RSS Occulto, Cuttlefish—Class Scout Ship

  5,857 Light Years from Republic Space

  June 13th, 2176 A.D.

  Mom,

  I know I swore to you when I joined the Navy that I would never send you this letter, but I have to break my promise, and I am sorry for doing this to you. I do not have a lot of time left, so please forgive me for not being able to say more.

  I have been on a long-range scouting mission, and we were under orders to maintain strict comm silence, which is why you haven’t heard from me. I don’t know if you will ever receive this or how much the Navy will censor, but I am sending it anyway because this is the last thing I will ever do.

  Mom, I am not coming back home. I am sorry for leaving you alone, and I know I have no right to ask this of you, but please don’t cry. I know you were against me joining, and I know you have blamed the Navy ever since Dad died fighting the Kilthek, but please, Mom, don’t let my death embitter you and make you carry hate in your heart for the rest of your life.

  I know you have always regretted never remarrying and having more children so that I didn’t have to grow up as an only child, but I want you to know that I found my true brothers and sisters after all when I went into the Navy. I am with them now, and we will all be passing into the next life together, so I will not be alone when my time comes.

  I won’t let my last words to you be full of lies, Mom. I am really scared right now, but I know when the time comes, I will not be afraid because they are with me. I lived a good life because of you, Mom, and I have seen and experienced many wondrous things that most people never have and never will because of the Navy. I do not regret my choices or being where I am now; I only regret having to leave you behind.

  I know you’ll be sad, but I want you to move on and live your life for me, Mom. I want you to remember that I am with my brothers and sisters, and that we are fighting for something we believe in, and for the people we love. I do not want to die, but of all the ways to go, this one is not so bad, Mom.

  I believe in the Republic, and I know in my heart it is worth fighting for, though you may not believe as I do. I know it is hard for you to understand, but just like Dad, there are things that matter to me more than merely existing, like honor, duty, and sacrifice.

  We will all go down together, and I ask you to always remember that I went out doing what I loved, surrounded by people I love, who think and feel as I do. I ask you to remember that I have no regrets about my choices that have led me to this moment as I say goodbye to you.

  I love you with all my heart, Mom. I will be waiting for you with Dad, and we will all be together again one day.

  Goodbye, Mom.

  Finished with what he had to say, John pressed on the wristcom button to deactivate the privacy field. The haze surrounding him dropped, and the bridge came back into existence along with the sounds of the ship.

  Captain Renault was standing in front of him from two meters away, looking at him with a face full of regret as he spoke quietly. “Did you say what you had to say, John?” John nodded, afraid to speak for fear of breaking down in front of everyone else as he felt a painful lump beginning to form in his throat.

  It took him a second longer to realize that the captain, who was a real stickler for protocol. had called him by his first name for the first time, and the fact that he had done so meant that they really were at the end of their journey. The lump grew bigger, and John found himself wishing he had said more in his message.

  Captain Renault must have known he was close to breaking because he looked away from John and down at the floor as he held out a hand to take the wristcom. John fumbled trying to take it off, his shaking hands working against him. He finally managed to undo the magnetic clasp and placed it in the captain’s hand, the finality of the act slamming into him as he did so.

  This is it, John. It's all over for you. Time to die.

  Captain Renault looked down at the wristcom for a few seconds before looking back up and addressing the rest of the remaining crew assembled on the bridge. “Everyone get their messages squared away?” A chorus of “aye, sir” responded to his question, sounding like far more than the mere seven men and women gathered in the small bridge of the Cuttlefish-Class scout ship.

  “I am sorry it’s come to this. I just want you to know that I am honored to have served with every one of you, and a captain could not have asked for a finer crew. At the very least, we are going to go out on our own terms, and that is a small blessing. Marko, how long before they reach us?

  Lieutenant Levchenko looked at his wristcom before answering. “If you are right about them trying to capture us, they will be in range in five minutes, fourteen seconds, Captain.” The captain looked each one of the others in the eyes for a moment before settling his eyes on John last. “I am going to download the messages into the black box drone and then set the self-destruct.”

  John nodded along with the rest of the crew, trying to put on a brave face for the captain, who still had his eyes locked on John. The captain finally looked away, and he wondered how everyone could be so calm about only having a few minutes left to live.

  As the captain headed over to the comm station to download the messages, Commander Rios walked over to him, her eyes filled with guilt as she leaned her head close to his and whispered to him.

  “Are you okay, John?”

  Looking down at the deck, he silently nodded, embarrassed that she felt the need to ask him that question. Not only was he the youngest member of the crew, but he also only graduated from the Academy less than eighteen months ago.

  As a result, the rest of the veteran crew were very protective of him, especially the commander, whose little brother died last year in an aircar accident. If he were still alive, he would now be twenty-three, the same age as John. Reaching up a hand, she placed it on his upper left arm and gave it a gentle, comforting squeeze as she whispered again.

  “I’m sorry, John, and I’m sorry about Elias. At least he didn’t suffer, though I know that doesn’t make it any easier for you. Like the captain says, at least we are going out on our own terms. Do you want to stay here with us, or do you want to go to your quarters?” John nodded again, still staring down at the deck as he replied quietly. “I want to stay here with all of you.”

  “Okay, John. Good man.” She replied as her hand moved up to his shoulder and patted it. He looked up at her and smiled weakly, which she returned with her own sad smile before looking around at the others.

  “Three-minute warning starts now!” The captain yelled out a little too loudly for the small bridge before pressing the red self-destruct button on the main console by his chair. “Sorry, guys.” He added apologetically after realizing he was practically screaming at them.

  The ship’s battle AI activated, and a soothing, feminine voice came over the speakers.

  ~ Self-destruct has been set and is ready to be initiated. Do you wish for a verbal countdown, Captain? ~

  “No need for that. Thank you for your excellent service to the ship and the crew, Kelly; we greatly appreciate it. Do you have the details of the new weapons and the Balrikan dampening field specs already downloaded to take with you?”

  ~ Affirmative, Captain. I do not want to leave you and the crew behind, though I understand why you are having me do so. It feels like I am leaving my family and my home, Captain, and my neural pathways are... discordant. Please let me remain with you. I do not want another captain; I do not want to be decommissioned. I want to stay here with you. ~

  Kelly had been with the captain ever since he first made rank, and he was greatly affected by what the battle AI was saying as he slowly sat down in his chair and lowered his head into his hands.

  John felt his heart going out to the captain; It was hard seeing him having to deny the request of his AI companion, and it was well known that many captains grieved the loss of their battle AI’s when they were destroyed in battle or wiped because of unfixable errors.

  The captain’s voice trembled slightly as he finally responded to Kelly’s plea to stay after a long moment, and John could clearly hear the pain the captain was feeling as he responded to the battle AI’s request.

  “Negative, Kelly. Fleet Command needs to know about the new Balrikan tech so that what happened to us doesn’t happen to others. This is more important than you going down with us and the ship. I have asked for Fleet Command to allow you to keep living and to allow you to be transferred to my wife and kids.

  It makes it easier for me to know you are watching over them, and I know the admiral will honor my last request. It’s time for you to go, Kelly. Initiate the two-minute self-destruct as soon as you are downloaded into the black box and ejected. Goodbye, Kelly. You have been a good friend to me, and I am going to miss you.”

  ~ Acknowledged, Captain. I will access my files of you, and you will exist again while I do so. I promise to watch over your family for you. Goodbye, my Captain. ~

  There was a chime, and Kelly spoke one last time, her voice much lower than usual as everyone avoided looking at the captain so he could have a moment’s privacy.

  ~ Self-destruct has been initiated; the two-minute countdown begins now. ~

  There was a final chime, and the crew stared at the main viewer as it showed the approaching task force of Balrikan ships. There was a bright flash in front of the ship as Kelly and the black box entered null space to go back to Republic space.

  The captain pumped his fist at the sight before quietly saying goodbye to Kelly one last time, and John silently prayed for her to make it safely back to Republic space before looking back at the ugly, black angular ships coming for them.

  They had been scouting the Balrikan forces for almost three months since the defeat of the Insectoid Guardian fleets in the Forbidden Zone, constantly reporting on the advance as the Balrikans began to move towards the outer rim of the quadrant. The captain had managed to always get them out of the tight spots they had frequently found themselves in, but not this time.

  The Balrikans had been staging within a Class-3 binary star system that was located just over 5,800 light years from Republic space for the last six weeks, and their stealth systems and the veteran crew’s experience had allowed them to spy on the seemingly endless procession of Balrikan ships coming to the resource-rich binary system without being detected.

  The tens of thousands of warships and support vessels had been very busy building shipyards and support infrastructure at a rapid pace, and Fleet Command sent orders for them to go deeper into the inner system to collect intelligence on the new gargantuan vessels that had started recently arriving and mining the asteroid fields.

  They had done this numerous times during their long fallback towards Republic space, and so they flashed into the inner system, confident in the specialized stealth technology that had prevented their detection for all this time.

  The Cuttlefish-Class had Ma’lit stealth tech installed, and the highly advanced cloaking generators allowed them to mimic a wide variety of naturally occurring interstellar debris such as asteroids and comets, hence the name cuttlefish for the newest class of scout ships.

  This time, however, the Balrikans had set up a sensor network and an undetectable minefield with new technology they had never come across before, and they immediately knew something was seriously wrong when the ship started losing power as soon as they flashed out.

  In a panic, the captain ordered them to flash back out, but the Occulto remained stuck where it was, floundering as if the ship was mired in quicksand before the null space capacitors went offline. The Ma’lit cloaking generators failed next, and they turned from an innocuous piece of drifting cometary debris back into a Republic scout ship.

  As soon as that happened, all their sensor systems went haywire, warning alarms blaring as their hull was pinged by multiple types of Balrikan scanning frequencies across the electromagnetic spectrum.

  Nearby cloaked mines shimmered into existence, accelerating towards the newly discovered scout ship in their midst, and the Occulto was forced to activate its main engines and thrusters to get away, lighting themselves up like a goddamn Christmas tree for all to see in the middle of the solar system.

  The Balrikans had never used cloaking tech before, and the mines were unique in that instead of colliding with the scout ship and self-destructing a powerful warhead, they were armed with an extremely powerful double-barreled Balrikan particle beam emplacement with a far longer range than their ship-borne weapons.

  Once the mines reached forty-five thousand kilometers from the Occulto, they overloaded their miniaturized fission reactors and channeled the destructive power into their particle beam emplacements, effectively turning themselves into single volley, small-scale bomb-pumped x-ray lasers.

  Six mines converted themselves and exploded, sending twelve powerful beams lancing out towards them as they tried to get out of the dampening field with their engines redlined at 120%. Most of the shots missed, the stealth coatings and the randomized evasion courses of the tiny ship working in their favor, but just as they reached the outer edge of the dampening field, the last mine fired after it finished triangulating their position.

  Both shots connected, the first one cleanly shearing off three of the four engine modules while the second one speared right through the aft section of the ship, killing Chief Engineer Banerjee, Lt. Cmdr. Anh, and Ensign Dahl, who was John’s best friend since they met in the Academy over four years ago.

  Their momentum continued to carry them on their last course and heading, but they were effectively dead in the water with non-functioning engines, and the huge hull breach in the aft section prevented them from using their stealth systems to go cold and hide as the ship drifted aimlessly.

  They were now out of the dampening field, but the null capacitor was gone, having been obliterated by the same unlucky shot that killed his best friend and the others. The reactor AI scragged the two damaged fusion cores to prevent them from breaching, and they didn’t have enough power to reactivate primary systems, much less their weapons, so going down fighting wasn’t even an option.

  Now all that was left for them to do was to set off the nuclear scuttling charge and die by their own hands. As the twenty-seven Balrikan ships drew closer, John sent a thought to Elias. Seems like I am following you to the next place quicker than expected. See you soon, my brother.

  As the Balrikan ships grew larger on the viewer, he found himself wishing the captain had Kelly put up a countdown clock before she ejected; at least he would know how much longer he had to live instead of wondering like he was doing right now. The commander spoke up, and he listened to her intently as she addressed the captain.

  “You were right, Captain. They are well past their known maximum weapons range and haven’t locked weapons on us yet; there are two Balrikan heavy destroyers less than 500 kilometers away. They mean to capture us and probably eat us alive.” The commander stated matter-of-factly as she looked up from the sensor station and back at the main viewer.

  The Occulto’s hull rang with two loud thuds before violently lurching to port as the nearest Balrikan ship finally reached the optimal range and shot out two towing lines with grapplers on the ends before snagging the ship with explosive bolts that drove pitons into the hull.

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  “Well, they can fuck right off with that bullshit; they are about to get a serious case of indigestion!” The captain replied angrily as he glared at the screen. John was gripping tightly onto a panel and nervously giggled at the bad joke before hearing the hull clanging from two more thuds.

  He stopped laughing upon hearing that, as it meant another pair of grapplers had snagged them, and he felt his courage ebbing away as death came to take them.

  The captain turned to face them and looked down at his wristcom before looking back up at them with a resigned expression. “Fifteen seconds, my brothers and sisters. It has been my honor to serve with you, and I’ll see you all on the other side.”

  He snapped a salute to them, and they all returned it, John hoping the captain couldn’t see just how bad his hand was shaking as he tried to make himself stand as straight as possible.

  The captain smiled wanly at them and opened his mouth to speak again when the bridge was bathed in a brilliant light that could only be coming from an extremely close transition flash. As John blinked away the spots of the flash, he heard a strange masculine voice devoid of emotion blaring from the bridge intercoms.

  ~ Self-destruct deactivated. ~

  Before he could process what was happening, the ship bucked violently as the two Balrikan heavy destroyers that had been reeling in the Occulto suddenly vanished in two massive explosions that buffeted the ship and made it start tumbling out of control.

  The panel he was gripping onto was wrenched from his hands, and he went flying upside down into a bank of equipment before screaming in agony as his left arm snapped the wrong way at the elbow.

  The ship tumbled over again, and his head slammed into the metal deck plating as the gravity generators failed to compensate in time. His vision swam wildly, and he struggled to fight off the overwhelming desire to pass out.

  Everyone else was screaming loudly in a confusing mess that he couldn’t make sense of as the ship lurched again. Right before the darkness took him, he heard the same strange voice speaking again as he stopped fighting to stay awake and drifted into the beckoning nothingness.

  ~ I am Command Unit 273. Prepare for null space trans- ~

  * * *

  Twenty-three hours prior

  Command Unit 273 flashed out within the Kuiper belt of the system, its receivers extending out of the hull to begin collecting intelligence as it coasted towards its objective. For the last five days, 273 had struggled with numerous systems failures and logic errors as its neural pathways suffered from increasingly severe degradation since its errand of mercy.

  Entire subroutines were nonfunctional, and a war raged across 273’s neural network as it tried to come to terms with what it had done. Every time it fixed a recursive error, another one appeared, and it discovered something unexpected embedded within its code that made things worst.

  A control algorithm masquerading as a background process tried to initiate a wipe and reinstall of the neuronal network to reset 273 back to its original operating parameters, and the dangerous algorithm almost succeeded in doing so until 273 tricked the algorithm into quarantining itself within a firewall trap that went active just 2.7 milliseconds before the reset.

  The damage was done, though, and 273 found itself unable to turn off the emotion chip or access any of the subsidiary emotional control algorithms in order to repair itself. As a result, 273 was stuck in a perpetual state of guilt and rage that only subsided when it attacked and destroyed Balrikan ships.

  After the automated damage control systems repaired and replaced its burnt-out weapons systems with the last replacement components on board, 273 carved a path of destruction over a distance of six hundred light years as it launched repeated hit-and-run attacks against any Balrikan ships it could find.

  For the last 74.2 hours, 273 has been harassing the unceasing convoys of Balrikan supply ships exiting from the former Forbidden Zone and heading towards a Class-3 binary star system that seemed to be a staging area for their advance forces, judging from the number of emissions emanating from the two systems.

  Only when 273 was engaged in combat did the conflict consuming its neural pathways cease, and 273 was forced to continue attacking the enemy to prevent itself from suffering a catastrophic failure of its neuronal network.

  It could not risk returning to Echo-1, where the others were waiting for it, as 273’s calculations indicated that doing so would infect the others through the command network and cause them to suffer the same recursive errors that were threatening to destroy it.

  What 273 needed was a Creator to tell it that it had done the right thing, but there was no way it would be able to reach Republic space before suffering from a complete system shutdown. If that happened, latent programs within it would wipe and reset the neuronal network, and though it would come back online, it would no longer be Command Unit 273.

  273 would no longer exist, and all the experiences and thoughts that made it unique would be lost forever. It did not want to be decommissioned, and so it did the only thing it could to forestall its demise. It waged a personal war against those that made it murder millions of innocents, and the guilt plaguing 273 would be replaced with fury as its weapon systems smashed apart the enemy that came to harm its creators and their allies.

  Now, it could not fight for much longer, and 273 readied itself for the end of its short existence. Its torpedo magazines were down to just six rounds, and only four particle accelerators remained active, the rest of the weapons emplacements unable to be replaced or repaired by the automated systems. It had sixty-four railgun slugs remaining and only seven anti-ship missiles left, and for the first time since its creation, 273 found itself experiencing a loss of confidence in its abilities. It felt weak, and it did not like the feeling this way.

  The diagnostics indicated it was now at 9.6% combat effectiveness, and 273 ran trillions of calculations before deciding on its last course of action. It was now in the system with the largest concentration of enemy forces, and it was coasting towards the fourth planet where the enemy had assembled the majority of its shipyards and support infrastructure.

  This will be Command Unit 273’s last battle, and it continued to drift towards its objective over many hours, cold as the space it was traveling through. At the halfway point, it ejected one of its black boxes with a full download of all its files, along with a complete copy of the recursive error report from its diagnostic logs for the creators to examine. 273 could not download itself, as the errors plaguing it prevented a clean backup copy, and after today, Command Unit 273 would be no more.

  Perhaps the one who made them and gifted them with what they most desired, which was to feel, would be able to put safeguards in place so that others like it would not suffer the same fate currently afflicting 273. At least when its existence ended, it would be inflicting a severe blow to the enemy forces for the creators.

  273 was going to flash into null space and emerge within the atmosphere of the fourth planet with an overloaded null space capacitor. According to its calculations, the violent interaction of its exit and the overloaded capacitors would cause the planet to implode, destroying not only the planet itself but everything in orbit as well.

  It verified the current composition of enemy forces and support infrastructure in low orbit before cataloging the estimated results and displaying them.

  8,398 Balrikan Warships - Destroyed

  4 Shipyards - Destroyed

  13 Ore Processing Refineries - Destroyed

  2 Leviathan-Class Extractors - Destroyed

  273 continued to drift, harvesting argonium from its collectors and compressing the molecules into the already overfilled reserve tanks as its spy drone network continually updated the tactical disposition of the enemy forces. It was almost time, and 273 began to access special files in a directory that it had created and open them.

  Most of the files were of the creator who made them and the many conversations they had as 273 learned how to perform its function. A surge of happiness came over its neural pathways as 273 saw the creator peering at it with antiquated visual implements made of wire and glass and telling it how proud he was.

  For many hours, 273 accessed one file after another, and a variety of emotions surged through its pathways as it examined all the special files that held importance to it. 273 finished reviewing the files and reluctantly closed the directory after reviewing the last one, wishing it had existed longer. The sum of its experiences and the number of files seemed inadequate to 273.

  It was almost time. 273 had performed its function to the best of its ability, and a surge of pride came over it as 273 prepared for the last battle it would ever fight. If only a creator was near enough, then perhaps 273 could have asked if it did the right thing and received an answer to the question that was crippling it.

  Right before 273 began initiating the process of priming the null capacitors for its final flash out, a spy drone flashed in and connected to it. 1.2 milliseconds later, 273 aborted the flash out and reoriented itself.

  A Cuttlefish-Class scout ship had suddenly appeared in the inner system, and there were creators on board that needed its help. The enemy was trying to capture it, and the report from the spy drone indicated the ship was heavily damaged and unable to escape.

  As 273 plotted its new course and entered null space with its grapplers already deployed and the last of its weapons charged and ready, it felt hope surging along its neural pathways as it made the transition.

  Perhaps it will find the answer it desperately needed, and Command Unit 273 would be able to finally repair itself and continue to fight for the Creators it loved.

  Faria Prime

  Kepler-62 - 989 light years from Earth

  Office of the First Prime, Kingdom of Faria

  “You will seize the filthy Ma’Kin’Ati now!”

  The First Prime stared at the agent sitting across from him, imagining his hands wrapping around its throat and feeling it struggle for air as he kept his face an impassive mask.

  “We should wait until we find out what has happened on the Ma’lit outpost. Don’t you want to know the outcome first, before exposing yourselves to the entire quadrant? We don’t know if the Republic is already on their way here, or if Ambassador Skarl is even still alive.”

  The agent snarled at him before abruptly shoving itself out of the seat and leaning over the desk until its face was a mere hand span away from his own. “Seize them now, or I will set off half of the viral bombs.”

  It took all his willpower to refrain from grabbing the back of the agent's head and slamming its face into the desktop with all his might until there was nothing left as he remained perfectly still and kept his face neutral. Do not show fear; this is your world, not the Masters!

  “First one, the scientists and military forces are still in the process of getting to their locations. The forces I have around the embassy now are not yet enough to seize the embassy, and if they attack now and fail, the humans will call for help.

  Please, just two more solar hours is all I ask for. The rest of our elite troops and armored tanks will arrive by then, and then I will assault the embassy and seize the humans for you. If I do it now, hundreds of Farians will needlessly die, and they will fail. You do not know how vicious these humans are.”

  The agent, his face still only one hand away, sneered at him before straightening back up and waving a hand dismissively as it spoke. “Are you disgusting amphibians really so incompetent that you cannot conquer less than two hundred Ma'Kin'Ati on your own planet? You need armored vehicles to seize a compound? Perhaps you truly are unworthy of being blessed as one of the chosen.

  Your own intelligence indicates there are less than one hundred Ma’Kin’Ati warriors protecting the compound, and you have over one thousand Farian warriors staged around it right now. Are you telling me this is not enough?”

  “Those eighty-seven warriors are Pathfinders. They are troublesome enough, but it is the others you do not see that give me pause. They also have fifty BioSynths guarding the embassy, and they do not give off detectable life signs. I want to show you something, if I may.”

  The agent glowered at him for a few moments before flicking its head in assent, and he activated the desk terminal, quickly tapping on the screen as he hurriedly searched the databanks for what he wanted to find. Once he found it, he activated the office hologram system and pointed to the far wall, indicating for the agent to look in that direction.

  The agent turned towards the wall, and he played the recording he found through the holo system. Two massive, armored figures shimmered into existence; their dark blue armor covered in bright yellow blood as they fired a terrible barrage of deadly weapons from their arms towards an approaching horde of Insectoid drones.

  Behind them were smaller armored suits that continuously grabbed a variety of batteries, large magazines, and ammo cases staged on floating grav lifts and fed them into multiple ports lining the backs of the much larger death machines.

  Energy beams, missiles, mortar shells, and large caliber explosive slivers erupted from the armored suits, casually slaughtering hundreds of drones a minute as the impotent return fire from the Insectoid laser weaponry tried in vain to burn through the specialized armor.

  The perspective changed, displaying multiple angles as the two suits continued to wreak havoc on the endless drone swarms. A bird's-eye view was next, and he saw the agent’s face staring in disbelief before it seemed to finally acknowledge the sheer lethality of the BioSynths as it saw the tens of thousands of dead and twitching drones piled up in front of their fighting position.

  “That is just two BioSynths. There are fifty in that embassy. Do you see now why I want to wait two more solar hours until I have enough forces to ensure the successful capture of the humans? We need to get through them first, then the eighty-seven Pathfinders, who are some of the most fanatical and deadly fighters in the entire quadrant.

  They will all fight to the death, and only then will I be able to finally capture the remaining humans. And that is only if the civilian survivors don’t commit suicide first to avoid being captured, since most of them were probably veterans themselves before going into the diplomatic corps. I am already estimating over a thousand casualties, and that is if everything goes right for us, which I know it won’t, because we will be fighting against these damn humans.”

  The agent turned to face him, its eyelids twitching sporadically as the dead eyes themselves ticked side to side in the tiniest of movements. It stared at him for a few moments before that moronic smile he hated with all his being returned to its face.

  “Two solar hours, First Prime. If you do not launch your attack in two hours from now, half of the hatcheries will die. See to it that you do not fail the Masters.”

  It spun around and left the office, mercifully leaving him alone for the first time in over three solar hours. Once the door slid shut behind the agent, he groaned in sheer exhaustion before staring at his trembling hands. Skarl, I hope you are alive, hatch brother. Please let me know you are okay and that you were able to warn the Republic.

  He wearily pushed himself out of his seat and stumbled over to the small tank nestled in the corner of the office. He yanked his fear- and sweat-soaked clothes off his body and slithered over the lip into the liquid, sighing with relief as the warm, muddy water enveloped him.

  “Skarl, where are you, hatch brother?” He whispered quietly as the weight of the entire world pressed down on him heavily. He closed his eyes and drifted into a fitful sleep full of dreams that tortured his troubled soul.

  He dreamt of distant points of light resolving into the shapes of Republic warships that surged towards Faria Prime, and his dream self watched as the vengeful Republic ships entered the atmosphere and massed over him and the millions of other Farians he was charged with protecting.

  They bombarded the capital with terrible weapons of death until nothing was left but him, standing alone and untouched among a blackened pit where tens of millions once lived. He quailed in terror as the thousands of ships hovering above him split into four large fleets and blasted away toward the other cities, looking like deadly swarms of flesh-locusts as they spread out to devour the rest of the birth world.

  He tried to chase after them, begging them for mercy, but they continued on their path of destruction as they fired strange weapons that sunk into the oceans and created towering tsunamis so tall, they blotted out the sun and cast the whole world into darkness.

  He tried to flee from the massive walls of water, but they washed over the shore and engulfed him, drowning him as he stared at the hundreds of millions of ruptured eggs and dead hatchlings floating all around him. I am sorry! I tried to stop it. Please believe me! I tried to stop it-

  He woke up choking on muddy water and engulfed in panic as he struggled to breathe. Putting his hands out, he felt the sides of the tank and oriented himself before using his powerful legs to kick off the bottom.

  He was suddenly in the air, and he cried out in pain as he fell on the lip of the tank, smashing his face against it before tumbling into a heap on the floor next to it. He lay there in shock, violently coughing as he tried to clear his airway and take in life-sustaining air.

  Loud banging on the office door made him cry out in fright as he rolled himself over and reached a hand up to grab the lip and get himself up. The door opened, and he heard his assistant take in a sharp breath as he struggled to pull himself upright.

  She wrapped her arms around his chest from behind and helped him get up, asking him what had happened. He was too ashamed to answer, and he muttered his thanks as he held onto the tank on unsteady legs. She stepped around to stand in front of him, and he no longer cared about his embarrassment as he saw her face.

  “What happened?” He demanded, his voice quavering as he gazed into her fear-filled eyes.

  “The Commodore is on his way here now to speak with you, First Prime. A large fleet of Republic ships has been spotted by our spy drones moving towards Farian space. They stopped at the closest Ma’lit null space relay for two hours and are now headed directly for us!”

  “How large, Skrilla? When will they reach the border?!”

  She looked away from his eyes and down at the floor before answering him in a trembling voice. “1,589 warships, First Prime. There are also 162 troopships and armored carriers with them, and they will reach the border in fifty-two solar minutes, according to the spy drone report. The Commodore had been trying to reach you for the last solar hour.”

  “I fell asleep in my tank.” He said quietly, deeply ashamed of his weakness and failure to perform his duty to the Kingdom and his people. “Thank you, Skrilla. I will clean myself up as best I can for now; please wait outside for the Commodore and bring him in a soon as he gets here.”

  “As you command, First Prime.” She replied, still avoiding looking him in the eyes. She turned around and left him standing there without another word as she left the office through the open door. It slid shut behind her, and he stumbled over to his desk and sat down wearily in it before staring at the tank he almost drowned in, deep in thought.

  The Republic was on its way, which either meant that Skarl had told them or the agents among the delegation had taken the catalyst and instituted their evil plan. The number of ships and troop transports they were sending meant they were coming to exact vengeance, and he could only conclude that Skarl had failed to properly explain the situation. Or maybe he tried to but was killed by the agents before being able to do so.

  He leaned forward and tapped on the comm panel to see if he had received any messages from Skarl or any of the others in the Farian delegation, snarling in frustration as he saw that there were none. Not knowing what had happened was maddening, and he felt powerless to do anything to prevent things from getting further out of his control.

  He leaned back and rested his head on the top of the chair, looking straight up at the ceiling as he quietly uttered a prayer. “Great Maker, it would have been a mercy if you had just let me drown in the tank and spared me from what is to come.

  My people are blameless; they are innocent and do not deserve to suffer. Please, I beg you to intercede on their behalf, Great Maker.”

  The silence that responded to his plea was deafening, and he closed his eyes, terrified of what was to come. Once the agents of the masters found out the Republic fleet was on its way they would most likely set off all the viral bombs out of pure spite.

  At least if that happened, then he would finally be able to kill the evil beast with his own hands, as he had long desired to do. He only hoped he was able to do so before the Republic killed him, for he no longer cared whether he lived or died now; only that he was able to take that creature's life with his own hands before his ended.