The silverfish form of the Kalon glided into dock, looking very out-of-place among the harsh industrial machinery that surrounded it. In the next bay, an ugly red-hulled war cruiser was receiving automaintenance from a host of scurrying spiderbots. Victrix Lament, descending the ramp from the Kalon, glanced at the four-foot high stencilled lettering on the side of the cruiser. Pollux.
She always hated coming back to the Consulate. Tariz treated her like a mercenary. But it was rare in this sector for higher-level officials to bring anything to the attention of the Agency, and she was sworn to defend the interests of the Empire, no matter how petty.

As she entered the impressive office with its window overlooking the famous shipyards, Tariz tossed a bag of Imperial chip on the gold-inlaid desk and turned his back to her.
“Your payment,” he said languidly. He was a sour man who kept his black hair in a loose ponytail, and wore tinted contact lenses to conceal the spiderweb blood vessels that hairlined his grey eyes.
Lament took the bag. She poured out the money and weighed it in her hand. “Feels light,” she said.
“It is light. The mess you made of that recovery – I never asked for that.”
“I did what you asked.” Lament poured the chip back into the bag and dropped it on the desk. “With minimal collateral damage. Like you said.”
“Interesting definition of ‘minimal’ you have there,” said Tariz, turning to face her. “I would really like to see your version of unacceptable collateral damage.”
Lament let it slide. She couldn’t afford an argument with him. As the sector’s Clerk First Class, Tariz may as well have had a sign on his desk saying “The Chip Starts Here”. There was no way above him without his approval, either.
“I’ve got another job for you, anyway,” said Tariz, after a long pause. “This one’s completely S.R. Confidential, you hear?”
“I’m listening,” said Lament, casually wondering how easy it would be to boil his blood with her considerable mental power if they weren’t restrained by a psycho-nullifier.
“A shipment has come up short,” Tariz said, clasping his hands behind his back. “I need that missing crate located and retrieved.”
Lament was stunned “That’s all?” she asked incredulously.
“That’s all. The beacon on the shipment led us to Rakhell. It’s a world with a heavy industrial presence. The signal trail goes cold in one of the sub-cities of the main sprawl. I believe it’s called Shard. The Imperial Covert Operations Administration has a man there in deep-cover. He’ll be waiting for you.”

As Lament left the office a junior administrator, leaning against the wall, looked up from his clipboard and stepped forward. The young man had thick corrective lenses fixed in front of his eyes that made him look like one of the Amphib mutants from an aqua-world.
“Is he ready?” the young man asked. The lenses covered almost his entire upper face, but amplified his clear blue eyes to the size of saucers. Lament almost found herself getting lost in them.
“He’s by himself, but I would leave him a minute. He’s in a bad mood,” she said.
“Ah, thanks for the advice. Administrator (trainee) Caraveli,” said the administrator (trainee), extending his hand to her. Taking pity on the kid, Lament shook it and introduced herself in kind.
“Wow,” said Caraveli. “An Agent! And such a beautiful one!” He paused for a second, then clamped a hand over his mouth. “Please don’t explode my brain!” he forced out between his fingers. Lament rolled her eyes. There was a new one every time she visited. Some green recruit who had come straight out of sixteen years at an all-male training school. Shipped out on his first assignment and spends the whole thing putting his foot in his mouth.
“I’ll do my best not to,” she said with an insincere smile. As she strode off she heard Caraveli counting backwards from one hundred, a technique to ward off psychic attack that almost every citizen of the Empire knew, and that categorically did not work.

Rakhell was a horrifying sight. It had been a verdant world of soaring mountains and swooping valleys, according to the historical records Lament accessed on the way there, reclining in the silvery nerve centre of the Kalon in her silk dressing gown. She sipped icy water and watched in time-lapse as the industrial megasprawl grew like a cancer, eating into the surface of the planet until it was visibly lopsided.
Reminded her of home. She sighed. Nothing beautiful survived the Empire’s arrival for long. She leaned back, and the warm, reactive metal of the chair softened into a pillow. Before long she was asleep. She dreamt of forests.

The planet in reality was if anything slightly more horrible than she had anticipated. A satellite took control of the ship from her, leaving her free to watch from the fore viewport as the sub-sprawl came closer and closer. She wondered where the border was. It all looked like one city to her.
The satellite dropped her at subsonic speeds through the smoggy atmosphere and into the airlanes above the spaceport. The air was a sickly yellow, and the sunlight was feeble even at the top of the structures which stretched down further than she could make out. Most of the planet’s crust had been scraped away under the Rakhell sprawl. It was literally eroding beneath their feet, great excavators even now working to deepen the pits, to extend their grasp to the lowest reaches. A race to the bottom.

Lament dressed in Agency yellow, adding a metal filter mask to her usual tunic-and-tights ensemble and tying her hazel-coloured curls back with her white focus-band. Swirling her overcoat about her, she tucked her force pistol into its notch on her belt and flipped the catch shut.
There was no welcoming committee at the bottom of the ramp. Lament strode down nigh-unnoticed. There were few people in the port, local time being around 2AM equivalent. She strode out, her breath hissing through the ports of the mask. She was glad of it. She had heard that life expectancies on industrial worlds like this were heavily contracted. Peering through the yellow air she saw a taxi driver wave to her from inside his enviro-sealed cab.
“Any baggage?” he asked. Lament shook her head.
“Take me to Block 437.”
“Four thirty-seven?” said the driver. Evidently he didn’t take a lot of clientele down there. “You sure a nice girl like you wants to go that way?”
“You don’t know how nice I can be,” said Lament, pulling aside her overcoat and flashing her Agency insignia. “Now don’t ask any more stupid questions, and I’ll give you a nice tip.”

437 was a long way down the stack. The cab dropped her on the square walkway that encircled the level, dodging the catwalks that stabbed between buildings. Lament pulled her collar up as she entered the block. Doorways lead to bedsit apartments and cubicle motels crammed in any spare space in the building walls. Probably all it would take was one electrical fire to waste the whole block. Lament dropped a few chip into the hands of a woman outside one of the cubicles, who crammed it into the coin-slot eagerly and slipped into the cramped space as if it were a king-size bed.
There was a club here, among the stores and stalls. No name. You didn’t ask where it was. You knew, or you didn’t. Victrix Lament walked in as if she had been there every day of her life.

The first stage was a bar, serving illegal moonshine. Nobody talked to each other here, a sort of speak-easy-at-your-own-risk. There were a few men, sadly staring into dirty glasses. If a casual passer-by walked in they would be immediately put off by the hostile atmosphere. But if you happened to leave some chip on the bar and imply that you were interested in more exciting business, the broad man behind the bar might be persuaded, if you seemed genuine, to show you through to the next level.
The next level was larger, louder, and more potentially hazardous than the first. Images of women danced on hovering platforms as men below crowded around small holoscreens, watching intently not at the beauties above them but at ugly acts of violence splashed across every screen.
A gambling den. The Rakhell lawmakers were neopuritans who forbade drinking and betting and violence, along with a whole host of other sins. Of course, that only drove it underground. So the sinners came here to drink and gamble and be violent, and then they went home and played the innocent.
Bare-knuckle boxers pounded teeth from each other’s heads, with only a dishonorable-discharge sawbones for a medic. Lament glanced away from the holoscreen as blood splattered the camera lens.
The door was up a narrow flight of stairs that turned sharply right. It said “Myle Omar: OWNER” on the plaque. Lament didn’t know what to expect. She knocked, and when no answer came, she tapped the access pad and the door slid open.
The first shot thumped through the space her head had been a second earlier, as she rolled into the room and pulled her force pistol from her belt. Black outfits. Armoured. No markings. Kill squad. She swept the legs out from under one of them and let fly with a shot at his buddy, who ducked behind Omar’s desk. Ugh. These things were never easy.
Two guys on the other side of the desk. Small room. No windows. She vaulted over the desk just as one was peeking over the top of it and whipped him in the face with the end of her gun. The other one was raising his own weapon to meet her, but she aimed a swift kick and knocked it flying into the air. As he recoiled from the kick she pulled her white focus-enhancing band from her hair and wrapped it around her palm.
The man she had knocked over first was on his feet now, and running for the exit. She fired a quick pulse into his back that slammed him into the unopened door. He fell to the ground, motionless. A shot grazed the back of her head from the man she had pistol-whipped and she turned, planting her palm on his forehead. No time for fancy tricks, she simply commanded, STOP, and his brain obeyed. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell limp.
That left only the last of the kill squad. She turned to face him, but he had already retrieved his weapon and that of his fallen comrade.
“Impressive work, Agency bitch,” he sneered, weapons trained on her.
“Where’s Omar?” Lament asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He waggled one of the guns. “Come over here. Leave the airshooter.”
Lament let the force pistol fall from her hand. This man, evidently the honcho of his squad, was wearing a close-fitting white cap.
“Who sent you?” she asked calmly.
“I’m not being paid to answer questions,” he said. “I’m being paid to make sure you never leave this joint – alive!”