by Aer-ki Jyr
That possibility was considered as a necessary step in order to maintain control, but the Royals’ military advisors pointed out that such a drastic step would have cataclysmic effects on the empire…not to mention the fact that most of the military would probably side with the patriots and the Royals would end up losing their power in a full-fledged revolution.
For a long time the Royals were publically silent, watching the ceremonial procession moving from planet to planet and gaining supporters with each transition. When it finally culminated at their homeworld they’d seen the writing on the wall and had arranged to back the supporters, organizing and funding a much larger ceremony as Vedja’s body was brought to its final resting place
That place was a new monument built in the center of the capitol city, with several very important buildings being leveled to create the artificial plain amongst the chaos of the tightly packed infrastructure. In the center of that 6 kilometer-wide plain was a single structure…a narrow spire that reached up higher than any other object within the city, seeming to defy the parameters of physics.
The ‘sky needle’ had at its base a single interior room that held Vedja’s preserved corpse, still locked into the rigid position of his death, and surrounded with the enshrined orders that he had left for the H’kar so that anyone visiting the monument could look upon him and receive the orders personally, with an endless line of visitors forming outside and stretching back into the city.
That line would exist for years to come without a break, and the site became the central rallying point within H’kar society. The sky needle was the symbolic spear that would be sent into the heart of their enemy, delivering them their long awaited retribution against the Li’vorkrachnika. Eventually the buildings surrounding the monument would be reconstructed to service the site and the pilgrimages being made to visit it. Whatever small hope that the Royals initially had of their being able to wait out the fervor and return the empire’s future into their hands withered away as the public demanded reports of what was happening in the joint operations with Star Force.
Those reports became the most important and scrutinized news within H’kar society, and as the resources and ships continued to flow out to the distant empire the impressive results only got better, showing to everyone that the Li’vorkrachnika could in fact be beaten and the H’kar learning in detail just how it was being done…with Star Force becoming revered second only to Vedja himself.
Hope was powerful enough, but give people actual results and their hope quickly became belief, then belief became confidence as the list of star systems being reclaimed from the Li’vorkrachnika began to grow. That list was eventually displayed at the monument in the form of small pedestals, with each conquest labeled and arranged in a rough map of enemy space around the sky needle.
The trend caught on, with each addition pumping more adrenaline into the H’kar…with someone even going so far as to paint the spot where the pedestal for the original H’kar homeworld would go should they ever get that far.
The mark hadn’t been official, just some hopeful graffiti added by an overzealous citizen, but the thought of one day returning and reclaiming their old worlds spread like wildfire throughout the H’kar, with even the Royals genuinely getting onboard with the idea and fully setting their entire civilization towards that goal, despite the fact that Star Force was nowhere near to them and was in fact on the other side of the Li’vorkrachnika core worlds.
That didn’t matter to the H’kar, for even if they were inching their way forward they now saw a way to one day reclaim what was lost to them, and even if they didn’t live to see it happen they were committed to doing their part in the here and now to make it happen for their descendants…with their legend leaving them the blueprints for how to do it.
And it was those final orders from Vedja that ultimately transformed H’kar society, for prior to them the H’kar were always the one that carried the battles. They were the focal point, the strong arm that did the heavy lifting and took on the biggest battles…but Vedja had made it clear that they couldn’t beat the enemy on their own merits, nor could they lead others to victory. No, the ultimate victory over the Li’vorkrachnika was rooted in the H’kar becoming a support empire and their doing all the auxiliary tasks that they had previously ignored out of a mix of tradition and arrogance.
But that no longer was the case, with their pride now rooted in supporting Star Force.
Vedja had said that given enough backing the Human-led empire would one day, in the distant future, lead the H’kar to ultimate victory…and with the initial results seeming to confirm his predictions the H’kar went all-in in their new role, with the single focus of their civilization becoming the reclamation of their true homeworld, and them no longer settling for mere survivor or anything less than full and final retribution.
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