A Brotherhood of Crows.

“All ships, report in,” Pillion barked. “Ajax?”

“Standing by,”

“Huntsman?”

“Standing by,”

“Portsmouth?”

“All crew at battle station,”

“Adjudicator?”

“Standing by,”

“Albatross,”

“Let’s hunt some rebels,”

“Indeed, Captain Neema, indeed,” Pillion glanced at the faces of the other captains on his holo-screens above his command console. Around him, Cerberus bridge buzzed with excitement as her crew made ready for battle. The fleet had assembled in in deep, gray storm-laden clouds, one Shock away from the location of the Severance vessels. The gunmetal hulks of the Commonwealth fleet blended into the clouds, their sleek hulls and bristling rail gun emplacements seeming just a darker patch in the dark nebula. “Gentlemen, our target is the 57th Severance fleet. The enemy has been testing his latest vessels here in the dead zone, far from our eyes. Our intelligence suggests that their latest class of Panther battleships possess formidable ordnance, and the latest in Shockstream technology. Should these vessels complete their trial period, the enemy will have at his disposal a fighting force which could turn the tide of the war,” he paused. He had been speaking briskly, firmly, but he was struggling to keep the excitement from his voice. It had been too long since he’d given a speech like this. “Gentlemen, you will bring those ships down. Targeting data has been sent to your battle computers. Good hunting. Pillion out.”

He turned to Modaboah, who stood at his side. “Is the decoy ready to send?”

“T minus ten seconds, sir. She’s in the tubes.”

“Good. Get me a tactical view of the enemy fleet.”

Before his command console, a holographic image burst into life, captured by Cerberus’s long range scanners. Great billowing clouds seemed to draw back like stage curtains, to reveal a series of grey dagger like shapes, hanging languidly in the sky. Eight battleships, eight hundred crew a-piece, ninety gun emplacements, each supported by two frigates, which darted between the main ships, weaving around their steely bulks.

“It would seem,” an echoing voice came from Pillion’s left, “That you owe me an apology, Captain,”

Gorcrow stood, flanked by two marines and Jessup, a few yards behind Pillion. His hands were clamped before him in military irons, yet it did little to detract from his menacing, debonair form.

Pillion ignored him. “Status update?”

“The freighter is away, sir,” Modaboah reported. “Ready to Shock when ready.”

“Very good. Let’s get down to business, shall we? On my mark, prepare to Shock...five...four...three...two...one. Send it.”

The cumbersome form of the captured freighter had begun to edge into Cerberus’s viewscreen. On Pillion’s command, it jolted, stuttered and briefly disappeared as its Shock Stream drive remotely triggered. The holo-image of the Severance fleet wavered with static for a moment, and then the freighter materialised amid the ships.

“Report,”

“Long range scans detect rapid enemy comms chat. They’re charging railgun batteries.”

It was working. Excellent. “All ships, spool up Shockstream drives. Prepare to jump as soon as they take the bait. Squadron leaders? Have your airmen in the tubes. You launch on my mark.”

On the holoimage, flashes of light. The Severance vessels were firing over the freighters bows, perhaps assuming she was a civilian vessel who had stumbled across them by some absurd accident. The lines of tracer fire began to arc closer to the vessel, as the Severance commander realised that something was wrong. A burst of railgun fire caught the freighter’s lower stabilisers, not enough to cripple her, but it did not matter. What the Severance vessels could not have known was that she had no crew, and that her cargo bays were packed with several tons of plastic explosives. She blew apart, a great billowing ball of flame and debris, not enough to damage the surrounding fleet, but that was not the point. As the freighter’s explosion glared through the holoimage, Pillion gritted his teeth and said: “Helm, shock now.”

Cerberus leapt forward as if stung, and suddenly she was not longer hidden behind clouds hundreds of kilometres from her prey, but in them, among them. With their attentions taken with the sudden explosion of the freighter, the Commonwealth had shocked until they were basically on top of the Severance ships. Cerberus led the charge from the south, with Ajax and Huntsman flanking her, the Adjudicator following at her rear. From the north, Albatross and Portsmouth shocked in, trapping the 57th fleet in a pincer movement between them. Shocking this close was risky - it meant flying into point blank range of the enemy’s ordnance. If the freighter had served any purpose, it was that her destruction had given Pillion’s force a few vital seconds to land the first blow.

“Gunners, charge batteries one through fifteen, maximum yield. Fire when ready.”

Along the sleek sheen of her main deck, shutters slid back, revealing Cerberus’s forward batteries. Quad barrelled railguns emerged, their barrels swinging to bring themselves to bear on the enemy vessels, and hurl their fire.

“They’re scrambling fighters, sir!” called a voice from the crew pit.

“As expected,” replied Pillion dryly. “Squadrons Alpha through Delta, I think it’s time you joined the fray? Launch now.”

“Sir, Adjudicator asks if she should scramble fighters,” Modaboah asked, her eyes flicking from the data on her holopad to the viewscreen.

“No, have Neema hold his fighters in reserve for the time being. Have Adjudicator pull back and provide artillery support.”

As Adjudicator pulled back, laying down heavy fire from her mortars, Pillion tapped a button on his command console and tuned into the comm channels of his fighter squadrons. He could see them flitting forms of the holoscreen before him, but experience had taught him he could learn more about the field of battle from listening to them than from demanding a remote from the squadron leaders:

“...watch your six, you’ve got one on you.”

“Delta wing, on me, prepare for attack run.”

“Rodger, Delta Gold,”

“Three o’clock, heavy fire from those cannons -”

“I see it, Alpha Five. Beta wing, target your fire on the starboard cannon array - they’ve got heat on my boys -”

“Delta wing, form up, report in -”

“Delta Three, standing by,”

“Delta Nine, I’m on you,”

“Delta -”

A cut off scream, and a burst of harsh static.

“We’ve lost Delta Two - come on, Beta wing, take out those goddamn cannons -!”

“We got you, Delta. Commencing attack now.”

“Alright, boys, let’s make this quick, on my mark, break vector, right, 237 - break now, go go go -”

The light fighters of Alpha wing, single man crafts, lightly armoured and nimble, weaved in and out of the skies, drawing away the Severance’s hastily scrambled interceptors. Pillion’s battle readouts flashed and updated, live, as the two sides clashed. The Severance airmen were sloppy, and his own fighters were harrying them, preventing them from forming up, raking them with railgun fire as soon as they were in the sky. Delta squadron, flying heavier two man bombers, slipped past the flak and fire, and unleashed their loads on the nearest battleship’s heavy batteries, blowing them apart in great plumes of fire. Her weapons would be useless in a matter of moments, and then Cerberus could move in for the kill.

Pillion clasped his hands behind his back and, in the fury and fire of battle, found a peculiar peace.

*

The problem, Dr Kendell realised, ultimately was needles.

He had treated gunshot wounds that had blown fist sized holes through men’s bodies, amputated limbs, grafted great sheens of skin over the blackened flesh of serious burns, and yet, in all his years, it was still needles that filled his mind with horror.

That thought entered his mind again as he looked over the results of toxicology screen on his holopad. Connected via holonet to his pad were six vials of vermillion blood. They sat innocuously enough, yet as he scanned the results on his device, that thought entered his mind again - the slim sharpness of the needle puncturing flesh, that alien, sudden coldness as it ruptured skin, that initial acceptance that it was in, that it was burrowing deeper into the flesh, but also that fear that it wouldn’t stop at the vein but would keep up its piercing passage, plunging into those deep, dark parts of the body that should never see the light or human gaze.

“Tox screens show nothing out of the ordinary,” the attending nurse, to his left was saying. It had been she who had drawn the blood - he had made excuses about running some further tests, a lie of course - “And the MRI and CAT scans came back with no sign of abnormalities,”

That thought was of a needle perforating his lung, its cruel shaft finding its way the secret places between his vertebrae, that cold hypodermic point pricking almost playfully at the soft tissue of his bowels. Kendell could barely even look at needles these days. There was something about their smallness, their innocuousness, which made him think that they might move, loom towards him, and spike his unblinking eye.

“Doctor?”

“Hmm? Oh. Sorry,” he blinked away those damn needles. “I suggest we run another test for catecholamines. The last results showed elevated adrenaline levels.”

Very faintly, he became aware of a faint booming, as if someone far away was pounding a fist on a distant door. He knew of course what it was. The sound of Cerberus’s rail gun batteries laying down fire against the enemy. Like all Commonwealth vessels, Cerberus’s medbay was placed at the very heart of the ship, settled in its own inertia field. The heavily shielded series of rooms were designed in such a way as to keep their occupants safe even when the ship was under heavy fire. The inertia field surrounding the medbay kept the space relatively stable during combat - surgeons could work without fear of delicate care being disrupted. Kendell and his team were based in the isolation wing, right at the heart of the medical complex. In many ways, this was the safest place in the whole vessel. The flaw in the design from Kendall’s perspective was that while it hard for damage from enemy fire to get in, it was difficult for him to get out.

This dwelt in his mind as he glanced up through the viewport ahead of him. He, his nurse, and two stiffly standing marines, were based behind six inches of reinforced steel and perspex. On the other side were twelve standard issue medical cots, in a hermetically sealed room with its own atmosphere. A sturdy airlock was the only way in and out, and none of the medical personnel entered or left without respirators and two marines apiece.

A dozen men loitered in the isolation room. All wore standard issue medical smocks, drab grey things that laced up at the back, exposing the backs of their legs and the thin ridges of their spines. A few paced in loose circles in the spaces between the cots, as if following some unseen, cyclical trail of breadcrumbs. Some lay on their cots and stared unseeingly at the harsh strip lighting on the ceiling, eyes unblinking. One, Kendall noted, stood with his face pressed against the far wall, his back to the observation bay, rocking quietly back and forth on the balls of his feet.

None spoke.

“They’re still asking for it,” the nurse was saying.

“Meat? Still raw?”

“Yes, Doctor. It’s all they ask for.”

Kendall glanced over at the reports from the night watchmen. All the patients had lost substantive amounts of weight since being brought in for observation - since reappearing, Kendall added mentally. The food that the medbay had provided for them had been rejected, at first politely, then more forcefully, until the orderlies tasked to feed the men refused to enter the room alone, for fear of thrashing arms, and snarling mouths, and raw shouts of “meat!” Meat.

“Why raw meat?” he wondered out loud.

“It could be a neurological issue?” suggested the nurse. “Head trauma patients often report strange food cravings.”

The meat craving bothered him far less than the diamond shaped devices embedded in each man’s chest, which glowed faintly beneath their hospital robes. The devices baffled and scared him. They had tried to remove one, surgically. The man had been deeply sedated, yet as soon as the first tool had tried to cut around the device, he had awoken and howled in pain. Scans suggested that the devices, whatever they were, were hooked into the skin with needles.

Needles.

“I doubt any of these men are right in the head,” he replied dryly. A deep boom rumbled the chamber, and the nurse shuddered.

“How do you think it’s going out there?” she asked, nervously.

“I imagine its -” (Needles pushing into skin, that cold steel penetrating just too far) “-going well. Our Captain knows what he’s doing. He’s -”

Kendall stopped speaking. The nurse wasn’t looking at him anymore, but beyond him into the isolation area, her face set in a look of horror and surprise. He followed her gaze.

At the very far end of the isolation area, the man with his face against the wall had moved from rocking back and forth on his feet to banging his head against the wall. Thunk. Thunk. Each impact gave a hollow thump, reverberating around the chamber. The other men ceased their pacing, their still lying, and were watching their comrade intently. Thunk. Thunk.

“What’s he doing -?” Kendell heard one of the Marines ask.

There was a sharp crack. The man’s head snapped back, blood gushing from his split forehead. His head lolled back in a lazy arc, and then crashed into the wall, hard, hard enough, Kendell thought, to shake the wall itself, leaving a ugly splatter on blood at its point of impact.

Instinct took over. “Get in there, restrain him!” Kendell barked at the Marines and to the nurse. “Give him 50ccs of nitrazepam!”

The Marines keyed in the access code and leapt through the door into the isolation area, closely followed by the nurse, readying her syringe as she went. Kendall hesitated in the doorway. Doing so saved his life. Briefly.

The marines and the nurse were perhaps halfway across the room when the bleeding man drew back his head one last time, and brought it against the wall with a splintering, sickening blow. His body slumped against the bloody mess on the wall, and began to slide down, the limbs twitching pathetically. Kendell could tell he was already dead, or good as. The nurse hesitated in her steps, the syringe of sedatives now redundant in her hands. The two marines pressed on, pushing past the other patients - all kneeling now, silently, around their fallen comrade - and dropped their knees beside the body.

And then, over the shouts and aghast cries of the marines and the nurse, Kendall heard, from the man with the shattered skull, a small, but loud, click.

The body reared back, as if drawn on puppet strings. Scrawny arms bulged and twisted out of shape. The hospital gown was shredded as the torso expanded and cracked into new and contorted forms. Legs bent back on themselves and jagged shards of metal perforated the skin like scales. The splintered skull was snapping and elongating into jaws that emitted a deep, dark animal roar.

As Kendall gazed in horror, the man - thing - seized the closest of the two marines. It’s jaws snapped and the marine careened back, a huge chunk gouged out of his torso.

Over the screams of the marines and the nurse, over the roars of the monster, Kendall realised he could here another sound, coming from the remaining men. They were laughing. Maniacally laughing.

And then they started to kill themselves.

One wrapped his hands around his head and twisted sharply, the snap of his neck dry and brittle. Another was vomiting blood. The tongue he had bitten clean off flailed on the floor like a beached fish. Other smashed their heads against the ground, they laughter growing damper and wetter as they died. And as each man fell, he rose again a beast, the diamond on his chest glowing like a third eye. The remaining marine had been level with the men as they changed. He drew his carbine and managed to get a few rounds off before they fell on him.

All of this happened in a matter of seconds. Kendell was aware that he stood in the open doorway, with the beasts that had been men not a stone’s throw away. He became of the nurse, dropping her syringe and fleeing towards him. He became aware of his hand moving, slamming down on the doors lock. It slammed in the nurse’s face. The beasts were on her heels.

It was horrible, what they did to her.

Kendall realised as he back away from the door that he was trapped in this room. The nurse had his keycard. Part of him screamed to radio for help, to sound the alarm, but all he could do was stare in fascinated disgust at the horrific things as they broke threw the viewing window, and were upon him.

In his final moment, Dr Kendell learned that there were worse things than needles.

There were teeth.