The clock oppressed all under the golden sun of the Poslushi nation. Its infernal tick-tick-ticking counted down, ever down, to the end of all society held as decent, of everything the Venerable Ancestor had held dear. If nothing was done, if the clock was not rewound and reset, the vile forces of mankind would crush down their monuments and erase their culture forever, corrupting their people to servants of iniquity and sin. Vermin and rot, from every side vermin and rot, a pestilence that dared put its jackboot upon their sacred lands in the interest of the Tenth Warlord. It had to be the Tenth; it just had to be.
Dao’s expression was serene, and she looked down at Macuahuitl from her throne with an inscrutable gaze. Only now, standing before her Overbattlematron with her grand idea, did she see how truly imposing Dao was. With the light glinting off of her exoskeleton and odors of apprehension curling off of her, she seemed almost like some heavenly being passing a judgment. Then, Macuahuitl chastised herself; there were no gods, no beings beyond the Ancestor, and comparing another to one was blasphemous. Still, her point stood; Dao remained in silent consideration.
“If we can return to our old ways, we can turn back the clock. This will pass if we are virtuous; surely, the Ancestor will favor us if we honor Her traditions! We can muster forth all our strength and push back these servants of the Tenth before they destroy us!” Macuahuitl recited, her antennae perked up and her posture raised in triumph. “The forces of evil can throw however many warheads as they wish at us, but they can never break us if we stay true. We will push them back in blood and in fire, and we will redeem them and teach them to be joyful under our benevolent dominion!” she continued on, shaking her clenched fist with every phrase.
There was a short pause while she caught her breath. “Are you finished?” Dao said, her voice flat. “No, ma’am,” Macuahuitl said, filling the air with determination, “but we will, with the power of the Ancestor’s grace, win! The war is not yet over; the clock has not yet reached midnight! It will be costly, yes, it will be unbearably costly, but we will win!”
With that, she fell silent, her hands clutched in front of her chest, waiting expectantly for an answer. The various bridge crew of the High Judge Sabre didn’t look up from their duties. Macuahuitl vaguely remembered getting their attention at the start of her speech, but she must have lost it at some point. Dao continued to look down upon her, emotionless as ever. Needles of doubt began to prick at Macuahuitl’s psyche, but she pushed them down; she would not bend for the opinions of others in her holy quest.
With a grunt, Dao stood from her throne, towering over Macuahuitl by some three meters. Macuahuitl still couldn’t quite make out what she saw in Dao’s eyes, but she was starting to see glimpses of disappointment–or disgust. “I have humored you too long, Battlematron; I see that that was a mistake.” she spat, the first smells of pent-up anger beginning to register on Macuahuitl’s antennae.
“I’m–I’m sorry, ma’am?” Macuahuitl said, nervously taking a step back.
“You speak of the Venerable Ancestor with the words of a lunatic,” Dao said, slowly stepping down the stairs to her throne, one by one, and driving Macuahuitl back further and further, “you forget that, in her lifetime, the Ancestor forbade idols in her name and refused any spiritual title! You worship our founder like primitives worship a crashed spacecraft!”
Suddenly, Macuahuitl felt hot anger rise up within her. “How dare you!” she hissed, her elytra opening outward in defense. “How dare you blaspheme Her name with such lies!”
“How dare you contradict the oldest edict in the Combine with your dogma?!” Dao roared back. She was taller than Macuahuitl, and now that they were almost face to face, she seemed monstrous. Suddenly, her hand was on Macuahuitl’s chest and she shoved her back. “You Squireworlders are nothing more than a bunch of madmen prostrating yourselves before false prophets!”
“The Squireworlds are the only thing keeping this nation from the bowels of depravity!”
“E-nough!” a high-pitched voice rang out, shocking them both into silence. Macuahuitl looked to her left to see a male Poslushi dressed in the robes of a Dynastic Commissar staring them down, his mandibles clenched in anger. Macuahuitl didn’t remember him being in the room originally. “In all my years enforcing Her Dominance’s will, I have never seen such unprofessional conduct by anyone of such high rank! You are to serve the High Judge, not succumb to petty politics!” he enunciated every word, never breaking eye contact.
“She will serve nothing but her twisted cult!” Dao jabbed a finger at Macuahuitl.
“And she will serve nothing but her own corruption!” Macuahuitl jabbed her finger right back.
“I don’t care if you’re working for the humans!” the Commissar shot them both down. “If you cannot execute the commands of your superiors, I will personally bring you out before the High Judge herself! Do I make myself clear?”
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There was a brief pause while both sides of the argument considered whether it would be wise to continue. Then, Dao bowed her head. “Yes, sir.”
Macuahuitl did the same. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” the Commissar said, “I’m going to be on my way now, and I had better hear that you two are on your best behavior.”
“Yes, sir.” Dao said. Without answering, the Commissar saluted, and then marched his way back out of the bridge, leaving everyone aboard in stunned silence. Nearly a minute passed before Dao spoke again.
“Macuahuitl,” she began, barely holding herself back, “return to your flagship. I will have a shuttle collect and return you to your homeworld.”
Macuahuitl’s mouth fell agape; this was all going wrong. “But, ma’am–”
“Go.” Dao said, obviously not taking no for an answer. Thus, Macuahuitl shrank back, and then stormed out from the bridge, barely controlling herself outside and utterly boiling on the inside.
“Good riddance,” she could hear Dao saying behind her, “now prepare the Omen reinforcements."
This was absurd; Dao was to be her hierophant, her herald, her prophet, and yet she had thrown back her truth in her face. Now, her time was limited; she could do nothing from her home. It seemed that the demons opposing the Ancestor were higher up than she had ever imagined. Vermin and rot, she knew, would come from within as well as without, but she had no idea before of just how far the current of blackness ran.
It was said that the Tenth Warlord was beautiful on her throne as she watched her subjects dance themselves to death for her amusement. And Dao was nothing if not beautiful. That beauty would corrupt and obliterate anything it touched. Macuahuitl had to do something.
The demon must be exorcised.
—
The Judge of Omen had decreed that a party be dispatched to greet any reinforcements from the Oxilini fleet in orbit, and thus, as the shuttles descended from the westward sky in plumes of cyan flame, Jian stood before a platoon of Soldier Caste. Only some had power rifles; the rest wielded captured or cobbled-together powderguns. A formerly Poslushi-only unit was intermixed with Ovinis, and their garments, if taken and put together, could assemble roughly two sets of body armor. Such was the shape of the Omen levies and their stockpiles.
With a hiss, the first shuttle touched the ground, its landing gear sagging downwards under the sudden weight. Seconds later, the rest followed. The rear loading ramp of the first swung downwards and a Poslushi officer stepped out, his armor far cleaner than that of his counterpart. Behind him was a dozen or so more soldiers, and yet more filtered out from the other spacecraft. “Captain Xiphos!” Jian saluted. Xiphos saluted back, looking over the platoon before him before speaking.
“My, it seems you need us more than your Judge said, Undercaptain.” Xiphos noted, the smell of humor coming off of his body. Jian bowed. “Your assistance would be greatly appreciated; we haven’t much time until the humans try something.”
“Indeed,” Xiphos gestured east, where the glow of the capital could just barely be made out over the horizon, “I’m told we need to set up defenses a little ways to the east.”
Jian made a gesture of affirmation. “Indeed; it’s important that you ensure that no one can repeat a…” he paused for a moment, careful not to give anything away, “a regrettable incident we believe was caused by subversives.”
“No spy or saboteur will bypass Dao’s soldiers.” Xiphos said. The air around him smelled confident. “Our professionalism and discipline is beyond even–”
SNAP-CRACK!
The sound of a power rifle beam striking metal stopped Jian’s heart. In a panic, he turned around to see one of his Ovinis soldiers reeling back, one foot raised. Mere centimeters from where it had once been, the metal of the landing pad was charred black and partially melted. The Ovinis looked around frantically for the source of the shot, and then he found it. His eyes narrowing and his lips curling back into a feral grimace, he stamped back down, leveling his rifle.
“No!” Jian screamed, but it was too late, and the sound of a powdergun discharging sent a shockwave of pain through him. Like a geyser flaring up, the back of another soldier’s head blew out in a white mist and he fell without a sound, almost hitting Xiphos from behind. Xiphos’ eyes widened and he stepped back in horror at what had just happened. For a brief few moments, it seemed that the whole world had come to a stop.
Then, the shock wore off. Xiphos’ hand went to the saber at his hip. “Traitors!” he roared, pulling his sword free of its scabbard with a hiss. “Fire!”
Jian dropped down and started running, just barely avoiding the cleaving edge of Xiphos’ blade. This couldn’t be happening; this wasn’t happening. The Oxilini soldiers pulled up their power rifles, but then the stuttering blasts of automatic rifle fire cut through their ranks. Still, they let fly their first volley, and Jian felt a terrible burning pain searing into him like a hot iron between his shoulders. Falling to the ground, he saw as his own men and Xiphos’ charged at one another. Men were on the ground, screaming, writhing, or just still. Jian watched as one of his own brought down the head of a hatchet onto another soldier’s skull, and a few more ran for cover, the makeshift bullets in their bandoliers jingling like bells as they moved.
Then, Jian was staring down the barrel of Xiphos’ pistol, but, even as Xiphos’ finger tightened on the trigger, Jian couldn’t help but laugh.
Poslushi fighting Poslushi. Whoever thought he would see the day?
—
“Hoo-wee.” the sergeant muttered, looking down on the carnage through his binoculars. The woods of Omen really made for good shooting, it turned out.
“Really pulled the wool over ‘em with that one, huh?” another soldier said, ejecting the energy cell out of his power rifle.
“It’ll make for one hell of a story when we get back to Camp Lejeune, that’s for sure.” the team’s support gunner chuckled quietly, slinging his machine gun over his shoulder. “Killed twenty men with one shot, and I didn’t even have to hit ‘em!” the soldier exclaimed with a wide smile.
“Shh, shh!” the sergeant quieted them, but he was smiling too. “Let’s get out of here.”
Thus, with a few more kills to their score, the fireteam disappeared from their vantage point, returning to the dark wilderness once more to find another place to strike.