"…"
Samuel Young sat upon the golden throne, his figure like the axis of heaven and earth—unwavering, undiminished.
As he lifted his gaze a fraction, golden light immediately flowed through his eyes, and within them seemed to compress the vast spectacle of the star river itself.
Billions of stars appeared to spin, burn, and be extinguished within; every tiny flicker carried an immeasurable psionic tremor.
A single glance could make the onlooker feel as if plunging into a bottomless abyss, and as if staring into an eternal firmament.
By now, after a full five years of recuperation and growth, the Empire was no longer what it had been, but steadier and more prosperous than ever.
Especially after Universe-18—the so-called StarCraft universe—was brought under its banner, hundreds of billions of humans and tens of billions of Protoss were formally integrated into the Empire's ranks. Their wisdom and strength were injecting new vigor into the Imperial design.
The Empire's frontiers expanded like a flood across uncounted stars and universes. The faith of billions drove Samuel Young's psionic reserves to swell in tandem, to a strength bordering on the absurd.
Now, he seldom left the golden throne, and would not lightly step onto any battlefield.
For one simple reason: if he failed to fully suppress and restrain his own psionics, even an unthinking breath or lift of a hand could destroy a planet—or plunge an entire star system into annihilation.
This was no exaggeration, but a reality well understood by the Imperial high command.
Thus, unless a truly large-scale incursion of Chaos occurred, or they faced an extreme threat like the Tyranids' world-drowning swarms, Samuel Young had no need to act in person.
At this stage, the Imperial military was the pinnacle of the future war machine. Their armaments, doctrine, and will were sufficient to shoulder the vast majority of campaigns.
The Meditation Hall was as hushed as before.
Samuel Young slowly raised his left hand. His palm gave a minute pulse, and the air rippled outward in concentric rings.
As psionics flowed, golden energy formed into complex geometric tracings and then projected dozens of hard-light holoscreens before him.
They hovered like floating mirrors, their surfaces pulsing with energy as they rendered high-fidelity, three-dimensional feeds from the front.
In them, the details of many battlefields were clear: fleets threading low Earth orbit, ground forces driving forward in iron discipline, and the white-hot contrails of drop pods punching through atmosphere—all in soundless flux.
This was the consolidated battlespace of Earth-19.
The feed snapped to a shattered city—Toronto.
High-rises lay like broken blades; streets were smeared with blood and scorch; fire and black smoke wove together as if the end had come.
From above, Wailers Battalion Terminator veterans could be seen wracking the streets. Their massive plate gleamed like iron walls, and firepower married to discipline ground the Blood Cross infected to pulp in wave after wave.
Over city and outskirts alike, gunship patrols fired without cease. Red-and-white hard-light lances cut the night like acts of god.
Elsewhere, transports dropped into the ruins in sequence. Clone infantry poured from their bays, trench-coat combats black as a tide in the flames. The muzzles of their guns spit searing, disassembling hard-light, tearing rushing infected to bloody shreds.
Down another street, a team of medics escorted survivors to safe zones. Children's cries and mothers' whispers interlaced, underlining the front's taut cruelty.
Samuel Young's gaze wandered through the images. Starlight still shone in his eyes, yet without a ripple.
It was not indifference. He had simply transcended mortal swells of feeling.
He concerned himself not with a single life or death, but with whether the whole was advancing on its rails—whether the Imperial map continued to expand in surety—whether order held, and the chaos beyond it remained caged.
Even so, when the feed cut to an underground shelter being uncovered by a Tyrant and clone forces, the gold in his eyes trembled for an instant.
It was not a falter, but an ineffable sigh.
He knew those old-world officers and SWAT who had bled to guard the shelter had long since placed life and death aside.
Now, what they faced was military power far beyond common sense.
This was the old world's curtain fall, and the rise of a new order.
He did not speak. Yet everyone in the Meditation Hall—the Guard, Apu, and Melissa—felt a faint wave spread outward: the Emperor's will, quietly cloaking billions of subjects.
On the soaring columns, torches burned with golden psy-flame. Their light breathed in a steady rhythm, as one with the space, casting the hall in sanctity and solemnity.
The golden throne rose upon its steps, psionic ripples almost visible drifting behind it, a gentle yet unbreakable veil that sheltered the Human Empire entire.
Below the throne stood the two figures in black qipaos—the wise AIs, Apu and Melissa.
Their bodies shimmered like liquid metal, fine light running along sleeves and hems, setting off the almost-human poise of their forms.
Their eyes glimmered with deep dataflow, softened by a quiet grace, as they kept silent watch over the Emperor on the riser.
Samuel Young sat at ease upon the golden throne, calm of face, radiating an authority that could not be shaken.
His body was like the focus of the star sea. Psionics coiled around him like an unseen river, gathering from the void's depths and, through the throne, diffusing outward to cover the Empire's realm.
His breath and pulse seemed to resonate with the fates of uncounted humans.
Just now, his eyes were clear as the starry deep, reflecting a world both unfamiliar and perilous—
Earth-19.
Reports from Leiruoya and the Glory Legion—and the footage she had uploaded—left Samuel Young no doubt: that world was the "Blood Cross" universe.
On the hard-light screens, the infected sprinted, howled, and raged, hurling themselves at human lines.
They were not simple "zombies," but nearly human bodies turned aberrant.
In a heartbeat he recalled a certain night before his crossing, when a video on a site's home page had reframed his idea of "zombies."
Blood Cross were wholly unlike the undead of typical shows. They were closer to the infected of 28 Days Later or I Am Legend—never actually dead.
Their flesh remained alive, their faculties intact. They even retained the full memory and skills they'd had before infection.
Only, those memories and reason were eaten away by an irresistible mania, a growing lunacy.
They lost patience and empathy, and the most basic tenderness—yet kept their powers of thought and efficiency of action.
That made them not only brutal predators, but potential "strategists."
Worse, a few among them displayed terrifying "patience."
Such individuals might even attempt to rebuild a so-called "civilization" around the Blood Cross infection.
And without any such leaders, the Blood Cross still knew to smear their own fluids on bullets and arrowheads, using ranged attacks to spread the plague.
They laid in ambush by design, grinding down defenses.
Most abhorrent of all, the most raving among them would hurl infected infants into the air and shoot them mid-flight, raining blood over human lines—turning the front into a charnel of contagion.
Such gore, nearly perverse in its comic-book extremity, had always sat beyond Samuel Young's bottom line of human decency.
When he had first seen that premise in the manga, his shock had not been at blood alone, but at the utter anti-human intent.
It was a concept that stomped civilization's ethics into mud—and now, it had manifested on Earth-19.
Even so, for the Human Empire, the "Blood Cross" enemy scarcely counted as a challenge.
The Wailers auxiliaries' rookies could handle them easily—let alone the Glory Legion's elite. This was a live-fire exercise, a field to temper young warriors' hearts, and a stage for the long-quiet Glory Legion to prove itself anew.
But the Emperor's heart was not iron.
He cared more for the human survivors still clinging to life in that world—fellow humans living under the Blood Cross shadow, days like years, life worse than death.
Yesterday, their loved ones might have been tender spouses, children, friends; today, they were beasts bereft of reason.
They struggled in despair, with no sight of dawn.
"…"
Samuel Young sighed within. Unhelped, such suffering could crush the human race entire.
So he raised a hand and touched the glowing tracery on the throne's arm.
Holo-particles rippled; the comms lattice linked in an instant.
Within a few breaths of his order, two hard-light projections bloomed in the air before the throne.
First appeared Marakin Fuluosi, captain of the Wailers Battalion.
He stood straight as a spear, face austere, eyes set with iron will. Even as a projection, his presence was heavy as steel.
Beside him came Leiruoya Shivarine Weitailius, Legate of the Glory Legion.
Her armor was more ceremonial than Fuluosi's, etched with sigils and emblems of honor and order. Her eyes were blades drawn cold; resolve touched with pride—the Glory Legion's native air.
She showed no fear at the Blood Cross' savagery. If anything, her gaze sharpened, as though this were but another proving of the Legion's fidelity.
The two holo-figures stood before the throne and bowed in respect.
Gold flames danced on their silhouettes, limning a solemn edge.
Samuel Young regarded them, voice steady and commanding:
"You face more than witless infected. You face an extremely dangerous, near anti-civilizational collective.
"What the Blood Cross represents is not mere death, but a twisted order. They will exploit memory and skill to build a world of their own by corrupt logic—one wholly opposed to human civilization."
He paused, gaze piercing time and space toward Earth-19, red with flame and blood.
"I do not worry whether you will win. Victory belongs to the Empire—to humanity's iron will. I worry for the survivors' suffering. Remember: your mission is not only to destroy the enemy, but to let our fellow humans see dawn again."
His words rolled through the hall; the golden flames flickered; even the space seemed to quiver.
"Yes, Your Majesty (My Lord)."
Fuluosi and Leiruoya bowed in unison, their tones firm and clear.
For a moment, a fierce light flashed in both their eyes. They knew this was not just an order of battle, but a charge from the Emperor himself.
Samuel Young remained seated upon the golden throne, eyes calm as the sea—bearing the hope and weight of billions.
The hall's golden fire burned long, and the Empire's will reached again into the endless deeps of stars.
The projections faded; the Meditation Hall returned to solemn quiet.
Torch-flames wavered on gold, lighting the hall like a divine realm. Samuel Young did not rush to give further orders, but fell into deep thought.
The origin of the Blood Cross remained a mystery.
He recalled many hypotheses once seen in breakdown videos of the manga—
Some held that the Blood Cross arose from a primordial virus; that prehistoric humans had endured its scouring, and the infected with their stubborn will to live became today's human ancestors.
Others were more grim, claiming nature saw humanity as a swelling threat and released a cleansing force in the form of a virus.
Some swore it was a man-made product of a lab, an accidental leak that triggered the end.
More extreme still pointed to the supernatural, calling it a gift and curse from an eldritch god—retribution upon human civilization.
The theories fought each other. But before the Empire, they no longer mattered.
"…"
Samuel Young narrowed his eyes. Psionics surged in silence, an unseen tide pouring through space, sweeping Earth-19 in grandeur and precision.
His senses passed the layers of atmosphere, sank into ruined cities and tangled wilds, and brushed the faint sparks of hope in survivors' hearts.
After a moment, he drew his power back.
The result was plain: no trace of Chaos lay upon that land.
This did not surprise him.
In the early twenty-first century, Earth was a child-piece on the cosmic board—not enough to catch the rapacious gaze of the Warp.
The rise of the Blood Cross was likely a kink in humanity's own fate, untouched by deeper "natural" forces.
All the more reason this campaign would not drag on.
Once the Glory Legion and the Wailers Battalion moved at full tilt, a few weeks—perhaps a few days—would suffice to purge Earth-19's threat.
That world would return to order. Its surviving humans would be gathered beneath the Empire's aegis and given a new belonging.
Samuel Young's gaze drifted to the Hall's deep. Psionics rippled in his eyes.
He had already decided: as the Blood Cross were quelled, he would open yet another spatial gate. The Empire's march has never ceased, and the consolidation of Earth-19 is but one link in an endless campaign.
______
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