NOVEL NEXT B2 Chapter 26
No reply came, only the hum of the shuttle's engines as it sped away, leaving the cratered ruin behind.
A moment later, instead of answering, something Angar didn't know was possible occurred. A box appeared in the upper left corner of his HUD.
A scry-capture began playing in the box, projecting a scene from within Widow Fitch's home, likely from one of Hidetada's drones, maybe nanites. He wasn't certain what nanites could do, only that Hidetada sometimes utilized them.
The footage showed the dimly lit main room. Sister Amnat knelt in the center, tracing a ritual circle with a consecrated rod tipped with chalk, muttering prayers.
Widow Fitch led Rusak through a narrow hallway.
Her black veil was discarded. Her jet-black hair was uncovered, still pinned up, but not really, or fully, and its billows caught the dim light as she gave Rusak a tour.
Inside the bedroom, Rusak's hungry gaze burned as his tattooed face twisted into a grimace. With a groan, he seized Widow Fitch by the waist and pulled her close.
She didn't slap him or resist. Her lips met his with equal fervor. Angar's fist clenched as jealousy bloomed hot in his chest.
As they passionately kissed, a sickening crack shattered the silence. A black spike, veined with pulsing electric-blue light, burst through the top of Rusak's skull.
The Hierarch's eyes bulged, his mouth locked in a silent scream as the spike hoisted him off the floor. His exosuit's hydraulics whined uselessly as his lifeless gaze stared into nothingness.
Angar recognized the spike that had emerged from Rusak's skull. It was an Ebon Drain, a biomechanical horror of the Old Guard, designed to siphon the core's Energy, the Divine force that fueled Abilities.
This distilled essence was a key ingredient of their gene-forging and apotheoserums, vile processes used to transform and mutate once frail flesh into juggernauts of unholy fury.
Blue light pulsed faster and faster along the spike, drinking Rusak's essence, making his corpse twitch as his core was drained.
Then Widow Fitch's form convulsed as her flawless skin split like cracked porcelain.
Her body expanded with bones snapping and reforming with wet crunches, morphing into its monstrous truth.
The widow was a Reptiloid Devourer, an elite Matriarch of the Old Guard.
All Reptiloids besides the Worker-caste could shapeshift. Many had controlled Terra before the rise of machine intelligence and neural communion, a tech it was rumored the Pleiadeans granted the far less advanced Terrans. With all minds connected, all secrets were exposed, and the Reptiloids' control ended.
The widow's human guise sloughed away, revealing a towering, monstrous, serpentine frame of scales of jade and obsidian, mottled with amber pulsing veins coursing through her body.
Her overly elongated skull morphed into something familiarly Reptiloid, but infused with terror and nightmare. The bony crests crowning her head grew into ragged spikes, and her slitted eyes glowed a venomous green.
Her lower half birthed something like four biomechanical spider legs, each glowing with blue-lit filaments, tipped with a edged claw vibrating with monomolecular sharpness.
Her arms lengthened, thickened, and sprouted additional joints. The hands were biomechanical too, and buzzed with energy.
Her segmented and whip-like tail kept growing and growing, lashing behind her, embedded with blue conduits that crackled with bioelectric arcs.
Her torso rippled with symbiotic machinery. Plates of living alloy shifted and merged to protect vital organs, while tendrils of crystal-like tissue snaked from her shoulders, probing the air like sentient sensors.
This Devourer was a product of the Old Guard's unholy tech, both their fusion of flesh and machine, and a gene-forged mutant monstrosity engineered for slaughter.
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Her four spider legs softly clicked against the floor, almost silently, as she stalked into the main room.
Sister Amnat's disfigured face twisted in horror as she looked up, only to meet her death. A beam seared through her mouth, exploding the back of her head in a splatter of viscera, stifling her scream, streaking the ritual circle's chalk with crimson.
Before Amnat could collapse, a second Ebon Drain erupted from the floor, impaling her, lifting her off the ground, draining her core's Energy.
Then the Devourer began shapeshifting again.
As some human skin appeared, the scry-capture fizzled, then flared white as a deafening roar consumed the feed. The box disappeared from his HUD.
Angar drew a slow, calming breath, letting the cargo bay's chill air fill his lungs.
He despised always being on his back foot, off-balance, in the dark, a pawn in his new master's schemes. He hated it.
He decided he wouldn't ask a question. He'd unravel the truth himself, piecing it together from the facts he knew.
Slumping against the bay's reinforced wall, he closed his eyes, letting the shuttle's hum fade as he sifted through the events of Rhiginia, thinking it through.
A minute ticked by. He believed he'd pieced it together. Mostly, though a few details didn't fit.
If he were right, Hidetada had used him as bait again.
The Ilarix Accords barred the Holy Empire from orbital strikes against enemies, but its own citizens were fair game, a ruthless loophole the Saint had exploited.
Angar activated his comms, knowing that Hidetada listened even when deciding not to reply. "We're pulling out and heading into the void. I'll soon get my first taste of ship-to-ship combat in a naval battle we have no chance of surviving."
"Correct," Hidetada replied instantly in his sharp mechanical voice. "But the chances of survival are not zero. At least mine aren't. So, am I evil?"
Angar didn't want to admit it, especially in this case, but he said, "No," after a slight hesitation. "It was ruthless calculus and duty."
Hidetada's tone held a hint of challenge. "Walk me through your reasoning."
"You knew or suspected the widow's true identity from when I first spotted her," Angar said. "You ordered me to investigate the…"
"That wasn't an order," Hidetada interrupted.
Angar accepted that fact, quickly reviewing their exchanges again. The Saint had only given him two commands. The pieces shifted, fitting better, though not perfectly.
He adjusted his words, choosing them with care. "You suggested I go for a walk. Your goal was twofold. First, I'd distract her, and get her attention locked onto me. I believe you can see through my helm, and your main aim was to spot her sensor array around Rhiginia, allowing your drones to approach unseen, avoiding detection."
He grimaced. "Everything, all of it was a setup, just diversions so your drones or nanites could disable a few sensors. Not enough to trigger alarms or warn her, but enough to create a gap for a plasma bomb. Maybe she could hear our comms, maybe not. I returned to the sermon, so she assumed I might suspect something, but definitely not that she was a Devourer."
Old Guard technology wielded nanites like sorcery, conjuring a wide array of spell-like effects. Hidetada, Angar suspected, employed similar methods, though it had to be rarer in the Holy Empire, as he had learned it was Old Guard-specific tech. Or the sister teaching him had outdated knowledge.
"You ordered me to keep my helm on," he continued, "so its filters could shield me from her nanites and pheromones. If I…"
"Incorrect," Hidetada stated, interrupting again.
He'd been unsure about that part. He was uncertain if nanites and pheromones both assaulted him. He wanted to believe he was strong enough to resist one or the other, but together, they'd overwhelmed him. He wasn't sure if that's what he'd gotten wrong either.
He reasoned through which part of his statement Hidetada deemed incorrect, and the puzzle and its pieces changed.
"You didn't want her to know my age," he said, "so she'd think I'm older, consider me a bigger threat."
Hidetada didn't reply. After a few more seconds stretched out, Angar said, "I was supposed to go to her house with her. You planned to bomb me along with her from the start."
"Correct, young Knight," Hidetada replied, no shame at all in his mechanical voice. "But your helmet caused her to grossly overcalculate, assuming a seasoned Crusader's restraint. Instead of making you compliant, your sixteen-year-old passions were overwhelmed, locking you in inaction, consumed by lust. Pure dumb luck provided me an opportunity to save you."
Hidetada's voice grew colder. "I'd feel no guilt if you'd died. Your failure to control your lust, even against her nanites and pheromones, was your own weakness. We are Holy Knights, expected to rise above base emotions.
"Patience, the restraint of inclinations, is the root of victory. Learn patience, master your emotions, or embrace defeat. Until you do, expect me to see you as a tool to exploit, not an ally to cultivate."
Angar's face grew red. Hidetada was right. His loss of control was unacceptable. He couldn't let it happen again. He was Mecian, superior to all others, and he failed in a spectacularly shameful way.
"You resisted the dark corruption and psychic might of a Nofelim," stated the Saint. "Far greater feats than simply overcoming a base emotion."
Mechanical laughter grated through the comms. "If Azgoth was a beautiful woman, you'd be following her around like a Heretical lapdog right now." The Saint left the comms on as he continued snickering.
Angar's jaw tightened, Hidetada's mocking laughter fading as he tuned out the comms. The Saint's taunts stung, but Angar focused, dissecting the rest of the bombing's necessity, as well as his imminent death in his first space battle.