I crashed through walls, moving quickly. Matter couldn’t really get out of the way in time, and mostly melted as I did, doing significantly less harm then spraying hypersonic shrapnel in every direction.
I glanced over, and the line of Shi’ar troops with their rifles raised was cut apart before the Ho’gruk miners in front of them were executed.
I didn’t stop moving as I flicked a glance around the room, and the Shi’ar officers who’d given the order were sliced apart, as well as the alarms and the observers in their rooms overhead. Specs took my feed and did the job grimly, both of us angry at the necessity of it.
Alarms were going off at my incursion, but that was not unexpected. I went straight through more walls as I continued to move, picturing the cubic miles of the entire complex in my mind as I did so.
Shi’ar troops and mercenary hirelings perished as I came through the walls, floors, and ceilings, and I wiped them. I didn’t have the time to be nice while they were slaughtering the rebelling miners here, and so I butchered them in return.
Felicia was already into their computer systems, finding the data she needed to send out to the public in general and the Imperial Guards in particular, letting them know what the overseers of the Ho’Gruk had been up to, and just WHY the natives were rebelling.
The four noble houses of Shi’ar who oversaw the mine operations were old-guard racists, and particularly loathed the amphibious Ho’Gruk. They had basically forced the entire population of them into slavery in the mines, with brutal production quotas, while selling off the sick and infirm to the Brood to generate additional trade goods and income. Those who protested were hauled away and sent off to the same fate, and when it finally became known what was happening to them, even the normally stolid Ho’Gruk had had enough, and the entire planet erupted into rebellion practically overnight.
The response had been brutal and merciless, including calling in the Imperial Navy to suppress the rebellion, as well as hiring mercenaries to fight it. That was actually how I’d found out about it, as they’d tried to hire the Octessence Battalion to put down the rebellion. Cain Marko had run it by me, and I’d told him exactly what was going on. He’d turned it down.
I was in the unenviable position of being aware of the rebellion, the reasons why they were rebelling, and being able to do something about it personally. Did it matter that it was in the Shi’ar Imperium?
Not really. What they were doing was not truly ‘against the law’, but selling off slaves to the Brood was a political no-no, even among the coldest noble families of the Shi’ar, profitable as it was. Furthermore, killing off your slave population was an indication of rank stupidity, as eliminating your labor force meant having to procure more to keep up production, and in the meantime the highly-desired mining output suffered.
I was stopping the slaughter and serving as a diversion while Felicia gathered the evidence. I was also moving so fast I was a stream of fire in the atmosphere, obliterating everything in my path, which included billions of credits of Shi’ar dwellings and buildings which were necessary for them, but hardly for the Ho’Gruk.
I kept my eyes on the two heavy cruisers above in orbit. The only reason they hadn’t bombed out the Ho’Gruk entirely was because doing so would collapse the mines, which would raise the cost of re-opening them by at least an order of magnitude. They had bombed the populations, who fled into the watery, swampy planet, and killed many non-combatants as a warning to the other Ho’Gruk... which had only made them double down in their determination.
I sighed and Portaled up into orbit.
Their shields broke as I came in, tearing through the hull of their engineering section and promptly slicing their primary power cores apart. As the engineers panicked and ran, the main power systems of the ship blew off through the emergency vents, taking with them the ship’s main stardrive, weapons, and shields.
I arced around through their hangar deck, and Shi’ar pilots and workers ducked and fled for cover as I annihilated the entire complement of vehicles that had not yet been deployed.
The other ship on the opposite side of the planet was alerted to the fact I had done that, but that didn’t save them, as I Portaled in on top of them and inflicted the same punishment on them.
---
Three hours later I left the planet, the Shi’ar power on the planet completely broken. Electronic proof was filling the airwaves. The entire population of the four noble houses in the vicinity of the planet was gone, lost in the ruins and wreckage of their aeries and personal house guards, and dying with them.
The ships in orbit didn’t dare to act, for they had received notice that the Starjammer, with Prince Vulcan aboard, was coming to deliver the Majestrix’s justice after receiving massive amounts of evidence of the culpability of the overseeing Shi’ar noble houses.
Corsair loved sticking it to the Shi’ar noble houses this way, and didn’t mind being Lilandra’s hatchetman for this kind of work. If the atmosphere turned, he’d go rogue and keep doing this kind of thing. After all, he had a real home he could go back to if needed.
Whether the Ho’Gruk would be able to grab this chance, or even be allowed to, I didn’t know. But if the Shi’ar cracked down on them for trying to survive, well, I could always return... although doubtless that would be a trap as well.
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They’d probably bring in Kallark to handle me. Even for good reasons, this was the kind of behavior the Shi’ar could not tolerate, and they’d crush it whole-heartedly if they could. I smiled despite myself at the thought.
Law crushing the Good. The War of Alignments, invisible and unseen, went on even here...
--------
Several weeks later...
“We need to go over evacuation protocols,” I told Xavier, Corsair, Kallark, and Vulcan in a closed-door meeting. Imahd and Fatima were also both there, listening in so they could help devise and aid with what was going to be done.
“Evacuation?” Xavier asked, frowning. “On what scale?”
“Planetary, but especially the Imperial Household.” I looked at him and Vulcan significantly. “There are things coming, events that are happening, and I don’t know how they’ll unfold... but the signs are all ominous.”
“Is this... part of the Negative Zone scouting you are doing?” Gladiator asked shrewdly.
“Yes,” I nodded. “The scale of the efforts being undertaken there are, nnn, vast is an understatement. We are talking multiple galaxies, dozens of them, being used for recruitment, with all the economic power that entails. Billions of soldiers, thralls, and biotroops being bred and grown.
“I would have to be full-time engaged in doing nothing but stopping the effort merely to keep it at its current stage, and it is still growing and spreading. Eventually, it would outpace what I could do to it, and that is if they didn’t come up with solutions to fight me off or kill me, which I deem unlikely.”
Looks passed around the table. At the high end of performance, I was exceptionally powerful, definitely in the cosmic-class and able to hang with Kallark and Primus, even before I Copy/Mimicked anything else.
“They are turning whole planets into battle stations designed to kill cosmic beings, with the goal of being able to deal with Galactus Himself.
“If certain of the cosmic beings could reach across the Crunch between us and the Negative Zone, they could interfere with these efforts catastrophically, from simply making the technology unstable to stirring up aggression between the races.
“Galactus is taking certain steps against them, but as an example of the scale we are talking about, if a Negabomb was detonated over the invading force now, wiping ninety percent of them, those that remain would still constitute an army greater than the Kree, Skrull, and Shi’ar Empires combined.”
Breaths hissed out, and everyone looked at one another.
“All three Empires are aware of the Negative Zone, naturally, and have opened portals there in the past. Well, the other shoe has dropped. Now they have the ability to open portals here, and they are preparing their invasion forces, sending through scouts, purchasing navigation data, and making ready to take over multiple planets.”
Kallark and Xavier frowned deeply. “Evacuation, indeed,” the Imperial Consort murmured. “Can this be prevented?”
“Only for a time. They are a dying universe. There are entire species staking their existences on being able to escape the Negative Zone and travel here, to a young and expanding universe. They have made the commitment to come here and fight, or go extinct in battle.”
“They have a warrior’s spirit. It is a shame that we cannot indulge them in such numbers... and they do not belong here,” Kallark remarked. “What are you requesting we do, Dyna?”
“The Shi’ar have a far more diverse population of sapient races underneath them than the Kree, and especially the Skrulls. One way or another, you are going to lose entire planets to the invasion.
“You are not going to need simple evacuation protocols, you are going to need Arks to carry away the survivors if possible.” I turned to Corsair. “I am hoping that the Starjammer will serve as the Ark for the Imperial Household.”
Corsair looked at the Consort and his youngest son, who were both looking thoughtful at the idea. “I don’t know, perhaps we don’t have enough room,” he smiled, despite himself. His trading runs meant he’d made sizable fortunes for himself, and combined with support from the Imperial Family, he’d been able to make many upgrades to his ship, which was already one of the finest ships in the Shi’ar Empire.
Xandaran, Whoberis, Galadoran, and Corbinite tech was all present in his ship, in addition to Terran innovations, although you had to have a real good eye to see it. Hell, he had Kree, Rigellian, Ovid, and Skrull tech there, if it was better. The Fixer was paid good money to look it all over and make it work synergistically instead of at odds, and had started his own branch of Weird Science involved in just that, with some impressive results.
Dimensionally-expanded areas using Xandaran technology was totally something Corsair made use of when transporting cargo. Xandaran drives, teleport technology, and similar stuff had also made their way into his ship, making it far, far more dangerous for its size than any Shi’ar craft... which was a big reason the Shi’ar didn’t even think about messing with it now.
“That will require a substantial investment by the Empire,” Kallark judged grimly. “Many will be opposed to such a move in the Council of Elders, wanting to limit such a protocol to the Shi’ar themselves, and dismissing the possibility of there truly being such a formidable power.”
“Would the word of the Praetor of the Imperial Guard sway them?” I asked reasonably.
His frown only grew into grim silence. At last he said, “Knowing what I know of them, they might be forced to understand the scale of the threat, but they will still reserve this ‘Ark’ notion for the Shi’ar.”
“Given they control the navies of most of the sapient races of the Empire, that basically amounts to abandoning them to extinction,” Corsair growled. Gladiator simply nodded slowly, and both of them turned to Xavier and Gabriel.
“This will turn into a panicking bidding war of who gets to be saved at the expense of someone else,” Xavier murmured. “There are not enough resources to go around and save everyone, or even a tithe of those, depending on how many worlds must be saved. Even if we devoted the full resources of the Empire to the problem...”
“And we can’t have that many ships sitting around doing nothing,” Gabriel added grimly. “Even if we were to build an Ark Fleet, it would have to be put to use in the interim.”
I nodded slowly. “So, this is a matter of scale, and the Negative Zone has the scale. We will need to up the game, then.” I stared at the two idly. “Make an Ark for each race of sapients on behalf of the Shi’ar Empire, but leave the scale up to us. We have allies who can address it.”
“You have allies who can produce enough ships to evacuate a galactic empire?” Xavier asked, just making sure I’d said that.
I nodded. “We’re moving up the cosmic scale on this fight. Yeah, we’ve got contacts up the scale. Where we’ll move them to is a bigger issue, but that can be dealt with, as well...”
All four of them considered that fact, and that I actually said that I could do it. Being able to evacuate a galactic empire naturally meant being more powerful than a galactic empire...