The Withered Land, The Empire Falls: ABYSSIUM

ABYSSIUM, Part Six

Politicians, legislators, ministerial diplomats, barristers..., Ugh. Over-educated bureaucrats all. Human cyphers with scarcely any identity other than that the empire they served allowed them to have. Schemers and manipulators, functionary appointees hiding behind rules and regulations designed to subvert the individual destinies of the common man and common woman in favor of the governing regime's hunger for dominion. Physically soft and militarily ignorant, untrained in the art and science of warfare, these were folk unused to sublimating their egos and personal aspirations for the greater service of the needs of the team and its objectives. They didn't farm. They didn't hunt. They didn't forge or construct any tools with which to farm of hunt. Nothing they did protected anyone from the cold or the rain or from fangs and claws. They were little more than parasitic human slugs. The only things they built were cages for other people. She could barely stand to look at them as they timidly shuffled into the barracks-longhouse, looking tired, thirsty, confused and lost. Weak. They repulsed her.

She silently shook her head as they filed by after being searched for weapons, once again doubting the wisdom her own clandestine decision to work as a renegade counterspy within the ranks of Haq'Ja-Rashaei's Korhng'Nathi clanship.

Her name was Reihn Valkonurr and she was a former Sergeant in the High Frontier Saber Infantry, now an Inspector-Operative undercover embedded with the criminal brotherhood in the Dryfte-Town of Vazyoneulle.  Her covert intelligence role was known to no one in local territorial law enforcement, for fear of that information leaking out to informants on Haq'Ja-Rashaei's payroll.

She had only recently assumed the role of Dalseth Qri'Loth's Command-Second, having fought hard over time to earn the mercurial and brutish Anomaleunne Vale-Ogre's trust.  

Except for one other person, only Lunar Response Brigade Chief-of-Station Pragkus Rehdgraice at Swordphont 107 knew anything about her mission.  And unfortunately, that one other person had just arrived in Vazyoneulle...

Regency Diplomat Master-Chancellor Czeerai Seda'Bausayed. 

Reihn Valkonurr's mood had darkened enough to match the night sky above the Dryfte-Town.

Though born of the Ran-Jaddath bloodline, the most common, but poorest and least politically-influential social bio-culture, Reihn was a mixed-blood individual, possessing over a third of the genetic traits usually belonging to the ancient and decadent nobility of the enigmatic Omaygun bloodlineage. She was distantly related to the scions of the House Aosguestyn, the third-ranking Master-Kyne of the Omayguns' society of clockwork cybernetics-enhanced, Olympia gene-ascendent mutants. The Omayguns were, for the most part, arrogant and imperious and frequently interbred with the lower castes of Teshiwahurian culture for their twisted and cynical amusement, but, more often than not, they cold-bloodedly executed any offspring resulting from those unauthorized sexual liaisons. However, in certain cases, their innate curiosity would get the better of them and they would unexpectedly let the mixed offspring live because they'd find that child's particular mutation in some way uniquely fascinating.

Reihn possessed just such a variety of bio-genetic variance.

She was neurologically hyper-vigorous, having both physical and mental reflexes a dozen times faster than even the most athletically gifted or intellectually-flexible Teshiwahurian, and she was extremely long-lived, nearly immortal, just like the purest blooded Omayguns. She was also blessed with a wildly robust and efficient cellular healing factor, an incredibly fortuitous trait for a thief-warrior-assassin to possess. But, simultaneously, she was also cursed with the endowment of a rare and sometimes highly limiting biological disorder, that being an extreme metabolic susceptibility to cold temperatures, resembling acute symptomatology of a disorder on planet Earth known as hypothyroidism.