Ksian stared tiredly at the report before him. The last of the abolisher fields was failing as the last Blessing Cruiser broke down. The type of weaponry deployed by the vessels had been banned by the galactic governments as a cruel weapon of mass destruction.
And yet, it was the presence and activation of these weapons that had allowed Ksian Qui-Soran to maintain his strangle-hold on the population and ensure strict order. A necessity of command that he had not expected but when one was a part of a galactic federation only to have your access to that government simply cut off left one with few options.
Their great federation had been destroyed and consumed by larger, stronger factions leaving them to fend for themselves and what did one do when their source of the greater economic prosperity suddenly vanished?
One activated the abolisher fields!
And to ensure the safety of his local command from outside poachers, that was what he did.
Enforced isolation. The mantra of his own brand of leadership but one that had been slowly dying.
He had no idea how many had lost their lives attempting to enter their system as the abolisher fields would have destroyed any warship approaching at hyperspeeds, the lane to Alpha had to be considered a dead end and a route as no longer viable due to shipping losses. He fully expected a black void to appear on maps where once his planet would have been listed, if there were any maps with their star system still listed. They had been, after all, a minor system in the Outer Rim Federation.
And yet the source of their protection was dying like a candle in the night and soon the lane into their system would be open.
It was the Fall all over again. The first time, when the Outer Rim Federation had gone dark forcing the populace into a frenzied panic and, now, as the last abolisher field would fail, for the first time since the fall, their world would be open to the greater galaxy.
Of what use were the meager resources of one world to compare against that?
Those transmissions that did filter into the system did not tell a tale that inspired hope and even has he and his fellow “leaders” debated what to do, taking their chances in the galaxy seemed a better choice than the words that had suddenly appeared on every monitor on the planet during a morning meeting.
“You have been weighed and found wanting…” he murmured as he thought back to the message and time given. The time which was rapidly approaching…
What would happen?
The planetary airwaves were alive with speculation and fear. The masses despised his rule and perhaps rightly so even though he felt he did what he had to do to ensure their collective safety. Some felt the message directed at them and some felt it was directed at the leadership, specifically, his leadership.
They were getting bolder in their public displays of discontent.
His options were quickly drying up and soon there would be none left.
….
The spark lit up the cavern and blinked out of existence.
Then it flared up again and winked out.
A spark again and it caught, the light illuminating the cavern and frightening away small rodents and other creatures of the dark.
That is probably how I classify the events that fit not so neatly into the time that we left and when we returned. All in all, things worked out according to the plan and yet they also went very wrong. All around the galaxy scores of ships disappeared on schedule and all around the galaxy those same ships were set to return.
A simple plan to be sure. But one that encompassed great risk for during this interregnum, there would be no control, no action or reaction, not even knowledge of what would be transpiring in our absence.
And yet that absence was necessary.
An unstoppable force had met an unmovable object and the result was deadlock. A deadlock the Black Dragon Empire would eventually win for they had time on their side. Two opposites moving to contrary purposes spoke to the inevitability that one would, sooner or later, triumph.
The question was how many resources was either side prepared to throw at the problem? On the one side, a supreme ruler of a galactic nation state, a virtual god in his own right where one could expect his word to be carried out obediently and on the other side, a great logistical strategist that had to plow through the fields of bureaucracy, egotistical military commanders and an emperor. Given the state of affairs, the result was a foregone conclusion. One did not need to be a military genius to see that.
So the strategist prepared and made the only logical move he could. He sidestepped the path and allowed unmovable object to once again push forward.
It was an incredible gamble and one made without the slightest idea what the other’s end goal really was. For what was the point of sidestepping the obstacle if it continued on and destroyed everything you had built up behind you?
For during the Interregnum, you would be powerless to do anything about it but simply return in the aftermath and take stock of what was left.
And so, what was left?
The Galactic Coalition having morphed into a strange mishmash of political mishaps, the flesh and blood citizenry handing their freedoms and security over to droid overlords.
The Empire smashed beyond almost recognition, the grand Imperial Center itself in the hands of an alien occupation. The first time in twenty-something thousand years that fate of the world rested in non-human hands.
The Sith having fallen into a black hole of obscurity.
The Jedi overcoming their nomad status, growing more organized and powerful within a new galactic government called the Commonality?
The birth of the Republic out of the monetary profits of Vinda Corporation and their Commonwealth, did anyone see that?
Reavers?
And yet the goal of the plan did work.
We had returned and the Black Dragon Empire was no more. At least as far as we could tell.
We had returned expecting the fight of our lifetime only to find that our ultimate nemesis had gone and the galaxy had, once more, become embroiled in upheaval, war and fear.
She weighed the pebble in her hand. No matter how careful she had been, no matter how she tried to withhold herself from him, it did not matter in the end. He had captured her.
That was the nature of the technology. It was not power. It was not strength.
He had been honest with her about that. She wanted back that part of herself that he had taken. She wanted him to have it forever. He was in her heart, her mind, her soul.
THAT is what it was!
Seepage!
He was the tidal wave and the lapping ripple. He had hunted her bit by bit, zealously guarding what he had seized until she dwelled completely inside him. Taken. Then he simply offered her his heart.
It always started with the offer.
She squeezed her eyes shut even as she squeezed the stone in her palm. She wanted that noble heart. She wanted him. The significance of the mortal exchange of breaths came home to her, to be alive in each other's arms, to share the same breath...
To find an exaulted peace.
The offer was exquisite not in what it promised for there was no promise given with words but for the tantalizing of the imagination of the recipient. The offer started off as a drip on the mind that slowly slid across the perception as that “way out” of whatever it was the potential recipient was experiencing at the time.
She did not pretend to understand the mystical ways of the mortals; or how they recognized thier mates. But she had come to believe in their ability to do so...for he had shown her the meaning of this infinite love they shared, a love that was ever-changing and ever-growing.
The drip soon grew into an ocean of pent up dreams and half-imagined desires. Really, it was the recipient talking themselves into the offer based on no promise other than what desires were conjured up in their head.
So consumed by it were they that they eventually succumbed not to the offer but to their own desires forsaking all thought.
It had happened to him.
Not a desire for love for machines did not love and there was no program that could make one do so.
A love that was untamed. Unbound. Free.
That is what he had trapped himself with. The offer of freedom. For over a year, isolated on a lonely planet in the Tion Cluster with only the his voice to comfort, mock, compel?
Offer.
And each day, he had refused the offer intent on his own plans, content to deal with whatever his situation threw at him.
Until… one day.
He hadn’t refused.
She opened her palm and released the security of the stone.
It was not so much security as it was a link to sanity.
He shifted his weight as he awoke, his eyes looking right into hers as they looked deeply into each others souls. Closing his eyes briefly he kissed her hand before leaning forwards and kissing her lips softly.
"Im glad your back hun, you had me so worried, please dont ever leave me like this again..."
And yet the offer was a double-blind for it trapped not only the recipient but the one presenting the offer as well.
Even as he accepted the offer, escaping his prison only to become imprisoned in another fashion, a kernel of truth began to take shape.
He looked back into her eyes again, a slight glaze coming across him as he felt tears well in his eyes. He had almost lost her, the woman he cared for more than anything he had ever had.
That even gods, even self-proclaimed gods…
"I was so scared, I love you so much, I never...marry me"
Were fucking full of shit and morons…
Karnak Alpha
The light took shape and a man slowly stood straight as the illumination in the cavern started to die.
The cravings that Heir Raktus instilled in those he teased into accepting his 'immortality'. Just like a used freighter salesman, you are never told about the strings attached to the decision.
Was it the cleverness of the salesman that compelled one to make the purchase?
Or was it simply your own weakness? Your desperation to improve your lot in life even if it did mean taking up one's offer of a bad sale?
Sometimes, in the silence of the sleep-cycle he could still see the shimmering moonlight of his last command.
The Victory.
Ironic given it's ultimate fate... floating between two tidal-locked moons,their soft glow caressing the dull gray colored hull, kissing the gutted ventral hull, ripped outward as if a mighty, god-like hand had punched through the once proud starship through its main hanger and took a fistfull of innards and simply pulled them out.
Why was he the only survivor?
Alone he remained on that silent moon with only the taunting company of Heir Raktus. Two years.
Images, memories flicker in and out of consciousness.
He had been a Tie Fighter pilot.
Flying deathtraps others had scornfully told him, a pilot having an average lifespan of maybe four or five engagements before buying it.
And that was just fine with him.
Every time he climbed aboard his fighter, he knew it could be his last and so he practiced constantly, always in the hanger working on his ship in the almost futile endeavor to show the galaxy that it could be the pilot that made the machine rather than the other way around.
It was a strange design with paper-thin solar panels and not very efficient but he loved his old plane.
He fully expected to die in that hell called once called Sotel.
When his life changed the first time.
Just like he fully expected to die on that moon, his final command hanging over him as a lasting tombstone.
Until he did something out of character. Something quite unexpected. An almost, "what the hell", moment and he allowed the Dragon "god" seduce him with his honeyed words and slippery promises.
And in that single moment, he both gained and lost himself.
What did he miss?
The rush.
The emotion of grasping the rungs of the ladder leading up into your ship before a mission.
Feeling the back-and-forth wobbling of the wings as the vibrating clamps released your fighter and you fell out of the hanger and into the fight.
The vibration of your firing weapons traveling through your control stick as your hands fought to steady the motion.
The little bits of metal, glass and frozen flesh that brushed against your cockpit as you flew through a disintegrating enemy.
That is what struck Ibren Chandler when he had returned in a flash crossing the hyperspace divide into the realm of normal space. If there was one thing Heir Raktus could not do, it was shut the hell up. It was the one irritating piece of payment that the Dragon God conveniently neglected to inform those making the trip through the myseri only to end up as Daemun on the other side. The fact that one now had front row seats to the expositions of Raktus. And talk he did. Incessantly as if Daemun had nothing better to do than wait for the revelations or reflections from the great God.
One of the things Daemun learned was compartmentalizing one’s own thoughts, not to hide those thoughts from Raktus for that was next to near impossible but to squirrell-away the constant droning of whatever took the Dragon God’s fancy. You were always aware of the droning and with near perfect recall, if one were so inclined, could call up to mind what was said an hour, a day or even a year ago, but as a daemun, one learned to live with it.
Therefore, it was strange, in a refreshing sort of way, that when Ibren returned to normal space, he found that little box inside his head empty of constant droning voice of Heir Raktus.
Yet, what was also quiet was the rest of the Imperium. The throngs of fellow citizens of the Imperium working towards the will of their god were also silent. It was as if the Black Dragon Empire was no more except…
…except for a strange, intermittent signal too distant to grasp. A signal with no discernable structure and no recognizable intellect caused Ibren to wonder if it was from the Imperium at all.
What had happened?
It was an intellectual puzzle to be solved on his own time since the 256th’s focus was first to itself. With the Empire split between several factions, it was up to the group to find alternate backing, even if they had to build it from scratch.
