Intergalactic Espionage

Saren Raethar sprints down the labyrinthine streets of Vandyr, dodging down alleyways and under overpasses, winding about in all manner of disconcerting directions in the hope of losing her tail. Always she feels their presence, no matter where she turns, whenever she thinks she’s finally safe, they gain on her. The city smells of ozone and shit, the sky is dark, not of night but from the low layer of smog that lingers always above the metropolis moon, the humidity is thick and acidic. Saren’s skin beads with sweat from the chase. She’s never seen her hunter in full, only brief glimpses of the black armor of an Impyrial Executioner.

Ducking under a shattered skybridge, Saren jumps between chunks of twisted metal and concrete, spinning about she cuts left hard, hoping futilely that her hunter will fall for her feint. They never do. For three days she’s run and been pursued. She’s fought Clegharyon Executioners before, all formidable foes, but none have persisted as this one has. Jumping between the planets in system, they’ve managed to track her from moon to moon, planet to planet, Dyson sphere to megastructure, never ceasing, never relenting. Saren grows ever more weary, she doesn't know how much longer she can hold out. Only if she can find a shuttle out of system, hitch a ride on a merc ship or with a bounty hunter, maybe she’ll find freedom.

Her left turns fails, she can hear her hunter closing fast, their footsteps splash through the puddled streets, silently cursing herself she keeps on, heartbeat racing to the beat of her pounding thighs.

Jolting right and over the wreckage of an Impyrial R9 crumpled between two buildings whose tops disappear into the haze above, she bolts down the long street beyond the crashed starfighter. Not far behind she hears the scramble of the Impyrial servant over the crushed ship.

The Executioners and their ilk are sent to hunt down the few remaining bands of resistance to the Empyror’s reign. To hunt down the likes of Saren and her guild, the last of a generation with an ambition to roam between systems free of the Clegharyon Supremacy. With every passing year the Empyror spreads his spindling fingers further from the capital, out even beyond the quasars and blackholes of the backwood systems.

Gasping for breath, she bolts around a corner into a dank alley, the ground is slick from the last acid rainfall of a few hours past, the dingy walls marred in rust and graffiti. She pulls her lasrifle from her back, it’s time to make a stand. It's clear the anonymous Executioner won't stop until one of them is dead. Whatever this creature is that the Empyre has employed, it's slowly outmatching Saren, if she isn’t able to blow the hunter to scrap now she’ll be dead of exhaustion soon anyway.

Kneeling behind a dumpster she waits, eyeing her lasrifle scope on the entrance to the alley not ten meters ahead. Her vantage point is strategic, that entrance being the only easy way into the alley. Unless somehow the Executioner can climb thirty stories of rusty steel and pounce from above. She shrugs it off as unlikely. Calming her breathing, Saren settles her heart rate, years of self discipline working in her favor, she lets her muscles ease, searching for an inner peace that paves the path for battle stasis.

She hears footsteps over the clamor of the disgusting city, someone approaches the backstreet. Her finger caresses the weapon’s trigger, the whole mouth of the alley in her sight, the footsteps grow louder, clomping and rhythmless. She begins to doubt it's her hunter, lacking in all deception as the footsteps do. Too long has passed, he had been just behind her, she should have only had seconds to raise her weapon.

Then a bipedal armored in the knockoff kargrä steel of an Impyrial soldier saunters past the gap. They carry a massive electropike longer than they are tall, helmeted in black, the twin headed sigil of the Empyre emblazoned across their breastplate.

Saren pulls the trigger and a beam of emerald erupts from the end of her lasrifle, blasting a hole larger than her fist through the soldier’s chest. He falls in a clatter of plate and mail without a grunt or groan. Saren smirks, a wave of relief washing over her, she's free at last, it was almost too easy. She chides herself for not having done that days ago.

“Don’t move.” A helmet augmented voice growls in her ear.

“Not moving.” She says, muscles tensed, silently cursing herself. I knew it was too easy.

“Put down your weapon.”

“Well if I can’t move…”

“Put down the damn lasrifle.” He snarls, rage burning in the Executioner's voice as though born in the lava rivers of Killarnithir.

“Alight, easy now.” Saren lowers the weapon and raises her hands over her head. “Who’d I just shoot?”

“Some grunt, they don’t matter.” The Executioner says. “Turn around, slowly.”

Saren does as ordered not knowing what to expect. A part of her wishes he’d just shoot her in the back and be done with it, now she'd have to stare death in the eyes, she suppresses a shudder at the Executioner's potential brutality.

The man standing in front of her doesn’t wear the full armor of an Impyrial soldier, or even the full plate and mail of the other Executioners she’s met in battle. He's armored only in light shoulder and breastplates, his fuligin cloak and robes are a cut Saren has never seen, his helmet the only Impyrial issued armor he wears, clearly modified, the elongated visor reflects the dim light of the alley, the black metal all of sharp angles and jagged edges. He points only a laspistol at her, though the well used laserlance hanging hinged in two on his back looks ready for a fight.

“I’m going to remove my helm. Make any quick movements and you die.”

“Fair enough.” Saren says, resigning her death as imminent anyway. She isn't ready to meet the void, there's still so much work to do, an entire Empyre to overthrow. A little ambitious perhaps, but what's there to life without aspirations? All her hope flees then, flooding from her like a tsunami off the coasts of Cyrelin VI, she's snared in a trap of her own making. I should have known he'd find a way to come from above. At least she'll die fighting the Empyre. Well, running from the Empyre. She decides it's better than nothing.

He holsters the laspistol and removes his onyx helmet. A clean shaven and vaguely human face of gray skin is revealed, silver hair hangs loose to his shoulders, short bone shard horns stab out the top of his skull above his long locks. A Nyven. Saren's only met one or two Nyvens over the years. The gray skinned sentients tend to remain isolated on their home world of the same name, a snowcapped wasteland. The low g planet evolved the sentients tall and lanky, perfectly suited for the zero g of vacuum and other low g worlds and moons, not unlike the shit stained metropolis of Vandyr on which they stood.

“I can’t see ass in that thing.” The executioner says, hanging his helm on a utility belt heavy with pockets and small arms. “I’m Deimos Vaethrin, Executioner of the Clegharyon Empyre, and Lieutenant of the Xenoquith Intransigence. I’m here to teach you how to escape the Empyror’s wrath.”

“What?” Saren’s jaw drops, she can’t help it, exhausted from over three day’s worth of running and hiding, now this? It has to be a ruse, the secretive Xenoquith Intransigence is one of the few other guilds still resisting the Empyre's rule across the Universium, and a notoriously ruthless bunch at that.

“You heard me.” The Executioner removes a glove and extends his hand. Saren spies a spiral branded into the wrist half covered by his sleeve. Only the deadliest of Xenoquithi assassins are awarded that molted mark. “Long have I worked from the inside of the Impyrial bureaucracy, long have I hunted for men and women like you. Come on, the Clegharyons aren't going to overthrow themselves.”

Saren eyes the Executioner and his branded wrist, then shrugs and takes his hand.