Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Superheated

They were too late.

Adam had just gotten that star, and now some idiot was out here trying to blow it up. Either by making it go prematurely supernovae or have it collapse in on itself to become a black hole, either option was less than ideal. At this distance, a supernova would vaporize Arcadia or pull them into an inescapable gravity well.

Adam shivered involuntarily at the thought, imagining them streaking towards an infinite point of pure mass inescapable by anything including light.... Inescapable by anything including.... Anima.

Brief panic overwhelmed him, the ship that had dropped the deadly paload was already gone. In the next few seconds they would all be dead. His hands twitched, ready to warp them to safety. He was piloting the fastest most powerful ship in the known galaxy.

He could warp away and save his crew.

His panicked brain had already begun the order to move his hands when a thought occurred to him.

Certainly, he could warp away and save his crew, but he would leave everyone on Arcadia behind to die.

Including his three children, his family, his dogs....

He knew Sunny loved him, but he was almost positive that sort of cowardice would be a sin she could never forgive.

The internal war between cowardice and bravery, or perhaps outright stupidity, occurred in less than a fraction of a second, his desire to flee seen only in the miniscule twitch of his hands as he contemplated the alternatives.

But instead of running, he did something else entirely.

No time to come up with a clever plan, the did the only thing he could do.

He warped.

But instead of warping away from the inevitable explosion, he warped towards it, using the Empyrean's rapid calculations on distance and timing to place the ship into space right next to the dropping payload.

The bridge erupted in searing white light blinding them in the few milliseconds it took for the Empyrean to respond. The room was filled with the sound of pain, as crew members doubled over clutching their faces, or throwing up their hands to cover their eyes.

Adam's vision was practically gone by then, his human eye blinking back blazing whtie artifact, tears streaming down his face. The ship creaked under the weight of the star's gravity. The only thing that filled the view screen now was blazing white light.

They were closer to a star than any human in recorded history had ever dared, and he was almost entirely sure that if this ship had been anything but the Empyrean, they would most certainly be dead, melted to slag as they hurtled towards the Star's massive gravity.

Adam reached up, flipping the eyepatch up from his mechanical eye, which whirred to life, pleasantly unphased by the sudden eruption of light.

Around him the empyrean groaned softly.

The corona: they had entered the star's corona. The heat that bombarded the ship would be somewhere near 1 millions degrees celsius.

He was lucky they weren't dead already.

"Come on girl, Makers know the architect should be able to fly you right into that thing." Truth be told, Adam wasn't so sure what the Architect could and could not do. He still wasn't entirely sure if the powerful Maker was equivalent to the monothestic god of the old testament. Surely not since that god was omnipotent and omnipresent and all those other omni things.

If he was so powerful then he doubted the whole void war would be a thing.

Maybe he couldn't withstand the heat of a star, or its terrible gravity.