Chapter 28

“Likewise, the fixation on the personal power of the emperor himself suggests that there is a sort of state religion in place, with worship of him at its center. Of the man himself, we have been granted some insight thanks to his publication and widespread dissemination of a book of personal philosophy entitled “The Necessity,” which has provided us with an extremely bleak and nihilistic interpretation of the universe and informed us of certain specific practices that the Dominion uses. For instance, in the book we hear that military units are structured in sets of nine within the Dominion, with ten being trained, and then the ongoing loyalty of the others to the Dominion’s cause is permanently assured by having them choose and kill one of their comrades in arms, sealing them to one another and the empire through guilt and the sunk-cost fallacy. This suggests that almost every aspect of life within the Dominion is under the emperor’s direct purview, and that he uses manipulative psychological techniques to force compliance and obedience. Possibly even convincing his victims that they respect and admire him.”

—Our Unpleasant Neighbor, Theron Greenmantle, Part Two

Orbital defenses had activated around Leitnir 7. 

Ancient Aion constructs were swinging into place to block their approach now that Sylvas and the others had arrived. Shields were flung up around the ship immediately. Stories about what Sylvas and his party had encountered before had spread rapidly throughout the ship once there was some downtime, and everyone was well prepared for them. There was a lurch as the curved orbital platforms shifted to capture them in a well of artificial gravity that would prevent them from escaping the system, but the bombardment that Sylvas had been expecting didn’t come. The weapons arrays on the platforms were already busy with a prior engagement.

Rapid scrying showed six ships flitting around the platforms, each of them half the size of the Dusont Gunship but with a far more wicked array of armaments on display. They were jet black, jagged, and immediately identifiable by their forward-slung wings. Obsidian Dominion ships. The torrents of spell-fire being unleashed by the platforms pursued each of the ships as they flitted around, every one of them coordinated not to cross one another’s path or lead the artillery raining down on them into the course of one of the others. It was a complex dance, but Sylvas had confidence in his abilities. He moved them forward to join it. “Hit the platforms with everything that we’ve got. They can be taken down, they’re just tough.”

He dipped in close to the nearest platform, the whole ship thrumming with his will and power, ready to leap in whatever direction he chose. There were layered shields surrounding them to fend off the first blows of the Aion platforms if he failed to dodge the shots fast enough. Everything was ready. He was poised to make what had been a catastrophic failure the last time into a success. 

Then a vision flashed before him, instantly causing him to curse.

“Vaelith—” he started to shout, only to have the woman cut him off.

“Firing!” she shouted at the same moment she opened fire on the Dominion ship in front of them. One that was just starting to turn in their direction, according to the scry, weapons blazing with light.

Magic lashed out from the emitters slung beneath the bridge. Shards of shining green burst through the night and hit home. One deflected cleanly off the Dominion ship’s shields, but the other seemed to flicker on contact with it and then detonate. The explosion washed over the shields, doing no damage to the ship itself, but unleashing enough explosive force that it spun out from the arc it was flying in, giving the tracing fire of the orbital platform an opportunity to catch up.

Vaelith’s spell hadn’t been enough to penetrate the Dominion fighter’s shields, but the platform’s bombardment tore through them like they were made of paper. The ship buckled and collapsed in on itself a moment after.

Sylvas did not have time to divert his attention away from the battle outside. Not when all of the firepower that had previously been directed to one of the Obsidian Dominion ships was now freed up to come tracing over towards them. He resurfaced from the piloting trance as much as he dared. “Damn it. Why are they wasting time fighting us?”

“Because they’re the Dominion.” Vaelith’s answer was both curt and sharp, the woman already channeling another spell through the ship. “Always assume they are the enemy.”

Outside the window, more streaks of green went flying off towards the other Dominion fighters, but they were ready now, launching into evasive spins to dodge their attacks.

The barrage of destructive magic pouring out of the nearest orbital platform was nearly on them by the time Sylvas had reassumed control of the situation, mostly by sending the ship into a lurching sideways motion that ran completely contrary to how the engines should have propelled it to avoid them being consumed. Now that he’d been reminded how effective the platform’s artillery spells were, he had no intention of trusting in whatever shields the ship had to its name.

More green shots blasted out from the weapons cluster at the front of the ship, all of them aimed at the Dominion ships. Not trying to hit them, but to do what the Ardent had always trained their fighters to do, deny the enemy space to move, locking them in place so that the spells being cast could find them. Every one of Vaelith’s shots missed the fighters, and every one doomed them all the same, detonating in space to force them off course. Two of them nearly collided with one another as they flung themselves into evasive maneuvers. Another was caught in the firestorm as it failed to adjust course after being knocked aside by a detonation.

Dimly, Sylvas could hear voices on the bridge of the ship, shouting from the Ardent as the Dominion ship died, but he couldn’t tear himself away from his task long enough to take any of it in. He spun them around, running perpendicular to the platform that they were nearest, giving all of the weapons arrays stretched down along the belly of the gunship ample opportunity to lay into it with a full bombardment.

Which Vaelith did, releasing blade after blade of blazing green energy down upon the construct below them, tearing countless rents into the alien metal until Sylvas had to jerk them out of the smooth curve that he’d put him in.

“Moderate damage to the superstructure!” Kerbo called out from somewhere on the bridge. “But we didn’t hit anything vital! We’ll need to line up another pass to dig in deeper if we want to take it down!”

However, before Sylvas could spin the ship around to do exactly that, Vaelith’s sharp voice rang out immediately after.

“We don’t have enough Etherium for that!” she announced heatedly. “Reserves are already down a third and falling fast! We need to try something different!”

It didn’t take long for Sylvas to piece together what that something different meant, and he quickly started to discard vision after vision as he put a plan of attack together, eventually landing upon one.

Oh, they aren’t going to like that, Mira commented from within while rapidly supplying the course corrections and flightpath that Sylvas would need to execute it.

“Tough,” Sylvas grunted from his place in the circle as he shifted their flightpath into something more jagged and twisting, turning it until they were heading straight back down towards the construct. He pitched his voice higher so that everyone could hear him. “Digging in deeper! Brace for impact, just in case!”

Sylvas heard a renewed chorus of shouting break out from all around him as it became apparent what he was doing, that he had twisted them around to make a run straight at the center of the orbital platform this time. The smooth surface of it glowing with power filled his vision. But this time he wasn’t aiming to strafe it. He was intending to ram it at full speed, pouring more and more mana into the engines. 

Dimly, he could hear more screaming out in the real world, maybe even a few hands on his body when someone in a brief moment of panic tried to drag him out of the command circle, to stop him from making what they thought was a suicide run. But then it all faded away as he split his mind and fell deep into his body, channeling all the magic he could bring to bear.

Raising his hands, he cast his own shield around the ship. Not the weak protections that the Ardent had conjured, or even one of the simple Gravity Shears that he’d mastered before setting foot on a ship’s bridge. He summoned a drill of twisting gravity and war, pouring power into it until it entirely enveloped the gunship. It was no longer a ship; it was a missile, a weapon, and he had aimed it right at the center of their enemy.

The spiral of red and black completely blinded the ship. They were inside the spell that he’d cast, but he didn’t need to see where they were going. He’d set their course. All he needed to do was see it through to the other side. 

The tip of the drill struck the slick surface of the platform and bit in.

The platform couldn’t fire at itself, and while the other platforms did begin repositioning themselves to fire on the ship, they weren’t going to make it in time. Sylvas dipped his consciousness back into the ship for just a moment to pour yet more mana into the engines, then snapped back to reality just in time to hear the shrieking begin. The drill carved into the ancient space-bound monolith. It dug through the layers of spells and stone and whatever else the Aions had left behind. They dug their way inside the platform, and by the time that the other two in orbit had moved to open fire on them, they were cutting their way out of the back side.

The spell dissipated as they emerged back out from the molten core of the platform into open space, and the whole tide of the battle had been instantly reversed with that one blow. The platform that they’d cut through was riddled with cracks, and as magic charged inside of it to unleash its next attack, it shattered. The explosion made no sound in the vacuum of space, but the impact washed over them like a wave, launching them away from the spreading cloud of debris that would surely follow. 

Without the third part of their harmonics, the other two platforms could no longer affect gravity, preventing travel through null-space. That changed everything.

During their reckless attack, and no doubt aided by Vaelith’s earlier attacks, the remaining platforms had not only polished off the remaining Dominion ships and had continued repositioning to get their best shot at them, but now, with all the speed that he’d put on, and no longer needing to worry about other factors, Sylvas was too fast for them. Launching the ship forwards, he wove his way through the fragments of the destroyed platform to close distance with the surviving pair, casting through his eidolon as he went.

Just as they emerged from the chaotic debris, the ship slipped into null-space. They were only there in the absolute darkness for a fraction of a second before they blipped back into existence in the real universe, behind where the platforms hung in space. “Fire!”

Vaelith unleashed a torrent of green construct projectiles that ploughed into the dense surface of the platforms and detonated once they were under the surface. The smooth expanse of the orbital defenses became pocked rubble as the gunship swept by. The shielding woven into the stone fractured as the spell work was disrupted. Sylvas flipped the ship through a full turn and returned them along the same course to prey on the exposed stretch. Now the spells hit home and detonated huge chunks of stone and metal away from the Aion superstructure. Whatever spelled intelligence had been implanted into the other platform finally came to the conclusion that the one they were attacking was a lost cause and opened up on them with a full release of every spell and weapon it had on board.

Exactly what both Sylvas and Mira had been waiting for. Dropping back into his body, he cast through the eidolon, one tear through into null-space directly behind the last surviving platform, and then one between the two platforms. 

With a heave of power and will, he opened the second one wide, expanding it out and out until the empty black expanse threatened to slip loose of his hold and expand forever, then it was over. All of the artillery fire that had been flung into the abyss had returned, condensed through the other portal, striking perfectly into the back of the undamaged portal with all of its destructive might. It hammered into itself with every spell at its disposal, and when it finally died, he slammed the portal shut so that the spells that remained in flight could carry on through the shattered husk of the superstructure, across the intervening space, and into the orbital platform that Vaelith had been brutalizing. 

All three platforms, all six of the Dominion ships, destroyed in the span of less than a minute. It was amazing how much of a difference the completion of his covenant had made.

“So”—Sylvas took a deep breath as the last of the chaos settled, and he let go of the ship, turning to look back at all the others who looked at him in amazement—“who wants to go crack a vault with me?”