While the Arcadian Galactic Commonwealth and the Omniconpro Corporate Sector were engaged in the massive proxy war in the 80 systems, there were things going on elsewhere. For instance, a small pocket of Angelus Holy Union ‘citizens’ still remained on the planet they were trapped on, completely oblivious to the destruction that had befallen their race. This was a star system on the very edges of the galaxy, and it was only reachable via a very narrow hyperspace lane that would occasionally close up and experience a kind of ‘hyperspace static’ that prevented all communication to and from the system.

Whether it was by luck or some miracle, they managed to survive the near erasure of their race and avoid Arcadia’s gaze. For now, at least.

This was not to say that the sole inhabitable planet in the system was a lush, verdant paradise. No, this was a penal world. It was a place where anyone who openly doubted the state and its goals were sent to ‘disappear’. They had been trapped there beyond the closed hyperlane for a good long while and it was about time for the lane to once again reopen. Fresh supplies needed to be brought in, and new convicts would have to be processed.

When the hyperlane reopened, however, they were bombarded with messages that only just now were able to reach them. They had, once again by pure luck or possible misfortunate miracle, managed to stay out of the conflict that doomed their nation.

For the highly patriotic and religious members of the prison guard, this was akin to a small congregation of Catholics hearing that the Vatican had been nuked and every other Catholic church and clergyman aside from theirs were razed and dead. For those who had been imprisoned for their thought crimes, this was a chance to start anew.

When the bulk of the prison guards abandoned their posts to try and bring one last desperate fight to the ‘primitive apostates’, the prisoners took the chance and staged a bloody and violent takeover. As the dust settled, the former prisoners took stock of their new situation, and split up into groups depending on their beliefs. The various groups spread out across the small patch of land that was able to sustain them and tried to rebuild their civilization in a ‘better’ form.

Unfortunately for the Angels, it was in their nature to wage bloody conflict with those who viewed the world differently than them, and not even a week after the first seeds of civilization had been sown, the first Holy War began. This quickly devolved into every single group out for each other’s blood, and soon after any semblance of compassion, mercy and comradery they had built up with each other during their incarceration vanished in the growing tide of zealous hatred.

Thus, it would be that Arcadia did not condemn the Angels to extinction, but instead that they would wipe themselves out.

…

It had been two years since the 80 systems had been embroiled in the proxy war between the AGC and the OCS, but the military fleet that was speeding through the black was not headed towards that area. No, they were off to determine where the last vestiges of the AHU were hiding. They had retraced the steps the AHU prison guards had taken to get to one of Arcadia’s fortresses and discovered an unstable hyperlane that led to…. somewhere.

Not willing to take any chances when dealing with the AHU, the fleet gathered was one large enough to (hopefully) deal with anything on the other side. The ships slaved their hyperdrives and followed the hyperlane, not knowing who or what awaited them at its end.

The fleet emerged at the edge of a system with a single yellow star. Preliminary scans showed no other AHU ships or stations in the system, but tons of wreckage floating in mid orbit above one of the planets. Said planet was completely uninhabitable, save for one small portion of land that was surrounded on all sides by polluted and irradiated wastelands. Oddly enough, there were structure reminiscent of a massive prison complex in the center of the habitable zone but surrounding the prison complex were the razed ruins of several iron-age cities.

As the inhabitable part of the land was relatively small compared to the unhabitable part, it was far simpler that was expected to search the ‘island’. Large battlefields where thousands of bodies laid unburied told the ground teams that the Angels had been fighting someone and had been butchered with extreme prejudice, but they could not find the victors. It seemed, based on initial observations, that the Angels had turned on each other, but such a thing was impossible, as the Angels they knew would never have done something like that.

The search continued as the fleet watched from on high, slowly mapping out everything that was visible from space. After searching through the ruins of the iron-age cities, it became clear that the Angels had indeed regressed to a far more primitive level of technology, and they had done so very fast. In fact, based on the data they mined from the prison complex, the majority of the population of this planet were convicts, brought here for ‘thought crimes’ and ‘heresy’. The prison had traces of a violent riot and based on the time that the riot happened, and the last AHU force was sighted, it was now clear that they had been oblivious to the AHU’s defeat and destruction until the hyperlane reopened.

It all started to come together when it was discovered that the prisoners had formed into cliques based on their ‘heretical’ beliefs. This was why the battlefields were littered with the bodies of the Angels, without a single victor in sight. They had, in true Angel fashion, turned on each other due to differences of opinion and attempted to wipe each other out. The deaths here were not caused by another race, rather they themselves had consigned their race to oblivion though idiotic and self-destructive means.

Then the call came in about a single standing structure out in the middle of nowhere. As the ground forces arrived, they witnessed something that made them realize just how mad the AHU really was, and how mad the Angels were as well.

The last two Angels in the galaxy were beating each other to death just inside the last church to Lugus in the whole galaxy. The mix of MSGs and living people watched with a mix of stunned confusion and schadenfreude as the two idiots tore and clawed and bit and hit and kicked each other with ever increasing ferocity. In their rage against the ‘heretic’ in front of them, they did not notice the audience they had gained. Feathers were ripped from their wings and bones snapped as flesh was torn. Three minutes of fighting later, both of them collapsed in a heap as they used what little life they had left in them to curse each other to hell and back.

As they faded into unconsciousness, a cracking sound echoed through the wooden structure as the stone statue of their god shifted in its poorly laid foundation. It slowly tipped forwards until it fell upon the last two beings who worshipped it, crushing any life that they still had.

This was how the AHU truly was extinguished. Not by the hands of Arkhan, Asharia or Arcadia, but by their own self-destructive tendencies. This was how a race doomed itself to extinction by its own hands.