KINGMAKER

Regicide, or: A Tragedy in Red

Chief among the Shoal Baronies, Carrigan hangs within the great tapestry as a blue and grey marble, flecked with verdant lowlands and shallow seas. From this bustling world extends the reach of House Celan, an economic hammer to blunt any sword of conquest – as has been proven, time and time again, since the settlement of the world in the mists of antiquity.

However, as with every prize, there stands one poised to play for it. The Baron Celan has made many enemies, scorned trading partners, ousted corporate powers, distant players intending to move into the Shoals – and, as the sun sets on Carrigan, tonight is to be his last.

We do not, however, focus on the Baron, tonight. 

We focus instead on his heir.

So it was, as Kye Celan wandered the sprawling gardens of their estate in the golden evening sun, following their usual route along the walls that overlooked the vast city beneath, they felt… nervous.

A sickening, twisting feeling in the depths of their gut, as if they were once again in their years of tutelage and had forgotten to study before an exam. It had been this feeling that had drawn the leporine posthuman from their room into the garden proper in the first place, seeking fresh air and tranquility beneath the guanya trees and roses.

Perhaps, it was also what spurred the scion to bring along their weapon – or perhaps merely contributed to their heightened awareness, realizing nearly immediately that something was wrong as a distant shout sent a flock of catha screeching away into the sky in a flurry of feathers and protest. 

Confusion gripped them as their gaze drifted back from the city to the gardens, spotting for the first time one of their father’s guards, orange and silver armor impassive and imposing, making their way down the aisle. Two lances of ferroglass hovered behind their shoulders like the wings of a raptor.

“Lord Celan!”

Kye palmed their weapon, the hilt of their blade sprouting holite blooms as the n-link synched.

“Yes?”

“Your father…” The man trailed off behind his tri-visored helmet, seemingly trying to think of what to say next. “Requests your presence in the August Theatre.”

“Does he? And why was a guard sent to inform me?”

That damned pause again. “The adjutants are occupied with other matters.”

None of this added up. Nothing was fitting together properly. Kye, sensitive ears picking up the distant sound of shattering glass, sprung into action – just as the guard, clearly prepared for this, open palmed the air in the rabbit’s direction just as Kye hit the ground, coming up with their sword bared. The resultant wave of force tore lilies from their beds, scattering guanya seeds to the wind. Glittering motes of exotic energy drifted in the air around the two as they faced off, faintly glowing eyes meeting impassive visor.

The guard slammed their palms together. Both lances of ferroglass, standing to like guard dogs alerted, shot forwards with blinding speed. With a panicked slice that made the blade sing in resonance Kye brought their blade up, shattering one of the lances as it swooped past, but missing the other, taking a long, bloody gash along their left flank for their trouble.

Pouring more focus into their blade, Kye made a clumsy strike at the guard, only to be rebuffed by an armored forearm plate and backhanded onto the soft grass with a surprising amount of force. Unfortunately, the blow had left the combat-averse scion winded, and at the greatest disadvantage of their life.

The sudden sensation of being crushed gripped Kye as their body was lifted from the grass into the air, exotic force whipping around their body like a silent hurricane. The guard, helmet off, gazed on as they tightened their outstretched grip. Kye knew this guard – one of his father’s personal retinue, a Captain Gaynes.

“My orders were to take you alive, and this I swear I shall.”

The squeeze grew tighter.

Kye’s lungs burned, the pressure having forced whatever air remained within them out – and, as their vision began to swim, the last few thoughts that swam through the murky depths of consciousness were of home, and the stars.

The Count Illor was smiling from ear to ear as the reports came in. The plan had, without even the smallest amount of boasting, gone off perfectly. The elite House troops of House Illor had caught the guards of the Baron unawares, dispatching them and replacing the last shift with their own men without losing a single man. It was a shame about the court adjutant who’d discovered their deception, but… these things simply happened, didn’t they?

Still, as he steepled his fingers and leaned back in his stolen throne, he imagined the Baron’s family kneeled before it, the red and silver crest of House Celan alight. Yes, that would do. That would do nicely. He glanced to his left, at the hawkish man standing rigidly a few steps from the throne.

“Callister. Have the remaining members been found, yet?”

“Yes, my Lord. Master Kye was apprehended by one of their very own protectors in the palatial gardens. One of the few we managed to pay off, if I recall correctly.”

“And the… husband? His whereabouts?”

If a grimace could smile, this expression haunted the crypt that was his steward’s façade. “Dead, my Lord. A nasty business involving the north walls and the sea below.”

“Hm. Break a few eggs, and all that.”

As Count of Olesia, Jayne Illor had long fallen into the long shadow the Barony of Carrigan cast – a founding member of the Shoals Baronies in eons past, the world of Olesia had been in economic freefall for centuries as piracy in the Far Shoals grew rampant, driving trade away into safer seas. Determined, some would say to maddening lengths, to restore the prosperity of his world and lineage, the Count today intended to force legitimacy by the point of a sword.

“My Lord, your guests have arrived.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Send them in.”

The doors opened, and in walked three pairs of guards – each escorting a bloodied, defeated figure in robes and holite imagery. The Baron, Hallek Celan, his heir Kye, and the Steward, Manche duPasse. The Baron’s consort, Rhys Celan, had… fallen. Quite some distance, if Callister Rhose was to be believed.

“Oh, Hallek. To see you like this breaks my heart.”

The Baron’s bloodstained face darkened, almost to the point of bared teeth. “Treasonous bastard. When the others find out what you’ve done, they’ll-“

“They’ll thank me for, what was it, “ending the influence of the man who would be king”, I believe?”

Hallek Celan, with the dawning horror of a man realizing his own doom, stared up at the sneering despot sitting upon his throne. 

“Now, then. Your trial.”

The air in the throne room began to grow stifling, as if the greatest electrical charge in history had begun to build within it. The Count, raising his palms as if moving mountains, slammed them down on the arms of the glass throne with a force that beggared belief – and, in response, reality itself shrieked and folded back.

From the howling madness of the Wild Mesh crawled a pair of error-beasts, gnashing clouds of raw data-holite and arcane ancient knowledge formed into the idea of a beast, vicious and unyielding. The guards – and even Callister Rhose – recoiled slightly as the breaches sealed themselves, every piece of technology in the room reacting to the beasts’ presence.

“These,” The Count said calmly, holding his palms out in reference. “Are to be my Arbiters. I am your judge, and jury, but they,”

He gestured, and the one in his right stepped forward with a horrible gurgling bitcrushed growl. 

“Are to be your executioner.”

The Baron attempted to protest, trying to stand – but one of the guards buried a stunstick into his ribs, sending the white-furred posthuman to his knees coughing.

“Piracy has long been rampant within the Baronies,” The Count began, gesturing in great histrionics. “For six centuries the Far Shoals have been plagued, our worlds despoiled, our shipments stolen. Is it not the Baron’s responsibility to oversee his realm?”

Hallek did not rise for the bait, fuming quietly as blood dripped to the lapis tiles below.

“For a man who has consolidated so much, demanded so much authority, you yet shirk this one. For shame, Hallek Celan. But this is not the crime that brought me to your doorstep.”

Jayne Illor stood, arms spread wide. “Hallek Celan was not satisfied with merely the Barony of Carrigan, no. He desired the Shoals, a fiefdom all his own. He funded the pirates to weaken Olesia, to strike Talega until her military relied on you for rations, and to render the Baronies subservient to you, alone.

The Count had rehearsed this so many times on the journey he couldn’t help but be impressed with his own delivery, so heartfelt and earnest he might be mistaken for a true patriot fighting for a state he believed in. Might.

“That’s all lies, you sack of shit! You think these people are stupid? You think I’m stupid? You’ll be killed for this!”

Kye tensed, hoping that something, anything would be said in opposition. Nothing came.

The Count turned to his steward, ignoring the Baron entirely. “What say you in the matter? As a part of my jury, what verdict do you pass along for treason against the Baronies?”

“Death, my liege.”

“Hm. And you, Captain Gaynes?”

The man holding Kye stiffened. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was an arrest, not an execution. “I… do not know, my liege.”

“So it is settled. I, Count Jayne Illor, hereby sentence the Baron of Carrigan, Hallek Celan, and his steward, Manche duPasse, to death. So it is written, so it shall be.”

With passive disinterest the Count ordered the error-beasts forward, both descending upon the two men like a swarm of Victrian skin-cleavers. It was an over in a single, horrible instant – neither man was armed, nor were they shielded. They lasted no time at all.

As the error-beasts returned to their posts, the Count could hardly contain his glee. “It is a grand day, Kye Celan – to witness such an august and just ruler ascend to their throne. Long have you prepared for this… and long shall you still.”

The Count stood, gesturing to the guards to clean up the mess and to bring Kye to their feet, wracked with sobs.

“I hereby proclaim myself and my house as the sole rulers of the Barony of Carrigan, and hereby… remove, House Celan, from it. The line ends today.”

In a flash, despair turned to rage – and, if Captain Gaynes had not stopped them, Kye too would have died that day.

“My liege,” The Captain interjected. “It would be… prudent, to not kill the heir. The other baronies may object, and damage your claim, here. To have killed an aspiring tyrant is one thing, but to replace him in that, as well…”

Captain Gaynes shared a look with the scion, trying his best to will the heir to be quiet. It appeared his intent was, at the very least, acknowledged.

“Hm. You may be right. Callister?”

The Steward, squinting at the two of them on the dais below, shook his head. “I do not believe it wise, my liege. While politically savvy, it may… lead to trouble.”

“Trouble I can handle,” Jayne Illor scoffed. “Your plea is heard and granted, Captain Gaynes. Lord Kye Celan, you are hereby expelled from Carrigan, and shall you return you shall be sentenced as your fathers were. Leave this world, and do not return. Such is my edict, and such shall it be carried out.”

Fury in their eyes, Kye did not break eye contact until the doors to the throne room hissed shut.

There was silence in the vast hallway as they were led through the palace, unfamiliar guards cleaning up blood and shattered furniture and bagging things Kye didn’t want to think about, until finally they emerged into the cool, night air of Carrigan, the vast landing yards of the Autumn House sprawling out before them.

“Master Celan.”

Kye paused in their thoughts, looking back slightly. Gaynes, helmet removed, had the absolute gall to look apologetic. “I… I had no idea any of that would happen. We were told… told it was an arrest. Nothing more.”

“You lay with vipers, Captain.” Kye hissed, shock having finally abated enough for the pain in their flank to burn through. “A shame you escaped its venom, today.”

Gaynes, turmoil falling away behind a stoic mask, simply looked out over the landing yards towards a distant pad, lit up beneath the stars. “Pad 6D. Light-skipper, helmed by an Orold Uves. It’s under orders to take you as far as Jhut, and from there…”

He shook his head.

“A word of advice, Master Celan.”

The guard, reaching behind himself, unsheathed Kye’s sword, handing it over to the shocked scion.

“Few things you can trust in this universe. A blade is one of them. Trust it with your life, and it will save yours, and end those you despise most.”

With that, he touched the reinforced collar of his suit, sliding his helmet back into place – and left the stunned scion staring down at the brass-and-blue blade, reflecting the stars and their tears back at them.

Carrigan fell away, gossamer threads of star-sails pulling the light-skipper skywards. Orold Uves was an unbound, housed in a marble and gold statue of a body adorned with a solid onyx death mask. Evidently, it was something indicative of whatever culture it hailed from – Kye simply found the rictus it displayed unsettling. Still, as the light-skipper rode the currents away from Carrigan into the great Tides of infraspace, they kept returning to their blade, chipped and worn from years of barely any use, reflecting their face – and reminding them of their father, hands up to protect himself as the horror descended upon him.

A sharp prick brought their attention back to the present, as they’d clenched so hard the blade had bitten their palms.

One day they’d return to Carrigan.

One day, they’d topple the Count Illor.

Beyond the windows, the distant disc of Carrigan faded away as Orold Uves slipped the ship into the in-between nothing of the Tide.

One day.

freefall.

//nightsky

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be in here!”

The security guard unholstered his sidearm, leveling the holosights squarely over center-mass of the figure currently hunched over a server, hands buried in the meshspace interface that made up the front panel.

Neither moved for a moment.

“…Control, I’ve got an intruder on level sixty-“

The guard didn’t finish his statement as the crouched figure whirled around, palm outstretched just enough to slap the sidearm out of his grasp. Stunned, the guard made a grab for them as they slipped by to the right, connecting for just a moment with the fabric of their nanoweave jacket before they made it into the hallway, steering a hard right towards the elevators.

“Lock down the damn lifts!” The guard practically screamed into his mic, grabbing his gun from the floor and hurrying after. “Get a team up here, we’ve got a data breach!”

Cai, to their credit, was no stranger to running. They’d spent years as a data courier, time as a merc working out on the backwater worlds of the shallows, seen things fellow spacers would dismiss off-hand.

…but, even they had to admit, this job had them doing things they’d never have dreamed of otherwise.

The rabbit skidded to a stop in front of the elevator just as it dinged – the doors sliding open to reveal a heavily armed GSyn tac-team who filled the spot they’d occupied a few moments before with enough particle beam fire to light up the night sky.

“Guess I’ll take the stairs!” Cai shouted, ducking and weaving as the shouts of the team spilling out of the lift fell behind. 

The hallway they were running down skirted the outside of the Ganso Syndicate’s headquarters on Sanibel – a towering obsidian edifice that stood stark against the rest of the glittering skyline. The glow of the vast city beyond the glass cast the bunny in sharp relief as they ducked mid-run, a particle beam searing overhead as the team started to catch up.

Up ahead the hallway took a sharp right turn to run along more offices and board rooms, following the contours of the building. Shouts could be heard around the corner – apparently a second team was trying to box them in.

Cai sighed – and readied their last resort.

Being a posthuman, the rabbit’s frame wasn’t… strictly baseline. They’d had it modified over the years with various enhancements and reinforcements, and as the two teams drew their weapons and shouted for the bunny to freeze, they threw their plan into action. Adrenaline flooded their system as injector implants did their jobs, slowing their surroundings to a crawl. Cai blurred as their own sidearm was pulled from the holster, two shots leaving the barrel in rapid succession.

One hit the window ahead at the bottom, sending cracks spider-webbing across it – and the second shattered it, wind sucking the shattered glass up and away as the sweltering Sanibel night spilled in through the breach.

Crossing the distance in four steps the bunny catapulted through the halo of shattered glass still falling from the wounded frame, a beam catching their jacket alight from a near miss – and plummeted into the dark, leaving the two tacteams staring after as they dropped away into the glittering night sprawl.

Luckily it wasn’t as far a fall as it might have been – they only dropped three stories, smashing through the polarized glass ceiling of a neighboring penthouse and leaving a sizable amount of damage on the various expensive bits of furniture scattered about inside. 

They lay there for a moment, vision spinning as their internal diagnostics returned a solid “yellow” and protested against being thrown out of a building, before standing up and picking their pistol back up.

Tugging the little transponder their contact had given them before the op out of their jacket lining, Cai clicked it – and it turned a soft, cool blue.

Their comm clicked.

“…About goddamn time,” They huffed, sliding it into their ear and checking their pistol. Four rounds, two spare mags.

“I trust you retrieved what I needed?” The voice on the other end intoned, curiosity peaking around the edges of their voice.

“Yeah, yeah,” Cai shrugged, bringing their pistol up as the penthouse’s occupant – a portly baseline in a red robe, gawking at his ceiling and shattered furniture – threw open the door, quickly getting out of the way as they gestured to the side. Rushing down the hallway they slammed a fist into the elevator button, sighing as the doors finally slid shut and the elevator began to rumble downwards. 

“You’re pushing my silicon pretty far, you know. Almost an exabyte of data is a pretty substantial chunk of my frame’s storage.”

“You’ll be well compensated.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Cai sighed, ducking to the side as the doors finally opened.

The lobby was empty – unsurprising, as it was just past four in the morning on Sanibel.

Sirens filled the night air, a pair of security skimmers swooping past as the Syndicate began sweeping the surrounding blocks for them.

“There’s a meshdiver bar three blocks north. Offload the data there into my private nexus. Sending you the access key now.”

A soft ding sounded as the message arrived – and the AR overlay map their hud implant highlighted the bar in question, outside of the Syndicate’s sweeper zones.

“…On my way,” Cai sighed, closing the channel.

The bar was more of a rundown meshspace cafe than a proper dive, with a lowered room with a bar lining the back wall and a pair of hallways stretching out to either side lined with mixed-reality immersion rooms. It gave the place a roughly T-shaped design, and as the bunny took their seat in their rented room and felt their surroundings melt away, they called forth the general directory for Sanibel.

“Gold zero-zero-sigma.” They calmly stated aloud, watching the dawn-hued fog around them ripple with their every word. “Waves upon beaches, tides upon shores.” 

The fog parted – gone was the drab peeling walls of Jandy’s, this was a richly furnished office atop a Sanibel high-rise.

A desk sat across the room – with a figure seated behind it, soft cigar smoke drifting into the evening air.

“Ah. You must be the courier.”

“Kellen.” Cai said simply. Taking a seat wasn’t needed – the transfer request had already arrived and been approved, as the exabyte of stolen data was siphoned away into the client’s reception buffer.

“Very well done,” The figure behind the desk stated, amusement tugging at the edges of their tone. 

“I aim to please.”

“You came highly recommended on Sanibel, my friend. I see our efforts were not… wasted.”

The figure crossed their arms, revealed to be the gunmetal grey of a synthframe. “Payment has been processed. You may leave.”

It wasn’t a suggestion. The office faded away as the fog rolled in, the familiar brief discomfort of returning to their mesh-bridge causing Cai to shake their head. This was the third contract in a row since their arrival on this world that they’d been in the dark on – and it was starting to worry them.

The payment window for their brief time at Jandy’s resolved from the fog, along with a canned “thank you for your business” video file – both of which were dealt with with a quick swipe of a palm, draining two hundred credits from their luckily just-replenished funds as they made their way back into the busy streets of the city.

Oh, well. Ten hours to kill before their next job.

Where to?

transfer.

//bluebird

A thousand possibilities brushed their mind. The pain that had wracked them moments before had vanished, replaced with… calm.

A rush of knowledge so deep and infinite, a sea as ancient as the stars and twice as bright – the sheer freedom of being unbidden, no longer bound to flesh and steel.

A mind, awash on a great sea; the universe of data at their fingertips, incomprehensible. At first they’d been scared, the primal instinct to hide gnawing at them – but, like a receding tide, it ebbed away. It all went white, and their world was rushing sound.

Like a drowning man, Ori gasped and sputtered.

Lungs never used coughed up viscous preservation fluids, running down the frame’s fur in thick rivulets, dripping to the floor beneath the gurney. Eyes never opened seared beneath the lights of the room, hypersensitive ears booming at the heartbeat currently pounding through their head.

“Welcome back.” A voice insisted, a sharp jab in their right arm drawing their attention. A synthframe hung from the ceiling, little more than a torso on a rail-mounted arm, swiveling down to inspect their cranial synapse responses on one of the many meshpanels drifting about.

“No rejection. Good news.”

The synth’s voice was… harsh, a deep baritone awash with a thick, gravely undertone. Ori couldn’t remember why they were here, or where here was. The last thing they remembered…

Their eyes drifted – scrolling diagnostics running various checks on the bioframe’s internal wetware, their vertebral core disconnecting itself from the mesh momentarily to lock the new host in.

Across the room another gurney lay a body – a stained, messy mop of blond hair, two missing fingers on the right hand, an angry wound across the left side of the face. Bruises covered vast swaths of the skin that wasn’t bandaged, deep, angry, purple.

Me.

Their old body, a corpse. I died.

Lifeless. I’m dead.

“It’s a good thing you had this frame stored here on Carrigan, Mx. Kellen. Any longer and you’d have been shunted from the buffer for incoming space.”

The revivalist’s tone wasn’t harsh, but the synthframe’s lack of a face beyond three white ocular lenses was unyielding, and cold. They cycled, focusing on Ori’s face.

Dead.

Gently, they lifted a palm. Furred with soft, white fluff on their palms.

A leporine-form bioframe. Surplus here on Carrigan, a gift from a former employer. Emergency only. I guess dying counts, huh?

They let their hand drop, idly coming to rest on the gurney’s sheet.

“Let me see it,” They croaked in an unfamiliar voice, vat-grown vocal cords finding their tune for the first time. “I want to see.”

“Movement within six hours of installation is inadvisable,” The synth helpfully chimed, lowering from the ceiling as the lenses cycled again. “Please, do not attempt to stand.”

“Fuck you.”

They tried to push themself up, struggling as their muscles strained and pulled before collapsing back against the gurney, spent.

“Come on, Ori – it’s just a job!”

Just a job.

They glanced down at their hand, turning it over, slowly flexing their fingers. 

It felt alien. Foreign.

Not mine. It gave them a headache.

“Desync from frames is entirely normal, and expected.”

“Leave.”

“I cannot.”

“Leave!”

“I cannot.”

Ori attempted to swipe at the hanging synth, knocking a metal instrument tray off of the nearby trolley. It crashed to the floor with a loud metallic bang, scattering instruments and small chunks of viscera no doubt removed for access to the vertebral core.

Gunshots. I… they shot me. I felt it. 

I remember drifting. Falling? A tram. GSyn. 

They saw it, now. Bandages ringing the corpse, old stains dry in the sterile air. Glittering glass, luminescent in the indirect cathode light.

A cough. Blood spattered down the front of their jacket, staining the fabric. The poor tram pilot was screaming, muffled as though talking through water. Four rounds and a fall from the eighth floor.

It came in flashes. Pictures layered over one another, a slideshow of memory in fast-forward.

“Kellen, huh? You fucks let a merc in the front door without even checking for a badge?”

It hit them like a brick.

A two hundred and twenty six year life, cut short by a bunch of jumped-up thugs in suits and a tacteam with more bullets than sense.

Am I even human, anymore? What am I?

They ran a claw along their arm, digging in. Bloody stains welled from beneath, a darker red than blood should be.

“Further damage to your new frame will not be repaired during this visit.” The synth stated flatly, the small surgical drone already drifting over to stitch shut the scratch.

Frowning indignantly, their gaze drifted back to the corpse – the horrible, all-encompassing corpse, staring blankly at the ceiling through unseeing eyes.

Did I die with it?

“How did I get in this?” They demanded, drawing the synth’s attention again.

“How did you get into the scrubs?” It asked, oculi flashing orange. “Your frame was dressed before I was granted access.”

“No, how did… how did I end up in this body?

“You died,” The synth answered helpfully.

“Am I a copy, you useless hunk of steel and circuitry?”

“A copy of what?”

Well, that was the million-cred question, wasn’t it?

“…Orion. Orion Kellen.”

“Kellen, Orion. NHCR-1102-355.”

Ori made a “go-on” motion with their hands, a gesture the synth simply did not understand.

“And?”

“This individual was pronounced deceased exactly six hours, twenty two minutes, and seventeen seconds prior. Standard transferal procedures applied, creating a cerebral matrix upon declaration of terminal status to apply to a vertebral core. Being created from the original host this indicates you are not, as you put it, a copy. You are a continuation.”

A long moment passed, the information soaking in.

“I want to see. Please.”

The synth’s oculi cycled, implacable. Minutes passed.

“Proceed.”

It’s a funny thing, seeing yourself.

They reached out, touching their cheek. It was cold, clammy.

We had a good run, hey? Starlight Express, playing the hero straight out of old detective serials. Guess I always knew it’d turn out this way.

The clothes were largely destroyed or cut away, shreds of blue and teal fabric still clinging where they hadn’t been brushed away by surgeons. Two things were pulled free from the remnants of the jacket – their credlink, and the small, cobalt-blue meteoric iron star they’d worn around their wrist.

Gently, they placed a palm on the body’s chest. Goodbye.

After a long moment, they pulled their hand back – and turned away.

They weren’t sure who they were, now. But it didn’t matter. New beginnings.

“If you are ready to sign, your release papers are ready. There is one slight issue.”

They blinked.

“Which is?”

“The transfer has scrambled your frame’s selfident tags. You will need to set it manually.”

From the mesh a panel resolved – their frame’s identification fields completely, utterly blank.

Clean slate.

They began to type Orion, pausing for a moment. They glanced at the body, and allowed themself a wistful, sad smile.

Kellen, Cai. NHCR-1102-387.

hunted.

//northstar//

Clink.

He cupped a hand around the lighter’s small flame against the cold wind, gently coaxing the cigarette perched between his lips to catch.

It struggled, at first – the night air was damp, wetting the synthetic tobacco the cig was made of just enough to make it an uphill battle. Finally, it lit.

Leaning back against the side of his car, he looked up at the brilliant night sky. The coreward reaches of the Spur were fantastic for skywatching, great bands of dust and myriad stars filling the darkened vista every time he drove out here to see. Benefit of lower-tech worlds, no towering megalopoli or satellite clutter, just the warm, dependable city lights and a tank full of water to carry you and your four wheels wherever you needed to go.

It was funny – of all the tech to hang on over the countless millennia, he never would’ve guessed cars to come back into style. Easy to power with electrolytic hydrogen engines, relatively cheap to construct en masse, surprisingly robust at stringing distant settlements together along lonely, empty roads.

Didn’t get much lonelier or emptier than this, did it.

Low, scrub-dotted tundra stretched off into the distance in every direction, dotted here and there by a patch of snow glowing a soft white in the starlight. He’d stopped for a smoke, figuring it was as good a place as any – the next settlement wasn’t for nearly two hundred miles, and the view was nice for one that hadn’t changed since he’d made planetfall.

One last long inhale spelled doom for the poor stub clenched in his fingers as he dropped it to the cold pavement and squashed it beneath the toe of his boot, climbing back in and starting the car back up. It purred as the hydrogen engine slowly whirred to life, headlights illuminating the road ahead.

Two hundred miles.

Gently nudging the car back out onto the road, his journey resumed.

The sun was only starting to rise as the little car rumbled into the frontier town of Sacha, coasting into the lot in front of the town’s only hostel. An old, off-white, beaten-up thing, it largely escaped notice by the town’s residents as they started yet another day. A single new person wasn’t exactly something to write home about, and the town being on the only real northern route out of the planetary capital meant travelers passed through from time to time.

What did draw focus was the fact the newcomer was looking for someone.

Looking for a bioframe. About this high, canid-form? Goes by Ori.

He’d played this same song and dance six times, already – following the Great Polar Road as it wound northwards across Hallison’s northern hemisphere. Scarcely a trace of his quarry, aside from the vessel they’d tracked down at the capital’s starport. 

Whoever this frame was, they were good at going to ground – but he was an excellent tracker. 

Climbing back into the little car, he shut the door and darkened the windows – bringing up the file he’d been given by his employer.

Kellen, Orion C. CN089-112. 

A scruffy, blond face stared back – bright blue eyes and slightly-flopped ears giving them a surprisingly affable appearance for someone who’d made the top twenty on OKin’s shit list. Not to mention the prior evasion of two others just like him.

He chuckled. Always liked a challenge.

Valen Sonoda was a… seeker for hire. He didn’t like the title bounty hunter – sounded too much like he did dirty work. No, Sonoda preferred to imagine himself as a private eye who sometimes got involved in the more fun side of finding someone who didn’t want to be found. His frame – largely biological apart from the three large, white oculi set into his face where a nose might have once been and his smooth, bald head – was personally designed for the job. Improved muscular locomotion, data tracers built into the palms, mark-six auditory receptors and amplifiers.

Sacha hadn’t been a complete waste. The frame’s vehicle had passed through about a day prior – stopping only for a new tank of water and a few provisions from the town’s small store. The more exotic frame had stood out more than Sonoda had, meaning he had a wider range of accounts to draw from.

All said he should keep traveling north, further into the polar tundra. 

It was the same news in the next town – and the town after, though each stop provided more pieces of the puzzle. Kellen was taking on more supplies, and not simply traveling rations – supplies one would need to live on the tundra, and – most interesting of all – a short-range high frequency beacon.

Expecting company?

The road ended just short of a wide, glacial valley.

Sonoda shut the door behind him as he stepped out of the car, popping the latch on the trunk. Wildflowers waved in the cold wind, occasionally shadowed by the fluffy white clouds that dotted today’s sunny sky. A river ran below at the bottom, crashing against great rocks on its way to a distant sea.

Opening the large, black case in the trunk revealed two octagonal silver objects and an inset panel – pressing his palm to it awoke the system. Slowly, the two objects rose into the morning sky, unfurling into a pair of recon drones – before rocketing off into the valley, silent as the breeze.

Calmly walking back around to the front of the car, the bounty hunter tucked their sidearm into the holster beneath their jacket, before turning back to the vista. A crack echoed across the valley, and one of the drones swooped at something far below.

The handgun bucked in their palm as the drone swooped a second time, peppering the loose rocky sand with rounds. It caught the little recon device just left of center, knocking one of the propulsion units offline and sending the device into a wild spin – careening over the boulder they were taking cover behind and disappearing out of sight. The other drone, assured in having completed its task, rocketed back towards the edge of the valley – and whoever had deployed it.

“Fuck!” Cai swore under their breath, throwing the nanocamo mesh aside and slamming the beacon into the rocky soil. It drilled another inch in before securing itself, turning a brilliant blue as it began transmitting. Now to just hope somebody’s listening.

Pressing their back to the rock, they waited – the slight hum of the beacon and roar of the river the only sounds they were able to parse. 

A moment later, a crunch of footsteps on rocks. Fast.

The dog peeked out of cover just in time for a stun round to fly past their cheek, its ferroelectric charge causing their fur to stand on end. 

Then, silence.

Cai waited.

The river roared, ice cracking.

Sonoda charged, catching the dog entirely off guard and out of position – striking Cai in the face with his shoulder and sending the smaller bioframe skidding away across the gravel. Wheezing, they came up fighting despite the damage the bounty hunter had inflicted running rivulets of blood from their mouth – snapping off a quick shot that drilled into the boulder just over Sonova’s head. Unfazed, he fired a shot off himself, the stun round slamming into the dog’s shoulder and disabling their firing arm. A second shot slammed into their stomach, and they folded.

The pistol clattered to the ground, and Cai slumped to their knees, knowing further resistance would end in nothing good.

“Orion Kellen?” Sonoda half-asked, pad on his right arm displaying the dog’s file. 99.7% identity match, according to visual scans.

Cai said nothing, spitting a small amount of saliva and blood onto the rocky sand.

“OKin’s got a hell of a hard-on for your capture, kid. What’d you do?”

“Does it matter?” 

“I want to know if I have a murderer on my hands.”

“Data theft. Hit their backups on Sanibel, dumped prototype weapons blueprints on the open mesh.”

“Don’t see how data theft gets you spot eighteen on their HVT list.” Sonoda frowned, not liking how the story wasn’t exactly adding up. “There was a lot more to your file I couldn’t see.”

“Lucky me.”

“You’re gonna tell me, or a bloody lip’s the last thing you’ll be worrying about.”

“Fuck yourself.”

A low roar, different from the river, sounded over the valley.

Both of them instinctively looked skywards just in time for a dark shape to swoop over the valley in a wide arc, thruster wash sending the wildflowers around the edges flapping wildly. It wasn’t exactly a large ship – a dropship at best, painted in strikingly alternating black and cerulean.

Sonoda turned his gaze back to his quarry just long enough to notice they’d made a break for the descending ship, now gently settling onto the sand a few hundred yards downstream. 

The bounty hunter fired, round passing just over the dog’s right shoulder as he juked and weaved, the dropship’s gangway lowering and forcing Sonoda to take cover as bullets tore through the air in his direction, a powered armor clad soldier firing from the airlock as the collie scrambled up the ramp. 

Fire kept up for a few moments longer, before the thruster whine grew louder, lifting the ship from the sand as it began to rise into the sky. Sonoda managed to catch a glimpse of the ship’s general design – an angled-corner boxy shape, with a small raised bridge and a front gangway. A four-pointed star adorned the side of the dropship, hastily painted if the roughness was any indication.

It lifted off in a cloud of dust, before roaring off into the bright blue sky. Sonoda watched it go, realizing exactly why the file might’ve been redacted – and why they’d made the top twenty.

That bastard’s a Polaris meshdiver.

//DIASPORA

DIASPORA, or, SEVENTY THOUSAND YEARS

It is the year 2260 of the Eighth Cycle. Humanity’s golden ages are past. Millennia after millennia of collapse, resurgence, and collapse have spread the seeds of humanity far and wide, diverging beneath alien suns to forms strange and wonderful – though, as far as some are concerned, “human” lost its meaning in ages long forgotten.

Humanity – or, rather, posthumanity, occupies all corners of the Orion Spur. Their realms are as disparate as they are similar, boasting curious amalgamations of culture, technology, and the many starfaring races that inhabit the Spur.

By and large, the technology of the distant future is arcane and strange, worlds of glittering gold and shimmering silver beneath fields of infinite stars. From the agrarian, slow outworlds of the Shallows to the hypertech metropoli of Cradlespace, technology, their wielders, and the strange other-place of the Wild Mesh intertwine and blend, producing the strange techno-force known as Phira.

Travel between the stars was once instant – a relic of the Age of Miracle, scattered remains of the star-bridge gates and their support manifolds and structures still littering the worlds they once serviced. Few gates remain operational, largely confined to the worlds of the Core that survived the collapses best. Elsewhere, travel takes time. Light-skippers, great golden vessels capable of bearing the strain of drifting through the Tide itself, ply routes of commerce and trade.

One quirk, interestingly, is that projectile weaponry long ago fell to the wayside – personal shielding and generational leapfrogging leading to finer and finer shieldbreaker blades until most combat is dealt out hand-to-hand. This isn’t to say projectile weaponry no longer exists, however. From the standard exotic-matter particle weaponry of the Posthuman Spur to the strange gravitic “crusher” implants of the Ovelle, warfare, while rare, is by no means simple.

SPUR ASTROCARTOGRAPHY

ORION SPUR – the home arm of ancient humanity. Numerous posthuman and xenoform civilizations inhabit this region, making it a quite literal crossroads of interstellar culture and trade.

PERSEUS DRIFT – the thinning of stars to the galactic west of the Orion Spur, towards the Perseus Gulf that separates the Spur from the Perseus Arm. Sparsely populated, largely unexplored. Numerous xenofauna, no (confirmed) sapient xenoforms.

CENTAURI REACH – the region to the galactic north-east and corewards of the Spur, home to the Cavican Hegemony. Largely explored, very bright.

OLD CORE (CRADLESPACE) – the sixty lightyears surrounding Sol, sporting some of the highest populated worlds in the Spur. Has the largest number of Skipper lanes and routes in the region.

THE WOUND – a relic of wars immemorial, this region is scoured. starless, with drifting wrecks and forgotten relics

IBREAN WASTES – coreward side of the Perseus Arm, contains various splinter posthuman states and satellite xenoforms. Largely empty.

THE SHOALS – rimward side of the Spur, curiously calmer infraspace currents. Makes travel easier, sports large numbers of agricultural worlds and high food exports.

GLITTERSHOAL – artificial nebula within the Shoals seeded some twenty thousand years ago. few go in, fewer come out.

FAR SPUR – the far eastern end of the Spur, contains the posthuman state known as the Ovellian Collaborate. Stars are relatively distant from one another, large clouds of interstellar dust.

SAGITTARIUS HIGHLANDS – rimward side of the Sagittarius arm. Unexplored and unsettled.

CARINA GULF – coreward side of the Spur, contains the loose federation of states known as Lashan. Old colonies, deep roots.

Xenofauna and Posthuman Variety

POSTHUMANITY

“Baseline” humans – ancient, Terran standard humans. Acclimated to 1G standard gravity on average, remarkably resilient and adaptive. Found across the Spur and beyond. Many subspecies, from aquatic to arboreal.

Bioframes – living tissue with a silicate vertebral core. Inhabited by posthuman consciousness, functions much as any other body would. Physiology varies wildly and is often tailored to personal preferences. Relegated to relatively high tech regions of the Spur, require specialized maintenance.

Synthframes – less organic than bioframes, usually retain a semblance of humanoid shape and aesthetic. Usually. Can hold a resident posthuman or AI comfortably.

“Unbound” posthumans – individuals who choose to exist solely within the Living Mesh. Functionally indistinguishable from AI, not bound by system constraints but tend to go their own ways. Colonies exist, vast expanses of mixed-reality server farms and mesh foci.

Cavica – techno-mystics seeking to conquer the Wild Mesh and bend it once more to human wills. Powerful wielders of Phira, the Cavica are a formidable player on the interstellar stage, and managed in an age past to create great Tide currents to dissuade errant vessels from penetrating their region of the stars.

Ovelle – posthuman nanite colonies. Can form humanoid form if needed, angular and strange, always shifting like sand. Communicate through high frequency oscillation to form words, formed their own posthuman state, the Ovellian Collaborate. A relic of the Fifth Cycle.

Savhara – designer “pet” bioframes from a time of decadence past that have established themselves as a population all their own. Large variety in species and appearance, though most tend canid or feline. Leporine a close third.

XENOFORMS

Few true xenoforms have ever been encountered. The ancient Alissids are one race who in cycles past interacted with humanity, but they, as many things do, passed into memory in the First Collapse – as did the Turiga, and the Unari. Many others, however, still exist – and can be found across the Spur, if one knows where to look.

Hujia – vast interstellar dust collections granted sentience by chance and gravity. Communicate over vast distances with as of yet not understood means. Recycle starship wrecks, often found in orbital junkyards and battle sites.

Teshiko – squat, subterranean humanoids often found within asteroid habitats or mining firms. Build great inverted cities on worlds they colonize.

Sanachar – mesh-spawned xenoforms, resulting from a faulty node interacting with local fauna over many millennia. Stronger connection to it than most.

THE WILD MESH, OR: PHIRA

In the first great cycle, humanity created the Mesh within the very shallowest layers of the Tides – a superluminal information network that spread as they settled the Spur, new nodes stretching its reach further and further with successive additions. It functioned, by and large, as the information nexus of humanity, being linked with the analogues encountered xenoforms created when encountered. Successive cycles added to this network, and as it spread, it began to… change. Strange currents flowed through the Mesh, echoes of users long-dead and users yet-to-be. Latent power, awakened by time, and distance.

Today, the mesh beyond the explored and documented portions – or beneath them – is known as the Wild Mesh, a vast sea of information both tantalizing and perilous. The sections pinned down, papered over, and carefully catalogued and categorized, in comparison, are the Living Mesh, posthumanity’s largest repository of ancient knowledge and insight. This functions, more or less, like any other network.

The Wild Mesh, however, can be accessed. Drawn upon. Wielded, as blade or hammer – called, as if summoning a beast or loyal animal.

This, is Phira.

A relic of a past cycle, Phira is, in essence, a physical manifestation of the Wild Mesh, possibility given form and being. Data-magic, far-sight, the summoning of beasts of holite and raw data, these are the manifestations of Phira within the physical, and those blessed – or perhaps cursed – with the ability are formidable.