Ravens of Eternity

And she felt her companions’ fear even as they stood by her side.

It seems they all had stepped into some sort of landmine, and there didn’t seem to be a way out of their predicament. Not that she had the time to think of a way out. All she could think about were the dead-eyed colonists and their pallid grey complexions.

“Did you do that to all those colonists?” she asked Callie. “Were you the one that emptied them out and left them... hollow?”

Callie sneered, but didn’t bother looking at Amal. And although she lowered her gun, she simply adjusted her aim from her head to her heart.

“I don’t talk to trash,” she replied. “Now get on your knees.”

“Why are you doing this?” Amal protested. “We haven’t done anything to you. We came here to help your colony, as your predecessor asked. There’s no need for all this!”

Callie was instantly amused by Amal’s words, and even almost broke out with a laugh. But she maintained her composure for the time being.

.....

And, for the first time, she turned to look at Amal. Although her face was plastered with a smile, pure malice was laced underneath it.

“Because it’s my right,” she replied. “Because I can.”

Amal was immediately taken aback by Callie’s unrelenting hostility. She felt it pour out of her freely, as though she threatened to snuff her out with it.

“Because I want to,” she continued. “Now. Get on your goddamned knees.”

Off to her sides, Amal felt her companions freeze up with fear. She practically felt as their hearts seized up and their blood drained away.

Instinctively, she reached over, grabbed their hands, and gave them a comforting squeeze.

“And what if we don’t get on our knees?” she said.

“Then I get to find out what’s underneath all that disgusting skin,” replied Callie.

Amal felt waves of disdain pour out of Callie, along with an aura of oppressive power. But no matter how strong they felt, she knew she would never kneel in front of her. Everything inside her refused to do so.

And this was a hill she was willing to die on.

“I don’t-”

“Stop! Stop stop!” cried Max. “We’ll kneel, alright? Calm down, please. Come on, let’s just cool down a bit, shouldn’t be hard all the way out here, right? Put the weapon down, and we’ll get on our knees.”

Callie chuckled at Max’s plea, and lowered her weapon at his request.

At the same time, Max tugged at Amal, and gave her a pleading look. Please, just kneel for now, it said. She grimaced, but eventually nodded in agreement. Then all three of them lowered themselves onto their knees.

“Oh, hold on,” said Callie. “Not you. You don’t have to kneel. Just these two.”

“I refuse,” said Max. “If they kneel, I do too.”

Callie sighed deeply, then gestured to one of her colonist assistants. It walked over next to Callie, and gave a small bow.

Claire’s eyes widened with surprise the moment she laid her eyes on the assistant. She immediately recognized her as the settlement’s former mayor. Her likeness came with her contracts, right next to her signature.

Claire remembered that she looked obscenely happy in the image, and it began to dawn on her what exactly was going on in this settlement.

She attempted to tell the others through her DI, but found the network blocked.

“Bring me two Conversion Modules,” Callie told her assistant. “Also bring a Family Unification Ring.”

The assistant bowed and walked away as Callie looked down at Max. The synthetic admired his features with unabashed adoration. She ran her fingers through his hair and felt its softness on her skin.

“You oughta feel lucky,” she told him. “You’re about to become part of a grand family.”

She continued to pet him, like he was a dog.

“Wh-who are you?” asked Claire. “And what’ve you done to these people?”

“Oh, that’s right, how rude of me,” said Callie. “I’m Callie Drenn, Prophet of Gaea, right hand to Crusader Mia. And we’re well on our way to undo the curse that is the Federation.”

Max watched as the blood drained out of Claire and Amal’s faces. Unlike them, he had no idea who the Prophets of Gaea were, nor did he know they were synthetics. Although he didn’t mind her cursing the Federation, it was clear to him that her actions were far from acceptable.

Amal in particular was completely bewildered by what Callie had declared. Her mouth gaped wide in shock at the incredulity of it.

“How the hell’re you going to do that?” she asked. “They kinda have whole swaths of galactic territory, with tons of people everywhere. With a seriously powerful fleet by their side. And you’re all, what, a few thousand at best?”

Callie laughed wholeheartedly in response.

“Figured you’d be an idiot,” she said. “Can’t even see the bigger picture, even when it’s all around you... Fine! If it isn’t obvious by now, we’re gonna be converting the whole goddamn galaxy.

“Colony after colony, planet after planet. Sure, it doesn’t seem like much right now, but once things get rolling... Once we claim even a quarter of Federation space...”

All three were instantly horrified by what they heard. They all immediately recalled the colonists’ dead eyes and somber faces, and imagined that look on everyone they ever encountered, on every planet they visited.

“Well, at that point there won’t be any stopping us,” Callie continued. “The more worlds we convert, the faster we can spread out. The faster we spread, the more we convert. So on and so forth.”

“Th-that’s madness,” said Amal. “And impossible. Space is... is huge! There’s too many people in it! People will fight back against you in the meantime!”

“Impossible?” she sneered. “It’s already started! Mia and I are continuing Father’s work, in his stead, while he builds the core family. And no-one’s come to challenge us! Out here, no-one’s looking out for these colonists. No-one cares about these weak, pathetic little people. No-one’s even gonna know what happened here for a long, long time.”

Callie only laughed harder.

“By the time they do figure it out,” she continued, “we’ll have too many of the colonies converted to our side! We’ll have our armies trained by then – pilots and soldiers everywhere. We’re training them even as we speak!

“We call them the Hallowed, in honor of their sacrifice to our cause. And I believe they’ll bring glory to the Prophets, and retribution to the Federation. Nothing can beat them, and nothing can stop us!”

Callie’s moment of glory lasted only a second before her terminal began to beep for her attention. Annoyed by having her moment ruined, she walked over to it and impatiently reviewed the notification.

“What the hell?” she intoned. “Under attack?”

She turned around and looked straight out the large bay window. Outside at the courtyard, she watched as Miko walked in with a baton in her hand. Three drones flew around her, one of which zapped a Hallowed that was running right for her.

The Hallowed fell over as electricity coursed through its systems, and shook uncontrollably. Miko stepped around it as another of her drones neutralized another Hallowed with a powerful electrical discharge.

She immediately flipped open her comms and screamed into it.

“High alert!” she yelled. “The mansion is under direct attack! All Hallowed are ordered to enter Blood State and destroy all aggressors!”

Immediately, every Hallowed within the settlement stopped what they were doing. Their heads and bodies jerked around as their code switched from one mode to another.

Then, they began to head towards the mansion. Shopkeepers leapt over their counters, workers dropped their crates, families ended their meals, and then everyone joined the others as they ran up the mountain with robotic strides.

All of their dour faces were wiped away after the order. They were replaced with murderous ones instead.

~

Miko sent Eva a message just before she walked into the mansion’s foyer, then glanced around as she checked for any more Hallowed. Luckily, none seemed to be in visual range, but she clearly heard a number of footsteps headed her way.

She looked further ahead into the adjoining room and scanned her surroundings with her DI. At the very far end was the Y-shaped double staircase that went up to the second floor.

She perked her head to the side, and listened as someone on the floor above her screamed out orders.

“Cycle out,” she told her drones. “Shoot only one at a time. Give the other two time to charge up to full. And only discharge when full.”

Her cottonball drones floated dutifully around her, and chirped in unison.

Before she could take more than a couple of steps forward, one of the Hallowed blocked her way forward. Two more came running in from a side hallway, and she heard as a few more came running up from behind the doors.

She ran straight towards the one up front without any hesitation. And although it reached out to grab her, one of her drones shot it with a full discharge of electricity. There was a loud CRACK as it struck the Hallowed, and completely fried its internal circuitry.

The Hallowed was flung backwards with force, then fell to the ground, dead. Its limbs shook from the excess electricity that coursed through them.

As she neared the stone steps, she noticed that two of them were running down each side. On top of that, three more were coming in from her right side, where some sort of amphitheatre was.

The two from the room she arrived from came running up, and three more from the outside slammed open the front doors.

There’s too many! she thought in alarm.

She quickly floated up thanks to one her drones, and stayed just out of the Hallowed’s reach. Not that they tried to grab at her – they simply gathered up and stared at her. They shuffled around to get as close as they could get to her, but not much else other than that.

All the others came running in and joined the crowd of Hallowed.

Miko couldn’t help but chuckle as she saw them move. It really felt like they were simple NPCs with poor or buggy AI. It was rough, yet certainly effective. But was also easily worked around. At least, in its current iteration.

“Your security intelligence is significantly more robust than your operational intelligence,” she told them.

Then she threw her armorscale ball at them, opened it up as wide as it could go, then zapped them all in the ElectroCage. They shook uncontrollably as electricity poured through and all around them.

When she was satisfied, she reduced the ball’s power, snapped it down to size, and watched as the Hallowed bodies fell to the ground.

Their charred and blackened bodies smoked and sizzled, a testament to the power of electromagnetic energy. A few still twitched, despite death.

Miko floated down, picked up her ball, then floated back up to the second floor. She went down the main hallway up to the double doors that led to the mayor’s office, then pushed it open.

She found her friends kneeling on the ground, and with Callie’s gun pointed at their heads. It was a sight she couldn’t stomach, and anger rose from deep within her.

“Kneel,” Callie told her.

“Never,” Miko responded.

“I’ll kill them if you don’t.”

.....

“And you will die one thousand deaths if you do.”

Callie was unnerved by Miko, not just because she had wiped through nearly a dozen of her Hallowed without breaking a sweat. It was because she felt no fear coming from the girl. The threat she just made was filled with true conviction, and that shook Callie to her core.

She laughed nervously, then trained her gun on Miko.

“You know what,” she said, “killing me isn’t gonna change a thing. No matter what happens, I’ve got hundreds of Hallowed on their way here, and they’re gonna tear you all to pieces with their bare hands. Only I can tell them to stop.”

She then fired a shot at Miko, murder deep in her eyes.

But in a flash of energy, Miko’s antigrav buckler spun out from Miko’s back and caught the bullet just before it struck her. The 20mm slug spun out slowly as the antigrav field neutralized all its kinetic energy.

“You are wrong,” said Miko. “I have already begun to dismantle your inferior drone army. And I hope you will still be alive to see its complete deconstruction.”