Quorum of War (Part Six)

Silver Wisp let his mind settle. He had done all he could to reassure his peers that he wanted justice, not revenge. Although the difference wasn’t going to be apparent to his enemies. He sealed the ship and blended with it, becoming his entire self. It was a relief to be whole again. He aimed at this ‘Council World’, the primary target of his wrath.

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The Council was a shouting match, starting with the report regarding Citadel-class Marine 3008 and working up from there.

“It was one ship! Now we know where this thing is we can kill it. We all knew this was going sideways and one battleship is going to end this - one way or another. I have assets in place that can destroy the whole damn system if we need to! Stop bitching about some marines, goddess knows they’re no loss to the gene pool!”

That caused a sudden silence. Several members of the council had come from the marines and they didn’t appreciate being treated as cannon fodder.

The council member waved at them, “I’m sorry, you know what I meant. They were dead on arrival. Whatever this creature is used them as propaganda, another trick to terrify the fleet. I regret their loss as much as you do but it changes nothing about the tactical situation.” He paused and threw down the report, “We can’t even bury them properly, not with…this.”

The Council regarded the report. One section, in particular, was causing a lot of noise:

“It is with regret that we cannot assure the Council that the Marines fell with honour. Through the misuse of ships systems, they have been reduced to what can only be described as pulp. Not content with simple murder, the alien continued the process until the remains of the dead were embedded or distributed throughout the ship. In our honest opinion, there is no further value in searching for a cause of death and that declaring the ship an official graveyard for the crew might be more appropriate.”

“And this creature is now on the Messaclip? What should we expect next? What new recordings will bleed into the fleet until we have no damn crew at all?”

The recriminations continued until a senior staffer walked carefully to the stick-holder and whispered in his ear. Security measures not used in generations suddenly activated and the doors slammed shut. The very chamber itself began dropping hundreds of meters below the ground, an unfortunate event for all the decorative baubles and treasured portraits on the walls as they were suddenly ground to dust. Much of the furniture also fell loudly and shattered.

The chairman stood, shaky as he was and announced, “Council, we have an incursion into the system, we have reason to believe it is hostile.” He paused for a moment as he tried to recall the words, “A vessel of some ten kilometres in length and width has arrived in orbit. It is unknown to our security or intelligence community. I am awaiting more details.” He sank into his seat and clutched the speaking stick. He nodded to the staffer. “Tell them.”

The staffer wasn’t known to the rest of the council but he spoke with a certain gravitas. He nodded, “A vessel, a sphere of some kind, has arrived and is currently sitting in low orbit over our world. Anything approaching, including the home fleet, has been destroyed. We have no intelligence on the species or the vessel. All we are receiving is a countdown, indicating it will make contact late tomorrow. I cannot recommend evacuation as nothing has been permitted to leave the atmosphere. I am here to answer any questions I can, although I believe that sums it up.”

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Silver Wisp almost felt guilty as the dumb ships attacked. He appreciated the bravery but it was outweighed by the sheer stupidity. It took a moment to extinguish the idiot machines and sit quietly in low orbit, particularly since a few warning shots had grounded anything leaving the planet. He kept an eye on his kill count, just to make sure he didn’t ruin his introduction.

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The final images of the home fleet were played for the Council, the vastness of the alien vessel becoming suddenly real. The staffer’s gentle monotone filling them in, “It is a ten-kilometre sphere, although where it begins is uncertain. That was simply its footprint as it entered the system. It shows no weapons or propulsion, it left no track beyond its arrival here. All our ships that tried to engage it simply exploded with massive internal disruptions that bypassed every defence we have. It went straight through our shielding and we have no answer. If it chooses to, we will be dead tomorrow. What I need from you are orders for the rest of the Empire. Do we surrender? Do they fight on? Do we appoint a government on one of the colonies? These are questions you must answer tonight.”

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Beacon watched the chaos spread through the ship. Tired, angry and confused crewmen were handed weapons and told that the orders were to fire at will. They were even more confused. Free fire on a ship was just suicide with extra steps and no one seemed to be in charge. The stories of the Haven of fire and the Citadel were murmured but this was a fucking battleship. The decent officers roused their men, posted watch and rotated them out but many dragged their men to chokepoints and then threw weapons and fear at them until it became dangerous to move about the ship. He decided to join in.

He disguised himself as an ordinary crewman and approached one of the most disciplined watches. He held up his four limbs and crooned a simple tune until he was waved to the side. Apparently, they had forbidden crew to pass while carrying weapons. In a moment of sheer genius, their Lieutenant had decided that he could simply hand them back once the crew had left his area and arranged runners to accomplish it. No one with a weapon was going through his area of responsibility and it had worked. By the time any wandering soul had got through the checkpoints, his weapons were waiting at the exit. So far he hadn’t lost any of his crew to the fear currently filling the ship. That had to stop. At the first checkpoint Beacon pulled out his knife, “Sorry, does this count?”

The NCO looked at it and moved his hand to the trigger, “Drop it before I drop you.”

Beacon grinned and dropped it straight through the NCO’s foot and as it screamed he grabbed the creatures gun, firing through the man and into his two crewmen before they could react. As he stood amongst the corpses he picked up his knife and did his homework. He began whistling quietly, an old tune from the planet that these bastards had burned. He was probably the last person to know it and that fed his anger.

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The council had achieved nothing, spending their time looking for a way off the planet and when that had been denied, refusing to hand over authority to anyone. It didn’t matter how unlikely a victory was, they would share the spoils of defeat instead. Barked orders to the military produced nothing since they had read the same reports hours before they reached the council. They sat in sullen silence and waited for the countdown to end. For the end to begin.

The clock ticked slowly down. Nine hours.

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Beacon began his plan, beginning with the Navigation office. He knew exactly where this ship needed to go and now the door was unguarded. A simple punch and it flew open, “Surprise!”

The six crew stood stunned as a monster broke in, a creature as dark as the night outside, but the glint on its two blades caught their attention and held it. It spoke, “Today is a good day for you, although probably quite short. I’m going to let you run. If you make it to the escape pods before I count to ten, you get to leave the ship! Isn't that nice of me?” It stood out of the way of the doorway and looked at them, “Run.”

The crew seemed to hesitate for a moment and then Beacon raised his knives and they bolted from the room. He pushed the door vaguely back into place and smiled. He hadn’t lied, they could reach the escape pods if they moved quickly. He had programmed them to jettison in twenty minutes and they were all pointed directly into the local sun. But they would have time to feel the pain, time to repent of what they had done. He planned the same for the rest of the crew.

Today was a day of fire.

The math was complicated and not all the systems wanted to do what they were told. He had to break quite a lot of it before he was happy with the trajectory of the ship. The crew had left all their posts without logging off which helped a lot. He double-checked and, now satisfied, then crushed all the ships systems that could prevent it. He had whimsically called it his ‘dead man walking’ strategy and he was looking forward to seeing how it worked. Now for Engineering and the engines.

The hatch to Engineering was a hell of a lot thicker than anything else on the ship and he paused. He wanted that door, it was a nice door. He pulled up his transmission from the Captain and modelled himself appropriately. The cameras were already his so he simply knocked. The squinting creature that appeared on the screen seemed surprised to see him, “Sir…you are not supposed to be here. Like, ever. What can I do for you?”

Beacon put on the same scared herbivore face the Captain had used when he had been waiting for the Marines to save him and whispered, “I’m bringing my guard here and we will wait for the Fleet to arrive. I’ve ordered us home but the creature is interfering with transmissions… please open the door.” Behind him appeared the image of his Armsmen arriving and looking nervous. Nervous and heavily armed.

The Engineer was not a difficult man, certainly not one to pick a fight with his own Captain but this was almost too much. Then the door began to slide open of its own accord even as the Captain stumbled in, “Thank you! My men will stand guard outside.”

The door closed silently behind him.

He began simply, wandering around the department and annoying the crew. He asked stupid questions and pretended not to understand the answers. He poked at things that made tails twitch and scales itch, he hit buttons that shouldn’t be hit, he pulled levers that shouldn’t be pulled. Finally, the Chief Engineer had had enough, “Sir! Can you sit down? Something is wrong with the ship…surely you have better things to do?

Beacon sat down comfortably at the console. He had already accomplished all he wanted to do in this Department, all that button-pushing having done its job.

He smiled at the engineer, “Honestly? I just wanted to see if I could carry it off. You, creatures, you are such a dull evil. I wondered if I could send you to your reward without you even noticing and here we are. Tell me, Chief, when you were powering the weapons that burned my world, did you ever ask why you were doing it?” As he spoke his body got darker and bigger.

The engineer stuttered, “What…Captain, Wait what are you?..oh shit. I’m so sorry, we just stay here and take orders…I’m sorry.” He already knew it wasn’t going to help.

Beacon pulled out a small weapon and nodded at the Engineer, “Sorry isn’t enough.” He pulled out a pistol. “This one took a while to calibrate with your shields but it should be a memorable moment. For me, anyway. Your weapons stole all the air on my world and it wasn’t pretty, so I thought you would like to see it first hand.” He smiled at the confused crew, some of whom were running for the unresponsive door. It was a nice door. “Ready?”

He didn’t wait, simply pointed the weapon at the exterior hull and fired. The hole was small, not more than thirty centimetres square but it cut through every shield until it reached open space and vacuum. The atmosphere began to rush out as the crew and random objects were pulled towards the hole. He watched as the engineer realised what was about to happen. Beacon leaned forward and added, “Go fuck yourself.”

He sat and watched as men, equipment and despair were dragged kicking and screaming into the small hole, no doubt smearing themselves all over the nice clean space outside. He had been surprised how long some of these creatures could hold their breath. Something to remember for the next time. Then he went back to the consoles and turned off all the stupid alarms and refined his earlier work. He wanted to be absolutely sure they got the full benefit of his lesson. He had debated staying on the ship but this close to the sun and with failing systems he couldn’t be sure that the rest of the fleet would get the transmission. He would have to watch this one alongside them. Perhaps he could give a running commentary, that could be entertaining.

He expanded the hole in the ship and stepped back into the void.

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The Captain was already a mess, barely out of the medbay and accompanied by two healers in case he needed to be dismissed for medical reasons. Or if he completely lost the plot again.

“Sir, we have lost Nav and engines. Engineering is not responding, showing a vacuum in the department. I have sent a security and repair section to both. Awaiting reports.”

The Captain was not shaking. The ship must be quivering. He snapped at the bridge crew, “Stabilise the damn ship. This shaking is distracting.”

The crew looked at each other and pretended to adjust some settings. “Sir, yes Sir.”

One of his crew cursed and stood up, quickly moving to another station. He waved for support and within a minute the whole crew was desperately hitting their consoles and whispering to each other.

The Captain asked in a wearied voice, “What? What has the creature done to us now?”

The Second took a deep inhale and reviewed what the crew and screens were telling him. This was not going to be pretty. “Sir, the creature has changed our course. We will be approximately three million kilometres closer to the sun than permitted. He has also disabled our heat shields and slowed the ship to one-third speed.”

He tried to paint the picture, “Sir, we are going to slowly fall into the sun with no protection. I estimate it will take nine hours before the situation is fatal to all crew. All escape pods have been jettisoned and our comms are shot. We are going to burn in here.”

Beneath his desk, he had already alerted Security to lock down the ship and nodded at the healers to drag the crying Captain from his post. He took the Captains console and skimmed through the nine hours deadline. The creature had held the Haven of Fire for nine hours. He had delayed the Citadel for roughly the same. It became clear when he realised that they had bombarded the human world for nine hours. Shit.

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Beacon watched the ship fall into his carefully planned trajectory. He estimated- depending on how clever the crew was- they would begin to fall apart in an hour. In the meantime, he had been busy punching a direct feed to all the other Fleet shipping that he could reach.

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The Consul of Grey was a frigate, just under a thousand crew and with a respectable battle record. Sharp, well-disciplined and used to heavy odds, it had enjoyed a little planet burning even if the Captain had seemed unhappy. He was a growly and bloody-minded Scour, full of honour and regret. When his Comms Officer pushed his way past everyone to report an illegal stream being pushed into the system he waved him in and listened.

“The Messaclip is under attack?”

The crewman hesitated for a moment, “No sir, the Messaclip is doomed. The human ghost has seized it and has sent it towards the local sun. They aren’t the ones calling us… it's the creature. It wants us to watch.”

The captain seemed to grow older, “So it begins. The goddess is never going to forgive us.” He pulled himself straight, “Can we rescue? Are we close enough?”

The crewman shook his head. “Too far and I’m not sure the crew would even obey the order. As I said, the Messaclip is doomed. No one is responding. I checked and the Fleet is abandoning the system and gossip says they are going to use a sun-killer on the system.”

The Captain dismissed the crewman and looked thoughtfully into the future. The council would fall for this, but there was always another council. Unless this wasn’t the end. Why just attack the Fleet? Perhaps because the big guns were on their way somewhere else. One creature was paralysing the fleet, what would a nation of them do? Another world of meat-eaters? He had despised the orders when he had received them but he must be on a list somewhere, another of those that had burned an innocent world. He scanned the list of the Thousand Worlds and picked one that might suit. He began watching the stream, watching a battleship fall apart and the burning begin. He didn’t wait nine hours.

“All hands, new orders are sending us far into the Thousand with little prospect of return. We will be making one stop in…” he checked the starmap…” eight hours. Disembark if you wish.” He pulled full ship control to his office and sealed the door. He was going to do the only sane thing and run.

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Inside the battleship, the temperature kept rising. It didn’t matter what they did and how many men they sent, you can’t fight a sun or kill a ghost. The crew heard rumours of a cooler spot and ran towards it. Issuing weapons to all crew merely turned it into a bloodbath. The heat sent some mad, some literally burst into flame if they touched a wall. All sanity was lost until a low voice chirped into the comms, “Remember the Citadel is just sitting there? Maybe you could escape on that?”

Beacon cackled at that one. To use that mess as bait, encouraging the murderers to murder better. He made sure the cameras covered the insanity that followed as the crew slaughtered each other to reach the ship that only a few hours ago had been a horror. Pity that he already had a plan for that ship. But he wasn’t going to be mean about it, in fact, it would save him a walk. He waited until the puking, bleeding survivors launched the ship and then made himself comfortable on the hull, listening.

“It's done. We are out of the gravity well, course set for the station. Goddess forgive us. How many did we kill to get here?”

The older creature, now carrying no tags or rank, shook his head. “None. We killed none. They will be dead within the next few hours and their records with them. We were just lucky is all, happened to be guarding this ship and fled when all else failed. What can they do to us that that creature hasn’t already tried to do? You wanted to live, same as me.”

After an hour one of the men, squirming with discomfort, had pulled off his bio-filtered mask and endured the smell of…cooking meat? What the fuck? “Sarge, is it getting hotter in here?” One glance at the grinning thing outside told them the truth. They hadn’t escaped, hell was taking them home.

“Fuck.”

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Emergency Broadcast- Senior ranks only

Sun-killer failed… Unknown interference… No alien traces were found… Declaring emergency missing Sun-Killer…Battleship Messaclip and Citadel recovered… no survivors.

‘Creature’ ( Unknown Hostile Entity) is assumed to still be active.

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Rowan stood beside Silver Wisp as the timer ran down. She was almost sure he had a plan. Almost. She was mostly there to see what happened next.

Four kilometres below the surface of the council world the Council waited. Suddenly a dark force arrived. It walked to the stick-holder, ripped it from his hands and then tore his face apart. Fangs ripped at him as he fell, the screams filling the suddenly locked room. Then an androgynous figure stood up. “Forgive me, I believe this is how you conduct diplomacy. “

“Perhaps he might need medical assistance?”

All the attending staff that had been waiting, including several bodyguards and medics, ran in and saw the damage. They ignored the stranger and hauled the Chairman away. The figure nodded at the support staff, “My apologies, I felt it would serve little purpose in killing them today.” He seemed to solidify, becoming a metal biped, an ever-changing landscape of patterns instead of a face.

“You declared war and I am here to see you lose.” He picked up the blood-soaked stick from the floor and threw it to a random Councilman. “Here you go. Speak.”

The Councilman caught the stick and, in a moment of fury, slammed it down. “You are new to us, an aberration. We have done you no evil.” He looked at the blood on the speaking stick, “He had done you no wrong to die like this! Why do you speak of war?”

Silver Wisp turned to his old face, his early days. Days in the forest as a child, days of innocence until the burning. The same face he had shown the Seer.

“You burned our children. You burned our green spaces. We are Human and we are legion.” He raised a hand and then a finger, carefully allowing them to watch as he touched the podium. “I will send you the terms of your surrender.” He paused. “ I see from your notes that Beacon has been busy. He will never stop. You probably shouldn’t have killed his family, he isn’t human anymore.” Then the countdown reset and Silver Wisp returned to himself.

Rowan was waiting for him, “A little dramatic wasn’t it?”

Silver Wisp looked at her as if she was from the darkest past, finally nodding, “Rowan, I was the one that poured the healing waters on your family. You have no idea of what I will do to these people.” He seemed to grow taller, darker and fiercer, “But many of them are about to die and I am not sorry. I am going to burn them out of space.”

He stopped for a moment, “You were not much more than a child at the burning. Go to the Seer and tell him I permit you to see my memories. He can show you what war means to us.”

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“He said he was one of those damned humans, he said we burned their children! What the fuck have we done? That ship could kill us all in a day.!”

The sudden crash surprised them as the podium collapsed. The place where the human had touched had burned a hole that had spread. Reluctantly they looked around and saw the same breakdown spreading, small cracks that didn’t seem to care if it was steel or plascrete, paper or wood. The human disease was burning through their chamber.

This then was the countdown. Nine hours.

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