"This doesn't look good... Where are we? Why in Seven Devils are we here?" Klauvane Tregg's tone was rife with grim anxiety.
"I don't know," Mune'stahr said.
Poli'Artta Ranzireth joined the two men. She didn't even try hiding her growing sense of unease and worry. "We changed course. I could feel it. Why? What's going on?"
"I'm not sure," Mune'stahr admitted reluctantly. "But I have no doubt that NeeSharim has uncovered some new information concerning our mission that somehow relates to our new coordinates..."
"And how would she know to navigate to a place like this? We're off the map. We've traveled too deep in," Poli'Artta hissed past clenched teeth.
"I've got a feeling we're way beyond the jurisdictional reach of the Authoritarchs out here," Tregg said. "This is beginning to look a lot like the outermost borders of the Undefined Provinces..."
"Yes, there is indeed that likelihood," Mune'stahr said, his already brittle mood darkening.
"The Undefined Provinces. We shouldn't be here," Poli'Artta said glumly. "This is a bad place. There's nothing here but death."
A full Astronomical Unit, as distance was measured, beyond the mammoth statuary of The Frozen Kohlaussaye, they reached the Incidence Zone. It occupied an anchored interstitial convexity that, if it were it to be defined as a geophysical locale, was physically four times as large as the state of Alaska on planet Earth. On the outer rim of a gravitic Event Horizon, the confluence was identified as the 'Aggregotham Incendia' and it was a monstrous paradox of TimeSpace and visible asymmetric, baryogenetic antiparticles. As interpreted by the human eye, it looked like a vast liquid ocean the color of red wine, floating in space as a roughly disk-like configuration impaled by fifteen, one thousand story tall inverted thistle-stalks. Immense metallic bridges, open-topped tubes containing roadways, connected the towering thistle-stalks above the burgundy-hued oceanic waves at their bell-shaped blossom-heads, with each of those involucellian urn-heads being having the circumference of ten naval aircraft carriers. Free-floating Cation clouds created atmospheric winds that fanned across the sea, birthing rolling waves that surged and splashed against the huge thistle-stalk pillars that broke the sea's surface. Compared to the vastness of the Aggregotham Incendia, even a craft a massive as The Glide appeared comparatively to be little more than a large, silvery-white boulder streaking across the stormy panoramic horizon.
It was a forbidding and uninviting vista made even more macabre by the intermittent bombardment of glacial rock-ice that fell from out energetic electrical fields that resembled clouds. Between the clouds, in what would normally be called a "sky", the rock-ice fell from out vibrating oval holes of shadow to plummet into the wine-colored sea, exploding in bursts of orange flame.
Atop the centermost thistle-pillar's urn-head, they could see an uneven artificial skyline composed of a collection of closely-packed buildings. The narrow metal buildings were weathered and pitted, some leaning or bowed, sagging, indicative of great age and decay, and though they were lit from within by pallid, flickering lights, there was an undeniable darkness about them.
Lobarth Ceryndum. Words, a joining of demonstrative adjectives actually, from an ancient pre-Authoritarchian, non-human Organyk, Sanguivylleate dialect that meant "The Mouth of the Serpent".
On the for'ard bridge, at the pilot console, Riktonn Mune'stahr stared solemnly at the image projected onto The Glide's jumbo mega-viewer screen.
"Your ship's Synthautotron A.I. is leading you into serious danger," Poli'Artta pressed, unable to take her eyes away from the expansive alien tableau displayed on the viewscreen.
And through the glare, the passengers aboard The Glide could just barely make out strange visual details above the waterline adorning the towering stalks...
Specks. They were moving. They appeared to be a unwholesome hybrid of oceanic arthropod blended with a humanoid primate, long-torsoed, four-limbed things encased in spiny, segmented exoskeletons.
"NeeSharim never does anything without a very good reason," Mune'stahr countered.
"I don't like this, not at all. There's nothing to concern us here. Anything happening in the Undefined Provinces is beyond anyone's jurisdiction. This is an independent area, unallied, and whatever societies there are here are under no obligation to obey the cultural and behavioral norms created by the Authoritarchs. Whatever it is we're expected to do here is sheerest folly. We don't need to make any new enemies. We should leave as soon as possible," Tregg argued tensely.
"The Aggregotham Incendia has long been rumored to be the place where the Kohlaussaye met their dooms over the many millennia since the territory was discovered," Poli'Artta argued. "Strangers are not welcome and those who venture within these borders are never heard from again."
"NeeSharim brought us here. That means someone is in desperate need of our assistance, even as the two of you were when we met," Mune'stahr said. "We cannot turn a blind eye to their plight nor can we abandon the opportunity to lend them our aid."
"Did you not see what happened to the Kohlaussaye we left behind us? They were more like gods than mere men! And yet even they could not withstand the assault of dark powers in this region. The Andrayevich Manifold Network's Incidence zone is the domain of creatures of staggering power," Tregg pointed out, his tone bitter. "And while The Glide may be a powerful technological miracle and blessed with considerable defensive capabilities, I don't believe it was ever intended to be a warship..."
"In case you've forgotten, you're guests aboard this vessel, not crew members," Mune'stahr said. "You don't determine what paths or destinations to which we navigate."
Poli'Artta Ranzireth stubbornly stood her ground. "This sojourn represents a completely unnecessary risk. This ship and its crew, meaning you and Pylott, offered us sanctuary. That makes you responsible for our safety."
"Don't you dare lecture me on my responsibilities," Mune'stahr said, his voice deepening into a threatening growl. "The times of unrepentant violence, lawlessness and unchecked predation against the weak by those more powerful are over. The Glide is a protector to every sentient being in the Ventriculum, that means everyone everywhere on every realm of existence."
"Yes, yes, but do you even know who you are protecting and what you're protecting them from?" Klauvane Tregg said.
At that precise moment, with the sound of the Temporal Chronadigitator's tense question still floating on the air, the NeeSharim entered the bridge area, followed by both Pylott and Neuronia Syngulareous, and calmly spoke the answer.
"Fellmanghul. We are here because a murderous mutant tyrant, a Cyonik Vamfyrr, named Mondrum Fellmanghul, is going to assassinate Queen Infernyya Rebekkon and the most senior members of the Paranescience's Noble Court."
"What? You're saying what? How would you know that?" Poli'Artta challenged.
NeeSharim shrugged. "I do not 'see' or comprehend things in the limited linear fashion to which you Organyks are accustomed. Your five traditional bio-neurological senses, limited to spatially-oriented tactile input, are prisoners to assumptive reasoning to make sense of your surroundings. My eleven base-senses see data, all kinds of interconnected multi-level data, and make precise deductions based on chronological Time, Spatial periodicity, Cognitive Kinesthetics and predictive mathematical dynamic extrapolation."
The Hexabreed warrior woman closed her open mouth and blinked slowly, a pained expression briefly crossing her features. She decided sometimes it was better not to ask NeeSharim to explain things.
"We're in potentially hostile territory here," Mune'stahr said pointedly, aiming the comment at NeeSharim. "What's the ship's status?"
NeeSharim's reply was coolly reserved. It was clear she was still assessing their situation and making adjustments on the fly even as she spoke. "The Glide is currently locked into dark cloak-mode. All electromagnetic field and thermal emanations are masked, all environmental telemetry and navigational probe transmissions have been downshifted into a sub-rosa state and the shiftship's physical optical profile has been camouflaged against the Flow's hyper-radiance backdrop. We should be invisible to most known scanning systems."
Mune'stahr nodded his approval, but noticed Pylott's frown at NeeSharim's specification of the term "known scanning systems" in her conclusion.
"And our defensive state?" Poli'Artta managed to hiss past the knuckles of the hand she'd nervously raised to her lips.
The Glide's autonomous mobile A.I. squared her shoulders as she said, "You will find that we possess technological combat macro-systems more than capable of defending ourselves against assault by any model or class of modern Destroyer and Dreadnaught actively in-service or ever to venture into the cosmic depths of the Ventriculum."
"You said this Cyonik Vamfyrr named 'Fellmanghul' was going to attempt to kill Queen Infernyya Rebekkon. But what would motivate such a creature to do that?" Tregg queried.
"Obviously that is what we are here to discover," NeeSharim said.
* * *
Fellmanghul's Emissary appeared uninvited on the ship's bridge promenade as an animated, 3-D holographic projection, the Emissary visually appearing to be a non-humanoid creature that physically resembled a hybridization of an ocean-going sea horse blended with an alligator. As it spoke , it non-expressively referred to Itself in the third person causing both Mune'stahr and Pylott to deduce that it was likely the Emissary wasn't actually a living being at all and that they were being hailed and greeted by an avatar for a primitive artificial intelligence.
"Identify yourselves. Why do you hide from Bahoumet? You have entered into territorial glide-space without explicit authorization from The First of the Highest. Bahoumet is the foremost official representative of the Quantum Consortium, the ruling Executive Ministry of Lobarth Ceryndum. Masking the presence of your incursion can and will be interpreted as an act of aggression against the Quantum Consortium unless you can convince Bahoumet that you are not military operatives employed by the Authoritarch Primacy or by the Devolutioner Protectorate or by the Quegfellum Union. If you represent a heretofore unrecognized or uncatalogued independent merchant confederacy, then you may enter into synchronous orbit at the glide-space outskirts of the city until we can assess the potential value of your offerings to the Consortium. At that point, all merchandise will be subject to taxation under Consortium bylaw. But regardless your status, you must unmask and identify yourselves immediately."
"I thought you said you were certain no one could see us," Klauvane Tregg rasped ruefully, directing his remark at NeeSharim.
She casually responded without having taken offense. "They can't. So far as my multi-wavelength channel-insight probes can tell, what we are seeing is a projection that has been sent out across no less than seventeen trans-atmospheric, sub-orbital glide-space locations. It has bounced back without acknowledgement from twelve of those locations inasmuch those beam-points are non-automated, organic Flow-debris. Bahoumet's holographic greeting is on a randomized navigational-beam loop. Apparently this message is constantly in rotation and aimed at anything above Lobarth Ceryndum's skyline, containing enough frequency-penetration to pierce most protective shielding. It's very likely that if the targeted object the beam encounters offers resistance above a certain penetration setting, then the computerized originator assumes the object would be cloaked in stealth-mode."
"So then, we can assume this message isn't interactive and there's no one on the other end?" Pylott wanted to know.
"I didn't say we could safely assume any such thing," NeeSharim said. "I have only enough information to deduce that we are still unseen by the city's defensive weapons systems. This message is a reconnaissance probe looking for an intelligent response. If we do not respond and do not change our dark cloak status, then we will be probably catalogued as MetaFlow void-junk and be ignored."
"Probably. You deduce, you theorize, you assume, perhaps...," Poli'Artta muttered crossly.
"You're not being especially helpful. But you know that. This is just a way for you to undercut the authority of those around you who make you uncomfortable. But, unless you have something concrete with which to contradict what NeeSharim is saying, you would do better not to speak at all," Neuronia Syngulareus suggested, her tone sharply cutting.
The Hexabreed warrior heatedly favored the cyborg-anthrobot Lt. Commander with a furious glare. But she did not speak again.
"So what do we do?" Tregg said, dreading the answer.
"We decide who will be assigned to the Away Team, gear up, and then venture out into the city," Pylott said. "We find this 'Queen', this Infernyya Rebekkon, and we find out what threat she poses to the ruling Executive Ministry of Lobarth Ceryndum, this 'Quantum Consortium', and we try to keep Fellmanghul from killing her. We see how this is connected to the original mission. Then we continue on to Hellmarrow."
Tregg sighed. "Yeah, I kind of thought that would be the plan. Of course."
***
She was incensed, feeling indignant and nearly apoplectic over the current state of affairs. She had thought herself immune to such phenomenon, inviolate and invulnerable by reason of her noble position, by the martial power of her army of Black Sun Seraphs, and because of the strength and intensity of the physical power she herself possessed. Something like this should never have happened. Captured and abducted like mere mortal chattel, like some exotic slave girl to be presented to an emperor or caliph for their harem -- forcibly removed from the confines of her Wavecraft Flowship, isolated and bound, shackled by searing particle energy mysteriously molded into tethered bridles. And yet here she was, in this place, among madmen, gene-dregs and dead things in a backwater region of a hyper-dimensional modular isthmus... Caged and restrained. This place was not where she had chosen to be.
She was a Queen. She was responsible for the deaths of thousands by virtue of her command. Entire cities had been razed and their vanquished populations driven into harsh servitude at her pleasure. By All that was Holy in this cosmos, someone would pay for such affrontive insolence. They would pay with their life. Only the spilling of blood would satisfy her rage.
Fellmanghul had no concept of the abeyant ferocity waiting to be unleashed upon him...
"You certainly do hold yourself and your abilities in high enough esteem, m'lady, I will say that for you," a soft, coldly sibilant voice said aloud. There was just the slightest touch of amusement lurking behind that commentary, a hint of an urbane and cruel, perhaps even debauched, aberrant personality.
Infernyya Rebekkon remembered that voice recently invading her thoughts and forcibly commanding her mind, feverishly infecting her with a malaise that had temporarily sapped her willpower.
Without me, you are nothing. Can you not hear the music of my Glory?
"Leech," she said, hatefully spitting out the word which was both accusation and condemnation. "Cowardly parasite."
"Parasite? Hardly. More like a dark and wrathful god, as I see it."
Despite his grandiloquent yet loathsome, sociopathic manner, Mondrum Fellmanghul was a physically beautiful, if morphologically exotic, physical male specimen. Under the glareless white lights of the mostly featureless holding cell, he was revealed to be a tall and muscular humanoid male with pearlescent, cream-colored skin over which he wore yellow and chrome, segment-articulated body armor. His armor's cuirass was abbreviated, ending below his pectoral region, and his sculpted torso was mostly bare except for a large rose-hued disc connected to a bandolier of interlocking chain links. The disc was a rarified variety of polished stone set into a collar of arabesqued swirls. His shoulders were hooded under hammered and sculpted, articulated metal pauldrons which left his bulging biceps bare except for a single, narrow leather band around each. His thick forearms were encased in metallic guard-sleeves inscribed with the raised image of a triangular demon's head, but his very large, bare hands ended in ruby-colored talons that had the consistency of tortoise shell. Sitting low around his hips was a wide twist-link belt that was centered by a buckle in the shape of a ferocious reptile-skull. Leather pants the color of burgundy were tucked into knee-high, medieval-styled armored boots.
But it was his head and face that were most arresting to the eye. He was incredibly handsome in an androgynous, aristocratic way that contradicted the alienness of his red, almond-shaped eyes and crowning mane of swirling, yellow-white hair. He was Vamfyrr, an ancient and despised, raptorial culture long ago outlawed by the Authoritarchs because of their exploitative and predacious practices towards other sentient beings. Exceedingly formidable mental telepaths, they were killers and sadists, each and every one, and they recognized no authority or morality except their own. The Authoritarchs had spent half a millenium hunting them down and exterminating them.
Fellmanghul and Queen Infernyya were deep inside his oceanic fortress, a starfish-shaped semi-submersible warship, openly bristling with weaponry, anchored off the colossal, mountainous stalk of one of the easternmost thistle-pillars.
The Queen shook her head animatedly, as if the motion would deny the evidence of her bondage. "This is unconscionable. I am the Head of State of a sovereign nation. What you've done constitutes an overt act of war. Where are the others who were on my ship, my Noble Court? What have you done with my people?"
Fellmanghul chortled acridly. "You mean your retinue of sycophantic advisors and foppish courtiers masquerading as diplomats? You mean to say you're actually going to feign some level of actual concern for their well-being? Or is what you're attempting to display more akin to the prideful behavior of the owner of a pack of cowed and domesticated mongrels, alarmed someone else has stolen their property from them?"
"Where are they, you degenerate?"
Fellmanghul shrugged, unruffled by the Queen's smoldering anger. "Oooh, a degenerate, am I? How provincial. Well, I would suppose your so-called Noble Court are providing mouthfuls of fresh meat for my most-favored Manifold Predators. You'd know something about Manifold Predators right, the 'Barsheem Tir'Drung' I believe they're more formally called, you know what they are, HOW they are, yes? I believe your people in the Paranescience have had past encounters with them, back when you massacred their tribes, stealing their native territories and then resettling among the bones of their cities, tearing down their brutishly primitive, megalithic longhouses and paving over their cemeteries..."
"At least we didn't mind-rape them en masse and destroy their intellects..."
"True, but only because you couldn't. So that's how you'd describe the wide web of oppressive mental domination over them that enslaves them to my will? 'Mind-rape'? That's almost amusing," Fellmanghul said. "I have crippled them for generations, you know. They'll never again have brainpower enough to unite and recreate a civilized culture. They are evolutionarily stunted. Crippled as a species. All they know now is hunger and bloodlust... and an insistent urge to serve only me. Consider it my gift to the Ventriculum."
Infernyya Rebekkon couldn't suppress the growl that emerged from the back of her throat. "I will live to watch you die."
"So you say, m'dear. But I wouldn't count in it. The High-One-Who-Commands me, he to whom I owe unbreakable allegiance, has other plans in mind for you even after your demise."
"What? The High-One-Who-Commands?"
Fellmanghul smiled, a frightful expression that was all glistening ivory fangs. "The Qaan'Rai, the Lord-Master of Kadaverign-Space."
Kadaverign-Space. Infernyya Rebekkon felt her flesh grow polar cold as Darkness clawed its way down her trembling spine.
***
The gray atmospheric shell enveloping the furthermost Z-axis-off-horizontal point of the Fluidic Topological Highway was illuminated by strobe-like light bursts from compressed negative ion implosions. Hovering high in the firmament, the kilometer-long Nebulancer flagship continued its assault against the monstrous Seraph. Concussive electro-waves resonated off the titanic bodies of the Frozen Kohlaussaye lining the cobalt-blue bands composing the Fluidic Highway, the destructive effects of the blasts de-solidifying the coherent, high-energy light and gas ribbons, vibrating the broad spatial path between the Kohlaussaye. Fountaining cascades of white-hot sparks mixed with the tumbling tides of gray mist as the battle raged.
The voice over the ship's internal communications nexus was riding the edge of hysteria. "We took a hit to Level Seven, Starboard subsection. Damage assessment indicates significant impairment to the subluminal voidwarp units! We can't contact Engineering Propulsion! Their comm-network is offline! Control over ship's guidance and drive actuation has been diverted to Central Command Wheelhouse consoles!"
The usually arrogant and disdainful Nebulancers were beginning to know the first stirrings of growing fear as they realized their attack presented only a moment's moderate annoyance to Opthas Kandyruu.
They had been well within the borders of the Andrayevich Manifold Network's Incidence zone, at the territorial boundary of the Aggregotham Incendia, when they'd been confronted by the herculean Black Sun Seraph's sudden assault, that being a bombardment of radiant energy exceeding lethal 1000 exahertz in intensity. The Nebulancers had never before known of any single humanoid creature in the vast database of their Compendium Zoologica Sentianis capable of projecting controlled emissions of electromagnetic radiation on such a scale. They'd been unprepared for such opposition in pursuit of their objective. Luckily, their flagship was composed of a blend of neutrino-derived poly-alloy that could withstand such staggering power -- but even so, only barely.
Even though they had before encountered Black Sun Seraphs of the Paranescience in their travels, Opthas Kandyruu was a being beyond their comprehension.
A sixteen soldier squad of tactical exo-troopers had been dispatched onto the Fluidic Highway to confront the Seraph, but they were unable to approach past the protective mobile shield of free-floating, clustered maxi-ions surrounding him. Kandyruu's force field was immune to their weapons fire, and they were in the process of being recalled to the drop-sector to return aboard the flagship when the giant trans-human mutant drew his triple-muzzled long-gun from its sheathe across his armored back and unleashed on them a withering volley of particle beam death.
The outer hull of the huge flagship began to destabilize and buckle, to deliquesce and slag, losing its inflexible firmness as the metal's structural matrix corroded.
The Colonial Expeditionists were caught in the vise-like grip of a force that they couldn't slip or repel, imprisoning their vessel. Some unidentified force streaming from emitters built atop the structural crown on the armet of Kandyruu's helmet was creating an expanding web of concentrated force that had latched onto the molecules of the Nebulancer ship, creating an adhesive anchor that bound the rift-craft to the battle zone. Reversing the engines had not broken the attraction that bound the ship to Kandyruu; as the flagship had inverted its forward momentum, that act had stretched the limits of the force field and slowly dragged the Seraph with it, threatening to overwhelm the engines since the ship's mass had attached itself to Kandyruu who was, in turn, rooted to the Fluidic Highway.
It was like the Nebulancer ship was trying to pull an entire planet through a keyhole.
Initiating converging target locks on the Seraphs towering bulk, they fired their forward cannons. All of them. The energetic-force recoil almost ripped the front end off from the warship.
In the vessel's PilotNav Control Center, the First Speaker for the Ascendent Integernarian Colonizers addressed his Weapons Array Specialist sharply. "Terminate cannonade! Focus Matter Particulater Probes and get me a read-out on the beast's armor! What are we confronting here? Have we managed to do any lasting damage to him at all? And how long before we exhaust our Array's power generators?"
Before the Weapons Specialist could reply, the External Defenses System Analyst shouted his readings above the din of the ship's growling and grinding engines. "Protective Repulsor Shields down by 23 percent! Rerouting ischemic power-flow to bolster shield integrity. Doubling bow and keel-underhull safeguards. Stabilizing...!"
"No damage to target! Repeat: no damage to target! Weapons Array Power generators are nearly offline! We exhausted the primaries with that last cannon blast. We'll need a period of a cyclic quarter before we're back up to eighty percent pulse-projection potential," the Weapons Specialist announced. "Suggesting the option of focused plasma torpedo barrage...!"
Breathless, the usually unflappable The First Speaker shouted, "Affirmed! Lock and fire!"
Outside, standing in the cold shadows of the mighty Kohlaussaye...
The smoking bodies of over half the contingent of Nebulancer exo-troopers were floating a hand's width above the tidal surges of the Highway's multiple bands, their specific gravity surrendering to the effects of shattered electromagnetic polarity, and their armor twisted, charred and split where particle beam blasts had torn into them. The remainder of the sixteen soldier unit were beating a hasty retreat back to the drop zone beneath the shadow of their massive flagship.
Behind his armor's helmet, his squinted eyes were stinging and his face was contorted in a rictus of pain-wracked effort. Opthas Kandyruu weathered the monumental pull of the Nebulancer flagship against his body as its engines futilely tried backing the vessel away from its invisible tractor-link to him. His body quaked and shook and he could feel an incredible pressure closing in around him from all sides. Even an Ego as great as his could not pretend that the effort resisting the warship's drag wasn't exhausting. The Black Sun Seraph straddled a single three-meter-wide, blue filament comprising one of the dozens of bands that were the surface of the Fluidic Highway, his own body mass increased a thousandfold-cubed and quite literally bonded to the lengthy, sinuous avenue between the humongous, craggy-surfaced, petrified carcasses of the dead giants. When the Nebulancer ship tried to pull backwards away from him, it was the equivalent of the ship trying to levitate and move the entire cosmic path.
Kandyruu had emerged earlier from his voyage through shift-tunnel projection to rapidly cross the distances between the Wrathbeurne Hive Domes and Lobarth Ceryndum just as the Nebulancer warship had appeared. It had slid out into the standardized oceanic MetaFlow from within the glowing ring of its collapsed stellar event-horizon, its own self-engineered jump gate. Kandyruu's chronal-event navigational system had plotted a course following The Glide, but the limitations of his armor's power source required he stop to allow the nav-gauge processors to clear their buffers and regenerate before moving on to the next phase past the Highway and into the Incidence Zone. It had just so happened that the Nebulancer flagship had appeared right after he'd interrupted his journey... He could have ignored them. He knew they had no idea who and what he was nor were they, so far as he knew, searching for him. They had their own agenda. It was likely they were hunting some Flow-roaming life-form to dominate or enslave in service to their acquisitive and covetous culture. But Kandyruu would not, in return, ignore them. They were Nebulancers, militant xenophobic conquerors and empire-builders. They were implacable, long-time enemies of the Paranescience, adversaries of his Queen. And more, on a personal level, they had been responsible for the violent deaths of Kandyruu's tribal relatives only fifty stellar cycles past.
Besides, after the distressingly humiliating events that had occurred at the Wrathbeurne Hive Domes, as he'd contested against the Argossyan Navy and the Devolutioner Protectorate's Extrasolar Cavalry, the Seraph had wanted, no, needed, blood on his fists and bodies at his feet to make up for it.
He'd make do by killing a Sovereign-class Armada Leader flagship, though. Easily thirty-six hundred star-roving Integernarians Colonizers, mere Bernoulianite scum, aboard such a vessel. That would be quite satisfactory.
Among Kandyruu's most favored of personal weapons was an aged and dented, weather-beaten relic from an earlier time in Ventriculum history, a brutal implement dating from a time before the arrival of the Authoritarchs and he drew it with savage intent, relishing the feel of its heft. It was a huge, metallic war-hammer, like a medieval maul, with an oversized head that was both a cudgel and a scythe-like, bladed axe-head, and the supporting langets fixed onto the shaft were decorated with strange rune-like designs that denoted its alien origins from a dimension beyond the borders of the MetaFlow. At the base of the war-hammer's thick, tubular handle was the chrome-plated skull of a three-eyed primate. Set into the palm of his gauntlets, the Seraph had been equipped with a durable and flexible electronic relay that enabled transfer of energy from his armor's energy-supply unit into a distributing processor built into the weapon's handle. Accessing the external control panel set into the pectoral armor of his cuirass, Kandyruu tapped a pair of small raised nodules and activated the suit's power system. He then raised the war-hammer and pointed the weapon up at the flagship...
A hollow, coughing puff accompanied the abrupt emission of a searingly brilliant bolt of energy.
A wide area of the flagship's exposed keel took the direct impact of the pulsating light-bolt, a coherent projection of super-dense, magno-photonic particles, forcing the hull to crack and shattered as it breached, caving inwards into the body of the craft.
It was at that point the Nebulancers decided that discretion was the better part of valor. The massive ship vibrated rapidly in place for a half dozen heartbeats and then shuddered as it lurched away and vanished... escaping back into a Null-Point Hollow, riding the wave of a collapsed stellar event-horizon to jump out and away from its current location.
Cowards.
Opthas Kandyruu turned his back on the slowly fading remnants of the glowing ring of the ship's jump gate and continued on his way towards the Incidence Zone and the city of Lobarth Ceryndum.
***