CHAPTER 63 – IRREVERSIBLE

DATE: JUNE 10th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)

LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, OUTER ASTEROID BELT,

UNKNOWN FACILITY, CODENAME: DOGHOUSE

LIEUTENANT PAUL KARST

“Boss, we got a problem.” Hamilton whispered by Paul’s ear as soon as he arrived close. Paul kept staring at the advisory in his neural HUD.

THREAT DETECTED, NEPHAELI’IM-HUMAN HYBRID; SOLDIER ARCHETYPE, QUANTITY: TWELVE,

THREAT LEVEL: DANGEROUS; EXTREME CAUTION ADVISED

FIGHT OR FLIGHT DETECTED; COMBAT HORMONE PRODUCTION RELEASE APPROVED

Son of a bitch. What are we dealing with, Creepy? An ambush, or have we caught them unaware?

Unaware… for now…. I can sense…Ten in the room on the left … and two in the right…

It wasn’t much to work from, but at least now he knew there were two in the room on the right. it confirmed the total from the heartbeat sensor, as well. Well… Shit.

Paul waved the team into a huddle as a new plan took shape in his mind.

“It seems the ship isn’t empty like we hoped. The good news is, the bulk of their forces remain in stasis. The bad news: we have a dozen soldier class giants between us and our objective. If I had to guess there's probably two or three manning the stasis chamber and the rest are likely in the armory.” Paul whispered.

“So, no matter which room we clear first, we can expect enemy reinforcements on our six. What’s the plan, boss?” Hamilton asked in a dry tone.

“We have to hit them both pretty much at the same time. There’s no way around it. Ariana, I want you to assassinate those operators and plant what’s left of our high explosives in the stasis room set to blow by remote detonator.” Paul ordered.

“Consider it done. What about Gardner? If we have to detonate that bomb early…” Ariana trailed off.

She didn’t have to finish her sentence; everyone knew exactly what the consequences of blowing Gardner’s cover too early could be.

“That’s exactly why we do this clean and quiet, so it doesn’t have to come to that. That means no rockets, Hamilton The rest of you stick by me.” Paul ordered.

“Rockets? I don’t need ‘em to take these clowns on.” Hamilton said with a confident pat to the upper receiver of his breacher.

“Stay sharp, only a fool underestimates their enemy. We move into the armory the moment Ariana gives the signal.” Paul whispered to a round of thumbs up from the rest of the team.

Ariana finished setting the bomb and stowed it in her pack. She then drew her tech sword and disappeared into a faint shimmer.

Go get ‘em, sis.

Paul switched to thermals and watched her pad noiselessly down the hallway and around the corner. Satisfied at her prospects of success, Paul signaled the rest into position. A startled gasp and a wet gurgle broke the silence, causing Paul’s heart to race as he listened intently for any other noise.

One target is down… the other has been startled…

Damnit! Paul vigorously shook his head and gave the hand signal to stop Hamilton from moving in.

Paul raised his rifle and flipped the selector to fire. The others trained their rifles on the doorway before Paul signaled Hamilton to hold position with the rest on either side of the armory door.

The sounds of a struggle and steel ringing off steel filled the air as Paul gripped his rifle tighter in anticipation.The noise of battle grew ever louder until a giant emerged from the doorway and yelled in a deep voice.

“INTRUDER! Sound the—” A sword emerged through its throat in a shower of gore, cutting him off mid-sentence.

They giant fell to their knees then crashed to the ground as Ariana leapt off their back and withdrew her sword.

“Ariana! The bomb!” She nodded, flung the blood from her blade, and rushed back into the room.

“Smoke out! Switch to thermals, move in, and find cover! Aggressive action gets results so move it!” Paul shouted as he thumbed the selector on his under-slung grenade launcher to smoke with a satisfying click. Hamilton shifted a little closer to the edge as Paul strafed his way in to get a good angle. The moment he had it, he pulled the secondary trigger.

*THUNK* Paul smiled.

The grenade arced through the air, bounced off the back wall, and began to spew thick smoke into the armory. Paul switched to thermals and opened fire through the doorway to suppress the enemy before he settled into place to replace Hamilton's old position on the right side of the door. The enemy was in chaos as Paul slung 185 grain penetrator rounds at anyone stupid enough to expose themselves.

“Move it, damn you Jenkins, move up!” Paul shouted.

Finally, Jenkins ran from cover low and fast to join Hamilton just inside the room. Hamilton opened fire with his breacher and blew a hole through one of the giants who’d stepped out to shoot blindly into the smoke. Several more giants popped out from behind cover and joined in the fire as well.

PARTICLE BEAM DEFLECTED; PHOTONIC SHIELD DEPLOYED…

86% INTEGRITY REMAINING… RECHARGING…

Paul was knocked backward a step by a lucky shot as the smoke began to fade. A short burst of fire from Paul’s left liberated his attacker of the top of their skull.

We have a problem… Gardner is in trouble…

Paul raised his rifle and knelt down to expose as little of himself as possible before he let off another string of fire.

What do you think this is!? All right… gotta hurry! Paul thought in mild annoyance before his shield flashed yellow and his head was knocked backward.

PARTICLE BEAM DEFLECTED; PHOTONIC SHIELD DEPLOYED…

68% INTEGRITY REMAINING… RECHARGING…

Time seemed to slow down as he shook off the impact and his eyes were drawn to a small object flying through the air towards them.

“Grenade!” Hamilton shouted.

Thinking fast, Paul let his rifle drop on its sling as he focused on grabbing the grenade with a TK field. He slung it back amongst the densest cluster of enemies, who dove and scattered, making them easy victims for Jenkins and Hamilton. He could feel through the wall with his mass senses as the explosion painted their enemy with blood and shrapnel.

“Try that again, asshole, I dare you!” Paul snarled.

He relied upon his external speakers to translate his speech, as he refused to install the instinctive language pack for it. Something about speaking their foul language with his own mouth felt wrong on a deeply instinctual level. As if to answer him, one of the giants in the back opened fire with a Gatling gun through a notch in a heavily armored gun emplacement. The storm of combined fire forced Paul back behind cover as the fire raked across the doorway. A scream from his left drew his attention as Estefani’s shield flared from orange into deep red before it failed as she spun and hit the deck. She reached down to her midsection with a shaking hand only for her gauntlet to come back red and sticky with blood.

“I need suppressing fire over here! They're chewing us the fuck up!” Jenkins shouted from his forward position next to Hamilton.

Paul took a deep breath and peaked his head around the corner only to have it immediately knocked back. His shield flashed orange before he leaned back against the wall with his heart racing in terror.

KINETIC STRIKES DEFLECTED; PHOTONIC SHIELD DEPLOYED…

32% INTEGRITY REMAINING… RECHARGING…

Fuck, FUCK, FUCK!

“Ariana! We need a medic!” Paul shouted as Estefani began hyperventilating and shivering off to his side.

Moments later, Ariana decloaked at her side and gently straightened Estefani out on the ground.

“You’re going to be okay, stay with me. I’ve got you now.” Ariana said in a calming tone.

Paul watched her medstat icon flash an angry red on his HUD.

“I… I can’t feel… I can’t feel my legs! Why can’t I feel my legs?! Oh God… I don’t want to die… I don’t want to die…” She whimpered as Ariana detached her chest plate and tossed it aside.

“Listen to me, now. You’re not going to die. Try to slow your breathing and get ready. Here’s something to make you feel better…. Now listen to me, I need to remove the bullets and after that, you’re going to be just fine. You’ll be floated gently out of here, like you’re on a cloud… and we’ll get you a nice, long rest in the hospital, okay?” Ariana said as she unrolled her field surgical kit.

“Like I’m on… a cloud… To the hospital…” Estefani repeated with a weak cough. “You’ve been… a good friend to me… I'm glad... glad I met you...”

“I’m going to kill these motherfuckers!” Hamilton roared as he rose and fired his breacher in rapid bursts. The sound of rifle fire joined him as both Jenkins' and Hamilton’s shields began depleting at an alarming rate.

Dammit Hamilton! Kill them already!

“All right, hit em hard! Rockets free!” Paul shouted.

Paul shut his eyes and focused outwards with his mass senses as an explosion rocked the room, killing two of the remaining five giants. Paul formed a powerful TK field over the machine gunner on the platform in the back. With a roar, he lifted them into the air and threw them into the opposing wall with a wet crunch then lifted them again and threw them against the opposite wall for good measure. Paul charged into the room as the second to last enemy fell to the crack of Jenkins' rifle. Hamilton tossed his empty breacher to the side, drew his sword, and set upon the last standing enemy with a roar. He smacked their face to the side with his hard light kite shield then rammed his gladius in through a gap in their chest plate. The enemy spasmed and smoke rose as the full capacitor charge was dumped into their nervous system at once. He then kicked the smoking corpse to free his blade as his shoulders heaved.

“Stay with me, dammit!” Ariana shouted from behind him, which seemed to snap Hamilton out of it.

“Tell Hamil… Ham…In any other life… He’d have been… the one…. Tell him… this… damned war…” Estefani mustered the willpower to mumble between wet coughs and gurgles. “It’s so pretty here… As I walk… through the val.. valley…”

After a moment, she seemed to quiet down, the breathing stopped, and all life passed out of her.

Blood dripped from tip of Hamilton’s blade before his grip loosened and it clattered to the ground. He knelt beside her and let out a horrid wail and slammed his fists down, denting the deck.

“I… I thought we.. I thought she had the nanomachines… They’re supposed to fix her! What kind of useless xenotech bullshit did they stick us with!?” He roared.

Jenkins tried putting a hand on Hamilton’s shoulder, only for him to shrug it off and angrily wave him away. Paul pondered Hamilton's public display of weakness and shrugged as he walked over to the discarded chest plate. Despite it being made of Alderei composites, it hadn’t seemed to have held up well against heavy fire. While they really had made it look like bronze scale armor on the outside. Hints of internally hidden technology shattered the impression as he inspected the damaged sections.

After a long, quiet moment, Hamilton asked in a bleak tone. “How… how did it happen?”

“She was at half shield when they opened fire… Two bullets penetrated the armor after her shield failed. Um…” Ariana began in a shaky voice. “The first nearly severed her spine, while the other hit her square in the liver and started a nasty bleed. There was nothing I could do for her but make her comfortable… The way she was hemorrhaging… no fancy xenotech could have saved her from that.” Ariana dropped two bloody, thumb-sized armor piercing bullets on the deck.

Five impacts… two hits... She'd have been better off in a Paladin suit...

“Only two made it through… This would be damn near impervious to slings and arrows down on Earth… Fat lotta good it did against these monster bullets up here, though. I told her to get the subdermal armor while it was available, but nooooo… she wanted to live more au natural.” Paul chimed in, even as his subconscious screamed at him to just shut up already.

In a flash, Hamilton rose and stood in his face.

“You know, them funny little quips of yours… sometimes they cross lines. Crossing certain lines at certain times might be a very… foolish… move.”

Paul’s follow up quip died in his throat. Even after augmentations, Hamilton still towered over Paul by almost a full head and had him at the shoulders by a good half meter. The man was a beast, and Paul had zero desire to fight him.

When did he pick his sword back up again…?

The tension of the moment was shattered by an explosion from the other half of the ship.

“That’s one of our H-E’ bombs.” Ariana said.

“They tried to access the secondary garrison!” Jenkins said.

“We’ll come back for her, and we’ll give her he honors she deserves. Right now, we gotta link up with Gardner. We’re officially assuming that explosion just blew her cover.” Paul ordered.

Hamilton huffed and sheathed his sword, but ultimately said nothing. Paul’s own mood had sobered significantly to match the grim situation as he ran the new squad calculus.

“Jenkins, congratulations, you’re now our combat field technician. Hope you’ve been studying the manuals I’ve been referring to you. You’ve been asking for some more responsibility, so here’s your shot.”

“Ah… Yes. Sir… I’m up to date is what I mean to say. You can count on me.” Jenkins said. Admittedly a bit sheepish at first, but with growing confidence.

Paul reached out with his telekinesis and pulled the Gatling gun and its cover panels towards himself and sat them down by the door.

“Good, because you have until the enemy arrives to figure out how this thing works. After that, you and Ariana are to hold this corridor while we kill Set. We pull this off, and we can cut off their only other source of reinforcements and secure final control of the ship. You holding this corridor is essential to our victory, is that clear?”

“Crystal, sir.” Jenkins nodded.

“We got this, now, go!” Ariana shouted as she got to work.

“Hamilton.” Paul said as he carefully approached the mute mountain of a man. “There will be time to mourn her later. I promise. Right now, you and I need to make sure Gardner and Anubis are alright. No more funerals today, right?”

It took a moment for the words to register. When they did, the big man seemed to come alive at once.

“No. No more funerals.” Hamilton said with steely determination.

Paul reached out and grabbed the breacher from the spot it had been abandoned and pulled it back to them and dropped it at his feet. Hamilton dug through his pack and pulled two box magazines out, clipped one to his tac vest and loaded the other into the emptied breacher. Paul grabbed a few of the sleek particle rifles from the racks on the walls and piled as many of their stick grenades as he could into his half-emptied pack as he could.

“Let’s go save them, then.” Hamilton said in a hollow tone.

Unsure of what else to say or do, Paul gave him a pat on the shoulder. One last look confirmed Ariana and Jenkins were busy hardening their position. With that, Paul motioned them forward and they set off to help Gardner.

MEANWHILE…

DATE: JUNE 10th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)

LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, NEAR JUPITER,

ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL

CAPTAIN HENRY O’TOOLE

“Relax, honey. They’re going to call, trust me. Now for once in your life, my duty-obsessed stud, would you please just live in the moment?” Chantal said in a soothing tone as her hands kneaded the knots from the muscles in his oiled back.

Candlelight flickered on the screen of a datapad which cast dancing shadows over the scraps of the dinner he’d prepared for this date night.

The woman has a point… might as well relax into it. Lord have mercy, that feels good…

“Truce, then… but this isn’t over. Ooh… Right there. Rub a little low- ohhhhh… that’s the spot…” Henry replied as he melted into her touch.

“You went out of your way to arrange this date night; the least I can do is fill your love tank, too.” She purred.

The fact that he could feel her naked, wet, and very warm as she slowly grinded against the small of his back made a certain part of his anatomy rebel against relaxation by swelling in anticipation of the possibility.

Again, Soldier? Well… I don’t see why not… Haven’t showered from last time yet…

“Well… if we’re talking about filling love tanks…” Henry replied.

Just the thought of pushing himself back inside her and feeling that warm, wet, vacuum effect…

CAPTAIN, I’VE GOT THE FIST OF THE ARGONAUTS ON THE Q-COMM FOR YOU.

NEED YOU UP HERE ASAP, SIR. – CMDR. ALVAREZ

Blast.

His pent up breath deflated as he gathered his thoughts on what to say to Chantal. One small twist of his hips signaled for her to get up. He looked apologetically into her increasingly quizzical face.

“Duty calls?” Chantal asked in a disappointed tone.

“Perceptive as always… How do you always seem to know?” Henry asked as he rolled over.

The moment he exposed himself, she latched onto his junk and squeezed. “You mean to tell me we have to go, and he was ready for round two!?”

“Nobody is more disappointed than him, trust me. Now, normally I’d say don’t rub it in, but…” Henry wisecracked as she released him with a snort.

“I’m positively devastated that you’d think I wasn’t the most disappointed one here. I think you know this means you need to make it up to me later, deal?” Chantal asked with a smile as she reached for a towel to wipe the excess massage oil from his back.

“Alright, woman, you have yourself a deal. My tough little negotiator.” Henry teased.

“Hey, a girl’s gotta get through life with some kinda skill set. I didn’t get this far coasting on my good looks or by shakin’ my shaggin’ wagon, you know. That show’s for just you, anyway.” She said with a sly wink before she bent over to pull her panties up with deliberate slowness.

“I think I could live with that, I’m far too big a fan to be sharing, anyway.” Henry said as he flipped himself up into the waistband, zipped up his BDU’s, and sealed the neck.

He watched, mesmerized, as she hopped and jiggled herself into her own set of BDU’s. The way she looked back at him with a sly smile made him wonder how much of the show had been on purpose. He ate it up, either way, and stood up to help her zip up the front with a kiss.

“Ready to go, my dear?” Henry asked.

“Let’s.” She concurred before she took his offered arm, and he led her to the door.

They moved quickly towards the CIC and emerged into a scene of tense conversation amongst the crew.

“Captain on deck!” Henry nodded as he passed the officer of the watch.

Alvarez looked them over and sniffed with a single huff. Only a momentary curling of the lip implied any kind of disapproval.

“There you are sir. You’re going to want to hear this. Lance, why don’t you start from the beginning?” His XO spoke into the receiver.

“The mission started off perfectly according to plan. The station seemed abandoned with all the guards in stasis awaiting an emergency signal to awaken them. O’Brien and I split off to map the rest of the facility while Victor split off to hack the hangar door systems to let our heavy support in. The alarm was triggered while O’Brien and I were in the throne room, so I ordered him to fall back and get the rest of the team to minimum safe distance. I stayed behind to prep the nuke.” Lance stated in a calm and slow manner.

“We heard this much from O’Brien, that he’d engaged them from afar before they drove him off with bursts of plasma fire. It was then he broke the air shield to escape and directed HT one to blow a hole in the hangar door which Janessa used to escape. Tell him what really matters, tell him what set off the alarm.” Olivia’s voice interjected.

She sounds rattled, and she doesn’t get spooked easily. Henry suppressed a growing sense of unease.

“Right… I was getting to that.” Lance said before he took a moment to center himself.

“Where to start? The station was boarded by three Nephaeli’im hybrids while Vic’s team was working to splice their way in. Lucas… He was killed instantly by a horizontal null matter blade launched at him through the door. Victor engaged the enemy and helped Staff Sergeant Bryant escape, killing one boarder in the process.”

It was obvious by his intentionally monotonous tone that Lance was doing his best to hold himself together. Nobody commented as he took a moment to regain his composure. The news about Lucas seemed to weigh heavily on Alvarez; the normally stoic man looked careworn far beyond his years.

“Jesus… I’m sorry. We lost one of our best today. We’ll make all the arrangements to send him off with honors.” Henry said.

“They were always dangerous, you know… boarding ops. It seemed like someone always came home wrapped in a flag. The rags called me Space Wolf for seizing five enemy patrol boats and a frigate. We took dozens more tiny asteroid stations than that, though. It got to the point where we were more replacements than originals by the time the Gen-two ships entered the fight. Through all that, the four of us always survived, even when all the odds said we shouldn’t have.” Alvarez said with a far off look in his eyes.

“To die the way he did… with no chance for a standup fight… Lucas deserved better than that. Guess we actually need to hire a bartender for Acapulco now, just to pour out drinks to another empty seat. One by one, the old dream dies as we do. It’s damn near pointless now, who’s gonna be left to remember?” Victor said in a miserable tone.

“I know this is a rough time, and the pain is fresh still, but we need you to keep focused. There is absolutely critical intel the Captain needs to know!” Olivia couldn’t seem to help but interject.

“We’ll get to that in a moment... Victor, tell me everything you experienced from your perspective.” Henry said to quiet the cross talk.

“Aye, aye sir. We separated from Lance and O’Brien and found our way into the control room. Just as Lance was about to sequester the panel from any alarms, the hangar doors opened to allow a pillar of fire and smoke to fly in.” Victor said.

“I’m sorry, but what? Fire can’t exist in a vacuum!” Chantal said in an incredulous tone.

“It had to have been some kind of illusion or projection because it dissipated in an instant to reveal a ship shaped like a step pyramid. Three occupants emerged wearing armored pressure suits, two of which had white and grey feathered wings folded up on their backs. The suit heartbeat sensor seemed to positively ID them as Nephaeli’im hybrids, and they all had powers.” Victor stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

Once satisfied that nobody would interrupt, Victor continued.

“The one I killed had some sort of ability to read minds or emotions, even through walls. They called him Gabriel. They called the other winged one Michael, and the wingless one was named Metatron. They were all servants of Yah’Weh of the Bible. Henry, there’s no doubt about it now. He’s one of them.”

“No, but… that’s impossible! Isn’t it? That would mean God… and these false gods… Fuck… IF this is the truth, it leaves us with so many lies across so much of our history to untangle. The rest of these false gods were selfish and cruel… Hell, half the bible is a polemic against them! How could a God that gave us Jesus as a sacrifice for our salvation be the same as them? There has to be something… some angle to this that we don’t yet understand.” Henry said as his logical mind warred with the still-powerful voices of his upbringing.

Chantal laid a supporting hand on his shoulder, though her expression spoke to a different inner turmoil.

“Sweetheart, the old testament only decried the worship of Ba’al and the others because Yah’Weh was a jealous god who demanded they submit out of fear to him, alone. He used an endless cycle of love bombing and abusive punishments to exercise coercive control over his people. He called for multiple genocides in which he ordered the forced marriages of young virgin girls to the very men who just murdered their families! Dammit, Henry, it was his laws on slave ownership that would later give moral justification to the transatlantic slave trade! Sure, own a person, rape them, beat them, just don’t kill them, and don’t be the one who captured them or sold them. Follow those rules and you’re in the clear with God. Disgusting. I know you haven’t opened your bible in years, but have you really never thought through all of this?” Chantal asked as her eyes bored into his.

“I, uh… No. I was bored to tears the only time I tried reading the old testament and skipped ahead to the new. I do remember scratching my head at some of those rules, though. I guess my old pastor just made it sound so… reasonable, everything that seemed bad had a justification. We couldn’t judge God in his eternal wisdom because we don’t have his grand perspective. Is all that stuff really in the Bible?” Henry asked as he thought back to his younger days before the enemy made landfall.

“It makes sense, I know a lot of pastors like to pick and choose passages to cover, so most people will go their entire lives without becoming aware just how often depravity gets justified as morally good in the Old Testament. I remember from an early age questioning how the angry, jealous, physical God of the old testament could possibly be the same as the all -forgiving, all loving, and notably non-physical God described by the New Testament. Well, that, and how he could have possibly gotten the science of literally everything wrong from the age and cosmology of the Earth, to describing storehouses for snow and hail in the book of Job, to the insistence that disease is caused by demons and sin rather than bacteria and viruses. Imagine how many lives he could have saved simply by warning his people to wash their hands! Either the writers were simple humans who didn’t know these things, or they were faithfully recording the areas in which they were intentionally misled. I used to think the first was more likely, but now I think it’s clearly the second.” Chantal replied.

“Shit… In spite of the evidence, it’s hard to believe that the God of the Bible is one of them…” Henry said.

“Is it though? Think back to everything we have learned so far. All you have to do is dial the mythological clock backwards to the first pantheons. The word for the first pantheon was the Anunnaki, which itself means those who came from the sky, An, to the Earth, Ki. El is nothing more than a later Canaanite rename of that original sky god An. The very word Elohim means sons of El, which the Canaanites of this very time in history would take to mean the seventy children of El in their pantheon. Christians would later take this same word, Elohim, to mean angels and their fallen demon brethren while the term originally meant the seventy god-king governors appointed to rule over mankind.” Victor snarled out.

“If what he is saying is true…” Captain Cutter said.

“El the father, Yah’Weh the son, and this Michael who called himself the holiest of spirits… The fact that they both borrow Enlil’s mythic archetype explains some of their bitter rivalry described in the Bible. Frankly, it explains a lot of other oddities, too. Like how he has a giant sized body that Jacob was able to physically wrestle with, or how a non-physical god could enjoy the smell of incense and burnt flesh… The illusion on the ship they came in explains the column of smoke that led them through the desert. The splitting of the Red Sea could have been done by a pair of ship-grade TK fields… Access to advanced technology could also explain the illusion of the burning bush as well as the magic super-food from heaven… It could also explain the radiation burns on the shroud of Turin as well as some of the strange things in the sky during Jesus’ death… Michael even asked me if I knew of the blood of the lamb who would be slain for our sins.” Victor said as he connected the dots for them.

Henry felt his world spiral as he considered the implications further.

“This changes our risk profile tremendously, especially if this Yah’Weh tries to flip the believers on our crew to his side… We’ve gotta take him out, immediately. This is a true existential risk for us. I don’t know who the real creator of the universe is, but I think we can safely say that Yah’Weh isn’t it. Do we know where that ship launched from?” Henry asked as he began to form a plan of action in his head.

“The Captain makes a good point. While we can safely at this time conclude that Yah’Weh is just another false god, that doesn’t mean there is no God. Just that we don’t or can’t know its nature. I say we kill that manipulative bastard first and with extreme prejudice.” Lance interjected.

“Well, we managed to track down the approximate location the craft would have launched from. A quick flyover would confirm our suspicions before we launched an orbital strike, if given the order.” Commander Cutter chimed in.

“So, we’re abandoning the idea of ground strikes? I guess we can drop a bunker buster on the temple if we have to, but won’t that cause trouble for us trying to govern later when we move through on foot?” Olivia asked.

“Temple? The first temple is still centuries away. We need to locate and strike the tabernacle, which is a glorified tent. Airstrikes only backfire when the people understand what an air strike is, who sent it, and when it hits civilians instead of military targets. None of those are a major concern here. We need to be sure this strike works, we should take no chances with this one. He cannot be allowed to escape.” Victor said.

Henry took in their words with a heavy heart before he spoke. “Very well, you have my permission to launch an orbital strike. Get in, verify your target, hit them hard, and get the hell out.”

“We’ll get it done, sir.” Commander Cutter replied.

Henry felt a supporting hand on the small of his back as he turned to look over the railing into the CIC below. On a whim, Henry closed his eyes and prayed for the first time in years.

Oh, true God of the universe, whoever you are, if you have any objections to killing this imposter, please let it be known, send us a sign, anything! If we are about to make a horrid mistake out of our ignorance, please help stop us before it’s too late…

His only answer was the same empty silence he’d ever gotten from prayer, made worse by his own inner turmoil.

“Alright, Now that we’ve taken care of that nasty bit of business, I want to know everything that happened in there. After that, I’m going to need an update on Paul’s team. We need to consider them if we’re going to time this strike right.” Henry ordered.

“Sir! So here’s what I remember…” Victor began to speak as Henry devoted his full attention. He could review the mission tapes later when they linked back up with the Indomitable Will. In the meantime, the information he gained from this debrief would have to suffice. He needed all the information he could get, the lives of his people would depend on it.

We cannot allow ourselves to be blind sided like that again… Henry thought as he moved to his console to begin taking notes.