Humanity Endures

Part 13 - Epilogue | Chapter 10

The blazing lights of the Ineffable's bridge, catching the gilded panelling that dominated most of the radiant vessel, cast a brilliant lightshow onto the walls of the ship's command center; of course, this splendid sight was outshone entirely by the Remnant that surrounded the vessel. The Ineffable was now underway towards Tehkria, along with a sizeable fleet and Lassarha herself, for the purposes of her coronation — at long last, her reign could truly begin, and finally, humanity's efforts would be refocused entirely on the alien menace. The coming war demanded no less.

Lassarha, sitting on her centrally-placed command throne, thought on this, and cursed under her breath; nothing was ever that simple. Despite crushing the Traitor cause — and their leader's skull — during the costly but decisive battle of Nahmatiix, the wounds of deception, dating before the civil war, or even Light's End, festered; if Tehkria's intelligence ministry was to be believed, then treason reared its ugly head within nothing less than the Military Council. This treason did not refer to Elkan's predictable circumvention of protocol either — the "Inexorable incident," something that had completely escaped the mind of Lassarha, was now the centerpiece of an investigation that seemed to prove treachery committed by Xertaza, Terilan, and everyone in-between.

If her sources were to be believed, then the "Inexorable Incident" that had taken place over Light's End, years ago, and had resulted in the destruction of a warship, involved none other than Xertaza, who had apparently been a captain in the Executive command, though it was with a different name and identity. According to Lassarha's sources, Xertaza's ship, the Inexorable — the name meaning "unstoppable," and indeed it was fitting for such a woman — had gone to Light's End for reasons unknown, and shortly after this, the Inexorable had put out a priority call for help. Yet again, for reasons known only to those on the Military Council, this alarm had been remotely disabled by Prime Admiral Terilan's flagship; a few hours later, and the Inexorable was destroyed with everyone on board — except Xertaza, who vanished for seven years, before reappearing on Retharxia as a private citizen with a new name, and a new history. As these details flowed through her mind, Lassarha's spine went cold, her hearts leapt into furious action, while her omniscient gut ached with suspicion, terror, and confusion, born from knowledge of just how much she still didn't know. Lassarha shuddered; this degree of state coverup never meant anything good, and this went doubly when the person who was at the center of the coverup was now a member of the Military Council. Lassarha was imperator, tasked with beating back the alien scourge, and yet she had not been told a thing. What else were they keeping from her?

After being deposited on Retharxia, Xertaza had then undertaken the most rapid, and perhaps most famous advancement up the military-political ladder ever seen in the history of the Empire; though this last truth was well-known, when contrasted with everything else that had been learned, it became as unnerving as any of the events of the last week. If Lassarha's informants were to be believed, before the prime admiral's flagship left the system, it had enforced a short-term memory wipe across almost all of its crew, and that after this, an explanation for the ship's loss was forged, and the matter went undiscussed as yet another tragedy among the stars. How Xertaza came out of it alive, or what had really happened over Light's End, was anyone's guess, save the Military Council's. Indeed, one of Lassarha's main informants came from the Civilian Council, and even that source didn't know everything — what they did know, they got from Otelesia. Clearly, the previous imperator had kept it an unimaginably tight secret, and the Military Council intended to keep it that way, even from their current ruler. Though Lassarha's spies had not been able to uncover the true reason for the ship's distress call and subsequent destruction, whatever it was, the late Kesaldax was purportedly very familiar with it; now that Lassarha occupied his station, the question was, why wasn't she?