OSaBC BoH II: The Monster with a Hundred Heads
LP's A/N: Did you think this was a done deal? When I still have PC's to torture?
Never.
Bird of Hermes 1 was a study in horror and increasing levels of beginning to understand the things that make the entire Verse so miserable. It started out just me, but I adapted my RPG campaign around it. But then I started thinking. Why only stop with an SCP/X-Files remix? Why not hit them with some more flipside shit?
Bird of Hermes II, therefore, skips most of the horror. Instead, it focuses on politics, scheming, backstabbing, human trauma, emotions, and the fact that most of the people involved in this have so much mental and personal wreckage they make Shepard look well adjusted.
As a result, some of this is going to be hard to read. Especially the Commissariat bits, and with Lady Emilia Manswell. There's also a great deal of indirect references to medical abuse, child torture, sexual abuse, gaslighting, outright brainwashing, the High Lords being absolute trash, and as always, things I adapted from people I worked with or counseled in real life.
Safe for absolutely no age groups.
As always thanks to EnigmaticOne for typing this up, any mistakes are mine but of course I don't make mistakes. And if I do, it's Fluffles fault.
EO's A/N: I wanted to strangle LP, having learned he'd planned a full-blown sequel to Bird of Hermes right when I already had my hands full with revamping the Battle Chicken System (sorry IThinkIWasBob, that was just the alpha test run) and Mooloor dropping out due to burnout.
Well, somehow I'm still doing this. Fun fact: given the name of the story, I decided to take all act and chapter titles from the Theogony.
Editing Gang Disclaimer: We didn't get to review any of this, the hack didn't even warn EO when he put it up, so we take no responsibility for LP's terrorist-like abuse of punctuation and spelling.
And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,
And they mixed and made peace after strife;
Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;
Death tingled with blood, and was life.
Like lovers they melted and tingled,
In the dusk of thine innermost fane;
In the darkness they murmured and mingled,
Our Lady of Pain.
A PROLOGUE : By despair, the twin-born of devotion
The man standing in front of the desk was attired in the modern business suit all employees of the company wore - a two piece black omni-cloth woven coat and slacks, with a light grey singlesuit shirt and a ribbon tie. His hands fidgeted nervously behind his back as the man behind the desk read the scrolling blue lines of the padd he'd handed over.
The grey haired man grunted and tossed the padd on the desk. "So the entire system is destroyed, and our participation was... hinted at, but no proof, is that about it, Banham?"
The younger man nodded. "Yes, Mr. Jones. The one mapping clerk for the Citadel had no issues with wiping the records. And unless they find Gillor alive somewhere, I doubt A/E has any data backups."
The other man smiled in a wintry fashion, his own dark suit more finely cut than that of Banham. "You've done excellent work, then. I'll speak to the vice president about a bonus. That's all." He watched the younger man smile and leave his office, before tapping the comm panel on his desk. "Corda, Banham is leaving. Once he leaves the office, have his workstation wiped and the hardware melted, and have Noro shadow him. Once you're sure he's not rabbiting, kill him and frame up a slum-gang or something, failed robbery, that kind of thing."
He clicked off without even waiting for a reply, standing up and moving to the far wall of his expensively decorated office, high atop one of the most elite starscrapers of Bekenstein. He tapped the larger and more heavily protected comms station there, entering in two codes, before the shadowy outline of a human head appeared on screen, the voice distorted with static and digital masking.
"I trust everything is secure, Jones?"
The gray hair man nodded at the screen. "Yes sir. Mapping, license office, ship office, all wiped. The two A/E reps are already handled, Gillor is still missing but was probably still at Jeremiah, and the Black Rendition liaison got mind-wiped and assigned to Brazil. I've already had my cleanup crew check any loose ends, and they're being...taken care of now."
"And the secretary? Getting her out of the reach of Herrero's assassins and the Commissars was not easy."
Jones shrugged. "She's with the team on Polas IV, with the rest of the... problem cases. I wasn't aware she was still important at this stage..." He trails off, and the digitized voice laughs.
"She isn't. Kill her. What about the reporter?"
Jones grimaced. "Alive, but probably wishes she wasn't. The guards..." He looked away from the display, and the voice sounded amused.
"I'll ease your weak stomach. Have her prepped for transfer - she has a use, given the rest of the operation went smoothly. Once we're done, we'll need to discuss our next moves with your superiors."
Jones nodded, pleased. "ExoGeni - ha, pardon me, Jinn Outer Systems Exploration - is happy to be of help." He paused. "But...the CEO was curious if your group was somehow related to Terra Firma or...I mean, given the name. Or biological study, with the whole 'life itself' thing...?"
The outline's expression could not be seen, but Jones could almost hear the smile in the man's voice. "No, our corporation is...independent. But I assure you, Mr. Jones, we take humanity very seriously, and our cooperation will only lead to good things in the future."
The signal cut out.
Prologue: A Rough Translation
Varian didn't often play to stereotypes, usually finding them lazy, uninspired and predictable. But some of them had a purpose. In this case, he'd wound up with a proper conspiracy nest in the Kinnix band's shared workspace, strewn with datapads and even the odd archaic paper notepad. Planetary surveys, newsfeeds, psych profiles, veering into the esoteric with the odd tract on theology from Athemist to Imperial Batarian.
In short, he looked like a damn spy, or a lunatic from Westwatch.
So Daniel thought, wandering into the workshop, a crate of myriad AESIR components under his cyber arm. His opposite hand worked his omni-tool, scrolling through parts lists, blueprints and catalogs as he wound his way over to his personal bench. Various mechs in random stages of construction, including SLEIPNIR, JOTUN, and LOKI models, stood behind it. "Ah, Varian. You're not often in the shop at the same time as me. What's on your docket today?"
"Yeah, spy hours. I'm doing some digging. You remember the... primer the Ciana bitch sung at us? I'm trying to work things out. Contextualize the information, make it fit. So far, not liking what I find." Varian gestured broadly. "Ascended seem to have certain markers. Aquatic preference, massively advanced technology handed out sparingly, domineering/overbearing attitudes, arrogance, but a modern inclination to manipulation and proxies over direct force. And they have to have proxies. I'm just trying to work out who. The current list is... disturbing."
Hard enough when much of the information on the padds and documentation in front of him was contradictory or even unable to be verified.
Daniel set the crate beside his bench and took in the sight of Varian's spy nest. "You collect all that on your own? Doesn't look like a clean thread there."
Varian chuckled at that. "That's an understatement. The various anomalous monitors we left a hop skip and a jump ahead of work hard at keeping things quiet, to say nothing of the actual actors, but there's always going to be leakage. Implications that don't make sense without context. But now I've got a foot in the door. I know a little and that lets me guess a lot."
He gestured widely to the first section. "Hanar. Aquatic, reclusive, and when provoked reacted with military technology that not even the best archeotech researchers can figure out. Only known splinter is on the Citadel and are just hilariously suspicious. Oh yeah, and the only time I ever met a glowkid it talked about 'the unkindness of necessity,' when I was on my least favorite assignment I ever took in the AIS. Suspicious as all hell."
The finger pointed to another section. "Batarians. Not aquatic, but the newly trimmed back Empire kept some shit-useless water worlds for no discernible reason. And apparently some of the rebels bombed them. The shit-useless water worlds with hardly anyone on them. Highly perverse religion, based around the worship of their Dark Gods. Notable fixation on sadism, dominance, inferiority of the other and mental control or power. Given what we saw on Rho..."
Varian shoved off the memories before reaching his third set of suspects. "And then... asari. Semi-aquatic, dominant species of the galaxy until modern events slightly nudged things. Manipulative to a fault, highly adept at political maneuver. Primary faith is highly syncretic and adaptable, perfect to integrate with other aliens, but the actual power, the Thirty, remain stalwart Athemists; a monotheistic and centralized faith whose primary temple is more heavily guarded than some governmental headquarters. On occasion they produce unknown technology directly from their asses, always when their dominance was threatened. And then there's... Trellani."
He finished, eyes moving to a separate little bit off of the Asari section. Daniel noticed for some reason it was all on hard copy paper, covered in scribbles.
"...Asari?" Dan's voice was quieter than Varian had ever heard before. "What's the asari got to do with these damned cuttlefish-things?"
"Every single one of my suspects has displayed mental/informational wrongness that seems to be a hallmark of higher-order manipulation. Asari melding and bonding, several batarian rituals and possibly practices, and hanar seem to undergo it as a matter of course during maturation from glowchild to adult." The spook explained. "Nothing else explains the shift at least. Also, the latter two both exhibit it in their music curiously enough. Doesn't work through recordings though. Along with the many snippets of circumstantial evidence, they are my guesses for Ascended proxies. So yeah, I think you're doing better with me. Mechs are much nicer."
"Mechs are just puzzles you can just change the outcome of. Simple or as complex as you want." Daniel's thoughts turned back to memories of the Lodge of the Crushing Storm, and the training he'd received on Thessia. Of one ritual he saw there. "...You ever found anything about megafauna movement on Thessia? Rogue lightning storms?"
He knew Varian wouldn't. By all reports, all megafauna above a certain size on Thessia went extinct before recorded Thessian history.
Varian buffered for a second, before taking his now always-present headphones and turning them down to minimal. "No. Please elaborate." His tone was now somewhere between concerned and predatory.
"Heh. Guess the Lodge is keeping its secret. Can't. Breaking promises to old Battlemasters is bad for the health." Especially when the one in question was the true founder of the Lodge. Daniel scratched his chin thoughtfully "Tell you this much. For a species that so associates itself with water and oceans, asari have an odd tendency to not explore the depths of their own."
"Well, that's another point on the line." Varian acknowledged. "Current theory for them is a leader or politician Ascended, makes sense that they'd want to keep them at arm or tentacle's length from their hidey-hole if they aren't as thoroughly controlled. The hanar are likely a scientist or researcher type, very withdrawn and cautious. The Batarians... cops. My money's on some ugly, nasty beat cop sort. Possibly multiple to be the Dark Gods, although that would imply each being individually less powerful than the others. I'm unsure on assigning Lethath as the hand behind the Hanar, or as a free agent."
"Impression I got was that Lethath was an 'unseen hand' type." Daniel gestured from the hanar to asari sections. "Hanar, goofs that they are, don't strike me as that. Asari though..."
"Also possible. The reason I'm cautious is that the hanar exhibit more of what I think is his... style. The big artifice on Rho, the high technology, just keeping them around instead of killing them. He obviously had a thing about being seen as big and powerful. The Asari are currently my primary candidate for Kidun. A sneaky bastard who'd sabotage Rho as a gambit fits them quite well, and would explain why their tech is more restrained and their position more integrated."
Daniel turned back to his bench and started working on the JOTUN. "Hm. Still seems an odd fit, but you're the spook. You run any of this by the Old Frog, or one of his own spooks?"
"Not yet. I'm writing it all up a little more... coherently. The current notes are a little too 3D for easy reading. But I'll see what he can pry out with his bullshit. I'm not getting married to these ideas until I have confirmation. Hell, I ain't even kissing them right now. Too much uncertainty, too much give in the guesses."
Varian paused. "How's the Big Man doing? Not talked with him much recently, don't even know what he thinks about the possible job yet."
"...he and I haven't... really talked since Rho." Daniel huffed raggedly, then set himself down forcefully at the bench, his expression thunderous. "Fuck... Ahern's own daughter. I didn't... How could he not butcher everyone involved in that?!"
"Well I haven't blown my old CO's brains out either. There's a strange power to the chain of command, knowing that you can't unseat shit. You can just rotate smoothly, or get popped out of the clock and replaced with someone who will."
Varian smiled, not a good smile. It reached his eyes, but in all the wrong ways, cold and dark. "Doesn't suppress that little fire in your chest though. The one you feed the little flickers of anger to, that sharpens your mind and steadies your hand. You might never get to use it on its original target, but it's still there."
Daniel whirled to his feet, his right hand flicking out claws, smashing through a SLEIPNIR. Parts scattered across the floor.
"FUCK!" He screamed, blades retracting, and his hand slamming into the leg of the JOTUN.
"I'm half glad you made it this long before you had your event. And it's contained, mostly. Doing better than I did. Hell of a lot better than I did." Varian, somehow managing to sound both sympathetic and eerily impassive, flicks up his omni-tool, swapping the quiet music from headphones to speaker.
Odd. It sounded quite different from any music Daniel usually heard, but not alien, the vocals unmistakably human. Varian's smile warmed a little.
Daniel breathed raggedly, simply standing there with his gaze swinging sullenly across the mess of the SLEIPNIR. Finally he moved to clean up the mess, anger replaced with ash. "...Goddamnit. I thought making a Knight Defiant, I'd finally be done with all this ducking and fucking. And then the Boss is just as twisted up inside as the rest of us."
"It's a shit world, Arondine. And there's some shit people in it. That's the same conclusion I reached when I watched my partner laugh as an STG backed candidate had a mental break from the drugs we'd cut her coke with." Varian answered. "But I ask you this. Is Jason Kinnix a good man? Not perfect, none of us are, but is he a good one, in his core. Because it's a shit world, but that's not what matters. What matters is what you do about it."
"...And what if what I want to do is tear the goddamn Ivory Towers down, and damn the consequences? Manswell. Williams. Eldfell. All of them." Daniel snarled.
"You could try. Die in glory, all that good stuff. Or you can do what you can." Varian remarked. "It's not an indignity to be limited and mortal. It's a shit world. But you can make it a little brighter."
His lips quirk up in a smile. "Not to say that if I somehow got a sightline and an escape route that I wouldn't liberate a few noble brain-substitutes from their skulls."
"I can live with Kinnix not being a hero. I can live as one of the Shifter's goons, hunting relics with a target on my skull." Daniel moved with a purpose now, taller and straighter than in a long time. He stood beside Varian's desk, extended one claw, and impaled an image of Trellani on the wall. "But you mark me. One day, I'll see Maxwell dead. Even if I have to storm into the Iron Towers myself."
"And that's the fire, isn't it? You've given it its first spark, but the kindling has been there for a while. Remember that. Keep it alive and it'll keep you warm." Varian told him.
"...Trellani." Daniel muttered. "Name's familiar. Who is she, and what's she doing in that picture?" Daniel pulled back his hand, claw neatly sliding free of the wall. His gaze was drawn to the figure opposite Trellani, wearing some kind of uniform he didn't recognize... save for the layered hexagon pin on the lapel. "Is that someone from Binary Helix?"
They heard dry laughter as the big man himself slowly walked in, looking more worn than either had seen him. Tired, old, but no less proud. "Good words. Even better message. I really should have come sooner. I have been... engaged in trying to make sense of it all myself. And mend the broken fences with my family. You. My friends. Not servants or minions. But friends. Probably have plenty of questions. Ask them. I'll answer what I can."
Jason leaned on a table, resting his weight on it and ignoring any mess, uncaring if his sleeves and hands were stained.
"Varian first. It's important." Daniel decided.
"Hey hey hey, don't lean on that table, you break it and half my Hanar notes take a vacation." After glaring down Jason Kinnix, Varian turned to Daniel. "That is former Stellarch, Matriarch Trellani. Extremely former, after finding... something. Something related to the Temple, almost certainly. Anyone with so much of a hint of it got blasted off the face of existence, and the Thirty would probably love to finish the job, and have two billion credits asking to make it happen. I've got my grubby mitts on some of her earlier writings off an old and shady contact. It's about as concerning as that pretext suggests."
"Even I know of her." Kinnix said. Her book on light commando tactics was still used in the present day. "She was big news a long time ago then went absolute fucking crazy. Whoever the fuck she's with is bad news. Like, nearly Rho levels of bad. Especially if he's standing with her so freely."
"Okay... but who's that there with her?" Daniel demanded. "I know that logo."
"Ah." Varian smirked. "That would be the insignia of Cerberus. Yes, that one. I'm sure you can understand why that little association is odd."
"...Cerberus. Color swap of Binary Helix can't be a coincidence." Daniel stared at the wall.
"Human supremacists with a known former Asari bigwig who has a massive bounty on her head? You say odd. I say cause for Shifter to get involved in this. Wouldn't you agree, Daniel? Even more if they used Binary Helix as a front. Money laundering or recruit– Daniel?" Kinnix cut off as he saw the increasing tension in Daniel's body.
"They were there, tending to those exposed to eezo, in that accident that killed Mom. They said they were Binary Helix... but Richard Williams showed up later that day to 'offer condolences.' He was wearing the same pin that officer has, down to the color." Daniel ground out, creeping rage tinting his vision.
The Arodines had been Knights of the Starlight Lance, the order of House Williams. They'd carried out General William's last orders, to ensure the safe escape of the Exodus fleet. That had barely saved them from burning by the Commissariat after the FCW. Instead, they'd gotten the 'leniency' of his father being made a Penal Legionnaire, and Daniel allowed to remain in his mother's care through his sister's volunteering for conscription and the condition of enlistment in the SAMC when he came of age.
It caused him no end of trouble for his career, and even got his initial application to the Knights of the Defiant Axe blocked, had Kinnix not been intrigued enough to pay him a personal visit.
"Fuck... do you think they were behind the accident Daniel?" Kinnix asked. A cargo accident had exposed Alessa Arodine to eezo dusting, leading to fatal complications in childbirth. The unborn child had gone with her… or so they'd been told.
"I almost tried to kill him. Now I wish I had. I knew that was no accident!" Daniel whirled away, pacing again. "And Mom didn't miscarry! That fuckstick KNEW and tried to fucking recruit me!" Daniel hurled himself into a biotic charge, embedding his right fist up to the elbow into a nearby wall.
Varian leaned back. "Fuck. Didn't consider that angle. Makes sense though. From a rather warped point of view, but... More biotics is more biotics. Just have to be an amoral bastard about it."
"I doubt it's that simple." Kinnix disagreed. "Otherwise there would be programs to dust you with eezo to try and birth biotic babies or some shit. Has to be another variable, right? They couldn't have skipped right into insanity."
"Yeah, but why take the PR hit? Subjecting all those women to cancers, stillbirths, medical complications for the rest of the lives of them and their children. Even in the SA that's a bitter pill. Ooor, you accomplish about the same thing with a couple of 'accidents.'" Varian explained.
"Just have to think like an amoral bastard, is the trick."
"You take this to the Old Frog. Or I will. I have family out there, and Cerberus has them, or knows who does." Daniel pulled himself from the wall, shaking his arm to clear debris "The cuttlefish can wait."
"Fuck. Now I want to go back and take an axe to... well a lot of people. Far more than I probably should... fuck." Kinnix shook his head despairingly. "What happened to make humanity into this... shell of what we were supposed to be. The Shifter will hear of this. And anything else you want him to. Who knows, maybe he can find your family and we can accident them free." Kinnix tries to smile at that but it was clearly forced.
"Kinnix, you want to take point with the Cerberus stuff, and I'll keep on at my Ascended work?" Varian requested. "I've just got the countermeasures section and type up left before it'll be on the Frog's desk."
"Aye. These bastards hurt a lot of people. Least I can do is fucking put them down wherever I can. I remember why I turned to debauchery and hedonism after becoming nobility... and it's all this bullshit. Politics and crazy shit galore." The former Lord General turned to his knight. "Now. I believe I owe you an explanation. Where should I begin?"
"Ahern's daughter. You told us they boxed you in. You really never tried to strike back?" Daniel wondered.
"I literally had no angles. They had bombs, gunmen, hell, they had a freighter parked in orbit over my home. I was able to confirm the presence of them through back channels." Kinnix answered. "And the moment it was done? Gone. Like they never existed. I didn't even know if they were even who they claimed to be. For all I know, they were monitoring my comms. My movements. My transactions. It's what I would have done."
"...Damn it." Daniel returned to his desk, seating himself to face Varian and Kinnix. "You ever have Varian look into any of that?"
"Honestly, no. I don't want to send him to his death." Kinnix frowned. "Hell I'm not gonna ask the Shifter either. Because at that point we become a big fucking problem. Worse than we are. And then you die, I die, my family dies. I'll throw away my life in a heartbeat. But I'm not throwing away the lives of others."
"So we find a way to get ours back." Daniel smacked a fist into his palm. "Hell. We do it right, old man Ahern might even tag in with us long enough to settle up with the High Lords first."
"Not before he ventilates my skull. But I like your enthusiasm, Daniel. Reminds me why I made you a knight in the first place."
"I've no objections. But can we please try the sneaky bastard way first?" Varian's voice carried a long-suffering note. "Getting shot in the back of the head by the Commissars is something we just managed to avoid, I don't want to tempt fate a second time. I'd much prefer something else. At least dying against these Reapers maybe, but I'd like to go out in my bed, surrounded by friends, at a ripe old age. Being unsubtle with this gets me significantly further from that."
