Forevermore Unto the Void

The War in Heaven (part 2: Shots in the Void)

1

7 Minutes to Midnight-the Break of War (~52505 AFR)

Dead pods raced through the silent aether towards an insignificant asteroid little smaller than Luna. Teardrops of metal coasting on old momentum, they cut through the audient void. The Sentinels inside the teardrop said nothing, all kept in their dormant states until the pod registered impact.

Twenty pods crashed into the small satellite at once, their momentum shattering through the top crust of the dead rock, their baleflame canisters chewing melting through the rock and metal around them as they sank into the bowels of the rock.

The instant the flame melted through the Adamantium plating, the pods fell through to a rushing of air and the wailing of alarm klaxons. When the pods struck the ground inside the asteroid, the fins burst open and the sentinels awoke. Emotionless, uncaring, and deadly, the Argus machines strode forth from their metal teardrops, hardlight railguns raised and ready.

Straight from the pods, the automata swept the halls of the asteroid, working with absolute precision. Their bloody crimson, lifeless crystal eyes bathed the empty halls in infrared. Splitting up into squads of five, the machines made their way through the Mindful base.

Connected via a satcom-variant uplink embedded into their neural processors, the Sentinels quickly converged on any areas that contained any citizens and mercilessly gunned them down where they stood. Hardlight railguns left little mess besides the charred stains that were once bodies and the shadows, frozen mid-scream or mid-plea, that were forever burned into the walls.

As they moved quickly and remorselessly through the winding, labyrinthine halls of the asteroid, the sentinels purged the survivors with greater and greater efficiency as the pockets of survivors became more and more tightly knit. After a mere twenty minutes, the vanguard had reached the command chamber and found Iris facing the portal with a glass of wine in her left hand.

"Go on then, Archimedes," Iris told the machines, "strike me down and turn me into a martyr for the whole galaxy to see."

"Do you really think," Archimedes' voce, albeit distorted and mechanical, came through the vox-emitter of the lead Sentinel, "that the galaxy will mourn you so? The only ones who are remembered are the monsters-the cruel and ruthless. Do you know why the name 'James Wadeth' still persists after fifty-two millennia? It's because he single-handedly brought low the entire species. Your name will be but a blip on the map. Some may remember you for a time, but the heroes all eventually fall into legend and myth. Until only those who were willing to look into the abyss remain."

"You always were a cold bastard, Archimedes," Iris replied, taking a long drink from her glass of wine. "But you were also always logical, so why take the time to talk with me before you shoot me?"

"Simple," Archimedes told her before turning her into another shadow to match the others, as the rearguard squad of Sentinels planted the explosive charges around the asteroid to make the whole thing look like no more than a mining operation and the middle squad tore through databanks and server hubs for any useful information, "that's classified."

Once all the squads had finished with the tasks assigned them, they all filed back through the empty, dead halls towards the pods that ferried them back to the small hive-ship that hurled them into the only extant Mindful base.

The Shadow Council met once more, gathered within the confines of Deimos, the smaller of the two Martian satellites having been abandoned after it had been mined dry shortly after the formation of the Martian colony; it was primarily used as an underground meeting hive. Both Midas and Minos seemed surprised to see the other was present.