Albion was tearing itself apart. There was a time when it was whole, and maybe, even as the first crack split its way along the dark spine of the cosmos, there could have been a longing for the old symmetry. But it seemed that within Albion a perfect unity could not exist. Four great powers were at work within the wandering Eden, and what moved them to abandon their lush, starry pastures for the unknowable deep, no causal mind could know. A silent bell had rung, and from pre-drawn faults their schism was born. And yet Revol was calm, sitting cross-legged in the center of Oak, waiting for the aged mother's reply.
"Seven thousand years," was her answer.
Revol sighed. He heard Catalyst call his name.
"We spinning up?"
Catalyst nodded from the doorway. Revol stood and followed him to the barracks. Their fellow Harbingers rushed through the hallways like arterial blood.
Ishtar, Haruspex and Forge were already in the armory. Eukary and Aster came last. They all geared up in silence, choosing their most trusty weapons and equipment. Revol wanted to break the quiet, but could only think of pointless things to say, so he kept silent, choosing the rifle that shot the straightest and a skullfort that had never cracked.
Sensus was waiting in the conference room to brief them. His tired eyes looked old.
"You coming with us Cap?” Eukary asked.
"I am," Sensus replied.
When all eight of them were seated, the room went dark.
"Eno," Sensus said, "bring up Dawn Exigent. Night Op One, please."
The old machine birthed a hologram of Albion and the surrounding eighteen parsecs.
"Tactical, please?" Sensus asked.
The map turned from a star field to a grid.
"What was that?" Revol blurted. "Can we go back?"
"I'll explain everything, Revol," Sensus answered.
"There were a bunch of stars missing along the Phrastus Belt, on the side bordering the Verge."
"Albion, darkening in the West," said Haruspex.
"Team," Catalyst barked.
They all were quiet while Eno zoomed in on a solitary planetoid.
Sensus began the briefing. "Solomon is holed up in what long range scans show to be an extensive subterranean compound, accessed by a door in one of these hills. We'll land here, and Attack Group Six will be dropped ten clicks north. They'll make a swift, quiet approach and hold off until we signal them."
So he went on, telling them what they could have deduced from looking at the map by themselves. Then he asked Eno to display the cartographic map again, but only for an instant, before the lights came back on and the map faded.
"Let me be clear," Sensus said, "mission protocol demands comm silence. We locate, we secure, we extract. Any discussion about our mission parameters will be had en-route or on return. Once we're deployed, there's to be strict radio silence unless we need Team Six to engage."
And they were away, filing into their insertion craft. Speck was waiting to help load their gear, and when they all strapped in, he returned to the helm of their jumpship, Harbinger One.
"What's really happening?" Revol asked, once they were away from Albion.
"I know we all trust each other," Sensus replied, "but we're going to have to stretch our trust a little further than we have in the past."
”Captain?” Cat said nervously.
"Solomon was right," Sensus said.
"About?" Revol asked.
"Everything, including the Verge and its expansion. But instead of responding to our communications, he went completely dark, until recently, and what we've heard from him is both confusing and troubling. The Quorum wants him brought in to be detained so he can answer for what they perceive as threatening behavior. I agreed to the mission for the love I feel for the man, and I want to see for myself what's become of him."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"Then why are we moving against him as if he were an enemy?" asked Aster.
Sensus lifted his arm and the display embedded in his vambrace glowed.
"I took a risk copying this file. It will play once and only once before erasing itself completely. I have no clue where the root storage is, or if it even was preserved, so listen closely."
And they all heard the hissing of the heliopause at the border of the deep. The hiss was cold, a living static, but too it seemed a rattle in a dying throat. Then they heard a halting voice that shifted starkly in octave, at times sounding unnatural.
Mighty Haleon, I bow to you before your throne of souls. Carry me away to Zar Zafaran and entomb me in your wisdom. Lovely Topar, lay me beneath your shadow on your bed of sweet bile. Nurse me as you would an infant son, and fill my empty mind with truth.
The heliopause spat and crackled as if it were struggling to silence Solomon's heretical words. But he persisted, naming all eight of the beasts that once brought the universe to the brink.
... nails were driven deep into their luminous fibers... take me to Nessus, Lovely Topar...
Solomon's voice again yielded for a time to the heliopause, then he broke through and he was as the Harbingers remembered him.
Red Orak is coming. Haleon's daughters have found a way through the Klippotic Verge and sent a detachment of Archeus Knights through. I barely escaped their outriders, and the one I killed had information that we need. They used some sort of resonance to portal through. The daughters are weak from their singing, and Haleon himself is still in deep hibernation, but his son is mounting a full-scale offensive. They must not be allowed to gain a foothold. If we do not act now to drive back Orak and his knights, Haleon's forces will pour through the Verge and all of Briah will burn.
And he was quiet again before resuming his chant to the Tangent Lords. The heliopause spared them their mentor's last tortured words, and then the file was gone.
"Archeus," said Sensus.
Revol was young, and had only encountered one of those animals. The Harbingers it defeated had their bodies broken and their radiance scattered. They returned in a hideous form; their radiance gathered, fragmented and shackled inside weaponized shells. Revol shuddered at the thought of his consciousness being splintered and blended and trapped with shards of others in a slave body.
"We can expect to encounter the Anunnaki, then," said Sensus.
"We're in no way prepared for this," said Forge.
"We'll make do," said Sensus.
"I mean emotionally, Captain."
Revol gave Forge a sideways look. He didn't relish the idea of fighting an Archeus Knight, but what churned his stomach was the thought of meeting the horrors that awaited any Harbinger the Archeus defeated.
"How is Attack Group Six composed?" Catalyst asked.
"Sentinels from the 79th," Sensus answered. "I saw to that personally."
"He only mentioned activity from Haleon," Eukary said, "and only by proxy. If you ask me, it sounds like we have time."
"As long as we act," Catalyst said. "What we don't have time for is the bureaucratic dogma that drove Solomon to leave Albion in the first place."
"There won't be any of that," Sensus assured them. "Steps have already been taken to stymie the Verge's expansion. The dark space you saw on Eno's cartography is reduced by point-two percent from its state three days ago, and the Cosmogesis Guild claims to have made some hopeful breakthroughs."
"So, the Artifexus will plug the hole while we kill whatever squeezes through." Eukary mused.
"Boots on the ground," said Forge.
Sensus nodded. "But the Quorum wants this quiet. And they're worried about more than mass panic. They're afraid of Solomon."
The heliopause screamed its static hiss again, and Solomon's voice, lucidity restored, whispered a name.
Othominian...
"Holy tits!” shouted Revol.
"Check your vams," Sensus commanded.
They all searched their vambrace displays for signs of the sound file, but it was gone, a digital phantom.
"A hidden piece of data?" Catalyst asked.
"Let's hope that's all that was," said Ishtar.
The proximity alert was a welcome noise, pulling them all back to the realm of the familiar. They readied their gear while Speck evaded Solomon's sensor buoys, then braced for insertion.
The planetoid was a dead blue amidst turbulent grey, with clouds like milky coals that seemed to drip into their own selves in constant flow and reabsorption. Beneath the cloud cover was a gaseous curtain several miles thick where lightning greased the backs of great floating eels. They recognized the eels to be of a transient brood who sought out desolate worlds that, while lonesome of flocks and herds, gave ample nest to wild and unique energies.
Harbinger One burst from the underbelly of that stormy expanse and leveled out, soaring alone in a haze of empty sky. Speck brought them down to the south of Solomon's grotte and deployed their sound dampening net before their insertion craft ejected from its launch tube, hurtling into the ground like a missile. Its rear doors then opened, holding apart the strata for their repulsor ramp to extend. Ready for actions they already regretted, the combat team of Harbinger One stepped onto the repulsors and rode the wind to the surface of Solomon's lonely redoubt. On charts it was an oddity labeled Bindu Prime. To forgotten settlers and wayfarers who, by various melancholy fates found themselves so close to the edges of doom, it was known as the Temple of Fiends.