Hunter/Killer

Hunter/Killer
By Sketchy Warrior

A Pinwheel Story

Chapter 1: Cold Lump of Metal

	Before his displays, the starfield swam past in that slow mechanical drift that it adhered to since time began. The pinpoints of light broke into the cockpit through the wide view screen. It mesmerized Gibberish as he leaned back in the flight couch that doubled as his bunk, foot hooked on the rung at the base of his seat. His stomach swam and groaned in the zero-g as he sat up and pulled his control display in front of him. He pulled at the zipper of his flight suit, sliding thick, insulating fabric from around his shoulder. The cockpit was warmer than he liked, but familiar to him after previous tours. It always heated up when they sat on the float with their sensors reaching out into the black, hunting for the slightest sign of their quarry. They could vent the waste heat, but that would break stealth and make them stand out against the cold shadow of the asteroid they were parked behind. He switched from one feed to another, slowly parsing through the vacuum around them.
	He coughed, feeling a scratch in his throat as he pushed away from his seat, drifting up towards the cockpit roof. As he drifted, he rubbed at the knot in his neck from the hard foam padding of the flight couch. He rolled, pulling himself along the recessed handholds in the ceiling towards the rear of the cabin. He began whistling a sharp tune, some old opening theme to a show from his youth. The bright, cheerful tune conjured memories in his mind of his boyhood home, sitting at the edge of town, looking off into the deep Finnish woods and the cartoons he binged on Saturday mornings. He passed the restroom, kicking out at the door with his boot before a bang came back from inside.
	“You still alive in there, Dakota?”
	“Yeah, really wish I wasn’t right now.”
	“I’d just miss you more, then,” Gibberish laughed as he continued on.
	He slowed, pulling himself next to a small panel at the rear of the cabin. Behind it hummed the powerplant and battery banks of the craft, the slow breathing of the slumbering strike craft resonated through the bulkhead to his ears. He pulled at the panel latch, swinging it open and revealing a small dispenser lined by several sealed bulbs of water. He clasped one, breaking it free of the dispenser rack and closed the panel before kicking his way back towards the cockpit.
	As he drifted, he resumed his sweet whistling, painting the cockpit with a chirping birdsong as he opened the seal on the bulb and let small globes of water dance behind him in zero-g. They shimmered in the low light of the cabin, twinkling like a handful of stars before he swept them through his fingers before sucking them up, feeling a soothing cool feeling roll over him.
	He swung himself back down into his couch, strapping himself in and pulling the displays back up. The stars continued in their uncaring march and Gibberish found himself staring at nothing. That seems to be par for the course, he mused, a whole lot of nothing out here but dust and gas. Not what he had in mind when he saw the recruitment posters growing up, but at least he wasn’t stuck behind some desk or getting shot at on some muddy hellhole. His eyes crept back up to the starfield beyond, watching the inexorable dance spread before him. Sure there wasn’t much to see out here, but damn, it had a beautiful view now and then.
	The toilet hissed behind his seat as the vacuum pulled its cargo away to the storage tank, and the door clicked open. Dakota drifted out, shutting the door behind her and swinging herself forward with the recessed handholds in the cockpit ceiling. She stopped halfway up the cockpit and opened one of the storage bins in the walls, fishing out a sealed juice bag and resuming her forward progress. She dropped into her seat behind his and slid her boots into the rung at the bottom.
	“What does that make? Four times today?"
	"Not my fault, that ration pack made me sick. You see anything?"
	"Just cold vacuum for now, but that may just be changing," he answered as the sensors flashed an alert. "Looks like our bird found something."
	"Really now?"
	"Yeah, open tightbeam with Fir. We'll warm up while we wait for the delay.
	He pulled up the sensor feed, the camera zeroing on a small cluster of heat several million kilometers away in the shadow of another asteroid drifting in its lazy route around the star. The feed zoomed in as the LADAR array honed in on the cluster, lancing out at the speed of light.
	"Tightbeam's locked. You're green on the mic," Dakota said behind him.
	"Fir, this is Gibberish," He started. "We've got a possible mark on our boys. How copy, over?"
	There came a brief silence as the comms array shot its message to the AP-1 "Skua" Patrol Bomber drifting cold and dark a few thousand kilometers above them. The communique shot back quick and clear in his headset.
	"We hear you, Gibberish. We're going to warm our torps and engines. Let's go hunting. Over."
	The light delay passed by as they strapped into their seats, checking the vacuum seals on their flight suits and throwing on the simple helmets that slaved to their data feeds and weapons. The seats primed, pulling the two of them into a firm embrace as the engines kicked to life and began to push them out from the shadow of the asteroid. The light of the pale white star down the gravity well blazed through the cockpit windows before the shaders darkened the glass for their eyes.
	The LADAR scan came back, filling Gibberish's HUD with a three-dimensional render of the contact. Before him, the largest object was a massive, oblong asteroid two dozen kilometers across at the broadest point riddled with craters and other scars from eons in the void. The asteroid sat, lit along its left hemisphere by the star while pitch-black shadow wrapped the right. Hovering off the right hemisphere, in the shadows, was his quarry laid out in a tight cluster. He zoomed him, panning over the group, trying to bridge the gaps where the LADAR beam had been blocked by one object or another. It was a cluster of ships that was easy enough to tell from their target profiles, but he was more interested in this little flotilla's exact makeup.
	The largest shape was the center of it all was a supertanker spanning hundreds of meters in length that dwarfed most of the small escorts around it, the tiny cockpit flanked by the rows of spherical liquid gas tanks that ferried its cargo along. Its massive hydrogen engines would have propelled it if it wasn't parked in the shadow of the asteroid with its transponder off. Without the transponder, Gibberish couldn't identify it quickly, but combined with the mismatched mix of civilian and outdated UNN naval ships, it screamed pirates in the back of his mind. He switched away from the LADAR display to his briefing and panned through it for the shorthand list of missing ships in the relative area. Among them was the FTS Mari-Lou, a gas freighter hijacked about three weeks ago. Gibberish pulled the LADAR feed back up and flicked back and forth between it and the brief. The LADAR had detected a handful of decommissioned UNN ships and six cargo ships, the supercarrier included. The brief detailed eight cargo ships and one civilian liner were lost in total, so the numbers were within a solid margin.
	"Dakota, I want tightbeam to the task force," He started, before keying his headset. "Fir, I'm seeing old UNN ships and cargo haulers in that cluster. They aren't ours, so we'll call it in, over."
	"Copy, Gibberish. What do you see for target calling? Over."
	"Feeding LADAR readout. It looks like one old warden, three CIWS barges, and four or five gunboats, but I can't be certain. I'm dead set on the five jump freighters and one gas super. Over."
	"Yeah, that fat bastard's too hard to miss. You thinking pirates? Over."
	"Without a doubt, but we'll follow procedure and call the task force for fire support. We're still a better part of the day from them unless they come to us. Over."
"Copy that, we'll follow your lead. Over and out."
	"I have tightbeam lock on the JPJ, Gib. You're green on comms."
	"Thank you, Kota."
	Gibberish cleared his throat before starting.
	"John Paul Jones, Hotel Kilo 1-1. We are departing the asteroid cluster HHF-552 at mission time 192:55:30. Sensors detected an anomaly at asteroid HMR-999. LADAR located a flotilla of at least fifteen ships without transponders hiding in the asteroid's shadow. Possibly refueling from the supertanker.  Hotel Kilo 1-1 and 1-2 are moving to attack position and should be in ambush position in T-minus sixteen hours, 7 minutes. LADAR readings and flight pathing are attached to the transmission. HK 1-1 over and out."
	He hit send and watched the onboard computer compress his recording and beam it out, racing away at the speed of light. It would be some time before they got a reply with the task force parked several light-hours away. In his mind, he could picture them sitting over the second planet in the star system, a fledgling colony world with a population in the low millions. Ostriv, he thought that was its name. It looked like a pretty little marble from his cockpit, but Gibberish never liked being planetside. Everything was too heavy, but that could be all the time on the float playing hell with his body.
	He pulled up the LADAR feeds again, watching the light-delayed afterimage of the possible pirates hanging 16 hours away on the dark side of a voidborne rock. For a brief moment, Paavo "Gibberish" Jaeru felt infinitesimally small in his seat, hurtling towards a gunfight at several thousand kilometers per second and accelerating.  They were a Hunter-Killer flight, roaming out far from their carrier to look for any enemy far from the guns and sensors of their mothership. His EPR-1 "Albatross" was only half of the mission, handling the electronics sensor suites and comms arrays that allowed them to roam far and hunt effectively. The other half was the AP-1 "Skua" flying relatively close with a heavy load of anti-ship torpedoes of varying explosive yield that would take the targeting data from the “Albatross” and carry out the attack runs with letah precision and surprise. Both of the voidcraft were based on the spaceframe of the reliable AS-100 "Penguin" gunships that had become a workhorse craft for the Coalition.
	While the Penguins were limited by the need to survive reentry and have the thrust to escape from planetary gravity wells, the Skua and Albatross didn't. They stripped the thermal protection plating and other useless systems, replacing them with stealth composites, more powerful engines, increased payloads, and other supplementary systems such as solar chargers and heat sinks that greatly expanded mission range and striking power. With summation of their components, the Hunter-Killer flights formed a vector for carrying out unseen patrols and unexpected attacks against any enemy they met in the cold, ruthless void.

Chapter 2: Hunting Pirates is Good Business

	Thousands of kilometers away, Rear Admiral Adam Ravensburg stood in the dim Combat Information Center of the John Paul Jones, a Yu Sun-Sin-class escort and patrol carrier tasked with tracking down rogue pirates and brigands across the frontier. She was a good ship, swift and clean, focused on her duties with only a small suite of 20 strike craft for various missions. While only a fraction the size of the larger fleet or assault carriers in the UNN’s toolkit, she filled a vital role of force projection across the frontier to reassure the colonies of the UNN’s presence and remind pirates that their nefarious pillaging wasn’t welcome anytime or anywhere. The long, sleek space frame reminded Ravensburg of a lance, reaching out far from the wielder to strike his foe.
Ravensburg shook himself from his thoughts and returned his focus to the display before him. His eyes traced the system's orbital paths across the volumetric display before him as the displays around him flickered with communications amongst his task force. He found the lulls a tedious strain on his sanity but understood its necessity. Piracy against commerce had grown substantially across the frontier and demanded action in addition to extending a screen to hopefully catch any Betelguesan ships that slipped past the main fleets far out amongst the stars.
	He prayed that his task force would never have to face down a hive fleet. Their task force, Red 12, was built for speed and subtlety consisting of the lighter John Paul Jones. She was escorted by two Warden patrol corvettes, Longbow and Yangtze; two torpedo boats, Whiskey Rose and Espana; and a contingent of six CIWS ships, Bulwark, Quebec, Meredith, Jackdaw, Black Bart, and Tangiers. Against a ramshackle pirate force, it was more than enough. Compared to the jump carriers that formed the heart of larger war fleets, the JPJ was a fraction of their size. She carried only a fractional number of strike craft with only twelve Beewolf space superiority fighters with a mix of two dropships, two Penguin gunships, two Skua attacker variants, and two Albatross patrol variants.
He brought his mind back from his command's simple logistics to the map as it chimed with a new alert. He'd deployed his Skuas and Albatrosses in a pair of hunter/killer flights to scout out past the small asteroid belt and nearer gas giant, Eureka, that dominated the middle reach of this system. His console chimed as he took the call.
	"Go for Command," he started, shifted forward on his knuckles, and leaned against the console.
	"Hunter-Killer 1 has found possible enemy force hiding in a small cluster near the asteroid belt. Forwarding message to you."
	Ravensburg pulled up the message, listening as the flight commander relayed the enemy force and location, making notes on the displays before him. The pirates were oriented radially out from him, almost in line with the task force. Hunter-Killer 1 was burning hard with this solar system's clockwise spin, slowing gaining on the pirates. In less than fourteen hours, they would be behind the fleet in open space. Once it concluded, he turned to his second-in-command, Captain Judd, hovering at the edge of the twilight cast by the display.
	"Where is Hunter-Killer 2's last known position?"
	"Due to radio silence, they're expected to be somewhere in the shadow of Eureka about here," Judd responded as he updated the display. "If Hunter-Killer 1 can alert them, they may be able to shift and come over the northern pole and behind the pirates like so…"
The flight moved over the pole, coming in from the rear left quadrant of the pirate force.
	"And with us attacking along the radius of the solar system," Ravensburg interjected, "We'd encompass them from all sides. They'll never see the hunters until they've already fired all they have. Notify the Yangtze to deploy one standoff missile immediately. Comms, set tightbeam to Hunter-Killer 1, and pass my orders along.
	He cleared his throat before the comms officer nodded to begin.
	"Hotel Kilo 1-1, this is John Paul Jones. Continue your trajectory. The Yangtze is deploying one standoff missile to intercept. ETA is fourteen hours from recording. On terminal approach, engage at will. Red 12 will be jumping into ambush position on the far side of the pirate fleet. If possible, relay orders via tightbeam to Hotel Kilo 2-1 outward of Eureka to attack over the northern pole. Deploy a repeater probe one hour before engagement to issue a demand for surrender. If they decline or attack, engage at will: godspeed and good hunting. Send. Put the task force to general alert and have engineering prepare the jump drives. We have fourteen hours to prepare, and sloppiness makes bastards of us all.
	He turned back to the display, watching the slow drift of heavenly bodies play out before him in such a simple format. Outside, the task force hummed as the ships began pre-battle preparations and began to slowly charge up their jump drives while the Yangtze shuddered in the cold vacuum. From a boom extending from the starboard flank, a long cylindrical silo opened and kicked the immense standoff missile free from its housing. The gentle hiss of monopropellant pushed it away from its berth before the main thruster glowed to life in a bright point of starlight. The immense 45-meter long object began to hurdle faster and faster, pushing itself beyond any safe acceleration for a human, unburdened by the need to keep its crew alive as it ran towards its quarry with all the indifference a cold machine mind could impart.
	With his orders given, Ravensburg turned and departed quietly from the CIC, turning down the spartan corridor and towards the hangar bay with Captain Judd matching his pace. He checked salutes along his journey down the length of the simple ship as the general alert buzzed overhead.
	"What do you make of our situation, Captain?" Ravensburg asked as they reached the elevator, waiting for a response and the chime of the machine.
	"We're in an advantageous position, that's clear enough. Our targets appear to be unaware anyone is watching them for a start, so the first strike should be ours. As for what follows, we should be ready for anything, sir."
	The elevator chimed, opening to take the two men down to the next deck.
	"How so?"
	The doors closed, pulling down into the carrier's underside.
	"The main pirate band in this sector was some Rask horde going by the Golden Scar or some dribble like that. I wouldn't expect them to surrender easily. They may even try to scuttle with us or require a boarding action to bring them to heel."
	"An astute observation, which is why stealth should be our friend. The less chance to shoot, ram, or scuttle us, the better. As for now, I'll inform our resident marine contingent before taking some time to rest before our surprise attack. You're dismissed, Captain."
	"Understood, sir. I'll see you in the CIC in approximately...thirteen hours.
	"Oh, Captain, one last thing."
	"Sir?"
	"Do you know what the galley has prepared today?"
	"Not at the moment, but I believe it is tuna fish and salad today, sir."
	"Delicious…"
	The door opened out onto the deck, and they stepped out, nodding to one another before turning to head in separate directions. Ravensburg strolled down to his left past the doors for the sickbay, the galley, and the recreation rooms before coming to the general crew quarters. He glanced around the space before he was spotted by an attentive crew member.
	"Officer on deck," one sailor called, pulling the rest of the room to snap attention before the rear admiral relieved them and continued down the rows of bunks arranged between the bulkheads in tight triple stacks that made him squirm in a familiar discomfort of his previous days as an ensign. As he reached the far end of the crew quarters, he found the space-saving triple stacks replaced by several larger double bunks occupied by a handful of Borealans going about their lives while several human marines milled about in their midst. They rose with the rear admiral's arrival before he put them at ease. Ravensburg set his pale brown eyes on the marines' commander Lieutenant Edmond and the Alpha of the Borealans, Zazak, an immense Elysian tiger with scars to recount his stellar odyssey.
	"Lieutenant Edmond, I've come down here to personally notify you that we may have a mission for you."
	"And what would that entail, Rear Admiral?"
	"A boarding action against pirate vessels. At approximately 2420 local time, we'll be engaging a possible pirate fleet and would send your contingent over to capture them before they can scuttle or flee."
	"Any information about who is on board, sir?" Zazak resonated in his deep baritone.
	"At this moment, no, but we suspect Rask brigands, so you and your pack would be first aboard. For now, rest and prepare. That is all."
	"Understood, sir."
	Ravensburg turned on his heel and slipped out of the general crew quarters, seeking out his private room and the privacy it entailed. He crossed through the galley and came to a halt outside his door, pecking at his archaic keypad. He passed through the sliding door as it opened with a whoosh. He loosened the collar of his uniform and slumped into his chair and flicked on the screen on the far wall, setting it to the external camera.
	In a second, the wall became a passing feed of the task force hovering above the world that filled his view with Ostriv, a fledgling colony of approximately one hundred fifty thousand spreading out across the surface from the spaceport marking its largest city, Port Arthur. As the world below spun slowly, he could pick out Port Arthur by the twinkling lights that stood out against the nightside. He'd heard they made an excellent red wine down there, but he hadn't been able to determine that for himself.

****

	The standoff missile continued its long, accelerating burn towards the asteroid belt present in this system. It cruised on a constant burn of hydrogen fuel, racing on without consideration for time, heat, or cold. The target lay ahead, anchored behind its asteroid shelter; the afterimages of the task force hung behind. The standoff's optical navigation suite wolfed down any data it could to support the inertial navigation system, but not replace it. Everything it saw was a ghost, delayed by the immense distance, first by seconds, then by minutes, then hours as it drove headlong onward. It cared not for the more profound questions about how or why the universe moved, only that it did move and via relativity, the missile adjusted course. Some said the missile knew where it was because it knew where it wasn't, and technically this was the case since the distances it flew at were too great for remote control, and those delays grew longer with each passing second. That forced it to rely on an advanced algorithm to work through vast computational derivations and integrations to account for the error in its trajectory as time flowed by in that silent vacuum about it, running through the layers of its guidance protocols as it carried on with its mission. As the target moved in its orbit of the star, the Standoff would correct its flight and continue on.
	The HPM-545 Inter-Orbital Ballistic Missile "Standoff 2" was a simple evolution of the UNN's MAST program, bypassing the need for terrestrial launch and instead focused entirely on maximizing delta-V to bring interplanetary defense into play. It wouldn't replace a proper warship, but as a supplement or booster to a planetary defense grid or task force, it added a surprisingly long reach. The Standoff 2 was a simple fire and forget weapon fed a rough flight plan derived by onboard computers before launch, racing off to the target area before the warhead activated. Corrections could be made remotely but at the cost of light delays and the possibility of a target jumping away before impact.
	Depending on the mission profile, different warheads could be utilized from swarms of more nimble torpedoes to massed clouds of kinetic kill vehicles and even large nuclear payloads against particularly large targets. This missile, in particular, was laden with a cluster of torpedoes hidden within its fairing that would fan out and overwhelm point defense guns of anything not marked by IFF tags while the missile's now-defunct core could become one final kinetic weapon. However, this flight was slightly different in that there would be an allied presence downrange, serving as a laser pointer to indicate targets and improve the probability of a direct hit. This made the onboard computer somewhat serene in that it wouldn't have to continually account for the likelihood that the target area was empty and the missile had wasted its fuel and brief moments of freedom.
	Ahead the asteroid became clear to the optical guidance system, standing out from the myriad of other points of light across the black tapestry around it. It was evident due to its rotating surface's gentle flicker that caught the scant light of the star far behind, towards the inner system. Now and then, in shortening intervals, the communications suite would receive a short data pulse from a moving point to the right with respect to the asteroid. It was a guidance update from the allied flight in the area, walking in the Standoff 2 as it neared terminal approach. The onboard computer hummed and chirped in its cold languages, a creole mixture of digital and analog, binary and nonbinary, flashing across the control lines and command nets of this simple machine brain. For a moment, it flared in thought as it was fed targeting data, passing that to the dozens of plasma torpedoes in the conical nose of the standoff. Despite knowing its termination lay ahead, an inevitability in the shadow of the asteroid, it burned on without hesitation or doubt. It was a missile, all it knew was its code, all it bore was its mission to seek and destroy. Its engines flared, putting it into a curving drift to circle the asteroid over its upper left quadrant as the computer whined out "Daisy Bell” from a command line buried deep in its flight code.

Chapter 3: The Black Raptors

	"Standoff's almost to terminal. T-minus five minutes to alpha strike," Gibberish shot across the tightbeam lines. He tugged at the collar of his flight suit, feeling the sweat building up in the humid cabin. He reran his targeting diagnostic, painting the plethora of ships ahead of him and passing the targeting data to the Skua out to his right somewhere in the black and the incoming missile flaring upwards in its final approach. The ships ahead were scrambling to warm their engines and move, knowing that someone was targeting them. Small alarms flared and passed inside their cockpit, tugging at Gibberish's ears as the pirates whipped their targeting systems around, looking for the source, but finding none. At this range, the Skua and Albatross were invisible, wrapped in anti-radar composites molded to reduce their radar cross-section. Furthermore, with their heat sinks were stowed, they were almost invisible to other sensor suites, but it warmed the cabin substantially until the heat was vented.
	The ships fueling cut their umbilicals and puttered away, leaving wisping clouds of hydrogen gas in their wake. They broadcast on wideband systems, the gnashing and ugly Rask language flickered in and out of his headset as they screamed for orders and organization after they'd rejected the surrender order. Slowly, the pirates began to make their retreat from the asteroid. They were coming towards Gibberish's flight as they worked to put distance between them and the missile.
	"You ready?" Dakota asked from the pilot's seat before him.
	"As ready as we can be. At least I pissed before this."
	"Same."
	"Fir, time for the angel dance."
	"They don't even know we're here," their wingmen called.
	Through his displays and the exterior window, he spotted the task force's superlight bloom marking their short jump from down the well. At the heart of the cluster, the long dagger shape of the John Paul Jones stood out in its naval gray color, catching the scant light of the sun, even out here. Points of light flared from the ventral hangar as her fighter wings scrambled out of her hanger bays. The starboard rail cannon flashed with the first, automatic shot and sent its immense tungsten slug hurtling towards the pirates. From above, there came a second starburst as the standoff hit terminal and blossomed out and hurled its two dozen torpedoes out into the fray.
	At this moment, Gibberish triggered the active targeting array, painting everything marked enemy as a valid target. He could hear the alarms in his head as the Rask received the immense burst of alerts that he'd locked them and was bombarding their sensors with light bursts and radio static to blind them while he called them out to any allied gun. It was something they'd referred to as the wolf's call, sending a shiver down anyone's spine at the sudden and terrible sound and its implications. He lurched on his couch as Dakota pushed the throttle to full, running out the heat sinks now that stealth was broken, and they made maneuvers to avoid any potential fire. In his seat, he could feel the G-forces pulling and pushed him as they raced onwards, towards the pirates.
Fir's Skua ran out its payload off to his flank, picking target after target that Gibberish fed it and throwing one torpedo after another into the mix. It only took a matter of seconds for their entire payload to launch before the hunter/killer flight spun and burned hard towards the asteroid, aiming to evade any enemy return fire.
	The first swarm of torpedoes fell onto the pirate fleet as glowing strands of CIWS fire raced out to counter them. Some burst in the void, halted by a spray of small slugs while others ran onwards. In the chaos of the ambush, the supertanker took a number of direct hits. It ignited the hydrogen onboard with a cascading explosion that caught another of the cargo ships and a gunboat in the spray of debris before the fireball was snuffed by the vacuum. From all sides, the deluge of torpedoes sewed chaos among the pirate formation, shredding another of the cargo ships and rending its engine cluster from the long, slender frame, sending it into a slow spin outwards until a second torpedo impacted amidships and split it into two smaller chunks. On the close side of the formation, one of the pirate gunboats received a direct hit on the bow, penetrating and blasting through the bulkheads in a brutal flower of burning fuel and metal that engulfed the twinkling engine plume.
	One by one, the torpedoes either found a target or were defeated by the scattered CIWS fire before the Beewolves set upon the scattered force. The pirates were stung out in a rough line with the surviving cargo ships at the rear, puttering along on their slower engines while the repurposed warships burned away. The fighters swarmed over the helpless haulers like sharks against a wounded whale. Rather than rip them apart with a flurry of carnage, the smaller, nimbler craft crippled engine pods with precise bursts of tungsten and singular missiles, letting their prey drift helplessly before pushing on after the retreating pirate horde.
	His view of the attack was broken as Dakota swung them around the asteroid, reducing the throttle and maneuvering them up towards the sleek form of the John Paul Jones as it pushed forward slowly. The escort carrier occasionally hurled immense tungsten bolts from its pair of rail cannons along its flank. Before it sat the screen of Wardens, torpedo boats, and CIWS frigates that warded off any counterattack against the carrier. The Wardens engaged with their rail cannons and missiles, peppering the space around the pirates to keep them on edge as they pursued. Another wave of flickering engines emerged from the Jones and the Wardens, curving down towards the disabled haulers, dancing around the wounded behemoths before docking, most likely carrying marines for boarding actions.
	As they finished the orbit of the asteroid, Gibberish was able to lay his eyes over the wreckage drifting here in the scant light of the distant star. All of the cargo ships had been crippled or destroyed in addition to a handful of the pirate gunboats floating dead in the vacuum. The fighters had pulled back to cover the boarding teams, leaving the hostile Warden and a total of 5 picket ships to disappear with a small burst of superlight gases.
	Gibberish sighed heavily in his helmet as he slumped back against the false gravity of acceleration. He took a second before keying commset.
	"Flight Com, this is Hotel Kilo 1-1 and 1-2 requesting permission to land, over."
	"HK 1-1, you are cleared to land in the starboard hangar. See you inside."
	"Understood, Com. You heard her, Dakota. Take us home."
	"Finally. Long patrols are the worst. Never-"
	"-enough time to adjust to zero-g, but long enough to make you hate it," Gibberish droned from memory. "At least it's done for now. I want a hot shower instead of glorified wet wipes and gravity tied to something besides acceleration."
	"Agreed. Soft bed, too. Maybe someone to warm it as well."
	"You asking me out on a date?"
	"Maybe, you Finnish fuck."
	"I have a suggestion; you see what you can get from the quartermaster's stash. I'll get some hot food from the mess, and we'll make a night of it in your room."
	"Our room. I'm your pilot, not just some zero-g piece of tail for you."
	"Oh, you are so much more than that, Tista-"
	"Maybe you two love birds could make sure you're fucking off the flight channel, too," Fir barked into their ear. "Not all of us are in such a lucky situation. I'm stuck here with Swordfish."
	"Hey now, just because you don't want to make the best of it is entirely on you, big boy," Swordfish interjected.
	"Jesus," Gibberish closed the comms channel and leaned back, watching as Dakota pulled them up and lined up with the sweeping entrance to the hanger. They flipped and burned hard to kill their velocity before crawling towards the almost invisible hanger door on short puffs of monopropellant. The Albatross shuddered around them as the landing gear extended and then passed through into the expansive hanger deck, feeling the pull of the artificial gravity making his muscles ache after a stint on an almost constant float. The hanger was a fraction of what a proper fleet carrier had, but then again, fleet carriers had 50 strike craft to the Jones' 20. His eyes swept over the space through his cockpit window, seeing the far port door leading back out to the cold vacuum. He unhooked himself from his couch and popped off his helmet before rising on shaky legs. Dakota caught him as he started for the hatch at the rear of the cabin. Outside, he could hear the support crew set to work running diagnostics and routine maintenance. It was good to be under gravity again.

****

	Zazak fixed the bayonet to his XMR as the dropship shuddered and came to a halt. He hissed inside his helmet as his stomach vaulted and swam in the void. He hated being away from gravity, leaving a perpetual unease in his mind and body and toying with his balance as the fluids in his ears shuddered. The rear door dropped, and he was the first out, the magnetic clamps under his clawed feet pulling him against the deck. He swept his head around, the readings showing they were alone on the exterior of the cargo ship as it floated listlessly. The only thing moving was the faint plumes of the venting atmosphere where the fight had ruptured the hull.
	He waved back to the dropship and held his overwatch as the rest of his six cat pack and the gaggle of human marines shifted out into a semi-circular formation before breaking to move along the metal surface of the hauler. His heavy footsteps reverberated through his suit with each stride, fighting the faint magnetic click as he led his team to the nearest airlock. As they approached the chamber, they slowed and circled the hatch while one of the marines knelt and opened the exterior panel, overriding the door controls and forcing the airlock open. Zazak was the first through, hoisting his upscaled XMR in front of him and clicking on his helmet's low light mode.
	The corridor was dark and cramped for a Borealan of his size, standing over eight feet by the human's standards, but he was the best suited for fighting the Rask at this range. He moved along what had been the floor, but with the power plants destroyed and gone, up became a floating relative. His bayonet propped the dark interior, showing a small T intersection up ahead where he flicked out with his rifle, using the integrated camera to scan to the left, showing an empty corridor that led to the long gantry towards the engines. In the distance, he could see the gnarled metal where the engines had been torn away from the hab section, blinking with stray motes of starlight.
	He flipped his rifle to the right, showing a sealed bulkhead door and a pair of lazily drifting bodies. Their sun-bleached manes wafted as they hung like ghastly puppets. Zazak signaled to the stack behind him and moved around the corner towards the dead. He reached out with and pulled them out of the way and continued towards the sealed door. It had claw marks gouged into the metal when the two Rask found themselves trapped in the vacuum. He leaned close to the door, pressing his helmet to the metal and listening. He picked up a back and forth sound, possibly voices muffled and warped by the metal. He leaned back, keying his helmet microphone.
	"I have possible voices. We may have survivors."
	"Remember ROE," the lieutenant chided. "We're supposed to capture them, but if they shoot, shoot back. Form up on the door, and we'll cut and flash. The second team will come through the cockpit airlock at the same time, so watch lines of fire."
	Zazak shifted to one side, pressing low against the bulkhead and bracing his XMR against the doorframe. Several others moved up behind him and braced along other portions of the corridor. Another moved up to the bulkhead, ripping off the case and plugging into the bundles of wires beneath. He probed and prodded until his readout flashed green and he moved back. One of the marines behind Zazak primed a flash grenade and moved to the control panel.
	Zazak breathed slowly, and tensed. Once the door was open, aggression would be needed in the chaos. The marine hit the override, cracking the door with a hiss of freezing atmo as he lobbed the grenade inside. The door shut behind with the thudding ring of two slugs punching through the metal and spalling past the marines down towards the cargo gantry. The bullet holes hissed with steam as the thud of the flash grenade reverberated through the hull. The override was triggered again, flinging open the bulkhead door, and Zazak pushed in, weapon up and ready.
	Beyond the bulkhead was the habitation section, ripped apart to fit the Rask pirates. Cabin walls torn away, replaced with immense throw beds meant to service packs, clearing his line of sight. Six Rask were clustered towards the front of the space, shaking their heads and floating in the low gravity as they fought against the flashbang's aftereffects. Zazak barked through his helmet, commanding them to disarm. One who could still see whipped his arm towards the door, the heavy pistol seeming to lag in zero-G. Zazak squeezed a short burst from his SMG, riddling the Rask fool with a smattering of holes where the softer Teflon-tipped rounds hit and stopped without over-penetrating and venting more of the scant atmosphere. The Rask cartwheeled backward, leaving crimson globs drifting in space.
	The other marines piled in, fanning out and barking for the pirates to lay down their arms, some releasing their guns to drift free. Zazak moved forwards, his pack following close behind as his magnetic grip kept his feet planted while he shoved the survivors in the shrinking atmosphere. At least they understood the odds were against them dead and drifting in space. The humans moved forward, securing the pirates' massive hands behind their backs before passing out the emergency vacuum suits to carry them to the shuttle. His earpiece chirped as one of the other marines broke onto the local comms net.
	"Prep the shuttle, we've got five coming back alive, one cold."
	Zazak moved on into the hab section, beginning to scour through the smaller rooms towards the bridge, finding empty rooms littered by drifting pieces of the crews' effects set adrift by losing power. Seeing the debris made his stomach churn in a way the vacuum couldn't. He turned back with the rest towards the airlock and the shuttle beyond, yearning for a hard drink to calm his nerves.

Chapter 4: Down the Gravity Well

	"What are our new orders, sir?" Captain Judd asked, stepping up behind Ravensburg as they looked out over the debris field before them. They stood on the forward observation post, watching the smaller craft drift in and out of the hangers below them. The panoramic view screens fed in the exterior through a myriad of sensors and cameras, showing the tiny giant of Eureka in the distance, the orange clouds swirling and glittering with the scant starlight.
	"We will need to return to Ostriv to offload our would-be pirates. We brought on more than we can handle effectively without turning half of the hangar deck into an impromptu brig."
	"Not pursue?”
	"Pursue where, Captain? Those flea-bitten curs jumped with half their flotilla disabled. I'd wager they're halfway to Borealis by now to hide in their Matriarch's shadow. Make a note to send an alert to the fleet stationed there to keep an eye out for any half-slagged gunboats."
	"While possible, I would argue they could have made a short jump out to the far fringe of the gravity well to regroup."
	"While possible, Captain, we have no way to determine how charged their jump drives were; otherwise, we could detach the Yangtze to shadow or engage. Since our options are limited, we will go ashore and resupply."
	"Understood, sir. I'll tell the bridge to plot a course for Port Arthur and leave a repeater beacon to demark the debris field."
	Ravensburg chuckled as he looked over the displays before him, watching the patrols of strike craft come and go through the hanger bays below him.
	"Hopefully, the scavengers will clean it up for us as 'legitimate salvage'...Leave a probe as well. I want to record anyone poking through the refuse in case your hunch is right, and our foes are merely waiting for us to leave."
	Captain Judd nodded as he turned and strode out of the observation deck, leaving Ravensburg sitting above the starfield around him. The old commander lowered himself into the lounge chair he'd had brought on board, letting his body relax into the foam cushions with a deep sigh. He tracked the flickering engines propelling the last flight of Beewolfs out into the vacuum, chasing them until he lost them amongst the cascading debris, and their white-hot engines were lost amid the pinpoints of stars burning in the distance.
	He brought up an overlay, meshing the camera feeds with the fine-detail LADAR scans, highlighting each one of his craft making their patrols amid the sea of swirling metals and ceramics drifting apart in a long lost cloud of gases and fuel. He watched in silence for several minutes before he brought up a small menu and turned on the speakers mounted into the observation deck above him. The last of the dropships and fighters streamed back into the glowing plasma walls that marked the hanger entrances, coming home out of the black like moths to a street lamp.
	He wouldn't sleep tonight, that familiar scratching in the back of his head returning like it always did after a clash. He loved the thrill of command and leading, but that realization of blood spilled on his orders never sat easily with him, regardless of cause. Maybe that's why he never accepted the promotions to full admiral, he wondered. Perhaps he preferred a command without significant risks as a happy cog in the more massive machine, preferring to hunt pirates on the frontier like some commodore of the bygone age of sail.
	The shipwide comms system burst in, announcing the new flight path back to Port Arthur as the engines sent a faint rumble through the John Paul Jones' skeleton. He sank back into his lounger as the starfield began to drift around him. The slow cry of violins crept up around him from the speakers, filling the mostly empty observation deck with dulcet tones in a long-form. As he listened, his heart rose and fell with a mix of joyous exaltation and the sad realization that made him swim through the highs and lows of the music, enjoying something apart from himself. There was a familiarity with it as well, but from where? As he let it play, the source seemed to draw nearer, filling him with the faint memory of some sad movie about a ship he'd always watched with his late wife. This shadow pulled at him as he hummed with the music, letting it wash over him, reminding him of his age. His mind broke free for a second, considering that maybe it was time to step away from all this, to retire to some small cottage by the sea. He let his mind wander for those sleepless hours alone on the observation deck as the task force strode back towards Ostriv under the power of their simplistic hydrogen engines until the jump drives were able to expedite their transit.
	It was night for Port Arthur when the task force entered the colony's gravity well, bypassing the two small moons that hung in its skies. From his seat, he could make out the small twinkle of lights on the far side of the larger moon where an immense telescopic array sat in a crater on the moon's surface. It spun down and away as the John Paul Jones flipped for a deceleration maneuver to enter an orbit about Ostriv, the rest of the task force following suit as they slowed down and slipped quietly towards the spaceport.
	While by no means as massive as Fort Hamilton, Port Arthur's anchorage was still of reasonable size as it hung in geosynchronous orbit. The majority of the station was a dense drum spun up to simulate Earth's gravity while smaller docking tori sat at the drum's ends to allow for easy boarding. Simultaneously, a web of cargo gantries spread out like branches from the drum's planetside end to facilitate cargo transfers to and from the planet's surface. Far below, the city's lights glittered with the occasional thruster burn of a shuttle going down or coming back up.
	The task force drifted into berths next to Ostriv's planetary defense fleet, which was little more than a handful of corvettes and gunboats centered around a reasonable force of two Clovis-class frigates and one Onager-class Light Cruiser. Ravensburg groaned as he turned off his music and rose from the lounger, starting back towards the bridge to facilitate the unloading of prisoners and supplies. He wished that he'd gotten some proper sleep before having to deal with the mountain of paperwork that inevitably lay before him.

Chapter 5: Shore Leave

	"They're giving us what, sir?"
	"Shore passes, Zazak," Lt. Edmond replied, slinging his duffle bag onto his shoulder. "Most everyone's taking their 72s and running for the ground. Do us all some good to get off this ship, stretch our legs, feel actual sunlight, wear something beyond a vac suit."
	"And what do they expect us to do, LT?"
	"Relax and behave. Take your pack, find some place to crash, and enjoy yourselves. Tour the colony or some shit. You remember those times we got stuck on the Pinwheel between patrols, and you had to pass the time sleeping, eating, fucking, or relaxing?"
	"Aye, sir."
	"Same thing here, just on a planet instead. Just keep out of trouble and be back aboard before we cast off. That's all there is to it. You get it now?"
	"Aye, LT."
	"Good. The service office on the station should be able to help you find your way. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find a soft bed and a fat-ass hooker."
	Lieutenant Edmond flashed a shark-toothed smile as he slid past the immense Borealan and strode out of the bay. Zazak turned and strode back to his pack's nook in the bay, calling their attention in his harsh native tongue, watching his five subordinates snap their ears to him, not letting their eyes linger too long.
	"We've been granted leave to the colony below. Gather what you need for a few days away from the ship. Might do us good to stretch out legs under real gravity. As for details, we'll have to figure it out once we leave."
	"How so?"
	"This isn't like Pinwheel, so we'll have to find our way when we land."
	He moved past his pack to his bunk as the rest of his pack set about gathering their things. He rounded up a change of clothes from his footlocker and slid them into the simple duffle bag he kept for times away from the Jones. Zazak reached back into the footlocker and clasped the small lockbox he hid at the back. A quick scan of his thumb sent the tumblers on their way before his flicked the simple metal case open, revealing the small credit stick molded of a gray plastic with the human scrawling of the bank his pack stored their wages on and the short bundle of Elysia passport documents they were issued. They were worthless on Borealis, but a necessity whenever they were somewhere in Coalition space, as rare as that was. Zazak slipped the credit stick into his jumpsuit pocket before passing out the passports to their owners.
	He had them double-check their supplies before they set off, falling into a single file line behind Zazak as they navigated the cramped corridors of the carrier, leaving behind the alcoves of the marines' bay and passing through the two cavernous hangers before reaching the gangway where the rest of the departing crew streamed down towards the umbilicals flanking the cargo loading doors. The skeletal umbilicals extended from the station, pressed against the hull to link the gangway airlocks and let people transfer on or off in small groups. Zazak fell into line, watching as the airlock doors blurred open and shut, sending others across to the station. Eventually, they reached the gates, going two at a time to fit comfortably before entering the umbilical. Zazak cursed as his stomach shifted again, the umbilical being far lower than the human's ships. He scrambled down to the other end and through the airlock onto the station, feeling the gravity change yet again.
	He led his pack down towards the torus, finding the strange curves where the gravity changed again, pulling him onto the docking torus. They were met by another line as the task force's crews all reached a chokepoint at the documentation desks. They fished out their passports, swiping them through the terminals and quickly speaking to the attendants inside before passing through and onto the torus. The exceptionally small human woman inside shied away from Zazak and his pack as they handed her their passports, receiving a quick scan and nod from her before they continued on their way.
	He led his pack along the curving floor towards the next crossing point before they transitioned to the station's main drum, feeling the gravity return to that human normal. He always felt lighter on their ships and stations versus back home. As soon as he crossed the plasma shielded threshold into the drum, he was met by a deluge of noise and smells. The main drum spread out in a curving plaza before him, swarming with crowds of the small humans wrapped in a spattering of different colors and patterns, chattering away in their various tongues. The strange smells of food stalls assaulted his nose, making his mouth water and stomach rumble through the unease. He wanted to get off the station as soon as he stepped on.
	"We need to find the service office," he barked to his packmates. "Keep your eyes out for it so we can find our way planetside. Understand?"
	They nodded and set off across the drum, treading carefully to not step on the tiny humans as they parted around Zazak and his pack. Some humans let their eyes linger on him, more out of curiosity than a challenge like if they were his kin. They were too small and frail to be any real challenge to him anyway, and from what he'd gathered about how far the humans were spread across the stars, his pack might have been the first Borealans they'd ever seen. If that was the case, then let them look on and see some of the best of Elysia's sons and daughters. Perhaps he might find some human woman who's more than curious about, but that could wait until they were planetside.
	Zazak navigated by the overhead signs and the trickle of fellow crew members towards the far end of the drum, riding along with the structure on a moving walkway that led towards the planet. Before them was the entrance to the service office off to the side of the departures zone that led to the planetary shuttles. The automated door slid open for them, revealing the sleek desks and reception areas of the office. Several other crew members milled about at the desks before departing past Zazak as the towering Borealan stepped up to the closest desk, staring down at the mousy clerk steed before him. She looked up, meeting his gaze with a smile as she looked over his pack.
	"Marines going ashore?"
	"Yes. Six of us for shore leave."
	"Identification, please?"
	Zazak nodded as he handed over the passports. The clerk leafed through them, looking up now and then to look over the rest of his pack.
	"What can you tell us about the planet?" Niza asked, leaning against the desk to Zazak's right. He was the youngest of their pack and the most curious of them, but he knew his place in their pack. He had a knack for navigation, so Zazak let him continue his questioning rather than discipline him.
	"Well, Ostriv isn't known for much. We're fairly out of the way on the frontier, mostly working on mining and farming. But there are still a few things to do in Port Arthur like the botanical gardens or the plaza and wharf. First, though, we should handle your stay for these two days, because I'm sure many local hotels will enjoy the business. Ah, here we go. The Portside Inn actually has a Borealan-sized room available."
	"Wonderful," Zazak replied. "So...what happens next?"
	"I'll generate a UNN service voucher for when you land; you can go there and have the room at your disposal. Of course, it's just the room, no special offers, or the like."
	The clerk smiled as she printed out the voucher and passed it to Zazak.
	"Thank you, but where is this...Portside?"
	"Once you land, it's straight out the main doors and across this beautiful plaza. There's a massive sign on the front of the building, so you should be able to find it."
	"How well do you know this place?" Niza spoke up again.
	"Fairly well," the clerk smiled back. "Especially since I live down in Port Arthur when I'm not here. This is my day job. If you want, I can recommend places to eat or things to do. Hell, I could show you too," The clerk's smile grew sharper as she looked over Niza.
	Zazak stifled a laugh as he stepped back from the desk.
	"Find us when at the hotel when you're done here, Niza," Zazak chided as his subordinate nodded, turning back to the clerk. It was shore leave, Zazak thought, and they should all be able to find some relaxation.
	The rest of his pack followed Zazak back out of the service office and towards the transit shuttles. They fell into line, waiting until it was their turn to board and plummet down through the night sky of the colony. Through the small viewports on the shuttle's bulbous body, Zazak could see the lights of the colony glittering along the web of streets spanning out from the curving shore of the bay.
	The surface rose to meet them as the shuttle banked for its final approach, shifting Zazak in the oversized seat. Through the windows, he could see the waves rolling across the bay under the shuttle's landing lights. On the shore, the spaceport's rising monolith was lit by clusters of lights ringing the structure and the flare of engines sending shuttles and lift rockets back to orbit laden with cargo or passengers. They flew over the waves, slowing as they approached the spaceport, flaring and shuddering as air brakes were deployed. Zazak reflexively clenched the seat's harness as the shuttle hit the landing strip, jolting as it decelerated aggressively before taxing towards the spaceport. After a few minutes bumping and rolling along the tarmac, the shuttle came to a halt, and the cabin doors opened, disgorging the passengers into a spacious atrium leading away from them. Through the wide glass skylights, Zazak could see the immense scale of the monolith as it jutted into the starry sky overhead before he started along the corridor. He followed the other passengers down through a pair of moving staircases and into a tunnel light by white lights. In the distance, he could hear the deep rumble resonant from up ahead as the strong scent of salt began to push into his nose.
	The tunnel opened out onto a pair of platforms that stretched between a pair of dark tubes howling with a humid wind that only made the salt smell grow stronger. The rumbling grew louder while chimes blared from overhead before the wind died. From the right, a pair of bright lights emerged from the dark and slid out into view, showing the human train's long, sleek form. Doors along the flanks of the dozen or so cars opened, letting some people stream off before Zazak and his pack boarded with the rest of the crowd on the platform. Unlike the shuttled, there were no Borealan-sized seats available, so his pack was left to stand, holding onto the series of too-small handlebars and poles lining the central aisle. Then the doors closed and the train began to move, slowly accelerating down the other dark tube. After a few moments, Zazak watched through the train's windows as the dark tube fell away, showing the dark waves of the bay and the glittering lights of Port Arthur.
	For a moment, his heart longed to be looking back at Elysia's shores, but it was dashed when something yanked on his tail, jolting from dozens of nerve endings screaming in surprise. He hissed and wheeled around to find a small human kitten clinging to his tail, wide-eyed and staring back at Zazak. Almost immediately, the child recoiled as his mother scolded him in some unknown language before turning back to face Zazak. His surging instinct to discipline whoever pulled his tail ebbed as he watched the child retreat next to his mother. There was no threat, just a slight annoyance as he unclenched his jaw and loosened his grip on the metal pole, feeling the dents he’d crushed into its surface.
	"S-sorry," she chirped. "He's too curious for his own good and we've been cooped up on a transport for a month straight."
Zazak seethed for a moment before he replied. He caught a glimpse of his pack snickering at his embarrassment before returning to the present. "Either way, someone might not take kindly to you pulling their tail. They might think you want to cause trouble."
	"Oh, I'm sure he understands," the mother spoke, focusing her attention towards her son. "Now, Sasha, what do we say to the nice man?"
	"Sorry," Sasha murmured as he hung his head.
	His mother sighed and returned her gaze to Zazak, beaming with a gentle smile that seemed even to put him at ease.
	"What brings you all to Ostriv?"
	"Shore leave from our ship. See what this colony has to offer. And you?"
	"Moving from Alpha Centauri. My husband came here as a miner, and a fresh start sounds nice. Hopefully, it works out."
	"Leaving everything for a new world can be rough," Zazak nodded. "Even now, we all still miss home, but the things we've seen have made it all worth it."
	As if by command, a bright flare ignited back towards the spaceport, rising into the night. The heavy-lift rocket's distant roar cast a deep orange over them as it billowed dark smoke behind that blossomed outwards. Its climb was slow at first, growing faster and faster as it pushed away into the night. Zazak watched in quiet awe as the rocket moved higher into the heavens before it pivoted and sped out over the sea.
	"See what I mean?" He smiled towards the small boy as the train began to slow on its way into the station.

****

	Gibberish hopped from the train, humming as he hooked his arm around Dakota's shoulders as they started down the stairs out of the terminal. The warm sea air ran over his skin and made his heart sing at the feeling of solid earth beneath his boots. He looked up at her sharp, brown eyes and flowing black hair that she'd let down after they landed and wondered what she thought as they moved along the street. The pair passed along the closed storefronts and offices as they headed away from the station.
	The street led them beneath the high branches of strange gray-barked trees lining the sidewalk away from the shore. Some distance from the station, the street opened up onto a vast plaza centered around a cluster of fountains and green spaces lit by gentle lamps illuminating the silver-barked trees and the flower gardens surrounding them. Dakota thumped him on the arm and pointed across the plaza to a small bar parked at the edge of the park.
	"You read my mind. Tie a few on before bed?" Gibberish asked as they started along the edge of the plaza.
	"Sounds like a plan."
	The rumble of music from inside drew them to the swinging door and into the neon-lit interior. The air hung with the scent of tobacco in wisping clouds as they let the door close behind them. They slid into an open table nestled by the front window. Far to the back of the bar, a jukebox belted out a slow jazz tune as Gibberish set his eyes on his pilot, meeting her smile with his own.
	"I wonder what they have here."
	"We'll find out in a bit," Gibberish replied, slumping back in his chair. "There's nothing like real gravity."
	"Agreed. My back still hurts from weeks on the float."
	"I'll rub it tonight. Sound fair?"
	"Then I'll pick up the tab here," Dakota crooned back.
	Gibberish nodded before slipping off his chair and moving over to the bar. He flagged down the bartender. She came down along the black marble countertop and leaned in close to hear over the din dominating the room.
	"What can I do y'all for?"
	"What you got?"
	"Local stuff mostly, ciders and wines and such."
	"Sounds good," he replied, swiping his credit stick and taking a handful of bottles back with him. He slid half his haul across to Dakota and rested back in his seat, taking a short draw from one of his own, tasting the sharp, sweet taste within. He nodded and flaunted his bottle before continuing.
	"Tastes sweet," Dakota spoke up over the din. "Makes the hangover feel better."
	"Maybe. But that's tomorrow's problem. Tonight, to us."
	"I'll drink to that."
	The pair slammed back more of the bottles as they lounged in a few moments of silence as the music played from across the bar. They worked through most of the bottles before either one spoke again. Dakota broke the air between them, rousing Gonneeish from the encroaching buzz.
	"What's that now?"
	"You space out again? I asked if you remember when we first flew together. That patrol near Hades."
	"Yeah. Shitty place for leave. Couldn't go anywhere without a mask. Why do you ask?"
	"How long ago was that? About a year?"
	"More like a year and a half. That was right after I got posted to the Jones. You went to show off after we broke contact with the task force and made us both sick."
	"Don't remind me of that. Reminds me of how I got stuck with Dakota."
	"You've still never told me that story."
	“And I never will."
	Gibberish cracked a gentle smile as he finished off another of the bottles. Combined with the loud music and pulsing light, his head was beginning to swim in the early morning hours. He looked across the table, seeing Dakota's dark eyes and flowing hair as they caught the glittering light around them.
	"Anyone ever tell you you have real pretty eyes?"
	"Just about every marine trying to get in my flight suit," she replied. "But, you always make it sound original."
Gibberish smiled as he slipped from his chair, wrapped his arms around his pilot, his friend, his lover before he whispered into her ears.
	"I know. Now, I'll go get some more drinks."

Chapter 6: R&R

	Ravensburg looked over the small plate of food before him. It was a simple breakfast of local fruit, eggs, and some toast. It was mostly apples brought from Earth and some alien plant resembling an enlarged blackberry that tasted hauntingly like maple sausage when spread on the toast provided to him. The eggs leaked their golden yolk as he leaned back in his chair and cast his eyes over the planters that hemmed in the cafe's patio. He enjoyed being out of his cabin, under open sky and away from the cold, sterile interiors of John Paul Jones. One had to remain grounded, he pondered, or well the claustrophobic halls of their ship might drive them mad.
	By now, Port Arthur had stirred awake with the sun, the trickle of colonists going about their day along the walking paths that passed the cafe and crossed the plaza stretching before him. Now and then, a truck would putter along on its fuel cells along the narrow streets. As he picked at his breakfast, he watched the trucks come and go towards the spaceport laden with exports or coming back full of imports, bouncing heavily on their suspension. When the waiter came to refill his coffee, Ravensburg drew his attention before turning back to the trucks. He was an older gentleman, but not as old as Ravensburg, with a dusting of salt-and-pepper hair around his weathered face.
	"Perhaps you could answer my question."
	"Depends on the question, friend."
	"Quite. Those heavy trucks passing back and forth, what are they carrying?"
	"Not sure. Inbound is almost anything we need around here. Going out, probably ore from the mines or crops from the local farms. Whatever keeps the lights on around here, but I don't fret over it, not why we moved here."
	"How so?"
	"Just wanted to be away from all the people, and we found a place here. Not having to rough it on our own, but not big enough to draw big crowds or deal with some ridiculous hazards like acid rains or poison air."
	"It does seem like a quaint little place," Ravensburg replied, casting his eyes over the buildings around them. He could appreciate the multi-storied buildings formed from what appeared to be immense concrete slabs latticed by greenery and simmering windows in the daylight. Along the rooftops, small clusters of windmills churned in the gentle sea breeze.
	"The buildings are interesting too, for a fairly young colony," He resumed. "I'm far more accustomed to sprawls of prefabs or the inklings of urban sprawls and skyscraper jungles."
	"Oh, we still have prefabs from the initial years, but we recycle them for expansions. Most of the newer permanent buildings use waste rock from the mines to make a variation of concrete. You can make actual buildings with it rather than just stacking prefabs and saying sayonara."
	Ravensburg nodded as he sipped at his coffee, half-expecting the waiter to leave. Instead, the man pulled out the chair across from Ravensburg and settled in. He raised a hand to meet Ravensburg's curious stare as he set the empty coffee pot onto the table next to him.
	"It's a slow morning, and some conversation might be good for both of us."
	Ravensburg smiled behind his coffee mug and nodded, waving him to the seat already occupied.
	"Forgive me if it's too probing, but what brings you out to Port Arthur?"
	"A bit of shore leave for an old navy man, and I heard they made good wine here."
	“Well, Captain-"
	"Rear Admiral."
	"My apologies, Admiral. As for the wine, we do make some of the best, if you ask my opinion, and a close friend of mine makes the best of the best. If you'd like, I can get you a bottle, and you can judge for yourself."
	"As nice of an offer as that is, I'm not much of a judge. My wife was always the wine connoisseur between us; I just drank it to pass the time."
	The waiter chuckled as he leaned back in his chair. "Maybe you should take her a bottle as well."
Ravensburg's eyes softened as he stared down into his coffee. The waiter lagged for a second before he responded, reaching a hand across from the with a look of condolence across his face.
	"I'm so sorry."
	"Don't be. My dear wife passed some years ago. I had to come to terms with that some time ago. Still, I do miss her. She wanted us to retire to the south of France, back on Earth. Set up a vineyard of our own and grow old. Quite a silly thing."
	"I understand. It was my wife's idea to move out here. I wanted to go to Franklin, but she insisted."
	Ravensburg shifted in his seat, staring away from the table out over the plaza. He took a slow draw from his cooling coffee as he felt some shallow dread worm into his stomach. A weight built within him, and he found the bitter taste of the coffee too strong.
	"Do you have children?" The waiter asked, trying to move the conversation to a better topic.
	"Sadly, no, but I doubt I would have made a good father. I could never bring myself to retire, to leave a command. It was selfish of me, but whenever I was home, I wanted to be out on a deployment. In a way, I'm glad I never had children, because then only one person had to put up with my decision. I broke her heart a little more every time I left, but she didn't stop me because she knew I would be back. After all, I loved her. Except for that final time, I didn't come back before she passed. I was near Sirius, on some standard pirate hunt when I found out. Even still...what am I doing?"
	Ravensburg shook his head and slammed back the last of his coffee, his eyes still resting over the plaza, watching the people trickle back and forth in the monotony of their lives.
	"I'm sitting here, disgorging my life's story to some stranger. Forgive me-"
When Ravensburg looked back to the waiter, he found an empty chair staring back at him. He pushed up from his breakfast and left a small fold of credits next to his plate.
	"Adam," he hissed to himself. "What has gotten into you?"
	Maybe it was time to retire, he thought to himself. He straightened his jacket and stepped out into the plaza, disappearing among the throngs of colonists going to and fro.

****

	Zazak pulled the collar on his oversized jacket a little closer about his neck. Even under the sun, he felt a chill wind roll over him from the coast. He wasn't sure how the little humans could put up with the cold so easily. They completely lacked any significant fat or fur like the Polars from his homeworld, but maybe it was just his own experience compared to life in the desert heat, he thought.
	He rallied his pack as they started from the hotel they'd spent the night at previously and hissed a silent curse back towards the monkey manager who cut them off from the breakfast buffet after their third time through the line. It wasn't their fault the humans expected everyone to eat like them. He shrugged off the irritation of it as he started along the street with his company in tow. He flicked an ear back as some of his pack chided Niza about the scent of that clerk's perfume that still clung to him.
	"Niza," Zazak started, calling back over his shoulder. "What did that clerk have to say about entertainment here?"
	"Uh...she made mention of some park, but I wasn't listening very well," Niza shrunk at his admission.
	"Next time, listen with your ears and not your cock."
	Zazak sighed as they continued along the broad street, passing the stone planters where long clusters of ivy crept up the decorative light poles that dotted the street's edges. They bloomed with small gold flowers that smelled like alcohol to him. The smaller humans shot strange glances at his pack as they sidestepped to move out of the way of the aliens that dominated the sidewalk.
Niza moved up next to Zazak and helped navigate their way through the broad avenues and winding streets away from the hotel. The park was situated a short distance away from the hotel, on a hilltop overlooking the colony. A small tower surrounded by six domes sat in the center of the rolling green space. Away from the buildings, small ponds rimmed by trees and walking paths dotted the area.
	He led his pack through the arching gateway, passing slowly along the walking paths towards the cluster of buildings. Zazak reached up, running his claws over through the long willowing leaves hanging down, feeling the soft leaves through his fur. He slowed by a small pond and dropped back on the grass, watching the sunlight dance on the gentle waters. His pack lounged out on the grass nearby, Niza and Martza resting their feet at the water's edge while Maxvi and Xha took to the shade of the trees. Zazak felt someone drop to the grass to his right, finding Aika leaning against his side.
	"It's nice not being cooped up on a station. Feel the wind in your hair, dirt under your feet, room to stretch…"
	"Agreed," Zazak replied, leaning against his pack member.
	She was his second-in-command in the pack and his closest partner. He watched the breeze pull at her bobbed blonde hair. They sat beside the pond for some time, feeling the salt-tinged breeze roll over them. Some of the more curious passersby slowed and watched before moving on about their day. The sun climbed higher, giving Zazak a more exact view down the hillside to look over the colony below, seeing the curved grid pattern stretching along the coastline.
	Before long, Zazak began to grow restless, glancing towards the domes towards the center of the park. He wondered what was inside and rocked up on his feet, watching as his pack stirred. He waved them down, leaving them to lounge as he started towards the domes with Aika in tow. She bounced along at his side, humming a lullaby she liked from her youth as she cracked a smile towards him.
	The domes were gigantic glass bubbles surrounded by support beams to help reinforce the structure. Through the glass, Zazak could see the broad greens and golds of plants pressed up against the smooth surface. The pair moved along the outside of the dome, finding an entryway into the central tower. Above the automatic doors hung a sign that read:

			Port Arthur Botanical Garden and Labs,
			 Presented by TransStar Agricultural,
			 A TransTech Interstellar Subsidiary

	"Botanical Garden?" Aika spoke up. "The domes must be greenhouses."
	"Want to see what's inside?"
	"I would love to-"
	"Then let's go."
	Zazak led his partner through the sliding doors, ducking under the human-sized doorway before they found themselves in a wide corridor that curved to the left and right. A small directory sign showed the building's layout, with the six greenhouses arranged around a central display room and lab in the central tower. A sign on the directory showed only two of the greenhouses were open; the rest still under construction as new plants are found on the colony. They turned, moving along the corridor to the right, finding it reasonably empty considering the early morning hours.
	They passed into the dome through another sliding door, feeling the cold air fall away to the greenhouse's hot, dry air. The room's curving terraces held an array of desert plants nestled among the brown rocks and sandy soil.
	One plant that caught Zazak's eye was a gnarled tree twisting up from the soil. The black bark split and fell away. The short, looping branches were dotted by clusters of spiny red-orange leaves around a blue flower. It didn't have a strong scent to it, but the strange shape drew him in.
	"Malave's Pricklewood," Zazak mumbled to himself as he looked over the small sign flanking the plant. "An an-analog to desert pines, the Pricklewood is common to the more arid regions to the south. The name comes from the pine needles surrounding the flowers that have traces of iron that makes them hard and sharp to protect the flowering buds from predators."
	"It definitely is a strange plant," Aika spoke up, leaning close to her Alpha. "Do you think any of these could live on Borealis?"
	"Possibly, but would it thrive?"
	"What do you mean?"
	"The deserts here might be a far cry from Borealis. Not as hot, rocky vs sandy, so on."
	"Pretty flower at the least," Aika added, reaching to hook one of the petals with her claw.
	The duo moved along, passing small clusters of hardy desert flowers and small, rugged trees and scrub brush that earned their place in the wild through their adaptations.
	Returning to the corridor, they moved on to the other operational greenhouse, finding it full of bright, flowering bushes and small trees adorned with creeping vines. As soon the doors had parted, Zazak inhaled the vibrant aroma of various scents spreading from all corners of the room. He relaxed his shoulders and started wandering along with the terraced planters and beds that surrounded the room. He moved along, passing beneath the short branches of pine trees that lined the innermost ring of terraces, casting a small realm of shadow over the center of the greenhouse where several smaller plants thrived in the twilight.
	Though the plants were beautiful in their own right, nothing caught his eye as he moved, letting his eyes play over the alien plants around him. Aika slowed, fixated on a broad bouquet of strange yellow and red orchids creeping up a metal lattice along swirling green vines. They smelled like ash and frost in the cool air, bobbing gently in the faint breeze circling the greenhouse.
	"Seems you found the one you enjoy, too," Zazak started.
	"I love the color, and the scent is just…soothing."
	Zazak chuckled to himself before he reached out, plucking one of the blossoms free and handing it to his packmate. He watched her cheeks flush before she took it and slid in into her flowing black hair that framed her green eyes.
	They slipped out of the greenhouse and into the tower at the center of the cluster, coming to a halt in a circular display room lined with signs and screens along each wall. Looking over them, Zazak found a hologram of a human structure adrift on some immense lake. The facility was made of large ring structures anchored by carbon tethers to the bottom. Surrounding the structure were long webs of floating cages that seemed to glisten and shimmer as they bobbed with the waves. Zazak leaned closer, trying to make sense of the structure before an electronic voice broke in, jolting the Borealan upright in surprise.
	"Farms of the Future brought to you by TransStar Agricultural. Like Earth, some of the settled worlds are blessed with immense bodies of water that are vital to the ecosystem at large. To better utilize those bodies, TSA had worked hard to develop a way to harvest the bounties of the sea, sustainably."
	"What is it," Aika hissed in her native tongue.
	"One method of this is floating aquaculture farms, as you see in the hologram before you. Floating cages and nets allow us to cultivate fish and floating crops, while seafloor structures can be used to harvest shellfish and kelp. Depending on location, these floating farmsteads can be automated, manned by rotating shifts, or even lived in permanently as brave aquasteaders, forming the basis for future colonial ventures by helping provide food and housing for communities on land and at sea while being mindful about the impact of non-native species on a world. Here on Ostriv, several of these farms are being built today."
	"Fish farming," Zazak mused. "I wonder if they could float them back home."
	"Maybe one day."
	The pair continued along their wandering, looking over the various arrangements and styles of farms and how they can be applied across the frontier of settled worlds. They halted at a holographic display showing a rolling desert basin shifting by a creeping green tide. He wondered if the humans might be able to help do this to the deserts of Borealis and make his homeworld a little greener.

Chapter 7: FTL Rupture Detected

	Ravensburg rubbed his temples as he sat at the small faux-wood desk in his room. Before him, the screen glowed a bright white as he scrolled through the after-action reports from Red 12. He wanted to make sure he had an accurate read on his munitions and the effectiveness of his force with those munitions and how they affected the engagement. He sipped from the cooling mug of tea to his left as he scrolled down to the hunter/killer flights. Of the two flights deployed, both confirmed seven crippled pirate ships, and several others damaged that either escaped or were destroyed by allied fire. Combined with the array of electronic warfare interference they generated, they could sow discord among the pirates to his advantage. The most considerable drawback he could see was positioning due to the vast distances the wings could cover relative to the fleet. It would be something he'd have to monitor should the Rask warband return, he mused as he leaned back in the plush office chair.
	A flurry of heavy knocks roused him from the tedium of his paperwork, drawing him to the door. He swiped the lock and slid the door open, finding Captain Judd panting, one hand clutching his handheld commset and the other gripping the doorframe. He snapped a limp salute before Ravensburg began.
	"Captain, what seems to be the matter?"
	"Ostriv's telescopic arrays have detected a large superlight jump beyond the orbit of the outer gas giant, Victory. Our probes confirmed the signatures as well between gravity waves and light scatter from the bloom. We couldn't raise you, but I was downstairs when the information came in, sir."
	"Possibly our pirates?"
	"Unsure. Possibly, but the trajectories seem off, pointing back towards Kruger."
	A small knot formed in his stomach, waiting to see what came next from the beleaguered Captain.
	"Any chance it was some wayward freighters?"
	"If it was, we don't see transponders."
	"How far away from the system was the signature?"
	"Rough estimate is almost fifty AU, sir."
	Ravensburg nodded and pulled his commset from his pocket.
	"Captain, as of now, all leaves are canceled. I want to cast off as soon as possible. If needed, we can have our dropships start ferrying directly from the surface."
	Judd nodded and stepped into the room, barking his orders into his commset. Ravensburg could picture in his head, the sailors and marines away on their leave, seeing the flash messages break into view, pulling them back to the spaceport immediately. As for the knot in his stomach, he turned to the Captain and waited for a break in the deluge of orders. When it came, he seized on it ruthlessly.
	"If they are coming from Kruger, what are the odds of a Roach fleet slipping past the border?"
	"I'm unsure, sir, but I don't want to think about it. We're an anti-piracy force. A hive fleet would outgun us by a good margin."
Ravensburg hung his head and sighed before he responded.
	"Outgunned or not, we need to appraise the situation. My orders still stand to ready Red 12 and weigh anchor. I want to determine what our would-be enemy is and work from there. Between our forces and the PDF ships, we can mount a defense of the planet if needed. Walk with me."
	Ravensburg pulled up a readout of the system, the long elliptical arcs of the planets in their orbits as he closed his work and stepped out the door of the room. He began to draw up simple battle plans on his hologram, shifting the task force from Pstriv to the outer planets.
	"Regardless of our threat, our opening moves should be thought out. I would have our ships form a loose screen about the Victory subsystem, lurk by her moons and orbital rings, and use our hunter/killer flights to carry out more aggressive searches."
He stormed down the hall with a focused gait, passing other hotel guests as the sailors present rallied their things and began to stream out of their rooms and back to the port.
	"If it is a worst-case scenario, we would begin evacuation of the colony immediately, while waging a fighting retreat. Pirate or bug, that fleet would have spent a large share of its energy making the superlight jump into the system, so they are most likely driving at sublight speed, which gives us a window to scramble our fleet and set a trap."
	"Possibility of them holding and jumping directly to the colony, sir?"
	"We'll leave the PDF ships here in addition to one of the Wardens, Yangtze, since she is short one standoff. Our advantage is our speed, Captain. If it is Bugs, we must keep out of reach and let our missiles and strike craft carry our attacks, but even still, our goal is to stall until a proper UNN force can reinforce us."
	"I understand fully, sir."
	"Good. Let us get underway then."
	"God, please just let it be pirates."
	Ravensburg nodded as they rode the elevator down to the lobby. The Betelguesans were an existential threat, far worse than some upstart pirates and privateers. They seemed to be an endless deluge, one fleet after another streaming out from the depths of space beyond the frontier. They usually would launch their horrific bioships at the meager worlds on the border like Kruger III. Still, he wouldn't doubt that they might bypass the usual warzones for some isolated colony behind the front. Perhaps they were learning in whatever abominable way they did to stop throwing forces into the meat grinder and set their eyes on easier prey.
	Regardless, he thought, his task force would need to be ready and on the prowl. His force would be away and hunting in a day at the latest, but what time would that give to his foe? They had already gained several hours based on the light delays between their jump point, the probe, and the colony even before he issued the order to rally. Captain Judd followed at his side as they exited the hotel and crossed the plaza towards the spaceport. Ahead, he could see the maglev line leading back to the launch facility.
	Ravensburg pulled his commset back up and opened a channel to the PDF command, letting the line ring before a woman's voice broke through.
	"Rear Admiral, I suspect this is about the FTL signatures?"
	"You would be correct, Captain Martins. What is PDF fleet readiness?"
	"We can be prepped and away in three hours at most, sir."
	"Begin preparations and report to the John Paul Jones, Captain. I want to brief you personally on our plan of action."
	"Understood, sir."
	The connection dropped as Ravensburg began to mount the stairs into the maglev line. In the distance, a heavy-lift rocket bloomed upwards in the setting sun, the exhaust plume becoming a writing pillar of fire as it caught the afternoon glow.

****

	Ravensburg leaned forward in his chair, looking over the holographic display of the star system before him. He loathed the implication of what lay beyond the orbit of Victory, hurtling sunward while they lingered at anchor preparing. Several probable trajectories attempted to model any major incursions down the gravity well. The fastest of which involved a gravity assist close to Victory to accelerate their approach by a substantial degree. Around the table at most of the commanding officers of his task force and the PDF fleet. A sharp silence hung over the room, broken only by the faint hum of the air recyclers. Hours had passed as they scrambled back to orbit, flooding the orbital station as they returned to the moored ships, bolstering the skeleton crews that maintained the essential systems.
	"How soon can we cast off?" Ravensburg asked, his eyes playing over the interlocking fields of missile coverage from Victorian moons that they would use for cover.
	"Since the majority of the crews were in Port Arthur, we can depart within the four hours at the latest, sooner if we scramble our transports planetside in addition to the spaceport's fleet," Captain Judd spoke up.
	"The PDF ships are already leaving to establish a screen over the colony," Captain Martins added. "And we've prepared a Courser to raise the alarm if necessary."
	"Good," He responded, rising from his seat to better address the officers before him. "I'll get right to the point. We are moving to counter a possible hostile incursion into our territory. Several hours ago, gravitational waves from an unknown superlight signature were detected far beyond the orbit of Victory coming from the Kruger system. As of current, we can't determine who or what generated the signature, but we will not take this easily. We deploy Red 12 outward to form a screen around the moons of Victory to determine our unseen foe while the PDF fleet will take up a defensive cordon over Ostriv. If it is pirates, we will act accordingly, but the PDF will begin evacuations immediately if it is a Betelguesan force. At the same time, we fight a defensive retreat back to the colony and await UNN reinforcements. To counter a potential FTL jump past us towards the planet, Yangtze will be stationed with the PDF to deploy its standoff missiles as necessary. Any questions?"
	"What is our plan if it is a hive fleet?" Commander Li of the Yangtze spoked up, asking the question that hung over them all.
	"We have no real chance of winning a pitched battle against a full hive fleet," He replied, letting his head sink a little before locking his steely eyes over the officers before him. "Our objective will be to defend the colony and its people until reinforcements arrive. It will be a defense-in-depth, using our standoffs, strike craft, and positioning to inflict as much damage as possible. We will not surrender this system without a fight, without upholding our oath to the UNN and her peoples. Once we depart Ostriv, we will jump close to Victory and disperse amongst the rings and moons for a first strike before withdrawing to regroup with the PDF fleet."

Chapter 8: Scramble

	Gibberish leaned back in the lounger, tugging at the blanket covering him. His eyes were glued to the screen on the far wall, watching the vidscreen flashing across the ready room. The screen was flashing with footage of some giant monster rampaging through Neo-Tokyo in some half-budget B-movie. The out-of-sync roars and dubbed lines blasted from the headset covering his ears as he took a slow drink from the juice pouch in his hands. Now and then, his eyes flicked off the screen to his wing's emblem emblazoned on the wall to his left, the immense black bird of prey circling a pale world adrift on a deep blue starfield.
	For the moment, he was alone in the ready room, the others from his wing off at the mess, finding something to eat before they settled in for their launch watch. He heard there was something good down in the mess, but eating before a jump never worked well for him. When the orders came in, he was sitting on the beach with his toes in the water, doing nothing of note. Dakota stayed back in their room to sleep while he wanted to enjoy the sun and tan his Baltic complexion. All he knew during the dash back to the ships was that his wing was on watch and expected a jump. He figured it was something to do with the pirates they'd chased off earlier. The vultures were probably returning to pick from the wreckage or get even for getting their flotilla smashed earlier.
	He chuckled again as the rubber suit monster kicked its way through a horde of small drone tanks and aircraft and into the city's downtown sector. He remembered what would happen next from countless times watching it with his brothers growing up. The generals and admirals couldn't stop the beast's rampage, forcing a retreat from the city and a nuclear option to be threatened. All seemed lost until the armored heroes arrived in their mighty mecha to save the city.
	The door to the ready room flicked open, and he found Dakota's delicate features leading in his wingmen. She clutched a pair of food boxes against her jumpsuit, offering one to him as she passed. He shook her off and tapped the seat next to him as she walked behind him and slid the boxes into the minifridge at the back. Fir and Swordfish placed their boxes in and took seats across from one another at the small card table against the wall, pulling a holodeck from their pockets and zoning out. Dakota dropped into the seat next to him, fishing her pair of headphones from the chair's side pocket.
	"What are we watching?" She asked, leaning against her partner.
	"Neo-Tokyo Monster Defense Force 3: Revenge of Nobunaga's Ghost."
	"I still can't see what you love about these things," she giggled.
	"Low-budget charm and youthful nostalgia."
	He offered her a juice pouch he had stashed in his lap as the screen flashed with a flurry of pyrotechnics and chaos. The monster toppled a cluster of skyscrapers down into the planned block sectors, blanketing the clean streets and broad plazas with a torrent of broken steel, glass, and ceramics. Smoke and fire broke out amidst the wreckage, growing into infernos that engulfed the sprawling debris. The glow of flames underlit the monster as it bellowed a menacing roar towards the darkening evening sky. The score swelled with dread as if all was lost, building the tension. It held this tension before breaking into a triumphant score as the camera snapped to the skies as a crackling beam of energy burst down from the heavens. It splashed against the wreckage as the power-armor clad heroes arrived. Gibberish leaned forward in his seat, yearning to see them unleash their tachyon lances and particle cannons against the beast.
	The screen froze before flashing to a white screen as the jump klaxon whined through their headsets. A two-minute timer began counting down as a monotonous voice broke through, declaring the FTL drives were charging to the necessary level. Gibberish cursed as he dug for his rough bite guard and jammed it into his mouth. The others in the ready room with him closed followed suit, dropping into their couches and fastening their restraints. He tasted the cruel plastic and gritted before Dakota nudged his elbow.
	"Hey, how's that movie end, anyway?"
	"Heroes beat the monster…"
	"How? The power of friendship?"
	"Extraordinary violence and planning. After the heroes do that, the main character marries his wingman and rides into the sunset-"
	"Until the next movie?"
	"No, he's gone until Neo-Tokyo Monter Defense Force 6: For All Mankind, where a multi-national force has to go to Titan to defeat a bunch of space peacocks."
	"Weird," she muttered, throwing the bite guard back in.
	He shrugged as he bit down and pushed him back into the couch, humming a lullaby to himself. He hated jumping, he thought as his body melted and nerves screamed in eldritch rhythms. He ceased to be as he was one and zero for those countless, brief moments when reality shattered and reformed in a cyclical cacophony. He lurched and crushed down on the bite guard as he fought spasms and blinked away into the LED banks overhead, casting a warm glow over him. Where was he? Who was he? Why was someone holding his hand?
	Gibberish shook his head and undid his restraints, recognizing the ready room again and sprang to his feet. The other three were shaking off the warp shudders and coming around to reality again. He fought an urge to hurl, forcing the acid back down as he stalked back to the refrigerator unit and scooped up a bulb of water, emptying it before turning back to the couch.
	They slowly roused themselves from the couch, shaking themselves back into reality before the ready room door opened, and the Rear Admiral entered, flanked by the Captain of the Jones. He waved them down before they could muster to attention, taking their seats before he began, pulling up a holographic display of the local gas giant and its moons.
	"I'll make this quick. We are attempting to intercept an unknown force that recently jumped into the outer reaches of this system. We suspect it could be the remains of the previous pirate fleet we engaged recently," The Rear Admiral spoke with his usual curt demeanor, confident and to the point. Still, his expression seemed to darken before he continued. "But due to the approach vector, there is the possibility of it being a Betelguesan hive fleet."
	Gibberish froze, his stomach dropping as he looked over the holographic display hovering before him. They were fucked, he'd seen the footage and the wrecked ships dragged into dry dock at the Pinwheel. He wondered if his will was up to date before the Rear Admiral resumed, tracing a rough orbit around the gas giant.
	"Your wing is being scrambled to provide early warning and determine the nature of our enemy. Red 12 will maintain a holding position here among the Victorian moons while your flight will pass into the shadow of the gas giant. If you make contact in the shadow, return to the task force as fast as possible. Our defense of the colony will rely on speed and surprise, so knowing as fast as possible is vital. Once you are away, Hunter/Killer 2 will take up a picket position on the return point of your orbit to relay and messages. Your birds are loaded and ready, any questions?"
	No one spoke up in the room before he dismissed them and turned, stepping out of the room. The four of them were silent, listening to the hum of the air vents.
	"Time to go," Gibberish muttered, stepping to the lockers at the rear and pulling his vacuum suit out, he shook it on over his jumper and pulled his helmet against his chest.
	"You think we're getting into it?"
	"Yeah, just a matter of what it is we're getting into."

Chapter 9: Hunting Again

	Gibberish’s Albatross burned hard away from the task force, tailed by the Skua as the built speed to carry them around the gas giant. Ahead through his view screens, Gibberish could see the glittering rings of Victory, marked by dark stone, golden dust, and white ice, that caught the scant light from the sun far to their back.
	Their flight path would take them down around Victory to skim within the rings and hide their flight amongst the orbital debris and background radiation of the gas giant’s dense core. They would fly cold, primary engines off, relying on cold chemical thrusters to push the Skua above or below the rings and run wideband sweeps. The hope was to detect something without issue and slip back to the fleet.
	The fall in took time, building speed as they let gravity do the work for them on the way out. Gibberish punched in his commands, opening the sensor clusters along the nose and flanks. The cold black eyes opened, scouring the void around them for motion amongst the stars. Some were tracking the stars themselves, running rough calculations to determine if any were out of place while others looked for movement, hoping to catch a glimpse of an engine flare in the dark. The LADAR arrays swept slowly, hunting through the lightless spaces between the stars, bouncing back at the speed of light.
	As they neared the shadow line, he tightbeamed Fir to kill engines. From here, they’d ride cold until they found something or completed their orbit. He sent a final update back to the task force and leaned back in his seat. The Albatross hummed faintly as the main engines shut down, cooling as the internal heat sinks came online. To anyone watching, they were nothing but a few pieces of cold debris tumbling along, vagabonds at gravity’s mercy.
	With the heat sinks running, the air conditioning had to dial back to maximize time in stealth, but it slowly meant the cabin would grow warmer too. Gibberish took one last look back at the star down the gravity well before they passed into Victory’s shadow, the pitch-black engulfing them. It was too dark, he mused. He wished he could’ve turned on a light.

****

	Ravensburg hadn’t left the CIC since the flight went into the blind that morning, watching the holographic display update whenever a LADAR ping came back. A smaller display to his right ran through a flurry of simulations, returning the results as fast as the John Paul Jones’ computers could spit them back out, compounding the inklings of dread mired in the back of his mind. He referenced every distinct type of Betelguesan warship that the UNN had encountered across the decades of war with the omnicidal bugs in his calculations. He compared the estimated speeds of each form or breed or type of bioship they fielded from the smallest strike craft to the immense hive ships that bore their ilk across the stars like the parasites that they were.
	The hive fleets that had plagued the frontier colonies were an enigma to naval command, seeming to lack any greater coordination. They drifted across the borders one after another, attacking whatever world or station they reached, swarming with instinctual hate for anything in their way. What complicated his simulations was the lack of any cohesive fleet template amongst the Betelguesan hordes. Aside from the constant center of gravity consisting of two or three hive ships, the cloud of expected escorts could be a scarce handful of cruiser-sized ships or dozens of fast attack boats and strike craft. He ran another simulation, letting the computer hum and chirp in its esoteric language as he turned back to the holographic displays showing the expected orbit of Hunter/Killer 1. By now, they were nearing the apoapsis of their trajectory, skimming between Victory’s atmosphere and the wide rings that danced about the world.
	An ensign had brought him dinner from the mess, a small meal of warm vegetable stew, and baguettes simmering in a lock-lid bulb. Hunger pangs lanced out from his stomach, breaking his eyes from the hologram. He took the bulb and retired to a chair near his display, soaking the hard bread in the broth. He took a deep breath, smelling the rich aroma as he closed his eyes. Ravensburg took a tentative spoonful, blowing to cool the steaming contents.
	“Rear Admiral,” Captain Judd said, coming to a stop next to the display.
	“Captain,” Ravensburg sighed. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll be eating during our interaction.”
	“No problem, sir.”
	“Then what seems to be the matter, Captain?”
	“Some of the men are starting to talk, sir. Rumors amongst the rankers about why we raced out here so fast.”
	“Such as?”
	“The possibility of it being bugs, sir. They’re worried about our odds.”
	“They’re right to be,” Ravensburg nodded, pointing with his spoon to the simulation readout as the computer chirped a completion notice. “What does that simulation say, Judd?”
	“Outcome negative. If we can’t keep out of reach, the Roachs’ll either shoot us apart or board us. Either way, Ostriv is left exposed.”
	“Others show that they could overtake us with the weight of numbers or the hive ships push through to planetfall with a heavy escort screen we can’t pierce. Regardless, I do not relish our position. As for the men, we should address these rumors now, remind them of our goal here.”
	“I’ll draft a general alert for you to authorize later, but frankly, sir, I feel we need to alert the UNN command.”
	“Until we confirm our foe, a false alarm would only draw a proper carrier fleet away from a more pressing warzone. The situation along the border is more tenuous than we’d like to admit, which is why a delaying action will be so vital here.”
	“I understand, sir.”
	Ravensburg finished his stew, closing the bulb and returning to the display. For now, all they could do was wait until the hunter/killer flight made contact with the picket.

Chapter 10: Contact HOSTILE

	"Your turn on watch," Dakota groaned, shaking him awake.
	Gibberish moaned as he sat up in his couch, unlatching the sleeping bands. He ran a hand over his control boards, pulling up his sensor readouts.
	"Our songbird say anything while I slept?" He asked, letting himself float away from the foam padding. He pulled himself along the handholds towards the storage lockers lining the rear of the cockpit, opening one of them with a faint click. He scanned over the rows of ration packs and drink pouches inside, pulling one out and letting it drift as he continued back to the bathroom.
	"Nothing of note, but background radiation is picking up, and our sensors are having trouble."
	"Before you catch sleep, could you push our orbit out and pass me the stick? I'm going to run another sensor sweep."
	Dakota nodded as she slid into her flight couch. Gibberish relieved himself and floated back to the couches, scooping his ration pack into his hands. He strapped in as he felt the Albatross shift around him, climbing higher away from Victory. The cold gas thrusters were flaring out along the black hull, pushing them on swirling clouds of carbon dioxide and xenon. It was a slow ascent out of the gravity well as he picked at his stale meal. He pulled up his command bar and beamed a simple message to Fir and Swordfish as they lingered relatively close. Gibberish set the LADAR arrays to sweep again while the passive sensors reset their arcs to the front of the Albatross.
	Outside, the stars hung in their eternal dance as his craft cruised along in its new arc. Aside from the hum of the heat sinks far to the rear of the ship and Dakota's slow breathing, it was quiet in the cockpit; his eyes scanned across the array of sensor readouts and out into the black void beyond Victory's shimmering rings of stone and ice. He set his sights on the brighter stars, letting the constellations trace themselves out of the myriad points of light.
	It was then that his display chimed, a single alert flashing in the queue. He pulled his headset on and shifted in his seat as he opened the notification. One of the passive star sensors noted an anomaly, inconsistent flickering at the limit of one of the sensor's cones. He referenced its angle from his position, tracing it up and away from Victory out into the stars above him, above the orbital plane.
	"Now, why are you up there?"
	He returned to the readout and reviewed the data. The sensor detected a flicker that didn't match the star's recorded rate, but it was seen at the fringe of the sensor's arc off the port wingtip array. Maybe it was a calibration error, he wondered if some crew chief tapped it weird, and now it was stuttering in its housing. If that were the case, he would personally space someone. He laughed to himself as he cleared the alert and tapped the flight stick, rolling the Albatross 90 along its central axis. There was a second star sensor at the end of the starboard wing.
	Gibberish whistled as he pulled up the suspicious star on his screen. He set the sensor to track it in the middle of its arc, looking out from the orbital plane. While he left the other sensor to run, he started a diagnostic over all the port wing sensors and warmed up the communication lasers. If there was anything out there, he wanted to let Fir know immediately. The minutes ticked by as he watched the stars drift by, waiting for something to finish. To his right, he had the suspicious star pulled up, his eyes flicking to it time and again. He stopped himself from bouncing in his seat as he watched the feed, seeing the afterimage cast across an unfathomable abyss to reach the mechanical eye of his sensors and then onto the screen next to him.
And then the star blinked out.
	He jolted up as the sensor fed him a new alert, zooming out to the local cluster of stars. The diagnostic scan returned an all-clear as he gritted his teeth. Some of the nearby stars flickered and then went dark, flashing back in at random intervals across that small patch.
	"Dakota, wake the fuck up!" He barked as he primed his commset. "Fir, you awake?"
	"You got something?"
	"Yeah, but I don't want it."
	"No chance for returns here," Fir chided.
	"Gib, what's up?" Dakota groaned.
	"Dakota, point us at this vector and warm the engines. Fir, I'm going to blast away with LADAR at full power. Once I get the return, we're going to run like hell for Red 12. We need to cut our orbit down and keep under the rings."
	"Why?" his pilot asked, looking back over her shoulder as she powered up her displays.
	"Once I blast them with LADAR, they'll know someone saw them. If someone was painting us, we'd have three kinds of alarms for it and two more if they target locked us."
	"But why under the rings?"
	"The fuckers are flying high, going over the orbit planes. Fucking smart bugs, probably expected trouble."
	"Fuck," Fir hissed through the headset.
	"We wouldn't see them unless we looked up or they dropped in," Dakota muttered.
	"Exactly. Firing pulse."
	Outside, the LADAR beacon hummed as the powerplant transferred a full charge into the emitter. At the speed of light, a tight cone of particles shot off along Gibberish's guess towards the slowly drifting patch of flickering stars.
	"Why didn't passive spot them?" she asked, pulling on her helmet.
	"Not sure, maybe background radiation from the gas giant. Maybe they were too far out for the low energy sweeps to reach them and bounce back cohesively. Either way, I hope you're ready to dance."
	"Need to pee first, but good to go beyond that," Dakota lamented.
	The sharp cut of seconds turned to agonizing minutes as they waited, warming the engines and plotting the run for home. He loathed the high-g runs, but he would have to put up with it once the beams came back. He couldn't stand this waiting or that implication of doom lingering above literally above their heads. The air in the Albatross became a tense silence, clinging to them with the residual heat of drifting in stealth. He swallowed hard before breaking that humid silence.
	"Hey, Dakota…"
	"Yeah?"
	"If we get out of this one, would you marry me?"
	"What the fuck? Why are you asking me this shit now?"
	"Us versus a bug fleet isn't a fair fight. Might give us something to look forward to."
	"Fair enough. You're Orthodox, right?"
	"Not practicing."
	"Same, keeps things simple for us."
	He chuckled for a moment before the LADAR blast came back. The after image bloomed in a hologram before him, revealing three immense shapes amid a smaller cloud of escorts. They were hive ships, the bloated, anthropoid forms bristling with plasma cannons and hideous sensors and long segmented legs folded against the undersides of their bulk. The Albatross' combat computer identified two possible carriers and four cruisers amongst the dozens of smaller screening corvettes and picket forms among the escorting force. They crept along in a close formation for those first few seconds in the LADAR feed before a carrier, one cruiser, and a handful of pickets pivoted and dropped out of formation, moving straight towards the source. They knew someone spotted them and were swarming to the origin.
	"Go...go now. Fir, time to run."
	Dakota didn't hesitate, slamming the throttle and throwing them back against their seats as they burned hard for the sunrise. The quicker they got around Victory, the faster they could raise the alarm. Gibberish screwed his eyes shut as the acceleration crushed him against the flight couch. He could feel his blood rushing up and down as they roared through the void.

****

	Ravensburg leaned forward over the display as his task force began to shift around their ambush point. Besides sleep and other urgent matters, he had yet to leave the CIC, waiting for any information from the recon flight. Had it not been for the mission clock ticking away above the holographic display, he wouldn't be able to determine how long he'd been watching the 3-D feed of the gas giant and its slowly drifting moons.
	As he waited for confirmation from the scouts, he passed over a mental checklist of his contingencies. A courser was awaiting orders back at Port Arthur, its jump drives charged, and ready the summon reinforcements as soon as possible. The PDF fleet hung around as a paltry screen over the colony to keep a clear route for any civilian ships to evacuate the population. Simultaneously, the few hundred planetary militiamen were busy at work revising evac plans and defenses if they couldn't stall the bugs. As for his force, he'd briefed the various commanding officers of the potential threat and reviewed orders for scuttling if they were boarded. For the first time in years, he prayed silently to himself as he looked over the tense faces around him, the techs at their stations as they scoured the spaces around them for their enemy.
	"Sir, Incoming message from picket," one of the comms techs spoke up.
	"Put it through."
	The comms tech nodded, swiping at their screen. The speakers overhead crackled to life before a voice broke through, fast and airless as it rattled off information.
	"-Confirm Red 12, we have encountered a Betelguesan fleet. Force moving above orbit plane to evade sensor sweeps-"
	"Open a tight beam to the colony, begin civilian evacuation and launch that damned Courser," Ravensburg interjected, sending the comms techs scrambling to flash an alert to the waiting PDF forces. "And, sound general quarters."
	"-Force consists of three hive ships, two carriers, four cruisers, and over two dozen escorts. Position compromised, enemy force closing with speed. Requesting orders, over."
	As the message ended, a klaxon cried overhead and the CIC darkened, shifting to a deep red as the combat lighting came online.
	"All hands, all hands, battlestations, battlestations."
	Based on the hunter/killer report, the LADAR arrays were angled to scour the hive fleet's expected flight path as the John Paul Jones increased her arrays to full power, sweeping the void for her foes. As they waited for the return, Ravensburg turned to Captain Judd at his flank.
	"Orders, sir?" Judd asked, leaning forward to adjust the holographic map to a display of the solar system.
	"Set an intercept course towards Port Arthur; we need to keep parity with our foe. Tightbeam our hunter/killers, signal them to engage, and return to the task force if possible. Longbow will deploy all six of her standoffs, swarm payload once the opportunity arises. Put Beewolves onto staggered combat patrols; if they lash out with bombers, we must be ready."
	His eyes grew stern as the LADAR scans returned, showing the hive fleet in detail. The ships clustered around their vagabond hive ships, racing onward on that strange green corona of their engines. A small cluster separated, falling towards the rings of Victory, chasing the scout flights he'd cast out towards the enemy. He keyed the shipwide broadcast comms, clearing his throat before he began.
	"All hands, now hear this. By now, the rumors have most likely circled through you all that our scramble wasn't brought on by simple pirates. They are correct, as we speak, a Betelguesan hive fleet has entered the system. Our enemy is burning hard starward for the colony, having caught us out of position. They are moving above us, through the cold black, and we must move to counter or leave them with a clear route through to the inner system. The odds are not in our favor, but the situation is unchanged. We must fight these abominable starspawn to the heel, if not to repulse them altogether, then at least to by time to evacuate the colony. I would not ask any of you to stand and fight here if I were not certain I would fight alongside you, to uphold that oath we swore long before, to uphold and defend humanity and her allies amongst these cold and brutal stars. Our wretched foe chose this world to ravage and plunder, but we will not let them do so easily, even if we must face our fate here, it will be done standing."
	Around him, the silence of the CIC gave way to the distant rumble of the Jones' engines, burning hard to build speed as the rest of Red 12 fell into screening formation. Those around him were silent for a moment, but they were steeled with a firm resolve. Whatever fears or doubts hung about them, they swallowed it down and went about their work, relaying the communications throughout the force. Far starward, the Courser's lithe frame danced and spun as it set its course before ripping that hole through reality to jump away, leaving the bright flower of a superlight bloom.

Chapter 11: Big Game Hunter

	"They want us to what?" Fir screeched into Gibberish's ears.
	"Turn and fight, and then run for the fleet. We can't do that easily with a cruiser and carrier bearing down on us. They'd swat us in open space like flies."
	"Any suggestions then?" Dakota spoke through the commset.
	"Same as before, we use the rings to hide," Gibberish replied.
	He pulled up his display, reading out their flight along the inner rim of Victory's rings with HK 2 off one hundred kilometers to their right, skimming above the rocks and ice. To their rear, their pursuers were slowly closing. The closest was the cruiser, a hideous beetle-like thing bristling with antennae and plasma weaponry. It was ringed by five picket ships that shifted like flies about carrion with the carrier hanging behind. The bug ships were back and above the rings, just out of their approximate weapons range, but that gap was creeping shut a few kilometers at a time.
	If only we could swing first, we might get out of this, Gibberish thought. Both of our Skuas are fully loaded and ready to go, but we need an opening. He wondered how the bugs could tell a rock from a ship. RADAR? Possibly, maybe they just had a bunch of eyes on the outside too. If they had to see him shoot him, then they could be blinded too, he figured.
Gibberish opened the comms array, beaming to HK 2 off their starboard beam.
	"Ghostrider, this is Gibberish, I got an idea."
	"Go for it," the static-tinged voice came back.
	"We won't outrun the bugs at this rate, so we have to make our escape. I say we drop into the rings and play dead. They can't tell us from the rocks and ice without knocking on the front window. Either they run by chasing ghosts out here, or we give them a hell of an uppercut."
	"Sounds like the best we got. Take us to the dance when you're ready.'
	"Wait till we dump a signal repeater and then play dead."
	Gibberish switched channels and pulled up his tool suite, selecting one of his signal repeaters and cranking the settings to maximum, overriding the battery limits as needed. In addition, he primed a pair of sensor drones, plotting their trajectories before he spoke again.
	"Dakota, Swordfish, on three, I'm going to throw several drones and probes backward and throw out as much noise and light as I can to buy us an opening. When I do, run us under the rings and cut thrust. We're going to play dead. Fir, how many torps you got?"
	"Two dozen and they are very mean and ready to fight."
	"Good."
	Gibberish opened his commset with HK2, pulling his display in front of him. He took a deep breath inside his helmet before starting.
	"Three...two...one...Drop!"
	Outside, the Albatross threw the drones and repeater away. After a short warm-up, the probe exploded with a torrent of static, light, and radio screaming. The pair of probes raced for the cruiser and carrier, blasting a wide cone of LADAR waves at the bug ships. The bursts only lasted a few seconds before the onboard batteries melted from overload and exploded with a spray of slag and metal. The four strike craft had disappeared, their engines off as they hurtled beneath the rings. Inside, Gibberish heard the scattered thunks of dust bouncing against the hull of his Albatross. He powered down every subsystem that he could; all he wanted to do was look like a strange black rock.
	He swallowed hard as they hurtled along, looking out through the forward windscreen. Dakota slowed their rotation, tapping them into a drift with the cold gas thrusters. He opened the tightbeams, clicking away with the smallest data bursts possible to prevent any heat buildup or signal confusion.
	HK11: SO FAR SO GOOD
	HK21: WHAT NEXT, GIB?
	HK11: SEE IF WE LOST BUG
	HK11: SHOOT THEM IF NOT
	His foot drummed against the deck as they slid along on inertia. At this put, he was riding on luck and a prayer. Gibberish hoped someone was listening as they coasted, mostly blind to the outside, skimming dangerously close to the massive rocks that made up the innermost ring. A bad hit could vent them or kill them outright, but if they weren't close enough, the bugs might somehow see them and slag them with a plasma burst.
	HK12: TORPS WARM, SAY WHEN
	HK11: EASY COWBOY
	HK22: WHAT TARGETS YOU CALL?
	HK12: ALWAYS WANTED TO BAG CARRIER
	HK22: WE SHOOT CRUISER THEN
	HK12: SIMPLE AS
	Gibberish flicked his eyes back to the cockpit window as Dakota waved, pointing up to their left. He leaned forward from his couch, peering along the underside of the ring to the swirling clouds of Victory ahead of them. Slowly, he watched the orange chitin hull of the bug cruiser creep into view, pulsing with biomechanical rhythms that twisted his stomach to observe. They had moved away from the ring, but not far enough to evade the torpedoes. The bugs were smart, Gibberish thought, but they weren't that smart. They hadn't slagged them yet, so they probably couldn't see the four hunters as they coasted along.
	As the bug ships slid in front of his cockpit, he could see the five pickets spread out between the cruiser and the carrier. In addition, the small cluster of burning green lights meant that the carrier had probably scrambled its fighters. If they took too long, he thought, the bugs might start combing the rings for them.
	HK11: 21, WANT TO HELP WITH ANOTHER FLASHBANG?
	HK21: SURE, WILL PRIME WHAT WE HAVE WARMED
	HK12: WE CAN HELP FLASH AND BANG, TOO ;)
	HK11: WHEN WE SHOOT, RUN LIKE HELL
	HK21: WHERE TO?
	HK11: RED 12, GET TO FIGHTER SCREEN ASAP
	HK11: WHEN YOU ARE READY, WE GO
	HK21: READY FOR FULL BLAST
	HK12: FANGS OUT, GOOD TO SHOOT
	HK22: BLOODTHIRSTY HERE, LETS CRACK CRABS
	Gibberish chuckled to himself as he prepared the Albatross's powerplant, slowly warming the engines and priming the LADAR arrays. When they shot, he'd through another blinding burst of probes and static at the roaches to try and clear the way for the torpedoes. They would have this one opening to make a break for it, so it had to count.
	HK11: ON FIRE
	HK11: 3
	HK11: 2
	HK11: 1
	HK11: FIRE
	He slammed the power gauges to full as another cluster of sensor drones screamed forward, belting LADAR static at the bugs. Simultaneously, the Skuas unloaded every torpedo from their internal drums, sending the missiles streaking out at breakneck speeds into the cluster of bug ships. Before he could watch from the cockpit, Dakota threw the throttle to the limit and screamed down and away from the bugs as wild sprays of glowing plasma wildly lanced back towards the rings, inaccurate from the mix of static and surprise.
	He opened the rear-facing cameras, watching the blue engine glows of the torpedoes dancing around the sporadic plasma fire of the bugs. The cruiser had been closer than expected, catching the full salvo from HK 22. The explosions rippled across the flank of the bug ship before the warheads fully ignited, rupturing the craft along the gaps in its chitin hide. It arched and spasmed in its death throes before slowly succumbing to Victory's gravitational pull.
	Fir's spread raced into the picket line, popping three of the pickets in a flash of nuclear white. Most of the remaining warheads were intercepted by a hail of plasma fire and fighters. Still, one made it through, impacting the carrier along its underside, illuminating the sprawling clawed legs tucked along the bottom of the pink monstrosity.
	"Hey Gibberish, what is that? Three bugs for us?" Fir hooted through the comms as they scurried away into the void.
	"Three pickets don't match one cruiser," Dakota scolded.
	"It still only counts as one," he hissed back through his laughter.
	Gibberish kept his eyes to their rear, watching the carrier slow to a limp as the two remaining pickets began to orbit it. Those three wouldn't be racing anywhere anytime soon, he thought. Then his eyes caught the glittering of green thrusters diving away from the carrier and towards the rings. A swift LADAR broke through as he marked them on his display.
	"Party's not over for us yet. Five fighters are racing for us. Run out the defensive guns."
	Gibberish tapped at his display, deploying the articulating railgun turret at the rear of the Albatross. The blister sprang open, letting the articulating gun pod track the closest of the five fighters. At the tap of his trigger, a burst of glowing tungsten slugs arced ahead of the fighter, working to predict the insectoid craft's path. Several other shots lanced out from the other strike craft flying along his flank.
	The fighters bobbed and flickered as they closed, rolling and pitching at sickening rates. The bug fighters were more agile than an Albatross or Skua, able to contort their exterior to vector their engines wildly. Sporadic bursts of plasma came back, forcing them to evade via harsh shots from the RCS clusters as they traded fire.
	"Focus the closest before it hits missile range!" Fir called over the comms.
	"Keep your throttles to the floor. The quicker we get to Red 12, the better," Gibberish replied. "We aren't fighters. These roaches will fry us in a turn fight. On my go, ripple fire at the near fighter."
	He confirmed his target lock, swinging his gun ahead of the bug fighter. He expected to swirl and dance away from the plot into some wild vector until it could return fire. He squeezed the trigger, letting the railgun rattle deeply through the hull of the Albatross. The glowing tungsten slugs slashed across the fighter's path, blending with the three other bursts that bracketed the fighter. Its thrusters flared, trying to evade, but every route only led it into the burning metal. The chitin plates fractured before erupting into a searing gas cloud that faded swiftly into the void.
	"Haha, one down," Fir cackled.
	Gibberish ran his eyes over the display, watching the four remaining bug fighters slow. They weren't closing for now, but clustered together, matching speed. For a moment, he hoped they were breaking off to limp home, but then they began accelerating again. They were closing in a tight line to break through the loose tungsten screen. He checked his ammo, seeing around seventy percent in the drum. Ahead of their flight, he could see the task force marked on his display and a wing of Beewolves burning hard to intercept. He thought almost home, double-checking the status of their onboard countermeasures, finding green lights across the board.
	"Keep it fast. We're almost to the fighter screen. They're lining up to rush us."
	The bugs crept closer, probing their reactions with sporadic plasma fire, forcing them to maneuver and return fire with short bursts. It would be a matter of seconds based on their rough routes of the three flights, racing to a convergence out in the cold black away from Victory's rings.
	Gibberish began feeding targeting data to the Beewolves racing closer, marking the bugs in a target lock for the long-range radar missiles the Beewolves were bearing. The Albatross' LADAR arrays painted the bugs in radiating waves that made them easy prey for the missiles' sensor cones. If those failed, they would switch to infrared missiles or even guns at close range.
	The bugs shuddered in their pursuit, throwing a flurry of missiles free from the clawed legs beneath their rotund shells. The beady eyes and porous antennae scoured the space around them before locking onto the engine flares ahead of them, burning hard to impact.
	"Fuck, they launched," Gibberish hissed as he fired the countermeasures.
	Blasts of static and laser emissions flashed to their rear to blind their sensors while the turrets sprayed in wild arcs to intercept the missiles and shake off the bugs. The missile swarms flickered and flashed, blinded by the static and flying wide or swatted away by the railgun spray. Ahead, the Beewolves released their radar missiles as they closed, opening up with their LADAR arrays to clog the air around Gibberish's flight and distract the bug missiles. Behind them, the bugs broke, running down and away as their attack failed. The Beewolves hurtled past to run down the fleeing bugs with guns and missiles.

Chapter 12: Counterstrike

	"The first strike is ours, but the odds are still against us." Captain Judd said, looking over the holographic display before them. "Our hunter/killer flights are repairing and rearming. However, the hive fleet is reacting to us detecting them. They are dropping into the orbital plane and accelerating; we will be within general weapons range within the four hours."
	"Report from Longbow, all of their standoffs are warmed and ready to fire on your command," the XO added.
	"And the evacuations?" Ravensburg asked, steepling his temples.
	"Proceeding slowly. We've around 150,000 civilians in Port Arthur and the surrounding countryside. We have to move them all down to the port and then transfer them to orbit where we hit another bottleneck. Ostriv isn't on a major route or near it, so we don't have a surplus of ships to help get people out. That may change based on when the Courser reaches help, but for now, it's a trickle."
	Ravensburg took a slow drag from his coffee as he looked over the map before him. The bugs had altered their path, descending along a sloping arc towards the colony. The task force had kept its speed as they left Victory behind, putting them in a position ahead and below the hive fleet. At their current pace, they would arrive at the colony within two weeks if they didn't jump to close the distance. He prayed their jump drives were offline, letting them stall them longer if only to allow a scant few more colonists to get off-world.
	"We made the first strike," the old man began, "so let us follow up before they can reply in kind. Within the hour, Longbow will deploy all six of her standoffs in a saturation attack against the bug fleet with supplementing long-range railgun fire. She will sally forth into weapons range with Whiskey Rose and Espana. The torpedo frigates will follow up the standoffs with a full salvo while Quebec and Meredith provide a screen against any return fire or carrier strike."
	"This sounds risky, sir. Especially moving them away from the remainder of the CIWS screen."
	"In this case, Captain, a good offense is the best defense. We're punching well above our weight. There is a risk to everything we do. This will rely on the enemy being too overwhelmed by the saturation attack to reply in kind short of panicked fire."
	"Understood, sir. I'll relay your orders."
	The task force continued their withdrawal as the strike force separated, drifting towards the edge of weapons range. The Longbow followed behind the two CIWS frigates with the torpedo boats sailing at the formation's flanks. Ravensburg felt his nerves dance as he watched the ships drift away from his carrier on the holographic display. Every slow minute that passed pushed them further from Red 12 if the enemy counterattacked or retaliated.
	It was a gamble, and he knew that without a doubt in his gut. A Warden was no match against anything that was at home on a proper battle line, but they drew upon their foe with sabers bared and silos open at this moment. It wouldn't be much longer before the strike force was inside effective torpedo range, then they'd open fire with everything they had and return to the carrier's meager fighter screen. If the bugs turned to engage, half of his task force would be within their counterattack range. If they turned to flee, it would force him to pursue and give up initiative.
	He needed to determine his next steps before they came to pass. If this strike faltered, he would push hard to keep ahead of the bugs. If it failed altogether, they would have to retreat to Port Arthur to consolidate their forces. Regardless, he would have to prepare follow up strikes to keep the bugs from having a chance to regroup or proceed, anything to stall their inevitable fall starward. Perhaps the hunter/killer wings could be deployed again, let loose like bloodhounds to slip into the enemy formation. Something that close would be dangerous, but he needed to land blows against the hive ships directly. Shooting away any of the supporting vessels was clearing chaff that clogged the void around his actual quarry.
	He cursed to himself at the inscrutable nature of his foe. He could send volleys of torpedoes and strike craft against piratical rabble, and they would break, hurrying for the black like rodents. But bugs, they pushed on in some mindless disregard for self in their pursuit to despoil and consume. Maybe they were a hivemind, being driven on without concern for self because another fleet was waiting for the green light should this one fail. Heaven help us if that is the case, he thought, but maybe they're all fatalistic bastards and monsters, too.
	An alert flashed from the sensor banks, shifting the hologram's focus to the hive fleet as the screens moved around the hive ships, drifting in and out of their radar shadows. The fleet turned towards the strike force, pushing a swath of screens to the front while the three remaining cruisers moved in behind them. The three hive ships altered their course and moved away from the combat area with the carrier and a fraction of the screening ships.
	"Sir, enemy ships moving to counter. Tightbeam from the Longbow."
	"Patch them through," Ravensburg hissed.
	"Rear Admiral, the enemy is closing. Orders, sir?"
	"Press forward with your attack and disengage, Longbow."
	"Understood," Longbow replied, leaving his tightbeam open. "Weapons officer, status of all silos...Fire all silos."
	The holographic display updated, tracking the burst of six Standoff 2 missiles launched from the Longbow as Whiskey Rose and Espana began to volley fire every torpedo they could. The display was soon tracking dozens of warheads racing forward in a terraced cone with the standoffs at the tip. With their strike launched, the ships turned, burning back towards the task force with the two CIWS corvettes hanging around at the rear.
	"Sir, counter-launch detected!" The sensor officer called out, adjusting the display before them.
	"Detach the remainder of our CIWS, move to reinforce Longbow," Ravensburg called, leaning over the holographic display table before him. He thumped his fist against the edge, gritting his teeth as the display updated with each ping of the LADAR array.
	From the cluster of screening vessels, a flurry of torpedoes broke from the bug ships, screaming towards the strike force at speeds too fast for any man to safe experience. A secondary launch of torpedoes bristled from the three cruisers' dorsal spines as the core of the enemy force.
	The display updated with every passing second, tracking the onslaught of torpedoes racing across the gulf between his ships and theirs. Minutes dragged on as his remaining four CIWS screens detached and burned hard for the strike force, but the rate wasn't fast enough. The bug torpedoes were faster, a harbinger to the three cruisers accelerating towards the outgunned Longbow and her companions.
	The torpedo clouds met, some blinking out where they collided by raw chance or tripped some proximity charge. Seconds later, the clouds separated, continuing their hostile burns.
	"Time to impact?" Captain Judd asked anyone in the room?
	"Thirty seconds on ours, less than a minute on theirs."
	"Our CIWS screen won't reach them in time, sir."
	"Keep them moving," Ravensburg ordered back.
	Across that gulf of thousands of kilometers, the Longbow's standoffs hit their terminal point, erupting into a blossom of warheads that flared out before the bug screen. Indiscriminate bolts of plasma danced in the gloom, triggering scattered explosions against the spray of torpedoes converging on them. The entire cone collapsed inward, diving into the school of bug ships burning hard for the Longbow. For the briefest of moments, the display errored out, painting a haze where the bugs were. The telescope feed on the screens above their head showed a new starfield in the distance, twinkling in and out with detonations and rippling explosions too far away for any real detail to be parsed.
	Ravensburg shifted his attention to his withdrawing ships, scrambling ever closer to the horizon of protection the reinforcing CIWS ships could provide. It wouldn't be enough, though; the almost three dozen bug torpedoes were nearing their terminal approach, focusing and locking onto their prospective targets. The Quebec and Meredith let their CIWS buzz to life, spraying off long arcs of tungsten into the approaching cloud. Seconds later, Longbow, Espana, and Whiskey Rose opened up with their guns, tracing wild new constellations across the black behind them. The first few explosions dotted the area behind them, but the torrent of fire wasn't enough.
	The display tracked the bug's torpedoes as a half dozen dove in, impacting along the hull of Quebec in a flurry of explosions. The CIWS corvette burned bright for a millisecond before it died, leaving a debris field in its wake. Meredith swung and rolled, firing as she swept away one torpedo after another until one slipped through, catching her at the drive cones and shearing the engines clean off.
	Ravensburg felt his stomach plummet as the remaining dozen or so torpedoes began to converge on remaining ships. Whiskey Rose caught two along the flank before the secondary explosions broke her spine in half, sending her pieces drifting away slowly. Espana was hit on her port beam, carving a hole in her hull, but she burned away alive.
	Longbow defeated two more of the torpedoes, but the final one slipped in, blowing away the starboard silos and a large portion of her drive cones. She went into a flat spin for a handful of seconds before her maneuvering thrusters restrained her and left her adrift.
	"Longbow, respond," Ravensburg barked through the open tightbeam. "What is your status?"
	"Clipped, sir. At short, we've lost a third of our engine power, and our hanger is destroyed. Currently appraising our situation."
	"Admiral, we have LADAR contact on the cruisers," a sensor officer cried somewhere off to his right.
	The display shifted, tracking the bug forces now that the debris had scattered. Nearly all of the screens had been destroyed with only two limping back towards the hive ships along with one of the cruisers, leaking some form of vapor cloud from a series of craters along the dorsal spine. The second cruiser pushed onwards, continuing the pursuit of Longbow. The third cruiser was nowhere to be seen, most likely reduced to ash or dust by the barrage of warheads his vessels had launched.
	"Longbow, what is the status of your engines? You have one cruiser closing on your position."
	"Still inoperable, and we are aware of the cruiser. What are your orders, sir?"
	"Withdraw if possible, otherwise abandon and scuttle your ship. We can not intercept the cruisers without risking the carrier or her strike craft while the hive ships are still at large."
	"Understood, Rear Admiral," Longbow replied before the comms went quiet.
	"What is the status of Espana?"
	"She's alive, mostly structural damage to her flank and weapon systems offline. She is withdrawing with the four CIWS screens."
Ravensburg watched as the surviving vessels limped away from Longbow to regroup with the John Paul Jones. The cruiser continued its ravenous approach, leaving the swirling detritus of its escorts adrift in the void. It most likely had their sights on the John Paul Jones. It was Ravensburg's center of gravity and his best weapon to threaten the hive ships. To this ferocious cruiser, the Longbow was most likely dead and adrift. The odds only grew longer, he thought as the display chimed again.
	"Sir, Longbow is powering up her rail cannons. She's launched lifeboats as well."
	"Open comms immediately," He said, setting his eyes on the display where his Warden corvette blinked.
	The comms banks overhead hissed and popped before a voice came through.
	"This is Longbow, sir."
	"Longbow, you're powering on weapons. Explain yourself."
	"We're going to fight on, sir. All wounded and non-essential crew abandoned ship, but we need to do what we can. We can't outrun the cruiser and are too far from Red 12 for help. It was an honor, sir. Godspeed-"
	"Sir, they cut tightbeam. They are refusing hails."
	"Troublesome even to the end," Ravensburg chuckled under his breath. "Plot us a pursuit course on the hive ships. We can't let them escape us."
	"Sir, the Longbow," an ensign piped up.
	"They understand their situation is untenable, but those men and women won't accept it without a fight. They will buy us time to engage the hive ships and to do what we can to protect the colony."
	The ensign nodded and returned to his post as the task force began to accelerate from the area. They knew what must be done and set their minds to it. If he made it out of this alive, he would retire, Ravensburg resolved. This was too much for him, but he knew he couldn't crack here and now. Far more than just the lives of those in the CIC with him were under threat, and that put a deep, acidic knot in his gut and a throbbing ache along the back of his skull.
	To the rear, Longbow locked her LADAR array on the cruiser, belting the bug vessel with static and light to try and blind her sensors and weapons. Once the arthropod cruiser crossed that invisible line, the rail cannons opened up with furious applause. The sizable kinetic slugs zipped out towards the cruiser, forcing it to writhe as its thrusters flared to dodge. In the darkness, the engine flares painted the blue-green chitin in a sickly black glow as it opened up with plasma bolts from the cluster of gunports protruding from the blisters along its bow flanks. The two vessels traded shots at range as they slowly grew closer and more accurate.
The first hit was a fierce one from the Longbow, the kinetic rod smashing against the cruiser's ventral hull and burning through before blasting out a swath of chitinous hull from the dorsal side. Shortly after, the cruiser retaliated, landing a flurry of plasma bolts along the corvette's starboard hull. The first hit melted away the port silos' anchor points, sending them wheeling out into the black. The next few slashed against the ceramic and metal hull, burning deep into the surface to leave a glowing welt along the Longbow's exterior.
	The corvette turned, keeping her bow pointed towards the cruiser as it came ever closer like a predator to the kill. They were within visual range, the cruiser coming ever closer. Its plasma cannons thundered across the Longbow's hull, burning away ablative armor as the corvette's rail cannons continued to fire back, burrowing deep into the cruiser and blasting away chunks of the ship, but never seeming to find a critical hit. The next volley of bug plasma found the rail cannons, jamming one in place while slagging the other. Seeing its impacts take effect, the cruiser dove in closer to the Longbow.
	The cruiser flared its thrusters and rolled to flash its flank at the Longbow. In that brief instant, dozens of small black seeds fell free and then ignited their thrusters, racing for the corvette. The seeds slammed against the corvette's port side, running along the decks from the ventral hanger up to just next to the bridge. The righted against the hull before plasma torched flared, cutting into the interior and disgorging their passengers. The drones ignited plasma shields and set about scouring the ship.
	Through the camera feed coming in, Ravensburg could see the sporadic gunfire in darkened corridors as the borders clashed with the marines still aboard. What few marines were alive fought back, engaging with guns and grenades within the cramped, dim corridors of the dying warship. The crew was outnumbered, but it didn't matter. All they needed to do was stall until the commanding officers were ready. On the bridge, the commanding officers nodded in agreement. They ignited the engines, diverting as much power into them as possible, pushing well past the safety limits as they steered the sleek, dagger-like hull of their beloved Longbow at the cruiser. They lurched forward, charging with a silent howl through the battered skeleton of the ship. The cruiser saw their approach and made to evade, but was caught in the underside by a final shot from the Longbow's damaged rail cannon.
	In the Longbow's command room, the officers inserted their keycards into the central display as a small prompt flared and was approved, triggering a wailing klaxon throughout the ship. The men and woman still alive howled silent roars with spiteful glee on the screens as the Longbow made contact, thrusting her dagger-tip bow into the underbelly of the cruiser. The immense bug wailed in pain before it became nothing. The reactor went critical with its safeguards disabled intentionally to scuttle the ship if boarded. The camera feeds died with the Longbow, leaving only static behind. For the briefest of moments, a new star was born amid those two entwined ships. Its light burned brighter than any man could ever dare imagine as the heat stripped atoms apart and reduced everything around it to superheated gas and dust shot off in every direction possible. The CIC was silent save for the muted cry of the radiation alarm as the bursts of ionized energy reached the John Paul Jones seconds later as the new star died out.

Chapter 13: False Starlight

	"They scuttled her, man," Fir hissed.
	"Went down fighting," Dakota replied. "At least they took the cruiser with them. One less for us to worry about."
	"Regardless," Gibberish interrupted. "Keep your heads on the mission. We're going to get even for the Longbow."
	"Sounds like they got even already."
	Gibberish turned his attention to the holographic display before him, looking over the formation of strike craft around them. The two hunter/killer flights were spread along a 400 kilometer wide front with the two Skua attackers at the center position with the Albatrosses out on the ends. Three wings of four Beewolf fighters each formed their escort on their flight. The fighters were spaced out in a rough screen ahead of the Albatross, invisible across the dark starfield save of their engine cones' faint flicker.
	It was a full-force carrier strike. Gibberish knew that when he saw the crews loading the nuclear-tipped torpedoes onto the Skuas. They had gathered in the briefing room to hear the Rear Admiral say just how long the odds were growing after the Longbow and her escorts were destroyed. The rest of Red 12 would be withdrawing at speed towards the colony to consolidate their forces with the PDF fleet. Every strike craft the John Paul Jones could field would be used to raid the hive ships before they could move any closer to the evacuating colony. They wouldn't have standoff support because any change in the PDF fleet's posture could spook the bugs and force them to alter their course, so they were flying in and out on their own.
	Ahead, the three hive ships continued their fall starward tailed by the surviving cruiser and carrier while the remaining screens swirled around them like hornets around a nest amid a cloud of bug fighters streaming out of the carrier. The hive ships bristled with heavy plasma batteries and beam weapons that would turn even the mightiest warships to molten heaps in seconds when that came into range in addition to dozens of boarding pods that could overwhelm even the most steadfast defenses in a sea of flesh.
	"We only get one chance at this, and even then, we might not get out in one piece," Dakota lamented.
	"Just the risks we take," Gibberish replied.
	They were nearing the attack line where they would run out their guns, and there was no turning back. The seconds grew short as they hurtled forward, slowly warming the onboard computers as they doled out target selections. The Beewolves would sweep away fighters and screens with missiles and cannons so the Skuas could get at the hive ships with their atomic harpoons while anything else the bugs had was a target of opportunity. The Albatrosses would follow along and activate every trick they had to blind and distract the bugs and highlight every enemy around them.
	Gibberish murmured a quiet prayer as they passed the burn line, and he triggered every sensor suite under his command. A sharp blast of radio static and laser bands torrented from the Albatrosses as the formation broke into their attack runs. His holographic display exploded with returns from the dozens of screens and fighters swirling around like a cloud of chaff that contorted and shifted towards them.
	The first wing of Beewolves drove on, launching an initial spread of radar-guided missiles, following the Albatrosses' marks to swat several of the bug fighters before converging on a lonely screen and laying into it with guns and heat-seeking missiles that tore into the green drive plumes.
	The second wing arced to the left, sending wave after wave of missiles out on wild tangents into the thickest cloud of fighters. A constellation of flashes followed their wrathful curve before they circled back towards the Skuas, letting their rail cannons spray off belts burning tungsten along the armored flank of the remaining cruiser.
	The third fighter wing hung close to the Skuas, sending missiles into any bug craft that scrambled a counter-attack towards the attackers. They piled into the bug formation within seconds, closing on the three titanic hive ships that dominated the core of the fleet. Both of the Skuas opened their weapon bays, priming the warheads and confirming target locks through the buzzing tones in their helmets.
	Then the stars doubled ahead of them in burning green and blue. The hive ships retaliated with torrents of plasma bolts in sweeping, indiscriminate arcs and scything beams of pulsing blue fire against them. The space between the Skuas and their targets became far more hazardous than expected. The first wild spray washed over the Beewolves, destroying three of the screening fighters in a cloud of gas and debris.
	Dakota threw the Albatross down in a sharp descent to drop under the deluge of burning plasma and debris. The Skuas broke away, climbing as they continued their attack approach towards the hive ships, weaving and pirouetting through the bolts and beams that burned around them. Swordfish fired his first rack of torpedoes. The burning blue thrusters lost amid the wild strokes of plasma on the black sky. The torpedoes accelerated into the wall of return fire, rolling and shifting to pursue the first hive ship. Four torpedoes were launched, three were interdicted by the plasma fire coming from the bugs, making a cluster of small starlight before fading into the chaos. The fourth pushed on until it slammed against the rear of the hive ship before a new, young star was born.
	Radiation alarms screamed around Gibberish as they dove away from the expanding gas cloud. They were too close to the blast, and his onboard systems were fighting to stay active. He swallowed, tasting metal in his mouth and wondered if he'd bitten a hole through his tongue in panic. They continued the dive under the hive fleet, looking up at the gas cloud that was the third hive ship. His commset stuttered between hissing static, cheers, and panicked calls for support. The formation had bloodied the bugs, but the sheer volume of plasma was becoming too much. Of the twelve Beewolves they were escorted by, three were still launching attacks, two had retreated from damages, and the rest were reduced to slag and cinders.
	Through his sensor suite, Gibberish turned his cameras to track the rest of the hunter/killer flights, finding Swordfish pushing towards the carrier. A deep burning wound cut along the Skua's flank, where some foul bug weapon had scoured the ceramic plating. Atmospheric gas seeped from the gash, trailing behind the attacker as it continued. He watched it release another salvo of torpedoes into the void before the harsh green light of a plasma bolt smashed in from out of frame. The bolt caught the Skua just behind the cockpit, blooming against the black hull and burning into the interior. For a moment, the glowing slag of his wingman tumbled on before it was lost in another burst of starlight. When the lights faded, there was nothing.
	"To hell with this," Dakota hissed, pushing the Albatross as much as it could take, limping them away from the hive ships as fast as they could.
	Between the damage and radiation interference, Gibberish worked to track what was friendly or night. They'd destroyed the carrier and one hive ship while crippling the cruiser and wounding a second hive ship. The IFF system couldn't locate any of the escorting fighters or the other hunter/killer flight. The bugs shifted, slowing to break away from the fleeing strike craft while their buzzing fighters swung in a renewed pursuit.
	"We failed," he mumbled, slumping back in his crash couch.
	Pain gripped his body as he doubled over, spitting blood onto his flight suit. His head swam with guilt as he looked out through the cockpit at the fading starfield around them. His stomach felt wrong for a few moments before he buckled forward and vomited into his helmet. It was dark with blood as it slid down across his visor as they ran as fast as they could manage.
	A new alarm overrode the radiation alarms, indicating missiles closing from the rear.
	"Dakota, I'm sorry."
	There was another burst of light, a cloud of expanding gas and debris, and then nothing.

Chapter 14: Abandon Your Homes

	Zazak stood at the window, watching the cluster of light dance before the eternal eyes of distant stars. His jaw clenched as the false sunlight of their nuclear weapons erupted into existence and faded. That was something he'd never truly grasped about them, the humans. For ones so small and weak, they could unleash wrath far beyond any he could imagine. For those brief few seconds, new stars hung in the distance before they faded, and the stars were alone in their vigil again.
	He turned away from the window, setting his eyes over the throngs of people before him that crowded the expanse of the drum in every direction. It reeked of fear and panic, strong enough to seep into his helmet as the air hung with tense voices and crying children. They had abandoned their homes, crowding the spaceport planetside and piling onto the orbital anchorage whenever a shuttle could bring another flight up the gravity well. They were stuck here, waiting within the drum until another civilian ship arrived to take as many as possible.
	It had been like this since the task force withdrew to the colony, hanging in a defensive posture as the evacuation continued below. He'd been sent to the anchorage to help keep order amid the scared, desperate, and hopeless. As desperate as some were, they were still smart enough not to cause trouble for him and his pack. The sound of feet to his right drew his attention away from the crowded drum. Lt. Edmond was next to him, peering out the window with sharp, fearful eyes. He reeked of dread, the scent pouring from him as he looked behind Zazak towards the distant battlefield.
	"Enjoying the show?" Edmond asked in that off-putting tone of half-seriousness that made Zazak hesitate.
	"Not really," Zazak replied. "Hard to enjoy any of this."
	"Agreed. Some of us are worried-" Lt. Edmond fell silent as he pressed a hand against the ear of his helmet in some quiet conversation over his commset.
	"We've got a passenger liner coming into port little ways down. Have your pack meet us at dock A12. If we don't have enough space, people might get violent."
	Zazak nodded and keyed his commset, relaying the orders through his native tongue to the rest of his pack, pulling them in from their patrols or sentry duty to the dock. They pushed through the crowded drum, navigating the web of gates and bulkheads to reach A12. Through the wide window flanking the docking gate, Zazak could see the elaborate structure of the liner. Its expansive observation decks glowed with a  warm electric light as it slid into the berth. The flared hull and sleek trailing flanks seemed at odds with the warships buzzing around the station.
	His pack fell into close formation as they met at the gate. Already, people were forming into a mob, pushing and jostling to be at the front of the group. A sparse line of marines was spread along a line between the gate and the growing crowd. Towering over the crowd, Zazak could see more collapsing on them from all directions. Some were carrying bags and effects with them, others bore only the clothes on their back, clinging to those around them.
	Lt. Edmond passed him, heading through the gate and onto the boarding gangway. A small band of uniformed crew met him, speaking in a swift, calm tone before Zazak spun his ear back to listen in.
	"-Redirected from our cruise route once we got the word."
	"How many can you take? We've got about six thousand crammed on the station and almost fifty thousand still planetside. We're running out of time here."
	The liner's officer sighed sharply before replying.
	"We could take maybe five thousand with us. We're rated to hold ten thousand in cabins with amenities and have eight thousand two hundred twelve on board already. We can overload in our common areas, but there is a hard limit to what our life support and supplies can handle."
	"I need an accurate number, 'maybe' isn't clear enough for us keeping a mob from forming."
	"I'll double-check with engineering, but we can start loading now. No bags save for medicine or vital documentation. We're going to be short on space as it is, no need making it worse cause someone can't ditch a couple of dresses. I wish we could take more, but we only have so much room."
	"Just get me that number."
	"If it's worth anything, word is they have another colonial hauler coming in a day or so. That may get the last fifty thousand away safely."
	Zazak flicked his attention back to the growing crowd ahead of him. More colonists were drifting in as the news spread along the drum about the liner's arrival. A thump on his thigh plate let him know Edmond was next to him, speaking quietly through their helmet communications to keep the chatter between them, tuning out the growing din of the crowd.
	"We aren't getting everyone off the station on this one, so I want you at the ready if people get desperate. No bags either, unless its meds and the like. Pass the word along to your pack and get them ready, we're going to start loading these people as soon as we can."
	"I understand."
	A strange unease set over Zazak as his pack formed a rough line in front of the gate. He slid the safety on for his XMR as the crowd stirred around them. The other marines hung towards the fringes as Lt. Edmond opened his helmet's visor and cleared his throat. Looking over the group, Zazak could see a mix of hope and fear painted across their faces, bolstering the soup of sweat and pheromones they pumped into the stale station air.
	"If I can have your attention, please. We are about to begin loading the liner with as many as we can because the liner can only take five thousand of you at maximum. We want to make the most of this, so no personal effects besides medical needs and vital documents. I don't care if you're bringing some family heirloom, it's not coming on board. We're going to form a rough queue to keep a headcount, so keep your families together and make sure you get everything you need out of your bags now."
	The lieutenant moved back, guiding the first fingers of the crowd as they surged forward. Most left their bags where they lay, clutching small portfolios or bags of medication close to their persons. Some of the more stubborn tried to bring their bags only for Zazak or his packmates to snatch it away with a hiss before casting off into the slowly growing mounds of discarded suitcases and trunks towards the left of the gate.
	It was a slow process as they waved through the colonists, letting the gate's biometric sensors keep a tally of each person aboard. Zazak watched them leave behind their homes and possessions to find a shred of safety elsewhere. He noted how many families were going, small trains of scared and crying children trailing exhausted parents whose eyes gleamed with a chance of hope out amongst the stars. His unease faded into a sharp, gnawing pressure behind his temples. He turned his focus inward, to try and parse out what the cause of this feeling was, finding only a deep loathing for the bugs. This wasn't a dominance fight or a matter of treacherous piracy. This was a flight from extermination, a desperate exodus where the other option was certain death. There was no honor to it, just a butchery that left him sick to his stomach.
	The liner's liaison returned, flagging down Lt. Edmond. The two spoke in a swift, frantic exchange before separating again. The lieutenant stormed over to the gate, leering at the sensor count before keyed his commset and said in a bitter tone.
	"Those bastards just gave me the numbers. They'll only take two hundred more, and we've got about two thousand people waiting. They keep ferrying more up. They might get pushy, so be ready."
	Edmond returned to the line, slowly waving the people through as the number crept closer to the limit. When it reached the limit, the marines moved in front of the gate, blocking the rest of the crowd as they shouted and cried. Lt. Edmond barked down at them, but they continued to rant and roar. At the front of the group, a woman tried to push her child forward, weeping as the crowd surged against the marines that held them at bay while the liner sealed its boarding airlock. The gate closed behind the marines, a slow lumbering bulkhead clenching shut on the gangway like the unstoppable jaws of a titanic beast. The crowd's panicked cries reached a peak as the door slammed shut before fading out into mournful wails and moans. They would have to wait longer, hoping another ship would arrive before the bugs.
	Zazak watched through the viewing windows flanking the gate as he watched the liner push away from the station. Its maneuvering thrusters burned bright along the ornamental curvature of the hull and spun the immense ship away before the main engines flared and sent it out and away from the doomed world. His eyes tracked the shrinking form as it slipped into the black void beyond before an explosion of gases burst forth, hurtling the liner across space and time to some distant expanse.

Chapter 15: Ravensburg’s Gamble

	“With the loss of our strike craft, our long-range options are down to a handful of standoffs. The shock of being attacked directly slowed their drive towards the colony, but they are still coming with the two remaining hive ships. Even with that breathing room, we have three thousand colonists planetside in addition to one thousand stranded on the anchorage. I do not envy our tactical situation," Ravensburg admitted, scouring the holographic display showing the dreadful situation before him.
	"Agreed, sir." Captain Judd responded. "I feel the bugs will launch their next attack soon. When that comes, we may not be able to avoid committing everything to defend the colony."
	"The question is, what would their objective be before anything else? We only have a handful of capable warships, a wingless carrier, and a scattering of screens. Captain, what do you believe their next move will be?"
	"In my opinion, it would be one of two broad options. The first is that in the face of mounting losses in space, they will accelerate in a mad dash through our task force and to the planet's surface. The second is that they understand the importance of the anchorage and attack us directly. Despite consolidating our remaining ships with the PDF's cruiser and two frigates, we still can't hold our own in a direct confrontation with two hive ships. Their plasma will tear us apart before they push onto the station and the colony. So sir, what is our next move, in your opinion, sir?"
	"Consolidate around the anchorage with our remaining ships, have our marines stand by to repel boarders, and use the John Paul Jones as an evacuation ship."
	"Sir?"
	"You heard me clearly, son. This barge is useless without her strike craft. We have less than one wing of fighters and a large amount of hanger space. I'm transferring command of the Jones back to you and detaching it from Red 12. Your final orders are to take on as many civilians as possible and evacuate them. I'll be moving my command to the PDF cruiser UNN Brittany and coordinating the defenses from there. Any questions, Captain?"
	"Are you certain of this plan?"
	"Absolutely, Captain. We can't defend this colony if they land, and we can't defend this station if they intend to destroy it. Every action made was to get as many colonists off-world as possible. If we can get a few thousand more crammed in the empty hangers of this ship, then so be it. The only supplement I have is to transfer our two Penguin gunships planetside in the event the bugs make landfall. You have your orders, Captain. But before I depart, I wish to make a parting announcement."
	Captain Judd nodded, snapping to a salute before Admiral Ravensburg returned the gesture. The old man turned and took up the handset for the shipwide PA system. He keyed the talk button and let the alert tone chime overhead.
	"Attention, all hands, now hear this. The John Paul Jones will be taking on colonists before withdrawing from the system on my direct orders. Should this be our last meeting, I wish to tell my beloved crew that they have earned my undying respect. Through every patrol, you have exceeded my expectations and continued to perform admirably and carried out my orders to the letter. I see you as my sons and daughters and wish to thank you for everything you have given me. Good luck and Godspeed."
	He returned the handset to the console before turning and gliding out of the CIC. As he left, a clatter of applause rose behind him and faded behind the closing bulkhead doors. He navigated the corridors of his carrier past saluting ensigns and officers before reaching the cavernous hangers. They were vast stretches of empty deck space since he'd ordered his strike craft or assault the bug fleet. He never expected such a hellish defense, and each craft lost was done so on his orders. Looking over the cavernous space before him sent his stomach into a deep spiral as he boarded the dropship that would ferry him towards the cruiser hanging nearby.
	The flight was a fast burn across to the small boarding hanger along the Onager-class cruiser's underside. He thanked the pilots and made his way swiftly to the ship's CIC and appraised himself of the situation. The hive ships were continuing the approach, slowly building speed again as they neared their effective ranges. Around them, the John Paul Jones shifted as it rapidly slipped into an empty berth above Port Arthur. He began the next stage of his plan, pulling the screens around his cruiser and the station in a shallow dome facing the bugs' approach. If they fired missiles at range, the screen would shift and intercept while he retaliated.
	Within his screening defenses, he had his new flagship, the cruiser Brittany, in addition to the Clovis-class frigates, Martin Mendoza and Benjamin Yahtzee, and the Warden corvette, Yangtze. Between his four proper warships, he had an array of rail-cannons, and torpedoes could easily threaten a single hive ship, but two of them firmly held the advantage in firepower and defenses. At the least, Yangtze still had five of her standoff missiles, warming the silos for Ravensburg's command to fire.
	The minutes ticked by as the bugs continued their approach, and he gave the order. The Yangtze launched all five of her standoffs, the maneuvering thrusters pivoting the missiles at wild angles before the primary thrusters took over and sent them on fantastic arcing approaches from above and below. As soon as the bugs could comprehend the attack, their remaining screens broke from the hive ships, fanning out towards the standoffs as they closed towards the hive ships.
	"What is their play now?" Ravensburg murmured as he gave his torpedo frigates the order to open up with a scattered salvo from the fringes of the dome.
	Several of the bug screens flipped and burned towards the new threat while the rest accelerated faster and faster towards the standoffs. Several minutes after the five immense missiles had been launched, the screens reached them, opening up with a deluge of missiles and plasma into the interplanetary missiles' flight path. Two were destroyed before they could deploy while the three others triggered their failsafes, detonating with a scattered cloud of kinetic kill rods.
	The several meter long kinetic projectiles hurled onwards along their final vector into the two hive ships' flight path. The immense abominations flared their putrid green thrusters and maneuvered, scrambling out of the way of the tungsten clouds. Two of the clouds missed entirely, continuing uninterrupted into the black void beyond. The third scored a glancing blow against one of the hive ships, peppering its bow and port side with several glancing blows that scoured the chitinous hull. In contrast, several others completely penetrated, bursting out the behemoth's underside in a spray of molten slag and sickening ichor.
	The screens broke away from their intercept routes and fell back to circle the wounded hive ship, opening up with a plasma spray at the closing torpedoes. Ravensburg watched them buzz around their mothership before he measured the range between the bugs and his ships. They were well within his torpedo range, but not close enough to engage reliably with the batteries of rail cannons at his disposal. The bugs would be within their weapons range as well, opening up with their ruthless plasma bombards.
	"All vessels engage with torpedoes, focus the wounded hive ship."
	From the scattered screens and frigates around his cruiser, synchronized volleys of torpedoes broke from their launch tubes and raced out at breakneck speeds towards their horrendous foe. The first wave closed as speed, collapsing on the wounded hive ship before it was met with a burning response. The screens and hive ships fired wildly, interdicting most of the torpedoes before they threw themselves into the path of the remaining few. The next wave of torpedoes met the same result, interdiction by the plasma screens before a few of the screens used themselves as a shield against the torpedoes.
	Then the hive ships retaliated with immense bolts of burning green fire. Their aim was wild and wide, pouring fire into the hovering screen ahead of them. The remaining bug screens raced forward, firing plasma wildly at the gunboats and torpedo boats ahead of them. Some even rammed Ravensburg's screens with suicidal intent before clasping on with their spindly legs before both of the ships destroyed each other with spiteful fire.
	"Rail cannons, engage. Fire at will," Ravensburg barked, feeling the echoing shudder of Brittany's kinetic batteries opening up with a vengeful rebuke. Between his warships and the hive ships bearing down with single-minded focus, the remaining screens were crippled or destroyed, left adrift in the cold vacuum.
	The hive ships drove on, shifting their fire to the frigates and cruiser ahead of them and the anchorage behind under the barrage of tungsten slugs and torpedoes fired in retaliation. Some of the torpedoes and slugs glanced off, impacting impotently against the strange angles and layers of chitin that made up the Hive ships' robust exterior. Others moved with brutal efficiency, leaving glowing holes in their hulls where the tungsten drilled through, and the torpedoes cracked the hull.
	The hive ships' plasma fire was equally brutal, burning hulls into the ceramic-metal alloy hull of his warships. The green plasma melted burning orange welts against the stealth black hull plating, punching into the exterior corridors and bulkheads. Several hits knocked out rail cannons, melting the guns into smoldering slag and leaking atmosphere through small hull breaches. All of his ships were damaged, but Yangtze and Mendoza were incapacitated.
	"They're charging us, they must be focusing the station," Ravensburg growled as the bugs drew closer, tempting him to rake their flanks with his point defense cannons, but then they shifted. The hive ships flared their thrusters and dove down and away, towards the planet below. As they hurtled past the remaining warships, the hive ships cast out clusters of boarding pods into the warships. Most were swept away by the point defense guns, but several got through with a violent thud. Outside the CIC, the muted echo of weapons fire sounded through the bulkhead. The hive ships drew away, falling towards the planet's surface in a violent deceleration against the planet's gravitational pull.
	"Standby to repel boarders," Ravensburg barked as he drew his sidearm. "Send a message to the anchorage, get their marines planetside now. They need to protect the spaceport at all costs."

Chapter 16: The Fall of Port Arthur

	Zazak cursed in his native tongue as the dropship plummeted violently, far harsher than he'd experienced when he visited the colony as a tourist. This was a combat drop to the surface, rushing to form a defense around the spaceport so they could continue the evacuation. Far above his head, the remains of his task force held onto the anchorage station as they loaded the civilians onto whatever ship they could find space. His pack sat around him, a mixture of excitement and dread about the idea of a proper battle. They'd seen footage and heard stories of fighting the bugs, but this was the first time they'd met them in the field.
	"Alert, all UNN Marines," Captain Judd's strained voice came through his earpiece. "We have secured the orbital space around the anchorage. Enemy forces have committed to the surface. As such, orders are to defend the spaceport until the remaining civilians can be extracted to the orbital station. At this time, orbital support is limited to three gunships for close air support. Godspeed, marines."
	Through the porthole windows, Zazak watched the clouds break around them as they arced low over the bay. They weren't landing at the spaceport, instead dropping into the colony to reinforce the roughly four hundred militiamen who stayed behind to fortify their homes. Once they hit the ground, they'd be sent where they were needed while the dropships took up more colonists before returning with whatever marines were left waiting in orbit. The dropship banked again, coming in towards the landing zone along the shorefront. Through the porthole, Zazak could see the bulk of one of the hive ships nestled in the hills just beyond the edge of the colony. The other hive ship had crashed in some valley further inland, but he wasn't sure if that was true. Everything was wrapped in a chaotic uncertainty at the moment as the dropship flared, throwing open the rear ramp open.
	They bounded out onto the shoreline road, shifting away from the bay and up into the winding streets of the colony. In the distance, gunfire rattled along the brickwork where the small planetary militia was dug in. Zazak led his pack up into the low rolling hills that ringed the main colony, closing on the sporadic sounds of battle ahead of them. He felt that surge of adrenal fire crash over him as he spied the rising inky black clouds of smoke ahead of them where it grew to dominate the sky above the colony. A sharp orange glow hung in the air over the far rooftops as the smoke continued to pile into the sky. The column was aflame with the setting sun's light as twilight grew over the colony, marking night's coming approach.
	They reached a vast plaza in the low point between two hills to the left and right with the main road bisecting it. Numerous stores and restaurants surrounded the plaza while a series of retaining walls, fountains, and trees carved up space before them. The marines slowed, spacing out into the storefronts overlooking the plaza with the road to the spaceport behind them. Zazak took his pack and set them along the low concrete wall that hemmed in the patio of a small cafe. The gunfire was growing closer, rolling down the canyon of buildings lining the road ahead out of the plaza.
	The militiamen were withdrawing to the plaza; the first sign of their withdrawal was the civilian trucks laden with wounded rumbling down the road. They passed, leaving the lingering scents of acrid, burnt skin, and the sharp, sweet iron of blood. Their beds groaned and writhed as they retreated to the shoreline. Next came the loose squads, racing back into the plaza in a rapid stream of bodies. They dispersed amongst the marine forces, filling holes in the thin line amongst the buildings and hidden trenches and fighting holes dug into the plaza's green spaces.
	Zazak ran his eyes over the rag-tag band of humans joining them, seeing the grime and sweat staining their faces. They reeked of gunpowder and dread, wrapping in irregular camouflage patterns of greens, browns, and grays. A red and white armband was tied tight over their right arms.
	His eyes swung back to the road as more civilian trucks raced into view next to the retreating militiamen. They were small, bouncing on either four or six wheels with the rear beds housing weapons too large for a single human to wield easily. Some of the more damaged trucks raced past the marines while others slowed and stopped to park among the abandoned cars and concrete barricades that decorated the plaza streets.
	Zazak's attention snapped to the group of five militiamen who skidded to a stop at his flank. They hefted a grenade launcher onto the concrete wall and unslung the half dozen ammo boxes. They spoke in some different language, one he wasn't familiar with before one turned to him, staring up at his visor.
	"You marines, yeah?"
	Zazak gave a shallow nod back before the man turned his attention to the road leading up the valley.
	"Good, maybe we break their shields now."
	"Having trouble before?
	"Yeah. None of us have plasma. They just keep coming, so we've collapsed buildings on them, caved in sewer mains, blown gas lines. But they keep marching forward. Damn them to hell," the man muttered before spitting onto the pavement.
	"Any chance of them circling us?" Zazak asked, swapping his receiver to fire sharp plasma bolts at the encroaching mass. In the distance, he could hear the faint tramp of feet and whine of plasma shields.
	"No. We...acquired fuel and mining charges and lined the hills with traps. Since they didn't land on the beach behind us, they'll have to come through this choke point. We've got more defensive lines behind us, and we'll keep pulling back when-"
A flurry of deep thuds rolled up the road, sending cries along the line of militiamen.
	"Incoming!"
	The howling mortars rained overhead. Most flew long, impacting the empty buildings towards the shore while others fell short, exploding over the rooftops ahead of them with plumes of flame and debris. The rest landed around them, blasting plumes of concrete shards over their hunched and huddled frames. Several abandoned cars around the plaza caught fire with a stray shell, burning with an acidic venom from the burning fuel and batteries. Several solid hits collapsed the facade of a building down on top of several men to their left. Those around them scrambled to claw at the rubble, digging for a sign of life as more shells slammed around them. A lucky mortar landed squarely in one of the occupied fighting holes ahead of Zazak, the geyser of dirt and fire launched the shredded remains of the occupant into the air, cartwheeling away to splatter against the road. As quickly as it started, the shelling stopped, drawing foreign curses from the grenade launcher team to Zazak's right.
	"They're coming. They're coming now!"
	The faint blow glow of the bug's plasma shields lit the street ahead of them as the first swarms of Betelguesans appeared at the top of the road. They held their fire as the bugs marched in their tight phalanx that stretched the breadth of the road. The bugs squeezed off sporadic bolts of plasma down into the plasma as they crept step by step. Zazak hissed to himself as he saw more and more bugs appear at the top of the road, pouring into the canyon formed by the multi-storied concrete buildings.
	"Want to see something fun," the man to his right asked.
	"Go for it."
	A sharp, spiteful laugh came from the men before he keyed a radio.
	"Zrob to!"
	Up along the road, thunder broke over the advancing bugs. A violent flurry of explosions erupted from the buildings lining the streets, triggering a cascade of concrete, glass, and metal down onto the roadway. The phalanx faltered, bringing their shields overhead to protect against the rubble crashing down around them. Just then, the street bowed up in a spray of pavement and chitin as a secondary line of charges detonated within the sewer main beneath their feet. A cheer shot along the line as the militia bloodied their foes again.
	"Ognia!" the man bellowed as the militiamen opened up into the crowded, debris-choked street. The grenade launcher thudded as it sent charge after charge into the fray. Some of the marines opened up as well, letting off a torrent of tungsten rounds into the smoke clouds that shrouded the street. Gradually, they let off their barrage, letting barrels cool and guns be reloaded before a near quiet settled over the plaza. The only noises were the whistling wind and faint roar of the growing firestorm further up the road.
	Zazak turned back to the strange, bloodthirsty militiaman to his right, finding a fury burning in his eyes that cemented his growing contempt for the bugs. They shared a sharp, sudden laugh before the towering alien spoke.
	"How many more tricks like that do you have, little monkey?"
	"Plenty, if they keep coming at us like that. We should have a few minutes while they regroup, then they'll come over that mound. We'll shoot them to hell before moving back to the next line. By the time we reach the spaceport, everyone should be away."
	"We can only hope."
	That tense near-quiet hung over them as they waited, training their rifles towards the mound of rubble where the street had been. For these few minutes, nothing stirred beyond the first few mounds before a new sound crept into Zazak's ears. A low, resonating hiss mixed with a quiet buzz seemed to come from up the road, putting his hair on end as he waited. He turned to his packmate, confirming he didn't merely hear radio static. Some of the militiamen on the grenade launcher heard it too, stirring in uncertainty at the new stimuli.
	"What is that?"
	"Something new, maybe."
	From the mound, something stirred, drawing sporadic shots from the rooftops behind them. Shouts came over the radio, confused before the first of the hulking azure forms trudged onto the mound. A Betelguesan warrior lumbered on its two trunk legs and hefted two of its arms up before a cacophony broke the quiet. The warrior unleashed dual streams of unending plasma bolts, pounding the plaza with the horrendous, burning spray. Men took cover, huddling behind their earthen walls as the thing stomped down off the mound, gnashing its two terrible claws in the air, yearning for close combat. Three more of the immense creatures marched over the rubble behind it, two of them engaging with the wild arcs of plasma fire. Where openings came in the barrage, the militia and marines retaliated in sporadic bursts, seeing rounds shatter against the approaching masses. Even though his helmet's filters, Zazak's nostrils were assailed by the burning plasma stench and fear hanging over their lines.
	One of the gun trucks roared to life along the right flank of the plaza, swinging its autocannon on target and letting it bang out deep, resonating shots into the warriors. The 23mm shells smashed against the chitinous armor, some skittering off to impact against a distant building while others splashed against their armor, and some struck true, piercing through a fault in the armor to blast away their strange flesh and ichor. The wounded warrior dropped one of its plasma cannons, spinning its aim towards the truck before it unleashed another horrific stream. The plasma ate through the body and crew, turning the gun truck into a smoldering heap before returning its fire to the militiamen.
	A rocket fired somewhere to the right, smashing against another warrior with a small initial flash before a secondary explosion punched into the beast. It pushed on for a few seconds, firing wildly at everything before it collapsed forward onto its front. Several more rockets screamed over Zazak's head as he fired at the crippled warrior marching towards him. They impacted against the disabled warrior, spraying through the armor before detonating with a fragmenting spray of chitin and alien flesh.
	The fourth warrior had yet to fire, nearing the fighting holes and trenches across the plaza while the defenders plinked away at its armor with their rifles. It hissed a terrible sound and raised two of its arms, filling the plaza with a faint roar before the jets ignited. The burning fluid sprayed forth, pouring into the earthen works, igniting anything it came into contact with, including the defenders. Some managed to clamber out and run for cover, but the rest burned in their holes, screaming into their radios before a sudden silence overtook them. Behind the warriors, the Betelguesan drones started to scale the mound bringing up their nefarious plasma shields and guns, adding to the onslaught coming against the defenses.
	The two remaining warriors continued their push across the plaza towards the stern facade of the defender's buildings as they poured fire down on the hideous behemoths approaching them. A deep roar joined the din as the radios squawked to life in Zazak's helmet. The Penguins were en route; gunships sent to help hold the line with a payload of cannons and rockets. It was a sacred sound as it climbed louder and closer, echoing off the buildings that surrounded them.
	The three stubby-winged gunships roared in from behind, flaring their engines into a sudden hover before the chin cannons began to respond in kind, belting out rippling streams of explosive shot against the two remaining warriors. The fire tore apart the two lumbering things before shifting towards the returning warriors, pushing them back over the mound of rubble and into the street behind it. One of the gunships moved, pursuing them as its cannons and rockets raked the rubble-strewn mess beyond. They took the chance to reload and rearm as the gunships circled like hawks over the plaza, using their weapons to tear at the bugs.
	Then the buzzing came again from the direction of the rubble mound. One of the gunships bucked wildly as shapes darted up over the far rooftops. The gunships wheeled back, spraying wildly with their chain cannons as they tried to track the new targets. Winged drones were swarming over the rooftops, firing at the Penguins with long plasma rifles as another wave of shield drones pushed over the rubble mount and into the plaza. Others were starting to move into the buildings along the far side of the plaza, firing up at the gunships with focused fields of fire while others fired at Zazak and those around him.
	The marines and militiamen returned fire, working in tandem to overload the bug's shield with concentrated plasma fire before using rifles and tungsten darts to kill the defenseless drones. Even as they poured fire on, more drones came over the rooftops and down the street. The air was dense with their indiscriminate plasma fire coming in as the Penguins did their best to suppress the growing numbers of Betelguesan drones pouring into the plaza.
	A burst of ground fire ignited one of the Penguins along the port side, eating through the stabilizing engines and sending it careening into the center of the plaza. Before anyone could react, the drones were on it, using it as cover to push further across the plaza while others carved open the cockpit to get at the crew inside. Then Zazak felt the ground shudder as the plaza's left end bubbled up before collapsing inward with a plume of dirt and gravel. Another warrior lumbered out into the light, unleashing burning jets of flame into the buildings along their left flank, flushing out the defenders while more drones poured from the tunnel.
	Zazak shifted his pack down the line to reinforce the left, clearing the distance in a few swift bounds and scoping up a discarded rocket launcher as he went. The weapon was small in his hands, fighting to fit his hand into the trigger mechanism. He forced his oversized finger into the trigger guard and aimed at the warrior as it turned the jets towards the. The rocket kicked away in a furious shriek before slamming against the warrior's flank with a flash and detonation. The warhead penetrated, igniting the flammable mixture within the warrior, erupting from the back with a burst of volatile liquid setting the ground ablaze where it fell.
	Zazak tossed away the launcher and brought his rifle up, firing into the approaching drones as they pushed closer. His pack fell into formation alongside him, firing a mixture of plasma and tungsten from their XMRs, carving through their approaching shields and chitin. Still, the bugs pushed on, pouring plasma fire into their position. Some of the bugs at the front drew knives with their smaller, secondary arms and let the metal catch the plaza's firelight around them.
	Then Niza fell, a plasma bolt boring through her helmet with a sickening hiss. The fire grew fiercer, the bugs growing closer despite their losses, spitting their incendiary hate back, cutting down Martza and Xha. He drew his foot-long bayonet from his belt, fixing to the end of his rifle, letting hate roar within him. He squeezed the trigger, emptying his magazine into the enemy around him before the nearest bug dropped its shield and lunged, knives glinting in the darkening twilight. He caught the bug on his bayonet, spraying plasma into its torso until the end of his weapon melted off. Zazak roared through his helmet before hurling the impaled bug back at its ilk. He turned to take up Xha's rifle as he saw the bugs pile onto Maxvi, carving and chittering as he spat and fought the horde.
	The last Penguin hanging over the plaza swung its cannon towards the tunnel, carving into the bugs with burning belts before the rocket pods howled their onslaught. The blasts threw Zazak back into the window of a burning storefront. Dirt and stone rained over him, peppering his armor while he fought to his feet, feeling the fire scar his forearms. He leaped from the window, shaking the shock of the blast from his vision, finding Aika slumped against the concrete barricade before him, her torso carved out from a stray cannon round.
	Around him, the plaza burned as the drones kept coming, reaching the street on the near side. They even stormed some of the buildings with blade and shield ready, mauling the defenders in close combat. The firestorm up the road grew closer, the fires setting the inky black night sky overhead ablaze with images of hell. The militiamen were withdrawing, hauling whatever weapons they could as the bugs pushed on.
	"Fall back, all hands, retreat! Get to the spaceport!" His radio screamed in Zazak's ears, stirring him to move. He scooped up a rifle and moved, bringing up the rear of the scattered forces before him. They retreated, falling back in as fast as their legs could carry them. They bounded down the winding streets, triggering clusters of charges as they went to collapse the maze of buildings and roads behind them. Fires roared and danced among the empty homes and stores, engulfing the remains of lives abandoned as incendiary charges burned through vital supports within taller structures and under bridges, raining the debris to form hurried roadblocks against the hissing tide washing down from the immense hive ship nesting in the hills over the colony. This was it, Zazak thought, cursing himself for dragging his pack into this hellstrom growing around them. A hope of crossing the stars for glory and combat and this was their end, trapped against a black alien sea by a foe from some dark corner of the galaxy. A wave of hopeless fear washed over him as they scrambled back towards the magnet train station. He could see the waves of the bay glittering in the firelight behind him. Some part of his mind remembered the starfields overhead, blocked out by the choking black smoke pressing in on them from above. He slowed his run, feeling some bottomless pit well up in his stomach as he waved the waves lap at the shore.
	He collapsed before he felt the hit and the burning sensation between his shoulders. It burned for a moment and went numb, growing cold as the firelight dimmed around him. His eyes traced the arc of the coast as it all went black. Before he passed, he thought of home, of that warm sand and blue lake.

Epilogue

	Far below, the colony was aglow in flames that burned bright against the encroaching nightside of the planet. Ravensburg stood at the observation window along the ventral deck of Brittany. His left arm was in a sling with a darkening bandage clasped over his left eye. The Brittany’s captain strode into the observation deck and snapped a salute to the old, distraught man before him. He relaxed his arm when he realized the gesture wouldn’t be matched before stepping next to the window to look down over the burning colony below them.
	“The commset has gone dead. The spaceport has been overrun, sir.”
	“How many made it out?” Ravensburg whispered, his eye not moving from the fires below.
	“Uncertain. Less than a thousand based on our estimates.”
	“Then we have done all we can. It was a losing battle from the start, but we made them bleed for every inch. I want a tally for every man you have down there. They faced their end with courage, only right it’s recognized by someone.”
	“Understood, sir.”
	“You’re dismissed, Captain.”
	The Brittany’s captain nodded, snapped a salute and slid out of the room, leaving Ravensburg alone again.
	His eyes scoured the world below, drawing that bitter sting of failure into his mind. He replayed the strategic overview of the previous weeks of fighting, from their first contact beyond Victory to the slow fall starward as they shot wildly at the hive fleet. Perhaps if he’d been more aggressive amongst the moons of Victory, using all of his standoffs in some complex gravity slingshot to trap the bugs between a hammer and anvil. But what if they’d moved, or otherwise reacted to the launch? They could’ve charged his force, forcing him to retreat or be overwhelmed. Perhaps a more passive defense, modifying their torpedoes into cloaked atomic mines, letting the bugs wander in too close before activating and reducing them to base elements. His mind racked itself with alternatives, plans, and contingencies to scold him for losing the colony and every man, woman, and child still trapped down there.
	What horror did they suffer, as the bugs stormed the port, with omnicidal intent? How many parents lost children before their eyes to the gnashing jaws of these inhuman abominations. A deep, wrathful part of his heart yearned for revenge, to glass the land below him in a spiteful rebuke. What good would the colony be in their cold hands if it was smoldering under atomic fire, roasting the wretched things alive with invisible flames of radiation? Even without a nuclear bomb, he could pour his wrath upon them. They had guns rated for kinetic bombardment. With a word, they would aim down and rain humanity’s fury on that dead city until even the bedrock was broken and molten by the kinetic energy.
	He loosed a deep, rattling sigh before sinking into a nearby chair. How many times had this tragedy happened before, how many times would it happen again? These interstellar locusts were without remorse or mercy, exterminating anything in their way like the animals that they were. The Coalition was founded to resist this menace, but they couldn’t exist by resistance alone. Counter-offensives would be needed; revenge would be had by mankind and her allies at the tips of their bayonets, the barrels of their rifles, beneath the treads of their tanks, and at the ends of their naval guns. Mankind’s greatest trial yet lay ahead, and men of dutiful wrath and clear resolve would be needed, retirement be damned. There would be no mercy, no quarter, no restraint in this path. As he stared down at the grave of thousands below him, he felt a bittersweet joy that his wife wasn’t here to see this, to see the man he knew he’d have to become in the coming conflagration.
	Outside, the superlight flashes announced an arrival into the system. At the center of this new force was a UNN fleet carrier, surrounded by an array of escorts and screens. His reinforcements had finally arrived, too late to help the colonists, but in time for Ravensburg’s revenge to fall upon those wretched things far below him. It was only the beginning.