Space Sector 19.
Approximately four hundred thousand kilometers away from the pirate planet, Draxil.
A blood-red ship of heavy industrial build was moving steadily through the void and carrying the ruthless crew of the Void Breakers.
Inside the bridge, the pirate Vark sat on a throne of welded scrap while his yellow eyes tracked the lights of the sector map with the hunger of a man who owned everything he saw.
That was the Jackal race for you, greedy to the core and born for the hunt, since their ancestors spent generations stripping the meat from the bones of larger predators.
In fact, the entire universe operated on a simple rule where the weak existed only to be consumed by those with the power to take.
Vark adjusted his position while his furred ears twitched at the sound of his crew bickering over the latest haul of stolen goods.
As for Vark himself, he did not care for the lives of his men or the screams of his victims because his only loyalty remained fixed on growing his personal wealth.
And today, he felt a rare surge of satisfaction because they successfully looted sixteen ships and accepted a job to transport a black casket to Draxil.
To a Jackal like Vark, money was the only language that mattered in a cold and starving galaxy.
That was the reason approaching the pirate planet filled the entire bridge with a frantic, greedy energy.
Reaching Draxil successfully meant finishing the mission perfectly.
"This haul of Skrullian fuel rods alone will pay for a year of silence on Draxil, so keep your filthy hands steady or I will snap them off."
"We are the Void Breakers, and any weakling who stands in our way gets crushed under our boots."
One of the scavengers held a glowing canister toward the dim light while a grin split his face because the major problem with being a pirate was the inability to afford the latest star-energy engines.
These scavengers were forced to rely on fuel rods because their outdated hulls could not handle the power of a star-energy core.
Only the newest and most advanced military vessels were able to move through the void without bulky fuel tanks since they drew their power directly from the stars they passed.
"Forget the fuel, because that heavy black casket from the client holds enough power to make us kings of the entire sector."
A younger pirate was moving toward the heavy, reinforced black casket while his teeth remained bared in anticipation of the vibration coming from the security field.
"Step away from that seal right now, or I will paint the deck with your brains."
A veteran scavenger shoved the younger Jackal back to prevent an immediate execution because the client was a ghost from the Kree Empire who would skin them alive if the seal was broken.
"Cowards. I do not care about ghosts when I am looking at a payday that could buy us our own moon."
"Silence, you worthless whelps, or I will feed your tongues to the void."
Vark did not care about the contents of the casket because he feared getting caught smuggling Kree cargo into the territory of the Viltrum Empire more than he feared his own crew.
After all, there was a saying that you could cross gods but not Viltrumites, for gods might show mercy but—
Just then, the tactical screen pulsed as a white-hulled vessel suddenly appeared on the long-range scanners.
The ship was moving with a level of speed and confidence that the pirate lord found insulting because he knew the political landscape of this sector better than any navigator.
This was a neutral zone where the other major powers avoided military conflict to avoid a full-scale war with the Viltrum Empire, as they were simply not bold enough.
And even though Viltrum ruled this void and claimed the stars, they rarely wasted their warships on patrolling such empty areas.
That was why Vark grew certain that some rival pirate lord finally stole an experimental vessel to challenge his dominance.
He wanted those advanced engines for himself because he would either own that technology or turn it into scrap so no one else could have it.
Greed shone in Vark's eyes as he decided it was time to upgrade their vessel by force.
"I want that ship in pieces, and I will personally gut anyone who lets that technology slip through our fingers."
.
.
.
Every step I took forward felt identical to the last, just further from the point of origin.
But the vacuum of space was well suited to the mental strength I built in my past life through meditation, exercise, and the lovely gift of enough trauma to break a lesser man. In this life, sheer isolation while traveling the stars was enough.
"Commander, sir, Draxil is a specialized rot in the center of Sector 19."
To me, it was fascinating to think that a single sector held thousands of star clusters, and the Empire ruled a thousand of those sectors, including this lawless stretch of void.
Ruling these clusters was not a matter of managing populations, since life was a rarity, but rather the clever assessment of whatever resources were worth the effort of taking.
"Isn't it interesting? The only reason the Empire hasn't burned it to ash yet is because a lawless zone makes a perfect dumping ground for things we don't want to officially own."
Solvek turned back to his console with a shaky grin while his fingers moved over the monitors, and though I found his need to please me meaningless, I saw no reason to stop a happy man.
"Draxil isn't some tiny asteroid where rats hide in the dark; it has a radius of roughly 23,000 kilometers and a diameter of over 46,000."
"I once held a planet like Draxil in the palm of my hand and crushed the life out of it just because the local king did not know how to bow."
Old man Virexa was more interested in hearing his own ancient, so-called glories than the mission at hand, looking at me as if I should be impressed by the scale of a pirate world.
"Solvek... I suppose it is the seventh largest planet..."
"It is actually the fourth largest after Viltrum, Commander."
I leaned back in the command chair and ran the numbers, realizing that if those measurements were even remotely accurate, we were looking at a world roughly forty times the size of Earth.
Back in my past life, a rock of that mass was supposed to collapse under its own gravity or bloat into a gas giant, but this universe produced physical miracles that were far more entertaining to witness than any old textbook theory.
I let the silence of the bridge take over as I watched the distortion of Draxil grow larger against the black, feeling the vibration of the ship's engines travel up through my boots.
For a moment, everything felt still as we drifted into the gravity well of that massive world.
But the peace did not last long, and the next second, a blinding beam of red light tore through the darkness of the void, aiming to turn Deep Recon into a cloud of dust.
"Commander, sir!"
"There are people out here who clearly don't know how high ...."
Solvek did not even wait for my command before he yanked the manual overrides, throwing the ship into a violent lateral roll that made the stars outside the viewscreen spin like a wheel of death while we dodged the blast by a hair.
"Who the hell is trying to ruin my nap with a light show, and do I have to kill every single one of them before I can get some actual rest?"
"Brat, if you spent half as much time training as you do drooling on the deck, you might actually be a threat to someone besides your own damn pillow."
"Shut up, you old fossil, because I could beat you into the floor before you even finished recounting one of your fake-ass war stories."
"I was conquering systems while your ancestors were still licking the dirt off their paws, so show some respect before I teach you how a real Viltrumite handles a loud-mouthed whelp."
"The only thing you've conquered lately is a senior citizen's nap, so try and move those creaky bones and I'll send you back to the retirement home in pieces."
I didn't even get the chance to be annoyed at these morons before the sensors revealed a blood-red pirate vessel lurking in the light of a nearby moon.
Witnessing an ICBM-level attack on a planetary scale was undeniably impressive, and I wanted to ask what Carliya thought of the spectacle, turning toward her with a slight smile.
"Understood, Commander."
"..."
Understood my ass, I didn't even say a word to that unhinged maniac before she punched the red cycle button and launched herself straight out into the freezing vacuum.
I told Solvek to increase the speed, and a second later the pirate ship was visible to our naked eyes.
I watched through the viewscreen as she slammed into the enemy vessel, digging her fingers into the primary hull and literally splitting the metal apart with her bare hands like she was opening a piece of overripe fruit.
"Look at that, the girl is struggling with a tiny cruiser, whereas in my prime I once tore a heavy flagship in half with my teeth and didn't even break a sweat!"
Less than five minutes later the airlock opened and Carliya walked back onto the deck, looking completely refreshed as if she had just finished a light morning jog.
"Commander Glenn, they were nothing but filthy jackals, and though they did have a lot of treasure, I thought materialistic things were beneath you so I just burned the entire hoard."
"..."
"I actually wanted to bring you the severed heads of those bastards as a tribute, but I decided I didn't want to show such an ugly, pathetic sight to the Commander"
At this point I kept my mouth shut and remained completely silent, just standing there on the bridge while my brain wept for the mountain of gold she just vaporized.
And foolish me was planning on painting a badass pirate skull on the hull as a trophy, yet my crew just destroyed a fortune because they assumed I was too noble for gold.
"You performed excellently."
My praise triggered a sharp glint of manic pride in her eyes as she scrubbed the blue blood from her knuckles with a burst of frantic energy.
Wasting no more time I activated my healing zone, and green energy flooded the ship to repair every hidden injury because I refused to let my crew carry even a single scar from such worthless bugs.
The minor scratches on Carliya's palm vanished instantly under the emerald light.
And a second later, I looked down at the strange casket she brought, and whatever it was I decided to open it once we reached the destination.
"Solvek, get us back on course for Draxil."
"Immediately, Commander, sir, and I will definitely make sure we do not encounter any more interruptions from the lower life forms of this sector, I promise!"
And so we continued our journey through the void, and approximately three hours later, we were inside the orbit of Draxil.
.
.
.
From the moment a soldier could stand, he learned that strength was the only truth that mattered, and everything else like loyalty, discipline, or even survival was nothing more than a byproduct of superior force.
There were no prayers on Viltrum, because faith was a parasite that only thrived when a superior power stripped away the logic of its host.
Sadly, was there anyone more superior than the Emperor himself?
The Emperor was the faith.
The Emperor was the only god permitted to exist, and his divinity lasted only as long as his strength remained absolute.
That meant in a cruel world like this, even gods were not absolute, let alone small fry like himself.
Hylos stood in the hollowed-out tunnels of the moon, staring through an observation fissure at the planet Viltrum as it hung majestically in the sky like a marble of pure gold, yet he felt no attachment to it.
Hylos was a man who knew how to take responsibility for his actions. For that reason, he never thought of himself as a victim, ending millions of lives across two hundred years of service.
He was a man who believed he would survive any outcome.
But he was flawed.
The man was not a pure Viltrumite, born instead to a nun of the Ecli who worshiped the Evergreen Goddess before the Empire erased her world to prove that mercy was a biological flaw.
Hylos knew well that he was the result of a temple raid where a Viltrumite soldier raped her and left her to rot in the ruins of her own sanctuary, where she spent her final years whispering about a goddess who showed mercy even to her enemies.
He often thought that if gods existed, they must be weak or at least weaker than Viltrumites, and that thought filled him with disappointment.
That same disappointment turned into hatred towards Viltrumites, yet he was simply too weak to do anything.
That was why, when he met the boy, he wanted to end his suffering.
That day, he was a high-ranking soldier sent to test the limits of a boy the Empire viewed as a mere experimental subject.
Yet the moment Glenn shattered his ribs and then reached out with a green light to mend his pulverized organs, his entire reality collapsed.
As the energy flooded his veins, something deep inside Hylos screamed in denial, because he realized his mother was right about the existence of a merciful being.
He questioned if this man was the same as the goddess his mother spoke of, being Viltrumite yet kind at the same time. The boy was an anomaly.
Days passed, and soon months. Hylos heard similar stories circulating around the capital, a boy with blue eyes and red hair showing mercy even to enemies, and Hylos realized his own thoughts no longer aligned with the rigid ideals of a Viltrumite warrior.
But that was the nature of the Voran race, who believed they could live without food but never without faith.
That day, Hylos found something worth believing in.
This realization broke the last remnants of his sanity and transformed his old hatred into a new, terrifying obsession with the man who held the keys to life and death.
He felt a burning loathing for Halvar, a man who dared to chain the divine and treat a living god like a common prisoner while the Empire continued to rot from within.
Hylos saw the signs of the end everywhere, a dying beast that would soon consume its own children just to survive for one more hour of dominance.
That was why he created Dawn.
In these lunar tunnels, he gathered the half-blood children and broken soldiers, because they were the only ones still capable of seeing the truth.
An old man with a face carved by a thousand scars limped forward from the shadows and dropped seven severed heads onto the floor.
These were high-ranking Viltrumite officers affiliated with the medical division who oversaw the desecration of the Lord.
The old soldier knelt before a statue with a trembling, frantic devotion that had nothing to do with kindness and everything to do with the hunger for a new master.
"For the grace of the Lord, for the blessing of the Green Flame!"
"..."
Hylos looked at the bloody trophies with a sense of holy purpose as each head was offered to the base of the statue.
"Strength without mercy is just a slow way to die, and the only true strength I see in this empire is the one who cannot die."
The Empire was eliminating its weak links, and Hylos knew that soon the world above would plunge into total darkness.
"Will the Green Light hurt when it touches us, or does it feel like the warmth of the stars?"
A young girl with a prosthetic arm looked up with curiosity while the rest of the orphans fell silent, ready to follow any god that offered them a seat at the table.
"It feels like the moment you realize you are no longer a tool of a failing machine, but a living soul the Empire cannot touch."
"Go now, and bring me more of the forgotten, for we shall build an army of the weak to reflect the holiness of the man who saved my soul."
He picked up the list of names written in blood and crossed out the seven who lay at his feet, leaving only those who still guarded the temple of the Divine.
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(EndOf The Chapter)