Villain

by Ivan Kal

  The battle had been going well, up until a couple of days ago. The Grand Fleet had entered the system and was taking objectives, the experts in the room agreed that they were winning. The Enlightened in the system had been identified, and Anessa had been able to counter him. Their battle had been recorded and sent as priority packages. Tomas and the many other rulers of the galaxy were worried about the Enlightened, but they were all looking to the future. Once the Enlightened were defeated, there would still be people that had their power.

  A multi-race task force had been created, led by the Empire’s experts to come up with ways to counter them and, if it became necessary, eliminate the threat that they may pose. It made Tomas sick to think about it, but he had the safety of the Empire and all of its people to worry about. He had stopped being able to understand Adrian a long time ago, and he knew the danger of power. It corrupted even the best, and no one should have so much of it.

  The images on the holo just made him believe that all the more. What he was looking at was, in a single word, insane. He watched as Doranis began an attack on the Grand Fleet, destroying ships that were part of the command. It was a terrible thing to behold—a ship, symbol of a nation’s ingenuity and power, turned to nothing but scrap in an instant, and not by another warship, but by a being that had once been the same as any one of them. It was terrifying.

  Anessa appeared and fought against the Enlightened. Tomas watched the battle, watched as Doranis destroyed the Kar Ona, the flagship of the Shara Daim.

  And then Anessa went mad. The sensors couldn’t really follow their battle after that. What Tomas was seeing was the aftermath. Ships were destroyed left and right, the two fighting with complete disregard for anything around them. On the holo he saw the records, which had been edited and ordered so that they could follow the battle, as it changed location often, and they didn’t catch every moment of it.

  He saw them fall to the planet, saw the short exchange in the atmosphere before they crashed into the ocean. Then there was nothing for a long while, until the entire planet shook, cracks forming in the surface, plumes of lava exploding outward high into the atmosphere. The planet buckled, imploding in on itself. It was unlike any sight he had ever seen before. The planet halved in size and then, as if it had reached some kind of unseen limit, it stopped. The sensors recorded the spikes of gravity of electromagnetic fields, and then the sphere that was half the size of the planet it used to be exploded. Violently.

  Any ship that was in its orbit was destroyed. Those that were trying to get away didn’t manage to move away in time. The pieces of the planet were sent spinning in all directions, and hazards filled the area, radiation and pieces of the world covering an insane amount of space. Tomas couldn’t really believe what had happened. It was unbelievable. There was no sign of the Enlightened or Anessa, and he could only hope that they were dead. He had watched the records of old, when the People had crashed with the Enlightened. He had seen them rip an entire World-ship to pieces with their terrible power. But this? This was a thing from nightmares. No one should have such power. Ordinary people were never meant to be able to blow up planets. It was far too much to be put into an individual’s hands.

  “Dear gods,” Levisomaerni whispered as she saw the aftermath of their fight. “How can anyone be so powerful?”

  No one answered her. No one knew the answer.

  The Enlightened forces went berserk once the planet exploded. Every one of their ships started gunning for the Grand Fleet with no regard for their own safety. The Grand Fleet had the advantage in that their enemies were disorganized, but their recklessness mitigated that somewhat. Both sides were losing ships at an astonishing rate. The orderly battle of days past had turned into a bloody fight where each force wanted only to destroy the other.

  Tomas walked out of the room. There was nothing that he could do now. The battle was going to be decided without his input. He walked to the room across the hallway, the office of the Lord Sentinel. It was empty; Hayashi was still back in the command room. He heard footsteps behind him as Levisomaerni followed.

  He walked over to the window wall that looked onto the city below the mountain, and before long he heard Levisomaerni walk up and stand next to him.

  “The experts agree that the Grand Fleet will be victorious, assuming that no other Enlightened are in the system,” she said.

  Tomas closed his eyes. It should feel like a victory, but somehow it didn’t. So many ships were lost, and so many more would be lost. They’d lost the leaders of the Shara Daim, both previous and current. Urvu’ri had died as well, along with the best commanders from across the galaxy. This was the victory that he had been working for so long, and was why he had convinced the entire galaxy to attack the Enlightened. He had never really believed that one person, even an Enlightened, could threaten an entire fleet of such a size. He had thought that they could defeat all three of them with ships and good tactics. The last Grand Fleet had been defeated less because of the Enlightened intervention, he’d thought, and more because they had been drawn into the system and then surrounded by a second Enlightened fleet. They had been outnumbered and outmaneuvered—things he could comprehend and adjust for.

  But after seeing the records of this battle… He could see how they would’ve lost if it hadn’t been for Anessa.

  “Two of them weren’t there,” Tomas said, his eyes trailing to the edges of the city. There was a war being waged across Mars. The Enlightened Created that had landed outside of the city shields had entrenched themselves and, like a plague, they started to spread away from the city that they couldn’t take. There were other cities on Mars, ones that weren’t as defended.

  “Do you think they are in the core? Do you believe that Adrian is right?”

  Tomas sighed. “I don’t know. Our relationship soured a long time ago, and all of our scientists and experts agree that it’s impossible to kill all life in the galaxy in an instant. There is no technology known to us that could even do it in single system. The People had nothing even close. There is no evidence for what Adrian believed, and I had seriously considered it regardless. But it is just so unbelievable. After seeing that…” He shook his head. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “We can’t think about that, Tomas. We can’t do anything about it. Now is the time when we take this victory and unite the galaxy. If there are more Enlightened in the galaxy, we need to find them and eliminate them.”

  Tomas nodded his head. If the other Enlightened were in the core, if Adrian was right and they had a weapon that could kill everything, then the only thing he could do was hope that Adrian managed to stop it. He took a deep breath, steeling himself. The day was not over. There were politics to consider—too many races and nations had just lost people in the Grand Fleet. He was going to need to placate them and assure them of their victory. Knowledge about Adrian and the core was restricted; the vast majority didn’t need to know about it and worry, and neither could he.

  Now was the time for him to secure the future for the Empire and its allies.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Year 718 of the Empire — Galactic Core

  Aranis pulled his mind back and returned to the orbit above the Conduit. He stepped directly into the sanctum of Loranis’s Living-ship. He found her sitting in front of the large holodesk, her expression drawn back in shock.

  “He is dead,” Aranis said.

  “That… It’s not possible. How could one of them have killed him?” Loranis asked as she met his eyes.

  “I knew they were dangerous, but I never thought they were powerful enough to kill any of us. Harm, yes…but kill? Never.”

  “I felt her pass through the Sha as well. They died together,” Loranis said absently. “Could it be… Could they have died together from something else? A weapon of some kind? Maybe the fleets managed to pin him down long enough to kill him.”

  “I don’t think we will find the answer to that question, not now.” He looked at her intently. “We have a fa
r larger problem. There are three of them here. We can’t assume that it wasn’t Anessa who killed Doranis. We need to act as if they have the power to kill us.”

  “What should we do?”

  “We need to fire the weapon now,” Aranis urged.

  “Do we have enough power stored to ignite it?” she asked.

  The weapon required an enormous amount of energy—energy that they had been storing since they had begun their plan. It was one reason why it took them so long. Even with all that energy, they wouldn’t be able to fire it. All that they had gathered was only to push the Conduit deep enough into the Sha so that they could draw on the power of the black hole. They had tried this before, had done experiments where they had wiped out entire planets. To do something on such a scale required unyielding will, but it also required energy. To pull energy while inside the Sha state wasn’t hard, but to pull it from the largest black hole in the galaxy and channel into a weapon was another thing all together. They couldn’t wait it out anymore.

  “It will have to be enough. If not, I will have to bridge the gap myself,” Aranis said. He knew full well that that might kill him, but he didn’t feel like they had a choice. They couldn’t risk it, not anymore.

  “If you die before you use the weapon…”

  “I know. If I die, you will have to take over,” Aranis told her.

  “It wasn’t meant to be me. It was always designed with you in mind. You are better at this than me.”

  Aranis sighed. He had always excelled with manipulation of matter and Sha in general, whereas Loranis had always been more geared toward dealing with the mind. “I know, but I don’t think we have a choice anymore.”

  Then the ship they were on shuddered, and Aranis immediately threw his mind outward. He shook himself—it was stupid of him not to keep a watch on their surroundings.

  What he saw made him angry. The ship that was not a ship was there, and it was firing on Loranis’s Living-ship. Before he could respond, a mind slammed into his head with the weight of an ocean. Aranis felt his defenses buckle and he saw Loranis wince. They had put their guard down, and they were paying the price now.

  She shook off the attack, pushing it back and letting Aranis have room to shield his mind.

  “Go,” she said, “take care of the others. I will contend with Lurker of the Depths.”

  Aranis nodded and bent space. The ships around the Living-ship, the Juggernauts and their escorts, fired on the massive enemy ship, but its shields held. He could tell that it wouldn’t be able to hold for long, but then it moved using skim to keep changing its location around Loranis’s Living-ship. It had broken through the shield of the Mindseer, and was scoring hits on the hull. It was killing ships around it even as it was attacking Loranis’s ship.

  Aranis spread his black wings and gathered dark energy, then slammed them forward, sending a wave of it toward the ship. He felt the beast inside the metal shell pull on the space around them, gathering dark energy itself before sending it into his attack, negating it.

  Aranis growled. He bent space to get closer, but it skimmed away. He saw its shields fail in places and his ships get a few hits in, but it wasn’t nearly enough to take such a ship down. He needed to catch that thing and destroy it, he knew. Inside it he felt Adrian, using his skill to guide the beast’s power. He followed the beast again, sending blasts of power at it from above. It fired its mundane weapons at him, and he deflected and shielded himself against it. Quickly, however, he realized his mistake. Even mundane weapons were powerful enough to damage him, and the amount of weapons fire being poured into him was going to overwhelm him.

  He bent space and moved away, regrouping. Just as he was about to go back in, the enemy vessel skimmed away, heading toward its fleet. He wondered if Adrian had realized that he couldn’t survive for much longer against so many of Aranis’s ships there, but then space around him bent and Adrian was there with several dozen small objects floating all around him. Before Aranis could realize what was happening, a red field surrounded every object and he had only a split second to protect himself from the incoming attack.

  * * *

  Lurker of the Depths was swimming in the ocean that was the Sha. To his mind it was clearly just that: an ocean that filled reality. The deeper one went, the more powerful they became and the more they understood. It was the Song of the Universe that his people had once followed, although they had been so very wrong about it back then. Now, Lurker of the Depths knew that there was more to it. The Song of the Universe was the universe itself, its voice. He didn’t pretend to understand everything, but every time he entered the Sha state he felt his understanding deepen just a bit more.

  Now he was not in the Sha state to seek understanding. He was here to fight a being that had been hailed as the most powerful telepath. It was in a way thrilling to pit his skills against someone so skilled, and in that manner he was much like Adrian in his desire to test himself. However, he didn’t think like his former student. Lurker of the Depths had once murdered a people, had committed a crime for which there was no redemption, and he had sworn an oath to protect all life as penance. There was no choice in his actions. The Enlightened wanted to kill all, and he could not allow that.

  And so as he slammed the weight of his mind against the Enlightened, he did his best to use his emotions—the feeling of guilt at what he had done, the pain of realizing the truth. Those emotions were a telepath’s greatest weapons. His attack buckled the defenses of both Enlightened. But quickly Loranis recovered and pushed him back, then moved to shield Aranis. Lurker of the Depths wondered at her skill and power. She was so quick, but he couldn’t let her gather herself. He attacked again, focusing completely on her. His mind battered at her defenses, and he felt her deftly push his tendrils away before sending an counterattack.

  A battle of the minds was not something that was visible, but it could be felt through the Sha. It was about trying to get into the head of your opponent, about sending an attack past defenses that could incapacitate them or outright kill them. There were no flashy displays of power. Lurker of the Depths was not anywhere close to Loranis—he was on his ship, back with their fleet—but in the Sha state, it didn’t matter all that much. He used his ship’s amplifier to boost his range and strike at her. His attacks would probably be more powerful if he was close, but so would hers, and so far Adrian hadn’t called for them to activate their plan. He knew that he thought there were too many ships in orbit around the weapon, and he was right, considering not even Moirai had managed to survive there for long.

  He didn’t know when Adrian was going to trigger their plan, but he knew that they couldn’t wait for much longer. He doubted that the Enlightened would send more ships away from the weapon, and the main fleet was still far enough away that it was no threat to it.

  Loranis sent a bundle of mental attacks at him and Lurker of the Depths had to pull his tendrils back in order to prevent the attack from punching through his defenses. He managed to deflect it, but that left him temporarily open. Loranis attacked, stabbing at his mind and managing to get through with one tiny tendril. But it was enough, and she sent an attack that stabbed deep into his mind.

  Lurker of the Depths felt pain spread through himself even as he managed to push Loranis out and seal his mind again. The pain abated, but the damage was done. He felt the Sha state around him tremble and he nearly lost his focus. He couldn’t remain playing defense. He knew that he had to attack.

  And that was what he prepared to do.

  * * *

  The sensor suite in Adrian’s new armor was the best in existence. With it, he could easily keep track of Aranis even with him jumping around. Of course, the sensors followed commands from his imp, and every time Aranis teleported Adrian would point the sensors to him immediately. The sensors were only important for a single thing: to provide Iris with information on the Enlightened’s location, all in order for their missiles to follow him.

  All around Adrian were skim missi
les, usually useless in a system with a skim-nullifying field, but Adrian could surround the missiles in a field that disrupted that effect.

  Aranis realized what he was doing a second too late. His missiles were on the way, and traveling faster than light they reached their target. Adrian felt one detonate near Aranis, exploding against the shield that he had so hastily raised. The second hit him in the chest. The missiles were smaller, carrying smaller loads, as they needed to be. Adrian couldn’t cover many missiles, and not from too far away. With Moirai, he could increase that limit, but not by much.

  Aranis survived and teleported away, but Adrian already sent the new location through his imp.

  “Firing,” Iris said as she sent the missiles on their way. She was controlling them remotely, using his armor as eyes.

  He could see Aranis moving away, teleporting faster and faster, and Adrian followed, bringing his missiles along. He was chasing after him and continued firing missiles, but soon enough the Enlightened fleets managed to lock on to Adrian and open fire. He barely managed to evade a few powerful shots, and was forced to use his missiles on the ships threatening him.

  He realized that there was no way for them to threaten the Enlightened like this. Their fleet was protecting them too well.

  That left only one other way, and he knew that it wasn’t going to be enough. It would give them time, but they wouldn’t be able to survive it. In the end, he decided that the price might be worth it.

  He bent space and returned to Moirai, who had returned to the fleet.

  “Iris, it is time. Get the battle platforms ready,” Adrian said.

  “You are certain? We won’t be able to use this for more than a couple of minutes. And the moment they realize what’s happened, all hell will break loose.”