The comparatively humble stealther conveying Ryan Frost had arrived at this cosmic palace, a collective of infernal storms raging below the dreadnought thrashing the methane waters. As he crossed the gantry connecting the two vessels, the fully armoured Hound witnessed hypercanes towering as vast as continents ripping through the gelid lower atmosphere thousands of miles below, the planet blasted by forks of lightning as powerful as bombs snaking through the sapphire air. Soaring over the battling storms in safety was Sokolova's fortress ship, the Bellator's wings spread across the alien heavens as its huge artigrav plates kept it hovering in place.
Within the ship's extended rear after the docking bay stood a vast hall, huge decorative flying buttresses propping up the dark stone roof. A hall of such sufficient length to host two full-sized cathedrals and then perhaps an additional small chapel. Reliefs built into the walls stood rendered in shimmering steel carved with such precision and skill as to grant each display of historical Martian glory the privilege of life. Beside them were vivid watercolour paintings, great gold-coated chandeliers which illuminated the interior with a deep, thrumming fire from the ceiling granting each painting the privilege of breath.
In one such depiction, a group of masked soldiers stood backdropped against a sky as great amber as a deathless sunset. With the burning remains of a fortress behind them and the American Star-Spangled Banner crushed beneath their boots, the soldiers held in their armoured gauntlets a new flag, a tricolour of silver and dominant orange at the centre, with a silver Lambda marking the middle, raising their banner high above the battlefield. Ryan would recall this depiction as the fall of the Aeolis fortress, the last great battle of the mid twenty-first century revolutionary war that forged the extant Commonwealth of Mars in fire. As Earth closed in on collapse from the Second Great Depression, with two billion souls dead from the onslaught of global warming, the twenty million of Mars battled for their freedom.
The next painting saw the amber Martian air and bronze Cydonian sands gradually being consumed by virescent green grass and the sky transforming into a deep cerulean; on the verdant side, a group of massive constructs shaped like coffins hovered in the air, the lushness expanding around their hulks. As he walked beyond this painting, Ryan recalled how it depicted the colossal terraforming project by the newly empowered Martian state to transform the planet into a second Earth by the turn of the century. No recollection of the precise science utilised in the metamorphosis of the Red Planet took shape in Ryan's mind, though a magazine had informed him long ago that the process had involved aerosols sourced from harvested comets, and that the inefficiencies involved precluded Mars from retaining its new atmosphere for any geological period of time. On the government's propaganda channels, there was already talk of reactivating the terraforming machines to collect more aerosols for a rejuvenation project.
The murals had passed, leading onto the great hall. Gathered in immaculate formation before a grand stage stood an army, Ryan's estimate being a hundred strong; not the patchwork of levies who charged into battle, but the masters who led them to war, anointed Knights encased within similar suits of powered armour as the Hound. Their armours stood greyer than the Hound's platinum white, their helmets missing the painted teeth and no capes to speak of, save for the imperial purple surcoats bearing the Knights' gilded shield emblem.
Ryan noticed the shadows, where waited with accipitrine patience a man wearing a smart crimson suit and jacket and a black tie. A fedora of identical colouration to his suit, with a black band circumnavigating the middle, crowned his head. A silver scarf was wrapped around his neck to complete his impressively tidy dress. His youthful face possessed a pair of sharp, marble-like black eyes; a deep vermilion red resonated from his irises, with no white in his optic sensors to speak of.
The first figure that Ryan beheld after the knight congregation stood at the centre of the stage, wearing a hood of deep, piercing purple over a suit of custom-forged armour. The woman's youthful countenance was forged from death-white synthetic skin, her machined amethyst eyes surrounded by gunmetal-grey eyeliner tailored alike the wings of a hawk, lips black as an onyx. The Broken Angel, whose hair stood as white as snow, dressed in platinum armour behind a gold-trimmed cloak of imperial purple. Stood by her side were the four Knight Masters, two at each flank, gilded in different suits of armour festooned with medals, decorations, capes and sashes to denote each of their great achievements. All five of them fused their gazes upon the approaching Ryan.
"Welcome home, my Hound," spoke Annaroza Sokolova. The voice of the Broken Angel was an icicle-sharp, light Russophone alto, her speech rolling through the hall like divine thunder. Every word flowed from her lips like water, every syllable enunciated with sniperlike precision.
Upon reaching Sokolova, Ryan sank to his knee in an instant, deferring to the customs of his order.
"You sent for me, my lady," his voice rumbled through his helmet.
"My sources have informed me that Ardent Red was destroyed," Sokolova's voice was now as stern as her countenance. "I have also been made aware that you crossed swords with a man who is close to your heart. Your father, Edward."
"Your sources are correct, my lady," Ryan admitted. "I made every effort to kill him once I was certain of his identity."
"Take off your helmet," Sokolova commanded him; her eyes started to grow brighter as her hands balled into pair of fists behind her back.
The Hound did as ordered without a moment of hesitation, the headpiece detaching with a hiss as he placed it upon the floor at Sokolova's feet. There his shoulder-length black hair was visible for all to see.
"He wore only a suit and a powered exoskeleton compared to your armour," Sokolova queried, a scowl settling upon her face. "How did he survive your onslaught?"
"He was helped by a sniper," said Ryan. "I came close to killing him after I drove my blade into his gut. I would have finished him off had it not been for the interloper."
"And yet he survives," Sokolova enunciated in a grim tone.
"There is no certainty of that – he may yet have succumbed to his injury," said Ryan.
"Edward Frost lives – of that there can be no question!" Sokolova's electric voice snapped through the hall, her threatening left hand now revealed for the crowd to see. "And the matter remains that the key he possessed was destroyed in the battle for it. Ardent Red is now inoperable. My plans have gone up in flames. Our enemies on Earth are free to continue their reign of terror over this solar system! I have no doubt that they will be swift to take advantage of our failure."
"I take full responsibility for the loss of the weapon, my lady," said Ryan. "It is my failure that has ruined your plans, not yours."
"No," Sokolova denied him with a sad glint in her eye. "I was the one who entrusted you to the safeguarding of the weapon for when the time came to deploy it against Earth. Now I see that you were bested not by your father, but your own anger and lust for vengeance. The weapon that would have brought the Twilight is lost and your father has sided with our enemy. I now fear that my teachings have all but gone to waste."
A wave of panic swept into Ryan's psyche. Nothing surfaced, however – his eyes and expression remained unchanged.
"I gave everything I had to you when you took me in," he announced. "My attachment to my family chief of all. From the moment he abandoned me, the name 'Edward Frost' no longer meant anything to me. I swear to you that he is no father of mine, and I will destroy him as I have every other enemy that has dared cross my path!"
Sokolova took a moment to consider Ryan's words, her scowl straightening into a more thoughtful expression. She glanced to the man in the red suit, who had stood in the sidelines as if awaiting a fresh set of orders. Then her amethyst eyes settled their laserlike gaze upon the congregation of knight commanders standing alongside her, their own stares marked on herself as they waited for her next word. Finally, she turned to the deferential Ryan Frost, still knelt on the ground before her.
"If wha
t you tell me is true, my Hound..." she addressed her Hound in her mother tongue and readied her dreadful command: "Bring his head to my feet."
"It will be done," Ryan made one simple vow, no hesitation in its utterance. On the sidelines, a forbidden, puerile grin tugged the cheeks of the man in the red suit.
The metallic rasp of a sword blade being withdrawn from its side sheath filled the hall, its owner Sokolova swinging it to her side. It began as a flash of lightning at the base of the blade, then the energetic sparkle was subsumed by a brilliant eruption of sky blue light, enveloping the sword blade and illuminating the chamber with solar warmth. Infernal frostfire rippled across the now fully enshrouded blade, arcs of lightning cascading toward its tip filling the hall with the cacophony of crackling electricity.
"Arise, Ryan Frost, Knight of the Order of Iron," Sokolova commanded.
The Hound rose to his feet, a stern expression bedecking his countenance. Sokolova presented the ignited blade to him by the handle, proffering the raised weapon for his use.
"Take my sword, Knight, and burn all who would stand to oppose our Vision!"
Ryan accepted the gift, his eyes blazing with pride as he slotted Sokolova's warblade into his own scabbard. His Special Mission was set, and for as long as he drew breath, he would not fail his mistress.
A deafening thunderclap filled the hall as every Knight bearing witness to the command banged their gauntlets on their armoured chests thrice, a tonitruous chant booming through the hall:
"OOO-LAH! OOO-LAH! OOO-LAH!"
~
CHAPTER SIX
Thursday, 26 May.
LOCATION: Somewhere in the Asteroid Belt.
Aboard the Enigma.
Patching up internal plasma burns was no easy endeavour. This matter White, Morgenstern and Wilkins had all discovered as they sought to repair their commander's insides that had been all but liquefied by ten thousand degrees of ionised gas-shrouded titanium.
It took White some time to remember some of the bootleg techniques that the Ghoul's doctors had used to patch her and her colleagues up after they had sustained heavy injuries. Her memories unveiled that the so-dubbed 'organic mechanics' had used nanomachines and three-dimensional tissue printers to repair wounds that otherwise were impossible to survive. Further revelation about Bridger's status as some kind of genetically augmented supersoldier unveiled that she rested amidst a whole stash of advanced medical supplies, most of it Sparrow Corp nanite-based pharmaceuticals. Even after they managed to repair Frost's injuries, after much perusal of the operation manuals for the printer and the nanites, the presence of such an extremely advanced laboratory aboard the personal yacht of an Occator Conglomerate executive raised more questions than it answered. The trio was met with little reassurance when it emerged that some of the meds were completely incompatible with human physiology, especially considering that Bridger kept no pets aboard her vessel or even accommodation for such.
Frost had sat perched on his bed ever since he had left the ship's medical bay six hours prior, finally awakening from his month-long coma – much to White's intense jubilation. He had missed breakfast, and his hands trembled as he stared into some empty space thousands of yards away. He had said nothing to any of his soldiers – a matter most unusual, considering how White and Morgenstern were his most typical ports of call whenever he sought to speak about anything so serious. The former had therefore elected to check up on him once every hour, peering through the open door to his bedroom.
"Boss...?" she spoke, unsure of whether she should enter.
"I saw him," Frost whispered to her. "My boy, in that suit of armour..."
"What, Ryan?" White realised in an instant what had plagued her commander so.
Frost gave a solemn nod. "I shouldn't have thrown him out. I should have kept him. I shouldn't have done what I did!"
"You did what you had to do," White assured.
"But I didn't!" Frost thundered, finally turning a face filled with rage to look White in the eye. "I let my anger get the better of me after Marilyn died! I thought it was all his fault, but it wasn't! I'd always vowed I'd try and talk him down, but what's the point now that Sokolova has him in her talons?! I saw the anger in his eyes! And the hatred! He tried his damnedest to kill me! And I don't blame him! Now that damn fucking cunt Sokolova has taken him and warped him into a killing machine!"
"You didn't know about him," said White. "Nobody told you. But there's no use in dwelling on what happened in the past."
"Oh, that's easy to say, isn't it?" growled Frost, gnashing his fists so hard together that they turned purple. "I should have been there for him! I can only imagine what horrible things that wretched fucking whore has done to him, to twist him into such an engine of death!"
"So you made a pretty big fucking mistake," White stated. "The only way you're gonna be able to resolve this massive predicament you have here is if you go seek out Ryan and talk to him."
"Why the fuck would he ever want to talk to me any more... The only words he'll have for me are the ones I deserve the most!"
"Maybe we should discuss this over alcohol," White suggested. "Since Bridger's dead now, she won't be needing anything from the drinks cabinet."
"You know it's poor form to rob a dead man of his belongings," Frost grumbled.
"It's also poor form to let good booze go to waste," remarked White. "Come on, will you at least have a drink or two with me? You owe me after I ran in there to save your arse. Again, that is. Come on, you can't keep moping forever."
"I'll certainly bloody try," Frost stated.
"No you won't," White was having none of it. "Not on my watch. We're on our way back to Ceres anyway. I originally came in here to tell you we've got word about Sparrow having arrived at Port Royal. Turns out that Bridger was some kind of high-level plant, incorporated by the FIA into the OCCS like Merley was."
"Sparrow..." Frost's expression grew dark as midnight. "Oh, I'll be having a word with her, alright..."
~
Meanwhile, at Port Royal's spaceport...
One might be forgiven for wondering what kind of event might draw the precentor of the OCCS himself to attend to the arrival of an ostensible corporate dignitary. The ten-strong guard detail of Alexander Kane were such wonderers, the blue-dressed mercenaries standing with unease as their boss waited with a glass of whiskey.
At the age of fifty-three, Kane had reached that age where he had begun to consider retirement. When he was this old, the body would begin to degrade to the point where the immune system would begin to turn on the many mechanical augmentations typically present within a former soldier who had fought and suffered an intense conflict, necessitating a specialised immunosuppressant to prevent biological rejection. Kane had already devised a quite literal solution to that particular problem by mixing the required weekly dose of immunosuppressant with a shot of his favourite whiskey, yet such was a temporary solution for what ailments awaited him in later life. Not to mention the immunosuppressant itself was a considerable personal expense on his part, each months' worth of pills costing some eight hundred dollars.
At last the hangar doors peeled open to unveil the black void of space, it being revealed at this point that Kane and his troops were behind a thick quartz-glass window. Kane moved toward the stairs down to the hangar without gesture, his guards shifting themselves to follow. The last one to follow caught sight of a bright white-painted UH-45 Thunderhawk dropship, standard issue for the United States Marine Corps and the Federal Intelligence Agency's SWAT divisions. This one came with the Sparrow Corporation logo emblazoned on one of its tail booms, however.
Upon reaching the terminal down the steps, the airlock ahead peeled open. The first sight Kane and each of his guards witnessed were twelve almost identical suits of soot-grey powered armour with glimmering yellow eye lights, their strange weapons clasped to the flaming skull emblems on their breastplates. The drumbeat of their sabatons filled the terminal as they began to march in perfect,
synchronised robotic formation, leaving even an experienced commander like Kane to raise his eyebrows. The formation ceased as they reached the OCCS troopers, and they parted to unveil the silver-suited, chestnut-haired shape of Diana Sparrow and two men in black as her retainers.
"Welcome back to Port Royal, Miss Sparrow," Kane introduced himself. "I'll trust you had a safe journey."
"If only I could respond in the affirmative," the spymistress responded in a tone that betrayed her exhaustion.
"If only circumstance hadn't drawn us back together," remarked Kane.
"My career has survived stranger events than this," Sparrow stated. "I wouldn't be alive if it hadn't weathered most of them. Even so, Tureau is, putting it in the gentlest possible terms, most displeased with how recent events have turned out regarding Ardent Red."
"I don't blame him," said Kane. "The Hound seems to have you on the back foot, and by extension all of united Earth."
"Like I said, I've lived through worse," assured Sparrow. "That doesn't change the fact I had to give the President an assurance that I'd bring the Hound's helmet back to him personally."
"Does Frost know?" Kane turned his head to her.
"He'd be useless to me if he didn't," Sparrow affirmed.
"I can't help but think he should have been told to begin with," said Kane. "Why hold that kind of thing back?"
"When you're dealing with such vicious threats to the safety of my planet as Strasser and Sokolova, you've got to be certain that your trap will work for the first and only time," Sparrow explained herself. "You need to make sure your attack dog is sufficiently riled up to chase after your prey and make sure they fall into the trap you've spent years setting."
"Oh, I have no doubts at all he'll be pissed off, now that he knows his son's fate," Kane grumbled. "And what do you suppose happens if he doesn't want to play fetch?"
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