(NERV Game Site – Official DAtS Offline Forums)

Number5Alive, Golddigger, BurtBacharach, CrazyCelt, Blaze, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, l33tpally, Bennie, SEA-TAC_Sweetie, Requiesce-in-Pace, MacD, HaveGunsWillTravel, TheDespoiler, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, Inquisitor, Lizard, RedFox, SemiSolidSnake, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous7, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, M.Mollen, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, DigDug, BigGunn, Dolcett, Starwatcher, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, Hullu_Kapteeni, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, MajorTom, Parca, and DarkAngel are in the chat.

Chummer: OK, what the hell did you people do?

Inquisitor: What? What are you talking about?

DoYouEvenDPS?: I haven’t done anything lately.

Chummer: Well, SOMEONE had to have done something pretty big, because the Imperial Navy’s Ninth Fleet just passed through Alpha Centauri in a damn hurry!

Anonymous4: Where were they headed?

Chummer: To one of the Consortium Gateways.

Knocker: Can’t be an invasion, then. Invading through a Gateway is damn near impossible if there are defenses in place.

GrimDark: And ALL known Gateways have defenses in place.

Dolcett: Hmm. That’s odd. The Kul’tiran First Fleet just headed for Consortium space as well.

Not_the_Face!: The First Fleet, or the ‘Mercenary’ force?

Dolcett: The actual fleet.

BloodForTheBloodGod: The Confederates are moving, too. Sixth Fleet just left Dimiya.

BackDat@55Up: What? The Confederate Twelfth Fleet just left Ba Sing Se! There was an emergency recall of shore leaves and everything! Scuttlebutt says we’re headed to the Consortium, too!

Number5Alive: That is disturbing. My business partner in the Consortium says that the Fifth and Seventh Fleets are on the move, and the Tenth and Fifteenth are already on mission somewhere.

M.Mollen: Coldana. They were on mission at Coldana.

Starwatcher: Does this have anything to do with the fact that the Black Star ships near Nuevo Edo have left?

M.Mollen: Yes.

Inquisitor: It is the X’thari, isn’t it? There’s been talk, saying that, because of the size of the Swarm, some treaty has been invoked.

M.Mollen: The Treaty of Helbizore, yes. The normal actions of the X’thari can be dangerous enough, but when a Harvester is sighted, all the Major Powers are bound by treaty to put aside their current issues, and work together to drive off the threat.

ElfMama: Harvester? Is that the big ass thing we saw in the cinematic that NERV put out?

M.Mollen: Yes. It is a Planet-Eater. Literally strips a planet down to the bedrock, and uses the biomass and resources to make more X’thari and X’thari ships. It poses a threat to all life in the galaxy.

GrimDark: Like the fucking Tyranids on steroids. Fucking wonderful.

Starwatcher: So, what is Black Star doing in all of this?

M.Mollen: This will be the biggest fleet battle in the game to date, and the stakes are as high as it gets. Of course, Black Star will be in the middle of it!

TheDespoiler: Hmm. This enemy sounds like a foe worthy of our guns.

Inquisitor: What will you be doing in the battle?

M.Mollen: Unclear so far. We have combat data of the Harvester and the Swarm in action, so we’re going over it now, to see if we can formulate a plan of attack.

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot: You have COMBAT DATA on this thing? How the hell did you do that? From everything I’ve heard about it, nothing fights that thing and lives. Hell, the best anyone has done to one is blow its face off by self-destructing a dreadnought in the thing’s mouth. And unless this is a new one, that means it got better from a hit like that!

M.Mollen: The Consortium Navy’s Fifteenth Fleet, and what remained of Tenth Fleet as they desperately tried to get to Coldana through the blockade, fought the Swarm to the last, buying time for the people of Coldana to prepare defenses on the ground.

GrimDark: What do they expect ground defenses to do against the Swarm, much less the Harvester?

M.Mollen: Nothing, in the end. But they intend to make the Swarm bleed for every inch of ground, hoping to buy time for the rest of the galaxy to implement the Treaty before another world is consumed.

Lizard: You mean, they knew they were dead, all of them, even the civilians, and they lined up to fight to the end, against hopeless odds? And these are NPCs, not Nomads?

M.Mollen: Yes, for the sole purpose of ensuring that whoever comes next has the best chance at ending the threat permanently as they can possibly get.

BurtBacharach: That is a tale worthy of song.

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot: It is damn impressive, for sure. But that doesn’t explain how you got combat data out.

M.Mollen: Two sources. First, the BSS Heartseeker and her sister ships used their Anchor Drives to jump in, and lead the X’thari on a chase, giving the Consortium a chance to strike at the Swarm’s capitol ships, instead of dealing with the escorts.

Anonymous9: Ah, yes. The X’thari absolutely hate anyone playing with their toys except them. Always trying to blow anyone using that Anchor Drive that isn’t X’thari to particulate matter.

M.Mollen: Quite. Only reason the drives aren’t used more often, honestly. Anyways, there was also a Transition capable freighter in system, containing the only Nomad presence in Coldana. That freighter waited until the last Consortium ship died before transitioning out. They brought with them all the combat data they could, and a copy of Coldana’s complete database, as well as personal messages from everyone they left behind, both the fleet and those on the ground.

Anonymous4: How in the hell did they get so much data in their systems?

HaveGunsWillTravel: They dumped their cargo, and the system government outfitted them with military sensors, and filled their entire cargo bay with servers to hold the data. There are fleet bases with less storage capacity than what they crammed into the Fucking Bitch.

Anonymous3: That has to be a Nomad ship, right?

Guardian: Yeah, it is.

DoYouEvenLyft?: So, just how tough is this Harvester, anyways?

M.Mollen: It got hit twice with a shuttlecraft moving at five hundred times light speed, and survived with what looked like minor injuries. Some bleeding, but nothing that would slow it down for long, if it really is the same Harvester as before.

Requiesce-in-Pace: What the hell? How did it survive something like that? One should have been enough to end it!

M.Mollen: That’s why we’re going over the combat data. We know it can be made to bleed. If it bleeds, we can kill it. But we need to figure out how. If we figure that out? Well, knowing is half the battle.

MightMakesRight: *whistles* The NERV site has video of the battle up now! There’s gotta be over a thousand ships in that fleet! That is going to be one hell of a fight.

(Flag Bridge, CNV Tribute of Gold, Grimshield’s Bane System)

Admiral Dhurdroda Ironbelt was anxious. As commander of the Consortium Navy’s Seventh Fleet, and senior commander of the Consortium Navy on the scene, she was nominally the commander of the entire task force that was gathering, because of how the Treaty of Helbizore was worded. The Treaty was designed to end a threat to all life in the galaxy. As such, someone had the great idea to write into the treaty that the senior commander from the nation currently threatened by the Harvester was in overall command. All well and good. However, there were five different star nations and one mercenary company represented in the task force, and she knew quite well that, while she was the senior in terms of length of service, all that service had been against pirates or the occasional skirmish with the Terran Empire. Against the X’thari, even the Nomad mercenary leader had more battle experience than her.

Nomads. They were changing the very fabric of the universe everywhere they went, or so it seemed. It wasn’t a change she was entirely comfortable with, because these Nomads would sometimes disappear for hours or days at a time, and yet they were able to get information from across the galaxy, even across factions. Anywhere a Nomad was, there was a potential leak in information, and a potential intelligence source, and they were spread across all factions, and all walks of life. The ramifications were mind-boggling!

“Admiral, we have incoming warp signatures, multiple vectors.”

Ironbelt forced her voice to remain calm. They were expecting ships, after all. It might not be the worst-case scenario. “Coldana?”

“Negative. The tracks look to be from the Malvenad Sector and Dagon Gateway! Getting IFF signals from Fifth Fleet now, coming from Malvenad. The ships from Dagon are identifying… it is the Ihm Imperium! Their Second Great Armada has arrived!”

Admiral Ironbelt let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. Reinforcements, not the X’thari making an early run on Grimshield’s Bane. That was fortunate. The addition of Fifth Fleet and the Second Great Armada, along with the Imperial Navy’s Ninth Fleet meant that the only forces that hadn’t arrived were the Kul’tiran First Fleet, and the Fourth Group of the Black Star Navy. It still wouldn’t be enough, if the X’thari came unexpectedly.

Fortunately, everyone had already been given the tactical data that the civilian ships which escaped Coldana were able to bring out. With this, they were able to start making preliminary guesses about the Harvester’s defenses. So far, the analysts had confirmed the judgement of Admiral Fullstout, indicating that the Harvester possessed layered shields, allowing for it to take an extreme amount of punishment before being wounded. A conventional attack would almost certainly fail, even if they had ten times the number of ships promised for the fight. The fate of the Harvester seen in the last X’thari war must have been due to the fact that Captain Pyrrhus of the INS Heraclea was able to blow his ship’s reactor inside the Harvester’s maw, so it did not have to deal with the shields or whatever armor made up that thing’s hide.

Hopefully, all the ships would arrive in time so that they could have a true planning session, and figure out how to drive off this threat without sacrificing all these fleets to allow a dreadnought to fly down the Harvester’s throat like last time. But before they could get a plan, they needed to get a read on how much time they had. They needed eyes on Coldana so that they could know when the Swarm set off. Problem was, only six ships had been able to escape Coldana the first time, and none of them had tried using conventional drives to do so. Any ships she sent would almost certainly be destroyed long before they got to Coldana, much less sighted the Harvester.

She looked at her tactical plot, her eyes coming to rest on the area where the Black Star Navy was resting in orbit, visible only because they had active IFF signatures. Black Star ships were some of the ones that were used in bringing back combat data. It was possible…

“Comms, put me through to the Ama-no-Murakumo, and see if Admiral Mollen has time to talk.”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Gugnir, Grimshield’s Bane System)

Slave-Commodore Hirata Konomi was well aware of the ‘tensions’ that existed between the Black Star Company and the Kul’tiran Navy. After all, the Admiral had wrecked three of their warships with a light freighter, and hadn’t taken a scratch doing so. He had then taken the survivors prisoner, and ransomed them back to Kul’tiras for an obscene amount of money, doing so in so public a manner that they couldn’t help but lose face, which had caused them to lose several security contracts, and had given rise to piracy in the area, which was how Fourth Group’s home port of Madrigal Base became part of Black Star’s growing portfolio. Given that history, it was impossible for her to not know the history between their factions.

So, it was something of an awkward situation when the Fourth Group of the Black Star Navy exited the Dagon Gateway, so they could rendezvous with the gathering fleet, only for the Gateway to open again just behind them, forcing them to expedite their fleet maneuvers to clear the lane. That the newcomers were the Kul’tiran Navy’s First Fleet only made things more ‘interesting’, as the Admiral would put it. Thankfully, the Admiral was not actually on board her Gugnir, or things would have been beyond awkward, with the First Fleet being commanded by the Kul’tiran’s Lord Tandred Proudmoore, the brother of the commander that the Admiral had humiliated. She hoped to be very far away if those two ever met face to face.

Fortunately, the Kul’tirans were at least professional enough to allow the past to stay the past while the larger picture was at stake, and agreed to travel in concert with Fourth Group. They even did it with the bare minimum of posturing, as well, despite having a three to one advantage in the number of ships. Of course, the Black Star Navy had made its name by punching above its weight class, so those numbers meant that it was almost a fair fight. Almost. And if Fourth Group used Starbolts, then the fight was just downright unfair.

Hirata banished those thoughts from her head. Killing Kul’tirans wasn’t on the menu at the moment, which was probably for the best. They were coming up on Grimshield’s Bane, now, and she needed to finish up her calculations based on the combat data that had been sent out about the Swarm and the Harvester. The Admiral had asked for both her and Fifth Group’s Slave-Commodore Icebrand to come up with an initial battle plan, given the estimated fleet strength they figured the joint fleet would have. There would be precious little time for simulations and wargaming once the fleet joined up, so it was best to already have potential plans worked up so that the planning meeting could work on melding them into a coherent operational guide.

From what she saw, the sensors said that the Harvester had multiple layers of shields, each of which was at least at superdreadnought strength. This was actually more formidable than a simple planetary fortress shield, as any conventional attack would be doomed to fail. By the time you beat down the third or fourth shield layer, the first would be working on regenerating, while the lower shield layers would still be untouched! The only reason Firebringer did any damage was because it massively overpowered multiple shield layers at once. Unfortunately, they were limited by the number of shuttles they could modify in time for the battle.

Hmm. Disabling the safeties would require a lot of work. The things were buried damn near in the middle of the hyperdrive engines, after all, and for good reason. Any accidental failure on the part of the safety would likely disable the engine entirely, and the position made it impossible to sabotage without significant maintenance time. There was a potential work-around, but it involved sabotaging your sensors by deliberately feeding false data to them, almost the reverse of how the Tarpits worked. That was an even worse idea than sabotaging the safeties on the hyperdrive, since those sensors were the only things that let you aim a kamikaze run at distances where the light bouncing off the enemy’s hull was already ten or twenty minutes old by the time it reached you, if not more!

Of course, if they could get enough Starbolts to bear… Slave-Commodore Hirata nodded to herself as she reviewed her plan. It was bare bones, but it was a start. Hopefully the rest of the combined fleet would either have something better, or would be able to refine her plan somehow. There was, after all, the little problem of getting past the thousands of ships protecting the Harvester to make their attack run.

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Grimshield’s Bane System)

“Master, Fourth Group just arrived in system along with the Kul’tirans.”

I nodded to Slave-Captain Virstina. Fourth Group was right on time. They had had the longest transit time of any of my ships, having had to reach a Gateway before they could transit to this sector, they had made it in two and a half weeks after I had given the call.

“Contact the Gugnir, and welcome them to the fight. Have their group form up with First and Fifth groups, and try to make it look good. We have five professional navies out there, watching us.”

“Orders received and acknowledged, Master. Fourth group is joining the fleet formation. Slave-Commodore Hirata is transmitting her proposed action plan to the flag.”

I smiled. It had taken some work, but all of the Black Star Navy was acting like as professional a navy as anyone could ask for without a couple centuries of history and tradition to guide and inspire them. I looked at the high points of Hirata’s planned attack. It was a working idea, but needed polish. She was, after all, running off the public data of the assigned fleets, not any bonuses they might have picked up here and there.

Still, the majority of her plan matched my own, and that of Fifth Group’s Slave-Commodore Balmit Icebrand, one of the few Gauz in the Navy. Essentially, the plan boiled down to finding a way for the Black Star ships to get past the X’thari vessels, and unleash as many Starbolts as we possibly could before we got wiped from the face of the galaxy. The scale of the X’thari forces made the whole thing a likely suicide mission if we just charged in. We would need some kind of diversion. Not just in the system itself, but something to force a hole in the patrols no doubt lying in stealth on the system approaches, waiting for relief forces, like they had been for Tenth Fleet. Given the data, Raven concluded that the reason systems went dark when the Harvester was coming was because the X’thari were trying to keep someone from doing what we planned to do, coming in while the Harvester was weak and perhaps even helpless, eating a planet and unable to defend itself. We needed a way to get in without being reduced to scrap.

Hmm. I checked the ‘guild chat’ for the Black Star Company. Both the Company and the Navy had their own ‘guild chat’ channel, with every Nomad in the company assigned to one or both of them, allowing for quick transfer of information, internally, so long as Nomads were involved. The newly designated Starhunter-class Scout Ships that made up the Heartseeker and her sisters had left Nuevo Edo after a conversation with Admiral Ironbelt. They needed real-time information on Coldana, if they could get it, and that meant the Starhunters. Currently, they were coasting into the Coldana system on ballistic trajectories, well, well above the ecliptic. It was possible for fleets to maneuver to come in on ballistic as well, but without the X’thari drives, it would be a matter of a week or more to get to a place where they could set up the ballistic run, and another week to cruise in. All the while, they would have no way of escape if noticed too soon. Not to mention the lingering fact that, the longer they took to launch the attack proper, the more likely it was that the Harvester would finish with Coldana, and move on, spoiling the maneuver entirely. It was what some might call an untenable situation.

Hopefully, the Starhunters would be able to give them some information they could use.

(BSS Heartseeker, Coldana System)

The last time they were here, the Coldana system had been the site of a desperate last stand by the Consortium Navy, trying to bloody the X’thari as much as they possibly could before they were overwhelmed by the impossible numbers of the Swarm. The five Starhunter ships had played their own role in that battle, even though they had far fewer kills to their names than the Consortium ships did. Because of the way X’thari always attempted to destroy non-X’thari ships with the X’thari Anchor Drives on them, the call had been made for all five of the Starhunters to enter the system and draw off as many ships from the main fleet as they could.

With their escorts drawn away, chasing the lightning quick Starhunters, the Consortium Navy was able to get in several devastating blows, including two major hits on the massive Harvester itself. That hadn’t stopped the X’thari advance, of course, but it had been a major morale victory when it had been reported back to the ships and fleets that were gathering to try and destroy the menace once and for all.

For the Starhunters, though, that battle had been an exercise in quick reactions and seat of your pants flying. Thousands of ships had broken off from the swarm to hunt down five little ships that weren’t any larger than a light freighter each. If there were graver mismatches in the history of the universe, there couldn’t have been many of them. Fortunately, all five Starhunters had enough of a lead, that their overpowered engines were able to keep them out of weapons range, even as they kept drawing the X’thari away from the Consortium ships. And they had gotten their licks in, too! They may not have had many weapons, and certainly nothing for the numbers they faced, but every one of them launched their weapons bays dry, the sudden assault taking out some three dozen escort ships in total. It wasn’t much, but they could proudly say that they hadn’t simply run from the battle without doing anything.

Now, rested and rearmed, Heartseeker and her sisters were back in the game, this time to provide much-needed intelligence on what the X’thari were doing. It had been almost two weeks since the first battle of Coldana, and people were anxious to see what the X’thari had been doing in that time. So, the Boss had ordered them in. It wasn’t a heartless act on his part, though it was certainly cold and calculating enough. The Starhunters were designed for stealth insertions and reconnaissance, and they were designed with finding and mapping X’thari strongholds in particular. This was simply a dress rehearsal for when they did this for real. That’s what they told themselves, anyways.

Using the Anchor Drives, they came out far outside the system, where they could avoid detection by the X’thari ships blockading the system. Then, they got up to speed, before coasting on a ballistic trajectory into the system, sixty degrees above the ecliptic. With stealth systems fully engaged the five ships may as well have been holes in space as they spent three days on their approach. It was far too early to announce their presence, after all.

Finally, they began getting readings on the passive sensors. The readings were all limited by the speed of light, since they did not dare light off their active sensors, but what they could see was both impressive and disheartening at the same time. There were over one hundred and fifty-five THOUSAND X’thari vessels in the system! That number was enough to darken the heart of the most stalwart warrior, but it meant that the Consortium had managed to take down almost ten percent of the Swarm in their fanatical last stand! That number was up from the initial combat reports the Starhunters and the Fucking Bitch had brought back, evidently reflecting that some of the X’thari ships had been too badly damaged to continue functioning, or had been sent to replace losses in the groups blockading the system.

Slave-Captain Drah Sross had enjoyed their brief stay in Star’s Reach, where all the Starhunter crews had been able to get quite drunk without having to spend a single credit, thanks to the people who kept plying them with drinks in exchange for their story of the Battle. Even the Nomads, who had gotten the information on the battle through their communication networks, were impressed by the stories of those who were actually there. Still, there was only so much alcohol an Ihm could drink, and she was glad that they were back here in Coldana, doing something important. The Master had promised her excitement when he first ‘recruited’ her, and he had certainly delivered so far!

She took a breath, and then said, “Adam, tightbeam transmission to the group. All ships spread out, maximum stealth, into Stellar Halo formation. We want to map as much of the system as possible, and get any and all data on the X’thari movements. We don’t have the Consortium Navy or their tarpits to help us out this time, so getting spotted is going to be severely hazardous to our health.”

“Understood, Captain. All other ships acknowledge.”

Stellar Halo was just what it sounded. All five Starhunter ships would move on ballistic trajectories, with as minimal maneuvering as possible, to a distance 0.75 AU from the system primary along the ecliptic and 0.75 AU above the ecliptic, spreading out so that their path described a perfect circle circling the sun. The formation allowed all ships to keep in tightbeam communication, and being so far above the ecliptic made the chance of running into X’thari ships remote, to say the least.

“Adam, have we located the Harvester yet?”

“Yes, Captain. The Harvester is approximately two hundred thousand kilometers from its last known location.”

Drah frowned at that. “The thing has been here for two weeks! What has it been doing all this time? Has it finished off Coldana yet? What is the system’s status, Adam?”

“Negative on destruction of Coldana. The biosphere of the planet is still intact. However, I am detecting an extremely high number of X’thari ships in orbit of the planet. All orbital infrastructure has been destroyed.”

Chakizo purred slightly as he made his way to the cockpit from the engineering spaces. “Perhaps the Harvester was hurt badly enough that it couldn’t just rush and consume the planet. There might still be survivors!”

“We are detecting wideband transmissions from several parts of the planetary surface, but there is significant interference. The transmissions are not on frequencies known to be used by the X’thari. The chances of there being living resistance forces on the planet’s surface is 32%.”

Drah considered that. “What sources would the transmissions be coming from if not survivors fighting against the X’thari?”

“Several possible sources, with recordings of fallen resistance groups set to replay at intervals being the most likely. Given the extreme numbers of X’thari ships in orbit, it is unlikely that any forces still remain alive on the surface.”

“What about defense bunkers?”

“Calculating… If defensive bunkers were secure enough, and not destroyed by orbital bombardment, there is a chance that some of them could still survive.”

“Which ship is closest to Coldana Prime?”

“The Flux Capacitor is closest.”

“Tightbeam to the Flux Capacitor. Standard Black Star encryption.”

“Ready.”

“Flux Capacitor, this is Heartseeker. We have what looks like corrupted signals coming from Coldana Prime. Do you think you can get a better read on them, maybe clean them up and see what they have to say?”

“Heartseeker, we’re reading the same thing here. Sarah, our AI, is saying that it doesn’t look good for any survivors to be still alive, given the number of ships. However, we’re not picking up the atmospheric ionization you’d expect if the X’thari had been doing large-scale orbital bombardments. If there are defense bunkers that haven’t been overrun, we could have survivors still alive on the planet’s surface!”

“Flux Capacitor, do you think you can get a better read on the situation if you moved closer?”

“Probably. I would like to know what the X’thari are doing if they haven’t been conducting large-scale bombardments, though.”

“Captain, I calculate a 74.9% probability that the X’thari intend for the Harvester to consume the biosphere intact, and that orbital bombardment would taint large parts of it making it suboptimal for their use.”

“Flux, Adam’s just had a brainwave. The X’thari want their big Harvester to eat the planet, so they don’t want to poison it with their big guns. I want you to break formation, and see if you can coast close enough to pick up the transmissions from Coldana, and clean them up. Do not transmit anything or respond. There’s nothing we can do for them, except letting the combined fleets know that there are survivors still fighting, if we can confirm that.”

“Understood. We’ll be quiet as a ghost.”

“Just don’t become ghosts yourselves!”

“Hah! Copy that. Flux Capacitor, out.”

Drah nodded to herself as the Flux Capacitor closed the line. “Adam, work with the other ships, to alter formation so we cover for the Flux dropping out to cover the planet. How soon until we can get more data on what the Harvester is doing?”

“Other ships are adjusting positions. Estimate twelve hours until all ships are in new final positions. Data analysis on the Harvester is ongoing. Prioritizing analysis of damage received and other factors.”

“What is the Harvester currently doing.”

“Analysis ongoing. Cross-referencing the current position of the Harvester with data from the Battle of Coldana. Discrepancy noted. Mass of debris from the destroyed remnant of Tenth Fleet is no longer present. Mass of debris from destroyed Fifteenth Fleet is 25% less than the predicted base on mass of the fleet and observed pattern of destruction. Preliminary conclusion: Harvester is consuming remains of the Consortium Navy vessels before advancing on Coldana.”

Chakizo frowned. “I mean, there’s a lot of reason to consume the fleets. That’s a lot of resources that they could get from it. But why would they focus on those fleets before going and snapping up a whole world’s worth of resources on Coldana?”

Drah shook her head. “Maybe it is just going with the closest source of resources, and will consume them all in time? But something the size of the Harvester should have been able to consume the fleets by now. The last time the Harvester showed up, and it would eat an entire planet down to the bedrock in two weeks. There’s no reason they couldn’t have moved past the fleet by now!”

“Captain, visual analysis of the Harvester shows scar tissue at the site of earlier wounds. This suggests that the Harvester has not yet fully recovered external wounds from the Firebringer attack. Additionally, there may be internal damage to the Harvester’s systems that is not immediately visible. This would mean that the Harvester is using the resources of the Consortium Navy fleets to fuel its regenerative processes, and also why new X’thari ships have not launched to replace the losses already incurred.”

Drah blinked, and turned to look at Chakizo. The Felisan also looked surprised at that revelation. “Could it really be that simple? The attacks hurt the Harvester enough that it was able to slow the speed at which they were able to process materials, even if there wasn’t noticeable external damage?”

“Damn. Yeah, it could be possible. Those hits from Firebringer had to have been one hell of an impact. Before I was ‘recruited’ to Black Star, I was a mercenary. You had plenty of people that would get hit, and they might not have big gushing wounds like you see when someone gets shot full of holes, but they get internal bleeding, and die out a while later if they don’t get it fixed up. And hell, you get your head smacked hard enough, you can get a nasty concussion, even if you aren’t killed, and that’ll throw you off your game for sure until it heals. And if a shuttle going at FTL hitting you upside the head doesn’t give you a concussion, I don’t know what will!”

“Adam, emergency message to the Master. Use the Nomad networks. We don’t want the X’thari discovering us. Tell him that there may still be survivors on Coldana, and that the Harvester has not yet made it in system to strike at the planet itself! They’re planning how to attack this beastie, and this might give them the opening they need!”

(Conference Room, CNV Tribute of Gold, Grimshield’s Bane System)

Admiral Ironbelt looked around the conference room at the assembled Admirals, their top aides, and flag captains. This was the moment she had been both waiting on and dreading, the first planning meeting for how to deal with the X’thari Harvester that was in Consortium space. There were eight fleets from five nations and one corporation here. She would be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy the thought of being in command of such a force, but the circumstances made any enjoyment turn to ashes in her mouth. There was a very good chance that the only people here who would still be alive after the battle were the Nomads.

When everyone was settled, she touched a button on the conference table in front of her, and a chime sounded. Everyone stopped their conversations, and turned to look at her. “Thank you all for coming. I know our nations have not always been allies, or even friends. Some of us have come to blows with each other in our own lifetimes. Remember that the threat we face is one that threatens all life in this galaxy. Any differences we have must be set aside until the crisis is resolved. This may mean working alongside people you have good reason to hate. I will not try to cheapen your feelings, or the reasons for them. But we all know the stakes here. And we all know that, in the end, there is a very real chance that none of us, or our fleets, will make it out of the coming battle alive. It falls on us, then, to shelve our ill will with our fellow commanders, and work together, so that we might spend those lives that are lost as dearly as possible, and work on destroying the Harvester once and for all.”

She looked around the table, and was pleased to see that while there were definitely tensions (one could not help but notice the glare that the Kul’tiran Lord Proudmoore gave Admiral Mollen, unless you were blinder than a Tygelian rock slug), but there were grim nods and even the Kul’tirans did their best to hide their displeasure at sharing a table with the mercenary leader. It wasn’t much, but she would take what victories she could get at this point. The stakes were far too high to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

“Right. In that case, let us go around the table quickly and introduce the key players. As you all know, I am Admrial Dhurdroda Ironbelt, commander of the Consortium Navy’s Seventh Fleet, and overall commander of this task force.”

She nodded to the Ihm female sitting to her right, indicating she should speak. She was lean and slender, like most Ihm females, and her eyes betrayed a deadly cunning. “I am Keh Dhaka, Warleader of the Second Great Armada of the Ihm Imperium. By the words of the Treaty, I will carry the command if Admiral Ironbelt falls.” The Treaty of Helbizore was rather clear that the entire chain of command could not be one country’s commanders before all others, for fear of recklessly wasting lives like cannon fodder. Because of that, the second in command of the combined fleet was chosen by lottery among the remaining commanders as the fleet was gathering, and so on, with each country being kept out of the next round after their commander was chosen. This resulted in Warleader Dhaka being the combined fleet’s second in command.

Dhaka nodded to the Gauz male to her right, passing the floor. He was short, stocky, and bald on the top of his head, with the close-cropped beard common to spacefaring Gauz (whiskers caught in spacesuit seals were a bad thing). With a nod to Admiral Ironbelt, he turned to look at the rest of the group. “I’m Admiral Bradmig Jadegut, commander of the Consortium Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and third in command of the task force.”

A Knelfi female was next in line. She looked quite prim and proper in her dress uniform, but then the Knelfi were always prim and proper looking. “I am High Admiral Leena Aejor, commander of the Confederate Navy’s Sixth Fleet, fourth in command of the task force.”

The human Kul’tiran was next. He was a broad, hearty man. Scion of the aristocracy or not, he had worked his way up through the Kul’tiran Navy like everyone else. “Lord Admiral Tandred Proudmoore, of Kul’tiras, commander of the First Fleet. I guess that makes me fifth in line.”

Another human smiled. She was slim, and had skin that was a slightly darker shade than the Kul’tiran’s. “I am Admiral Han Moon-Hee, of Her Imperial Majesty’s Ninth Fleet. The Vindictus and I are here to see this threat ended, once and for all. Should things go bad, I will be sixth to take up the mantle of command.”

A Felisan Male bobbed his head next to her, and said in an almost purr, “I am Admiral Kasyx Rizazzi of the Confederate Navy’s Twelfth Fleet. Should things get to that point, I would be the seventh fleet commander to take overall command.”

Finally, the last human in the room spoke, from his seat at Ironbelt’s left. He was the only Nomad in the room, and the only commander who was not a part of a star nation that had signed the Treaty of Helbizore. “Some of you know me already, by reputation if not in person, but I am Admiral Mirikon Mollen, of the Black Star Navy. And should things well and truly go to shit, command will fall to me. I hope for all our sakes that such a thing does not happen.”

Ironbelt nodded, and said, “I, too, would very much hope that the command of the combined fleet never falls on you, Admiral Mollen, not least because of the fact that I am extremely allergic to being dead!” That got a laugh out of the group, none of them strangers to gallows humor. Such things were common amongst all militaries, it seemed. “Now, before we begin planning specifics of our attack, we have new data from Coldana, that must be considered.” That got a stir out of everyone. She turned to look at the Nomad. “Admiral Mollen, if you will?”

Admiral Mollen stood to his full height, and looked around the table. “At the request of Admiral Ironbelt, five Starhunter deep space scout ships attempted to sneak into the Coldana system. Because of their stealth features, tactics, and small size, they were able to enter the system undetected. The FTL comm array in Coldana has been destroyed, as expected, but the Starhunters have Nomads on board, and, as such, have been able to provide data on the conditions in the system.”

Ironbelt had heard this report before, but it was a good sign to see everyone straighten up a bit more as they paid attention to the Nomad’s words. The Nomad communication networks had proven far too useful for them to be discounted now. “The first thing to report is that Coldana still lives, and her people are still fighting the X’thari forces on the ground. We have not been able to get confirmed numbers from the resistance forces as the Black Star ships were ordered to maintain strict radio silence except for tightbeam intership links to avoid detection. But we are able to confirm from intercepted transmissions that the battle is ongoing.”

He paused, and then continued. “As good news as that is, the more important information is that the X’thari Harvester was apparently damaged more thoroughly by the Consortium Fifteenth Fleet’s Operation Firebringer than the initial reports suggested. The Harvester is slowly making its way through the remains of the Consortium fleets, consuming the materials. However, we have not seen an appreciable increase in the number of X’thari vessels compared to the post-battle data. This, combined with the fact that the Harvester looks to be consuming and processing the debris at a far slower rate than past data would suggest, leads our analysts to conclude that there was internal damage to the Harvester that did not show up on the outside, much like having a broken bone or punctured lung might not be immediately obvious from the outside in one of us.”

Admiral Jadegut frowned. “Will we be able to go over the data as well, so our analysts can corroborate? If this is true, then it gives us a window where the Harvester is more vulnerable than we can ever hope to find it, save while it is actively consuming Coldana.”

Admiral Mollen nodded. “The data, such as it is, is being compiled and sent to each of your commands’ analysts. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of hard data at this time, as we are dealing with oral reports, which don’t support massive data files.” When Jadegut nodded, he continued as he was before. “According to the Starhunters, the X’thari in the system are split between guarding the planet and the Harvester. If tarpits could be deployed, then this would allow the two groups to be kept separate, keeping reinforcements from helping defend the Harvester.”

Admiral Rizazzi cleared his throat as the Nomad sat down. “Could we use the method these Starhunters used to enter the system without fighting our way through the X’thari blockade?”

“Unlikely. The Starhunters used their X’thari drives to warp to a point well outside the system and engaged a ballistic course to enter the system well above the ecliptic, avoiding most of the X’thari patrols. In addition, five small ships designed for stealth are an entirely different matter from a combined fleet numbering over fifteen hundred ships. The Black Star Navy might, might be able to sneak in the same way, but without the support of the combined fleet, it is unlikely that we would be able to get close enough undetected to get a clear shot on the Harvester, and against that many ships it is unlikely we would be able to make a decisive attack before we were destroyed.”

Warleader Dhaka nodded her head. “It is good to know one’s shortcomings, and have a clear head, instead of becoming filled with the battlefire and losing sight of reality. If we cannot sneak in, then we must have a wedge to force a hole for the rest of our ships to get through.”

High Admiral Aejaor nodded slowly. “Before we decide which forces will force the hole open and which ones will make the attack, what plans do we have for destroying the Harvester? Given the data on its shields, we would have to use a sustained bombardment of the entire combined fleet to have a hope of destroying the shields by conventional means. Unless we are going to try and have a dreadnought sacrifice itself as in the last battle?”

Admiral Mollen raised his hand. “The data suggests that the layered shields of the Harvester can be defeated if we have a high enough concentration of firepower, striking in conjunction. Unfortunately, the amount of firepower required is unobtainable, unless one uses superluminal weaponry.”

Ironbelt shook her head. “It took an entire fleet base’s worth of engineers working in dry dock over a week to remove the governors of twelve shuttles. The time it would take to remove them on enough craft to be useful to the attack…”

Lord Proudmoore cut in. “What about the Black Stars and their FTL torpedoes? Are there enough of them to make the difference?”

Admiral Mollen looked over his shoulder to the synthetic female sitting behind him as his aide. “Raven?”

“Currently, between the various ships in the combined Black Star forces here, and the Starhunters currently in Coldana, the Black Star Navy could field well over four hundred Starbolt torpedoes without resupplying from supply ships. This includes torpedoes launched from the Dragon bombers, Assassin corvettes, Reaper cruisers, Knight destroyers, Wrath battleships, Starhunter scout ships, and the Starlight Raven. Simultaneous launch numbers are significantly below that number, however.”

Lord Proudmoore looked at the aide blankly for a moment. “Well, that was certainly more than I expected.”

Admiral Han chuckled. “I have found that the Black Stars are always more than one might expect. However, hearing this makes it clear what we need to do. If we can get the Black Stars a clear shot on the Harvester, they are the only force with enough burst firepower to have a hope of destroying it, certainly before Coldana is consumed.”

Ironbelt smiled. “Then, in that case, lets start talking specifics.”

(Flag Bridge, CNS Wrath of Gadran, Interstellar space near Coldana)

Admiral Kasyx Rizazzi shook his head. This was the kind of battle that any Navy man wanted to be a part of. No uncertainty about who was right and who was wrong. No wondering about the motivations of the other side. Just a simple, black and white battle between a terrifying foe and entire worlds of civilians. If there was ever a righteous fight for someone who wore the uniform to be involved in, it was this one.

From the moment that the Treaty of Helbizore had been put into effect with the news of a Harvester appearing, everyone knew that Coldana was dead. The Swarm that accompanied it was simply too large to defeat normally. There was no way that the forces in place would be able to fight their way through and defeat the Harvester. The planet was doomed along with all the civilians living on it. The best they could do was to avenge them.

But, through some conjunction of desperation and insanity, the Consortium Navy had managed to hold longer and deal more damage to the swarm than anyone had believed possible, in part thanks to those Black Stars with their Starhunter scout ships playing the X’thari’s habits against them to draw off the swarm. The tenacity with which the Consortium fought off the X’thari in space was worthy of all of his respect. They had even managed to wound the Harvester enough that the thing had not yet moved to consume Coldana. However, that didn’t mean he had to like the implications of what they had done. Turning Navy personnel into what amounted to suicide bombers stuck in his throat. But it had allowed the Firebringer pilots to give Coldana a fighting chance.

Now, the combined fleet had a plan, and a chance to not only save the people still on Coldana, but to destroy the Harvester altogether. The problem was getting the ships into place so that they could strike. The Swarm still encircled the Coldana system, and they would need to punch through if they hoped to attack the Harvester directly. Punching a hole would fall to him and the Confederate Navy’s Twelfth Fleet.

Looking to his aide, he took a deep breath, and said, “Give me fleet wide. Copy to the combined fleet.” There was a nod, and he looked into the camera that would send his image to the fleet. A battle like this was something a Naval Officer always wanted to be a part of, and yet hoped would never come. Such a battle needed words beforehand to rally the troops, and to be remembered by those who came after.

“Men and women of the Twelfth Fleet! This is Admiral Rizazzi. As you know, we are fighting here, as one part of a fleet of over a thousand ships, from six different star nations. We are far from home, in space that belongs to a people that are sometimes our rivals, and sometimes foes. We have fought each other, bled each other, lost good people, military and civilian, to each other. Now, we fight side by side in common cause!”

“I will not lie to you and say such foolish things like how this is the dawn of a new era of peace and understanding between all peoples, or that we will all return home after this battle to join together as a single people, no longer needing to fear the specter of war between us. You are not kittens, who have yet to know the way of the world! You are warriors, defenders of your people! You know that such a future, despite what we may desire, is not something a single battle can bring about.”

“But here, today, we face a foe that is beyond any one nation’s power to defeat. We face an enemy that threatens all life in this galaxy, an enemy that consumes entire worlds along with their peoples, to create more of these vile creatures! Once before, the peoples of the galaxy joined together, as soldiers against a common enemy, and they bled and died together to push back the threat, delaying the death of all things for a day.”

“The Consortium’s Tenth and Fifteenth Fleets refused to lie down and let the people under their protection be destroyed, and they gave everything they had to push back death another day, another hour. The people of Coldana, the men and women who live upon that world and call it home, have stood against the swarm! Even now, they fight to keep back the hordes unnumbered that wish to kill and consume them! They looked at Death itself, coming for their friends, their families, their children, and they came together and answered, ‘Not today!’”

“The people on the ground have not driven off the invaders, for they do not have the strength to compete with such numbers. And yet, they fight on, unconquered still! Their fleets above did not bring down the great enemy, for they were too few to do that, but they made it bleed, and showed that, yes, we could hurt these abominations! And if we can hurt it, then we can kill it! They pushed back the death of all things for a day, and now it falls to us to push it back another day! But I am not satisfied with a single day! I say we ensure that this threat is destroyed, now and forever, so that this Harvester will never again be a threat to the civilized species of the world! Never again will a planet die, consumed by this abomination!”

“Know this, not all of us will survive this battle, but that does not make it hopeless! The X’thari have only numbers on their side! We have the collective will of six peoples on our side, with the cleverest minds of the entire galaxy coordinating our strategy, aided by the Nomad communications networks, so that we know where the enemy is, and how they are situated. They think mere numbers can defeat us! Twelfth Fleet, you are hereby ordered to prove to these damned bugs why numbers alone will never overcome the fighting spirit of the Confederate Navy! Third Group and Second Group, to the front! First Group, when the tarpits hit us, pave the road for our allies that follow! Drive it directly into their teeth!”

He cut the feed, and took a deep breath. With a deliberate air of confidence that he only half-felt, he watched, and waited. Thanks to the Nomad who was part of the Consortium Navy, they had an idea of when they would hit the tarpits that the X’thari had set up to interdict relief forces trying to enter Coldana. In fact, Third and Second Groups should be running into them in three… two… one… now!

Two thirds of Twelfth Fleet hit the tarpits right on time. Half a second later, First Group followed them, slamming back into realspace as the warp bubble collapsed. This was the critical moment. This was where the Consortium’s Tenth Fleet had met the X’thari, and had most of their forces wiped out as they valiantly tried to press on, despite all odds, to reinforce Coldana. Rizazzi held his breath as he watched the sensor readings.

“All ships, report in!”

“First group reporting in, ready to fight. Second and Third groups… we’re starting to get status reports on a ship by ship basis. The Kil’jaeden, Archimonde, Sargeras, and Stormrage are all drifting in space, no power! All ships in Second and Third groups reporting massive damage from the energy spike! Computer estimates we’re down to 45% combat effectiveness!”

Forty-five percent? That meant that over half of his ships were out of the fight, or compromised in some fashion. He knew it was going to be bad, but this bad? This was beyond anything he had ever faced before. With bated breath he asked the question that he had to know the answer to, but wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. “And the enemy?”

There was a pause as the Gadran’s tactical department analyzed the sensor data, trying to make sense of everything. “Accurate readings are difficult to attain, given the levels of high energy particles in the area, but we are looking at over five hundred enemy ships crippled or destroyed by the strike, Admiral! That’s the low estimate! Confirmed numbers climbing higher! Tarpits have fallen in Sections 7 through 15!”

Rizazzi let out his breath, and said, with a calmness he truly felt, now that he was committed, “First Group is to move forward and cover Second and Third Groups while they initiate repairs and reform their sections. All ships, fire at will. Take out any X’thari ships you can, and see if we can’t open that door a little wider! Send word to the combined fleet. Tell them that Twelfth Fleet has kicked open the door. Sprained our ankle doing it, but we’ve got it open for them!”

It had been an inspired bit of insanity, to be honest, built off the success of Fifteenth Fleet’s Operation Firebringer and the Black Stars’ Starbolt torpedoes. There were two main points of failure in the safety systems built into anything with a warp engine. Firebringer focused on removing the hardware interlocks that prevent a warp engine from accelerating into the surface of a planet. The problem was that, unless ships were designed with the ability to become the most massive missile in history in mind, those interlocks were buried in the middle of the hyperdrives for a reason! Starbolt, while a purpose-built platform now, was apparently originally just a civilian engine on the back of a solid mass. Instead of removing the hardware interlocks, the original Starbolts removed the software that interfaced between the sensors and the safeties, so that, if they were headed towards something solid, the Starbolt’s sensors wouldn’t relay that information to the interlocks, and the hardware never got the alert signal to shut down. It was a frighteningly simple solution to the problem.

That kind of suicidal maneuver was fine for attacking single point targets with maximum force, but Firebringer had shown that, in the cold of space, those methods wouldn’t work against groups of ships, like the Swarm. To deal with them, Rizazzi needed something that could strike in a wide area. He needed to compromise not the safeties on the hyperdrive, but the safeties on his shields.

A ship traveling through space using a warp drive is essentially moving in a little bubble of spacetime moving through the rest of the universe. Problem is, space, empty as it is, still has particles all over the place, and the shields of a ship at warp pick up those particles and carry them along for the ride. The longer the jump, the more particles you acquire.

This is normally not a problem, since the ship’s shields are designed to reroute the energy from the particles from the shield to rechargeable batteries that help provide emergency power, or supplement main power temporarily when it comes time to fight. Rizazzi had ordered the engineers of Second and Third groups to disable the pathways that siphoned off the energy, causing everything to be stored in the shields, building up more and more of a charge as the fleet flew for Coldana.

The result was… energetic, to say the least. The ships of Second and Third group came out of warp right in the middle of the X’thari tar pits, with the X’thari lying in wait, ready to strike the moment they entered the area. The clouds of high-energy particles that had stuck to their ships during the travel were suddenly unleashed with all the (localized) power and fury of a supernova. When the ships exited warp, the particles exited with them, and were shot out in front of each ship like a shotgun.

The shotgun blast from hell may as well have been an actual supernova, judging by the results of the event. One hundred ships, spread to form as large a ‘splash’ as they could, and, suddenly, things weren’t looking quite so bad for Twelfth Fleet from a strategic POV. For the first time anyone had ever intentionally attacked with ‘damaged’ shields, it had certainly proved why doing such against anyone but the X’thari would be considered a war crime of the highest order.

Rizazzi shook his head, clearing those thoughts from his mind. This was the time for desperation plays and leaving everything on the field of battle. He just hoped that the rest of the combined fleet would be able to make the most of it.

(BSS Heartseeker, Coldana System)

“Captain, we have just received word from Admiral Mollen. Operation Starburst has been successful, and the Confederate Twelfth Fleet has opened a path for the rest to follow through.”

Drah Sross nodded to the image of the Heartseeker’s Nomad AI, Adam. “Understood. Patch me through to all Starhunters.”

“Done.”

“Starhunters, this is Heartseeker. Signal Flare is a go. Remember, keep the bugs as far from you as you can. Ready Anchor Drives for double jump, Amazon to Star’s Reach. We still have scouting missions to go on, now that we have a new infiltration strategy, so no one is allowed to die today. Flux Capacitor, send a burst transmission on friendly frequencies when you light up your drives, warning incoming friendlies. The Marines will need targets for their attack, best have the people on the ground get some warning so they know to have coordinates ready.”

“Copy that, Heartseeker.”

“Captain, multiple warp signatures entering the system. Many warp signatures! It is the combined fleet!”

“All Starhunters, Signal Flare on my mark. Three… two… one… GO!”

As one, the five Starhunter scout ships began charging their X’thari anchor drives, lighting off their sublight drives as well, accelerating as quickly as the could in different directions. The X’thari acted as they always did, with the escort ships quickly moving to take up the chase, breaking off into five groups to try and follow the Starhunters. Predictable, as always. At the same time, the combined fleet of the task force entered into the system, all except Twelfth Fleet, which was holding the door open. Tarpits slammed down across the system, locking everyone into realspace maneuvering unless they were suddenly suicidal.

(BSN Thunderfury, in orbit of Coldana Prime)

Twelfth Fleet had kicked open the door, and everyone else ran through it. Slave-Captain Am’rica didn’t know how bad their casualties were, but she knew they had to have taken casualties from intentionally disabling the safety systems that kept a warp-capable ship’s shields from becoming a portable supernova. There was no way that there couldn’t have been casualties, with that much energy running around uncontrolled.

That wasn’t her problem. The Imperium’s Second Great Armada and the Kul’tiran’s First Fleet slammed into orbit of Coldana Prime just as the Starhunters began drawing off the escort ships, trying to give the assembled fleets a chance to take out the heavier enemy ships. The ships serving the Black Star Marines followed in their wake, along with six Consortium Army troop ships.

“Comms! Patch us in on Consortium frequencies. Hail any survivors, and get us drop coordinates! Vicious Return and Acherus are to launch fighters as soon as we have coordinates on enemy ground-to-air weapons, and take them out. Leave the ships to the Fleets, that’s their job. Don’t bother with them unless they start trying to attack our forces.”

“Captain! General Meadbeard sends his complements, and intends to land his forces at the primary spaceport in Coldana City to form a beachhead and attempt to draw off X’thari drones that might be attacking survivors nearby. We are free to engage at will.”

“Understood. Do we have communications from the surface?”

“Confirmed reports from ten survivor enclaves on the northern continent. The intel about the X’thari not wanting to ‘spoil the meat’ must be correct, since all but two of the enclaves are walled areas without underground fortifications. They wouldn’t have lasted two hours against sustained orbital bombardment.”

“Small favors, Lieutenant. Status on the enclaves?”

“All enclaves are under constant attack… Captain, we have word from Darboldor that their defenses are under heavy assault. The Dharram bunker is reporting X’thari inside the defensive perimeter, they are being overrun!”

Am’rica kept a look of calm on her face. Turning to a nearby screen, she said, “Major, I presume you were listening?”

“Yes, Ma’am. First Company will drop directly on Dharram. Second Company will help hold the line at Darboldor.”

“Very well. Drop ships will deploy your companies directly, and provide close air support. Once an LZ is clear, the Assault Ships and pocket carriers will land. We risk losing the ships otherwise. The Crows have the speed and shields to fill that role, and will orbit the drop zones to provide air support.”

“Understood, Captain. Will the ships be safe from X’thari raiders on the ground, though?”

Am’rica smiled viciously, “Major, without having to worry about fighting gravity to keep aloft, even the Vicious Return’s point defense should be plenty to keep the bugs from doing more than splatting against her shields. They’ll certainly last long enough for one of the Crows to come and assist.”

“Understood. Marines will be ready for a hot drop in five.”

(Fleet Command Cluster, IAS Aclotloxl’s Claw, in orbit of Coldana Prime)

“Warleader! The Black Star Marines and Consortium Army are breaking for the planet’s surface!”

Warleader Keh Dhaka nodded once as the communications savant reported to her. The plan was audacious. There were so many moving parts, so many places where things could fail at any moment, but this was a situation where no one could afford to sit back and stand on old, conservative tactics. Everyone knew that the combined fleet would likely be destroyed in its entirety, and, even if they were successful in driving off or destroying the Harvester, their forces would be severely understrength, if any of them survived this day. And yet, so far, they had made it through with no confirmed ship kills to enemy action. That would change soon, as the battle turned into high gear, but that was why deploying what troops they could to the surface of Coldana was to be one of the first things they did once they reached orbit. The troops would do no one any good if their ships were destroyed in orbit, after all.

“Then may the Ancestors guide their path. The ground fighting is not for us to engage in. We have our own battles to find. All ships, come about to three eight, mark two! Full power to the weapons and shields! Point defense and secondary weapons to fire at will!”

Scanning the tactical plot, she hissed slightly as she saw the X’thari begin to maneuver. The insects were trying to create a pincer movement, and envelop the Ihm and Kul’tiran ships. The escorts had been drawn away, which was a blessing all its own. If – when – she returned to the Imperium, she would make a recommendation to include the X’thari anchor drives in new scout units. These tactics would be invaluable the next time the X’thari approached Ihm space.

Of course, she couldn’t lose herself in thoughts of future plans. For now, she had a battle to fight. The pincer force was mostly cruisers, with the enemy dreadnoughts focusing on the headlong approach. The Armada could not turn and face the cruisers without opening itself up to the dreadnoughts, but taking the cruisers’ fire from the side or rear would still be courting disaster. But the lighter ships on the wing gave her an opportunity.

“Contact Lord Admiral Proudmoore. First Fleet is to turn and advance on the pincer forces. Second Armada will charge on to keep the dreadnoughts at bay. Get in close, and keep them from using their superior maneuverability or numbers to overwhelm us!”

“Enemy fighters have launched!”

“Scramble fighters! All wings, scramble! Interceptors to focus on enemy fighters. Bombers to focus on tail shots, if possible. X’thari shields are weaker at the rear. Focus fire on their engines. A disabled ship is as good as dead, and can be wiped out from a distance.”

“Entering primary weapons range.”

“Concentrate fire, focus on the ships at the center of the formation. The X’thari like to keep their leaders in the center of the swarm. Blast us a hole to take the fight to their leaders!”

If they could throw the Swarm into chaos, then so many things would become easier. Chaotic enemies did not fight with the unity of those led by a single overriding purpose. Robbing the X’thari of their order would cripple their formations and fleet structure, allowing them to defeat individual units instead of formations or fleets.

The first salvoes were away. Because of the scale of warfare in space, the time for their attacks to reach the enemy had some measure of lag to it, but that was unavoidable. It wasn’t until they got much closer that things really got into nail-biting action. But the ranges were closing fast. All too soon, they would be in ‘knife range’, where the lag between their shots firing and the light reaching their enemies was less than a second. Fighting at such close range would hamper her ships’ ability to defend themselves against so many foes, but the Swarm would be limited in how many of their ships could fire at any one time, lest they risk shooting their own people.

Hopefully, it would be enough.

(Flag Bridge, KNS Ashvane’s Pride, in orbit of Coldana Prime)

Lord Admiral Tandred Proudmoore was a professional. He would have preferred to have his First Fleet be one of the ones that were set to take on the Harvester and its guardians, but everyone knew the history between Black Star and Kul’tiras. It was not a slight, or a sign of favoritism either way, he knew this, but that history was why First Fleet was assigned to the forces pinning down the X’thari ships around Coldana, and preventing them from reinforcing the Harvester’s guards. Having his people so close to the main Black Star force would have been… ill advised. It added an unnecessary complication into a situation that had already been hopeless enough that everything would have to go perfectly for them to have a chance of living through this.

Yes, he was a professional, and he understood the reasons. That didn’t mean he had to like them, or that he wasn’t scowling at the sight of the Black Star Marines’ ships making landfall along with the Consortium’s troop ships. There wasn’t anything for it. He didn’t have troop ships of marines to help out with that effort. They barely had enough marines to cover for potential boarding and counter-boarding actions. He was a professional, though, and that meant he would do his duty, and damn his feelings until the job was done. The Black Star Marines were going to be going onto a planet full of X’thari, and fighting them at close range. They were welcome to it. He had ships to kill.

He noticed the envelopment coming, and was just about to hail the Warleader to propose the change in tactics when she sent orders detailing what he had just been about to suggest. No one ever said the scaly bastards were dumb. Well, not the women, at any rate. Their men were hulking brutes who were all less than intellectual titans, while their women were slighter of build and far more intelligent. The Warleader could read a plot as well as he, and knew the relative strengths of their forces. Ihm ships were larger and stronger, while Kul’tirans favored speed and maneuverability. It was the right call.

“All ships, come about to new heading! The X’thari are attempting to envelope the fleet! All fighters and bombers launch! Starbane cannons to full power! Aim for the lead ships. Torpedoes ready to fire on my command!”

He looked at the plot again, striving to see what the bugs might be planning for their next maneuver. “Bombers are to focus their attack runs on marked potential command ships, and then return and rearm. Secondary targets are the enemy carriers, hiding behind the fleet. All ships, take out the enemy cruisers, don’t let them get behind us. The Second Armada is counting on us to watch their backs as they punch it out.”

Wait, one of those carriers was out of position. No, wait, it was falling out of position. Scanners showed it already had battle damage. Probably from the last battle. The bugs hadn’t had a chance to repair all their ships, especially not when the only mobile dockyard anywhere near here that would take a X’thari ship was, itself, damaged. Looking to one of his lieutenants, he said, “Have Commander Shaw ready his men. There is a X’thari carrier that may have intelligence on it, and the technological upgrades it might give us are impossible to predict.”

“Aye, Admiral!”

(Flag Bridge, CNV Tribute of Gold, Coldana System)

As one, the Consortium Navy’s Seventh and Fifth Fleets, the Confederate Navy’s Sixth Fleet, and the Imperial Navy’s Ninth Fleet dropped out of warp, well away from Coldana, between the planet and the Harvester. They did not quite drop out of warp directly in weapons range of the X’thari fleet, but they would be in range very soon. All according to plan.

“All ships are on target and in formation! Tarpits active!”

Admiral Dhurdroda Ironbelt nodded grimly. This was the way it should be. Despite there being four fleets from three star nations in this section of the task force, she was happy to see everyone working together as professional naval officers were supposed to. There was no place in an operation like this one for petty rivalries.

Bringing herself to her full height, she began snapping off commands for her communications officer to relay to the fleet, “Launch all fighters! Commence active jamming! All ships advance! Attack pattern Alpha! Focus on disabling or destroying as many enemy craft as possible! The Starhunters have drawn off the escorts, now it is up to us to hold the attention of the main force! Every ship taken out of the fight is one fewer that can get in the way of our true objective!”

That done, she stood back, watching the screens. It was the Captain’s job to fight the ship, and the Admiral’s job to maneuver the fleet, responding to the enemy attacks. But the Swarm used no tactics, not even the normal X’thari ones. It was the numbers, of course. Even this section of the swarm numbered in the tens of thousands. It was impossible to maneuver such a fleet in any but the most basic ways. And a fleet like that wouldn’t need maneuvers, really.

“Enemy carriers are launching fighters.”

“Have the fighters intercept while the bombers make their attack runs. Tell the fleet to close to knife range, so we can limit our exposure to the swarm.”

It seemed paradoxical on the face of it. Charging into the swarm to reduce your exposure to it? But that was the truth. The X’thari couldn’t shoot through their own ships, so diving into the swarm, and making it a capitol ship version of what the fighter pilots called a ‘furball’, was the best way to limit how many of the swarm’s ships could target a ship at any one time.

It wasn’t a perfect defense, but it would allow them to keep their ships intact longer than they would have if they tried to keep the range open, and allowed the swarm to dictate the pace of the engagement. Keeping the initiative was their best defense. She just hoped that it would be enough.

(Main Bridge, CNS Dawn of Ten Thousand Suns, Coldana System)

Captain Venali Rona gripped the seat of her command chair as another volley of grav lances struck the shields. “Starboard batteries, concentrate fire on that cruiser, it is trying to make a run on the Vision of Purity! Port side, fire as they bear!”

“Captain, Enemy fighters incoming!”

“Point defense, pick them up!”

“Ma’am! We have a X’thari dreadnought on an intercept course!”

“Transfer power from life support to forward shields! Hold course and increase to flank speed!”

The ship shuddered under another barrage, the heavy cruiser taking hits that they were never meant to withstand. She ignored the mounting list of damaged systems. Her chief engineer had never let her down before. She trusted him to keep her ship in the fight as long as possible.

The cruiser surged forward as it increased speed, throwing off the firing solutions some of the swarm had on it as the Dawn barreled down on a X’thari dreadnought that outmassed it by at least five times. Venali kept her eyes fixed on the screens, trying to will the situation to change somehow. Her eyes turned to her helmsman. “Lieutenant Adzana, have you studied the records of the Second Battle of Nuevo Edo that the Black Stars provided us?”

“Yes, Ma’am. If you’re thinking about the Shinokage, I can follow that track, but I don’t know what kind of condition we’ll be in after that.”

Her tactical officer spoke up, “Captain, the Shinokage has those Black Star railguns. Even with our full forward armament, I don’t know if the Dawn has the offensive punch to break through the dreadnought’s shields in a single volley, even at the rear.”

“The Luvon Gilrie and the Imra Aecyne are close, right? Those new Assassins have the Black Star guns. Comms, get me those ships! Tell them we’ll run cover for them against the dreadnought so they can get into position.”

“Captain, if we’re covering for the Assassins, we’ll have to slow down so they can get into position before beginning our run. That’s going to leave us exposed for longer.”

“Divert power from all nonessential systems to the shields! Anything that isn’t weapons, shields, and engines is secondary at this point!”

“Aye, ma’am!”

(Bridge, CNS Luvon Gilrie, Coldana System)

Captain Faylen Zylna ignored the medic hovering around her as she held on to her command chair. Her Assassin had been hit hard in that last exchange. The exploding power conduit had sent shrapnel flying across the bridge. She had been lucky to only get a narrow gash across her forehead. She nearly lost her eye. It could have been worse, much worse. She didn’t bother looking to the sensor station, where Ensign Umedi’s body lay, his head rolling a meter away after the shard of deck plating removed it from his shoulders. There would be time to mourn later, if they lived through this.

“Time to main weapon charge?”

“Thirty seconds!”

“Captain! The Dawn of Ten Thousand Suns is offering to cover us and the Aecyne on an attack run to take out that X’thari dreadnought!”

“Is the Aecyne still with us?”

“She’s battered, Captain, but she’s still with us. One minute to full charge on their primary weapon.”

Faylen took a breath to steady herself. As the Captain with the most experience in the new Assassin-class corvettes, she had been made the squadron commander for the first group of Assassins to join the Confederate Navy. They had been refining their doctrine and tactics ever since, building off what the Black Stars had done. This, however, was their first test under fire.

“Danger close formation. We will fly as close to the Dawn and each other as we can. I want us practically touching shields with each other. Merge our sensor shadows with the Dawn’s. Once the primary is charged, divert all power from weapons except point defense to the shields.”

“Aecyne responding. Captain Sylven says he’s with us, you call the play.”

“Right. Get us into position with the Dawn. Match course and speed. Helm, when we pass the X’thari dreadnought, I want a fast one-eighty. Pick your axis, and send to Aecyne’s helmsman so we don’t hit each other. Weapons, the moment we make our turn, the X’thari are going to pick up our sensor shadows again, and they are not going to be happy about us being there. Set the primary for computer control. As soon as the vectors line up, I want it to take the shot.”

“Dawn and Aecyne confirm. Beginning the attack run now.”

Faylen nodded. It was time to show the galaxy that the Black Stars weren’t the only ones who could use the Assassins to their true potential. Corvettes taking out dreadnoughts wasn’t a thing that was supposed to happen. The Senators that had fought against the idea of the Navy taking ship designs from a mercenary company would finally have to shut up and admit defeat.

She smiled to herself as a thought popped into her head. Maybe, when this is over, they’ll let us get some of the Reapers?

(Flag Bridge, INS Vindictus, Coldana System)

Admiral Han Moon-Hee watched the strategic plot, watching the disposition of forces. This was a battle unlike any she had been in before. What drew her eyes, however, was the sudden disappearance of a X’thari dreadnought from the center of the Confederate area of responsibility. The only ship nearby was a heavy cruiser. Had they gotten a lucky shot?

Her eyes widened as two Assassins appeared as sensor shadows for just a moment. The Confederate version of the Black Star’s Assassins were just as stealthy as the original, even in the middle of battle, but the Imperial Navy, especially those who were on the loyalist side during the war, were probably the one group with the most practice trying to detect Assassins under combat conditions than anyone else in the galaxy, save only Nuevo Edo or the Black Stars themselves. But, even as stealthy as the ships were, they shouldn’t have been able to sneak into a firing position on the X’thari dreadnought like that! Not at that range!

Of course! They used the cruiser as a hat, using it to hide their sensor shadows! She recognized the maneuver only because, during the Civil War, then-Captain Mollen had said that he developed their tactics based on old, wet-navy submarine tactics, so she had researched them extensively.

But the Confederates weren’t the only ones that had bought ships from the Black Stars! She searched the plot, looking for the IFF signatures she knew would be there. There! And they were close enough to make a difference.

“Flash transmission to battle group Silver Dawn! New orders for all Imperial Navy Assassins! Each cohort is to partner with a traditional model heavy cruiser to make attack runs on the X’thari dreadnoughts. Have Admiral Catallia split her ships as she will.”

She paused, and then said, “Mark all Assassin cohorts on the plot. Superdreadnoughts closest to the Assassins are to divert fire to taking out the enemy cruisers. We need to take these ships out fast!”

“Admiral, the Glory of Terra!”

Moon-Hee searched the plot, and found what she was looking for. The Glory of Terra, the first Wrath-class battleship purchased by the Imperial Navy, was surging forward into a group of three X’thari dreadnoughts! What was her captain thinking?

Suddenly, all four of the Glory of Terra’s rail guns fired as one, at a range where the middle of the three dreadnoughts couldn’t hope to evade in time. The attack shattered the dreadnought’s shields, and looked like it crippled the ship. Follow-up attacks by the Glory’s energy weapons ripped into the X’thari vessel. As the two healthy dreadnoughts moved to flank the smaller battleship, the Glory unleashed a double broadside of torpedoes, ten Dragonbreath torpedoes slamming into each of the healthy dreadnoughts, setting off sympathetic explosions across the ship. The first dreadnought exploded as the energy weapons blew through where the reactor had to be located, masking the Glory for a moment until it emerged victorious from the other side of the blaze.

“Status of the Glory of Terra?”

“Captain Abentre signals that shields are at 28% and climbing, minor hull damage. Several systems damaged, and are being repaired, including Transition Drive, long-range sensors, and main life support.”

Stunned, it was all the Admiral could do to keep her composure. “Commander, make a note. After the battle is over, I wish to talk with Naval command about procuring more Black Star vessels.”

“As you wish, Admiral.”

(Flag Bridge, CNV Tribute of Gold, Coldana System)

Six X’thari cruisers targeted the Tribute while she was engaged in a slugging match with one of the X’thari dreadnoughts. Their grav lances overwhelmed the flagship’s shields for only a moment, but that was enough for a graser blast to penetrate into the heart of the superdreadnought. Damage control teams went to work immediately as systems were rerouted, and Commander Rustfoe took command in the secondary bridge as communications cut out to the main bridge.

The main bridge was a charnel house, with exploded panels and conduits turning the entire compartment into a bloodbath filled with the dead and maimed. Right now, Technician 1st Class Kurnim Graniteforge was concerned with the adjoining compartment, the Flag Bridge. As he forced the door open, he heard a brief whistling of air before the emergency forcefields snapped into place.

The main bridge was a charnel house. The flag bridge was a completely different affair. There were signs of slagging on the deck, caused by energy weapons, but there was no scene of carnage here. No, other than a bit of charring, the flag bridge looked remarkably pristine and sterile. Just as one might expect from a compartment looking directly out onto space.

“Graniteforge to Secondary Command. Alert the Commander, we’ve reached the Flag Bridge, but it is open to vacuum. No survivors. The Admiral is dead.”

(Fleet Command Cluster, IAS Aclotloxl’s Claw, in orbit of Coldana Prime)

“Warleader! The Consortium’s Seventh Fleet is contacting us. The Tribute of Gold has been hit! Admiral Ironbelt is dead, and the fleet command has fallen to you.”

Keh Dhaka bowed her head for a moment, and then said, “The Ancestors of her people will guide her. We have a battle to win! Are the X’thari still focusing on the larger ships?”

“Yes, Warleader! All groups report X’thari ships are focusing on the dreadnoughts primarily. Escorts and small attack craft are only being targeted when they go on close attack runs or attempt boarding actions.”

It was a stupid strategy for the X’thari, nowhere near what she would expect of them. Sure, the dreadnoughts were the heart of the fleet, but to ignore the escorts entirely? What madness would make them think that was a good idea?

Wait, the escorts? Could it be that simple? She checked the database for past encounters with the X’thari. Yes! That was it, the X’thari were hunters, not soldiers! They let the escorts peel back the enemy escort ships, allowing for the heavier ships to focus on the toughest prey. Without their packs of escort ships to balance the fight, the X’thari’s proven tactics were working against them. They had the weight of numbers to make it work anyway, but they would lose many of their ships because of it.

“Send to all ships. Admiral Jadegut is in command of the strike division. I have overall command. All dreadnoughts and carriers are priority targets. That is where their fleet commanders are.”

She waited for the communications savant to send the message, and then said, “What is the status of the Black Star Navy?”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Coldana System)

“Status report.”

Raven looked over from where she was analyzing the data from the sensors. While her eyes might have been on the screen in front of her, I didn’t doubt that she was also hooked in to the raw data and everything coming through from the combined fleet’s tactical network. Not having that meat to slow your processing down was a bonus at times.

“All forces are under attack, as expected. Black Star Marines have landed at two enclaves of survivors that were in danger of being overrun. Second Company has reinforced the Darboldor enclave, and pushed the X’thari back there. Second’s Crows and Thunderbolts are conducting seek and destroy missions, taking out enemy artillery and vehicles where they find them. First Company dropped directly on the Dharram enclave, where there were X’thari inside the perimeter. The Thunderfury herself contributed to the bombardment, allowing the marines and local militia to sweep up behind and take out the X’thari inside the perimeter. They are currently clearing an LZ near the breach in the walls, so they can use the Thunderfury’s point defense and shields to seal the breach temporarily. Consortium Army units have taken the primary spaceport outside Coldana City, and are establishing a perimeter.”

“In space, the Second Great Armada has engaged the X’thari heavy ships directly, while the First Fleet is battering a group that tried to flank the forces. Warleader Dhaka has split the groups effectively. Combat effectiveness of Second Armada is at 83%. First Fleet is at 90%. The X’thari appear to be focusing on the superdreadnoughts, instead of the lighter ships. The dreadnoughts are simply too tough to be taken out quickly, and the escorts are getting some crippling shots in because the X’thari are focused on the largest prey. X’thari ships are at 70% effectiveness, but some appeared to be damaged prior to the battle.”

“Unfortunately, it seems like the strongest and best prepared units were guarding the Harvester. The rest of the combined fleet has been hit, hard, though they are giving as good as they’re getting. The Assassins that have been sold to the Confederates and Imperials have been proving their worth. They are now having units of a cruiser and two Assassins making high speed passes of dreadnoughts, using the cruiser as a screen so the Assassins can use their primary weapons on the weaker rear shields. The Wrath-class battleship that the Imperials purchased, Glory of Terra, has been proving its worth, as well. The various forces are at 76% effectiveness. No ships destroyed yet, since the X’thari are focusing on the largest prey, but we have word that the Tribute of Gold was hit hard. The ship is still in the fight, barely, but Admiral Ironbelt is confirmed killed.”

I nodded once to show I was paying attention. That meant that overall command of the combined fleet would go to Warleader Dhaka, but command of the strike force drawing the X’thari away from the Harvester went to Admiral Jadegut of the Consortium’s Fifth Fleet. He just hoped no one would panic as the casualties rose. They were only going to get one shot at this.

“Status of our ships?”

“The Black Star Navy is maneuvering into strike position. Currently at six light-minutes below the ecliptic, running as quietly as we can. Estimate 80% chance that the X’thari did not notice our entrance, with the additional noise from the rest of the combined fleet. Further 19.99% chance that the X’thari, if they have detected us, have judged us to be of secondary importance compared to the rest of the fleet.”

That was unfolding according to plan. The Starhunters were far above the ecliptic, leading the X’thari escorts on a merry chase. The rest of the fleet was fighting either in orbit of Coldana, or in a position near the Harvester. Anyone watching sensor screens would be hard pressed to notice our ships, designed to be stealthy for their classes, and view them a credible threat with conventional weapons.

Indeed, from the time we’d entered the system almost an hour ago, we hadn’t noticed even a single X’thari ship turn our way. That was good, since it meant that our ships were probably undetected. And we needed to be undetected, so that we could get clear shots on the Harvester. Once we had a clear angle on the massive creature, the situation would change dramatically.

“Time to Point Omega?”

“Ten minutes, twenty seconds.”

“Firing solutions?”

“Resolving final numbers now. The only question is whether you want to go with firing plan Alpha or Beta.”

“Computer analysis of the firing plans?”

“Fire Plan Alpha has a 45% chance of success, given the unknown variables, but offers maximum accuracy on the firepower brought to bear. Fire Plan Beta is rated at a 67% chance of success, though individual impacts will not be uniform due to the change in flight times. Unknown what the actual effect will be on the target, but computer models put it as a net gain on the overall damage output.”

“Send to all ships, we’ll use Fire Plan Beta. Have them begin making the necessary adjustment. Bombers to launch once the adjustments have been made.”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Banshee’s Wail, Coldana System)

Slave-Commodore Balmit Icebrand steadied his breath as he heard the command come in from the Master. Fire Plan Beta was ambitious, and more complex than Fire Plan Alpha, but the computers agreed that it had the better chance of success. He personally thought that the actual odds of success with both plans was higher than the computer projections were suggesting, but the computers didn’t like having unknown variables, such as not knowing the composition or internal structure of the X’thari Harvester.

It wasn’t unreasonable of the computers to raise flags for that, of course. That uncertainty about the Harvester’s composition had already played out to their advantage once, with the Harvester clearly having suffered more damage than was outwardly visible from the Firebringer attacks. That was a boon for their forces, meaning they actually had a chance to save Coldana and at least some of its people. However, they couldn’t count on all of the uncertainties resolving in their favor. It was better to be pessimistic and be overprepared than to be too optimistic and not have the tools needed to win.

“Send to the group. All ships are to adjust their torpedoes to fit Fire Plan Beta. Message the Wolfsbane, and let Slave-Captain Rostina know that the Deathguard squadron is to launch as soon as their torpedoes have been adjusted. All other fighters get ready to scramble once the Dragon bombers have launched, just in case we draw someone’s attention.”

“Aye, sir!”

(Flag Bridge, CNV Vein of Starlight, Coldana System)

Admiral Bradmig Jadegut braced himself against the command plot as the Vein of Starlight was rocked by another salvo from the X’thari grav lances. So far, the engineers had kept the shields up and their weapons firing, but damage was mounting across the fleet. One simply needed to look at the numbers to see that this was not going to be a fight that many of them would walk away from, if any of them did.

“Admiral, Warleader Dhaka confirms your command of the strike division.”

He nodded, grimly. It was the obvious call, and he had not expected it to go any differently. Warleader Dhaka was too smart for her to be blinded by power. There was no way that she could effectively manage the strike division while attacking the forces around the planet. So, she needed a deputy, and he was the next in line for overall command.

The situation was… well, not good, but it was less bad than it could have been. Frankly, the fact that any of them were still alive after an hour of close-combat with a force mismatched as they were was astounding. Part of that was due to the superior engineering and skill of professional soldiers versus a group of hunters that relied primarily on either stealth or numbers to win the day. But, in no small part, it was also due to the basic strategy that had been devised at the planning meeting.

The disposition of the Black Star forces had been easiest to determine. They were going to be the spear held in waiting, ready to be thrust into the heart of the enemy when the time was right. For a group that was designed around sneak attacks with overwhelming firepower, that was, perhaps, the best possible use of them that could be imagined. It was the rest of the fleet that had been tough to sort out.

Originally, Admiral Ironbelt had intended for her fleet to be in the center of the allied formation and take the brunt of the assault, as was proper for a commander of a multinational force. However, the Confederates and Imperials argued against it. The Black Stars, once they learned the fleet composition of the Imperial Ninth and Confederate Sixth Fleets, had agreed, and pushed for them to be at the center.

He hadn’t understood at the time, but seeing the results of those aptly-named Assassins working in pairs, with cruiser screens to allow them to close enough to take point-blank shots on the engines of the X’thari dreadnoughts with those insanely powerful guns of theirs? Well, he was Gauz enough to admit that it was the proper call. Given the state of the X’thari fleet, his analysts concluded that they had already taken out at least six leaders of the Swarm with those tactics, and the chaos left in the wake of each leader’s fall was a weakness that the combined fleet exploited to its fullest.

But all of it was just a smokescreen, a diversion to keep the X’thari occupied, keep them looking the wrong way. Their goal, at the end of the day, was to prevent the X’thari from figuring out what the stealth ships of the Black Star Navy were up to, and taking steps to intercede. Not that the Black Stars needed much in the way of help to keep off the X’thari’s radar. Even with the IFF signals, his sensor teams could barely track the Black Stars in the heat of battle. If they had been running radio silent, and coasting on a ballistic track instead of moving under power, there was no way his sensors would have picked them up at that range, and the X’thari sensors weren’t that much better than the Consortium’s.

“Admiral! Incoming message from the BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi! Message reads, ‘Prepare for scream in thirty seconds.’”

Frantically, Jadegut turned and ran for his crash chair to get somewhere secure. “Signal all ships, brace for impact!”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Coldana System)

“Admiral, all ships report changes to the torpedoes are complete. Pandora’s Box, Tribune, and Wolfsbane have all launched their bomber squadrons, additional fighters ready to launch on your command. Sixty seconds to Point Omega.”

I nodded as the aide reported on the readiness of the fleet. Fire Plan Beta was ambitious, but it would allow the fleet to get as much ordinance on the Harvester simultaneously as possible. Since we knew that individual impacts weren’t going to be enough to destroy the Harvester, it was important to use what we had in the most effective way possible. We were likely only going to get one clear shot before the X’thari realized what we were doing, and moved their ships to intercept, like they had done with Firebringer.

“All ships to commence Fire Plan Beta upon reaching Point Omega. Computer controls for the firing run. Send word to the combined fleet, warning them of the psychic scream incoming when we are at Point Omega. Give them a thirty second clock.”

“Aye sir.”

I took a breath, and strapped in to my crash chair. I preferred standing by the consoles during battle, to get a better feel for the situation as a whole, but the last time the Harvester had been wounded, it had apparently sent a psychic scream that had stunned the entire system momentarily. Somehow, I didn’t think that it would be less ‘vocal’ when it was getting killed.

Each Wrath-class battleship had ten torpedo launchers as a broadside. The Reaper-class were refitted with four torpedo launchers on their broadsides, changing out the original ship-killer missiles for smaller missiles, designed for taking on fighters as doctrine developed. The Knight-class destroyers had been designed with four torpedo launchers, two each fore and aft. Each of the Assassins had a single torpedo launcher, fore and aft, as they were expected to deal with fighters and small craft more than ships of the line unless they were using their primary weapons for stealth attacks. Three squadrons of Dragon bombers of twelve craft each launched from the carriers, each bomber carrying two torpedoes.

Point Omega was located exactly a light-hour from the Harvester, at our current elevation below the ecliptic. By the time the Harvester, or whatever was left of it, would register the light of our attack, the information would be an hour old. This was normally far past the range forces could engage each other, unless they were content to waste ammunition herding their foes into pre-designed snares. The only exception, prior to this battle, was with ballistic weapons, striking unmoving targets before they even knew they were under attack.

A light-hour was no different from a light-second for FTL weaponry. The only concern was in making sure that there was nothing solid in the line of fire. The Starbolts were indiscriminate. The first solid mass they hit, whether it was a moon or a single-person fighter, would unleash such an explosion of energy that the torpedo itself would be destroyed, unlike the ballistic weapons which could continue on through some targets, damaging ships and structures behind them.

That was the main reason we had come out so far below the ecliptic, to ensure that we would have the fewest possible number of ships to try and fire past. It was also why the ‘strike division’ of the combined fleet attacked so far out from the Harvester, drawing the defenders away, if only a little. It was all for the purpose of clearing the path for this shot.

As the ships reached their assigned positions for Firing Plan Beta, the computers took over, guiding them into the proper alignment for when they reached Point Omega. When they crossed that imaginary line in space, the computers reacted instantly, launching one hundred and fifty Starbolt torpedoes in unison. Thirty seconds later, another hundred and fifty launched. Thirty seconds after that, one hundred and fourteen torpedoes rushed into space, the bombers having shot themselves dry. Finally, two minutes after the first torpedoes launched, the final hundred and fourteen torpedoes launched as the firing plan finished, releasing controls back to their flesh and blood controllers.

Five hundred and twenty-eight Starbolt torpedoes flew though the infinite void of space, many times faster than the speed of light. But not all of the torpedoes were going at the same pace. This was not due to a malfunction in the control software, but a deliberate act. The torpedoes fired in the first salvo were the slowest, and had a run time of precisely two minutes longer than the last torpedoes to be fired. In this way, five hundred and twenty-eight Starbolts fired from one hundred and fourteen launchers and thirty-six bombers arrived within microseconds of each other.

It was a science fiction adaptation of a tactic that had originally been devised and put into practice in the sands of North Africa as the British Army faced their enemies. Time on target attacks were simply artillery barrages firing at the same time at the same target, so that all the rounds landed at the same moment. One moment, the desert would be quiet, and the next the entire world fell upon the unsuspecting enemy.

As technology improved, the doctrine became known as Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact. Each gun would fire multiple rounds at different barrel elevations, lowering the elevation each time. This meant that the first shots flew in the highest arc, taking the longest time to reach the point of impact, but arrived at the same time as the fourth shot. In the true spirit of military forces throughout history, the acronym MRSI became known as “Mercy”, for the poor bastards at the receiving end at least got the mercy of never knowing what hit them.

Barrel elevations weren’t possible with the torpedo launchers, and wouldn’t have had any effect to begin with in the void of space. But it was possible, if you had the computing resources, to change the flight speed of the torpedoes. The math required to determine what speed the first salvo needed to be traveling to arrive at the same time as the fourth salvo launched two minutes later traveling at 500c made my head hurt. Relatavistic calculus was never my strong suit.

The computers gave us a 67% chance of destroying the Harvester outright with this firing plan. They didn’t have any projections for what the probable scream would do, or how it would affect people. I had time to consider what the scream would be like, in the adrenaline-fueled time dilation as I anticipated the result of our attack. Even at five hundred times the speed of light, the torpedoes still took a little over seven seconds to reach the Harvester. Seven point two seconds of frenzied anticipation, as we waited to see the results of our attack.

Seven point two seconds after the final salvo of Firing Plan Beta was launched, I, and every other living creature in the system, heard it. A scream of primal pain and fear, so powerful that I felt like I was going to be slammed through the bulkhead! Words could not begin to describe the impact of the scream. The best I could do would be to quote an old movie, it was ‘as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced’. That does not do it justice, however.

“Oh, god, my head!”

I couldn’t help but agree with the voice, whoever’s it was. It took me a moment to realize that it was my own. My head felt as though it had been run over by a dreadnought, and then set on fire for good measure. It was, by far, the worst experience I have ever had in this game world, even including that incident with the Vrok on Dimiya’s moon, where I didn’t realize her saliva contained a nerve toxin. That was actually my second death in the game, outside the Arena.

As my eyes stopped trying to focus on six different things and settled down on only one, I shook my head slowly, to try and gather my thoughts. Fortunately, there was one member of my command staff that I knew would be unaffected. “Raven, status report?”

The AI was ready with the report, and did her best not to make my headache any worse. “No damage to the fleet. The psychic scream did not affect nonliving material, as expected. Working with the other combined fleet units in the system, I have been able to analyze the effects of the scream. While it is impossible to replicate artificially, we now have readings on the energy wave, and proof that it does weaken as it travels over large distances. Forces in orbit of Coldana were disabled for approximately thirty seconds, while forces in the strike division began to recover after almost eighty-seven seconds. As expected, it is a Mental Psy effect, so Mental Psy resistance reduces the time one is affected. However, Mental Psy Affinity in a victim increases the time affected.

She paused, to see if I was following, and then continued her report. “All X’thari forces were affected, on average, four times the length of other species. The deviation in these numbers could easily be accounted for by differences in Mental Psy Affinity or Resistance, as well as other factors, like existing battle damage.”

“Because the combined fleet had the preset commands issued, fleet computers continued attack and evasion patterns during the time the crew was incapacitated, resulting in a sharp uptick in X’thari ships disabled and destroyed. The swarm is effectively 76% combat effective, with the majority of that effective group being the escorts that the Starhunters have been leading around the outer system.”

I growled slightly. Raven was telling me things that I, as Admiral, needed to know. But, at that moment, it most certainly wasn’t what I wanted to know. Fixing my gaze on the AI’s android body, I said, “Quit dancing around the main event, Raven. What happened to the Harvester?”

The AI smirked at me, “Admiral, you have to know that an explosion of the magnitude we unleashed has caused a massive increase in the background radiation. That blinded the sensors temporarily. Getting a full picture of the situation under such conditions takes time.”

Oh, she was going to play it like that, huh? I narrowed my eyes as I glared at her. “Come on, Raven, you’re not expecting me to believe that your processors are too slow to work through the data to get a basic status update on the Harvester’s condition?”

Raven stuck her tongue out at me, before straightening up, and saying, “Nope, your taunts aren’t going to change anything. There really is too much radiation. Think of trying to get confirmation of a target’s destruction after a nuke goes off. Sure, any normal thing would get blasted by the nuke, and be destroyed, but you can’t confirm it until you can cut through the light, clouds, and radiation to see for yourself. Oh, by the way, a little under an hour from now you should probably keep from looking through the view screens without a heavy light filter in place. Apparently, it was like a second sun went off momentarily out there.”

I grunted, begrudgingly. As much as I wished otherwise, I couldn’t just snap my fingers and change the laws of the universe. “How long until we know more about the Harvester?”

Raven made a show of looking at her tablet, and said, “Approximately twenty seconds.”

I took a breath to calm myself, and kept my eyes locked on the viewscreen where the sensor reports were collating, resolving themselves into a picture. The haze caused by the radiation began to clear, and, at first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Sure, the computer models said it was possible, but no one really believed it, not really. I slumped back in my chair, the energy leaving me in shock at what I saw on the screen.

The Harvester had been completely wiped out of existence, with nothing remaining but trace elements in the rapidly expanding cloud of debris!

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Coldana System)

“Well, hot damn! We actually did it!”

The sensor readings were rather definite. The Harvester had been utterly wiped out. Checking my character sheet showed that I had jumped up to level 55! Ten levels in one go was a pretty definite sign that the Harvester was dead and gone. Oh, and there were some new titles and other goodies handed out.

Legendary Creature slain. All Fleet commanders gain the following title:

Legendary Admiral

While in command of a fleet of warships, you have accomplished things that had been thought to be impossible. Few commanders ever see a X’thari Harvester. Fewer still survive the experience. You have not merely survived. You played an active role in bringing this harvester down, for good.

+100000 Fame

+10% to all skills regarding commanding a fleet

+30 CHA

All Fleets gain the following Perk:

Transnational

This fleet has fought in concert with ships of rival nations to achieve larger goals. This gives you better insight into how to integrate different groups into a greater whole.

+10% to all actions while working as part of force comprised of naval units from different political or corporate entities.

All Ships gain the following Perks:

Legendary Ship

This ship has been part of acts that would be considered legendary in any sailor’s book all ships involved in the Second Battle of Coldana will be considered legends in their own right, and the pride of their fleets.

+25% Defense and Armor vs non-legendary foes

+25% Weapon damage vs non-legendary foes

X’thari Bane

This ship stood in the fire of the X’thari onslaught and gave better than it received, helping to strike a mortal wound against the X’thari Swarm by destroying one of their Harvesters. That act has left a psychic imprint on the ship, aiding it in battle against the X’thari.

+10% to Weapon Damage against X’thari vessels

-10% to Weapon Damage from X’thari vessels

The Black Star Fleet gains the following Organization Trait:

First Strike

It is said that, in war, he who strikes the first blow, if he strikes hard enough, need not raise his hand a second time. Your organization takes that concept and ramps it up to levels thought insane by other groups. However, your results speak for themselves. All Black Star Navy ships and fighters gain the following benefits:

+10% to Attack when stealthed

+10% to Weapon Damage on first attack of a battle (additional +20% if attack launched from stealth)

I whistled softly at the list of goodies. No doubt other ships and groups in the battle had gotten other things, depending on how they had acquitted themselves in the battle. Oh, that’s right, there was a battle still going on. Looking to Raven, I said, “Status of the X’thari swarm?”

“Cohesion between forces has fallen. The only groups still functioning at their normal efficiency would be the escorts chasing the Starhunters. All capitol ship formations are falling apart, acting like individual units.”

“Hmm. So, the Harvester was basically acting as the lynchpin for the entire Swarm, and without it, their entire command structure is thrown into chaos. In that case, we should take advantage of this. How long until we can recover the bombers?”

“They are already beginning docking procedures. As planned, they turned back to their carriers as soon as they recovered from the Scream. Thirty seconds from completion.”

“Status of enemy tarpits?”

“Enemy tarpits are down!”

I looked at the tactical map with renewed interest. The ships around the planet were doing fine, relatively speaking. But the ships of the strike division had been hit hard, and that was where most of the X’thari were. “All ships, prepare for in-system jump. Coordinates to follow. Launch all Raptor and Thunderbolt squadrons as soon as we get in the engagement zone. Dragons to be rearmed with Dragonbreath torpedoes and launched as soon as they are ready.”

I looked at Raven. “I need coordinates that will get us into the fight. Preferably near the Consortium forces. They’ve been getting hammered hard, and could use some relief.”

“Calculating.”

(Flag Bridge, CNV Vein of Starlight, Coldana System)

Admiral Bradmig Jadegut groaned as he felt the room spin around him. He had a genetic quirk that made him uniquely susceptible to Mental Psy attacks, while making him also uniquely capable of using them. However, he gave such things up when he entered the military, as the Consortium did not allow mental psy users to rise in rank, for obvious reasons. The psychic scream of the dying Harvester, however, was far more powerful than anything he’d faced before, and easily overcame the pitiful defenses that his gear provided.

“—dmiral! Admiral!”

“Ugh. I’m all right. I’m all right.” He struggled to find the source of the voice that was yelling at him. There was something he was doing before the scream, right? Something… oh yeah, a battle. He was fighting a battle! He should probably get back to that.

“Admiral, are you sure? You’re, um, bleeding quite a bit.”

He blinked his eyes a couple more times, and the room swam into focus, allowing him to see the concerned face of his aide. He coughed, and found blood on his hand. Oh, that was bad. He struggled, and managed to make his tablet give him a picture of his face. He wasn’t supposed to have blood coming from his eyes, nose, and ears, right? That was probably a bad sign.

No. No time for that. The battle. He had to finish the battle. He could go sleep when the battle was over. “Damn the bleeding. What our status? What about the Harvester? How bad did the Black Stars hurt it?” He knew the Black Stars had hurt the beast. His brain wouldn’t be feeling like he has a full military parade marching in circles through it if they hadn’t. But how bad did they hurt it?

The aide shook his head. “Admiral, the Harvester… it… it’s just gone, sir! The Black Stars annihilated the thing!”

That statement cut through the haze in his mind like a knife. “On screen!” Sure enough, where the Harvester had been moments before, there was now just a rapidly dispersing nebula of organic material, thoroughly irradiated from… whatever the hell the Black Stars had done. “How?”

“Admiral Mollen sent a flash message to all fleets. The Black Stars altered the flight speed of their Starbolt torpedoes so that they all arrived at the Harvester within microseconds of each other. While that slightly lowered the yield from the slower missiles, the firing plan allowed them to magnify the overall blast damage, overwhelming the shields and having a definitive impact on the Harvester.”

“Excellent. Status of the Swarm?”

“The Swarm appears to be breaking into individual units, Admiral. They’ll probably start organizing themselves into Hunts before long, but for the moment they are all fighting as individuals. Their formations have gone to crap. We even saw one example where a cruiser walked right into a dreadnought’s fire while they were attempting to take out the Forge of Fury!”

Admiral Jadegut grinned ferally. “The X’thari are pack hunters, not soldiers. They don’t have a chain of command, according to Intelligence. If the biggest, baddest hunter gets taken out, the others fight for dominance. We’ve seen it before, in the last X’thari war.”

His aide’s eyes grew wide. “And we just took out the biggest hunter in the whole Swarm, with the Harvester, right?”

“Exactly! Send to all ships, press the attack! Without a leader holding them together, we can get them running!”

(Fleet Command Cluster, IAS Aclotloxl’s Claw, in orbit of Coldana Prime)

Warleader Keh Dhaka bared her teeth in a victorious snarl as another X’thari ship fell before her fleet’s guns. The effects of the perks and titles the fleets had gotten thanks to the Harvester’s destruction were already making themselves felt. The battle had been a desperate one so far, but they had taken far fewer casualties than they had any right to. Now, with the added bonuses, their desperate stand had turned into a counterattack, and the hunters had become the hunted! This was a battle that would be hailed in song for generations, while the War College would teach it as a lesson in how insanity can be a viable battle plan.

“Warleader! Admiral Jadegut has ordered the strike division to press the attack! They intend to rout the X’thari before they can decide upon new leaders!”

The communications savant had barely finished reporting when the sensor savant called out, “Warleader! The Black Star Navy has initiated a microjump, and is engaging the Swarm with the Strike Division! Enemy tarpits are down all over the system!”

So, the mercenary decided that one kill, no matter how massive, was not enough credit for his ships in this battle, and thirsted for more blood? That was good, a fine attitude for any warleader! If he were an Ihm, she would claim him as her mate, and force him to give her many young, to grow strong and one day rule her House when she passed on.

Still, now was not the time for idle fantasies of things that could not be. She was a Warleader of the Ihm Armada, and she would act accordingly! Drawing herself up to her full height, she looked over to the communications savant

“Orders to all ships, both divisions. No mercy to the enemy, but no need recklessly wasting lives now. The X’thari swarm is broken, and we need only drive them off from Coldana. The time for fell abandon upon the field is past. Now it is time for cooler minds to take what kills we can. Our new objective is rescuing survivors on Coldana Prime, not exterminating the X’thari to the last.”

(Flag Bridge, KNS Ashvane’s Pride, in orbit of Coldana Prime)

Lord Admiral Tandred Proudmoore howled in delight as the X’thari ships broke before him like a wave upon the rocks. “All ships, keep firing! We’ve got the bastards on the ropes! Tell Daughter of the Sea to keep her ion cannons locked on that damn carrier! The Marines have almost reached the self-destruct and the bridge. When they do, we can make sure the X’thari won’t be able to make it blow up in our faces.”

“Lord Admiral! The Black Stars have engaged with the X’thari alongside the Strike Division! Warleader Dhaka is ordering all ships to press the attack, but keep an eye out to avoid unnecessary casualties. The X’thari are fracturing into individual ships!”

“Hah! Take out their leader, and the damn bugs don’t know what to do! All ships, continue the attack! The damned Black Stars may get the greatest glories because of the Harvester, but Kul’tiras will not be left playing second to them this time! No mercy to the enemy! Destroy them all!”

“Admiral! New contacts warping in! It is the Confederate Twelfth Fleet!”

(Flag Bridge, CNS Wrath of Gadran, Interstellar space near Coldana)

Admiral Kasyx Rizazzi stood tall on the bridge of his battered flagship. Thankfully, the majority of his Second and Third groups had been only lightly damaged. Running some power cables, rerouting power from a couple areas, and replacing a couple burnt out components was all that most of the ships had required. Which was good, since without Starhunters to draw off the escort ships, once the X’thari swarmed in to close the gap in the perimeter they had created with their unorthodox entrance, the fighting had been fast and furious.

Still, half his ships were still relatively intact, and another fifteen percent, while unable to engage in combat, had, at least, been recoverable to the point where they could limp home to the shipyards. The other thirty-five percent of his command was not so lucky. There were just too many of the X’thari.

They had been on the verge of being overwhelmed completely when the X’thari ships all froze. They just hung in space, suddenly not knowing what they were doing. The psychic scream, it seemed, did not reach far enough out of the system for Twelfth Fleet to be affected by it but the X’thari were clearly bad off for a moment.

That moment had cost the X’thari dearly, with many of their escort craft being disabled or destroyed before they could return to their senses. Capitalizing on this brief reprieve, and the fact that the tarpit that had been over them suddenly broke, he ordered them forward, into the breach they had created. It was time to hunt the hunters!

Arriving in the Coldana System, he saw that the majority of the Allied forces were fighting away from the planet, by where the Harvester must have been. Two parts of the fleet, however, the closer ones to him, were fighting above the planet. “All ahead full! The X’thari have lost their precious harvester, now they will lose their fleet!”

(Dharram Enclave, Coldana Prime)

“They’ve broken through the western wall!”

Colonel Lurhak Hardminer cursed under his breath as he looked at the command plot. The moment they heard that the X’thari were coming, they had known that the world was doomed, but they weren’t going to simply go down without a fight. Plans had been put in place, quickly fortifying as many areas as possible. He and his marines had dropped from the Fires of Khazad-dum and the other ships of the fleet to support the local militia. The populace of Coldana had been pulled back into thirty-seven enclaves around the world. Three billion sentients crammed into thirty-seven enclaves originally rated to hold no more than twenty million each.

They knew they were doomed, but they had come together, and decided to make sure that the damned bugs bled for their world. Every man, woman, and child who could hold a gun was armed, and those thirty-seven enclaves became holdouts that would give any rational enemy pause. Millions upon millions of people in too tight a space with nothing to lose? That was the kind of situation that armies broke upon.

But the X’thari had numbers uncounted, and threw themselves against the enclaves in waves. Thirty-seven enclaves had started the siege. Two days after it began, Norwurh, the last enclave to be completed, found that they had rushed the job a bit too much. The X’thari found a weakness in the walls, an access to the sewers that had not been properly sealed. They came up out from under the ground inside the enclave, killing everyone over the course of several gruesome hours. There was nothing anyone else could do, except listen. They all knew that would be their fate, eventually.

Norwurh was the first to fall, but it wasn’t the last. One by one, an enclave would suffer a breach. Maybe it was through the sewers, or maybe they managed to break through a wall, but there would be a breach, and the X’thari would pour through. There would be a few hours of screaming, and then silence. Even in defeat, though, the enclaves made the X’thari burn, setting off fusion bombs as a last act of defiance, bleeding more of the Swarm’s strength.

There were only ten enclaves remaining. Little more than seven hundred million souls and dropping, from a population of three billion. But they were still here, and they were still fighting. Now, it looked as though it was Dharram’s turn to fall. And then suddenly, hope emerged.

“This is the BSS Flux Capacitor to all Consortium forces remaining on Coldana. Relief forces inbound, including ground troops. Send target information on this frequency.”

Hardminer’s head whipped around at the comm setup that they had half-forgotten, the one that had connected them to the Fleet, before they were wiped out. The entire command post was shocked for a moment, and before he shook his head. “Well, what are you idiots waiting on? Give them our location! And get the reserves over to the western wall! We have to keep those bastards out of the bunkers as long as possible!”

“Flux Capacitor copies, says to expect reinforcements in twenty minutes!”

Twenty minutes? They would have to be practically jumping directly into orbit for that to be true. The X’thari ships were still encircling Coldana, keeping anyone from getting off the planet or acting to unite their enclaves against the threat. But if they said they would be here in twenty minutes, then his troopers would damn well hold twenty minutes! He grabbed his rifle, and gave the orders for the command staff to join the lines. They had bugs to kill.

Nineteen minutes later fire trailed through the night sky as ships forced their way into Coldana’s atmosphere. Twenty minutes after the initial call for aid, explosions rocked the ground as three assault craft, supported by fighters, both of a type Hardminer had never seen before, strafed the X’thari positions, concentrating on taking out heavy weapons sites. The next trail of fire was a modified Marine Assault Transport, laying down fire on positions closer to Hardminer’s troops. Marine drop ships blasted clear a landing zone, and the marines, all wearing matching black armor, flooded out, weapons blazing as they faced the X’thari.

“Pass the word! Check your targets! Friendlies incoming, wearing black armor! Everyone hunker down! We’re the anvil and those glorious bastards are the hammer. Let’s see how the damn bugs like being caught in between!”

There were cheers on the line as Hardminer’s orders spread among the troops. Not just from the troops, but from the people in the bunkers, as well, who, just before, knew it was only a matter of time before they were forced to fight for their lives. Now, it looked like, against all odds, that there might be hope for them yet.

He looked around, and pointed out his intel officer. “Graystone! I don’t recognize that armor configuration! Who are we dealing with?”

The intel officer looked through his viewfinder, and frowned. “The armor is modified Imperial Marine armor, but the color scheme is not any known design used by the Terran Empire. High likelihood that this is a mercenary group of some kind.” He paused, taking a look at the fighters flying overhead, helping to provide air support. “Those fighters match ones intelligence has attributed to the Black Star Navy. Given that the Fleet was in contact with Black Star ships before they were wiped out, and the ship that contacted us was the BSS Flux Capacitor, these should be the Black Star Marines.”

Mercenaries? Damn, he’d been hoping for regular military. But at the moment, he didn’t much care, so long as they were on his side. “Do we have comm codes for them?”

“Negative, Fleet’s never worked with the Black Stars before. But if they hired them, we should be getting communications from them shortly on the merc frequency.”

“Dharram Enclave forces, this is Major Chris Khan of the Black Star Marines. We have a plug on that hole in your wall now. Thunderfury and Vicious Return are using their shields and point defense to keep the bugs out, so if we can clean up the ones inside the wall, you should be secure, for the moment.”

Well, that was the best piece of news that Hardminer had gotten all damn week! “Major Khan, Colonel Lurhak Hardminer, Coalition Marine Corps. Thank you for the assist. We’re all for a target rich environment, but it was getting a little uncomfortable down here.”

“Glad to help. We have forces dropping on Darboldar as well. All other enclaves are under attack, but holding, for now. Coalition Army is setting up base camp at the capitol city’s spaceport, trying to draw the X’thari away from the enclaves, and get a beachhead to start driving back the bugs. The situation in orbit is still fluid, but we’re trying to solve your little Harvester problem.”

“Yes, we’d been wondering why the Harvester didn’t simply come and consume us all. Didn’t make sense for the X’thari to try and wipe us out this way, when their Harvester could just eat the planet. The science types have any word on that?”

“Well, it looks like your fleet did more damage to the Harvester than they thought. It has been hanging around the wreckage of the fleets, eating them and trying to heal itself, we think. And the X’thari are probably smart enough to realize that you wouldn’t be past unleashing a few nasty surprises right in the Harvester’s mouth if they tried to eat Coldana without neutralizing you.”

“Hmph. At least we gave them something to think about. How are you for supplies, Major?”

“We have enough weapons and ammo for an extended campaign, and facilities on Thunderfury for making more. Rations and power cores enough for a week of hard fighting. By that point, we’ll either be sent for respawn, or we’ll have been reinforced by more ships coming from orbit.”

“Respawn?”

“First Company, Black Star Marines is entirely composed of Nomads, Colonel. These bugs don’t know what they’re messing with.” There was a pause, and then, “They’re about to hit the Harvester! Prepare for psychic scream!”

Hardminer didn’t respond out loud, simply pointing to Graystone, who issued the warning through the command network. He remembered the scream that had stunned them on the ground when the Harvester was attacked last time. Having one come through while in combat was not ideal. They didn’t have the resources to block the scream, but they could at least make sure no one had live grenades ready to go when the scream hit.

Darkness hit along with the scream, but it soon passed. He pushed himself up off the shattered wall where he’d fallen, and looked around to see what was going on. Slowly, his people began picking themselves up, and started firing. Right. The enemy. What was happening with the enemy?

The X’thari were floundering about, running wild. No longer attacking the defenders of the enclave en masse, but acting like feral beasts, if they were conscious at all. Easy prey for the fighters.

Minutes after the scream, the darkness gave way to light as a brightness like that of the noonday sun filled the sky. Hardminer blinked furiously as he shielded his eyes, but soon the light faded away, and the darkness of the night sky returned. And on the battlefield? The X’thari broke, scattering in every direction, attempting to flee the death waiting for them inside the walls of the enclave, but there was no escape for them. They were between the hammer and the anvil.

Finally, the last X’thari inside the walls fell under a hail of gunfire, and Hardminer could finally breathe easily for the first time since the assault began days ago. He sat down on a pile of rubble, looking down at the figure of a slain X’thari warrior. So much death. So much slaughter. Seven hundred million survivors out of a planet of billions. And all of it for what?

That was where the man in the black armor of the Black Star Marines found him. He walked easily, rifle slung across his shoulder, his armor’s helmet under one arm. The X’thari had been pushed back outside the enclave, so there wasn’t anything for him to fear here, not really. The tall human reached out a hand to him, and said, “Colonel Hardminer?”

He reached out and grasped the offered hand, allowed the big man to haul him to his feet. “Aye, that’s me. Major Kahn, I take it? That was a mighty timely arrival you and your men pulled off. Not ashamed to admit that we were being overrun, like the other enclaves were. Lots of civilians in the underground who will be damn pleased to see you guys.”

The man shook his head. “Well, you can thank the Starhunters for the timing more than anyone. The combined fleet was gathering, and trying to figure the best time to hit the Harvester. Best plans they had were to put tarpits out between it and the next system on the menu, and fight it there. We were under the assumption that you were all dead, right up until the Starhunters snuck in a few days ago.”

“A few days? We only heard from them just now!” They’d been watching for days? How many lives could have been saved if they had just let everyone know help was on the way. Grabhammer Enclave fell just two days ago, the civilians setting the fusion plant to go critical when the X’thari breached the walls. Better to go out in fire than to be ripped to pieces. If they’d known help was on the way, maybe some of them would have survived!

Kahn nodded. “They were under orders to keep radio silence. And they were only five scout ships. Nothing they could have done, especially if they got detected and let the X’thari know the fleet was coming. They did what they could, however. When they confirmed survivors on Coldana, they sent word back immediately, and the fleet’s planning went into high gear. That miniature sun earlier? That was the Harvester getting taken out. In space, the fleets are hounding the X’thari and driving them out of Coldana, as individual bands instead of the Swarm.”

He clapped an armored hand on Hardminer’s shoulder. “You might be thinking of all those who died on your watch. Know I would be, in your place. There will be a time for remembering the dead. For now, every living soul on Coldana is one more than anyone was expecting there to be when this was over. And they’re alive because people like you and yours held the line, even when it was hopeless, even when there was no help coming. You held the line, and they survived. Remember that.”

The human Major had the good grace to stay silent as Hardminer finally broke down and wept. He knew it wasn’t dignified, but he did it anyway. He couldn’t stop it. He’d earned that much, hadn’t he? Major Khan answered the unspoken question the way a soldier should, just resting his steady hand on his shoulder and letting him get it all out.

He had earned that much.

(Virtual Room inside NERV HQ)

“Oh, holy crap. They actually did it!”

Isaac wasn’t sure who it was that said those words, but he agreed with them completely. What they had just watched on the feeds was incredible. Even watching it from the control room, with the benefit of being able to play with the time dilation to speed up and slow down the replay, it was amazing to see something thought to be impossible done before his virtual eyes. And so effortlessly, too!

He shook his head, centered himself, and, getting back into ‘professional mode’, said, “All right, we need to get ahead of this. Work with the main AI to find a way to carefully manage how this might get out into the game world. We’ll have to try and put something together to keep the players from rioting when they find out about this. If it goes bad, people will freak out. Suggestions?”

“Distract them with something shiny?”

Isaac laughed, and said, “That’ll only work for a little while, and you know it. But get something together, Ted, so we can have it ready to roll if we need more time on things. Anyone else? We don’t have to work miracles, just something that will keep people from burning the place down until things settle. We want this to have a chance to work itself out without the players swarming all over things doing like they do.”

“What about a new Gateway? Nuevo Edo has ships of their own, now, including some civilian ships that are up to current spec. Could have some good, old-fashioned corruption or bribery to get a couple addresses off the stele.”

“Hah, this is Nuevo Edo. The gender imbalance is still way out of whack, and people in power are almost entirely female. So why not have a reverse honeypot? Get some sexy seducer out there to sleep his way to the information, like a scifi James Bond?”

Isaac grinned as the other game masters spitballed ideas. “Now, THAT is an interesting idea. Have a ‘tall dark and hansome’ type go and seduce someone to get a gate address. I can dig it, and it will play well with the player base. What gateway would we use?”

“THX-1138 is a good choice. There’s a nice, existing power base for people to play against, so that whoever goes there won’t immediately be able to take everything over, like the Black Stars did when they started exploring. Might be a decent place to send people, anyways, especially since they’ve been working on that project…”

Isaac frowned. THX-1138 wasn’t a bad choice, per se, but did they really want the players out there so soon? “No, not that one. We were going to introduce THX-1138 in the next expansion pack. We need something a little more self-contained.”

“What about the Basilisk system? The station there is pretty isolated, but the Navy usually has some cruisers on patrol there to help ward off pirates. They could learn a few things about wormhole physics, too.”

“OK, sure, that’s a possible. How did they explain humans being in that area for longer than they’ve been in space?”

“Gravitic lensing through a wormhole caused all kinds of time craziness. Essentially sent them back before the Apollo program started.”

“Hmm. That’s what the AI came up with? Little thin, but it’ll do when people get there. Think we can have that worked out for the next big update?”

“Sure, Isaac. Everything’s in the game already. Just gotta get an explorer to the right place at the right time, and boom, people get new stuff.”

“Hey, guys, you been watching the feeds?” Isaac looked up as Morgan appeared in the virtual room, and headed over to where his people were figuring out how to keep things running. “Isn’t it crazy?”

Isaac nodded. “Oh, yeah, we’ve been working on things down here for the last few hours, trying to think of ways to manage the potential fallout. The player base is going to go nuts when this hits the public nets, I’m sure. Right now, we’re working to try and control the information so it comes out in the best light possible.”

Morgan frowned. “Are you kidding? There’s no way you can try and keep a lid on this! The footage is GOING to get out. Trying to run some kind of cover-up job is just going to make things look bad on us, like we were helping someone cheat or had something else to hide. The whole thing played out in game, and we know no one was hacking the system, so let’s just put it out there, as cinematically as possible, and let people hype themselves up for our product. This is the best free PR we’ve had in months!”

Isaac frowned. “Are you sure? It has the potential to completely destabilize the game. Everyone will be rushing for it once this comes out. I don’t even want to think what the effect will be on the ‘locals’. They’re already getting swept along by the players doing crazy shit. This is going to make it worse unless we handle it carefully!”

“Carefully? How in the hell can you talk about carefully? Come on, this is the biggest story in the game right now, even if people aren’t aware of it yet. You can’t just try and sweep it under the rug! Hell, you wouldn’t be able to, anyways, since Mollen was in the mix, and his stream will be going live soon.”

Isaac blinked, and said, “What are you talking about? Mollen wasn’t even there!”

“What? The Black Stars were right in the middle of everything going on in Coldana! Hell, their Marines dropped on a swarm of X’thari warriors and saved a bunch of people in the enclaves. And that isn’t even considering what his ships did to the Harvester!”

Isaac breathed a sigh. “Oh, you’re talking about Coldana. Yeah, we ran the numbers once they had made their plans, and it was obvious the Harvester was going down. The only question was on the casualty numbers. That’s all well and good. Actually, we can use that as the distraction we were hoping for.” He looked to the side, “Ted! Use Coldana for the distraction. That’ll keep the players running around for ages! Susan, keep working on the Basilisk idea. We won’t implement unless we need to.”

Morgan just stared at him, dumbfounded. “Wait, if you guys haven’t been watching the battle at Coldana, what have you been doing?”

Isaac grinned his most shit-eating of grins, “Well, you see…”