“You belong here, Lantern,” Carn said.

  “Hmph,” Vandor said. “You are the only known surviving station chief, anyway, so you’re the only person even remotely qualified.”

  “I am honored, Elders.” I gestured extreme humility.

  “Of course you are,” Vandor agreed. “Now sit down and we’ll have the formal investiture.”

  I sat, and the protean chair adjusted for me. It was the most comfortable seat I’d ever taken in my life. Also, in another sense, the most uncomfortable.

  “We’re still working on the new oath,” Carn said. “The original version had a lot of ‘glory to the old masters’ stuff that hardly seems appropriate anymore.”

  They’d all taken that old oath, and broken it, so I wasn’t too worried about taking a new one, despite my reluctance to tell lies.

  “I proposed an oath of personal loyalty to me, but it was voted down four to two. Only Hister has any sense.” The figure to Vandor’s right grunted, pleased to be noticed. “The new oath is adequate, though, and simple enough. Repeat after me. ‘I pledge to work tirelessly for the unity and advancement of my people, for so long as I shall live.’”

  I repeated. It was a pledge I would have supported, if I hadn’t known that “advancement of” really meant “domination of the galaxy by.”

  “There, now you’re on the council. You’ve been appointed head of the Homeland Reconstitution Outreach Committee – that means you’re in charge of gathering together our far-flung relatives, as you already know. You get Scoliax’s old suite, while you’re here, and more importantly, you get access to the private council database. Familiarize yourself with our plans for World, so you can properly sing the planet’s praises when you go among the masses. If you have any suggestions for planetary development, flag them for Witlock; she’s heading up the infrastructure initiative.”

  “I could use heralds, message-bearers,” I said. “Are there any kindlings on board who could be assigned to me?” There was always a small generation of new truth-tellers on the council station – once one generation graduated and went off to serve elsewhere, another batch was kindled and taught the old ways.

  “You’ll have to use your own people for that,” Vandor said. “When it became clear several years ago that the humans were meddling in Axiom affairs, we paused the next generation of pod-births. The people in this room are the only creatures with nervous systems on this whole planet. Fortunately we have a lot of drones, enough to get started here, and once we get the orbital fabrication engine up and running, we’ll have all the resources we need. Plenty of feedstock, organic and otherwise, on the planet itself. When you check the database you’ll find a list of professions and special skills we could use, though – make sure you recruit people who can fill those positions first, would you?”

  “Of course, Elder.”

  “All right then, lots of work to do. Review the data we’ve left for you, Elder Lantern, and we’ll reconvene tomorrow to discuss your next steps. Council dismissed.”

  Vandor left the table, Hister following after like a pet. The others paused to welcome me, with varying degrees of warmth, and then returned to their quarters, until only Carn and I remained.

  “If I can do anything to help, let me know,” Carn said. “I took the liberty of marking a few documents you’ll want to look at first. I know the urge to dig into the archives and find out all our strange old secrets must be a powerful one, but we have to focus on the mission above all else.”

  “Of course, Carn. I understand.”

  She left, and I went to the only empty suite of rooms. The door rippled open, and closed after me.

  They hadn’t cleared out Scoliax’s things – her robes still hung on hooks, her collection of small carvings of spaceships remained on a shelf – but the relaxation pool was clean and everything had been dusted. A small serving drone, half my size and bristling with manipulator arms, gave me a welcoming chime.

  The terminal recognized me. “Welcome, Elder Lantern,” it read, a floating screen lighting up invitingly. I took a seat (perfect comfort in here, too) and spent some time familiarizing myself with the system. It was much like the one on Veritat… but with directories I’d never seen before, or had even known existed. I’d foolishly believed I’d penetrated the deepest levels of security the truth-tellers had, but there were local files here on the museum of subjugation that weren’t networked at all, inaccessible to anyone outside these seven rooms.

  A few files were marked “urgent” – “Orientation Material,” “World Plans 3.3,” “Suggested Points of Persuasion,” “Proselytization Best Practices.” I wasn’t very interested in those, since I had no intention of heading up the council’s outreach efforts, though I did take a moment to look at the list of “Recruitment Priorities.” They wanted engineers, of course, preferably ones with experience that might prove relevant to using a fabrication engine. But they also wanted massage therapists, chefs, experienced personal assistants, and intimate recreation specialists. All roles their kindlings would have served, to one degree or another, and all sorts of work the council wouldn’t deign to do themselves.

  After shaking my head over that list, I checked the other directories, to see if I really had full access.

  I really did. I had at my fingertips all the records of every world we’d destroyed, and every species we’d exterminated. A map of every Axiom facility (almost all marked “destroyed,” so that was nice), and an inventory of every known piece of Axiom technology (many of those marked “destroyed,” too), including the last known fabrication engine, up there in orbit (if it malfunctioned, you didn’t want it eating the biosphere). I found the exact coordinates of World, and the other candidate planets the council had rejected. We weren’t that far from Sol – not by cosmic standards, anyway, but even one of the Free would die of old age if they tried to come here via Tanzer Drive rather than wormhole bridge.

  I found the schematics for the museum, too. The specs for the reactor that powered this entire station. That reactor was built around a type of Axiom power cell – essentially a very small exploding star held in a stasis field, though that’s an oversimplification.

  I locked my rooms and set a council-level “do not disturb” message. I set my comms to autoreply to any contacts with this message: “I am deep in study. Please override for emergencies only.” Then I disabled the override.

  I called over the serving drone and had it disassemble itself as much as it possibly could, then completed the process using the tools the drone had removed from its own body. I checked the ship schematics again, used the tools to remove a wall panel, and wriggled into a ventilation duct that eventually led to a service tunnel. From there, I made my way deep into the bowels of the station, toward the sealed regions where the reactor was housed.

  Nothing is sealed to a member of the council, though. The station would probably notify Vandor and the others that I was going places where I had no business, but I expected to finish my work before they could do anything about it.

  I was going to breach the stasis field in the reactor. I was going to expose the collapsing star. I was going to kill the entire council: including myself. They were all here, all in one place, and there would be no collateral damage, since there were no innocents, unless you counted me. Breaking reactor containment would end the prospect of a home world for my people, but it seemed a fair price to pay, to end the machinations of the council and their plans to eliminate your species, Elena.

  I was mostly sad for you. You’d never know what happened to me. You’d only have that first letter, the one that said I loved you, and I was leaving, and I hoped to take light into the darkness. I was going to make light, all right. Solar light. Starlight. I was going to gouge a hole into the side of this planet and atomize my old masters in the process.

  I made it into the reactor room, and sealed the door behind me, using a torch improvised from the innards of my serving drone to fuse the controls. Then I approached the reactor. It was beautiful – a coruscating ball of light, shining even in a stasis field that was tuned to be nearly opaque, because to look upon a naked star is to court blindness. I went to a control panel and pried up one corner, prepared to sabotage all thirty-four separate safety systems I would need to destroy in order to destroy us all.

  “Oh, Lantern. I’d really hoped Vandor was wrong about you. I’m so disappointed.”

  Carn spoke with her voicebox, that time, and it was kindly and sad. I spun around to see her emerge from the shadows between two support struts. She was holding a nasty Axiom sidearm bristling with silver spines: the weapon had a distressing resemblance to the brain spiders the Axiom used to compel obedience if their servants proved unruly or intractable.

  “Do you know why Vandor chose to bring you through from Pluto?” she said. “He thinks he’s funny. He picked that location because the humans once thought that icy dwarf was an important thing – a planet – and later found out it was something more insignificant and common.” She flushed the color of a disappointed sigh. “You’re just like Pluto. We once thought you were special, and worthy of attention and respect, but now we know the truth: you are small and contemptible. Isn’t that–”

  I hurled the wrench clutched in my pseudopod straight at her largest eye. She squawked, and I scurried, straight for the exit route I’d planned in case my apparent all-access pass to the station proved too good to be true. I pulled aside a vent grate, squeezed my body into a small-diameter pipe, propelled myself with peristaltic motion, popped off the other grate, dropped into a service tunnel, and headed for the Exodus Chamber, where we kept the bridge generator used to send truth-tellers to their permanent postings, and to open bridges to move the station itself. There were failsafes that would prevent me from opening a wormhole inside the station, at least in the time I probably had available, but I could open a bridge back home, and armed with the coordinates of World, I could bring Callie and Shall and a fleet through –

  I opened the hatch to the Exodus Chamber, and Histur fired a weapon at me, something kinetic, I think, based on the boom and crash. He may have been good at pleasuring Vandor’s cloaca, but he was a terrible shot, and he missed. I reversed course, reviewing the schematics in my mind. I had to find a place to hide, where I could regroup and come up with Plan C, and the closest plausible place was…

  The exhibit hall.

  And here I am. I dropped out of the ceiling and fell, landing on top of one of these asteroids, spinning it around and nearly tumbling to the floor twenty meters below, barely holding on with my major pseudopods. I was in the middle of a floating diorama of an Axiom space battle, not that they had “battles” so much as “routs,” and I managed to leap from the small asteroid to a larger one, hollowed out, with a cannon poking out of the side and a little chamber inside where the operator was supposed to sit. (It’s a working cannon – the museum doesn’t go in for replicas – but it doesn’t have any ammunition, which is the case for all the weapons in here. Kindlings are just like human children in many ways, Elena, though they mature faster; you don’t let them loose around live ammunition if you can help it.)

  I disabled my comms so the council couldn’t track my location. This is a big station – half the size of New Meditreme, though it was never home to anywhere near half as many residents – but they’ll find me eventually. I can hear movement down on the museum floor. It sounds like drones rather than any of the elders. I suspect there are brain spiders, too, silvery legs flickering, just waiting to jam probes and release nanites into my nervous system and make me a willing servant. To burn all the me out of me, and leave a puppet behind.

  I can’t let that happen. There’s a terror-drone near my location. If I can get to it, and get inside, and figure out how to turn it on… those machines don’t need weapons, or ammunition. They are weapons, complete in themselves. With one of those, well, I might stand a chance.

  I don’t think much of my odds of success, but it will feel good to fight before I lose.

  Yours,

  Lantern

  P.S.: I realized I’ve been thinking about you, and me, and us, all wrong. You have to understand, I don’t really have any models of healthy relationships, and certainly not romantic ones. The Free sometimes enter into such relationships, even occasionally with humans, but I… I grew up in a cult, Elena. The mission always came before everything else. I was first drawn to you, to your kindness and your brilliance and your smile and your openness, because you came from a different time, and felt like an outcast among the humans, too. There were so many reasons I became fascinated by you, not least of all your endless interest in and fascination with me. No one had ever really looked at me as an individual before you did, Elena. Everyone else – certainly my own people, and even Callie, at first – saw me as a tool at best. You saw me as a person. Is it any wonder I fell in love with you?

  You also gave me the ability to see myself as a person. To think of myself beyond my usefulness to the mission, whatever that mission might be. To imagine that I might deserve happiness and fulfillment on my own terms, for myself alone.

  I am ashamed that I was so focused on what I couldn’t have with you that I neglected to enjoy what we did have. We could have remained close friends. We could have worked together on all those projects you suggested over the years. I could have gotten very nearly everything I dreamed of having with you, I realize now. You don’t want to be my life-mate, I know. You are with Callie, and you are good together; you temper her, I think, and make her sweeter. But I was jealous, and sad, for so long, and thought that giving up my dream of us together meant I had to give up everything. But I didn’t, did I? We could have been many things. We could have been friends.

  The Free are famed for our adaptability. We change our bodies to fit varied environments. We make up stories about our histories to fill the void of the unknown. And yet, somehow, I was unable to change my view about you. About us. “I can’t have her for my one true forever love, so I can’t have her at all.” No. I could have adapted. I could have gracefully let that conception of us go, and embraced everything you did offer me.

  I wish I had. I wish I still could.

  My dearest, Elena,

  A lot has happened.

  I reached the terror-drone, but it was inactive, its red lights purely decorative. I didn’t have the codes or the necessary override tools to make it operational. I didn’t have any tools at all, except an electro-probe I’d stripped from the serving drone – it’s basically just a screwdriver capable of generating a small current. I wished I’d taken Ashok up on his offers to “improve” my environment suit – he would have surely built in all sorts of interesting weapons and countermeasures, but I never thought such things would be necessary.

  I was clinging to the top of the terror-drone when Vandor and Hister and one of the council members whose name I didn’t know came into the exhibit hall, far below. The lights came on all through the museum, shining orbs that hung in space illuminating all at once, and I flattened myself out, even though they couldn’t have possibly seen me from way down there. “I know you’re in here!” Vandor shouted. “You may as well show yourself now!”

  I declined.

  The councilor I didn’t know said, “You’ve shouted the same thing in every room we’ve entered, Vandor.”

  “Yes, well, one of these times, it’s bound to work. I knew we should have killed the wretched traitor – sent her into the heart of that sun, as a practice run.”

  “Your perception of the situation was perfect as always,” Hister toadied.

  “She’s a sad case, really. Going native. That’s why we always destroyed these upstart species from orbit.” Vandor thumped the floor for emphasis. “Too many of the adherents have weak minds. People like that can’t go mixing with the primitives, or they risk getting sentimental.” He went on in that vein for a while, but my mind stuck on one part: they always destroyed their enemies from orbit.

  My entire perception of my situation changed at that moment, Elena.

  The elders of the central council of the truth-tellers were terrifying. They had the power to destroy whole civilizations. They directed the energies of unspeakable engines and commanded a legion of secret operatives. They were killers on a scale rivalled only by the Axiom themselves.

  They were all that. I knew it. I’d always known it. I knew, and I was intimidated.

  Except now I realized… they’d never done anything personally in their lives. They always fought from a distance, pushing pieces around, directing their troops, setting plans in motion, but they didn’t have any experience at directly executing those plans. I’d escaped Carn’s ambush by throwing a wrench at her, because she wasted time giving me a little speech. She’d tried to take me alone, when it would have been trivial to have backup. She could have blocked all possible exits – she clearly hadn’t looked at the schematics as carefully as I had. Histur couldn’t even shoot me successfully when I was mere meters away and he had the element of surprise.

  Now Vandor and the other two were below me, standing in bright light, shouting. They could have come in with night-vision equipment, and communicated nearly silently by private comms, or even used pheromones alone – our language is simple when reduced to that level, but functional enough for a hunt-and-kill operation. Instead they were strolling around, looking behind exhibits, poking their tentacles into pipes and kicking the sides of Axiom ground ships, like I was a lost pet that had escaped her cage.

  I am not a killer… by preference. I am not trained in combat, like Callie. I have not taken many lives directly… but none of these people had taken any.

  I knew, if they caught me, they would break my mind and use me as a weapon against the people I loved. I couldn’t allow that to happen.