Eye of the Viper

Xion settled into the pristine white leather captain's chair, his gaze locked on the vast, shimmering display that dominated the room.

The sleek, styled interior of the Tachy was hushed.

Katya stood in silence beside him, her eyes fixed on the screen, hands wrapped around a mug of kahawa.

The incandescent flash and sudden shadows of hyperspace rushed past the holo view.

Xion leaned back and aimed his mocha-jade eyes at his woman. ‘We have to talk, beautiful,' his rasp was gentle but firm.

Katya fixed her eyes on him, uncertainty flickering in her eyes.

‘Are the good times over?' she teased, tilting her head. ‘Is this the appointed time for my reaming?'

‘Nada. I'm not interested in giving you a hard time unless it's on my terms.'

The gleam in his eye left nothing to the imagination. ‘That said, we have a mystery to unravel. Sit.'

She did as commanded.

‘I need to understand the big picture,' Xion murmured. ‘Your brothers, you, the freakin' King of Iccythria and what the fokk he was hoping to achieve by kidnapping me and siphoning my metanoids. But let's start at the beginning.'

She opened her palms to him in surrender. ‘Go for it. I've nothing to hide.'

‘Sawa. When you were on Eden II, did you use the ruse of the card game to steal access codes from Isabella Annan Djansi? Or was it to plant the gemstones?'

He referred to the famed Rhesian art dealer who'd been the showcase curator.

‘Both. It was a long way to come pick up some data, but we also needed a way to get hold of the Serpent's Iris. So I guess we went for the two birds with one-stone strategy.'

Xion leaned back. ‘Your idea?'

She hung her head. ‘Naam. Kidnapping you was not on the table before Korin discovered our signals from the gems I planted on Eden II were being blocked.'

‘So you had to change tack, up the ante and capture me instead.'

Katya's eyes fell again as she nodded in shame. ‘Until I got to know you better on those two days and tried to stop them coming into my suite.'

‘What was your plan B to gain access to the vaults?'

She shrugged. ‘Stealing your wrist comm and somehow hacking it.'

Xion smirked. ‘You'd have never succeeded, not against Mirage's quantum mind.'

‘I get that now,' Katya sighed. ‘But with my kids kidnapped, my back was to the wall.'

Once more, she gazed at her feet, and he spotted her bite her lip some more, a sign he now recognised as her nerves showing. ‘Khaliya, don't blame yourself. A ruthless enemy played you and I. We now get to play him back. Why the heist of the Serpent's Iris?'

‘We were deep in debt. The first half deposit money he paid us for it was enough to fund this ship, the crime, this freakin' caper and pay off all our debts.'

‘Who did you hand the Serpent's Iris to?'

‘The King, The ALMQ monarch. He took it along with the delivery of yours truly when we landed on LeCythi. We also received full payment for our services soon after.'

Xion ran his tongue under his top lip. ‘I understand. The Iris, what's it for?'

She shrugged. ‘All I know is that he needed Sable vault access and your metanoids to bypass Sable. After which he intended to use the Iris, but what exactly for we were not privy to.'

Mirage piped up. ‘On the matter of the noids K'Sumi harvested, I deactivated them, but I still have eyes and ears on the ground in Iccythria, and I've learnt that K'Sumi was livid about the fact. He's nuked the lab and the doctors who siphoned them. He's also screaming blue murder and tearing his palace down until his advisers devise another way to get what he wants.'

Xion changed tack. ‘Like the Khosana said, he's getting shit wild and on the lam. Did you always deal directly with K'Sumi?' he asked Katya.

She shook her head. ‘At first, he used a proxy to procure my father's services, but I believe he became frantic and started dealing with Korin. He's the one who insisted on the card game because it'd be the one sure way I would place the gems into Sable hands.'

The Rider sat back, his mind racing.

‘So here's what I think,' he grunted a few minutes later. ‘We know the Supreme King of the House of ALMQ is desperate as his influence wanes on Iccythria. He needs to pull off a major coup to stay in control. ‘I suspect what he wants from us, Riders, will give him a vital advantage over his enemies and offer him his last chance to hold onto power.'

He leaned back in his chair and thought. ‘And he needed my metanoids for it. Given my work on the rock, this means high security, for I have the highest clearance, bar Kainan and Zane.'

He thought for a beat longer. ‘Katya, you were also tasked with playing a card game on Eden II that would allow you to secret a gem with a hack bomb into our systems. So, we know the target is Eden II's framework. He has to breach a facility where my security privilege is crucial. What would that place be?'

‘Somewhere that holds items, data or goods that are highly valuable,' Katya posited.

Xion's eyes gleamed. ‘There's only one location that fits the bill. The Sable Vault.'

‘He needs access to it to take something out,' Mirage suggested, chiming in. ‘It can't be mullah; he's rolling in Ccyth reserve funds. It can't be jewellery; Iccythria is the source of Pegasi's gems, so it points to an artefact or something of otherworldly power.'

‘He can't be thinking of the Shard?' Xion asked.

Mirage shook their head. ‘Nada, too big, too risky.'

Katya snapped her fingers. ‘What if it's something within the Shard? One of them?'

Xion knifed forward in his chair. ‘Fokk, that's it, khaliya. He needs access to the vaults to get into one of the Shards. Why? What's so potent inside it that he'd risk so much to get it?'

He whirled around to his monitor. ‘Can we all do some research now and examine what we find? What threads connect Iccythria to the Shard?'

The trio set off to work.

Xion, Katya and Mirage sat in the silence of the Tachy's cockpit, glued to individual massive view screens displaying scrolls, maps, files and feeds from all over the galaxy.

They had been scouring every database and public data source for hours. Tracking down any lead or information on Iccythria and its connection to the Eye of Elysium.

Their search had led them to ancient manuscripts and stories of lore, uploaded onto Sysnet by historians and scholars.

Xion examined through pages upon pages of data, his fingers flying over his holographic keyboard as he searched for any mention of Iccythria.

Meanwhile, Katya pored over maps, charts, old books, and archaic scrolls on Sys-Net.

Mirage concentrated on the Darknet, their screen flickering with feeds from the most secretive corners of Pegasi's digital universe.

Xion froze as he scanned through a document saved in a dusty corner of Sysnet.

His eyes widened, and his gaze flickered towards his companions.

‘I might have located something,' he murmured. ‘It's a passage from an old book that dates back centuries.'

Both Katya and Mirage leaned in closer to examine what he had found.

‘It's an old manuscript written by a group identified as the Keepers of Knowledge,' he told them. ‘They were said to possess vast amounts of information about the history of various worlds,' Xion read out loud. ‘According to the parchment, Iccythria was an uninhabited planet that once housed an advanced civilisation famed for its incredible technology. However, their wisdom was lost when a massive volcanic explosion destroyed their society and left behind inhospitable conditions on Iccythria.'

‘The eruption was caused by an experiment gone wrong with an artefact of unknown origin.' Xion added. ‘The text states it's called the Viper's Eye, and when turned on, it can trigger a planetwide seismic and polarity meltdown.'

‘I've done some crunching and taken a closer look at that manuscript, and I have more of a scientific explanation,' Mirage piped up. ‘Like many worlds, the core of Iccythria is a moon-sized ball of heavy, elemental metals. From the scrolls, it sounds like the vibrations from the Viper's Eye created pressure so intense and so dense in the past that it led to a colossal catastrophe that damaged the core's crystal structure and magnetic field.'

‘If K'Sumi were to use it now,' Mirage said, ‘damaging electromagnetic radiation would reach Iccythria's exterior, stripping the now ionised atmosphere by solar radiation, killing everyone. The oceans would freeze and boil as the planet rotates towards its sun. Everything would die. It might even have rippling effects across this part of the universe and even reach other planets.'

Xion whistled under his breath. ‘So it's possible to imagine that the waves emitted by the Viper's Eye might somehow disrupt the geomagnetic fields of other worlds?'

‘Naam. Imagine all the magnetic rocks across Pegasi going ‘kachink' all at the same time,' Mirage said. ‘There would likely be earthquakes, volcanoes, and cracking of the planets' surfaces.'

‘Which it once did,' Katya breathed, ‘from the notes in the manuscript. But the historical catastrophe was short-lived and only affected Iccythria, triggered for a short time.'

‘Correct,' Xion concurred. ‘So to be triggered, the Viper's Eye needs a key, a lock. A gem of some variety to unlock its oscillating power.'

Both he and Mirage gazed at each other at the same time. ‘The Serpent's Iris.'

Katya's eyes shot up in surprise. ‘So it's some kind of planet-destroying artefact, not just a pretty bauble?'

Xion jerked his chin. ‘Mirage examined it and found it gives off a radiating energy frequency that might be used to set off a series of reactions. So now that K'Sumi has The Serpent's Iris, we can assume he needs the Viper's Eye. Perhaps to use it as a bargaining ram to maintain his power over the Council and the Houses.'

Katya hissed in disbelief. ‘Meaning he'd threaten to use it unless they allowed him to keep his throne?'

‘Truly a far-fetched, fokkin-mad, ego-driven, maniacal idea,' Xion mused.

‘So if the Viper's Eye artefact is hidden within the Eye of Elysium, where is it?' Katya asked.

‘I think it's more like who has it,' Mirage countered. ‘The text says that hundreds of years ago, a man, an elder of Iccythria, was chosen to take the Viper's Eye out of sight and mind to a far-off realm inside the Shard. His name was K'Xyrth. He walked into the Eye with the artefact in hand for his walk to eternity.'

Xion shook his head, nonplussed. ‘Fokk, aren't there thousands of souls in the Shard Eyes? Mirage?'

‘Millions, in fact,' the quantum mind confirmed.

Xion sat back for a beat. ‘Perhaps we don't need to uncover the artefact; we probably don't have the time. That said, no matter how the King swings it, he's desperate for access to our strongroom to find the object and enact his terror on Iccythria. How about we lure K'Sumi with a way to reach the vaults and the Shards and make him believe he's close to getting a hold of the Viper's Eye?'

‘So you're saying that we give him a little help?' Katya smirked. ‘If so, I know of a double-cross caper we could use.'

Xion turned his eyes on her. ‘Pray to tell.'

She proceeded to share.