The Martial Unity

“Sir, we have lost full control of the Sorora Mining Station!”

“What?! What the hell happened?”

“Sir, you should look at this!”

Prime Minister Edward’s eyes widened as his subordinates shared with him an image featuring the zoomed-out feet of a large segment of the solar system. It had been wiped out.

Entire planets, asteroid belts, moons, and space debris.

All of it had been completely destroyed. Prime Minister Edward found himself completely frozen in horror at the unimaginable reality that he seemed to have woken up to. It had been midnight in the Britannian Empire when the shaking had spread across the entire continent, waking him from sleep.

He had been even more surprised at the incoming waves of water that washed over the entirety of human civilization and Gaia. That meant that whatever Rui was fighting against was so powerful that he needed to go all out in order to even fight back against.

And then, the shaking stopped.

The maelstrom of chaos stopped.

And for a moment, all of Gaia found itself in a state of blissful peace. There was a marked difference in the air as a sense of safety befell each and every single one of them.

And then, it happened.

Prime Minister Edward had gotten a flood of emergency reports from various institutions and organizations relating to outer space. They each shared images of a distant unidentified object that had entered their solar system. The object was unlike anything he had ever seen, resembling a soap bubble that had somehow been inflated to the size of a planet. It seemed to shear and jiggle as it emerged from an even greater wormhole, taking root at the edge of the solar system. Its surface was iridescent and a spectrum of colors, just like the surface of a soap bubble. Its depths were unfathomable and inscrutable.

Preliminary analysis concluded that it was likely a ship based on engineering paradigms that were entirely unfathomable by the standards of Gaian spaceship design.

And then, minutes later, he had been informed that an entire segment of the solar system had been utterly annihilated.

“This…” Prime Minister Edward’s eyes widened with shock as he studied the before and after images supplied by their telescopes. “What… what is this?”

His tone was one of pure, unadulterated shock.

“How is such a thing possible?”

Words could not even begin to describe how much what he was looking at moved him. “Our space telescopes and sensors recorded the solar system perfectly one moment, before recording its destruction the very next moment,” a young analyst explained with a strained tone, clearly struggling to maintain her composure. “The event of the destruction itself occurred many minutes before our recording of it due to the fact that light takes a long time to travel the vast distances of our solar system—”

“I’m asking you what the hell happened.” Prime Minister Edward gritted his teeth. “How. How could such a thing possibly happen? How could an entire segment of our solar system be destroyed?!”

The young analyst shifted on her feet with a hint of nervousness on her face. “According to our preliminary analysis, it was most likely a highly powerful and intense gravitational phenomenon. Most likely an extremely powerful gravitational wave that created an expanding gravitational well that converted matter into energy.”

Her fingers flew around the hologram display sitting on the table within Edward’s office, featuring other data that their sensors had managed to capture. “According to the data we have managed to gather. A powerful gravitational wave expanded outwards, emanating from the very edge of this solar system, at around the same point that the unidentified object is present at. This suggests that the unidentified object is likely responsible for the destructive gravitational wave.”

Prime Minister Edward found himself completely bewildered. “You’re telling me that alien entity destroyed an entire section of our solar system, just like that?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” The director of Britannian Intelligence responded instead, wearing a grim expression. “According to our analysis, the energy deployed by this alien entity vastly surpasses anything that we are capable of except for…”

His expression grew more grim. “Jormungandr and the Martial Transcendents. That is the caliber of the entity that appears to have tried to destroy us.”

Prime Minister Edward grew horrified at what he heard. “…If they are that strong and they tried to destroy us… Then what stopped them from succeeding?”

“Most likely, His Majesty has intervened,” the director replied with a solemn tone, the severity in his eyes reflecting the gravity of the situation. “It appears that His Majesty teleported from wherever he was to outer space, and somehow managed to negate the attack.”

Prime Minister Edward’s eyes widened with shock. “What?! You’re telling me Rui singlehandedly protected us from an attack of that caliber?!”

Prime Minister Edward knew that Rui had become extremely strong, but even he found it shocking that Rui had managed to negate an attack of such astronomical power. That seemed to break his understanding of the scales of power that existed within the Sage Realm.

He didn’t understand.

He didn’t understand how Rui had managed to become so powerful.

“We have reason to believe that His Majesty is confronting the alien entity at the moment,” the director added. “It would be extremely unwise to let our greatest asset face this particular threat by himself. If something were to happen to him, it would be of devastating consequence to our entire civilization. He is also the only one who likely understands what is happening right now. Most likely this alien entity is connected somehow to the alien entity that His Majesty insisted was present within Gaia and had focused on confronting.”

In that moment, all of a sudden, Prime Minister Edward felt old. He felt outdated and obsolete. His entire life, all of his experience, all of his competencies, none of them had prepared him for dealing with an alien threat of such a magnitude. He was so far out of his depths of understanding and his area of comfort that he felt like a rookie.

He now better understood why his late friend Rael had privately confided in him about his intention to abdicate his throne sooner or later. They were both molded and shaped in an era that was entirely different from the era in which he was. The race to space, alien threats, and traversing the stars…

These were beyond him.

In his heart, he made a resolution.

Once this threat was over, he would retire and let the next generation take charge and lead their destiny in this new era.

But for now, he had a crisis to solve.