Their expressions were sour. It was not going well, and they were losing ships and planets, and there were a LOT of xenosym ships.

I nodded slowly. “Be that as it may, this conference you called has served its purpose. One moment, now. You’re about to lose another battleship.”

The hologram in front of me fizzed, faltered, and vanished, as they all looked surprised... and the grim smiles starting up didn’t quite materialize.

------

At a random point in space near Chiriimspace, space split open and disgorged a great and mighty Imperial Battleship, the Admiral Nelson. It was a full TL 15 flagship of the Tellurian Armada, emerging right on top of the psychic signal after following it from the meeting.

The relay beacon beeped cheerfully, and went silent as the looming battleship towered over it, looking for a system, a star, a planet, a ship, an asteroid... anything...

What it found was a tendril from an entity massing more than Jupiter, moving at several thousand miles per second, slamming down with enough force to crack a moon, and which thoroughly obliterated the proud ship of the Imperial Fleet.

------

The connection came back two minutes after the death of the battleship, and their faces were pretty long as their psions reported that the source of it was several thousand light years from the original, and not even in Corunsun Space any more.

“For your information, we know where all twenty-three ships you have in the Warp adjacent to Corunsun Sector are. Well, twenty-two. It appears you haven’t learned to sense the para-mass shadows of the Anti-Life from the Warp, and the Admiral Nelson just got swatted like a fly by one when it entered realspace half a light year from any nearby systems.”

The Grand Admiral looked a bit tense. So did the others, as they all had ships roving about in the Warp, trying to find key worlds. They’d successfully located several systems with Beacons turned off, but those had only been frontier and agri-worlds, not of great strategic importance. Still, they would have razed them, except when their ships came out they tended to find whole squadrons waiting for them with great interest as to their motivations. They had either surrendered on the spot or been crippled, thence to blow themselves up, or been boarded and taken.

It probably wasn’t welcome news to them to keep losing ships, but I wasn’t the one turning down the free gifts they were sending us.

The Anti-Life was probably annoyed that we were using them, but the fact was that when they investigated those strange beacons, they almost inevitably found ships breaching the Warp within a short period of time, and crushing them did give the things great satisfaction.

“As I was saying, gentlemen, this conference has now served its purpose. You may inform the Emperor that We Know.” I closed my eyes and sighed. “We know he has fucked with all your heads, even the Coronals and the Umbrans.

“No Coronal would ever accede to the loss of three-quarters of the Empire just to put down a rebellion that is not marching out to conquer bloodily. You would negotiate for time, assured that you would win in the end, but reduce the cost to the Empire as a whole.

“You didn’t even blink at the idea of going straight to war with us, Grand Coronal. You are not a Coronal.”

He was going to say something when I turned to his shadowed companion. “Likewise, the Umbrans know better than anyone the situation the Empire is in. You are intimately familiar with and use all sorts of alternate means of conflict resolution than direct suppression, and the cost it would entail.

“You also did not bat an eye at immediate armed suppression and civil war.”

I looked over the rest of the dozen old men with narrowed eyes. “I am a Nineteen, gentlemen. Your little psychic wards and cybernetic defenses cannot evade my eyes. The reason I agreed to this little conference is because these are psionic reflections of you and who you really are, mirrors of you in your entirety.

“I can tell you have been fucked with. The Emperor reached into your minds and rewired you into obedient puppets who have no choice but to follow His desires, probably when you swore your oath to Him.

“You are unable to see that He has become a lich, and that His path is leading humanity to death, which is the only destination any lich can ever have. When He rules an Empire of the Dead, perhaps He thinks humanity will indeed live forever.”

“You dare so judge us? Who do you think you are?” the Grand Prognosticator of the Mentats burst out.

“I’m a Nineteen, and you’re a Thirteen,” I replied coolly, staring at him. “You are not fit to wipe my boots.”

His mouth worked, but he had no reply to that. He had risen to his position on political ability, not raw ability. He wasn’t the weakest member of the Council, but none of them were a true threat to me... at least not without an army behind them, or planet-crackers in my general vicinity.

“So, we know. We know you don’t have a choice, we know you aren’t trustworthy to negotiate with, and we know that even though the Emperor knows that He could end this all now... He’s going to fight and see as many people killed as possible, because this does not follow His vision.

“Also, copies of this meeting have been playing on Beacons and Booles throughout the galaxy concurrent with this meeting.”

Their eyes got really, really wide. I could actually DO that?

“Goodbye, gentlemen. I think the galaxy is going to be a different place in the morning.”

---

The reconnected holoconference winked out. I considered the space it had occupied with narrowed eyes.

Yeah, the Emperor had no problems with loyalty, because He fucked with the minds of the High Council. He didn’t do a full personality replacement, but He basically crushed any rebelliousness and replaced it with overwhelming loyalty... minor changes that could be expected of any man who first set eyes on the Immortal Emperor of Humanity.

I hadn’t been telling THEM of the facts behind the Corunsuns. I’d been telling everyone else who had watched and listened in.

The ones who realized we could beat the Xenosyms... unless all of them came at once, and even then, we’d win in the end, although we’d probably lose almost every inhabited system there was. But if they came all at once, the Warp would come down on those psi-active twits, suck them all in, and xenosym could fight demons that would not die until it was all over.

Maybe. At least, they seemed to react adversely to areas of Warp influence. Certainly demons were made of ectoplasm, not real matter, and weren’t a very good meal. Would the Warped directly intervene if there was a mass invasion?

Probably. The Anti-Life was their enemy, too. The Gods of the Warp were probably very pleased by the way we were killing them, and all the fighting that was driving humans to every extreme to survive... and if that meant Warp Events bringing in demons to fight them, that was happening, too.

Still, the Fleet wasn’t staffed just by loyalists to Tellus. When they realized the Empire was going to start a civil war and abandon all those worlds and sectors threatened by the Xenosyms, I knew there were a lot of political officers who were suddenly going to be shot in the head... and a lot of Mentat Navigators under Imperial Seal, too, who could sabotage the whole ship. That would also effectively strand those Fleets in the systems they were in, making them impossible to recall.

As for our production... the Ruk could lay endless numbers of hulls for us. We only had to produce the power cores, engines, and all the wonderful killing tech that filled them. It was a win-win situation, as we had them focus on making Reaper Fleet models, focusing on our mutual enemies. More general-use ships we took care of ourselves, not wanting them involved in our fight to that degree... although they certainly weren’t reluctant to do so, given what they knew of the Empire.

They almost had the bodies to pull it off now, too. Just another decade or two to get the new kids out of their basic schooling, and their species never daring to ignore its population problem again...

--------

Twenty-four hours later, the map of the galaxy had indeed changed.

Tens of thousands of worlds in the afflicted Sectors were gripped in hysteria that the Empire had abandoned them. Hundreds of system Fleets had seen what was going to happen... and then received orders to pull back from their stations in the systems, and even out of ongoing fights, and form up in systems outside Khagan Sector and the Corunsun sub-sector.

The numbers of ships that revolted exceeded those that obeyed by a significant margin, and barely any ship managed to obey the Imperial orders without putting down an attempted mutiny that ran through every level of the command hierarchy.

The few Beacons active in Khaganspace were overwhelmed by requests to the Duke Corunsun to come and save them.

That could not happen, of course. The Imperial forces were massing up along the only remaining Beacon path into the Khagan Sector, and there was no doubt that they would be unleashed upon the rebelling worlds there as soon as they assembled in good order and could be dispatched.

But while the Ruk were directed not to interfere in our internal conflicts, they could mess with the Xenosyms all their stout little hearts wanted to.

------

The kids had gone to a lot of places after they dispersed from active roles in Imperial Space. One of their favorite places was the Kingdoms of the Ruk, where the girls were regarded as priestesses of the god of the machine... and the Briggs Boys were cheerful fellows who really, really knew their way around a hammer.

There had been a lot of savage and merciless fighting with the Compact of the Black out in the void and borders of the Ruk domains, and the kids had thrown themselves into it with a savagery that let the Ruk know that that kind of fighting spirit, and maaaaaaybe hunger for Karma, was in all ways hereditary.

Slapping together our hulls was extremely minor relative to their own heavy ships, and we added a light, faster element to the Ruk forces that was in no way bound to their tactical doctrines, and was perfectly happy to manipulate those doctrines to our benefit. Very disapproving Ruk tacticians frowned at all the special situation folders that kept popping up in their expanded tactical calculations and training, and could only sigh at some of the crazy shit the kids got them involved in... and pulled off with the pure chutzpah, skill, and daring of the kids, and the merciless discipline and precision of the Ruk.

The Compact of the Black had been getting slammed back, back, and back again. With the Ruk Citadels serving as supercarriers and production centers, the kids had hit them again, and again, and again, driving them back across space, chasing them like hunting wolves, laying ambushes, infiltrating, sabotage, raids, all the good stuff.

There were dozens of Ruk serving in the Strategos Circle now, coordinating a multi-racial force of ships across the stars, with a specific force led by the Unforgotten and Grimshield that specifically laid traps for the Anti-Life.

They had over thirty kills between them. We didn’t know the number of the Void-dwellers, of course, but they were basically Eternal. Losing any of them had to be huge, but thirty in a short period of time to mortals had to be colossal. Maybe the Warp had cost them more over time, maybe not. Tossing Warp Storms like blind artillery bombardments, who knew how successful that had been?...

The Ruk were avenging their fallen, their ancestors, and their Creators. Their souls were shining silver and bright, singing a song across the stars buried for ten thousand years, and now given a new refrain and tenor.

TREMBEL, VIR KOMMEN!...