The Verdant Seven

                                    

                                          


                          
        
                          
Dekker'sDozen #008
                          
Dekker stripped off his shirt as he entered his personnal sanctuary. He desperately needed sleep, but too much weighed on his mind: psychic mechnar assassins, Vesuvius, the stolen DNIET super-weapon, the deaths of a teammate and an intelligence asset. 
                          
Sighing wearily, he sat on his bunk and took an inventory of his stress. Prognon Austicon's game remained constant; each time Dekker uncovered clues to the mysterious red tree, the enigma only expanded, like a jigsaw puzzle that continued gaining new pieces.
                          
He'd just begun to speculate that their newest data they'd was planted misinformation. If Satyr hadn't been murdered to cover up what he'd learned, his entire trove of information would have been more suspect. At least they could reasonably confident in its authenticity.
                          
Dekker squeezed the stress off of his face with rugged hands. Too much to think about; he needed to clear his mind. His head hit his pillow, but instead of soft cloth, his scalp crinkled against a sheet of paper. Someone had laid it very intentionally for only him to find. Only one person besides the psy-nar assassin had proven the ability to access his personal quarters.
                          
He scanned the paper with weary eyes. Sorry for your loss. Look to your friends in Jerusalem when you round out your dozen. –Ezekiel.
                          
If he hadn't proven himself as an ally, Dekker might have throttled the old time-traveler for the intrusion on their next encounter. He crumpled the note and discarded it, not sure about its exact meaning; one more enigma didn't helping Dekker empty his mind.
                          
The Verdant Seven
                          
Nibbs sat in the ready room, a conference hall directly adjacent to the Salvation's command bridge. Deep in thought, he exhaled measuredly and winced against the pain that radiated from his torso. Nibbs scowled at the bandage covering the wound he'd incurred when the psy-nar assassins attacked them.
                          
Of all the injuries they'd incurred several days ago, Nibbs was the worst, one fatality aside. Shaking off the self-pity, he locked his eyes upon his target again. If eyes were lasers he'd have burned through the framed patch of Prognon Austicon's skin hours ago. In his injured state, Nibbs felt particularly useless. But his deep-rooted problem-solving nature drew him to the red tree riddle during all of his down time.
                          
He tapped his toe impatiently: a nervous habit. Nibbs got fidgety whenever worked. Licking his index finger, he stuck it into the sugar container he'd swiped from the drink console and then sucked the sweet granules off while his mind wandered.
                          
"Dodona's Oak," Nibbs muttered aloud like a mantra. This was the last message Satyr had relayed, and it had cost him his life. It also proved indecipherable. The coordinates Dekker had recorded appeared to be an azimuth heading, Phi was a standard symbol for azimuth readings, but they didn't lead anywhere. Ironically, heading pointed back to the Osix moon if the azimuth angle was read at the site of the ancient tree-worshipping cult's historic divining rod. That clue reinforced what they believed Dodona's Oak meant. But something still obfuscated the plain meaning of it all.
                          
An analytical computer expert, Nibbs felt he'd crept on the verge of deciphering all the clues. Pages and pages of information, photos, and notes lay strewn across the table at his right and a video console displayed a planet-side feed. All were tightly wound loops of string in one massive knot—soon, a single tug would unravel the whole mystery... if he could only find the right perspective.
                          
As was typical, The Pheema dominated the MEA newscasts. He explained away the decapitation murder of his human liaison. "While we have our suspects, there is too little proof for us to pursue justice. Residents of Earth do have my pledge to further crackdown against lax weapons restrictions and investigator licensures." The implications were pretty obvious.