And They Came

No uproar; either the assembly had exhausted their energies in the previous instance, or they were too stunned to voice it. The intruder leaned on his knees, and the Prime Beacon realized he had run to the chamber from wherever he was before. He was panting hard. "A-apologies, but it's the truth. The Jackal's sitesman confirmed it himself."

Not that anyone thought this was a false report or a joke in the first place, but those words made the chamber all the more somber. Up high, the Prime Beacon settled his mind. "Can they present before us?"

"Right now, sir?" The intruder paled; the yellow band was out on full display. "I don't know if this is an appropriate time to contact them."

"Were Aud pursuing them when the sitesman made the report?"

"N-no, but--"

"Then have them begin a long-range communication." Both screen projectors and focal relays connecting the transmission towers existed among the complex machinery buried in the chamber's walls, so if external tasks needed delegation, or information needed checking, there was rarely a reason to send someone outside of it during an ongoing session. "That isn't a problem, is it?"

The intruder nodded and went rigid, a sign he was interfacing deep with his HUD. He refocused and looked up again, nodding. "They've sent it, sir."

"You may go then," he dismissed the intruder. "Thank you for relaying this to us."

"Sir!" The intruder saluted and made a swift retreat from the chamber. He waited until the large double doors closed behind him, and spread his gaze to every headman of the home interest.

"Do I need permission to accept the communication?" At his jab, some of them turned prickly and sour. Eighth Headman grinned and offered two raised hands curled into fists, with the thumbs sticking out. He taught her that.

"Answer it already," In-3 spat. His eyes seemed to add, 'Most of our production waste has more value than the words you produce.' The Prime Beacon nodded at that, careful to keep a neutral face. He raised a screen resting on the arm of his seat and pressed a few controls. From the center point of the chamber, a screen flickered to life, depicting a command center. Engineers, techs, and officers raced around in the background, while a single figure occupied the foreground.

Re-5 was intimate and familiar with that background, though she found it odd the sitesman was on a level lower than his assigned command console. If Ze-4 was spindly and lean, the sitesman of the Jackal was a mountain of flesh, with an impressive beard of gray, black, and white streaks to match. "This is sitesman of the Jackal, He-6, reporting to the One-Light Directory." His head turned to the side, and he locked eyes with the Prime Beacon. "It's nice to see you, sir."

He nodded, a relieved smile present. Though they couldn't address each other as friends, they had shared most of their deployments during their compulsory service. The bonds forged through those trials kept them together after, even once he surpassed He-6 in the ranks. "I'm glad to see you're still with us. Unfortunately, we hear the same isn't true for those at Rhea?"

"I wish I could claim that's a false report, sir." Sorrow twisted He-6's visage. "Disregarding the fort itself, the Jackal near failed to escape from the ambush."

"Ambush?" That caught his interest, and not only his. Others in the chamber beheld the screen above them with rapt eyes and keen ears. "What do you mean? And what's the condition of the Jackal?"

"I should start at the beginning, shouldn't I?" The burly man rubbed his scalp. His speech was too informal for the crowd he was addressing, but no one had the patience to pause the proceedings to remind him of this. "I grounded the Jackal inside Fort Rhea for scheduled maintenance and resupply. The number of Aud hordes we've diverted in the past months was rising in frequency, forcing us to almost exhaust our munitions reserves before returning. We received an opportunity to retreat and took it."

"When we had replaced our power cores and restocked the majority of our munitions, something strange happened." The outer whiskers of his beard almost curled in on themselves when his lips puckered. "Our scans--sometimes the techs run them to fine-tune the assistive programs, you understand--were going through the motions when we received an alert for positive matches."

"Aud were in the vicinity of the fort?" Ch-4 sat up, smacking the top of her head into Eighth Headman's chin. While the older woman shot a string of staccato "damn!", the younger woman left her perch. A rare sight. "How did the sitesman of the fort let that happen? All forts have their own scanners to detect the fur."

"They didn't find anything." He shrugged, looking as confused as they were. "But there was an error with ours. There must have been."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because the scans revealed a single pinprick of light. No, of shadow."

"What's that supposed to mean?" In-3 scowled. "Stop being cryptic with your words and speak plain."

"I'm not twisting any words," He-6 reassured the Fifth Headman. "It's only that this is what the scans showed. A void of color. Black."

"There was black in the scan? Are you sure there were no projection errors for your screens? It could have been something as simple as the individual pixels. After all, there were no matches with the fort's scans, were there?"

"Yes," He-6 admitted. "But that's because the Titans have more sophisticated scanning technologies embedded into them. Their range spreads out further than the forts'. That's my theory."

"What happened after?" The Prime Beacon was quick to interject and eager to return the report to its proper course. "How does this correlate to Rhea's fall?"

"It doesn't." He-6 shook his head. "Or rather, it had nothing directly to do with it. Our scans continued to show a match for black. Nothing else."

"Was any surveillance deployed? Drones?"

"We thought about it, but in the end, we decided against it."

"So what does this have to do with it?"

"Nothing."

"Exactly nothing, you mean?" The Prime Beacon stroked his chin. He was beginning to see where this was going.

He-6 grimaced upon seeing the visage brought on by contemplation. "Yes."

"The fort did fall?"

"Yes."

"And the Aud were responsible?"

"What else could be?" He didn't know the answer to that. Did a chunk of the Gaiss Hollow's theoretical roof come crashing down and flatten the location? Did it vanish into thin air?

"So why did your scans only show the black dot, and the fort's show no lights at all?"

"Exactly."

"How did the Aud attack?"

"They came from below."

That prompted pause among the assembly, him included. The words were eerily alike Pa-5's opening statement. And he was beginning to see a theme. Not between the two forts exclusively, but all four of them. Callisto, Clyvis, Io, and Rhea.