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These sample chapters haven't gone through final edits or proofreading, so there may be a few imstakes here or there :)

@2017 Fey Dreams Productions. All rights reserved.

Through the mists of the deep, where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes…

- The Star-Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key

I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.

- General James N. Mattis, USMC, Ret.

To Gracie.

Prologue: Dragon’s Fall

Drakul-Six, Wyrashat Empire, 166 AFC

King-Admiral Grace-Under-Pressure, commander of the Hrauwah Volunteer Flotilla, felt the weight of despair pressing down on her.

She let none of it show, of course. Everyone in the Fleet Command Court aboard the dreadnought Undying Defender could see her sitting in the centrally-located throne from which she oversaw all other workstations. To rule crews and ships, one must put up a good front: proper officers never bared their teeth, allowed their hackles and tails to rise, or otherwise displayed strong emotions. A leader should treat even the most harrowing circumstances with dispassionate calm. The phrase ‘Never let them hear you growl’ had been old when the Royal Navy had gone to war in wind-propelled wooden ships and used iron cannon to unify all five continents of the homeland under the Crown. Four millennia of tradition demanded respect.

Retaining her composure in the face of an unending stream of bad news wasn’t difficult; the problem was that doing so had begun to feel futile. Howling in impotent rage was as likely to accomplish anything of worth as pretending nothing was wrong.

The more experienced members of the Court sensed her worsening mood as she quietly read the message that had been uploaded into her cybernetic implants. Grace could see them tensing up ever so slightly; the younger officers’ tails puffed up involuntarily as old fight-or-flight instincts asserted themselves. They knew that whatever news the Grand Dame had received likely portended disaster, despite her best efforts to appear unconcerned.

“Our hosts have denied Fleetmaster Klem’s request for reinforcements,” she announced. “It appears a second Imperium armada has entered Wyrashat space on the Outer Quadrant. The Supremacy of the Empire sent a personal note along; in it he expressed ‘the utmost confidence in the Joint Star Fleet.’ We are on our own, in other words.”

Better to tell everyone the truth than to let their imaginations conjure something even worse for morale. The facts were bad enough: the Wyrashat Empire had just abandoned the combined forces guarding Drakul System against the imminent Imperium invasion. She paused for a moment, letting the officers absorb the implications.

“What are our orders, King-Admiral?”

“We hold here, of course. The final words of the His Supremacy were ‘They shall not pass.’”

It is a brave thing, to make such grand pronouncements while knowing your life’s blood will not be spilled in upholding them.

Such thoughts could not be voiced out loud of course. The ruler of the Wyrashat Empire might have left them to their own devices, but he was owed a modicum of respect. From the tense and angry body language displayed by the bridge crew, she didn’t need to say anything.

“We still hold the advantages of our position,” she went on. “The Wyrashat are masters at defensive warfare, and Drakul-Six is heavily fortified. Their great asteroid-fortresses are second to none, and Fleetmaster Klem is as good a commander as any non-Hrauwah I’ve met. We will give a good accounting of ourselves and teach the Galactic Imperium a harsh lesson.”

None of what she said was a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. Again, except for a few young bushy-tailed junior officers, her Fleet Court knew it. Much like the shifts in pressure that preceded one of the great tornadoes on the plains of her homeworld, there was a sense of inevitable disaster in the air, fast approaching and impossible to deny.

“We fight beside humans and their warp fighter craft,” Lord of Tactics Relentless Determination said, supporting his monarch-commander. “We have all seen the reports of the damage they inflicted on the Vipers, shattering dreadnoughts in a single pass. Their presence is likely to make moot all other tactical considerations.”

A rumble of subvocalized thoughts followed the statement. As King-Admiral, Grace was entitled to listen to them, to better know the minds and hearts of her subjects. As part of the Royal Compact, no private messages short of plans of outright mutiny would be allowed to affect a crewmember’s career. The warriors and technicians who had agreed to fight and die many warp transits away from home were of three minds about the Human Expeditionary Force that was part of the Joint Star Fleet. A slight majority were friendly towards the hairless aliens, of course. They would not have volunteered to join the Flotilla in the first place. The rest were here out of ambition – combat offered assured advancement to the competent – or simple duty. Their ranks were evenly divided between those who resented humans for dragging the Kingdom into a likely losing war, and a growing number who had become afraid of them. The warp fighters Lord Relentless had spoken of were indeed wonderful weapons, but they also awakened ancient fears that predated the Hrauwah’s expansion into the stars.

It was I that brought Earth into the Starfarers’ fold. All that has transpired is marked with my scent.

A much younger Grace-Under-Pressure had sat on a much smaller throne, aboard the cruiser Wisdom of War, on the day humanity had made contact with the greater universe beyond its shallow gravity well. Her actions had led to the deaths of billions of humans and the salvation of the rest. And over the course of a century and a half, the benighted natives of Sol System had become a force to reckon with – and a source of dread.

If humans and Hrauwah hadn’t found it so easy to get along, things would have turned out differently, of course. Although most Starfarers would deny it, most relationships between species were based on little more than how pleasant they found each other’s company. It so happened that humans reminded Hrauwah of their beloved tree-brothers, thin-haired near-sapient primates who had shared the great forests with them and become beloved pets and fellow hunters and scavengers. In a rare equivalency, humans found the Hrauwah very similar to the canid species they had brought into their social order back when they’d hunted prey with stone-tipped spears. Their nicknames for each other reflected this: the Hrauwah were commonly known as ‘Puppies,’ and humans were in turn dubbed ‘Tree Cousins.’

We liked humans from the beginning. And we liked the Americans best of all the survivors. If we hadn’t found that footage of wolves being hunted from helicopters in Russia, would we have befriended them instead? Probably not. Nowhere else among the survivors was the level of devotion to canids greater than in America.

From that mutual liking, much had followed.

In the normal course of events, the Hrauwah, being the older and more powerful species, would have taken the fledging apes into their pack as junior members, to be taught the ways of Starfarers and, after centuries of apprenticeship and service, released to thrive or flounder on their own. Circumstances had prevented that, however. At the time they made contact, the Hrauwah were fighting a war against the Risshah. Commonly known as the Snakes, they comprised a minor but well-armed civilization, thanks to their Lamprey patrons. It had been the Snakes who, thinking Earth was a Hrauwah ally, had unleased untold devastation on the planet’s innocent inhabitants.

Having discovered Sol System by accident, the Hrauwah couldn’t hold it while the Risshah threatened their lines of communication. The Kingdom’s help had been limited to some technical advice and a few trinkets: some light weapons, a handful of power plants and fabbers, as well as instructions on how to make more, and a basic defense system to prevent America’s rivals from using their atomic weapons to finish what the Snakes had started. A dozen volunteers had stayed behind to teach humans what they could. After that, Grace’s ship had left, and no further contact had been had for a decade.

When a Hrauwah ship revisiting Sol System, it was greeted by crude spacecraft bearing the American flag, and a nation determined to make its own way in the universe. There had been some tension but even after the war with the Snakes was over, the Kingdom didn’t have the resources needed to establish full suzerainty over Sol System. The fact that the human’s home system was in a disputed territory made laying a claim on it impossible. There was more technical assistance, but little more.

Two decades later, humanity fought and won its first war against the Snakes, using mostly warships of their own design, and relying on their uncanny ability to endure exposure to warp space. The Tree Cousins were nobody’s pets, and the species’ liking and mutual respect had become tinged with more than a little apprehension. Humanity’s rapid advancement into independent status was as worrisome as its seemingly unnatural resistance to the Chaotic Void ships must traverse to cross the vast distances between stars.

Demons. Witches.

Starfarers shared a mythology developed over millions of years, passed down in fragments of incomplete information. Much was lost when civilizations either fell into Oblivion or Transcended into Elder status, abandoning their worlds and departing towards the center of the galaxy. That mythology spoke of cursed cultures that dealt with forbidden technologies. Humanity’s ability to resist the madness of warp transit had no equivalent in recent galactic history – the thirty thousand years or so that was all that even the largest databases could hold in any detail. Outside history, however, there were plenty of cautionary tales about older species who had turned into monsters in deed and appearance, and whose deeds had precipitated periods of darkness and strife.

The Hrauwah liked humans, but they tempered their feelings with caution. There was never a formal alliance between the Kingdom and America or any other Earth polity. Trade aplenty and a great deal of technical support, yes, but never a formal agreement to fight for each other. Even now, when humanity’s destruction might result in the Hrauwah’s own, the High King would not commit to that degree. There were almost a hundred Royal Warships fighting alongside Americans on several war theaters, but they were all volunteer formations like Grace’s own flotilla, flying under the American flag.

Only fitting I should lead one such group, Grace thought. Her choice to prevent humanity’s extinction had led to this.

Strange how a decision made so quickly could impact so many lives over the ensuing decades.

* * *

“In conclusion, we are at DEFCON-One, people. Enemy emergence is categorized as imminent. All birds are loaded and ready to go.”

Captain Fernando ‘Hulk’ Verdi, USWMC, shrugged at the news. Everyone in the briefing room knew what was going to happen. The Joint Star Fleet had been given its final orders: stand or die. Which pretty much meant ‘stand and die,’ unless the fighters of CSG-11 could pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. It appeared that their Wyrm allies were counting on them doing just that.

Sometimes getting a rep for kicking ass and taking names means they’ll give you more asses to kick than you can handle.

“What do you think, Hulk?” asked Richard ‘Dicky’ Morales, Fernando’s wingman. They weren’t moving their mouths, or even subvocalizing the way people did when using their comm implants. Their conversation was happening entirely inside their heads, unbeknownst to the colonel giving the briefing or anybody except other warp pilots. One of the many benefits of being the few, proud and batshit crazy Marine aviators. Nobody had expected fighter pilots to become telepaths, but that was exactly what happened.

“I think we’re going to have to try the thing, Dicky,” he said. They both knew what ‘the thing’ was, but had developed a superstitious urge not to refer to it by its name.

“That bad, eh?”

“You saw the scout reports. Almost five hundred distinct contacts. Too far to make out the actual classes, but the energy signatures marked hundreds of heavy-weights. Looks like they’re bringing in more battleships than we’ve got ships, brah.”

“Yeah. And nobody’s talking about running.”

“Nowhere better to fight them, not for three warp transits, and that means leaving like three billion Wyrm asses hanging in the wind. If it was Americans, would you run?”

“Shit, no. You’d think we’d have gotten more reinforcements, though.”

“The Glimps just opened a second front. The Wyrashat Empire may be bigger than the US, but they only got so many ships, and they can’t be everywhere at once. If we can’t help them hold this system, they might quit on us. They can make a deal with the Galactic Alliance. We can’t.”

“Can’t trust nobody,” Dicky groused.

“In the end, you look out for your own. And we’ve got a bunch of Puppies fighting alongside us, even though they don’t have to.”

“They owe us, man. Do you know their flotilla commander...?”

“… is the one that led the Snakes to Earth?” Fernando finished for him. “Yeah. Everyone knows. She was also along for the ride when we burned down the Snake core worlds. She’s been lobbying for a full alliance all this time. Don’t be talking shit about the Bitch Queen.”

Dicky replied with the telepathic version of a shrug. The two pilots didn’t usually discuss politics, which was just as well. Dicky was a Humanist, a faction that considered aliens to be a necessary evil at best and pure evil at worst. A lot of Marines were part of the movement, which made some sense given that their primary job was to make war on assorted ETs. The Navy was supposed to be a little more nuanced. Fernando, who’d been a jarhead throughout his career, sometimes wished the Corps could be more like the senior service.

“Yeah, easy for you to think,” Dicky said, picking on Fernando’s thoughts. Hard to keep things to yourself when engaged in a psychic chat; his opinion had leaked through. “All due respect, Hulk, but you used to be a pogue shuttle pilot. You ain’t been in the dirt dodging plasma.”

“Fuck you very much,” Fernando said, but without much heat. His wingman had a point. Even a so-called ‘assault shuttle’ rarely performed hot landings. Shuttles mostly waited until orbital bombardment and Marine warp-dropped attacks had secured a landing zone, and then ferried troops and equipment to the surface. Hard to do anything else in the face of energy weapons that traveled at the speed of light and had a range measured in light-seconds. The only combat ops Fernando had performed in his former MOS had been against primitives who couldn’t threaten a civilian lander, let alone an armed and armored one.  

“You still think any aliens are our friends, Hulk? After all this shit?”

“People are people. And if it wasn’t for the Wyrms and the Puppies, we’d have gotten swarmed under before we even came up with warp fighters.”

“Sure. Let’s hope they don’t change their minds while we still need them.”

“Let’s,” Fernando agreed, putting an end to it. Not a good time for breaking their rule about talking politics.

He knew why they’d done it, though: so they wouldn’t talk about ‘the thing.’ The new trick warp fighter pilots had come up with shortly before this deployment. When it worked, it worked great, but it came with a price. If the US had enough time to develop the new tech – or new magic, the way some of their scientists spoke about it – they would be able to beat anybody.

“Battle stations. All hands report to battle stations. This is not a drill.”

The Gimps had arrived. On Drakul System, time had run out.

* * *

Not letting them hear her growl was becoming rather difficult.

The King-Admiral tried not to snarl at the liquid-filled transparent pillar and the holographic display within. The holotank readings illustrated the information that she’d already received via her cybernetic implants and confirmed her worst fears.

“Warp emergence detected! Three light-seconds away. Five hundred vessels of all types.”

“Battle stations,” Grace ordered, echoing the commands she received from the leader of the Joint Star Fleet of which her flotilla was but a minor element.

The enemy force couldn’t have arrived directly from its original point of departure on Vendack System. A twelve-hour warp transit would leave their crews incapacitated for as much as three hours, plenty of time for defenders to tear their vessels apart. To avoid detection and recover from transit, the enemy force had to arrive no less than fifteen light-hours away from the terminus of the ley line connecting the two systems.

A human scientist, one of the first to grasp the concepts inherent to faster-than-light travel, had likened the process to swimming under a sheet of ice. One entered through a hole in the ice, and emerged from another hole. It was theoretically possible to exit far somewhere other than the ‘hole’ in question, but it required massive energy expenditures to claw one’s way through the ‘ice,’ which was a metaphor for regular spacetime. The further one was from a hole, the harder it was. That had been a daring move, to arrive so far away from the system’s single white dwarf star and the handful of inner planets whose gravity fields’ interactions created the network of ley lines that allowed relatively safe entrance into warp space.

One in a hundred of the ships that made the high-risk jump would never return from the bizarre realm where distance and time were meaningless, their crews doomed to death or some worse fate. The enemy was willing to suffer significant casualties for the privilege of denying the defenders the advance warning a more sensible approach would have provided.

Five hundred vessels. Their warp jump into the periphery of Drakul System must have cost them at least five ships. That sort of determination was rare in the known galaxy.

Grace glanced at the icons of the Joint Star Fleet as sensors identified the emerging enemy armada and classified each enemy vessel’s class in the tactical map. Following Wyrashat tradition, friendly forces were marked in dark green, the enemy in a deep purple. There were a few nervous whines among the bridge crew as the purple icons grew in number and size and the correlation of forces became clear.

The Joint Star Fleet was centered around the Wyrashat Upper Quadrant Defensive Wing: ninety-three vessels strong, including half a dozen superdreadnoughts, five, dreadnoughts, nine battleships, and twenty battlecruisers, with the rest of the formation composed of destroyers and a smattering of frigates. The Wing had been reinforced by the Human Expeditionary Force: six battleships, twenty-four cruisers of assorted tonnage, six carrier vessels and fifty lighter ships, evenly divided between destroyers and frigates. Grace’s Volunteer Flotilla was the weakest component of the JSF, and her single dreadnought, thirteen battlecruisers and twenty-eight light vessels were not particularly modern or well-outfitted. Some had considered her post as its commander to be an insult of sorts; she disagreed rather strongly, although she still wished the Hrauwah Kingdom had seen fit to be more generous with its assistance.

The two-hundred-and-twenty-five vessel formation was arrayed around the sixth planet of the star system, a rocky giant surrounded by five warp entrances that led deep into Wyrashat space. A dozen orbital facilities, orbited the planet, including four massive fortresses, each bristling with three times the firepower of a superdreadnought. On its surface dwelled some fifty million colonists; due to Drakul-Six’s inhospitable atmosphere, they were mostly confined to a handful of underground cities. Each city was protected by a formidable Planetary Defense Base capable of engaging targets up to two light seconds away with its battery of super-heavy graviton cannon and well-stocked missile launchers.

The system was named after a legendary Wyrm warrior-king; humans had replaced the long and unpronounceable name with one that meant ‘Dragon’ in one of their languages as well as being the title of an ancient warlord in their own history. By any other name, Drakul lived up to its reputation as a deadly bulwark against anyone daring to invade the Wyrashat Empire.

Every door has a key, and it is shaped like an axe. The old Hrauwah refrain flashed through Grace’s mind as the Galactic Imperium’s formation came into focus.

Four hundred and ninety ships. Numbers alone meant little, of course. Tonnage and energy signatures were the only meaningful metrics to assess the threat each vessel represented. Grace had to fight an atavistic urge to whimper as raw data was converted into tangible designations.

Forty-nine superdreadnoughts. Eighty dreadnoughts. A hundred and seventeen battleships.

The icons’ sizes were proportional to each ship’s estimated class and firepower. Capital vessels looked massive by comparison. Grace couldn’t credit what her eyes were seeing; for several seconds, she believed there had been an error, some glitch in sensors or displays. The oversized icons remained on the holotank, however. Each superdreadnought was three times the size of the largest ship in the Joint Star Fleet.

The rest of the Imperium force appeared to be comprised of light cruisers or oversized destroyers, tightly arrayed around the larger ships. Their contribution to the force’s broadside weight would be negligible, not that it mattered. Drakul’s defenders would be woefully outgunned by each of the three categories of capital ships facing them. With all sets of ships combined, the situation was beyond hopeless.

The King-Admiral cast a hopeful glance at the icons of the Human Expeditionary Force. Earthlings were notorious for winning spectacular victories against seemingly impossible odds. Humans, led by the American tribe, had fought numerous wars against several larger and more prosperous polities and won most of them. If anyone could deliver a miracle, it would be them.

She glanced at a visual display focused on several HEF vessels. Their outlines were obscured by glowing multi-hued clouds. Those warp shields rendered human ships invulnerable to most direct-fire weapons, at least until ranges closed enough that the enemy could probe for the gaps between them. No other species in the known galaxy could endure the constant exposure to desecrated spacetime those shields represented.

Warp Witches.

The unfair thought lingered in her mind for a moment. Perhaps that’s what humans were. The Galactic Imperium certainly believed so. That belief had been strong enough to forge an alliance with humanity’s enemies. Witches or not, the American ships would determine whether Drakul could hold against the impossible armada bearing down on them.

Grace-Under-Pressure dutifully passed on the orders from the leader of the Joint Star Fleet. Fleetlord Klem Angrar was four hundred years old and had fought the Imperium and its clients in no less than five conflicts of varying intensity during his multi-century career. His long-necked, pseudo-reptilian image filled several screens as he addressed the JSF.

“The so-called Galactic Imperium has arrived. Ten times in our history, it has tried to force its way past the gates of Drakul. Ten times, it was forced back, winning nothing but hisses of grief for their dead and maimed. Today, our enemy will be taught for the eleventh time that Drakul is forever closed to invaders. Empire, Republic and Kingdom: we all fight together against a common foe. Our joint efforts will be successful. Carry on.”

Grace’s Hrauwah’s culture would have found such plain words downright offensive, but the Wyrashat prided themselves in their terse and simple speeches, saving their creative energies for visual arts and crafts. Grace sighed and uttered a commonly-used phrase out loud, to help mollify any ruffled fur among her crews.

“Diversity is the universe’s way to test our patience.”

Every sophont in the galaxy had evolved from small tribal groups, where everyone looked and behaved alike and ‘stranger’ was synonymous with ‘enemy’ or ‘dangerous.’ It took considerable energy to deal with different cultures, let alone species, and most people didn’t bother except when circumstances forced them to do so. Most polities’ citizens spent their lives without ever meeting an alien in person. The Galactic Imperium had unified dozens of species into their fold, but only through a determined effort to stamp out all native cultures and replace them wholly with its own.

As part of the small minority that could endure faster-than-light travel, Grace had grown to appreciate different ways of doing things, however. Having nothing better to do while her well-trained crewmembers performed their duties, she indulged herself for a few moments and watched the visual displays of the Joint Star Fleet’s varied vessels.

Wyrashat designs followed biological motifs: their warships resembled great beasts covered with glittering emerald or azure scales, their warp nacelles and weapon ports skillfully concealed beneath spreading wings and sharp talons; each ship was a sculpture as much as a tool of battle. American vessels, by contrast, were functional almost to a fault: their lines were meant to magnify internal space, which meant spherical chambers connected with a latticework of struts and tunnels. The Kingdom’s aesthetics lay somewhere between the two extremes, with functionality being the primary but not sole concern. Grace liked to think that her dreadnought’s elegant lines, somewhat similar to pre-Contact humans’ fictional depictions of what rocket ships would be like, were a sensible compromise between style and substance.

 The Wyrashat could afford their extravagance, being one of the wealthiest polities in the known galaxy. Those beautiful sculptures hid extremely efficient shields and weaponry, with a good twenty percent more firepower and resiliency than their Hrauwah’s ship-type equivalents, and thirty percent greater than the Americans, at least when you removed warp shields from the equation, something most Starfarers wished they could do in reality. Humans, on the other hand, were poor up-and-comers, with barely enough industrial capacity to meet their defense needs, and able to survive only because of their extraordinary ability to survive exposure to warp space.

One’s status was never fixed in time, of course. Like a segment of a wheel, what was on top today could well be on the bottom tomorrow. This battle would likely determine which way the wheel would turn.

Grace watched the Galactic Imperium’s ships as they moved into range. Like the Wyrashat, they were works of art, their facades the color of burnished bronze and seemingly made of riveted plates covered with intricate bass-reliefs depicting scenes related to each ship’s name and history. Several of the advancing superdreadnoughts and battleships had fairly plain decorations, which meant they were new ships with no great deeds attached to their names. Unsurprising, given their number. New ships meant green crews, who even if experienced elsewhere had likely not spent much time learning the ways of their current spacecraft. That might be turned to the Joint Star Fleet’s advantage.

Where did they get those crews? Grace wondered. A superdreadnought needed no less than five thousand sophonts to man all its systems; the need to provide for multiple shifts meant at least two or three times that base number. By the most conservative estimate, a million warp-rated beings were manning that armada. Automatic systems could only do so much: true artificial intelligences were not only frowned upon by the Elder Races, they were also hideously vulnerable to warp space and prone to going insane when confronted with what they perceived as the meaninglessness of existence.  

Even for a two-hundred-billion strong polity, this was a sizable fraction of its spacer population. Those million spacers had been drafted from less warlike occupations, at near-ruinous expense. The ships themselves represented trillions of sophont-hours of fabricator and assembly work and enormous amounts of raw materials, with all the economic costs such entailed. The Imperials had been surprisingly slow in joining the crusade against humanity; they must have been patiently building a force they thought would be unstoppable once it was set in motion.

And they might well be right.

“Enemy formation is two light seconds away.”

Everyone tensed up at the announcement. As the two ‘battle walls’ were now close enough for missiles to be launched, and even for long-rage energy fire. The battle could start right then and there.

“No incoming fire. Enemy is maintaining course.”

“They’ve decided not to waste their missiles, I suppose,” Grace said. Over the previous year, the Galactic Alliance had relied on massive missile volleys to overcome the humans’ warp shields. Humanity and its allies had developed very sophisticated defenses in turn. Waiting until the flight time to their target was shorter or so was a sensible reaction. That would also allow the advancing armada to back up their so-called Sun-Blotter barrages with direct fire.

Humans had a particularly apt phrase, a sarcastic prayer of thanks used when on the receiving end of heavy artillery fire. ‘For what we are about to receive, we are truly thankful.’ Grace could sympathize with the sentiment as the Imperium forces advanced for another fifteen minutes of peace and quiet, the deceptive calm that always preceded the deadliest storms.

One light second.

“Multiple launches.” The Lady of Tactics’ voice grew hoarse with tension. “Three hundred and eighty thousand missiles.”

Grace exhaled and took a slow and deliberate breath, fighting the natural impulse to pant. She absently stroked the fur behind her ears with one hand while she relayed the Fleetmaster’s orders.

“Launch defensive missiles on rapid-fire mode.”

That would deplete her flotilla’s ready magazines, but they needed to thin out that impossible volley or they would end up scattered among all Seven Hells. “All vessels will engage assigned targets with main guns.”

Her dreadnought had been given a worthy target: an enemy battleship. The rest of her flotilla’s relatively paltry weapons would focus on light ships and the upcoming missile swarm. It was disappointing, but necessary. The enemy cruisers’ numbers must be winnowed down, since they would be tasked with protecting the heavy ships from missiles and, more importantly…

“CSG-11 has launched its fighters.”

… from the dreaded American warp fighters.

* * *

“Clear for launch.”

Fernando ‘Hulk’ Verdi tried not to tense up. He and Dicky had a target, and in five seconds they would be catapulted through time and space to come up a mere handful of kilometers away from it, hopefully on a matching course and speed. The mechanics of warp targeting were beyond him. He just used his brain to make sure the ship emerged where the techies in charge told him he should.

“Launch.”

Transition.

No warp ghosts showed up. Fighter pilots had learned to scare them off early on, and the critters didn’t even bother with them anymore. Not that it was all peaches and cream, though. Fernando felt an unknown presence nearby, something more dangerous than a mere ghost or hallucination.

“Flak’s going to be heavy as fuck,” Dicky said; his mental voice came through as calm and unconcerned as if he was talking about the weather, but underneath it his true feelings showed. Dicky didn’t think they were going to make it.

“Stow it, brah,” Fernando told him. Despair was downright dangerous in warp space. If you were truly suicidal, you wouldn’t come out the other side.

“Roger that.” Dicky set aside the gloomy attitude; Fernando could tell from the way the mental signature of his wingman firmed up, no longer in danger of falling adrift in the place between spaces.

Emergence.

From five km out, the Gimp starship looked huge: a dreadnought, six thousand meters long, gleaming bronze in the light produced by energy weapons going off all around it. Fernando cut loose with his 508mm cannon. At that range, he could see the effect of the nearly-invisible graviton beam as it struck the target. Force fields twisted and failed in a dazzling spray of colors; armor tore apart an instant later. A flaming dot appeared on the target’s surface, which meant one hell of a fireball to show up on his display. Dicky had struck the exact same spot. Even for something that big, it had to hurt.

The enemy flak was as bad as they’d feared: the dreadnought was blanketing the entire area with lasers, enough to find spots unprotected by warp shields. Fernando saw his War Eagle’s force fields drop by fifty percent in the time it took him to fire a single shot and jump away.

Transition.

No ghosts were waiting for him in the dark, but he could hear something: a moaning sound, as if thousands of people were sobbing and whimpering. He somehow knew they came from the ETs he and Dicky had just blown to hell during the sortie.

“Shut up,” he hissed. “Shut the hell up.”

It wasn’t that their crying bothered him all that much – this was war, after all – but that he worried their belly-aching might attract something else’s attention. Warp navigators and now fighter pilots all knew the truth about null-space: there were things in there, and they weren’t ghosts or hallucinations, but something else altogether. And if they noticed you, they would hunt you down.

Emergence.

They came out right where they were supposed to, a thousand meters off the USS Kenneth Walsh. The rest of their flight – six fighters – were already there, but two of them were falling out of formation. One of them was on fire. It was Missy ‘Bombshell’ Brady’s fighter.

“Fuck! Eject! Eject!” Fernando shouted, both through his comm and via telepathy.

She did, but before the tractor beams from the Walsh could grab her – tricky during the best circumstances at the ranges and speeds involved – the fighter blew up. Bombshell was too close to the blast. Her status carat turned black.

Fernando didn’t realize he was biting his lower lip until he tasted blood. He ignored the pain as he guided his bird until the tractor beams took over and dragged it the rest of the way inside the ship. Nothing to be done. At least the other damaged fighter managed to keep control of his wounded bird until it was snagged and brought in. Two losses in a single sortie was downright terrible, though.

“Stop trying to unload on a target, people!” shouted Major Harry ‘Eel’ Hendrix, the squadron commander. “One and done! They’ve got hundreds of lasers on continuous fire all around them. No more than three seconds between transitions. Is that understood?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” they all dutifully replied. They all knew that three seconds barely gave them time to land one hit, maybe two if they were lucky, and even their twenty-inchers couldn’t punch through a dreadnought’s armor and shields in one shot, not reliably. The Gimp big hitters took a lot of killing, and the super-dreds were supposedly worse, with multiple layers of armor and force fields that had to be defeated before you hit something vital.

He tried to relax while the flight crew replaced the power pack for the 508mm cannon and checked on the rest of the War Eagle’s systems. Everything appeared to be green, and his gluon plant was good for another six sorties before he was bingo power and had to head back to get a new one. Problem was, with the amount of flak the enemy was putting up, he didn’t think Flight A was going to live through six sorties.

His flight orders came in. The five survivors would be hitting a single target this time. A super-dred: hopefully five blasts hitting within a couple of meters from each other would stab deeply enough to achieve something useful.

“Clear for launch.”

Transition.

Bombshell’s voice followed him in the darkness, and that wasn’t fun at all. She sounded angry.

Emergence.

Flight A fired their single volley and dropped out in under two seconds. Even that wasn’t quite good enough. Fernando’s force field got depleted by ninety percent by a lucky glancing hit by a plasma weapon, a secondary gun meant to burn holes in cruisers, and more than enough to turn his crate into a molten puddle of components if it hit him dead on. They all made it back in one piece, but they had to hold for almost five minutes while they replaced several force field gennies; too many components had burned out under the unrelenting enemy fire. Next time they were going to lose another guy.

Time to try ‘the thing.’

“We’re gonna have to go full ghost, sir,” he told Eel.

The officer’s mix of fear and doubt came loud and clear through the psychic connection; so did the final decision.

“We’ll talk about it on the next sortie, but I think you’re right. God help us all.”

* * *

The Imperium battleship shattered into a thousand burning fragments when a salvo from the Undying Defender’s main guns caused a chain reaction that devoured the enemy ship. A visual display showed the massive bronze vessel being consumed by white fire. A few crewmembers barked in triumph, but quickly stopped under her steely gaze. This was no time for celebration. The Sun Blotter swarm was a mere thirty seconds away.

Admittedly, her ships had performed some excellent long-range gunnery, aided by their targets’ inexperience. A competent shield-allotment crew would have been able to shift their strength to match the Defender’s volleys with negligible damage to their ship’s hull, let alone its power plants. Their contemptible performance had doomed everyone aboard the battleship. Half a dozen other capital ships, two of them superdreadnoughts, had also gone up in flames, most of them at the hands of human fighter pilots. So far, all the losses had been on the enemy’s side; their energy weapon fire had been ragged and poorly coordinated. The lack of skill would become less important as the range shortened, however, at which point the balance would tip the other way.

Grace turned to the more immediate problem, the flight of missiles headed their way. The Joint Star Fleet had done its best, and destroyed nine-tenths of the first salvo; they would probably kill nine-tenths of the remainder during those final seconds. Which still left some three thousand missiles, and probably twice as many from the second wave, which was smaller but had been shielded by the first one.

The Joint Star Fleet had launched its own anti-ship rockets, but their much-weaker volley would be lucky to score more than a handful of kills.

The human warp fighters had done well, but at great cost: out of a hundred and forty-four, half a dozen had been destroyed outright and another ten damaged. At that rate, they would all be gone before they could inflict enough losses to affect the battle’s outcome.

The Imperium armada continued its relentless advance and began to concentrate its fire on specific targets. Wyrashat light vessels were struck by main gun salvos destroyers and frigates couldn’t survive even at long range. The tactic was simple and brutal: those ships were hideously vulnerable to even inaccurate fire, and their losses reduced the anti-missile defenses nibbling away at the approaching Sun-Blotter swarm.

The Undying Defender engaged a new target, an enemy dreadnought this time: her twenty-eight main guns hammered at the bronze monolith mercilessly, but without dealing a killing blow. The Imperium ship contemptuously ignored the Hrauwah’s fire and continued picking off one destroyer after the another. Shortly afterwards, the remains of the Sun-Blotter swarm arrived.

Thirty-one-hundred missiles struck the Joint Star Fleet, and ships began to die in earnest. False stars flared up all around Drakul-Six, each burst of light marking the death pyre of a vessel. The Hrauwah were not spared this time, and Grace winced as nine of her destroyers were snuffed out in quick succession. The ship-killers were following the same pattern as the enemy artillery, concentrating on point defense platforms and clearing the way for the next volley. The light vessels of the JSF suffered crippling losses in a few moments.

Their first fire mission accomplished, the Imperium heavy ships began to switch targets, going after the American carrier vessels, which were held as far back as practically possible and defended by the HEF’s destroyer screen. Destroy them, and the fighters would quickly become useless; the tiny gunboats required replenishment after every sortie. Distance and the carriers’ warp shields made them difficult targets, however, and they incurred no losses. Several of their escorts weren’t so lucky; destroyers could be severely damaged even by glancing hits from a capital ship.

A mere thirty seconds later, the second missile volley arrived. Four thousand ship-killers reached the battle-line. Last-ditch short-range lasers reaped many of them before they could strike, some of them close enough to weaken force fields. The rest struck their targets head-on.

The Undying Defender shook like a small prey animal in the jaws of a Hrauwah blood-lizard. Grace held onto her throne, ignoring the barks of shock and fear coming from the Fleet Court crew. Her attention was on the tactical displays; she continued issuing orders, hiding her fear that the battle was lost.

Half of her light vessels were gone or unable to fight, and all the flotilla’s other ships were damaged to some extent. The Wyarashat Wing had suffered even more: four of their mighty dreadnoughts were no more, and only a dozen destroyers remained of their light forces. The humans, despite their warp shields, had lost half of their point-defense ships.

In return, they had destroyed or crippled two Imperium superdreadnoughts, five dreadnoughts, twenty battleships, and fifty battlecruisers: easily ten times the tonnage the JSF had lost, but the balance of power had, if anything, tilted further in favor of the enemy.

“Missile launch detected,” the Lord of Tactics announced. “Two hundred thousand this time.”

* * *

Fernando Verdi and the rest of Flight A were holding an impromptu last-second planning session while inside warp space, the kind of discussion they couldn’t have in the real world, where higher might overhear them and get creeped out. The top brass knew warp fighter pilots could do all kinds of nifty stuff, but they still hadn’t figured out how to deal with it. Out of sight, out of mind seemed like the best way to handle things.

A two-light-second jump happened just about instantly in ‘real time,’ but Flight A had learned how to spend a good five, ten minutes in warp space when they wanted to. And right now they wanted to.

Instead of the sensory deprivation most people experienced inside null-space, the pilots were in a simulacrum of their usual briefing room. They could see each other, hear each other, even smell the stinking cigar ‘Hardhat’ Rodriguez liked to puff on at every opportunity. It all felt real enough that Fernando often wondered whether being stranded in warp would be so bad after all. Maybe you could spend eternity living in a fantasy world of your own creation. He dismissed the idea, though: nothing good ever lasted very long. Not in this or any other universe.

“You’ve seen their formation,” Eel said. “Lots of light ships all around, so no matter where we show up, they’ll spot us, and they’ve mounted light guns all over their hulls. If their gunners were as good as their tactics, we would have taken worse losses.”

Lieutenant Turner ‘Big Tuna’ Jamieson nodded in agreement.

“The lasers ain’t so bad but the close-in plasma weapons will wash over the warp shields every time. Soon as we pop out, we’ve got two seconds, tops, before they blow us away.”

Big Tuna had fought in the Hades System battle before getting reassigned to the HEF. He’d learned his lessons the hard way, but anybody who bothered to read the reports could see how had things had gotten. Losses had climbed until the last few fights had resulted in the ten percent killed or damaged birds per sortie. Which meant that after ten sorties you might as well blow your own brains out.

They’d talked about going full ghost before, and had tried it out a few times. Nobody liked it, and with good reason.

“We’re gonna lose people either way,” Big Tuna went on. “But doing it like that means we can actually get some licks in before we go.”

“Yeah, that’s how I see it,” Eel said.

“Getting killed isn’t the problem,” ‘Wild Thing’ Moretz said. “It’s what happens every time we ghost. It’s the Warplings, brah. We’ve got to go deep to ghost, and that’s where the Foos are.”

Foo Fighters was a term from pre-Contact aviation, unidentified bogeys that some had thought were ET ships coming to visit, although that had turned out to be bullshit. Fighter pilots had taken to calling the warp inhabitants by that name. The scientists insisted the Foos were nothing but vivid hallucinations, but everyone who’d spent enough time in warp space knew better. Getting killed was one thing, but what the Foos could do to you was something else.

Fernando had seen them twice. The first time happened during training, when something had shown up in the skin of a dead Marine. The second one had come after him while he was training some Foxtrot-Novembers. That had been a lot worse, despite all the safeguards they’d set up to prevent just that sort of thing. Wild Thing had a good point. Getting killed was bad, but losing your soul was a lot worse.

“Odds are still better if we ghost than what’s waiting for us back there,” Big Tuna said. “I’m ghosting.”

“Same here,” Hardhat and Dicky said at the same time.

Wild Thing and Cowpoke stayed quiet. Either thinking about it or just saying no without speaking out loud, Fernando figured. He could have peeked into their heads and found out for sure, but decided not to. It was their decision.  

“I’m not going to order you to do it,” Eel said. “You do what you think best. For what it’s worth, I’m going to ghost.”

The major could have made it an order, but if those two didn’t want to do it, they’d lose all hope and likely never come out. If you went into warp expecting to die, you’d disappear in transit nine times out of ten, or even more often than that. Better to let them make their own decision. Worst case, if they did their attack run normal-like, they’d get in a shot or two before they died. The job was risky no matter what, and it had to be done no matter what.

“Your choice. Y’all know the target. Let’s go.”

The shared illusion dissolved and they were back in their cockpits, alone in a way they rarely were anymore. They all had to concentrate on their emergence. And for those who chose to do ‘the thing,’ it was a lot more complicated. Ghosting was something completely different, something they still had trouble understanding.

A pilot from Sixth Fleet had discovered the technique by accident. He’d been about to emerge in a spot that he ‘knew’ was going to be hit by a main gun battery, but once you’re in warp, your only choices are either emerge at the selected coordinates or stay in warp forever. What he did was sort of a compromise between the two.

As it turned out, if you willed it strongly enough, you could sort of remain in warp and still reach out and touch reality through the aperture you’d normally come out of. Sort of like opening a door and poking your head out without crossing the threshold to the other side. To do that, you had to anchor yourself in a ‘deeper’ part of warp space, though. The places where the Foos lived.

Fernando had ghosted twice before, and each time had been scary as hell. He went for number three. Everyone in Flight A did, even Wild Thing.

Emergence. Sort of.

It was like seeing the world at the end of a tunnel, if a tunnel was made of every color of the rainbow and a few others that couldn’t be seen with normal eyes, and if the walls were swirling around like the inside of a tornado. Everything in the real-world side was murky and distorted, but he could see the target, a damn Gal-Imp superdreadnought. Flight A fired at the exact same time, and six 20-inch blasts of graviton death came out of six warp apertures and struck within a few meters of each other, punching through heavy-duty force fields and about four feet of hyper-dense armor to spread death and destruction inside.

The Gimps had been waiting for them, just as they’d feared. Their emergence points were struck by several dozen plasma blasts apiece less than two seconds after they showed up. If they’d come out the usual way, it would have taken them a full three seconds to jump back in, and even with their shields they’d have lost one or two ships. But they hadn’t. None of the fighters were really there, so all the plasma bursts and laser beams hit nothing but dead space or were swallowed into null-space without touching them.

Just as if they were a pack of ghosts.

They fired three more volleys from their invulnerable position, and the super-dred began to burn as its internal power plants brewed up. Splash one bandit.

Transition.

The peephole into reality closed, leaving him back in the deep end of the pool. And something had noticed him.

It was large and deadly and hungry, and it reached out for him. Fernando felt like a child swimming away from a dark fin in the middle of the ocean.

Nando.

The voice sounded just like his dead mother’s.

Nando, come here. I want to kiss you goodnight.

He wanted to curl up in a corner and rock himself to sleep, and the urge almost froze him in place. Almost.

Emergence.

They all came out, flying in formation behind the Walsh. Everyone was fine. Fernando knew that without having to check their status readings on his imp or cockpit displays. Wild Thing had had his own close encounter with a big nasty, but he’d managed to escape as well. Everyone else had made it out without incident. As they maneuvered to enter the carrier, Flight B came out. Five out of six; all the survivors were damaged. They hadn’t ghosted and gotten deep-fried in plasma. From the looks of it only two of those birds were in any shape to go out again. Shit.

It was going to be one of those days.

* * *

The battle became a dance of sorts, if the music accompaniment was provided by an orchestra of the insane.

Status icons changed colors in the holotank, and the Undying Defender swayed back and forth every few seconds, each sudden move marking a missile strike powerful enough to overcome the ship’s inertial compensators. The enemy fleet was firing volleys individually as it closed the distance, resulting in a continuous storm of fire. The incremental damage the flagship of the Hrauwah Volunteer Flotilla.

“Shields down to thirty percent,” the Lord Protector announced.

“Shift power from secondary weapons to force fields. And find the source of those missiles and tear out his throat with our primary guns!”

Grace let the King-Captain do his job; his curt orders were not what she would have chosen under the circumstances – reducing point defense would lead to more hits on those force fields – but that was a matter of taste; defense versus offence. In any case, the Undying Defender was unlikely to live up to its name.

It had been as brutal a battle as any she’d witnessed before. Both fleets had suffered losses that under most circumstances would have led one of both to break off and retreat before fleeing into warp. Most rational foes didn’t fight on after the loss of more than one fifth their tonnage; at that point it victory and defeat became empty titles for two shattered fleets.

Ah, but this battle involves humans.

That thought was not unfair, unfortunately. Almost every major space action where the US Navy had been involved seemed to end in the utter destruction on one side and horrendous losses for the other. In some cases, the Tree Cousins and their tormentors had annihilated each other. Fighting Americans was a bloody affair at best, and disastrous at worst.

They had good reasons for fighting to the death, of course. Most of those battles were fought at their doorstep. They had nowhere to run, and battles where no avenue of retreat is available are the deadliest of their kind.

So was the case here. The Imperium armada and the JSF had no intention of retreating, and were slashing at each other with wild abandon as the range closed to under a quarter of a light second. Humans referred to such engagements as ‘a knife fight in an elevator.’ Crude, but apt. With flight times below thirty seconds, missile volleys got through in far greater numbers. The Imperium fleet no longer could unleash hundreds of thousands of ship-killers in every salvo, but it didn’t need to do so. And direct energy weapons struck with their full power, and as the two formations became mingled with one another, ships could target vulnerable points in their foes.

Even the proud Wyrashat winged dreadnoughts came apart under the relentless bombardment. One after another, they fell silent, reduced to drifting masses of metal or glowing balls of incandescent gases. Even the oversized orbital fortresses around Drakul-Six were falling silent as their weapon hardpoints were immolated one by one. They were all fighting on heroically, but she feared this was nothing but a gallant last stand.

The enemy was suffering a terrible toll as well. The American fighter craft were as deadly as Grace had been led to believe, and more. Their losses had actually decreased as the battle went on, and they had accounted for over sixty capital ships. The problem was that their carriers were being taken out: half of them were out of the fight. The orphaned fighters were being tended to by the survivors, but the situation couldn’t last long.

Who will break first?

The Imperium’s casualties were worse than anyone would have expected, and its leaders might decide that it would be too costly to continue the offensive. Drakul-Six’s planetary defense bases remained relatively unscathed and their steady fire would become more effective at close range. What good would be achieved if the winners were too weak to continue their offensive?

We might still turn the tide.

The Defender’s shuddering as more missiles struck it seemed to give the lie to her thoughts.

* * *

Flight A was down to four pilots now. After a couple of close calls with the Foos, both Wild Thing and Cowpoke had stopped ghosting. Fernando could sympathize; the Warplings were getting closer with every sortie. The one chasing him kept using his mother’s voice, and each time it got harder to resist it. There’d been tears in his eyes when he’d made it back to the Walsh. But sad and scared still beat dead, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t know what his buddies had seen or heard, though. Maybe they’d decided it wasn’t worth it.

Wild Thing bought it the first time he’d fully emerged from null-space, when a cruiser hit him with a dozen laser guns. Cowpoke lasted for two more jumps before a near miss set his cockpit on fire; Fernando heard his screams as he burned to death. Not a good way to go.

That was a big problem with what the science remfies were calling tachyon-wave communications. Hearing people die was almost as bad as dying yourself. Just as bad was the knowledge his dead buddies would eventually show up in his dreams, or even while wide awake. That was another problem now that he was what his ex-girlfriend liked to call an Adept: warp ‘hallucinations’ didn’t bother him while in transit, but hit him in the real world instead. Of course, if things kept going this way, he wouldn’t have to worry about having nightmares, because his own shade would be out there haunting someone else. Assuming anybody survived this fight.

Emergence.

He and two others made the return trip. Dicky didn’t. A Foo had gotten him, and Fernando hadn’t even noticed. He’d been too busy trying to outrun his own warp demon. And that was only half the bad news waiting for him.

The Walsh was burning.

While Flight A had been carrying out the sortie, something or other had bent their ride. A big explosion burst out of the aft section of the carrier. The Walsh was a goner. Fernando could see escape pods leaving the carriers like so many rats fleeing a sinking ship. Called “mom pods’ – as in, ‘See, Mom? If anything goes wrong we’ll get to safety in them pods’ – the little flying coffins would most likely only delay the inevitable, because chances were no US or allied ship was going to be around to rescue them by the time the battle was over..

A stray graviton burst came a little too close for comfort, less than a hundred meters away. Hanging out in space was no place to be in a small crate.

Orders came in. They were to keep fighting until they were out of power and then match up with the USS Cunningham, which had lost most of its birds and thus had plenty of spare room. Eel ran a status check on the survivors of the flight. They all had two shots left and enough juice to do the requisite number of jumps. One final sortie and they could go to the Cunningham for resupply. Hopefully it’d still be there when they were done.

Transition.

The Foos were all but nipping at their heels. Fernando felt ghostly fingers brushing the back of his hair, and he almost lost it. Only reciting Psalm Twenty-Three got him through to the other side. He and his buddies fired while ghosted, and they put a big hole in one of the superdreadnoughts. Not a kill, though; three fighters firing two shots apiece just didn’t have enough firepower for the job. Their guns ran dry, and they returned to null-space.

Where the Foos were waiting. 

They took Big Tuna. Fernando heard him howling in unbearable agony for what felt like forever. And then they were on him. Right on top of him, his mother leading the chase, and this time she was touching him, grabbing him, dead fingers tightening around the back of his neck.

He panicked. There was only one way to escape, and the fact that it was impossible didn’t matter. Fernando focused everything he had on one thing: emerging from warp, even though he wasn’t at the designated exit point. It shouldn’t have worked – a panel full of FTL travel experts could have spent hours listing all the reasons why it shouldn’t – and yet his fighter tore a hole through reality fifty thousand kilometers off-course. Right into the path of a Gimp battleship.

He didn’t emerge alone.

In the brief instant before the two ships tore into each other, every Imperium crewmember aboard the luckless vessel had their minds destroyed and overwritten with something from beyond reality. Only the surviving warp fighter pilots and some of the more sensitive navigators on both fleets noticed something was amiss. The battleship was heavily damaged, and the crashing fighter turned out to be the last straw; a power plant collapsed and caused a chain reaction that consumed the Imperium vessel. The invaders’ foothold in reality was destroyed when their hosts were obliterated, leaving behind only a hint of horrors to come.

Blissfully unaware of their close brush with something worse than death, the rest of the battling forces carried on with their business.

* * *

Fleetmaster Klem was a professional to the bitter end.

“You have my orders, King-Admiral,” he told Grace on a personal vid-call. The fleet leader’s head was deeply tucked between his shoulder, the instinctive Wyrashat posture of defense. Smoke rose up behind him as crewmembers fought a fire somewhere in the command center. For all that, his demeanor remained calm; Grace knew enough about his species’ body language that Klem was not letting his people hear him growl. She could admire that, even though his last commands to her were breaking her heart.

“We understand, Fleetmaster,” she said. The beleaguered Wyrashat commander could have relayed his orders through the highest-ranking American officer left in the HEF, since her flotilla was technically attached to it. Choosing to speak to her personally was a gesture of respect she could appreciate.

“As I told Captain Clements, I am releasing all auxiliary forces from our previous agreements,” Klem added. “The Galactic Imperium has agreed to a cease fire in preparation for a formal surrender.”

The translation software could not convey the shame the Wyrashat must be feeling. Klem would be forever remembered as the officer who had lost Drakul System to an invading force. Grace tilted her head in a Hrauwah gesture of deferential sympathy.

“By releasing your forces during the cease-fire, you will be allowed to depart in peace. Otherwise the Imperium would have seized your ships and interned your crews. The Americans would have fared a rather worse fate, of course. I cannot honorably turn them over to the enemy.”

“You have my utmost gratitude, Fleetmaster,” she said. Only a scant dozen American vessels survived; they had lost all their carriers and fighters, at which point the battle had been officially lost. Klem could have surrendered honorably at that point; his superiors would probably believe that he should have done so. But the Wyrashat commander had only stopped fighting when the Imperium agreed to let the surviving Americans and Hrauwah to leave peacefully.

 “You fought very well, King-Admiral. I hope you will do as well in the future. Farewell.” The visual feed disappeared.

Grace-Under-Pressure followed her new orders. Her remaining seven ships prepared for warp transit in coordination with the human survivors. Her fit ships rescued any survivors and scuttled any vessel unable to make warp transit. The Imperium host did not interfere, perhaps gratefully. Their losses had been much lower only as a percentage of their initial line of battle: some seventy-five enemy capital ships had been destroyed or heavily damaged, along with over a hundred light vessels. Some of them would be repaired and returned to action, however, and even if they weren’t, the remaining behemoths were more than enough to defeat any Wyrashat formation in existence. A battle to the death would have been pointless, however. The Imperium wanted to save its strength for its main goal: the extinction of humankind. Allowing the ragged remnants of the HEF to leave would do little to change the balance of power, especially now that they had shown they could defeat the vaunted American warp fighters.

This wasn’t the first time Grace had been forced to flee a system in the face of the enemy. Another shameful retreat had led her to Sol System and the subsequent destruction of over half its population. This time, the civilians in Drakul System would be spared. The battle had been won before any damage was inflicted on Drakul-Six’s surface, although its orbital defenses were in shambles.

“The human commander has hailed us, Your Highness.”

“Send the call to my personal link.”

Captain Alois Clemens’ face appeared in front of her; the visual communique was projected into her retinas by her implants. The man’s expression was one of shock and near-despair, as could be expected from a battlecruiser captain who found himself in overall command by virtue of being the highest-ranked survivor. The Imperium had concentrated their fire on the American capital ships towards the end, destroying all of them, and slaughtering their thirty-five thousand crewmembers, including Admiral Del Toro, who had commanded the HEF until a deluge of missiles had ended him.

“King-Admiral,” Clemens said. “My surviving space assets lack the facilities to accommodate all the wounded we managed to rescue from the wrecks in the HEF. I was hoping you might have some room to spare among your vessels. I have some twelve hundred wounded spacers and can only take care of half of that number.”

“We will do what we can, Captain. Fortunately our life support requirements are similar enough, and two of my battlecruisers survived with minimal damage. We should be able to accommodate your wounded.”

“Thank you, Your Highness. I will make the necessary arrangements as quickly as possible.”

“You are quite welcome.”

She cut off the communication, suppressing a surge of irritation amidst the much deeper feelings brought about by defeat. The young pup should not have contacted her directly for such a request, but he was dealing with a situation beyond his experience and training, so she wouldn’t hold it against him. It did not matter. The two defeated forces would be conducting a long retreat through half a dozen warp points. In their haste, some of those wounded – both Hrauwah and human – wouldn’t survive.

Five hours later, every survivor had been given accounted for and the tattered remains of the two flotillas made ready to depart. Their destination was Paulus System; that would be their first stop but almost certainly not their last. Grace doubted that the forces being assembled there would suffice to stop the armada that had overwhelmed the Joint Star Fleet.

She doubted anything would stop it.

Transition.

The Undying Defender entered warp space and Grace-Under-Pressure found herself surrounded by the spirits of the dead. Her own people, who’d lain down their lives helping pay off a debt she had personally incurred on behalf of her entire species. And humans in endless numbers – the victims of First Contact, and perhaps every human still living, if this defeat was a harbinger of what was to come.

It was almost too much to bear.

One

Starbase Malta, Xanadu System, 167 AFC

He tried to play it safe, and it cost him. Again.

Captain Peter Fromm watched the tactical display as if glaring at the numbers and symbols could somehow alter the outcome of the scenario. He knew what Colonel Brighton would say during the Field-Ex analysis the next day. It’d been a simple mission. Lead Charlie Company against two dug-in platoons of simulated Galactic Imperium infantry. Instead of doing what he knew would work, he’d done what he thought would reduce his casualties to a minimum. He’d been slow. Downright timid. Adopted a belt-and-suspenders approach. Just so he could keep those red and black carats from showing up on the roster.

Even in a simulation, it was becoming too hard to send his people to their death. And when First Sergeant Goldberg had not-so-subtly called him on it, Fromm had overcompensated and rushed his Marines forward, which he knew he never would have done in real life. The result: the two enemy platoons had stopped his company cold after notionally inflicting twenty-nine casualties – including twelve KIA – on it.

He’d lost his nerve, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to get it back.

“Can’t win them all, sir,” First Lieutenant Hansen said, loyally blowing smoke up his ass. Goldberg didn’t say anything, but his silence spoke volumes.

Fromm shrugged, watching the ‘casualties’ pick themselves up from where the simulation had left them for dead and start heading back to the transport lift that would take them back to base, some hundred klicks away from the huge chamber they’d been using for the exercise. He tried to set aside his despondency and marvel at the lifelike holograms that turned the huge compartment – large enough to fit an entire Earth city – into a near-perfect replica of an alien planet, complete with skies overhead, a distant horizon and even variations in weather. Malta’s former owners had belonged to a hyper-advanced civilization with access to better toys than most Starfarer species.

In the end, all those toys hadn’t saved them. The Tah-Leen were no more, making them the fourth species the United Stars of America had rendered extinct in its hundred-and-sixty-seven-year history. Not exactly something to be proud of, although in all fairness the Tah-Leen had deserved death as much if not more than anybody Fromm had ever met. There was a team of intelligence weenies doing nothing but cataloguing the aliens’ atrocities over the previous eighty millennia; that was job he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. A much larger team was busily trying to unearth as many advanced technologies as it could. The US was going to need every scrap it could extract from their conquest.

The three Marine battalions currently stationed at Malta, including Fromm’s own 101st, had enjoyed some of the fruits of conquest. They were the best-outfitted units in the Corps, and probably the deadliest ground force their size in the galaxy. Not that they would be seeing action any time soon. The three units had suffered severe losses at the battle of Parthenon the year before, and all of them needed some time to rest and refit. Malta seemed like a safe enough posting, now that the former Habitat for Diversity’s weapon systems were back online. Probes by the Imperium and the Lampreys had been met with overwhelming force and sent back running. In fact, Xanadu was probably the safest human-inhabited system in the universe, and a steady trickle of immigrants had begun to show up in the three months since its seizure. They included some four thousand Marine dependents who’d been relocated there; for the 101^st, the 44^th and 210^th, Xanadu System was their new home.

If things didn’t improve soon, the system and its artificial habitat might become humanity’s last redoubt. Fromm fervently hoped that wouldn’t be the case. He’d seen what happened to the previous owners, and it hadn’t been pretty. Being bottled up in a single system, unable to ever set foot beyond its confines, had driven the locals insane. Granted, the Tah-Leen had probably been halfway there before the mysterious Elder Races had marooned them for all eternity, but he didn’t think humanity would fare much better.

Fromm shrugged. All of that was out of his hands. His battalion would spend months getting ready for action, and the war might be over by then. It would be up to others to save the day.

To his shame, he was glad of that. He and his Marines had done enough.

He didn’t want to write any more letters of condolence.

Secret Facility, Venus, Sol System, 167 AFC

“Could you please tell me your name?”

“Major Lisbeth Beatrix Zhang, US Warp Marine Corps, Serial Number 0259-1913108. And this is the one hundredth time I’ve been asked that same question. Congratulations!”

“How did you survive direct exposure to warp space?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you return to Starbase Malta after your spacecraft was destroyed?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Tell us everything you remember from the time of your last warp transit aboard the Totenkopf until your appearance at Starbase Malta.”

She did, for the hundredth time. The questions were always the same, and her answers were always unsatisfactory. The truth was, everything was a blur after the cockpit of her dying ship collapsed and a sea of many colors had come pouring into the cabin. The bogeyman of her nightmares had been there, yes, and a host of ghosts, most of them belonging to the ninety-odd aliens she’d executed a few days before, and they’d all been out for blood. Her blood.

The critters in question may not be ghosts. They most likely were Warplings; some pilots called them Foo Fighters or just Foos. She hated both nicknames with a passion. Most of them weren’t very smart or dangerous; all they did was assume the shape of their victims’ memories and try to scare or otherwise annoy them. But a few could kill you. The ones who’d ripped open her ship had been more than dangerous enough.

Lisbeth had fought back, she knew that much. At one point, a gigantic three-eyed alien had fought besides her: Atu, the Path Master whose consciousness had become entangled with hers. Then again, she sometimes suspected her invisible friend was a Warpling who’d assumed the shape of the dead and gone Path Master to help or trick her. Or both. Either way, Atu was a major badass, shooting beams out of its third eye and shredding Tah-Leen ghosts left and right. It might have been fun, except for the fact she’d been scared shitless the whole time. At one point, she’d become the alien, and had been bizarre. The way Atu thought was too different; the experience hadn’t been good for her mental health.

The alien ghost was still around. She’d come back with a giant invisible monkey on her back. The thought made her giggle, and it made her current interviewer nervous. Nobody liked it when she laughed. There was something scary about the sound. That sucked, because lately it was very hard to deal with the universe with a straight face.

“Are you all right, Major?”

They asked that a lot, too. She didn’t have a good answer, either. Physically, she seemed to be fine, although her brain wasn’t normal anymore. The strange brain growths her previous checkup had uncovered had turned into large whorls of grey matter growing in perfect symmetry on each side of her skull, which incidentally had developed two noticeable bulges to accommodate them. They weren’t easily visible under her medium-reg haircut, but if she ever decided to shave her head, they would be.

A doctor had commented that the bulges looked a little bit like horns.

“I said, are you all..?”

“Yes,” Lisbeth answered, shaking her head. The shaking was to clear her mind from the visions of the past that she’d been experiencing as if she was back there, but of course it looked like she was contradicting herself. Like she was crazy, in other words.

“You are giggling again,” her current debriefer said. It was a civilian this time, some sort of psychiatrist. She’d scared off the last couple of interviewers – a Naval Intelligence weenie and a CIA interrogator – with a few off-hand comments.

Must be my winning personality, she thought, and giggled one more time. The shrink just looked at her, waiting for an answer.

“Sorry, doc. My mind wanders when I’m bored.”

“Please try to concentrate. We’re all here to help you, you know.”

Time to run him off, she decided. He was getting on her nerves.

“I know. Speaking of helping, I can answer the question that’s been on your mind for a few months.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your wife. She is cheating on you.”

“What?”

“She’s been seeing someone at the ad agency she works at. Her boss, as a matter of fact.”

“Wait a moment. What..?”

“It all started when she found out about your own affair – well, affairs, but she only knows of the last one – so I can’t really blame her. By the way, I’m flattered you like the way I look, but I hope we can keep this professionally.”

Lisbeth batted her eyelashes at him.

The shrink left and didn’t come back.

She enjoyed a few quiet days inside her spacious and comfortable cell, fifty meters beneath Venus’ hellish furnace. The only inhabitants in that festering boil in the solar system’s ass were terraforming crews, most of them convicts doing hard labor, and a few subjects that needed to be out of sight and mind. She wasn’t technically a prisoner, but she wasn’t allowed to wander off on her own, not that strolling outside was an option without a haz-con suit. They’d been terraforming Venus for decades, but the planet’s average temperature was still enough to turn ice into steam or broil a human being even before its corrosive air had a chance make its presence known. It was going to take another century or so to make the place habitable, and she wasn’t planning on hanging around that long.

On her next interview, there were two of them, male and female, in matching Navy uniforms and a no-nonsense look about them that she could appreciate. At this point, she’d welcome a straightforward enhanced interrogation session. Anything but the constant blathering.

“Major Zhang,” the guy began.

“That’s me. And I appreciate you not asking what name is for the hundredth and first time.”

“Sorry about that. Honestly, we didn’t know what to make of you. Your story was hard to believe, even with all the witnesses.”

And all the imp recordings, she thought. A dozen people had immortalized her appearance in the Situation Room at Spacebase Malta on the day she’d strolled through a warp aperture wearing nothing but a smile. Not exactly the kind of exposure she would have chosen. There were dozens of VR pornos ‘inspired’ by those visual records. Plus a dozen religious and mystical movements. Whore and Madonna at the same time.

The bubbleheads waited until she was done giggling before continuing.

“The decision has been made to accept your recollection of events,” the female officer said.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Might as well stick to military courtesy before they changed their minds and kept her in this hellhole for a few more months.

“Which brings us to the proposals you’ve been making all along.”

Lisbeth nodded. If they were willing to listen to her crazy theories, the situation was even more desperate than she’d thought. She’d been following the news – they let her do that much – and things had been looking pretty dire, with the Imperium pressing forward and the Lampreys massing up along the Wyrm borders, presumably to link up with their allies for one big push into American space. Things might just be bad enough to make even her insane ideas worthy of some attention.

“You claim that your connection to the Kranxan starship gave you access to a great deal of data, including astrogation maps of their territory.”

“Yes, sir. Including a couple of remote systems that served as their last place of refuge. That’s where they took their last fleet of Corpse-Ships. Nearly a hundred of them.”

Both naval officers winced visibly at the name. No red-blooded American would be comfortable with the idea that a ship made with the bones of a dead and yet somehow aware alien slave had proven to be more effective than anything in the Navy’s arsenal – or anything in the known galaxy for that matter.

“I can lead you there,” Lisbeth went on, for the eighty-sixth time; a few of her interviews had stopped before she got to that part. “I think there’s a good chance at least some of those ships are still operational. And I know how to activate them and train others to use them.”

She pictured dozens of Corpse-Ships flying the Stars and Stripes and sweeping the skies clear of enemies. From the way the two officers looked at her, they were seeing something similar. Maybe the exact same thing: sometimes she could make people see what was inside her head, instead of the other way around.

“What price victory, if the cost is your soul?” Atu the Happy Alien whispered in her ear.

Shut up, you. I have a plan.

“We would like to hear more about your ideas,” the male officer said.

“Of course, sir.”

Lisbeth ignored the disapproving looks from her invisible friend as she spoke.

She might be crazy, damned, or both, but she was going to do her part.

Starbase Malta, Xanadu System, 167 AFC

“Lieutenant McClintock, you are hereby relieved from duty.”

Finally, Heather thought, suppressing a relieved sigh.

After the ancient alien habitat now known as Starbase Malta had been secured and become a US possession, Heather had spent some three months running the place, mostly because only her t-wave implants allowed her to bypass the security blocks protecting the alien network that ran all its systems. After taking one look at the mess the US had inherited, the admiral in command of Third Fleet had reactivated her at her old Navy rank of Lieutenant and put her in charge. It had been an exhausting and unnerving situation, especially since the Lampreys and the Imperium had launched attacks on Xanadu after the system had been ‘secured.’ That had been a little too exciting for her taste. Turning the impossible job over was something of a relief.

“Thank you, Captain Gupta.”

The new commandant was an experienced orbital facility administrator who’d grown up in a mining community in Sol’s asteroid belt and spent most of his Navy career crewing and eventually running space fortresses. His confident expression as he accepted the official handoff worried her, however. The poor bastard had no idea what was waiting for him, and she was worried he would screw things up.

Nobody’s indispensable, she told herself. She’d made sure someone else could do the job, after all. It had taken a lot of work but now ordinary computers and technicians could run the massive station. More or less. Acting like everything depended on her wasn’t very mature; she smiled at her own conceit.

“Something funny, Lieutenant?”

“Not at all, sir. I’m just happy to leave this post and return to civil service.”

“I see. You have done an adequate job so far, and I’m sure your assistance during the transition period will be invaluable.”

Heather was still one of a handful of people with any idea of how the massive alien habitat worked, and who knew how little they really knew about it. Just keeping its weapons and shields working had taken the efforts of dozens of trained personnel. To restore Malta to even a fraction of its former glory would probably take thousands. Captain Gupta had brought in five hundred Administration specialists with him, which would help a lot, as soon as they figured out that running the incredibly-large facility was unlike anything they’d encountered before. She would try to teach them as much as she could before she was reassigned, but after that…

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

For the last six months, she’d been so busy she’d hardly seen Peter for more than an hour or two before rushing off to deal with a new crisis. The problems involved in running an ancient habitat half the size of Earth’s Moon were legion, especially when the alien intelligence charged with keeping it in working order had died during the takeover. Been killed in cold blood by a rather deranged Marine, to be precise. That the poor creature had been lobotomized and largely mindless was beside the point. And its absence had been felt when the whole place promptly began to fall apart.

The fact that a Lamprey fleet had shown up just after the Americans had seized the place hadn’t helped, of course. The aliens shot the ever-living crap out of the place before Heather came up with a last-ditch method to kill them all. Fortunately, the ancient civilization knew how to build them tough, and the habitat had survived the bombardment relatively unscathed.

Two thirds of the habitat’s volume currently didn’t have any atmosphere, power or other amenities, but that had been the case before the US delegation arrived. The remaining third still had more usable volume than every human-made space facility combined, and keeping it in working order had turned out to be a full-time job.

Handing it off to someone else would give her a chance to do her real job: gathering information. The records of the oldest known civilization in the galaxy were a priceless intelligence find, even if most of the data would be useless to all but the most dedicated historians. That aside, the system was a major trade nexus where a sizeable portion of the galaxy’s commerce passed through. The opportunities to buy, steal or cajole valuable intelligence would provide work for hundreds of intelligence officers. The CIA had so far sent her five. She needed to get on top of that.

Captain Gupta had been droning on about something while her mind wandered. She smiled and nodded while her imp provided her with an instant replay.

“Yes, sir,” she said after a barely perceptible pause. “Our first priority was to see to the defenses in Malta, and to the security of the warp network around it.”

“Now that you have activated its weapon systems and the power plants needed to operate them, the system’s defense should be easy enough.”

Something about the man’s tone told Heather the good captain didn’t think she’d done either of those things quickly enough to suit him. Perhaps he blamed her for all the death and destruction that had ensued during the Lamprey attack, whose victims had included an entire destroyer squadron and over a hundred Marine, Navy and State Department personnel. The fact that she blamed herself didn’t make it any easier to accept the unspoken reproach.

“Yes, sir. Once the systems were up, we were able to deal with the follow-up enemy attacks easily enough.”

The second Lamprey attack had been another disaster for the aliens. Third Fleet had been on the scene, and the Lhan Arkh force had been weaker than the one she’d helped destroy during the First Battle of Xanadu. Third Fleet would have been able to handle the sixty-ship enemy formation on its own. Paired with the gigantic habitat’s devastating firepower, it’d been over in a matter of minutes. The useless sacrifice had surprised her. Perhaps the Lhan Arkh hadn’t believed the initial reports. They certainly believed them now.

In any case, the loss of two fleets had cost them dearly: Third Fleet had launched a counterattack into Lamprey space, and destroyed two enemy colonies before pulling back. Further attacks into Lhan Arkh space would have to wait until reinforcements arrived, however, and most new ships were being funneled into more important fronts.

The Imperium thrust had been a reconnaissance in force rather than a full attack. Twenty medium vessels had warped in, their energy signatures masked to simulate a civilian freighter convoy from a neutral polity. Their attempt at subterfuge hadn’t fooled Malta’s sophisticated sensors, however. The luckless Gal-Imp ships had been shot down on arrival, while their crews were still recovering from transit.

“Security should no longer be an issue,” she said. “And we’ve been gradually restoring power and life support to more areas of the habitat. At this point, we could easily provide for ten times as many people as we’ve already got.”

Gupta nodded. “Good. We are going to be relocating an increasing number of personnel here. Mostly displaced civilians with the proper mix of skills and experience. Our main problem is securing enough transport to bring in everyone who is able and willing to move here. Even with those limitations, the current plan is to resettle a hundred thousand workers and their dependents within twelve months. And to increase that number tenfold over the ensuing year.”

Mighty ambitious, not to mention optimistic, Heather thought. The Navy officer would soon find out just how big a job he had ahead of him. Even with most automated systems up and running, too many things could and would go wrong on a nearly hourly basis, and after the destruction of most of the stations’ army of service robots, just building replacements would require more fabber operators than they had.

Still, she’d done what she could. Two of the massive fabricators in Malta – out of several dozen they’d discovered – were working three shifts now, and the scratch crew of Navy personnel and civilian volunteers she’d been bossing around for the previous few months had made a good start in setting up a naval shipyard.  Once Gupta managed to bring a hundred thousand workers here, Xanadu System could start building the best ships in the galaxy.

Securing Xanadu System should have assured victory in the war. The Hrauwah Kingdom – a.k.a. the Puppies – were sending massive amounts of supplies and ship components now that they had a direct line to American space. Even more importantly, the massive Galactic Credit accounts the US force had ‘liberated’ from the former owners of the system had been enough to pay all the debts owed to the Kingdom, with plenty to spare to buy more. It was always better to settle things in cash than to depend on the kindness of even friendly aliens. Xanadu generated enormous revenues from transit tolls collected from dozens of polities that depended on the multiple warp lines linking the system to most of the known galaxy. The only problem was, capitalizing on those advantages was going to take time, time they might not have.

News of the disaster at Drakul had reached them just a few days after their victory here. Two Gal-Imp armada was ponderously pushing through Wyrashat space, and word was that the Wyrms, Earth’s only official allies, were one or two defeats away from suing for a total cease-fire. Surrender would allow the Imperium to consolidate its forces and mount an assault directly into US space. The only question remaining was whether humanity would be able to stop them long enough for the rearmament program to matter.

All she could do is her job. She’d consult with the new base commander, of course, but she looked forward to returning to her real job.

“By the way, Lieutenant, your new orders came in the same ship that brought me here. I’ll upload them to you now.”

It only took a few seconds to find out that she wouldn’t be going back to her old job any time soon.

* * *

“Can you believe this shit?” Lance Corporal Raymond ‘Gonzo’ Gonzaga shouted before slamming both fists on the table hard enough to spill their drinks.

Corporal Russell ‘Russet’ Edison was just as outraged as his buddy, but had learned the hard way not to take things so personally. Gonzo was normally a cool customer, but their new marching orders had turned several months of hard work into nothing but shit. At this rate they were both going to leave the Corps as broke-ass as they had gone in, other than their short-lived pensions.

“Detached duty! Again! Motherfuckers!”

A waitress came over with new drinks and wiped the table clean. Nice-looking girl, but she looked scared. Russell couldn’t blame her. There were a lot of Charlie Company grunts in the bar, and they’d all gotten the bad news at the same time.

“It is what it is, Gonzo.”

“Did someone screw with a general’s daughter or something? Are they trying to kill us all?”

“Seems like an awful lot of trouble just to get rid of a few leathernecks. They could just send us off against the Lampreys instead.”

“No, that’s not good enough. We might just end up kicking alien ass and surviving. No, this detached duty shit is going to kill us all, man.”

Russell couldn’t disagree with that. They had taken it on the chin every time Charlie Company had gone off on its own, or when Third Platoon had been left to its own devices. They were still putting things together after the last time. The Marines of C-Company had taken the biggest space station in the galaxy pretty much all by themselves. They’d taken the biggest space station in the galaxy using mostly improvised spears, knives and entrenching tools, for fuck’s sake. And instead of giving everybody medals and about two years’ worth of leave, which they so richly deserved, they were going off on detached duty again?

His fists were clenched so hard his knuckles were turning white. Russell realized Gonzo wasn’t the only one getting worked up about the unfairness of it all. He had to force himself to relax, because if they both lost their shit, they might get in trouble.

Then again, what else could they do to them? Send them on a more suicidal mission than the one they were on?

“Not to mention, it’s going to ruin all the stuff we just set up.”

Russell nodded and clenched his teeth. After all the blood and sweat they’d spent taking the place – and holding it in the face of a Lamprey fleet, let’s not forget that shit – this had turned out to be a damn good posting. Lots of space traffic, which meant lots of opportunities. Most of it didn’t touch on the giant space station, but enough did. And the place was huge and full of alien goodies. They’d sold a few trinkets they’d stumbled on, and were hatching plans for more. In a month or two, they were going to pull enough scores to retire comfortably. Until their new orders arrived. Detached duty on some Survey starship, destination classified, objectives classified, duration classified. The only thing they hadn’t bothered classifying was that it was going to suck ass.

PFC Keith ‘Grampa’ Gorski joined them in their booth at the newly-opened enlisted bar. The place was pretty nice; a couple of retired Marines from New Parris had moved to Xanadu and set up the place like the old one they’d run back there, with plenty of mementos from their time in service decorating the walls. About the only difference was that the place was more spacious and less dingy than the original. There was a lot more elbow room all around, courtesy of being located in the largest space station in the known galaxy. Which was now US territory because Russell and about a hundred of his closest friends had butchered the previous owners with knives and e-tools. In the case of the fat alien in charge of the place, their bare hands – well, gloved hands, and their combat gloves were almost as good as brass knuckles when it came to punching someone in the face – and booted feet, mostly feet. Best time to kick some bastard to death was when he was down. Those happy memories did little to remove the scowl from Russell’s face, though.

“That’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Grampa said as he sat down.

“They trying to kill us, is what they’re doing,” Gonzo said. He emptied his drink and looked at the glass as if considering the best way to weaponize it. Probably by chucking it at someone’s head.

“Way I heard it, it was the Major’s idea to have us along, and this whole mission is on her.”

“What Major?” Gonzo’s expression changed, became almost wistful. If someone, O-4 or not, gave you shit, there was always a chance that someone could be made to go away.

“Zhang.”

Gonzo carefully set the glass on the table and lay his face next to it.

“We’re fucked.”

Russell wanted to disagree with his buddy, but he really couldn’t. Major Zhang was the weirdest Marine in the entire Warp Marine Corps, bar none. That lady could do warp drops without using a catapult. Russell had seen the vids. It was one of the few shows where the naked chick onscreen was the least-interesting part. The look on the admiral’s face when he returned the naked chick’s salute was priceless. Word was that Zhang was crazy on top of being a witch.

Russell had met another witch, back in Parthenon. Deborah Genovisi was a former bubblehead warp navigator. Gorgeous, but spooky as hell. She was back in the Fleet, as a warp fighter pilot, which didn’t surprise him one bit. Deborah could read minds, more or less, which if Russell had any sense would have been a damn good reason to run away from her as fast as possible. Instead, he’d spent a few very memorable days with her. After that, he’d written her a couple of e-mails, and gotten answers each time; he didn’t know what that meant. 

“In all fairness, the Major saved our asses,” Grampa reminded them.

“If she’s involved, you know it’s going to be something crazy.”

“We’re just going to be running ground security, right?”

“Sure, Gramps. Because it’s always as simple as it sounds, right? Like the one time we were just supposed to do a dog and pony show for a bunch of ETs? Remember that one?”

They all looked down for a moment. A lot of their buddies hadn’t made it.

“And almost half of the people in the company just got here,” Gonzo went on.

“No boots, though,” Russell said. “We’re getting set up as an elite battalion, the 101^st. They let us keep all them new weapons and armor, too. This is turning out to be a prestige post.”

“Ain’t gonna be enough.”

“Save that shit for the Army.”

Privately, though, Russell thought Gonzo was right.

Two

CRURON 23, McCormick System, 167 AFC

Admiral – former Fleet Admiral – Nicholas Kerensky watched his enemies burn in the bonfire he had prepared for them.

The twelve ships of Cruiser Squadron 23 fired as one: a total of forty-eight heavy graviton cannon unleased their fury onto their targets just as the pirates realized the American formation had emerged from warp a mere light second away. The alien vessels were arranged in a ragged column tens of thousands of kilometers long, each of the thirty-odd ships moving at its best speed with no thought about keeping formation. The sudden appearance of his squadron on their flank had caught the Horde raiders by surprise. Executing an ambush was no easy feat in space engagements, but Kerensky’s people had performed the maneuver flawlessly, performing a warp jump before the invaders’ sensors had time to alert them that an American fleet was in the system.

The holotank in the Tactical Command Center had detailed visual icons for the enemy forces, designated Sierra-One through Sierra-Thirty-four. Like all Horde raiding fleets, it was a ragtag collection of hulls from a dozen different civilizations, with new weapons and systems added as opportunity or whim dictated. Command and control was spotty at best.

That didn’t make the individual vessels any less dangerous, however; underestimating the Horde was hazardous to one’s health. The larger pirate ships had the tonnage and energy signatures of a battlecruiser or even a pocket battleship, and there were a good dozen of those; the rest were somewhere between a light cruiser and a frigate in displacement, all heavily armed, and all manned by members of a warrior culture whose only pleasures were combat and pillage. In a head-on confrontation, Kerensky’s squadron would have been outgunned and would have likely taken losses even with the huge advantage warp shields conferred on American vessels. The enemy had given him a perfect opportunity to avoid anything resembling a fair fight, however, and he planned to make the most of it.

Three large icons and nine smaller ones flashed red before they turned black and vanished from the tactical display, indicating confirmed kills. Kerensky’s ships had gone after the leading contacts, which belonged to the swiftest pirates. In this case, the quick had become the dead.

“Their shields were down,” Kerensky commented dryly as the performance of the squadron’s opening salvo was processed and presented to him. “Too much in a hurry to reach McCormick-Seven, I suppose.”

CRURON 23 advanced towards the disorganized pirates, pounding them with steady main gun volleys as it closed the distance. Six more enemy icons disappeared from the tactical display before the Horde ships altered course and raised their shields. Most of the survivors were already damaged. The plan had worked even better than he’d expected. The raiders had been in a hurry to reach the inhabited world they’d come to despoil, and diverted most of their power to their propulsion systems. Since the aliens were over an hour away from McCormick-Seven’s orbital defense stations, they’d thought it was a safe maneuver. It wasn’t the sort of mistake a professional navy formation would normally make, but the Horde were barbarians.

“Sierra-One is down,” Tactical Officer Mendez reported. That had been the flagship of the enemy force, a big whale of a boat that had started life as a pair Viper destroyers – of different classes, from the uneven look of their lines – before the Horde had welded them onto the larger hull of a Botari freighter and tacked an extra fifteen kilotons of armor plate and a dozen forty-inch grav guns of Lizard make to the ensuing mess. Kerensky wouldn’t have cared to exchange broadsides with that bloated monster, not from the bridge of the City-class battlecruisers that comprised his squadron.

Not too long ago, he had commanded Fifth Fleet from the CIC of a dreadnought that could have wiped out the entire pirate flotilla without bothering to warm up its main guns. He’d been stripped of that command and sent off to rusticate in a remote frontier for the rest of the war. Deservedly so: he had led Fifth Fleet to disaster and defeat, and fled the system he’d been charged to protect, abandoning millions of innocents to their deaths.

Fourteen million, eight hundred seventy-three thousand and ninety-seven innocents, to be exact. He’d memorized the final tally once a relief force liberated the planet and rescued a scant three hundred thousand survivors. 14,873,097 dead. He could provide chapter and verse of the victims’ demographic data. Average age of twenty-three, which in a civilization with anti-aging treatments meant a large percentage of children. Thirty-eight point-seven percent: 5,755,889 total victims under eighteen years of age. He had the exact number of children he’d left to die forever engraved in his mind and soul.

The ghosts of those dead children were part of his mental background as he impassively watched the battle unfold, giving orders only when necessary. After assuming command of CRURON 23, Kerensky had drilled every ship mercilessly. Once he was sure every cruiser captain knew how to do his or her job, replacing the failures with all due haste, he mostly let them do it at their discretion. His preparations had paid off. Not that this was much of a battle, of course. It could technically be described as a massacre, given how little the enemy could do to change its outcome.

The Horde ships tended to burn brightly after taking critical levels of damage; their preferred atmospheric mix was high in oxygen, and they had huge containers of high-pressure volatiles in their hold. When their shields and armor were pierced, each colorfully-painted vessel became a fireball in short order.

The remaining pirates tried to fight, shooting back at their tormentors with a wild variety of weapons and unleashing several hundred ship-killing missiles. Most of the incoming fire was swallowed by the Americans’ warp shields without achieving anything; the few leakers or lucky hits didn’t inflict even cosmetic damage on the cruisers. The missile barrage was as badly coordinated as everything else, and the cruisers’ point-defense batteries destroyed them all long before they covered half the distance between the two formations.

After the utterly uneven exchange resulted in another dozen kills, a few of the more foolish or desperate warlords tried to jump into warp, which only hastened their demise. Engaging FTL engines took time and energy; an undamaged ship with a well-trained crew could perform the maneuver in under five minutes, if one diverted most of its power to that purpose, leaving it all but defenseless. In the Horde’s case, weakening their shields only provided the Navy gunners with easier targets. The last two volleys from the squadron immolated every last pirate vessel in the system. The final score was Navy 34, Horde 0.

“Maintain course. We will scan the debris for any survivors, then clear any potential navigational hazards.”

In the unlikely event that any Horde raiders still lived in those blazing hulls, they would be shot on sight. For untold millennia, the space nomads had murdered and enslaved billions of Starfarers, and every civilization in the known galaxy had only one method of dealing with them. The Horde didn’t negotiate and never surrendered. For once, Kerensky was glad of the simplicity of choices facing him. He wasn’t feeling particularly merciful at the moment.

What little mercy had been in his soul had been left behind at Heinlein-Five, along with his honor.

He found it highly doubtful that he would ever regain either of them.

* * *

Kerensky was going over the after-action report when the courier ship arrived.

The actual AAR had been easy enough to generate, of course. The operation had been carried off flawlessly. He couldn’t help adding his own opinion of the strategic import of the event, however. The Horde probe was worrisome, not in itself but because of what the pirates’ appearance meant.

McCormick System was an American backwater, an island of civilization in a largely unexplored frontier. The raiders had come from the only Starfarer-occupied warp line in the system, one belonging to the Botari, colloquially known as the Blue Men for reasons obvious to anyone who saw them. That meant the Blues had let the Horde flotilla travel through their space unmolested, in violation of the non-aggression pact they’d signed with the US almost a century ago. Another friendly neutral had turned against the US.

Botari and humans had never been at war; they’d worked together during the Gremlin Conflict, and been peaceful trade partners ever since the two polities had come into direct contact, shortly after humanity defeated the Risshah and took over their ley line network. They’d had as good a relationship as any other species other than the Puppies.

And none of that mattered worth a damn, he thought bitterly.

Granted, the Blue Men were loosely organized, more of a confederation than an actual nation-state, and the local satraps had a reputation as mavericks if not outright rogues. The kind of robber baron types that might have sold the Horde the hulls used in their flagship, say. But letting pirates stage a raid through a warp gateway under their control was an indisputably unfriendly act, and something that the Greater Botari Council would have to punish forcefully – provided it hadn’t allowed it to happen. There would be excuses and pretexts aplenty, but the reality was that a raiding party of that size couldn’t have forced its way through without massive neglect or outright complicity.

In either case, Kerensky’s conclusion was that this sector could no longer be considered safe. A cruiser squadron wasn’t enough to guarantee the safety of the one million inhabitants of McCormick-One, let alone the other three million colonists scattered across six star systems further down its second warp chain.  The nearest openly hostile polity, the Lhan Arkh Congress, was twelve warp transits away, too far to push through a substantial force, but if the Blue Men let even a few enemy squadrons through… 

Images of devastated Heinlein-Five flashed through his mind. 14,873,097. That number, never to be forgotten or forgiven.

The US was running out of friends. The Hrauwah still hadn’t committed to a formal alliance, although after the US had seized Xanadu System their supplies were flowing into human space at an increased rate. That helped, but having the Royal Fleet join in the fun would help a lot more. Through the few contacts Kerensky still had in the Navy, he’d heard that other Starfarer civilizations had stepped up the pressure on the Puppies, pressure that included threats of war if they intervened directly in the conflict. Plenty of polities who weren’t unwilling to join the crusade against humanity were happy to give aid and comfort to it.

We are not a numerous people, and nobody loves us.

The first time Kerensky had heard that phrase it’d popped up in a speech by Vice-President Olsen some eighty years ago, but he was sure the VP had been quoting somebody else. The statement’s truth remained self-evident, no matter who’d said it. There were eight billion humans in the universe, and only two billion or so lived under the American flag. The actual belligerents in the conflict outnumbered humanity fifty to one. If all major civilizations turned against it, the odds would become over five hundred to one.

Kerensky shook his head. Worrying about the overall strategic picture might have been part of his job when he was CINC-Five, but that part of his life was over. He’d all but begged for a command after stepping down from his post, even if that meant becoming the skipper of a logistics vessel in some galactic backwater. Getting a squadron to call his own was more than he deserved. They ‘d let him keep his rank, but he was a five-star admiral in name only.

He deleted most of his insights into the political situation from the report. There were plenty other people whose job would be to determine those, men and women untainted by the decimation of a Sector Fleet and the loss of 14,873,097 people. Instead, he dutifully listed the officers and spacers he wanted to nominate for commendation and promotion. He could do that much, at least.

The FLASH priority message interrupted his work. A courier frigate had arrived in-system, bearing what were almost certainly bad news.

“Commander Grayson from Naval Operations wishes to meet with you.” The report from the bridge arrived seconds behind the eyes-only message saying the same thing.

“Have him escorted to my office as soon as he arrives on board.”

He closed his eyes, but he could still see that damned number.

* * *

Kerensky had met Commander Alfred Grayson before. The Navy troubleshooter normally could have stepped out of a recruiting video. Tall, blonde and fit, with a dimpled chin and an aura of almost insolent self-confidence about him, the man usually looked completely unflappable. His salute was crisp and his posture perfect, but something in his eyes betrayed the officer’s frayed nerves. He was the bearer of very bad news indeed. Something had happened, and it was dire enough to require a face-to-face meeting instead of even a highly-encrypted ship transmission.

“If I may, Admiral?” Grayson said after both men had exchanged the usual military pleasantries and sat down. “I have a classified communique to upload.”

“Go ahead.”

The sealed orders were sent via direct laser-comm and uploaded into his imp in a couple of seconds, mostly spent in validation and de-encryption procedures. They were short and to the point, and they left Kerensky as breathless as if struck by a punch to the solar plexus.

“Congratulations, Admiral,” the commander said when Kerensky regained his composure and looked up.

“I’m to leave CRURON 23 and report back to Earth to assume command of…” he said, trying to ascertain if what he’d just read was true and not some implant-generated fantasy.

“Of Seventh Fleet, sir. I am to escort you there and assist you in any way you require until you assemble your personal staff.”

“Why?” Kerensky blurted out.

“It’s all in the attached report, sir. But to summarize, the Navy was targeted by a series of covert decapitation strikes. The assigned commander of Seventh Fleet, Admiral Henderson, was killed. Admirals DuPont, Conway, Finnegan and Herrera are also dead.”

“I see,” Kerensky said as he mentally scanned the reams of attached information he’d been too stunned to review.

He was glad he was sitting down.

The assassins claimed to belong to the Galactic Justice Army, a terrorist organization comprised mainly of human renegades. They were the kind of nutjobs that believed humanity was a cancer on Earth and the universe at large, and thus deserved to be exterminated. They’d never amounted to much, being about as popular as leprosy-inducing herpes among the general public, not to mention ruthlessly hunted by Homeland Security, so this was most likely a false-flag operation.

Starfarers abhorred decapitation strikes, since retaliation in kind would ensure anybody espousing such tactics would come to their own untimely end. As a war-winning move, it wasn’t all that effective, either. That made it pointless, not to mention nekulturny. A polity whose survival depended on an individual or a few people was doomed without resorting to such unsavory methods. Assassinations just weren’t done. Except the enemy had just crossed that line, and in this case it might accomplish something substantial.

The initial attack had taken place during a meeting at the Hexagon in New Washington. How the GJA had managed to smuggle a bomb powerful enough to level a huge section of the highly-secure building remained a mystery. Within the ensuing seventy-two-hours, several assassin teams had struck across several American systems. The commanders of Second and Third Fleet had been murdered; other attempts on similar targets had been thwarted, although casualties and collateral damage had been heavy. Bombs, snipers and poison had all been used liberally. Admiral Sondra Givens of Sixth Fleet, a close friend of Kerensky’s, had barely escaped with her life.

No civilian leader had been targeted. This made sense if the attacks’ objective was purely military. While politicians were a dime a dozen, the experience and skills of those dead admirals wouldn’t be so easily replaced.

“The Lampreys,” he said. That sort of underhanded move just smacked of the treacherous bastards.

“That is everyone’s assumption, sir,” Commander Grayson said. “Although the Galactic Imperium cannot be discounted as a suspect. Just because the Gimps would never normally do this doesn’t mean much, sir. They consider this conflict a holy war of sorts after all.”

Kerensky nodded. “And when the enemy is the Devil, any and all measures can be contemplated.” The Imperium wasn’t given to religious mania, but humans had inspired them beyond logic or reason.

“The ETs won’t get a second chance,” Commander Grayson continued. “The War Powers Act passed Congress a few days before the attacks, and all likely alien sympathizers have been rounded up. A few assassins were captured alive, and interrogation uncovered some of their support network. Between that and improved security measures, the likelihood of another attack is near-zero, sir.”

Kerensky knew the reality behind the bloodless words: humans and aliens seized by grim-faced Homeland Security agents and dragged off into the night. Invariably, some of them would be innocent of anything beyond voicing the wrong ideas on social media. Collateral damage wasn’t limited to the front lines.

“In any case, the damage is already done,” he said out loud. “The bench is empty and they’ll give even a disgraced admiral a chance.”

“Sir, with all due respect, you are doing yourself a disservice. I studied the Heinlein campaign in detail at Naval Ops. The use of massive missile volleys occurred too recently for the Navy to develop effective tactics to counter it. Nobody blames you for what happened to Fifth Fleet.”

I do.

He didn’t voice that thought, however. He knew that he’d been broken by that defeat, and was no good for anything for several months after that. When he’d gotten over that funk, Kerensky had been happy to accept any sort of posting. The Hewer Administration – or Hewer Regime, as it was informally known – couldn’t afford the political capital needed to give a defeated admiral a major fleet command. Until now.

“Admiral Carruthers survived the attack on the Hexagon. He ordered me to ask you one question personally. Off the record.”

Kerensky nodded, turning off his imp’s recorders. Carruthers had been his mentor, and most likely the man who’d engineered this reassignment.

“Go ahead.”

“His words were: ‘Are you ready?’”

A simple question, deserving of a simple answer. The job was his for the taking. Assume control of Seventh Fleet, the force that would interpose itself between the vast Gal-Imp armada pushing implacably through Wyrm space towards its ultimate target: Sol System, the cradle of humanity, its largest population center and the fulcrum upon which his nation and species rested.

Could he handle a fleet command, one bigger than the last one, a command where the stakes were orders of magnitude greater? If he lost, it wouldn’t be fifteen million civilians who paid the price. It’d be six billion on Sol System alone, and a billion among all the systems in between. Seven warp transits between the edge of Wyrm space and Earth. Seven chances to stop the invaders cold, terminating at humanity’s doorstep.

“Yes, I am.”

Honor and compassion might be beyond him, but he might be able to achieve a measure of redemption.

Lahiri Proving Grounds, Lahiri System, AFC 167

Emergence.

It was chaos and old night out there. The looming shape of a Lamprey dreadnought, all three kilometers of it, flashed like a Christmas tree: each burst of light marked a weapon hardpoint spitting death downrange. Not a welcoming sight when you pop out of warp a couple kilometers from it. Sort of like starting a knife fight with a grizzly bear.

Eat shit and die.

Lieutenant Gus ‘Bingo’ Chandler squeezed two shots from his main gun while he thought his evil thoughts, cycling the weapon as fast as it could go, three seconds from first shot to the next. The Lamprey’s force fields and composite armor buckled and burst open, spewing flames and sheer radiance; Gus vanished from the universe just as a dozen point-defense laser beams descended upon him like the angry glare of some pagan god.

Transition.

Blessed silence for a change. The smart guys at Medical had finally worked out Gus’ Melange dosage, and he could enjoy warp space once again. Somewhere not too far away, four of the other five pilots in his flight were there as well, all fine and dandy, cool as so many cucumbers. Problem was, the fifth one wasn’t cool at all.

It’s coming for meeee!

The thought came out as an endless scream, a psychic sound like nails on a chalkboard. Sounded like Howard ‘SOL’ Soledad was getting tagged by a Foo. Not good.

“Beta Flight, continue transit.” The steady voice of Lieutenant Commander Deborah ‘Grinner’ Genovisi cut through the screaming and the growing panic among the other pilots. “I got this.”

Bingo had seen the spooky flight leader pull plenty of rabbits out of her proverbial hat; he didn’t even try to argue with her orders and concentrated on arriving at his preset destination. Grinner would get SOL out, or neither of them would come out of warp. There was nothing the rest of the flight could do to change that outcome, except by adding another name to the casualty list.

Emergence.

Another massive object filled his screen, but it was a welcome sight: the USS Schwarzenegger, a converted Governor-class cruiser deemed too fragile for actual combat and relegated to the role of training carrier vessel. He’d made it home yet again.

Five other fighters arrived within one second of his, including Grinner and SOL. The warp witch had pulled it off again. She might be spooky as hell, but she’d saved the lives of everyone on Flight B’s lives at least once, which made her a damn good witch. When their lives hadn’t been on the line, she’d also kept them from a medical discharge while the docs put their brains back together. You didn’t just risk your life when you signed up for Top Gun: your mind and possibly your soul also ended up on the table.

The training sortie had been successful, at least. The simulated Lamprey ship was dead in space, a confirmed ‘kill.’ If this had been for real, everyone on Flight B could paint the silhouette of the dreadnought on their War Eagles’ fuselage. Too bad it wasn’t for real. Especially since they’d almost lost a guy – KIA or MIA in warp, you were just as gone as if this had been actual combat.

“Sorry guys,” SOL sent out through their t-wave link. “Kinda lost it there for a second.”

Training or not, the fact they were making actual warp jumps – no way to simulate those – made them almost as dangerous as actual combat missions. No flak meant you couldn’t die on this side of the universe, but the other side remained ‘dark and full of terrors,’ in the words of some pre-Contact writer one of their instructors had been fond of quoting.

“Shit happens,” Grinner said. The flight leader’s mental voice was as cool and collected as her real-life one. In the six months since she’d assumed command of Flight B, Fourth Squadron, Fourth Carrier Space Wing, she’d put her hard-earned experience to good use, whipping everyone into shape. They’d all gotten their flight wings a mere two weeks ago, and they needed all the training they could get before they went into actual combat.

Which was going to happen sooner rather than later.

Grinner hadn’t said it in so many words; neither had the squadron’s commander, Captain ‘Papa’ Schneider, but everyone had figured it out: they were getting rushed into combat, ready or not, because they needed fighters very badly, and they needed them now, not in a year or two, which was what the still brand-new manual had called for originally. As it was, training attrition had been nasty: of Bingo’s class of three hundred candidates, only two hundred and twenty had made it to graduation. This last shakedown might cause a couple more – SOL among them – to lose their wings, reducing that number even more.

That’d be a shame: they’d all gone through their naming ceremony a few days before, after getting certified and licensed like a pack of good doggies. He’d earned the handle Bingo because during a training sortie he’d returned to base with a near-dry bird, a.k.a. bingo power. The War Eagle’s miniature gluon power plants could run out of power on you if you weren’t careful, and he hadn’t been. Still, he’d made it back, and that was good enough to keep him in the program.

Of course, there were worse things than washing out. Like a close encounter with a Foo. He still had nightmares about his first time. And the second and third, for that matter. Being chased by Warplings wasn’t the sort of thing you got used to.

Warp ghosts were nasty, but all they could do was scare you or bum you out. Warplings, Foos, or demons, whatever you wanted to call them, were different. If you did enough jumps in a row, they spotted you and started giving chase. The one that had come after Bingo had been like a giant shark; he hadn’t really seen it, but that was what his gut had told him. Huge, hungry, and cold.

Bing shook his head to clear it off as the flight went through docking procedures. While in theory it might be possible to warp directly into a carrier, warp arrivals were as destructive as a large bomb, so it was easier to arrive near the mothership and make a conventional entry instead. Of course, in combat that meant trying to enter a hangar bay when you and your target were moving at three hundred kilometers per second, give or take, and the neighborhood was full of energy beams and missiles. Some mornings, Bingo woke up wondering why the hell he’d ever volunteered for the Navy fighter pilot program. Marines were crazy enough to do this kind of shit, but those in the senior service were supposed to have more sense than that.

He guided his ship through the small hole on the side of the carrier and let a graviton grapple carry his bird the rest of the way. That gave him a few seconds of peace and quiet. Truth was, he wouldn’t trade being a pilot for the world. Ever since he’d undergone the treatments to increase his warp tolerance to superhuman levels, he’d changed. Improved, you might say. It was worth it, even if you could get killed in two dozen different ways in the course of a sortie.  

At least, that was what he kept telling himself.

“You all right, sir?”

Bingo sat up. A team of spacers was done servicing the outside of his bird and was waiting for him to get out of their way. From the tone of that imp-to-imp call, he’d spaced out a little too long for their liking.

Their thoughts popped into his head. He sleeping in there? Fucking space cadet.

“Heading out,” he said. An imp command released the hatch over the cramped cockpit. The War Eagle wasn’t much to look at, or fun to be inside of for that matter. It was little more than a big-ass battleship main gun with a pilot compartment welded on top, plus miniaturized warp generators and power plant, and a few other gizmos, mostly converted from orbital shuttle systems. A teleporting cannon, in other words, driven back and forth by a crazed warp wizard who might be going crazier with every jump. And a flight of six of those mothers could reduce a dreadnought to boiling plasma in two or three passes.

  The spacers let him climb down in grudging silence. He caught a couple of unspoken comments – mostly variations of ‘Asshole’ – with his special powers. He wondered what was going to happen when more people learned how to look inside the minds of their fellow humans. Nothing good, he figured.

He shrugged at his own thoughts as he joined up with the rest of the squadron. Most of them were laughing and joking around, except Grinner, who was kind of half-smiling and looking all wise and enigmatic. She’d been doing witchy stuff for a long time, so if anyone knew what the future held for humanity, it would be her.

Not that he was going to ask her. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her answer.

* * *

They had their sailing orders at last.

“Seventh Fleet,” Bingo said. He and the rest of CSW-4, all forty-eight fighters of it, had been assigned to a brand-new fleet carrier, the largest one ever built. The USS Enterprise; the ‘Big E’ would ferry two full Space Wings, ninety-six fighters total, effectively giving her more firepower than any ship in the galaxy. The massive ship had originally been designed as a dreadnought, her plans changed halfway through construction after the Battle of Parthenon. They’d taken out all its main gun batteries, made room for fighter bays, and added a ton more point-defense emplacements and two layers of force fields; between those and its overlapping warp shields, the Big E was going to be very hard to sink.

Good thing, Bingo thought. Because as soon as the enemy figures out what it is, every motherlover in range is going to try to bend her.

The carrier and the rest of the fleet was headed for Paulus System, which was threatened by the Lampreys and, now that the Wyrms were giving up, the Gimps. They might even get to fight both sets of ETs at the same time. Talk about a target rich environment.

“Under Kerensky,” Mike ‘Mooch’ Kowalski groused. “Bastard had one fleet shot off from under him. That’s not good.”

“They wouldn’t give him a second chance if they didn’t think he could cut it,” Bingo said.

“He’s good,” Grinner joined in. “I served under him my first time around, in the Ohio.”

The USS Ohio had fought in the Gremlin War and been decommissioned after it was over. At the time, Bingo’s father had been in second grade. Just another reminder that Grinner Genovisi was pushing a hundred and had been a weirdo even before becoming a fighter pilot. She’d started out as a warp navigator, and those had been the weirdest peeps in the fleet until the War Eagle jocks had come around.

“Good skipper, good man in a storm,” Grinner went on. “He’s still hurting after the Battle of Heinlein, but he’s up for the job.”

Nobody asked her how she knew that last bit. They didn’t have to. Spooky shit, but they were all getting used to it. Gus was still a noob when it came to Warp Hoodoo, but he could pick up other people’s feelings if he put his mind to it. Nobody played poker with fighter pilots anymore. He couldn’t blame them.

 Word was that the Navy was working on ways to give normal people the same abilities as warp pilots, at least when it came to mind-to-mind chatter. And they had already figured out a way to keep them out of the minds of flag officers. A couple idiots who’d tried to take a peek into the carrier task force’s commander had come back sorry and sore, and been unwilling to share any details, beyond telling everyone that they shouldn’t try it.

For the time being, though, only pilots had those special abilities. The whole thing fell under the heading of ‘FM Systems’ – Fucking Magic, in so many words.

Considering what they were going up against, they would need every last bit of magic they could get.