Dreddrick had been gone for about a quarter of an hour when Padre walked in. they called him Padre due to the fact that he was the 1504th

Paratroop Divisions chaplain. Usually the "god-squad" types got all pissy if you refered to them as such, but Padre was different.

Technically he was known as Major Brooks, but no one except his wife ever called him by that name.

He walked straight through the medlab, lifted Henny's, what was Henny's head in one hand as he took a swig from his flask of "holy water".

"Shit, boys and girls, this is the real deal alright. Just got word from Penitentiary Tango Tango that it's hit there too," he said, the

fire water he was drinking not even causing a scowl on his already wrinkled and scarred face. "Got some more images headed your way,Neil.

Along with an extended version of the translation software. The one ... that we spoke about.

Neil paused to glance up from his screens, face aglow in green-wash terminal light, "Think this is it, padre?"

"What? "The Big UnBang? Naw, but someone has their ugly slimy little hands in this and it ain't anyone from R&D, that's for sure."

Guerra spoke up, "Aliens? But who ever heard of them doing ... this?"

The padre sighed, "No, ma'am." He out ranked her, but respected her fully for her combat skills, which he lacked, "Well, sorta.

Not aliens like one would normally think. Not the ones we spend so much time dealing with anyways. The powerful ones. The ones who build

and destroy worlds." He walked over to Neils holo-table and pulled up an image from her own helmet-cam, "See this?" He was pointing to an

image that was undiscernible to the untrained eye. "If you look at it from this angle," he spun it around a bit, "it looks like an eye.

With fire burning up from the where the pupil should be. This symbol has been in the ancient books for thousands of years now. All very

very bad books. It is said to represent the "Great One" and his minion armies. Not the Big Guys that we ... our people normally

worship. But the old gods. The ones that claim to have built our universe, it's worlds, all as crops to be harvested.

'When the stars are right'," concluded the preacher / scientist. He took another swig from the flask and handed it to her.

"And there ain't nothing we can do to stop them."