"Okay. No more bombs. We're just using the sled and ourselves as mass, and gonna hop in and out, displacing as much of his brain as we can... just scraping it out one chunk at a time. Even the brain on this bastard is huge, so we need to work fast. You with me?" Eyeball focused on the strange red sawblade on Ripper's head as if he were meeting his gaze.

Ripper braced himself against the metal of the sled, coughed, and nodded. "I'm in. Fuck. Alright, tell me when. Timer, same deal."

Eyeball shifted the angle slightly; the Emperor seemed to have stopped moving, which was fortunate. "Okay. He's not moving, we may have hurt him pretty damn bad there. Honestly, the fact that dropping an anti-matter bomb inside his brain didn't one-shot him is.... pretty bad."

"Talking hurts right now, just give me the go, damnit."

Eyeball whistled softly.. watching the display, focusing on probabilities, shifting angles. "Okay. It's time. Follow the timer." He could see, now, the enormous glowing cavern that was the Emperor's equivalent of a skull; with a surprisingly large gap where the bomb had gone off. And... there.

Moments later, they appeared inside the strange space. It was no longer so tight and confined; but instead was filled with trails of the grey ooze, and tendrils reaching inward from every direction.. "Just keep shifting, as fast as you can. I'll aim us."

He focused on the largest cluster of intact mass. There they were; embedded in darkness again. And in the light. Darkness.

The brain was recovering; visibly healing itself; but it was obvious they were hurting it faster; Giant chunks were being torn into the ethereal with each jump, fast faster than it was able to heal itself. But then.... "Stop!"

If they continued, jumped out and back a few more times... they'd be in space. The Emperor would have moved.... and far beyond sensor range. Damnit. This.... he'd been hurt badly enough he was going to run away to recover. "...Pull us back. Stay in the ethereal. It's over."

He turned to face the red sawblade-topped helmet; and blinked. There was blood visible on the inside of the faceplate. All of the futures involving entering the ethereal, vanishing back... faded.

Whatever had gone wrong with that first jump... it had been killing Ripper. But he just kept going. And now.... he was done.

The sled was trapped in a slowly regrowing mass of Rikk brain tissue; and Ripper... either dead or dying... was as well. The metal was audibly creaking as the reforming tissue compressed it, pushing it away; and Eyeball hopped away before it could latch on.

He.... was trapped. Inside the Emperor's skull. His way out, or to finish of the Emperor... dead. Well, fuck.

***

"His life force is fluctuating! He's building up energy for something... but he's hurt, bad! If it keeps going like this, I'll eventually be able to overpower him, crush him!" Kezia grinned, exhilerated. With each passing moment she felt stronger. More capable. That metaphor, of drinking an ocean with a straw... it might still be true. But with each second she drew more power... the straw grew bigger. Now it was more akin to draining it with a hose. Still impossible... but progress. And he'd stopped swatting at her with those dangerous telekinetic blasts.

Spike cracked his neck; and started to accelerate towards him. "Alright! Sounds like Ripper is getting some work done. I'll pull in close, see if I can do some damage."

The Jeanne was cycling up to fire another maximum-powered shot, Spike was moving in... but suddenly.... the Emperor was gone. The enormous, black-shelled squid-like creature.... had vanished.

Kezia frowned, placing a hand on her helmet. "Moreau! I've lost sight of the target, and he's... outside of the range of my life sense as well. I can still sense a vague direction, he's not dead, but... Where did he go?"

She floated there, adrift, confused, looking at the emptiness. The next signal... wasn't helpful.

~Kezia, this is RC. The Emperor formed some sort of gateway... and pulled himself through. It's not like hyperspace, or any FTL method I've seen or heard of, it's an actual gate, or an enormous wormhole. For about six tenths of a second, I got a visual of a different set of constellations in the background. He's.... running away. Far away. He just jumped over a thousand light-years in an instant; probably closer to ten thousand. And from the orientation... he just jumped out of the Milky Way. He's in deep space. Truly deep space. And.... he just took Eyeball and Ripper with him.~

Spike and Kezia looked at each other, then at the empty space where the Emperor had once been. "Well. I guess he was right. We took out the Emperor.... and he's not making it back. Assuming the Emperor is, well. Dying. Or at least running away."

Spike sighed. "...My boss will probably be happy. Ripper dying killing this guy solves all sorts of problems."

The two figures slowly floated back towards the ship; Kezia having grown another two feet taller, but thankfully had prepared the new armor for that, as she had a seat inside the cargo bay; even this room was uncomfortably small for her. It would not be a fun trip home.

Everything seemed.... tense. Rex, Spike, the engineers, the marines... all waiting for the other shoe to drop.

***

Prrskel was the highest-ranking surviving admiral in the Imperial Capital system. Technically, this made him the highest-ranking Imperial alive, despite others in distant systems having hundreds of thousands of years of seniority. The Empire was not, by any means, defeated. They had millions more ships. Trillions more citizens. But... when word of this got out, that the Emperor had been defeated in combat and forced to flee by an alien from within the Forbidden Zone...

Every cluster whose economy was dependent on terraforming worlds for the Emperor would fall apart. Those who were equal to the Imperials in technology, or even superior, but only held in check by fear of the Emperor? They wouldn't so much rebel as simply eradicate every Imperial nearby and assert their own self-rule. There was only one possible way to preserve the Empire, and galactic peace.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The golden-hued, only lightly-adorned crab climbed onto his comms platform, and sent out a signal to the remaining lower-ranking admirals. "Fellow commanders. We are set an unprecedented event. An outsider has arrived, eradicated the mightiest fleet we have ever assembled, defeated the Emperor himself, and now watches, ensuring that he is not simply leaving momentarily to recover from his injuries and then return; our astrogators inform us that this is unlikely; the Emperor appears to have fled towards the Andromeda galaxy. As the senior admiral of the Capital fleet, the ruling is clear. While we are dedicated to the Emperor above all, to his command and purpose, this is due to the Emperor's position as an unstoppable juggernaut which all other enemies must flee before."

He sank into the warm water of the platform, inhaling, letting bubbles rise around him; before he rose once more. "My proposal is simple. Empress Kezia has defeated the Emperor. Much like the Emperor himself, she has the power to feed on life, entire worlds, to grow stronger; only she was able to defeat him. We must beseech her to take the throne, and offer to continue the same practice on her behalf. Should we fail to do so, the Empire will collapse. And if the Emperor lost now, at the height of his power, then should the Empress grow in power as he did... she will find it even easier to defeat him should he return."

He glanced around the tank. "And, of course... we watch her for weaknesses, much as we did the Emperor himself. The concerns about a collapse with the emperor gone would be nonexistent if we had defeated him ourselves, after all; it's us everyone would fear, then."

***

With each passing moment, the tendrils of regenerating brain extended towards him, filling in the empty, damaged sections. The grey ooze had been re-absorbed into the walls, leaving the shrinking space clear. He was, ultimately, doomed. He had never been claustropohobic.... but being crushed and possibly absorbed like this was not the way he wanted to go, even if it did mean the Emperor was running away.

Eyeball looked around at the steadily closing in walls. No way to get a signal out, if anyone were close enough; the Emperor's skin was a better faraday cage than anything man had ever invented. He casually started disassembling the 40mm revolver; letting the bits scatter, to fall and float slowly in the air towards the center of gravity... now a steadily expanding wall of tendrils.

He looked at the walls around him, and the projected map of the Emperor's internal organs. "Helmet. Discharge the revolver capacitors to.... seventeen percent capacity." He aimed the handle and the extradimensional pocket entrance at the nearest mass of tendrils; and a loud pop sounded, as a jolt of electricity; enough to kill a man, and even most metahumans, surged into the alien flesh; with no apparent result.

He held up the component. A tiny silver cylinder, not much bigger than his pinkie, with a hole at the end just a bit over 40mm across. After taking a deep breath, he held up his left hand, opening the other interdimensional space, containing its railgun and a variety of other tools, implements, and accessories... and simply rammed the device into the opening. He'd known the universe would go black when he was done. He wished there was a way to send a message home. But....

The way his power worked, this was probably why he'd even carried both on him to begin with. He gave a soft chuckle as the world turned black... "Kamikaze, you stupid bastard."

***

The Emperor was hurting, yes. The pain was agonizing, and he'd lost hundreds of thousands of years worth of memories to the brain damage; if his brain didn't have enormous redundancies, it would have been even worse. But.... he was gone. No longer in the Milky Way, no longer anywhere that Cronos knew of. No.... he was most of the way to Andromeda already. One more gate, and he could spend the next few centuries gorging himself.... and then perhaps flee to another galaxy entirely. His brain was almost completely healed; he'd need some careful time and effort to get the bits of neutronium he couldn't absorb out of it.

Was he even the emperor, now? Perhaps he should just be Samarr, devourer of worlds, for a while. He could still gather allies, but just... be nomadic. Wander the stars.

One moment, he was shifting through space, considering his next meal as he slipped through a gateway to the outer edges of Andromeda. The next... there was an empty void where his brain had once been. The local residents of Andromeda would eventually find, to their confusion, the dead husk of an enormous, neutronium, space squid orbiting a star near the galaxy's edge.

A curiosity, no more.

***

Kezia blinked as she sat on the floor of the cargo bay; reviewing the message traffic. The proposal from the Imperials. She... could sense.... A void. She had a connection to everyone she'd stolen life force from. Everyone she'd given it to. She could point out earth; she would know where her grandfather and father were no matter how far away she was. It wasn't exactly a useful power, under most circumstances. But...

One moment, she knew the Emperor, Eyeball, and Ripper, were all there... just extremely far away. Ripper's life seemed to be... sort of flickering. As if he were on the verge of death. Then.... they were all gone. Completely cut off.

She inhaled deeply and laid back on the floor. Well. That solved the issues of romantic entanglements with someone less than half your height. She shook her head... and turned to RC, where she sat on the floor of the cargo hold. "Go ahead and put me on."

RC smiled. "You're on... Empress Kezia. I'll project the image of the Imperial directly overhead, and that'll be his perspective."

A few moments later, the image appeared; a holographic form of a golden, jewel-encrusted crab with a mass of tendrils rather than claws; each tendril tipped with a single metallic spike. "Your majesty. Have you considered our proposal? We await your decision."

"Of course. I have both news, and a response for your proposal. First... the Emperor is now dead. My minions slew him as he fled for Andromeda; I unfortunately don't know exactly where his corpse lies; I may have you mount an expedition to retrieve it, as a trophy."

The golden creature shivered for a moment. "Of... course, Empress. One cannot allow the previous ruler to remain, after all."

"Precisely. I have yet to decide if I will resume the Emperor's course of consuming worlds. If I do so, however, I will not be consuming those inhabited by sentients... except as a form of punishment. Worlds like the first one I devoured in Imperial space... will do nicely. For now, other Imperial rules may continue; I will be reviewing them on a case by case basis to determine what best fits my personal objectives. I believe there is an... Imperial Council, that handles matters too small for the Empress?"

The figure shrank down below the water, bubbles rising. "You... consumed the Imperial Council, my Empress."

"And how were they chosen?"

"Each member of the Imperial Council was elected by the leaders of one of the sectors of the Empire, or chosen and designated as such by the Emperor."

She nodded. "So be it. The... Forbidden Zone... will remain the territory of my blessed Ancestor, Cronos. The Empire is mine. Have a new council brought to me. We will meet here, on the ruins of the old Capital, atop the Plateau of Woe, remnant of the fleet that foolishly defied me. It will be... a fitting reminder of the cost of disobedience. You have... one Imperial year to bring this council before me, and build me a suitable palace atop the plateau. We will determine the future of the Empire at that time." Imperial years were only five and a half terran months long. Enough time to be reasonable. And to get to earth..... and back.

Some of the crew might want to go home. Others... might want to be her new Imperial Guard. And, well. She would now be a power unto herself. She could let earth handle her own affairs, but there was something amusingly ironic about a Gypsy Empress ruling the galaxy.