Salvation

by voroshilov

Ultimus

“Take us to Ultimus, quickly!”

No sooner had the Retaliator been in orbit of Orpheum they had received a distress signal from a Dominion battleship in the Ultimus system. With adrenaline fuelled speed, they had entered the Rift, en route to the Ultimus system. Only as the frequencies of the Rift calmed her mind, did Penumbra realise that transmissions could be easily faked.

“Do you think this could be a trap?” She asked Ablazed Glory.

Her flaming companion turned to her, her face scrunched up. Then, her eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”

When they exited the Rift, there was a moment of terror when the silhouette of a massive warship was all they could see. Calm only came when the silhouette was recognised as a Dominion battleship, surely the same as had sent the distress signal in the first place.

Plasma drifted from a gash in the hull, slowly coming to fill the Retaliator’s viewscreen as the brutalised husk of the vessel lazily revolved. As the battleship neared a half-turn, another gash came into view, though unlike the previous it did not have an end point. The warship had been sliced in half, the rear of the vessel missing.

“This isn’t good,” was all Ablazed Glory could mutter.

“Scanners are detecting fifty-three wrecks,” Cain called, “all of them marked as Dominion.”

Penumbra shook her head and leaned back. “Damn it,” she sighed, “that’s an entire fleet.” She covered her eyes with her claws.

“Are we too late?” Ablazed Glory asked, her fiery mane flattening on her back, “did we miss the signal?”

A moment of silence followed.

None of them were willing - or in Cain’s case not sure enough - to say it. The field of debris was a sight Penumbra hadn’t seen anything like since the War in Heaven - which she had considered to be more of an apocalypse than a conventional war. What had happened to the conventional wars she read about in her library? What happened to two knights duelling? All she had seen were ancient evils, daemons, and cults; every battle she had experienced had been more of an armageddon than anything else.

“I am detecting pockets of Dominion ground forces.” Cain’s robotic voice was sweet to Penumbra’s ears - the message it carried even sweeter. “They are currently fighting on the planet’s surface. I suggest we move to assist.”

Penumbra couldn’t have given the order sooner: “get it done.”

Once, Penumbra thought, I had been scared of entering the atmosphere quickly. It was an odd thing to think about - odder still to compare myself now to what I was like back then - what little I can remember anyway. Where have all the years gone.

Ablazed Glory’s aggressive flying has completely filled the viewscreen, she thought, how does she fly when she’s blind? I wonder - is she really in control or just lucky? Another odd thing to think about. Maybe she’s both? We’re in the troposphere now - three minutes, that’s just under a record I think. The instruments are reading conflicting numbers, are we at Mach 15 or 17? Does it matter ultimately, so long as we reach the ground in one piece?

Ablazed Glory’s braking manoeuvre was a form of aerial drift, notable in that she was close enough to the ground for barely audible clanks to be heard from the outer hull. Penumbra felt something die, then several more things.

Ablazed Glory, she thought, you beauty.

“Alright,” the flaming pilot in question yelled out, throwing her controls aside and leaping from her seat, “we’re on the ground, weapons free.”

“If you see any survivors,” Penumbra called out, her crew already throwing themselves into action, “get them to the ship, we need to rally everyone we can.”

Ablazed Glory was already out of the ship, but Penumbra trusted her to do something similar to her order anyway - Ablazed Glory could be trusted in that way, probably.

Astrid would protect the Glow Sisters - like Ablazed Glory, she could be trusted to do these things without Penumbra’s input. Cain, meanwhile, would be Penumbra’s wingbot - the perfect sidekick for her one-alicorn-one-robot parade of death which would cover the Dominion forces whilst they rallied together.

Stepping out onto the battlefield, Penumbra remarked in her mind at just how blasted it seemed. She had seen the classic blasted hellscape before, but this field was a whole new level. For as far as she could see, in all directions, there was grey - punctuated by craters every few metres. It was almost patterned, like polka dots. In several of the craters, she could see the sleek, glossy black armour of Dominion Warriors - surprisingly clean considering how ruined everything else was.

Cain just behind her, Penumbra advanced. There was a signature mental feel to the cult’s forces, almost like the bitterness of overdone coffee, that marked them out to her from a good distance. They huddled in the craters, just as the Dominion troops did, though seemed less interested in self-preservation than their opponents - more like they were instinctively copying them.

She crossed what seemed to be the Dominion frontline, to the apparent confusion of the pair of Warriors who garrisoned the crater she leapt over. Three cultists were in the closest crater, which quickly became twice as wide and three-times as empty.

Penumbra knew she had no need to order Cain around - the WarSynth already more than attuned to Penumbra’s thought stream to be able to understand her plan. As she predicted, the WarSynth followed her closely, bouncing high over the battlefield, swivelling its torso and mopping up the few cultists Penumbra left in her wake.

“Fall back,” she yelled, magic projecting her voice, “fall back to my ship!”

The Dominion Warriors - beleaguered for who knew how long - didn’t need telling twice. With an efficiency that marked them out as elite, they retreated. One by one, the craters emptied, covering fire from Cain and other Warriors allowing the smattering of soldiers in each crater to conglomerate, forming back into their squads, creating far more effective and menacing formations than they had been previously.

A few minutes more, Penumbra thought, a few minutes more than I can head back. Bloody their nose, make them think twice about coming back.

For certain, the cult’s nose was bloodied - far more than that, even. Cain’s machine ruthlessness proved invaluable, cutting a perfect, ever-expanding swathe through even the most well hidden of the cultists.

Bitter, she thought, very bitter.

“Alright,” she called out to Cain, “let’s head back, gather everyone together.”

The WarSynth slammed into the ground, swivelled its torso ninety degrees right, fired a bolt into a tiny speck of slightly darker ground - a muffled yelp erupted as the speck fell backwards - then waited.

The bouncing would have been fun had it not been for all the violence.

“They alright?” Ablazed Glory was speaking to a medic, tending to a Warrior whose left hand had been blown off.

The medic nodded, rather assuredly. “They’ll be fine,” they said, “we’re built tough.”

The flaming alicorn nodded and stepped back. “Alright,” she called out to a group of squads, “we’re here to get you out.”

Penumbra arrived next to a juniour officer, startling them slightly. “Sorry,” she mumbled, “you alright?”

The officer nodded, very much not assuredly. “Ah, probably. I’ve just never been in command before.”

“Leftenant!” A Warrior called from behind them, “what are our orders?”

The officer gave a half-shrug, before turning to Penumbra. “Any ideas?” They asked.

“I’ll need a moment,” she replied, “what are you all doing here?”

“We were supposed to be a relief force for Orpheum,” the officer said, “but we got intercepted by.” They paused and shrugged. “Whoever they were. They just dusted the entire fleet in orbit, we got into the emergency teleporters and came down here.”

Sounds like they fought back, Penumbra thought, that doesn’t sound like the Warriors at Orpheum. Except for that Joyous-Seeker.

“The soldiers at Orpheum were mind-controlled,” Penumbra said, “except one, called Starlight-Makes-Joyous-Seeker, or something like that. He said he was on a mission from Chronove.”

The officer seemed to recognise the name. “Joyous-Seeker? He was in my class at the Chronove Officer’s Academy. We were both a new model of Warrior, the type-8 mutation, so are all the troops here.”

New model, Penumbra thought. All the Warriors of this new model seemed to be immune to the mind-control. The new model could actually fight the cult. Hopefully the Dominion realise that.

“You’re all an immune form,” she said, “I think. Which means we might actually be able to do something here. Gather everyone together.”

The total assemblage of Dominion Warriors was far fewer than Penumbra had expected. All in all, there were only around one hundred, tiny by Irenton standards.

How long ago was it when entire battalions had been small, Penumbra thought. When thousands of soldiers had been little more than coloured rectangles on a board, that she’d move towards other, different coloured rectangles, whereupon combat would occur at some nebulous distance, like a calculator performing a subtraction. Why does the universe have to change so suddenly?

Something buzzed, causing Penumbra’s gaze to snap to the juniour officer she had spoken to earlier - the effective commander of the ad-hoc formation.

“I’m getting a signal,” they said incredulously, “Dominion signal!”

“Mountain.” A voice came over a speaker on the officer’s armour after a moment of silence.

“Flower,” was the officer’s reply.

Codeword, Penumbra thought, very useful with all this mind-control around.

“Good to hear a friendly voice. What’s your name, soldier?” Even through the somewhat garbled communicator, there was a tough friendliness to the trooper on the other side.

“Second-Leftenant Sunlight-Shaded-Rose, sir.” No indication of rank had been made by the soldier on the other side, but Rose seemed willing to assume authority - no doubt they wanted to remove that unwanted responsibility.

“Well, you’re First-Leftenant Sunlight-Shaded-Rose now. And, First-Leftenant, this is Vice-Admiral Vivid-Trench, I’ve got a small fleet of transports I got down to the surface before the fleet was torn apart. Send us your location and we’ll come to you, we need to consolidate our forces.”

The officer nodded to themself - no doubt the higher power was providing them much needed comfort. “Yes sir, patching you coordinates now.”

“Received. Hold on, trooper, we’re inbound.”

Penumbra had seen the transports long before she’d heard them - a surprise to be sure. Unlike the motley crew assembled around the Retaliator, Vivid-Trench’s veritable fleet of transports was enough to at least partially impress Penumbra. About four dozen ships, she counted off-handedly, more than enough to carry the approximately company-sized force she had by more than ten times over.

Vivid-Trench’s armour was identical to that of the other Warriors, except for a half-metre tall red plume on his helmet. Penumbra cast a brief glance to Ablazed Glory, who was visibly excited by the strangely extravagant customisation.

Immediately, Trench pointed to her. “You weren’t in the fleet,” he said, as though the concept of such was an incredible discovery.

“Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra,” Penumbra replied to the unspoken question, “with Ablazed Glory, Cain, Astrid, and the Glow Sisters: Sun Glow and Moon Glow.”

Trench nodded. “I’ve heard of you. Shit, yeah I’ve definitely heard of you. A veteran of the old war. Good to have a war hero with us.” He shook her talon. “You willing to lead? Because between you and me I’m completely lost down here.”

Penumbra chuckled. “I can do. How much do you have with you?”

“Got my fleet, all Rift-equipped so we can travel - but I’d rather not put anything in orbit in case what dusted the fleet decides to make itself known again. Then, four companies of infantry and what bits of my command staff we could get to a dropship before my cruiser went down.”

Ablazed Glory moved in, ready to fill in Trench and his troops about the general situation. As she did though, her steps became distant. Everything began to echo miles away. Something is wrong, Penumbra thought, as she fell through the ground.

Visible ash. Something burning. Close burning, or simply all around? Both. Incense. Was it incense? Or just something as heavy as incense? The smell. Odd smell. Cancer. Cancer was the smell. And the taste, too.

Ash hovered in the air. What heeded ash? Fire, fire heeded ash but there was no fire except contained. And this ash; it was not the normal ash she had experienced before. It was not even the bone ash from Hammerfell. It was ash of something far more powerful. An ashen end.

Amongst the ash, shrouded by ash. So much ash. Powerful ash, shining embers of power. Look through the embers, look through the ash. Look at the bodies. Bodies, three bodies, powerful bodies - living yet not living. No, two living yet not living. One definitely living. Old, but living normally - how living normally when so old? Don’t ask silly questions, focus on the body.

Body, seen before, recognition. Why does recognition spark in the air like that? A leader, a leader of a cult. A powerful leader. Very powerful magic, bleeding off them. Leader, magic-user: wizard. Powerful wizard leading the cult. The powerful wizard from the vision.

He is here, he is their leader - kill him.

Recognition sparks brightly.

“What happened to her?” Vice-Admiral Trench was pointing at her as Penumbra was pulled back to reality. The entire assembled force of Dominion Warriors, as well as Ablazed Glory, were staring at her as if something terrible had just happened.

Fortunately, Astrid was able to calm Penumbra’s nerves. “I saw it too,” she said, “tell them.”

I was forced into that vision, she thought, and it wasn’t like the other ones. Not now, Penumbra, there’s a time and a place for worrying about that sort of thing and this isn’t it.

She cleared her throat.

“The Cult’s leader is on the planet with us. I saw him in a vision and I can feel his location. If we attack now, we may be able to cut the head off of the snake.”

Vice-Admiral Trench nodded. “Alright, troopers, you heard her. Get to the ships and prepare for combat!”

Oddly trusting, she thought, for a commanding officer.