Part One:
The Fall of Mobius
One
"Realspace transition initiated, my Lord. Estimated time until window opening, is approximately twenty minutes."
Robotnik silently nodded his approval, beads of sweat glistened on his bald scalp in the dim light. The large man stood in the stale environment of a starship, at the fore of its long and narrow bridge. Around him lights of every colour blinked incessantly from bank upon bank of consoles that lined the narrow room, casting an unsettling glow that punctured the gloom.
He was entombed in the armoured shell of a warship that was probably more than a dozen times his own age, and it was not showing it well.
Islands of rust covered the dull and dented metal in spotty patches, while great clumps of coloured wires hung loose, dangling from missing panels overhead. The air was thick and smelled strongly of sweat and oil, the ventilation systems having long since decided to give-up working properly. A hotchpotch of mismatched machinery filled the guts of the old ship, from the many repairs it had received over the course of its long life from the tech-smith guilds of Kitsune.
Though none of this concerned Robotnik in that moment, he simply stood there at the foot of the foreword observation window. His chubby gloved hands were clasped firmly behind his back as the crew scurried around urgently behind him, attending to their tasks.
He calmly looked through the observation window, watching the nebulous, red hued 'fog' beyond. Of course, in actuality, there was no fog beyond the warship's thick hulls. It was merely how his senses perceived the chaotic swirl of unreality that humanity had come to know as warpspace.
The currants and eddies, the ebb and flow. The sea of unreality seethed and moved with a seeming purpose veiled behind the chaos, as if possessing a will of its own. It looked so peaceful, so calm from the illusionary safety of the ship. However, warpspace was far more deadly than any man-made weapon of mass destruction. A testament made all the more clear by the crew as they hurriedly checked and rechecked sensor readings and the engine output, whilst constantly updating the ships navigation computer and reality bubble parameters accordingly.
Robotnik had seen fleets made-up of hundreds of ships disappear in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again. All because of a slight navigational error or an unexpected warp storm. Millions of souls lost in an infinite blood red ocean. In the end, they were but petals adrift on an infinitely cold and lonely sea, left to the mercy of an uncaring tide.
"Realspace window forming."
This must have been how the mariners of ancient Earth felt, Robotnik thought, to be at the mercy of something greater than oneself. He detested it, feeling so small and insignificant. Still it was a necessary evil, without warpspace the distances between the stars were impossible to travel. And the star that lay at Robotnik's final destination was very special indeed, if the information he had received was accurate.
Nevertheless, it was worth the risk to his reputation, and even his life, in convincing the Warlord to commission this 'little' expedition. Fate favoured the bold, and with more than twenty warships and auxiliary vessels under his command, the Warlord had placed a lot of trust in him and his information.
"Vanguard jumping to real space now."
A small ship, little more than a jump engine and a sensor package bolted together, detached from a long strand of metal cabling that had tethered it to a specially designed transport. The small ship disappeared in a flash of rainbow colour as it burrowed through the barriers that separated the two realities.
One thing still bothered Robotnik however, a thought that niggled at the back of his mind and refused to release its acid grip, casting an uncomfortable layer of doubt on his actions thus far.
The stranger who had approached him had asked for nothing in return. All he had said was that what Robotnik would do with the information would be payment enough. Could he truly have known though, and if so, what would he gain from his actions? Perhaps the figure had simply been a manifestation of Robotnik's destiny, sent by some surviving god of ancient Earth to usher him along the path destiny had chosen.
"Vanguard returning in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."
Robotnik heard a collective intake of breath from the crew. So much rode on the little ships return, the months that it had taken to get here all for nothing if it did not. A heartbeat later the small ship reappeared. It sat in the same space it had occupied mere minutes before, waiting to be retrieved by its mothership, as if it had never moved.
"Vanguard reports that everything is clear, proceeding to exit warpspace. Jumping in three hundred seconds," a faceless subordinate announced, snapping Robotnik from his reverie. He continued to gaze through the observation window, ignoring the renewed fervour of the crew behind, as perhaps the most dangerous part of their long journey awaited them.
The corridors between warpspace and realspace created by these windows were notoriously unstable. And deservedly so, a single mistake could collapse the tunnel and crush the ship into atomic dust before anybody could have a chance to realise what had occurred.
Alert lights flashed red up and down the ship as klaxons hollered a warning. "Realspace transition imminent," a hollow voice echoed through the corridors, as the ship's crew hurriedly strapped everything down before doing the same to themselves.
The bridge crew buckled themselves into their chairs as they continued to work away at the computers. Robotnik just stood at the front of the bridge not tearing his gaze from what lay beyond the observation window.
The deck beneath him began to vibrate as the ship moved to cross the dimensional bridge. The blood red fog beyond the observation window began to churn, betraying glimpses of inky blackness. The vibration grew suddenly into a violent shuddering, forcing Robotnik to take a handhold on a nearby railing in order to steady himself.
Like a curtain drawn back the blood red retreated, giving way to cold blackness speckled with white. The infinite red ocean was but a dim memory.
Suddenly the bridge was engulfed by the silent darkness, as if the blackness of the void they now occupied was somehow infectious, but Robotnik barely noticed, not even when his feet left the deck as the artificial gravity cut out.
His eyes narrowed and a faint smile played across his lips. Straight ahead, twinkling invitingly in the distance, almost indistinguishable from amongst the cluster of stars in which it hid, lay his prey. A small blue-green world; Mobius.
Lights began to flicker on again and computers hummed back into existence, as life was breathed into the old ship once more. Loose items that had floated freely moments before crashed back to the deck and Robotnik returned to his feet with a gentle thump, as gravity slowly regained it's grip on all.
Several silent minuets passed until an officer announced, "All ships report that realspace transition was successful."
Robotnik finally turned to face the rest of the bridge; he could see the sense of relief on their faces. "How long until we arrive at the target?" he asked the officer at the navigation station.
"Fifteen hours and forty-seven minutes, my Lord," the officer answered after hurriedly checking his instruments.
Robotnik turned to leave, his boots clanking along the raised walkway that ran down the centre of the bridge. "Snively, I want the scans of the planet sent to my terminal as soon as they come in." The bridge doors parted obediently and Robotnik stepped through.
Snively, a diminutive man with a rather large needle-like nose and a handful of wispy hairs that clung desperately to the top of his head, was Robotnik's second in command, and he could not stand the insufferable little man. However, even Robotnik had his superiors, for now. Speaking of which: "Oh, and send a report to Warlord Julian, tell him we have arrived at the target system."
"At once, my Lord." He heard Snively's characteristic nasal whine reply, before the doors had had a chance to hiss shut behind him and block the noise.
Robotnik made the short walk from the bridge to his private chambers, through the gloom of the cramped corridors that snaked their way throughout the old ship's hull like clogged arteries.
"Lord." The two guards that stood an eternal vigil at the entrance of Robotnik's chamber saluted at the Fleet Lord's approach. Robotnik paid them no attention as he walked passed them and entered.
The cavernous space contrasted sharply with the rest of the ship. It was like a bright and silvery oasis in a vast and decaying desert. The stark metal of the walls and floor shone in reflected starlight that pored in through the massive observation window that dominated the far side of the chamber. The window curved upwards until it met the ceiling, and looked out upon an endless sea of glinting stars.
"Did you detect any unusual transmissions after the jump?" Robotnik asked the empty chamber as he took his seat at his desk in the centre of the room.
The desk was made of the same stark metallic-silver that everything else in the room was, it curved out of the floor in the shape of a crescent moon. It seemed to lap against Robotnik, like a solitary wave in a deathly calm ocean. A computer monitor and keyboard were set into its smooth surface.
"I did, master," the empty chamber answered. Robotnik look up from the monitor to see a wiry green man veiled in shadow. He returned Robotnik's gaze through beady red eyes, slick greenish-black hair radiated from the side of his head in eight thick strands, like a spider's legs.
"Which ship?" A spy! That was all he needed, a snivelling toad of the Warlord's slinking around unchecked.
Politics in Julian's court was a rather complicated and tiresome affair. While Robotnik had long been his favourite, he still had many detractors within the ranks of the other Fleet and Planetary Lords. Obviously one had gained enough influence to catch the Warlord's ear, and begin sowing the seeds of Robotnik's eventual downfall. Just as Robotnik had done to his predecessor.
"The Autumn Rain, master."
"Hmmph." He would have to deal with it somehow, and quietly too. No need to get the Warlord all worried about nothing now.
"That is all, Grimer," Robotnik dismissed the creature. "Attend to your other tasks. We have much to prepare for."
"As you wish, master." With a bow the creature disappeared back into the shadows.
Several minutes after Grimer had gone Robotnik opened one of the desk's drawers and removed a small metallic box, which he set carefully onto the surface of the desk. He slipped the glove from his right hand and placed his thumb on the small pad of the fingerprint-DNA scanner, a second later the box clicked as it unlocked. From inside he produced an amount of black cloth, unfolding the cloth revealed a small crystal.
Robotnik held the delicate crystal between his forefinger and thumb, light gleaming off its faceted surface. A data crystal, technology not used for over a thousand years. Robotnik smirked, technology that no one had been able to replicate in over a thousand years. What he held in his hand was a relic from a forgotten time. A time when it meant something, beyond the simple struggle for survival, to be human. A time which, Robotnik knew, was his destiny to bring around once more.
The terminals incessant chirping broke Robotnik's train of thought, the screen recessed in the desk announced that it had an incoming message. He quickly wrapped the crystal in its protective cloth and placed it back into the box, before tapping a key. Snively's face appeared on the screen.
"What do you want?" Robotnik snapped.
"The scans you requested of the planet are coming in now, my Lord."
"Is there anything else?" Robotnik asked when Snively did not immediately disappear.
"Well, sir," Snively said nervously. "The first scans suggest that the planet has a mid to late level five civilization, which is far higher than you indicated."
"Obviously, do you have a point or not?" Hmmm, level five, that was nearly spacefaring capability. While he knew the crystal's information to be out of date, the level of the indigenous populations' advancement had been higher than he hoped.
"Well, I was wondering if the forces we have will be enough."
"They will do. I assume you have already sent this to General Granite?"
"Yes sir."
"Very well, after he has had a chance to look over the readings himself, have him come here."
"Certainly, my Lord," Snively inclined his head in a slight bow and a moment later his face was gone, replaced with that of a planet.
Robotnik flitted through some of the readings, there was little there yet and it would take them months to scan the whole planet thoroughly.
He stood and slowly paced up the steps towards the observation window. He watched Mobius; the planet was little more than a speck of light so very far away. Mobius was a big planet, but at least it was a start.
Several quiet minutes passed before Robotnik heard the hiss of his chamber's door. He turned to see a stern looking man with a thick bushy moustache, General Granite. He stood to attention at the foot of Robotnik's half-moon desk, in his crisp grey uniform.
"You summoned me, Milord?" the man said.
"General Granite." Robotnik smiled broadly. "Yes. I'd like to discuss with you your plans for the invasion of Mobius."
- - - -
Mobius continued to spin serenely in the void, without a care. Circling its parent star as it had done so forever.
But every second that passed slowly brought the swarm of shadows closer, bringing with them a promise of death and destruction. Like a plague of hungry locusts ready to descend on fresh fields of cereals, and cover the little world in darkness forevermore. Second by second, the cold uncaring shadows grew closer, ever closer.