As they made their way over to the hatch he kept to the rear of the formation, Calla at his side. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed it before, but he found it strangely symbolic that she was the only white figure amongst a group dressed in black. Perhaps the depths of space, which was the backdrop to the majority of their view, helped to make it all the more obvious. He wasn’t sure what it actually meant, but he felt like it was just another reason why he had fallen in love with her; there was no-one else like her, she was unique.
They walked behind the legionnaires side by side, their relationship apparent through their gait despite the way they marched with the same discipline as the Guardians in front of them. As they reached the door that waited for their arrival, something itched in his gut. Something was probing his instincts, setting them off like wildfire until he couldn’t help but turn around.
The only thing on the platform other than the Stormfalcon were the huge cargo containers that were used to ship supplies across The Shield and the even larger cannons that were designed to protect the Empire from its foes. There was nothing living out here apart from them and yet…he had seen someone when he turned, but now when he glanced again, they had disappeared completely like they had been just a figment of his imagination.
“What is it?” Calla asked, seeing that he stopped before the others noticed. The legionnaires turned a fraction later to see what had caused his delay as well, but when he answered he used a channel that was exclusive to him and her. He wasn’t entirely sure why he felt the need, but what he was about to say made him feel mad and he wasn’t willing to let the legionnaires see him in the same way.
“I thought I saw someone…out there…on one of the cargo containers” he confided. It still sounded crazy to him, so he had no idea what Calla would think. Would she assume his troubled sleep was finally getting to him in evidentially detrimental ways, or would she gracefully listen to him like she had always done?
“Who, Lupus? A man, a woman?” Calla asked. He was glad that, as usual, she didn’t doubt him. She was concerned, but only because she believed him.
“I’m not sure…but they were right there…and now they are gone like the sharp cry of a sudden breeze” he answered.
After a moment, when it was clear he was either imagining things or that the mysterious figure wasn’t going to come back any time soon, he turned and ordered the legionnaires to find the way to open the access door. When they did, he followed them inside and waited for the Admiral and his men to come to them and open the inner hatch after the first had closed behind them.
When the Admiral arrived and greeted them, Lupus was a little surprised to find himself still preoccupied by what he had seen out there on the platform. He could not deny his senses; he had seen someone, he was certain of it. The thing that disturbed him was not that he had seen them, but that they had been sitting on the cargo container in a relaxed, comfortable way, their legs dangling over the side like they were watching him.
Their posture had been so calm that it was as though they had been expecting to see him on the platform at precisely that moment in time, like they knew he was always going to be there. That very idea, he didn’t like to admit, was deeply unnerving.
Chapter 13
TIBERIUS WASN’T SURE if he could condone any of it. What they were doing may have been through direct orders from the Apostle, but that didn’t make it any more moral. It didn’t make it right. As he stood and watched his legion carry out their duty, he tried to escape the memories of what happened when they first began this task.
Some of the humans had screamed. Some yelled at them in dismay and denial. Others tried to run and only the few were willing to listen. Sooner or later, they were all made to hear the legionnaires out. They had no choice, because the 375th had their city surrounded. There was no escape from the angels that were supposed to be benevolent and had instead come in force like monsters.
“We have come to take you to a safer place” Tiberius tried to reassure them after the crowds were gathered in the city square. Tens of thousands were there, for it was only a small city in the outermost reaches of the Pantheon Sector. The sparse population, one that would not be easily missed, was the only reason this world was chosen by Hydra. It didn’t make Tiberius feel any better, though.
“We’re already safe! The war is thousands of leagues from this world!” someone in the audience cried.
Tiberius wore a genuine look of compassion and honesty on his face. “No, you’re not. Nowhere in the entire galaxy will keep you free from the war. Eventually the Phantoms will devastate every planet, even if they find you until last.”
“Kidnappers!” someone yelled.
“Where can you hide us, then? What trust should we have in you when you let one of our worlds be destroyed in the very first fight you had?” a previous voice asked.
Another joined in. “We’re not going anywhere, Guardian! It’s high time you earn your title and either protect us or leave us alone!”
“You cannot take us by force!” yet more protested.
Tiberius shook his head in shame. They hadn’t wanted to come here and steal these people away without their consent, but he had to explain the situation and gauge how the humans would react to the simple truth that the war would find them. Safety was only guaranteed if they did as the Guardians told them. The only way to survive was to abandon their lives and leave everything behind.
Now, the Commander had to use his last card. It felt like cheating the humans, as if he was about to trick them with an offer that was impossible to refuse. Everything about it was unfair, because he knew no human could turn it down, but there was nothing else he could do to get them to go with the legions.
“Show them where we will bring them, Tiberius. It is the only thing that will help you to take them without rebellion and death” the Apostle told him back on Hydron before he left for the profane mission.
I can’t tell if this would have gone better with you here or not, Tiberius thought. Despite his doubts, he put them aside and asked the legionnaires of his command echelon to come forward. They joined him on the speech stage, the same that was usually reserved for the city’s governmental announcements and carried with them a small, unimpressive looking box.
Tiberius saw the distrusting look on the sea of faces in front of him. The only thing that made him feel able to continue was that ultimately, they were doing this for the right reasons. The legionnaires set it on the podium that he was using and the audience was silent in anticipation. He knew that if he waited much longer, they would start to scream and shout again and he would miss his chance to do this with even a hint of a clean conscience.
Reluctantly, he pressed a series of activation buttons on the box and a second later it exploded into life. He couldn’t be certain how it worked, but the captivated looks of the city’s people told him that it did. What they saw now, projected into their very minds to create a perfect memory of it, was the heaven made real that humanity had dreamed about since its birth.
After witnessing its actuality, each and every human on that world let the Guardians take them with open arms, willingly, like it was the rapture that every religion their race had ever endorsed teased them could happen to the worthy. Yet, instead of only a select few being chosen every man, woman and child, whether they were young or ancient, was going to a place they never dared to hope existed.
It still didn’t make Tiberius feel any less guilty about it.
THE WHOLE PROCESS took a day by the human planet’s standards. The 375th had only come with one ship, the Blackstar Leviathan. It was Hydra’s own, the icon of the legion. The vessel was vast, almost the largest of its class bar the Luminon. Its insides were just as complex as the Hydra’s House, with every corridor and bulkhead designed in mutual respect for the purpose of defence and integrity. Even the medical and hangar bays were constructed with one thing in mind; survival.
The ship was indomitable, a fierce beast that blended into the darkn
ess of the void. If the Astral Titans had brought more ships, they would have been noticed more easily by the sentries that the Empire had stationed throughout the sectors. Using the Blackstar alone allowed for a level of stealth that a fleet couldn’t offer.
Fortunately, the Leviathan was so massive that holding the population of a city in its depths was hardly a problem and that was the reason it was chosen for the mission. All it required was the proper logistics and the expert organisation of the legion members to get the humans on board in an efficient and timely manner.
Tiberius stood on the bridge, watching the view screens as they showed the last of the Stormfalcons and Ironwroughts ferrying the final passengers to the ship. He wondered what the humans thought of their vessels. Were they impressed, intimidated, or were they so stupefied by the visions of Apollia that they hardly noticed the grandeur of the Black Guardians’ space-faring craft?
The Commander couldn’t say which of those possibilities the case was for certain, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it. What did it matter what the humans thought? He had a mission given to him by the Apostle, nothing else mattered. No human opinion or directive could override or change that.
He turned to the Blackstar’s captain, who always seemed stronger-willed than himself. “Tiergan, was that the last of them?”
Tiergan looked up from the data reams coming from his throne, disinterest plain on his face. Was it really that, or was the Captain trying to remain stoic in the face of the wrong that they were doing? “It was” he answered.
Tiberius wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t elaborated. What more was there to say? He nodded and turned to the view screens to have one last lingering look at the planet they had harvested of its inhabitants. He wouldn’t allow himself not to memorise the way it looked. This was an event that would change things in ways he couldn’t yet anticipate. He refused to let himself, in the future, look back and wonder where they had taken all these people from and where they really belonged.
“Then it’s time for us to return to Hydron” he replied. “Let us hope that the Apostle is satisfied with what we’ve done, because I could never sanction this alone”.
Only then did Tiergan show some compassion. “This task was never going to bear satisfaction, Tiberius. It is what it is; we have to come to peace with that or it will destroy us”.
Tiberius turned to regard the Captain, to try and see the sensitivity and wisdom on his face, but by the time he did Tiergan was back in stone-mode. “Prepare for jump” he said. A moment later, the Blackstar Leviathan departed from the world it had left deserted, never to return.
***
HYDRA SMASHED HIS fists into the innocent wooden table that sat square in the centre of the PTH deep in the depths of his fortress. Here, he should have been safe from his enemies. Here, he should have been threatened by no form of foe. His walls were impassable, the defences impenetrable. Nonetheless, he was under attack.
Yet, the thing that was assaulting him was not physical. It was immaterial, an emotion and its name was shame. Tiberius had arrived back from his mission and he had brought with him the cargo that he’d asked the Commander to obtain. He could see plainly on the legionnaire’s face an experience that was at once full of duty and conflicted by a broken morality.
Hydra knew that what he ordered his legion to do was wrong. No matter how many ways he looked at it, he could never truly justify the act of stealing the human population of a city and bringing them here to Hydron, even if it was so that they could pass through the Gate and be safely harboured on Apollia. Seraphim didn’t seem to disapprove, but did that make Hydra feel any more vindicated? No, of course it didn’t.
Once the Astral Titans had returned home, he asked Tiberius to begin moving the humans through the Gate to Elysium City. Hydra had already discussed the logistics and the plans with Seraphim and his brother had already laid aside a portion of the glimmering citadel for the human refugees.
Hydra knew it had to be done. Despite the nagging sense that it was completely, undeniably wrong, he knew that there was no guarantee that he and the other Apostles could actually win this war. Yes, they had secured victories and they had saved worlds. They had evacuated tens of millions of humans back to the Meridian Sector in preparation for a final battle against the Phantoms, one that together with the Empire’s forces they stood a chance of winning, but the success of that required all of the Apostles to play their part and one of them was still missing.
Nobody had any clue where Samael had disappeared to. After Pheia, they had tried to find him together as a family, but there was no sign of him in any of the sectors. At first, they searched the Abodian Sector where his home world had been, but there was nothing there. Even the Promethian Shipyards had vanished without any explanation. It was as if he had never existed at all.
The Lion had been the foremost to emphasise the importance of the Apostles working together. It had also been the hardest for him to cease the search for their missing brother, despite the previous tensions between the two, but in the end the war demanded their full attention. The Apostles had resorted to each using a portion of their legions to continue the search, but their hope grew dim as time went on.
It was for this reason, this disturbance of their purpose and obstacle to their destiny that Hydra had chosen to act on his own intuition. The humans may have seen Gothica as their home, but what good was a world that could be blown away by the Phantom fleets with ease if the Guardians were defeated? To Hydra, the extinction of mankind was a very possible future. He had no choice but to prevent it; after all, that was their true purpose, wasn’t it? If morals had to be broken to achieve that goal, then he would break every one, whether that meant sacrificing his soul or not.
His mind was in a civil war with itself all the time now. He sunk down into a chair and was about to try and reconcile what he had done for the thousandth time against what he hoped to achieve, but when the stairs resounded with the sound of an armoured figure descending them, he was interrupted from trying to settle his conscience.
He looked up, already knowing who dared to disturb him during this time. “Brother,” he said. “What could you possibly be here to discuss with me that I could think important now? Have the humans realised what we’ve really done?”
Seraphim shook his unarmoured head, the sanguine features of his face mismatched by the smile that split it. “No, but that’s not why I’m here”.
Hydra laughed, the expression frustrated and tired. He rubbed his forehead in consternation. Of course Seraphim would be oblivious to the validity of his anxiety and worries. “Alright, spill it out then”.
With that, his brother dropped a heavy-bound pack of parchment onto the table. There was an audible ‘thud’ as it crashed onto the wood and Hydra tried to conceal the natural pique of his interest. He didn’t like playing games with Seraphim, but this was the first time since Pheia that it seemed he was coming with more information that would actually help the Apostles learn more about themselves and Vermillion’s path for them.
“What’s this?” Hydra prompted when it became clear Seraphim was waiting for the question.
“That,” Seraphim began, pointing a finger at the pack and sitting himself down as though they were two old men about to have a debate, “is a record of everything the caves under Elysium have to say about us.”
Hydra gazed at the papers for a long while, trying to outwait his brother, but his patience grew thin more quickly than usual. “Out with it already” he demanded.
Seraphim had a slight grin to his lips when he answered. “What, exactly, do you think when you hear about The Four Immortals?” He let the question hang in the air before adding, “And which of our family, do you expect, are one of them?”
Chapter 14
THE NIMERIAN SPEARED into the Frontier like a silent knife in the dead of night. Accompanied by a modest flotilla, the Blackstar completed its jump from the Abodian sector with finesse. The other ships were equally masterful, keeping t
hemselves undetected the moment they arrived in-system. It took only moments to ascertain that there was no Phantom presence here; at least, not near Byzantium and its neighbouring worlds.
The fact was not a cause for relief, however. The damage had already been done; that much was clear from the devastation wrought on Byzantium. As the Black Guardian vessels drew nearer to the planet, like moths drawn to a light, they maintained the systems that would help conceal them in lieu of speed. It was clear to them that they were too late to save the humans, but it didn’t hurt to protect themselves even if the enemy did seem long gone.
The Nimerian held anchor when Byzantium filled the view screens of the bridge. Valkyrie had demanded caution, but there was a need to understand what they were witnessing the aftermath of.
“This world is completely aflame…” Basilius muttered. “How can that be?”
The Recon Master was on the bridge with Valkyrie, the rest of the command echelon of the 402nd and the crew itself, yet no-one seemed willing to answer. Eventually, Valkyrie herself spoke. Upon seeing the state of Byzantium, she had been fighting deep-seated bile in her throat that was spawned from both anger and disappointment.
“It can be because the Lion has failed. He promised things that couldn’t be delivered, assured us of things that were far from reality. He made an assumption, one that I always knew was wrong yet could not sway him from; that the Great Enemy had forsaken the Frontier because we had.”
There was sadness in her voice that belied her unconscious emotions. Truly, she never wanted to be right because being right meant this, the death of worlds. As she removed her blue helm and ran a hand through her long, soft white hair, she closed her eyes and tried to deny the fury that rose within her. “I told him we should have left someone here…I told him…” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else just so she could get it off her chest. “Just because the Phantoms overlook something doesn’t mean they forget about it. Pretending to ignore Byzantium was a game, a trap to see how much like a puppet we could be played…and now they know”.
The Deian War: Conquest Page 17
