They called themselves the Unblemished. They were the members of their kind who, by strength of will or inherent resistance, had defied the siren song that had claimed the vast majority of their species. They had always been nomadic by necessity and yet had maintained a communications psy-net across the whole of the galactic disc that put the best efforts of the Imperium's Astropathicus to shame. When their fall came it was swift and brutal and for metacycles afterwards we assumed their silence was indicative of yet another extinct culture. But they are tenacious. We re-encountered the survivors a ten-score-metacycle ago, as we measure time. Their vessel was in dire need of repair work and the survivors lacked the expertise. Since we showed mercy to them they have made excellent trading partners. Every metacycle or so one of their vessels, and we have no idea how many they posses, will pay us a brief visitation laden with things of a tantalising nature. This time they did not even seem to realise the sheer magnitude of what it was they had.
I watched the two of them negotiate as they had been for the last three hours. Had they known what it was worth to us they could have named the price and we would have paid it gladly and unquestioningly.
One was a creature of astounding intelligence, insight, sophistication, experience and wisdom. His manner spoke of a level of civility often thought to be lost from this galaxy. In the depths of his eyes there was an inexhaustible supply of compassion and patience.
By comparison our Farseer seemed crude and brutish as he tried to match wits with the Gene-stealer.
Metal fatigue, that bane of most space fareing cultures, had crippled the containment mechanism for their quantum reactor and they had been forced to dump the entire reaction mass into the depths of interstellar space whilst travelling at thirty percent of the Constant. The reaction mass had then attempted to occupy two places at once. This had not been such a problem until the mass had begun to dissipate and the two points it began to oscillate between spread further and further apart.
A variation on this principle was used to devastating effect in the Trip Wire devices employed to slice hostile targets apart. There were very few things that could stand in the way of a pebble bouncing between two points thirty miles apart at an immeasurably small fraction off the speed of light. Usually the pebble would rip its self to pieces in a much less than a second but in that time it could do serious damage to even the Void Shields of the Orks, who possess shielding technology considered second only to the Slanni.
The reaction mass would have continued to dissipate as each individual atom found a rest state and became just an inert isotope. But by that point it could be smeared across nearly a quarter of a cubic light hour of space.
They had been forced to limp their way to our home using an antiquated backup fusion reactor to power their warp engine. It had taken them just under two hundred cycles.
And that was what they were attempting to gain off us. Various exotic and extremely hard to manufacture isotopes that could, with the right expertise and some rather odd equipment, be persuaded to become unstuck at the quantum level. We have never been able to understand how they manage this, and you may believe we have expended a great amount of time trying to figure it out to no luck whatsoever.
What they had was information.
Who am I? Maybe that needs some explanation by now. I am Ayvif. I am a Bodyguard, or near to as makes no difference, in the service of Farseer Krobolis. I am very noticeably under the average height for my species but I am also considered extremely brawny with a broad muscular build, some claim that I have a Demiurgue somewhere in my ancestry and I suspect they may be right. I have blood red eyes and similar coloured hair, or I would have if I neglected to shave it all off. My complexion should be an earthy brown but being born on a fringe colony such as this has led me to have very limited exposure to sunlight and so like nearly everyone else I know I am ivory pale. I am currently wearing a rather fetching super-diamond micro-mesh close fitting combat suit. Besides my combat gear, of which I own three suits, I have an all-weather robe-suit for official occasions. I seldom have opportunity to wear robes. Over my shoulder I have a laser rifle and at my hip I hag my sword.
I am relaxed as my master tries to hammer out a deal with the Unblemished. He will fail, precognition regardless. They may need some new isotopes for their ship but our need for what they know is unimaginable.
I could afford to relax here. My master was probably safer here than he was anywhere else in the Enclave. The gene-stealers, of which there were three just as there were three of us, could kill us without breaking a sweat. Assuming they have the biological hardware needed to sweat. Their finely embroided silk robes covered a thick exoskeleton composed of some form of bio-crystalline structure, they have an internal skeleton of a much harder material not too dissimilar to carbon-fibre, they have reflexes that could give a Harlequin Solitaire a run for their money, enough muscle to rip an ork in half and four sets of razor sharp claws. I am just as sure that we would stand no chance as I am that they would never try anything. It's just not in their nature.
We have lived on this asteroid since long before The Fall. Back in the day we were considered a group of barely sane morons. The Empire relied, in our opinion, far too strongly on warp derived technology. We suspected it would all go wrong eventually and so we set out for the northeastern fringe in hand built ships made of mundane materials. We found a suitably enormous rock and built the Enclave in it. At the time of founding we numbered about four thousand individuals, this has risen to near fifty thousand at the last census. Most of these were born here and know nothing of those glorious days when we bestrode this galaxy like barely mortal gods.
A small but appreciable fraction of our citizenry have joined us from other factions. There are a number of ex-exodites, craftworlders who have had enough of The Path system, travelling traders and merchants who have traded adventure for a certain measure of safety and those trying to avoid the unpleasantness of the Dark City. There are even a few escapees from the Crone Worlds, easily identifiable by the thousand-yard-stare they all share of people who have seen far too much of things too horrendous too often and for too long. They may like to believe they have escaped hell but looking into those blank eyes makes you realise they have brought their own little piece of it with them. We are not well known or influential among our own kind and so anyone who runs to us has probably been running for a long time, sometimes from monsters and sometimes from men and sometimes from the gods themselves.
But even deducting the people who have joined us from outside our walls our population has been steadily rising and thriving and living without fear. Or at least with less fear than if they had been elsewhere. In this galaxy that puts us well ahead of the game.
By the next durational cycle one of the Dockers Syndicates had brought the Unblemished ship, Lament for Nostalgia, into the great docking scaffolds and much renovation work and refuelling was being done. The ship was constructed to perfectly imitate an Imperial vessel of the Neo-martian merchant navy style to the smallest detail.
I was dismissed as my replacement bodyguard around the mid point of that durational cycle. I recognised her immediately, of course. Her name was Gelkiniya. She came to via a demiuge planet-sculpting fleet as it stopped off to pick up the latest news. Her place of origin was the Dark City and for that I never quite trusted her, although Farseer Krobolis most evidently did. She was taller than me, but then who isn't. She had been a low ranking member of some kabal or another back in the Dark City and commanded a certain respect or fear, which is a reasonable alternative, from nearly everyone in the Enclave. Unlike myself she was naturally very pale. I knew for a fact that she was not as strong as me but she held her self with a certain poise and moved with the grace and speed of a Harlequin. Her eyes were very dark. Her hair would be darker, except like myself she keeps it shaved off for convenience.
I always felt uneasy after a shift change knowing that I would have to place the nearest thing we have ever had to a leader into the care of what I had always considered a cold form of madness in body armour. The only thing I could find comfort in was that the Farseer always kept his pet with him at all times. His pet was always reliable, if more than a little odd.
Having been dismissed I decided to return to my apartment and rest. My apartment is functional. I have no Companion and few worldly possessions. I need little more than a bed and a place to keep some old equipment. I disrobed, lay down and attempted to count the rivets in my ceiling.
I awoke a few hours later refreshed. I washed, dressed, finished off the bowl of yesterday's porridge and set out for a stroll around the Enclave. If I was one of the other eight bodyguards the Farseer had I would be practicing in one of the training halls. But as I am one of the ever-diminishing pre-Fall generation I see no point. I already know everything I am capable of learning and have been doing it for longer than some civilisations have lived. I have been doing this job for so long I could do it in my sleep. Am I what the Craftworlders would call Path Lost?
My wanderings as always took met eventually to the far end of the Enclave, beyond where people traditionally congregate to the dull unmarked places. The unmarked places are those left behind when the asteroid was first excavated in the belief that our numbers would grow to fill them. It was not for two entire breeding seasons that we realised the depth of our troubles. Isha, the mother goddess, was taken from us by force, our birth rate is far, far below what it should be. Just one more nail in our collective coffin.
Here I have always found room to think. My psionic abilities, though stunted and undeveloped by the standards of my species, are too worrying to be left unrestrained. When I take the walls down I can not only see out but also become viewable to any and everyone. I am of the pre-Fall generation. My memories are of our kind at their height and their glory and I have no intention of showing the younglings how far we have fallen. Unlike many of the other smaller settlements we have never had a problem with suicide or madness, I would very much like to keep it that way. Out here in the unmarked territory I can relax for a time.
With the walls down I can hear them all, all the brilliant specks of light in the firmament behind me, deeper in the heart of this hollowed out old rock. I can hear the mind of my master as he places forth his final proposal for the up coming expedition. I can hear the whispers of the giggling innocence of the children in the communal crèche, I can make out the roaring of the Millita Orders as they perfect their art of death, I can make out the deep bass rumbling of the Unblemished as they supervise the workers of the Dockers Syndicates as they make repairs and I can hear the minds of the Dockers reply in heavy, deliberate thuds.
No matter how much I feel joy to be so close to them all I know that soon it must end and I must rebuild those walls and hold them tight, not to protect myself from the world but to protect the world from me.
But for now, for a time, I am free.