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When she’d been a youth, there were three disciplines that her father and mother had instilled in her. The first was the importance of books, experience, and education for the mind. To help the mind grow strong and to gain greater understanding of the Universe and all the knowledge it possessed, books and learning were an essential part of her life.
The second was martial arts. She was taught that the body was a temple, and one of the best ways to respect it was martial prowess. With the disciplines of multiple styles and techniques, some truly ancient, she had gained mastery. Additionally, she was an expert sharpshooter, skilled swordfighter, and could expertly wield a staff in attack or defense. Martial arts made the body strong, supple, and immensely capable.
The third was meditation. To best connect the mind and body, the spirit needed attention. To that end, meditation allowed her to sink deep into herself while being ultimately self-aware and mindful. Meditation opened the Universe to her in ways that she knew helped her to be the best she was with all that she did.
Ilizeva continued to make time to read, practice martial arts, and meditate daily. It was these practices she most credited with her continued success and the respect she both gave and received in her life.
Prior to battle, drill or real, Ilizeva found meditation allowed her clarity of thought. That helped her strategic mind see and work the overview of any plan, and her tactical mind to work with necessary changes and adaptations required in virtually any combat situation.
During this meditation, Ilizeva was considering the audience the Synod had had with the Grand Master of the UEO. His warning of unintended consequences from actions was something she was completely familiar with. What that might amount to was outside of anyone’s control.
Ilizeva was a believer in transtheism. The Grand Master of the Universal Energies Ontology was the head of the religion in its formal form. Elves, sun, moon, stars, and dark alike, might have believed in deities of some sort in the distant past, tens of thousands of years ago. Those had all been forgotten and replaced by science and/or transtheism.
Transtheism believed that there was something beyond what one could see, hear, and otherwise sense, that the Universe itself had a consciousness that transcended deities. Monks and clerics of the UEO gave themselves to the Universe, and in so doing gained power to manipulate Universal Energies and their own life-force – chi - to do wondrous things.
Traveling the stars showed you incomprehensible wonders. That doubled as soon as you crossed the threshold to unrealspace. In all her travels, Ilizeva had become convinced that something grander than any beings, beyond the notion of gods, shared creation with all.
She knew in her heart and soul that there was something bigger than herself, the drow, the elves, and all else. What that was didn’t matter in the face of living, in the moment, in the Universe. It was a particularly comforting and empowering notion to Ilizeva.
Because she felt the deep connection to the Universe via transtheism, Ilizeva felt that she was better connected to herself. That connection between herself and the Universe led her to believe that her purpose in life was to deliver the long-awaited payback to the elves for wronging her people.
Still, she would heed the warning from the Grand Master, and remain vigilant. She was not so hell-bent on revenge against the elves that she wished to do greater harm to the galaxy at large.
There was a chime, and Ilizeva was back to herself, her meditation interrupted, but not unexpectedly. She activated her chatter. “Colonel?”
“The fleet is ready, General,” Colonel Ulozov informed her.
Ilizeva returned to the bridge of the Nuummite Raptor. Once again, her flagship was surrounded by a fleet of drow warships. But this time, there were also hobgoblin and troll warships. This offensive would be against a larger target.
Unlike their prior attack, Ulozov had ordered both her ship and the rest of the fleet to battle stations. Now, all that they awaited was the word from her to strike out and begin.
“Open the fold,” she ordered.
Once again, space appeared to fold in on itself at a small point, then it erupted like a volcano into a ring of distortion that appeared cloud-like, with a grey-orange-blue glowing portal at its center.
“Proceed,” she ordered.
The starships of the drow, hobgoblins, and trolls flew into the portal. As the last passed through, Ilizeva’s flagship followed. On the other side of the fold, Ilizeva’s fleet had emerged above a group of sun-elf starships and a small, wheel-and-spoke space station.
“Targets locked,” a bridge officer reported.
“All ships reporting target lock,” another said.
“All ships, weapons free. Attack,” Ilizeva ordered.
The sun-elf starships had no time to react, no time to raise shields. The synchronized pulse cannons of the drow, trolls, and hobgoblins blazed across the void at them. Missiles and torpedoes punched holes and blew ships apart. Ilizeva noted in the haze of combat that the elves hadn’t even sent signals out before they were being decimated.
It was a brutal but swift battle. The drow remained focused on destroying the sun-elf starships. Because it had been a surprise attack and the drow had brought more ships than what they faced, the elf ships not immediately obliterated could hardly raise shields or maneuver to defend themselves.
The trolls and hobgoblins had veered off and focused on the station, firing SPP, missiles, and torpedoes without pause. They destroyed it before defenses could be raised, and what little defensive fire lashed out from the station was ineffective, too late to stop the attackers.
In just over three galactic standard minutes it was over. There was naught but debris, large and small, where the starships and station had been. Flashes of light from pieces of the wrecked elf forces indicated ongoing secondary damages.
“Does any opposition remain?” Ilizeva asked.
“No, General,” Ulozov replied.
“Damage reports?”
“We are receiving reports that none of our starships, nor the hobgoblins or trolls, have taken any significant damage. Zero casualties have been report.”
“General,” the Nuummite Raptor’s captain, Major Onuzov, called out. “We’re getting reports of survivors, sections of the station were airtight and are intact, as well as escape pods. Do we give quarter?”
“Yes,” Ilizeva said. She felt Ulozov look at her with surprise. “However, no rescues. We leave them and allow them to call for help. Pass that on.”
“Yes, General.”
Ilizeva listened to communications back and forth between the ships of her fleet and surveyed what they had achieved. Less than three galactic standard minutes later, Ilizeva ordered, “Regroup. Prepare to fold.”
The starships of the drow, hobgoblins, and trolls maneuvered to take up position around the Nuummite Raptor. As she saw that they were in position, a communications officer called out, “General, we’re at full readiness.”
“Open the fold,” Ilizeva ordered.
As her fleet slipped through, Ilizeva knew that this time she was leaving behind not only a graveyard of wrecked elven starships, but survivors. Let them warn the elves that the time of retribution for their past misdeeds was at hand.
↔↔↔
She had always hated escape pods. They were tight and cramped, even when you performed maintenance on them and left the hatch open to the ship. They were far, far more claustrophobic when you were trapped in open space with five others.
She and her companions had been doing routine maintenance on some internal ship’s systems when their starship suddenly shook from multiple impacts. The unexpected attack had almost immediately disabled them, and it wasn’t more than a minute before the captain was calling for evacuation.
They’d reached the escape pods without incident. They’d gotten six aboard the pod, sealed the hatch, and ejected. Then they drifted, wreckage all around them from their destroyed starship.
She’d been able to watch the drow, hobgoblin, and troll warships firing on the base and the local task force through a porthole. In seemingly no time at all, it was all over.
They had expected to be hunted down and destroyed, but instead the attackers regrouped. Then, she saw how they had arrived with no warning. It had looked like images of wormholes she’d seen. Despite her lack of knowledge of such things, she knew it wasn’t a wormhole, but something else. Something more terrible that the drow controlled. After the last ship passed through it the strange portal closed and the survivors were alone.
She knew that the drow had once been called dark elves. There was no love lost between sun and dark elves. Though apart from a general distaste for the drow she couldn’t have explained, she had always been disinterested in them.
It wasn’t long before an officer sent out communication via chatter and ordered them to use maneuvering thrusters to group the escape pods together. The rendezvous point was near several sections of the station that had remained sealed, survivors within awaiting rescue. They did what they could to help the injured.
Long-range communications had been damaged, and the escape pod beacons would not be immediately registered. It would be almost a day before anyone would notice the beacons when the task force and station failed to check in.
Someone on the station’s remains succeeded in getting communications restored. They’d been told it would be a few more hours before anyone arrived to help. Her companions agreed that was an imperfect answer, but at least help was on the way.
It took her a great deal of effort not to want to crawl out of her skin. Fortunately, her companions were unhurt as she was, and kept largely to themselves.
Something caught her eye, a flash of light through a porthole. She looked out. Space erupted like a volcano into a ring of distortion that appeared cloud-like, with a shimmering blackness streaked by flashes of light, like a lightning storm, at its center. The same as she’d seen when the drow and their allies had departed.
Fear gripped her. Were they coming back to finish the job and kill them all?
What emerged from the portal were not drow, hobgoblin, or troll warships. Creepy, seemingly organic vessels with a hammerhead fore and strange protrusions at the very front, that almost stuck out like tentacles, were emerging. Alongside the unexpected and unusual starships, enormous, even more organic-looking starships emerged. Only she realized they weren’t starships at all but living creatures in the void. She couldn’t help herself and cried out.
“What is it?” one of the other survivors asked in alarm. Then, as he looked out the portal, he gasped.
Someone was on the chatter, calling out to the odd vessels and monsters approaching them. It was evident that it was a one-way conversation, as long pauses followed each plea for help, identification, and understanding.
After a few moments of uncertainty, matters got worse. She felt as though someone were applying a vice directly to her brain. It was disorienting, and very uncomfortable.
“Uhg!” one the other survivors cried out. “What is that?”
“I...I think it’s a psionic attack,” another said through gritted teeth.
Through her pained vision, she saw the distressing starships began to fire on the escape pods and remains of the space station.
“No!” one of her companions cried out in the grief, fear, pain, and terror on multiple levels that she was also feeling.
The attackers were closing in. The escape pod had no weapons and no shields. They could do nothing, they were helpless. Her heart raced in her chest and her head throbbed as she was gripped more and more by terror at the oncoming death.
There was an explosive, sudden, brilliant flash of light, and then nothing. All went black.
