It was a long way back through the network of hallways. Passing through a white corridor punctuated by large bulkhead doors, Lament thought she saw movement down a side passage.
“Hold up,” she said. “Down there.” She touched her hand to the wall and sent a sensory pulse through the network of hydraulics and power lines inside.
“The other one saw us,” said one miner, the shorter of the two.
“Ridiculous,” said his friend, sighting along the barrel of his pistol. “They couldn’t even.”
There was a substantial pause, and then the short one spoke up again. “No, no, I really think they did.”
“You’re being paranoid again,” said his friend.
The clearing of a throat behind him drew his attention. It was a woman’s voice. He turned around and saw a fist rushing towards him.

When Barian came to he found his hands were tied. He could smell something caught in his beard, and he hoped he hadn’t been sick when the woman had hit him.
“Sorry, fella, but I’m afraid so,” Lament said.
“We’ve got to get going,” said Carian, glancing the length of the hallway up and down.
“Wait up,” she said, then turned her attention to the bound man again. “Where did that crate really come from?”
“Stole it from an Imperial shipment,” said Barian.
“And who told you where to find this shipment?” said Lament.
Barian shrugged. “I don’t know. You think I’m a big dog around here? They set me on patrol duty to catch two escaped Agency stooges.”
“Who would know?”
Another shrug. “The boss, I guess.”

“You already know who they got that information from,” said Carian. “Same as I do.”
“I know,” Lament said, grunting as she shoved the crate into a maintenance hatch. “But without proof nothing will ever get done.”
Carian scoffed. “You think you’ll show Tariz’ boss a vid-mail and get him ousted? He’s already thought of that. He’ll have escape contingencies in place.”
“You don’t know that,”
“Try me. You’re being naive. He’s been siphoning resources into his own pocket for years.”
“If you’re so sure, why are you here? I thought you were investigating him as well,” said Lament. Carian shook his head.
“Not investigating,” he said, and tapped the crate of advanced weaponry. “Did you know that most officials have a weapon-nullifying signal broadcaster in their office?”
“And let me guess, that crate will let you bypass it. You’re scheming an assassination.” Her hand hovered by the notch on her belt that held the force pistol. Carian stood impassive, his hands extended slightly from his sides. She couldn’t see a weapon, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one. And even if he didn’t, he was still dangerous. She sent out psychic tendrils, but his own power batted them away. They circled each other. Lament had only ever faced a battle of the mind a couple of times in training. She wondered how many Carian had faced.
“You’re coming with me to get evidence, and we’re going to bring him down the right way,” said Lament. “I don’t want to fight you.”
Carian lunged. To an outside observer the two of them appeared to be standing stock still, staring at each other intently. But within, their psychic forces were spiralling and gnashing at each other like wild dogs, vicious and somehow graceful all at once. Then she was an ocean and he a cliff, seemingly impassive, immoveable. But like a cliff, each wild strike found more and more purchase, tearing away his defences layer by layer by the inevitable power of erosion.
“Nice try,” he thought, suddenly withdrawing from her attack. Lament gave chase, but it was a feint; like a general he had played her game with one hand while the other played an entirely different one.
“You bastard!” thought Lament, as he cut her off from retreat. She took a fighting stance, and struck again.
“I expected more from you,” thought Carian. “Tariz’s star enforcer.”
“I’m sworn to service,” Lament thought. “But I’m not his anything.”
“No?” Carian shot back. “Why are you protecting him? To give him to a system he’s been playing for a decade? A system that has only ever protected its own interests? Power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Remember that.”
She faltered for a moment. Carian was right. At least, he wasn’t totally wrong. He lashed out while she was distracted and sent her reeling back into her body, which collapsed to the floor from the shock.
“I wish things could have been different,” Carian thought to her as he pulled the crate out of the hatch and opened it. “I was starting to like you.” He lifted the lid and selected an armful of the white transport canisters. “You can keep the rest,” he said aloud, letting the crate fall closed. He looked down at her, powerless to move, and smiled. “See you around, Victrix Lament.”

She was really starting to get tired of having to relearn the basics of walking. She shuffled down the corridor, using the crate as a makeshift walker. At least she still had her senses about her. She had left the tied up thugs where they were: nothing now mattered except the evidence that would put Tariz if not behind bars, then at least in serious discomfort. The crate scraped along the floor, leaving a grey trail behind her. It made her sound like something made of stone.
Slowly, though, her strength returned and she found herself relying less and less on the crate for support. See you around! That arrogant… She took a breath. She was supposed to be able to control her emotions without a second thought. Now, all of a sudden, Careli Carian was occupying mental space, throwing his weight around and making it impossible to think clearly.
She did have one advantage, and it was no small one: Carian had to travel to the Consulate to assassinate Tariz, whereas if she could get to a network terminal she could do everything she needed to from right here. That gave her weeks. She was in no rush.
Scattered at junctions all around the platform were rudimentary you-are-here maps with broad labels arrowed to the key areas: hold, engineering, crew quarters. She pressed her hand against the map and brought it into her mind. Where is the old man who calls himself the lord of this castle? Where else but the former apartments of the company man who would have ruled over this little fiefdom back when it was still run by the company. Direct line to the operations command centre on the top level. It would take her a while to make it up there. Days.

The arduous journey began with a detour; creeping around maintenance hallways and fire escape shafts, disappearing until night-time and stealing food from the canteens like a rat. She wondered where Carian was. Probably in the lap of luxury in his ship. A pair of heavy hobnail boots clanked overhead and Victrix Lament froze, a mouthful of dry, heavy bread left unchewed for fear of making too much noise.
When the footsteps passed, she let a breath escape through her nostrils and swallowed her meal. It was stale, but substantial. Her enhanced survival techniques could get her through days on just a few mouthfuls of bread. Something else to thank the academy, and her mental powers, for.
As she crawled through a cramped, dust-smelling duct, something the old man had said began to weigh on her. That line about “transgenetic trickery”… She decided to put it into the back of her mind. True or not, her current circumstances were no different. Best not to worry about it until she was in a position to act.
She lived in those tunnels and ducts, only emerging at night to stretch and maintain her strength with brief bouts of the multi-purpose exercises that her training had drilled into her, each motion a clinic to a different portion of the body. After several days of worming her way through the dark spaces of the mining platform, she reached the place where she could go no further without getting out in the open. She waited until the platform was on night mode, the harsh lighting softening to a pale blue glow that barely touched the walls, which up here were panelled in rich wood. Must have cost a fortune. There wasn’t a tree on this side of the planet outside of the terrarium-parcs of the upper class, which Lament’s ship had buzzed past on the approach to the city which seemed like years ago now.
She dropped to the carpeted floor of the hallway. It was red, of course. There was only one way through this maze now, only two directions: To the company suite, the centre of it all, and away.

Inside the door, the salon-reception room was almost too much for Lament to bear after the days in the ducts. She wanted to lie down on the carpeted floor and look up at the ceiling, so high above, and just breathe. But there was no time. She ran to the stairs, towards where she knew she would find the office and the terminal she needed.
“Are you here to kill me?” asked the old man, sitting placidly at his desk. He turned around in the chair, his dressing-gown incongruous with the hulking metal arm that protruded from his right shoulder.
“Not unless I have to,” Lament said. “Will you surrender?”
“Never,” said the old man, standing up with his hands on his knees, groaning of old complaints. He was faking it, Lament knew instinctively.
The wild swing came as soon as the old man was close enough to reach. The metal arm sliced through the air like a blade; Lament dodged it easily. The old man was no match. She hit him with a palm strike to the chest that sent him staggering back.
“I can’t promise you immunity,” she said. “But if you let me do what I have to do, I swear I’ll do whatever I can to protect your people.”
The old man snarled, and Lament swung a powerful chop to his shoulder. The metal arm moved with deceptive swiftness and stopped it, though the edge of the enhanced hand did leave an imprint in the old steel.
She grabbed the wrist below her outstretched arm and wrenched, bending the claw with inhuman strength until she felt the pneumo-tendons snap one by one. It fell uselessly by the old man’s side.
“W- what are you doing?” said the old man, fear edging its way into his voice. Lament dropped him dispassionately, and the weight of the useless arm left him listing to one side. She pushed past him.
The terminal was already unlocked. It took minutes, with her expertise in information intelligence, to discover the hidden compartment in the filesystem – a blackbox in the OS. The old man whined uselessly from a chair in the corner of the room, his arm draped over an end table.

“You brought in the weapons,” said Tariz. Lament didn’t know what had happened to the evidence she had sent in. Maybe it was still being examined, maybe not. “Good job.” Carian had never shown up. Officially his location was unknown. A lot of places a man can be made to disappear in the spacelanes. Maybe someone had gotten a little too suspicious.
The bag of chip was a little heavier than last time. Lament paused. The force pistol in her belt was from that crate. It wasn’t locked down like it should have been. She could do it.
But she never would.
Sworn to service.