Void travel was a perilous endeavor. Any being who took the time to consider it would have to conclude that most crafts used for such travel were terribly fragile, given the extreme conditions of interstellar space and vacuum. It was a tough environment to survive in, much less thrive. Thus, the multitude of one-size fits all generic life rafts were ultimately destined to break down and fail, rendering at least one of their life-supporting functions unperformed. Even under the best of circumstances, any one of a thousand things could go wrong with the hundreds of thousands of life-necessary systems on such craft. These malfunctions usually rendered the void-going vessels incapable of generating an environment sufficient for living spirit beings to continue their existence.

Take, for instance, the punctured Caravel directly before Kyon Shi as it aimlessly spun in a field of its own debris.

To be sure, the undead admitted, this malfunction was more than a simple stress failure from overuse or unexpected micro-punctures from nano meteorites.

In fact, the damage was spectacularly impressive for a single attack from a stealth position.

Given this, the Caravel would not represent an irrefutable argument supporting his point concerning travel through the void, but, for the sake of debate, if one were willing to go one step farther and look where the spirit beings that had been on the destroyed Caravel had fled to when it failed… From that perspective, one could not deny that Kyon Shi was indeed right.

The hodgepodge of escape pods and life craft clustered before his own retinue of ships were utterly insufficient to make safe the Caravel’s crew in their time of greatest need. In fact, given the name for the tiny vessels,-- Kyon Shi could not help but notice the irony in the fact that those spirit beings were in greater and more imminent danger of being exposed to the void on these craft than in the original Caravel.

“Bah, ‘life craft’, they are anything but that!” Kyon Shi couldn’t help but voice his contempt at the apparent misnomer, choking the complaint out through his dead and infrequently used dusty throat.

The words spilled over cracked and lifeless lips to ring emptily in the stale air of his command bridge. Still, the sentiment was a perfect representation of the vampire’s hatred for all things lacking the perfection of undeath.

Kyon Shi had been alive once. What a sad and incapable creature he had been. Once he learned the benefits and increased power of undeath, Kyon Shi had jumped at his opportunity to become a spiritually risen undead. Thousands of years later, he had very little patience for things that weren’t.

The energy drainer chuckled internally as his calcified, opaque eyes continued to stare through his viewport at the hundreds of failing pods dotting the void. They gathered in clusters and pathetically attempted to provide solidarity and inspire hope in one another.

All this, even though they could not offer any actual assistance to anyone, or even themselves.

The Caravel’s crew waved to and encouraged one another through the tiny view slots in their pods’ hulls. Communications had also picked up the crew’s pointless distress calls and continued messages of encouragement from those with functioning transmitters.

Keep it up... Your little well-wishes will not add one moment of increased function to the overburdened oxygen scrubbers in those tiny crafts.

Indeed, the scrubbers continued to fail, starting with the older pods first. Those crew members struggled uselessly as their breaths became labored and erratic. Pulses quickened in anxiety from fear of imminent death as their biological needs were no longer supported.

A twisted expression that passed for joy rose on Kyon Shi’s desiccated face. That is my whole point concerning the contrast of living beings’ frailty against the perfection of undeath, is it not?

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Life’s extreme vulnerability and its necessity for specific environmental conditions was the ultimate cause of peril to living beings when crossing the void...

Or doing anything, for that matter! Living beings need so much support and amenities that any duties assigned to them require supportive help beyond reasonable justification.

Concerning the void specifically, how could any craft be expected to meet the requirements of supporting these living beings’ continued existence in such an inhospitable place?

It is pure arrogance and foolishness to think that long-term survival is likely for such beings out here.

In Kyon Shi’s view, this behavior was so arrogant that it violated Balance to the point of needing resetting. In fact, resetting was the only way to achieve Karmic peace for everyone who took the time to think this issue through. Karmic peace was what everyone wanted... wasn’t it?

What is more peaceful than the still bliss of death?

As unsustainable as it was for life to travel through the void, it was much more reasonable for undead beings to do so. Be they spiritually risen dead as Kyon Shi was, or simply reanimated corpses—as most of the Caravel’s Kaizuko were about to become.

Balance can be easily achieved here. If I turn this valve.

Using his Space-Time Attunement, Kyon Shi reached his hand through the created wormhole attenuating his matter many multiples of times and opened the atmosphere vents on dozens of the pods at once. Simultaneously, jets of vapor erupted from release valves propelling the pods into random and oblique collisions with their neighbors. Terminal fissures sprang into being as weld points on hull plates popped open. Explosive and reciprocal decompressions of all the vessels involved was the result. Immediately, shredded flesh and severed limbs spiraled out of the structural breaches until all the affected pods’ atmospheres were expelled.

Or if I were to facilitate touching some of these frayed active wires to the oxygen condensers so poorly designed into the pod’s walls.

Another small wormhole for Kyon Shi’s emaciated hand.

Flashfires erupted on dozens more of the ships, roasting the lung tissue of all aboard. With the breathable oxygen instantly consumed, the pods’ occupants were left seared and gasping like fish on the sand seeking deep breaths their lungs couldn’t take... of oxygen that no longer existed.

Then again, a simple adjustment of the temperature range on the life support to include near-zero Kelvin would allow the AI system access to the engine’s coolant systems... and give very similar results of Balance.

Freezing air, near absolute zero, poured from the life-support vents on dozens more pods. Blood flow was immediately stopped in the crews’ bodies, ceasing their organs’ functions. The view ports into these pods were obscured in a thick layer of frost that quickly hid from view the dead, swollen, and goggled-eyed bodies inside.

I mean... it is an imperfect iteration... sometimes screws just fall out!

Kyon Shi opened two larger wormholes for his arms as they reached through. Dozens of attenuations of his bony fingers curled around the steel of scores of hull plates, twisting off entire sections of the few remaining functioning pods.

More explosive decompressions ejected whole and twisting bodies. Their agony was soon stilled among the quickly solidifying puddles of urine, blood, gastric contents, and other bodily fluids. All swirled in vortexes of bursting atmosphere before dissipating into the expanse.

Occasionally even the superstructure of many vehicles catastrophically fails... Alas... I seem to be out of pods to use in achieving Karmic balance... Pity, but it really is for the best. If I got any more enthusiastic I wouldn’t leave any serviceable corpses for the necrolon…I don’t think I can stand any more of their obsequious excuses today…

A malicious smile lifted the corners of Kyon Shi’s terracotta-skinned lips.

Back to work, I guess...

It really was time to be about his business. Dezain and his lackeys had failed. That much was evident from the supremacy bindings Kyon Shi had chained them with.

With their failure, Kyon Shi’s piracy gambit had come to a disappointing end. It was time to clean up and remove all who knew of the Savoy’s involvement in the Hegemon-4 debacle.

If the Clone was to discover what had been attempted and turn his attention against the Savoy for the attack on the Hegemon-4, the results would be more than disastrous. Both to the Savoy Corp. and to Kyon Shi personally. There was no hope he would survive neither the Clone’s nor Xsias’s discipline for such a failure.

Turning to the command bridge’s only other occupant, Kyon Shi’s eyes thinned under bloodless, gray lids.

His arid voice spoke imperially. “You see what comes from failing my will.”

It was a statement, not a question, but Jian Tojaku, huddling in the corner with unfelt tears running down his stunned face, nodded profusely in response anyway. The battle leader was shocked beyond the ability to make such distinctions.

“M-my-my crew and I are ready to serve you, your eminence!”

Smirking, Kyon Shi laughed internally. The fool doesn’t even realize his crew has already been added to the myriad legions of undead following my Necrolon servants.

The five thousand were a mere drop in the bucket, but every bit would count. Soon, they would serve their purpose.

Finding pleasure in the ironic mockery, Kyon Shi’s leathery vocal cords croaked a response to stretch the deception a few more seconds.

“Oh, you will. You all will!”

Relief started to blossom on Jian Tojaku’s face as the energy drainer’s jaw hinged far too broadly as he consumed it. Golden light streamed out from Jian’s Core into the energy drainer’s gaping maw.

With the battle leader merely being a singly-Attuned Cultivator, the meal was over far too quickly. As the last spark of Essence left Jian, a look of forlorn loss crossed his face for the briefest of moments. After that, all that stood before Kyon Shi was a mindless reanimate who felt nothing. It was a vast improvement over the bumbling oaf he had been as a living spirit being, however.

A Necrolon came from the shadows and led the former Kaizuko away to the reanimate holding pens.

Where more just like him awaited their master’s will.