Humanity Endures

Part 4 - The Beginning of the End | Chapter 5

It was but a few hours of travel through the Remnant until Lassarha had rendezvoused with Cehlarxan's support fleet, and had arrived at the nearby world of Uulcax. Her fleet was arrayed in a combat formation on either side of the Ineffable, awaiting the order to breach into the system that housed the traitor himself; Lassarha, her hearts pulsating with burning anticipation, wasted no time in giving this order. Rending the reality of the Remnant with ease, the Ineffable bored a sizeable hole into the golden void within five minutes. Soaring into the system, accompanied by over one and a half million ships from the planets of both Ihndrastar and Tehkria, the arrival of the Ineffable and the joint fleet that accompanied it was imposing enough to instill fear in even the bravest of Uulcaxians — though, admittedly, that wasn't saying much for a world of artists, architects, writers, and philosophers.

Standing just before Lassarha's armada was the opulent world of Uulcax, dominated by towering, glamorous spires that reached into a sky filled with millions of expansive — and expensive — space stations, whose purpose ranged from managing interstellar businesses, to patronizing and housing artists, though there were few defensive works scattered among them. Interspersed between said habitations was a fleet of just under one million Uulcaxian warships, their stylistic hulls all emblazoned with a stylized image of a paintbrush and quill, crossed in an X, that, over the millennia, had come to signify Uulcax as much as the word Uulcax itself; there were a few other such craft sprinkled throughout the system.

Though both the brush and quill so proudly sported on the sides of Uulcax's warships were completely harmless, the vessels they were emblazoned on were far from pacifistic: with each ship almost as well-equipped as their Imperatorial Navy equivalent, the only question that remained was whether or not the crews manning the warships were as worthy as the vessels on which they served. Lassarha, having easily bested the Uulcaxian navy in multiple war-games with half as many ships as she had with her then, and knowing that their admirals relied upon doctrines at least three millennia old, was firmly of the negative opinion — most of those aboard the warships she faced would rather be in front of a canvas or an uncarved chunk of gemstone than behind the controls of a nuclear turret, and it was this lack of mettle that was the crux of her strategy.

The Uulcaxian vessels were already armed and readied, so Lassarha assumed that Felakax had somehow received word of Lassarha's attack; worse still, Felakax had spread his fleet out amongst civilian installations, meaning that Lassarha could not attack them without also slaughtering countless innocents. Holding one's own people hostage and using them as shields was as foul a tactic as one can use, but Lassarha knew well that no tactic had never been below Felakax, in politics or on the simulated battlefield.

The untested and outnumbered fleet posed little threat to Lassarha, but causing such tragic loss of life, especially to those civilians who would be caught in the crossfire, was not only unnecessary, but it would utterly annihilate her reputation and perhaps even cause mutiny amongst her own ranks. Knowing that she couldn't advance further without straining already high tensions and igniting the oft-radioactive inferno of battle, Lassarha cleared her voice, and prepared to do what she did best: destroy her rivals by making most of them her allies, and then convincing those to finish off the remainder.

As the flagship of the Uulcaxian fleet contacted the Ineffable, the voice of a shaken admiral came through, with tones of both confusion and terror present in his words.

"Tehkrian fleet, state your—"

Lassarha, broadcasting to every sailor in the Uulcaxian fleet, every soldier in the Uulcaxian army, and to those on the civilian stations the Uulcaxian fleet hid amongst, cut the admiral off, her voice a roar at first, before it receded to a quieter, yet no less threatening, tone.