The Peacemakers Ch. 01

"Did you feel anything, Luther? When we burned them all? When you hit that man?" Marie was staring straight up at the high curved ceiling, where soft lights twinkled like stars. "They keep telling us we're heroes. They say we saved so many people. But all I can think of was what he said to us. Monsters, that's what he called us."

"We're not monsters," Luther said, reaching out to stroke her face. She didn't resist, which was somehow worse than if she'd turned away.

"Monsters never think they are." Her voice was suddenly harsh. "God, and the way Andreas and the girls were talking to me...as if I just needed to relax. As if everything was normal."

"They mean well, love. They care about you."

"They're monsters too."

The silence was long and deep. Through the open doorway, Luther could see the dim outline of the garden, and hear the soft rushing of the waterfall. Beyond the trees, the lights of the city below glowed through the crystal canopy.

"Marie..." Luther said at last, his voice hesitant. "You know I love you, don't you?"

"I do. I love you too, Luther. But I don't think either of us deserve it."

She didn't say another word, and eventually her breathing became soft and even. Luther lay awake listening to her sleep. It felt like he was lying next to a stranger. He'd always known Marie was a gentle soul, and he loved her for it, but she'd volunteered as a peacemaker alongside him. She'd excelled at the military training and been top of their class for accuracy with her nuclear eyes. He'd never expected the first taste of bloodshed to hit her so hard.

He'd been so naive, he realised. He'd brought her along with him thinking that it would be easy, that it would be fun. The Earth people were so weak, so fragile; walking among them was like being a god, surrounded by awed worshippers. Back home, he'd cared about their suffering in a sort of abstract way, and he'd volunteered as an act of self-satisfied charity. He could never have imagined the sheer ugliness of this war. And Marie was right. Murder was murder, even for a good cause.

But he couldn't back out now. He'd sworn an oath, to his own kind and to the people of Earth, that he would not rest until peace was restored. Returning home now would do nobody any good, and he knew deep down that it wouldn't soothe his guilt. Marie, however...she needed help. He'd have to be there for her every step of the way, and do whatever he could to keep her safe. Maybe he could get the generals to transfer her away from combat duty. Maybe he could even ask for some help from home -- quietly and discreetly, of course. The integrity of the superhuman intervention had to be preserved. Nobody could know that the peacemakers harboured doubts.

Luther tried to relax, curling up close to his sleeping sister, but for once her sweet naked warmth was no comfort to him. When sleep finally took him, he dreamed of a wild-eyed man in a cheering crowd, and a prairie that was burning.

*

The morning was bright and clear. The birds of the little jungle chirruped merrily as the sun rose, and before long Andreas and his sisters went up to the hovering walkway to have their usual morning fuck. Luther awoke bleary-eyed to the sound of their happy gasps and groans.

He turned to shake Marie awake, only to find her already gone. Frowning, he went to check the ensuite bathroom. She wasn't there either. It was fairly standard for his sister to be an early riser, but the sun was barely up, and their press conference wasn't for hours yet.

Luther dressed lightly and wandered out into the main chamber, yawning as he gazed up through the crystal canopy at the pale blue sky. One of the giant orbitals was directly overhead, a vast halo that hung just outside the orbit of the Moon. It was hundreds of miles wide, but from down here, it looked small enough to cover with his thumb.

Elena, Aurelia and Andreas were still crying out in the heat of passion up on the floating walkway. They'd had the nanobots make them a nest of plump cushions to lie on. Aurelia was straddling Andreas and riding his huge cock, moaning and playing with her superb tits, while Elena lay beside them with her crotch close to Andreas' face so that he could kiss and lick her pussy. Usually, Luther would have been sporting a massive erection at the sight of them, but right now he was too preoccupied.

He'd walked halfway around the vast chamber when he found his sister. Marie was sitting on a nanoformed bench a little way from the outer edge of the garden, looking out at the city below. She wore a long white dress and elegant black heels, her long hair tied in a neat ponytail. It was her formalwear, the outfit she always wore to big public events. She didn't look up when Luther came to sit beside her.

"You're up early," he said, attempting jollity.

"We have our conference today." Her tone was as dull and flat as it had been the day before. Luther's heart sank.

"Not for a while yet, love."

"They'll ask us questions, won't they?" Marie continued, as if Luther hadn't spoke. "'What's it like to kill people just by looking at them?' 'How does it feel to be invincible?' They're sick."

"They're just human."

"Unlike us."

The triplets finished fucking above them. First Aurelia, then Elena and Andreas, leapt gracefully off the hovering walkway to join the two younger peacemakers. It was a thirty-foot drop, but their enhanced skeletons could survive a fall from orbit; they landed lightly on their feet and walked over naked to say good morning. Their perfect bodies were still sweaty and happily flushed from sex.

"Morning, sweethearts," Elena said brightly, putting her arm around her brother's waist. "Hope you're both feeling a bit better. Got a big day today, huh?"

"Press conferences are a pain in the ass," Andreas added sympathetically. "Trust me, I know."

"You're looking gorgeous for it, Marie," Aurelia smiled. She received no response from the seated girl, and gave Luther a worried glance. "Um, are you two going to be alright?"

"The public-relations guy said he'd coach us. In case they ask awkward questions," Luther said.

"He'd better. It's so annoying when we have to jump through hoops for the little people," Andreas chuckled.

Marie stood up suddenly, fixing the triplets with a vicious glare. "The little people?" she shouted. "You mean the human race? The people we came down here to save?"

There was a stunned silence. Nobody, not even Luther, had ever heard her speak with such venom. There was real hatred in her light blue eyes.

"You think they're nothing, don't you," she continued. "Sitting around up here fucking all day, laughing because we're gods compared to them, and we can do whatever we like to them and they can't stop us..."

"We're helping them, Marie," Aurelia said in a pleading voice. "We're saving them."

"How many have you killed, Auri?" Marie spat at her. "I'm on twenty thousand. Want to have a competition? That city you burned in the north, how many people lived there?"

Andreas stepped forward, his tone indignant. "She was protecting civilians, babe, she didn't just-"

"Civilians!" Marie gave a rueful, humourless laugh. "I know about what happened on the Great Lakes, Andre. Those ships they told you were enemy transports. Full of women and children, weren't they, and you burned them up. I bet you'd have done it even if you'd known."

Andreas froze, his face growing pale. Luther placed a hand on his sister's shoulder. "Calm down, love. You're not making sense."

She shook away his hand as if it were a scorpion. "You don't know about it, do you, Luther? The things they're really making us do? Why do you think we're here? You think our people actually give a fuck about the humans? They don't want to end this war! They need it! They made it!"

Luther stood there, his mind reeling. She was talking nonsense. She had to be. The generals had given them all their intel, and their overseers up in orbit had confirmed it. They only attacked military targets, they never hurt civilians. They were here to end the war, and protect both sides, so that Earth could recover. They were here as peacemakers. Weren't they?

"How...how do you know that?" he asked Marie.

"Them!" she hissed, pointing up at the great ring of the distant orbital. "Ask them!" Her lovely eyes were hard as stone.

Elena stepped towards her. "We're heroes, Marie!" she said plaintively. "You are, I am, we all are! We chose to be!"

Marie spun away from the others. She took several quick steps towards the garden. The air began to shimmer around her face as she walked. "I chose this!" she shouted. "I chose it!"

Luther started forward as he realised what was going to happen. He reached out to grab her shoulder. "Marie, no-"

She shoved him away with the full force of her augmented muscles. It would have killed an ordinary human instantly; Luther was sent flying a hundred feet through the air to smack brutally against one of the soaring crystal arches. His q-machines strained to keep his ribs from shattering. He slid to the floor, gasping for breath and trying to get to his feet. Elena and Aurelia ran towards him in concern, while Andreas moved to reach Marie, shouting her name. He was too slow.

The penthouse chamber lit up in a ferocious white pulse as Marie fired her nuclear eyes. The familiar distorted thunderclap filled the air. Luther cowered away from the hellish light as his clothes ignited and disintegrated. Sonorous alarms began sounding as the smart crystal of the penthouse struggled to resist the massive rise in temperature. Outside the outer canopy, the skyline of the city was illuminated by a flash that was briefly brighter than the rising sun.

When the blinding after-images faded away, Luther found himself lying sprawled on the floor naked, his spine and ribs aching, nothing left of his clothes but ash. He looked around him in disbelief. The penthouse's structure had been designed to survive a nuclear strike, and it was still in one piece, but every inch of its crystal interior was scorched black. The transparent outer canopy, though also intact, was scarred by a massive jagged crack, easily three hundred feet wide. A huge pall of black smoke hung in the air, swirling through the chamber. Elena and Aurelia stood in stunned silence, open-mouthed. Their naked skin was smeared grey with ash.

Luther turned his gaze in the direction of the garden, and saw Marie standing naked in front of a huge smouldering crater, her dress and shoes incinerated. The fragrant jungle had been turned to cinders. The waterfall and its plunge pool were vapour now. All that remained was an enormous, glowing, half-molten lump of rock, the remains of the garden's central hill. Above it, half of the hovering walkway was gone; the surviving half was twisted and misshapen and sinking slowly towards the floor. The alarms still wailed in the background.

"Oh, fuck, Marie," Luther groaned. He got shakily to his feet and walked over to his sister. Marie was weeping, her slender body shaking with great anguished sobs. The penthouse canopy was fixing itself as Luther watched, sealing the huge crack shut with repair nanobots. Outside it, to his dismay, a growing swarm of news drones and helicopters was buzzing around the tower. The whole city had seen the flash. And, no doubt, the superhumans high above would be asking questions too.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Andreas had caught the edge of the nuclear pulse. He was kneeling on the floor beside Marie, his whole body scorched and smoking. A huge scar had been seared into the skin of his back; the raw flesh was still so hot that it glowed. His golden hair was entirely burnt away. He rocked back and forward, making a long, low, agonised moan as he cradled his right arm. Luther saw that it ended at the elbow in a charred black stump.

"What did you do, love? Why did you-" Luther found he couldn't speak. Andreas' sisters ran over to their crippled brother, crying out his name in panicked voices.

"I'm sorry, Luther," Marie said through her tears. "I'm so sorry." And then, moving so fast the air howled around her, she turned and sprinted across the black ruin of the garden. At the far edge of the great chamber, she leapt upwards, soaring towards the the shrinking crack in the outer canopy. There was another terrible blaze of light, smaller this time but still dreadful to look at. The vast canopy split open with an apocalyptic crash, immense crystal fragments spraying out into the morning sky. Several of the watching drones and helicopters were struck, exploding in blossoms of fire. Some of the larger fragments gouged great craters into the glass façades of the nearby skyscrapers.

Luther watched in mute disbelief as a tiny human figure flew down through the air to vanish in the streets below. The fall wouldn't kill her, he knew. But she was moving at maximum speed, and she'd be gone from the city in minutes, maybe less. She'd always been the more agile one. He realised, with a sick jolt in his stomach, that he had no idea where she would go.

Elena and Aurelia were kneeling beside Andreas, crying as they held him in their arms. Luther walked away from them to stand on the edge of the penthouse. He gazed out at the skyline as if in a trance. The sun shone intermittently through the vast pillars of smoke that billowed from the damaged buildings below. The rising wail of police sirens mingled with the clamour of the penthouse alarms. God knew how many were dead and dying down there.

He stood silently. Images of Marie whirled through his mind. Their joyous childhood on the heavenly orbitals. Hot sweet nights of passion with the blue Earth stretched out beneath them. Joining the peacemakers with pride in their hearts. Burning the prairie under a weeping sky.

His eyes flicked upwards, to see the great orbital hanging above the horizon. It had gleamed in Earth's skies for millennia now. Some of the primitives here worshipped it as a god. But what kind of god was it? A protector? A peacemaker? A destroyer?

Ask them, she had said.

"Marie," Luther said at last. His voice cracked, and tears brimmed in his eyes.