CMR Prologue

The room still held some of the lingering riot of perfume from the previous week's ball. The smell must have been cloying with all those aristocrats and debutantes in the large but closed cabin, as one would have expected the air scrubbers to have cleared out most of the scent. House Greeling had gotten a discount for renting the space on Astarte Station in orbit around Venus. Their accountants might even have preferred the stuffiness—people bid faster when they’re eager to leave.

The sign on the door outside was so bland and bureaucratic that it was ignored by most of the intended guests. It read 'AUCTION FOR SURVEY ARTIFACTS OF KBO-328, BY INVITATION ONLY.' Most of the room was filled with wealthy collectors, museum scouts, and a few obligatory representatives of the various Great Houses. Only two in the room knew what they were looking at.

The first was Yacen Lema, a businessman from Aphrodite Prime. The front of his shop was dedicated to refurbished technology, but the rear of his shop was a meeting place, safe house, and black market outlet for the Hellfire Cabal. They would be very interested in the objects on auction. He’d decided to take a chance on some of the encrypted datapads. The gamble had blown almost half his risk budget.

The second was Amaris Volkert, a minor scion of House Volkert who had shown up simply to keep up appearances at a Great House function. She wasn't as immersed in the darkest aspects of reality as many in her House.

But she knew a Rat-Thing when she saw one.

Various encrypted datapads of the Reformed Solar Commonwealth Era had been on offer before. From previous experience, these could be anything from recipe books to little insights into politics of the time, valuable for the museums and collectors but not likely to be practical. The two who knew better chided themselves once the last item was on the block.

It was a grimy jar, almost opaque with filth, and what sat inside would have been mistaken for some genetic experiment gone wrong or a taxidermist's sick joke. It had the appearance of a large brown rat, but its head resembled a grizzled old man complete with a long beard and receding hairline. There was something uncanny about the face that had nothing to do with its ancient, mummified state. The eyes were too wide-set or the face was too long even under the beard. Where dry lips had receded, its teeth were more ratlike than human, with a dusty forked tongue clenched between a double row of dry yellow fangs.

While the curio would have interested both of those attendees in the know, it was the incidental artifact being sold with it. On a retractable cable attached for unknown reasons to the lid of the jar was a stylus. It had been custom made in that ancient bygone era, but through the bronze tarnish you could still see the monogram—a stylized SD stretched into a seal, the kind found in the grimoires of ancient Terra. Suddenly for just two bidders, the atmosphere became charged with a near desperate energy.

Yacen made the mistake of bidding first, and high. Amaris picked up on his tone immediately, and glanced back at him. Her expression had been placid, but her eerie blue eyes told him that he'd been clocked. She matched his bid by a single increment, which made him breathe a sigh of relief. He offered two more bids, then shrugged airly. That was the signal for his spoiler, Creedy, to begin bidding for him to diffuse the interest. He almost hadn't brought Creedy, but now was very glad that he did. The incremental duel between Creedy and Amaris gave Yacen some breathing room, and he slipped into the hallway. He didn’t notice the faint shimmer of active camouflage in the corner of his vision as he dialed up his contact with the Cabal, but the prickle of paranoia that he'd been feeling for weeks made him keep his voice low.

The hologram that floated above his palm wasn't Vernis's face. It was a horrible demonic toad, better to maintain anonymity should Yacen be captured. Vernis's voice was rough on the other side, as if he'd been exercising.

"What is it, Lema?"

"I have something, but I need a guarantee," Yacen murmured. "It's big. Sephiran Dubhan big. Do I have your guarantee of payment once the auction clears? There's a Volkert here, and she's trying to outbid me. I'll need at least forty mil. Do I have you on side? I can't do this with that kind of risk on my own."

There was silence on the other end, and finally Vernis's response. His voice was strained, almost pained. "Fine, Lema. Do what you need to do."

Yacen chuckled as he shut off the holocomm and turned to enter the ballroom again. As he straightened his clothes, slicking his hair back into place, and putting confidence back into his posture, he didn't notice the active camouflage dropping behind him. A black bag dropped over his head, but he struggled and it didn't quite make it past his cheek before he got a look at the uniform of his assailant; the immaculate white reflec tunic with the red knotted cross of the Order of Saint Sarah. A cold terror gripped him before a gloved finger crammed into his mouth, choking off his scream. A surge of electricity erupted from the finger, then ripped through him as a second gloved finger rammed into his ribcage to act as the neutral and complete the circuit. His vision went white and then black as he slipped into unconsciousness.

Back in the ballroom, Creedy looked nervously at the door. He had no resources on his own, and was entirely reliant on Yacen for any money he'd be on the hook to provide. His hesitation cost him, and the auctioneer began counting down. Creedy was frozen. He couldn't risk defaulting, and sweat began to bead. Finally, he shouted, "One hundred million!" His voice squeaked, and his fingers jittered like loose wires. When those eerie blue eyes glanced at him, both Creedy and Amaris knew then and there that this had been his last bid.

"One hundred million and five," Amaris responded, settling back with confidence. The auctioneer tried to draw out the countdown on what had turned out to be the most valuable piece, but nobody made another offer and the Rat-Thing of Sephiran Dubhan was sold to Amaris Volkert. 

As Amaris filled out her docking information, she wondered where Yacen had gone. On a whim, she sent off a request to her House to look into him along with a full report. By the time she was ready to board her ship and disembark, her House had responded; she was to bring the Rat-Thing to Eris, and she'd have to do it without the planetary waygates. She resigned herself to a long, boring journey.

Meanwhile, on Terra, the call cut off and a dingy soundproof room was plunged into the shadow of candlelight. Vernis winced, feeling the slim opportunity for salvation disappearing. The shackles on his wrists rattled with the movement, and some part of him felt a little impressed by the showmanship of the interrogation. He looked up with his remaining eye at a human monster.

A bioplastic goat mask covered his face from the cheeks up, cowling at the back and supporting two twisting black horns. He was wearing a red coat over a black jumpsuit which strained to contain his bloated barrel of a frame. His voice was chesty, clipped, and blunt, carrying the distinctive accent of a man who’d learned to read among the nearly illiterate. The man-mountain bent low to get into Vernis's face. "Tell me about Sephiran Dubhan," he rumbled. "If you don't make me ask again, I'll let you keep the other testicle."

Vernis didn't make him ask again. Vernis babbled everything he knew, which was both inadequate and extensive. The man in the goat mask didn't understand most of it, but he was recording the interrogation anyway. He'd be able to go over and over it as required until he understood what he needed to.

Unbeknownst to him, something else was watching—and through it, three sisters were cackling triumphantly.

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