Villain

by Ivan Kal

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It was when Ryaana gained the same power that we hold. It is selfish of me, I know. She gained it as a result of a betrayal, because she wanted to be strong enough to get revenge. But to me, it was the fulfillment of all of my beliefs. A person had reached and gained power, had joined me here.”

  He could feel Ryaana smile against his shoulder. “What about Lurker of the Depths and me?”

  “You are different. You’ve both been ahead of me at times. I had to overcome you. Ryaana had always been behind me, and she still is, but I see the potential she has to eclipse me. That is what I want: to see her grow beyond me, so that I may have another challenge.”

  “What, the Enlightened aren’t enough for you?”

  Adrian chuckled. “They are…a challenge, to be sure, but I don’t think that I can put it into words. The fact that they want to destroy all life… It makes them smaller in my eyes. It saddens me that people so powerful don’t see what I see, that they don’t want what I want.”

  “They think that they are saving everyone,” Anessa said.

  “I know, and that is one thing that frightens me. I think…I think that if they are right, if there is no other way to prevent our universe from being destroyed…then perhaps they are right.”

  “You would stand aside and let them kill everyone?” Anessa asked quietly.

  “No, I don’t think that I would,” Adrian said at length. “I think I would believe that we would find another way to save it.”

  Anessa didn’t respond. They lapsed into a silence, and then eventually went back to sleep in each other’s arms.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Year 718 of the Empire — Moirai

  Adrian entered the AI’s system inside Moirai. Around her were his escorts, the Krashinar who had accompanied him to Sol. He saw that the force had already prepared for departure. The machine ships had been placed in formation below the two Krashinar packs, his Nomad Fleet was scattered between the Krashinar great beasts, and Iris’s Black Swarm was above their formation. It was an impressive force, perhaps even more impressive than the Grand Fleet.

  The machine ships weren’t up to par with the most advanced modern warships, but they were still more powerful than pretty much anything else in the galaxy. The Krashinar beasts were unique; the Old Hunters were weaker, slower, but had more experience. The Eternal Hunters were a savage force, uncontrollable, powerful, raw, and the most advanced weapons that the Krashinar had designed were among them. His Nomad Fleet was far smaller compared to the other fleets, but it packed a punch with forty thousand Titans along with nano warships of every class. It was adaptable, fast, and technologically advanced, perhaps the most advanced force in the galaxy. And then there was the Black Swarm—now under command of Iris, it was any fleet’s nightmare. Adrian was certain that he wouldn’t have been able to defeat it on its own. If they hadn’t beaten the Custodian AI, the Black Swarm would’ve consumed all of his forces. But now it was on their side.

  He saw two more mobile battle platforms. Among the swarm, Iris had informed him that she had halted production of ships and rushed them to completion. The platforms held one of their secret weapons: a system that the AI was working on but hadn’t had the chance to finish. Iris completed its work, and incorporated it into the platforms. They hoped that that system would give them the edge they needed to surprise the Enlightened.

  He told Moirai to make her way toward Bastion. He wanted to confer with Lurker of the Depths and Ryaana before they headed out. He checked the battle net and saw that Lurker of the Depths was on his own flagship, the Dark Waters. He sent him a quick message to meet him on Bastion, then sent a quick mental invitation to the Seventh through Moirai.

  * * *

  About an hour later, they were all gathered on Bastion and sitting in one of its meeting rooms. Adrian looked around, seeing the people he trusted the most in the room. The only one who was missing was Anessa. He shook his head, clearing his mind as he spoke.

  “I wanted to speak about our plans for when we reach the core. We didn’t make a plan, simply because we don’t know what to expect. But I think that we should at least talk about it.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Lurker of the Depths asked.

  “First, I think we need to decide who will be in command of the battle. We are most certainly going to clash against the Enlightened, which means I can’t lead our forces.”

  “We have quite capable commanders in the fleet,” Ryaana said.

  “We do,” Adrian said with a nod, “and they will each command their own task forces, but I think that the overall fleet command should be in the hands of the Seventh.”

  The Krashinar tilted his head, obviously surprised. “It will be difficult. Our way of communicating is not comparable.”

  “I will have Sowir telepaths be made available to you, and they can relay your orders to the non-Krashinar fleets. You hold the most ships anyway, aside from Iris. Besides, she will be able to control her ships from Moirai no matter what.”

  At his mention of her name, Iris’s form appeared next to him. “It is no problem, and while it will be difficult for you to relay information to me, Seventh, I can read messages directly from Moirai, so I will be able to keep in touch. Although I will mostly use my machine ships to screen your beasts, and operate my swarm independently—it is not really made to act in concert with a fleet.”

  “If this is what you believe is the best, I have no issue with it,” the Seventh said.

  “Good,” Adrian continued. “The plan is simple, really. We get to the core, we see what the situation is, find the weapon, and destroy it.”

  “If only,” Ryaana sighed.

  “I know, a lot can and will happen before we reach our target. But I want the three of us on Moirai, ready to fight the Enlightened together,” Adrian said.

  “I have no better suggestion, Adrian. The only thing that I can add is that perhaps one of us should be on a different ship,” Lurker of the Depths said.

  “Why?” Adrian asked.

  “In case you lose. We don’t know what all the Enlightened have—what if they possess a weapon that can kill Moirai and you in a single shot? Better that we keep at least one of us on another ship.”

  “Hm… Very well, you can stay on Dark Waters. But I want your ship next to Moirai all the time. I want us close enough that we can provide aid immediately after we encounter an Enlightened.”

  “Agreed,” Lurker of the Depths said.

  “The plan for the attack is still the same?” the Seventh asked.

  “Yes,” Adrian answered. “Once we locate the weapon we will try to draw as much of their force toward us before we use our trump card.”

  “I feel obligated to point out,” Iris started, “that while I am certain that it works, I am less certain that the Enlightened have no way to counter it. The data I recovered from the Custodian doesn’t say anything, but I don’t have the complete database it had on the Enlightened.”

  “That is a risk we are going to need to take. Even if it doesn’t work, the plan doesn’t change much. We will still need to fight our way through,” Adrian said.

  “I’m just saying,” Iris said lightly.

  “In any case, I want all the preparations to be done by tomorrow. We leave for the core the day after.”

  Adrian knew that it would take them several days to get all of their ships through the access point, as even if they packed their formations tight, only so many ships could pass through at the same time—and they had a lot of ships. Thankfully, the last part of their journey they would be making through hyperspace, so their entire force would be arriving at the same time.

  The others all nodded and agreed. Adrian dismissed the meeting, leaving them to handle their obligations.

  The time was going to come soon enough. They were finally going to go against the Enlightened directly, finally going to put everything on the line to stop them.

  The fate of the universe was at s
take—and for him, the ultimate challenge.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Year 718 of the Empire — Sol

  Anessa stood next to the two command chairs on one of the Shara Daim Sovereigns—the Kar Ona, the High Rule. In the chairs sat her children, Kane and Vaana. It was their ship, the flagship of the Shara Daim forces. Just over two hundred thousand Shara Daim warships were a part of it, and Anessa knew that her children had to push their people’s manufacturing to its limit in order to build up enough ships to replace the losses the last Grand Fleet had suffered. Kane and Vaana weren’t in command of the ship itself, which was the job of a Dai Sha, which was why they were in the secondary command center, along with their staff. The two of them oversaw the entire Shara Daim fleet and coordinated with the other Fleet Commanders.

  The Grand Commander for the Grand Fleet was a Tar’ferat, Urvu’ri. When Anessa had first met the large avian, she had assumed that she was the leader of her people, something like Tomas—but it seemed that the Tar’ferat were a society that was led by the military, meaning she was both the head of state and of the military. Anessa didn’t know how that worked, but the Tar’ferat had existed for a long time, and she was the last person able to judge, considering she had taken rule over the Shara Daim by force. Urvu’ri seemed to have quite a lot of experience, as well as advisers. The Tar’ferat flight seemed to operate with something similar to a committee in all matters, although Urvu’ri seemed to be the voice of that committee.

  She might not be comfortable with having someone she didn’t know in command of the fleet, but it was no longer her place to argue. She had left the Shara Daim to her children, and she didn’t want to interfere. Besides, she had never been good at politics.

  She stood in silence and watched as the ships spilled out of Sol through the access point. They were going to Josanti League territory, to a system close to their target. The target system had an access point, but that point was heavily defended. The biggest problem with invading a system through an access point was that the invaders were limited by the amount of force that could pass through that point. An access point could allow a lot of ships to go through at the same time—thousands, even tens of thousands if they were tightly packed—but if the defender had enough ships or defenses inside the access point’s shield, they could bring to bear superior firepower on the invaders. Ordinarily it wouldn’t matter, as not many races could build enough defenses or have enough warships to protect an access point.

  The Enlightened, however, did, and since they hadn’t had an opportunity to scout deep into the system since it was taken, they couldn’t risk it. They had no idea what was around the sun that held the access point, and so the attack was going to come through hyperspace. It would take them some time to get there, but there was no helping that.

  Battles on such a scale did not end in hours, or even days—they raged for weeks across the entire system, sometimes more. They were talking about millions of ships, and it took time for so many ships to pound one another to dust.

  This would be probably the most important battle in the history of the galaxy, and for all that, it was only a distraction. The other races in this Great Alliance couldn’t really comprehend the fact that the Enlightened had a weapon that could kill all life in an instant; to them it was a thing beyond their comprehension, and even for those who gave some credence to the proof that Anessa and Adrian had showed them, it was hard to believe. They were scared, they needed to fight back and defend against the threat that they could see, and the Enlightened had given them exactly what they needed: a visible target that served only to distract from what they were doing in the core. Anessa could understand that fear, and she knew what Adrian had gone through so much difficulty to understand.

  Tomas and the other leaders of the galaxy were never going to use this fleet in the core—they couldn’t. They lived in a world that Adrian didn’t really comprehend. He never had trouble believing the truth, changing his views and understanding as new evidence was brought up. He never lied to himself. But all of these people in the fleet around her… They believed in things because it was easier, because they had spent their entire lives believing that things should be one way, and they had hard time changing those beliefs.

  Anessa had been the same, once, but Adrian had never been like that. To him, it was incomprehensible; the truth wasn’t something that he could chose to disbelieve. That was one of the things that had drawn her to him. She remembered their last night together, when he’d told her that he loved her. She knew that he didn’t understand how much that meant to her. Neither of them were very emotional beings; she was a Shara Daim, and they were not a people prone to emotional expressions. She could count on one hand the times she had heard Adrian express his emotions for her, and it made those few instances all the more precious to her. It made her feel good to know that after all the centuries they had spent together that they still loved each other. She had gained far more than she had ever imagined from her relationship with Adrian.

  At the beginning, she had been attracted to his strength. She had wanted him because he was strong and because being with him would give her a connection to the Empire. But as the time passed, she had fallen in love, a deep love that endured for longer than she had ever dreamed possible. They had three beautiful children that she loved watching grow, even though she might not have always been the best mother. But now, she had good relationships with all of them. She was proud of them all.

  But no matter how much she changed, how her life changed, her one drive had always been to keep her people safe. She felt a sense of trepidation as their ship passed through the access point. Soon she was going to be involved in the largest battle the galaxy had ever known, fighting beings that just a few centuries ago she would’ve considered gods.

  And now she was one of them.

  She had the easier task: she needed only to prevent the Enlightened forces from sending reinforcements to the core. Adrian and her daughter were the ones that needed to stop the real threat. A part of her wished that she had gone with them, but they had decided that Lurker of the Depths was a better asset with his skills in telepathy, and Ryaana wasn’t strong enough just yet to protect an entire fleet the size of this one.

  It had to be her.

  The Sovereign arrived in the new system and immediately began its ascent through the star’s corona. Up above it, she saw the various fleets heading toward the hyperspace barrier. The Grand Fleet was divided into several larger fleets, as there was no way for anyone person to actually command so many ships. The individual fleets would follow the guidance of the Grand Commander, but they would operate mostly independently. Because of the vast gap between technology levels, the most advanced races had been split into six major fleets, with the less advanced races being attached to them.

  Anessa was in the central fleet, which consisted of the Rimward Alliance races: the Erasi, the Empire, and the Shara Daim. The Krashinar alone were isolated; they didn’t even have other ships attached to their Great Pack, all because they were too different from the others. They couldn’t even communicate with everyone. Their position in the Grand Fleet was on the left flank, just next to the Rimward Alliance, since they had enough telepaths to coordinate. The position above them was taken by the Tar’ferat, Suvri, and the Afar Group, three of the core powers. Below the Rimward Alliance were the Josanti League and their close allies from the core: Benos, Tuete and Baarta. The last was the right flank, which was led by a race from the other side of the galaxy called the Hexar, that Anessa wasn’t all that familiar with. The hundreds of other fleets from less advanced nations were scattered across the formation, attached to the much larger fleets.

  It was a nightmare to keep everything organized and to have clear channels to coordinate with everyone. Anessa was thankful that she didn’t need to bother with that—a benefit of not being in charge. She didn’t even know how they were going to get everyone into hyperspace. Not every race had fast hyperspace drives, and so those wh
o didn’t had to have their ships close enough to the larger ships of the more advanced races so that they could be taken with them. Some even had to be attached to the hulls of other ships.

  As the formation made its way across the system, more and more ships coming into line behind them as they left the sun, Anessa took the opportunity to look through the Grand Fleet’s info. There were so many different weapons in use: different types of missiles, some fleets’ kinetic weapons, and others’ lasers and beam-type weapons. It was a mess. She saw that all advanced fleets had brought skim missiles, even though in most cases they would be useless, as the Enlightened had ships that could use skim nullifiers. They were all machine ships, provided to them by the AI, but the Suvri stealth reconnaissance of the system told them that those ships were still with the Enlightened forces. Iris had told them that she had been unable to establish contact with those ships, that they weren’t listening. Anessa suspected that had been a last-ditch effort by the AI to deny them any advantage.

  They had therefore all brought conventional missiles as well. The Empire had stripped all of their reserves for every missile they could find, even those that had been retired and stored, and the other races had done the same. The older missiles might be far weaker, but they were betting on numbers now. The Empire had even taken out the old missile pods from storage, attaching them to many ships, even giving some to the less advanced races. The other core races had taken the concept and scrapped together some missile pods themselves. They hadn’t used them before, but now even their formations were filled with them.