Ravens of Eternity

216 The Patriarch Falls, Pt Commander “Aurora” Dolere paced down the hallway with bold, hard steps. Her face was etched with a mix of determination and hope. In her hand was a datapad whose screen was filled with reports and coordinates and all manner of military and operational intel.

She came up to a closed door and barged right in without a shred of pause or hesitation.

Inside, two people were having a small conversation, one behind a desk and the other across from him.

“Captain!” said Aurora.

She walked right up to her captain’s desk, and barely acknowledged the interruption she caused.

“Commander Dolere,” he replied. “You know I’m in a meeting right now, yes? You can’t just walk in here whenever you want and demand my attention. What if my guest wasn’t a fellow commander? What if it was the rear admiral?”

Aurora looked over at the officer in the seat, nodded to him, then turned back to her captain.

“It wouldn’t matter,” she replied. “In fact, it would be better. Freya sent us another communique with fresh intel on the Prophets of Gaea. She’s found their main base, or at least she suspects it’s their main base.”

The other commander gawked at the revelation – what Aurora had claimed was huge, and he was in awe at the intel she received. To him, that info was everything their team was about – the removal of the Prophets from Federation space.

.....

But the captain was the opposite. His face was filled with mild indignation.

“And? Did you really have to interrupt us because of some intel you received?” he said. “We get dozens of reports every cycle! Are we going to act on every single one we get?”

Aurora was immediately surprised by her captain’s reaction, and the frustration welled in her quickly.

“Didn’t you just hear what I said?” she said. “We might have the coordinates to the Prophet’s main base! If we take them out, no more Prophets! Not only that, but we got it from an incredibly reliable source!”

“You know as well as I do that we can’t just go attack someone without verification,” her captain replied.

“Verification? We’ve got all that we need! Coordinates of many of their bases, footage of Prophets building armies, logs from their logic circuits. How much clearer could it get?!”

“Listen, dammit!”

The captain immediately stood up, his anger now just under the surface.

“We can’t just go and attack them, alright!” he continued. “I had people check on those settlements, and things just barely checked out. There were very little traces of the Prophets there. And beyond that, we’ve got procedures to follow. I’ve got to take it to the rear admiral, and she’s gotta greenlight any mission.”

“So then do it!” Aurora fought back. “Alert the rear admiral and tell her what we’ve got! Tell her we’ve gotta go sortie. In fact, tell her we’re going to sortie, and that she’s gotta finish up the paperwork on her end. This isn’t hard!”

“You might think this is all easy – a signature here, a firefight there. But that’s not how things work. We get the intel, we verify, we request, and if we get approval, we act.”

“Approval? The rear admiral’s just some PR mouthpiece for the Navy! All she exists is to tell the public that we’re doing our jobs. Which by the way – we aren’t actually doing!”

“There’s this thing called the chain of command, you understand? Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean we can ignore it!”

Both of them were getting angrier and angrier by the second. The other commander simply shrunk in his chair and watched as the shouting match escalated in front of him.

“Then what’s the goddamned purpose of being in a special unit, huh?” Aurora cried out. “I signed up because we were supposed to have the autonomy to act. And now you’re telling me that we never had that ability to begin with? You’re seriously telling me that now that we’ve got a bead on the Prophets, we’re gonna just sit here and do absolutely nothing?”

“Don’t you think that I want to sortie against them?” the captain railed back. “Of course I goddamned do! But my hands are tied, alright?!”

Aurora had enough of her captain, useless as he was. She pointed right to the pips on his collar.

“You oughta take those off,” she said, “since they’re clearly only there for show.”

“And you hold your twice-cursed tongue, commander!” he retorted. “I think you’ve forgotten your place! You’re not the one in charge here!”

“Well it certainly isn’t you, Captain.”

She slammed her datapad on the man’s desk, then stormed out of his office in a mad huff.

The captain sighed deeply, then slumped into his chair.

As he rubbed his temples, the commander across the desk from him pulled the datapad over and activated its screen. His eyes bugged wider and wider as he scrolled through the ripe intel displayed on it.

~

A thick metal access hatch opened up and allowed light to shine down to the tunnel beneath it. Freya dropped down to the bottom and immediately got into her Cyclone Stance, both halves of the Ra’ventrii blade in her hands.

She had landed in a small dark room with a permanently open doorway that connected to a larger hallway. But there was nothing inside, so she relaxed her body, then crept up to the edge of the doorway.

Then she peered out both sides briefly and surreptitiously. There was nothing in either direction except darkness and dust.

So she went back to the hatch, looked up at the opening, and beckoned the rest to follow her in.

And they certainly followed suit. They climbed down the recessed hand and foot-holds that descended down from the access hatch itself. Raijin was the last to hover down, and as she did so, she waved at the hatch door. It swung closed and relocked itself almost immediately.

Down at the bottom, everyone re-checked their equipment and ensured everything was in working order. All of them were armed and armored and 100% ready to wreak havoc.

The Ravens only had their basic C-ranked armor, however the other four wore their own specialized ones. Both T-Rex and Xylo wore A-ranked personal combat armor, while Locke and Fluke wore B-ranked civilian armor.

With the exception of Freya, Azrael, and Raijin, everyone equipped B-ranked FTG “Skirmisher” Short-Range Battle Rifles. Each one had thick rectangular suppressors on their barrels to keep them nice and quiet.

The only thing Freya added to her arsenal was Callie’s Handcannon. She strapped both of them to each of her thighs via magnetic holsters. With her guns and her blade, she had never felt more badass in her life.

All she needed to do now was find an armored long coat, and she felt she would’ve been set.

“Freya and I are gonna scout ahead,” said Xylo. “If anyone comes up behind you, take care of them quickly and quietly, alright?”

The others murmured in agreement.

“I’ll take up the rear,” added Max.

“Alright, let’s go,” said Xylo.

She and Freya crept out to the other side of the dark hallway and hugged the wall itself. After they had walked forward nine or ten meters, the rest followed suit. Max then took the rear position and kept an eye out for anything behind them.

Xylo herself was at the very lead, and held her rifle at the ready as she moved forward. She wore a military headset that enclosed her eyes and ears.

The hallway itself seemed incredibly long, and curved inwards slightly. Every so often, they came across a random door or short hallway. Xylo investigated each and every single one with quick peeks, but found nothing but small offices or large storage rooms.

After they walked for another minute, Freya put a hand on Xylo’s shoulder, and whispered lightly.

“Chatter up ahead,” she said.

Xylo nodded in acknowledgement, then continued walking. She retuned her aural amplification sensors and quickly picked up some light conversation. They seemed to be talking in one of the side offices along the other side of the hallway, so she quickly crept up to the other side.

Freya followed suit quickly, along with the rest of the team shortly after.

Xylo slid up to the open doorway, peeked in briefly, then turned to Freya.

“Four in the room,” she whispered. “Gimme a sec to deal with ’em.”

She then peeked the doorway again, but with her gun high. She squeezed her trigger four times quickly. All her rifle reported were four fast THAKs in a row as she shot the Prophets inside with unparalleled accuracy. Each of her bullets struck them right on their temples or foreheads, and ended their lives quickly and with little pain.

Then she gestured for everyone to get inside the room, which they quickly did. Xylo herself went in last, then slid the door closed behind her.

She glanced around the room, at the terminals, the short server rack, the monitors and screens that lined the walls, at the robust weapons cabinet. She recognized every centimeter of the layout and design, and sighed deeply.

“Alright, I’ve got a bit of bad news,” she said.

“Already?” said Fluke. “We just got here.”

“We appear to be in some sort of security room,” said Raijin. “This seems to be good news to me.”

Xylo looked over at Locke, then over at Max.

“Fine,” she said. “Both good and bad news. Before I get to that – I think we might have to come to terms that Hegemony Max here might’ve been right about the Prophets. About who calls their shots.”

Locke groaned audibly.

“So, bad news first,” she continued. “I recognize this layout. It’s a standard Federation military base layout. And everything you see in this security booth is standard issue. Those terminals, those seats, even their datapads.”

Locke was immediately set aback, and his face grew more and more bewildered by each passing moment.

“Federation military?” he said. “But we got in so easily! She just waved her wand, and poof!”

“I said it’s the layout,” countered Xylo, “not the protocol. Security’s extra lax here, which would never fly on an actual base.”

“So you’re saying what exactly? Are they Federation sponsored?” said Freya. “Doesn’t that mean that we’re attacking the Federation?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” said Xylo. “It’s unlikely, I think. I hope. Because if they were, then they’d have guards and tighter security protocols everywhere. No way would we have gotten this far without a serious fight.”

“Let’s just skip to the good news,” said Locke. His throat had become dry and cracked lightly as he spoke.

Xylo turned towards Raijin.

“Wanna do some more of your magic?” she asked the girl.

Raijin simply nodded, then looked at the terminals where the dead Prophets sat at. She pushed one out of his chair and took over his terminal.

“This one is still logged in as an administrator,” she said. “How lucky!”

She tapped on the screen and pulled up all manner of data. Reams of it scrolled past as the others crowded around her.

“I have a map of the compound,” she began.

Then she displayed it on one of the larger screens above her. It displayed multiple levels inside of the mountain, each one separated into smaller, hexagonal zones. Like a honeycomb.

Each of the zones had circular hallways that connected them to each other, while floors were connected by longer, curved ramps and antigrav platforms at various points. The zones themselves were labeled with their function, such as Power, Hangar, Main Security, Primary Databank, Central Command, Cloning & Education, Research, Growery, Mess Hall, and so on.

The zone they were currently in was labeled Storage.

.....

“Each zone’s circuit is quarantined from the others,” continued Raijin. “It all appears to be controlled by a Command Intelligence, and it manages all other Intelligences across the network.”

“Just show me where their blasted Father is,” said Freya. “We end him, we end the Prophets for good.”

“That’s not enough,” said Locke. “We figure out the goddamned truth of this place. I don’t think I could rest if I don’t try to find out.”

“I agree – it’s important for us to know,” added Azrael. “I also need to understand what’s being done to these Prophets. I’ve got this serious need to know why they are the way they are. Why this ‘Father’ of theirs changed them into... whatever they are now.”

“I suggest we split into teams,” said Raijin. “I will head towards the Primary Databank and take control of the system. Azrael – you should go towards Cloning. And Freya – I believe that the Prophet’s Father is located at Central Command. It is literally in the very center of this base.”

She tapped on her screen and highlighted a number of tunnels that ran up and down and across the entire compound.

“There are multiple maintenance tunnels and hallways that we can use,” she continued. “I am certain that we can remain undetected if we travel through these.”

Everyone nodded and quickly got into three teams of three. But as they did so, Azrael spoke up.

“Hold on,” she said. “Before we split up, lemme give you all a shot of my VitaLife. Nothing crazy, just a little physical and mental boost to keep us at our peak. At least, for the next little while. But don’t overdo it, okay? This isn’t gonna make you invincible or anything.”

Then she drew out her MedGun, slid in a fresh biocell ampoule, then buffed up the team one by one by one.