Endgame scions of oth ep.., p.1
Endgame: Scions of Oth Episode 6, page 1
ENDGAME
SCIONS OF OTH EPISODE 6
JACK SHILKAITIS
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
CONTENTS
1. Whittled
2. Paste
3. Kingpin
4. Bex
5. Mother
6. Interpreter
7. Listen
8. Bullshit
9. Platform
10. Firmament
11. Obey
12. Cookie
13. Fianchetto
14. Solutions
15. Compleat
16. Whiskey
17. Orgy
18. Jester
19. Coliseum
20. Miscommunication
21. Hydra
22. Opposition
23. Alpha
24. Hot Potato
25. Essential
26. Filter
The Story Continues
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Shine on, O benevolent sun of Ceron. Shine upon the broken. Shine upon the severed. Make whole the hearts of men who have wandered from Oth’s grace. By Caïssa’s light, lead them to paradise.
But first teach them penance. For there is nothing that comes without a cost. Let sacrifice be their teacher and pain their mistress, until they have learned the ways of wisdom and turned back from their folly.
-Tome of the Soldier, 13:7-8
1
WHITTLED
“That's the last destroyer, sir,” Karis said.
Jerald stared at the Master Tablebase. He'd seen the same screen over and over, replaying the same maneuvers for weeks. It was eating at him.
“Reroute fighter wings one, two, and five,” Jerald ordered. He didn't bother drawing the paths himself. He'd done it five hundred times already in the last few weeks. He rubbed his forehead, resisting the fatigue. “How's it looking?”
Karis sighed, “The same, sir. Putting up a fight, but it'll go down.”
Jerald looked over at Tamaran and Relik. “Start the retroanalysis now. See if there's anything we missed, anything that's different.”
“Aye, sir.”
While Relik and Tamaran went to work, Jerald looked back at the screen. The last of three Grakhon destroyers was being picked apart by their fighter wings. Intrepid wasn't alone, they never were. The bishop was accompanied by a knight and two rooks, enough fire power between the four of them to take down the destroyers. They'd learned the strategy after the first dozen encounters. Each encounter was identical, at the same place, at the same interval. When the destroyer finally went down, it hardly felt like a victory.
“I'll get the jump coordinates punched in, sir,” Karis said, preemptively. “We have twenty minutes until we have to jump.”
“Last one of the day,” Jerald sighed. He braced his hands on the edge of the tablebase. He checked the fighter wings. The numbers were dismal. In the first week there had been heavy losses, but after a while the pilots got the hang of it. Now it seemed the constant combat was wearing on them. “Losses are up by five percent. What's going wrong?” He was looking at Relik and Tamaran for the answers.
“Hard to say, sir,” Relik replied, the duffer’s eyes still glued to his datapad. “We've had better runs before. The batteries seemed to trip them up this time.”
Tamaran looked over at Relik’s datapad, then to her own. “If that's the case, sir, then there are probably some errors in their flight paths. Perhaps we need to make minor adjustments.”
Jerald nodded. “Do the work and I'll review it. It's possible the Grakhon are making adjustments, too, though I strongly doubt it.”
The Master Tablebase flashed. She brought up a display of all previous encounters, showing the lines the Grakhon had taken. They were identical within less than three percent.
Jerald shook his head. “Well, I guess she answered that question. It's us, not them.”
“Should we still run analysis, sir?” asked Tamaran.
Jerald waved his hand. “Yes. Just to be safe.”
Karis looked up at him from his datapad. “You think they're trying to wear us down, Colonel? The regular attacks, small numbers, fighting around the clock…”
“That's what it points to. If they'd wanted to destroy us, they'd have done so. Just like they did with Jadarna and Kolora and Gondol and…”
Karis nodded and went back to his work. Jerald appreciated the silence, the chance to catch his breath. Standing on the bridge had never been so tiring. He'd had harder fought battles, certainly, but he was being chipped away little by little.
And so was the Ceron fleet. The constant loss of fighters was costing them dearly, both in resources and lives. They were sending cadets out into battle among battle-hardened veterans. And the flagships themselves were being whittled away as well. Too many had been lost to count. Sending more flagships to overwhelm the enemy only meant risking more of them to the battle. The strategy had become set and stale at this point: a knight, two rooks, and a bishop. That was the bare minimum. Anything less meant defeat, and anything more was a waste.
But the Grakhon had more pieces. For every three destroyers they took down, there were another three waiting for them twenty minutes later. There was no telling the end of them.
“We’re ready, sir.”
Jerald looked up at Karis. “Punch it in.”
They jumped to the next rendezvous point. The timer started ticking down. Each piece took its place, ready and waiting.
“When do you think this will end?” Relik asked. Jerald could tell the question was off the cuff, born of frustration. Still, it was no less agitating.
“It ends when it ends, Ensign. You don't ask why or how. Do you understand?”
Timidly, “Yes, sir.”
“We still have Novos to defend, and the homeworld. We haven't lost yet. We haven't lost.”
Jerald watched the timer tick down. Three minutes and forty-five seconds left. It seemed like an eternity.
“Fighter wings are ready, sir. Auxiliary wings have filled in the gaps.”
“Thank you, Tamaran. Have them report to their positions immediately.”
Two minutes.
“You think they'll jump in early?” Karis asked. “If they wanted to throw us off that'd be the surefire way to do it.”
Jerald scowled at the idea. “No. They're creatures of habit. They’ll be here on time, like every time before.”
Karis nodded, setting down his datapad on the tablebase. There was no work to do, just waiting. The board was set, the game was ready to play. The opponent just needed to show up.
One minute.
“Nimble is having trouble with their stealth drive, sir,” Relik reported. “They may not have it online by the time the Grakhon jump in.”
“Shit.”
Jerald grabbed the comm, called the captain of the Nimble, sorted the situation out. They were just as tired as his crew was, just as worn down. It turned out to be a simple mistake, easily fixed.
Thirty seconds.
“Everyone prepare yourselves,” Jerald said over the comm to his crew. Sirens blared. The Intrepid was on high alert.
Ten seconds.
Jerald felt his heart race. Every time. It never failed. They were coming and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Nothing.
Five seconds.
“Fighter wings start your attack runs!”
Time.
Jerald stared at the Master Tablebase. But nothing changed. No destroyers appeared on the screen. There were no enemies to fight, no demons to slay. As much as that should've been a relief, it wasn't.
“Should we wait, sir?” Karis asked.
“Of course we’ll wait!” Jerald snapped. “It's how long we’ll be waiting that I'm worried about.”
2
PASTE
The cage was all that was keeping her in. It was all that stopped her from being free.
Abi looked behind her, at the mass of humanity that was huddled there in the cell with her. It was pathetic, but no surprise given their conditions. They were being kept as pets, and treated like a nuisance.
“When will the food come again?” asked one of the Mesav men. He was one of the whinier ones. It would've been amusing under normal circumstances for such a hulk of a man to complain around the clock. Here it was just annoying.
“Food won't come for another hour. It's regular. You know that by now.”
Abi retreated from the bars of the cage to her corner of the cell. It was her corner because none of the other Mesav would lower themselves to be in her presence. Even the women and children looked at her with disgust. They were all hungry, getting slimmer by the day. It didn't do much to help morale. And neither did the food, which was some sort of putrid meat paste. Abi had her theories on its origin, but she didn't want to know. She just wanted to fill her belly.
“You there! Ceron!”
Abi looked up, finding a woman shouting in her face. “You have anymore food? I know you're saving it up. You're a conniving little bitch.”
The woman grabbed at Abi’s clothes, looking for hidden morsels of food. But all she found were skin and bones. Abi fought back, pushed her away.
“Back the fuck up, lady. If I had any food I'd have eaten it myself by now. Maybe you can eat one of your kids in the mean time!”
It was insensitive, for sure, but that was the point she had reached. The Mesav woman backed away, though, slinking over to their side of the cell. Abi had no pity on her or the men, but the look of fear in the eyes of the children… it made her regret those careless words instantly.
“Someone's coming!” one of the men shouted.
Everyone got down, huddling close together. All except for Abi, alone in her corner. The Grakhon pulled them out every now and then, one at a time. The Mesav had hypothesized that they were looking for the weakest among them to eliminate them. They were projecting their own ideals of strength onto the Grakhon, as if they shared the same values. Abi was sure she knew what they were doing with them, but she didn't want to think about it.
One of the Grakhon stopped outside the cell. The green glow cast shadows on the floor of the cell before they could even see the beast. The obsidian skin was sharp as razors. Just the sight of it made Abi’s body recoil in fear.
The cell was opened. It was her chance. The cell was the only thing keeping her from being free. All she had to do was survive the culling.
“Jezerha… nunush embrakhi.”
The words meant nothing to her. They were never quite the same. It hurt just straining her ears to listen.
The Grakhon extended a pole into the cell with a loop at the end, putting it around the neck of one of the men and pulling him out. He didn't struggle nearly as much as Abi would have if their places were exchanged.
The cage door began to shut. Abi hurried to the front of the cage along with all the others inside, pressing themselves up against the bars. They wanted to see where he was being taken, but she had other plans. She slipped a thin piece of metal in between the locking mechanism. The crowd of Mesav dispersed, backing away to their corners. She stayed there a moment, considering her options. If she let them out, too, they could prove a distraction for her. They'd make noise and the Grakhon would hurry over to round them up. Abi had witnessed it from one of the other cages. The roundup had been swift and merciless.
No, that wasn't what she needed to do. It would draw too much attention. The benefits of a distraction didn't outweigh the risks. She had to go alone.
She pulled on the door, bypassing the lock, then pushed it out by a hair. She could see the lock passing over the metal, missing the slot where it was supposed to sit. She only had to push it open and she was free.
“Sit down, wench!” one of the men shouted at her. He got up, started walking toward her. “You're blocking my view!”
Abi checked both directions. She could see one of the Grakhon far off, its back turned. The path was clear, she just had to take it.
The man set his hand on her shoulder. “Come on, get back to your corner, you filthy pig.”
Abi took a breath. Her elbow found the man’s temple before she pushed with both hands on the gate. She was out. She rushed to slam the door shut, but the man had already gotten half of his body through. Her preferred method of escape was no longer an option.
She ran. There was no hesitating. There would be a crowd and there was nothing she could do about it.
She turned a corner between two cages, evading the hands of the captives inside who reached out to grasp at her clothes and her hair. If they got their hands on her she would've been eaten alive. She had no doubt about that.
The Grakhon were alerted to the escape. She could hear them rumbling about the cages, rounding up those that had escaped. Abi came out from between the line of cages just as one of the beasts was passing, ducking back into the shadows and waiting for it to pass.
She saw a door into a building across from her, darted for it. The Grakhon had taken over the Mesav homeworld swiftly, laying claim to everything that was theirs. The building looked like it had been a factory of some kind before the fall. Now it was an empty, dark chamber. She ran without stopping until she slipped on the floor. She came down hard on her side. Something slick was on the floor, viscous and putrid-smelling. She looked down at her hands, squinting in what little light she had.
“Blood?”
She found her feet and looked up. There were hundred of bodies there in a pile, their arms and legs dismembered. They were being torn apart and having their limbs processed in some sort of grinding machine. The machine spat out a paste that was all too similar to the food they'd been given.
A side door opened with a loud bang, and one of the Grakhon stepped in. The room was illuminated by the light outside and the green glow of the Grakhon. He had the Mesav man at the end of the pole, the one who was taken from the cage with her. The Grakhon made it only a few steps inside before noticing her.
“Zughali! Geffa!”
There were more Grakhon in the room than she'd realized. They came out of hidden corners at the call of their comrade, and soon they surrounded her. One of them grabbed her by the hair and started dragging her to the machine. Her life started flashing before her eyes. She'd survived for weeks in captivity, planned her escape, and made it out only to die?
But another one of the Grakhon stopped her. He muttered something to the other, persuading him to hand her over. Soon the noose at the end of the pole was around her neck. But at least she was being led out of the meat factory. She wouldn't be turned into paste, at least not today.
She was taken to another building entirely, brought into a dark room with a chair. There were tables with instruments on them, ghastly looking devices that seemed vaguely medical. They sat her down in the chair, bound her down to it. She couldn't move. A needle appeared in the hand of one of them. It disappeared into her arm. She felt her control over her body slip away from her, until she found herself unable to move even the slightest muscle.
She could still see. She could still hear. And as they began working on her with the instruments in the room, she realized she could still feel, too.
3
KINGPIN
The dream state was more intense than it had been before. Now instead of experiencing it just for himself, Eben’s senses were magnified by all the others there with him. It was easy to lose himself in it, and at times he did. The olive trees and the grass and the stream all felt like parts of himself, too.
He pulled himself back from the overwhelming nature of the dream, finding himself lying on his back in the field. Neith was there with him, leaning against one of the olive trees.
“You look worried,” he said. She didn't acknowledge him. She was staring off at the sky, but she was looking deeper, he could tell. “We’re rid of Zebulon. I know it. I purged him when I brought you all here.”
The councilwoman looked at him with an expressionless gaze. “Zebulon will never truly be gone. We must keep our eyes peeled for him. The Zephyr may be especially vulnerable to him. If even a sliver of him survived, he could replicate himself and wreak havoc.” She paused, looked down at her hands. “But that's not what I'm worried for.”
“What is it then? The Grakhon?”
She didn't need to say yes. “They will stop at nothing. You must know this by now.”
“I do.”
“Then you know that these last few weeks have been a reprieve from the destruction that awaited us. The Grakhon stopped short of sniffing out the Conglomerate, but there's no apparent reason why.” The councilwoman looked like she'd swallowed vinegar. “The Glom cannot be saved.”
Eben tucked his knees in, wrapping his arms around them. He stared out at the scene in front of him. It wasn't real, but it felt real. “What if… no. Never mind.”
“What? Speak your mind, Ebenar. You're an emperor now, after all. Shouldn't you speak your thoughts?”
Eben smirked. “I'm no emperor. But, perhaps there's a solution. I don't think it would be anyone’s first option.”
