Tear of Diasporex, the Bridge.
The command center, buried deep within the flagship's core sector, was ablaze with light.
A 360-degree holographic projection cast real-time footage of the entire battlefield right in the middle of the room. Countless blips of light flickered, collided, and vanished in the void.
Those were the steel behemoths of the 52nd and 28th Expeditionary Fleets, locked in a brutal, final death struggle with the nomadic fleet of the Diasporex Alliance.
Surrounding the holo-table were fifty-three levitating seats.
Twenty-six were occupied by humans. The other twenty-seven belonged to those unique, eyeless, four-legged xenos.
They looked like some kind of elegant quadrupedal reptiles, their slender bodies covered in pale cyan scales.
Their eyeless heads tilted upward slightly, perceiving everything around them in a way no human could ever understand.
This was the Diasporex Alliance High Council.
Two entirely different sentient species that had forged an alliance millennia ago during the Age of Strife.
Since then, they had lived as nomads, drifting through the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, surviving together and facing the endless horrors of the void side by side.
But right now, this millennia-old bond was being tested like never before.
Shukra Valentine sat at the head of the table.
The human leader of the Alliance was pushing fifty, his grey-white hair cropped tight to his skull. A nasty old scar ran down his left cheek, starting from his brow and slicing all the way down to his jawline.
Unlike the others, he wore a deep cyan double-breasted greatcoat. His epaulets bore the highest mark of authority in the Alliance: crossed crystal diamonds and an olive branch.
He wore no cybernetic exosuits or mechanical augments.
Shukra was a strict human purist. To him, mechanical modification was a desecration of human purity.
Yet, he had successfully governed alongside the mechanically obsessed xenos for decades without a single hitch, running the Alliance like a well-oiled machine.
"I'll say it again, we need to pull out immediately!"
A human councilor slammed his hands on his desk, his voice laced with panic.
He was a middle-aged man in his fifties, decked out in the standard cyan uniform of the Alliance.
"We can rebuild those solar collectors!"
"We can reconstruct our fleet!"
"But if the Tear of Diasporex falls—if every single one of us sitting here dies—the Diasporex Alliance is completely finished!"
"Bullshit!"
From across the aisle, one of the xenos abruptly raised a forelimb.
Despite having no eyes, its scale-covered face locked perfectly onto the shouting human councilor.
Its voice was raspy and shrill, carrying the screeching sound of grinding metal.
"Gunnar Weiser!"
"Do you have any idea how much blood, sweat, and tears went into building those collectors?!"
"A thousand years! It took a full millennium to piece together that energy grid!"
"Without them, we won't even make it to the next star system!"
"Without energy, every last one of us—including you humans—will starve to death in the void!"
Gunnar Weiser refused to back down, slamming his fist hard against his armrest.
"Starving to death is better than getting slaughtered on the spot by those psychopaths!"
"Orwell Valentine! Are you blind to how massive the Imperium's fleet is?!"
"Can't you see how terrifyingly overpowered their Primarchs are?!"
"Fight them head-on?!"
"With what?!"
"With our bucket-of-bolts rust buckets?!"
"Then what's your bright idea?!"
"Just drop everything and run for our lives?!"
"And then what?!"
"Drift out in the void until we die?! That's your master plan?!"
"At least we'll live to see another day! At least we'll still have a shot at finding a new energy source!"
"A new energy source? You think energy grows on trees?!"
"You think we can just find one whenever we want?!"
Another xenos chimed in, "We aren't colonists with stable core worlds like the Imperium of Man! We're nomads! Energy is literally our lifeblood!"
"What good is energy if we're all dead?!"
A female human councilor shot up to fire back.
She wore a form-fitting flight jacket, a meticulously maintained laspistol strapped to her hip.
"My people just ran the numbers. Only forty percent of our fleet is still operational."
"Forty percent!"
"Orwell, do you even grasp what that means?!"
The shouting match echoed endlessly under the glow of the holographic projection.
The twenty-six human seats and the twenty-seven xenos seats were completely split down the middle.
One side wanted to cut their losses and run; the other was ready to die fighting.
Some of the xenos believed the energy grid was worth more than anything, while the human councilors argued that survival had to come first.
The figure sitting in the highest seat of authority remained dead silent.
His eyes were quietly watching the councilors tear into each other.
Shukra had been silent for over ten minutes.
He heard every word of the shouting match clearly.
He understood the humans' fears.
And he understood the xenos' absolute stubbornness.
They really couldn't afford to lose those solar collectors.
That was the energy network the Diasporex Alliance had spent a thousand years bleeding to build. It was the only thing keeping the entire nomadic fleet alive out in the void.
Without those collectors, they wouldn't even have the juice to reach the next star system, let alone find a new home.
But the humans weren't wrong either.
The situation had deteriorated way past the point of safely recovering those collectors.
The Imperial fleet's firepower was only getting heavier, and the Alliance warships were getting wiped out one by one.
If the Tear of Diasporex fell, if the entire High Council was wiped out right here and now... what would it matter if they saved the collectors?
Shukra's gaze slowly swept over the holo-map.
The blips of light representing their ships were winking out at a terrifying rate.
One by one.
Every light that vanished meant hundreds of thousands of lives snuffed out. Decades of hard work gone up in smoke. Another piece of the Diasporex strength lost forever.
Just then, the heavy metal doors on the right side of the bridge violently blew open.
A human soldier in the same cyan uniform stumbled into the room. His face was a mask of pure terror, his voice shaking uncontrollably.
"Captain! It's bad!"
The entire bridge went dead silent in an instant.
The screaming match stopped cold.
Over fifty pairs of eyes—whether it was human sight or xenos perception—snapped onto the panicked soldier.
Shukra slowly stood up.
"Report."
The soldier swallowed hard, his voice totally hoarse.
"The warriors of the Imperium of Man..."
"They've completely shattered our three defensive lines in the core sector!"
"They're pushing straight for the Diasporex Gate!"
A deathly chill swept through the bridge.
The Diasporex Gate.
That was the very last barricade before the bridge. The final door protecting the heart of the Tear of Diasporex.
If that gate fell, the bridge would be wide open for the enemy to storm right in.
Shukra's pupils contracted slightly.
He had known this was coming.
Those Imperial Astartes—those giants clad in purple and silver-grey power armor—they weren't something regular baseline soldiers could ever hope to stop.
But his people had held the line for this long.
And that was long enough.
Shukra took a deep breath, his eyes slowly locking onto the face of every single councilor in the room.
"Everyone."
His voice was completely calm, but it carried a heavy, unquestionable weight of authority.
"We couldn't run right now even if we wanted to."
The councilors who had just been screaming at each other fell completely silent.
He was right.
There was no running away from this.
The warriors of the Imperium were already at their doorstep, right in front of the Diasporex Gate.
Outside, their surviving ships were still locked in a death grip with the Imperial fleet.
Their escape route was completely cut off.
Shukra's eyes shifted to the figure sitting at the very front of the xenos section.
Karu Atlee.
The leader of the four-legged xenos, the supreme representative of their entire race within the nomadic fleet.
Those sightless eyes were currently fixed directly on Shukra.
"Karu Atlee."
Shukra's voice was gravely serious.
"Deploy your strongest warriors."
He paused for a beat before continuing:
"The bio-augmented shock troops. The cybernetic combat units."
"It's do or die now. We can't afford to hold anything back."
Karu Atlee remained silent for two long seconds.
Then, he slowly raised a forelimb, forming a gesture of absolute commitment unique to his people.
"Understood."
His voice was low and raspy, yet filled with an unbreakable resolve.
"Every single combat-capable bio-augmented warrior. Every cybernetic unit. All one thousand two hundred of them. I'm sending them all to the Diasporex Gate."
He paused for a moment before adding:
"The remaining eight hundred stationed near the bridge will push up and join them."
Shukra nodded.
He turned toward the human councilors, his voice rising in volume:
"The same goes for the humans! Every combat-capable Diasporex mechanized shock trooper, every elite guard, send them all to the Diasporex Gate!"
"Furthermore..."
Shukra's gaze swept across every councilor present. "Send a broadcast to every operational ship left in the fleet."
"Draft every single available body and rush them to reinforce the Tear of Diasporex immediately."
His voice spiked into a shout. "Tell them the flagship cannot fall!"
"This is our final home!"
"Only by purging every last enemy from this dreadnought..."
"...can we rally the fleet, recover the solar collectors, and then... get the hell out of this cursed system!"
He paused, a look of absolute finality in his eyes.
"This is our one and only shot at survival!"
An officer standing behind him snapped to attention, his voice firm.
"Yes, sir! Right away!"
The officer spun on his heel and sprinted off the bridge.
Shukra's eyes swept over the room once more.
The human councilors and the xenos councilors were all staring right back at him.
"Everyone."
His voice echoed under the glow of the holographic projection.
"Whatever bad blood existed between us, whatever screaming matches you just had, you need to drop it. Now."
His gaze sharpened to a razor's edge.
"Focus on the enemy!"
"Only by driving these Imperial Astartes off the Tear of Diasporex do we even have a prayer of recovering the solar collectors and escaping this sector!"
"This is our only way out!"
The councilors exchanged looks, then stood up in unison.
Human and xenos alike, every back straightened.
"Understood, Captain!"
"As you command, Shukra!"
Over twenty voices rang out simultaneously, echoing long and loud across the bridge.
In the xenos section, Karu Atlee rose to his feet, letting out a deafening, low growl.
"All bio-augmented warriors and cybernetic combat units present, with me!"
"I am personally taking command of the defense at the Diasporex Gate."
All thirty-two xenos councilors stood up as one.
Without wasting another breath, they turned and marched off the bridge.
Watching the back of the xenos leader—a being he had locked horns with for years—Shukra suddenly spoke up. "Karu."
The xenos leader stopped but didn't turn around.
"Come back alive."
Karu Atlee remained silent for a second.
Then, he started walking again, his deep, raspy voice floating back.
"I plan on living a long time. You don't need to tell me that."
"Just watch your own back. Don't go getting your head chopped off."
"I'm fully expecting to take that Captain's seat back from you in the next democratic election!"
The heavy metal doors of the bridge slowly slid shut behind them.
Listening to those parting words, Shukra's expression softened just a fraction.
He turned back to the holographic projection, watching the brutal meat grinder unfolding before the Diasporex Gate.
Slowly, his hands balled into tight fists at his sides.
Hold the line...
He prayed silently.
You have to hold the line...
--
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