Prologue: Shadows & Blood
---SANCTUM ACCESS LOG#715397731339---
>>ACCESS: COUNCIL PROTOCOL MAINFRAME
>>INITIATE: ISCARIOT PROTOCOL
>>ACCESS: DENIED//BIO-KEY REQUIRED
>>SERAPH BIO-KEY: ACCEPTED
>>ENCRYPTION: LOADING…
>>DECRYPTION: LOADING...
>>CRYPT CONNECTION: SECURED
>>ISCARIOT PROTOCOL INITIATED<<
>>TRACE: SUBJECT/ZERO
>>LOAD: SUBJECT ZERO//ID:0957313591
>>CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
>>ACCESS: NEUROSPIKE
>> NEUROSPIKE: OFFLINE//REBOOT?
>>REMOTE NEUROSPIKE REBOOT INITIATED
>>NEUROSPIKE: ONLINE
>>WARNING: CYBERNEURAL NETWORK: 13% DEGRADED//NEUROSPIKE INTEGRITY: 79%//RECOMMENDATION: REPLACEMENT/REMOVAL
>>BEGIN SURVEILLANCE<<
Ordion VII - Amarr Navy Testing Facilities
Ordion System
Kor-Azor Region
Finena Constellation
Security Level: 0.5
Akai adjusted the crimson kheffa draped over his shoulders for the thirteenth time since he walked into the corporate headquarters of the Khanid-Caldari Prosperity Cooperative. He never wore it any more, and the shawl scratched his shaved head. It had been almost a decade since he'd been back to Ordion, and it was here that Akai became a capsuleer; here, he had undergone the battery of tests both physical and mental, tests that had nearly broken him. Instead, they turned him into a spaceborne god, the technological apex of humanity. A Capsuleer.
Fresh from the prestigious Royal Khanid Military Academy, and a graduate of the first class of the Khanid Special Operations Program, Akai Kvaesir was a natural pilot and gifted strategist; but at Ordion VII, he was Subject #0957313591 and nothing more than just another hopeful candidate. After nearly six months of intensive conditioning and training, he was one of three to pass the first phase, out of a thousand; by the end of the program, Akai was the sole graduate, one in a million. His talent not only impressed the Navy, and his father, but also a small research corporation called the Khanid-Caldari Prosperity Cooperative Corporation based on-station in Ordion VII.
Shortly after graduating as a certified capsuleer, Akai was approached by a representative of the CEO of the KCPC, known only as The Doctor, who talked him into signing a contract for his clone-production rights to be handled by KCPC in exchange for a rather large yearly stipend. On the surface, the contract seemed harmless; somebody had to produce his clones anyways, so why not get paid for it? The fine print, however, came with a few details that were anything but harmless.
His neural socket suddenly throbbed in pain as Akai leaned back into the cloudcouch, filling his whole body with momentary static. For the space of ten heartbeats, his ears and eyes heard and saw pure white noise, every nerve firing in asynchronous agony, as if his brain had gone through a hard reboot. Every iota of his being was aflame in sensory chaos, his universe was become a maelstrom of pain and neural overload.
It took all of Akai's capsuleer training, and nearly a decade of immortality-backed experience of death, to simply maintain his composure. He almost succeeded.
His first clear thought was of his father; of the bitterly traditional old Admiral that he was, preaching on and on about the Word of the Clanfathers. The second thought was of his need to stop screaming, and breathe. As Akai's cyberneural network rebooted, awareness flooded back in; everything from market data in Jita and sovereignty changes from the warzone in the Bleak Lands to biometric data from his cybernetic implants instantly poured through his mind like the wind.
The receptionist, an expectedly attractive and painfully attendant Caldari in an immaculate uniform, had barely begun to look up, and a quick check of his uplink confirmed that a mere 373 milliseconds had based since (remote) disconnection. 'Another disconnect?' He thought, wondering briefly about the confusing (remote) entry. 'How is that even possible outside of a clone vat?' This wasn't a normal problem for a capsuleer to have, as the cyberneural network was necessarily independent from the neural socket, but it wasn't the first time it'd happened to him in public either. 'Time for another show, can’t let the mortals see you weak…’
"...Sorry, Ma'am, I guess I'd gotten too used to the goo," Akai said, waving his hand through the anti-grav field of the cloudcouch. "These cloud chairs take a bit of getting used to, eh?"
"Mr. Kvaesir, with all due respect, winking at me will not expedite your appointment with The Doctor."
"Agh! How you wound me!" Akai said, as he sprawled back onto the couch melodramatically. The frigid, stoically Caldari look she gave him could've guilted even Tibus Heth into order. He forced himself to smile and laugh, as his nerves finally began to stop burning.
"Tell me darling, do you Caldari all learn that icy death-stare in military school? Or is it just something you're all naturally amazing at? I only ask because there's this one guy I know, he's just the nicest guy you've ever met but--"
"Please, with all due respect, shut the fuck up. Mister Kvaesir."
A tiny part of him still felt shame, a tiny diamond of self-identity faceted by tradition and honor that kept him sane amidst all the death in immortality; but it was a very tiny thing, sometimes so tiny as to be invisible, and it was easy to ignore.
"Now, that's just plain rude," Akai said, getting up from the too-comfortable couch. "You shouldn't be interrupting clients, especially wealthy capsuleer clients representing one of the most powerful militia alliances, now should you?"
"You aren’t a client, Mr. Kvaesir.” She said.
“Touche, Madam.” Akai strolled about the spartan waiting room, trying to loosen up his stiff muscles. Like most Caldari-inspired medical offices, it was full of sterile white ceramic and polished steel, all hard angles and riveted edges. Unlike any other Caldari office however, the KCPCC office was decorated with Khanid art and sculptures, full of vibrant colors and sweeping curves; a symbiosis of Caldari architecture and Khanid culture. “This sculpture, it isn’t an authentic Assimian piece, is it?” He asked. “No answer? Or are you just surprised a podjockey knows his Khanid history?”
As she led him deeper into the office complex, Akai couldn’t help but notice the way she exaggeratingly swayed her (admittedly attractive) hips, and hated his capsuleer status even more. It was obvious she loathed him, yet nonetheless she was all but swooning over him; as always, it came back to the power and the money. Humanity both loved and feared capsuleers, and for good reason; but it made for a lonesome life outside of the pod.
The Doctor looked no different than he had the last time Akai had seen him, no doubt a product of extensive rejuvenation surgery and expensive organ cloning; while his face was still unlined, his hair had gone stark white and his skin had become almost translucent, clinging so tightly to his face that it looked as if he was nothing but a living skull. He had changed in small ways, noticeable only to capsuleer’s enhanced brain, but his eyes remained as cold and intensive as ever, a robot’s eyes.
As Akai walked in, The Doctor locked eyes with him, and in that moment, recognition flooded through Akai; it wasn’t just him that had begun to have issues with his cyberneural network, it was affecting The Doctor too.
“You may leave us,” the Doctor said, flicking his eyes toward the door. The receptionist was out of the room before he had even finished the second word.
“Doctor.”
“Mr. Kvaesir. Or should I call you Commander, now?”
“It’s been...a long time. I had hoped it would’ve been longer, Doc.”
“Time--”
“--is a flat circle. Yes.”
“I see you have not forgotten much, but then, you wouldn’t be here if you had.”
“Let’s cut the philosophical shit Doc, why did you recall me?” Akai said, grabbing the pristine labcoat of The Doctor with his cybernetic arm, locking the grip in place. “I had to pull out of the warzone in the middle of an Op… Do you know how many ships we lost because ‘you urgently requested my presence’?”
“Commander, I advise you to remove your hand from my--”
“Doc, I advise you to tell me what the FUCK is so urgent you had me sacrifice a whole squadron of Oracles!” Akai screamed, hauling the Doctor up off the ground singlehandedly.
“The Sleepers are waking, Commander.”
>>END SURVEILLANCE FEED<<
"Can we get verification on those Oracles?"
"No, sir. The warzone is--"
"I didn't think so. Are our assets in place?"
"Tac teams are in position ready to move on your command, and the station is clear of witnesses. Sir."
"Lieutenant, get the Admiral on deck. He'll want to watch this."
"Sir."
"Alrighty ladies and gents, this is your Commander speaking. We all know what the stakes are today, but I know each and every one of you will do your duty today; for yourself, for the men and women next to you, and for your King above all. Operation Iscariot is a go, I repeat, Operation Iscariot is a go. Time to dustoff is twenty minutes and counting. Let's grab us a podjockey, people!"
"Lieutenant, get me that feed back up, NOW."
"Sir, the neural strain on the subject is nearing critical levels as it is--"
"Do it. Now."
"Sir."
>>BEGIN SURVEILLANCE<<
Akai gasped in blinding pain as another 'disconnect' struck, and his world shattered into jagged splinters and white noise. The servomotors in his arm, previously maintaining an iron grip on the Doctor’s labcoat, shrieked in electromagnetic agony as it short-circuited. As quickly as it had come, the pain and neural shock dissipated almost at once; but as always, the disconnect never lasted longer than ten heartbeats. Akai’s vision swam into focus slowly, but his hand no longer held the Doctor off the ground, instead it (as well as his arm) had partially fused and was a completely ruined mess of scorched ceramics. Dazed and in still in neural shock, he tried to walk towards the edge of the room in search of something to lean on, staggering for a few steps until his knees gave out. ‘What the hell is happening to me?’ Akai thought, as his brain kept trying to make his right arm move, even an inch.
“Look at me, Commander.” The Doctor’s atonal voice boomed in Akai’s ears, snapping his mind into something resembling awareness. Lifting his head became an epic struggle, only to be rewarded with the grim visage of the Doctor’s lifeless eyes. “Understand that I had no choice, Commander. What I did to you the last time you were here, it is unforgivable nonetheless. But you must know; I did what I did for the Kingdom. I do not regret this.”
“I...d-don’t,” Akai managed to say, “I don’t un-understand.”
“I have little time to explain, Commander. In ten minutes, everything will be out of my hands. Don’t trust anyone, not even the Royal Navy; this is bigger than the empires could’ve possibly realized, but they’ve realized it too late.” The Doctor spoke quickly, quietly, and with a passion Akai had never before seen in so dispassionate a man. “Follow the money; Modern Finances, Samarkand Financial--” “Doc, what in the devil are you talking about?” Akai said, managing to sit up. It was a start.
“Tukoss’s reemergence, of course! Ah, but I forget you don’t read about anything that isn’t exploding,” the Doctor said. “The wormholes, the Sleepers, nano-fullerene polymers, C3-FTMs, TCMC’s...it’s all connected; but Tukoss’s reappearance can only mean one thing: the Sleepers have awoken.”
“OK Doc, you lost me after the exploding bit--”
“There is no more time, Akai,” the Doctor said, looking up over Akai’s shoulder. “I will almost certainly not survive what is about to happen, but Ms. Oni will contact you once she is safe. I am sorry about your men, Commander. None of them deserv--”
Whatever the Doctor was about to expound upon, poignant though it may have been, was utterly lost in the cacophony of noise that erupted from the door into the office.
A bright light, like the birth of a sun, briefly illuminated the room in a ghastly white before shattering what was left of Akai’s eardrums with the sound of God’s fury.
Shadows. Blood.
Agony.
>>END SURVEILLANCE<<
>>SURVEILLANCE FEED TERMINATED:SUBJECT//ZERO
>>STATUS:INCAPACITATED/COMATOSE
>>LOADING: TRACER-RR...
>>TRACER ACTIVE
++“Command, this is Talon-One-One. Target is in custody, enroute to transport. ETA five minutes.”++
“Talon-One-One, this is Command. Roger that. Casualties?”
++“Zero KIA, Command. HVT also in custody; HVT had restrained himself prior to infil. Orders, Command?”++
“Proceed to exfil, Talon-One-One. Talon-One-Three will be on grid as support. Rendezvous is Arzieh V.”
++“Roger that Command, Talon-One-One out.”++
“Lieutenant, any comms traffic from the Imperial Navy in Ordion?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Let’s just hope it stays that way, the last thing we need is an international incident right now.”
“Sir! I’m picking up multiple cynos on scan...three, five, thirteen cyno signatures detected and counting.”
“Idents?”
“None. Sir. All sub-cap.”
“Blood Raiders, then.”
“Should I alert Talon-One, sir?”
“No. Let’s see what they are after first. Talon-One can improvise.”
“Sir. High Command is asking for you.”
“Tell them… Tell them Admiral Kvaesir is bringing his son back home.”
