Quorum of War (Part Four)

The Haven of Fire was now surrounded by heavily armed marines. Following the first investigation, a bunch of pale and sickened medical and police staff had left the ship under escort, completely silent. After that, it was armed men in full bio-hazard suits that sealed the door and were apparently waiting for orders. Beacon watched silently, fully hidden and hovering three hundred meters above the ship. He could wait, he already knew what the next target was and he was willing to be patient. He spent the time going through all the data that he had ripped from the ship and its crew, building a map of events and a death list.

Finally, a new group arrived, stern-faced and cold-blooded they arrived at the ship’s port. “We come from the Council. No one is to pass this door without my personal permission and nobody, and I mean nobody, leaves unless I am standing here. If they try, you shoot and you shoot to kill.” The creature radiated the coldness only achieved by a lifetime in government service or waitressing and the bio-suited guards quickly nodded their agreement.

His face was mostly concealed by the mask as he opened the door. “Entering now.”

He was running a live feed to his office, feeding the darker parts of the Council with information in the hope that it might prove useful. They were more familiar with the sorts of…damage done to the crew and perhaps might have some insight.

“Three bodies on the right-hand side of the door, two are missing lower limbs. The blood trail indicates they crawled to the door before they were executed. Tracking…”

------

The Shant Council read the report in silence. They had seen it happen but this was something else. Their experts had mapped the destruction, the injuries. It was clear this intruder had overcome and subverted security within the first few minutes. It could obviously have killed the crew as quickly but had chosen to do…this. Nine hours of hellish murder.

The current holder of the speaking stick offered it to the group but found no takers. He sighed and tried to give voice to what he had read, “We have awakened a demon from old. This is beyond anything those humans could have created, this is beyond us.”

One of the other council members shook his head, “This is a new thing, an attack on one ship. This is not a war, this is personal. We have ships and crew across a thousand worlds. I vote to secure the area and hunt this thing down. We can evaporate the damn star if necessary!” The rest of the council nodded in agreement.

The Speaker spoke, “Fine. I will appoint the Fleet Commander as Director and instruct him to hunt this thing down. He shall have whatever resources are required.”

Silence fell in the room. No one believed it was over.

-----

Silver Wisp summoned the hundred witnesses to watch as he arrived at the graveyard of a human world. The walls turned to steel, then pulled open to reveal the burning remains of a once vibrant planet, flaring rock and shattered hope. He addressed his audience.

“A playground we called ‘Eru’, a home to our people for over five thousand years. We crafted it from dead soil and made it beautiful as a gift, as a promise. All man is man. They wanted to explore our beginnings, live with the rain and the dirt. Hunt and gather, live the life that we were first designed for. Many of us have grown up in such worlds, finding out what it is to be human.” He closed the walls, “Witness this. We stand in arms against such cruelty, they have burned our children beyond recovery and we can only mourn and seek justice. I will be scanning the system to its very edges in the hope that someone survived and in the knowledge that none could have. Because we must always have hope. Then I will bring the wrath of man upon the misbegotten bastards that did this until they are sorry that they ever learned how to make fire.”

The cold steel of his eyes met the fury in his voice as he vowed justice on those that had chosen to burn the green spaces that man had built.

One of the men stood forward, “So seen and witnessed.” He bowed a little and added, “I will lead the service for those lost, Silver Wisp. Until then.” The crowd dispersed and left him alone with his pain and his plans.

----

Beacon listened as the enemy made all sorts of cunning plans and smiled. He had left them his next target, hidden under the thin soil of a half-deleted file. It had taken them a full day to find it and he watched as they summoned their marines to guard it. The ship, the Messaclip was battleship class, swarming with a massive crew. Four times the size of the Haven of Fire. It had immediately launched from the station and moved into a close orbit of the local sun on full alert and full scanners until the ‘Emergency Drill’ was over.

The crew had, one way or another, found out what had happened to its sister ship and a not insignificant number of crewmen had failed to show. Military police were pretending to look for them and instead, they drank together in silence and they ignored what they had all seen. The recording had filtered down to everyone, even the barkeep, and a sort of strange waiting silence filled the Shipyard. They watched as the bodies were removed from the Haven of Fire, sometimes in quite small bags piled together.

It took Beacon only a moment to track down the marine transport that was being sent to defend the Messaclip. It wasn’t even worthy of a name, simply a serial number. It would soon be burned in the memory of anyone that heard of it for the next thousand years after his intervention. He slipped quietly aboard the Citadel-class Marine 3008 and waited. The ship had a central command post behind the best of armour, room for two to four hundred soldiers and excellent defensive fire. Beacon pulled himself deeper into the vent and waited for it to leave, polishing his blades and cleaning his weapons as he waited for the ship to be far beyond help.

Out of the dark and silence of the bar came a drunken, angry voice, “We should have left those humans alone! What the fuck had they ever done to us? Poor bastards didn’t have a chance and I dropped a thousand kilotonnes of atmos burners on them. The Goddess isn’t going to forget or forgive me for this one.”

The voice was met with silence. The Military Police just drank deeper and switched off their comms.

A single gunshot rang through the bar.

-------

Silver Wisp stood alone as the witnesses returned to their endless bickering. His attention dwelt in the weapons foundry, creating every nightmare and pondering its use. Much he sent back to the furnaces, careful of the scars he would leave on the future. The punishment must meet the crime and he had no mandate for genocide, nor the will to carry one out. It was like walking through the endless enemies that earth had faced since the beginning of the Expansion, nearly twelve thousand years ago. A mere blip in the existence of mankind but a combination of immortality, FTL and geneAug had created a reservoir of ways to inflict pain and death that included several ways to end the universe itself.

Silver Wisp reached into himself and pulled out the flint arrowhead he had found as a child, a talisman and promise. He found it strangely entertaining that he would be able to identify with the creature that had made it. If they stuck to drinking beer then they might even be able to chat about the properties of flint. He was a fan of chert and greenstone but the connection would be real. And then they would have used it to kill any bastard that had burned down a village.

-----

Beacon began by slipping silently to the Citadel itself. It wasn’t difficult, the troops were lounging around the front of the ship and the pilots hadn’t bothered to close the doors. This ship didn’t truly have a Captain, just a marine commander and a pilot who pointed the ship. It was almost enough to raise a smile as he hit the command to seal the Citadel itself and kick off the alarms. Then he waited, invisible to the crew.

The two pilots were suddenly surprised by the fall of anti-mil doors and energy shields, the lights went to emergency as the power plant was locked down and their consoles went to a totally new menu. One they hadn’t seen since they were boots. Then the comms lit up.

“Sir, I don’t know. I didn’t trigger it!” More mad button-pushing, “Sir, it needs you to be in here, or you need to be …well you need to be dead. I don’t know Sir.” The pilot watched as the ship was slowed to one-third speed, “Sir, I’m trying to troubleshoot it. This is a Citadel class ship, the whole fucking point is that you can’t get in. With respect, command in here falls to me. Look after your men and I’ll call you.” He continued cursing and trying to regain control of the ship.

Beacon unveiled himself, with a grim smile, “And you can’t get out. My name is Beacon and you burned my world, we need to talk.” He drew his knife and began.

The marines couldn’t hear the screaming through the armoured doors.

==============================================================

My Patreon, if anyone wants to support my writing... You can drop into my channel at Discord or buy me a coffee. This series is at part eight on Patreon. Also, the sequel has begun!