The Dying Peace Arc
Chapter 1
Omens of War
01.01.300AAC, Ti'Yan System
The name of the system was Ti'Yan. In a Yi-Tish dialect that been forgotten thousands of years ago, it meant 'the Oracle's Residence'.
At first view, the system was anything but remarkable. The asteroid belt and the diverse moons around the gas giants had long been stripped of their valuable resources. Ti'Yan was an old system, only ten jumps away from the capital-system of Yin. The Yi-Tish civilisation had long plundered everything they could and moved on towards better prizes. None of the planets and moons orbiting around Ti'Yan's star were the sort humanity could modify for their own use. There were three gas giants in the system, either surrounded by ice bodies or volcanic hellholes. No king or emperor was foolish enough to order a colonisation of those.
Ultimately, Ti'Yan would have been unremarkable if it had not a gigantic pyramidal-shaped space station orbiting one of the frozen moons of the first gas giant.
The spatial construction was huge. No, in fact this word was underestimating its size. The pyramid-shaped object was twice the size of the biggest spatial project ever built under a God-Emperor save the Five Forts.
The runic scripts and the decorations were of unknown origin. Certain travellers had made a rapprochement between this marvel and the ancient pyramids of the Ghiscari civilisation. There were still minor points to contradict this theory: by conservative estimations, the gigantic base was older than the ancient Ghiscari by at least a millennium and they had never managed to build something of this size or established colonies in this galactic sector.
Other theories had been similarly rejected. The origin of the space station was a mystery. As was its age, because methods of dating gave answers between six and fifteen thousand years old.
The more a man asked about this wonder, the more questions were raised. Because if the structure was full of mysteries itself, it was nothing compared to the entity living at the heart of it.
The Yi-Tish had called it the Oracle in their flowery language. It was not a man or a woman, though it could take a human appearance. Some of those who had looked at it had described it as a living statue. Poetic philosophers told their disciples it was a mystery of the universe, the perfect mix of flesh and celestial energy. The Oracle had taken many forms and it was likely that if it had a species it belonged to, they were no longer around.
Maybe it was the last representative of a glorious and powerful race having once dominated the galaxy. There were other explanations, of course, like the one which presented it as the first, sole and last inheritor of this citadel.
These enigmas aside, the Oracle held a terrible power. It had the answers to every question posed.
But there was a problem.
Any human presenting himself in front of the Oracle had the right to pose a single question. More, the entity simply refused to answer. And it was not a question per visit. It was a query for the entirety of the demander's life.
Now, this may still be considered a good bargain...but it was the Oracle who was sending the convocations by a strange mental command. Some visitors were summoned as soon as they set a foot on the space station. For others, the wait could take decades. There were still examples of old crones and agonising old men be called when they had waited since they were young children. There was no logic to it and the Oracle did not care about social ranks. According to the legend, a Prince of the Scarlet Dynasty had been forced to endure four decades of mockeries aboard before being granted the opportunity of asking his question.
The visitors who were here in a hurry scoffed in disbelief and left the system right after learning these non-negotiable conditions. Especially since the answers had a good choice to kill them. No one knew what the persons invited in the Oracle Chamber demanded, but there were frequent instances of them cutting their own throats or committing various suicidal acts once they were released. The Oracle was said to know Past, Present and Future. Such knowledge was not for the faint-hearted.
Humans being well...humans, it wasn't enough to stop a large majority from staying and waiting for their turn. The majority would moan and groan every day that things would go faster if there was a queue to join but the Oracle had never seen fit to change its methods in millennia. As a result, a thriving megalopolis had spread in the entrails of the space station. The ostensible goal was for the petitioners to stay alive until the Oracle deigned summoning them. The less respectable objectives were to squeeze a maximum of money from these unconventional dreamers. Clothes, food, little balls with snow and the emblem of the Oracle inside them, miniature reproduction of the pyramidal structure...force was to admit the Yi-Tish had transformed one of the great marvels of spatial engineering into a tourist trap.
Life continued. Centuries after centuries, the Oracle saw empires rise and fall, armies go to war, disasters and tragedies succeed to each other. Uncountable joys and triumphs could be recorded or not, the spatial station endured, impervious to the assaults of time and the small living things crawling inside its corridors.
For the denizens of Ti'Yan, this was a simple system and there were no exceptions to this. The stellar system was ignored anyway in every war...the Oracle could not be captured and an ugly end had befallen all those who had tried to prove the contrary.
Elders recounted the same thing to their children and grandchildren: in this system, the 'voice' of the Oracle was the only law which mattered.
They were completely wrong.
One man could present himself without invitation before the Oracle and ask his question.
And today this man had come.
Under the stunned eyes of the personnel maintaining the station monitoring systems, a great battleship had emerged from the sole jump point of the system, escorted by an armada of lesser cruisers and other warships.
Once given the proper codes, about four hundred shuttles demanded the permission to be received in the great docking bays. Minutes later, an impressive army of courtesans, officers wearing their parade armours, high nobles and eunuchs of the Yin court emerged to form two neat lines, restricting the access to the last golden shuttle to dock.
The smartest women and men instantly went to a prostrating position, knowing there was a single authority which could commandeer so many influential people.
In a deluge of traditional music, a golden ramp was put in place and Bu Gai, seventeenth azure God-Emperor of Yi-Ti, Celestial Protector of the Dawn, Master of a Million Legions and One, Great Prince of Yin and Holy Champion of the Light, marched out.
The consternation was complete among the Ti'Yan population. There had been no warnings that their divine ruler would come visiting the Oracle, no messengers, nothing.
Realising their error, thousands of men, women and children instantly prostrated themselves on the ground, preceded by a second or two by the courtesans, princes and imperial dignitaries. God-Emperor Bu Gai, resplendent in his azure and gold traditional Yi-Tish robes, continued his march, the Celestial Sceptre of Jade in his dominant hand.
In a matter of minutes, the supreme sovereign of the greatest human Empire in this galaxy found itself in front of the nine thousand nine hundred and nineteen marches descending to the Oracle chambers. The first step in the descent was taken without hesitation, the aged visage of the God-Emperor revealing nothing of the dangers waiting for him at the end of his travel.
There was no mental command from the Oracle to stop him and none would come in this long progression. By an ancient pact so old its very existence was debated by generations of erudite, the God-Emperor title was sufficient to be admitted at once.
After hours of descent where Bu Gai was forced to rest, eat and drink more than once, the great gates finally became visible. The solid doors were forty metres high and yet when they opened not a whisper could be heard.
Inside the room was in the penumbra but a brilliant circle could be seen. Bu Gai marched on top of it and spoke.
"Oracle, I am-"
"The God-Emperor..." The voice which had just interrupted him seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Its tone varied word after word. It was like a thousand people were hidden in the background and were taking turn after turn to speak. "I know."
"The seers of the Empire are receiving terrifying visions," said Bu Gai. His speech was jerky and poorly pronounced. The divine ruler of Yi-Ti was not used to plead his cause. "Beasts and demons which were sleeping for millennia are waking up. Loyal generals and princes are revolting with madness in their minds. I want to know..."
After a moment to steel his courage, the last azure God-Emperor pronounced the fatal sentence.
"I want to know the destiny of my Empire."
Before him a female figure bathed in light was shaped. The Master of A Million Legions and One sobbed quietly as the Oracle took the appearance of his beloved concubine Lin, dead four years ago in a conspiracy which had forced him to kill a third of his harem.
"Then watch, mortal..." Told him the Oracle in the voice of the woman he had loved.
And Bu Gai watched as millions of fragmented images submerged him. He saw his Empire, tearing itself apart in petty feuds and futile power struggles. He saw the millenary-old foundations of the thousand systems under his rule burning, priceless knowledge burning, armies annihilated and worlds destroyed.
This wasn't the worst part, not at all.
All over the stars, the kingdoms, citadels and empires of mankind were killing each other. A period of devastation which made the previous wars of this era insignificant such was the violence and the bloodshed caused. The God-Emperor saw gigantic fortresses fall, and soldiers of every armour colour possible die on millions of battlefields.
Billions, perhaps trillions had died.
And then the demons came.
From the Death Nebula, the devil-spectres attacked, crushing the isolated Five Forts before spreading into the Yi-Tish systems and devouring the souls of his subjects. The few legions remaining, weak and crippled by the multiple civil wars, were in no state to resist them.
From the great wound in reality the foreigners named the Doom, flaming monsters and flame entities were unleashed. Their appearance was fair and bright at first, and the celestial ruler could see millions worshipping them in adulation and ignorance. With each burning, the flames grew in strength until finally the monsters created an inferno to burn the galaxy. The flames of death consumed their priests and ravaged a thousand worlds in mere seconds.
The Breach-in-the-Stars, the other unnatural phenomenon at the edge of this galaxy, was assaulted by cold and terrible beings. Here the Oracle showed a far more united resistance but the inhuman enemies buried the human defenders with billions of their own dead. The stars grew cold and the planets froze. Order collapsed and one of the monsters let the greatest of the ice-cold entities rampage through tens of thousands systems.
There was also a fourth demonic threat, terrible and coming from the very depths of the Void. Those were the ancient heralds of madness and chaos, taking the forms of tentacles, black energy, starship-sized maws and eternal hunger. Unlike the other demons they were of this reality and yet not, having waited for their gruesome feasting for untold time.
Here and there, heroes died. There were some divine help coming but they did not present a united front and fell one by one.
Humanity died and the demons fought each other for the great tithes of flesh, bones and souls.
Then there was only darkness. The galaxy was a ruin devoid of life, full of stars extinguished and exploded asters.
It was the end.
"Everything is said, God-Emperor. Now carry the weight of fate and go!"
The man faced the ageless eyes of the Oracle and seemed to stand straighter before turning around and leaving the Oracle to its long vigil.
The long ascent back to his starship was a very long journey for Bu Gai but those who saw the pace of the God-Emperor believed him filled with a new determination.
They were right.
Three days after his return at Yin, three princes, nineteen generals and sixteen sorcerers would lose their head, all convicted of high treason.
Fifty-four days later, the greatest armada Yi-Ti had ever assembled in the last three centuries departed Yin. Over three hundred legions, six thousand warships and a chain of supply ships and transports it created an artificial eclipse when they passed between the capital and the sun. At their head was the God-Emperor himself and his family. Millions of engines burned and the fleet began its long travel to the Five Forts. For the troublemakers, loyalists and demons, the Azure forces had sent their message.
The Golden Empire of Yi-Ti was not going to die without a fight.
King Mance Rayder, 03.04.300AAC, Black Cairn System
Like many men before him, Mance had imagined the day he would be acclaimed King-Beyond-the-Wall would be a day of celebrations and joy, where millions of his people feasted and drank three times their weight in ale.
The meeting who had just ended with the clan leaders had not felt like this at all.
If he wanted to be truthful, it had had all the characteristics of a funeral.
The Free Folk had not cried, but their gloomy faces, the murmurs of condolences, the colours of mourning and the images of destruction shown by the antique holo-projectors of the Red Cloak's bridge were an adequate substitute.
They had had the confirmation the Snowhunter ships had been wiped out to the last, and though this clan had been a relatively small one, it was still one Ark, one Barge, ten large transports, dozens of scout cruisers and frigates, and hundreds of starfighters the Free Folk had lost. Between four and six million men, women and children, all dead...and sadly he had no doubt a good portion would not stay dead for long. Oh no, they would be resurrected as wights, these parodies of human life and hurled against their former friends with inhuman blue lights in their eyes.
Tender hands went to caress his shoulders, his neck and his back. Mance smiled but didn't turn. There were only two women left on the bridge of the Ark he used as his flag bridge and one would never touch him in this fashion.
"You convinced them," said his wife.
"I had hoped the death of an entire clan wouldn't be necessary for them to understand the threat we are facing." The sadness in his voice was not feigned. The Free Folk were his people and he had not begun to unite the clans and tribes of these stellar immensities to sacrifice them in cold-blooded stratagems.
"We are a stubborn people, Mance," Dalla was as beautiful as she ever was with her blonde hairs. Her belly was big now; her pregnancy had entered its sixth month and Mance gently joined his hands with her over the new life they had created in their passion. For their first child, he hoped it would be a little princess but time would tell. He had not been there for the latest medical exams of his wife as he intended the news to be a complete surprise. "The clans believe what they see and would never have taken you on your word alone. The White Walkers were just an old legend..."
'Were' was the key word here. Mance had been perhaps the first man after the greenseers to be informed of their resurgence but in the last decade countless clans had known of the abominations' return the hard way.
"Well I can't deny you have a point," he said with a large smile and kissing her softly on the lips. "The Free Folk are stubborn..."
For a moment they stayed there on their seats, kissing and hugging each other while looking at the planets and the stars. The great gas giants of the Black Cairn System were in view and the red giant star they were orbiting around was a red inferno. These were the asters the Free Folk ships were watching for the present and a recall how small they are all were when confronted to the mysteries of the stars.
Unfortunately this moment of relaxation and tenderness was rudely interrupted when Dalla's eldest sister marched imperiously onto the bridge with a sort of false reprobation on her face. Wearing the white battle-armour she had managed to build herself, Val was the very expression of death and beauty. Mance had never tried to court her. Not because she was his wife's sister or the next best thing a King-Beyond-the-Wall had of a chief of staff. He just was perfectly happy with Dalla and didn't fancy being 'stolen'.
"You organise council of wars on your bridge, Mance. Councils of love are for your quarters." When Val visage was like this, the men of Westeros would have accepted her as Queen the moment they saw her. "Or your warriors will believe you want Tormund to join the fun."
Dalla growled at her sister.
"You didn't come to warn me Giantsbane was on his way, don't you Val?"
He knew the blonde-haired formidable fighter didn't. For all her faults, Val wouldn't intervene in his love life unless he did something monumentally stupid.
"No, I don't." The two exchanged a conniving grin before turning serious again. "The ships we sent to Shadowbelt and Winterford have come back. They have seen no sign of White Walkers."
If they had been against the Night's Watch, he would have trusted the reports. Free Folk scout cruisers and frigates might be obsolete by the Essossi and Westerosi standards, but their commanders were the best. They had to be, for their engines, weapons and practically everything aboard were older than his great-great-great ancestors.
Alas, their skills and minds were nothing compared to the stealth capacities of the White Walkers ships.
"Let's not be too quick selling the skin of the direbear, Val." Sometimes his people were too easily baited in committing their forces when patience would have earned them a victory. "The Snowhunters thought they were safe too and look what it got them."
The white-armoured spearwife grimaced but didn't protest too much. She had seen the images brought by the lone raider which had escaped the slaughter.
"We have more scouts than them."
"And I'm sure the abominations have more than a single ship out there to hunt us." The former brother of the Night's Watch told her, making a gesture in direction of the stars. "Imagine what a pack of them could do against our Arks..."
By his wife's sister paling expression, she understood very well how bad the battle would be. The Arks may be far bigger than a conventional ship of the line, human or Other, but they were not true warships. The big hulks were carriers for the starfighters, possessed huge number of shuttles and great quarters for a civilian population. Mance was deadly sure one of the few remaining Night's Watch warships of this tonnage could have destroyed the Snowhunters. They would have suffered damage, but his former brothers would have won.
The Others were definitely far more powerful and the devastation unleashed by a single ship had convinced the clan leaders there was no way they could win against this.
Before the destruction of the Snowhunters, there had been talks of taking the war to the White Walkers. After, the commanders had agreed fleeing was just common sense.
"Were there new messages from the Children or the three-eyed crow?"
"Not a single one," told her darkly the new King-Beyond-the-Wall. The messages had been getting rarer since his last meeting face-to-face with the human figure trapped on his weirwood throne. When at the beginning of the decade news had been transmitted by magic or mortal means every four or five standard days, the rhythm had gotten slower. Eight years ago, it had become one message per ten days, a delay explained by another set of offensives launched by the monsters. Five years ago, he would have been lucky to have a message per month. Each little titbit of information was frightening and had caused him plenty of sleepless nights. The Children may have renewed their millenary-old war with the Old Enemy by a decisive victory, but it had been the last one. Now the tree-dwellers were crumbling against the onslaught. The last message had been eleven standard months ago and the Children's core systems were besieged by a terrifying fleet the likes had never been seen in the last thousand years.
"Not a single one and I fear there will be no more." He repeated. The recent apparition of the Enemy's warships in their systems was certainly not a coincidence. If this was not a sign the White Walkers believed they had dealt their great enemies a fatal blow, Mance didn't know what it was. "We will have to win our survival by our own efforts."
Val's nod was determined, but her very body language betrayed how she wanted him to be wrong. She wasn't the only one. But the survival of his people was too important for him to dream that somehow a greenseer was going to find a spell to throw back the White Walkers into the Hell where they had spent their last eight thousand years. Life wasn't a bard tale, no matter how much he loved singing them.
"It won't be easy, but the time has come to gather all the clans and tribes of the Free Folk." He told his wife and her sister. Both nodded at the same time. "Unless we want the White Walkers to pursue and crush us one by one, we must begin our journey towards the Wall. Val?"
"We are thirty-one jumps away from Craster's Fort." The fierce blonde-haired woman explained as she lightened the old tactical display. "Considering we have around four hundred-plus clans to gather and the strain each jump will place on our hulls, my basic estimate is that we will need eight months to reach the Breach-in-the Stars."
With her right hand, Val lighted a succession of stars between their current position and the stellar anomaly.
"I think our best course is to use the Fist of the First Men as our great muster point then launch a two-pronged attack by Whitetree and Milkwater on the crows."
Mance had learned tactics and strategy from the last two Lord Commanders of the Night's Watch and had perfected his talents since by leading his people in uncountable skirmishes. He didn't like hearing this strategy at all.
"It is too risky," he refused. "Coordinating hundreds of ships on a galactic scale is impossible and the crows have the interior jump lines." The Black Brothers had faster and more powerful ships too. The Free Folk great advantage was in the overwhelming numbers of ships they had. The Night's Watch had had less than five hundred warships when he departed; he would have at the very least twice that number in scout cruisers.
"The wargs present at the council promised they would help." By her dubitative tone, Dalla's eldest sister had realised how weak a proposition it was.
"I don't want their help, I want them to listen to my strategy and my tactics." The grimaces he received told him how miraculous it would be for that event to happen. Wargs had never been noted to be the most stable of individuals and the average Free Folk commander was courageous but undisciplined. "No, a two-pronged attack will only be an opportunity for the crows to defeat us piecemeal. I think you have a good point mustering our forces at the Fist of the First Men. It will put us in position to strike rapidly the Wall."
Not that he had any intention to ram hundreds of ships straight in the cannons guarding Castle Black. Many Kings had tried this in ages past, and the outcome was as predictable as it was bloody. No, once they got through the Breach they would harass the defenders and force them to stand their ground. As the Wall guardians were distracted, the Thenns and a few clans would sneak by the abandoned systems and assault them in their rear. Hopefully, it would be a victory won with minimal losses and it would put him in position of force to negotiate with the Northern Lords.
"We must also send new scouts," proposed Dalla. "Our people have been away for too long from the Eye of Woe, we don't know what the crows and the rest of the kneelers are up to..."
Victarion Greyjoy, 01.07.300AAC, Talon System, Basilisk Sector
By the Void God, Victarion loathed Talon One. The toad, skull and talon decorations were ugly. The smells coming from everywhere were awful – it took all he had to not vomit in the middle of the corridor. Everything was falling into disrepair and even the basic systems like the air, the water and the artificial gravity could fail at any moment. The fact said the mechanical parts used from the garbage compactors to the durasteel plates they were currently walking on had never been intended for the usage they were used did not help.
On Talon One, the goods traded and the entire environment had been pillaged somewhere else and the stealing succession was probably not over. The orbital station was the central hub of piracy and every possible illegal activity in the Basilisk Sector. Though calling 'illegal' some of the things done on Talon and the neighbouring systems was a bit of a misnomer. There were no laws in the Basilisk Sector save the one of the strongest and the always permanent threat a Triarch of Volantis was going to send a fleet to burn this hive of scum and villainy to the ground.
Victarion could honesty admit he didn't understand these pirates at all. By the kraken's maw, the lack of maintenance and proper care in the station was likely killing a score of men and women per day! If they had stopped sending sub-par technicians and slaves in the abandoned tunnels, maybe this orbital station would have been greater than the current cesspit of accidents and break-downs. But the pirate captains didn't trust each other not to steal their best engineers and crewmates, and so Talon remained in its dilapidated state.
"I hope this meeting is worth it, Adrach." He growled to his second in command, his mood getting worse and worse as he saw long traces of red and black painting the ground which had not been there during his previous visit.
Adrach Goodbrother – born in a lesser branch the Goodbrothers of Hammerhorn had likely forgotten a decade ago – did not even blink at the threatening tone of his Lord Captain and liege.
"Teach has not disappointed us so far, my King." His black eyes met the glare of Victarion with a certain measure of respect and prudence. "It was his information network which allowed us to attack the last two convoys successfully. We badly needed the fuel and the supply parts."
Victarion grunted in a non-committal tone. Force was to admit – only in his own mind of course – he had seriously underestimated the changes transforming a regular squadron to a pirate fleet required. Before the failed Rebellion, he always had the military infrastructure of Pyke to support his plans. Commanding warships in the Basilisk Sector with an inexistent budget, shipyards that could be generously called 'space dangers' and allies ready to stab you in the back wasn't an ideal situation.
This was why Adrach had been elevated to his position of Iron Castellan. The Goodbrother captain had little qualifications in battle tactics and war strategy, but he was excellent juggling with supplies and logistics. In the midst of these bloodthirsty 'corsairs', deserters, traitors and pirates, this was a priceless ability. They were far from the Iron Sector, and crewmen affiliated one way or another with the Basilisk pirates cared more about money, food, water, spare parts and luxury items than honour and faith.
"Assuming you get the rest of the promised shipments from Toad-face," which they wouldn't, he wasn't ready to bet a single coin on it, "will we be able to restore the Vigil of Pyke back to fighting condition?"
The longship had lost a third of its armament, half of its sensors and most of its counter-missiles defences four years ago when they had been pursued by a corsair squadron from Qarth.
"I...don't know my King," Adrach was grimacing like an enemy was about to eviscerate him. "The pirates we're dealing with never had many longships spare parts to sell in the first place. There were Iron captains regularly coming in these systems during the reign of Aerys, but they never stayed long and I fear we bought most of the available supplies when we arrived here."
Victarion did not like hearing this but nodded, marching right silently to avoid a large fight between two Tyroshi-born crews. Maintaining the longships in the Basilisk Sector was a true nightmare. They weren't compatible with the common Essossi technology and with the destruction of the Iron Fleet, finding replacement hulls would take a miracle. The Iron Retribution had been dismantled seven years ago, following the disastrous attack of a Braavosi convoy, and it left the Wrath of Iron the sole battle-worthy longship in his fleet.
"But your fleet is still growing size, my King." Today, mused Victarion, Adrach was really keen to see only the positive news. And though he might have a point, the brother of the fallen Iron King Balon Greyjoy wasn't going to rest on these congratulations.
"My fleet expands because we're capturing Volantene, Lysene and Tyroshi ships and recruiting thousands of pirates to crew them." He had hoped not to be forced to this extremity, or at least not in these numbers. Victarion had led himself many raids against the greenlander spaceships travelling through the Narrow Void, the Stepstones sub-Sector, the Dornish Rift and the Summer Void. Surely ancient veterans would learn of his exploits and escape the vigilance of the dragon's dogs. They would come and he would forge a new Iron armada.
It had not happened. Merely hundreds of Ironborn had rallied his banner instead of the expected tens of thousands and nine out of ten had already been fleeing when the Fall of Pyke was proclaimed to the rest of the world. There was no Ironborn flow of reinforcements to reinforce him. He ignored the feelings of betrayal like he ignored the pain of his old wounds. Raging against the cowardice of his former subordinates would not change things. But once he sat again on the throne...
The group formed by his ten reavers, Adrach and himself entered the vast hall they were supposed to meet their 'ally'. At the moment of its building, the place had certainly been the dining room of a Volantis Admiral - the flag officers of the First Daughter were the only ones to have the place to waste on this and they did it by cramming together their slaves in living quarters so small that simply sleeping in them was a torture by itself. How and when the hall had been integrated to Talon One, Victarion didn't know and he didn't really care.
What he could see anyway told him the location was certainly not used for activities the first owners would never have approved though you never knew with the depraved Essossi nobles. The space available to the pirates frequenting the orbital station had become divided between a strip-club, a casino, a mercenary recruiting point, a black market business ground, a bar serving only prohibited alcoholic beverages, several drug sellers and a slave market. Every hour there was at least one murder, the orgies and crimes against decency were uncountable and human lives were sold by the hundreds.
Had he been paid enough money, Victarion would have wiped out the place in a firestorm but he needed the contacts these fellow outlaws had. They were the only chance – a really tenuous and improbable one to be sure – he had of liberating Pyke and the Ironborn people. And it was why he marched towards the bar, followed by Adrach and the rest of his detachment. The man they had arrived to meet was here.
"Admiral Teach," Victarion did not salute, but his previous talks with the man had made him realise the man was arrogant and vain to the point the Targaryens were minor nutcases in comparison.
"Lord Captain Victarion Greyjoy," replied his interlocutor and the reaver who had once led the Iron Victory tightened his fists, thinking of the great joy he would have to beat this loathsome head into a red pulp. "Please be seated."
Victarion obeyed...after a few seconds, showing Teach he was not one of the lackeys he could order at his will. And for a good two minutes the two stared at each other. 'Ed Teach' – or whatever name he chose to use this month – did not look like a pirate. He wore a pristine white uniform with the elegant white gloves of the nobility and the golden decorations of his rank on his shoulders. His hairs were white-silver, his visage was so flawless it was a given genetic enhancements had played a role to make him attractive like this and his eyes were a colour somewhere between the red and the violet.
In short, this arrogant prick had the very appearance of a Volantene Admiral...which had something to do with the fact 'Admiral Teach' had once been called 'Admiral Iovinos Helloquo of the Volantene Navy' and had been retired forcefully in circumstances no one had ever been able to discover. Afterwards, he had embraced the life of pirate though his actions had made many whispering he had kept ties with his Tiger allies at home.
"I will admit I had my doubts your tiny flotilla could accomplish the ambush of the convoy." As always, it was irritating to hear this smug bastard speak. Volantis had really to be an unbearable den of arrogance with all these aristocrats of the Old Blood around. "But you seem to have succeeded with light losses. It is admirable for a man of your reputation."
Teach sipped in the nice cup in front of him. Victarion had no wish to imitate the Volantene. He had consumed enough pain-killers and drugs after the war to shorten his life by a decade or two, he had no death wish to drink the filth the pirate was addicted to and worsen his health.
"I have another mission for you."
"My men and I are not under your command, Admiral Teach," told Victarion. A few feet away, a corsair of Braavosi origin was found cheating in a card game and murdered by the other players on the spot.
"What a disappointment," the silver-haired pirate affirmed before drinking the rest of the blue substance. The hateful glance told the Ironborn leader that had he been really a subordinate, Teach would not have hesitated to throw him out of Talon One by the nearest airlock. "But you need my help."
It would have been good if it wasn't true...and if the Volantene-born outlaw had not been showing of his smug smiles.
"My ships are the most successful fleet operating in the Summer Void," reminded him Victarion.
This was the truth after all...Teach warships operated most of the time in the Jade Void and extorted astronomical sums from the slavers of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen.
"Your ships are a mere nuisance to any real navy," corrected the man who had definitely the traits and the arrogance of the ancient Valyrians. "You have...two longships, one Lysene super-cruiser, three Tyroshi Q-Ships, two Myrish protected cruisers and one Volantene strike-carrier." The next inaudible words uttered were certainly a curse destined to the ghost of the Volantene inexperienced enough to lose their ships against a bunch of under-armed reavers.
The listing did not trouble the legitimate King of the Iron Sector. In all his raids, skirmishes and punishment assaults, it was a given anyone who could count would have a good guess of his order of the battle. It did not count his auxiliaries, transports, supply ships and the like but to be honest they contributed little to his battle-firepower. Yes, Teach knew what he had under his command...and one longship and one of the Q-Ships would need a lot of reparation if they had to participate in a two-second long skirmish.
"You have no hope of retaking the Iron Sector by yourself." And all the while the pirate was widely showing his perfect white teeth. Nice to see he had a good dentist or that the genetics modifications he had been given were that good.
"Get to the point, Admiral Teach." Did the man consider him an idiot? Of course he knew he had no chance liberating his home from the greenlanders! If he had one, he would be at Pyke, killing the garrisons of the Tyrells, the Lannisters and the Targaryens. But with his current forces, all he could do was destroy some light units of the warships in orbit before the reinforcements of Casterly Rock translated in-system with murder in their eyes. He had neither the capital ships nor the land forces to fight the fleets and the armies of the Iron Throne.
"There are people who think the Targaryens and their allies should be taught a lesson." Teach pronounced each word with excruciating care. From his pocket, the pirate admiral drew a sort of badge and posed it on the table.
Victarion saw it and frowned. The object was decorated in the symbol of a three-headed black dragon.
Blackfyre.
The descendants of Daemon were perhaps not as dead as King's Landing's authorities liked to pretend.
"And would these...people would be disposed to support a King unjustly deprived of his realm?"
Once more, one of these unpleasant smirks was the only answer.
"Accept the mission, and I will gladly arrange an appointment with these benefactors."
Victarion cursed under his breath. He didn't trust at all Admiral Teach and he really doubted the Blackfyres were as generous as the pirate implied. But it was not like the Ironborn survivors had a lot of choices. His forces were increasing but too slowly. He was getting older and it was his authority which cemented the fleet cohesion. When he died, his warships would disperse before the month was over. The dreams of independence would die.
Still, if Teach expected him to drink this blue stuff, he could wait eternally.
The former Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet sighed.
"What do you want me to do?"
Somewhere in the Void, 2.07.300AAC
This was a battle which should have entered the legends of the Yth'yr'tel and the Aldarai alike. Alas, it was quite possible it would never happen for the possibility of survivors was looking slimmer and slimmer.
For the last three long years, the gigantic ice dragon had pursued the six tree-ships with an indefatigable ferocity.
For the last three long years, the Children crews had done their best to kill the formidable predator sent by their dreaded enemy.
The end was near. Five of the six warships were gone now and the sixth was in critical condition. The ice dragon was critically wounded: its wings had been pierced hundreds of times and on the rest of the body there were thousands of injuries where scales should have provided protection.
It was quite lucky for the living races of this galaxy the battle had been fought in the Void and hundreds of light-years away from any inhabited stellar system. Between the implacable breath of the dragon and the capital weapons of the Aldarai warships, the casualties could have easily been in the millions.
Most of the sentient beings would have abandoned the struggle. There was no point attacking relentlessly if you were unable to enjoy the victory in the end. But ice dragons were not most sentient beings and this particular specimen had ever been a prideful beast, easy to anger and refusing to abandon a challenge to its superiority.
As for the Aldarai, giving up was simply not an option. Firstly, the ice dragon was not going to accept their surrender. Secondly, they were transporting one of the eight cursed artefacts which had been stolen years ago. If the dragon triumphed, it was quite possible the Night's Swords would be able to guess its location with some of their dreaded skills.
The dragon opened its gigantic maw and breathed an inferno of blue dragonfrost. On the other side, the last weapons still operable fired in anger as fast as they could.
This was a violent and brief battle. Unlike the majority of the space battles, the distance of engagement was measured in hundreds of metres, not in kilometres. At this distance, the slaughter was incredible for the two sides could not miss. The ice dragon right side was mangled to the point its formidable regenerative capabilities were useless. One wing disappeared into exploding ice fragments. But the warship broke in half and was wracked by monumental explosions.
Had the ice dragon been able to, it would have roared in triumph. But this was over its forces. Its movements were sluggish and the power the Yth'yr'tel had infused in its bones was fleeing it.
The ice dragon was dying and its mission was going to be a failure. The kilometre-long creature stood immobile only for a few of its heartbeats before deciding on a course. Grabbing with its claws the ship section where it could feel the relic built by its masters, the ice dragon began to tow it in direction of the nearest star.
This was its last race. The faint light was somewhat familiar from the draconic instincts, meaning its masters knew its coordinates. If the dragon brought its prize here, the Yth'yr'tel would be able to salvage it.
The ice dragon accelerated, consuming its last reserves of energy. Soon it would be able to rest.
Lord Eddard Stark, 2.07.300AAC, Winterfell System
Lord Cregan Stark had been many things in his life. The man had been an excellent tactician, a good judge of men, an excellent strategist and an affable patriarchal figure. His abilities to rule the pack of angry direwolves some called the Northern Sector had been impressive. His economic investments in the Winterfell System and the domains of his bannersmen had generated much prosperity and wealth which his descendents were still reaping the benefits a century and a half later.
There was however one black cloud darkening these sunny qualities: Cregan hadn't known how to ski properly and when he had the idea of creating a ski station for his House, the disposition of the ski slopes had been slightly...hazardous.
Cregan's children had probably not wanted to burden their Lord when the Old Man of the North had just celebrated his ninety name day.
But force was to admit, the ski station of the Frozen Lake, private domain of House Stark and better known in the imaginary collective by its nickname of 'Direwolf Slope', was not a station where a boy or a girl just discovering snow learned how to ski. The station held to this day the record of the greatest number of black and red slopes, no mean feat when one was aware of the difficulty proposed by certain snow resorts on the different planets of the Northern Sector. Beginners were consequently...discouraged to descend the majority of the local slopes unless they wanted to see their skis abandon them in the first minutes.
There were those who pretended Cregan had known all along the difficult ski challenge he was creating and feigned to be a senile old man when the final preparations were made. Else why would he have named the black slope right in front of the family chalets the Magnar Streif?
One thing was sure, the number of falls and extraordinary wipeout here was unmatched. As his daughters were currently proving this point in front of him.
"Get to the right! Slow down!"
"The left! To the left! Ahhhh!"
Fortunately Arya and Sansa were skiing slowly and as a result the collision was almost gentle. Not that he had been worried with the helmets and the protections they were wearing. But for the noble sport of ski, it was over. Sansa lost both skis and ski poles in her fall before hurtling down the black slope on her buttocks. Arya continued on a single ski for a few seconds in a straight line...then she tried to turn around and lost her remaining gliding support. After that, the descent head first on her belly was a foregone conclusion.
"I really need to find new ski instructors for you two," The Lord Paramount of the North said, trying not burst into laughter as the two girls were trying to stand up on shaky legs and the rest of their ski equipment was finishing its course independently of their owners in front of the chalet-restaurant.
"It's Sansa's fault!" grumbled his youngest daughter with a large dose of bad faith. "She skis like a direbear and she never watches where she is going..."
This tirade was brutally interrupted by her sister throwing her a snow ball in her mouth and the situation degenerated from there. Joanna, who had been first to arrive at the end of the Magnar Streif, decided to join the snowball battle too. Brandon did not wait ten seconds to be involved, well-rested as he had returned to the station earlier by cableway.
"Sometimes I think I should have signed up Arya for the ice skating lessons, my love." Catelyn told him as she took his left hand in her right while Rickon half-stumbled half-ran in direction of the battle. "It probably would have improved her dexterity and her grace."
The style their youngest daughter threw snowballs could indeed be considered brutal and inelegant. But then Arya was a very close copy of Lyanna at her age. The hairs, the grey eyes, the wild behaviour were there...and the loud mouth was too.
"The skating teachers of this continent would not have thanked me." The Master of Winterfell said. Understatement of the year: several of Arya's school tutors had already complained in private these last years. All recognised she was really talented. Arya spoke fluently five languages, was two years ahead of children of her age in her academic performances, her athletic capabilities were superb and she had built her own air-bike when her personal guards had had their back turned. But she was also extremely stubborn and prone to throw legendary outbursts when she was bored or uninterested in something. "And the last thing we need is to give her ideas about playing hockey."
The Northern ruling couple exchanged a shivering and silent glance which was more telling than any roar of anger. Their dark brown-haired hellion was already involved in too many fights with her little court. Settling the accounts with hockey sticks in company of the little terrors named Lyanna Mormont, Ellyana Bolton and Eddara Tallhart sounded like the recipe of a potent disaster in the making.
In the mean time, the snowball battle was raging on the snow front of the station. The brilliant red hairs of Sansa were struck regularly by new layers of white as Arya and Joanna teamed up against her. Rickon was running around, his shoots completely inaccurate and the targets he touched were probably not the ones he had in mind – like the Winterfell guards waiting near the wooden posts where dozens of ski pairs were waiting. This left Brandon free to retaliate again Arya but though the grey-eyed Stark was not gracious, she evaded the slow and predictable shoots of her brother.
Eddard chuckled but inside was somewhat slightly dismayed at the lack of talent Brandon displayed for activities involving long-range accuracy. While Arya, Joanna, Sansa, Baela and Robb had a top accuracy when they grabbed a rifle or a pistol, this talent largely seemed to have ignored Bran.
The battle was turning rapidly in the alliance Joanna-Arya's favour when the last two skiers finished the Magnar Streif. The large quantity of snow on their ski jackets and trousers clearly indicated the descent had not been a tranquil affair and they were out of breath. It was not sufficient alas to discourage Baela from taking her shoes off the skis and bombing Joanna in the back with a large snowball. A good minute later, Robb finished the black slope and giving a resigned look to his parents, went to fight on Arya's side.
It was three against three, with Rickon proving the unaligned element randomly attacking both alliances. A true mini-war between the young generation of Starks and it was not long before the snow trenches were dug and an endless supply of snowball was put to good use.
Had he been fully concentrated on the snow spectacle, Eddard would have missed Rodrik Cassel marching quietly from an alley between the chalets but he had long taken the habit of being aware of everything in his surroundings. It was an essential habit if you wanted to survive a real battle, when it came down to it.
The old man who was his chief of security bowed before delivering a sentence the descendent of Cregan Stark didn't want to hear at all while he was taking a few holidays.
"My Lord, we have a situation," said the old sworn sword of Winterfell. Just after the Peace of Maidenpool, Rodrik had been proposed a knighthood by Lord Manderly but he had politely refused. The behaviour of the so-called 'knights' on the other side and the liberties they took with the tenets of the Seven had tarnished their image in the eyes of the Northerners forever.
"Rodrik, there is always a situation. But I told you that for the next six days, this would be someone else's problem." Between the massive armament programs started by the North a decade ago, the general hostility of the Great Lords in the galactic south, the rule of an entire Sector full of angry war veterans and the wildling raids rising in intensity and in numbers, there were few weeks where a significant event demanding his personal ruling wasn't required.
There were simply not enough hours in the days to accomplish every task. To complicate matters, a lot of the activities could be justly regarded as bordering on treachery against the Iron Throne and so the son of the deceased Lord Rickard was forced to forge alibi and false appointments to explain he was somewhere doing something perfectly innocent while he was meeting his ground commanders to discuss war preparations.
Eddard had not wanted the title of Lord Paramount when he had received it and since his elevation to it had seen little reason to change his mind. The duty to govern the North was an exhausting one. He wasn't able to spend half of the time he wanted with his wife and his family. This was why those days at Frozen Lake were important for him. For long hours, he could forget the problems caused by millions of arrogant and idiotic Southerners and enjoy with his sons, daughters and niece hobbies which had nothing to do with war preparations or Noble Houses quarrels.
"It is urgent, my Lord." Rodrik was far too polite to insist more than this, but the hard expression on his face and the stiffness of his body told his liege something important had happened.
"Where is the situation which is so pressing?"
"On Runic Fang."
The answer caught him off-guard. He had expected 'the Wall', 'King's Landing' but not on a planet in this very system. And not on Runic Fang of all places. There were three settled planets in the Winterfell System: Winterfell Prime, capital of the Northern Sector and citadel of House Stark, where he had been enjoying peace moments ago and the vast majority of the system population worked and lived; Old Bastion, whose extreme seasons and aggressive fauna didn't exactly encourage tourism and intensive colonisation and Runic Fang...well, not a lot of humans lived on this one. The planet was so distant from the sun it was honestly a miracle of the Old Gods there was life on it, and humans rarely set a foot on it unless they were crazy or tired of life. There were blizzards and cataclysmic weather phenomena practically every day, the super-predators living there made their cousins of old Bastion fluffy stuffed animals by comparison and the ancient ruins sometimes uncovered by the weather patterns had long lost all their interests.
"What is the problem with Runic Fang? We have a single orbital station around it and the Marine extreme training base on the equator."
Honestly he had thought training in this sort of hell was the best way to arrive on a real battlefield with missing limbs but Marines had always been particular beings he never fully understood. It was for the better, in all likelihood. Jon Umber was a formidable General and a good drinking partner, but he had no wish to be in his friend's head.
"It's..." Rodrik seemed to search his words, which was extremely unusual for him. "It's complicated."
Eddard sighed. This was going to be one of those days, he just knew it. Every time it happened, the consequences pursued him for several years and created an endless stream of paperwork.
"I appreciate your attempts to present this in a delicate manner, Rodrik. Truly, I do. But I think that at my age, I can handle the truth."
"Approximately ten hours ago my Lord, an ice dragon crashed on the cold tundra ground two hundreds kilometres east of our Marine fortress. Judging by its wounds and the debris it had between its claws, our analysts believe it was dying from a battle fought against a non-human warship and it tried to reach the planet in its last moments of life." Rodrik paused and regarded the data-slate in his hands like if he didn't believe the information on it. "The moment the shockwave of the impact was over, the monitoring satellites reported that the ice dragon was attacked by a pack of battle tanks-sized direwolves and the lone reptile was killed in short order."
Fine, he couldn't handle the truth. Eddard had the sudden urge to take the Winterfell fleet and go down to King's Landing to kill the Rapist. Damn the consequences, he was too old for these potent omens and surreal events.
"Is that all?"
"No, my Lord," unhelpfully replied Rodrik. "The Green Priests are convinced there is and I quote 'an incredibly evil artefact' near the ice dragon's corpse."
"Then tell them to organise an expedition to make sure it is destroyed," commanded the Master of Winterfell. "We have a few hundred thousand troops and entire capital ships squadrons which can be deployed on Runic Edge at a moment's notice and the Priests are what, three hundred strong on Bastion?"
But Rodrik negatively nodded.
"That may not be possible...the direwolves are preventing us from reaching the dragon corpse, my Lord." The old warrior explained and Eddard winced. Direwolves were a symbol for every Northerner and in the last centuries had become so rare the presence of an entire pack was enough to give any proud Northerner a long moment of pause. "But according to the ancient stories, there is a solution..."
"I know the stories they refer to." The ones of First Men riding terrifying predators in battle and putting the fear of the Old Gods in their enemies for centuries. These were tales of a simpler time, where the South had been smart enough to recognise Northerners were not to be trifled with.
The Lord Paramount of the North breathed loudly in the cold air of the Rampart Mountains before turning to kiss Catelyn on the cheek.
"What do you say my love?"
"Five days on the frozen wastes of Runic Fang aren't exactly the holiday I dreamed of...but it is sure to be memorable."
It was by that point Eddard turned his head to watch his children, praying they had been too busy to listen to this conversation.
Judging by Arya's delighted and mischievous expression, this was not the case.
"Yes! We're going to see the direwolves!" His wild daughter shouted while running away with her siblings on her heels. "We're going to ride a direwolf!"
Catelyn sent him a heartbroken look and Eddard was sure his own visage mirrored it. Security problems posed by a carnivorous species bigger than the shadowcats of Bastion aside, the Lord of Winterfell had absolutely no wish to fight a new legislation battle on the pets a Northern officer could or could not bring on deployment.
"Sometimes I think Benjen had the right idea to join the Night's Watch at the very beginning..."
Ser Gerion Lannister, 2.07.300AAC, King Tommen's Last Stand, Outer Edge of the Doom
Gerion had never been so happy to see the bland shuttle bay of the Laughing Lion again. Given the last hours of horrors, finding something familiar was balm for his soul and unfortunately it was not a literal expression. His honour be damned, if he had more time he would have kissed profusely the ground and muttered prayers to the Seven for hours.
But it was not the moment to rejoice. The second the hatch of his shuttle opened, he stormed outside, protocols and security measures be damned. The trumpets and the ceremonies could be done another day. Followed by his surviving sworn swords, he ran to the Laughing Lion's bridge while the other assault shuttles were welcomed aboard.
"Tion, get us out of here," he ordered his second. "We have what we came for and I don't want to know if the demons have more horrors in store for us."
"By your command," replied the younger officer. "Engines are hot and we will be ready to depart in four minutes fifteen seconds."
Gerion took a disgusted look at the Valyrian sword hanging to his belt. Yes, they had the object of their quest. Brightroar, after hundreds of years, was once again in Lannister hands. And they had grabbed other weapons and artefacts from the fallen Freehold. It should be a great day for House Lannister and the Western Sector.
It wasn't.
He had met the horrors lurking beyond the gates of reality and it had been a horrifying experience.
Proof of the dire time the crew of the warship faced, not a single spaceman turned his attention in his direction when he entered the flag bridge of the Laughing Lion. All their focus was on the tactical display, where the planet they had left moments ago was erupting into continent-sized infernos.
"Talk to me Tion," Gerion urged.
"It began seconds after our last surviving patrols left the ground, Colonel," the face of his right-hand man was livid and Gerion knew that if he was handed a mirror, he would see the same thing on his face. "Everything is in flames."
The pile of rocks they had named Tommen's Last Stand had not been pretty when they had discovered it. It had showed brown, yellow on their sensors, and too little green and blue. If the debris of the ancient Lannister fleet had not been discovered at the surface, they would have probably went to another system...Gerion was not sure if it was a good or a bad thing.
The Laughing Lion began to move ponderously while thousands of kilometres below, the planet was convulsing in agony. The images were blurry and saturated with electronic interferences, but it was largely sufficient to see the fires acting with a supernatural ferocity and horrors emerging from the new volcanoes.
"Get us out of here," the youngest sibling of Lord Tywin Lannister repeated but with more urgency this time. "How many men of the 104th Regiment remain?"
"First reports are still coming in," intervened the Lieutenant in charge of the shuttle logistics. "But it looks like we have recovered less than two hundred men and at least half are injured to varying degrees."
"By the Seven..." Gerion whispered. The Western infantry had been slightly overmanned before their deployment to the surface with one thousand and nine hundred valid soldiers. Moreover, Gerion had made sure when he departed for this dangerous travel all of them were veterans of Pyke.
They had been slaughtered all the same.
"All their heavy equipment was lost," added unnecessarily a supply officer. Fine, it was not like they were going to recover it in the magma lakes forming where their temporary camp had been located.
"Time for an emergency jump?"
The tactical display flashed in a bright red. The planet moments ago had been burning but now it was tearing itself apart.
We are the flame. We are the Light.
The imperious sentences had not come out of a human mouth.
"What in the Seven Hells was that?"
Two warren officers had fallen to their knees, their noses and their eyes bleeding unnaturally. A Rock Officer was screaming and striking his legs to deal with a threat which was simply not there.
"Oh, Merciful Mother..." Tion Laster's plea made him turn towards the bridge's bay. Energy was pouring out of the planet, island-sized rocks were impossibly launched and something was coming out.
Father and Warrior protect us.
Gerion had never considered himself a devout man but should the Seven come down from the Sevens right now, he would be their eternal follower and they would no fiercest champion than him. Tommen's Doom had not been a planet. It had been a trap and a prison in one.
The first planet of the ancient Freehold we visit and we meet THAT.
"Jump translation in..." began the astrogation officer. "Wait a minute. Where are the jump points?"
Consternation was in everyone's mind. On another day, it would have been a poor joke. Jump points were gravitic anomalies which had been used for hundreds and maybe thousands of years. Sometimes they became unstable or their stellar locations were modified but it was a process decades in the making and it was when the phenomenon was fast. You could not enter a system, wait a few hours and just remark they were gone!
But this was the Doom and apparently the physic laws meant nothing here. The stars themselves on the outside seemed to become stranger and stranger. Some were disappearing, other were surrounded by fire coronas while the worst appeared to bleed.
"The path back to Volantis doesn't exist anymore." Lannister Navy officers were supposed to stay stoic and stone-faced in all circumstances but here it was showing its limits as a couple of men burst in tears. "What are we going to do?"
"We will jump anyway." A good third of his men regarded him like he had suddenly grown a second head and the two-thirds remaining were looking like criminals who had just been told their death sentence had been adjourned for a few days. "I think this is a trick like they used in the temple they had on the planet."
"You mean we are in one of their hellish illusions?" demanded a spaceman. The idea seemed to give them back their courage so Gerion nodded confidently while inside he was not that convinced.
"Anyway we can't stay here..."
The abomination had nearly got through what should have been an impenetrable planetary crust but which had shattered like a biscuit. It was...ghastly.
With all the flames and destruction, a magnificent dragon like the ones he had promised to Tyrion would have been nice but the thing was more a mix between a worm, a shark and a butterfly. The body of the first, the maw and the teeth of the second and the wings of the third were indeed present in this order.
Of course, it was also a hundred times the size of a ship of the line so in a real confrontation beauty wouldn't matter.
"Course calculated for the jump point which-is-no-longer-there," announced the light brown-haired astrogation officers. "We need to last four and a half hours."
"I fear the Laughing Lion is not going to hold that long," said dejectedly a warrant officer on the right. "The monster is about to open fire."
"We are out of range from conventional weapons," protested a subordinate of the tactical officer. "Distance between us and...the worm-thing is two and a half million kilometres and our acceleration is largely superior to his. There's no way..."
Embrace the Kiss of flames.
Crewmen collapsed over the bridge in agony. Some never stood again, and a pool of blood grew under them. A few had to be put down by force as they went crazy and tried to smash their consoles or attack their fellow spacemen.
The gigantic abomination opened its maw and unleashed a torrent of flames. Those were not missiles, and yet these brilliant projectiles of light were faster than any man-made killing weapon.
"Stand by missile defence," Gerion said, drawing Brightroar and cutting down one of his men who had charged directly at him like one of these insane gladiator fighters he had seen in the Great Coliseum of Volantis. On a normal day, doing a thing like this would have left him horrified and the culprit would have been awaiting his court-martial. In this unnatural sector of the galaxy, seeing his officers shooting in the head some of their mind-befuddled subordinates was just the only choice they had left.
"Missile defence active, for all the good it is going to make us," acknowledged Tion. "These things are coming too fast and our counter-missiles will have just a single volley to counter them."
The prediction was verified mere minutes later. The entire space was tainted in a reddish colour and the incoming storm was racing towards them through the void like a horde of light. Laser, plasma, missiles and counter-missiles, practically every weapon they could direct at it was firing as fast as the tolerances of their builders allowed.
It wasn't enough. It was like fighting an ocean of evil with firearms.
"We are not going to make it." There were still more than four away from the possible location of the jump point and the worm-shark-butterfly monster was continuously firing at them. Disregarding the first wave they were pouring their firepower into, there were already three more on their way. "Prepare the Laughing Lion for an emergency jump."
"It will be a suicide so deep in-system." Pair of green eyes watched each other but not with the anger this insane proposition would have received if they were near Casterly Rock.
"We are dead anyway if we stay here." The knight of House Lannister retorted. "And since the planet and everything we know have gone to hell, the rules of gravity and the laws of physics may not be the ones we take for granted anymore. Prepare the jump."
"By your order..."
The wave of flames and light struck them like the hammer of a furious deity. But no compartment was opened into space, no alarms sounded to inform the bridge of a breach in the hull. No, the result of this overwhelming wave was far worse. From the communications consoles mounted screams of agonies and choirs which nothing human in them.
"Demons! Demons in the crew quarters!"
"Reactor number two is under attack by the monsters!"
"They are on every deck! The Seven save us they are everywhere!"
This was all the warning they got before the flames coalesced on the bridge. There were beings of light, beautiful and ugly at the same time. They were part reptile but bipedal and human-shaped, surrounded in flames.
Flames for the Light. Die and be reborn in the warm embrace our Lord.
A loud battle-cry answered them. For better or for worse, they were men of Lannisport and the Rock, the descendants of Lann the Clever, they ruled the Western Sector with a fist of gem stones, gold and ruthlessness. They would never bend their knees to the Enemy.
"HEAR ME ROAR!"
Laser weapons poured the content of their batteries, vibro-swords struck and Gerion led his men into the melee. Brightroar in his hands, he danced for his life, parrying and attacking. The Valyrian Steel and the conventional weapons were killing them, but there were so many opponents the Westerners were each fighting two or three opponents. The bridge was consumed in fire. Atrocious moans were coming from everywhere.
And then suddenly it was over. The monsters flickered out of existence, banished by the blades and guns, though the former seemed to have been far more effective.
"Make the emergency jump now." He ordered to Tion Laster whose gaunt appearance was the one of a man who had swam in human blood and organs. A good thing they had all worn red uniforms and armours. "The second wave will be upon us in a matter of minutes. We will not get another chance."
About a third of the bridge effectives had been slaughtered or had to be executed as their brains had not managed to cope with the horror.
"What is the situation on the other sections?"
"The infantry armoury is under heavy attack, Lieutenant Sarring and the rest of the 104th are surrounded there. Half of our starboard armaments and defensive systems have melted." The Lieutenant in charge of logistics recited with a tone of funeral, his vibro-sword fuming like it had been in contact with something incredibly corrosive. "Most of our shuttles are gone; the missile stores are a sort of four dimensions maze that should be by all rights impossible. Demons' presence is literally everywhere and nowhere, there are spacemen reporting they hear tortured people screaming in their ears at every moment. Most of our sensors are reporting interferences and anomalies no matter the physical evidences. Two damage-control centres are out of service and we don't exactly know what is happening inside. And the hull integrity is...problematic."
"Excellent," Gerion said, ignoring the incredulous expressions he received in return. "I think it is time to begin our counter-attack."
Seven Hells or Seven Heavens, he would go back to the Rock. It was out of question his eldest brother got rid of him that easily.
Colonel Janos Slynt, 2.07.300AAC, King's Landing System
The Royal Sun Casino was the greatest casino of the city of King's Landing and the most well-known as well. With its classical Valyrian architecture in marble and its golden sun-shaped fountains and sculptures, a week did not pass without it being shown on the holo-news or an ads campaign. It was a gigantic construction: not counting the main entrance lighted day and night and taking half of the avenue, there were seven skyscrapers and hundreds of smaller buildings. And every construction had been built for the greater glory of the games.
They were six thousand-plus slot machines, three thousand-plus table games, hundreds of special rooms for private parties, a gigantic holo-display to bet in live on horse races and many card games popular from Asshai to Oldtown. Cyvasse games could be played for astronomical stakes with gold sets. All the variants of poker from the common Five Cart Draw to the Tyroshi Crazy High had their experts here. The Royal Sun was acknowledged as the third most prestigious casino in this part of the galaxy, behind a Volantene and a Braavosi game centre.
For those who wanted to take a break from the games, there were activities to content them. Dozens of restaurants proposed a wide range of local Westerosi food and there were foreign cooks too. Ten-star inns proposed rooms at indecent prices, the privileged clients could relax in a ten thousand square meters spa and there were three large public swimming pools. In the middle of the fountains there was an impressive golden liner-terrace, men and women wanting to practise their favourite sports could do so as golf courses, work-out rooms and indoor sport fields had been included along with cutting edge racing air-cars simulators.
You didn't need to be a genius to realise that in this place, fortunes were lost every minute and the owners of this place were not going to be poor any time soon. The profits made were top-secret, but the money won by the casino every day was probably enough to feed a hundred million people of King's Landing's poorer social classes.
Not that the Royal Sun owners and their clients cared of course. The casino had been built under the orders of King Aegon IV the Unworthy and after its confiscation when the first family of owners revealed themselves to be Blackfyre loyalists, the establishment had returned to the Crown and had remained in the grasp of the Iron Throne since. Situated in one of the upper-class neighbourhoods of the capital, the games centre was barely forty kilometres away from the gates of the Red Keep and the Volantene and Tyroshi embassies were not far from here. The stores and mansions between them were not exactly modest, really. This was a part of King's Landing which had been spared the tumultuous events culminating in King Aerys' death and the pillages which had followed. On the other hand, the issue of being intact had not stopped the great companies from demanding more renovations, more funds, more everything to embellish the avenue. It was difficult to argue the Red Keep had not required heavy reparations when the dust settled and King Rhaegar was crowned...but this street – the Avenue of Meraxes to call it by its name – had grown fat from the money the Lords and the nobility had not raised a finger to earn.
Janos Slynt had never set a foot inside the Royal Sun Casino by the way. Yes, it was a pretty sight but the pay of a Goldcloak Colonel wasn't that important. The Crown didn't pay much the men supposed to enforce the peace, billions of thieves, crooks, swindlers and scum or not. And he had a family to feed. His wife had a minor bureaucrat job in one of the Treasury agencies so thankfully it added a second income but the gold required to buy a modest apartment outside the slums was ruinous. He had four children to raise, three sons and one daughter. Morros, his eldest, had gone to a military school of the Crown Army despite his warnings that war was nothing like the holo-movies he was so fond of. Three more months and he would be a proud soldier, gold battle-armour and all. Jothos, his cadet, wanted to join the Navy and was about to enter it as a simple spaceman. Danos and Alia were still at school and had no professions in mind for their future though his baby girl dreamed to become a bard and become one of the star-singers the galaxy adulated.
Raising and schooling their children had severely emptied their purses, but Janos had been determined to offer them the education his own father could not pay for. Son of a butcher, he remembered very well what a hindrance it had been once he had wanted to climb up in the ranks of the City's Watch.
And the knights and the sons of the nobility wondered why he and his colleagues didn't raise their voice in anger to stop the bribery, the traffic of promotions and the hundreds of 'protection tariffs' in the narrow streets of King's Landing City. Oh, poor them. Daddy had just bought them their own house in front of the town's sept...and perhaps the sport complex, the shops and the rest of the offices available nearby. They were living with a silver spoon in their mouths and bank accounts eternally replenishing once they reached the bottom. In fact, if he wasn't mistaken the reason he and so many Goldcloaks were forced to patrol around tonight was probably because many Gate Commanders and high-ranking officers were inside the casino.
In other circumstances, patrolling here wouldn't have bothered him. Janos and his men were paid for their extra hours and the perimeter of the casino was devoid of danger, which was a welcome difference with the most difficult areas of Fleabottom and the Rows. But he had had plans for a little restaurant this night, Lord Commander Rykker had informed them at the last moment they had to work past their allowed hours and finally, their presence was completely useless. The Royal Sun Casino had a large contingent of security guards and many expensive measures available to them. Honestly, they were far better armed than his men. The only weapons authorised by their mighty superiors had been laser pistols and a few vibro-sticks, so no rifles and swords, never mind the big guns.
Provided they had been granted the right of searching the thousands of curious smallfolk walking, laughing and celebrating in front of the casino, the issues should have been reasonable. But it was out of the question to scare the sheep eager to spend their gold dragons in the purses of the highborn.
As a result, there was nothing to do but stay near their golden air-cars and in theory show a vigilant attitude. In practise, the crowd passing before them made a mockery of their efforts. Half of his effectives were busy playing games or betting on who was the next Lord they would see arriving or departing.
The radio crackled to let talk the vice of one of the young recruits he had ordered to stay close the casino doors. "Colonel, there's a Lord leaving."
"Are you sure, Los?" A rapid look at his watch informed him it was not yet eleven o'clock and the nobles in general didn't leave before the night was almost over.
"Sure, Colonel," The voice of the young brown-haired Goldcloak had hours ago lost its enthusiastic tone. "It's Lord Rosby and his cousins."
"Oh, him," Lord Gyles 'Sickness' Rosby was a familiar sight for the Goldcloaks these last months...he was a Planetary Lord, he was fat, he was old and he was useless. The latter point was shared with a lot of nobles and unfortunately may not be spoken in public, unless you fancied visiting the prisons of the Secret Police.
Rosby was also very rich, and given that he had no children and his death appeared to be imminent, he was always followed by a band of cousins, 'friends', distant relatives, courtesans and young people. Needless to say, they obviously weren't interested about his gold or his titles.
"We aren't supposed to protect him, he has his own protection detail." The Colonel said as a sizeable of men-at-arms and sworn soldiers left their reinforced air-cars to prepare their master's exit. "Keep an eye on him," he commanded on the standard frequency, "but no need to protect him unless the crowd becomes violent. Nice job."
The order was in fact nearly impossible to accomplish. Seeing a VIP leaving the palatial buildings, thousands of people wanting to take a holo-picture or satisfy their curiosity converged and even the Rosby security detail had every difficulty in the world to reproduce a formation looking like a guard of honour.
His Goldcloaks did not stay quiet in front of the 'spectacle'.
"Look at that car! Is it a Leonine GT4500?
"Nice to see some have seven hundred thousand dragons to spend..." The envy in the voice of the Lieutenant was easy to hear.
"Bah, you haven't seen what the Braavosi last fortnight arrived with. Now that, that was a true speedster..."
It took several minutes for the ermine-coloured uniforms to appear, surrounding their Lord. Once more, Lord Gyles looked frail, sickly and miserable. Janos was ready to bet his night had been interrupted by another health problem.
"Why is this cretin going to the casino when he's on his deathbed?" wondered a private.
This was a good question, actually. Between the crowd outside and the cohort of friends inside, Rosby would not have a moment to breathe and probably go back to his home exhausted and half-dead.
Janos was not going to shed a tear for one of the highborn but-
"THIS WORLD BELONGS TO THE SEVEN!"
The scream was so powerful it went over the racket made by the men and women on the avenue. Janos searched the crowd and glimpsed a few white septon robes in a group twenty metres of the crowd. Weird, the servants of the Seven did not go to the casinos, these modern empires of damnation. He seized his radio...
The explosion was terrible. There had been far louder noises of destruction years ago during the battle in the streets of the city but this time he had no ear protection...no good protection at all in fact.
Janos was thrown against the sides of the air-car behind him. Windows and countless objects were pulverised. Men women ran away, a gigantic wave of panic nothing could stop. Where the Rosby air-car had been, there was a massive crater and hundreds of bodies sprawled everywhere. The entire area was painted in blood, corpses and carcasses of vehicles. Sirens and screams filled the air. His back hurt terribly. There was blood everywhere.
One of the sun statues near the entrance collapsed in an abominable crash. Janos touched his visage and realise his upper lip and his nose were bleeding. He groaned loudly and tried to stand up but his legs were like they were made of jelly. Many lights had exploded and were projecting cascades of sparks and small fires on the ground and the blood-soaked grounds.
"What in the Seven Hells just happened?"