The Gray Machine

7 Anomalies, Shadows

This world already belongs to the Gray Machine.

Her world had known such horrors.When the madman Dajri Rova had split the world of Nu to its molten core while trying to unleash the psychic force of a Mindrealm, it was said he had looked into the molten maw the size of a city.

The magma spewing forth from the gash swallowed a continent, and the heat from it stained the sky of this world forever. Dajri had wept blood, and it fell at his feet. And from it grew the first black Vriktha flower – the drug called Eater of Dreams, and Hunger for Sleep. He picked the flower, and blew a small breath upon it, and its dagger seeds danced away, and spread across the harrowed land. No more than a tear brings hunger for sleep, memory long as victory deep.

But the Vriktha bloom adorned the Ikoem crest for another reason, she reflected. A reminder to never be ruled by ambition.

So what might stand as the Vriktha flower for the Gray Machine? How might she teach them the same lesson, without destroying another world?

She made her way with long strides through the great hall to her command quarters, traversing cool swirled marble. Passing through the Sisterhood's hanger, arched like the center of a kaleidoscope, she spared not a glance at the Drifts and Pales that oiled the flexwings and kept the dark marble gleaming bright as onyx ale. The workers avoided her solemn gaze, seeing a woman with all the poise and inscrutability of a hungry tigress.

The Magistrate sat down at a private distal communication module. She made a gesture as if waving out a candle flame, conjuring a living light statue of a stocky, balled headed golden man. It was far from a face she wished to see... but such are the times in which we live.

The man they called Fen, newly appointed baron to the five dwarf stars of Q'uahid, might have been handsome in an opprobrious way, a decade or two back, if not for the smirk. Any woman who'd thought so the night before wouldn't the morning after, but no one could argue his charm. Charm alone kept his newly-won galactic barony within his sweaty little hands. That, and his tendency to put those same sweaty little hands into everything.

Fen was defined by three features beyond his squat smugness. The first was the opulent silk flung around his rotund torso. The second was the rugose greenish gills he bore upon his neck – the mark of the disreputable Gold underclass of bureaucrats, movers, shakers, back alley dealers. The third was more unique. It was a third eye like hers. He was the only male she'd ever seen with one, and it was unquestionably the source of his infamy.

Fen's projected image hovered, barely more than smoke, above a simmering brazier in the center of the chamber's round, marble table. "Well, Red. I see you've been doing your research on dear old Earth. What a fine, fine mess we are in."

There was venom in his voice, as usual — a tired, jaded sort of venom. He studied her, and the look made her think him lucky to be an image of light and smoke. If he had been in front of her in a corporeal sense, she might have broken off his manhood and shoved it in his mouth.

"May my eyes rot from my skull before they're forced to look upon you again, dear Fen."

The short greenish-gold man's smirk became a full-on grin, his broad teeth swirling in light yellow smoke. "I did quite miss you too, my dear."

"Enough. I need something from you, as much as I hate the notion of it."

"My, my...let's not get carried away with pleasantries, then, shall we?" Fen retorted. "Diplomacy was never one of your weaknesses."

"You flatter me too much, good sir."

"And you deserve so much more."

"Including old friends spying on me and my affairs?" Rajna spat. The fact that he knew she'd been looking at Earth vexed her, and yet surprised her not a bit.

Fen looked so injured she almost believed him. "My lady, deep concern for your wellbeing is paramount. I offer my sympathies at your recent...loss."

"Your sympathies are to me as a serpent's venom to the cat that beheads it."

Rajna realized that at least two pairs of feminine hands we massaging the Baron's soft, stooped shoulders as they spoke. Ghost hands in the smoke, their owners faceless wisps. He sat back self-contentedly, but not self-righteously. There was a tortured quality to this disgusting little man, under all his bluster. And somehow it made her trust him, just a little.

"Your dear Ambassador has taken your one chance at salvation and run to a world you are finding is well within the grasps of your truest enemy. And you hate these humans, don't you? I can see it in those big, beautiful, mysterious eyes."

"Then elucidate, my good Baron. What does a man of your import care of the machinations of a lowly Magistrate and her humble enterprises?"

Fen's face fell. "You misunderstand me, my dear lady. Think. Were it not for you, I'd be a cautionary tale, with all the best bits festooned on the late Imperator Brila's bloody scepter. You should be scrubbing out radioactive waste tubes with the rest of the Reds, and I should be dead or castrated, peddling aphrodisiacs or counting coins or pleasuring fat old penny duchesses in brothels of Ksal. Should. What a funny word."

Fen batted away the third or fourth pair of feminine hands massaging his shoulders.

"But thanks to your 'arbitrary' decision to save my vessel from our dear departed Imperator Senior, I find myself wearing the shackles of power rather than those of a spitted foul. I have no illusions that you spared me out of kindness, though whether or not it was out of cruelty I am not so certain. One way or another, I am left with a barony I do not want and a constituency that does not obey. So what interest do I have in your little escapades? Simply to keep a finger on the pulse of this blister we call an Empire. I find myself in the delicate position of needing to know how soon it's going to burst, and spew its fury out like magma from the mouth of the Mage's Gape. And so do you. And I suppose that's why we need each other, my dear. Now...how can I be of service?"

She saw no choice but to risk trusting him.

"Tell me, Baron. When my choices are the blood of war and the grayness of undeath...how might I save my world without annihilating another?"

Fen drew a long, luxurious trail of fragrant smoke from a smoldering lamp somewhere off-projection, and his eyelids drooped. He grinned. "Shadows, my dear Nightspeaker. It is within shadows you may find light."

"Interesting. Tell me what I might do. And what it is that you seek in return."