A small craft launched silently from the bay of the Omega Dream. Milan Walters knew he couldn't fly a shuttle to save his life, but he also knew he could establish communication with the creatures living on the planet below. He concentrated single-mindedly on the task of piloting the shuttle down to the planet and landing safely.
Milan had struck the ceiling of the shuttle on the top of the shuttle bay door as he pulled out, puncturing the metal and ripping a hole in the craft. Milan had equipped his atmosphere suit beforehand - he believed in preparation for any eventuality. The hole in the ceiling allowed all the air in the shuttle to escape into space, but did no damage to the navigation systems. Milan continued his journey. Under his direction, the small craft rocked like a tugboat on a stormy sea and woven every which way, but he was moving effectively towards the planet. When Milan got within 10,000 km of the planet, he focused on the shape of the general area where they had landed the last time. He managed to bring the weaving under control for a short time as he sped into the gravity field of the planet. When the force of attraction began to pull on Milan's craft, he suddenly realized that he didn't have the slightest idea how to land. He plummeted, spiraling rapidly towards the jagged surface of the planet. Fiddling with the controls haphazardly between bouts of being jerked around in his seat, he started speeding up, then slowing down, then rotating the craft every which way. When a chance cloud flew by and blocked Milan's vision of the ground, he stopped panicking for just long enough to remember the rotation control sequence. He punched it in and turned the ship to face back the way he came, and began carefully running the thruster engines. He balanced out the force of gravity to an acceptable rate and began a slower descent. He breathed a sigh of relief and mopped his brow.
No sooner had he done this than the craft began picking up immense speed again. Milan had failed to account for the fact that gravity causes acceleration. While turned around, he could not see the ground below him, and could not gauge his speed accurately. Not that it mattered - he didn't know how to fine-tune the booster engine adjustments, either. Milan, in a frenzy, pushed every control button he could, yet nothing worked. He slammed his fist down on the panel and put his head down, resigned to his fate, and a parachute shot out of the front of the space shuttle. He began to slow down again, rapidly this time. He looked up slowly, bewildered but unquestioning. Shuttles were all equipped with emergency parachutes for landing, and Milan's had gone off in the nick of time. The craft landed softly inside a basin of limestone and the parachute came down over it, slowly and peacefully deflating. Then, when all was quiet, the tiny ship simply fell apart.
Milan crawled out of his half of the shuttle, slightly dazed but unhurt.
"Du du du du du!" Echoes of laughter in tiny voices bounced around the basin. Milan stood up, dusted himself off, and walked up the side of the hole, still wearing his atmosphere suit. By now, he had grasped the meaning of "du du du" and he was determined to find those responsible for it. He marched around the area very loudly only to hear the scampering patter of little feet running in all directions. Children of the alien race, most likely, and thoroughly gone. Milan saw the towers of a great city in the distance and decided to set out for it. With luck, it would be the same one he and Andrew had entered two nights earlier.
The magistrates of the Thousand Citadels stood in circle around the Emperor of the entire world in the One Hall. The light of their sun never stopped shining upon this great convocation. The reports of the magistrates were to be given to the Emperor in a ceremony of the spoken word. The Emperor bade them speak, each in turn, and listened to the news they brought.
"Emperor, I have recently learned of the colonization of one of our moons by an alien race..."
Andrew McKinley raged on the bridge of the Omega Dream. "Where is he!? I never imagined he would try something this hopelessly stupid in the middle of uncharted space! Aaaargh!!!!"
Andrew began massaging his forehead as he slumped back into the captain's chair. "Ok, Kreller...what do we know?"
Milan watched the towers grow in height and breadth as he continued traveling towards them. He estimated that he would reach the city in an Earth half-hour. The familiar, annoying laugh in the distance had been replaced by a perturbed hush. Milan headed towards a city whose magistrate had taken his place in the great Circle, addressing the Emperor of their world.
"Emperor, I have been watching the stars, and there is one that troubles me..."
Dark matter. It formed the infinite empty space of the universe; it upheld the structure of the void. In the realm of seven stars, a creature as old as the universe had fallen upon a tiny planet. The sky grew black as death as the people of this world looked up in fear. From the midst of the great cloud, a tendril struck the ground. The ground quaked and split, a piece of the planet simply disappeared. Light flashed up through the tentacle of dark matter and disappeared completely inside the cloud. The leaders of the world opened the defense controls and awaited the signal of their President.
"Release the shield! Release the shield or it will consume us all!"
The atmosphere began to grow thin. A barrier of energy was created around the planet, just in time to block another tendril from its target. A flash shocked the entire cloud, causing it to shrink into itself and slow down. It had unexpectedly met with resistance at a critical moment. Its pattern was lit with a sick yellow thread of light, and the people could see that it covered all space above them - except for a small hole that had been opened by the shrinking. A shuttle was immediately prepared, and the chieftain of off-world relations flew it at top speed straight for the opening. He saw it slowly closing as he sped for it, muttering "I must escape, I must tell some being what has happened here today. I must escape, I must tell some being what has happened here today."
The hole pulled itself completely shut when the shuttle had almost made it through. The cloud gripped the back end of the shuttle like a vice and began trying to pull it in, consume it and its pilot. The chieftain revved the engines as fast as he could, but he was losing ground. Seeing nothing else for it, he put a brick on the acceleration control, threw on a breathing apparatus, and used the shuttle's laser cannon to detach the back end of the shuttle. The air rushed out, giving his small shuttle half some added propulsion, but threatening to pull him with it. He gripped the chair so hard his hands began to bleed, sending silver droplets flying out into space. A tendril struck out after the shuttle, but the dark matter was dispersed temporarily by the air blast, and before the cloud could reach the chieftain, he was too far away. The cloud returned its attention to the planet below.
The energy shield had caught it off guard, and the people were trying to blast it away with whatever they had. A tendril took a more cautious shot, slowly extending down to the rim of the energy shield. The cloud glowed bright yellow and shriveled like a balloon cast into liquid hydrogen, but it managed to punch a hole in the barrier. The tendril struck the surface of the planet once again, absorbing pieces of it and turning them into dark matter. The cloud began to grow once again, eating the planet in large chunks, like a voracious, savage jungle cat. As the control tower was taken, the energy shield faltered, flickering for a few minutes, and finally died. As the cloud moved in, the people fell with their faces to the ground, awaiting their death. The planet was completely annihilated within seconds.
On the home world of the Neopenti, the hooded one looked to the cosmos and smiled coldly. It was starting, he knew. He immediately struck out for the imperial palace.
The wrecked shuttle from the destroyed planet was hopelessly adrift in space. The chieftain checked his air supply. Not much time left. He looked around at the star patterns and got his bearings. Feria was only 200,000 kilometers to his 170-degree mark. He recorded a brief but descriptive message about the events that had transpired. His race had known the Firians for a few centuries. The computer was still capable of translating a recorded message, so the chieftain set it to encode the recording to Firian language. He took the encoded beacon outside the shuttle and threw it towards Firian space. As he watched it floating, slowly but surely, towards its destination, he took his final breath in unforgiving space.
Milan stood before a Citadel. The guide from the palace came out to meet him. He took Milan around the side of the palace and looked in all directions with his many eyes. No one was around.
"Human, we know your language."
Milan's eyes grew wide as tea saucers, and the guide put out a hand to clamp his mouth shut. "Quiet! My superiors feel this is a mistake, but I have been following the news. I believe we need all the allies we can get. And rather than waste precious time letting you bumble around, trying to decipher our language, I chose to open communications with you, against the direct order of my magistrate. So you will tell no one here of this. Return to the moon immediately and inform your fellow humans that I will act as your liaison here. We must form an alliance, you and I, secretly."
The guide removed his hand from Milan's face and waited for him to depart. Milan did not - he wiped his mouth with his hands, unsure of how to phrase his situation. He finally decided to just say it.
"I'm afraid I can't do that...my shuttle was wrecked in the process of getting down here."
The guide was extremely annoyed, and he seethed for a few minutes before he got himself under control. "Ok. I am your liaison here, so I will guide you once again. We will take my shuttle. Follow me, and not a word in your language, you understand? Be silent."
The guide led Milan into the palace. When the guards stopped them, he explained in their language that it was all right. He took Milan through the palace and outside to the Citadel gardens. At the main patio, several shuttles were located on cannon launch pads. The guide and Milan climbed into one and initiated the firing sequence. Within seconds, the shuttle was fired like a bullet into space. The guide was opening an alliance with the humans behind the back of the Emperor and his Convocation.
After listening to the counsel of his thousand magistrates, the Emperor ordered a brief recess to consider all that had been spoken, and decide how best to address their concerns. The thousand magistrates took their leave of the light chamber, and the Emperor kneeled, praying to the light for guidance.
A Firian advance patrol pilot was preparing to return to base after 45 degrees out of a full rotation of their planet had passed by with nothing happening. Just as it was turning the ship around, though, it caught a flash of bright light across its retinal well. The light danced around the well's obsidian edges and reflected down into the pilot's sensory processor. Quickly turning the ship around again, the pilot picked up the light of the full beacon and used the ship's absorption mechanism to pull it in.
On the way back to Feria, the pilot decided to view the beacon. It was completely unprepared for what it saw. Before its stunned senses, a planet was completely dissolved into nothingness. The pilot was not sure which was more terrifying - the world's dissolution by the void, or the flashes of sick yellow light that ran through the great cloud. Both images chilled its lava blood. SOMETHING had destroyed an ally of the world of fire, and it could very well come after them next. The pilot rocketed into the control tower and landed its ship hard. It turned off the engines and jumped out with the beacon firmly entrenched in a mineral coating the Firian pilot had produced on the end of an appendage. The control technicians thrust themselves against the rock walls of the landing chamber and transferred their mineral body patterns to the other side.
"Are you out of your mind!? You could have been killed! You could have killed all of us! What could possibly put you in such a state?"
The beacon dropped to the ground as soon as the pilot released it. A control technician picked it up and looked at the pilot inquisitively, but the pilot only said, "Take it to the King. Prepare. Prepare!"
The Convocation of the Thousand Citadels had been re-convened. It was time for the Emperor to address them all. The last rays of the sun's light faded out as he began to speak.
"The news you have brought before me today is most ominous, most disturbing. We must continue to keep a vigil on the Neopenti. If they begin showing signs of aggression, we must seek allies and turn them back. We cannot stand alone.
The entrance of humans into this realm of space has thrown me for something of a loop. You all know how we learned the humans' languages. Their being here represents the unraveling of a unique thread. We should be very careful about the way we approach them.
We shall not alter general planetary policy over these developments, however. We must continue as we were for as long as possible. I leave the economies of your Citadels to you. May peace reign!"
"May peace reign!" cried the thousand voices. The convocation dispersed, and the Emperor remained alone in the darkened chamber once more. He wrung his hands and looked to the heavens. The circle of seven stars, which had once shone so brightly, now seemed clouded over, dull, and very far away indeed.
"Tramel, you bastard. You're doing it. You're going to do it and I can't do a damn thing about it. Tramel!!"
Queen Ayana and Emperor Veda had gone out of the palace and were amongst the people. They had spoken to many of their subjects and had been to several social events. Now, Ayana desired a brief respite. The royal couple sat down at a table in a cafe and talked about anything that came to mind.
On his way to the palace, the stranger noticed large crowds gathering. Only a short way back, he had seen a large crowd in the distance in another place. Curious, he decided to investigate. He pushed his way through the crowd until he could see through gaps in the movement of the people. He saw the royal couple, sipping their drinks like characters in a dull stop-motion video. Yes, this would do nicely, he thought. He dematerialized his robe and was instantly clad in formal garb a moment before meeting the Emperor and Queen.
"Sire, my Lady, I am a traveler, and a humble servant of the imperial majesty. I pray, may I join this table and share my tale?"
Veda began to state a clear 'no' when Ayana undercut him. "Why, certainly you may! We have come out of the palace for exactly this purpose - to learn of the people. What is your name, traveling stranger?"
"I am called Tramel Viardak. I have been to far, strange places and have seen many things..."