As they traveled the cluttered interior of the busy drydock, they were aware of the stares their presence provoked. Even among the ranks of the somewhat exotic, nomadic population who traveled throughout the Withered Land, the sight of Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig still managed to be unusually arresting. Synthetic humanoids were a throwback to the times before the Great Revocation, when the Emperium was still highly invested in space travel and Offworld empire building. Those advanced technologies were famed for creating miracles that both dazzled and frightened the normal populace.
From the perspective of Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig, the attention they received was distracting, but no more especially unpleasant than what they normally experienced from the less sophisticated of Teshiwahur's peoples. They were synthetic humanoids, strangers among a world made increasingly more strange since the commencement of the Long Death.
Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig, the synthetic gene robot constructs known amongst the naval militia of Peravendath as "the Duality of Kohra'andum", found the person they had been searching for over above Terash Munyatt's windward, southwestern slope on the Sinaudruim mountain range. Within the Ureeon Dockyard, the strange duo had traveled to the Level Six Machine Tekk Tooling Lab, near the open doorway to the lab's loading zone.
When Durkka-jan had assigned them the task of investigating the particulars of Layvis Kroule's business aboard the drydock built into Terash Munyatt's massive cinder-and-spatter cone, they had foregone the obvious effort of checking Kroule's airship's declared Bill of Lading inventory. The most truly valuable of the assorted cargo that the mercenary was carrying inside the hold of that ship was not going to be freely and prominently revealed on the Bill of Lading. Given his reputation and public record as a bounty hunter and high-end renegade security operative, Kroule was obviously involved in something unsavory and better left opaque to unauthorized public scrutiny.
So Pnoom-Ogg checked the Assemblage Listings showing the names of the latest arrivals into the drydock while Pnoom-Aig reviewed the latest, updated list of names for technical employees visiting or consulting with the staff of Ureeon. They ran the names against their own voluminous mnemonic database of individuals with extensive or exotic technical expertise, isolating those persons known to have interaction with unsanctioned or illegal trade in black market Tekk. They cross-checked those names against records of possible members or former members of the Fraternity Machus, the clan of enigmatic scholars who had rediscovered the Laws of the System Mages after the appearance of The Wound. The Machusians were scientists who'd once been, before arrival of The Wound, enemies of the Church of the Emperium and who had thereafter become outlaw seditionists. Amassing this knowledge had taken the pair only a few moments of computer network interfacing and a moment more of focused, intense personal concentration. And that was how they found him.
The name under which he was listed as a crewmember among the staff of Ureeon base was a false name, but it was one behind which he had twice before hidden himself so he could walk unmolested among normal humanity. Like the artificially-created fraternal twins, the man was a Synthetic, a gene'bot. But unlike them, he was a model of Synthetic long outlawed by the Emperium and by most territorial city-state metropolises on Teshiwahur.
The twins were an advanced model of gene'bot with multiple varieties of cybernetic augmentations in their neural networks, bio-mechanical skeletal and supportive musculature structure, and sensory receptors. They had been designed for military duty as sophisticated machines of war. But the Synthetic they sought was designed to be an evolutionary step upwards, beyond man, beyond machine, virtually god-like, gene'bot mutants with unusual and unpredictable special abilities. He, and the other Ultra-synths like him, was an experiment that had not been expected to survive. He did not have semi-transparent, hard crystalline flesh with overlapping segments at the joints of their limbs like the twins. He looked exactly like a normal human being, virtually indistinguishable from them. His kind had been created on Pex'Insava, the craggy disc-shaped moon that orbited the giant planet, frequently eclipsing the world's dual suns in its erratic orbit. Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig were classified by the Post-Wound government as "industrially-produced non-human variants" and, since they had been manufactured on Teshiwahur, they were assigned as citizens the social classification of the Yur'seyn'Ahktar bloodline. The Synthetic individual for which the twins searched was classified by the government as an "Offworld non-human, hybridized evolutionary alternative" and bore the social distinction as being only one of sixty-six living beings declared to be "Alpha Progenitors".
Synthetic Alpha Progenitors were considered threats of an extreme nature to the security and domestic sovereignty of the peoples of Teshiwahur. As such, the Emperium had engaged in a relentless campaign to identify them, contain them and otherwise wipe them from the face of the planet. Ultra-synths were designated a danger to every natural born human being in the hegemonic dominion, though, truth be told, not one had ever so much as committed even the slightest of crimes.
Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig knew him by his true name, which was "Kodespawn 77". Alternately, the name under which he was hiding in plain sight was that of "Emaris Staurqe". For the last five solar heliars, he had been Ureeon Dockyard's Master Engineer. He did not welcome the presence of his fellow Synthetics. He had fought hard to retain his anonymity among the crew of the drydock and did not appreciate being exposed and singled out as a non-human variant created by a shadowy, secretive government program.
"Whatever it is, I am not interested. Leave me be," he said as he stood framed in the machine shop's open doorway, silhouetted against the panoramic mountain vista outside.
"Apologies, Brother Kodespawn. We respect your need for privacy. We require nothing from you but the answer to a few brief questions...," Pnoom-Aig said.
"I am not your brother and it has been many, many long heliars since I have referred to myself by the appellation 'Kodespawn', a term I rejected as a label to designate my status as a slave to the human tyrants who manufactured my body," he said. "My name is Emaris Staurqe."
He strolled deeper into the machine shop and his features took on definition under the ceiling's pale fluorescent lights.
He wore a tunic of dull twilight-purple onto which body contouring designs were etched in pewter-gray piping. Across his wide, massively muscled, chest was a slate-colored breastplate onto which the bas-relief design of the head of a roaring bear was affixed. Banded, silvery-gray gauntlets covered his bulging forearms to just below his elbow joints and a broad mahogany-hued leather belt enwrapped his narrow waist. His leather trousers were purple and a series of chrome bolts ran down the outside of each powerful leg. He wore knee-high boots of a pale graphite color with knee-guards onto which the same fearsome bear's face as on his torso was engraved. Staurqe's hands were huge, veiny and callused tools of corded muscle, the thick fingers wrapped in graphite-colored tape. And on his head was a chrome and gray helmet bisected by a tall, mohawk-like ridged crest, the faceplate of which allowed only teasing glimpses of the fine-featured aristocratic face underneath.
He didn't look like any common Tekk-mechanic of any kind that Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig had ever seen.
He looked like a war-god.
Pnoom-Ogg allowed himself a raised eyebrow as an external reaction to the Kodespawn's appearance.
"Where are your co-workers? Surely, you do not work here alone," he said.
"It is time for this work shift's dining break," Staurqe said, his manner reserved and diffident. "Most of that break will be spent lying about the romantic conquests they supposedly experienced last night and the rest will be a lot of grousing about their workloads here at an aging mountaintop dockyard where Management is actively disinterested in what it takes to keep this dilapidated mess running. Wine and mead will be consumed at a rate and volume not recommended for those working around physically heavy, technologically complex machinery."
"I take it this happens regularly enough that they no longer have any expectation you would join them," Pnoom-Aig remarked. "A good cover for the fact you're planning on leaving. So you took advantage of their absence and changed your uniform."
Staurqe's lips curved into a small, restrained smile as he said, "I had planned to be elsewhere momentarily and then I became aware of your computer inquiries via my telesthesic sensory linkage to the base's computer network. I thought it best to meet with you and get this over with as soon, and as quietly, as possible."
"We can assume, then, you established a steady state remote mental interface with the facility's computer network as soon as you came aboard the drydock," Pnoom-Ogg said. "That way you could monitor communications and data searches and alert alarms regarding active personnel. Why? Are you being hunted?"
"Of course I am being hunted. I am an Alpha Progenitor."
"And yet the Dockmaster, Baron Traytheq Farhoon, knows of your existence," Pnoom-Aig said pointedly.
"He does. We have a shared history, he and I. A private history forged by blood and treachery."
"If you are in a secret partnership with Baron Farhoon, I would submit it is he who benefits most from it. You are immune to the majority of known poisons and diseases, resistant to all but the most extreme forms of nuclear radiation, you have knife and sword-proof flesh and are possessed of massive physical strength. Moreover, you have the senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, metacognition, clairaudience and quantum telecausality," Pnoom-Ogg said. "The Baron is simply a man. What could you possibly have to fear from humans?"
"Firstly, there is nothing even remotely simple about Baron Farhoon. To underestimate him is to invite disaster. And who said I was afraid of humans?"
"I get the impression you hold no affection for human beings," Pnoom Aig said. "If that is so, then why do you live and work amongst them?"
"Why do YOU?"
Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig were startled by the question. The shining, sinuous female of the pair of artificial humans pursed her perfectly sculpted lips and said, "We have entered into an allegiance with humans who have accepted us as equals. We work to honor that allegiance. We live together. We fight together. Our fate is inextricably linked with theirs."
"But you are NOT equals. You are stronger and faster and have a much greater mental capacity than them. You have made a conscious decision to willingly limit yourselves and your accomplishments."
Pnoom-Ogg tilted his head to one side and considered Staurqe's statement before answering, "Yes, there is truth to that. But our choice is predicated by circumstances of mutual need. Is this not the same with you?"
"No," Staurqe said. "I live the way I live and I do what I do because I do not, based on sheer pragmatism, have the options of doing otherwise. And because, impossible as it may seem, Farhoon is my friend."
"We did not know it was possible for an Alpha Progenitor to have 'friends' and certainly not human ones," Pnoom-Aig said.
"Most the rest of the few remaining Alpha Progenitors hide deep in the desolate, inaccessible wastes of the Withered Land, living autonomously away from municipal utilities and off the few metropolitan electrical grids still working in this Post-Wound society. They've become nomadic hermits and recluses. That is a costly and damning strategic error. It keeps them ignorant of whether or not they're being hunted and conversely, it makes them easier to find," Staurqe said. "Living as a human among humans makes me less of an obvious target and makes me less likely to be noticed. Meanwhile I remain informed about any possible pursuit and efforts to target me. As long as I do not use any of my ultrahuman abilities, I am invisible. I tell myself that is the main reason for it. But it isn't. I am here mostly because my friend, my only friend, who fought against his own kind in my defense, asked me to be here."
"And yet you were preparing to leave this place," Pnoom-Aig said.
"And yet I was preparing to leave this place," Staurqe said, agreeing. There was a deep sadness in his admission and a fatalism he could not deny.
"Why?" Pnoom-Ogg demanded.
"Because a catastrophe is drawing near, a conflagration that will envelope us all. You want to know what it is that a mercenary named Layvis Kroule is covertly transporting from Warlord Kolag Y'phree's stronghold in The City to within Peravendathian borders," Staurqe said cagily. "Your instinct is that whatever it is, it is poses a great danger to you and yours. Well and good. But 'what' isn't nearly as important a question as 'for whom'..."
"Again, why?" Pnoom-Ogg requested.
Staurqe, massive arms crossed behind his wide back, took a trio of steps nearer the duo of lesser generation Synthetics while he shook his head at their naivety.
"Layvis Kroule and Kolag Y'phree are dealing with something they cannot possibly control. They do not see the hand of dark destiny moving behind the scenes. They are human and so they perceive only as humans, not realizing they are missing key pieces to the puzzle. They do not make allowances for non-human intervention and motivations. They are unaware they are being ruthlessly manipulated, even as they themselves attempt to manipulate others. And so, they have unwittingly aligned themselves with the demonic forces of Chaos Itself."
"Specifics, if you please," Pnoom-Ogg pressed.
"I was first made aware of their existence long ago, while back on Pex'Insava, before making planetfall here on Teshiwahur. I take it you've never before heard of a group of treacherous and lethal alien beings who are called 'The Arbiters'...," he said ominously.
* * *