Sending out a few dozen Citadels was the greatest show of power the Ruk had put on in over ten thousand years. That they could do so was a signal to the whole galaxy that they had once more set an armored boot upon the stage of the galaxy, and they well knew what it took to remain there.

They didn’t come alone, either.

The humans of the Empire gawked when the flying mountains arrived, able to compare favorably with space stations, yet hurtle through the skies at unprecedented speed.

And they carried entire fleets inside them.

Corunsun Navy, Elvar Sunsails, Kappa Shell-ships, Golgumph slickships, Xrik Hivers, Kollas Temple-Carriers, Chirchiru Wing-craft, Naruff morph-mecha, and Gassth Claw-cutters were all among the ships that emerged from the great hangars yawning open in the carved jaws of the Ruk Kings that adorned each colossal chamber.

And there were at least a dozen others, some of races humanity had never encountered or heard of... but willing to come to the call of Ruk and prove themselves to the elders of the galaxy.

They were all kitted out specifically to deal with Xenosyms, too.

The implications of so many alien races standing together was not lost on those humans whose worlds were saved from the insatiable appetites of the Xenosyms by them. Abandoned by the Empire, and seeing the words of the Cult of Man turned on their head, the faith of the common folk of those worlds shattered, save for the truly demented and deranged souls... and those who wanted to stir up hysteria and rage, of course.

With over a hundred thousand inhabited systems in each Sector, there was no way the Ruk could save everyone... but where they went, worlds were saved. When they left, more often than not, ships of the local system were anchored to the massive Citadels and dragged along like ornaments, replacing losses in battle and adding to the forces the Ruk were massing against the xenosyms.

Watching Gardeners cleaning up whole swarms of Xenosyms, to the point of landing on worlds often blazing with radiation from massive atomic shelling trying to destroy them so that motile plants could race across the world and hunt them down, left world after world gaping in shock.

Behind them, the hotzones were consumed, vivic fire was occasionally burning on mountains of corpses left behind, and spores generated by unseen worldminds were starting to rebuild the planetary ecologies.

The galaxy... what had become of the galaxy? These... these were miracles. Miracles defiant in the teeth of the Empire...

The Stellamundi Cluster, the Aspergii systems, the Ramses subsector, the Bilegeon Protectorate, the Forgeworld of Galactic Motors, the homeworlds of the Fire Lions and Sapphire Bulls, the Carlentine Baronies, the Daimyo subsector...

System after system, worlds after worlds besieged by the Xenosym crashed head on into the united fleets the Ruk brought to the fight. Bioships burned in the void, and became meals for slowly-increasing numbers of Gardeners.

--------------

Grand Admiral Tokato stared at me through the holo. He was trying very, very hard to keep an impassive face, but the bead of sweat forming on his forehead indicated what he was feeling even as he struggled not to crumble under my gaze.

Through a holo. Yeah, Nineteen Ranks in Intimidate is a thing.

“Contessa,” he said, unable to keep the respect out of his voice despite being told to condemn me as a race-traitor, rebel, heretic, blasphemer, insurrectionist, and corruptor of souls. Doubtless an unclean hedonist and tramp, too.

Some Mechanist who happened to be a fan of the Dark Angel videos had done some statistical analysis, especially after my conversation with the High Council went public.

A Nineteen? A Nineteen could jump between worlds directly... that would account for the Dark Angel being on so many worlds. A Nineteen could fight like that, right? The Contessa was a known bladebelle. Facial modification tech was easy to come by, but general figure, equipment, and that aura of being a Nineteen... and doing the job despite pissing off the Empire.

Contessa Rantha was the Dark Angel!

When that spread around the galaxy faster than light, I could almost hear the collective grimaces of generals and flag officers throughout the galaxy. The Dark Angel had been seen throughout the galaxy fighting the enemies of Mankind, and had never stopped. There had been vids of the Dark Angel, or Angels, fighting on multiple worlds even now, where there was no other hope coming to them.

He knew I was death incarnate to fight personally; he had seen more than a few vids of me taking on Xenosym Tyrant biomechs, Devourers, Greater Warp Demons, Fallen Legionnaires, and Drow bladewitches and cyberdemons.

I had killed everything.

Because we were basically all unique in our own ways, even if the hair, eyes, and faces were the same, the analysts quickly subdivided all the vids by who was actually fighting, the signatures of a Null standing out like stone once they realized they were there.

Yeah, there were quite a few of us by now, but there was no doubt whatsoever that the earliest and most frequent performer was me.

The originator of -akkK!, among other things.

“I will not tremble before you, madam!” he finally got out sternly, and oh, it was so HARD not to smirk at his choice of words. “The full force of the Empire is coming to your little subsector. We will crush every world there to dust in order to root out this futile secession!” He actually managed to shake his fist at me, and it only trembled a little. “Surrender now, and some of your worlds may yet be spared! A song and pretty theatrics are not going to save you now!”

I closed my eyes and sighed loudly. He shivered there, his eyes widening.

That was not the sigh of capitulation. That was not the sigh of resolve.

That was the sigh of “You dumb shit, you made me do this.”

The holo shimmered, and was replaced, on every vid and projector in the entire fleet lining up to begin the grand crusade to flatten the Corunsun subsector.

YOU HAVE FAILED THE GOD OF THE MACHINE.

In a unique font which could not be replicated, no matter how hard those who tried to do so attempted the feat.

“Oh, shit,” the Grand Admiral whispered.

-------

Thirty-some years earlier, it had come to the attention of the Strategos that one of the primary munition factories of Diadem, the Crownworld of the Noble Sector, was in fact a secret holding of the Corunsun Foundation, buried under many layers of interwoven ownership of different institutions and megacorps.

Analyses were run, simulations were made, and plans were executed.

The great spacedocks of Diadem were an ideal place for an armada that wanted quick access to Corunsun space to gather, and the munition reserves there deep and ample enough to fully supply multiple Fleets of ships at once if need be.

Anatolia had calmly made alterations to a couple of the production lines of Crownwork Arms, Ltd, and started cycling out the regular munitions in their endless magazine warehouses cut deep into the mantle of the planet.

Those reserves were vast indeed, and it took three decades to replace them all.

When the suppression armada was being assembled, the requisition orders came forth (along with a truly impressive amount of credits; thanks, guys!), and those long-quiet warehouses were opened without reserve. Megatons of munitions were cycled up in endless flights to waiting ship after ship of the Fleet, topping off shells, missiles, rockets, mines, torpedoes, energy cores, shield generators, fuel cells, and catalytic primers.

The additions to each of those munitions were truly minor in scope, but TL 20 tech didn’t need to be large, especially when it was meant to evade the highest TL 15 Imperial scanners going over every load for potential problems and concern about saboteurs.

It took an average of ten PSP to activate each of those munitions, which numbered in the millions. Beacon Psions in Ritual to the God of the Machine on worlds scattered across the galaxy, and millions of Nulls and Sources, offered up that power for the Great DM to make use of.

And right now, everything went off.

A hit on an arsenal, armory, or magazine was second only to a strike on the reactor core for the devastating impact it could have on a ship. When all those munitions went off on their own, and their power fed into other munitions to set them off, too...

Thousands of Imperial ships went off. Ten Battleships, a stupefying amount of firepower, blew apart from within, instantly crippled and helpless. Most of the smaller ships were simply torn apart in one great show of fire and the screams of the damned echoing through the void as durasteel was rent and atomic cocktails were uncorked. Strange radiations covered the sky in hues no sane man wanted to see.

But the vengeance of the God of the Machine was not limited to the Fleet.

The Marked employees of Crownwork Arms had dutifully cycled in their munitions and wares throughout the system, including many, many very sensitive systems reliant on three thousand years of honorable and proud service to the Empire.

That included the planetary shields and city-shields of the ecumenopolis below, and many, many of the missiles, torpedoes, rail gun loads, batteries, generators, capacitors, and power cores of the world-city defenses.

That the Stuttgard Family who dominated Diadem were millennia-long rivals of the Corunsuns didn’t hurt matters, either. They had been salivating at the chance to lay claim to the whole subsector of their ancient rivals.

The sky lit up, and was only matched by the show that went up on the world below, and the great orbital ring that encircled the world entire.

----------

Grand Admiral Tokato’s shieldsuit had deployed, protecting him from the cessation of ship’s gravity, the radiation trying to make it through the decks between him and the secondary power core barely supplying power to his command bridge, and the poisonous vapors now taking the place of the oxygen that only wanted to burn around him.

Half his command crew was dead, broken in the multiple shockwaves that had gutted the Torador like a strangled calf. Most of the rest had shattered limbs and were unconscious.

His Signals officer, Lieutenant Monika Durant, had somehow managed to escape the devastation with almost no injuries, and was at her post.

“Sir, incoming tactical,” she said, as if somehow managing to patch a feed through the carved spaghetti of the sensor arrays was a routine matter. Despite himself, he looked up as the holo came up.

A hole in space had opened, and a fleet was coming out of it... a fleet moving very, very quickly, with ship designs that only one force in the Empire used. Their guns were already blazing, even though there seemed precious little need for them.

One of those ships turned directly towards the Torador, a massive cargo-hauler with an... open... maw.

The fires of the solar furnace opened up in a cavernous opening fully large enough to swallow his entire battleship.

There was an explosion, and a rending shriek as the hull gave way above him. His magclamps kept him stuck to the ground, but the venting eruption sucked Lieutenant Durant away in an instant; he didn’t even hear her scream.

Through the rent hole he could see the cold void of space, superheated gasses and poisons swirling... and a bright light coming directly for him.

He had failed the God of the Machine, and Hell was coming for him...