The Black Garden: Chapter 6

Short one today. If you're enjoying the story, please consider dropping a like or a comment to let me know what you think!
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The first night in hospital, I had nightmares of the collapsing parking lot. I frantically wandered through the rubble, calling for my brother as I dug out corpse after crushed and mangled corpse. None of them were him. I woke up sobbing, Ratcatcher holding my wrists to keep me from clawing at the bed. The attending doctor arranged a genomic transfusion to head off the neural damage before PTSD had time to set in. My second and third day were spent working with a therapist to gently reprogram the trauma. The Palae'an method was to have the therapist walk with you through the experience as an observer inside of a virtual reality mock-up of the mission. The second night, I slept soundly. No dreams at all.

I was scheduled for discharge the morning of the fourth day. When I checked my ATLAS, I saw that I’d been relieved from duty for two weeks, plenty of time to safely get back to fighting weight. I had just finished putting on my uniform when the door to my suite chimed. The frosted surface shimmered to clearness, revealing an unexpected face. My eyes widened a little. I turned to face him, stiffening to attention as it opened.

"At ease, Zealot." The Commander was not a tall man: five and a half feet tall in his well-shined boots, with shoulders that seemed nearly as wide as he was high. His torso was a thick, heavily-muscled triangle under his neatly styled uniform. I knew for a fact he was inhumanly strong. He worked out in the same gym as the DWO teams six days a week, and I'd once watched the guy squat eight hundred pounds. For three sets of six.

"Sir. I’d heard you might visit, but it’s still a surprise." I saluted and then shifted position, folding my hands behind my back. "Flattering, but surprise."

"You are the first human to have soloed a G-2  Avon-class and lived to tell the tale. That alone is surely worth a house call." The Commander wore the more modest of the three CEIDR uniform options: a dark blue turtleneck so dark it was nearly black, stitched with his unit patches and bars; black fatigue pants, black gloves and boots. The dark clothing accentuated his pale ivory skin, the hard hairless jaw and deep-set eyes. And those eyes... they were a startling white-gray, as pale and heartless as a cold winter's sky. "You are extremely underweight."

"Yes sir. I had to burn everything I had." I, naturally, preferred the sluttiest of the uniforms: a sleek charcoal zerosuit under a cropped indigo jacket. The zerosuit hugged my body in all the right ways and usually made my ass look incredible, when I wasn't twenty pounds underweight and actually HAD an ass. I felt awkward and bony as I stared over the Commander's shoulder. "I take full responsibility for placing myself and my teammates in unnecessary danger, and for any disciplinary action you require."

Within Confluence militaries, ranks were temporary titles to ensure everyone knew who to answer to in various situations. There was no vertical hierarchy and no true officer class. The Commander was a singular exception. He was the founder of our corps, CEIDR: the Circumvention, Espionage, Infiltration and Direct Response Unit. We were the first human-majority defense working group within the Abyssal Response Fleet. He had been almost unanimously reelected by everyone three times since then, and not a single person in CEIDR referred to him by his name. To all of us, he was just 'The Commander'.

"I reviewed the replay of your ATLAS data," he said, slowly. "In a normal operation of this type, your decisions would have been wholly reasonable. This mission has revealed two challenges the Corps must address. Firstly, that Palae'an military AIs are not completely suitable for planning human, Earth-based operations. We are the newest Confluence species, so this is regrettable, but not unexpected. The Fleet has already recruited a specialist council to retrain SEER to account for some variables that may be specific to Earth-instance operations."

I nodded, rolling my lip under my teeth.

"Secondly... what happened on 332-b represents an evolution in abyssal Earth-invasion strategy," he continued. "We did not report this to the Jump Base staff, but while you were unconscious and being treated for acute injuries aboard the Fetch Quest, a bio-mechanical parasite was removed from your body."

All the muscles in my pelvis tightened, and a feeling of revulsion crawled up the back of my throat. "A parasite?"

The Commander elegantly inclined his head. "It appeared to have been inserted vaginally at some point after the Violator's husk abducted you, but before it reached the parent demon's lair. The parasite burrowed into your abdomen and anchored itself near your bladder. It resisted attempts to remove it, but fortunately, did not appear to have any ability to replicate or deposit a payload. However, it WAS transmitting locational data via an entangled link to an unknown third party. When we attempted to trace it, the parasite self-destructed."

I felt the skin of my face heat. "I need a very long shower after this news, sir."

"No doubt." His thin mouth twitched to one side. "Regardless, our Nexus intelligence group analyzed the same feed, and they have drawn some conclusions."

I swallowed, trying to push the bile back down. "Go on."

"As you noted, the Violator was likely leaving its initial victims around the city in such a way as to engineer an intervention, which supports the idea of a third party having a role in this. This party – probably in a strategic role – expected we had contacts on Earth 332-b. That is a reasonable assumption, given that the instance is adjacent to an Earth that is being actively invaded.”

“Shit.” I frowned. “It can’t be Nihil, can it? Or Mammon?”

“We are investigating to rule them out. However, the Violator itself acted as they typically do. It showed little self-awareness, but a great deal of narcissism and the accompanying rage. When SPECTER analyzed the combat data, it noticed the demon was going to great lengths to not kill you. We think it was attempting to weaken and capture you, rather than kill you. Avon-class demons of that size tend to smash more than they grab, but the rate at which it was trying to grasp you was significantly higher than other analyzed attack patterns."

I frowned, listening.

"The parasite was likely a dual contingency. If you managed to escape the husk before reaching the demon, then it might have acted as a tracker, allowing the receiver to direct the Violator to your location if required." The Commander folded his hands in front of his belt. "In the event you defeated the Violator and-or were evacuated, then you might have carried the parasite onto the branchship, where it could activate and feed information to an external source."

"Holy shit," I said. "It was an intelligence counter-operation. With an external handler wrangling the Violator?"

"That is the most likely scenario. Even mature, conscious Violators are not capable of that level of impulse control, let alone the ability to mask their narcissism. Only Bohu-class are capable of that."

A prickle of alarm crawled up my spine. "Who or what has the ability to direct a frigging Violator across branes in real-time, and wrangle it into cooperating with a subtle intelligence-gathering op?"

"An excellent question. And one we do not have an answer for," the Commander replied. "It could be a Bohu. It could also be cultists with a powerful Chronomancer working with them. Whoever they were, they were able to maintain exceptional control over the Violator's instinctive urges to rape, eat and kill - in no particular order - and they practice excellent operational hygiene."

I clicked my tongue. "I won't be surprised if that was some kind of roundabout way for an Abyss-aligned enemy of the Confluence to obtain information on branchships, sir. And perhaps on Leviathan."

The Commander regarded me thoughtfully. "Nor will I. And the quality of your insight is why I am visiting you personally, as a matter of fact. Come. Walk with me."