Starbreaker: Volume 4 - Chapter 23

“While humanity was still divided into nation states in the cradle of its homeworld, the dwarves had spread beyond their own system to begin prospecting and mining the asteroids contained in the belt beyond their star’s light. But with their increased power and capability, they encountered a problem. An ever-expanding market with no buyers. In the other sentient species that they have encountered, dwarf kind has found not only friendship but customers.”

—The Dwarves: A Contemporary History, Part Two, Krain Festenlaide

I was tired of waiting for you all to come to the correct decision. So I reached out to contact the only person in the Hammerheart Consortium that we can be sure would answer your call and that wouldn’t immediately blow your ‘I’m dead’ cover.

Strife’s rage surged through Sylvas and immediately tore down Clearmind. “You did what?”

Kaya took a few doddering steps back as wrath started to flare off his skin, bright and red. “Sylvas… calm your doggy down.”

Just go and take the call, darling. You’ll thank me later.

Taking a deep breath, Sylvas brought his entirely reasonable anger back under control. “It’s my fault, I… I need to go take the call.”

Hector’s usual jovial nature seemed to vanish in the span of a few words. “Kid, what have you done?”

Sylvas pinched the bridge of his nose and resisted the urge to bang his head on the wall until Mira fell out. “I… I don’t even know yet.”

The pulse sounded again, and Sylvas moved towards the cockpit. Hector moved to block his path. “Kid, if you’ve blown this operation—”

Who’d have thought that super-powered spy mages were so risk-averse?

Sylvas was beyond frustrated at this point, and Strife within him was thriving upon it. “I won’t know until I answer the call.”

Hector stared him down for just a moment too long, or Sylvas took a step forward just a moment too soon, and both of them bristled, ready to fight. Power flooded through Sylvas, unbidden. Strife rippled out from his core to flood through the channels of etherium that lined his body.

Kaya stepped in between them, heading for the cockpit herself. “Come on, I want to see who’s calling the culgh end of nowhere.”

Sylvas couldn’t stop the little hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Hector seemed to remember where they were, too. Sheepishly, they both headed through to the cockpit with Malachai trailing along at the rear. Before he stepped into the circle and received the call, Sylvas cast a quick glance in Hector’s direction, asking permission, the way that Mira really should have, and he saw the tenuous nod before moving forward and answering the hail.

Every console slate flickered to life as he did, projecting the same face on every surface. Hammerheart. Not any of the cousins, and not any of the executives of the shipping company. The very same Hammerheart who had been in the same training camp as Sylvas and Kaya. The same dwarf who had murdered Hotlips in a fit of ego and tried to murder Sylvas, over and over again. His ginger hair was shaved down to the barest fuzz, and his neatly braided beard hung loose and bushy. As the signal cleared, and Sylvas’ own image was projected back to him, he broke into a smile.

“Vail. I knew the universe couldn’t kill you.”

There were few things in the universe that could spark absolute enmity in Sylvas’ heart. Eidolons had been one, and now that same anger was binding him ever closer to one. The destruction of peaceful worlds had ranked highly in the listings, too, which meant he was already feeling a little raw. Hammerheart’s grinning face turned out to be the third thing that could send him into a murderous rage. “Looks like you survived being kicked out of the Ardent and crawling back to suckle from your rich family, too.”

“Yes. I have. And truly, unironically, I thank you for returning me to them.” Hammerheart’s smile didn’t falter despite the insult. Instead the man offered him something akin to a bow on the screen. “That last day on Strife…you taught me a lesson in humility. One that I realized my family had been trying to teach me for decades. I was an arrogant, spoiled, and angry child, and you set me on the course to being a man. For this, I can do nothing but thank you.”

This was not how Sylvas had pictured a reunion with the bullheaded bully who had made his Ardent training into a living hell. He’d pictured more shouting, more blood, and less… acceptance. “I’m glad I made you a better person, but it isn’t hard to find a way uphill when you’re in a valley.”

For a moment, it seemed as if Hammerheart’s more familiar frown would return and he’d start spitting contempt back, but then he let out a near-breathless laugh and nodded. “Hah, you are funny. I never had the chance to learn that about you. So many missed opportunities I must now try to make up for.”

This version of Hammerheart was somehow even more infuriating to Sylvas than the original. It caused Strife to growl and pace within him. After all the evil that man had done, now he was finding inner peace. All while Sylvas himself was tearing himself apart from the inside out. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. He was the one who deserved to be suffering.

Darling, this would be a good time to say something back before the opportunity walks away from us.

Mira’s words brought Sylvas back to ground, if only because it allowed him to redirect the anger he felt towards her. He focused his attention back onto Hammerheart. “Yes, I’m hilarious. Why are you calling?”

“You desired information about the Thesulan Consortium. I have already stolen it from my family’s archives.” He took a steadying breath. “I simply wanted to confirm that it was really you contacting me before sending it.”

Sylvas’ frown deepened at the admission. “Why?”

This time it was Hammerheart’s turn to look a little uncomfortable as he searched for words, eventually just shrugging. “Because it’ll help you…and because it’s part of my penance. My path. I wasn’t ever going to, but when I heard that you had died…well, it showed me a great many things about myself that I didn’t yet realize. Things that still weighed on my soul. I know I don’t deserve it after all that I did, and I know it’ll be all too hollow, but I wanted…needed to apologize.”

The dwarf visibly braced himself in the seconds that followed that, and quickly added, “I’m sorry Sylvas. For everything. I don’t expect your forgiveness, but at the very least I wanted you to know that I’m now on a better path. Thanks to you.”

Sylvas’ mouth was hanging open. He closed it with a snap. “I… don’t know what to say to that.”

“And you don’t have to,” Hammerheart replied with a shake of his head, the screen then showing that an information packet had been received. “I’m sending you everything that we’ve be have on the Thesulans. We’ve been tracking them for years and even had some spies planted within their organization at various points in time. Hopefully this will help in whatever it is you’re trying to do.”

Sylvas quickly accessed the packet and discovered what the man had said was true. There was everything they could have hoped to get about the consortium, everything they could possibly need to find a trail to follow. But above even that what stood out particularly brightly to Sylvas was that there had been no fishing for what they wanted the data for, not that Sylvas had any intention of disclosing it even if he’d been asked.

Still, there was one question, one assurance, that needed answering, even if having to ask them of Hammerheart made Sylvas feel somehow dirty. “About my being alive…”

“I won’t tell anyone. Ever.” Hammerheart assured without a second of hesitation. “Not unless you give me explicit instructions to do so. If you need to be dead to do whatever you’re doing, I figure it must be with good reason, and I’m not going to be the one who breaks that.”

Sylvas didn’t know how to respond to that for a long time. He had no idea what had happened to Hammerheart since he had last seen him. No idea that anyone could change the way that this dwarf had. Eventually, Mira’s persistent nagging at him to be polite paid off. “I… thank you.”

Hammerheart looked extremely gratified at even that small concession. “Once we’re done here, I’ll make sure this console finds its way into a star. No one will know we spoke. Past that, if there is ever anything else you need, all you need to do is reach out on the comm link I put in packet. You’ll find me right away.”

Sylvas closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again to see Hammerheart’s face for the first time, all over again. He was the same dwarf, of that there could be no question, but everything from the way he spoke to the way he carried himself had changed. There was a stillness to him now that had never been there before. “I honestly did not see this conversation going this way.”

“We are only mortal, and we have no true idea of what our future will hold.” The dwarf smiled again. “I would never have guessed when we first met that you would prove to be my reformer and salvation, yet here we are.”

Hammerheart said something in rapid-fire dwarvish, which Sylvas couldn’t follow, then the signal cut out abruptly.

Still dazed, Sylvas turned to Kaya. “What did he say?”

“It was a bit of an old poem, from the age of… He’s said he wants you to live until the hammers no longer ring and to know only… uh… the warmth of the heart… fire. It doesn’t translate well.”

“I can see why you bore this man such enmity,” Malachai said with a completely straight face.

Kaya snorted. “He was not like that back in school.”

Hector had moved past them to pore over the files that had just been transferred. It was a vast amount of information—Sylvas knew that much from the flood of it through his slate into his brain—and it would take any one of them weeks to sift through it all.

If only you had some sort of dedicated genius lodged in your brain who could sift through it all while you sleep.

“Right.” Hector’s lips were moving as he read, eyes widening at everything that they’d just gotten for nothing. “I’m going to need some explanations.”

Sylvas sighed, having known that it had been coming. “One of my paradigms. It’s not in my file…but it functions somewhat independently of me.”

“Sorry, what?” Hector dragged his eyes away from the screen. “Part of your brain works independently from the rest of you.”

“Oh, it gets worse,” Kaya chimed in, earning her a scowl from Sylvas.

“A part of my brain, which… seems to be manifesting the personality of an old friend from my homeworld, functions as a secondary consciousness, helping me to process vast amounts of information rapidly. There is so much sensory input from my various different senses that…well, that it was impossible to follow. So I created someone who could help me do so.”

“Someone?” Hector repeated as he rubbed his temples. “Wait, can it hear me now?”

“If I can hear you. She can hear you.”

“It’s his ex-girlfriend,” Kaya added, uninvited. “Living in his head. Rent free.”

Sylvas growled. “Mira is not—”

“Okay, so Mira? Right?” Hector grabbed onto Sylvas’ face and stared into his eyes as if he might be able to spot the other person inside him. “Mira, if you pull something like that ever again, I’m going to space you.”

And how precisely does he intend to do that without killing you, darling?

Hector continued speaking entirely calmly. “And if she wants to know how I’m going to do that without killing you, I’m not. She pulls a stunt like that again, you’re both walking home.”

“I might have something to say about that.” That treacherous anger rose up in Sylvas, even though he knew that the right course was to shut up and calm down.

Power washed out of Hector, so potent and intense that it knocked Kaya and Malachai to their knees, and Sylvas could only withstand it because of Strife inside him rearing up and throwing itself against the wall of force.

Hector eased that pressure on the others, letting them regain their footing, then doubled down on Sylvas, trying to drive him back, to force him down, to grovel before his better. “That’s the great thing about having a complete covenant instead of one that’s only just started forming. I’m one of the only people in this neck of the woods strong enough to completely destroy you if I judge you to be too much of a danger. Blowing our cover, revealing your identity, sending messages to parties that might be working with our enemy, for all we know. Those things aren’t going to stand. I know the kid has got that. He’s got it memorized. But you, Ms. Mira. You don’t seem to grasp the situation.”

Inside Sylvas’ mind, in the fractured and segmented parts of his memory and self, where Mira lay, she had no physical form except for that which he remembered for her, but despite this fact, Sylvas could not deny that he knew without a doubt, in that moment, she was pouting.

He took a deep breath. “We will be having a long conversation about this until she understands the situation, I assure you.”

“Well, until then, I’m going to disconnect you from the ship so our little stowaway can’t get up to anything else.”

That stung Sylvas more than he would have liked to admit. In the brief time they’d been aboard the Folly, he had entirely fallen in love with it, and with how he felt when he was a part of it. But at the same time, he couldn’t exactly argue that Mira wasn’t going to cause problems. “That’s probably for the best. I’m sorry. I had no idea that she could act independently like that without me even being aware.”

Darling, the things that you have no idea about would comprise a list stretching from the dawn of time to the heat death of the universe. Particularly when it comes to women.

Sylvas sighed. “If you wouldn’t mind excusing me for a moment, I have to go and have a rather unpleasant conversation.”

As he stalked out of the room, he heard Kaya cracking her usual jokes. “Who’d have thought the chat with Hammerheart was going to be the nice one?”