Madi Roll fell to his knees. Despite his gaping wounds and his proximity to death from the severe loss of blue blood staining his body and the floor beneath him, he remained as unyielding as a mountain. He stifled his groans. He swallowed his agony. He refused to show a single ounce of weakness. He knew perfectly well that breaking down meant absolute humiliation for him and his people before these monsters. Squeezing out the last drops of his willpower, he stayed tall, seeking strength and patience.
The Emperor studied him from his throne, a sadistic smile carved into his face. He didn't utter a word. He merely raised his hand in a slow, deliberate motion, signaling Veronica. A silent gesture carrying a monumental command.
Veronica caught the signal with her usual coldness. With a brief order to the robotic army, she spoke the password: "Execute Protocol: B-714."
In that exact moment, from the dome of the planet Uranus, the muzzles of giant electromagnetic cannons aimed into the void. The target? Madi Roll's space dreadnought.
The beam of death fired. The ship was struck. In a fraction of a second, thousands of Orion's absolute elite were annihilated, swallowed by the vacuum. The jewel of the Orionian crown, their pride, their invincible shield... utterly crushed. The absolute pinnacle of Orionian space warfare technology was reduced to brittle debris scattered by the winds of oblivion.
The Emperor could have ended this with a push of a button from the very beginning. He could have destroyed Madi Roll and his fleet, crushing them in the void. Instead, he chose to lure them in, leaving the pleasure of manual dismemberment to his wives to feed his own sadistic hunger. And here he was, dragging Orion's most important general through the shackles of a crushing defeat—bound, humiliated, and broken.
Madi Roll lowered his heavy head for a few moments. A suppressed grief squeezed his heart for his comrades and soldiers who had died as martyrs. In a flash, he remembered his glorious nights with them and his radiant heroics by their side. Yet, he quickly raised his head high, knowing with absolute certainty that his men would never accept humiliation or bowed heads from their commander.
Roxy gave him no time. She began kicking his broad back with her steel-like foot, shattering whatever remained of his spinal bones. A savage smile never left her face. Still, he endured, absorbing the brutal blows with legendary silence, despite his severed arm.
Then, Layla intervened.
She stepped forward with a confident strut, her silky black hair cascading down her lower back. Her screaming elegance imposed its authority over the hall; her radiant dress highlighted her charm, her precious jewelry gleaming under the lights, while her high heels—sharp as knife blades—struck the floor with a calm, deadly rhythm.
Layla approached, glanced toward the window where the wreckage of the Orion ship drifted, then turned back to the General. Her features dripped with artificial tenderness; her tongue dripped with poisoned honey:
"Oh, my... how my heart bleeds for them. These poor souls actually believed, in their sheer naivety, that they could stand as equals against my dear husband... By my life, how utterly deceived they were."
Layla painted an innocent smile on her lips, concealing a massive malice. She stepped closer. With a swift, graceful motion, she raised her leg and plunged her spiked heel deep into Madi Roll's stomach.
His blue blood poured heavily onto the floor. It was the breaking point. His wounds became too much for any physical body to bear. His strength vanished, and his colossal frame collapsed, crashing against the floor.
Layla stood over him. She drove her sharp heel directly into his remaining, intact eye... crushing it entirely and blinding him forever. She shook her head, repeating in the tone of a mother comforting her child:
"Poor thing... poor... poor thing."
She pulled her heel out from the mess of his eye fluids, walking back to her spot as she complained with delicate annoyance:
"How sad. His blood just ruined my new dress."
The physical torture show had ended. The curtain rose on the psychological hell.
From his throne, in a glacial tone, the Emperor broke the hall's silence:
"Can you speak, Madi?"
The blind General didn't utter a letter. He couldn't even form a coherent thought while bleeding and agonizing to this degree.
Eve stepped forward. With a clinical motion, she drove a syringe into his neck. A chemical substance flooded his veins. Within a single second... all his pain vanished. A perfect anesthetic, designed specifically to eliminate physical suffering while keeping the mind at peak alertness for a full interrogation.
The Emperor resumed his questions, his voice echoing in the General's total darkness:
"Question one, Madi... Where are the access codes for the hidden planetary shield generators?"
The General remained silent.
"Question two... What are the coordinates for your fleet gathering in deep space?"
The General maintained his absolute refusal, grinding his jaw in anger.
"Question three, then... Where is the King hiding? And what are the numbers for the fortified emergency bunkers?"
Madi Roll growled silently, clinging to the crumbs of his military honor. He would never betray Orion.
Then, the Emperor dropped his fourth question... The question that obliterated every psychological fortress the General had left:
"And what about 'Oria'? I heard you are planning to marry her off soon."
Madi Roll convulsed. Despite his blindness and paralysis, his body thrashed with blind terror and rage. Oria... his daughter, a princess of the planet Orion. How did this devil reach her name?!
The Emperor didn't wait for an answer. He began answering every question he had just asked. He recited Orion's governmental structure and the King's hiding spots. He talked about precise details like their currency denominations, their favorite national dishes, all the way down to the most intimate details of the General's personal life.
The secret lay in the first ten minutes of the surprise attack on the planet.
When the suicide drones struck Orion's shields, billions of nano-chips scattered with the explosion residue. The size of a single chip was 1 nanometer—a third of the size of a virus. They spread like a silent plague in the atmosphere, inhaled by every living, breathing creature on the planet.
Those chips infiltrated the cerebral nerves and memory centers directly, broadcasting the data back to Eve's main database. There, artificial intelligence systems took over, analyzing and categorizing every piece of information—no matter how big or small—into organized tables. A single attack by outdated-looking reconnaissance drones put all of Orion's secrets, and even the General's innermost desires, right into the Emperor's hands.
The Emperor stepped down from his throne, whispering into the General's ear:
"If you had agreed to tell us the information yourself, we would have negotiated with your people and found an unconditional surrender formula. But... because you refused, we will now switch to our main plan."
Veronica stepped up and said, "The ship is ready, My Lord."
A squad of robots entered and dragged the General to a special operating room.
A grotesque surgery was performed on him. His lower half was severed from his upper half in a way that kept him alive, but perpetually humiliated. Then, what remained of his mutilated body was crucified on the very top of the Emperor's ship—a bloody, degrading symbol meant to strike terror into the Orionian people.
The Emperor's ship launched, crossing the open space-time rift to reach the atmosphere of the planet Orion in mere minutes.
The hell of the sky opened. Millions of massive black drones rained down. Advanced aircraft like B2 Stealth bombers looked like absolute nothing compared to the suicide drones of the Solar System Empire.
It was a sweeping invasion. In minutes, the entire military arsenal fell.
But Orion did not surrender in silence. Fighter squadrons gleamed in the sky; the vanguard of the "Orion Youth" air force, led by a young man burning with rage... Princess Oria's fiancé.
With a single command from the Emperor, a giant missile launched, tearing through the sky and striking the dead center of the "Orion Youth" aerial formation.
A horrific explosion roared, a brutal earthquake whose sound echoed across vast regions around the blast radius. The fighter squadrons vanished. Oria's fiancé and his forces evaporated, the winds of annihilation scattering them as shredded corpses and body parts raining down over their cities.
The Solar Imperial Army possessed incredibly precise information. It wielded weapons of mass destruction that could wipe out cities, precise weapons to assassinate specific targets, and weapons that could destroy a small puddle if the Emperor so desired. Whatever the target was, there was a weapon dedicated to eradicating it.
In less than an hour...
Nine people, alongside robots, brought down an entire planet.
A giant civilization, built over thousands, even millions of years, was exterminated in under an hour. The scale of the destruction was colossal. Millions of people died without a single human directly killing them.
Amidst this absolute ruin, under a sky raining ash and blood, the Imperial vessel landed in the grand square.
The steel doors opened, and the Emperor stepped out.
He placed dark black sunglasses over his eyes, their lenses reflecting the fires of the burning planet. He wore his long coat and began his iconic walk toward the shattered Orionian Imperial Palace. A crushing, demonic Aura radiated from him, carrying an overwhelming majesty.
He was not walking alone.
Behind and beside him, in a perfectly symmetrical formation dripping with arrogance, walked his eight wives.
Directly to his right was Veronica, and directly to his left was Eve.
One step behind them, Roxy on the right, and Layla on the left.
Then Kaori on the right, mirroring Camille on the left.
And at the rear flanks, Isabella on the right, and Celine on the left.
A march overflowing with absolute dominance by nine individuals.
The result: The planet Orion was completely conquered by the Solar System Empire.