Lords of Misrule
(US title: Against the Rules)

pilot: Deus ex Machina

VHS recording

Act 5

Black fades back up to space. The Venture is prominent in the middle of the shot. Mars is a full disc, visibly receding as the ship attempts to make its escape. (Whether or not this is "real" in terms of relative velocity and orbital mechanics.)

Cut to…

Flight deck. Moon is hunched over the helm console. The computer avatar is stood close by.

"Delta-V complete; transfer orbit achieved," the avatar announces.

"You know this is nuts, don't you," Moon protests. "We're going totally the wrong way."

"We are going to Jupiter," Gray states calmly.

"Transfer time calculated," the avatar speaks up again, "nine hundred, ninety-seven days."

"Nine… hundred…?" whispers Pete Quinn.

"We have no direct transfer window on Jupiter from Mars at this time. We will need to burn again in thirty-seven days and then again in six hundred, twelve."

"But aren't we headed straight there?"

Peta gestures towards the forward view where a bright object, Jupiter, lies almost directly ahead.

"Jupiter will outpace us in its orbit."

"Space is funny like that, sister," says Moon. "And real unforgiving. We ain't got the right window on the Jupiter system from here and now. So, we're gonna jump out to a higher solar orbit, one that is on conjunction for old Jove. Then we swing back round the sun and do another transfer orbit out. Yer kinda lucky the math lets us do it in just two."

"But why not just," Peta flaps her hands, "point the ship and use the engines."

"'Cos we'd run out of fuel for the generators in about three weeks. And we'd probably burn out the engines before that. These ships are made for planetary orbit, not deep space. D-Gates see to that."

"So why fly there at all?"

"There ain't no D-Gate at Jupiter, is why. Earth, Mars, Titan, Oberon, and the big one out at Neptune that'll take you all the way to Uriel and that's a whole other star. But not Jupiter. Not, apparently, on our ancient ancestors' agenda. No one knows why."

"Well…" Gray starts to say.

"We have," the Avatar interrupts, "increased our lead over the Argai defender to ten minutes."

Cut to…

Visual effects. The exterior of the Venture, looking back towards Mars. Another bright point of light is visible. We zoom in dramatically and the point expands to reveal it is the Argai warship, 'Banner of Glory'.

Cut to…

Bridge of the 'Banner of Glory'. Admiral Vain is standing. Two pilots work over the consoles in a pit front of him. Tactical officers man stations around the walls to wither side. Behind him a woman in white face make-up stands over a nervous-looking man in a chair. Captain Tawlb stands at his shoulder.

"Saints and martyrs, what are they doing?" Vain demands.

"A long elliptical solar orbit, sir," Tawlb answers dryly. " Perigee somewhere in the asteroid belt."

"Where? Ceres? Hygiea?"

"Much closer in, sir. Nowhere colonised, as far as we know. It may not be their destination."

"They can't have the supplies for a long journey, surely?"

"Unknown, sir. We do not know the full extent of the treason the Fallen builders may have conducted. We should presume the worst and assume they are fully stocked."

"Armed?"

"Perhaps. Though it is interesting that they have not fired on us after the initial attack."

"We were barely scratched!"

"Indeed. Two rockets only. Hardly starship class torpedoes." Tawlb, diplomatically, does not raise any further allusion to Vain's retaliation. It was unclear at the end of Act 4 how much of Helium Station remains after the Admiral fired on the Valient. That mistake, destroying the wrong ship, is what let the Venture escape in the confusion.

"Can we catch them?"

"We can match their orbit. If we engage in pursuit, they can probably outrun us."

"How?"

"Their sails appear to be more efficient than ours."

"Can we shoot them?"

"Easily. Torpedoes are ready."

Vain glanced at the white-faced woman.

"Then, what do the fates say, woman?"

The Soothsayer's Story

["Knights of the Spire" Vol.1 No.9]

Her name was Calixa. Formerly Calithea tol Rondoroth, but caste and clan were cast off early on in the induction to the priesthood.

Mother of Fire gan Telithu had placed Calixa at Vain's elbow to watch this unfolding catastrophe. Calixa did not like the Mother. She did not like Pyromancers generally, spending all their time staring into sacred flames and breathing intoxicating gasses.

Truth be told – and she was a Soothsayer, after all – Calixa had very little time for any of the other diviners. Not the dream-readers, or the bird-watchers, and certainly not the card-players. Mother of Beasts gan Feromu, her study forever full of cats, had tried to tempt Calixa, but Mother of Signs gan Ormoru had just snorted at her and sent her straight to the Hieromancers.

Which had been fine by her.

The futures, Calixa knew, were written in breath and blood and bone.

The gauntlet that she wore on her left hand was equipped with needles, knives, blades, and sheers. She could take blood or hair or skin or life, depending on the need, urgency and scale of foresight required.

Her own right arm was scared with tracks of her own sacrifices, and the palm of the gauntlet itself was forever reading and restitching the lifeline that curved around her thumb.

The boy under her hand, strapped to his chair, quivered with nervousness. The boy – she thought of him as a boy, young as he was, a mere sergeant in the Admiral's ground troops, in his early twenties perhaps – the boy had been honoured when he was first chosen. But that had been before things had started to go wrong. When he'd expected the honour to cost him maybe a scratch and a few centilitres of blood.

With her right hand, Calixa peeled back a strip on the gauntlet and pressed the anaesthetic tab to the boy's neck. His head swayed and he was under in seconds. Not asleep. Entranced. In his dissociated state he would remain within the observation/awareness matrix. But he wouldn't struggle.

She uttered a silent prayer to the secret goddess, not Juno mother of blessed Saint Sebastian, but Elizabet the Pythia.

Then, without pause, she gripped his right hand in hers, took the little finger between the third and fourth fingers of the gauntlet and with the secateurs sliced it off just below the first joint.

The boy didn't move but his eyes widened, and she knew the shock had gone through his system. Maybe through his soul. The soul, his true being, that connected this knot of mundane matter with other bodies across space and across time. Through the vibrations of the shock in the matrices she could read past, present and some of the future.

She picked up the sacrifice, the boy's severed fingertip, and held it in the palm of the gauntlet. It began to analyse the vibrational energies, the threads in the pattern. She cauterized the stump with the heatpad on the gauntlet thumb.

And then she began to run calculations.

The future stirred. Something was coming.

She glanced over at the Admiral and his man. Surely Vain was not that important. A second-rate son of a third-rate bloodline. For all that he had been sent here by the Emperor. Part of some scheme, no doubt; the Mother of Fire probably knew, you could bet.

She glanced over and something gazed back, something with huge eyes, and huger ears, and yet skull-like, with such sharp, sharp fangs. Something prophetic.

But about the stolen ship, this Venture and the Fallen pirates who had taken it, nothing. It was like there was an absence of threads in the pattern around them.

The Admiral looked at her expectantly. She would need more.

Again, she did not hesitate. She took the boy's left eye.

Inside his head, she knew, he was screaming.

Something obscured her vision. Something even bigger. Like a black eye staring back at her, uninterested, unforgiving. A black eye or a black flower. A black flower opening up before her. The black flowers of Throne were a warning. The priestesses remembered that, even if the patriarchs had long since forgotten. A black flower or a black mouth. A black mouth swallowing her up, devouring all the futures.

Local space and time, all the careful structures put in place by the Order, tore open and the rules of prophesy dissolved in the face of—

"Aaiii!"

Calixa pitched forward and collapsed across the boy.

"They are gone!" she gasped.

***

"Well," says Gray. "This is where we find if we really have what we think we have."

"What the hell are you talking about, lady?" Moon replies, but Gray ignores her.

"Interface," she says.

The avatar looks at her disdainfully.

Gray pauses, musing.

"Peta," says Gray. "Could you address the ship's computer, please."

Peta Quinn looks confused for a moment.

"Just try it, please," Gray urges.

"Um. Okay, I guess," says Peta. "Er, computer, interface?"

"Yes, Peta Quinn," the avatar responds to her with almost enthusiasm.

"Interesting," Gray ponders. "Peta, repeat what I say, could you."

"Er. Sure. Okay." Peta looks from avatar to Gray and back. Moon looks on sceptically.

"Peta, please say 'Key phrase: Lupus, Lion, Leopard'."

"Um, 'Lupus, Lion, Leopard'," Peta repeats.

Suddenly it appears she has the avatar's full attention.

"Project Paradise. Access key. Awaiting."

"Peta," Gray continues, "now please say: 'Avarice, Violence, Malice. These are the beasts that pursue us'."

"'Avarice'," repeats Peta, "'Violence, er, Malice. These are the beasts—'."

"Project access granted," the avatar doesn't wait. "Activation code required. Awaiting."

"Activation code?" Peta asks, looking up at Gray.

"Repeat after me," says Gray again. "'Abandon hope…'"

"'Abandon hope…'"

"'…all ye who enter here.'"

"'…all ye who enter here.'"

"Oh corks," says Moon. "The gates of hell."

"Open the gate, please Peta," says Gray.

"Open it," says Peta Quinn.

Cut to…

Visual effects shot. Exterior, Venture. Close, viewing the ship from in front.

The strange devices of coils and crystals on the ship's central wings are lit up with green and purple lightnings.

The point of view rotates, keeping the ship in view but revolving front to rear.

In front of the ship, we see space stretch and warp, unfolding like a paper flower, opening up like a musical box, and a black disc forming.

A D-Gate.

The Venture has opened a D-Gate.

This is, of course, impossible.

A bluer flare around the finlike sails at the rear of the ship propels the Venture forward and she vanishes into the Gate.

Cut to…

Flight deck. The wrap-around screen is strobing with the same effect we saw in Act 1 when the Pentallion went through the Gate from Earth to Mars.

Peta Quin is kneeling, fallen to her knees, and whispering over and over:

"Screaming, screaming!"

The Gate effect ends, and the screen is suddenly dominated by a giant planet, of brown and red clouds, and one huge red spot.

They have arrived at Jupiter.

Fade to black.