Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:32:23 GMT
“There are no desperate situations. There are only desperate people.”
--Heinz Guderian
--oOo--
Before we get to what common history would regard as the moment’s primary event, it is worth noting that as the Temporians at long last made their first open assault on the Flux Ascendancy, events were taking place elsewhere which would later radically redefine the conflict as a whole.
One of these events was in its earliest stages; dubbed Operation Genie by the powers that were, it was only
known in the highest echelons of the Immortal Empire’s governments. Even then they only knew the whole plan when certain parties were present.
So it came to pass that coincidences happened, and so it came to past that at the same hour that the Temporians at long last tracked down their opponents, an exchange occurred within the heart of the Immortal Empire. It was a thing of closed doors and redacted records; the sort of meeting that would likely be denied given the circumstances, and would not be spoken of with any sense of ease.
Simply put, briefcases switched hands.
The specifics would not be evident for some time from a linear perspective. But it came to pass that a set of
suitcases were escorted with incredibly care by the Emerald Guards from their points of origin down darkened corridors; their boots clapping rhythmically as they ushered it through checkpoints and hardened rooms. With a staccato tempo to guide them, the boots of some of the Immortal Empire’s most hardy troops slapped onto the cold concrete and metal floors of an undisclosed world.
Ultimately, after a thorough debriefing that no recording equipment was to be used, a room was entered; the
briefcases were delivered to another party, who courteously signed slips of paper acknowledging that his party had taken custody of the briefcases and their strangely mortal contents. The other party exited via one door, and the Emerald Guards withdrew through another, receipts in hand.
In total, they’d just delivered the souls of some particularly dangerous men into the hands of ghosts.
And ultimately, the souls would do the same.
--oOo--
Elsewhere, diplomacy was proving difficult.
“Incoming fire shipmaster!” the navigation overseer shouted curtly, and the shipmaster spun about towards the peculiarly dressed emissary.
“They clearly, sincerely don’t want to talk with us Emissary, I suggest we open-” the shipmaster’s emphatic
voice was interrupted by the low warble of contact alarms began warning that the rounds the Centum were
throwing at them were beginning to come closer than the ship’s spirit was comfortable with.
“-open the Uller’s boxes and fire a suppressive spread. We have support, and-”
“-and then we lose the moral high ground, shipmaster. Diplomats don’t use weapons.” The emissary replied calmly as he finished buttoning his dress shirt. He’d eschewed the traditional black and silver robes for something he hoped would have more of a historic value in these circumstances, and to the besieged crew watching the emissary tighten his tie as they were being fired upon seemed fairly indicative that something was not well with the man.
Never mind the fact that this whole affair would never happen if they were to die; dying was distinctly
unpleasant in space, and even with the knowledge that their deaths would have little permanence, they really
didn’t want to be there when it happened.
“They’re going to blow us out of the heavens if we just sit here, support or not.” The shipmaster murmured
softly. “Now maybe you’re a-”
“Remember who you’re speaking to, shipmaster.” The emissary interrupted softly, as he moved away from the ship’s leader and gently positioned himself by the communications post. “If I may, please.” The emissary asked already knowing the answer, and the awed crewmember stepped aside as duty dictated. The emissary moved his hands threw the air with a few selective movements, then began speaking; the computer automatically translating the verbal statements into brief flashes of light.
“We are the hollow men…we are the hollow men…leaning together, headpieces stuffed with straw…”
The comms overseer looked with peculiar alarm to his shipmaster as another shell fell closer to their vessel.
“…our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quiet and meaningless…”
“Shipmaster…” the comms overseer began to protest, and silently the emissary raised a finger to encourage the silence, as the dull alarms rumbled softly. All eyes were on the emissary, in his peculiar clothes, with his
peculiar words, murmuring softly into the void as if he were a warlock casting spells.
Perhaps they were right. The emissary, as all emissaries are, had been created for one purpose: one seminal
accomplishment in life at which all one’s essence was to be thrown, and for the emissary, this was that moment. Life, with all it’s intricate complexities, brought all of them here, and here he would either fail to bridge a gap he had been trained since the womb to transcend, or he would establish a contact that would potentially avert further suffering in a universe swarming with unwell things.
The emissary, pale as the others, continued reading throughout the increasingly accurate fire by their
counterparts. Seconds poured by slowly, like molasses on a late fall day.
--oOo--
Yet despite the significance of these two events, they would not be acknowledged or for that matter generally recognized by the outside world; not for a considerable while, at least, and only then if ever. Hand of God class stellar transports moved silently out from their regular courses, carrying payloads the size of which otherwise would have been insurmountable and grossly unwieldy. This too was unrecognized, for history-even then, a secret history at that-would focus on the long awaited initial engagement between two foes who stalked each other across time and space.
In fact, there were two engagements taking place simultaneously; for the fleets from Lorenchan and Dalkani
had been tracked by the Temporians to separate end destinations; both of these four ship fleets had been
assigned to participate in the hit and run attacks behind Tenebraen lines in order to destabilize their offensive in the Immortal Empire. As such, they had tracked their opponents quite stealthily, and now that they were well enough alone, the Temporians engaged their enemy.
For Dresson, this was not a good way to start his day. The Chaw’Sah’Voh ahead of him was breaking apart
violently in the wake of the ramming attack, and for a brief moment there was stunned silence on the bridge of his ship. The moment, however, did not last long.
“I want flank speed immediately. Helm, evasive manuevers. Keep them busy.” Dresson commanded calmly,
more for the sake of decorum than in reflection for his own inner disposition. The shock of it would last a few minutes, surely, but for now what he needed was cool reflection, not panic.
Never the less, the way he waved his hands through the air had a certain element of rapidity to it, as he began targeting an FSEMCE on their own coordinates. As he did so, he watched as the Flux began to reclaim the rammed warship’s corpse.
The Ehm’Beh rocketed forward; the majority of the ship’s mass was dedicated to its comprehensive propulsion systems, and here it became evident. With the thrust emitters well spread over her large wings, the Ehm’Beh could redirect force effortlessly, and thus with just as much ease as a swallow dances in summer skies, the ship accelerated, curving sharply off in one direction while peppering the larger Temporian ships with wormholes.
They did not have the intelligence at this point required to target the more sensitive areas on the ship, so instead the focused on what appeared to be structural vulnerabilities; in particular, Dresson’s weapons overseer focused on the base of the spires that protruded like minarets from the Temporian’s ships.
Additionally, the temporal compression cannon mounted in the nose of the rapidly manuevering Ehm’Behs was, when the opportunity presented itself, being brought to bare as well. It was a much more close range weapon than the wormhole spinners, but inversely it was also capable of much more dramatic effects. As the beam painted over its targets, metal abruptly felt the wear and tear of tens of thousands of years of service. However, the temporal cannon was being directed at targets who likewise commanded temporal capabilities, leading Dresson to question their efficiency as he completed authorizing the weapon’s deployment.
As he opened his mouth to issue his next command, he watched as a second vessel in the fleet broke apart; the Ehm’Bey’s wing clipped into the edge of a beam fired from the cathedral-esque warships which had attacked him, and it broke off in a trail of debris as the ship began to bank, descending towards oblivion even as the Ascendancy began reclaiming the bodies.
“Order the fleet to retreat; I have an FSEMCE on countdown for our coordinates, t minus ten seconds. Engaging Uller‘s boxes.” He said firmly, hoping that all things worked as they ought to.
--oOo--
Of the two task forces engaged by the Temporians, Dresson’s was the one where they had the most immediate advantage. In taking out the Chaw’Sah’Voh, they had killed the prime shipmaster in charge of the small flotilla, and thus brought about a disorganized resistance that had so far cost half the tiny fleet their lives. This ultimately lead to Dresson’s quick decision to deploy their most thorough weapon in this scenario. But for the other task force, the situation was different. Ultimately, this boiled down to a matter of formation; while the Chaw’Sah’Voh in Dresson’s flotilla had been in the dead center, for the other attack the Temporians quickly found that the Chaw’Sah’Voh had been taking point. However, this did not stop them from making a similarly dramatic entrance into their small formation, through which the tail position Ehm’Beh was immediately crushed beneath the prow of the larger Temporian aggressor.
Here however, confusion did not reign quite as thoroughly as elsewhere, and this benefited both parties.
Dresson’s rapid assessment of his situation concluded with the understanding that, from the start, he was
outmaneuvered and out-gunned; thus, his survival was in a questionable condition. What mattered more was
that, if they were going to take his life (potentially, at least; the timeline was hardly solid on this matter) was
that he was going to exact the greatest possible cost for it.
But with the prime shipmaster still alive and able to function for the other fleet in question, the battle proceeded differently; much less ambush, and much more fighting. The Chaw’Sah’Voh immediately began to throw her weight and brought her sideful of weaponry to bear on the timeship which had just plowed through the immensely smaller Ehm’Beh; even then, the Chaw’Sah’Voh was perhaps half their size.
But while smaller, it was potently armed; and dozens upon dozens of wormholes reached out towards their
assailant with vengeance. Supported by the two remaining Ehm’Behs, the Chaw’Sah’Voh was bringing herself around to face her target; and as she did so, sixteen temporal compression cannons were brought to bear.
While only three on four, and with the numerical odds in the favour of the attacker, the Chaw’Sah’Voh’s
shipmaster was dedicated to making the affair a proper battle.
--oOo--
At t-minus four seconds, Dresson’s ship took a critical hit, and in his final moments he found himself intensely dissatisfied with the way the battle was progressing; the damage inflicted meant that the trans-dimensional baffles were now mangled to a point at which they were grossly inefficient, and he thus ordered an immediate bypass. To not do so would mean that his ship would flood itself with terrible energies when it jumped to faster than light speeds, and he had no intent on being there for that.
So the two surviving Ehm’Behs jumped; their courses were not parallel, and in fact, they jumped blind. With two sets of Uller’s boxes open, they could not look upon each other any more than the enemy could, so they charged screaming into the unknown well separated from each other.
Then the FSEMCE hit.
--oOo--
In the span of one instant, existence ceased; and in one moment of non-existence, something sprang from the nothingness. As the energies of time itself were wrapped into the flake’s physical manifestations, reality’s breath was sucked away.
All
energy
ceased;
the combustive forces of fuels were burned out, and the warmth of whatever flesh there had been before was snatched away, and reality screamed without breath into the face of its own extinguishment. The atmosphere on the four Temporian ships was abruptly converted from its gaseous state to solids; once gravity began to reclaim its domain, it would be snowing inside the Temporian’s corridors, and their bodies would be quietly buried by the air they may have once breathed.
All
things
cooled.
Plasma became gas became liquid and then became solid, faster than time itself could count. The energy required to retain memories, even of the most hardened and passive realities, was drawn up as if the drain to some cosmic pool had been pulled. Blood coagulated, and batteries drained; reactors went cold well
before eyes could begin to blink. Through this all, the flake grew, spreading its tendrils and its abominable
hunger across space and time with ravenous obsession.
The Temporian’s ships were at a dead stop now, and the essence of life, of movement, were all gone well
before this chapter began. The flake devoured everything that had ever been, everything capable of ever coming into being, and still it devoured, its insatiable appetite drawing in energy from the bones of its victims and from the vitae versus apparatus that a select number of people aboard wore; it stole souls and swallowed them whole, converting them into meaningless information less matter as the flake expanded.
This was dead space, and it was deader than ever.
Perhaps next way towards the next instant, the flake was dead. It had consumed all the energy there was to
consume, and it starved. If it had been a thing capable of screaming, it would have tried to eat its own screams, and if it could have, it would have eaten itself into nothingness, and if the grim reaper himself had tried to come and collect the souls of those who’d so shortly prior basked in the warm glow of life (or whatever approximation to that the Temporians may have known) he too would have found his unlife cut short.
Snow began to fall, but not for a considerable while longer.
--oOo--
For those two fleets that had been tracked by the Temporians, their immediate agendas were survival and the defeat of their avowed enemy. The Temporians, after all, were The Enemy; they were the core of the problem. Much as the Flux Ascendancy were patrons to the Immortal Empire, the Temporians patronized the Dark City Imperium, and even the Flux were willing to admit that barring their offensive invasive nature, the Dark City Imperium was but another invader in a sea full of invasive species; perhaps a bit more resilient in the fact that they could die and keep fighting, but ultimately just another invader. The Dark City Imperium may be the enemy of the Flux Ascendancy, but The Enemy of the Flux Ascendancy first and foremost was the Temporians.
So while those two small flotillas engaged the Temporians, the remaining forty eight task forces began engaging the Dark City directly; unseen, they unleashed their own silent judgement of their opponents, and began methodically exterminating the ships that came and went to and from the frontlines. In the space of the hour where the Temporians began to fight back against the machinations of the Ascendancy, the Ascendancy began cleansing the heavens of their enemies.
There are no stereotypical flashes of light when an FSEMCE occurs. It would be illogical, in point of fact, to assume that there are any emissions at all from such an event; a single black hole will let out more noise into the heavens than ten thousand FSEMCEs, and this was fortunate too, for two reasons.
First off, had the FSEMCEs emitted light, the skies would be on fire. The Ascendancy, having found reason to extend their hand that much further from the shrouds of secrecy, was not the sort of faction to underdo things. After all, no one could discover them if there were no survivorrs to their actions; and with the rate that they were harvesting the cosmos, that could be arranged for without too much difficulty.
This was not turning the soil yet, not hardly; the FSEMCEs were all being triggered in remote corners of space where planetary populations were safe from the corrosive and infectious hunger that embodies the FSEMCEs. If the Ascendancy had wanted to turn the soil, they would have started on their enemy’s home fronts, and worked their way out from there.
So as the emissary read the hollow men to an increasingly confused SSC, the universe between the Immortal
Empire and the Dark City Imperium was not ending with a bang.
It wasn’t even given the opportunity to whimper.
--Heinz Guderian
--oOo--
Before we get to what common history would regard as the moment’s primary event, it is worth noting that as the Temporians at long last made their first open assault on the Flux Ascendancy, events were taking place elsewhere which would later radically redefine the conflict as a whole.
One of these events was in its earliest stages; dubbed Operation Genie by the powers that were, it was only
known in the highest echelons of the Immortal Empire’s governments. Even then they only knew the whole plan when certain parties were present.
So it came to pass that coincidences happened, and so it came to past that at the same hour that the Temporians at long last tracked down their opponents, an exchange occurred within the heart of the Immortal Empire. It was a thing of closed doors and redacted records; the sort of meeting that would likely be denied given the circumstances, and would not be spoken of with any sense of ease.
Simply put, briefcases switched hands.
The specifics would not be evident for some time from a linear perspective. But it came to pass that a set of
suitcases were escorted with incredibly care by the Emerald Guards from their points of origin down darkened corridors; their boots clapping rhythmically as they ushered it through checkpoints and hardened rooms. With a staccato tempo to guide them, the boots of some of the Immortal Empire’s most hardy troops slapped onto the cold concrete and metal floors of an undisclosed world.
Ultimately, after a thorough debriefing that no recording equipment was to be used, a room was entered; the
briefcases were delivered to another party, who courteously signed slips of paper acknowledging that his party had taken custody of the briefcases and their strangely mortal contents. The other party exited via one door, and the Emerald Guards withdrew through another, receipts in hand.
In total, they’d just delivered the souls of some particularly dangerous men into the hands of ghosts.
And ultimately, the souls would do the same.
--oOo--
Elsewhere, diplomacy was proving difficult.
“Incoming fire shipmaster!” the navigation overseer shouted curtly, and the shipmaster spun about towards the peculiarly dressed emissary.
“They clearly, sincerely don’t want to talk with us Emissary, I suggest we open-” the shipmaster’s emphatic
voice was interrupted by the low warble of contact alarms began warning that the rounds the Centum were
throwing at them were beginning to come closer than the ship’s spirit was comfortable with.
“-open the Uller’s boxes and fire a suppressive spread. We have support, and-”
“-and then we lose the moral high ground, shipmaster. Diplomats don’t use weapons.” The emissary replied calmly as he finished buttoning his dress shirt. He’d eschewed the traditional black and silver robes for something he hoped would have more of a historic value in these circumstances, and to the besieged crew watching the emissary tighten his tie as they were being fired upon seemed fairly indicative that something was not well with the man.
Never mind the fact that this whole affair would never happen if they were to die; dying was distinctly
unpleasant in space, and even with the knowledge that their deaths would have little permanence, they really
didn’t want to be there when it happened.
“They’re going to blow us out of the heavens if we just sit here, support or not.” The shipmaster murmured
softly. “Now maybe you’re a-”
“Remember who you’re speaking to, shipmaster.” The emissary interrupted softly, as he moved away from the ship’s leader and gently positioned himself by the communications post. “If I may, please.” The emissary asked already knowing the answer, and the awed crewmember stepped aside as duty dictated. The emissary moved his hands threw the air with a few selective movements, then began speaking; the computer automatically translating the verbal statements into brief flashes of light.
“We are the hollow men…we are the hollow men…leaning together, headpieces stuffed with straw…”
The comms overseer looked with peculiar alarm to his shipmaster as another shell fell closer to their vessel.
“…our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quiet and meaningless…”
“Shipmaster…” the comms overseer began to protest, and silently the emissary raised a finger to encourage the silence, as the dull alarms rumbled softly. All eyes were on the emissary, in his peculiar clothes, with his
peculiar words, murmuring softly into the void as if he were a warlock casting spells.
Perhaps they were right. The emissary, as all emissaries are, had been created for one purpose: one seminal
accomplishment in life at which all one’s essence was to be thrown, and for the emissary, this was that moment. Life, with all it’s intricate complexities, brought all of them here, and here he would either fail to bridge a gap he had been trained since the womb to transcend, or he would establish a contact that would potentially avert further suffering in a universe swarming with unwell things.
The emissary, pale as the others, continued reading throughout the increasingly accurate fire by their
counterparts. Seconds poured by slowly, like molasses on a late fall day.
--oOo--
Yet despite the significance of these two events, they would not be acknowledged or for that matter generally recognized by the outside world; not for a considerable while, at least, and only then if ever. Hand of God class stellar transports moved silently out from their regular courses, carrying payloads the size of which otherwise would have been insurmountable and grossly unwieldy. This too was unrecognized, for history-even then, a secret history at that-would focus on the long awaited initial engagement between two foes who stalked each other across time and space.
In fact, there were two engagements taking place simultaneously; for the fleets from Lorenchan and Dalkani
had been tracked by the Temporians to separate end destinations; both of these four ship fleets had been
assigned to participate in the hit and run attacks behind Tenebraen lines in order to destabilize their offensive in the Immortal Empire. As such, they had tracked their opponents quite stealthily, and now that they were well enough alone, the Temporians engaged their enemy.
For Dresson, this was not a good way to start his day. The Chaw’Sah’Voh ahead of him was breaking apart
violently in the wake of the ramming attack, and for a brief moment there was stunned silence on the bridge of his ship. The moment, however, did not last long.
“I want flank speed immediately. Helm, evasive manuevers. Keep them busy.” Dresson commanded calmly,
more for the sake of decorum than in reflection for his own inner disposition. The shock of it would last a few minutes, surely, but for now what he needed was cool reflection, not panic.
Never the less, the way he waved his hands through the air had a certain element of rapidity to it, as he began targeting an FSEMCE on their own coordinates. As he did so, he watched as the Flux began to reclaim the rammed warship’s corpse.
The Ehm’Beh rocketed forward; the majority of the ship’s mass was dedicated to its comprehensive propulsion systems, and here it became evident. With the thrust emitters well spread over her large wings, the Ehm’Beh could redirect force effortlessly, and thus with just as much ease as a swallow dances in summer skies, the ship accelerated, curving sharply off in one direction while peppering the larger Temporian ships with wormholes.
They did not have the intelligence at this point required to target the more sensitive areas on the ship, so instead the focused on what appeared to be structural vulnerabilities; in particular, Dresson’s weapons overseer focused on the base of the spires that protruded like minarets from the Temporian’s ships.
Additionally, the temporal compression cannon mounted in the nose of the rapidly manuevering Ehm’Behs was, when the opportunity presented itself, being brought to bare as well. It was a much more close range weapon than the wormhole spinners, but inversely it was also capable of much more dramatic effects. As the beam painted over its targets, metal abruptly felt the wear and tear of tens of thousands of years of service. However, the temporal cannon was being directed at targets who likewise commanded temporal capabilities, leading Dresson to question their efficiency as he completed authorizing the weapon’s deployment.
As he opened his mouth to issue his next command, he watched as a second vessel in the fleet broke apart; the Ehm’Bey’s wing clipped into the edge of a beam fired from the cathedral-esque warships which had attacked him, and it broke off in a trail of debris as the ship began to bank, descending towards oblivion even as the Ascendancy began reclaiming the bodies.
“Order the fleet to retreat; I have an FSEMCE on countdown for our coordinates, t minus ten seconds. Engaging Uller‘s boxes.” He said firmly, hoping that all things worked as they ought to.
--oOo--
Of the two task forces engaged by the Temporians, Dresson’s was the one where they had the most immediate advantage. In taking out the Chaw’Sah’Voh, they had killed the prime shipmaster in charge of the small flotilla, and thus brought about a disorganized resistance that had so far cost half the tiny fleet their lives. This ultimately lead to Dresson’s quick decision to deploy their most thorough weapon in this scenario. But for the other task force, the situation was different. Ultimately, this boiled down to a matter of formation; while the Chaw’Sah’Voh in Dresson’s flotilla had been in the dead center, for the other attack the Temporians quickly found that the Chaw’Sah’Voh had been taking point. However, this did not stop them from making a similarly dramatic entrance into their small formation, through which the tail position Ehm’Beh was immediately crushed beneath the prow of the larger Temporian aggressor.
Here however, confusion did not reign quite as thoroughly as elsewhere, and this benefited both parties.
Dresson’s rapid assessment of his situation concluded with the understanding that, from the start, he was
outmaneuvered and out-gunned; thus, his survival was in a questionable condition. What mattered more was
that, if they were going to take his life (potentially, at least; the timeline was hardly solid on this matter) was
that he was going to exact the greatest possible cost for it.
But with the prime shipmaster still alive and able to function for the other fleet in question, the battle proceeded differently; much less ambush, and much more fighting. The Chaw’Sah’Voh immediately began to throw her weight and brought her sideful of weaponry to bear on the timeship which had just plowed through the immensely smaller Ehm’Beh; even then, the Chaw’Sah’Voh was perhaps half their size.
But while smaller, it was potently armed; and dozens upon dozens of wormholes reached out towards their
assailant with vengeance. Supported by the two remaining Ehm’Behs, the Chaw’Sah’Voh was bringing herself around to face her target; and as she did so, sixteen temporal compression cannons were brought to bear.
While only three on four, and with the numerical odds in the favour of the attacker, the Chaw’Sah’Voh’s
shipmaster was dedicated to making the affair a proper battle.
--oOo--
At t-minus four seconds, Dresson’s ship took a critical hit, and in his final moments he found himself intensely dissatisfied with the way the battle was progressing; the damage inflicted meant that the trans-dimensional baffles were now mangled to a point at which they were grossly inefficient, and he thus ordered an immediate bypass. To not do so would mean that his ship would flood itself with terrible energies when it jumped to faster than light speeds, and he had no intent on being there for that.
So the two surviving Ehm’Behs jumped; their courses were not parallel, and in fact, they jumped blind. With two sets of Uller’s boxes open, they could not look upon each other any more than the enemy could, so they charged screaming into the unknown well separated from each other.
Then the FSEMCE hit.
--oOo--
In the span of one instant, existence ceased; and in one moment of non-existence, something sprang from the nothingness. As the energies of time itself were wrapped into the flake’s physical manifestations, reality’s breath was sucked away.
All
energy
ceased;
the combustive forces of fuels were burned out, and the warmth of whatever flesh there had been before was snatched away, and reality screamed without breath into the face of its own extinguishment. The atmosphere on the four Temporian ships was abruptly converted from its gaseous state to solids; once gravity began to reclaim its domain, it would be snowing inside the Temporian’s corridors, and their bodies would be quietly buried by the air they may have once breathed.
All
things
cooled.
Plasma became gas became liquid and then became solid, faster than time itself could count. The energy required to retain memories, even of the most hardened and passive realities, was drawn up as if the drain to some cosmic pool had been pulled. Blood coagulated, and batteries drained; reactors went cold well
before eyes could begin to blink. Through this all, the flake grew, spreading its tendrils and its abominable
hunger across space and time with ravenous obsession.
The Temporian’s ships were at a dead stop now, and the essence of life, of movement, were all gone well
before this chapter began. The flake devoured everything that had ever been, everything capable of ever coming into being, and still it devoured, its insatiable appetite drawing in energy from the bones of its victims and from the vitae versus apparatus that a select number of people aboard wore; it stole souls and swallowed them whole, converting them into meaningless information less matter as the flake expanded.
This was dead space, and it was deader than ever.
Perhaps next way towards the next instant, the flake was dead. It had consumed all the energy there was to
consume, and it starved. If it had been a thing capable of screaming, it would have tried to eat its own screams, and if it could have, it would have eaten itself into nothingness, and if the grim reaper himself had tried to come and collect the souls of those who’d so shortly prior basked in the warm glow of life (or whatever approximation to that the Temporians may have known) he too would have found his unlife cut short.
Snow began to fall, but not for a considerable while longer.
--oOo--
For those two fleets that had been tracked by the Temporians, their immediate agendas were survival and the defeat of their avowed enemy. The Temporians, after all, were The Enemy; they were the core of the problem. Much as the Flux Ascendancy were patrons to the Immortal Empire, the Temporians patronized the Dark City Imperium, and even the Flux were willing to admit that barring their offensive invasive nature, the Dark City Imperium was but another invader in a sea full of invasive species; perhaps a bit more resilient in the fact that they could die and keep fighting, but ultimately just another invader. The Dark City Imperium may be the enemy of the Flux Ascendancy, but The Enemy of the Flux Ascendancy first and foremost was the Temporians.
So while those two small flotillas engaged the Temporians, the remaining forty eight task forces began engaging the Dark City directly; unseen, they unleashed their own silent judgement of their opponents, and began methodically exterminating the ships that came and went to and from the frontlines. In the space of the hour where the Temporians began to fight back against the machinations of the Ascendancy, the Ascendancy began cleansing the heavens of their enemies.
There are no stereotypical flashes of light when an FSEMCE occurs. It would be illogical, in point of fact, to assume that there are any emissions at all from such an event; a single black hole will let out more noise into the heavens than ten thousand FSEMCEs, and this was fortunate too, for two reasons.
First off, had the FSEMCEs emitted light, the skies would be on fire. The Ascendancy, having found reason to extend their hand that much further from the shrouds of secrecy, was not the sort of faction to underdo things. After all, no one could discover them if there were no survivorrs to their actions; and with the rate that they were harvesting the cosmos, that could be arranged for without too much difficulty.
This was not turning the soil yet, not hardly; the FSEMCEs were all being triggered in remote corners of space where planetary populations were safe from the corrosive and infectious hunger that embodies the FSEMCEs. If the Ascendancy had wanted to turn the soil, they would have started on their enemy’s home fronts, and worked their way out from there.
So as the emissary read the hollow men to an increasingly confused SSC, the universe between the Immortal
Empire and the Dark City Imperium was not ending with a bang.
It wasn’t even given the opportunity to whimper.