Spire - 1. Glassed

Daiandra had watched as it happened. From a comfortable seat on the viewing deck, high in orbit, with a panel to her left showing satellite perspectives and a vast Holopane out in front, showing the planet from a distance, she had watched as the world ended. To her right, a restless child had noisily stuffed snacks - dried fruits and biscuits from the planet being annihilated out front - into its mouth as its mother had shushed it repetitively. She remembered wondering if this was what public executions felt like. Performative. Mundane. Spectacular in their banality. Horror from a safe distance. A point made with no words; just actions.

It had been faster than she’d expected: a flash of light; a rush of motion. Nested concentric circles rippling out from the point where the beam made planetfall, like a rock in a still pond. But the speed of it, was - when you really thought about it - the most frightening part. In mere minutes, the shockwaves had moved from one side of the planet to the other. The beam disappeared. And then there was a stillness; as if a…hesitation. Daiandra remembered realising she had been holding her breath. Then, like a firework, debris exploded, perfectly synchronised, from the planets surface into the inner atmosphere. She remembered the quiet sigh that had slipped from her lips; the way the muscles in her forehead and eyebrows had caved slightly inward at the sight.

“It’s…beautiful…” she had murmured. The child’s mother had leaned over to her slightly:

“We owned property in Ephralia, to the north. When the glassing was sanctioned we were worried, but the credits we got for the hassle?” She had whistled quietly, shaking her head.

“Were passes to watch the show part of the payout?” Daiandra had enquired. The mother nodded, smiling widely.

“Couldn’t pass them up. Glassings don’t happen every day, after all. Never thought I’d get to see one in person. Is this your first?”

“Yeah, I’m with the CAT5 post-event cataloguing team. Just here to document it all, really.”

“Oh. Good. Nice of them to give you a seat.” The mother had muttered, shifting back into her seat with a look on her face like she’d just smelled something very bad. Daiandra had sighed to herself. It was a familiar reaction. Civic versus corporate tended to readily provoke it.

Planetside, Daiandra adjusted her suits’ helmet, glancing over at the Adjunct.

“Looks good.” She nodded. There was a slight reverb as her voice crackled through the comms. She took a second to think about the word ‘good’, in context. Turning to look around herself, as far as the eye could see, was flat, slightly reflective translucent black glass. Like a frozen ocean at night; ripples, indents and curvatures from where topography had melted, slagged into uniformity. The sameness was punctuated by banks and chunks of ash and what looked like pumice-stone - the remnants of cities, forests, landscapes reduced - again - to a bland verisimilitude by the violence from distant orbit. The winds - which would have moved faster than the speed of sounds in the seconds and minutes and hours following - had died to nothing. There was no sound, other than the crackling of comms…Daiandra’s own breath and heartbeat, and the occasional sensor blip from inside her suit. Outside was still somewhat oxygenated - for now - but the air was full of aerosolised debris. She could see it in the haze, the reduced visibility. Outside her suit was silence, poison, death and glass.

“Yeah, I’m not picking up anything problematic. Good scrap, seems like. Ready for repurposing.”

“What’s the project, anyway?”

“Did you not read the brief?”

“Skimmed it.”

“Aww c’mon, Dee…” he shook his head.

“What? Doesn’t change the job.”

“Yeah but…speaks to thoroughness, doesn’t it? Caeto memorises this shit - "

“ - Caetos a Quadrian. They memorise everything. And then never shut up about it.”

“It’s for a Ring. Quaestor Corp are building out the system. Interstitial governance rubber stamped development and here we are. It was not a long brief, Dee.”

“But you summarise so well, Tanis.”

“Just be professional, Dee? Yeah?”

“Will it add credits to my fee?”

“No, but - "

“ - Then I’ll leave the anal retention to Caeto, if it’s all the same to you - "

“ - Hey!” Caeto’s voice crackled over the comms.

“Sorry, Caet,” Daiandra rolled her eyes.

“No - ‘Hey’, in the sense of ‘Hey, dissonant readings over here’.”

“Fuck.” Tanis muttered. “Please tell me it’s within parameters? Quaestor are not patient people.”

“What Corpos are?” Daiandra foot-noted rhetorically.

“Well…” Caeto started, voice uncharacteristically hesitant. “Yaevran radiation.”

“Bullshit. No indicators of that on the pre-event survey. It’s gonna be your instruments glitching.”

“My instruments are not glitching.” Caeto assured Tanis.

“Great. If we just glassed a Yaevran relic - "

“ - I know, Daiandra.” Tanis snapped. “Caeto, please run ancillary scans. I want triometrics and isolation protocols started immediately. Daiandra, handle comms - * encoded* comms - to Interstitial HQ. If Caeto’s right - "

“ - My instruments are right - " Caeto interjected.

“ - If Caeto’s instruments are right, then they’re going to want to get out ahead of this.”

“Will do.” Daiandra confirmed. “And Ar-Teth?”

“No, hold off on contacting Intelligence until we hear back from Interstitial. If this is war, we’ll get there by the gods-damned book.”