A/N 1/2: Thanks again to Skyborne for reading the first half of the chapter.

A/N 2/2: Music recommendations are below

1 Homeworld 2 Remastered Soundtrack - The Keeper
2 Gekkou no Carnevale OST Cilindro

1
The Lead Wing of the Aeldari Dark-Star fighters, Ravynax, absorbed the news from the local psychic net of the slave carriers ceasing to function. Over three quarters had lost communication all of a sudden, and their solar sails and engines were destroyed by the very Wraithbone of the ship.

Their goddess had begun to act against them, and although part of her wanted to turn back to the slave carriers with her fighter squadron, the logical part of her focussed on the greater threat; the burning glow of whatever was on the Mon-keigh flag-ship.

'Their snare is also our salvation.' Ravynax thought to herself bitterly; tightening her grip on the controls of her angular chiropteran shaped craft, cockpit nestled at the base of the sharp spearhead like prow that took the place the animal's head would have been.

Whatever disabled their portal drives had also cleansed the local warp, and the constant feeling of being watched was gone from them; the thing sapping at their souls sent away. They could use their psychic abilities once again. The telepathy and foresight they had used against the green-skins and other belligerent alien races that inconvenienced the Empire had returned with crystal clarity.

No longer would they have to react only to the now against the Mon-keigh's clumsy fighters; blind to the place where the defense turrets on their larger ships' would fire their explosive shells.

'Another slave carrier falls, Lead Wing.' One of the squadron broadcasted to the rest of them. 'She is there.'

'The Mon-keigh flag-ship is our target.' Ravynax broadcasted back. 'The Mon-keigh seek to surround us. Their portside vessels already move to form the second net of a three way trap. It would be best to predict that another battlegroup hides below us in the void.'

'No vessels are present there Lead Wing.' Another retorted, blood lust and anger giving passionate heat to the thought, raising the temperature of Ravynax's own temper.

'The Mon-keigh are foolish, but not stupid.' Ravynax retorted, reasserting control over herself and realigning their conjoined mood with cool calculating thoughts. 'There is or will be another force there. If we cannot see it, it means it has not arrived, or it is composed of smaller vessels Running Silent.'

'Smaller vessels means a vulnerability; an opportunity to bite through their net.' Several of her squadron voiced the same opinion, but Ravynax only shook her head at that.

'It will matter little if we do not destroy their flag-ship. Even now more vessels could be reinforcing this position. We strike them now, so we can flee to strike again later.' Ravynax delivered the thought in a psychic tone that demanded obedience, and the rest of the squadron sent begrudging nods, acquiescing to their senior in both rank and age.

Ravynax pulled her consciousness back from herself, letting her mind fall backwards into the psychic net, spreading her thoughts at a broader level, sending the required formation to the rest of the bombers and fighters following behind them.

The fighters were all sleek craft like hers. All of them were armed with two miniature starcannons nestled in the craft's spearpoint prow, capable of acting like rapid firing guns and guided missile launchers at the same time with the psychically guided balls of plasma they brightlances were tucked under the base of each wing, providing penetrating blasts of light to deal with heavier armor.

The Eagle bombers that followed were still streamlined, but bulkier than the fighters overall, almost one and a half times thicker and wider; with two cockpits, one behind the other. Instead of a spearpoint-like nose, the prow of the craft split in two, like a two pronged fork; except the prongs were replaced with katana-like blades. These strike craft carried sonic charges in addition to the weapons carried by the Dark-Star fighters; bombs that let loose shockwaves that warped and deformed anything they touched, detonating enemy munitions inside their magazine and silos, rupturing fuel lines and power cables, and liquifying anything organic the shockwave passed through.

There was no time to form the bombing waves that would efficiently disable and destroy their target; to distribute every sonic charge and brightlance blast efficiently so their weapons did not strike a dead target twice. They would have to attack en masse to overwhelm the Mon-keigh defenders and ensure the escape of their fleet. It was an ugly tactic, and dangerous as well. Their own ships would clutter the void, making flying extremely dangerous. However, with their psychic net and foresight restored, avoiding each other and the enemy munitions should still be possible, even if it would be exhausting.

'Prepare to match speed to target.' Ravynax ordered.

Most void shields of larger vessels reacted to the speed of the projectile impacting it, only becoming impassable to fast moving projectiles and reacting to the slight increase in temperature before the full power of a Pulsar blast hit. Even if the flag-ship's shields had been overloaded to become impervious to all things, matching their speed to its would ensure their strike craft did not destroy themselves on collision.

'Missile launch detected.' One of the squadron called out, and Ravynax saw several thousand puffs of gas erupt across the front half of the flag-ship as missiles were slow-launched from their silos and allowed to slowly drift past the shields, before their rocket engines kicked in, roaring towards them.

'Cut through them and accelerate to maximum velocity!' Ravynax ordered, angered yet impressed at the Mon-keigh's timing.

They were deep within the firing range of the missiles, meaning that each missile would have ample fuel to turn around and follow them after their first pass, forcing their fighters and bombers to accelerate to speeds that would certainly activate the void shields, forcing them to give up their attack.

The Mon-keigh of previous raids were not as patient, firing as soon as they got into range. It was a simple task to avoid the nearly empty rocket engines of the missiles, and then cut apart the vessels that fired them at their leisure. It would not be so easy this time.

Ravynax looked minutes into the future and fired bolts of psychically guided plasma, destroying the missiles that were in her future self's way, opening a hole in the barrage wide enough for her craft to slip through. All the strike craft in her squadron and the ones behind it did the same, or twirled through the holes opened by those in front of them.

Even as they did so, gyros within the center of each missile spun them around, decelerating and then reaccelerating as they turned 180 degrees to follow their targets.

Ravynax snorted to herself as they passed the prow of the flag-ship, now illuminated in the void by the Pulsar beams and plasma blasts dissipating against its shields. This was a delaying tactic. The missiles may be faster than their strike craft, but with such a large gap between them, all it did was prevent them from attacking the flag-ship for a few minutes. All they had to do was run until the missiles' rocket engines were dry, and then turn around to attack the flag-ship.

'Prepare to move past the flag-shi- Ventral turn NOW!' Ravynax's craft's gravitic drives stopped the ship moving forwards, and instantly turned it downwards, moving perpendicular to its past direction as her foresight saw through the Mon-keigh trap. Just as she did so, explosive munitions detonated meters away from her position as masses of defense turrets on the un-shielded aft sections of the two battleships besides the flag-ship pre-fired their rounds in a hail of explosive warheads, creating a wall of fire and shrapnel that blocked the Aeldari's path.

All the fighters followed her orders, but turning while being chased by missiles was a risky move. The missiles had gained several hundred meters, and another evasive maneuver could lead to them losing some of their trailing bombers.

However, the Mon-keighs' own excessive defense turret fire prevented their strike craft from taking off. None of the clumsy fliers would be able to maneuver around their own weapons to strike the Aeldari fighters and bombers.

'Missile launch detected!' One of the squadron reported again, and another wave of missiles were released in puffs of gas, before roaring towards them.

On the other hand, there may be no need for the Mon-keigh to send their fighters. The Aeldari were being surrounded by walls of enemy missiles and bullets, and the first ones to be caught in all this would be the slower and more important Eagle bombers.

'All fighters, about-turn and destroy the enemy missiles! Buy our bombers time till their shields fail!'

The enemy flag-ship had no intention of letting them decelerate to dive under its shields, so the only thing they could do was wait till the firepower of their cruisers depleted the shields so they could attack the ship directly. But, at this range, with the prow of the flag-ship being peppered with Pulsar and plasma fire, and Mon-keigh battleships on either side covering the flanks, the only place they could wait was in a narrow ring of space around the front-half of the ship. A ring of space that was quickly being saturated by homing missiles, coming at them from behind and the side at once.

Ravynax and her fellow Dark-Star fighters dove through their own strike craft, bombers parting around them like a school of fish expertly avoiding a barracuda that had come charging through their group. The last bomber sent the position of the missiles they had seen to the fighters, and Ravynax launched her plasma bolts as soon as she passed the bombers, opening holes in the wall of missiles that were coming towards her.

Several of the missiles turned around, separating into two uneven groups, the smaller of which chased the fighters heading in the opposite direction to the bombers.

Ravynax cut her engines, her craft continuing in a straight line with its remaining momentum, then she turned her ship around to face the missiles. Now flying backwards, her starcannons shot down each missile chasing her before she reactivated both gravitic drives and gunned forwards, chasing after the remaining group of missiles that followed the bombers. Every trigger pull, loosed a storm of individually guided plasma blasts, taking out tens of missiles with every salvo.

Suddenly, the white glow of a dissipating Pulsar beam was replaced with an orange flash. A small part of the flag-ship's shielding had failed, allowing several bolts of plasma and a single beam to impact the armor of the ship. Superheated metal erupted like burst boils from the ship's armor, but there was no white mist or foggy vapor rushing out, indicating the thick hull still stood firm.

'All fighters, clear a path for the bombers!' Ravynax ordered, and they accelerated past the bombers to clear a way through the newest storm of missiles heading towards them. Bombers slipped through the holes opened for them by the fighters, and several dozen entered beneath the shields, before the ones following them quickly turned away as a brief flash of blue appeared in their path; narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with the restored void shields.

Explosions criss-crossed the flag-ship's hull as the Aeldari Eagle bombers' sonic charges detonated missile silos and defensive turrets; attempting to reduce the threat to the rest of the bombing squadrons still circling the front half of the flag-ship, and themselves inside the shields.

Ravynax shivered as she felt something move through the immaterium, and looked at where it headed. One of the Eagle bombers suddenly stopped, crumpling as if grabbed by a giant hand, then the psychic grip that held it flung the wreckage right into the path of another bomber, destroying both in a flash of orange flames.

'Concentrate on the bridge!' Ravynax ordered through the psychic net, tracking where the telekinetic hand had originated.

There was no avoiding that attack, no amount of foresight or marining skills could allow them to escape that thing's grasp.

Panic suddenly spread through the entire psychic net, and Ravynax instinctively swiveled her head towards the third Mon-keigh fleet that had appeared.

'Barbarians!' She hissed, fully understanding the trap that had been sprung before them.

'All fighters, prepare for enemy strike craft!' She called out into the psychic net just as the hangar bays of the flag-ship and two battleships all opened.

'Defend the bombers! Get them back to the fleet!'

Hundreds of boxy stubby winged Mon-keigh fighters launched themselves as the defense turrets from the battleships ceased firing, emerging from behind the curtains of auto-cannon shells to deliver their own missiles, lasers, and auto-cannon rounds.

The fighters launched from the hangar doors facing the flag-ship charged straight towards them, while those launched from the hangars facing away from the flag-ship circled around them, cutting off their escape.

Ravynax's plasma fire depleted one fighter's shields, and she rolled out of the way of a laser blast with her foresight, before nailing the Mon-keigh through the cockpit with a brightlance shot in return. But for every fighter she destroyed, two more replaced it. Beads of sweat evaporated almost as soon as they formed from the excess heat her brain was releasing from psychic exertion.

'Do not give chase!' She shouted at one of the other mariners, who'd swerved behind a Mon-keigh fighter, just in time for him to break off as two laser beams and multiple rounds of autogun fire passed where he would have been and where he would have ran had he continued to give chase.

The continued evasion and void skirmishing was taxing them, wearing out their patience and their wits; brains near boiling from psychic exertion. The Mon-keigh fighters were baiting them, taunting them with easy targets followed by several different squadrons ready to pounce on any who tried to go for the kill. Their tactics were beginning to work. Some of the less experienced mariners had already fallen to this simple trap, and the rest were beginning to burn out from the constant dog-fighting they were forced to engage in.

The Aeldari strike fighters were faster, more maneuverable, and more heavily armed than the Mon-keigh. However, the greatest advantage was not the specifications of their weapons, but the mariners inside them.

Each was an experienced veteran with at least several hundred years of service.
Each possessed a psychic mind capable of predicting the future in real-time, and were conjoined in a way that allowed them to move in formatons only dreamed of by human minds.

However, most encounters until now had been won in single skirmishes lasting mere minutes.

For this battle, they had been avoiding munitions, each other, and shooting down missiles that were far smaller than the targets they were used to for the greater part of an hour. Exhaustion was building up inside all of them; allowing rage, bloodlust, and impatience to convince them to take the easy kill.

Now outnumbered and pressed for time, unable to conduct the coordinated strikes or form the wing formations that would have allowed them to dance in and around the Mon-keigh in this melee range of void-combat, their greatest strength was slipping from their hands.

This was not an elegant battle, but a brawl that the Aeldari had been baited into; a muddy fist-fight in the dirt, a primitive battle of stamina and numbers.

'Bombers engage their fighters!' Ravynax ordered. Their fighters were too heavily outnumbered, and they could no longer cover the bombers. Running now would mean certain death from laser fire from behind. Their only avenue of escape would be to thin the Mon-keigh ranks, and hopefully break through to the fleet, already losing cruisers as the Mon-keighs' barbaric strategy progressed.

A sense of dread came from one of her fellow mariners, and Ravynax saw through their eyes squadrons of Mon-keigh bombers heading towards the Aeldari cruisers outside the encirclement of the Mon-keigh fighters.

"Curse you… CURSE YOU!" Ravynax screamed out loud, blowing apart another Mon-keigh fighter with plasma bolts to its engines as she felt her fellow mariners die around her one by one; overwhelmed and surrounded by auto-cannon rounds and laser beams that could have been avoided on their own, but were inescapable in the nets of death the Mon-keigh wrapped around them.

Her skin crawled again as she felt the immaterium ripple, then her heart almost stopped as the echoes of a psychic shockwave rolled over her, ending the lives of all the mariners still trapped underneath the flag-ship's shields.

As she dove past a Mon-keigh fighter, swiveling around to fire a brightlance straight through its exposed rear before spinning forwards again, a great sadness gouged a hole in what remained of her heart.

'Were we so insignificant that you'd use these animals to end us?' Ravynax thought to herself.

She did not regret refusing the offer of the goddess, even if she knew that made her the goddess's enemy. But, if she had to die for her actions, then she would have wanted it to be at the hands of the one they had rejected. At least then, they would have mattered to her. They would have made her raise her hand against them, and it would have shown that at the very least she cared enough about them to strike them down. But her thoughts went unanswered by the goddess, just as they had been when all the gods were forced to abandon them long ago.

The crystalline viewport of the Dark-Star fighter shattered, and the wind was knocked out of Ravynax as Wraithbone wreckage nailed her to the cockpit chair. A stream of stray auto-cannon rounds had hit her in the moment her misery had distracted her.

Ravynax sealed what remained of her suit with a telekinetic patch, and forced blood back into the torn blood vessels with another spurt of psychic energy. Then she turned on the Mon-keigh who'd shot at her, and unleashed every weapon she had on it; blowing up its hull, before cutting the wreckage into three pieces in fiery vengeance.

If she was going to die to these creatures, she would show them what it meant to fight the Aeldari. The dead faces of all she killed would haunt the survivors to their last breath, and they'd speak to their spawn of the sheer relief they felt at surviving the battle. She would kill as many as she could till the last spark of her soul, and the last atom of her ship was incinerated by their weapons. She'd kill and kill and kill and…

Suddenly, Ravynax no longer felt the pain in her gut, nor the feverish heat of psychic exertion. The itchy sensation of salt from dried sweat was gone, and the rage that had burned inside her left, leaving only a long forgotten feeling of peace.

There was a garden before her; wild with long grasses and small flowers, with only soft dirt beneath her feet.

She felt a presence behind her, but before she could turn around, warm arms with soft skin embraced her from behind.

"Mothe-"

Ravynax's fighter exploded as a laser beam pierced it from behind, cutting right through the psychically charged crystal that lay at its center, and passing through the cockpit all in the same instant.

—-
2
Isha's psychic embrace carried Ravynax's soul from the battlefield back to her in the last slave carrier, as she did for all the others who died there. Her physical arms laid down the body of another one of her children. There were no other ships the Emperor needed disabled, so she walked from room to room on the last slave carrier to say her last farewells to the occupants of each one.

She cast a side-ways glance at the Emperor and at the battle occurring before them. It was a brutal strategy the humans employed, but not entirely without its own logic. However, the methods of warfare were not her interests, nor her speciality. She was the last one to be called for by the Aeldari warsong; when the battle had already ended, and there was nothing else to be done.

After making sure the Emperor was focussed on the battle, Isha brushed against the golden scar tissue that marred her stomach. Green brown transparent tendrils, like vines or roots, rubbed against it gently; in order to coax the smallest yet complete part of the Emperor's power in such a way that it would remain whole, and not dissolve into immaterial essence or psychic energy.

A psychic cell of the Emperor, in a sense, was what she wanted.

It would not provide her with any new insight into its past nor would it show her some hidden weakness. This cell would be too small, too insignificant for that. After all, it was only because of how minute this cell was that she would be able to hide this investigation of hers from the Emperor.

Replication was impossible, for it was not an actual cell. There was no genetic information inside it, no organelles that she could exploit.

However, it would act as the Emperor's own aura would act.

Green and brown tendrils encircled the cell she had managed to extract and felt around its surface.

This fragment would be an antigen, a foreign particle that could be recognized to form an immune response. No actual antibodies would be created, but she would have a better understanding of what the Emperor's powers were and how to adapt to them.

The Emperor's touch erased the unreal and the immaterial. Even this singular cell she had extracted was singing her probing feelers, reverting them to nothing.

Isha narrowed her eyes. She had her suspicions when she felt its glow burn away the Warp on their first encounter, but had hoped that it was more of a purification ritual that allowed it to do that; not some intrinsic ability linked to its very nature.

Psychic attacks made of wind or lightning would be made in vain. She would spend more energy making the attack than the Emperor would negating it. However, the Emperor's own powers would be unimpeded by its own touch.

'A fittingly tyrannical ability for it.' Isha thought to herself.

She would have to be wary of this passive ability. Only physical attacks would be effective against it.

An overwhelming amount of psychic power could be used to push back the Emperor; hitting it harder and faster than its negation could cope. However, even in that scenario, a prolonged battle of psychic blows, the victor would always be the Emperor. Its negation would ensure its opponent used more power than it.

Isha felt the simultaneous death of hundreds of her children as one of the Eclipse-class cruisers's psychic crystal core detonated from exposure to the humans' lance batteries. Their dying cries and curses flowed into her, and their souls entered her body empowering her a little bit more.

Isha compressed the extra-strength she gained, hiding it from view as she had done so when the Warp Plagues and Enslaver hordes broke out. It was a long time before a treatment was found, and both she and her children had to hide their psychic signatures while the creatures did nothing but endlessly multiply using the psychic species less prepared than them.

The Emperor may have counted the number of Aeldari souls, possibly even estimated the amount of time each one had existed, and came to the conclusion that she could never rival it. If only it could ask itself the question, 'Why did the Three only appear long after the War in Heaven; the greatest conflict filled with war, death, and deceit?'

Then again, it only knew what it had experienced. Perhaps it thought itself clever for re-using the ashes of those it consumed, not realizing the waste that it made with every cremation.

Isha rose, still analyzing and planning while at the same time collecting the thoughts and souls of her children. Her feet carried her to the next room, and her hand tore open the Wraithbone she had used to seal the occupants inside.

If she had faced the Emperor before the Fall, she would not have had to worry about any of this. Efficiency was only necessary when two opponents battled on similar levels. It was only in this depleted shrunken state that she would have to fear it.

There were ways she might be able to destroy it, but to do that would mean a corruption of her own nature, possibly even fatal if she couldn't digest it fast enough. That was, however, a last resort; and even then it might not be worth it.

Her objective was not the usurpation of man, or revenge against the Emperor. It was always her children, first and foremost. Even as she ended the life of another one of them, euthanizing the shivering man in her arms painlessly.

If servitude bought the lives of her children, then she would serve. However, seeing the Emperor's nature brought both hope and worry at the same time. She was the daughter of Morai Heg, and the mother of Lilieath. Prophecy may not be one of her powers, but it would be foolish to assume that the middle of such a bloodline was blind to the future.

That golden figure was the protector of mankind; formed by its species to defend against the various Warp predators that lurked in the depths of the immaterium. That explained its inherent rejection of unreality.

However, its endless stride through the dark meant it could never stop and it could never relent. To do so would mean the end to its entire existence and the end of everyone aboard the bricks it laid.

There was also the issue of who it carried upon its path. Only one species was there, and even they were not safe from it. If the Emperor ever did conquer the galaxy, then all others would forever live in humanity's shadow, if they were even allowed to exist at all.

The Emperor may have stated that her children could live in its domain, but she would need to confirm the details of what that entailed.

Isha also sensed other dangers within it. The Emperor was not a stable being. She had no interest in being dragged down with it when it eventually broke. The hypocrisy of what it was and what it said it was could not be sustainable. Not to mention the brief bit of philosophy it had revealed to her.

It hated gods and hated godhood. Even though it had achieved apotheosis long ago.

Part of it might be to avoid the eventual fate all gods met that it espoused. However, there was something else there. Otherwise, the simplest way to avoid its own predicted fate would be to stop being a god.

There were some who had done that, deserters of the War in Heaven. But, the Emperor had not taken that path. It was still a god with mortal followers.

It needed to be a hypocrite for some reason, but for what?

Isha laid the body of the man to rest and closed his eyes; blood and brains on her hand sinking into her skin, as if to symbolize the return of her children to her body.

The Emperor's self-deception was deeply ingrained in it and extremely important to it. It wouldn't have made the threat to hand her over to Chaos when she called it a god if it wasn't.

Isha puzzled over its nature as she walked to the next room.

Gods were beings of thoughts and dreams, unconscious and conscious.

The brief touches Isha made against the psyche of billions in the Sea of Souls while dancing away from Khaine inspired stories of fae and faeries. Gods were not as impressionable as the unconscious thoughts of mortals, but a serious blow between them would bring their essences in contact. In that moment, images and thoughts, memories and theories would be exchanged between them.

Therefore, a battle between gods could be thought of as a battle between ideals and ideas, symbolized and materialized through their powers and Truths; a violent form of divine debate.

If their Truths were too similar, the battle would become that of Khorne and Khaine who were both gods of war; two answers to the same question. Those two could clash with each other without fear of being infected with the other's Truth. However, that also meant they would never be able to understand or reconcile with the other. Eternal conflict was the only outcome to result from their meeting.

Isha and the Emperor were too different to reject each other like that. Although that left the option for both to learn from the other, they also ran the risk of ending up like Gork and Mork. Those gods were cunning and brutal, but the war-like nature of them and their species brought them into conflict too many times; ruining the both of them and leaving only two lunatics who could no longer tell who was who, becoming cunningly brutal, and brutally cunning.

Regardless, whatever the outcome, neither would leave entirely the same as they were before the battle.

'Perhaps its nature of negating the unnatural means it has never felt the touch of another god before.' Isha mused.

The Emperor was far too eager for conflict with every encounter they had. But, if that were true, it would be useful. The shock it would feel would buy her a few moments, if only to gloat at its shattered hubris.

Isha sang a single verse and formed the same Wraithbone spear she first used against the Emperor's sword, inspected it, then shook her head and dispersed it with a single note.

She may know how to fight, but she was not a god of war. Weapons were not her specialty, and although she used them against the creatures of Chaos, it was mostly because she loathed even touching the creatures, disgusted by the thought that even a sliver of their memories might slither its way into hers.

No weapons she could make, however, would be sufficient against the Emperor. Wraithbone itself was an unnatural material. It would weaken in the Emperor's presence no matter how hard she made it.

Isha looked down at her fist instead. This body was a physical construct made to house her essence. It would be barbaric, but it could work.

She already had methods to nullify the Emperor's sleeping spell, and as long as she could separate the Custodes from their master, she would not be rendered as powerless as she had been on that dead planet covered in Dark Pylons. Its chains could be delayed, and their physical abilities were nearly matched when they first met. Unfortunately, the Emperor's battle instincts were better than hers. Split second decisions would always favor the Master of Mankind, for it was a creature of strife while she was a being of balance. Still, she could see the first moves of the dance that could lead to one or both their destructions.

Isha looked down at the planet; at the ancient battlefield and final resting place for some of her most unfortunate children.

The battle between them could be avoided. There was another offer of servitude she could make to the Emperor, but its rejection would mean there would only be two paths left to her. It would also hurt her heart immensely if the offer was spurned, and possibly doom some of her children to She who Thirsts. They were buried here for a reason.

Isha reorganized what she knew of the Emperor as she entered the next room.

It was a god which was not a god.

It was a being of the immaterium that was made to protect against the Warp.

It had been brought down and changed two times for or by the creatures it was meant to protect.

Her song brought up rage and pain in its heart, but she was not sure what part of her song upset it.

Several possibilities to its Truth surfaced and sank in her mind.

If things finally did come to blows between them, she would at least like to know what she would be taking in from the Emperor, if only to ensure it could be encysted and sealed away from the rest of her.

Isha continued down the slave carrier, towards another one of her children.

The battle was almost over and several cruisers were falling down to the planet below. The Emperor was sure to call her soon, and she had questions of her own for it as well.