Ravens of Eternity

235 Chessmaster, Pt The frigates all pulled away from the twisted, mangled destroyers. Warped sheets of destroyer armor were prised off as they ripped themselves from the deep indentations they had created. They had wrenched all five of the destroyers into each other, and turned them into one large and terrible wreck.

Deep inside the command destroyer, the Gorgon captain and his officers picked themselves up after being tossed around. At least, those who were still able to, anyway.

Some moaned and cried as they clutched at a broken leg, or punctured rib. Others simply laid still, their necks or spines bent at extreme angles, and bled out with choking gasps.

The screens all around the bridge had been damaged and cracked. A few were broken and warped, along with the wall behind it. Red alerts now filled every single one of them. Reports of damaged sections scrolled past the one of the component displays at an alarming speed.

Before they could get their bearings, the ship rocked with multiple tremors. The sound of their hull getting bombarded filled every passageway and room. Everyone was thrown to their knees once again from the assault.

Their bodies shuddered as the relentless assault rocked their ship. It seemed violent enough to shake it all apart.

Outside, the frigates had repositioned themselves 300 meters all around the twisted wreckage. And they fired their 480mm cannons right into the mass of destroyer bellies. Their unceasing cannonade slammed into them, and tore whatever remaining armor they had to shreds.

The barrage ripped off whatever was left, and exposed the weakened structure underneath. Their shells tore it all open, and even pierced through to the lower decks.

They mangled everything they struck, components and cargo and people.

.....

Then, they stopped short of picking the fruit clean.

Lucifer winked on the comms display with a gentle smile on hir face. At the same time, the Gorgon captain dragged himself back up onto his feet, and leaned on his chair for support.

A shard of scrap had jabbed into his leg, and blood soaked his pants. He pulled it out with a groan, then tossed the scrap aside.

“You win!” he screamed at Lucifer. “You win, and we surrender. Is that what you wanna hear?”

Lucifer laughed, but there was an odd tone to it, and it brought a chill to everyone’s spines.

“Surrender?” ze said. “You had your chance, Gorgon. I gave it to you at the beginning. Since you refused it, I’m forced to commit to my word. That was the deal. None of you are leaving here alive. I’m only here to give you my condolences myself. And to thank you for a halfway decent fight.”

The Gorgon captain immediately paled at Lucifer’s words. His mouth gaped open in shock, and had no idea what to say.

“You can’t refuse a surrender!” cried the Perseus’ captain. “That’s against our charter! It’s against all decency in war!”

Lucifer turned to the rotund captain with an eyebrow arched high. Ze looked around at the other officers, and saw they all held the same expression he did. That of incredulity.

Ze shook hir head in exasperation. At their collective naivete.

“War? Decency?” ze said. “Only fools believe that those two can co-exist.”

“Well call us fools, then,” said the Perseus captain. “They’ve conceded the battle, there’s no need to kill them!”

“Tell me something. If your roles were reversed, do you think they would do the same for you?”

Lucifer turned back to the comms display and looked at the broken Gorgon captain, who grimaced at the question. Ze then turned to the Perseus captain, whose face was also in a grimace, but for completely different reasons.

Ze came to the conclusion that both were weak, each in their own special way.

“Do you think they won’t attack again in the future?” ze continued. “Maybe not here, but another vault? And what if your people aren’t as lucky as they were today? What if they had won today, obliterated you, then moved on and obliterated more?”

“The galaxy’s filled with maybe’s,” countered the captain. “And the only thing that’s certain, at least for companies like ours, is our principle. Please, let them concede. You won’t lose anything if you do. But we lose ours if you don’t.”

Lucifer sighed deeply.

“Very well,” ze said. “I’m done here anyway, so I may as well return your command to you now. You and your principles can go dance to your heart’s content.”

“Thank you, Lucifer sir,” said the captain. “We’ll send your pay straight to your ledger. With a bonus as thanks for your adhering to our principles.”

Lucifer nodded curtly, then walked out of the war room. Ze was slightly depressed – after such a good fight, ze wanted nothing more than to finish off hir opponents. Ze had won the right fair and square, but these people took it away from hir.

Ze made a mental note to never accept a contract with them again.

Such scruples, ze thought, only matter to history’s losers.

As ze stepped out into the command frigate’s passageways and out towards its topside hangar, a notification rang in hir DI. Eris’ mischievous face appeared in hir mind the moment ze answered.

“My favorite freelancer!” Eris announced. “How are you? Busy? Enjoying life?”

Lucifer smiled widely at Eris. She was a client who had no such hangups about principle. Her jobs were both profitable and completely free-form. Ze always enjoyed the flexibility hir contracts were empowered with.

“More or less,” ze responded. “Just finished up my last job. Didn’t exactly come out like I expected, but at least I still got paid... Well, I’m sure you know how it is.”

Eris nodded emphatically. She certainly had her fair share of jobs gone sideways. Sometimes they even descended into straight-up disasters. But in the end, her ledger always swelled.

“Anway,” she said. “I’m ringing you up because I’ve got a job for you. Not really your usual thing, but I need someone who can get this job done. A real pro.”

A packet of information came through their connection, which Lucifer immediately opened up and sifted through.

It was a relatively thin dossier with few images, videos, and documents. They all seemed to log the many purchases that Discordian agents had made – mostly highly potent medicines. And most purchases were made with one small group of people.

Lucifer frowned when ze realized what Eris was asking of hir.

“I’m not a bounty hunter,” ze said. “Honestly, I’m not very good at it, either. I’m more finesse than force. I mean, I’m honored that you think highly of me, but this one’s... not exactly my specialty.”

Eris shook her head adamantly.

“Bounty hunters are a dime a dozen,” she countered. “Nothing special about them in the slightest. Any old scumbag can pick up a gun and a badge and pretend to clean up the other scumbags. No thanks. It’s like you said, I need finesse on this one.”

Lucifer flipped through the images and purchase logs, and shook hir head.

“I’m not exactly sure what to do with any of this, honestly,” ze said.

“One of my boys actually kind of recognized the ship,” said Eris. “Said it looks like the one on a ‘Cast he was searching around for. You ever heard about the Conspiracy of Ravens?”

“What’cha mean ‘searching around for’?”

“That’s exactly what I said!.”

Eris laughed loudly, then called to one of her officers. Then she connected him to their comms line. His face appeared in their DI.

And when he realized that he was about to get grilled by both Eris and Lucifer, he began to shake nervously.

“Tell Luci about the Ravens,” commanded Eris.

“Yes, ma’am,” said her officer.

He then looked straight at Lucifer and grimaced as he spoke.

“It’s kinda like this,” he began, “I’ve been in these sorties where the pilots I was with were smacked down pretty hard. It was crazy stressful, and I had to run, which I wouldn’t have done if that pilot weren’t so damn scary.”

He then went over the few frightening times that he had run-ins with “a certain pilot” – first at a Tetragrammaton Tech station, and the second at the secret Fed asteroid base. There were other skirmishes when he recognized the pilot, all out in the colonies.

Each one was a devastating encounter for him and whoever he flew with.

“You sound a little traumatized by that pilot,” said Lucifer.

“If you faced off against ’em, you’d be, too.”

Lucifer looked at Eris with disbelief. Hir face was etched with an expression that said, ‘Is this guy serious?’

Eris simply nodded in response.

“Anyway, I got obsessed with that person,” continued the officer. “I mean, I wanted to know who they were, just so I could get away from them if I recognized them, ever. So I watched ‘Cast after ‘Cast of ace pilots, in search of ’em. Months and months of watching, searching.”

“How many hours did you spend watching ‘Casts, man?” said Lucifer. “I mean, damn.”

The officer shrugged.

“Enough,” he said. “Because I think I found ’em. I watched ‘Casts of them doing the same crazy crap in dogfights. And that ship, that ‘Vette – it’s in the background all the time. It’s their ship.”

“And you think it’s this Conspiracy of Ravens?” asked Lucifer.

“Watch the ‘Casts yourself,” said Eris.

She then ejected her officer from the comms and ordered him to get back to work.

While she yelled at her people, Lucifer took to SolNet and searched for the Ravens. Ze browsed through their ‘Casts and noted their most popular ones, as well as their most recent ones.

“Looks like they were the ones behind the Prophets getting the axe,” Lucifer uttered. “Consider me impressed.”

“And if that idiot’s to be believed,” Eris said, “then these Ravens have fucked with my biz more than a few times. Means they disrupted a ton of my operations. The big one being that juicy Fed lab. That one cost me close to a billion.”

Lucifer whistled at length.

“Alright, lemme get this straight,” ze said. “You’re hiring me, the most expensive freelancer in the galaxy, to find these people out there somewhere, and what? Kill ’em? Don’t you have people for that?”

“What?” Eris yelped. “No, hell no. I don’t want ’em dead. I wanna recruit ’em! They need to be in the Temple’s roster. Imagine how much damage they could do to the Federation! I want their drugs everywhere! Their bullets everywhere! But with golden apples between their breasts. Hot, yeah?”

“So send them a recruitment ad, damn. You don’t need to hire me for that. Offer a huge sign-on bonus and reap the rewards without spending a fortune.”

Eris shook her head. From what she could tell just from their ‘Cast alone, the Ravens would never willingly join the Temple of Discord. Their principles simply didn’t match. Not only that, but the asteroid incident definitely had an effect on them.

She had no doubts that they saw her and her people as their enemies. They had shot at the Ravens after all, more than a few times.

“It’s not like that,” she replied. “I want ’em shaken up a bit. Or a lot, whatever it takes. Maybe a little bruised and battered, too. I want them led to me, instead of shoved on their knees in front of me. I want them soft to my offers. Finesse, not force. Right?”

Lucifer sighed deeply, and furrowed hir brow.

“This sounds messy as hell already,” Lucifer shot back. “But alright, could be fun. Let’s give it a go.”

.....