SPECTRE OF WAR

Chapter 2.2 - LORDES

About the size of a bean-pod it seemed to Lordes as the transport descended on a cloud of anti-grav. The likes of the transport pod weren't lost on him; called Modular Confined Ingress Egress Apparatus for Transport, Special Ops and mercenaries who took dicey jobs found great use in them. Only those who used the transports called them String Beans or Strings, as the official title was too much of a mouthful. Matte black, Strings were basically the same around the galaxy, regardless of who owned them. Big enough for a single adult, they were claustrophobic death traps purpose built for insertion and deployment into an active warzone.

He glanced around and then back up at the bean-pod. Sure, the surroundings did look a warzone, but it was sure as shit not an active one. What did that Domiq woman call herself? Caretaker of NS-7? He nodded, the String held certain rationale behind it. As a glorified custodian, the woman had likely never seen a battlefield outside of pictures. Money signs tumbled in his head, a smile splitting his lips. Such naivety was going to be fun.

When the String landed, no sooner had Lordes climbed in and put his back to the cushioned recess when the cushion inflated to hug his body, the lid slid shut, and the String flung itself away from the ground as if it were being chased by large, hungry wildlife. Lordes' CLOTH upped the oxygen level in his sealed environment, keeping him from passing out as the String hit 7 gees. The entire thing rattled like rocks thrown in a clothes dryer, increasing with the speed of it. Lordes whooped in excitement. Would have thrown his arms up too if not for the cushion keeping him pinned.

The lid glass made transparent on his side allowed him an unobstructed view of the icy planetoid, which was just superheated steam from snow and frozen soil meeting new lava coming up from the growing fissures in the crust. Suddenly the steam abated and the sounds of excitement stalled on Lordes' lips. Destruction on a scale he had never once imaged gave pause to the veteran mercenary. He just stared, trying to process it. It seemed as if another planet had collided with the one he had been on, but had somehow not left a giant crater behind. Rather, leaving pure hell.

Something pinged against the String's hull. Lordes blinked, tearing his eyes away from tectonic plates creating a mountain range while he watched, and looked for the ping. Another ping and then more. It was like hail on a floor-to-ceiling window.

"Oh fuck!" he yelled when something big struck the String, sending a reverberation through him.

There were no warning lights or a claxon or a calm voice telling him to stay calm. It was just him held immobile by a cushion while space debris tried to rip open his String. More huge chunks of God only knew what, for he didn't, struck the String threating to throw it off course which the transport adjusted for by altering trajectory which changed the pitter of hail to a constant static. Attempting valiantly to think of something happy to get his mind from inevitable death his mouth dropped open.

"Holy...," he said breathlessly. "The divine wraith of the Almighty."

It was the only reason that fit. Being a mercenary who sought out jobs that paid the most, the jobs Lordes were awarded leaned toward the line of work that allowed him to intimately witness the power of militaries. Missiles, bombs, exploding devices that went by different name, laser, masers, even large spaceborne objects hurled at great velocity; Lordes had witnessed it all. The thing with those weapons was that the destruction was tell-tale. Craters of various sizes surrounded by scorch marks made by the explosive devices and heavy objects, or straight lines in dirt slagged to glass where laser or masers were used. What he looked at was none of the above.

"It's gotta be the size of a big continent," he said, straining to lean forward for a better view.

The trees had not been ripped from the ground by explosive energy thereby obliterating a great deal of them. No, these trees had been pulled from the ground—if what he saw were roots on the largest of trees. Millions of miles of trees literally plucked from the soil. The String turned slightly, offering him a view of what might of have been a mountain range. It was all leveled quite nicely though.