Two days passed. Those who lost friends during the syndicate attack grieved their passing. The bodies of the marauders that died on the Kelsor were extracted from their armor, placed into stasis to halt their decomposition, and situated inside a large cargo container. The container was fitted with a subspace beacon. If the Three Brothers Syndicate cared enough about their dead, they would find them. At least, that was Atara’s reasoning. Atara ordered the ship to stop in deep space for just a few minutes—long enough for the Kelsor’s tractor system to launch the container into the black.

     On the morning of the thirty-ninth day, Xannissa insisted that the Kelsor stop to acquire more matter that the battlecruiser’s onboard refinery could convert into fresh omnium. It wasn’t until the next day that they arrived in a largely-vacant star system with a significant asteroid belt. With the triumvirate gathered on the bridge, Xannissa consulted with Atara and Sesh and settled on a ten-kilometer-long asteroid from which they would gather raw material. On Atara’s orders, Naret guided the battlecruiser to within a thousand meters of the asteroid’s surface. Xannissa took the lifts to a cargo bay she had ordered emptied in anticipation. Gravitics in that bay had been shut off, and Xannissa compensated for the weightlessness with her Accellus. From there, she looked through the bay’s airscreen and gazed upon the asteroid’s dark gray regolith. She watched the Kelsor’s shadow curve across the pock-marked, uneven surface. The Elestan communicated with her team, and the ship’s port-side gravitic tractor activated. The tight cone of artificial gravitational flux swept across the asteroid’s surface, and the asteroid’s ancient regolith departed from it like a river of dust. The regolith flowed toward the tractor’s source until it was caught by the bay’s stronger gravitics being projected beyond the airscreen. The dust was formed into a sphere, and as it gained mass, mass from it was slowly drawn into a long, hexagonal cargo container positioned just beyond the cargo bay’s airscreen which was held in place by gravitics. The regolith was compressed, the container sealed, and the gravitics system of the cargo bay, acting like an invisible crane, rotated the container vertically and dragged it into the hold. What loose dust was on it was pushed back into space by the airscreen. An empty container was driven through the barrier into space, and the process was repeated until the Kelsor had collected three-thousand cubic meters of regolith—the entire matter-harvesting process taking about an hour.

     That evening, Krystal Zara locked the door to her private quarters. She had anxiously awaited this moment since first boarding the Kelsor five weeks ago. The woman opened her small locker, grabbed the box she had deposited aboard, and placed it on her bed. Inside was a small, black device with only one purpose. She grabbed the tiny device—a cube—and placed it on her desk. Krystal sat down in the desk chair, opened a lumigraph, and pressed the cube’s top. As the cube’s sides flashed red, the lumigraph before her closed and reopened a total of four times—behavior consistent with either poorly written, malicious, or surreptitious software. After the cube’s software had finished its work, the lumigraph stabilized and presented an image of a red symbol against a black background. The symbol was a surviving relic of a state senselessly upended. No one younger than two-hundred years was likely to recognize it as the Star of Avenath: a small circle in the center with four flares radiating away from it in a clockwise spiral. The image changed to that of a man with white hair, a smooth face, and pointed auricles—an elshe, and he was just sitting down as if she caught him unprepared. Visual artifacts corrupted the image from time to time, but they were the consequence of snaking her pirate transmission through the Federation’s Q-comms and sub-comms network.

     “Illeiri?” the elshe on the screen asked in Avenathi. “I mean… um… Krystal! Krystal Zara! It’s been almost ten years!”

     “Please excuse my silence, magister,” Krystal responded, also speaking in Avenathi. “This is the first time that I was able to….”

     “Hold on, your majesty,” said the magister. “You were on the Akkain station posing as a guard until the Revolutionaries struck it and made off with the black omnium they’ve been so intent on possessing. Then, you befriended the Federation, and are on the fastest ship ever constructed: the Kelsor? Correct me if I’m wrong, of course.”

     “I didn’t need to report anything, after all,” said Krystal. The magister grinned.

     “Those Revolutionary dogs still don’t know you’re alive,” the magister stated, “even after two whole centuries. If the Federation will openly support you, you will no doubt defeat that bastard pretender Taretes.”

     “Don’t mention his name to me,” Krystal said coldly.

     “I apologize, your majesty,” said the magister. His expression changed to fear when he said “Oh no… our transmission’s been detected. We barely even got to say ‘hello,’ too! Be safe, your majesty! Terminating now.” His image vanished, and so did the lumigraph she was watching him through. The door to her quarters slid open despite her lock, and two Auroras dressed in full sets of white armor marched in toting drivers.

     “Krystal Zara!” one of them shouted. “You are under arrest. Hands and face forward!” Krystal did not resist. She held out her arms and stared straight ahead with unflinching eyes as the guards put circular restrainers on her that covered her wrist bracelets and the ankle guards of the boots. The restrainers locked her out of any conscious Accellus functionality, and when the wrist pieces locked into place, a ring of light on the side of each restrainer turned from green to red. The guards commanded her to stand, and they escorted her out of the room.

     “Captain Atara, may I see you in your office?” Fiori’s orange figure had appeared before Atara who was enjoying her evening meal with Xannissa in their quarters.

     Atara finished chewing her bite before saying, “What is it?” Unfortunately, Fiori vanished before she could get the words out. The captain sighed and looked at Xannissa who simply shrugged her shoulders. “I guess I need to go see what this is about.”

     “That’s fine,” Xannissa told her. “I hope it’s nothing too serious.” Atara left their quarters, rode the lifts up to the bridge, waved at and quickly told Sesh she was going to be in her office for a moment, and walked through one of the aft corridors past the briefing room and walked through her office door. Fiori was standing there waiting on her.

     “What is this about?” Atara asked her. She was concerned that this involved Aesho, but she was calm in her inquiry. The captain slowly approached her desk. Fiori said nothing until the office door reopened and two armored Auroras marched in with a Terran in tow.

     “Captain,” said one of the Auroras, “this starman was caught sending a transmission to an unauthorized receiver via illicit software. What are your orders?” Atara’s temper sparked. Betrayal was unacceptable. Atara moved closer to examine the face of the accused, but the captain was taken aback by who she was.

     “Corporal?”

     “Captain,” Fiori said across the room, “please allow me to elucidate matters. If you would, please dismiss the guards.” Atara treated as a pet peeve any orders from her superiors that were meant for her subordinates, but because it was Fiori, it was easy for her to let it slide off her back.

     “Wait outside my office,” Atara told them, and they nodded in compliance. Krystal had no idea what was going on, so what Fiori was about to say was just as much a mystery to her as it was to Atara. Once the Auroras left and the door closed, Krystal’s bindings turned from red to green and unlocked—a work of Fiori’s seeming omnipotence.

     Atara crossed her arms while she turned to Fiori, saying, “I despise being that captain that just blindly follows orders, so by all means, enlighten me.”

     “I would be more than happy to oblige.” Fiori told her as she stepped between Krystal and the captain. “Krystal Zara is an alias. Her human appearance is a disguise. The female that stands before you is not a woman but an elshi. Her real name is Illeiri Syoness, heir to the throne of the now-defunct Commonwealth of Avenath.”

     “The Commonwealth remains,” Illeiri said with passion. The elshi used her anger to suppress her fear.

     “From a literal standpoint, that is correct,” Fiori stated as she looked toward Illeiri. “As long as you are alive, your sovereignty is legal.”

     “I’m only still alive because of subterfuge,” Krystal admitted.

     “Please,” Atara said, growing annoyed with her lack of immediate understanding, “just tell me what is going on here.” Looking directly at Fiori, she asked, “Why did you put a renegade elsheem royal masquerading as a human aboard my ship?”

     “You are correct in assuming it was my doing,” Fiori explained. “I crafted the Krystal persona and allocated the espionage technology that has allowed her to walk among humans inconspicuously.” Krystal felt behind both ears and touched both places simultaneously. Suddenly, her head transformed as it had for Doctor Iveti the day she received her NI upgrade. Her hair changed from blonde to a red more vibrant than Atara’s own and eyes just as green. The auricles of her ears were ten centimeters longer, and a pair of black devices appeared, one situated behind each ear. “Allow me to start from the beginning,” said Fiori.

     “Please,” said Atara. “I want everything.” Fiori knew the extent of Atara’s knowledge on elsheem history, so the orange figure kept things simple; far from the state of things. Over two centuries ago, House Syoness was elected into power in Avenath, the birthplace of the strikingly humanlike elsheem race, the capitol of the old Commonwealth of Avenath, and capitol of the current Elsheem State. Avenath was the only planet ever discovered to be inhabited by intelligent humanoid life while possessing a native supply of omnium; accounts of which date back to prehistory. Decades after House Syoness took power, and due to increasing influence from the neighboring Alliance, a popular revolution led by the current Emperor Taretes led to the fall of the Magisterial Assembly—the ruling body of Avenathi nobles—, and until now, no member of House Syoness was thought to have survived.

     “After the revolution,” Fiori continued, “the Avenathi Magisterial Assembly went into exile, and they shielded Illeiri from the Empire. The state of Avenath was incorporated into the Alliance’s corporate confederacy and was granted representation on the Executive Board with Taretes acting as the Executor of Avenath.

     “When Illeiri surfaced, she was already on Earth. It was then that she requested political asylum. When her background was verified, she was secretly granted citizenship and began working with the clandestine services of the Federation government to organize a reinstatement of the Commonwealth of Avenath. This plan involves interfering with the activities of the Elsheem State, such as the reacquisition of ecksivar.”

     “What makes ecksivar so important to them that they are willing to risk war to steal it?” asked Atara.

     “You assume the Revolutionaries want it for the same reasons you do,” said Illeiri, “for research. Avenathi intel suggests that it is meant for a far more sinister purpose.”

     “Like what?”

     “It is not the Elsheem State that wants it,” Illeiri explained. “The Alliance does, and they sent their elsheem lapdogs to retrieve it.”

     “Military Intelligence has arrived at identical conclusions,” Fiori stated.

     “Are they planning to weaponize it somehow?” Atara asked.

     “There is additional information that I must finally divulge,” said Fiori. “Please wait while I retrieve it.” Atara and Illeiri stood quietly, almost awkwardly, for ninety seconds as Fiori’s image took on an unnatural statuesque appearance; frozen where she stood. Not a virtual muscle in her virtual body moved. Her eyelids, which had blinked with biotic regularity, were stuck open. Eventually, Fiori blinked her eyes, subtly expanded her chest to simulate breathing, turned her head and said “Please look at this.” A lumigraph appeared at Atara’s desk, and Atara moved to sit in her chair. Illeiri and Fiori stood to either side of her. Atara’s eyes widened when she assessed the document. Displayed before them was the first page of a secret Military Advanced Research and Development document briefly describing a research project undertaken by Akkain Technologies.

     “This is why Aesho wants ecksivar,” Atara whispered. The document’s abstract claimed that based on prior experimentation, ecksivar had the ability to neutralize orivar and military synthevars, and the goal of the project was to turn this characteristic into a weapon. The exact mechanism by which ecksivar neutralized other omnium synethvars was not detailed on the abstract, but that was all Fiori gave them.

     “It would appear that the Federation’s goals are more aligned with those of the Alliances’ after all,” said Fiori to Illeiri. “This document merely introduces the idea.”

     “What more can you give me?” Atara asked. “I want to know more about this.”

     “I am unwilling to risk detection by the retrieval and decryption of additional classified MARAD information,” said Fiori. “If you are interested, the person to ask is aboard this ship. Doctor Quen Souq led the Akkain research team on the project until his sample of ecksivar was stolen from his laboratory.”

     “Back to you… Illeiri,” said Atara. She was staring at Illeiri’s elsheem features and how not-too-dissimilar they were to human anatomy. Before the captain could speak again, Illeiri started saying something.

     “You mentioned Aesho? Admiral Aesho?”

     “I did,” said Atara.

     “She knows who I am and what I’m fighting for,” said Illeiri, more confident as an elsheem than as a human.

     “Did you trust her?”

     “Yes. She has assisted me and the Magisterial Assembly since I came to the Federation. She granted my request to participate in this mission which has more import to my people than it does to yours. If the Revolutionaries fail, the Alliance will forsake them, and without the Alliance backing it, the State will crumble.”

     “I wish I could believe Aesho to be that altruistic,” Atara told her, “but the Federation has much to gain from a friend so close to our enemies.” Atara approached the elshi and said “I want to foster a genuine friendship between human and elsheem. I will do all that I can to show you I’m trustworthy. All I ask is that you do the same for me.”

     “With honor,” Illeiri said. She took a customary elsheem bow that Atara had never seen before, and upon straightening, said, “If you help me now, the Federation as a state, and you as a person, will always be my friend.”

     “I hope that, in time,” Atara said, “my people will erase the stigmas associated with the elsheem and that our two species can coexist in harmony. Until then, it is best that you continue wearing your camouflage.”

     “Agreed,” Illeiri nodded. She pressed the devices behind her auricles and reactivated her camouflage—her hair becoming blonde and her ears humanlike. She thus resumed the alias Krystal.

     “I’m astounded that you haven’t been detected yet,” Atara told her.

     “This system is Federation-made,” Krystal said, smiling, “and was designed to defeat even Federation sensors.”

     “I have one request,” Fiori said. “Do not send anymore unauthorized transmissions. If there is anything that the Magisterial Assembly must hear, bring the information to me, and I will send it to them.” Krystal nodded.

     “You’re dismissed,” Atara told Krystal. Atara followed Krystal through the door, picked up Krystal’s bindings using her suit’s gravitics, handed the bindings to the guards, and said “Escort her back to her quarters.”

     “Affirmative, captain,” said the Auroras, curious yet asking no questions.

“Intruder alert. Level four security breach.”

     There was only one thing that came to Doctor Souq’s mind when he heard the words echoed by Fiori’s adjunct. His daughter was somewhere aboard this ship, and so long as there was an active security breach, Lieren was in danger. With nothing left to protect in his life but her, he leapt from his desk chair and put on the Accellus boots that he had been encouraged to wear for his own safety. He didn’t like the feeling of having his body wrapped in a bodysuit, but at least he could don his usual attire over it. Though the suit easily covered his male anatomy, it could not as easily hide it, and that made him uncomfortable. As soon as he was dressed, he threw away common sense and opened the door. He poked his head out only to be shoved back inside by passing Auroras.

     “Remain in your quarters!” they commanded him.

     “I need to find my daughter!” he pleaded.

     One of them, knowing who he was and reasoning who his daughter might be based on names, said, “Adjunct, locate Lieren Souq.”

     The adjunct responded, “Cadet Lieren Souq is in main engineering.”

     “It’s a war zone over there,” one of the Auroras stated.

     “Please, I’m begging you,” Souq pleaded once more. “She’s all I have left.” The man was on his knees now and grabbing the hand of who he perceived to be the leader. The leader of the group sighed through her helmet. Her Accellus was mostly exposed bodysuit.

     “Armor up and you can follow us,” she told him.

     “H-how do I do that?”

     “I really don’t have time for this,” she told him. She grabbed him by the wrist, dragged him to his feet, and used his lumionic interface to recall his clothing and fabricated for him a suit of SIRAC.

     “Just remember this,” she instructed, “do not get in our way.” The scientist nodded. The Aurora in the phantom armor configuration motioned to her girls and they set off down the darkened corridor. Bold lumigraphs on the walls visually announced the ongoing state of emergency aboard the battlecruiser. The group moved swiftly and cautiously from hallway to hallway as they followed the sounds of weapons fire. When they arrived at one of the local arteries, they encountered a firefight that forced them to hang back. In the wide corridor beyond, a line of three white, hovering battle drones lobbed plasma bolts from their twin cannons toward a group of heavies. Each drone was under Fiori’s direct control. The phantom knew that the only one who could authorize their use was Atara. The captain made the right choice, she thought.

     “Colonel Teseri,” said one of the Auroras, “how should we proceed?”

     “Hold your ground,” Kyora told them. “Let the drones do their work.”

     The battle drones were only a quarter of the size of an ALAT, and they were truly the only heavy infantry in the Federation’s arsenal. As most of Civilized Space—including the Federation—was still leery of using fully autonomous weapons systems for frontline combat, their deployment was rare and always required senior level authorization. One of the drone’s lumionic systems eventually gave up, reset, and exposed the drone’s armor to direct kinetic bombardment. It wasn’t long before the drone’s exterior had been penetrated. The syndicate bullets shredded its innards, and the drone stopped firing. It’s dying husk drifted to the floor, shooting off sparks and flames. The other two battle drones soldiered on, completely immune to the psychological aspects of battle. Their persistent advance was enough to drive the surviving marauders back down the corridor.

     “This is our chance,” Kyora told them. “Make for the other side! Now!” The group, led by Virn, charged across the open corridor, past the dead drone, and into the other hallway. Kyora brought up the rear until all of them were safely across, including Souq. The group moved about twenty meters down the hallway before something made them stop.

     “Subspace rift detected,” said the adjunct’s voice. A lumigraph marked the location of an incoming blinker. Two seconds later—barely enough time to spread out—, the rift exploded and out came another marauder who slammed his feet to the ground. Reacting purely on instinct, Kyora charged the heavy suit as its user got his bearings. The phantom leapt through the air, fabricated her knife mid-flight, guided her jump over the marauder using her gravitics, sliced through the back of the marauder’s neck with her glowing knife as she vaulted over his head, and rolled as she landed on the ground. She crouched there—smoking blade in hand—as the marauder’s body fell forward. His armor thudded against the floor.

     Atara and Sesh watched the Kelsor’s white plasma shoot across the dorsal hull and slam into the last corvette. Proving tougher than it appeared, the craft continued to barrel toward the battlecruiser which prompted Atara to order that Naret change course.

     “Affirmative, captain,” Naret responded. “Steering to port two-eight-zero minus one-five.” The corvette’s shields ultimately capitulated to the endless bolt barrage. The entire forward section of the small craft’s armor melted and broke apart.

     “Great work,” Atara said to her bridge in a normal tone that only Sesh and Naret could hear. Louder, she asked, “How many marauders are still on my ship?”

     “Two-hundred-thirty,” Fiori said after appearing to Atara. “Your adjunct detects one more subspace signature on the bridge.”

     When the lumigraphic markers visualized, Sesh yelled, “Everybody down!” She, Atara, and most of the other bridge officers—all of whom had been sheathed in armor since the intruder alert began—fabricated weapons. The Auroras that were guarding the bridge stepped forward into the bridge’s center circle and prepared to meet the marauders that exploded into the most secure area of the ship, immediately triggering a level five breach warning. The captain and the commander leapt over the divider that separated the center circle from the ring of terminals that formed the aft perimeter of the bridge. The other officers, including Ethis, took up positions in that cover next to them.

     “Naret!” Atara yelled. She was the only one of the regular bridge officers left in the open. Not even Fiori’s image was still present. The marauder armed his twin, triple linear motor cannons and started spraying the bridge. The Auroras were reluctant to battle him because Naret was potentially within their line of fire. Against all compulsion to cower down behind the giant suit of armor and knowing that the other bridge officers were in immediate danger, Naret fabricated a handgun, held it firmly with both hands, lifted herself out of her seat with gravitics, and fired the gun point-blank into the back of the marauder’s neck repeatedly until he fell to his knees. When the firefight was over, Naret was still suspended in the air. Her trembling hands still clenched the gun and would not let go. She couldn’t catch her breath, either. Atara and Sesh emerged from cover first. They grabbed Naret’s body from both sides, pulled her down to the floor, and praised her for her bravery. The other officers joined in the praise, but it was short-lived as the Kelsor still needed to contend with the remaining marauders aboard, the frigates circling about them, and the kicker ship ready to emit more spatial waves to keep the synerdrive grounded.

     “Scramble the strikecraft,” Atara ordered.

     After a brief, yet successful, round of counseling cleared her head, Cylenna was back on duty. She was already wearing her Accellus’ piloting configuration: helmet, bracers, boots, and dark gray bodysuit. The hangar had seen its share of combat between the Auroras and syndicate marauders, but that didn’t stop her and the pilots from running to their aerospace strikecraft.

     “You ready, Ice?” she shouted to one of her fellow pilots she was fast becoming friends with.

     “Yeah, I’ll try to save you a piece of the action!” Ice was a Larissian and a Predator interceptor pilot.

     Arriving at her Savid Astronautics Goshawk aerospace superiority fighter, Cylenna used her gravitics to ascend into the cockpit. The vehicle was sleek—a design choice that was not only aesthetically pleasing but also aerodynamic and allowed it to cut through atmospheres during blue space engagements. It possessed a warp system that was designed for intrasystem travel only. The fighter relied on a mothership like the Kelsor for interstellar transit. Once inside the craft, there was a minimum of control systems. The vehicle immediately identified her, and through her Accellus’ interface, she switched the craft’s ODEC from standby to active. As the fusion engines roared to life, Cylenna’s helmet display changed to serve as her vehicle HUD. Most people knew Cylenna as a racer, so when they realized she flew superiority fighters rather than the faster interceptors, she told them it was two-fold: superiority fighters were on top of the strikecraft food chain and fighter pilots flew more missions more often than interceptors according to Military statistics.

     After performing her cockpit checklist, she EM-commed strikecraft control. “Big Boss, this is Spectre One. Ready to taxi, over.”

     “Roger Spectre One. Taxi to fence and hold, over.”

     “Wilco. Holding at fence.”

     Cylenna engaged the craft’s gravitics but held the fusion engines at idle. The Goshawk crept slowly from its bay and into the hangar’s main area. She turned it to face the lumionic airscreen and drifted until her craft’s nose almost touched it. The other strikecraft in her flight borrowed her usual nickname as their callsign, and they lined up behind her.

     “Spectre ready for launch, over.”

     “Roger, Spectre, you are go.”

     Cylenna throttled up her gravitics such that her strikecraft fell through the airscreen at five g’s. After she was hundreds of meters away (only a few seconds), she throttled up her fusion engines and dialed back the gravitics. After initializing her warp drive, all three drive systems worked in a three-way synergy that conferred the Goshawk unrivaled maneuverability (except against interceptors) and saved omnium fuel for use in weapons and shield systems.

     “Flights, destroy those frigates.”

    “Wilco, Big Boss,” Cylenna said. EM-comms could become more distorted the farther from the Kelsor the strikecraft operated, but they relied on it for short-range communications first before using sub-comms in order to keep sub-comms free for long-range transmissions. Her flight of superiority fighters escorted a group of bombers toward one of the syndicate frigates. The strikecraft were weary of the eighty-centimeter plasma bolts and were cautious to avoid the firing lines between the Kelsor and their target frigates.

     Kyora and Virn’s group of Auroras passed into the lower decks and toward engineering which had seen the fiercest of the fighting. They arrived in an outer corridor at one of the last ongoing exchanges between syndicate attackers and defending Auroras which happened to be in front of a closed blast door. It would be a while before the marauders’ miniature jump systems had recharged. Virn fabricated her sustainer and found a place behind a SIRAC container to lay down fire while some of the others—especially Kyora—attempted to flank the group of eleven marauders attempting to besiege engineering. Souq waited safely behind a corner with his hands gripping the sides of his helmet. Virn’s fire was able to bring down one, and she was hoping that the shock of seeing him die would drive the others into cover. On the contrary, the other ten faced her and fired at her with a combined sixty guns. The Exan’s lumionic system held on for a staggering nine seconds—she was mostly behind cover—before its potential reached critical low, prompting her and the others with her to crouch down behind barricades with their weapons in their arms to avoid the incoming fire. During the kinetic barrage, Virn released her right hand from her sustainer and fabricated a concussion grenade. She swiveled in place to give herself enough room to throw it, and she lobbed it right into the crowd of armored marauders. One of the braver—or foolish—ones picked it up when it landed, but as he prepared to toss it back, the grenade exploded. The detonation turned his hand into a cloud of metal chunks, bone, and blood that sprayed everything around him. The armor on his arm was shredded, and the weapons systems of several marauders suffered critical damage. Virn and the others felt the blast rock the crates and barricades protecting them. Without protection, the pressure wave would have made them deaf and damaged their lungs. With the marauders in momentary disarray, Virn and her group stood up again and opened fire. Their bolts ripped through the partially-pulverized marauder armor but only managed to bring down three before the marauders with functioning weapons restarted their suppressive fire.

     While the marauders had their sights on Virn, the blast door behind them slowly opened upward. Once there was sufficient space between the floor and the door, a shrouded Kyora rolled beneath it, bounced to her feet, and started unleashing bolts from her heavy pistols directly into the weak neck armor of the marauders. In moments, Kyora had reduced the remaining marauders on this side of engineering to a pile of corpses. The phantom deshrouded after determining that the scene was safe. Any remaining grasp on life from any of the marauders was swiftly denied by her handguns.

     Virn recalled her sustainer, took Souq by the hand, and led him into the engineering department. There, they found Xannissa kneeling over a visibly-shaken Lieren. With his helmet still on, and simultaneously not knowing how to take it off and not caring to, he knelt down and wrapped his arms around his daughter. Xannissa stood and backed away to give the father and daughter their space. He could feel her begin to sob, and he could no longer hold himself back. His helmet began filling with tears.

     “Hyperwarp contact closing,” said one of the officers. Everyone was back at their stations. REMASS had repaired most of the damage to the bridge and its terminals while the Aurora had tagged the armored body so that the Kelsor’s internal gravitics could haul it away.

     “Show me,” Atara ordered. When it appeared on the lumigraph, Atara remembered it immediately. “It’s that ship we thought was Archangels,” she told Sesh.

     Sesh replied, “I guess we’ll see what happens.”

     The Virga bombers dodged the limited anti-strikecraft fire from the remaining frigates as they worked to acquire a positive lock onto the ships’ engines. When those locks were confirmed, the bombers unloaded guided missiles from their bays, unleashed them, and broke off to circle around as their ordnance was replenished by onboard REMASS. This cycle kept the bombers a relatively safe distance from the frigates. On the other hand, the fighters flew much closer to the frigates’ hulls. The Goshawks closed in fast and strafed the frigates with plasma bolts and missiles, dealing direct damage to guns and weak-points while the Virga bombs blew out the fusion drive systems which sometimes resulted in catastrophic structural integrity failures.

     “Crit another one!” Ice shouted over EM-comms as the frigate detonated from within and its hull buckled outward from the internal stress until it blew apart. Most ship destructions were never violent explosions, but the demolition was anything but uninteresting.

     “Don’t get too cocky, Ice,” Cylenna told her in a more mature manner than Xannissa would have probably ever heard her speak if she had heard it.

     “Hey now,” Ice responded. “I’ve seen you talk so much shit before races.”

     “Well,” Cylenna said, “that’s before races. During one, I’m a pretty cool customer.”

     “Bullshit!” Ice told her, laughing a little.

     “Believe what you want,” Cylenna said. “I’ve seen people die on the track because they thought they were better than they were. Doesn’t mean I don’t take risks.”

     Strikecraft control said, “Cut the chatter, flights.”

     “Sorry, Big Boss,” Cylenna and Ice responded in unison.

     “We have a new contact merging in the volume, ETA thirty seconds. Unknown dispo, eyes open.”

     “Roger,” said the flight leaders.

     After those thirty seconds passed, the unknown contact emerged from hyperspace between the Kelsor and the large syndicate kicker ship that still had yet to exchange any fire with the battlecruiser. When it emerged, it became clear that the craft was a giant, older but repurposed Federation carrier.

     “Attention, Federation vessel,” said an Elestan with black hair buns in the lumigraph being presented to the Kelsor’s bridge. She wore a white and light blue Accellus 3 bodysuit. “I am Admiral Relex of the Archangel carrier Limitless Horizons. As you’ve no doubt seen, we’ve been following you since you passed Vandos. Not often do we see battlegroups come this far fringeward, much less solo voyagers, but when we do, they are often unprepared for the bandits of the Range.”

     “What is it you want, mercenary?” Atara said. It wasn’t her intent to inject any condescension, but her tone belied her true feeling of relief.

     “I’ll brush that one off, captain,” said Relex, “but that’s no way to talk to us. We’re just here to offer you safe passage. I’ve even deployed my complement to deal with that straggler.”

     “I humbly thank you for your assistance,” Atara told her, trying to sound more positive.

     “That’s more like it. By the way, who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

     “I am Captain Atara of the GFN Kelsor.”

     “Ahh, yes. You’re quite the talk of the town at Vandos, if you have your ear to the ground. I didn’t believe it until we left dock and saw how fast you were going. Tell me this, from one commander to another… did GreDrive do it?”

     “Would you believe me if I said ‘no?’”

     “Come on, captain!” Relex laughed. “We’re on your side! Can’t you trust us for a moment? You know, many decades ago, I was in your shoes.”

     “Okay, fine,” Atara said. “Yes, GreDrive did it.”

     “That’s very good news,” Relex said, visibly pleased. “The future of the Federation looks brighter than ever. My girls and I will ensure your safe passage.”

     “For a price, I assume.”

     “Of course,” Relex assured her. “You must know how expensive it is just to operate one carrier such as this as a mercenary company. We don’t collect taxes except from passing merchants and Vandos.”

     “How much do you want?”

     “How much can you give?”

     “I’m authorized to use a hundred-million for parley,” Atara explained.

     “A hundred-million mecred? I swear, the Navy has gotten stingier.”

     “I can give you half that,” Atara told her, ignoring her comment.

     “Half?” Relex exclaimed.

     “My girls handled most of the syndicate forces,” Atara explained. “You got here too late to contribute in any great capacity, but I’m still feeling generous.”

     “Fine, captain. If I had known I was coming after your loose change I would have stayed in dock, but I see your point. Just know that we might be a little more reluctant in the future. We will take your offer of fifty million mecreds.”

     “We have a deal?”

     “Deal.”

     “Good. I’m wiring you the money as we speak,” Atara said before nodding to Ethis who nodded back. “I look forward to seeing you again.”

     “If you ever step foot on Vandos,” Relex told her, “you owe me a drink.”

     “Sure thing,” Atara said before closing the channel. To her officers, she said, “Recover our strikecraft. Once everyone is accounted for, I want to reengage hyperwarp.”

“The lume looks clearer now than it’s been,” Aedan said from his apartment on Earth as he stared into the eyes of a lumionic recreation of Xannissa using data sent over sub-comms.

     “We’re passing very close to Vandos,” Xannissa told him. They both sat on the edges of their respective beds next to the lumionic construct of the other. Each noticed that the colors on their projections were more accurate now, and they both noticed the overall lack of interference.

     “Vandos?”

     “It’s just one among millions of other habitats out there,” Xannissa said, “but what makes this one special is that supposedly it was a joint venture with the Republic, and it’s the most densely populated place for many lightyears around.”

     “Do you have any plans to stop there?”

     “We just don’t have enough time. Atara does want to make a stop for shore leave on the way back.”

     “How do you all handle being stuck on a ship for so long?”

     “We have four really good simulators,” Xannissa said with a smile.

     “I see,” Aedan said as he looked around his own room. OPEL panels made up all of his walls, ceiling and floor. He had them set as if he and everything in his room were sitting in a flat, grassy field surrounded by oak trees under a starry sky.

     “You don’t use it for anything like…” Aedan said jokingly.

     “Hah! How dare you!” Xannissa laughed and slapped Aedan’s arm. After they had had a good laugh together, Xannissa said, “But there is something I need to talk to you about. It’s a bit serious and I may need your opinion.”

     “What is it?” he asked.

     “It’s about Cylenna.”

     “Alright, I’m listening.”

     “Well, it all started when I heard about her disrespecting her superiors.”

     “What else is new?”

     “I know, I know. But while I was there, I found a device of hers. I had the liquid inside analyzed by someone in medical. Turns out it’s one of the more potent neural stimulants.”

     “Which one?”

     “They called it chronol. It messes with your perception of time—slows it down.”

     “Never heard of it.”

     “Neither have I until today. I haven’t told Atara about it yet.”

     “Where is she? I expected her to be with you.”

     “She’s on the bridge giving me some space. I’m going to invite her back in when I’m done talking to you.”

     “I don’t want to impose,” Aedan told her.

     “No,” Xannissa said, “she’s the one who decided that. But what do you think? Do you think I should tell her?”

     “I always thought that she was the kind of person in need of more tough love. I think it’s better if you and Atara intervene, especially if she poses a risk to others.”

     “I just hate feeling like the bad guy all the time,” Xannissa said. “I hate telling her what she can and can’t do. It makes me feel like I’m trying to enslave her.”

     “Have you ever asked her about that? Asked her how you make her feel?”

     “I, well… what if she doesn’t tell me the truth?”

     “Surely if she loves you, she will.”

     When Atara returned to their quarters later that evening, Xannissa told her everything she knew about Cylenna, her disrespect, and her drug possession over their evening meal. It wasn’t until they were both naked and lying in bed when Atara proposed a solution other than confinement: counseling.

     About a week later, Naret saw the downspin face of the Saraian Range’s Zone of Obstruction through her terminal’s lumionic interface. Atara instructed Naret to hug the Zone as tightly as she could because she wanted to gain time on this maneuver. The young helmsman piloted the hyperwarping battlecruiser within a few hundred astronomical units of the seemingly random outpouchings of collapsed space. Ethis experienced as sound what Naret saw. Unless the signals were bounced over the Range, all sub-comms from upspin Civilized Space beyond the Zone were completely blocked. This gave the communications officer the sensation that the ship was cruising next to the best insulation in the galaxy. Atara stood over Naret once again. Xannissa and Sesh flanked the captain as they watched the virtual demarcation of the Zone’s edge fly by at almost seventeen astronomical units per second.

     Sesh asked, “Why is the boundary so irregular?”

     “Beats me,” Xannissa told her. “People disagree as to whether it’s even natural.”

     “If it’s not natural, who could have even made something like this?”

     “A weapon, maybe.”

     “Can you make a weapon that destroys space?”

     “We can’t, no. But I’m sure people would love to have them. Take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, though. We have no idea how the Range came to be. It’s the only volume of collapsed space we’ve ever found.”

     Naret asked, “What would happen to us if we went in there?” as she continued piloting the ship while staring at her lumionic console.

     “Nothing,” Atara said. “We would all still be alive.”

     “Except that,” Xannissa explained, “every technology we have that relies on multidimensionality would cease to function, including REMASS.”

     “So, we’d be dead in the water?” Sesh asked with concern.

     “Exactly,” Xannissa assured them. “People seem to forget that REMASS relies on subspace.”

     Atara said, “Don’t let that intimidate you, lieutenant. You’re doing a fine job.” Naret smiled and refrained from thanking the captain. The captain then turned to look at the three-dimensional lumigraph she kept open next to her that visualized subdar data.

    Subdar could detect the unique shockwaves within subspace created in response to any kind of spatiotemporal manipulation including gravity, warp, or even hyperwarp. It was unintuitive for most beginners learning advanced propulsion that ships in hyperspace create distortions in subspace, and that’s when Xannissa would urge them to forget any ideas they may have had about multidimensionality being arranged as defined strata. Even if hyperspace was “above” normal space and subspace “below,” hyperwarp still involved the movement of a parcel of normal space—albeit in hyperspace where spacetime is less dense and gravitational effects are significantly reduced. The effects of spatiotemporal distortions are amplified in the denser subspace, and hyperwarp signatures are unmistakable on sensitive subspace detection and ranging systems.

     The detection radius within the lumigraph extended up to one-hundred lightyears in every direction. Of course, the Sarairan Range was marked as undetectable. Atara counted nineteen subdar contacts in hyperwarp within that sphere of detection, but one signature made her anxious.

     “Xannissa, Sesh, look at this,” Atara said, pointing to the contact of interest.

     Sesh asked, “Is it still following us?”

     “What is?” Xannissa inquired.

     “Same signature?” Sesh asked again, ignoring Xannissa for the moment.

     “Exact same,” Atara stated. Turning to Xannissa, the captain explained. “As we were passing Vandos, subdar detected a vessel on an intercept course with the Kelsor. They have no transponder, but the drive signature is Federation—GreDrive.”

     “If it’s kept up for this long,” Xannissa noted, “it has to be Military. Have you hailed them?”

     “Of course,” Atara told her. “No response.”

     “Maybe it’s a silent escort,” Xannissa replied. “But then again, what good is an escort that can’t keep up?”

     “I’m hoping it’s not Archangels,” Sesh said.

     Atara stated, “I’d rather not get tangled up with mercenaries.”

     “Especially the Archangels,” Xannissa added. “But they can’t catch us, so don’t worry so much.”

     “Unless they are corralling us into some kind of trap,” Sesh said.

     “If that’s the case,” Xannissa said calmly, “are you prepared to parley?”

     Atara said, “If they’ll ever talk to us.”

     The officers of the bridge carried out their duties. Naret navigated the hills and swales of the Zone’s edge closer and closer—now to within less than fifty astronomical units. The unknown contact kept itself up to a half-lightyear away from the Zone, easing Atara’s mind somewhat. One of the spherical drones that patrolled the ship decided it was time to shield-scrub the bridge floor, so the triumvirate moved out of the tiny drone’s way as it made its lumionic sweeps. As the triumvirate looked on through the starscape projected through the OPEL panels, the atmosphere began to quiet. It was a while before Atara noticed this peace, and its eeriness bothered her. It was like a lull before an impending storm.

     Sirens blared as Fiori’s adjunct announced, “Warp hyperplane destabilization detected. Warp drive emergency shutdown engaged.” The demarcation of the Zone, which just moments before was moving by like the sea beneath a low-flying aeroplane, paused as if it were stuck in time.

     “Adjunct, elaborate!” Atara yelled.

     “Spatial wave interference intersected hyperwarp trajectory.”

     Naret turned around and looked up at the captain. When they locked eyes, Atara was struck by Naret’s dismay; the latter shaking her head in a nonvocal attempt to deny responsibility. Atara told the young officer who was approaching the point of tears, “It’s not your fault.”

     The sirens continued to blare as the lights dimmed, indicating an automatic transition to the red readiness level and a call to general quarters. When Naret turned herself back around to look at her console, Ethis told the triumvirate that she was receiving a sub-comms transmission.

     “Put it through,” Atara told her. A lumigraph appeared before the triumvirate. Their eyes met a helmeted man dressed in dark yellow armor with three clean red stripes crossing diagonally over his chest. The stripes bifurcated on his left breast and terminated with the Miri-equivalent symbols for “3BS” arranged vertically. The armor’s design was reminiscent of Novekk’s work, albeit modified for marauding. The armor was scratched and worn, revealing the metallic nanoplating beneath the armor’s coloring.

     “Greetings, captain,” said the armored marauder. “You’ve entered territory belonging to the Three Brothers Syndicate. As such, we reserve the right to collect a toll.”

     “Saraia owns these volumes,” Atara rebutted, “and they have given us freedom to navigate.”

     “Even so,” the marauder said, “you’ve warped into a dangerous place. We can guarantee your safe passage with a price.”

     Atara asked, “What is it you want?”

     Without hesitation, the marauder stated, “The schematics of your so-called ‘synerdrive.’” Atara said nothing. After a few moments of silence, the marauder said, “All we want is a little information. No one has to die today.”

     “Stop wasting your breath,” Atara told him. “You can’t intimidate us.”

     “Is that so?” said the marauder captain. “After I steal your ship, I’m thinking it’s been a while since my boys have had any good R and R. What better than a ship full of… beautiful women?” The marauder laughed heartily at the thought. Leaning closer to the lumigraph, he growled, “And I’m coming for you, captain.” Then the lumigraph disappeared.

     “Total savages,” Xannissa muttered.

     Atara said to Xannissa, “They’ll never get the chance.” Louder and to her bridge she commanded, “Put our strikecraft on standby. Have we calculated the source of the kick?”

     “Affirmative, captain,” said Fiori appearing before the triumvirate. “The spatial wave originated from a stationary vessel three-hundred-thousand kilometers forward of your current position.”

     “What precision,” Xannissa noted.

     Sesh added, “They planned this well.”

     “Three— no, five new contacts detected at warp,” a bridge officer declared. “Make that six. Closest is one AU. Furthest is fifteen. All closing on us, captain!”

     “What’s the kicker doing?”

     “Just sitting there, captain.”

     Sesh asked, “How large are these ships?”

     “Destroyer-class hulls based on warp signatures only.”

     “Give me those signatures,” Xannissa ordered, and a lumigraph appeared before her displaying each of them in separate rows. “These are modified GreDrive units.”

     Atara asked, “Same as that one following us?”

     “Not at all,” Xannissa told her. “I never saw the other signature, but if subdar was spitting out ‘Federation,’ then the difference is night and day. These ones are either very old or modified from civvy engines.”

     “Naret,” the captain told the young lieutenant, “the rules of engagement in this situation are very clear. Tell me what I am allowed to do.”

     “They kicked you out of hyperwarp without warning,” Naret said. Her voice was trembling from her surge of adrenaline. “They stated their intention to kill us. They are of a known pirate faction which is deemed ‘kill-on-sight.’ You are free to fully employ lethal force.”

     “Very good,” Atara said. “Tactical, launch a quarter salvo of warp missiles. Target all incoming ships.”

     “Aye, captain,” said a tactical officer. “Prepping twenty-two missiles and firing.”

     Xannissa was still looking at the warp signatures when something caught her attention. She superimposed each signature overtop the others. Normally, every engine had very minute differences in its warp signature that could distinguish it from others of the same model. This is how tracking stations and ships’ subdar could keep track of particular, otherwise-unidentifiable ships across vast distances.

     “Wait,” Xannissa said. The results of her quick analysis revealed that every one of the signatures was exactly the same. “Those ships are all fake.”

     “What do you mean?” Atara asked.

     “Missiles away,” the bridge officer shouted.

     “I guess you’ll see in a minute,” Xannissa told her as she panned her lumigraph toward Atara.

     The freshly-fabricated missiles left their tubes and engaged their small warp engines. Guided by the Kelsor’s subdar telemetry, the missiles shot across the immediate deep space to intercept the incoming signals. The captain watched a lumigraph and witnessed the missiles approach the destroyers’ signatures—only to fly straight through them, arc completely around, and follow the false targets until they self-destructed.

     “Looks like you were right,” Atara told her. “Not that I wouldn’t have believed you.”

     “Captain!” said an Elestan on a lumigraph that opened before Atara.

     “What is it, Kyora?” Atara said, interpreting her identity based on her short, white hair.

     “I have a bad feeling,” the phantom expressed. “Give me authorization to mobilize the Auroras.”

     “Go,” Atara told her. “Do what you have to do.”

     “Thank you, captain,” Kyora said before disconnecting.

     “Now then,” Atara spoke. “Target that kicker and…”

     “Multiple new contacts detected!”

     Atara sighed and said, “Not again.”

     “Positively-confirmed by optics,” said the bridge officer. “These are real. Multiple corvette- and frigate-class ships deshrouding within twenty kilometers!”

     “How could we not detect their omnium signatures that close?” Atara asked.

     “They could be using conventional nuclear reactors,” Xannissa explained, “but we can discuss that later. I really should go back to engineering.”

     “Why didn’t you leave sooner?” Sesh asked. It was only partially a joke.

     “Shut up, you,” Xannissa quickly retorted as she hurried toward the lifts.

     Sesh stated, “Those corvettes would chew our strikecraft to pieces.”

     “But they’re too close for our missiles,” Atara replied. To her bridge she shouted, “How effective are our eighty-centimeter cannons against those corvettes?”

     The tactical officer asked, “Is that an order to fire, captain?”

     “Not necessarily,” Atara turned and told her, “but if you think they can do the job, by all means.”

     “Aye, captain. Engaging corvettes with eighty-centimeter plasma.”

     Upon the Kelsor’s surface was a well-organized, loose mosaic of invisible hatches. The missile tube hatches—twenty-two of the eighty-eight having just been used—were now closed. There were ten much larger hatches—five dorsal and five ventral—that opened to reveal turrets that emerged from the hull’s protective SIRAC shell. Each turret possessed dual cannons capable of firing solid or plasma projectiles with diameters of eighty-centimeters. Once the sleek turrets were secured in their combat positions beyond the hull, the twenty cannons aligned themselves along the trajectories of their targets and fired in a sustained cycle of one bolt from each cannon every three seconds. The dual cannons in each turret operated alternatively, so each turret unleashed a glowing, white projectile in half that time.

     The corvettes altered their trajectories constantly in an attempt to fool the Kelsor’s targeting systems. With Fiori’s direct help, however, the fire control system could discern an emergence of predictable order in the marauders’ deliberate chaos. Using this data, the cannons were able to land what appeared to the marauders as several lucky shots that dealt severe damage to a few of the corvettes. Damaged or not, the crafts accelerated toward the battlecruiser with all the impulse that their reaction engines could produce. Once close enough to the Kelsor as to defeat the turning radii of the eighty-centimeter cannons, the passengers aboard the corvettes activated their personal jump drives and launched themselves through subspace toward the vulnerable battlecruiser.

     A brief moment earlier, Xannissa exited the lift at engineering wearing a full suit of SIRAC armor over the dark gray combat bodysuit. The department was more abuzz than usual given the present circumstances. Her eyes darted from her personnel, to the synerdrive cores, the mediator, lumigraphy tables, and finally Lieren.

     After rushing past her staff and to the cadet, she said, “What are you doing here? You should be in your quarters!”

     “I know,” Lieren told her. The young Larissian was visibly afraid. “I was worried about taking the lifts. Are we really under attack?”

     “We most certainly are,” Xannissa assured her. “You need to armor up.”

     Lieren noticed the two armored Auroras now standing at the lifts’ entrances. Recalling her ongoing Accellus training, she quickly sheathed herself in her own armor.

     “Why are you in engineering, anyway?” Xannissa asked her.

     “I came looking for you,” said the cadet.

     “You could have opened a lume.”

     “I know,” Lieren said, distraught. “I didn’t want to disturb you. And then I heard the drives stop.”

     Xannissa told her, “That’s when the spatial wave hit us.”

     “Spatial what?”

     “It’s a hyperwarp interdiction technique,” Xannissa explained—her tone betraying her frustration. She rested an arm on the lumigraphy table while she analyzed the Kelsor’s systems in the virtual space. She noticed the large increase in mass expenditure from the use of the eighty-centimeter cannons. “A hyperwarp core can emit a pulse that distorts local hyperspace. It’s a common tactic to force engagements by pulling ships back into the material plane. We call it a ‘kick.’”

     “But why?”

     “Some syndicate rogues pulled us over because they want the synerdrive. That’s what happens when you cruise around with bleeding-edge technology.”

     Lieren’s eyes widened at the thought. She never considered that the Kelsor’s advanced technology could make them such a large target or that anyone could catch them if they were.

     “Just stick close to me,” Xannissa told her while she continued to pour over her lumigraphs.

     One of the Auroras yelled, “Blinkers!” A series of flashes and explosive thunder rattled the teams of technicians and engineers. Lieren felt a hand on her back pushing her to the ground. Xannissa dropped down beside her and pushed the cadet’s face to the floor. With her head looking to the side, she saw the emergence of a towering marauder in yellow armor with triplicate red stripes running down his suit. Two large guns unfolded from his back—each a triple-barreled, belt-fed, linear motor system—, and he grabbed the handles and squeezed the triggers. Just like that, engineering became a battlefield. The Auroras sought cover behind walls, terminals, and deployable static barriers from the barrage of kinetic rounds as they fired plasma bolts from their own assault drivers. The intruder alert warnings were barely audible above the sounds of ricocheting bullets and expanding plasma bolts. Xannissa dragged the cadet behind the lumigraphy table before fabricating a helmet and a driver. After lifting herself up into a crouch, Xannissa and the others throughout the department heard another blink followed by a blood-curdling scream. Using her firearm to peer around the table’s corner, she saw the source: one of the marauders missed his landing. Half of his body was now irreversibly melded with the floor. The ceiling autoturrets, equipped with their own omnium reservoirs, fabricated above to deal with the intruders as two more blinked in a half meter above the floor—leery of repeating the mistake of the one that accidentally killed himself. They dropped to the floor, unfolded their guns, and before they could all begin firing, one of their torsos had been reduced to an oozing, molten hole by the streams of focused plasma fire. Another took a lumionically-contained, white-hot beam from a shoulder-mounted cannon directly to the helmet that quickly evaporated his armor and vaporized his head. More Auroras were streaming into engineering now to match the marauders’ metal slugs with their own white plasma. The projectiles sliced through the air hitting walls, shields, armor, and flesh. Lieren wanted to be the strong woman she knew her mother had been, but in the present tribulation, she clasped both ears, shut her eyes, and began to sob. Tears streamed down her girlish, lilac face.

By now, the hyperwarp synerdrive cores had sustained continuous operation for a little over thirty days. After Mirida, the Kelsor made no stops, though Xannissa advised Atara that it would be wise to stock up on matter in a nearby star system sometime within the next week. Her recommendation came despite her slightest reluctance to shut down the drives for fear they may never restart—a fear substantiated by the fact that it had happened rarely with certain drive systems in the past. The happiness and excitement Xannissa felt at reaching the one-month mark on the synerdrive’s operation was dampened by news she heard circulating amongst the officers regarding her sister.

     Cylenna was slumped in a chair in her small quarters alone. She was naked from her waist to her knees—her short jacket fastened halfway up to her neck atop a combat-variant bodysuit that only covered her upper torso that she used as a brassiere to support her breasts. The elbow of her right arm rested on the chair’s armrest, and her right hand formed a blinder for her right eye. Her other hand lied atop her smooth, toned abdomen. In the weeks following Mirida, Strike Officer Kodi had her pilots run hours upon hours of practices and skirmishes aboard the simulators, though lately most of their encounters had resulted in a crushing defeat. Cylenna’s mind was fixated on the latest outcome, and her subsequent actions landed her in her modest quarters for the next two days. The Elestan pilot’s hand slid over her abdomen toward her crotch, and her fingers gently stroked her clitoris. The headache she was developing made the sensation less enjoyable than she expected. Upon hearing the doorbell, her hand quickly darted back to her abdomen.

     “Who is it?” Cylenna called. The door slid open and Xannissa stood there leaning against the frame.

     Xannissa said, “I heard about the heated words you exchanged with Kodi.”

     “Oh?” Cylenna responded. She remained quiet as Xannissa sat on her bed. Cylenna’s face was partially hidden by her hand.

     “Is that it?” Xannissa asked. Typically, Cylenna welcomed her younger sister with open arms. Today, she just wanted to be left alone.

     “Go away,” Cylenna growled. Her eyes dodged Xannissa; locking on the walls of the room instead. Xannissa crossed her legs.

     “I’m here because I care about you,” said Xannissa. “When I heard my sister was confined to quarters, I had to see if she was okay.” Cylenna was silent. Xannissa leaned forward on the bed’s edge, placed her meshed hands on her knee, and stared at her sister.

     “We were doing a tactical training simulation,” said Cylenna, still looking away from her younger sister. “It was going well until Kodi had us fighting Alliance heavy fighters.”

     “What happened then?”

     “We were slaughtered,” Cylenna told her.

     “Isn’t your training supposed to teach you how to handle defeat?”

     Cylenna said nothing for a moment. “They’re supposed to teach us how to win.”

     “You can’t win them all…”

     “Watch me,” Cylenna said loudly before sitting up in her chair.

     “…and that’s why I worry about you when I think about you flying those strikecraft,” Xannissa continued despite her sister’s comment.

     “I don’t want you to worry about me,” Cylenna’s voice quieted.

     “Then don’t give me a reason to.”

     “You know I live for this kind of thing.”

     “I do. But I wouldn’t worry if I didn’t love you.” Xannissa leaned over and placed a hand on Cylenna’s bare thigh. “Have I ever stood in your way?”

     “No,” Cylenna admitted, turning her head toward Xannissa and finally making eye contact. Cylenna digested that for a few seconds before saying, “That’s fair enough.”

     Xannissa stood up from the bed and said, “Come here,” grabbing her sister’s hand and encouraging her to stand. Before Cylenna could balance on her feet, Xannissa wrapped her arms around her sister’s gray skin in a loving embrace. Their faces rested against each other, and Xannissa closed her eyes.

     “I love you too, Xann,” said Cylenna, squeezing her sister tightly.

     “If I hear of any more insolence on your part, I’m taking you to the captain,” said Xannissa. “I do want you to apologize to Kodi.”

     “I will.”

     As their bodies moved closer together, an item hidden within Cylenna’s jacket, made precarious by her slouched posture in the chair, found its way out of its pocket. When the initial squeeze had ended, it fell from her jacket and hit the floor making a metal-on-metal tinging sound.

     “What was that? Did you drop something?” Xannissa asked, casually releasing her hold on Cylenna.

     “What? Did I?”

     Xannissa looked down at the white floor, and then she knelt down and picked up a small object.

     “What’s this?” Xannissa asked. It had a clip on the side and a plunger on one end which was protected by a cap. The other end had a small point. Xannissa twirled it in her fingers, looking at it from all sides. The device was only five centimeters long.

     “It’s a pen,” said Cylenna, “a writing utensil.” She stuck out her hand to receive it from Xannissa, but her sister did not give it back.

     “It looks pretty uncomfortable to use for writing.” Xannissa removed the cap on the plunger and pressed it down. A clear fluid dripped from the tip. “That doesn’t look like ink,” Xannissa remarked in surprise. Cylenna said nothing. “You’re not lying to me, are you?” Cylenna kept her silence. “You know what else this looks like? An injector. Are you using drugs aboard this ship?” Cylenna’s facial expression changed.

     “It’s a victimless crime,” said Cylenna, noting the Federation’s policies toward such offenses. Xannissa grabbed her sister’s short jacket by the collar and pulled her close.

     “You don’t know how serious this is,” Xannissa spoke through a grave face. “Certain rights, like recreational drug use, aren’t afforded to military personnel, and you should have the sense to know that. I’m taking this for analysis, and I won’t tell anyone, but as long as we serve on the same ship, I’ll see that you straighten your act or I will have you incarcerated for the remainder of our mission. Is that clear?”

     Cylenna nodded. Xannissa walked briskly out of the bunk room and down the corridor. Taking a lift to the medical bay, she looked at the device once more and shook her head in disbelief.

It had been three weeks since Rikter Svalti’s hunting trip with Minister Gresken. The doors to the barracks opened, and in walked the Elestan Revenant sporting a black shirt and gray pants. The barracks was a long room within the small Republic corvette that served as shared-sex quarters for Quietus of Hiracet. Even the head beyond the barracks’ forward door was intended for simultaneous use by both sexes. On the aft wall was another door that connected to the armory. Recessed bunks lined both walls all the way through and were separated by storage lockers. In the middle of the barracks was a long table with several chairs. There was enough room to move around, but everything was packed together as tightly as possible before becoming too uncomfortable.

     Jade Valaa had been waiting for him to return from the front of the ship. She leaned on the wall next to her recessed bunk and wore only a white top. Her red Yeran skin and long bronze hair set her ablaze relative to the dark gray walls of the ship.

     “We’re suiting up in ten,” Svalti told Jade in his Persean accent, noting her readiness represented by her bare skin from the waist down. He untucked his shirt and took it off, displaying his Brand of Revenancy across his back. The bottom of Jade’s Brand was just visible below her top. “Where the hell is everybody?” he asked as he folded his shirt on the center table.

     “I’m over here,” said Itagoreth Ransun, waving his dark Terran arm out of his bunk. His head was smooth and tattooed patterns ran down both of his arms.

     “You heard me, Itagoreth?” Svalti yelled toward him.

     “Yes sir, I did!” Itagoreth was listening to music through a pair of earphones that were clasped to his auricles. “Suiting up in ten!”

     Jade stepped away from the wall to stand next to him, and then she said, “Jon and Vald are in the head.” Svalti turned to put his shirt on his bunk, and then faced her as she continued. “Dreth is in the mess, and Aran and Tykon are setting up in the armory.”

     “Thanks, Jade,” he told her, and at that moment Dreth Wade walked through the port doorway drinking from a cup in his hand. Jade crossed her arms as Svalti said, “Good. Four to go. Keep these beasts under control for me. I’ll be right back.” He patted her shoulder as he took off toward the head.

     “You’ve got it,” she told him. Jade was Svalti’s second-in-command, had been around since the beginning of their special unit, and while she did not blindly follow his orders, her loyalty to him was unmatched. Walking over to Itagoreth’s bunk, she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to his feet, telling him it was “Time to get up.”

     “Is that any way to treat a dead man?” he asked, unclasping his earphones from his ears. He turned his body sideways and stood from the bunk. On the other side of the barracks, Dreth chugged the remaining liquid in his cup and slammed it on the table in his usual way. One look at Jade or Rikter was all he needed to step back in line, and other than their attitudes, there was nothing particularly imposing about either of them; however, Dreth was a large person, towering at two-point-two meters. He was born from the womb; a living example of the kind of men that flesh and blood could still breed.

     In the head which was devoid of dividers or stalls, Svalti stepped up to one of the latrines, unfastened his fly, and urinated into the dry bowl. There was a hose on the side of each toilet designed for use by either a male or female in during gravitics failure. Svalti refastened his fly while he watched the bowl be cleansed with cleaning solution. Looking to either side, he saw Jon and Vald relieving themselves. Facing the bathroom door and about to leave, he shouted “Let’s go-o-o-o! Pinch it off!” He heard one toilet flush, and then the other. Finally, Jon and Vald emerged from the head and Svalti herded them into the barracks.

     “We’re ready in the armory,” Aran Eda called, a Terran still in her full uniform who just emerged from the armory door with Tykon Marsar. “Svalti and Jade, you two first,” Aran told them.

     “Attention!” Svalti yelled. “Get ready to suit up!” Svalti and the others took off whatever remaining clothing they had on and lined up in the armory. Svalti and Jade walked onto separate pads in the middle of the room. Once their bodies were in an upright and balanced standing position, they were locked in lumionic stasis. These pads were fabricators. A polyalloy bodysuit slowly crept up Svalti and Jade’s legs and bodies. This Novekk bodysuit differed from Avond’s in that it had absolutely no modesty. Everything, including genitalia, were still visible on a soldier. After the bodysuit was generated, the bulky Type-M power armor grew upon the bodysuit like a self-assembled construct that still looked inorganic like a product of industrial manufacturing. Normal Type-M was metallic slate in appearance, but Quietus of Hiracet’s was all matte black. Quietus’ suits were also equipped with personal, miniature jump drives that would allow them to strike at the heart of enemy installations in the contested Persean Rift.

     The fabrication of the bodysuit and Type-M took forty-five seconds. Once Svalti and Jade were fully armored, they were released from stasis and walked off the pad, allowing the next soldiers to step on. The thick armor conformed to everyone’s unique body-shapes differently, but without their HUDs, it would have been difficult to tell each other apart. Once everyone was in armor, they all grabbed their prefabricated weapons and awaited orders.

     “We’re approaching blink distance, Revenants,” said the captain of the ship over intercom. Svalti’s team was waiting in the armory. “You should see your destination now.” Svalti looked around the room until he found a marker on his helmet’s HUD.

     “Destination acknowledged,” Svalti told the captain, pointing in its direction so that everyone in his team could see. “Look alive, Quietus!” Svalti shouted to the team. He could see their distance to the target shrinking. “Blink in twenty seconds.” The ship rocked from weapons impacting on its lumionic shielding. “Ten seconds. Five… four… three… two… one… jump now now now!” All eight of them were enveloped by spherical artificial wormholes that opened and closed faster than a human eye could see. Their sudden subspace jumps produced deafening shockwaves in both the armory and the room in which they arrived while also releasing bursts of heat and light. Blinking was not a stealth tactic, but stealth would detract from their overt shock-and-awe style.

     Quietus had blinked into a cargo hold of an omnium refinery ship. They all appeared in midair and fell to the floor. Blast doors decorated with the Alliance’s green Astral Archer emblem closed before and behind them, the interior lights turned red, sirens sounded, and two ceiling turrets dropped down to greet them. The Republic soldiers spread out, ducked behind cargo containers, and quickly dispatched the turrets with their heavy assault drivers. The Alliance was getting into the habit of arming the interiors as well as the exteriors of its deep space industrial ships to defend them against strike teams like Svalti’s. Quietus’ directive was to secure, and in situations where that was not possible or feasible, destroy. The corvette was already in a subspace corridor on the way back to Republic zones in the Rift.

     “Vald, you’re up,” Svalti said.

     “Yes sir,” Vald acknowledged, moving to override the door’s locking mechanism with a hacking suite built into his suit. He had to maintain direct contact to the door’s controls with his hand to sustain his connection. It did not help that the Alliance tended to isolate ship systems from one another. Had this been a Federation ship, he could have accessed anything from anywhere, but the Federation’s defensive software was far more robust and would have retaliated against his Type-M, possibly killing him.

     “Twenty soldiers behind that door,” Jade noted from their mass scanners.

     “Take cover,” Svalti ordered. Once the doors opened, fire flooded into the room from the outside hallway. The Alliance soldiers stormed into the cargo hold and unleashed molten metal rounds they called thermal slugs—more popularly known as slag. The barrage caused the lumionics on some of their suits to automatically harden against it—the Republic “invulnerability field” consisting of a nanoscopic meshwork of cross-linked lumions. Quietus responded with plasma charges—plasma rounds encapsulated within an insulating casing. The Alliance slag built up on whatever it hit, glowing yellow and dripping to the floor. The Republic charges opened on impact, releasing the plasma inside that burned holes through tissue and structure. Several Alliance soldiers dropped in seconds. The survivors retreated back into the hallway firing molten metal at the reinforced crates Quietus was taking refuge behind.

     “Jade, you have point,” Svalti told her. “Move out.” Jade leaped over a container and sprayed charges down the hall toward the Alliance who were crouching behind support structures stretching from the walls. Hardening her lumionics, she charged into the corridor against a hail of slag—the molten metal bouncing off of the shield and landing in yellow-orange clumps on the floor. She did not stop until she was safely behind one of the solid, buttress-like structures. The slag ceased, and Quietus used the lull to move deeper down the corridor. Ahead of her team, Jade could feel and hear a rhythmic vibration.

     “Heavy!” she cried. From around a corner appeared an Alliance heavy assault exosuit, lumbering with the posture and heavy steps of a giant primate. To one of its modular arms was attached a rotary machine gun firing an unrelenting torrent of conventional bullets. To the other was a cannon firing explosive charges. The unceasing sound of whizzing bullets and their impacts was broken by booms of fiery blasts. Cracks and craters formed in the floor and walls. Smoke was being sucked out of the corridor through the ventilation system.

     “Dreth! Decommission this bastard!” Svalti shouted. Dreth moved a missile launcher from behind his back and over his shoulder that remained attached to his suit. Hardening his shields, he jumped from cover into the middle of the corridor. An explosive charge hit him right in the chest and detonated, sending him backward onto the floor.

     “Dreth!” Aran shouted.

     “Pig,” Dreth muttered. He raised his upper half from the floor, took aim, and fired his shoulder launcher. The missile exploded against the exosuit’s shielding. Most of the blast was concentrated in a small point ahead of the missile, overloading lumionic systems and penetrating the armor plating. Still firing the machine gun, the exosuit stumbled and crashed onto the floor, landing on its side; a glowing hole straight through the torso section containing the pilot. As the suit lost power, the machine gun slowed to a stop, and the corridor was quiet. Itagoreth helped Dreth to his feet and Quietus continued down the corridor until they reached the junction from which the heavy emerged.

     “Three teams,” said Svalti. “Jade, with me to the bridge. Vald, Tykon, and Aran to engineering. Itag, Dreth, and Jon to processing. You know the drill.” From there, each team left down a different corridor.

     “Are you ready?” Jade asked Svalti. Their suits’ built-in sensors illuminated the bridge crew behind the bulkhead. Four guards lied dead within the short, narrow corridor, and debris from two exploded ceiling cannons littered the ground. Glowing slag flowed slowly down the wall behind them. Separating Svalti and Jade from the bridge was an impenetrable blast door.

     “I am,” he said. Svalti gave the countdown, and both commandos blinked onto the bridge. All of the Alliance crew were caught off guard. Some collapsed from the sudden explosive entry. They directed their focus away from the door that was previously barring entry and trained their weapons on Svalti and Jade. A hail of slag poured from the Alliance guns, but it all landed on hardened lumionics and rolled off like water on a hydrophobic surface—that is, until Svalti and Jade’s invulnerability systems reset from overuse and entered a cooldown period. Both of the Republic soldiers stood side-by-side, blasting the Alliance personnel above them while trying to avoid destroying important computer terminals. Svalti’s shields were the first to fail, reaching zero lumionic field potential in seconds. Jade’s were saturated, and she was quickly losing her own field’s potential. Slag was sticking to Svalti’s armor. He could feel the heat creeping into his suit. It would not be long until he burned to death in his own armor. Jade grabbed him and moved behind a low wall toward the bridge’s upward sloping windows. The bridge, like most Alliance ships, was located at the bottom of the ship, and both of them were crouching on OPEL panel floors.

     “Stay down!” she told him before raising herself back up. Svalti scraped his hands frantically across the globs of molten metal on his suit which was already beginning to harden. Their suits were designed to handle extreme environments; not baths in lava. Jade’s shields failed as a plasma charge took off half of the last Alliance officer’s head. After sweeping the room with her eyes and sensors once more, she dropped back down to him and asked “Are you okay?”

     “The suit’s cooling down,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” Svalti’s shields were restored, and much of the slag was sloughed off by them.

     “Good,” she said. “The dead don’t die.” Jade helped Svalti stand and they moved to the terminals.

     “Quietus, report,” Svalti called through his suit’s comms system.

     “Engineering secure,” said Vald.

     “Processing secure,” said Jon.

     Svalti approached the bridge communications terminal and sent out a ship-wide message stating “This vessel has been commandeered by the People’s Interstellar Republic. Anyone found aboard unaffiliated with the Republic Military will be considered stowaways and will be hunted down and swiftly executed. You have been warned.” From the bridge windows, Svalti and Jade caught glimpses of engine fire from escape pods heading into the belt full of frozen meteoroids among which the refinery ship sat in orbit around a massive ice giant.

     “We’re detecting jump signatures,” said Jade. “Alliance craft. They’ll be here any minute.”

     “Prepare for hyperwarp,” said Svalti to his entire team after situating himself at the helm. After several acknowledgments, Svalti chose a set of coordinates back toward the Republic-controlled Persean Rift, and Quietus with their freshly-acquired Alliance omnium refinery ship escaped into hyperdimensional transit.

A particularly-skilled phantom stood with Virn—both of them in their combat bodysuits with differing coverage of SIRAC and no helmets—in the middle of a large, walled training field. The sparseness of the field’s grass indicated frequent use. Atop the grass and dirt stood the cadets in rank and at attention. This field was just part of an abandoned military base at the edge of a deserted town. Low stratus clouds covered most of the sky and obscured the distant mountains. Of course, this environment was all a fiction maintained by a different simulator room than the one the cadets had their ceremony in.

     Kyora and Virn were watching an Aurora sergeant train the cadets in foundational Accellus use. This exercise—the first in a series—was real basic training. Typically, Accellus training began toward the latter half of the last year of academic work before an officer’s first posting.

     In a whisper that Kyora could hear, Virn recited, “Dulce et decorum est.”

     Kyora, who had been focusing on the cadets, looked toward Virn and asked, “What is that?”

     “What is what?” Virn responded.

     “That phrase. What does it mean?”

     “Oh, that,” Virn said. “My mother said it to me a long time ago when she found out I joined the Navy. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It means, ‘it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.’ At the time, I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. It’s an ancient Terran phrase written during a time when warfare was viewed as glorious. This same phrase was reused centuries later by a soldier in Earth’s tumultuous lead-up to the nuclear age who had bore witness to the horrors of their first global war himself. My mother was of the same opinion: there is no glory to be found on the battlefield. There exists only death and destruction.”

     “How did that make you feel?” Kyora asked, watching the cadets practice with their Accellus by recalling their standard uniform and resheathing themselves in it again. It was difficult for the cadets to catch on at first, leaving many of them naked.

     “I believe it was presumptuous of her to think I joined for glory and honor,” Virn told her. “But I think she knew me better than I knew myself. Although I told her I joined to see the galaxy—to escape the routine—, all I did was exchange one routine for another. I secretly longed for the prestige of being a soldier. I agree with my mother, but I must add that there is no other place that tests one’s character as thoroughly as the battlefield.”

     “It sounds to me like you had something to prove.”

     “Perhaps I did. Maybe it was to prove that I am more than tradition and religious rites.”

     By now, the sergeant had proven her point to the cadets. Growing accustomed to using the suit through the neural interface was akin to learning how to walk. The sergeant announced in her booming voice that she would drill them until accessing the interface was as natural to them as breathing or blinking.

     Before long, Krystal entered the simulator. She placed her boots upon the patchy lumionic turf expecting to see Kyora, Virn, and the cadets immediately as she entered, but seeing them so far away across the field destroyed her suspension of disbelief. Because she was reliant upon her extra perception with which she was supremely adept, being in an environment where people felt adjacent to her yet could be visibly or audibly anywhere near or far left her terribly disoriented and prone to looking over her shoulder only to find no one.

     Kyora noticed the corporal striding toward them. Before Krystal stepped within earshot, the phantom said, “Here comes the VIP,” with a condescension stemming from her ignorance as to why this former security guard had so far been treated with such regality.

     Stopping to give them the customary Federation Military salute—right hand on the forehead with palm out and open, and left hand behind with palm also out and open; legs together—, she spoke to them like a soldier. “Colonel Kyora Tseri! Lieutenant Colonel Virn Lorralis! Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you.” Despite being in the Navy for only a few days, she was well-adapted to Military discipline.

     “You’re here for special training?” Kyora asked.

     “Yes ma’am.”

     “Then we can have one of our non-commissioned officers train you.”

     “I would like to learn from the best, ma’am.”

     “Flattery will get you nowhere, corporal.”

     Through her Q-comms link, Virn said, “Let’s humor her. What have we to lose?”

     “Our time,” Kyora responded, “but fine. I’ll humor her.”

     “I’m bringing the three of us into a new instance,” Kyora said as she tapped on a lumionic interface generated by the simulator. When she finished, the sergeant and cadets vanished, but the environment remained. “What would you like to learn from us?”

     “I would like to familiarize myself with the various combat classes available to me, ma’am.”

     “There is an orientation module that the cadets will see later,” Kyora told her, “but I will load it for you now.” After interacting with lumionic interfaces once more, a lineup of eight lumigraphic mannequins appeared. Each mannequin represented one of the eight predefined combat classes available to an Accellus user. Every class had its own armor configuration—the ratio of SIRAC armor to exposed polyalloy bodysuit—ranging from minimal like Kyora’s to heavy like Virn’s. Weapons floated near the mannequin of the class to which they belonged.

     Krystal browsed the combat classes like a visitor to a museum as she stopped periodically to read the info boxes next to each one. Kyora and Virn looked on as Krystal practiced a process of elimination until she arrived at support: a class with a light to moderate armor configuration. Of all the weapons and equipment suspended around the support mannequin, one in particular caught her eyes.

     “What is this?” Krystal asked, pointing.

     “That’s a disc,” Kyora told Krystal flatly as the corporal grabbed the lenticular, thirty-centimeter disc and held it close. “Discthrowing is perhaps one of the more mentally-intense specializations.”

     “How so?”

     “Imagine having two pairs of eyes,” Virn illustrated. “One pair is yours and the other is on the disc. You can view your surroundings through both pairs at once, and you use both pairs to engage your enemy both from your handheld weapon and the drone simultaneously. You must be aware of your position and the drone’s at all times.”

     “The difficulty lies in ordering the disc drone,” Kyora explained, “while at the same time looking out for yourself.”

     Krystal asked, “Why isn’t it automatic?”

     “It keeps itself aloft,” Kyora responded, “but you must assign its targets which are either going to be in your direct line of sight or the disc’s. Both Avond Designs and the Military were reluctant to give the disc a mind of its own for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, most beginners neglect their disc when they start taking fire and it ends up idling until it’s shot down.”

     “I understand,” Krystal said as she turned the disc around with her hands and examined both of its sides before holding it in front of her chest. “Can I give it a try?”

     “After you configure your armor for support,” Kyora explained. Krystal’s Accellus fabricated SIRAC around her chest and upper arms while leaving her bodysuit exposed at the forearms, abdomen, pelvic area and thighs. Being a product of the simulator, Kyora had to link the lumionic disc to Krystal’s Accellus as if it were her own.

     “One exercise we have trainees perform,” Kyora told her, “is for you to run around a tight track while you pilot the drone through a course.” As she said this, her right fingers inputed a torrent of information into a lumigraphic interface that brought the track and drone course forth into existence. “Go ahead and give it a shot. Just throw the disc into the air and pilot it through the rings until you get comfortable, and then you can start running.”

     Doing as she was instructed, Krystal held the disc in her right hand, brought it to her left shoulder, and flung the disc into the air where it floated on gravitics. She could see through the drone’s photosensors via lumigraphs projected on her corneas. Every movement the disc made was a product of Krystal’s thought through her neural interface. After one successful pass through the course with the disc, Krystal jogged toward the oblong track and ran several laps without ever losing control of the disc.

     “Do you have any prior experience with discs?” Kyora asked her, impressed by Krystal’s demonstration of skill well into an intermediate level.

     “I don’t, ma’am,” Krystal said through her breaths as she came to a stop in front of Kyora and Virn. “Has anyone ever tried to control two at a time?”

     “Most supports use only one,” Virn said, noticing that the disc kept circulating through its course. “Though there have been known exceptions.”

     “Can I try it?”

     “Humph. Knock yourself out,” Kyora told her. Moments later, Krystal was running around the track again while maintaining two discs on the course—both traveling in opposite directions. Virn was genuinely impressed. Kyora did not know what to make of Krystal’s seemingly immense mental aptitude.

“I apologize for this mission wasting your Frontier conning skills,” Atara told Naret. The captain stood just behind the young officer on the seventh day of the mission. Naret, who had been staring at readouts on her lumigraphs, swiveled her chair completely around to look up at Atara.

     “It’s relaxing—probably too relaxing,” Naret admitted, “but I can run simulations from this terminal to keep myself occupied.”

     “That’s a good idea,” Sesh stated as she stepped toward them. “Our chase will take us dangerously close to the Saraian Range. We have a high chance of encountering pirates when we swing by. It’s best you stay in top form.”

     “Pirates?” Naret asked.

     “The Saraian Range is a volume of space,” Atara explained, “that is difficult for warp systems to manipulate.”

     “If you want to get anywhere in the Range proper,” Sesh continued, “it’s going to take you a very long time.”

     “So criminals use it as a hideout?” Naret asked.

     Sesh nodded, and then she said, “They perch at the edge of the Range and attack merchant traffic. If things get too hot for them, they just slip into the Zone of Obstruction. The boundary is well mapped, but the interior not so much.”

     “Not even sub-comms gets through,” Atara added. “If you’re wanted by law enforcement, it’s a safer place to hide than the Frontier.”

     “Oh,” Naret vocalized, recounting the scum she encountered in the Frontier and at a loss for how anyone could be much worse.

     “Anyway,” Atara said, “have you gained a feeling for the ship yet?”

     “I have,” Naret responded. “It handles very nicely for such a large ship.”

     Atara laughed and said “No, no. What I mean is, can you sense its personality?”

     “You mean the adjunct?”

     “I mean the ship itself; as a whole.”

     Naret pondered for a moment before saying, “I think I understand. I see it as a hotshot—someone with a lot of talent and ambition but no experience.” She paused for another moment. Embarrassed, she added, “That sounds like myself.”

     “It’s normal for us to see ourselves in our machines,” Atara told her. “Sometimes you can see other people. To me, the Kelsor has given us little drama. Quiet and dependable; responsible but lax, like the commander.” Atara and Naret both turned their heads toward Sesh who stood there staring through the bridge’s large armored OPEL window at the stars and nebulae. She hadn’t registered a word of what they said.

     “To me,” Xannissa said, startling the captain from her other side, “she’s a really hard worker that tries its best to be left alone to do her work. That’s why there’s no drama.”

     “Really?” the captain asked. “I thought it was because we had the best engineering chief in the Navy.”

     “I don’t deserve any credit,” Xannissa told her, placing her arms upon and leaning against the railing next to Naret’s station. “GreDrive and Archetype did really remarkable work.”

     Using her Q-comms link, Atara asked, “Have you talked to your sister recently?”

     “I’ve been giving her her space,” Xannissa thought. “I don’t want to be the overbearing younger sister, but I’ll make it a point to see her more.”

     Via audible vocalizations, Xannissa said, “I came up here to gather you three for the suiting ceremony. Are you ready?”

     Atara, Xannissa, Sesh, and Naret changed into their white dress uniforms with dark gray bodysuits beneath, black neckties and white short jackets. After riding the lifts and walking together, they met up with Kyora and Virn and arrived at one of the four partitioned-reality simulators aboard the ship—collectively among the major sinks for the excess power saved by virtue of the efficient synerdrive. Upon entering the simulator room, each person was enveloped in their own lumigraphic bubble and held aloft via a combination of gravitics and lumionic barriers. These bubbles—or individual reference frames as they were technically known—allowed each person to experience the fictional environment maintained by the simulation from their own point of view. Each individual reference frame was then placed somewhere within the dark meta-space—the term for the physical simulator room itself—and constantly rearranged at the behest of the simulator’s controller that attempted to position individual reference frames such that those which were adjacent in the virtual space would be adjacent in the meta-space also.

     This maintenance of an elaborate illusion manifested through the eyes of the officers as a seamless transition from a starship corridor to a resort situated atop a tropical shoreline. As they walked through the open-air lobby, they passed by officers and starmen both with and without uniform and in various states of undress. They eventually arrived at a large private balcony overlooking the beach and recreational facilities. Twelve pairs of Accellus 4 boots had already been placed on the smooth stone floor. A table nearby held the dozen pairs of bracers. After a few minutes, the cadets were led in by a junior officer, and each cadet stopped behind the pair of boots that were to become hers.

     “Cadets, attention!” Sesh shouted. The cadets stood with their backs straight and their arms glued to their sides. Atara waited for a moment to allow the ceremonial tension to fill the air as the salty sea-breeze blew in from the ocean on that clear evening.

     “At ease,” Atara commanded, and the cadets stood with their legs slightly apart and their arms behind their backs. Atara paused again, looking at the face of each one where she stood.

     “As cadets,” Atara started, “you are the future leaders of the Greater Federation Navy. As future officers, you are inheriting the responsibilities that we as the current officers of the Navy carry: answering to the will of our Commander in Chief, Madame President of the Orionan Federal Republic, setting the example for our forces by leading with courage, honor, and integrity, and being model citizens to the very people we sacrifice ourselves to protect.

     “Some of you are near the end of your training, while others of you are only just beginning. The Active Officer Training Program was established so that the best and brightest among the pool of cadets could experience the rigors of interstellar service at the foundation of their promising careers in the Navy. You twelve are among those who have proven themselves through academic accomplishment and have been granted this rare opportunity to serve the Federation alongside a body of mentors underway on a real-life mission.

     “A starman relies on her REMASS gear for offense, defense, and basic survival. It is your weapon, your shield, and your tool. It protects you from the vacuum of deep space, the crushing gravity of giants, extreme weather of distant worlds, and armed conflict with our enemies.

     “It is with great honor that I, Captain Atara Korrell…”

     “…I, Commander Xannissa Cetalo…”

     “…and I, Commander Yora Sesh…”

     “…collectively the triumvirate of the Greater Federation Navy vessel Kelsor, grant you, our young cadets of the Navy, your own, personal Accellus Four REMASS gear. You may go ahead and put them on.”

     A junior officer approached each cadet with a pair of bracers and put them on the cadets’ outstretched arms. The cadets then removed and folded every article of clothing they wore and handed it to the officer before them. The last item they removed was their shoes, placing them on top of the pile of folded clothing at which point they were fully nude. They stood like that until the officers placed the old cadet clothing on the table. When the officers returned, the cadets placed their feet into the Accellus 4 boots. The officers helped the cadets clothe themselves for the first time in the Military REMASS gear. They would use lumigraphic user interfaces projected on their arms until they adapted to using their neural interfaces to operate the suits. As the sun neared the horizon and the ceremony concluded, Atara invited the cadets to dine with the triumvirate in a seaside pavilion aboard the simulator.

     After the ceremony, the junior officers were dismissed. Naret returned to her small quarters and fabricated a meal from her room’s REMASS terminal. After that, she recalled her standard uniform, stepped out of her boots, and collapsed her gray, naked body face-first upon the bed where she lied for several moments. Eventually, she rolled over, pushed her black bobbed hair out of her eyes, and rested her head on her pillow. As was her nightly ritual thus far aboard the Kelsor, she put her right arm behind her head and with her left hand navigated the Subnet through lumigraphs projected before her face. She spent at least an hour checking her favorite social outlets before wandering into an encyclopedia.

     Her respect for Atara as a mentor was stronger now than it ever had been. Her encyclopedia journey began with an article about Captain Atara Eisen Korrell which immediately led to an article on the Semarahn Incursion. With interest, she read the article’s introduction:

The Semarahn Incursion (8392-10-12 to 8393-06-20), also known as the Semarahn Conflict or Operation Crimson Aegis, was a war between the Orionan Federal Republic and the Kingdom of Semarah. The war began on 8392-10-12 when the Federation invaded Semarah following a series of deadly border raids by attackers originating from Semarahn space. The Federation invasion ended in a truce after thirty-three weeks.

     “Crimson Aegis,” Naret whispered to herself. “That’s an interesting name.” She continued reading the article, but the more she read, the less sense it made to her. And it wasn’t because the article was poorly written. She dismissed her confusion as a result of still being young and naive. She found out that Atara, Xannissa, and Sesh had served on the front, but to Naret’s surprise, they had been captured after a critical battle in the war that took place above the Semarahn capitol world.

…

     “Aesho, I realize we are pushing a campaign of rapid dominance, but don’t you think this is a bit reckless? Even for you.”

     The dark-haired, dark-skinned Elestan, Admiral of the Fifth Fleet, contrasted with the light-skinned, light-haired Terran beside her. Thirty-six years ago, they stood together within Orionan Rift Command’s map room filled with lumigraphs that displayed a scaled view of upspin Semarah. Every star system was mapped. Every Semarahn starbase was identified. Space under the control of the Federation Navy appeared as orange volumes. The armadas pushing the Federation advance were Federation Triangles. Most notably, the two admirals were alone.

     “Remember what we’re here to do,” Aesho told Musani in a lowered voice. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

     “Of course not,” Musani said. “You just need to be more transparent with me.”

     “Killing terrorists isn’t exactly a good reason to send a courier to the king’s castle.”

     “Sending good women to be cut off is?”

     “That’s what I’m counting on. Do you know who’s commanding our flagship?”

     “Who?”

     “Cassandra’s daughter. She’s smart, so for her sake, I hope she uses her head.”

     The triumvirate of that battleship was determined to carry out their superior’s orders. Just as Aesho wanted, that ship and its accompanying strike group became isolated from the rest of the armada and was forced to surrender in the Semarahn home system. In exchange for the safety of their crews, the triumvirate of the flagship Unity—a younger Atara, Xannissa, and Sesh—offered themselves as prisoners of war. The three officers were ultimately taken into custody by Kalashik’s daughter, the guard captain, and placed in a cell beneath the palace where they would spend the next few months unclothed but untouched. As a matter of fact, the guard captain never allowed her father to see them.

     When the Semarahn Incursion ended, it was publicized as a major victory over the terroristic elements that had butchered civilians on the Federation side of the border, but without a lasting occupation and a strengthening of the Semarahn government and military, no real victory had actually been achieved. Unfortunately, releasing prisoners of war was not one of the conditions for a Federation withdrawal, so without ever realizing that the war was over, the Unity’s triumvirate spent a few more months held within their relatively cushy cell beneath Kalashik’s palace. This was exactly what Aesho wanted. Six months after the end of the Semarahn Incursion, Kalashik’s palace was infiltrated by an elite team of Assault Force phantoms. Without harming a single guard, they swept through the lavish chambers and ornate halls and rescued the triumvirate from their captivity. The real prize, though, was what lied in the palace vault. One particularly-skilled phantom cracked the Vault’s security within a minute. Once within, they retrieved what had been Crimson Aegis’ primary objective all along. The thing that cost so many Federation and Semarahn lives was none other than ecksivar, held by the Kalashik dynasty for over two centuries, and now once again in the hands of the Federation.

“Set us down over there; in that clearing,” Minister Gresken ordered the two pilots. He was standing over them in the dropship’s cockpit as they flew over the forest’s canopy. This was the world of Duborik located in the distant reaches of Republic space. When the transport was landing, Gresken noticed the retreat of the native quadruped wildlife and said in his deep, booming voice, “Yes! That’s it! Run away so we can hunt you!” Following his excitement-fueled laughter, he climbed back into the passenger compartment of the craft. “Are you ready, Svalti?” Gresken said, grabbing the shoulder of his hunting partner. “I hope hunting game is as fun for you as hunting people.” The minister burst into laughter again. At this time, the Akkain research station attack and the beginning of the Kelsor’s mission would not occur for another three months.

     “I’m thrilled,” Svalti said, lacking enthusiasm.

     “Of course you are!” said Gresken. “Put a big smile on your face! And grab your gun.” The minister latched onto a handhold just before the craft touched down and rocked everything inside. The side wall of the transport folded down into a ramp, and the first to leave were six guards clad in the Republic’s glossy, bulky, slate gray Novekk Type-M battle armor. An identical transport landed a few meters away, and as its door opened, a swarm of spheroid camera drones liberated themselves from the craft and gathered around Gresken and Svalti as they walked together down the ramp. Moments later, the drones’ human masters—journalists, most from the Republic, some from the Federation, and a few from the rest of Civilized Space—crowded around to speak with the Minister of War and the “Hero of the People,” as they called Rikter Svalti.

     Svalti was an Elestan man with just enough jet black hair to manipulate. He had been letting it grow during his first two weeks of leave, and was taking a liking to it. Minister Gresken was four times his age, and that age showed only psychologically, though mostly in a good way: centuries of experience and a low-stress attitude. The minister was Svalti’s second father in a manner of speaking, and it had its perks—such as extended leave. Svalti would never tell Gresken, but he was ready to return to his family: the Quietus of Hiracet, his team of elite Republic Marines.

     “Smile, Svalti!” Gresken shouted, wrapping his arm around the marine and posing for pictures. A female Federation journalist close to them asked “Minister! Can you speak about the rising tension between the Republic and the Alliance in the Persean Rift?”

     “I will say nothing today,” said the minister, waving his hand dismissively. “But, please take all the pictures you like! Hurry though. We have hunting to do.” He grabbed Svalti’s shoulder, and Svalti smiled as the drones took several more pictures and several seconds of video.

     Gresken and Svalti stepped off of the ramp of their dropship, and Gresken leaned toward a guard, whispering, “They’ve seen enough. Take them back.” The guard signaled to his comrades, and the soldiers herded the journalists back to their transport. The minister took a deep breath through his nostrils as he and Svalti ventured into the forest alone. The trees were conifers, and they scented the air with the sweet smell of pine. A loose layer of stratus, like a lifted fog, hung on the forest’s canopy, hiding the tops of the trees. The green leaves of the undergrowth were damp with dew which collected on their black trench coats and metallic boots as they both walked along. A flock of small, black birds, flapping their wings in unison, took off from the top of one of the trees and flew deeper into the forest.

     “You could at least enjoy your time here,” said Gresken as they marched across the soggy ground. “After your leave is over, your team is being relocated to the Rift.”

     “I look forward to it,” said Svalti, grinning.

     “The Alliance has started construction on two-hundred new bases out there,” said Gresken, “and they’re buying local omnium to do it. Saves them logistically. That’s why our Navy is there. We will blockade every system if we must to choke them of their civilian omnium supply.”

     “Then what do you need me for?”

     “Because, when the Alliance does begin to choke, they will send their refinery ships to harvest their own mass. Then, ‘accidents’ start happening.” Gresken’s laughter was followed closely by Svalti’s.

     “It would be my pleasure to serve as your catalyst for these… ‘accidents.’”

     “Splendid,” said Gresken. “I would have expected nothing less than your total cooperation.” Svalti hated when the minister said things like that; as if he and his team were mere tools. Tools always gave their total cooperation. They lacked the minds to think for themselves. Regardless, Svalti had to play the politics for his sake and the sake of his fellow Revenants, for it was the People of the Republic who brought them back, and they all possessed the mark that identified them as such. The Republic, and Minister Gresken in particular, would never let them forget it. When your prized tools break, they are repaired and returned to the toolbox.

     “Put this on,” said Gresken, tossing Svalti a small capsule. “It will mask your scent.” The marine sprayed the capsule of liquid across his exposed head and neck and tossed the capsule back to the minister. Supposedly it was an olfactory camouflage technique, but it was Gresken’s first choice among all the existing methods. Several minutes later, Gresken found a fallen tree amid thick underbrush, and the two of them hid within, propping their coilguns on the thick trunk. The forest beyond was sparser but teemed with underbrush growing beneath an open canopy. The planet’s sun was starting to appear through breaks in the clouds, causing the surrounding flora to glow with verdant vibrance.

     Gresken and Svalti crouched in this undergrowth for thirty minutes. Then an hour. Then two hours. The wind would come and go regularly and whistle through the limbs and leaves of the thicker forest just behind them. Svalti opened a pouch he kept on his belt and grabbed his mass scanner. When he held it to his face, Gresken quietly said, “Put that thing away. That’s cheating.”

     “I’m just checking for other humans,” Svalti whispered back. He was being honest. He anticipated danger.

     “Not necessary,” Gresken whispered. “There’s no one but us on this planet.” Svalti turned the device off and slid it away. That’s when the minister tapped him on the shoulder and said “Look!” The distant undergrowth was swaying. Both of them sat up and grabbed their guns. The swaying moved toward them slowly. Gresken drew his coilgun to his shoulder, just before the swaying stopped. Gresken kept his gun trained on the tall grasses and moved gently into crouching.

     The undergrowth started moving again, but violently. The creature’s quick footfalls sounded like thunder. Gresken fired into the brush. As if in rebuke, the creature roared toward them like a predator. It was several meters away now. Svalti readied himself, grabbed his tactical knife, and leapt over the fallen tree. The creature—a three-hundred-kilogram feline—launched itself from the vegetation. He could see the animal’s center of mass from the way it carried itself, its weak points, and its dangers. At this moment, time for the marine seemed to stand still. He was in complete control. Svalti ducked, and as the creature passed over him, he lifted himself up and sliced the beast’s underside with his thermoplate blade wrapped in white-hot plasma that he held with both hands. The beast’s flesh popped and sizzled as the blade cut across its abdomen in mid-jump. The monstrous feline roared in pain, and it slammed into the ground behind Svalti—dead on impact. The smoke and smell of burning flesh pervaded the air.

     “Excellent work, Svalti!” Gresken cheered with a grin. “You saved my life.” He began to laugh like he had on the transport.

     “Just serving the People of the Republic,” Svalti said.

     “For the People!” Gresken exclaimed patriotically.

     “That was fun,” said Svalti, grinning and sliding his knife back into its sheath. “Let’s keep hunting.”

After leaving her father’s bedside to have a meal within the quarters she shared with four other cadets, Lieren returned to her father’s small room where she spent the night. The morning found her lying asleep on the couch across from her father’s bed.

     “Lieren?” her father called out to her. Lieren stirred, gasped as she awoke, and brought herself upright. She brushed her hair away from her face with her hands and looked at Doctor Souq through groggy eyes. The young cadet revealed a weak smile.

     “Hi, dad,” she said, rising from the couch and stretching her arms. She was still wearing her loose-fitting, white cadet uniform.

     “Look at you,” Souq stated, also suffering a bit of grogginess. “My baby girl’s all grown up.”

     “Not quite,” Lieren told him, walking over to sit in the chair next to his bedside. “How are you feeling?”

     “I’m hungry,” he said. Despite the lingering weakness from the sedative and the emotional turmoil he was experiencing as a result of the Akkain station attack, he smiled with the joy of seeing his daughter again.

     “We’ll get you something to eat,” Lieren said. She pressed the call button on a lumigraph next to her father’s bed. Seconds later, a nurse entered the room, assessed Souq, left and returned with a breakfast tray. When Lieren asked, the nurse said that meals served in the medical bay were for patients only. Souq heard this, and after the nurse left, he offered his daughter part of his meal which she promptly refused.

     “You need to get your strength back,” she told him.

     So Lieren hugged her father goodbye while she left to have breakfast in her quarters. As she passed the nurse station, the nurse overseeing her father’s care informed her that he would be released around noon. The nurse also reminded Lieren about her appointment for the installation of her neural interface. When the cadet returned from breakfast, the lavender-skinned Larissian took a seat in the medical bay’s waiting room next to a light-skinned, blonde Terran in standard uniform with armor sheathed over her right forearm. Both of them possessing shy dispositions, neither of them said a word to each other until they were both called by their full names simultaneously.

     “Lieren Souq, Krystal Zara,” a nurse called. The two stood and looked at each other for a moment before walking toward the nurse together. “Follow me,” she said as she led them down a corridor and to a medical officer’s examination room. Once inside, they were greeted by the chief medical officer herself: Doctor Iveti, a Yeran, wearing an unfastened lab coat over a dark gray bodysuit.

     “You’re both here for neural implants?” Iveti asked them. Krystal and Lieren nodded. Iveti pointed to Krystal and asked, “You’re swapping to Accellus Four, correct?” Krystal gave another nod. Directing her attention to Lieren, Iveti asked, “You don’t currently have one, correct?” Lieren also nodded. “Okay,” the medical officer said impatiently. “We have a million of these to do today, so go ahead and take off your clothes while I evaluate your health.” Lieren began unfastening her jacket while Krystal hesitated. The cadet had stripped down to her undergarments before Iveti told Krystal,” Remove your Accellus for me, please.” As soon as they were completely undressed, the nurse gave each of them a gown to slip over their naked bodies. Iveti’s medical scans confirmed their good health, and she walked with them through an airscreen to the operating room where another medical officer was waiting next to two vertical operating tables.

     “Lieren, your procedure will be performed by my assistant,” Iveti stated as she recalled her lab coat and replaced it with a gown. A sterilizing shield-scrubber passed over her as she talked. “You are going to stand on this platform,” she instructed, pointing the base of the table, “and you’re going to lie with your chest against the cushion and your face against this hole at the top.” The two did as they were told. When the two had positioned themselves appropriately, the tables angled themselves downward toward the horizontal. Lieren was given anesthetic first. Iveti could feel the tension in Krystal’s body, so she leaned down to speak softly in Krystal’s ear while she was still conscious.

     “I’m going to need you to remove your camouflage,” Iveti told her. “Don’t worry; your secret is safe with us. I’m going to take every precaution as the ones who gave you your Accellus Three NI. As you of course are aware, your anatomy makes this procedure much more difficult which is why I’m performing it myself.”

     Krystal disabled the advanced, Federation-designed shrouding system she wore behind each ear. Her hair transformed from blonde to a red fierier than Atara’s. Her silver eyes matched Atara’s green. Krystal’s auricles doubled in length, and a glowing, red circle appeared on the back of her neck just below where her NI was. Doctor Iveti applied a dosage of anesthetic a fraction of the strength of Lieren’s, and the elshi was out in three seconds.

     “How are you feeling?” a nurse asked Krystal as she came to her senses. Krystal immediately pulled a lock of her hair down in front of her eyes. It was blonde, and she sighed in relief.

     “How long was I asleep?” Krystal asked.

     “About four hours.”

     “What happened to the cadet?” She remembered the girl’s surname and had wanted to ask about any relation to Doctor Souq.

     “She left after the surgery.”

     When she realized she was still naked beneath a gown, she began scanning the room with her eyes until she found her Accellus boots.

     “May I get dressed?”

     “Of course,” said the nurse, “after which you are free to go if you’re feeling well.” The nurse exited the room. Krystal stepped her bare feet into her boots, removed the gown, and using the new NI for the first time, clothed herself in the standard uniform.

     The day after, Xannissa met with Lieren and the other eleven AOTP cadets in the heart of the Kelsor’s engineering department between the two hyperwarp cores and the mediator—the three of which formed the synerdrive system. By now, all of the cadets sported new Accellus 4 neural interfaces, but they were still relegated to wearing their non-REMASS cadet uniforms for the time being. Xannissa, as the principal mentor and overseer of the Kelsor’s cadets (which she eventually found out), sought to orient the cadets to actual starship life by exposing them to the state-of-the-art, technological wonderland within the battlecruiser which was underway on a real mission. Engineering was one of the more dangerous places to conduct a first meeting, but Xannissa couldn’t be bothered to consider any alternatives. She took pride in her career and area of expertise. Other engineering staff glanced at the group of officers-in-training as they carried out their work.

     “Good morning, cadets,” she said. “Allow me to formally welcome you aboard the Kelsor for her maiden voyage. I am Commander Xannissa Cetalo—chief engineer of this vessel. As engineers, our duty is to maintain vital ship systems such as propulsion, gravitics, life support, omnimics, and power generation as well as structural integrity, shielding, and weapons system functionality. Basically, we keep the ship running. These bowels you’re standing in house the seven plasma engines and their reactors, the four primary ODECs, four of the six large omnium reservoirs, and our incredible synerdrive: the first of its kind. Though multi-core hyperwarp systems have been tried, they have never worked until now. And it’s all thanks to the mediator,” she stated, pointing to the master synergistic drive regulator.

     “What is important about the mediator?” Lieren asked. It was times like these that her curiosity overwhelmed her shyness.

     “I am so glad you asked,” Xannissa said, beaming. “Normally, hyperwarp drives manipulating the same space interfere with each other, reducing performance and increasing energy expenditure. As a matter of fact, having two hyperwarp cores on the same ship would use more energy than the same hyperwarp cores mounted on two different ships—with marginal speed gains at best. The only way for a multi-core system to work effectively is for the two warp fields to be in perfectly-precise sync with each other. Even the smallest of natural perturbations is enough to throw two cores into chaos, so the mediator is essentially a computer—separate from the adjunct—that measures warp field perturbations and instructs both cores to correct for them nigh instantaneously a trillion times a second. What you find is that both drives use less power working together than they would have used separately, and, in the case of this ship, a twelve percent increase in hyperwarp top speed compared to standard speeds for other military vessels this size.

     “Now, maintaining starships is not a trivial task. Note the difference between maintaining and repairing. Supposing we haven’t seen combat of course, if a system reaches the point where it needs repair, we aren’t doing our jobs properly. As an engineering department, we have three lines of defense against malfunctions, and I’m not talking about shields. Can anyone here tell me what those are?”

     One of the cadets said, “Autorepair.”

     “Okay, that’s one,” Xannissa told them. “Autorepair is a specialized REMASS system that passively remodels and maintains most of the ship’s hull and armor. Can anyone think of another?”

     “What about the drones?” another cadet asked.

     “The drones, for sure. They’re small enough to fit in most places, and since they are controlled by the adjunct they know the ship better than any of us ever will. Plus, they are totally expendable. We put them to work on vital systems that autorepair can’t maintain. Someone tell me the last one.”

     After several seconds, Lieren said, “Visual inspection.”

     “Absolutely,” Xannissa said smiling. “At the end of the day, we need to know how to take care of this battlecruiser ourselves despite the technology aiding us. I have served in the Navy for about seven decades, and I can tell you that there will be a time when you will need to find and fix a problem yourself. We never crawl on our hands and feet through small spaces ripping panels off walls. We have gravitics and lumionics for moving around as well as sophisticated subspatial gravimeters—better known as mass scanners.” Xannissa held out her hand as she fabricated a small device.

     “This is a special type of mass scanner that we call a holostereographer. Follow me.” She shepherded the cadets to the nearest wall and attached the flat, circular device to it. After interacting with a lumionic interface, the holostereographer made the wall’s surface look like an active OPEL window into the conduits, pipes, electronics and support structure within the wall, all presented in false color that accentuated depth. “With this device,” she continued, “there is no place where we cannot peek into walls. Most other mass scanners work by detecting the motion of objects. This one detects objects that are not moving and has a very short range, so it can’t see straight through walls; only into them.” She disabled the device and recalled it into her suit’s omnium reservoir.

     “Are there any questions before we wrap up this part of our tour?” Xannissa asked them.

     “What motivated you to become an engineer?” Lieren asked. Xannissa paused for a moment.

     “I honestly wasn’t expecting a question like that,” the Elestan responded, laughing lightly. “As a child, I wasn’t very interested in toys. Actually, when I was four, I took apart our family’s REMASS system to try to figure out where all the things it made came from. My father was not impressed at all.” Xannissa laughed, and the cadets joined in, although nervously. “I grew up on Elestus, so Sister World snob. It was easy to get another one. But after that, the first thing my father fabricated was a tablet that he gave to me. On it was a copy of a book for teenagers about starships. I couldn’t understand most of the words, but it came with three-dee lumes that you could take apart and put back together. I took it to school when I first started, got it taken away many times, but when I was seven, we took our first interstellar flight. That’s what sold me. I love big machines, and I enjoy being around them; working on them.”

     Xannissa paused once more, realizing that despite those memories being over a hundred years old, she could remember them in astonishing detail. Eventually, she led the girls back to the lifts which ferried them to the next leg of their orientation.

     Meanwhile, Dr. Souq was alone in his quarters that had been provided for him upon his release from the medical bay. He wore his personal civilian REMASS clothing which he decided would be a light gray t-shirt and black pants. Because he was a civilian, he was discouraged—but not forbidden—from wandering the ship. He wasn’t interested in making more trouble for himself, so to preoccupy his mind, he sat at the desk in his bedroom and browsed the Subnet on a set of lumigraphs. When the door to his quarters was pinged, Souq felt a surge of happiness because of the anticipation he had of seeing his daughter again.

     “Lieren?” he asked.

     “Doctor Souq,” came an unfamiliar voice through a lumionic speaker.

     “Who are you?”

     “I’m Doctor Sayn Namara. May I enter?” Her tone was serious.

     “C-come in,” Souq said hesitantly. The woman who stepped through the door was not Lieren. Instead she was an Elestan with black hair in a ponytail. Like the physicians of the medical bay, she wore a white lab coat over her bodysuit, but her bodysuit was dark gray and plain. Souq stood from his chair when she strode in.

     “Doctor Quen Souq,” she said, extending her right arm to him, “I am the Kelsor’s chief science officer.” Souq grabbed her hand and they exchanged a cordial handshake. “Do you know why I’m here?” Souq released his hand.

     “I’m afraid I do not,” he told her. Namara let out a light sigh before pausing.

     “I need your permission to release your data.”

     “Is this about ecksivar?”

     Namara nodded. Souq slowly lowered himself back into the chair.

     “But that’s all classified,” he stated.

     “I am aware,” she told him, dropping the sensitive act. “I knew you would say that. Read this.” She opened a lumigraph, grabbed it with her fingers and brought it to his face where she let it go. As he skimmed it, he determined that it was a legitimate disclosure order from the Federation’s Military Advanced Research and Development Agency, otherwise referred to as MARAD. He was to hand over everything that he and Akkain Technologies had pertaining to ecksivar including data, facilities, equipment, and staff effective immediately.

     “Why are they doing this to me?” Souq asked softly. His voice trembled and his eyes were like glass. Namara crossed her arms as she waited for him to submit. “Don’t you understand? My lab was attacked. I lost everything! The only things I have left are my daughter and my data.”

     “You can keep your daughter,” she said with a sarcastic reassurance, “but that data was never yours.”

     “Then why are you asking for my permission?” he yelled. Namara was as unfazed as the psychologist on Mirida had been.

     “That data belongs to Akkain, but it’s logged in your name. Don’t make this any more difficult.”

     Souq brought a hand to his eyes, rubbed it back and forth a few times, and moved his hand down his lilac face and let it slip off his beard. His heart sank through the bottom bulkhead.

     “You know, this is the end of me, right?”

     Namara said nothing.

     Souq sighed loudly. He stamped his signature into the lumigraph, and it abruptly disappeared.

     “Thank you,” she told him before exiting his quarters, leaving him to quietly contemplate the remaining value of his life as he stared at the blank wall across from him.

Thousands of lightyears fringeward of the Kelsor, in an uninhabited star system deep within the Persean Rift, a herd of private refining barges grazed upon the crystals of water ice and dust of a vast planetary ring system orbiting a massive gas giant. The individual members of this thousand-strong herd were so distant from one another as to be invisible by the unaided eye, so they kept track of each other using a combination of optics and sensors. Each vessel used a focused, gravitic tractor system to propel streams of icy debris into a collector where it would be condensed and processed into a military synthevar of Alliance design. This omnium would then be compressed and shipped; destined for use as energy and building material for local Alliance development projects.

     The captain of one of the barges slouched down in his chair in the ventrally-located bridge. His arm dangled from its armrest. Between his fingers rested a smoldering cigarette that he lifted to his mouth periodically, taking a puff—the end glowing orange from the flow of fresh air—and then blowing a stream of smoke between his teeth. To the side of his view through the forward OPEL panels was a lumigraph playing programming carried over subspace, bouncing between transmitters for hundreds of lightyears. Despite being in Civilized Space, the distance from actual civilization was too great for Subnet reception. The program’s fidelity was low, and it muddled the picture and sound, but it was the best the captain had.

     The blue light from the distant star, filtered through the OPEL panels, was the only real illumination the bridge had. This kept the dingy, metal room bright in one half and very dim in the other. If the captain hadn’t been so preoccupied with the show he was watching, he might have noticed a bright sparkling from an object drifting among the field of crystals.

     “Captain,” a crew member said over EM-comms.

     The captain sighed and asked, “What is it, man?”

     “We, uh… we pulled something out of the matter stream. I think you should see this.”

     “Just send me a lume, will ya?” The captain returned to watching his show and took another puff of his cigarette. Two minutes later, a lumigraph appeared next to the captain’s video showing a picture of the metallic object. It appeared to be several meters long. The captain, immediately recognizing its shape, got up from his chair and walked down to matter processing. The object was certainly manmade, and it was none other than a Republic probe.

     Occupying about fifteen percent of the galaxy, Civilized Space is the region directly administered by any formal state government. Put another way, Civilized Space is the volume composed of the maximum extent of the ancient Miridan Empire and its colonial expansions, plus the development since then. Politics within Civilized Space are defined by three superpowers: the Federation, Republic, and Alliance.

     The Orionan Federal Republic occupies the minor arm of Orion and contains all six Sister Worlds. With a culture inspired by the late pre-interstellar and early interstellar Elestan and Zelnaran civilizations, the Federation leans matriarchal. Their government practices a type of hybrid democracy-technocracy, and the pressure of merit adds to the difficulty of an already competitive society. Overall, the Federation seeks knowledge above all and aggressively pursues technological superiority.

     The Peoples’ Interstellar Republic resides within Perseus, the arm of the galaxy fringeward of Orion and separated from the Federation by the relatively-sparse sea known as Thalassia Orionis. Operating under a unitary government, the Republic strives to maintain an egalitarian society presided over by a political oligarchy. Supporting a massive population compared to the other two, the Republic values service and overwhelming manpower.

     Also occupying Perseus, though further downspin from both the Federation and the Republic, is the confederation of states known as the Persean Corporate Alliance. Each “state” within the Alliance is actually a megacorporation that runs semi-independently from the others: performing its own administration, providing its own security, and maintaining its own currency, at least until about two centuries ago. In the current age, the Alliance has truly become a unified entity that desires prosperity and the accumulation of wealth.

     Five-thousand years ago, the Empire of Mirida established itself within modern Tribesson and grew to subsume all of downspin Orion. After the Miridan Civil War—still the costliest and deadliest war in recorded history—the Empire advanced technology and human biology to heights that are still marveled by present-day historians and scholars. The Miridans pioneered significant human life extension, warp, jump, gateways, and lumionics. The Miridan government coordinated wave after wave of expansion into Perseus and the more dangerous and denser Sagittarius. After a thousand years, this very expansion ultimately led to its violent collapse, plunging Civilized Space into an Age of Darkness followed by an Age of Conflict which has yielded to the current Age of Peace. Most academics believe Civilized Space finally surpassed the height of Miridan technology just five-hundred years ago, and leaps and bounds have been made since including REMASS, hyperwarp, VARICOR, and synthevars.

     Stability had been maintained by a mutual, three-way rivalry between the superpowers. Had war been declared by one upon a second, the third would have opportunistically engaged the first. But, when the Alliance ushered in greater unification, it encouraged the Federation and Republic to forge tighter cooperation with each other. Today, Civilized Space is separated by the Great Rift. On the upspin side sits the Federation and Republic; the downspin side the Alliance. The coreward region is referred to as the Orionan Rfit; the fringeward portion as the Persean Rift. Development within the Rift has largely been stifled by the three superpowers and remains backwater territory despite occupying the heart of Civilized Space.

     Feeling bolder against its neighbor as a result of its maturing partnership with the Federation, the Republic Navy engages in a perpetual conflict against the Alliance over claims to star systems within the Persean Rift. This conflict is dubbed the Invisible War for it resembles a formal war in nearly every way save formal declarations. To date, the Invisible War has claimed more lives than any other armed conflict in the Age of Peace.

     A pack of three Republic long-range missile cruisers lurked like hunters in the darkness one-and-a-half lightyears away in interstellar space. The captain of the lead vessel stood out of his seat and discussed the information displayed on two- and three-dimensional lumigraphs with his female first officer. As officers, both were dressed in gray uniforms complete with black neckties and belts, gray peaked hats, pants for males, skirts and black hose for females, gold buttons, gold trim, and endowed in several places with the blue Union Circle emblem of the Republic. Like most Republic vessels, their bridge was located deep within the ship.

     “Rellia,” the captain said. His voice had an accent unique to the Republic. A blue female figure with a striking resemblance to Fiori materialized as a three-dimensional lumigraph.

     “Sir?” Rellia responded. She stood at ease like a soldier.

     The captain paused for a moment to interrogate the lumigraph of the planet’s rings and the refining ships before ordering, “Can you give us a clean sweep of those rings?”

     “Firing solutions already calculated, captain,” Rellia said with a smile. “They account for sharing the targets between all three ships. This is the most efficient firing pattern.” The lumigraph changed to show warhead detonation sites covering most of the ring system. All of the refining vessels would be caught within the explosion radius of at least one missile.

     The captain turned to his first officer and said, “What do you think of this?”

     “Everything looks good,” the executive officer told him. “We should begin preparations immediately.”

     “You heard her, Rellia,” the captain stated.

     “Understood. Beginning launch preparations”

     Missile tube doors opened on the dorsal and ventral surfaces of each ship. There were forty such tubes per cruiser, and from each tube three missiles launched within eight seconds of each other. The ships became blossoming flowers of destruction as they surrounded themselves with rockets driven by plasma engines propelling warheads carefully containing pre-fabricated antimatter reservoirs. Bridge officers monitored the weapons as they more-or-less instantaneously activated their self-contained, miniature jump drives to close their distance to their targets in a matter of seconds. Nearby probes recorded the mass detonation of the warheads that created a halo of light around the planet where the rings had been just moments before. After the explosions subsided many minutes later, the probes showed that giant perforations now existed within the rings.

     “Verify the status of our targets,” the captain ordered.

    “So far,” the commander stated, “none remain.”