The Last Watchmen

by Christopher D Schmitz

  “The Arboleans have obtained their prize after all,” he mused. “Interesting.”

  Have I failed you?

  “No, my friend. In fact, you have done exactly what you were meant to, and you’ve delivered information critical to my plans.”

  There is more. The Pheema suspects you. He planted an agent infected by the apothecium into District Three so he could accuse you of subversion before the Council. The Right hand has forever been suspicious of the Left; he thinks you would usurp him—he thinks it is the very nature of anyone implanted with fallen one’s seed. He believes in the prophecy: that the withered tree will shake the leaves of the other six… that you will supplant him, are plotting a rebellion, and have worked against him, even against the Verdant Seven.

  Prognon Austicon smiled a wicked grin. “And that is exactly what I am planning. You, my loyal Leviathan, shall be a part of my grand scheme. Dodona will rise above even Zeus and cast him down upon the smoldering wreckage of mankind. The Pheema will play his part; you will play yours; and the trees of the red light will also do theirs before they burn!” Austicon returned Leviathan’s blade and pulled him to his feet. “I trust that I retain your full loyalty?”

  Leviathan bowed low. My lord, you own me… body and soul.

  ***

  Dekker ignored Guy. Something had excited Guy, but it had to wait. Dekker sprinted towards his personal quarters. He keyed in his private code while the others tried to catch him. Dekker whirled back around with disgust.

  Guy caught up with him, out of breath. “Something amiss?”

  “Count the bodies! The psy-nar assassins. They stole DNIET!” He brimmed with agitation. “I should have destroyed it,” he chastised under his breath.

  Vesuvius knocked at Dekker’s door. She waited outside for him.

  “Vees?” Guy called.

  She stepped closer in order to respond. “Corgan says there is a priority message coming in for you or Dekker. Corgan said it can’t wait.”

  “SHIP, patch my message through to this location.”

  The speakers crackled for a second under Satyr’s stressed voice. “They know I’ve been collecting info. Whatever I stumbled onto in my package was big! Something bad is brewing. I know too much and I’m in it too deep. Come and get me. Now!” he stressed the urgency. “My life depends on it, maybe even the lives of billions—my new intel is yours if you get to me first. I’m fleeing the consulate!” The transmission suddenly stopped.

  “SHIP, patch those coordinates to the Rickshaw Crusader and set up an IR override to remotely cycle through the preflight diagnostics. Alert Corgan, Juice, and Shaw to meet me there immediately!”

  ***

  The Rickshaw Crusader set down and illegally parked near the consulate. With vapor trails still dissipating, the armed Investigators fled the ship. Fanning out, they approached the crowd which had gathered just beyond the embassy gardens.

  Pushing their way through the rabble, they found the local constable and the coroner mapping the area and searching for clues. Center stage, a headless body laid on his back leaking precious ichor. Satyr’s head lay several feet from his body.

  As the constable rushed to control them, Dekker yanked out a pen and jotted down the last clues Satyr left them with. Satyr had written several words on his belly. Dekker just barely noticed the words peeking from below the cadaver’s rumpled shirt, “Dodona’s Oak!” Below that, a Greek character had been drawn, the letter Phi, followed with a string of numbers.

  “Where have you come from? What’s your business here?” a suspicious constable asked. He eyed Vesuvius as she wore her blades proudly.

  Vesuvius noted the nearby severed head of their informant and discreetly backed away. They wouldn’t be able to do any good or gain any new information with Satyr dead.

  The group turned as a whole and walked retreated to the Crusader. The faster he put pieces of this puzzle together, the faster it seemed to come apart.

  Dekker’s Dozen #008

  The Verdant Seven

  Dekker stripped off his shirt as he entered his personal sanctuary. He desperately needed sleep, but too much weighed on his mind: psychic mechnar assassins, Vesuvius, the stolen DNIET super-weapon, the deaths of a teammate and an intelligence asset.

  Sighing wearily, he sat on his bunk and took an inventory of his stress. Prognon Austicon’s game remained constant; each time Dekker uncovered clues to the mysterious red tree, the enigma only expanded, like a jigsaw puzzle that continued gaining new pieces.

  He’d just begun to speculate that their this newest data they’d collected might be planted misinformation. If Satyr hadn’t been murdered to cover up what he’d learned, his entire trove of information would have been more suspect. At least they could reasonably confident in its authenticity.

  Dekker squeezed the stress off of his face with rugged hands. Too much to think about; he needed to clear his mind. His head hit his pillow, but instead of soft cloth, his scalp crinkled against a sheet of paper. Someone had laid it very intentionally for only him to find. Only one person besides the psy-nar assassin had proven the ability to access his personal quarters.

  He scanned the paper with weary eyes. Sorry for your loss. Look to your friends in Jerusalem when you round out your dozen. –Ezekiel.

  If he hadn’t proven himself as an ally, Dekker might have throttled the old time-traveler for the intrusion on their next encounter. He crumpled the note and discarded it, not sure about its exact meaning; one more enigma didn’t help Dekker empty his mind.

  ***

  Nibbs sat in the ready room, a conference hall directly adjacent to the Salvation’s command bridge. Deep in thought, he exhaled measuredly and winced against the pain that radiated from his torso. Nibbs scowled at the bandage covering the wound he’d incurred when the psy-nar assassins attacked them.

  Of all the injuries they’d incurred several days ago, Nibbs was the worst, one fatality aside. Shaking off the self-pity, he locked his eyes upon his target again. If eyes were lasers he’d have burned through the framed patch of Prognon Austicon’s skin hours ago. In his injured state, Nibbs felt particularly useless. But his deep-rooted problem-solving nature drew him to the red tree riddle during all of his down time.

  He tapped his toe impatiently: a nervous habit. Nibbs got fidgety whenever he worked. Licking his index finger, he stuck it into the sugar container he’d swiped from the drink console and then sucked the sweet granules off while his mind wandered.

  “Dodona’s Oak,” Nibbs muttered aloud like a mantra. This was the last message Satyr had relayed, and it had cost him his life. It also proved indecipherable. The coordinates Dekker had recorded appeared to be an azimuth heading, Phi was a standard symbol for azimuth readings, but they didn’t lead anywhere. Ironically, heading pointed back to the Osix moon if the azimuth angle was read at the site of the ancient tree-worshipping cult’s historic divining rod. That clue reinforced what they believed Dodona’s Oak meant. But something still obfuscated the plain meaning of it all.

  An analytical computer expert, Nibbs felt he’d crept on the verge of deciphering all the clues. Pages and pages of information, photos, and notes lay strewn across the table at his right and a video console displayed a planet-side feed. All were tightly wound loops of string in one massive knot—soon, a single tug would unravel the whole mystery… if he could only find the right perspective.

  As was typical, The Pheema dominated the MEA newscasts. He explained away the decapitation murder of his human liaison. “While we have our suspects, there is too little proof for us to pursue justice. Residents of Earth do have my pledge to further crackdown against lax weapons restrictions and investigator licensures.” The implications were pretty obvious.

  Nibbs frowned; Satyr, the dead person from The Pheema’s interview, had been the source of the best clues on Nibbs’ desk. Although, the more evidence they pieced together, the broader the web of conspiracy seemed to span and the more powerful this enemy appeared. His eyes fell
to a photo and a list of names, some of which were circled. Red pen marks linked them to a circled question Satyr had asked, Bankers? Historical ties to Illuminati?

  In another margin, Satyr’s chaotic scrawl asked, Who are the Verdant Seven? Nibbs was determined to answer that question.

  ***

  Prognon Austicon’s ship orbited a distant planet at the furthest reaches of human occupation. With the great advances in technology and the relatively peaceful coexistence of most sentient races, Homo Sapiens had flung themselves far and abroad these last many decades.

  He gripped the armrests of his pilot seat and shivered. The demon within raged with resentment at its feigned submission to the red tree. This trip had taken several days to complete and he hated being so far removed from the plans he’d meticulous laid. He did not trust The Pheema. For years the two plotted an underground war against humanity; now they plotted against each other, constantly searching for leverage or weakness.

  This trip momentarily removed him from his surreptitious struggle against the Right Hand, but Austicon wasn’t yet prepared to defy their masters on the Arbolean Council. The pieces were in play, but for now he waited for the opportune moment, and that meant accomplishing these tasks before him and performing the least of his duties.

  The assassin stood and scanned the readouts of the human colony below. This would be the first of many stops along a tour of the occupied territories in the outer rim planets. It would take a long while for anyone to notice the dire fate of populations in these sectors.

  Austicon secured the stone vessel under an arm and slid into an atmospheric shuttle. He would operate quickly, slipping in and out, infecting the scheduled colonies. He didn’t want to risk his pans by giving that Krenzin snake any extra time to plot against him.

  Shutting the door, the ageless killer grinned wickedly. There would be plenty of plotting, but Prognon Austicon would not be the one who died. An otherworldly laughter welled up from within. As the living avatar of what dwelled within, Austicon now doubted that even the power of death held any sway over him.

  Austicon transmitted a falsified customs manifest to the MEA constabulary forces below and waited for his clearance to drop planetside. It would not be long, now—and for the next couple days, at least, he could play by the rules.

  He smiled again. All in due time.

  ***

  Dekker stretched out in the booth at the earth-side pub. Under the table, his leg brushed against Vesuvius’s. It had been a tough week following Jamba’s funeral. Plus, there remained plenty of work for all of the Dozen, not least of it including the administrative aspects of operating the Salvation. Many of those duties had been voluntarily assumed by MacAllistair. It was an oddly good fit..

  “So,” the fearless Vesuvius Briggs ventured as she broke the silence, “what are we, Dekker?”

  Dekker remained tight lipped. He shrugged, but not indifferently. He treaded unfamiliar waters.

  Vesuvius took another swig of her drink. “Well, yeah. That’s why I ask. I mean, what does it take to get a guy’s attention around here? I don’t know if you haven’t gotten the signals, or if you’re rejecting them? Every time I think we start gaining a little momentum it feels like you purposefully put the brakes on. That feels like rejection to me.” She took another drink, searching for some additional courage in the liquid.

  Dekker looked around, wishing a waiter would interrupt them by taking their order. He hoped for some kind of rescue from this conversation, but there was none in sight.

  “Is it because of our past? I know it’s a constant joke, but are you really so insecure that you need me to apologize for all that? It was a heat of the moment thing, forgive me of my passion, but I thought saving your life a few times would make up for any of my past hotheadedness, but if not—”

  “No. That’s not it, Vivian,” Dekker sighed. “And I’m not nearly so petty. I just… I move pretty slowly here. I’m not really sure how I feel and I’m unsure when it comes to love, especially when we lead the kind of lives that we do.”

  Vesuvius nodded and peered into her nearly empty glass. “I’ve been thinking a lot since my uncle died. First Shin, then Muramasa. I am the last of that line, just like you and yours. I know that we disagreed on families before.” She locked eyes with Dekker. The silence in that moment was heavy, tangible. “I’m no longer opposed to having children. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  Dekker had to look away. “I just…” He couldn’t even finish the sentence. An awkward moment followed.

  “Then at least tell me about your mystery woman. We’re close enough that you owe me an explanation, at least. Tell me about Aleel.”

  Dekker looked at Vesuvius. He’d never told any of the Dozen about her; his past was so far buried from the rest of the Dozen that he never thought he’d hear her name. Suspicion momentarily curled around in his mind. “Did Ezekiel tell you about her?”

  She returned a quizzical look. “Who? The old nutjob you talked to before the psy-nar attack?” Finally, she shrugged and conceded the point.

  He let it drop, truthfully somewhat relieved that Ezekiel hadn’t been just a fabrication of his tortured subconscious. “Aleel… was my wife,” he admitted. “She was murdered by Prognon Austicon late in her term while she carried our unborn child.” His eyes remained rooted to a dirty spot on the table. “She was killed because of who I am, who my father was, what we believe, and what we stood in the way of. Austicon needed to end that, sever my line.”

  Vesuvius took his hands in hers, understanding what he meant: the ageless terrorist would hunt down any children he ever had. “You know that he wins, this way? If your line ends with you, for whatever that reason—even if you never see him again and die of old age, surrounded by friends.”

  He looked up at her and nodded.

  She’d never seen pain, genuine pain, in his eyes before.

  “I know.”

  “You’re not the kind of man that lets his enemies live in victory, are you? That’s not the Dekker I know.”

  “And you know the whole me?”

  “Almost. But I do plan on resolving that.”

  Dekker managed to give her a smile, glad that the waiter hadn’t shown up after all.

  ***

  MacAllistair peered over the reports and peeked at the video feed which alerted him to the blaster fire; a warning icon lit on the command console. One deck below Rock conducted firearm training with the live-aboard volunteers. A requirement for any person accepted aboard was that they be made combat-capable in case called upon in an emergency. The recent psy-nar attack validated that mandate.

  For the most part, they had a perfect response to The Pheema’s “citizen soldier” dictate. Anyone with a thimbleful of skepticism saw through the political smokescreen that it was; if anything, all the “citizen soldier” talk only galvanized those asking to live aboard the Salvation. They currently housed approximately five thousand people with more requests coming each day, impressive numbers considering that none of them were paid and most, in fact, brought some degree of their own private financial support.

  MacAllistair returned to the reports and frowned. He’d agreed to handle much of the logistics and paperwork in exchange for him not needing to endure firearms training; fighting really wasn’t his thing. He was, however, impressed by the welling numbers of live-aboards, but was a little disheartened that the numbers didn’t demand a long Earth-side waiting list. The additional capital crew was a godsend, but there still remained too few humans with any rational sense. True, there were pockets of long-time religious and traditional holdouts, but most of them had so cloistered themselves, such as those in the walled Jerusalem fortress, that they had no relevance to the MEA’s economy or politics.

  Of course, MacAllistair realized that they had ironically done exactly what the Jerusalemites did many years ago: become self-sufficient and seceded from the rest of the planet. MacAllistair glanced at the readouts as he wandered outside and down a hall. He pa
ssed by the next bay where their militia trained to use laser cannons and capital ship systems on simulation machines.

  The scientist returned a mock salute to Matty who taught the basic operations to a group of newbies. MacAllistair hit the mess to grab a couple bottles of water and then returned to the command bridge. He walked past Nibbs and left him the second bottle. Nibbs seemed like a man obsessed, lately. MacAllistair dropped his progress reports off in an assessment file, and then returned to his private quarters to indulge in his guilty pleasure: saturating himself in the MEA propaganda machine—some earthlings watched sports and screamed at referees, he preferred to view the news and scream at reporters.

  Scanning through the propaganda, the voices were oddly hushed. The talking heads had been rendered speechless by the footage that aired. The streets of the furthest colonies were silent, homes had been emptied. They had no data to explain the mass disappearances.

  Finally, the televised personalities attempted to speculate on alien abduction. They hadn’t found any plausible suggestions before their superiors interjected a new story about potential deep space attacks.

  The new video feed, silent as the previous, showed a class E MEA constabulary cruiser under attack from some alien force. The stream came from a remote drone with only a fixed angle, but the action was visible enough. A ghost ship, similar to the one that attacked them during MacAllistair’s rescue, fired insistently upon the MEA cruiser.

  Trying to provide some sort of commentary, the stunned celebrities stumbled through a description of the carnage. The MEA ship took the pounding as it vainly tried outrunning its pursuer on crippled engines. As the pirate frigate closed the gap, some sort of grappling cables lashed out and seized the military vessel. It pulled the two together; the demon-ship’s lasers repeatedly fired point blank as the warring crafts drifted to the edge of the video’s angle. Just before the enemy ship exited the screen, a series of eruptions ripped through the MEA craft, jettisoning atmosphere and bodies.