Dimension

Chapter 6

Eyyyyy!!!!!!!

Chapter 6. Yay!

A hundred reads! Woohoo!

Here goes nothing!

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Throughout the past decade, it hasn't been uncommon for UPRN High Command to hold emergency meetings. With the UPR on the back foot of the war, every week meant a new list of battle plans and contingencies.

Yet today, the meeting was to discuss something else entirely.

Sixteen men and women were seated around a clear crystal table with a three-dimensional holograph of the Bubblegum Nebula projected above it.

"The Prythians do understand this would be an act of war, correct?" President Lyctove asked in his thick Ralina accent. "Isilon is a Republic protectorate. For all intents and purposes, it is our station."

"Hold on." Kuznetsov replied, standing from his seat directly opposite Lyctove, "Don't jump to conclusions. We have no reason to believe the Prythians did this."

"We lost contact with station security and the defense flotilla at the same time." Secretary-General Hasan replied, rising to meet Kuznetsov's height. "This was clearly a deliberate attack."

"That is not enough for a declaration of war." Kuznetsov retorted. "Anything could've cut communications. The station is in a nebula, for crying out loud."

"Fringe sensor clusters would've detected an anomaly."

"Bullshit!" Kuznetsov said, with admittedly more force than he had intended. "Those have been wrong time and time again. Trusting them now would put us on a one-way ticket to a multiversal conflict which could kill billions of people!"

"This is not the time for speculating! We have to act under the assumption that our clusters are correct! Prythian warships could be entering our borders as we speak-"

"Enough!" Lyctove shouted, slamming his fist down hard onto the table. "Both of you!" 

"I will not redeploy the fleet on your hunch, Secretary-General," Kuznetsov said slowly,  "Without the approval of all of High Command and the President." 

Lyctove let out a deep sigh. 

"Kuznetsov is... mostly correct," he began, "but we cannot let this go unanswered. The fact remains that our ships were destroyed and our people were killed. Either that, or we should expect to regain communications with them in a few days, a week at most."

"I feel as if I must reinforce the fact that our fleet is fighting defensively at best, and is in a full retreat at worst," Kuznetsov stated. "Stripping our defenses to persecute a war against the Prythian Assembly would be insane in every sense of the word."

Hasan swiped his hand across the holographic map of the Paragon galaxy and a similar map of Carok took its place. A series of blinking red dots were arrayed across the new map, most of which were deep within the Bubblegum Nebula.

"Our watchtowers in Carok are armed with stealth planetbusters," Hasan said, once again replacing the holographic display with the cross-section of a missile possessing an hourglass-shaped warhead. "Each missile contains twenty-five MIRV antimatter warheads."

"You are not suggesting we destroy Prythian planets." Kuznetsov responded in an uncompromising voice. He glanced at Lyctove, and suddenly felt sick when the president didn't make eye contact.

"Of course not." The hologram of the planetbuster miniaturized and one of a planet rose to replace it, with one of its six moons highlighted in bright red.