***
"You failed, Freyt." The man in the nightmarish blue robes whispered, voice trembling with restrained outrage. "You claimed certainty. You said the attack would succeed. That Nymphar would fall. Yet it still stands! And now the empire's people rally with renewed purpose—tearing out our spies and cults by the roots! The assassins you sent accomplished nothing, and your precious mercenary failed to rescue the god's advent."
He stared daggers at me from across the steel chamber—only to flinch as he noticed the pistol hidden under my arm, aimed squarely at his heart.
"Disarm," Freyt ordered, barely glancing my way. His focus was on the half-melted ruin of his arm.
With a sigh and a theatrical eye-roll, I obeyed. Playing the part of the obedient gun-for-hire, I holstered my pistol.
"The message was sent," Freyt continued, voice even. "The people are in disarray. The empire's armies remain the only united force within the Hegemony of Forced Sovereignty. All that's left is to take away the object of their hatred. Then the empire will tear itself apart, desperately searching for someone else to blame."
"You're disbanding Freiheit?" I asked, raising a brow. A quiet scoff escaped me. "Who the fuck's going to keep my pockets full now?"
"Freiheit won't disperse. We only need Nymphas to think it has." Freyt placed his damaged arm on the table, and without hesitation, sliced it off. "The Empress's sudden declaration of war disrupted my timeline. Heavily. But the schedule for the weapon's completion will remain unchanged."
"That won't sway the Great Houses," said another of his kind—part machine, part man, like Freyt. "The empire and its vassals remain separated. Their loyalty lies in fear of the Constellation Knights. But now they believe you control that fear, Chief Freyt. When they pay tithes to the empire, they believe it protects them from the CKs' wrath. You, however—you're a weapon guaranteed to be aimed at them. That unites them against us. Your obsession with giving your CK something to 'enjoy' has clearly dulled your computation."
"Are you so certain?" Freyt rose from his seat and slowly began to circle the table. "It was my plan that slipped a blade into the heart of the central galaxy. My weapons. My armies. My designs. I delivered the results—and much, much more." Reaching the skeptical lieutenant, Freyt leaned close. "Tell me... what have you done, aside from managing what I built? Because I told you to?"
"You've gone mad," the droid said flatly. "Your organic component is deteriorating. A consequence of your duel with Andromeda."
Without hesitation, Freyt sliced off the droid's head, then ripped its arm from the torso with a sickening crunch of metal and synthetic sinew.
"And yours," he muttered, "is now inoperative." Returning to his seat at the table's end, Freyt affixed the droid's arm to his own stump with practiced efficiency. "Yes. My body is failing. The duel with Andromeda triggered massive backlash. I have—at best—a few years left in this outdated vessel. Which is why Freiheit must return to the shadows. I need time to acquire a new vessel."
"How exactly?" the cultist asked warily, rubbing at his throat.
Freyt pointed directly at him. "The empire believes it has us on the defensive. Let them believe it. Meanwhile, your people will spread whispers—dreams. The empire will become obsessed with its own shadows. Paranoia. Infighting. That buys us the time we need to complete the weapon... and build me a new body."
The hall doors slid open with a hiss, drawing my attention to two familiar figures entering.
A boy—half metal, burns barely concealed—walked beside a woman whose wide, mad grin was practically carved into her face. Two new faces i had never seen in these meetings before, but not new enough i had no clue to their identities.
"My new secondary will assume command of all military operations in my absence," Freyt announced. "And Doctor Clefsi will oversee construction of my new body. A better body. Zeran—our timeline?"
"The empire will be distracted by internal conflict within four years, Chief," Zeran rasped through his damaged mouth. "A false base has been prepared. We've begun stoking the greed and ambition buried within each house. But centuries of enforced loyalty will take time to unravel."
Freyt wheezed—his voice struggling through his mechanical systems, but clearly pleased. "Good. Remember. Only nobles and those in power are to be targeted. Make them fight personally. What happened on Nymphar was just the opening message."
Zeran nodded.
Then, in a blur of motion, he launched across the room and grabbed the robed cultist by the throat. "You are fortunate the bombs beneath the city were discovered, Pope of the Dream," Freyt said coldly. "If not, I would've flayed you alive for every blind human that died in your recklessness. Your desperation to escape the shadows nearly cost me my reverie."
Gasping and coughing, the cultist clawed at the hand around his neck. "We both want... the empire... destroyed! Who cares about... sacrifices... to such a great cause?!"
"I do." Freyt's voice turned razor-sharp. "My directive is to save humanity—not destroy it. We do not kill the innocent. We eliminate those who hoard power. Those who would rather the world burn than lose their throne."
He released the Pope, tossing him across the cold floor like garbage. Limping toward the grinning doctor, Freyt added softly, "You all know your missions. Now do what must be done... to save this galaxy's people."
The near-century-old AKP leaned into the doctor's support as they left the room, moving like a man whose bones had finally remembered their age.
And as the heavy doors closed behind him, I let out a slow, bitter breath.
After today, I could already tell—my jobs were about to become a hell of a lot more tedious. And a hell of a lot longer.