Unholy Star, Beyond Faith

The Churchman

  [At an outer colony somewhere in the Orion Spur]

"Is it not remarkable? That which exalts the ignorance of heathen wisdom!?" hailed the Churchman over a deathly field of smoke and bodies. His augmented voice was horrible and his skull-masked visage monstrous. Stepping up onto a pile of bloodied dead that had been gathered in the aftermath of the termination, he drew twin revolvers into the air. To the few faithful that dared remain to watch the sermon, so awesome was the image of the Churchman, he could have been standing atop a mountain of slain. The colonists huddled together as a star ship floated from behind the gathering like a dark crystal cutting out the red light from their sun. The Churchman's jet black armour drank in the shadow and his holographic mask shone blue bright.

After the ship had passed overhead, the Churchman continued, shouting over a hot wind called up in the wake of the ship, "Not since before the Ages has any group countenanced such primitive blasphemy against the Gospel that holds tight the very fabric of our Galaxy as I have hereby held witness. It is with a fear for all that is holy that I tremble in a world whence righteous wisdom is so disparaged by those whom selfishly seek to live forever; those whom greedily seek the touch of a sacred, second knowledge knowable only by the Lord, our Father. But know this: To covet immortality is a sin!" He fired a shot down into the head of a corpse to make his point, the boom from the gun made some of the spectators jump, others gasped. 'These ones sought to live forever. Now they are dead!"

The Churchman holstered his weapons. "Look then upon what remains beyond this flood of strife come to wash away the devilish confusion that has plagued this colony so. Look then to the pure and noble mercies of the most merciful, our Lord God and weep that you have been spared by him to liveth, and loveth ever one God, in a world without end. Amen."