Nettal nearly leapt in delight as their sensors detected a sudden flare of power deep within the gas giant.

“All ships! Converge on that signature! Prepare to open fire! I want that ship disabled and helpless!” She bellowed, and the few serviceable ships moved to obey. She gripped the arms of her chair tightly, beak clacking together in jittery excitement. They’d disable the ship, board it, execute the crew and rescue the prince! Perhaps this time she might actually get promoted for her actions.

The ship broke through the atmosphere, trailing gaseous vapors behind it like a wedding train, and then it started blasting the comm waves with a hail.

“Ugh, put them on, I want to hear their panic!” She said, and the comms officer did as ordered, patching into the open hail.

“All ships! Flee immediately! A Leviathan class entity has been discovered! I repeat, a Leviathan class entity has been discovered and it is angry! If you want to live, run for your lives!”

Nettal blinked, then laughed, as did the rest of the crew. As if they’d fall for such an obvious trick.

“Ignore them, all ahead full!” The ships pushed ahead, none of them heeding the warning. That is, till a tentacle curled up out of the gas giant and then snapped towards the smuggler’s ship. But quick thinking on their prey’s part saved it, as the cannons opened fire, slamming into the fast moving tentacle and carving great gouges from the hide, which now wept blood into open space.

The crews of the Inquisitor's little fleet went silent in abject horror, and Nettal swore she felt a blood vessel burst somewhere.

“All… All ships… protect that vessel at all costs. Open fire immediately on the Kel’kari…” She said, and nobody moved. She looked at them all, then raised her voice into something close to a shrill shriek. “I said, OPEN FIRE ON THE KEL’KARI!”

That got them moving, and the ships did as she ordered once more. Streams of plasma, kinetics and lasers flashed from the five ships, slamming into any bit of the Kel’kari that was exposed. This really only served to make it angrier, but it drew the attention away from the smuggler at least.

Nettal knew that she and her fleet probably wouldn’t make it out alive, but at least they could buy time for the smuggler to escape, even though they still held the prince hostage. But at least he would be alive, and that was all that mattered right now.

Nettal clucked, then pressed a few buttons, the lights shifting to a glow they all knew. The mood was set, and they would sail into Pher’Kerin as the valiant warriors that they were.

⫷⟪∞⟫⫸

The engines were straining considerably to put distance between us and this Kel’kari. I had only ever seen one in documents and pictures, never in person and while I admired their natural beauty, their reputation as near cataclysmic events was enough to sour further appreciation on my part.

I had been content to keep the Kel’kari firmly in my mind as nothing more than interesting tidbits, I did not want a first hand experience. Yet here I was, the unwilling recipient of one. The tentacle came in, and I fired, the rounds carving deep. I detected more of them rising out of the gas, and I also detected the weapons of the enemy ships warming up as they bore down on us.

“Idiots! There are more pressing matters at hand!” I cursed, preparing to fight them and the leviathan as well. But when they fired, it wasn’t at us, but instead at the creature. I sat, dumbfounded for a moment before I stopped looking the gift horse in the mouth. If they wanted to piss this thing off more, then that was fine by me!

“What are they doing?! Don’t they know they’ll just be killed!?” Zreeth said, completely blown away by the supposed stupidity of his now quite doomed rescuers.

“They’re trying to keep the thing occupied while we escape. Clearly they value your life more than their own.” I say, and that shuts the prince up quickly. Perhaps it also opened his eyes a bit, royalty never really thinks about what others sacrifice for them. And those that do from the start tend not to care.

I look to the FTL drive, and prepare the charging process. No way I’ll be sticking around to see what happens next. The drive reaches a solid 10% charge before failing, and I hiss in annoyance.

“Somethings wrong with the FTL, we’re going to be stuck here a little longer.” I inform Zreeth and Ula, who both groan. A warning flashes to get my attention and I look to see what new problems are popping up for us.

What I see is the gas giant’s atmosphere bulging, heaving as the great form of the Kel’kari attempts to break free. A segmented, four mandible mouth protrudes, open in a silent roar. A roar we all somehow hear despite the vacuum. It rattles the hull plating, sends shivers down those with spines and conjures to mind our deepest fears. I watch… No, we watch as a tentacle curled and lashed out, battering and coiling around one of the smaller ships, raising it to the gaping maw and swallowing it whole.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

And just like that, there’s one less ship in the fight.

I feel my morals conflicting with survival instincts. And they win out when I hear Ula speak at last.

“Intra… Help them.”

With my mind made up for me I sigh.

“All hands, prepare for flip and burn. We’re joining this fight.” I say, and immediately spin the ship around, reigniting the engines to cancel our momentum. We lurch and then begin the trip back, all while drones work on the FTL drive.

“Launching fighters, diverting power from shields to weapons. Inquisitorial fleet, this is the Warden of Eternity, we are here to help.” Closer and closer we draw to the raging battle, my fighter wings streaming out of the hangars to swarm the Kel’kari. Big ships the beast can handle, as big ships are slow and easy to hit. Small starfighters on the other hand, are not slow and easy to hit, especially for something of that size which is hampered by organic reaction times.

The fighters swarm over the starships, then streak forwards, pounding the thick hide of the beast relentlessly, while my cannons aim for anything they can easily see and open fire. I run several high intensity scans, while calling up old documents on autopsies done upon deceased Kel’kari. I’m looking for anything vital, namely the hearts, because it has three of them. A thing that size needs three, otherwise it’d be a lot smaller.

Scans corroborate what the documents say, and I lock in firing solutions immediately.

“Inquisitorial fleet, target your heavy weapons on these coordinates, don’t stop till those hearts are pulp!”

“You can’t give us orders! Stay out of this!” I hear Nettal say, and was about to retort but Zreeth beat me to it.

“Oh stuff it Nettal, do as the lady says! Your prince commands it!”

“Hmmpf, fine.” The scattered fire shifts, becoming more focused as they started to carve into the beast, the beast which was smarter than it looked as it moved tentacles to cover its weaknesses. But my significantly larger cannons started chunking into those as well while I focused on my own heart.

Something happened that none of us were expecting, the creature started to writhe in agony, and we all detected a large surge of power from within it, before a large chunk of it was rather literally torn apart from the inside out. Again it roared, and I took the chance, pushing us harder and faster, closing in on the now gaping wound that had been inflicted. As we neared it, I shifted myself to present my broadside and laid into the wound with everything I had. Between the pain of the wound and shots being fired into the wound, the beast was stunned, unable to respond as we all burrowed our way into its hide and vital organs, reducing them to molten pulp.

It was over in seconds, in seconds we had killed a leviathan. The beast shivered and then gasped, before growing still and slowly getting pulled back into the gas giant. The crushing depths would do little to the beast, and at least its young would have something to eat, as their species was well known for cannibalism. It was just what they did.

And now there we were, guns primed and ready, all of which now turned towards the other. Uneasy silence descended upon the survivors as we sized one another up.

“Intra is it?” Zreeth asked, then continued without even waiting for a response. “I would like to be returned to my homeworld please, to properly thank you for such daring and willingness to help out loyal servants of the Imperium.”

I mulled it over, but Ula being Ula, and the captain, decided yet again for me.

“I think we’d be more than happy to take you back to your people. We honestly didn’t know you were our cargo when we accepted the job, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have taken it… Right Intra?”

“Yes, that is correct.” I say stiffly, partially focused on them, but mostly focused on the four armed and ready ships slowly bearing down on us. “Could you perhaps call them off, I’d prefer to not get blown out of the sky just yet.”

“Hmm? Oh! Yes, one moment. Ahem, Inquisitor!”

“My prince! Did these savages hurt you? I swear if they did, I’ll put them all to the gun!” Nettal said, to which I rolled my eyes.

“Oh no they didn’t, in fact they didn’t even know I was their cargo. So please, stand down and let’s all just go about this like civilized people hmm?”

“Civilized!? These savages are anything but civilized and they should be ma-”

“Nettal.”

“Y-Yes my prince?”

“Shut up and stand down. That is an order.”

There was a sufficiently chastened silence on the other side of the line, and I allowed myself a moment of smug satisfaction as a result. As a show of good faith, I powered my weapons down one by one, and even kept the shields off for now while the other ships moved into escort position.

“I must inform you that repairs are nearly complete on our FTL drive, we’ll be about… twenty or so minutes before it’s fully operational again.” I state, and for a moment there’s silence, before Nettal speaks.

“Very well. We can… wait. I presume you would prefer to keep the prince aboard your ship as well?” She almost sounded like she was sneering.

“That would be preferable, yes. If only to keep you from blowing us up prematurely.” I could hear irritated clacking on the other end, then a defeated sigh. “Oh, we’ll need the coordinates as well for his homeworld if you please.”

For once, I felt like delighting in the temporary power I held over this Inquisitor, and I think she knew it as well. There was an irritated hiss and then we received the coordinates, which I plugged in and set heading, all I had to wait on now was the FTL to get repaired.

“Ula, perhaps you should take the prince to the VIP quarters? I think he might appreciate the chance for a little rest.”

“Oh, oh yes I would indeed. And some food… And perhaps a bit of an explanation about this setup of yours as well.” He was still talking as Ula led him away.

I leaned back in a digital chair, sighing and rubbing my temples. One crisis averted… Potentially three more waiting in the wings.

How delightful.