The above video (Part 1) is the account of General Herman Thorn, leader of the New United Earth Forces.
The following story (Part 2) is the account of the crew of Azan's Vengence. Both are selected from Annex C-6717Y. Looking for the audio version? Click here!
“What do you mean, you missed?”
Such a pointed inquisition from his superior was the rare sort of thing that could quickly shatter the normally unassailable composure of Getlek, Primary Mass-Driver Marksman of the battleship Azan’s Vengeance. His carapace immediately began to break out in jagged tones of anxiety-induced chartreuse. It was his species’ primary indicator of stress, an evolutionary response that was meant to help them blend in with the tall, spiked stalks of pale-green pseudo-fungus that their species had evolved to dwell within. It was an involuntary instinct that had undoubtedly saved many of Getlek’s ancestors from any one of the cruel multitude of predators that had evolved to subsist on their soft, calorie-dense innards. It could not, unfortunately, hide Getlek from the barely-veiled fury of his superior.
“The Shard dodged behind a planet at the last second, Grand Executor Tatora.” He said, straining to keep the quiver in his mandibles from breaching the measured tone of his explanation. “It used the world as a shield, and now appears to have vanished in the wake of the resulting impact. No sign of it remains in this system.”
The Grand Executor turned to her Combat Analyst, a junior officer by the name of Loawn, whose carapace had long ago shifted into the same fearful shade of sickly green as Getlek’s.
“And how exactly did it do that if it was in stasis, Analyst Loawn? It was in STASIS, was it not?” Tatora punctuated her question with a smacking of her stinger against the deck of the bridge, a threatening CLACK-CLACK-CLACK that caused Loawn’s face to shrink back into the protective shell that constituted his thorax.
“It-it should have been, Grand Executor! All the signs, a-all the data told us that it was! There’s no, no possible WAY that it could have re-constituted its neural manifold in time to initiate movement rapid enough to evade our homing driver!”
“YET IT DID!” Tatora shouted as she slammed her stinger onto the ground, making a sharp sound that gave every on-deck crew member a violent start.
“It shouldn’t have been possible, Grand Executor.” Came the level voice of Catorai, the Vengeance’s pre-eminent Shard Specialist.
“Analyst Loawn is correct – every observable sign told us that our quarry should have been in stasis. It shouldn’t have been able to fake that, and even if it WAS somehow pretending to be in stasis, why would it remain stationary in the system’s asteroid belt for so long? The shards are not beings of rest – they are beings of action and limited, STRATEGIC recovery. You know this as well as I.”
Catorai’s eyes drifted back to the readouts displayed on her data-screen.
“Our quarry is exhibiting highly atypical behavior. I suggest we report this instance back to central command and initiate immediate pursuit. We may be dealing with a previously undiscovered shard variant, and if that’s the case we cannot afford to linger. We must find it and kill it as quickly as we can.”
Catorai turned her gaze back to Tatora, meeting the Executor’s compound eyes with a steely poise.
“Our killing shot missed. We must accept that and move on. The pursuit must continue, before it’s too late.”
Tatora exhaled, causing her exo-scales to rattle as the breath left her body. They had been so close. SO close to killing the Shard they had been pursuing for nearly 200 turnings now. The Shard that she had sworn she would stop at nothing to destroy. The shard that had taken EVERYTHING from –
She shook her head. No. This was no time for rumination on the past. Catorai was right. The only path lay forward, unto the cold and distant dark. She turned towards the viewport, and stared out at the vast darkness before her. Stars twinkled across the endless veil, some she knew, some she did not. Some of those stars held uncontacted worlds in their orbit, those lucky few that lived blissfully unaware and subsequently unbothered by the great struggle that raged around them. Others, like the one they had just hit, bore the scars of the Great Conflict, as they would for the remainder of their existence. She turned toward her Chief Cartographer, and finally asked the question she had been dreading to find the answer to.
“The planet we hit… was it inhabited?”
The Cartographer paused before he replied – a momentary lapse in conversation that made Tatora’s stinger involuntarily twitch in dreadful anticipation.
“Yes Grand Executor, it was. The world harbored an estimated 12 billion sentients, 9 billion of them members of an advancing technological society.”
“And the planet’s current status?” Tatora replied.
Another pause.
“Complete devastation. If anything on the surfaced survived the initial strike, it will be long dead by the time the planet next returns to this point in its orbit.”
A deathly quiet took the bridge. It was broken when Tatora slammed her stinger into the deck, so hard it left a small crater in its wake.
“LET THAT BE A LESSON TO YOU ALL,” the Grand Executor howled, “AS TO THE SAVAGERY OF OUR ENEMY!”
“The Shards, these bastard children of the Shattered Queen, will do ANYTHING, sacrifice ANY number of innocents to achieve their ends! They will allow, and even INITIATE, the suffering and DEATH of TRILLIONS of sentients if it means accumulating even a MOTE of power they may use to reconstitute their broken mother! If these beings, these pale SHADES of that evil, are willing and ABLE to do that, just what do you think their maker will be capable of should they successfully reassemble her? WHAT FATE DO YOU THINK WILL BEFALL OUR UNION, OUR WAYS OF LIFE, THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE IF THE SHATTERED QUEEN IS ALLOWED TO RISE AGAIN?”
The bridge was silent. No response was necessary. They all knew the histories, had all stood in the awful silence of the monuments dedicated to the uncounted quadrillions who had died in pain during the reign of the Shattered Queen. They knew the horrors that had been, and their imaginations provided each a vivid picture of what horrors may yet come to pass, should the Great Conflict not resolve in their favor. Such a fate could not be tolerated – not now, not ever.
Analyst Loawn was the first to speak.
“Grand Executor. I’ve just picked up a signature, in a binary system only 4 light years away. It appears the Shard has exited its jump-tunnel there. I’d bet that it’s refueling between the two stars before it attempts a larger interstellar traversal.” She turned to face the Grand Executor. “If we move quickly, we can sneak up on it behind one of the stars. It’s not gotten away yet.”
Tatora turned to her pilot, who was already in the midst of making the necessary calculations.
“Time to tunnel breach?” She asked.
“62 seconds.” The pilot responded, his eyes unmoving from the data-screen. “We’ll be on the damn thing before it even knows what happened.”
“Grand Executor, should we put the collateral planet in this system out of its misery before we go?” Analyst Loawn added. “A mercy kill, if you will.”
Tatora considered it. She looked down at the ammunition readouts on her data-screen.
“No. we can’t afford to waste another homing driver.”
The breach engines began to hum, and a flashing blue light filled the deck. Everyone, Grand Executor included, sat down in preparation for travel.
“Plus,” Grand Executor Tatora added, “We’d be robbing them of the chance to rise again. I’ve heard of species that survived worse fates.”
She looked down at the display of the ravaged planet once again. Once a sapphire blue orb, the sphere was now a raging scene of crimson fire and acrid smoke. Its atmosphere swirled around it, belched into space by the force of the impact. It was a gory sight.
“If they do survive this, do ascend once more, it will not be in our lifetime…” she sighed. “But they may yet surprise historians of the future.”
Tatora looked forward. The hunt lay ahead. The floor began to vibrate beneath her feet as the fabric of reality outside their ship split wide and sucked them into its folds. And then, with brilliant flash and no sound at all, they were gone.
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