Agent047
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886 - “From stardust you are made, and to stardust you shall return”
🕑 Added 2025-04-13 03:52:25 +0000 UTCAs he sat there, replaying the conversation in his mind, he began analyzing whether anything important had been overlooked during the heated exchange between the four holograms. It didn’t take long before he noticed a flaw in Hologram Four’s logic, one that hadn't been addressed during the debate.
The oversight? Hologram Four had failed to consider the possibility that the Empire might resort to using their black hole bombs if pushed into a corner. Any attempt to dominate or provoke the Empire could lead to catastrophic consequences if their survival was truly at stake.
Still, the realization came a little too late. A direction had already been chosen. A decision had been made. There was no longer room for second-guessing, at least not until the next meeting, when the final details would be reviewed and only approval remained.
So, without dwelling on it any longer, he rose from his seat and left the ship. As he walked through the corridors toward his quarters, he gave a command to his assistant, “Start arranging meetings with the other representatives. Prioritize those who’ve already received approval from their governments.”
Unbeknownst to him, he wasn’t the only one making moves. All across the Trade Hub, representatives who had received positive responses from their governments began reaching out to each other. The goal was clear: gauge where everyone stood on the offers, and see if they could align on a collective response and coordinated counterdemands.
This flurry of activity had an unintended effect. Those who were still undecided or waiting on final deliberations from their governments suddenly found themselves under pressure. The momentum of the others made them feel like laggards, and no one wanted to be the outlier who missed out on what might become the most transformative agreement in the Conclave’s history.
The fear of missing out spread like wildfire. Some began to suspect that this may have been the Empire’s plan all along, to use the secrecy of the VR negotiations to fragment the initial reactions, then allow peer pressure to push the hesitant into compliance.
Within the week, every representative had received some form of approval from their governments, either through genuine support or through political necessity born of FOMO. Along with these approvals came lists of conditions and inclusions they wanted added to the final agreement.
To consolidate their collective terms, the representatives began hosting long, intricate meetings inside the Trinarian representative’s mental network. But as they did, many of them found themselves missing the VR space they had experienced. The mental network was efficient, but it lacked the startling realism and emotional presence that the Empire’s virtual environment had delivered.
…………..
“We need to secure ourselves, from surveillance, unfair profit cuts, and other threats, but before anything else, we must first agree on the rules, regulations, and profit-sharing structure for the wormholes that will be connecting our different civilizations territories,” one representative said firmly, cutting through the growing chaos in the meeting room. “We need to resolve our interconnected issues and move forward with a unified stance before we start making demands of the Empire.”
His voice was an attempt to bring order to the increasingly disorganized meeting, where each representative had begun pushing their own agenda, blending internal and external concerns. No one wanted to be left out, knowing that missing even a single point could mean long-term losses for their faction.
But barely a second passed after he finished speaking, it was as if his words had been cast into the void. The meeting room immediately descended back into the same chaotic noise, as if nothing had been said at all.
This was just one of the many challenges they faced. The outcomes of these meetings would directly determine their future profits, leaving no one willing to back down. As a result, the first hour of the meeting had been far from productive, with little progress made and no clear direction established.
It wasn’t until the Trianrian representative threatened to disband the mental network that any sense of direction was restored. The threat struck a nerve; losing access to the mental network would mean being forced to negotiate in person, a move that risked drawing the Empire’s attention. The fear of exposure was enough to bring structure back to the meeting, at least for the moment.
……………..
“From stardust you are made, and to stardust you shall return,” Dreznor said quietly as he watched the footage from the long-range observation apparatus. The ship, now a coffin carrying all the dead, was consumed in flame as it entered the star’s atmosphere. What remained of it was soon vaporized against the stellar surface, reduced to nothing.
He blinked one last time before rising from the seat he had not left for seven days, the length of mourning determined by how long it would take the vessel to reach the star and complete its final rite. For Dreznor, it had been seven days of silence, of grief, of remembering.
“So,” he asked, voice steady now, “what is our next course of action?”
{We need to find an inhabited planet, ship, space station, or anything. Something with access to an updated database. Your ship only contained the bare minimum, with all sensitive data removed beforehand. The attack didn’t help either; all we recovered was a partially corrupted star map and a few other bits of data,} the little protagonist replied, her tone clipped, her frustration contained.
“Well, the ship was being decommissioned. It’s not surprising there wasn’t much left to begin with,” Dreznor said, rubbing his neck absently. His own knowledge of current affairs was barely useful; he had been a slave, cut off from the world for too long. Interstellar communication was expensive, with mana costs rising exponentially with distance. Only the important had access. He hadn’t been important.
{The information from you, while helpful, can’t guide us for long, not when we can’t return to your planet. For now, we’ll head toward the closest known star system. It’s two light-years away. At maximum speed, the trip will take three months,} she said as a map materialized in front of him, displaying their trajectory and destination.
“Any chance the pirates are headed there too?”
{Without knowing their motive for attacking you, it’s hard to predict their course. But I’ll monitor for any trace of them, movement patterns, signal echoes, anything,} she assured him, overlaying the recovered data: fragments from the ship’s damaged sensors, brain data from Dreznor, even the steps they had left during the attack.
Dreznor blinked in surprise. She had pulled more from the wreckage than he had expected.
“Then it’s best I use this time in VR,” he said, stepping toward the pod. “We should start drafting rudimentary objectives, plans to execute once we have the rest of the missing information.”
{I was about to suggest the same,} the little protagonist said, her avatar appearing beside him as the medpod sealed shut, doubling as a long-stay VR system. She followed him seamlessly into the virtual space.
Comments
GripenSupremacy
TYFTC!!!!!!!!
Sol_Invictus(Hail the Terran Empire)
TYFTC!!
