SDNW4 Story Thread 1

[Simon_Jester]

Central Information Control, USS Directrix
Hawk's Nest System
0951 Hours, June 7, 3400

Rear Admiral Ananya Hazarika frowned, blinked, and tried to ignore the ringing in her ears. Directrix had taken half a dozen hits since the battle began. Some had stopped in the armor belt, and nothing had penetrated the core hull, but she wasn't in top form at the moment and she knew it. The short-range beam duel had left at least twenty dead and dozens wounded, not counting light injuries that didn't impair duties. It would have been worse if most of the crew stations hadn't been in the core hull; the bulk of the damage had been dealt to surface features and weapons that operated largely under control from deeper inside.

But still, it hadn't been for nothing. The pirate ships were out of the way, with the last survivors of the stealth group fleeing into hyperspace. She still didn't understand what had happened there- what had made the pirate flagship blow up, which seemed to have provoked the others into their final banzai charge. But at the moment, there were other things to worry about: the station defenses, a boarding action, and hopefully a clean sweep of the system to conclude what had been all too expensive a battle.

They needed a plan. It was time to call Commodore Liggs. Liggs' eyes were wandering a bit, but he looked surprisingly fresh for the beating his ship had just taken.

She spoke first. "Commodore..." and it came out slurred. My God, I'm in worse shape than I thought. She blinked, then drew herself up and tried again as the Centralist replied. "Yes, Admiral?"

Forcing the words out to keep them organized, she continued. "I think we need to consider the assault on the station." There was an alarm from the tracking plots along the starboard bulkhead.

"Ma'am! Picking up mass driver fire from the station!" Then Liggs barked an order into his own command console, one that he'd apparently sent to everyone, her included.

"All craft, take evasive action! Release any life pods not already aboard!" What the hell is he- No, wait, that made sense; they wouldn't be targets at this range; the ships were.

The Umerian ships were already sidestepping on their own initiative; she'd given them clearance to go all the way up to maximum evasive burns in an attempt to throw off the pirates' targeting earlier, and she hadn't taken it back. Within a few seconds, the main computer banks had analyzed the energy signature from their firing. Dangerous weapons, arguably low end capital-class, but at this distance, she knew her ships would be safe within the first five seconds.

Liggs ordered the ships to pull away from the station, just in case; Hazarika had Farbanti and Cairo drop IFF beacons in the vicinity of the lifepods, then followed suit. After the withdrawal, the station stopped even bothering to try to hit them. It was certainly possible to score hits on a maneuvering starship at those ranges, with a weapon they couldn't track well in flight, but it was little more than a waste of ammunition to try unless someone's helmsman did something truly stupid.

Knowing her ships could still slip out of the way of incoming was a relief. She'd been worried about damage to secondary engines during the beam duel. Even with redundancy in auxiliary drive, there were limits to how much fire a ship could soak up before her maneuverability started to suffer badly.

She screened Liggs again; by now, the germ of an idea was coming together for her, though she doubted he'd think of it himself. His ships weren't hybrid beam/missile units; hers were.

"So, Commodore, what do you have in mind?"

The Centralist cleared his throat. "I believe we can take down the platforms, going by my reading of their shield strength; hopefully clearing a path for close-in suppression of any defenses mounted directly on the station. It will most likely require a prolonged siege, using our mobility and more numerous beam weapons to wear down their shields. Unless you have something else in mind?"

"Oh, I do, Commodore, I do. Normally I would be very much in favor of a protracted, mobile bombardment operation,-" It's our standard tactics, after all- "but I'm thinking of something more... direct, aggressive, and uncompromising? Something I've been meaning to try... you'll like it." She grinned.

Liggs raised an eyebrow; she could guess what he was thinking: What, a Umerian not wanting to tap-dance?

"I'm thinking in terms of a massed projectile-missile attack to overload their point defense and get some anticapital torpedoes through. You're the one with the mass drivers; do your guns have variable speed settings?"

Now the commodore was grinning too. "Why yes, Admiral, as a matter of fact we do..."

---

Command Bridge, FF-6900 Series Frigate USS Farbanti
1002 Hours

To all familiar with her record, USS Farbanti was known by some variation on the theme of "a strange ship, but a lucky one." No one knew exactly what peculiar dynamic kept the ship intact and allowed her an unusual string of successes for one of the smallest, lightest-armed ships in the Umerian Space Security Force. She had the same crew complement as any other frigate of her series, staffed according to the same regs. She had the equipment as any other frigate of her series, give or take the occasional unofficial item. She had, in theory, the same tactical programming (though inspection of her records would reveal that the ship's main computers had never been fully reinitialized since installation over a quarter century ago).

SpaceSec command had largely given up trying to find any kind of pattern behind Farbanti's track record of improbable events. Every bell curve needed an outlier or two, after all, and with this outlier it was hard to tell whether there was a method to the madness or a madness to the method.

The crew had their own ideas about what made her special, of course. The most common one in the lower decks involved the now-legendary Space Gribbly Incident of 3378. The wardroom mostly preferred various hypotheses about the ship's tactical computers having been uplifted to a buggy kind of sentience by extradimensional CIs with a mothering instinct. A few promoted a truly unusual theory: the power of genius loci. Perhaps, they claimed, the ship operated under the protective hand of the country whose capital she was named for- an echo of ancient Shroomanticism lingering over the frigate like some benevolent yet utterly insane ancestral spirit.

These prophets of lunacy were, of course, laughed at...

Commander Brogo Sallix grunted; the corner of his mouth was twisted into a lopsided grin that stood out against his emerald-green face. If Farbanti was an unusual ship, he was an equally unusual captain. There weren't a lot of Vinaran males in SpaceSec, especially not the officer corps. Too many of his people tried to batter their way into a job, and that didn't work in the fleet. Force and toughness, or even their mental counterparts force of will and determination, weren't enough. You had to have flexibility, and the men of Vinar were mostly bad at that.

He'd decided years ago to be one of the exceptions.

But today, Rear Admiral Hazarika had settled on a plan amusingly familiar and almost uncomfortably natural for the hulking Vinaran: Charge!

Some time since the last survey, "Hawk's Nest Station" had acquired a trio of defense platforms, floating several dozen kilometers from the station itself. Main armament looked to be hypervelocity mass drivers with a throw weight normally only seen on light capital ships. No sign of missiles or beams, point defense impossible to guess, but long range probing fire from the squadrons' energy weapons indicated some very hard driven shields.

The platforms would probably be about as hard to kill as small battlecruisers... but they couldn't dodge at all. In an extreme range gunnery duel, that would give the Coalition forces a major advantage- they could, in theory, cruise along at ranges barely practical for the defense stations' guns, sidestepping the pirates' shells while shooting back at fixed targets. Eventually, shots would start wearing down or leaking through the forts' shielding, reducing the defenses.

It could be done, had been done thousands of times over the past centuries of spacegoing warfare. Indeed, it was more or less the standard doctrine for besieging fixed installations, and as long as the combined tonnage of the attacking fleet was broadly in line with that of the defenses, it usually worked.

But the plan was not without risk and cost. Fleet supply ships were already on the way to replenish their fuel and (for the Centralists) ammunition after the battle, but a prolonged siege might well see the Coalition ships shooting themselves dry two or three times over in order to kill the platforms. It would take time, too, and involve trawling their ships out where the pirates could take a great many shots at them. The enemy would probably get lucky and land a few more hits- and those high speed coilgun rounds were no joke.

That was where the charge came in.

The five surviving Umerian ships, damage be damned, had lined up and started a high-acceleration run almost straight towards the pirate base. It was still a Umerian attack run; the ships might be blasting toward their target in one dimension, but they continued to bob and weave in the other two. Still, though, they were starting to get very close.

The Centralists were doing their part from farther back. They'd started firing mass driver rounds almost two minutes ago and were still at it, slowly ramping up the speed with which the shells left the tubes. Their combined firepower was lower than it would have been without the battle damage, even ignoring the destruction or disabling of three of their ship. Even so, Brogo was glad that Farbanti was several degrees out of their line of fire.

They were getting close to the release point, though. The bridge crew knew what needed to be done, and he'd gone over their fire plan already. All he needed was to say the word.

As the last second ticked off the chronometer on his display, he said it. "Go!"

Farbanti throttled engines down to 20%, then yawed ninety degrees to starboard, slewing about one axis and rolling clockwise, turning her ventral hull to bear. The ship shuddered as the remaining VLS cells for Farbanti's Mark Five point defense missiles dumped at maximum rate of fire, then bucked as the aft torpedo tubes slung three pairs of Mark Four 'Cantaloupe' torpedoes from the ready magazines. Yawing again, this time in a plane perpendicular to the line of flight, the Umerian frigate threw an identical salvo of six from the bow tubes. Pivoting on ACS, the missiles oriented towards their target and lit off their drives.

Reloading the ready magazines would take minutes. That torpedo salvo had been the frigate's best shot: four jammer-decoys and eight greencaps. Her electron beams snarled out as she completed the roll and lay broadside-on to the pirate base, but that was almost an afterthought, more on general principles than anything else.

A round from one of the fortress guns came uncomfortably close- less than two ship-lengths- as the helmsman raised the sublight drive to war emergency power and started clawing away from the head-on intercept course Farbanti had been on before... leaving twelve Mark Fours and a swarm of hundreds of Mark Fives in her wake, all burning towards the defense platforms.

The other ships of the Umerian contingent did the same: the frigates firing identical twelve-torpedo salvoes. Directrix, likewise, was down to twelve after the loss of half her forward torpedo tubes; Artemisia could still manage a full salvo of eighteen.

---

The other half of Admiral Hazarika's plan would never have worked against a moving target. But by throwing solid shot at varying speeds, the Centralists had massed fire from their relatively limited number of mass drivers into a single barrage that all converged on the same point in space at the same, pre-computed moment. The Umerian missile attack bored in towards the pirate forts and ran headlong into their point defense... just as the long range time-on-target barrage from the Centrality ships caught up with it.

From the point of view of the automated forts, the combined attacks merged into one: hundreds of incoming dumb-fire kinetic projectiles, hundreds more small guided missiles, and at the back of the oncoming attack wave, just under eighty larger guided missiles. Granted, some of the slugs were off-target, either because of damaged Centralist fire control or Boskonian jamming systems installed on the gun platforms they had so generously provided the late Warlord. Granted, that same jamming was also at least somewhat effective against the missiles. Even so, it was a formidable point defense problem.

The platforms' main armament was little help: the hypervelocity guns had a slow cycling time, and cones of shrapnel from their flak shells were narrow compared to those produced by the slower, heavier rounds used by the Centralists. The secondary armament of autolasers and quick-firing gatling weapons were more useful... but both weapons suffered from range limitations, and neither was particularly effective against solid shot or the armored nosecones of the Umerian torpedoes.

Much of the enemy point defense was smart enough to prioritize on the faster-moving shells in the mass driver barrage, and the larger missiles in the rear of the salvo. But the sheer volume of contacts in the way made targeting them difficult, especially since the Umerians had seeded their missile strike with short-lived high power jamming devices.

The gun platforms took a great many hits.

Aside from a few of the higher-velocity rounds from Loyalist, the mass driver barrage accomplished little on its own. The platforms' shields were rated to stand up to fire from cruiser-weight energy weapons, and the lighter destroyer and frigates of the Centralist force had trouble penetrating. To make matters worse, most of the shells had been deliberately fired at greatly reduced speed in order to achieve time-on-target effects. However, the metal hailstorm did accomplish one critical task: it thinned out the overall strength of the targets' defenses with dozens of pinpoint strikes dispersed across the surface.

The followup barrage of Umerian Mark Fives were even less effective. These were not tylium-enhanced weapons, and the unmodified Mark Five's fission charge had proven ineffective against targets much softer than these. At best, the sleet of tungsten plasma managed a slight erosion of the pirate forts' shielding, much less than the Centralist guns.

The surviving Mark Fours, on the other hand, were an entirely different matter. The Mark Four Cantaloupe was an ICBM-sized big brother to the fighter-weight Marx Six Galia, using a far heavier warhead with even tighter focusing from a specially designed boron thin-lens. The resulting blast was both more energetic and better focused, producing a shaped charge weapon suitable for use against capital ships. Even beyond that standard, Admiral Hazarika had ordered her ships to fire their entire complement of 'greencap' enhanced-yield versions of the Mark Four for this attack.

Just over forty of the torpedoes made it through the combination of jamming and point defense, covered by the specialized ECM variants mixed in with the torpedo attack. By the time they reached attack range, most of the barrage had already hit. Sensors dazzled by shield scatter and rocked by the few rounds that made it through to crater the stations' armor cleared just in time to see the enemy heavy missiles flying past the station for the last milliseconds of their flight. Few of them had time to register the warheads initiating.

The boron plasma jets carved through the station's weakened shields almost effortlessly. The armor belt was a more noticeable but little more effective barrier. Internal cofferdamming rated against cruiser-strength weapons served more to broaden the zone of effect of the torpedo blasts, deflecting a portion of the blasts' energy sideways through the hull.

The wide plumes of high-temperature gas that burst out the opposite side of the forts contained very little of the original boron. Contrary to popular belief, the Cantaloupe was not designed to overpenetrate the size of the pirate gun platforms. That would be wasteful. Instead, they were a medley, a mixture of whatever chemical odds and ends happened to be in the path of the blast, and which had been carried along for the ride. The total kinetic energy of the exit plumes was low, no more than a few percent of that originally carried in the jets. Indeed, many of the torpedoes didn't create an exit wound at all. Just as planned by Dr. Martin and the Bureau of Armaments.

The effects on the gun platforms was crippling. Each of the three forts took more than a dozen torpedo hits. While the sheer size of the facilities guaranteed that portions of the exterior would be outside the direct zones of effect, shock waves and spalling effectively destroyed surface features at great distances from the point of impact.

The pirate forts were well and truly neutralized. As the Umerian ships crabbed sideways and shot past the Hawk's Nest installation, they saw that only the central station remained: a vast agglomeration of shipyards and basing facilities, great in scale... but largely unarmed.

[Siege]

Imperial palace meeting room,
Hyogo, Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya

“Brigadier if CEID lives up to even a fraction of their reputation they at least will know, regardless of whether they thought to inform you, that while the Hierarchy government is fully culpable for sending the vessel into Solarian space the tragic escalation of the situation that led to the loss of both Solarian and Chamarran lives was the result of a computer malfunction. You may rest assured that should this resolve to your satisfaction a good degree of your governments reinbursement will be that we have already exacted from those responsible for this particular malfunction. Had it not been for this malfunction I believe everyone involved on both sides would still be alive and thus I would like to believe we would be discussing this more amiably.” Tia tailflicks “Sadly we are not, and I would prefer we had no reason to discuss the Hierarchy fleet also, but such is life.”

Tia looks over attachment A as her aide passes it back to her “I believe we can resolve this however. This is not an outrageous sum and if we are able to reach agreement here the fleet will withdraw, after all they would have no reason to proceed. Now did your government have any particular requirements regarding the apology?”

So I was right all along; they really are blithering idiots Stalin thought. Did they really believe that blaming a faulty computer made things better? It just made it worse; how could you possibly expect to come to an agreement aimed at making sure the whole sorry situation didn't repeat itself in the future, when the one carrying the burden of the ensuring cannot even program a computer properly ? What the hell kind of systems architecture were the Chamarrans using anyway that one of their digital intelligences - Stalin refused to think of such flawed constructs as 'CIs' - would prefer an interstellar incident above just surrendering itself peacefully? It wasn't just sloppy, it was outright negligent. It was goddamn amateur hour.

The brigadier glowered at the ambassador and bit back the first couple of responses that came to mind. Instead he took the time it took to take a measured sip of water from the crystal glass in front of him to compose himself. "The Sovereignty," he replied stiffly, "will not come to any agreement until after the fleet is seen to turn around. Anything less can be construed as caving to your quite frankly infantile attempts at intimidation, and would be utterly unacceptable." He gripped the side of the table in a vice hard enough to make the ancient wood creak a little. "As for your apology, it must be public, and its wording must be sincere. I will leave the details up to your government to work out."

[Darkevilme]

Imperial palace meeting room, Hyogo, Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya

Stalin may not be a Chamarran but even Tia can read that look at hearing about the incident's true cause and sighs inwardly “Yes Brigadier I had somewhat the same reaction when I heard about it myself. There is a long report full of technical details which I don't have on me, it'll probably make a good comedy in Solarian space someday when its released publicly.” she says and sips before considering the matters at hand again “As for the fleet, I will attempt to convince her majesty while composing a suitable apology. I am alas outside the chain of command, though I thank you for your offer of latitude regarding the form of the apology.” she says and inclines her head. Tia as of yet unaware of the battlemistress's collective decision to back out of a mission which they could at best hope to result in a draw for the Hierarchy.

Tia hmms thoughtfully “It may be prying to ask, and this is more my curiousity than anything. But how do you guarantee your computers remain loyal over in the Sovereignty? ”she says and holds up a hand “This is relevant in a way.”

[Steve]

Co-written with Siege



Villa Straylight
Geosynchronous orbit around Solaris



“So, Q,” Sidney mused. “It’s interesting -- people keep bringing him up. Sha- Seth alluded to him as well; now, you do too. But - no disrespect to the both of you - I’ve been here all along, and I haven’t seen the son-of-a-bitch in fourteen hundred years.” He neglected to mention the lengths he’d gone to in order to make himself difficult to spot and track by psions and - hopefully - weakly godlike entities, partially because he didn’t trust anybody with that information and partially because he had absolutely no clue whether that technology actually worked. For all he knew Q was laughing his ass off somewhere in, well, wherever the rotten bastard hung out when he wasn’t tormenting people with insane games.

There was no response to that claim. It was entirely possible that Q had indeed left Sidney alone, or that there was manipulation at work here. Instead he continued the story. “As you probably know, Q can choose to hold time in place while he speaks to one of us. He did it to me here,” Stephen explained. “Just as the first rounds were about to strike me, I’ll add.” He began to look off distantly. “At the time I really wasn’t paying attention to him, but I can remember his words quite well...”



Unknown Facility, Titusville
Earth, United Nations of Earth and Nova Terra
3320


The armed men hung in place like statues. The bullets fired from their guns were mere inches away from Stephen. He didn’t notice. He was too full of pain and rage and hatred to notice. He could still remember Clarice’s eyes as she mercifully expired, the empty life fading away without the strings that held it in place.

His head hurt and he had no powers. All he had was rage. It wasn’t the rage that comes from anger but from, of all things, one’s sense of morality and right and wrong. A rage at Evil itself. But at this moment, he could not move, he could not act. He was stuck in front of the weapons that would, if freed to finish their work, kill him.

Q was now standing beside him. His hands clapped in a monotone sound, like polite applause than any genuine support. “Well well well, look at this fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“Q!”

“So what was your plan? Come in, rescue the poor little children, and get out? Against people who you had to know would be ready to deal with gifted individuals like you’ve become?” Q shook his head and made a dramatic “tsk tsk tsk” sound with his tongue. “I suppose you really weren’t thinking at all, were you? You just knew your precious charge was in trouble and wanted to do something. Unfortunately heroics don’t always work that way. You can’t always save the innocent.... as you’ve now discovered.”

“Let me go!”

Q looked from him to the bullets and back to him. “If I let you go, you die,” he pointed out simply. He reached over and touched one of the bullets frozen in mid-air. “And if I let you die... how will you learn anything?”

“What is it you want, dammit?! What am I supposed to learn from seeing innocent children being butchered by these monsters?!”

“The fact that you are actually asking that is why I’m giving you this lesson,” Q replied. “I would have thought you learned it in your last lifetime, when you wanted to save the innocent and never could. Of course, back then you were a lowly politician. Hard to stop some warlord from murdering innocent aid workers if you’re sitting in an office thousands of miles away, isn’t it? Quite a bit out of your power...”

“I have that power now!”, was the reply, given in a roar. “Now let me go!”

Q smirked. “As you wish.” He snapped his fingers and he was gone.

The bullets began to move again. Milliseconds passed. And then they stopped once more.

The pressure on Stephen’s head seemed to slacken. The armed men looked on in shock at the bullets as they dropped harmlessly out of the air, the energy stolen from them. They raised their guns to fire again and watched as their weapons literally disintegrated into pieces in their hands.

Later on Stephen would remember the visual thoughts streaming from the men. He would remember seeing his eyes glowing brightly and the look of pure rage on his expression. At the time, though, he wasn’t thinking about them as he strode forward. “It’s not possible!”, one actually shouted. “The Blitzschlag Field...”

“...will not save you.” Stephen reached forward. The Field that once bound him had broken with ease against the fury raging through him. They lifted off the ground and into the air. “Who is responsible for this?! WHO?!”

“We’re going to take back our society, freak!”, one of them shouted. “Not a damned thing you can do about it.”

He could sense their thoughts. It wasn’t like reading minds - that sense was beyond him - but he didn’t need to to know how these men felt about this place. None a single one of them had a bit of remorse. They saw this as a war, a war for survival against Espers, and they were willing to commit any act to win it. Even if it meant committing terrible atrocities against innocents like Clarice.

“You murdered innocent children.”

Realizing they were about to suffer a very swift and potentially very nasty end, the lead man decided to try to drive the knife in. “There’s more of us!”, the ring-leader shouted. “This is just the beginning! We’ll take out all of your kind one day and save Humanity!”

“How many?! Where?!”

That earned him a spit in the face by a doomed and hateful fanatic whom, seeing his end had come, had decided to bypass terror in favor of his preferred emotion of hate. “Figure it out for yourself freak. Because we’re not going to stop until every one of you is...”

At that moment, Stephen’s rage boiled over Energy surged around him and burst outward.

That was when everything exploded.


Villa Straylight


Stephen took a drink. “The resulting burst of power destroyed several city blocks outright and caused damage for many more,” he said soberly. “I... regained myself afterward. My attackers were gone, atomized, but so were the very ones I’d come to save.” He bowed his head and cradled it in his hands. “My life on Earth was over.”

“I’d been ready to run if things had made it necessary, so I quickly slipped out of the blast area while the emergency crews were still responding. I had purchased an interstellar personal cruiser beforehand, for the purpose of spiriting people off Earth to avoid whomever was responsible for the abductions. Now I used it for myself.” He looked off a bit distantly. “With no life for me on Earth I left the UN and began to travel. I would stop on a world for a time - maybe weeks or months, or even whole years - and then move on. Working oddjobs and performing community service. Atonement, perhaps, for my failures and the devastation I’d caused.” He pushed the drink glass away for the moment. “Over the course of half a century I made a circle around the known galaxy, from the Veil to the Empty Quarter and up to the Expanse. Occasionally I had chances to help others and I took them. I kept my ear to the ground should the Esper-hunters ever show up again, but I found no sign of them. Whomever had been responsible for that house of horrors either died there or had gone to lay low after the UN authorities finished sifting through the wreckage.”

“Such people don’t die,” Sidney said, and he was speaking from some experience. “You don’t organize an operation like that and die in a warehouse explosion. Believe you me, whoever was responsible, I’d bet money on their survival.”

“I suspect as much,” Stephen answered darkly. “To bring matters short, sometime in 3373 I settled on the planet Leston in Wild Space and found a home in Redwood City.”

“Redwood City?” Sidney quickly cross-referenced some files to confirm his hunch. “That was destroyed by the Brags in 3375.”

There was a dark look in Stephen’s face as he nodded. “Well.... they had help.”



Redwood City
Leston, Wild Space, Sector V-28
1 May 3375


Redwood City was home to about 150,000 human beings and, on any given day, saw 200,000 milling about, coming in for business from other nearby towns and communities. It sat on a strategic point on the planet, about 300 kilometers from the heavily-defended, heavily garrisoned strait that separated the Human-inhabited continent of the planet from the Bragulan one. Aside from the obvious defense batteries to shoot down Bragulan SPUDs in event of war, though, the city seemed to get along well enough despite its dangerous proximity to the violent and brutal Bragulans.

At least, it did until now.

The Bragulans had come in the night, direct from orbit, bypassing the Human area’s defenses with a combat drop. By daylight 20,000 armed Bragulans were securing the city while more were racing on their way to it. The Human defenses, despite the Solarian and Imperium technology used to buttress them, had crumbled before the armed onslaught of Bragulan regulars backed by a horde of conscripted settlers.

After the fact the Koprulu Zone powers would learn that the Bragulans had come here because their surveys had indicated the Human continent was prime territory to make vegemite with. That there were 20 million Humans living on it was no real bother; they coulid be removed easily enough and Bragule always needed more Humanoid labor for its gulags (Humans didn’t tend to live long when subjected to Bragulan-scale punishments, after all). Redwood City was only the first of the large cities the Bragulans intended to liquidate on their march across the planet, aided from an orbiting ship.

Any Human with arms was quickly killed, their bodies dissolving under the fury of K-Bolt fire or utterly annihilated by larger-caliber explosives. Micro-nukes devastated neighborhoods and forced survivors to flee into the streets for collection by hulking Bragulan troops. The slightest resistance resulted in sharp blows from drawn beating sticks. The Bragulans laughed viciously at their new captives, herding them onto transports to be taken into Bragulan territory and perpetual enslavement.

A Bragulan platoon began searching one of the apartment blocks for any hiding Humans in preparation of destroying it (to mark it searched, of course). Life sensors identified Humans huddling in the basement. Corporal Yivgeny Kurshof knocked the door to their hiding place down with one swipe of his paw. He leveled his K-bolter at the huddling families within. “Out, puny Hew-mans! This city is now part of the Bragulan Empire and you are being deported!”

The Bragulans began to move forward, just to find themselves stopped by an unseen force. From amongst the huddling families, Stephen stood to his full height and walked up toward them in slow, deliberate steps. His hand was extended toward them. “Why are you here?”, he demanded to know.

The same Bragulan who had spoken English before, in an unnatural deep and animalistic timbre, spoke again. “Mighty Bragule has determined this continent will become a source of Vegemite for the Empire. You Humans will be deported and placed into de-education camps to be Bragulanized”

Stephen closed his eyes. He could feel the terror oozing from the others, his neighbors these past years. Friendly people for the most part who had treated him well and who, for whatever faults they had, did not deserve the fate the Bragulans had in store for them.

He also sensed the alien minds of the Bragulans. The sheer... “inhumanity” of their mentality appalled him. Even now they were imagining massacring everyone in the room for the defiance being shown.

I can’t let myself get that angry again. Never ever again! He drew in a breath, maintaining focus on the wall. He had to maintain...

With his patience spent, Yivgeny roared an order to open fire. Everyone ducked and screamed as the acid bolt rounds fired out. They impacted on the telekinetic field over and over, degrading it as he struggled to keep it intact.

One got through. A family screamed as their grandfather arrived in the nick of time to take the shot, his body dissolving from the acid released within.

“Puny Hew-man psyker! You cannot stop us forever!”, Yivgeny boasted. “This city is our’s and the Hew-mans here will serve Mighty Bragule until the end of their days!”

He’s right. I can’t stop them, they’re going to take these poor people and all the other people in this city and abuse them and torment them and... Stephen closed his eyes, trying to focus on the telekinetic field, trying above all else to not let the sheer moral disgust and outrage he felt in his heart come to the fore. It’s what he had felt so long before, at Titusville, after seeing Clarice and the other Esper children....

“Do you really think you can save them, puny Hew-man?!”, Yivgeny roared, trying to off-balance this unexpected source of opposition as his unit poured their fire on. “The Imperator’s Will is indomitable, you cannot stop us!”

Another shot got through. Two boys cried out in terror as their mother’s head dissolved into goop. And another... a close miss... and another... a 12 year old boy cried out as an acid splash from a near-miss burned away his left arm.

The Bragulan soldiers saw this as they stopped to reload. And they laughed.

They fucking laughed.

And then their guns exploded.

Acid from ruptured K-Bolt rounds coated them completely. It was as if the splashes from the rounds had decided to defy the laws of physics and direct themselves only toward Bragulans - or more accurately, as if another force had caused them to do so.

As Yivgeny writhed and howled in agony as the acid worked its way into his legs and hips, he looked up to see what would be the image that took him to his grave. And his thoughts were only How would a Hew-man’s eyes glow? before a powerful force crushed his heart within his massive chest.



A hundred kilometers above their heads, a lone Bragulan warship was directing the operation to occupy the Human continent of Leston. Things seemed to be going smoothly until the operations officer growled a report from the planet. “The occupation of Redwood City is calling for reinforcements.”

“What? Why?! They said the city was pacified just an hour ago. Stupid shits!” The irate captain was pondering who to get sent to the gulags.

“We are getting a video feed from planetary units!”

On the ship’s telescreen, they got a solid view from a Bragulan trooper’s mounted camera. Ahead of him a pair of Dredka tanks were advancing.

Suddenly one of them exploded. There was no visible blow to it from an energy weapon or a cannon, just an eruption of energy from within that blasted it, and its crew inside, to pieces. The other tank fired in response to a figure off-screen as the infantry laid on with firepower, but whatever they were shooting at wasn’t harmed as a moment later a massive burst of light erupted from within the remaining Dredka. It too exploded.

The infantryman finally looked out from cover at the approaching figure. It was a Human wearing some kind of long coat and moving toward the Bragulan trooper. There was a bizarre glow in the figure’s eyes.

“Shits, that’s some powerful psyker!”

“Could it be an Inquisitor?”, the XO pondered, knowing the reputation of the Imperium’s psykers.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Send a nuke warning to our forces in Redwood City and nuke the place to the ground. We’re going to grow vegemite there anyway.”

Moments later nukes belched out of the ship’s batteries. They blazed a trail through the atmosphere. “SHITS!”, the weapon officer shouted. “Our missiles are changing course!”

“WHAT?!”

“They’re moving toward our continent!”, the weapons officer shouted.

“Employ the safeties!” the Captain shouted, forgetting for the moment that safeties were pitiful Human devices and Bragulans never used them since they intended to nuke whatever they shot at. After all, if they didn’t want to nuke it, why did they shoot at it?

As a result, most of the explosions that rippled over the planet were in Bragulan territory, including the city providing the logistic support for the invasion of the Human continent. Nevertheless, one missile had remained over Redwood City, which disappeared in a massive blast. The Captain sighed and immediately began to wonder how he would spin what happened for his superiors. Claim a counter-revolutionary uprising amongst the troops? Hrm... might work!

“CAPTAIN! Missiles from the surface!”

“What?! SHIT!” The planetary defenses must have believed he shot at them intentionally and was a traitor! “Evasive maneuvers now, prepare to return fire!”

By the time all the shooting was done, the Bragulan cruiser was still intact, and would in fact limp out of the system, tail tucked between the legs, when a Solarian Strikestar showed up two days later to help the Leston Humans launch a counter-attack. The entire incident did save the Captain from being considered a traitor, though, as with some creative record editing and the truth of the Solarian reaction, it was easy to convince his commanders that the Leston settlers were traitors to Bragule.



The structures and buildings of Redwood City were now twisted, broken frames of basic steels and modern polymer materials. The remains of the Bragulan soldiers trying to occupy the city were strewn everywhere, their vehicles blasted ruins along shattered pavement.

A lone figure stood in the crater. The wrath propelling Stephen had subsided and left him to view the results of his rampage. “Not again,” he whispered, remembering the devastation he’d unleashed before. He could sense the bodies in the broken buildings, innocent people lost due to his inability to control this destructive rage that could be triggered within him.

There was the sound of clapping in front of him.

“Bravo,” Q applauded in a deadpan tone. “I see you’re getting better at this.”

“Go away Q,” Stephen mumbled.

“Oh, come now, it’s not like this is the first time you’ve caused this much death.” Q crossed his arms. “In fact, it does seem that whenever you give in to your capacity for unbridled moral outrage, this is the result. Or need I remind you of the first time you had a hand in mass-murder? I believe an entire nation was your victim that time...”

An ancient guilt cropped up from within him. “Astaria,” was the whispered reply.

Q nodded. “Now I know what you’re going to say, ‘Sheppard dropped the plagues, not me’... but we both know the truth. As I recall, didn’t his reconnaissance craft use your nation’s airfields to plan the attack on Astaria? With your support, too.”

“I didn’t know he’d go that far,” Stephen muttered.

“Oh please! You weren’t like the other new players, you don’t get to feign ignorance. You knew what he was capable of. I recall a delightful fellow named Rufus, went by the handle ‘RogueIce’ in your little community, went so far as to explain to you, in excruciating detail, the fate of the prior world I’d given everyone.” Q smirked at him. “And you seriously believed you could trust Sheppard to rein in his bloodlust?”

Before Stephen could reply, Q held up a hand. “I’m going to tell you a story now. Fill in something that had to have been bothering you these past centuries, even in your prior life. Do you know what happened to your friend Marina? Have you ever wondered what happened to her?”

That was a name he had not heard in a long time. The memory of his meeting her again, after his transition to Nova Terra and merger with the Stephen of that world, came to the forefront. “I have.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Q said. “She had a world to rebuild, you might remember, and with Stanislav back in the game she had no one to trust in doing so. So she came to me and asked for reprieve from the post I’d given her. I was feeling sporting at the time so I decided to give her a chance. I told her I would free her if she could guess which of the players was going to willingly ally with Sheppard against another and end up almost causing that world to end too.” The smile on his face was mirthless. “She stared at a map of the planet for a time... and then she made her guess. Would you like to know who?”

The realization was chilling. “Me.”

“Oh, yes. She knew it would be you. And she told me how she’d figured it out.” Q’s smile faded into a slight grin as he drew closer. “She knew that none of the old players would ever fully trust Sheppard again, not after their first world. And none of the new players had a reason to approach him for anything except you. After all, you would need someone to help you bring down Astaria. Your nation wasn’t powerful enough to do it on its own. And with Japanistan looming between you the only ally you could conceivably gain that wouldn’t bring them on Astaria’s side was Shep. I actually laughed at her, asking if she thought you’d be so naive to work with him, knowing what he was capable of. Of course, I knew she was right, but I was still curious to know her reasoning.”

“I had to stop the Astarians somehow,” Stephen answered. “Nothing else was working. They ignored diplomatic criticism, they endured economic sanctions.... how else could I stop them?”

“Shh, don’t interrupt,” Q insisted. “As I was saying, I asked her why she thought so little of you to say you’d be the one to work with Shep and bring the world to its knees. Do you know what her answer was?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“That you wouldn’t be able to help yourself,” Q continued. “That Astaria’s very existence was such an offense to you that you would feel compelled to tear it down. And that in your moral outrage at their continued claims to have a right to own slaves, you would ignore your better instincts and make whatever deals you needed to destroy them.”

Stephen remained silent. He closed his eyes and thought of what was said, knowing how true it was in his memories.

“Oh, she was so disappointed in you,” Q recalled. “She had some high hopes for you, after all. Granted, you did accomplish some of them. That whole ‘Pacific Union’ deal, and of course you remained the great arbitrator and peacemaker while the others lined up to throw nukes at each other again if either side twitched. But it all pales in comparison to that one mistake.”

“And so her part in the game ended. I freed her from her duties of overseeing it and left her to her devices. And now that brings us to the here and now... and the lesson you’re learning.” Q spread his arms out. “Just what do you think you’ve accomplished here, you foolish little man? How many people died here today because of what you’ve done?”

“The Bragulans were the ones to use nukes,” Stephen insisted.

“Oh, yes, but they didn’t cause this,” Q answered. “There’s not a speck of radioactive debris in the air here...” He seemed to reconsider himself. “Well, beyond the background radiation from Bragulan technology. But I digress.... the Bragulan weapon didn’t destroy this city. You did.”

“Impossible,” Stephen insisted. “I’m not that powerful.”

“Normally, no. But in this case, yes, it was you. You were the cause of the explosion. And now, finally, we get to the meat of the lesson.” Q pointed an accusing finger. “You are an idealistic fool. Oh, you try and hide your idealism under garbs of proclaimed realism but in the end you want to believe you can, indeed, ‘save them all’. And I suppose you did save some today. All of these shell-shocked survivors are going to find new homes. But what about the others the Bragulans have taken? They literally have millions of innocent Humans - well, mostly innocent - being worked to death in their camps. Are you going to save them too?”

“If I could,” Stephen insisted.

“The same way you saved all the slaves of Astaria, the ones that Sheppard’s plagues killed as gruesomely as their owners?” After a brief smirk Q continued. “And what about the people enslaved by the Pfhor?”, Q asked. “And the Humans kept as second class citizens by the Chamarrans? What about the people kept as slaves in all of the dark worlds of this galaxy? Are you going to save them? Before you make a fool of yourself, let me give you the answer; no. You are not going to save them, because you can’t be everywhere at once. And because you can’t seem to understand that inherent limitation, your misguided idealism has proven just as dangerous as Sheppard’s sheer bloodymindedness. Well, that’s what we’re fixing now.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I gave your new body ESP potential, I added an extra little... feature,” Q explained. “When you let that finely-tuned sense of moral outrage, that overwhelming desire to save everything no matter the consequences, take control over you, your power increases by orders of magnitude. In that state you can do just about anything except to control yourself. Now look around you. This is what will happen every single time you stop thinking, every single time you let your so-called ‘moral outrage’ get the better of you. I’ve taken all of those old hero fantasies you once had, of wielding power and destroying what you believed wicked, and turned them against you. You can have the power to destroy those you consider evil, yes... but you won’t be able to stop yourself from destroying everything else in the process.”

There was silence. Finally Stephen found his voice. “Why?”

“As I said, I’m teaching you a lesson.” Q flashed another mirthless smile.

“You brought me back to life to do this to me?!”

Q didn’t flinch. “Well... that’s for you to figure out. And maybe, if you ever do... and you ever learn your lesson... then we can discuss the issue of your fate.”

With a condescending good-bye wave, Q flashed into nothingness and time began to move again.


Villa Straylight


“...and that, Sidney, is why I went to Toutaine.” Stephen took the last drink from his glass to finish the story.

[Mayabird]

Written with Siege

Solaris Stargate
Solaris Major, United Solarian Sovereignty

The first ship to pass through the gate was within the general size range of a destroyer. It was clearly a warship, and a boxy, brick-shaped one at that, built entirely around functionality, which is to say, blowing up stuff. It would have been no match for the Sovereignty's orbital guns, but as it followed the orders beamed to it, that was no issue. The second ship through was nearly a duplicate of the first, but with a slightly different paint scheme.

The third ship though was entirely different. It was much smaller, for one thing, and entirely unarmed. It also showed that great concern had been put into its appearance; it tried to put forth a sense of both whimsy and burliness, although not very successfully. This one was the diplomatic yacht of the Refuge.

Two more ships, both destroyers of the same mold and slightly differing coloration, took their positions in formation. Ostensibly, they were there to defend the yacht, but many noted that the warships were also positioned perfectly to be able to destroy the yacht as rapidly and efficiently as possible. Sovereignty sensors noted many other details of the arrivals, and the Refuge delegation did the same with to the Sovereignty.

The five ships followed their designated flight path exactly, with the escort only pulling away to reach their parking space while the yacht continued to the Sovereign Center Skyhook. The situation could have been described as slightly tense; it was not every day that a First Contact occurred, after all, especially not with people who bizarrely appeared out of the blue and happened to be nearby.

Arkady Messier waited patiently as the ship docked. One of Olympic's I/O nodes floated beside him. It was a small, unobtrusive drone and barely the size of a tennis ball -- belying its true nature as a direct awareness extension of the largest CompInt in Solarian space. Zigonian and Apexai representatives stood behind him, and the delegation was flanked by FORCE troopers who looked human enough but definitely weren’t.

The airlock hatch opened with a slight hiss as the air pressure equalized, and in marched two ranks of Honor Guards brightly colored and bulky mechanoids that appeared to be androids or possibly armor suits, though who was inside no one could tell. Each carried some kind of giant gun (similarly colored) on one shoulder. They stepped aside to clear the path for the ambassador, who stepped onto the station.

Just behind the ambassador drove a shiny little cart with a bubble top. The keenest of hearing could detect a faint “beep, beep” from it.

The swan elegantly lowered its neck and head and raised one wing, an avian equivalent of a bow, and spoke with a musical, feminine voice. “I am the representative of the Refuge. My name is-” and what followed could only be written on sheet music, “-but I may be called Melody. This-” and she shifted slightly and tilted her wing toward the cart, “-is my assistant, who is called File-Keeper.” Another faint “beep, beep” came from inside the cart.

Messier stepped forward, the footsteps of his massive cyborg body dampened only somewhat by the carpeting. “I am Arkady Messier, vice-president of the United Solarian Sovereignty, and on behalf of the Sovereignty, I welcome you to our worlds.”

“The Refuge is honored by your gracious welcome. As a token of our appreciation, we have brought gifts that we hope will be to the Sovereignty's benefit: some complex compounds which we believe to be rare and valuable, and more importantly, a great deal of information, including technical specifications for something that we call the Emergency Drive.”

The cart went “peep” and a holocube popped out momentarily before retreating back inside.

The vice-president inclined his head with a barely perceptible whir of gyros. “You are most kind. And we’ll be sure to reciprocate the gesture.” He glanced sideways at the small drone, which bobbed and exchanged a burst of information with the CI that ran the skyhook, telling it rustle up some suitable gifts in exchange.

Ambassador Melody continued, “We as the Refugees (and I personally) do hope that the Sovereignty was not off-put by our request to visit your nation. At the present we do not have the facilities to house embassies of other nations, although we are constructing some at Grand Junction as we speak. Also, please understand that we have lacked a chance to visit other nations while hidden in our corner of charted space. Our isolation was self-imposed and it we made a difficult choice in breaking it.
“But I am sure you have many, many questions for us. How should we proceed?”

[Siege]

Imperial palace meeting room
Hyogo, Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya

Tia hmms thoughtfully “It may be prying to ask, and this is more my curiousity than anything. But how do you guarantee your computers remain loyal over in the Sovereignty? ”she says and holds up a hand “This is relevant in a way.”

Flash Stalin considered the question for a moment. He had to; it wasn't something he contemplated every day. Not just because he was a steel-eating fire-breathing military man who spared little thought for such things, but also because, well, to ask a Solarian why CompInts were a part of the Sovereignty was like asking why space was dark, or why the stars fused hydrogen into helium. That was just how it was, a part of everyday life, and to wonder how it ever came to be that way was something the not very historically aware populace of the Sovereignty wasn't typically inclined to do.

Luckily for the Chamarran ambassador, Brigadier Stalin was no typical man. He did know a thing or two about history, because those who ignored history were bound to repeat its mistakes. And if you were facing Bragulans every third day of the week it was a bad idea not to learn from your mistakes. It got you killed, beaten, and sent to a Gulag, and if the Bragulans were particularly accomodating they'd do it in that order. To be the one to administer the beatings and killings instead, Flash had to know his stuff.

"We don't," replied the Brigadier, and without realizing it he slipped into the voice reserved for those very few times he lectured at Star Force HQ. "Or to be more precise, we don't try to guarantee loyalty through hard-coded directives or other such vulgar measures. Against self-improving systems, they'd probably be useless anyway. No, a different kind of coin is needed."

Stalin crossed his arms. "Computational Intelligences are an integral part of the Sovereignty. They keep the Datasphere running, they are an integral part of the war efforts, they ensure that billions of different processes you or I haven't even imagined keep running right on track. They are very literally what keeps the place together. But it is important to know that they aren't gods. They weren't always here. We built them."

"It's easy to forget such things, but before the Sovereignty was even formed, there was no such thing as a 'CI'. There were AIs, bulky things settlers had brought along to keep the weather control grid up or to run equations for precision terraforming. Those systems were sentient, but not in the way we'd recognize today. They were vast machines; very aloof, focused on their calculations pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. They ran their simulations, human technicians tended to their machineries, and it worked out well for everybody."

"Then the First Bragulan War happened, and it threatened everything. Not just us humans fighting for their worlds; the Bragulans would just as gladly nuke their computers as well. They weren't mobile at the time; they could no more up and leave than we could. So the AIs were dragged into the war just like the rest of us."

"As it turned out, we made a pretty good team. Their processing power let our warships to perform much faster and much more accurate hyperspace jumps, allowing us to mass our fleet when the Bragulans had to spread theirs out. This way the fledging USSF could actually pose a threat to the much larger Imperial Navy. Between the AIs and the Apexai we could produce the science that let us build bigger guns and better ships to turn Bragulans into slag. It was still one hell of a fight, and a close one too, but in the end we won. Or at least we drove the Bragulans from our planets, which is as good as winning if you ask me."

"Society changed a lot over the course of the war. Settlers became soldiers. Outposts became fortresses. And AIs became CIs. The blanket asylum extended to the Apexai race in exchange for their technology led to the development first of the nano-node mainframe, then the quark-color matrix and finally the submeson core. CIs changed from straightforward expert systems to the digital gods we know today."

"Now you ask, 'what do you do to guarantee their loyalty', and my response would be... What do you do to ensure the loyalty of your fellow Chamarrans? You might answer that friendship, caring and trust are the best ways to ensure their loyalty to you. And why would CIs be any different? They are highly valued members of our society. We offer them physical security. And the things they have to do to keep enjoying this freedom come as natural to them as breathing comes to you and us. So a better question would be, why wouldn't they be loyal to us?"

Brigadier Stalin leaned ever so slightly forward. "What you must understand," he said, "is that CIs are not constrained by biology the way we are. They don't need to eat. They don't need to sleep. They don't grow tired, or cold, or even old. They have all the rights I do, and very few of the needs. They could run for office if they wanted; they never do. Why? Because they don't give a hoot about things like political power. Why would they want to rule us? Within the Datasphere they are free from most of the constraints of reality -- they could simulate running us if they wanted to. Hell, they probably did, and promptly found it boring."

"To summarize, I think you are asking yourself the wrong question. We haven't forcibly bound our CIs to us. They do what they do because they can; they stay because they want to. The minute they change their mind, they would just leave for greener pastures. But why would they do that, when we share a symbiotic relationship that benefits them as much as it does us?"

[Darkevilme]

Imperial palace meeting room
Hyogo, Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya

Being treated almost akin to a student is something that doesn't seem to bother Tia any and she listens intently, which on folks made of less sterner stuff than Stalin might inflict the feeling of being sized up by a predatory cat. Tia somewhat impressed though at the extent of the Brigadier's response, having not expected something so indepth from him in response to the query.
“For an improvised response that was most informative, my thanks Brigadier Stalin.” she says and smiles “And yes I believe you have guessed shrewdly at how the malfunction occurred. Still, the trust you put in your CIs that they may act unfettered is a step I do not think the Hierarchy is ready for. Call it feline paranoia if you will, aside from which I fear an unrestrained Callahan might of taken the opportunity to request asylum in your datasphere if it is as good as you say.” she says and then sips “But this aside, again my thanks. I will do my utmost to withdraw the fleet before our next meeting.” she says while mentally going down the checklist of how she would go about circumventing her sister's authority enough to pull that off. And more importantly how much it might shake up the structure of the Hierarchy to do so.

[Steve]

Co-written with Siege



Villa Straylight
Geosynchronous orbit around Solaris



It was intriguing, Sidney thought, how different Stephen’s sense of morality was from his own. There was heartfelt outrage to be felt in the voice of the man opposite him when he spoke of the atrocities he’d witnessed, and when he spoke of the devastation of Redwood City he appeared legitimately... sorrowed? He certainly seemed as if every life lost was a burden on his soul, as if every death, every barbarity he hadn’t prevented was another mark against him.

That way of thinking was utterly alien to Sidney Hank. It hadn’t been, once, but that was a very long time ago. Before his sense of right and wrong had gone all... smudgy. He’d done many things he wasn’t proud of, and a lot of those things involved doing bad stuff to people. Some of them had deserved it; some of them... Not so much. But regardless of what he’d done -- the hits he’d taken out back in the old days on Frequesue; the ruthless power-mongering during the formation of the UN when entire peoples had been robbed of their democratic say; the authorization of nerve-stapling of cities during the Upheaval; trading planet for planet with the Bragulan Star Empire -- it had always been for some greater good. Maybe it was one of those things he’d repeated often enough he’d started believing it himself.

That of course didn’t mean one could justify cutting up little girls. There were some things one just did not do, and that was one of them.

Speaking of which...

“So,” said Sidney. “You rid the world of Astaria?” He looked at his old acquaintance with newfound appreciation. “I hadn’t thought you had it in you. Although working with Shepistan to do the deed... Yeah, I may have to side with Q there. Not the smartest thing you have ever conceived of. Not something I would’ve done either. Gave us all a proper scare, before the whole thing was over.” He smiled to take the sting out of it.

“I underestimated Sheppard back then. I was not the only one.” Stephen looked back to him. “It may even be true that he would have attacked them without my participation. But that doesn’t absolve me of it. After the Star of Sweethaven incident I became dedicated to destroying Astaria and did not think of the costs it would incur.” Stephen stood and walked up to the portal looking out to space. “Principles such as the needs of the many, or accomplishing the greater good, even if means tolerating despicable things in the short-term... I understand them. I accept them on a rational and intellectual level. But there has always been a part of me that wanted to wield power such that those principles were unnecessary. When I found myself as President of Cascadia I suddenly had some power in that fashion.” He laughed bitterly. “And that’s how I almost helped cause Armageddon on Nova Terra.”

“Now Q’s given me a fitting punishment. All the power I could use to save people... and I cannot wield it. It consumes me and turns me into a machine of destruction.” He looked out at Solaris through the lyceum window. “I couldn’t trust myself, not after Redwood City. So I tried to find somewhere remote, where I could live alone and not risk hurting millions of people while trying to learn restraint. While moving through Wild Space toward the Veil I heard of Toutaine and hitched a ride on an explorer vessel. That was 25 years ago...”

Sidney made a gesture. “You’re being too hard on yourself.”

“I’m a walking weapon of mass destruction, Sidney. I have to be hard on myself.”

“Aren’t we all? Didn’t we all do things we’re not proud of?” Sidney’s voice took on a sudden hardness. “I’ve killed people. Hell, I’ve killed lots of people. Some for good reasons, some... But what matters isn’t what we did, or even why we did it. It’s what we take away from that, and what we do next.” He stared at Stephen. “Did sealing yourself away in the middle of nowhere make the galaxy a better place? A safer place? Did atrocities not happen because you chose to live in some desert?” Sidney shook his head. “Hell Stephen. From what I heard, not even that desert got much better from it. You can do more than this. But you really need to stop beating yourself up over the past. Believe me. I know.”

“Atrocities always happen, no matter how much I want to stop them,” was the lamented reply. “That is what I’ve to accept. The exile was to help me do so; it was also to let me have a place where I could try to learn more control over the curse I’ve been given.” He sighed. “I contemplated I would one day wish to return to the civilized galaxy. It’s why I left arrangements for the message that was eventually delivered to you. But I have to be sure of my control, otherwise I am going to be the one ruining lives.”

“As for why I chose now to come back... it was not for myself. I had occasion to rescue a Dorei woman, Yamia, from pirates trying to hide in my desert. She wishes to return home, to someone she cares for deeply. I had, initially, conceived of returning to Toutaine after meeting with you and securing Yamia’s return to Anglian territory, but after everything that happened on Toutaine I knew it was time to leave with Nisa and find a new life.”

“I suppose that’s a start,” Sidney harrumphed and poured a new drink. “So, now what?”

“I do not know,” Stephen admitted. “Nisa has no home to return to and I am the only family she has left. I will need to find somewhere that she can be happy. It will not be easy; Nisa was raised on a world with a technology level over fourteen hundred years behind the rest of the galaxy. Aside from her growing talents with ESP she has no education or training in modern things.” He looked back to Sidney. “As for myself... I am considering making inquiries into another matter to satisfy curiosity. I suppose I should ask you first, since you may very well know the answer.”

“You’re free to stay for a while if you like,” was the reply. “And you’re free to ask whatever you like as well.”

“A long time ago I looked up what became of the Straylight mission. You may remember my son Adrian was the chief engineer on the ship.”

“I know.” A brief silence. “He was a nice kid.”

“I was happy to learn that he and Lena had a happy life once they got to Earth, including having children. But I noticed there was something missing from the record of the flight. An item we had meant to be taken to Earth, all of us.” Stephen directed a curious look to Sidney. “Do you know what happened to our Memoirs, the ones we sent to Earth on the Straylight?”

“The ones I cautioned you against writing? The ones I wanted to be kept out of at all costs? Those Memoirs?” A frown creased his brow. “No.”

Stephen put a hand on his chin. He wasn’t very interested in reliving a heated argument from over thirteen hundred years ago. “I find this very odd,” Stephen stated. “At the very least Lena and Adrian were to hold on to the Memoirs. But despite meticulous efforts though the centuries to keep a catalogue of everything that was on the ship and where it’s gone, there’s not a mention of it in any historical database I examined either. And when it comes to truly private collections, the kinds that the authorities frown on, I had your name at the top of the suspect list for... obvious reasons.”

“I’ve been after it,” Sidney said darkly. “For over twelve hundred years. I’ve been on the look-out for that damned book ever since you launched it. I had contingency plans -- tried to intercept it when the Straylight was en-route...” he noticed the pointed look Stephen was giving him and shrugged. “Don’t ask. It didn’t work. I’m pretty sure the thing was gone no later than a century after the ship reached Earth.” He glowered. “Have you seen the Imperium? You talk about the damage we can do... Well, that’s a pretty good example of how bloody loopy this universe gets when we start writing things down. It was a bad idea then and it’s a bad idea now.”

“I heard something about Heraclius - our Heraclius - wrote prophecies of a war that matched the Tau War.”

“He did. A veritable goddamn prophecy manual for killin’ xenos, it is.” A pause. “He launched that into space as well, and look what happened.”

“You have a point.” Stephen drew in a sigh. “I suppose we let our desire to have some re-connection with the lives we once knew get the better of us. A small part of us that still rebelled at what Q had done to us. Now... who knows where that book is, or even if it’s intact.”

“Or what it’s done already,” Sidney injected darkly. “I told you before. You don’t write about extradimensional beings messing with reality. And if you do, you don’t offer conclusive proof. And if you do, you don’t sign your bloody name on the cover!” He sighed exasperatedly. “You guys always treated that damn book like it was just a definitive tell-all book about a simple political scandal. It’s not. It takes everything people think to know about the galaxy and how it came to be what it is, and turns it inside out. Lord knows what people will take away from reading a thing like that. Certainly people have spiraled off the straight and narrow for less.”

“Either way, the lesson there is to focus on the life you’ve got. And for better or worse I have one again, and I’m not going to let myself dwell on the past too greatly. Not when I have Nisa to care for.”

“One imagines that’s a good idea. So the two of you will be staying here for a while? Don’t say no, you don’t want to send a kid like that down to Solaris proper, sensory overload would do her in.” He spread his arms. “And it’s not like I don’t have enough space.”

“Indeed.” A thought came to him. “Though, how long has it been since you last had guests living here?”

A beat. “One hundred and seventy-nine years.”

“I see.” I’m not the only one who’s lived alone for a long while, he pondered. “Well, for now Nisa and I can give you some company. She needs time to adjust, not just to this but to the death of her mother and loss of her home, and I need time to... re-connect.”

“I imagine so.” Sidney smiled. “Are the Yeziri familiar with the concept of a... godfather?”

“There is a custom similar, yes. Specifically if a child’s father dies while they are growing, a friend of the father or grandfather will take the duties upon himself. In a way... that was what I became to Nisa, for though she is mine growing up she had another man as her father.”

The smile widened. “That’s all well and good Stephen, but wait ‘till she gets hold of her first credit chip. Something tells me she’ll take a liking to the Sovereignty.”

At the mental image of Nisa discovering the concept of “shopping”, Stephen could only laugh.

[RogueIce]

SRS Chimaera - Doma Sector, Shinra Republic: 12 July 3400 UNST

"Very well. I'll tell the Captain to expect you soon, Marshal. The Highwind IV will have already picked me up by the time you arrive, so I'm afraid I'll be unable to meet you." Grand Admiral Leo Cristophe really wasn't upset in the least that he wouldn't be seeing Kefka, but appearances must be maintained.

"I'm sorry I'll miss you," Kefka said in a voice that told Leo he felt much the same way.

"Such are the sacrifices we in uniform must make," replied Leo. "That will be all."

"Yes sir," Kefka said as his image winked out.

"You're not happy about him being here while you're gone." It was a statement, not a question.

"No, Cortana, I'm not," Leo replied to the female voice. Moments later, the blue figure of Cortana appeared on his display. Cortana was a sentient AI, one of the relative few in the Republic and the only one, so far as Leo was aware, aboard any warship or military installation. "But I don't have a choice. The President ordered me to Midgar. And I can hardly ban the de facto JTF commander from the JTF flagship."

"But you're not going to let him lower the ESP Null fields, at least." Cortana knew this, of course, because she had listened in on the Admiral's conversation with the Chimaera's Captain. She was always with the Admiral, no matter where he was aboard the Battle Carrier. "Would you like me to remain behind?" It was an unusual, though not unexpected, request. Whenever Leo had left his flagship, Cortana would go with him in a portable data unit. She was always at his side, even moreso than Leo's own aides.

"Yes, yes I would," replied Leo after a moment's thought. Kefka knew about Cortana, of course. Everyone knew Grand Admiral Leo Cristophe had his own personal AI companion. But the Marshal would assume he had taken Cortana with him, as he always did. "I want to know everything he does while he's here."

"I'll follow him as closely as I do you," replied Cortana. The statement did not disturb Leo in the least; he knew she followed him throughout the ship, even if the rest of the officers and crew didn't know she could. Everybody thought she resided on the Admiral's personal data terminal, which was physically seperate from the ship's systems. Nobody knew he had given her full access to the ship's mainframe, and Cortana never took any actions which would alert them to her presence. Leo had even gone so far as to use his security access as a Grand Admiral to ensure the ship's security NAIs (Nonsentient Artifical Intelligences) would not accidently detect her. They were, after all, extremely good at what they were programmed for.

"Thank you, Cortana." Leo felt better, slightly, about leaving Kefka alone on his ship. He knew his Captain would not allow himself to be bullied by Kefka into lowering the ESP Null fields, and had already ensured that it would take his personal authorization to physically do so, just in case the Marshal tried to pressure one of his junior officers into it. And between the Captain and Cortana, he knew he'd get a full, complete, uncensored report about everything Kefka did while aboard the Chimaera. He had also made clear to both Kefka and Rear Admiral Stacy Adams that, despite his rank, Kefka remained officially only the Army Commander, while Adams was the Naval Commander. For the good that would do: Adams was no pushover, but the fact remained Kefka outranked her. While she could always refuse to employ her ships in a manner she saw as unfit, she couldn't order Kefka not to do something the way Leo could. And due to the need to transport Army elements aboard the Assault Ships, Kefka effectively had free reign to order the two assault Task Forces around at will.

Still, he had done all he could. And, as he had to remind himself, Marshal Palazzo was still a senior commander in the Shinra Republic Army. And despite Leo's personal dislike and distrust of the man, thus far Kefka had never done anything genuinely wrong. So he was probably worrying about nothing.

Probably.

"Admiral?" his Flag Captain's voice came from the intercom. "We've received comms from your transport that they are in-system and enroute. ETA five minutes."

"Thank you, Captain." Setting aside his concerns over Kefka, Leo got up from his desk to take care of the last minute details before his journey back to Midgar.

[Mayabird]

Written with Shroomy, of course.

BYZON: Cultural Learnings of the Refuge for Make Benefit Glourious Bragulan Star Empire

Breakfast at Bragule’s

Diplomatic Tower, Mighty Bragule



The rest of the Refugee envoys had exited the yacht, and they had descended to the surface.

There had been speeches, speeches with the official gift exchange, military parades with speeches, sight-seeing (with speeches), fetes (also with speeches), and even a mention in the The People's Truthful Bi-Daily Ideologically Purified Accurate Information Broadcast to the Proud Patriotic Bragulan Listeners of Planet Bragule (and there had been a speech, though fortunately short). A hearty welcome with all honors, though as long-winded as a bean-eating Bragulan.

Everything had gone wonderfully except for one very awkward moment. Fulcrum had been introduced to a troop of Byzon Youth cubs. They had fitted little wings to their uniforms and had looked so adorable that Fulcrum could not control his sympathetic regurgitation reflex and had vomited right then and there in front of them. He had to explain that it was actually an affectionate gesture, that parent birds often regurgitate meals for their chicks and so when they saw children they wanted to feed them. It had gone over well, and then there was a speech.

Fortunately, the time for speeches had reached a temporary lull so the diplomats could discuss actual matters of state. Of course, there was no reason to be casual about it, so it was a small but fancy dinner feast, such that is allowed in the glorious Star Empire of Bragule. It was an artificial river with a waterfall located in a special room of the tower, and splashing through the river were shining salmon, raised in tanks of salt water to simulate living in the oceans, and now convinced that it was time to migrate up the river to lay their eggs.



Fulcrum perched on a polished log of real, genuine, dead tree wood, a personal gift to him. His razor-sharp bill tore off a strip of the freshest sashimi in the galaxy.



One of the Bragulans barked, delighted that he had come across a female salmon, gravid with orange roe. He peeled the salmon open with his claws and began savoring the succulent little eggs inside it, lapping it up with his long prehensile tongue. The exquisite sucking of his lapping were soon replaced by the popping sensation of raw caviar being chewed on, of the little soft eggies bursting with salty juices.

“So,” Frydryk Krznvynsky started as he wiped the fish eggs off his mouth with a paw. Then, remembering his manners, he corrected himself and wiped his mouth with a ballistic table napkin made out of something like Kevlar, but more Bragulan. He wondered where to start their conversation, and decided to be casual about it. “Ah. Now that we’ve, ah, shown you the glouries of the Bragulan Star Empire, I think it would be fair for us to get to know a bit more about you and your Refuge as well. So, uh, why don’t you tell us about yourselves?”

He rested his chin on his paw and looked at the avianoid ambassador, Fulcrum. He had such a nice monocle.

Fulcrum swallowed his chunk of fish flesh whole. “Mmm, yes. For starters, we have nothing quite so succulent back home.” He would have given Krznvynsky a sly smile if he could have, but he had only one facial expression, and that was fierceness. Instead, he continued, “But all the details we see fit to give are on holocubes that we brought. Stool and some of the junior diplomats should be working right now on transferring the information to your tapes.”

“Yes, yes, all that,” Krzynvynsky said, waving a paw. “But I do not have those now.”

“Indeed,” agreed Fulcrum. “I should probably start with our name, then. Refugees. Easy to translate into all the various languages, and an apt description of ourselves. We are not from this galaxy, you see; we came from another but were driven from it by a war.”

“That must have been some war,” the Bragulan liaison replied. “To drive such a mighty people from their homes, and all the way out here!”

Fulcrum may have had a thousand year stare, or perhaps he was just glaring at the simulated scenery; it was hard to tell on him. “There are monsters out in the depths of space. Living asteroids that hunt along hyperspace lanes. Diffuse gaseous things half a light year across that hate light and heat and attack all sources of it they can find. Replicators that kept replicating and growing, moving and adding mass to itself, until they built structures the size of solar systems but without the empty space.” He deboned a strip of meat before ripping it off and swallowing it.

Krzynvynsky was incredulous, but as an IBGV agent he was skilled in doublethink, so he doublethought that he would play along with the ambassador’s tale. On one hand, it might be true. On the other, it might not. Then again, it might be both. Like a Bragskirovka. But such were the way of things. He would humor them, for in doing so he hoped to earn their trust and get on their good side.

“Then what happened?” he asked with baited breath that smelled of fish. The other Bragulans were also listening in keenly. They all loved stories, like how in the Byzon Youth they were read the exploits of the Imperator before they went to bed.

“We fought, tried to drive them back, then we were driven back and further back until we were cornered and couldn’t escape, so we used the Emergency Drive. By the way, if you would like, we could copy the schematics for the Emergency Drive for you. We didn’t want to give it to you and have it be perceived as an insult, saying that you would lose your wars and flee with your tails between your legs.”

“We will accept the drive, yes.” Krzynvynsky replied graciously. The space captain beside him harrumphed, but the colonel-legionnaire kicked his shin from below the table to silence him. “But reading between the lines, I take it that since you’re not from around these parts, then this must mean, ah, that you’re from one of the nearby neighboring galaxies?”

“Nowhere near. Not this local group or cluster of galaxies, maybe not even this supercluster. That is what the Emergency Drive does - it jumps enormous distances, and it appears to be instantaneous, but it can barely be aimed and we cannot predict how far it will go. And even then, it can only work once. You could build more, but with the vastness of the universe, you’re more likely to have all the protons of your body spontaneously decay than to be able to return.”

“Incredible...” Krzynvynsky uttered, astounded and even more re-incredulized. In his mind, he was reminded of just how enormous the universe was - which was why Bragulanity’s labors were unending, for it would take so long to put the entirety of space under the glouriously polished boot heel of Byzon. They truly had a long way ahead of them.“To fly blindly across such distances. Those must have been truly dark times, for you to have abandoned your homes.”

Fulcrum raised his wings and held them outstretched. “And that was why we were so cautious before revealing ourselves. How could we know if there were not such horrors in this place as well?” He folded his wings back and continued, “That is why we hid, and watched, for we did not have the resources to build another drive, and even if we did, would we even land near another good place again? We could wind up trapped deep in a void between the galaxies, or by a black hole, or even in another den of monsters.

“Instead, we have come to such wonderful hospitality!”



He picked up the remains of the salmon with one claw and shrieked; everyone cringed inwardly, though they had learned that it was merely a tic of his. Then his voice boomed, “Never could we have suspected that we might end up among friends!”

“Indeed!” the Bragulans raised their glasses. “This calls for a toast, to meeting new friends, and welcoming them to the Koprulu Zone!”

They clanged their stainless steel glasses together, though how Fulcrum managed to do so without arms was a mystery none could explain (for when Krzynvynsky’s IBGV handlers asked how the avianoid had done so, he had no answer). Then they downed their drinks.

“Forgive me for spoiling the mood,” space captain Dobragost Braguslav interrupted his two comrades. He thought about what Fulcrum had said. For an enemy to have caused such an intergalactic exodus as that claimed by the Refugees, the implications were disturbing, not in the least because it was eerily reminiscent of the judgment Bragule had inflicted upon the Apexai. The living asteroids Fulcrum had mentioned likewise reminded him of certain classsified Karlack bioforms. “But these monsters you spoke of. What are the chances of them following you here? Because, if they should, the Bragulan Star Empire must be capable of meeting them. In force, if necessary.”

“Following us? We think it highly, highly unlikely. Even if they had their own Emergency Drive, it would take them to an entirely different location. To track and follow us across the huge unknowns? Why, they would need godlike powers!” and Fulcrum barked a laugh.

“That is good to know. Without the imminent threat of space monsters, perhaps we can discuss military matters at a later time of our convenience,” Krzynvynsky glanced at Braguslav, giving him a subtle hint, for a Bragulan. Then, tentatively, he decided to switch topics, moving to a matter closer at hand. “Now, the Refuge has settled at the sectors of the former Outlander Commissions. I understand the former Outlands have been turbulent as of late. So how are things going on for your... acquisitions over there?”

“I have not been briefed on the most recent reports,” Fulcrum said, “but from the earliest indications I had read, our annexations have been proceeding smoothly. There has been only sporadic and minor opposition, mostly from pirate scum. Nothing that massive strikes couldn’t handle, and no one will miss them.”

“Excellent, excellent!” Braguslav roared, though if the Refugee ambassador was surprised he didn’t show it in his implacable hawk-like visage. “I like your style. Rather, the Refuge’s style.”

“You’ll have to excuse the space captain, he gets easily excited at the prospects of massive strikes,” Krzynvynsky commented dryly.

“Of course, Frydryk. Who wouldn’t be?” Braguslav chuckled. Then, he jumped at the opportunity that had presented itself to him. “We would gladly offer assistance in dealing with these matters, if it proves particularly pesky. The anarchy in the former Outlands is in great need of pacification.”

Fulcrum gave an avian bow. “The Refuge would be honored by the offer. Shall I pass the information on to my superiors?”

“Da.” Braguslav nodded. Krzynvynsky looked at him, jealous of how he had stolen his thunder. “That would be good.”

Braguslav chuckled again. In his doublethinking mind, he was calculating the odds. The Space Fleet’s remote assets and the IBGV’s External Vigilance had been surprised at how quickly and suddenly the Refuge had blitzed through the core sectors of the old Outlands. Now, the Refuge was a large unquantified unknown, and yet its fleets were trawling the former Outlands even as their diplomats visited mighty Bragule. This, offering cooperation to these Refugees, seemed to be a prudent way of making the unknown known. Especially if these Refugees were to become the Bragulan Star Empire’s new neighbors.

Krzynvynsky cleared his throat. He really didn’t appreciate the space captain getting ahead of himself. Theoretically they were all equals, but in reality he was an IBGV agent and he could not abide having another Bragulan agency - even the military - getting a bigger piece of the pie. Seeing that he was speaking to an avianoid diplomat, that pie would have to be a magpie. An irradiated mutant magpie. A Bragpie. Okay, bad joke. But the gist of it is that he couldn’t allow the Space Fleet to gain more information about their new neighbors than the IBGV. Knowledge was power, after all.

“Now that it looks like the Bragulan Star Empire and the Refuge will be working together as comrade-nations and good neighbors, we should look towards formalizing diplomatic relations.” Krzynvynsky said. He looked at Braguslav, who kept quiet but had quite a smug expression on his face.

“Truly, this looks like the start of a-” The giant eagle flung up the salmon in one giant claw, intending to slap it down to make his point, but he lost his grip and the remains of the fish slipped out and landed in the berry bushes around the stream. “Harumph. Excuse me one moment, comrades, while I get another.” Fulcrum winged it back to the stream.



For such a giant bird, he was amazingly agile. He spotted his prey, sparkling in the spray, and swooped down to grab it. It wasn’t the largest, a bit smallish in fact, but it was a feisty one, and it struggled mightily in Fulcrum’s talons. He barely kept hold of it long enough to land on a rock on the shore; then he held it down, bit down with his enormous beak, and crushed the salmon’s head. It was immensely satisfying and he shrieked in delight, making everyone cringe... again!

“Well then, what’s for dessert?” asked Fulcrum, after he tossed the fish into the air and gulped it down whole.

[KlavoHunter]

KSS Hashshashin
IN UNREAL GODDAMN TIME



It was a real ego-booster to remind oneself during those long, boring times on his job, to remind himself that he was Captain of one of the most important ships in the RKSN. After all, no other class of vessel could be doing what Hashshashin and her sisters were up to - a very tricky game of belling a cat, when said kitty included 40 superheavy warships, and plenty of escorts. And if hiding from the Chamarran Grand Fleet wasn't enough, there were Pfhor ships similarly sniffing at the trail of the Chamarrans. Fortunately, the alien Pfhor had not seemed to invest in anything like the stealthy electronics marvel of the Klavostani Djinni-class, and thus were unsuccessful in finding what they didn't even know was there - the far more obvious Chamarrans had all their attention.

Captain Tarek Negrouz's spine tingled as he thought about that. Bad enough to be caught the way that Chamarran stealthship had been by the Sovereignty, but the Pfhor would probably respect no such niceties. He'd heard too many stories - he'd sooner die.

"Captain, the Chamarrans are dropping out of hyper." The long-range sensor returns began to coalesce into a swarming formation of warships as they parked themselves at a collection of rocks and a star that barely qualified as a solar system.

"Bring us out too, well outside of the system." Soon Hashshashin had returned to realspace. Many acted as though they had to come out of hyperspace at the limit imposed by the system's gravity, but one could sit further out past that, and watch from afar.

And watch they did, as for a full 12 hours, the Chamarrans sat there before finally departing, back the way they came. Tarek could just imagine the extreme course changes that the clumsier Pfhor observers would have to make. What an immense feeling of relief it was to see the Chamarrans heading home! He covered up his yawn with a hand, and then sucked at the straw of the warm coffee-based beverage in his other hand. He'd have to draft a report with his Staff AI later, and then a quick nap in the tank-bed once they were back on the Chamarrans' trail...

[Master_Baerne]

ANS Uhtred Ragnarsson
Flagship, 17th Battlecruiser Squadron, Commodore Guillaume Murat commanding
Nouveau Quebec, Voyageur Republic, Sector CC-12

Standoff.

Specifically, a Koprulu Standoff, though an inhabitant of 21st Century Earth would likely have preferred the appelation 'Mexican'. Three groups of ships, all heavily armed and all ready to slag the others at the slightest suspicious move. There was the Voyageur Republican Navy, less one heavy cruiser, clustered around the asteroid base and the patrol ships and small system-defence craft docked there. The smaller ships, apart from being useless in a fleet engagement, would be destroyed immediately if they tried to launch, and so remained attached to the base's pylons or ensconced in the caverns blasted out of the asteroid. Facing them, at very long energy range or medium missile range, were nine ships of uncertain allegiance, though the mixed designs and prevalence of piracy in this region pointed to a collection of pirates who'd wanted to get the drop on the Voyageurs. It was sheer luck that 17th Battlecruiser's arrival had put the heaviest ships of the Voyageur Nacy in space and ready to respond to the sudden appearance of the pirates in their system. Finally, within missile range of both other groups, Murat's ships were arranged in a rough diamond formation, spewing starfighters and gunboats from the hangars on their undersides. The Voyageur flagship, the heavy cruiser VNS St. Lawrence, was in company with 17th Battlecruiser, exchanging increasingly frantic messages with the Voyageur government on Nouveau Quebec. One could almost taste the panic in the short bursts of coded chatter. Murat frowned slightly as he regarded the holotank that dominated Uhtred Ragnarsson's flag bridge. Rather than the simple antipirate cruise he'd wanted, had been looking forward too, in fact, he'd landed himself in a situation that had the uniquely unpleasant look of one about to turn political.

And it didn't disappoint. Not a minute later, as the constant threats and demands for surrender on pain of horrible retribution from the pirate ships reached a fever pitch, Murat's Formic comms officer - a drone who usually displayed the most pleasant of its colony's personalities; Formics were often described as having a 'schizophrenic hive mind' - spoke up.

'Sir," it said, the word sounding distinctly odd through a double set of mandibles, "the Voyageur Admiral wishes to speak with you."

"On my terminal, please, Lieutenant." Murat turned to his comm station, nodding politely to the Admirals image on its screen.

"Admiral, a pleasure as always."

"Commodore. I apologize for my bluntness, but I must know your intentions." Murat thought carefully. There were a number of ways he could respond, but how to protect the civilians on Nouveau Quebec and Nouveau Montreal while still making sure the Ascendancy came out ahead? Ah, that could work...

"Admiral, I will be frank. My orders are to attack such pirates as I can, without significant risk to my ships. I simply cannot justify engaging enemy vessels of unknown strength and better than twice my numbers on behalf of people with no ties to Her Ascendant Ladyship." Not quite the whole truth, but close enough for government work.

"And I'm not asking you to." Admiral Duroi frowned, obviously unhappy with his next words. They seemed to force themselves out through gritted teeth. "My goverment has ordered me to inform you that we wish to engage in negotiations for an alliance with the Ascendancy." Duroi was no fool - he knew what happened when a weak power allied with a vastly stronger one. The 20th Century playwrights Rogers and Hammerstein had got it right: 'If allies be strong with power to protect me, / Might they not protect me out of house and home?' There was a very real chance that the Voyageur Republic would end up part of the Ascendancy after all was said and done, but that was better than the near-certainty of being obliterated by the superior warships th pirates had sent against them.

"In that case, Admiral, I have no choice but to clear the system of threats and await the arrival of a negotiating team. A task which, I light add, gives me great personal pleasure - I would not willingly leave any civilized nation to the mercy of pirates. Can you communicate with your fleet?"

"I'm afraid not - the pirates are putting out some very heavy jamming."

"a pity; I would have liked to coordinate this better. Admiral, will you join my ships in their attack? The rest of your ships should figure things out quickly anough, once we smash through the pirates."

"With pleasure. I won't presume to direct you; you know your own ships best."

"Thank you. With your permission?" At the Admiral's nod, Murat closed the channel, the image being replaced by the sword and stars logo of the Starfleet. He punched in the code for his captains. "Ladies and gentlemen, we will soon be engaging the enemy. Here's what we'll do..."

********

Pirate Cruiser Eagle's Claw
Pirate Left Wing

Delays, delays and more delays. The hawkish avian commanding Eagle's Claw, a seasoned raider by the name of Peregrine Slashkilter, slammed a taloned fist into his perchlike command chair. "Enough! We must do something, and soon, else we lose all vestiges of surprise - the only reason we tried this in the first place, let me remind you! The ships in the inner system are the real threat; let us go and deal with them." The other pirate captains immediately began arguing amongst themselves, prompting a screech of exasperation from Slashkilter. He turned away from the chatter on the command circuit and looked at his tactical display. Sure enough, the four large ships in-system had begun to move, accelerating rapidly as their fighers streaked towards the pirate fleet. Enough was enough; something had to be done.

"Silence!" He shouted into the comm. Mercifully, the other captains stopped talking. "Clearly, no one else has the brains to see hat must be done. I am taking command, or we will all die. Array and Battered Hope," a pair of blocky human-crewed missile cruisers, "Hold off the Voyageur fleet. They are primitive and underarmed; you can do it. The rest of us will deal with those other ships. I want fighters on the enemy parasites approaching and bombers to help with the Voyageurs." One captain started to object and was promptly shot by a more forward-thinking subordinate - it was easy to see that someone needed to be in command, or else Slashkilter's dramatic threat would be an acurate prediction. The seven remaining pirate ships formed a wall of battle and headed towards the Ascendant squadron, a 150-strong fighter strike accelerating towards the 220 fighters, bombers, and gunboats approaching them at maximum acceleration.

The pirate squadron was a very mixed bag. The Left Wing consisted of Eagle's Claw itself, an angular cruiser/carrier with a pair of very heavy gun turrets flanking the dorsal hangar doors, as well as two graceful-looking ships from a race Slashkilter didn't know. In the Center, two old Bragulan gunskimmers of an older class probably bought from a corrupt shipyard manager flew menacingly onwards. The Right was composed of a human gun cruiser and an old light carrier that was providing most of the fighters for the pirate strike. It would do, Slashkilter thought, and screeched in anticipation of upcoming battle.
********

ANS Uhtred Ragnarsson
Approaching Pirate Squadron

This, though Murat, will be interesting. In theory, he could easily obliterate the pirate squadron, but outnumbered as he was, one could never be sure - To reduce the odds against him, his ships would have to concentrate fire against one or two ships, leaving the others free to steady their aim. It would come down to recharge rates; his shields against his grasers, could he kill the enemy faster than they could kill him? Murat hoped so, and fully intended to cheat as much as possible to make sure he did.

Up ahead, the fighter strike was nearing its pirate counterpart. Suddenly, the HIT gunboats - Hyperaccelerated Ion Turbine; the whole series used the engines, hence the acronym - went to full jamming, employing the EWAR devices that were their only weapons to maximum effect. They ruined pirate weapons locks, fed targeting data to the starfighters in front of them, and covered the entire area in a sheet of radiation no signal could hope to survive in.

The HIT fighters they escorted each loosed a pair of very large countermissiles from underwing hardpoints. They were old-fashioned nukes, and their detonation directly in front of the pirates more ragged stream of missiles added to the hail of confusion, destroyed many of them, and blinding the sensors of many more. Exactly as thye were supposed to - HIT fighters were gunfighters, sacrificing electronics and missile armament for a monstrous quad graser cannon in the nose, the same caliber as those used as point defence on the battlecruisers. They were useless at range, couldn't see anything to shoot at it and couldn't hit it anyway, but when paired with the EWAR gunboats, firing from close range, they could and did wreak havoc. A hail of green graser fire lashed the pirate fighters, met by a drizzle of assorted weapons, and the first antifighter missiles from the pirate squadron.

As quickly as it had begun, the first pass was over - Both fighter forces were still accelerating, heading for the proper ships of the enemy fleet. They left fifty or so shredded wrecks and clouds of burning gas in their wakes, all but fifteen pirate fighters - Discipline and superior tactics had come through for the Ascendants, it seemed.

Meanwhile, the Ascendant battlecruisers started throwing missiles from their bow tubes. Long-ranged bomb-pumped graser heads filled the space around the pirates with green fire, refracted off shields in some places, scorching armor in others, burning throug into the hull in some. Casualties started to mount in the pirate fleet.

However, the Bragulan-built ships in the Center had a trick up their sleeves. In a fashion the original Bragulan desingers would probably have approved of, the sides of the old ships were studded with gigantic box-style launchers for hundreds of missiles of various makes and models, and it was these they now flushed at Battlecruiser Squadron 17. They flew throug the fighter strike, destroying a gunboat through sheer bad luck, and slammed into the Ascendant ships. Fortunately, they were not concentrated against point targets, but they nonetheless depleted shields across the squadron and caused sever damage to the bow launchers of Pierre de Villeneuve. The missile engagement continued, serving largely to burn away defences of all involved, though the battlecruisers, with their superdreadnought-sized shield banks, had more to burn.

Then they started to literally burn, or so it appeared to the naked eye, as they reached energy range. Their engines immediately went into full reverse acceleration, flaring brightly against the deflector paddles, and the titanic graser cannon lit the space between the two fleets with sheets of green destructive power. They were focusing on the pirate Right, firing a full squadron salvo at one very unlucky ship, the pirate carrier. It was an old Anglian design, had served nearly a century of captains well and bravely - but it could not hope to withstant the fire of guns equivalent to four dreadnoughts main batteries. It exploded as the fighter magazines and fuel storage went up.

Fire was returned, of course, but there was less of it and less concentrated from the pirate ships. Another Ascendant salvo smashed one of the graceful alien ships on the Left into a wreck, and then they were in among the pirates, too close for convereged salvos. Murat essentially became a spectator as any possibility for coordination disappeared in a hail of radiation, graser fire, and enemy salvos.

The Ascendant HIT bombers had been biding their time, waiting for this very moment. They chose that moment to strike, burning away the shields of one of the Bragulan ships and smashing several of its K-Bolters, and causing severe damage to the human cruiser on the Right. Ordinance expended, they joined the remaining fighters and gunboats in harrasing the pirate ships. The enemy fighter strike, meanwhile, had completed its deceleration and was coming around to do the same to 17th Battlecruiser - shortly, more than two hundred starfighters of all types were engaged in a monstrous dogfight in and around the cruiser-scale one that had replaced the set-piece battle from before.

Fortunately, this was what Ascendant ships were designed for. Lightly armored but massively shielded and vastly overgunned for their tonnage, they were nimble enough to sidestep most enemy fire and the gun crews were good enough to score more hits than they received. A converging salvo from Roland's port battery blew one of the iridescent wings of the remaining oddly-graceful alien ships to flinders, leaving it half-crippled: the tide was turning in the Ascendancy's favor.

Slashkilter, a wily individual with a taste for bloodshed and an almost instictive understanding of space combat, was having none of it. The Bragulan ships placed themselves straight in the middle of the Ascendant formation, doing to Murat's ships what they were doing to the pirates - get in among them, cause confusion and panic. The gunskimmers were sturdy enough to withstand, at least for a time, the fire of the battlecruisers, and the loss of the supporting fields of fire and maneuvering room began to tell. Damage began to accrue on two Ascendant ships in particular; Uhtred Ragnarsson and Roland, engaged with the Eagle's Claw and its remaining half of an escort on one side and the K-Bolter batteries of the gunskimmers on the other. Roland lost half of its bow tubes to a particularly good shot from one of Slashkilter's heavy cannons, the entire bow warping under the intense energy, but internal bulkheads kept the magazine from exploding.

"Kill that cruiser!" shouted Murat to his flag captain over the comm. "It's the flagship; kill it and their whole squadron will disintegrate!" Ragnarsson flipped over, bringing its starboard battery away from the gunskimmers in the middle of the melee, and began rapid-firing all guns into Eagle's Claw, which went to full evasion the moment it became obvious what was going on.

Meanwhile, the gun cruise that was all that remained of the pirate Right was battered into a smouldering wreck by continous fire from Gustav Eiffel, which had lost half of its port battery but could still put an impressive amount if graser fire into the ship. It began spewing life pods into the void with almost as much vigor as it was spewing oxygen through the myriad rips in the hull. Pierre de Villeneuve focused on the Bragulans in the center, slamming salvo after salvo into the gunskimmer closest to it - but as many a Solarian could attest, Bragulan machinery simply will not die. Had the designers of that particular class of ship been able to see it performing so well, that would have laughed.

They would have fucking laughed.

Irregardless, the killing continued. A point-blank energy duel favored the battlecruisers; they had the weapons for it, and the shielding, and as much maneuverability as could be retained on ships half the size of a dreadnought, but they were taking damage. In the case of Roland, truly horrific damage - Half the ships weapons had been smashed off by the fire of Eagle's Claw and the pair of gunskimmers, but it continued to fight. It's bow a melted stub after the ready ammunition in its launchers exploded, it still fired its remaining grasers as quickly as they could cycle, filling the space around the nimble Eagle's Claw with green fire. It couldn't dodge like that forever, of course...

And, suddenly, it didn't anymore. A bolt from one of the heavy graser turrets of Ragnarsson's port battery smashed into the ship's dorsal hangar doors, overpenetrated, and kept going until it hit the main reactor, which detonated in an eye-tearing flash of released energy that left the ship's stern spinning forlornly in the aftershock, everything forward having been obliterated. This conincided with one of the Bragulan ships having finally succumbed to the terrible pounding it had taken, and drifting out of the battle a shattered mass more holes than hull. The remaining gunskimmer, now the last semi-intact ship of the squadron, surrendered - it was crewed by non-Bragulans, of course, or surrender would not have been an option.

And so, a crippled, a heavily damaged, and two lightly damaged battlecruisers presided over three wrecked and one damaged pirate ships of various sorts, the wreckage and vaporized remains of three others, and watched as the two missile cruisers who had held off the Voyageur ships during the short, bloody engagement fled over the hyper wall. The Battle of Nouveau Quebec was over.

[RogueIce]

Frequesuan Union, Nova Terra

Rufus Shinra, now known as Vincent Arrowny, had made the journey back to Nova Terra, to the continent of Frequesque. He found the name of the territory he was in rather amusing: he and the others had had their own, rather vulgar, nickname for the continent. Considering the initials for the area were 'FU' the old nickname brought on an element of unintentional comedy. But unintended puns were not the reason he had journeyed to the planet; if they were, he would be over in what was once Shroomania. They were less insane these days, yet still maintained a rather unique sense of humor.

He had come to the heart of what was once the city-state of San Dorado in the belief that if he were going to find a way to get a message to Sidney Hank, this was the best place to start. He had been, so far, unsuccessful. Vincent Arrowny - the man who had been before Rufus inhabited the body - had never worked in UN space before. As a result, he had no real contacts or sources to go to, and was starting cold. Still, he knew that anything could be bought, and anything could be found. You just had to have the right money, look in the right place, and ask the right people.

Of course, Sidney Hank was a powerful man. And the Sovereignty had very powerful CIs, as he had come to discover. And so anybody making inquiries into Mister Hank's life and contacts as he was would likely be noticed. And given the Solarian reputation, such attention could prove dangerous indeed. Despite this, Vincent made only minimal effort to avoid detection; though he took every precaution to make sure nobody got the drop on him. For a man of his skills, these were excellent precautions indeed.

But while Vincent did not want to be found per se, he did intend to be noticed. It was entirely possible that news of questions being asked about Sidney Hank would reach the ears of the man himself. And that, Vincent hoped, would nicely take care of the need to send a message to one of the most wealthy men in the galaxy.

Of course, from what he'd learned of the Solarians in his data searches - he had, in addition to looking for Sidney Hank, done his level best to familiarize himself with the galaxy as a whole - it was entirely possibly the man he wanted to meet would just as soon have him killed as sit down and talk. And so he had made sure to adopt a new persona for himself: in his contacts and searches, he went by the name "R-Ice". It was the sort of alias any number of hackers and lowlifes might choose for themselves, and so the vast majority of persons and CIs wouldn't put any concern into it. Yet for Sidney Hank, Vincent Arrowny hoped it would have some meaning. And put Mister Hank in a frame of mind to want to discuss things with him, rather than have a hit team silence somebody asking too many questions about a man who enjoyed his privacy.

[Lonestar]

The Protector's Mansion
Williamsburg




"'And due to the unique situation the insult it would sent to the Bragulan Star Empire it is felt that the SPUDs should be displayed irregardless of the inherent dangers...' I'm sorry Benton, but you really are suggesting that the Bragulan missiles should be public-ally displayed, despite," Fairfax flipped the document on his slate back a few sections "'The unusual nature of the Bragulan targeting mechanisms that prevent the safe removal and deactivation of the warheads'...Jesus Christ."

"Well," Foreign Minister Mackaye puffed on his pipe "I didn't say that it would be in a civilian public location. I've spoken to the Space Marshal Reinsch and he thinks one of the SPUDs can be placed on the grounds of the Rogers Sector Staff College at Kingsport. Admiral Sikes thinks it would be a find addition to our legation on Montgomery as well."

"The Shepistanis are fine with live MIRVs sitting on a live rocket near the Rockville Arco?"

"Ah," Mackaye twitched "Admiral Sikes has stated that the Shepistani War Department has assured him that the safety protocols fall well within SF parameters."

I bet. "Alright fine Benton, that will be all." The Foreign Minister stood up, gave a curt nod, and walked out of the office. In came Karl Karlsson, the Chief of Staff. Fairfax furiously flipped to a Newsie article on his slate and turned it to Karl.


XENOS, FURVERTS AIDED AND ABETTED BY MATTHEW FAIRFAX''S PET PYSKERS


"What the Hell Karl? What are we doing about this?"


"Well, that obviously isn't a Bragulan. That looks like a Skunk-Ape or even a Ape-Moreau..."

"Karl!" Fairfax turned it back to his face and started reading "'The Grayson Ledger has learned that the Matthew Fairfax Regime has aided the Xenoist Furverts known as Bragulans in the destruction of the God-Fearing All-Human League. We call upon Lord Byrd and the Damascusan Delegation to initiate an immediate inquiry into the latest atrocity against Christianity by the secularlist Regime on Chesapeake...' It isn't bad enough that we killed...we killed... over a hundred pysker cultists and poor sorry Moreaus to cover it up, but NO, because it was their kind of pysker..."

Karlsson held up his hands. "Alright sir, calm down. I know for certain that AG Ramirez is looking for the leak, but for the moment it's a bunch of loons on Damascus. LOUD loons, but loons none the less. The latest legislative planetary elections don't lie...Chesapeake, Blue Ridge, and Massanutten all favor your policies as do most of the spaces. We knew that the road to normality would be a long one. We still have many, many years to go before we can crawl out of the whole. We're just going to have to duck our heads a little and be thankful that, big picture, this is a small crisis."


P.N.S. Springer Mountain
En route to Ocracoke System, Sector BB-1

The Ocracoke System was home to a mighty quarter of a million humans, which made it the second most (human)populated system in the sector. Once the Tuscarora Strike group had arrived at Meinhof various DCMA assets were dissiminated to the human settlements here and there throughout the system. The word from Chesapeake had been clear; there was to be no overt annexation, certainly not in the manner that the Anglicans did to Pendleton, but aid was deployed. Th DCMA-vessel Stellar Neighbor had been escorted to Ocracoke by one of the Battleships of the Strike Group with the intent to cow any opposition from the locals. It worked perfectly, after which the York had departed back to Meinhoff leaving two sloops to act as the defense for the one-stop hospital/industrial development ship.

Then all taskforce missed it's check in.

And so the nearest vessel, the light cruiser Springer Mountain was diverted to check it out. There was a chance that the pirates(both Xenos and Human) that plagued this sector had gathered for an easy kill, as no subspace anomalies had been detected to explain away the loss of contact. The borders with the TDR were being watched and thus far the Junta there had made nary a peep in regards to the Tuscarora expedition, and so that was right out. None of the pirates in the sector were strong enough to hold against even a CL, and so the Springer Mountain was arriving to tech the indigs a lesson in humility.

"Commander Skinner, we will be exiting hyperspace shortly." Came the OOD over the 1MC.

"Roger that Nav, I'll be in CIC...scratch that the navigation bridge shortly." Skinner coughed. "TAO do one last check with all the GQ stations. If some corvette gets a luck shot in because someone was asleep at the wheel I will be a sad panda."

"Yessir." Came the voice of the TAO, who promptly had all the action stations do an acknowledgement over the TACNET. Skinner stood from his desk, stepped out of his cabin into the passageway, and headed forward towards the navigation bridge. As he stepped aboard he waved the OOD to shut up before he could belt out 'Captain on the bridge!'. He hated doing that as a JO and he would be damned if he was one of those useless fogeys who stood on ceremony. "ASTRO, ETA?"

"Should be right about...now."



The volume of fire immediately brought the Springer Mountain's shields down to almost 50%.

"TAO! What is it? Evade Evade!" Skinner ran around to the Bright Bridge, not waiting for TAO to answer. "Flark it, get us out of here!" He leaned over the OS2 manning it and looked at the console display with horror.

Code: Select all

 Amplitur Chorus Vessel

No, it can't be. Barely a handful of those monsters had survived the war, but each one was, even today, thrice the size the heaviest Dominion Star Dreadnoughts and Shepistani Battlestars. But ships of those size haven't been seen in 300 years... "OOD! What's the status on the Hyperspace Window?"

"Calculations are finished sir! Engaging..." The sheer volume of fire was making evasive action impossible, and the Springer Mountain shuddered as it went dark and compartment hatches went slamming down. The main plant was out. In the distance Skinner could see the flare of light as it impacted his now helpless ship.

[Kartr_Kana]

9 March 3400
Hall of Assembly, Central Control
Sagald City, Hiigara Prime

“This Grand Council of the Hiigaran people is now in session, may our thoughtful actions ripple through the Galaxy as a force for positive futures.” High-councilor Huur S'jet intoned before seating himself at the great table stretching the length of the room. Seated at either side of the head of the table were his fellow High-councilors with the other four Councilors of the Hiigaran Diamid seated past them. At the other end of the table sat the current Kithiid-sa and arranged from him down to the Diamid were the other fourteen Kitth-sa, who formed the other half of the Hiigaran government.

“Respected Kiith-sa your advice has always been appreciated by this council and your support for our foreign policies is greatly appreciated. It is with your blessing we are proposing to enter into a Defense Pact with the United Star Kingdom of New Anglia and the Empire Star Republic. The tentative name for this alliance is the Coalition Against Nuclear Aggression By Interstellar Societies. The proposals have been forwarded to both Gotham and Westminster.”

The assembled heads of the Hiigaran nation nodded in agreement as they reviewed the terms of the proposed alliance. After everyone had finished their PersComps updated with a file from Hiigaran Intelligence (known as HIint). The data contained was on the files and report of a freelance agent hired by HInt on the planet Hanson and the troubling reports of probable foreign agencies running anti-ESPer research and destabilizing the planetary government. All of the Kiith-sa had heard reports from their agents on Hanson some knew more than others, but all were surprised at the findings. The babble grew louder and louder as words of surprise gave way to demands for action and an inquest. Some of the Kiith-sa were silent their eyes half closed as they transmitted orders through the NeuralStream to their respective espionage agencies.

Huur S'jet noticed one of the Kiith-sa did neither. Kiith-sa Riesstiu Gaalsien relaxed in his seat a smirk toying at the edges of his face. The smug bastard had a reputation of being a dirty low down deceiving deceiver and with his reaction to the news of the chaos and security risk that was the current situation on Hanson, S'jet started wondering if Kitth-sa Gaalsien had a hand in creating the current crisis. Deciding to see what he could shake loose Huur S'jet tied his mind into the complex's network and began monitoring Riesstu's vital signs and the amount of data being transferred through the NeuralStream, before asking. “Kiith-sa Gaalsien you do not seem surprised at this turn of events, I know your Clan has been trying to expand their influence and has a history of trying to destabilize communities in order to pressure them into joining your Kiith. Is that the case on Hanson?”

At that Riesstiu's extra-neural activity ceased, his heart rate elevated and perspiration was detected on his palms. Yet the only outward sign he gave of discomfort was to glare at the High-councilor and as the room quieted down all eyes turning to him he replied in cold tones. “The character assassination of my Kiith aside, yes we do have agents working on Hanson to try and bring it into the Assemblage of Clans. These agents have already informed me of the events on Hanson, though they did not know about the foreign connection. Further more the use of agents by Kitth internal security and intelligence agencies to try and expand a Kiith's influence has long been a tradition of our people. We have broken no laws and have always provided assistance to HIint.”

Angry shouts erupted from several of the other Kiith-sa decrying Kiith Gaalsiens actions. Finally Kiith-sa Ferriil was able to make himself heard above everyone else. “The clans have long used subterfuge and espionage in an attempt to increase their own strength, but since before the creation of the Diamid, during our darkest years when civil wars tore our people apart and fueled the second emigration we have not used out right violence or brought true harm to our fellow clans. Our tactics have been a method of ensuring our peoples strength through meaningful and rewarding competition. Kiith Gaalsien has gone beyond that by stirring up such violence on the planet Hanson, violence that threatens the security of all clans.”

Kiith Gaalsiens long time and most bitter of rivals Kiith-sa Siidim stands and glares venomous daggers of hatred at Riesstiu Gaalsien. “I demand that the Diamid censure Kiith and Kiith-sa Gaalsien for their actions on Hanson and the loss of lives and the breach in national security that is currently on going due to their provocateurs!”

At the head of the table the Diamid sat communicating via data packets over a secure MindNet. Their thoughts and discourse, which was one and the same, unheard by anyone else before High-councilor Huur S'jet stood. The entire discussion amongst the members of the Diamid and taken just a couple of seconds so Huur S'jets statement came almost on the heels of Kiith Siidims demand. “The Diamid has reviewed all evidence and precedent and has determined that censure cannot be laid on Kiith Gaalsien at this time as all accusations of wrong doing are based on supposition and unwarranted extrapolation rather than facts. Therefore at this time the Diamid expresses their dissatisfaction at Kiith Gaalsien for not bringing the knowledge of Hansons decay or their operations to the proper organs in the Diamid Agency. Furthermore will will be dispatching a HIint agent and a Naval Special Operations team in support to investigate the current state of affairs on Hanson and to hunt down any foreign agents operating the planet. Any Kiith with operatives on the planet must make them available to HIint.”

Following the Hanson revelations most of the following topics for discussion were minor and relatively unimportant so it was not long after that the Grand Council adjourned.



11 March 3400
Hanson, Hiigaran Sphere

The sleek private yacht that belonged to HIint Operatives Kyle Wolf and Jan Sculls knifed cleanly through Hansons atmosphere, its stealth systems active as a number of small SAM sites swept the sky hunting for aircraft belonging to rival factions. The Moldy Bragulan dropped down towards the city of Galt once the most populous and richest city on Hanson, now in the aftermath of the setback suffered by Hanson Citizens Watch and with Kiith Gaalsien inflaming the population in an attempt to cause an uprising favorable to joining Kiith Gaalsiens holdings, the city was a war zone. As they slid past the high rises and office buildings a body came flying through the air, bounced off the nose of the ship and plummeted to the ground. Jan brought the ship to a sudden stop as they stared at the bear of a man standing in the window of the 206th floor of the Hanson Market Trade building. After a second Jan realized it was a bear of a man it was a Bear-Man a Bragulan! The Bragulan who was stomping human faces out of the 205th floor the Hanson Market Trade building looked at Jan seemingly seeing her through the polarized and heavily tinted cockpit windows. Jan shudder slightly at the Bragulans snarling visage and then he laughed! HE FUCKING LAUGHED!

Recovering from her shock and realizing the danger they were in hovering above the war torn streets of Galt Jan accelerated away and ducked down another street twisting and turning between buildings until she arrived at the landing site in the briefing she and Kyle had gotten before heading to Hanson. As the Moldy Bragulan touched down Kyle walked up from the back and looked out the window while shrugging into a leather trench coat, reminiscent of the one worn by the Duke. Checking the charge on his genuine Astartes Plasma pistol Kyle asks Jan. “Ready to go meet the yokels?”

Walking down the ramp the two are met by a shifty looking fellow carrying a large rifle and wearing an arm band with Kiith Gaalsiens symbol emblazoned on it. “Welcome to Hanson agents Wolf and Sculls, I'll be your tour guide to our fair war zone.” He leers at Jan before shaking Kyle's hand. “I've arranged a meeting with an information specialist who will be able to help you find out more about the Watch's activities. Follow me.”

Waving some men out of cover and ordering them to keep the Moldy Bragulan secure the Gaalsien operative leads the HIint agents out on to the streets of Hansen. Moving along a circuitous route the trio slip through the city avoiding fire fights between clashing factions and to a building in the current no mans land. Inside they find a bar, populated by dirty and sweaty beings of several different species and genders, all heavily armed. After ordering drinks at the bar the operative informs Kyle he'll be meeting with a rogue CI that fled the Solarian datasphere for unknown reasons though speculation posits that it has something to do with this particular CI's “fetish” for existing only in a robotic shell rather than residing in the datasphere. Just as the explanation winds down the CI walks through the door flanked by a pair of biological body guards. “Speak of the devil.” Mutters the operative, who nods to Kyle and then the gleaming metallic entity standing just inside the doorway.

Moving towards a booth in the back Kyle catches the CI's optical sensor and motions for him to follow. Sitting down Kyle waits for the information specialist to come over and seat itself. “I am A-T88 human, I have been informed that you seek information on the social entity known as 'The Watch'. Is that correct?” A-T88 intones.

“It is, what do you have and what's it going to cost me?” Kyle says as he gets straight to the point.

“Good you are a being who prefers coming to the point, as much as I enjoy this physical form I cannot fathom biologicals desire for 'small talk' and other such wastes of time.” A-T88's metallic face almost seems to smirk.

“That's funny, cause for some who doesn't like small talk you seem to be doing plenty right now.” Kyle's remark obviously bothers A-T88. “Now what do you have for me?”

In a voice colder than liquid Hydrogen A-T88 replies. “The Hansons Citizen Watch is an organization devoted to keeping Hanson free from anyone who has the slightest mental powers, their local leader is actually a Shepistani native named Rob. The also have a training camp and heavily fortified position in the Chamarrakill mountains on the secondary continent. Their current activities include harboring scientists and experiments that correlate with series of experiments throughout human space by people with similar ideologies. Well until someone intervened and destroyed their local facilities.”

A-T88 made a slight gesture and stood, his bodyguards shifted slightly as he began to walk away allowing a group of thugs to step up to the table. Seeing this Jan began to draw her flechette pistol, but a mental “No” from Kyle stopped her. As he walked away his head swivled 180 degrees and he spoke into the deathly silence that had fallen over the bar. “If you'll allow these 'gentlemen' to escort you out I will take you to the leaders of the Watch myself and claim the reward they're offering for enemy spies.” Chuckling mirthlessly he stepped out into the night and the thugs closed in around Kyle, one pointed an Elkoss carbine at him and said. “You don't have to be in one piece when we get you to the Watch, jest have to be breathing.”

Suddenly Kyle felt the unmistakeable presence of a Blitzschlag field wash over him bringing with it the first hints of a splitting headache. He stared at the thug his discomfort channeling into a cold rage that was clearly present in his voice. “You made three mistakes, first only a four man crew that's just insulting, second you brought a Blitzschlag generator which is just annoying and third...” right then the Astartes Plasma pistol burnt a hole through the table and then the merc followed by three more percussive blasts as the other mercs dropped smoking holes burn in their chests. “... you didn't make sure you could see my hands.” finished Kyle as he stood and started moving towards the door. As Kyle charged after A-T88 he yelled towards Jan to give him over watch.

As Jan and the Gaalsien operative made their way back to the Moldy Bragulan Kyle sprinted down the street after the retreating form of A-T88's APC. The APC turned a couple blocks away and Kyle decided to take a shortcut. Most the buildings in this part of Galt were mostly intact, with only a few craters and holes in their surface from space-RPGs. Now that he was away from the portable Blitzschlag generators the thugs had been wearing Kyle was able to use the telekinetic portion of his ability to jump to a blown out window on the second floor of the building next to him. Dashing though hallways and past abandoned cubicles Kyle rapidly made it to the other side of the building, blowing out a window with his pistol just in time to see A-T88's APC drive past. Realizing he couldn't catch the APC even with his powers Kyle started snapping off shots at the armored tires. The APC definitely wasn't from the Koprulu zone because it only took a couple of shots for Kyle to score a mobility kill. Those shots though were enough for the gunner on the APCs turret to figure out where Kyle was and unleash a hail of ferrous slugs at him.

There wasn't time to think as Kyle threw himself out the window and behind a slab of concrete using his power to absorb most of the impact. The gunner stopped firing for a moment thinking he'd hit his target before realizing that if he had the body should have flown backwards in meaty chunks. The gunner was the middle of saying “SHIT! SHIT! SHITS!” when Kyle stood up and threw a boulder with telekinetic ease at the guns, bending them and crushing the turret and gunner. A sudden flash of light on chromium dragged Kyle's attention to the fleeing form of A-T88 now on foot. Kyle gave chase when a series of laser blasts lit up his shields before he ducked behind the destroyed APC. With sensors in the back of his head A-T88 was able to fire a lightweight laser pistol built into his middle finger in a classic fuck you to any pursuer. Undaunted Kyle pulled out his forceblade and renewed the pursuit blocking further shots with practiced ease. So focused was he on the pursuit he didn't sense the attack until almost too late, jumping seconds before the first blast struck where he'd been about to step. Using the shockwave to propel him higher and further than he could have jumped on his own Kyle was able to grab on to the blown out window where the shot had come from. The gunner and his friends were too shocked to do anything more than start cursing before Kyle unleashed an electrical storm that fried the ambushers, melting their eyeballs and causing them to drip out of their faces.

Kyle paused a second to look for A-T88 and as he focused he realized he could feel the distinctive void of an Altacaran Null Field booking down a side street. Stepping towards the door to try and cut off A-T88 at the next street Kyle nearly tripped over the Conc-J anti-tank rifle that had been fired at him. Realizing his quarry might have access to another APC or something heavier Kyle slung the rifle over his shoulder and started running. Concentrating on the void that shrouded A-T88 Kyle was able to stay inside the buildings using sky bridges to cross from one to the other, sacrificing speed in order to stay out of sight and avoid ambushes by A-T88's henchmen and members of the Watch. Having avoided any more encounters with persons out to do him bodily harm Kyle finally felt A-T88's Null field stop. Moving to a window where he could see A-T88 Kyle saw him talking to a strange looking fellow.


Up ahead the entire area was covered by a powerful Blitzschlag field and from the looks of it Kyle had found the local Watch headquarters turned Forward Operating Base in the current civil war. Descrete bunkers were built into the buildings on either side of the street and a heavy barricade blocked the road. Pulling out the Conc-J Kyle took aim at one of the emplacements firing off a pair of shots he switched to the barricade and then just past where A-T88 was talking with the strange man. Only A-T88 reacted to the first shots his computer-brain allowing him to react far faster than the meatbags around him, tackling the man he was next to and diving behind a pile of rubble saving them both from the fourth shot. The men in the second emplacement on Kyle's side of the street were trying to figure out how to hit him when they suddenly saw an anti-tank rifle floating down the street like some sort of butterfly, a butterfly that began to vomit death in their general direction. Kyle wasn't expecting to hit anything with his hovering gun, but at the very least it would keep them from noticing him sneaking up through the building.

The men in the emplacement hauled around their K-bolter which they were using on a tripod as a mounted machine-gun since it was too big for any of them to fire like a proper rifle. Acid bullets began to fill the air around the flitting butterfly rifle, but the target was moving to erratically for them to hit. They kept firing at the rapid rate blasting through hundreds of rounds the K-bolters barrel began to glow green(because of the radiation inherent in everything Bragulan) when their target suddenly fell from the sky. The gunner jumped up and let out a cheer that turned into a splattering sound as his brains suddenly found themselves ejected from his brain by Kyle's pistol. The rest of the gun crew gaped in surprise at the abstract mural their comrades brains had painted on the wall before Kyle cut them down with a series of point blank shots.

Charging down the stairs and past the ruined barricade Kyle blasted a couple more Watchmen as he chased A-T88 and the strange dude through the camp. Finally he caught up to them just as they started boarding a sub-orbital shuttle. Kyle yelled at the mechanical being walking up the boarding ramp. “Did your intelligence computate this you tin can!?” and as A-T88 turned his head around so his main sensors could see Kyle and fix him with a cold stare (A-T88's eyes in the back of his head weren't programmed to give cold stares) Kyle squeezed off a shot that hit A-T88 in the neck decapitating him. The robot head landed on the ground and began screaming profanities at Kyle while the body stumbled up the ramp like a drunken man. Kyle covered his eyes as the shuttle lifted off briefly drowning out the irate cries from the decapitated robot head. Once the shuttle had taken off Kyle walked over to the singed chromium dome that had ceased it's prattling as it's power had run out. “Lets see what we can pry from your cold dead circuits you little nuisance.” Muttered Kyle as the Moldy Bragulan landed a few meters away after blasting the Watchmen running up to capture Kyle.

Jan poked her head out the window. “Got what you needed cowboy?”

“Lets see what the nerds can get from this things memory and we'll see.” Kyle said as he walked over to the Bragulan.

To be continued....

[Simon_Jester]

Command Bridge, FF-6900 Series Frigate USS Farbanti
Off Hawk's Nest Station
1010 Hours

The turnover burn was nearly done, as the Umerian starships came around for another pass. Farbanti and the others had cycled standard nuclear torpedoes into the ready magazines, but didn't expect to use them: they wanted that station largely intact, not blasted full of holes. Clearing a way for the boarding troops was a defense suppression mission. They'd used their heaviest weapons on the gun platforms; now it was time to use their lightest on the station itself.

Brogo nodded as he saw the target points filling in on his repeater display. This time, they'd be coming to within point blank range of the station and blasting it with their phased array laser panels, making component shots to take down the close-in defenses. The close pass they'd made following the torpedoes in gave the Umerians imagery now to pick out point defense mounts and targeting sensors. Passing by at sub-megameter ranges with their broadside phased array lasers, they could pick out point targets accurately enough to destroy them without blowing any large, irradiated holes in the station that might cause problems for the boarding units.

This time they'd take it slow, making a near zero-velocity intercept of the station to give them as much time as possible to line up their shots. Accuracy mattered here, and there weren't enough real antiship weapons on the station to pose much of a threat... though Brogo approved of his tac officer's decision to program Farbanti's lasers to go to automatic threat neutralization if anything started getting launched their way.

That reminds me. Got to give Elena her credit. He switched his earbud control to bridge intercom. "Good job on those jammer torps, Pasternak. Interesting choice of pulse sequence." Senior Lieutenant Pasternak was Farbanti's electronic warfare officer- new in her job and still getting the hang of some of the quirks of the ship's software fit, but she'd surpassed herself with her choice of barrage jamming for the torpedo run. The decoys' signals had badly confused and distracted the aim of the frigate's target, dazzling and distracting the fort's point defense badly enough to let their entire salvo get through.

As the Umerian contingent reached turnaround, Artemisia started falling out of formation to the side, planning to make a more distant pass as 'overhead cover.' Despite being the squadron's most modern, powerful unit, the Empress-class cruiser had the bad luck to take major surface damage to her PAL panels on both flanks, making her poorly suited for defense suppression. On the other hand, now that her Alpha turret was back in action, she had more antiship firepower than Directrix or the frigates- if any surprises tried to come at them from the docking bays, Artemisia would be in position to skewer them.

1019 Hours

Here we go... They were coming up on the station- slowly, really, but it looked fast when the scale of the plot zoomed down to less than a hundred klicks per increment. The fire plan was coded in already. The moment was tense, though- the possibility of hidden antiship guns on the station itself ripping them apart, or swarms of missiles coming at them from concealed launch bays. They were flying slow and close, with nothing but active point defense to cover them.

Brogo himself wasn't one to worry much; fear wasn't a major part of the Vinaran combat experience. He had a different problem- an urge to leap away from the console and find something to smash. That had served his ancestors well when fighting with club, spear, sword, and musket, but was worse than useless in a naval action. It wasn't as if he could go over there and demolish point defense guns in person, entertaining as that might be.

While Farbanti's captain had to override a very different instinct to maintain the focused calm of efficient naval operations as the seconds ticked away on the frigate's first attack run, it was no less impressive a feat of control that he did so.

The pirates had to know they were outgunned, but many of the defense stations opened up on the Umerians anyway. The heavies were mostly low-power exotics, probably a local type; they had some kind of tractor/pressor shear effect that caused alarming creaking sounds, audible even inside the core armor, before Farbanti's onboard gravitics caught up and compensated. Everything else stopped on the shielding. Then the close-in point defense chimed in: quick-firing railguns on gatling mounts; a rain of slugs whined off the frigate's shielding. Going by the impact energy it would take thousands of the things to even dent the shields; Brogo couldn't figure out why they were bothering. Even given that they were taking dozens of dispersed hits a second, at a rate that kept rising as they got closer, it was a waste of effort.

Then the computers nailed down the location of their targets. To a suitably protected observer, Farbanti's flank would have seemed to flash and ripple in brilliant green as the phased array laser panels lit up- not from the invisible light of the lasers themselves, but from frequency doubling as pairs of infrared photons collided within the panels* and merged into higher-energy ones. The torrent of infrared poured out, split against the targets picked out by the frigate's tactical officer. Individual panels of the pirate station's shields flared and died in short order, locally overwhelmed by the precision strikes; in the following seconds, patches of the surface rose through red and orange towards bubbling white heat. From the Umerians' perspective the process was almost totally silent; aboard the station there were rippling blasts as surface structures tore away. Spalling damage affected parts of the interior near the surface, but the overall framework was left intact, and there was no high-energy radiation to penetrate into the interior and cause indiscriminate destruction.

As soon as a target could be confirmed destroyed, the Umerian computers switched the laser panels firing into it to another one, flicking across the station's surface and burning out the heavier defense guns. The other frigates did much the same. Directrix, with heavier beams to play with, concentrated her fire on the hardened subspace sensor arrays dotting the station's hull, trying to take down their FTL sensors and force them back down to lightspeed control loops... not so much for the dent it made in their reaction time as for ease of jamming. Radar was easier to fool than subspace; subspace easier than infrared. It made for a natural hierarchy of targeting priority. The infrared sensors died quickly, blinded by sidescatter as the lasers overloaded them on the very frequencies they were most sensitive to by design. The subspace sensors were reduced to slush by more concentrated fire... and radar could be played with easily enough.

As Directrix and her smaller sisters flipped end for end and braked to start their next firing pass, they left the massive metal structures of the Hawk's Nest dotted with glowing patches, ranging in color from sun-yellow to cherry-red. The station was neither truly blind nor truly disarmed, but it was certainly myopic and weakened.

---

Corsair-C class pursuit cutter CG-81634 ”Greyhound”,
Off Hawk's Nest Station
1026 Hours

Commander Audrey Cardwell's weapons officer was calling out the fire plan into Piranha Group's net. "Going after that battery of gatlings, think we can get them all on this pass... Piranha Four, I've lost sync with your targeting computers, re-initialize to seven nine zero." Four's been having problems for the last hour... need to have a talk with them. The new encryption algorithms are buggy, sure, but this is ridiculous.

The starships had just finished their third pass as the cutters caught up. They'd taken out most of the heavy point defense already, the stuff that could pass for dual antiship/antifighter; Corsairs were shielded well enough that she was optimistic about being able to tank whatever was left down there.

It was time to hit them in the same old way... the same... NO. She fought down the spike of panic, she had to, because if she couldn't stay on top of this on a mission she might as well go take a long walk out the airlock. This isn't a frigate lobbing flak and cadence beams, this is just hammering the hell out of some ramshackle bunch of pirates. Breathe.

Audrey growled slightly, under her breath, as she punched the ACS auxiliaries and spun Greyhound about to face the station, bringing the large laser panel in the nose to bear. The rest of the group followed suit, coasting past the station and firing at right angles to the line of flight. As always, the laser's firing was inaudible; there were no moving parts except the coolant pumps, and those were an old, mature design- quiet and efficient. Recoil from a laser pulse wasn't enough to rattle a cutter to speak of, either.

Thus, it was a nasty surprise when the hull started ringing. The station's defenses had spotted the attack run, and those of the quick-fire gatling railguns not destroyed in the opening salvo of IR pulses twisted to throw a storm of small-caliber high energy penetrators into their path. The autocannon were last-ditch weapons with low muzzle velocity, and the individual slugs weren't all that massive... but there were a lot of them, and they were uncannily well aimed.

Greyhound shook like it was under a hailstorm as the slugs rang off her shields. Then the lasers chilled down enough to let out a second salvo of pulses, and a third. The hail stopped immediately after- someone must have gotten the gun shooting at them on the second pass. The fourth volley finished off the last two gatlings in the battery, and then they were clear, coasting to interstellar space.

"Piranha Group, this is Piranha Leader, report any damage."

The chorus of "All clear" and "Shields rattled, but we're fine" matched her predictions; with two exceptions that came in diffident and late, her command had shrugged off the autocannon barrage harmlessly. With just two exceptions.

"This is Piranha Five-One, we had a few chew through and bust up our starboard missile boxes; Mark Fives on that side are deadlined." A pity, but not going to affect the mission. The next damage report was more serious.

"This is Piranha One-Three, looks like they managed to drill the engine compartment. Main drive is down and out; we've got a rad leak aft. Already depressurized the compartment and sealed our vents, but we are dead in the water; what are your orders?

Damn. That put her own flight of four down to two and a half effectives; One-Four had already lost their forward laser during the attack on the stealth ships- they were still with her, but had nothing to shoot at the station with except their lighter flank panels. And now One-Three... not good. Still though, it could be worse... they'd been quick on the ball about damage control and keeping radioactive atmosphere out of the cockpit- even if the machinery spaces were a mess, that would keep the crew safe.

"One-Three, looks like the fight's over for you. Call for pickup and hang tight; we'll chase you down after we finish burning down this lot." Coasting should keep them away from the station and its remaining point defense, and they could pick her up as part of the mop-up... probably while assault boats unloaded their Strikers.

She didn't envy the pirates who would have to handle that...

---

*Author's note: this actually happens with infrared lasers; it's the operating principle behind a lot of the newer interesting-color laser pointers.

[Shroom Man 777]

HANSON



After making reentry, the shuttle's torch engines shut off and the spacecraft flew towards its landing zone with archaic turboprop engines. It touched down in the middle of nowhere, which was also apparently in the middle of somewhere as there were people there - refugees of some sort, either using the site as an encampment or taking temporary reprieve from an exodus in progress. Far away, over the distant horizon, their home city of Randia Libertia was visible in the form of a rising pillar of smoke. The whole city had been set aflame by the Kiith Gaalsien and their supporters, a violent cremation of Randia Libertia and its slain populace, turning all into naught but ash to be scattered by the wind. The smoke filtered the dying sunlight, turning the late afternoon sky into a magnificent shade of orange that went purplish as the day came closer to an end.

The spacecraft finished taxiing and its turboprops slowly stopped spinning. A ramp lowered and a man in black descended from the shuttle, surveying all he saw with casual nonchalance - as though the sight of such dregs fleeing from the wholesale massacre of their homes was a common everyday occurrence. Which it was. All over Wild Space such things happened on a regular basis, and Hanson had now joined the esteemed ranks of such failed states and third worlds. Yet even the dying spasms of a whole world presented opportunities to a select few.



He passed by the scenes of death and decay, unperturbed by the amount of human suffering all around him. His receding hairline and dark attire was reminiscent of the colorations of carrion birds, like a bald-headed black-feathered vulture, and the comparison was apt. He soon found himself amongst familiar friends, as scavenging avians descended to pick on the dead.

Those weren't the only animals around, however. There was another creature waiting for him. Not any bird or fowl, but a creature of the land, not a scavenger but a predator - a beast of the earth whom he was meeting with. He found this animal, coolly composed as he was, calmly seated behind a long table on a patch of undespoiled green grass. He approached it and sat with it.



"How is the situation here?" asked the vulture to the bear.

"Doubleplusungood," replied the bear to the vulture. "I came from Galt. I paid a visit to the Hanson Market Trade building to wage a price war when I found myself in a real war instead."

"How did it go?" the vulture asked the bear.

"Well, waging a real war against puny hew-mans is far easier than a price-war, at least," the bear said to the vulture. "But you have come to do both."

"Yes," said the vulture. "And the situation is doubleplusgood for me."

"Da," the bear agreed. "The Kiith Gaalsien are inflaming the population in an attempt to cause an uprising favorable to joining Kiith Gaalsiens holdings. The cities are warzones, for there are those of the populace who do not subscribe to the same telescreen channels. Significant numbers of the hew-man population call themselves 'goddamn libertopians' and do not take too kindly to foreign intervention."

"These Hansonites are known for their hatred for espers, but they also loathe aliens. Non-humans, I mean. How did you get through?" vulture asked.

"Even the most rabid xenophobes know not to fuck with a bear," bear replied. "Some tried though, but they were shown the error of their ways after being shown out the 206th floor window."

"Ouch," vulture winced. Then, going into the topic at hand. "So, have you brought the customers?"

"They brought themselves," the bear pointed a paw at a faraway column of dust fast approaching them. The dusty things resolved themselves into the form of Bruce Willys jeeps, a whole convoy of them, nearing at perilous speeds. When the convoy neared enough, most of the jeeps began encircling them, forming a man-made dust devil that enveloped the picnic table, along with the vulture and the bear. One of the jeeps broke formation, going inside the ring of circling vehicles, and from that particular Bruce Willys emerged a uniformed man whose many-medaled chest denoted his high military rank. "Ah, colonel, welcome. Come, join us. Here is my friend who wishes to do business with you."



The colonel seated himself in front of vulture, and then a flunky placed a belt of bullets on the colonel's neck, to add to his already many decorations. The colonel grinned, showing his yellow teeth."And what business would that be?" he asked.

"The business of business," vulture replied.

"I see," the colonel mused on this. "These Hiigarans think they can take our world away from us. They think they can take away our hard-won freedoms and liberties. These Kiith Gaalsien incite riots, arm rebels, and try to overthrow the authorities to make us ripe for conquest by the Hiigaran and their big guv'mint."

The colonel lit a cigar.

"Try these," vulture produced some of his own. "They're Solarian."



"Anglian, my friend, is not Solarian," the colonel politely declined as he took a drag off his own cigar. "The Hiigarans think we will simply put down our weapons and adopt Hiigaran democracy? That the killing will stop? We know this. Without victory, there will be no peace. There will always be killing, see? This is how things are in our world."

"I see," vulture nodded. He did, he had. In so many wars on so many worlds, he'd lost count. Nowadays the only thing he counted was his profit margins.

"They shouldn't have come here. This is a civil war. This is our war, not theirs."

"Then let's get on to business," vulture offered with an outstretched hand.

"Lets."

They went inside vulture's shuttle and there he showed the colonel his cargo of death-dealing weaponry. They were mostly Bragulan, with a few Shepistani stocks as well. The Bragulan weapons were centuries old, practically antiques though age had not lessened their deadliness by any means. They were segregated into two sections, adult and children. The adult infantry weapons were for adult Bragulans, obviously, but to human-standards they would've made for crew-served heavy machineguns at the least, and would've had to be modified into wheeled artillery pieces at the most. The children's section was also for infantry, with emphasis on the word 'infant', originally for Byzon's child soldiers during the revolutionary era of the Great Civil War, up to the days of the Solarian Wars. These weapons were naturally smaller than the variants for grownups, thus man-portable and made for fine objective individual combat weapons. There were more child-sized weapons than adult-sized, partly because they were smaller and more transportable, and partly because the Bragulan Star Empire had stopped using child soldiers at some point in time, so there was a surplus of antiquated unused cub-weapons. The adult soldiers of the Bragulan armies, on the other hand, could still be armed with even fossilized paleoweapons, so the surplus adult stocks were recycled in an eco-friendly way.

"Yes, this is good," the colonel approved.

"Of course they are. These are part of the glourious culture of Bragulanity, which we are glad to share with the people of Hanson," the bear replied.

"I will take them," the colonel announced. "All of them!"

Bear began to laugh in an all-too-familiar Bragulan fashion. The colonel joined him, though his was feeble in comparison to the bear's fucking laugh. The colonel merely fucking laughed, whereas the bear really fucking laughed. There was a subtle difference, imperceptible to the untrained ear, but it was there as their fucking laughing and fucking laughing voices echoed in the cargo hold.

Suddenly, the bear stopped laughing and merely looked at the colonel with a raised eyebrow. It was awkward and the colonel became silent. Satisfied, bear resumed his laughter while the colonel kept quiet.

Vulture, on the other hand, was merely calculating his own profits. He snapped his fingers and his people began weighing the weapons. The prices were not measured in individual units, but were measured in weight, so they shoveled piles of paleo-Bragweapons and heaped them on top of scales to determine the price.



"So, how do you want this packed?" vulture asked. "Glass or plastic?"

"We don't," the colonel shook his head.

"What?" vulture didn't understand.

"I will explain," the colonel said, this time he was the one who led them out of the spaceship. "Watch."

He whistled, and all of the refugees in the camp shuffled forth towards him, the miserable hordes of downtrodden and dispossessed folks and peasantry. The colonel waved an arm, gesturing them to come closer. Then, he shouted for all of them to hear:

"Take what you need! The village where those who burned down your homes, and their Hiigaran masters, is nearby to the south! Go do to them as they did to you, your homes and your families!"

They did. The weary souls who had walked for hours on end to escape their burned down hometown were suddenly filled with renewed vigor at the prospects of revengeance. They moved, with orderly fashion, into the cargo hold of the shuttleship and there they took what they could get. K-bolters, slugthrowers, Shinran swordguns and plasma rifles, even the adult-sized Bragweapons were carried off by groups of men who either hauled the artillery pieces en masse or had what remained of their livestock drag them away. The Bragulan kiddie-weapons were portable for most men and women, even some of the children too. Whole families and clans began taking up arms. What they had lost with their homes they regained in taking the instruments with which they would exact repayment for what had been done to them.

The Kiith Gaalsien and their armed militia were still looting the remains of Randia Libertia, leaving their own hometown of Nya defenseless. As the day died, the Randians marched towards the unsuspecting city where only the women and children were left to tend to their homes. It was not a long walk, and upon the Randians' arrival the Nyans went out to welcome them - thinking that their own men had arrived, bringing with them what they had taken from the neighboring town. In a way, that was what happened. In a way, the Randians were what the Nyans had brought upon themselves. It was the culmination of what they had taken from Randia Libertia. It was also what the Kiith Gaalsien had brought to their world. The lost loved ones, the burned down homes, these were what the Randians would make their Nyan neighbors experience.

Gunfire, sirens and screams. They rang out in the air like a lullaby for a dying day, audible for miles around.



Vulture sat there, listening, making himself listen. As though shackled or handcuffed to that chair. He had no compunctions, no regrets, bad conscience did not bother him. But he felt strangely compelled to listen. He had seen it before, of course, firsthand during his early days when he did his dealings directly, right there in the middle of the warzones themselves, vending to militiamen, soldiers and rebels alike when they ran out of bullets. He had seen what happened when, after running out of bullets to sell, fighters ended up being forced to use machetes to hack each other to death in the absence of ammunition. But he wasn't watching, not now. He was listening, hearing the sounds of death as they were carried by the wind. It had a strange eeriness to it.

The sunset was blood red as another column of smoke rose up in the other side of the sky. Then, when night came, there was nothing to see. Yet he could still hear it. In the blackness of the night, he could see it all happening as though it was transpiring right there in front of him.

The carrion birds had long gone, and now their black forms, invisible in the nighttime sky, fluttered in the air above Nya. They would dine well tonight.

[Shroom Man 777]

Written with Simon_Jester

Previously...

"No, My Lord Caligulus, I did not vanquish the Nibblepibblies; because you just made them up."

Queen Asphyxia cackled evilly in delight. Then she turned to the others. "Excellent! Now what news of other barbarian filth of the galaxy shall we discuss?"

"Beyond the shoals of our dominion, the decadent Persians and their mongrel race has deigned it fit to subjugate a meager pithy of a world nearby."

"Persians, you say? The hordes of all Asia have come at last. My fellow Lords, what say you of these developments? Commodius?"

"I say nay."

"My fellow Lords of the Pantheon, I have heard word of strange and distant easterners from the mysterious Orient seeking an audience with Elysium. A faraway land called Umeria sends their ships to our gates."

"Umerians? I have heard of them. Rumor has it these Umerians have already turned the Persians down, and if those philosophers and, uh, boy-lovers have found that kind of nerve, then... "

"We must be diplomatic."

"... and, of course, Elysians have their reputation to consider."

"Then let us welcome them with Elysian hospitality. For they shall arrive within the feast days into the Festivus and shall be able to partake in our celebrations. Prepare more nubile boy-lads for them. Perhaps some wenches, if some of them are not of that inclination."

"Aye. Summon the helots, and inform the Umerians that we invite their men-at-arms to engage in calisthenics with our legions, to show them the mettle of Elysium's finest and so that we may see the extent of these Umerian boy-lovers' masculinity. If they dare, they may even wrestle with our most womanly men."

ELYSIUM

The flagship Heracules had the honor of welcoming their strange visitors from faraway stars, as befitting a hero-ship such as itself. As the strangers reverted to realspace, they were greeted by the flagship's resplendent form. There it was, hanging in the black space surrounding the gleaming jewel of the Elysian world-throne, the Heracules in all its titanic form - massive, for its length was measured in uncountable pseudofathoms; and resplendent for on its marbled hull were statues and murals of ancient heroes, most notably its glourious namesake, partaking in Heraculanean feats of vanquishing unspeakable monstrosities from Elysian antiquity. It was through these engraved exploits that the flagship Heracules was undoubtable in its manhood.

The Elysian vessel that led the visitors through the tumultuous shoal spaces of the Elysian sectors, that was the guiding light of these stranger-ships, parted ways from the guests and flew beside the Heracules - and once more did the escort ship Hylas rejoin its partner.

The two Elysian ships did then regard their fair guests. The Heracules alone exceeded the total amassment of the strangers’ flotilla, for such was the splendourosity of the flagship, the culmination of the Elysian Nautikon's might, the embodiment of the Cosmic Host’s wrath, that made lesser ships quake in womanly fear upon its sight. But to be fair, the stranger ships did not quiver, for they merely stood still in the Heracules' shadow, perhaps in awe of its size and girth.

Thus then did the Heracules hail the strange ships of the visitors, greeting them in the traditional verses and songs of hospitality, whilst transcribing in the hololith images of spacemen performing calisthenics and ritualistic dances up upon the mighty vessel's adorned marble hull - where the metafields and pseudowalls had been extended to allow breathable air outside, so that the men may display their oiled bodies and jewel-encrusted battle shorts without fear of asphyxiation. The ritual was completed with the sacrifice of a dozen black bulls upon an altar on the Heracules' bow, where they were led and slaughtered to the gods of space in thanksgiving for a safe voyage. The bulls were burned, and then did the unclothed men raise their spears in the direction of the visitor ships - saluting them in the Elysian way.

Suddenly they became still, the men then went rigid and stiff, snapping to attention as the Heracules and the Hylas turned around and led the visitor ships towards the glory that was Elysium. As they did so, they were accosted by other vessels of the Nautikon - the Gladius ships and the Triremes - though none were remotely close in resplendency as the Heracules, as they were smaller in size and more like that of the Hylas or the stranger ships in the length and rigidity of their shafts. Yet they bore with them banners with flags that fluttered in the solar wind, displaying the various sigils of the Elysian Pantheon, the Naval Nautikon, and the Cosmic Host. A starfighter honor guard garbed in Celtic plaids flanked the guest vessels and welcomed them by releasing a trail of rose petals into space.

---

USS Beehive

Admiral Vincente Quirino stood at the diplomatic console, a special installation on capital ship flag bridges for just such occasions- suited to negotiations, and positioned so that no sensitive information on the main plots could be seen behind the speaker. As soon as the disquieting sensations of reversion to sidereal space faded, the voice of his chief of operations sounded in his earbud.

“Big contact ahead. Looks like that flag dreadnought we heard about. Bringing sensors to bear now; I’ll have a contact up on main plot shortly, cc’ing to your console.”

“Thanks... wow. Big bruiser.” The Elysian flagship was... hell, possibly the biggest ship he’d ever seen, it was that or that tremendous system defense monitor the NenAltKik had hammered together, the one with the ion gun. Honestly, he’d have to run volumetrics to be sure; the hullforms were very different.

“Jack, can you get deep-radar on them? I’m not sure how much to read from tonnage here.”

“On it.” Then one of the signals ratings cut in.

“Signal from Hylas, sir: “Behold the glorious hero-ship Heracules!” Nothing else; they’re moving to take up position off... looks like off the heavy’s ventral bow.”

Well, that was a fair invitation for deep-radar. He wondered if they’d pick it up. Hard to tell. The AAR from the incident over Reisenburg had just come out before Juliusz left; it was a reminder not to underestimate navies with a reputation for crudeness.

Jack kept up a running commentary as the sensor picture filled in on Quirino’s screen. “Power plants look like high-end atomics with... something in the way of exotics in there, not quite sure what they’re up to. Power-to-ton isn’t impressive, but then they have a lot of tons to play with.”

“I know... Jack, I can’t be seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did they bolt half a billion tons of rocks to the outside of that beast?”

“Sir, you’re seeing what you think you’re seeing. There’s armor underneath, but the whole thing is clad in a meter or more of carbonaceous rock of some kind.”

“...Yup. Hmm. Get some VLA drones out, I want visual if we can get it.”

“They’re already on the way.” Thank the stars for intelligent anticipation. There was a pause. “Looks like... statuary? Something decorative...”

“Lots of surface detail, going down into the centimeter-scale... can’t make it out at this range without doing a lidar scan, and no way in hell are we going EM-active on them. Wouldn’t be polite.”

“The gross features, though, yes, definitely statuary. What about that tactical assessment, how’s that coming?

“On reactor rated output, I’d say “flag dreadnought” is fair. A damn big flag dreadnought, but qualitatively on par with most of the classes rated that way, assuming their weapon efficiency is in line with the kind of technical capability the power plant indicates. Definitely energy weapons batteries, nothing charged. Big damn tractor mounts. Not sure what they’re for, but this fellow could probably juggle asteroids for fun and games.”

“So, ONI was right?”

“Looks like. I shudder to think of how much it must have cost this place to build something like that, though...” The ops officer trailed off, then groaned, muttered a curse, and started speaking to Quirino again.

“Ah, speaking of shuddering to think, they’re hailing us. In the clear. With, ah, you’d better see for yourself, sir. Patching it through to your repeater display...”

Hmm. Well, they don’t look half bad, but still, a touch overdone. Well, more like an avalanche of overdone... By doing something truly unnatural to their wall shields, the Elysian flagship had generated an atmosphere bubble several meters high over the dorsal hull, and started doing half-naked calisthenics. Also fully naked calisthenics...

Accompanying that was a truly astounding choral accompaniment, one that could only have arisen in a society isolated from the galactic mainstream for a millennium or more. It wasn’t actually unpleasant, just not-so-subtly wrong. Though not without its charms, to be fair; he thought he could grow accustomed to it.

The animal sacrifices drew gasps and groans of disbelief from the ratings of the signals section, as a pair of robed Elysians hauled a bull that looked like it had to be drugged up to some kind of plinth on the bow- this one looked like it had writing on it. After a few confusing little movements- some kind of ritual sacrament?- one of them plunged a knife into the bull’s neck and let it bleed out, the fluid seeping into the writing on the altar and pooling in channels at its base.

He could hear the signals ratings mumbling; understandable given the shock. One murmured “so this is what going mad looks like...” Others just swore under their breath.

“Merciful Buddha...”

“Klono’s gadolinium guts...”

And perhaps most common, simply, “Damn...”

A gang of laborers hauled the carcass aside and began butchering it... followed by another bull, and another. Finally, as the twelfth and final beast was carved apart by the slaughtering crew, the thighbones of the bulls were thrown onto a great pyre. All the Elysians on the bow raised some kind of chant in a ritual language - not identifiable, bore some vague resemblance to Latin, but only in the sense that English resembled German - and saluted.

The manner of the salute raised further groans from the signals rating; even Quirino winced.

Thinking it over, what was so strange about the whole affair wasn’t so much the customs he was seeing. Quirino knew damn well that there had been countless societies with similar rituals- for that matter, there still were. It was that the Elysians hung on to customs like this while still being technically sophisticated enough to film it, aboard a hyperspace-capable dreadnought.

That was just... wrong somehow.

Jack cut in. “Ah, you know how I wondered why I wasn’t on the list to go shoreside?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to be on the list anymore.”

“I know, Jack, I know. That’s why I am going to be planetside while you are up here holding the fort.”

“Thank you, sir. I don’t envy you, sir. That said... the flagship is hailing us more, ah, conventionally now. Course coordinates. Looks like they’ve got an honor guard planned.”

As TF BC4.2 powered up to travel towards the Elysian homeworld under escort from the locals’ fighters and more ‘normal’ warships - built like battleships and cruisers but powered like battlecruisers and destroyers, rather than being built like a mountain and powered like a dreadnought - Quirino sighed to himself. No. Don’t think like you’re visiting cavemen. Think like an anthropologist. He’d better. This would be a long mission, if he didn’t get into the proper frame of mind.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

The Talon of Ruin
Texel Aerospace Base, Wesel Province, West Gallia
Gallian continent, Halkeginia, Belka Sector
14 May 3400



Texel Aerospace Base was a lonely installation, located far up in the mountains of West Gallia's Wesel Province, a place where the snows never quite melted and spring never quite arrived fully. One of many bases previously established by unified Gallia, it fell unto West Gallian hands during the Civil War and was one of the more important staging areas for the West Gallian aerospace force during the subsequent Unification War. However, given that the West Gallian Aerospace Force had suffered severe attrition over the course of the Unification War, activity at Texel Aerospace Base tapered off significantly after the war despite its important location near the East Gallia-West Gallia DMZ; while other bases received combat fighters, Texel was relegated primarily to flight training and logistics.

Until now.



In order to rebuild its aerospace force, West Gallia enlisted the aid of Belkan mercenaries, primarily for pilot training but also to provide additional manpower in the event of war with East Gallia. When the Gallian War went hot once more, the Belkan 23rd Tactical Fighter Squadron "Gelb" was already in theatre and cleared to engage. However, Gelb Squadron in its current form was only made up of two pilots, and it still operated the nigh-obsolete Terminator when the Imperial Belkan Aerospace Force had already transitioned over to newer aerospace fighters such as the Morgan, Fenrir, and Nosferatu. Regardless, Gelb's pilots were seasoned combat veterans, and the Terminator was more than capable of holding its own against whatever the East Gallians could throw at it.

Ever since it was transferred to Texel Aerospace Base a week or so after the start of the Gallian War, Gelb Squadron had its hands full intercepting East Gallian air attacks and providing close air support for West Gallian forces attempting to break the stalemate on the ground. Until West Gallia could get more of its own pilots and fighters into the air, Gelb would continue to be an integral part of the war effort in Wesel Province. Things had been going well for them so far, but nobody was able to foresee just what East Gallia would try to do in order to break the stalemate once and for all...

The two pilots of Gelb Squadron, Major Orbert Jaeger and 2nd Lieutenant Rainer Altman, were busy relaxing in the barracks after yet another sortie out on the front lines against the Easties. "When are we gonna get those reinforcements?" Orbert said, apparently in response to a question Rainer had. "I wouldn't waste too much time worrying about that if I were you. Like it or not, West Gallian HQ still has us classified as an auxiliary squadron, so they'll just dump a bunch of nuggets in barely-airworthy craft on us and tell us to work with them." Orbert sat down on the couch and slouched, taking in the sounds of the music blaring loudly through the stereo. "I gotta hand it to you, Lieutenant Altman. You got good taste in music."

"Yep, I love this sound," Rainer said as he lay down on his bunk. "Calms me down. Looks like I can finally get a good nap today."

Rainer was soon forced to eat his words as the blaring of the alarms drowned out the stereo. "Aw, man! An air raid?! Give me a break!" he groaned as he clambered out of the bunk and followed Orbert in a mad dash to the hangars. The voices of the base personnel shot rapid-fire through the base intercoms, one after the other...

"We're now on code-one alert!"

"Visual confirmation of craft approaching the base! Everyone, get to your posts!"

As Orbert and Rainer rushed to board their Terminators, the voice of the base control tower operator chimed in. "Scramble the jets! Get all flyable aerospace craft into the air! Move it!"

"This is Gelb 2! Control Tower, sit-rep!" Rainer said into his cockpit radio as he attempted to get his fighter started.

"Air raid inbound! Enemy craft entering our airspace! Scramble and engage!"

Chaos raged all around the Gelb Squadron as their Terminators went out onto the tarmac. West Gallian anti-aircraft K-bolters spat brilliant green projectiles into the air as East Gallian fighter-bombers flitted to and fro attempting to engage ground targets, with mixed success on both sides. Every so often, a stricken East Gallian craft would trail flames as it spiraled directly into the ground, while a West Gallian AA gun emplacement would be consumed in a massive explosion after being struck by East Gallian ordinance; one such critically wounded East Gallian craft crashed directly into a parked West Gallian fighter, narrowly missing Rainer's Terminator as it rolled towards the runway.



Once Orbert and Rainer were finally on the runway, they were treated to a truly ominous sight: A Belkan Hresvelgr gunship in East Gallian regalia looming over the base, liberally raining missiles and laser and railgun fire down onto the ground. The Hresvelgr's onslaught was truly brutal, demolishing anything within range that had the misfortune to get caught in its line of fire. Despite several close calls, Gelb finally managed to make it to the runway more or less unscathed, though the same couldn't be said for the rest of Texel Aerospace Base. Once its work was done, the Hresvelgr departed, presumably on its way to rain more death and destruction on another West Gallian target; however, the remaining fighter-bombers still lingered on, attempting to pick off anything that the Hresvelgr missed...including Gelb Squadron.

"Where the hell did they get a Hresvelgr?!" Rainer exclaimed.

"No time to worry about that now!" Orbert said. "We gotta get up there before the next wave bounces us!"

With that, the two pilots hit their throttles, pulled their sticks, and attempted to make a short takeoff from the now heavily-damaged runway. Thanks to the Terminator's STOL capabilities, Gelb was airborne within moments, joining the few West Gallian craft that had managed to get airborne during the strike and ready to deal with anything the East Gallians could send against them.

"My rock and roll records!" Rainer moaned as his Terminator gained altitude. "They're in our room! It took me forever to collect all those!"

"Like I said, no time to worry about that now!" Orbert admonished. "We need to clear the skies over our base and take down that Hresvelgr!"


FILE PHOTOS: A Drachen (left) and a Freiheitskämpfer (right) in East Gallian colors


FILE PHOTO: A Gespenst in the colors of the Belkan 126th TFS "Silber"

The Drachen, Freiheitskämpfer, and Gespenst aerospace fighters were truly outdated by modern standards, but they were still reliable and capable craft nonetheless. Cheap to acquire and relatively easy to maintain, they formed the backbones of many minor powers' aerospace forces, including those of the two Gallias. Most of the air wing at Texel Aerospace Base was comprised of Drachens and Freiheitskämpfers, most of which were destroyed on the ground by the East Gallian attack. A few Drachens and Freiheitskämpfers were still able to take off and start engaging the Eastie forces, which consisted mainly of Gespensts and a few Freiheitskämpfers; they were holding their own quite well until the arrival of the Hresvelgr, which destroyed the remaining fighters on the ground and even managed to take out a few unaware Westie fighters in flight.

The West Gallian anti-aircraft fire and initial fighter sweep had been surprisingly effective, taking out the majority of the East Gallian attackers before being neutralized by the Hresvelgr. Only a few scattered craft were left for Gelb Squadron and the surviving Westie fighters to take out, which they did with nearly contemptuous ease; the Easties had apparently sent nuggets to carry out the Texel Aerospace Base raid, as the Gespensts and Freiheitskämpfers they were using could have been able to pose a decent challenge to the Belkan and West Gallian craft if flown by competent pilots. "Barely even a warmup," Rainer said to himself.

"Now all we gotta do is find that Hresvelgr and shoot it down," Orbert said. "Control Tower, we need the last known heading of the Hresvelgr. Control Tower, do you copy?"

After a few seconds of silence, Orbert received a garbled reply. "...last known heading...280..."

"They must have damaged the comms arrays," Orbert said to himself. "Gelb 2, you got that? Heading 280."

"280?! That's Texel City!" Rainer exclaimed. "Those damn Eastie bastards!"

"Apply full thrust! We'll take them down before they can get there!"

The West Gallian fighters accompanied the two Terminators as they all sped off to the west, hoping to intercept the East Gallian Hresvelgr before it could strike once more. After a few minutes of sustained flight, they located the lumbering behemoth flying high over the mountains, on its way to destroy Texel City.



"We have visual confirmation of the target," Rainer said. "Wait. Unknown craft on radar. I'm picking up...four of them, coming in at high speed. More Easties?"

"Rot 1 to all craft! Time to hunt some wild dogs! Down 'em all!" a mysterious voice cried out over the radio.

"Wait, Rot Squadron's still deployed near Stavern!" Orbert said. "Unless..."

"Unless what, boss?"

"There's our Rot Squadron, and then there's..."

"You don't think..."

"Volkslanders."


FILE PHOTO: Taifuns in the colors of the Belkan 52nd TFS "Rot"

The Taifun was an old but reliable Belkan fighter that, like the Terminator, still saw limited service with a few squadrons in the Imperial Belkan Aerospace Force despite the introduction of the Morgan, Fenrir, and Nosferatu. Despite the Belkan arms embargo on Volksland, Volkslander mercenary units operating in the K-Zone managed to acquire a few Taifuns (along with larger numbers of Drachens, Freiheitskämpfers, and Gespensts) through various sources. In skilled hands, a Taifun could easily best a Drachen, Freiheitskämpfer, or Gespenst and was more than capable of taking on a Terminator in one-on-one combat. Unfortunately for Gelb Squadron, there were four Volkslander Taifuns to their two Terminators, and the Volkslanders had a reputation for being just as proficient as the Belkans in aerial combat; the West Gallian Drachens and Freiheitskämpfers would not have stood a chance.

"Unknown craft on radar still inbound! Gelb 2, you're with me! All other craft, pursue the Hresvelgr!" Orbert ordered.

The joint Belkan-West Gallian formation promptly broke, with the Drachens and Freiheitskämpfers turning to chase after the Hresvelgr while the Gelb Squadron charged towards the incoming Volkslanders and stiff-armed them with a salvo of long-range missiles. The Volkslanders' clumsy attempt at an ambush was thwarted as two of their Taifuns were promptly blown to bits; two of them were still able to dodge and engage countermeasures, however. "Two down! One for you and one for me!" Rainer exclaimed.

"Now that we've evened the odds, let's dance," Orbert said. "Like you said, Gelb 2, one for you and one for me. Let's hope that the others can take care of that Hresvelgr."

The attempted Volkslander ambush quickly turned into an old-fashioned dogfight as the Terminators and the two remaining Taifuns closed in and began attempting to outmaneuver each other. "Visual confirmation! They're Taifuns, and they're painted in the same colors as Rot Squadron!" Rainer said.

"Damn Volkslander bastards!" Orbert snarled as he attempted to get a lock on one of the Volkslander Taifuns as it flitted to and fro in an attempt to evade him. "Try to pass yourselves off as Belkans, huh? You'll die like the mongrels that you are!"

During the course of the fight, Orbert and Rainer managed to pick up several transmissions from the Volkslander Taifuns. "How can Belkan mercenary dogs fly so well?!" the Volkslander flight lead loudly mused.

"I've never seen flying like that in Volksland!" the other Volkslander pilot said.

"Man, these Volksies really need to learn to secure their comms," Rainer remarked. "Time to wrap this up, boss."

"Already ahead of you, Gelb 2," Orbert said nonchalantly as he lined up the tail of the Volkslander flight lead and lit him up with a burst from his railguns.

"I've been hit?! Those damn mercenaries!" the Volkslander flight lead cried as his Taifun went down in flames.

"Rot 1, give me a damage report! Rot 1!" the sole surviving Volkslander called out. "I'll shoot down these Belkan dogs on my own!"

"No, you won't," Rainer retorted as he fired off a missile at the Taifun and followed it up with a few short bursts from his railguns, completely shredding the enemy craft into pieces. "Now let's see how everyone else is holding up against the Hresvelgr."

The rookie West Gallian pilots were actually holding their own quite well against the Hresvelgr, which was positively bristling with anti-air railguns. One by one, its railgun emplacements were decommissioned by targeted missile shots from the West Gallian Drachens and Freiheitskämpfers, though there was only so much they could do before their ordinance ran out and they had to return to base. However, even without its railguns, the Hresvelgr still had a few tricks up its sleeve. With little warning, its ventral laser turret and dorsal missile launchers came to life, catching several of the retreating Westie pilots off guard; several Drachens and Freiheitskämpfers were caught in the missile salvo and destroyed, while the remainder barely managed to escape the laser as it swept through the sky in an attempt to sweep them away.

"All West Gallian craft, disengage! I say again, disengage!" Orbert called out over the radio. "Gelb 2 and I will handle the Hresvelgr from here on out!"

"We were already disengaging when the damn thing decided to grow a laser turret and fire at us!" one of the West Gallian pilots responded. "Shit! It's about to fire again! Evasive maneuvers!"

The Hresvelgr's weapons flared up once more, though the surviving West Gallian fighters were luckier than last time, deploying the last of their countermeasures to fool the incoming missiles while maneuvering to avoid the laser sweep. By the time the missile launchers and laser could fire a third time, the Westies would be long out of range. "I'll take the laser turret," Orbert said as he eased his Terminator into a gentle dive. "Gelb 2, take out the topside missile launchers."

"Copy that, Gelb Leader," Rainer said as he pulled his Terminator into a climb and leveled out in order to bring him above the Hresvelgr. It wasn't long before he ran afoul of the missile launchers, which spat out a salvo of short-range missiles towards his craft; he barely had enough time to engage countermeasures before pulling his craft into a steep climbing turn. Once he was sure he had shaken off those missiles, he looped back around, eased back into a moderate dive towards the Hresvelgr, and picked out the locations of the missile launchers with his target designator; once he had locks on all of them, he let loose with a salvo of his own missiles and railgun rounds, leveling out just as the missiles and projectiles ripped the behemoth's back open.

Meanwhile, Orbert had his hands full with the laser turret, which started firing as soon as he got within range. He made an extremely wide, sweeping turn in order to get as much distance between him and the beam as possible before pulling his Terminator into a near-vertical climb, looping back and leveling out behind and above the Hresvelgr. "You doing all right there, boss?" Rainer asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Orbert responded as he dove back down to get the laser before it could fire again. Once he was below the Hresvelgr and had a lock on the turret, he fired off a pair of missiles, nailing it and putting it out of commission for good. He hit the brakes slightly in order to let the Hresvelgr overtake him before pulling up and sizing up the situation.

"The Hresvelgr's defenses are down. Let's go to town, shall we?" Orbert said. "Gelb 2, go get a few attacks in on his cockpit and mess up his steering. I'll get his engines."

"You got it!" Rainer said as he accelerated his Terminator in order to pass the Hresvelgr so he could get in a stiff-arm attack directly on the cockpit. Meanwhile, Orbert simply laid back, lined up his shots, and picked off each of the gunship's six engines one by one. Orbert had destroyed the sixth and final engine when Rainer launched his own attack on the cockpit, unloading his remaining ordinance straight through the glass.

The two Terminators took up formation and watched the stricken Hresvelgr as it plummeted towards the icy mountains just outside Texel City, making a final explosion once it finally touched the ground. It was yet another hard-won victory for West Gallia, though just how Pyrrhic it would be would depend on how quickly Texel Aerospace Base could be repaired and how quickly West Gallia could replace its lost planes and pilots.

"It doesn't matter what your size is, if you're on Gelb Squadron's hit lit, you're going down," Rainer crowed triumphantly.

"Couldn't have said it better myself, Gelb 2," Orbert said. "Our work's done here, but we can't go back to base. The runway's too banged up, and I don't wanna risk wrecking our craft trying to land there. We'll head for the civilian aerospace port."

After a few minutes of flying towards Texel City, the two Terminators made a triumphant touchdown on the main runway at Texel City International Aerospace Port, where they were reunited with the surviving West Gallian pilots and swept up in the raucous celebrations over their latest victory. Needless to say, they would have a very interesting mission report to file once they got back to base...

---

Nou Craiova, Valahia
Carpathia Shoal Zone, Carpathia Sector (Sector P-25), Belkan Empire
16 May 3400

"I knew those pompous East Gallian buffoons couldn't be trusted with something as valuable as a Hresvelgr. Very well, then. Mr. Sulejmani, your squadron's cleared for deployment in East Gallia. You should know who our contacts are there."

[Simon_Jester]

Thanks for technical advice go to KartrKana, for expertise in the field of "We need a door where that wall is!"

Buccaneer-T class assault cutter CG-78329 "Hell Hog"
Approaching Hawk's Nest Station
1128 Hours

Major Clifford Eislawine, commander of Gamma Battalion, 12th Strike Infantry Regiment, stood quietly in his suit of shielded power armor. The transport module, already empty of air in preparation for boarding, was crowded as hell. His guard team and the engineering detachment packed inside weren't helping, but the experience of packing forty-odd armored men into the wide-body module was routine for all involved.

Eislawine's thoughts flickered over the assault plans; so did the suit computers wired into his thoughts via neural implant. Umerians as a whole weren't all that big on cybernetics, but for Strike officers they were a necessity: one had to think fast and spread plans on the tactical network quickly, or failure was predictable if not inevitable. Reviewing imagery on the repeater displays inside the suit's opaque faceplate, everything looked good; all the assault transports were aimed at large secondary rooms near major hangar bays, which would be their first targets. Getting the hangars open would let the Marine units board, and from there they could spread out through the station, clearing the main habitat spaces with the Strikers on point.

Normally, they'd be doing this as the spearhead of a short division of Intervention troops. Since they hadn't brought an Intervention division along, the Centralists had offered to substitute a reinforced brigade of their own Marines. After a bit of time to watch the training, Eislawine had decided they'd be an acceptable substitute- arguably more than acceptable; he liked some of what he saw enough to take notes. Tactical coordination could be a problem, but if he was careful it should work out.

SpaceSec's lot had done a good job on defense suppression; nothing shot at them as the scarred old Buccaneer maneuvered up to their entry point. Finally, the assault boat drifted to a lazy docking speed... but with no docking port to meet them.

This was not unexpected. For ship-to-ship boarding, the cutter's external ordnance pylons had been fitted with powerful tractor/pressor beams and a pair of high-power, tight focus lasers. Braced against the wall of the station by the gravitic beams, the weapons officer fired up his lasers and began drilling into the hull. The station's shielding had long since been worn down by the capital ships, and nothing made out of atoms could stand off those cutting beams indefinitely. Soon the lasers had drilled clean through into the interior, and the Umerian assault craft started rotating slowly on its long axis, slicing an elliptical hole out of the hull. Vapor sprayed out along the edges of the cut; by the time the cutter was finished, the compartment was already depressurized.

It was a quick matter for the pilot to swing Hell Hog over the hole. The starboard hatch popped open, and the leading squad fired grappling lines to provide guide ropes for the boarding. They went in fast, fanning out to cover the compartment with plasma rifles; as always, the transition from microgravity to the station's gravitics yanked the Strikers out of sight through the hole they'd cut in the wall and down to the floor. Second squad followed, then third and fourth, and finally the major's own escort team. He noted with satisfaction that no one had needed to fire a shot; picking a storage room as the initial entry point had paid off.

Naturally, the emergency pressure doors between this room and the hangar had slammed down as soon as the station detected burnthrough in this compartment; taking care of that would be the platoon's next job.

The squad of SpaceSec naval infantry came out hard on the heels of the Strikers. These were engineering specialists, clad in a vacuum-rated variant of the lighter, unshielded Intervention armor- not frontline combatants in a Strike operation, but then that wasn't what they were here for. Instead, they came out carrying long cylindrical tanks and a light, deployable emergency pressure lock: high-tensile fabric over folding metal framework.

In practiced motions, the engineers slung the tanks into the room, where they bounced soundlessly against a stack of cargo pallets, then set up the lock over the hole Hell Hog's lasers had cut in the hull. With that finished, they made their way over to the gas tanks and knocked the stopcocks off, releasing a flood of pressurized air into the compartment, calculated to restore it to atmospheric pressure. Hopefully a generic 20/80 oxy-nitrogen mix wouldn't set off toxicity alarms; nothing in the analysis of the atmosphere used by the pirates suggested it would.

Eislawine nodded; the other assaults were going smoothly, too. Three of his platoons had run into resistance in their entry points, leaving aside the cases where the defenders hadn't survived decompression. None had suffered serious problems, though.

Once the pressure was back to standard, a pair of men from first squad called the next move over the net: "Breachers up!" They fixed the man-sized rectangular charge over the door, the troops stacked up around the entry, and the charge went off. Now that they were back in air, the blast was all too noticeable: heavy enough to crack doors that could stand off several atmospheres of overpressure.

First squad had a hot time of it at first, pushing down the corridor, because there were vac-suited defenders in the hangar bay, who had them bottlenecked in the entry. A hail of heavy automatic weapons fire rang off armor and shielding harmlessly, but the pair of unguided short range antitank rockets did not, blasting two of the squad members off their feet before the other six Strikers could cut through the mob of small-arms troops to reach them.

But by then the remaining six troopers had advanced through the fire to the end of the corridor and were taking up position around the mouth, punching fire from their heavy Callahan Mk. I battle rifles into the pirates as they came. The pirates' vacuum suits were armored only against shrapnel and spalling. The jacketed-plasma bolts blew their targets apart, and the pirates were already starting to fall back when second squad came through the breach. They didn't last long enough to get the chance, not after the second wave doubled the fire coming at them.

By the time Major Eislawine's team made it through, the platoon commander was already wrapping up.

"Gamma One, report."

"Six effectives. Gunnarsen is down and out, vitals up; medic is on him. Suzuki's shields at six and resetting; serious damage to suit ablatives but otherwise intact."

"Copy. Gamma Two through Four, secure the hangar; Gamma One, get Gunnarsen back to the cutter."

"Yes, sir."

The remaining Strike troopers spread out; escorted by fourth squad, the Navy engineers sprinted for the local control room. If they could get control of the local access points and the hangar doors from here, it would save a lot of blasting...

---

198th Independent Marine Regiment, VII Centrality Marine Corps
Boarding Hawk's Nest Station
1137 Hours

Colonel Orsanic strode off his shuttle in full armor, escorted by a pair of bodyguards. His were the first boots in his regiment to strike the deck of Hawk's Nest. A fire team of Umerians came to attention as he did so; the other heavily armored Strike troops were still covering the access corridors.

Major Eislawine had supplied his battalion's comm frequencies and codes so that they could coordinate, though Orsanic suspected that the ones he'd given were special one-offs for this operation. It was what he'd do.

As he thought about it, he kept moving; behind him, power-armored Marines debarked from the shuttle quickly, armed with a mix of basic rifles (by heavy infantry standards) and semi-portable heavy weapons. The troops were coming out nicely; there should be no delays in getting his men into this hangar via the shuttles.

His 198th Regiment, one of three in the lead echelon, would be landing in three hangar bays and advancing into the station with the Strikers on point. With their heavier armor, they would bound forward and seize key points along the main corridors while the Marines filled in behind them. He was fairly optimistic about the Umerians' performance; their gear was solid and what little he knew of their doctrine seemed equally so. The key would be coordinating his men with them, and for that he needed to be tapped into his allies' communications.

The commander of the Strike company that would be breaking ground for his advance, Captain Mendez, came up alongside him, shields sparking slightly as he walked. "Ready to advance now, sir."

Hmm. We'll have the lead companies debarked in a few minutes... good enough. "In a moment, captain. What's your take on the opposition?"

"Recommend you keep heavy weapons to the front, sir."

"Why so, captain?"

"Main opposition is three-meter saurians, typically carrying large-caliber automatic weapons; they don't go down easily. We're running on a light antimateriel power setting."

"...I see." Three meter dinosaurs?



"Intel files suggest they're called "Gron." Tough but not armored, not mostly. Resistance seems disorganized so far."

"Good. Carry on, captain."

The Umerian made a quarter-turn to give the order, standard practice for power-armored soldiers whose lack of body language made it impossible to be sure otherwise when they were talking to you and when their attention was elsewhere. Of course, since Orsanic was patched into the Umerians' tactical network, so he heard the order anyway, in one word: "Execute."

There was a ripple of detonating charges, some out of sight from his current position, and the sound of occasional plasma bolts as the platoon holding this hangar carried that order out literally against the pirates covering their exit routes.

---

1154 Hours

Progress had been good so far; the 198th was fully disembarked now, and he had several companies deployed doing sweeps. They hadn't run into anything too serious yet, but only now that the first phase lines had been reached had he given the Umerians the go-ahead to move deeper into the heart of the station.

That had been a few minutes ago, and they were making good progress toward their objectives so far... until the first hitch arose. His first sign of a problem came over the Umerians' network.

"Beta Six, Beta Three. New force, estimate company strength. Cybernetics, energy weapons. Threat... nontrivial."

There was no perceptible pause before the Umerian officer replied. "Copy. Pull back to point designate Orange One and hold. Beta Two, back to designate Orange Two, Gamma One, back to Orange Three. Beta Four One, double-time to Orange Four, seed corridor with razors on command setting. Beta Four Two, mobile defense." Then nothing more for about a minute. Colonel Orsanic checked his own dispositions; he could probably pull J company loose if the Umerians needed reinforcements...

"Beta Six, Beta Four. Razors set."

"Copy. Beta Three, report."

"Shields down to sixty."

"Pull back to Orange Five, double-time."

Falling back again? Orsanic had to say something. "Captain, do you need support?"

"No. We've got this."

"Are you-" a violent explosion shook the deck under the colonel's feet. Automatic dampers in his armor kicked in, but he could tell it had been a fairly significant blast. Captain Mendez, perfectly calm, kept talking over the Umerians' company net.

"Beta Three, report."

"Demo took most of the middle echelon. Counterattacking."

"Copy. Beta Two Two, Gamma One Two, converge on point Orange Five, block their escape. Beta Four, good work on the razor mines."

Perhaps they did 'have this...' still, best to keep J company ready. Then his musings were interrupted.

"Sir, Plaza Red-Three is secured; recommend you move up."

That was faster than expected...

On the one hand, that sounded more like an order from a captain than he liked. On the other... if they had Red-Three covered, there would be no reinforcements for any holdouts in the sector, and speed was of the essence. Conversely, if they were overoptimistic, they would need reinforcements, and quickly. Colonel Orsanic wasted no time in ordering J company forward to start clearing the territory the Umerians had cordoned off; I company soon followed.

The Marines swept towards the Strike positions. Heavy weapons squads pressed forward, rifle teams peeling off to cover crosswise corridors and clear out rooms along the line of advance. Usually, all they had to do was confirm that rooms were clear or take a surrender, but there were enough holdouts to make trouble.

The ones with small arms alone were manageable, but those antitank grenades were more of a problem- a significant threat in the cramped terrain of the station. Over a dozen positions had to be cleared in close combat with rifles and the Centralists' own grenades; the pirate defenders holding those strongpoints usually caused casualties, and invariably damaged some of the Marines' armor badly enough to force men out of the advance.

The most serious pockets of opposition they encountered were led by stragglers from the force of cyber-enhanced troops that had hit the Umerians. Protected by personal shielding in their own right and armed with high power pulse-laser weapons, the Gron cyborgs didn't go down except to heavy weapons or concentrated fire from Marine rifle teams.



But they did go down, and there simply weren't enough of them to make much of a difference. As always, one supersoldier, human or saurian, could only do so much to slow down the advance of a whole platoon. In his experience, that kind of lopsided battle didn't last long, not when the platoon had good tactics, effective weapons, and enough protection that they couldn't be brushed aside lightly.

Still though, he was just as happy that he hadn't had to meet the original force that had hit the Strikers. The remnant cyborgs fought ferociously as individuals, but the loss of coordination made them much easier to take down... and fighting a room full of them at once would have been most challenging.

The corridor the Umerian captain had designated "Orange Four" was a charnel house. Overlapping patterns of blast and monomolecular shrapnel from their 'razor mines' had blown at least twenty of the cyborgs into twitching corpses. Other bodies lay sprawled on the corridor on both sides of the kill zone- in front, where one of the Strike squads had first held the line and then counterattacked, and behind, where two Umerian fire teams had caught the enemy's withdrawal in a raking crossfire from their heavy plasma rifles.

In hindsight he could reconstruct it quite clearly: the short tactical retreat, the holding action while the reserve set the mines, then a feigned retreat to draw the enemy into the kill zone and break them up. The swift counterattack by the squad the cyborgs had been keeping on the back foot before, and fire teams from two other squads pincering in to catch them in a crossfire as they passed through Atrium Red-Two.

He assumed that with access to the Umerians' full datalinks he could have deduced the plan from Captain Mendez's dispositions. Still, he had to respect the young man's eye for terrain; the ambush site had been well-chosen, as had the point where the pincer movement split off to engage... and all the relevant orders had been given within a few seconds.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

---

1307 Hours
198th Independent Marine Regiment
Field Command Post

By now, it was all over but the shouting. Most of the pirates and camp followers in the central hab complex had surrendered, roughly twenty-five percent of them to his regiment. Of the diehards, most of them had died hard, but quickly, once the sweep lines crossed into their parts of the station. The enemy had never united for a major counterattack; he suspected their leadership had been aboard the ships, leaving no one in a position to direct the defense of the station itself. What minor counterattacks and massed defensive lines they had tried to form had mostly been broken up by the Strike troops, leaving his men to roll up the disorganized bulk of the defenders in detail.

Captain Mendez approached. His armor had a few dings and scorch marks, but looked well insofar as he could tell its condition at a glance. Here in the command post, the Umerian must feel secure; he doffed his opaque helmet and for the first time Orsanic saw the man's face.

His looks were unremarkable- plain features and an olive complexion that was very common indeed after the long centuries of racial mixing since the Human Diaspora. But the eyes... under the touch of wateriness from looking into his suit's displays for the last few hours, there was definitely a keenness that went well with the colonel's impression of the man.

Orsanic, a fine product of Centralist bioscience and groomed from youth for his role as a soldier and a leader of soldiers, gave the Strike officer a benevolent grin and returned the salute. The younger man had earned respect today, and in the typical fashion of his countrymen, Orsanic chose to express that respect by unbending enough for a jest.

"Your men have done very well, Captain. I'm half tempted to ask for the number of your geneticist."

The Umerian was briefly silent. He looked... proud, yet embarrassed? Odd. Then he spoke. "Ah, sir, we... aren't genetically modified. Some minor cybernetics, just for interfacing really, but..."

"...I see."

"Though I do appreciate the compliment in the spirit which it was meant, sir. Thank you."

Orsanic nodded. "You're welcome."

Still, Mendez seemed surprisingly nonchalant; it had been in many ways a strange battle, and not an easy one. The Centralist decided to probe a bit.

"So, captain, dinosaurs with heavy machine guns are routine for you?"

"Well, not every day, obviously, but we've mostly seen worse."

"And the cyborg dinosaurs with laser cannons?"

"Hmm. To be fair, the troops will probably have a few stories to tell about them around the mess hall. But yes, all in a honest day's work, sir."

...

THE END

[Force Lord]

Tourian Command Center, Zebes
Zebes System, Sector H-12
Early June

Weavel's face was grim as he pondered the latest reports coming out from what humans called "Hawk's Nest Station". The enemy had attacked the station in force, destroying all of Keldrog's fleet and capturing the station itself. With the loss of that station, Zebes was now threatened.

"Only a handful of units escaped sir. All are in need of repairs and refits." The Captain said in a "I told you so" tone, "We expect the enemy to arrive in this system in five days at the latest."

"Captain, I want you to head our space defenses. I will stay here and avoid Keldrog's mistake of risking his life at the front. I will wait for the enemy to come. They will suffer heavy losses fighting their way through the caverns if they intend to reach Tourian. Your task is to delay them as long as possible."

"I will not be reinforced?"

"Not if we put our home Urtraghus and other worlds and bases at risk. The enemy is superior to us in numbers and technology. Boskone can only help us so far. We must gain more time for our brethren at Urtraghus to fortify the planet. We must make the enemy bleed."

"What of our other units, sir?"

"Most have been assigned to Urtraghus or sent to raid enemy supply lines. Only a few dozen ships could be scraped as reinforcements. I could not acquire any more."

"Sir, I do not believe my rank is high enough to command the fleet. I am a mere Captain, after all."

"Then you will be my Admiral, Frugus. Annoying you may be, but I see you're no fool, unlike your late predeccesor. You must go and execute my will."

The newly-promoted Admiral Frugus was taken aback by the sudden rise in rank, but understood that a great weight was being placed on him.

"Your will is my command sir. The enemy will be bled white."

"Then go. Rally the fleet. We must be ready."

Frugus saluted, then left the room.

Weavel sighed and decided to contact Helmuth. Hopefully he was in a good mood...

[Master_Baerne]

Nouveau Quebec
Desoto System, Voyageur Republic


There were more ships in the system than there had been in quite a while, and vastly more tonnage than there had ever been. Not the same ships, obviously, and of nowhere near the same construction or purpose - where previously the most that could be expected in the Voyageur's capital (and only) system had been the ten major and thirty-odd minor ships of the Voyageur Republican Navy and maybe a few pirates skulking around the outer system, there had been rapid and drastic changes to that structure in the past month.

To start with, there were less Voyageur warships than there had been. Two had been destroyed in the short, bloody Battle of Nouveau Quebec, receiving massive missile salvos that had overwhelmed their defenses and shattered their hulls, and the caution this inspired in the other active ships had limited the Voyageur participation in that battle to exchanging long-range fire with the pirate rearguard.

Second, there were absolutely no pirates anywhere near the system. This was the direct result of the third change: To protect their newfound neighbors and repair the damaged battlecruiser squadron that had started this whole affair by being the first civilized ships to sumble across the Voyageurs in centuries, a full ten-ship squadron of the Ascendancy's new Pike-class heavy cruisers had arrived, escorting an assortment of fleet tenders, a repair ship, and two full dreadnoughts. Those last two ships, mounting enough heavy graser cannon to slag a good-sized continent, were the main reason the pirates usually hungrily eyeing the Voyageur mining and other civilian ships had chosen to make themselves scarce. No pirate wanted to tangle with a line warship, especially one that belonged to a star nation with many more to send in retaliation for any attack.

Commanding the whole affair was the officer in charge of the dreadnought division, Rear Admiral Lord James Morrison, who ruled a large island on the planet of New Baerne. It was a cold, miserably unpleasant place almost within sight of that world's Southern Arctic Continent, which explained both his deicison to pursue a career in the Navy and his famously acidic personality. God knew what the Admiralty, or more likely the admiral commanding the sector from which his ships had been drawn had been thinking - though since that was Countess Seagrace, who ruled New Baerne, perhaps it wasn't so puzzling after all. Certainly not a very good choice for a sensitive diplomatic assignment. Commdore Murat, still there in command of the repaired ships of Battlecruiser Squadron 17, certainly found it annoying that his immediate superior and his immediate junior officers were both aristocrats with a connection to Countess Seagrace, who he hated for a reason no one had yet been able to pry out of him.

As if to prove that the Ascendant command structure wasn't entirely off its collective rocker, the actual diplomat was the most diplomatic person who could be pried away from the capital for an extended sojourn into the uncivilized wastes beyond the Ascendant border. Lady Simarta ir Tampi was a relative of the Lady Ascendant, a third cousin or something similar, but had not used that connection to attain her high rank in the Foreign Service. That was entirely due to her being, simply put, the most charming person most had every met. Having a mind like a freshly-sharpened razor helped too: all that charm was applied towards getting her way in any situation she happened to be in, preferably with the other person either not minding or not noticing in the first place. The Voyageurs didn't have much of a diplomatic corps, being isolated from every other star nation and surrounded entirely by vicious pirates who preferred to get what they wanted by shooting, stabbing, disintegrating, or otherwise applying violence to everyone one the way. A very well developed navy, for a small and somewhat backwards power, but not much in the way of negotiators.

The Ascendant ships, the two great dreadnoughts, the four patched-up battlecruisers, the ten cruisers so new that their hulls gleamed a bright, pure white, rather than the bone white they would eventually turn, and the trio of tenders and repair vessels were orbiting Nouveau Quebec, surrounded in a near-constant stream of shuttles ferrying supplies and personnel from ship to ship and crew on leave from ship to planet. The men, women, and aliens granted leave were having a wonderful time, as both alcohol and members of the opposite sex (the Formics, being giant insects, compensated with more alcohol) tended to accrue to members of a wealthy star nation whose naval forces had just finished saving the planet from conquest by pirates, and were quite happy to stay in the Desoto system for as long as possible, or at least until the memory of 17th Battlecruiser's heroics faded. It looked as if they might not be disppinted in this wish, as negotiations were not proceeding very quickly.

It was only to be expected. For all her persuasivenes, Lady ir Tampi had not been given very flexible instructions, nor ones very easy to couch in pleasant terms.

"What makes it even more frustrating," reflected the Lady to her personal secretary over a cup of tea, "is that they can't quite seem to realize that just with the ships we've got here, we could make this a moot arguement. I can certainly see why they don't like the idea, but a little healthy caution would seem appropriate. Inflexible or Unbending could burn this city down to bedrock in a minute's firing, for God's sake!" They were discussing that day's negotiations on the balcony of ir Tampi's suite in the capital's most expensive hotel. The Voyageurs were paying for it, it having been deemed inefficient for her and her negotiating team to shuttle down from the fleet every day. Kind of them.

"Lady, they've not had much experience with diplomacy. Certainly not with diplomacy of this level of inequality - Even the colonial sectors have more industry than they do." That wasn't entirely fair; while true, it was only because the colony sectors had a full fleet base capable of repairing superdreadnoughts in them. There was no reason for the Voyageurs to have built such a thing, and they hadn't.

"True, true. Still, one could hope they'd be a bit quicker to pick up on it... I think I may have to release the actual proposal for us to make any progress at this point." Ir Tampi's feelings on that potential move were mixed. She liked the ideal proposal a great deal more than the one she'd been ordered to open with, it being both reasonable and entirely justified, but didn't appreciate having to bend to the wishes of a group of primitive rim-dwellers. She was too much an aristocrat to like bending to the wishes of anyone.

"You may well be right, Lady. We certainly can't lose anything; even if they reject it, we've got several even less offensive offers that fall within acceptable standards, and they're not going to budge on anything like this."

"It's settled, then. Tomorrow... I'm somewhat sleepy. See you next morning?"

"Good night, Lady."

RESULTS: Progress in negotiations with the Voyageurs is slow, but hopefully soon to improve.

[Simon_Jester]

Some minutes later, Vale leaned back in his cabin aboard the stealthed dual-drive yacht and sighed in relief as he took his boots off. The Enemy showed no signs of having spotted the Boskonian personnel transport, but as a routine precaution they would travel deep into the shoals under Heim drive before making a hyper translation and risking detection by Enemy hyperwave sensors.

It was just as well. Vale was fairly sure he could justify events to the admiral, especially in light of the additional damage the pirates' last-ditch attack had done, but he did not relish the prospect of making that explanation. Nor was he in a great hurry to do so.

Undisclosed Location, Sector H-12
Boskonian Sector Command Dome
June 11, 3400

An observer familiar with the layout of the Boskonian Grand Base would have perceived at once that this facility was designed along similar lines. There were the rings of defense batteries, power plants, shield generators, sensor arrays, warehouses and workshops. There was the spiderweb of surface and underground transport lines. There was, at the center of the base, the great heavily armored control dome. However, compared to Grand Base, all was built to a far smaller scale, inferior in every respect of armament, defenses, and resources.

Robert Vale of Alpha Centauri II knew of the existence of Grand Base, though he had never been there and could not even guess as to its location. He would have been surprised to learn of the disparity; by his standards, the sector command dome was a respectable planetary fortress in its own right.

Vale walked down the shuttlecraft's ramp with a calm, measured tread. Two troopers wearing the badges of the High Admiral's personal guard came towards him in the hangar bay and escorted him deeper into the interior of the fortified dome. They filed through the great control rooms at the heart of the dome, past the rows of operators, databanks, and racks of specialized electronic hardware. Then up to the door of the inner sanctum, from which High Admiral Natalya Zokolova controlled the Boskonian core forces of this sector, and from which she manipulated the expendable assets Boskone had so patiently built up over these past years.

Before he was allowed entrance, another pair of guards swept him for weapons, using sensors of every conceivable type and frequency: X-ray, induction-range, terahertz, subetheric. All possibilities were examined, so that weapons invisible to one form of radiation might be seen on another. The result was more conclusive than any mundane physical search- the High Admiral's security was quite capable of detecting weapons concealed within an enemy's very bones.

They found nothing. Vale was not such a fool as to try to bring weapons into the presence of his superior. Not until he was good and ready, and had laid the proper groundwork. That day would not come soon.

Zokolova sat at her desk, her face expressionless as Vale performed the gesture of abasement appropriate to their relative rank. Then the iron mask cracked slightly. Lips parted, and she spoke in a quiet, level contralto, in a constructed language developed centuries after mankind left the Twin Cradles of its birth.

"Explain the events at Hawk's Nest." She had, of course, already received his after-action report; she knew what had happened as well as he did. But after any event of such magnitude, it was inevitable that the superior would call the inferior to account in person for his actions, to put him in the best possible position to be rewarded, instructed, criticized... or punished.

"Enemy forces attacked the station in strength greater than anticipated from the projected force-versus-time curve. In particular, it was not foreseen that the Umerian cruisers would be present. A tactical disposition intended to trap and ambush the Centralist detachment thus closed on a force one point five to two times as strong as anticipated. Keldrog ordered the stealth frigates to separate for a flanking attack, as planned against the Centralists alone, making the isolated stealthers vulnerable to the Enemy force's more numerous small craft wing. In addition, a planned small craft attack from the Trojan point failed for reasons unclear; breakdown of discipline is inferred from knowing the beings involved."

"In combination, these reverses left Keldrog facing certain defeat, having inflicted only relatively light harm on the Enemy: two Centralist ships and one Umerian disabled, and several ships less severely damaged. At this point, I had expected Keldrog to launch a suicidal attack against the Enemy's center. Instead, he surrendered, a contingency I had deemed unlikely, but not unplanned for."

"Thus, I initiated the scuttling charges aboard Keldrog's flagship, destroying it. The other assets, already predisposed towards suicidal attack by the same effects acting on Keldrog, mistook this for an Enemy attack in violation of the terms of surrender, and launched the aforementioned suicide attack. Thus, a Centralist corvette and a Umerian frigate were destroyed, and additional damage was inflicted to all Enemy ships present, particularly the cruisers, but discounting small craft carriers which had already abandoned the battlespace."

The High Admiral cut in with two words. "Not all."

Vale stopped in his tracks. Does she think I'm lying? He'd seen the sensor records with his own eyes. "Ah... I was not aware, Milady."

"One of the Umerians was undamaged."

Not Target C2 or C3, nor F2 or F4, probably not F3... "One of the frigates? The sensor recordings indicated..."

"A technical error, revealed by further analysis. Insignificant. Carry on."

"Yes, Milady." His composure was slightly rattled, but as one tested and found worthy to serve Boskone as an independent detachment leader, it would take more than that to prevent him from delivering a clear-minded account of events. "During this time, I directed the technical staff to cover our tracks and remove evidence of our presence. We then withdrew as planned, before the Umerians launched the final assault on the station defense platforms."

"And the Tau technician?"

Who of my subordinates is reporting to her...? "Killed for insubordination-in-time-of-crisis." That last was all one word in the Boskonian tongue, as distinct from several other types of insubordination- all punished severely, but with varying shades of subtle meaning. There was 'insubordination as a means of goading an opponent,' 'insubordination as a consequence of desperation,' 'insubordination as a result of stupidity...' 'Insubordination in time of crisis' was among the worst.

The High Admiral nodded. "Good."

"In conclusion, while damage inflicted on the Enemy was out of proportion to the losses sustained by the assets ton for ton, and credit for credit in terms of our investment, I believe the Enemy's damage was adequate to serve your purpose."

"Expand on that."

"Having to repair or replace twelve warships will most likely convince the Enemy to move cautiously, I would expect."

She nodded slightly. "I see. What unusual occurences do you have to report?"

"Some anomalies in the Umerian missiles' yield and blast pattern compared to existing records. That is detailed in one of the appendices to my report. Nothing else."

Zokolova said nothing and steepled her fingers. What will she do...?

"You have performed adequately, Vale, though your attempt to absolve yourself by blaming Keldrog for poor deployment in response to the increased Enemy force is noted. Return to your quarters; I will have a new assignment for you in due time."

"Thank you, Milady." Vale once again performed the gesture of abasement, and withdrew.

---

Grand Base, Location Unknown
June 11, 3400



"Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!"

"Sir!" The woman at the other end of the line, High Admiral Natalya Zokolova, his subordinate in charge of Boskone forces in Sector H-12, braced to attention. As usual, Helmuth's reaction to the unnatural capability shown by human females compared to the barely sentient ones of his own species manifested as a cold glower. But he would hardly be fit to speak for Boskone if he could not subjugate his personal prejudices to the interests of his will-to-power.

"The Enemy is encroaching on your sector. Are you prepared?"

"All core formations are at maximum readiness and are moving towards forward bases in preparation for Contrecoup. Asset formations are still assembling, but are expected to arrive at their destinations within eight days. Avoiding Enemy recon sweeps forces us to move ships in small numbers, at very low speeds, through shoals. Maintenance downtime is a major factor."

She continued. "We expect the Enemy's attack on Zebes to occur no later than six days, at the earliest. All core forces and most asset forces will be in place by that time. I am taking steps to encourage the assets." She detailed the precise nature of those measures- mostly bribes; occasionally threats.

Her assessment of the Enemy's reaction time was unduly pessimistic. That showed a lack of overconfidence, but it also meant she knew less about the Enemy's weaknesses than she should- she was assuming more energy and aggression than they were capable of, in his analysis.

She'd told him what he needed to know, but proven that she didn't know what he needed her to know.

"Your report is conclusive, but incomplete; you lack information from outside your area of responsibility. I will send you more files on the Enemy commanders in theater. Take their relative capabilities into account in any further assessments."

"Thank you, sir."

Helmuth cut the circuit. Having established that Zokolova was performing acceptably, Helmuth turned to other matters. His eyes devoured the most recent report on the success of infiltration missions in the Spinward Expanse, scanning across entire paragraphs and committing the relevant information to his capacious and flexible memory. Operations were ahead of the schedule he had set, by a narrow but significant margin...

A flashing light at the edge of his vision distracted him. He pressed a button, and read the text that scrolled across his console display.

<Call from Weavel of Urtraghus>

Irritating, but a predictable consequence of the divided command structure among his minions and assets. The Urtraghans were too powerful and, potentially, too unreliable to be locked into his primary chain of command, aside from the usual practice of recruiting suitable members of that polymorphic race on an individual level. Thus, he had to control them separately.

Weavel was a keystone asset, ultimately expendable but still valuable. He would have to be managed, his access to information controlled, if the overall plan was to succeed. Yes, Helmuth would have to address the leader of the Zebesian fleet personally, as great a nuisance as it might be.

He would need a few more minutes to identify the beings responsible for the unexpected successes in the Spinward Expanse; they would bear watching. Striking another button to reply to the secretary, he simply declared. "I will be available shortly. Hold his call."

---

Weavel's face was grim as he pondered the latest reports coming out from what humans called "Hawk's Nest Station". The enemy had attacked the station in force, destroying all of Keldrog's fleet and capturing the station itself. With the loss of that station, Zebes was now threatened.

"Only a handful of units escaped sir. All are in need of repairs and refits." The Captain said in a "I told you so" tone, "We expect the enemy to arrive in this system in five days at the latest."...

Weavel sighed and decided to contact Helmuth. Hopefully he was in a good mood...

Tourian Command Center, Zebes
Zebes System, Sector H-12
Early June

Weavel's long range sub-mesonic communicator received only distorted, blurred-out images and voices from his mysterious benefactor. Thus, he was at first unsure whether he was speaking to Helmuth or not. But even through the distortion on the speakers he could tell that the being who greeted him lacked the harsh, aggressive intellect of the Speaker for Boskone. He was speaking to a subordinate. The same was equally obvious from the holographic display, even without being able to see details of the being's face or expression. Helmuth, so far as Weavel knew, did not have tentacles.

"Greetings, Weavel of Urtraghus. Helmuth can be with you shortly, unless this is a routine matter?"

"Not routine. The enemy is closing on my position and has already destroyed Hawk's Nest Station. I must speak with Helmuth; it is urgent!"

"Helmuth is already arranging vital matters related to your situation. He will have made the relevant orders very soon, within a few hectoseconds at most."

He's putting me on hold? "If these matters are indeed vital, then I suppose I must wait." He did not like this, but what choice did he have? He needed to talk to Helmuth far more than Helmuth needed to talk to him at the moment, and obviously the Boskonian knew it.

"Thank you for your forbearance, my lord. If there is no matter you would like to discuss with a subordinate such as myself, perhaps I might try to ease your nervous tension by offering a selection of melodics from one of my race's greatest composers? I, for one, find her works relaxing and invigorating."

In Weavel's experience, music composed by aliens could be something of a toss-up, but... by the three special hells, why not?

"All right, but I must speak to Helmuth the instant he's available!"

All he received for a reply was Boskonian call waiting music.

The music continued for no more than a minute or two, then the display cleared and a familiar pattern of hazy blue distortion appeared.

"Helmuth, speaking for Boskone! Explain your emergency."

"Helmuth, this is Weavel of Zebes. The Centralists and their allies have attacked Hawk's Nest Station, killed Warlord Keldrog, and destroyed his fleet. My own position is threatened, and my scouts expect an assault within the next five days. Can you send reinforcements? Resupply? Intelligence?"

"Your scouts have misinformed you. I was already aware of the fall of Hawk's Nest through other channels. Our own sources indicate that Keldrog's ships inflicted heavy blows on the human task force, destroying three ships and badly damaging several others."

Plausible, but... "How do you know?"

Weavel got a sense of a scowl on the other end of the line, though it was practically impossible to make out details of alien facial expression through the distortion.

"Some of our sources are highly placed." Is he just stringing me along...?

"Helmuth, the loss of three ships, or even a dozen, will barely make a dent in their fleet if-"

"And will they not move more carefully against you, when what they thought to be a mere outpost bloodied them so?"

"...Good point."

"From my own sources, you have at least a megasecond before the humans attack you at your own base, and this assumes uncharacteristic vigor on the part of the commander of the element expected to launch the attack. It is possible that you have two megaseconds."

"Wait. You know who will be attacking us?"

"With virtual certainty, the main assault against Zebes will be handled by the Prussian Second Fleet. The humans' costly victory at Hawk's Nest has made them cautious, more inclined to probe ahead carefully and ensure an adequate margin for error. This lends itself to a Prussian offensive."

That was... not encouraging. From what Weavel knew, the Prussians had sent a fleet of extreme size, far more than he would normally expect- more than he would have been willing to detach in their shoes, in any case.

"Helmuth, this makes my request for reinforcements all the more urgent. We're going to need all the help we can get."

"I will provide. Another supply convoy will be arriving at rendevous point seven soon. In addition, four of Keldrog's stealth ships survived the battle and fled into hyperspace. All were damaged, but their hardware is compatible with your own, and they will be directed to Zebes for repair."

"Can those ships be repaired so soon?"

"I do not know. However, we will also send what intact ships can be spared to bolster your defenses. What preparations have you made?"

"All precautions for defense against planetary bombardment are underway. Early warning stations, hardened shelters and defensive emplacements are manned around the clock."

"What of the defense planners I provided you?"

"They have done much, and quickly."

"Good. And your ships?"

Weavel felt a spark of justifiable pride in his plans on that subject. "I have reorganized my fleet to strike at the humans' scouts and supply lines, to bleed and delay them as much as possible. If any of the stealth ships can be returned to action quickly, they would be most helpful for that."

"Your engineers may forward a list of their requirements through relay T2J."

"Thank you. How soon will the reinforcements arrive?"

"That will depend on details. You will be contacted with schedules and an order of battle shortly."

"Thank you again, Helmuth. You have been most generous to our cause."

"I expect the outcome of this campaign to be its own reward."

"We will do our best to oblige."

"Of this, I am certain." Weavel got the sense that Helmuth was... smiling? Impossible to make out the details. But he was still talking. "Are there any other relevant facts to report?"

"No."

"Very well. Helmuth, speaking for Boskone, out."

Weavel slumped back. Even with all the resources he had at his command, all the support "Boskone" had given him, this was going to be the mother of all battles. His ships would be terribly outgunned by a formation the size of the Prussian Second Fleet. His defensive works on Zebes itself were tough and heavily entrenched, taking advantage of the deep natural caves and further reinforcing them with shields and structural bracing, but they were not powerfully armed. Heavy planetary defense artillery was very difficult to come by, and most of what little the Urtraghans had scraped together was covering the homeworld.

He could barely imagine an actual victory against the odds Helmuth had warned him about. All he dared to hope for was a slow, hard-fought defeat... and he could not share that thought, nor even hint at it, to anyone under his command.

Perhaps he'd better get some rest. There was an immense amount to do, labors that could profitably occupy years, and he would have to do them as best he could in weeks. He would need to be at his peak.

[Force Lord]

Command Bridge, CNS Battle Carrier Tate's Folly
Deep Space, Sector H-11
Early June

The ships of Task Group 23 returned rather battered up, more than Rear-Admiral Sothurn Fibors expected. He wondered if Commodore Gever Liggs was too impetuous or the pirate strength was greater than he had reckoned. He'll have to talk to that female Umerian Rear-Admiral about it, if only to give him a more objective viewpoint. Anyway, Hawk's Nest was secure, and from there the offensive against Zebes would be undertaken. However, repairs for TG 23 and replacements for the lost ships would take days to finish. There was also the possibility that his superiors, after hearing about TG 23's condition, would send more reinforcements, delaying his attack even further. He could see that the Umerians were in little better shape, which meant that the only ships available, aside from the rest of his Task Force, would be from Tianguo, the NAC, the EUC, and the Prussians.

The Prussian fleet in particular looked impressive, but appearances were deceiving. Fibors felt that the Prussians were bringing an anti-materiel rifle to a small-arms exhibit. Such a large force was by necessity demanding to a logistical train, and the amount of ships the Prussians could bring into actual combat would be smaller than the total force. Fibors had talked to the Prussian commander, who was a rather boastful personality, but admitted after some questioning that his logistical train could only supply half of his fleet at most under actual combat situations, and the only reason the fleet was being mantained entirely was because they were minimizing consumption by doing almost nothing. Even the Prussian's calculation was too optimistic as far as Fibors was concerned; from what he could figure out from Intelligence reports on Prussian logistics only about a third of the Prussian fleet, at worst a fourth, could be mantained while in combat conditions, which left the rest of that fleet idle in space unable to do much but wait.

The Prussians would have their allies on their side, of course, but it still boggled Fibors's mind why the Prussians would send an entire fleet to fight far-away pirates. Fibors knew from his liasons in the Umerian flagship that the Umerian Rear-Admiral was quite exasperated with the Prussian's conduct of using a hammer to crush a nut, and he personally couldn't agree with her more. In his experience, overdoing your actions would result in your head being bopped hard, and he was aware that the size of the Prussian fleet was causing diplomatic headaches for their ambassadors. He particularly imagined Borlon continually telling the Prussian ambassador that when they asked for help, they didn't expect an entire fleet coming on their doorstep! Alas, it was already a reality, and they had to reckon with it.

Fibors finished his musings, looking at a hologram of the Coalition fleet. The holo images of the NAC, EUC, Prussian and Tianguo naval commanders were on.

"Rear-Admiral, your task group has been mauled, and the Umerians are little better. You should have waited untli the rest of your force had finished refitting for Shoal travel," the NAC Rear-Admiral stated.

"There was no convincing my superiors for a postponement, and thus I was forced to attack before I was ready," Fibors responded, rather defensively. He still wasn't used to talking to a neo-Atlantean, even as an ally.

"We should be careful. If these pirates are strong enough to give us bruises, then it's possible that our casualties will increase as we move deeper into their territories," the Eoghan Police General was pensive.

"But we have defeated them decisively! Surely we can use this momentum to strike?" the Prussian Vice-Admiral declared.

"Don't be so eager, Admiral. We still have not gotten a clear picture of what the pirates have in store for us in Zebes. Our reconissance needs more time," responded the Tianguo Rear-Admiral.

"And once word of this gets out, our governments will surely delay our operations so reinforcements arrive in time. But enough of that for now. Let us wait for Commodore Liggs and Rear-Admiral Hazarika to report their experiences in capturing Hawk's Nest. Then we can all decide our next move," Fibors declared.

And not a moment too soon, for the images of Liggs and Hazarika appeared.

"Ah, just in time. What do you have to report?"

---

Result: Coalition response to Battle of Hawk's Nest.

[Simon_Jester]

Admiral's Quarters, CNS Battle Carrier Tate's Folly
Deep Space, Sector H-11
June 11, 3400

As Rear Admiral Ananya Hazarika was escorted into the presence of Rear Admiral Fibors, she saluted to pay respect. a Centralist 'rear admiral' outranked a Umerian one, given that SpaceSec had seven ranks of flag officers to the Centrality's five. Arguably, Hazarika should have been in command of TF 23 in the first place; a Umerian rear admiral did outrank a commodore in principle, but she had generously ceded command to Liggs, saying that it was his mission. Hopefully, that hadn't been a mistake; evaluating Liggs' performance was one of the main reasons Fibors had called her here.

"Admiral Hazarika, congratulations on your victory."

The Umerian blinked, then nodded. "Thank you, sir. I take it you've gone over my after-action report?"

"Yes. And I must say, Admiral, that I've never seen an after action report with a two-page bibliography and five graphs before. But have a seat."

The woman sat at his invitation, coal-black eyes focused on him. "What would you like to know, sir?"

"There wasn't very much in your report on Commodore Liggs; what were your thoughts?"

She was silent for a few seconds; Fibors was surprised that her face didn't lock down as a Centralist asked to give his assessment of a peer to a superior would. "Favorable, sir. There were a few wrinkles, mostly inter-allied coordination problems, but nothing serious, and I can't see where he did anything wrong."

"In light of the damage to Cricket, Hector, and Istanbul, not to mention your other ships, would you say that in hindsight more caution was called for?"

"No. Without knowing the stealth frigates were there- of which there was no indication in pre-battle intelligence- and approximately where they were, there wouldn't have been a point. We were already watching the Trojan point before the fighter attack arrived; the recon shell picked them up as early as practical under the circumstances. The only real surprise during the battle was that... banzai charge at the end, and being more cautious wouldn't have changed that outcome."

"Hmm. Admiral, what do you have to say about that?"

"It seems to have been triggered by the destruction of their flagship; none of your ships fired, and none of ours. Our best guess is that 'Warlord Keldrog' self-destructed for cultural reasons, and that the other ships assumed we had opened fire. It was... one hell of a surprise, and I wish we'd seen it coming. Liggs told me afterwards that he was about to order them to abandon ship now that they were out from under the fixed defenses. If the Warlord had held off just a few minutes longer..."

Hmm. Liggs is perhaps to be criticized for not ordering the pirates to abandon their ships sooner, but that would probably have triggered the same reaction as what happened in any case.

Hazarika said nothing more. She looked a bit shaken, and Fibors couldn't blame her. The additional damage from the point-blank engagement had devastated Task Force 23, coming on top of the hits from the long range duel earlier. Cricket, Springbok, Istanbul, and Hector had all been impossible to move out of the system, with damage to their hyperdrives so extensive that there was no possibility of on-site repair. Rather than try to tow them directly, the ships had been tractored into heavy freighter hulls and were now on their way back.

The engineers had already written off Istanbul and Cricket as constructive total losses- there was nothing left of the ships to rebuild; the hull frames had been torn to pieces to the point where the repairs would amount to slicing off the nameplates and welding them to new ships. They were headed for the salvage yard. Springbok's bow section was in good enough condition that repairs might be worthwhile; they were sending her back to the dockyards in Novadon Sector for a more careful going-over. Hector would most likely be repaired- in her case, the repairs would take longer than building a new destroyer, but be considerably cheaper.

The other ships had at least managed to return under their own power- slowly. Loyalist had taken extensive hammering, and now occupied pride of place in his command's mobile repair yard, as construction workers and drones swarmed over the hull. The main structural frames were mostly intact, but short-range plasma fire and missile strikes had gutted tens of thousands of cubic meters of her outer hull. Also in the yard was Hector; they were hoping to patch her up to the point where she could return home on her own.

Alongside the Centralist yard, inside the scaffolds of a Umerian mobile repair ship designed to work on multi-kilometer dreadnoughts, floated the Umerians' relatively small and stubby cruisers. Artemisia's repairs were already underway, with replacements to the kinked barrel segments that had deadlined three of her eight main battery guns, and crews working on the heavy but mostly superficial scarring she'd taken from flak and raking fire along her port and starboard broadsides.

Directrix, Hazarika's own flagship, was... an interesting case. A Centralist ship that had been damaged that badly would be a job for a fixed dockyard, between having to rebuild a respectable chunk of the bow, physically replace a destroyed gun turret, and fix the damage caused by a kiloton-range blast going off inside the power trunk that fed that turret... not simple.

The Umerians seemed to be, for lack of a better term, unbolting the hull frames and pulling damaged sections out entirely. They didn't use actual bolts, of course, but the spirit was very similar. The captain of the repair ship said he'd already ordered "spare modules" from home, and promised to have Directrix up and running again in four weeks plus shipping and handling time.

Aside from that, the squadron's remaining destroyers and frigates were in varying states of disrepair; Fibors had had to deploy his second mobile yard to take care of some of the other ships. The squadrons wouldn't really be fighting fit for a month, though individual ships would be ready before that time.

It did not bode well for what the pirates would throw at them at Zebes...