Humanity Endures

Part 2 - The Senate | Chapter 5

As the bridge let loose a single emphatic cheer of approval, before they began slaving away to implement the task given them, Yezalax, now with sixty kilometers of moving metal to manage, turned back to Lassarha, saluted once more, and silently strode to his post. Lassarha, with nothing better to do while her ship prepared to breach into the Remnant, moved to her station as well.

The Empire's salute, the same one that was combined with a bow when shown to political superiors such as Lassarha, was deeply symbolic. By loudly throwing one's right hand into one's left, and then drawing these clasped appendages into one's chest with enough force to produce a fairly loud noise, a soldier pledged their strength — their arms — and their heart — the movement of these arms into their often armored chest — to their superior, and the Empire as a whole. When executed properly and en masse, the result was breathtaking; not only was a formation of millions saluting an incredible sight, but when millions of arms slammed into millions of chests, it sounded impressive too. Nevertheless, even the salutes Lassarha received were not loud enough to drown out her landmass-sized vessel's workings. As the immense, numerous remnant drives aboard the Ineffable began to violently awaken, and as a golden breach was slowly torn into the fabric of normal space before her vessel, Lassarha felt even more relieved — once she arrived at the planet of Tehkria, she would be more secure in both position and in person. This was in no small part because she would be surrounded by people who genuinely liked and trusted her; in the galaxy's Senate, there was scarcely anything genuine. Yezalax was correct, or, rather, he had accurately guessed and summed up Lassarha's reasoning — Tehkria, with all of its resources and all of its support for Lassarha's reign, was indeed the perfect place for her to try and uncover the shadowy master of the recent attempted killing. Though a part of Lassarha considered venturing to Ihndrastar, Cehlarxan's world, to make an appeal to his sense of righteousness and enlist his help in clearing her name, she realized that showing up to his doorstep with a fully armed fleet would look more like she was trying to finish the job than make amends. After all, he had started the coalition against her in the first place; this, and the fact that Lassarha much preferred the sights in the Tehkria system, made her stellar demesne the best destination available to her. The most recent crisis in the Senate had gripped the galaxy, and Lassarha, more totally than rumors about Light's End; Lassarha would have been fearful of the black hole, had her limited capacity for fear not already have been expended on human threats.

Lassarha's hearts pined for the sight of Tehkria's twin stars catching the world's artificial atmosphere; when this light hit the gilded cityscape and network of space stations beyond, it birthed a radiant array of glorious effulgence that mimicked a starry sky, though it somehow outshone all the stars in this sky by itself. Much like the Ineffable, Tehkria's visage provided a sense of security and familiarity much-needed by the beset Lassarha. Every moment she inhaled the morally and mentally bankrupt air, languished under the dull light of the single star, or took in the endlessly, painfully ostentatious scenery of Earth, was a moment her lethargy multiplied. With her career at stake if she couldn't prove her innocence, and her life at stake if she couldn't destroy those responsible, lethargy was something she could not afford.

***

Xertaza's hypersphere burst open; the grey-and-gold confines of the Ruthless's modern bridge, an immense, rectangular chamber whose multiple floors hosted over ten thousand pilots and senior officers, sprawled out before her. Lines upon lines of digital desks, akin to a marching column of infantry in their arrangement, served as the nerve center of her entire ship. To make a landmass of destruction move delicately, precisely, and quickly, over a hundred pilots were required; to command and resolve issues that sprang up amongst the warship's eleven million sailors, a massive number of senior officers were required for even basic function. To manage the Ministry of Interstellar Security, whose headquarters was essentially Xertaza's flagship, over a hundred thousand of the galaxy's most senior constables commanded their sectors of the Empire's police network from onboard.