They were too late.
Adam had just gotten that star, and now some idiot was out here trying to blow it up. Either by making it go prematurely supernovae or have it collapse in on itself to become a black hole, either option was less than ideal. At this distance, a supernova would vaporize Arcadia or pull them into an inescapable gravity well.
Adam shivered involuntarily at the thought, imagining them streaking towards an infinite point of pure mass inescapable by anything including light.... Inescapable by anything including.... Anima.
Brief panic overwhelmed him, the ship that had dropped the deadly paload was already gone. In the next few seconds they would all be dead. His hands twitched, ready to warp them to safety. He was piloting the fastest most powerful ship in the known galaxy.
He could warp away and save his crew.
His panicked brain had already begun the order to move his hands when a thought occurred to him.
Certainly, he could warp away and save his crew, but he would leave everyone on Arcadia behind to die.
Including his three children, his family, his dogs....
He knew Sunny loved him, but he was almost positive that sort of cowardice would be a sin she could never forgive.
The internal war between cowardice and bravery, or perhaps outright stupidity, occurred in less than a fraction of a second, his desire to flee seen only in the miniscule twitch of his hands as he contemplated the alternatives.
But instead of running, he did something else entirely.
No time to come up with a clever plan, the did the only thing he could do.
He warped.
But instead of warping away from the inevitable explosion, he warped towards it, using the Empyrean's rapid calculations on distance and timing to place the ship into space right next to the dropping payload.
The bridge erupted in searing white light blinding them in the few milliseconds it took for the Empyrean to respond. The room was filled with the sound of pain, as crew members doubled over clutching their faces, or throwing up their hands to cover their eyes.
Adam's vision was practically gone by then, his human eye blinking back blazing whtie artifact, tears streaming down his face. The ship creaked under the weight of the star's gravity. The only thing that filled the view screen now was blazing white light.
They were closer to a star than any human in recorded history had ever dared, and he was almost entirely sure that if this ship had been anything but the Empyrean, they would most certainly be dead, melted to slag as they hurtled towards the Star's massive gravity.
Adam reached up, flipping the eyepatch up from his mechanical eye, which whirred to life, pleasantly unphased by the sudden eruption of light.
Around him the empyrean groaned softly.
The corona: they had entered the star's corona. The heat that bombarded the ship would be somewhere near 1 millions degrees celsius.
He was lucky they weren't dead already.
"Come on girl, Makers know the architect should be able to fly you right into that thing." Truth be told, Adam wasn't so sure what the Architect could and could not do. He still wasn't entirely sure if the powerful Maker was equivalent to the monothestic god of the old testament. Surely not since that god was omnipotent and omnipresent and all those other omni things.
If he was so powerful then he doubted the whole void war would be a thing.
Maybe he couldn't withstand the heat of a star, or its terrible gravity.
Maybe Adam was placing too much trust in this ship.... Either way, it was too late to back down now. He didn't have much in the way of material or much in the way of time, but he had to come up with something.
Spacecraft and space probes had survived the corona of Earth's sun plenty of times, but those were probes, specially designed with heat shields to reflect the star's heat back on itself.
Could the Empyrean handle it?
As if in response, the empyrean's outward shields flared with an eruption of golden light.
"Sir, heat shields at 100% capacity." someone shouted.
Well that was the first good news he had heard all day. At least the empyrean was heat resistant.... Key word being resistant.
They continued their dive downward desperately trying to track the fall of the deadly payload. They weren't out of the woods yet, and they were heading rapidly towards their doom. Whatever that payload was made out of, it was sturdy stuff, somehow managing not to disintegrate in the high heat, but at these temperatures they didn't have many options. Magnets certainly wouldn't work for a traditional grapple.
They would have to try the gravity beam.
Yes , yes the Empyrean had an alien style tractor beam, a fact he was incredibly excited about, yet at this point in his life, he still hadn't found a reason to use his tractor beam on an unsuspecting human or random farm animal. but could it be more powerful than Bob's gravity?
But no, that was a dumb quetion, he didn't need to play tug of war with Bob, he just needed to bring the payload close enough so they could engage a warp.
All along the floor, the bright golden light of the empyrean's power stores began to brighten with intensity. Adam's skin burned gold with Anima light.
Now if he could just find the damn....
"We have lock!" The voice that shouted over the mummering of the bridge was, not surprisingly, their targeting officer, and just as they promised a little red box appeared superimposed over the dimmed view screen.
The payload was still falling, and they were falling behind.
Shit.
Adam sped up.
They were entering the Chromosphere now, all around them the empyrean's walls glowed with an incredible golden intensity. Adam himself was burning like a small star. He turned his head slightly to the right and was surprised to find the crew members glowing as well. It was subtle at first, but with every passing moment their skin began to take on a golden cast.
Turning to his left, he watched as his Comm's officer's eyes began to glow.
This couldn't be good.
He pushed the ship forward, trying to manuver her into the correct position
But then.
"Sir! We're headed right for.....
"Solar prominence." He briefly sighed in annoyance, Sol was the name of Earth's star, so when he said solar did he actually mean Bobular?
That intrusive thought was able to gain space in his head, somehow, even as the reality dawned on him. A solar prominence, a superheated arch of plasma, shot from the Star's surface, following magnetic field lines, and they were headed straight towards it.
The fall of the payload would take them directly through its arch.
How the payload had survived this long,and how it expected to survive the superheated plasma was something he would have to consider for a later date because right now Adam wasn't sure if they would survive. The empyrean had compensated for the light by superimposing a reconstructed image of the star over the viewscreen so Adam could see what he was dealing with.
And what he was dealing with was a tongue of plasma several hundred miles wide.
And they were heading straight for it.
Could they survive?
Did it matter?
If they didn't try they were dead anyway. Adam Closed his eyes and squeezed them tight for a brief moment, shooting off a quick prayer to the Architect, though he wasn't sure if the alien being could hear him. All around the room the others braced themselves, fear plain on their faces. A few people balked at their stations and threw themselves under their consoles, as if that would help.
The rest of them watched their doom approach.
And then, the Empyrean shot into prominence,
Light flared inside the Empyrean, white hot and burning gold.
Adam felt his skin begin to tingle and burn.
"Sir! Heat shield at 98 and dropping!"
A communication appeared on screen from the engine room. Nairobi stood in a small window in one corner of his view screen, her dark skin shedding golden light like some sort of celestial solar deity. Her usually amber eyes glowed honey gold, "Admiral,, the engines...."
"Overheating?"
"No, we are losing power, the entire damn ship is."
"Shit."
How could they be losing power when their power came from the crew?
Oh shit again. Everything was starting to make sense. The crew was providing the power to the ship, powered by makers and the Architect himself, losing power would never have been a problem. But their ship only had one Maker on board, everyone else was dampened by the construct.
They weren't outputting enough power.
The glow around the room only increased as they plunged further into the prominence, catching up to the rapid fall of the payload.
He hat to do this now.
Adam forced the ship forward, pouring as much energy as he could into the engines.
Sensing his intentions the empyrean responded, shutting down all systems on the ship nonessential to this moment, redundant holo projections on the bridge vanished, the weapons system shut off, but still their heat shields were failing.
"76%!" Someone shouted
The only light in the room came from the hot glow that shed from the crew.
Adam's tingling skin began to burn.
Sunny was a ball of blue fire to his right.
Someone shouted in pain.
Just a little closer.
Their systems were failing
55% 54% 48%
Once that number reached zero their heat shield would be gone, and they would be vaporized inside this arch of superheated plasma.
He could see the payload now, with his own eyes, make out its features.
44% 37% 32%
Come on!
He flipped on the gravity beam.
System Shutdown
Shit!
"Turn it back on dammit" he shouted
The Empyrean complied, but at a cost, reducing the amount of power being fed into the shields. They were hemorrhaging percentages now.
The room was getting warm
He could feel the heat against his skin like he stood in an oven, and hot sweat slicked his face.
26% 19% 12%
The beam turned on, pulling the payload towards them even as they fell.
He just had to get it close enough.
8%
He had it!, and as soon as he did he trust his hands forward forcing all his remaining energy, all the remaining energy left on the ship, into one desperate uncalculated warp, completely unbacked by safety protocols, and with no way of knowing where they were going except away.
1%