“Three minutes to initiate sequence. Mandatory evacuation required.”

Marshall Phaedra of the Autonomous Planetary Covenant ignored the planet wide alert. She pushed her muscles to the extreme, lungs burning, every cell of her being begging for a temporary respite, but she must push on.

“Shorin. Fresh orders. Leave without me.” Phaedra instructed her second-in-command through the comm Link. Soon, very soon, the surface of planet Zolara would be razed by an unnatural blaze. The obligation she felt as a Marshall to a conscientious job did not absolve her of her responsibility to her squad.

“Marshall, we have decided to stay behind.” Shorin’s voice through the comms sounded raspy yet determined, unwavering even before the very imminent desolation they faced. “Not when they are more Lorvian children to save.”

“Phaedra, what are you doing? This is madness. Return.” Phaedra heard the imperious command of Covenant Phantom Vierna from the safety of her ship high above in orbit. “This is no longer a covenant affair. The deal is settled between Koravecs and Lorvian Senate. These Lorvian settlers are not your problem anymore.”

“I cannot, Phantom,” replied Phaedra. “In good conscience, I cannot turn my back on the settlers for a mistake not their own. Not when I could save lives. You should know the value of lives. After all, you are a Vajran.”

“One minute to initiate sequence. Mandatory evacuation required.” The planetary wide alert went again.

Phaedra continued running through the deserted town. Her brain desperately processed the information fed from through her neural nanonics, seeking for signs of life. Not all protesting Lorvian settlers were extracted from Zolara’s surface. A last-minute audit revealed a missing group of Lorvian schoolchildren. Forgotten in the ensuing chaos, left to doom on a soon-to-be scalded planetary surface.

With an effort, she ripped the insignia of the Mediators embedded with trackers — the official sign of her post, her long-term pride — and tossed it aside, denying Vierna the chance to forcefully beam her out of the surface. A decision, not easy to meet, considering not just the emotional worth the insignia held but the virtues she had come to associate with it. In the end, that was but a mere external casing of the real values that she represented; that the famed Mediator squad of the Covenant represented.

“To protect those who had none. Triumph is measured in lives we preserved.” Phaedra repeated the mantra to herself, as she darted past lonely settlement dwellings and charred buildings in a lifeless town. Her sensors did not lie. Somewhere here, awaiting salvation, were a bunch of Lorvian children.

“Thirty seconds to initiate sequence.” The planetary alert spelled the eventual doom.

“Shorin, please return.” Phaedra issued again.

“No Marshall. Our resolve is as strong as the one who leads us.”

Her squad was made of adamant fools, but at the moment, Phaedra could not suppress the pride swelling inside her. There could have been no finer team to lead. No finer deputy than Shorin.

The scanner detected a life sign at the settlement’s edge.

“Ten seconds to initiate sequence.”

Phaedra torpedoed in the indicated direction, covering an otherwise impossible distance, towards an abandoned processing plant on the verge of crumbling any moment.

“Five seconds to initiate sequence.”

A tiny fragile creature, with skin as brown, patchy, dry and furrowed like the bark of a tree, but her eyes, a verdant blossoming green, carried the vibrancy of life, perched alone outside. A Lorvian Child.

“Three seconds to initiate sequence.”

Phaedra wrapped her arms around the scared child, drawing her closer in a protective hold.

“Two seconds to initiate sequence.”

“Fear not, little one. You will be safe. I will protect you,” cooed Phaedra in a gentle whisper.

“One second to initiate sequence.”

Not enough time. There was never enough time.

With not a moment to spare, Phaedra remove her field suit and wrapped it around the child. Anything. Any chance. Any tiny sliver or morsel of possibility to ensure that the child survived. Stack those chances up. No matter how small. It was all that occupied her mind.

“Initiating sequence.”

She could still save the child. She must. Phaedra’s mind raced. Lorvians are a resilient bunch but not immune to a planetary-wide conflagration, even with the protection of her field suit. Phaedra pulled, shielding the crying child. “It will be alright. Trust me.”

Soon, the first of the heatwave razed through, burning Phaedra’s exposed back. Tears from the girl fell on her shoulders and evaporated in an instant.

A second wave soon followed.

And then a third.

Phaedra pulled the girl’s unprotected face into her bosom, offering every bit of herself in exchange for the child’s safety. She gritted her teeth. She dug her nails into her scalded skin to prevent her own screams from escaping. But the screams came, eventually, from the Lorvian Child.

“Shorin! Shorin!! Status.” The comms were silent. Dead as her squad. Still, Phaedra could not accept. “Shorin. Anyone? Anyone?”

A fourth wave, a more intense scorching of sizzling sands, heated flints and igneous grit, tore through the exposed skin of her back in a torrid and agonising maelstrom.

Phaedra realised the death of her entire squad over the screams of the child in her arms. They sacrificed themselves while fulfilling their purpose. In a desperate measure to save children. And her squad failed.

The knowledge inflicted a more excruciating pain. But Marshall Phaedra, the celebrated hero of the Covenant, did not relent her grip. She held tight, shielding the child, till her own scream, the child’s cry, the child’s desperate thrashing and the torment wrought upon her body in the middle of a chaotic searing vortex, amalgamated into a singular agony wrecking her mind.

After what could only be processed as eternity to her shattered mind, the child stopped her thrashing. Her chords produced no more screams.

And Phaedra fell.

Unconscious or dead. Phaedra was neither. Her mind still struggled to accept. Her will, still unchained, but on the verge of being broken, toiled against the relentless onslaught.

She was a Menkaran. A race without a place. No planet. Not even a rickety space port or a motley collection of ships to call their own. Thinned and dispersed across the universe, Phaedra, the famed hero of the Covenant, was their identity. Her people looked up to her to provide a welcoming place for all Menkarans to call home. And lying forgotten on Zolara, she failed her people.

Her squad, the celebrated Mediators of the Covenant, lauded for their ability to resolve conflicts, lost. No. She lost them. She led, and they willing followed. No kernel of doubt resided in Shorin’s voice when she last heard. And she failed her squad.

Vierna was right. This conflict on planet Zolara — between the Lorvian settlers and Koravecs — was not her concern. An internal affair. Even the Covenant pulled out. But not Phaedra. The notion of abandoning the settlers did not sit well with her. She vow to save every one of them. She promised the nameless Lorvian child that she would save her. And she failed her too.

Can’t accept. Her mind battered against the unrelenting barrier of the odium.

No.

She refused.

The searing agony of painfully experimented, vivisected and patched, vivisected and patch, the cruel process repeating, again and again. She rejected it.

Was it her mother Vierna, who allowed it?

Or was it her hands that carried out the deed?

The feel of Vierna’s throat in her hands, the poignancy of her mother’s pulse throbbing in her palms, the way those eyes bulged as life seemed to ebb out. Phaedra felt it all.

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Memory and mind played a cruel prank in tandem. Neither became reliable.

It was a quest. But who gave her?

Her sister? Was it Astra who directed her? Or was it the last words of the smuggler she so brutally slaughtered?

Causality was optional to her fractured mind. Verisimilitude became fleeting to her memory.

Clarity evaded.

And the madness stirred, posing a barrier to Phaedra’s quest. A fact she knew for certain.

Restraining herself, Phaedra took note of her surrounding. She found herself in the interior of a spaceship. A voidprowler. Older model.

A gift from her sister? Or from a Menkaran family she ran into?

Or robbed after killing her mother? Or was it the smuggler?

Mind and memory played the cruel joke on her; again.

Phaedra clenched her palms as she rose to her full height. Corded steel-like muscles jumped beneath rich red invaded bronze skin, carrying her power. The will of a Prime soared. With a slam, she cracked the door of her spaceship and jettisoned herself towards planet Vatune.

Neither the cold of the space, not the airless void, bothered her evolved perfection. They were nothing compared to the instilled madness.

----------------------------------------

Phaedra rose from the crater of her arrival and assessed her surroundings. Lush forests surrounded by mountains. Her evolved senses confirmed a lone town in the distance.

She inferred a dearth of technology on the surface of Vatune. Or rather, the presence of technos interdict, enforced from Caeletis, the orbital city above Vatune. The verdict of Caeletis ensured a civilisation dependent on steel and mettle to settle their conflicts.

But none of that interested the fallen Marshall. Her concerns were more primitive. Granted, the isolation on planet Zelnir made the novelty of nudity worn out, still Phaedra retained enough of social grace to know her current state. Most of her paltry attire, torn cloaks in fact, having burned on her entry to the atmosphere, left Phaedra naked in the forest. She needed some rags, plain and simple. Phaedra sauntered towards the lone town.

And as she neared, the chinking of armoured metal, and the ominous and barely audible murmur of a crowd, came from the town.

Soldiers. Armoured soldiers.

Conflict.

Instinct screamed for her to avoid. Getting involved in a conflict not her own was what brought her to her current state. The Koravecs and Lorvians were not her problem. Neither was the dispute between the Lorvian settlers and their senate. Nor were Astra and her problems. Sneak. Procure some rags from those who would not miss it. That would have been a very logical solution.

But the dying embers of her identity would not relent. Even denied a place, the Menkarans always held themselves to higher standards. Never committed themselves to an unethical practice. Nor would she.

“For long have the demon spawns conspired with their sinful ways to pervert our faith.” A voice with resoluteness to shatter mountains rang from the middle of the town.

Those words made Phaedra cautiously approach the town.

“The Verdict of Caeletis was provided to guide us back to Ascension. We are sinners. We carry within ourselves the sins of our ancestors. A deed so vile that the empyreans have cast them down. Only a strict adherence to the Verdict of Caeletis shall we be tempered to Ascend.”

Phaedra approached the deserted outskirts of the town. Farms and fields, devoid of any working hands. Straight ahead, her vision could peer through the distance, directly towards the town centre, where on a raised dais stood a figure in a rich silvery robe, preaching vehemently.

“Good citizens of Eotheath, Children of the Sunken, let no demon spawn corrupt your devotion. For the path to Ascension is near. Even as I stand before you, the promised Holy Maiden has been delivered to us. From her heavenly world of Earth, she has come promising us guidance.”

The last part held Phaedra’s attention. She edged closer towards the crowd. She tried to ignore the figures bound to the poles, and the collection of wood piled around them.

“From the city of Aermire, she awaits. She beckons. Do you answer?” The preacher’s question resounded through the town square. No one spoke. Not even a stirring. Neither from the townspeople nor from the hundreds of assortment of knights, a full company of a sacred order of paladins.

“Would you reject these demonic brood?” The preacher, with a scaled head, calculating ophidian eyes, and split tongue twisting, indicated to the figures bound to the pike. “Children of the Sunken, would you rejoice in enacting the Judgement of Caeletis?”

Phaedra stepped into the town square. The lethality of her presence incited a harrowing silence. She noticed the slit-guarded eyes of the preacher, and the attention of a full company of paladins narrowed above her head, observing the lack of her horns.

“I beg to the kindness of strangers.” Despite Phaedra’s words, the tension did not ebb away. “Could someone offer an old rag to clad myself? Perhaps there is a fence to erect or a wall to repair in exchange? That is all I ask.”

“O exalted Menkaran, have you come to save us?” cried one of the captured tied to the pike.

Patches of silvery fur on a face with yellow eyes, and an alto-timbre of a feminine voice, Phaedra noted.

“Great-Grandfather was right. When he came from the stars, he brought the message of the Menakaran Potentate. I have never wavered in my belief,” she added.

“An open declaration of demon worshipping,” roared the preacher. “An affront to the Verdict of Caeletis, and the Holy Maiden.”

“Not worship. Veneration,” said the captive girl. “to the Potentate.”

“The Menkarans never had a planet or an empire. Only a fool would claim that title,” scoffed Phaedra.

Even as the words left the tips of her tongue, the preacher snapped fingers, instructing the paladins.

A squad of armoured knights, behemoths encased in steel, with halberds thick and large enough to split reinforced doors, advanced in a single file.

“I want no part of this.” Phaedra tilted her head in the direction of the forest. “I am merely a down-on-her luck traveller, seeking some hospitality. If your town has none, then I wish to be on my way.”

“Caeletis, aid us,” screamed the Preacher. “May your faith be our shield, and your acts be your prayers. Caeletis, send us guidance.”

In a precarious instant, three figures, towering over the armoured column of knights, manifested.

The crowd parted further. Some falling on the ground kowtowing at the appearance of the Angels. Others shouted, proclaiming their faith. Some even screamed divine judgement, for the presence of Immanence strengthened their resolve.

But Phaedra remained unwavered. Neither fear nor anger. Her eyes, grey-silver and dull, casually flicked from one angel to another. A lethargic dismissal passed with her gaze. Three automated combat suits teleported from the orbital city, was not the kind of threat that daunted the Most Evolved of the Menkarans. Such petty tricks only served to infuriate her.

One lone brow of the Phaedra curved up in a quizzing look. “Is this necessary? I have sworn not to involve in conflicts that are not my own.”

“Surely, the Potentate would not allow this,” shouted another captive. “You are an exalted Menkaran. How could you ignore the mandate of the Potentate?”

Phaedra’s gaze languidly darted towards the captives. All fifteen of them stared back at her. Not even of the same race. Mixed heritage. Phaedra could see the telltale signs. A tale as old as the dawn of any civilisation. Blame individuals who do not align with the majority’s perspective. In Vatune, those born between different races seemed to fit the narrative.

“The Potentate shall rise to uplift the noble Menkarans, was what Great-Grandfather believed in,” said another captive. “Yet, why would you choose to ignore our plight?”

“There is no ruler for the Menkarans.” Phaedra’s words were a decree and a pronouncement. “And there is no salvation for the Menkarans.”

The Preacher scowled, a vindictive expression. The exchange bordered on the blasphemous, a nearly intolerable transgression for him. With the flick of his hands, he signalled the waiting mob to begin.

Flaming torches were brought and the pyres with the captives lit.

Phaedra turned to leave, ignoring the company of paladins converging to her position. Neither the presence of the three battle suits blocking her path, nor the screams from the captives failed to breach the hardened shell of the fallen Menkaran Sentinel.

Covenant Phantom Vierna was right. Her ruin manifested from involving in conflicts not her own. Only an unseen, ethereal hand prevented her from leaping out to continue her journey. The captives might have been mixed race, but the commonality stared Phaedra in the face; for one part of the heritage was definitely Menkaran.

With a voice low, yet clear to be heard by all, she offered, “Leave them alone and receive my mercy.”

Her mercy was unappreciated and the lonely Prime of the Menkarans unleashed her fury.

Moments later, Phaedra walked unscathed, leaving behind a demolished town sheathed in the conflagration. She tore one helmet from a combat suit, examining it with the intense gaze of a Prime, but then, with an unbothered attitude, she tossed it to shatter.

If Caeletis had not been aware of her arrival, they are now.

From among the pile of corpses, Phaedra reached and relieved a fallen paladin of a surcoat, tearing it to fashion out an attire, simple and practical, to provide modesty.

When Phaedra completed dressing herself, she found all fifteen of the captives kneeling before her.

“Forgive us Potentate. We have failed to recognise your magnificence.” One of them eventually spoke.

The title burned Phaedra. Another responsibility. Another task to fail. Another set of wretched souls whose blind faith in her would doom them.

“We will follow you, Potentate. Despite persecution, we remained steadfast. Our commitment is strong as the one we devote ourselves to,” said another freed captive.

There it was. The last part. It staggered Phaedra, eliciting memories she wished forgotten. Her squad uttered similar words. Shorin voiced it the last time. And they all died, just as their words.

“I lead no one. You are on your own,” denied Phaedra.

“But the town has been razed. How could we survive in this inhospitable world?”

“By embracing nihilism.”

Without sparing a moment of acknowledgement, Phaedra leapt to the skies, leaving them alone.

----------------------------------------

Aermire stood atop a hill overlooking a fertile valley. It was a walled city with multiple concentric circles separating the administrative, from the noble residence, to the market district and eventually tapering to the outer towns and finally the farms.

From far away, Phaedra peered at the steepled structure in the centre of Aermire, a feat impossible to all but a Prime. The wide-open doors offered her an unrestricted view of a raised altar in the middle.

Vatshilah Shadoi. A defunct concept of an extinct culture.

Phaedra could feel her heartbeat picking pace.

There she stood in the middle of the altar. Neither the distance nor the years have diminished her sharp features. Phaedra stared at the pair of glacially calm blue eyes on a face with an adorably teasing smile. She was still five foot seven and eighty kgs of bad news.

At the instant, Phaedra knew for certain. Escorting Hallie would be a trivial quest, but the way her body responded to Hallie’s presence was enough to alarm the undaunted Sentinel.