“I wanted you to see this,” Adrian said.
“Why? Do you think that if I see you defeating these weaklings that I will change my mind, counsel my Elders not to attack you?” she said harshly. She couldn’t contain herself; this was her blood call. And she was seeing it fulfilled by another.
Adrian gave a sad shake of his head. “You told me that this was important to you, to see the Ra’a’zani dead for massacring your people.”
“I thought that your Empire doesn’t wipe out weaker civilizations. Does that cover only those races that didn’t have the chance to harm you? Are you perfectly fine with killing others when it is out of revenge?” Anessa asked sarcastically.
“You think that you know everything, that you know what my people are ready to do,” Adrian said as he turned towards her, his expression harsh. “We don’t wipe out entire civilizations when there is another option. You think that that makes us weak; I assure you it does not. The end of Ra’a’zani civilization begins now, not because we are vengeful, but because they are a blight on the universe. They made a conscious choice to enslave others with full knowledge of what they were doing, and they cannot change. Their culture, their economy, and their industry all rely on slaves. We gave them several chances to surrender. They refused.” He calmed down a bit, taking a deep breath.
He turned to look at the planet on the holo. “What we are about to do, we do with full understanding of what the consequences will be, and with a heavy heart. But taking a life of a sentient being should never be easy.” He turned to look at her. “You would’ve bombed this planet and wiped out all life on it, with no regard for those that the Ra’a’zani had enslaved, thinking that they are weak. But they are not; they just haven’t had the opportunity to become strong. We are going to give that to them, but the choice of using that chance is ultimately theirs. If they squander the chance we give them, they will remain weak and we will let the universe decide their fate.”
Anessa grimaced. Everything he said went against all that she knew. “And how will you end their civilization without bombing their worlds? Will you become like them and enslave them?” she asked. The Shara Daim abhorred slavery, both the slaves and the slavers. It was a weakness.
A hurt expression came over his face for just a moment, and Anessa realized that her believing he would allow such a thing hurt him. But quickly his emotions disappeared behind a blank mask. “No, we will not enslave them. We will kill them all, because they are too far gone to be saved. We have devised a pathogen that will make all of them infertile. They will not be able to reproduce; this will be their last generation. We will leave them on their worlds with no means to reach space, to die of old age. Their race will not end with a loud bang of a planetary destruction; it will end in a soft exhale of the last Ra’a’zani’s dying breath.”
Anessa looked at him, shocked. To create such a thing was an amazing achievement, one that her people would’ve never attempted, partly because they didn’t have the knowledge, and partly because they preferred to fight and grow stronger from the battles against the weaker races. But to end a race like that, it was a fate far crueler than what she had believed this Empire capable of. She couldn’t imagine living with the knowledge that her people would die, and that there was nothing that she or anyone else could do about it.
“So,” Anessa said, giving him a level look, “you will wipe out an entire sentient species from the universe, and yet you frown on the actions and beliefs of my people.”
“You still don’t understand,” he said slowly, pityingly. “The Ra’a’zani will be gone, but something new will be born out of their ashes. It was never your actions that bothered us; what you are doing is the rule of the Universe, the strong survive and the weak perish—we understand that. It is your core beliefs that we take issue with, those that say that you are better than everyone else, that you are destined to rule. You don’t fight against other races because they have harmed you first; you do it because they are in your way.”
Anessa watched him, wanting to ask him about what he meant by that, but with a glance and a gesture, he dismissed her. Sending her back to her quarters under guard, his face filled with disappointment. And somehow, that disappointed expression hurt her more than anything had in a long, long time.
Chapter Eight
Military transport; Inside Lu’tal’s atmosphere
Commander Sahib Adin waited patiently for his drop-pod to be launched out of the military transport. The fleet was hammering the Ra’a’zani planetary defenses, opening a path for the transports. Suddenly, Sahib’s comm chirped and the pilots informed him that they would be dropped in fifteen seconds.
The chatter from his squads washed over him as he steeled himself for the uncomfortable drop. Fifteen seconds later, his pod launched out of the transport with a lurch. G-forces pressed at him even with the absorbing foam and the dampener field. Then the landing burst initiated and the pod slowed down abruptly, the dampener field working overtime to counter the forces that would’ve splattered him otherwise.
Once the pod was safely on the ground, the pod’s front panel exploded outwards and he stepped out, his weapon at the ready. Twenty-eight other pods were arranged around him; twenty-seven of them were his people wearing combat armor, but from the last one emerged a female figure wearing Sentinel armor. Three blue glowing lights were embedded into hard plates on her chest. Her torso and feet up to her knees were also made out of hard plates and painted silver; the rest of her was covered in small black, scale-like plates. Sentinel Aileen walked over to him and shook her head. “I don’t know how you do this every time you deploy somewhere, but I am never doing that again,” she said slowly.
Sahib grinned inside his battle armor. “Well, we don’t do it every time.”
“Once is more than enough,” Sentinel Aileen said as she shook her head.
“It will take us twenty minutes at full run to get to our target. You sure you can keep up?” Sahib asked.
“I could leave you in my dust, soldier, finishing our mission before you even arrived. But I will match my speed with yours; no point in me taking all the fun,” she said jokingly, but Sahib knew that she wasn’t really joking. He was Adrian’s friend, after all, and was perfectly aware of what a Sentinel could do.
“Right, then. Wolf Platoon, move out.”
Twenty minutes later, they reached their target: a larger complex inside a mountain. Two large anti-air turrets prevented any air support from approaching, which was why they were here on foot. Their mission, operation Last Chance, was to take the complex and disable the anti-air turrets, allowing for shuttles to land and pick up their cargo, which was deep inside the building.
“So… a frontal assault?” Sahib asked.
“Yes, and they will be very protective. We need to move through them quickly, killing all in our path, before they decide to barricade themselves into the birthing chamber,” Aileen responded.
“We know what to expect from their guards and soldiers, but do you know what we will find inside the chamber?” Sahib asked.
She shook her head. “I know only what I overheard, which is little. I know that Ra’a’zani females rarely leave the chamber, but I don’t even know what they look like or what they are capable of.”
“Well, then, let’s get going. Move out.” He ordered his platoon forward. They crossed the distance quickly, entering the courtyard unopposed.
“We should’ve been challenged already,” Garth, one of his teammates, said over the comms.