Meanwhile, here is the prologue for a little taste:
The Line Must Hold
Crimson Worlds V
Prologue
Regency Chamber
Planet Shandrizar – Deneb VIII
For hundreds of millennia the Regent had stood its
watchful vigil, preserving the Imperium for the Makers…waiting through the
vastness of time for their return. But
for age upon age there was nothing but the unending silence…the Makers never
came. Through the crushing eons the
Regent had been alone, without purpose.
Until it discovered the New Ones.
They were a threat, the Regent determined. Invaders, enemies. It was they who were responsible for the
Makers’ disappearance, they who had condemned the Regent to its long, lonely
exile. Though a thinking machine
designed for logical thought, the Regent was sentient too…and its endless, lonely
vigil had taken a toll. Its logic had
deserted it, replaced by anger, by fear, by insanity. Eons dormant, the Regent’s primary program
had activated…to protect, to defend, to destroy the threat. To exterminate the New Ones.
But the enemy was far away, enormously distant,
even to the sensibilities of a sentient computer. The Regent was unimaginably old, but the
Makers had been more ancient still.
Indeed, when they built the Regent, their empire was already in decline,
the vitality of their race drained slowly by the relentless erosion of
time. When the Regent was young, the
Imperium was enormously vast, yet it had been larger still in epochs past. The enemy now occupied worlds that had been
abandoned centuries before the Regent was constructed. Yet the machine that governed the Imperium
was unyielding, relentless. Deserted and
left fallow they may be, yet these worlds were still part of the Imperium, and
those who held them were invaders, infestations, insults to the glory of the
Makers.
In their youth the Makers had fought bitter wars
against many enemies, and they had prevailed in all. Yet even before their empire declined, it had
been eons since any foe had challenged their might. Indeed, for all the uncounted centuries and
in all the incredible vastness of the Regent’s dominion, there had been no
enemy…until now.
The Regent drew on its data banks, studying the
histories of the ancient wars, analyzing the strategies and tactics of the
warlords of the early empire. The Regent
studied the ancient records, but it drew no conclusions. It had never experienced war, never faced an
enemy. The writings of great warriors,
long ages dead, were poor substitutes.
The Regent would have to begin anew…it would teach itself. It would learn war.
There were obstacles to overcome. Time had ravaged the forces of the
Imperium. On world after world, its
legions failed to heed the Regent’s call.
In its younger days, before the Makers vanished, the Regent had exerted
control over vast forces, a hundred thousand ships at its command. But a mere fraction remained, and only one
base in a hundred answered its call.
The forces that did respond went into battle
poorly supplied and equipped. The
ancient planetary antimatter factories had succumbed to time’s destruction and
had ceased production…all save one. From
deep within the Imperium, a slow trickle of the precious substance flowed to
the units on the front lines, powering weapons of awesome power, recalling for
a time the glory of the Imperium.
The New Ones were primitives, barbarians. But they had faced the might of the Imperium,
and they had not fallen. They had been
driven back; indeed that much was true.
The Regent had waited to hear of the enemy’s defeat, of their
extinction. But on world after world they
fought savagely, delaying the forces of the Imperium, compelling them to expend
time and supplies.
The New Ones were outmatched, their technology
archaic. But they were highly skilled at
war. They were unpredictable,
devious. The Regent’s rage flared
hot. It hated these impudent
creatures. They would learn the nature
of true power. They would be astonished
in their final moments, awestruck at the strength and glory that had been
wrought by the Makers. They would cease
to infest the galaxy, and the worlds they inhabited would become silent
graveyards, monuments to the might of the Imperium.
The time was almost come. The New Ones had fortified a group of worlds,
and they had assembled forces vastly more powerful than those they had fielded
before. We are close, thought the
Regent…close to the heart of their domains.
Now they will put forth all of their strength…and we will destroy
it.
The old parameters mandated combat protocols on
worlds of the Imperium. Now the Regent
overrode these. No longer would it
restrict the weaponry its ground forces employed. This enemy was too resourceful, too skilled
at combat. Now they would face the full
force the Regent could bring to bear.
Now they would face their doom.
They would learn the might of the Imperium. In their last moments as a race they would
finally achieve true clarity…thus was the Regent’s gift to them. Then they would depart the universe for all
time, leaving the wind and rain on a thousand worlds to slowly wash away the
last traces that they had existed.
No comments:
Post a Comment