Rise of a Valkyrie

Part 11

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"Are you mad?" he hissed once his office door was shut. "If you were recognized in this city, or caught, I'd have a dozen rivals using the resulting investigation to get rid of me." He gingerly took a seat behind his desk.

Rayker was not impressed by Merris—a short, balding man, who thought of himself as subtle, but was as easy to read as a gossip magazine. "You demanded a progress report," she said. "I decided to deliver it personally."

Merris raised a finger at her. "You're an adrenaline junky, like everyone else in your sordid criminal underworld."

Rayker stared back at him but said nothing.

He eventually turned away, flustered. Getting up out of his chair, he walked to the nearest window and looked out at the surrounding buildings. "The Caldera project is proceeding well below expectations. I am struggling to justify its existence to the Secretariat."

"You'll be closing it down, then?" she said, with practiced disinterest. No need to let him think she was too attached to the operation, or he might get suspicious. What the cardinals never understood about power was that it was never found in the decisions of the institution—only in what you could make people believe.

He turned back. "Now, I didn't say that. But we must address its limitations, and develop a holistic process going forward, making sure we keep the defined objectives in view whilst furthering the team's alignment with the Adjudicate's broader strategy."

Rayker tapped her fingers loudly on the armrest of her chair as she let the sentence fade into the forgettable past. He always spoke in such vacuous words that offered only the pretense of competence.

"As I have explained to you many times, Merris," she said, "the machine cannot turn people into obedient drones. It simplifies and amplifies their instincts, making them violent and dangerous. We have had success with animals, true. But that is because animals have simple minds. If we give them food and a warm place to sleep, they are easy to manage. Every time we put a human in there, I lose men, and it is rather difficult to manage a rampaging monstrosity when your workforce is in pieces on the floor."

Of course, Rayker had not been foolish enough to try a second human test, but she needed a believable way to justify her repeated requests for manpower. Specifically, for only those men who had served with, and were loyal to, Captain Reed.

"But you have been working towards a solution?"

"How can I? I don't have any scientists or engineers on my team. Instead, we've been exploring the laboratory in greater detail, in the hopes of finding new research avenues."

"Have you discovered anything?"

Rayker rolled her eyes. "Don't you think I would have communicated something as exciting as a new discovery, Merris?"

"You will remember to address me as Cardinal Merris, please," he said quietly, before looking back to the window. "I thought you knew how to use this alien technology from... from your own background."

She turned up the corners of her mouth. "I am not an engineer, unfortunately, but I have had a degree of success in fine tuning some of our creature's characteristics."

"Meaning?"

"I can program the machine to make them larger, give them... upgrades."

"But nothing so far that has truly intimidated the local populace?"

"Unfortunately not," Rayker said. "They have proven quite adaptative. Their militias are well organized and able to absorb losses. The people have accepted the risk and continue to live their lives. Colony worlds are dangerous places that breed hardy folk."