Chapter 42.1: Who We Follow

Comakk stood still, letting all the busyness of lab Delta’s teams stream past him. Team members moved crates, applied final calibrations to the expulsion units, and tried desperately to stay out of Kikka’s line of sight. They were useful, even talented, but they were all cowards. Yes, Kikka had a penchant for inflicting pain on those who defied or displeased her, and she was pushing them all with an aggression even she had seldom demonstrated before, but that was no reason for them to shimmy around like cockroaches avoiding her shadow. A certain degree of self-respect had to be upheld, regardless of how many times “Yes, Mistress” was forced off their lips each day. Perhaps it was that very sense of self-respect, or something like it, that was grating at the back of Comakk’s mind as he scrolled down the stream of data he’d just downloaded from one of Jezzi’s terminals.

As usual Kikka had instructed Comakk to scan the reports for critical inaccuracies. He was the only person she extended such trust to, and he had been for some time, even for teams led by engineers like Jezzi, who simply never made such errors. On this particular project, not only had her team successfully repurposed the designs Comakk himself had stolen from the stacks in Rata Sum: outdated schematics meant for an opposite magical frequency. But she’d also developed a system of recursive diagnostics along the way, leveraging the energy waste of each device’s secondary systems to store a running feedback record of its activities. And she and her team had done it all without any clear sign of error. Comakk had no love for Jezzi, but the thoroughness of her skill was undeniable. It was that very thoroughness that gave Comakk space to consider another situation, another problem that had been nagging at him.

He eyed Kikka herself, just over the edge of the tablet. As usual, she was threatening her krewe to greater efficiency as they moved the crated golemites out of the lab and into the courtyard. It was simple and effective, and Comakk had never thought otherwise. If discovery, advancement, and output were their primary objectives, generally accepted ethics could be damned. The strong, the smart, and the committed among Kikka’s people always had a place; it was only the weak that had ever been cast aside. Thus far, at least.

Comakk glanced over his shoulder to the oversized enforcer golem that she had remained so intent on finishing. Vadd’s people still had the huge construct anchored to the wall as they rushed to weld the last few sections of armor plating to the skeletal structure inside.

And as he looked it over, he remembered Kikka’s words once again. It’s meant to defend me.

Verbatim, that’s what Kikka had said to that asinine human just three days past. She’d shoved it in his face in one of their idiotic tête-à-têtes, just after he’d asserted that four, smaller golems equipped with that agony-cannon technology would be a more viable defense of their facility than a single unit of greater size and payload. Just as quickly, though, Kikka had snapped back at him with the words that still rang in Comakk’s ears. That golem isn’t meant to defend this place; it’s meant to defend me.

He tried to suppress it, but the thought curled Comakk’s bare toes. The human’s simple observation had been correct, and before that moment, Comakk had never even considered it.

Kikka had made her intentions clear to him from the start: amid all the dome-projector golemites that were needed for the offensive side of her plan, only a single, large-scale enforcer was all she meant to make for defense, in the event that conflict came to them. But she’d never told him the reason for that decision, and he’d never asked. Of course she wouldn’t tell the blind, milling masses of their krewe; they didn’t need to know. But she hadn’t told him either, and he’d never asked. It had taken a dimwitted human to even awaken him to the question. Had Comakk become one of the blind, milling masses?

A sneer tightening across his face, Comakk returned his attention to the data pad in his hands and skimmed a few more lines. He still had a job to do, if only at a cursory level.

In only a moment, though, he was back to work on his other problem, still scrolling down the tablet’s screen despite his mind being somewhere else entirely.

According to her, the construct had no purpose other than protecting Kikka herself, and yet she seemed as intent on its completion as she was on completing the golemites themselves. Those weapons were the peg on which their whole plan hung, on which everything hung. He and every other asura at Thaumacore had once again shifted their focus to what Kikka demanded, this time with her audacious bid to decentralize authority and resources by assassinating Inquest command. If it succeeded, the freedom it would afford them would be unparalleled, just as she promised—Comakk understood that. However if it failed, the result would not be a simple chaos rift or a random monster rampaging through the facility. No, a failure here would bring down the wrath of the whole Inquest on every head in the complex. Every person there, including him, was complicit in what they were attempting, and as far as Comakk knew, every one of them was willing to be so, as long as it meant freedom to push the boundaries of modern science even beyond the Inquest’s currently hamstrung, politically conscious position. And yet, amid this degree of krewe commitment, Kikka was concentrating her effort on a device that would only serve her, only protect her. And the truth, he knew, was that she recognized their commitment less and less with each passing season.

“Comakk!” Kikka’s bark pulled him from his thoughts, only to find her glaring at him from only feet away now. Three other krewe members watched over her shoulder, in a combination of fear and mockery. One was Jezzi, and there was nothing but mocking contempt on her face.

“Reconnect your circuits,” Kikka snapped. “I want a full assessment of the diagnostics report. Are the golemites as ready for deployment as Jezzi asserts?”

Jezzi turned up her porcine nose and sniffed, but Comakk only nodded. “Yes, Mistress. The reports are in order. I don’t see any concerning errors. This batch is ready for shipment.”

“Concerning errors?” Jezzi demanded. Her sharp grin flipped into a scowl. “There are no errors at all. I made absolutely certain of that myself, and nothing you can say will lead me to conclude otherwise. Frankly I don’t even comprehend why I have to provide you with—”

Kikka pushed the other female aside. “Shut your theory hole, Jezzi. We all recognize your self-important perfectionism. Comakk validates everything I don’t verify personally, period.”

Jezzi slipped reluctantly into Kikka’s shadow, but she held that glare at Comakk.

“The imperatives are encoded and implanted correctly?” Kikka asked, running an inquisitive finger beneath the unscrewed panel of a golemite still on the workbench.

“Yes,” Comakk confirmed. “They’ve done their work satisfactorily.”

She snapped a glance at Jezzi, then back at Comakk. “Rerun the data for any insubordinate anomalies.”

Comakk nodded and returned to the top of the data stream. “Yes, Mistress.”

Jezzi stilled, as did those of her team who were in earshot. “Insubordinate anomalies, Mistress Kikka?” She was anything but smug now.

After several furtive glances from one female to the other and back again, Jezzi’s subordinates had the wisdom to return to their duties. Jezzi watched Kikka intently, her pinched face wrinkling like a raisin under the heat of Kikka’s implication.

Insubordinate anomalies was a relatively new turn of phrase for Kikka. Few beyond Comakk had actually heard her say it outright, but its meaning was relatively obvious to anyone who heard it.

“Don’t be an imbecile, Jezzi.” Kikka turned on her, icy eyes blazing, and stepped into her space. “You can calculate the probabilities as well as I can. What we’re attempting—what we will accomplish—it requires a degree of discretion, even loyalty that I can not statistically depend on every member of this krewe to have, despite my most extensive efforts.” Mouth tight, Kikka hovered inches from Jezzi’s face. “The numbers are unavoidable. Someone here will subvert me, and if there is any moment in time I cannot permit that to occur, it is now.”

Jezzi shivered, working not to fall backward under the bearing presence of their krewe leader.

“Mistress,” Jezzi scraped out, “I— I would never— you know I would never—”

“I know nothing with complete certitude.” Kikka spat the words.

“I assure you—”

“I’m sure you do,” Kikka said flatly, spinning away from her before discussion could continue. She passed Comakk and stopped a pair of engineers who worked to get one of the crates onto a repulsor sledge. He turned, watching as she forcefully inspected their container before moving on toward the gigantic enforcer golem at the back of the lab, not even flashing a backwards glance.

Comakk continued his superficial inspection of Jezzi’s data, knowing full well there wasn’t a hint of insubordination at play in her work. He raised an ear toward Kikka. She was hassling one of Vadd’s engineers now, insisting he prove to her that certain motivator specifications had been used in the golem’s legs. Before he could provide the necessary evidence, though, she had listed off three more design details that had certainly been employed already. Even from where he stood, Comakk could see as much, but that simple fact was not sufficient to halt Kikka’s effusive threats to the engineer and eventually Vadd. Being the lead engineer on the enforcer project meant Vadd eventually became the recipient of all her threats, just as Jezzi had received the weight of her final worries over the golemites.

Unlike Jezzi, though, Vadd lacked any semblance of a spine. Though he whined responses to each of Kikka’s concerns as she forced her way around his workstations, his noodly manner said he was anything but confident in his assertions. He flipped through documents for evidence and become increasingly flustered the further Kikka pushed him. Alchemy, even the human, who fidgeted mindlessly at something on the table, had more nerve than Vadd, and he was a captive.

That man was another issue entirely. Comakk couldn’t understand how Kikka considered him a captive at all at this point. In her increasing obsession with these weapons, Kikka had left the human unshackled and allowed to roam the lab as needed throughout the day. Most of the time, the closest thing he had to a guard was the supervision of the lab staff, who themselves were obsessed with simply meeting Kikka’s deadlines; they weren’t paying any attention to him. Comakk knew that Kikka was beginning to underestimate the man, but she would have none of his remarks on the subject.

That brought his attention right back to her, still barking orders at Vadd even as she inspected his work with evident pride. After all, she believed every accomplishment of the facility to be hers, and every failure someone else’s.

For his years in her service, Comakk had recognized that about her, and at some level, he’d admired it. Pragmatically speaking, that confident blindness had enabled her to keep pressing the krewe ahead to one advancement after the next; in her mind, she could not be stopped, and what she saw in her mind, Kikka manifested into reality. She wasn’t an engineer. She wasn’t a technician. Kikka wasn’t even a scheming operative. She was a force of nature: an arrogant, overzealous futurist who’d made more than her fair share of progress because she believed in every corner of her mind that she would. She had been so much of what Comakk aspired to be. She had been.

Comakk continued to scroll down the contents of his data tablet, his mind racing in the background, when he recognized the lines that indicated he was once more approaching the bottom of the records.

“Mistress Kikka,” he called, “the data is clean. There are no anomalies.”

He saw her eyes dart in his direction before returning to Vadd for one last threatening instruction. With a final glare to melt ice, she spun from the lead engineer on her pet project and stomped back to Comakk.

“You’re certain?” she demanded, even before reaching him.

Comakk only nodded.

“Fine.” She cast one more speculative gaze across the lab, landing finally on Jezzi. “Fail me, and your life will be forfeit in ways even I haven’t yet dreamed of.”

Jezzi shook her head with urgency, lacking almost all of her usual self-confidence. “No, Mistress. No. Of course not.” It was disgusting.

Kikka nodded, spun, and snatched the data pad out of Comakk’s hands. Her eyes didn’t meet his, even for an instant, flying instead to the screen to flash back and forth across the data. She strode past him toward the door. “Move your ambulators,” she demanded. “Those imbeciles outside need a prod under them if they’re going to remain on schedule.”

Comakk cast one last look around the lab as he set off on her heels. Jezzi and her team leapt back to crating golemites; Vadd and his fled toward their giant toy on the wall; and that human stood there through all the shuffle, working far too hard to look like he wasn’t paying attention.

Comakk followed Kikka through the flow of busy engineers. She was talking through the state of the project at the same time as she triple-checked the data he’d already scoured for her, but he watched her more than he listened.

He’d followed her for five years now, bending to every whim, because her vision was one he’d thirsted after. Limitations be damned, Kikka and the people she used had made advancements in power conservation and chaos prediction that only she’d been bold enough to dream of. The female never asked for permission; she simply pursued her inquiries, pulling new tools and teams into her lab and removing obstacles wherever and whatever they were. And now she had them on the cusp of unbridled authority over their own work: no Arcane Council, no Inquest command, and no limits to what they could achieve.

That golem, though—the enforcer built only to serve and defend Kikka, it had raised questions that Comakk simply couldn’t ignore. For whom would Inquest decentralization improve the situation? Who would benefit? Whose aspirations would be realized? She’d promised freedom for their work, but was there a they at all? Was there even Comakk? Or, for Kikka, was there only Kikka?