Darkseid and his retinue were now on their way back to Apokolips. Their spaceship was flying at full speed to the intended destination with no stops and no slowdowns. They had finished their diplomatic missions with flying colors.
New Genesis and its secrets were behind them. A city of green and light, clean to the point of sterility, Supertown, was now out of sight. The only reminder of their diplomatic mission was a new passenger. Beautiful Dreamer, with her puffy and red from crying cheeks, was standing on the deck, right behind Darkseid. Her eyes were vacant; she was looking in the distance, clearly deep in her thoughts.
Darkseid did pity her a bit, but not strong enough to risk the establishment of the alliance with the New Genesis. He needed their alliance to be strong enough to ward off their future war. H'san Natall was his intended target of an invasion campaign.
It was a vast and strong empire of energy-based people. Their prowess lay in harnessing the energy from different sources, from the usual fire, wind, water, light, to the exclusive to their own kind - the power of their life. They were beings of immense power, capable of manipulating and even embodying the power of natural elements, but their bodies were not strong enough to partake in direct combat.
The warriors of Apokolips fought with H'sanians before. Even the strongest individuals from the energy manipulator race were weak compared to the regular soldiers of Apokolips. Combat magic and modern weaponry capable of interacting with natural elements were enough to kill H'sanians. There was no contest on the battlefield between the New Gods and the H'san Natall.
But the advantage of the energy manipulators was in space battles, especially those that took place at a considerable distance. There was probably no Empire in the universe that had stronger weapons than H'san Natall. Their ability to work with energy directly made them the uncontested leaders in the field of space grade weaponry. Their long-distance lasers had no match in their range, as there was no match to the power of their plasma canons that were able to disintegrate a whole spaceship with a single hit.
Their shields were just as strong as their weapons. Powered not only by the machinery on their spaceships but also by every single H'san present, they could take on hits that no other ship in the universe could. To kill one of their ships, one should pummel it with every single weapon they have to drain not only the energy of the shields but also the immense life force that the crew on those ships has.
No one in the universe wanted to take head on the might of the H'san Natallian fleet in a direct encounter. Even for Apokoliptian forces, only with threefold advantage in numbers would an Apokoliptian admiral consider a direct confrontation, and even then, they would expect heavy losses on their side.
But with all that power, H'san Natall should have been an unstoppable force. The problem was in their birth rates. Not a single H'sanian had been born in the latest century. No one knew why there was such a problem in their civilization. It was kept secret, and not a single spy was ever able to get the reason why.
That's why H'san Natall practically never waged a war. And even in the incredibly rare cases of them fighting someone, they were never the ones to start it. The loss of a single life was a heavy loss for them, much more than for every other dominant species in the universe.
So they resorted to genetic engineering to try and "fix" their birth rates by creating a H'sanian capable of procreating in their current circumstances. Fortunately, not successfully. They were not able to create such specimen, no matter how long they tried to create one.
In the original timeline, they would eventually try to create a hybrid. By kidnapping Psions, a race of scientists from the Vega system, H'san Natall would get their first success in engineering a superior representative of their race. Ironically, it was a hybrid of a Terran and a H'sanian.
Terrans were from the planet called Terra, or how local called it – Earth. A single planet with a population of several billion. To the omni-verse this planet was akin to a center. Everything was circling around it, every major event, every change of fate. It was THE point of interest not only of this universe, but somehow of almost every single plane of existence that was out there in the omniverse. The knowledge that Delirium gifted Darkseid made the importance of that small planet pretty clear.
But he also knew that to conquer that planet, the power of Apokolips would need to increase tenfold. The power of Terra was extreme, with such guardians as Superman, Captain Atom, Dr Fate and hundreds of others; there was no comparison to be drawn with any other planet out there. Even Apokolips, home of the New Gods, the strongest race of people out there, was capable of birthing a couple of dozen notable characters with potential to influence the fate of the universe… Unlike the hundreds, if not thousands, that the Terra was able to produce in its lifetime.
And the next step in his plan of gaining more power was conquering H'san Natall. A relatively small Empire of the best weapon masters in the universe. It was promising to be a tough challenge.
Establishing an alliance with New Genesis was the first piece of the puzzle. With their frontline with New Genesis secured, Darkseid would be able to concentrate his attention elsewhere, without worrying about the attack from their eternal enemy. This alliance was essential to his plan. And his guarantee of its existence was now standing a couple of steps away from him, hugging and puffing with rage and shame, planning his demise. He needed to find a key to her, make her accept her new fate. But he did not know how.
The space before him fractured. A wormhole. Someone jumped in front of them. This was an ambush.
"Ship, what is our location?" Darkseid asked the semi-sentient AI that was piloting the ship.
"System Arzolla. Red star, a key wormhole star system. This system is considered to be a border between Apokolips, New Genesis and H'san Natall." AI replied with short information about the star systems they were currently in.
He immediately understood. This was the single point of contact with H'san Empire that Apokolips had. They must have decided to attack him on his way back.
Three angular ships, shining with energy, were sliding into formation ahead of them. H'san ships. Smaller than their own, but even faster, built to chase them in case they manage to escape them.
Darkseid knew they were easy targets here. With the power the enemy ships had, he and his people would be space dust in a matter of minutes.
His brain fell into an override trying to think of the solution.
The enemy ships started glowing. He noticed the energy spears mounted under their keels… beam-canons.
"Shields to maximum. Turn off the engine. Turn off everything except the life support," he commanded the ship. There was no hope of running, and there was no weapon to match the enemy's firepower. All they had was time. Time was running out fast, falling through their fingers like unruly sand.
The first barrage came almost immediately. Three beams of molten white light impacted the red next to the protective shield around them. He looked at the display, five per cent. A single impact took a sizable chunk of their energy. They had twenty seconds, more or less, before they would turn into dust.
The impact rippled through the ship, a low-frequency roar through the metal hull. The deck immediately became full by the rest of their crew. Furies came running, weapons drawn. He looked over their equipment once again, finding two clues to safety. They had nothing on them that could save them. Their weapon and armor were useless; all of them were martial combatants, useless in the current situation.
Trying to talk with H'sanians would not result in anything. They were notorious xenophobes, regarding themselves as the superior beings in the whole universe. Ironic, they didn't know how abundantly dull that made them; there were countless creatures with the same ego as them. His original self included.
In the future, during his endless wars, he would have been so arrogant, so sure of his prowess, of his superiority, that he did not bother with tactics and strategies at all. All his "excellent" military genius could produce for a plan was a boomtube to the target planet and conquering it.
Wait. Boom Tubes. Of course. Extra-dimensional portals that allowed for instant travel across interstellar distances. In theory, they functioned like wormholes connecting any two points in the universe, allowing movement between the two locations that would otherwise be separated by light-years. Upon creation, they produced their signature "boom" sound that gave them their name. They looked like two floating disks, portals, but inside them, they looked like tubes of energy that one could walk on.
They were created by the motherboxes. An invention that was just made on New Genesis by two scientists, Metron and Himon. Those fancy little computers were one of the targets of his diplomatic visit to New Genesis and the reason why Sulli was with him. He wanted to take one of those inventions with him to Apokolips and recreate it.
Motherboxes and scientific research in general were topics of discussion in his conversation with the Highfather, and eventually became points of cooperation in their alliance. The smartest people in their countries would cooperate in research and development of new technologies, which, of course, included the revolutionary motherbox tech. Fortunately, one of the prototypes was given to them as a token of goodwill between two allies.
"Sulli, Dreamer, where is the motherbox?" He roared at the two young women panicking next to him.
"I…".
"Here, my liege". Fortunately, Sulli was calm enough to understand his question and react quickly. She pulled out a small cube-shaped box that was no bigger than her hand and gave it to him.
This model had no voice activation, and the use of a motherbox was a complex endeavour that needed a minimal amount of training. Fortunately for him, he still had his meta knowledge. He entered his mind for a second, trying to summon the correct memory of him using the motherbox. One floated to the surface of his thought pretty quickly.
He followed the motions that it showed him, pushed the central point of the cube, and then pulled a bar from the side of the box, pushing several crevices in a particular order.
BOOM.
The motherbox opened the way gate to their safety directly in front of him.
"INSIDE", he roared a command for his people. Furies and Sulli followed his command immediately. Only Dreamer was left standing, paralysed with fear and confusion. She had minimal military training and never took part in the actual battle.
He swept her off her feet, beginning to run into the Boom Tube himself. There was no time to wait for her response; they needed to move fast. He held her bridal style, closer to him, fearing that she would resist his hold and try to break free. Getting stuck in the Boom Tube could be fatal, and for most people (including her at this point in time), it was certain death.
A second later, his group ran through the portal, landing on a solid surface of some distant land. The details of their destination were not important now. Darkseid looked behind him at the Boom Tube, which immediately collapsed behind him. In the brief flash of his ship that they left behind, he had seen fires roaring on the deck. The ship was definitely gone. It probably died to enemy weapons a second or two after they ran through the portal.