Ravens of Eternity

207 The Seven (plus Two)

Large flakes of snow fell lightly over the mountain settlement as night blanketed the sky above. Columns of flame and tongues of fire consumed the mayor’s mansion in its entirety. The flame itself was so large that it lit up half of the settlement itself, along with a good amount of the mountain behind it.

Inside were the many corpses of the dead colonists, all of whom rested atop burning and charred bundles of wood. The great pyre reduced everyone and everything inside to dust and ash and bone.

The only things that remained whole were the Prophets’ invasive cybernetics and the rock that surrounded them.

All five of them stood right outside the courtyard, far enough from the fire, but close enough to feel its heat. They bathed in its warmth, and chased the cold from out of their bones. They watched as the fire consumed it all, and cleansed the colony of their corruption.

Amal’s eyes were reddened and wet with tears. When she spoke her voice was soft, yet cracked.

“What these Prophets did was irreversible, and reprehensible,” she said. “They hollowed out an entire settlement just so they could build their foolish army.”

“They claim to be superior humans,” added Eva, “but instead take away the best parts about being human. And destroy them at the same time.”

“Not only that,” said Miko, “they replace that humanity with some inferior, lackluster version. Their abhorrent philosophy does not match their brutal reality.”

“We’ll stop them,” said Amal. “We’ll definitely stop them.”

.....

She said it twice, as though to reaffirm their impossible goal. On hearing them, Max and Claire glanced at each other with questions deep in their eyes.

“But can we stop them?” asked Max. “I mean, you already said it – there’s thousands of them.”

“Of course we can,” said Eva. “If our home system can simulate the sun and control the weather... anything’s possible. All we gotta do is figure out how.”

Those questions rattled around in their minds, even as they paid their last respects to the dead in front of them. They knew the task in front of them was practically insurmountable, but continued to carry on regardless.

As they thought and strategized, a voice came out from behind them.

“Mighty big fire you’ve got there,” said the voice. “Our sensors picked it up way up from upper atmo, almost. Led us right here, no problem.”

The five of them spun around, and saw four well-armed and armored people approach them from out of the darkness. But any wariness quickly faded as the recognition set in.

“Locke!” exclaimed Eva. “Everyone! It’s great to see you all! I’m glad you all could make it!”

Next to Locke was the rest of the Seven: Xylo, T-Rex, and Fluke. All four of them looked to be in great spirits. At least, they certainly looked happy enough during their reunion.

“Great to see you all as well,” said Xylo. “Though you seriously coulda picked some place way warmer to meet up. This is straight up miserable.”

“If only that were possible,” answered Eva.

With the Seven together again, Claire visibly and audibly wowed. She made sure that her EyeCast caught their reunion, along with every hug and handshake and wave.

Which, of course, Xylo quickly noticed. In fact, she saw that all their EyeCasts were out, and zipped around everywhere.

“Say, uh,” she began, “are we gonna get any residuals for being on your OmniCast? I keep hearing people talking about it here and there. Some even recognize me while I’m out and about.”

“Yeah, you’re all getting quite a bit of traction in Helios,” added T-Rex. “I’m kinda jealous, honestly.”

“We are happy to set up contracts with all of you,” said Miko. “It is a simple thing to send you a percentage of earnings gathered for ‘Casts that include you. We should even discuss the potential for a spinoff.”

“Well, look at you being all serious,” said Xylo.

“Here we are, negotiating over some ‘Cast when we don’t even know why we’re here fully,” interjected Locke. “Not that I mind, but how ’bout you fill us in on what’s going on first, then we can chat about doing justice for profit.”

Eva threw a thumb over her shoulder, and gestured at the huge fire behind them.

“It’s all about those people,” she began.

Then she and the Ravens filled them in with the ordeal they had just fought through and survived. Each of them recounted their point of view, what they observed and experienced. They told them about the Hallowed, and the Prophets in as much detail as they could.

Their initially happy, jovial faces turned more and more sour with every story they were told. They became downright sick to their stomachs as they watched the footage the Ravens had captured.

And their hearts bottomed out when they heard Callie’s boasts about armies and takeovers and the glory of the Prophets.

It took them all a little bit of time to absorb it all, but by the end, their faces were as hard and gray as stone.

“Alright, I get it,” said Locke, “so you wanna go after the Prophets, right? Trash ’em, put ’em down for good. Why not take it to the Federation? They can handle it. I mean, we’re talking about hundreds of these synths, right? Thousands of Hallowed.”

Max immediately scoffed at Locke. To him, the implication that the Federation was capable of anything was laughable.

“That might be viable,” he said, “if the Federation actually gave half a damn for these people. All they care about is playing war with the Hegemony. Especially out here. Good luck getting a single Naval officer to look in this direction, much less send a cleanup crew.”

“I agree,” piped in Miko. “I believe their response to this will be far too late, if anything at all.”

“We definitely wouldn’t police this far out,” said Claire. “Even Peacekeepers would stay away from somewhere so lawless. I think these people are practically on their own.”

Eva began to walk down the settlement’s main street, and walked towards the bottom. She gestured to everyone to follow her, which they did.

“I did send some info to some buddies from the academy,” she said. “They’ve got a whole team set up just to deal with this. They’re definitely going to take action, but who knows how long it’ll take them to get set up.”

“Which means it’s all pretty much up to us,” said Amal. “At least for now.”

“And besides,” added Eva, “this is something we have to do. We can’t just let others take care of it. They might just fuck it up. Or they might get caught up by red tape or procedure or ‘operational budgets’.”

Locke sighed deeply as he caught up to her.

“Do we even know where they are?” he asked. “It’s all pointless if we can’t even locate their settlements.”

“Of course we do,” said Miko. “I performed a hack of their systems...”

She hovered in the air as they traveled down the settlement’s streets, which surprised the others. Fluke looked more than a little jealous, all told.

“...and was able to find a handful of coordinates buried in their data,” she continued. “While they are not guaranteed to be filled with Hallowed, I believe it is still a good start.”

“Fine, but if none of them are?” asked T-Rex. “Then what?”

“We do our thing,” answered Eva. “We put our heads to the ground, and listen. We hunt ’em down like we would any scumbag bounty. We knock on some doors, or some heads, suss out where they are, then stamp ’em out.”

“This isn’t like hunting down Nightmare and his band of goons,” said Locke. “We’re talking about the Prophets of Gaea. They’re a serious terrorist organization with funding and training. And real motivation to do harm.”

“I honestly don’t see the difference,” added Xylo.

“Alright, let’s say we do go after these terrorists, vigilante-style,” said Fluke. “How the hell are the seven of us-”

“Nine,” interrupted Max. “There’s nine of us.”

Fluke nodded with hesitation, as though he was agreeing, partially. As though two more people would have made a real difference to his argument.

“I stand corrected,” he said. “How are the nine of us gonna face up against thousands of them?”

“Not sure yet,” said Amal. “Figured we’d take them down settlement by settlement, whittle away at them. Then, like with Nightmare, we face off against them while they’re weakened and end their reign of terror.”

This time it was Fluke’s turn to scoff.

“Oh, right, why didn’t I think of that?” he said. “We’ll just step foot into each of the settlements, guns blazing, no problem. Bang bang here, pew pew there, and boom! We win!”

“No need to use our feet,” said Eva. “We’ve got mecha and ships at our disposal. We’ll just steamroll over each settlement, take over the systems that control their Hallowed, and shut them down. We even get to kill any Prophets sitting in charge, like the cherry on top.”

“That’s gonna get expensive real quick,” said Locke. “What kinda guns do we have in our arsenal? I hope we’ve got a few big ones.”

“We have our corvette, outdated as she is,” said Miko. “We have also commandeered one of their Mecha, an A-ranked one at that. We will certainly commandeer more as we go along.”

“I’ve got a mecha we could use,” piped in Xylo. “From my old Navy Recon days. Assault-class with a sniper loadout.”

Eva brightened considerably when Xylo revealed she was a pilot. It certainly sounded like she had gone through boot camp as well.

“You never said you were a pilot,” she said.

“Never came up before, honestly,” Xylo replied. “Not like we needed it against Nightmare and his band of fools.”

“I’ve got a ‘Vette of my own,” chimed in T-Rex. “She’s totally sweet – thick armor, tons of nice guns, super lux on the inside. She’s parked next to yours; I’ll give you all a tour.”

Fluke leaned in towards Eva.

“He ain’t lying,” he said. “Thing’s got a seriously decked out passenger cabin. Leather, wood, raw titanium. Rarest drinks in the galaxy in the wet bar. And it’s doubly armored.”

“Hey, I’ve been living the life,” said T-Rex. “Doing high class VIP transport gigs across the core systems. It’s been a big source of creds for me. Big, big creds. Anyway, she can take a hit, and deal some serious punches herself.”

“Alright, great,” said Eva. “We’ve got two mecha, and two corvettes. Should be plenty enough to take on whatever’s on the ground, right? I mean, it should just be Hallowed with ground weapons, and those will barely be a threat.”

“We should assume that many settlements will have drone defense systems available to them,” said Miko. “Not to mention the fact that each settlement likely has at least one mecha in it.”

“Easily neutralized if we go after the pilots before they sortie,” said Xylo.

“Taking out any Prophets should solve that issue, no problem,” said Eva. “And we’ll get whole, untouched mecha out of the ordeal.”

“No matter what,” said Locke, “we can’t just go in guns blazing.”

“Agreed,” added Xylo. “We need to do some recon. Lots of recon. Then we hit them after we plan out an attack. Anything less would be outright suicide, mecha or not.”

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