Your Defeat is Nigh
Sylvon Year 2197 (Indoraptor Year 1270), October, Indoraptor Space, somewhere in Nabradia system...
Damned aliens!
Filthy scoundrel aliens who could never appreciate true greatness!
Vajra had been shifting back and forth between his usual composed self and random bouts of furious ranting over the loss of his primary hand. Worse, with the death of his superior, Naja, the mission had been thrown into jeopardy. And that's not counting the loss of the Red Lotus relic, which the Indoraptors had reclaimed, further deepening Vajra's loss of self-control.
What would the spy mistress say if she found out about Naja's untimely demise?
The servant was in his private cabin on his spaceship, mulling over the Assembly's defeat at the hands of the allied forces. For the last three weeks, the joint fleets had pursued the Sylvon pirate fleets across Republic and Union-owned territories. The failed invasion at both Shangri and Atlantis became a serious drawback when the higher-ups back on Akantorin failed to send in more mercenaries or combat fleets. When asked why, Councilor Astrax and his fellows mentioned how the pirates were cutting their losses by retreating en masse from the battlefield due to them hemorrhaging too much money and manpower.
The ship's crew didn't talk about it openly, but they all knew Vajra was begging, actually begging, for the Assembly's shadow organization to aid the mercenaries to turn the tide of war back in their favor and take over the ancient relic. They were in dire need of reinforcement, funding, or Intel, anything to keep the Assembly's hired goons and special soldiers from losing the interstellar battle. Heck, if they had to, the Council of Elders should consider searching for primitive aliens to turn into vassal races, or maybe allies who shared the same mindset as the Sylvons.
But their problem was not finished yet.
The ship and its last escorting corvettes were doing their best to evade the Union's military fleets; the Indoraptors certainly had better warp drives in their spaceships, as they managed to seek out the pirate fleets, systematically gunning them down one flotilla at a time. Only this ship and a mere handful of corvettes evaded the grisly fate their hired forces suffered at the hands of the black lizards. But even then, these Sylvons had their days numbered.
According to the ship's Executive Officer, ten days had passed as they tried to navigate the Nabradia system. The Assembly's Intel seemed to indicate a continental planet orbiting the star system as belonging to the Union, but so far there were no signs of any habitable planet... that or they were just looking in the wrong direction. If the system they were in was indeed part of the Indoraptors' territory, they better get out fast because every second they wasted in the system gave the Grand Fleet more time to catch up to them.
The ship's pilot was thinking to get something to drink when the alarms went off. That could only mean one thing; the Union's Grand Fleet was here.
Will they all made it in one piece?
"All hands, get to your stations, brace for hostile encounter!"
None of the crew were religious in any way, but as soon as the energy weapons from Union ships began piercing into the hull, they all recited prayers of many languages.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Indoraptor Year 1270, November, Shrike (Nabradia system), uncharted mountain regions...
Something chased the Sylvons.
Something so big it defied the known laws of physics.
No one, not even Vajra, recalled precisely what happened. All they could share was that the Indoraptor's Grand Fleet sent their nimble fighter ships in conjunction with their destroyer ships. The surviving engineering personnel declared their ship's engines to be heavily busted. They wouldn't be going anywhere for weeks, and with the communication system having to be repaired, they'd be stuck on this weird planet for quite a long time. Hunger and sickness would put them all in mortal danger.
It was already five days since the assassin's ship crash-landed on this weird garden world. The Assembly of Akantorin wrote it as a 'continental planet' in their database. They never said anything about how or why the planet was... abnormal. The plants were so colorful, lots and lots of bright colors it made one or two personnel suffer a slight photosensitive seizure. The animals were even stranger. Many of them could grow to immense sizes and had unnatural body shapes. Overall, the flora and fauna on the planet were mostly inedible and the chemicals the Sylvons could use to turn the fruits and plants into a form of palatable mush were running low.
The humongous beasts… and that giant snake... by the stars, how did the Indoraptors keep those things under their thumbs for so long?
It's as if the planet itself was a natural home for the titanic monsters, and the Indoraptors were keeping quiet about it.
It all occurred during sunrise. Some of the crews were walking away from the makeshift camp to scout the neighboring area for edible animals. At first, contact between them and the ship's captain was going well. Then the radio went silent without warning, followed by short but frequent tremors on the ground. Half an hour passed as contact remained cut-off. Hours later, with no news from the two crew members whatsoever. a few of Vajra's crewmates were getting tired and prearranged a means to search and rescue the missing members. An argument broke out between those who agreed and those who'd rather stay at the basecamp. It might eventually escalate into a fistfight soon, had only a monstrous abomination didn't rear its head first.
Yes, a reptilian creature of massive length and proportion stood before them with lumps of fresh meat dangling from its jaws.
The remains of the two missing Sylvons.
That creature, the titanic serpent, shrilled as it lunged toward the bickering Sylvons. Vajra's memory was fresh enough to recall how the giant monster caught the downed ship between its long jaws and twisted the ship with its long body into scraps of bent metals. Realizing that the ship was not a tasty meal to it, the serpent threw it to the ground, but by that time the Sylvons were already on the run.
But it's not like the scaly titan would let them get away.
One by one the crews were devoured by the great serpent, either due to being left behind or being injured when the titanic monster doused them in blobs of venom. No matter what they did to it, from shooting it with their guns to blowing off rocky outcroppings they came across, nothing stopped the titanic serpent from chasing after them. Every time it did, one of Vajra's crew was lost to its insatiable appetite. The titan's short legs only fastened the monster's rough body as it slithered up and down the rocky landscape, fervently pursuing after its fleeing prey. At least once every ten minutes, the serpent would slam its tail to the cliffside hard enough to generate a small earthquake, disorienting the mollusks for a few seconds.
Now they were down to five people... and through a series of very unfortunate events, the Sylvons got themselves separated from one another! How could this be? How could they do such a thing while the serpent was closing in?
Vajra was very exhausted, but he did all he could to scramble across the jagged surface in his injured state. Unfortunately, mountain climbing was difficult and physically tasking when one was lacking a functional hand to grapple the protruding rocks on a cliff.
So when Vajra was struggling to navigate a narrow treacherous path, he forgot for a split second that his right arm ended on a stump. He carelessly tried to use it to hang on a crevasse, but the stumped arm slipped, and the rest of his body came down shortly after. As he fell to the ground below, Vajra's mind wandered away, recalling the time when he left his superior to die at the hands of the cursed lizards. And then he remembered the classified tasks he did under the spy mistress' orders, the ancient relic he once held gloriously in his hands, and the invasions he partook in, everything flashed across his eyes as his body fell into the gaping maw of the titanic serpent waiting below.
The great serpent didn't care; Vajra was nothing more than a snack it eagerly devoured.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Sylvon Year 2200 (Indoraptor Year 1273), September, Akantorin (Sylvon Space), Assembly's Council Chamber...
"What is power but weakness and blindness without wisdom? What is authority but a lie we perpetuate among men and women to make ourselves appear great and flawless? What is hubris but filth, despised and looked down upon by the Maker?"
Three years.
Three long years had passed since the Council of Elders ordered the theft of the Lotus relics, only to be thwarted at every turn, and now the Sylvon Assembly of Akantorin was on its last legs. The pirate groups failed to do their job correctly and their forces were scattered everywhere in the void. The empire's economy had collapsed as the mercenaries they paid chose to instead smuggle the Assembly's money away, unwilling to take up any more losses in the war they were losing. Those slave labors the Council of Elders used to sustain their entire species went into arduous, unending rebellions that crippled the central government and its supporting businesses.
"Let go of your pride, now, and reach out to other species. Together, you the young ones will uncover the secrets of the cosmos. Together, you the young ones shall usher in a new era of peace, unity, prosperity, and enlightenment. Do not fear the unknown, for you are always meant to explore the unknown together with your companions."
What's worse, the rebelling slaves gave secrets concerning the Assembly's weaknesses to the allied aliens in exchange for freedom, irretrievably crushing the Assembly's grip over them.
"We pray to the Maker of the Cosmos so that the species we've seeded across the stars will one day stand together as one. We pray to the Maker so that the young ones shall not be separated by race, faith, creed, or language. No war, no violence, only unity, and enlightenment."
"Silence, you worthless relic!"
The spy mistress slapped the relic away from her table, letting it shatter into a thousand pieces upon impact on the floor.
The spy mistress and her assistants waited for three years in anticipation of some grand revelation of their species' future and genetic destiny, only for the Lotus artifact to deny them their proof of supremacy. The incredulous lady could not contain her sheer disappointment at the disclosure the relic brought to her people, that the Sylvons were not special… were never meant to be special…. as mundane as any other race in the galaxy…
Was their years-long endeavor for naught, then?
Was that the worse the Assembly's councilors had to deal with? No, there were more; the allied alien fleets scuttled the Assembly's starbases using AI robots, their mining stations were raided, and their colonies were liberated from slaver guilds faster than expected. Their victory over the mollusks was certain at this rate. And starting from last week, the Indoraptors' Grand Fleet and the Republic's Space Navy were putting Akantorin under permanent quarantine until the Council of Elders was gone and the slaves were all liberated.
Oh wait, they were in the process of breaching the Assembly Chamber's gates.
There was no use weeping over what would befall them anyway.
The female Sylvon stood overlooking the fall of her species from the office's balcony. The potted plants placed on the balcony's corners used to be healthy and fragrant, not shriveled as they were now. They were neglected, just like her. The Council Chamber's caretakers were arrested alongside every employee, minister, and councilors in the building; anyone who tried to fight back would be shot dead by Human troops, no questions asked.
The female Sylvon let out a deep, long sigh. Councilor Astrax brought her a terrifying request not too long ago. At his wish, Astrax demanded to be mercy-killed by her last agents. Why would he choose such a fate? If his last will mentioned the truth, it was said that Indoraptor soldiers would feed captured Sylvons to dangerous wild animals back on their homeworld. Maybe the original idea was to let the prisoners of war starve to death in the wilderness, but even this slightly more merciful form of execution unnerved Astrax enough that he demanded her to sanction his own demise. A poison pill was all it took to end the old male's life. What a shame…
The female's musing was shattered when the doors to the balcony slammed open. Trampling through them were groups of Humans, Indoraptors, Navarie, and at least a pair of AI units which she assumed would deliver her to their leaders.
An Indoraptor stepped forward and produced a circular object from his breast pocket.
The White Lotus…
"Hey. I heard you're looking for this, so I guess it'd be nice to show up personally and bring it to you."
"If only you showed up earlier, you filthy lizard…" the spy mistress uttered a weak insult, still scowling at the sight of these intruders, "If you're looking for its counterpart, then let me inform you that it is as useless as the one you're holding right now. It did nothing but repeating stupid prayers and other nonsense," she gestured at the broken Purple Lotus on the floor.
"Put your hands where we can see them, lady!"
A Human soldier barked an order, but the female alien didn't flinch. "Look at you all, so brave, so confident, believing that I will simply come quietly at your request. Why don't you just shoot me here and now? I am nothing but a liability to my fallen organization. If you don't kill me now, someone else will do it eventually."
"And why should we?" A Navari questioned her.
"Because you won't find me interesting. I might as well be the most boring entity that you all have ever encountered, so why bother taking me in? Because you have orders from your leader? Because you want to see me cry like a frightened slave, or to make me spill all of my secrets? I've chosen to welcome death, regardless of your final verdict," the spy mistress sneered as she spread her arms, waiting for a hail of bullets that'd end her life.
Before anyone could say something in return, Raizex stomped forward and snatched the Sylvon by her neck. For the first time, the spy mistress actually felt afraid of death despite her cold remark earlier.
"Look, bitch, I won't lie to you; I'm itching to sink my teeth into your neck and cut you up to pieces for everything you've done to my species…" Raizex snarled, his claws clutching the female alien's neck tightly, "But I think death is far too kind for you. You don't fear it; you welcome it, and I think your punishment ought to be greater." The spy mistress' eyes widened as Raizex threw her to the floor, whereupon she was quickly seized by the two AI robots. The Indoraptor agent then faced his companions, "I'll examine her computers and network database, just in case there's something of value."
"Acknowledged, Agent Ludvik," the AI units nodded, "We will escort this Sylvon outside the building where her fellow dictators await."
"I'll take my men to the building's library," the Humans volunteered themselves to investigate the Assembly's archive sector, followed by the Navarie.
With the young agent's companions departing to perform their respective tasks, Raizex sent his fellow Indoraptors to analyze the spy mistress' information database to see just how much knowledge the unscrupulous mollusk had gathered over the years. A book on her work table intrigued the young agent; by using a language translator program on his smartphone, the book's title roughly translated to 'Ancient Relics and Modern Culture: How Archaeological Discoveries Influence the Development of Civilizations'. Seeing that the data analyzing procedure could take hours until its completion, Raizex chose to take the book to the balcony, where he could sit and read it while listening to the noises below.
"Wow, that scummy lady sure has a taste for big, heavy books," Lea came to read the book from Raizex's shoulder.
"If only Vion and Xivena are here with us…"
"They'll be laughing their asses off at the sight of that woman being dragged away by robots. I mean, look at her face! I bet she has never been manhandled by sentient machines before."
The young dinosaur shrugged and smiled as he opened the book's first chapter. Down below, the arrested councilors were probably being paraded by those liberated Sylvon slaves across the streets and judging by the noises, the angry mob was throwing stones or garbage at those scum.
