"LIRICA!!"
"LIRICA!!"
Orlan repeated the name into the unresponsive channel, pressing the console repeatedly in a futile attempt to force a reconnection.
The screen remained dark, and the signal was dead.
"Sir! We need to maneuver out of the debris fields!"
The ship jolted under another impact, but Orlan barely reacted.
His fingers tightened around the console, pressing commands that wouldn't work.
His breath was uneven.
"Let me go!!"
A sharp order cut through the tension.
"Lock him down."
The crew hesitated, but security stepped in, firm hands pulling Orlan away from the controls.
The ship banked sharply as automated defenses kicked in, the hum of stabilizers barely keeping them intact.
The crisis wasn't over, but Orlan's focus was still on the silent channel, on the name that no longer responded.
"I apologize for that ma'am, we'll handle this."
Rear Admiral Veyra Phoeleman Asterra, the commanding officer of the 12th Operation Fleet—designated as Control—acknowledged the report with a short nod.
"It's okay."
The channel was cut off.
Veyra turned, surveying the deck from her command station.
Her officers were already looking at her, waiting for orders.
"All escort frigates to the front. Defend the operatives," she commanded.
"Inform all monitoring crews—deploy UAV units to scan the source of that attack immediately."
A brief silence followed before one of the officers spoke up.
"Ma'am, if it's an enemy? We're only composed of escort frigates and destroyers."
Veyra's expression didn't change.
"Follow protocols as usual."
"We'll send an emergency message to the capital. Attack at that scale, reinforcements sure would be nice. For now activate all shields."
The bridge remained tense as the officers processed Veyra's calm orders. The soft hum of consoles and distant chatter from the fleet's communication channels filled the air.
"Escort frigates moving to the front," one officer reported, fingers gliding across their console.
Another followed.
"UAV units launching. Scanning for energy signatures and hostiles."
The feed on the main display shifted, showing multiple UAV units dispersing into the darkness of space, their sensor arrays primed to locate the source of the attack.
Veyra's gaze remained steady.
Her officers were efficient—they knew what to do.
But the unspoken tension in the air told her everything she needed to know.
They were uncertain.
"Unknown energy signature detected—bearing zero-four-nine. Approaching fast."
Veyra's eyes narrowed.
"Shields at full power," she ordered.
"Ready all weapons."
"Yes, ma'am!" The officers moved swiftly, relaying commands to their respective teams.
She turned slightly, glancing at the tactical officer.
"Status on reinforcements?"
The officer quickly checked the relay.
"Message sent, but response is pending."
Veyra exhaled slowly.
That was fine. They would hold.
"Maintain formation. We don't know what we're dealing with yet."
She leaned forward, voice calm but firm.
"But if it fires again and it locked on us... retaliate immediately."
A fresh alert blared through the deck.
"Ma'am!" another officer called out.
"The anomaly—it's growing!"
The officer stopped mid-report, eyes widening as the readings spiked. The holographic display flickered, distorting for a brief moment before stabilizing.
"Something's coming out!"
The entire operations bay fell into a brief silence as the readings solidified into something that shouldn't be possible.
Then, through the viewport, it emerged.
A ship, forty-eight thousand kilometers long, locked into realspace, its massive frame still dripping with residual energy from its jump.
The distortion warped everything—the stars behind it bent unnaturally, failing to illuminate its form. Its silhouette dwarfed everything in the sector, casting a planet-sized shadow over the field.
The display screens couldn't even capture its full form without zooming out, and for a split second, it was as if the ship's existence bent local gravity just slightly.
The bridge lights flickered, reacting to a sudden surge of electromagnetic interference.
Its outline took shape slowly, like a shadow stretching across the stars. Dull red hull panels reflected stray light from the system's sun, showing scars that hadn't healed in millennia, with markings not used in fleet design for a long time. Some plating was mismatched—patched with alloys no longer used in standard production.
It didn't look like a ship from the current era.
Because it wasn't.
The ship's gravity displaced the surrounding area just enough to make a few of the bridge instruments and shield systems drift out of sync for a second. One of the junior officers adjusted them manually.
Several officers stood frozen, eyes wide, unable to tear their gaze away from the colossus now dominating the viewport.
The ship in front of them wasn't just large—it was a command carrier class last used long before all of them were even born. Its design wasn't unfamiliar, but seeing it in person was different from reading about it.
"....what in the Emperor's name…?"
Admiral Veyra's gaze was locked onto the tactical holo-screen.
And in its place—
"Contact! It's—" Someone's voice cracked.
The ship's formation data came in a second later.
"It's a Governor-Class Battlecruiser!"
They stood motionless, some even stepping back instinctively.
To the older staff, it was a surprise. To the newer ones, it felt unreal—like seeing a figure from a school archive step out in real time.
Some of the newer staff leaned forward, trying to see more through the viewport.
One of them quietly pulled up the ship's registry to confirm what they were looking at.
Most of them never thought they'd see one deployed, not in their service years.
Even for Asterrans, who lived long enough to see trends die and rise again, the sight of a warship like this—attached to a name only seen in command rosters or archived footage—was like meeting a figure from a textbook, except that textbook was etched on alloy in the Empire's oldest databanks.
They had seen it in records, in old footage, in training simulations.
But none of them had seen it in person.
A Governor-Class Battlecruiser—a ship reserved for war heroes, figures who made a great contribution in the Chaos Born war, figures second only to the Emperor himself.
A warship from history, seen only in debrief logs and memory cores.
"Wh—why—how is that here?!"
"Impossible!"
"That class hasn't been seen since the Chaos War!"
No one had an answer. But before confusion could settle, another alarm blared.
[IMPACT EVENT DETECTED]
[TARGET: PLANET PX-79]
[TARGET: AEGIS MORS ORBITAL DEFENSE STATION]
They barely had time to react before the feed from PX-79 cut out.
Perhaps because the ship was too close to the Orbital Station, as it came out of the distortion.
Another Archonic Mass Driver had fired.
The planet cracked open, a massive hole punched straight through.
The detonation that followed tore through its mantle, sending shockwaves across the entire system.
The Aegis Mors Orbital Defense Station, lost control and detonated, consumed by the planet's destruction.
The Karakoa's bow, larger than entire continents, descended through the planet's burning atmosphere.
Admiral Veyra's and her crew were still processing what they were looking at.
The distorted space anomaly had collapsed.
The planet, PX-79 was gone.
And then came the debris.
Massive chunks of planetary wreckage, burning and tumbling through space, crashed into the fleet.
Shields flared under the impact, struggling against the sheer force of continental-scale debris.
The defensive systems held, but only barely—this was exactly what they had been built for, yet the scale of destruction was beyond anything they had prepared for.
"That was an Archonic Mass Driver shot…" one officer whispered.
A weapon not of any known enemies.
A weapon of the Empire.
"Who the hell are we dealing with?" Veyra muttered.
At that moment, the comms crackled again.
[EMERG3NCY TRANSMI551ON RECEIVED]
[ORIGIN: 1#.5.5. K4!#KO4]
[STATUS: AUTHORIZED INTERFERENC# DETECTED##ERROR]
The signal was rough, fragmented by the sheer interference in the system.
"Unidentified—Imperial transponder—cease movement—"
Every officer on the bridge froze.
An authorized interference?
Who are they?
A fellow imperialist?
A reinforcement?
This was impossible.
No reinforcement was supposed to come.
The Emperor himself had declared it.
The Capital had been ripped off—disconnected from its former home.
The Imperial Capital now resided in an entirely different living sector—a region of space untouched by any previous exploration.
Classified as living.
Even the Expeditionary Fleet, the best and brightest sent beyond mapped territory, had never recorded anything like this.
Revealed data, estimations, and reports were made public. All concluded the same thing—it was impossible to detect how far the capital was displaced.
And yet...
An Imperial warship appeared out of nowhere in this new region.
The bridge was silent.
The comms crackled again.
["Unidentified Imperial fleet, respond. State your designation and purpose immediately."]
A moment of hesitation.
Rear Admiral Veyra glanced at her officers.
Their expressions demanded an answer.
She pressed the transmitter.
"This is Rear Admiral Veyra Phoeleman Asterra, commanding officer of the New 12th Operation Fleet. Identify yourself."
A pause.
Then the voice returned.
["Unregistered designation. No record found."]
["Your fleet appears unauthorized within Imperial space. Power down all weapons, disengage your defensive formations. Compliance is mandatory."]
"Pardon?" Veyra said flatly, blinking once.
The tone was direct. Unyielding. Confusing.
Veyra clenched her jaw.
"Imperial space? Listen to me. The Capital was transferred to a new region. Following Decoupling Protocols, no known Imperial jurisdiction exists beyond the capital's new location. How did you even appear here? I don't know who you are, but—"
["Negative."]
The interruption was sharp.
["This fleet does not recognize your claim."]
["The Capital was never transferred anywhere. We do not hold any record of that event, your operation, your designation, nor your fleet's authority. Therefore, unauthorized. You will stand down. Immediately."]
Veyra felt the tension in the bridge rise.
Whoever was speaking genuinely believed the Empire had never moved.
That was impossible.
The Capital had relocated—ripped from its former home, disconnected from the empire as a whole.
What the hell was this?
She forced herself to stay calm.
"You are mistaken. We are on an authorized operation under the Viri Concilii Imperialis and the Emperor's decree. We are not your enemy. Your fleet came out of a distorted anomaly during our operation. Do you not recognize our fleet?"
There was silence.
Then, another voice—less mechanical—cut in.
["We don't recognize your IFF. Your ships are Imperial-patterned, but your authority codes are… non-existent."]
Veyra blinked.
"What?"
["That fleet sigil you display—it's also non-existent."]
["Explain."]
What is he talking about?
Then it hit her.
Her fleet was newly commissioned—constructed after the Capital's displacement. The entire 12th Operations Fleet was formed in the post-transfer era. The Capital's sudden displacement into an uncharted region left its fleets isolated from critical infrastructure, including the orbital docks and stations responsible for disseminating essential updates. More importantly, the docks where her and her crew's originally commissioned ships were lost. This separation resulted in newly commissioned ships, operating with the latest authority codes that remained unrecognized by older Imperial systems
While their hulls and systems followed Imperial design templates, nearly everything had been revised or restructured to suit the demands of the new frontier.
They were, in a sense, provisional.
The Battlecruiser's systems hadn't yet been fully synchronized.
That explained it.
Since the Governor-class battlecruiser barely arrived minutes ago, obviously they won't receive any relay or synchronization.
The old orbital megastructures, the codex uplinks, and the deep-space broadcast beacons were left behind during the transfer. Only infrastructure directly embedded within the Capital itself had made the transition.
Everything else had been severed.
Cut off.
She exhaled slowly, keeping her voice even despite the tension tightening in her chest.
"We're operating under the current Imperial framework," she said.
"Our fleets are Ponoma-Class, Echelon-3 groupings—constructed post-transfer. Of course you wouldn't recognize our signal hash. It's part of the updated authority matrix."
["Updates?"] the voice echoed, now uncertain.
Veyra nodded once, still staring at the forward display.
"You're running the Old Imperial Chain—first-issue war protocols,. Those were temporarily decommissioned after the displacement. Your systems weren't within broadcast proximity to receive the revisions. The old outer relay towers, codex beacons, and sync stations—they were all left behind. Without a central uplink, your vessel wouldn't have received the new encryption layers or authentication changes."
She paused.
"To your systems, we probably appear as an unsanctioned threat. Because from your perspective… we don't exist."
A silence followed on the channel.
One of her comms officers leaned closer and whispered, "Ma'am, they really might think we're fakes… insurgents even."
Veyra ignored the comment, keeping her focus on the channel.
"You're responding like an old-world fleet. Where did you even come from?"
The reply came slowly—curious, but still guarded.
["We initiated warp toward the Imperial Capital. Mid-transit, all systems failed due to warp turbulence. We exited by force... into this region, as you can see."]
They all looked at the ruined PX-79's remains.
["That is all we can say."]
There was a beat of realization in Veyra's eyes.
So that was it. They'd warped "before" the displacement happened...
And never made it out until now.
Regardless of time, that might mean there's a way back to the original imperial sector.
She straightened slightly. "Then you missed everything. The Displacement. The Emperor's proclamation and Audience. Your entire fleet has been displaced in time and space."
["Impossible..."]
["I will relay this to my Lord. Please standby."]
"Your Lord?"
Her analysts were already scanning the hull.
"Ma'am," one of them called out. "We just got a partial ID scan—transmitting now."
A projection flickered to life above the command console.
It was fractured, but unmistakable.
A stylized insignia: a burning twelve-pointed star framed by twin leviathans coiled around a singular throne, overlaid with sixteen bars of authority.
Etched in old Imperial Cant. Ancient.
Her brows furrowed.
This was no ordinary fleet.
"Your ship… it's a Governor-class. But those haven't been in commission since circa Year 1000."
Another pause from the comms.
Then, the voice replied once more.
["You will speak directly to our Lord. The Sixteenth Warlord, Lord Karakoa."]
The identity was no longer in question.
The battlecruiser belonged to a warlord.
A true one.
And not just any.
Not a decorated general or a sectoral commander.
But one of the Empire's sixteen.
Lord Karakoa.
From their viewing ports loomed the I.S.S. Karakoa—a Governor-Class Battlecruiser, the personal flagship of Warlord Karakoa Al-Sedecim Primarus Septhogrit. The name wasn't commonly spoken outside of high command, but it existed in nearly every strategic archive. His flagship, most officers only knew of it from historical files or training modules. Few had ever seen him nor him aboard the vessel in real space.
Its name was not something anyone could forget—no Imperial officer would dare mistake its significance.
Veyra, like most of her generation, had only heard of the sixteen warlords through indirect sources.
The Asterran Empire hadn't fought a large-scale war in ages. Even so, almost every Asterran alive had at least one ancestor who lived through the Chaos-Born War.
Some served in the military. Others were just regular citizens at the time.
Even those not born to military bloodlines and simply citizens had heard the stories passed down at family tables and encoded in cultural memory. Regardless, almost all families passed down stories from that era.
And through those stories, one truth always remained consistent:
The Sixteen Warlords—Imperial Guardians of the Cardinal Warfronts—were larger than life.
Monsters in battle.
Saints in service.
Symbols of an era when the Empire bled and burned, yet did not fall.
She remembered hearing about the warlords from her great great great grandmother who once worked in a civilian post near a logistics center.
They'd never seen a warlord in person either, but they talked about how the Empire used to mobilize entire sectors during emergencies, with warlords leading from the front.
To the Empire, the warlords were rarely seen figures.
Their authority extended across sectors, but direct encounters were limited to upper echelons.
To the younger generations, they were part of history. Important, but distant—yet never absent.
Their faces appeared during Empire-wide broadcasts, commemorations, and historic observances—Founding Day, Victory Over Azgarom, the Liberation of the Arc-Belt Worlds, and other planetary system celebrations. They stood alongside the Emperor during public events, even if only briefly.
They weren't talked about in casual conversation, but everyone recognized them. People didn't forget who they were—especially not officers.
The Emperor was the God of the Empire. The Warlords were something close to saints or guardians—icons of strength, loyalty, and legacy.
So while most had never stood in the same room as one, no one doubted their existence. Their presence shaped the foundations of the modern Empire. Their names remained etched into every high-tier war manual, their battle doctrines and exploits during the Chaos War still studied by military tacticians. Every officer knew their names, their campaigns, and the roles they played in the Empire's darkest hours.
Now, one of those figures had come here—in this new region, through unknown means—his flagship appearing in front of her fleet without ceremony.
No one expected to see his ship emerge from a collapsing anomaly, its bow half-buried in the disintegrating crust of PX-79, which was already in its final moments of structural collapse and gravitational instability.
A living legend from the most destructive era in the Empire's history.
For the first time in her long career, Admiral Veyra felt the weight of her position shift—heavier, sharper.
All those years of duty, of cold silence and buried longing, had finally brought her here.
And still, her authority—seven centuries of unwavering command—suddenly felt like a candle before a star.
Admiral Veyra had served the Empire for seven hundred and sixty-seven years—not through glorious campaigns, but through the long stillness that followed long after.
An unimaginable era of peace.
That meant paperwork, drills, some fleet exercises, the occasional patrol, and a lot of simulated war scenarios. It wasn't a short career by any standard. She had seen reforms come and go, policies change, and chains of command reshuffled.
For millennia, the Empire stood unchallenged as a lone existing nation, never had any neighboring civilizations, nor any rebellious factions. And its military turned inward, embracing duty without war.
War simulations had replaced real combat. Patrols became routine flights through quiet sectors. Promotions were earned through administrative excellence, not battlefield valor. Officers like Veyra found excitement only in the rare chance to be part of something different—like being assigned to the most coveted assignments, being with the Expeditionary Fleet, assigned to explore through the Turan's Gate into new uncharted territories. But even those exploration barely gave any excitement.
For a militaristic civilization built on centuries of war, this era of peace was both a blessing for those who know and a cage for those who don't know.
When the transmission from the Emperor arrived after the Great Displacement—when the entire capital had been flung into a new world—the officers were expected to feel loyalty, solemnity, perhaps grief, and fear, at the gravity of their situation.
And Veyra did feel all of that.
But beneath the surface, buried deep and unspoken, was something else.
Excitement.
The moment she realized the Empire had been moved into an unknown region, where maps meant nothing and ancient threats might still lurk in the dark, her blood stirred with a dangerous yearning.
She wanted to be sent on a mission.
She wanted to face something more than paperwork.
And that shame ate at her.
If the Puritanical Directoratorum knew what flickered in her heart, she'd be reprimanded. To feel gladness at a time like this, to see opportunity in what might be a crisis—it was unbecoming of her rank.
She hated that part of herself. And she buried it, just like she always did.
But then came this moment.
But this was different.
This kind of tension wasn't what she wanted.
This wasn't about filing reports or sending mission updates to a superior officer.
She wasn't about to speak with a council representative or a sector marshal.
She was going to speak with a Warlord.
An actual one.
A direct remnant of the Chaos Born War.
Someone with real authority—the kind that didn't need to be announced.
Officers like her were never expected to face someone like Karakoa.
Just like most citizens never got within viewing distance of Emperor outside of national broadcasts or Empire-wide celebrations.
They existed.
Everyone knew that.
But this? Seeing one take to the field again?
That only meant one thing.
The situation was serious.
From the viewing ports, the I.S.S. Karakoa loomed steady, and its escorts had already begun moving into position. They weren't new ships. Most of them looked like they hadn't been in standard rotation for thousands of years. Not worn down, just not the kind used anymore.
The Karakoa's main hangar bay opened with a low vibration that even reached their own hull.
And then they saw them.
Old Imperial warships—pre-Pacis War era—sliding out from the hangar in sequence. Heavy gunships, strike corvettes, and dreadnoughts with hull armor built to withstand physics anomalies, not just kinetic rounds or modern plasma fire.
These were not modern ships built for balance and sustainability. These were war-beasts built during the worst of the war. Monsters forged to kill other monsters
They were made for war, and nothing else.
These warships were fully optimized for confronting Chaos-born monstrosities.
Their firepower made even the 12th Operation Fleet look like harmless utility ships in comparison.
With machine-like precision, they spread out into an escort formation around the Governor-Class Battlecruiser.
Their shields activated, overlapping into radiant hexagonal walls thick enough to block energy bursts that could shatter entire fleets.
Veyra didn't need to read their specs to know they were operating at full capacity. Their weapon pods were live, shields were layered tight and overlapping, and the targeting systems—she saw them link in real time.
It was a show of force.
The weapons locked onto the 12th Operation Fleet.
Hard lock.
Bridge indicators flashed, and the AI confirmed what she already felt in her gut. They were being painted by targeting arrays from Karakoa's escort group. Not just a few ships. Nearly all of them.
The bridge crew noticed too.
A junior officer's voice cracked through the silence.
"Ma'am... they've locked onto us."
Of course they had.
Tension rose.
Quietly.
No one said it, but they all understood.
This wasn't a warning.
If the Warlord gave the command, they wouldn't even get to finish their distress call.
From the depths of the Karakoa's hangar, a massive carrier emerged—it was an Arkhangel-Class Command Carrier—an ancient model from the Perditionis Era, mostly forgotten by the new generations except in archived fleet diagrams and some old combat doctrines.
Even though it was smaller than the Governor-Class Battlecruiser that housed it, the Arkhangel-Class was still over 11 kilometers long, with a wide, blocky frame bulkier than the Ponoma-Class Light Carrier. And the Ponoma-Class wasn't exactly small. Despite its "light" designation, it stretched around four kilometers in length and could carry a full complement of escort frigates and a squadron of destroyers with room to spare.
By the pre-imperial standards (before the unification), both ships were considered massive. But for the Asterran Empire, this scale was expected. Warships weren't designed to be sleek or compact. They were built for reliability, durability, and decades of independent operation. Size was a necessity.
But back in the perditionis era, the design philosophy was even more extreme.
The Arkhangel-Class, while massive, wasn't even considered a top-tier ship in its time. It was common. It wasn't rare or unique. It was standardized—mass-produced to function as a self-contained fleet during the height of the war. Ships of that class were made to deploy their own escort units, split into smaller fleets, and continue operations and combat readiness even if isolated from command for centuries.
Every ship class during that time followed the same logic: carry your own support, build in redundancies, and never assume help would arrive.
The integrated deployment bays weren't a luxury—they were a requirement. Smaller ships couldn't survive was the reality of the war.
Modern design retained some of those ideas—modular hulls, segmented shielding, deeper automation—but with updated tech and better energy systems. However nothing today matched the raw utility of Perditionis-era ships.
Those were wartime designs, no one made ships like this anymore. Mostly because they didn't have to.
The Empire hadn't seen a war in ages.
Some said it was a wasteful design.
In today's standards, most of those old designs are considered impractical. Too large. Too costly to maintain. But that's only from a peacetime mindset. In war, none of those things mattered.
And while they might look crude or excessive now, they were made during a period where losing a vessel meant losing a planet's worth of personnel and resources.
Against the Chaos-Borns, wasteful meant survival. All that mattered was endurance, firepower, and survivability against entities that ignored conventional logic.
The modern era never forgot these ideas. It just evolved with different constraints—resource efficiency, logistical reach, system-wide coordination.
And it wasn't just the Arkhangel.
Every warship from that time period followed a different standard. Cruisers had the mass and durability of today's dreadnoughts. Destroyers were configured as autonomous strike platforms. Scout vessels carried weapons that would be restricted to fleet flagships in modern doctrine. Even the smallest corvettes were equipped with inter-environment traversal modules—able to dive into oceans, hide beneath planetary crusts, or skim the surface of stars to escape pursuit. It was common for evasion tactics.
Class distinctions weren't about fleet balance. They were about survival roles.
If you have a carrier, cool! It meant you had deployable support, and you could stay in the fight longer. You could launch recon units, resupply other ships, or break into smaller formations if needed. That increased your odds of not getting wiped out.
If you had something smaller, like a destroyer, cool! You have a big ass weaponry system on board and can blow up ugly motherfuckers.
The Arkhangel-Class was just one result of that shift.
It wasn't a flagship class, even with everything it could do. It wasn't the most advanced or the largest ship back then. Just standard issue for high-command fleets. A command carrier that happened to carry half a fleet inside it and still pack enough firepower to flatten a small modern fleet.
That's how warship design worked during the perditionis era. Nothing was built for looks or balance. Everything had a job, and it was made big enough to do that job for decades and even centuries, no matter the cost.
Just a product of its time.
Most of the new generations, including Veyra and her officers, had only seen those ship names in records, Simulation Trainings—never in active deployment.
And this wasn't even the most advanced ship Karakoa had stored. Just one that could still deploy without pulling structural power from the host.
So when the Arkhangel slid into formation behind the Karakoa, there were no cheers, no awe—just quiet calculation.
If that was one of the smaller ships inside Karakoa's hangar…
If the Karakoa's hangar was housing Arkhangel-Class carriers as deployable units, then what else did it carry?
The Arkhangel's destination was clear, the Ponoma-Class Light Carrier, the flagship of Rear Admiral Veyra Phoeleman Asterra and the temporary command center of the 12th Operation Fleet.
Inside the Ponoma-Class command deck, officers watched in silence as the Arkhangel-Class Carrier approached. The massive vessel dwarfed their entire fleet, moving with the calm certainty of a predator unconcerned with resistance.
How come a Battlecruiser who's specialized in speed has this massive vessel.
"Ma'am, the carrier is closing in. Escort ships maintaining formation. Shields at maximum power," an officer reported, voice tight with unease.
Veyra exhaled slowly.
"Hold position. No sudden movements. Open a direct channel."
The tension on the bridge was palpable.
Veyra stood near the central console. One of her officers alerted her to the Arkhangel-class warship approaching. It wasn't hailing. It was just closing in.
She opened a line.
"May I ask the purpose of a ship this close to mine?"
A moment of static preceded the response.
["This is a routine precautionary order."]
"For what?"
["Should you be found withholding critical intelligence, we are authorized to neutralize your fleet and extract you directly to our Lord's command. However, to avoid unnecessary conflict, we will first access your Central Intelligence Core(CIC) for synchronization."]
She didn't respond. She just looked at her officer and gave a nod.
The core was accessed remotely. The systems reacted, but the encryption was bypassed fast. They didn't ask for access—they took it. Internal systems synced. The translinks updated. Data caches were mirrored. Cross-confirmations of mission logs, chain-of-command registries, and Imperial fleet movements followed. Their memory banks—called ARCH-IX Banks—contained all necessary fleet authority chains, cipher updates, and mission directives. All of it was now uploaded into the Arkhangel-class's buffer.
The process was fast. In less than five minutes, it was done.
Once the transfer concluded, the Arkhangel-class retracted to a respectful distance. Then came a message:
["Rear Admiral Veyra, that was efficient. You've spared us the ordeal of escalation. On behalf of the Vanguard, thank you. This is where we part ways."]
The Arkhangel-class ship shifted position and began pulling away. Its lights dimmed, thrusters aligned.
No further communication followed.
The bridge remained silent for a moment.
Then someone spoke up.
"Ma'am," said Officer Ryle, glancing from his terminal, "we just had a full system bleed. ARCH-IX mirrored down to 98%. They didn't take local diagnostics or crew logs. Strictly command-related layers."
"Naval protocols included?" Veyra asked without looking.
"Confirmed. Routing charts, live mission tracking, recent engagements, and chain-of-command hierarchy. They ignored auxiliary banks."
"Engineering," another voice chimed in—Lieutenant Uras. "No breaches in hardware integrity. They only interfaced digitally. We're clean."
"Security?"
"Intact," said Juren, head of security. "Their link was high-level authenticated. Took us offline for 0.2 seconds, then bounced out. No tampering."
"Communications," she said next.
"Still linked to Sector Relay 3. But the packet transmission from their side included a cross-confirmation signal. That means they had clearance from a higher command chain."
The bridge grew quiet again.
A new prompt flashed on the holofeed.
["Rear Admiral Veyra, you are to prepare for direct communication with Lord Karakoa. Maintain your position and await further instructions."]
Veyra nodded to her communications officer.
"We copy. Awaiting transmission."
The bridge quieted again. Ambient lights dimmed automatically as the holofeed activated.
Moments later, the figure of Warlord Karakoa appeared.
He stood over 3.2 meters tall—towering even by Asterran standards. He wore a full set of power armor that was black with green outlines, made of thick plates that covered his entire body. The armor was solid and angular, built for defense. Green lights ran through the chest and arms—visible power lines.
Even though an Asterran's body could handle direct hits, extreme pressure and damage, a reliable power armor like his added another layer of protection—more weight, more shielding, and more stability during combat—especially in long campaigns or hostile zones.
His silhouette was broader than most Skurr'Ers—more angular, more structured. His left pauldron carried twelve embedded glyph-cores, each glowing faintly—with one large sigil across the surface—likely tied to command designation or campaign record..
His face bore the sharp, hardened profile of a first-generation Asterra Primarus Galactican, but unlike the standard command constructs, Karakoa retained a more archaic design—it had no visible optics, just a pair of vertical green line where eyes would normally be. No faceplate details, no mouth design, no expression system. The design was sealed, plain, and old-issue. His posture was centered. The cape was thick, armored at the collar, and fell straight to the ground without flow—attached directly to the inner plating.
Then, his voice followed. Layered. Heavy. Unmistakably old.
["I am Warlord Karakoa Al-Sedecim Primarus Septhogrit, Sixteenth Warlord of the Empire, Imperial Guardian of the Cardinal Warfronts and Outer Marches Sectorum, Castellan of the Forgotten Shields, and Supreme Executor of His Will beyond the Eastern Void."]
Veyra and her crew promptly knelt. The holofeed sensors read their gestures, transmitting back compliance markers.
Heads bowed. None spoke.
Karakoa observed them without expression. Then, his voice returned—measured, commanding.
["Raise your head."]
They complied. Veyra's eyes met the center of the holofeed's projected angle—just below Karakoa's primary optics.
["Rear Admiral Veyra Phoeleman Asterra, descendant of the Phoeleman lineage. Your family, once civilians, rose to prominence. Your grandfather—Commodore Phoeleman—constructed the outer shipyards of Hestra Prime, through your grandfather's exemplary service as High Marshal, establishing shipyards and earning nobility through administrative excellence. Inspired by his legacy, you joined the Imperial Navy, distinguishing yourself in the Expeditionary Fleet before attaining your current rank."]
"Your acknowledgment honors me, my lord. I... only hope my service continues to be worthy of the name I carry and the banner I serve."
Karakoa's optics dimmed for a second. Then he spoke again.
["I reviewed your Central Intelligence Core, Rear Admiral."]
["Nothing but logistics reports. Mining surveys. Standard route logs. No flagged anomalies. No special orders."]
Veyra didn't hesitate.
"I don't think so, my lord."
A short pause.
["Who briefed you on your mission?"]
"It was the Resource Allocation Department of the Administratum. I volunteered for the mission when I heard we could go out, my Lord."
Karakoa leaned slightly, expression unreadable.
["I see. Perhaps it's just me."]
"Pardon, my lord?"
["Nothing."]
He continued scanning the feed.
["Your Central Intelligence Core carried fleet movements and sector charts. The usual. It recorded events—ones that concern the Empire as I know it."]
["It confirms the displacement of the Capital World—together with the Emperor and the Throne Assembly. Transported through unknown means into this new sector. A fully intact universe."]
Veyra straightened slightly.
"Which means... you believe what I've been saying."
["Yes."] Karakoa gave a brief nod. ["You've spoken the truth."]
○●○●
The information didn't lie. Everything in Veyra's Central Intelligence Core had been backed up and redundantly copied into secure translink archives—location records, internal timestamps, energy pattern scans.
It matched Karakoa's experience.
The Governor-class Battlecruiser "Karakoa" had been en route to the Imperial Capital. The Warlord himself had been on board. Karakoa, was returning from an inspection of the Eastern Marches. On a whim—more of a habit than protocol—he armed the ship for war before jumping.
But this time, things deviated.
Midway through the warp corridor, turbulence struck. Severe gravitational instability. The warp tunnel distorted, the exit coordinate loop never finalized. Even after shutting down their warp drive, they were still inside the corridor.
With no clear path out, Karakoa ordered the use of Archonic Mass Drivers—planetary strike weapon systems—to rupture the tunnel structure manually. It worked. They punched through.
But they exited too close to a designated resource planet. One already embedded with AEGIS MORS infrastructure.
The ship fired to neutralize the proximity threat. The shots caused a chain reaction. The planet collapsed.
The Battlecruiser fell with it. When they stabilized on the planet's crust, they were surrounded by an unknown fleet. That fleet, of course, belonged to Rear Admiral Veyra.
That was how things went on until now.
Back in the present, Karakoa was silent again. Then, he spoke, voice steady.
["We have been transported into this new world.] Karakoa said. ["Without the use of Turan's Gate."]
["No one is capable of traversing the rifts of the void, unless..."]
Veyra's eyes widened.
"A Chaos Born?!"
["Do you believe it a mere coincidence, Rear Admiral,"] he said, ["that we—on a compromised warp jump—were transported here in this region... only to discover that the capital had also been relocated in this region too?"]
Veyra hesitated. She met his gaze.
"I don't presume coincidence, my lord," Veyra replied. "But I cannot say with certainty."
Karakoa gave a low, short exhale.
["You are not expected to answer with certainty, only to observe. You did that well."]
He leaned back into his seat.
["The Chaos Borns were long gone. Exterminated. Every last one of them.]
["For ten thousand years, the Empire has known peace and stability. But now, the Empire itself is displaced. Finding itself in a new world."]
"Is it possible my lord, that the enemies did this?"
["I do not know, Rear Admiral. It may well be fate."]
Then, a faint sound—almost a low chuckle.
["Or perhaps... the Emperor's design."]
Veyra raised her head slightly. "The Emperor's plan?"
Karakoa leaned back, his expression contemplative.
["He understands the board better than any. A new, living frontier lies before us. Things are becoming... interesting."]
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