In my absence beware the coming of a Devil. She is a monster of high birth and false purity. Recognize her poisoned body and corrupted mind. Fear her divine wraith, for she is the instrument of our destruction.

  -Edict of the Divine One, translated from the Elrathian Codex

  A swirling storm front grumbled in the dark cerulean sky of the planet Pathos when Patricia Anson received the call. She was standing barefoot in her beachside apartment rocking the infant bundled in her arms when the message icon popped up on her wrap around windowpanes. Alarmed by the sudden persistent chiming the weeks old baby girl began to wail as Patricia hurried to swipe at the glass pad laying on the couch amongst a pile of her medical school exam documents.

  “Its Uncle Marko,” Patricia smiled as she comforted her child. There was a hint of disappointment in her cheerful banter as if she was expecting someone else. Accepting the call, Patricia took a step back and watched as a man manifested in her living room. The finer details of the Western Sphere Alliance officer in his smart dress uniform flickered in and out of focus as the transmission stabilized. Patricia immediately sensed that something was wrong. She’d known Marko almost as long as she’d known her husband Greg and yet had never seen him look so weary and downtrodden. Marko shifted uncomfortably in place, his lower lip quivering in a somber frown. The tall military man was on the verge of tears.

  “Patricia I’m so sorry,” he gasped holding back a sob. He tore the peaked cap off his head and shook his head. “I have bad news and It’s about Greg.”

  Patricia froze in place unable to turn off a transmission she didn’t want to here as her baby once again began to cry in her constricting grip. She knew what Marko Crozier had to say but refused to believe it. Greg was fine. His last week-old message had been brief, but reassuring. Greg had been far from the fighting on the colonial frontier.

  “Patricia listen to me! You need to hear this,” Marko said in a stern stammering voice. “Greg’s ship was just marked as overdue and lost with all hands. We officially lost contact with them six days ago and haven’t heard anything since. There will be no rescue attempt.”

  “How could they do that?” Patricia pleaded as her baby cried and squirmed in her arms. She had collapsed on the couch. “How do you know he’s really gone? Greg mentioned the communication problems so far outside the deep space network. There are a thousand reasons why his ship can’t respond and hasn’t returned. How could they give up on them so quickly?”

  “I can get in a lot of trouble if this gets out so promise me you won’t tell anybody,” Marko said with a sniffling whisper. He threw paranoid glances at unseen off screen listeners. “I’m only telling you this because we’re friends and you deserve to know what happened.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “We know that the Eureka was lost somewhere on the colonial frontier. We don’t have enough data to triangulate where. Their last transmission was a fragment of an emergency action report detected yesterday in a routine DSN corrupted packet purge,” Marko explained with great difficulty. He ran a hand down his face as he bowed his head. “We think it was uplink failure on their end when the Eureka was destroyed in a Syncline attack. We were lucky to get anything with time delay degradation.”

  “The Syncline?” Patricia frowned. “Aren’t they supposed to be light years from where Greg’s patrol was?”

  “Yes,” Marko responded grimly, “That is why this information has been classified by High Command. Fighting is worse than they want you to believe. We get pushed back every day and are sustaining losses we can’t endure for much longer. If the Eureka report is accurate then it means that the Syncline have already out flanked us. The prospect of another front has already sparked panic in the top brass. Nobody knows what to do.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “I thought this was about Greg?” Patricia whimpered. She gently soothed her crying daughter as Crozier stared at her helplessly.

  “I promised Greg I would take care of you if anything happened to him, you and Adelaide,” Crozier insisted. He was unable to repeat the fact that his best friend was gone. He choked on those words and continued. “Things are going to get bad Patricia, and I don’t want to let him down. You need to leave Pathos when there is still time.”

  “Just leave me alone,” Patricia whimpered softly. Crozier hung his head and faded away. The first heavy drops of rain had begun to attack the windows. Lightning flashed on the horizon as storm waves crashed against the beach. Patricia was crying, choking on wet sobs as her daughter stared up at her with her husband’s kind eyes.

  Greg Anson gazed up at the stars through the craggy opening in the cave ceiling with a sinking feeling in his empty stomach. Sitting in the dim orange glow of his pitiful fire with the look of despair painted on his grimy face Greg silently accepted that rescue was unlikely. There was no way for him to know if the Eureka had sent a distress signal or if it had even been received. Even if it had, there was no way for him to contact any rescue mission sent through the system. They would pass him by like he wasn’t even there. He glanced gloomily at the cracked data pad that had been in his pocket during his crash landing and pulled up a flickering holograph still of his wife and baby daughter. He was likely never going to see them again. Rubbing his face Greg did his best to hold back his tears. They wouldn’t want him to give up. He’d survive for them.

  Powering off the data pad to conserve its precious battery life Greg willed himself off the floor and wandered over to where he had spread out his small cache of supplies on the snow dusted cave floor. He’s salvaged all he’d could from his escape pod as well as another he had found in the snow. For a brief moment Greg had been taunted by the prospect of finding another survivor, but instead had to spend the day figuring out how to bury a corpse in the frozen earth. A mound of stones was the only real solution. Who would do the same for him when his time came? Greg shook his head as he counted the rows of ration bars and took stock of his other supplies with a quick glance. He didn’t have much of anything beside a large white bundle of cloth. He wasn’t going to die for lack of parachute fabric he chuckled darkly. Something within the bundle rustled as he bent down to examine it.

  “There you are you little aggravation,” Greg scoffed.

  A small flat circular face dominated by two bright yellow eyes emerged from the pile with its beak ajar. The diminutive ball of red feathery down bounded up to Greg and clung to his gray one piece survival suit with its clawed three fingered hands and feet.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  The little Syn scampered painfully up his torso and settled on his shoulder beside his right ear. Greg felt the beating of its little heart and heard its raspy breath as he returned to the fading fire. The little Syn watched with interest as Greg threw more scraggly red fungal wood onto the dying embers. He recognized a certain cognizance in its wide wet eyes. He thought of his baby daughter and stifled a sob.

  “What am I going to do now?” he asked his infant enemy with a sigh.

  Nobody understood the Syncline, the enigmatic alien enemy which had halted six centuries of colonial expansion in less than a year. They appeared as if a cruel force of nature. Vicious and without mercy they had swept through the colonial periphery slaughtering everyone in their path. The Syncline were poised to sweep through the heart of humanities combined territory if what Marko Crozier confided in him was true. Nothing, not even the combined military strength of Humanity entrusted with the newly formed SMCAF could hope to push them back for long. Hard to imagine such evil resided in the small bundle of warmth clinging to his shoulder. No, the possibility of evil Greg thought philosophically. Maybe the little orphaned Syn on his shoulder would be different if it received the proper care, had a loving father.

  With a faint smile Greg returned to his supplies and collected a few ration bars. The little Syn on his shoulder eyed the foil rapped bars with anticipation. It had already learned to associate food with the otherwise unappetizing foil bars. Greg ripped open a ration bar as soon as returned to his spot beside the fire and held a piece up to the impatient child.

  “Calm down you little Agra-“ Greg winced as the little Syn nipped at his fingers with its sharp beak. Cursing as he clutched his hand, Greg once again thought of his family.

  “If only Patricia and Marko could see me now,” he reflected with a somber chuckle. “What would they think of you my little aggravation?”