Chapter 2

2.

Things weren't going so well with Ambrozy, but it seemed that a total disaster had been avoided for now. In these recent decades, after the death of the emperor, the galaxy had slowly but surely started to crumble down, bit by bit and more clearly in some places than others, but the golden era was now firmly in the past, as sad as that was. Ambrozy's crash landing into this rain forest – he wasn't sure what it was officially called – was a direct result of that, both in a smaller and in a greater view. The passenger ship had been attacked by somebody, either by pirates, opportunistic imperial fleet members posing as pirates or by some nearby local faction that was trying to make its own way in the world. Ambrozy knew that he would have been kidnapped and his family would have heard the ransom sum very soon so he had decided to take his chances: the ship hadn't reached its destination to the capital of the planet Llapus 844, so he had to bail and try to reach the city on his own. He knew that he was taking great risks on this journey, but he hadn't expected the difficulties to mount so high and so fast. Just a couple of years ago a civilian ship being robbed and attacked was almost unheard of, even if it was traveling so far outside the Core Sphere like Ambrozy was now, but the instability had reached a stage where basic safety was no longer guaranteed. Then the pod's computer had malfunctioned and it hadn't steered the vehicle towards the emergency landing zone of any of the Llapus's cities so Ambrozy's only option was to wait and see how bad things would turn out for him. All in all it could have been so much worse: the eccentric forest hermit who had kicked him like a mule apparently was just as well-meaning as he portrayed himself to be, since a genuine robber would just have taken his things and left him to die. If the man would have wanted to deceive him in order to sell Ambrozy later on to the slavers, he wouldn't have acted this way either. He let Ambrozy walk and move freely after the initial hostilities had been cleared out of the way, gave him ample food and drink and even provided him some ointment and bandages for some very minor burns Ambrozy had sustained when the control panel of the pod had exploded in the ill-fated landing.

The peculiarity of the weirdo manifested itself in many ways. Ambrozy wasn't the most talented psionic out there but he was competent enough and the dose he had hit the hermit with hadn't even made the man flinch. After their deal had been made and the hermit started to pile parts of the pod into his backpack, Ambrozy could only look in disbelief when the hermit stood up with his enormous luggage and walked about like it weighed nothing, even though he had strapped onto himself a several hundred kilos worth of useless metal. If he had kicked Ambrozy with full strength that would have been the end. Ambrozy had real trouble in keeping up with the hermit as the man sped through the woods like it was an open road and Ambrozy had to look twice before each step where he should place his feet in the treacherous terrain. He was out of breath after just a few hundred meters and there was ways to go: Ambrozy stumbled, tripped, scratched himself on branches, cut his knees on rocks, felt his stomach turn upside down in the rigorous physical activity right after being kicked so hard and he tore his robes in several places. Still, the hermit seemed to take it slowly and he tried to match his pace with Ambrozy's snail speed. Ambrozy couldn't even think how fast the man could go on his own.

After a few hours of agony they arrived at the hermit's hiding place. The man fiddled with something on a mound that looked identical to any other spot in this uneven terrain and suddenly a door opened on it and the hermit gestured Ambrozy to step in. They went a few meters downward in a tight corridor and then a bigger space opened up that was practically filled with all manners of junk to the utmost capacity, leaving only a small area in the middle of it for an old mattress and some cooking equipment meant for outdoors use. The hermit rummaged through his belongings and pulled an even more shabbier mattress out of the pile, cleared some space with his feet by pushing the junk against the wall even tighter than it had already been and placed the mattress on the freshly freed floor. He looked at Ambrozy, nodded towards the mattress and went to ransack another part of his junk collection, procuring a few pots and pans as a result. Exhausted, Ambrozy collapsed on the mattress. It was quite a lot cooler here than outside and after drinking more water Ambrozy was quickly presented with some ration pouches that had been heated in boiling water. He fumbled with the slippery packages that were too hot to touch and the hermit patiently opened them up for Ambrozy before heating up his own meal. The rice and a meat stew were heavenly and Ambrozy didn't care about the industrial aftertaste that was often present in shelf-stable products like these. Once the hermit had eaten too he boiled up some instant coffee and took out a box of oatmeal cookies that he opened and placed between himself and Ambrozy. Munching on these delicacies Ambrozy wondered how in the hell he would have been able to survive in the forest by himself. It dawned on him how close he had possibly been to a death by starvation or dehydration.

Nursing his coffee the hermit cleared his throat. "I don't think it's proper to break bread if we haven't even introduced ourselves. Yuri." he said and reached out his arm to shake Ambrozy's hand. Ambrozy had to wiggle himself out of the tight but cozy position he had managed to get himself into in the midst of all the clutter and he exchanged his coffee mug to his left hand before he could answer to the greeting. He winced from the pain in his ribs, a reminder of his host's kick. "Sorry about that. Are you sure you didn't break anything? Should I have a look?" Yuri said, looking a bit apologetic. "It's fine, I'm okay. I'd probably still be wandering out there and possibly already met my end in one way or another, there seems to be plenty of possibilities to go out there. Getting kicked like that was the best of all possible outcomes. Ambrozy is my name." Ambrozy answered. After a moment of silence Yuri spoke again. "So, do you want to tell me why you want to go to Anegend of all places? I'm having a hard time processing that. Unless they're building a new temple there that I am not aware of." Ambrozy had been fairly sure that he would be questioned about this again and he wasn't quite sure how he should present the issue.

Ambrozy Broniec was from a fairly good lineage. Pure blue blood coursed in his veins but his family had dropped from the elite circles many decades ago and their wealth didn't match their proper aristocratic standing. Many industrialists had marched past them a long time ago and while the Broniec family wasn't completely "out", they definitely were not "in'' in any sense of the word. Besides the illustrious past and some moderately decent estates in one of the planets inside the Core Sphere, the broniecs had been forced to settle into a – at best – upper-middle class lifestyles. His father was a bureaucrat in the imperial administration, an unglamorous post if there ever was one, and because of his meager wealth the top universities were out of reach for his offspring, so his two sons had to look into other directions to start careers that could actually lead somewhere. Ambrozy's older brother had entered the military very young and when the time had come, his family name had still had enough prowess to allow him to enter the military academy without too much of a fuss. Now he was a captain and once he would serve five years in a no-name garrison, he would be promoted and most likely have a future. Ambrozy couldn't see himself donning the uniform: he hated the outdoors life and his present circumstances did nothing to better that relationship, so the idea of becoming a monk in the temple system came to him very early on.

From the beginning of the late emperor Delek Gerey XII's unnaturally long life – officially he had reigned close to two centuries, but there were suspicions that he had either passed away or had somebody else doing most of the decisions at some point before he had "formally" died – he had embraced and utilized the Cult of Kai. A multitude of faiths reigned in the empire and many familiar sects of the Core Sphere had transformed into differing variations in the colonies, but the relatively secluded Kai had been close to the different imperial dynasties in the distant past. For several centuries there had been a select few that became the elite military unit to serve the emperor, mostly as his bodyguards but also taking care of some of the wetwork that inevitably was a part of all palace intrigues. This group had not been allowed to marry or have children, and they had been taken from their families at a very young age, their lives becoming solely dedicated to the sovereign personally and their faith had started to mirror that reality disproportionately. Such fanaticism had suited many emperors and over time the small elite warriors had become a bigger bureaucratic function, where high-level administrators had to originate from this circle. It had served a few dynasties very well until an exceptionally weak ruler had seated the throne and the members of the now bloated cult of the Kai had their ambitions run free. With the pretext of saying that the imperial line had been corrupted they arranged a coup and a civil war broke out. When a new dynasty was established the first thing the new emperor did was to ban the Cult of Kai and the political power was now more evenly distributed among the aristocrats. All of this had been centuries ago until Delek Gerey had resurrected the Kai as a new variation: the same reverence to the emperor continued but instead of binding only the select few it was supposed to now include everybody. A layperson could start as a monk in a temple of Kai and rise inside that system to administrative prominence in the government. Those in the sect were almost solely dependent on the graces of the emperor and the Kai members were preferred for all the important positions. All this undermined the ambitions of the aristocracy.

So it had been the temple life for Ambrozy, but then the restlessness of the empire had broken the balance. There had been a string of failures and bad decisions and when the emperor had finally been declared dead, it was clear that there was no obvious heir. A flimsy and temporary council of state had been established and Ambrozy suspected that the aristocrats were now trying to get rid of the system of absolute monarchs that had been standing in the way of their interests for so long, but it was not going well. Violence broke out in the capital and the once whole empire was now splitting into numerous competing factions. Secret societies abound had different schemes and aspirations for the future of the common good and as Ambrozy saw the tried and true route to power crumble he had decided to cast his lot on with one of these groups. The secret society of Dark Rose was one born from the Cult of Kai and many of Ambrozy's fellow monks had joined that group quickly. The unofficial leader of it was colonel Valeev Khairullin, a veteran of the colonial wars who had a fanatical loyalty towards the imperial family. Ambrozy had heard him talk several times and it was obvious that he was a man of immense talent with a one-track mind so he at least wasn't joining a group consisting of complete crackpots. In the confusing situation it was hard to make safe bets.

There was a terrorist attack in the capital but somehow it was bungled and the explosive didn't reach the Imperial Palace where the council was meeting and it detonated instead next to the Ministry of Records, blowing a huge hole to the southern side of the building. Street fighting ensued as an assault was launched into the palace and several other important locations. As the citizens of the city dived into the bunkers and protected themselves the best way they could, Ambrozy listened carefully when the sounds of the battle would cease or move farther away from his hiding spot. The small temple where he lived was near the Ministry of Records and he had noticed when peeking out that the explosion had also broken a portion of the floor and the basement where all sorts of documents were stored could be entered. After about thirty or forty minutes the fighting seemed to have moved a few blocks away and Ambrozy had decided to risk it. He sprinted towards the hole of the building, twice taking cover behind rubble to not be in the open area for too long, then dashed and slid through the hole on his side like an athlete in a ball game, getting a big bruise on his hip for his efforts. There were rooms and rooms full of documents and dossiers on all sorts of subjects but it seemed that Ambrozy would have all the time in the world to go through them: people would not want to be anywhere near the city center after an incident like this and the building seemed to have been evacuated. Ambrozy spent the whole night there and came back many times. After the incident there was a curfew in the city but the hole remained and the soldiers had their hands full in the subsequent battles in the next few days so the Ministry of Records was not at the forefront of anybody's mind.

What Ambrozy gravitated towards were the documents about the plans of different military operations. A lot of them dealt with the colony planets in different parts of the galaxy, then there were loads and loads of reports on where the empire should expand next and why. Ambrozy found these extremely interesting but they had little use for him and a lot of these plans were not feasible for anybody in the current situation the galaxy was in. He didn't know what he wanted but he definitely knew what he didn't need. Ambrozy read on with a flashlight, the lights of the building were no longer functioning for one reason or the other.

Then he found documents about the pulse ray. The pulse ray was a next generation weapon that had been causing quite a lot of worry inside the military circles and there had been plenty of articles about it in the articles of restricted military journals that where only available to the select few, Ambrozy's brother had just heard gossip about it but didn't have the clearance to see them himself. With pulse ray, a powerful beam could be shot into space and it could travel exceedingly long distances, hitting a target accurately a several solar systems away. The blast radius of the ray could be regulated, the maximum being around 400 kilometers, but this by itself wasn't the main feature of the weapon. Star destroyers and dreadnoughts could generate explosions like that but they needed to be close by and they needed many harbors on the route where to stop and fuel before reaching targets that far away and their presence would be noticed very quickly. But as of now, there was no way to detect the pulse ray unless you literally saw it passing you by from a spaceship window with your own eyes. If and when an enemy of the empire would get their hands on this technology then paranoia would take over: at any moment a pulse ray blast could be traveling towards the capital and none of us would be wiser. The technology really wasn't even that complicated but the fuel needed for the weapon was a rare mineral called red micenate. It was not present in many solar systems, let alone planets but many military experts urged that the galaxy should be scrounged for red micenate sites and these areas should be occupied by the imperial forces even if the rest of the planet would be otherwise useless or hostile. The project was underway and sites had been detected, but not nearly all of them were under the imperial power.

One of these sites seemed to be on a far away planet of Dolustea. It was on the edge of the Outer Rim, an insignificant place that was inhabited by somewhat primitive tribes and where the atmosphere was breathable. When the colonization project started centuries ago it had been an immense shock to find human life in the remotest parts of the galaxy and the scientific world still couldn't explain how this could be. It had obviously been thought that the home of humanity had been the imperial home of Yebiri but it had not been so. The galaxy was teeming with intelligent life but a lot of it was humanity. Ambrozy was pretty sure that it would be an eternal mystery.

Reading through these documents Ambrozy had thought that this information could very well be something he could use. It was only a matter of time before the pulse ray would be in use with everybody who possibly could get his hands on it. The estimates had been ranging from a few decades to a century or two depending on how well the empire would manage in monopolizing it but as things were standing now, all bets were off. Every now and then Ambrozy could hear the distant and muffled sound of explosions and a slight tremor traveled through the basement walls, ceiling and floor. Some dust trickled down from the lamps whenever this happened and he could see it float in the air in the direction where his flashlight was pointing. Ambrozy stared at the table he had been reading on and thought about his options. Black Rose could definitely find a location for mining red micenate very useful but that information would have to be delivered. Ambrozy was sure that the fighting would die down very soon and the government would start cracking down on any organizations that it viewed in any way troublesome with renewed vigor. Many leaders of different groups had gone deep underground already and Khairullin had not been an exception. He had spent a lot of years on Llapus 884 after his career had stalled and he had been pulled away from the action of the front lines and put into a distant corner where he couldn't be an annoyance to his competitors. Ambrozy's contacts to the Black Rose had not straight up admitted it but it was pretty clear that Khairullin had gone back to that planet to lay low and bide his time. Ambrozy didn't trust his fellow conspirators as far as he could throw them and even if he could, this trump card of the mining location would not better his own prospects at all if he just gave it away for somebody else to deliver. The spaceports would very likely shut down soon for regular people and traveling would become enormously difficult, so if he wanted to go it would have to be right away. This could be a golden ticket for him and he didn't want to waste it, especially since anything he could possibly do would be a huge gamble anyway. He stuffed the documents into his bag but memorized all the vital information in them anyway in case something would happen to them and left for his small room in the temple. He took just the bare minimum with him and all the money he had, plus the ceremonial sword that he had inherited and now could sell if he would get really desperate for money, then walked in the dead of night about twenty kilometers to get to a train station that was still functioning and he bought a ticket to a city on the other side of the continent that had a spaceport. To his family and friends he said nothing. It might have seemed rash and impulsive to make such a drastic and dangerous decision so fast but in reality Ambrozy understood clearly what it had meant when had joined the secret society. Something like this would have happened sooner or later anyway.

Now, sitting in this cave with the hermit, Ambrozy weighed his words carefully. "I have contacts in Anegend and was going to go there anyway. I know it's a sketchy place, but it's restless out there in the Core Sphere and many good people have had to go and hide. A lot of that restlessness has probably reached this planet too and it's best for me that I get to meet the people I need as fast as possible." Yuri didn't seem much convinced and a certain bitterness appeared on his face. "Restlessness, huh? Good riddance. As for Llapus here, I don't think that anybody here would really notice if we got some restlessness imported our way." He glanced at the sword that was leaning against some pieces of machinery right next to him. "But fine, not my business anyway." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. "Now we sleep, tomorrow we leave. If you need to use the bathroom you'll have to venture to the great outdoors again, don't go far so you don't get lost and close the door after you but leave just slightly ajar so you don't lock yourself out." He gave a water bottle to Ambrozy in case he still was thirsty after sweating the whole day, shut down the lights and went to sleep. Ambrozy was out cold the instant it became dark in the cave.

The next morning Yuri packed all kinds of things with him into his backpack and Ambrozy could only watch in incredulity as the luggage just grew and grew in size and Yuri handled them like they weighed nothing. He spent a while going through his piles of junk and procured a battery the size of a grown man's thigh and a lower part of a military exoskeleton. The pieces of armor were stripped away and only the motor and the bare minimum of the supporting structure remained. "This trip is going to take a while and you're going to need some help if we want to make progress at a decent pace." Yuri said and with his help Ambrozy tried to figure out how the thing worked. There basically were sandal-type shoes that he was supposed to put his own feet in and metal bars were fitted next to his shins and thighs, a joint mechanism being next to his knees. Around his waist was the motor in front of his stomach and the battery place was on his right thigh. The whole thing was set in place with a few straps and a belt. There were also two metal bars remaining in the back that were meant to provide strength to his upper body, but in this bare-bones state it only meant that it would take the weight of his backpack and support his spine, not enhancing the strength of his arms in any way. Ambrozy was a bit skeptical since the contraption was in such a sorry state but once Yuri fit the battery in and put the power on, Ambrozy felt like somebody had turned the gravity off. A slight jog was easily turned into a record-breaking sprint and he could kneel and lunge just as easily as without the exoskeleton. He almost hurt himself immediately since he tried to jump a bit and found himself almost three meters in the air and then botched the landing. Ambrozy realized that he would need to be very careful before he got the hang of it. Yuri gave him elbow pads too so he wouldn't cut himself open when he fell.

And fall he did. It was like every stick, branch, root, rock and pebble was conspiring against him and combined with the new experience on an exoskeleton Ambrozy was forced to face a kinesthetic experience completely unfamiliar to him previously. The parts where his feet were in the exoskeleton was as if he was wearing comically large shoes that made him stumble in places where he would have normally been fine and he became unsure where he could safely step. His legs in general now were practically three times as thick because of the hardware and it made him clumsy in the uneven terrain of the jungle underbrush. The extra strength was very hard to gauge since he should have at first practiced for a while on an even, urban terrain of concrete but he had been immediately thrown into the advanced stage of hiking in a very challenging environment. Sometimes he put in too much force even though he thought that he was being careful and when leaping over a ditch he banged himself on a tree on the other side that normally would have been so far away that he could have never jumped that distance in a million years. Other times he used way too little force and he didn't get where he was supposed to, so he needed to make corrective steps that all had the wrong amount of strength in them and he somersaulted, cartwheeled and crashed all over like a drunken bum with superhuman strength. Yuri couldn't take the physical comedy at times and he was laughing with tears in his eyes, holding his sides and having to sit down to calm himself as Ambrozy gathered himself from another put or hole he had managed to get himself into. "I should have given you a helmet, I'm so sorry." he managed to say from his laughter but Ambrozy stayed quiet. He wasn't sour from being laughed at but he really needed to concentrate to get hold of his bearings. He remembered the sensation of picking up a jug of milk or some other liquid container that in actuality was almost empty but he had thought was full but now this experience was constant and it was in his legs, not in his hands. If he would have had the full exoskeleton and his arms would have been like this too, Ambrozy was sure that he would have reached a stage of absolute physical confusion. He started to remember his brother telling him that the use of full sets power armor – suits that contained this exoskeleton but were equipped with protective padding and different sorts of weapons – were only given to those who were athletically gifted. It made sense to him now.

Still, the contraption helped him enormously. His muscles really didn't get tired and he wasn't out of breath even though they traveled from morning to evening, only twice stopping to eat each day. The nights proved to be another sort of torment: insect-like creatures of various sizes were determined to make Ambrozy their permanent home and again Yuri had his fun as Ambrozy squirmed and slapped himself all over. Thankfully Yuri had brought a couple of sorts of repellents with him and they mostly seemed to do the trick, but some species were unfazed by them and pretty soon Ambrozy was ready to make it his life's quest to burn down the whole planet. A good chunk of each night was bitterly cold no matter how hot the day had been but thankfully in those periods the flora and fauna around seemed to leave them alone and hibernate. Yuri had brought two sleeping bags that were alright but Ambrozy still felt the need to cover up his face too, so biting was the cold. They obviously couldn't wash themselves anywhere and Yuri said that the bodies of water in the jungle were most likely unsafe and teeming with parasites. Ambrozy had trouble tolerating the disgusting feeling of staying in dirty clothes constantly. Yuri had a portable water purifier with him that could make even the filthiest swill drinkable but it took time as it processed the water and would only provide enough for drinking. The water from it had a stuffy, metallic aftertaste in it and as this same water was put into the freeze-dried food rations they ate every day the taste didn't leave his mouth at any point. All in all everything was quite miserable and the traveling was not ending anytime soon. After five days Ambrozy lost the conception of time and after two weeks it seemed to him that his whole life was this jungle and everything else before it had been a dream or a distant mirage.

Ambrozy was pretty sure now that he knew what was up with Yuri's abnormal physical strength, stamina and agility. He didn't seem to be bothered by the cold or heat much either and the bugs were seemingly leaving him alone. When they had met Yuri had withstood Ambrozy's psionic attack with ease so most likely Yuri was a psionic savant: he utilized that peculiar ability so well that he was constantly enhancing everything he did with it without probably even realizing it, so easily it seemed to come to him. He most likely wouldn't have been able to live the way he did, completely alone with little technology to help him in the middle of this jungle. So many others with the ability would have exhausted themselves with the sheer effort in doing anything that he did even in short bursts and would have gotten splitting headaches and nosebleeds for their troubles but Yuri was like a fish in water. He just swam. Others avoided drowning the best they could.

They didn't talk that much with each other but it wasn't out of rudeness or awkwardness, they mostly were just trying to reach the destination and on meal breaks they were too hungry to just chit chat. Every now and then the curiosity about the other got the best of them. "So why don't you live in any of the cities? You seem pretty capable and probably could do all sorts of things. Why all this?" Ambrozy asked Yuri when they were sitting on rocks and waiting for the water purifier to finish its task and start boiling the clean water. There was an option in the machine to get the finished product as piping hot or at room temperature which still meant that it was quite warm in these circumstances. Yuri scratched the back of his head with his left hand, clearly not knowing how to express himself adequately. "Well, I guess... but what for? I'd probably end up being drafted either into the military or I'd have to start working for any of the gangs or other criminals to get my daily bread. The slavers always need people to herd their wares but that stuff makes me sick. I can't get an education and all the trades are jealously monitored by their own guilds and I'd have to be an apprentice for a decade or even more. The farmers are equally tormented by the gangs, slavers and imperial soldiers. I can't open up any sort of business in any of the cities since only the city folk can do that. The empire keeps tabs on everybody. Not much of choice available." These reasons were by themselves logical, but Ambrozy could clearly see from the hermit's face that those weren't the true reasons, despite their seeming rationality. "But why be alone? Not many would could tolerate that." Ambrozy said. Yuri mumbled something incoherent but clearly didn't want to talk about the subject. He was fiddling with the ceremonial sword. "They teach you to use these things?" he said as he pulled the blade out from the sheath. "Actually, they do. Those in the Cult of Kai in its original form were basically warrior monks and they try to keep the tradition alive. They justify it as a way to strengthen you mentally but a lot of people drop it as soon as they can and just focus on working in the administration and the bureaucracy or just go for the scholarly route. They do it a lot in the military though. It's not like they wage war with swords either but the activity in a way possesses the identity of the empire. It's a place and a state of mind we came from, in an abstract way at least. Combat sports in general are a big thing anyway." Yuri had started to do the movements from one of the traditional sword dances that were performed by the imperial military in parades, on holidays and in the many ceremonies. Yuri was doing it pretty well too and Ambrozy didn't quite believe in him not wanting to join the imperial forces.

Several more days went by. There were hills here and there but you really couldn't see what lay in the horizon because of the thickness of the jungle even if you climbed on them, but finally there was a sort of a clearing where you could see over the trees. Yuri and Ambrozy climbed to the top of it. Ambrozy was finally getting at least somewhat proficient with the exoskeleton even though he still was a far cry from a professional power armor soldier but he was able to climb the steep slope pretty well. Yuri said that the battery for it would last virtually forever because there was so little weight it needed to support and the climate was not too hot or too cold to drain it. At the top Yuri pointed to the direction they had been going and indeed there stood the towering city of Anegend: the jungle had been cleared away from around it for several kilometers and a bunch of shacks surrounded the high walls that protected the industrial giant. On the left of it the gigantic machinery for the mining operations were clearly visible even from here and Ambrozy was a bit dismayed to see how far away they still were.

Then there was something peculiar. In the jungle between their location and the city some smoke was rising. Then a bunch of trees started to fall and the sound of shooting echoed in the air. Yuri and Ambrozy glanced at each other and then they both instinctively hit the deck when an explosion shook the ground and filled the world with tremendous noise. More such sounds followed and some of them had the distinct quality of missiles exploding, others were clearly from energy weapons. A thick beam of light from such a gun rose to the air from the area where the fighting was happening, as if a completely straight thunderbolt would have come from the ground instead of the skies.

"What the hell is this?" Yuri said when he saw that. "Let's get down from here so we won't get hit by any strays, come on! Hurry!" They crawled on their bellies away from the open clearing before standing up and jogging down the hill which wasn't as steep on this side. Ambrozy had a bit of trouble trying to crawl for the first time with the exoskeleton on but he managed. When they were once again in the depths of the jungle Yuri turned to Ambrozy and started to fiddle a bit with the control panel of the exoskeleton. Suddenly a bunch of the weight it had supported was released and Ambrozy had to carry much more of the weight of his huge backpack with his own muscles. "I want to see what is going on but we have to make sure that you don't stumble about, you can't afford to get clumsy if things get hot." he explained. "It's not completely off but moving is going to be physically much more taxing. But hey, it's good exercise." Yuri continued and he slapped Ambrozy's shoulder encouragingly. Ambrozy didn't understand why they had to go into such a mess head on but it was possible that they couldn't enter the city just like that if there was some sort of a battle going on. They needed to know what was happening. Ambrozy thought that if it turned out that Yuri had a death wish and was too reckless he could stay behind and assess the situation on his own. They were technically at their destination so he really didn't need Yuri's help anymore. There was no point in taking stupid risks.

They jogged to the direction where the battle had been happening and the sounds of fighting had died down. The jungle seemingly was like before. After a while a smell of burning could be detected in the air. Yuri started to walk cautiously instead of jogging and Ambrozy was grateful for that since he was already breathing more heavily. Soon the smell intensified and it now had the sickly quality of burning flesh. They were close to the site of the battle and they started to see the area where the trees had fallen. Yuri started to basically crawl and Ambrozy followed his example. They went to a spot where there was a huge trunk of an old tree that was covered in underbrush. From here they could see clearly and still remain hidden.

"What, these are here?" Yuri mumbled to himself out of sheer amazement. Ambrozy moved some of the branches in his way to see better. A large group of androids of various sizes with several bigger walker units with heavier weapons were scrounging the fresh battlefield. Some were doing maintenance to their weapons, other's sat around with eerily human mannerisms, a few were staring into the nothingness like lifeless mannequins in a clothing store. Ambrozy's mind drew blank for a few seconds as he watched this strangely antiqued machinery in confusion and then in it hit him. It was like the pages of a history book had come alive.

Several hundred years ago technology had reached a point where human bodies and minds could be highly modified via robotic parts. Replacing a limb had not been a problem for quite some time, same with organs like hearts, kidneys and livers, but now not much else was needed from the original body besides the brain and parts of the nervous system. Life could continue in a new shell and humanity as a whole had started to obsess about this new state of affairs, convinced that the whole purpose of our existence had aimed at this precise moment where our species could finally break the shackles of biology and transcend into a new stage. However, the brains still were decaying organic matter and the new technology was pushed even further: it was now possible to transfer a human consciousness into a mechanical vessel without needing anything organic from the original individual. Man had defeated death.

The whole thing had flopped almost right out of the gate. A limb or a few organs getting replaced did not damage the individual psychologically in a truly severe way, even though it might take time to get used to the new prosthetic, but once a certain line had been crossed and you ended up with a full-blown cyborg, more man than machine, it just was too much for the psyche. Simple human needs and sensations were suddenly gone: No taste, no sense of smell, no reaction to the temperature of the environment, no physical pain and no hunger topped off with a confused sense of sexual desire that could not be stimulated or satisfied. Once all the mundane acts and appetites of being a human were gone and you basically were a sort of a vague consciousness floating around with a hazy memory of being a some sort of a sentient life form whose standards and goals now meant nothing to you, the only possible results was insanity or catatonic depression. Mansions and palaces had been filled with cyborg aristocrats who had cheated death and debilitating illness but who ended up jumping from bridges, committing heinous violent acts or just simply stopping moving in a few short months. Scientists and doctors tried to remedy this by setting up systems into the cyborgs that would try to mimic these human sensations, for example having a some sort of a sensation of touch in the fingers, but it only seemed to make things worse as these signals were all wrong and it only sped up the decaying of the mind. The relatives of these seemingly immortal machine men were obviously horrified: their more or less beloved family members had been replaced by perverse impostors that were like an echo of a person they had once known. Ambrozy thought that even if the technology had worked better people just would have not accepted it, despite all the previous rhetoric: these new beings walking around them just weren't human. It was as if humanity had become enslaved by some other species but instead of a war of defiance and a tragic but heroic end to the superiority of our kind, we had just created our conquerors by ourselves and handed the mantle to them without a fight. This just was too much and many of the laboratories and universities where this kind of cyborg technology had been developed were shut down and some were even destroyed and burned to the ground. The regular people did the physical acts but the powerful did nothing to stop them. The dream was dead and humanity was to remain painfully human.

Still, in a stubborn and an irrational fashion that seems to apply to all inventions that fail to produce the promised revolution, another use was devised. Despite the use of artificial intelligence, men were needed in the operations of war and soldiers inhabited the battlefields just like in any other period of history. If this technology did not elevate the elite, maybe it would elevate the warfighter? After the debacle with the aristocrats going mad, nobody wanted to volunteer. The government went to those who were in the most desperate of situations: miners or farmers who risked their lives and health every day in the remotest of colonies for a pittance were easily motivated when offered a sum that equaled a few years pay. The money was given to their families and they themselves would have a chance to escape the endless wretchedness of existence. Most of them probably had no idea of what had happened in the mansions of their far-away masters but even if they did, the deal was just too good for those who had never had even the slightest chance at all. They were shipped off, their consciousnesses were transferred to android bodies, then they went to boot camps and after that found themselves fighting in backwater worlds.

Apparently Llapus 884 had been one of those destinations. Ambrozy was extremely impressed with how these androids had been able to keep themselves and their equipment functional after all this time. The soldiers had gradually gone insane too and the project had been permanently stopped soon after, there just was no use for the technology. Still, maybe picking individuals from such demanding circumstances had resulted in a more resilient product? Ambrozy had not even heard rumors of any of these still walking about yet here they were. With transferring consciousnesses there was even more controversy: in the process the original individual died and then the machine body was woken up, now containing the person, but it was very much possible that the individual was just killed and whatever now inhabited the android was just the best representation that an AI could cook up with whatever information it had got from the person's brain and nervous system. According to many critics saying that an actual person had just switched an organic vessel to a machine one was just jumping to conclusions and wishful thinking. What you had ended up with was a novel way to construct AI that somewhat mirrored a person, nothing more. Ambrozy knew that some supporters of the technology had accepted these criticisms partially but then ended up with a conclusion that this was a new way to create offspring, make new individuals that had parts of the original person's character. This was fringe thinking and at any rate you still ended up with mad androids.

Now this group was starting to move again. They went for a sort of a formation, each android taking its designated place, and then they started to walk towards Anegend. Yuri tapped Ambrozy's shoulder to get his attention and then pointed his thumb back the way they had come from. Ambrozy nodded and they slowly crawled away, the androids moving to the opposite direction. After going on all four's a while Yuri stood up and Ambrozy followed his example. They drank a bit from their canteens. "So, what, they attack people often? Do they usually go to cities and other population centers? Why are they trying to get to Anegend?" Ambrozy asked after he had quenched his thirst. Yuri was pouring some of the water on his face and he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger. "I don't know what this is about. Those things roam around the forest in set patterns and the area they cover is gigantic, you can go a year without seeing them even if you are on their patrol route and yes, they usually attack if they are in their way but not always. One time a big cargo ship had crashed into the forest and I had been stripping it down for several days but then an android group was there, seeing if there was anything that they could use. I was well hidden but then one of them stopped what it was doing, walked towards my direction and actually called to me! It said that they didn't mind my presence and even said that if I had anything that they could possibly use they could trade for it. I don't think that it knew precisely where I was at, since it just yelled all this to my general direction, but I absolutely did not want to take my chances with them. I didn't even know that they could talk. Its voice was all scratchy and barely intelligible, like those announcements at train stations. I was genuinely creeped out by them after that. Usually they just walk around." Yuri answered. He looked into the forest without his eyes really focusing on anything, pondering the options. "I have no idea how things are going to go in Anegend, but if we keep our distance when we can arrive at the edge of the city, it'll probably be alright. We can't go straight from here since it's not a good idea to end up in the middle of the action so we'll loop around a bit." Yuri fiddled again with the controls of Ambrozy's exoskeleton and once again Ambrozy felt like the gravity of the planet had suddenly lessened. He realized that he never would have been able to make a trip like this without such a contraption, the short trek they had made when sneaking to check out the androids had already been a demanding workout. Ambrozy wondered how far the nearest city or village was from where he had landed on this forsaken planet. Up to this point he had had tremendous luck, despite all the challenges and difficulties. He could only hope that it would last. Ambrozy fixed the position of his backpack a bit and followed Yuri.

After two days the sounds of another battle could be heard from the distance and this time it just didn't stop. Shooting, explosions and the loud, distorted electrical sounds of the energy weapons pierced the air for a whole day and it just got worse the closer Yuri and Ambrozy got. On the evening of the third day the jungle had finally reached its end and the travelers found themselves looking at the abandoned shacks surrounding the great wall of the city of Anegend. They climbed on top of one of the sturdier-looking bungalows to see what was going on and to the far left of them, a few kilometers away, they could see raging fires, muzzle flashes and the glowing blue shields produced by portable shield generators. It looked like the soldiers of the city had decided to make their stand outside the city walls and it had not been going well at all. Yuri pointed towards the towering machinery in the horizon that was in the middle of the shanty town that stretched around the city. "You see those? Anegend was built next to the mines and those are the pumps and drills of the operation, the soldiers here apparently were ordered to stop the androids before they reach the mining site. I don't think they have much to oppose such heavy firepower, at most you'll have to occasionally defend against the raids from the nomads but they don't pack heat like that, not even close. If the androids don't stop by themselves I think the city is done for. They really went crazy this time." He had to yell some of what he said so Ambrozy could hear him when several missiles hit the wall of the city and left huge, black spots on the side of it but it still held.

Ambrozy was grinding his teeth from frustration. It was very likely that Khairullin or some other contact for the Black Rose was in the city and now they may have died or escaped. It seemed that he had struggled for nothing and was back to square one, but he didn't want to throw his lot away just yet. On their side of the shantytown Ambozy could see soldiers running about on top of the city wall. Everything on this rotten rock was dangerous anyway so Ambrozy decided to just go and take his chances yet again.

"I'll go and ask what those people know, come with me if you want, I'll come back if it doesn't pan out." Ambrozy said as he climbed down from the roof of the bungalow and left the astonished Yuri to stand there by himself, sprinting towards the city wall and now keeping his balance perfectly despite the speed. He could hear Yuri shouting "Hey, wait up!" and soon he was sprinting beside Ambrozy at the same, inhuman pace. Ambrozy could only shake his head as he ran at how extraordinary the hermit was. That truly was something.

"Hey, officer! Sir!" Ambrozy yelled and waved both of his hands as he sprinted to one of the soldiers wearing an officer's gray uniform who was clearly ordering the other soldiers around and gesturing towards different directions as the men ran to fulfill their duties. He did a double take as he glanced down the wall, most likely noticing the fast movement than hearing Ambrozy's yelling. He called back some of his men to give them some new orders and it didn't take long for a rope ladder to unfold in front of Ambrozy and Yuri. Ambrozy went first and as he reached the top two soldiers helped him up. "Holy hell, we still had people down there! You boys sure are late!" The officer said to them but then got confused as he saw the details of their peculiar get-up. Yuri was wearing parts of the imperial armor and Ambrozy had the partial exoskeleton on, so from far away the officer had apparently had thought them to be regular soldiers, but now he didn't don't what he was dealing with. "Wait, so what's this supposed to be? Are you privates or not? Name, rank, unit! Speak up, men!" he barked as Ambrozy was trying to get enough air into his lungs to speak. "That is classified, sir. We are looking for lieutenant colonel Valeev Khairullin, we have extremely urgent information for him from the imperial capital." The officer looked perplexed. "The capital? Why didn't you come here via the normal route? The cargo ships come here from the interplanetary harbor every month and it looks like you walked here!" Ambrozy had gotten his breathing steady. "We got compromised so we had to move unnoticed. The power struggle in the Core Sphere is escalating and we could not risk the information getting into the wrong hands." The officer looked over his shoulder nervously to the direction where the battle was raging on as more missiles hit the wall and this time it sounded like at least parts of it were giving in. "Fine, follow me!" the officer said to Ambrozy and Yuri and they jogged behind him down a set of stairs and through the narrow streets buzzing with panicking civilians and busy soldiers. The attack had come out of the blue and it was clear that the city was now waking up to the fact that it had very limited answers to a threat like this. Ambrozy was guessing that only a few individuals had personal ships and could fly away when they wished and most people, even the wealthy ones, had to make do with the regular cargo and passenger ships that made their way across the population centers of the planet. Despite the fact that the empire had been here for a long time, Llapus 844 was still in very, very early stages of development. The few cities and their immediate surroundings contained most of the human inhabitants of this armpit of the cosmos and the vast majority of its surface was its untamed and original flora and fauna, pure nature. The empire had come to remote places like this to extract what it needed as cheaply as possible and with the minimal use of resources. Llapus 844 was part of the boondocks of the galaxy and this was one of the reasons for their tendency to become infestations of criminality and corruption. As long as the raw materials were sent out of here to the production centers of other planets with the minimum amount of hassle and the paperwork was in order, nobody cared what precisely happened in the periphery. As a result, its cities were not up to code with safety regulations or emergency plans. There were no life boats for this sinking ship.

Running through the escalating panic and chaos Ambrozy and Yuri were led through one door in a gigantic building that seemed to constitute most of the center of Anegend. Everything was so closely connected here that it was like there originally had only been one gigantic clump of industrial steel that had just been expanded when a need had risen and every section of it was just a few separate rooms inside the same entity. Where they were now was clearly the military command center and it was filled with offices where an army of clerks in uniforms were feverishly pounding the control panels of their computers as the officers beside them were yelling and arguing with each other about what they should do, in no way reassuring their subordinates that the superiors here had any semblance of control over the situation. The officer who had been leading Ambrozy and Yuri stopped and stood at attention next to one of the higher ups who was crouched over one of the computer screens with a serious look on his face. Ambrozy saw over his shoulder that it showed a live feed of the battle. "Sir! Sir! '' the officer who had escorted them called his superior. "Yes, what!" the superior yelled over the other shouts of the room without looking away from the mayhem. "Sir, these two came here to bring classified information to lieutenant colonel Khairullin, sir! Is he available, sir!" Now the superior took his gaze out the screen and looked at the officer, then Ambrozy and Yuri. "Khairullin... Fine time for you to show up, like we wouldn't have other things to worry about! Khairullin left for the Main Base two weeks ago anyway so you're at the wrong address. Now get these clowns out of my face and go do something useful for a..." the superior answered but then the whole building shook and the screeching sound of twisting metal drowned every other voice under it, many of the soldiers hit the deck. The officer who had led them seemed to forget them and ran to help up the superior they had been talking to as he had fallen on his back and Yuri shook Ambrozy's shoulder to get his attention. "Let's get out of here before it's too late, it doesn't seem that you can find your people here!" Ambrozy nodded and they ran back to the way they had come, out of the building and into the street. The ground shook yet again and outside the sound of the explosion was so deafening that it was almost unreal. Now the city was in full-blown panic and even the soldiers had abandoned their tasks, only focusing on saving their own lives. Yuri pointed back to the wall and they ran to the stairs, but it was hard to move as Ambrozy kept bumping into the pedestrians trying to get to safety. He could see the afterburners of a few small-scale spaceships rising above the tall buildings and one of them was hit by a blue and thick ray of an energy weapon and the ship was split into half, the fiery cockpit falling into a different spot than the rest of it. With the power of the exoskeleton Ambrozy was able to power through the hysteric mass of men and women and it got better the higher he and Yuri got up the stairs since no one wanted to be on the wall. Ambrozy saw Yuri stopping and looking to the direction where the androids had apparently broken into the city and Ambrozy did the same instinctively. Thick pillars of black smoke were rising from several locations and parts of the buildings were collapsing before their eyes. Then a gigantic ball of fire rose to the sky as an ammunition storage or a fuel depot was hit and Ambrozy and Yuri snapped out of their trance and they ran farther away on the top of the wall as debris from the explosion rained all around them, breaking windows and destroying vehicles wherever the pieces landed. Suddenly Yuri stopped and Ambrozy almost hit him, but he was curiously stopped in his tracks in an unnatural way that seemed to defy physics and Ambrozy understood that this was yet another instance where Yuri's psionic ability showed its potency. The wall had also been hit and a huge part of it had crumbled almost all the way down. Yuri turned towards Ambrozy and started clicking on the exoskeleton's control panel. "We're going to climb down from here, as fast as possible. There is a feature in the exoskeleton that helps with falling from high places, it corrects your posture and absorbs a lot of the shock, but I don't know how well it works in this stripped-out crap. So don't test it, okay? Then there's this hook too, you can have it." Yuri had taken out a metallic box the size of a small suitcase out of his backpack that he attached to Ambrozy's waist. It opened up and there was a hook and a winch with a whole bunch of metallic rope. He attached the hook to the steel framework that protruded out of the destroyed wall and pulled at it a few times to check that it held. More explosions could be heard behind them. "Alright, here we go." Yuri went first and he was like a professional athlete that was clearing an obstacle course that he had been practicing on for years. The height twisted Ambrozy's stomach but there was no choice. He started climbing down but thankfully the wall had broken in a way that it was like going down a very high hill consisting of rocks and gravel and the ordeal was feasible for even the likes of him, but without the safety rope of the winch he would have been done for two or three times as the wall crumbled from the places he had stepped on. At the bottom of the destroyed section of the wall there still was a section of intact wall for several meters that you had to jump down from. Yuri made it to the very bottom like a cat, tossing his backpack to the ground before he jumped himself, doing a forward roll as he landed. Ambrozy collected his courage and had the idea of hanging from the edge with his hands and then letting himself go in order to take a meter or two out of the wall – he had no idea if this made any sense or not – but as he tried he of course couldn't sustain the weight of his gigantic backpack and the weight of the exoskeleton on top his own body weight and he slipped at once as he tried to hang on, the stone under his fingers crumbling. He had also forgotten about his safety rope that stopped his fall and he spun upside down, smacking the left side of his body hard against the wall and Ambrozy yelped from pain. "The winch, you idiot! You'll have to detach it!" Yuri yelled at him as he spun around suspended in the air and Ambrozy fumbled with the device, swearing loudly. Then he succeeded and the box came off from his waist and Ambrozy felt how his stomach was where his throat was as he fell. He would have probably landed on his stomach if the exoskeleton had not kicked in and corrected him to a standing position mid- air and Ambrozy hit the ground feet first, ending up automatically in a squatting position as the exoskeleton absorbed the impact. He didn't quite comprehend what had happened and Yuri had to pull on his hands to get Ambrozy to get up and move. They ran across the vast ghetto to get away from the now doomed and burning city. Only when they finally were in the jungle again they stopped to catch their breath and Ambrozy collapsed on all fours and he started to heave and gag from the sheer physical exhaustion, but nothing came out except spit. The smell of burning had filled the air.

They walked away from the devastation deeper into the jungle and suddenly found themselves in an abandoned military checkpoint. The door had been left open in this small building and Yuri and Ambrozy went inside and sat on the office chairs that were next to the communication equipment. They drank water and felt extreme exhaustion setting in. The dangerous ordeal had left them drained and the sounds of the battle seemed to have stopped. The silence felt deafening and their ears rang. "I think we can stop here for a while, I don't think that the androids would end up here, they'll have plenty to do in the city and the mines. Or hell if I know what they think or do. I would have never in a million years thought that they could be that dangerous." Yuri went to look around the checkpoint, Ambrozy could just sit and think nothing, his mind drawn completely blank. Yuri came back with a bunch of military rations that had a whole bunch of sugary snacks and shelf-stable bread besides the now familiar freeze-dried meals they had been eating all these weeks. Piles and piles of trash sprung around them as they opened up a package after package as they devoured the empty calories their bodies craved for. After they had had their fill and Yuri had boiled some water with the electric kettle of the checkpoint and made them some instant coffee, Ambrozy started to feel like a human again. It was really nice to be indoors again after so long.

"I guess the Main Base is in the capital of Llapus? Usually that term refers to that." Ambrozy said. "I know that you didn't get paid and I'm asking wonders from you, but can you take me to the capital? I'd have been dead dozens of times already without you, I'll never make it by myself out here. I'll pay you double what I promised once I can access my money." Yuri drank from his cup, using a one that he had found in the officer's break room. Its original owner was probably now dead. "Actually, I think I'll have to go that way anyway now that things turned out like this." He pointed behind his back with his thumb, indicating the whole general direction. "The androids can move in huge convoys with hundreds of individuals and the group that attacked Anegend wasn't that big. Maybe more are coming in this direction because of whatever has attracted them here and I'm not not taking the risk of going back into the jungle to meet more of them. Not if they are really this bad." He then pointed to his right with the same hand. "If we go that way a couple of kilometers the jungle actually ends. I don't know how much you knew about Llapus before you came here, but as gigantic as the jungle is, right next to it on this end is a huge, completely treeless steppe that is called the Great Plains. Through there we can travel to the capital. I can go from there to my place and avoid the areas with the androids since they never leave the jungle. Or haven't left it before, at least. Who knows what other new things they want to try out." Yuri continued. "Maybe it was only that group that became aggressive like that and nothing else is crawling towards Anegend, but I'm too paranoid now to take any chances. I'll have to see how things are in other cities and what they are going to do about the androids. Things are going to be different and that is going to affect my livelihood. We'll see." Yuri sighed. "What a mess."

They slept the night on the military bunks in their sleeping bags and being in an actual bed was heavenly for Ambrozy, although he was so tired now that he could have slept standing on his feet anyway. He had been a bit worried that the androids would stumble their way when they slept but Yuri assured him that he would spot them in time, even though he went to sleep too. Ambrozy didn't doubt him and they slept like they were dead for ten hours.

When they got up they took advantage of the checkpoint in every way they could. They took a shower and Ambrozy couldn't believe how good it felt, he had been grimy and dirty for so long now that it had become the new normal. He took a bunch of toothbrushes from a storage room that had a bunch of hygiene products and changed into clean military clothes. He put several sets of shirts, pants, long underwear and socks into his backpack and thought about tossing the filthy monk robes but decided against it, there maybe could be use for it later on if he needed to look the part and not be mistaken for a common imperial soldier. He shaved his head since some bugs of the jungle had been fancied to live in his hair and that disgusted Ambrozy to no end. They resupplied their rations with the military ones that would bring some much needed change to their stale diets. Yuri slapped a fresh battery into the exoskeleton and took two extra ones, just in case. He also took a rifle and an energy pistol, then looked at Ambrozy thoughtfully. "Can you shoot? You haven't really been showing much aptitude with any kind equipment so far." Ambrozy shrugged his shoulders and wasn't offended. Yuri didn't seem to have a bad bone in his body and very possibly wasn't even able to insult anybody. "I was supposed to work in the administration, not conduct intelligence operations in the field." Yuri took Ambrozy outside and he showed the basics in using the energy pistol. There was the safety switch and you didn't need to worry about running out of ammunition anytime soon: there was a green light that was covered by a metallic flap in the case that you needed the light to be hidden and when it turned red the battery was running low. It charged at least partially back up in time when not used. It was a very good weapon for a beginner since there was a minimum amount of things to worry about. Ambrozy tried to shoot at things that Yuri pointed at, mostly missing. The gun made a scratching electric sound with every shot, but it wasn't loud at all. A thin blue ray of light left a burning mark where it hit. "Well, at least don't go blasting me with it. Although you'd probably miss anyhow." Yuri gave a holster to Ambrozy that he strapped to his waist.

It was soon time to go, but Yuri snatched one more useful thing from the storage room of the checkpoint. It was a hoversled, a platform of about a meter in length and a half a meter in width that didn't touch the ground but floated about twenty centimeters in the air by itself. Yuri put a lot of the baggage on the sled and tied a rope to his waist to pull it while he walked. "Back in the jungle it would snag on every little thing since the forest bed is what it is, but this will be perfect on the plains. I barely notice it." he said as he walked about testing the sled, which seemed to follow him with the bare minimum of effort, but funnily enough it didn't seem to have much momentum: You really had to constantly push or pull the thing, if you just shoved it the sled would stop by itself after a meter or two, no matter how much force you had put into the thrust. Yuri had taken a lot of extra rations with him, just because they were available. There was also a new water purifier, a military one straight from the box. Ambrozy hoped that the water it processed would not taste as foul.

Off they went. They hadn't heard anything from the direction of the city, only an occasional explosion when the raging fires reached another fuel depot or a generator, but there wasn't a soul or an android around. Their backs facing the black pillars of smoke the journey continued, and Ambrozy could only do his best to renew his patience. He was in for a long game.