System Supervillain, Book 10 Epilogue

Epilogue – Elsewhere

(Thraxl Invasion Deployment Point, Thraxl Prime, Gel-Nak Empire)

He was known by many names and titles. Most were just some means of flattery, given to any who had ascended to the Imperial throne. Some, though, he had earned on his own merit. Throhi the Green, for how he had personally covered himself in the blood of his enemies and rivals when they tried to assassinate him. The Mind Taker, for his advanced use of the psionic talents the Leader caste had. The Conqueror, for having brought two new species into the Empire under his reign. Father, to those who bore his blood. He was Emperor Throhi Kruxl, Third of His Name, Slayer of Iszak the Unrelenting, Reaver of the Omzocut, Destroyer of Thauszizk, Tamer of the Kez Sisterhood.

This and more, was he. Right now, however, Emperor Throhi was displeased. News had reached him on the homeworld, Gel-Nala, about how badly the invasion of Earth had gone. News bad enough that he was forced to come out to one of the active invasion points himself and make examples in order to restore the fighting spirit of the Warriors.

Ten invasion points had been prepared on ten different worlds in ten different systems, none of them Gel-Nala. He was no fool, after all. The portals, by their nature, allowed people to pass both ways through them. Putting one on the homeworld, or even in the home system, was something only an idiot, who did not comprehend the possibility of failure, would do. And while he would never let the lesser Gel-nak around him know, Throhi always considered how his plans might fail. That was how he prevented those failures, and earned his reputation as Conqueror.

The enterprise had not failed, yet, even with the setbacks. Losing the fleet to the Uprising Controls was a blow, to be certain. The lack of orbital bombardment meant that the destined slaves were able to organize, and fight back, preventing six of the ten invasion points from being brought online. Whole continents were now without Gel-nak presence, as the footholds had been taken back by the humans.

The Uprising Controls being exposed in such a way was of lesser concern. They were a relic of Emperor Qrak’s time, almost one hundred cycles ago. Qrak the Vicious had been known for cruelty and his bloodthirsty nature, not for wisdom, and his Commanders in the Armada had followed his lead. Too often, they pushed too hard, and the Uprising Controls were used to keep others in line.

To Throhi’s mind, this episode perfectly summed up his issues with the system, beyond the weak and cowardly image it portrayed. The Controls were a weakness that could be exploited in his forces. But the Navy had always been slow to change, and argued that such a weakness was unimportant, as there was no way that someone could penetrate the Gel-nak networks without their Technicians knowing. It was why they had agreed on installing an override to the Controls in the Computer Control Nest, a half-measure which clearly proved ineffective.

Throhi looked out from the window of his shuttle as they descended to the Thraxl Invasion Point. This failure would give him the excuse he needed to remove some of the more intransigent obstacles within the Navy, and force changes through. He would have liked to remove them cycles ago, but he had not won his titles by moving before he was ready. If he gutted too much of the Navy, there would be nothing left to defend the Empire. And if he moved too soon, then the Navy might turn, and try to put a new Emperor on the throne. Now, though, he had leverage to use against them. Even a setback moved his plans forward.

Of course, too many setbacks would be fatal, as well, and this campaign had already suffered enough. Six invasion points failed to establish the connection. The Fleet was dead, their ships captured. And the Shass Invasion Deployment Point had been destroyed as a blast of superheated material burst through the portal like a bomb blast, irradiating half the city. Forces had already been dispatched to start cleaning the mess, but that did not change the fact that the portal had been destroyed, and the troops at the Invasion Point were all dead, or dying, from radiation exposure.

Which is why he was here, on Thraxl. Of the three invasion points remaining, Thraxl was connected to the one that had made the least progress. The Srusk Invasion Point’s forces had already completely claimed the city of ‘Moscow’, claiming any humans who survived the bloody purge as slaves. The Rhuxa Invasion Point was encountering resistance in ‘Rio di Janeiro’, but was steadily making progress, despite the losses. However, the Thraxl Invasion Point had made no real progress in capturing ‘London’ since the shield went up.

Throhi wasn’t blind to the reasons for that failure, of course. The humans of Earth had a strange factor in their biology allowing them to express a wide-array of powers under the System. It was known that all species developed certain abilities as they evolved under the System. A properly ordered species would refine those abilities into something normal, and predictable, pruning unwanted genetic lines so that they did not cause disruptions. Chaotic species that allowed things to go as they pleased were not unified enough to resist the ordered species, and so were conquered, and order was imposed upon their genetics. That was the way of things.

Clearly, more work would need to be done with these humans, in order to properly order them, and force them into the galactic norm. Tests on the slaves brought back through the portals proved that human genetics were uniquely adaptable, to the point where any baseline comparison was worth little, as the average did not compare to the individual realities. Instead of the traditional way, ordering the species into castes based on whether they were a worker, warrior, leader, and so on, they would have to be ordered by ability. Fire, Light, and so forth. It was more troublesome to deal with species like that, but the Gel-nak had done it before, and they could do it again with these humans.

But first, he needed to rectify the failures of the invasion force.