We had wine and cheese and sauces and crackers, and then I asked her where she wanted to go so she and her band of murder queens would get the fuck off one of our worlds. It was a jiveass world out in the armpit of nowhere; I saw it on the Map, cut open a Gate there, and escorted them off world as their eyes flashed that I could do such a thing to a ‘secret’ location so easily... and the vivic fire burning on Chalice as she hummed ominously and really wanted me to duel each of them to the death in succession was a strong incentive to stay nice and run away from me as quickly as they could, with decorum.

-------

Two days later, the dying suns burning in the heart of Gloom blew up, reducing the center of drow culture, all the Portals, the city, and the undead inhabitants who hadn’t been fully organized yet to ashen smears across the substance of Gloom.

The shock of the explosion rippled through the shadow-planet, cracking open the Jupiter-sized world like an egg, forcing it out and away from the explosion, and instantly expanded the closed world from the size of a gas giant to the size of a star. Gloom itself became something more like a weird ringworld, the tunnels and nodes unfolding into flat surfaces that stretched out from the black and white remnants of the stars circling in the middle, a great flat landscape a million miles wide and more, splayed out like an impossible painting.

The atmosphere didn’t vent into space, gravity was still down, and the broken remnants of three suns spun around one another slowly in the center, creating endless shadows as they did so. The sky was only shadows... no different from before.

Gloom was quite happy with the results.

Of course, Spidey Base One wasn’t really affected. It ended up attached to the ‘bottom’ of the place somehow, although we had no idea how far down it ‘actually’ was. As it could only be reached by shadow-walking or dimension-jumping before and after anyways, nothing really affected it. The lands were frozen in an ever-shifting twilight of moving shadows, which only helped Gloom in the end.

Yeah, there were still tens of millions of undead drow who had moved out and were looking to kill everything, but the surviving drow would be enough to deal with them. Probably.

The Shadowknives were watching now. If things got truly out of control, they were now ready to step in and eliminate any guiding intellects among the undead, hastening their defeat as needed.

If the Emperor wanted to turn Gloomheart into a fallback point or a base of operations, that wasn’t going to work now. All the major Portals into and out of the plane were gone with Gloomheart, and the secondary ones had all been moved now. Rediscovering where they all were for use was something that was going to take lifetimes of exploration, and keeping control of such things would scatter the drow and any intruding forces all over Gloom.

Naturally, that precluded the drow, or the Elvar, from building new Portals, but that wasn’t going to happen for quite some time, given how bad the drow had just been hammered.

Was Gloom strong enough that they could use it against the Warp, attuning themselves to the shadows of the Plane and making themselves eternally grey and dark? Maybe, maybe not. Only time would tell. Gloom was certainly willing to grab power from the Warp if it got the opportunity, that was certain. Even just taking its connections to Dream would turn it from a pocket dimension to a true plane, if not an infinite one. Size, in that instance, was far less important than the strength and power of dimensional barriers that defined it.

With the combination of fighting their own undead for survival and vengeance, claiming new territory, and figuring out the new pecking order with the annihilation of the center of power, the drow weren’t going to be a major problem for anyone for some time. While I doubted they would be energetic enough to kill all the undead, unless the undead persisted in trying to kill them, they definitely didn’t have the power to spend getting killed running out into normal space right now, even if their demand for slave labor to do what they couldn’t be bothered to do themselves was higher than ever.

Our fights, however, just kept continuing.

------

The assault on the Imperial Sector continued. The hundreds of billions of people on Tellus hid within the Spires and Bloks and in Underspire from the regular sweeps of the Blacklight beams sweeping past, leaving no living thing outside the buildings of the ecumenopolis... except the fanatics looking for His blessing, and then turning into undead trying to kill the other citizens of Tellus upon receiving it.

Other forces working for the Emperor landed, and started land fights, trying to secure more bodies. Opposition was quite intense, and there were firefights raging everywhere on Tellus now, living fighting the unliving, betrayals from within... or people psi-dominated by the Emperor and forced to obey, as most of us suspected.

Although we had no eyes there, we were pretty certain that everyone left in the Imperial Palace was undead, and there were no living ships or troops of the Emperor left in the system. Even the Umbrans and Coronal Knights who had not managed to flee in time were converted, and the black and red/purple mindswords of the latter were grim things to see on the vids.

It was still the best-defended star system in the galaxy, with literally billions of bodies or more under arms, even after we’d wiped most of the hidden Animated corpses. Cracking it would be neither simple nor easy.

As for the rest of the worlds of the Imperial Sector, they were caught between a rock, a hard place, a waterfall, and a forest fire. Hundreds of trillions of people were caught between their Emperor wanting to make them undead, the Warp wanting to convert or slaughter them, the biovores who wanted to eat them, and a rebellion they didn’t trust and which seemed doomed in the face of everything that was happening.

On the other hand, we were the only ones not trying to actively kill them...

---------

I watched the Deathship drifting away, burning with vivus and wild radiant energies having a cheerful feast of deadness. There was nothing unliving left on it, and when the vivus got done, it would be prime solar furnace fodder.

Our solar furnaces had lots of work to do, amazingly. Every single one we put into production was basically working around the clock now. So much raw material to process!

I shifted mental eyes to the other fights. Three of the system fleet’s cruisers had been compromised in the fight with the Deathship, necroic eruptions blasting through them and slaughtering the crews, to be Animated by follow-up discharges and then turning their guns on their former comrades.

Still, their ships had been shelled and blasted and were at less than optimal states. The MF Gunboats and Crescent squadrons had been able to contain and cripple them, and some fire-and-forget vivic warheads had punched into them and saturated them with vivic flames to eat all the animating energies.

All three were drifting in space now, engines off-line after their power cores were crumped, burning from shields and gun emplacements precisely targeted by the squadrons launched from the Dojo. They were actually fairly salvageable, once you got over the fact that you were probably breathing in the dust of the previous crews.

“Admiral, your undead problems seem to have been dealt with,” I said neutrally.

The harried man in his rather grandiose uniform, which didn’t disguise the fact that he was portly and out of shape, didn’t look like someone who wanted to deal with the situation he had found himself in. He was in a system less than a thousand light-years from Tellus; Delta Aquaria was almost a Core World, dating back to before the Emperor took the Crystal Throne.

The System Fleet here had not suffered an attack from any foe for over three thousand years; it only went out to reinforce more endangered systems at the border, and was generally considered a posh and easy pre-retirement posting for Fleet officers who could not aspire to a higher posting of sub-Sector or Sector command.

That didn’t mean the captains here didn’t know how to handle themselves in combat, but it had been relative years for most of them, and naturally they didn’t have any experience with Deathships.

If the Dojo hadn’t come in, the Deathship would have wiped the whole Fleet, as it had demonstrated by taking out three cruisers and starting the Animation process within ten minutes of the shooting starting. Their appalling power was just not something a standard force of Fleet hulls could match. They were designed to kill ships manned by living things, after all.

“Contessa Rantha,” the puffed-up Admiral managed to wheeze out, his face florid with a combination of fear and desperate pride. “I, we, thank you for your help in this matter. Your arrival was most timely.”

“Indeed.” I kept his eyes very calmly. “I am wondering, Admiral, just where our relationship is going to go from here.”

“We do not wish to be enemies with the Archduke!” he blurted out a little too hastily, and I smiled just slightly. Yes, the Dojo had put on an excellent display against the Deathship. However, it wasn’t equipped to perform nearly as well against standard ships. If it came to a firefight now, I’d have to rely on my squadrons to kill them... which they probably could. My MF Gunboats were all crewed by Tens, and they knew how to use them. In addition, Mom’s Flitter was down the hall and to the left, and I was perfectly willing to go out there, put my Toys in their places, and get hands-on.

“I believe this is a time for utter frankness, Admiral,” I said calmly. “Do you believe the words of the Corunsuns regarding the Empire, after encountering this Deathship?”

He wanted to look away, but could not. I had his eyes, and wasn’t letting him do so, which had to be a frightening thing to experience on his end.

“I...I do, Your Grace.”

“That is wise. I see none of your ships experienced a core breach, so you were also smart enough to implement the code updates to the control systems we sent out. A little doubt, just in case, I see.” He could only nod shortly, both ashamed of his lack of faith, and horrified by the fact it was proven right. “So, when I tell you that I am here for your Oath of Fealty, you should probably consider that I am not joking around, either.”

He managed to take a deep breath. “I...I cannot speak for the governor and the senate of Delta Aquarius, Contessa.”

“Mmm.” I blinked slowly, releasing his eyes, ignoring his gasp as I looked away. “Recall all the squadrons. We are leaving this system.”

The clipped tones were more than enough to trigger all his paranoia. “What? So quickly? Contessa, we are not ungrateful for your help, and if you wish to discuss terms...”

“I will take your fealty on a Shard of the Corunsun. No more, no less,” I replied promptly, and watched the sweat drip down. “I know the Aquarian Senate and the Planetary Governor are listening in. In a nod to tradition, I will give them time to vote the measure. It should take five minutes for my squadrons to dock and get settled, at which time I will leave the system, and no Corunsun ship will stop here again... at least, not in a timely manner.”

He shuddered. He had no idea what was really going on in the star cluster around him, as Warp interference was making psychic communication impossible, and the Celestial Beacon was down. The Empire’s communication system was in tatters, and the lack of news was terrifying, given what he knew of what had been happening.

I could have told him there was a xenosym swarm five days away, and that in a month, every planet in this system would be stripped to stone. I could have told him that an arm of Demon Prince Kollifor’s fleet was regathering two stars away, and this was the most populated planet within twenty light years of that location.

I could have, but I did not. If I did, they would think they only gave their fealty because I was exploiting a moment of weakness and extorting them, and be looking for ways to get free. Either they were going to walk into this with their eyes open and willing, or they were going to die.

If they thought they could go it alone without us, given everything that was going on, they deserved a visit from another Deathship. The Emperor had more than one, after all, and it wouldn’t take that long to convert the system back to full loyalty to Him.