18. Unexpected Guests

Normally, New Kamina City was a noisy, bustling place, as one would expect for the capital of the galaxy-spanning Spiral Nation. Today, though, there was a stillness to it, a sense of quiet reverence. Crowds of citizens, human and beastman alike, had flooded the upper walkways, all jostling for the best view. The Chouginga Dai-Gurren had arrived in the system a day ago, and it seemed that there were two moons in the sky, the mighty Spiral flagship being kept at a safe distance to avoid untoward effects from its gravitic field on the planet's surface.

Teppelin Square had been cleared, the usually-crowded public space now serving as a giant parade ground to display those warriors being prepared for their mission beyond the stars. Rank upon rank of Grappal war-mechs stood immobile, headed by the gleaming red, yellow, and black Gurren-Lagann. Small groups of dignitaries walked between the sleeping giants, inspecting them and their pilots with fascinated awe.

Admiral Viral allowed himself a smile of quiet pride. They had come a long way in the decades since the War of Liberation, growing into a mature, peaceful civilisation where once they had been scattered, desperate refugees, living in fear of what loomed above. The fact that he had once been part of 'what loomed above' was something he dismissed as largely irrelevant these days – a cushy job, a few dozen medals, and a well-deserved reputation as a war hero trumped getting repeatedly beaten up by his superiors for looking at them funny any day.

He glanced around, looking for familiar faces. President Rossiu was gazing down from one of the balconies overlooking the square like a benevolent elder deity, occasionally saluting the crowd with grave majesty. Viral's inhumanly sharp eyes could detect a faint bluish glow around said balcony, presumably generated by a force field. The man was a populist, not an idiot.

Just as the Gurren-Lagann was at the forefront of the Grappals, so were its pilots, Lieutenant-Colonels Gimmy and Darry, leading the assembled flight personnel, their uniforms pristine and almost as decorated as Viral's own. They had grown too – he remembered back in the Liberation War when they had been just a couple of scared, unusually lucky teenagers who had required constant bailing-out. Now, though, they were respected across the galaxy as peacekeepers and crusaders against injustice – neither was Kamina the Enkindler or Simon the Digger, certainly, but they were most definitely good enough.

All in all, the admiral was feeling fairly confident about the coming conflict. For all that the years of peace might have softened them, the Spiral Nation still had the courage, the power, and the technology to face any conceivable threat. He took a deep breath, stepped up to the podium at the head of the square, and began to deliver his prepared speech.

"Citizens of the Spiral Nation-"

He got no further. There was a horrible, viscous sound, and Gimmy's head came apart, spraying pink mist across the hull of his mech and the uniform of his co-pilot. She had no time to react, no time to even open her mouth, before the second shot punched right through her heart.

The third hit Viral right between the eyes.

He toppled backwards, his flesh beginning to knit itself together again even before he hit the ground. The back of his head slammed into the flagstones of the plaza, causing his vision to blur and his scalp to throb with sharp, hideous pain as his fractured skull repaired itself. He dived behind the nearest piece of cover, silently giving thanks for the immortal body that the dead Spiral King Lordgenome had given him, and attempted to take stock of the situation.

More shots were pouring in, eliminating scientists, politicians, and pilots with gleeful impunity. Some of the last tried to get into their mechs, either for protection or vengeance, but with little success. One bullet headed straight for the President, passing through the force field as if it wasn't even there. One of his bodyguards shoved him to the ground and the shot went wide, tearing off Rossiu's arm at the shoulder and going straight through his unfortunate guardian.

Viral tried to assess trajectory and fire patterns in an attempt to figure out where the sudden assault was coming from, but the closest vantage point in the most likely direction was a hill all the way outside the city. So accurate at such a range... not even Yoko could manage that.

He scampered on all fours towards the nearest Grappal, using the available cover as best he could. The crowds had begun to panic, undulating like a sea as they attempted to escape from what they had originally considered a safe haven. Flailing bodies fell from the walkways, pushed over the edge by the terrified mass of people.

His oversized paw-hand grabbed the back of the Grappal pilot's uniform, dragging him behind the huge mech. Ignoring the bloody ruin that was the dead man's lower body, he rifled through his jacket pockets. At last he found the activation key, a crude imitation of the Gurren-Lagann's Core Drill, and held its strap between his fangs as he scaled the war machine. A stray shot took off his foot at the ankle and he almost fell, instead relying on his three functional limbs as the appendage regrew.

Once inside, he quickly closed the cockpit, inserting the key and placing his hands on the grips with practiced familiarity. He was no Spiral, certainly, but he still knew his way around a Ganmen if required. He powered up the flight-sphere and took off, weaving through the convoluted tangle of New Kamina City's skyline.

Explosions mushroomed in the distance, toppling towers, blocking roads, and collapsing walkways. The attack on Teppelin Square was clearly not an isolated incident. Viral patched into the military comm-net, and found total anarchy.

"... some sort of commando teams... small but tough... Lagann's bolts, they're tough... Stop them, stop them before they..."

"There's monsters in the streets, going after the civilians... Shit, it's a massacre down here."

"Air Marshal Shiki's down! I say again, Air Marshal Shiki is down! One of his aides turned into... something, I don't know what, and..."

"They're on the Chouginga, hell, I think they were here all along... planting bombs... some sort of bioweapon... so many dead..."

"Where did they come from? In Kamina's name, where did they come from?"

He cut across the chatter, attempting to stave off a total breakdown. "All units, this is Admiral Viral. Initiate Defence Plan 36B – we are under assault by a large-scale guerrilla operation. Remember your training, remember those we are sworn to protect, and above all remember that we are the Spiral Nation! Nothing is impossible to us! No enemy is undefeatable! Together, we shall pierce the heavens themselves!"

A ragged cheer echoed from the net, and Viral grinned a toothy grin. That was how it went, wasn't it? What I wouldn't give to have a few more members of the Dai-Gurren Brigade at my back...

That was then, though, and this was now. He had to make do with what he had – the true test of a leader was how they could adapt, whether to new situations, new assets, or, most importantly, new enemies.

They had never faced foes like this before – the Dai-Gurren Brigade had been created to fight robotic colossi in honourable combat, and that was what they had mostly ended up dealing with, plus the occasional swarm of lice-ridden bandits during the rebuilding after the War of Liberation. These... creatures were different. Ganmen and the Anti-Spirals' Mugen you could see coming, and bandits were never this well-equipped, this well-organised, or even this creatively vicious. He very much looked forward to administering a little payback.

Another detonation blossomed from the upper storeys of a nearby tower, and he rolled the Grappal to avoid it, his eyes still set on the high, rocky hill ahead.


The assassin leaned back, and watched the Spiral capital burn. It had been a textbook operation – send in the Divines to eliminate the sensitive targets whilst the Hellhounds tore apart the military and the daemons spread general chaos. The transports were still in the Warp, Divine Assassins summoning Hellhounds from them to attack precise locations as required. Though they were still somewhat vulnerable there, he had formulated a plan to deal with that problem that had been cheerfully authorised by the gods.

Looking up, he maximised the zoom on his mechanical eyes and was pleased to see explosions rippling across the surface of the Chouginga Dai-Gurren like pinpricks of sickly yellow light. Lady Reigle's plague bombs were working as advertised. Well, that should keep them from achieving space superiority any time soon.

All in all, everything was going according to plan. Everything, that was, except whatever maniac was trying to fly a building-sized war robot into him.

He took stock of his equipment. One Exitus-pattern rail rifle, accurate at ranges of up to ten kilometres with the appropriate training and augmentations (which he had), plus five clips of regular ammunition and one of the special phased penetrator rounds, adapted from the ancient Lance of Longinus in much the same way as the Angel Cutter blades popular with both his fellow-assassins and the Hellhounds. One standard-pattern bolt pistol. A full belt of Warp-powered grenade dispensers. More than enough.

He levelled the rail rifle, slapping in the clip of PP rounds as he did so. The Grappal had opened fire, high-explosive shells chewing up the ground around him. None of them came particularly close, and all lacked the telltale greenish tinge that indicated Spiral Energy use – the pilot was obviously emotionally-compromised by the destruction of his home. Makes my job much easier, I must say.

His first shot went straight up the barrel of the mech's enormous machine-gun, detonating it from the inside in a fireball that reduced its forearms to molten slag and scored deep rents across its chest. His second punched through its head into the flight-sphere on its back, shattering it and sending the Grappal crashing to the ground. His last two hit its exposed leg joints, immobilising it where it lay.

He ejected the clip, swapping it for one of regular rounds. No sense in wasting the rest of the valuable phased penetrators if he didn't have to.

The crippled mech's cockpit-hatch creaked open, and the pilot staggered out. For the first time that day, the assassin knew uncertainty.

Hold on, didn't I kill you once already?

The pilot was a tall, rangy creature dressed in the medal-bedecked blue uniform of a senior officer who could almost have passed for human if it were not for the oversized, clawed hands and the fang-filled mouth that twisted into a feral snarl as he regarded his assailant. A mutant? No – must be one of those chimerical constructs the Spirals have living with them. Beastmen, I think they're called. That explains why he wasn't using the Grappal to its full potential, anyway.

All in all, he looked a great deal healthier than when the assassin had last seen him with bits of his head splattered across Teppelin Square.

He didn't waste time trying to figure out his foe's miraculous resurrection, though, instead taking aim with the rail rifle once more and shredding the beastman's torso with a full clip of high-velocity rounds. His target collapsed to the ground in an undignified tangle of limbs... before starting to get right back up again, his body regenerating with impressive speed.

The assassin started to fall back, firing off shot after shot at the advancing beastman. All of them hit, and none had any permanent effect other than further ruining his target's uniform. Slowly but surely, he was losing ground. Time for a change of tactics.

He dropped the rail rifle, reasoning that he could retrieve it later, and pulled out his bolt pistol. This proved rather more effective, the miniature rockets lifting his pursuer off his feet and sending him tumbling down the slope, chunks of flesh flying in every direction. The assassin nonchalantly holstered the weapon and held out his hand beneath one of the grenade dispensers on his waist, allowing himself a satisfied nod as something heavy, round, and metallic dropped into it. He thumbed the arming stud, calculated the trajectory, and threw the fragmentation grenade down after the beastman, setting off after it a moment later. He didn't need to check to see if it had hit – he knew it had.

"Exitus acta probat," he muttered to himself.

He drew his pistol again as he approached his enemy's last resting place, but soon saw that it wouldn't be necessary. The grenade had done its work above and beyond his expectations, leaving nothing but a scattered mess of viscera and...

An inhumanly long arm shot upwards from behind a rock, its huge, gnarled fist hammering into his groin. His legs turned to water and he collapsed to the ground, the beastman looming in front of him. Its (he could no longer reasonably call it a 'he') flesh was reknitting with horrifying speed as it rained down blow after blow into his armoured bodysuit. He tried to bring his pistol to bear, but it was snatched from his grasp, crushed into mangled wreckage, and dismissively thrown to one side. The creature was roaring, reciting name after name as it pounded him.

He kicked out, catching it in the knee and causing it to crumple over beside him. As he tried to get away, though, it caught his leg and squeezed, crushing flesh, bone, and cybernetics with equal ease.

The assassin was dragged backwards, scrabbling desperately at the surrounding rocks, and the beating began once more.


Eventually, the red mist rose from his eyes. Viral stood up, gave the assassin's mutilated corpse a disdainful kick with his one remaining boot, and limped back down the hill.

He had a city to save.


The Grand Convocation Chamber of the New Republic Senate was in turmoil. As a central parliament for over a hundred thousand star systems it could be said that this was its natural state of being, but it was especially pronounced today.

"So allow me to summarise," Senator Borsk Fey'lya said, his deep, rich voice dripping with disdain. "Peace has returned after the longest period of political turmoil in living memory, we have finally begun to heal our wounds and restore order to the galaxy, and our children once more have the opportunity to grow and prosper in freedom. So what is the honourable Jedi Order's response to this? What do the self-appointed guardians of said peace and stability will? Why, nothing other than a return to conflict against an unspecified, supposedly terrible foe on the word of some shadowy order of self-described magicians who claim to come from another universe! Noble senators, does that sound sane to you? Does that sound reasonable?"

There was a ripple of discontented mutters and calls of "Hear, hear!" from the floor.

"Even assuming that these extradimensional bogeymen, these 'Chaos Gods', do in fact exist, have we attempted to meet with them? To reason with them? Of course not! We are glibly assured that they are wicked, deceitful manipulators, that no word they utter can be trusted. Do the Jedi have so little faith in our skills as negotiators that they must coddle us against the horrors of the universe at large, letting us play our own games while the grown-ups work elsewhere? I am sure I need not remind you, noble senators, of the consequences that arose when we last placed so much faith in the reasoning of a Force-user."

"Did he just play the Palpatine card?" Senator Ferron Hykso muttered to his neighbour. "Please tell me he didn't just play the Palpatine card."

"I'm afraid so," Senator Val Wrynn replied, idly scratching at the eyepieces of his mask.

"Well, there goes his credibility."

"I'm not so sure," the Kel Dor politician replied slowly. "He's making some good arguments. Master Skywalker's faction may face some genuine opposition here."

Hykso stared at him, and he threw up his three-fingered hands in surrender. "Well, apart from playing the Palpatine card, of course."

Meanwhile, Fey'lya was winding up to the end of his speech. "And so, ladies, gentlemen, and indeterminates of the Senate, I say to you... WHAT THE KRIFF IS THAT THING?"

The indicated creature stood calmly in the upper tiers of the chamber. It was dressed in a matte-black armoured bodysuit with a white, skull-shaped mask concealing its face. The fingers of one hand were tipped with long, metallic talons engraved with faintly glowing runes, whilst the other held an enormous, brutal-looking sword that was toothed like a chainsaw. The dismembered bodies of three senators and their staff were strewn around it – Hykso could only assume that the Senate's chaotic floor-plan and general hubbub had kept the murders undetected.

The creature spoke in a quiet, emotionless voice that nevertheless managed to carry to every part of the chamber.

"Fear me, for I am your apocalypse."

That was when the screaming started.

The assassin vaulted down into the mass of terrified politicians, carving a bloody trail through them. The chamber's inhabitants scattered like herd animals before a predator, but the intricate, symbolic seating arrangements conspired against them, creating natural chokepoints wherever those attempting to escape were not becoming hopelessly lost. In those first few minutes of the attack, more were trampled to death than caught on the assassin's blades.

Hykso dragged Val Wrynn through the crowd, yelling into his headset for his bodyguards to attend him. His only response was an ominous silence. Why didn't we see this coming? Why weren't we warned?

They exited the chamber, swept along by the living tide through the maze of passageways beneath. It was only once they had almost reached the main foyer that said tide began to slow, and they heard more screaming from up ahead. They rounded a corner, and saw the cause.

The assassin's attack had not been without purpose – it had been intended to frighten its prey, driving them down into a trap. They attempted to turn, to run back the way they came, but the stampeding crowd blocked their escape.

The last thing Senator Hykso saw was the second assassin's goggles, burning with a hellish red glow as the creature closed in.


Two floors above, Luke Skywalker was attempting to shape the Senate Building's defences into some semblance of order. He had borrowed a comlink from an injured Republic soldier, and was employing it to get a feel for the situation. Meditation might have proven more effective, but meditating while a berserk killing machine was firing off what appeared to be directed fusion blasts at you and your troops was not what he deemed to be the wisest course of action.

He had directed several squads towards the lower floors to deal with the second assassin, but the sheer congestion meant that they probably wouldn't arrive there for another five minutes, and he was uncomfortably aware that every second might cost another life. In the meantime, though, he had other things to deal with.

One squad had set up an E-WEB repeating blaster on one of the upper balconies, pouring down fire on the assassin. Despite its best efforts, several shots hit, gouging molten craters in its armour, and it snarled, slagging the gunners' position with a shot of its fusion pistol and leaping into the remainder, chainsword roaring. It was then that the heavy blaster's power packs cooked off, going up in an explosion that hurled the assassin to the chamber floor. The remaining soldiers wasted no time in taking advantage of its temporary incapacitation, rushing out of cover and firing shot after shot into it until it finally stopped moving. Luke had just started to breathe a sigh of relief when the creature started to twitch and writhe once more, before exploding in a shower of acidic bile that melted holes in the tiles for fifty metres around it.

"Primary target has been eliminated," he reported through the comlink. "How are you doing on the secondary, lieutenant?"

"No longer a problem," the Senate Guard officer replied shakily. "Senator Kerrithrarr got 'im before we could arrive. Tore him apart."

Luke winced. Death by angry wookiee – not a pleasant way to go.

"How is the senator?"

"Dead, sir. That assassin-freak exploded when he died – turned most of the corridor into steaming goop. There were at least a dozen casualties just from that."

"... I understand. How is the evacuation going?"

"Most of the surviving civvies are out – Senator Fey'lya was surprisingly helpful with co-ordinating that mess – but we still haven't heard from the Chief of State or his staff. They headed for the roof, towards his private craft."

"Thank you, lieutenant. I'll check that out." He turned back to the soldiers accompanying him. "Stay here for the moment. Sergeant Garlak, you have command."

Not waiting for a reply, he sprinted away towards the rooftop landing bays, leaping between the tiers and balconies of the Grand Convocation Chamber with precise applications of the Force. He drew on it further, feeling its power infuse his limbs, and accelerated, igniting his lightsabre as he went.

For a moment he wondered how the assassins had managed to bypass the guards so easily, but dismissed it. We can figure that out once everybody's safe.

Even before he entered the Senate Building's departure lounge, he knew something was wrong. The smell of blood and other unnameable things hung thick and heavy in the air, and waves of darkness seemed to pulsate from the room. Something terrible happened here.

He slid open the door, and entered hell.

There were over twenty people in the room – bodyguards, senators, clerks, and diplomats. Not a single one was alive. Each had been killed in a different way – decapitation, strangulation, and evisceration were amongst the least creative. Chief of State Ponc Gavrisom had been plucked, dismembered, and sculpted into a twisted imitation of a gamebird at a banquet, placed on the table in the middle of the room like a grotesque offering.

The third assassin unfolded himself from the shadows in the corner, his artificial eyes glowing with giggling insanity.

"Hello, Master Skywalker. Do you like my little arrangement? Don't be shy now – I'm sure there's room for one more."

An ordinary human might have felt rage, terror, or some similarly strong emotion at that point. Luke, however, simply felt... calm. Tranquil. The complexity of his life seemed to fade away, collapsing into a simple tunnel with him at one end and this grinning butcher at the other. He rushed forwards, lightsabre raised, without saying a single word. The assassin shrieked in delight and moved to intercept him.

They exchanged a single blow each, and a body fell to the floor.

Luke sheathed his weapon and walked away. He had no desire to stay in this place any longer than was necessary.

Behind him, the assassin exploded in the same manner as its colleagues, filling the room with cleansing acid and taking away just a little of its horror.


Across the New Republic, garrisons and listening posts fell silent, overwhelmed by a tide of hideous monsters and shadow-skinned infiltrators that seemingly came out of nowhere. Galactic communications collapsed, plunging entire systems into isolation, and entire fleets vanished, swallowed by nameless predators. Through it all flew the Yuuzhan Vong, plunging towards the young civilisation's heart with god-given speed and burning everything in their path with unholy glee.

Rudely awoken from its dreams of peace, the galaxy screamed into the long night that crept over it like a shroud.


Author's Notes: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another week's instalment of the Doorstop, in which things are starting to look very grim indeed. Also, we learn that when a Spiral Knight dabbling in mad science makes you immortal, he damned well makes you immortal.

I can definitely imagine bringing up the Emperor in a debate being roughly equivalent to Godwin's Law in the New Republic. It only makes sense, after all.

Oh, and if you find yourself agreeing with the Expanded Universe's top political sleazemonger in this chapter, relax – that was quite intentional. Might still want to grab some antibiotics just in case, though. Can't be too careful.