A Movable Fortress

Story by Triad Fox on SoFurry

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The second short story from the Anasian Universe (my furry sci-fi universe). This one is quite a bit longer than the first short story, Infection, found here: https://www.sofurry.com/view/1319250.

Substantially different in scope than Infection, A Movable Fortress deals with the struggles of Frederik Azimar, a wolf who is also an interstellar corporate mogul. Frederik has made a highly profitable "deal with the devil", the devil in this case being Zenin Binot, a deadly and cruel lion who is notorious among the crime syndicates of the Anasian Confederation. Azimar's business is in the manufacture of hollowed-out dwarf planets for rich clientele, providing them with a nearly-indestructible and personalized environment, akin to the rich purchasing a private island on 21st century Earth.

Desiring to constantly one-up his competitor, Marva Pletokaar, Azimar takes this risky and possibly illegal contract to profit heavily and retire to his own private paradise world. However, when mysterious billion-year-old ruins are found inside the dwarf planet that is chosen for Zenin, everything begins to fall apart, including Frederik...


A Movable Fortress

A short story from the Anasian Universe, by Triad Fox

Capitalism was a dangerous game for Frederik Azimar. The years of competition, corporate espionage, and social darwinism had turned the wolf into a cold, shrewd, calculating, and highly successful mogul in the luxury asteroid industry. Competition was violently fierce, but the prime dangers of his job tended to lay with his clients. The types of people who bought hollowed-out asteroids that contained their own custom atmospheres and ecosystems usually fell into one of two categories: royalty and hyper-wealthy interstellar business figures, or high-ranking members of the Rederaks, the vast collection of loosely organized crime syndicates that operated across the equally vast Anasian Confederation.

All of Frederik's clients were people who could make or break a career, or destroy and even end a life on a whim, free of repercussions. They commanded militaries, corporate mercenary armies, or gangs of highly armed and unsavory Anasians. Not many others could afford a private asteroid, the 39th century equivalent of the ancient practice of the wealthy owing private islands on their pre-spacefaring homeworlds. Nor would many others have a need for such a secure construct. Unlike most spacecraft, space stations and space-cities, a private, hardened asteroid could take the beating of an entire interstellar navy before the inhabitants would realize that something was amiss.

Powerful people with powerful enemies were Frederik Azimar's bread-and-butter. They were the reason he rose out of bed each morning, and scheming of costly methods of catering to their tastes lulled him to sleep each night. He may have been a professional, but he also shared many of his client's expensive tastes. He could afford them though, as Azimar Worldbuilding was the largest and most well-known of the Allurian asteroid terraforming corporations.

Alluria was a world inhabited by Lupinasians, a group of wolf-like humanoid canine races that, like most other hominid-animal peoples, lived across the region of space referred to as the Anasian Confederation, or AC for short. The wolves of Alluria had peacefully inhabited their world for thousands of years before they discovered that their sun was slowly beginning to go nova. Having become an advanced spacefaring people several centuries before learning the news of their now-terminal world, they began the task of moving a population of three billion off of the surface of their planet.

Over the course of 150 years, some of the population was moved to other planets in the Alluria system, but due to the immense logistical nightmare of moving an entire planet's population off-world, the Allurians decided to hollow out much of their planet's crust into a honeycomb of hundreds of immense artificial caverns that could hold a large city of several million, plus any surrounding countryside. Upon developing and mastering the methods of creating underground environments, the rest of Alluria was moved into the underground cities. People, plants, animals, everything.

Just before the sun went nova and the surface ecosystem was destroyed in the solar flash, the Allurians were able to successfully reproduce every major ecosystem that had existed on the surface of their planet, and created others for customized purposes, such as recreation or agriculture. While their planet was a barren, rocky husk when viewed from the outside, the interior was a series of vibrant and thriving cavern-worlds, filled with the lupine people who set the Anasian standard for interior terraforming.

Allurians, out of necessity, were a tough, creative, and intelligent people. They would not have survived their ancient catastrophe otherwise. Frederik Azimar also would not have survived the ire of some of his clients and enemies in his long career were he not blessed with Allurian foresight as well. He would not, for example, have lasted this long with his current client, the dreadful and much-feared feline Zenin Binot, the notorious leader of the Zarthu Morga, the primary Felinasian branch of the Rederak crime syndicates, and some of the most murderously effective of them all.

Zenin made his fortunes on the standard fare of those of his calling; extortion, drugs, prostitution, murder-for-hire. Only he executed these affairs with a near-religious passion, and a systemically twisted and almost genius level of aptitude for his criminal arts. Zenin's blood-stained paws were in criminal affairs that reached across thousands of light-years, and his net worth was higher than that of many entire Anasian societies.

While Zenin owned several small worlds that contained private residences and homes for his many operations, what he really wanted was Azimar Worldbuilding's most groundbreaking and revolutionary interior world. Each of his planets were capable of defending themselves from attack from a rival Rederak gang or other standard enemy. But what of the Califeron Teseretz, the Anasian Confederation's combination of interstellar military and federal law enforcement? This organization had the firepower to level the surfaces of entire worlds in seconds, something his rival Rederaks could not do to him. Yet.

When the Califeron Teseretz, or CT for short, wound up coming after Zenin, he wanted to be ready.

The artificial sun had been shining upon the Allurian metropolis of Teletria for several hours by the time Frederik had arrived at his office at the center of the cavern-city. He usually could afford to keep his lower-class clients waiting on him for hours, but with Zenin, he needed everything to be precise. Any aberration to his intended plans could be lethal; Zenin had a habit of leaving the frozen corpses of those who displeased him with trivial matters orbiting uninhabited planets in the Periphery.

The orange light from the artificial sun at the cavern's roof entered the office's window, and illuminated Frederik's exorbitantly-expensive Hazian Teakwood desk. The wood's color shifted from a ruddy-brown to a dazzling, almost psychedelic iridescence in direct (semi-) natural light. Frederik chose this time of day to meet with new clients, as the rare and valuable wood was used to wordlessly express great wealth among the elites of the AC. A wealthy client would appreciate the gesture, and know that they were dealing with a true individual of taste.

Frederik doubted that this would impress a character as vile as Zenin Binot, but it certainly could not hurt. Overt signs of wealth were big among the Rederaks, and Frederik assumed that Zenin, who was due to arrive shortly, would be no different. Considering the absurd and potentially illegal specifications that his project was to entail, the assumption was that Zenin's personality and demeanor would match his expectations. Frederik was not exactly pleased to discover just how correct he was.

"Sir," Frederik's intercom rose him from his thoughts, "your clients are here to see you."

Deeply drawing in a breath, Frederik pressed the panel on his desk that opened the office door. In strode three very tall and muscular Felinasians, apparently of a leonine variety. They produced small instruments that they used to scan the room, apparently for listening devices or other hidden threats. Once the devices ceased beeping, the three giant cats moved out of the doorway. In entered a much smaller leonid, dressed in a suit made of the leather of some exotic, unknown scaled organism. The suit creaked sickeningly as the lion entered the room, and approached Frederik's desk.

"Zenin Binot, I presume?" Azimar began his standard greeting, "May I welcome you to Alluria? I hope that your trip here has been pleasant"

Zenin snorted. "My trip? Are you joking? Have you ever travelled to this planet on a ship?"

"I- I'm not sure I understand what you mean..." Frederik replied uneasily.

"What I mean is, you can't land a ship on your planet. Your spaceports are entirely underground. There's no entrance or exits." Zenin said.

"Yes?"

"So the only way you can enter this planet is though a jump-gate. And the ones you have are all terrible. I nearly threw up when we went though!" Zenin replied.

Due to the post-nova sun's constant ejection of intense radiation, the surface of Alluria was forbidden from access. Any attempt to reach the surface, either from space, or from underneath, was prohibited. The underground cities were connected together into an enclosed system. There were no direct access points to the outside world, except through jump-gates that were placed in large caverns that functioned as spaceports. The sister gates these were connected to lay further out in the Alluria system, where ships could safely gain access to the radiation enshrouded planet.

"My apologies for the uncomfortable trip, Mr. Binot. Most gates that you would use do not have to move a ship through several miles of solid rock as these. Ours do take some getting used to. Is there anything I can get you to alleviate your travel stress?"

"Yes, a drink, some Felinasian Barata, on ice. It has been a long trip, and we have important business to discuss..." Zenin ended the statement on an ominous tone.

"Yes. I have reviewed your specifications for the project, and I must say, they are.... more than we have done in the past with other clients." Frederik explained as he began preparing Zenin's Barata at the bar behind his desk.

Zenin scowled. "Well, Mr. Azimar, as you must know, I am not like your other clients."

"Oh yes, I am well aware. I too, am not like other purveyors of internally-terraformed asteroids. I also relish a challenge, and what you propose is... challenging, to say the least."

"I know that. I also know that this has never been tried, only proposed by the CT and a few other militaries. That's why I came to you. You're supposed to be the best. Can you do it?" Zenin asked.

"It is very much within our capabilities." Frederik told him, "However, the issues lie in finding the proper candidate asteroid or planetesimal for such a task, as well as cost and AC laws that are put into place to limit what one can actually do with a private asteroid." Frederik presented Zenin with his Barata on ice.

The lion laughed, while his three cohorts in the back of the room smirked. "Do I look like the kind of person who gives a shit about AC laws? And cost? Pffffftttt." He stuck out his tongue at Frederik at the idea of these being concerns.

The wolf was taken aback at the gesture. He had to remember that these were Rederaks, and not his normal, more culturally refined and less dangerous clientele. "Well, we do have three large candidate asteroids and one small moon in an uninhabited system that we have mapped. I can send out a few survey ships that can be there in a couple of days to bring back scans. Once we get the results, you can choose which one you feel works best, and we can begin work."

"Good, that's what I like to hear!" Zenin's face contorted into his twisted version of a smile. "Then by all means, get to it! I need this done as soon as possible."

Abruptly, Zenin gulped down his drink, and placed the glass on the top of the desk. The light from the window had moved on, a result of the artificial sun attempting to imitate movement across the sky. The iridescence had faded, and the wood had returned to it's normal appearance. The lion and his entourage of bodyguards exited the room, and left a slightly relieved Frederik Azimar to begin organizing the survey parties.

The next morning, Frederik and three ships from Azimar Worlduilding jumped out of the gate at the spaceport cavern adjacent to the city of Teletria. Once they exited the planet and appeared outside of the external gates, they plotted a day and a half faster-than-light burn to the ABRAXAS-6 system, an uninhabited and unclaimed system consisting of a yellow dwarf star, eight small rocky planets, a rich and unusually large asteroid belt, and two large gas giants.

The survey ships, designated AZIMAR-1, -2, and -3, had four targets in the ABRAXAS-6 system. Three of the largest and most spherical asteroids in the belt, and a medium-sized rocky moon orbiting the inner gas giant. During the trip, Frederik reviewed Zenin's insane asteroid specifications and the reports from the initial survey team. A crew of Humans and other Apinasians were sent by the AC from the relatively nearby Apinasian planet Earth 230 years prior, and determined that the system was useless and devoid of any profitable resources. The system had been placed in the ABRAXAS catalogue; named after an obscure ancient Earth deity of the primate-people who hailed from there, this was a list of systems that had little to no practical use to Humans, Apinasians, or the AC.

Well, Frederik would see about that. His probes had determined that this system had some of the finest quality sub-planet orbital objects in the entire interior of the Anasian Confederation. Even better, none of his Allurian competitors knew about it! It was a shame that corporations could not claim chunks of space the way that individuals or governments could. Otherwise this system would quickly become the property of Azimar Worldbuilding.

He would need all of the extra resources that he could get for this project. If Zenin's specs were to be trusted, this would be, by far, the most ambitious project his company or any others in the industry had conducted. Additionally, it was possibly illegal, but the vast sum of money that the interstellar gangster was willing to pay was worth it. Azimar's company would be worth more than many Anasian societies, and he could finally retire early to his own private paradise planet. His son and two daughters were more than capable of running the company at this point. He had a life to enjoy.

Alas, in order to retire, he had to complete this mad project. Zenin's plans, while psychotically ambitious, were revolutionary. The current state of Azimar's industry contained several limitations. First, were the technological limitations. In the beginning, converted asteroids were usually left in their natural orbits, as it was next to impossible to move them, aside from nudging them into a more stable orbit for the client. Finally, a century prior, the CT Engineering Corps developed a new massive class of spaceship designed to move asteroids and planetesimals around in a star system to stabilize stray objects and to keep them from striking inhabited planets. The ships, designated "moonhaulers", had become commercially available around the time that Frederik Azimar had inherited the company from his father, four decades prior.

Using moonhaulers, a company like Azimar Worldbuilding could, for an exorbitant fee, use their ships to move an internally-terraformed asteroid to a location of their client's desire. It was a tedious task, as a moonhauler that was towing a huge space rock could not travel too far past light-speed, and could only use the largest gates of the Anasian Confederation's jump network. Zenin wanted to get around this by strapping the engine arrays of eight moon haulers to his asteroid, thereby making it self-mobile. This would be a first in Anasian history.

This lead to the next, and even more serious problem with this project. The Califeron Teseretz, understanding the tactical concern with, say, an unhinged individual who uses a hardened, hollow, and self mobile asteroid as a nearly indestructible weapons platform, had pressured the AC to pass laws regulating the industry. A hardened civilian asteroid could not have any external structures, aside from sensor arrays and entry-points. No weapons, and as far as Frederik could tell, no engines either.

Azimar's company had a whole battalion of AC lawyers to fight that battle, thankfully. As long as Zenin avoided requesting external weapons systems, his legal team should be able to handle it. That's what he paid them for, after all. Thousands of years may have passed, but most legal systems were still greased with the proper application of monetary lubricant. Frederik decided to rely on this particular universal constant for his peace of mind, and moved on to fully review the rest of the specifications. His team leaders and the captains of the other two ships would need to be briefed on the nature of the project en route.

The asteroid or dwarf planet would need to be large, and have enough gravity to hold a spherical shape. Ceres-class asteroids/dwarf planets and slightly larger rocky moons were the only ones that would do, but something Mercury or Ganymede sized would be too large, and much more likely to contain an active core. The solid, dead core of the asteroid would be hollowed out, still leaving at least 25 kilometers of crustal rock on the outside. Zenin had requested 100 kilometers of rock, and a dwarf planet that reached the upper-edge in acceptable size.

Another thirty or forty kilometer layer of a hardening agent would be applied under the crustal rock. This would create a second layer of armoring. This layer was generally a combination of concrete made from rock from the asteroid's interior, and mixed with a plasticizing agent and a resinous substance made with various mineral nano-fibers. The mixture was applied in alternating layers in differing directions. The idea would be to absorb and disperse the seismic energy of any impact force hitting the surface, as well as offering another layer of protection to the inside environment.

The internal environment would be vast, even with these outer layers. A giant spherical open core that could expand in diameter for over 800 kilometers. In this core would be one of two configurations that customers had the option to decide. The first configuration would contain an artificial sun planted in the enter of the environment chamber at the core. The entire surface of the interior would be covered in land, water, forests, mountains, deserts, and other aspects of the complete custom ecosystem. This allowed for more surface space, but created a less natural feel than the second configuration.

The second type of configuration of these asteroid interiors would have consisted of the same spherical interior, only with the artificial sun moving across one half of the space, with terrain and land occupying the hemisphere underneath. This would give the impression of a natural-appearing artificial sky, complete with moving sun(s), planets, and stars, in addition to weather systems and other aspects that a customer would choose. This was usually the most popular option of the two, and the one that Zenin had decided upon.

Once the survey ships had done a complete interior scan of the asteroid, checking it for weak points or other structural flaws, they would begin coring out the interior. This was always the most difficult part of the job. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of rock would need to be removed, and this was usually done with conventional nuclear explosives. They were fairly inexpensive for excavation purposes, and generally extremely effective, once the residual radiation was removed. Their use was highly regulated, though.

Finally, a suitable series of mountain ranges or crater-free highlands would need to be found on the candidate asteroid's surface, the purpose being to find a stable location to mount the engine arrays. An engine array of a single moon hauler could be up to 200 kilometers wide, and produce enough thrust to tow a small moon, so it would be essential to find a place that would not cave in when the engines were activated. Finding eight locations to mount such a device would be no easy task.

Once Frederik understood the full scope of this project, he relayed his directions to AZIMARs-2 and -3. His ship, AZIMAR-1, would investigate the moon of the interior gas giant, while the other two ships would scan the asteroids, which were smaller and would take less time. Within a week, Azimar and his crews would select which of these four celestial objects would become the new fortress of one of the Anasian Confederation's most feared and reviled criminals. The pads of Frederik's hand-paws began to tremble as he sent the transmissions to the survey teams.

A week had passed, and the survey ships had not yet completed their scans. AZIMAR-2, while conducting a deep-core scan of the third target in the belt, had collided with a small piece of rock while in orbit. The impact had knocked its sensor array out, and had taken the ship out operation for the surveys. After AZIMAR-2 returned via post-light burn back to Alluria, the other two ships had to fill in the scanning gaps. This lead to a series of delays, which made the eternally impatient Zenin Binot highly frustrated.

"Where's my asteroid, Frederik?!" Zenin's holographic projection screamed at Azimar. "You told me you'd have the surveys done in a week! It's been a week, where's my planet?"

"Mr. Binot, my apologies, we lost a ship in the asteroid belt, and have been working double-shifts to make up for the loss in scanners and manpower. Please accept my-" Frederik stammered, trying to appease the gangster.

"I don't care if the Great Star-Swallower of the Vulpinasians ate your whole fleet! I want my surveys, and I want my asteroid! I don't have time to play your fucking games Frederik!" Holo-Zenin continued screaming, diverting the attention of everyone on the bridge of AZIMAR-1 from their duties, and onto the unfolding drama.

"Look, please." Frederik pleaded, "Just give me three more days, we will have all of the asteroids surveyed, and we will send you the reports via QC linkup." QC, or "Quantum Communications", uses quantum entanglement and non-locality to "instantly" communicate across space using a vast network of entangled devices.

"In three more days I will be discussing this project with Marva Pletokaar, your direct competitor on Alluria!" Zenin threatened.

Frederik's fur bristled at the name. If there was anyone that he genuinely hated, it was Marva Pletokarr. She was the chair of Mivell Terraforming, the second-highest grossing internal terraforming company on Alluria. She was also a frightening and formidable wolfess, just as cutthroat as Frederik, except that she, unlike him, did not find a problem with hiring private mercenaries and Rederaks to deal with adversaries in the business. They had a long and violent history with one another.

"No!" Frederik yelled angrily, "No, absolutely not! I will not have you going to that... that bitch!"

"Then you," Zenin growled menacingly, "have a planet to produce for me, Azimar. You have until the end of the day to complete your surveys, or I go to Pletokaar, who I know would just love to get her paws on a project like this!"

Frederik gulped, and attempted to regain his composure. "Very well, Mr Binot, I will have the reports for you tonight by QC. I apologize for the inconvenience."

Zenin (or his hologram, rather) looked downward, and slowly ran his hands across his suit, the creaking of which managed to make it's way into the holo-feed. "I saw you eyeing my suit when we met in your office." Zenin said seductively.

"Y-yes? It is an... interesting piece. Very..." Azimar gulped, "Very eye-catching."

Zenin took advantage of Frederik's nervousness. "Do you know how I got it? It's a very interesting story."

"No, I don't know. I'm not even sure what kind of material it is." Azimar answered, taking Zenin's bait.

"Well," Zenin began, "twenty years ago, when I took over the Zarthu Morga, I had a young protege, a deadly and very attractive young Dracinasian, X'clid Zentu. Hard to pronounce, I know. Ah, but in those days, he was always by my side, my second in command. Ruthless, cunning, virile, murderous. Mmm..."

"He sounds like your lover..." Frederik replied sarcastically.

"Oh, like none YOU would have ever known! But that's beside the point. One day, he was...seduced by another Rederak gang leader, with greater power and wealth than I could provide him then. He left me, and switched over. X'clid took many of my men, ships, and wealth with him."

"What does this have to do with the suit?" Frederik sighed. "Or the asteroid?"

"Oh, my dear, impatient Azimar, I'm getting to that." Zenin purred. "I had to make an example of him after such a harsh betrayal. So I sent a few of the boys to capture him when he and his defectors were out drunk and chemically celebrating. I brought him to me, and confronted him. His apologies and cries for mercy were not enough when I was done having my fun, and I made an example of him." Zenin smiled and tugged at the scaly lapels of his suit, with Frederik's stomach dropping as the realization dawned on him.

Zenin, seeing this, grinned an unusually contorted grin, and screamed the following: "And if you ever fail or betray me, Azimar... I will be wearing YOU next! That long white Lupinasian fur of yours would make for a great cloak..."

The holo-projection quickly winked out and shut off, leaving Frederik and the others on the bridge of AZIMAR-1 in shock, their jaws agape. After a few seconds of stunned silence, Frederik suddenly yelled "Well! Let's get to it! We need a planet by tonight people! What are you waiting for? That skank Pletokaar to beat us on this one too? Go go go!" He stormed off the bridge, and retired to his office. Frederik took an amphetamine pill out of the jeweled container on his desk, and swallowed it. He needed time to think.

The decision was made to expedite the survey process; the team chose the second target asteroid in the ABRAXAS-6 system's belt. It was not perfect, but considering the new time constraints, it was selected anyway. Azimar needed to get specs of some sort to Zenin to prevent the loss of both his own pelt, and the lucrative project to his direct competitor, Marva Pletokaar.

After sending the interstellar gangster's files to him via QC link, Frederik ordered AZIMAR-1 to land in a deep cavern that had an opening on the surface. AZIMAR-3 would remain above the dwarf planet, and perform orbital support operations as needed. If Zenin was going to be this maddeningly impatient, then Frederik needed to get this project started (and completed) as soon as possible. He was beginning to dislike the felonious Felinasian as much as he despised Marva.

The moderately-sized AZIMAR-1 activated it's thrusters, and flew across the rugged and barren terrain of the asteroid. Their destination was a horizontal opening in the surface of the small world, nestled at the bottom of a large crater. The opening appeared to be the collapsed ceiling of a long-dead lava tube. Frederik's planetary geologists recommended entering and following the lava tube to it's terminus deep under the surface. This would give the teams a place to begin excavating a path to the equally-dead core of the world.

Sinking into the opening of the tube, AZIMAR-1 switched on its external running lights, and illuminated the cavern system. The wide walls of the lava tube were almost perfectly smooth, all imperfections in the surface of the rock having been scoured away by ancient magma flows. The route that they took through the cavern system was extensive, and finally lead them to a large, dome-shaped opening that reminded Frederik of some of the caverns on his world.

AZIMAR-1 set down next to a pile of what looked like large pieces of rocky rubble from above. He and his survey team, consisting of several scientists and engineers, donned pressurized environmental suits, and exited the ship's lower anterior airlock. Stepping out onto the cavern's rocky floor, the team set up an array of powerful floodlights to illuminate the inky darkness of their surroundings. When the lights were set up and turned on, the survey team was astounded by the sight that lay before them.

Large, crumbling spires of what appeared to be some odd metallic alloy and transparent glass-like compound dwarfed the wolves as they towered over the floor of the cavern. Ruins, ancient even by the standards of most spacefaring peoples, lay partially intact at the bases of the spires. Once the amazement abated for Frederik, he began to feel a sense of impending dread. He turned to his team, and called for his resident exo-archeologist, Dr. Elan Motou.

"Elan, what do you make of this?" Frederik asked in regard to the unexpected ruins. "Please tell me it isn't-"

"Well Fred," Elan sympathetically responded to his loyal friend and employer, "I won't know until I examine the buildings further, but from the looks of it, these ruins belonged to the Zhed'Faldei..."

Frederik grunted in disgust. Hadn't he already been through enough setbacks today? Between having his life threatened by some awful -and awfully rich- jackass in the morning, to having the misfortune of finding Zhed'Faldei ruins on the asteroid he hastily chose to appease said rich jackass! Now he had to alert the AC Department of Environmental Affairs to the finding!

Anasian Law dictated that any ruins of the Zhed'Faldei (Old Anasian for "The Progenitors") were to be reported, so that they could be given a proper archaeological survey if they were found during construction or exploration. Such ruins were extremely valuable to the AC, as the Zhed'Faldei were understood to have been the original fully-sentient inhabitants of the galaxy, having departed over a billion years prior. They were rumored to have evolved past a corporeal form, having genetically seeded the galaxy with intelligent, bipedal, "humanoid" life before leaving. They also possessed technology far more advanced than anything the Anasians or their peers had produced.

While that might have interested a scientist like Dr. Motou, it severely bothered Frederik. An AC archaeological team would not have the ruins completely recorded for at least another month or two! Frederik could not wait that long, Zenin would be after his hide before the paperwork for the survey would even be approved by the AC, and Marva would have the last laugh on him!

"Well, this is just great. We don't have time to waste waiting for an AC team to survey these ruins!" Frederik told Elan.

"Fred, surely you aren't suggesting..." Dr. Motou replied.

"I am suggesting. I know the AC penalty for tampering with Zhed'Faldei ruins. That's still not worse than what Zenin will have in store for me if we don't get this project done according to his timeframe. You heard the message on the ship!" Frederik, growing ever more agitated, replied.

"I did." Elan began, "Not that I am recommending this in my official capacity as your exo-archaeologist, but it may be possible to scan and record the ruins to the AC's standards before we have to destroy them. This way, you might be safe in court should the AC catch wind of this..."

"Is that so?" Frederik asked, peering at the illuminated ruins through the helmet of this suit. "Well, it's worth a shot, and better than being turned into some maniac's scarf. Let's get everyone we can down here to record these ruins so we can start blasting out the core."

Frederik's orders made their way back to AZIMAR-3, still in orbit. From there, they were sent back to Azimar Worldbuilding's headquarters on Alluria. Another small fleet of survey ships was sent to assist in the documentation of the Zhed'Faldei ruins. They would arrive in two days. Until then, Frederik and Dr. Motou decided to begin sifting through the rubble for valuable artifacts while their personnel on the asteroid began recording the ruins.

Once the landing area in the cavern was set up as a base camp for the company's operations, the two wolves, after arming themselves and attaching radio-locater devices to their environment suits, ventured off together into the center of what appeared to be a small city or base. While traveling to the ruins in a small all-terrain wheeled vehicle, Elan explained to Frederik that the central clump of ruins was the region that was the most likely place to contain intact artifacts, which could fetch a handsome price on the grey and black markets.

"It is very unusual to find Zhed'Faldei ruins this deep in the interior of an asteroid." Dr. Motou told Frederik, "Usually they are much closer to the surface, if they're even underground at all. It's very likely that these have never been discovered by outsiders."

"So they haven't been picked over by grave-robbers like most of the other ruins that are found?" Azimar asked.

"Correct, or at least that's what I'm hoping." Dr. Motou replied.

"What kinds of artifacts are usually found in these places?" Frederik asked.

"Heh heh, well, they've found all kinds of bizarre things in there. Have you heard of the Taara Saata back on Lupinasia?"

"The Taara Sa- Oh! Yes, I remember now. They're that order of reclusive monks way up in the Zhuldashian Mountains on Lupinasia. When I was a kid, they used to talk about them having superpowers and flying around the clouds, but no one on Alluria ever saw a member, so I thought they were always a fantasy for children." Frederik said.

"Nope, they're real!" Dr. Motou exclaimed. "When I was working on my Doctorate on Lupinasia, we had a member of the order conduct a seminar on their history. Apparently, thousands of years ago, the founders of the movement found a collection of intact Zhed'Faldei ruins on a planet somewhere. They collected these artifacts, and discovered that they were extremely powerful devices, capable of great usefulness or great destructiveness, depending on who wielded them."

"So," Elan continued, "due to their danger, they decided to create the Taara Saata order, to ensure that only the most enlightened, noble, and ethically advanced peoples should have access to it. Of course, they decided that they'd be those people, and have been rounding up these artifacts for their use ever since. In fact, they're the reason that the AC has such strict laws against tampering with one of these ruin complexes. This is to ensure that the Taara Saata Order are the only ones who receive the artifacts that are found. They don't care about the buildings or any of that."

"What? That's incredible! Are you sure you're not just pulling my tail on this one?" Frederik asked.

Dr. Elan Motou laughed. "I've known you for how many years, Fred? You know I'm not messing with you on this one. The Anasian Confederation decided hundreds of years ago that the Taara Saata were the only people capable of using and understanding these devices, and so whenever one is found, it has to be sent straight to them, under tight armed security."

"I had no idea!" Frederik replied, very intrigued by the odd story. "So that's the only reason the AC would need to know about these ruins?"

"Yep", responded Dr. Motou, "That's the only reason. We've known everything that we can about the buildings and other parts of the ruins for centuries. All they care about are these strange artifacts. It's a well-kept secret among those in my field."

"Do you think that we'll find some of these, Elan?" Frederik asked.

"Heh heh, all things considered Fred, I'm sure of it!"

Their vehicle sped down what appeared to be a major road in the ruin complex, heading towards the center. Azimar was still very concerned about the various issues that had arisen in his life that day, but he knew he could always count on Dr. Motou's bizarre stories and sense of humor to defuse his temper during rough times. To think, a monastic order of levitating wolves high up in the mountains of Lupinasia that were hoarding ancient artifacts that gave them superpowers above and beyond that of a normal Anasian? Not only that, these "martial arts monks" were fully supported by the Anasian government who mysteriously funneled these magical Zhed'Faldei artifacts to them? Sounded like a great idea for a novel or animated children's show, but he couldn't take it as a fact unless he saw it with his own eyes.

Regardless, the vehicle approached it's destination. The shattered ruins of the city's central spire arrogantly jutted forth from the piles of ancient structures at its base. Dr. Motou explained that most of the profitable artifacts in untouched Zhed'Faldei cities were located in the central spires. The activities of the cities were governed from these spires, and all of the interesting technology was usually clustered in these locations. It had been a couple of decades since Frederik had the excitement of anything resembling an old-fashioned treasure hunt. Adrenaline, mixing with his amphetamine pills, coursed through his veins, and Azimar felt as though he were young again. He inhaled the recycled air of his environmental suit deeply.

Approaching the massive base of the structure, the exploratory vehicle dodged a few more rocks and skidded to a halt several meters from a large opening in the odd building. The two wolves slowly got out, and carefully jumped to the ground. Gravity was much weaker than usual on these virgin dwarf planets, and they had to adjust their movements to avoid careening off into one of the numerous piles of rubble and shattered glastic that lay about.

"So," Frederik asked, "Do we just go inside?"

"Uh, yeah," Dr. Motou replied, "Pretty much. We just go in with these scanners, record the interior, and check to see if there's anything... interesting."

The two left their vehicle behind, and bounced their way over to the entrance of the central spire. The opening itself towered above them; clearly it was designed for beings much taller than the average Anasian. Creeping inside, they entered the pitch-black interior of the building. Remembering that the illumination in the cave did not extend into the buildings, Dr. Motou and Frederik turned on the helmet-lamps of their environment suits, and began looking around.

Aside from the same piles of billion-year-old rubble as on the outside, the remnants of the interior were fascinating. The building was divided up into different floors, however, each story of the spire was roughly 20 meters high. There were several large stone spiral staircases with steps that were as tall as Frederik. He was impressed at the stature of the Zhed'Faldei, and realized that the galaxy must have been a very different place in their heyday. He began to ruminate on the idea that they were responsible for the myths of giants across almost every culture in space, until he was distracted by a loud beeping sound in his earpiece.

"Oh wow!" Dr. Motou exclaimed, having experienced the same sensation. "The scanners have already picked up the signature of something! I'm glad I had these programmed for Zhed'Faldei artifacts before we left!"

Frederik brought his right wrist up to the viewport of his helmet to view the scanner that Dr. Motou had attached to his suit before they left base camp next to AZIMAR-1. Sure enough, it's small screen displayed a cluster of tiny dots superimposed on a map of their immediate surroundings. Better still, the cluster of dots were not very far from their current location. Frederik relayed this discovery to his friend, who unfortunately did not share his enthusiasm about the find.

When questioned why the apparent close proximity of the objects did not arouse Dr. Motou's hopes, the exo-archaeologist simply pressed a small orange button on the side of his scanner. Frederik watched as a 3-D holographic projection of the spire materialized directly above Dr. Motou's right wrist. The holo-image did not do much for Frederik's morale either once he saw the problem. The cluster of objects were displayed near them in the 2-D image, but only because they were located almost all the way at the top of the remnants of the spire, over a kilometer above them.

"How in the hell are we supposed to get up there?" Frederik demanded. "We didn't bring any climbing gear or hover-packs with us, did we?"

"No," Dr. Motou began, "But it looks like two of the staircases are still intact. One of them hits the top floor pretty close to where we want to go anyway. I recommend that we simply take the old-fashioned method up."

"What?" Frederik was beginning to become irritated again. Clearly his pills were starting to wearing off. "You can't be serious! Did you see the size of those steps? They must have been at least two or three meters high! Are you telling me that we have to climb a kilometer up those things?" As if Frederik's day could get worse...

Elan smiled at Frederik through his helmet. "How high can you jump?"

"How high can I--? A meter or two, like most wolves of my age. Why is that important?"

"Go ahead and jump for me. Right here." Dr. Motou requested of Frederik.

Frederik shook his head. If anyone else had asked him to jump, he would have threatened to throw them out of an airlock. But Dr. Elan Motou was a long-time friend, and he did enjoy humoring the bizarre wolf at times.

Frederik squatted down on his haunches, and launched himself up into what would have been the air if he wasn't inside a sterile dwarf planet. To his surprise, he sailed up almost forty meters, and watched in amazement as Dr. Motou's orange environment-suit rapidly shrunk beneath him. After nearly floating for a split second, he began drifting downward, almost striking the edge of one of the enormous staircases. Dr. Motou briskly strolled to where he assumed that Frederik would land, and waited for him.

Elan heard Frederik's voice over his helmet radio. "Oh. That's right, how could I forget? The gravity here is something like one twentieth of Alluria's..."

Dr. Motou chuckled. He knew that Frederik had a habit of getting so absorbed in his own schemes that he would often forget obvious details such as being on a low-gravity spatial body. Plus, his amphetamine habit probably did help things much as well.

"It's okay, Fred, we all have our moments."

Once Azimar landed, the two bounded their way over to the spiral staircase that would take them to the top level of the spire, and -they hoped- to some lucrative finds above. Motou understood that they could just jump their way up the stairs, being able to land in the section of the stair's helix immediately above them. Within an hour, they had made their way to the top of the spire. The two older wolves immediately collapsed on the platform that capped the column of stairs. They began panting hard, temporarily fogging over their helmets' viewports.

Once the tongue and muzzle-induced humidity cleared from their helmets, they gazed at the sight that lay before them. In stark contrast to the rest of the spire, the top level was fairly devoid of rubble, and the ceilings and walls were made of a very intricate latticework of various geometric and arabesque patterns, occasionally interrupted with extremely elegant embossed writing that nether of the wolves could read. This floor felt more like an ornate temple than the governing center of the underground city. Frederik was impressed, but he felt that it would have been more incredible if the details of the wonderful style of interior artistry had not been covered in several feet of dust.

"This is just--" Dr. Motou was still panting from leaping up the staircase, "--incredible! I have never seen the central chamber of a Zhed'Faldei city as intact as this one is! What a find!"

"Yeah, it is impressive." Frederik said, with a pang of regret in his voice. "It's a damn shame that we'll have to destroy it..."

Elan sighed. "Yes it is. I'd love to spend a season just poking around in here and studying it all. However, as that won't be the case," He tugged at his backpack, "I have brought along several wide-area scanners to create a series of perfect scans of this chamber to study later."

"Well that's good." Frederik said. The excitement of floating through low-G and ascending the spire by leaping off of the columns of immense stairs was beginning to fade, and the reality of the situation began creeping back into his head. "We wouldn't want to let all of this splendor go to waste, would we?"

Dr. Motou, enthralled by his upcoming task of scanning the chamber, ignored Frederik's last statement as he went to work unpacking and placing his scanning devices. While Elan engrossed himself in what amounted to the accomplishment of one of his life's many goals, Frederik began aimlessly wandering around the immense chamber, pacing and mulling over the series of unfortunate events of his day. The art and surroundings steadily lost their charm for Azimar, and he found himself becoming very bored, very lonely, and very angry.

Frederik's internal dialogue began digging a series of ruts for itself by constantly focusing on just how stupid and greedy he was for accepting this contract from Zenin in the first place. He realized now that he hated Zenin, and everything that he was about. He especially hated the disgusting lion's repugnant suit! Even if most of the Dracinasians lived outside of the AC and were mildly hostile to it, no one deserved that. Besides, who could blame the poor dragon if he wanted to betray and leave Zenin? The awful things his lovers and subordinates must have had to endure... Appalling, even for the Rederaks.

Then there was the issue of Marva Pletokaar. Marva. Fucking. Pletokaar. Frederik often did not like to debase himself with the use of the vulgarities of the lower classes, but in the case of Pletokaar, she absolutely deserved it. To Frederik, she was more than just his direct business competitor. She was his mortal enemy. He had good reason to think this way, as his beloved niece, Peietta, was killed in an attack on his offices in downtown Teletria several years ago. They had been competing for a very highly regarded military contract with the Califeron Teseretz, to create a series of asteroid bases in a volatile region of space that bordered the Phalanaxian Empire, an Anasian-offshoot society that, along with the Dracinasians and others, split off shortly after the creation of the AC.

The area was often in conflict, and the CT wanted fifteen asteroid bases spread across seven systems along the Phalanaxian border, to monitor and defend from Phalanaxian attack. This contract was, prior to the Zenin Binot deal, the most lucrative offer that had been made to anyone on Alluria. The level of competition among the five businesses that had won the right to make a bid was unprecedented. After the accompanying media circus and quickly-escalating cases of slander and libel cast amongst the companies permeated the consciousness of the planet's populace, the hiring of mercenaries and martial-style security tactics were employed by the businesses. The contest for the bid on the CT contract had become a literal bidding war among the corporations.

Frederik Azimar was never above fighting dirty with the other corporations on his homeworld. But he also abhorred violence in the world of commerce. He felt that it had no place; not for the ethical or moral reasons that most average folk hold, but simply because it was extremely bad for business. Sadly, none of the four other corporations that were up for the bid held themselves to the same standards, and over the span of six months, they began hiring ex-military security and mercenary forces to defend themselves, and to attack other companies respectively. Azimar Worldbuilding had hired a top-rate security force themselves, but had refused to hire mercenaries. He had figured that the nasty tactics of the other companies would lose them the CT bid.

This did in fact turn out to be the case, as once the pre-bidding timeframe had passed, the CT investigated, and was appalled at what had happened inside Alluria. Thousands had died in the conflict, and many more were injured in the battles. The CT awarded Azimar Worldbuilding the bid by default, and began to prosecute the individuals and companies responsible for what was later to be called "The Bidding War" by the Anasian press. Marva Pletokaar swore revenge, as prior to that point her company was on track to win the bid. Now she was implicated in several crimes as well as losing the bid.

Finally, Marva had called her mercenaries together for one last mission, which they were paid handsomely for. Two weeks after the conflict had stopped, Marva's mercenaries had bombed Azimar Worldbuilding's headquarters in Teletria, destroying almost a third of the building, and killing over 300 people, including several children as the office's daycare section was hit in the blast. Thus, Frederik lost his innocent five year old niece, and families across the corporation suffered devastating losses as well.

That was the only reason that Frederik took Zenin's contract. He wanted to ensure that Marva would never get an advantage over his family and company again. While she was certainly wealthy enough to pay her way out of any imprisonment, Azimar would ensure that she would never manage to secure the top position on Alluria. Not now, and not ever!

As Frederik lost himself further and further in his thoughts, he once again began ignoring his immediate surroundings. He had forgotten about the extremely low gravity again, and began pacing at a normal speed. Much to his surprise, he veered off his normal course and flew into a large pile of dust that had accumulated around some sort of control console. Sitting stunned in the pile, he angrily got up and brushed himself off. He felt that his luck was steadily decreasing. This was, naturally, no fault of his own, and solely the fault of those who were trying to manipulate or destroy him. So he told himself, anyway.

Frederik, upon attempting to exit the dust pile, accidentally stubbed his foot-paw on an extremely hard, small, and surprisingly heavy and pointed object that was residing in the small dune. He cursed in pain, as the point of the object nearly punctured the outside of the environmental suit's boot toe. One he determined that he was not at risk of losing oxygen, he dug in the dirt to see what it was that he had stubbed his toe on.

He was intrigued as he discovered that the object was a tetrahedron-esque crystalline appearing device that reflected the light off of his helmet's head-lamp in a manner very much like the Hazian Teakwood desk in his office. He wondered if this bizarre thing was one of the artifacts that Dr. Motou was looking for. Frederik remembered the scanning device on his forearm, and pressed the small orange button that he watched Elan use to access the 3-D holographic map.

The orange wireframe holo-representation that the scanner displayed showed two small dots in his immediate vicinity; a red dot for himself, and a green dot for one of the target objects. The dots were superimposed on the display, indicating to Azimar that this item was, indeed, one of the Zhed'Faldei artifacts that he and Elan were searching for up here. He, in a rare display of excitement, quickly turned to his friend to tell him the good news. Then he immediately remembered that Elan was off in his own little world a few hundred meters away setting up his scanning devices. Frederik would also need to wait and rest for a little bit after his crash. His cheerful mood quickly vanished again, and he was left to sit and stew in his thoughts about Zenin and Marva for just a little while longer as his joint inflammation subsided.

Images of Zenin's suit, and the limp, lifeless corpse of little Peietta, cruelly ripped from her innocent childhood by the life-negating forces of greed, ran through Frederik's brain. He was no stranger to greed, and he fancied himself to be one of the greediest bastards on Alluria. But the images morphed into symbols of these things that he hated about himself as well. How could he view himself as being any better than Zenin or Marva? After all, he was building one of the AC's most notorious and vile criminals an almost indestructible, movable fortress to do Creator-only-knows what. Probably just spread more deadly greed and suffering across the AC!

As Frederik began to realize just how deeply he too was implicated in this vile destructive greed, the Zhed'Faldei artifact in his hands began to emanate an aura of orange and purple light. This went unnoticed for a few minutes by Frederik, as he continued his internal downward spiral of painful introspection. Finally, the device began to vibrate and hum. This caught Frederik's attention, but by the time he decided to drop the object, it was too late. The hum in his suit turned into a screech. The pointed end of the device, which was facing the direction Azimar left Dr. Motou to finish setting up his scanners, emitted a beam of similarly colored energy, which erupted into a massive explosion that immediately destroyed the opposing section of the chamber. The interior of the cavern outside became visible, and Frederik stood speechless in shock.

When he began coming to, he realized that one of his best friends and confidants, a wolf who had been on decades of adventures with him, had been vaporized in the blast. Dr. Motou had been in the section of the chamber that the beam had hit, and there was no question as to his fate. He had been killed. Frederik screamed in anguish, and clutched the artifact harder in his agony. The artifact, still glowing, emitted another beam out of the hole in the spire, which caused an equally large explosion to create a giant rockslide along the side of the cavern that was opposite of AZIMAR-1 and the camp that the company was setting up.

Once the first explosion began rocking the camp and ship, the employees of Azimar Worldbuilding had attempted to contact Frederik and Dr. Motou on the radio. When this did not work, they attempted to locate them via their radio locators in their environmental suits. Unbeknownst to them, the artifact's energy was masking Azimar's signal. When the second explosion and rockslide occurred, the employees began giving up hope and started evacuating the camp and loading everything onto the ship. After three more shots from the remains of the central spire, the anterior section of the cavern began to give way. AZIMAR-1, full of supplies and crew, but missing Frederik and Dr. Motou, quickly exited out of the lava tube, and joined AZIMAR-3 in orbit, where they began monitoring the strange situation in an attempt to figure out what was happening inside the asteroid.

Meanwhile, back in the cavern, Frederik was losing his mind with anger and grief. Delirious with rage, he raved about his enemies and his own shortcomings to an empty radio channel. Images of horrible things filled his mind, murderous rage for those who had wronged him. In his few moments of relative clarity, he began to notice that every time he had a particularly intense outburst the artifact would send another orange-purple beam of destructive energy out into the cavern. After a short while, the beams and explosions had cleared out nearly a hundred square kilometers of rock, destroying the ruins, but also clearing enough room for a space that could hold a moderately sized city on Alluria.

Though half-mad with stress and amphetamines, Frederik began to understand how to use the object, and what it was capable of. He realized that the device amplified and transferred the thoughts and emotions of it's user to itself, and extended them into a beam of energy. As Dr. Motou had described before, the devices were rumored to be able to have amazing capacities for creation and for destruction.

Frederik did not care about creation at this point, just destruction. Destroying the inside of this asteroid so he could satisfy Zenin enough to get paid and be left alone. Destroying Marva Pletokaar so he could avenge the death of his niece, and destroying the demons inside him that he was able to suppress until he came to these Zhed'Faldei ruins. Now that the ruins were mostly vaporized, he needed to hollow out the rest of the world's core so he could rid himself of this abomination of a project.

While processing these thoughts, Frederik inadvertently caused the artifact to clear out an incredibly massive amount of rock, opening up an area of several hundred square kilometers in front of him. The lights of his suit would not shine all the way to the end of the space. A grin crossed his muzzle when he realized that he could use the artifact to hollow out the world in a much quicker amount of time than the conventional nuclear explosives. Plus, there would be none of the usual expenses of the radiation cleanup afterward! The amount of time and money that Azimar Worldbuilding would save using this technology would put them lightyears ahead of Marva Pletokaar!

All he had to do was focus on his negative thoughts about his enemies. That should be easy! Frederik calculated that, assuming how much he was able to clear out in the hour's time since he accidentally set off the artifact and killed Dr. Motou, that he could clear out the entire interior chamber of the asteroid in three days at this rate. Completely by himself. He had enough emergency rations in his backpack to last him for that long, and his oxygen would hold out for another week if need be. He should have no problems with this task. Despite his recent loss, he was beginning to feel tinges of joy and excitement again.

Frederik felt that his luck was finally beginning to change.

Three days later, a large cluster of Azimar ships, two Califeron Teseretz cruisers, and an envoy of small ships from Lupinasia were parked in orbit around the small planetoid. AZIMAR-2 had returned with Frederik's son and two daughters, the oldest of which was legally obligated to take over the company in the event of Frederik's untimely demise. The two other Azimar ships had remained in orbit, and had been closely monitoring the explosions in the interior of the planet. With the assumption that these had killed Frederik, his family had been alerted to the situation.

The family, unaware of all of the specifics of the scenario, had alerted the CT that something bizarre was happening inside the asteroid after the ships had discovered Zhed'Faldei ruins. Annoyed by not being immediately alerted to the presence of these ruins, the CT dispatched the two cruisers to investigate. Tieravasi, the eldest of Frederik's daughters, was also aware of the AC laws concerning Zhed'Faldei ruins. She also had knowledge of the Taara Saata, and alerted them to the situation through several back-channels that she knew about to contact the reclusive monastic order. The Lupinasian ships contained a rare delegation of wolves from the Taara Saata order. As this strange disaster overtook the interior of the world, it was determined that they were the only ones who had the experience necessary to deal with whatever was going on.

However, until the explosions ceased, all of the ships remained in orbit, quietly watching the situation unfold, and collaborating with each other to find a solution.

Finally at the close of day three, the explosions ceased. Everyone on the ships in orbit were astounded at their sensor readings. The readings showed that a massive spherical chamber roughly 850 kilometers in diameter had been cored out of the planet. The Azimar crews were shocked, but the CT and Lupinasian crews were extremely nervous about the development. What concerned them even more was the single life reading that the sensors were pulling from a lip in the rock face that extended a few meters into the massive opening. The reading was also miraculously coming from near the end of the lava tube that AZIMAR-1 had explored a few days earlier.

Once the Azimar ships discovered that the entrance was still intact, Tieravasi requested permission from the CT ships to go into the lava tube and investigate whether the life sign was from Frederik or Dr. Motou. The CT agreed, provided that they send down their own troop transport and disaster relief ships, and that the Taara Saata sent their delegation down as well. The terms were agreed to, and each of the ships sent down their parties.

The blocky and utilitarian Azimar ships entered the tube first, followed by the sleeker CT ships, with the Lupinasians taking up the rear in their diplomatic transport craft. Slowly, the convoy reached the end of the tube. The Azimar staff who had visited the end of the tube days ago were amazed to find -not the Zhed'Faldei ruins- but a large, smooth dark opening, so vast that it's walls could not been seen from the end of the tube.

They also found, lying on the small ledge of rock, an orange environmental suit, containing the incapacitated and barely alive body of Frederik Azimar. His life signs were hardly registering, and his mental scans showed a sizable amount of troubling activity in his frontal cortex and other areas of the brain. The captain of AZIMAR-2 requested that he be taken back aboard an AZIMAR ship to receive treatment on Alluria, but this was shot down by both the CT and by Frederik's daughter, who requested that he be treated by the more advanced CT medical technology. The Taara Saata suggested this as well. This was agreed to, Frederik was taken aboard the disaster relief ship, and was hooked into a bed in the medical bay.

Frederik was met in the medical bay by his offspring and legal team, lead by Tieravasi. Once Frederik was hooked up and stabilized, she approached his bed. She grimaced as she looked into her fathers eyes. They were sunken, and enveloped in folds of skin that were visible under Frederik's fur coat. He had lost so much weight that his skin and fur hung from his bones. He coughed, and then recognized his daughter. He them smiled at her.

"Tiera? Is that you? Did I do it?" Frederik asked through his daze.

"Father, what have you done to yourself?" Tieravasi desperately demanded from Frederik. "What did you do to the planet? How did it get cored out?"

"Oh Tiera. I am sorry." Frederik coughed again. "I fear that the poison that our industry has subjected this family to is infecting you as well."

"Dad, I don't know what you're talking about. You must be delirious. Did you use a Zhed'Faldei artifact to clear that asteroid out? Don't you know how illegal that is?!" Tieravasi asked.

Frederik's eyes glazed over, and he began mumbling incoherent gibberish. The CT doctors gave him a series of injections, and asked for everyone to leave the room so they could treat their patient. Annoyed and disturbed, Tieravasi returned to AZIMAR-1, where she was greeted by an even more bizarre QC call that she had routed into an empty office on the ship.

"Hello?" Tieravasi asked when she opened the QC link. "With whom am I speaking to?"

"Oh honey, that's no way to greet your most valuable client!" The oily voice of Zenin Binot filled the speakers of the office with his toxic verbal effluence, along with the creaking of his atrocious suit.

Tieravasi's stomach dropped. So her father HAD signed the contract with Zenin, against her wishes as she had told him on numerous occasions. That's what this was about! She was upset that her father had taken her out of the loop on this, but she understood why. He did not wish to implicate her in any illegal activities he might be a part of on this project. Destroying Zhed'Faldei ruins and illegally using an artifact for business purposes certainly qualified for that!

"Oh! Mr Binot! I am very surprised to be speaking to you right now." She greeted the gangster.

"Oh, I'm very sure that you are, Ms. Azimar." Zenin began, "But you see, I have my means of monitoring the situation with my asteroid. And from what it sounds like, your daddy has made some incredible progress after his most infuriating delays. I just wanted to express how pleased I am with the progress."

Tieravasi had an idea. "Well, Mr. Binot, I am very happy that you are satisfied with the progress on your world. We take our clients needs very seriously here at Azimar Worldbuilding. Mr. Azimar wishes to greet you here directly to show you in person the progress that we have made on your world."

Zenin scoffed. "Oh! Oh that was good! You are very clever my dear, are you sure that you're not part Vulpinasian?"

"I'm- I'm not sure what you mean..." Tieravasi stammered.

"Well, let me explain it to you" Zenin purred menacingly, "You are in orbit around my planet with two CT cruisers!" He yelled. "Do you think that I'm stupid? Until your friends leave, I will be conducting my business from a distance, as I am now!"

Shit, Tieravasi thought. No dice.

"Very well then, Mr. Binot. We appreciate your gratitude for a job well done, and we will see to it that the rest of your specifications are met. Payment is expected upon completion of the interior ecosystem. We thank you for your business."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't mention it. You're even more devious than your father. I'm going to have to keep an eye on you..." Zenin's image and audio blinked off of the QC channel, which proceeded to go blank, displaying the Azimar Worldbuilding's corporate logo. Tieravasi breathed a sigh of relief. She was thankful that the communication was on a secure channel, otherwise the CT might become wise as to whom the company's client was.

She left the empty office, and entered her father's quarters aboard the ship. As she was now effectively head of the company, she began to go through his computer to investigate just how extensive the legal ramifications of what had happened here had been. She found the specifications and documents for the Zenin project, and spent the rest of the evening pouring over them. She considered taking one of her father's amphetamine pills to stay awake, but she decided against it. She needed to get some rest before she tried to talk to her father tomorrow.

The next morning came upon Tieravasi with a sudden start. She was awoken an hour earlier than she had planned on by the sound of her door alarm. Someone outside was requesting her presence. She yelled at them to hold on while she got dressed. When she was ready, she unlocked the door, and was greeted by an officer from the CT ship her father was on. He required her immediate presence, as Frederik was beginning to regain his composure. She followed the officer, a CT Major, to AZIMAR-1's airlock and boarded the CT shuttle that was docked to the side of the ship. Once the shuttle detached, it quickly sped over to the adjacent CT relief ship, and docked to one of it's airlocks.

As Tieravasi and the Major walked though the comfortably minimalistic corridors of the CT ship, they passed busy officers quickly going about their duties. Frederik's daughter was not used to seeing so many different species of Anasians in one place. On her way from the airlock to the medical bay, Tieravasi passed by plenty of the Anasians that she was used to; Lupinasians, Felinasians, and Vulpinasians. Foxes, felines and wolves were all over the central AC, but all of the different Avianasians, Procyanasians, Rodinasians, Geitinasians, Cervinasians, Bovinasians, Mustelinasians, and all of the others were not ones that she saw on a regular basis. Thankfully, she didn't see any of those creepy cyborg-looking Vul'Prassad foxes onboard. Non-combat CT ships and facilities were considered to be some of the most diverse places in the AC, and Tieravasi could now understand why.

Despite the interesting diversity in the ship's corridors, the people that Tieravasi found to be the most shocking were the ones that she met inside the medical bay. As she and the Major entered the bay, she was stopped in her tracks by the sight of three very tall and graceful, almost etheric-looking white long-furred Lupinasians with the most piercing crystal blue eyes that she had ever seen. The feeling she got as she peered into them was intense and extremely disarming. These wolves must be the Taara Saata, she thought. She averted her gaze, and let it rest on her father, who, while still bedridden, was able to sit up and carry on a conversation now.

"Ms. Azimar," The Major announced, "Your father began coming to last night, and requested to speak to us and the Taara Saata. He wants to work out a deal, and needs you here to finalize it."

"What deal is this?" Tieravasi asked. "What happened to my father down there?"

"He can fill you in on those details." The Major replied. "Until then, we have matters to discuss."

"Honey, it's okay. I have things worked out, but we need your consent for some of this." Frederik tried to explain.

"Honey?" Tieravasi was suspicious. "Dad, you haven't called me that since I was eleven. Something's very wrong with you..."

"No, but I think things are about the be made right soon." Frederik began to nod off, and laid down on his bed. His delirium was beginning to intrude on the meeting, but he worked to keep it under control.

Several members of Azimar Worldbuilding's legal team were lurking in the back of the room near Frederik. One of them approached Tieravasi, and explained the situation to her.

"Since you got the CT involved in this situation, it makes it very difficult for us to make a case in Frederik's defense involving the use of the artifact, as well as the destruction of the ruins. The Taara Saata have already taken the artifact into their custody. Apparently Frederik here did a number on it using it to clear out the asteroid, and nearly destroyed it. It almost killed him too. Dr. Elan Motou also has been declared missing and presumed dead. In order for Frederik to use the device to vaporize a small planet's worth of rock, he needed to dredge up every harmful memory and emotion he had and channel it through the device."

"In addition," the Azimar lawyer continued, "the process almost destroyed him as well. The feedback that the device creates also amplifies everything that is put into it. According to our tall friends here, every time Frederik filled the device with rage, it was delivered back to him in kind. Had he continued the process, he would have been dead in a matter of only a few more hours."

He went on: "AC law dictates a minimum of five years imprisonment for the known and unlawful possession of a Zhed'Faldei artifact, plus another five for using the artifact. However, the CT, representing the AC, and the Taara Saata have worked out a plea deal for your father to avoid jail time."

Understanding the severity of Frederik's situation, Tieravasi grew intrigued. "What's the deal?"

The CT Major stepped up, and replied. "The deal is, Frederik pleads guilty to these two charges, one sentence is withheld, and his remaining five years of imprisonment is transferred to the Taara Saata on Lupinasia. You take over the company, and finish whatever project you're working on here. Legally, I might add! We keep this from the press and the public, and go on our merry way. Five years pass, your father completes his 'medical' treatment on Lupinasia, and returns home."

"Father, did you think of this?" Tieravasi asked incredulously.

"I can't take all the credit for it, Tiera." Frederik replied. "The Taara Saata suggested that I do my time with them. They say I'm very sick, and only they can help me get better. The artifact--" He started coughing, and lay back down.

The tallest of the Taara Saata delegation approached Tieravasi and sat down with their legs crossed, attempting to level the height difference between them. She noticed that the wolf appeared to be sitting on the floor, but was in fact levitating a couple of inches off of the surface. Apparently to keep the immaculate white robes that the Order wore from getting dirty. What a mundane use for an ability that indicated the advanced nature of these wolves...

"Your father is sick." The Taara Saata wolf explained. "We are the only ones who can treat him. No one in Anasian history has withstood such exposure to the energies of one of the Zhed'Faldei devices. Even we do not come into nearly as much direct contact with them. He must come with us as we have much to learn from each other."

The situation smelled funny. Tieravasi suspected some kind of secret plot between the Taara Saata and the CT, but the deal sounded much better than allowing her aging father to rot in some hellhole AC prison for the next ten years. Besides, she had been groomed her whole life to take over the company once her father retired. It now seemed like his retirement would come early, and that he would be spending it with some very... interesting company.

"Very well. I agree to the terms." Tieravasi said. "Just-- please give my father and I some time to work some, ah, business items out before he is well enough to depart. Thank you for the meeting, and may my father, our lawyers and I please have some privacy for a few minutes?"

The CT Major and the Taara Saata wolves nodded, and left the medical bay. Once they were gone, Frederik beckoned to his daughter, and she approached his bedside.

"I'm transferring control of the company to you, Tiera." Frederik told his daughter. "You need to complete the project for our current, uh, client. I know he's repulsive and disgusting, but the future of our family depends on this project getting completed. No matter what he tells you he is going to do to you, you have to complete it."

"I understand." She replied. "I went over all of your files on the project, and it's the most revolutionary and lucrative project our family has seen. Even if it is for... him, I want to finish it. To get back at Marva for what she did to Peietta, if not for any other reason."

Frederik sighed, and smiled, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. "That's my girl!"

Tieravasi noticed that her emotions were getting stirred up as well. Holding back tears herself, she attempted to keep the topic of the conversation to the business at hand. "If we are going to finish this project legally, we need to start with a name for the planet. Something to register with the AC Spatial Cartography Division."

"I take it you don't want to name it after the client like we usually do?" Frederik asked.

"No, of course not." She replied. "I can't stand him."

"You think he's bad now," Frederik said, "wait until he tells you the story about that awful suit of his!"

"I don't even want to know..." She returned to the topic. "But anyway, before you have to go, I need to know what you want to me to call this planetoid. It needs to be registered."

Frederik mulled the subject over in his head for a minute or two, remembering the events that had taken place over the previous days. Finally, his ears perked up, and his eyes became clear for the first time since she saw him in the medical bay. "Hmm... Why don't we call it Motou's World?" A couple of tears finally began to fall down his long muzzle.

"After the missing archaeologist? He was your friend, right, Dad?"

"The best friend a guy could have."

"Plus," Tieravasi smirked through her tears, "It'll drive Zeni-, I mean, our client, crazy!"

Just then, the CT Major and the tallest of the Taara Saata returned to the medical bay, with several of the CT doctors.

"It is time." Said the tall blue-eyed Lupinasian. "Frederik needs to be prepared for his trip to Lupinasia. We will allow you to contact him once his health is stable. Thank you for your cooperation."

"Very well." Tieravasi said. "Goodbye Father, I will contact you as soon as I can. I love you, take care of yourself, and please, don't do anything stupid with any more Zhed'Faldei artifacts!"

Frederik chuckled. "I love you too, Tiera. You have always been an excellent daughter. Take good care of that desk of mine too. It cost us a fortune!" Frederik and his bed were wheeled out of the room, leaving his daughter alone to gather her thoughts. It was now up to her to navigate Zenin's insanity to lead Azimar Worldbuilding to it's position as the permanent leader of the internally-terraformed luxury asteroid industry on Alluria.

Tieravasi decided that she might need to try one of her father's amphetamine pills after all...