A/N:

Without further ado, we're off!

Interlude

Interlude(N.):

An Intervening Period of Time

"If you so much as miss one target I will skin your tail and pour an entire stock of Reesian salt upon it." Threatened Jorban Sal'Naa, as he watched a BattleVector hopeful of the ripe young age of one hundred bind his eyes with a thick blindfold.

The Oather in question had dark green scales and brown flesh, and his lack of experience shown almost painfully in the light tone of his voice. "Yes, Lancemen!" The child - for that was what all BattleVector Oathers were, children; unless they passed their trials, even seniors upwards of six hundred would become but children if they took the oath - lacked not in confidence, but experience. He had no scars to speak of, his muscles were woefully underdeveloped, and his eyes lacked the killer instinct nine out of every ten Oathers had. Jorban had long ago decided that this one had either been enraptured by the sight of a BattleVector in combat, or had been swindled by a priest.

"Stop speaking and load your cursed weapon!" Jorban roared deafeningly, causing the Oather to scramble for the disassembled Energy Lance on the table in front of him. The dull-scaled BattleVector snorted derisively as the blinded Oather nearly put the battery where the laser went. If the Dregs in this very facility broke free, this child would be among the first to die, unless his master beat him into shape.

Soon, the dark-scaled Oather had the laser rifle assembled and was on his feet, though when he turned to face the wall upon which he'd hung his earmuffs, he had made the damnable mistake of forgetting to curl his tail around his gut. Jorban caught this mistake instantly and slammed his armored boot upon the man's tail, shattering the bone into several painful shards that almost immediately started cutting in to his flesh.

"Your enemies will not stop at breaking your tail if you leave it hanging around on the battlefield! They will shoot it off, and where will you be then?!" Jorban demanded as the Oather suppressed a whimper of pain and curled the tail around his gut, and then proceeded to put the earmuffs on his head, thankful for the silence it gave him.

The silence lasted all of three seconds, before Jorban's voice was blasted into the earmuffs' speakers, which had been placed there an hour earlier without the Oather's notice. "Your equipment will not always function as you expect it, whelp!" The battle-born man warned him, "the silence you expected has now been stolen from you because you failed to check it before donning it! Now destroy your targets, or so help me I will feed you to the Dreg Queen!" If there was one thing he could simultaneously enjoy and despise utterly, it was training the Oathers; he loved it because it reminded him of his own training days, the proudest days of his life, the first days he'd ever had warm food, a roof over his head, and a family that wasn't constantly involved in criminal exploits, but he despised it because it reminded him of his own training days - when he was weak beyond understanding and could barely tell the difference between the stock of a rifle and its barrel.

The Oather managed to suppress his horror at Jorban's sudden booming presence in his very mind, he inhaled deeply through his nose and smelled the paint adorned on the targets. He whipped around one hundred and eighty degrees and shouldered his Energy Lance, he took a moment to aim it - and was admonished for his lack of speed - and then pulled the trigger. The first target was lit ablaze, a bright white circle the only way of telling where the laser would cut and burn, not that the Oather could see it anyways. The Oather snapped to the right and fired again, then to the left and fired a third time, but on the fourth one, he made a dire, some may think unholy, mistake.

The invisible beam of righteous, hellish fury missed the target entirely and began burning the wall to slag. The Oather had no idea what he'd done and snapped to the fifth target, which he hit in the stomach and not the face. He brought the rifle to alert-carry and waited a moment, before he placed it on the table to his left and removed his effects - his scales paled in abject horror as he realized what he'd done.

"Oh... You've done it now, whelp." Jorban said deeply, as he drew a knife from its place in the steel wall.

Before he could slam it into the scales of the Oather, however, a fellow BattleVector entered the room, smelling almost instantly the tense air and the intent to kill emanating from Jorban. The BattleVector, who was adorned in full armor including her helmet, looked from Jorban, to the Oather, to the targets the latter had missed. She nodded in understanding, "I apologize, Lanceman, but you are wanted."

"By whom?" Jorban hissed, dragging an extended claw along the tip of the blade, he noticed that the Oather was trying desperately not to wet himself, as he didn't at all know if Jorban was going to make do on his threat. "I am currently filling in for trainer Bracknell." He elaborated.

"It is the Praetorian himself, Lanceman." Said the BattleVector, "a shuttle is being held up in your absence."

That visibly gave Jorban pause, "a shuttle? To where?"

"Hoomanisire."

Jorban blinked both eyelids, Hoomanisire? The fourth planet? Private shuttles to that world were all but unheard of, usually even the Praetorian worked his schedule around the bi-monthly shuttle departures, that he had one summoned and prepared now meant that this was a dire situation. "Can you take over?" He asked, nodding at the Oather, who finally did wet himself as he realized he wasn't escaping this.

"I can." The BattleVector took Jorban's knife as Jorban passed her, and just a few moments after the door closed, blood-curdling screeches could be heard as the BattleVector forced the Oather to the ground with her foot and began the meticulous process of cutting off the scales and skin of his tail, inch by painful inch.

It will grow back. Jorban thought as he walked through the bright, stony training facility. He must learn. He made a mental note to send an e-mail to Bracknell, the trainer would understand of course, but he still knew that the ancient man would be rather annoyed that he'd skipped out on him. Jorban shrugged to himself, serves him for succumbing to weakness and getting sick. He thought ruefully, stepping into the elevator and hitting the button for the ground-floor.

BattleVector training facilities were, as a custom, always underground. To be able to protect the world, the ancient Vectors had said, one must be buried and trained underneath it. The largest training facilities - which this one certainly was not - stretched dozens, if not hundreds of kilometers under the surface of the planet, some even having their own magmafields for an in-house First Trial. Ironically, and likely born by the wrath of the Hoomanisire, the controlled environments of the in-house Magmafields were far deadlier than the ones on the surface of Saltor, likely because these ones were the only breeding grounds in which Dregs were allowed to roam - somewhat - free.

Thinking of the Dregs was somewhat coincidental for Jorban, as the elevator ascended past the thirty second level as he did so. While this certainly was not the temple that contained it, the one and only temple to have not fallen during the Dreg War two thousand years ago contained within it a Dreg Queen on its thirty second level. It wasn't symbolic at all, but thinking of the number reminded Jorban of the first time he'd drawn Dreg blood, during an unintended outbreak in a city around Saltor's southern pole. The bug-like monsters had haunted Jorban's nightmares for decades, with their massive eyes, tentacle-like protrusions and multiple, pointed legs, they were somewhat uniquely suited to killing anything, and a Saltorian who was too young to have joined the Tyyrahn was uniquely suited to die at their hands specifically.

Jorban shook his head, thinking instead on what the Praetorian could possibly want with him. Praetorian Jun Mun'Sid was, as were all Praetorians throughout history, the single most powerful living Saltorian in existence. The legends said that he had saved his predecessor by grabbing a bisnatch by the tusks and ripping it in half, lengthwise. Merely stopping a charging bisnatch was something to behold, but to halt it wholesale and then tear it in half was something of legend.

It might be because of that fallen void-watcher... That night mere weeks ago had brought him and his gun-brothers no end of trouble. Nearly everyone who was allowed to study it had gotten the very same idea as he - it wasn't Saltorian, nor did it share any of the godlike characteristics of Hoomanisirian gifts. It was alien, and that fact alone had terrified a great many Saltorians who held a large position of power. Was it a sign from the gods? Were they to be tried again, soon? Or was there another species, lost as they were, and searching for their brothers and sisters? Were they going to be given a chance to ascend to the stars to search for the gods? Or could it be that a war, worse than the Dregs and worse than the ceaseless insurrection, was soon to come to their homes?

Jorban had assumed the lattermost since day one, he was convinced that if there was another race out there, they would - with their universal technological advantage - be far more enraged at being abandoned than the Saltorians could have ever been. If they came to Saltor to meet their abandoned brothers and sisters, the result would be death to the entire species. Jorban had never been more conscious of the pistol strapped to his hip, and wondered if the bullets it fired - each of which which were almost as big as his thumb - would even scratch alien scales.

The elevator slowed to a halt and let Jorban out on the ground floor. Jorban exited it and took a moment to gaze about the main floor; the elevator came to a halt and opened up in the center of the entire complex, both for strategic purposes and so Oathers could be in awe as they took a cinematic ride down to what would very likely be their deaths. The result was, whenever someone exited the lift, they immediately saw the ground - some may say 'grand' - floor in all of its simplistic beauty. The teachings of the Hoomanisire were almost painfully direct when it came to architecture - function over fashion, make sure it works and works well before aesthetic beauty even entered the picture. Resulting from that, the floors were a uniformly tiled stone, with a blood-splatter red on their surface, the walls were a gray stone supported by steel support beams, and the ceiling had a great spiderweb of steel beams crisscrossing about it to make certain that, if it ever did collapse, only a small bit would. By way of furniture and other such things that a building would need to be a building, one saw very little in the main room, there was the main desk several feet from the entrance, at which the BattleVectors who had been crippled were allowed to continue to serve and wear the title, and all along the walls were doors leading to rooms of various use and paintings of historical and societal importance. Each BattleVector temple had at least one unique piece to them, and the one Jorban had found himself in today could count itself unique even among uniquity, as it had one of the few remaining, pristine statues that had survived the Golden Age of the Hoomanisire.

Almost dictated by forces unseen, Jorban found himself strolling towards it, as there were no Priests lounging about, looking as if they were waiting for him. The statue's base stood at five feet - just a few feet shorter than an average male - and had written upon it words straight from the tongue of the Hoomanisire itself. There were an infuriatingly small number of people who could speak the Hoomanisirian language, let alone write and read its divine script, and as such the words were lost on the Saltorian, but the effect was not, for one need only look at the statue to garner its meaning. The god towered over his creations by standing its twelve foot frame upon the base of the statue, its stone robes billowed in an unseen, ancient wind, its skin - for it had no scales whatsoever - rippled as the muscles underneath it tried desperately to break free, its hair followed the direction of the billowing robes, and its face - its beautiful face - spoke of unending kindness, though hidden behind it was an endless capacity for even the harshest of judgements. It cradled in one hand a book, which had written upon it more letters of undecipherable origin and meaning, and with its other hand it pointed to the sky, beckoning its creations to set aside their differences and join them among the stars. It was an object most holy, and the ancient tales said that many thousands of BattleVectors had died just so the Dregs couldn't destroy it in the war long passed.

"Jorban Sal'Naa." Came a voice to the BattleVector's right. Jorban turned to the voice and beheld a priest garbed in robes similar to the statue he'd been admiring, he nodded in greeting and the priest spoke again, "every moment you spend in awe of the gods is a moment we waste in our pursuit of them. Come." He said, beckoning the veteran BattleVector to follow him out of the temple.

Jorban followed him, "pursuit? What do you mean Father?" Ever since the start of the space-age, 'The Pursuit' was the goal that always stayed out of reach of the Saltorians, their all-consuming goal to break free of the confines of their solar system and walk among the ancient pathways of the gods, to follow the path that had been set for them so long ago.

"You were there, you tell me." Said the priest.

Jorban blinked, "the void-watcher?" He guessed correctly.

"Indeed. But I cannot reveal anything else to you, not until we are on the shuttle."

Getting the hint, the armored BattleVector followed the robed priest out of the only surface-level floor in the temple. They stepped through massive the cave-opening, which itself looked like it had no doors, but in reality the building-sized steel doors were simple hidden inside the face of the mountain they were exiting, if need be, the doors could seal shut in less than ten seconds, and nothing save for their god himself could get in, or out; some of the more blasphemous people believed that even the Hoomanisire himself couldn't pierce those doors, they were in such a way that they could resist even several direct nuclear blasts.

Exiting their temple, they were greeted by a suitably bizarre sight. Usually, space-shuttles had dedicated launch and landing sights, because their engines produced a great deal of heat and smoke, but here was a space shuttle, seated atop an aerial vehicle.

Jorban itched his scarred scales, "I have heard of this before… Assisted launching. I did not know we had the technology…" He said, in awe.

"There are many things the Praetorian keeps for himself that he delays the public seeing." The priest explained, "assisted launching is just one of those things."

"Why would we hide things from our people?" Jorban inquired, as they walked through the typically hot Saltorian air towards the massive airplane. "Would not a device like this help us in our great quest?"

"You would think that it would. And we tried. It did not." Said the Priest, "the gods created light to show us the limits of conventional machinery. We cannot truly begin our quest until we learn how to travel like they do…. Faster than light itself."

They entered the airplane and ascended a ladder into the space shuttle, within which were two other BattleVectors, both of whom Jorban recognized instantly. "Syn, Heris, Brothers." He reached forward and clasped arms with each of his gun-brothers in turn, he hadn't seen either of them since the downed satellite.

Syn cleared his throat, "Jorban… Compose yourself." He nodded behind the dull-scaled, suddenly humbles Saltorian, who turned and saw who stood tall behind him.

The Praetorian, the single most powerful Saltorian alive, Jun Mun'Sid. Jorban leapt to attention, and clasped his fist over his hearts. "Lord Praetorian." He managed not to stutter out, "I apologize for my outburst." He swallowed thickly, "please, forgive me."

The nine foot tall Praetorian shook his head, and for a moment Jorban thought his hearts would be burned out of his chest with the Praetorian's energy pistol. The Praetorian, however, chuckled on his second shake, his mouth curling into a wide grin. "It is fine, Lanceman. Sit, we will be launching -" The shuttle shook under their feet, as the assisted launcher took off. "Now." He was the only one of the three of them to stay firmly on his feet. "Though I see it has been a long time since you've all left the planet… These days, I seem to be in a shuttle more than I am on the battlefield." He nodded to the seats that assembled themselves out of the floorboards. "Now, tell me, what have you heard about the void watcher?"

Syn cleared his throat, as he sat upon his unfolded and full-formed chair. On older shuttle-models, the chairs were built into the vehicle, like airplanes, but on the newer models, the floor-boards could separate like plates and the compressed, cube-shaped chairs grew out of, and unfolded from, the floor. Despite how rigid they looked, they were surprisingly comfortable. "Precious little, Lord-Praetorian." He said, "we knew more when we were fighting for it, than we know now."

The Praetorian nodded, looking a lot smaller and less intimidating now than when he was standing at full height. However, his presence still managed to take up most of the room. "Then I shall tell you what we have learned these last weeks. The void-watcher that fell that night was of non-Saltorian origin. It is made of materials that do not exist on our indexed list. It is a machine of alien origin. What you have suspected is true, we are not the only ones in the universe on a great journey to find the ancient gods."

Jorban nodded slowly, "this does not sound like the joyous news it should be."

"You know of our history, and you know of the history of the gods. The ancient scriptures say that the lands they travelled were all violent, all horrifying, all war-torn, and ours was no different. The only difference between ours, and the peoples they pacified, was that the righteous Hoomanisire spared us pacification, and taught us the ways of peace and education. So just think, out among the stars, the very lands upon which the gods themselves once walked… Now walks a race they once pacified, and then left as they left us… A race that did not learn the ancient lessons, but stole and savaged the ancient gifts." He said, solemnly. "And they have been watching us, and the only reason we know is because an asteroid ripped through our solar system, and its gravitational pull affected their void-watcher."

"So what are we to do? Are they coming?" Heris asked, his light voice providing stark contrast to the low tones of the Praetorian.

"We do not know… But this machine has provided us the means with which to find out." He explained, "while it itself shares not the design conventions of Hoomanisirian technology, our men are taking it apart and learning the ways with which to reverse engineer and study alien technology. We hope to apply these lessons to the temple we found on Planet Hoomanisire." Said the Praetorian, "and yes, we did indeed find a temple. Many years ago, our miners discovered the ancient temple, and we used blessed materials to break into it, and we have been slowly opening it up to us." He paused, "it is… Magnificent. Larger than the Temple of the Hoomanisire on Innsua, by a factor of three, and it is larger still, for there are lower reaches we have yet to breach, and further doors we have yet to open. It still has power, and one of the rooms we have found…" He paused, a smile playing on his religious features. "We believe it to be a communicator. From the ancient texts in the Temple on Saltor, it fits the description. All we must do is provide it with power and apply the lessons we have learned from the void-watcher. We may be on the precipice of finding the gods.

"Imagine what we can do with this opportunity. We can show the gods all that which we have learned… We can win back their favor." The Praetorian's voice shook with glee. "We can be the ones to usher forth a second age of the Hoomanisire."

The shuttle went silent, as the plane climbed through the atmosphere and rapidly reached the point from which the shuttle would launch.

"So… Why have you brought us?" Jorban asked.

"The chaotic ones. Word has spread like wildfire amongst them, and they have reached the same conclusions as us. They have very few on Planet Hoomanisire, but we have word that they are gathering up all of their supporters for a single, explosive attack on the new temple, so they can claim it for themselves. We cannot let that happen… So we are bringing our best BattleVectors from Saltor and its moons, and transporting them directly to the new temple's landing strip." He explained.

Jorban's jaw and the tail wrapped around his midsection both went slack, his many razor-sharp teeth practically itched for the flesh of his enemies, as he realized what his Praetorian was saying. They were going to war, on the planet that knew only peace. He felt the itch in his scales again, the one that had preceded the void-watcher. Things would never again be the same, the four-centuries old, dull-scaled Saltorian knew it.

The first trip to planet Hoomanisire, ever, in all of recorded history, had taken upwards of eight months; the crew wouldn't have survived without hibernation technology. Since then, the technology became better, and the trips got faster, to the point where it took just a few weeks to travel the two hundred million miles between the two planets with life. With propulsion and fuel-conservation technology as advanced as it was these days, it was actually more economic to simply lay on the accelerator until the vessel got to five percent of the speed of light. It kept up that velocity for a few days, before turning around and bleeding off ninety eight percent of it, the rest was bled off in the descent into the atmosphere.

Normal procedure was to descend into the designated orbital-landing zones, as simply landing willy-nilly on any part of the planet one desired was impossibly dangerous, and invariably got people hurt, or killed. Today, however, the procedure was overlooked by the only man alive who had the authority to do so, and the shuttle came hurtling through the atmosphere towards a landing zone made specifically around the largely excavated Hoomanisirian Temple. The landing was a bit rougher than usual, but there was no damage to the shuttle and no one died, so after a few minutes as the shuttle was shut down and cooled off, the BattleVectors and the Priests chosen by the Praetorian, and the Praetorian himself, exited the shuttle.

"I shall give the each of you one hour to familiarize yourself with our new temple, after which I will expect to see you at the armory we are constructing for further orders. This is the line we are drawing in the sand, no one shall cross it." He said, looking over the massive plateau, and its planet's characteristically silvery dirt and deep gray rocks. His scarred face was stoic as thoughts ran through his centuries-old mind, he sighed once, and turned back to the three assembled BattleVectors. "Understood?"

The three jumped to a salute and clenched their hands over their hearts. "Yes, lord Praetorian!" They three declared, before they were released from his presence.

Though anyone else, on any other day, would have scrambled over each other in their attempt to make a mad-dash for the new, impossibly valuable religious artifact that was a second Temple of the Hoomanisire, the three BattleVectors walked with grace and tranquility, though they each had a quickened pace - religion to a Saltorian was like killing to a Dreg, they valued it above all else, even integrity. In ten minutes, they descended the spiralling roads that led to the primary entrance to the ancient temple. Originally, the miners had had to used blessed thermite to get in, but as excavation efforts went on, they found the true entrance to the massive temple.

Walking inside, Jorban felt a sense of awe, and being in the place where his ancestors and his gods once stood made him feel impossibly tiny. With lights donated by Saltorian technology, the massive foyer wasn't as well-lit as it would have been in its past, but it was lit enough for Jorell to see the history and the sanctity of the place, as well as feel it with every step and breathe it in with every lungful. Like a majority of Hoomanisirian artifacts, the entrance hall was silver, its gleam had dulled with age, but its magnificence hadn't decreased at all. The walls stretched up and curved beautifully, seamlessly into the ceiling, as if the entire place had been made of one single piece of metal.

Lining the walls were mind-bogglingly intricate reliefs, simple line-drawings that created spiralling patterns that all diverged and separated outwards to create massive pictures and illustrations of Hoomanisirian concepts and artwork. They all extended into the ceiling, where they became more sparse, representing the stars above everyone's heads, but at the center of the ceiling, they all dropped - going from small depressions in the wall to wire-thin silver extensions from the ceiling, which all converged at a single point: The head of a massive, towering silver statue.

"My gods…" Said Heris as the three of them came to a stunned halt in front of the enormous statue.

The enormous statue was made of the everlasting Hoomanisirian Steel, and depicted a kind, gentle god wearing flowing robes. His skin was smooth and flawless, and his hairy face was curled into a warm smile as, its arms extended and its five-fingered hands opened, it welcomed all who stepped into its temple. Its hair flowed down its head as freely as the rigid silver statue could be allowed to depict, and its eyes were affixed to a subject that no mortal alive could ever name.

Jorban was the first to fall to his knees, eyes slowly leaking tears as they were graced by the beauty and the reality of where he was and what it meant for his people. Here he sat, in the eons-old temple of his people's gods, within which lay the very key to ascending to the stars to travel among them. Syn slowly fell too, his own eyes tearing up as he realized that, perhaps for the first time in his life, he wouldn't simply be fighting merely for peace, but he would be fighting for the glory and the honor of his god. There truly was not a better honor, and there could not possibly be a greater way to die, if it was to be his time. Soon, even Heris fell, and the three of them clenched their hands above their hearts and bowed their heads in humility and in respect.

They sat there for a time, before the time came that they had to stand, and with that time's arrival came the first word they would say in the temple, the one and only holy word that every Saltorian knew by heart. A declaration of faith to the very gods they worshipped, a legendary battle-cry that the ancient Saltorians shouted in their misguided attempts at killing their way back into glory, the single most powerful word in the Saltorian vocabulary.

"Amen."

A/N:

I promise you all, there is definitely a point to these little 'intermission' chapters.

'Till next time!

-PFB