Chapter 6: Witness to a Pheonix

A hive of hurried hands, hauled haggard souls from the heaps of snow, bodies heaping higher. The last licks of life had quenched before his eyes an easy hundred times. At least, that many only since he started counting. How many more, would likely be marked in scores by their absence from the firing line, rather than their funerals. 

 

Only the young were panicking, sprinting messages between the rescue teams and Ohrdin’s watch. His delivery was urgent, steeped in care as he waved the messengers forth. His heart, however, was tightly impassive. The chaos provided a passable distraction from his head and its wayward thoughts. Even now, he could feel the shifting steel colonies above him, gently maneuvering the next catastrophe into their path. 

 

The centennial veterans, for their part, what few hundred were above the surface, were impressively tireless. Lakes of snow had been melted and steamed away under the ministrations of their flamethrowers. A planet's ransom in age regression treatments without doubt. A ransom that even the colossal conglomeration of nationally backed mega-corporations that made up the United Terran Authority, absolutely could not afford. The UTA wasn’t late on their payments, nor would any of their corporate houses splurge on a federally run expense. 

 

That wasn’t entirely true. Those that had the inclination, were long since perished. Scattered to space amidst the memory of their enterprises. All, save for one. Sterran Kreischer himself took part in the program. Kept alive by private capital they had yet to trace. Those accounts were accounted for. To keep this legion in their prime it would easily incur four hundred million a head, totalling to at least two trillion federal credits by transfer or public work per treatment. If his head count was accurate. Come to think of it, he didn't even recall that many humans in the program. 

 

This was a troubling headache that he would normally divert to his assistant. Numbers were never his forte and spotting economical inconsistencies made his current situation almost preferable. Rather, he would have given the task to her if he knew where she was. He’d feared the worst when the mountain had shed. The mangled frost-fallen littering the trenches had yet to produce any hope beyond an impressive funeral march, dragged to the side so as not to interrupt the lucky living who had made it to cover in time, in dire need of a medic as they were. No, he was confident she was not dead, not yet. 

 

The unoccupied parts of his mind struggled far more with the reality which disproved his fears. He could feel her but he could not find her. The traces of her presence were distantly toying with him, as if deliberately obscured by some enveloping shroud of mystery. Every time he thought he was getting close, a fog descended in his mind and he suddenly found himself struggling to recall that he had even been looking for something. Twice now he had failed to marshal his abilities, first in difficulty and now in an entirely new frontier of bewilderment. 

 

It was telling that there was still something to find. She was not dead. He was glad of it. Behind her peers as she may have been, her potential was of a rare grandeur. Most assistants were cycled on the decade. Picked for the task at hand and released in favor of a better suited candidate. No matter how capable, no one being could fit the many situations he encountered as if tailored. Tailored to the present they could be however. They were useful. She was not measured by usefulness, not to him. Potential meant influence, meant possibility, meant opportunity he could not refuse. He’d hoped for at least a century with her as his charge, to assist the growth she already chased so feverishly. To see it snuffed before its bloom softened his focus, reminded him of immediacy. 

 

He’d lost his count of the years since the last time he felt this way, or felt incapable. It was unnerving, how much the failings of his past were rising from the grave he had so dutifully marked for them. It was as Kreischer stormed forth from an opening blast door, wildness in his eyes and passion in his arms which wrestled on his rebellious, flapping fur collared coat, that Ohrdin realized these feelings would only be the first of the ghosts, come to haunt him. 

 

“I want the main corridor cleared within the hour! Front line the hour after that!” Kreischer shouted at a pair of veteran officers who had come running from the flamer crews. “Pull your men from the rescue and get the engineers up here! Tell them if it won't break when they leave I want them shoveling!” 

 

“We’re fortunate there were so few above ground.” Ohrdin called to him, raising a pair of hands in greeting. 

 

“Forgive me if I'm not so chipper about the luck. I'll take it, don't get me wrong. Just hate that I needed it in the first place. Could have blasted the buildup on the way in and cleared the melt with the landing thrusters. I shouldn’t have missed this.”

 

“No, you shouldn’t have.” Ohrdin replied, lowering his voice as Kreishcer trudged in beside him. A glare so icy it made the windchill seem pleasant, bored into the side of Ohrdin’s head. 

 

Kreishcer stood beside him in silence, observing the scene and lingering on the pile of bodies sticking together in the frost not ten feet to his right, a convoy of stretchers to his left making for the blast door he had departed. His features softened, inhaling the chill deep through his nose as if it could somehow recharge his cool exterior. 

 

“How many more?” He said.

 

“We should be able to recover another hundred and fifty at least at this pace.” Ohrdin replied optimistically. “Even if there are complications, what I’m seeing is strong. I shan’t imagine too many more would succumb to the delay.”

 

“Any luck with your student?” 

 

Ohrdin tilted his head questioningly. “Interesting verbiage.” 

 

“Ah, so I was right.” Kreischer smiled. “Atypical isn’t exactly your style.” 

 

“I find myself mildly offended that you of all people would be so egregiously wrong on that account.” Ohrdin straightened his head and looked away. “I would have thought my reputation had been established with your people a long time ago.”

 

“Chalk it to a matter of perspective. Is she alive or not?” 

 

“Such a keen interest in just one life. It seems atypical to be more your territory.” 

 

“She’s an Iverian warrior.” Kreischer pushed back. “Titled and blooded defending a horrible position while outnumbered. She could carve a path from where we stand straight to the foremost trenchline. Not to mention she’s cleared every drop trooper prep course. She’s a platoon, not a woman.”

 

“She’s alive. Though I’m not sure where.” Ohrdin’s voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s a distance I can’t seem to focus on long enough to trace. She may be alive but she is far from fine.”

 

Kreischer shifted nervously over the next few minutes as officers came and went. Shifting slipped slowly into outright pacing with every list of names he skimmed. Each time he asked of the recovered officers, corpse or otherwise. The list was surprisingly short, yet each time his agitation grew. 

 

“Tell her she has full permission to operate the Morningstar in my absence. If any of the longer frigates that came in after manage to skirt our firing arc on an orbital intercept, I want to know as soon as it breaches an altitude of twelve thousand kilometers.” Kreischer said to an eager recruit, shivering, shaken and sharply dressed for the occasion of running to one of the wired comm’s boxes the planet’s interference had forced them to install. Comm’s boxes which could carry a wireless signal ten feet to an earpiece at the best of times. 

 

Ohrdin chuckled wistfully at the young man’s forceful trot. “It’s a strange thing indeed to see your people limited to such primitive means. Terran air in recent times swims with signals, of the living and from them. It is so quiet here. Even the strongest signals you’ve learned to produce make it but a whispers distance before being lost in the distortion.”

 

“Could that distortion be the reason you’re struggling?” Kreischer asked. 

 

“Struggling?”

 

Kreischer rolled his eyes. “I see no reason to think you wouldn’t bring your strength to bear, given the circumstances. First the fleet, now your student. You’re struggling and the planet is as good a reason as any.”

 

“Hah!” Ohrdin laughed, breaking his reserved posture, shaking his antlers in a show of genuine pleasure. “Are you really so busy these days that you have no time for the fundamentals? No self respecting Witch of any measure would find themselves put to task by this. Quite the contrary in fact! The falsity of the distortion tells me as much about the truth as the truth itself.”

 

“Spare me the philosophy. It’s only a small rock I’m living under.” Kreischer replied indignantly. “What was that asinine quote, ‘Stagnancy is the death of…’” 

 

“…perspective. I did think it was a bit paired down when I wrote it, dulls the meaning. It Seems I was right.”

 

“Well if you’ll do me the favor of clearing my ignorance, I’m curious as to how this works.” 

 

Ohrdin straightened with a certain academic bearing. “Truth and being are one and the same. Constant, unchanging, immortal and utterly incomprehensible, even to us. It is that which we are of and cannot touch. To put a word to it, divine. The study of a Witch is a rather scientific one, observing and contextualizing the ever flickering shadows of what we shine our light on. Change is a departure from truth and so contains an impression of it. It moves from what it was, to what it is now, defining what it was by what it is not. Your uniform defines the plants it was every time you look at it and know, this is not a plant. And so, each time we shine our light on what is not, we learn a little more what is.”

 

Kreischer rubbed his eyes in frustration, a patient breath giving space for Ohrdin to continue. 

 

“I believe humanity saw this most clearly in how you processed death. You don't really understand it do you. Absence. You always defined death as simply the opposite of alive. They aren’t breathing. They aren’t experiencing. They aren’t here anymore. You never seem to say what they are. You can't. You stare straight into the face of death and the abyss smiles ignorance back. Yet still, you know it intimately. You know it in everything it is not. You know death because you understand life.”

 

“A fair assessment. So I take it this belligerent phenomena is almost comfortable for you?” Kreischer said, the etchings of an idea forming on his face with a sly tone.

 

“Far from almost. Constants outside of the Witch themselves are toxic. Flux is our home.”

 

“Seems complex and limiting in it’s own right. Known values are what our civilisations are built on.”

 

“They are what your sciences are built on. The qualifiable, quantitative measures of things and happenings. Of course really it is all one and the same, science and witchcraft. I suppose for most of the learning races it is quite the challenge to adapt to such a different approach, to let go of what you can fix in place. Your senses are built for the material after all. However, I have yet to meet a Witch who regretted expanding their understanding of reality. Known and unknown in equal measure is precisely how my people achieved our advancement. We ‘burn the candle from both ends’, if I recall that phrase correctly.” Ohrdin’s pleased tone tapered sharply as he saw Kreischer’s aura fluctuate alongside his shifting eyes. 

 

“So a Witch in a place like this…” he began, pausing to gauge Ohrdin’s impassive reaction, “… would find themselves at a distinct advantage.”

 

“Do not insult your intelligence by raising that question again.” Ohrdin droned with an unnatural lurch as he began drifting forwards, hands signaling another team into place. 

 

“Oh I don’t mind being seen as stupid.” Kreischer replied keeping pace in a steady march. “Any intelligent commander would be a fool not to bring however many they could get their hands on.” 

 

“You’ve managed to make a fool of yourself thrice now. First you insinuate that such a thing is even possible. Then you presume to think that there lives a Witch, a Drenhari Witch no less, who could even make me notice their attempts to hinder my sight. Finally, perhaps most idiotic of all, you deign to call them intelligent.”

 

“They are.” Kreischer said firmly. “A century of study has taught me well.”

 

“Uncountable millennia have taught me better!” Ohrdin seethed, mindful of his voice carrying the short distance it could before the wind would steal it away. “They are driven, not intelligent. There is a difference you should keenly understand as a man who possesses both. Throw enough mindless drones, or even a particularly dedicated brain cell at a task and it will eventually be finished, optimized and put into proficient practice.”

 

“I have seen nothing short of brilliance in their strategies. Just because we consider their goals abhorrent, does not mean we should deny the merit of their application. Regardless, intelligence is one thing. No intelligent being could have predicted me as well as they did.”

 

“Is that your ego I hear behind that gaudy mask?” Ohrdin jabbed, a distinct venom in his voice as it dripped over his rising, challenging jaw. 

 

“They knew!” Kreischer affirmed, meeting the challenge. “They knew every battleship from here to the other side of the Black Mirror. No conflicting order, no last minute change in flight path, not even wild jumping with uninstalled comms and Setheran jamming tech so much as stalled their pursuit. For years they hunted those ships. Gutted them. Hundreds of thousands of good men and women lost until I was confident that my own people had sold them to their graves in fear. It wasn’t until Ushabti Legion seemed compromised that I realized it wasn’t us. There were powers beyond my control hunting those ships.” 

 

“Failure to accept inadequacy is not an excuse to ramble inanely about Drenhari Witches.”

 

“You…” Kreischer trailed off as he fought to keep his blood cool. The raging tempest of emotion whirling around him betrayed his efforts to Ohrdin. 

 

“If I must put this to bed, if only to clear your mind, then let me be clear. Your experiences undoubtedly raise uncertainty, but a Drenhari Witch is an impossibility.” Ohrdin said sternly. “They do not feel, biologically, for any other than their own. Selfish isolation is so incongruent to the very foundation of our craft that it renders them blind. Your paranoia asks that a blind man would see.” 

 

“And yet your skin crawls as much as mine at the thought.” Kreischer hissed between gritted teeth. “I’ll ask you once, be it the Nid’s or not and so help me you will answer! Is there any chance another Witch is blinding you?” 

 

“I've already answered this.” Ohrdin mumbled, passing a hand across his neck to relax the tension therein. 

 

“No, you’ve talked around it. Over and over again, saying it isn’t possible. I want you to tell me, in simple language, it isn't happening.”

 

Ohrdin did not respond. His eyes were locked beyond Kreischer’s head, flickering lights narrowing to a white pinpoint. Ohrdin’s tail shook with a slithering spasm, writhing in discomfort like it had done watching thousands burn in orbit. “So these are the measures you stoop to? In your own home.” He whispered furiously. 

 

“What are you?” Kreischer’s frustration slipped into confusion briefly. “Never mind. This game you play is answer enough.” He turned away with his brow resting in the palm of his glove, a single eye catching the mangled upper half of a junior officer being pulled free from their legs. “Leave him! Get to the next one!” He shouted, the morbid sight dulling his temper. 

 

“So many lost needlessly.” Ohrdin sighed, lulling into place beside Kreischer as the man’s discomfort seemed to seep outwards and into Ohrdin’s bones. It made his task all the more galling to approach. Grey vapours curled out from beneath his crystalline eyes, coiling in a faint spiral beneath the skin which obscured them. 

 

“They deserved burials I don't have time to give them.” Kreischer sighed.

 

“Did they?”

 

Kreischer was unsure whether to feel offended or bewildered by the comment which had descended from on high. In the end it was offense which responded. “Excuse me?”

 

“You say that like it’s inherent. Or perhaps you mean they earned it?”

 

“If you have the gall to disagree…”

 

“I do not.” Ohrdin interjected, raising a hand. “How does one earn their hole? In your measure?.”

 

“Usually they start talking like that and find it pretty quick.” Kreischer turned to march away but found himself frozen in place, a vibrating rage cooling under the anxiety which loosened his tongue. “It’s not the burial you earn. It’s the respect of the people who dig the hole. They have mine just for being here and they’d have better been granted yours.”

 

“I trust you wouldn’t be so childish as to distribute that limited time unfairly?” Ohrdin continued, looming further over Kreischer, a soft, sharp voice twinging with disappointment. “Do you dig holes or build tombs?”

 

“Care to explain this creepiness?” Kreischer said as if to raise a shield. The gaunt face above him untangled his nerves in the warm glow of pulsating flamethrowers and gave rise to a flurry of overwhelming emotions. They were his own, he knew them well enough to be sure of that, but he wasn’t normally so agitated. 

 

“Call it curiosity.” 

 

“Your curiosity would be better served finding your student.” 

 

“As stated, she is far.” 

 

“No, you just can't find her.” Kreischer smirked. “Your lack of creativity is certainly disenchanting. Over reliance on your own capacity is a lesson you’ll be taught until you learn it. Given how long you’ve been around I’m surprised it hasn’t sunk in yet.”

 

“It is hardly over reliance when you are the only one present who can perform the task.” Ohrdin’s tone turned ever more tense, the gray vapors he knew their subject would not notice, turning black and thickening with every barb Kreischer threw at him. “When you can do better I will be pleased to receive the commentary.” 

 

“Lieutenant Merce. He was last with Lohren. Right here in the landing site.” Kreischer flashed the datapad strapped to his wrist, showing Merce’s last update. “He’d freeze himself infertile before he abandoned his charge. Find him and you’ll likely find her too. Presuming you can.”

 

“Your theory has quite a few presumptions. The odds are slim.”

 

“Slimmer every second you waste thinking about it.” 

 

“He hasn’t been accounted for yet?”

 

“Would I bother asking if he had? What kind of ridiculous question is that?”

 

“You seem quite bothered by that.”

 

“Can you find him or not?”

 

“More so than any dozen of the tragedies freezing around you.”

 

“Ohrdin.” Kreischer warned as a slight tremble overtook him. “Your own student is on the line.”

 

“Does it hurt you? Icy mass graves dug by incompetence.” Ohrdin said before Kreischer’s last word had even finished. “I find myself unsure.” 

 

“If you can't find him then just say so. My patience for Thentian deflection is wearing thin.”

 

“I can.”

 

“Then do it!”

 

“Answer my question first.”

 

“Did those shockwaves scatter your brain?”

 

“Answer my question.”

 

“You’re a sick bastard to leverage this for your games.”

 

“Answer…”

 

“Of course it does!” Kreischer bellowed, emotions forcefully surging beyond his ability to gate them. “Every person, every family, every goddamn generation we have buried greets me in the mirror! The same plague that took them from us comes screeching from the depths of our nightmares once more, to swing the reaper's scythe… again! Do you expect me to cry? Do you expect me to prostrate myself before you? Lay bare the countless fields of bodies I have seen? They make this look like a fucking training exercise!”

 

“Pressure to perform does not a conscience make.”

 

“Oh shove it up your ass you slithering shit!” Kreischer’s heart thundered behind his ears, rage having consumed him before he’d even had a chance to notice the fog glazing his judgment. 

 

“You saw them. You didn't bury them. Other people did.” Ohrdin circled Kreischer, leaning forth as his eyes became oily pools of smoke. “You didn't lose them either. They were buried by widowers, parents, children or simply forgotten about. You live with the weight of your failures and very clearly the anger that inadequacy incurred. Is any of that directed at your foe? Or are you really that self absorbed”

 

“They ravaged half the worlds I’d ever known, enslaved more people than I could ever hope to witness! Those were my people! Under our care!” Kreischer screamed as all sense of composure abandoned him. Pain replaced the anger in his cries as Ohrdin’s own darkened further into swirling, domineering ichor. “Don't you dare tell me it wasn’t my loss. Don't you dare, tell me, I live with my failures. I live with every decision I ever made, because every one of them left genocides in their wake. I buried planets, my home among them! I allowed it to be lost, reduced to dust in an empty void. All because it spared a civilisation! You speak to me of loss when you haven't known anything beyond that catastrophe on Kodeira fifty fucking years ago. That wasn't even a war! It was a damned raid turned sour when the admiralty, your fucking Iverian pets, decided cracking those stolen ships open without bothering to confirm that the shipyards crew hadn’t been taken with then, was a splendid idea. Thousands scorched all for a lack of prudence.” 

 

“Other people's regrets are hardly your concern, my dear retiree. It speaks to an unbecoming insecurity to turn to another’s failings when faced with your own. Though trust me when I say, I know far more of the nature of loss than you. You know pain, you know absence, you know death. Loss is about life. The lives they could have bettered had they lived. The lives who’s tortured expressions paint the scenery of the funerals you did not attend.” 

 

“I buried those people!” 

 

“No. You did not. You dug the hole. You picked who would go in it but you didn’t bury them. You didn’t even know them, yet you picked.”

 

“A burial is for the sake of remembrance. The memory of what those people built was killed by the Drenhari and dies with me!” Kreischer thumped his fist against his chest in punctuation, gloves creaking between the clinging digits.

 

“Indeed, it dies with you because your failure was so monumental that there isn’t even a grave to visit.”

You are reading story The Horrors We Choose at novel35.com

 

“That was them! They pushed us to the brink and made sure our efforts meant nothing.”

 

“And so now you seek revenge?” Ohrdin said, toying with the words as if he didn’t believe them. “They didn’t kill them kresicher. You did. You picked them. You decided which lambs got slaughtered. Did you know their names? Their history? Their families?” 

 

“It’s not about revenge!”

 

“Then tell me how you picked.” 

 

“At random! Their names didn’t matter, we were all there to earn a future for those who weren’t!” 

 

“Did that make it easier? Knowing they didn’t matter? You didn’t kill them if they were as good as dead anyways.” Ohrdin said, falling off sharply as he found Kreischer’s pistol staring him down. “Now we can get where I want to go.” 

 

“I don’t regret anything I did during that apocalypse.” Kreischer squeezed between gritting teeth, though his finger remained over the trigger guard. 

 

“I know. I had thought to ask if you could be more personal about these things. Could you bury a son in front of his mother? Kill a daughter beyond her fathers reach, look him in the eyes and tell him it was right?” Ohrdin leaned in close until the barrel pressed hard into his forehead. “I had thought to understand if you knew what you were doing beyond the suffering itself. We both know you can do these things. We both know you knew their consequences. You are living in an age beyond the suffering after all. You’ve seen exactly what loss really does to a people.”

 

“Oh it’s worse than I thought.” Kreischer laughed a crooked laugh, voice cracking harshly like it was straining against chains. “You have your answers. All of this is just the extent you’ll go to in service of protecting a comfortable lie.” 

 

“There’s that frustrating problem, Sterran. You accuse me of talking around the issue and yet here you are, doing the same. You work so hard not to say it and that is how I know you are afraid. It’s fragile to you, you care for it. You’ll do anything you can to create an environment it can prosper in and worry that even the mention of it could crack it. What is it? Beneath the fear, behind the loss, under the anger?”

 

“Get out of my head.” Kreischer replied painfully. The impotence of his mental resistance was becoming apparent to him, shifting his finger to the trigger in a desperation not entirely born of anger. 

 

“What worries me is that you think you can’t share it with me. As if I’d hamper something that can be loved so feverishly.” 

 

“You already do!” 

 

“Then tell me so I can stop. Tell me what we’re fighting for here. What we’re really fighting for. Tell me what they harm, that you hate them for.”

 

“Sir! Enemy frigate has breached an orbit of eight thousand…” Called an out of breath data analyst, skidding to a halt at the sight of the aggressive encounter. She flinched hard as the trigger clicked. 

 

“Well.” Ohrdin said, snapping his head from the distraction, back towards the inert weapon. His fingers trailed absently across the pistol’s barrel, attracting Kreischer’s attention to the weapons flickering power status, which despite being clearly activated, was unable to move that power to the rails which would have discharged its round. “I have to admit I didn’t expect the commitment.”

 

Kreischer’s face softened for a moment as the weight of the report distracted his emotions. However briefly, he was mustering some focus amidst the mental fog. Expectantly, he drunkenly drifted his head towards the woman frozen in indecision. 

 

“The… ahh…” she stammered. 

 

“There is no danger in our interaction, my child. Keep your mind at task please.” Ohrdin spoke softly. 

 

“The ship began reentry near the opposite pole.” She replied. “Projections have it set to enter an equatorial orbit outside of our firing arc.”

 

“Any landing craft?” Kreischer mumbled. 

 

“Dropships.” She replied. “Two were ripped apart in low atmosphere, the other five destabilized and seem to be attempting controlled crashes.” 

 

“Landing sites?”

 

“We lost visual too early to predict more than rough zones.”

 

“Have the Huginn focus its scans on tracking planetary targets along the projected path.” Kreischer ordered.

 

“They were unable to discern any detail once the ship passed the upper atmosphere.” She offered nervously. “They’re aware of the frigate’s position and little else planetside.”

 

Kreischer observed little more than a raised brow in Ohrdin’s reaction to that news and swallowed to maintain his focus. “In that case I want service personnel not essential to the tracking of planetary targets or organization, out here replacing our infantry and a catalog of all remaining mech’s within the hour.”

 

“I can tell you that now sir.” Relieved to have positive news to report. “Only one operator hadn’t checked their machine into the bunker complex when the snow came down.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Sorry sir I hadn’t read the personnel listings. Unless you know the… Yellow Feather?”

 

“Julie… she’s quite the xenophile. What are the chances she followed up on…?” An idea seized Kreischer from his stupor in fleeting clarity. “I want Romeo squad exempt from all other orders and prioritizing the evacuation and rescue of large heat sources.”

 

“Yes sir!” the young woman saluted.

 

“Oh, one more thing. Forget what you just saw, nothing happened between the counselor and I.”

 

“Yessir!” she said more insistently, spinning off towards the nearest comms box.

 

“Whatever you’re doing, has to stop.” Kreischer almost pleaded once she was far enough away. 

 

“We have time.” Ohrdin said, blatantly dismissing him as casually as he increased the pressure.

 

“I don’t!” Kreischer snapped, the exertion of fighting Ohrdin’s influence on his emotions becoming too much to bear. “I don’t have time to prepare these, fucking children for what that ship is ferrying unto them.” 

 

“You brought these, young volunteers, down here.” 

 

“I didn’t bring the mechanised assault they’ll hit us with.”

 

“Oh?” Ohrdin said in mock surprise. “Here I was under the impression that you knew they’d come eventually. How many trillions did we give your people to armor a border you also apparently knew you wouldn't be fighting at? Better still, how much of it was spent on this project of yours?”

 

“Ignoring the fact that those stations are not remotely scaled to the potential threat, l’ll be happy to inform you that not a single federation credit was spent on this construction. It’s over a hundred years old and barely equipped to handle the onslaught of shelling they’ll unleash once they realize they can’t just run us over with shock and awe.” Kreischer took a moment to steady the shakes in his body. “I thought we’d have a fleet, I’d hoped we’d have another twenty years! This place wasn’t even set to be inspected for another five! Now, I have nought but the most idealistic of young men and women, hopped up on generations of vengeful media with no idea as to reality of what those psychopathic arachnids will unleash when they realize zealotry, dies slow under shelling. If the starved disparate trophies of a hundred hunting grounds don't rip them limb from limb. If the chemicals don't scourge them to the core. Well, by then they may have already put a barrel to the roof of their mouth. Then all I’ll have left is a legion of soldiers who wished they’d done the same a century ago, and a councilor, who doesn’t even have the courage to work with me!”

 

“Quite the morbid checklist you’ve described. They were particularly cruel on your people.” Ohrdin paused with a wince. It was almost as brief as the smoky vortex in his eyes swirling away, coerced back into cohesion before it’s grasp could be lost. “I do hope you know…”

 

“Checklist!” Kreischer jutted in with a macabre smile, stretching away from his frosted faceplate, sounding almost relieved, like he had realized the answer to a test he hadn’t studied for. “That is what I hate! If we dont break, they’ll settle in to wear us out. Morale isn't a factor for them as it is for us, at least not in the same way. They can take their time, but they wont. They’ll rain hell, ramp the pressure and not let us sleep. They’ll bring monsters, they’ll bring gas. Assault, shell, deprive, terrorize and if you can’t break them then simply scour the very ground they walk on! It’s consistent. Clinical. Utterly lifeless. If they hated us, if they wanted us to suffer and took some amount of satisfaction in it, I could understand! If it was joyful or pleasurable for them, I could understand! If they were afraid or ambitious and this was a grab for power, I would certainly understand.”

 

“They don't care about you.” Ohrdin whispered in a silent affirmation of the tears streaming icy streaks across the gleam of Kreischer’s prosthetic. 

 

“Precisely! Everything they do is so devoid of connection. Selfish, soulless, sickening. There isn't a word I’ve met which can describe it. Those who comply are fed, looked after, used like workhorses. Their happiness matters little beyond ensuring that they function properly. Slaves in a paradise. Those who don’t?” Kreischer’s tone turned sour, a visceral reaction to the images flooding his mind. “They could be anything from insects in need of cleansing, to a butchered warning to the next world. Men and women reduced to a message. Freedom slaughtered and weaponised in service of a subjugation. We are tools, mattering nought beyond how we affect the hands that wield us. I hate them because despite their venerable dedication to their own, their insurmountable love of their own, they can still look a loving being in the eye, and forget it's even alive. They don’t hate us and I can’t understand it. I hate that we mean nothing to them. They wage a war and won't even afford us the dignity of seeing us as a people to be conquered.”

 

The councilor held Kreischer in his power, floating in a painful contemplation. Kreischer for his part, observed a mustering of will, resigning itself to a commitment it was far from comfortable with. He opted to let the councilor speak, hoping that the effect it was having would leave more of an impression than whatever answer he was hoping to extract. 

 

“You don’t hate their war, you respect it.” Ohrdin settled on after some visible internal debate. “Your forebears hated them, blinded themselves to it. I’ve known hateful people my child, you are not one of them. They fell to their hatred, fell to their destruction, thinking that any amount of wrath could ever grow back what was lost. They wanted battle. You were moved to war and spent every moment of it minimizing the cost. You weren’t afraid to spend but I still don’t quite understand what you were buying.” 

 

“Time for help to arrive, as I do now.” 

 

“Once again, no.” Ohrdin sighed. “I am quite sorry for this unpleasantness but so long as you lie to me it will have to continue. Time, that’s the public line isn’t it. It’s an insult to your capabilities that they all believe that was the best you could do. Perhaps to start but I have no doubt that if your goal had been time you would have achieved it. This planet, this weapon, those soldiers' treatments… time is not what you’re buying by deceiving us all. This place could have been a fortress… these bodies could be breathing.”

 

“So this coercion? It’s because you’re confident in me?”

 

“Exceptionally. Whatever your goal I have no doubt you’d achieve it unchecked. Before I offer any assistance I have to know that goal is worth assisting. As above, so below. As the mind, so is the beast. As the king, so are his people. I wanted to know, what birthed the killer before I empowered his knives.” Ohrdin found himself staring down the face of a man lost, confused and in need of guided introspection. “Then I realized that your dishonesty was not as wilful as it appeared at first glance. Let me help you, you’ll see what I’m getting at I’m sure. Those tears freezing on your faceplate aren’t falling out of grief. A field of corpses drew little more than regret. Your hatred comes not from pride, not from the indignance of having been made a victim. It came from being reduced to numbers in someone else’s game.”

 

Kreischer dropped the pistol hanging from his limp arms. With one hand he gripped the side of his head, fingers locking into his hair. A slow nod, rose and fell in languid succession like a weary tide. 

 

“This is good, we’re getting there. There’s the hate. What’s the fear? What’s bringing forth this instability?”

 

“I can’t let them win.” 

 

“Wrong. You can. We’ve taught you well, anything lost can be regrown. No matter what they do we would never allow you to be truly lost.”

 

“You allowed it before.” 

 

“We are not a monolith. We had planned to liberate those worlds before they were lost. Now let’s stay on topic. Fear didn’t make you cry, anger didn’t make you cry. What did?”

 

“Frustration.” Kreischer breathed, too tired for anger. 

 

“Over?” Ohrdin inquired. 

 

“Inadequacy.” Kreischer admitted as much to himself as any other. “You’re right, I’m a killer. A killer trying to be a doctor. A killer trying to fortify. That isn’t what I do. It isn’t what I am! When I worked with numbers, I saw the patterns, I figured the problem, I cut it down, I made it efficient. Working with violence wasn’t much of a difference, I found a dying system, saw the patterns, cut down anything that wouldn’t work and made it efficient enough to survive.”

 

“Sounds to many I imagine, like you succeeded.” Ohrdin said in a rare sound of praise for the retired admiral. “Yet here we are. It wasn’t your goal, to survive.” 

 

“For me? Who knows. Humanity deserves more than survival. That war taught me that a dead man’s heart can still beat. I can win this war but I can’t put a smile on the face of the men who’ll fight it for me.”

 

“Why must they be smiling?”

 

“Why else would It be worth it? They need to live! Not just after, I can’t control after. I can’t ever make it that they won’t suffer. But, if they can smile? If they can be inspired, by the world around them, by the people they know, by the people they could be? I can’t give that to them, only give them every opportunity to take it for themselves.” Kreischer’s tears fell now in admiration rather than pain. “They have this remarkable ability to continuously struggle and overcome and survive. I want them to be empowered and free to move the world to where they want it to be. I want humanity to have hope. True hope and a truer determination to strive for better no matter what obstacles they face, because that will keep them alive until they return to the dirt. I want them to live! How long is beyond my control. I cannot spare them the cost but I can make damn sure they think every moment was worth it. However long our candle is I will ensure, we burn until the end. I cannot give hope but I can give belligerence. I can give self belief. I can give them self worth so that they will not tolerate a fault against them. I will free them because I will teach them the inner strength that means no matter how bad it gets, no matter what they must suffer, no matter what or when we lose, they will be free. I will make sure every one of them can die with their dignity. Can die knowing they did all they could. That they smile until the end, in the face of death, in spite of everything they’ve been burdened with. That they shall never be reduced.” 

 

“There, under the fear, there’s the love.” Ohrdin said, the words spilling out alongside the tension which had infected him. A deep discomfort accompanied by pride of all things. “I’m relieved. More than anything I am relieved that you are who…”

 

Ohrdin’s voice turned to surprise, slowed and fell away, a rowboat tipping over a waterfall. The energy he had seen, heat bubbling beneath the snow, wasn’t alone anymore. The two souls he had seen, scared and uncertain, were no longer alone. The telltale signs of a directed will surrounded the third figure. A familiar, yet changed figure, that felt for the briefest of moments, like a legion. 

 

The smoky vortex beneath Ohrdin’s skin faded and withdrew behind the crystalline orbs they had enveloped. The larger pair of arms glided to his lower back, spreading and gingerly touching their fingertips together. The smaller pair folded upwards from beneath his upper shoulders and interlocked the straightened fingers like two picket fences fallen upon each other. The vortex gone, replaced by a subtle array of coloured lights, warming the cool appearance of his skin from beneath, signaled the change in his priority. 

 

Kreischer doubled over, gasps turning to hyperventilation. “If you ever!” He began between insufficient breaths. 

 

“Im sure you’ll understand once you’ve had a chance to process it.”

 

“No!” He demanded, extremified emotions not quite brought to heel. “You’re going to listen to me very carefully. Out here your authority extends as far as I let it. Your power extends as far as I let it. These are my soldiers, this is my battlefield. Regulations be damned.”

 

“The barrel looming over us means I’m quite aware of your disregard for regulation.” Ohrdin returned absentmindedly, not quite aware in that moment of the severity of Kreischer’s tone. 

 

“Of course you are, which is why I wasn’t finished.” Kreischer reaffirmed. “Despite the fact that you know this, you still seek to police me should I step out of line.” 

 

“There’s more to your influence than just this battle.” Ohrdin said matter of factly. 

 

“Which is why I have to ask what were you going to do if you didn’t like the answer you got?” A new anger rose in Kreischer’s voice. “Were you going to sick Prodigal on me? Make my grave the stars just like you did to Galahad?”

 

“You shouldn’t know that name.” A deep chill rose in Ohrdin’s voice. A short silence let the councilor gather his thoughts. “You shouldn’t know about Galahad either though I’m not surprised you do.”

 

“Where the fuck is Merce?!”

 

Ohrdin turned his posture amicable, like a diplomat suddenly aware of a camera. The hum of an answer quickly died as the desperate plea of a familiar feline roared through his mind, striking the back of his skull as if caught in a shockwave. Bewildered and unusually without his bearings, he stared once more at the strange build of energy and saw it imploding, feeding a deeper core within. 

 

“I hear you child.” He whispered.

 

Kreischer followed Ohrdin’s gaze to the spot he was appraising for the third time. Realization dawning as the last vapors of the Thentians influence left him. 

 

“Juliet! I need shovels, thirty feet, port side of the Kanabo’s thrusters!” Kresicher roared, taking off into a sprint. 

 

“No.” Ohrdin said as the energy beneath the snow began swirling upwards in a dangerous crescendo. “Detonation!” 

 

“Romeo!” Kreischer stalled his movement slightly at the warning but didn’t miss a beat in his orders. “I want Eclipse and their speeders topside, outfitted for scouting, destruction and denial! They have their pick of ordinance. Send word for the remaining mech operators and get the legion clearing and bunkering into the front trench ASAP!” 

 

Kresicher was confused to see Juliet squadron drop to a firing position on their approach, aiming straight above his head. A large hand gripped his collar and pulled him from his feet with a vicious yank as a strange reverberating whine emanated from the ground between them. Moments later the dim atmosphere of HE-1 lit as though a sun had risen, or been birthed from the very ground in a brilliant eruption. 

 

Rock flew at tremendous speed in all directions atop the wave of light and flame, casting them out of the hole they resided in. Even as they melted, the ejections pulled trails of vaporized snow and ice like the plumes of a prehistoric missile. A luminous, serpentine dragon of flame coiled upwards in a staggering escape, burning white hot at its center and diluting with every dozen feet it rose. The great jet engine divulgence, burned the eyes of nearby onlookers and turned those closer, to the ground in hopes of being spared the dragon's wrath. The whirling vortex spun out of control and dispersed its flames outwards, scalding the surface remains of the avalanche whilst leaving those contained within, little more than warmed. 

 

A scattering of desperate and curious heads rose and drew closer to the eruption. Those of greater experience decided against adding more minds to the mess and turned instead to the almost entirely uncovered dead and wounded. As hands broke free from their confinement, skywards in search of warmth like moths to a light, fourteen figures descended upon the steaming crater. 

 

“Juliet, Icarus formation! Get me a line and a medic!” Kreischer’s orders came as swift as their response. Orders flew between the squads members while Kreischer rushed to meet Ohrdin by the crater’s rim. Miniature launchers were unfolded and pieced together amongst the squad, affixed with anchors and embedded in a triangle, five feet back from the nearest half of the crater.

 

“I heard you.” Ohrdin muttered. Kreischer barely stopped in time to avoid falling in as he looked down upon what was entrancing the Councillor. “I heard you… like I hear my own.”

 

Beneath them a weary Iverian stood surrounded by ice and clad in a suit of frost. Shaking, unsteady and balancing herself with one hand on a dormant Setheran power core, carrying a limp, familiar body in the other. A thin line of dense paracord was palmed over to Kreischer who immediately stepped out over the edge alongside the two lightest members of Juliet squadron, without so much of a glance to the men behind him. With blistering efficiency the squadron had split into three, one man each anchoring the lines behind them, whilst the others prepped stretchers and fed slack to the three rappelling downwards. 

 

Kreischer’s boots struck the ground, two more pairs following in unison. “Check the Iveri’s vitals!” He ordered as he took Merce from her flagging paw. 

 

“There’s a ghost in the aurora.” Lohren said, glassy eyed and barely conscious. Her knees buckled and cracked the ice as they dropped. 

 

The two adjacent soldiers swore as they attempted to arrest her fall, opting instead to spare their joints and guide her momentum into a fetal position near the crater wall, the ice beneath her shattering. Kreischer wrapped his line in various knots around Merce’s chest and arms, arranged in a makeshift harness. After a few soft mutterings that barely graced the wind with their presence, he yanked the line and began walking up the crater wall, following the lieutenant being hoisted by the squad above. 

 

Ohrdin descended the funnel shaped crater, excessively restrained compared to the efficiency of the soldier’s around him. He lingered on Lohren’s limp body, comparing the crumpled mass of metal and meat and it’s vulnerability to the preceding display. Terrifying and impressive in equal measure. A gingerly lain hand touched the cool surface of the mech’s crumpled canopy. The marks of a vicious assault littered its surface. Leading him to think it hadn’t been refurbished since its last deployment. 

 

“Julie?” He called out on an experimental whim.

 

A feminine voice responded first in a shaky call that barely whispered beyond its cage. The following silence prompted forth a rather professional scream. “Yes Ma’am! If there’s anyone still outside they’ll need the help more than me!”

 

“You needn’t worry, child.” Ohrdin responded in a comforting tone. It seemed Kreischer’s guess was right, on both accounts. He wasn’t sure whether to be disturbed by the accuracy with which Kreischer had come to understand three people of deeply varying relevance to him so well, or to be amused by the use of Ma’am. His species was not gendered by any biological measure and only really used pronouns to cause less friction between what individuals projected upon them and the truth of the matter. Still, it had been quite some time since a soldier had referred to him in the feminine. His position of authority usually skewed their perceptions enough to create consistency. And so, it stood to reason, based on the awe emanating from the woman, that her issue was not with authority, but with the gender administering it. A rejection of paternal figures lent credence to the idea that his protege was not near this mech coincidentally. 

 

Ohrdin observed Kreischer once more. The man was hard to read. Not for lack of information but a deluge of it. Today was a day of many returning, unlikely events. Many old feelings and even an old pronoun. A slight tremble was crawling through Ohrdin’s skin into his very bones. He was… he’d forgotten the word. He was unsteady, unsure and mildly paranoid. Caught mentally in the grips of what may be unbecoming for a being of his position. It hadn’t been since his earliest campaigns for humanity’s uplifting that he had felt like this. 

 

The Terran’s would have called it anxiety. A more apt description perhaps would have been a query of faith. He did not like being blindsided by unexpected elements of his self. It unmade his confidence in his prescience, his intuitive understanding of a consequential nature from which the future unfolded. 

 

Despite his ecclesiastical issues, he could find solace in a familiar feeling. One which seemed to creep in deeper with every moment he forced the retired Admiral’s speech. Deeper still as he watched the aftermath trudge away from him carrying a connection Ohrdin could have simply presumed. Presumption was a comfortable temptation he reminded himself to no avail. At least this feeling was familiar. He had felt it for just over a century. He felt it clearly. He felt it strongly. 

 

He felt guilt.

You can find story with these keywords: The Horrors We Choose, Read The Horrors We Choose, The Horrors We Choose novel, The Horrors We Choose book, The Horrors We Choose story, The Horrors We Choose full, The Horrors We Choose Latest Chapter