Broker III - The Tarvani blunder

A stack of plates exploded off a market stall on her right “fuck” she thought, springing away and bounding down the densely crowded street as sonic pulses burst to her left and right. “Fuck fuck fuck”. Her nerves were so shot she was shaking as she went.

“Stop” came the Vox roar of the guard mechs behind her, sonic pulsars blaring, the auto targeting mercifully thrown off by the overhanging awnings and densely packed AR marketing encroaching on every inch of visual space. She jabbed a claw at her Viz-band and the vibrant colours of the marketing slogans flicked off, leaving the dull grey of the streets. Colour was costly in real space on Broker III. A sonic pulse caught the tip of her tail and she yowled, spinning to see the closest mech barrel through a group of hagglers, causing a cascade of hard-wire drives to go spinning across the polished floors.

“Cease fleeing or risk escalation” came the rasping mech’s voice again, its Vox unit lights flickering as it fired off another sonic pulse at her. She spun around again and bounded on, flicking her claws out as she cornered for extra traction on the slippery floors. She was panting, glancing back and forth. Guard mechs were slow and ungainly, but their hive programming was still sophisticated and they worked as pack hunters, the blaring and blasting of those behind her a distraction from the ones she knew would inevitably be making their way along the side alleys of the market to cut her off, and if that happened… well there was no way a juvenile Hanna like her could take on a half tonne mech. Shouts and sounds of surprise came from the row of stalls over to her right and instinctively she leapt, her lithe feline body propelling her higher than your average biped could manage, which was lucky as a volley of sonic pulses ripped through the stall she had been running past a split second before. She landed on all fours on a flat metal stall roof, the glistening high ceilings of the Tarvani marketplace still hundreds of metres above her.

The Tarvani Broker family was only a minor one in the grand scheme of things, house of a lesser son of a lesser daughter, so far removed from the ancient Prime Broker families that they could almost be considered a different species at this point. Nevertheless, even a lesser Broker family wielded wealth and power that a young Hanna outcast like herself couldn’t even begin to dream of being a part of. Well, not until recently that is, not until she had somehow found herself caught up in a piece of palace intrigue that she absolutely would have been better off avoiding. Mittlick, as her friends called her, was a drinks bearer in a lower tier of the Tarvani family grounds, there to wait on and entertain the guests of the family who weren’t important enough to actually enter the palace itself, but would rather meet with delegates of delegates down in the meeting halls outside.

As the various Broker families did with all trade in the Broker system, the Tarvanis had a strangle hold on this quadrant of the planet, not a credit was exchanged without their books registering it, without the prices being monitored and markets being watched. The marvellous thing about a corrupt system was that anyone can profit, and people did, in ludicrous fashion. Under the illusion of a perfect free market the universe’s least free market rates were controlled by the manipulation of wealth from the families and as a result people rose and fell like surfers riding the tidal waves of corrupt volatility, everything was for sale and anyone was a prospective buyer, and always the Brokers watched, waited, manipulated and ultimately profited in unfathomable quantities. Next to them, she was a speck of dust, she was a nothing and a nobody, not a buyer or a seller, part of no family and with no name but the one her friends had given her; she was less than nothing.

So you can imagine her surprise when she’d been performing her usual nightly role of ferrying drinks from the bar to one of the minor meeting rooms and had fallen into a conspiracy that now had her running for her life through the streets of Tarvani’s marketplace. What had possessed her to tuck away behind the red and black drapery? Why on earth had she deviated from her usual path to the private secure rooms?

Well actually that wasn’t a hard question to answer, it had been curiosity. Not curiosity at what she had heard, but curiosity at what she had seen. It had been because she had caught a glimpse of something through a closing doorway and as quietly and unnoticed as the youth of her kind are best at being, she had slipped through and nestled between two layers of translucent drapery as the door clicked shut behind her. Inside the room were was the usual collection of three or four random races, a Thrall, two Runcorn and a middle aged Hanna who had the impression of being the head of the group, though he was at that awkward stage of Hanna life where they haven’t reached the dominating size and presence of the elders, but had lost the lithe beauty of the juvenile members of their race that she was still blessed with. More excitedly though was the sweating, seething mass in one corner, gold garb, dripping in jewels and fanning itself slowly the unmistakable form of one of the Broker Clan spread out across a specially designed chaise, three eyes sunken in the pudgy grey skin, four huge arms resting on a vast gelatinous body that entirely swamped its useless legs, given up centuries ago for mechanised transport. Upon his head three hard keratin sheets had been coated in gold plate, making him stand out as a member of the Tarvani family, though which it was impossible to tell, immortality and genetic modification meant that age and identity was hard to establish.

What was even more interesting than him though, what had drawn her into the room in the first place was the alien standing opposite, leaning back against the wall in what might be a nonchalant fashion as the Broker and Hanna made animated conversation. It was clearly a human, and Mittlick had never seen a human, hell, no-one this side of the Anti-matter fields even knew anyone that had seen a human. She stood back in awe, hiding in the curtains out of sight. Humans; rarer than rare, nothing more than stories about stories out here in the Broker systems, rumoured to be leading the offensives for the Republic on the front-line of the Hegemony wars, their technology and stature was the stuff of hushed bar-room conversations and horror stories that you tucked your children into bed with. She watched the man. He simply exuded threat, the primal animalistic parts of her brain screaming at her to run in a way that could only be described as… thrilling. His outfit was plain, disks of flattened scaled metal clinging tight to his torso, arms bare to show rippling muscle that was densely packed and hairless, large hands resting against his forearms which were crossed in front of him. But it was his eyes that got her, dark, large and piercing, though his body language was relaxed, his eyes watched, swinging back and forth as they surveyed the room and absorbed information. This was a predator, but not the usual kind, not the kind like her race, with claws and teeth, not like the Runcorn with their scaled bodies and long spiked horns, this was a predator that combined power and thought in a way that the universe had not heard of, in a way that reportedly burned planets and scoured fleets from the skies.

She cursed as she sped across the stall roofs, bounding and clutching from one to the next, alternating from four legs to two when necessary to avoid slipping and falling to the mercy of the mechs below. She couldn’t stay up here long, vid-drones were circling above, looking for her amongst the market-goers, though at least she had seemed to have lost the heftier ones below she thought as she leapt over a street. She needed a plan; running was all very well and good if you have somewhere to run to. She shot a glance left and right, cursing as the stalls stretched out seemingly endlessly under the glinting roof vaulting high high above her, up into the infinite sky above. A desperate idea came to her then and she veered hard to the right, heading west, swearing and sobbing at herself as she went.

She had stood and watched the human for quite a while before she had heard something that had pricked her ears, rasped from in a voice that sounded like grating iron from the depths of the Broker. “You can’t strong arm us” there followed a sound that might have been a chuckle “your war ravages your supplies”

“Ravaging that your family encourages”

“A baseless accusation” the Broker rasped with a flick of one fat hand, though the cracked grin through rows of spiked teeth showed the pointlessness of that lie. “You are in no position to make demands of us; the demands are ours to make of you. Your coffers run dry, your resources are spent, your victory hinges on this new race of…” the Broker licked his lips as he gestured the human in the corner “creatures” the man raised an eyebrow but said nothing. “On these, and on the money to continue to build their machinations. Delegate, this is a planet of transactions. We grow and thrive on offers and counter offers, so tell me, what can you offer us?” he reached over and took a large fruit from a plate nearby, biting into it as the juices dripped obscenely down his chin. The four members of the party had a hurried conversation in hushed voices, the human remaining back against his wall unmoving.

“We would offer you… assistance” said the Hanna, his voice measured.

“Assistance?” hissed the Broker “and what assistance would that be?”

The Hanna took a deep breath. “As you are no doubt aware, the Republic has forged an alliance with the Prime Broker of Broker IV to harass and harrow the Northern borders of the Hegemony. We are however aware that the Tarvani family is no friend of the Prime Brokers and has as such fallen on hard times” the Broker growled and Mittlick thought she sense the slightest tensing of the Human’s arms, though upon looking he seemed as relaxed as ever. The political talk was over her head but it was clear that the conversation had suddenly become very charged. “We would provide covert assistance… extremely covert assistance in getting the Tarvani family into a more… esteemed position. We are aware of your current machinations towards the Primes and would provide access to a network of agents for you to… make use of upon Broker IV.” There was a pregnant pause as the Broker sat fanning, his body heaving up and down under the low light.

“I must commend the Republic’s espionage network, you are… thorough in your research delegate” He smacked his lips, twin tongues running across the juice on his lips “you are correct that our aspirations would lead us to seek… new management for the Broker System and the Tarvani are well placed to oversee such a takeover.” His eyes narrowed and the room seemed to bristle as his voice lowered “yet the Primes are far more entrenched than you could perceive, they have existed since before your populations even had planets to enter existence upon, they have dominated this sector since before even their own memories can record. To overthrow the primes would be to overthrow a law of nature” There was a rustle to the Broker’s left and from her position Mittlick suddenly saw three dark shapes slinking round through the drapes, wicked blades jet black in the shadow. “And one does not do battle with the laws of nature” he finished with a wicked flick of his tongue. The shadow’s intent was clear and the grin upon the Broker’s fat face was unmistakable yet the delegation seemed unmoved. She almost cried out as the first assassin took a step into the light, yet before she could something else happened.

The shadow disappeared.

The human had flung himself across the room, the distance covered and speed at which it was done was almost faster than her eyes could track. There was a sickening crunch as thick muscle obliterated bone. The limp form of a birdlike Thrall smashed against the rear wall as the human flung it away, eyes flicking to the next target. The second assassin squawked in surprise, a noise that was cut short as its neck was snapped in a huge hand which lashed out and crushed the weak bones in its throat as though it was made of twigs. The final Thrall had had time to leap at the Hanna delegate, who had been caught off-guard, but before the knife could find its mark the human flung the broken body of the second bird at the third and bowled it over in a tangle of shrieking limbs and feathers. To its credit it picked itself up quickly and held the blade out in front of it, clacking its beak threateningly at the daunting figure of the Human. At least it was meant to be threatening, but the would be assassin was barely half the height of the giant alien and the shattered bodies of his accomplices made for a good inclination of what was about to happen. The Thrall lunged, a seemingly wild swipe with the blade which the human moved to block with his wrist but the move suddenly became a well measured feint, a second hidden blade hissing up in the Thralls other hand and plunging deep into the human’s upper thigh, followed immediately by the first blade thumping into the forearm he had used to block.

With a screech of triumph the Thrall leapt backwards and raised its head plume in victory, only to suddenly frown. Rather than collapse to the ground or keel over in pain the Human was standing looking at the blade in puzzlement, and then suddenly laughed. A great booming sound from his throat and chest that seemed to shake Mittlick’s bones. He yanked the blade out and a trickle of bright red, oxygen rich blood dripped out of the gash left, though the wound seemed to barely trouble him. Reaching down he did the same with the other in his leg, pulling the two blades free he tossed them to the side, and licked his thumb, running it over the wound on his forearm.

“What is…” started the Broker, but was unable to finish, merely looking in disbelief as the red blood turned brown and the wounds seemed to seal themselves up as they watched.

“Oh I’ve always wanted to say this…” the Human’s voice was a low rumble, but instead of anger or pain it was full of mirth, stabbed twice in ways that would usually cause system shock or completely incapacitate most creatures, the man was simply laughing.

“Say what?” the Thrall hissed spitefully at him, circling slowly round to try to get closer to his discarded blades.

The huge alien spun and grabbed the bird by the shoulder with a lightning fast move from his injured arm before it had taken two steps.

“Tis but a scratch” he growled with a grin and tore the assassin in two from neck to waist, as though he was made of paper, laughing almost to himself as he dropped the broken halves to the floor and stepped away from the viscera. The scene was one of horror and it was all Mittlick could do to stop herself from crying out in shock, tears welled in her eyes. The human turned and looked directly at the Broker’s horrified face “as you were delegates”.

The nonchalance was more than she could take and she spun around and sprinted away, running from the terror of that room, from the death and gore that she wanted no part of. She had run and run mindlessly, all higher function leaving her until she dropped, exhausted in an alley, where she had hidden in a large refuse barrel for several hours until she could get her heartbeat and brain back to usable levels. She didn’t have to worry long about whether she had been seen or noticed as her Viz-band had promptly shown that her employment had been terminated, and from there it had been a short sprint until she now found herself hurtling across the market roofs, heading West towards the merchant launch pads, two vid-drones blaring alarms as they gained on her, the rumble of the security mechs in the streets below keeping pace.

Now she was crying. Each rooftop was a blur as she bounded from one to the next, not thinking, not stopping she pounced and leapt, claws scrabbling for traction, her body veering this way and that in a desperate attempt to get away from her pursuers and the vague prospect of freedom on a merchant vessel as the Launchpad came into sight not 200 metres ahead of her.

Suddenly a roof collapsed in front of her, a hail of sonic pulses blasting it to dust and she went bowling head over heels onto the street below, feeling her fragile left ankle snap as it cracked against a stall corner on her way down, making her yowl in pain, stars in her vision and a red mist in her mind. She tried to lift herself to her feet but the pain was too much and she collapsed again, her vision getting thicker. ‘No no no’, she thought, panic and fear overwhelming her, tears and pain making her shake. She crawled slowly forward, willing herself to keep going, every inch a battle to stay conscious as the pain pulsed in her ankle, as her brain sought relief in oblivion. A boot landed next to her and she collapsed against it as the sirens of the security mechs and vid-drones rose to a crescendo.

“This is her Lexi” a familiar and terrifying voice rumbled above her

“Poor thing, she looks terrified” came a female voice, higher yet equally as sonorous, the sound filling the street.

“Citizen, please stand away from the fugitive” the vox roar of the nearest security mech barked the order. The female laughed

“Citizen? Oh honey, to be a citizen you have to be civilised and we’re certainly not that.”

“Citizen, step away from the fugitive” the female voice laughed.

Mittlick tried to look up, to see who was looming over her, though she already knew. “Help” she mewled, the effort of the word almost more than she could manage, but it was her only hope then. The human knelt, the impact of his knee next to her reverberating round her body.

“Don’t worry little one” his voice was soothing, the low rumble completely empty of the threat she had felt earlier in the draped room. "Me and Lexi have a seat saved for you” how funny to be so deadly and yet so gentle she thought absently as she felt herself lifted from the ground.

“Citizen, desist”

“Oh go on blockhead, call me citizen one more time!” the woman’s voice laughed and Mittlick heard the unmistakable whine of a gauss rifle charging.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here” rumbled the male as he turned away from the mechs. The last thing she heard before passing out was a whoop of joy and a loud ‘come on then!’ from the other human as a sonic pulse flickered over their heads, followed by a crackling howl of gauss fire and small explosions. She rolled her head against the metal scales of the Human’s chest and passed out to the sound of his slow strong heartbeat.

---

 Artwork by Francesco Lorenzetti

Verian Spirit part 3

Part 1

Part 2

“Oh thank god” breathed Harken as the three remaining crew members watched the Beast turn at the final second after them, smashing the large official looking buildings beneath it, but otherwise leaving the surface mercifully untouched.

 “Good, that’s that bit done then” muttered Hicks. “Shrikes are you still there?” he asked loudly through the headset. All he got in response was a loud roar of static. He grimaced. “Shit. Shrikes! Come in are you two still there?” Static. “Trish spin the ship let’s see if we can...”

 “Wheeeeeeeeee!” came a high pitched excited squeal through the Vox. Hicks breathed a sigh of relief. “Lexi thank god. Where did you two end up? Are your vid-Comms working?”

 “Here you go Cap” came the female twin’s voice and suddenly the cargo bay Vid screen flickered and split to show what the two Shrikes could see. They were above them, flying on an air current high over the top of the great Beast as it smashed through the city below.

 They could see Alex the male twin through Lexi’s vid, his shining liquimetal wing-suit flowing and rippling from his arms as he barrelled and rolled through the air above them, laughing as he did.

 “Whenever you’re ready then you two, it’s all you now”. Hicks said. “And I mean it about those Lances! They’re worth more than you are.” He smiled and sat back into the now stowed cradle seat, crossing his legs and watching the vid as the two twins began flicking their heads back and forth, their eyes darting along the length of the creature, hunting for a spot. They were like great birds of prey, circling on a thermal, eyes darting this way and that hunting for their target.

 Suddenly they folded their wings in perfect unison and dived down peregrine style towards the great swaying head of the Beast below.

 “This bit is my favourite” grinned Tiny, thumping the small birdlike Thrall Harken excitedly, who fell with a surprised squawk and small puff of feathers. The two on the screen were approaching the Beast at astonishing speed, with no sign of slowing, apparently ready to crash head first into the scaled back of the creature.

 Finally, at the last second the two pulled up hard, flinging their wings forward so they flowed out, the obsidian sharp edges of the liquimetal tearing through the air to slice two perfectly neat gashes along a small soft fleshy spot between two plates just as they opened out to allow for the head of the Beast to twist. The twins landed a little way on with synchronised rolls before exploding to their feet again. It wasn’t a second too soon either as just as they did so they were faced with an onrushing horde of insect-like creatures that made up the strange parasitic/symbiotic occupants of the Beasts body.

 The two just had time to grin at one another before the screens became a chaotic mess of movement and purple-green liquid. Hicks glanced back at the other two in the docking bay and smiled, Tiny was grinning, his large fangs on his bottom jaw poking goofily over his furry top lip as he stared fixedly at the screen. Harken however was looking at everything but the screens, his head twitching this way and that awkwardly, blinking both sets of eyelids overly fast. “Don’t like the view Harken?” Hicks asked innocently. 

“I don’t mind the view” the ruffled bird squawked, “what I don’t like is the mess that that view tends to leave those two in. One day they’re going to slip up and then I’ll be doing more than sewing flesh wounds.”

 “Slip up? Lexi and Alex?” Hicks turned back to the screen as the sound of laughter and excited shouts came over the Vox Comm. “Maybe once the last star goes out.”

 The twins were Shrikes; vicious, violent, mad living human weapons. They had been trained since infancy, foregoing the genetic enhancements that other races relied on to instead focus on pure muscle memory and perfected technique. They were terrifyingly effective and they cut their way through the army of parasites that swarmed over the back of the Beast as though they were Olympic gymnasts tackling obstacles on a playground assault course. They danced and swung, their wings flowing out and back and all round, extended on their arms like knife blades they used to cut back and forth and spray entrails across the chitinous carapace as they made their way back to the deep cuts they had made on the beast’s back.

 “Thirty seven!” came Alex’s gleeful shout through the Vox followed quickly by Lexi

 “Forty two! Slowpoke!” she giggled as the liquimetal flowed from her hand through the brain segment on the nearest parasite.

 “Shrikes, ETA?” Hicks cut across the carnage through the helmet. He was aware that they couldn’t sit there forever, sooner or later the Beast would spot them and Lexi and Alex would be at risk of being flung off its back.

 “Thirty seconds Captain!” they both shouted back in unison, Alex mid somersault with Lexi sliding beneath him, severing clawed legs as he took heads. Hicks shook his own head. These two were in a whole other class he thought to himself. He was as lucky as they were that he had found them when he had. That had been no place for children. He grimaced and shook the memory of that dark little room and two scared faces from his head.

 “Alright, get to it. Tiny” he said, hopping back out of the cradle and placing his helmet back on, the clamps hissing as they locked into place. “You remember what to do old boy?”

 “But Captain I wanna watch the twins” the great brute whined back

 “I know you do, I promise I’ll let you stream the whole thing in your cabin later.” The big furball smiled and clapped his hands before stomping off to the back of the cargo bay, pulling one lever up to close the bomb bay door which shut with a grating whine of rusted hydraulics.

 “Ten seconds Cap-ee-taaain!” Lexi sang through her headset. Tiny opened the back of the cargo door, sending Harken racing for the nearest grip, presumably swearing colourfully as he did with his Vox Comm muted.

 Hicks watched the screen intently, flashes of clear view showing as the twins cut through the final few metres. “Come on” he breathed, licking his suddenly dry lips.

 Lexi made it first she whirled a full three-sixty degrees, cutting herself a hole in the parasite army and revealed the gaping gash she had made on landing just as it was exposed again by the Beast’s head movement. Alex was in the middle of performing the same manoeuvre as Lexi plucked the glinting black lance from her belt and plunged it shoulder deep into the gash, Alex doing the same straight after.

 Hicks took one breath, smiled then set off at a sprint from one side of the cargo bay to the other, grabbing the end of a nanotube cable that Tiny held out for him he flung himself out of the open door, hooking the cable on as he fell.

 He unspooled himself as quickly as possible, using his suit’s burst fire to direct his fall towards the concentrated mass of shrieking insects that showed where the twins were. The beast gave a shudder and most of them were flung to the ground. “Bugger” he muttered “you two still with me?” he shouted.

 “Sure am!” replied Alex, appearing as a green streak from a pile of parasites “Say Cap, next time can we get a fancy suit like yours?” Hicks growled in response, closing the distance fast as he tucked his arms and legs tight reduce as much drag as he could. The Beast gave another shudder and then let out a loud moan. He almost felt sorry for it, having a smart-lance firing back and forth through your central nervous system couldn’t be a pleasant way to die. If there truly was a pleasant way to die.

 He slowed up with a controlled burn on the suit’s stability jets just above the confused frenzy of insects, locking the cable behind him so that he went from freefall to controlled swing.

 As he passed overhead he managed to pluck Lexi from the crowd, her wings sheathing as she leapt up to catch his outstretched hand.

 “Alex we’re swinging back for you!” He grunted as his suit stiffened his arm to hold the girl’s weight as they swung back on the cable. Alex performed another spinning slash before furling his wing and leaping up just in time, catching Hicks just as the Beast gave one last almighty roar and slumped down into the earth below, earthquake like ripples crashing through it, flinging the insects metres through the air, crashing down around one another as massive convulsions shook the dying creature. The Richter scale shudders threw them into a howling pile over and over, reducing them to a frenzied collection of broken limbs.

 “Well done you two!” Hicks smiled down at the Shrikes, both of whom were bleeding from several superficial cuts and grinning from ear to ear up at him. He looked up at his ship, his Selleain and smiled to himself. “I’ll get you back. Tiny I want you to start Harvesting ASAP, you know how quickly this stuff degrades. Trish make sure my ship isn’t too banged up, and Harken make sure these two aren’t either” He spoke through the Vox Comm, unable to keep the happiness from his voice. Then he looked over to the tall drop towers back on the city limits and frowned. “Then I’m going to take the shuttle. There’s someone I’d like to talk to.”

Hephaestus part 2

Part 1

"Keep firing!" The Captain shouted over the howl of Omar's cannon as the advance group approached the edge of the trenches. Hera raised her hand again, this time in an open palm. "Ah that's my cue!" The big man said, "please stand back, do not stand behind me my friends, and perhaps cover your ears." He grinned as he took his finger off the trigger and placed the cannon gently on the ground next to him, the Thralls scattered from around him, giving him room as he busied himself and put his helmet back over his bearded head. He raised his right leg high in the air and slammed it down into the ground, doing the same with his left after providing himself with a stable platform as large clamps on his armoured boots thumped down into the ground, anchoring him down in the baked dirt. The two large artillery pieces on his back unlocked and unfolded until they were angled over his shoulders. The long tubes twitched in the air as he extended his arm out, directing the angle of the cannons by pointing with the index finger on his enormous armoured fist. He gave his arms few sweeps to test they were tracking properly before nodding and aiming toward the trenches. 

  The technology was impressive, the man was a walking mobile weapons platform. The human commander closed her fist and Omar fired, two massive blasts created huge black smoke rings at the barrel of each cannon as superheated projectiles flew through the air at supersonic speed. They arced over the battlefield towards the trenches, splintering into a thousand pieces as they descended on the enemy before crashing to the ground once more. They blanketed the ground with explosions as the human advance team split. All fire stopped from the bunker and trenches as the air filled with smoke and dust and the occasional body part from the less dug-in Pirates.   

Before anything could settle down the Hephaestus advance team jumped into the trench and began clearing it of the sheltering pirates. The three hammer wielding behemoths of Li Sasha and John split up to take a trench each, their shields folded away as their leader in white armour kept back, seemingly content to observe their progress. They went about their job with a ruthless precision, almost mechanical as they moved through the trench network. The hammers where a terrifying weapon, almost unnecessarily so. "What do you think of my brothers and sisters Captain?" Boomed the Giant, smiling down at the Thralls.  

"How do the hammers work Omar? I mean humans are strong but those impacts" he winced as a sickening crunch echoed back to them and a pirate went flying fully twenty metres up out of the trenches through the air as Sasha's hammer caught him in and upward swing.   

"Well my friend, I am no scientist, merely a humble weapons specialist" his eyes twinkled as he feigned being as conceit, "it is my understanding that they manipulate the effects of force of an impact." He stroked his beard as two more pirates went skidding across no-mans land, nothing but a collection of broken bones. "It works as a multiplier, the harder you hit, the more the hammer multiplies the damage. In my most basic of opinions it works on manipulating densities in the hammer's head. But of course" he smiled to himself watching Sasha squash a defender into the ground "I could merely be making this up."   

The Captain nodded, and watched in horrified pleasure as the hammers wrought terrible damage amongst the pirates. Suddenly the white armoured leader Hera moved, she was like a lightning bolt, superhumanly quick she moved towards Li's position where three defenders had managed to slip behind him and were moving on assaulting him from behind. Before they reached the armoured giant though Hera was on them, a lethal curved blade had slid from the forearm of her armour. In a move that looked like it belonged in a dance hall rather than warfare the female leader leapt, spinning gracefully in the air from the trench she had been running down over the wall of earth to perfectly decapitate one of the pirates in a rippling backhanded slash as she landed in Li's trench. Before either of the other two had time to react or even turn around Hera had crushed one's throat in her armoured left hand and the other was skewered through by the blade attached to her right and like that she had hopped back away to a position where she could watch all three again in relative safety. It was vicious, it was efficient, it was beautiful and the captain couldn't help but smile a grim smile when he saw it.  

 The team were getting closer and closer to the bunker, which had begun to rain fire down onto them again, although most of the slag shots missed their targets which were covered by the defenders own trenches. Li and Sasha who were slightly closer to the bunker had been hit a couple of times, their armour practically shrugged the melted shots of though, causing very little damage at all apart from some mild abrasions, this being said there was always the possibility of a stray shot hitting something integral. He made a quick decision.  

"OK fire team, let's move up to the forward crater, try and draw their fire away from the advance team." He looked up at Omar who was nodding approvingly "Omar would you rather you joined us or held ground here." The giant shook his head.  

"If it is a target you require then there is non better than Omar." He smiled and slapped his chest again "Go Thralls, I shall follow" he said as he pulled his feet out of the ground and his back mounted cannons folded themselves away. The captain nodded.  

"Ok, thralls on me, we go in two groups, second group will hold here and lay down covering fire as the first makes their way across then first group will cover our crossing, then we will all provide cover for Omar here."  

"You are too kind Captain" the big man boomed, attempting a theatrical bow in his enormous armour and coming up short.   

"Right then, teams ready up, first team, led by Jonas there, second team led by me. On my order, good luck everyone." He took a look around, the first running team collected below the lip of the crater watching him, ready to run. "Covering fire!" He roared and was replied with the howling shriek of Omar's cannon along with the hiss of his troops gauss cannons. "Now" he pointed at the runners who set off, hitting full pace almost instantly. This time none of them burst into flames, as the moment any Pirate started to shoot they were either incinerated or forced to take cover by the incinerating beam from the human support weapon, as well as the fact that their forces were becoming depleted now as the strike team made their way through the last of the trench system.   

The running team piled into the forward crater and quickly took up firing. "Will you be alright without us?" The captain smiled at Omar innocently.  

"Somehow Captain, I think I shall survive. Run fast though" he grinned toothily back at him.   

"Second team, on my mark!" The howling of the cannon took up again "Now!" And he was off, it felt good to run, to through caution to the wind, to escape the crater and feel the air rush through his feathers as his legs carried him at full tilt through no-mans land and over the lip of the forward crater, barrelling in with his team to land in a crumpled heap before quickly pulling themselves up to the edge as they joined the first team in supporting Omar's advance. He raised his arm and the big man stopped firing to lock the cannon into a slot on his back, hefting his helmet off the earth nearby and onto his bald head. He turned to them and began walking. The weight of his armour meant he couldn't run, unlike his colleagues in the forward strike team, however the size of his gait moved him quick enough. He was a tempting target to the pirates across the field however and without the hammering of his cannon they found the courage to push their guns through the bunker's firing holes and begin to take aim at him as he walked methodically across the blasted landscape.   

"Covering fire!" The captain yelled, but the hiss of the Gauss rifles didn't have the same effect as Omar's and the slag shots roared out at the giant increasingly. The first shot hit him and the Captain winced, the giant however didn't even noticed and continued to walk almost nonchalantly as more and more bolts splashed against his armour. The slag simply couldn't even dent the Human engineering and the pirates quickly realised this. Two explosive shots blasted the earth near the giant, followed quickly by three more as shrapnel and earth battered against him yet still he walked on, completely unfazed by a positive arsenal of weaponry being turned against him. Suddenly an explosive shot crashed against his helmet and covered him in smoke. The Captain gasped, as did several Thralls who had been glancing over, yet out of the smoke walked Omar, his pace unchanged, his demeanour identical and as he grew closer they could hear that he was in fact whistling as he walked. It was a sunny tune, full of nonchalance and warmth as another explosion thumped against his chest plate. As he marched inexorably towards the forward crater, his whistling turning into song.   

  "Someeeewheeerrrrreeeee over the rain bowwwww,   

Bluuuuuue biiiirrrrdds fllllyyyyyyy,  

Therrrrrrrre's aaaaaa land that I dreamed of,  

Once in a luuuuullaaaaabyyyyyyy"  

  His heavily accented bass voice rolled sweetly over the troops as several more explosions thumped into him, not even throwing him off key let alone off balance. It was impossible not to cheer as the giant marched his way over the lip of the crater. He removed his helmet and grinned at them, ending his song with an elaborate bow. "Shall we get back to it then?" He boomed and was received with another cheer, the Thralls taking up their fire again with renewed vigour. The Captain shook his head and smiled at the big man as he hefted his cannon back into his hands and unleashed it's screaming beam from their stronger position in front of the bunker.  

***  

The strike team had made their way through the trenches now, with their commander mopping up the last of the pirates with a ruthless efficiency. Not a single target was left breathing in the whole defensive network. This only left the bunker now, which was still a formidable objective, though the commander smiled to see her allies behind her had taken up a more forward position on the field and were now battering any enemy that attempted to fire on their position.   

The bunker itself was too solid for them too cause any damage externally, even Omar's Fusion cannon would take days to burn through its outer wall and no doubt the windows would have one way shielding to protect from grenade fire. She sighed, if she had more time she would have liked to have cleared it personally, but this flank was already falling behind the main advance and she couldn't risk allowing the advance to turn like that or the whole offensive would go out of whack and she'd end up being called up in front of a tribunal.  

'How the hell are they so well-funded out here?' She thought. There was half a Republic legion deployed on this rock, more troops than had been put into action in over fifty years. She cartwheeled over a trench as she thought, her blade moving through the thick skull of a screaming Pirate without even the slightest hint of resistance.  They should have squashed any resistance hours after the offensive began, yet here they still were, bogged down in the muck. She couldn't let them be bogged down any further though. She sighed then grimaced in her helmet as a lucky slag round caught her in the back.  

"Li, Sasha, John" she called through the suit vox as she sliced the creature that had shot her from neck to leg "Form up at the base of the hill. We're calling Zeus."   

*** 

From the ridge of the crater the Captain watched as the last of the pirates in the trenches were dispatched by the white-armoured human, in what could only be described as a gymnastic performance. The Thralls were keeping up their fire on the bunker, although it was mostly the giant human next to them who was have ing the most effect at pinning the enemy. THe forward strike team had gathered at the base of the hill beneath the bunker, but weren't advancing. "What are they..." He began but then the leader, after a few quick words with her larger companions turned to Omar and signalled for him to put his helmet on. The big man frowned but did as he was ordered, hefting it onto his head. What followed was clearly a heated conversation, although Omar had switched off his suit's vox relay and so all the Thralls could see was the emphatic movements of the man's head as he argued. After a short time the argument was clearly over as he slammed one foot into the ground and then his shoulders slumped and he nodded, the commander ahead of them turned back to her troop. Omar removed his helmet, his cheeks slightly flushed now beneath his thick beard.   

"Well my friends, it appears the reveries of the day are to be brought to a premature halt." He forced a smile from behind the thick black hair but his eyes looked tired. The group looked at him in confusion "I was all for drawing this out, giving you chaps and chapesses a shot at rushing the bunker, making them pay for the lives they stole here, but our fearless leader Hera wants otherwise." He said the words fearless leader  with a slightly snide look on his face.   

"I'm sorry, so what is happening? Are we retreating?" Asked the captain incredulously. Baffled the giant looked down at him.   

"Retreating? Heavens no my friend! Quite the opposite, we are ending this joyous day in fire and light. Hera is calling in Our father Zeus." The captain looked at Omar for a second then said  

"I'm sorry but I have honestly got no idea what you are talking about Omar. What does this mean?"  

"It means, my feathered compatriot, that you and your troops should take cover. You have nothing to fear so long as you stay low." With that he replaced his helmet and dropped the cannon to the ground. Marching forward he signalled to Hera down at the foot of the bunker. The strike team began to pull back from where they stood, the three larger humans still facing the bunker and Hera guiding them through the trenches. The pirates, seeing this and no longer hampered by Omar's cannon took up firing again, belching smoke and slag down at them. "Take cover thralls, I cannot guarantee your safety at this distance." He boomed over the sound of slag rifles.   

"Hello weapons officer Omar, Hera tells us you would like control of the orbital Zeus platform, is this correct?" Came a polite voice in Omar's ear  

"Yes Hub that's right. And I want to go on record as having said that I am wholeheartedly against this course of action. It's fucking barbaric and Hera is a coward for pushing this."  

"My apologies Omar, however it is vital that this flank not be left behind the main approach. The fighting is intense in the centre and they have a significant amount of reserves including several Titan class mobile fortresses. If you do not carry out this action then we shall simply action this remotely, though that is not preferable as you yourselves may then fall under the possible casualties." The voice was soothing yet confident, yet it did little to placate the big man.  

"I know, I have had it explained to me." He replied venomously. "Those are my thoughts. As I said, I want the record to show that this is an abhorrent course of action and that the blame here falls entirely to Hera. I will carry it out out of respect." He replied with a finality. 

"The Zeus platform is en route, you will have control for thirty seconds. I assume this will be sufficient?"  Omar sighed before straightening. 

"It is sufficient" he growled. 

"Thank you for your compliance Omar. The platform will be required back at the main front as soon as you are finished. Good luck, is there anything else you need today?"  

"No Hub, please let me know when the platform is overhead."  

"Happy hunting, twenty seconds." The voice cut out. Omar adjusted his suit settings to integrate with the incoming weapon platform and then waited as his strike team pulled back.  

"Thralls, please fall back to the base of the crater, get as low as you can and we shall march on together once this day is won." He looked down at the captain, his helmet concealing the sad grimace he made as he met the bird's eyes. The captain for his part looked back at him in bewilderment then shrugged as a slag round whizzed past their heads.  

"We are right behind you Omar." The big man nodded, turning back to watch the battlefield. Looking up at him, wreathed in smoke as he stood unflinching in the fire and explosions it was hard for the Captain not to be in awe, slag bolts splashing uselessly against his armour, explosive rounds thumping against his unmoving chest not even causing him to flinch. The engineering work in that suit was astonishing he thought to himself. This was Humanity, shining beacons against the blackness that rode in against them, they swept in and plucked you from the darkest situations and led you to the light. He smiled to himself as he hustled the last of his men into the bottom of the crater, excited despite himself to see this final  At that moment Omar raised his right hand in silence, pointing at the bunker and for the first time in that day he felt genuine fear shiver up through him.   

"Thralls get down!" The giant boomed and then the sky split open. 

Down in the trenches the four other humans immediately crouched, huddled together as a split second later the most perfect thunderbolt was hurled from the sky to connect with the earth in a cataclysmic, shrieking explosion. The bunker almost immediately disappeared in blinding white light as earth and fire was flung into the air where the vast electrical current connected. the feathers on all the Thralls stood on end, quivering and bristling as they huddled at the bottom of the crater. Omar stood above them, wreathed in a perfect white light, he was nothing more than a jet black silhouette standing in stoic silence as a thunder roared at a constant level over the battlefield.  

This was no usual lightning bolt, if a normal bolt was the branch on a tree, then this was the tree trunk. It was impossibly thick and perfectly still as it obliterated all traces of the enemy position. Rolling, deafening thunder masked all other senses, it was in their ears, in their skin, covering their taste buds as it shook their bones and their very souls to the core. A melting, ferocious heat radiated back, scorching the earth and tearing at their heavy metal armour suits which bristled with conductivity as their onboard systems desperately tried to dampen themselves. And still Omar stood, pointing at the bunker, a giant metal golem bringing the fury of the gods down to crush any who would stand against them. Thirty seconds felt like an age as all trace of the fortified position was removed, eviscerated from existence by the vast electrical bolt, sheer force overwhelming all else.   

And suddenly, as fast as lightning is reputed to be, it was over. The vast bolt simply ended, a high pitch shriek tailing off into the booming thunder as that too rolled away in an almost natural diminuendo. All that was left of the bunker was a glowing scorch mark in the earth. Omar dropped his hand and stood motionless, looking out over the blasted dirt. The heat was still radiating out as he stood there, his suit atmosphere unit humming loudly as it worked to keep him cool. He stood, breathing slowly as he watched Hera and the other three make their way back over the cooked ground towards him.  

As they arrived at the top of the crater's edge he slowly turned for the first time to look down into the hole.  

"Is this what we are then Hera?" He asked softly, gesturing at the small collection of blackened bones and ash that had moments before been their compatriots. 

"Omar get back in line, I heard what you told the Hub" 

"Good" the big man replied softly, not taking his eyes from the charred uniform of the captain at the front. "So this is Humanity then is it Hera? This is how you would have us be? Shining saviours in White Armour" he rounded on her then, his voice rising in anger and disgust. "Saviours in white armour until we hit a fucking deadline. Tell me, oh great and noble leader of mine, what is the fucking point in taking this rock if we lose all our friends and allies along the way?" 

"Their losses were deemed acceptable to..." She began, but the giant roared in response. 

"Deemed acceptable? Acceptable Hera? You arrogant, self-righteous waste of a goddamn brain! Do you even hear yourself?" The other three were watching the exchange in silence. "How dare you, how fucking dare you, no losses are acceptable Hera do you hear me? No losses. Not when they are our friends." 

"Omar you will get back in line or you will be disciplined." Hera shouted, trying to regain her composure as the big man towered over her. 

"Oh discipline away" he waved a big hand as though swatting her comment like a fly. He took a long pause before going on, his voice now tired "if this is to be our role in the galaxy then I do not want, nor shall I take any further part in it" he turned from her and stepped down into the crater. Reaching down amongst the collection of blackened bones he pulled the charred badge from the sleeve of the captain's ruined jacket and placed it in a storage compartment by his leg. "We should have been better than this, I am sorry my friend" he whispered, before turning and striding away, out into the whirling dust. 

Ark Royal part 1

"She was a Leviathan in the sky" the massive human male in the Hawaiin shirt and wide brimmed straw hat said rapturously. The captivated audience of children and the couple of adults who quietly watched with disapproving gazes was silent as his story began. "The Ark had no equal, not even a dozen Fillion Capital ships could match her for weight, let alone firepower. She was a continent floating silent through space." He reached behind him to take a sip from the large multicoloured drink that had been going down astonishingly quickly as he sat there. He delicately picked out the small umbrella and replaced it after taking a long draft. "Ahhhhh." He smacked his lips then went on. "But even with her might the war was sitting in a stalemate. AS we know, the Republic simply didn't have the numbers and the newly introduced Human fleets, despite all shiny and new were still far too few and far between to be able to cover all the space on the Western frontier at once. The Hegemony were simply too numerous for us to hold back and so we were busy..." 

"'Scuse me Sir, but my mummy says they're called the Dominion not the Hegem... Heggeymo..." Cut in a small and largely tentacled child sitting at the front row, peering up with wide jet-black eyes. The man in the straw hat squinted at the interruption then took a thoughtful sip as the child tapered off from struggling to pronounce the complicated word. 

"Well your mummy certainly has her opinions on the matter" he said darkly "Dominion feels like a bit of dirty word  to me though so I'll be sticking with Hedg-e-mony" he pronounced it with particular flair that made the children giggle. “Either way the bastards were tough and they'd had millenniums more preparation time than the Republic. We may have had the brand spanking new tech from Jupiter but the Hegemony had fleets upon fleets of reserves and they quickly learnt that it was easier for them to avoid straight up confrontation and instead simply attack where we weren't, wait for us to get there and then shoot off and attack somewhere else. Had the Oan councillor not had the sense to pay off the Brokers to raid their northern borders as well then we would have been buggered from the beginning." A parent tutted at his language and he stuck his tongue out at the children, who giggled. "So yes, the war was going badly, and we were stuck playing catch up, engaging and beating back the Hegemony fleets only some time after they had entered our space and decimated colonies. It was a losing game of cat and mouse across the front. That is save for where the fighting was hardest." his eyes glazed slightly and a fond smile spread over his face "Save for where the legendary Seventh Admiralty Fleet held the Oan-Dyson spheres." He paused then for dramatic effect as the children crowded forward in excitement. Leaning back he tilted the last drop of his drink into his mouth and gestured for another. Everyone knew about the Seventh Admiralty, Humanity's spear point fleet during the Dominion Wars. They had been led by the Ark and it had been them that had decimated the Hegemony's Capital ships in a blaze of nuclear fire above the skies of Arcturas Prime, the tipping point at which the republic had began the slow march back from the brink of destruction. This arrival in fire and death had signalled Humanity showing it's hand to the interstellar table on the side of the Republic, despite expectations that they would remain neutral. From there it had been the Seventh Admiralty fleet who had gone on to hold the line in the Sphere fields where most other fleets had been lost or reassigned in the face of the sheer weight of enemy numbers.

"Yes, the Seventh fleet held, even when all around them was failing they held, and where the fighting was the thickest you could guarantee that you'd find the Ark Royal there, cutting a swathe of antimatter annihilation through even the toughest of the Hegemony cruisers." They were now grinning up at him as he painted the picture of the great ship. "God she was beautiful though. Brutalist architecture coupled with glistening reflector fields. There was no liquimetal back then either so she was held together with a rigid structure, fixed in position as a behemoth of broadsides coated with glinting manoeuvrable plates of tungsten. In size alone she was more than enough to contend with most capital groups and in firepower, well she could eradicate moons with a single volley." He took a sip and smiled, settling back and looking a little flushed, though whether from alcohol or excitement the onlookers couldn't tell. "They say that when she arrived at the defense of Arcturas Prime she blotted out the sunlight of an entire hemisphere before illuminating it again with her legendary fusion spears. Yes the Ark was Humanity's crowning joy and the figurehead of the Republic defence. Unfortunately..." He paused to take another sip and build the tension, a glimmer in his eye as he lent forward "she was also where one young reprobate had his first posting as a runner, and it was there that he took part in the Ark's most famous mission." He grinned and then a small frown fluttered over his face before he settled back to begin his story in earnest.  

*** 

"What a marvellous day!" Shouted Admiral Ferris with a grin out to the vanta black of space in front of him, prompting chuckles and shaking of heads from below him. The expansive bridge window was a whole mess of holographic data, far too much of which was highlighted in red, not to mention the constant ongoing bombardment of enemy bombers blasting away at the forward shielding with luminescent  annihilating orbs of magenta and white. That didn't seem to bother the somewhat eccentric admiral though, who was staring out with a content smile, as though he were watching waves breaking over a romantic beach scene. It was the fifth day of their engagement with what they thought was the Hegemony's ninth and fourth capital groups and although they had been making short work of the bulky cruisers that had headed up the group, he had lost most of his fighter escort and were now taking prolonged fire from the smaller enemy bombers. The distinctive bulbous green hulls of the Hegemony bombers pounded the massive surface of the Ark which stretched out before him beyond the vanishing point.  

"Ablative shields diminished to 7%" came a cry from the pit beneath him. He leaned over the railing from his viewing platform, or 'the crow's nest' as the crew had taken to calling it.  

"They're Ablative shields, they're supposed to be at 7%" he shouted back sardonically with a smile. "Maintain refresh rates and divert some power from the kinetic barriers". Below him was a sea of people frantically working at the vast array of controls it took to manage the Ark as she carried out her operation to protect the nearest Dyson Sphere group. They seemed in a good mood though, it was hard to have a grim outlook when you were in Ferris' bridge group.  

"ETA on that fighter support reinforcement?" He called out. A short and frumpy looking comms worker shouted back 

"None confirmed yet admiral, Dominion forces have begun a land invasion of Parenth which is drawing away small craft."  

"Hegemony please, not Dominion." Ferris replied, as though telling off an irritating student. He frowned a little though, land invasions didn't make sense in a conventional manner for the Hegemony as they already held more than enough planets to maintain their resource requirements. It was a clever tactic though, as they knew that a land engagement sapped resources and vital fighter units away from the Space based engagements and it was in Space that this war would be decided. Really they should abandon the land battles to focus resources on their Capital battles but that probably wouldn't go down well with the local populations. Ferris chuckled to himself. How kind of the Hegemony he thought to himself, drawing resources away from him made his day just that bit more interesting. He stood tapping an upbeat tune on the railing and chewing his bottom lip absently as he watched the antimatter fire flow out from his gun batteries like orange rain into the crowded sky around them.  "I'm siiiinging in the rain..." he sung to himself quietly. 

"Fusion spears at 98% Admiral" came a shout from behind him. This brought him back from his thoughts and he clapped his hands together excitedly. "Ooo!" He exclaimed like an exuberant five year old. He turned and walked back off the suspended platform to where his seven weapons officers were sitting in a tight knit bunch around a central holographic board. Each controlled a different weapons group and was relaying orders down to the pit below where specific teams were poised to process and then carry out those orders.  

"Right then my glorious team of weps, what's our situation?" He asked as he approached.  

"All things considered we're in pretty good nick at the moment Admiral" said the nearest of them "though we could really use some dry dock time to get the forward batteries repaired, they've taken the brunt of the beating and are down to only 40% capacity."  

"Don't be ridiculous, you only want to go back to dock so you can meet up with that lovely barman again" the man blushed and then looked sheepish "besides 40% sounds a whole lot better than being at 30% doesn't it?" Ferris smiled then frowned in quick succession and looked down at the hologram display of the battle as it was being played out. In the centre thousands of blue craft spun and whirled like a swarm of bees on the board, these were the small and manoeuvrable frigates – both Republic and Hegemony - each with a crew of about 100 whose task it was to mop up fighters and each other and generally defend their carrier and cruiser groups. The single pilot bombers and fighters were too small to register as single entities on the board and so only collections of them showed as blue smudges in the darkness. The Hegemony still had several groups of cruisers left floating in offensive formations on both their port and starboard bow, attempting to come into positions where they could bombard the Ark, but also wary enough to not come too close to her powerful broadsides and so they were mostly hanging back out of range, waiting for an opening. The Republic cruisers, depressingly only about a tenth in number of the Hegemony were putting up a brave fight, taking guerrilla tactics of harassment and rapid strikes on their opposites, utilising their more advanced propulsion systems to get in and out of range without taking too much damage. Sat back from the main hub of activity were seven large Capital ships though, all of them Hegemony and it was these that posed the true threat to the Dyson spheres, and it was these that it was their mission to destroy. The attrition was taking its toll on the Republic fleet and it was clear that without the presence of the enormous blue bulk of the Ark Royal, which took up the majority of space on the board this battle would have been lost a while ago.  

"Right then Cherubs" He surveyed the board for a second then highlighted a group of enemy cruisers that were surrounding a smaller capital ship some 70 A-clicks to their starboard. "This bugger thinks he's out of range, target him."  

"But sir you are aware that their lead ship is also within range, here" one of the officers in charge of the defensive Arc Cannons said cautiously as he leant over and highlighted the largest of the Hegemony capital ships on the Board.  

"True Boris"  

"My name is Henry sir," said the tired looking weapons officer 

"I know that Boris, you've been my wep for two years now. Today you're acting like far more of a Boris than a Henry if you ask me" said Ferris, the others grinned. Ferris famously knew the names of every crew member on his ships and famously refused to use any of them. He scratched his thick black beard "See the thing is, if we hit the group around the lead ship we'd bring down their command down for sure, but they'd just delegate to the next biggest ship and all those cruisers - he pointed at the hive of activity that surrounded the highlighted Capital ship - would scatter. If we hit this ship here" he pointed back to his original choice, the swirling blue of the smaller ships was considerably more tightly packed "then there's a good chance we can take out all those cruisers with her as well. That creates a knock on effect of debris that's going to go surging outwards and destroy even more and more and so on. They're tightly knit, probably reinforcing one another whereas the group around the lead ship are sparse and would be able to get away from the wreckage and the little Sun we're gonna plop in the middle of them." He looked up at them expectantly as they mulled over what he had said. "Capiche?" They paused for a minute more, surveying the battlefield one last time before nodding in agreement. "Right then, aim for that cruiser, full burn Fusion Spears. God I love saying that." He grinned, of all the devastating toys on his juggernaut of a flying country, the fusion spears were his favourite.  

Harnessing the power of the Ark's massive anti-matter/fusion hybrid engines they took days at a time to safely siphon off and store enough power to be ready to fire, yet they were a complete game changer when they were, so much so that most capital groups wouldn't come close to him at first, but they always got impatient, they always thought they'd be the ones to bring down the infamous Ark Royal. 

"I don't suppose you'll allow the targeting computers to fire them sir? Or at the least a weapon's specialist who's trained to use them?" Shouted one of the officers after him. 

"Bradley" he shouted back to the officer whose name was Harriet "what is the point in working all the way up to Admiral if I don't get to play with my own toys? Runner!" He shouted back, and the weapons team let out a quiet groan in unison. A young lad, barely old enough to have signed up joined him, standing a respectful distance back.  

"Admiral?" He said hesitantly.  

"Yes, Sampson isn't it?" 

"Richard sir" the boy replied. 

"Right then Sammy" he leaned over the platform again and looked down into the pit. "I want you to bring me the fusion spear interface. Don't go using it yourself now though, I'd have to send a note home to your mother. I will also need that enormous lump of brains and meat that is Comms Officer Mary-sue from that desk there" he pointed and the boy peered down before nodding as he recognised the enormous head comms officer who's actual name was Jothram. "Good lad, chop chop, get going." He sped off and the Admiral picked up the tannoi system. "Ark crew, it's a beautiful morning in this pretty tub wouldn't you agree?" There were chuckles and grunts of sarcastic agreement "Well it's about to get a lot prettier, take a step with me into paradise ladies and gentlemen and stock up on your Pina Coladas, Fusion spears firing in 5, please be so good as to make the necessary preparations."  

The atmosphere immediately became charged as excitement bristled through them, anticipation of the spectacle to come was almost palpable in the air above the pit and he grinned as he watched it. "System, increase UV filter by 700% in 3 minutes" he spoke to his lapel. An androgynous voice in his ear replied

"Increasing UV filter. Advice: 1000% would be more suitable for Fusion Spear discharge."  

"Advice duly noted and duly ignored." He smiled and looked out of the crystalline viewing window as it dimmed. The great shining surface of the Ark had begun to split as two enormous rails were lifted up from her depths by vast pistons and actuators. They resembled a pair of ancient Roman javelins, with the nearest half thick with the monstrous power capacitors and the conductive tips at the far end comparatively thin. They shone in the light of the nearby star as a faint whine began to grow in the background.  

"Here you are sir" came a voice from behind him and he found the Runner standing there, offering out a pair of mechanised gauntlets. Behind him stood an enormous woman, even by human standards she was large, with bulging arms crossed across a massive chest and legs that looked better suited to a horse than a person. "What music do you like Sammy?" He asked as he took the gloves. The comms officer rolled her eyes but smiled. "Now now Mary-Sue, music can tell a lot about a man. Go on lad, don't be shy."  

"Well sir..." The boy glanced at the Giant comms officer who nodded encouragingly "Well sir it depends on the mood really, I like different kinds at different times." 

"Excellently evasive answer boy, never pigeon hole yourself on matters of the heart and never get backed into a corner by a question from a superior" he held his hands up and flicked a switch on each palm with his thumbs. Immediately the two rails burst into life in front of them, high accuracy accelerators and dynamos perfected in the engineering labs on the moons of Jupiter rotated and moved the two spears impossibly quickly, following the directions of his hands. He whispered to himself with a slight frown "now I am become death...". The boy shuffled nervously behind him as he carried out a few system checks. "Say you had to choose for right now though" the Admiral said quietly, squinting through one eye following the line of the spears, bringing the necessary targeting systems online on the large display window. The boy stared at the admiral. Everyone had heard of Hector Ferris, his reputation amongst humanity and now even the wider Republic was incredible but to be standing by the man was something else. He exuded an almost disturbing level of calm and yet at the same time had the touch of dangerous unpredictability that kept you constantly on edge. It was difficult to justify the man with the stories of incredible military heroism that were told in the canteens, stories of pomp and circumstance. The man before him resembled more of a particularly likeable barman crossed with a cage fighter.

"Right now sir?" He frowned thinking hard as his mind forgot every song he'd ever heard. He chewed his lip for a while as the admiral carried on with his checks. Then he smiled. "Right now, I'd want an old earth classic." Smiling even more as he thought of the perfect song he went on "something with drums, guitars, lots of distortion and a powerful voice. Something that makes you laugh but also makes you want to stamp your feet and scream with a smile on your face, a song that..." He cut off as the admiral spun his head to stare at him. His face was dark, his eyes stared into him and in one moment he felt himself being pulled apart by nothing but his gaze. Then Ferris raised one eyebrow comically and music filled the bridge, ringing out loud over the tannoy. It was exactly the song he had been thinking of. A grin burst across the admiral's face and the boy matched it.  

"Good lad" he said as the music swelled. Down in the pit those not working on the Fusion spear interfaces jumped from their seats and ran to the viewing window to watch. "Mary-Sue, I want you to broadcast to as many enemy craft as you can, let's get them distracted listening along to the Boy’s most excellent choice of soundtrack." The big woman grinned and input a few commands on her wrist control. The enemy ships flying nearby visibly hesitated as the crashing drums and rising guitar joined a powerful vocal through their comm systems, the monstrously powerful cyber warfare systems on board the Ark briefly overriding their wireless communications. A wave of visible confusion went through the enemy fleet. "Here we go" smiled the Admiral and he raised his hands.  

The two massive spears shuddered and rose with him. He gave them one last wave back and forth, then focussed in, squinting through his right eye he zoomed on the target capital group, aiming manually with his fingers as the weapons officers held their breath. The music was reaching a crashing crescendo, the crew that knew the song, and that was most, joined in the singing, the noise in the pit was of deafening, brilliant music causing waves of excitement and pure thrill to flow through them with every heavy bass drumbeat, so much so that they sang and screamed and howled along with it as the song built, the singing grew louder and the drums faster, raising higher and higher it all swelled to one great drop. The admiral grinned and suddenly looked down at the Boy. 

"Bang" he said simply. 

The music crashed in an explosion of sound as pure light flooded through the dimmed viewing window and the crew let out a roar of exultation. The power of the Fusion spears made the great ship shake from top to toe as the engines suddenly howled to compensate for the ferocious kickback that they gave off. Quickly the light fell away to show two long white streaks that could be seen surging off from the bow of the monstrous ship into the now natural view of space, sent on their way by the earth shattering chorus of the song. The admiral stood steady, holding the spears still as the metal glowed hot white in the blackness around them. "One... two... three" the boy heard Jothram count under her breath and in the distance a small burst of purple blossomed out from where the white streaks had disappeared to. It was small at first but then was coupled with a rush of orange, then green and blue bubbles expanded out, growing and merging in a menagerie of colour until all at once an enormous disk of shattered hulls and pure fusion energy fired outwards as the small star-like occurrence that had briefly burst into existence collapsed in on itself,  making the bridge rock and the crew have to grab one another to remain upright.  

"Capital ship destroyed" came a shout from one of the weapons officers behind them as the music thumped away “no… two Capital ships down”. 

"Counting at least twenty-seven cruisers down, extensive damage likely to a further forty." 

"Estimating thousands of enemy fighter casualties"  

There was a pause as the crew marvelled at the colourful view through the display window. It bloomed out like a flower, petals of crimson and vermillion destruction unfurled on the black canvas of space.

"They're pulling back Sir, they've gone to reinforce" came a fourth shout. The holographic board showed the other capital groups slowly turning away. 

The Admiral sighed deeply and stood up straight, the music was dying away now, the spears slowly sinking back into the depths of the Ark but the majority of the bridge crew was still standing watching as the darkness of space was illuminated with the fluorescent colours of the exploding enemy craft.  

"'And they would all smile at the Beauty of Destruction'" whispered the Admiral again. The boy turned to Jothram and cocked his head in confusion, but the big woman quietly shook her head at him. Ferris pulled off the gloves and handed them back to the boy. He seemed slightly troubled, with a dark look over his features as though he was suddenly tired to the bone, even as the cheers and whoops of the crew continued from below as another cruiser could be seen to go up in flames, caught in the debris field.  He caught the boy watching him from the corner of his eye and quickly shook himself, pulling up to his full height again he grinned and turned to the large Comms officer. "Right then Mary-Sue old boy, let's you and me have a pow wow, there's something that's come though the wires that I need you to take a look at with me." He winked at Richard, then took the Comms officer by the arm and led her back past the Weapons crew and away from the Bridge, turning his back on the devastation he had wrought in space behind.

End of Part 1. 

Hephaestus part 1

"Where the bloody hell..." He was cut off as a slag bolt splashed against the hard cracked ground in front of him, narrowly missing his head as he ducked back below the edge of his foxhole. "Where the bloody hell did this lot come from?" He roared over the sound of slag rifles belching their molten rounds and thick black smoke at his unit's pinned position.   

  "I don't know captain!" Yelled his communications operative. "By all accounts of this flank they shouldn't be here at all!"  

  "Well they bloody are aren't they you blithering idiot!" He shouted back. He lifted his feathered head quickly up over the parapet of the crater to catch a glimpse of the enemy. They were dug in hard, a large grey fortification fronted by a maze of trenches that hadn't appeared on any of the reconnaissance Intel loomed up across no-man's land. He cursed again under his breath, they were supposed to be on the far reaches of the battle lines with minimum to no contact he had been assured, but here was what looked like a full battalion holed up across a small stretch of sand and wind blasted rock. Judging by the amount of smoke belching from the firing holes and over the trenches  there must have been about eighty to a hundred of them holding their extremely commanding position of the flank. The flank his meagre squad of thirty Thralls were supposed to be the farthest tip of.   

  "Damn the republic, why are they so intent of taking this bloody rock anyway?" He asked, meaning to be rhetorical.  

  "It's the pirates sir, they all run out of the space port here before raiding our outer rim"  replied his comms officer unhelpfully. 

  "I know it's the sodding pirates you arse, I was being facetious". He threw a clod of earth at the man before sighing. He glared down at his Gauss rifle, at least they were better armed than the damned pirates he thought, good old Fabricant engineering. It may not have been as fearsome as the smoke and liquid metal belching slag rifles but it was lethally accurate and as reliable as an old boot.    

  He pulled his thoughts together and gestured to his two officers. "Right you two, fan out around this crater, I want a squad of ten led over to that crater there." He pointed towards a slightly smaller foxhole to the North West of their position. "We will provide covering fire from here and you get your men there, you should be in range to clear some of the trenches from there, how many do we have?" The other officers made a quick tally  

"Eight sir"   

  "Fat lot of good that's going to do." He muttered to himself. It was less than he had hoped for. Their rifles were powerful, but useless against a bunker unless they could fire their shots directly through the firing holes. His men were good but at this range that would be and impressive shot to make without the added danger of slag bolts tearing your face off. "Right well you'd better take all the grenades and clear that sodding trench at least, focus on the sections with more of the bad guys in them, don't waste any you understand?" He looked at them staring back at him. "Right. Well go on then you daft parrots!" He clacked his beak at them to emphasise the parrot joke and they laughed, slightly manically as fear flashed briefly in their eyes before they scrambled back down the bank to relay the orders.   

  Thralls weren't the biggest or most fierce fighters in the galaxy but they were certainly some of the most tenacious and amongst the fastest, the republic military liked to make good use of them in fast flanking manoeuvres and it was imperative that his men were able to, if not eliminate the bunker, then certainly get around it as quickly as they could so that they could complete the sweep of this section of the planet as ordered by republic command. That would mean clearing the trenches.   

  His soldiers were lining up along the outer bank of the crater, the sound of their gauss coils charging was a high pitched whine over the crashing and pounding of the slag bolts coming from the pirate's position. He looked down to where the advance squad was gathered, they were watching him as they waited for their covering fire with long clawed legs twitching in their eagerness to be flexed.   

He glanced over his line once more with their heads ducked below the edge to avoid the slag storm and he nodded, everyone tensed. "Open fire!" He shouted down at them, and they all rolled onto their fronts, heads over the top and the air crackled with electromagnetically charged energy as gauss bolts sliced through the air between them and the pirates with a snapping, but otherwise eerily quiet intensity. The roar of the slag rifles cut back as their users took cover to avoid the dense projectiles. "Now!" He shouted and the small squad set off, their legs lancing out in front of them, quickly reaching their top speed and covering the distance impressively quickly. The defenders realised what was happening almost too late and smoke once again billowed out of the bunker as red hot slag bolts pitted the earth around the running Thralls.   

  "Keep firing! Don't let up!" He shouted over the din, but three of the running squad fell before the rest barrelled into the crater to crash down on top of each other out of view from the defenders. The feathers on those who had been hit burst into flames as molten metal buried itself into their lightly armoured bodies and splashed across their skin. It was not a pleasant or easy death and they went out screaming. He shuddered and looked down at his men "OK take cover again" he shouted, seeing the ashen looks on their features. Some were nervously twitching their feathers under the small plates of armour, beaks chattering quietly in anxiety.   

  Slag bolts were disgusting weapons, designed to break those they didn't kill, the incessant banging and crashing accompanied by the smoke and the gruesome way they killed would turn the hearts of any soldier that was not used to them. He embarrassingly remembered his first training session with slag when he had gone into shock under a burning tree trunk and had to be pulled out by his drill sergeant, whom he had then bitten.   

  "Right then, now we have command of no-man's land, well done everyone, but it's not over yet!" He shouted cheerily before wincing as a loud explosion burst nearby, apparently they had explosive rounds too, this day kept on improving. "Now we crack open that little nut they're holed up in, ready?" Their faces hardened and they nodded, these soldiers wouldn't be cowering under any tree trunks. "Up! Covering fire!"   

  The gauss rifles opened up again, their large tungsten slugs peppering the bunker with deep gashes, but only really causing superficial damage to the outer layer. They did have a suppressing effect however and the smoke thinned slightly, enough for the men in the forward crater to stand and throw two grenades. Two was all they managed though. As soon as they stood there was a howling screaming sound and all at once things began to really fall apart.   

  Out of the forward enemy trench suddenly spewed a mass of howling, screaming, spitting claws and fur. A tide of savage looking feline animals poured as one cohesive swarm, six legs speeding lean black fur covered bodies and snarling fangs across the short distance between the trench and the forward crater. In a heartbeat they fell upon the unsuspecting squad who toppled back in shock, falling out of sight beneath the crater's lip. The screams of the Thralls were drowned by the howling of the feline mass and roars of celebration from the pirate defenders across the way. Those left behind looked on in shock. 

"What the...." He started but couldn't finish. The men around him were quaking as the slag rifles fired up again, focussed intently on their position as the felines finished off their comrades, their howls and screeches joining the booming and crashing. Explosive rounds were landing heavy around their position now and he saw two of his men on the far side of the crater explode in a flash of white phosphorous. He looked around, he didn't know what to do. His comms officer was screaming down the com-pack, anguish on his face as he implored the Hub for reinforcements. This would be where he died then, he thought, in a dustbowl on an alien world. He shrugged. There were worse places to go.   

  The woman to his left took a slag bolt to the face, her beak and skin torn away to leave a gaping gash as her eyes went dead. This snapped him back and he spun to open fire on the enemy position, at least he would go down fighting he thought as he squeezed off rounds at any target he could. Slag was now pouring in a stream at them, the earth in front of the crater acquiring a metallic sheen as it set hard. Another of his soldiers burst into flames further down the line, his screams ringing out over their position. Some of them were crying he could see, one woman was laughing maniacally, the rest just set their faces and squeezed off slug after slug. Then, bizarrely, there was a gentle tap on his shoulder. He turned, bemused, to see the communication officer standing there holding the vox-comm receiver to him, a look of sheer glee playing around his eyes.  

  "It's for you sir" he said, not terror or despair in his eyes but absolute happiness and relief. Thinking the man had gone into shock he took the receiver hesitantly. 

  "Hub?" He had to shout over the hammering of the slag rifles.  

  "Good afternoon commander, how are you lot doing there?" Came an infuriatingly casual male voice down the comm-link  

  "How... How THE FUCK do you think we're doing?!" He screamed down the link, having a complete sense of humour failure as another explosive shell pounded the earth not two metres from their position.  

  "Yes that's about as well as we figured, given your poor comms officer's attitude earlier. We have re-tasked some reinforcements for you Captain"  

  "Good!" He shouted above the din, his heart racing at the thought of a possible rescue "who, where and tell them to hurry up!"   

  "Yes, the human drop team Hephaestus 4 is on route to your position." His heart stopped.   

"A... who?" He asked again, the comms officer was grinning like a mad man now.  

  "Hephaestus 4 captain, a Greek class human drop team" the machine clearly showing signs of pleasure in the man's shock. "ETA 5 minutes, can you hold?"  

  "We... yes Hub" He grinned back at the comms officer now, who laughed and stamped his feet on the ground in excitement "Yes! Yes Hub we can hold for 5 minutes!"   

  His men were glancing at him in confusion as he turned to them, happiness and excitement written across his face. "Right then soldiers!" He shouted over the din, not caring now about the molten death raining down around them "reinforcements are on their way, ETA five minutes!" They looked happily to one another, relief written on some faces, but anxiety still there amongst most and they turned back to their firing positions with grim looks on their faces. "Reinforcements will be the Greek class Human drop squad Hephaestus 4!" He shouted at them again. Silence fell over the crater as they all stopped firing, turning to stare at him in disbelief. He smiled back at them and suddenly grins and excited laughter burst around the crater as the reality dawned upon them. "Does that sound good? Can you hold for five minutes then?" He shouted for the last time.  

  "Yes Captain!" They roared back at him and cheered, resuming fire as they laughed and excitedly chattered to one another. The smoke still billowed and explosions still fell all around them but to the soldiers in the crater it was as though rain had begun to fall in hell. Almost as if they sensed what was coming the enemy intensified their fire, shells bombarded their position and two more of his soldiers were torn from life in a blinding phosphoric flash, but they held. Against the roar of slag and the explosions all around them they held the crater, the deafening thundering crash of the slag rifles and the howling keening of the felines waiting for an attack did not overrun their position, even when a man on point at the craters edge burst into flames as a slag bolt caught his shoulder plate and splashed melted metal over his feathers. They held. And they were rewarded.  

  Above the hammering of the pirate's rifles, over the smoke and the screeching defenders, over the explosions and whistling of shells the Captain heard a new sound begin. It was almost inaudible to begin with, a far off sound like a breeze through an open window. A speck had appeared in the sky, a black dot against the light pink refracted light, occasionally obscured by smoke and ash. The sound grew and grew and his men pulled back into the crater, watching as the speck became larger and larger. Now the sound became a rushing of wind, then a roaring gale, then a howling, rending sound that tore at their ears and obscured everything else, even the slag guns ceased firing as defenders and attackers pressed their hands, claws anything against their ears to blot it out. It grew to a deafening crescendo as a human drop pod landed with a world ending crash into the scorched earth in front of them.  

  Then there was silence. No guns fired, no animals howled, only the slight creaking of cooling metal and sand being blown in the wind could be heard as the drop pod stood proud between the two forces.  A shining monument glinting in the smoke wreathed and blasted ground. There was a large number 4 crudely daubed over the side, under which a burning hammer had been stencilled on.  

  The defenders remembered that they were in a war first and the pounding slag rifles started up again, this time aimed at the drop pod rather than the crater, much to his men's relief. There was a hiss of pressure equalisation and magnetic locking fields as two large panels on the rear of the glinting pyramid fell open to reveal its precious cargo.   

  An enormous metal boot slammed down on the access ramp and Hephaestus 4 stepped out from their metal chrysalis. Five Humans strode forward down towards them, hulking exo-suits, hung heavy with plates of armour making them twice as bulky as ay normal human. If there was such a thing as a normal human.   

  "Captain" one of them spoke as she stepped over the lip of the crater, her armour was slightly more fitted than the others, less bulky and clearly designed for faster movement. It was also painted white whereas the following three were gunmetal grey. She removed her helmet to reveal a firm yet appraising look and short cropped hair. "I see your position is tenuous at best."  

  She cast her eyes around at the weary looking soldiers before looking down at him, meeting his eyes. He barely came to her armpits in height, and even without the suit of armour she would have been at least double his weight in pure muscle and sinew. "Are you alright?" She asked, the compassion in her voice was disarming when coupled with her intimidating physique.   

  "Ye... yes." He stammered, then hardened. "Their position is well fortified and they outnumber us five to one. They also seem to have a pack of some kind of feline animals in the trenches there blocking any advance on foot, they killed a number of my soldiers."  

  "Yes we saw the vid-com. Don't worry, we shall clear this, although we would be honoured if you would stay to fight alongside us." He looked up in amazement at her.   

  "You would have us fight with you?"  

  "Well of course!" She laughed, then straightened and smiled at the surrounding soldiers "it is always an honour to fight with a Thrall Flank team!" The flattery was clear but the men lapped it up anyway, ten minutes before their death had seemed certain, but now...  

  The other four Humans entered the crater, three of them held what appeared to be enormous hammers in their armoured fists whilst the fourth made the men gasp. All humans were large, but this one was enormous, both in height and bulk the man towered over even his comrades. In his hand was a gun that hummed and glowed with an eerie red light and on each shoulder was what was clearly some form of artillery. He appeared as a living tank.   

  "Omar!" The woman in white shouted, beckoning at the enormous man as they joined them in the bottom of the crater. Omar removed his helmet, shaved head and a thick bristling black beard came tumbling out, a broad glinting smile glowing through the tangle of hair. Even standing in the bottom of the crater he had to duck slightly to avoid the slag bolts whistling overhead.   

  "Hera, my queen, what can Omar do for you?" The man boomed theatrically back to the woman as he approached, smiling to the watching men who couldn't help but smile back. He had a face of boyish glee, the thunder of enemy fire not phasing him in the least.  

  "Omar you and the Thralls will hold this ridge, you shall lay down covering fire on the bunker and trenches as we advance to within hammer range. As we move up you can follow at a range that you deem suitable, or hold here." The giant was nodding along, a comedic look of feigned  concentration as she spoke, one of his hands stroking his beard dramatically.  

  Once we have cleared the trenches and made it to the bunker we shall reassess... are you listening to me?" She asked incredulously. 

"Forgive me my queen" the man boomed again, shaking his head, "I struggle deeply to hold attention with you, your beauty beguiles the senses, it penetrates the very core of my being and leaves me unable..." He never finished as Hera slapped him hard across the face, the metallic slap sound of her armoured glove meeting hairy flesh rung out around the crater. The Thrall soldiers all laughed and even the other three humans could be seen to giggle in their armour.   

  "Omar, that is not a good enough excuse to use the word ‘penetrate’. Did that help your attention?" She asked sweetly.  

  "Ah yes my Queen, I understand you completely now" he grinned at her, rubbing a pink cheek as he did as the Thralls howled with laughter. The change from abject terror to laughter and warmth on the battlefield was amazing and the Captain looked down at these humans and realised it was a show. It was a show to warm them, to lift them from despair and to pull them back from the edge of, their casual attitude to the hell that surrounded them relaxing them and bringing them to themselves again.   

  "Li, Sasha, John you're on point, I'll be running clean-up." The Human leader continued. She motioned to the Thrall captain "Captain your men and Omar will provide fire support from here." She glared at the big man "the Captain has the command at the firing point Omar, understand?"   

  "I do of course defer to you here Captain" the giant turned and bowed to him dramatically.   

  "Your role here is vital" She continued, ignoring Omar, "we will need you to pin the enemy down as we advance, our armour is thick but cannot withstand a sustained bombardment for too long. Keep the enemy pinned, we will clear the rats nest."   

  In all honesty he was stunned, he hadn't been expecting to even be involved once the humans had arrived but here he was being placed in a position of authority and still very much providing what appeared to be an integral part of the assault.   

  "Yes of course, we will do all we can from here"   

  "I know you will captain. Right. Sasha, Li, John, step up. Li on point Sasha you're on left, John on right. Thralls!" She shouted turning to his men "let's give these pirate arseholes a reason to fear the Republic again! Rain death on them, pin them down and together we shall tear them from this world!"  his men cheered loudly, fired by the human's zeal. She grinned at her three comrades as she placed her white helmet back on her head "Let's go for a walk."  

*** 

  The three of them moved off, hefting their massive hammers in one hand. Their leader fell into place behind them as they neared the edge of their crater, she was smaller than the other three, and kept her posture low, one hand on the back of the man in the middle as they took up position just below the lip of the crater. The thundering of the enemy rifles suddenly intruded on their minds again, they had almost forgotten about the pirates over the ridge during the excitement of Hephaestus 4's arrival but now the howling and blasting of their enemy crashed back upon them. "Right then!" Shouted the Captain, shaking himself back from his reverie. "Let's do our job then soldiers! Firing teams on the lip, I want a constant stream of fire on the enemy position, let's keep them pinned." 

   "And me captain?" Boomed the monstrous Omar, making him jump "Where am I to be positioned in our brave assault?  

  "Well honestly Omar, I imagine you know where best to stand for yourself" he smiled up at the man, who smiled back   

  "Agreed captain" the giant laughed. "I shall hold the centre, this will likely also aid your men as I tend to draw enemy fire, and this Hephaestus suit can take a significant pounding" he slammed a fist against the front of his armoured chest, a great metallic crash ringing out.   

  "Are we ready gentlemen?" The human leader's voice came through the vox comm as they ascended the crater in front of them.  

  "When you are Miss" replied the captain.   

  "Ok then, Hephaestus, shields up! Let's move on!" The three giants lifted their free arms up, and from them unfolded large metal sheets that glistened unnaturally in the light. They held them forward, shielding their bodies from the front. Their leader tapped the central Human Li’s back and they moved up over the edge. 

   Immediately the hammering of slag bolts intensified, focussed on the them. But instead of striking the metal shields held ahead the molten rounds simply disintegrated half a metre before getting there, some invisible field was being emitted by the strangely shimmering material. The captain grinned, human there was an old quote about how any technology suitably advanced was indistinguishable from magic. That certainly applied here. 

  "Open fire!" He shouted over the din of the concentrated slag bolts. The whine and hiss of the gauss rifles spat out their projectiles, causing the thundering to slow down as some of the pirates took cover. Not enough though. He had lost too many men and his reduced numbers weren't enough to worry the pirates, he grimaced as the rain of molten metal slammed down on the forward team. Then Omar opened fire and all questions on pinning down the enemy were answered.   

  The enormous cannon in his hands took a few seconds to wind up, a loud throbbing sound like a razor being dragged back and forth along a piano string grew and grew. Omar began to laugh as he squeezed the trigger. A jet of pure red energy exploded out of the end of the cannon in a perfect, constant beam of incinerating power.  The Thralls stopped shooting in alarm for a second as the big man directed the astonishing weapon at the enemy trenches, his booming laughter ringing out over the battlefield as the belching of the slag rifles stopped completely.   

  "Ohhhhhhh what a beautiful morrrrrrning, Oh what a beautiful dayyyyyy, I've got a wonderful feeeeeeling! That everything's going my wayyyyyyyy!"  

  The giant was singing as he fired death at the enemy, his face illuminated red by the howling weapon in his hands. It was a bizarre sight and the Thralls began to laugh along as they took up their firing again with renewed vigour, hammering away at the enemy position as the four other humans advanced at a quicker pace now across the blasted no-mans land in front of them. Intermittently a pirate would fire of a few rounds at the Hephaestus team from the trenches, but they would quickly be put down by a gauss rifle slug, or would simply evaporate as Omar directed his beam at them. The only fire that came from the enemy now was from the bunker itself, which still spewed smoke at them.   

  The assault team was coming in line with the forward crater where the small group of Thralls had been brutally torn apart before. The captain shuddered as the snarling and screaming sound of the feline animals came out from the trenches in front of them. The furred creatures flooded out of the trench to pour towards the human invaders. He looked nervously up at Omar, but he seemed unfazed and was in fact whistling nonchalantly as he turned his enormous energy cannon towards another would be shooter in the trenches.  

  The creatures sped towards the giant humans as they pushed forward amidst smattering of slag and explosive shot. They bore down on the team in a fury, who seemed apparently unaware of their approach, not altering their actions at all. But as the swarm of teeth and claws came within ten metres of the giants the white armoured leader held her right fist in the air. It was glowing bright orange, shimmering with heat as it radiated off the armour. She slapped the back of Li in the middle and they moved as a well oiled machine, Li went to his knees as the two flanks came back to form a protective U shape. Hera took two steps back before running hard at Li and using him as a launching platform to fire herself into the air, fist raised high. She seemed to hang for a moment, armour shining bright in the harsh sunlight, before she brought her hand back down to earth like a meteor just as the pack leapt forward with jaws wide and claws extended.  

  The earth beneath them exploded upwards and out in a wave. Fire and rock blasted from where her fist had hit the ground, arcing out from the forward team to engulf the swarm. The animals were shredded; their fur catching fire as heated earth tore through them all, quickly removing any semblance of life. Dust and blood mingled in the air as the explosion died back and before the ground had even settled the three shields were back in front of their leader and the humans were advancing again. The whole thing had happened in a shocking blink of an eye, and Omar had continued blasting away all through as if it was the most normal thing in the world.  

  The captain shook his head, ‘Humans are fucking scary’ he thought.  

*** 

Part 2  

Space Junk

Neural implant trace of Broker IV - AM Mining Operative 77c-Pe52 

*Audio file: -"Hm"-*  

Nope there's not a lot else I can really think of saying right now. 

*Audio file: -"Hm"-*  

What was that quote again? From that book I read in the archives on Broker IV once. The one about Hitchhiking.  

*Information prompt: -'Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind - bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space'-*  

Ha! That was it. 

Being a miner I think I must have laughed a bit at this. I used to figure that my frequent trips back and forth from the AM fields to Broker IV had given me a pretty good perspective on just how big space is. Clamped to the rusting hull of the Persephone, banging away at a bit of extra plating I would occasionally look up and see just how utterly vast space was. I remember looking out into the eternal nothing, the speckling of stars bright against the pure vanta-black blanket and smiling. Then I would just go back to hammering away at the old piece of scrap, whistling whatever idiot tune was stuck in my head at the time and not really giving it the proper consideration that it so clearly deserves. 

Yes Space is Big, big with a capital B. But I don't think I ever truly appreciated that capital B until right now. I mean look at it!  

*Audio file: -"Hm"-* 

I have to say though that space is particularly Big when you're just stuck floating in it.  

Looks like I'll be stuck here for good as well, once you're stranded out in nothing it's not like you can put a thumb up and get a lift, it's not like that book. I'm not about to go swimming off through a vacuum. Wait can you swim through a vacuum? 

*Audio file: - strained grunting sounds -* 

Nope. Apparently not, I'm just flailing at nothing here. Well there's some scientific research at least. 

I suppose even if I could there's the whole 'space is Big' thing again. I can barely swim half a kilometre without becoming a panting quivering wreck of bad cardio and half a kilometre isn't very far when you measure things in lightyears. I wonder how many half kilometres there are in a lightyear? 

*Information prompt: -'1.8922e+13' half kilometres to a lightyear-* 

Yes, thank you suit you snarky bastard, that was meant to be rhetorical.  

Ah well, at least I'm not actually moving all that much, I've seen fast space junk can spin at just the slightest shove. I get terrible motion sickness and don't really want to spend the rest of my life spinning wildly as a pool of my own vomit sloshes around inside my helmet. Oh god don't think about that... 

*Audio file: -Loud retching sound-* 

Nope nope nope, quick, think about something else.  

Hey that cluster of stars kind of looks like a dick... Wait... Yup that's a full shaft and balls right there. Christ I'm a mature. But it really does, look I'll highlight it for you.  

*Image file enclosed: -censored-* 

Ha ha ha, as if my final communication is going to be an interstellar dick pic.  

Urgh, my final communication. There's a happy thought.  

It's funny, I’m not sure why I'm acting like this. People say that humour is a coping mechanism and right now I'm inclined to believe them, the more I think about all this stupid shit the less I'm thinking about... well.  

Oh god but it is beautiful out here.  

You think of space as being pitched nothingness, blackness on blackness with nothing but eternity between you and everything else, but it isn't you know? It's bright, space is so bright! Just over there to my left is the galactic core, the stars so densely packed together they've formed a sort of fuzzy white orb that's been smudged along its axis, splashing in opposite directions to fly outwards into the glowing arms. They're like huge sweeping brushstrokes painted with the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Some ancient deity took their brush and painted over the blackness to create a galactic artwork glinting and shining as it fades gradually to either side, splattering stars and nebulae in smatterings all across the black canvas. There's no curves to it all either, no fuzziness or flickering, it's not like being planetside where there's lensing effects from atmosphere and curvature of the ground beneath you to provide perspective. No out here it's pure light, a sweeping mass that is so immeasurably... I was about to say Big again. Ha! 

*Audio file: -loud snorting sound-* 

But it's not just the macro of the galaxy that's beautiful, just there over my right shoulder there's all sorts of wild and wacky cosmic goings on, mostly dotted stars but also what looks like an old Nebula, a stellar nursery. It's close enough just to make out the different colours if I zoom with the suit HUD. I suppose if I was much closer I'd probably be vaporised by the weirder parts of the laws of physics so I'm pretty happy I'm this far out to be honest. But what colours those are! It's like a collection of all the different pallets of the old masters that's been blended together and then flung through lightyears of dust to create the most imperfectly glorious art work that certainly I've ever seen.  

Wow listen to me, waxing all poetic like this. My mum used to...  

*Audio file: -brief choking sound-* 

My mum... she always used to say that I was wasted on the mining Junks, that I could have been an academic working at some fancy Academy on a Republic core world. I'd then have to remind her that I was in fact expelled from one of those very same Academies for being too 'energetic'. Mining certainly sated some of those energies, and the nightlife back on Broker IV sated the rest! Though I'm quite sure it anything but sated Mum's aspirations for me. But that shows what she knows, I'm damn good at my job, I'm the youngest engineer on Broker IV! Well I think I was for a time at least, they don't exactly keep records of these things and I've been doing it a while, so I'm a bit older now.

Not old enough though... Not old enough for this... Jesus why the fuck is this happening I'm going to die, I'm going to fucking die. Mum I'm... 

*Trace record cut: -37 seconds-* 

Yup, mining engineer is what I was born to be, no-one can keep those damn heaps of scrap floating like I can, I belong out there, on the hulls of the Junkers, keeping them flying, keeping the antimatter flowing into Faction space. The Factions don't have the fancy Oan-Dyson spheres the Republic does so they need energy the old-fashioned way, and it's me that keeps the lights on. Sure it may not keep mum happy, but it certainly keeps me happy.  

*Audio file: -quietly "kept"-* 

It's funny, dying is always something that seems to happen to other people. Death is a statistic on a news vid or something harrowing that happens to someone you know. When dad died I remember feeling... well just hollow. Anger, pain, hardship, all these things. But his death didn't happen to me, it was something that had an effect on me but... I'm not sure what I'm trying to say really. I think it's strange how we can experience everything else that anyone else can, every cause and effect every moment in life we share with everyone else, hand in hand with the billions of other souls that've ever felt the same before or will again in the future. Death though. Your death happens to you once and only to you, no-one that has ever been or will be will be able to have that experience and so when I step over the threshold to non-existence, I'll be doing it alone. 

I suppose there are worse ways to die, the suit tells me that life support can keep me hydrated and breathing for another 26 standard hours, after which I'll just slowly slip away from hypoxia as the CO2 levels rise. Not so bad. Then I'll be drifting in space forever, a tiny speck of space junk floating in infinity. Maybe one day I'll smack onto the windscreen of some trade vessel, that'd give them a shock! Ahahaha, Splat! Like a giant bug smearing across the glass. If there is a God then please let that happen.  

Shit, I suppose I'll be finding out the answer to that one pretty soon as well, now there's a weird thought. The question that philosophers throughout history have all fought with and I'm about to find out the answer. 'Is there a God' ha ha, fuck you Nietzsche.  

It is beautiful out here though. There's so much to see, and the longer you focus at a point the more emerges from the nothingness, it's wonderful. Part of me thinks I should take a 360' pic for whoever finds this, but perhaps that would detract from the personal nature of this a little? No, I think I won't, this is my spot in heaven, these are my stars and I'm going to keep it that way. Only I will know exactly how the constellations stand out in certain ways at this moment, only I will know the exact colours and shapes of this little corner of space, and when I go that information will go too. I'm sorry if that seems a little selfish. 

I hope there is a God you know. I hope this isn't the end, that it isn't just nothingness after. I.... yeah I hope there's a God... I hope they're kind... I'd like... I think I'd like a little kindness at the moment. 

*Audio file: -quiet sobbing-* 

Fuck this. You know what fuck this, Jesus fuck. This can't be it, I can't be about to die, this isn't the end it's not. I don't want to die here I don't want to die, what if there's nothing what if it's just nothing after. I'm so fucking scared I'm so fucking scared I'm so scared, I don't want to go, Jesus FUCK 

*Audio file: -"No No NOOOO please god NOOOOOOOOO! ARGH! FUUUUUUUCK!"-  

*Audio file: -loud screaming- * 

*Audio file: -quiet sobbing-* 

-"I don't want to go. Please help. Please. Mum. Someone please. Please help, I don't... I can't..."-*

*Trace record cut: -29 minutes 42 seconds-* 

It's funny, I know I should probably be thinking about my family, my old friends, love interests past and future. But in all honesty the only thing I can focus on is that I left a bloody rivet loose during my last botch job and now I'll never get round to tightening it. That and my knee itches, seriously who gets an itchy knee, that's like the weirdest bit to get itchy. 

*Inactivity: -7 minutes-* 

You know what, 26 hours is a long time to float around waiting for the end.  

Did you ever find a piece of music? Something that you listened to a few times and it was so beautiful, more than just chills down the spine but full on emotional overload from the first listen, because of an event it's tied to or just the way the music works with your soul. Do you ever find a song like that and you stop listening to it after a couple of plays through because you're afraid that you'll get sick of it and you'll lose that feeling? I've found three pieces of music like that, ones that I've saved for... well I guess I was saving them for right now, although I didn't know it at the time.  

*Audio file –deep breath-*       

Mum if by some miracle you get this before you pop your clogs and come join me wherever I am, there's a million and one things that I want to say to you and as you know, if I get started I'll never bloody stop. All I will say instead then is thank you, you've been perfect through every part of my life, both good and bad and you will never begin to understand how deep my love for you goes. I love you.  

To the people who eventually find me, I'm sorry I splattered on your windscreen, bill me.  

And to anyone who is listening to this in the future, please make sure it gets back to my family, however many generations on it is, I think they'd like to hear what happened to me, even if it's just a curiosity. Oh and sorry for all the swearing.  

Actually no I'm not, fuck you.  

*Input instruction: -play Playlist: The Last 3-* 

Oh wow this... is an amazing song, I'm so glad I saved this. 

*Inactivity: -2 minutes-* 

*Input instruction: -Disable life support system: air purification-* 

*Warning note: -Carbon dioxide levels rising-* 

*Input instruction: -Mute all warning notes-* 

*Audio file: -"It really is beautiful out here you know."-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels rising-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels rising-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels rising-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels rising-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels above safe breathing level-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels above safe breathing level-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels above safe breathing level-* 

*Warning note (muted): -resuscitation attempt unsuccessful-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels above safe breathing level-* 

*Warning note (muted): -resuscitation attempt unsuccessful-* 

*Passive note: -Playlist: -The Last 3 ended-* 

*Warning note (muted): -Carbon dioxide levels above safe breathing level-* 

*Warning note (muted): -resuscitation attempt unsuccessful-* 

*Neural trace activity reduced to zero. Entering shutdown.*

*End Trace.* 

Verian Spirit part 2

Part 1

Sorna shook her head as she watched the Beast complete its full rotation, its tail snapping round as it went back to shaking its head back and forth. The two of them, Beast and ship, were now alarmingly close to the city, she could make out the details of the pestering ship and see that, bizarrely, there was a person hanging in the cradle beneath it.

 It was almost certainly a human she thought, no other race in the galaxy would be insane enough to be in a position like that. They probably thought it was fun. She noticed as well that the ship looked rather like the drawings of bees she had seen from her text books on the Human’s home planet, adding weight to her hypothesis.

 Suddenly the ship dived down past the great head of the creature and Sorna watched as it noticed the little bee and went to snap again, the ship darting even lower and disappearing behind the colossal creature for a second. It really was massive she thought, stories failed to do them justice, it nearly filled the sky above her, the swirling clouds obscured by plates of hard chitin.

 Then the bee appeared again, swinging up underneath the Beast, close enough that Chlora actually watched the man in the cradle as he flew past. He glanced at her as he went by and did an almost comical double take. He watched her in confusion as he swung by and she gave him a little wave, not really knowing what else to do. He was still for a second, but then threw back his head and she could see him laughing as he shot off on a wide arc.

 When he swung back around though he was fixated on a contraption in front of him, cranking at an archaic metal gear system, a wickedly sharp black spike jutting out from it. The ship blasted up and away from her, carrying him with it as the Beast passed above.

 She frowned. She didn’t know much about Shrikes, only stories again, generally told by the same people who made things up about Beasts. Shrikes were Humans, no they were Hannas, no they were a strange sect of Oans from a lost moon. They fought Beasts, killing them with swords and axes and gunpowder, no they used antimatter displacers, no they beat them to death with their fists. That one had always got a few laughs. Well she could see now that at least one of them was a human, she had always assumed they had been human, what other race would be insane enough to tackle a beast up close? How do you kill something that big? Can you kill something that big? She imagined she would find out, or at least she would certainly see them trying.

 The beast let out a great roar and convulsed, a shiver flowing down its body. She squinted at the ship and saw what appeared to be a wire linking from the yellow hull to the great creature’s gaping jaws. As she watched there was another great roar and all at once it dived. A smile spread across her face for a second but then her eyes went wide and she screamed. The sudden change in direction itself wasn’t terrifying, nor the frustrated roaring or gnashing of teeth. What was terrifying was that the Beast was diving straight for the city. Not only that but it was diving straight down at the exact point where years ago the mayor had built the public shelters, where the entire population of her city was now taking cover.

#

“Yes!” Came the shout through the Vox Comm to Hicks. He smiled as he saw the tell-tale shiver go through the Beast.

 “Pull me up!” he shouted, and there was a whine as the winch began to quickly spool the cradle in. As the colossal Beast suddenly pushed downwards he glanced back to the little local he had seen on the top of the silvery silo earlier. Brave little thing he thought, smiling to himself. Mad, but brave. He squinted at her and could just make her out against the white backdrop of the tower. She was jumping up and down, waving frantically at him. He nodded and waved back at the girl, smiling.

 She didn’t stop waving. He watched her for a while, his smile quickly turning to a frown. Some body language was universal and he saw now that what she was showing wasn’t happiness, it was fear. He zoomed on her with his helmet’s HUD. She was waving frenetically, pointing at the ground and mouthing in a language he couldn’t understand.

 “Suit patch through to the Hub and get me a lip read” he said quickly to the helmet as the beast began to descend. There was a short pause as the information was relayed back to the Hub network. “Shelter. Public. Shelter. Public. Unintelligible. Shelter.” The mechanical voice relayed to his ear piece. He went white, he understood immediately and the world began to slow as adrenaline flushed his system. He used it to think quickly. 

He had to divert the creature. How? He grimaced because he knew how. Harken really wasn’t going to like this. He estimated he had perhaps a minute before the Beast crashed into what he assumed was the main concentration of the local population.
“Trish dive dive!” He shouted into the earpiece, and bless her the pilot responded immediately without questioning, the Seillean suddenly hitting free fall and faster as they raced the creature down.

 The winch pulled him in, the gravity dampening field taking over and allowing him to jump the last two metres into the cargo bay.
There were confused cries from the other crew members but he cut over the top of them. “That thing is diving for the public shelters, we need to move it out the way. So we’re going full bait mode. Shrikes tether up, 30 seconds, you still have a job to do.”

 The twins, who had been standing at the back of the bay didn’t miss a beat and leapt across the open bay doors to the winch and almost before he had finished the instruction they were tethered to it on individual nanotube filaments. Lexi opened a small container and plucked out a pair of what looked like shimmering metal sleeves and tossed one to her brother and slipping the other set over her own arms.

 “Trish get beneath it and pop flares, parachutes, anything and everything, make noise, make it bright, we need to keep that fucker off ground.” 

“Aye sir”. She sounded flustered. Warning lights and safety valves were flashing on in a cacophony of noise and light in the relative gloom of the cargo bay as they rushed towards the ground. Hicks opened a container and pulled out a pair of seemingly uninteresting black metal spikes, throwing one to each of the twins.

 “It’s gonna be bumpier than if she had landed, but it should be smooth enough. Ready?” he asked the twins who nodded enthusiastically in reply, clicking their helmets shut “Then go! Go!” he shouted and the two other humans glanced briefly at one another, grinning, before launching themselves gracefully out of the bomb doors, arms spread in perfect swan dives. “And don’t waste those lances!” he shouted after them.

 Outside the ship had just overtaken the Beast and bursts of flares were filling the air, burning with a ferocious intensity in the Hydrogen heavy atmosphere. Lights and sirens blared from the rear of the yellow ship as Trish made the Seillean as noticeable as possible. On the tethers the twins were winding back and back, closer and closer to the great creature, and over the Vox Hicks could hear them laughing as they were dragged along in freefall.

 “Gotta pull up Captain!” came a reasonably panicked shout from the Trish the pilot as they sped towards the ground.

 “Go Trish!” Hicks shouted over the roars of the air and the Beast behind them. The Seillean lurched beneath them, cutting suddenly at ninety degrees as the twin fusion propulsion systems flipped and whirled into new positions to accommodate the pilot and on board computer’s instructions. They were now skimming the tops of buildings and the two Shrikes’ lines went loose.

 Hicks held his breath. There was a moment of almost bizarre silence as the warning lights and sirens flicked off and they rushed perpendicular to the surface of the planet. He glanced down and saw a small square passed beneath them. Then there was a deafening crash as the Beast hit the ground and his heart sank.

# 

Sorna held her hand over her mouth as she watched. The ship and the Beast were in a perfect dive with one another, the little yellow bee blasting off all sorts of odds and ends in what looked like a desperate attempt to catch the Beast’s attention, flares burning almost blindingly. The two plummeted to the ground and she gasped as the bee disappeared beneath the level of the buildings, lost from her vision for a second, but to her immense relief it suddenly bobbed up again above them again, rushing off across the building tops.

 The Beast did not change its angle though and She looked away as it approached the ground, sure it would collide, crushing the entirety of her city’s population and sure enough two seconds later there was a deafening crash.

 She couldn’t bear to look, for a heartbeat at least.

 Then the crash carried on. It was less of the world ending bang as she had expected, but more of an ongoing series of smaller crunching, breaking noises. She looked back at the monstrous creature to see it was now snaking its way along the ground. At the very final moment it had turned at ninety degrees and rather than falling full force into the public bunkers it had scraped against their top and was now skirting along the surface of the planet, chasing after the noisy little bee.

 “YES!” she screamed in relief, jumping up and down on the towers top, “YES YES YES!”

 The Beast was charging recklessly, angrily, knocking down buildings and houses as though they weren’t there. It didn’t matter though, they were empty, their inhabitants safely squirrelled away in the public shelters, which the creature was now flowing safely over the top of. She grinned to herself, they were probably absolutely terrified in there.

 She watched as the enormous creature chased the ship for a time, roaring and snapping at it as it tried to catch up, getting very close one or two times. It seemed to be working itself into a frenzy, shaking its head harder and roaring louder and louder. 

And then it died. 

She blinked. Her head cocked as she watched. The Beast was dead, it had barely given a final roar before it slumped into the outskirts of the deserted city. She watched a little longer to see if this was another act in this bizarre dance the two had been performing but no, it was definitely dead. It had suddenly simply stopped moving, stopped crushing buildings, stopped... everything. It had simply collapsed into the ruins of the city’s houses, its enormous tail crashing to the ground last as the dust flowed around it, caught on the East wind.

 “Errr...” she said out loud.

Prime

It's amazing how quiet these modern ships are. Pacing through the dark corridors and access ways the engines didn't even make a whisper. He wondered if that was just because there was a dampening field extended around them or had technology really come so far during his stasis that spaceflight no longer required noise? A light to his left dimmed gently, one of the corridor branches slowly fell into darkness. He shivered and carried on. "Not that way then..." he muttered through gritted teeth. The gel-suit chafed slightly at the armpits every time he moved, the high-friction surfaces that were good for keeping you steady in a stasis field were not so good when it came to walking through abandoned corridors.  

He came to a T junction and slowly peered out, glancing left and right to make sure the way was clear. He had seen enough horror vids to know that if you woke up on an abandoned junker you didn't go making a whole song and dance about yourself in case something else had woken up with you. He shuddered and took a step forward, the annoying non-slip foot pads on his suit sticking slightly to the ground as he did. The silence was perfect, complete, overpowering, like the feeling of lying in a bed in a quiet country cottage after having spent three months sleeping in a room by a main road. He could hear the blood in his ears, every step was a cymbal's clash against the background, the gentle clicking of his mechanised right arm might as well have been Fred Astaire doing his most vivacious jig.  

Turning right he padded on down another corridor. The ship had completely changed since he had gone into stasis, although that was normal. Hub controlled ships like the Axis were active and got bored easily, changing corridors and upgrading themselves was just a simple way to keep their enormous computing power entertained on these long dark-space missions. What was wrong though was the glaring absence of the four hundred and thirty one crew members, well four hundred and thirty not including himself, that should have been bustling around him.  

"Shit" he muttered, the curse echoing down the corridor and back to him, the sound barely diminishing. He walked on, checking the corners as he went. Another corridor dimmed ahead and he turned right. He was doing his best to maintain a mental map in his head but the simple technology of the gel-suit had nothing for him to interface with rendering his neural trace completely useless. He was stuck on good old brain power, brain power that was threatening to severely let him down. Another corridor dimmed to his right and he kept walking. Was that getting more frequent? He kept on going, as silently as he could through the deserted halls.  

A realisation slowly came to him as he padded on. Although he had been walking for... well he wasn't sure, he hadn't come across a single room. It had all been nothing but miles and miles of corridors. Not even a door at the end of one of the hallways, simply branches and junctions and stretches of featureless white walls and grey floors. He shook his head, not even the most anarchic or overly charismatic Hub would fill a ship with nothing but corridors. Would they? No that was completely unlikely, mostly because corridors were boring and Hubs hate being bored. He kept on moving.  

When all is silence and the only features of your surroundings is the occasional left turn or right it's hard to tell how long you are doing something for, remove the use of the senses and it becomes difficult to gauge the passage of time. He tried counting seconds but was thrown off after a couple of thousand when a corridor he was about to head down began to dim. He moved off quickly, his mental map now nothing but a vague recollection of the last five or six turns he had made.  

Coming to another T junction and experiencing deja-vu for the umpteenth time that day he glanced left then right and stumbled sharply backwards, suddenly shocked. His breathing was immediately deafening, his ears rushed with the sound of adrenaline filled blood as he struggled backwards, friction plates on the gel suit making him stick and jump in a jerky manner until he was flush with his back against the wall. It took him a while to regain his normal breathing, reigning his lungs in from a panicked panting to a stable in and out, the blood cooled in his ears slightly and he relaxed a bit against the wall. He didn't move though. He wasn't sure why he had been so frightened, he needn't have been, had he? He blinked and then blinked again, the feeling of his eyelids coming together strangely comforting against the ambient bright light of the corridors around him, though he dare not close his them for too long.  

He slowly stood, trying to slide up the wall but having to push off as the suit caught again. After a brief pause to collect the last of his wits he peered around the corner again and felt his heart quicken, but he managed to stay looking, blinking perhaps a little more than usual. He took a step and then another step forward, approaching the anomaly in front of him. On the wall was something so simple he almost laughed at himself for being so frightened. Someone had cut a number into the wall in front of him. It wasn't neat, but it wasn't like it had been rushed. It was the best that a person could do with what looked like a pretty primitive cutting tool. He looked at it for a while, it was quite tidy. The reason it had shocked him of course was because by that stage anything that wasn't a corridor was completely bizarre and abnormal. The corridor behind him dimmed. The number clearly wasn't there by design, which felt almost exciting, finally there was a break in the uniformity of the endless corridors. This was not part of the ship design, this was not created by the Hub which meant it must have been created by a crew member. He smiled to himself and walked on, unsticking his feet from the floor and moving off. 

331 

The corridors continued but he moved with new vigour, someone else was around, someone was in the ship with him, he was no longer alone and pawing his way through the unknown, now he knew there was another person awake and he went looking for them. It was almost a hunt at this stage, he was suddenly feverish in his searching and he had to stop himself from running, had to work on keeping his breathing stable. The damn gel suit kept catching under his arm pits and at his thighs and he would stare down angrily at it as it made his limbs jerk and twitch with each movement. He flexed his mechanical arm a few times just in case, hearing the satisfying clicks and hisses as the powerful servos and gyroscopes moved the titanium and nanotube bone structure. He glanced around him to check the corners he had come to. A corridor dimmed so he moved forward, not wanting to spend too long near it he stepped more confidently towards a sharp left.  

This time the number was less neat, it was scrawled in a more frustrated way, the sharpness of the tool leaving more ragged edges on the liquimetal walls. He raised a hand to it and gently stroked one finger round the ragged edge of the carved three. Dust trickled down to the floor, as though he was knocking off broken plaster. Liquimetal should have reformed over these scars though right? He shrugged and carried down the long corridor, reaching his hand out and going through the small door in his path. 

263 

That was a door. It had been so innocuous and normal looking compared to the slashed number on the wall that he hadn't even noticed it as he pushed through. He stopped, one hand on the simple white handle, the door half open and one foot halfway through the opening. He couldn't see around to the other side, but it was lit up at least. He paused there for a while, weighing up the situation and glanced back at the number again. Somewhere far behind he saw a light dim slowly and he sighed, turning back to the door he went through with not a small amount of mental fortitude required. 

He realised he had shut his eyes as he went through in nervous anticipation and opened them as the door swung wide. His heart sank as he did so however. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting but it was certainly something more interesting than just a continuation of the corridor, but alas that was all it was. What the hell had the Hub been thinking placing a functionally useless door in the middle of a hallway? He glanced back behind but there had been no change, the corridor stretched back, two branches now dim behind him. He shook his head and walked on.  

And walked 

And walked 

He came across three more numbers in his further travels; 211, 157 and 109, but no more doors. He did notice by now that the numbers were going down, descending but apparently with no discernible pattern that he could make out, and without the analytics of a proper function suit he couldn't rely on any network assistance either, besides he figured he had more complicated issues at that time anyway. He was now completely lost and had given up on trying to remember his turns all together and was now travelling on random whims, taking left turns and right turns whenever he felt like it, hoping to eventually find something else, something other than corridors and increasingly erratically carved numbers.  

Turning a corner again, this time a left turn that he had taken because he thought that he had smelt a slight variation in the air which had more than likely been imagined the corridor immediately behind him fell dark. His heart dropped and he took two very quick steps forward, turning as he did. He squinted into the corridor and realised something with a confused pang. He wasn't sure why he was afraid of those dark corridors. Fear is a response to a stimulus which you know will produce an adverse response to your person. Yet there was nothing he could tell about the dimming corridor that should frighten him at all, and yet... and yet his heart was beating at his ribcage, his legs were aching to turn him and walk away and the adrenaline levels in his blood were rapidly fogging his ability to think critically, but he tried. He peered back at opening as the lights slowly faded, ignoring his body's chemical screaming to get him to run now, run from that darkness. He stared through it, stared into the space and watched as the light dimmed and dimmed and dimmed until the corridor was almost perfectly black and then his eyes widened as he realised... then suddenly he ran. 

He ran faster than he had ever run before. Darting up corridors, taking lefts and rights, his gel suit making the fast actions almost unbearably uncomfortable as the friction plates stuck and caught on the floor and each other, but still he ran. Hard and fast he didn't care about direction, his footsteps slapped heavily on the floor, his breathing ringing loudly in his ears. He ran and the darkness followed him.  

That was what he had realised. What he had thought had been the lights dimming, what he had thought of as an electrical malfunction or a simply energy saving measure was in fact something else all together, something far more terrifying. The lights hadn't been dimming, the light they had been emitting was being absorbed, instead of the light source becoming weaker he had seen that the light itself had been getting obstructed. He didn't know what that meant but combining it with the fear he inanely felt he wasn't going to hang around to find out.  

He glanced back over his shoulder, corridors were dimming faster and faster behind him as he ran, he jerked left, right, it didn't matter. The darkness was following him. He ran and he ran, blindly bursting through doors he glimpsed another number, 87, as he ran but didn't stop to think of it. The darkness was all encompassing now, not simply lights going out but tendrils of shadow reaching towards him he wept as he run, pure fear boiling in his guts as he bolted on. 71, 53, 37 counting down, counting to his end he thought as he glimpsed the numbers now coming in faster patterns through tear misted eyes. 29, 17. He sobbed loudly but the darkness simply absorbed that too as it neared behind him. He felt it choking out the sound, his peripheral vision going dark as he willed his legs onwards, nothing but primal instinct to run, run, run keeping him going. 11, 7, 3. 

He rounded a corner and saw a door up ahead, howling now in terror and sorrow, the sound whipped away from him even as it left his vocal chords, he dived through the door. 

1 

"Impressive". The voice was deep, though barely above a whisper it sounded as though thirty voices were speaking as one, layered on top of each other in a quiet cacophony. "I wonder though..." The room was bright, but it was a room not a corridor. He lay on the floor panting, not wanting to move as he his cheek pressed into the cold metal. He couldn't quite pinpoint where the voice was coming from around him but he was simply glad to be free of the darkness. "Much better this time much better, you're certainly improving." The voice was moving all the time, and slowly he pushed himself up to a sitting position to get a look at his surroundings. The room was white, without any distinct walls or ceilings, rather a high dome that rose from the metallic floor. He glanced around looking for the source of the voice. There was nothing. He blinked and turned around, checking behind himself for the door but that was gone too. Worried again now he stood and paced around, looking for any kind of blemish in the room.  

"Hello?" He called, his voice hoarse from lack of use. No response. The domed room was completely featureless, perfectly white above and around him, with the reflective metal floor so perfect he could see himself clearly looking back in it. "Hello?" He tried again a bit louder now. 

"No no no, that's no good, he's still missing the Primes" the voice spoke again, bouncing around the room with no fixed point. He tried to follow it but the domed roof reflected it to every part of the hemisphere he was in faster than his ears could follow. "The Primes don't matter, it's as though he's following them without noticing. Fascinating behaviour." A chill went down him, the voice was talking to itself not him.  

"Hello? Where am I, can you get me out..." He cut off as suddenly the floor beneath him showed a plethora of images. All of him. It showed him walking through the corridors, stopping by the numbers, observing the darkness and running. It showed thousands of images, clips and audio of his footsteps all at once, creating a multiplex information beneath his feet.  

"No no it's no good he needs to visibly understand the significance of the primes for this to work. We must understand their learning facilities" He began to get angry now, confusion and exhaustion boiling together he had had enough. 

"Fucking listen! What is this? Who are you and where am I? Where is my crew?" The screens beneath his feet immediately flicked back to their reflective surface. 

"Well would you look at that, it's responsive to a point. Can it hear us?" 

"I can hear you, tell me what I want!" He screamed again.  

"Fascinating, utterly fascinating. Hello in there Four Three One, try not to over exert yourself too much, you've done fantastically."  

"Just tell me what is happening" he shouted, his own voice reflecting back and echoing around the room.  

"Now now, stay calm Four Three One, you've been such a help, so close to success" the voice continued as if chiding a sulking child. "You're going to prove invaluable to our research, now prepare yourself." He looked down at the reflective surface, into his own face and suddenly screamed. He clutched at his mouth and eyes, at his nose and chin and screamed, scrabbling back trying to flee the image beneath him. An image which calmly walked after him. Its feet reflected his steps perfectly, but rather than flailing and screaming in terror it followed with a cold methodical purpose. "Four Three One you must stay calm" his reflection said to him as he reached the edge of the room and pressed himself against the curving walls, trying to shrink away from the now calmly smiling reflection beneath him. "Stay calm Four Three One, this will be over soon." He howled again and ran back to where he thought the door must have been but it was now just a smooth wall, his reflection watched on with that small smile and he couldn't come out of his panic. "Oh damn, why is it always at the final stage when they lose it?" His reflection said coolly as he scrabbled at the wall. "Ah well, Prime synapse test Four Three One failed, prepare Four Three Three" He screamed and tore at his gel suit but then stopped, terror once again filling him as he stared down into the metal beneath him. His reflection stared back calmly as he stood panting, the smile on his reflected face oddly lopsided. "Prime Synapses shutting down, logic gates closing, ready for reset" it said and dread filled him. Reflected above the light from the walls started to dim as a patch of darkness slowly spread out from the apex of the Dome. Fire in his guts roared as adrenaline flooded his system. He couldn't run, he couldn't escape, he stared wide eyed at the reflection, his other self smiling back at him. The darkness reached out, covering the walls, consuming light, sound, even the energy in the air began to deaden. He let out a small moan as from the centre of the darkness poured a pure black mass. He sank to his knees as the room slowly pitched over, light being drawn out from around him, the molecules in the air stilling and growing cold as he let the darkness envelop him. His reflection grinned and fell away to land at the top of a pile of four hundred and thirty identical copies of itself, all still, all grinning.  

"Four Three Three online" it whispered. 

Verian Spirit part 1

The upper atmosphere screamed into the cargo bay of the Seillean as the bomb doors whined open, the slightly rusted pistons grating as they pulled the mottled yellow blast shields apart. Moisture immediately settled on every surface as the artificial atmosphere inside melded with its Hydrogen heavy counterpart outside.

 “No explosives” Shouted Hicks above the din of rushing air, wiping his helmet clear as he peered down into the clouds rushing beneath them. “One spark and you’ll be going home in sandwich bags!” The big Hanna next to him grinned, rows of filed sharp teeth showing through his helmets viewing plate.

 “Sandwiches” the furry mass of muscle and claw growled. “I’d like a sandwich Captain.” Hicks chuckled, Tiny the Hanna really took the idiom of ‘all brawn and no brains’ to another level.

 “I’ll cook you up something nice for when you get back Tiny” He shouted back through the helmet before switching to an open Vox Comm channel. “Tish, where is this bastard?”

 “Not sure Captain” came the pilot’s reply “by the last reading it, should be out over to starboard slightly, but that was before it… JESUS” she shouted as the ship was suddenly pulled up into a jolting evasive manoeuvre to avoid an enormous carapcaed fin which burst through the clouds beneath them. Three of the five crew in the cargo bay were flung to the floor, including Tiny who landed awkwardly on top of Hicks’ leg. The two other Humans stood nonchalantly by the open hatch in the floor, riding the bucking ship like it was a small boat on a calm morning.

 “Captain captain!” shouted the female, bouncing up and down whilst clapping her hands like an excited child.

“What?” he shouted back as he struggled to get himself to his feet from under the flailing hairball.

 “I found it sir! I found the Beast! It’s just...” she rose up on one foot and leaned forward precariously over the bay doors to point at a ridged hump poking up through the cloud below “there!” she exclaimed, hopping back with a demented chuckle, her twin brother joining in. Laughter rang over the Vox comm from the pair of them.

 “Yes yes you mad bastards” Hicks growled shaking his head as he finally made it to his feet. He looked over his crew as the other two joined him and the twins upright again. He nodded. “Right then, Harken go dampen the reactor, prepare it for high burn." The small birdlike Thrall grimaced before scuttling off to do as he was told "Tiny get the harpoons ready, I’ll get the cradle into position. Everyone check your suits, and Shrikes!” He looked at the twins who stared back with matching grins spreading over their faces. “Limber up, we’re going hunting.”

#

Down on the planet beneath Sorna covered her ears as she ran past the Siren tower. Her hearts were pounding out of synch, ‘not a good sign’ she thought as she tried to keep herself from tangling up with the milling screaming crowds of people running in the opposite direction to her.

 ‘What am I doing?’ She thought, the breath catching in her filters as she dodged past a family of wide eyed Justicers. ‘This is a bad idea, a very bad idea’ one half of her brain told her. The other half told the first half to shut up though and so she couldn’t help but keep going.

 It had finally happened! A Beast had never come this far into Republic space, she’d only ever heard stories about them from the trickle of travelling traders that dropped into the dingy dive bars she hung around in at night. Even then the stories varied wildly and were almost always over-exaggerated depending on how much of her city’s specialist Verian spirit the story teller had had to drink.

 But the sirens didn’t lie, there was only one reason they rang. She remembered the drills from school, filing into the public bunkers built especially for this reason, claws clasped tight with her classmates and quietly chanting the various softening litanies they had been taught. So after all this, why the hell was she running away from those bunkers now?

 Why was she heading straight for the hulking drop towers at the edge of town rather than making herself safe with the rest of the populace? The answer was simple of course, and she grinned as she put on another spurt of speed. She wanted to see the Beast. She wanted to see the story for herself.

 She rounded the corner to the Distillery and quickly scuttled up and over the fence as she had done a hundred times throughout her life amongst the streets of Veriathe. This time there were no guards though and she was bathed in the broad orange glow of daylight rather than shrouded in the inky black of night. She crossed the courtyard and left the screaming crowds behind her as she began to scale the closest drop tower.

 As she climbed the only sound she could hear was the rising and falling of the sirens and the gentle rush of the planet’s ever present eastern wind. It was quiet here, that was usually why she came and she nearly forgot about the civilisation-ending creature that was at that point bearing down on her as she put one claw over the other in perfect muscle memory. It was strangely peaceful then, the sirens providing an almost relaxing undertone that petered away below her as she climbed the final level onto the bright white roof.

 She sat for a while, watching the sky, expecting at any second to see the behemoth burst from the clouds with a roar. But there was nothing but stillness, the rushing wind, the now distant sirens and the turbulent cloud systems the only things happening above her now still city. She began to rap her claws impatiently, staring with a frown at the blanket of whirling cloud. “Come onnn” she muttered, leaning back against the cool white metal of the tower.

 Just as she began to think it was a false alarm, and her disappointment was strangely at odds with her relief, she heard a soft rumble. It sounded was far off and at first she thought she had imagined it but she listened hard and sure enough, it came again. It was a gentle rippling noise, muffled and dull, but definitely there. She looked about her, it was hard to gauge the distance and direction that it was coming from. There were long pauses between each rumble, each one long enough for her to start to think that she had imagined it, but each time she began to settle back onto the tower she would hear it again and would sit bolt upright. It was getting louder.

 Suddenly, after a longer pause than any of the ones preceding, there was a roar. This wasn’t a roar like the type an animal might make on a nature vid, or the kind an angry parent might bellow. This was an ear splitting, planet tearing, rending sound that burst from above her like a thousand claps of thunder. She put her hands to her ears and screamed in shock as from the broiling clouds above burst a pair of gaping jaws.

 She felt nothing but awe as she watched, and for the longest time couldn't begin to form a cohesive thought. 'Fuck that thing's big' she finally managed beneath the pain in her ears. The giant creature was dropping beneath the clouds, skimming their underside as she watched, it's roar rolling over the buildings below as it petered out. 

It was incomparably large for someone like her who had never left her city, let alone gone to space where large things roamed. The head was vast, its huge jaws hanging open to reveal teeth the size of houses, rows upon rows sprouting seemingly randomly of various shapes and sizes. She could not see any eyes to speak of on its massive serpentine head, though there were numerous pits and holes that could have hidden any number of sensory organs, the complexity of which she didn’t even begin to consider.

 The body of the creature spread back, similar to an eel, but thicker and lined with an assortment of different sized fins like those on a dolphin or shark. It was heavily armoured, carapace layers visible all over its underside and even thicker on top and as it moved the plates seemed to slide over and under one another in an intricately connecting pattern.

 The thing moved gracefully, as graceful as a creature the size of a small town could move anyway. Sorna found herself mesmerized as it wove below the clouds.

 The movements were not random however, and as she watched she saw something else drop out of the cloud bank above and fly hard and fast past the Beast’s head. The thing let out another colossal roar and it turned sharply towards the yellow speck, which sped by, narrowly dodging the huge snapping jaws as they closed with a rumbling crash of teeth. 

She stared at the yellow speck as the two made their way closer, weaving back and forth below the clouds, the Beast turning, hunting the speeding dot, always just out of reach. As they approached she saw that the quarry was in fact a ship. It was painted a gaudy yellow and was oddly shaped, surprisingly squat with two enormous propulsion systems swivelling frantically back and forward on two arms as it dove back and forth to avoid the roaring layers of angry teeth. A cockpit leered forward on a long neck and as they approached she could see a kind of basket hanging below the ship, swinging dangerously back and forth with each dramatic turn.

 Sorna held her hand to her mouth suddenly and let out an involuntary whimper. She realised what was happening and she felt a cold rush of elation mixed with deep fear. She was watching the first Beast to have entered her homeworld’s space and she was watching a Shrike team.

#

“FUUUUUUUUUUUU...” came the scream through the Vox comm. Hicks gritted his teeth again.

 “Harken shut your beak you blithering twat, I’m trying not to die out here” he shouted back as the cradle swung wildly out, coming close enough to the Beast for him to be able to see the man-sized skin parasites clicking their jaws at him. He narrowed his eyes as he took aim with the harpoon again. He checked the locking system as the ship spun back in a bone melting arc before bursting forward to avoid the Beast’s swinging head. He felt his suit tighten and mould to his body to try and dampen the G forces so that he wouldn’t pass out. His eyes still tried to jump out of his skull though.

 Gritting his teeth against the blood rushing in his ears he locked in the large bolt, took several breaths and waited for the perfect spot. “Come on Tish” he muttered to himself and as if in answer he felt the cradle swing out in a loop, curling in towards what would be the nose of the Beast if it were a normal animal. He squinted, pulled on the prep lever, spat once then fired.

 The black harpoon sliced out through the air, the fine nanofiber cable attached to the ship above him spun out fast as it uncoiled through the air. It seemed to take an age but finally it stuck home, burying itself between two plates on the Beast’s hard outer layer. “Now!” he shouted through the open channel and somewhere above him the bird Harken threw a lever.

 The harpoon strike itself was not enough for the Beast to even notice, but a sudden high burn of the fusion reactor being channelled down a conductive nanofiber cable into its primary sensory cluster was more than enough to sting a little.
It roared, louder than it had before and Hicks grimaced. “Come on you bastard, come on” he muttered again. Suddenly it shook, the cable whipping back and forth alarmingly. Then it began to roll. “Bollocks! Disconnect!” He shouted, “Disconnect now Harken, NOW”

 “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...” came the Thralls loud scream again as the ship was suddenly jerked down, the cable running taught as the monstrous Beast tried to tow them down.

 “HARKEN!” Hicks roared through the Vox channel as his cradle swung closer and closer to the surface of its back. The ship bounced back with a stomach dropping jolt as the panicked Thrall managed to stop screaming long enough to detach the nanotube cable.

 “I’m a goddamn medic, not some Beast hunting maniac, why do you bastards drag me out on these things, I just want to go home, I just want to feel grass on my claws, I don’t like…” Hicks cut the blubbering Thrall’s Vox channel off.

 Beneath them the creature did a full barrel roll, several parasites and symbiotes visibly falling down to die on the planet below. “Steady her for a second Tish, I think one more and we’re in business” he said, surprising even himself with how calm he sounded, despite the true insanity of the situation and the wild swinging of the cradle he hung in. He grinned to himself, he was calm because he lived for this. He loved this. He let out a bark of laughter and heard the two twins whoop back at him from the bomb bay above. 

“With respect captain, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You humans are fucking mad” Tish said breathlessly through the Vox. Hicks grinned and the twins howled like wolves out of the bomb bay doors. 

The ship hovered gently above the rolling Beast, his cradle coming to a gentle rock beneath the main body of the Seillean above. He watched as the Beast settled again, swinging its great head back and forth, searching for him in his ship. It was more frantic now, if things that large had emotions he reckoned it was probably royally pissed off. He smiled to himself, one more shot.

Gabriel

"We're getting pasted, our ships can't take more of this!" The first mate shouted up at the Captain from his seat down in the lower bridge. A flash lit up space through the large viewing window as their carrier over on the flank was suddenly breached, the artificial atmosphere inside igniting a fireball in the darkness.   

"I can very much see that" snarled the Captain through gritted fangs. Her fur was bristling in anger as she looked out of the glass at the enemy fleet. Chlora watched from her seat at the back of the bridge, keeping very quiet as crewmen ran back and forth from various terminals around her. "What the bloody hell are these bastards doing this far into republic space? This is bold even for the damned Black Maws!"  

Chlora kept very still as she watched the Captain rage at the situation. It was unfortunately clear that the small escort fleet she had hitched a ride with was woefully underprepared to deal with the surprisingly large black and orange pirate fleet that had appeared in front of them.  

A wall of cruisers belching drone swarms, frigates bristling with heavy armaments and fast moving sloops blocked their small transport fleet's migration route and were now proceeding to unleash everything they had at the small escort group. 

Chlora sighed to herself and smoothed the creases from her sleeves. She flexed her long clawed fingers, cracking the knuckles on each one as she thought through her options. Unfortunately ‘die in a large fireball in space’ was the only one that really jumped out at her. Sighing again she stood and walked silently across the bridge to stand by the captain.  

She looked down at the frantic Hanna female who was busily inputting various commands to the central console, her fur shimmering and glistening in the lights of the ongoing space battle. Chlora mused that she would look rather splendid with a fur coat like that and considered growing a pelt to match, but shook the thought away. Hannas were skeptical of other species as it was, to reveal herself as an A-morph in the current situation would add another level of tension that the room really didn't need.  

"Captain...." The bridge was racked with another explosion cutting off the first mate as he furiously input a series of commands to the ships defense batteries. The large arc cannons below the bridge let loose bolts out at the enemy fleet and successfully disrupted several incoming plasma based projectiles fired from a nearby frigate.  

"Captain they'll be within range of the passenger transports in ten minutes at this rate." The first mate finished. The Captain snarled in response without taking her eyes off the screens in front of her, ordering her drone group into a defensive position above them to attempt to shoot down the incoming torpedoes.  

As she mashed at the buttons Chlora snaked one long, slender arm over her shoulder and picked up the Vox-Com. The feline officer spun round to stare daggers at her, her eyes flashing hatred and a primal viciousness that would have made a lesser person flinch. Chlora ignored her, she knew better than to do anything rash.   

"Hub please transmit message sigma 23, full beam, full range. The code word is Calypso." She intoned softly into the Vox, her voice sounding like warm honey with only a dash of bitter lemon.   

"I'm sorry Ma'am but there are no Republic vessels within the distance necessary to assist you." Came the sorrowful androgynous voice back at her.  

The Captain slammed her hand down on the armrest and snarled up at her again, her claws dug into her hand drawing blood in unbridled anger. Chlora looked down calmly and matched her burning gaze with one of pure ice.  

"I am full aware of that Hub, but could you please put out the signal all the same?" She continued without taking her eyes off the bristling Hanna. 

"Of course Ma'am, sending signal now. Can we help you with anything else?"  

“Yeah you can shut the fuck up or blow up these fucking pirates!” Shouted the captain as she ripped the receiver from Chlora’s hand and slammed it down into the console.  

Chlora kept her eyes cold as she held the Captain’s gaze. She contemplated whether to respond to the insubordinate action, a quick flick of her wrist and she could cut the feline's throat before anyone even noticed. She decided she had responded from fear at the situation though, rather than actual malice and so let it slide.  

Still, the two held eye contact for a second more before the Captain huffed and turned back to the console, muttering a brief “sorry Ma’am”. She went back to shouting expletives down at the crewmen who were running panicked back and forth in the bridge below to vent some aggression 

Chlora walked softly over to the viewing window and looked out at the progressively worsening scene before them.   

She was actually impressed with how quickly the Hanna escort crew had responded to the pirate threat, moving to protect their colonial transports with a surprising efficiency and speed, rather in vain given the desperation of the situation though. They were clearly well drilled and it was only that training that had kept them in the fight this long. 

Looking out beyond the crystalline ceiling high window the great bulkheads of the enemy cruisers formed a slowly advancing wall pushing towards them as they advanced on the civilian transports behind. Swarms of drones darted to and fro, swooping this way and that to block torpedo fire from the desperate defenders as fast moving skiffs and bristling frigates took up firing positions.  

The ships Arc cannons fired again, scoring a glancing blow off the flank of the lead cruiser but not penetrating the thick shielding. Another one of the escort frigates to the right flank was in bad shape and the remaining two above them were hardly much better off. They leaked atmosphere from where the plating had cracked under the sustained fire, which showed as gouts of blue and red flame along their hulls. 

The bridge rocked again “starboard deflector shields down, limited to physical Captain” called a crewman. 

“Port shields are down to 20%” cried another. Chlora pursed her thin lips even tighter and scanned the darkness one last time, rapping her razor-like claws against the window frame.  

She had always wanted to die in space. The process of death by the perfect cold vacuum itself sounded rather painful, but there was something that seemed blissfully serene about spending eternity in nothingness, a speck floating forever through the vastness of space, slowly deteriorating to eventually become nothing but drifting stardust. 

Plasma was impacting their bridge, the shields flickering ominously as they struggled to hold out against the pounding of enemy fire. It looked like she would get her wish slightly sooner than intended, although she mused as to whether death was ever not considered 'too soon'.  

The weakened frigate to her right cracked open like an egg as the lead pirate cruiser unleashed a salvo of short range rockets at it, causing it to spill its contents of crew and cargo out in a great jet of flame and debris.  

Turning she could see the anger and panic on the crewmen and their Captain, sparks were flying as the bridge buckled slightly, a loud groaning coupled with the howling of alarm bells and warning sirens. It was nearly time she thought, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. She prepared for the rush of murderous silence that space would bring. 

Suddenly there was a different sound amongst the hubbub. At first she thought she imagined it as it blended into the sounds of the dying cruiser. But then there it was again, rather than deadened silence there was an oddly tuneful wailing sound that was coming over the internal speaker system. It started quiet but quickly grew louder and louder, a fast rising crescendo of artificial sound drowning out the noises of the battered ship.   

Rather than the endless nothingness of space cutting out all sound, now there was music, discordant and upbeat drums, guitar, shouted singing and bad electronics grew in a rising cacophony, drowning out the panic of the dying fleet. Chlora looked puzzledly around her but then groaned softly to herself in realisation. She turned back to the window so that the crew wouldn't see the small smile spread over her face. She knew who’s music that was. 

“What is that?” bellowed the Captain “What the F…” she was cut off by the lead pirate cruiser suddenly exploding in a massive red blue and green fireball in the centre of their viewing window, lighting up the blackness of space. 

"Gabriel" Chlora breathed. 

“Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, you will please pardon my intrusion” came an upbeat voice over the top of the music as an enemy frigate suddenly spun away to violently explode against the hull of another cruiser “I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d pop by to play with these buggers in their big ships, I sincerely hope you don’t mind.”  

The crew were staring at each other in bemusement as a small drone cloud burst into vicious bright purple flames. “I just can’t stand it when the big kids pick on the little ones, but then I’ve never let size get me down” the voice said emphatically as the second damaged cruiser exploded in a brilliant white flash directly in front of them and they all covered their eyes, all except Chlora who flicked her UV filters down and shook her head as she watched. 

 Out of the explosion burst a shining ship, sleek as liquid silver it glowed in the reflected light of the exploding pirate ships, spinning gracefully to avoid a rocket aimed at its left side. Two raptor like wings slanted against a sleek body, a small cockpit bubble the only blemish on the glistening white-blue metal. It was utterly beautiful.  

The shimmering craft shot out of the flames like a bolt from heaven. It moved in impossible turns as its wings pivoted and bent in astonishingly fast and fluid movements, which suddenly became abrupt evasive maneuvers to gain perfect assault positioning. The impossible spaceship seemed to flow through space like a dancer.  

“Who the hell is that?” bellowed the Captain over the music, but no one responded. They were mesmerised by the glimmering craft as it swung high up above them and rained down a stream of magenta bolts on the next cruiser before suddenly twisting down to avoid a cloud of drones, outstripping them to spin and fire up, reducing them to scrap in moments.  

Before that was even registered it had looped out to give chase to a smaller sloop that was trying to get back to the main fleet, not even bothering to shoot it the shining craft simply smashed straight through the hull, shrugging of its debris as it jerked upwards again to acquire the next target. It was an awe-inspiring show which was made even more brilliant and bizarre by the music, the crashing drums and brutal vocals of some old Human Earth band adding a passion and feeling that made the chest swell.  

The crew began to let out shouts in bemused joy as the glinting ship swung down beneath the enemy fleet, unleashing a flurry of blasts up at a nearby frigate which crumbled to pieces in a burst of yellow sparks. They cheered and they laughed as this impossible craft wrought havoc, single handedly tearing apart the entire enemy fleet. It jerked upwards again and arced gracefully round to fly upside down a hairs breadth from the large viewing window.  

Through the crystal they could see into the crafts cockpit, to where a single Human male was sitting, singing along to the music with an intense passion that was so out of place it was comical. He shot them a brief salute and a wink as he went by before executing a truly gorgeous spinning maneuver to confront and then shoot down a cluster of incoming torpedoes. The crew cheered and clapped in a bewildered mix of ecstasy and relief as he raced off again. 

The Captain came to stand next to Chlora, frowning as she watched the mayhem the glinting ship wrought on the enemy whose ships were now in total panicked disarray. The fur covered Hanna only came up to just above her waist, though she was several times as wide with thick muscles tight on her crossed arms.  

They stood side by side in silence for a while, watching the Human pilot as he danced through space to the whooping and cheering of the crew below. “Is he with you then?” she growled at her as another frigate spun off into the darkness.  

Chlora did not reply for a while as they stood taking in the situation. “I don’t think Gabriel is with anyone really, Captain” she eventually replied, her eyes not leaving the human ship as it pivoted hard to avoid a rush of plasma fire “he’s an Archangel”. 

“Right right,” nodded the captain “and what is that then?” she asked, almost annoyed but too enthralled by the mad pilot to let it show. Chlora smiled again, the crew letting out a loud cheer as Gabriel swept by the window during the song’s chorus.  

She drummed her fingers on the window again as she thought about how much would be prudent to tell her. “That, Captain, is an Archangel.” She nodded towards the ship which was in the process of blasting a frigate to pieces whilst performing an elegant loop-the-loop “They’re a very particular group of human pilots, some of the most adept in the galaxy. If I’m honest though, even I don’t know much about them. They’re quite a secretive group as they generally only go on extremely black ops missions, chosen for them individually by a very select group on the Hub. They are effectively lone wolves though and when they're out on missions they aren't even connected to the network for various reasons but if you ask me it’s mostly for 'plausable deniability'." 

The Captain looked up at her, eyebrows raised slightly. Chlora carried on. 

"They’re outfitted with the most state of the art technology, they’re outside normal Republic law as you can see.” she indicated the glinting ship “Mostly though it’s their inherent skill and natural reaction times that set them apart as quite possibly the most effective fighting individuals in the Galaxy. Certainly in space battles as you can see." She nodded to the dancing ship again "This one is codenamed Gabriel and I suppose you could say he’s an old friend” She smiled, this time inwardly as she remembered some details of their ‘friendship’. “And an idiot” she muttered as the ship shot past them again, the pilot now emphatically air drumming along to the music as a swarm of drones tried and failed to keep up with him.  

“So he’s been guarding you then? He could have bloody got here sooner” growled the Captain, glancing around at the damaged bridge accusingly. 

“Guarding me? No Captain" she shook her head frowning "he would have been very far away when all this started. On his own mission I expect, that’s why I sent out that signal. I was hoping for a Human cruiser or perhaps a Swift pickup, I never expected…” she gestured with one hand out at the dancing Archangel who right on que flew head first down into an exploding frigate, coming out the other side with a beautiful tail of burning debris pulled with him.  

“Humans…” muttered the Captain with a soft growl. “You’re blessed Ma’am that’s for sure. A guardian angel with a big gun, that’s the best kind.” She shook her head and walked back to her central terminal to get back to the job of running her ship.  

The crew gave one last cheer as the shining Archangel spun up above them before it folded its wings like a hawk and dove down into the final pirate cruiser. There was a split second of nothing but soft flashes from inside the bulky ship until suddenly Gabriel exploded out of the hull in an enormous nova of colour, lighting up the darkness one last time in perfect unison with the final crashing of drums and music.  

The enemy fleet was in tatters, their ships either in full retreat or drifting silently in blasted pieces. Gabriel hung in space for a while, pivoting slightly to survey the aftermath of the brief battle as the music faded away. Things were eerily quiet for a few moments, save for the occasional burst of sparks from a damaged terminal. Chlora stared at the glistening ship, her lips pursed. 

“Always a pleasure Chlora,” came Gabriel’s voice over the comm system, breaking the silence. His voice was warm and jocular, full of fresh laughter, conjuring an image of a naughty schoolboy. “Give me a shout when you’re next planet-side you old devil, it doesn’t matter which planet.” The ship pivoted to face the bridge viewing window.  

“It’s been a pleasure ladies and gentlemen, good luck with the redecorating in there. Remember: stay in school, eat five vegetables a day and say ‘perhaps’ to drugs.” the crew laughed as one of the wings on the ship bent inwards to give a slightly awkward salute. “Peace out bitches” came the voice on the speakers one last time. There was a flash of blue light, a moment of optic lensing and Gabriel was gone as quickly as he had arrived, firing off into hyperspace followed by the cheers of the Hanna crew.  

"Idiot" Chlora muttered, suppressing a smile.  

She watched the space where he had been for a while after, thinking to herself as the crew turned and slowly made their way back to their stations chattering excitedly about what they had seen as they prepared to limp their way on to their destination, their civilian charges still mercifully untouched. 

The whole episode had taken less than five minutes but, despite her joy at being alive it had left her troubled. A frown slowly took over her from her relieved expression as the crew bustled around and chattered noisily to one another, the captain back to yelling down orders and punching buttons again on her central console. 

There was a lot to think about, there always was in her job but this day's activities gave particular pause for thought. The obvious question was why the hell had there been a pirate fleet that large this far into republic space? More of a worry to her though was that despite what she had previously told the captain, the signal she had sent was not a call for help, but rather just a location and statement of death along with a data package of her most recent work to the Republic Senate.  

There had been no chance of rescue, she had known that and the Hub had made it abundantly clear, therefore there was no way that Gabriel could have got to them in time without him being in the local region. Why would a disconnected Archangel have been out in this portion of well known, seemingly friendly space at the same time as a large, undisclosed pirate fleet? Both usually operated exclusively out beyond Republic space. There was something going on she wasn’t aware of, there was something off in the Galaxy and she didn’t like that. It made for more paperwork. 

A Quiet End

Carmen peered out from behind a pair of spindly legs at the back of the bridge as the large alien spun playfully in his chair a few times, sliding his feet along the floor as his rows of medals glinted in the off-blue light of the ships command deck. The atmosphere around her was one of expectant calm; quiet conversations and the gentle humming of the infinitely intricate machines that beeped and whirred around her the only real sounds in the stillness. Even so she was still shaking a little.  

A green light flashed twice on the control panel in front of him and the creature stopped spinning. "Ah!" He exclaimed, swinging his feet up onto the desk in front of him and leaning back into the faux leather cushioning of the luxuriant chair as he prodded at a button with the toe of his boot and tapped his ear with one hand.  

  "Hello Hub, are you there?" he asked nonchalantly to the empty air in front of him. 

  "When are we ever not Commodore?" came a slightly artificial and strangely androgynous voice in reply. Carmen jumped as blue particles came together to form a face made of light in the air in front of the alien. 

  "Hrmph” he grunted in reply, taking his feet off the desk and leaning forward to inspect something nestled under one of his fingernails. “We've arrived on our targeting vector within the boundaries of Rundern space, would you kindly re-route and then pass through control of the nearest Norse class weapon system for me?" 

 "Of course Commodore.” the floating face replied “Norse class will require Republic centre authentication, please hold." There was a brief pause as the alien continued to study his fingers. "It appears that Thor is currently voluntarily becalmed in the Alenchian system currently. I shall set him en-route to your position now, ETA 5 minutes." 

 "Thor, indeed? Now that's exciting” he looked up and raised his eyebrows in surprise “we've not had a go with him in a long old while, you don’t think that’s a little… over the top?” He frowned over at the crew bustling about beneath him.

“The next nearest Norse Class vessel is the Odin platform, ETA seven and a half hours” the floating face said. The alien scratched his chin in thought before leaning back into his chair.

“Ok Hub, pass control of Thor through." the giant flicked whatever had been under his nail away and rubbed his hands together, sitting up straight. 

 "Was there anything else we can do for you Commodore?" The invisible voice asked. 

 "Nothing I can think of, thank you Hub, talk soon" 

 "Always a pleasure commander" 

  The giant spun round emphatically to face the crew on the bridge, clapping his hands and rubbing them together in anticipation. 

  "Right then people,” He shouted, clapping to get the crew’s attention “Thor is on his way so let's get everything all nice and cosy for him.” He stood and begun barking orders down to the lower levels of the command centre ”Prepare the HIVE control inputs for Norse class interaction, sub category Thor and move the fleet into position ready to receive him. Take up formation outside of scanner range from the target planet and have the drone carriers prepare for containment and prevention. I want engineering to prepare field dampeners, don’t wan this place being ripped apart just yet do we?" 

  Carmen was quivering slightly in the corner as she watched the room come alive with activity and an atmosphere of excitement settle over the now bustling crew. Her eyes darted from one frantic alien to another as they worked, an excited thrum of activity taking over the space around her. The person whose legs she’d been hiding behind put a feathered hand on her small shoulder and cleared his throat with a hacking cough. 

  "Hmrph. Well then my dear this is to be a very interesting day for you.” His voice crackled in his throat and his eyes were watery. “I don't know whether to apologise for your being here or to try and convey how lucky you are." She looked up under hooded eyes at the bird-like animal that was talking to her as he stroked the under side of his large flat beak and glanced around at the crew. "Yes indeed yes indeed. It really isn’t every day that one gets to witness something such as this, thankfully. He shook his head again “an unbridled retaliation strike, never thought I’d have to see another of these" he said, looking back down to her puzzled face. "For their crimes against your race dear, and I’m afraid they are crimes that require paying rather a high price indeed" his face was grave as he spoke, a slight grimace on his avian features as he looked out from where they stood again, back to the crew of giants. 

  Carmen was confused as the small earpiece she was wearing translated what was being said in real-time. She had gathered that this creature's name was Eraint, and he was from some far off world that she had never heard of. She’d never heard of any of the places that they’d mentioned and in fact she barely understood much of what anyone was saying, translator or not. She looked about her and flinched as one of the giants walked past them, the ground didn't shake as he stepped but it certainly felt like it was trying to. 

  She turned to her companion and shyly gestured to the giant overlooking the central console, "who is that?" she quietly asked her slightly wizened chaperone, trying to ensure that she wasn’t overheard by the other aliens. "Is he a god?" she whispered even quieter. 

Before that day the only sentient life she had seen had been her own race. She would later discover that this was due to the fact that they had not yet achieved a point where first contact was deemed necessary by those in the galactic Republic, the body of people who governed the space her planet had inhabited… once inhabited at least.   

  Since then though she had seen a whole plethora of different races, bustling and skittering and all working as one on board the massive ship, the bridge of which she was on now. None of those races, however impressive or frightening they had appeared to be, had struck her as much as these enormous aliens on the bridge. It had been them that who had landed on her planet in their vast exo-suits, ripping their way through the gang of Rundern raiders who had killed her brood as though they were nothing more than dead leaves before a storm. They had plucked her from where she’d been hiding from the raging atmospheric fires and taken her back to the small dropship. She’d woken up aboard this much larger vessel and it had all been a blur from there.

The aliens themselves dwarfed many of the other strange and wonderful creatures she had seen since then and they seemed to command a great deal of authority over those around them that went beyond just their physicality. This coupled with the awesome showing they had made as her saviours on her doomed planet meant that divine power was seemingly the only explanation. 

  "A god?" responded Eraint, with a surprised snort, "my dear no, although I'm sure he wouldn't mind you saying so, he is a Human. Not a God, just a Commodore." 

  She stared at him blinking her eyes in confusion. The birdlike creature appeared slightly flustered, how to explain to an overwhelmed, primitive child about the nature of aliens and galactic politics in a way that wasn't going to overload her with too much information, or simply go right over her head? He sighed and shrugged, this was beyond his mandate anyway.  

"I tell you what, when we get planet side I will provide you with a data upload so that you can learn all this properly, once you get your neural trace of course. However, as a brief description, Humans are one of the four dominant species in our Republic and if you want my humble opinion were there a few more of them they would be the only dominant species." He smiled at her as though they were sharing a secret that Carmen was in fact completely oblivious to. 

"Oh I'm sure if you talked to someone else and they'd give you all manner of reasons why I'm wrong and why in fact it's the Hanna or the Oans, blah blah blah. But it's quite simple really, what sets Humans above the others is this simple fact: where other races see barriers, they merely see hurdles. An impossible task to them is not something that should be ignored and bypassed or left alone, but rather it is something to be met face on, battered down and torn through until impossible is made possible. That's why you see them here, in control of this fleet of ships, that they built, in space that they led us to take. 

"And what are the ships for?" she asked, not feeling any less confused about anything, but not wanting to aggravate the only person keeping her company by asking stupid questions. 

  "Well these are warships. Admittedly these ones in particular are nothing special, only a minor policing fleet when you compare it to the Admiralty fleets that patrol the outer borders of the Republic. But they are more than enough to deal with the bunch of pirates. Republic forces are spearpointed by Human operated fleets such as this one. A facetious man would argue that this is because of their natural aggression, but I would argue that it is far more to do with their technological and organisational prowess, not least to mention that their Hub system runs the entire network that the Republic fleets operate from. Since the Humans joined us our borders have grown fivefold, we owe a lot to them." he was talking with a type of reverence, and Carmen thought that this only proved their divine standing, despite Eraint's previous statement. 

  "So they are Gods!" she persisted 

  "Well no..." He paused, trying to piece together a suitable way to explain to this small insect like child. "Well they are not gods in a divine sense child, although they may seem it to you at the moment. They are merely a very advanced race. Arguably Humanity has never truly lost. At anything really, even when it appears they’ve got the weaker hand they always come up trumps in the long run, not that they’ve been on the scene for much of a long run mind you. Their ingenuity and their passion have led to them being the most technologically advanced race that our galaxy has seen for a very long time, and they did so so quickly that it's been hard for other races to keep up, we often find ourselves being dragged along with them. There are of course a number of factors, their home planet is bizarrely hostile, making them a naturally aggressive, hardy and physically daunting race, whilst their astonishing capacity for creativity coupled with an often stubborn tenacity ensures that they will not accept that there is no way to achieve something." He scratched at his chin, thinking how best to go on. 

  They create and they build to overcome any problem, and even if there is no problem with a current system they will update, integrate with other’s tech or simply invent better, more efficient methods, rather than make do with what already works. This applies to every walk of their life, be it new ways of feeding a populace, ever faster ways of travel, a more refined way of mining, a faster method of terraforming or even a better way of waging war, every single Human is pushing to improve, innovate and stand out with every action they perform. They build and craft their way out of every situation, even hypothetical ones they prepare for well in advance. So in short..." 

  "In short, little one," The Giant Commodore turned from the central console to look down at her, making her quail in surprise. 

  "We are not Gods, but in their absence we have built our own." he turned to the rest of the room, gripping the console in front of him and shouted; "Everybody brace!" 

  A sudden explosion of noise and vibration tore through the bridge, Carmen grabbed at her ears, trying in vain to keep back the deafening sound of antimatter rending and reality warping as it split through the artificial atmosphere on the bridge. The room glowed blue from ionisation, alarms rang as radiation warnings went off, the entire deck shook and rolled and the blackness they could see through the viewing window became distorted, as suddenly the impossible materialised into real-space in front of their ship. What she saw was beyond comprehension. A sound like the end of the universe boomed through the fabric of the ship as the aftershock of the Thor's arrival shook reality, before instantly stilling it again. She was too frightened to even make a sound.

  The enormous spacecraft stood motionless through the viewing glass, grey and blue and vast, and suddenly, terrifyingly silent as it appeared to drift by the viewing panels. Larger than all the other ships in the fleet together multiplied again by ten at least, it felt as though a continent had just materialised in front of them. From a side on angle it appeared almost flat, but from above it was much wider, made up of two symmetrical bladed beams, with a central channel running down the middle from one end almost the entire length of the ship, leaving a short bridge at the very back where an enormous conical object was sat. This was made from some sort of glistening metal different to that of the rest of the ship. It was perfectly smooth, reflecting the light of the red sun at the centre of the system and contrasting the infinite blackness of the space around. 

  It was an impossible thing, and Carmen cowered back in utter terror, hiding her eyes from the silent grey monster that now hung before her. 

  "Don't be afraid little one." whispered Eraint next to her, trying to calm her with a soothing tone as he himself looked on in awe. "He's surprisingly simple technology actually, developed back in the Human’s first information age. Although the scale has increased somewhat since then.” he made a clacking sound with his beak that may have been a chuckle “He uses extreme levels of magnetism running down each side of that channel in the middle there to fling the projectile that you can see at the base. The projectile itself can have its density increased or decreased so that it is the correct level for the target. The magnetic forces are so high that there is can be no crew on board otherwise they tend to die in bizarre and unpleasant ways. The whole system is operated from here in the Commodore's capital ship." 

  "But what is it used for?" she asked, wondering why anyone would need to build something so enormous. Eraint appeared to grimace again and shuffled uncomfortably. 

  "I'm afraid my dear that today you are about to bear witness first hand as to why the Republic has enjoyed an extraordinarily long period of peace in its borders and honestly why I believe it is Humanity that is set to be the dominant power in the galaxy.” He drew himself up and straightened his coat, taking Carmen’s hand and guiding her out towards the command desk” I think I do regret that this is to be included in your first experience of the Republic, but I suppose it will give you a better understanding than what words on a page, or spoken by an old bird could ever give you. Commadore, any words for the little one?" The huge alien turned once more and looked down at her, a slightly sad look in his eyes 

  "I'm afraid Eraint is right little one. This is a... complicated day.” He frowned at her “You see the ship before you? He is Thor, so named after one of our Gods from a time long ago by your standards, and his sole purpose in our armada is to be a shock and awe tool. We could do what we are about to do with far more simple methods, but Thor is a message. A warning to the rest of this pitiful band of hegemonised raiders that saw fit to assault a world under our protection." He stood then, bringing himself to his full height towering above her as he looked out over the eyes of his expectant crew. 

  "Isn't that right people?" he asked, his voice booming out over the bridge. "Today we show this little girl what it means to stand against the Republic! Today we show her our remorse for the loss of her family, her race, her home-world! Today we send a message to the pirate planets that are growing too bold outside of our influence and today, we give this girl the revenge she deserves!" he turned back to Carmen and she almost shrunk into the floor under a gaze so powerful, so suddenly furious that every fibre of her body was screaming at her to run from him. "You see my dear, these animals came to your world, took your planet from you and slaughtered your family, when they had no right! So we will come to their world and we will rip it all from them!" He turned back to the console and barked commands to the Human engineers below him, "Give me targeting. I want an ETA on our arrival in Rundern space. Begin to charge the rails and move Dreadnoughts Alpha and Charlie into defence over Thor's point." 

  The augmented crystalline viewing screen at the front of the bridge was showing a small planet, various numbers and figures showed its total population, the race of inhabitants, the central urban areas and more relevant information that Carmen couldn’t make sense of. The distance to the planet lessened and now she could see the full length of Thor, stretching out as it silently glided beneath them like the incoming tides of the seas back on her homeworld. The Commodore was shouting out more orders and she saw a number of bulky, cumbersome looking ships fly up above them. A Human on one of the consoles on a lower deck looked up at the Commodore who nodded to her. She input a sequence of instructions and thousands upon thousands of craft spewed from the bellies of the bloated ships above, like a swarm of insects they flowed as a wave towards the planet ahead. 

  "Those are drone ships" Eraint muttered to her, seeing the direction her eyes were pointing. "Their purpose is to ensure that no-one can put up a fight, nor escape the planet. Only those that the Humans allow to survive will do so” he glanced up at the towering figure standing in the middle of them “and seeing the Commodore today, I doubt that will be a large number." She watched as the viewing window relayed in the zoomed image of the planet. Tiny flashes of light could be seen as the drone swarm approached their target, overwhelming the small defence force that had been attempting to slow them as though it was not there before firing outwards to create small specks of light in the outer orbits of the planet. Her stomach turned as she realised they were engulfing and disintegrating ships that were seemingly attempting to flee, the drones moving like a noxious cloud as they sped through space. Carmen felt sick as she watched flash after flash, the swarm coming ever closer to the main planet. 

  Each of those ships was full of refugees, people fleeing from the wrath of the Republic and although she knew that these creatures had killed her family, massacred or enslaved her race, scorched her planets surface and set fire to its atmosphere, she found she still felt sorry for them. She looked up at the Human commander and shuddered. His face betrayed little emotion that she could decipher, save for a grim look of purpose, along with a hint of something that she could not pick out. She looked around the bridge at the other Humans, they all had the same look. It was an excited anger, burning deep behind each set of eyes, not like the fury that the commander had expressed a second ago, this was something else. Something quieter, never vocalised and never betrayed, bubbling beneath the surface. This was something primal, unexplainable, and she felt fear wash over her once more. 

  Suddenly there was a burst of explosions from up ahead as the drone swarm reached the planet, entering a low orbit at high speeds and eradicating any systems around the planet as they swept clear its circumference. 

  Eraint was explaining how their planetary defence systems had been disabled during the approach thanks to a massive cyber attack conducted from one of the other ships in the small fleet, which overloaded all of their computing technology. Carmen was nodding but not listening and he tailed off as a hush fell over the bridge and the planet fell still. No more flashes of dying ships came from the drone storm orbiting the small planet. No further commands were being barked out and no-one was looking at anything now other than the Commodore. 

  He rose from his seat and looked around "Any person who does not wish to take part in what we are about to do may now leave the bridge, and no one will think the worse of them." He said these words softly, looking around the bridge and was met with cold eyes and steel hard faces staring back at him. Nobody moved. He nodded. 

  A silence fell over the bridge and the entire personnel, the atmosphere was empty and dead, each persons face a mask of impassivity where once they had stood so energetic and defiant. Carmen turned to Eraint, not understanding why this seemingly mighty and angry group of people now stood so humble, but he put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head in the smallest of motions. After what felt like an age, but in truth was only a few seconds, one of the crew members from the lower bridge took a step forward and raised his head. "Permission to fire sir." It was not said as a question but rather as though he was in fact giving an order to the Commodore and Carmen looked again in confusion up at Eraint, who merely held a finger to his beak and shook his head again. The whole crew snapped their heads up and looked to the giant in their centre. 

  "Thank you Lieutenant Connoly" The commander replied. The crew all jumped back to their seats, the commander took his place at the helm and began to shout his orders again. "Bring the rails to maximum firing power, increase density of the projectile to 700%," and suddenly the bridge was a hub of activity again, as though the bizarre silence had never even happened. The Commander turned to Eraint and Carmen, "you two had better strap down," he said, "things are about to get really weird in here." Eraint grabbed Carmen's hand and pulled her to a corner of the bridge before she had a chance to ask any questions. There were a number of benches with all manner of strapping into which he roughly placed her and affixed as many of the restraints as he could without damaging her fragile body. 

  "Sorry my dear, but this will have to do. The magnetic fields..." but he was cut off, the whole bridge groaned and slowly leaned to one side, sliding through space towards Thor and Eraint scrabbled to get into a sitting position of his own. 

  "Full stabilisation! Bloody hell I forgot the pull he can have." The Commodore strained at his seat as he was visibly being pulled up out of it by the metal in his uniform, caused by unseen forces coming from the nearest of Thor's enormous rails. "Helmsman get us further from him or we'll be torn apart!" 

  "The distance is safe sir!" Barked a surly looking female Human at the front of the bridge. She checked a readout again "It's gonna be uncomfortable, but it should be safe!" 

  "Uncomfortable is an understatement. You OK back there you two?" he turned his head to look at Eraint, who meekly put his forward limb up as a signal to the commander, his strapping straining to keep him in place. Carmen couldn't even nod. "Power status!" the now slightly red faced Human barked to a computer terminal. 

  "Thirty seconds until fully charged Commodore" came an artificial voice that seemed almost comically calm compared to the chaos occurring on the bridge. 

  "Pull back the drones," he yelled as the bridge gave another groan, and Carmen saw the cloud of small ships orbiting the planet dissipate suddenly, scattering out like the head of a dandelion, seemingly fleeing as far as was possible from their original prey. The nearest rail on the giant weapon was glistening, and a howling sound was echoing through the ship as the magnetic distortion threatened to buckle the hull. 

  "On my mark then" he took one more look at the displays in front of him, 

  "Fire" 

  The word hung in the air for a second and then came a release. The ship lurched back in recoil, flinging crew members and various desktop objects to the floor despite heavy dampening from the ship's atmospheric controls. The Thor had released it's payload with a blinding flash as magnetic fields collapsed and the full rage of Humanity was released upon this doomed world. 

  It wasn't the noise of the Thor's arrival that had scared her the most that day, nor was it the huge, powerful alien race she had come into contact with for the first time. It wasn't the being pulled one way and flung the other, nor the myriad of different deaths she had witnessed as the drones had engulfed the planet. She felt pure dread that day and it came not from the occurrence of something, but rather the absence of it. She looked out of the viewing panel then and saw a spheroid of perfectly formed metal, as large as any comet or asteroid, flung through space at terrifying speeds, with staggering force. 

  And it made no sound. 

  The death of billions upon billions of creatures rushed towards them then and there in front of her eyes, caused by those she was standing with, and there was not even a cry. Not a whimper of pain nor a plea for mercy. There was no whoosh or deafening roar as the projectile bore down on its target. There was pure and utter silence as the massive payload from the Human's dark grey God hurtled through space and hit the planet in a blinding flash of light and flame. She expected to hear a sound that should have been befitting of the end of a world, preparing herself for perhaps an ear splitting explosion or a gut wrenching shock wave, but instead there was nothing but silence. She watched as the atmosphere ignited in a blinding flash and Thor's hammer hit home. 

  She turned away then, not wanting to see any more of the destruction laid out before her, and instead looked up at the Commodore. His gaze was fixed on the screen in front of him, a hardened mask of impassive force staring forwards as great jets of molten rock spewed from where the hammer had collided with the world's crust. Glancing around she could see every one of the Human crew members faces shared that same mask, faces of molten rage and shining sorrow fixed on the dying world. She looked down at her feet and began to cry. She did not know why exactly but she felt the emotion surge up through her small body as she shuddered and shook from the weight of it. "Remember this day." The Commodore's words came out softly in the silence "today is not a good day. Today a people paid the ultimate sacrifice for their own stupidity. Today we are no more angels than them we have ended. May we be forgiven" 

  A few crew members muttered in appreciation, but most kept their gaze fixed on the dying planet above them, the reflected light of the molten core being expelled into space flickering over their faces and Carmen saw then, behind their eyes, behind the anger and the pity and all the other hardened emotions there still hung something inexplicable. And she buried her face in her hands.