Hell came silently to Mindoir.
Batarian slavers disabled the colony's early warning systems by slipping in on a captured shuttle. Once the long range scanners and alarms were disabled, the slavers filled the shuttle with high yield explosives and programmed the shuttle's auto-pilot to crash into the colony's defense grid. The impact and subsequent detonation shattered the defenses, and sent burning chunks of rubble flying into the settlement. This in turn set the surrounding buildings on fire.
Then, slave transports and assault craft stuck, taking out additional key points of infrastructure, but leaving the colony's communication grid undamaged. One craft landed at the colony's primary child center; Mercy learning and child care. Troops leapt out, gunning down adults, and corralling the children together in the dining hall.
Broadcasting a video demanding the colony's compliance, the batarians promised to kill a child for each attempted act of resistance. To prove they were serious, they shot a small girl, leaving her bleeding on the floor. The video continued in real time, watching the girl scrabble on the ground as she bled to death.
Mindoir was defenseless, disorganized, and demoralized.
That's when things started to go wrong.
A tremendous burst of electromagnetism pulsed over the planet, frying the batarian communications, and knocking their largest dropship out of the air as it was about to land. The drop was only a few hundred feet – any higher and the craft could have recovered before crashing. Any lower, and the damage might not have been so severe. The impact critically wounded or killed the bulk of the batarian land troops. In addition, their command structure was thrown into disarray as their leaders were all on the primary dropship, coordinating the ground assault at the last minute.
The brutality of the broadcasted video galvanized the human colonists. Grabbing what firearms and farming implements were available, the colonists began to ferociously resist the slavers. This sudden outburst of violence would have normally been easily handled by the heavily armed slavers. After the initial uprising was harshly dealt with, the remaining humans would have been easily pacified. At least, in theory. Unfortunately, the batarians were mostly clutching their helmets in pain as the dying squeal of their communications equipment left them momentarily disoriented. The coordinated assault and conquest of Mindoir unraveled into hundreds of small skirmishes backlit by the fires of the burning colony.
Screams of agony filled the air. Burning buildings gave the night a red, smoldering look. Suffering was everywhere. Hell had indeed come.
Amidst all of this, the appearance of a small girl was easily overlooked.
56 hours later, the remnants of the batarians limped out of the system. While the slave raid was technically a success - they had obtained two transports of slaves, they had lost over eighty percent of their force and were definitely fleeing the system.
Below them, the colony of Mindoir lay in ruins. Unchecked fires had spread across the entire settlement, and human and batarian corpses lay strewn about. A few human corpses lay in houses or curled up in corners, but the majority of the human dead were stretched out among the batarian corpses where they had tried to engage the slavers in hand to hand combat, or clustered around the Mercy learning and child care center where the batarians had broadcast their video. The Mercy center had been at the heart of the batarian defense, and the batarians viciously held the line until the colonists were able to crawl over their corpses and overwhelm the batarians, sometime near the 52nd hour of the battle. While they still held the learning center, the batarians were able to delude themselves that everything was under control, but once the center was lost, they quickly cut their losses and fled.
Out of the 258 children on the rolls, only three were found alive when the center was finally retaken.
The EMP that swept across the planet during the invasion was easily forgotten. After all, the attack was chaotic, the colony's sensors were down, and people were more interested in rebuilding or moving away than dwelling on small details of the traumatic past. Plus, all the batarians who could talk about the EMP were either dead or trying to forget the debacle as they fled.
Alliance aid came, taking traumatized survivors to counseling and relocation. All orphaned children were also relocated to the Alliance foster care system. Time passed, and life went on. But in many ways, this is the beginning.
-56 hours ago-
Janice was exhausted. She first thought she was in hell, seeing bizarre creatures chase down screaming humans, shooting some, and capturing the rest. Pulling herself out of the labyrinth of time via death should have left her on the other side of the Shroud, after all. However, she quickly began to feel that this was not the case here; this looked more like something out of a movie. Besides, she had been to hell before, and this place felt different.
Either way, she needed to learn more about what was going on.
Crouching low, she hid behind a bush as she watched several monstrous figures run past. She tensed, ready to sneak after them.
"Wait a moment."
She stilled.
Her big sister Mandy carefully looked over the foliage and took another glance around. Another group ran past their hiding place. After a few more moments, Mandy motioned Janice to go.
Holding a shaking knife in her fist, she crept out after the second group.
Mandy and Janice followed the trio of monsters, and watched as they started breaking down the door to what looked like an apartment.
"Jan, I need you to stay here with big sis Mercy. Follow her lead. I'm going to follow them in, and see what's going on."
Mandy knelt down and gave Janice a hug. Janice squeezed back hard. They knelt in silence for a few seconds.
"I am so proud of you; you are doing so well. Keep it together and stay safe." With that, Mandy ghosted through the wall into the house.
Janice scuttled closer to the entryway. Inside the door, she could hear shouting, and gunshots. A few moments later, the monsters returned, dragging a weeping woman covered in blood. They threw her to the ground and started to tie her hands behind her back.
Janice struck the one keeping watch first, Mercy's murmured instructions in her ears and Mercy's hands guiding her blade.
Hopping up, she drove the knife like a spike into the back of its head; up and in from behind. Dropping to the right, she grabbed the twitching corpse's arm as it crumpled, and carefully aimed its gun at the other figures bending over the woman. They were turning and looking in her direction as she pulled the trigger, sending a spray of some not-quite-bullets into them. Flaring barriers lit up for a moment before the rounds smashed into them, carving their faces into ribbons.
Dropping the limp arm, Janice turned and threw up into the bushes. Mercy was laughing at her in the back of her head.
After a few minutes, she crawled over to the woman who was still lying on the ground. She started checking the weeping woman for wounds.
Mandy walked out of the house.
"House is empty, one male corpse. Looks like they killed her husband for trying to resist."
Janice looked over to her big sis, and nodded once.
"Jan, help her up. We have to get out of here." Mandy looked into the distance, and then pointed. "There's another team over there, and they'll come in this direction in a few moments." Mandy thought for moment. "We need to cover up what happened here as well."
Janice started pulling at the woman, making quiet shushing sounds. The woman was still crying, and wasn't getting up. Janice pulled harder, and started to whimper. The woman finally looked up, and noticed the bloody girl pulling on her hand.
"Please get up." Janice whispered.
Something in the blood covered girl made the woman react, and she got to her feet. With Mandy guiding them, they got out of sight in time, even after leaving behind a surprise. Grenades make a great cover up device; no matter what happened before, afterwards everything looked like a grenade went off.
When the next batarian patrol came by to investigate the sound of the grenade, they weren't able to figure out much more of what happened. The next batch of grenades primed under the corpses and planted barely in the ground ensured that.
When dusk fell, big sis Mercy took Janice hunting.
Sneaking into Mercy children center was easier than it should have been. The echoes of the fighting and dying left a resonance that covered the entire settlement. All Janice had to do was lie down in a grave to begin her katabasis. The hard part was going to be coming back to Mindoir from the other side; the anabasis, but Janice was talented at that, and had her sisters and Avatar to guide her.
The Shroud on this realm was expectedly firm. Ivory pillars carved with science and etched with reasoning stood tall, stretching to infinity.
Janice stepped close, and drew her fingers across the chiseled words. She skimmed over them, looking for keys to pass through. There.
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Mandy stepped next to Janice and eyed the words under Janice's fingertips.
"John, right? Somewhere around verse 15? 14 maybe? These people are predominantly Christians of some sort, then."
That would make it easier.
Janice centered herself. Time to sneak into the land of the dead, bypass the guardians, and arise back inside the Mercy learning center. Inside her, her big sister Mercy was still laughing at the name of the building.
They waited by the barrier for a few moments, and then slipped in behind one of the newly dead passing through the Shroud into the lower umbra. No one noticed. So many dead were passing through that any guardians would have been hard pressed to spot them sneak in, but there were no guardians to this underworld. Marble pillars silently standing. Empty plains, and the shuffle of the dead.
Mercy glanced around. "Strange. No Cerberus. No Charon. You'd think that even after all this time, the old guardians would still be here, if not replaced by new ones of technocratic making."
Mandy frowned. "Maybe they didn't win the Ascension war then. Or they won so long ago they don't think such protection is still important, or they forgot why they needed it. But shouldn't ghosts be a major problem to them, then?"
"A mystery for another time. Let's find out where this 'Mercy' center connects to, and get out of here."
It was easy to find the location of the Mercy center; Janice just asked the ghosts of the children for directions, and soon arrived at the center. The cheerful colors of the walls were drab here, and the shadow of the center was tinged in blood. Abandoned children shoes littered the area by the front door. Janice carefully stepped over the shoes, and entered the shadow building.
She wandered back and forth until she found the right spot; a small desk, sized for a child, in an abandoned nursery classroom.
Time to start the anabasis.
Janice knelt down. She covered the small desk with a sheet, and drew forth a small horn carved from wood from behind her. The horn had a braided knot whittled along its side. She placed it under the desk, hidden by the sheet.
"How are you going to start?" Mandy asked mildly.
"Voluspo."
"Poetic Edda, the Seeress's Prophecy. Good choice." Mandy nodded, and waited patiently.
Janice took a deep breath, then another. After a moment, she spoke,
"I know of the horn of Heimdall, hidden
Under the high-reaching holy tree;
On it there pours from Valfather's pledge
A mighty stream: would you know yet more?
"Mimir's sons dance,
but the central tree takes fire,
at the resounding Giallar-horn.
Loud blows Heimdall, his horn is raised;
Odin speaks with Mimir's head."
She took the horn from under the sheet, and raised it above her head. Palms open, hands together, she held the pose for several seconds, then turned and lowered the horn. Once, twice, thrice more, once in each direction she repeated the gesture.
"Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a dew of light and the earth will give birth to the dead.
"Is not this the fast that I have chosen?
To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens,
and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
She knelt, lowered the horn, and placed it in her lap. Carefully, she poured dust into the mouth of the horn.
"Now the trumpet summons us again
not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need;
not as a call to battle, though embattled we are,
but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle.
She placed the horn on top of the desk, and stood. All was still.
"Rejoice in hope!
She clapped her hands together, a thunder echoed through the silent building.
"Patience in tribulation!
She stomped her foot, a tremor shook the air. Vibration. Pressure.
"Struggle 'gainst the enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war.
She poured the dust from the horn into her hands. It shimmered, glimmering a grey, subtle glow. She traced swirls and patterns onto her face and arms.
"Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
Each generation has been summoned to give testimony to its loyalty.
The graves of the young who answered the call to service surround the globe.
She spun, throwing the last of the dust in a circle around her. It hung in the air, a sparkling cloud.
"And ken; the last enemy to be destroyed is death.
The entire room was quivering. Grey light covered Janice's face in a mask, obscuring and disfiguring everything but her blazing blue eyes.
"Tia mi aven Moridin isainde vadin;
the grave is no bar to my call."
She drew the horn to her lips, and blew. Silence echoed. Janice vanished into reality, leaving behind a dusty, empty, reflection of a classroom in the penumbra.
Twenty minutes later, unable to handle their deaths at something they couldn't see, the batarians broke, and were overrun.
"Big sis Mercy, Mandy, what do we do now?"
It was almost dawn. Survivors clustered around fires in the dark, bone weary. Janice huddled by herself under a blanket. It was only slightly crisp outside, but Jan felt tired and cold. Blankets were also a bit cuddly, and she really needed a cuddle right now.
"Should we try to return to earth?"
"No." Mandy was firm.
Mercy and Janice waited for her to continue.
"Look, either the war is over, or it's not. If the war is over, then we don't need to head back to earth right away. If the war is still going on, then they could use our help. However, technology is everywhere. Aliens! Other realms! If we go back to earth, we will probably be found by the technocracy first - surveillance is their forte. We can learn and grow better out here, where no one knows us."
"What about the old man?" Mercy asked, eyes sharp.
Mandy stilled, then sighed.
"He would want us safe, more than anything else. We still do have reasons to hide; passing time didn't stop them from finding us before, and I see no reason why it would work now." She glanced wryly at Mercy.
Mercy grimaced.
"Sorry, Amanda. You know I'm sorry."
"We know, big sis." Janice crawled into Mercy's lap, and gave her a hug.
"So." Mandy stated, "Let us see what wonders this new milieu can offer us, let us gather our strength and focus, and let us stay hidden. For now."
Janice and Mercy nodded, and they turned to watch the dawn rise on a distant planet.
The next morning, a bored child was sitting in an alliance child welfare waiting room.
A kindly faced older woman entered the room, an electronic clipboard in her hands. "Jane Shepard?" She asked, looking down to confirm the name.
The child shrugged. As good a name as any, and it never hurt having more names. "Yeah, what do you want?"
"I'm with Alliance child services. My name is Elisabeth. I'm in charge of making sure you get taken care of. Please come with me."
Janice followed the lady out of the room, and into the future.
Author's note: Good lord, this chapter did not come easy. Every time I thought I had it finished, more and more kept coming out.
