NationStates Jolt Archive

Please note: this roleplay is rated PG-13, as it contains moderate violence and mild language. It is also closed, since it is a character RP.
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The Nystol Temporal Research facility in the Barnards Star system was the foremost authority on time related technology in the entire Empire. For many decades, secretive research had been granted trillions in credits of funding, and it was only now, seventy two years after joining the research team, Professor Valtare Rigin could appreciate the results. He walked into the Nystol Facility entrance chamber via the front door, knowing the security sensors had begun tracking his movements within the building. His inserts send a one-time, highly encrypted security key to the receptionist, who smiled brightly and granted him access to the main research labs. He entered the elevator, and descended forty floors.

Later, he was behind a large holo-display panel, watching graphic representations of quantum time tunnels shift and manipulate like some giant snake. He was the lead scientist of the research team. He had four other colleagues in the room, and today was their big day. They were going to manipulate time.

First, his team had used simple chemistry to create an impossibly complex molecule that could never form naturally. They then intended to send the molecule thirty minutes into the future, and across the room, where their team, in the future, should manipulate it into a different molecule and send it back thirty minutes. It was a test designed to calibrate the quantum time tunnel generator.

“Time wormhole is stabilizing, we have go authorisation.”

“Acknowledged, lowering molecule into event horizon… Molecule transmitted.”

“I’m picking up some strange fluctuations in the quantum structure of the wormhole. Its interstice in time is shifting, and the event horizon is widening. Shit!”

He walked into the Nystol lab through the now seven foot tall quantum time wormhole, knowing the security sensors would now have his image on file. He didn’t care.

One of the scientists began to cautiously walk over to him. “Hi… Can we help you?”

“No.” He shot him through the temple with a microdart from his arm dispenser. It’s n-pulse locked his muscles solid, an instant rigor mortis, holding him upright. Anyone walking into the lab would see him standing as usual.

His implants opened a channel to the lab array. A brief software battle ensued as he took control of the lab network. He sealed the building, and cleared a path out for himself. Another scientist made to run for the door. The ion bolt vaporised the top of his skull. Blood-steam misted the atmosphere of the lab, now air-tight from the rest of the complex.

He walked up to the scientist behind the large holo-panel. He looked up, fearfully. “Who the hell are you?”

“You are Valtare Rigin?”

Rigin nodded quickly, silently making a call to the guard, who had so conveniently visited the toilet at the wrong moment. Roberto, the guard, ran in not thirty seconds later, only to be met with another ion bolt.

Roberto, as a good guard, was wearing a light deflector field under his work gear, and the ion bolt bounced off into the metal walls. Molten metal puffed out of the strike point. He grunted in surprise, and immediately went for the weapon in his shoulder-holster in a high-speed slick motion only available to those wetwired for combat and enhanced reaction times. He fired two plasma shots at the intruder, whose sparkling forcefield deflected both. That was the only chance Roberto got.

The intruder launched himself at the big man, right leg swinging up and round to kick his ribs. Roberto shrieked as the blow punched clean through his armour frame. Three ribs broke and pushed inwards, puncturing his lungs. He ignored the pain and countered with a left twist, his right arm coming round flat, aimed for the intruder’s neck, armour frame’s e-dump function on and eager to wreck the other’s forcefield. Energy flared from the impact like a fusion bloom, the blinding discharge flinging off slivers of static that clawed at both figures as they grounded out. But the e-dump never got anywhere near overloading the intruder’s forcefield. A fist like the front end of an express train crashed into Roberto’s side, sending him flying backwards through the air to smack into the curving metal walls. Trailers of blood smeared it as he slithered down limply to the polished grey floor.

He lept gracefully across the intervening distance, one heel coming down on Roberto’s leg. The knee joint snapped with a sickening crunch. Roberto threw up as hands grasped his shoulders, hauling him to his feet. It was difficult for him to focus through the daze of pain, but he just managed to squint at the intruder’s frighteningly emotionless features. Then the head butt caved in the front of his face, pushing several splintered fragments of bone from the skull directly into his brain.

The intruder dropped the dead guard, and turned to face the terrified man behind the desk. “You are Valtare Rigin?”

“Yes.” Rigin crossed himself, an unheard of thing in the Atheist Empire, and waited to die.

“I do not have time to torture information out of you. If you do not cooperate, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

Rigin nodded frantically. “Holy Mother of God, who are you?” His eyes flicked to the broken corpse of the guard. “How did you…?”

“The location of the Prime?”

“Huh?”

“Where is the Prime of The Empire?”

“I… I guess he’s at the palace on Midna Beta… No, wait, he’s on a publicity tour, he’ll be in a hotel somewhere in M-1. That’s all I know, I swear!”

“Give me all your money.” He ordered his inserts to open a file, ready to receive the payment of credits. Rigin complied, and 250,000 new credits appeared in his bank insert. The ion bolt blew a wide hole through Rigin’s chest. He hurried over to the corpse and bent down. A single slender harmonic blade slid out from underneath his right index finger, and he quickly cut through the neck of the man, pulling out half his brain, and all his inserts. He pocketed it, and did the same for all other bodies in the room. He then used his access to the lab network to erase any clue to his identity, and walked casually out of the complex through the route he had set up.

The memorycells of those involved safely in his pocket, he dropped a thermodetonation charge in an empty hallway. He shot an ion bolt at a nearby window, blowing it outwards, and dived gracefully out, landing in an acrobatic roll. He walked a few blocks from the complex, as the superthermal charge detonated behind him.

OOC: Say hello to the future leader of The Empire… Sounds like a nice guy, no? :P

Although this is closed, I'd quite like comments, criticism and suggestions on how to improve my writing and the plot. Pointing out mistakes is always helpful too. :P

(OOC: Looks pretty good insofar, Mindset. But I'm having some doubts about this idea of yours...)

It definitely looks good, and is well written. Um, since you told us where this is going, I really can't say "I want to see where this is going." But, I suppose I can say, "I'd like to see how this gets there." So write faster.

OOC: Thanks. I'm writing the second part right now. 5CN, what doubts do you have? That I can't pull it off without godmodding? Or that you don't like the direction I'm taking The Mindset?

(OOC: Oh, I know you can do it without godmodding, but I have a really bad feeling about the government change for your nation...)

OOC: I hope you meant without godmodding. :P Anyways, this shouldn't affect anyone in the ESUS. Regardless of how "evil" or immoral the government becomes, I doubt he'd be willing to leave the ESUS, or attack members. Mostly this is a personal vendetta, though you won't really know why until later in the plot.

Part II

He knew he had to move swiftly. The Serious Crimes Directorate of The Mindset would already be on the case, and may even have tracked his progress through the streets of M-3. The hyperopolis may be sixty times smaller than it’s fathers, M-1 and M-2, but with a population of sixty million, most would have thought he’d be able to blend in seamlessly. Unfortunately for him, he knew this wasn’t the case. He knew all M-digit cities had sophisticated AIs continuously monitoring citizen movement in public areas. Downtown’s sleaze district was no different, if less so than other areas.

He carried a nanonic package capable of reshaping his facial features into a preset pattern, which in this case was that of a middle-aged man with greying hair and a slight double chin. He thought it should help him bypass the visual sensors, though he’d just have to make sure he didn’t leave any physical traces of himself lying around. Though apparently in a daydream, his inserts were monitoring everything happening around him, and he was acutely aware of reaching his destination without ever having to glance at the holosign flickering above its shabby doorway.

The receptionist was a fat, greasy man, wearing a too-small t-shirt and unwashed jeans. His hair was slicked back with what appeared to be thick axel-grease, and his forehead was dyed black from too many hair re-colourations.

“How can I help you… sir?” He sneered; looking at the strange clothing of the approaching man: his bulky armour suit hidden under a long leather cloak, shimmering slightly in the dull sulphurous lighting, his face hidden under a pitch black hood.

He was dead before his body hit the floor. The cloaked man launched himself powerfully while still several meters away, curving in a graceful arc to connect with the receptionist’s neck, cleanly dislodging the bones from his shoulders with a sickening crunch. Blood began to flood the tiled floor behind the reception desk in ever slowing spurts.

While wiping his boot with his sleeve, the cloaked man laughed slightly. “Yes. I would like to rent a room for the night, please.” He promptly cut out the receptionist’s inserts, opened a channel to the motel array, deposited 250 credits, and walked down the hallway to his designated room. Once inside, he used his specialised inserts to seal the door, and set up a forcefield around the room. He took off his cloak, untied his boots and threw them in a corner, and slumped onto the bed – though not before applying the nanonic package. By tomorrow morning, he would have a new face, and a new identity.

(OOC: :headbang: edited...)

Bump for comments, and in anticipation of part three.

C*changes undies after Part I* *Shites again after Part II*

Part III

I ought to be getting used to this, Chief Investigator Paula Myo thought. She wasn’t, though. And that was far more painful than any irony.

For once, she’d gone to Mel Rees’s office. It was a political thing. This was her mess, her responsibility. Once again.

Not that it was any comfort, but Mel Rees seemed to be as unhappy about the meeting as her. His office was only marginally larger than the one she occupied. Although his view of M-3’s cityscape was a lot better. The door closed behind her, and she sat behind a big, ancient walnut desk imported from old Earth and devoid of any clutter.

“So what happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“For fuck’s sake, Paula. Some psycho takes out a half block of M-3, kills nineteen people in the process, and you don’t know? This is not a good start for the Agency. The Prime is demanding results, and he’s not using nice language to ask.”

“I am aware of the Agency’s situation. What happened out there concerns me a lot more.”

“I understand how concerned you are.” He hesitated, winding himself up, like a doctor preparing to break bad news. “You’ve been working yourself too hard lately. Maybe…”

“No,” she said flatly. “It is not the time for me to move on and hand over to someone else.”

Rees didn’t argue. He seemed to shrink a little further behind his desk. “All right. But be warned, Paula, there are questions being raised about your suitability. Things are different now, and they’re going to change even more. If the order comes down for you to move on, it isn’t one I’ll be able to shield you from. If it wasn’t for your record…”

“I am aware of how my reputation protects me. And you know none of your other investigators would be able to run this guy down.”

“Yeah.” The thought was visibly worrying him. “So what can you tell me about this incident?”

“I’ve been supervising the forensics operation, trying to reconstruct the sequence of events. It added very little to what we already know.”

She told her inserts to run a file on the deputy director’s wall mounted holoscreen. It produced an image from one of the observation team’s sensors, showing the man poised in the lab’s shattered window moments before he dived out. “The face is unknown to any database, so we assume it’s cellular reprofiling. There’s no visual sensor image of him arriving or departing through M-3 Customs, and the thermal bomb erased all physical evidence from the scene.”

“A native, then?”

“Unlikely, but we haven’t ruled out the possibility. As far as we can determine, his weapon systems were all wetwired, with the exception of a simple arm dispenser. All memorycells of those involved were removed by force, but even if he hadn’t removed them, we’d be lucky to have recovered any. The way the lab was built meant the ground floor had some degree of protection from the plasma surge after the blast. There were other bodies down there, but they were ninety percent vaporised. The lab guard, Roberto Caluz, was more fortunate. His armour wasn’t exactly designed with a thermal charge in mind, but its deflector field did provide some shielding. The armour’s internal logs contained some interesting records. Just before the blast it had managed to ward off an ion pulse, then the armour received some terrible physical impacts. Someone used poor Roberto as a punchbag. Our intruder was one sophisticated boy. I asked our colleagues at the Enforcement Directorate what it would take to build someone up to that standard. They actually had trouble working out the specs for me. Wetwired forcefields are cutting edge.”

Mel took a long disproving glance at the image wavering in the holoscreen portal. “Do you think there might be more of them?”

“I don’t think so. If this were prolific we would already know about it. No-one we track, regardless of criminal wealth, has this kind of capability.”

“Any other guesses?”

“Logically, there are three possibilities. A deep Mindsettian security department sent him in, something we’re not cleared to know about. But the lab was a Government building, so they must have had one hell of a reason. There have always been rumours of the Prime having his own intelligence sector. Why he’d use an operative in this instance I don’t know, unless it was to send a very clear message to a third party we don’t know about yet. The same applies to the mega-corporations. They certainly could have put someone like this together. They may have been attempting to steal the top-secret research being conducted in the labs for their own purposes. However, computer logs do not register any attempts to access files other than to shut down security sensors inside lab one.”

“And the third possibility?”

“He is the result of whatever experiments were being carried out in that lab.”

“Oh, come on!”

“It’s an option, you have to admit that.”

“No, I don’t. What about political factions – enemies of the state? The Prime may be popular, but he’ll still have people who want his power. Politicians don’t settle disagreements over a meal and a bottle of wine.”

“A rival wouldn’t bother destroying a lab complex if he wanted to replace the Prime. It doesn’t make logical sense. Timing indicates someone had intelligence about getting into the lab. That fits the first two possibilities, it may even fit the third.”

“No. Paula, no! There is no third option. The government will destroy you if you publish that theory. You know that. You do not include it in any official report. If you do, I will not even attempt to cover your ass. Don’t you see how political this thing is? It had to be a corporation or the government themselves. We can investigate many things, but not them.”

“Nobody is above the law.”

“Damnit. If the Prime ordered it, then it is lawful. Same for the corporations; hell, some own their own planets. They are governments, local though they may be.”

“That doesn’t make what they did right. They killed people.”

“Be it upon your head then.” Mel visibly sighed. “Dismissed.”

Bump.

more Now!!!! Do It!!!! Write It!!!! Don't Leave Me Hanging!!!

The nanonic package had done its job well. He now had a face that was on no police records, and his chaos inserts had created an identity profile to match. He could walk into the lab again, and no one would realise it was him. But he wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t that stupid. He knew too much was at risk; that too much planning had gone into this for him to let his own mistakes allow it fail.

It was unfortunate that he had already made one.

***

Paula gazed at the clouds slowly making their way overhead, and listened to the calls of a million seagulls. Of course they weren’t terrestrial seagulls, but this colony, Francis Shore, had its own equivalent. Her inserts notified her of a call coming through the datasphere as she lowers her gaze to survey the pale blue sea, the beach stretching for miles in every direction. Ferris, the planet in the Barnards Star system which Francis Shore was located was a much larger than average. Luckily for the Mindsettian survey team that discovered and claimed it a thousand years previously, the gravity field was weak enough to support humanoid life.

She answered the call. Mel Rees face appeared in the upper left corner of her virtual vision, his face agitated.

“Paula, we’ve had another attack. We think it’s the same guy, since the victim died of a brutal blow to the neck. Only someone wetwired like our fugitive could do something like that.” He nervously pulled on his collar, and then smoothed his eyebrows.

Paula took her time replying, drawing out the moment. “What makes you so sure it’s the same guy? For all we know there’s a secret army of these wetwired supersoldiers running around The Empire.” She was pleased at the reaction this drew from Rees. He stuttered to reply.

“Just get down there and take a look. It happened at a small motel in the lower district of M-3. There’s more details in the briefing, which should have arrived in your inbox by now.”

“I’ll take the express.”

By mid-afternoon Ferris time, Paula had walked through one of the planet-to-planet wormholes permanently linking all Mindsettian worlds. After walking through similar wormholes at five further destinations, she arrived at M-3 wormhole station alpha, 3:16PM local time.

She walked up to the invisible forcefield separating the maglev roadway from the pedestrian sidewalk, and ordered her inserts to hail a taxi. Within sixty seconds, one had pulled out the five hundred kilometres per hour traffic to stop beside her, and the forcefield sparkled a little, allowing her to pass.

Inside the taxi, she ordered her inserts to open a channel to the local police force.

“Commander, this is Detective Paula Myo of the Senior Crimes Directorate. I have reason to believe we have an extremely dangerous terrorist loose in your city, and I require the help of you and your men to apprehend him. He is very well armed, and considered extremely dangerous. I formally request backup of six armed units, to be directed to the address included. Thank you.”

***

He pulled on his boots, rubbing them affectionately with his cuff. He’d seen many things wearing these; served aboard Battleforges as they destroyed an enemy station, witnessed the birth, and death of a star, and now, travel through time to fulfil his destiny.

He ordered his inserts to deactivate the forcefield around his room, and cautiously opened the apartment door. What greeted him made him immediately shut it again.

“Shit.”

He had been expecting this to happen. Paula was the best in The Empire, and her department got near unlimited funding. They were bound to notice him one way or another. Now he regretted the face-change. What he hadn’t been expecting, however, was Paula herself to show up. Surely she had subordinates to do her dirty work? He pondered the thought for a while, but then turned his attention to the more immediate matters. The apartment was bottom of the range, and didn’t even have a window. He was trapped inside the small room, with his only escape route leading him right into the arms of Paula Myo. Unless…

“This had better be worth it.”

He strode purposely towards the faecal waste receptacle, and briefly examined behind it. The tubing connecting it to the apartment sewer system was wide enough for a small boy to fit through. Unfortunately, he was no longer a small boy. Regardless, he gripped the metallic rim of the seat, and with all his enhanced muscles, ripped it clean off the floor and threw it aside. It made a loud clanging noise as it collided with the edge of the bedside cabinet.

The floor now had a gaping hole in it. The semi-organic walls were already seeping complex chemicals out of tiny pores at the torn edges of the hole, slowly rebuilding it. He had no regard for the highly advanced genetic engineering. He quite happily ripped larger chunks out of the hole, gradually increasing its size. At last, after a few minutes hard labour, the hole was large enough to fit his entire body through, and he jumped into the black abyss below.

***

The scene disgusted Paula. Never before had she seen such senseless, brutal violence. The man had died instantly from the incredible force of the impact, but his face had somehow managed to form an expression of complete agony despite the swiftness of his death. While examining his torso for any clues to his attacker, Paula heard a loud metallic clanging noise from one of the apartment buildings upstairs.

“I thought this building had been evacuated?” She demanded of the local deputy, who was standing by her side, and staring intently at the ceiling as if trying to see through the lighting panelling.

“Every legitimately registered tenant was evacuated this morning. If anyone is up there, it’s our man.” He tapped his cheekbone, activating a tiny wetwired radio transceiver, and began to tell his forces what to do. “Team One, sweep and clear floors one through ten. Team Two, maintain surveillance of rear exits. Team Three, I want a full blockade on the front exits. Team Four through Six, I want full sensor coverage established for five blocks. Arrest anyone who cannot explain what they are doing.”

The doors of the motel burst open, and twenty drugged up, wetwired gym-junkies marched in. All were kitted out in the latest Mindsettian police protection gear. Each carried a Plasma Gauss rifle, and wore a high-powered deflector shield under their conventional molecular bonded armour suits. Their masks hid their identity, but their low grunts, directed towards each other, allowed for some form of recognition between them. They made no sound on the smooth, shiny floor. The soles of their $4000 boots had been coated in material that absorbed the slightest sound of footsteps, and the outer layers of their suits were completely frictionless.

The burly leader of Team One kicked the door of Room 241 clean across the small apartment room. Nanoseconds later, his enhanced senses had scanned the room for threats, deemed it safe to enter, and motioned to his team to fan out across the space between the door and the bed. He took in the scene before him: the dented waste receptacle, the gaping rips in the floor. It took him perhaps half a second to work out what had happened.

“Son of a bitch!” He yelled, his words being electronically transferred directly into the deputy’s brain, three floors below.

“What? What’s happened? Report, Captain!”

“The suspect has left the building via the sewer network. Get the techjunkies scanning the underground systems for any unidentified heat signatures. Fucking son of a bitch!”

It took only five minutes to find him, crouched low in the narrow tunnels servicing the sewer network below the city floor. His deflector shield gave off enough electromagnetic readings to make him shine like a star against the freezing cold backdrop that was the tunnel interior.

“All units, deploy at tunnel entrances and exits. We can’t lose him again.”

The streets outside the motel suddenly became a hive of buzzing, frantic activity. A total of one hundred and twenty men began running in various directions, all following their orders efficiently and professionally. Sixty men, two fully armed units, deployed at the only exit to the sewer tunnel. In pairs, they descended through a maintenance shaft into the catacombs below. Their target was three hundred meters away and closing. Sensors had begun picking up more data. His heartbeat and breathing could now be heard, and was already being analysed by a police AI for pattern matches with known criminals. Thirty more men deployed at the entrance to the maintenance shaft, while the remaining thirty headed for the entrance the fugitive had created for himself in the motel.

Paula waited, but not for long. After five minutes of activity, the police became very still, and quiet, awaiting their prey.

“The target is fifty meters and closing. Twenty. Ten. Target has made contact, I repeat, target has made… Arrghhh!”

***

His fist met the first officers’ jaw in a savage uppercut, pushing his teeth deep inside his skull. Blood poured down his arm, fizzling on his deflector shield. As the officer dropped to the tunnel floor, the fugitive was already drawing back his arm and spinning counter clockwise. In a split second he had crushed the ribcage of a second officer with an open-palm strike so powerful it caused his lifeless body to fly backwards along the narrow tunnel, knocking down three more officers in the process.

Crouching low, his powerful leg muscles propelled him in a swift spin, taking the legs out from under a further two officers, whom he quickly incapacitated by crushing their kneecaps with a vicious follow-through punch. He jumped up, and began to spin on the spot again, his left leg rising above his chest to impact with the side of another officer’s head, causing his neck to snap back and rip his throat open. Blood gushed out the wide hole, pooling on the tunnel floor, now thickening with police officer bodies.

A rapid shallow kick propelled a further four officers backwards, breaking several bones in the process. He began to move forward in staggered steps, his fists barely raised. A new officer started towards him, rifle raised, and the man gripped the barrel, pushing upwards and lifting him clean off the floor. With a resounding crunch, he pummelled him into the walls on either side of the tunnel, and let him drop.

He moved forward once more. Officers began opening fire, attempting to take him down with a brisk and brutal assault of lethal amounts of energy. Every shot bounced off his deflector shield, ricocheting off walls, and taking down several more officers in puffs of boiling blood and explosions of internal organs as their cells broke down into component atoms. Cries of anguish echoed along the tunnels, mingled with screams of pain and whimpers of fear.

Several officers at the rear of the assault were desperately attempting to climb up the maintenance shaft ladder. Some were even forcibly pulling others off in order to gain advantage. Still more officers advanced upon the fugitive. One attempted a kick to his kidneys that would take down the most powerful fighter in the city, but was instead caught off guard as the man gripped his shin and squeezed so tightly his bone cracked and splintered.

The palm-edge of the man was brought up to the neck of another, dislocating a segment of his spine, and rupturing several major arteries. Yet more blood poured out into the deepening puddle now sloshing around the tunnel floor. The soundproof boots of the officers were oddly silent in the gallons of bright red and sticky fluid covering most surfaces.

The fugitive crouched again, and the officers in front made to jump, expecting another spinning kick. However, he made as if to perform a rugby tackle on the officer directing ahead. He powered forwards at an impressive pace for someone so bulky, his shoulder impacting into the stomach of an officer, ripping his abdominal muscles wide, letting his intestines flow onto the floor of carnage below. But he didn’t stop there. He kept running, crunching bones of some officers, ripping others wide, until he stopped at the shaft ladders.

He easily pulled the officers desperately attempting to escape him off, and threw them into the dwindling crowd of wrecked officers left behind. He then proceeded to climb up, and into the fresh air of the city. He was painted bright red from the blood of sixty police officers, his deflector shield slowly cooking some internal organs caught in the folds of his fabric. He reached the top of the shaft, and climbed out into the street. The thirty officers waiting for him took one look, and one listen to the dying cries of their comrades below, and turned and ran as fast as their enhanced muscles would carry them.

The fugitive made as if to dust off some blood, and gazed up. His eyes met Paula Myos, and a manic grin filled his face.

***

He mouthed words that she could not hear, and his deflector shield shimmered for a second. Then, he was gone.

“What the fuck?” Paula screamed with rage. “Who the fuck has technology that allows personal cloaking? This isn’t some secret corporate hitman. This is something bigger. This is something much, much worse.”

The professional's little office had a desk with an array that connected directly to the Clinton Estate's network. He moved the corpse to one side, wiped away the blood which had burst from the man's neck when it was wrenched backwards, and put his hand on the desktop array's i-spot, opening a direct channel into it. Software from his inserts infiltrated the Estate network. The club had extrememely sophisticated routines, hovering just under AI level. Given its clientele, it was inevitable that the security be top-rated. That was what made it the ideal place for the extermination. People were comfortable enough to let their guard down here.

His software identified the nodes which served the club's squash courts, and infiltrated their management programs as diagnostic probes. The nodes couldn't be crashed, that would be detected by the network regulator immediately. What he wanted was the ability to divert emergency calls.

When he was satisfied his subtle corruption was integrated and functioning, he changed clothes, slipping into the white shirt and shorts that were regulation for the club's sports staff. He waited in the office for forty-one minutes, then picked up a squash racquet and walked down the short corridor to the court which the Senator had booked for his lesson.

The Senator was already inside, warming a ball up. "Where's Dieter?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Senator, Dieter is off sick today," he said, and shut the door. "I'm taking his lessons today."

"Okay, son." The Senator gave and affable smile. "You've got a hard task ahead of you. I got beaten by Goldreich's aide this week. It was a little humiliating, and now I'm looking for payback."

"Of course." He walked towards the Senator.

"What's your name, son?"

His hand came round fast, chopping into the Senator's neck. There was a loud snap as the man's spine snapped. The Senator's body turned limp and fell to the floor, inserts shrieking in alarm.

He paused for a second, checking his software to see that none of the network nodes were relaying the alert. The diverts were working, routing the dying man's calls for help to a useless one time address code. He clenched his hand into a fist, and used his full amplified strength to smash it into the Senator's face. His skull shattered from the impact. Reaching inside the bloody red crack, he pulled out the Senators inserts, and promptly copied his ID codes and passwords.

Now he had access to the Prime.

He watched as his fate inexorably approached him. He gazed through the eyes of a hundred dying men as their necks were snapped, their ribs imploded and their internal organs ruptured. He was the Prime, supreme ruler of The Empire, longest living Mindsettian. Right now he felt terribly old.

He tracked the progress of the intruder through his palace, the most magnificent of buildings; it sprawled across sixty acres of land. His virtual eyes locked with that of the man, currently snapping another innocent neck, and his doubts were instantly cast aside.

Quietly and carefully, he reorganised his desk, a huge and very ancient highly polished teak antique imported directly from Earth some one thousand years previous. It had belonged to the previous Prime, and Pr’Varia was very careful never to damage its surface. He wished the next Prime would appreciate it as much as he had; he had spent a great many hours of his time polishing it with his sleeve between the days politicking. After this task was completed, he straightened his outfit – smoothing out the creases in his expensive semi-organic suit. It manipulated itself to conform to his body shape just enough to provide full freedom of movement. It felt like wearing air.

This was his favourite suit. He only ever wore it on very special occasions, the last of which had been the birth of his six hundredth son, Nurik. Nurik, now ten, was playing with his toys on the long red carpet stretching to the entrance to the Primes chamber some sixty feet in front of his desk. His features were the complete double of his fathers: the mother had never met him, and the best geneticists in The Empire had resequenced his DNA to a point where he was barely human, he was so perfect. Pr’Varia had spent a great deal of time with Nurik for the last three weeks, something he rarely had time for. His other one thousand plus kids only ever got to see him on the holonet. Nurik was a special case.

Pr’Varia fixed his son with a stern grey-eyed stare. “Nurik, pick up your toy and take it into the room behind my desk. Close the door behind you. Come when I call, and not before. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father.”

Nurik obediently picked up his things, and departed the chamber. Pr’Varia sighed, and lowered himself into his high-backed chair. A few moments passed in which he paused to reflect on the beauty of the light columns pouring in the high windows of his chamber, dancing across the bookshelves covering the entire length of the chamber like some kind of fairy dance.

I am going to miss all this, he thought to himself sadly. So much work… I hope this doesn’t destroy my people…

Just then, the chamber door burst open, the thick door skidding along the floor, clipping the carpet and echoing loudly.

The intruder stood silhouetted in the doorway frame. “Prime.”

“I have been expecting you, Nurik.”

“Then you know.”

“Of course I do, son. I am the Prime, it’s my job to know these things. Please, take a seat.”

Pr’Varia motioned to the large black chair that swiftly formed itself from the plyplastic underflooring. Nurik hesitated, but eventually strode to the desk and sat down.

“So, how’s the future these days? Am I still Prime?” Pr’Varia smiled, ordering two whiskeys to be delivered. They rose out of the desk a few seconds later. The smile was not returned.

“Surely you know by now that the future I have come from is no longer possible on this temporal path? I know you are not a stupid man, Father. The world I came from is not this world.”

“Ah yes, of course. I suppose in your world I’m still Prime, and you’re still… you. Correct?”

“My world matters not. This is my world now.”

“Dear child, you just got your logic muddled. If your world matters not, then this world matters not by your terms. Please be more careful in future. Do you not remember all I taught you?”

“I am not your subordinate, Father.”

“Naturally.”

“I have come to claim what is rightfully mine. You shall never die from normal means, and I shall never become Prime. However, I am far from normal, and I will live to be Prime. Sadly, you shall not.”

“Have you come to kill me, Nurik?”

“Indeed I have, Father. And I shall enjoy every minute of it.”

“Then perhaps we should consult what you once where. Nurik, you may now enter.”

The young Nurik entered, rigid from fear at what he had overheard.

“Ah, but of course. I should have realised you’d play dirty. You damn pacifists are all alike. You say one thing and do another. Fucking hypocrites.”

He spat on the desk.

“Sadly, Nurik, I am neither pacifist nor hypocritical.”

Pr’Varia overturned the desk, his ultra-enhanced muscles lifting it from its mountings with ease. Nurik’s artificially improved reaction time allowed him to jump clear just in time. Pr’Varia didn’t give him time to recover. He launched himself forward in a powerful fly-kick, impacting hard on Nurik’s shoulder before he had a chance to enable his forceshielding. He grunted as his left shoulder dislocated and tendons ripped.

Pr’Varia executed a nimble roll in recovery from the inertia of his kick, but his son was too swift. Nurik had by now enabled his forceshield, and promptly upper-cutted his fathers jaw in a fluid motion capable of crushing the front of an express train. Only the bookcase halted Pr’Varia’s momentum three meters behind. Half a dozen ancient heavy books fell on top of him, each in turn being incinerated by his own forceshield. The smell of acrid smoke filled the air, and young Nurik cowered into a corner, watching from behind shaking fingers.

Nurik crashed his foot down onto his fathers shin, snapping it in half. Their forceshields both overloaded at the same time, spinning tendrils of superheated ozone plasma around the room. The paint on the ancient desk began to peal. Pr’Varia screamed until sensory barriers blocked out the pain. He tried to use the shelves to lift himself up onto his remaining good leg. Nurik watched with a satisfied smile. Pr’Varia fired a six-atom neutronium slug at 1600km/s from a wrist-based kinetic launcher. It blew Nurik’s left leg clean off, and promptly continued across the chamber, blowing a hole out the read wall six feet across. It was Nurik’s turn to scream as he fell to the floor.

Pr’Varia managed to raise himself onto his leg, and instructed his nanonics to compensate for the loss of balance. He hopped over to his son, and began to drag him towards the gaping hole in the wall. He grunted in pain….

...his eyes buldging at the strain of his sons heavy bulk. Nurik attempted to struggle, but even his nanonic enhancements were not enough to ease the blood now pooling around his waist in a long streak from one end of the chamber to the other.

"I'm sorry it had to come to this, son."

Pr'Varia gave a heave, and pushed his son to the very edge of the gaping hole. A hundred meters below, the distinct hazy shimmer of the palace's forceshield gave way to a dense metropolis jungle. Nurik's eyes expressed his fear.

That is, until young Nurik shot his father in the back with a plasma bolt,and olderl Nurik used his enhanced muscles to lift his father clean into the air, and toss him out the hole. His screams echoed for a few seconds, before he impacted with the shield, and was instantly incinerated by the gigawatts of energy.

The throne had changed places for the first time in over seven hundred years.