Luis doesn't know if the Keeper's bodyguard drones are going to defend their charge after he's dead, but he's not taking chances. Luis' UMP patters away in short bursts at one of the small spheres. The drone reacts with inhuman speed, forming into oblique shapes to deflect the oncoming rounds as best it can, but the armor-piercing .45s rip gobbets of quicksilver from the tiny machine.

Ngawai's SCAR thumps its suppressed reports in heavier time than Luis' submachine gun. She hoses the second of the three chrome spheres, but the machine flattens into a disc, presenting itself edgewise. Most of the shots glance off or miss, but a vital few punch terrible canyons through the shapeshifting metal.

Arketta's had more time with Earth weapons than her Apprehender comrade. She pours half a mag into the third bodyguard drone and is rewarded with a complete and utter failure of integrity on the machine's part. The Keeper's third drone hits the floor in spatters of gooey, semi-liquid silver.

Angel moves quickly once the signal is given, dropping to one knee and firing a determined burst at the nearest of the radiation drones, the earth-made rifle joining the clamor of automatic fire in the chamber.

Like it's nimble brother, the second neutron drone zips up and away from Angel's line of fire. The difference is that Angel's seen them move already. Two rounds of his three-round burst punch their way through the deadly machine and it slams to the floor. A fireworks show sparks out of the bullet holes, then there's nothing but sizzling noises and smoke.

Swims picks up where Davis left off. His gotcha shroud falls to pieces as he stands his ground, firing the SCAR with arm outstretched. The last neutron drone stays one step ahead for most of Swims' magazine. Most of it. The shots tear off something from the drone's rear and it wobbles, spins, but stays up.

Jonnoperest doesn't fire. He's doing the Cortex equivalent of rolling the dead Keeper for his wallet.

The two damaged but live bodyguard drones settle slowly to the ground and return to their normal baseball shape.

The last neutron drone is wavering, clearly sitting off-kilter on damaged impellers. There's a wumwumwumwum, a sense of heat, and then the drone explodes. Fragments and debris ricochet off the hard floor.

Arketta staggers and falls forward, unable to balance.

Luis checks his magazine, then puts a few shots into each of the remaining intact bodygaurd drones. With the current threats eliminated, he turns to the rest of the group, "Okay, let's get this place buttoned up. Jonoporest, keep at it, I'll join you once I check Arketta. Swims, Nagwai, Angel, get the doors, lock 'em down. Stay alert for any more of those big drones. You can stand down if those turn out to be the only ones, but until then, play it like there are more. Davis, stick with Jonoperest and me. If Arketta's all right, you two will act as cover for us as we work until we give the 'all clear' about the drones. Oh, and one more thing", he turns to give Daivs his full attention, "you're a mad genius to get us in here. You know that, right?" That done, he goes to put actions to his words. First, Arketta, then the Cortex.

Davis reloads his SCAR and stands up. *Congratulate me when we're out of here. Noble instincts Luis, but hurry your ass up and get in the Cortex, we need you in there now. Patch her up quick, that's what the Masters invented the frisbees for, right Arketta?* Davis grabs their frisbee off his belt and tosses it to Luis. *The rest of you, what he said, and make sure those fluid sentries are dead. Having those things sitting around here creeps me out.* He sits down and hooks up to the Cortex. *Jonno, how we doin'?*

Luis takes the healing artifact and checks Arketta. He pulls off her helmet; bloody vomit pours out and she reflexively coughs up a little more. She's not conscious. Luis soaks her in the frisbee's glow, watches her pain visibly ease, and joins Davis and Jonnoperest at the Cortex controls.

"I've got the Keeper's access," Jonno explains. "Kept his death from being logged, but those neutron drones were no doubt hooked into the network - yeah, there." He points in virtual space at the great glass eagle-thing swooping lower, its shadow eclipsing the virtual landscape. "We've been made."

A few rifle shots turn the dormant quicksilver drones into messy puddles. As for the doors, well, they're sturdy enough, but there doesn't seem to be any way of physically jamming them, just the access panel that they would presumably need intact in order to leave once the Cortex mischief is done. Cover is likewise scarce in the narthex. The Cortex storage archives would provide better cover, but would leave Davis, Jonno, and Luis exposed at the controls.

Davis plots out their escape route while Jonno and Luis send phantasmal hunting dogs out to find the Imperium's classified information. The team'll have to leave the Cortex the way they entered (for the black doors are the only human-accessible entrance, fire code be damned). Then out the neighboring Repository vault's coreward entrance. One corridor over, the Halls of Tranquility act as a buffer between the outer palace and the Court of Heavenly Purity: meeting place of the Imperium's highest officials, home to the Emperor's physical body, and location of the Black Gate.

The glass eagle screams a challenge, and a swarm of crystal shards rip Luis and Jonno's search routines to pieces. Clearly, the Emperor will have to be dealt with before the Cortex can be declassified and shunted out to the thousand worlds of the Imperium.

"Okay," Davis says, "That's not good. Can we hook into the security systems from here? We need to turn on the security system, get the drones and turrets to attack the Turai, especially the Caretakers and that Avatar outside, buy us some time and hopefully wear them down a bit." Davis thinks for a second. "Can we lock the Emperor out of the Cortex? Revoke his access rights?"

"We could physically cut him off - cut the broadcast lines leading to Napai's transmitters - but we need those to broadcast our updates. He can't be everywhere at once, though... Davis, head back to our beacon we planted and get the fucker's attention. Luis, keep to the mission - get those declassified files updated across the board. I'll work on the security system."

Arketta manages to sit up and regrets doing so. Another small stream of puke, but this time without blood. "What's going on?"

"Shoot now, questions later!" Ngawai shouts. The access panel for the Cortex doors triggers, glyphs lighting up a soft blue across the device.

Davis rolls through his interface and selects the beacon link. Suddenly, he's pulled at what seems to be an incredible rate of speed, through the cables and conduits of the Cortex, lights and strange edifices roaring past until the familiar crystal globe of the Emperor's presence comes into view, like a planet appearing to a ship as it draws closer at nearly the speed of light. It seems that he's about to smash straight into it when he decelerates almost as quickly as he arrived, coming to a rest inside the protective swarm of security drones that surround the Emperor.

After checking to make sure he's safe from the drones behind him, he switches from observing the security layer to looking at incoming lines of communication, searching for an unused connection. Once he finds one, he cuts the cable using his virtual multitool, and splices a communications subroutine that resembles a classical radio broadcast microphone onto the end. He taps on the microphone to make sure it's connected, then leans towards it.

"Umm...hello? This is Garrett Davis, I'm from Earth, or as you call it, Narsai, and I request an audience with the Emperor of the Jade Imperium."

"You have it, Garrett Davis." The voice is baritone and dulcet, but edged with the rasp of age. The alien eagle turns and regards Davis' Cortex presence with its green human eyes. "Although we relish discourse with a fellow diplomat, we regret that we have missed the opportunity to meet prior to this moment."

Davis is struck by how similar to Morgan Freeman the Emperor sounds.

"I feel the same way," he says. "I usually prefer the chance to talk before having to resort to violence. However, when your soldiers on Whirr fired a sunball through the gate into our base, invaded, massacred the people inside, all of this unprovoked I might add, it seemed to our leaders that we were past the point of diplomacy."

He pauses for dramatic effect. "I'm willing to take a chance, though. I'm here to try to figure out what kind of man you are. You describe yourself as a diplomat, and I want to believe you, but the actions of your forces and your Avatar do not bear that out. Why did your forces attack us the instant it was discovered that we were from Narsai? Why did your Avatar threaten us with slavery and annihilation when we repelled the unprovoked attack on our forces?"

"Not unprovoked, Garrett. This confirmation of Narsai shakes the pillars of our house. One planet turns away from us and kills another planet that relies on that planet's surplus. That planet starves another world, and in turn yet another world's manufactories grind to a halt."

An immense web of planetary systems, all linked by Gate, flickers into existence on the Emperor's sphere. Arteries, veins, food, fuel, people, power, all interdependent. So few of them Earths. So many of them harsh.

"We predicted your subjugation would save lives, would strengthen our Imperium. Your destruction would be a tragedy, but the Imperium would survive. Your unfettered existence weakens us. This shall not continue."

---

Ngawai grunts as she slides the dead Keeper across the floor and drops prone behind it, using the corpse as a shooting rest. The Cortex doors open wide enough for Angel, Luis, and Ngawai to glimpse pandemonium outside before a half-dozen attack drones (not the horrifying neutrons, just the normal horrifying twin-linked stinger types) dart into the Cortex through the narrow-but-slowly-widening entrance.

"Shit!" Jonnoperest shouts. "Working on it! Working on it!"

Davis takes in the expanse of the Jade Imperium spread before him. "So, simply because Narsai might have a negative effect, that's enough to condemn billions of people to die? Is the uninterrupted expansion of the Imperium worth more than the lives of the people you kill in the process?"

"Have you ever stopped to consider the human cost of the Imperium's actions? I have seen how life is in the Jade Imperium. The obscenely wealthy few live off of the suffering of the many, with no opportunity to climb above your circumstances. Fear, lies and brutal oppression keep the people in line while the individual has no rights and no way of protecting themselves from the rampant abuse of power. And let's not forget what happens to those who disagree with the Imperium's priorities. Look at Bashakra, which was burned to the ground for the crime of wanting to determine its own destiny. You talk about diplomacy, but when you could have negotiated with Bashakra, could have established trade, gotten your precious resources and brought them back into the Imperium, you instead destroyed them and the resources that you claim to care about so much. No wonder so many people think that there's no point in talking and turn to rebellion."

Davis pauses to catch his virtual breath. "Emperor, I want to believe that you care about your people, that you believe that what you are doing is the best for them, and not out of some self-perpetuating need for expansion. You've never been to Narsai, but as I've said, there are billions of people living there. Overcrowding is becoming a serious problem, and we are beginning to cause real changes to our planet. For as long as we know, we've been at war with each other over land and resources. But, on the whole, the people who live there have rights, liberty, are free to make their own decisions about their lives. I guarantee that not a single person on Narsai would trade it for living in the harsh oppression that is the Jade Imperium. I'm not saying that the planets in the Imperium should be as crowded as we are on Narsai, but have you ever stopped to think that while securing resources for the kind of ridiculous excess that I've seen on Napai, you've neglected and abused your people, that maybe they'd rather be a little more crowded but actually have individual rights, freedoms and liberties?"

Luis joins Jonoperest at work, trying to close the doors and seal them down. Whatever Davis is up to this position needs to hold. They've got a mission, and Luis can't let the team down. He dives headfirst into the datastream.

OOC: ADS, I'm itching to burn some WD. Feel free to use if required to close the doors and lock 'em tight, warn me if it takes more than four.

"And what have your people done with their precious freedoms?" the Emperor asks. "Have their rights and liberties fulfilled them, so that they might come together in mutual cooperation to survive, advance, and expand into the stars? No! They have made war on themselves and their planet. Does every person live as they desire? No! They squander their freedom, they give it up to those in higher stations, they trade it for security, power, possessions. Your people have no more freedom than mine. They are simply more deluded."

"You confuse what freedom means," Davis says. "Freedom includes the ability to do nothing. Yes, many people give up some of their liberty to others, but the critical difference is that on Narsai, they have the option to get it back any time they want. No one is a slave unless they choose to make themselves that way, unlike in the Imperium. Besides, do all of those in the Imperium with the means to do what they want constantly act in the greater good of everyone else?"

He thinks for a second. "Also, your analogy doesn't stand up. We have not expanded into the stars on Narsai, not because our freedom has made us lazy, but because we simply don't have the capability. When your ancestors were taken by the Masters, you were given technology that might take us another thousand years to develop on Narsai, and not for lack of trying. You've been given a head start that we can't possibly compete with. We're both human beings, you know as well as I do that we have an insatiable need to explore and expand. Our history is full of examples of Narsai'i pushing the boundaries, exploring our planet and eventually space, and instead of being held back by our belief in individual freedoms, it is what has allowed us to explore and expand as much as we have, limited as it is. Look at how far we've come in the short time we've been exposed to your technology. Less than a year ago, we had no knowledge of any of this incredibly advanced technology, and now we're almost as fluent as your best scientists are. Freedoms are not our weakness or a hindrance to exploration, Emperor. On the contrary, they are our greatest strength."

Luis performs the Cortex version of grabbing the dead Keeper's keys, locking the heavy blast doors, and snapping the keys off from the other side of the lock. They're not opening until someone on the inside says so.

Meanwhile, the six attack drones that made it through the temporary gap decide to end this little security breach.

Click.

A chorus of silence follows where the team is NOT cut down in a hail of razor-slivers. Ngawai turns to look at Jonnoperest, who is programming just as madly as Luis, trying to keep the team's IFF one step ahead of the swarm of Imperial techs trying to strip it.

Swims swats one of the drones out of the air with a heavy paw. Ngawai perforates a second one, and even Arketta's on the ball enough to shoot at a third.

If Jonno can't keep your IFF going, though, it'll be bad. There's little to no cover out in the Cortex narthex.

Luis grins as he queues up the series of comands to slam the door in the Imps' respective faces. He taps the command to send it, then looks up. The drones hang in the air like Damoclean swords, their deadly potential temporarily sheated, but hanging so close it's almost tangible. On the other hand, he can almost feel the advantage of their suprise slipping away. If they can't get started on the Imps security to achieve their objectives, this is going to be a bust. His blood rushes and his face pales. "Jono...need a hand?"

EDIT: An quick version of the Imperial equivalent of a shake of the head is enough for Luis. He's into the warrens of the Imperium system again. This time, though, he's hunting the hunters. Any security is going to go down....

Angel hunkers down as best he can in the generally poor cover of the chamber, his rifle raised while the spook is busy playing Thomas Jefferson meets King George and his Apocalyptic Empire.

As the drones get temporarily muddled by the spoofed IFF codes, Angel gives them a good spray. Stationary and not trying to rip us to shreds makes them somewhat more approachable targets, and Angels thumb slips over the selector to "Full Automatic".