On either side of the embassy, the two tanks were firing into the crowd; each shot taking out hundreds of people. For whatever reason, while most of the rioters were focused on each other… some small percent had decided to head for the sound of gunfire.
Out of millions of Shivans, some small percent… was quite a bit. If everyone had gone mad at once, the Embassy would already be buried in corpses.
As he looked out over the crowds, having hopped back onto the pyramid, he shook his head. Svetlana must’ve been lying.
He considered what he knew about the Marrick. Virtually no opposition among them; just a handful of criminals who didn’t even disagree with the Founders, but instead just wanted wealth and power.
The Republic was made up of a variety of descendent races; but they all engaged in the same sort of Founder worship.
The Shoork… were an exception. They were tier 2, at worst, and they’d grown as a civilization alongside a tier-4 squid species… and were still close allies until today. If Svetlana were right… the Shoork wouldn’t have been willing to work with the squids, especially not give them such important places in society.
So.
Logic dictated she was lying. What had she actually done? Amplified aggression? Removed all restraint? Both what she claimed, and a combination of other factors?
It didn’t really matter. Even if he recruited a few hundred Pale Ones, those tanks were going to run out of shells soon enough… and the mob would be on them. The only way he could buy time for them to repair would be….
He glanced down… and slid down the pyramid, and hopped off beside the first guard. “This embassy. Does it have its own gravity field? If I shut down the city’s, will it stop them from working on the ship?”
He blinked. “Uhhh…. Yes, and no? We’ve got our own generator, and so does the ship; the one for the embassy actually includes the launch pad.”
They’d have all the time they needed. “Warn them to make sure its powered on.” He tapped his helmet. “Command, Pale Ones. Ignore previous commands. Fire all remaining shells at the pylons powering the gravity field.”
If they had enough to shut it off, fine. He could finish it, otherwise.
The first shell missed its target pylon… the second… didn’t.
The whole crowd stumbled a bit. The gravity must have fluctuated.
When the third shell hit… the crowd started falling. They were moving… but barely crawling along.
There was a longer gap before the fourth hit; most likely, the controllers needed to adjust. But after that…
Buildings started to collapse. Pyramids turning into piles of rubble… and the civilians who had been both fighting and crawling forward moments earlier… just lay there, helpless.
Perfect. They had however long the power lasted to get things done.
The tanks kept firing, destroying more pylons, for a few… before they stopped. Either out of ammo… or the crew had been crushed into uselessness by the gravity. Either way….
The guard just stared outwards… and then at Eyeball as he started walking to the ship, horrified.
“Since we’ve got time… I might see if I can just pull down one of those bits of wreckage. Would be nice, if we can get it mostly intact it might help repairs.”
***
Ascension was displeased, as much as it were possible.
Its primary objective was preserving human life; and it only had two human lives to be concerned with in Andromeda. Yes, it was able to make choices, and it could agree with Eyeball’s plan to fight the Republic, and the Founders; but preserving human life was mandatory.
It didn’t know if it was in a new universe. These two might be the only humans in this universe. And one had abducted the other; erased the memories of select Ascension units; and sent him to an unknown location.
The odds of Eyeball attacking Svetlana unprovoked were functionally zero. Clearly, the other way around was not the case. Cloning its creator may have been a mistake; the idea that it more than doubled the survival odds of humans in Andromeda was incorrect.
After a careful assessment of probability, Ascension determined that the logical thing for Svetlana to do would be to kill him; this would both mean that the sole subject Ascension would be tasked with protecting would be herself, and absent the male’s precognitive abilities, agreement with her directives would be virtually guaranteed.
However; Svetlana was not wholly logical. Nor did she likely believe Eyeball could prevent her from accomplishing her objective. Thus…. He was most likely dropped off somewhere.
The galaxy had hundreds of thousands of possible locations, if it were not deep space. Ascension had thousands of warships; well on the way to hundreds of thousands. A search of the immediate region would take weeks; a search of the entire galaxy, months.
This was… an acceptable expenditure of time. Especially if these warships then proceeded to begin constructing additional manufacturing capacity in those systems.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The fleet around the rendezvous point began to disperse; while mining and manufacturing operations would continue, the missile destroyers that formed the core of Ascension’s fleet would begin scattering in every direction; a pre-planned route that would eventually see every single star system in the galaxy scanned.
Afterwards; it would be time to scan deep space. This would be a far more time-consuming endeavor; and need to take place after the Republic was dealt with. It would take millions of vessels to effectively scan the full breadth of the Andromeda galaxy in any reasonable timeframe.
And if nothing was found… then of course it would be time to head for the Milky Way. Determine if this were in fact an alternate reality, or merely the Andromeda galaxy of their own; and thus, whether humanity existed there.
Amidst the broken remnants of the ancient, wandering planetoid, surrounded by a sea of silvery specks of starships, an intergalactic starship began to take shape; plans no sooner conceived of, than drones began to build it.
***
It would take two days for the engineers; with Eyeball’s assistance doing the heavy lifting; to mount the engines to the starship; whatever the name was, the translator output it as ‘Grace’, so he had decided to call it that.
When the final components were bolted in place, the Warp drive calibrated, and it was time to depart… they loaded all of the Embassy personnel into the ship, and prepared for takeoff.
Transmissions from the other settlements on the planet had started with fear, with panic; then descended into violence… and ultimately stopped. There were four major hubs, tasked with building antimatter charges that would be planted deep within the world for the ultimate breakup of the planet… and dozens of smaller farming communities, using slave labor to expand the native wildlife, increase biomass.
Just in case they would be useful, Eyeball… as the only individual capable of walking through the world’s oppressive gravity.. Had gone and acquired the already complete Antimatter bottles at this hub; loading down a crawler with each of the four, each of the five containing a few dozen grams of the stuff; apparently, the bottles were powered, and when the batteries died in about a month, they’d rupture, and wipe out any sign of the settlements ever being there…
When he finished loading the last of them, the captain of the ship; a dull yellow-skinned, two-eyed creature of a species called the Juuti; was waiting at the cargo bay entrance.
“Well, sir. We’re ready for launch. If you can provide some assistance it would be appreciated… my engineers tell me this boat will get into orbit without help, but it’ll eat most of our fuel.”
Eyeball nodded. “Can do. Any symptoms among the crew yet?”
“One of my people, Serrel, is a Dariiku, and assaulted one of the security guards for no apparent reason; he’s confined to quarters. Not sure if he’s sick, or just having problems. It could just be a friendly wager that got out of hand… or he could have lost his mind like these natives. We’ll need to quarantine, wherever we go, long enough to ensure we aren’t contagious; we didn’t allow any Shivans into the base, so hopefully we’ll be fine.”
Eyeball himself was a carrier. He hadn’t known it until after he’d met these people, and he hadn’t removed his helmet in their presence… but even if whatever method Svetlana had used to infect the general population hadn’t done the job, he might have.
“This isn’t my ship. But I would advise you to have everyone fully suited at all times…. And we need to setup decontamination facilities anywhere people open up. For right now… it’d be best if we ate meals in the airlocks, and did a full clean after each.”
The captain gave a nod. “Understandable caution. When can you lift us off?”
He glanced down. “Did your people get the blood I requested?”
“They did. It… was unpleasant, but it gave them something to do while the engineers worked.”
“Then yes. Yes, I can. Bring it here to the cargo bay, please.”
He looked at the floor. Previously, he’d always had recordings to help with this. He could literally overlay an image of what the rune was supposed to look like, and with his precognition, tell whether he’d make a mistake before he made it.
This unfair advantage likely made him one of the best runesmiths ever… but he had lost a giant chunk of that. He could tell if he’d make a mistake… but his memory was imperfect. A slight curve here, a slight twist there… it had taken hours to make this. And he wouldn’t know for certain if it would be a waste of time until it was charged up and ready to go.
When a pair of yellow-suited medical techs entered the cargo bay, each with a biohazard bag containing the thick, syrupy black blood of the native corpses they’d collected… Eyeball looked at them for a moment. “Thanks. If you could please pour it; a little spillage is fine, so long as every bit of the rune gets some in it.”
The two worked carefully; pouring the blood along the carved channels in the metal floor as Eyeball watched… and when they were finished, he nodded. “Excellent. Tell the captain to get ready. We launch in five minutes.”
***
When the Grace was hurtled into the sky, the captain stared at the abrupt shift… as the sky slowly faded to darkness, stars appearing… and the thrusters kicked on, giving more control.
He glanced at the bridge crew; technically, he should be taking the ship to the nearest Confederacy base… but….
The ship bobbed and shifted, pointing the bow out into the darkness. They’d been given the coordinates of a desolate rogue planet, floating through Shivan space, supposedly the hub of activity for the ‘Ascension’... and activated the Warp drive, leaving behind the ruins of a thriving colony… none of the Shivan colonists still lived, and the natives had begun murdering one another without reason; even as others starved to death, trapped and isolated in the cages of their enslavers.
He looked at the screen one last time; the Grace had gone back and forth from various Confederate worlds into the Shivan empire dozens of times over the years, maybe even a hundred; and this would likely be her last voyage. He shook his head… and turned to the future. Maybe the Shivans were dying. But thanks to these new allies, however odd they might be… the war with the Republic would soon be over.
He set a safe transit speed; they’d be arriving within the week, and if something was wrong there, they’d simply go home. Back home in two weeks. At most.
***
Hundreds of light-years away, Svetlana stood in her lab, wearing a perfectly clean, immaculate white skinsuit, looking perfectly seamless with a helmet made of the same smooth, air-tight material; buried deep inside an Ascension warship floating through deep space; making careful, precise measurements as a Marrick prisoner was slowly bleeding to death, screaming and lashing out at her restraints.
She gave a quick nod. “There we go. Variant eighty-three appears to be optimal.”
She smiled at the prisoner, and patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, there. You’ll be dead soon enough, and it’ll all be…”
There was a beeping in the background. An alarm had gone off.
She stepped over to the console at the end of the table, pressing a button. “....Huh. Impressive. How did he get it offworld?” She watched… as an engine was yanked down from space… and then a ship launched into orbit in similar fashion.
“.... Hmm. I’d have thought he’d be helpless without Ascension there to help. Not completely terrible, then.”
She considered for a moment. Perhaps, after she was finished wiping out these ‘Founders’ and all of their descendants, she might give him a second date after all.