"What were you two gone for so long for?" Sarah asked when Carrie and I returned to camp. "Care, were you two doing it?"

"Gross, Sarah," Carrie reacted exactly as I knew she would when her sister asked that question.

"Do you see dirt and mud on my back? My knees?" Okay, maybe not the exact way.

"Seriously, what's up?" Sarah pushed.

"Send word to the Phoenix," I told her. "Priority Zero containment team to this location. Screechers in a two hundred mile radius spaced twenty miles and two hours apart. Double the numbers of Nephilim on the ground after those Screechers go off."

"I thought we weren't using the Screechers," Sarah said confused.

"Your Demigod gave you an order Wing," Carrie said. "Don't ask questions. Move it!"

Before Sarah could say anything, I was striding past her and Carrie was following me.

"Accelerating our timeline for this planet?" she asked over a private chat line.

"By at least triple," I told her. "We're going to have to split up for the majority of this planet and then we'll be swapping which one of us is here at all times for at least a decade. By then I expect the first answers to start showing up, even if they aren't the ones we want."

"I'll take the western half of this planet," she told me. "Put Sarah in charge of the eastern half, and you stay here. I know you're a little spooked about this, so I'll leave you to guard it if that will make you feel better. You'll have to put the work in and coordinate the overall offensive of both fronts though."

"I can do it," I assured her. "It's not the first time I let my own decisions take me out of the fight. This is just going to be the first time that I have all my limbs for this."

"Also the first time you'll be breathing down a research team's heads," Carrie noted.

"Never told you about your eye then, did I?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" she answered.

"Just after Yurnel told me what was going on, I started riding the asses of the teams in charge of prosthetics and made them work double time to complete a rough model of it," I told her. "They did it in a third of the time that they had projected and since it was rough, I forced them to perfect it and then improve it. Now, we've got more than a few civilians and Nephilim that are going around with eyes just like yours and all the medical pesonnel in the Human Empire and the Deva Collective agree that it's going to be the standard for another century at least."

"Does that mean I owe you for having perfect sight?" she asked.

"No," I answered. "It means I know how to light a fire under a researcher's ass."

As she chuckled at my words, I watched as several missiles were launched from one of the ships in orbit with several shuttles following after a moment. I moved to meet the shuttles just touching down with my containment detail that would be spending the next several decades guarding a ten foot rock that jutted from the ground.

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"Do you want to tell Sarah what's she's going to do? Or do you want me to?" I asked Carrie as the Principality in charge of the team approached me.

"I will," Carrie answered. "She's probably mad that you kept her out of this loop."

"You know I don't really have a choice," I told her as the Principality saluted us.

"Just take care of business," she told me before walking away.

"Containment team as ordered, Demigod," the Principality said as her Orders filed out under their Wings' command. "Where are we setting up, sir?"

"Follow me," I said before turning and making my way back to the obelisk. "I don't want anything that isn't there already touching this until I get research teams here to study it. Get me?"

"Sir, yes, sir," she said.

"Horseman Applewood and myself are the only two that you take orders from on this," I told her. "If anyone, Horseman, Demigod, Principality, King of Earth, anyone! tells you that I wanted this or that done with it, you are to take them out with lethal force. Do you understand?"

"I do sir," she answered. "What about when the researchers get here?"

"I will personally escort them and every member of their team to the object," I told her. "This is an archeological artifact that predates everything we know, likely including this planet. You and your team are to keep it safe."

"Mag-rifles locked and loaded," she swore. "I'll make sure that my whole team carries cold weapons for Scourge or bad situations."

"Excellent," I told her. "Stay close it's this way."

"Demigod, sir, I hate this," Sarah told me over the comm line that was open between us. "I don't know if I want to keep sending people out to fight like this anymore."

"You have to," I told her as I examined the holographic representation of the battlefield she was on. "If you don't, then someone who doesn't care about the people hurt takes command and casualties go up. If you don't lead, then people who don't think about these hard decisions will and they won't hesitate about these sorts of things the way you and I do. That's why I want you to be a Principality. You won't always have easy decisions or simple ideas that you come up with, it's how you tackle the problems that force you to make those choices that make you a good leader."

"Have you made mistakes with this sort of thing?" she asked.

"I have," I answered. "Each time I added it to my lists. The ones that turned out good remind me that I can make the right decisions and they inspire me to continue when I want to stop. The ones that didn't, remind me that I have more lives and memories relying on me to give up now. So stand up, and keep going. The fight's not done yet."

"Yes, sir," she answered. "Thank you sir. I'll try to make you proud."

"You already have," I said to the disconnected line. "You and every Nephilim that's still fighting."

"Rickshaw, I have a shorter list of researchers that I feel you should bring to this planet to study the obelisk," Cai said after a moment or watching the lines of Nephilim fighting push forward to hunt down the Queen on this planet.

"Hologram," I told him as I leaned back in my chair.

"The first is an archeologist from the planet Dhamphir," he told me. "An Aasimar by the name of James Odin."

"Odin? That's not a common family name," I noted as the file in question appeared in hologram for my viewing. "Where did it come from? Last I knew, no one was changing their family name to ancient Norse gods."

"It came from when his grandfather immigrated to Dhamphir in the initial construction efforts," he said. "Odin Smithwick chose to remove his family name and his children took the name Odin as the new family name. James is the youngest of my selections but he is extremely dedicated to learning about history. In his university acceptance essay, he cited Indiana Jones, the film character, as a big inspiration for him."

"What is he? Early twenties?" I asked. "That's extremely young. Maybe. Who's next?"

"Rickshaw Alan Sanders, Jr," Cai said. "He's extremely well accomplished as a linguist and an archeologist. His degrees are likely to be very useful to the efforts that your reseach team will be making."

"That name sounds familiar," I muttered. "Sanders. Where have I heard it before?"

"This young man is your great nephew," Cai answered. "He is the son of your nephew; Rickshaw Alan Sanders, Sr."