The Martial Unity

With such a firm confirmation on one of the most knowledgeable human beings alive, especially when it came to the field of consciousness, the Esoterist simply turned back towards Ria with a bewildered expression. ”You’re serious? Can you sense infected worlds? While sitting in this room? Across the cosmos?”

She nodded, relieved that he was finally taking her seriously.

”How does it work?” His organoid eyes grew more intent. ”Can you tell their exact locations? Can you give me the coordinates of the closest infected world? Also, are you sensing infected worlds or esoteric matter? Does Gaia register to you as an infected world? Also, what about the gargantians? Can you—?”

”Calm down,” the Psycher heaved an exasperated sigh. ”You’re going to overwhelm the poor lass.”

Yet, Ria had answers for all of those questions.

”It works like seeing stars in the sky,” she remarked. ”I can make inferences of distance based on size and brightness, to an extent, as well as using the Parallax Method. The closest infected world is…”

She pointed to her side. ”…in that direction. It feels like the sun compared to the rest of the stars to my senses. Although it is not the only one by any means.”

”Like the sun?” The Esoterist’s eyes widened. ”So you mean that… it’s within human civilization?”

She nodded with a serious expression.

The Psycher immediately accessed the stellar map of human territory with his visual organoid cortex, immediately identifying the direction she pointed in on the map, scanning all territory in the line of the direction that she pointed in.

”Where?” he muttered as he searched hundreds of star systems. ”All of these planets are—”

He paused as he spotted it.

An isolated star system within human civilization with very little presence that was exactly along the line that Ria pointed in. Not all stars within human civilization were heavily colonized. Just like an extremely populated planet, there were remote pockets with every little human presence.

These were star systems whose stars were very dim, whose systems were barren of valuable material resources or life. These also tended to be isolated star systems that were more than seven light-years away from any other star system, which exceeded the distance that most commercial negatron-empowered warp-drives could travel to in one sitting.

Thus, they were dismissed in favor of more fertile and connectable land. After all, the Milky Way effectively had infinite stars, so why settle for inferior options when you could simply go outwards and set up shop in a better place?

The Seni Solar System that Ria had pointed to was one such isolated star system, the only one of its kind.

It had one unremarkable planet with the most mundane and bog-standard elemental compositions, with an environment that could plausibly support life, but had never been investigated extensively because of how unattractive the star system was compared to the countless other opportunities to investigate alien life.

”Well?” He turned towards her. ”Is this it?”

She grew nervous. ”I’d need to be closer to tell, ideally at the planet, to be absolutely sure. But I think it might be, yes.”

”Good enough for me.” The Esoterist’s eyes lit up as he opened a channel to the Interstellar Superluminal Ballistics Spaceforce Division of the Esocline Spaceforce.

”Authority: Esoterist. Code: A6-77P-162B. Initiate Single-Strike Interstellar Superluminal Ballistics Operation. Target: Planet X-167. Location: Seni Star System. Weapon…” He spoke with an excited tone of voice. ”S-16 Samsara Tide Interstellar Missiles.”

”What…” Ria’s eyes widened with horror. ”What are you doing?”

”Something foolish and reckless, as always,” the Psyker heaved a sigh of exasperation. ”He’s firing a superluminal weapon that uses your father’s anti-virus poison as a payload against that planet.”

”But I thought you had to have a geological sample of the Tide of Samsara, right?” Ria asked with a stunned tone.

”That’s only with the paltry, diluted, super-safe kids-mode virus extermination system that the Gaian Alliance shares with the rest of human civilization,” he scoffed at her. ”Don’t compare my superweapons to that garbage. I cracked the Tide of Samsara and managed to harvest and replicate it, creating my own payloads and my own weapons systems derived from the poison!”

”And that’s precisely why using it so carelessly is reckless,” the Psycher directed a sharp gaze at him. ”If something goes wrong, the Tide of Samsara could begin spreading across the cosmos of human civilization in search of life to extinguish; you would have to ask His Majesty to intervene.”

”Hey, she said it’s an infected world,” the Psycher shrugged even as he grinned excitedly. ”If she’s wrong, then the fallout of this is on her.”

”Wha—!” She stared at him in horror. ”That’s a superweapon that can cause grave damage if it goes out of control! Cancel that orde—!”

”ZIP IT, PRINCESS!” He barked at her. ”You want me to take you seriously? Then I need at least this much empirical confirmation of your woodoo infected world astrology! Consider this to be a test. If this messes up, both of us will be in a lot of trouble, but if you’re right then…”

His expression blazed with excitement.

”Then you have yourself a new business partner.”

A hologram featuring a live feed of the mobilizing weapons system appeared before him with a wave of his hand before she could retort, along with a brief animation featuring the stages of the operation.

The weapon system contained a negatron-empowered world-bridge system that created a wormhole into the target’s star system before launching a missile with an FTL payload, an extremely extravagant, not to mention wasteful, deployment of negatron matter, but it made defending against weapons of mass destruction almost impossible.

Ria watched with an anxious expression as the rapid mobilization occurred over the span of merely five minutes.

RUMBLE

A wormhole opened at the entrance of the barrel of the missile. Another live feed of Planet X-167 emerged through the wormhole in the distance.

The Esoterist grinned.

”Fire!”

THWOOM

The missile was never even seen as it simply entered the wormhole as it exited the barrel of the launching system, being transmitted into the Seni Star System.

Moving at FTL speeds, the attack didn’t even need a second to strike.

She couldn’t hear the collision, but if she could, the explosion would have been catastrophically massive. The FTL projectile struck the planet with such force that a massive crater the size of a country emerged on the surface of the planet, causing the planet to visibly quiver and shudder.

That was just the physical impact.

The delivered payload was the actual purpose of the attack.

And, just like it had on Planet Sarantel, the Tide of Samsara quickly exploded forth.