"Dagger-6 to Mothership-Prime! Dagger-6 to Mothership-Prime can you hear me!?"
The young pilot grit both sets of teeth under his faceplate as he huddled in the thin transparisteel bubble protecting him from the black void. Sweat almost made his stubby hands slip off the control stick that guided his fighter swiftly around his mothership as hundreds of unidentified enemies swarmed around him in every direction.
Dagger-6 struggled to make sense of his surroundings, the explosions and debris flying in every direction gave him no end of difficulty in that area.
"Dagger-6 we read you! The Mothership is disengaging and will rendezvous with the Beta flotilla."
The pilot blinked, not recognizing the voice.
"Who is this? By the stars! Where is Captain Telsh!?"
"Dead! So is the Supreme Commander!"
"What!? But command is supposed to default to the highest ranking Admiral!"
"He's dead. So are all the other Admirals. So is the Miskara."
The pilot froze, not knowing how to react to the news.
"What!? What happened!?"
"Those mechanical automatons we captured! We heard weapons fire over the comm, I don't know what happened but they turned on us out of nowhere! The Fleet's command structure has completely collapsed! I'm getting out of here and if you have any sense you will too!"
"What!? Where in the infernal void do you think-"
Bump
A blaster bolt crashed against his shields. Dagger-6 turned his head and his heart skipped a beat at the sight behind him. A V-Shaped formation of the enemy fighters swung down at Dagger-6 and performed a manoeuvre that should've been impossible for any squadron of sentients to pull off. The squadron flipped and dived with perfect coordination, spreading out around him like water from a fountain and closing back in to converge on his fighter from every direction.
Dagger-6 banked downwards, diving for dear life. The young Vagaari escaped the snare, but just barely, taking a hit not strong enough to shatter the transparisteel bubble surrounding him, but still strong enough to crack it. The fighters closed in like a pack of wild dogs chasing a wounded deer. He got a closer look at them now, at the unusual design, the semi-circular body, the four prongs mounted on the wings, the oval shaped cockpit and the twin windows glowing red.
Twin windows that looked more like a pair of eyes than any kind of cockpit the pilot had ever seen.
"Blast it! What steel pit did these creatures crawl from!?" The pilot growled from his upper mouth, lower mouth keeping its teeth locked firmly closed.
The thought was cut short by the sound of the engines exploding behind him.
Dagger-6's fighter spun uncontrollably, leaving debris from the shattered engines flailing behind them.
Frantically, the pilot slammed down on the release that disconnected his cockpit from the rest of the fighter. Explosive bolts blasted the small spherical structure away from the flaming body of the craft and out from the grasp of the fighters, speeding through a myriad of explosions, a deadly maze of blaster bolts and a durasteel jungle of shattered Vagaari ships until finally, all that lay in front of Dagger 6 was the endless void and a twinkling sea of stars before him.
He drifted there for what seemed like hours, but was only for a few moments. The battle raging around him, all Dagger-6 could do was watch in horror as the proud battlefleet was torn to shreds, the gunners of the ships seemingly unable to react to the foe as they were overtaken or unable to coordinate.
In one corner sat, the unknown vessel they had engaged. An odd structure, six grey ships docked around a larger cylindrical superstructure which made the craft into what could only be described as a monster of a warship.
In another corner were the fleet of Chiss ships that had been seemingly waiting for the Vagaari when they had arrived. They began to move, falling upon the distant beast as though the fate of the Vagaari was already sealed, for none could look at their plight and think this was not so.
And in the last corner was the horrific sight validated Dagger-6's thoughts.
The Prime Vagaari fleet, its command structure systematically eviscerated, the Miskara's flagship drifting helplessly, its escorts descending into pure chaos. The unknown fighters were now weaving and swooping around every ship in the fleet, spraying the hulls with pinpoint accuracy and painting patterns around the bubbles, leaving their occupants unharmed whilst shredding the interiors to pieces.
All resistance had faded, a frenzied panic took hold. Fighters scattered like rodents fleeing a burning building. Cruisers and Frigates collided and smashed together in a desperate attempt to escape the carnage. The resulting wall of debris encircled what was left of the fleet in a makeshift grave with the fighters.
The image of the burning Vagaari fleet was the last image in Veltosh's mind before he awoke from his slumber.
Supreme Commander Veltosh looked out the viewport from the bridge of what was now the Vagaari flagship. He'd dozed off again, once more reminiscing on his days as a pilot. Under the callsign Dagger-6 he had eviscerated Ebruchi pirates, faced Ssi-Ruuvi swarm fighters and even gone toe to toe with the forces of the Chiss themselves.
On some level he missed those days, no burden of command, no lazy wretch of a Miskara, just a battery of high powered lasers at his fingertips and the enemies of the Vagaari in front of him.
And all of that had changed when the Prime Fleet met its end.
It had been many years since the downward spiral of the Vagaari had begun, but it had all started with that fateful battle, the encounter with the strange alien ship that called itself "Outbound Flight". That accursed vessel had cost them everything. Through trickery and deceit the accursed Chiss had wiped out the leadership of the entire Miskarate in a single blow, sneaking an army of mechanical soldiers onto the flagship with orders to exterminate every important Vagaari they found. With the Miskara, Supreme Commander and Admiralty all dead, the command structure collapsed. The Chiss' automated fighters made short work of the routing rabble that remained, until mere shreds of the fleet limped away from the battle while the Chiss were distracted.
Even now the carnage of that day had seared itself into Veltosh's mind. Oh, to find the Chiss Commander responsible for that catastrophe, to come face to face with whichever member of that miserable species had dishonoured the Vagaari in such a manner and strangle the insidious crimson glow from their eyes, nothing would make Veltosh happier.
With the Prime Fleet destroyed, the remaining raiding parties, reconnaissance forces and other detachments quickly grouped up and attempted to form a new fleet. Veltosh himself was lucky enough to be picked up by one of the few ships to successfully escape. The Vagaari had survived, just barely, but they had lost most of their numbers, and the best of their race.
The most skilled and capable leaders of the Vagaari all perished in that battle, cut down by Chiss treachery. The beings who rose to fill their place were subpar at best, inferior officers and warriors who had been sent away to less important postings, tasks of limited significance where failure would not spell catastrophe, only to now have the future of the entire species resting on their shoulders.
And so the Miskarate fell into decline, worlds and empires that feared and respected the Vagaari now laughed at them, tributaries and slave worlds revolted in defiance. The Chiss Ascendancy ceased to view the Vagaari as a major threat, instead focusing their attention towards the Hollow Cult of the Voidlord and the resurgent Grysk Hegemony.
The Grysk in particular had proven to be a serious thorn in the side of the Miskarate. Where the Miskarate waned, the Hegemony waxed. One minute the Grysk were a dying race of squabbling warlords and petty fiefdoms, the next they were a resurgent, unified empire expanding faster than any other power in known space. Aggressive and powerful, the Grysk had capitalized on the Vagaari weakness, devouring its former satraps and crushing any attempt at retaliation. Time and time again the Grysk beat them back with a seemingly overwhelming advantage in technology and numbers, until all that the Vagaari could do was simply run away.
For years Veltosh watched silently as incompetent superiors blundered the Vagaari Empire further into decline. For years he held his objections and kept his mouths shut, rising through the naval ranks on the back of his experience as a pilot and his reputation for diligence.
But now Veltosh was Supreme Commander, and he planned to change things.
Miskara Pesh was a disgrace to the throne he sat upon, a rotund, gluttonous oaf who cared more for his wealth than the future of the Vagaari. All Vagaari were undyingly loyal to the Miskarate, but less and less Vagaari found themselves loyal to the individual sitting on that throne.
And Veltosh had been privately gathering those dissident voices for a long, long time.
"Commander!" A bridge officer spoke up, a particularly young individual. Behind his head stood a rather plain ceremonial mask, the mark of a fledgling. Veltosh was old enough to remember the days where such an individual would never have been able to get a position aboard the Vagaari mothership, but desperate times meant scraping the barrel as much as possible.
"If I may please, Sir, I have a report."
"Then report, Officer."
The Officer nodded.
"One of our probes found something interesting, I think you're going to want to see this."
There is a reason this chapter is short.
Part of the reason Ascendancy slowed to a crawl like it did was because the story got, well, bloated. I bit off more than I could chew. In the words of a man we're all no doubt familiar with, I went too far in a few places.
So I'm doing a little experiment. By breaking the story up like this. I'm hoping I can compartmentalize it, which will allow me to write more, which will allow me to get more done. Which means more frequent updates without having to sacrifice quality. If it doesn't work I'll go back to the longer chapters.