Jessia sat in the dark living room, her fingers tracing the magnetic card that still carried a hint of body heat.
She could spend the rest of her life aboard the Grey Hope, staring out the window at the unchanging starlight until she withered away.
But she was unwilling.
At the very least, she didn't plan to flee like a beaten dog. If she was to leave, she had to be personally escorted away by Belisarius Cawl, the Archmagos Dominus of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
But there was a prerequisite.
Cawl wanted STCs—Ancient Technology—and Jessia didn't have any in her possession. The "Black Box" was in the hands of the mystery man, and the starship was controlled by an insane Machine Spirit.
To Jessia, however, that didn't matter. She knew perfectly well that with Helios's current strength, they could never take those things back.
If she couldn't take them back, she would sell them to someone who could.
Since Cawl was nearby, and since he coveted these items, why not simply send him the coordinates? Tell him directly: Come. Here on Forge Seven, in the Underhive, in Sector Nine, is the Black Box of your dreams and the Rogue Trader relics you desire.
Once the Mechanicus Ark arrived, the mystery man in the Underhive and the maddened Machine Spirit would be nothing but garbage in the face of a Martian fleet.
This was Jessia's plan.
Betray Helios. Betray Forge Seven. Betray everything on this planet.
She would package this world as a gift for Belisarius Cawl in exchange for a true ticket into the inner circles of Mars.
The decision was insane—one might even say anti-human. But in this world of competing evils, loyalty didn't exist; only the exchange of interests did. To the high nobility, territories, partners, subjects, and even families were essentially just assets.
When an asset became a liability that threatened to bankrupt the owner, liquidating that bad asset was the only rational business logic.
As long as she could survive, Jessia wouldn't blink an eye even if the planet were burned into a glass ball.
But there was a technical hurdle: Communication.
The frequency Cawl had publicized was a public channel. Every day, tens of thousands of opportunists like Jessia flooded it with junk data, trying to catch the Archmagos's eye. If Jessia sent it that way, her message would be drowned in a sea of distress signals and false intel.
She needed a dedicated channel—a way to bypass the filters and put the information directly in front of Cawl.
Such a thing was only held by the high-ranking members of the Mechanicus. The local Fabricator-General, Sigma-7, certainly had one, but he would never give it to Jessia; he wanted all the glory for himself.
Therefore, Jessia had to find someone else: the greedy, shrewd, and bottomless Senior Priest of the Mechanicus, Zor.
Mid-hive, Heart of Gears Industrial Park.
Jessia brought no bodyguards, walking alone into the towering Gear Spire. She wore her Helios executive uniform and carried a black briefcase.
Priest Zor sat upon his life-support throne, his mechanical mechadendrites performing maintenance on several servo-skulls. Seeing Jessia enter, Zor's electronic eyes flickered.
"A rare guest, Miss Jessia," Zor said with a hint of mockery. "I hear things are quite chaotic up there lately. How do you have the time to visit me?"
Zor was an old fox with excellent ears.
Jessia wasted no words, throwing the briefcase onto the table in front of him.
"Zor, I want something," Jessia said, getting straight to the point. "I want a high-level identification code that can contact the Mechanicus Ark fleet directly. It must be Mars-certified and able to bypass the public filters."
Zor froze, then let out a grating, electronic laugh.
"Ha! An ID code?!"
"Jessia, are you still dreaming? Those are internal Mechanicus secrets. Every code is bound to a Priest's digital signature. If I give it to you and you send some heresy, the Skitarii will follow the signature back to me. I'm the one who dies!"
"Besides, why should I help you?" Zor spread his massive mechanical hand. "Helios can barely protect itself right now. Not helping you is simply common sense."
Jessia pointed impassively at the briefcase. "Open it and see."
Suspiciously, Zor extended a mechadendrite and unzipped the bag. Inside were not credit chips or currency, but five heavy data drives and several paper contracts sealed with the wax stamp of the Helios family.
Zor picked up a drive and plugged it into his interface. A second later, his semi-mechanical body jerked upright, and the mechadendrites behind him bristled.
"This... this is..."
"The master control keys for Industrial Parks Three, Five, Seven, Eight, and Twelve," Jessia said coldly. "And those deeds are transfer agreements for those five sectors. I have already signed them."
"If you nod, these five parks—which account for forty percent of the Mid-hive's production capacity and possess the most complete cooling systems and power grids—are all yours."
Regarding the power structure of the Mid-hive: while Zor had the technology and the factories, he had been strangled for years by the Helios Corporation. Helios controlled the surrounding supporting parks, the cooling water supply, and the raw material channels. This meant Zor's production was capped; whenever Helios had a need, Zor was forced to work for them.
Zor dreamed of absorbing these parks, but he couldn't, as they were Helios's core assets.
Before taking on that cursed Underhive project, Jessia had been Helios's true operator in the Mid-hive, specializing in monopolies. Her "friendship" with Zor was built during that time.
Later, due to internal power struggles—perhaps to suppress her or for some other consideration—Jessia had been exiled to the Underhive to tackle the "hard bones."
The irony was that while the corporate leadership stripped her of her title, they didn't dare touch the resources and keys she had buried in the Mid-hive. The web of interests was too complex; no one but Jessia knew how to run it. Forcing a takeover would cause the Mid-hive's revenue to collapse.
So, in substance, she still held terrifying influence in the Mid-hive; she just lacked the formal title.
Old, senile Thor likely never imagined that the assets he left untouched for the sake of stability were now being gift-wrapped by Jessia for Zor. With these, Zor could instantly integrate the entire Mid-hive supply chain and become a true local overlord, possessing the capital to challenge the Spire itself.
"Are you insane?" Zor looked at Jessia, his voice thick with shock. "If that old man Thor finds out, he'll have you flayed!"
"He won't have the chance to find out," Jessia's voice was hauntingly calm. "Helios is finished. Thor just refuses to admit it."
She stared into Zor's eyes. "Well? Is it a deal? One ID code in exchange for de facto control of the Mid-hive industry. You're making a fortune on this trade."
Zor fell silent, his logic core calculating furiously. Risk assessment, profit analysis.
There was risk, certainly. Providing internal codes to an outsider was a violation of protocol, and Jessia was clearly planning something big. But the profit... was too immense. It was enough to make Zor ignore any risk.
Zor could guess what Jessia wanted to do, even though he hadn't attended the recent briefings. Like the other desperate nobles, she probably wanted to send a plea to the Ark for a ticket out.
What did Zor have to lose? Nothing. Even if Cawl actually came and took Jessia away, Zor would still hold the industrial parks. He would still be the God of Industry in the Mid-hive.
For a fence-sitter like Zor, you take the benefits and dodge the risks. As long as it didn't touch his core interests, he didn't care if the world burned.
"Deal."
Zor swept the drives and contracts into his cloak, moving so fast it seemed he feared Jessia would recant.
"I can give you the code you want, but on one condition." Zor held up a finger. "You must understand that this code is a one-time use; it self-destructs after use. Furthermore, when you send the message, you must use an encrypted frequency and leave no digital traces pointing back to me."
"No problem," Jessia agreed instantly.
Zor pulled a data cable from the back of his head and connected it to a blank data chip. Seconds later, he tossed the chip to Jessia.
"Take it. Good luck, Miss Jessia. I hope this gets you an audience with the Archmagos."
Jessia caught the chip, gripped it tightly, and turned to leave.
Half an hour later. Upper Hive, Hall of Astropaths.
The place was still overcrowded. Nobles waited for the half-dead Astropaths to vomit out new bad news. Jessia, wearing her heavy ceremonial robes, entered once more.
She bypassed the crowds and headed straight for a small communication terminal in a corner of the hall. It was a place usually reserved for nobles to send private letters, though no one typically used it for anything serious. The Skitarii at the door saw her family crest and let her pass without hindrance.
Jessia entered the booth and closed the door. She inserted the chip Zor had given her. The screen instantly flashed green characters:
[Identification Code Verified.] [Access Point: Mechanicus Ark "King of Explorers" Frequency.]
Jessia took a deep breath and began to input the information she had prepared long ago. Because the recipient was the Archmagos Cawl, she used no flowery language or begging nonsense—only a string of precise coordinates and several extremely detailed data packets.
Recipient: Belisarius Cawl. Subject: Regarding the specific location of STC (Standard Template Construct) fragments from the Dark Age of Technology, and detailed intel on an unknown model Rogue Trader starship involving Dark Age technology. Attachment 1: Coordinates and defense map of the Acid Swamp military base in the Underhive. Attachment 2: Helios Black Box project experimental logs (including parameters of the Reconstructor). Attachment 3: Internal schematics of the Sector Nine starship and behavior analysis of its Machine Spirit.
Finally, she added one sentence: "I offer this planet as a gift in exchange for your protection."
She pressed send.
Beep.
The information turned into an invisible beam, piercing through the Spire's dome, through the atmosphere, and into the chaotic, dangerous void.
Jessia leaned back in her chair, watching the words "Success" on the screen. In that moment, like a gambler who had bet their entire life, she let out a grin of both madness and relief.
She had succeeded. She had sold the planet.
And she had sold it to the most powerful buyer in existence.