The universe did not sing in victory; it screamed.
Plasma bolts, incandescent green and searing violet, tore through the void, their silent fury visible as the final death of the Zergs.
On the command bridge of the Imperial flagship, The Unbroken Blade, General Kaelen watched the show with eyes that held no pleasure for victory.
The last of the enemy dreadnoughts, a monstrous thing of chitin and jagged metal, blossomed into a silent, expanding flower of fire and debris these are Zergs an alien species and with them defeated marks the end of the battle for Cygnus Rim.
A wave of cheers erupted across the bridge. Officers hugged; technicians cheering up and the air, once thick with the metallic smell of ozone and fear, now full with the pure, intoxicating energy of survival and success.
"Status report!" Kaelen's voice cut through the celebration like a shard of ice. It was not loud, but it carried the weight of absolute authority; an authority earned a hundred campaigns just like this one.
His second-in-command, Commander Valerius, a man whose face was a roadmap of old battle scars, stepped forward, his data pad glowing. "Enemy fleet completely neutralized, General. All Zergs signatures have been extinguished. Our losses are… acceptable. Fifteen percent casualties across the Fifth Army but the blade reports only superficial damage."
'Acceptable?', Kaelen's jaw tightened and closed his eyes for a moment 'Fifteen percent? Thousands of men and women who would never see their homes again, reduced to a statistic, a line item in a report that would be lauded in the gilded halls of the Imperial Palace.
He was, at twenty-eight, the youngest SS+ ranked General in the Empire's history, a prodigy, a living legend. The Hero of the Outer Sectors. The Emperor's Sword. He was also a fraud'.
He turned from the view to the star-dusted blackness offering no comfort. The bridge was a symphony of controlled chaos, but to Kaelen, it was a cage. A gilded cage, perhaps, polished with medals and accolades, but still a cage, nonetheless. He saw the adulation in the eyes of his crew, the raw, unvarnished hero-worship. They saw the tactical genius who had just lured the Xylosian fleet into a gravitic minefield disguised as a debris cluster; a move so audacious it would be studied in war colleges for centuries. They saw the warrior who had personally led the boarding party that took the enemy command ship in the last war. They did not see the man drowning in weariness, a man who felt more like a finely honed weapon than a person.
His internal monologue was a bitter counterpoint to the cheers. 'Another victory. Another parade is waiting in the capital. Another cloying speech from a senator whose hands have never touched anything rougher than a silk glove. They will toast my name, but they celebrate the blood I spill, the lives I spend. I am a tool, a butcher's knife used to carve out the emperor's will across the galaxy'.
"General?" Valerius was looking at him, a flicker of concern in his hardened eyes. "Your orders?"
Kaelen forced the exhaustion out of his face, replacing it with the cold mask of command.
"Begin search and rescue operations. Prioritize escape pods. Full damage reports from every ship in the fleet within the hour. And get me a secure channel to Imperial High Command. They'll be wanting their pound of flesh." The last part was muttered, just for himself.
As Valerius relayed the orders, Kaelen walked to the tactical display, a holographic map of the sector shimmering in the center of the bridge.
The Fifth Army, his army, was represented by a constellation of blue icons, victorious and dominant. The red icons of the Zergs were gone, wiped from existence. It was a perfect victory, clean, and absolute. It made his stomach turn. He remembered the political maneuvering that had led to this war it was a trade dispute deliberately escalated by Imperial diplomats, a manufactured crisis to justify the annexation of the resource-rich Cygnus Rim.
The Zergs had been forced into a fight they could never win, and he, Kaelen, had been the instrument of their annihilation.
He was tired. Not the simple physical exhaustion of a long battle, but a deep, worry feeling like something wrong with crushing weariness. Tired of the killing, tired of the lies, tired of the political games that played out in the Imperial court, a battlefield far more treacherous than any warzone.
There, the weapons were whispers, smiles, and daggers hidden in velvet sheaths. Here, at least, the enemy was honest in their desire to kill you. He felt more at home on the rugged frontier, under the cold, uncaring eyes of alien stars, than he ever did in the perfumed air of the capital. He was a hero to the Empire, but he was beginning to despise the very Empire he served.
A communications officer turned to him. "General, a priority-one channel is opening. It's… it's the emperor's personal terminal"
A cold dread, more chilling than the vacuum of space, settled over Kaelen. The emperor rarely made direct contact. This was not a simple congratulation. This was a summon. The gilded cage was about to get smaller.