The meeting with the ersatz Imperial Council yielded little in the way of useful information. Instead, Victrix Lament found herself at the centre of a web of petty tit-for-tat exchanges between the various members of the council, each using her as a pawn in their internal struggles. You would never know there’s a war outside those doors, she thought.
After the meeting she was led out onto a balcony on a high-up floor of the office building that the Imperial loyalists had made their headquarters in. The soldier on duty gestured for her to sit down on the floor, keeping her head below the guardrail. Not long after that, a young man walked out onto the balcony and knelt opposite her. She realised he had been one of the councillors. The quietest of them, who had hardly spoken up at all during the extended bickering session downstairs. He was almost unrecognisable without his official garb.
“I know what you’re thinking. Useless bunch of politickers, right?” he said. “Well, I can’t say your’re exactly wrong. But these are unusual circumstances. Not every day that concrete proof arrives that the Empire doesn’t care about us.”
“Of course-” Lament started, then stopped. What was she about to say? Of course the Empire cares? But that was a bald-faced lie and both of them knew it.
“I’ll be blunt. The Fascists have us beat. They’re better-armed, better-fed, and better-trained – two-thirds of our garrison are on that side of the barricade, and their numbers are growing. Civilians are leaving us like rats leaving a sinking ship. Rats!” he said, releasing a mirthless gasp of laughter. “Quite the apt simile, I think.”
Lament said nothing, watching the young man’s face carefully.
“We have just about one hope left, Agent Lament. An attack we’ve been putting together for some time. You see-” he said, sticking his head over the railing and pointing, “-that area of buildings over there? It’s their territory, technically, but virtually unpatrolled. Too tight-quarters to maneuver a force-gun in those alleys, let alone a whole squad of ’em.”
“Perfect spot for an attack, if you’re right,” Lament said.
“Yes. ‘If.’ Quite. There’s the word that hangs over the whole plan. The rest of the council, not least his Imperial Majesty, won’t dare sign off on any less than a sure thing. Not in these circumstances. I’ve assembled a team to scout the area. I want you to lead that team. I’ve heard all about you Agents. If you’re half as capable as the stories say, you’ll multiply that scout team’s effectiveness by a factor of ten.”
Lament got the feeling that this wasn’t the kind of offer you said no to.

Smuggling the team into Fascist territory was the first step of the plan. The four of them were hurried into the Cthonian Undercity, a network of ruins that lay beneath the capital that had been left there by the Empire’s ancient predecessors on the planet. Lament’s mental sense confirmed that their route was clear of the swarming patrols of the fascists as they made their way through the dark, dank catacombs.
There was Lament, Agency yellow heraldry abandoned for drab clerk’s clothes and force pistol concealed in a slim shoulder holster; Zhen in black, with a facsimile of the black skull symbol the fascists used inked on her neck; Lander Mist, who carried a handbag full of innocuous household chemicals that, when combined in just the right proportions, could blow a hole in a steel door; and Fol Morya bringing up the rear, a vid-cam swinging on a strap around his neck.
They splashed through the puddles of dark water close to the access point that they would use to get up onto the street. A rusty ladder in a dim pool of light was their beacon. Lament went first, feeling the gritty texture of the metal and probing with her mind upwards. Their contact was waiting for them anxiously in the shadowed crook of a drab-looking building. When Lament reached the top he extended his hand and she shook it.
“Henry. You must be the scout team. Please don’t tell me anything,” he said.
“Don’t worry, this is strictly need-to-know,” said Lament. “You’re from the core sector?” Henry asked. She tilted her head.
“How could you tell?”
“Your accent. My wife was from Szah Prime,” he explained. “They… anyway. What’s a core-worlder doing out here?” he wondered aloud.
“You did ask me not to tell you anything,” said Lament.
When they were all above ground, Lament and Henry carefully closed the access hatch all but a fraction. It was the night side of the artificial cycle that the city ran on, Cthon existing in perpetual darkness as it did, so the lights were on low-power settings. The military police still roamed the streets, though, and more than once Henry pulled the four of them into dark shadows as the troopers rounded a corner, force-repeaters in red-gloved fists.
Henry led them to a crumbling warehouse. Half of the roof had fallen in and the scattered impact craters of force-blasts told the story of a hard-fought battle that had raged here once before. Inside the ruins, a big loading hatch that lead down was locked with a conspicuously new padlock. Henry retrieved the key from a secret pocket in his sleeve and twisted it in the lock.
“Great. Back underground,” Zhen remarked.
Henry struck a match and touched it to the wick of an oil lamp that hung from the roof of the saferoom. In the flickering lamplight, Lament took in their resources. Four bunks were laid out in one corner. A gas-burning stove was hooked up to a single metal canister. On the table lay four old-fashioned force pulsers – twice as bulky as a modern repeater and half as powerful. Only Lament had been able to bring her own weapon, as the loyalists couldn’t spare the equipment, so Zhen and the others darted forward to examine the pulsers and make their selection.

Lament quickly established her lead over the group. Their first priority, she laid down, would have to be evaluating the threat in the abandoned block. If it really was a blind spot in the enemy forces, they would be perfectly placed to aid a loyalist push by running interference. If it wasn’t, they would send a runner to the council to call off the attack.
They would split into two teams and make their way to the block by different routes to avoid undue suspicion: Lament and Mist, Zhen and Morya. The rendevous would take place just outside the maze of side streets and alleyways that made up the block, and then the four of them would make their way through, methodically sweeping every area.
The next morning the four of them ate a simple breakfast of tinned beans heated on the gas stove, packed satchels of equipment and left. It would take an hour to reach the abandoned block, maybe more if patrols were heavy. First to leave were Lament and Mist, Mist’s bag full of esoteric makeshift explosives, Lament with only her force pistol and her focus band wrapped around her bicep. Half an hour after they set off, Zhen and Morya would make their approach by a shorter route, so that the two teams would arrive more or less simultaneously.
“How do you get to be an Agent?” Mist asked almost subvocally as the two of them traipsed along the almost-empty streets. As a stranger passed by them, Mist eyed him suspiciously and put a protective hand on their bag.
“You’re born to it, I’m afraid. Sorry if you were thinking of joining up. The training takes nearly twenty years. Mother got pregnant during a recruiting drive, the Agency bought my contract before I was born, and here I am.”
“That’s intense,” Mist said, and then went quiet. A pair of officers were approaching them. In daylight the red accents of their armour seemed to glow a warning to anyone nearby.
“Ladies,” said one of the troopers, adjusting his grip on his force-repeater. “Care to show some identification?”
Lament froze. Mist had their imperial citizenship papers, the fascist regime being too new and too militaristic to develop its own bureaucracy yet, but so quick had been the turnover from arriving to leaving on this mission that she had none of her own. Mist, doing their best impression of a cowed civilian, produced their papers and handed them to the trooper. He looked over them, and nodded approvingly.
“All in order,” he said to his colleague. “And you?”
Lament looked him in the eye, or at least the eye-slit of the impassive helmet he wore. “I don’t have mine. They were taken from me at the checkpoint. They told me I wouldn’t need them.” A gamble. She would have to bet on the fascist border guards being nakedly corrupt.
Practically a sure thing.
The trooper looked at his colleague. “Those bastards. Leaving her wandering without papers. Unbelievable.”
“Heinous,” said the other guard, with a surprisingly high, nasal voice. Lament muttered something under her breath, still staring straight into the trooper’s eyes.
“We’d better let her go on her way,” said the first.
“Yes.”
The military police officers waved them along. After a while, Mist couldn’t contain themself any longer.
“What was that? I was sure we were screwed! Was that some Agent trick?”
Lament shrugged. “A little bit. It wouldn’t have done anything if they didn’t believe me. I just nudged them to be a bit more amenable.”
“Wow. I could use that!” Mist said, their mind racing. Lament retracted her mental probe. She had no desire to intrude on any mind she didn’t have to.

Zhen and Morya were nowhere to be seen at the rendevous point. If they didn’t arrive within ten minutes, Lament and Mist were to return to the safehouse and regroup.
Nine minutes later, a breathless Zhen emerged from a shadowy path to the right.
“They got him,” she said. “They searched his bag, found his pulser. But I got away.”
Lament cursed. “We have to abort,” she said.
“Why?” said Zhen. “We’re already here.”
“They’ll be on alert. They’ll be looking for us. For you,” said Lament.
Zhen shrugged her bag off her shoulder and pulled her pulser from it, letting the bag fall to the ground. “And you want us to go back through it?” she said. Lander Mist nodded. Lament saw she was outnumbered. Trying to drag them back to the safehouse against their will would only put them in more danger.
“Alright,” she said.

The first movement into the maze seemed promising. Nearly half an hour passed without sign of a fascist trooper. The twisting passageways seemed far too narrow to maneuver a weapon. Something felt wrong to Lament, though. She reached out a hand and pressed it into the concrete wall of one of the tall buildings.
Her mind reached through the wall, probing into the interior of the building – and felt weapons. Machinery. Soldiers. She pushed further, extending her mental probe into one of the soldiers.
Lament fell back from the wall with a gasp. “They’re preparing an attack. They’re going to destroy the council!”