Inconceivable Ch. 31 (Invincible AU) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Out in space, things continue apace.

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Thaedus stares out the viewport into space, still in disbelief at what he is witnessing with his own two eyes. That being… absolutely nothing at all. There’s nothing in front of him save for the backdrop of distant stars. No planets, no sun, no nothing. If one didn’t know any better, they would say there had never been a star system here at all.

But he did know better. That was the problem. When the report had first come in, he had assumed it was just a mistake. Allen wasn’t always the… best with directions. He often got confused about where he was in relation to galactic space. But he’d been certain and so others were sent to confirm what he was claiming.

When those reports came in, Thaedus had not hesitated. He’d immediately got on a ship and come out here himself. He could do nothing less… he had to see it with his own eyes. And even now that he was, the temptation to leave the ship and float freely in space to actually make sure it wasn’t some kind of… of trick, was extremely powerful.

He restrains himself, but it’s still a near thing. Because this? This didn’t make any sense. And what little sense it did make… was as horrifying as it was terrifying.

“I feel like I need to reiterate that it was like this when I got here.”

“Allen…”

Thaedus doesn’t react to Allen’s words. He barely even processes them. But when Telia speaks the Unopan’s name in a disappointed tone, he finally tears himself away from the viewport and turns to regard his second.

“General Telia. Report.”

Immediately snapping to attention, her eyes becoming focused as she rips them away from Allen and looks to Thaedus, Telia pauses for a moment to collect her thoughts. Then, she begins.

“Extensive scans are completed sir. They have been double and triple checked as well. As our initial long-distance readings told us, something happened here… something big. These new scans confirm what some of our analysts already suspected… something has utterly destroyed the Viltrum Star System, causing the star to go supernova and blowing up every planet, including Viltrum itself.”

The General pauses for another moment to swallow before continuing.

“However, this was no normal supernova. Nor was it even just artificially induced. A weapon was used here that made the supernova ten times more effective. There’s barely any space debris left behind and what little remains has been propelled out of the system at speeds that following any of it will take… years of work.”

Thaedus’ jaw clenches but he nods encouragingly all the same.

“And what have we managed to uncover regardless of that? What have our scans told us.”

Consulting her tablet, Telia bites her lower lip for a moment.

“Well… sir… there are… miniscule remnants. Even a supernova this powerful can’t completely erase everything. The amounts we’ve been able to detect aren’t even enough for a proper testing sample unfortunately, but we have nevertheless been able to identify the fragments of Viltrumite cells.”

Eyes narrowing into slits, Thaedus stares intensely.

“And?”

Again, the General hesitates. But to be fair, nobody likes to be the bearer of bad news.

“B-Billions, sir. At this point we’ve been able to detect billions of unique traces of Viltrumite Cells.”

Billions. Thaedus feels like he’s been struck in the diaphragm. In the end, he actually needs to sit down, landing heavily in a chair as the weight of what she’s just revealed settles upon his shoulders.

It shouldn’t have been possible. The Scourge Virus should have decimated his species. All projections, even the most pessimistic, had been clear that millions would survive at most. And the Empire… the Empire had been stagnant for the past thousand years, ever since the Scourge Virus was unleashed on them, so it had clearly done something.

But what if it hadn’t done enough? What if all it had done was make the Viltrumites more cautious? Had they simply developed a more isolated and insular diplomatic policy? Hah, the very idea of Viltrumites and diplomacy was utterly absurd… but still, if the destruction of the Viltrum Star System had resulted in the deaths of billions of Viltrumites, then they were not nearly as weak as he’d hoped they were. The threat hadn’t been even slightly curtailed by the Scourge Virus.

Of course, none of that mattered in the face of… this.

“I don’t really see what the problem is. So Viltrum is gone, right? That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

Allen’s words cut through the tense silence, leading Thaedus to look over at the Unopan quietly. He hadn’t expected the other man to… disobey him like he did. Allen had always been obedient enough before, an agent who could be relied upon to follow orders.

For him to buck that trend now and refuse to return home… well, it could have resulted in catastrophe. Instead, Allen’s little rebellion had led precisely to this moment. The Unopan had admitted to flying through what had once been the Viltrum Star System multiple times before he realized he wasn’t lost but rather it had ceased to exist. He’d contacted them with the news immediately afterwards.

Now here they were on the Coalition of Planets’ flagship, having led a small fleet (every ship that could be scrambled on short notice) into the heart of the Viltrumite Empire to discover once and for all what had happened to the powerful, tyrannical species.

Thaedus didn’t necessarily think Allen was stupid. However… he finds himself huffing slightly as the Unopan continues to stare at him with his one big eye filled with confusion.

“… Tell me Allen, what do you think happened here?”

Blinking, Allen looks out the viewport and scratches his cheek with a large orange finger as he considers the sheer emptiness that once was a star system.

“Uh… well, the Viltrumites blew themselves up, right? Had to have.”

Thaedus scoffs.

“’Had to have’? And why is that?”

Allen frowns and crosses his arms over his broad chest.

“Well… what else could have happened?”

Letting out a tired, mirthless chuckle, Thaedus shakes his head.

“That’s the problem. We don’t know. But answer me this… do you truly believe the Viltrumites recalled every single one of their agents back to Viltrum… just to blow themselves up?”

Allen opens his mouth to respond… and then closes it. He spends the next minute pondering Thaedus’ words while silence reigns over the room. Until finally…

“No? I mean… that doesn’t really make any sense. Why would they do that?”

Thaedus nods, once more turning his eyes towards the viewport.

“Why indeed? No… I don’t think that’s what they did at all. I think… I think someone else did this to them.”

Choking on his own spit, Allen uncrosses his arms, looking absolutely flabbergasted.

“What?! But who could do that? Who could blow up every Viltrumite like that? It wasn’t us, obviously!”

Thaedus snorts derisively.

“No, it wasn’t us. Obviously. Still, you’re finally asking the right questions. Something made the Empire recall every Viltrumite outside of the Viltrum Star System back home. Something made them abandon the rest of the Empire… perhaps an enemy that needed to be fought. An enemy that was too much for them to handle. This enemy… has wiped the Viltrumite Species out of existence.”

Well, save for one. If Thaedus was right, he was the last living Viltrumite. The last of his entire species. For a long time, he had believed that was the only path forward towards a peaceful and free galaxy. He had developed the Scourge Virus specifically because he didn’t think his people could be changed, that they could become anything more than the tyrants they were.

Heh. Be careful what you wish for. Because now… now that Thaedus seemed to have finally gotten what he wanted, he found himself completely at a loss about whether it was a good or a bad thing. And no, not because he mourned the Viltrumites who had died here. He didn’t, truthfully.

No, it was because… he had not been the one to wipe out his warmongering species. And that meant...

"Hang on, whoever killed the Viltrumites... what if they’re even worse?!”

Telia brings her palm to her face as Thaedus gives Allen a deadpan stare. The Unopan isn’t joking though… he’s literally just caught up.

“Yes Allen. That is indeed the concern.”

“But then… we’ve got to find them! We have to figure out who they are and how they did this! So that we know what we’re up against!”

On the one hand, Thaedus agreed with Allen. On the other hand… there was no ‘we’ about it.

“You will be doing no such thing, Allen.”

“What?! But sir, I-!”

SLAM!

“Enough!”

Rising to his feet, Thaedus pins Allen with a glare, freezing the Unopan in place.

“You disobeyed my direct orders, Allen. I told you to return to Talescria so we could discuss next steps. And instead you came here without permission.”

“But I had to! If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have even known about this!”

Thaedus shakes his head.

“Do not be so bigheaded. I told you that we’d picked up strange readings from the Viltrum Star System. I told you that we would discuss our next moves upon your return. Do you think we would not have continued to investigate? Further scans were in the pipeline. Clandestine operatives would have been sent out on subtler missions to check on our initial readings.”

Allen doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. Good, Thaedus barely has the patience for the artificial Unopan at this point.

“You chose to come out here yourself in defiance of your orders. You chose to risk your life and the security of our operations so you could see it with your own eye. If you had not done so, we merely would have found out about this a few weeks later. Because you did so, we learned it a little sooner but risked everything in the process.”

The Unopan at least has the good grace to look sheepish as he rubs the back of his head.

“I just… I just knew the mission wasn’t done. I knew there was something more to be discovered.”

Thaedus makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat.

“Well it’s done now. And so are you. You are not some big damn hero, gallivanting off through space to do whatever you feel is right, Allen. You are a Coalition of Planets’ evaluation officer. It’s high time you got back to your proper role.”

He stops just short of telling the Unopan that involving him in this entire exercise was a mistake from the start. Allen clearly hadn’t been ready and in hindsight, they couldn’t rely on him.

“But… but what about all of this? What about whoever wiped out the Viltrumites? And hell, what’s going to happen to the Viltrumite Empire now that we know they’re all gone?”

Thaedus sighs and exchanges a glance with Telia. The General steps forward and clears her throat.

“The Coalition has no intentions of dropping this line of inquiry, Evaluation Officer Allen. However, your services are needed elsewhere. You are weeks late to your next evaluation of the planet Urath, for instance. We will take it from here.”

Allen looks heartbroken. Thaedus is well aware that the artificial Unopan carries something of a torch for General Telia. He’s pretty sure that Telia is also aware of this. Whether anything eventually comes of it is between the two of them. For now though… Allen has done this to himself. It will take time for him to build back the trust he has broken here.

Fortunately, he at least has the mental maturity not to throw a fit. Hanging his head, the orange-skinned alien slowly nods.

“I… I understand. I’ll… get back to work. Sir. General.”

He salutes them both and then departs. Thaedus watches him go for a moment, hoping that Allen will do as he’s been told this time and not go gallivanting off to find the source of this… annihilation. But of course, it’s not like any of them have the time to babysit the Unopan either. Rather…

“Call for a meeting of the Assembly, General. I want everyone assembled by the time we get back to Talescria so we can give them all this report at the same time and discuss our next moves.”

“Yes sir!”

They would be very busy for the next while. Figuring out who had actually destroyed the Viltrum Star System would probably have to be secondary unless they revealed themselves and started threatening other star systems. In the meantime… the rest of the Viltrumite Empire was now completely and utterly rudderless and leaderless.

That left an opening for the Coalition of Planets to expand and bring those who had lived under the rule of tyrants for centuries and in some cases millennia into the modern era. An era of freedom and prosperity.

Just because the Viltrumites were gone... didn’t mean the work was done. Though once Thaedus knew what had wiped out his species and whether it was still a threat to everything he had worked to build… he would have to decide whether it was time for him to go as well.

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A/N: Thaedus is panicking!

Throw me a comment if you can but please leave a Like if you don’t want to, it’s the main metric I use to track whether a story is doing well or not!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HoCy5xFMdxRyWLxtUpERaU-qnAwswVT8AWctswux678/edit?tab=t.0