"O Tyrants! Where are you?
You creators and constrictors,
Now departed gods,
What lies beneath your self-made myth?
We cast eyes for ancient truth
Yet find only dust and scars.
Thus you remain to us
Monsters in the mist."

Lyechusas

Year 14 of Xer's reign

507 LE

Civilization in the Tion Cluster was only possible because of the complex network of beacons that allowed starships to safely traverse hyperspace. When all the orbital buoys on all the inhabited worlds connected they made a vast web that bound together the Kingdom of Cron, the Three Allied Systems, the Livien League, the Thanium worlds, the Yutusk Federation and dozens of unaligned planets. Constructed piecemeal since the Liberation, they were a luminous web that collectively lifted humanity out of darkness.

But some things could be hidden in the shadows. Hyperspace beacons were, after all, just transmitters blaring out a constant signal for inbound ships to latch onto. Like primitive lighthouses, they flashed in all directions and anyone could use them. But they had the potential to be more than swinging lights.

The success of Xer VIII's campaign against the Cron was commonly attributed to his audacity, the Argaians' barbaric violence, and Cronese lethargy. All of these were true, but Xer had another advantage, one he kept closely-guarded. Over the past hundred years the Argai pirates and their brazen hyperspace explorers had mapped secret routes through the heart of Cron and the tangled nebulae of the Ihala Spiral. Using beacons of their own make, transmitting on narrow frequencies only they could hear, the pirates created secret passages that allowed them to intercept starships in transit, wage lightning-strikes on unsuspecting targets, and set up bases on undiscovered planets.

Xer's empire had grown much since those humble days of smash-and-grab, and many of those secret routes had fallen into disuse. Some beacons had been abandoned, others moved to entirely different parts of space.

One of those beacons had been moved by Xim himself, without his father's permission, to light the way to the planet Abraxin. Seen from the cockpit of Jaminere's shuttle it was a forlorn world, so encased in fog that it appeared a sphere of swirling mercury against the lavender backdrop of the Spiral. The only thing in orbit above this lonely place was the hyperspace beacon itself, which blinked steadily as it broadcast its signal on one narrow frequency known only to those Xim deemed worthy.

Jaminere was glad to be counted as such. He still had no idea what Xim was doing here, but it seemed something he kept secret even from his father. After strapping tight into his seat and shuddering through a violent set-down, he transferred from the shuttle to its docking tower, rode the lift down to its base, and finally stepped onto the surface of Abraxin.

Even at ground level the fog was thick. Distance dissolved into a featureless haze, colored somewhere between silver and violet. All he could make out beyond the docking facility were a handful of hunched metal-frame buildings and an electric corona blurred into the fog.

When the open-topped jeep arrived for him, Xim was waiting in the back seat. The young man, like Jaminere, wore a plain gray tunic, vaguely martial but lacking any official marking. The same was true for the driver and he handful of personnel moving about the landing field. It only deepened the atmosphere of secrecy and piqued Jaminere's interest further.

Xim, however, did not immediately share. It had been two months since they'd last met face-to-face, and Jaminere was still working to secure a conference with the governor of the Livien capital Desevro, whom his agents suggested would be amenable to covert negotiation. Xim, meanwhile, had been everywhere at once, striking the Liviens at Raxus Prime, Amarrin, Jhantoria, and Lorrad, while also going off the grid completely, once for an entire week. Finally Jaminere had a chance to understand why.

Xim did not speak until they reached the entrance to a concrete slab of a building. The entry doors, haloed by a pool of spotlight, were wide enough to swallow their jeep, but the vehicle stopped outside. As they got out of the back seat, he told Jaminere, "This place used to belong to a group of pirates from Stalimur. They had their own secret hyperlanes for a time. It's where the Argaians got the idea for theirs, actually."

"But your father doesn't know about this place." It wasn't a question.

"There are plenty of things my father has no need to know. This one of them."

The doors cracked just far enough apart so that both men passed shoulder-by-shoulder inside. As the door banged shut behind him, Jaminere squinted against the interior brightness. When his eyes adjusted he saw that they stood inside a vast chamber, roofed by metal and walled by concrete, probably a pirate storehouse once but something else now. Movable metal walls had been raised two-thirds of the way to the ceiling, dividing the chamber into over a dozen smaller sections. Men and women in gray coveralls moved between the cubicles, footsteps echoing off distant walls, but the entire scene felt empty and cold. With a shiver Jaminere realized he was cold, physically, and he hugged his arms against himself.

"The low temperature makes preservation easier," Xim said. "Follow me."

Jaminere followed. Xim led him around two cubicles whose entry doors were latched shut. As they approached a third he said, "My father loves to collect, as you know. He doesn't particularly care what he collects, so long as it looks pretty. The less pretty things, he gives off to his men or simply throws away. I made a point to examine all those cast-aways. I wanted to see if I could find things he could not."

"Is this about the Tyrants?"

Xim stopped three steps from the door and turned to face Jaminere head-on. Dark light flared in those eyes as he said, "They ruled this part of space for millennia, and then they vanished. But everything leaves traces. Sometimes they're just hard to find."

Then he took Jaminere into the cubicle. Objects were arranged on tables, some laid out beneath plastic screens and others in airtight translucent cases. Jaminere couldn't make much sense of them at first. Some were art objects with details worn by time and too many hands. Others were exotic pieces of machinery he could figure no purpose for. Each one was tagged with a small white card, and each card contained hand-scribbled notes.

"You're a collector too," Jaminere told Xim. "But all of this… what is it for? Do you even know that these artifacts are from the Tyrants?"

"Some of them." Xim stopped in front of one object and, with unusual deference, used a white cloth to pick it up. Jaminere didn't recognize the dark-blue stone it was carved from, but the figure depicted a bipedal creature with long legs ending three-clawed feet, overlong arms, and a conical head with eye protruding from stalks on either side.

"These do match the usual image of the Tyrants," Jaminere allowed, "but does it tell you anything useful?"

"Not these alone, but they do provoke wonder, don't they?" Xim put it down and, cloth still in hand, picked up another object. This one was a metallic cylinder slightly smaller than his forearm. On one end was a blunt cap, on the other some kind emitter nozzle, but as Xim rolled the thing in his grip Jaminere saw there was no switch or button anywhere on the smooth metal surface.

"Curious, isn't it?" Xim said. "Interior scans show a small power generator and what appears to be a focusing crystal, not unlike our laser cannons, though on much smaller scale."

"How does someone fire it?"

"I have no idea." He smiled, like the mystery was enchanting in itself.

Jaminere tried to contain his disappointment. After being whisked away to a secret facility shrouded inside the Spiral, he'd assumed that Xim was working on something, well, important. Instead his friend, so ambitious and visionary and cruel, was acting smitten by worthless curios.

A little desperately, Jaminere said, "This is a massive storehouse. I can't believe you've found enough artifacts to fill it all."

"I've been collecting these 'artifacts' for a long time. I used to keep them in the palace at Argai, but that changed last year." Xim, still smiling, put the strange weapon down. "Let me show you something even you'll find impressive."

He led Jaminere out of that cubicle, past two more, and toward the largest one yet. The metal wall stretched ten meters on either side of the door and waiting beside the gate was a man with a white jacket thrown over his jumpsuit. Long platinum hair fell to his shoulders and round-rimmed spectacles rested on the bridge of his stout nose. The glasses and pale hair made him look old from afar, but when he came in for handshakes, Jaminere saw he was as young as they were.

"Prince Jaminere, meet Etan Loreac," Xim said. "Technically of the University of Eibon."

"Technically?" Jaminere asked.

"I was set to complete my dissertation in two years, but I decided to take a sabbatical," Loreac said with a crisp Cronese accent. "Our mutual friend offered me a research opportunity I couldn't pass up."

There was something about this man Jaminere didn't trust. "Am I about to see that research?"

"Oh, yes. Come with me."

This time Loreac lead, and Jaminere and Xim followed. When they entered this chamber Jaminere nearly lost a step, because he'd been expecting yet more pointless curiosities. What he got were tall racks lining every wall, and each shelf contained pieces of equipment unlike anything he'd ever seen. These weren't mere handheld appliances, these were parts of a spaceship. Some pieces looked like engine nacelles, power conduits, and computer panels, but their designs were unlike those used in Tion. Other pieces were technology he couldn't recognize at all.

But what really drew his attention was in the middle of the chamber. Four coffins, each with a glassy lid, sat in a plus-formation, head-facing-head, and in the center of them was a mechanical contraption unlike anything he'd seen. Eight long, thin, multi-jointed legs supported a central body shaped like two cones pressed together. It looked like a giant mechanical arachnid.

Scientists in various parts of known space had attempted to create machines in imitation of men. The technical term for them was 'androids,' though common Cronese parlance reduced them to 'droids,' while others borrowed an antique Livien word of 'slaves' and called them 'robots.' Legend said the Tyrants had used such technology but, like most of their devices, the knowledge on how to create them was lost. Recently engineers had matched primitive computer brains with primitive mechanical bodies, but from the scoring and wear on this metal spider, Jaminere knew it was far older.

Then he stepped closer and looked into the coffins.

He almost recoiled. The bodies within were ghastly. Despite being sealed in cool airtight chambers the skin was gray and withered around inhuman skeletons. Each body must have been nearly three meters tall, and despite their desiccation he recognized their form as matching those of the Tyrant statuette.

"They didn't look much better when we found them," Loreac said.

Jaminere shuddered. "Found them where?"

"An archaeological dig on Dellalt. The native sentients there are aquatic, so the wrecked spacecraft sat there unnoticed for, by our guess, five hundred years."

"Since the Liberation, then."

"If that's what it was. Most scholarship todays casts doubt on the traditional narrative, but who ever listens to scholars?" Loreac smiled wryly.

Jaminere rubbed his throbbing temple. "This was an expedition with your university, then?"

"Yes. As soon as we reported our findings, we suddenly lost all our funding and were ordered to close the project." Loreac turned that smile on Xim. "Fortunately, we had private interests ready to take up the research."

"So all these people here are from your archaeological team?"

"Oh, no. Most of them aren't archaeologists at all." He ran a hand through his long bright hair. "We've gathered a variety of specialists from different disciplines. Most of us are students and, when we saw the resources and funding we were being given," he laughed, "well, the academy can't compete."

"I assume none of you are allowed to leave here either." He looked at Xim as he said it.

"The scenery is a little gloomy, but the accommodations are spacious," answered Loreac.

"And what are you doing with… all of this? Do you think you can get that spider-machine working?"

"Oh, we already have. One moment."

Lorean reached into his jacket and pulled a small control pad from one of his bulging pockets. He tapped a button and the robot jerked to life. Jaminere barely restrained the urge to jump back as the machine scuttles toward on squeaking legs. Then it spoke in a guttural and unintelligible voice.

"What the devil is that?"

"A message in the Tyrants' language, we believe." Loreac tapped another button and the robot spoke again. The voice was still deep and rough, but the words seemed different. "It appears to be capable of at least six different languages," the archaeologist explained. "One of them bears a resemblance to a language used on an obscure planet in the Thanium region, by the Stygian Caldera. Another has characteristics vaguely similar to proto-Tionese. At least, proto-Tionese as reconstructed by theoretical linguists. Suffice to say," he pushed his glasses up his nose, "we may be able to decrypt the Tyrants' language."

Jaminere stared for five full seconds before he asked, "Then what?"

Xim replied, "We have written records and digital files salvaged from the Dellalt crash. There's no telling what we can learn once we decrypt them."

"We also have engineers looking to duplicate and expand on robot designs," Loreac added, and with the push of one more button he sent the spider-machine scuttled back to its resting place between the tombs.

Jaminere sighed and looked around. "All of this isn't a museum, then. It's… an incubator."

"It's both," smiled the archaeologist. "The more pre-Liberation artifacts we recover, the more we learn. The more we learn, the more we apply. The more we apply..."

"The more likely we can change the face of the galaxy," Xim said. He told Loreac, "Thank you, you can go now. Prince Jaminere needs to time to… process all of this."

"Of course. Buzz me if you need me."

Loreac sketched a casual salute and walked briskly from the cubicle. The door clanged shut behind him, leaving Xim and Jaminere in privacy, but neither of the spoke immediately. Jaminere took a deep breath and walked one circle around the coffins, looking at the ghastly corpses. When he could take it no longer he went back to Xim and asked, "Are any of these scientists going to leave this place alive?"

Xim smiled. He was doing that a lot today and it put Jaminere on edge. "These people are assets, not threats."

That also wasn't an answer. Jaminere decided to drop that question for another. "Do you really believe you can make robots based on that… thing?" He waved at the spider-machine.

Xim shrugged. "The form the body takes is less important than the brain inside it. Imagine an army of thinking machines programmed for war. Thousands and thousands of mass-produced units, more deadly than a real man but also more disposable. The Cronese and the Allied Kingdom have the industrial output necessary. Next we'll need the proper design. The Tyrants had that design, and here was stand a chance of reconstructing it."

It could change the face of war, but to Jaminere it still seemed like fantasy. "What's the point of the rest? Keeping the bodies, decrypting the language..."

"The best way to learn about the Tyrants—their technology and everything else—is to read what they wrote and discover how they thought. As for the bodies, we're learning things from those too."

"You're running genetic testing?"

"That's right. Their DNA doesn't change, even in death. Their genome structure is unlike that of any race in known space, which means they clearly came from a distant part of the galaxy."

"We already knew that much."

"We assumed," Xim corrected. "I'm hoping we can learn more." The pirate prince walked over to one of the coffins and peered into it. Jaminere lingered, keeping the corpses out of view. "There are stories," Xim said thoughtfully, "many stories, in fact, that attribute special powers to the Tyrants. They could move objects with their minds, summon lightning from their hands, compel men to do their bidding with only a word."

"They were like gods to our ancestors. I never took those tales literally." He couldn't believe that that Xim—cold, pragmatic Xim—would.

"There are also stories from the very start of the Liberation Era that claim the Tyrants used their power to navigate through hyperspace itself. We know they didn't rely on beacons. Perhaps this power was how they did it."

"Or they simply had superior technology."

"That too." Xim smiled again, this time it had a hint of self-deprecation. "Either way we have things to investigate. If their powers were something encoded in their genes, I'd like to find out."

And then what? He knew his friend had a fascination for the Tyrants, but now he was indulging fancies that bordered on delusion.

Jaminere asked, "All of this, the droids, the bodies, the old magic… Who do you plan to use them against? The Liviens? Or someone else?"

Xim knew what he meant. Their front-line campaigns against the Liviens had given them excellent cover, allowing them to hide their activities from their absent fathers. Neither Xim for Jaminere had said aloud where their path would end, though each knew it in his heart.

Xim wouldn't say it together, either. He shrugged and replied, "I'll use anything I can against whoever tries to stop me. Just as I've always done."