We arrived in Orion’s galaxy nearest the sun of Mintaka, at an unknown and heat-ridden planet where the zealots had hidden themselves in catacombs and underground passageways far from the surface’s deadly visage.

Our ship arrived alongside a vanguard team of the Sons. Our ships docked each other and we made our way to the surface via gravmag, the sons of the flame setting a cordon immediately upon our landing. One of them, his dark suit well-fitted, with the rank insignia of a major, walked with a familiar gait. The rest of the sons were unknown to me.

My team of deathslayers was of myself and three others, each younger than the last. Sephina could not have been more than fifteen, but, they said, she would stay in the rear camp ready to receive.

“Triune formation,” I barked.

In unison Claire and Ellios replied, “affirm.”

Sephina was delayed and spoke softly, “Yes, ma’am.”

I remember striding to her, placing my hand on her shoulders, and looking into her eyes through the crystalline faceshield, though I do not recall what I said exactly. I do remember she looked away and slumped as she waited behind. Groups of supporters rapidly building a heat-shielded camp on the surface for ease of return to the ships.

“On me!” The major’s voice was an electric jolt, and my team swept into the center of a three fireteam structure, fanned out with twenty paces between. The surface of the world sent error warnings into the suit as it tried to convert that heat into energy for other functions, but began to reach the capacity of the diamond batteries.

The formation moved quickly, covering the ground with great speed assisted by partial gravity suppression. The entrance to the catacombs was a sheer drop into a black abyss, and we entered it without a word, diving downward, slowly modifying and molding the formation with a kind of effortless ease as our sensors attuned to the change in light. A coordinator, I thought, and felt the gentle tug of power as my own movements seemed to ease along paths like puppet strings, but not with great force or coercion. The sons and daughters will know the sense, the sense of being drawn – I could have resisted, but I knew better.

The first pulsefire blasts threaded needles between our formation as if aimed for something other than us. My display danced with radiation readings, attack direction, and began rapidly working through the trajectories to pinpoint enemy combatants.

I heard someone say “two tangos up.” A brief pause, the whining report of two of the vanguard firing, and shortly after, “two tangos down.”

Our gravmag controlled fall and spectral vision made the catacombs clear, and beneath I saw the spread out bodies of two zealots in their ramshackle suits beginning to burn and desiccate in the alien air.

The downward corridor was narrow, and I glanced back to see that our formation had become a spiraling downward dance moving in patterns to complex to guess. As we reached the bottom two more zealots emerged from a separate tunnel branch. I felt three tugs from the power toward other members of the team and suddenly two of ours intercepted the zealots and wrestled them to the ground. A third man floated behind them, touched the two struggling men and binding flames rolled out from his hands shaped like roots and drove them into a steady permanence in the ground, though both men still breathed.

“Two tangos bagged, move to clear.” More tugs from varying powers and I could see seven passageways branching from where we landed. I was given no time, The major went left, I was tugged right with another member of the vanguard, and soon the whole catacomb filled with cacophonous fire. A QAV detonated behind me, sealing the passage. I cursed words which should not be spoke but kept in step with my team and the section we were with. We sprinted past another branch and a pulse struck the man in front of me, his right arm carried clean away and spinning him into another smaller corridor. I swung to him, the power glowing with whipping radiance around me and grasped his severed arm and then him and the flames knit him back together in a moment and then spread to wreathing him entirely. He shot up and flexed, then flashed into the room from which the fire had come. There was a brief sound of shouts followed by a roaring flame before he returned, his suit nearly destroyed, his face open to the surrounding world, but the power engulfed him, and he felt no pain or struggle. He nodded to me, smiled a broad silver-toothed grin, and then broke back toward the QEV, ripping through it with the power and clearing our way back to the others.

It took hours, but by the end of it of the eighteen of us who had begun, only myself and the Major still maintained our suits. Claire and Ellios stood with the remaining fourteen vanguard, clothed in the power, and it danced between them in dazzling displays. Not one was lost, though the after action would show at least seven had been injured and three more almost certainly killed if not for my deathslayers. I was proud. Of the zealots, only three remained, bound and ready for transport – one the HVT we were sent for, but that is for another time.

The team returned exuberant to the surface, but was soon sobered by a giant black stain upon the sky.

The Major’s voice snapped, “Move!”

The tug of the coordinator pulled at me and another who gathered me in his arms and flashed straight to the heart of the event. The breathless rush of transformation from light to energy to movement and back to flesh left me stunned for a moment. I blinked then, my hair blowing in the wind as my suit had been destroyed by the flame. There, in the center of the event was the whole support team, huddled in shaking fear. Sephina knelt there, slumped and hardly breathing, the flame that wreathed her flickering in dying gasps.

One supporter spoke, whispering but loud enough to hear, “she held us together, fused us as it tried to rip us apart. I…”

I rushed to her. I will never forget how her eyes were filled with tears nor her sad smile as she asked, “Did I do good?”

“Amazing, little sister, you were amazing.” It was true, such power for one so young was a marvel. I held her in my arms and tried to will the power in me to heal her, to slay her death as well, but the power would not come. I grit my teeth, straining, reaching, trying for it.

The power may be infinite, but we are not. Sephina had gone beyond her strength. I looked around at all those who she saved, who themselves hated and feared her, and I hated them all the more. Yet, two among them, I witnessed, hid growing flames upon their own skin. I grit my teeth and pulled Sephina to me and wept as the Sons, Claire, and Ellios gathered around us and sang the song of departures.