On a distant planet, far from the familiar blue world called Earth, beings in white uniforms floated above a landscape that had been transformed into a vision of hell.
Their uniforms, once pristine and proud symbols of their empire's might, were now soaked through with blood. Red stains covered the white fabric in patterns that spoke of brutal, close-quarters combat. Some of the stains were still wet, dripping slowly in the planet's lighter gravity.
There was chaos everywhere. The signs of recent battle were impossible to miss.
Buildings that had stood for eons were now reduced to rubble. Sophisticated technology lay scattered and broken across the ground. Fires burned in the distance, sending columns of black smoke into the sky.
And everywhere, absolutely everywhere, there were corpses.
The bodies covered the ground like a macabre carpet. Most of them were yellow-skinned, belonging to the native inhabitants of this world. They lay in twisted positions, faces frozen in expressions of terror and pain. Some were still clutching weapons they had tried to use in their final moments. Others had clearly been fleeing when death caught them.
Among the yellow corpses were some bodies in white uniforms - the invaders had not emerged from this battle completely unscathed. But these white-uniformed casualties were extremely few in number compared to the carnage inflicted upon the defenders.
For every fallen invader, there were millions of native dead.
This was not a battle. This was a massacre executed with ruthless efficiency by the beings in white.
They were Viltrumites, the most feared conquerors in this region of the galaxy. And they had just wiped out an entire civilization - the Gelderians, a race that had thrived on these worlds for thousands of years.
The Gelderian population had numbered in the billions before the invasion began.
Now, only a few hundred survived, and those only because they had been away on missions in different corners of the galaxy when the attack commenced. When they eventually returned home, they would find nothing but ashes and memories.
Their civilization, their culture, their history - all of it ended in a matter of weeks.
But the massacre was not quite complete yet. One Gelderian remained in this star system, still fighting against the inevitable. The last one standing was the ruler of his people, the Gelderian Emperor himself.
And he, too, was going to fall. It was only a matter of time.
The Viltrumites hovering above the ruined planet were all looking in the same direction, their eyes fixed on a point in the void above them. They stared with unwavering attention, none of them daring to look away even for a moment.
They were watching their leader fight.
In the black void between planets, two figures clashed with such force that each impact created shockwaves visible even from this distance. The Gelderian Emperor, encased in his people's most advanced combat suit, fought with the desperation of someone who knew he was the last of his kind.
His opponent was Thragg, the Grand Regent of the Viltrumite Empire. The most powerful warrior of Viltrum.
The fight had been going on for thirty days straight.
Thirty days without rest, without pause, without mercy. The two combatants had carved a path of destruction through this star system, their battle taking them from planet to planet, through asteroid fields, even past the system's sun itself.
And throughout those thirty days, not a single Viltrumite had looked away from their Regent's fight. It was both respect and duty - witnessing their leader's combat was an honor, and missing even a moment of it would be a shameful display of weakness.
The Gelderian Emperor and Thragg were both beasts in their own right, warriors who had honed their skills across eons of conflict. Though there was a difference between them that everyone watching understood.
The Gelderian Emperor was what he was because of the suit he wore. The technology developed by his people's greatest scientists was the only thing that allowed him to stand against a Viltrumite.
It enhanced his strength to Viltrumite levels, granted him the ability to survive in the vacuum of space, and provided weapons capable of actually harming Viltrumite flesh.
Without the suit, Gelderians were nothing special. They were intelligent, certainly, and technologically advanced. But physically? They were weaker than humans, slower, more fragile. A Viltrumite child could tear through a thousand unarmed Gelderians without breaking a sweat.
But with their suits, they posed a threat to Viltrum's expansion.
And that was precisely why this fight had been brought to the Gelderians' home ground. This was not a random act of aggression or a spontaneous conflict. This was a calculated decision made by the Viltrumite Council and the Grand Regent himself.
In this corner of the galaxy, only the Gelderians posed a real threat to the Viltrumite Empire's continued expansion and dominance.
They had developed these suits that could harm a Viltrumite - beings who could only be injured by things and forces that could be counted on a single hand.
Individually, a suited Gelderian was still no match for a Viltrumite. The power differential was too great. But warfare was rarely about individual combat. It was about tactics, strategy, and numbers.
A squad of twenty-four equipped Gelderians, working together with coordinated tactics, could take down a Viltrumite. They had proven this capability multiple times in skirmishes along the border regions. And if they could kill one Viltrumite, they could kill more, given the opportunity.
That capability alone would have been sufficient reason for Viltrum to take notice and consider action. But there was another factor, one that had accelerated the Council's decision to launch this invasion.
Intelligence reports had reached Viltrum that the Gelderians were in negotiations to join the Coalition of Planets - a loose alliance of civilizations that opposed Viltrumite expansion and sometimes actively resisted it. The Coalition was not particularly powerful on its own, but it represented potential obstacles that Viltrum preferred to eliminate.
More concerning was the military alliance being formed between the Gelderians and the Reach.
The Reach were another technologically advanced species with ambitions of galactic conquest. They used more subtle methods than the Viltrumites - infiltration, subversion, slow assimilation rather than direct military invasion. But their technology was formidable, and their scientists were among the best in known space.
If the Gelderians' suit technology was combined with the Reach's advanced research capabilities, they could have developed something dangerous. A suit that could individually match a Viltrumite in combat. Perhaps even exceed one.
The implications were clear. If such technology spread, if other civilizations gained access to it, the Viltrumite advantage in warfare would be compromised. Their conquest would slow or even stop. Worlds they had marked for annexation might successfully resist.
Viltrum could not allow that scenario to unfold.
So they had struck first, hitting hard and fast before the Gelderians could finalize their alliances or mass-produce their most advanced suit designs.
The invasion force had come to Gelderia, the home star system of the Gelderian civilization. This planet, where the Viltrumites now hovered, had been the capital world, the seat of government, and the center of Gelderian culture.
Currently, all eleven remaining planets in this system are surrounded by Viltrumites.
Thousands of them, stationed throughout the system, all watching their Regent's battle with the Emperor.
It was a show of force, a demonstration that this was not merely a military operation but the end of an entire species.
There had originally been seventeen planets in the Gelderia star system. But six of them had been destroyed during the invasion - not by the Viltrumites, but by the Gelderians themselves in acts of desperate defiance.
Rather than allow their worlds to fall intact into Viltrumite hands, the Gelderians had chosen to destroy them. They had overloaded power cores, detonated weapons stockpiles, and in one case, actually destabilized a planet's core to trigger a catastrophic explosion.
These acts of self-destruction had led to the deaths of nearly nine hundred Viltrumites who could not escape the explosions in time. Some had been caught too deep inside planetary structures when the detonations occurred. Others had been locked in close combat with Gelderian soldiers and could not disengage quickly enough.
But those nine hundred Viltrumite deaths had come at a cost to the Gelderians that dwarfed their own losses. Nearly thirty thousand equipped Gelderian warriors had perished in those same planetary destructions, sacrificing themselves in the hope of taking as many invaders with them as possible.
The math was brutal but clear. Even when the Gelderians were willing to die by the thousands, they could only achieve a kill ratio of roughly thirty to one against Viltrumites.
Today's battle - this entire invasion - had cost Viltrum approximately three thousand Viltrumite lives.
It was a staggering number. The Viltrumite population was not large compared to other spacefaring races. They numbered in the hundreds of thousands rather than billions or trillions. Each Viltrumite was valued, their loss mourned.
The Empire weighed every Viltrumite life, regardless of rank or station. Three thousand dead represented a significant blow to their total population, a loss that would take decades to replace, even with aggressive breeding programs.
Yet today's losses were considered acceptable, even necessary, by the Council and the Regent.
Because they had eliminated a potentially lethal threat. If the Gelderians had been allowed to continue developing their technology, if their alliance with the Reach had been formalized, the future losses could have been far worse.
Better to sacrifice three thousand now than to risk thirty thousand or more in a prolonged conflict against enemies equipped with anti-Viltrumite weapons.
The calculation was cold but rational. And Viltrumites prided themselves on rational decision-making when it came to warfare.
In the void above, Thragg and the Gelderian Emperor's fight was reaching its conclusion.
Just moments ago, Thragg had managed to rip off one of the suit's arms. The advanced prosthetic limb had been torn away at the shoulder joint, exposing the machinery and energy conduits beneath.
With that breach in the suit's integrity, the tide of the battle shifted decisively. Thragg pressed his advantage immediately, focusing his attacks on the damaged area. Every blow targeted the exposed shoulder, widening the gap, destroying more of the suit's internal systems.
The arm of the suit attempted to regenerate, its self-repair systems working frantically to close the breach and restore functionality. The Gelderian technology was impressive - under normal circumstances, the suit could recover from significant damage given enough time.
But it was already too late. Thragg was not giving it time to repair. He hammered at the damaged section relentlessly, each strike causing more destruction than the repair systems could compensate for.
Slowly, inevitably, the suit began to glow with an ominous light. The color shifted from the normal blue of its power systems to a dangerous red that pulsed with increasing intensity.
Thragg understood immediately what was happening. He had seen this before with Gelderian warriors who knew they were doomed to defeat. When their suits reached critical damage levels, they could be deliberately overloaded, turned into weapons of last resort.
The Regent backed away, putting distance between himself and the Emperor with powerful beats of his flight capability.
The Gelderian Emperor did not pursue him. He could have tried - his suit still had enough power for movement, enough function for one final attack. But he chose differently.
Instead, he simply floated there in the void, his suit glowing brighter with each passing second, and spoke his final words.
"Hear me, you damned Viltrumite!" His voice carried across the communication channels, broadcast so that every Viltrumite in the system could hear. "My Empire has fallen to yours. Our civilization is dust. Our people are scattered to the winds. You have won this day."
The glow intensified, and his voice took on a manic edge, the tone of someone who had nothing left to lose and found dark amusement in that freedom.
"But do not celebrate for long! Do not think yourselves invincible! Do not believe your Empire will stand eternal!" He laughed, a sound without humor. "Soon, very soon, yours will fall as mine has fallen! Your cities will burn as ours burn! Your people will scatter as ours scatter! Your mighty Regent will watch his empire crumble to dust, and he will know the despair that I know now! This I promise you with my dying breath! This I swear on the ashes of my world! Your doom comes, Viltrumites! Your doom—"
The explosion cut off his words.
The suit detonated with a force that rivaled a planetary explosion. The blast was visible from every planet in the system, a ball of white light that expanded outward like a newborn star. The shockwave rippled through space, causing asteroids to tumble and disturbing the orbits of smaller moons.
Thragg watched from a safe distance, his expression unchanging. He had known what the Gelderian Emperor intended to do. The Emperor was going to die regardless - the suit was too damaged, the battle already lost. So he had chosen to destroy the suit rather than allow it to fall into Viltrumite hands.
A final act of defiance. A denial of the prize Viltrum might have claimed.
Thragg did not mind. They had already captured enough Gelderian suits during the invasion to reverse-engineer the technology. One more would not have made a significant difference. And there was a certain respect in the Emperor's choice - to die on his own terms rather than surrender.
It was the kind of choice a Viltrumite would make.
The Regent turned his back on the fading explosion and looked toward the planets of the Gelderia star system. Every Viltrumite warrior had now flown into the void, leaving the planetary surfaces behind. They maintained strict formation, arranged by rank and unit, holding position at what their combat doctrine deemed a safe distance.
A younger Viltrumite broke formation slightly, flying forward with careful, controlled movement that demonstrated she understood the discipline required. Ursaal, daughter of the Grand Regent, approached her father with her head bowed in respect.
Thragg looked at her, his gaze taking in the blood that covered her white uniform. She had clearly been in the thick of the fighting, had engaged the enemy directly rather than hanging back in safety. His eyes showed approval even though his expression remained stern.
He gave her a slight nod of acknowledgment before turning his attention to the massive Viltrumite warships stationed at a distance in space.
The ships were enormous constructs, each one capable of housing thousands of warriors and equipped with weapons that could crack planets. They represented the industrial might of Viltrum, the infrastructure that supported their conquest.
Thragg raised his hand and made a simple gesture - a cutting motion across his throat, visible to the ship commanders even across the vast distance of space.
The order was clear.
The massive ships responded immediately. Their primary weapons systems were activated, drawing power from reactors. Energy built up in the barrel arrays, visible as a blue glow that intensified rapidly.
Then they fired.
The Purge Beams - weapons designed specifically for the complete annihilation of planetary bodies - lanced out from the ships. Each beam was kilometers wide, composed of energy so concentrated that it distorted space itself as it passed through.
The beams struck the eleven remaining planets of the Gelderia system simultaneously.
The planets did not simply explode - they were unmade. The Purge Beams disrupted the fundamental forces holding the planetary matter together, causing the worlds to disintegrate into their component atoms.
What had been solid worlds became expanding clouds of superheated gas and debris. Everything on those planets - the remnants of Gelderian civilization, the bodies of the fallen, the cities and monuments and history of an entire species - all of it was reduced to particles that would eventually disperse into the void.
The Viltrumites watched from their safe distance. The shockwaves from the planetary annihilation reached them as ripples in space-time, easily survivable at this range. None of them flinched or showed discomfort. They simply observed the end of the Gelderian star system with the same calm they had shown throughout the invasion.
This destruction included the bodies of Viltrumites who had fallen in this battle. The three thousand warriors who had died fighting the Gelderians were now dispersed along with everything else, their remains scattered across light-years of space.
This was standard procedure following any Viltrumite military operation that incurred losses. Viltrum had a strict policy regarding fallen warriors - their bodies were never to fall into enemy hands, never to be studied or dissected or used for research.
This policy had been established after an incident in the distant past, one that the Empire preferred not to speak of in detail. The official records were vague, but the lesson had been learned permanently. Enemy powers must never gain access to Viltrumite biology for extended study.
So the dead were honored by being destroyed along with the enemies they had fought. Their atoms would mix with the remnants of Gelderia, indistinguishable from the civilization they had conquered. It was considered a warrior's ending to be consumed by the same destruction they had inflicted.
As the last echoes of planetary destruction faded, Thragg spoke for the first time since the Emperor's death.
"Inform Conquest and his unit," he commanded, his tone flat and businesslike. "Begin preparations for the next phase of expansion. Target sectors 2098, 2813, and 2819."
There was a brief pause as he considered the strategic situation in those regions.
"Kill all Lantern Corps members encountered in those sectors," he continued. "Green Lanterns, Yellow Lanterns, whatever colors they wear - eliminate them all. They will attempt to interfere with our conquest. Do not give them that opportunity."
Another pause.
"Also, eliminate any Blackstar operatives you encounter. They are tools of the Controller and will similarly attempt to obstruct our expansion. Show them the same mercy we showed the Gelderians."
Which was to say, no mercy at all.
The orders were acknowledged across multiple channels. Conquest, one of the Empire's most effective field commanders, would receive the message within minutes. His unit would begin planning immediately, identifying key targets and developing invasion timelines.
The Viltrumite Empire's expansion would continue. One civilization had fallen, but there were thousands more waiting to be conquered or subjugated. The war would never truly end until all of known space bent knee to Viltrum.
Thragg looked one final time at the expanding debris clouds that had once been the Gelderia system. Then he turned and flew toward the nearest warship, ready to move on to the next conquest.
The invasion was over. The Gelderians were extinct. And the Viltrumite Empire had grown stronger through the elimination of a potential threat.
It was, from their perspective, a successful operation.
Sector 2814, Near the Sun
A man with long crimson hair floated in the void of space, positioned much closer to the sun than any unprotected being could survive. The stellar radiation that would kill a normal person in seconds washed over him harmlessly, absorbed by his Kryptonian cells and converted into power.
His body hung suspended in zero gravity, perfectly still except for the gentle movement of his hair in the solar wind.
This was Kon-Rao, Emperor of the last Kryptonians, and he was meditating.
The practice was something he had developed over the past few weeks since returning from Earth. With the power of the yellow sun flowing through him, he could feel his capabilities continuing to grow. But raw power without control was dangerous, potentially as threatening to allies as to enemies.
So he had positioned himself here, in proximity to Earth's star, and focused inward.
He had been learning to sense the energy flowing through his cells, understanding how it moved and accumulated. He had been developing finer control over his abilities, testing how precisely he could modulate his strength and speed.
The meditation also served another purpose. It gave him time to think, to process the vast amount of information he had gathered and the decisions that needed to be made.
He floated there, absorbing solar radiation and contemplating strategy, for what might have been minutes or hours. Time became fluid when you did not need to breathe, when your body did not require food or water, when sleep was optional rather than mandatory.
But eventually, something changed.
Kon-Rao opened his eyes.
.....
Want to read ahead of the public release? Support me on Patreon at "https://www.patreon.com/FreakyHaru" and get access to:
5 and 10 chapters of all my fanfictions.
Ongoing Projects:
DC/MARVEL: The Kryptonian Emperor
Marvel: Shadow Monarch
ATG: Not a Cannon Fodder
Your support helps me keep writing and brings you more content faster!
Thank You