//------------------------------// // XII. Heretic // Story: The War in Heaven // by voroshilov //------------------------------// “Proclaimed immediately: the hereditary aristocracy of the Irenton Empire is to cease as a social, political and economical entity. All hereditary titles, wealth and land is to be forfeited to the Emperor. Refusal to do so, support of refusal to do so, is to be considered Treason of the Highest Order and Rebellion against the Irenton Empire and its Emperor. The Most Loyal Armed Forces of the Irenton Army are permitted to use all available means to prosecute this order to the finish. Glory to the Emperor.” - Edict for the Destruction of the Aristocracy by The Emperor, Nicholas - Penumbra had felt the Glorious Song enter the Rift from within her dropship, seeing the faint purple corona around her vision that was symptomatic of such. Barely a minute after the corona had faded, signalling they had exited the Rift, the intercom had flared to life. "Green for deployment, lock and load." With a rumble, her dropship and dozens more rose and sped from the hangar. Her armour didn't alert her to any weapon discharges, that would be a telltale sign of defences aboard the station. Perhaps, they had taken the station's inhabitants by surprise. Penumbra reached out with her magic, attempting to reconnoitre the station. "Imperial cruiser! Right on top of us!" "How did they know we were here?" "ETA twenty seconds," the pilot flared over the intercom. "That cruiser will prevent any evacuation attempt..." "Dropships inbound! They're moving to board and they've blocked our comms." With a sudden rush of noise from without, the ramp opened, revealing a makeshift hangar bay. Only one ship was in it, though there was room for about ten dropships at a time, with a dozen of what looked like engineering crew, scrambling for the exits. An arrow whistled past Penumbra's ear, ramming deep into one of the fleeing crew's heads. The now dead crew member collapsed slowly, only realising they were dead a few seconds after the event. One of their comrades tried to drag them through the nearest exit, though another whistling arrow put them down too. All the Volunteers save Erin leapt out, charging the few crew still remaining within the hangar, whilst soldiers from other dropships moved to the exits. Erin moved up alongside Penumbra, bow in hand, even her breathing completely silent, right eye squinting as she lined up a shot with a fleeing crew member most of the way through a rapidly closing exit door. No sooner had she loosed the arrow, that it was buried into the newly paralysed crew's spine, their body arching backwards and collapsing into the path of the door, where a squad of Volunteers quickly appeared. "No time to waste," she said, leaping down to the floor of the hangar, Penumbra quickly following, allowing their dropship to return to the cruiser and be replaced by another. "Have the breach teams herd enemies our way," a commander, by their yellow cape, said into the handset of a communication trooper's backpack, "we'll take them out in the choke points." She paused a moment, receiving information Penumbra couldn't hear. "Copy that, I'll tell her." She turned and yelled Penumbra over. "Command says the control room's been sealed tight, apparently the bastards have something important in there, Emperor Nicholas wants confirmation it's been destroyed. There's a stairway up down to the right of the centre door, take your squad with you. We'll clear the rest of the station, I'll send up everyone I can spare to assist." Penumbra nodded. "So that must be the reason we didn't just destroy it," she mused aloud as she joined up with her squad, waiting just beyond the threshold of the hangar's centre door, various bodies of maintenance crew scattered about. "We have a new objective," she said, "there's something inside the control room we have to destroy, by order of Emperor Nicholas. We'll take the stairway to the right." Another squad was holding the bottom of it, their sergeant saluting when Penumbra arrived. "We've been tasked to you, sir." Penumbra went first, her longsword ready in an aura of magic, a pair of Volunteers right behind her, the rest of the squads following. The staircase winded up, apparently all the way along the station's spine, passing several floors already cleared by the Imperial troops, another squad joining on at the bottom at the third floor. At the fifth floor, only Penumbra's honed magical senses kept them from an ambush, with the corrupted alicorn bursting up from the stairway, longsword spinning at near impossible speeds to deflect any oncoming shots, whilst her magic threw rebel soldiers about like ragdolls, smashing them against the station's walls until all of them were collapsed in heaps, bones and organs torn and ruptured. Their uniforms appeared a relatively random mishmash of armours and clothing, with the only theme being dark colours and a yellow rectangular patch on their shoulders. Their weapons all appeared to be originally Imperial issue, with various unsanctioned modifications performed and crudely spray painted a dark brown. Unfortunately for them, as Penumbra quickly deduced, their modifications often had the unintended effect of making the weapons very volatile - a fact Penumbra would happily exploit. Another two flights of stairs led them to a sealed bulkhead, the control room beyond, and a squad of guards. As a test, Penumbra reached out with her magic, using its supernatural precision to undo a few valves here and loosen a few chambers there. With shrieking bursts of orange light, five of eight rifles detonated, turning most of their operators into mist and badly burning their fellows, with Penumbra's comrades finishing the job with a few bursts. "How'd you do that?" Caitlin asked, as three of the Volunteers started to work on the bulkhead's controls, only to find them useless and start simply cutting through the bulkhead with plasma torches. "Magic," she said, "I've always known how to use it, but Emperor Nicholas gave me a lot of new power recently, that and reading up on those rifles." "We had legends back home," Caitlin said, "ancient stories, older than the Empire, even; about when our ancestors first learned to commune with nature. There was one, I can't remember the specifics, but it was about someone similar to you, regarded as a spirit of nature, with the sorts of powers you have. Probably just a coincidence, but it's an interesting thing to consider." She chuckled. "Imagine if the Archons came back, wouldn't bet against it considering what's happened recently." "Bulkhead door's thicker than we thought," one of the Volunteers was speaking with Harriet, whilst four of her fellows slowly attempted to cut the door open, "gonna take about a half an hour to get through with what we have." "You sure we can't short circuit it into opening or something?" The Volunteer shook her head, "nope. Even if we could access the panel the most that'll happen is we knock out all power on the station by accident, then suffocate." Harriet nodded, "alright. Well, keep cutting, I'll see if we can bring up heavier gear." Penumbra trotted up behind her, "there's a problem?" "Yes, bulkhead's sealed tight. We don't have the cutting power to get through, not as we are, anyway." Penumbra surveyed the door, it was certainly thick, about a metre of material between her soldiers and the other end. It was also pretty solid, too, made of that miracle metal - Vulcanite, as they called it - that the Empire seemed to have in abundance, stronger and harder than any other material she knew of. It was secured in place with multiple locks and about three feet of extra material surrounding it, securing it against all but the strongest of blasts. Fortunately for Penumbra, she believed she had the strongest of blasts. "Stand back," she said, trotting to a position four metres or so from the door and setting up her stance, "and get ready." Her horn's magical corona wrapped around itself four times, before the light alone was near blinding to anyone standing directly behind. Carefully, she locked her horn onto a point in the very centre, with enough structural weaknesses from the cutting attempt it would give relatively easy in comparison to the rest of the bulkhead. Taking care to minimise the back-blast, she fired forwards a beam of energy, which shifted her slightly backwards, scorching the floor in its path slightly, audibly burrowing into the bulkhead for a minute straight, before, with the sound of rending metal, the bulkhead was torn from its position and a way into the control room was opened. The Imperial soldiers jumped into action, a volley of fire whooshing past Penumbra's head the moment the blockade was down. A squad ran forwards, swords and bayonets glowing orange as they cut apart the highly susceptible coverings of the rebel soldiers. Penumbra did not follow, bending her head down to rest for a moment, allowing her magic to replenish. To their credit, her soldiers did not need her assistance, clearing the control room with brutally efficient ease. When Penumbra finally entered, searching for whatever Emperor Nicholas could want destroyed. She quickly found it in the form of a console, a small disk drive crudely bolted on, containing a single file simply marked 'End'. She allowed her curiosity to get the better of her for a moment and opened the file. She was confronted by a few paragraphs of text, apparently ripped from various complete texts. These Rift-based phenomena are, perhaps, not simply physical anomalies, but actions by an as yet unidentified intelligence. During my research of the Great Void, I encountered a planet on the very edge of the formation which contained a primitive culture. Normally, these would be of no interest or concern to me, indeed, I only documented said culture for posterity and to not potentially fall into any nasty habits around data collection and recording. Their myths described a number of anomalies almost exactly identical to those reported by the Echo of Retribution and others, all prophesying a supposed 'end of the world' - their primitive nature most likely being the reason for their usage of the term 'world' and not 'universe' or 'omniverse'. ...end of the world, a common feature of primitive mythology. However, quite few mythologies provide so much fact to back up their argument. This culture's view of the 'end of the world' focuses around something from within the Great Void, something that, in its slow awakening - perhaps similar to a REM state of sleep - cause a number of transient events within a plane they called the 'path to the underworld', most likely in reference to what we now call the Rift. 'And the path to the underworld will shift and alter, whirlwinds will push travellers aside and whirlpools pull them to their doom. And then, the path will be emptied, until it awakens again, when the end shall come.' She lit her horn, snapping the disk in half before yanking it from the console, breaking that too. Her soldiers, meanwhile, had either left, placing demolition charges about the room, or waited at the door for her, watching as she smashed the console. Satisfied that the disk and console were unsalvageable, Penumbra turned to the door. "Prepare the demolition charges," she said, "we'll detonate them then bombard the station with the cruiser for good measure." They nodded, before suddenly vanishing. A strange chill filled the air. Penumbra looked about in shock, before they returned again, just as surprised and far more stressed than Penumbra. "We have to leave," one yelled, though Penumbra was so dazed she couldn't tell which. The three soldiers who had been waiting ran, disappearing down the stairs within seconds, Penumbra dizzily trying to pull herself towards the bulkhead, which suddenly closed on her. "I thought," she muttered, bashing on the new door with a hoof to see if it was real. "Warning," a robotic voice blared over a dozen speakers, "warning, extensive reactor damage. Panic room systems activated, please board the nearest lifepod." Penumbra decided to follow the voice's advice, not in the least considering she couldn't focus enough to light her horn anymore. She practically threw herself backwards, her eyes fortunately landing on a runic sign above a door: 'Lifepod'. She scrambled forwards, moving more off of momentum than conscious effort, before moving entirely off of momentum as the gravity suddenly failed, her grab of the railing by the door becoming less one of stabilisation to stop her falling and more one of stabilisation to stop her going upside-down. The pod itself was clearly Imperial issue, complete with the small winged star that was the universal symbol of the Imperial Navy, which guided her to the control to open and prime the device. The door, cushioned from within, released a small stream of air and opened slowly, Penumbra using its multitude of rails and guide-lines to pull herself within and secure her body with a strap. With the press of a single interior button, the door closed again, just as a distant but audible explosion began to rock the station. The door locked with a click and rush of air, before a friendly, if robotic, feminine voice appeared over the speakers, "initiating lifepod preservation features." Penumbra shivered, the temperature of the pod had dropped rapidly, to just below uncomfortable levels. Her temperature was quickly forgotten when she was suddenly weighed down in her seat, the station having catapulted her up and out, a booster on the lifepod propelling her at an incredibly high velocity away from the station, with the cruiser she had arrived on nowhere to be seen. "Activating stasis functions." The little window at the front of her door began to freeze up, with Penumbra feeling like she was drifting off to sleep. "Please remain calm." A liquid appeared at her feet, thicker than water but still flowing with ease, which rapidly rose until it completely filled her lungs and the pod itself. Penumbra fell unconscious a second later, her brain almost immediately ceasing its non-essential functions.