"Well," said Revol, "that's not as bad as I expected."

Of all the times to joke, thought Catalyst. Sometimes it seemed that Revol completely lacked any capacity for respect. But good luck articulating how he determined when to demonstrate or omit deference. To Catalyst, his shifting tone seemed random.

“What did you expect?” Ishtar asked.

“Oh, you know. The worst.”

“What do we do, Cap?” asked Eukary.

Catalyst looked to their captain. Sensus seemed to have aged over the last few days. Catalyst attributed the apparent stress to the confusion. One can adjust to either heaven or hell, making limbo the real torture.

“We may as well approach him openly,” Catalyst suggested.

Sensus nodded. “Yes. I’d like to know how he knew where...”. He lifted his wrist. “Speck. Speck to you read me?”

“I thought we landed a little too easily,” said Revol.

“Well,” said Sensus, “It’s decided then. We knock on the door.”

“Do we signal the Sentinels?” Catalyst asked.

“Alert them to the situation and have them on standby, but tell them to hold their position.”

Catalyst entered a coded sequence into his vam, giving the order. They then broke camp and returned to Solomon’s grotte. He stood outside the entrance, waiting.

“Speck’s inside,” Solomon said. He sounded as he always had, a shrewd and lucid man.

Catalyst wanted to speak, but could find no words.

“How you been, Sol?” Said Revol.

Catalyst groaned.

“I’m well,” he replied. A breeze scattered the stones around their boots.

Revol stepped forward with his rifle mag-clamped to the side of his backpack.“ Picked up a hobby, huh? Dead bodies, knives, and blankets."

“Yes, Reev. That's exactly what I've been doing all these years; picking up hobbies.” The irritation in Solomon’s voice was palpable. “Would you like to come inside and see? Or have you already helped yourselves in.”

“Well, that would be how we know about it, of course. But honestly, I would feel a little better about myself if I saw place after being invited in.”

“Our orders are to bring you in,” said Sensus.

“Naturally,” replied Solomon. “Out of curiosity, how did you find me?”

“Needle,” said Sensus.

Solomon nodded. “Well, you may as well come in.”

Their response was delayed, scored by the growing winds in the liminal sly.

“There are storms in the night,” Solomon said. “You may find it inconvenient to be caught in one.”

Catalyst grew impatient, but waited for Sensus to enter first, despite how long he was hesitating.

“What are you doing with those bodies?” Asked Sensus.

“That should be obvious,” Solomon answered.

“Whoa hooo well,” said Revol, “it’s, it’s really not.”

“I’m hoping this can be simple,” Sensus said.

The breeze grew strong and scattered more stones. Catalyst felt them pelting his boots.

“I’m searching for something,” Solomon said. “Something important.”

Even Revol was quiet.

“If you come inside, I can show you.”

There was a painfully long moment of silence and apprehension. Catalyst felt relieved when Sensus stepped forward. Whatever path they were to choose, standing still in the dark was unbearable. When Sensus gave Catalyst a nod, he turned to the team and commanded them to follow Solomon, who led them through a long tunnel they had somehow not seen.

“Should we be embarrassed that we missed this?” Revol asked.

“I saw it,” said Aster.

It ended in a circle of doors wrapping around a pentagonal foyer. Solomon opened a door on the left and walked through, leading them into a cramped hall that was empty save for a podium in the center.

“Pitari,” he said, and the crystal dome of the podium glowed. It greeted Solomon with a feminine voice, then asked who his guests were.

“They’re friends,” he replied. “Pitari, show them pathway Emerald.”

Pitari displayed a holographic map of the Phrastus belt. There was a zigzagging path in green light that shot through the belt and branched into the borders of habitable space.

“These are all Ben’Azret colonies,” Catalyst said, reading the names of the star systems crossed by the branching green line.

“This is where the Archeus Knights have attacked,” Solomon explained. “At first, I thought they were simply making a beach head, so I focused on reconnaissance and sending out warnings. Then I saw the pattern and began to investigate.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Catalyst looked at Solomon, then the team. Revol, Eukary and Aster were peering at the map while Ishtar and Forge stood back. Forge was visibly agitated. As for Solomon, it was clear he had no thoughts beyond his work.

“What are the bodies for?” Catalyst asked.

“I found them that way. On every world the Archeus assailed, they left every Ben’Azret drained and opened. I studied them, hoping to find some clues as to why the Archeus were doing this to them. The mercenaries I hired thought I was some sort of mad man. In time they began to pity these poor people, despite their devolved state. They came out here so they could live in peace, without being treated like subhuman trash. Then this happened.”

“It’s genocide,” said Revol. He was tracing one of the branches with his finger.

“Almost,” said Solomon. “There were a few settlements left when I cut the outriders off.”

"You said on your broadcast that you killed one of their outriders," said Catalyst, trying to sound hopeful. "How did you manage that?"

"I got it alone and blew the bastard up. Used up half of my explosive ordinance. It was the most difficult fight of my life, even with the allies I made that day."

"What allies?" Catalyst asked. "Those mercenaries?"

“Where’s Speck?” Sensus asked rather abruptly.

Solomon looked at him, showing signs of indignation through the tilt of his head. Catalyst thought sadly how much time they spent in their harnesses anymore, that they could tell each other’s expressions so readily with their skullforts donned.

“Resting. He was wounded.”

“How?”

“When your vessel crashed.”

Then were was a long, tense moment during which Revol flicked at some strange shapes surrounding the Temple of Fiends, which he had expanded to a low-orbital view.

“This a live feed map?” He asked.

“It updates every hour.”

“So, these might have been here for a while then.”

“Those distortions? Those are sensor ghosts from the Archeus craft that followed me here. Don’t worry about the knight. It didn't find me and it moved on.”

“I’m only worried about you, Sol,” said Sensus. “The bodies below… what you’ve done to them looked, ritualistic.”

“That’s because it is. When I’d studied hundreds without discovering anything noteworthy, I continued to gather them so they could be treated according to their tradition, which is rife with ritual.”

Sensus and Solomon regarded each other coldly for what felt like hours before they both relaxed their posture.

“Okay,” said the captain. “I believe you. But what about the recording Needle found? You transmitted more than a warning of Orak’s so called invasion. You were chanting, praying even, to the Tangents.”

Then Solomon tensed again, to the point where it seemed he might strike Sensus across the face. The team began reaching for their weapons.

“I did no such thing,” in a low rasp, Solomon spoke.

“I couldn’t risk being caught with it, for the team’s sake as well as mine, but we all heard it. I bow to you, Mighty Haleon, before your throne of souls. Sweet Topar…”

“Be quiet!” And Solomon did hit Sensus. He buried his fist in the captain’s gut and blasted him with kinetic radiance across the room. Catalyst and Forge had their rifles drawn instantly.

“No!” Shouted Aster. She stood in front of Solomon. Revol had his rifle at low ready, and with one hand was waving Forge to stand down.

“Holster your weapons,” grunted the captain.

He stood up slow, then brushed off his shoulders. “Take us to see Speck now, Solomon.”

“All you had to do was ask. You’ve fallen far since I left Albion. You never would have let the Quorum poison your thinking like this when I was your Section Chief.”

“Well, Solomon, you did leave, and you’re not my Section Chief. What you are is an AWOL deserter who has been engaging in some very alarming behavior. I appreciate that your warnings regarding Ulro were accurate, but I have yet to see anything here to convince me to disregard our order to bring you in.”

“You may find that difficult. I am not alone here.”

That’s when they heard them. A soft hiss followed them, like a whisper in another room. Their bodies were in another place, bleeding through the soft recesses like a whispy ooze.

“Shadow children,” said Ishtar, her words halfway to a gasp.

They grew dark into human forms distinct, and one grew nails like swords. That one spoke in a voice more felt than heard.

“Solomon is sacred. You will not touch him.”

“I want one,” said Revol.

The shadow children looked sharply at him. All he did was shrug.

Catalyst was at a loss. Even if they called in the detachment from the 79th, there would be too few of them left to call a victory a success, and Solomon would not come back in the hands of only a few whom he had mentored.

He knows all our tactics, Catalyst thought.

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” said Sensus.

“Actually, I don’t. Now, would you like to see Speck or not?”

They followed Solomon to the depths of his grotte, seeing the projections of the shadow children emerging all around them. It was impossible to get an accurate count of such creatures, but they filled every room. They were fools to think they could simply ‘bring Solomon in’.

And the Quorum are fools to want to, Catalyst thought.

Speck was propped up on a soft bed in a clean room. There was a tray with an emptied soup bowl beside him. His body, through robust for a simple human’s, looked especially fragile, especially with the grey pallor of his skin. His midsection was wrapped in fresh bandages.

“A piece of the console stuck right through me,” he said. “One of them creepy kids found me. She stuck her hand in my wound and stopped the pain.”

“They took off your harness and skullfort,” said Forge, squatting on the ground next to him.

“Kind of hard to do surgery through all that armor. And as you can see the air is breathable here. Which is odd, considering some of the compounds the probes picked up from the cloud layers.”

“Solomon is sacred.”

Catalyst couldn’t help doing an about face. Everywhere he looked, he saw their silhouettes.

“Expanded the old aura, eh?” Said Revol.

“I can cover the whole compound. It’s second nature to me now.”

Revol nodded slowly, as if admiring a fresh paint job on a jumpship. “Very nice.”

“I’m glad you’re alive, Speck,” said the captain. “What happened?”

“Well, I was flying low, using that weird dampening field those eels make to stay hidden while I did those scans you asked for. My best guess is I got a little too close to the eels and spooked one of them. I got hit. Several times. I almost got clear but then a static discharge took out the stabilizers and I dropped like a rock. I should have been a stain on a bulkhead, but you can add inconsistent gravity to the list of this planet’s quirks.”

“What can you tell us, Sol?” Asked Sensus. “Did he get knocked out of the sky by a spooked eel?”

“It happens quite often, actually. But your craft looks to have been hit by ice crystals. They form in the upper stratosphere and fall like bullets in the night storms.”

Something about it didn’t sit right with Catalyst, but they’d gotten all the answers they would for the day, and followed Solomon to an empty bay of guest quarters to rest for a few hours and think. Catalyst kept his harness on, but did remove his skullfort when in Solomon’s private conference hall, after a shadow child came to his door to inform him that he was invited there for dinner and what the shadow child called ‘truth talk’.