The Black Legion fleet dropped out of jump, 303 warships flashing into existence at random positions within the boson sphere of the gate.

From the pilot capsule on the bridge of his Tengu class Strategic Cruiser, the invading Fleet Commander, Elo Knight, watched his head-up display populate. Hundreds of red-coded ship symbols appeared in rapid succession as the Tengu’s computers sorted out the hostiles.

There were no friendlies on the HUD yet. According to the readout at the upper left of Knight’s tactical overlay, his ships would remain cloaked for another twenty-eight seconds. Plenty of time for him to scope out the strength and displacement of the enemy’s forces.

Y0-BVN was a dead end star system. Only one gate, and a cyno jammer to keep capital ships from bridging in. The star was deep into Imperium space, more than 45 light years from the Fountain region where the major battles were being fought. A safe place to hide a string of Capital Ship Construction Arrays. Maybe crank out a few Titans, or a couple of Super Carriers. Or so those idiots thought.

Knight felt himself grin, always a strange sensation in the gel-filled womb of the capsule. Black Legion was about to unleash a little bit of hell, right here in the Imperium’s back yard.

Predictably, the defending force was camping the gate—the bulk of the enemy ships within a hundred kilometers of the exit—positioned to intercept anything trying to jump into the system.

It was a good tactic. Against a different commander or another fleet it might have worked. But not against this fleet, and definitely not against Elo Knight.

The Tengu’s computers had finished racking and stacking the hostiles. In terms of simple numbers, the two forces were closely matched, but one look at the Imperium fleet composition turned Knight’s grin to something harder and more feral.

The stupid bastards had only fielded 92 Battleships. The rest of the enemy formation was limited to smaller combatants: Naga class Attack Battlecruisers and below.

Knight had nearly twice that many Battleships under his command, and three times the number of logistics ships.

The defending fleet must have been scraped together at the last minute, from whatever the Imperium could find. They couldn’t seriously expect to stop him with such an underpowered formation. His fleet could hit harder, fight longer, and repair itself more quickly.

This was going to be a slaughter…

He’d hammer the fuck out of the Imperium’s front line, then break off a formation to go crush the cyno jammer. When that little detail was out of the way, he could bring in the real killers.

Fourteen Black Legion Dreadnaughts were staged at a midpoint cyno, waiting for the jammer to go off line so they could jump into the system and wreak havoc.

Knight took another quick glance at the time readout. His fleet would be coming out of cloak in about three seconds. Time to get this party started.

He keyed the comm channel and spoke to his other pilots—the words coming not from his mouth, but from the neural link to the speech centers of his brain’s left frontal lobe. “All ships: align to sun and activate modules. Primary target is Damnation class Command Ship, hostile track alpha-zero-seven. Secondary target is Tempest Fleet Issue, hostile track alpha-one-nine. Engage!”

Before the last word was out, the battle was on. More than 300 Black Legion ships popping up suddenly on his HUD, appearing just as suddenly on the tactical displays of the enemy.

The blood sang in Knight’s ears, his Tengu surging forward into combat; the ship’s sensors, engines, and weapons responding instantaneously to the thought-quick commands of his cerebral cortex.

The space around the gate swarmed with waves of launching Black Legion drones, angry metallic wasps with death-dealing stings.

Knight began to feel ghostly twinges at the lower threshold of his nerve endings, the ship’s method for alerting his brain to minor shield impacts.

He singled out the primary target and watched the fire control computers lock on to the enemy Command Ship. With an almost subliminal shudder, his launchers spat out four Heavy Assault Missiles.

Knight followed in the wake of the hurtling weapons, augering in for his first kill of the day.