Chapter 1: Emperors and Dark Gods

<p>"Stars dance in the eyes of the Emperor, and roll in the palms of dark gods."<br/> <br/>Chapter master Orion Phatris had heard such words before, and often they were followed by tales of ships arriving at destinations before ever leaving for them, stories about entire battle fleets traversing time, in both directions, at the apparent whims of the boiling warp.<br/> <br/>But he had never, in his seven hundred years of service to the Emperor, heard or read of anything quite like this.<br/> <br/>"Confirm these reports." He ordered, his mind wary of daemonic deceptions and Alien illusions.<br/> <br/>The large man kneeling before his throne seemed to wince at that, raising his head to plead and speak.<br/> <br/>"We already have, my lord." The Astrogator said, exasperation thick in every syllable that slid from his wet lips.<br/> <br/>"Eight times before it was reported to me, and then I personally verified it ten times before bringing this report to the Captain. My peers verified it five additional times when it was decided to bring this to you! With respect, your beneficence, there isn't any more verification we can do with our current instruments and personnel."<br/> <br/>"What, exactly, are you suggesting?" The ancient, half machine warrior king asked, his voice as cold and calm as frigid steel.<br/> <br/>"I-I…" His head astrogator sputtered. He was a wide man, fat, and Orion had never had cause to speak with his current head astrogator personally.<br/> <br/>The man was known for being marginally more competent than he was shamefully corpulent, and given that he required servo limbs to aid in carrying his anemic bulk around the ship, he was a fairly good astrogator.<br/> <br/>"I think we need to get closer." He finally managed, mopping at his sweat laden brow with a red cloth. "We must land within the nearest detectable system with life, and...and verify what we are seeing with our own hands, if not our eyes."<br/> <br/>The Chapter Master said nothing, leaving the man kneeling and sweating before his throne for almost a minute.<br/> <br/>Gradually, he nodded. "Return to your station." He ordered, and the mortal before him wasted no time in obeying, hoisting himself off the ground with his spiderlike assembly and shuffling from the metal antichamber that served as Orion's command center and bridge.<br/> <br/>A scant second after the astrogator had removed himself from view, Company Captain Auralian Teks approached the command throne, saluting smartly to his commander.<br/> <br/>He was the youngest captain by far, barely cresting over a hundred standard years of service.<br/> <br/>He was a prodigy within the chapter, a genius with a sword and an equally proficient pilot and gunner.<br/> <br/>As was typical within their order, The Chapter master took some pains to keep the young captain close, both to mentor the man, and to judge him.<br/> <br/>"What do you make of it?" The marine asked.<br/> <br/>Orion did not speak, did not answer at all for a moment as plans and probabilities boiled behind his yellow eyes. Eventually he broke from his contemplation to ask his own question.<br/> <br/>"Is Keela still incapacitated?"<br/> <br/>The Captain of the third Company shrugged his shoulders with a soft, mechanical sigh. His face looked sour suddenly as he was made to contemplate the words of that mutant woman.<br/> <br/>"The Navigator isn't in critical condition any longer." He said curtly.<br/> <br/>"But?" The Chapter Master pressed, sensing more behind his subordinates words.<br/> <br/>"But she hasn't stopped crying. She insists that the Emperor...the Emperor is… That he must be-"<br/> <br/>"Don't." The Chapter Master warned softly.<br/> <br/>The Captain nodded, and quickly changed the subject.<br/> <br/>"So...what do you make of it?" He asked again.<br/> <br/>Orion rose from his command throne, carefully lifting the Sacred blade, the mighty Serpentus Venandi, as he strode over to one of the large, glowing, hololithic displays. This one displayed the galaxy, and indicated their current position several light years beyond its languidly turning borders.<br/> <br/>"I cannot be certain....but my eyes are honed and often find the truth. And the truth that I perceive, the yield of my vigilance appears to reveal that...either something has utterly remade the galaxy in a way that was previously unthinkable to us...Or, when we tried to breach that thin tendril of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the warp flung us to the border of an entirely different Galaxy… Perhaps even a different dimension entirely."<br/> <br/>The captain looked at the same hololith, coming to stand beside his master. His brows furrowed, and Orion knew without looking at him that he disagreed, even before the younger demi-god spoke.<br/> <br/>"Is there perhaps not another answer?" The captain asked.<br/> <br/>"I can see that the eye of terror is not present...but does that really indicate that we are within a whole different galactic disk? Is it not possible that we were merely lost within the warp for a much longer time than expected, and that the Imperium conquered the warp while we were gone?"<br/> <br/>Orion shook his head. "It is not the lack of the miserable eye of terror that I find unbelievable. It's the missing astronomicon that makes me think we can not be looking upon our home."<br/> <br/>The captain shrugged. "Perhaps it is just blocked? Such things have happened on the far side of the Cicatrix Maledictum."<br/> <br/>Orion laughed at that, a bitter, unamused sound. "A fine theory, but blocked by what? The Eye is gone, the tear with it."<br/> <br/>"Other things could –" the captain started to say.<br/> <br/>"Crew," Orion interjected. "Play the audio of the chief Navigator's words. The last words she spoke before we had to drag her out of her nest."<br/> <br/>At this the crew hesitated.<br/> <br/>"My lord…are you sure?" Asked one of his bridge officers.<br/> <br/>Orion nodded. "Everyone present has heard it before. Your faith should not be so weak that you cannot bear to hear it again."<br/> <br/>At his prompting, The officer complied, adjusting some of the controls upon the panel he sat before. In short order, the voice of Keela Shastrava began to bleat over the vox casters on the bridge, her words wretched between bouts of sobbing and shuddering sorrow.<br/> <br/>"By the weeping stars, I can see. For the first time, I can see, and my sight blinds me. Woe to us, woe to the world, and the universe. For my eyes can see all, and yet the light of the Emperor has faded completely. For our lord in the stars shines no longer. We are made orphans, for our father has died."<br/><br/>————————————————————<br/><br/>Impossible.<br/> <br/>Stars danced at his command, rolled in the palms of his hands, and yet those deceitful little specks had hidden something from him!<br/> <br/>Something enormous, something which could shift the careful balance he had spent the last four years creating!<br/> <br/>And the worst part about it was that he didn't even know, at least not yet, what precisely they had hidden from his sight.<br/> <br/>Palpatine had been informed of the unexpected gravitational disturbances by a mid level, hyperlane service report. Hundreds of thousands of ancient Hyperlane buoys, most of which had been presumed to be underpowered and non-functional, had come alive nearly all at once.<br/> <br/>The report showed a cascading effect originating from a point in space a few hundred light years away from Pzob, a backwater world at the very edge of the outermost part of the outer rim.<br/> <br/>The fact that Pzob had no buoys around it only emphasized the unprecedented nature of the disturbance.<br/> <br/>But this was not something that would have drawn his attention normally.<br/> <br/>The Dark Lord of the sith was only marginally interested in space anomalies and phenomenon, and not at all if they could not expand his knowledge of the force or be turned to function within his design. A curiosity, and nothing more, that is what anyone reading this report would have drawn from it.<br/> <br/>But Palpatine had known about the disturbance well before the report had been delivered to him, for he had felt it through a different vector.<br/> <br/>The force.<br/> <br/>Something...dark had just entered into the near boundaries of his soon to be claimed Galactic Domain, something which screamed and howled in voices the darkside had never used before.<br/> <br/>Palpatine knew it could only mean one thing.<br/> <br/>Rivals.<br/> <br/>Grim forces of a darker galaxy had arrived to stake a claim on what was his, and the sense of them made him feel power which he had been loath to use before. The intoxicating strength of fear added itself to his arsenal, for what he sensed was no mere chaff to be blown away, no jedi-like force to abuse and deceive. Crawling ever closer, he sensed a threat he had thought silenced forever when his crackling power had executed the drunk, foolish Sith Lord who'd called himself Palpatine's master.<br/> <br/>The threat of other masters of the darkside, and the plurality he felt approaching only heightened the sense of danger he now perceived. But, even though he had already felt it, the report was important, vital, in fact.<br/> <br/>Because while Darth Sidious was a master of the Darkside, and deeply attuned to such things, Sheev Palpatine, kindly Chancellor of the embattled galactic Republic, was most decidedly not.<br/> <br/>Initially he thought to wait until the Jedi brought the matter to him, thinking they too would sense the arrival of the oncoming threat.<br/> <br/>But as days dragged by, Sidious found himself vexed by his own competence. He had blinded the jedi, and had done so with a great amount of intention.<br/> <br/>Even sitting within his room, speaking with him, surrounded by his dwarti statues, the jedi could not catch even a whiff of his true nature.<br/> <br/>While he was a great deal more subtle than these newcomers, he was also a great deal closer to the Jedi, and these outsiders had not even entered the Galaxy yet.<br/> <br/>By the time the Jedi realized the threat, it would destroy them just as surely as Sidious himself would have, and that would not do. Thus, the report.<br/> <br/>"And you really think thiss dessservesss thissss kind of attensstion?" asked Jedi knight Renphi.<br/> <br/>Palpatine smiled calmly and nodded, completely negating his desire to scrunch his nose at the hissing, slurring accent of the trandoshan jedi before him. It was bad enough to be a pathetic, parasitic reptile, warming itself on the power of the republic, did it also need to be a Trandoshan as well?<br/> <br/>"Most likely not, but I would like to be sure. These readings are quite unprecedented, and it stokes my anxiety to simply allow whatever is causing them to pass us by unobserved." He said, fingers folded in front of him on his wide desk.<br/> <br/>"Hmmm, I ssssuppossse." The Jedi said. "But why clonesss? Why not ssssend a ssssurvey team inssstead?" He added.<br/> <br/>The impertinent fool.<br/> <br/>"Oh, I shall send scientists and researchers with you as well." The Chancellor assured.<br/> <br/>"But, it is unprecedented, so I wouldn't send them out there without protection. Besides, we can never underestimate the enemy we are currently facing. Even if the Separatists have nothing to do with what caused these readings, they have buoys of their own. I cannot rule out the possibility that they will also attempt their own investigation."<br/> <br/>The Jedi considered for a second before nodding his assent.<br/> <br/>"I ssssee the wisssdom in thissss." He said.<br/> <br/>"Good, good!" Palpatine added. "Then I'd be glad to send you on your way as quickly as possible! Like I said, we don't want this phenomenon to pass us by. I already have a science team picked out and ready to go. How many battalions do you command currently?"<br/> <br/>"Currently? Two."<br/> <br/>"Make it four, I'll have you reinforced before you leave."<br/> <br/>The Jedi gave a shallow bow of respect, and Sheev smiled. "Thank you chancccccellor." He said.<br/> <br/>"Please, do not mention it. Simply promise me you will take care to remain safe! Odd things are said to...linger near the edge of the galaxy. Our war is maybe a month from its close, and I'd not have you miss it because of a tragedy on the frontier. Keep your men close to you."<br/> <br/>The knight nodded. "I will chanccccellor...Do you truly believe it might end sssso fassst?"<br/> <br/>Sheev leaned back and smiled. "Trust me my Jedi friend, I am an expert in such unfortunate things as war and peace. These matters can move suddenly, and mark my words, it will be over before you know it."</p>