Dekker's Dozen #009

The comm crackled. Static broke into Dekker's solitude.

Salvation hung in complete blackness within the shadow of Earth's moon. Beyond, a steady influx of MEA ships had brought a decent force to muster near the planet—all defensible ships had been called home, it seemed. The lunar umbra provided a good vantage point for whatever might happen next.

Inside the command room, Dekker brooded in deep thought. He'd sat still long enough that the automatically lighting had switched off due to inactivity. The comm crackled again.

"This is Captain Johns of the Gallant. I'm trying to contact Dekker; I hope you're still in this system, somewhere. Please contact me." A long pause followed; this hadn't been Johns' first appeal. "I have disturbing information—something you will want to hear. I believe the three rebel ships that destroyed District Three were... under coercion."

Dekker turned his head and looked at the communication console; the lights shimmered on. He squinted as the illumination bit his eyes.

So many factors had interwoven through this mystery that the mental fatigue had begun eating away at his fortitude. He needed more minds working on it, and Nibbs had suddenly vanished: possibly an indication of yet another problem linked to the Red Tree.

DNIET Disaster

Nibbs' vision cleared to a mild haze. The fever ravaging his body would not relent; but more menacing was a foreign voice that whispered inside his mind. It contended with his will for control of their body.

The investigator's dry, cracked lips threatened to split again as he croaked a guttural scream. His blurred vision gazed downward and Nibbs saw his chest. A network of veins like root tendrils bulged darkly; they wormed their pattern just beneath his skin. The wound on his abdomen looked vicious. Its ragged edges had blackened and Nibbs wondered how long he'd been unconscious.

The persistent, usurping voice was more than some hallucination caused by the infection in his body. Nibbs struggled to stand, but something anchored his feet and arms. He glanced back; the elder zombies who had captured him stood as statues, moored to the center of the Verdant Seven's circle.

Relaxing, Nibbs nearly collapsed. His vision split, doubled, and then reformed momentarily, fixed on the horrible item before him. Lying before the trunk of the red-leaved arbolean leader was the DNIET weapon the investigators had encountered at the research facility.

In the dawning terror of that, Nibbs found enough strength to stave off the next mental barrage. He had to stay strong; he had to escape and warn the Dozen!

Through the symbiont's connection, Nibbs could understand the Arbolean communication. As a maddening migraine gripped his head, he saw one of the elder apothecium drones retrieve the DNIET unit. Nibbs could hear the resonant voice in his mind, like a menacing breath. Install this within the Child of Destruction and call down Ragnarock; summon the Valkyries, they will rip through our enemies' ships like submerged reef on choppy sea.

* * *

"An informant sent us this wealth of information," Rita told her supervisor. As a broadcast personality, she had very little power in the stories that ran. Truthfully, she'd had very little interest in them up until now. The job had been a paycheck; her pretty face and charisma had been the doorway to a comfortable life. Life had just gotten much more interesting, however, and the entire galaxy seemed to erupt in chaos overnight. Curiosity had suddenly gotten the better of her, that is, as long as she could report the chaos from the security of their New Babylon broadcast center.

Russ flipped through the photos and information. "You're sure it's not from those same hacktivists responsible for the recent piratical takeover? There could be legal problems if we use this stuff and it turns out they're the source."

"Come on, Russ. They went offline when those orbital ships burned through the entire continent. Those hackers were obviously based out of District Three when it all went down. They've got to be all dead."

Russ tapped his fingers against the file. "Alright. If the other networks are all at the edge, we might as well step over the line first. It's been a long time since anyone's done any actual real reporting. Run with it, but hang back on anything that makes The Pheema look bad. Jerusalem may or may not be involved in the things like your snitch claims, but everyone needs a scapegoat, so let's leave that door open."

* * *

The Pheema, head Krenzin religious leader and Chief Magnate of the MEA, stood in a meeting of the only persons on the planet who wielded more power than he. For nearly an hour, now, this inquiry had raged and he had every intention of stripping his enemy of all power—even ripping out the arbolean seed that empowered him, and the alien felt certain the Verdant Seven would support him.

Holding a fistful of data from the destruction of District Three, he pointed a talon at Prognon Austicon. "This was all your doing! I know it, and this time I have proof!" he accused the Left Hand.

Austicon stood opposed to his counterpart and shrugged placidly. He feigned ignorance. "I don't know what he's talking about, do you?" He turned to his silent psy-nar general, Leviathan, and sent him a mental command that only the psychic would receive.

The black-clad Leviathan stood statuesque, scanning the faces and minds of The Pheema's aides. They included a handful of security guards and a collection of elderly women—avatars of the Arbolean council and descendants of the ancient Dodona cultists. Leviathan shook his head.

"I thought not." Austicon's ruse fell apart when he grinned wickedly. "Then again, maybe I do know what you mean." The Left Hand stepped in and grasped the Right by his wrist.

Leviathan sprang into action, his blade danced through the air. Shots from the security team flew wide as the psy-nar assassin ducked, rolled, severed, and stabbed. Within two seconds only the wide eyed Krenzin official still stood, towering over the bodies of guards, aides, and elderly women.

The Pheema grimaced as Prognon Austicon's tight grip manacled the Chief Magnate's wrists behind his lithe frame. He winced against from the assassin's hot breath. "What do you plan to accomplish here? You can't go against the entire Arbolean council!"

"Oh, but I can!" Austicon drew a wicked, twisted knife in his free hand. "You see, it is my time now. Forget the Verdant Seven, they are a joke, a council of impotence—cultists communing with six ambitious pieces of kindling. Upon those trees I will build the funeral pyre of all mankind!"

"You're mad, Austicon! This plan has been in the works for millennia!"

"And you're too shortsighted! As are the arboleans and all other mortal things! You cannot see how I transcend these all. I am a god incarnate, a vengeful deity of death and destruction, imprisoned for centuries and released so those ambitious fools could attach themselves to me! I am the god of wrath! And now, thanks to the barren dissenter, I will impose my will! I become Baal Dione, the true architect of this whole ruse!"

"But the plan! It's perfect!" The Pheema stammered. "We will enslave the humans and bend them to our own will! The arboleans will transcend!"

Austicon glared at him. "And your drones will become the next step to evolve the arbolean race? You'll give them the freedom to uproot—to provide every arbolean beyond the council with sentience and tethered mobility? And what about that percentage of immune humanity? There will always be a resistance!"

The Pheema bartered as if his life depended on it. It did. "Those are the ones reserved for mechnar units!"

"A pool which will never be large enough! You know that mechnar hybrid implants don't work on the apothecium infected population." Austicon plunged the blade between the two bones of his enemy's collar.

Shrieking, The Pheema shuddered with pain. "There isn't enough room for two predators in this food chain!"

"Indeed," Austicon spat. He yanked down hard on the knife handle, breaking The Pheema's collarbone. "That is why I'm going to kill the Verdant Seven! You think this war is over the bodies of men, who gets to use them for husks or shells for implantation. You misunderstand. You always have. This is not a war over the bodies of humanity, but for their souls!"

The Pheema whimpered with pain. "You're insane. You've lost it!"

"No!" Austicon's eyes challenged, more maniacal than ever before. "I've lived since before the dawn of time! The hearts of men are capable of anything; they are imprinted with the blueprints of the great divine machine within their very genetic material! You could never cage such a thing; they would throw you off and usurp you—adapt into some new form! And always there is the other threat from within their midst!"

"What other threat?" tears of pain crawled down the Pheema's furry face. "Let us face it together!" He assumed the desperate posture of a person making promises he could never keep. "The arboleans can help you! Ragnarock is a powerful weapon unlike any other!"

"I already have my super-weapon, I also have a DNIET!"

The Pheema's face went even paler.

Austicon laughed as he recognized the surprise. "You did not know that there were two, did you? Only this weapon can deal a heavy enough blow to humanity to wound my enemy, the other threat."

"What threat!"

"I am the god of vengeance—I seek to kill the God of mercy, the very one who spawned creation, the one whose machinations power the universe itself and whose fate is tied these humans! One can destroy the bodies of men, but their souls will endure unless I wipe out the entire population—kill them all and silence the ones who carry knowledge of the ineffable names!"

"And your mechnar units?" he gambled desperately. "With no humanity, you will limit your army."

"You should worry about you." Austicon ripped the blade out, and then stabbed him again. Again. Again. Over and again. The Pheema's shrieks soon died as the Chief Magnate collapsed in a pool of his thin, Krenzin blood.

Austicon stood over the dead and cackled with a low, guttural and otherworldly laugh. Leviathan stepped over the bodies and silently lorded over the kill.

"My friend," Austicon stated, speaking to the spirit deep within the psy-nar unit, "You have been with me since the fall of our ethereal race, taking new forms through the years, but now, we finally reach the end of days! Let us activate the DNIET weapon and destroy this system before we savagely deflower the red tree.

Smiling, Prognon Austicon took The Pheema's limp hand in his own. Dipping a forefinger in blood, he drew an archaic Star of David symbol upon the stone floor. He laid the dead hand next to the mark.

As the two assassins departed, an elderly woman dragged herself across the chamber floor, leaving a trail of her own blood in her wake. Her breaths came in ragged gasps as her wounds spurted.

She pulled herself up to the window. Trembling, grasping a thin, yew wand she divined for the proper wind. Dropping a handful of beech leaves into the current, she poured all her thoughts, emotions, and energy into the act. Her masters, the arboleans, had to know of Austicon's plans.

She collapsed, quite sure that her message had been sent. With a shudder and a final groan, her eyes rolled back in her skull and she bled her last.

* * *

Dekker respectfully stood as Captain Johns entered the conference room they'd borrowed on Darkside Station. Doc Johnson and Fryberger stood at the edge of the room, observing the parley and fidgeting nervously.

An older man, Johns' hair was shot through with gray and his years of service had cragged his face with jagged lines. After a few brief formalities, Johns leveled with him. "There's not much left of the MEA military after these last few decades of vulture-picking by the politicians. We're bringing most everything back home for the time being. And this comes directly in contradiction to our orders. As far as the actual navy goes, I'm the one giving commands, now."

"And what about the outposts, settlements, and trade routes the navy is supposed to protect?"

"Protect from what? The only real threats are here at Earth. The only thing we do out there is delegate; even if some kind of military threat did surface, most warships are equipped at only forty percent of their weapons capacity or less after the legislators started meddling. Most of the colonies have already been stripped clean and search efforts prove futile. The populations have either disappeared or lay dead in the streets. I ordered the same thing you did: our men picked up whatever survivors we could find and guarantee were safe, and cut our losses."

"The MEA will cut you off for that," Dekker replied coldly. "Even with the fleet's reduced numbers you can't feed and supply your numbers without those apron strings; luckily for us, the Salvation is supplied by a number of private benefactors; a few patrons in Mesopotamia City at least keep my ship fueled and fed. But I don't disagree with you—you're desperately needed here in the system. Things are imploding all around; something big is in the works—bigger than the mechnar and the ISW, this is not a series of coincidence."

"Exactly," Johns agreed. "Something larger is at work here. I know there are risks, but the dangers only increase if we redeploy back to our ordered posts. Can you feel it in your bones, Dekker? There's a war brewing on the edge of deep space. Those three defectors, yesterday, were compelled. I'm not even saying it was necessarily the wrong choice, given the details, but we found irregularities in their transmission and I didn't have time to explain on an open comm. I knew each captain personally so it made me look for reasons to justify their actions which were out of character for them—or at least their silence while doing it was."

Johns looked Dekker in the eye, "Here are the facts. I am in favor of rearmament—I always have been and that's one of the reasons that my assigned post has been so remote. It's also a reason why I'm not a friend of the Krenzin. We are overrun with policy and regulation; we can't operate like this. I also recognize that you have the most powerful ship known to our books."

"And just what is it that you want with the Salvation? A Shakespearean coup? 'First thing we do is kill all the lawyers?'"

"Something is happening, something big. All I ask is that you keep her around nearby. I think the human race might just depend on it."

Doc and Fryberger whispered intensely. Something had piqued their interest.

Dekker grimaced for a second. He suppressed the irony of his time-traveling friend's insistent prophecy that Dekker would be responsible for humanity's destruction. "We can do that. We're just starting to sort through yesterday's debacle and integrate those we rescued from District Three."

Doc interrupted. "I don't know exactly what kind of salvage I've got for compatible weaponry systems in my warehouses, but I've got a whole graveyard of old warheads, torpedoes, and projectile weaponry buried under all that gray dust. That might help some of your armament issues."

Johns's face softened with but gratitude. He gave the administrator a half bow.

"I'm a big fan of preserving the human race," Doc added. Fryberger nodded in agreement. "And we're taking a huge risk here; this could sever our funding too. Fry says we've got no loophole to get us out of this one. I guess we're casting our lot here: putting all our stock in your claims of intergalactic Armageddon and what not."

A short emergency tone emitted from the tiny device clipped to Johns's hip. He held up a finger to ask forgiveness while he answered the page. "This is Captain Johns. What's the emergency, Gallant?"

"Captain," the voice chirped. "We just received a priority message. The Pheema has been assassinated in New Babylon!"

A sharp moment of silence punctuated the air—one could almost hear the gears churning out details of a new plan in Johns's mind. He looked at his accomplices, "Please excuse me. I assume I have the support of you both, but I have to leave immediately. I'm making a play for the seat of Chief Magnate."

As Johns departed, he called over his shoulder, "Get those warheads prepped, Doc. I'll send over some crews—I hope you've got room for more funding as soon as my military assumes control over the MEA. And we will assume control—one way or another."

* * *

Vesuvius and Guy slouched in their seats. The rest of their team had been assigned to other tasks—for some of those, that task was physical rest. They'd assigned mandatory shifts to ensure they stayed healthy. She looked over at Dekker. "When's the last time you slept?" she asked. "You look terrible."

Dekker turned slowly to face her. "It's been awhile. We're up next though; two more hours and we'll get some sleep, too."

"Yeah. Lay off, Vees," Guy joked. "He has always looked terrible. You're just finally noticing."

Dekker grinned and rubbed his chin, yawning. His hand chaffed against the bristly stubble that had formed. When was the last time he shaved? Time could be an elusive concept in deep space. "I'll go grab a pot of black caff. I think we've got a hot one in the command room."

In his sleep deprived stagger, Dekker found his way to the heated carafe. A video feed flickered nearby where Doctor MacAllistair sat. The Doctor had set up a mattress nearby; he appeared to be camping out.

"Moving in?" Dekker asked.

"Something like that," MacAllistair replied. "Ever since we picked up those refugees I've felt a little... less comfortable in my quarters."

"I understand," Dekker nodded. MacAllistair's deeply seated paranoia was certainly justifiable. Especially since they hadn't had the ability to screen the newest refugees, yet; his uneasiness was only natural.

"I just feel more secure the closer I am to the command bridge. Only a minority has clearance to get up here." He paused a moment. "But it is nice to have a fully crewed ship in case everything in the galaxy continues falling apart."

"Yeah, well, I feel that might just be the case." Dekker leaned into the mediaphile's space to catch the news broadcast.

Riots raged in the streets of major world cities. A video loop showed a Krenzin religious adherent assaulting an elderly man; even following the destruction of their home-world and assassination of their parliament the Krenzin had remained passive. Suddenly, all over the planet, the "peace loving aliens" had lost control following The Pheema's demise. A scrolling banner listed related news, broadcasting gory facts about the assassination of the MEA's Chief Magnate.

A young, male Krenzin stood at a podium giving a major announcement. The accompanying text information labeled him as The Pheema, a new prophet to replace their fallen leader. In the power vacuum resulting from his predecessor's death, this Krenzin prodigy had stepped in, just as Captain Johns lobbied for the Chief Magnate position.

"The holy books demand it!" he screamed. "This crime demands repayment in blood and Jerusalem must pay!"