The command bridge of the Lux Sovereign was a three-story tiered arena of polished dark wood, brass switchboards, and ground quartz watching domes, perched high upon the vessel’s forward superstructure.
Grand Astromancer Vaelen Kael stood at the central command console, his four-legged brass exoskeleton twitching with wild, clockwork agitation.
Across the console’s brass status dials, red warning needles were pinning themselves against their stop-pegs.
“Lower gun deck: non-responsive!” an acolyte officer screamed, wildly adjusting the brass switches of a dead sound speaking tube. “The firing telegraph has been dissolved! The battery interlocks are locked in neutral!”
“Coal bunker four has fallen!” another officer shouted, wiping blood from his forehead where a shattered pressure glass had grazed him. “The intruders are led by an armored giant statue and a warlord wielding a royal geas! Our marines can’t break their line!”
Grand Astromancer Vaelen Kael’s brass exoskeleton whirred with high-pitched frenzy as he paced the dark wood deck of the bridge.
The old man had spent fifty years climbing the office hierarchy of the High Zenith. He had outlived three High Hierophants, poisoned two rival Chancellors. Then he personally signed the execution decrees for forty thousand border peasants. He was a man who believed that the universe was an orderly, exact hierarchy where power flowed downward from the stars into the hands of those with the pedigree to hold the pen.
