Silence hung in the air for a long time until a hollow whistle sang behind a black katchin staff, the thinnest warning before it struck Koorimaru, setting his face to match the rest of his bearing and pushing him away from Asha'rah's side.
"You're a fine one to make demands, after all this time and
what you did," Zaofan said, holding his weapon, Bojack, by his side, his frame rippling with a subtle power as he stood between the Arcosian and Evangeline. "But in so many words, the young man just asked you a question, got nothing to say to Charco or the rest of us, do you?"
Zaofan narrowed his eyes. More than being filled with the fight, they were moist at the edges, loosed of all patience. When his martial brother was mentioned, the grip on his staff tightened as he poised to strike again.
"Got a lot of nerve. He's not here," he said. "I, on the other hand, have a different problem. Bringing her here, you've just made the Earth a target without so much as a warning. One of you had better start talking."
_____
The Big Ghetti Star was stationary in its placement, the odd anomaly in the Sol System. It had been nearly a year since it had been rediscovered, and this early in the year the planetary revolution had brought it adjacent to the Earth. In the ringed habitation that served to station and dock ships from visitors from all over the universe, the Clarion Call of Sakin echoed through its halls of nanite steel, and the entirety of the station, normally a hub of trade and commerce was silent at first before erupting into pandemonium.
A long stretch of monitors and holo-light displays stretched across engineering control, and Ochazuke stared deeply into them watching the scene unfold. The machine-heart of the Star resumed its automated work schedule where the engineers, paralyzed by fear, could not, for they lost heart when faced with that vision, harsh whispers passing between them as they looked to the lone M-Fighter amongst them.
Sakin's threats had not passed idly through the denizens of the promenade, for here among businessmen of shifting scruples, taking stock of eternal life, measured against the legions that threatened he'd loosed on the universe, it was a rather easy sell. Screaming untranslatable curses the Universal Translators could not pick up, Junjo dealers unshrouded their concealed stunners and fired the first shots into a group of Prometheans, sending one of the noble giants falling into the wares of a Nevadian emporium. The Anole of the Gurro System hissed, their lizardlike features flush and frightening in equal measure as they argued with the Kitani delegation.
"The Cookman sold us out!"
"Bring me the heads of the Sons of Zxu'ro!"
"You couldn't do it if you tried! Calm the hell down!"
"Damn the Hu-mans! They wanted to put
us into the Capsules! Damn them all!"
Captain Ulysses Prizzm and his company of Navigators, on break from sorting through the last record archive of shipping manifests, soon found themselves bound to their force shields as they pushed back against a mob they weren't willing to put down. They held the line, buying time for Master Chief Petty Officer Spopovich to ferry a retinue of science officers into safer quarters as he and the EDF Security Detail scrambled to put their training to the test; Yet their numbers were thin, they had nothing but hand to hand, and as the fighting intensified, the newly minted diplomat hadn't felt a fear like this since his company had flown under the Red, all the while wondering,
how could it come to this?
The video feed of the chaos in the Satellite City reached Ochazuke in real time. It seemed like it was miles away behind an ocean of noise as the vision still echoed in his mind. The Universe split at the seams, the dead rising through the foundations laid for the living. But beyond that, he'd beheld Sakin, heard him
speak, and beheld him upon his construct of ancient bones felt the wailing of souls carrying his call. In the midst of such harrowing portents of doom, the voice of the enemy was strangely assuring, authoritative, a source of comfort, promising salvation.
In a word...angelic.
Slowly, the shouts reached him, and the silence in the engineering bay stiffened his nerve.
"So the Fallen One has shown himself."
Silently, the hammer entrusted to him by the Forger materialized in his hand. He gazed into it deeply for a moment before setting it on the ground before him.
"Chief. Ensigns. Galvanize the Stargates, and hail the Orbital Ring."
Shakily, the crewmen of servicing the Gotengo did as they were told, for following this path had brought them this far, and they would be remiss to forget it. Ochazuke himself moved to a communications console. Flipping a few switches, he soon opened a channel, the signal pinging across Earth Frequencies, first the EDF frequencies, then the President's own emergency channel, then into the Nevadian band and beyond as he prepared to speak.