Unedited/ First draft
"You're lying." Dia hissed. "You're lying!" She repeated, snarling like a beast ready to pounce on its prey.
If what he says is true, they sacrificed us. Just like bait, sacrificial lambs threw to the wolves for the sole purpose of creating a pretext, a casus belli to start the war.
No matter what he said, she couldn't believe it.
"Am I?" His voice clanged and echoed.
It was an odd, scathing sound like a rusty mechanism turning, the disturbing noise of metal scraping against metal. It took her some time to understand the Umbra was laughing at her, but when she did, Dia felt just one thing: pure, unadulterated rage.
The anger of before was like a drop in the ocean compared to the storm raging inside her now. She gnashed her teeth, the floor under her feet cracking as she got ready to charge, cross the distance separating the two of them with a single jump.
But she never did.
"Then, what about the training, Miss Zephyr?" The Umbra asked, his words like cold water, cooling down her anger.
"Don't you find strange that recruits, fresh out the academy would be subjected to that kind of torture? He said and tilted his head. "A bit harsh for a bunch of rookies, don't you think?"
Dia blinked, recovering just a tiny bit of her rationality. It was strange, undoubtedly so. But at the same time...
"If we were supposed to die, why did they train us?"
"Finally a good question. Why, indeed? Clearly, someone knew what your mission was really about, and didn't like to sacrifice an entire crew just to start a war."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because, Miss Zephyr." He answered patiently. " that person didn't try to stop the mission. Instead, he chose to train you, give you and your crew a fighting chance, a way to survive. That person had to be an officer with enough clearance to know about the real mission. Anybody comes to mind, Miss Zephyr?"
There were a few candidates, but her guts told her it had to be the Sarge. But it didn't matter now.
"Let's say for a moment that I believe you. Why would the emperor do that?"
"Why? What do you think, Miss Zephyr? Why would the emperor, the most powerful man of the entire galaxy do something like this?" He asked.
Dia just glared at him, all the irritation and anger she was feeling coming back twofold when he refused to answer. The Umbra's voice was toneless as before, but she knew he was mocking her, goading her for some reason. A pity she wasn't clear-headed at the moment, unable to understand why he was pushing her to the brink. Unable to understand why she was so angry in the first place.
"I would like to say there is some grand plan, a greater and noble purpose behind the emperor's actions." The Umbra said after a while. "But unfortunately the reason is much more trivial: money."
"Money?" Dia repeated, incredulous.
"Or power. Pick one. A little cliche, I know, but they are the same in this case."
Money and power?
"This is ridiculous."
"I knew you would think that way. But don't worry, I don't blame you" He said like he was making a big concession. "You are just misinformed. You don't know how fragile the empire really is. In the last two centuries, the empire survived or even prospered, expanding its borders, exploiting the labor of the settlers and depleting the resources of the fringe worlds. The last emperors maintained peace and order creating a police state, controlling the media and suppressing the population with the empire's oversized fleet. But now?" He snorted. "Now, there is nothing left to conquer, no planets to colonize to revitalize the empire's rotten core. The empire needs new habitable worlds, and there is just one place where it could find them. Can you guess where?"
He asked, but didn't wait for her to answer. "I'll give you a hint. It's past the Empire's space. You have been there before, though I suppose you didn't have time to enjoy the view."
It wasn't hard to guess.
The Collective's space. More she listened, worse she felt.
"We colonized dozens of planets in the last ten years." Dia answered, but her words sounded weak even to her.
"Colonized? No, miss Zephyr. Most of those planets are gas giants, volcanic or barren worlds, unsuitable to human life and too expensive to terraform. Those colonization projects, as the emperor calls them, are just mining expeditions, ways to keep the empire's machine afloat."
"That's a lie!" She said, but the Umbra paid no attention to her.
"The empire is imploding, miss Zephyr, crushed by internal strife and a huge fleet it can no longer afford to maintain. It can last for two, maybe three years before going bankrupt and collapsing for good."
Dia closed her eyes and kept shaking her head.
"The Emperor sacrificed you and your crew just because he wants to hold on to power."
"Enough" She whispered.
"It's ironic. For decades the emperors condemned us, called our people pirates and thieves. But what is the Emperor doing now?"
"Enough." She repeated, her voice growing stronger but the Umbra continued, completely undaunted.
"He started a war which will affect millions, maybe billions of people. And for what reason? To steal and loot, taking something it doesn't belong to him just to prolong the life of a dying empire."
Dia couldn't take this anymore.
"Enough!" She screamed as loud as she could. Then she fell to her knees, her chest coming up and down quickly as she tried to breathe.
But the Umbra had no intention to leave her alone.
"How does it feel, miss Zephyr? How does it feel to know they used you? How does it feel to know your friends died for nothing?"
Dia stopped thinking altogether. Now it didn't matter who he was or how dangerous and unstable the HPE could be; it didn't matter she was inside his fortress, surrounded by hundreds of guards, so outgunned it was ridiculous to even think about resisting.
Just one thing mattered: she wanted to kill him, tear him apart with her bare hands. She was hanging by a thread, on the verge to surrender to her impulses when the Umbra spoke for the last time.
"How does it feel to know your entire life had been a lie?" And that was the final nail on the coffin, she couldn't control herself anymore.
What came out her mouth wasn't a word, but a growl, bestial and desperate. Before Dia knew what she was doing, she was already airborne, jumping toward the Umbra. She so was close, her nails like claws as she tried to pierce the hard metal of his armor when he dodged. He didn't move much, just some inches, but it was enough.
Dia crashed on the throne behind him, the stone cracking and crumbling as a result of the violent impact.
When she got on her feet, there was something close to a stone spike---thick like her thumb but thrice that long---plunged in her arm. Dia didn't see it or feel any pain, but snarled, her blood red eyes shrinking when she found her target. She went on all four and circled around him, her head down as sniffed the air, hissing from time to time.
The Umbra stood there, motionless except for his upper arms. He lifted them above his head and then stopped like he was waiting for her to move.
Dia danced around him for some seconds, but then all of a sudden she charged, going toward his right side like she was targeting his torso. But it was a feint. She was just a few steps away from him, one of the Umbra's mechanical arms coming closer and closer to her face when she ducked. She put all her weight on her right arm, made a full twirl around herself and kicked the Umbra's leg.
The thick metal warped inward, but the Umbra didn't budge.
After that, six arms moved at the same time coming toward her. Dia rolled on herself, one, two, three times, managing to dodge most of the hits, but at the end one of them reached her, grabbing at her right ankle before lifting her until they were face to face. Dia struggled, clawing and kicking as she tried to get free, but without avail.
"Fascinating" The Umbra said, staring at her, but Dia just roared, her mouth opening impossibly wide like her jaw was made of rubber.
The Umbra was too busy looking at her face to realize what it was taking place just a few inches below, close to his chest. Dia was pointing her arm at him, though more than a limb it looked something close to a barrel of a gun, the soft flesh replaced by hard metal.
The Umbra could do nothing when a flash of blue light came out of her arm. Most of the energy hit the Umbra's chest, but a small part of it bounced back to Dia. The light flickered and then went out, the room becoming oddly dark and quiet for a second or two. But then, it was like a bomb exploded in the middle of them; the Umbra's heavy armor grating on the floor as the shockwave pushed him backward, his mechanical fingers opening holes in the ground while he struggled to slow down.
But Dia wasn't better off. In fact, it was worse for her. Since she wore no armor and was much lighter than him, she was flung like a bullet for fifty, maybe sixty meters, until she reached the wall on the other side of the room.
It was a good thing the place was so big since when she hit the wall, her speed was much lower than it had been at the beginning. Still, something broke in her body at the impact, a piercing pain following a loud crack. However, it could have been worse. Way worse. That madness, the anger she was feeling disappeared all of the sudden when she fell, face down on the floor. Her body felt numb, her eyelids heavy.
She started to close her eyes when she heard a loud thud, and then another and another. She tried to raise her head, but it was wasted effort, she couldn't move an inch. But as the sounds kept coming closer and closer, she saw something: the Umbra's huge feet.
"Really fascinating." He said. The Umbra's voice seemed muffled, far.
She felt something cold and hard touching her chin and then lifting her head. His fingers. All of a sudden she was looking at the Umbra's ghastly head, those ominous red eyes staring straight at her. But now she was too tired to be scared, too tired to think.
"What kind of creature are you, Miss Zephyr?" He said, staring at her for some time before shaking his head. "No matter. You are part of my collection now."
Collection? She had just enough strength left to think she really didn't like that word and the way he used it.
Up close, Dia could see two of his arms were broken while there was a huge crack in his armor just in the middle of his chest.
"I'll forgive you for your transgression...this time. But you must understand one thing, Miss Zephyr."
Dia tried to stay awake buy her eyes were getting foggy.
"You belong to me."
I belong to no one.
His words were like an adrenaline rush, a fire last blaze before burning itself out. She opened her eyes wide, just in time to see him jabbing a syringe in her arm.
W-what is it?
"Besides, I am the only one who can give you what you need."
Her lips moved a bit, quivering as she tried to speak, but nothing came out of them except a low whistle.
"This is the first time you try the new Spice, right? Well, while you are awake, I mean."
New spice? No, no, leave me alone!
But she was way too late, paralyzed and barely able to see what he was doing.
"But don't worry this isn't the watered-down filth they use in the slums. I think you'll like it."
When the drug started working all her body stiffened, but it didn't last long. Gradually she relaxed, and an odd feeling, something which could only be described as bliss spread throughout her body.
"It's not bad, isn't it?"
She didn't answer, though probably he didn't expect she would. Dia was only able to open her mouth wide and exhale.
"I'll take care of you, miss Zephyr. I can be quite fickle, and I bore easily, but I'll never grow tired of something unique. So, help me, miss Zephyr. Help me to discover why you are special, so different from all the others."
Dia shook her head, unable to understand what he was saying. His words sounded like gibberish, useless distractions compared to the absolute pleasure she was experiencing.
"Help me to make more of you, miss Zephyr." He said while the Spice's initial charge started losing ground, an undefined feeling of happiness enveloping Dia as she fell asleep.
"Because that's the only way you can be free."