Internal airlocks and bst doors kept closing in their path. Sometimes she was able to bypass the security protocols on the bst doors. Generally Usha was able to smash through the airlocks. But too many times neither worked and they had to turn to another route.

  As they went they occasionally encountered security guards or drones, all of which seemed panicky, having apparently found out the M’tethon was on the pnet. It was hard to be calm with that information. Thus their nerves were leading to itchy trigger fingers.

  The defenders were also armed with weapons that seemed to do uncomfortable things to spacetime. It may have been for the best that Usha and Thisbe didn’t understand what they were seeing, even when both of them stared at the confusing impact craters the weapons left in the walls.

  In all honesty O’tmyil wanted to pretend she didn’t understand what she was seeing either, but O’myinis whispered on their private network for confirmation of the same readings. O’tmyil couldn’t lie. Those were not forms of energy and matter that were supposed to be used in combat. Some of them weren’t meant to be used in physics boratories. They made bckholes and FTL drives look cozy.

  Neither Usha nor Thisbe understood her refusal to pick up the weapons from downed enemies, but they didn’t argue. At this point Thisbe trusted her (and her siblings) while Usha seemed to find ranged weapons boring compared to melee.

  Eventually, though, despite the uncomfortable discoveries and awkward travel route, O’tmyil began to feel hints of another mind tickling her own. Fshes of a cell and a baby held close. There was also worry coming in, and so O’tmyil tried to respond with calm and reassurance. Whether the emotion she sent would have been enough to make a difference on its own or not she couldn’t say, but the fact that Svetna felt her did work. It answered the question of what was happening. Why the fortress was shaking with explosions.

  They had been getting closer for a while, but Svetna only let herself truly believe it when the door opened to let her see them with her own eyes.

  “O’tmyil! Thisbe! Uh... I forget your name, sorry,” she said, looking up at the tall women with twin horns growing from her forehead.

  With all the exhaustion and the need to keep Houyu from crying she really didn’t have much space in her head for half remembered names.

  “Usha,” the woman said.

  “O’myinis helped too,” Thisbe added.

  “Oh! Right. Yes. Thank you O’myinis and Usha,” Svetna said. “And, um... do you know how to deactivate these ser pilr things?”

  “Give me a moment,” O’tmyil said, pressing a section of wall to reveal a control panel Svetna had been oblivious to after... well, she wasn’t sure how many days.

  Svetna nodded. “If giving you time means a better chance to admire you all tall and muscur and Kobaroian-y... I won’t compin.”

  The fluster coming off O’tmyil was delightful. It was also a good distraction from how miserable her past few days had been. Having Houyu with her had both helped, by letting her know where they were and having someone else to focus on, and been a negative, since it meant she knew her baby was a hostage alongside her.

  So she was feeling extra bratty wherever she could get away with it harmlessly.

  Before she could come up with any other way to tease either O’tmyil or Thisbe the ser bars vanished, O’tmyil having disabled them. The currently tall and green woman then stepped over, grabbing Sveltana’s hand, before releasing a fsh of light to shift to armour mode, wrapping herself around Svetna.

  “I missed this,” Svetna sighed, hugging herself to hug O’tmyil, feeling so safe at long st.

  “I am gd to have the real you at st... having been fed a virus by that replicoid was a deeply unsettling revetion,” O’tmyil replied.

  Before anyone could say anything else (and it was clear that the Usha woman would probably have said something with the way she raised an eyebrow watching things) Houyu started crying. The fsh of O’tmyil’s transformation must have upset them. That or the ongoing rumbles of battle.

  Scooping them out of the rather evil looking crib, Svetna rocked them back to calm, lowering her helmet to whisper soothing nothings.

  “We need to get going,” Thisbe said. “They’ll likely check here soon, since they know you’re our main objective.”

  “R-right. Yes,” Svetna said, hurrying to follow the others as they ran out into the hallway.

  It had been so long since she’d seen anything other than the small room that held her cell that she’d forgotten how many other cells were down there. She couldn’t help but wonder who else was being held in them, assuming at least some of them had occupants. Would it be in there best interest to free the other prisoners?

  “Most of them will likely be Zumuults in for insubordination. They would happily betray us for a shortened sentence,” O’tmyil whispered.

  “Fair,” Svetna mumbled in reply.

  As such she continued to follow the others, running through hallways that showed signs of battle. Which meant signs of weapons fire that did odd things to the walls. The fact it was giving O’tmyil the willies told Svetna she really didn’t want to ask what those weapons were or what they’d do to people. Instead she followed Thisbe’s lead of maximum stealth.

  It impressed her just how good Thisbe was at all that, serving as a reminder that the vampiric woman had centuries of experience stalking prey.

  “Remind me to never go against you in an FPS,” Svetna whispered over the suit radio.

  Her comment drew a small giggle from Thisbe, but she apparently felt it was not safe to engage in too much chatter. Especially not when the hallway just around the corner apparently had about a dozen spider-y security drones hurrying towards them.

  “Back. Back,” Thisbe hissed.

  Even if Svetna could was in proper fighting form (so, not furiously hungry, tired from pregnancy, and stiff from having not had room to stretch out properly for a few days) she was carrying Houyu, so she didn’t argue. Protecting the baby was Svetna’s priority.

  Plus, the next corner was only about five metres away, so she would be able to keep an eye on everyone.

  Or, well, that was the pn. But then the ceiling caved in between Svetna and the others. The crashing noise caused Houyu to burst into tears again, Svetna struggling to rex them while panicking about being trapped again herself.

  “We aren’t trapped and you aren’t alone,” O’tmyil whispered.

  The words calmed Svetna. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s understandable. The idea that one’s armour is another person does not come naturally to most sentients,” O’tmyil replied. “However much familiarity there is, panic is primal.”

  “Still... I feel bad forgetting about you--also, I’m curious about the exceptions,” Svetna said.

  “Well, that is not overly important at the moment, but the Chkar are a parasitic species that evolved sentience only for their hosts, the Lrii to then stumble into sentience in part of their evolutionary arms race. Eventually they learned a means to treat all the negative side effects of carrying a Chkar and came to live in harmony.”

  “Huh,” Svetna said, really note sure what else to respond to that with.

  It was nice to have a random fact to distract her though. Once O’tmyil convinced her that she knew where they were going Svetna asked for more mostly irrelevant Gactic trivia to keep her from panicking as they walked through seemingly endless hallways.

  Apparently the ceiling colpse had been part of a major bout of chaos, because they didn’t encounter any (conscious) guards on their winding routing through the sprawling fortress. Though they were likely close to the battle at a few points from the way the ground shook now and again. Each time Houyu ended up crying and took a few moments to calm, but that was the worst of it.

  Then, at st, Svetna thought her luck had taken a turn for the worse when O’tmyil spotted someone walking down the hallway ahead of them.

  Except whoever it was likely wasn’t a threat, being dressed in what looked to be bedsheets wrapped about in a vague facsimile of a toga. More confusingly the person seemed to be human.

  And then Houyu let out a gurgling bit of baby noise, alerting the other figure to their presence. When it turned around Svetna felt her blood grow cold.

  “You,” she hissed, shifting into a protective stance to keep the replicoid away from Houyu.

  Couldn’t it stop wearing her face? That would have been polite.

  “Ah. You got out of your cell,” it said with a small nod.

  “And I’m getting off of this rock,” Svetna hissed. “So... don’t get in my way.”

  “What would you do if I did?” the replicoid asked.

  “Uh... go through you if I had to. As weird as that would be,” Svetna said.

  The replicoid nodded, before raising one of its arms. The skin split apart, shifting to dispy some sort of built in arm cannon... thing. It was even more unsettling to see than the replicoid looking perfectly like her. At least then she could pretend that was another her, instead of some sort of assassin android that had infiltrated her family to a degree she wasn’t quite certain of.

  Then it closed its arm again, lowering its hand to its side.

  “Alright. I know enough about O’tmyil to know that I’d lose, even if I went all in. It would probably even be quick and pretty painless if I tell you my central processor is actually about where my heart should be,” it said.

  The words took a few moments to sink into Svetna’s brain.

  “Pardon?”

  The replicoid’s lip quivered for a moment, then it forced a smile as its eyes grew wet. “I betrayed them. Especially Vivian. I’m just a robot copy that was built to betray them, with nothing else in mind... it wouldn’t even really be ‘dying’ anyway. It would just be ‘breaking’,” it said.

  No... if the replicoid’s brain was as completely built on Svetna as it seemed... then she said.

  (Not that there was anything inferior about ‘it’ pronouns, they just weren’t what Svetna wanted, so wouldn’t be what the replicoid wanted.)

  “Is my life less valuable?” O’tmyil asked over the speakers.

  That caused the replicoid to tense slightly. “I--no. Of course not... and, I’m sorry about the virus.”

  “You had a deep programming you couldn’t escape telling you to do it,” O’tmyil replied, stepping forward and bringing Svetna (and Houyu) with her. “It means I can’t fully trust you, because I don’t know what your other underlying parameters are, but I can’t bme you.”

  That caused the other Svetna to start genuinely crying, hugging herself and shaking her head. “Don’t make me start wondering if it could actually work. It’s better just to not have that dream.”

  “Ok... as much as I’m realising you’re, like, 90% me in there... which is weird,” Svetna said, “I also think it’s worth remembering how paranoid the establishment are about a kid who could potentially inherit the crown who could also potentially become an immortal supernatural. I think they’d probably want to scrap you on principle the moment they saw you.”

  “... right. That was the other big issue,” the other her replied. “So I’d prefer to just get it over with.”

  “I’m not going to do it,” O’tmyil said, shaking her head.

  Which was sort of awkward for Svetna, her cheeks getting mildly squished in the process.

  “You’re not going to what?” a deep female voice asked.

  Turning, they saw Thisbe, O’myinis, and Usha approaching.

  “She’s the Replicoid,” Svetna said. “She wants us to destroy her.”

  “Which we are not doing,” O’tmyil replied. “She had no choice in anything she did and she regrets it to the point of... well, the point of wanting to have her central processor crushed.”

  “Well... we can’t just let her go,” Usha said. “She’d be a security risk... she knows everything Svetna knows.”

  “I don’t know anything?” Svetna and the Replicoid said in unison.

  Which was awkward. And probably another reason for them to not spend too much time together.

  “It’s true,” O’tmyil muttered with mild annoyance. “She can only remember two intelligence briefings at a time, and generally only retains the most irrelevant information.”

  “For once it’s a fact in my favour,” the replicoid said, managing a slightly broken smile.

  “Oh, sure, rub that in my face,” Svetna muttered.

  Besides, it wasn’t like it was really her fault. The various consultants and minders threw incredibly boring multi-hour briefings at her multiple times a week. How was she supposed to retain all that?

  Thisbe tilted her head, before turning to O’tmyil and Svetna. “How long do replicoids st?”

  That was definitely a question for O’tmyil. Svetna had a guess, but was probably only slightly more reliable than anything Houyu would offer. (Yes, ‘gurgle blurk’ was also a possible reply, good work Houyu.)

  “Um, well... ultimately they’re androids, just with a pseudo-organic casing. So as long as they can be maintained,” O’tmyil replied.

  Nodding, Thisbe then turned to the replicoid. “Maybe we can try to pick things back up in a hundred years or so, then.”

  Blinking, the other Svetna then gave a slow nod. “I don’t... I don’t know how to process that concept.”

  Thisbe walked over and pced a hand on her arm. “It takes quite a bit of getting used to.”

  “That depends on the person,” Usha muttered just loud enough to be heard.

  The others did their best to ignore her comments, however.

  Also, Svetna decided to try to ignore how weird it felt to think about this other version of her outliving her. And getting to escape all the various nonsense of being dragged around the gaxy by worry-wart minders who thought resting was wasteful. Though, on the other hand, the other version of her wouldn’t be there for Houyu or the twins. Or any other kids. She’d also likely never see anyone in the polycule other than Thisbe or O’tmyil again.

  Clearly they’d both have to convince themselves they go the better deal.

  “We have to go... but, I’m serious,” Thisbe said, before then grabbing Svetna’s hand and pulling her away. Over her shoulder Thisbe offered the replicoid a genuine: “Good luck!”

  Houyu looked around confused, turning to the replicoid as she grew more distant before reaching out and starting to cry. A quick whisper lead to O’tmyil dropping her helmet so that Svetna could distract Houyu by making silly faces and to let them know their mother was carrying them.

  It worked well enough after a few moments. Even if Houyu still looked understandably confused.

  So, it turned out the empere’s armour was at least as good as O’tmyil’s family. Adding that to the fact that they were about 3m tall and a supernatural, so were already stronger than the ws of physics said they should be, the fight was very much not going well.

  Plynx was already more or less out of the fight, having found a pce to hide with Vahr. As ambush predators Issiod’rians had fairly limited endurance. The Lanthoneans from the Imperial Guard were also starting to grow visibly exhausted. One had already been knocked out. Which meant that most of the fighting was on Auguste and Bhramari’s shoulders, the pair doing their best to dance about to keep out of Ouzzhen’s melee range. Which was a terrifyingly rge range.

  Thankfully both of them were rather high mobility fighters, Auguste realising that the other woman was clearly trained as a fencer from the way she moved. It had briefly struck her as amusing that a fencer would get her hands on a sword that shot lightning, considering the electric nature of scorekeeping in modern fencing, but she hadn’t had time to focus on that.

  At this point the thought had completely escaped her mind, the struggle of staying in the fight taking too much of her focus.

  Trying to track Ouzzhen’s movements she found herself too focused on where their eyes were and was not prepared for the ground to suddenly shift beneath her, Garcelle’s fight having apparently intensified at the wrong moment. A fsh of humiliation flooded her mind as she fell, having lost her bance.

  Ouzzhen, meanwhile, spotted her and had spun around, about to strike just as she finally hit the floor.

  Only for a rge metallic mace to fly through the air and sm into Ouzzhen’s head, staggering them.

  A moment ter Usha followed her gada, the rakshasi grabbing the mace before it hit the ground and attempting to strike Ouzzhen again. The Zumuult blocked, but it was clear that even through her armour the blow took her effort to stop.

  “Sorry we’re te,” Svetna said, her and Thisbe hurrying in as the two rger supernaturals exchanged blows.

  Seeing her, Ouzzhen smiled and hopped back to the far end of the rge room their fight had moved to. “Well, well, looks like round two is starting up... do put the baby aside, we don’t want it to get hurt.”

  “... I’m gd you at least have those standards,” Svetna said, sounding as genuinely surprised as Auguste felt as she got back to her feet.

  Plynx emerged from the small niche she and Vahr were hidden in, still visibly tired, but apparently recovered enough for another go. “They-baby will be safe with Vahr-ally.”

  “Vahr? Oh! Good to see you!” Svetna said. “I’m gd they listened to you... do you mind holding Houyu?”

  “Uh... no?” Vahr replied, sounding slightly uncomfortable, but they cooperated, taking the baby off of Svetna and retreating back into the cubby where they’d been hidden.

  Long limbs wrapped around the baby to keep them shielded. That complete Svetna joined the others, forming a line up in combat stances across from Ouzzhen.

  “It won’t make a difference, but I was getting a bit bored,” Ouzzhen said with a smirk. “Adding some more enemies will freshen the fight up aga--”

  At that point the ceiling colpsed on top of them, two more levels of ceiling on top of that, with a grinning Garcelle and slightly frazzled looking Tessa riding the whole stack down down.

  “Salut!” Garcelle decred. “We’ve wrapped up our part of the fight. Are you lot ready to go?”

  “Uhhh...” Svetna began, shifting out of her stand.

  “I guess we-team are now,” Plynx said, offering a shrug.

  “Oh god. We nded on someone, didn’t we?” Tessa asked, hopping off of the chunk of architecture.

  Garcelle did not look concerned, but did seem curious, so floated off and lifted the thick chunks of polished bck ceiling. Below was Ouzzhen, partially pressed into the hard floor, with their armour visibly cracked and broken even where Auguste was standing.

  “Ah. I have good aim,” Garcelle said with a grin.

  “Should we run now, then?” Auguste asked. “Before they recover?”

  “That sounds good to me,” Svetna replied, hurrying over to take a worried and tired Houyu from Vahr. “I’m really not in fighting shape.”

  With a few nods and shrugs the group began to head for a door, Vahr included, when the Zumuult suddenly stopped.

  “Navreh the usurper,” they muttered.

  “Uh, pardon?” Svetna asked.

  Turning to her, they expined: “They were the most famous smaller sibling to stage a coup and steal the throne for themself, reducing their rger sibling to be the line-carrier instead.”

  “And... you think you can do that now?” Svetna asked.

  Vahr nodded. “Ouzzhen is defeated. Allow me to restrain them and I could cim the throne.”

  “You don’t have much support,” O’tmyil chimed in, it being slightly confusing that her voice came from the same figure as Svetna’s. “At least, not domestically.”

  “No... but if I were to have a dynastic connection to the Commonwealth...” Vahr said.

  “Uhh... I mean, I guess it could work? If you think that’s the right way to go about it...” Svetana stammered, sounding mildly embarrassed and flustered while waving her hand about aimlessly.

  Only for Vahr to step past her with those long legs. Instead, they dropped to their knees and took Thisbe’s hands in their own.

  “We may not have known each other for long, and such a commitment would be a very long one, but, Thisbe Campbell... will you have me?” they asked.

  “M-me? I... but you wanted...” Thisbe mumbled, her helmet withdrawing to show that she was blushing furiously.

  Clearly she was even better fed than Auguste had realised.

  “I have barely spoken to the empress. It would also be too great a gamble, expecting the Imperial Council to accept that proposal. You, however, are her consort, free to make your own decisions but carrying weight from having her hand,” Vahr expined. “Though I... I had been hoping to ask you whatever the politics, for you have shown me what love is, both as an emotion and in patient practice and acceptance.”

  “I...” was all Thisbe managed at first, before letting her eyes drift to Svetna, Auguste, and Plynx.

  “It is an open polycule,” Plynx said.

  With that Thisbe nodded. “I would love to, then, Vahr.”

  The Zumuult’s face lit up with a grin that managed to look adorably dorky despite the shark-like teeth it revealed. Then they leaned in, offering Thisbe a clumsy kiss.

  “We’ll work on those,” Thisbe said, once the kiss had finished. “But there’s lots of time for you to learn.”

  AnnouncementGood news for everyone: I'm almost done editing. Even if I'm a bit behind schedule... the commercial release should be at the end of the month, which will also be when I publish the st update publicly. Also, it will be in an itch bundle shortly after release for the more patient.