Halban Imperial Airship Aurora Irontooth-RhyDin Skygate, 2200 miles from City of RhyDin

Captain Elara Draleth stood on the observation deck of her airship, holding a pair of binoculars one-handed while the other held the railing, steadying her against the strong winds that buffeted these high mountain ridges; in spite of them her lieutenant had never seen the woman shift from exactly where she wanted to be since the battle began. In fact they were the only two people on the ship not scurrying between portholes and duty stations, calm (at least for the captain's part) in the face of the battle raging across the narrow pass.

The skygate's relay station lit up in the early morning darkness with every burst of anti-aircraft fire, aimed at the iron behemoth cresting the opposing ridge - not the Aurora, a sleek silver vessel with gilded trim every place the designer could find to put it, but a massive ugly monstrosity, black iron bristling with guns, antennae, thick loops of electric cable and devices whose purpose could barely be guessed at. Most of the shells bounced harmlessly off of her reinforced hull, but sometimes one would strike true in a shower of sparks or a flash and a plume of smoke...

A stray shot struck the Aurora with a reverberating boom, rocking her dangerously. From the sound of it Elara knew that her ship's armor had held, and reacted only by tightening her grip on the railing to keep herself steady. Her lieutenant, however, felt he'd kept his silence long enough:

"Captain Draleth, the professor gave explicit instructions for us to stay behind cover! With your permission - "

"Tsk." The lieutenant only saw her make the noise instead of hearing it, from the roar of the battle, but he still winced far more from her than he had from the shell that just struck their ship. When he raised his eyes again she was offering the binoculars; silently he accepted them, and began to observe the battle as she had.

"Is that what it calls itself, now" Professor...?"

"Ma'am?"

"Hm." She did not need the binoculars as badly as the human at her side; she was Drethi, a dark elf of pure and noble stock, and her red eyes were sharper and better suited for the dark. "We are officers of His Majesty's Imperial Air Corps, lieutenant. We do not take orders from pirates."

"Pirates, captain?"

"Mm." She slapped his shoulder with the back of her hand to get his attention and pointed him to a dark mass hovering up the far end of the pass toward the station. "Talent scouts. Do you see it, lieutenant' That is what has been jamming the station's signal since before our friends came into radar range. Their airship is merely a diversion, a large target while the boarding party arrives on the signal jammer."

"Boarding party?" The lieutenant frowned, and squinted into the binoculars. "I had not heard they had marines..."

"Homonculi," she pointed out. Naked pink shapes leapt out of their craft, clambering up the underside of the station built into the rock face; many were shot on their way up, but enough clambered over the railing to overwhelm the handful of Port Authority officers manning the station. Just as she had predicted, each homonculus picked a fallen officer, stooped over his face, and....began to melt.

"By the forebears..." Her lieutenant turned his head and coughed into a handkerchief, which elicited a tiny smirk from his commanding officer. Once a homonculus had completely melted, seeping through the eyes of each fallen officer, the bodies returned to life. Immediately one of them returned inside to raise the next station down the line by radio.

"Disgusting, aren't they, Mycroft. But effective. Fifteen minutes for the entire operation, and now the Irontooth Skygate reports in, on schedule, that nothing is amiss. The 'professor' would have preferred us not to see this, but will not begrudge us this little preview."

Lieutenant Mycroft wiped the handkerchief across his mouth once more as he recovered. "Will the Corps be using the homonculi, captain" Will we buy them?"

"Mm. Perhaps," she said. "If they are priced competitively, I am sure we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. If not..."

Thrusters boomed over their heads, cutting her short. The massive prison airship was already on the move, an iron Frankenstein of a vessel more than four hundred meters long. It had no windows, no portholes to offer any view within, even on the bridge, but Mycroft had heard what lay within the hull and it chilled him to his core: scientists and inventors, the most brilliant minds from more than a hundred different worlds, collected by force and made to design insane new weapons of war in laboratories deep within the bowels of the ship.

They called her Tartarus. In each city she came to, she unleashed her multitude of unnatural weapons to take new 'talent' to make new weapons to sell in new wars. The Halban Empire was in trouble - Mycroft was a patriot but he knew the colonies that sustained the motherland were slipping from her grasp - and desperation drove them to Tartarus. They would buy her weapons...

"If not....we take Tartarus by force."

The lieutenant paled. He felt the bile that had threatened to rise at the sight of the homonculi rise anew, driven by fear. "Captain..."

She lifted a hand to silence him as she walked away. "Take the bridge, lieutenant, and set a course for RhyDin. I shall be in my quarters."

Research Vessel Tartarus Fool's Luck Bay

The last time the subject called #118 could remember his name or any other information about the person he was before was seven hibernation cycles ago; he knew only the ship and his master and fellow subjects #97-128, and though his brain buzzed with telepathic suggestions of his tasks and his loyalty to them he remained clever enough to surmise there had been a time when he was different.

He was old. His joints ached from the ship's frigid atmosphere every time the voice in his head jolted him awake; he knew he was older than the seven hibernation cycles he could count because he had not aged much further that he could see from his reflection, while many of the Tartarus' short-lived homonculi had assumed human form and aged to the point of death within the same timespan.

"Therefore I am human," he muttered into the darkness of his cell. He had been awoken by the voice seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine seconds ago. The average time between being awoken and released from his cell was eighty-three seconds, with a minimum of seventy-seven and a maximum of ninety; three times it had fallen outside of that range but only during an emergency, therefore they were outliers and he excluded them.

#118 to the Hub. Fluorescent lights flickered on in his cell and blinded him, but he navigated past subjects #117, #119 and #120 blind by following the sound of their iron door rolling open. It had been eighty-two seconds exactly.

The corridor was lined with cables and glowing green displays, iron doors like his own and hatches above and below. This one was sloped at approximately fifteen degrees like most of the others in this level of Tartarus. He would make a right turn, approximately one hundred thirty-five degrees, and descend to the Hub.

Three glistening pink homonculi were marching toward him, though it was highly unlikely he was their objective. When he drew close they clung to the cables and climbed onto the ceiling, thus neither party impeded the other's progress by more than a moment, though #118 did feel a globule of their chilly mucus drop onto the back of his neck.

It had gotten into his scars. He rolled his neck uncomfortably and worked it out with his fingers as he marched down the corridor. Only three times within the last seven hibernation cycles had he had the chance to examine the scars in his reflection, but from their appearance they were not much older than the timespan he could remember. It was possible the scars were tied to his amnesia and/or the voice in his head, but he could not speak to the probability: correlation and causation were two different things.

00:17, read the display on the wide black door at the end of the corridor, and continued counting down. #118 had timed his pace perfectly this time, and arriving exactly when the doors would open gave him a small sense of pride and pleasure, inasmuch as he was capable of feeling it.

The other subjects seemed to feel a wider range, and deeper as well, than he could remember feeling. They often greeted him with looks of fear and revulsion; #84, whom he had encountered on the upper levels, had given him a look of recognition but seemed afraid of offering #118 his name or any other information when he pressed for it. It was the first and last time that he could recall seeing #84.

The others called themselves and each other by name, especially the recent arrivals, #120-128. #128 called himself Rodovic and remembered who his grandson was. He had nightmares about his grandson, just as many of the others had nightmares about the people they could still remember.

"Enter," said the voice, though this time it came not from within his head but from beyond the wide black door now sliding open. It was a circular chamber, with thick braids of electrical cables hanging like garlands around the perimeter. A bank of displays, speakers and control panels faced the door, with two long metal arms, three-fingered, dangling from the ceiling and manning the controls. He had seen them kill #121 two rests after his most recent hibernation cycle, separating his head from his body with a single sharp pull.

Beyond this setup was a glass dome in the floor reinforced by six iron bands. It was completely filled with a murky green liquid. On two occasions he had seen an organic mass bump into the glass before slipping out of sight again; once it had coincided with a stutter in the voice, though the other time the owner of the voice had not been speaking at all.

Perhaps it would happen again. Perhaps #118 would learn another piece of information about Tartarus.

"Subject #128," the voice began, "has a grandson in Stars End named Sergei Rodovic. He is working on a hybrid advanced levitation and high-speed propulsion engine for the Stars End Aerospace Institute. Our homonculi have related limited observations that suggest this engine is a potential breakthrough on #128's missile designs." The displays flashed and changed, showing three separate views of the area: one of them a murky scan of the Stars End skyline from their position at the bottom of Fool's Luck bay, another a view from a mountaintop highlighting the positions of a hangar and a college, and the third a detailed map.

Tartarus' power fluctuated, and the owner of the voice hesitated until stability could be restored. "Professor," #118 said; the owner of the voice preferred to be addressed by this title. "Am I to acquire Sergei Rodovic as a new subject?"

"No. #128 will soon be indoctrinated and is capable of reverse-engineering his grandson's designs to benefit his missile designs. There will be a demonstration of this engine at the Institute, tomorrow at eleven twenty a.m. local time. Your scientific knowledge and judgment are far superior to that of our homonculi. Go and observe this demonstration but remain hidden. If it is suitable for our needs, then contact us when there is the greatest opportunity to acquire it with least resistance."

"I leave immediately, professor," #118 replied, and he felt another twinge of pride and pleasure; before he could back out the door, the voice addressed him again.

"The Halban Empire seeks to cheat us this time. They can meet our price but do not wish to any longer. They will seek to acquire #128's grandson as our own and avoid dealing — " #118 heard the organic mass hit the glass before he saw it, and this time he knew what it was: grey matter. The voice stuttered, then continued:

"Kill Sergei Rodovic."