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A smile. No Dhes’nethi leader smiled like that. A species far too proud, far too “dignified”, far too… brutish. The Emperor Himself didn’t smile like that, nor did the Vice-Chancellors of Affairs. The Grand Orchestrators of Production didn’t smile at all, and even the very proud Commander in Chief of the Dhes’nethi Star Navy only gave the odd disgusting smirk.
Isabella Harper, even as plum-colored blood stain her lips and the floor below, smiled like that. Enemy of the Dhes’nethi Star Empire, leader of the terrorist group known as Angels, with a kill-on-sight order hanging over their head for three decades… They smiled with pride, rather in spite of the control yoke ran raggedly through their midriff. Even as their eyes drooped softly, bruises began to blossom, and breathing began to take on a labored heft, something was apparent to them that was most certainly not to their opponent.
The back of an armored glove hoped to find out what.
“Speak! You have naught to smile about, Angel… you’ve been bested, your entire kind lay in ruin… you may well bet the last. The only pleasure to be had is mine, when I drag you to the gallows to the cheer of thousands…” Iolanta’s tongue cut the air like a blade, nearly as harshly as her glove attempted to remove Isa’s smile, nearly succeeding, before those curled lips returned with even more fury, spitting the beaten leader’s ichor onto Iolanta’s boots.
“I have all the time I need to enjoy your failure… the only thing being dragged this day is your reputation through the mud, posthumously. Listen, use your ears, Dhes’nethi… they’re certainly big enough.” Would tumble out of Isa’s mouth with a strange, smooth surety not common among Iolanta’s victims. Iolanta’s long, pointed ears would blossom and shift from their usual grassy green to something almost deep and inky as Isabella’s response whittled at her composure, and her face soon followed, blood collecting particularly on the ridges atop her cheekbones. Her eyes darted quickly around their surroundings, this beaten old warbird complaining profusely about the damage done to it. Those dense Dhes’nethi boots would shift as she began to do her best to examine the many panels that sit in the trashed two-seat cockpit, needles spiraling, pointing pegged in the red, the whole thing bathed in flashing lights. The few low-resolution screens that flickered and flashed seemed to show navigational data… and numbers, slowly counting down.
It finally hit her. Beyond the deafening roar of the wind coming through cracked cockpit glass, the screaming of four truck-sized engines pushing them through the air at well above the speed of sound, beyond the many warning sirens blaring in the cockpit and telling tales of a failing aircraft in a language she couldn’t understand… was a methodical beeping. Sure enough, as she listened, she found it to be perfectly in sync with those numbers slowly counting their way towards 0.
Victory was temporary.
“What have you… done, Angel?” Tumbled like sand from Iolanta’s stunned face, eyes fixed on the sea of chaos before her.
“The only thing I had left. You, your people took everything. My home, my loved ones’ homes… Everything any of us ever built, ever loved-“ Isa coughed violently as the floor turned further purple beneath them, and the color slowly faded from their face. “And the hopes, dreams, and wellbeing of a thousand planets…”
Those Dhes’nethi boots echoed through the barebones cockpit again, and without immediate verbalization, a scream was drawn from Isa as that yoke was separated violently from their midsection and they were sent flying back-first by powerful Dhes’nethi arms. Iolanta towered a whole seven and a half feet above the wrecked, leaking body of her opponent. Just as they had hoped to catch another breath, a boot hit like a bomb impact, and Iolanta’s bright green face got uncomfortably close again as she leaned in close.
“WHAT!? HAVE!? YOU!? DONE!?” Would ring from her lips above all the noise in the cabin as she reached down and gripped the top edge of Isa’s chestplate, pulling their face in near-touching with Iolanta’s as her hot, salty breath hit Isa. “I know VERY well what city we are flying towards, the mere idea you thought the capital city would not detect you is laughable at best…”
“Occam’s razor, dear interrogator…” Isa would respond with what must have been their last ounce of playful coyness. “If it was impossible not to be noticed…”
“Then you- no. No… You… wanted to be seen?”
“It wouldn’t be fair without a fight… or at least an audience, a warning… something. Plus, it would give the populace a bit of time to evacuate, though…” Isa trailed, eyes slowly struggling to stay open. “At Mach 2.3, it won’t be much time…”
“Evacuate fro-“ Iolanta would freeze, those pupils suddenly like inky dinnerplates as the last dot connected.
Victory no longer existed, not for either party.
“No way to defuse it. The reactor draws from the Void between universes… and it’s feeding on its own connection now. As if Oroboros was a pressure cooker…” Whispered the old, withering Angel, rather proud of her last defiance on some level. “Poke a hole in it now and it still incinerates miles of area, and if my ears are any good still… I believe we’re over land now.”
Iolanta’s eyes shot back to the cockpit glass, sure enough the tundra of equatorial Ki’mea rushed beneath them, the glimmer of the Capital city a speck in the distance. Home was nearing, as was its annihilation. Her feet wouldn’t move, as if the permafrost flying thousands of feet below them had sunk into her boots.
A wet, hot cough not far from those boots was what it took to snap her out of it. The Angel about to lay waste to all that could be seen didn’t have long, nor did she. Surely, a solution could be found. Before thoughts floated to the conscious top of her brain, Iolanta’s hands found that plate armor again, fingers curling around its edges as palms drove its wearer against the wall, and sounds rose from her diaphragm like the explosive shells being readied in the Capital. Words, certainly not, and ideas barely even, but sound it definitely was, and emotion even more than that. Neither side had won, and such both shall lose.
First Isa’s eyebrows rose, woken from the slow slip into near-permanent slumber, and then that smile rose ever so slightly once more, Isa’s head slumped forward, but held just high enough that their eyes could meet.
“Welcome… welcome to my world. Welcome to the past few hours I spent in the air alone. The past few hours I had to cope with decades of my life now thrown away. As I felt souls slipping from this plane, as I have been cursed with the memory of all who I loved… Welcome to all I have left.” Isa would slowly cough and mumble out.
“Undo it! Do SOMETHING! SAVE THEM!” Iolanta nearly cried to the beaten old leader, who could only shake her head in response.
“What’s done is done… There may be escape for us, and for any in the city near a ship that can Void jump… but that assumes anyone knows.”
“E… escape? Escape!? How do we ESCAPE a-“
“A 200 megaton blast? The same energy that makes the bomb… runs my armor, runs through my body, lets your and our ships travel between universes… You all have a love of portable fission, Angels took a better-“ Isa’s speech was cut short yet again with the metal plate of a glove, and punctuated with a cough, before they nodded. “We could… slip into the space between universes in theory. Hop into the Void… the blast would shunt us towards gods-know-what, we’d have no control of where we end up or if we even reach real-space again… but we would survive the blast. Then you could spend as long as you like beating me…”
“How do I know you’re not telling a lie, trying to gain advantage? Your kind are deceptive… slippery, in the early days you often escaped our grasp like water between fingers…” Something of a light smirk would take Iolanta’s face, with the knowledge that nowadays the proverbial Dhes’nethi grip had tightened. “As of now, even with both of us slated for death… I have you trapped. Your wings are pinned… I will die a hero, and you a terrorist.”
“No, a Martyr… my death will stir further revolution. You’ve killed the Angels… but what about all those planets you enslaved? All the numbers we’ve saved and spurred into action? They’re coming... we only spearheaded the assault on Ki’mea. If you survive... You could warn your kind what’s coming. Go ahead, try your radio now...” Isa would retort with some level of surety. They were being slippery, perhaps, but their words weren’t a lie. Sure enough, Iolanta’s hands went for the radio reciever on her hip... and when brought to life, only had loud static to offer.
“Can anyone hear me? Gold-One? Gold-Two? Comms check, Gold-One, Gold-Two... Gold Leader, comm-check...” Nothing. Iolanta’s calls for a response only welcomed more static back. As her eyes darted up again and she twisted around, they met that countdown on the console, ticking away, the golden shimmer of the capital city coming ever closer. Something between desperation and determination filled those eyes as destiny came ever-closer. Quietly, she clicked the handset back in its place on her belt and looked back down to the battered Angel beneath her.
“Prepare it. Let me make you suffer for your sins longer, and bring your head home once I finish…” Iolanta nearly hissed, body visibly beginning to itch to do more damage to her captive as reality set in. Isa’s ability to save her, and potentially far more Dhes’nethi, was perhaps the only barrier between Isa’s eventual death, and certain, immediate death at Iolanta’s hand.
Isa simply, quietly nodded, opening up a secure panel on one of their gauntelts as they began shakily keying in information. Concentration was beginning to be hard to come by, and so were fine motor skills as the blood still drained from their body, every ounce of will they had left being used to buy the pair some time. Iolanta, meanwhile, began to check the cockpit for anything she might need with some haste. Helmet, her sidearm, Isa’s sidearm slid into a spare holster, her overcoat, anything she could find that might help her ended up on a gear loop, in a pocket, or wherever else it could be stuffed.
“We... we’re going to need to do some teamwork. I only have enough suit power for one jump... and we’re going to need to be moving fast to make it through successfully. Call it two meters... about a fourtieth of a second window to jump... we’ll have to be going at least a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour, and that’s in a predictable direction... we can’t just hop out the back and do it, vectors won’t be any good.” Isa explained as Iolanta paraded around the room, looting the doomed vessel.
“For being experts in Void travel, you sure seem incompetent at it... h-hold on. Why don’t we complete it while inside this vessel? We’re going faster than sound...” Iolanta quickly retorted, disturbed by the notion of jumping out of a supersonic aircraft.
“Too much interference. The reactor is a Void bomb, if it’s killing your comms, it’ll wipe out any attempt at a stable ingress point to the Void. We need distance, at least a mile or two.”
“A mile or two... damn you, Isabella Harper.” Iolanta spat by the aubergine-painted Angel’s head.
“We need to do it soon, we have the altitude for it now, but we are on a descent path... and the city will make our relationship with the ground even more complicated. And as I’m sure you guessed... I have no feeling left in my legs.” Isa would respond, beyond unconcerned with Iolanta’s distaste for the solution ahead. As their eyebrow would raise, they’d offer a shaky, outstretched hand, with a soft sigh to punctuate their need for help up. Everything inside of Iolanta told her to not trust this being lain near death ahead of her. Even in such terrible shape, it was like shaking hands with the devil. This being had cut down the Empire’s capability so far, led to so many deaths with more well on the way.
In spite of it all, so their hands met.
A piercing shriek would drive itself out of Isa’s lungs as they came to be chest-to-chest with the Angel Hunter, held tight, fresh wound pushed against armor. Iolanta did one last instantaneous dance through mental inventory, before looking to the cockpit glass one last time. Small roads and buildings already flew past them at a mile a minute, the glimmering edges of the city proper coming just into view, the last view of home she might ever get.
“At least you get the chance. Soak it in, but with haste, Angel Hunter.” Isa would say with a softness not felt by Iolanta before. Some level of empathy eased those words, or perhaps it was the blood loss. Nonetheless, Iolanta silently took the opportunity to hold her gaze on home for just a moment, before nodding and looking aft. The evidence of their struggle lay ahead, and further along… destiny. Action took hold of those boots, and Isa took hold of Iolanta as the two began their dash towards salvation. Caved in walls, destroyed coolant lines, dents, scrapes, scuffs, all littered the cargo hold as the two carried forward, ever closer to the roar of battered engines and screaming of wind flying past.
The reactor bathed the pair with magenta light, the energy of the Void leaking out into the world as they sailed through engineering, the entire vessel sounding beyond ready to quit. Grating rang out under boots as the rear hatch, locked open by high explosive shells, came directly into sight, and the feet of solid ground ahead quickly shrank.
Ten.
Her parents would never see it coming.
Nine.
Nobody would be able to notify her family on the eastern continent.
Eight.
There was no guarantee the pair would ever land in a civilized universe.
Seven.
What if it was a trap? The successful bombing of the capital city would rest etirely on Iolanta’s shoulders.
Six.
All those lives...
Five.
All those loves...
Four.
All those innocents…
Three.
Cousins.
Two.
Children.
One.
Was it worth it?
The two experienced quiet weightlessness for just a moment as they fell from the hatch to the edge of the energized atmospheric shielding, before suddenly the force of thousands of miles per hour of wind shocked them, nearly knocking Isa’s heavy form out of Iolanta’s arms. The two spun like a top as they struggled to gain control in the air, Isa having to hold onto the last shreds of their focus to time their escape perfectly. Their altimeter shrunk as the vessel and its pursuing aircraft shot ahead, thousands of feet ahead of the pair in only seconds as they tumbled towards the ground. Closer the ground did get, every time the two rotated around each other, Iolanta could make out more detail. Green. Splotches. Lines. Roads. Smudges. Buildings. Grass. Trees. Leaves. Feathers.
Blinding, searing light.
Crushing dark.
Nothingness.
