Curses were almost always a branch of closely related magic to necromancy. So the Aotrs had a two millenia if experience with dealign with them, both in the creation, manipulation and removal of curses.

The first thing was simply to put the Lichemaster in a Null Magic zone (easily enough set up; the KPS Division in particular had a store of readily available places and the termite-mound-like Citidel had store room on store room of specialist equipment the High Command had reserved to hand fot their own use. (Foul Skream's personal stock of weapons among them.)

Once inside one, the curse simply couldn't function. That served as a stopgap measure, while the powers' curse experts were brought in.

The science of advanced curse removal ultimately came from the science of Necromancy.

Everything, in the necromantic sense, had a soul. In a non-necromantically scienticfic sense, "soul" in conversation referred only to the very large and obvious souls of sapient beings. Beneath that, even primitive necromancy could ascertain that sentinent animals had a soul. The layers beneath that only could be found when technology was advanced enough to reinforce magic with computer analysis. And, ultimately, EVERYTHING had a soul. Demons and creatures typically held to BE a physical manifestation of a soul did, in fact, have a nonmaterial soul. Nonsapient creatures had a soul. Machines had a soul. Objects had a soul. Each component of a machine or object had a soul; as did each molecule, atom, electron and quark down to the smallest discovered partical had it own microsoul, and so did every discharge or energy, every erg of reality. Because, in the end the soul was ultimately the very essence of the impression of something on the universe; a fundemental of any that could concievable exists and interact with the universe; the sum total of everything it ever did, thought or felt. A flame existed, so it had a soul. An atom existed, so its microsoul was the record of everything it had ever been part of.

Even with Aotrs magic and technology, the microsouls were completely beyond manipulation. But the fact that something as large and compartively obvious like a curse (detectable with even pre-industrial magic) had a soul, necromantically speaking, meant that it could, in fact, be isolated, no matter how deeply and conceptually intertwined with its subject it was, because it EXISTED.

As when it could be isolated, it could be dispelled - or in some cases, destroyed by main force.

The most advanced and difficult curse removal necessitated not the complex unpicking of the spell matix (or equivalent) of the curse, but isolating the curse, and simply hitting it from a metaphysical, conceptual tangent where it was, to the applied curse-breaking effect, metaphorically floating alone in nothing. This was incredibly difficult, even for Aotrs magic. 

(Though it was grimly hypothesied that The Entity They Dared Not Name These Days could do it with a force analogous the the effect of shattering the strongest ever recorded curse (or any other supernatural effect) like a fragile glass scuplture hit by a super-giant black hole moving as near the speed of light...)

But, for EXACTLY this sort of occasion, the means did exist to do it. This was not the first time, nor would it likely be the last, that such an instance had happened. 

The anti-informational nature of the curses made routine methods of scanning it difficult to impossible. But even that was, in the end, not an insummountable barrier. Technology worked perfectly fine in a Null-magic field, and specialist scanners and sensors built be their own unmagic field (like the SK-X-TN) existed, to function in extremely high magic regions. It was a case of acquiring one such system (the most easily accessible in the KPS Division's supplies), bringing it to the Lichemaster (or vice-versa) and then analysising - functionally doing an end-run around the curse's anti-information protocols. (If it had been (or was) sapient, the curse might have screamed in impotent frustration.)

Then it would be a case of simply determining how hard to hit it and what metaphysical angle to hit it from.

And, of course, in the analysis, to determine other counter-measures to apply, which would further be added to the Aotrs database for any similar occurances (and even now, the databases were being examined for previous similar occurances).

*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

That the curse seemed to be powered from the effect on G-2679 and thus provided a "tame" star for further analysis was an additional boon. And, in addition, a useful test subject for targeting star-breaking weapons.

Apocalyptic weapons were not assets the Aotrs preferred to use. But they had them, in small number, in reserve. (Indeed, the presence of some of these weapons was about the only deterrent against threats such as the good-aligned Lazerblasters and even that was a knife-edge facade.) The Aotrs had had, in the course of so MANY centuries of adventures and history, cause to destroy a star only occasions which numbered in the low-single digits. But, like the greater gods they'd killed, they HAD done it. And those weapons were now being prepared. Some were not of Aotrs manufacture. 641 years of FTL-capable exploration had brought with it the loot of other technologies; some of it, at great expense or great luck, won from powers more advanced than they. The Harbingers, in particular, had a racial tendancy towards the exotic technology, and until the re-emergance of the Shardan, and the subtly-escalating terror of the Lazserblasters, the Harbingers had been the most advanced society known. The Strayvians, too, in particular had gone all-in on exotic weapons of mass destruction, but the Mad-Scientist approach had meant most of them had died with their one genius creator.

Destroying a planet was, ultimately, just a case of pumping enough energy into it until it exploded. This usually required a long and sustained attack. Modern capital ship energy weapons could theotheretically do it if they could have been fired continuously for long enough, but that was a barrier sufficient that even the Cybertanks (the most likely to use such weapons if given any chance) couldn't do it in practise.

(The first Lazerblaster supercruisers spotted in the mid 2310s were labelled "planet destroyers" simply because of the spinal-mount lazer cannon WAS powerful enough to blow a planet up in only hours with a sustained blast, though it was unclear whether they have actually ever done that instead of shoot each other. [i]Now[/i]... Lord Death Despoil did not want to contemplate.)

Destroying a sun, then, was fundementally possible the same way, just on several orders of magnitude higher energy requirements. But it was far more feasible to use a weapon to set-up a destabilising effect on the fusion reaction through various means and ways, and use its own energy to destroy itself; something you couldn't do on most planets BECAUSE they didn't have enough energy.

Thus sun-killing was comparitively, less of a stretch that might be initially thought.



The most mobile star-killer the Aotrs had was a Harbinger device - a Spacial Splinter cannon. Spacial Splinter cannons, and their related cousins, the continuum crackers, worked in th very most basic of terms, by fundementally just putting large hole in the underyling fabric of reality and making things around it Not Exist Anymore because the laws of physics were broken. Continuum crackers were rather unsafe, with a tendancy for the effect to go out of-control and were alarmingly small enough to be seen on Harbinger combat robots on occasion. The spacial splinter cannon was "safer" but perhaps mostly so only in the sense that they were capital ship weapons, and as such the relative area they Made Not Exist anymore was proportionally smaller.

The particular one in question was the largest one the Aotrs had recovered - and it was still distressingly small for its capabilities. The power required for it, however, was entirely NOT small. Unlike the Harbingers, the Aotrs had to charge a massive series of batteries and capacitors to even get enough power to fire the thing. But when it could be fired, with the right settings and discharge time, it could break enough of reality in the core of a star to cause it to come apart. A very crude and brute-force approach, but it had worked the only previous time the Aotrs had to deploy it. (To destroy, as it happened, a star being used as an invasion gateway by an extra-reality alien power.) 

While in theory, the weapon could be used as a normal anti-capital ship weapon, it was far too precious to be used as such. So the device was not permenantly mounted on a ship; it and its batteries were essentially towed into position for the specialist use. Currently, towing the bulky mass that resembled a space station (the weapon itself no larger than a standard capital battery) was a relatively trivial job for one of ten remaining [i]Doomskrieg[/i] Supercruisers. One of the five [i]Star Swampers[/i] (the biggest vessels ever built by the Aotrs) might have been a better choice, since they had even more powerful energy cores to help the charging process; but such vessels were so demanding on resources (especially if they got damaged) that they were all waiting the conversion to mobile shipyards over the next few decades. 

The [i]Doomskrieg[/i] itself, with an escort fleet, was preparing to head for G-2679 with the spacial splinter cannon array.

The other weapons were being readied.

*	*	*	*	*	*	*

In the meantime, the [i]Crippling Glare[/i] continued its watch and the 4th Fleet was assembling to join it, now with confidence that they would emerge in the system at distances and positions the Azure Skies wouldn't be able to visually spot.

*	*	*	*	*	*	*

While none of the High Command were particularly adept medics, sheer osmosis over centuries meant they did have good enough grasp of first and second aid - enough to ensure Boldness was walking wounded, at any rate. She was thus given the brief, but very rare honour of seeing the High Command's personal chamber complex (starting with Lord Death Despoil's chamber office, where it turned out that they had been listening and had opened the Gate True from), as she was escorted out.  Unlucky, recovering, explained that this was simply because the Citidel's depths could be... Rather dangerous to living creatures, since there were denizens that brooked no life. He accompanied her (with a couple of Defilers as additional escort) to a Gate room, and thense to a waiting [i]Fettered Star[/i] and finally, a short FTL Gate-hop to one of Kalanoth's orbiting stations where she could be finally properly treated.