Tales of the Obsidian Triumvirate
Stories of Treachery and Triumph
By: David the Mathis
Thunder rumbled on the edges of the horizon. Commodore Sam lazily batted some kind of bug from his face that he could not see in the failing light and clicked a button on the arm of his chair. Immediately, the whooshing sound of cooler air surrounded him and his fellow commander—Sirith. Sirith was sweating under the thick humidity of summer and was grateful for the cooler temperatures. Sirith looked out from their high terrace on the side of a tall, steel-grey building. The tiered courtyard below was full of trees that were imported straight from Earth and never originally existed on the planet—people walked through the large Red Dragon insignia on the courtyard floor, busy with last minute shopping for the day. Commodore Sam smiled at the sound of another burst of thunder as it echoed across the courtyard.
“You certainly picked a beautiful planet for this meeting.” Sirith leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. He looked to the sinking sun as it ignited the horizon with sharp greens and blues, shaded the bottom of the clouds with soft purple and lavender.
Commodore Sam took a drink from his glass—the ice sloshed together in a rattle.
“I’ve conquered my share of planets and taken their technology. I’ve glassed a lot of worlds, but there are some that are too beautiful for me to break,” he took a long drink, rattled the glass again and stared out across the courtyard before he continued. “I called you out here because the planet is far away from most of our interests. Nobody will look for us here.”
“And yet,” Sirith paused, stood up and gestured towards the people walking around, several stories below. “I have men in that courtyard. And so do you.”
Rain began to fall softly. Commodore Sam lazily touched a button and a weak shield fizzled to life, casting a faint blue glow over the terrace. The rain sizzled softly as it contacted the shield and burned away before it could ever penetrate.
“When you go to the bathroom, you have men stand guard outside that, Sirith. In your older age, I think you’re getting paranoid. I don’t have any men with me today.”
Sirith pondered the thought for a moment as the rain began to come down in droves. Stark white lightning illuminated Sirith’s uncharacteristically gaunt features—bringing the black edge of shadow to creases Commodore Sam didn’t know existed within his ally’s visage. At length, Sirith let out a sigh clouded in thick condensation from the dropping temperatures and settled into his chair, but kept his back straight and his shoulders squared. Commodore Sam lazily played with the handle of his revolver—the ridged endurorubber grip had long since lost the crisp lines of its freshly manufactured state.
“What’s eating you?” Commodore Sam looked to Sirith curiously. His hands moved from his revolver to the arms of his chair and he sat back, propping his feet up on a glass table between the two of them. Sirith stood up again, walked a couple laps between the wall and the table. Finally, he stood before the open side of the terrace, reached slowly towards the shield. His hand intercepted the flow of energy with a slightly uncomfortable sizzling sound and then his hand was through to the other side. When he pulled his hand back, it was dripping with water droplets.
“Being planet side during a non-combat situation gives me the jitters. I’m too used to hull plating and artificial gravity. Breathing real air flares my allergies and rain always feels strange. I still like the sound though. I may be paranoid, but I have reason to be: most human colonies at this point mark me as their number one most wanted after that attack on Earth. And now, we’re going to be marching on the largest human colony in existence: Lexicon III. No human wants to see my face these days. I’ve been considering cosmetic surgery to avoid assassin bullets.”
Commodore Sam made a vague gesture.
“Don’t let people wanting to kill you get you down—there was a time when I would have put a bullet through your head too.”
“There’s been more than one occasion that you nearly did. That revolver hurts.” Sirith grinned for the first time and held his chest where Commodore Sam had shot him years before.
“So,” Sirith started, finally settling down into his chair a little more than he had been “what did you think was so urgent that we had to talk away from the metal hull of a ship with cameras and guards around every corner to overhear us?”
“Voldorf was too far out of the area to come by this location, but I have set up a meeting with him elsewhere. I have reason to believe that our information is being leaked by somebody. a stealth ship was observed through telescope imaging orbiting the sun yesterday. We believe that it is trying to get a good look at our watchdog base. We’re afraid—“ Sirith cut him off with wave of his hand.
“Let them look. We knew building it inside Sol airspace would gather attention faster than anything else. They probably picked it up on telescope imaging themselves.”
“No, we think they’re going to wait for the right moment during construction and strike it while it’s still being built.” Sirith smiled at the news.
“Good. And while they’re busy destroying a bunch of steel beams, their fleet will be preoccupied. What would happen if we took Earth for our main base? Used all the already established defenses, and took the whole thing as our main location? Yes, it would be an unpopular decision, but I think all pretenses are gone: Earth will never really have its full infrastructure back. We will have to pull a greater number of aliens into our ranks, but in the case of the Vratch and the Rantikans, I would have to say between the two, they could overpower a human army any day. As far as I know, our enemy still uses almost exclusively humans.”
Commodore Sam looked mortified at the news. He sat up in his chair slowly, put his revolver on the table, lazily spun it in slow circles. He cupped it in his large, gloved hands and lowered his already impressively deep voice to talk as he leaned in. It sounded like the rumble of a crumbling mountain formed words from an ancient, molten tongue and spilled those words out in hot, red magma.
“I don’t know—aren’t we still in the Earth Reconstruction Project with King Kaskel, Commander Carver, and whatever he calls himself—Prearch Bishop? It is prearch, right?”
“It is,” Sirith smiled for the second time as he chuckled to himself. “I don’t know what it means, but I imagine he picked it because it sounded cool,” Sirith’s features snapped back to rigidity before he continued with his answer. “But yes. We are in the Earth Reconstruction Project. Perhaps it has run its course. It seems more prudent to withdraw from the arrangement and set up Earth as a military state. It would be nigh uncrackable.”
“We would have to talk it over with Commander Voldorf in the room with us first.”
“Of course. The Obsidian Triumvirate acts as one. We cannot leave such an important matter to only the two of us. But I believe it is time to act.”
The rain droned on with a soft sizzling sound on the light shield array. By the time it stopped, the sun was down and the inky clouds hid swaths of stars from view. Somewhere out there, Sol shone bright and hot, but Sirith couldn’t pick it out amongst the countless available. A small, sleek cruiser was observed leaving the area later that night, but only for an instant. Observers would later say that it melted to water before their eyes and became invisible. A warship broke orbit and if one blinked, the fact that the dreadnaught whisked away could be missed very easily.
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