Ghosts of Solais

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My predecessor had already retreated from the Hive by the time Solais breached the bridge, managing to escape the explosion with the Ashaton and a small part of our fleet that were capable to avoiding the blast zone. Destruction of the Rhekasolis and the Swarm stopped the Empire’s advance into human space, and our fleet was left broken once again by human hands. The same could be said about their own, leaving us once again at a stalemate. Szetschu’s flight into Empire space was a hasty one, Jumping through the scores of destroyed planets she had left in her wake just days before. During this time, the Sect has spun the destruction of the Bringer of Light as a victory for the Empire. The final blaze of the Rhekasolis had brought harm to the Infernal One himself, and the moment our Empress returned and gathered her forces would mark the beginning of the end of the Humans. My people believed their words, but as I looked upon the Priestesses faces and spoke to them in private I knew they were merely putting up a brace face. The reality was that the humans had once again done what we thought to be impossible. They had faced their own imminent destruction and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and there was they were at a loss at what else to throw at them.

I and a few others did not choose to follow Szetschu in her conquest, much to our benefit. In her defeat the ranks of people in line for the throne had thinned once again, and our political maneuverings against each other had escalated to war all upon itself. In a clear case of irony, I could attribute my eventual ascension to the throne to my greatest foe, though I am sure they would never be inclined to take the credit for such circumstances. There was still Szetschu to deal with, however, but with her continuous failures the motions the Sect were taking to usurp the throne were already taking place. When my predecessor arrived to the outer core world, Alaka, the people may have welcomed her with open arms, but under the robes of every priestess was a dagger waiting to be driven into her heart. A rather crude method of assassination, but the Sect has never been known to for their… modern methods of extermination.

The Empress must have seen this coming, however, for as she arrive she ceased contact with the Sect and instead nestled into the Alaka fortress and surrounded herself with her personal guards. It was during this time that Szetschu would invite the last remaining inheritors of the throne into private meetings. I do not know what she discussed with my competitors, but in her discussions with me she would frequently ask of the news of the humans. I never had anything to report to her, and beyond those questions we would go through the usual motions of the rigors of being Empress. She did not seem to passionate about such topics, for such talk must have made her think of her own possible demise. It was also quite possible that she never saw me occupying the throne myself, and was just going through the formal motions out of a loose respect for tradition. I remember, during that time, that my predecessor had become quite jumpy. Frequently she would nearly attack her own guards if they approached her too quietly, and the way she asked about the humans made it seem like they were about to drop in orbit any day and wreak destruction across our planet as she had already done. As I have said before, however, it was not fear driving these actions. The look in her eyes was that of a wounded beast, one itching for its next battle.

It appeared that the damage done from the Rhekasolis had been too much for even the humans to recover from quickly, and in that time the Empire did not waste time in rebuilding the fleet, this time now under command under the Sect of the Divine. Szetschu still remained the face of authority, but in her hiding she had allowed the Sect to overtake and manipulate a number of Magistrates into their umbrella of power, leaving Szetschu with nothing more than a figurehead position over her people. A position that would soon pass to someone else if the Sect had anything to say about it. I had to commend the Sect on their efficiency, but at the same time I couldn’t say that I was thrilled at the possibility inheriting a puppet’s throne. It appeared that my competitors were of the same mind, for in the Sect’s rapid rise to power our own quarrels had stopped and instead we would subvert the Sect’s authority whenever possible. A discrediting of one of their Priestesses there, an “accidental” revelation of a scandal in the core worlds would prevent the Sect from taking absolute power, but still their influence was far beyond that of the throne. They were Rezenaga, of course, so any methods they took would be within our natural instinct to overpower all that came our way. There were a couple of occasions in which I barely escaped death from a potential assassin or “malfunction” in one of our ships, and though most of my competitors and I survived their machinations, one or two were not so lucky.

Indeed, for a time after their deaths we had become docile, and in the following months we were resigned to the total dominion the Sect had amongst the people. Soon, it would be the Grand Priestess that would hold sway over the Rezenaga, with the throne of Empress being nothing more than a stepping stool. Szetschu still did nothing in this time, keeping her fixation solely on the humans to a level of obsession that I thought foolish. In her fixation on our distant foe, she had allowed the one laying in plain sight to subvert her, and she did not care. I could sympathize with Szetschu in a way, though at the time I had looked upon her with more anger than the pity I feel now. I would rather face the humans in combat again than to face the Sect that had occupied both the light and the shadow.

The anger against the humans was at an all time high. How dare they resist the will of the Empire, resist the will of the Divine herself? How dare the servants of the Infernal One encroach upon our divine dominion?  When my people would strike the Humans, there would be no survivors. There could be no other force in this Galaxy that could match my people, and had there not been a religious fervor behind their eyes, I would have felt pride at such force. Instead, I feared that anger, one that I had feared more than the destructive power of the Rhekasolis. My people had been reduced to nothing more than the High Priestess’ tools, tools that they would soon use to bring the rest of the Galaxy to heel. Nothing would stand in their way.

Then the humans arrived.

Their assault began without warning at the outer fringes of Empire territory. A fleet of ships Jumped in and struck with such quickness and strength that our outer installations fell in a matter of days. It was the beginning of a wave of destruction that, while not matching the pure raw power of the Rhekasolis, had the same quickness and unstoppable momentum that our fleets could not cope with. The human ships would Jump in, rain fire down upon our bases, and then Jump out. When our scattered fleets pursued, they would be waiting with a far larger force that would quickly cut our ships down as they Jumped into the system. The times our fleet did not pursue the larger Human fleet would Jump in and cut down both the fleet and the installations below with ruthless efficiency. We were left with pursuing and dieing, or defending and dieing. It was a brutal strategy, one that I never had associated with the usual tenacious, but merciful humans. No longer would they disable our strongholds and capture our troops, no longer would they delay their advances to assist the troops stranded in escape pods floating in space. Instead their attacks were now ones of complete and total destruction. They never attacked our civilians, but any sense of empathy they could have felt for our military before was now gone, much to the dismay of our fleets. They kept attacking, driving further and further in the Empire space as our fleets could only retreat into the core worlds to gather our strength. Doing so, however, only hastened the human’s advance into the core worlds.

There was no new technology on the part of the humans to explain this advance, but as I looked at the reports of the approaching fleet I knew where their strength came from. Their ships were now a black color, which in the vastness of space would have been near impossible to find had the stars not been present in the background, all except the new crest that was plastered in white to the side of every vessel.

A sword bathed in flames. The symbol of Solais.

The humans were angry, driven by a rage that was far greater than any of my people could have imagined. It wasn’t the pure, raw hatred stoked by the Sect that my own people felt, but instead the cold, refined fury of a people that mourned their fallen heroes. It was that rage that made them neglect their mercy, that led them to crush our fleets underfoot without daring to look back. There were not many instances of ground combat during the human’s advance, but in every report of these skirmishes there was one more constant that brought a chill to my spine. It was of a lone soldier, amidst the battalion of human infantry, adorned in pale gray armor that was in the style of the ones that Solais had worn. There was only ever one per picture, but each of these soldiers different in some way beyond their armor. Sometimes the soldier was in the bulky figure of a man, and other times it was the slim, but nimble frame of a woman. It did not matter, however, for I knew who they were. The ghosts of Solais had come, and in their wake our troops were left broken under their might.

In a part of my mind that was far larger than I was willing to admit, I could not help but feel like we deserved this in the end. The Empire had pushed itself too far, tried to control too much, and it attacked the wrong people. Still, like any new foe my people encountered, we tried to crush this enemy, and instead of cowering like the others, they met us in the fields, they met us in the skies, and they had brought our Empire to a standstill. Then, we forgot the rules of war, we forgot to treat our enemies with respect and instead decided to secure victory by any means possible. In doing this, we had torn a scar across the galaxy, one that to this day has not healed and perhaps would be even larger had the humans not possessed the courage to stop us when we came for their homes. At great cost, they stopped what may as well have been the true hand of the Infernal One itself, and now they had come for us. Their actions were not the actions of a scared people, they were not the actions of a blind, angry people. They were the actions of a focused people, a united people that instead of waiting for the beast to attack again, had gathered up their weapons and hunted down the beast in its cave.

The final battle of the war took place in the outer rim of Alaka. The Sect, unable to deal with the onslaught of the human fleet, had relinquished command of our troops to Szetschu once again. It must have been what she was waiting for the entire time, for as she emerged from her chambers from the Alaka palace there was a smile on her face. Our force was strong, as strong as we had been at the beginning of the war, all thanks to the religious zeal instilled with my people. But… in the upper command of the our fleet, there was a stillness to the air, a silent undertone of fear that hung between us as we waited for the humans to arrive. And then.. they did.

The humans positioned their Jump into the space right in front of our fleet. The closeness of their Jump surprised us, making us pause as they unleashed a volley from their rail cannons. The front of the fleet erupted into a wall of fire, blinding me at first. Their fleet scattered after the initial assault, diving into the rocks of the outer rim. Utilizing their superior mobility, they used the asteroids as cover from our cannon fire, minimizing the damage done to their fleet. We could not pursue, for our own ships were more likely to dash themselves against the rocks than to flush the humans out. We instead scattered our fleets, carpeting the area with plasma fire in an attempt to shatter the asteroids and force human ships from cover. However, the constant stream of fire from the human ships had thinned our ranks enough that their dropships could make it within proximity of the Ashaton itself. Tried as Szetchu’s ship might, it could not stop one of the dropships to make it into the hangar of the ship. I was stationed on the bridge of the Ashaton during the battle, and had access to the security feed of the hangar as the human dropship crashed its way in. A small squad emerged from the vessel, all wearing the same pale gray armor. The ghosts of Solias had arrived.

Like Solais’ charge through the Rhekasolis, the ghosts cut through the Ashaton with ruthless efficiency and strength. Our troops could not halt their advance, and soon they tore a direct path straight to the Ashaton’s bridge. The doors to the bridge blew, and from the smoke of the explosion the ghosts emerged. My predecessor stood in front of them, defiant and weapon in her hand.

I will not give the details of Khenka Szetschu’s death. All I will say is that she fought with the tenacity and strength of our finest warriors. She have been driven to madness during the war, but she was a Rezenaga to the very end. I want to say that my people continued to fight after her death, I want to say that we did not stop fighting until our final vessel was destroyed under the fire of the human ships. But that wasn’t the truth. The zealous fire of rage of my people had been smothered under the humans might, broken over their knee and turned into fear.  When our Empress fell, all hope was lost. The humans had won the war.

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