The soft hum of recycled air filled Ethan's temporary quarters, the only sound accompanying the flickering blue glow of the datapad on his lap. With nothing but time and curiosity to burn, he'd requested a secure data-link into the Mercenary Guild's restricted archives. He didn't expect Iris to grant him access so easily.
"I can't dig too deep for safety reasons," her voice had echoed in his earpiece. "But if you want to know who really runs the Guild… we can start with the Council."
And so he had.
What began as idle browsing turned into obsession. Hidden behind layers of encryption, redacted summaries, and myth-wrapped anecdotes lay a revelation that sent chills through Ethan's spine. The Mercenary Guild wasn't just a military contractor or a weapons-for-hire service. It was a force of nature and at its apex sat ten figures, cloaked in legend and dread.
The Council of Ten.
The Mercenary Guild operated under a ranking system, ascending from F all the way to the feared and respected SSS-Rank. But above even that stood a category so rare, only ten living beings held it at present: EX-Rank.
Granting this title was not a promotion. It was an acknowledgment, of influence, power, and mastery that transcended galactic comprehension. EX-Rank mercenaries weren't just hired guns. They were history makers.
Their exploits bordered on myth. A contract that turned the tide of a civil war in under a month. A mission where an entire moon was evacuated, mined, and detonated... all to delay an advancing war fleet. One Council member allegedly brokered peace between two ancient dynasties by assassinating both rulers and installing a joint AI regent that governs them still.
Iris commented without emotion:
"When a mission looks impossible, the Guild sends SSS-Rank. When it looks more than suicidal, they send the EX."
Six members of the Council of Ten lead their own elite mercenary clan. Entities that function less like traditional military units and more like autonomous microstates within the sprawling framework of the Mercenary Guild. These clans are not merely warbands or elite squads; they are sprawling, transgalactic institutions complete with independent supply chains, research divisions, command hierarchies, and even internal cultures. They have their own territories and their own internal laws of conduct.
There are countless mercenary clans scattered across the known universe, but none come close to the reach, prestige, or terrifying power of the Council-led clans.
Black Fang are brutal specialists in zero-gravity warfare and spaceborne guerrilla tactics. Black Fang units are often deployed into asteroid fields, orbital shipyards, or derelict megastructures. Environments where traditional military forces falter.
Their ships are jagged and predatory, rigged with magnetic claws and boarding drills. Their operatives wear reinforced void-suits with neural kill-switches, ensuring no captured data ever leaves their bodies. Black Fang has no formal ranks, command is earned in live combat.
Their training simulations are fatal. Graduation often means being the only survivor.
Spiral Dominion. A clan made up of Psionic tacticians, neural infiltrators, and biomech savants. The Spiral Dominion blurs the line between mental warfare and software assault. They are capable of subverting entire ship networks by weaponizing thought.
Initiates are subjected to neural scarification, a painful process of memory fragmentation, identity rebirth, and forced exposure to artificial sentience. By the end of it, they are no longer who they were, only what the Dominion shaped.
Dominion enclaves house libraries of encoded minds, some centuries old. Their clan ships are silent, symmetrical, and completely shielded from standard detection methods. Wherever they appear, confusion and collapse follow.
Crimson Vow. An oath-bound clan obsessed with honor, sacrifice, and the sanctity of contract. Every Crimson Vow operative has their contract temporarily carved into their flesh upon acceptance, visible reminders of promises made. Some are bound for life. Others until death.
To betray a contract is to summon the Bloodhunt, a full-clan mobilization to erase the traitor and any who sheltered them. Entire settlements have been wiped out in the aftermath of a single dishonored deal.
Their style of warfare is direct, ritualistic, and theatrical. Red holo-banners, bladed mechs, war hymns. They announce their coming days in advance, not out of arrogance, but obligation.
Iron Dirge, masters of siege warfare, gravitic weaponry, and destructive logistics. The Iron Dirge specializes in turning strongholds into ruins, whether planetary fortresses, orbital bastions, or capital flagships. Their clan colors are grey and rust-red, and their creed is simple: "Endure. Then End."
Their headquarters is an ever-burning forge-moon called Vaktra, where new weapons are constantly tested, often on their own recruits. Iron Dirge garrisons are slow to move, but impossible to dislodge once deployed. Their arrival is considered a planetary crisis in itself.
Pale Synthesis is a shadowy, cyber-organic clan devoted to enhancing life through integration with machine intelligence. Their agents undergo recursive bio-upgrades, constantly replacing organic parts with biomechanical enhancements, to the point where identity becomes fluid and replaceable.
They deploy nanite plagues, hijack genetics, and rewrite code in living tissue.
No one knows where their true leadership resides. Some believe Pale Synthesis is a distributed AI consciousness, spread across cloned shells.
Ashen Choir, a cult-like warrior clan who sing war into being. Their battles are conducted to sonic resonance, battlefield hymns that amplify emotion, dull pain, or instill semi-madness. Every operative is a sonic conduit, their armor embedded with vocal harmonics and frequency weapons.
The Choir is feared not only for their combat prowess, but for their unsettling presence. Where they pass, local wildlife either flourishes uncontrollably or dies out completely.
They believe war against biological threats is a cleansing rite.
"The remaining four Council members operate solo," Iris explained, "not because they lack the power to lead clans, but because their presence alone is force enough; they are entire war machines in a single body."
Together, they represent the Guild's military backbone, their elite forces, covert specialists, and planetary siege engines. While they often take on their own contracts, they can be summoned under a unified directive by the Council. And when they act together, entire fleets withdraw rather than engage.
Independently, each clan has the resources and power projection of a minor galactic power. Collectively, they are one of the most dangerous military coalitions in existence.
"And yet," Iris mused through Ethan's earpiece, her voice even, "they answer to no government. Only the Council. And the Council answers to nothing… except maybe each other."
It was a dangerous equilibrium. Each Council member had the means to wage war on the others and yet, they didn't. Not because of friendship or ideology… but because the Guild worked. And if it broke, the entire galaxy would burn.
Ethan leaned back, letting the weight of what he'd just read settle in.
These weren't just mercenaries. They were gods of war.
The Council doesn't merely participate in wars, they end them. They don't just react to history, they author it.
Across countless star systems, their names are etched into the margins of rewritten treaties, collapsed dynasties, and purged archives. They are the weapons behind ceasefires, the architects behind implosions, the whispers that reshape destiny.
Ethan scrolled through entry after entry, each fragment more staggering than the last.
One Council member is said to have stopped a planet-spanning civil war by simply landing with his clan. The opposing factions dropped their weapons, not out of fear, but because both sides realized continuing the war in the presence of that individual was suicide.
Ethan blinked as he read through the list of Council members. Some bore ornate war titles. Others were marked only by sigils, glyphs, or even strings of mathematical code. Some had no name at all, only timestamps or galactic coordinates marking their first appearance.
The Council was composed of different races, including ancient species and extinct-bloodline survivors.
Dravari Warlord-Mercenary Khal-Taresh, Ashen Choir Commander.
One of the last known members of the Dravari, a race long thought extinct after the Voidbeast Scourge of the Nebula Sector, a catastrophe they themselves triggered. Dravari arrogance led them to raise and control voidbeasts as bioweapons through their racial ability, only to lose control. Entire systems were consumed.
Khal-Taresh survived not by hiding, but by conquering the creatures. His signature black-red armor is fused with voidbeast chitin, resistant to energy, entropy, and thought-based assault. His sonic racial ability, "Dravarian voice", has caused battlefield-wide madness or skeletal implosions in exposed foes. His contracts often involve containment or extermination of cosmic-level biological threats.
Some say he is more monster than mercenary. But he always completes the job.
Void-Kin Chrono-Adept Vei'la, Council Solo Operator.
One of the four Council members who command no clan, because they need none. Vei'la is not confined to a single moment. Allegedly born from the Void Kin, a species with innate chronotemporal abilities, they are believed to operate simultaneously across multiple time branches.
Rumors describe Vei'la as appearing before events happen. They sign contracts with timestamps that haven't occurred yet. On at least one occasion, they were recorded assassinating the same target twice, in separate timelines, to ensure continuity collapse would be avoided.
No confirmed image of Vei'la exists. Surveillance recordings show temporal static. Witnesses describe their presence as "remembering a memory you never had."
Iris noted that some high-level chronomancer cults consider them a living paradox, a necessary anomaly permitted by the universe to correct timeline drift.
Zelsari Ghostblade Shūma, Spiral Dominion Leader
Leader of the Spiral Dominion, Shūma is regarded as the pinnacle of mental warfare and psionic sabotage. Once a royal enforcer of the Zelsari House of Mirrors, an ancient caste bred for thought-assassination. She now helms a vast network of neural hackers, cognitive disruptors, psionic tacticians, and biomech savants
Her most famous contract was the collapse of the Viroxi Theocracy, a galactic religious kingdom spanning 43 inhabited planets. Shūma didn't use guns or ships, they invaded the minds of Viroxi high command, turning them into unwitting saboteurs. Capital fleet systems were subverted, orbital defenses overwritten, and the Viroxi Holy King was bombarded by his own navy, moments after issuing a blessing to the fleet.
The more Ethan read, the more it became clear: this wasn't a council. It was a pantheon.
A living mythology of force incarnate. They didn't just influence the galaxy, they haunted it.
And yet, somehow, they all answered to one name.
The Guild.