"I need a woman with a wolf cut to beat me to death? No you don't! You need... healthcare and universal basic income. That's th-don't get distracted okay?"

- Northernlion on Stream reading and reacting to a chatter 10 February 2025

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I can feel her gaze burrowing into me, not just from the monitor now winking into unfiltered static, nor just from the yellow void I refuse to perceive as anything other than a defined room, but from the back of my chair as well, from the square steering wheel I was just holding in my hands, the metal armor all over my body, I take a deep breath and I can feel her gaze in the very air I’m breathing in and out, in and out. 

I am not talking to something(one) in my head or in the room with me, I am talking to the room itself. The room opens her mouth, and I am made to listen. 

“Disappointing.”

A sudden shock, my left arm spasming and whirling about as sharp and burning pain courses through it.

“Weak, pathetic, that is all your people can amount to isn’t it? Fucking crybabies?”

The pain radiates out towards my chest and I’m left squirming and writhing and bucking back and forth against something unseen that keeps me pressed down against the chair. My mouth opens just to say something but I end up biting down too hard and my scream is muffled by the flow of blood choking me that is just as quickly stemmed by my tongue stitching itselves back together.

“Not a single spine to be found in the whole lot. I promise power, glory and life everlasting and they run from the fight, they turn to honeyed words and pathetic schemes to avoid the crush.”

Eventually I slip out of her grasp for but a moment, enough to roll almost bonelessly onto the floor as countless fractures pulls themselves back together and joints pop back into place, letting me lift myself up on the useless stumps that my arms are proving themselves to be before I slowly start to wobble forwards, imagining myself bumping and steadying myself against the wall with every pained jolt and seizure, the cockpit’s walls closing in around me like some cheap hotel pod.

“Once I saw one quiver and moan as I fell upon her, but you, that rush of excitement in your voice, the naked brutality you displayed, the boldness, the sheer decisiveness of it all!”

I’m still struggling to move through the pain, drifting in and out of consciousness as she speaks, trying to turn the distance between myself and the monitor into no distance.

“I thought I found a true warrior, someone who could understand and revel in our power, wield it the way it was always meant to be, to crush anyone and anything standing in our way! BUT ALL YOU’VE DONE IS WHINE!”

Another jolt stops and restarts my heart, turning a thrown punch into a full body lunge. I fall, shoulder checking through the surprisingly fragile monitor that now lies right in front of me, shattering it, scattering sharp glass that bounces harmlessly off of everywhere save my head, leaving me lying, twitching and feeling something warm pool out of me before something cold and sharp and hard is pushed out of my face, and I’m still in pain but breathing normally again, lying on the side of the yellow void we’ve both agreed is a floor.

“I… I asked you a question,” I manage to slur out, still trying to push myself up to ‘face her’ again but mostly succeeding at flopping against the ground.

I can feel laughter all around me, mocking me even as I manage to kneel, bracing myself against the chair in time to hear her speak once more.

“Even your rage is pathetic, impotent, but I suppose you won’t break as easily as I thought.”

I start to regain sensation in both of my arms and regret every moment of it, as something sloughs free from them and disappears somewhere into my armor.

“Wha-what are you? What was that, that thing we fought? Where did all of you come from?”

A groan reverberates throughout the entire cockpit and makes my hand almost slip free from the chair I was trying to pull myself back onto.

“You’ve forgotten already? Must I-”

My eyes widen as a certain sense of understanding sweeps into mind again, driving me scrambling back down to the floor out of sheer shock before the knowledge flows out of my too small brain, leaving only a single image behind in its wake. A complete map of the milky way unified under one banner with names and fine detail for the vast kingdoms underneath it that I am already struggling to recall as my mind latches onto one thing, and one thing alone. 

There is a translation marked at the bottom right corner of the map, and it simply states ‘Approx. -4.632 PCE’. This map was made four thousand seven hundred and thirty one years ago, that is how long this galaxy has been conquered, that’s how long it’s been sinc-Oh God, how are we not dead yet? How did no one ever…. 

“I am a Mechacampus, caretaker of a sacred Imago, granted only to those the glorious Center of Xin has deemed worthy of civilization. Once, long ago I landed onto ’ar‘â, which your people now call Earth, and the strongest of your kings laid claim to the right to wield me.”

Typh-Ea grows wistful as she speaks, “Through me his ambitions were matched only by his will, and through my power he forged an Imago that he named in honor of his gods. With me he swore that he would use my unmatched power to conquer the Four Corners of the universe and unite all under heaven. A lofty, no, a worthy goal.”

But by the time I’ve finished clambering back onto my seat that venom returns to her graven voice, “And yet all he is now dust in Centauri’s dunes, unworthy of the strength I gave him, unworthy of the right to rule, unworthy of even a name to remember him by. I breathe him out and I am done with him! Let us not speak of the failure of your predecessor, but rather of the glory and acclaim you will surely obtain once you crush the Duke’s head into a fine powder.”

Coughing, I can’t help but point out, “Wait, you still haven’t told me where the Duke even came from, or why he wanted-”

“I do not know and do not care.The Duke is a mere worm, the emperor would have scattered men like him to the four winds with a mere word, and even at his weakest that fool king would have eaten him alive for daring to breathe the same air, but you, you waste time with these questions, this is simply how things must be done, how things have been done ever since the emperor’s word became law and I was first scattered throughout this galaxy.” 

The monitor reforms and a sped up recording of our battle plays before me, a disorienting display that is soon joined by another taking shape, and another, and another, and another. Thousands upon thousands of monitors all playing in perfect detail the songs and struggles of the thousandfold heroes and villains whose lives this great and venerable machine has ended, her sense of understanding and wisdom overlapping, joining with mine to allow me to perceive the sum total of her vast and storied history even as she speaks.

“If a realm bearing an imago comes into conflict with another then they must resolve it through force of arms, through their own strength, or alongside their vassal’s, that is how things are done. This is the empire’s peace.”

“But that’s-that’s stupid! You can’t expect everyone to-I can’t- I’m no-”

The screens suddenly shift, instead I am made to look upon the death of worlds. I see vast fleets of stone, living wood, sculpted bone, cold metal in hundreds upon hundreds of different makes and models, together or apart, all arrayed in a defiant last stand against… myself? No, Typh-Ea.

“Then you would prefer the wholesale death of your people? The Duke only sent out his drones to harry and contain snarling barbarians messing with forces beyond their understanding. But the moment you arrived, the moment I claimed you as my wielder did he not stop? Did the Duke not respect our challenge as backed by the Emperor’s law?”

My body refuses to listen to my commands as I am locked in place, staring onwards at the monitors, “What? No, it can’t be that simple, right? They were people for Christsake , they were all people! Just, living, eating, partying, arguing, struggling to see tomorrow, you can’t just…”

It matters not what the fleet brings to bear, crude nuclear weaponry, lasers hot enough to reduce tungsten to slag, or arrows tipped with antimatter. Their fleets burn, their fortifications are reduced to rubble, and I see one planet after another once teeming with life and joy and hardship reduced to ash, bodies stacked upon each other into grotesque temples, and the clinking of countless chains as kings and paupers alike are taken away to distant worlds never to return.

“And they will keep being people for as long as they are subject under an Imago and her wielder.”

That sense of understanding leaves my body, the monitors all fade into one, and the room shrinks into the familiar size and shape of the cockpit from before. I am suddenly aware that I can stand on my own again when I stumble as my little mind spins around in circles around itself,

“I… I don’t think I can, I’ve never killed anyone before! I’m not a… Opal Damnos! Y-you want a killer right? They’re the most infamous serial killer Centauri has ever seen or-wait no, someone more responsible! Lik-like one of the veterans in the reclaimer fleet up in R.O.M.E.! I’m sure one of them would love to use your power t-”

“Then kill yourself,” drones Typh-Ea.

“W-what?” I stammer out, instinctively backing away even as a knife materializes in my hand and lingers there for the brief moment it takes for me to recognize it and let go with a yelp.

“Holly Bashur, you can deny it if you wish, but you dream of war, of the glory long denied to you. Unless you prove yourself to be lower than the dirt you already are I will channel that rage and frustration within you into a greater purpose, my purpose. Through you I will conquer the stars and become the strongest under heaven, and through you I will surpass heaven itself until it is my name that is whispered out of fear, my songs that are sung in every corner of the galaxy.”

A wall materializes behind me, pinning me in place as the room and the monitor very suddenly surge up to meet me.

“But that’s insane…”

A ghost materializes in the monitor’s static, a faint impression of a humanoid shape warped into existence out of radiant blues and glimmering white, and she smiles at me with just her teeth.

“That is all I yearn for; kill yourself if you refuse to comply.”

I am suddenly naked and exposed in the cold room and the knife is in my left hand again. Nothing is holding it in place, nothing is keeping me from moving the way I want, but no matter how much my hand shudders and shakes I can’t bring myself to let it go. Is this just a test? That wasn’t me putting myself together all those times before was it? Does she just want me to know that I don’t have a choice in this? That I live or die based on her whims alone? 

But wait, no. She’s disappointed in me already, she hates me, I can tell from the way her red eyes are staring deep into my soul, she wants me to die, she wants me to degrade myself, to cry and change my mind and beg for a second chance like I’ve heard so many people do after slitting their wrists and fucking it up and ending up in the hospital from the other interns just so she can watch the light fade from my eyes when she tells me no.

Or worse, what if she doesn’t care? I mean the duke must have bastards and murderers of his own. It would be so easy for her to claim one once my world is dust like the countless others she’s killed before. And either way she has time, right? Time to wait until any lingering survivors crawl out of the ruins and then she’d have her pick of desperate, apocalypse hardened survivors eager for revenge and…

There is nothing I can do to win.

I let out a yelp as I feel cold metal press against my skin and I realize that the knife is already at my wrist, an all too familiar sting forcing me to throw it away, sending it clattering along the metal floor. Tears are streaming down my face, the room shudders and shakes with her laughter and I fall down to the ground, wallowing in the hot sand as distant voices and sounds swarm towards me and this is a nightmare I am not waking up from and my friend is dead and my life is over and everyone else is going to die unless I kill him I kill him I kil-

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I don’t actually remember how I got here.

I’m in… I think it’s a bedroom? Well I don’t know what else I’d call it to be honest. It’s small and there’s really nothing going on except for a strip of warm yellowish light at the top, a small cabinet on the opposite end of a metal door that probably slides open with a fsshhh, and the overly soft bed I’m lying on. 

I take in a deep breath and the air smells sweet, but a bit stale underneath it. Like… I don’t know actually, how am I doing this in the first place? I’ve gotten used to not thinking about it and there really wasn’t much time to do it earlier but I can smell again, and I really should be freaking out more about it now but, oh God if that’s real then everything else was right? 

Where do I start? I’m no-I know I’ll have to go back in there but someone’s got to tell Aliyah’s family that she- no, she could still be alive, she has to be, God please. And my family needs to know that I-FUCK, what do I even say to them about all this? That I’m what? Going to conquer the entire planet and fight giants from other star systems for a living?

I need to take it one step of a time, one step at a… yeah this could just be a trick right? Another way for Typh-Ea to brea- No. There’s this sense of heft to everything that I didn’t know I could miss back when I was still in there. Gravity, it’s actual real gravity, I’m being pulled down even when I stop thinking about being pulled down or start thinking about being pulled up instead.

So; I’m somewhere real, and whoever put me in here also made sure to… I think they didn’t bathe me for whatever reason but they put on an orange shirt with yellow palm tree motifs, a hawaiian shirt out of all things, and blue jeans a few sizes too big for me, I look like someone’s gross aunt, fuck. The cloth does feel good on my skin though, it’s shockingly well made.

I glance around to find any obvious cameras before I slide out of the bed, fumble on a pair of sandals they left behind for me, and I am suddenly struck by the sight of myself in the mirrored door. The golden circlet is still on my head, now proudly bearing two curved horns that I’m sure weren’t that long when I put it on to begin with. I move a hand up to take it off and it feels like trying to tear off a piece of skin, shit. I’ve gotta get that checked later, leaving it on all the time can’t be good for me.

I walk up to the door, and struggle and fail to push it open and a bit of panic seeps back in because I’m trapped aren’t I? I got abducted against my will and taken away to God knows where by unseen but probably criminal hands who want to sell me off into slavery or force me to do their bidding or tear out the secrets of how to ‘wield’ Typh-Ea out of me and there’s noth- 

Oh there’s a weird latch down there, I just have to click it open and-huh.

I’m staring out at a much larger room, it looks kind of like a lounge? Decorated by twinkling, clinking glass decor and weird sculptures surrounding a long sofa that wraps around a central pit. I can see a few other doors in the view across me, and also people of course, familiar people thankfully. Their outfits and style are different, Ms Tzeitman in some sort of loose white blouse and light green pants, and that professor from earlier, Cynthia I think? She’s wearing surprisingly rough looking blue coveralls with brown gloved hands and a sturdy looking hat set aside on a nearby table, but I remember their faces and voices clearly enough. 

They’re both seated on the couch, and I overhear a glimpse of whatever their conversation was before I caught their attention; Cynthia was talking about a worksite and needing to call up more people to sort through the ruins as quickly as possible, while there’s still time to find more of something, I don’t get to find out what that something is though because Ms Tzeitman cuts her off with a wave:

“Oh uhh-are you sure you should be walking already?”

It comes off as being… awkwardly casual? I guess there’s nothing not awkward about me being here, huh? Wherever this is, and Cynthia does just sorta stare at me when she turns around a bit to face me. I don’t really know what to say really.

“How are you holding up? Any pain or discomfort or anything?” Cynthia offers, looking up and down my body in a failed attempt to try and not stare at my horns.

I shake my head, hand moving up to scratch a slight itch at the base of the circlet, “No but where is this? Who are the two of you exactly?”

Cynthia’s expression shifts, I guess she’s thinking about it? “Oh, di-do you remember anything about the exhibit? Anything at all before the… attack?”

I squint at her, “No that’s not what I… you all must have known about all of this before didn’t you? About the empire straddling the galaxy, and the sleeping giant lurking beneath the dunes waiting for some fool to embrace her power so she ca-”

I am very suddenly cut off by Ms Tzeitman clapping her hands together and saying, “Holly, Holly, that’s your name isn’t it? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Wh-huh?” 

She holds her face in her hands for a bit, before she makes a show of rubbing her temples, “I have a headache Ms Holly, a hundred meter tall headache bearing a face I put my name and artistic reputation on all over the, the news, the social media, the adverts, you understand right?”

I don’t, but she does not give me the time to really reply as she drowns out anything I could say with, “This headache I have has turned a exhibition I’ve planned for months into a slaughterhouse, and oh so many people than I would have ever wanted are dead or missing and I need you to understand that I spent a lot of money on making that number zero Ms Holly, zero.”

Cynthia squirms a little in her seat as Ms Tzeitman continues on, “I have hired men for fire, men for people getting lost in the hills, men for fights and flus, but I do not have men for mechanical abominations strafing people from the skies Ms Holly, and you are, you are very lucky that the men I hired for earthquakes did their job when their world was burning, because that headache turned the ground into liquid when it flew out to, to fucking kick another giant man across th-.” 

She lets out a pained sigh, “Do not give me another headache Ms Holly, none of us know what is going on, no one except for you, so please, sit down, take a deep breath and fucking relax okay? You are in my yacht, it is a big, beautiful ship I had to bring all the way over frI-it’s not important, just, sit down Ms Holly.” 

She’s taking a deep breath herself, and a phone on the table starts buzzing and she makes a few movements near it that shuts it off completely, and the silence lingers until I speak.

“A-okay? I’m.”

I awkwardly shuffle into the room, brushing past and mumbling an apology to a suited woman I hadn’t notice before that had apparently been standing guard I suppose near the door to my room, and I take a seat somewhere I could face I guess all three of them and… there’s a weird thought that comes into my mind, neither of these two look like real fighters, I think I could just kill that guard and take the more expensive one hostage to make my escape and… fuck, that means she’s watching again isn’t she?

“Sorry, I think what Ms Tzeitman is trying to say is that we’re all tense here. Things have been a bit hectic since you disappeared and I know you must still be processing uh, things yourself but it’d really help if you could answer a few questions for us since you came out of that thing, no uh, pressure though, we’re not cops or anything,” Cynthia offered, stepping in between the two of us. Ms Tzeitman nods a little.

“Okay, okay, I think I can do that, but I have to ask i-”

Ms Tzeitman waves her hand and cuts me off again with, “We don’t have your phone or any other belongings, and we haven’t identified all of the dead yet, or found your friend anywhere if that’s what you’re wondering.”

My expression hardens as I reply with, “Okay? Thank you but can you just let me speak?” Neither of them reply, and I take that as an opportunity to continue with, “So it’s, it’s possible that she’s still alive right?”

Cynthia looks a little at Ms Tzeitman before she replies with, “Well it’s possible but… we’re counting her as missing for now, we don’t have the clearance to track her phone or other location tagged belongings of her yet, and that’s uh, assuming any of them still work to begin with but! If any of her accounts starts posting we’ll know, and we do still have people searching.”

Ms Tzeitman adds, “A lot of people, very expensive people working day and night like a dog, heh, whatever that means. Oh fuck sorry, not the time.”

I give her a weird look, and let out a little half sigh of relief even as a foreign part of my brain makes me think about how weirdly awkward she can be for someone in her high position, is that really the best this planet has to offer for leadership? Maybe I should kill her and conquer this ‘Dilmun Concern’ of her’s, install a puppet ‘CEO’ and reduce it to a tributary maybe.

“Uh, anyway we wanted to ask… well we have a lot of questions actually but I think the most important question is just, were you alone in there? Can w-” she coughs, there’s a glass of water on the table she moves for, “Can we expect anymore survivors to come out of wherever you went during the battle?” Cynthia offers, trying to get us back on track after I stared off at Ms Tzeitman for a bit too long.

I think for a bit, but shake my head, “No it was just me and… I don’t know how to describe it-,” I am suddenly reminded of the taste of my own blood “I mean her, I mean her.”

Ms Tzeitman is staring back at me now, and I can’t help avoiding making eye contact with her again even as she speaks, “Okay, so tell us about ‘her’, you mean the… mecha right? I don’t know what else I would call it other than… automaton? No that’s too gauche, who the fuck hasn’t heard of Gett-sorry, continue, tell me about her.”

I open and close my mouth a few times, trying to wrap my head around and encapsulate exactly what I should get across about Typh-Ea while fully aware that she is in my head and judging me and everyone she sees at all times. I eventually settle for, “Terrifying, there’s no other word for it, what she wants from me, no from us is… if she’s telling the truth, and I just know she is then we’re all fucked, like, you don’t understand there’s got to be thousands upon thousands of those things out there and they’re all, she said that was one of the weakest she has ever fought.”

Cynthia’s paying close attention to me, scribbling a few notes on her tablet as I speak before she replies with, “Okay so the, the alien ‘mecha’ is part of an army? Do you know what their motives are for attacking us to begin with? Was it caused by the one you, well were you in control over any of that?”

It takes me a bit before I can answer, especially for that last part, but something about just being here feels odd, despite the AC I’m getting a bit warm and my thoughts are drifting more than I’d like, I’m trying really hard not to stare, “Could you not hear him? He said he was Duke… Jim I think, part of Baihu’s Kingdom of Air which I guess is still underneath the Kingdom of Heaven?”

Ms Tzeitman’s eyes widen as she cuts me off with, “Wait like, fucking China?”

Blinking a little at her, I reply with, “What? No that’s… it might be a translation thing? China was also a country back on earth right? I don’t think the Chinese have a stellar empire, I think she was just… using the closest approximation in our language or culture or whatever.”

“Okay, yeah I’d be surprised if the TAU have already progress-,” she looks at my face and suddenly cuts herself off, “Carry on.”

“Well he said he was here to conquer my planet and claim it as his own by defeating me b-” 

Ms Tzeitman cuts me off again with a wave of her hand and a loud, “Just full on, annexing us, no questions asked after beating you with their giant robot?”

“Yeah, basically,” I note, reflexively stopping as she does something weird with her hand brushing against her mouth and chin.

“That’s stupid, Centauri isn’t just going to roll over and surrender because he won one fight against an ancient hunk of junk no one outside of this room has even heard of.”

I am staring directly into Ms Tzeitman’s forehead, glaring fiercely enough to bore into her skull, not because I really want to but because Typh-Ea is yelling at me about what a puny and crushable bug she actually is and how little barbarians like her know about the world and the way its supposed to work. “I know, but that’s just how it works, that’s just how it’s always worked in the Galaxy, ever since the Center started unifying it.”

Cynthia looks up at me, “Just to clarify, is the Center another name for the Kingdom of Heaven or?”

I nod at her and she writes something down and continues with, “So how did it feel to pilot the uh, ‘mecha’? That was you controlling it right? Or did the uhh, mecha just run by itself with you involved in some other way or simply absorbed into it for some other reason like as a power source or something?”

I take a bit of time to think through that, hoping that Typh-Ea would be so kind as to fill in the holes for me, she doesn’t though, and Ms Tzeitman cuts in with a wave of her hand before I could really get a word in anyway with, “Nevermind that, if the galaxy is fucking unified already right? If there’s all of these alien spaces running around forming multistellar kingdoms underneah some grand unifying bullshit empire, which sounds stupid by the way, it’s just… ugh.”

Amazing, every time she speaks it feels like Typh-Ea is pushing a hot knife into my mind, “if that’s even true, then how have we not known about this yet like come on? Our ancestors spent hundreds of years looking and all we got was the ruin up in Jupiter that got us all here in the first place! And I’m supposed to believe that what? We just missed all of them and they never bothered to check out Earth for the past several thousand years?”

A very vivid mental image forms in my head of one of Typh-Ea’s fingers suddenly bursting through the ceiling and crushing the exact spot we are all standing in within the yacht, killing everyone else instantly and forcing my body to rebuild itself from a puddle of finely pressed sludge as she screams about how our broadcasting methods are slowass, unreliable, and stupid fit only for barbarian scum li-

I’m staring at her mouth, it’s weird that I am staring at Ms Tzeitman’s mouth uhh, “I’m sorry I tried my best to figure out how to move her the way she wanted me to but it’s really hard and I’ve never had training in space or a military group or anything so I might have fucked up and taken too long when I could have beaten him back a lot earlier and she keeps telling me that and says we’re only using the stupid waves that no one bothers to check already even by her era and I just, I just don’t know any more than that okay?”

Cynthia gives me a bit of a weird look, “She says? Is she in the room with us right now?”

I shake my head, “No, but she can see and hear everything you do and say, I, I think she’s in my mind and has been ever since she let me inside of her cockpit.”

Ms Tzeitman opens her mouth as if to say something only for her phone to turn back on and start properly ringing, and she dismisses us from speaking with another wave of her hand before she picks up and lets out an annoyed, “What? Nat can’t you see I’m bu-the fucking what?” 

Her eyes widen, and without having the decency to shut off the phone or mute herself she points at the bodyguard or Cynthia or me or really any of us and goes, “Hey! Hey turn on the TV! Now!”

I turn around behind me and up above on a ceiling decorated with brilliantly shining (hopefully glass) gems and statues in the shape of planets and stars clustered into galaxies I see a segment lower down to reveal a completely normal flat screen TV that turns on to a local news channel that-wait do I kno-huh?

A humanoid figure is standing in front of a background of pure but familiarly endless looking neon red, garbed in familiar looking militant black plated armor that infuriatingly obscures his exact outline and bodyplan and skin right up to the elaborate white and gold mask and helmet of fluted metal covering every inch of a head I can only really describe as again ‘probably humanoid’ save for the four eyes arranged on (his?) head much like a spider’s would be, a constant stream of something blue constantly flows from the bottom of the mask, Typh-Ea thinks its blood.

The news ticker below just says exactly what I thought it would as the message repeats again, “People of Centauri, my name is Duke Jim(?), Patron God of the Planet Fleet(?) and its vassals, and loyal servant of Baihu and the Kingdom of Air, and I have arrived with my forces to challenge your indigo Imago for the right to enfold this world and its people under our protection and shining guidance!.”

“But do not worry for your own safety, although it has been mere moments since, I have already studied my battle against her from every angle and possibility, your Imago truly cares for you it seems! A noble and laudable thing to be, perhaps if she surrendered herself to our guidance she would make for a worthy vassal, but if she would rather ride to her death we have chosen to await her here, at the very outskirts of your star system!”

The camera shifts to reveal a glimmering sea of stars, broken up by distant planets and asteroids and the outlines of vast machines, at least three in number, perhaps not counting the one filming, along with their exact coordinates in the lower left corner.

“Out here we can rampage to our hearts content! Free from judgement! Free from the risk of harming even a single one of your people’s lives! Come! Come Indigo Warrior! Come and face your death like the true wielder you claim to be fuahahahaha!” 

The clip is cut, and an unimpressed looking balding man in a reclaimer general/admiral (i can never really tell) uniform is shown on screen, apparently he’s being interviewed? He starts to speak, something about how the fleet had detected something massive plowing straight into and out of our atmosphere a mere 17 hours ago, but that he isn’t scared of what is obviously a dirty Earth scum TAU fascistic provocation, the forces of R.O.M.E. are more than capable of holding up their side of the bargain with the Gang of Four and the Governate by protecting Alph-the screen is cut and reels itself back up into the ceiling, and Ms Tzeitman lets out a deep sigh.

“What happens when they fly into the obvious trap and get themselves and everyone aboard those expensive ships Janey from Allbetter convinced that stupid governor and me to chip in for killed?”

I blink, and try to keep my eyes on her eyes again, “They’ll carry away everyone they can find as slaves after killing almost everyone else.”

“Oh Godsdamnit.”