Unholy Star, Beyond Faith

Death Squad 8

"To fear death so much that one cheats the terminatio die is to invite a new fear; but, the new shall outweigh the old, for the new fear shalt not just be the fear of death, but the fear of a violent death!" ~~ Pope Admiral Jerome III, delivering the ending day treaty for the Hundred Year War.   

There is nothing, in all the history of humankind, that has had as much of an impact on the social and moral fabric of civilization as the idea of immortality. Men and women had only just ventured beyond the Solar System when the secret to eternal youth was discovered, a way to repair genetic degredation. But faith and science clashed when the proponents of genetic refresh were accused of seeking godliness. The hundred years of war that followed brought fear and famine, destroyed whole colonies, and caused countless mortalities -- death was the price paid so that we could learn what it meant to live. In the end, it was the Church that formed the boundaries; boundaries so that we could not aspire to become God. 

The terminatio die was a law, literally translated it meant termination day, but was known colloquially as the long life ends. While the complete canon of the long life was complicated, most knew the essence of the law was that it forbade a twelfth gefresh and anyone who dared to ignore the terminatio die would be hunted down and sentenced to death at the hands of the terminatio die militem, an ordained order of soldiers known throughout the galaxy as the Death Squad.

Membership of the order numbered in the thousands throught the galaxy with set number of small dioceses peppered throughout the stellar colonies. The death squad members were universally feared interstellar executioners.

Protecting mortality within the Skyean Kingdom was the work of Death Squad 8, a group of twelve Churchmen and many more acolytes stationed on a satellite in orbit around the Royal Platform that floated in the sky above the green planet, Skye's equator. Operating in teams of between three and six, this Skyean Death Squad would be ready at a moment's notice to summarily punish violations of the terminatio die.

Typically two teams would await assignment on the platform while the other two engaged in operations, but the current period had been especially busy and three teams were already on assignment when the notification was received of a violation on the Atripliceae Platform, which floated high over Skye's largest continent, Galicia.

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  [Death Squad HQ, satellite platform to the Royal Platform in space orbit over the planet Skye]     

Churchman Dean E1K0 walked in on his teammates, Churchman S66M and Churchman H0N3 shagging like peasants on the common room couch. "Hey, fuckers! It's time to go! We got a dumbass on one of the platforms over Galicia."

H0N3, or Honi was he was known, ignored his superior's call, being single-mindedly intent on unloading inside his lover. But S66M who other Churchen called Sam took the call more seriously and pushed the randy bull off with a jab of her foot into the dark skin of his smooth, muscular chest. The tall Churchman fell back with a scowl. Defeated, he bent down to retrieve his uniform from the floor cursing under his breath something about how he was going to get his pants on with such a powerful erection.

Sam sat up and pulled a black shirt over her head and ample breasts. She whipped her neck to the side to flick long brown hair from out under the white collar. "It's been an age since we had a local to put down. Are you sure it's not just a false positive?" she asked while wriggling into the rest of her uniform.

"No, the call's good. Captured twice this morning as the offender jumped to and from another platform."

"Who would be so fucking stupid to evoke a death wish so close to home," Honi asked, still pissed off at his change in focus.