#i want new official content NAOW

[darabeatha]

important thing;;;

[interstellerace]

Know Your Enemy

Original Work

680 words

Rated PG for animated violence and a single swear

Inside a castle made of glass and steel twisted into shapes we can only imagine, an emperor stands in front of a throne impatiently whining like a child in front of a toy store window demanding what he wants NAOW!

A bare bones crew scurries from console to console, giving orders to soldiers miles away. Lights flash and energy surges along lines set into metallic structure, sending and receiving packets of data all displayed on a series of staggered holograms in front of a single woman.

Her face is a mask of concentration as she stars at the wall of light, watching the thousands of little green dots form ranks around a trio of small red dots and one big red dot. She slides her fingers along the light, dragging dot after dot to specific places, each with a small symbol denoting their branch and rank in the emperor’s army. At every twitch of her fingers, people scurry behind her to make the hologram reality.

As one small red dot moves without her guidance to a higher elevation, she double taps it and reassigns a symbol to it; marking the dot as long-range attacker. She reallocates her forces to deal with the new information, separating the one red dot from the others, and looking for opportunities to separate the others. She devises a plan to draw away another red dot from her main target, moving forces to surround them.

Her concentration is broken by a shrill screaming behind her. The emperor shouting, “Delthia, kill them! Kill them NOW! They’re surrounded!”

She ignores his shouting, the light of the hologram reflecting off her crystal-like skin as she drags each dot one at a time into position, careful not to move too many at…

“You there, send the order, kill them all, NOW!”

“Belay that! Only squads 31 through 34 should be engaged!”

The emperor roars with anger, “You are not in charge here! I am! I am the god king emperor of twelve systems, and you will Follow My Orders!”

Delthia finally turns from the hologram, “That man could kill us with a thought and the only thing stopping him is his sense of morality, which I know you have no concept of, but right now, he thinks all we are is idiots trying to punch him until he stops moving and as long at that’s what he thinks, he’s content to stay out there, tiering himself out. But if he thinks for one minute that we’ve slipped down the evil scale, that we are suddenly worthy of his full power, then it’s over for us. And I have to keep him just engaged enough out there to keep him out there but no so overwhelmed to force him in here until we’ve worn him down enough to capture him without setting off his ultimate, world ending power.”

Delthia feels a wave of catharsis flows over her, and as she feels the blinding rage begin to die, she notices something off about one of the few guards left inside the castle. “Also, who the fuck is that? Why don’t you torture them instead of me and let me do my job?”

Delthia turns back to the holograms, already feeling the pressure to catch up for the time lost yelling at the emperor only to see that, the red dots have vanished and the green ones are scattering. Delthia takes a moment to take a step back, take a breath, and take in the chaos around her. The officials are scrabbling trying to locate the enemy. The intruder’s helmet has been discarded revealing the face of the hero’s companion who was allegedly currently in the dungeon. The emperor is shouting at his diminished guard to recapture them and doing nothing himself.

Realizing the hubris of her actions, how this had been a futile venture from the start, that there was no way they were going to win, Delthia took the blaster from it’s holster on her hip and did the only thing she could think of to get out of this mess.