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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: So, like I was saying, the security on those DK-1234 modules is crap. You just have to do a basic number substitution, and they fold like paper.
Blaze: Sure, if you’re facing people with dedicated hacking equipment, and if you leave the system hooked in to the network.

Chummer: What, you go stand-alone on it? For a ship’s main computer?

Blaze: Damn straight. Physical access only. I have secondary systems for outside communications. Files are downloaded, scanned, and then physically transferred to ship computers. So, anyone trying hack my ship has to be physically on board. And if that happens, I’m probably screwed already.

Chummer: OK, I can dig that. Clunky, but it works for any remote hacking attempts. At least until any of your people get lazy, and pull a hardware work-around to download direct to the ship’s computer. There’s always someone who is lazy, after all.

Blaze: Last person caught doing that found themselves walking home, from orbit, without a suit. Nasty bit of work, what with him begging as he was shown to the airlock, but everyone got the picture, and I haven’t had any problems since then.

Chummer: Fine, that will work for locals, but it just takes one Nomad who doesn’t care about a quick death for a paycheck, and boom, you’re wide open.

Blaze: Oh, had one of those, too. I took a detour to that Amazon planet, and used an escape pod to send him down. Trapped him there, since the Greenwave is still going strong there.

M.Mollen: Oh, yes, I’ve done that as well. Very good way to get rid of Nomads who are causing trouble. I consider it my version of a nonlethal death penalty, especially if they have cyberware.

Requiesce-in-Pace: ‘Nonlethal death penalty’? I’ll have to remember that one.

Starwatcher: Hey, anyone notice that several Black Star ships near Star’s Reach used X’thari drives to leave the system?

DigDug: X’thari drives? Aren’t those the ones that let you go anywhere, so long as you either start or end near a Gateway?

MacD: That’s right, DigDug. What ships were they, Star?

Starwatcher: The Shinokage, Shadowdancer, Simo Hayha, Artemis, and the ships belonging to the Second Company of the Black Star Marines. All left at the same time, in formation.

MacD: Well, that can’t be good. Any idea where they went?

M.Mollen: To where they were needed.

BigGunn: C’mon, mister cryptic. At least give us a clue, so we can be elsewhere!

M.Mollen: Fine. Don’t schedule any trips to the Tsk’neth system in the Free Worlds Alliance anytime soon.

DoYouEvenDPS?: The agri-world? I know they supply a good portion of the food for the Alliance, but why would anyone go there, except on a cargo run?

MightMakesRight: Huh, that reminds me. I have a buddy in Alliance space that says that food prices have been steadily rising lately. No one knows why, since there haven’t been any reports about things going on.

BigGunn: Y’know, there have been a lot of gunrunners making bank off agents from Tsk’neth. Maybe a connection there?

CrazyCelt: Tsk’neth? Huh. Marko, a bounty hunter contact I have, went that way, tracking a skip about two months ago. Haven’t heard from him since.

AggregatorOfSorrows: Any chance you could give us a clue on what’s going on there, Mollen?

M.Mollen: I won’t say too much, since we are still in the cleanup phase of the operation, and we would like to get it finished before any idiots show up and make me shoot them for pissing me off.

Anonymous3: So, what, you’re trying to lock people out just so you don’t have to come clean about what you’re up to?

M.Mollen: Not rising to the bait, Anon. All I’ll say is that my people heard reports of strange things happening in the system. Both the rising food prices, and the increase in weapons purchases. Oh, and stories about ships going missing. So, I had someone go check it out.

Starwatcher: Someone?

M.Mollen: I have stealth ships, and I’m not afraid to use them.

BigGunn: So, what’s going on, then?

M.Mollen: All right, without going into too much detail, there was a little ‘incident’ aboard a ship coming out of the Ihm Imperium, and it ended up drifting in Tsk’neth. The local government and megacorporation investigated the ship, and things spread. Instead of taking steps to stop the situation, the bean counters and politicians tried to cover it up, to keep their stock prices from falling.

Chummer: I’m not liking the way you’re talking about this.

Blaze: So, what happened, then?

M.Mollen: So, who here is a fan of Paccom games? Especially ones from the mid-90s. Like 1996?

Number5Alive: You’re not talking about Alley Brawler or Ultra Man 8, are you?

M.Mollen: No.

Number5Alive: Oh. Oh dear. That’s really not good now, is it?

Golddigger: Why? What came out in 1996? That was a hell of a long time ago!

Number5Alive: 1996 is when the first Biohazard game came out.

Blaze: Wait, zombies? Really? Space zombies?

M.Mollen: To put it bluntly, yes. I have taken care of all the zombies we can find in system, but there are some people who are not happy with the current corporation’s handling of the affair, naturally.

BigGunn: By ‘taken care of’, you mean…

M.Mollen: I destroyed any ship or station infected, and any body uninhabited by living sentient life was purged, with prejudice. Thankfully, the majority of the system’s population survived, but, since they were mostly slave laborers, and the corporation and government are effectively wiped out, there’s a bit of a sticky legal mess.

Starwatcher: Wait, ‘any body’? Are you talking about planets?

M.Mollen: Just one. And it isn’t a problem, or a planet, any more.

Starwatcher: Aren’t there treaties against that?

M.Mollen: No, because the senior surviving representatives of both the government and corporation are on record saying that the planet in question was no longer inhabited, and that the situation required Exterminatus.

BigGunn: Wait, Greenwave wouldn’t do shit to zombies, would it?

M.Mollen: I didn’t use Greenwave. Anyways, I have to get to a meeting, so I’m dropping chat.

(Main Bridge, BSN Shinokage, Tsk’neth System, Free Worlds Alliance)

“Admiral, we have an update from the Gugnir. Fourth Group is passing through Dothada with their auxiliary vessels. Estimated time of arrival is in one week. No resistance so far.”

I nodded to Slave-Captain Inatumal. “Thank you, Captain.” As I turned back to my tablet to continue the mundane paperwork that came with command, I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Fourth Group getting here.

It was just three weeks since I’d come with the Shinokage to answer Atlanta’s report of a Code: Veronica situation. I’d chosen the name as an offhand joke. Since we were making contingency plans, eventually one of the other Nomads in the Black Star chat channel suggested a Zombie Apocalypse plan, and everyone started offering suggestions. No one really expected it to happen, but, hey, the CDC has a zombie apocalypse plan, so why shouldn’t we? And it wasn’t like the planning wouldn’t be useful in multiple areas.

Turned out, we needed it sooner than we thought. I’d ordered the Atlanta to scout the system because the locals were not shipping food any more, and were instead buying a LOT of weapons, while freighters were going missing. I’d expected to see someone out there preparing for a war, or some other big endeavor. What Atlanta found, however, was a ship full of zombified Ihm.

Of course, that ship was bad enough, but then we’d found that the entire system was infested with the undead. The fourth planet had been completely consumed by the dead. The only solution had been to planet crack the fourth planet, obliterating it and the scores of the undead.

That, of course, was a problem, since Tsk’neth IV had supplied a large part of the food for the entire sector, and was the primary supplier for the mining colony on Tsk’neth III. Right now, the colony was on emergency rations. According to the Work Chief that was in charge of the colony, they had enough food for another six days.

The five Oregon Trail class heavy freighters that Fourth Group were escorting were the answer to that. The Fair Winds was loaded to capacity with emergency rations, enough to feed the colony for another six weeks. Dreamcatcher had quick-grow hydroponic farming technology, which would enable the colony to begin producing their own food. Do You Want Fries With That was loaded with synthetic protein vats and source materials, as well as the tech to shape and flavor them into something edible (it wasn’t meat, but it was as close as many got on the fringe). Ziegler’s Mercy had a full hold of medical supplies, and was set up to serve as an emergency field hospital. And the For Want of a Nail was loaded with manufacturing equipment, which would allow the people of Tsk’neth III to rebuild their orbital infrastructure.

Suffice to say, the people of Tsk’neth III were more than pleased with me. The problem, of course, was that the people were not the only ones with an interest in the system. The system government wasn’t a concern, since they were all quite dead by now, but the Yathru Corporation, which effectively owned the system and all the people in it, even if they weren’t technically slaves, were most assuredly not pleased in the slightest.

Four days after I destroyed Tsk’neth IV, a freighter entered the system, bearing the markings of the Yathru Corporation. The moment they found out that the zombies had been wiped out, and the space stations and planet along with them, they angrily demanded to know if we still had the ‘samples’ for corporate, because they weren’t going to be the ones in trouble for not delivering on time. The corporate officer aboard the freighter was not pleased that I had destroyed them all, and left in a huff.

It didn’t take much guess work (none at all, actually, since Raven hacked their systems) to discern that the Yathru Corporation had been ecstatic about the devolving situation in Tsk’neth before we arrived. Like the traditional Ihm rain covering that they were named after, the Yathru Corporation wanted to have a presence covering all potential markets and revenue streams. That included bioweapons, naturally.

The loss of the ‘irreplaceable’ bioweapons (read: zombies), as well as destruction of so much corporate property that it would be impossible to put a value on it, had infuriated Yathru. The next ship to arrive was an official corporate lawyer, who attempted to file suit and issue invoices, expecting me to pay for the ‘damages’. I quoted the sections of the treaties that covered Exterminatus events, which all quite openly and plainly stated that all property rights on planets slated for Exterminatus are rendered void. I then informed him that I had already sent the relative information, including video recordings of the station and planets, to the Alliance government, the Interstellar Corporate Court, the Unified Mercenary Association, and twenty-seven major news outlets within the Alliance, the Consortium, the Confederacy, the Empire, and the Imperium.

The lawyer frowned, but said nothing. The corporate officer beside him, however, was frothing at the mouth. He swore that we would regret this. Literally, that’s what he said.

Which, naturally, was why I was still on station with Shinokage and the ships I’d brought with me to help Atlanta, and why Fourth Group was escorting the relief ships. The people of Tsk’neth IV would starve if something happened to the ships, which made them a target for people who wanted to hurt Black Star, by any means necessary. And I wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Admiral, communication from the surface, Work Chief Ruak on the line.”

“On my screen.” The paperwork disappeared from my tablet, if only for a blissful moment, and was replaced by the Ihm male’s face. “Ah, Work Chief Ruak. I trust you’re doing well? Have those riots in Hive Seven been broken up?”

“Good day, Admiral. Yes, I am doing well, as I hope you are. The last of the Yathru ‘company men’, as the Marines call them, have been successfully taken down. As expected, the majority of them were surviving corporate security or administrative personnel who abandoned their posts when the work teams were voicing their displeasure initially.”

“Yes, there are always going to be rats who try and hide when things are bad, and then complain that their cheese is gone.”

“One of the few things I miss about the Imperium. They don’t tolerate that kind of behavior, there. Of course, they also have an Empress that’s gone crazy, so I guess you get the good with the bad.”

“Ha! That’s true enough. Well, it is good you got those malcontents under control.”

“Yes, especially given the other reason I called.”

“Ah, I take it your people have gone over my proposal, then?”

The Work Chief straightened slightly, and nodded. “Yes.” I took a moment to set the transmission to record, and gave him the signal to continue. “Given the gross misconduct of the Yathru Corporation, and the fact that all administrative members of the corporation have resigned their posts or been forcibly ousted, under the bylaws of the Tsk’neth System Charter, I, as the senior official remaining on the planet, hereby consider Yathru to have abandoned their claims in this system. Further, after taking a vote of the Hives, we would like to join the Black Star Company, and have a permanent Black Star base established here.”

I nodded once. “As the leader of a registered mercenary company, in absence of any other military or corporate security presence in this system, I, Admiral Mirikon Mollen, concur with the judgement of the ranking official of Tsk’neth III and the Tsk’neth system, in judging that the Yathru Corporation has abandoned their claims to the system.” I took a breath, more to separate the two statements than anything else, and continued. “As CEO and Owner of the Black Star Corporation, I am pleased to add Tsk’neth to our holdings. Pursuant to Black Star regulations, the Tsk’neth system will host a contingent of the Black Star Navy, to not be less than the size of one Defense Group, for the purposes of protecting the people, buildings, and traffic in this system.”

I ended the recording, and grinned at Ruak. “I’m glad your people decided to join us, Ruak. We have a few Ihm in our company already, and they have all been valuable additions to the company, and the fleet. Once Fourth Group gets here, we’ll start working up a defense station for Tsk’neth III.”

“You literally saved the hives from being eaten alive by our own people, and the rations you’ve provided already have kept a lot of people from starving. The fact that you already have freighters on the way with more rations, and the ability to make our own food, rather than relying on shipments from offworld, played highly in your favor. That was one of the things that they used to keep people in line. Restrict the food, water, and air to anyone who ‘got problematic’.

“Yes, I can imagine. People can be pushed much further when they are just well fed enough to not be weakened by malnutrition, and you threaten to take from them. Not a system I wholly approve of, myself, outside the military, or similar organizations, during training, when you’re trying to push new recruits to their limits.”

I was about to say more when alarms suddenly went off on the bridge. Those were the bow wake alarms, detecting incoming ships! I was already looking toward the sensor officer when he said, “Captain, Admiral, we’re picking up incoming ships. Twenty-five signatures total. IFF readings indicate that they are part of the Yathru Corporate Security Fleet.”

I sighed, and looked back at the tablet. “Well, Work Chief, it appears that Yathru has not gotten the memo about this system’s change in status, so I am afraid that I’m going to have to go and explain it to them. I am sorry, but we’re going to have to cut our conversation short.”

“No worries. I said all I meant to say, anyway. But will you be all right? Twenty-five against ten is not exactly the best of odds.”

“Chief Ruak, please believe me when I say that, if I wanted to give them better odds, I would have the Marine ships sit back, and take them on with only five ships. It wouldn’t change the outcome in the slightest, but then I would have to listen to the Marines whine about how they didn’t get to have any fun, and there’s only so much of that I can take.”

“Hah! Point taken, Admiral. Good hunting. Ruak, out.”

As the comm line cut out, I looked over to Captain Inatumal, who was next to the sensor officer. Looking back at me, she said “Sensors identify them as nine Tendix-Class corvettes, eight Ehkal-Class frigates, five Utadi-Class Destroyers, a Tellu-Class escort carrier, and a pair of Bol-Class battle cruisers. All older models, sir.”

They were indeed older models. They were all likely military surplus, left over from the last war, or the one before that. The Tendix, Ehkal, and Utadi-class were all Ihm make, but the Tellu-class came from the Confederacy, and the Bol-class were Regandian models, from the largest Free Worlds Alliance competitor to the Kul Tirans in military strength. Actually, the Regandians might have passed them, given their recent problems.

Still, for a corporation in the Free Worlds Alliance, this was a very sizeable investment of men and materiel. In fact, I’d bet that it was the majority of their mobile military assets. Oh, they probably kept some for the protection of their primary facilities, but this would definitely be the bulk of the Yathru fleet.

“Captain, orders to the fleet. Assassins to form up on us, striker formation. Shields up, weapons hot. Inform the Marines that the crows are to form the second line behind us, with the Orgrim’s Hammer and the Acherus following behind. Have Ebon Blade squadron prepped and ready to scramble. Load for space supremacy dogfighting.”

Captain Inatumal hesitated, then asked, “With respect, Master, dogfighting? Why not just take them out with starbolts?”

“Because starbolts don’t leave enough pieces behind for us to capture and interrogate. The crews of those vessels didn’t order this strike, so I want to know who did, so I can discuss things personally with them.”

“Understood, Master. Orders going out.”

The communications officer looked up. “Captain, we’re being hailed by the Yathru fleet.”

I chuckled, and waved the captain off, before stepping forward, to the center of the bridge. “Well, this should be fun. On screen.”

“Aye, sir.”

(Main Bridge, BSN Shinokage, Tsk’neth System, Free Worlds Alliance)

The screen switched from an overall tactical view to the bridge of one of the battlecruisers. I could immediately see that it was a mixed-race crew. Both a Y’nar and a human could be seen seated in the background, wearing Yathru corporate security uniforms. They were turned away from the screen, paying attention to their readouts. 

In the center of the screen was an Ihm female, with hilariously overblown rank insignia and ribbons on her uniform. She looked like one of the dictators from a banana republic back in the real world, but with more scales. The damn thing didn’t even look like it was capable of forming a vacuum seal in case of decompression. 

Black Star uniforms included an adaptive skin suit as a matter of course. They sacrificed a bit of looks for that, obviously, but the point of a ship uniform was to keep the wearer alive when things went to hell. Anything that made its way through from the looks department on top of that was simply bonus points. The Yathru Corporation apparently decided differently.

The Ihm female sneered at me. “This is Admiral Threkzi Akoh of the Yathru Corporate Security Fleet. Your ships are in violation of Yathru corporate property, and you stand accused of destruction of corporate property in the amount of 6.35 quadrillion Alliance credits. You are to be arrested and held without bail until this amount has been paid, your ships confiscated as partial payment of this debt. Surrender, or be destroyed.”

I just stared at the woman for a moment, and then broke out laughing. I could hear snickers and laughs from other people on the bridge. Even the stoic Captain Inatumal was giggling at the absurdity of it all. 

The admiral was… less than happy at my initial response, demanding again that I surrender or be destroyed, but I managed to catch my breath, waving at her to stop talking. I turned away from her, dismissively, typing in a couple commands to Raven. “Yes, yes. I heard you the first time, you jumped up iguana with the brains of a tadpole, you insignificant pimple on the backside of a pig covered in shit.” 

I took a breath, and then turned to stare directly at the admiral. “I am Admiral Mirikon Mollen of the Black Star Navy, and my ships have faced the best that the Empire, the Alliance, and the X’thari have to offer, and come out on top every time. If you think your pathetic little collection of relics which were outdated even in the last war are a match to my ships, then you are even more of a brain-dead idiot spawn of an animal fornicating gene-corrupted twat-waddle than your pathetically overdone uniform, which is clearly designed to compensate for your obvious deficiencies in finding a mate that isn’t a Helvarian Fecal Maggot, makes you appear.”

The admiral snarled, baring her teeth at me. Apparently, she was even less pleased at my response. “You arrogant human! I have twenty-five ships, and you have nothing bigger than a cruiser! Surrender now, so I don’t have to damage future corporate property for the research division.”

Ah, so that was what they were playing at. The corporation had already written off Tsk’neth’s usefulness, since the agriworld was literally gone, along with their source of bioweapons for research. So, instead, they wanted to take me and my ships, and use them to prop up their stock price. They no doubt had all kinds of ideas of getting their hands on Black Star technology to sell as their own.

“You intellectually challenged child playing dress up, pretending that you are anything other than a whimpering brood mare that no male would touch without being paid, if you think you can take on this mere fraction of the Black Star Navy, you are more than welcome to try. However, if your pea-sized brain can comprehend the words I’m saying, then know that this system is now under the control of the Black Star Company. Any aggression by your ships will be considered the start of a full corporate war between the Black Star Company and the Yathru Corporation. Now, turn that collection of pathetic rust buckets you call ships around and leave my system before I tell my gunners to remove those piles of scrap that are little better than mobile navigation hazards from my space!”

The admiral screeched, literally screeched, in rage, and snapped at her crew, “ALL SHIPS ATTACK! DESTROY THAT SHIP!” The next instant, the connection was severed.

Twenty-four of the twenty-five ships surged forward, with only the escort carrier hanging back, launching its two squadrons of fighters and one of bombers. I nodded, and said, “Launch Ebon Blade squadron. They and the Crows are to eliminate fighters. Raven, do we have the flagship? 

“Yes, Boss. The admiral is on the Dynasty Builder, one of the battlecruisers. I’ve updated target profiles. Unfortunately, they aren’t so foolish as to allow unlimited data transmissions during battle, so I don’t believe I’ll be able to hack their systems until the Marines board.”

I nodded, having expected as much. “Well, it would have been nice if they were all as stupid as their admiral, but that doesn’t matter now. Orgrim’s Hammer has her target. Full deployment. Capture the flagship, I don’t care if it is a bit busted up, but I want the Admiral and any corporate representatives alive for questioning.”

Looking at the scans, I said, “All other ships, weapons free, fire at will. Disable the flagship, but destroy the rest. Atlanta pairs with Artemis, Simo Hayha moves with Shadowdancer, Shinokage reaps souls alone. Main guns and dragonbreath torpedoes. No need to waste starbolts on these scrap heaps.”

 I watched the scans as my ships began moving. My ships had the edge on speed, since they had less mass and more power, causing the gap between the fleets to close rapidly. The five ships in front fired moments before the Thunderbolts and Crows from the Marine ships sped past us, hurrying towards the enemy fighters.

The officer at the communications station spoke up. “Admiral, long-range scanners are detecting a weak transmission on the quark-length transmission array. Identification code QT314159.”

I looked at my screen, and saw what that was. “Crows, focus fire on the bombers. Priority target. Ebon Blade, clear the path for them. All ships, Enemy has access to Dragonbreath torpedoes. Point defense to full.”

Captain Inatumal raised an eyebrow, even as she carried out her orders. When it was done, she turned to look at me. “Sir?”

“All Black Star munitions that are sold to non-governmental third parties are tagged, Captain. Anyone who buys a civilian-access Dragonbreath torpedo, as these people clearly have, consents in a bit of fine print sandwiched between clauses identifying the base elements of a chicken sandwich and the correct order to watch the Stellar Conflict movies to have a tracking device on the weapons which identifies it in a rarely used, and even more rarely monitored, section of the quantum EM spectrum. This tag is, by contract, has no connectivity to outside systems, but will set the Dragonbreath’s artificial gravity to create a microsingularity if it is removed. That should be fairly unhealthy for anyone in the immediate vicinity, at least for the few picoseconds before the torpedo destroys itself. The tag has limited power, so being inside a ship’s hull would likely block the signal, but the moment it was launched, or hauled out on a bomber, then it would be detectable to those in the system who knew where to look.”

“I see. And I take it our contract writers didn’t bother to mention that to people? I can’t imagine most people willingly sign on for that.”

I chuckled, and said, “It is hardly our fault if they don’t read the fine print. Technically, it is an antitheft system. However, it does give us the advantage of having exact coordinates, vector, and attack speed for all those weapons, in real time, which makes point defense easy. However, if we didn’t have to reveal that, it’d be great.”

The tactical officer called out, “Calculated impact in three, two, one. Impact!” I watched as three of the Utadis registered impacts. “Good impacts on Tangos 18 through 20. Tangos 18 and 19 are confirmed destroyed. Tango 20 attempted evasive maneuvers at the last moment, causing the weapons to hit just aft of the ship’s midpoint. The aft half of the ship is destroyed, and the rest is without po--.” The third blip went out. “Scratch that. Looks like Tango 20 suffered a reactor breach. Target destroyed.”

The Yathru ships hadn’t even bothered getting out of their attack formation. They were probably more than sufficient for counter-piracy, or suppressing rioting spacers, but they clearly had not been briefed on what the Black Star Navy could do. The fact that only one ship even attempted evasive maneuvers, even after they all should have seen our guns fire meant that they were either phenomenally stupid, or their leaders didn’t have the authority to deviate from the admiral’s attack plan.

Actually, that was probably closer to reality. Corporate security was never trained like Military. Sure, they might have military gear, but they usually aren’t trained to the same standards as military are. They’d probably been trained to deal with pirates, and maybe other corpsec. Unfortunately for them, Black Star was trained to be military.

The ships were going into evasive maneuvers now, but the patterns were so simple that I could pick them out even without the computer’s assistance. The corvettes and frigates did, however, begin moving in front, looking to shield the larger ships from future attacks. It wasn’t going to help them, of course.

“All ships switch to Dragonbreath and energy weapons. Save the main guns for larger prey. Punch through their lines, and fire the main guns at point blank range.” 

“Admiral, fighters are engaging the enemy.”

I nodded to show I heard, focusing on the screens. The Thunderbolt IVs were clearly superior to the Ika 7 fighters that the Yathru flew. They had better engines, better shields, and heavier weapons. More importantly, they had better pilots.

 Twenty-four fighters and twelve bombers had launched from the carrier. Twelve of those fighters were already dead or disabled, as Ebon Blade focused their fire forward, working to clear a hole in the center of the enemy force. Ebon Blade 6 was pulling back, a lucky hit taking out one of his engines. Otherwise, well, the Thunderbolts split into flights and started hunting.

The Crows blew through the hole the Thunderbolts opened, and sped past, targeting the Reveth bombers. The bombers were little more than reusable torpedo launchers with flight controls, designed for attacking fixed installations like space stations and asteroid bases or disabling heavy freighters, rather than attacking actual warships, but twelve of them with Dragonbreaths were still a legit danger. Six of twelve were destroyed before the Crows turned back to make a second run. I looked away, content in the knowledge that none of the bombers would threaten my ships.

Before long, our ships were in range. The Assassins and Shinokage each launched a pair of Dragonbreaths, followed by the eight Yathru frigates firing single shots each shortly after. The frigates were out of date, their missile tracking and point defense capabilities better than civilian craft had a right to be, but against bleeding edge weapons like Dragonbreath torpedoes? Well, six of the corvettes and one of the frigates simply weren’t fast enough.

My ships, however, were all modern warships, with modern sensors, modern fire control, and modern point defense. More importantly, they also had firing solutions sorted the moment the frigates launched, because the sensors were actively looking for the tags. They didn’t even get close enough to scratch the paint.

“Confirm Tangos 1 through 6 and Tango 13 destroyed. Frostwolf, Laughing Skull, and Warsong have eliminated enemy bombers. Ebon Blade Leader reports sixteen confirmed kills for his squadron, three disabled, the rest trying to run back to their carrier. Ebon Blade 6 and 11 are out of the fight, damaged but should be able to return to base.”

“HA!” I grinned. “Ebon Blade Leader cleared to pursue enemy fighters at his discretion. If he deems it possible without unnecessary losses, he may attempt to disable the pocket carrier. Have the Crows turn and start eliminating the remaining corvettes and frigates. Artemis to lead her pair against Tango 21. Shadowdancer’s pair will take Tango 22. Captain Inatumal, Tango 24 is blocking my view of the stars, I would appreciate it if you would remove the obstruction post haste.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral!”

(Main Bridge, BSN Shinokage, Tsk’neth System, Free Worlds Alliance)

“Master, Tangos 1 through 24 have been eliminated. Orgrim’s Hammer has disabled Tango 25, and preparing to send boarders to capture the ship.”

“Excellent work, Captain. My compliments to the gun crews and the fleet. Order Ebon Blade squadron to return to base, the Crows can take on patrol duties. Have the Atlanta and Artemis see if they can tractor any of the larger pieces of debris from the enemy fleet into stable orbits of the planet. When the relief fleet gets here, I’m sure they will appreciate having some readily available raw materials to start recycling into building the shipyard.”

“At once, Master.”

I turned back to look at the screens. The battle had gone just as predicted. Battle. Hell, it was more like a scrimmage between professional athletes and a high school junior varsity team.

Honestly, the Yathru forces put up a decent enough fight, considering that they were usually going up against pirates and maybe some corporate raiders. They might even have been good at their jobs. Unfortunately for them, I hadn’t been boasting when I said that my ships and crews were far superior to theirs.

The whole battle was only twenty minutes from start to finish, and the only reason it took that long was because of the distances involved when the fight started. The corporate fleet’s shields had been tuned to defend against energy weapons. Understandable, since most pirates didn’t use torpedoes, favoring energy weapons and their lack of physical ammunition. However, that meant that a single torpedo could cripple the lighter ships, if not destroy them outright. And the quickly rebalanced shields were not strong enough to save the larger ships (the destroyers and the second of the two battlecruisers) when my ships brought their main guns to bear.

Meanwhile, the Yathru ships’ weapons were powerful, but all my ships had shields fit for warships larger than their weight class. Their beams were better than most civilian ships, and they definitely dealt damage, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. Frankly, the ships died too quickly for them to get enough time on target on my better shielded and nimbler ships.

“All ships, damage report.”

“Atlanta has taken minor damage. Captain Veleth reports that the last broadside from one of the destroyers disabled their hyperdrive and shorted out the capacitor for the anchor drive. A few minor casualties, but no deaths. All other ships report a few minor injuries due to high-speed maneuvers, as the inertial dampeners struggled to keep up, but no lasting damage.”

I nodded. “Excellent. Captain Inatumal, what is the status of Orgrim’s Hammer and the enemy flagship?”

“The Hammer’s shields are down to 12%, and port forward maneuvering thrusters are offline. Tango 25 hit them hard as they were closing, but it appears that their armor was not enough to save them from the Dragonbreath torpedoes. The Hammer targeted the engines specifically, leaving the battlecruiser dead in space. Ion weapons were then able to disable major functions.”

“Very well. Prepare a shuttle. I will be going over to the Hammer as soon as the ship is secure to help oversee the interrogations of the corporate officers on board.”

“As you wish, Master.”

(YCSF Dynasty Builder, Tsk’neth System, Free Worlds Alliance)

First Blade Th’zak Lakan was a lucky Ihm. As a hatchling, he had been selected for corporate security training instead of going to the mines to work the resource extraction machines. As a youngling, he had been promoted to Second Claw, the youngest to achieve that rank in fifty years.

Since then, he had constantly fought to prove his worth, and rise up through the ranks of the Yathru Corporate Security Service. Eventually, at the age of twenty, he managed to qualify for the elite Ship Security Division, the proud males, females, and others that made up the protective detail of Yathru’s corporate fleet. Their mission was to provide security aboard ship, conduct boarding operations against vessels, either to seize them as pirates or searching them for contraband, and as mobile reinforcements to Yathru security officers based on stations or planets.

The SSD were the elite, and they were equipped like the elite. They sported the strongest armor out of any corporate force in the Alliance. Even the Alliance Planetary Defense Forces bought their armor from Yathru. Void, even the annoying Kul’tirans bought armor from the corporation for their elite troops.

Their weapons, too, were the best that Yathru had to offer. Each grunt and officer of the SSD was armed with a Class IV Neural Whip, a Kat’har Kinetic Energy Carbine, and a J-BAR Combat Knife using a modified Imperial design to carry a self-sharpening monomolecular edge that would cut through anything, in time. Officers also carried their Mark 3 Microwave Pain Inducers, as well, allowing them to incapacitate rebellious ground troops and bring them to compliance without wasting the resources that the YCSS put into their training and maintenance.

As First Blade, Th’zak Lakan was the leader of his squad of twenty security guards. Unlike other Blades, he did not simply choose from his own race to make up his squad. There was some wisdom to be had in the simplicity that came with not needing to balance a squad’s needs for different races, but Th’zak had grown up in the hives of Tsk’neth III. He knew that there was a strength in having minions with different abilities than he did.

Take Sekil, for instance. The little Gendar was smaller than the rest of his squad, but because of that the little ratlike alien was the perfect scout, and was able to slip through areas too small for a hulking ihm like Th’zak to get through. Having him on the squad meant that they could seek out and spoil ambushes when attacking pirate ships, or search hidden compartments too narrow for an ihm to fit inside when examining a smuggler.

Fully half of his squad were non-Ihm. That kind of thinking made him unusual amongst his other Blades, but his results spoke for themselves. Because of that, he had been promoted to serve on the company’s enforcement fleet flagship, the Dynasty Builder, and he brought his squad with him. One of six blades stationed on the flagship, his squad was the best trained, and the highest rated, second only to the Admiral’s personal guard.

Th’zak read the information relayed to him from the bridge on the HUD in his helmet. Turning to face his squad, who had gathered in the dim emergency lighting, he said, “All right, troops. I’m not going to lie to you. The ship is hurt bad. These Black Stars have disabled the Builder, and according to what information I can get from the ship net, the rest of the fleet is not going to be coming to our rescue any time soon.

“The enemy vessel is a modified Imperial Marine Transport. That means it comes with drop ships and boarding pods, enough to send over an entire company of Imperial Marines in full armor. Fortunately for us, it seems the creditpinchers in Black Star are as active as ours are, because we are not dealing with a full set of twelve boarding pods. Instead, we are dealing with only three, enough for three squads of corporate security officers, to our six squads!

“The incoming pods are targeting sections 3, 5, and 7. Squad Two will intercept in section 3. Squad Three will intercept in section 7. Our squad will take section 5, as it is closest to the bridge. Squads Four, Five, and Six will cover Engineering, the Bridge, and the main computer core, just in case any of them slip by us in stealth armor. Our mission is to kill or capture any Black Stars we can, to use as leverage until reinforcements get here.”

He looked each of them in the faceplate of their opaque helmets. “We are the elites of the Corporate Security Service! We are the ones that all the other troops look up to, and wish they were. We are the ones that get all the prime mates, while they get our seconds and left-overs!” That got a laugh and a cheer from his troops, as he knew it would.

“Now, some of you are wondering why, if we are guarding against an attack in this section, we are a corridor away from the hull, instead of getting ready to meet them. After all, we could be setting up a fire position as we speak, right? The answer to that is simple. If they are using Imperial boarding pods, then they will be using a short burn, high intensity laser drill combined with kinetic impact to force their way through the hull.

“Understand this. Those lasers that cut through a ship’s hull will still be quite active when they break through. You do NOT want to be on the other side of the hull when those things cut through. It WILL significantly reduce your prospects, both in mating and your careers, if you find yourself rendered into several tiny little pieces.”

Once he was sure that his troops weren’t getting any stupid ideas about waiting just on the other side of the impact site, ready to spray kinetic blasts into the breach, Th’zak nodded. He didn’t allow stupid troopers to remain in his squad, but it was always best to make sure no one was getting too caught up in the corporate spirit. With a gesture, he sent a ship schematic to his team’s HUDs, with a blinking light highlighting one area of the ship near them.

“Now, sensors indicate that our pod will be impacting the hull here, in crew quarters. The crew are at their stations, so these quarters are assumed empty. The laser drill has an effective range of one meter, but the impact and temperature differential will cause shrapnel to spray throughout the section. room it impacts into, so we want to keep our distance for the initial strike.

“We will set up two firing positions. Here, and here.” He highlighted the positions on the schematic. “Uvan, take Teams Two and Four, and set up to the side. Teams One and Three on me. We will set up on the route to the Bridge. We will have them in a crossfire, with no cover. Easy shooting. Everyone clear on your assignments?”

There were no questions, as expected. It was a standard formation, one they trained for, in case they were under attack. The plans originally were designed to compensate for X’thari raiders, but they worked fine against other corporate forces.

Teams One and Three formed up on him as they moved to the corridor in section 5 that the enemy was expected to break through. With practiced motions, they set up the movable security barriers. The armored barrier would stop all ‘ship-safe’ weapons cold, and was even rated effective for some ballistic weapons. Like everything the SSD had, it was top quality, the best that any corporate security force had.

He watched on his HUD as Uvan, the avian Vrok, took position with teams Two and Four. Nice, quick, and professional. Just as he expected of his men. If this were a drill, they would have all passed with top marks.

His HUD flashed to get his attention. Boarder impact in three. Two. One. Now. He felt the impact as the ship shook, harder than he was expecting. The inertial dampeners must be offline, along with the engines, he thought. To his crew, he sent a simple message. “Be ready.”

The door to the crew berth where the boarding pod struck flew outward, and the bulkhead visibly dented from some of the shrapnel thrown about. There was a fraction of a second of air whistling by, before the pod deployed sealing agents to prevent decompression. Smoke fumed out of the doorway, as whatever the laser drill ignited burned.

Th’zak focused on the audio feed from his armor. There. That was the sound of the boarding pod’s hatch opening. He waited half a second, and then sent to his squad, “FIRE!”

Thwump. Thwump. Thwump.

Kinetic blasts crossed in the air, even as an armored figure appeared in the shattered doorway.

BANG.

First Blade Th’zak Lakan was a lucky Ihm. As an adult, he became the first enemy to die to the Black Star Primaris Marines, and their upgraded weapons.

(Unknown)

Admiral Threkzi Akoh slowly returned to wakefulness. What in the Abyss’s name happened to her? Did they win? Win. That’s right, they were fighting the Black Stars. Upstarts who thought that money and technology could substitute for tradition and the status quo.

Things began coming back to her. She had been commanding her ship, the Dynasty Builder, and they had… they had been boarded. A strange thought. People didn’t do boarding operations any more, not until a ship had been disabled, so that the fragile landing ships could easily force their way into a convenient shuttle bay.

She opened her eyes, but it made no difference. She was in total darkness. The room was in utter silence, as well. Not even the faint hum of an engine in the background. Was she not on a ship, then?

When she tried to move, however, she got a shock. She could not feel her limbs. She thought she was moving her limbs, but she didn’t feel anything, just a heavy weight, as though she were buried under sand she could not feel, could not touch, but that was there all the same.

There was no floor under her, but she didn’t think she was falling. That suggested a microgravity environment. But it was silent. Even the quietest part of a ship or station had a constant background sound. A low hum from the engines, the constant motion of air through the recyclers, the sound of people moving, breathing, carrying out their tasks.

You couldn’t make a ship or station so silent. Not unless life support had failed, and the compartment was open to the void. But she was still alive, still breathing, so that couldn’t be the case, right?

And then the memories of the fears she’d had as a young officer, barely out of the training academy rose unbidden. Every spacer feared a death in the void, trapped in space with nothing but your suit, left to slowly suffocate as the icy void closed in on you. They said that the last moments were the worst, and time stretched into an endless moment before your death.

Was that it? Was she dead, but her brain simply hadn’t caught on to the fact yet? Was this darkness the Dark Stalker hunting her, relishing the way his prey danced at his command? Was Death toying with her?

She forced herself to breathe, to stop the panic before it started. She’d interrogated prisoners before, and she knew what was going on. Sensory deprivation was a common tactic, since most people relied more on their senses to keep their mind in check than they realized.

Akoh liked to think she was made of sterner stuff than the simple fools who made up her crew. She’d been given a course in how to resist interrogation, of course. All Yathru officers had. But how long ago was that? Five years? Fifteen? Twenty-five?

The Admiral couldn’t help but shudder as she remembered a truism: sensory deprivation was a common tactic because it worked.

(Ship’s Brig, BSN Shinokage, Tsk’neth system)

The brig was a fairly normal affair, for the most part. Two meters by two and a half, and thee meters tall. Simple grey walls, a cot, and basic waste facilities. No computer terminals, televisions, or other entertainment devices, not even a book. No sharp edges or other things a prisoner could use to harm themselves. The primary threat to any prisoner contained inside was terminal boredom.

In this palace of dullness was one member of the species Homo litigatorem corporatem, otherwise known as the abhuman monstrosity called a ‘company lawyer’. It was fitting that, even though the Yathru Corporation was primarily owned and operated by Ihm, their corporate counsel was human. The Ihm didn’t have the malevolent wickedness to be a proper lawyer. Any with that skill set typically had an ego that forced them into trying for the executive track.

“As you can see, we have complied with all the standard provisions of the Unified Mercenary Accords regarding the capture of prisoners. We are, after all, simply conducting business here, in accordance with our corporate charter. Likewise, you will be pleased to know that the paperwork signifying the official change in ownership of the Tsk’neth system from Yathru to Black Star was filed prior to your arrival in the system, making Yathru’s unprovoked attack on our ships a clear-cut act of corporate war.”

The lawyer looked up from the legal brief in his hands, the only thing more boring than the room it was contained in, and nodded slowly. “Two minutes before we made entry? Really?”

I chuckled. “You may check the records when you have access to a Yathru corporate system or another system that you trust for secured transmissions. As a legal representative of the Yathru Corporation, we are not allowed to monitor communications between you and your offices without your consent. However, all communications with Black Star ships and facilities are monitored and recorded for security and legal purposes, so I am afraid I cannot give you access to our communications array unless you consent to your communications being monitored.”

I paused, and then said, “As for the files, they were officially notarized and time-stamped as required for visual records of corporate claims. All filings were formatted and submitted according to the standards required by the Unified Mercenary Accords and the Interstellar Corporate Court, prior to the Yathru fleet’s entry to this system. Naturally, as Owner and CEO of the Black Star Company and Admiral of the Black Star Navy, I have been informed that there are now several suits that have been filed against the Yathru Corporation, compiling our grievances against them.

“Furthermore, I have been informed that, on behalf of the people of Tsk’neth III, a class action suit is being filed against the Yathru Corporation as an entity, and the corporate officers personally, for redress of grievances stretching back for the entire tenure of Yathru’s stewardship of the system. As well, another class-action suit for reckless endangerment and wrongful death has been filed on behalf of the populations of Tsk’neth IV, and the orbital stations located in the Tsk’neth System, due to the Yathru Corporation’s criminal neglect in seeking to acquire ‘research specimens’ for biological warfare weaponry. Finally, the fate of all freighters that were found compromised by the bioweapons has been transmitted to their corporate lawyers, as well as the next of kin of all individuals identified from crew manifests, so I wouldn’t be surprised if more cases are filed once their lawyers have the chance to go over the information.”

The lawyer breathed in heavily. I could see the wheels churning through the slime in his head, trying to find a way through this. “I believe I need to consult with my corporate office.”

“As stated, all communications from Black Star ships may be monitored for security concerns. Do you consent to this monitoring, or would you prefer to wait until secure communications facilities can be arranged? Note that this conversation is being recorded, so that your consent, if given, cannot be disputed later.”

“Yes, I consent.”

“Excellent. I’ll have someone bring you a communications tablet. If you’ll excuse me, I have other matters to attend to.”

(Unknown)

Admiral Threkzi Akoh could feel the blackness clawing at her mind. It had been far too long since she’d had to deal with such things, even in training. No one had dared do something like this to her. Things like this simply weren’t done.

She was an Admiral for the Yathru Corporate Security Fleet, damn it! She could decide the fate of thousands of beings, sentencing them to life or death at her whims! She was one of the most powerful people in the Free Worlds Alliance! She deserved better than this!

You deserve this.

What the hell? No, this was the kind of thing that only those low-class minions of lesser corporations deserved. She was better than them. She was smarter than they were, and her genes were purer. In every conceivable way she was superior to the trash that got put in places like this.

No, you aren’t.

Wait, that didn’t sound like her voice. Where did it come from? Who was it? Damn it all, she wanted answers!

You are a petulant child.

Child? CHILD? Akoh was furious. She was no mere child! She was an admiral! She earned her place, cutting and carving her way up through the ranks to get the position and privileges that she deserved, that were owed to her.

“WHO ARE YOU?”

I am the one who has trapped you here, in your tiny, empty little mind.

A psy user? But how was it—no, he, it was definitely a he. How was he doing this? She was equipped with psy blockers to prevent just this kind of access to her mind.

Your defenses were adequate, for most psy users. However, a device worn to ward off psychic influence is useless when you are no longer wearing it. And your personal defenses were useless without you being conscious.

Right, she was unconscious. She remembered now. The battle had been going badly, and the Dynasty Builder had been boarded. There were gunshots, louder than anything she’d heard before. “So, we lost?”

Your ships were fifty years out of date. Your crews were incapable of outfighting or outthinking anyone but pirates. And you are, frankly, an idiot. Of course, you lost.

“Who are you, then?”

I am the one that beat you so completely that, the odds stacked in your favor, you did not do more than scratch the paint on my ships.

“Admiral Mollen, then?”

Indeed.

“Then you should know that this is a gross violation of my rights as part of the Interstellar Corporate Court regulations! I demand to be released from this mental prison at once!”

Oh, dear, it seems you are confused. You see, to the outside world, you are simply in a medically induced coma. Unfortunate, but necessary, as you suffered some traumatic injuries while being apprehended for your attack upon my ships.

“Wha-what do you mean?”

It seems that you had the severe misfortune to be on the receiving end of one of Black Star’s new bolter pistols. The explosive ammunition did not leave much of your limbs, I’m afraid.

“Explosive ammunition for pistols? Used on sentients? That’s illegal!”

Black Star Corporate and Legal codes say differently. And since the Tsk’neth system was under Black Star authority, as of two minutes before you entered the system, it is quite legal for the Black Star Marines to use them on any target they see fit, sentient or not, provided they are on an official mission or defending Black Star personnel or territory. Which they were.

“No, I don’t believe you.”

That’s fine. Here, let me ease back on the mental blocks a bit.

“AAAAAAGH!” PAIN! Why does it hurt so much?

Oh, yes, your body currently undergoing cauterization on the wounds, so that, when you are returned to the Yathru Corporation, they can give you whatever extended medical care you qualify for, or can afford. We simply are doing our part to provide the minimum necessary care to ensure you do not die before then.

The pain died away, as suddenly as it started. Akoh’s head swam at the sudden transition. “That was… awful.”

Yes, I can imagine. Having all four limbs and your tail explosively amputated would definitely not be something most people would like to experience.

All four limbs? And her tail? So she was, what, just a torso, a slab of meat lying on an infirmary bed?

Quite right.

Oh no. Oh no no no! There’s no way she could afford the expensive cloned regrowth limbs, not for five limbs at once! And cybernetics were looked down on, low-class. They were brute force options. The generic force-growth limbs were better, but still not the same as having her own limbs. And the forced regeneration treatment would leave her in the hospital and rehabilitation for months. Her career would be dead!

Your career is dead anyway, you know.

He was right. Akoh knew he was right. After being so soundly defeated by Black Star, despite having the advantage in numbers, there was no way that she would ever see the command of a fleet again. She’d be lucky to captain a garbage scow.

All because she had just been following orders.

About those orders. I would really like to know who gave them, and where they are. I need to schedule a ‘meeting’ with them, you see. So, if you could just tell me everything I want to know, that would be great.

(Conference Room, Blackstone Station, Star’s Reach System)

The conference room was mostly full. The Captains and their Executive officers of every ship in the Black Star Navy were all in attendance, either in person or in holopresence, as well as General Khan and the Majors in charge of all six companies of the Black Star Marines. All of them were waiting with baited breath.

When everyone was seated, I took the podium, and the whispered conversations stopped. “Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, warriors of Black Star. As you all ought to know by now, the Yathru Corporation has declared corporate war on the Black Star company.

“One month ago, forces belonging to the Yathru Corporation attacked our ‘relief’ forces in the Tsk’neth system after we annexed the system by request of the surviving population following an Exterminatus event to wipe out the fourth planet, which had been overrun by zombies. These forces were apparently ordered to try and take our ships and people captive, hoping to claim them, and any secrets they knew, as spoils of war.” There was an uptick in murmured conversation, but I held my hands out to quiet it. “They, of course, were utterly destroyed, save for their flagship, which we captured.

“Through the interrogation of the enemy commander, we have discovered that the fleet’s orders were given at the highest levels of their corporate structure. In addition, the fleet we faced comprised the majority of their mobile forces, aside from their headquarters defense forces. That does not mean the rest of their territory and their facilities are undefended, of course, just that they rely more on fixed defenses and smaller ships, for in-system use.

“Yathru either controls or owns outright five other systems, including the Gateway system of Maccara, where they have their headquarters. In addition, they own major space stations in four additional systems. Under the Bylaws of Corporate Warfare set down by the Interstellar Corporate Court, all these facilities are considered viable targets for military strikes, now that the one-month notice period has passed.”

I gave the room a feral grin. “We’re going to take down all of these facilities in a set of simultaneous strikes across the Free Worlds Alliance, in a move to firmly settle this little Corporate War before anyone gets any ideas about repeating it. We are going to make such an example of Yathru that the rest of the interstellar corporations will get the same idea as the pirates have, and decide that not fucking with us is the key to a long life.”

When the cheers died down, I said, “Now, obviously not everyone here will be going out on these strikes. Just like we are allowed to attack Yathru, they can attack us. So, we cannot leave our people unprotected. This meeting, therefore, is to divide up the secondary targets.”

General Khan raised a hand, a smirk on his face. When I nodded to him, he asked, “Secondary targets? Then you have someone in mind for the Primary target?” The bastard knew I did, but, hey, a bit of showmanship never hurt.

“Yes, General, I do. First Group of the Black Star Navy’s Offensive Fleet will attack the Yathru Headquarters at Maccara, along with the First and Fourth companies of the Black Star Marines and their attendant craft. Our mission will be to capture or kill as many ranking members of the Yathru corporate structure as possible.”

I paused for a moment, to emphasize what I was about to say. “Additionally, as Maccara Prime is a wholly owned territory of Yathru, and is designated a Corporate World, under the Bylaws of Corporate Warfare, we are allowed to attack the planet and its infrastructure itself. There are few restrictions on what weaponry is allowed, save that the use of planet-crackers, atmosphere burners, virophage weapons, and all other weapons that would end all life on the planet are forbidden. We will, of course, be abiding strictly by the letter of those bylaws in the assaults on Maccara and the other corporate worlds.

“Now, as stated, the majority of Yathru’s mobile forces have been wiped out. However, they are not defenseless. Their trade stations are the least defended, of course, but even they have patrol craft and fighters enough to deter pirates and delay raiders, acting in conjunction with system defense forces.”

“The corporate worlds, on the other hand, will be substantially better defended. We can expect actual warships to be part of the system defense, primarily corvettes and frigates, backed by stationary defense platforms, fighter squadrons, and patrol boats. Yathru’s control of a Gateway makes them a significant trading presence in the Alliance, causing them to be wealthy enough to afford proper defenses for their worlds, and with enough enemies that they need them.”

Looking around the room, I said, “Now, Fourth Group, you’re not going to get to go on the attack, because if Yathru is going to cause trouble, Tsk’neth is where it is most likely to happen. The defense groups for our bases will be on alert as well, but we’re in a good position on that point. Dimiya is home to the Confederacy’s capitol, so that limits what they can do, and Madrigal was a tough enough nut before we started upgrading it that even we needed to use trickery to take it down. Nuevo Edo and Star’s Reach are unreachable to them except through the Gateways. Direct assaults through the gateway are too risky, so any threat to those systems will come from the Amazon gate, which is under close observation.”

I nodded to Third Group’s captains. “Third Group, I want you to hold back, as well. Your group is more suited to support and field logistics, anyways. I understand that the construction of Unknown Kadath Base is well underway, but the defenses are not yet finished. Once construction is finished and the automated defenses are handled, we’ll bring you back to Star’s Reach so your crews can rotate through shore leave, before we find your next assignment.”

Turning to the remaining naval officers, I said, “That leaves First, Second, and Fifth groups for naval battles. I’ve been informed that all ships in these groups have been outfitted with the Anchor Drives, which expands our operational parameters substantially. According to our information, the four secondary targets are not as well defended as the others.

“Second and Fifth groups will split their forces into three groups each. These groups will have separate targets, which I am sending you now, along with provisional force composition. These compositions are based on reports from the Commodores and their Captains, but if there are factors we are unaware of, Commodores may reassign ships as needed, so long as they ensure each target has sufficient strength to fight.”

Second Group, Task Force 1

Target: Droktins System (Droktins II)

Battleships – Hrunting

Reaper-Class Cruisers – War, Famine

Knight-Class Destroyers – Pride, Lust, Envy, Sloth, Angel

Assassin-class Corvettes – Doomfist, Junkrat, Carmen Sandiego

Gunboats – Ambrose, Balthar, Corrine, David, Evan

Fleet Carrier – Ravenholm

Fighter Squadrons – Estoc Squadron (Raptors, Ravenholm), Blue Knight Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Ravenholm), Silver Knight Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Ravenholm), Red Knight Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Ravenholm), Black Knight Squadron (Dragons, Ravenholm)

Logistics Freighter – Senua

Second Group, Task Force 2

Target: Uh’ah System (Uh’ah Minor)

Battleships – Nægling

Reaper-Class Cruisers –Pestilence, Death

Knight-Class Destroyers –Wrath, Gluttony, Greed, Acedia, Demon

Assassin-class Corvettes –Ahri, Akali, Evelynn, Kai’Sa, CJ Parker

Gunboats –Francesca, Gary, Holly, Isaac, Jackson, Katherine, Larry

Escort Carrier – Darkstar

Fighter Squadrons –Hunter Squadron (Raptors, Darkstar), Halberd Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Darkstar), Hammer Squadron (Dragons, Darkstar)

Logistics Freighter –Faron

Second Group, Task Force 3

Target: Argits System (Izih Trade Station)

Assassin-class Corvettes –Tracer, Widowmaker, Lara Croft, Barb Wire

Gunboats – Michelle, Nancy, O’Hara, Patrick

Fifth Group, Task Force 4

Target: Vadreix System (Ghadreix Omniplex)

Battleship – Banshee’s Wail

Reaper-Class Cruisers –Blightcaller, Scourgebane

Knight-Class Destroyers – Sarya Trismoira, Taenya Inana, Nesterin Naerora, Sylvar Helero, Elluin Thethyra

Assassin-class Corvettes –Fate’s Hand, Malice, Serpent’s Fang

Gunboats – Zima, Yellowfish, Xander, William, Venom

Fleet Carrier – Wolfsbane

Fighter Squadrons – Dark Ranger Squadron (Raptors, Wolfsbane), Scourgebane Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Wolfsbane), Silver Sword Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Wolfsbane), Valkyr Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Wolfsbane), Deathguard Squadron (Dragons, Woflsbane)

Logistics Freighter – Apothecary

Fifth Group, Task Force 5

Target: Zaaqu System (Zaaqu 2)

Battleship – Bane of Arthas

Reaper-Class Cruisers – Proudmoore’s Shame, Resolution

Knight-Class Destroyers –Caeda Shakalyn, Knucklerot, Stitches, Patchwork, Luzran

Assassin-class Corvettes –Shadowspike, Grimalkin, Bào, Windrunner’s Bite, Grim Tidings

Gunboats – Uriah, Terror, Sariel, Respect, Quietus, Providence, Observer

Escort Carrier – Light’s Bane

Fighter Squadrons – Silent Blade Squadron (Raptors, Light’s Bane), Soldato Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Light’s Bane), Stormfury Squadron (Dragons, Light’s Bane)

Logistics Freighter – Herbalist

Fifth Group, Task Force 6

Target: Fedya System (Iadol Trade Station)

Assassin-class Corvettes – Freehold, Solace, Shadowhunter, Talon of Wrathion

Gunboats – Nomad, Mystery, Light, Keeper

I waited until everyone had worked through the lists, before saying, “Task Forces 1, 2, 4, and 5, you will proceed to your target systems, destroy all enemy military and security craft, and eliminate all orbital infrastructure. When that is done, deploy the special munitions package on the planet, and withdraw. Task Forces 3 and 6, you are assigned two of the trade stations, primarily involved with agricultural and commercial goods. Destroy the stations, and deal with any Yathru-owned shipping as you see fit.”

Task Force Cornek

Target: Cornek Research Station

Second Company, Black Star Marines

Marine Assault Transport – Orgrim’s Hammer

Pocket Carrier – Acherus

Crow-Class Assault Ships – Frostwolf, Laughing Skull, Warsong

Fighter Squadron – Ebon Blade Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Acherus)

Task Force Rendo

Target: Rendo Exotic Physics Laboratory

Third Company, Black Star Marines

Marine Assault Transport – Odysseus

Pocket Carrier – Telemachus

Crow-Class Assault Ships – Penelope, Circe, Calypso

Fighter Squadron – Ithaca Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Telemachus)

Looking over to the Marine contingent, I grinned. “Black Star Marines, I haven’t forgotten about you, either. First and Fourth Companies will be with First Group, bringing the pain on Maccara, but Second and Third Companies are going to be getting in on the action, as well. You will be targeting two of the Yathru trade stations, but these ones are special.

“Second Company, the Cornek Research Station is where the Yathru Corporation has taken the ‘specimens’ they collected from the Tsk’neth system. Since you started this fight, rescuing the people of Tsk’neth III from these things, I believe it is fitting that you finish the job. I am sending you instead of the Assassins because I want you to strip their databases bare. Most importantly, I want to know if there’s anyone else who has received research data or samples of this bioweapon, so we can continue purging it from existence.

“Third Company, you are going on a field trip to a white hole. Yathru has a space station in orbit of the star, which they use to collect the emitted matter and study it. It might be nothing, but studying these exotic particles could give us some unique advancements. At the very least, I don’t want them under the control of anyone that considers zombies an effective bioweapon. Your orders are to capture the station as intact as possible, and secure it.

“Once secured, the Raven-class freighters Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza, and Deoxsys will use anchor drives to enter what will then be Black Star space, and deliver a skeleton replacement crew and supplies to the station, as well as removing any prisoners. The Oregon Trail-Class freighter Orient Express will be delivering fabricators and raw materials to create permanent defenses. This should cement our claim to the system, but if you’re attacked in force, we’ll use Anchor drives to get whatever help we can to you as soon as possible.”

Task Force Maccara

Target: Maccara System (Maccara Prime)

First Group, Black Star Navy

Wrath-Class Battleships - Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Kunwu

Reaper-Class Cruisers – Shinokage, Shifrat Almawt, Thanatos, Azrael

Knight-Class Destroyers – Lancelot, Galahad, Bedivere, Kay, Gawain, Tristan, Lamorak, Percival, Geraint, Gareth

Assassin-class Corvettes – Shadowdancer, Simo Hayha, Wisteria, Artemis, Spitfire, Whirlwind, Zephyr, Reliant, Voidseeker, Surprise, Boston, Felhand

Gunboats – Able, Barbara, Chekhov, Dixie, Echo, Falcon, Gabriel, Hestia, Isis, Jester, Kilo, Laurence, Maxwell, Night, Oscar, Peru

Fleet Carrier – Pandora’s Box

Escort Carrier - Hearthstone

Fighter Squadrons – Ghost Squadron (Raptors, Pandora’s Box), Red Guardian Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Pandora’s Box), Silver Sentinel Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Pandora’s Box), Gold Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Pandora’s Box), Black Dragon Squadron (Dragons, Pandora’s Box), Wraith Squadron (Raptors, Hearthstone), Warbird Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Hearthstone), Warlock Squadron (Dragons, Hearthstone)

Logistics Freighter – Davenport, Sandalwood

First Company, Black Star Marines

Marine Assault Transport – Thunderfury

Pocket Carrier – Vicious Return

Crow-Class Assault Ships – Threnody, Deliverance, Wrathgate

Fighter Squadron – Firelord Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Vicious Return)

Fourth Company, Black Star Marines

Heavy Assault Transport – Tiamat

Light Carrier – Orochi

Crow-Class Assault Ships – Kedu, Laho, Olimaw, Sawa, Bakunawa

Fighter Squadrons – Wyvern Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Orochi), Drake Squadron (Thunderbolt IVs, Orochi), Wyrm Squadron (Dragons, Orochi)

“And finally, that leaves First Group, and First and Fourth Companies. We will go to the Yathru Corporation’s corporate headquarters on Maccara. We will destroy their defenses. We will capture what of their leadership we can. We will strip them of their wealth as ‘reparations’ for making us do this. And then, when we are done, we will give them a final gift to remember us by, all within the letter of the Bylaws of Corporate Warfare.”

(Hedarik Space Station, orbiting Drotkins II, Drotkins System)

Dispatcher Fifth Zixly chirped happily as she watched the cameras in the Main Security Room of the station. She was a Vrok, an avian race that did not typically endure the confined nature of space travel that well, making them somewhat of a rarity in the wider galaxy. That didn’t matter to her. She was born on a space station, and had never known anything different. She just liked watching things.

That’s why she became a Security officer on the station, after all. She got paid to watch things all the time, and could then send Security officers to deal with any problems while she watched them too! It was the best job ever!

She liked watching things, so when her coworker, Dispatcher Fourth Jackson came in, looking troubled, she noticed. “Friend Jackson, what’s wrong? Did you and your nestmate have another fight?”

Jackson was a human. Humans were all over the place, but they were not common on the station. According to the numbers, Jackson was only one of seven humans on the station, and one of those was his nestmate. She liked watching them when they were in public. She didn’t watch when people were in private, of course. That was wrong.

“No, not that. Janet and I are fine. The problem is that a Corporate War has been declared, and the time limit for arbitration just ran out.”

“Oh, yes, that stuff with the, what are they, Black Stars? But why is that troubling you? There’s no Black Star facilities near here to launch attacks from, so we should be safe. All the stuff on those shows are fake, the Corp News said so.”

Jackson sighed. “The Black Stars don’t need local facilities to attack, Zix. They have a fleet. And I have a second cousin who is Confederate Navy. He was at Coldana. The Black Stars are the real deal. We’re all—”

His words cut out as alarms rang out across the system. Zixly frowned. That was the invasion alarm. Then there was a horrific screeching noise from the speakers that hurt Zixly’s ears, before a voice came over every speaker, using the emergency corporate address protocols.

“This is Commodore Keh Draka of the Black Star Navy. A state of corporate war exists between the Yathru Corporation and the Black Star Corporation. All non-Yathru shipping has thirty seconds to signal their noncombatant status.

“All Yathru shipping will be destroyed. All Yathru orbital infrastructure will be destroyed, including Hedarik Station. You have five minutes to evacuate, or be destroyed.”

Zixly chirped at the speaker in wonder, before bringing up the sensor data. “Oh, wow! There’s, like, over a dozen ships out there! And they’re launching fighters! And now the station is launching their drones, and the system defense force is moving into position. We’re going to get to watch a real space battle!”

Jackson wasn’t listening. He was on his comm, shouting, “Yes, I heard it too. Grab the bag, the one by the door, and get to the nearest escape pod. There’s only enough for a quarter of the station’s population, but if you go now, you should be able to get to one before people realize how badly this is going to end.”

He paused, and then said, “What? No, don’t go to the planet, Janet! Remember what Francis told us? They’ll take the planet out. Our only shot is if we get taken prisoner. Now go!”

Hanging up the call, Jackson grabbed Zixly by the armwing, hard enough to hurt. Humans always forgot that Vrok were fragile when they got excited. “Come on, Zix, we’ve got to get to an escape pod, NOW!”

She had little choice as she was dragged out of the security office, away from all the monitors she liked watching. She didn’t know what to make of Jackson. He usually didn’t act like this. But there wasn’t any point fighting against him, he was far too strong. Instead, she just kept up as best she could, watching the dataslate as she ran.

“Oh, wow, the drones are just no match for those fighters! The Clawlord is getting into range of that destroyer… oh. They killed the Clawlord. Venla was on that ship. Wait, there’s escape pods. Oh, I hope Venla made it! We talk together all the time, you know. She’s very nice.”

Jackson didn’t say anything, he just grunted. Soon enough, they were at the nearest escape pod, and Jackson almost threw her through the door. “Get strapped in, fast!”

“Wait, hold the pod!”

Two Ihm and a Knelfi woman with two children were running towards them. Zixly looked around as she buckled herself into the seat. There were only five seats, including the one she was in. That wasn’t going to be enough. But that only mattered if they launched, and they weren’t going to do that, right? Jackson was just playing a prank on her, right?

Jackson pointed at the knelfi woman and the female Ihm. “You and you, in the seats, with the kids. Strap them in fast.” Looking at the Ihm male, he said, “Grab one of the cargo straps, and hold on.”

Her dataslate beeped, causing Zixly to look down at it. “Oh, wow. These ‘Black Star’ ships are really hammering the defense forces. They’ve only got two ships and a handful of drones left! Oh! The fuel processor out by the gas giant just got destroyed. Wow, I didn’t think they would destroy that. Even pirates want those things intact.”

“We’re strapped in,” the Knelfi woman called out.

Jackson nodded. “Right, we’re going.”

“Wait!”

Other people were running towards the pod. Zixly looked at Jackson. There was barely any room as it was. It would be too crowded, right?

Jackson looked grimly at the people rushing towards the pod. “Sorry.” He hit the button, and the door slammed shut, launching the pod. “I’m so sorry.”

(Flight Deck, BSN Acherus, Cornek System)

Captain Darion Mograine (callsign: Highlord) took a deep breath as he sat in the cockpit of his Thunderbolt IV Space Superiority Fighter. Unlike a lot of Black Star designs, this baby was designed to be fast enough to hang in there with enemy fighters, while still tough enough to take a licking and strong enough to give it back in spades. The Dragons might give bigger booms, and the Reapers were the best stealth interceptors in space, but if you wanted to get into a furball and survive, then the Thunderbolt was as close to a golden ticket as you were going to get.

According to the Nomads in the Corps, the Thunderbolt was actually named after an ancient fighter, from the days when Terra was still called Earth, and humans hadn’t yet reached Mars. Like that legendary ancestor, the Thunderbolt IV was basically an armored and shielded cockpit strapped to some powerful engines, all wrapped around a very big gun. Oh, sure, he had missiles, too, but there was something satisfying in seeing the rapid-fire weapon pulses flying ahead while he serviced enemy fighters.

Thirty seconds to target coordinates.

Acknowledging the prompt on his screen, Darion opened up the squadron comm channel. “Ebon Blades, this is Ebon Blade Leader. We are twenty-five seconds to mark. We are launching the moment we get clearance. I want a go/no go from all birds.”

“Come on, Cap’n. We have new blood that wasn’t with us last time we really fought, back on Coldana. Cruising around Tsk’neth without anyone who could even fight back properly doesn’t count. This is their first real attack. How about a speech?”

Mograin shook his head as Ebon Blade 2, Sally Whitemane chimed in. “Really, Inquisitor? A speech?”

“Now, Captain, you have to admit it would be a good time for it.” That was Thoras Trollbane, in the cockpit of Ebon Blade 4

“You too, King? Let me guess, ‘General’ Nazgrim, you’re wanting me to say something, too?”

Ebon Blade 9 just chuckled. The former planetary self-defense force general turned slave following the destruction of Jagloth was a Durotian, from the world of Durotar, a desolate, desert world, and his kind were known for their hardiness. “Give the unblooded a warcry to send them into battle, Captain.”

“Fine. Fine. You want a speech? I’ll give you a speech.” He took a breath, and then called out, “Soldiers of the Corps, death knights of Acherus, minions of the Black Sun, hear the call of the Highlord! RISE! The skies turn red with the blood of the fallen! The Black Sun watches over us, minions! Leave only ashes and misery in your destructive wake!”

There were laughs and cheers over the line, and then he saw the timer click down, and the hangar doors opened before him. Cutting into the line, he said, “Go forth and wreak havoc! All fighters, LAUNCH!”

(Bridge, BSN Barb Wire, Argits System)

Four days on a ballistic trajectory, their only communications done by tightbeam laser coms. They were coming in from below the ecliptic, like sharks beneath a blue-water fishing vessel. Their target was the Izih Trade Station, and all Yathru ships currently using it. Argits did not belong to Yathru, so they couldn’t simply destroy everything here. This was a surgical strike, which is why they called for Assassins.

Captain Vallery Irons leaned back in her command chair as she watched the timer slowly wind down. Their first shots had been fired twenty minutes ago. The Izih station may have been sprawling and well defended, but it was still a stationary target. The four Assassins under her command had fired on mathematically perfect trajectories, from below the ecliptic so that the chances of ship accidentally getting in the way was next to nothing. It was the kind of action Assasins were made for.

Now, she was just watching as the time to impact grew smaller and smaller. Fifteen seconds. “Helm, ready engines. Microjump into positions point two seconds after impact. Let anyone who is left alive to watch think that the explosion spawned us. Tactical, I want IFF readings confirmed. Yathru ships are kill on sight. Anyone else, fire if fired upon.”

The timer hit zero. The next instant, the eight ships, four Assassins and four gunboats, jumped to hyperspeed for a fraction of a second, appearing in the midst of chaos. All four shots had hit their target. They had detected the shots in enough time to raise the shields, but it hadn’t saved the station.

As the eight ships began firing, Captain Irons broadcast a message on the commercial frequencies. “This is Captain Vallery Irons of the Black Star Navy. A state of Corporate War exists between the Yathru Corporation and the Black Star Corporation. All Yathru shipping and facilities in this system shall be destroyed. As provided by the Bylaws of Corporate Warfare, Noncombatants and Neutral parties shall not be attacked unless they attempt to intervene, conspire or trade with an involved party on site, or fire upon our ships. BSN Barb Wire, out.”

(Main Bridge, BSN Banshee’s Wail, in orbit of Ghadreix Omniplex, Vadreix System)

“Commodore, all off-planet infrastructure and facilities have been eliminated. All enemy forces and enemy-flagged civilian shipping has been destroyed. Three civilian freighters managed to communicate their surrender before they were destroyed, and have been captured by the Marines. However, the two inhabited planets and three inhabited moons all remain defiant.”

Commodore Lindsay Ravensun nodded at the lieutenant’s report. All was going as planned. “Very well, then. Are the special packages ready?”

“They are, Ma’am.”

“Very well. Initiate fire plan Alpha.” She turned her attention away from the lieutenant, dismissing him, and focused on image of the Ghadreix Omniplex city-world on the screen. The massive world city covered the entire globe. If there ever were seas or plains or mountains anywhere on the world, they were long since gone by now. Only city extending for kilometers above the ground, and just as far under it, where people could go their entire lives without ever seeing the sun.

Twelve Greenwave torpedoes had been devoted to this target alone, focusing on industrial and administration centers. The nanites would have ample resources to feed on. Whether they would leave anything for the population was academic. There were over 300 billion mouths to feed on that planet, all of them relying on food shipments and machine-made nutripaste to survive.

The world would become an abattoir. But from the ashes, the survivors would be stronger, hardier, and, just maybe, wiser than their current generation. If there were any survivors. She found it difficult to care about these wretches. Yathru would be destroyed, like a world-tree burned to ash, and its destruction would ‘persuade’ Black Star’s rivals that their rivalry should remain a friendly one, leaving everyone better off in the long run.

(YCSF Lessons Paid For, Maccara Gateway, Maccara System, Free Worlds Alliance)

Shipleader Irata Rhih was, as the humans would say, bored. The fleet had been buzzing the last few weeks, as the news that the Black Star Company, out of the Confederacy, had declared a formal Corporate War against the Yathru Corporation. Oh, corporate wars were fairly common in the Alliance, but they never involved the major players, like Yathru. At most, it would be a subsidiary fighting, not the main corporation. So, the news that the corporation as a whole was going to be involved in the war was a big thing.

It wasn’t just that Yathru itself was going to be fighting that got the rumor mill stirring, but who they were up against. The Black Star Company was widely regarded amongst the management types as being upstart newcomers. Somehow, they had ridden a wave of success to making a big name for themselves in the Confederacy, and had gotten too uppity. They needed to be cut down to size.

Or, at least, that was the view of the executives. In the ranks of the Fleet, however, the rumors were going in a much different direction. Unlike the corporate officers, the security groups had more face to face contact with groups outside the Corporation, or the Alliance. Moreover, they paid attention to the stories about military matters. Who had the biggest guns, and how they used them, was a vital part of living long enough to retire, after all.

 The Black Star Company may have been many things, but, if even half the stories about them were true, they were not a group that she wanted to be facing in a pitched battle. The executives were still discussing plans for economic warfare against Black Star, and arranging attack teams to hunt Black Star shipping. The Fleet had come to the dreadful certainty that they would have no need to go seeking out Black Star, now that the preparatory period for the Corporate War was over. Save for the most diehard loyalists to the corporation, not a soul thought that Black Star was actually going to wait for them to come and fight on Black Star’s turf, or that Black Star would use financial trickery against them.

 No, this war would be settled through force. And the Yathru Corporation simply didn’t have the kind of force necessary to fight off Black Star. Not in a straight fight, at least.

 Which brought her to why she and her ship, a frigate that had been cutting edge twenty years ago, when it was built for the Alliance-Imperial war, were sitting by the Maccara Gateway, along with the other guardians, scanning every ship that came through the gateway. It was dull, boring work, but it needed to be done. Even the executives weren’t so thick as to believe that they could just leave the Gateway unguarded.

By the Abyss, the rumor was that they intended to launch assault forces through the Gateway to the so-called ‘Amazon’ system. The idea being that, then, they could fly normally to the Star’s Reach system and strike at the heart of Black Star’s operations. To Rhih, it just sounded like a great way of committing suicide.

 But the Gateway still needed to be guarded, even after the assault force went through, so the Lessons Paid For would remain in Maccara along with the Home Fleet when the assault ships and mercenaries shipped out. And there would be plenty of mercenaries. The word around the fleet was that Corporate was even hiring the Kul’tirans to try and stick it to Black Star. Of course, the Kul’tirans didn’t really have a great track record against Black Star, either. Now, if only…

 “Unscheduled Gateway activation!”

 Her internal musing was cut off by the announcement from her Sensor Second. “Report!”

“Address matches the one recorded for Star’s Reach!”

 Star’s Reach? Surely, they couldn’t be that arrogant? “Shields up! All point defense to full. All hands to battle stations.”

 She had barely gotten the orders out of her mouth when the screen began lighting up with more sensor readings. She didn’t need the Sensor Second to tell her what they meant. Missiles incoming. Lots of missiles, being fired through the Gateway.

(Main Control Room, Drez Station, Yathru Corporate Security Fleet Headquarters, in orbit of Maccara Prime)

“What is happening?” Fleet Leader Chikzazz Zess snarled at the menials who were manning the sensor stations. She had been working on the plans for attacking Black Star when what seemed like all the alarms in existence began going off at once.

 “Fleet Leader! The guardian defense platform and ships guarding the Gateway are under missile attack! The defense platform has been destroyed. Three of the five guardian ships are just gone. Profit Margin is disabled, and venting atmosphere. Lessons Paid For is maneuvering away from the Gateway, shields at 24%.”

 “Damn it! Where is the gate coming from?”

“Star’s Reach, Fleet Leader.”

 “Damn it all to the infinite abyss! We’ve been outplayed. Full power to shields. All hands to battle stations! All ships, all stations to go to active sensors, maximum gain! There is a cloaked spotter out there, guiding the missiles through!”

Across the system, every Yathru ship, every station, every drone or satellite large enough to mount a sensor suite, whether they were civilian or corporate security, switched on their active sensors, blanketing the system in enough noise that it was impossible for any cloaked or stealthed ship to remain in hiding. Even the best stealth technology still had to obey certain rules of physics. If you were inside the universe, then spotting your ship was simply a matter of pumping enough energy out there that you got a hit, no matter what.

“CONTACT! MANY CONTACTS!” The sensor officer’s voice yelled out. “Computer counts fifty-eight unidentified contacts! Bearing two-one-four-mark-five by three-five-four-mark-five. Range six million kilometers and closing fast!”

 Zess frowned. That was just over twenty light-seconds away, and charging almost straight ‘down’ from above the ecliptic. How the hell had they gotten so close, without being seen? They had spies at all the other known Gateways, save for Star’s Reach. There should have been no way that a fleet this size could possibly slip past the spies.

The sensor officer yelled out again, once more disrupting her thoughts. “Fighters! Fighter launch detected! Bloody abyss, there have to be ten squadrons launching!”

 Fleet Leader Chikzazz Zess had thought that this would be a corporate war, like any other. Maybe not like any other, but following the same basic tenets. Now, she was starting to believe that Yathru had made a grave tactical error.

 “Wait, what is that? OH SHIT! KINETICS ON INBOUND TRAJECTORY!”

The sensor officer on duty aboard Drez Station noticed the kinetics when they were five seconds out. Shock and lack of practice slowed the weapons officer’s reaction time to a full second. Training point defense on the objects took two seconds. The beam weapons the station used for point defense could fire at a relatively quick five shots per second. However, the software was designed to target fighters, conventional missiles, and asteroids, not objects hurtling forward at relative velocities of 50% of the speed of light!

Drez Station sported shields twice as strong as a superdreadnought’s. A superdreadnought could shrug off three, maybe four of the impacts from a Black Star ship’s main weapon, and remain in the fight. Six simultaneous impacts would kill even a modern superdreadnought outright. Drez station was hit by twenty-eight shots, all timed to land within 0.02 seconds of each other.

 The best that could be said about the fate of the people aboard is that at least it was quick.

(YCSF Lessons Paid For, Maccara Gateway, Maccara System, Free Worlds Alliance)

 Shipleader Irata Rhih was desperately praying to whatever powers would listen that she could go back to being simply bored. One moment, she had been engaging in simple guard duty. The next, she was doing everything she could to try and stay alive.

The missiles had poured out of the Gateway in a torrent, two hundred and fifty in total. The defense platform never even managed to get their shields up, or activate their point defense, before taking fifty of the ship-killer missiles straight to their hull. The Contract Law, Tariff Setter, and Greener Pastures had at least left their point defense on automatic, but it hadn’t helped, not against the twenty missiles each had been targeted by.

The Profit Margin and her Lessons Paid For, at least, had managed to get their shields and point defense on-line, and were able to begin evasive maneuvers. Unfortunately for the Profit Margin, they had simply been too close to the Gateway, and hadn’t had enough time to maneuver. The frigate had managed to shoot down or evade twelve of the twenty missiles, but eight had been enough to gut the ship’s aft section, leaving it drifting, without power, and venting atmosphere. The best that could be said for it was that the reactor had not suffered a catastrophic failure. Yet 

Her Lessons Paid For hadn’t fared much better, however. They had been the furthest from the Gateway at the time, but that only gave them a couple seconds more time to maneuver. They managed to shoot down seven missiles, and evade eight more. Rolling the ship as they engaged in maneuvers, the remaining five missiles only scored glancing blows, and never in the same section of shielding, allowing her to spread the load, at least a little. She was down to 24% on the shields, but the rough treatment had already caused several systems to go offline.

“Damage report!”

“Inertial dampening at 57%. Hull breach in deck four, section three, port side! Port-side point defense is offline! Casualties reported, sickbay ready for patients. We have radiation warnings in the compromised section. Looks like one or more of the missiles that got through was a nuke of some kind.”

Rhih nodded. “Very well. Bring us around! I want starboard shields facing the Gateway until repairs are completed. Communications! Do we have any word from Command?”

“Ship Leader,” the Sensor Second cut in, “Active sensors detecting a massive number of enemy ships, on an intercept course for Drez Station! It is the Black Star Fleet! Fighters launching from carriers, looks like ten whole squadrons!”

“Of course, it is,” muttered Rhih. Who else would it be, after that sneak attack through the Gateway? And it would be just her luck to get caught up in the battle like this.

Still, it could be worse. She could have been one of the Ship Leaders who were too close to the Gateway. Or she could have been off duty, and her Ship Second, while a capable administrator, did not make decisions quickly, even in emergencies. In either case, she would have been dead already, along with her ship.

 “SHIP LEADER!” The sudden note of fear in the Sensor Second’s voice caught her attention, her gaze snapping over to focus on the young officer. “Drez Station is just gone, Ship Leader! It has been completely destroyed! No escape pods detected, and, given the size of the debris, it is unlikely that there are any survivors.”

“Comms, status of the rest of the fleet?”

“The situation is confused, Ship Leader. No one knows who is in charge, with the Fleet Leader dead. Leader of Ships Rodix of the Total Package and Leader of Ships Krih of the Theater of Pain are both attempting to assume control of the fleet, and the situation. Beyond that, there are simultaneous calls for both evacuation and to stand and fight.”

The Sensor Second called out again. “Ship Leader, tarpit traps have been dropped, blanketing the system!”

More oh so wonderful news. This was starting at bad, and getting worse by the minute. “What are the Black Stars doing?”

“They appear to have broken into four formations. Two are heading towards Maccara Prime. Probable Marine ships, so likely conducting landing operations, goal unknown. The other two are splitting, to engage the Home and Assault fleets simultaneously.”

Taking a breath, Rhih considered her options. There weren’t really any. They did not have weaponry that could turn the tide. They couldn’t run, and they couldn’t get close enough to the battle to do any good before it was done. It was not the most enviable of positions.

“All stop. Shut down all power except Life Support and sensors. Have damage crews work on restoring our shields and point defense, as best they can. Tell them to leave the repairs to our communications array until last.”

“But sir, the communications array is undam—” She quelled the communications officer with my patented death glare. “Oh. I see. Yes, I will tell them to leave the array for last, as you command.”

Ship Leader Irata Rhih was glad. She would have hated to have to summarily execute the officer, but sometimes needs mattered more than desires. Especially when the underworld god was in control. Maybe if they could just act like a hole in space, no one would notice them until the winning side was readily apparent. She just wanted to go back to boring, damn it!

(Dedzog Military-Industrial Megacomplex, Maccara)

The sky roiled with fire over the industrial and military center of Maccara, and the Yathru Corporation as a whole. Gravitic engines had long ago eliminated the need for every ship descending from space to create a flaming trail as they reentered the atmosphere, so this was a far from common sight. The only time one saw such a thing was when a ship made a power dive into the atmosphere, like military vessels doing a ‘hot’ insertion. And this was not one fireball, but seven central ones, along with thirty-six smaller trails!

The entire Fourth Company of the Black Star Marine Corps descended upon the military chief stronghold of military might on Maccara. Five Crow-class assault ships led the way, along with the fighters of Wyvern Squadron in their Thunderbolts, sweeping aside the few fighters and assault ships that managed to lift off. Flying behind them, Drake Squadron’s Thunderbolts supported Wyrm Squadron’s Dragons, as the bombers began taking out all the heavy air defense emplacements above the military base.

The Black Star Heavy Assault Transport Tiamat, which was designed for situations just like this, descended through fire and flame, her weapons laying waste to buildings across the complex. All Yathru Corporation buildings were legitimate targets in a Corporate War, and there was no building in the district that did not belong to the corporation. The entire industrial complex began going up in flames, a wound that, itself, would be enough to ensure that Yathru would be years, if not a decade or more, in recovering from this debacle.

But it wasn’t over.

As the escort carrier Orochi took up position nearby the Tiamat, adding her point defense weapons to the onslaught. Those weapons were too weak by far to deal significant damage to starships at ranges that could best be described by referencing how long it would take the light of an action to reach the observer, but against unmoving, unshielded buildings close enough that the distance was measured in meters? They were more than enough to add to the devastation.

Then, as Tiamat continued her work of leveling the district, her launch bay doors opened, and the six drop ships containing the actual troops of the Fourth Company entered the fray. Their own weapons, suited for both ground assault and close air defense, joined the fighters and the Crows in clearing away any threats to Tiamat or Orochi. And when they landed, the galaxy got their first look at the Black Star Ihm Marines.

One thousand Ihm marines had joined Black Star after the Battle of Second Cordana, and the fall of the X’thari Harvester. Four hundred had been assigned as ship-board troops for the Second Group of the Fleet, commanded by their former Warleader. Another hundred had been shifted to other companies as reinforcements, and to help fill out heavy weapons roles. That left five hundred Ihm descending upon the Yathru Corporation’s military high command.

Each Ihm Marine stood at two and a half meters tall, clad in power armor that looked beefy enough to qualify as a light truck in some jurisdictions. Squad by squad, they wielded weapons too large and powerful to be anything but crew-served weapons for a normal human. Some of them even had the weapons attached to their very armor!

Soon, the military base was filled with the cracking sound of powerful rifles firing explosive rounds, plasma weapons blasting apart their targets, and rushing roar of heavy flamethrowers that washed over the enemy. But the sound those that lived through this nightmare would remember most was the roar of whirling blades, as the Black Star Marines brought their most vicious of weapons to bear, the bastard son of a longsword and a chainsaw that chewed through even heavy armor. And in unholy harmony with them were raised the screams of the dying and those too slow to escape the Black Stars’ onlslaught.

The military forces had nowhere to run. The orbitals had been taken over, and wiped clean of support. Air transport was shot down long before they could even land, much less evacuate troops. And on all sides the military was surrounded upon the ground. Steadily they were pushed back, into an ever-shrinking cordon, as more and more of their number died. Oh, it was not bloodless on the Black Stars’ side, but for every Black Star that fell, a hundred, perhaps two hundred Yathru warriors were piled before them as sacrifices.

(Yathru Corporation Headquarters, Rak’kun City, Maccara)

On the other side of the continent, a smaller firestorm descended upon the city. Yathru’s headquarters was designed with aesthetics in mind, to show off their power to all who witnessed the grand city. Massed air defense platforms were ‘unsightly’, and so the city relied primarily upon a powerful city shield, and the few weapons that fit in with the city’s aesthetic planners.

The shield was a common one. It prevented energy weapons from passing through, and attempted to block all physical objects that were going faster than a certain speed. Forcing landing shuttles to slow to a near-stop as they passed through the shield would make them an easy target for the few cannons, and landing outside the city shield would put invaders outside the aesthetically pleasing, and yet otherwise defensively worthless, city wall. Thus, the planners gave the city’s armed forces the chance to fight from prepared positions, while the enemy would be slow, and bottlenecked in getting reinforcements, allowing for massed fire upon the entry points.

In theory, this would allow Yathru’s forces to hold out against a far stronger force so long as the shield remained up. And since both the power source and the emitters for the shield were inside the shield, once raised, there was little chance of an enemy defeating them unless they brought power great enough that defeat was both certain and likely to be total. In theory, they were correct.

Those theories were shattered along with the city’s shield as ten Dragonsbreath torpedoes struck the shields within meters of each other. The kinetic kill weapons unleashed all their power on the shields, and the emitter for that section exploded, opening a gap in the shield almost forty meters wide. Through the gab flew the fighters of Firelord Squadron, their Thunderbolt IVs unleashing hell upon the few active air defense stations. By the tie the shield had begun to recover, and started sealing the hole, it was already too late, as the Crows of First Company followed closely after the fighters, and the closest shield emitters fell under attack. Not long after, the shield collapsed entirely, and the Thunderfury and Fool’s Gambit came roaring in, their guns striking like thunder bolts, ripping into all ground and air traffic within their reach.

The Black Star ships cut their way across the city, until they came to rest above the Yathru headquarters. A second shield surrounded the building itself, but that was no concern for the Black Stars. Drop ships launched from the Thunderfury, and deployed their Marines of the First Comany around the building.

Unlike the Marines of the Fourth Company, First Company’s Marines were of all races. But, like the Fourth Company, they were clad in power armor, larger and stronger than any but the most elite military forces in the galaxy had seen before. They unleashed similar weaponry upon the corporate security forces, and the security guards fared no better than the military, as defenders were hewn apart along with their defense positions.

Every exit to the building was stormed, even the underground parking garage. Fire from above wrecked the last few air defenses within range of the headquarters building. The executives tried to escape, but the ships above ensured that anyone getting any ideas about trying to fly away was quickly disabused of those notions. The few who didn’t get the memo were informed of the new travel restrictions a bit more forcefully, and their remains were now scattered across the ground in flaming chunks.

Floor by floor, the corporate security forces tried to stop the onslaught, and floor by floor they were pushed back. Those who tried to run were shot in the back. Those who tried to stand and fight were slaughtered where they stood. Not even the office workers were spared.

The Marines’ orders were simple. Destroy the enemy. Their Rules of Engagement were clear. If it was not wearing Black Star armor, it was the enemy, and it was going to die. Only those who managed to completely and unequivocally signal their surrender, and met the Marines kneeling or on the ground, with their hands up, were spared. Those were cuffed, and left lying where they were, but they were left alive. Most did not have that level of self-preservation ingrained within them, having relied far too long on their position to cover them and keep them from harm.

(Board Room, Yathru Corporation Headquarters, Rak’kun City, Maccara)

“I don’t care where you get the guards from! We need them here now!”

In the board room, the executives of the Yathru Corporation were calmly discussing the opening gambits of the corporate war with Black Star.

“Damn you to the Abyss! STOP DYING, YOU FOOLS!” One of the Ihm Executives yelled into a microphone that was broadcasting to the troopers in the building. Looking at her fellow executives, he hissed, “What do we pay these idiots for?”

A second executive, this one a gauz, shook his head. “Ashf’rd, yelling at them will not suddenly make their populace suppression weapons work against military-grade power armor. Even the military is being slaughtered in Dedzog.”

Ashf’rd whirled on the other executive. “Damn it, Birkin! And damn you! This isn’t supposed to be happening! People just don’t do this in corporate wars!”

Birkin shrugged, and walked across the room to get a drink from the bar. “Perhaps someone should have informed Black Star about that, then? The fact is that we thought we could get an easy score out of them, but we got burned. Screaming won’t help that.”

Zwellspn’cer, the president of the Yathru Corporation, shook his head, his eyes narrowing at Birkin. “For someone that is just as deep in this mess as the rest of us, you certainly seem to be rather relaxed, Birkin. Is there something you’re not telling us?”

Birkin emptied his glass of the amber liquid in a single go, before refilling it again. “No, just acceptin’ the facts as they are. There’s no point yelling about it now. They responded far more actively than any of us possibly predicted, and now, we are looking like we’ll lose everything.”

Gl’dman, the executive in charge of shipping, slapped her tail on the ground in disapproval. “No, most of our shipping was out of port! We can still rebuild, if enough of the ships evade capture.”

Birkin spat on the ground in front of him. “Have you been reading the status reports? Or have you just buried your head in the sand like a Tarkad dulx bird, and ignored the reality of how badly fucked we are?”

Gl’dman looked shocked, but Birkin continued. “This isn’t just an attack on Maccara. We have FTL comm confirmation of attacks on every major facility or system we have, with entire systems going dark to us. The Black Stars aren’t just hitting us here. They’re hitting us everywhere, all at once, and they have sufficient forces left over to devote this much to us!”

Zwellspn’cer sighed. “Unlike Gl’dman, I have been reading the reports, and I am forced to agree with you. Unfortunately, it appears that we are decidedly the losers in this corporate war. We must act swiftly if we are to save anything. We have to surrender.”

The board room erupted in yelling as everyone tried to speak at once. Finally, there was a slap on the table, shocking the room into silence. All eyes turned to the most junior of the executives, and the only human in their number. He was an odd one, wearing darkened eyewear, even while indoors, and he rarely spoke in meetings, preferring to gather information before moving. Half the individuals on the board had even forgotten he was there.

Zwellspn’cer looked at the human. “You have something to add, Wesker?”

(BSS Starlight Raven, approaching Yathru Corporation Headquarters, Rak’kun City, Maccara)

“…and that is what the Board is discussing right now.”

“Forward the information to the Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi. Inform Commodore Virstina that I request a detachment of shipboard Marines to execute a quick strike on the facility, to prevent that sort of fuckery. And have Shadowdancer come in to cover the landing field they were talking about.”

“Orders sent, Admiral.”

I smiled at Raven’s acknowledgement, and turned my attention back to guiding my personal ship through the war zone. Not that I was all that worried. Any facilities on the ground that were capable of attacking me had been destroyed by the Marines, and the facilities in orbit were dead. I was in little danger from anti-air fire.

On the other hand, while the primary military base was currently under attack and being destroyed, we hadn’t had time to go and take out all of the facilities around the planet. There was always the chance that Yathru could have some strike fighters (or more likely drones) that could try and make a difference. While the Raven was far more capable than a light freighter ought to be, she was still a light freighter, and there was a limit to how much abuse she could take.

This ‘Wesker’ had come up with a really wicked plan. Well, wicked, if you hadn’t played any video games in the last few decades. His plan, at least the way he described it to the board, was to get the executives to a fallout bunker, while a strike team of Yathru operatives from the Strategic Target Acquisition and Retrieval Section went to a secret storehouse Wesker’s faction maintained in the city.

That facility was supposed to house several weapons that the corporation supposedly used for covert action. The weapon Wesker told the board he was going to use was a nuke. The idea was to set the nuke off in the city, and make it seem like Black Star was stepping over the line. This would bring other corporations into the mix, who would also be eager to try and get a piece of our tech.

I frowned to myself. Thinking about it, the plan didn’t make sense. A nuke, especially nuke going off inside the city where my troops were, wouldn’t be enough to get enough corporations involved to make a difference, especially not in time to save Yathru.

“Raven, keep watch on Wesker. His plan might have sounded good to people desperate for a way out, but something just doesn’t sound right to me. I think he’s going to do something.”

Raven acknowledged, and I focused on flying. Soon enough, the headquarters building was in sight. The plan was to land on one of the executive landing pads, and perform a surgical strike behind the corporate security lines.

“Captain, Wesker’s teams are heading to platforms 90-A and 90-B. Shuttles are standing by, presumably to take them to the target facility. Wesker is currently leading the STARS Alpha team personally.”

“Thank you, Raven. Highlight the pad Wesker is using, if you please. And have one of the fighters swing by to take out the shuttle on the second pad. Just in case.” With that done, I changed to the shipwide channel. “Everyone, get ready. We’re landing in five.”

I saw the target show up on my HUD. Sure enough, there was a shuttle on the pad, currently prepping for flight. I could see a squad of heavily armed and decently armored troopers heading towards it. That just wouldn’t do at all.

BZAP! BZAP! BZAP!

I smiled as I pulled the trigger. How long had it been since I fired the Raven’s guns at live targets? It might have been back when I killed those Kul’tiran ships while testing Starbolts for the first time. Hell, I didn’t even get to use my guns that time, just shooting off torpedoes.

The particle cannons blasted the shuttle into a cloud of debris on the landing pad. Of course, that left the wreckage burning all over the area I wanted to land. It could scratch the paint, and that just wasn’t allowed! So, I used the Raven’s shields to scrape the wreckage off the pad, letting it fall down to the ground ninety stories below.

Some of Wesker’s Alpha Team (the ones that had survived, at least) started to recover from the shock enough to try and take potshots at the Raven, but a few blasts from the keel turret ripped them apart. Their armor may have been good for corporate security, but that was like asking a bulletproof vest to stand up to a tank round. It just wasn’t happening. A quick scan showed that there were no more life signs on the landing pad.

I locked down the ship’s controls, and grabbed my helmet. I was already in my armor, and had my weapons ready. For the first time in ages, I was actually getting into the thick of things!

(Yathru Corporation Headquarters, Rak’kun City, Maccara)

“Go! Go! Go!” First Blade Kr’ss Blufield yelled at his team. This whole mess was a bad job. It wasn’t bad enough that the corporation had picked a fight with a clearly superior foe, but they were currently in the process of getting absolutely destroyed by these Black Stars! And now, in the middle of their company headquarters getting attacked, they were supposed to fly outside of town to the Zwellspn’cer mansion, and use the access tunnels to enter a secure site which supposedly would have weapons they could use to fight off Black Star.

The whole thing stank. It stank to the infinite singular abyss, but there wasn’t anything that he could do about it. His best bet for making it out of here was to follow orders, and hope that the Black Stars declared victory before things got completely out of hand. Of course, given what he’d heard through the infonet before it went down for ‘maintenance’, there might not be much of the company left when that was done.

That is when the world exploded.

Particle cannons! Those were ship to ship weapons, not something his team could stand up against! Hell, even the shuttle couldn’t take that!

Shrapnel flew across the landing pad, taking down all the Alpha Team members outside. Jo’frost and V’ckers went down, burning shuttle debris tearing through them. Then, the shuttle was literally shoved off the pad by the freighter (the freighter!) that had just killed their transport.

On the landing pad, Wesker stood, and shouted for people to get up, and start firing. Ji’valtine started to charge forward and answer the call, but Kr’ss grabbed her by the back of her armor, and yanked her back, just as the turret on the freighter’s underside began firing. The first blast hit the side of the building above the doorway. As the blasts tracked down to focus on the Alpha Team members outside, their view was cut off by a massive chunk of the building’s facing crashing down just outside the door, with enough force to crush a being caught in its path.

In a shocked voice, Burton, one of the human members of the team, looked over at Ji’valtine, and shook his head. “You almost became a Ji’valtine sandwich!” The female Ihm was not amused.

Kr’ss cut off that line of discussion immediately. “Enough! We’ll route back to platform 90-B, see if we can get a ride with Bravo Team.”

Ji’valtine looked at him. “What about the rest of the team, First Blade?”

Kr’ss made a cutting motion with his hand. “They are dead already, or wishing they were. We move, now, and see if we can get out of this death trap. Move!”

As they approached the platform, the building was rocked by another series of explosions. Turning the corner, Kr’ss saw fires sputtering as burning fuel tried to burn the plascrete walls. Two figures could be seen, huddling against one wall. Looking out through the doorway, Kr’ss gaped. The platform was simply gone, having been blown off the building entirely.

Turning to look at the two survivors, he saw that one was a medic, and the other was Blade Leader Enmarini. The Blade Leader was gasping for air, a jagged piece of debris lodged in his chest. As the Blade Leader choked on the last of his lifeblood, the medic looked up at him.

She was a knelfi, like most of the medics the STARS group employed. Light, nimble fingers were better suited to medical work than thick claws like his. Clearly trying to choke back a sob, she offered a single salute, “Reveka Chambers, Medic, Bravo Team. Th-they’re gone. They’re all gone!”

Kr’ss clapped the knelfi on the shoulder. She was in shock. That much was obvious. They didn’t have time for her to break down right now, so he went the other way. Give her a task to focus on, and let the breakdown happen later.

“I understand. You’re with Alpha Team now, until we have time to sort this out. For now, we can’t stay here. Can you move?”

Dully, Reveka nodded, and rose to her feet. Looking back to the rest of the team, he said, “All right, we can’t stay on this level. Options?”

Burton nodded. “The underground garage. The main elevators are probably locked down, and the stairs will be monitored by Black Star, but there’s an executive elevator on an isolated system. We can access it through one of the executive offices one floor up.”

Kr’ss nodded. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was still a plan, and that was better than what he had right now. “Right. Ji’valtine, on point. Burton, rear-guard. Reveka, with me. Move!”

(Landing Pad 90-A, Yathru Corporation Headquarters, Rak’kun City, Maccara)

Cali and Jaynie flanked me as I stepped off the ramp, Sheila, Shearah, Carissa, Raven, and Sana filling in behind me. All of them were armored up, weapons in hand. We hadn’t gone out as a tactical team in a while, but for this, when we were likely only going to be facing corpsec at best, rather than the X’thari swarm or the crazed followers of the ‘gods’ of chaotic space, we weren’t expecting that high a level of danger.

It was a damn impressive sight, to be honest. Too bad that there was no one on the platform alive enough to appreciate it. The corpsec that hadn’t been caught in the shuttle’s explosion had been ripped apart by the turret guns. Unfortunately, the first shots had been off, since I was out of practice remote targeting the guns, and there was now a very large piece of plascrete blocking the door.

That, as one might say, was a bit inconvenient for me, since I wanted to get into the building and hunt down the executives on top of the corporation. Since I had not figured out how to do things like turn into a ghostly mist, or teleport short ranges, or walk through walls, that meant I needed to get the rubble out of my way. And Firelord 3’s attack on the other side of the building had just taken out the entire platform, so I was hesitant to start using big booms to move the mess.

That was fine, though. I was more than just a guy with good looks, good toys, and good women. I was The First Sorcerer, recognized by the game itself.

I took a deep breath, and then stretched out with the force of my power. A blue field surrounded the largest piece of rubble, the visible effect of my Telekinesis ability, which I hadn’t used in combat for ages, but had been diligently training when I could. Slowly, the plascrete slab, which had to weigh almost four tons, lifted up into the air, just a foot off the platform. Gently, I pushed it to the side, so that it was no longer over the platform, and let go.

As the rubble fell, I took a breath to recover, and said, “All right, move out.”

(Below)

Wesker grunted as he pulled himself up over the railing of balcony on the thirtieth floor. It had been risky, jumping off the platform when the freighter began to open fire, but the experimental gravity belt had slowed his fall enough, and given him enough control that he was able catch the railing without ripping his arm from the shoulder. That would have to be enough.

This was a setback, for sure, but it was just a minor setback. He wouldn’t be able to get to the research lab outside the city, and get the data he intended to sell to the other weapons companies, but it was just a setback. He still had other cards to play.

A shadow loomed over him. Looking up, he saw a massive piece of plascrete falling, directly at him! “No, don’t come this way!” The plascrete did not listen to him, however, and his ‘setback’ was no longer minor.

Board Room, Yathru Corporation Headquarters, Rak’kun City, Maccara)

The fighting inside the Yathru building was going well. The Marines were steadily advancing up the building, going floor by floor to eliminate the security forces. The remnants of Wesker’s Strategic Target Acquisition and Retrieval Section team had been caught trying to use an executive elevator to the garage. Unfortunately for them, Raven had already directed a squad to meet them, and they had been quickly taken down by a rocket launcher the moment the elevator door opened. Explosions in a confined space are not great for barely armored infantry.

Now, I was leading my squad towards the board room where all the Yathru executives were huddling, trying to hide and wait out the battle. According to Raven, they were still desperately trying to order up new troops that didn’t exist anywhere except on paper, trying to get reinforcements to somehow stem the tide. As if that was going to happen.

Finally, we were at the last hallway. Ten security guards stood there, in light combat armor and blasters. They were clearly frightened, but that was fine. I wanted them to be afraid.

Raven’s analysis of their weapons came back. Low-yield blasters, designed for unarmored targets. In my armor, I could tank them easily enough. But I decided to play with another facet of my new sorcerous powers. “I’ll handle this, girls.”

Increased Reflexes

Physical Psy Power

Cost: 400 PP + 600 PP Reserve

Increases your mental processing and physical reaction speeds, to allow you to react to situations far more quickly than an unenhanced individual could. At current Sorcery skill level, increases your reaction speed by (DEX)%.

My DEX was currently sitting at 354. That meant my reaction speeds, which were already heightened by DEX, were further increased by 354%. Time seemed to slow slightly. As I extended the blade of my energy sword, everything seemed to be going in slow motion.

“Open fire!”

One of the guards yelled, and blaster bolts began making their way towards me, slow enough that I could see their path. My blade moved, intercepting the first couple shots, deflecting them, causing their energy to splash violently against the walls of the hallway. No, it wasn’t that the bolts were slow. My reactions were simply too fast.

I began walking forward, not needing to take any defensive stance for foes of this quality. More blaster bolts fired, and I deflected them all, my energy sword moving easily to intercept the bolts as I advanced. I decided to try something fun. With a flick of my wrist, the next bolt got reflected not into the wall, but into one of the other guards, killing them. The next shot, I managed to reflect back at the sender, hitting them center mass.

One of the guards started to panic. He turned, and began banging on the blast door to the secure board room. “HELP US!” He was screaming, desperate to get inside the room.

I deflected more blaster bolts. This was fun, but I wanted to try something else. I motioned with my hand, closed fist raised up, and one of the guards flew up to ceiling, hitting with a thud from the impact. As I passed under him, I waved my sword up, cutting him in two.

When the next guard fell from a reflected blaster bolt, I was almost in melee range. Only four guards were still trying to stop me now, the other two desperately trying to open the door, against the wishes of those inside. With a wave of my hand, and a telekinetic pull, the four guards who still had some fight in them lost their weapons, the guns clattering to the ground behind me. Their shock froze them momentarily, but that was enough. They all fell to my blade.

One of the two tried to turn, a Gauz male. I wrapped his throat in telekinetic force and lifted him into the air. With a wave, I threw him against the wall as his throat was crushed to paste.

The final guard, an Ihm male, did not even have the courage to look death in the eye, it seemed, still banging on the door, desperate to escape. His hope ended when I stabbed him through the spine, the blade penetrating through both him and the door until the hilt touched the guard’s back. His agony only lasted moments, as I drew the blade to the side, slashing his heart.

Now, all that was left before me were these blast doors. As my companions joined me, I began pressing on the hilt of the blade, slowly carving a circular hole in the door. It took almost a minute of concentrated effort, but soon there was a perfect circle carved in the blast doors.

With a telekinetically enhanced kick, that circle went flying into the board room. I could hear the shouts of shock and alarm as people tried to dodge the massive object. From the sounds, one person, at least, was not so lucky.

I ducked slightly as I stepped into the room, careful of the still-molten edges of the hole I’d cut in the blast doors. There was a bloody splatter on the far wall of the board room, where the plug had hit. Scanning the room, it looked as though the only faces not present were Wesker and Zwellspn’cer. I knew Wesker had fallen from the building after I took out his shuttle, so that meant the CEO would be the splat on the wall.

“Ah-ahem. Welcome, Mister Mollen. We have been expecting you.”

The speaker was the shipping director, Gl’dman. She seemed to be doing her best to try and ‘handle’ the situation. I decided to show her how we would be handling things. Her scream as the energy sword cut her down caused all the other board members to scream in terror (or, in one case, beg for mercy). All their voices were swiftly silenced, one by one, until the only sound was the humming of my energy sword. A flick of the switch, and the blade extinguished, and silence reigned.

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Maccara orbit)

“Master, welcome back.”

I nodded to Virstina as she welcomed me to the bridge. “Thank you, Commodore. Are all our people off Maccara?” The battle had been won, any forces capable of challenging us swept aside, and the executives responsible for starting this war personally seen to.

“Yes, sir. Though the Marines sent to the site that the Yathru operatives were trying to reach uncovered some disturbing news. Apparently, the research facility we tasked Second Company to destroy was not the only research facility studying the bioweapon from Tsk’neth.”

Great. That was just great. “How bad is it?”

The knelfi woman shook her head. “At the moment, containment systems are holding, and power has not been interrupted, despite the fighting, thanks to independent generators. Unfortunately, all of those will be destroyed if we deploy Greenwave as planned.”

I sighed. “So, not the worst-case scenario, but it would be rather awkward if we blasted all other sources of the bioweapon, and then left Maccara to become a prime source of it. Well, that complicates things substantially. Options?”

Virstina shook her head. “Unfortunately, they are limited, if we wish to abide by the terms of Corporate Warfare. The facility’s primary access is in a mansion outside Rak’kun City, but the facility itself is located underneath the city, deep enough that even ground-penetrators would have trouble getting to it.

“First option would be to send in Marines to sterilize the facility manually. But that opens us up for more casualties on our side, and even a small mistake could see an accidental release of the weapon. And, frankly, people would question why we need to bother with it.

“Second option is to ignore the corporate warfare regulations, and use enough ground penetrating nuclear weapons to open up the facility to the surface, and then forcibly sterilize it. This has the best chance of success, but would be resource intensive, and would undermine the work we’ve done to carry this campaign according to the bylaws. But we would destroy the weapons.

“Third option is to collapse the access tunnels with explosives, sealing the facility as best we can, before launching Greenwave. However, unless we forcibly evacuated everyone from the facility beforehand, then there would be potential carriers to be infected. Or, they would try and escape, and let the nanites in. And once Greenwave gets to the facility, the weapon would be released. The chance of a catastrophic release is nearly certain.

“Finally, we just… do nothing. Use Greenwave on the planet, as planned, and leave warnings for everyone who might want to land. The weapon would be released, and the likelihood of the population surviving with both their technology failing and having to deal with the undead bioweapons… Well, it isn’t good. But, strictly speaking, they are not our responsibility.”

I nodded slowly as Virstina ran through the options. Frankly, none of them were good ones. So far, we had been lucky, as far as casualties went. Sure, we’d taken some. That was unavoidable in war, even when you were going up against bush league foes. But, across all theaters, we had only lost 6% of our people, with another 13% wounded to some degree. 19% total casualties for such a large operation was a great number, and I didn’t want to go screwing that up.

Still, I couldn’t just bury my head in the sand like a politician who chose to ignore the implications of their decisions. From a business standpoint, as well as one of my own personal feelings, then it was simplest to just go with the fourth option. But, if we simply used Greenwave on the planet and called it a day, then the likelihood that the civilian population of the world would be slaughtered and turned to the undead was near certain, especially since they would not have access to any of the technology they relied on. It would be kinder to simply line them all up against the wall and shoot them.

So, yes, it wasn’t technically our problem. My problem. But that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t be to blame for all the deaths if I did this. But there didn’t look to be any better options, that still protected my people. And, when it came down to it, I cared more about my people than the civilians on the other side.

A calm came over me. That was it, wasn’t it? The simple truth was that I did not care about the people on the other side as much as my people, and so I would work to protect my people, first and foremost.

I took a breath. “Very well. We won’t risk any more of our people on this business. Are the special munitions loaded and ready?”

“They are, Master.”

“Then you may fire when ready.”

Virstina nodded, accepting the situation. “As you wish, Master.” She turned to the officers who were watching, and said, “Ensign Fletcher, signal the fleet. Special munitions to fire in thirty seconds.”

“Aye, Commodore.”

Thirty seconds later, a single torpedo was launched from the Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, her sister ship, the Kunwu, and the ten Knight-class destroyers in the group, each named after a mythical warrior from old Terran history. Twelve torpedoes, to cover a world, and take it from the age of space and technology, and cast it down into the stone age.

Oh, sure, Greenwave only destroyed post-industrial technology, but on a planet like Maccara, there wouldn’t be any pre-industrial technology around. And the population wouldn’t know how to build any of the old technology, anyways, since those skills would have been lost a long time ago. It was, in essence, a less violent way of bombing them back to the Stone Age, but this time, there would be zombies to contend with.

As the torpedoes launched, I took a breath, and then said, “Raven, compose a message to the Corporate Court, and copy to the Free Worlds Alliance Assembly. Inform them that, as of this moment, the corporate war between the Yathru Corporation and Black Star Company is at an end. We will not be pressing for any sanctions or indemnities upon Yathru, beyond the funds, materiel, and research that we have already seized. All Black Star ships will return to their previous posts.”

“As you wish, Admiral.”

“Then, comprise a second message, direct to the Assembly, and put in a formal request that they consider using Exterminatus-class weaponry on Maccara at their earliest convenience.”

“It will be done.”

(A Virtual Room in NERV HQ)

“James, I just got off the line with one of the external group. We’ve got some real-money traders in the game, trying to farm resources, despite the fact that we made it about as easy to do that in game as it is in real life. Hopefully it is just people with more time than sense, but we need to check and make sure that they aren’t hacking or botting somehow.”

“Sure thing, Boss. You have a specific target? Because that’s a big haystack to go looking for needles in.”

Isaac laughed, “You’re in luck. One of them got sloppy, it seems, and left the guild name on the web site where they were selling in-game credits. The guild is supposedly called ‘LegitimateBusiness’. Get a team together, and go through their logs. Look for any ‘charitable donations’ or other patterns. You know the drill.”

“Got it. Look for any large donations. Think they’re smart enough to have a shell company?”

“I doubt it, but check anyway. They could be looking at doing a bunch of small transfers to a central source if they are worried about automated systems. So, if there are any patterns of donations, follow them. If they were really smart, they would have set up two or three shell companies to move money through. But, if they were that smart, then they probably wouldn’t have put the guild name in the website.”

“Right. I’ll get right on it, Boss.”

As the game master shimmered and returned to their work area, Isaac turned to the rest of the group, who were more focused on the story and tuning elements of the game world. “All right, talk to me.”

“We’re tracking the fallout of the little corporate war. Well, not ‘little’, by corporate standards, but by the scale of wars in the game world, it was fairly minor. Obviously, Yathru was expecting to fight the war on mostly economic terms and maybe a few surgical strikes.”

Isaac chuckled. “Yeah, they tragically misread their opponent if they thought Black Star was going to work like that. Roy, have you checked with the AI, made sure nothing was bugged out, there?”

The third GM shook his head. “We checked, but there was no sign of bugs. From looking at the settings, I’d say that it is down to the higher-ups in the corp not believing everything they were told. The stories did spread to Alliance space, but at the high levels people mostly thought it couldn’t happen to ‘them’.”

Isaac sighed. “So, standard human (or humanoid, I guess) thinking? Too caught up in their own affairs to believe the ‘propaganda’? I guess that works. Check the scripts on other leaders, see if we can’t get the controlling AI to tweak them enough to take the stories seriously.”

The second GM tilted his head to the side, considering, “But why? I mean, sure, this fight was pretty one-sided, but it made for great RL advertising. We’re sure to get more players from this.”

“Sure, it is, Ted. But only in the short term. We let things go on too far like that, and it becomes a Goku situation, where the whole game revolves around Black Star, and everyone else doesn’t really matter. That’s great for a manga or anime, but crap for a VRMMORPG.”

“Right, I can see that.”

“Anyways, we want to nip that kind of thing in the bud before it really gets started. So, I want to see if there’s anything we can do to take the focus off Black Star for a bit, or at least not have any idiots go provoking them like that. I don’t care if it is bringing up someone to take the spotlight for a bit, or just keeping Black Star out of it for a while, but either way, we need to keep things from focusing on them.”

“I think we can manage to keep anyone from ‘poking the bear’, as it were, but that doesn’t mean the bear is just going to go in their cave and hibernate.”

Isaac laughed, “I’ll take what I can get at this point.”

A fourth GM raised their hand, “Sir?”

“What is it, Sarah?”

“What about Maccara? Black Star’s Greenwave attack has obliterated infrastructure and weapons on the ground. Worse, the underground facility beneath Rak’kun City has already been compromised, and the test subjects have escaped.”

Isaac took a breath, and said, “Well, I actually reached out to our favorite beta tester and corporate raider, and asked him about that, just after it went down. After all, he took such pains to sanitize all other sources of the virus so completely, and yet he just released it to go wild on Maccara? Didn’t make sense.”

“What did he have to say?”

“Basically? His hands were tied. The only possible way to ensure a nonrelease of the bioweapon would be to launch a full assault and take out the facility under Rak’kun City. He told me directly that he’s seen too many movies and played too many games to think that could possibly end well.”

Isaac took a breath, and continued. “Now, there are things he could have done, sure. He could have blown up the planet like he did in Tsk’neth. But that would have violated not only the corporate war rules that he was playing under, but also some pretty serious treaties. Basically, the whole galaxy would be bound by law to try and destroy everything he built.”

Sarah nodded. “And there’s no winning that fight, even if he’d probably make it hurt for anyone who tried.”

“Exactly. In Tsk’neth, the zombies had already spread completely, and he used some legal posturing that he recorded and broadcast to the appropriate bodies to ensure that it wouldn’t blow back on him. He didn’t have that option at Maccara, it seems.”

Ted chuckled. “So, he punted, and left the decision to the Alliance, all while Greenwave makes it impossible to get in there and get samples. And it is too early to know just how far things will spread. Depending on how easy it is for the virus to infect animals, the outbreak could even be limited to a single continent. Without air power to move around the world, you dramatically slow the spread of the virus, if nothing else.”

Isaac grinned. “Yep. And Maccara is too public for sneaky weapons tests, since the Gateway is there, so blowing it up later on, when people aren’t looking, isn’t going to fly. So, he dropped it in the Free Worlds Alliance’s lap, and is letting them deal with the headache.

“Now, Terry, what have you got for me on Cagliostro?”