Chapter 22 : Mother System 1

At the same time that Tom unexpectedly met his childhood friend, Jun and his crew were slowly moving towards their goal.

It has now been three years since Jun was able to escape Kar'goth and the scyllas. Following the advice of Tassadar, his dark matter, after escaping Kar'goth Jun decided to join a sector attacked by a void Legion.

After fleeing the scyllas, the squad had to wait an entire month for their ship to be operational again. Jun spent this free time inspecting the entirety of the huge flagship, as well as each of his troops who were now under his sole command.

Kat and Jerome were placed in cryo until Jun was able to find a way to clear the Scyllas' mind control over their minds. As for Alice, she was still in a recovery pod and finally began to recover from her injuries, her condition started to greatly improve after a few weeks inside the healing capsule.

Once the ship systems recovered from the warp jump and the flagship was ready to function at its maximum capacity, Gladia calculated the coordinates to join the nearest Void Legion and the flagship jumped again.

Although this flagship was ancient the technologies it used were extremely effective, especially its cloaking capabilities. This allowed Jun and his crew to stay at safe distance from the Third Legion without being detected.

The Void Legions, which Jun always imagined as an army of bloodthirsty and horrifying monsters, were far from what he expected. All the races composing the Legions were technologically advanced enough to build their own spaceships and roam deep space, they had a social structure and after observing them for a while, Jun realized that the Void Legions were just a group of void natives like Gladia. Actually, they seemed much more moderate and close to humanity than the Scyllas.

During these three years, Jun and the flagship he named The Lance of Kar'goth took part in many space battles. He gave this name in honor of this hostile planet that forged him and his squad into brave fighters, it was a way for him to remember that he was insignificant when compared to all the other species living through galaxies and dimensions.

When they first showed themselves, they almost got attacked by the legion who did not recognize their ship, but after seeing that this powerful and unknown ship was fighting alongside them against the scyllas and their army of rifters, they decided to not attack the flagship. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, following this principle the Legion ended up considering Jun's flagship as an ally after a few battles fought together.

The first battle was very difficult, and although the ship's armament was powerful and it had a large number of interceptors ready to be deployed, it came close to being destroyed by a Scylla battleship. Even if Jun had a great quality which was to be a very quick learner, it was still difficult for him to get used to being the Ship-Master and to coordinate everything.

Fortunately for him, the operator drones present on the ship were all programmed by the ancient race and they were doing their job at the perfection. Jun and his crew were able to emerge victorious from their first battles by losing almost no interceptors.

The main problem with the flagship was its class. Because it is a carrier, in theory, it has to fight at a great distance by swarming its enemies with interceptors. Unfortunately, it is impossible for Jun to restore the interceptors destroyed in combat and he, therefore, had to use them sparingly until he finds out a way to replace the old materials used to create these interceptors, which are for most of them no longer available in this era.

Battles ensued, both in space and on the ground of different planets, and the prowess of Jun, his squad, and his ancient army commanded the respect of the Legion with which he fought.

The army of reapers and battle drones could easily match the same numbers of rifters head to head. Alpha Zero even succeeded in killing a Scylla in its Templar clone ; he also brought back his clone's corpse so Gladia could analyze it.

As the battles progressed, the 3rd Legion commanders contacted Jun to find out who he was and why he was helping them, and Jun only told them that as long as they keep fighting the Scyllas, the Lance of Kar'goth will fight alongside them.

The soldiers of the 3rd Void Legion, impressed by the firepower of this sole ship and its army, nicknamed Jun "The Lone Slayer".

The scyllas humiliated that one of their rifters betrayed and rebelled against them, now called him "The Heretic Anomaly".

Because of Jun's betrayal, the Scyllas had to rewind their whole mind control, fearing that other rifters might escape their mind control and rebel against them.

When Primus One heard about B213-84 having escaped their mind control and rebelled against the Scyllas, he violently reprimanded his subordinate.

Legatus, who failed to capture Jun when he had the chance to, got demoted and tasked to eliminate him. He has been sent out in a single corvette class ship and tasked to hunt and kill The Heretic once and for all, not being able to return to his brothers until B213-84 is dead.

In just a few years, Jun and his ancient ship had become a disruptive element that appeared whenever an opportunity to harm the Scyllas presented itself, and disappeared whenever a trap was set up to catch him.

He was fast, smart, elusive, and his ship's firepower could rival the Scylla main-battle cruisers.

As for his squad, although they weren't complete without Katarina and Jerome, the remaining three rifters had progressed to the point where they could rival a complete high lethality vector squad on their own.

Alpha Zero had also progressed a lot. Although the reapers were considered soldiers of low importance in the ancient era, Jun took great care of them and he put everything in order to make them operate in the best conditions possible. He ordered Alpha Zero to select 10 officers among his brothers, and have them command 50 men each.

Jun organized his troops effectively. When he took control of the flagship, he took command of a battalion of 500 reapers and a whole regiment of 2500 battle drones.

While that pales in comparison to the hundreds of rifters bataillons the scyllas have created over the centuries, it was still a force not to be overlooked especially with the guerrilla tactics Jun liked to use to disturb scyllas operations.

After dividing his reaper battalion into 10 platoons of 50 reapers each, he divided his battle drone regiment into 3 battalions of 500, each with 5 platoons of 100 drones.

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This organization made it possible to be more selective when teleporting troops on battlegrounds, it allowed him to have a more malleable and versatile army that he can adapt to the enemy he has to face.

Douglas was given the task of commanding a platoon of Elite battle drones, which he re-specialized in a sharpshooter platoon possessing very long range and extreme firepower.

Alice, who was able to get out of the recovery capsule after healing inside for an entire year, obtained a platoon of 50 reapers and she created a highly effective covert ops unit, capable of exploiting the reapers' stealth to its maximum.

Although Alice was fully healed and her former life-threatening wounds are now mere scars, she nevertheless retained a deep psychological wound from her fight against the Giant Ants and became extremely cruel when fighting enemy rifters.

She now shared the same hatred of scyllas as Jun and Douglas, and her change of opinion towards them gave Jun a brilliant idea.

Perhaps the best way to counter the mind control of the Scyllas is to understand and realize who the scyllas really are. Jun guessed that a regular rifter mind is inside a dense fog, only by removing this fog and letting the sun rays go through could the mind be cleared and the rifter regain its freedom.

If he could make Kat and Jerome realize who the scyllas truly are and open their eyes, maybe that would make them no longer subject to being controlled by the Scyllas.

Over the past few years, Jun and Gladia have both brainstormed several plans to deal a big blow to the scyllas, and after much trial and discussion they finally came up with one that could definitely harm their forces.

These numerous battles the scyllas were engaging were, according to the officers of the 3rd Legion in contact with Jun, an attempt to delay the legions' advances to the mother system. All the leaders of the five different Void Legions agreed that the scyllas were up to something big.

The fact that the Scyllas themselves joined the war in the Singularity inside their Templar clones and were ready to put their life and their whole existence so much at risk is a first in history. This is probably to delay the advance of the Legions and more particularly of the 5th Legion, which was the most powerful and the spearhead of the Void invasion.

After fighting a high-intensity space battle in a sector bordering the mother system, the 3rd Legion was finally able to break through the Scyllas' defense and progress far enough into the Singularity to join the 5th Legion at the edge of the mother system.

Jun took this opportunity to put the plan he prepared with Gladia into execution.

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I was in the command room of the flagship when I received a communication from the admiral ship of the 3rd legion.

"Ship-master, admiral ship requesting communication."

An operator drone transmitted the information to me.

"On screen."

After giving my permission to the drone, a holographic screen appeared in the middle of the control room and one of the leaders of the Void Army, the commander of the 3rd legion, appeared on the screen.

Void natives are all different from each other, and from what Gladia told me most of them are combat-hungry and extremely brutal. The scyllas weren't totally wrong to be wary of them, and in a way, they were right to invade them first to reduce their strength and scavenge resources they couldn't get in the Singularity.

However, these perpetual invasions of the Scyllas armed forces into the Void, and the many planets they have destroyed, have provoked intense hatred from the natives of the Void.

Thus, although the Void natives are formed of many races and civilizations and they have never been able to get along without killing each other, these Scyllas invasions gave them a reason to ally with each other.

This allowed one of them, the most powerful of their leader, to unify the forces scattered through the Void with the same goal ; the hatred of the Scyllas who destroyed their home-worlds, stole their resources, and killed their people, gathered everyone under the same banner.

For centuries, the Void and the Scyllas forces have clashed. At one time the Scyllas' rifters are invading the Void, the next time it is the Void's turn to invade the Singularity. The two forces continued this destructive cycle and both armies seemed balanced, but even then the Scyllas still managed to have the upper hand due to the large number of genetically modified rifters they used as cannon fodder.

However, everything changed a few years ago.

After centuries of depleting their supply of rifters, the Scyllas began to be more selective in their research and prioritized the quality of their rifters over their quantity. Although they greatly improved their protocols until being very close to creating a perfectly fused Void Rifter, they also began to run dangerously low on rifters and the Legions didn't let this chance slip, they took advantage of it.

Having noticed the decrease of the numbers of rifters the scyllas were deploying, the leader of the 5th legion, who had a century ago united all the races and civilizations of the Void under the same banner, decided to exploit this timing and launch a great offensive with the all the troops and ships they had.

The leader himself was aware that this invasion was probably the last one he could lead with equal force against the Scyllas, if they don't manage to eliminate the Scyllas when they are so much weakened then no matter for how long they keep fighting, they will never manage to beat them.

Thus began the Last Invasions ; one of the reasons the Scyllas invaded Earth and abducted the humans.

I found myself in the middle of a galactic war between two dimensions, but at least, I'm not a slave fighting for these crazy beings. I have now a major role in this conflict.

After a few seconds, we finally received the transmission from the admiral ship.

The 3rd Legion commander who was displayed on the screen was from a rather strange race, although being organic they did not have a mouth or any other visible means to eat or speak.

I had no idea how they could feed themselves, I don't even know if they needed to feed themselves, and especially how they could communicate and make sounds.

They looked like a kind of octopus, they had a soft body and numerous tentacles acting as arms and legs. But while octopuses have 8 tentacles, this species had a few dozen of them, all of different sizes and widths.

The admiral communicated in the Stellar Language, the same language the scyllas implanted in our brains when they abducted us.

"Greeting, Lone Slayer."

This being's voice had nothing in common with his hideous appearance, his voice was soft and melodic, and echoed for a short time after every word. As if I was fully immersed in water, listening to someone playing a harp.

"Greeting, Admiral."

"We finally grouped with the Fifth legion, but we don't have time to rest. The sensors of the 5th Legion admiral ship detected strange energy variation inside the mother system. Our Chief decided to not wait further, and attack the mother system as soon as possible. He originally planned to start the offensive with his legion alone, but because we were able to join them so soon we can push into the mother system with them."

"Do you know what are those energy fluctuations ?"

"We don't, but it seems that the scyllas are trying to awoken a being from an ancient era. I was about to ask you about it, as you are flying in an ancient ship. I thought you had information about this. "

"If they are trying to awoken an ancient being, it would probably be the one they call their Revered Mother, but I know nothing about it except that it resides in this system and the scyllas are zealously worshipping it."

"This is also the conclusion we made, that is why our leader planned to attack before they could complete their ritual. Their defense are tight and the majority of their force is concentrated on this system, this fight will be the hardest but if we fail, it might also be the last one, Lone Slayer."

"I also think so. If the purpose of your call is to know if I'll take part in the fight, you already know my answer. I will. However, we won't take the same path as you. As you know, our ship isn't suited for head-on battle and rushing straight into them isn't our strategy."

"I expected that much. As long as you fight with us, I have no issue with you taking a different path. During the last years, I was able to understand your way of fighting, and while it is a little bit too sneaky and tricky for us, we still respect it and that is why we gave you the name of Lone Slayer.

Remember, we have a common enemy that we must fight together.

We shall emerge victorious."

"Thanks admiral. We will be victorious."

And so the communication ended.