As Amon’s forces made their last stand, the rest of the sector was facing a life threatening danger.
Jean diverged small groups of the purifier fleet toward the rest of the sector with the purpose of eliminating the local inhabitants and conquering the planets for the purifiers. Nowhere, except for the territory of the swarm, was safe. Even fractions like the tal’darim and the Terran Dominion were under attack.
This was why Nova received a rather angry transmission from her former emperor.
Sitting in her chair, Nova waited patiently for Jean to return from the experiment. There really wasn’t much she could do for the battle below. A sea of purifiers were gradually overwhelming the defensive forces. Yes. Overwhelming. This word most commonly used to describe the zerg was used for the protoss purifier forces.
Hybrids were being overwhelmed by dozens of sentinels. Hybrid destroyers unleashed psionic storms on the charging sentinels, but after every psionic storm was a sea of reconstruction. Psionic storms couldn’t really destroy the bodies of sentinels, and the metal zealots could just recover from the critical but to the surface wounds and rejoin battle again. Hybrid reavers were simply crushed. So what if they could destroy two sentinels completely with one single swipe? Twenty sentinels on all directions, and the reavers would be in pieces in minutes.
Void shades fought without a sense of fear. Formed with void energy and duplicates of units in the material world, they fought till their last breath. A few void shade carriers and battlecruisers even performed a suicidal charge on the combined fleet in the air. They didn’t accomplish anything as they were noticed and shot down before leaving Aiur’s orbit, but their spirit was to be admired.
At one point a group of purifiers even moved forward and almost reached one of the void shards. Granted they didn’t reach any further as they were immediately surrounded and destroyed by reinforcements Amon dispatched, but on the positive side the purifiers were able to call down a bombardment that wiped out the majority of the clumped up reinforcements. A group of purifiers for several times their number of Amon’s defenders was certainly a worthy trade.
That group of purifiers were down, but still Nova had no doubt of the eventual victory. She was deploying an orbital strike on a position where another group of purifiers were about to be destroyed when a communication request caught her attention. Giving the command to another executor, she opened the transmission.
“Nova Terra!” The Dominion emperor had fire in his eyes. “Explain yourself! Why is your fleet attacking us?”
The Terran Dominion was literally defenseless against the purifier fleet. Jean casually took over the Dominion fleet and turned them into her Warden fleet after Valerian told her he would no longer support her cause. Now the Dominion had no ship, and a few orbital cannons on the surface of the planets wasn’t enough to stop an entire purifier fleet.
Valerian, upon hearing about the report of the attack, remembered his encounter with the purifier fleet during his time working with Jean and Nova. Wasting no time, he made a call to Nova.
Valerian thought Nova would at least lie or pretend it had nothing to do with her. Either that or she would call it a mistake and pull back her ships. After all, Nova was a former Dominion ghost. She later joined Jean, but Valerian had to believe she was still on his side. He was wrong.
“You have refused to aid us.” Nova didn’t even bother with an excuse. “You are no longer of any use to us as the Terran Dominion, but you will be of use as a series of mining and construction planets.”
“What…” Valerian was shocked for a minute, not able to believe his own ears. “So you want to destroy us and take over our planets? This is not a joke!” He said angrily, half expecting Nova to be joking because no one with any logic would do such a thing, but the serious look of Nova told him she was serious. “You can’t...there are millions of people in the Dominion! Innocent people! You can’t do this! You can’t just slaughter them for some resource!” He said desperately.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“The wellbeing of your people is not my concern.” Nova’s eyes were cold as stone. She only cared about one thing, and that was not the Terran Dominion.
Valerian was speechless. He was barely recovering from the shock of his fleet just disappearing, possibly forever, but this was even worse. Hands pressing on his table to support his forward leaning body, Valerian said loudly. “Listen to me! Nova! The Dominion fleet is gone! Someone took it! You must call off your fleet now! People are dying as we speak! If you don’t do anything millions will die! You are better than this!” He was still unable to realize Jean took the Dominion fleet. Subconsciously he still believed Jean was on his side.
“I know. I know your fleet is gone.” Nova replied as she glanced at the Warden fleet outside her window.
Valerian rose his eyebrows, as if wanting to ask a question, but the problem of the Dominion fleet was no longer the top priority. Tens of thousands of potentially dead crew members were less valuable than millions of Dominion citizens that still had a chance of surviving.
“Please, Nova!” In this own throne room and right next to his own underlings, the young emperor cried desperately. He was almost begging. Already reports were coming in about the purifiers bombarding resistance and unloading ground forces to slaughter the terran on the planets. Several planets have already lost contact and ten times that number of planets were under attack. If this continued Korhal would fall in a few hours. There was just nothing the Dominion could do. “Just...just get me Jean! Belay your attack and get me Jean. I will convince her...”
“Jean gave the order of the attack.” Nova broke the last hope of Valerian. “Now, if you have nothing else to say, I have a battle to command.” She turned off the communication.
On the other side, Valerian collapsed in his seat, spiritless. In the comm beside a Dominion official on one of the attacked planets screamed as a sentinel charged into the room and chopped his head off. A few officers in the throne room turned away as desperate screams came from the other side. They came from officers and staff members that were being slaughtered by the robot purifiers. A few seconds later the comm turned dark. Another planet lost. Another several thousand people gone.
“Emperor…reports have came in. The Kel-Morian Compound is gone.” Corporal Faraday, one of Valerian’s trusted lieutenants, reported hesitantly. He had became Valerian’s most trusted underling after the much more experienced general, General Warfield, vanished with the Dominion fleet. The Kel-Morian Compound, one of the terran factions and ten times as strong as the current Dominion, was completely destroyed by the purifiers in just hours. Everything happened so quickly. This morning he was wondering what he would have for dinner. Now he was wondering if humanity would live to have another dinner. At this rate the entire Dominion would be gone in just a day. Not conquered. Not controlled. Gone. The purifiers had no need for prisoners.
“Corporal, pass down the order. Send out every ship we have into space. Destination: Anywhere the purifier fleet have no need to go to. The Dominion may fall, but mankind will live on.” Valerian tried his best to do his duty. There was nothing he could do to save the Dominion, but he could try to save as many people as possible. He knew most of the ships would probably die of some reason, whether it was from the purifiers, from starvation, or from something else, but some of the ships would live on. If fortune really smiled upon mankind, then perhaps one day the terran could populate the sector once again.
Faraday signed. It was the best thing Valerian could do. No. It was the only thing Valerian could do. “Yes emperor.” He paused for a second. “Forgive me, emperor, but what are you going to do?”
Valerian signed as well. It seemed like a few days ago when Jean assassinated his father and put him on the throne. He thought he would be a better emperor. He thought, with the help of Jean, he could make the terran Dominion safe and secure.
Yet he had no idea he made a deal with the devil. He achieved the exact opposite of his desire. He not only failed to make Dominion safe but had took part in the total destruction of his people.
“I helped Jean become who she is.” The young emperor said quietly. “I made a mistake, and I will pay the price.”
“A captain goes down with his ship. What about an emperor?”
Faraday nodded. He knew what Valerian had chosen to do. Along with several other officers, he left the throne room, leaving Valerian alone.
In the purifier fleet, Jean walked into the bridge with a specialized adept. The smile on her face showed her success with the experiment.
“I hear Valerian called.” She said casually, not caring. “Anything important?”
Nova glanced at the adept, a renewed Talis, and shared her lover’s happiness. Everything was so peaceful...so nice. Nova felt like there was no need for the dying screams of Valerian to destroy this current harmony.
“No. Nothing important.” Really. It was not important at all. It was just the dying scream of half a sector. How was this important?