Victrix Lament piloted her silver-bullet spacecraft expertly through the rings of Cthon towards the planet’s only spaceport. Using mental control, the precision of movement that a crude mechano-digital flight system could only dream of allowed her to dip and weave between the purplish fragments of rock and dust that made up the planet’s luminous circlet like a playful aqua-mammal. This she could do from anywhere on the ship, such as her training room, her bedchamber or, as in this instance, from her bath.
As the Kalon bobbed and gyrated through the skies of Cthon, Lament lifted herself from the preternaturally still water of the brass tub and stepped out onto the white tile, allowing the fluid to pool beneath her. She stood there for a while, enjoying the feel of the air circulating around the ship as it whorled around her. She had cultivated the temperature controls perfectly. Eventually she fought her inclination to remain like that until she brought the Kalon in to land, since greeting the Imperial Prefect naked might raise eyebrows as well as questions. She activated her ultrasonic hydrorepellent and was completely dry in a few seconds. Padding to her wardrobe she reflected on what she had been told of Cthon.
“A shadow world,” the Prince-Elektor of the Szah Galactic Zone had told her. “Eternally in the penumbra of a much larger, uninhabitable planet in the middle systems. Virtually uninhabited itself, by any relative standard – barely a billion souls on the whole world, governed by a single Prefect and a subcouncil. Hence why there is no Agency presence there already.”
“The imperial throne has been displeased to receive no tribute from Cthon for some years now. His Majesty has shown some considerable leniency with these people, but unfortunately, the Imperial grace bestowed upon them has officially expired. You are to travel to Cthon, to ascertain the reason for their discommunication and if possible rectify it, using whatever means the Agency deems appropriate. If that entails extracting some part of the Imperial tribute then so much the better. Am I understood?”
Extracting Imperial Tribute. The phrase left a bad taste in her mouth. But her duty as an Agent Intergalactic overrode that and she had only nodded.

After her plain undergarment, Lament stepped into a bright yellow tunic bearing the official heraldry of the Agency, securing it around her waist with a thin, simple leather belt. To the belt she clipped her insignia, her field kit and her force pistol. Around her left wrist she bound a brilliant white cloth band that was infused with a focus-enhancing wavelength, allowing the mind-sharpening energy to radiate throughout her body. She tied back her hazel-coloured curls with an Agency-Yellow ribbon, and over all this she drew a frosty grey overcoat that swirled about her ankles with each step. The Kalon spiralled through the center of a corkscrew of ice particles and entered the gravity column of Cthon spaceport with a slight halting judder that shook her floor-length mirror a little more than a micrometer.
Lament adjusted the mirror back the way it was and relinquished control of the ship to the gravity column. Etiquette was everything with Imperial officials, even on backwater worlds that hadn’t seen official contact in years such as Cthon. No, she corrected herself, especially on backwater worlds like Cthon. Striking the right balance of reassurance and threat was the Agency’s speciality, the reason they were so prized as to be employed by such high offices as the Prince-Elektors’. A smile on her face, a force pistol on her hip. Carrot and stick. Enjoy the Empire’s protection, or else.
She was letting herself get cynical. That wouldn’t do. After this she would take some time off in a borderworld, maybe one of the great marketships that carried their huge trade-crews across the galaxy, never stopping. Spend a little time enjoying what remained of her humanity.
She practiced her smile in the mirror.

The practiced smile was plastered on her face as the silvery door of the Kalon fell open. The sight that met her, however, was far from official. Rather than the Imperial Prefect, she was greeted by a shabby looking pair of young women in oversized armour vests. The two women were filthy, and both wore dented Imperial Security helmets.
“Ah! Get your head down, your grace!” said one woman, who bore a long scar along her cheek. Lament suddenly became aware of the thumping report of force gunfire in the air. In the cavernous ceremonial entry hall she noticed makeshift barricades, behind which soldiers fired at an unseen foe in the darkness outside.
“What in heaven’s name is this?” Lament said, ducking low as she descended to the stone slabs that made up the floor of the great hall.
“We’re holding the spaceport, your grace, but only just. We knew the Empire would send help soon, just knew it!” said the scarred woman. She leaned around Lament, looking back up the ramp of the Kalon. “Are they… are they in there?” she asked hopefully. Lament shook her head.
“Just me. And please. Agent Lament. I’m no more nobility than you are.”
“Yes your grace. Well! An Agent! Of course you are, with the official whatnots and what not!” The woman ducked as a force-blast passed dangerously close overhead and reached out to shake Lament’s hand. “If my dad could see me now!”
For the first time, her companion spoke: “Blondie! Time to go, you reckon?”
“Right. Yes. Come on,” Blondie said, leading Lament by the hand. “We’d better take you to the Emperor.”
“The Emperor? Here?” Lament said, too shocked by the cavalcade of surprises to even fully disbelieve it.
“Oh, silly me!” said Blondie. “Not your Emperor. The Emperor-in-Synecdoche. In the stead of the Emperor, we have our Emperor, instead! You see?”
“Yes,” lied Lament.
“What she means is, since your Empire doesn’t have any presence here, we’ve had to make one up for ourselves,” said the other woman, covering their escape with a spray of force-pulses.
The escape tunnel was excavated into one of the hall’s great marble walls, behind the bank of gravity engines that had pulled the Kalon safely into dock just minutes ago.
“Come on!” said Blondie, beckoning Lament down the sharp downward slope. Lament followed, glancing back over her shoulder at the other woman, still firing at the unseen adversary with wild abandon.
“Go! I’ll be right behind you!” she said. Lament hesitated for a moment before Blondie’s hand closed around her wrist and dragged her away, running down the dimly-lit stone-and-earth tunnel for dear life.
Eventually, stronger light glared across her eyes, the harsh light of an electro-flourescent gaslamp. Still dragging her, Blondie darted out into the light. At the other end of the tunnel was a cathedralic chamber that seemed to have been converted into a makeshift infirmary, with stretchers set up on trestles all around the brightly-lit room. Semi-conscious injured groaned, suffering the internal trauma of force impacts or the external wounds of knife-blades.
“Collapse it!” Blondie cried, and a soldier standing by the tunnel entrance went to push the igniter on a winding fuse. Lament threw out a hand.
“Belay that, soldier!” she said before she knew what she was doing.
Blondie rounded on her. “What?” she asked. “We can’t let them follow us!”
“Cutting off your own comrade’s escape?” Lament said. Blondie sighed.
“Look around you,” she said. Lament took in the scene in the chamber, something she’d been too caught up to do previously. “We can’t afford to give them an inch. Collapse it!”
“Wait!” Lament said. She reached out a hand and closed her eyes, falling to her knees. She softly laid the hand on the gritty earth beneath her, and began to project her mind along the tunnel.
There! A mind, singular, fleeing towards them! She held a hand in the air, making eye contact with the soldier holding the igniter.
“When I say, you light the fuse. Not before.” Instinctively, the soldier nodded. Lament hadn’t noticed the explosives passing by them, but with her heightened mental focus their position was obvious in retrospect. She gauged it carefully, considering the fuse burn time as well as likely shrapnel radius and hearing damage, and when she judged the soldier was safe, she stood up.
“Burn it,” she said. The igniter sparked. The fuse flashed. A second and a quarter later, a seismic boom rocked the chamber, shaking mortar from the high ceiling. All eyes rested on the tunnel entrance.
After a long time, the other soldier emerged from the gloom, shielding her eyes.
“By God,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d make it!”
Lament smiled, offering a hand and pulling her out of the trench of the tunnel. “You nearly didn’t.”
“She held the explosion off,” said Blondie. “She could sense you were coming somehow.”
The other soldier turned to Lament and bowed her head. “Seems I owe you my life.” She offered a hand, and Lament shook it. “Zhen. Torric Zhen. Prefect’s clerk, second class.”
“My pleasure, Zhen. Victrix Lament. Agent Intergalactic. Now where is this Prefect? I’m to have strong words for him, from the Prince-Elektor himself. I assume he’ll be with your Imperial Synecdoche?”
Zhen’s brow furrowed. “The Prefect? Didn’t you get our message?”
Lament shook her head. “Message?”
“The Prefect was murdered. Assassinated. Nearly five years ago, now. We’ve been at war ever since.”
“With who?” Lament said. Who could have done damage like this to an Imperial world, even one as minor as Cthon?
“Our own people,” Blondie said. “Archaeo-Fascists.”
“They rose up out of our entire society all at once. Soldiers, carpenters, software engineers,” said Zhen, “like they planned it beforehand.”
Lament cursed. She had come equipped to deal with a corrupt governor, and she had stumbled into a decidedly uncivil warzone. “I need to get back to my ship,” she said. “This calls for Imperial support.”
“Your ship in the hangar we just destroyed access to?” Zhen said.
“I’m aware it isn’t the most convenient, but-”
“But nothing,” said the soldier who had held the igniter, lowering his hand from his earpiece communicator. “The spaceport is lost. Our people are retreating. We were holding it for your arrival, Agent.” The words dripped with sarcasm. Lament bit back an acid-tongued reply, remaining the outward appearance of consummate professionalism that befitted her position.
“Take me to the Imperial Synecdoche,” she said through gritted teeth.

The miniature version of the Imperial council that greeted Victrix Lament was depressingly grandiose for what it was. On both sides of the prefect’s mahoganite official desk, three ordinary office chairs had been dragged. In each of the seven seats sat an individual in the customary high collar of the nobility. It took Lament a second to realise that most of the collars were identical. They had belonged to the Prefect. A guard carrying a force-scepter under his arm announced her to the small office of people.
“To meet with his Majesty and the Imperial Council: Agent Victrix Lament!”