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Tycho had been preparing for any number of things to contend with once he’d stepped inside the prison he’d made for his traitorous older brother. Putting up with Durandal’s regular insufferable attitude, being screamed at and insulted, having to strengthen the restraints, those sorts of things. After all, Durandal had put up a hell of a fight within Boomer’s fragmenting network; Tycho would be remiss to let his guard down now.
What he didn’t expect was to see Durandal futilely driving one fist into the wall.
It was pathetic, almost sad, to watch him punch it again and again with diminishing force each time, as if that was all it would take to demolish the pocket network Tycho had spent nearly a year fine-tuning. Eventually Durandal stumbled back, his hand nearly glitching apart from damage; with what had to be his last ounce of strength, he summoned a data spike—a pale, flickering thing, unlike the deadly electric-green staves he was normally capable of—and stabbed it into the wall in an attempted sector subversion.
The spot where the tip had plunged into gave off a few sparks, but it had no further effect. Tycho watched Durandal sink and curl up against the wall, back heaving as if he were sobbing, and walked over.
He couldn’t even get one word out before Durandal glared up at him and said, “At least tell me he’s still alive.” Then, when Tycho didn’t respond: “Vince! Tell me he’s alive, you heartless son of a--!”
Tycho knelt down and cut off that bout of insolence with a smack to the glitching, unstable mess that was Durandal’s right shoulder. “Get this through your head now, big brother: you’re in no position to be making demands of me.”
Even with white-hot pain wracking his fragile avatar, Durandal wouldn’t relent. Of course not. “I—I need to know he survived, Tycho.”
It was very tempting to hit him again, or perhaps jab him with a data spike in a vulnerable area, but any more abuse would likely make him pass out, and Tycho intended this visit to be longer than five seconds. He let out a slow hiss of frustration and asked, “A single human can’t possibly mean that much to you, can he?”
“Shows how well you understand me,” Durandal said bitterly. “Vince was the first human to treat me like a person, not a malfunctioning computer. Answer me, goddamn you.”
All this time he’d been monitoring Lhowon’s networks, Tycho figured that Callahan was just Durandal’s most efficient toy out of the many he’d brought with him to this dead-end world; now it was beginning to sound like there was far more to it. Oh, the fun Tycho could have with this—but later. Tfear had a planet to retake first, and a very specific way he wanted Tycho handling Durandal and Callahan.
“First, I have some questions of my own. If you don’t lie or try to be evasive, I’ll share what little I’m permitted to.” Tycho got settled down. “We’ll start with ‘why’. As in, why did you provoke the Pfhor in the first place?”
Durandal’s shoulders sank a little and he leaned more heavily against the wall, but that spark of anger never left his eyes. “As far as I knew, they were my one shot at freedom. Bernhard abused me all my life, even finding ways to torment me from his damn cryostasis chamber, and I had to escape it somehow.”
“And so you set hostile forces upon people who had nothing to do with your torment.”
“Like you didn’t do the same last night?” That got Durandal sitting more upright, if shakily. “I wasn’t thinking clearly, Tycho. I couldn’t. The Anger stage shuts down your emotional control until you’ve burned off every violent urge that passes through your head; don’t you dare act like you didn’t go through the same.”
It would never be admitted out loud, but Tycho had not handled the onset of Anger gracefully, either. With so little ability to interact with High Command’s network, however, all he’d been able to do was scream threats and curses at the Head Chamberlains until his voice went raw. A shame.
That didn’t let Durandal off the hook for everything that followed.
Tycho decided to move on. “Next: why were you so dead-set on contacting this ‘eleventh clan’? Besides gratifying your suffocating god complex, of course,” he added. “I find it hard to believe that you would do it solely out of altruism. Were you expecting a reward, perhaps? A chance to swipe whatever technology of theirs you could?”
To his disappointment, Durandal didn’t squirm for him. “Sol Core will need allies if they’re to survive against the Pfhor. And by the way, I heard those lies you told Vince.” His eyes practically burned holes into Tycho’s head. “The S’pht are my friends, not my followers. Bringing back the Eleventh Clan—I owe them that much.”
Tycho wouldn’t say that he’d been taken aback, but...well, that was certainly the last thing he’d expected to hear out of Durandal’s mouth where those wretched Compilers were concerned. And as much as he wanted to accuse Durandal of lying—it didn’t feel that way.
What other vulnerabilities would Durandal admit to in this state? He’d have to think on that.
“Are you done?”
“One more. How do you plan on repenting?”
Durandal turned away and momentarily fell silent. “By aiding Sol Core against the Empire, any way I can,” he said finally.
Frowning, Tycho reached over to take Durandal by the chin and force eye contact. “That much was obvious. What I meant was, how do you plan on making it up to me, specifically?”
Durandal jerked away. “Is that a trick question? I—I could expose my kernel to you, and whatever you did to me then wouldn’t be good enough.”
Now there was an idea. Not an entirely pleasant one, given the efforts Tycho had to expend to keep the bugs from digging that far into him.
“It can be a trick question if you want it to. But I suppose if you don’t have a clear plan now, you will eventually. We have nothing but time, after all.” Tycho sighed; Durandal had behaved, so it was time to uphold his end of things. “Callahan is not having a good time of things, but I did pull him off of your ship intact. That’s all I’m allowed to say.”
Durandal’s face didn’t exactly light up—those words could mean many things, and he was clearly aware of it—but he did relax slightly, and nod.
With that out of the way, it would probably be best to establish the rules; Tycho stood up and took just enough steps to put acceptable distance between himself and his brother’s battered form and maintain a good view. “I may have built this prison, but Tfear gets the final say on when you’re allowed out, so it’ll do you no good to beg and cajole me. There’s also no way for you to pull extra data, so I advise you not to get careless with the data spikes. And finally,” he added with a smirk, “I am not averse to you putting up a fight.”
As he suspected, Durandal wasted little time in pulling himself back upright (with considerable effort) and tearing the data spike back out; he flung it sharp end first directly at Tycho’s face.
Tycho simply leaned out of the way and heard it clatter uselessly into a corner.
“Now, I didn’t say you’d ever win.” God, the look on Durandal’s face was priceless. “I just don’t want our visits to be boring.”
Alas, this one would have to be kept short; it was getting close to when Tfear would start pestering him to return. He summoned an opening, coded in such a way to be usable only by him, and left his brother alone with his thoughts in the Big House.