NationStates Jolt Archive

The Jai Emergence

Contact at 3 o'clock, seventy-five meters distant. Seventeen thermal signatures and five positronic sources.

As if a single organism, the four man Dealer team froze in place and slowly shifted into a new formation to face the newly detected threat. As three men reached to their belts and brought out oddly flared attachments for their KSMAR-1000's the fourth crept forward and stopped just short of the wall that their sensors told them shielded almost twenty hostile infantry and five automated sentry guns. The enemy infantry posed no problem, even a standard Marine squad would have no problems with seventeen gun-wielding punks, but the positronic brain controlled sentry guns had enough firepower, armor, and speed to cut a Shuttle Assault Force to ribbons before they even got within range to shoot back.

Placing Charges.

The fourth team member dropped a few small spheres right next to the wall and quickly retreated, re-joining his companions and bringing out his own attachment for his Assault Rifle. A few heart beats after he'd readied his weapon the explosives blew and obliterated the entire wall, leaving only a small smoking pile of ash where there had once been a two-foot slab of concrete and titanium.

Fire.

As one, the four Dealers aimed and fired, small balls of glowing light emerging from the covers that they'd placed on their weponry. Once beyond the edge of the weaponry the small balls of light began to expand and grow, merging together and enlarging until they illuminated the whole valley. Within seconds there was a single ball several hundred meters in diameter, and then it burst and flowed over every surface in the valley.

Sentry guns eliminated. Take the infantry.

The four Dealers deftly removed the attachments on their rifles and stowed them out of the way, then they raised the guns to their shoulders and unleashed a torrent of bullets at the group of men who were still reeling from the explosion that destroyed the wall. Three seconds later it was all over and the Dealer squad began moving again.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Sir, I have a status report from Dealer Unit 08. They have penetrated General Lions compound and eliminated all resistance. The General is in custody and they are heading back to their Elysium as we speak."

"Good, very good. Any casualties?"

"No, sir. The new Electron Charges made short work of the sentry guns, and to say the Generals supporters are undertrained is a grave understatement."

"True. How many soldiers did the General have, anyway?"

"Dealers place the estimate at just over two hundred, sir."

"Estimates if it had been a standard Marine force instead of a Dealer squad?"

"We place Klonor casualties at around ten individuals, possibly one death."

"20 to 1 in our favor, but I'm still glad we didn't even need to lose that many. Have the Dealer squad debriefed once they arrive back in Gamma Draconis and ready General Lions for trial."

"Yes, sir."

The young paige slowly backed out of the room and left the Duke to his own musings.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Please, just let me go! I'll pay whatever it is you want, just don't bring me back to him! I've got a small fortune hidden in the base, it can all be yours! Just release me!"

The four Dealers didn't even respond, they just kept walking as General Lions sputtered and begged in the small cage they had him in.

"Okay, forget the money! I can get you anything you want! Power for the taking! You want a seat on the Assembly? I can swing that. How 'bout your own moon in Regulus? Anything!"

Not even a small grunt came back to him and his pleas slowly turned to sobs.

Motion, 10 o'clock. Twelve meters.

Lions gasped as his cage fell to the ground.

Eliminate.

The air was suddenly filled with thousands of rounds of ammunition darting into the wilderness on the side of the trail, making sure that anything in the forest wouldn't be leaving it anytime soon. Satisfied, the four Dealers picked up Lions cage again and continued back towards their transport. In the cage, Lions continued to beg and sob.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Your Highness! Over here!"

"Yes, John?"

With a small grin on his face John Veril, reporter for the Journal, stood while the rest of the reporters around him took their seats.

"Sir, any news on when General Lions will face trial?"

"There's no set date yet, right now we're more concerned with making sure none of the supporters we've missed make an ill-fated resuce attempt. He'll be brought to SR-2091 for sentencing once Ihm and I are satisfied that he'll actually make it there."

Another reporter, this one for the Tribune, lept to his feat and called out his question before he'd even been acknowledged.

"Is there any punishment planned for the Epsilon Pegasi system for their role in the uprising?"

"As I've said before, no Klonor system will ever be harmed by another while I rule here. Both the Humans and the Elves in EP didn't have a choice, Lions strung them along when he could and forced them along at gunpoint when he had to, the didn't do a single thing voluntarily. With Lions in jail and his voluntary supporters captured or dead, I expect everything to return to normal."

A third reporter, unaffiliated as yet, called out a query of his own.

"Sir, are there any reports on casualties for the Klonor forces that managed to penetrate the Generals compund?"

"Thankfully, our reports have not one single death or injury in the Klonor forces sent to capture the General."

"Not one? Sir, was it wise to transfer so many troops away from other combat areas in order to insure this success rate?"

"I didn't have to transfer anybody, only four soldiers went in."

"Four...but.....how?"

"They were Dealers."

Those three words said enough, and as soon as they were out of the Dukes mouth the room became deathly ill and the many journalists took their seats. Even mentioning the famed, and feared, personal guards of the Duke had a strong effect.

"If there are no more questions, I'll be on my way. I do have a nation to run."

With a small wave and a dazzling smile the Duke exited the room at the rear, accepting a packet of papers from one of his many aides as he began to make his way towards the buildings exit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Okay, forget the money. Forget the power. I can still make it worth your while. I know the Messenger of the Spirit personally. He's a good friend. I can get you all individual blessings, blessing froms the Spirit Himself! Eh?"

With a jerk the Dealers stumbled to a halt and dropped the cage, turning to face the captive who had made the bad decision to start talking again.

"The Galactic Spirit is a heathens religions, a mere diversion from Jove and the Pantheon. Mention it again and you won't even reach the Transport."

Lions merely gulped and nodded as the Dealers lifted him again, this time making the effort to jostle him at every step.

Motion, 7 o'cl---

Before the message was even finished the foremost Dealer tumbled to the ground in two seperate pieces. There had been no audible sound, no visible strike, but a supposedly Invincible Warrior was dead.

Alert!

The other three Dealers dropped Lions (again) and brought up their Assault Rifles and immediately scanned the surrounding forest. Their eyes, ears, and several dozen advanced sensing devices detected nothing. Suddenly, a second Dealer collapsed, this time accompanied by the clatter of metal on metal as the two rifles held by the surviving Dealers collapsed and fell to the ground in pieces.

Sanitize the area.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a Dealer:

A Dealer is fast, strong, and deadly. They have been trained nearly from birth to be the perfect killing machines. A single Dealer is equal to dozens of normal soldiers in direct combat. They are better than the average Human in almost every way. However, their physical strength, which is exponentially greater than the average Human, their mental faculties, well beyond that of a normal person, and their unparalleled skill with nearly every form of weaponry, which alone makes them one of the deadliest of all Klonor weapons, is only a small fraction of what makes them the Elite of Klonor and the Scourge of the Associations Enemies.

Every single Dealer, each member of the Elite, is equipped with an Emitter Set the very second that they are selected to serve. The Emitter, the most secret of Klonor technology, is what makes the Dealers equal to none. Telekinetic powers, control of sub-atomic energy, and a plethora of other powers make the Dealers nearly Super-Human, and it makes any Dealer its own artillery support.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The very air around the two surviving Dealers began to glow, shining with its own inner light. The two soldiers seemed encased within the corona of a star, almost emanating power. They raised their hands, the glow flowing to the very tips of their fingers, and then flung out their arms. Without a noise the energy surged from their bodies and soared outwards, blasting into the forest all around them. The trees lining the path were incinerated nearly instantly, the grass at the roots gone in a puff of smoke. The bushes farther into the forest lasted a microsecond longer before they too were gone. Now there was noise, now there was the roar of a fire as the entire forest burned and was gone.

Area sanitized. Continu---

A third Dealer fell to the ground, this one managing to let a groan escape before his eyes glazed over and his mind stopped rolling.

The last Dealer froze in place, his eyes searching what was left of the forest for the threat, for whatever it was that had killed more Dealers in five minutes than had been slain in combat since the Corps had been founded. For the first time in his life, for the first time in the life of any Dealer, he felt the tiniest stirrings of fear. But, even experiencing something so very alien to him, he was still a Dealer of the Association. Another energy charge began to build up within his body and he slowly sent it out, mentally feeling the air around him for the unseen attacker. He sowly extended his reach, searching for whoever had slain his three companions. He sensed the blow a split second before it hit.

Shit!

He surged the energy within his body and collected into a single block, holding it directly in front of him where it absorbed the blow aimed for his neck. The glowing wall in front of him flared and grew brighter than ever, absorbing the energy of the enemy, but it held and staved off the assault.

Time to die.

The Dealer felt back along the line of energy that had struck at him, feeling for its source and readying his own attack. He aimed his right hand, index finger and thumb extended, towards the attacker and concentrated the energy into a single point at the tip of his finger, pumping a lethal charge into a ball the size of a pea. He finally breathed deeply and released the energy, he might have even smiled if he hadn't been a Dealer, and readied himself to go and finish off the attacker. Unfortunately, the unseen enemy swatted aside the strike like a man swatting aside a fly. The Dealer could sense the shifting energy even without being able to see it.

"You see the energy, you use the energy, but you do not feel the energy."

The voice seemed to come from everywhere around the Dealer, giving the soldier no clue as to his attackers location.

"You use natures bounty, but what do you give back?"

The Dealer began to send out small energy tendrils once more, attempting to use his energies to target his adversary. Once again, he sensed the attack a moment before it came. Again he deflected it, once more staving off death by the tiniest of hairs.

"How can you hope to use what the Universe creates if you do not embrace it?"

Not even bothering to try and locate his enemy any more, the Dealer concentrated solely on defending himself from the unseen onslaughts.

"You hold nature in contempt, manipulating it for your own gain. We cherish nature, we embrace its light."

A figure finally appeared, seemingly materialising from the very air. A single, solitary figure that had wiped out a Dealer squad alone. The survivor, with a target before him and finally a recipient for his anger, readied another assault and sent it straight between his assailants eyes. This time the newcomer didn't even bother to block it, the attacker simply took the blow and absorbed the energies within itself.

"And in return, nature cherishes us."

Without even so much as a gesture from the attacker the last Dealer gasped and tumbled to the ground, exhaling one last time and lying still.

"Nature cherishes the Jai."

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=421982&

The Changing of the Guard

"Sir, please stay calm. We have everything under control."

"Control? Control? Are you insane? What do you have control of?"

"Sir, please, control yourself. We can handle this. But you must stay in this room."

"Why? What makes this room better than any other room to die in?"

The Grand Duke Solomon Klonor was nearly hysterical, he was panicing and it was obvious to everybody around him. That alone, more than the extreme circumstances they found themselves in, was enough to instill terror in the hearts of everybody else present. For the Duke, a man who had actually been killed more times than they could count, to lose control was something they simply couldn't deal with. Fortunately, many of them didn't have to deal with it for long.

"Sir, please, stay calm and stay here. We'll take care of everything."

With a quick salute the seven Dealers present in the room, enough military might to conquer a small planet, turned and exited the Grand Hall of the Deneb Vicegral Palace and began to make their way towards the Palace's exterior defences. As they passed through the empty rooms of the Palace, ensuring that the grand mansion had been emptied of everybody they could clear out, they began to slow down and fan out, obviously expecting trouble the closer they got to the exterior. When they were a bare few rooms from the main exit they froze completely, all pulling concealed weapons from their loose clothing and visibly preparing themselves for death before proceeding to the exit. They were not disappointed.

The exit hall was littered with corpses, the floor literally covered with a carpet of tattered flesh, and only a bare few soldiers were still standing and well enough to man the guns that insured nothing would get into the Palace. Of the dozen men still alive, even the the best of them seemed severely injured and barely able to stand. Towards the front of the baricades one of the survivors stood up and turned to the newly arrived Dealers. He was a mountain of a man, nearly seven feet tall and a veritable wall of muscle, and seemed to be the only one without a nearly fatal wound. He saluted the new arrivals, but quickly turned back to his weaponry.

Status.

Teams 09 and 13 have been eliminated. We have lost contact with 05 and 02 has been halved. Still no sighting of the enemy. No communication.

Off-planet teams?

Gone.

The new arrivals nodded, then four began moving again and quickly exited the Palace while the other three stayed to lend their support to the wounded Marines and single Dealer that had, as yet, managed to keep the attackers out of the Palace and away from the Duke. With a small nod to the other soldiers the new Dealers began to focus their minds and glow with an inner energy, readying themselves for the next onslaught as the four others began to search the surrounding city for the unseen attackers. This time, they were disappointed.

The surrounding city, a jungle of concrete and steel, stretched for miles in every direction and was home to millions of Klonor citizens, both Human and otherwise. Except for its sheer size, one of the largest in the Association, it was indistinguishable from any of a hundred other cities strung throughout the Universe. That was the problem. It was to be expected that a city under siege, with its military being devastated by an unknown force that swept aside the most powerful of defences as easily as brushing aside a strand of silk strung before them, would be filled with frenzied mobs fleeing for the hills and massive destruction all around. It was not expected, however, that there would be no visible damage to the buildings and that the populace would be going about their business as if nothing had happened. To their knowledge, nothing had happened. They saw none of what had happened. It was the same everywhere in the Association.

It had begun a bare week ago, during the close of one of the smaller Civil Wars in Klonors history, with the disappearance of Dealer Team 08 after their capture of General Lions. Recovery craft dispatched after their failure to contact the Gamma Draconis base found only four corpses in eight pieces, a devastated wasteland scarred by the Dealers attempts at defence, and Lions nearly dead from starvation within the cage the Dealers had strapped him in. He had long since gone mad and shed no light on what had happened, nor did the remains of the Dealers. Within an hour three more teams had dropped off the scope without warning. Only one Dealer had managed to survive long enough to get a message to Supreme General Richard Ihm at Gamma Draconis, and then it had only been two short words: The Jai.

After that Dealers began dropping left and right, averaging out to one a day, and all surviving members had been called back to Deneb to ensure the Dukes survival. The fact that the attacks were only on the personal guards of the Duke almost guaranteed that he was the ultimate target. But still nothing made sense, since the attacks had been on the Dealers and the Dealers alone, the rest of the Klonor Space Corps left untouched except when they interfered. Thus, there were no massive space battles, no cities levelled from orbit, only individual men dying here and there across a span of several thousand light-years. The populace was easily kept ignorant.

But, whether the people knew about it or not, the Dealers were still being systematically wiped out, along with any standard Klonor Marines that were unlucky enough to be with them when they were eliminated. Eventually they had all but ceased to exist, a bare four Duty Teams and the Denebian Guard still left, and now it seems even the four Duty Teams were no more. The Denebian Guard were all that were left and, supported by the entire might of the Klonor Space Corps, they were still determined to keep the attackers out of the Vicegral Palace and way from the Duke. Unfortunately, determined or not, they failed miserably.

The four Dealers searching the city fell within minutes of leaving the Palace, caught unawares by the unseen enemy and falling to pieces, literally, in plain sight of the populace with no visible cause to anybody who witnessed it. The four left at the Palace entrance, manning the heavy weapons emplacements and supported by several thousand freshly arrived troops from the orbiting Destroyers, lasted longer. When the first Dealer fell, sliced neatly without the others even aware of a threat, they simply began to fire indiscriminately out from the Palace. The Dealers unleashed a flood of energy that would have obliterated any living thing caught in its path, the soldiers filled the air with an uncountable amount of bullets and an unmeasurable amount of energy from their less sophisticated but equally deadly weaponry. A second Dealer fell, this time accompanied by several dozen Marines as well, and the two surviving Dealers halted their attack. As the Marines continued, even escalated, their firing the two Dealers began to form a solid wall of energy in front of them, seeking to block anything from entering into the Palace. The wall flashed and seethed, battered by the unseen forces. The Dealers gritted their teeth and forced more of themselves into the wall, enforcing it and deflecting the next three attacks. It seemed as if they had succeeded, that they had managed to finally halt the mysterious enemies, when a single powerful blow shattered the wall and cast energy across those behind it. Many of the Marines screamed as they were scarred by the heat, but more simply tightened their fingers on their triggers and kept trying to hit what they couldn't see. Seconds later the two Dealers fell, and mere moments after that the guns of the Marines fell silent as the thousands of soldiers slumped to the ground amid a few gasps and the occasional sob before all was silent.

The Duke, watching on one of the many video monitors in the Grand Hall, stifled a sob and turned the the few men with him.

"That's it then. It's over."

His voice was flat, lifeless, dead. It was as if a corpse was speaking from the Dukes body.

"But.....sir?"

"What more can we do?"

Not even when Salm had had the Duke within his grasp had he actually given up, not when the still unknown secret society had destroyed his mind from the inside did he despair, not when he'd awoken from a hundred year slumber to find nearly the entire Universe changed had he lost hope. But now, with the entire Dealer force obliterated effortlessly and a seemingly unstoppable force now coming for him, he began to tread down those often avoided paths. It crossed his mind that an enemy this powerful, this resourceful, this intelligent, might have the technology to not only kill him, but to make him stay dead. That this time he might not be coming back, that this time he wouldn't wake up from his slumber and return to what was rightfully his. For what felt like the first time in his life, he thought he faced the end of his life. However, instead of the peace and serenity that the cheesy novels always said people felt when their time was up, he felt nothing but dread, regret, and fear.

The door to the Grand Hall opened silently, startling the occupants and causing them to cluster together. Nothing visible entered the room, but suddenly they all felt that they were no longer alone.

"If you think I can be deceived so easily, you will be unpleasantly suprised."

He might have felt that he was at the end of his life and nearly at deaths door, but the Duke felt no wish to knock. With the tiniest of gestures he sent a cascade of energy at the being he sensed in the doorway. The Dealers might have been the Elite of Klonors military, but the Duke had posessed an Emitter Set long before the Dealers had even been conceived. He had used them for centuries and his control over them was unrivaled. He could feel the energy that the Dealers could only blindly club.

"No surprise is unpleasant."

The energy evaporated before reaching the visitor, but the Duke had unleashed a second burst before the first had even left his body entirely. Then a third wave was launched, then a fourth. Before long the Duke was pouring flame into the newcomer, seeking retribution for the death of so many of what he had come to see as his children. None reached the unseen visitor.

"You have passion."

With a flash of light a figure appeared standing in the doorway, a being that seemed to resonate with power despite looking like what one would often characterise as a 'stick figure.'

"You have strength."

The figure looked at the Duke and blinked.

"But nature cherishes the Jai."

The Duke gasped and fell to the ground.

The visitor, completely ignoring the others in the room, crossed to where the Duke lay prostrate. The toppled ruler still breathed, but he clearly wasn't going to be rising any time soon. The visitor extended his arm and the Duke rose into the air, hovering slightly off the floor in front of the mysterious figure. Then the visitor dropped to his knees and drew one of the Dukes hands towards himself. He lightly leaned forward and placed a single delicate kiss upon the Dukes knuckles, then bowed his head to the floor.

"And the Jai cherish you."

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=422210&

The Last Domino

Emergency Alert! Situation: ω Immediate action required! Emergency Alert! Situation: ω Immediate action required!

"Damnit, I'm trying to sleep here! Leave a message and come back in a few hours!"

Emergency Alert! Situation: ω Immediate action required!

"Come on, I just got to bed twenty minutes ago!"

Emergency Alert! Situation: ω Immediate action required!

"I'm on leave, man! Go bother somebody else on the station, I'm not on duty for another two days!"

Emergency Alert! Situation: ω Immediate action required!

"Fine, I'm getting up. This had better be worth it!"

With grace that would shame a professional gymnast, Selhu Tys lept from his rumpled bed and landed before his comm-panel without even the tiniest hint of imbalance or effort. He then toppled to the side and retched into a small bin, wiping his chin and popping a small pill into his mouth before he again attempted to stand.

The second they invent a time-set Scrubber will be the happiest moment in my life.

Waiting a few seconds for the small micoscopic robots to purge the alcohol from his bloodstream, clearing enough of the toxin to have killed a normal man, he rose and easily managed to stay standing. Flicking a small switch on the comm-panel the video screen flashed to life and displayed an image of the empty hallway outside.

Emergency Alert! Situation: ω Immediate action required!

Ah.......bloody hell.

This time he wasn't stone drunk and his mind didn't spin in a dozen different circles at the slightest sound, he knew it wasn't somebody at his door attempting to wake him. He knew things were a bit more serious.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Each day, thousands of vessels travel to and from the Deneb stellar system. The Inter-System Jump-Node provided easy access to the Vega, Vasuda, and Sirius systems and, with a few more connections, paved the way to Sol itself. If someone was in Sol, let's say on a rare leave of duty due to a particularly strenuous mission he'd recently been on, then it would be a simple matter to book passage on one of the dozens of Klonor cargo or passenger ships that passed through Sol on a daily basis and be back within the Association in a (relatively) short amount of time. With the proper military access codes you could even make the trip without any documentation of your stay on the various ships and no records of your stop-overs on the various planets along the course when the ship was refueling.

Three days after Selhu became aware of the situation he was back within the Association and crawling his way through one of the massive cities scattered across the surface of Denebs fifth planet. He had expected carnage and destruction, what he found was a city full of ignorant people who couldn't see what was happening. All the better for him.

"You! Drop your voucher and back away slowly! Keep your hands where I can see them and don't even think of pulling that KSMP you've got tucked up your sleeve! You keep calm and you'll walk away from this with all your blood still in your body."

Selhu didn't even bother to respond to the hidden mugger, he just kept walking. The pistol up his sleeve, held simply for display purposes so he wouldn't attract and be forced to dispatch more vultures than he did with it, stayed where it was.

"Hey, you hear me? Drop the voucher!"

When Selhu still didn't even bother to slow down or change his course in the tiniest the mugger suqeezed off a round from his gun, spitting it towards Selhus' leg.

"I warned you, punk."

The bullet impacted on the back of his leg in the perfect spot to have dropped him flat on his back if he were a normal human, but Selhu was far from normal. The bullet ricocheted off his thigh and struck the side of a building off to his side, burrying itself five inches deep into the solid steel exterior. He didn't even miss a step, just kept walking. Behind him, in the shadows of one of the buildings, there was a small yellow flash of light as the mugger had his arms severed from his body.

Humming to himself, he kept walking and emerged from the alley he had been traversing into the middle of a bustling marketplace. He scanned the crowd, didn't see anything immediately threatening, and plunged into it. He worked his way across the broad open expanse and stopped by the CommuniGate at the far end.

"Help you, sir?"

The CommuniGates controller, a standard Klonor Marine who'd probably shown up for his patrol late one day, rose from his seat and approached. He extended his hand for the identification he knew was forthcoming and already had the Gate powered.

"Yes, I'm in need of some information. I hear you are a man who can find out certain things that others want to stay hidden."

It might have sounded like a line from a cheesy spy movie, but the controllers for the Associations CommuniGates were among the best informed people in the entire nation. They saw everybody from Ensigns to Admirals every day and regularly gave passage to Assemblymen and Representatives. Certain Gates even had the honor of serving the Consuls on a daily basis. If you wanted somebody who was exposed to every facet of the government and had contact with people in every branch of the military, you talk to a controller.

"There are some things that I've heard in my time, what would you be interested in?"

The ease with which the controller slipped into the 'informant' role, not even working towards extorting money for his information, obviously implied that this was nothing new to him and he saw it simply as another of his many duties as a controller.

"Oh, nothing to in-depth. What's been happening around the Palace recently?"

"Well, about four days ago General Ihm was running some pretty bizarre drills out of the Palace, I can only assume preparing for defending the Palace for an all-out assault, and there was near constant firing for five hours straight. I'd think it really was an assault except nothing came back at them, everything was coming out. Rumor has it that there were even a few Dealers involved in the exercise, some esitmate there might have even been two teams here for it."

"Two Dealer teams? Really?"

"Hey, these stories grow with every telling. I just report what I hear."

"Any idea what happened to those Dealers after the exercises?"

"Nah, not a clue. But you know Dealers, blink for 1/10 of a second and they'll be half a light-year away. Crafty little bastards, eh?"

"You got that right."

"So, where to?"

"Vicegral Palace entrance Gate. Got me a meeting with the Duke himself."

"Really? Care to share?"

"Sorry, but even I'm not to sure."

"Of course you're not."

Grinning, the controller punched in in a few combinations on his control pad and waited with his hand still extended.

"I'll need your Card before I can send through the transfer."

"Of course. But......"

Selhu reached forward and pressed a few buttons next to the Gates control pad.

"....that should take care of everything."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Please, go through, sir."

His voice suddenly respectful, even a bit fearful, the controller snapped to attention and stood out of the way while Selhu calmly walked through the Gate to the entrance of the Vicegral Palace several hundred kilometers away.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Come on.....come on......come on.....yes!"

With a whoop of joy the Grand Duke Solomon Klonor lept to his feet and applauded wildly, his eyes filled with joy as he watched the enormous Vid screen before him.

"Did you see that? Did you see that?"

"Yes, sir, I saw it. I also saw it last night, and the night before that, and the night before that. When the video is several centuries old it's hard to have not seen it."

"Well......yeah, but........I mean look at it!"

On the Vid screen before the Duke and Supreme General Richard Ihm an Incom T-65 X-Wing flashed past the camera and darted toward a small moon off in the distance while, behind the fleeing fighters, the Death Star exploded in a burst of flame. With a small gesture from the Duke the sound suddenly cut off, but the remainder of the movie continued to play.

"Okay, Richard, what's on your mind? Normally you start complaining about how old this movie is before we even see Obi-Wan for the first time."

"What's on my mind? Are you kidding? Hmmm, let's see. Mabe it's because the entire Dealer division as been exterminated in a week and the very people who killed them are now taking over their job. We don't know a damn thing about these freaking Jai guys and you're letting them hold your life in their hands. For all you know they're planning on cutting the Association right out from under you!"

He gestured, quite rudely as a matter of fact, at the plain looking man who sat on the floor behind the two government officials. Though he undoubtedly heard the Generals words he didn't bother to retort, he stayed as motionless as a stone with his eyes closed in a peaceful meditation.

"If they wanted to kill me I'd be dead already, you know that."

"Yeah, b--"

"I'd be dead, and I'd stay dead. You know that, too."

"But, sir, you really don't know anything about these peoples motivations or goals. They say they 'cherish' you, whatever the hell that means, but I used to say that I was the King of Madagascar and, save for this one really weird night in Ross128, that's not exactly the embodiment of truth. The Dealers were born in Klonor, grew up in Klonor, and lived in Klonor. You could trust them. We don't even know how many Jai there are! These new guys are from outside your domain, who knows why the're here."

"It's simple. They cherish nature, nature cherishes them, and they cherish me."

"Do you even know what the word 'cherish' means?"

"Well........no."

"I didn't think so."

"Listen, Richard, we really don't have much of a choice here. The Dealers were wiped out by these guys more easily than I took care of Salm after his first uprising. They didn't lose a single man in their assault. Even if we wanted to do something, there's nothing we could do. The Corps would be torn to shreds. So, right now all we can do is let them sit here and hope they keep 'cherishing' me. Now watch the damn movie, they're about to give out the medals. You ever notice how Chewie doesn't get a medal?"

Ihm sighed hard and braced himself.

"No, sir, I never noticed that. Why doesn't Chewie get a medal?"

"It's a funny story......"

As the Duke began to regale his subordinate with the story about the differences between Peter Mayhews and Carrie Fishers heights the Jai behind them slowly opened his eyes and rose from the floor.

"Somebody approaches."

He slowly turned and faced the door at the rear of the room, raising his hands into a simple self-defence pose.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a normal person the Vicegral Palace on Deneb, home of the Duke, is a nearly impenetrable fortress. Thousands of Marines call the mansion home, the walls can withstand direct bombardment from an orbiting Cruiser, and the automated defences can take care of an infantry batallion all by their lonesome. In the entire history of Klonor, through all its rises and falls, no enemy of Klonor had ever breached the Palace while the Duke called it home. Thankfully, since Selhu isn't an enemy of Klonor, that record continues to stand. However, he has just found many points of security along the Palace exterior that could use some serious revamping, he found them way to easy to slip past.

Then again, they'd never been designed to counter somebody with skills and abilities equal to a Dealer. That's what the Dealers were for.

Forward three hallways. Left hallway. Forward two hallways. Left hallway. Forward seven hallways. Right hallway. Stop.

He was slowly creeping through the vast cavernous hallways of the Palace, plotting the best course to reach the Dukes personal chambers without being detected, when he paused. Several kilometers away, in the direction of the Dukes personal chambers, he began to feel the stirrings of somebody manipulating the energy he and the Dealers called on. But something wasn't quite right, the energy felt......odd. The Dealers called it en masse, summoning a charge large enough to obliterate a tank even when they only needed to cut a piece of paper. This controller was bringing in barely a trickel, drawing in a tiny amount from the air outside him while still seeming to amass an extremely large quantity. Whoever, or whatever, was drawing in that energy had to have been the one that had so easily dispatched the Dealers.

Now I have a target.

His face as calm as ever, Selhu once again began to move through the Palace.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"He uses natures bounty."

The Duke and General Ihm glanced at each other when the heard they Jai utter those words and the same thought flashed through their minds at the same time.

The Dealers survived.

Accompanying that thought were equal parts elation and horror. To the Duke this was a moment of joy, the Dealers had been almost like children to him and each would have gladly laid down their life for his. That any survived was good news. However, that the Jai detected them meant that they were on their way here, probably already within the Palace. They were coming this way, and would only be massacred by the Jai as their fellows had been. Also, if they entered the room and found the Duke calmly watching a movie with the murderer of their fellows they probably wouldn't be to happy.

"This is not good."

The Duke and Ihm both whispered this at the same time, then sat back in their chairs and began to think about how they could protect the remaining Dealers lives and their own at the same time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forward two hallways. Right hallway. Forward one hallway. Left hallway. Arrive at the Dukes personal quarters.

Selhu paused before the mammoth doors and took a moment to prepare himself. He concentrated and began to manipulate the energy into a battering ram, aiming it forward at the last barrier between himself the mysterious murderer of the Dealers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Jais eyes widened a tiny bit and he calmly glanced over his shoulder at the Duke and Ihm.

"He's here."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

With a mental shove the battering ram surged forward and obliterated the door, shattering the foot-thick wood into splinters no bigger than a match. When the air cleared he dashed forward, lept over the small pile of chips that lay where there had once been enough wood to make a small forest, and landed before the Jai in a fighting stance that neatly mirrored the stance of the Jai.

"Selhu Tys, you have made it. Welcome."

"Jai!"

Selhu nearly spat the word from his mouth, seeking to expunge it from his system as one would a foul substance, but the Jais words were calm. Neither seemed shocked to find the other there. Turning from the Jai, Selhu addressed the Duke in a much calmer tone.

"Sir, I received the ω notification. If you will accompany me I will escort you from the premises and see you to safety. I will then return here to deal with this Jai."

He made the word 'Jai' seem a curse.

"Uh.....Selhu? What the bloody hell are you doing here, and how do you know the Jai? Why aren't you dead? What the fuck is going on?"

The Duke was nearly hysterical.

"It's a long story, sir, and better set for another time. It's better I get you out of here now while I still can. Once I'm done with this thing I'll tell you the whole thing."

"Oh, no, by all means, tell them now. There's no need to hurry."

Though nobody had seen him move, the Jai was now squarely in the doorway and blocked the exit.

"I think it would be better for us all to hear this."

Selhu audibly ground his teeth, but he didn't try to move the Jai blocking his way.

"Sir, am I correct in assuming that you're familiar with the Great Fall?"

"Indeed you are."

"Am I also correct in assuming that you remember the trigger that started the Fall?"

"I remember, Selhu, and I remember all to well."

"Then I'm sure you're familiar with how we never did discover the perpetrators, that to this day the identity of your murderers is still a mystery."

"Does this painful trip down memory lane have a point? These events aren't exactly easily forgotten, and I do not relish dragging them to the forfront of my mind again."

"I'm sorry, sir, but I do have a point."

"Then make it."

"Yes, sir. May I present to you one of those unknown murderers. This thing, this Jai, and his fellows are those responsible for your murder, the destruction of the Klonor Empire, and the fall of anarchy on all our peoples shoulders. This piece of dung which claims to cherish you is an enemy of Klonor on par with Salm himself. Beyond Salm, in fact, since it is because of their manipulations that he tried to take the throne."

General Ihm, who had been sitting quietly while this all played out, let out a small shout of fury when he heard this. Without hesitation he lept from his seat and rushed at the Jai, fully intent on beating him to death with his own bare hands. The Great Fall was heralded as the darkest of the dark times, the lowest point in Klonors millenia-long history. Billions had died, billions more had suffered unbelievable horrors, and a society that had taken centuries to build had collapsed in days. To finally have one of the perpetrators within his grasp, to finally be able to exact revenge, was something that every Klonor citizen begged for daily. Unfortunately, the Jai had no wish to beaten to death. He simply looked at the enraged General Ihm and blinked, mentally slapping Ihm to the ground and battering him unconcious without lifting so much as a finger. With a small groan the General lay still; alive, but barely.

"Is it true?"

In contrast to Ihms enraged shout, the Dukes words were calm and cool. He might have been simply asking for the time.

"It is."

The Jais response was no less calm.

"Then burn."

His voice still didn't betray the tiniest hint of anger, but the very air around him seemed to vibrate with his rage. A wall of energy surged from the Duke towards the Jai and sought to impale the warrior on a spike of pure hatred. Enough electricity for a dozen lightning storms filled the room and focused on the single Jai, pouring the rage of an entire nation into the solitary figure.

Now the Duke let anger into his voice, now he let loose a howl of rage and anger and fear and hatred, and he turned it all on the embodiment of his fears and his nightmares.

When the Dukes voice fell silent, when the energy bled from the air and the smoke cleared from the room, the Jai was standing there without a single mark on him. Not a single hair was out of place, not one bit of cloth was signed, for all intents and purposes the Dukes atack might never have happened.

"Sir, we have to leave now."

Selhu reached forward and placed his hand on the Dukes arm, attempting to guide him towards the doorway.

"I will explain everything in detail later, but we have to go. Get out of our way."

The Jai merely nodded his head and stepped to the side, making room for the Duke and Selhu to pass.

"No."

The Duke spoke and halted the two of them, then he turned to the Jai.

"Explain."

"The Jai cherish nature and---"

"Oh for Joves sake, shut the fuck up about your damn cherishing! Every other word out of your mout is 'cherish', it makes me want to shoot you!"

"Very well, the Jai love nature. We embrace it and its essence, and in return it gives us powers and abilities beyond that of normal Man. Our efforts to eliminate your Dealers took only a fraction of what natures has given us. But, though nature has given us power, it does not give us the wisdom to use it properly. That we must earn for ourselves, like all of natures creations. For years, the Jai made no efforts to gain such wisdom. We only saw that we had power others could only dream of, and we used that power. We conquered and we ruled, because we thought it our right to do so. But, even though we lacked wisdom, we did not lack intelligence. Even though to conquer something by force was easy for us, it was even easier to simply have somebody else conquer our victimes and then take control of the new masters. The Regulus uprising, Salm, even Bobaria, they were all our subtle attempts to oust you from power so we could simply take over whoever rose in your place. Unfortunately, our subtle tricks didn't work. Whether because of your intelligence or our stupidity, we will never know for certain, our attempts failed and you remained in control. So, we took direct action."

"The Great Fall....."

"Correct. The Klonor Empire toppled as easily as you would knock over a deck of cards."

"But...the anarachy that came afterwards.....where were you?"

"'It is beter to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.'"

"Pretty......what's it mean?"

"The Jai turned among themselves. We were a force unstoppable, nobody in the Universe could stand before us, and Klonor was but one in a long line of nations to have fallen before us. But many were unsatisfied with our progress, they felt that our subtle conquers were beneath us, that we should move en masse and secure our domination over this entire Galaxy before moving on to the next. They thought that our slow movements were simply the leadership attempting to secure their control over even the Jai. Others protested, and almost immediately after the Klonor Empire fell so did our own. Ours was a Civil War fought across the entire Galaxy, with individual Jai laying waste to entire planets in individual combat. By the time it ended Klonor had risen and all its systems had formed into the Association, for us to see one of our vitcims rising again before we had done so shook our beliefs that it was our right to rule the Universe. We were forced to re-evaluate ourselves, and we first began to search for wisdom in addition to our intelligence. The greater good won, we saw that our conquering the Universe would only end badly for all beings. We determined that we still had not the wisdom to rule the Universe wisely, but we could guide it. We saught to ingratiate ourselves with the leadership of various nations, hoping to use our abilities and our newfound view of the Universe to foster the Universal Good. Klonor was the first, we hope to eventually help assist all the Universes nations."

He turned to Selhu.

"This Dealer discovered us. We still don't know how. We don't know when. But one day he approached us and demanded we go public, confess to our past crimes, and place ourselves at your mercy. We refused and he attacked. We struck him down easily, but did not kill him. He was a soldier who, though misguided, attempted to serve the Greater Good and we could not end his life when we saw what that Greater Good was. So, we sent him back to your Association and accelerated our plans. We replaced the Dealers, as you know, because we feel that the sooner we begin to sooner we can finish."

"By finish you mean....."

"No, not what you think. We have progressed beyond our self-serving lust for power. But we do see that we are needed, that our abilities and strength can help the Universe. We seek to make up for our past attrocities. So, we placed ourselves in your service, the first among many nations to receive our service, so that we may help the Universe. That we may help the inhabitants of your nation and the inhabitants of others. As I have said before, the Jai cherish you. But, there is still one last obstacle. One last impediment."

The Jai turned to Selhu.

"The last Dealer. The last man who would seek to prevent us from assisting you, Duke Klonor, in ruling this nation justly and fairly. Despite our good intentions, despite the fact that we are wiser now than we were when we thought only of ourselves, they still resist."

A flick of his wrist and Selhus body tumbled to he ground, his head remained in the air.

"No longer."

He turned back to the Duke.

"Make no mistake, the Jai serve you and we will continue to do so. No matter your course, we will attempt to guide you on the path of life. But we could not do so, we could not heal the Universe as a whole, while the Dealers still live."

He gesutured with one hand and Selhus head dropped to the floor.

"The last domino has fallen."

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=423625&

OOC: Though this is a completed and unparticipatory story, I would like to hear what everybody thinks of what I've written. A few comments on what you liked or didn't like, an explanation request, or just general feedback. Much appreciated.

OOC: It doesn't have to be extremely detailed, just your general thoughts.

OOC: Please, just one responce!