A Tyrant's Focus

(guest post by Garst Tyrell)

The tyrant exited the pristine medical bay with a confident stride, quickly but precisely closing the distance to the lift that would transport him to the upper levels. As he entered the lift a lone Amarrian bowed and held forth the master's command console. The scene played out as it always must: He dismissed the mortal as he seized the proferred device, his mind already focusing not on battles lost but greater wars yet to be won. The ritual complete the Amarrian silently stepped from the lift and bowed once more unnoticed as the doors snapped shut. The lift began its silent ascent from Hades. He would be back.

The display faded back into life to project a Triumvirate alliance logo as his hands waved impatiently over the screen, haptic sensors responding to his newest body's unique bio-electrical field. Form is subservient to function in all things, but he indulged in that most common of immortal fetishes: all replacement flesh for his future deaths must precisely match that of the original. He had lost the original so many lives ago so as to render any lingering significance irrelevant. Rather this was a calculated choice, the permanence of his noble form a constant reminder to those around him of his otherness, a pilgrim on the path to an apotheosis that they will never walk.

Preliminary reports for the skirmish in GE- had already been replaced with a final battle damage assessment during the tyrant's rebirth. He scrolled through the force disposition, destroyed ships highlighted in crimson red to honor/shame the fallen. He frowned as he stopped on the loss of his own Curse force recon vessel, crimson pulsing dully behind the text bearing its name: Dictator. As expected the engineers on nearby vessels recorded the Dictator had been overwhelmed, shields instantly collapsing under the strain from a massed volley of 1400mm macrocannon slugs. He involuntarily closed his eyes and felt the intense heat as his ship incinerated all inside and turned to nothing. His frown turned into a snarl as he suppressed the pain being forced on himself by a brain still convinced it was dead and finished reading the reports.

They had never had a chance. Many immortals refer to the system of GE- as the 'Thunderdome', an archaic reference to a meeting ground for fleet skirmishes of all size where commanders and pilots clash to test their tactics with bloody result. The tyrant his led his fleet into the system chasing easy prey, but his greed had got the better of him and he had over committed his ship to run down a pirate cruiser bleeding atmosphere from a number of breaches in its hull. But this prey had summoned friends to avenge its loss, interdiction probes trapping the Dictator as the enemy battleship fleet casually snuffed it out with the press of a button.

The lift decelerated to a stop and the doors slid slowly open to reveal a personal hanger. Garst strode forward to a waiting orbital shuttle, open hatch a loving embracing to return him to his rightful destiny written in the stars. As history has shown, that destiny proved to be very bloody indeed.