The Order members did their best to block as many shots as possible with both Presence and their Light swords. Thankfully, the assault laser rifles had freshly charged clips in them. Even though The Order members did their best, when I concentrated fire on each of them they couldn't block all of the shots and died. I whittled them down and killed each of them in turn until I had emptied the assault rifles.

I let the empty weapons fall to the floor and looked at the completely shocked scaly alien. “Now it's your turn.”

“You don't have any weapons left.” Kralish said.

“Oh, but I do.” I said and took a deep breath. “TURN OFF THE BARRIER!” I yelled with as much Presence as I could generate in a single burst.

The scaly alien's eyes burst from the sonic waves and he screamed. His ears, nose and mouth gushed blood and he choked on it as he fell off of his chair and onto the floor. He threw up quite a lot of blood and some of his guts.

“Shall I continue?” I asked and kept speaking. “IF YOU TURN OFF THE BARRIER, I WILL STOP LIQUIFYING YOUR INSIDES AND WILL LET YOU LIVE.”

The scaly alien threw up even more blood and viscera. He heaved and gasped to try and get more air into his lungs as his internal organs tried to escape.

“IT'S A SIMPLE CHOICE.” I said.

“S-s-stop.” He managed to say and reached around blindly for the datapad. He found it and hit the button to kill the barrier that had killed Hailey.

“Now the one protecting you.” I said.

“I... can't see... the settings.”

“STOP STALLING AND USE PRESENCE.” I said and he threw up again.

Kralish's hands shook as he used Presence to 'see' the datapad and changed the settings to drop the last barrier.

I was by him instantly and took the datapad, memorized the schematics for the dampening field and the codes for controlling it, then I crushed it. “Thanks for giving me the means to destroy your entire organization, you fucking piece of shit.” I said and used Hailey's abililty to dissolve things into their component atoms to slowly unravel the scaly alien's limbs from the appendages inwards.

“AARRRRGGGHHHHH!” Kralish yelled as he felt himself being torn apart.

“HUNTER!” Kara yelled and I turned my head to look at her. She had blood pouring out of her eyes and mouth from my sonic attack. “Don't... don't kill him!”

“I'm not going to kill him.” I said and continued to dissolve the alien's arms and legs. Just before I reached his torso, I picked up one of The Order's Light swords and sliced off the stumps at his crotch and at his shoulder blades. “He's going to wish he was dead, though.”

I dissolved his reproductive system from the outside in... and let him feel each and every atom as it was torn away. The scaly alien screamed a blood curdling scream and his mind tried to lose consciousness to save itself from the pain, so I kept him conscious and kept going and dissolved everything to leave nothing inside of him that could be regrown.

I easily found his Presence core and didn't want anything from it, so I started to dissolve it. Kralish mewled like a wounded kitten as his power was eaten away and it disappeared into nothingness. His mind had broken of its defiance and he didn't even try to struggle anymore as I removed every mote of external power that he had and only left enough Presence to ensure that he would still be alive.

I picked him up by the back of his neck and looked into his eye holes. “If I thought you would still be alive, I'd dissolve the rest of your body and leave you as just a head.” I said, then I tossed him across the room. He hit the floor and rolled over a couple of times to end at Kara's feet. “Take that back to The Order. Tell them I'm coming for them all.”

“Hunter.” Kara said and stood. “You can't mean...”

“Yes. I mean you, too.” I said. “If you give up your idiotic ways and forsake your goddess, I may let you live.” I said and lightning coursed over my body. “Maybe.”

Kara gave me one last look and then used levitation on the scaly alien's torso. “Let's go.” She said to the others and turned to walk away.

“No, just you.” I said and reached a hand out, then made a fist.

The two Order members beside her and the twenty eight guards around her were instantly crushed into little balls of flesh and goo, then I concentrated and dissolved them into nothing.

“Let this be a lesson to you and to the rest of them.” I said as I felt her shock at how brutal I was. I dissolved the bodies of The Order members around me, then lifted the ten abandoned Light swords and hooked them to my belt. I picked up Kralish's Light sword and crushed it with Presence, then tossed it aside. “None of you are safe from me and I am coming for you all.”

“Even Lashina?” Kara said, still with her back to me. “The Wise One?”

“Especially that grotesque giant fly thing.” I said and let my Presence fill the room. “It's The Wise One's fault that this happened, so he deserves my vengeance most of all.” I said. “Yes, you can tell him that.”

I reached down into the ground and found the barrier emitters, now that their own barriers weren't hiding them, and I split the ground with Presence to pull them up to me. I examined them completely in mere moments and knew how they were made and could reproduce them with the right components. The main components were high quality focusing crystals. I carried the things over to where Kara still stood.

“You can tell Lashina that I'll come for her first.” I said and walked by Kara. “She's much too valuable to leave in the hands of The Order.”

“Unlike me.” Kara said.

“You still have your role to play.” I said and didn't look back at her. “Deliver my message and then reconsider your entire life's path.” I said and tapped the side of my head. “By the way, Kralish can't ever go to sleep. Just a little gift from me.” I let out a cackling laugh. “I hope you like incessantly mad screaming.”

I used Presence Run to run back to where we had left the prisoners. “You boys better get your asses and the prisoners out of here. This place is going to blow up soon.”

The two guards stared at me.

“Don't say I didn't warn you.” I said and then disappeared from their sight. I went back to the massive drilling machine and stepped onto it. I seriously considered riding it all the way back up to the top, then remembered Hailey driving it. “ARRRGHHH!” I yelled and used Presence to crush the thing. I grit my teeth and then used Levitation to fly back up through the winding tunnel we had made with it.

I thought about retrieving the APC, then remembered it was half melted and was pretty much useless. I landed in the courtyard of the compound and looked around. I used Presence to crush two of the assault shuttles, just because I could, then I walked over to Monna and climbed aboard.

“Grandpa? Where's Grandma?” Monna asked, tentatively.

“Monna... I...” Tears came to my eyes and then they dissolved. “Hailey's dead.”

Monna was quiet for a moment. “Who are we going to kill?”

“All of them.” I said and powered up her engines. “Hailey told me to kill them all.”

“Then we will.” Hela said. “I have six targets designated in the planetary atmosphere.”

“Include the government buildings and see if you can hack into their surveillance systems to catch anyone from The Order that's outside of their buildings.”

“I'm calling in help from Simone and Opina.” Hela said.

“That's fine.” I said. “I'm going to spend some time on Monna clearing away the barrier satellites around the planet.”

It took three hours for the computers to be hacked and for my AIs to find every Order member on the planet. During that time, the single assault shuttle flew back up to the dreadnought. I hailed them and told them that I would cripple them if they tried anything funny. They didn't attempt anything and the ship turned away from the planet and made its way towards the closest jump point. They were lucky, because I had already jammed their weapons and they would only damage themselves if they tried to fire.

Once the Order members were found on the planet's surface, Monna and I had cleared away every single barrier satellite from around the planet, which left them completely vulnerable to attack. I docked Monna in Hela's shuttle bay and went up into Hela's cockpit.

I sat down in the co-pilot's seat and spoke. “Patch me into the planetary network.” I said and Hela used Simone's and Sheph's expertise to do it. “Citizens of this crappy good for nothing planet that purposefully harboured an Order council member. My name is Hunter and The Order killed my wife. I am going to kill all of them in return. Because of your compliance in the crime, I sentence an unknown amount of you to die.”

I had added firing solutions into the specially modified missiles I had designed and pressed the fire button. A spread of missiles flew out of the launchers, then another, and another. These missiles were not like normal missiles, though. Inside the tip of each, was a circuit board I had discovered that would let me blow up a focusing crystal and it would disintegrate anything within its radius of effect.

When these missiles hit and exploded, instead of causing large explosions that did lots of damage, they caused powered focusing crystal explosions instead and whatever was caught inside the blast radius immediately ceased to exist. Seventy-five missiles flew down into the atmosphere and found their targets unerringly, then every member of The Order that was still on the planet ceased to exist, along with hundreds of other people and the buildings they were in.

“One planet down.” I said with a smile. “Only a few hundred thousand to go.”

*

“Oh, my god.” Simone sat back with tears in her eyes. “Hailey.”

“No! It's not true!” Hailey's mother Monica exclaimed. “It's a mistake. There's no way... no, they couldn't...” She started crying. “They just got married!” She nearly yelled and then covered her face and cried her heart out.

The others sat in the media room in stunned silence as they stared at the screen that had showed all of the explosions on the planet. Hela's oval shape turned around and flew out of view of the satellite. The console near Simone beeped and she looked at it.

“We have new orders.” Simone said. “Can anyone guess what they are?”

“Deliveries.” Gleas said and stood, anger clear on her face. “I'll send a specially prepared missile to the temple on the second planet personally.”

“Gleas...” Deborah started to say.

“We copy most of Hunter's message and we unload our wrath onto these bastards that have been ruining life for everyone.” Gleas said. “Simone, cut out the harbouring the council member part and send a copy to my datapad.” It beeped and she nodded. “Opina, get the missiles loaded onto Adona.”

“Already done.” Opina said. “Those bastards killed Grandma. They all need to die.”

“Agreed.” Udelis said.

“Agreed.” Adona said.

“We... can't be hasty.” Jelly said.

“We've stood by and let this go on for long enough.” Sandy said and took Beatrice's hand. “They came for us and were going to take us as hostages, assuming they didn't kill us and send regrets to our families.” She said and gave her a kiss. “We haven't even done anything against them and they sent an assault force after us. How many people have they killed for no reason and claimed they were cleaning up the criminals?”

No one responded, because they had all heard the stories and media pieces about how The Order had liberated another war-torn or downtrodden planet to bring them under their benevolent rule.

“But... there are so many...” Beatrice said.

“Yes, and every time we get rid of them, more will come.” Sandy said and looked at Simone. “My dear friend, can you bring up that wonderful communication from The Order representative that was so kind to thank us for taking down the rogues from The Order?”

Simone gasped and understood what she meant. “If you weren't saving all of your kisses for Beatrice, I'd kiss you!”

“Hey!” Beatrice said automatically to defend Sandy, who hugged her.

“I'm sure she was half-joking.” Sandy said and kissed her again. “She hasn't has sex in a while.”

“I'll send edited copies to everyone, including Hunter, and that'll cover our asses.” Simone said and quickly did so and Gleas' datapad beeped again. “Go ahead, sister of vengeance. Let them feel your burning touch.”

Gleas walked over to her and bent down, then gave her a kiss. “This won't take long.” She said and left at a fast walk to get changed into her flight suit.

“She just kissed me, right?” Simone looked around at everyone. “She did, didn't she?”

“She... is trying to... distract us.” Monica said and wiped away her tears. “So we don't... linger on...”

Simone moved over and took the woman into her arms and Monica started crying again. Simone's own tears followed, because she had lost a sister, then everyone started crying. Some did it silently like her, some with sobs like Monica, and Sandy and Beatrice kissed each other softly and tenderly as they mourned the daughter they had helped raise.

*

Hunter jumped to the next system and hacked their security systems to find who he wanted, then broadcast the new warning message that Simone had given him, along with the declaring the rogues message, and he shot every ship, space station, temple, town, and city that had an Order member in it on each of the three planets and one moon.

He turned the ship around and flew Hela out of the system to go to the next one. The only problem he had was that he would need to go home soon and reload his missiles. He wasn't looking forward to that visit at all. He went to two more systems and killed hundreds of Order members before Hela warned him that they were almost out of missiles and wouldn't have enough to take out the next system, even if it only had a single planet. It had five.

Hunter considered going there anyway and using the other shipboard weapons to do the job, then realized he wouldn't have any way to destroy the temples and structures on the planetary surface. He could have done it by hand, if he wanted to take his time and tore the buildings into pieces with Presence.

“I need more ships.” Hunter said and sent a message to the Bogorim Corporation for five more weapon platform ships. “Ooo, and a projectile launching system for my new weapon.” He said and used the navigation computer to plot a course for the nearly month long trip to the Dizahl System. “Let's go home.” He said and flew Hela out to the proper Lagrange point and jumped into hyperspace.