Chapter 10: The Return

“They’re learning fast,” said Solomon.  

Speck was at the helm, keeping to nebulae and anything else that might mask their trajectory. The team was in the hold, assessing what had just taken place. The Shadow Children sat quietly among them. Outside, the stars wheeled slow.  

“So that wasn’t a typical Archeus Knight?” said Forge, not a hint of respect in his tone. 

“There’s no such thing as typical in Ulro.” 

“There it is,” said Forge. “That’s what I was waiting for. That’s the voice we heard on Cap’s vam.” 

Solomon looked at Sensus, somewhat confused. 

“Needle found a message you’d recorded,” said Sensus. “Parts of it were rather alarming, Sol. You called out to the Tangent Lords for salvation.” 

“You have a copy of the message?” Solomon’s eyes were intense.  

Ishtar watched him. She’d almost forgotten what the man looked like. Six years away, and before having spent so much time in his harness. She remembered his singular focus, his drive, and his fearlessness. He seemed to have retained only the former of those traits, having exchanged his fearlessness for a circumambient dread. 

“It was self-scrubbing,” Sensus replied. 

Solomon moved quick, his fingers gliding over the screen on his vam. A scanning wave emitted from the ceiling of the hold and probed each of their vams, then their ears.  

“Tell me the first and last three words,” Solomon commanded. 

Sensus was at a loss. 

“Mighty Haleon, I,” said Catalyst. 

“Will burn,” said Ishtar. 

“Othominian,” said Revol. 

Solomon’s vam lit up and the file played again, though choppy and missing a few miscellaneous words. 

“The voice chanting isn’t me,” he said. “The rest I recorded five years ago. You said Needle found this?” 

“Yes,” Sensus answered. 

“Recently?” 

Sensus nodded. Ishtar couldn’t shake the supsicion that he wasn’t completely certain. 

“No,” said Sol. “No, if Needle found this, in good enough shape that I could recreate it from ghost echoes, then he was on my tail when I spoke those words, which means the Quorum’s been hanging onto it till now.” 

“The chanting was what, stitched together?” asked Forge. “We would have noticed that.” 

“No. But does it really sound so much like me?” 

“No,” Forge admitted, “but it is your voice. Or an outstanding facsimile.” 

“I’ve read the litanies of Ulro, and have repeated many of them out loud. But only when the chants are spoken with purpose do they take hold of their speaker’s mind. Someone combined a recording of me reading out loud to remember the verse with a chant spoken in earnest.” 

Eukary leaned forward on her bench. All were quiet, thinking, but Eukary rested her hands on the table they sat around and spoke. “How long have you been hiding on Bindu Prime?” 

“Six years. I went straight there when I left. And I wouldn’t say I’ve been hiding. I set it up as a base of operations and made it no secret.” 

“Needle,” said Sensus.  

“Yes,” said Solomon. “Needle.” 

“Movin’ in,” Speck’s voice crackled over the comms. 

Ishtar strapped in with the others, nervous over the coming encounter. 

“We can’t let that thing take Bindu Prime,” Solomon had said when they first escaped orbit. “I came here for a reason.” 

“It’s quiet?” Revol had said. 

“Two reasons,” Solomon said back. 

“It’s close to the Verge?” Revol asked. 

Sol stopped his prodding with a look. Now he had his skullfort on, and his piercing eyes were again shrouded. Ishtar pulled the collision gear over her chair in Solomon’s insertion craft and closed her eyes, remembering the look of the Archeus Knight. In her brief glimpse of the beast, she saw the stance of a creature who’d never known fear. 

She pondered over what Solomon had told them in the short time after their retreat. What he dubbed ‘necrokinesis’ had its limits. Her instinct to shoot their legs out from under them would be effective, as would explosive attacks. Still, the Archeus had a small army of fodder, and, according to Solomon, would itself take a small army to defeat. The Shadow Children looked sadly to the ground at that comment. 

“So, what are your actual reasons for being here?” Cat asked, his irritation with Revol plain. 

“It’s quiet,” Solomon said. 

Revol almost stood when he pointed. “See!” 

“And,” Solomon continued, “because it is a piece of something important. We’ll talk after we deal with the Archeus.” 

“I have a lot of questions, Sol,” Sensus warned. 

Solomon nodded, then all were quiet for their approach and insertion. Once they landed, Sensus tapped a signal to Attack Group Six. 

“Alright people,” the captain said, “you know your jobs.” 

Forge had a crate in each hand from Solomon’s armory. Behind him came three of the Shadow Children with smaller crates and packs. Where their hands gripped solid matter, a truth of their nature was revealed. Ishtar watched closely as their fingers flexed and their sinews writhed. These refugee components, returned from non-entity, vagabonds of a journey into death and barred from fully returning. So changed were they that where they made themselves real enough for touched, they glowed with simmering white light, as if the world of matter were fighting to thrust them back into their dark and hidden plane. 

Forge set four spring-up turrets while the Shadow Children built a perimeter of proximity warnings and lures. The rest of the team took their posts, and Ishtar found herself alone atop the highest nearby hill, half buried in crumbled glass. She pressed a button on the receiver of her rifle, extending the bipod, then posted up and put her visor to her scope. 

Solomon’s voice whispered over the comms, his tension plain to hear. “The Archeus is moving. Understand that this creature is not a soldier or even a commander. It’s neither human, nor machine. We’re going to battle against a cosmic mystery. Eliminate the fodder quickly so you don’t get bogged down, but also don’t let it distract you. Our weapons and our radiance will work against the Archeus, but we will have to overwhelm it with unrelenting force.” 

No one had anything else to say, so the moments were passed in ponderance.  

A cosmic mystery, thought Ishtar. I’d like to be described that way. And then she mused on the notion of a mystery, because little was known of her own species, saved that one of their own awoke the others and began the tradition. Their death dreams were strange, their re-emergence stranger, and the nature of what they called ‘radiance’ baffled scientists from Albion to Terra Ceti and beyond. And yet they were never described as a mystery. Proximity had seen to that. 

A shape moved on top of a distant hill. She fired. A cloud of shattered glass exploded. The shape moved again, more faintly this time. 

“Reev,” she said. 

“On it,” Revol replied.  

There was another explosion, and this time the shape rolled down the hill’s far slope. 

“Three more, northwest, sector four,” said Catalyst. 

Ishtar had line of sight on one, but left the other three for Revol and Eukary.  

“They’re on to us,” Cat said. “You’re up, Captain.” 

Ishtar maintained her vigil while Sensus, Aster and Solomon detonated the perimiter charges. The blasts were followed by a rain of glassy soil and necrotic limbs. A hint of movement to the southwest caught Ishtar’s eye. 

“Movement on our flank,” she said. “Southwest. You copy, Forge?” 

“I don’t see any… well, the kids are checking it out.” 

Ishtar searched briefly for the Shadow Children, but there was no sign of their motion on any spectrum of her visor. But she did hear them, and soon they were back with Forge, and the southwestern flank remained secure. 

Three heads slowly peaked over a distant hill. Ishtar picked two of them off without trouble, and the third in two shots. Another pair of them appeared, then four behind them, and when she’d narrowed them down to two the dell between the surrounding hills was full of reanimated dead. Only they weren’t ambling like the mercs. The Ben’Azret dead moved with purpose, perhaps because the Archeus had longer to work with them. Ishtar moved backward slowly, remaining prone, and with her radiance ignited the air in a space above and to the east between her and the onslaught. Some of the dead raised their weapons and fired blasts where her radiance had sparked. 

Interesting, she thought. She continued to back down, rising and moving at speed once she was behind cover. She found another hill closer to the line and posted up, then began shooting the knees out of the approaching force. 

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“I need a mortar volley,” she said when the dead kept walking over the corpses she felled. They were getting closer, and in the ranks, she began seeing some who were not from the docile slave race brought to Solomon. She aimed at the center of the throng and painted a thirty-meter circle with her targeting laser. Forge’s response was quick. A hail of small but deadly rockets showered down and what remained of the throng turned back to disperse among the hills. 

Forge was busy over the next few minutes. Revol called in two separate strikes, and the Shadow Children left him several times to keep the southwestern approach clear. Ishtar took to painting targets for a while, creating a wall of bodies and debris to slow down their advance and make a mass approach unfeasible. Then she and Revol went back to sniping, picking them off a few at a time until they were called back by an unheard clarion. 

The ensuing quiet was unnerving. Eventually, Sensus called for them to regroup. Ishtar went to Revol to see how many kills he tracked. 

“Do the airstrikes count?” Asked Haruspex. She’d wedged herself between Ishtar and Revol. 

Soloman and Sensus came last and both looked grave. 

“The enemy has retreated,” Sensus said. “Where to? We can’t tell. This Archeus is manifesting many abilities not recorded from any previous encounter. It seems to have the means to mask its signature on any of our scanners, including the mark four DRP.” 

“And it can hide from even the Shadow Childrens’ sight.” 

“We’ll find a visor setting that can detect it,” Revol said. 

“Or we’ll make one,” added Forge.  

“No,” said Solomon. “Only our radiance can defeat this beast.” 

“There any good news, Cap?” asked Eukary. 

Ishtar looked at her friend; her lithe, sinewy form complimented by her sleek harness with the bare minimum of supplementary armor plating. Eukary’s aura was brimming with anticipation. She was spoiling for the fight. Then she looked at Forge, the mountain made man in all his staggering bulk. Were he to crouch down on all fours in his armor and harness, one might mistake him for a small tank. She felt a smile creep on her lips, remembering a time when Revol said that when Forge ate a taco, he didn’t have to turn his head sideways. 

“Yes,” said Sensus. “We’ve drastically reduced the amount of fodder the Archeus can throw at us.” 

“This is not good news,” said Solomon. “We were being tested, nothing more. Now the Archeus has seen how we operate.” 

“Sol,” said Revol, “we have more moves than that.” 

“It gathered intelligence, Revol. I’d hoped to lure it in and attack it. This is going to take longer, unfortunately.” 

“With all respect, Sol,” said Catalyst. 

“I’ve agreed to come back with you to Albion,” said Solomon, “once our work here is done.” 

Cat nodded, and Ishtar looked at him too. Though he was even slightly taller than the Captain, Cat always looked small to her. It might have been the faint slump to his shoulders, as if he were carrying the cosmos on them and had begun to grow weary. But she’d seen him rise in battle and grow alive till the fighting was done. And across from him was their Captain, tall and stoic, though like Cat he seemed at times smaller than he was, but with Sensus it was humility that masked the long shadow he cast.  

“Let’s get to it, then,” said Forge. 

Solomon turned his head directly to Forge, and the big man seemed to shrink. 

Revol stretched and yawned. “I say we draw this out. I’ve had about all I can take of the Quorum lately.” 

Ishtar caught herself looking at Aster and Haruspex, whom she thought the most beautiful of creatures. But she knew her thoughts were really dwelling on Revol and Solomon. Many thought Revol and Catalyst to be polar opposites, but she’d always seen Solomon as Revol’s foil. It made her happy to see the two of them together after so many years. They were short men, with a firmness to their every move and a complete lack of fear of what lay behind them. 

Revol turned and pushed Haruspex away, then crossed his forearms and caught the missile with a radiant shield. 

“Anunnaki,” said Solomon, angry. He thrust out his hands, palms open towars the Anunnaki and lances of golden light stabbed at them, then faded into silence before unleashing massive explosions.  

Ishtar took aim and put three quantum rounds in an Anunnaki's skullfort. The tall, gangly creature caught itself as it fell, lifting it’s stave over its shoulder as it twisted back onto its feet. Another missile came from its weapon and this time Forge threw a spike into the ground. It glowed purple, and as quick as the missile flew the spike opened its portal, sending the missile back in the direction it was fired. Eukary was then blinking her way across the field, drawing another of the Anunnaki toward her and taking pot shots at it with her gauss rifle.  

As far as Ishtar could see, there eight Anunnaki. They had no escort, and the Shadow Children seemed to tip the scales in their favor. Seven swarmed over the Anunnaki Ishtar had shot and pinned it to the ground, tearing at it with rips in materium made by their bare hands that seemed to do more damage than her rifle had. She turned her sights to another of the foes and channeled her radiance through her fingers and into her weapon. The quantum rounds flew with the speed of light, blasting holes through the Anunnaki's torso. A sick light spewed out, milky and a sallow green. The Anunnaki reeled, but caught itself on one arm and managed to still lift its staff and fire two missiles at Ishtar. The first one she dodged completely. It detonated harmlessly between her and Forge. The second exploded beside her head and knocked her to the ground. She leapt to her feet and jumped back, for the Anunnaki had closed the distance and jabbed at her with the bladed end of its weapon. 

She caught flashes of the battle during their duel. Revol was firing rapid bursts and keeping himself at a distance. Forge had closed with his hammer, but his foe, while even taller than he, was much quicker. Ishtar managed to fire a point-blank shot into her opponent’s foot, staggering it, and broke free long enough to send a round into the side of Forge’s foe’s head before it could take him down to the ground. 

“Ishtar!” shouted Aster.  

Ishtar whirled, but was not in time to avoid the blow from her opponent’s staff. The blade cut into her skullfort and sent her spinning. Forge’s opponent was ready for her and struck her hard with the butt of his staff. When she fell back, she saw Aster closing with her foe, but then another took hold of her by the throat and pressed its staff into her abdomen. The missile sent her flying and her breastplate was rent and scored. That’s when Catalyst came alive. 

He’d leapt high and came down in the middle of the Anunnaki, sending a shockwave out in all directions. Ishtar jumped over it, riding a current of radiance outside the perimeter of the blast. She then took aim and fired round after round, landing each shot with help of the speed gained by her radiance. As fast as the Anunnaki were, they could not dodge her fire. 

They retaliated by swarming together and moving so that one was never shot two times in a row, and so they managed to keep their strength fresh as they seemed to have a protective field around them that healed.  

They’ve learned new tricks too, Ishtar thought. She’d fought them twice before, and while they were fast and strong, they had always fought conventionally. The Archeus, it seemed, had offered a reward for their corruption. 

She caught a glimpse of Revol and Forge. Forge was on his feet and firing away with his machine gun. Revol was darting between the Anunnaki, moving as quickly as they did, firing bursts at close range and dodging their strikes until one caught him by the collar, flung him in the air and fired a missile into him. Ishtar was growing very impatient with those missiles. She sent a thought to the others, reverberating not in word but in vibration, and they began to gather together, luring the Anunnaki to circle around them with a false wind of victory in their nostrils. 

Spending their inner strength to save precious time, the Harbingers focused their radiance in a pinpoint between them, then lowered to their knees as the Anunnaki stalked over them. The pinpoint rose and stood still and quiet with the enemy gloated over its diminutive size. Then one shrieked in horror, and the point of light became a nova restrained. They were sent sprawling, and the Harbingers and the Shadow Children unleashed volley after volley of their material weapons till there was nothing left of the Anunnaki for the Archeus to raise. 

It stood over them, massive and still, as if it had always been there. 

“Solomon...” Aster said.  

He was in midair when Ishtar saw him. His hands parted as he rocketed towards the Archeus. Rings of gold light scintillated around his wrist. He brought his hands together and hovered, blasting impossible heat and crushing force into the monolithic eye of the Archeus. It stood like a rock while Solomon spent himself, then swatted him aside. 

Revol ran in a wide arc around the beast, draining his power cells as he fired a constant stream of quantum bullets. Ishtar quickly followed suit, choosing a wider arc and firing more selectively. Forge unleashed his full arsenal of artillery and fired his sonic cannon. Catalyst and Sensus moved together, shooting the monolithic eye to disrupt its rovings. 

The archeus moves as a hill might if it came alive. His stride was slow, but he covered long spans of terrain with each measured step. And when he struck a blow it hit its target, sending them each into the air. They regained themselves and went ballistic, shooting at close range and vaulting off its segmented form to regain some distance before resuming their desperate onslaught. 

Revol, Ishtar and Forge were near each other. Revol’s rifle sputtered. He threw it at the Archeus and ran forward with his fist glowing. Aster howled and ran after him, tossing aside her spent weapon and glowing red. Revol’s white lighting clawed at the slender, flexible plates that covered the Archeus, but ultimately it did nothing. It seemed to be playing with them, only acting out a fight for their benefit while they floundered. Even Solomon failed to harm it, though his radiance seemed boundless. In time it seemed to grow bored and pinned Forge under his foot. Sensus raged and shot a blast strong enough to stagger the Archeus. He pulled Forge back and there was a moment of dreadful quiet. The Archeus leaned forward, holding each of them in its heartless stare. 

Solomon stepped forward, coming almost within reach of the behemoth’s limbs. He stared at it, and Ishtar readied her impotent weapon out of reflex. 

“Solomon!” she shouted. 

“Everyone,” called the captain, “stand back.” 

She felt a hand on her back and heard a voice. 

“Solomon is sacred.” 

The Archeus stood captive in Solomon’s stare. Everyone was still, hearts pounding, sweat testing the dispersal gear in their skullforts. Solomon glowed bright and gold, holding his aura steady. Then he laughed. He stretched his hand out and pointed his finger. The Archeus lowered its guard for a moment and, to everyone’s shock, the monolithic eye that shimmered pale went dark and it slumped down to its knees. 

“Solomon is sacred.” 

“Yeah he is!” shouted Revol.  

Solomon slumped his shoulders in relief. “We’ve won.” 

“We, as in you,” said Revol. 

“I don’t understand,” said Catalyst. “What did you do?” 

“What I’ve been doing all these years, Cat. What the Quorum refuses to do. What Harbinger Command had better start doing. I watched and I learned.” 

He walked to the Archeus and paced close to it, his head barely reaching its bent knee. Forge came up beside him and rapped his fist on the Archeus’s metallic skin. It rang dully. Lines of blue and red light formed around the segments of the beast’s skin, sparking and spewing energy in near liquid form. Solomon put a hand on Forge’s arm and they both stepped back. They all stepped back. Then the Shadow Children screamed.  

It filled the air, a long-drawn wail, and they turned on the Harbingers, pinning them down with searing pain that flowed from their liminal forms. Ishtar managed a surge of energy that stunned the Children attacking her, then rolled over and sprang to her feet. She struck them with radiant punches, but her fight was cut short by the sound of lightning stirring. She turned and all were still yet again, watching in confusion as the Archeus glowed so bright their visor shut down. When they could see again it was gone.  

“We have to leave,” said Solomon. He was hurriedly gathering the Shadow Children together. They were flickering in and out of view, and Ishtar could faintly hear their tired sobs. 

The sentinels came then. Twenty-four mechanized juggernauts with a thousand years of warfare etched in their metal hearts, bearing down on them with speed. 

“Run!” shouted Sensus.  

They fled at full tilt towards Solomon’s ship, using what energy they could summon to shield themselves from the barrage of quantum fire from Attack Group Six. Speck came through for them. He’d gotten the jumpship airborne and launched a salvo of scatterbombs over the sentinels. They dodged, only a few of them taking a small amount of damage, and resumed their pursuit. Speck bought them time, though, firing a volley hear and a salvo there, keeping the sentinels carefully at bay. But it wasn’t long before they fired at him and he had to raise the ship higher in the sky. He brought it back down further back. The Harbingers had kept running and had put a workable amount of distance between them and the sentinels. Fleck brought the ship down low and opened the bay doors. Ishtar was running faster than she had in her entire life. 

The doors were open and the ramp was lowering. Rounds from the sentinels’ guns exploded in the soil at her feet. One had a flak cannon and was launching shells. A few hit the ship and it had to reposition, putting it another three hundred paces further back. She skidded to a frantic stop when the shadow covered her. Now brimming with blue fire, the Archeus had returned, and it toyed with them no more. Revol was far ahead and stopped just in front of its feet. It stomped on him, held its hands near its chest and opened a portal. Incendiary rockets fired from the portal and pounded into Revol’s harness. It cracked, and the rockets kept firing. Every member of the team launched what radiance they could summon after such an intense fight, but even Solomon’s awesome blasts bounced harmlessly off the creature’s armor. The rockets kept coming, and Revol screamed in pain as his skin began to crack. His radiance bled like escaping steam. 

Haruspex vaulted screaming into the air with her knife above her head. The Archeus caught her in one hand and squeezed. Ishtar felt sick at the sound of her armor cracking. She ran as quickly as she could, but the sentinels were close now and she had to dodge their fire. She heard the roar of the jump ship's machine guns and the sentinels were forced to strafe. Ishtar turned towards the Archeus, but it was too late. The Archeus was exerting tremendous amounts of force and heat with its hand, and the rockets and broken through Revol’s shell in too many places for his light to be contained. There were two plumes of brilliant light, and then the field was still. They were gone. 

Solomon rose in the air and unleashed his full might against the eye of the Archeus. Sensus called for Eukary and Catalyst to do the same, then commanded the rest to form up on him and put a shield up to deflect the sentinels’ fire. Ishtar held her weight of the shield, calling up a rear view on her PIP. Solomon and the Archeus were both firing beams of raw energy at each other, and for an instant their beams met and they were forced to remain still by the colliding currents. Speck chose that moment to alpha strike, and the Archeus lurched forward, then, with a painful groaning of bending metal, it fell, a lifeless hulk. The sentinels slowly came to. With quick and precise movements of their armored skulls, they analyzed the battlefield, then terminated each other in shame. Solomon stood still over fallen knight. His arms hanged limply from his shoulders.  

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