Epilogue One - The Spectre and the Scripture

Sonic Spectre was having a difficult time reconciling her religious beliefs and the reality before her.

Part of her, one she would admit had been indoctrinated and groomed, but which she cherished nonetheless, wanted to see the Empress of Mars as more than just a woman. She was meant to be an icon, a symbol, a goddess in the flesh.

Then Sonic had to run after her and pick up the pieces. She'd spent actual time within close proximity to one of the central pillars, maybe the most important pillar, of the religious order she was a part of, and discovered that...

The Empress of Mars was a weird, weird woman. A terrible flirt. A hopeless romantic. A bit of a womanizer. Ivil Antagonist's near-perfect image in Sonic Spectre's mind took hit after hit, and yet... there was always that sense that there was more just under the surface. More than just someone who had gained unfathomable power through luck and grit.

The Adeptus Ancillia preached that she was the Machina Ex Deus. A being not unlike a god. And they were right, but their understanding of Ivil Antagonist was... superficial. They understood the symbol, the charismatic leader. They didn't understand the blubbering idiot she could be at times.

And yet...

Sonic Spectre was on the bridge of the Sappho. Next to her was Aurora, Twenty-Six, Pixie, and even Pepper. Every person onboard the ship, crammed into the room, all of them splitting their attention between the view screen at the front of the bridge.

Sonic Spectre shivered. Not from the cold, or from delight, or even fear. It was something more... primal.

Before her, far enough away that the details should have been impossible to see with the naked eye, two gods clashed.

Arcs of actinic, searingly bright lightning, in crooked forks, shot out into the empty void of space. Small thermonuclear explosions popped and fizzled, and then entire swathes of the void were rent open and enveloped by a pitch darkness that swallowed all light.

The Empress was there, in all of her glory. A shining beacon of golden light, bathing the enemy fleet in her holy radiance... and burning them with it.

The Earth Alliance fleet was trying to make space. They'd pushed their thrusters to full in an attempt to get away. The Uranian fleet, including the Sappho and the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates, was gently pulling back and away as well. A few of the attacks between the Empress and Emperor had caused large enough disturbances to short out shields and likely damage some of the ships at the fore.

The smart thing to do was retreat.

The Earth Alliance was just retreating from far closer to the conflagration, and because of that, they were being caught in the wake of it.

Ships were ripped in half. Some caught fire. One of them looked like it was disassembled into its individual parts in just a blink. No doubt the aftereffect of a powerful Core-based weapon being levelled its way. Entire ships vanished from sensors as they turned into clouds of spare parts.

The cleanup was going to be... messy, and expensive. But that was going to be a problem for the Uranians.

Sonic found herself staring at the fight with her attention split. A large part of her wanted to start doing math. How much energy was being put out. Their sensors were picking up gravitic fluctuations and enough heat to compete with the sun, though only in quick flashes and bursts.

Another part of her was wondering about the consequences. The cleanup, the impact on the Earth Alliance as a whole... this was going to be public. The Uranians had no reason to censor this, and maybe that was for the best, because the last part of her...

The last part of her was revelling in religious ecstasy.

Her Empress was standing before her as a bastion against the cruel Emperor of Earth, and she was wiping the floor with him.

There was going to be a whole new set of scriptures written about this.

Scratch that... as she watched the two Emperors split apart with a violent explosion that sent the Emperor of Earth reeling so far away that he crashed into Caliban.

Twenty-Six gasped.

Pixie... made a sound that might also have been interpreted as a gasp.

Sonic didn't look away, however. This was, in a word, Biblical, and she wouldn't dare blink.

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A wave of force rippled across the surface of Caliban, and when it passed there was an impossibly large bullseye crater smashed into the side of the moon.

The Emperor of Earth tore out of it, and Sonic swallowed. He was still powerful. He was still an Emperor. If he turned his ire on them, then maybe even the Empress herself wouldn't be able to protect the Uranian fleet while...

The Emperor spun around, and fled. A comet racing out and away from the planetary system at speeds that outpaced even the fastest ship.

The bridge was quiet except for the sound of breathing.

The golden light of the Empress of Mars turned orange, then settled in a deeply familiar red. The red of the soil of Mars.

And then the light winked out.

Sonic Spectre would have liked to think that she wasn't worried, but... Ivil had just taken on one of the other two most powerful beings in the solar system in a one-on-one brawl.

"Should we go see if she's okay?" Twenty-Six asked.

"I don't know if the Sappho can pick her up on scanners," Aurora said. "But... I suppose there's no harm in trying."

"Hmm, uh, I mean, some harm," Pixie said. She was red in the face, and a little sweaty, but she looked like she was making an effort to recover from what she'd seen. "I mean, there's going to be lingering effects all over. If we just move in without some caution... it could be a minefield. Not to mention the debris."

"So we just sit here?" Twenty-Six asked.

"No, of course not," Aurora said. "We recruit the Uranian fleet. They'll have more resources than us, and they certainly owe Ivil a favour now. They must know that without her intervention, they'd all be dead by now. Let me get on the comms with the officer in charge. If they don't want to help then... then I'll drag their reputations through the muck."

"I will communicate with the Adeptus Ancillia," Sonic Spectre said with a bow towards the others. "Perhaps there are some members of the Ordo with the appropriate cores to suss out the Empress' location. They'll be willing to risk life and limb to find her, if the need arises."

"I'll contact MINT right away," Pepper added. "Finding things is kind of our job. Especially when it comes to the Empress."

"Thank you," Twenty-Six said. She smiled, but looked a little sad. Sad and wide-eyed. "I wish I could do more."

"I think you've done plenty."

Everyone in the bridge jumped and turned, though Sonic believed that she might have been the first to truly notice the Empress' appearance. Her echolocation cores bounced off the Empress' body as she pulled herself out of a fold in dimensional space. For just a moment she caught a glimpse of the infinite expanse beyond and--

"Ivil!" Twenty-Six shouted.

She tripped over herself across the room at a dead run, followed by Aurora and even Pixie, who stumbled out of her pilot's seat and rushed over.

The Empress smiled. Her hair was plastered to her scalp with sweat and she seemed flushed, cheeks just a little warm and eyes a little wild. The look of someone who'd just exerted themselves and came out victorious. It was strange to see, knowing that the Empress' real body was likely not reflecting her current state at all.

"Are you okay?" Twenty-Six asked as she stopped herself just before crashing into Ivil.

"I'm fine," Ivil said.

"You dolt," Aurora said. "You didn't need to take him on like that. You could have been hurt."

"Ah, but I wasn't," Ivil said, her grin only growing wider.

"Yeah, 'cause he was a pissant and you're too tough for him," Pixie said with a nod. "We still lost a couple of ships. I'm not forgetting our bet, even if you've just come back from beating that idiot up."

"P-pixie, it's not the time for that," Twenty-Six said. "Ivil, I'm happy you're okay."

"Thank you," Ivil said, and it sounded... very genuine. Her smile softened. "I'm happy that I'm well too."

There was a moment where the relief was almost palpable in the air, where all in the room could feel the tension draining away.

And then the Empress of Mars' smile returned, this time with nothing coy in it. "So... does the victor get any victory kisses, or is that just something that happens in the soaps?"

Sonic Spectre decided that what happened next, with the pawing and the kissing and the... well, some things ought not be included in the scripture. It was far too unholy.

***

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