First Contact

Chapter 236: (The War)

Heavy warsteel boots thudded against the deck plates as the massive figure stood up from his throne on the bridge of the End of All Hope, moving down to the table where the leaders of the martial orders were all seated.

Naxar of the Nine Wigs finished off his mug of blood, milk, and whiskey and slammed the warsteel rim onto the table, looking up at the massive warsteel cyborg.

"Wha da humies want?" he growled.

The massive black figure leaned forward, putting spiked knuckled fists on the table. Pistons hissed and steamed, smelling of blood and rust, chains clanked as tension was put on gears, and a faint growl was heard from the warboi chassis at his side.

"Confed wants us to redeploy," the figure said simple. It tapped a few runes and a holographic map of the base of the Orion-Cygnus Arm Spur appeared. He tapped a single star and it grew in size, showing the system map. "There's something here. Something strange, according to Confed."

"Who care wha humies want. I wanna queen head on mah spikes!" the green figure snarled, starting to stand up.

"Sit down," the black warframe growled.

Nine-Wigs sat down, shutting his mouth, black perspiration appearing on his skin as fear, a largely forgotten emotion, trickled down his thick spine.

"Bellona, what do your eyes see?" the figure asked.

The figures at the table turned to face the nearly nude Terran female standing in the shadows, one hand on the back of the black iron throne. She was dressed in thin gauzy white material that showed the gray of her dead skin. She was a picture of murdered beauty, with her throat gashed open, her eyes missing and the sockets filled with purple fire.

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She stepped forward, still surrounded by black mist, her feet snarled with purplish black lightning, her long fingers tracing down the side of the graven throne.

The Dokijoan bowed her head and whimpered, Sister Mentissa, the current Joan of the Sister's of Wrath, bowed her head, her hand touching her holy reaver's pommel, both of them swallowing thickly as the founder of their two holy orders swayed to the front of the dais, her dead flesh perfect in its corrupted beauty.

"That which began and ended. The Alpha and the Omega. The intertwining of the beginning and the end leading to the edge of darkness," Bellona's voice was a choir, a chorus echoing from all around, and all present could hear her speak within their souls. She began to sway where she stood, her hands beginning to move in front of her, like fish swimming up and down a stream. "We have entered the Dark Days spoken of by the Digital Omnimessiah during his walk on the blasted sands of Tormented Mercury."

Everyone present felt a cold chill blow through the room at the mention of those chapters.

"The Dwellerspawn have been revealed, their corrupted and degenerate brethren defeated and cast down in defiance of those who thought their pale shadow of the Dweller's powers made them inviolate from all," Bellona said. Her feet began to move, slowly at first, but then with longer and more sweeping gestures as she descended the dais steps. The fog spread from her feet, wrapping around her and her white sheer wrap vanished in a puff of bluish-purple flame, leaving her dead flesh unclad as she began to dance with abandon.

"The death of the spawn has led to the awakening of the creators, from beyond, before, outside, and inside of time they have come out of their secret places that they fled to escape the destruction they now face," Bellona sang, the choir rising with her.

The Dokijoan raised her head, her sweet teenage girl feline face overcome with glory as she began to sing in pure tones of naive wrath and innocent violence as part of the supporting chorus, her pink and white chainsword held in both hands and pressed against her pink bangs. Joan Mentissa stood up, the heavy plates of her armor shining ivory, the eagle burning on her chest, the Lossflame torches on her armor igniting as she too joined the chorus, lifting her blade forged of Lossglass over her head as it ignited, her face overcome with bliss as she cried crystal tears as the two Mother Superiors lifted their voices to join that of the original Joan.

"The dweller seek to break the cycle, undo the loop, sunder the mobius of their own making," Bellona sang, dancing around the table, her thin delicate fingers tracing across armored shoulders and down plated biceps, her jet black hair flowing behind her as her dead gray form whirled and spun, only the burning purple of her eyes plainly visible.

"From each defeat they have sought to go backwards, to win the battle before it has started, spinning, twirling twirling ever towards victory in their own minds, on their own one sided history that forever has looped and twirled," Bellona sang. "Now, wrath they face, ones who can withstand their thoughts and their wills, their final defeat or victory lays at hand and all are but chaff before their cyclone."

"Cleave to the hatreds of old and TerraSol shall burn yet again, the lights shall go out, and the Spur will fall silent, no more will races and peoples sing to the ringing of the spur," Bellona's voice cracked crystal, her words caused computer consoles to implode, and the lights flickered as she moved onto the table, stepping between mugs and plates, the mist flowing up onto the table and around her legs. "Our war, our strife, our destiny lies, as it always has, through the Eye and into where only the dead dwell to the castles and fortifications of the Mobius, where yesterday's victory is tomorrow's defeat."

She fell to the surface of the table in an exhausted slump.

"And a child shall lead us through the eye to the mote of the Mobius, and there we shall all enter history with wrath and fire unbound," she whispered. "There we shall find what we have sought even as it has sought us. Our friend and companion death awaits us even as we go forth to seek it."

She gave a long sigh, the Dokijoan and the Sister of Wrath Joan falling limp in their chairs, slumping with exhaustion.

Daxin stepped forward, tearing a chunk of a warbanner free and dipping it in the wine still in High Marshall Lucian's cup. He began wiping down Bellona, the movements gentle despite the grinding and hissing of his warsteel warframe.

"Where is our fate, Lord Osiris?" Dread Lord Cavarxis asked, blood gurgling in his throat. "Where lies destiny?"

Daxin looked up, his face stretched across the black warsteel skull expressionless.

"We make for Belvak-8," Daxin said. "To your ships. Rouse your men," he lifted Bellona up in his arms.

"The Dwellers are revealed," he said. "The Digital Omnimessiah enumerate the soon to be deceased."

"Amen," the others chorused.

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Bellona stood on the bridge of her ship, staring at the warped and twisted lines of black armor that made up its hull. She stood perfectly still, unaffected by the vacuum of the bridge, her presence the sole 'living' presence aboard the ship.

A hologram flickered and appeared. Daxin, how he appeared whenever she remembered him. Large, muscular, with a scarred face and shaved head, tattoos on his face from the arcology gang wars, his rank and barcode of the Combine Marines on his cheek.

"Gather your children, Bellona," Daxin said softly, reaching out as if to caress her dead cheek.

"It will reveal me," she said quietly. Tears of blood began to seep from her eye sockets. "The Immortals are lost to time, we are supposed to be dead, gone with the death of the Digital Omnimessiah, praise be unto his binary name."

"And Bellona the Grave Bound Beauty?" Daxin asked, his voice containing something that hardly anyone ever heard.

Sorrow.

"I will do as I must. I will serve you, oh Dread Lord, as I have since I awoke upon the sands of Murdered Mars, brought to unlife by His breath," Bellona said. She was weeping openly now.

"Your children could possibly be the only thing that can take the fight to the Dwellers," Daxin said. Bellona tilted her head as if she could feel Daxin's holographic hand on her cheek, nuzzling it.

"In the name of love and beauty, I shall do as I must," Bellona said. She held out one hand to Daxin's ship, hanging a mere hundred miles away from the hull of her twisted and strange ship. She reached out with her mind, ordering the engines of her ship, not the Hellcore, not the Helldrives, but the great engines that had been silent for eons, to sullen hateful life.

She stared at Daxin the entire time, her purple eyes burning in the darkness of her abandoned and lonely bridge, as the engines slowly thrummed to full power.