Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:14:44 GMT
In spite of herself, the Prime Admiral’s thoughts went back to Myric. She sat alone in her chamber, peering as she ever did at timelines and fleet movements and the drift of planets and stars. She watched most things keenly, but all still, the thought remained.
“You could stop this here and now,” Myric had said. “Move your people away, and not intervene, go away into hiding.”
Into hiding. They were already in hiding. She reached out and spun the universe around, examining it from another angle.
Most of the Ascendancy were spending a lone, long night in the Silent Bastions. Four million lives were spending a day in darkness, enshrouded in veils and pocket universes as they waited with eager hopes that Prime Admiral Dorin would save them all from what lay beyond. Save them from the Timecasters, from the Dark City, from the people who would see their lives and render them small.
“Move your people away,” the Emperor had said with such sincerity. What he had meant was run. Run and surrender what was theirs; what had been theirs since the beginning of this galaxy, through infinite flythrough and retakes. This galaxy had belonged to the Ascendancy since before these invader’s forefathers had come down from the trees. They had driven out the Nakai incursion when they had came to Ancerious so many billions of years earlier; it had cost them dearly, but they had repelled the most formidable invaders the Ascendancy had ever faced.
This was Dorin’s garden, and she would rather die in it than abandon it. But the weeds kept coming. The Nakai had returned with the Union of Worlds, but in order to foster the potential for beneficial relations between the two, the council of five had had to tolerate it. Nevermind that it would have been a true war, not just a thing of shadow-puppets. With so many weeds, they couldn’t afford to go after all of them at once.
Now they were seeing more and more threats surrounding them. More and more capable of doing them harm. The Emperor did not appreciate that, at least in this galaxy, the Ascendancy had been here well before the Nakai. The Nakai probably hadn’t offered any clarity to him on just what had befallen both here; the bloodshed unparalleled had taken the Ascendancy down dark roads it did not want to tread again either.
Like the Native Americans had been on a world so distant and so long past, the Ascendancy’s free range was rapidly being claimed. They were being forced into situations they deplored.
The arrival of the Dark City Imperium was one of those. To cohabitate this galaxy with other time travelers in secret would be impossible. If they could force the Imperium to withdraw before too much harm was done, they could sleep easy at night. The Union’s civil war was troublesome, but they could secure its survival. As for the Immortal Empire, their collaboration merited their success. If she could save them all…
If she could save the indigenous inhabitants of this galaxy from their aggresor’s imperial whims…
The Sciastenos Centum’s temporal tech was troublesome. Another front in their war for secrecy, and with a faction neutral to those in their command, was problematic. Yet if they detected them, everything would have been in vain. The revelation that Yithe had taken the wrong target with him had been concealed from official channels, but awareness of the event’s true nature was slowly spreading through the shipmasters. The SSC had made declarations to that effect, and the shipmasters had listened.
If she could prevent her people’s undoing…
Even then, she had to prepare for what was coming. She was bending her own rules now; the Immortal Empire was being provided with weapons that had been tested by time, and found quite adequate. The four devices presently operational were quietly shadowed by Ascendancy vessels, ready at a moment’s notice to render them null and void if their payloads escaped prematurely. But she could feel it in the air; people were beginning to question her leadership.
This was her garden.
If she could…
It was a good thing Dorin was not truly Heraldic. A born Herald would have come to a solution months ago.
--oOo--
In deep space, the MV Halcyon Traveller crawled forward. Its manifest listed a miscellaneous cargo of mining supplies for Obcasio, portable generators for Uth-Rempoor, and medicinal materials for the colonists of Trathus.
Admittedly, she was not so prone to traveling slowly. The Halcyon Traveller was, compared to the majority of her stablemates, a tad…spritely. Her engines had been purchased from scrappers, and had been previously from a well renown passenger liner. Her speed, thus, was fairly impeccable; but now for in deep space, well beyond the borders and jurisdictions of the mighty empires that had set up stakes in this galaxy, the Traveller slowed.
Off of her bow a comet drifted slowly; well beyond the confines of stellar winds, no tail drifted behind it. It was simply a dirty, ugly, paltry snowball, moving slowly on its predetermined arc through the unknown. It was not at all a beautiful sight, and as the Traveller tarried here, machinery began to move. Slowly, with deliberate foresight, cargo containers were detached from the ship’s main frame. Guided by micro thrusters and tethers, the payload slowly drifted down, if there was a down to speak about, down towards the icy depths of this nameless icy tomb.
It would be several weeks before a ship would again rendezvous with this comet, on the edge of the space of the Spartan Infinite Empire. They would quietly collect these two containers, and then without a trace slip away with them.
When the deed was done, the Halcyon Traveller accelerated back to speed and resumed her course. The containers were never part of her inventory; they had been added aboard shortly after leaving port via transfer with a tramp registered in ports unknown to most denizens of this neck of the woods. Now propelled by her strong engines, she wouldn’t even be late.
“You could stop this here and now,” Myric had said. “Move your people away, and not intervene, go away into hiding.”
Into hiding. They were already in hiding. She reached out and spun the universe around, examining it from another angle.
Most of the Ascendancy were spending a lone, long night in the Silent Bastions. Four million lives were spending a day in darkness, enshrouded in veils and pocket universes as they waited with eager hopes that Prime Admiral Dorin would save them all from what lay beyond. Save them from the Timecasters, from the Dark City, from the people who would see their lives and render them small.
“Move your people away,” the Emperor had said with such sincerity. What he had meant was run. Run and surrender what was theirs; what had been theirs since the beginning of this galaxy, through infinite flythrough and retakes. This galaxy had belonged to the Ascendancy since before these invader’s forefathers had come down from the trees. They had driven out the Nakai incursion when they had came to Ancerious so many billions of years earlier; it had cost them dearly, but they had repelled the most formidable invaders the Ascendancy had ever faced.
This was Dorin’s garden, and she would rather die in it than abandon it. But the weeds kept coming. The Nakai had returned with the Union of Worlds, but in order to foster the potential for beneficial relations between the two, the council of five had had to tolerate it. Nevermind that it would have been a true war, not just a thing of shadow-puppets. With so many weeds, they couldn’t afford to go after all of them at once.
Now they were seeing more and more threats surrounding them. More and more capable of doing them harm. The Emperor did not appreciate that, at least in this galaxy, the Ascendancy had been here well before the Nakai. The Nakai probably hadn’t offered any clarity to him on just what had befallen both here; the bloodshed unparalleled had taken the Ascendancy down dark roads it did not want to tread again either.
Like the Native Americans had been on a world so distant and so long past, the Ascendancy’s free range was rapidly being claimed. They were being forced into situations they deplored.
The arrival of the Dark City Imperium was one of those. To cohabitate this galaxy with other time travelers in secret would be impossible. If they could force the Imperium to withdraw before too much harm was done, they could sleep easy at night. The Union’s civil war was troublesome, but they could secure its survival. As for the Immortal Empire, their collaboration merited their success. If she could save them all…
If she could save the indigenous inhabitants of this galaxy from their aggresor’s imperial whims…
The Sciastenos Centum’s temporal tech was troublesome. Another front in their war for secrecy, and with a faction neutral to those in their command, was problematic. Yet if they detected them, everything would have been in vain. The revelation that Yithe had taken the wrong target with him had been concealed from official channels, but awareness of the event’s true nature was slowly spreading through the shipmasters. The SSC had made declarations to that effect, and the shipmasters had listened.
If she could prevent her people’s undoing…
Even then, she had to prepare for what was coming. She was bending her own rules now; the Immortal Empire was being provided with weapons that had been tested by time, and found quite adequate. The four devices presently operational were quietly shadowed by Ascendancy vessels, ready at a moment’s notice to render them null and void if their payloads escaped prematurely. But she could feel it in the air; people were beginning to question her leadership.
This was her garden.
If she could…
It was a good thing Dorin was not truly Heraldic. A born Herald would have come to a solution months ago.
--oOo--
In deep space, the MV Halcyon Traveller crawled forward. Its manifest listed a miscellaneous cargo of mining supplies for Obcasio, portable generators for Uth-Rempoor, and medicinal materials for the colonists of Trathus.
Admittedly, she was not so prone to traveling slowly. The Halcyon Traveller was, compared to the majority of her stablemates, a tad…spritely. Her engines had been purchased from scrappers, and had been previously from a well renown passenger liner. Her speed, thus, was fairly impeccable; but now for in deep space, well beyond the borders and jurisdictions of the mighty empires that had set up stakes in this galaxy, the Traveller slowed.
Off of her bow a comet drifted slowly; well beyond the confines of stellar winds, no tail drifted behind it. It was simply a dirty, ugly, paltry snowball, moving slowly on its predetermined arc through the unknown. It was not at all a beautiful sight, and as the Traveller tarried here, machinery began to move. Slowly, with deliberate foresight, cargo containers were detached from the ship’s main frame. Guided by micro thrusters and tethers, the payload slowly drifted down, if there was a down to speak about, down towards the icy depths of this nameless icy tomb.
It would be several weeks before a ship would again rendezvous with this comet, on the edge of the space of the Spartan Infinite Empire. They would quietly collect these two containers, and then without a trace slip away with them.
When the deed was done, the Halcyon Traveller accelerated back to speed and resumed her course. The containers were never part of her inventory; they had been added aboard shortly after leaving port via transfer with a tramp registered in ports unknown to most denizens of this neck of the woods. Now propelled by her strong engines, she wouldn’t even be late.