He attempted fine klin beams, targeting her shoulder joints. But he quickly stopped, realizing what would happen to his body if her arm disintegrated out of nowhere. They were traveling at dangerous speeds. If he tried to catch his body before it could hit the ground, the resulting damage wouldn't be much different than if it hit the ground.
Varul stopped when it finally sank in. Liera came to a halt and she positioned Varul's biologics in front of her as her human shield.
"It is not wise to go any further than this, but if you insist, I will oblige," she stood 157 meters away from Varul. "If you try to use klin beams, they will hit your biologics, I will make sure of it."
"Are you certain of your victory, Priestess?"
"Yes. I can easily wipe you out," she pointed her gun arm at him. "I have voider mode. You have not."
“It’s easily solvable.” Varul scoffed. This was true, he only had to summon a new battle-frame with that configuration from the Darnek.
“But do you have time?” Liera asked, calmly. This was uncharacteristic of Varul whom she knew. She expected him to figure out the full extent of her plan by now. “We spent six minutes getting here, it will take another six minutes to get out. In eleven minutes, the dome reactor explodes.”
“How nice of you to spare five minutes for the negotiation, Priestess,” He frowned. She couldn’t see any cards that he could play now which would allow him to take back his biologics.
“We could start running again if you’re confident about your ability to get your body from me, but don’t forget whatever happens next is solely your responsibility. I’m offering you an easy way out, and this is the last time I will,”
“I won’t be stuck in the time loop with you for long. If you destroy my biologics, my brothers will destroy yours outside before coming here to get me out,”
“I wouldn’t make it that easy for you, Varul. If that is your intention, I will take this fight to the center of Rhea. I will unleash the greatest voider mode frenzy you've ever seen, and I will kill a few of your brothers in the process,” She told him gleefully. It was the worst possible outcome, but if it came down to it, she would do it. With voider mode, She had enough firepower to turn the Dome Reactor into a deep crater. Her base-frame was already there, she could easily return to 100% of her peak battle configuration with these new augments.
She and Varul had worked together for millennia. She hoped Varul actually remembered why she earned his respect. She didn’t need twelve replicants to do what he could do. If this battle was to happen, the time loop itself would be over. At least half of Rhea’s surviving population would be atomized, Calan could very well be a casualty, and the Vervid would escape containment to other areas of the planet, eventually figuring out its way off the planet, given enough time.
That wasn’t even the worst part.
”Think through this, is this something you want? If the events within the time loop were altered this drastically, We create a paradox. If I didn’t soul-split the child, you wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have called you about your brother’s sixth being found in an abandoned resonator, you’ll still idle beyond the frontier,” She knew Varul figured all of this out before throwing that empty threat at her. But he also needed to hear it, he needed to be shown how far she would go to not lose in a fight. “We will enter the timeline where none of this ever happened, and in it, The Vervid will have this entire planet.”
“Well played, Priestess,” He told her, his voice sharp and dangerous. “But what if I like that future?”
“It doesn’t matter what you like. It matters what your AUM friends think about it.”
She watched as his expression changed halfway to shock.
“Hit a nerve, didn’t I? That wasn’t hard to figure out. I don’t know who they are, I don’t need to know right now. I will kill them one day. I think you started your plan against me before you arrived. You didn’t like my war declaration, and you have a planet buster,” those were two facts that she always kept at the back of her mind during their entire time together. “I called you about your brother, I didn’t request you to move your entire fleet here. Who needs a planet buster in this galactic neighborhood? And who can afford to buy Varul the Second?”
“You’ve figured it all out by yourself then,” Varul looked ahead at the city. “Would you believe me if I said it’s not just about the money?”
“Of course, it isn’t. How else would you justify your actions to the Sect if it didn’t save our wonderful civilization?” She knew his playbook. It was no secret. Every decision he made needed to tie with God’s will. Not letting the Vervid spread to other worlds was in fact, God’s will.
“We’re wasting time. State your demands.” He set his sharp orange eyes on her optical array. She analyzed his face for a split second to figure out if he was genuine or not. He was serious now, after wasting nearly two minutes on meaningless banter. He was playing fake cards because he had no real cards to play. Defeat was bound to sting him hard, she noted it to herself to give him an easy out than he would reasonably expect. She would fight him to death if it came to it, but Varul was more useful as an ally than an enemy.
In essence, that was her demand.
“The first and the most important: You must enter a Red Sect Sovereign Pact that prohibits you from destroying Ephistome III. You must also deny any other parties from doing the same thing, at any cost to yourself,” She watched his face change.
“Cannot come to an agreement on the first half. For the second half, I’m already providing deterrence with my presence in this system.”
“I don't need deterrence. I need you to kill anyone that dares to destroy the planet when your deterrence fails.”
“Agreed, but in exchange, you give me my biologics.”
“Not so fast, Varul. Back to the first half, I decide when you get your biologics, not you,” His face twisted, and she knew he must have a reason to refuse it outright. “What’s wrong with the first half?”
“This planet might need to be removed, to stop this parasite from spreading to other systems. The time loop is a fragile solution and it is a precarious one. If containment failure is imminent, the only solution is to destroy it. It will be God’s will and a sanctioned action by AUM if it happens.” Varul stared at her expectantly.
“I will change the first half. Your problem is with preventing this action outright. I will change it to the following: You will not destroy Ephistome III without my permission.”
“What makes you the qualified arbiter?”
“Nothing, but I’ve gotten rid of the part you have a problem with. The planet can still be destroyed, someone needs to convince me that it's the right choice.”
“And you will always be objective?” He asked mockingly.
“If I’m not, I will be the one to take the blame for the aftermath, whatever it is. Red Sect does not look kindly upon miscalculations at this scale. It’s in my self-interest to be objective, Yes.”
Varul considered for twenty-two seconds. He looked up when he reached a conclusion.
“Agreed, I accept.”
Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds left.
“Second demand, you join my declaration of war against AUM,” She watched his face twist again.
“This is unreasonable, You’re not doing proper negotiations with broad strokes like this,” He tensed up, readying himself for drastic action in case the negotiation fell apart.
“…at a time of your choosing, on your own predefined conditions,” She added. She aimed the second demand to rattle him. Judging by how fast his demeanor changed, the declaration was the worst demand she could’ve made. She watched him relax his posture a bit.
“I can’t come up with a full list of conditions with the time we have left here.”
“How about just one to get started?” She simplified the demand. “You join the declaration when it is proven AUM used technology forbidden by God. This condition overrides any others that you will add later.”
She watched him think through it again. If she proves to the Red Sect that AUM has access to technologies that give them dominion over time, the Red Sect will be forced to go to war with AUM. Varul wanted to avoid another dark age where billions died. It wouldn't be good for business. He didn’t personally mind AUM having access to some device that could create localized time loops. He had a planet buster, an easy solution for such problems. He wasn’t paying attention to the possibility that this technology could be used at scales far worse than a city-sized bubble. Depending on how impossibly advanced it seemed to be, this was definitely a golden age artifact. AUM couldn’t have invented what Materium masters couldn’t do millennia ago. This had been kept a secret for a reason.
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“Agreed, If it is proven, I will join your war, The whole of Red Sect itself will join your war, isn’t this demand redundant?”
”It will still take time to convince everyone. You have to join with no deliberation or delay.”
“I see, agreed then.” He pointed his hand back at V2 Darnek. “Cinetra and your ascendant can sort out the details?”
“It needs to be approved and signed within the next minute, I will not move until I receive the transmission from my ascendant.”
Varul sighed, his last idiotic card failing right before him. “I’ve commanded Cinetra to send the signed pact to your ascendant,” He told her seriously this time.
“Good, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” She waited for Sineul to confirm.
> L98 BFrame: transmission received
- Sineul: It is done, my priestess
- Sineul: there is an additional stipulation that if the Second’s biologics were to be damaged before it could be recovered, the pact would be void
- Sineul: I find this specific addition suspicious
She triple-checked his transmission signature to confirm it was indeed from Sineul. The stipulation was a last-ditch nonsense effort from Varul to try and one up his chances. She wasn’t going to fall for it.
"Get out of here as fast as you can," She told Varul dismissively.
She engaged her Klin shield and jumped over him, rushing back towards the nearest exit from the time loop. She still carried his biologics safely, dampening all impacts with her Klin shield.
"You're supposed to hand it back!" Varul yelled behind her. While the terms were vague about what ‘damage’ meant, she didn’t leave it up to Varul to define. He could easily dismiss the pact if his biologics came to any harm, even if it happened while he was carrying it himself. While Varul liked his biologics, he wouldn’t be beyond breaking something to get out of the pact.
"If your biologics come to harm, it voids our pact. I don't trust you to carry it safely. We can regroup at the waypoint." She was already close to 600m away as she sent this transmission to him.
Varul came to a rough stop, crashing into a rock face as he reached the waypoint. He used everything he had to exit the time loop radius as fast as possible. He pulsed his klin shield to dig himself out of the rock face. Liera was half a kilometer away.
Panicking, he freed himself off the rock face, readying himself to head back if she couldn’t get out in time. As he rushed back towards Liera, He checked her location and found her exiting the radius safely with only seventeen seconds to spare.
The Dome Reactor explosion shook the ground beneath him. He saw Liera use the Klin shield to anchor herself just seventy meters away from the edge of the loop. This woman was a lunatic and she confirmed it over and over again with everything that happened between them so far. Seventeen seconds and seventy meters was too close, considering she risked his precious biologics.
But she had done it nonetheless. He was half amazed at this daring feat as much as he was annoyed at her for going through with it.
“Here you go.” Liera placed his body on a soft patch of dirt. It was still wrapped in blue foam and the Third was thoroughly passed out inside it. Time reset where they came from, erasing all the deep gashes on the ground they left as they exited the radius.
“You’re hard to win against!” He finally admitted. This hurt his ego like nothing else did in millennia. She had outsmarted his every move, and he knew now why she was feared and respected without a planet buster and a fleet of replicants. He had seen her ruthless tactics on the battlefield, but he had no opportunity to experience them at the receiving end until now.
“You didn’t make it too easy, I wouldn’t worry about it,” She pointed at the Fifth hovering above a mountain where she left the Vellek. He was a small dot from where they stood now. “You had a backup plan to destroy my biologics in return, a proportional response.”
Varul had arranged this response in a paranoid hurry in case the negotiations fell through. But Liera was wrong with her assumption here. He still wasn’t planning on destroying her biologics. He would never do such a thing to a Solarii female so beautiful.
He envisioned that bleak future much more pragmatically. First, he would have to console himself of the pain of losing his original, millennia-old biologics. After that, he could always clone himself a new body with his genome. He could take her biologics for himself. It would be a prized possession he could own for a long while until Liera could resurrect from a soul backup. Even then, she would have to fight for centuries to get it back from him, and he could always offer her easier ways out of her predicament if she could give him what he wanted from it.
He decided not to mention this to Liera. His infatuation with her had given her too many advantages in this current fiasco. She didn’t need to know more about it. He had Cinetra sneak a line into the pact to keep everything that happened strictly between them. He was pleased Liera agreed to it quietly without drawing any further attention to it.
> V2 BFrame: transmission sent
- abort mission, brother Fifth, negotiations were finalized
> V2 BFrame: transmission received
- V2-5 BFrame: a peaceful solution, I’m quite glad
The negotiation went better than he expected and there was no use in further hostilities. The Fifth was heavily opposed to harming the priestess or her ship in any way, but he obeyed Varul because of his loyalty. He was quite glad things didn’t escalate that far.
This was a more amicable deal than Varul had hoped. She had given him an easy way out. Maybe she didn’t hate him after all. He knew if he had such a huge advantage against someone else, he would’ve twisted the knife further.
“What will you do now?” He asked as he walked alongside her, carrying his biologics safely over his shoulder.
“I need a new base frame. I will be gone for at least eighty-nine years. You’ll keep this planet safe until I return.”
“After that?”
“I'll start by killing AUM.”
He turned to her with a frown. “They have a valid reason to do what they did here.”
“I assume you know more than me. Because they lied to me and tried to kill me as their first response.”
“I can arrange a meeting with Selus.”
“Selus can arrange a meeting with me, as he awaits his imminent death,” Her voice was hellfire when she said it.
“I found Anarul,” He decided to say, out of nowhere. There was no reason to hide information from her anymore. “At least I think I did.”
“Beyond the frontier?” She paused to look at him. “Are you spearheading an AUM rediscovery project?”
“All the former colonies beyond the 7200 light-year range were consumed by this parasite,” He told her abruptly. He didn't want to waste words on how or why he went beyond the frontier. They both came to a halt and stared at each other.
The information he just revealed had the exact impact he anticipated. He had seen the Vervid before. This is why he agreed with Selus, the AUM Prime Minister Supreme. The parasite could not be allowed to spread as it would eat the entire galactic civilization. It had eaten the former frontier with terrifying efficiency. It was unimaginable to allow this to spread anywhere near the densely populated center of the civilization.
His brother Anarul was likely the first to discover this in the current epoch. He was the only Red Sect Sovereign who was compelled to venture beyond the frontier while everyone else was preoccupied with internal conflicts during the 1270-year-long dark age.
“Do you have any idea who made it?” She asked, skipping several questions that he expected her to ask instead. She wanted heads to roll for it and she had to know which heads to detach. He had more shocking information to answer this question.
“I’ve come to this conclusion based on various evidence I have seen since my deployment beyond the frontier. I think the empire spread far beyond what it was claimed,”
“How far?”
“It is likely they made it orders of magnitude far than what is recorded,”
“That is impossible. The progenitor fleet only had near-light speed main drives. One light year per year, wasn’t that the golden age motto of the Empire?” She would be right if the history that they’ve known so far was true. Human Galactic Empire’s stated goal of expansion was exactly as she said. It was to conquer a light year every year.
“Is it so impossible? They improved main drives as they went along. This is how they reached the 10000 light-year boundary in six millennia,” It was no secret that Materium art evolved much further even when the golden age started to fade. Empire scientists found ways to improve the main drives. The progenitor fleet surely broke the light speed barrier, allowing them to reach the 10000 light-year milestone much earlier than anticipated. “The theory is they improved much further from there, double, triple, maybe even further. This knowledge was hidden and lost in the dark age.”
“Do you have any proof of these broad claims?” Varul knew she wouldn’t believe a word of it without real information. He had just one that he decided to tell her.
“I’ve personally jumped to 19000 light years. I found a colony, blackened with tar. This is the true face of what awaits humanity beyond the frontier.” Varul knew this would rattle anyone. Main Drive, or the Fold Drive in their ships weren't built for hopping thousands of light years. They came with hard limitations on prolonged use, and getting to such vast distances took extreme amounts of wealth. His journey of 9000 light years beyond the furthest known frontier point was comprised of 235 individual jumps across several known coordinates, it took nearly 8 years to complete.
“Do you mean to say the progenitor fleet extended twice as far?”
“Yes. Not even Selus knows exactly how far they went. He gave me the information about the furthest colony that he knew about and the coordinate map there. He funded fuel and fleet operation costs to show me that he wasn’t lying. It was no small amount to spend on such an expedition, I was intrigued solely because he was so generous. This is why I trust his judgment on this matter.”
“He is terrible at earning my trust, in comparison.”
He was taken aback by how casually she shook off what he just revealed to her.
“This thing ate billions of people, hundreds of billions. The Empire quietly swept All of those lost colonies under the rug. They wanted to get as far from the Sol system, perhaps rebuild their own civilization when the current one failed them,” He had made these assumptions based on what he knew. Selus had no interest in confirming or denying any of it. “Do you understand our position?”
“If what you're saying is right, this parasite came from the same humanity that reached the furthest point, this is something that they produced. So, this is golden age hubris, times a hundred,” She pointed at Rhea behind them. "Over that way, right now, there is something else that smells equally that way, the dominion over time itself. That is Selus' solution for the parasite. Do understand our position?"
"I hadn't thought about it that way, " he admitted. As he thought about these new ideas, he received several transmissions. He looked up towards the V2 Darnek. He narrowed his eyes, zooming at a point far behind it. He saw the supercarrier emerge from a gravity well.
> V2 BFrame: transmission received
- Cinetra: the first of second returned, he is reporting mission failure
- Cinetra: V2-1 S-Carrier has suffered catastrophic damage
- Cinetra: deploying builder swarms and initializing ship recovery procedures
> V2 BFrame: transmission sent
- send me a ship, right now
“Something’s come up,” He told her. “I have to leave.”
“What is it?” Liera asked curiously, zooming in the same direction he was looking at with her optics. “One of your ships? Why does it look…beaten?”
The First of Second had returned from his mission and his supercarrier was bent and twisted, barely holding its shape. Debris poured out from the gravity well before it dissipated and the ship floated lifelessly in space like a dead animal.