The Martial Unity

Rui stared at the Divine Mother with a dubious expression before shaking his head lightly. He didn’t exactly feel nice about ambushing an opponent in the middle of reproduction, that too, alien reproduction- but he didn’t make a fuss about it either. As long as he could kill the Divine Mother in question, he would gladly take up the mission.

”What about the defenses in the system?” Rui asked with a curious expression. ”Anything I should be concerned about? Any superweapons or heavy artillery in this Colton Star System?”

”There are more defenses than you can realize, but none of them are relevant to an administrator,” ooo—o- replied straightforwardly. ”However. It is possible and likely that this Divine Mother will try to use them to make an escape. Make sure not to get distracted by all the defensive measures in place.”

”Can you give me detailed information on the defensive measures?”

”I cannot do that,” she refused. ”It would weaken our civilization as a whole. I am selling out the War Faction, not the entirety of the Arakai Web Civilization. You will have to find a way to battle her despite those defenses. Perhaps the best part is that your goal isn’t to kill her, but to force her to use her Webverse.”

Rui smiled wryly. The divine mother was making a pointed reminder of what their agreement was. He was to force them to go all out and then leave. That would force them to disappear because of the consequences of the Webverse. Thereby weakening the arakai while the Divine Mother was out of commission, allowing the Pluralist Faction a greater say in the Divine Mother Council, and reducing the number of the Divine Mothers who wanted to attack human civilization.

It was unfortunate. He would have liked to kill them, but the moment he did, the agreement would fall apart, and he would not have made much of a difference in the war. The death of one Divine Mother was nowhere near enough to halt the arakai. If anything, it would only make them more militant. Only by removing a few dozen arakai from the equation would he be able to change the direction of the Council’s vote.

”Alright,” Rui accepted. ”What else are you able to share? What about her combat power? You said she’s a low-level Divine Mother. How does that compare to the three Divine Mothers I’ve fought?”

”She’s weaker than them,” Divine Mother ooo—o- replied. ”Divine Mother o-ooooo is an arakai who does not concern herself with combat. That doesn’t mean she isn’t capable of it. But she does not have the mindset of a warrior like -o- and —o-o— whom you ambushed. She is a civilian Divine Mother, for all intents and purposes. She mostly focuses her power on rearing excellent arakai descendants. Out of all of us, she takes her duties as the mother of the next generation more seriously than most. She spends all her time on reproduction for that reason.”

So removing her temporarily would put a great population pressure on the arakai. It would force them to take the deaths that they were suffering on their three-front war, especially with the Dessandrites and the Aquadites, much more seriously. Rui liked that.

He nodded. ”…Alright. I suppose that clears up all of the information that I need in order to complete this operation. One last question, though.”

His ethereal eyes sharpened.

”How do I know that this isn’t a trap for an ambush where you and several Divine Mothers lie in wait in order to capture me and extract the secrets of escaping Transcendence?”

The air grew serious as Rui thrust an aggressively suspicious question. He just wanted to see what her rawest reactions were like. The arakai didn’t have eyebrows, but she knitted them anyway, evidently unappreciative of the tone of his question.

Instead of simply denying them, she thought about the question for a moment. She highly doubted that he would be convinced by simple rejection of the possibility. She had to address the source of his suspicions if she wanted to assuage him.

”If I wanted to ambush you, I would have done so when I came here,” she began, turning back towards him. ”It would be easy for me to notice ten of my sisters on short notice and then jump on you while sealing off the entire star system, just as you ambushed two of my sisters in this very star system. Yet, I did not. And it is because, unlike my war-craving brethren, I understand that force is the least effective way to come into possession of something that doesn’t belong to you.”

Her expression morphed into what could only be described as an alien variance of contempt. ”My sisters in the War Faction… they have lusted after many such powers and knowledge. Though none as valuable as your ability to evade the price of the Verse. And they have failed to get their hands on most of it. Do you know why?”

Rui shrugged. ”Because they chose the wrong approach?”

”Yes, they chose to wage a destructive war each time, and each time, they only found themselves sifting through ruins,” she clicked with disdain. ”They wanted the amazing pocket dimension technology of the World Crawlers, but ultimately the war they waged led to the destruction of that very technology, leaving precious little that was intact. The World Crawlers were a civilization about the size of yours. They were razed to the ground by a Divine Mother as fanatical as the one leading the Web of War against your people. There was nothing left by the time this war ended. This is a pattern that the War Faction has repeated over and over again for eons.”

She bristled at the thought of how much precious knowledge and technology, not to mention unique species and cultures, had been lost to the ruination brought forth by war. Even when the War Faction was trying to be delicate in order to preserve something that belonged to their enemies, when faced with complete extinction or absolute subjugation, most civilizations chose some form of self-destruction, denying the arakai spoils of war.

It was an all too common occurrence.