Ivan Kal - What War Had Wrought

Shara Daim Legion — Shara Daim Legions consist of 800 destroyers, 600 cruisers, 400 heavy cruisers, 180 battleships, and 20 super battleships, for a total of 2000 warships, plus another 150 auxiliary vessels, for a total of 2150 ships.

Appearance — Pillar shaped.

Size — 850 meters long, 200 meters diameter.

Weapons and defenses — Low-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Appearance — Pillar shaped.

Size — 1100 meters long, 400 meters diameter.

Weapons and defenses — Low-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Appearance — Pillar shaped.

Size — 1400 meters long, 600 meters diameter.

Weapons and defenses — Mid-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Appearance — Pillar shaped, with a widening at the middle of the ship in a shape of a rectangular box.

Size — 2400 meters long, 600 meters diameter of the pillar, 1400 meters wide middle part, 800 meters tall middle part.

Weapons and defenses — High-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Appearance — Pillar shaped, with a widening at the middle of the ship in a shape of a rectangular box.

Size — 3500 meters long, 800 meters diameter of the pillar, 2000 meters wide middle part, 1000 meters tall middle part.

Weapon and defenses — High-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Erasi Fleet — Erasi fleets consist of 1000 destroyers, 500 light cruisers, 300 heavy cruisers, 120 battleships, and 30 super battleships, for a total of 1950 warships, plus 120 auxiliary vessels, for a total of 2070 ships.

Appearance — Saucer shaped.

Size — 800 meters diameter, 120 meters tall.

Weapons and defenses — Low-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Appearance — Saucer shaped.

Size — 1200 meters diameter, 200 meters tall.

Weapons and defenses — Low-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Appearance — Saucer shaped.

Size — 1500 meters diameter, 250 meters tall.

Weapons and defenses — Mid-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Appearance — Saucer shaped.

Size — 2200 meters diameter, 400 meters tall.

Weapons and defenses — High-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Appearance — Saucer shaped.

Size — 2800 meters diameter, 700 meters tall.

Weapons and defenses — High-powered particle beams, missile launchers. Laser point defense, shields.

Year 42 of the Empire — Sanctuary

Jacob Kelly, the former leader of the Earth Resistance, woke inside his cell just as the lights turned on. The word cell was a bit misleading, as the rooms he had been living in were nothing like what the cells on Earth had looked like. His permanent residence consisted of three rooms: a small bathroom, the main room, and a training room. The main room held the bed he slept in, one chair, and a desk with a computer terminal. The training room was twice the size of the main room, with enough room for running and a couple of weightlifting machines. And it had been his entire world for more than twenty years.

In the time since he had been imprisoned, Jacob hadn’t seen another person. He received his food and water through the slits in the wall, and over the years he had become convinced that the entire process was automated. The computer didn’t have access to any network; he could only access files already on it, which were a large library of books and a writing software which he tried to use but eventually dropped.

It had taken him a long time to make peace with his sentence, and even longer to come to terms with his crime. When the fleet that had come to Earth’s rescue returned to Olympus—or the Empire, as it was called by then—Jacob was put on trial for his crimes in the Sol system. He was charged with treason and mass murder. Both charges were true, and Jacob had elected to admit his guilt and accept the sentence from the Empire. He had withheld information concerning the Ra’a’zani, which had indirectly led to the destruction of most of the Empire’s fleet and the death of almost the entire population of Earth. That action weighed heavily on him, but at his sentencing, it was made perfectly clear to him that he was not on trial for that crime.

After the Sol system had been won, Jacob had taken control of an old Olympus ship and fired on the mining installations in the Mars asteroid belt, killing thousands of humans who had been brought there as a slave workforce. He had done it because he’d known that those people could not survive without the support from Earth, and that the Empire’s fleet was in no shape to take care of them. He’d known that they would try anyway, and in doing so would endanger the survivors from Earth. So he’d done the thing that ensured the survival of the remnants. His punishment was imprisonment rather than execution. He had been put through the immortality treatment, which stopped him from aging, effectively making his imprisonment unending.

He knew that what he had done was monstrous, but to his mind, it was also merciful. He had spared the Empire from having to choose—a slow death for everyone, or survival of the few. It was a terrible choice, but Jacob had made it fully expecting to be put to death for his crime. And yet he still lived. In a way, it was a far crueler punishment, because Jacob was not a monster. He felt the weight of all those whose lives he had taken; their screams and accusing eyes haunted his dreams every time sleep came.

There were times when the guilt became too much, when he could not bear it anymore, when he was tempted to end his life. But every time he contemplated ending it, he remembered those accusing eyes from his dreams, and he knew that he didn’t deserve an easy way out. He would take his punishment; he would spend eternity inside these three rooms.

Jacob got up from the bed and started going through his usual routine, bathroom-training-breakfast. After he finished in the bathroom, he went to the training room for his morning routine. He didn’t know if it was really morning, but he did have a clock on one of the walls which showed that it was 06:20. The lights in his rooms always turned on at 06:00 and shut off at 22:00. So he used those times for night and day.

And then when he was finished with his routine, something happened. The wall in the main room slid open, and Jacob was looking at a figure, the first living being he had seen in decades. The figure was dressed in a black armor suit that covered its entire body, with a dark blue coat over it. There was a symbol etched on the armor’s chest, the back of a hand with an open eye drawn on it.