In the Council Rotunda of Babylon Tower-7, silence was a manufactured resource. It was a perfect, sterile quiet, scrubbed of dust and doubt by an atmosphere processor the size of a city block. The air smelled of nothing, a clean void that made the lungs feel hollow. Here, in this circle of polished obsidian and projected light, Director Joris Crane addressed the council. Or rather, he addressed the Aegis Display, a column of cool blue light that resolved into a silent, three-dimensional map of the Slaughter Ravine. The wreckage of three Warden-class Mecha was rendered as precise, geometric scars on the landscape.
— The operational failure in Bracket Nine was precipitated by the unforeseen collusion of two rogue elements, — Crane stated. His voice was a calm, measured baritone, another component of the room’s oppressive sterility. He did not look at the other council members seated in their alcoves of projected light. He looked at the data. — One of our own, Pilot Rhys Carrick. And a Chorus oracle of unknown designation. Their actions led to a catastrophic loss of assets.
Councilor Tower, a man whose face was a soft mask for a mind like a coiled spring, leaned forward. His function on the council was to be the designated friction in Crane’s machine.
— Assets, Director? — Tower’s voice was mild, but it carried the weight of procedure. — I see the wreckage of three Warden mechs. I see the names of twelve dead soldiers on this report. You call them assets. Their families might choose a different word.
— Their function was to secure the sector, — Crane replied, his gaze unwavering from the holographic display. — They failed to perform their function. The variable was betrayal. Carrick’s. He broke formation, compromised the line. The oracle exploited the chaos. It was a coordinated attack, far more sophisticated than we anticipated.
This was the narrative. Clean. Logical. It assigned blame to the two people who were no longer part of the system, absolving the system itself. It was a lie of elegant construction. Crane knew it. Tower suspected it. But in the Rotunda, a provable lie was more valuable than an inconvenient truth. The price of this maneuver was the truth itself, buried under the weight of a falsified report.
— This coordinated effort suggests a new level of strategic capability from the Chorus, — Crane continued, pivoting from defense to offense. — They were not merely raiding. They were moving on a target. Our long-range scans confirm high-value pre-Fall energy signatures emanating from the Sunken Archive in the adjacent sector.
He manipulated the Aegis Display. The map zoomed out, highlighting a new zone with a blinking red border. The Sunken Archive.
— I am therefore requesting emergency appropriations to establish a full military cordon around the sector. We cannot allow the Chorus to gain a foothold at that location. The cost of the "failed patrol" must purchase us a strategic advantage.
Councilor Tower was silent for a long moment. He saw the shape of the play. Crane was using his own failure as leverage for more power, more resources. To deny the request would be to appear weak, to ignore the "new threat" Crane had so carefully fabricated. To approve it would be to hand Crane a private army and a sealed-off section of the Wastes.
— The council approves the appropriation, — Tower said, the words tasting like metal filings. — See to it, Director. And see that there are no more… variables.
Crane gave a curt nod, the barest minimum of acknowledgement. He had won. The cordon was approved. The knives were sheathed. On his console, beside the glowing Aegis controls, sat a small, heavy object of brass and glass, a pre-Fall dosimeter he used as a paperweight. Its needle was frozen, its internal components long dead. It was a symbol of a time when risk was a thing you could measure, a comforting, silent reminder of his mastery over the forces that had broken the world.
Miles away, in the heart of the Shimmering Eden, the air was warm and hummed with a low, choral frequency. The light was a silent, blooming violet that pulsed from the vitrified crater floor, and the air smelled of ozone and hot stone. Here, in the Synod Amphitheater, the leadership of the Chorus of Eden performed their own damage control. There was no obsidian floor, only the smooth, glassy ground of the crater. There were no holographic displays, only the shared consciousness of the Radiant Canticle.
The Envoy of Eden, his form a shimmering column of pale light, addressed the assembled shamans and oracles. His voice was a melodic chant, designed to soothe and reassure.
— The pilgrims who fell in the Wastes have not been lost, — the Envoy sang, his words weaving into the ambient hum. — Their spirits have joined the great song. They are a chorus of sacrifice, a pure note that has shown us the enemy’s heart. They have revealed a corruption in our own ranks.
He paused, letting the weight of the word hang in the warm air.
— The Oracle Nysa Calder, she who was meant to lead them, was touched by the machine-god. She communed with a man of Matter. She has fallen from the song, her spirit now a discordant note of static and doubt. It was her weakness, her impurity, that the enemy exploited.
The Choir Warden, a being whose light was a cold, hard silver, rose from his place in the circle. His form was less a shimmer and more a blade. His function was to be the voice of zealotry, the sharp edge of their faith.
— A song of sacrifice sounds much like a song of failure, Envoy, — the Warden’s voice was a low, cutting whisper that sliced through the Envoy’s melody. — The spirit should grant victory, not martyrdom. You speak of Nysa’s corruption. I ask, how did this corruption grow so deep under your guidance? Perhaps the discord is not in one oracle, but in the leadership that can no longer hear the pure song.
The accusation was plain. The Envoy’s light wavered for a fraction of a second. The Warden was using the loss of the pilgrims, the loss of a respected oracle, to make a bid for power. The system of the Chorus, for all its spiritual rhetoric, was no different from the Compact’s. It was a machine of power, and failure was blood in the water.
— The spirit tests us, Warden, — the Envoy countered, his voice regaining its smooth, melodic cadence. — It purges the weak. Nysa’s fall is a lesson, not a failure of leadership. Her heresy has shown us a threat we did not see. The man of Matter she consorted with was a high-level pilot. They move together now. They move towards a place of great power, a place the Canticle whispers is a tomb of the old world.
He did not name the Sunken Archive. He did not need to. The implication was enough. A threat, external and internal, that only the current leadership was equipped to handle. The Choir Warden subsided, his silver light dimming slightly. He had made his point, planted his seeds of dissent. He could afford to wait. The Envoy had bought himself time, but the schism had been exposed.
Within the hour, the two systems, opposed in faith and physics, acted in perfect, cynical synchrony. A public broadcast, transmitted on all open channels, announced an unprecedented joint initiative. A spokesperson for the Babylon Compact, their face a bland mask of sincerity, spoke of a temporary ceasefire on the Drowned Causeway. An announcer for the Chorus, their voice a soothing balm, echoed the sentiment. It was a move to "de-escalate tensions" and "restore stability" to the region. It was a beautiful, hollow lie.
The price of this grand deception was paid by two people who would never hear the broadcast.
In a darkened Compact command bunker, a communications officer received a new directive. It was coded red. He read the target designations: Rhys Carrick, former Warden pilot; Nysa Calder, Chorus heretic. The order was simple: Sanitize. Erase. He keyed in the command, dispatching a team of hunters. On his belt, a small, personal dosimeter, a cheap piece of modern tech, began to click erratically, a sudden, nervous chatter in the quiet room. The system was processing the order, and the world’s background radiation of pure malevolence ticked up a notch.
In a hidden Chorus relay station, a young acolyte received a new hymn, its verses coded with tactical data. The targets were the same. The Fallen Oracle and her machine-lover. The hymn described them as a spiritual contagion that must be cleansed before it could infect the greater body of the faithful. The acolyte accepted the directive, his heart swelling with righteous purpose. He was helping to purify the song.
Under the false cover of peace, the two largest powers in the known world had agreed on one thing. They had created two loose ends, two living records of their own corruption. And now, with the full weight of their military and spiritual might, they would erase them.
The hunt was officially on.
