When Hephaestos arrived at mech-deacon Tremendus-8878's quarters, his sensors immediately noticed two differences from the normal outlook. The first one was obvious. The conclaves were always organized during daytime hours and it was far darker now. Without the light of the sun, the only light source in the large room were the dirty glow globes in the ceiling and in their feint radiance, one could see millions of little dust particles, diffusing the light even futher. But the second difference was far more subtle. And it was only because of the years of visiting these quarters that Hephaestos even noticed. Several books, tomes and data crystals had been removed from the jumble of data carriers. For example, Hephaestos noticed that a tower of books beneath Tremendus' desk had been rearranged and was 5.3% lower than before. One of the only neat lines of data slates standing on a ledge next to the door, had lost three or four elements, shown in the slightly slanted way they now stood against each other. Everywhere Hephaestos looked, he noticed these little changes. He guessed that this was all according to his master's plan.
A short burst of binary made him focus his attention. Tremendus gestured to one of the chairs while he produced a small black octaeder from his robes. As he sat down, he used a fine manipulator mechadendrite to push a tiny, hidden button at one of the eight sides of the little contraption. Immediately a soft, high pitch beep could be heard, but as its tone rose, the sound was out of Hephaestos' auditory sensor range in a second. "Now, we can exchange data." Tremendus sent, putting the unknown machine down, next to a pictscreen. Hephaestos could see that it showed the corridor leading to Tremendus' quarters. The image was bobbing slightly up and down, which made Hephaestos speculate that it was one of Tremendus' servoskulls that was taking these picts in realtime.
"I will not fool you any longer, my young friend." Tremendus spoke and Hephaestos immediately felt ill at ease. He had always hoped to be placed above his fellow pupils by his master, but the word 'friend' implied a whole lot of social conventions he didn't care for. And neither did he like the interjection of his memory cores that friendship also implied a bond where one would do things that weren't expected in a teacher-pupil relation: covering things up, taking the fall or as his memory dug up a phrase from a cheap spaceport fiction "taking one for the team". None of those things seemed profitable at this point. Or actually at any point, his logicalculus drive corrected him. But Tremendus didn't seem to notice the sudden reticence in Hephaestos.
"I will grant you a few of my insights, but we have limited time. Shock troops are on their way here, as we speak." Hephaestos studied his master's stance, but couldn't register any signs of dread or fear. "Your research has been interesting and your hypotheses were daunting. I must admit that I have enjoyed following it from a distance. Clearly you were a pupil worthy of my attention. Who could have guessed that someone that came from such a low station, would prove to be such a promising scholar. And quite an ingenuitive one... Storing your research in a hidden cache in a fellow pupil's memory core was quite innovative." Hephaestos' language capacitator picked up on the fact that Tremendus spoke in the past tense when he mentioned his tutelage and added it to the fastly growing number of factors that contributed to the lack of personal safety for the techpriest. "Surely, you wonder why you are here now."
The mech-deacon pauzed and the lenses of Hephaestos' visor locked with Tremendus' bionic eyes. Hephaestos rushed his cores to come up with an answer. It seemed far from appropriate, or even safe to produce his true suspicions, so he needed a bluff. But apparently, his brain wasn't fast enough to come up with something good, as Tremendus resumed his monologue. "I thought it only... fitting... to end your research with a proper conclusion. Although it gives me no pleasure to tell you that you have been wrong from the start. Your hypothesis of null fields was interesting; banning all chronoton particles from a specific zone. And your speculation on how to set up an experiment using electro-magnetic fields would be a fine setup to test this hypothesis."
By now Hephaestos had decided - he wished he could conclude it - that his master had set him up with this research, aiding him in unseen ways, so Hephaestos could be his proxy. A proxy that could be held responsible for when things would go wrong. So Hephaestos was once more splitting his attention. A small part of his brain registered his master's words, curious of the conclusion of his research. The other part was desperately trying to cogitate a way out, but it seemed he had little chance of escape. Tremendus was better equipped, had decades of experience over him and had planned this.
"So, what was the logic failure in my reasoning, lord?" Hephaestos asked, stalling for time. He hoped his true intentions would go unnoticed, but a short binaric burst from Tremendus - the techpriest's equivalent of a laugh - together with him revealing a compact but potent hotshot laspistol, made clear that it was futile. "I knew I wouldn't be able to deceive you, my friend. But I also know that you want to know the answers... Your experimental setup wouldn't need electo-magnetic fields. Your test environment exists. It exists all around us. Can't you think of it now?" The mech-deacon paused again, granting Hephaestos another 7.6 seconds to search for a way out. "No? How disappointing... The answer is so obvious. Vacuüm. Hard vacuüm. There's nothing there, Hephaestos. No particles, no subatomic particles and no chronoton particles. Following your simplistic theory, space travel would simply be impossible." Hephaestos registred the words and tried to turn them around, looking for a way to save his hypothesis. But Tremendus' antithesis was as sound as it was simple. There was no possible argument. Hephaestos lowered his shoulders as if the shock of the revellation literally pushed down on him. His lenses, that had been constantly zooming in and out to pick out new details in his environment, stopped buzzing and now he just stared into the barrel of the little lasweapon.
Hephaestos scraped his throath, his vox box producing a scratching sound. "Your logic is infallable, mech-deacon Tremendus 8878. Your intellect clearly superior to my own." Hephaestos saw how the laspistol was raised and leveled at his chest. "But could you perhaps help me understand..." And then he saw the cable of the pistol that disappeared beneath his master's robes. It was an old gun and the plastex coating of its power cable was worn and dirty. So was the connection point between the cable and the pistol. The other end was most likely attached to Tremendus' potentia coils. Hephaestos caught himself and finished his question. "the true mechanisms behind the chronoton particles?" Hephaestos nodded at the pictscreen on the table. "There is still time."
Tremendus hesitated for a second. Hephaestos knew he had triggered his desire to lecture him. One last time. "Please. I need to know before... Hephaestos didn't finish his sentence and pounced at his master, grabbing the laspistol with both his hands. His logicalculus drive delivered the short message that he had indeed surprised his master, but it was quickly followed by a comparison of Hephaestos' and Tremendus' maximum mechanical force output. Hephaestos realized that he'd had to be quick. With a wild jerk, he pulled at the power cable, severing the connection between the pistol and his master's potentia coils. One of his lenses registered how Tremendus pulled the trigger repeatedly, but his main visual focus was on the power cable and his target: Tremendus' main MIU access port. A strange sense of satisfaction rushed through him when he rammed the ragged end of the cable into the port and his memory cores unvoluntary brought the phrase "an eye for an eye" to the fore. The feeling became even stronger when he heard a series of uncontrolled and unsteady bleeps from his master's vox grill. He surpressed the feeling with logic and reason, concentrating on the fact that he was effectively incapacitating the mech-deacon. Tremendus staggered and as his cores were sending the appropriate nerve stimuli to press his advantage, Hephaestos spotted movement on the pict screen still standing on the table. His memory cores kicked into action and began a visual comparison of the vague image on the screen with the millions of picts gathered during research.
Tremendus seemed to regain coordination, so Hephaestos retracted the power cable and scrambled to tear off his master's robes, thus revealing the metal breastplate protecting the mech-deacon's last remaining biological organs. The realization that skitarii were inbound came together with the smell of burned biomatter. Even as Tremendus started to fall to the floor, Hephaestos ran for the door. Just his presence here was incriminating. When he thought about it, R.I. would scrutinize everyone who had been in relation to the, now spasming, mech-deacon at his feet. He stormed throught the door and sprinted for the emergency stairwells at the end of the hall and even though his cores gave him several warnings about his vital bio-functions going into overdrive, he didn't stop climbing those stairs until he fainted out... Two stories above his master's quarters.