Silencer-7 was magnificent.

As a child, Roganda Ismaren had been one of the survivors of Palpatine's Jedi Purge. Far too young to use the Force to do more than hold a training saber—and even that had been something of a challenge—she had been quietly evacuated from the Jedi training facility on Kamparas by the Antarian Rangers. She still remembered the fierce, determined looks on the faces of those men and women, heirs to centuries-old tradition of aiding the Jedi during their moments of need. The hours after Knightfall had truly been the time of greatest need, and they had put their lives on the line to shepherd the Jedi younglings to safety however and whenever they could.

She had passed through a succession of small, ill-supplied refugee camps, shepherded by her Ranger guardians through the Outer Rim, in places that the Empire would not find them.

And yet the Empire did find them.

One after another agents of the Empire fell upon each camp. Those same expressions had been present on the faces of her guardians on each of those occasions, too: fierce determination, but then married to desperation and loss, because the Rangers always knew that as hard as they fought, those battles were ones they could not win. As they died for her, over and over she felt both worshiped, and weak.

She had been old enough to remember her evacuation from Kamparas, but only just. The slaughter of the camp on Belsavis, years later, was far more vivid in her memory. Inquisitors and their minions had swept over the camp, brandishing slugthrowers and poison grenades, and they had spared no one. She had fought, as much as she could this time, but when the Inquisitors were done, corpses were scattered through the compound, some still clinging lifelessly to their weapons, others shot in the back where they had fled. The whine of TIE engines in the skies above had been horribly loud, but louder still were the cries of their laser cannons strafing the ground, leaving smoldering craters where once buildings and Rangers had stood.

They had spared Roganda. In each camp there were always at least two survivors, and the devastated and despondent survivors of each camp had been given the same choice that every class of Inquisitors had received since the very first: Fight to the death, and the last one standing, the one who was strong enough, would survive to serve.

Roganda Ismaren had survived being given that choice, but the Jedi initiate she had been had died that day. From that day onwards she bore the blood of her brother and sister initiates on her hands like a psychic stain, and had been something different. Something greater. As the life had drained from people she had once called friends and family, she had truly known why the Sith were drawn to the Dark. It was not something to be feared—it was a way to secure her own future. Safe and secure, able to ride the vicious political tides. No more reliance on the Rangers, no more dreaming of being chosen by a Jedi to become a Padawan, Roganda Ismaren would forge her own future, her own way.

Now with Silencer-7 her future was here. The monstrosity was the marriage of Dark Force traditions and the Empire's technical genius. Its beauty was in what it could create for an Empire stretched to the logistical limit, the perfect weapon. With it, Roganda Ismaren would not just create her own future, she would impose that future upon the galaxy and make it bend to her will. When Palpatine had taken her aside and elevated her from mere Inquisitor to Emperor's Hand, he had anointed her the agent of his will, and he had taught her what it meant to bend the galaxy to her whim. Now she was his truest heir and the galaxy would be hers.

She gazed through the transparisteel window at the station. The massive factory and warship had grown since she had brought its core here. It had begun as a small cube, small enough to easily fit in a bulk freighter's cargo bay. Now, surrounded by the shattered wreck of a world that to Silencer-7 was nothing more than raw materials to be taken and reshaped, it had grown larger than a Star Destroyer. A blocky, cube-like thing, with four foot-like appendages that pointed 'downwards' at all the raw materials, it steadily used its tractor beams to draw asteroids and chunks of rock to be processed and transformed. With them it grew still further, like a hungry child, though it spared some of those resources to forge Halmere's precious TIE Droids.

But it is imperfect. I did not have a true seed, and for it to become what I need it to be I will need to give it one. That failure still stung; the fact that she had not been able to find the seed before Palpatine's death was, in hindsight, for the best, but she had spent years since Palpatine's death trying to find the artifact that was needed to truly perfect Silencer-7. She had found a fragment of the seed on a world which had once been called Dromund Kaas, but the repeated catastrophes that had befallen that world had left it diminished and inadequate for her needs. But Nar Shaddaa has what I need, she thought smugly.

Even now, her transport was preparing to depart for that tawdry exemplar of Hutt power. She was not sure how long it would take her to find the seed once she was there, but she would find it. I will not be denied, and with the seed and the command interface, I will do what even Palpatine could not.

"When are you leaving, Mother?"

She turned towards the voice. Her teenage son, Irek, was resplendent in his dark robes and violet-edged mantle. Like Palpatine, Irek did not bother with the golden frippery so common among many rulers of the galaxy. His black robes were absent frills, though they did look slightly too long for his still-growing frame. But while Irek had been imbued with strength in the Force that could rival even Palpatine's, Roganda thought smugly, he did not yet exude the presence and power required to be a galactic sovereign.

She raised her chin, looking up at her slightly taller son. Her hands moved to adjust his stance, lifting his chin slightly and guiding his arms to settle in a posture that communicated confidence and power. "You are the Emperor, my son," she told him firmly. "And soon you will rule not just the Empire but the galaxy. It is vital that you look the part." She turned him away from the window that looked out on Silencer-7, gesturing at the bridge of her transport and its crew. "Look upon them, my son. Remember that they serve and live at your pleasure. The galaxy is ours to rule by right. That is our power and our obligation. Never let any of them forget that fact." She leaned in closer, brushing her hand over his eyebrow. "You must carry that fact in your every look, your every expression. Your contempt is a reminder of the power you possess, the power they do not have."

Irek's response was that of the typical teenager she had never gotten to be. He sighed, the sound of a young man who had heard it all before, and many times. "I know, mother." But his complaint did not prevent him from stiffening his back, and the look that appeared in his eyes—dismissive, contemptuous, raw—reminded her of the last Emperor. Even if he always needed her there, in the shadows to stiffen his spine, he could rule, she thought smugly. He could, and he would.

"You know what you must do while I am gone?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

He nodded.

"Tell me," she instructed him.

"I must master the command interface and learn to command Silencer Station," he replied, his tone half-humoring, half-annoyed. Typical teenager.

"That's right," she agreed, as if she had not already told him this a dozen times. "Cray Mingla—the degenerate academic we took from Magrody Institute, the expert on AI—will need to be compelled to teach you how to use it. She will be reluctant." Roganda wrinkled her nose as she sneered. "Do not allow her to play on your sympathies. She will serve. If you must, remember that you can threaten her pet cripple to earn her compliance."

"Yes, mother," Irek said obediently. He smiled, gesturing at Silencer-7 through the viewport behind them. "I will learn to control it, I promise. You have gone through too much, and sacrificed too much, to bring us this far. I will not fail."

"Of course you will not. You are the Emperor," she reminded him. "My sacred son, the Elect. Yours is the will of the Force alone."

"He will be the Emperor, when he is ready," a voice said from behind them. Halmere was standing there, in his typical loose-fitting black robes and covering white chest armor. Once upon a time Halmere had been an attractive man, but age and the Dark Side had taken their toll. He was not as withered as Palpatine had been—far, far from—but his once boyish good looks had become severe, and his bright eyes aged.

"Emperor-Regent," Roganda greeted Halmere with false good cheer. She turned to her son. "Irek, you should be getting back to Silencer Station. I will see you upon my return. I expect you to have fulfilled all the tasks demanded of you while I am gone."

Irek's eyes moved between Roganda and Halmere, his lips twisted downwards into an obviously unhappy frown. He remained bitter about Halmere's position as the effective ruler of the Empire—Roganda had encouraged that, as his resentment would stoke his Dark impulses—but it was a necessary compromise with both ISB and the Inquisitorius. Even if they did believe that Irek was Palpatine's son, a belief that Roganda was only too happy to perpetuate, he was an outsider to the institutions of power within the Empire, all of which demanded their own pound of flesh.

"Yes, mother," Irek said in that obedient tone that she insisted on whenever they were in the presence of people with power. With a shallow, practiced bow, and a hint of a glare in Halmere's direction, he withdrew.

Roganda waited until he was entirely departed before stepping close and turning her ire on Halmere. "Was that necessary?"

Halmere raised both eyebrows, though they were difficult to see given his cloak, which shrouded the top of his head. "You promised me that Silencer-7 would be fully operational months ago and it is not. I told Daala and the fleet that they would receive thousands of TIE droids, and they have received merely hundreds. Your failures are either your doing, Roganda, or they are his. Which would you prefer I credit with truth?"

Her hand moved bare millimeters before she restrained it with conscious thought. Gritting her teeth and taking a deep breath, she glowered at the taller man. "You should not have made such promises without consulting me."

"But you promised me that I would have those TIEs, Roganda," he reminded her evenly, his face an expressionless mask, but his sense in the Force one of bitter, petulant annoyance. "Tell me, which of us has been the greater failure?"

"The greater failure?" Roganda echoed. She shook her head and laughed mockingly, tilting her chin up challengingly. "You speak to me of failure, Halmere? Which of us toiled year after year in the Jedi temple, waiting for the Master that never came? Which of us was so weak in the Force that even the Agri-corps did not want us. The Astrogation corps?" She tutted, shaking her head. "How embarrassing."

The anger she expected flared to life behind Halmere's dead eyes. She did not fear it; of the two of them, she was the stronger in the Force, and they both knew it.

"You are a small man, Halmere," she continued, dropping her voice to a bare whisper. She intended to embarrass him, to humiliate him, because he needed to be reminded of their hierarchy, but it would not do to diminish his authority in front of the Empire. Until Irek was grown, until Irek had learned to control Silencer-7, she still needed Halmere to rule the Empire, after all. "Always the loyal servant. First to Tremayne, then to Jerec, and now to me." She smiled at him, a bitter, accusing thing.

Halmere's hand clenched into a fist. The air around her crackled with energy as Halmere sank into the Dark Side, his eyes going sunken as they flashed with the familiar yellow of old hatred. "I should kill you."

"But you won't. You can't. You need me, you need Irek. You always need need need, and only I can provide." She patted his arm dismissively. "Now let me get you what you need to maintain the facade, Emperor-Regent." And with that she turned around, showing him her back, gazing out at Silencer-7, feeling him seethe behind her. She wondered if he'd take advantage of her apparent negligence by attempting to strangle her. She almost hoped he would—but she wasn't ready to do away with him. Not yet.

He wanted to. He did. She could feel him imagining it, his hatred and desire to rip her apart so sweetly clear in the Force. But even if he didn't need her, Halmere was still the failed Jedi he always had been, in a position of power not because he had earned it, but merely because she was all that was left. The Inquisitorious was a pale shadow of the horde of Jedi-killers it had once been and the parade of has-beens who comprised Halmere's loyal minions were even more useless than he was.

So he didn't try to kill her. Instead he leaned in behind her, his chin hovering just over her shoulder. "Do not take too long."

I will take however long I choose to take, she thought, but restrained herself from saying it. As Halmere stormed off, the Dark Side of the Force still swirling around him angrily, air almost crackling with electricity, she merely smiled to herself. And once I have what I need, and Irek has done his part, I will not need you anymore… and you don't have any idea what you can do about it. That is what you are really angry about, isn't it, Emperor-Regent?

Ephin Sarreti wanted to leave Silencer Station as soon as possible.

This whole place was downright creepy. Just being here was enough to send shivers down his spine, and he had no interest in prolonging his stay any longer than was necessary. The only reason he was here was Admiral Daala had become increasingly irate over the Halmere's delay in delivering her the promised TIE droids—her complaints about the difficulty of keeping the New Republic out of Corellia without them were increasingly laden with angry invectives—and she had sent him to personally convey the seriousness of her need.

Daala could do a lot to hold back the New Republic, especially with General Antilles' Fifth Fleet out of theater undergoing repairs, but without the promised reinforcements it was a delaying action only.

Still, going to a superior and entreating him to keep his promise was the kind of thing that, in Vader's day, had presaged the death of many promising young officers. Sarreti was ambitious, not stupid, and the last thing he wanted was to get between Halmere and Daala when the two were arguing. There was no upside to that.

So it was with the height of unease that he received Halmere's communications request. Grimacing, he stared at the communications unit, dreading responding to it. What if Halmere had decided he was angrier with Daala than he had originally seemed?

When Sarreti's parents had sent him to COMPNOR as a boy, his father had taken him aside and warned him to stay calm, glide smoothly through his schooling, and most especially not to antagonize anyone in a superior position to himself. The Sarretis had been a reasonably prosperous Coruscanti family, and his father had known that keeping that prosperity required keeping one's mouth shut. Ephin had kept to his father's lessons over the years, which was one way he'd risen to the rank of Loyalty Officer and was on the short list for Moff.

He took a breath and accepted the comm request.

To his relief, it wasn't Halmere himself on the other side of the connection. Unfortunately, this relief was short-lived. "Loyalty Officer Sarreti," said Moff Disra. "I understand you're preparing to depart to return to your duties as Daala's Loyalty Officer, but Emperor-Regent Halmere requests your presence before you depart."

"Of course, Moff Dirsa," Sarreti said, his mouth dry. "May I ask what this concerns?"

"I believe it is about the delivery of the TIE droids that Daala has been promised," Disra said contemplatively. He leaned towards the screen, lowering his voice as if sharing a confidence. "I fear the Emperor-Regent is in a foul mood. He had a conversation with the Emperor's Hand before she departed on her own mission and has been fuming ever since."

These machinations are going to be the death of me, Sarreti thought dismally. "I understand, Moff Dirsa. I will attend to the Emperor-Regent at once. Please have my ship ready to depart when the meeting is concluded."

"I understand completely," Disra agreed, and the screen went black.

With a heavy sigh, Sarreti reached for his dress uniform. If he was very lucky, he might even survive the afternoon with some starching still left in the collar. And if he didn't… Well. If he didn't, he wouldn't have to worry about it.

Emperor-Regent Halmere's chambers aboard Silencer Station lacked the pomp of the Coreworld elite. Dark and poorly furnished, there was little to the space. At the far side of the windowless room was a broad desk, replete with multiple monitors and a map of the galaxy. The rest of the space was almost entirely empty, with only a few cabinets on either side—closed, their contents unknown—and a large, circular meditation rug filling the empty space. In the center of that rug knelt Emperor-Regent Halmere, facing away from the door that Sarreti had quietly entered through.

"Enter," Halmere said without turning to face him. His voice was deep and hoarse, as if he had run a Stormtrooper assault course, though Sarreti tried to restrain his imagination from picturing the larger man in his dark robes and apron of armor running anywhere.

Sarreti took two steps into the room, standing just short of the edge of the tatty rug, and stood at attention. "Loyalty Officer Sarreti reporting as requested, your highness."

Halmere waved away any more perfunctory ceremony. "Sarreti, when you return to Admiral Daala, inform her that there will be further delay in the delivery of the TIE Droids she has been promised. They are being redirected towards another objective."

If Halmere doesn't kill me, Daala will, Sarreti thought dimly. This was a disaster. Daala was insistent that she had to have those reinforcements before Antilles' Fifth Fleet became active again, and that the only hope Corellia had to remain free of the New Republic was to use them to strike a surprise blow. She needed them and he was obliged to remind Halmere of that. He hovered in a moment of indecision, because reminding Halmere might well have fatal consequences…

"I am aware of Admiral Daala's concerns about Corellia," Halmere went on, pre-empting Sarreti's response, to his everlasting relief. "But Corellia is not the only thorn plaguing the Empire. If Moff Ferrouz and Admiral Pellaeon are not brought to heel, there may be even more defections from our fleet. The TIE Droids will be used to crush Pellaeon's pathetic fleet and bomb Poln Major to rubble."

"Your highness," Sarreti began cautiously, "Admiral Daala's entire plan for the defense of Corellia requires that the existence of the TIE Droid be kept a secret until they can be used to score a decisive victory. If they are deployed against Pellaeon, the New Republic will surely find out—"

"I do not care what Admiral Daala has planned," Halmere cut him off curtly. "She is the finest officer in the Empire, by her own reckoning. If the plan she has will not work, she will just have to find another." Halmere stood slowly, and Sarreti felt his heart clench with fear as the Emperor-Regent turned to face him. Those eyes… Halmere sounded calm, but there was a depth of rage and fury in those eyes that terrified Sarreti. Whatever Roganda Ismaren had said to Halmere had pushed him into a frenzy, and suddenly Sarreti was even more acutely aware of the bed of swords he was lying in.

He swallowed hard. "I will tell her, Emperor-Regent."

"I will provide the latest updates to the astrogation charts in the Core and Deep Core." Halmere's tone indicated that this was not a concession, but a gift—one that was to be respected as such.

"Of course, Emperor-Regent. I'm sure the Admiral's gratitude will be made manifest when she uses them to their full effect."

He was relieved when Halmere did not prevent him from leaving, but his heart rate did not return to normal until his shuttle was safely in the sweet embrace of hyperspace.

Cray Mingla stared at her hands. They trembled. For years her hands had remained stone-steady while performing minute adjustments in her lab work. They had stayed just as steady as she cared for Nichos after one of his fits. Now they trembled. They didn't tremble like Nichos' did—his tremble was that of illness, of synapses misfiring. Now that she had been taken by Director Ismaren and the Empire, her hands trembled from exhaustion and fear.

She needed to sleep. She needed to keep her strength up, because tomorrow would be another excruciating day, a day she would sustain because her pain was nothing compared to Nichos' pain and whatever she could do to preserve his life, to give them a chance of regaining the happiness that had been stolen from them by his illness and by the Empire, she would do.

But she couldn't. She couldn't sleep, because Nichos needed her.

Her lover recovered from the stun blast slowly. The first day afterwards he had trouble eating; the first time he swallowed down the gruel they were given she nearly burst into tears. Slowly, she took the time to help him back to health, knowing that it would not be long before she was sent back into the lab, poking at the innards of yet another one of the Empire's horror-weapons. She was furious with him for the risk he had taken, and she was furious with herself for the risk she had taken. But, she reminded herself, his had been premeditated. Hers had been a response to sudden, unexpected opportunity… and his, even if it had been successful, would not have assured their escape.

"You shouldn't have done it," she whispered quietly, coldly, when he was recovered enough to appreciate her fury.

His dark blue eyes held the reminder of pain, but not a bit of apology. "Had to do something," he managed, his voice hoarse and dry. She helped him take a sip of water. "Had to try."

"You're lucky they didn't kill you."

His eyes softened, and his hand grew surprisingly still as he placed it on hers. "I'm going to die either way," he said, calm and certain in a way that sent a spike of white-hot rage up her spine. "But if I don't do something, they're going to kill you after their project is up and running."

She nearly slapped him. Her hand balled into a furious fist. "I can save you!" she insisted. "Your disease is of your body, not your mind! I'm a cyberneticist! I'm the best damn cyberneticist in the galaxy, and I can—"

"At what cost?" Nichos asked. His hand wrapped around her fist and squeezed. "Say the Empire lets you save my life, Cray. Say they even let us both go. What will they do with this place after that?"

Cray thought of that swarm of droid starfighters. Of the cold, contemptuous voice of the AI she had interacted with through the command interface. Of the Imperials, with their cold, inhuman treatment of her and Nichos, looking through them rather than at them, like they weren't even there… except when they needed something done. Of Roganda's boot tickling her nose.

She shuddered. "If… if you're right," she stammered, "then… then what we need to do is stop them." She shook her head, fighting back tears. "Maybe we should just stop cooperating altogether. They'll kill us, but at least—"

Nichos' hand shook around hers. He clasped both his hands tight around hers, squeezing so hard that hers almost began to hurt, but that was just his way of keeping his own hands from shaking. "Do you think that is the right thing to do?"

She shook her head at him, not understanding. "That's what I'm asking you!"

His hands squeezed tighter. "Cray. Close your eyes."

"Why?"

"You said that Roganda told you that you have the Force," he said. His tone was quiet, reverent, and she could sense just how hard he was fighting to keep from allowing his illness to touch him in this moment, to interrupt something that suddenly had unexpected weight. "So close your eyes."

She did not understand. The Force was a mystery to her, a child's story. It wasn't something a scientist took seriously.

But Nichos was a scientist too.

She closed her eyes.

"Don't think. I know, that's hard for both of us." There was even a bit of humor in that voice, and it reminded her of the Nichos of old, of times that now felt long, long ago. The two of them had been happy then, working in their adjoining labs at the Magrody Institute, him on his enhanced droid intelligence and miniaturization projects, her on her extensive study of captured Ssi-Ruuk technology. The banter which turned to flirting, which turned to dinner, which turned to cuddling on his couch. "Don't think, Cray."

She tried, but there was always something, always some waywary thought, some idea, some pain, some premonition of mourning—or of hope.

It was good enough. "What should we do?"

The answer wasn't one that came from the Force. At least, Cray didn't think so. The answer was one that had lurked in the pit of her stomach, taunting her in dark moments. "We should sabotage this place," she whispered. "As much as we can. However we can. For as long as we can."

She opened her eyes slowly and found him staring back at her. "They'll kill us," he reminded her.

"They're going to kill us anyway."

There it was. A kernel in the pit of her stomach. Resentment and anger rising deep within her. Anger at Nichos' illness. Anger at the Empire. Anger at everything that had been done to them, taken from them. Resentment over everything they had already lost… and over everything that they had yet to lose. But for the first time, Cray's response wasn't rationalization. It wasn't fear. It wasn't panic.

It was hate.

"We can stop them," she said, and she knew, deep down, that it was true. She wasn't sure if that was some mystical Force talking, or if it was just her own accursed stubbornness. She had done everything she ever set her mind to, up to and including building that damned command interface for Roganda. "And at least we'll be together."

He squeezed her hands, but all the strength suddenly faded and she felt them start, once more, to shake. She gripped them firmly, holding them still. "We can stop them," she repeated, feeling the confidence born from experience and rage mingled together grow. "And at least we'll be together."

"All right," he agreed. "All right."

"One day soon, son, you will be Emperor in truth as well as name."

Irek Ismaren thought about his mother's words a lot. For his entire life, but particularly aboard Silencer-7, she was inescapable, and all of his cybernetic implants itched. Hers was the ever-present voice in the back of his mind. You will rule, it said. The Force chose you and I shaped you. You must rule. You deserve to rule. You are owed obedience. All those who stand against you are worthy of contempt and death, and their deaths are a lesson to others.

That destiny was not just a reward, but a burden. A burden of responsibility as well as authority, of work as well as leisure. The work that was required now was learning how to rule. For years, Roganda's pet—the brilliant scientist Doctor Nasdra Magrody—had worked to give Irek the ability to command the AI at the heart of Silencer-7. But despite early successes he had become more slothful and Roganda had decided that the old man's passive resistance would result in unacceptable delays. Magrody's death had been one of many Irek had witnessed since childhood. Their deaths are a lesson to others.

Irek had liked Magrody well enough, and his death—while necessary—had annoyed him. But then Roganda found Magrody's most brilliant student as a replacement. If Magrody had been resigned and contemplative, Doctor Cray Mingla blazed with hard-edged fire. Despite the bitterness she displayed towards everyone—Irek included, though they had spent little time together—Irek much preferred Cray. She was, after all, the most beautiful woman Irek had ever seen. Tall, with brilliant golden hair and dark, expressive brown eyes, Irek often found it difficult to look away from her, or to maintain his air of carefully-cultivated detachment.

His mother had warned him not to 'pursue' her, lest they lose another genius. Cray had talents that even Magrody had lacked and she had made incredible progress on the Silencer command interface in the long months she had been their captive. She was irreplaceable; alienating her would set them back and perhaps even make it impossible for him to command the AI his mother had worked many years to cultivate. But these restrictions did not make Cray Mingla any less beautiful, and Irek wondered about what would become of her after her task was complete. His mother would probably want to kill her. Irek recoiled at the thought.

The door to the chambers that Cray and Irek shared slid open at his command. There was no lock on the door—none that would stop Irek, anyway. Inside the small room, Cray was tending to her crippled fiancée, who remained alive for two reasons and two reasons only: despite his approaching uselessness he was a useful cyberneticist in his own right, and without threats to him hanging over her head Cray would not cooperate willingly with the Empire. Neither of these were things Irek much cared about—he was reasonably certain that the man was dead weight, and that he could force Cray to cooperate even without such a weak man for leverage. The thought was married to jealousy as he watched Cray look up from her tender caring to—he fought to remember the man's name, and it came to him in a moment of recollection—Doctor Marr. Such a pitiful creature does not deserve such a stunning beauty, the seventeen-year-old thought sourly.

At least he could interrupt their little love-fest. "Doctor Mingla," he announced, trying to sound as authoritative as an Imperial Admiral. His voice, thankfully, no longer cracked—that had been a humiliating few years. "It is time to begin my instruction in how to best use your command interface for Silencer Station." He wondered—hoped, really—that she would appreciate his willingness to credit her with the creation of the interface.

Cray stopped tending to her cripple and turned to look at him. She looked exhausted, with dark bags under her eyes, but despite her exhaustion and lack of makeup she remained stunningly, devastatingly beautiful. Irek's heart thumped in his chest when she looked at him.

"Go on, hon," the man-machine murmured, almost unheard, "I'll be fine. Need to rest anyway."

"Very well." Her voice was soft and lyrical. She took her hand off the cripple's back. "Where shall we work?"

Irek always liked it when she said "we." He couldn't keep the smile off his face. "In the lab," he suggested. "My mother left your interface there." He held his arm out as she rose carefully, but she did not take it. Instead, she took her time, arranging Marr's body with care. His eyes narrowed. "Sometime today, if you're feeling ambitious."

She did not quicken her pace. But when she was finished she strode from the room with her head up, as if she hadn't a care in the world, leaving him to hurry behind.