Chapter 1

SUBJECT: Oasis System Rift Gate Control, Spec. Carver

WARNING: UNSCHEDULED TRANSIT.

WARNING: TRANSPONDER INACTIVE.

WARNING: TRANSIT SPEED BELOW SAFE LIMITS.

“WARNING”, the transit console blared for the fourth time before being forcibly silenced by a harried Transit Control Officer Carver. “What in the fuck is this? Derrick, wake up and look at the console!” 

Derrick, Carver’s supposed shift supervisor, was fast asleep behind his station. The warnings and shouting apparently weren’t enough to break through his fancy new noise-cancelling headphones. Carver didn’t blame him- they regularly took turns sleeping through the long periods of nothing-to-do when there were gaps in the transit schedule. And there were always gaps out here.

Carver turned back to look at the console just as another warning sounded, this time for an automated comms hail being ignored by whoever just came through the gate. And sure enough, someone had come through. About 50 meters in front of the gate’s transit membrane sat a lone ship moving at an irresponsibly slow 12 meters per second. The computer helpfully marked it as “UNIDENTIFIED SHIP”. 

“Derrick!” Carver shouted again as he threw a stylus across the small workspace, hitting Derrick in the side of the head.

“AH! What…”, Derrick began to protest before his eyes caught the red flashing warnings emanating from his display. “What is this? How long have they been there?” Derrick asked soberly. He pulled the headphones off of his head and held them to his chest, his expression flashing from anger to shame to bewilderment.

“It just came through, and way too slow too. Computer has it at 12 meters a second.” Carver looked over the data coming in from the array of active sensors aboard the gate’s control center. “I’m not sure it’s a ship; the computer says it is but there’s not supposed to be anyone coming through for another what, almost six months? And there’s no transponder. Or drive signature. And it’s going crazy slow.”

“Yeah,” Derrick replied, “computer’s not getting a hull profile match either.” 

“WARNING”, both consoles lit up yet again, “SENSOR QUIET ZONE VIOLATION. BE ADVISED-“ Carver silenced the alert and quickly toggled off audible alarms.

Quiet zone violation? The damn thing is running a high power sensor sweep. You aren’t supposed to run active sensors this close to a rift gate, every spacer knows that. It’s outer space 101. Active sensors this close to other active sensors confuses everything. You’re also never supposed to transit without an approved flight plan. Or without a transponder. Or that damn slow.

“Okay it’s a ship,” Carver proclaimed while selecting the unidentified ship icon on his display and hitting the comms button. “Unidentified ship, this is the Oasis system rift gate control center. Disable active sensors and identify yourself.” Carver turned back to look at Derrick, who gave an unhelpful shrug and silently mouthed I don’t know. Carver pressed down the comms button again, “if you are suffering a communications failure, accelerate to 500 meters per second heading towards the formation of safe haven navigation buoys.” 

Carver lifted his finger off the comms button and turned his head to face Derrick. “This doesn’t make any sense, this is like the last place you just wander into. It takes forever to get here and for what?” Both men stared at each other, the whole situation being entirely bizarre. The Oasis system is basically a dead end rest stop. Oasis III, the system’s one borderline-habitable planet had at one time been a promising candidate for colonization, but now the whole place is on lockdown for biological hazards. It never even got it’s own name. Smugglers don’t even come into the system. Every six standard months a supply convoy for the fleet security flotilla comes through, and the occasional group of fleet ships stop by on their journey to the furthest reaches of known space, but they always have a scheduled transit time. Not only that, but to get to the rift gate you’d have to travel for months in rift space, and there’s nothing else out this far. It’s not like you miss your exit and use Oasis to turn around.

“Alright, I’m hailing Captain Russo.” Derrick was standing now and tucking in his uniform shirt, not wanting to embarrass himself in front of a fleet captain on his first day of real work since rotating into this post. “I’m thinking the ship has a bunch of structural damage or something, and thats why it’s flying so slow and the computer can’t recognize it. They’re probably going active sensors to warn other ships that they’re flying around out here. I think they probably need rescue.”

“Yeah, that seems plausible,” Carver turned to his workstation monitors and toggled the display from the simplified transit control view to the optical sensor view. LiDAR and hyper spectral sensor data from the safe haven buoys and the control center’s sensor clusters painted a three-dimensional view of the unidentified ship. Derrick started talking to some member of Russo’s staff over the comm link; Carver tuned it out and zoomed in on the view of the ship.

It was unlike anything Carver had seen before. Humanity had been building space going ships for a long time and the general design philosophy hadn’t changed much. Longer than they are wide. Engines at the rear. Studded with navigational lights and fuel tanks and cargo containers. This ship wasn’t like that at all. It looked like some sort of mutated sea creature, like an octopus with its tentacles fully extended and angled backwards away from a tiny head. It was totally chaotic at first glance, but the more Carver looked at it the more symmetry revealed itself. Twelve limbs, with some sort of protrusion sticking forwarding from the joints between each pair. A rough cylinder in the middle with what looked like hundreds of tiny antenna sticking out of the front of it. Carver zoomed in to get a better look. 

Suddenly, the ship turned invisible. Carver shook his head in disbelief and changed the display back to transit control view, which was a simplified view of space around the rift gate. A red banner lit up around the console and a red exclamation mark with the text MAXIMUM SAFE SPEED EXCEEDED flashed in red characters next to the unidentified craft. In the space of a blink the thing had gone from basically a standstill to careening dangerously towards the safe haven buoys, way too fast to slow down in time to make use of the designated rescue space. 

“Holy hell, yeah! Get Russo on this!” Carver looked at the readout again, not believing his eyes. There’s no engine signature! It’s not just that the computer doesn’t recognize it; there’s no engine signature at all. The ship’s drive was, apparently, reactionless, exotic. Another warning flashed on the console, a second ship emerged from the rift gate in the same spot the first had entered. This one also traveling at a snails pace. No transponder, no nav lights, nothing normal at all. 

The control room lit up with red light. Derrick had hit the station lockdown, apparently startled by the sudden activity. It didn’t seem real to Carver. This is like some kind of weird dream he thought, where logic doesn’t exist. This had been the most boring post of his career by a long shot. So boring, in fact, that his previous supervisor with the Transit Authority had practically begged him to take the post and offered bonuses and perks for taking a short-term rotation, only three years instead of the standard five. It seemed like a great deal at the time. It did not seem like a deal at all anymore. 

The door to the control center cycled open and three angry looking people stormed in, the other shift’s control officers and the station engineer. Derrick stood, turned to face them, and then straightened and rolled back his shoulders in an active attempt to fix his posture. He spoke, “two unidentified ships have come through the gate without filing flight plans. One just shot off towards the safe haven and the other is lingering around the transit membrane. The fast one has a reactionless drive, I guess. No engine plume. They’re both extremely weird.”

The anger melted off the other crew as realization of the potential of the situation settled in their minds. Everyone started talking at once, the other shift supervisor hurriedly giving advice to Derrick while the engineer yelled about the active sensors. The other shift’s transit officer, Carver’s peer, kept asking to the room, “are they fleet ships? Have we asked if they’re fleet ships?” Carver’s attention was drawn back to the monitor. 

The second ship had now zoomed off towards the first, which had pulled off a miraculous deceleration, stopping a few dozen kilometers from the safe haven. A unidentified weird ship had taken it’s place by the transit membrane. Captain Russo, the squadron commander for the three fleet ships that made up the gate’s security detachment, was apparently aware of the situation now. Carver could hear him talking loudly over Derrick’s workstation comm link while Derrick tried to brief both him and the other shift at the same time. It wasn’t going well. 

Carver had always held pride in how well he’d done his job as a transit officer. He’d held a five year rotation on a central system gate right out of the academy and was on a supervisory track. Controlling traffic on a busy gate network was a high-stress adventure in problem solving; everyday a different puzzle to be solved. It was mentally exhausting, but personally rewarding. Carver took a great deal of satisfaction in making order out of the chaos. And now, even though the situation was completely unprecedented for Oasis, the professional side of himself that Carver hadn’t needed since arriving in system took over. 

He immediately flagged the space around the gate network as a no-fly security zone, and got to work coordinating the system. He sent a priority notification to the rest of the fleet back at Oasis III and opened a direct SAECOM channel, the FTL communications system he was the hub operator for in Oasis, between Russo’s squadron and the flotilla’s admiral. He started preparing a sensor data package to send out to everyone, but just as he started choosing data to attach, a warning lit up across the screen. The room went silent.

WARNING! WEAPONS DISCHARGE IN SECURITY ZONE.

The first and second of the weird ships had stopped, flanking two sides of the safe haven buoys. The third ship was accelerating towards them, while a fourth ship had come through the gate. The first two ships were firing on the buoys with some sort of beam weapon. Each shot erasing the targeted buoy from existence. 

Captain Russo’s squadron of three ships normally loitered around the gate in a loose formation intended for a rescue operation. It had been years since an actual security action had taken place in the system, and, until just a few minutes ago it seemed unlikely that one would happen again. All three ships started turning towards the intruders, burning their main engines and RCS thrusters. 

Triton, a frigate, normally waited about 200 kilometers out and another hundred kilometers spinward from the edge of the controlled space around the front of the gate. It was the closest to the unidentified ships. From behind the gate, the patrol cruiser Warlock with Captain Russo aboard started burning for a better angle on the intruders while the last ship, an ancient destroyer, waited from a vantage point directly in front of the gate a few thousand kilometers away. 

The first two unidentified ships finished destroying the dozen buoys and then turned towards Russo’s ship, which was just starting to crest over the top of the huge, flat disc that was the rift gate. The other two ships formed together and angled towards the Triton. A fifth unidentified ship came through the gate at a snails pace. Warnings floated across the screen. Everyone was still, watching in feverish anticipation. 

The fighting started, and ended, in an instant. The unidentified intruders fired beam weapons at the Triton, cutting it in half lengthwise. The Warlock crested over the top of the gate and was hit by a beam amidship by the fifth intruder that had just come through, and was then speared longways down the middle by another beam. The energy beams fired by the intruders pulsed on and off like a strobe light and danced side to side as it burned through it’s target. The ships of the security squadron were ripped into pieces instantly, their thick armor apparently presenting no meaningful defense against the energy weapon unleashed on them.

Carver’s mouth went dry and his vision narrowed. Panic edged around his senses. This could NOT be happening. Oasis, out on the edge of fucking nowhere was under attack by something, some unknown bunch of freak ships shaped like goddamn squids or something. Why here? It does’t make any sense! There’s nothing here! And out of the rift? That’s entirely unheard of. The rift lane connecting Oasis to the Dominion is a pocket dimension, there’s nothing alive in there. That meant that these ships must have come through a gate in another human system, but there hadn't been any warning. All the gates are connected with FTL comms, there would have been a warning if another gate was under attack. How was this happening?

The third and final surviving member of the security fleet, the destroyer Palisade, launched a barrage of missiles at the two intruder ships closest to it and fired it’s massive spinally mounted railgun. The railgun dart hit one of the intruder ships and blew two of it’s tentacle-like arms off. A spray of dozens of small objects emerged from the other intruder ship and raced towards the missiles. Just before impact with the missiles, the objects detonated into a pulse of energy that detonated the missiles’ warheads. The Palisade launched another flurry of missiles and fired it’s big railgun again, hitting the damaged intruder ship a second time and scattering it into a half-dozen pieces. A sixth intruder ship came through the gate. They all rushed towards the Palisade.

“STOP!” A woman’s voice cried out, Carver turned to see Kate, the A-shift supervisor pointing a finger at Derrick. “These are fucking alien ships and you know it. Look at them! They have reaction-less drives that are way faster than ours! And those energy beam weapons are killing our ships in a single shot! We have to pull the failsafe!”

She was right, Carver didn’t want to face it, for fear that thinking of it might somehow manifest it into being true. Oasis was under attack by unknown alien warships. They completely and utterly outclassed the fleet ships put here to protect this system. And they came out of the rift. The procedure for this occasion is pretty straightforward; warn everyone and destroy the gate to deny the enemy of one of humanity’s greatest assets, and access to the rest of the Dominion. 

“Self destruct the station? Are you fucking crazy? Kill ourselves? We don’t even know what’s happening out there!” Derrick screamed at Kate. He was manic. Panicking. 

“They’re coming through the gate, we have to shut it down! If we stop it now we give the rest of the fleet a chance to get organized and fight them!” Kate yelled back. Carver looked at his monitor, in the handful of seconds he had turned to watch the argument unfold he’d missed the demise of the Palisade, which was now in three different sections floating aimlessly away from each other. One of the alien ships fired it’s beam, cutting the pieces into smaller and smaller sections. A seventh alien ship had come through while they were distracted.

“She’s right”, Carver said, his voice far too quiet for anyone to hear. Carver cleared his voice and shouted to be heard, “she’s right! Kate’s right! Russo is dead, whoever these fuckers are they’re still coming, one at a time. If we don’t shut this thing down now who knows how many will come through?”

“Oh I can’t believe this! Carver! You’re supposed to-“, Derrick began but trailed off as his eyes turned to the destruction on his workstation display. They were alone, standing against an apparently endless horde of alien ships. He looked up at Carver, eyes wide. “I’m supposed to- I-,” Derrick scrunched his face and then looked at the ceiling and let out a half-sigh, half-cry. He knew they were right.

Carver turned back to his station. Kate ran to his side. 

“Did you send a sensor package to the admiral?” Kate questioned.

“Yeah, sent. And I sent a mayday back to the central system with sensor data from the battle,” Carver responded.

“Has anyone responded to you?” Kate’s eyes were intense and determined.

“No. Not yet. I have confirmed receipt from both the fleet and the central system, but no one has said anything back yet.” Carver met her gaze with his own best impression of stoicism. 

“They’re probably trying to sift through the data. No one is expecting this. We have to do it now.”

Yeah, the failsafe. We have to do it now. An eighth ship came through the gate. Five of the functional alien warships had finished killing everything to their liking and had formed into a circular cluster around the gate. A sixth was edging in close to the gate’s control center, less than a hundred kilometers away and getting closer. 

 Carver was an exceptional transit officer. He always brought order to chaos. He always did the right thing, even when it was the hard thing. The failsafe was four nuclear devices built into the gate’s ring like structure, with one directly under the control superstructure. Four was overkill, the rift gate was a fragile creation.

Carver stared down the approaching alien ship like a predator about to leap on his prey. He pushed the failsafe key into a slot on the side of his terminal. Kate did the same with hers. They turned their keys in unison, no hesitation.

In an instant, the gate was annihilated by nuclear fire. With it, any meaningful connection between Oasis and the Dominion was gone, severed. The approaching alien ship dying alongside the doorway back home. Oasis, the furthest point of human control in the galaxy was now entirely cut off from the rest of the Dominion. 

The remaining six alien ships formed together, and began sliding down the gravity well.

Chapter 2

Subject: Security Sergeant Madison “Maddy” Turner, Oasis III. New Carthage.

The first thing Maddy noticed about the planet was the heat. Walking out of the New Carthage Spaceport and towards the taxi area, Maddy glanced at her smartlink. Not even 0900 and it’s already absolutely sweltering. Her device sounded a wet-bulb warning; something that would normally cause fleet marines and normal colonists a great deal of concern, but, she wasn’t really a fleet marine anymore, and no one around here could be considered ‘normal’ either.

The second thing was the smell. The whole system was apparently named ‘Oasis’ without a single helmet-off survey of it’s single habitable planet. The entire equator of the planet was one uninterrupted landmass filled with an incredibly diverse and virulent cacophony of bizarre creatures, their endless cycle of death, decay, and rebirth filled the air with a bizarre stench. Like someone had microwaved a giant bowl of rotten pear soup.

The landscape around New Carthage was was a patchy mishmash of rock strewn savannah intermixed with pockets of extremely dense and lush tropical growth. A mishmash of plant analogues that apparently thrived in the insane heat and humidity grew up to the sides of the city. The plants here were entirely unlike the Terran variety that was ubiquitous in Dominion space; Maddy lost her self staring at the horizon of red, blue, and purple forests.

“Hey!” A young security officer shouted at her from aside a parked pickup truck. “You must be the new sergeant, yeah? Turner right?”

“Yup, that’s me”, Maddy replied, tearing herself away from the alien world and back to her assignment. She turned to walk towards him, dragging two massive duffel bags just behind her. “You’re with the science group security team?”

The young man smiled a toothy grin. His uniform was the gray, black, and olive green of the Scientific Advancement Section Security Force, but worn down and faded. Despite being in the center of town, he wore light body armor and carried a sidearm. His smile made him look amiable and  genuinely happy.

“Yeauuhp, I’m with them! And your taxi driver and bag carrier too,” he grabbed one of the huge bags and threw it into the back of the pickup with a grunt. Maddy leveraged the other one off the back of the pickup’s bed and slid it in. 

“You normally drive town in full kit?” Maddy asked, surprised that he was geared up like so around town. Her briefing on the planet had been relatively short and primarily focused on the big native fauna her new team was supposed to keep away from the scientists, not local issues. 

“Yeah its those fuckin’ animals you know. Anyway, name’s Felix!” Felix stuck his hand out for a shake, Maddy reciprocated. 

“The uh, fauna gets inside the city?” Maddy asked, shaking his hand.

“No the fuckin’ uh, zoo animals. They gave you the run down right? Told you about the goddamn zombies? The animals?” Felix closed the tailgate on the truck and turned to walk towards the driver’s side, but stopped and gave Maddy a sidelong glance. 

“Nobody mentioned anything about a zoo. I have a huge packet of stuff on the hazardous fauna on the smartlink they gave me on the station. I’ve been reading through it on the shuttle ride but I didn’t get to whatever you’re talking about yet.” 

Felix smiled and started walking towards the front of the truck, ah yeah they act like everything is a big goddamn secret, even when it’s your job to know. Get in and I’ll tell you what’s up on the drive.”

Maddy complied and climbed into the passenger seat of the truck. It was a spartan, military model with an extremely sparse interior and horribly uncomfortable seats. Felix gave it a bit too much gas and the truck rocketed onto the main street. There was no traffic, which was apparently common given the carelessness of Felix’s driving. 

Maddy looked around, the calm striking her as unusual. All around were brutalist, concrete structures and simple two-lane roads. There weren’t any cars on the roads or people on the sidewalks. Even the spaceport had been slow; Maddy was the only passenger on the trip, the rest of the shuttle down from the orbital station had been loaded with cargo. Light shuttles were parked at the spaceport, but apparently in storage, or out of service. 

“Anyway so here’s the lowdown on the animals. So about uh, right after the ISD decided to bail on the colony here. You know maybe like nine-ten years ago or so, a bunch of scientists and lab-coat guys from the hospital got together out past the barrier and started cooking up a bunch of weird drugs, right? Wild shit! Right?” Felix smiled conspiratorially, apparently relishing the opportunity to tell someone new about the local lore. “The story is they used like venom and poison and everything from the local wildlife to make the drugs, okay? Right?”

“Okay.” Maddy agreed, looking out the window. The brutalist structures apparently only consisted of a few blocks around the spaceport. The town now looked like it was almost entirely made up of those single story modular habitation units they use for setting up the first wave of a new colony. Temporary structures, meant to be used for a few years while the first few batches of colonists built something a more permanent. Colonists moved between makeshift shops, bazars, and sidewalk restaurants. Their clothes worn and faded.

“Yeah so the shit they were making is wild, everyone gets hooked on it. Whole new economy, BAM! Like that!” Felix kept looking over at Maddy while he drove, it made her nervous. “And the thing is it almost fucking kills you, but since the colonists all have those medical nanobots in order to be here, they can’t actually die from it. But it ruins your mind, you know? So there’s all these fucking animals wandering around like zombies stealing everything so they can buy more zoo. Oh, they call it- the drugs from he venom and shit, they call it zoo, because it’s made out of the fauna here, right? And the users are animals. Zoo animals, you get it?” Felix chuckled. 

“Okay, so there’s local crime to worry about too then?” Maddy asked, switching into data gathering mode.

“Nah, they’re nothing to worry about just so long as you don’t look like a victim. They’ll steal shit but they ain’t gonna do much more than that. You’ll see, they’re all worn out anyway. God don’t make strong zoo animals.” Felix’s grin never wavered. The truck smashed through a pothole, sending both of them bouncing around inside the truck. 

A moment of silence passed between the two, and Maddy used the opportunity to take a closer look at the passing buildings. All temporary structures outside of the handful of concrete buildings in the city core. All clearly used well past their intended lifespans. Most of them had layers of ad-hoc repair work keeping them together. It looked like a shanty town. No surprise that there’d be a drug problem here. 

“What a shithole”, Maddy muttered. 

“Yeah you call it like you see it!” Felix laughed out in reply. The truck pulled up in front of a remarkably permanent looking structure, shitty though it is. It looked like an old style fire station, with a handful bays in front for land vehicles and an office off to one side. All of the windows were covered in armored steel shutters, and mismatched and weathered paint covered the outside like a mosaic of a decade’s worth of graffiti and hastily done coverup. One of the bays opened and Felix drove the truck inside. 

“Come on!” Felix turned off the truck and jumped out. “I’ll take to meet the team! Almost everyone should be here. I’ll help with your stuff.”

Felix and Maddy walked to the back of the truck. The building, apparently the security headquarters, had four bays. Two of them had some type of open cab all-terrain buggies parked in them, the third had the truck they’d rode on, and the fourth held a massive, jet-black infantry fighting vehicle that bristled with barrels and armaments. Maddy recognized the logo on the side armor playing as the security unit logo that adorned the patches on her new uniforms. A cartoon snake was painted on the side of the front armored plate, coiled and lunging. The words ‘Black Mamba’ in cartoon script sat next to the snake. Huge white block letters spelled out RESEARCH down the side of the thing. Armored Personnel Science Mobile; Maddy thought, absolutely absurd.

Felix grabbed one bag and Maddy slid the other out of the truck bed and followed Felix through the bay. It was noticeably cooler inside, and didn’t stink like rotten fruit. They walked into a room that looked a like a common space. A huge kitchen sat next to an open living room of sorts filled with couches and recliners. Some type of huge gun sat partially disassembled on the coffee table in front of a wall display. About a dozen people milled about the space, each wearing some variation of the security uniform pants and jackets she’d been issued, but apparently as casual wear. This is a lot of new folks to meet at once, Maddy thought as a sudden wave of shy, nervous energy washed over her. 

Felix cut through the awkwardness and announced her introduction to the whole group. “This is the new sergeant from the fleet marines! Sergeant Turner!” 

A mass of people turned to look and a choir of voices offered greetings. An extremely clean cut older man with a huge, wild mustache and skeletal, gaunt face strode over, a snake-like grin on his face. “Sergeant Turner! I’m Chief. Welcome to our domain.” He took Maddy’s hand and shook, just a bit too hard to be totally polite. His smile changed slightly, rising from his mouth to include his eyes. “I’m happy you’re finally here. You and I have a lot of work to do.” 

Chapter 3

Subject: Rear Admiral Sven Nilson, Oasis System Security Flotilla.

“What do you mean it’s gone? How does the gate become ‘gone’, Ensign?” Admiral Nilson was at a loss. A distress call had come in from the rift gate operations center, but it had come buried in a mountain of sensor data and logs. Far too much for him to sift through personally; that’s what a bridge crew is for. The communications officer before him paled somewhat, eyes darting side to side in panic. Admiral Nilson let out a long sigh as the ensign stammered. “Look, just summarize the message and let me know what Captain Russo needs to take care of it.” The junior officer looked like he was about to vomit.

“The gate was attacked, sir,” the ensign’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “Ships came through the gate and attacked Captain Russo. Gate operators self destructed the gate to stop more from coming through. SAECOM is down. Captain Russo’s squadron is dead. We haven’t confirmed with our sensors yet, of course. We only have light speed comms now. Sir.” 

Nilson stiffened. “I see,” he said. A billion thoughts ran through his mind at the same time. “Forward the sensor data to intel. Did the gate operators notify fleet command before pulling failsafes?” 

“Yes sir. They sent the same message to us and fleet command and another third group the system labeled as ‘classified’.” The ensign had his footing now and was apparently eased by the Admiral’s matter of fact questioning and apparent total calm. Nilson was anything but calm and was shocked at how steady his voice sounded. 

“Dismissed ensign, I’ll take it from here.” Nilson picked up his coffee and strode out of the mess, heading for the command deck. With his unladen hand he pulled his smartlink device out of a pocket and sent a comms request to the intelligence department head. 

“Sir!” She answered almost immediately. 

“Is it true? Are we under attack? Is Russo dead?” Nilson asked. Rumors had a way of getting blown out of proportion between the gate and all the way down the well. 

“Sir, sensor data shows eight unidentified ships coming through the gate at even intervals. They engaged Russo’s squadron and destroyed them with close range energy beam weapons. The Palisade either killed or badly damaged one of the unknown ships with two railgun strikes. Another was very near the gate control center when the self destruct occurred. We believe the unknown ships are alien in origin, sir. The Bastion’s systems can’t identify them, it’s defaulted to calling them ‘Adversary’.” 

“And the gate, it’s gone?” Nilson held his breath after asking it. 

“Total loss. SAECOM with it. A distress call went out to fleet command and a classified element that we are looking into.” The woman’s tone changed to be straight matter-of-fact, “we’re breaking down the combat data but it isn’t looking good. They killed our ships in just a couple of hits and we’re totally cut off and are relying on light speed comms and sensors. The relay for the whole system’s FTL comms ran through the gate’s operations center and it’s gone.”

“Thank you Lieutenant Commander. Send the battle data to tactical and my terminal on the bridge, and get ready to forward everything to the rest of the flotilla. Get me a profile on those adversary ships and start looking into the finer details on how our weapons performed against them.” Nilson dropped the call and immediately scrolled to the Bastion’s executive officer. 

“Uh, hello?” A tired voice answered after a solid minute of ringing.

“God damnit Commander! We might be a fucking discount bin flotilla but we are still in the fucking navy. Answer the comm like a goddamn XO.” Silence met him on the other line. Nilson sighed. “Shit has hit the fan and Russo is dead. Everything is fucked. Get to the bridge and check your messages. I’m forwarding everything to you.” Nilson dropped the call and stopped. He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his thinning hair. Tactical pause, he reminded himself, don’t freak out, take a tactical pause and think it through. 

“Okay, let’s do this,” Nilson said to no one and walked onto the bridge. This ship, the Bastion, is one of the few ships in the flotilla designed around modern combat doctrine, and he was quick to snag it as his flagship when it came available. The context was unusual, the ship’s former captain had a meltdown on a classified mission somewhere on the fringes a few jumps away from the Oasis system and found himself disappeared by Systems Intelligence, but Nilson was happy to have a real flagship regardless of the previous captain. 

The ship’s XO, an underachieving cousin of some politician back in the center systems, fell into his spot through pure nepotism. It only made sense to crush his dreams of being a captain and pull double duty as the captain and admiral for the tiny security flotilla that was his fleet. Nilson couldn’t imagine what it would be like to command the ship through such a fucked up intermediary as the XO he now had to drag along behind him.

The bridge of the Bastion was a half circle arrangement, with a row of workstations facing inward for easy communication between the ship’s captain and the various critical departments. In the center of the half circle lay a holographic display that the ship’s captain could manipulate with gestures and voice commands to get a big picture of the system, run combat simulations, and send orders to the fleet. 

The second Admiral Nilson walked on the bridge, everyone fell silent and turned to him, like a beehive suddenly stopped in time, with hurried conversations cut off mid sentence. 

“General quarters, flotilla wide,” Nilson stated flatly to the room, making eye contact with the comms department head. “There’s a half dozen adversarial alien ships somewhere on the outer edge of the system an we need to go kill them.” 

A flurry of activity broke out as soon as he finished talking. Alarm’s sounded and the ship’s public address system keyed on. “GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTER! ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS. HOSTILE CONTACTS CONFIRMED IN THE OUTER SYSTEM. SET CONDITION ORANGE!”

Nilson would have rolled his eyes at how scared the announcement sounded, but truthfully, he was scared shitless too. Nilson strode up to the combat information display and pulled up a simplified system overview. 

The Oasis system had a security flotilla that had been whittled down from an actual fleet of around three-dozen ships to what it currently consisted of, either twelve or fifteen warships, depending on who’s counting. Three of the ships were docked permanently for repairs that would never come at Oasis’s mostly-shuddered orbital station. Further, Russo had three that were now dead. That leaves a combat capable group of nine warships. Four in orbit around Oasis III’s largest moon and five more either orbiting Oasis III itself proximal to the station, or docked to it. 

Nilson was in command of the only real modern warship of the bunch. The Bastion is a heavy cruiser; full of piss and vinegar. Heavy armor plating, twin spinal railguns, a full complement of missile tubes, and an array of coilguns. Three of the remaining eight that could fight were older patrol cruisers, a class of warship that was designed to be a sort of jack-of-all-trades with an emphasis on endurance. Fast ships with a ton of missiles and good sensors, but lacking in armor and close in weapons. Great for patrolling the frontier, not great for fleet combat. Two were older destroyers like the now dead Palisade, and the remaining three are frigates with a kitchen-sink assortment of weapons systems and sensors kludged on by whatever discount shipyard got the refurbishment contract for warships destined for systems the Dominion didn’t care about anymore. They wouldn’t be much help. 

Nilson formed three squadrons out of the mess of ships. The frigates would be left around Oasis III to defend the station. The two destroyers would form their own squadron, and the three patrol cruisers would form up with the Bastion. Nilson knew he was going to have to do most of the work with the cruisers, but maybe he could put those destroyers behind something and have them run dark, maybe drive the adversary into a trap…

Commander Davis, the Bastion’s XO, strode up and took his post. He looked like shit. 

“Davis, read through the summaries and take point on answering requests from the other ships in the flotilla,” Nilson said without turning back to look at him a second time. 

“You got it,” Davis responded meekly. Nilson cringed at the informality and ground his teeth. He hated being left with the dregs of the fleet, but, he reasoned, if there was anywhere to stick a politically appointed worthless officer and a bunch of half-functional frankensteins monster warships it would be Oasis, the system where nothing happens. Until now, apparently. 

“We gonna let the administrator know?” Davis asked. It wasn’t a terrible question, and it had crossed Nilson’s mind. Oasis III had a population of just under a hundred thousand  people, and it had a semi-functioning corporate government. They would lose their minds and be up his ass constantly if he told them aliens were attacking.

“Great initiative Davis! Let the administrator know that there’s a potential security issue near the gate and the fleet will be responding. Let him know that the details aren’t confirmed yet, but that we have lost FTL comms and are going to investigate further. Don’t mention aliens unless you want to be giving hourly updates every hour until this is over. You got it?”

Davis paled for a moment, then seemed lost in thought. Probably debating whether he’d ever share initiative again, Nilson mused. To Nilson’s surprise, Davis winked at him. 

“Got it. I’ll let him know we’re going on a milk run.” Davis said in a self satisfied tone. 

“Alright,” Nilson started thinking out loud, manipulating the ships on his display and preparing to get the fleet underway. “Nav, I’m dropping a course that will put the destroyers in orbit around Oasis V while we head up the well counterspinward. Make it as quick and efficient as possible. Intel, work with those destroyers to keep them as silent as possible. They’re our ace in the hole and I want them to be a surprise for the enemy. Tactical, study that combat data and see if you can come up with some options for killing those ships once we get close. Ops, get with engineering and get an updated fleet wide readiness report.” Every department head answered with a crisp “aye sir" and got right to work. 

Nilson was about to ask Davis to put together a personnel schedule to make sure the crew didn’t get burned out on the trip out, but thought better of it at the last second. “Ops, you better put together a schedule for the crew too. Let’s not exhaust the crew on the trip up the well.” 

Nilson looked around the bridge compartment, each station was a flurry of activity as the crew came together to get the fleet ready to fight. Even Davis was working on something. God help us when we find those ships, he thought, but didn’t dare say it aloud. 

Chapter 4

Subject: Maddy

Maddy spent the two days since arriving in New Carthage entirely within the confines of the security headquarters getting acquainted with the team, the equipment, and the paperwork. Worst was the paperwork. This was a federal operation being conducted on a corporate world where everything, every person, building, tree, rock, and mote of dust belonged to a company that didn’t care to know it existed until you broke it and owed them money. Granted, federal law is such that Maddy could use the corporate-owned rock to beat the corporate-owned worker to death and it would be perfectly legal with the right combination of words, but those words would belong on at least three reports. 

The headquarters, as it turned out, actually was an old fire station. One of the first assignments the original group of settlers on Oasis III had was to build out a set of required permanent structures for the rest of the colony to develop around. A spaceport, a hospital, some administrative buildings, a police station, and a handful of fire stations were built using imported materials and concrete printers. The printers had been bought by a startup that wanted to do some biological research and two labs were built, one way out past the barrier, and the other in the downtown core by the hospital. The startup had gone under and the fire station was abandoned back when everyone started getting sick and the colonization effort was abandoned, but the Scientific Advancement Section stepped in to carry on the research and elected to keep one of the buildings. 

The feelings of being out of place were profound. Maddy wasn’t anti-social, but typically had few close friends and wasn’t a party going type. She wasn’t really shy so much as she was introverted. It took her a while to open up, so, of course, meeting the dozen new other people at the headquarters was awkward and uncomfortable and Maddy tried to find things to focus on to keep herself occupied and out of the spotlight. She was supposed to be a team sergeant, third in command of security overall, and in charge of five other people. She hated that her impulse was to turn away from them and try to not engage, but it was always tough coming into a group that’s clearly very tight knit, and you aren’t one of them. Even worse, you’re their boss.

Felix had been assigned to be her tour guide. Apparently, he’d volunteered to be the staff “educator”, a dubious position that he took extremely seriously.

“Look at this shit here,” he’d said, smiling proudly as he held up a battered clipboard with a ream of paperwork clipped to it. The first page was apparently his own handmade qualifications checklist for a new security officer. He had tasks such as, ‘rites reports good enough for now’, ‘is on sight on time’, and ‘understands manual’. The next several dozen pages were the manufacturer’s user manual for the service pistol they’d all been issued. “This kinda shit’s how we level up and become for real,” he’d said. 

Maddy silenced her inner critic and let him have the win. Felix was a good kid, and probably one of the few people in the security team that was actually happy to be a part of it. Everyone else seemed like they were there as some sort of punishment; and knowing how Maddy had gotten there, that was probably true to some extent. Dad, in particular, seemed like he was about to snap at any minute. 

Oh, and that was another thing. Everyone had some stupid-ass nickname. ‘Dad’ was called Dad because he was older than everyone by probably at least two decades; but despite his age he seemed to be in fantastic physical shape. One of those guys that had internalized PT during his service and never let it slip. He was also quiet, keeping to himself under almost all circumstances. Maddy could tell she’d probably get along with him if he ever decided to open up, but if he didn’t, that’d be just fine too.

Then there was Peanut, shorter than almost everyone but just as wide and all muscle. Maddy hadn’t seem him use the station’s gym at all; it had to be synthetic. He seemed nice enough, but got frustrated quickly and was constantly sighing. Everything he said sounded like he’d just woken up from a nap to say it. 

Two-feet was a dopey looking bastard. Not dopey like malformed, but dopey like he stopped caring. His hair was too long for regulations and he had a lame, whispy beard and always seemed to be dirty. When Maddy asked why his name was ‘two-feet’, Dad started laughing uncontrollably and Peanut yelled out, “because he has two fucking feet!” And joined Dad in his reverie. 

Felix whispered conspiratorially in her ear, “it’s because he ain’t pay attention for shit. Doesn’t look more than two-feet in front of him. I dunno exactly what ‘feet’ has to do with anything, but that’s what Chief said when picked his new callsign. He’s in the shit right now.” Two-feet didn’t say anything to his defense. 

Last on her new team of five was Gremlin. The only other woman, or at least, Maddy thought ‘woman’ was a mostly safe guess. Gremlin was apparently called Gremlin because of her short stature and generally haphazard nature. She “runs around like a fuckin’ gremlin,” Peanut had explained. Gremlin always wore a sneer and said weird shit at weird times. It was hard to explain, you just had to see it.

Everyone seemed like a bunch of fuckups, as far as Maddy could tell. Dad looked military and should have retired from it long ago by now, Peanut abused the hell out of the juice, Felix was trying too hard, Two-feet didn’t try at all, and Gremlin was, well… a fucking Gremlin. Maddy tried to press on what brought each of them to New Carthage, but it turned around on her and got weird quick. 

“It’s a way better job than working the fucking docks,” Felix said, then turned and asked, “what brought you from the Marines?”

“I got sick, needed the implant,” Maddy had been about to explain how she’d had to extend her enlistment contract another ten standard years subjective, and de-rated her salary to cover the initial surgery, but the silence and guilty eye contact from the entire team at once made her stop at the short version. 

It didn’t escape Maddy’s notice that the other half of the security team, Team 1, looked mostly squared away. Not like, Fleet Marine squared away, but definitely pretty good for a security outfit on a bad post. Team 1’s sergeant, Blitz, was competent and wistful. He didn’t have much to say except the usual, standard ‘welcome to the team’. When Maddy paid attention to the overall dynamic, she could definitely tell that the two teams didn’t cross pollinate as much as it might initially appear. Only Felix really seemed comfortable going back and forth.

Chief was the security lead for the whole group. Not ‘the chief’, just 'Chief’. His name was actually Roseburg, and he wasn’t a chief. The Scientific Advancement Section, or SAS, Security Force didn’t have chiefs; his actual title was something closer to liaison. As in, he was supposed to talk to the science team and locals and make sure the security team was doing it’s job properly and not making the SAS look bad. He was the scariest bastard in the whole bunch. His face was gaunt and he had these weird concave depressions around his temples. His head was bald and shined and his face was anchored with a huge, wild mustache. The bald head and gaunt cheeks and the big, snake smile he always wore made him look like a skeleton with a cartoon mustache, or like a mascot for some starving bands of space pirates. 

Aside from he security team, there were also a half dozen scientists. They mostly hung out upstairs, Felix had explained, where they had a lab set up and were doing ‘mad scientist shit’ all day. Maddy hadn’t seen them once. 

One thing that really stood out was the fact that after two full days of work, no one had really done any work or talked to her about work. They were a security team, but apparently only did any security anything when the science team needed to get field work done beyond the barrier. It wasn’t until the third day that Chief pulled her into his office and started making the new assignment seem like a job.

“Tuuuurner,” Chief drawled, he had a strange way of talking that made everything he said sound slightly unreal, like he was talking through a dream filter, “SEARGENT Turner. How very for-tuit-tous that we have the whole team here now finally. I’ll bet you’ve wondered why we need two teams of battle-hardened killers to protect six skinny, soft, precious little brainiacs from their own bad decisions?”

He paused, apparently expecting her to say something. Maddy started to respond when he suddenly interjected, cutting her off, “WELL it’s because the real plan hasn’t been revealed to you yet. No, not yet. This planet is my own personal hell, you understand?” His eyes grew wide as he spoke, and his skeletal features grew even more pronounced. “We have a Fortress of Solitude right here in our very own station! But, twice a week, sometimes more, we have to trek into the darkness of the wilds outside the barrier and earn our paychecks in blood. And do you think the brave patriots back here in town see that? Do you think they love the Dominion as much as I do? Do they SEE how we fight to keep them FREE? FREEDOM. ISN’T. FREE.”

Maddy was starting to get actually concerned that Chief was having some sort of bizarre breakdown right here in front of her. That would be an absolute nightmare. 

“Here’s the deal Turner, these goddamn animals have got to go. I’ve thought about just rounding them all up or taking ol’ Mamba out for a spin and clearing the whole fucking town out in one go, but we have ‘rules’ about killing corpo employees. Everyone in this fucking town is on an employment contract and ISD ain’t letting any of them get out of it. They HAVE to be a piece of shit and infect everything with their filth by CONTRACT and there’s nothing they’ll LET,” he emphasized ‘let’, winked, and kept going, “us do about it. And the local cops are all apparently on the fucking board of ISD and think the animals are all a bunch of precious do-gooders who’ve just fallen on hard times.” Chief frowned in mock sadness. 

“But, I have a PLAN.” Chief smacked the table hard enough to make Maddy jump, but just slightly. “YOU,” he pointed at Maddy, “You are the answer to all of my problems. You take your new team, hand picked killers. Picked by me. And you get out there and protect our precious science team and keep them safe and happy. Fulfill the contract, Turner. Set me free, Turner. I’ll take the rest of the gang; Blitz and his boy gang, and we are going to fix this broken world.” His eyes made contact with Maddy’s and burned a hole in her soul. This guy is a fucking lunatic.

“Sir, are local issues within our scope?” Maddy didn’t know what else to say, she didn’t actually care what his plan was. In fact, Maddy felt that the less she knew what kind of madness Chief was going through, the better plausible deniability she’d have at the inevitable war crimes trial. 

“Don’t bother yourself with the details! But you’re quite smart, I can tell. I see it already. You’re gonna do one hell-of-a-job keeping those eggheads happy. That’s your assignment, Turner. I brought you out here, the best the Fleet Marines had to offer, specifically because I believe in you, and your ability to lead. I need you to talk to the scientists, talk to the locals, make sure everyone is happy and getting what they need. You have the A-Team, believe me! Use them how you will. Don’t fucking touch Mamba without asking me,” Chief grew silent, the light in his eyes fading out, “I’m going to forward you some emails, answer them all. Get out.” Chief’s demeanor flipped instantly from maniacally happy, or whatever the fuck that was, to dark and foreboding. Like the mention of Mamba being touched was enough to make him believe it had already happened. Maddy stood, nodded, and walked out. 

Chapter 5

Subject: Admiral Nilson

The cruiser squadron was making a full burn towards the orbit of Oasis V, a gas giant just outside the system’s rocky asteroid belt. The former rift gate sat just over 4 light hours from Oasis III, and a series of medium confidence sensor return tracks painted by the Bastion’s computer found the Adversary in a boxy formation heading straight down the well. Oasis V was Nilson’s first initial guess for an interception point, and it looked like he was right. 

“We’ve checked and double checked the data. The Adversary ships deployed anti-missile countermeasures AFTER the missiles deployed their boosters on both missile barrages. The Palisade cold launched their missiles because they had to; those missiles are way out of spec for the missile tubes on those older ships.” Lieutenant Commander Estevez, the ships intel officer, would probably qualify as a genius, and was Nilson’s most trusted senior officer. She’d pored over every detail of the engagement between Russo’s condemned squadron and the Adversary, and cross checked everything with the tactical staff across the whole flotilla. “We can’t really tell what kill zone range is for that beam weapon. Unfortunately, they didn’t miss any shots in the first engagement. I can’t tell how far the beam might travel before losing coherence.”

“Are they Hegemony ships? They have beam weapons.” Nilson mused, cupping his face with his hands. The burn to Oasis V was almost over after three days of full thrust. He’d barely slept, choosing instead to test just how much coffee the human body could tolerate. 

“No, I don’t believe so. The Hegemony uses gamma and microwave lasers- maser beams. The beams from the Adversary ships seemed to be primarily in the UV spectrum, but pulsed rapidly and varied somewhat with every pulse. It was a very strange weapon; not the kind of tech we encountered during the Great Incursion, or any of the smaller border conflicts with any of the other known alien species.”

“Plus they came out of rift space,” Nilson added. “We don’t know of anybody that can do that. Just us.”

“Right, just us.” Estevez remarked thoughtfully, trailing off. They both sat in silence for a moment, enjoying it while they had the opportunity. 

“It’s almost time to get started, Estevez. I’m going to need you in this one,” Nilson meant for it to sound like a call to action, but instead it felt pleading. 

“We have a good plan, Admiral.” Estevez smiled, turned, and walked out of the Admiral’s office. Nilson frowned, drained his coffee and walked out of the office onto the command deck. 

“Commander Davis!” Nilson barked. The Bastion’s XO looked at him curiously. “Get me a cup of coffee. Your whole job for the whole battle is to make sure there’s an unending stream of caffeine available to me.” Davis sneered and mumbled out a half-assed yes sir. Nilson kept walking until he was standing amidst the combat information display. 

Nilson manipulated the display until it showed the battle space around Oasis V and a stretch of space further out to where the formation of Adversary ships were. The cruisers had flown in a formation that Nilson hoped had concealed the true size of the squadron, and had terminated the formation by flipping the cruisers a hundred and eighty degrees so the main engines were facing the Adversary, and pulsing them in a mockery of a false deceleration burn meant to wash out the enemy sensors and hide the fact that two destroyers running dark had dropped out of the formation towards the far side of the gas giant. Nilson wasn’t sure the alien’s sensors could be washed out, but it was worth a shot.

In space warfare, there’s a concept called the ‘kill zone’. It’s the maximum effective distance for a weapon based on a set of defined variables. If a warship fires a gun at an enemy ship, light from the projectile will get to the enemy before the actual projectile does. If there’s enough time between the enemy seeing the projectile coming and it physically getting there, the ship can simply move out of the way. How maneuverable the enemy ship is, how good its sensors are, and how fast it can react are all variables, as is how fast the projectile is moving. A light-speed weapon, like the beam weapons the Adversary has employed, has a maximum kill zone of however far the beam can stay coherent. By the time the light hits it’s target’s sensors, the beam is already there. It’s not like that with the kinetic weapons the Dominion fields.

Nilson overlaid the spherical kill zone estimates and eyed the various projected maximum ranges for the weapons aboard each ship. No one knew what the Adversary ships were capable of, so the kill zones on the display were an estimate, but the Adversary ships were certainly fast as hell. He knew that if was to have any chance at winning, he’d have to catch them by surprise on this first engagement. A slugging match between those ships and his was destined to be a disaster. Those beam weapons are a captain’s worst nightmare.

“Tactical, we’re in range for the next part of this. Coordinate missile release with the rest of the squadron when you’re ready.” Despite the uncertainty, Nilson felt good. This felt good. 

“First salvo away sir!” The tactical officer responded. “All ships in the squadron confirming release!”

On the display, Nilson could see green icons blooming from each of his ships. Missiles, cold launched. The patrol cruisers that made up the bulk of his fleet didn’t have the range with their coilguns to snipe at the Adversary to any effect, nor did they have the armor to fight up close. This was going to have to be an overwhelming hit and run. The engine plumes from the ships ‘decelerating’, as it appeared, would hopefully hide the missile launches, and the cold launch meant they were almost invisible. They’d drift at the speed they were dropped until Nilson gave them the order to burn like hell at the Adversary ships. 

Another salvo dropped, then another, then another. Nilson watched until three-quarters of the entire combat load of ship to ship and point defense missiles had been gently pushed out of each ship into a cloud of kinetic death. Nilson’s energy and anticipation had climbed with each volley of missiles until it had reached a fever pitch.

“Helm! Flip and burn along the planned course!” The orders came out fast and clipped. Nilson could feel the adrenaline starting to flow. Space combat was probably like ground combat, Nilson thought. Days of waiting, then seconds of pure chaos as the battle unfolded. Those chaos seconds were approaching fast. 

“Sir!” Intel officer Estevez, her voice higher than normal, apparently caught up in the excitement, spouted, “All squadron elements have acknowledged our signal and are proceeding along the attack route!”

Nilson took a deep breath. He was psyching everyone out with his nervous energy. Deep breath, count to five, then release for five seconds… Nilson blew out a breath in three seconds and then tried to convince himself that not breathing for the last two seconds counted as exhaling. The ship groaned and the engines roared. The lights on the command deck dimmed slightly as the artificial gravity drew extra power to keep everyone upright.

The kill zone line on the display grew closer, but the enemy kill zone was likely much, much further than his own. That’s okay, the kinetic impactors from the main guns are more chaff than anything else during the next part. 

“Tactical, fire main guns! Coordinate railgun fire with the helmsman so we don’t get off course. Intel, start updating kill zone data as you see it. Comms! Send a message to all squadron elements to drive course at full speed and fire!” Nilson’s attempt at calm failed. A chorus of aye’s erupted from the workstations. 

The four ships of Nilson’s squadron had broken apart like two halves, attempting to flank the enemy with fire and force them into a tight formation. The kinetic impactors from the rail and coilguns were meant to be in front of the Adversary, along their path of travel.

The Adversary, in their bizarre box formation, hardly responded at first, and then the formation split apart with each ship accelerating well beyond the limits of any human ship. They each flew in a different direction, changing course instantly. No deceleration. No turning arc. Just a sudden ninety degree shift towards another direction. 

Nilson had hoped a wall of steel and tungsten would make them decelerate, instead it made them act crazy. “Tactical!” Nilson barked, before taking a breath and repeating, “tactical, fire at targets of opportunity, comms, signal the rest of the squadron to do the same.” Nilson flashed a look at Estevez, who raised her arms in an ‘I don’t know’ shrug. Nilson looked at his display and watched the battle space start to order itself. 

The Adversary ships formed into three groups of two ships each. Two darted off on an oblique course from the battle, apparently bugging out entirely. Another two turned to meet Bastion and it’s companion patrol cruiser, Percheron. The final two turned to split down the middle, but to Nilson’s great interest, were accelerating towards the wall of missiles, despite the ships being turned to face the other two patrol cruisers at a forty degree angle from their vector. They didn’t see the missiles AND they can travel at full speed despite their orientation.

All of the human ships fired as fast as their guns would fire. Adversary ships moved precisely to avoid the fire. The kill zone projection shrank slightly with every missed salvo as Estevez’s team tried to guess how close they’d have to be before the Adversary couldn’t just move out of the way anymore. The squadron inched closer, firing and angling. The Adversary had to be in range to use their beams by now, but they hadn’t yet. Why?

“Comms!” Nilson was shouting “Get those destroyers in pursuit of the two that bugged out!” 

“Aye!” The comms officer responded. 

“Tactical, get the missiles in the fight!” Nilson eyed his coffee cup on whatever nearby flat surface he’d left it on. He grabbed it and took a long pull, hoping the simple act would ground him a bit. It kind of helped. Sort of. 

Seconds after giving the order, the missile cloud bloomed into action. The missiles had been placed to hit the whole formation dead on, but now the Adversary was scattered around the battle space and only two ships were left in the path, but they were caught dead to rights. The first wave of missiles were the point defense variety, designed to kill or confuse enemy missiles. Half of their payloads split into a barrage of decoy rockets, flying in random directions. The other half detonated their payloads to reveal a storm of ball bearings, grapeshot munitions. At speed they’d decimate an enemy missile, but stood no chance against the angled heavy armor of a human warship; only time would tell their effect against the Adversary. 

The entire first wave was meant to confuse the Adversary point defense, and that it did. All four of the Adversary ships launched a series of small projectiles that twisted and corkscrewed and detonated into small pulses of energy that sent decoy rockets and ball bearings flying off into the void. Some of the weird Adversary point defense things targeted the second wave of missiles, the ship killers, but there weren’t nearly enough. Ship killer missiles rocked through the debris storm and hit the two Adversary ships that had tried to run down the middle. The optical display washed out as a barrage of nuclear explosions mixed with whatever hellish energy propelled the demon ships from beyond the rift.

“Two kills!” The tactical officer proclaimed. Someone started cheering. 

“Kills confirmed,” Estevez stated flatly, too caught up in the battle data to show excitement. 

“Nav, have the other half of our squad-“ Nilson started and was abruptly stopped by the unfolding events on the display. The Bastion and the Percheron were facing down two Adversary ships, firing their guns like crazy to keep them off balance. Both Adversary ships suddenly stopped dodging impactors, halting in space before them. One fired it’s beam weapon into the front of Percheron, the forward momentum of the ship pushing its way through the beam. The beam was completely unfazed by the mass of the ship and split the Percheron down the middle lengthwise. 

The massive spinally mounted twin railguns of the Bastion were firing at the maximum rate, consuming huge amounts of stored energy. And good thing too, just as the Percheron met it’s fate, a double tap of railgun darts hit the Adversary ship aimed at the Bastion, killing it, but leaving the other alien ship perilously close to an out-of-position Bastion.

“NAV! Have the rest of the squadron come about and fuck this last one up! Tactical, re-task all the surviving missiles on this thing before it fires again!”

A chorus of manic ayes sounded across the bridge.

Oh shit, Nilson thought, staring at the Adversary ship on his display, we’re right in it’s kill zone.

“Helm! Divert counter-spinward twenty degrees and drive course emergency speed! Tactical! Target that ship and loose everything at it, point defenses too!”

Nilson knew he should be getting reports from his staff on that last kill and the loss of the Percheron, but everything was happened so goddamn fast.

The Adversary suddenly darted directly perpendicular to the missile cloud from the first wave of missiles. Those missiles had been re-tasked and were now flying an awkward arc to try to hit the remaining Adversary ship while also accounting for their inertia. The Adversary fired a seemingly endless wave of the point defense projectiles while sliding through space sideways. It was uncanny. The Adversary point defenses flew like swarm of bees, absolutely no coordination between each other apparent from the outside. 

Contact between the point defense and the missiles this second time decisively landed in the Adversary’s favor. Pulses from the detonating projectiles caused the warheads in the ship killers to detonate prematurely. They were so close to each other at this point that the detonation of one ship killer missile set off a chain reaction that killed another half dozen. The few that made it through were immediately run down by the swarm of point defenses and taken out of the fight. 

Nilson watched the Adversary dance through space with white knuckle fascination. The crew of the alien ship, if it had a crew, had apparently decided that the Bastion, with it’s railguns aimed away from it and burning to get out of range of the death beam, was no longer the pressing threat. Instead, the two patrol cruisers that had turned and started burning down on it were the problem to be solved. 

Nilson realized what was happening and chided himself for being reactive. This battle hadn’t gone according to the plan at all, but he was still up, having traded one ship for three of theirs. He needed to be positioning for the next kill shot, not trying to run. 

“Helm, flip us 180 and line up the railguns with that bastard. Tactical, fire when able.” Nilson stopped and look at each person while he spoke. The eye contact was reassuring. 

“Sir,” Estevez had something, “it looks like the alien ships can’t maneuver rapidly like they have been to dodge impactors and fire their beam weapon at the same time. They always stop before firing. If we can keep them dodging impactors we can use that to delay their firing.” 

The realization opened an entirely new world of opportunity for Nilson. That’s how we beat em! “Tactical! You heard the Lieutenant Commander! Don’t let them rest!” Nilson ordered, smiling now. 

“Aye sir!” Tactical responded. 

“Admiral, ship capacitors are at twenty-five percent,” the engineering liaison officer said, “should I disable non-critical systems?”

“Good idea, cut power to non-critical systems. Keep gravity where it matters,” Nilson responded, making a mental note to commend the young officer after the battle, if they survived. “We need those guns firing nonstop.”

The Bastion had two types of guns. Coilguns, which were electromagnetic accelerators firing tungsten slugs, operated on turrets which studded the hull. They could aim in any direction, and could fire quickly. But, the relative velocity of their projectiles is low. Low enough that at the distance they were from the Adversary, they could be avoided passively and with little effort. The railguns on the other hand, had barrels which ran almost the full length of the ship. They fired much larger tungsten darts at incredible speeds. But, the entire ship had to be lined up to take a shot. 

As the Bastion rotated it fired missiles. The pair of patrol cruisers coming up on the lone Adversary ship fired missiles and coilguns as well. They didn’t have railguns. The Adversary launched swarms of point defense projectiles, which Estevez had tagged ‘Seekers' on the battle display. The Adversary had learned from it’s engagements, and the seekers avoided the smaller point defense missiles loaded with decoy rockets and grapeshot munitions. Ship killer missiles were their target, and accuracy through volume simply wasn’t possible this time around. Missiles harmlessly detonated in the vacuum as quickly as they were launched. None were getting through.

The Adversary lined up on one of the approaching patrol cruisers and fired it’s beam. The beam evaporated a path from the front to back of the human warship. The beam pulsed and zig-zagged, opening a void straight through to the warship’s reactor. The patrol cruiser instantly disappeared into a flash of energy, it’s mass and crew ablated into an expanding cloud of subatomic particles. The Adversary twisted, lining up with the second patrol cruiser. It fired, but right as the beam began to coalesce and pulse it’s death song, two railgun darts penetrated the heart of the Adversary’s ship. The beam fired again, but missed this time as the Adversary was ripped into pieces. Two more railgun darts hit the biggest chunk of the adversary, and the beam went silent. 

“Confirmed kill,” Estevez said.