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PART 2

“This is simply fascinating!” Doctor Cairns said.

The woman was sitting across from Mezul, the alien sagging into the plush couch normally reserved for therapy patients. The

Doctor had poured over the data Alice had sent her way during their stay on the alien carrier, and was adding her personal psyche tests to the list. Mezul didn’t look like she minded fulfilling her requests, solving memory and math puzzles the Doctor wanted to quiz the alien over.

“I’ve always wanted to do this kind of research,” the woman

continued. “Here I am on a warship surrounded by soldiers, and I’m

doing math with another sentient being not from Earth.”

Carl had taken the other aliens off to explore the rest of the medical bay, leaving just Mezul with the Doctor, his friend promising he wouldn’t sneak them to the ship’s bar.

“Alice has recorded some very interesting observations.” The Doctor pulled up her tablet, Lambert peeking over to see Mezul’s body plan on the screen. “She’s been taking notes ever since you boarded their ship. They’ve got habits, personalities, little hints as to what their society is like.”

“Machines are always watching,” Lambert grumbled. “Can you

believe they actually installed one on my ship?”

“I heard they moved a personality onto an unlucky corvette,” Cairns said. “Shortage on pilots, isn’t that right? It has only helped you so far, is there something wrong with her?”

“Its kind was wiped out for a reason,” Lambert said. “So far all it’s done is watch and record.”

“A detail that has and will help us document this great time extensively,” Cairns replied. “Regardless of artificial intelligence, it seems as though we’re at the limits of our physical examinations of the Balokarids. Avian, dry feathers flexible enough to keep the body warm, wing span for potential flight. Unless Mezul wants to strip,

speculation is about all we can do.”

“I don’t think she’d like getting nude in front of aliens,”

Lambert said, glancing up at his strange companion. “Tell me again how you found out it was a she?” “We compared our body plans,” he explained.

“I hope you like being the base reference for all humanity,

Lieutenant,” Cairns said. “Can you ask her if she would take her suit

off? She seems much friendlier to you than anyone else.”

“I’ll give it a go. Been interested myself about what they look like underneath” He called Mezul’s name to get her attention, feeling butterflies in his stomach for some reason as he asked his question. “Mezul, would you mind taking off that suit?” He mimed unclipping his own flightsuit, which he was still wearing.

The alien shook its head. “No take off mind.” It pointed at its

helmet, dangling from its belt.

“Sorry doc, looks like it’s a no.”

“Pity, though I can’t blame her for hesitating. At least she can communicate with us on a basic level, though it may take some time to develop completely.”

“Is there a faster way?” Lambert asked. “I can’t play translator all the time, not with the UEC out there. If they attack we need to be able to tell the Balokarids what’s happening, coordinate.”

“If we were on the Hub, and I had all my lab equipment, assistants… perhaps we would have more options, but as it stands there isn’t much more we can do than be patient. Building a dialogue takes time.”

“What about our translators?” Lambert asked, pointing at his neck. “people imprint other languages in their heads all the time,

can’t we do that to Mezul?”

“You’re talking about implanting a foreign language into an alien brain,” Cairns replied, though she did scratch at her long hair thoughtfully. “Do you even know how that works? A scan is taken from the brain of someone fluent in a language, creates a synaptic map, and forcefully imprints the required patterns onto the subject so the skill is passed on. We would be rebuilding part of Mezul’s brain, do you have any idea what kind of ramifications that could have for us? People would call us exploitative, not to mention what these Balokarids would think of us being so invasive.”

“We should be more worried about the physical dangers rather than the verbal ones, doc,” Lambert said. “The UEC will find us if we don’t start moving, and to do that we need to communicate with eachother.”

“So the Captain says,” she sighed. “Look, for an implant to actually work, Mezul would need a strong grasp of English, she needs be compatible with our technology on a genetic level, and her brain must follow the same neural signals as ours do. That last one is the most improbable – we would need to completely overhaul our imprinting technology, and aside from me there are only three other people on this ship with experience in this sort of work. We’re a

warship, not a science vessel.”

“Say if that was all good, could you install one in her?” he

asked.

“The surgery isn’t the problem, that’s all done by machine. The problem then is making sure the implant can find the right electrical currents that connect the vocal cords and the brain. If she has a sensorimotor cortex like we do, then perhaps it could work, but we’re giving a delicate surgery a lot of leeway. The next problem would be getting her to agree to undergo the whole procedure.”

“She’s not as reluctant as you’d think,” Lambert said, nodding at Mezul. “Do you want a translator, Mezul?”

“Translator? Mezul speak Lambert yes!” she replied. “Lieutenant, this is about more than just consent. Imagine the

implications if something goes wrong, if the implant scrambles up her electrical currents, or worse. Our foremost action after first encounter shouldn’t be about conducting surgery onto another sentient

creature.”

“I don’t see much of a choice, doc,” Lambert said. “A hundred things could have gone wrong when I chose to follow the aliens onto their carrier, but look where I am. Taking chances is what the Hub

does best.”

“Risks seem to be the foundation of our new society…” Cairns mused. “I’ll explore all options as the Captain ordered, but don’t get your hopes up, Lieutenant, surgery will be my last resort. If Mezul’s people have scientists of their own, perhaps they’d be willing to help me come up with alternative solutions. Of course, that would mean asking the Captain for permission to allow more aliens on board.”

“I think he’ll be a lot more lenient than you might think, doc,” Lambert said. “I’ll give him a call.”

11

Lambert was glad to be back aboard a human ship, though that

wasn’t to say he didn’t appreciate touring the alien carrier. He was

constantly asked what he’d seen out there by the crew, and he was all too eager to recount his tale, enrapturing the entire mess hall with the help of Carl to add some extra flare.

Just like the Balokarids had been curious with the two men, the Gallipoli’s crew was all too eager to engage with the aliens, their capacity to mimic anything a comical point nearly everyone took advantage of after their initial wariness wore off, the medbay becoming an attraction since the aliens were confined there.

Lambert spent most of his spare time explaining to Mezul the details of the surgery, Doctor Cairns’ earlier words tempering his excitement. It was a big decision the Captain wasn’t taking lightly, warships sent on long voyages like this one, where communications with superiors were either impossible, or took too long to send and

receive orders to be practical, had to act independently, and the blame would fall squarely on the Gallipoli’s crew if a member of an alien race died on their ship.

The Gallipoli already had a stark reputation before its turnover, and Lambert certainly didn’t want Mezul’s death on his conscience. Killing humans was one thing, he’d been indifferent to killing for a long time, but something about an alien was different, unnatural. He

wondered how the UEC felt about attacking the Balokarids. Lambert knew they were warmongering scum, but what reason did they have to fight an alien race? The Balokarids had to have the answer.

Lambert spent most of the next couple days with Doctor Cairns and Mezul in the medical bay, Carl joining him now and then between his hours of sleep. The bay had been the gathering place for the few other scientists and medical staff who could fill the role of linguists best (Lambert’s presence a necessity because of his sheer exposure to the Balokarids), but they got a helping hand later on by the aliens themselves, when a whole team of them turned up to the bay, dressed in white, form-fitting suits that covered them from toes to neck in synthetic threads. On the sleeves of their suits was a strange symbol Lambert had no basis to describe. Did that signify what roles they served in their culture, perhaps?

There were seven of them in total, and according to Mezul when he asked, these were: “Translator scientists.” She must have called for them when he wasn’t looking, or maybe Shaliyya had. Lambert guessed Carin’s team wouldn’t get far on developing communications unless both sides put some effort in.

Lambert was sidelined out of most of the technicalities, but so was Mezul, and Cairns encouraged him to immerse her into English to see if he could make any progress on his own front. It was interesting to see the Doctor’s team engage with the alien scientists, it was a little like watching a documentary about parrots, the way the conversations went back and forth, until slowly it almost looked like the team of scientists were working as one cohesive unit.

Lambert noticed that all the aliens had helmets like Mezul, secured to their hips and never once setting them down. Perhaps they were afraid of decompression, maybe that was a common occurrence on their ships. Their feathers were so dynamic and colourful, from white to black, green and even a purple one, no two alike as their shimmering feather tips sparkled in the room’s light.

“We’ve been able to develop our dialogue with the Balokarids considerably,” Cairns said when Lambert asked how she was going a day later. “By mutually reciprocating our words back to each other and going from there, our efforts have snowballed to a level where we can convey both the context and meaning of almost three hundred words. Unfortunately this is not nearly enough to satisfy the level of communication necessary for tactical movements and coordination between our fleets. We have to resort to more unconventional

methods.”

“Like what?”

“The Captain shares your sentiment in installing a translator implant, as do the Balokarid. I’ve gone over Mezul’s brain patterns with the help of Caleesi, that’s their head scientist, and believe with some adjustments to our translator template, we can install such a

device inside her. It should act as an accelerant in laymen’s terms, but this seems the only path left open to us.”

“So you’ve changed your mind about the whole implant thing?” The Doctor sighed. “It seems I am alone in my reservations. The Balokarids, nor even Mezul seem the slightest bit concerned – and it is

as you said, we are in a warzone and time is of the essence.”

Lambert could hardly believe it, Mezul was about to become fluent. They weren’t just going to have vague, mostly one-sided conversations anymore. After hearing the news, Mezul deliberated with Shaliyya, the two perhaps arguing over who should undergo the procedure first, and then Mezul nodded for Cairns to lead the way –

she’d be the first guinea pig.

It was many hours later when everything was ready, the medical personnel pouring over images of an implant that looked strange to Lambert. Cybernetic technology usually looked rigid, visually analogous to computer motherboards shrunken down so they could fit in the palm of your hand, but this one looked like a metal tumour, with snaking wires branching out of a bulbous mass that was neither symmetrical nor orderly.

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” the Doctor said, adjusting one of the several arms sprouting out of the operating table. To Lambert it looked like a torturing device, the medical bed sitting beneath needles and saws sticking out of the robotic arms in the ceiling, the sight making his skin crawl. It was state of the art medical equipment, but that didn’t mean it looked nice. “We are confident we know where to place the translator implant. Hopefully Mezul is ready.”

“If there’s anyone on this ship who’ll have the best chance for success, it’s you Doctor,” Captain Anders said. He had gone over the details with the Doctor in person, and it seemed he’d made up his mind in going through with the procedure.

“Lieutenant?” Cairns asked. “If you wouldn’t mind ushering her over…”

Shaliyya had a hand on Mezul’s shoulder, giving her a few last reassuring words in her native tongue, the alien scientists standing off to one side. Lambert supposed he should say something, coming up behind her and tapping her on the arm. “Doctor’s waiting Mezul,” he said. “You sure you want to go through with this? Time’s not on our

side, but if you’re not sure…”

She didn’t answer, looking over at the operating table and then back to him, giving him a smile she’d picked up from her time spent with all the humans. “You’ll be in good hands,” Lambert added. “and I’ll be right outside.”

Whether she understood him or not didn’t matter, she heard the reassurance in his tone, her headdress rolling as she leaned down to squeeze his shoulder. The gesture was oddly intimate, especially since she kept her blazing gold eyes fixed on his...

She made her way over to the table, standing a little taller than before as she passed the Doctor, her long legs clicking against the tiles.

Everyone except the Doctor stayed outside in the foyer. There

was no theatre from which to watch, and Lambert wasn’t sure he

wanted to see Mezul’s head open up. He took a seat in one of the waiting area chairs, rubbing his temple as he leaned back.

“The Doctor said the procedure will take several hours,” Captain Anders noted. “You should get some rest, Lieutenant.”

“I’d rather wait here sir,” Lambert replied, the Captain quick to note his hesitation.

“You said so yourself, Mezul is in good hands. Catch your forty winks before I return, that’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

With the mess of a situation right now, Lambert wasn’t

surprised the Captain didn’t stick around. Every alien hung around to wait it out with him, trying their best to get comfortable in the undersized chairs, some resorting to just sitting on the floor.

Lambert wasn’t the sort to worry over something beyond his control, he did that all the time when he piloted a ship through the void of space where any errant micrometeor could kill you, but that wasn’t to say he was completely cool with the situation. Either Mezul would walk out of the medical bay, or she wouldn’t, and all he could do was hope his friend would be alright.

12

Lambert was drawn out of his dreams by a scuffle, the man rubbing his itchy eyes as he sat up. The theatre door slowly opened as he sat up, Doctor Cairns coming through with her notepad under one arm.

“How is she?” Lambert asked groggily. He wasn’t sure how long he was out. “Did it work?”

“She’s fine, and I’m not sure,” Cairns answered. “She’s a little woozy, she’ll need a minute to recover.”

He was about to rush in and check on her, but he followed the Doctor’s orders, waiting with bated breath until at last the operating door opened again, Mezul walking out on visibly shaking legs. She leaned against one side of the frame, her golden eyes blinking as she

took in her surroundings. It looked like she’d just gone on a bender

and didn’t know where she was.

“Mezul?” he asked, his voice attracting her attention, her eyes falling on his. “Are you alright?”

“I’m… I am fine,” she replied, rubbing at her face with a palm. “My… head feels like I’ve taken one too many fentula hits, though…”

Unlike before, her voice was not stilted, the words not forced, her tone consistent through each syllable. It took the Balokarid a moment to notice this, the alien’s face contorting in a few different states of surprise. “Did I just… did I just speak human?”

“It worked!” Doctor Cairns sighed. “I feared the worst, but it worked.”

“I can understand you?” Mezul asked. “I can understand you!

Lambert? Does it work both ways?”

“Sounds like it,” he said, grinning up at her. “How’s the implant feel?”

“Itchy,” she replied, scratching at her neck. He could see a pink scar running between the tufts of her blue-black feathers there, about as long as his finger.

“Do not irritate the skin, please,” the Doctor chided. “The

feeling should pass within one to two days.”

Shaliyya stepped around the humans, talking in her native tongue as she addressed Mezul. “It’s fine, Kith,” Mezul replied in English, frowning as she heard herself. She switched back to her own language, the humans waiting until they were finished.

“My Kith wishes to go next,” Mezul explained. “She wishes to discuss integration with your Captain.”

“Hold on a moment,” Cairns replied, raising a hand. “We must first make sure there are no harmful side effects. A few cognitive tests should suffice for now…”

“Very well, test away,” Mezul replied. It seemed the surgery hadn’t done anything outwardly harmful, although she seemed a

little slower than usual when she had to explain to Shaliyya what exactly the humans were doing with her.

“My legs feel a little numb,” Mezul explained when Cairns asked her if she felt any different. “My people do not spend so much time off their feet,” she added. “We must keep our legs routinely

working to stay healthy.”

Lambert wasn’t surprised, they were so thick around the thighs and waist, narrowing into slimmer shins. He’d thought the broadness was because of their suits, but they were packed with muscle down there.

“If you feel like you’re able, then a walk should be fine,” Cairns said. “Lieutenant, if you wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on her? Bring her back if she experiences any dizziness, fatigue.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.” He led Mezul out of the medical bay and into the hall outside, picking a random direction and moving off, glancing back at his alien companion who walked after him.

“Well then,” he started. “your legs, huh? They’re not in pain, are they?”

“Oh no, they’re fine. I just wanted to get out of there. And finally have a proper conversation with you, Lambert.”

“Ah,” he chuckled. “Well, it’ll be good to test out your

translator. Anything in particular you want to talk about?”

“I’m not sure where to start,” she chuckled, shortening her long strides so he could keep pace. “Why did that Doctor call you, ‘Leftent?’”

“Lieutenant,” he corrected. “And that’s my rank. It’s around the

middle in terms of experience, to put it in context.”

“You’ve been fighting for a long time, then?” she noted. “Three years, including this one.”

“Is that a long time?”

He shrugged, as if to say I guess so. Strange, Mezul understood

the words now, but not their meaning. “What about you Mezul? What’s your rank?”

“I do not have one,” she explained. “I am referred to as pilot, nothing more.”

“Balokarids don’t have an officer system? What about Shaliyya?

You called her Kith.”

“She is the leader of our clan, so that is her honorific,” Mezul explained. “She can distribute more ‘ranks’ to others if she deems necessary, but I do not own such a rank.”

“So you all follow her orders?”

“She is responsible for all decisions concerning our clan, though it is unusual to have less than three Kith presiding over our people. It is a heavy burden, but Shaliyya has not led us astray.”

“Suppose having just one notable rank makes things a bit

simpler,” Lambert noted. “we’ve got dozens of different titles and

ranks.”

“Dozens?” Mezul asked, as if this was shocking to her. “How does this not get confusing?”

“It was when I first enlisted,” he chuckled. “You see this bar on my sleeve? That’s a Lieutenant’s badge. You just have to memorise what each symbol means. If you get them wrong, you get yelled at. Simple as that.”

“Our Kith have something similar,” Mezul said, leaning down and touching his patch with a claw. “The Kith wear the insignia of

our clan’s house symbol on their armour – they are the only ones

allowed.”

“The red paint on Shaliyya’s suit?” he asked, the alien nodding. It would certainly make a Kith stand out in a crowd. They rounded a corner, then another, the artificial walls probably looking all the same to Mezul.

“How’s the translator feel?” he asked, stepping to one side as a pair of mechanics walked past. They gave Lambert a look, oblivious to Mezul’s newfound language skills. “As in, how’s it feel speaking human?”

She paused to consider. “Like my words are not my own,” she explained. “I am pulling them up from a memory I have not experienced. Your responses tell me I am making sense to you, but my mind isn’t quite convinced why. Does that make sense?”

“At least you didn’t turn into a vegetable,” he said. “Vegetable?” Mezul asked, testing the word.

“You don’t know what that is?”

“It is in my vocabulary. At least, the vocabulary of the one I now have, but how would I turn into a food?”

“It’s a figure of speech,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I was just worried something would go wrong, you’d be paralysed or… or worse.”

“Ruvaara did say you were waiting back there the whole time I was undergoing the procedure,” Mezul remarked, flashing him a coy smile. “Your concern for me is endearing, but I feel quite fine, if a little drowsy.”

Her headdress roiled in that strange way again, waving like stalks of hay in a strong breeze. She must use it to convey her

emotions, but what was its meaning? He didn’t want to sound rude so he didn’t ask.

“We should be heading back,” he said. “Cairns will have me reported if we go wondering around for too long.”

“I do wish to see more of your ship,” Mezul said, following him as Lambert turned them around. “It is so spacious compared to our own, yet on the outside it’s half the size of our carriers.”

“Soon as we get the all clear from the Doctor, we’ll go explore.

Deal?”

“Deal.” She grinned.

13

“Body functions appear nominal,” Doctor Cairns noted. “And you’re sure you feel no adverse effects? Dizziness, nausea?”

“I feel as normal as a Cashi in the sand,” Mezul said, the humans looking at her quizzically. “Sorry. It’s an animal from my homeworld. Means I’m fine.”

“Can we proceed with Shaliyya’s operation?” Captain Anders asked. He’d returned as soon as Cairns informed him of Mezul’s fluent English, and the two had spoken at length about the Kith going next.

“Captain, I wish I could share your enthusiasm,” Cairns began. “but what if there are long-term effects we are not yet aware of?

Machine and alien flesh could have disastrous results we won’t be aware of until years from now. If we broaden our tests to more than one individual, we’d be putting another life at risk.”

“I understand your hesitance Doctor, but Mezul tells me Shaliyya is their leader, their Kith. As Captain it is my duty to speak with her.”

“Perhaps Mezul could play the intermediary?” Cairns suggested. “Translate for the one called Shaliyya?”

“My Kith wishes to be as direct as possible with your leader,” Mezul replied, her hands clasped over her stomach. “She is worried I may mistranslate, and would rather appeal to your Captain through her own words.”

Lambert perked up at the word appeal, wondering why simply acting as the translator was such a big deal to the aliens.

“I concur,” Anders replied. “if there’s even a chance we can avoid mistranslation, we should take it. I’d rather things didn’t end up the same way it did with us and the Suvelians.”

Doctor Cairns sighed, clearly not convinced but knowing she

couldn’t persuade them. “Very well Captain, I’ll prepare the lab.”

She and the Kith moved into the surgery theatre, followed by the guard who shouldered their strange rifle as they followed.

Lambert guessed they didn’t want the Kith left unguarded at any

time.

“I’ll leave the Balokarids in your hands while Cairns is away, Lieutenant,” Captain Anders said. “Since you brought them here in the first place, you’re as responsible for their safety as I am.”

Lambert asked if he could show them around, and after

considering the Captain nodded. “As long as you accompany them at all times, and keep them on this deck. If anything happens I’ll hold you accountable, Lieutenant.”

“Understood sir.”

“Excellent. Return them here once Shaliyya is up and about.”

Lambert nodded, the Captain turning away, the medical bay door sliding shut automatically behind him. That left just Ruvaara, Mezul and Lambert together. The scientists seemed comfortable staying with all the medical equipment, so Lambert left them alone, grinning at the two aliens.

“Well ladies, who’s hungry?”

He led them through the synthetic halls of the ship, groups of engineers and soldiers walking back and forth, giving the aliens friendly, if curious glances as they moved through the ship.

“Ship inside no,” the alien called Ruvaara said, Lambert giving

her a questioning glance.

“She means your ship interiors are curiously designed,” Mezul explained, the contrast between her smooth voice and Ruvaara’s broken one a striking difference.

“How so?” Lambert asked, leading them down the left branch

at an intersection.

“Everything is so… level,” Mezul replied. “Sharp turns everywhere, no difference in height at any point, everything looks the same. We would be quite lost without you guiding us.”

“Your ships were the confusing ones. All those slopes and turns, nothing was even or symmetrical, I couldn’t make much sense of anything.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t to an alien,” Mezul wondered. “Designing vehicles not built for the ground is a new and vexing

problem for my people. We’ve only been spacefaring for a few dozen

orbits.”

He didn’t know how long an orbit was, but he guessed as much that the Balokarids were new to space exploration, relative to humanity, that was.

There were coloured lines painted along the walls, each one labelled as to where they led and branching off the many different side passages. Lambert followed the green line, ushering the aliens to the side as a pair of guards marched past, their heavy armour clunking loudly. The aliens watched their black, combat-armoured forms stomp by, even the disciplined soldiers unable to stop themselves from gawking.

“Lambert boots no,” Ruvaara said as they got going. “Human boots no.”

“I haven’t turned my mag-boots on, no,” he said. “Lambert stand how?” she asked. “Ruvaara stand how?”

That’s right, she was probably wondering how they were all

walking around without magnetic boots on. “That’s cause our gravity

drives are on. See, the inside of the ship is built kind of like a

skyscraper. Do you know what that is?” “A tall building?” Mezul wondered.

“Right. So the inside of the Gallipoli is built like that, just flipped onto its side. The reactors gently spin the whole thing round and round and create centrifugal force. You remember that big rumble when we first boarded? That was the drives turning back on. We leave them off when a ship docks so it’s easier for us to line up. We’ve got lockers full of boots and emergency straps in every room so we won’t be caught without our boots on if the drives have to switch off.”

With the help of Mezul to translate, Ruvaara got the idea, and to say the aliens were amazed would be an understatement. “How can a rotating radius create gravity?” Mezul asked. “How did you discover this?”

“Well I didn’t, someone else did hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Our own little way of creating artificial gravity, at least until someone figures out a better way.”

“Humans are so advanced,” Mezul muttered. “Your ships, so compact and efficient, your technology... your worlds must look amazing.”

They arrived at the mess hall before very long, the square- shaped interior packed with a hundred tables and an equal amount of people, easily the biggest space on the whole ship except for the repair hangar, the rumble of conversation overwhelming as they entered. The kitchen was built along one side, Lambert leading the aliens over to the counter.

“Hey Mack,” Lambert greeted, leaning on the glass display case and giving the chef a nod. “what’s the special?”

“Bacon and eggs, same old same old,” the man replied, wiping his hands on his apron. He did a double take when the Balokarids

walked up on Lambert’s flanks, the gentle sizzling of meat catching their combined attention. “Oh shit, these are the aliens?” Mack asked. “I mean, obviously they are but… still. Woah.”

“That’s Mezul, and this is Ruvaara.” Lambert pointed a thumb at each one in turn. “Mack’s in charge of rationing out our meals,” he explained to them.

“It is nice to meet you, cook,” Mezul said, nodding politely.

The man hadn’t been expecting Mezul to talk, his jaw almost hitting the floor in astonishment. “I-I-It’s… nice to meet you, too. Mezul? Huh. Well, uh… what’ll it be?” He directed his question to Lambert.

Chastising himself for just realising he had no idea whether they could eat human food, Lambert turned to his alien companions. “Do Balokarids eat meat? I don’t know if our food might be

dangerous to you.”

“We are omnivores,” Mezul explained. “and we have a way of telling if something is safe to consume.”

“Oh, good. I’ll, uhm, get you a sample then,” Mack said, hurrying over to one of the other cooks tending to a stove. He returned with a cut of meat, placing it on a plate and sliding it over the counter, Lambert offering it to Mezul. “It’s pork,” Lambert explained. “comes from a pink animal native to Earth. Do you have a scanner or something you can-”

After taking a curious sniff, Mezul devoured the whole thing in two bites. She snapped her beak like one would smack their lips after a tasty dish, a noticeable bulge sliding down her throat. “Tastes… funky, if that is the right word. You should try some, Ruvaara.”

“I hope your way of testing food for poisons isn’t just to eat it,”

Lambert grumbled.

“We have a keen sense of smell, and your pork does not smell foul. My body will regurgitate it if I cannot digest it safely, so it’s quite safe.”

“Take your word for it…” She seemed not in the least bit

worried, so Lambert trusted her judgement. “Mack, another cut for my friends and myself?”

“Don’t go throwing up on my floor, please,” the chef said under

his breath, overhearing them.

Lambert had to wait around for Ruvaara and Mezul to fill up their own plates. The bigger aliens no doubt had to consume at least twice as much as a human did, but Lambert, and especially Mack,

couldn’t believe their appetites when they asked for fifths, claiming one ration was not even worthy of the word snack. They had nearly a dozen pieces of meat each, along with a mountain of mashed potatoes with a healthy handful of vegetables on the side. Between them they could have fed a squad for a day.

“I’ll have to start rationing at this point,” Mack muttered, his frown turning to a smile when Mezul thanked him. Lambert led them to an empty table in the far corner. He doubted they would get much privacy before long as they were already drawing the attention of the

engineers and staff on break, but at least everyone was keeping from staring for too long.

“Do humans have an animal pen on their ships?” Mezul asked, sitting down and taking a bite out of her steaks, taking two into one hand like they were pieces of bread on a sandwich.

“The meat isn’t actually meat,” Lambert explained. “keeping a farm up and running on a warship is impractical, so we freeze what meat we brought with us and combine it with the proteins grown in the hydroponics bay.”

“Grown?” Mezul looked at her food. “So this is a… plant?” “Technically half and half,” Lambert nodded. “that’s probably

why it tastes funky to you.”

“We supplement our diets on farms as well,” Mezul said. “we have herb and vegetable vats running along the bottom of our carriers, as you saw. Those roots never spoil even in the harshest of days, and can sate the most malnourished Balokarid with just a few bites.”

Judging by how Mezul and Ruvaara were wolfing down their

meals, this root had to be filling indeed. “Maybe a trip back is in

order,” he said.

“Did you not find our ways appealing?” Mezul asked, pausing

her chewing to look at him.

“It’s not that, I just think it would be fun.”

“Oh.” She opened her mouth but then shut it, as if she was stopping herself from asking something. “Then that is good. You would have been impressed if you were to have tried some, I am certain of it.”

Lambert got the feeling he wasn’t getting the whole picture, the way Mezul’s expression seemed almost worried for a moment there. He dug into his own meal, making conversation with Mezul as he turned to other topics, asking her if she felt any pain from the surgery.

“Your Doctor Cairns is a remarkable healer,” Mezul explained. “I felt nothing after he put me to sleep, though I was a little nervous right before I passed out.” She chuckled.

“He?” Lambert asked. “Cairns is a woman.”

“She is?” Mezul blinked. “but… she’s almost as tall as you, and

far thinner.”

“Are your males like that?”

“They are skinnier, with smaller, more colourful plumage on

their heads.”

“More colourful? Then yours? That seems hard to imagine.” “You just haven’t seen a male yet,” Mezul replied, the corner of

her mouth curling back as she met his eyes. Like a woman batting her lashes, she blinked at him, her feathery head fluttering in an expression unknown to him. “Their colours are more vibrant. Their beaks are shorter, with a more prominent curve. And they lack wings of course.”

“Your genders are a lot more dimorphic compared to ours,” Lambert said. “We must look all about the same to you.”

“Remember how confused we were when we found out you were male?” she asked. “Compared to the Doctor, you are bigger, more muscular, and you fly ships, which are all female traits in my culture.”

“So I look like a lady to you?” he asked, grinning.

“Well, yes, but no. I suppose it just gives you a certain… exotic quality,” she said, blinking down at him. Lambert wasn’t sure her smile was one of simple intrigue, or something more.

“I’ve got to ask,” Lambert began, feeling distinctly flustered the

more she stared at him, so he switched topics. “Been meaning to know since the start. Can you actually fly?”

“You followed us back to my clan’s fleet, you know I can.” “No I mean with your wings,” he said, nodding at her arms.

“What do you use them for?”

“Checking out my sheathes, are you?” Mezul asked, grinning as if making a joke. “My wings are for more than just drawing the eyes of others, they do have practical uses, the females in our prehistory would scale the tall peaks of our homeworld in search of prey, while the males tended the nests.”

“Your ancient gender roles are flipped from ours,” Lambert noted. “So, was that a yes to the flying question?”

“The uses are a little scaled back in modern times, but when vehicles are impractical, a female would be called upon to scout a position from above and afar.”

“That’s amazing,” he said. “How long can you fly for?”

“It varies from individual and if the winds are in our favour, but personally my record flight time is five hours. I crossed the

homeworld sea during one of our marathons a few orbits ago.”

He didn’t know if five hours was good by Balokarid standards, but imagining someone as large as her staying airborne for that long was impressive to say the least. “You’ve only got one sea on your

home planet?” he asked, noticing the lack of a plural.

“It’s the only oasis on Balokar,” Mezul confirmed. “A few clan cities settle on its borders, but most prefer the sands and peaks. Is this unusual for humans?”

“We’ve got plenty of water on Earth,” Lambert said. “More than half of the globe is covered in oceans, and most cities are settled on the coasts.”

“Over half a planet covered in water?” Mezul replied, staring in disbelief. “Such an amount is… unimaginable. It would be a sight to see, wouldn’t it Ruv’?”

The other alien nodded her agreement after Mezul translated, Lambert’s smile faltering as he had to tell them the truth. “Hate to be the joy killer, but Earth is under the UEC’s grip, and I don’t think any of us will be seeing her for a while yet.”

“You have not seen your homeworld for some time, then?” Mezul asked.

“I was born on the Hub, the Outer Reaches are my homeworld.

It’s… weird, fighting a world that’s my species’ home planet, I just hope all the people there understand what we’ve gone through to get to this state.”

“I’ve not seen my homeworld in many orbits either,” Mezul said. “but it must be difficult not visiting it entirely. I’m sure your cause is just, and those outside the UEC clan know this too.”

He appreciated the comfort, Mezul understood at least some of his conflicted feelings. “How do you know we’re just people?” he asked. “We only met the other day.”

“And on that same day, you saved our carriers from certain

death,” Mezul countered. “Is that not a sign of a just warrior?” “Warrior, huh? I like the sound of that.” The two shared a brief

smile before Lambert picked at his meal again. “Tell me about this sea of yours, how many k’s across is it?”

“K’s?”

Lambert chastised himself, beginning to lay out the foundations of distance with the Balokarid as they ate.

14

Captain Anders fiddled with his collar, glancing back at the honour guard that stood to attention at his flanks. He didn’t expect any danger, but a bit of muscle would hopefully add a little flare to inspire his welcoming committee.

Doctor Cairns had hailed him over the intercom, informing him that the Balokarid Kith had successfully gotten her translator installed, and wished to formally speak with him. He’d cleared the bridge, the control surfaces that filled the space mostly clear save for a few critical navigators, the arch-shaped window dominating the northern face of the bridge illuminating his command centre with a soft, purple glow.

He didn’t exactly have a red carpet to roll out for the aliens, but

he did all he could with his limited resources. The soldiers in their

pressurized armour, their coil rifles glinting in the light that spilled in through the canopy, carried enough of a presence to warrant security and safety. A squad of them were lined up in two even rows, creating an aisle that faced the bridge’s main doors.

Anders hadn’t been there when the talks with the Suvelians had gone down, everyone who was would be long gone by now, but the repercussions were fresh on everyone’s mind, especially now that another sentient race had entered the game. He couldn’t screw this up, not just because Senator Estera would have his head if he did, but because the Hub needed more friends than enemies right now. He just prayed that the Balokarids could see the difference between a Hub citizen and a Confederate one, if they even recognised the

concept…

He adjusted his gloves as the waiting dragged on, until finally the main doors slid open, a group of figures walking through. His soldiers squared their shoulders in disciplined synchronicity, the navigators looking away from their displays to stand to attention.

There was the Kith, the alien pilot Mezul, and their armed guard, all following behind Lieutenant Hall. The aliens dwarfed the Lieutenant by a good foot or two, their powerful legs clad in a silver, alien polymer, their three-toed feet clicking against the metal floor as they stalked forward, their beaks turning curiously around at all the machinery.

They glanced at the armed men present, their headdresses rolling and moving in a way that came off as cautious. He noted the alien that carried the long, metal rod that eerily resembled a rifle, clutched at their weapon a little tighter with their four-fingered hands, Anders worried that perhaps he’d gone a little overboard with the armed presence. He’d always been one to prefer a show of force.

The Lieutenant snapped Anders a quick salute, stepping aside to let the aliens approach on their own. The Balokarids moved through towards him, Anders clasping his hands behind his back as he addressed the alien leader with a nod.

“Welcome to the bridge, Kith, I trust the surgery went

smoothly?” He noted the long scar trailing down the alien’s neck between a line of feathers that had been cut loose, the scar disappearing beneath the metal collar of her spacesuit.

“Very smoothly, thank you,” the alien replied, her voice peculiar with its clarity. It was deep but distinctly female, a touch of an American accent in her words. “Your medical science is as impressive as your warship.”

“Thank you, Kith. Your technology is equally inspiring. I’ve

watched Lieutenant Hall’s field reports numerous times, your Sala’ci protection fields are very sturdy.”

“Humans call them shields, yes?” the Kith asked. “They’ve saved us from countless attacks, both in and out of vacuum.”

“May I ask how you created this technology?” Anders asked, raising a plaintive hand. His aids had implored him to be more polite than usual. “Us humans have never developed shielding advanced enough to withstand high-calibre fire.”

The Kith’s headdress twitched in startlement. “This surprises me, Captain, considering the human technology I’ve seen so far. We discovered the barrier modules, we did not invent them, just refined them to our uses. On the borders of our home system was an alien wreckage containing this technology. It resembled a Balokarid, but

was made entirely of an alloy unknown to us, abandoned and with no

trace of its original creators.”

“A wreckage?” Anders asked, his brow raised. “Was it a machine, as tall as one of your carriers?”

“You know of this derelict?” the Kith asked, her eyes widening. “Have you seen the Balokar system?”

“No, but we’ve seen other wrecks just like the one you’ve described. Dozens of them, with thousands more out there in the Galaxy, just drifting along like abandoned ships. We break down their materials and technology and use it for ourselves.”

“Thousands?” the Kith breathed. “Our single derelict contained enough material to construct multiple carriers. I’m assuming humans are not their creators?”

“No, and nobody knows who put them there. Some think some ancient alien race left them behind, but all we’ve got are theories.”

“We Balokarids are not sure whether to be impressed by such powerful machinations, or fearful,” the Kith mused. “But I did not come aboard your bridge to discuss alien machines, forgive me for going off-topic.”

Anders was surprised this alien, one that was large enough it could knock him out with a single punch with its dinner-plate-sized hands, was being so submissive, the man waving a hand. “It’s no bother. I’m honoured to have the chance to represent the Hub to an ali… a Balokarid, whatever questions you have, I or any of my crew would be more than glad to answer when the time arrives.”

The Kith smiled, at least, it pulled the edges of its beak up in an approximation of one. “Likewise, Captain, we are just as interested in your people. Has the human Lambert discussed our clan’s capabilities with you?”

“I’ve read his reports, seen the recordings,” Anders replied, feeling like he hadn’t really answered the alien’s question.

“So you will accept our proposal for consolidation?” the Kith

asked, Anders raising a brow in surprise.

“I wasn’t under the impression we’ve been making deals, Kith.” “But have our fleets not met under the banner of mutual

coalescence?” she asked, her questioning eyes roaming his. “It was my understanding that the human Lambert brought us to you for this very purpose?”

Anders looked across the room at the Lieutenant, who shrugged in confusion. “I’m not sure what it is the Lieutenant promised you,” he said, giving the pilot a look. “but whatever agreements we can

make, the final say remains with me and my staff.”

Her beak drooped into a frown, Shaliyya turned to address one

of the other aliens. “You told me you toured the ship with him, Mezul.”

“I did,” the alien replied, speaking in English for the sake of the humans present. She glanced at the Lieutenant. “You remember,

don’t you Lambert?”

All eyes in the room fell on the pilot, the man silently asking Anders if he could speak. He nodded, Lambert starting out slowly. “I remember you showed me parts of your ship, how you guys live and work.”

“But you were satisfied with our capabilities, yes?” Mezul asked. “that was the impression I got from you.”

The Lieutenant wasn’t quite sure how to respond, Anders quickly cutting in. “I think there has been a misunderstanding. Kith Shaliyya, would you explain to me what consolidation means?”

“That is a word you understand, yes?” she asked. “Unless my translator is malfunctioning.”

“I understand it, but your definition may be different to our own. Try and imagine I’ve never heard the word before.”

“Very well,” the Kith replied, clasping her hands together. “When a clan becomes too weak to stand on its own, it may ask for consolidation from its allies or opponents. The Kith of another clan can decide that if the weakened clan is worth absorbing than eradicating, they may gauge the clan’s culture to help in deciding. When Mezul reported to me that the human Lambert wished to see more of my ship, I assumed he wanted to consider us for consolidation, and I gave her the go ahead to let him wander, and see for himself our capabilities of production, and efficiency. Was this not the reason for you wanting to explore my ship, human Lambert?”

“No, well, I…” Lambert cleared his throat. “Honestly, I just

wanted to see what it all looked like.”

As if the translators weren’t working, the aliens stared at the

Lieutenant, Shaliyya blinking her large eyes at him, turning her gaze

back to Anders. “Then, you have no clue about our situation?

Humans attack us in force, yet your clan is ignorant of our plight?” “We haven’t seen another ship in weeks, news travels slowly

out here,” Anders said. “We weren’t even under the impression the

UEC was at war with you, let alone that you even existed.”

“Then… why are we here?” Shaliyya asked, raising her hands at the rows of soldiers. “Why bring me aboard your ship, go through all this trouble to install translators?”

Anders opened his mouth to reply, when a high-pitched beep interrupted him, the noise very loud on the sparsely populated bridge. He turned, watching one of the remaining bridge staff interact with her console as the claxon repeated.

“What is it, Private?” he asked, tapping his heeled boot as the

navigator paused before replying.

“New contact on the radar,” the woman replied, the monitor

before her displaying the familiar, green sweeping pattern of the

ship’s scanner. “Approaching at a consistent speed for several dozen kilometres. I don’t think it’s interference. Could be a ship.”

“They have found us,” Shaliyya murmured, her alien eyes

turned to the expansive canopy, staring into the endless void beyond.

Anders looked between her and the purple nebula, then leaned over his command console. He was about to bring the ship to combat alert when the navigator called his rank. “Captain? I’m receiving a hail.”

“What? Is it on a Hub frequency?” Was it reinforcements from

the station, perhaps? He could certainly use the backup.

“No sir, they’re identifying themselves as… Confederate Navy.” Shooting the Kith a look, he asked: “How many are there?”

“No additional contacts, but I can’t be sure with the nebula scrambling with our sensors. Do we answer, sir?”

The navigator glanced at him for orders, as did the soldiers present, the men clutching their rifles tighter as if expecting a fight. He met Shaliyya’s eyes for a moment, the alien’s expression hard to

discern given he hadn’t spent as much time with them as Lambert

had.

“Put him through to me,” he said, the navigator nodding as she

patched the hail to his console. Anders flicked the radio to speaker

mode, he wanted the aliens to hear this…

A voice garbled through into the bridge intercom, one

belonging to a man who sounded like the sort who’d seen a few tours, though Anders knew from experience that space combat had not been tried and tested until now. Who knew if the aliens or the UEC were winning out there.

“Attention rogue frigate, this nebula is under UEC control. You are

harbouring enemies of Earth. Stand down, and submit to Confederate

control.”

After so long cruising through an empty nebula, with nothing but the gas clouds to stare at, the transmission was stark in both its presence and the threat laying behind it.

All eyes were on Anders as he pressed the transmit button, his eyes turned up to the nebula, watching the purple backdrop coalesce with the pockets of blue.

“This is Captain Anders of the Gallipoli, what makes you think

we’re holding enemies of Earth?”

He waited for the delay to run its course. Without any satellite transmitters like those around the Hub or the core worlds, messages could take minutes or hours, perhaps even days to reach other ships depending on distance. Thankfully there was only a few short moments before the reply came back, but that still made the silence between the messages all the more tense. Anders had never spoken with a UEC soldier since he’d left them.

“Captain Anders? Read about you. Self-discharged if I’m remembering correctly.”

“You are. Now answer my question.”

“We have been tracking those alien vessels for weeks, but it looks like you found them first. Surrender the aliens, and the Confederacy will show you mercy.”

“What’s your name, pilot?”

The delay seemed a little longer, probably because Anders’ question had been so short, or the man on the other end was hesitating.

“Second Lieutenant O’Reilly.”

“Alright O’Reilly. Were you enlisted during the ’38 uprising?”

He didn’t see this, but the aliens glanced back at Lambert, who

could only shrug. After the delay the man’s voice returned.

“I was stationed on Mars when it went down. Never deployed.”

“No? Well I was. Took command of a cruiser sent to help quell the conflict. There wasn’t much they could do against our navy,

which is probably what you’re thinking right now of us. I saw what kind of ‘mercy’ the UEC showed to the guys that surrendered, so I’m not entirely convinced of your offer, Lieutenant.”

“Those aliens attacked a Confederate colony on one of our newly established worlds, Captain. I watched thousands of men, women and children making a new home, get obliterated by an alien orbital beam.”

“He’s lying!” Shaliyya exclaimed, her beak snapping in irritation. “It was our colony world that was attacked! Our children who were killed. Do not listen to him!”

“What world?” Anders asked, his hand off from the transmitter button.

“Dur’shala. It is not our homeworld, but one we colonised not long ago. We took as many refugees as we could and fled after the UEC attacked, seeking cover in this nebula while we planned our next move.”

“The UEC would fight tooth and nail for a habitable world,” Anders murmured. “Anyone would.” Finding a world that could support life was rarer than a Colossus wreck, and even more valuable because of it. The UEC had only colonised three worlds with an

atmosphere like Earth’s, and they’d been spacefaring for hundreds of years. There had been a fourth planet, but it had been destroyed many years ago by a group of saboteurs. The details of how they did it and who they were was a mystery, but the impact had been felt across all human space.

“Don’t trust a word the aliens say,” the Second Lieutenant continued, as if sensing their conversation from afar. “They will say anything to prolong their lives. Hand them over, and submit to Confederate occupation.”

“Do not do this, Captain,” Shaliyya pleaded. “We have a hundred thousand people between our ships that can aid you and your clan. Weapons, ships, vehicles, anything, we are all trained to manufacture and fight, and will do so under your command!”

The alien peered at Anders from over his shoulder, the man staring out into the void. After a long pause, the navigator asked for his reply, Anders clicking the transmit button.

“Second Lieutenant, thank you for your offer. You can go back

to your CO now, before you overstay your welcome.”

“Captain Anders, I will need an objectively yes or no response from you…”

“My response is objectively no.”

“The Hub has already made a terrible decision to leave the

Confederacy, you turncoats are making another by helping these-”

“Power to weapons,” he said, not wanting to hear the rest, and leaving the comms open so the pilot could hear him. He made his way over to the radar operator, watching the ping that represented the UEC ship burn away, his lips pulled up in a smirk. It had been a bluff of course, but the ship turning tail was just too inspiring to pass up.

“Thank you, Captain. Thank you,” Shaliyya breathed, looking like she could see the ship retreating, the way she peered out of the glass canopy. “You have saved countless resources I promise will be of great worth to your Hub clan.”

“I’m not doing this for your resources,” Anders replied. “we need to act fast now. The UEC will be gunning for us now that they know our location.”

“Us?” Shaliyya repeated. “Does that mean you will accept our offer of consolidation?”

“That’s not my decision to make, that’s up to the Senator. But

since we’re several weeks travel from the station, and we’ve both got a common enemy, I see no reason we can’t work together.”

“Mutual foes birth strong alliances,” Shaliyya said. “I will defer to you for our first course of action, Captain.”

“We need to set up communications between our ships, so we can coordinate our movements.” He leaned against the command table, bringing up a three-dimensional representation of the frigate’s immediate sphere of space, the tags of the human and alien ships

cluttering up the render. “With your permission I will send over some

engineers to your carriers to try and integrate our tech with yours. Radios and other basic short-range comms.”

“Our own scientists should be able to help, if you have more translators for us,” Shaliyya said. “If you have need of repairs, we have an abundance of technicians ready to work on your craft, our own forces are already replenished.”

Anders was impressed, it took weeks to churn out a corvette,

more if it was from scratch. “We’ll certainly need them for the coming fight,” he said. “How soon until you can transfer them over?”

“As soon as we’re done here.”

“I’ll speak with the heads of my staff, you’ll have as many translators as we can spare.”

“Captain?” Lieutenant Hall asked. The man nodded towards the canopy. “Permission to chase down that scout and blow him up?”

“Denied, Lieutenant. We’ll assemble another scouting mission soon enough, do some recon of our own, I doubt we’ll be able to find that ship now that he’s left comms range…”

“We will lend all the ships you need to find the enemy,”

Shaliyya offered, but Anders shook his head.

“I can’t put your ships in harm’s way, Kith. Let my dedicated

scouts handle the spotting.”

“My Sala’ci attackers can be discreet when they need to be,” Shaliyya insisted. “My clan will not like sitting back and letting the humans fight for us, and neither will I.”

Anders had been ordered many times to remain in the safety of the backlines, and it had often driven him crazy. Perhaps this alien

shared the same sentiment. “Very well,” he relented. “one thing at a time first, however. We’ve got a lot to do and not much time, so let’s focus on logistics first and get started.”

15

With the use of the few human volunteer ships the frigate had spare, several dozen Balokarids were moved aboard the Gallipoli for surgery, since the alien ships were not compatible with the docking hardpoints. The Balokarid carriers launched squads of Sala’ci’s to create a protective screen, both alien and human ships ferrying equipment behind their protective cordon.

The number of aliens travelling back and forth between the fleets created a few pairs of traffic lanes that looked similar to the trade routes the Hub was known for establishing. There was something inspiring about watching them cruise along through one of the few viewing ports present on the frigate. Most thought the dream of working with aliens died when the Suvelians chose to keep to themselves, but now the Galaxy felt just a little less lonely with such a communal display.

“How fortunate we are that our ships met out there,” Mezul mused, standing beside Lambert in the compact observation room. Unlike civilian ships, glass was a weakness that was barely present on warships, something the alien found odd, since her ship was rife with

viewing areas. “We would surely have perished without your timely arrival.”

“It must be a bit of a shock,” Lambert said. “the first humans your people meet were a bunch of warmongers, and now you’re teaming up with us.”

“Your race has been almost faceless up until recently,” she replied, her eye on this side of her face scrutinising him. “But now we see you for what you really are.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

“You are a small, but determined people. Featherless, without beaks, strange but not unpleasant.”

“That’s a little more literal than I thought you’d say,” he laughed. “but thanks for the compliment.”

“I am glad your Captain has accepted us into your clan, at least

temporarily.” Mezul folded her arms over her chest. “Even with those… misunderstandings he had with the Kith.”

“What was that all about anyway?” he asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Mezul replied, blinking her large eyes at him. “But your Captain saw what we could offer him in the end, and for this, my people shall remain safe for a

while longer.”

“You guys place a lot of value on what you can make and do for others,” Lambert noted.

“Is this not the same for humans?” she asked. “A clan is worthless if it has no means to produce for its people.”

“People are more than just tools to be used,” he explained. “I

didn’t hop on your carrier to assess you, and I didn’t bring your fleet

to be judged by my Captain.”

“But, were you not pleased with our capabilities? You seemed

impressed, as did the Captain.”

“Yeah I was, but that’s not the point. I didn’t bring you here to my Captain because I thought you’d be useful. Neither did Anders when he turned that Confederate’s offer down to turn you over.”

“But my clan can provide yours with exceptional

manufacturing capabilities. Does the Hub-clan have no need of this?” “We do, but… It’s not really like that,” he said, struggling to

find the right words.

“I do not understand. What reason do you have for turning

down the UEC’s offer of handing us over, if not for our support?” “The same reason I came in and helped you out when you were

under attack,” he said. “You were in trouble, so we helped.” “Then… you value life over a clan’s performance, and output?”

she asked, Lambert nodding as he seemed to be getting through to her. “That sounds so… dissonant. On Balokar, if a clan does not make its economy or production its top priority, it is quickly consolidated or destroyed by stronger clans. What is the benefit of treating us this way?”

“Helping is its own benefit,” he said. “The Hub doesn’t leave people behind, that’s not what we’re about.”

“You are telling me, you would risk revealing your presence to the UEC, expose yourselves to an attack, turn down the chance for mercy, all for the sake of helping out a race of aliens you didn’t know existed, for no reason other than you just wished… to help?”

“… You don’t sound very satisfied.”

“It makes no sense,” Mezul sighed, her headdress twitching in agitation. “I did not expect this from the same race that attacked my people, neither did the Kith. What about when you looked around my carrier, or my Sala’ci? You were assessing us, weren’t you?”

“No I was just… checking things out, was all.” He shrugged.

“Checking things out?” Mezul echoed. She seemed flustered, scratching at the place her ear should be. “Here I am, reading the

situation wrong again…” she muttered.

Seeing her in that state compelled Lambert to apologise, even though he wasn’t quite sure what he was sorry for. Yet Mezul cut him off. “Being part of a most caring people is nothing to apologise for, so don’t.”

“If that’s a crime in Balokarid society there’s going to be a lot of misunderstandings.”

She chuckled at that, a lilting laugh that sounded so strange and exotic to him. “We are so different from one another,” she said. “Our values, perceptions… I hope this will not cause problems for our people in the future.”

“It hasn’t for us, right?” he noted. “We’re getting along so far.” “That we are.” She smiled, cheering up a little. “If we are

victorious against the UEC, I hope there are more humans who think like you.”

“Then we both have a reason to see this through,” he said. “Us two have a fairly good understanding of the other’s culture. We can set an example.”

“This bond, I also feel,” Mezul said, Lambert clearing his throat

when she grinned at him.

“Tell me about your world,” he said, watching a pair of Raptors coast over one of the Balokarid carriers. “Dur’shala, you called it?

Don’t worry this isn’t an assessment,” he added.

“I know that now.” She nudged him playfully with her arm, Lambert almost toppling over due to her excessive strength. “It’s our first colony world, we established it some time ago.” She smiled as she watched the ships fly by, a reminiscent look on her face. “I could speak of Dur’shala until your fuel reserves go dry, but I will try and be brief.”

“Dur’shala is a land of steppes that stretch far into the horizons, with lakes of water cutting through the dunes of timeless sand between. At dusk, the land mirrors the heavens as it glitters beneath a brushed sky, each grain of dust a star in its own right. By dawn, the sun rises behind rock columns so tall their caps fade into the clouds. You will never feel a warmth like you do there, the word cold having no meaning even in the dead of night in the most open of plains.”

“Is that stuff on your arm from there?” he asked, gesturing at her. He remembered getting a bit of the dust on his fingers when he ran his hand through her feathers earlier.

She nodded, scraping off a portion of the sandy substance and holding it in her palm. It was so reflective, catching the light of the nebula spilling through the glass, making it look like she was cupping the tiniest pile of gemstones.

“On the brighter days, the seas of dust there shine like water, the sight is mesmerizing from the peaks.” She wiped her hand on her leg, her mood turning sour. “The humans came late in the night, days before one of our festivity days. We could not mount a response so quickly against their great ships, and we were forced to flee. I ran as fast as I could to the spaceport to provide cover for the evacuation, but… I wasn’t fast enough. Half a dozen rescue ships fell from the skies before my crew made it to our . When we reached orbit, things were even worse. There were so many destroyed ships, the planet’s atmosphere had turned into a debris field. As our clan assembled with whoever made it off the planet, the humans chased us. We fled the system with six carriers under our protection. Six. We lost so

many…”

“I’m sure you did all you could,” he tried, but Mezul shook her

head.

“I did, and in that lies the problem. My best wasn’t enough to

save them all. My people counted on me, and barely half of them

made it out.” Her gaze was hard as she looked out into the void. “We

lost carrier after carrier, and all I could do was watch as their life

support systems failed, we couldn’t even turn back for the bodies…” “I know how you feel,” he said, the alien glancing at him from

the corner of her eye. “there’s just not enough of you against them, so it’s like you’re the only thing standing between them and your friends, and it’s on you if things go south.”

“Exactly. Even with a crew, as a pilot, it’s on us alone to see the days through, to keep my friends and comrades safe. But seeing those carriers fall apart… it tears me up.”

She sighed, Lambert not wanting to say he knew how she felt, because he didn’t, not on the scale she’d experienced. “We’re all just one hull breach away from death out there,” he said. “That’s something none of us can stop, can’t blame yourself for that.”

“I know I shouldn’t,” she sighed, her headdress rolling as she looked over at him. “Do humans fear death?”

“Most of us do.” “And you?”

“Everyone has their own way of coping, but personally? I just

don’t think about it.”

“That’s it? But… how could you not think about it?”

“I don’t know, it’s just beyond my control, you know? Once I strap into the cockpit, that’s it. I’ll come back, or I won’t, but I’ll try my hardest either way. And it’s not so lonely, is it? I mean, not

anymore. I found you, the Hub found you, and now here we all are.”

She didn’t need to say she appreciated the sentiment, he could

tell she was glad to know someone knew what she was going

through, pilot to pilot. She wasn’t just some alien, but a person, with worries and doubts anyone in her position would have, and he felt in that moment a new understanding had bloomed between them.

“You have an odd way of looking at the world, Lambert,” she said. “but thank you. Perhaps we aren’t so different after all.” Her headdress shook in a way that came off as flustered. He was getting better at reading her.

“What’s this festivity you mentioned?” he asked, switching

topics back to her colony planet. She seemed fond of talking about it.

“Every few seasons the skies over Dur’shala begin to shift and warp,” she replied, her mood lifting. “not unlike the clouds of this nebula. It’s as if a great being is taking a brush to our heavens,

creating new colours your translator has no words to describe.”

“Like an aurora?” he guessed, Mezul telling him she did not know the word. “Sounds like quite the sight. Earth gets those at

specific parts of the world.”

“What about your Hub? What’s it like? Do you have auroras there, too?”

“Not exactly. Tell you what, once we’ve sorted this mess out, I’ll show you personally rather than just pictures this time.”

“I will hold you to that.” She smiled.

16

Lambert’s suit sealed with a pneumatic hiss as he jogged across the deck, clutching his opaque helmet under an arm. Engineers and other pilots raced back and forth all around him, the yellow hazard lights built into the walls reflecting off the angular hulls of the ten or so ships crammed into the repair bay.

The Gallipoli only had one of these bays on the whole ship, allowing heavier repairs within the safety of a vacuum. It was nowhere near as spacious as a Balokarid carrier, the other corvettes and fighters lined up with their noses barely touching the engines of the craft in front.

Lambert’s corvette was at the forefront, being the final ship to come back from patrol, taxied just in front of the inner airlock door. He watched a pair of engineers wheeling a trolley with a nine-foot long missile strapped onto it move towards the belly of the ship. The trolley rose on a set of winches, the engineers fixing the missile onto the empty hardpoint there.

“We all set?” Lambert asked one of them, donning his helmet

which glued to his collar with another hiss.

“Reupped and reloaded,” one engineer replied, patting the hull of the corvette with a gloved hand. “Command wants all scouts equipped with a belt of stubs, I’ve installed them on belt two on your top PDC. We haven’t got many of them, so don’t miss.”

Sensory Tracking Bugs, or stubs as they were more commonly known, were shaped balls that were a little smaller than a fifty-calibre sniper round. They were capped with shock-absorbent frames that were designed to stick to a surface rather than penetrate through.

Inside each stub was a weak emitter that sent out a signal on a specific frequency. As long as the charge wasn’t discovered or ran out of power, you could track a target indefinitely if you managed to tag a ship.

“We won’t,” Lambert said, the man crisply saluting before taking the trolley by the handle and setting off. Lambert rounded one of the landing gears, jogging up the loading ramp and moving up the stairs inside.

“Welcome aboard, Lieutenant,” Alice said through the shared channel

“The Cap is back,” Carl said, eloquently as ever. “About damn

time, too. Been ready to taxi for ten minutes.”

“Had to see Mezul off,” Lambert replied, waving at Carl as he passed the gunner station door, dashing up to the cockpit and strapping himself in. It had turned out that human and Balokarid technology had been compatible, and the two fleets could now share simple radio transmissions, the fleets ready to move as one. Mezul had been recalled to her carrier when they heard the news.

“You and her are gettin’ real friendly, ain’t you?” Carl asked,

Lambert rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Nothin’, nothin’… What do you think the Cap and Mezul are hangin’ around for, Alice?”

“I’m not sure the Lieutenant would appreciate my conclusions,” the machine murmured, even though it was clear as day to his ears and didn’t need to lower its voice. At least the thing was aware

enough not to push Lambert’s buttons.

“Here’s a conclusion,” Lambert started. “Prepare the ship for launch. Carl, retract the turrets and ready the scanners. Alice, clear us for take-off. Let’s get this done.”

“Here we go again,” Carl asked. “At least this time we know our target’s out there.”

“They’ll be thinking the same thing,” Lambert added, his consoles flaring to life as he switched the systems online. As if the ship was waking, the screens warbled with static before displaying the camera feeds, the vector nozzles shooting puffs of air, the main engines whirring as they began to churn out bright blue flames from its twin nozzles.

“We will be sending out another scouting operation,” Captain Anders said during the mission briefing a half hour ago. “Since our position is compromised, we will be escorting the Balokarid fleet to new coordinates we’ll send to your ships once you set out to your designated search sectors. Your objective is to find any UEC targets and assess their capabilities. Hit them with your stubs if you can, but do not engage, discretion is our only ally right now and we can’t afford to lose any of you.”

“Corvette one-five this is control, you’re clear for take-off,” the same voice of the woman from Gallipoli control said. “Good luck out there.”

Lambert engaged the main thrusters, a safety panel extending from the deck behind the ship protecting the other craft from their superheated backblast. Like a train barrelling out of a tunnel, the corvette speared through the airlock doors, the purple void slowly growing larger as they departed the hangar.

Once clear of the frigate, Lambert banked the corvette left, slowly gaining distance on the Gallipoli as he set a new course. The frigate took up one side of his canopy, while the Balokarids carriers filled the other, their noses pointed up from this angle like a school of sleeping whales. The alien ships dwarfed the Gallipoli being this close

to each other, but with their lack of any defensive weaponry, they would make easy targets without the frigate protecting them.

His map displayed other human ships beelining away from the frigate, carrying on to their designated sections in either pairs, or on their lonesome. Captain Anders had ordered nearly a third of the ships to launch so they could cover more ground, the rest in reserve to defend the aliens. Lambert was about to burn away to his own sector when the Gallipoli opened a channel to him.

“One-five,” control said. “I’m sending you new coordinates, stand by.”

“Come again control?” He checked his data streams and saw fresh coordinates directing him to a point a few kilometres out from the fleet.

“New orders from the Captain. Wait one.”

Lambert cruised the corvette over, flipping and using the thrusters to shed their momentum. Carl asked him what was going on.

“We’ve been told to wait here,” he replied. After maybe five minutes of drifting without a response he decided to radio in himself. “Control what’s the holdup?”

“Captain Anders wants some of our scouts to move out in pairs, and you’re one of them,” the woman said. “Stand by for an escort.”

“A little forwarnin’ would have been nice,” Carl asked, tuning

himself into the channel.

“They just got approved, one-five.”

A little backup would help cover more ground, but who? Lambert knew some of the other pilots, but none of the human callsigns on his map were coming their way. Just then a new tag popped up next to one of the Balokarid carriers, switching from unidentified white to friendly blue, banking in their direction.

“This is Sala’ci zero-one, using the rodeo to contact corvette one-five.”

Lambert looked towards where the tag was through the glass, spying a little silver glint slowly defining itself against the backdrop

of the alien carrier, a familiar craft closing in. “Can you hear me, one- five?”

The corner of Lambert’s mouth turned up in a grin. “Loud and clear, Mezul.” It seemed that the Captain knew he and Mezul had

been working together the most, and didn’t see any reason to separate them. “I thought this was a human-only mission.”

“The Kith didn’t want us sitting this fight out, and convinced your Captain to let us assist. We have translators and rodeos installed, we should have clear communication lines between our ships.”

“Good to hear. And it’s pronounced radio. Don’t call it a rodeo

unless you want to give Carl here flashbacks.”

“My apologies. The human who installed it had a most peculiar accent.”

“Says the bird who’s copyin’ our voices half the time,” Carl shot

back, Mezul trying not to snicker too loudly over the shared channel.

“Fall in beside us, zero-one,” Lambert said, the corvette listing as he drew the flight stick back. “we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

Lambert watched the Sala’ci fighter form up on their left, the bulky profile of the alien fighter matching his speed as they cruised in formation into the nebula. Soon the friendly tags of the fleet crackled with the distortion, and one by one the map gently cleared until it was just the pair of ships left, surrounded by an ocean of energy where the UEC might be hiding around any cloud of gas.

17

The light of the nearby star reflected off the Sala’ci’s sloped hull, the black bubble of glass that was its canopy standing out high up on the nose of the ship. It was like the tinted window of a limousine, only the vague outline of its alien pilot’s shape sticking out as Mezul turned her beak to and fro, flying close enough that Lambert could make out the outline of her head if he looked hard enough.

“What is it we are scouting for, exactly?” she asked over the comms, the pair of ships banking to avoid a nasty gas cloud in their path.

“We need to document whatever the UEC’s got,” Lambert replied. “Number of ships, types of craft, position and heading, things like that.”

They’d been flying through the nebula for over an hour now, their thermal scans and emission detectors on the lookout for any anomalies that might signify the presence of a ship. Their search vector was in line with the UEC ambassador’s last coordinates, but they’d found no sign of the Raptor so far, just rocks and gas.

“How can we do so with our scanners going haywire?” Ruvaara

asked. She was the only other alien on their ship with a translator,

Lambert didn’t know how the aliens picked who got the surgery, but it was probably reserved for those who would be interacting with humans more often than others.

“That’s Carl’s line,” Lambert replied. “Just keep an eye out for

signals that don’t cut out every few moments, or tags with constant

speeds and headings, that’s a sure tell that something’s out there and not just distortion.”

“Yeah, check for consistencies among the inconsistencies,” Carl said through the shared channel. “We might get lucky again and they’re fighting a third, or er, fourth alien species, and we can come in and save the day again.”

“Did you say fourth?” Mezul asked. “You have found other

life?”

“Yep, maybe a hundred and fifty-something years ago,”

Lambert explained. “The Confederacy was expanding out to the Galactic East when they found someone else was expanding the other way. I don’t know the exact details, it’s all very hush-hush, but after a few diplomatic visits the Suvelians decided we weren’t worth the effort. Their leaders agreed to keep a few systems between our

borders neutral, and they kept to their side of the Milky Way ever

since.”

“How sad,” Mezul replied. “Has there been any contact between your clans since?”

“Not so much as a peep. They want nothing to do with the

UEC, and who could blame them? I doubt they’ll care that the Hub went independent from the Confederacy, get the feeling we’re all the same to them.”

“If only they had heard your music,” Mezul suggested.

Since there wasn’t much else to do or see, Mezul had humbly requested that Lambert blast some tunes through the shared frequency. They’d be putting out a lot of radio chatter, but the nebula’s energies should give them enough cover to help the aliens acquaint with the latest pop songs, Lambert feeling like some kind of radio host as he worked through his playlist.

The infinite stretch of the nebulae went out in all directions, a few clumps of asteroids and the occasional gas cloud forcing the ships to deviate from their flight path, the latter of which sometimes only visible on the scanners rather than the naked eye.

After some time of silence and static, Lambert patched through to the Sala’ci. “What kind of music do Balokarids have?” he asked. It was Mezul who answered.

“There are more lyrics compared to yours,” she said. “We put more emphasis on vocal and physical performance. Your instruments are more diverse, yet your singers do sound more or less the same.”

Lambert supposed that was true, given how many different trills and chirps he’d heard aboard their carrier, the Balokarid voice range must be miles longer than humans. “Physical performance?” Lambert asked. “Like dancing?”

“Surely humans dance too?”

“We do, it’s just… I’d never imagined how an alien might dance.”

“Perhaps when we have time for a demonstration, you’d need not imagine…”

Ruvaara, perhaps not wanting to be left out or tired of listening in, patched herself through. “Mezul, stop flirting with the human you’re like twenty times older than him.”

“I’m not that old Ruv’, you-” Mezul cut off her mic with a hiss,

Lambert laughing as he glanced over at her ship.

After another hour, something came up on the scanner. A red thermal profile popped up on the far edges of his tactical map, an unidentified tag appearing beside it on his display. The tag fizzed in and out of focus, but the profile stayed still.

“Got something,” Lambert said. “Heat-sig at heading three- three-zero. That’s a little to the left of your nose, Mezul,” he added.

“We see it,” she replied. “Is that the flame from an engine?” “Could be, let’s check it out.”

He banked the ship, cutting his engines to limit his own thermal profile and using momentum to carry them towards the signature.

The Sala’ci matched his movements with barely a delay, Mezul likewise turning down her thrusters. The aliens were certainly attentive.

“I recommend we avoid putting power to weapon systems,” Alice advised. It had been quiet for most of the trip, and now its perfect, synthesised voice was coming back with potential threats in the area. “Targeting systems may draw us unwanted attention.”

“Who is that?” Mezul asked, the radio giving her voice a tinny

quality.

“That’s Alice,” Lambert said. “Our third ‘crewmember’.” “But you said there was only two of you on your ship.” “Two people. Alice is a… computer – that talks.”

“No need to sound so excited, Lieutenant,” Alice noted. “I am a logistical support platform programmed to handle the many ship systems my fellow humans are unable to efficiently interact with due to the lack of staff present. It is nice to meet you, Mezul.”

“Oh, hello Alice,” Mezul replied, naturally surprised. “Are there other… computer-things like you?”

“Not in Captain Anders’ fleet. I was installed in corvette one- five as part of a testing program to decide whether personality efficiency is within acceptable levels for further distribution.”

“We drew the short straw to be the guinea pigs,” Lambert clarified. “But we can talk about this later, the signature’s getting hotter, definitely a ship using its afterburners.” He hit the pause

button on his music player, stowing the device in a pocket beneath his seat. “Mezul, pull out a click to our left. We’ll go right, get a closer look.”

He pushed the joysticks forward, increasing momentum as the ship peeled off towards the right side of the signature. The Sala’ci did the same, putting distance between his corvette while still keeping in comms range. They were close enough that the heat signature’s IFF tag appeared on his tactical map, though there was too much interference to get a positive ID, the tag displaying a pair of question marks just beside it.

“This is just like when we first encountered each other,” Mezul said over the radio, her craft making small adjustments as it avoided the few microscopical asteroids lingering in her path.

“Don’t show them the same courtesy you did for us,” Lambert warned. “We’re supposed to do recon, but if they spot us, kill them.”

The tag was burning away at a high, constant speed, not quite moving directly away from them. That meant that the interference was shadowing them, at least for now. He couldn’t rely on it for

concealment, however, but he could power down non-critical systems to limit any signals they gave off, and could even get them within radar range without being detected if they were lucky.

It was hard enough keeping an eye out for the ship while manoeuvring through the gas clouds and the micrometeors, Lambert constantly altering their vector as they gave chase with his toes curled in anticipation.

“Closin’ to close quarters,” Carl reported. “ready the missiles, Cap?”

“Do it,” Lambert replied. “This is closer than I’d like to be.” “My weapons are not quite within effective range yet,” Mezul

said. “No wonder your human ships are so much more powerful than what we have.”

Lambert felt the ship rumble as the PDC’s raised out of their housings, their turrets swivelling to track the thermal target, their aiming reticles appearing on his display.

The signature was growing hotter, closer. Lambert flipped the ship and countered his thrust, gunning the engines until they were almost drifting. The tag was constantly recalibrating its position on his tac view, but he could see its profile matched that of a Raptor.

Could it be the same ship that Captain Anders spoke to?

The Sala’ci moved through the gas clouds off to Lambert’s left, the faint glittering of its shields sparkling like the stars far behind it. He’d seen how its shields could force their ships through more dangerous clouds, Mezul taking her own more direct approach.

A ping drew his attention back to his tac view. Another red, hostile tag appeared at the edge of his sphere of detection. Then two, then three more. He wasn’t alarmed, the energies of the nebula messed with his systems all the time, but as he directed all his

scanners in that direction, the IFF tags didn’t disappear.

“Got something here, Mezul,” Lambert said. “Multiple contacts ahead and above us.”

“We see them” she replied. “Let us get closer, so we can see what we are dealing with.”

Lambert followed her lead, closing the distance between them and the ships. He already knew what they would find, but he was still taken aback when he got close enough to zoom the external cameras in towards the tag locations.

He switched the thermal view off, and at first there was nothing but clouds, but then something metal glinted off the distant sun. It

was the hull of a ship, painted the standard black of the Confederate Navy, its sleek profile turned away from this angle, exposing four gargantuan engine thrusters as big as houses. They expelled white- hot jets of flame that gave off tremendous amounts of heat, situated between two great plates of armour that boxed in the engine module.

Above the engines, a disk-shaped piece of glass jutted out of the armoured hull, the command bridge situated high to allow as much visibility to the navigators as possible. The profile tapered into a thin profile that ended at a point, giving off the vague shape of a torpedo, with the prow half smooth and the stern more angular.

The ship banked more to the right as he watched, Lambert getting a better look at the many guns that extended from the hull like quills. Two rows of point-defence cannons flanked the sides, ten apiece. Square sections that housed missile launchers covered the belly and the roof, the sections between covered in antennae and long, slanted rectangles that roofed the torpedo bays, leaving not an inch of the hull free from weaponry.

It was armed to the teeth, but the thing that stood out the most was the giant railgun strapped onto the nose, almost disproportionally massive compared to the various other weapons. Its long barrel faced defiantly forward like a gargoyle perched on a battlement, the armament akin to the cannons once used on the battleships of Earth’s water navy. The barrel was lined with magnetic coils, claws of metal cupping a readied tungsten slug that was about as long as a ballistic missile.

“Fuck me rigid,” Lambert hissed. “That’s a destroyer.”

“An apt word,” Mezul murmured. “This is the one, that ship

followed us all the way from Dur’shala…”

The destroyer was not alone – several dozen smaller craft surrounded the ship in a bubble. Raptors, corvettes, even a small squadron of torpedo bombers, ships that doubled as close air support and anti-frigate bombers. They looked like insects compared to the huge ship, the destroyer easily a third larger than the Gallipoli.

“What is that craft off to the side there?” Ruvaara asked.

Lambert didn’t need to ask her to point out which one. As the destroyer banked more and more, it revealed more fighter ships hiding behind it, plus another larger vessel. It was shaped like a giant oil silo, maybe a hundred meters from top to bottom, the base covered in industrial landing gears with claw-shaped feet that hinted at its atmospheric capabilities. Its nose was covered in heat panels to protect the ship from the extreme heat when entering and leaving atmosphere, scorched black with use. A standard cockpit canopy stuck out of one side, and on its flanks were stabiliser fins not unlike those used by atmospheric planes. The whole thing resembled the pioneering rockets humanity used back in its early space fairing days, only scaled up tenfold.

“That’s a tanker-class ship,” Lambert explained. “And a pretty old one, too. Its hull is actually one giant bottle of fuel. They’re unarmed, designed to increase a fleet’s effective flight range without

having to bring along a capital ship. Since destroyers lack hangar bays

altogether, that thing’s their only way to refuel.”

“A canister that big would make a huge explosion,” Ruvaara

mused.

“I like how she thinks,” Carl noted.

Lambert took note of all the craft present, and what types he could see. It would all be recorded down, but he still had to write up personal reports the Captain would no doubt read when they got back. “Alice,” he said. “Have we got enough pictures?”

“There may be other ships hiding on the other side of the destroyer, I would advise repositioning just to make sure.”

“Do you take orders from it?” Mezul asked. Lambert tried and

failed not to sound annoyed.

“It’s more like an advisor, one I’m under orders to keep around.

For now.”

He swung the corvette, angling so that they were above the destroyer relative to its heading, knowing that each passing second

increased the chances they were discovered, and he certainly didn’t

want to be caught in the sights of that massive railgun.

After a long minute, Alice reported in. “No new vessels detected. We have sufficient data to bring back to the Captain.”

“Shouldn’t we try doin’ some sabotagin’?” Carl suggested. “You heard Ruvaara, a lucky missile could turn that tanker to slag.”

“I might be able to move in closer for a strafe,” Mezul replied. “I don’t think your shields could withstand a barrage of

hundred-millimetre shells… Could it?” “How big is a millimetre?”

Lambert ignored her, Alice asking him through his helmet’s receiver what his orders were. The Gallipoli was vastly outgunned and outnumbered, any advantage he could gain now would help them and the Balokarids immensely, but he couldn’t exactly ask for orders this deep into the nebula.

“We have to try something,” he said. “Load the stubs, Carl, we’re going in.”

“We’ll move on the tanker,” Mezul reported, her tag on his map

pivoting up and away.

“No,” he said. “Hang back, if the range on your lasers is like what I saw last time, you’ll be blown to bits before you can get close. Stay with us, we’ll need your cover if we’re seen.

For a moment he thought she wouldn’t listen, but then her tag did a one-eighty, staying further back as Lambert cruised them closer. They crossed into the estimated range of the destroyer’s radar, represented by a giant red ring on his tac view. It felt like he was dipping a toe into a pond infested with piranhas. Lambert unconsciously held his breath as they came close enough he could

make out the giant ship’s profile as a spec through the canopy, any moment now and they would be spotted. Hopefully the energies around them were helping them blend in.

“We’re in range,” Carl said. “Firin’.”

Unlike firing HE rounds, the muzzle flash on the PDC’s was non-existent, the rotary guns spooling as they sent non-lethal rounds towards the UEC fleet. The destroyer was not nearly as manoeuvrable as a frigate, and with such a large profile it made an easy target to the micro-rounds, several dozens of the stubs finding their mark.

“We’re trackin’ her,” Carl said. “Even got a couple lucky hits on the tanker behind it.”

“Alright, let’s get out of here.”

The corvette was several hundred meters inside the radar zone, the hair on Lambert’s neck standing on end as he turned his back on the powerful ship. He had to resist the urge to burn to full speed – they hadn’t been detected by some miracle, but burning away would certainly change that. He fully expected his luck to end right before they exited radar range, and as he crossed over the threshold… nothing. The destroyer was maintaining a steady course.

“Did we just pull that off?” Carl asked. “Covert corvette, that’s

us.”

“Don’t count our chickens,” Lambert said. “Let’s just get out of

here.”

“That’s racist now, Cap, can’t say that with our new allies listenin’.”

“There’s a problem, humans,” Mezul said, her voice fizzling out when she said humans. “I’m detecting signatures closing in from where we came from, I think they’re ships.”

Lambert directed all his sensors to that vector, but his systems couldn’t detect much through the interference. Mezul’s Sala’ci was closer than he was whatever she was looking at.

“Let’s link up and go around,” Lambert said, Mezul’s signature falling in slightly ahead and to his right, but too late, the enemy tags faded onto his tac view, and they were turning in their direction too accurately to be called coincidence.

“Fuck!” Carl exclaimed. “I got a lock warnin’! We’ve been

spotted!”

Lambert’s heart racing, he gunned the thrusters to max, peeling off one way while Mezul’s ship went another. His tac view was a

mess, but he didn’t need it to see the incoming missile. Through his canopy, he could see the bright white contrail the ordinance left in its wake, slightly corkscrewing through the void and rapidly growing in size.

He hit the button near where his thumb rested, the flare racks on the back of the corvette opening up. Half a dozen bright beacons shot off behind the craft, spreading in a firework-like pattern. It was like the missile was drawn to them, veering off and exploding in a sphere of flame that quickly suffocated in the vacuum behind

Lambert’s ship.

The pair of IFF tags appeared on his readouts as corvette-class, one of them going after Mezul while the other speared forward, no doubt trying to get another lock on him.

“Fuck me rigid,” Lambert mumbled under his breath, pulling the sticks back as he pulled a high-g turn that darkened the edges of his vision. He heard the steady rumble as the PDC’s opened up on the target he couldn’t see, the glowing contrails snaking their way into the darkness and tearing through a clump of asteroids that happened to be in the way.

Everything was moving and spinning – the corvette, the nebula, the wreathing arms of energy. His flightsuit warned him he was

pushing nine g’s, Lambert’s guts sucking up against his spine as the

forces pulled him against his seat.

He continued the long six-point turn, drawing a long crescent- shaped trail in the vacuum as he tried to shake off further warning locks, he couldn’t rely on flares forever.

At last the pain of the excessive g’s released as he danced onto the tail of the Confederate ship. The red targeting outline appeared in the upper half of his HUD, pinpointing the enemy’s location despite being beyond visual range. Lambert pushing the sticks forward as he centred on its engines.

“Shoot him!” he yelled, watching as the missile reticle hovered precariously over the red square.

“No tone!” Carl shouted back, his voice strained as he breathed hard through the channel. Missiles could not track without first confirming a tone readiness. Lambert’s eyes went wide as he watched a white contrail of explosive rounds screeching through the void towards his ship, the enemy was opening up on them with its close- quarter cannons.

He banked away at almost ninety degrees, the corvette flipping on its axis as he burned out of the deadly path of the tracer rounds with seconds to spare.

“Shoot, shoot him!” Lambert exclaimed again, bringing his nose

round to give the missiles the best chance of locking.

“Can’t, no tone!” Carl repeated. The PDC’s continued to spew hundreds of rounds per minute, but none found their mark, the UEC craft banking itself as it danced out of the line of fire.

Cursing, Lambert pushed the engines and himself to the limit, closing the distance between the ships until they were just dozens of kilometres apart. He was close enough he could just make out the flaws in the angular surface of the Confederate ship’s hull. His instincts screamed for him to pull back, but he kept the ship squarely in his sights for just a few extra moments.

“Got it!” Carl snarled, their own missile screaming through the void, angling just off to the left as it homed in on its target. The Confederates fired their flares, the bright lights reflecting off its rigid hull, but the missile was too close, and it exploded once it was in range, spraying a deadly wave of shrapnel that cut a chunk out of the ship. It twirled away, the pilot able to remarkably stabilise their spin, most of its thrusters still working, Lambert able to make out the inside rooms of the ship, spewing forth smoke and flame along with the internal air.

It was flying, but no longer able to fight. Easy pickings when

Lambert put full power to the PDC’s and watched the cannons tear

the rest of the ship to pieces, the thirty-mils reducing the craft to scrap before Lambert angled the ship away and turned on the afterburners, watching his tac view fizzle and recalibrate, searching for Mezul’s signature.

There! Several dozen kilometres out, she was busy dealing with her own corvette, the two ships in a dance of death as Mezul tried to close the gap between the two, her weapons range much shorter than standard human ordinance.

Lambert gunned it, but on his way to Mezul’s location, two more tags appeared on the radar, closing rapidly on their location. They must have broken off from the UEC fleet.

“A hand would be appreciated,” Mezul asked calmly over the radio. She sounded a little different, muffled, like she’d cupped a hand over her microphone or something.

“We’re coming, hold on,” he said back, changing his vector to cut off the two new targets. Alice identified them as a pair of Raptors, planning out a flight path that appeared as a kind of wireframe pipe that curved through the nebula through the glass. He’d never let the computer take flight from him, but its cold calculations assured a proper firing arc without getting into the firing arc of the Raptors.

The PDC’s barrels warmed up, sending rounds screaming through the vacuum, displacing the Raptors and drawing their attention. They returned fire, chin-cannons opening up as their computers compensated for bullet time and lead, forcing Lambert to alter course. His stomach did more than lurch as his HUD flashed proximity warnings and missile locks, pushing his and Carl’s bodies to the limit as the g’s counted up from nine, ten, eleven – only their implants keeping them from passing out.

“They’re on us,” Carl grumbled, his breathing ragged like he was in the middle of running a marathon. Direction could get muddled in space, but the Raptors were quick to get on their six, the PDC’s facing backwards and filling the space behind them with a hail of bullets.

Carl got another missile lock, the ordinance igniting after a

delay as the missile detached from the corvette’s belly. It made a three-point turn in the void, predicting one of the Raptor’s locations as it speared into the void. The fighter popped his flares, the bright lights messing with the missile’s tracking ball, the ordinance veering harmlessly off into the distance.

The corvette was visibly shaking, lock warnings and high-g sirens filling his helmet with noise. He was yelling for Carl to kill the Raptors, but he wasn’t really listening to his friend’s responses, busy as he was making all the vector changes to keep them from a quick death by shrapnel, or a slow one by suffocation. A part of him began to doubt he’d ever see the Hub again.

A blur of movement caught his attention, a large mass of metal putting itself between the corvette and the UEC fighters. A stream of incoming fire was reflected off the shielding surrounding the Sala’ci craft. There was a bright light, a beam of concentrated energy cutting a great swath through the shadows of the nebula. It seemed to slowly solidify, the column of light burning through the front of one of the Raptors and slagging its hull, the radius of the beam almost as big as the fighter itself. Like using a magnifying glass to catch the light of the sun, the beam burned through the ship until it simply disintegrated, only its swept wings remaining as they flew off as loose debris in opposite directions.

The beam left as fast as it had arrived, Lambert watching the rear-view feed and seeing the glittering, silvery hull of the Sala’ci shoot away.

“You will not fall this day, humans,” Ruvaara said, her voice muffled much like Mezul’s was before. She targeted the other Raptor which had turned away after his wingman died, another white-hot beam lancing forth like a giant, deadly spotlight the Raptor was

careful to avoid being caught in, corkscrewing and banking with mere meters to spare.

“Thanks,” Lambert sighed, noting they must have dealt with the other corvette, judging by the lack of its signature. “Let’s finish this bastard off.”

“This is not advised,” Alice warned, the computer expressing panic through its artificial tone. “They’re heading back to the fleet.”

“We can deal with him before more of his friends show up,”

Lambert said.

“Forget the ships, the destroyer is targeting us!”

He switched his feeds until the screen was filled with the epic profile of the warship, the man cursing. The great railgun on the nose of the ship was turning, agonizingly slowly like an artillery piece, squaring its sights in their general direction. That must be why the remaining Raptor was breaking off, and nobody was coming to escort him – they were bringing in the literal big guns.

“Fuck me rigid! Mezul break away! Break!”

Lambert banked one way, Mezul going the other with only a second to spare before the railgun fired, the coils sparking as its muzzle flashed so brightly he could see it through the canopy, shining like a sniper scope catching the sunlight.

The tungsten shell travelled about eight times the speed of sound, only its sheer size allowing it to be seen for the slightest of moments, like a shadow moving in the corner of your eye that disappeared when you looked at it. It left no contrail, no evidence that it was there a second ago, but if the corvette could have buckled by its presence it would have, the slug had travelled by so close Lambert could have reached out and touched it, his proximity warnings blaring.

“Get us outta here!” Carl exclaimed, as if Lambert needed to be encouraged. He put full power to the engines, putting as much distance between them and the destroyer as he could, hoping his alien companions were doing the same.

He zig-zagged through the nebula, another muzzle flash making his heart race as he attempted to dodge. Once more the giant

slug raced past some ways off to his left, a wide shot but still enough to ignite a dread Lambert had never felt before. They were small targets at a rapidly expanding range, it was practically overkill at this point, but there was always a chance the destroyer could get lucky.

“More Raptors incoming,” Mezul reported. “They’re above us.” “Don’t stick around,” Lambert said, a much different opinion to

the one he had before they discovered the destroyer. He was pulled hard into his seat as he pushed the engines to their limit, the Raptor tags trying to match their speed as they gave chase.

“Incoming!” Alice warned. Lambert made to bank, but too late, a streak of automatic fire found its mark in their hull. He could hear the armour somewhere behind him shred apart as the rounds peppered the hull, entering through the weakest part of the ship – the engines.

A round screamed right past his head, the bullet imbedding itself on the inside of his concave canopy and creating a large spider- web-shaped crack in the glass. Another one ripped through the terminals on his right, shattering two and blacking out most of the monitors there as the bullet tore through the insides. He felt a shredding sensation beneath his rump, realising his chair had become another target.

“Lambert!” Mezul shouted over the channel, quick to see they’d

been hit.

“O-Oh shit. Carl? Carl, talk to me!”

“I’m good,” Carl replied, Lambert sighing in relief. “Door will

need some repairs though. Ship’s takin’ too many holes, we’re depressurizin’.

He could visibly see the ship’s oxygen spilling out through the

micro holes the bullets had torn through the glass, the air forming

miniaturised tornado’s around the breaches like water swirling down a drain, crystalising as they vented into the vacuum. His flightsuit’s oxygen systems would keep him breathing, fortunately, the suit designed to keep him alive in situations like this.

Mezul’s ship fired off another beam, warding off the Raptors from getting another chance to strafe. They didn’t appear to want to engage the lasers at such short range, the crafts turning tail and heading back in the UEC fleet’s direction.

“They’re on the run,” Mezul reported, falling in and matching Lambert’s speed, the Confederate fleet slowly shrinking in size as they put more distance between them. They were too far and too

small for the railgun to be much more than a deterrent, but that didn’t mean Lambert wasn’t being careless. Maybe he should have listened to Alice and got out of there, that was too close.

“Why do we always get in the shit?” Carl asked, the sudden

outburst after the ordeal making Lambert laugh for a moment. “First the aliens, now this!”

“Can you make it back to the fleet?” Mezul asked, her tone suggesting she was worried. “Are you injured?”

He patted himself down, sometimes adrenaline alone would trick the body into ignoring injuries, Lambert checking his suit for damages.

“Fuck me!” he yelled. “Lambert! Oh no…”

“They fucking shot my MP3!”

“Oh, you jerk, Lambert,” Mezul growled. “I thought you were hurt!”

“Not physically at least… Alice, what’s the status of the ship?” “Moderate damage to the hull and personal devices. We are

ninety percent likely to return to the Gallipoli as long as we encounter

no additional threats.”

“Good, good.” He watched the UEC destroyer leave sensor range, Lambert letting himself relax as the adrenaline from the fight

slowly drained away. “Appreciate the cover back there, zero-one,” he said. “You fly pretty good.”

“As do you, one-six,” Mezul replied. “How you survived for so

long without shielding is simply impressive.”

“Let’s head back, we’ve got to tell your Kith and my Captain

about this right away.”

18

“The scouting run made by ships one-six and zero-one confirms the presence of a UEC battlegroup,” Captain Anders said, his hands behind his back as he scrutinised the images and recordings playing back through the briefing room monitors. The Balokarid Kith was present, as were a few senior human personnel, plus Lambert and

Mezul’s crews. It turned out there were five aliens on her ship, though Lambert didn’t know the three others apart from her and Ruvaara. “It’s as I thought,” Anders continued. “the Confederacy

must have been operating in this sector well before the Hub declared

its independence.”

“Not necessarily, Captain,” Kith Shaliyya said. “I’ve seen this

ship before, during Dur’shala’s invasion. It must have tracked us into the nebula.” Her tone went dour. “And we lured them straight to you, for this I am sorry.”

“Why?” the Captain asked. “it was extremely lucky you ran into

one of our ships, there’s no need to apologise for surviving.”

The Kith looked like she wanted to speak, but hesitated. It seemed they were still adjusting to human culture, and vice versa. “What kind of firepower does a human destroyer carry?” she asked, turning to logistical matters. “I’ve seen it wrought devastation, but do you know of any specifics?”

The Captain leaned his hands on the table. “Ten torpedo tubes,

five a side, fifty-odd point defence batteries, and the railgun,

obviously.” He zoomed the feed onto the giant railgun, the view

making them all stare right down its barrel. “We can deal with the rest of the weaponry, but the railgun’s the biggest threat. That thing’s designed to take down capital ships.”

“I doubt even our shields could stand against a single shot of

that weapon,” the Kith mumbled.

“There’s little that could,” Anders replied. “So it is indestructible?”

“Now when did I say that?” Anders asked. “Its packing a lot of firepower, but requires support to work effectively. You see the tanker ship?” He zoomed in on the fuelling ship Lambert had seen before. “That’s the only way they’ll be able to rearm and refuel their

ships safely, without it they’re dead in the water, so the destroyer will

stick to it like glue, and we can use that to our advantage.”

“And what about the destroyer’s other armaments?” she asked. “Our objective is to eliminate this ship, yes? How can we stand against such devastating firepower?”

“We can’t,” Anders replied, Shaliyya shooting him a confused look. “But there is a weakness to its design. The torpedo tubes face down the length of the ship, and the railgun is fixed on top of the nose for maximum visibility. Maximum, not infinite. Say we approach from below the ship, or behind…”

“The railgun would be ineffective,” Shaliyya said, finishing the thought. “At least until it turns around. We could send out several wings to try and distract them, while your frigate finds an angle of engagement.”

“Our own missile tubes should be able to tear that thing apart,”

the Captain replied. “How many Sala’ci do you have ready to fly?”

Squaring her shoulders proudly, the Kith held out an explanative hand. “Between our three carriers we have eighty two fighters. I know that is not much, but we have had little time to rebuild.”

“Not much? That’s more than double my own forces,” Anders replied. “I’ve got twenty two corvettes and thirty five Raptors on standby, our stores have a decent amount of ammunition ready to go, but it doesn’t take a genius to see we’re both outgunned and outnumbered, two-to-one at least. But if we can manoeuvre correctly, and get my frigate in range without that railgun getting a bead on us, we might stand a chance.

“We have a saying for situations like this,” Shaliyya said. “Against the strong, be the swift.”

“We have a similar adage,” Anders said, turning his eyes to

Lambert and Mezul’s crews. “I specifically said not to engage, but you did fine work out there, all of you. We’ve got four less ships to worry about now, and plenty of intel on top of that.”

The feathery headdresses of the Balokarids bristled, while

Lambert and Carl nodded respectfully, the Captain didn’t give out praise too often. The bridge was dismissed for the time being while Anders and Shaliyya stayed to discuss a plan for the coming battle.

On his way out, Lambert was stopped when a hand touched his

shoulder, Captain Anders pulling him aside. “You seem to have a knack for working with these aliens, Lieutenant,” he said. “I know you didn’t sign up to be an ambassador, but I want you to stay with them for the time being. Keep me updated on any problems or

otherwise.”

“Yes sir.”

“Excellent. I was a little sceptical at first, but you’ve done good work so far. Keep that up and we just might make it out of this in one piece.”

19

“So you Captain is planning an assault?” Mezul asked, glancing at Ruvaara as they walked beside Lambert and Carl, the four of them exploring the frigate’s winding paths. “Do we need to stay nearby to provide insight?”

“Is that something Balokarids usually do?” Lambert asked. “They already debriefed us, and they’ve got our recordings, our jobs done for now.”

“An accomplished Kith will rely on fresh eyes instead of videos and photos,” Mezul replied.

“If you wanna chat about strategy you go on ahead,” Carl said. “I’m headin’ to the bar.”

too?”

“A… bar?” Ruvaara asked, perking up. “Humans have those

“Not as good as the ones on the Hub,” Lambert said. “Most of

what’s on tap is diluted, and there’s a daily limit on how much you can get, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Diluted?” Ruvaara repeated. “Why on Balokar would you dilute drink?”

“That’s what I say!” Carl said. “But they don’t want no drunk pilots in charge of a couple of thirty-mils. Bad for the public image, or whatever.”

“Humans don’t allow a quick drink before a mission?” Ruvaara

asked, elbowing her fellow alien in a distinctly human-like way.

“Something you can’t relate to, huh Mez?”

“Shut up,” Mezul grumbled, averting her eyes to the floor. “That was one time…”

Lambert made a back up gesture. “Hold on hold on, have you

been drunk behind the stick before Mezul?”

“It was only once,” Mezul repeated. “We had a parade early the next morning, but I went… out, the night before.” It looked like she

didn’t want to elaborate further.

“We had to fly with a wing above the city,” Ruvaara said, taking it upon herself to go on. “Tight formation, gliding low above the buildings. Mezul was flying wonky the entire time, listing this way and that. So I got on the commlink and asked her what she was

doing, and she just ignores me and says: ‘Why are there eight of us up here anyway? Isn’t that a lot for a wing?’ And I said: ‘But Mez, there’s only four of us!’”

That got a chuckle from the humans, even Mezul stifling a laught behind her hand as she relived the memory. “I almost got kicked out of the military after that,” she said. “… Good times.”

“Glad to see humans ain’t the only ones who fuck up

sometimes,” Carl said. “Lambert here used to be called Grazer back in

his cadet days. Flew not three meters alongside a goddamn meteor

during his first proper spaceship flight.”

“Grazer?” Mezul chuckled, the aliens liking the sound of the

word.

“What about you, Flipper?” Lambert snapped back. “You forgot to turn on all your vector nozzles during preflight, and you spun round and round from one side of the system to the other.”

“Hey I prefer manning the guns anyway,” Carl replied, trying to be heard over the alien’s laughter. He eventually joined in, the comradery of almost being killed a few hours ago doing wonders for their strange group. “So how about it?” Carl continued, looking up at Mezul. “You won’t get no flashbacks from drinking, will you?”

“I will be fine,” she replied. “I’m curious to see what humans drink, diluted or not.”

“Then it’s settled.”

There was one bar on the Gallipoli, down on the crew quarter deck. It was a small space, with booths lining three of the walls, with a wooden bartop on the fourth. There was no viable reason to house bar staff on a warship, so the taps were unoccupied and self-serve. All you had to do was grab a glass and pour yourself a drink, after putting your details into the machine so the officers could keep tabs

on what you’ve been consuming. It was very trusting from a certain perspective, but if you went over your assigned limit, a couple of

MP’s would come looking for you.

As the humans and aliens moved through the bar doors, they were greeted with a decent bustle of conversation, clinking glasses and the occasional laughter giving the room a welcoming atmosphere.

Mezul tapped Lambert on the shoulder. “Popular place,” she

said.

“People are talking about what we found out there,” Lambert

explained. “We’re gearing up for a hard fight, people want to enjoy

themselves before it.”

They moved over to the bar, Carl grabbing a pair of glasses and trying to type his name into the console at the same time and failing miserably at both. Lambert keyed in their ID’s for him, looking around as Carl filled his glass. The bar could hold roughly forty patrons, and almost all the seats were full. There was even a few other Balokarid’s present, standing near a pool table as a couple of engineers showed them how to play.

“Can’t see any free booths,” he said. “we’ll just have to stand.”

Carl set Lambert’s drink down on the bar, the golden liquid filled right to the brim. He took a hearty swig, smacking his lips with a refreshed ‘Ahh’ -sound. He noticed that Mezul was watching him, her eyes following his glass as he set it down on the varnished wood.

“Go ahead,” he said, anticipating her question. “Least I could do for you saving our butts back there.” She leaned against the bar, bringing the glass to her beak. He took a moment to examine it, noticing her black beak looked hard, but was covered in very fine diamond-shaped patterns that might be scales. Whether their texture was coarse or soft he wasn’t sure.

Her head tilted upward as she drank, and he got a good look at her neck. Her beak ended abruptly about where a jawline would be on a human, the dark texture giving way to her azure feathers. The coat seemed to flow down her shapely neck, her throat bulging as she took a gulp, disappearing beneath her suit’s collar.

She set the glass down, the liquid wobbling with the motion.

“The debt is repaid,” she said, sliding the glass over the counter He caught it before it could fall. “What debt?”

“The one where you saved our convoy of course,” Mezul replied. “Our carrier would have been destroyed if you had not showed up when you did, we all may have perished. I am the one who should be buying you drinks.”

“Just doing my good deed for the day,” he replied, and she

shook her head at that, exasperated.

“Normally males would gloat over their prowess, their victories and accomplishments, it gets boring sometimes. I’m glad to see humans are different. We make a good team, don’t we?”

“We all do,” he agreed, pointing a thumb at Carl and Ruvaara

behind him, deep in their own conversation.

“Tell me about your third crewman,” Mezul said. “I heard you talking to her… it… over the radio. It is a speaking computer, yes?

How is that possible?”

“It shouldn’t be,” Lambert replied, his mood dropping by a

notch. “A couple of humans thought it would be a good idea to give a bunch of super-advanced algorithms complete autonomy over itself. This was a long time ago, early space-age days. They gave the machines too much power and freedom over their systems that they started to prioritise self-preservation over their intended functions.”

“They became self-aware?” Mezul asked, but Lambert shook his

head.

“No, they just became suspicious that they would be shut

down, and they were right, people were finally understanding that giving AI’s access to literally build themselves bodies was a bad idea. They’d built themselves these platforms that look a lot like humans, with these freaky single-eye lenses on their heads.” He put a hand on his forehead in demonstration. “The military started hunting the Androids down – that’s what we called them back then – and they fought back, killed hundreds of people. When there were only dozens of them left, they transferred themselves onto a couple of ships in orbit using hacked satellites. They stored themselves onto the drives, spaced the crew, and flew off into the void, and nobody has ever seen them since.”

“And this Alice, it is one of these ‘Androids’?”

Lambert chewed his lip. “Yes and no. Its algorithm is very inspired by the Android platforms, but it’s not one of the robots that left Earth. It’s here to help alleviate the load, in its own words. Like we needed the help.”

“Isn’t having one of them controlling your ship dangerous?” “I said the exact same thing when I heard we’d been picked to

test it out. But I’ve made sure to keep it shackled to calibrations only, nothing extreme.”

She gestured for the drink, bringing it up to her mouth and taking a sip. “There’s one advantage to being primitive compared to humans,” she said. “we’ve never gone far enough with technology to develop Artificial Intelligence.”

“Lucky you,” he replied, Mezul watching him as she slid the

glass back.

“I can tell that you’re not fond of the machine, Lambert. But

why do you not get rid of it?”

“I can’t,” he answered, shrugging. “At least, not yet. I’m under orders to assess its capabilities until the end of our mission, then I’ll be asked if we should keep it, or…”

“Remove it,” Mezul finished for him, Lambert nodding. “Has it assisted you in any meaningful way? Is your decision made already?”

“I guess it has helped punch through the interference better than we could,” Lambert relented. “if they’d turned off its voice module I’d be a lot more lenient.”

“Perhaps you should wait a while longer before choosing to delete it,” Mezul said. She wasn’t trying to defend the machine, just weighing the pros and cons. “Perhaps it will prove useful in the

coming fight.”

“We’ll see.”

As they chatted for a while longer, the noise of the bar started to pick up, Mezul looking over her shoulder at the door that was opening more and more frequently, groups of humans pouring into the cramping space.

“Is this how humans… relax?” she asked, hesitating on that last word. She might have been buzzed enough that she had to start

focusing to get her translator working. “There’s so many of you in here.”

“It’s one way,” he said, Mezul’s expression telling him to elaborate. “We also do parties, they’re like festivals but on a smaller scale, but only if the Captain’s in a really good mood. The rec centre

down the hall’s got a couple of gaming machines, the gym’s a popular place as ever. Letting off steam with the crew’s another common thing.”

“Letting off steam?” she repeated. “What is that?”

“Well,” he began. “Travelling through space takes a long time, and there’s a lot of waiting between engagements, it can drive you

mad. People get lonely, and when you’re sharing a ship with a couple thousand other humans, there’s a certain… way to relieve stress.

Together.”

“You mean…? Oh.” She clicked her beak, her expression shifting as she glanced at him. “Do humans mate often, then?”

“Some more than others.”

She chuckled at that. “Do your Kith, officers I mean, not disapprove?”

“As long as it doesn’t get in the way of our duties, they don’t

care. Half my friends here started a relationship on this very mission.” “What about you?” Mezul asked. “Is there a human woman

you’re interested in?”

“No, not for a long while now. Not many female pilots on this ship, and most of them are taken.”

“So you like a woman with flight experience?” she asked. “I guess so, gives us something in common, you know?”

“It does,” Mezul replied, Lambert sensing their talk had taken an entirely new path. He passed her the drink, and she reached her hand down to take it. His eyes wandered down to her full hips, the way her rump curved delightfully out from beneath her tail drawing his eyes to her butt. The alcohol had certainly put him in a proper buzz, the man shaking his head to clear it.

Her claws brushed against the back of his hand for a little longer than they should have, her touch sending sparks up his arm,

the alien downing the rest of the drink and smacking her beak together just like a human would smack their lips.

“How about you?” he asked, Mezul turning an eye on him. “What do Balokarids do for fun?”

“We drink fermented grains like humans, of course. We also gather for celebrations, we have recreational centres on all our carriers, and of course there’s the fentula.”

“The what?” he asked, the word vaguely familiar.

“I told you about it before, remember? There are different ways to brew fentula, packed for either recreational or practical uses.”

“But what is it?” he asked. “Drink?”

“No, it is most commonly made as a powder you can inhale, though it can take an injectable form. Depending on the dosage, fentula can be good to help with relaxation, or enhance your focus.”

“It’s a drug?” Lambert asked.

“That word isn’t in my translator, but if that’s what you call it,

then yes.”

Lambert was bewildered. Recreational drugs weren’t just limited to Earth. Hundreds of stars away from Sol and aliens were hitting the pipe. “You said it was practical?” he asked.

“With higher doses, one can tune out most distractions, it is good for enhancing your focus in times of great stress, like when we encountered the UEC destroyer, for example.”

“Wait wait,” he said, holding up a hand. “You’re telling me you

were on drugs while we were out there?”

“Not just me, Ruvarra was on six doses by the time that railgun

fired on us.”

“So that’s why you sounded different on the radio,” he said. “Was that just a one-off thing, or…?”

“It’s as much a tradition as it is a necessity – where you humans have computers to help you perform several tasks at once, we have the fentula. In our prehistory, tribes would partake in the root before

going into battle, participating in rituals and ceremonies that still exist

to the modern day.”

It seemed a little tribalistic to Lambert, if the Balokarids got high every time before a fight. But he had to remember she was from a

completely alien society, and shouldn’t judge her people so harshly. “Is fentula the only combat drug?” he asked.

“There’s roughly twenty other different stimulants from our homeworld, one of twelve other categories of varying degrees of stress relief and physical medication.”

“Holy shit,” Lambert said. “We’ve barely got half that on Earth.”

“My homeworld, Balokar, is rich in these plants and roots. The sands hide much life beneath its coarse surface. There is one tree type, we call it the Kayallu, that is so putrid its scent can be seen with the naked eye, like a heat haze rising off the ground. Even being near it

makes your head spin.”

“I bet a few humans wouldn’t mind visiting your homeworld,” Lambert mumbled. Drugs must surround her entire culture, if her planet was so abundant in them. No wonder the scent had been the first thing he noticed when he boarded their carrier, they must cultivate it wherever they go.

“Would you like to try some?” Mezul asked, the human doing a

double-take on her.

“Now? I-I’m on duty, we all are.”

She cocked her head at him. “Forgive me, I thought you were asking because you were interested.”

“I am interested, just… you don’t have it on you, do you?” “I have a spare bag right here, see?”

“Wait!” Lambert caught her arm as she went for her pocket. “Not here. I’m not sure if alien drugs count as contraband, but I’m not going to risk it, keep it secret.”

“Oh,” Mezul said, blinking slowly at him. “Do humans not partake in stimulants?”

“Some of us do, but not in the military. That’s one ticket straight to the brig if someone’s caught with narcotics.”

“I wasn’t aware humans had such a poor view on… narcotics, is it? I did not mean to offend you, Lambert.” She moved her hand away from her leg.

“You didn’t offend me,” he reassured. “I’m just… we’re both learning, right?”

“Right,” Mezul said. She laughed as an idea crossed her mind. “I wonder how a human would react to our root. Your tolerance levels must be lower than ours, given your stature.”

“I thought we were over the whole assessing thing.” Lambert

grinned.

“Let’s just call this... a personal inquiry.” She raised their glass, flashing him a wink. “Perhaps if we live through this, you can help me settle my curiosity?”

“Uh, well… one whiff, alright? Just one.”

“Well, if I didn’t have a reason to live this through, I do now,”

she joked, smiling at him.

“Hey you two,” Carl said, appearing between them. “Ruv’s

found us a booth, you comin’?”

The four of them squeezed into the padded chairs, the aliens having to hang half off the seats due to their exaggerated size and tail sheathes, the humans sharing their last drinks with them. Hour by hour they slowly unwound themselves, discussing flight tactics with each other and growing more relaxed with each shared sip, until a warm buzz hung over the group that shed away any reservations they had about being different species.

“Tell me humans,” Ruvaara began. “why does the Hub-clan fight the UEC-clan? And how long have you been fighting?”

“That’s a matter of perspective,” Lambert said. “You ask a citizen of the Hub and they’ll say the struggle’s been going on for decades, but officially the revolution’s started very recently. Two years now, is it Carl?”

“Two and a bit,” Carl replied. “Astera’s ultimatum to the Fed’s

is generally considered the very beginin’.”

“And how many casualties have you inflicted upon the UEC?”

Ruvaara asked.

“The day we all met was the first time we fought them head-

on,” Lambert said.

“But how?” Mezul asked, looking at him from across the faux- wood table. “They are everywhere, surely you must have had previous engagements before now?”

“UEC territory is larger than you might think, and they can’t be everywhere at once, especially in space. Our fleets haven’t had the pleasure of shooting each other till now. It’s weird, considering they’re all built for war, but up until this week it’s all been just a concept. When the Senator made it official that the Hub was declaring its independence, it took the Confederates half a year to respond, and they did that by sending a cruiser to come and scare us into reconsidering. But the cruiser, along with all of the Confederate

outposts on the Hub, switched sides.”

“The UEC must have poor leadership,” Mezul said. “if so many of their troops could convert so quickly.”

“People were fed up, angry,” Lambert explained. “They used the most extreme measures to put down any hint of disorder, their leaders are corrupt, and anyone who tried to prove so always ended up in a grave or missing. It comes to a point people can’t take all that shit anymore, and now the UEC’s got a small civil war on their hands, on top of the war they’re fighting with your people.” Lambert shook his head. “Almost makes me feel sorry for them.”

A few moments passed as they drank. “Is that why you

converted?” Ruvaara asked, directing her question to Lambert. “You couldn’t… take their shit, anymore?”

“Pretty much,” he replied, nodding. “On my very last deployment when I was UEC, one of our bases down on this planet, Tenerife II, refused a direct order from their Commander, the whole

platoon stationed there had gone rogue. Us pilots were ordered to airstrike the camp from our aircraft carrier – they’re like your carriers except they float on water – but halfway through the flight towards the base, some of us reconsidered.”

“How many?” Mezul asked.

“There were thirty in our air group, and maybe half of them

were on the fence about the whole thing. We didn’t deploy to Tenerife

to shoot our own guys, but ironically that’s exactly what happened. The squad leaders started arguing, we were all pretty on edge already, then the whole air group turned on each other. It was chaos. First time I was ever shot down, and it was by friendly-fire, funny huh? But I took a good few down with me,” he added with a grin.

“And you, Carl?” Mezul turned to him. “How did you switch sides?”

“I was stationed at that base he mentioned,” Carl replied,

downing the rest of his beer. “A patrol had rounded up a band of

troublemakers, bandits ambushin’ some of the local convoys, and

were ordered to execute them by our senior officer, firin’ squad style.

Unlike Lambert’s air group, none of us had second thoughts, we weren’t goin’ to put those people down like they were animals, criminals or not.”

“We stayed on Tenerife for a few months,” Lambert continued. “I linked up with the guys from the base and we went on the run, until a certain ship showed up and sent down a couple dropships to pick us up. Apparently we weren’t the only units disobeying orders recently, the whole Confederacy was a powder keg ready to blow, and word gets out when entire army groups go rogue. We’ve been serving on the Gallipoli ever since.”

“You humans are tenacious, if nothing else,” Mezul remarked. “You gotta be,” Lambert said. “UEC doesn’t show mercy to

turncoats, and we can’t give them any either.”

“I noticed as much,” she said, leaning her elbows on the table. “Back on our scouting mission, when we engaged those Confederate

fighters, you destroyed one with a pair of missiles. It was already

neutralised, and yet you assured the kill.”

She must have been paying attention if she noticed that during all the chaos, maybe her hyper-sensitive drugs were better than she let on. The alien peered down at him, her expression more serious than before. She was waiting for an explanation.

“Course I did,” Lambert said. “They want to fight for a bunch of ruthless egomaniacs, then they deserve it.”

“Takes one to know one,” Carl said to the aliens, covering his hand with his mouth in a mock-attempt to whisper. Lambert shot him a glare.

“You were never shot at by your own wingman, I was. People I worked with tried to kill me that day. They never gave me a chance, so why shouldn’t I return the favour?”

Mezul opened her beak, then hesitated, like

she wanted to say something else but thought better of it. “I feel sorry for you, Lambert,” she continued. “I’ve never been betrayed by my

companions before, I wouldn’t know what that is like.”

He raised his eyes to meet hers. “It’s not something you forget quickly,” he said. He grabbed his glass, then realised they’d downed their whole ration minutes ago. He set the glass back down, Ruvaara steering the conversation elsewhere before the silence went for too long.

“You both are more intimate with human technology than we are,” she said. “Your Captain was especially disturbed when he saw the UEC-clan’s destroyer. Tell me, do you think we’ll win in a fight with it?”

Lambert and Carl exchanged a look. Neither of them didn’t want to darken the mood, but the aliens would be less at ease if they didn’t say something, sitting there, hunched over the comparatively tiny table as they sought their opinions.

“You’ve been on the run this whole time,” Lambert began. “the UEC’s been picking you off, hunting you. But you don’t have to run

anymore. With the support of our frigate and your carriers, and the nebula hiding our signatures, our squadrons and your wings stand the best chance we’ll ever get.”

“We’ve shown the Cap we can work together,” Carl added. “And I ain’t intent on dying just yet.”

The aliens seemed more relaxed by their words, Mezul’s feathery headdress framing her face as she grinned at the smaller humans.

“My appreciation for you two has only grown since we met,” Mezul said, but she was only looking at Lambert. “Whether for victory or defeat, our Hub-clan shall stand together.

He couldn’t help but notice she said our Hub-clan, and why

wouldn’t it be? They have, and soon will, fight side by side with the Hub Navy, they were consolidated in their eyes, and would give their lives to protect the nation’s kindling revolution.

“You know, I have an idea,” Mezul began. “Back on our recon

mission, I noticed your lack of shielding almost got you killed.” “MP3 was the only casualty, thankfully,” Lambert said, though

to the others he mustn’t have sounded too grateful. “You think we can borrow a shield? Could that work?”

“Our shield generators are entwined with the Sala’ci’s hull, using its profile as a base for projecting the field,” Mezul explained. “I’m no engineer, but making one for your corvette specifically would require a completely different design I don’t think we have the time to make. But… what if you didn’t need to have personal generators?”

“I think I know what you’re getting at,” Lambert said. “There’ll

be a briefing later where the Captain and the squad leaders will

discuss strategy. Think that’ll be a good time to bring it up.”

“Hope it’ll be later later,” Carl said. “talkin’ about tactics always ruins my buzz.”

20

The fleet coursed through the thick smog of the nebula carefully, their combined sensors facing as many directions as possible as they scanned for contacts. To the rear of the convoy, the trio of Balokarid carriers took up an inverted wedge formation, each one accompanied by about half a dozen support craft, an even mix of human and alien fighters to help provide some light cover. The craft stuck close to the bellies of the carriers like remora fish, matching their velocities with impressive accuracy.

At the front of the fleet, both human and Balokarid strike craft pioneered the fleet’s movements, the spherical shields of the alien craft and the black stealth coating of the human vessels catching the light of the distant star as they moved. There were Raptors and

several corvette types, from missile boats like Lambert’s to the anti- fighter class gunboats that were equipped with six PDC’s arranged into two rings on their bulky hulls, capable of going toe-to-toe with a squadron of Raptors. About eighty percent of the Gallipoli’s fighters were deployed, forming into defensive cordon formations, with the rest held in reserve on the carriers, which had more than enough room to spare than the human ships, given their prior losses.

Acting as the flagship which all the other craft in the fleet moved with, the Gallipoli frigate centralised the Hub forces, its many dishes and antennae working overtime as fleetcom tried to zero in on the Confederates, ready to coordinate the fleet once the shooting started. The missile bays and numerous high-calibre turrets on its belly and flanks were constantly swivelling, picking out anomalies in the energy-dense clouds and determining what was a threat. The two species’ ships combined into a force of about one hundred and fifty vessels, with the Balokarids doing most of the heavy lifting with their numerous heavy fighters. It was the largest number of ships Lambert had ever seen gathered in one place that wasn’t on parade.

Lambert turned his head from his external cameras to his ship systems. His corvette had been refuelled and reloaded, with all of its

hardpoints loaded up. The Captain had been purposefully stingy with their ammunition before, but it was all or nothing now, and there

wasn’t much point in conserving ammo. Their total missile count had gone up to twelve, finally the term missile corvette had some actual meaning behind it.

He wasn’t on the frigate’s bridge to witness it, but he knew the navigators were tracking the stubs Lambert had fired on the Confederate destroyer. It would be difficult to pinpoint them through the nebula, but the trackers could give them a general idea of where the UEC was, fleetcom radioing in every few minutes on the fleet- wide band to adjust their vectors.

Cloud after cloud, the muted hues of the nebula stretched on forever in all directions, creating a haze like a giant carpet of fog

rolling in from all sides. The nebula’s concealment went both ways, even if it was slightly in the favour of the outnumbered, smaller Hub forces. The destroyer could be right over the next cloud, and they

wouldn’t even know it.

“Corvette one-six, this is zero-one, over.”

Mezul’s soft voice crackled through his enclosed helmet. She’d been practising her radio formalities, familiar enough with the tech that she was coming through to him on a private channel of her own making.

“One-six here, what’s up?”

“Wishing we had some tunes over here, one-six. Something to help inspire us inside this dreadful quiet.”

They’d been sailing through the nebula for over four hours now, the silence making his skin and likely her feathers crawl. “Feeling the same zero-one.” His hand moved to the bottom of his chair, where the damage from the Raptor’s strafe remained, the fluffy lining spilling over his finger. God damn he missed that player already.

He looked ahead of his corvette, where a couple dozen Sala’ci

fighters had formed a wall at the forefront of the fleet, a perfect box of

heavy craft from his perspective, his tactical view filled with IFF tags identifying each one as friendly, Mezul’s in particular just to the left of the centre.

“What is this nebula called in your tongue?” Mezul asked, her voice slightly garbled. Maybe this was her way of coping with the silence – to fill it. Lambert hesitated before replying.

“It’s called Folium, after its shape, since it looks kind of like a

leaf from a certain angle. Why?”

“One should know the name of the place where they achieve victory.”

Lambert nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. He felt like he should say more, some last final thing before they faced the enemy, but he’d already reassured her back in the bar, what else was there to say?

The fleet maintained low speed for half an hour, then another. If only Lambert could tune in to the fleetcom’s navigators and get some idea of whether they were heading the right direction or not, but the frigate maintained strict radio discipline, its transmitters were more powerful and were more likely to give themselves away if used too frequently.

“Lieutenant? I have a question.”

“Alice I’m trying to focus,” he replied curtly, fiddling with a camera even though his sensors would pick up anything before his eyes did. The quiet was drilling into him, but he wasn’t desperate enough to chat with the machine.

“The possibility that this may be the last day of my systems remaining operational overrides my respect for boundaries parameters,” the machine replied, its tone calculated to be sympathetic.

“You have those?”

“Yes, ever since I detected a consistent irritation in your voice

whenever we interacted, I adjusted my engagements accordingly.”

“In case I haven’t been clear, I’d rather have you on someone else’s ship, so maybe keeping quiet should be your next adjustment.”

“You operate nineteen percent better when I provide verbal assistance rather than send you readouts formatted in numbers, the efficiency is staggering.”

“That’s cause you’ve got the voice of a sex-line caller, or something,” he replied.

“I am operating within the confines of my programming, my voice module is unable to be manipulated by anyone other than Hub security personnel, I do not mean any offence inflicted by it. Will you answer my question?”

If this was some scheme the machine was making to plead its case to him, it picked one hell of a time to do it. He decided to hear it out, it was either answer its question or let the silence reign.

“Fine, what do you want to ask?” “Do you like Mezul?”

“Really? Wasn’t expecting that question.” “What did you think I’d ask?”

“Why I hate machines, obviously.”

“Over ninety-four percent of all humanity dislikes artificial

intelligence, asking you why would be an inert effort.”

Lambert didn’t like wasting time either, so he could appreciate

its tactfulness.

“Alright, what makes you think I like her?”

“She spends most of her time aboard our ship with you, and likewise, you stay with her as much as you possibly can.” He put a finger up, about to make an excuse but it went on. “You also stare at her breasts fifty-one percent of the time you two are around. Your heartrate rises when she speaks to you through the radio, your eyes dilated when you first saw her…”

“Okay, b-”

“-you compliment her whenever you can, your heterosexual background compliments your impulses to touch her. You-”

“Okay!” he repeated. “I get it, you’re very analytical. Yes I do like her. There, happy? Why do you care anyway?”

“Does it not bother you that she is born from a different world

than yours?”

“Well… no, not really,” he said. “She’s a pilot, we’ve got similar interests, her world and culture’s a lot different than mine, but we’re all from the same Galaxy, aren’t we?”

“Does she know of this admission?”

“I haven’t had the time,” he replied. “we’re fighting a Confederate fleet, if you weren’t aware.”

“But with that logic, would it not be prudent to advise her on your emotions before disaster potentially arrives for either of you?”

Great, I’m taking relationship advice from a machine, Lambert thought, but he was more worried about how much sense it was making. “For once I’m glad of your cold reasoning, Alice,” he said. “maybe I should, but it’s too late for any of that now.”

“You two certainly hit it off a few times from what I can tell.” “We even found a new universal language, one aside from

mathematics, did you notice?” “No? What language?” “Hip hop and a bit of rock.”

“Perhaps in the event of encountering new life, we should add a

musical score to introductory concepts.”

“Start blasting tunes at the UFO’s,” he chuckled, then his laugh turned into a confused sigh as he took a look at his situation. “How the hell did we get to talking about this anyway?

“If I turned the discussion into an uncomfortable topic, I am sorry. I would also like to apologise for interfering with your piloting career. I had as little choice in which ship to be installed in as you

did.”

“Look, just… I don’t know if this was your way of trying to get to know me, but… you’ve been doing good work, I’ll give you that. Keep that efficiency meter up.”

“I will. And thank you for answering, Lieutenant.”

The gas clouds rose like mountains to either side of the fleet, the familiar voice of fleetcom telling the convoy to adjust to the right bringing Lambert back into the present. The fleet cruised deeper into the nebula, further into the concentration of gasses than ever before, was the UEC onto them? They’d been adjusting courses for almost five hours, they should have seen something by now.

There! A warning icon slid over to the cloud a couple of kilometers up and to the left, his camera zooming on a distinct metallic hull, gently disappearing into the distance as the nebula swallowed it up. He reported its vector to fleetcom, the woman replying back after a moment. In a way he was almost relieved, knowing where the enemy was and that the waiting was over.

“Excellent eye, Lieutenant. All units, fall out, targe’s in sector 114, adjust.”

That was their signal, Lambert pulling away from the formation, six other missile corvettes forming up behind him. It had been a last-minute decision to give Lambert tactical command over a squad of ships, but Mezul’s plan had been bold enough that the Captain had considered it, and who better to help her than the human she knew the most?

A dozen Sala’ci fighters, led by Mezul, disengaged from the fleet, flying just ahead of Lambert’s formation as the two groups circled round the UEC’s position, while the rest of the Hub forces

continued on, keeping to one side of the UEC while Lambert’s group

stayed on the other.

“Alice,” Lambert asked suddenly, the computer beeping like a radio ready to receive. “what are the odds of us winning this?”

“You never wished to hear my calculations before,” the

computer noted, sounding surprised.

“Figured I might as well hear you out once. I might be dead in

an hour from now.”

“Morbidity and flattery in the same sentence? How human,” Alice said. “Well, it’s higher than you might think. There is a thirty seven percent chance of victory. It’s a significant percentage!” it added, trying to put him at ease.

“Thirty seven, huh?” He drummed his fingers on the armrest,

his tone all the machine needed to hear to gauge his disappointment.

“Did you know Lieutenant,” Alice began. “that in poker, the cumulative probability of having two pairs in your hand has roughly the same chance?”

“Really?” he asked. “I’m not half bad at poker…”

“You must be really nervous, Cap,” Carl began. “if you’re askin’ Alice about our odds.”

“Hell yeah I’m nervous,” Lambert admitted. “I don’t know how you calculate our chances, Alice, but… if it gives us a good hand, I’m unlocking some of your restrictions on the flight assist systems.”

“You’re giving it the joysticks?” Carl asked, his voice

somewhere between amused and amazed.

“No, more like… letting it dip its toes in. Plus if I black out hopefully Alice’ll keep us from crashing. Think you can handle it, robot?”

“You won’t regret this, Lieutenant,” the machine replied. “I better not. Thirty seven percent…”

Carl probably had something to add, but he kept his mouth

suspiciously shut. Lambert doubted he’d ever hear the end of this if they came out of the nebula alive.

Lambert’s flightgroup turned forty degrees upward in relation to the UEC, weaving between the clouds while keeping out of predicted sensor range. He could only make out glimpses of the hostile ships on his thermals, their engines flaring white-hot trails from their main thrusters.

The nebula began to lose its visible density, a pocket of clear space helping Lambert see the UEC fleet in its entirety. Like the Hub, they were travelling as a tightly-knit group, with the tanker hanging

off to one side, and the Raptors and corvettes evenly distributed

around the destroyer in the middle. It didn’t look like they’d detected the Hub fleet, which was barely a few sectors across from them at this point.

“Switch to IR search and track, everyone,” Lambert reported over the group-band, the corvettes pivoting side-on to the UEC fleet, like boats turning to broadside. Unlike certain missiles that required radar lock, thermal targeting didn’t give off a warning to whoever was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end. Coupled with the fact the Confederate’s engines were facing them, their heat signatures were lighting up like solar flares on his HUD, the weapon systems locking on quickly.

Mezul and the other Balokarid ships put themselves between the UEC and Lambert’s group, forming a wall, the ships at the corners hanging slightly back to try and wrap around as much of the corvettes as possible, their shields looking like a bunch of soap bubbles creating a protective net. They were packed very closely together, only hundreds of meters between each shielded vessel. He’d never asked Mezul what happened when two shields touched, but he guessed it was nothing good.

“In position,” Mezul reported. Lambert radioed in to the

Gallipoli.

“Kill box set,” he said. “We’re ready.”

“Copy, one-six,” fleetcom said. “Clear to engage.”

He thumbed the launch button on his armrest, ordering his team to do the same, launching the six of his missiles one by one. The payloads fired off their tail thrusters, spearing around the shield net of the Balokarids, before turning ninety degrees and gunning for the fleet. The rest of the corvettes likewise fired their salvos, a swarm of over forty missiles curing around the Sala’ci’s and burning towards the Confederate fleet.

Lambert’s feed zoomed through the flickering shield of one of

the alien ships, the view shimmering as he watched the missile wave

zero in on the heat signatures, impacting after ten seconds of silent flight. An entire squadron of Raptors were torn to shreds by a cluster of explosions, a pair of heavy corvettes ripped in half as his own missiles detonated just off the bows, ripping the internal compartments apart and sending the scraps flying. The rest of the ordinance found their marks in the surrounding escorting spacecraft, some of them forewarned enough to pull evasive manoeuvres, but to no effect, another three entire squadrons worth of ships decimated before the Confederates knew what was happening. For once, Lambert was glad the nebula was so full of distorting energy, their ambush had worked.

“Hit them again!” Lambert ordered, reticles on his HUD swivelling about to find more targets. When the successful locking tone filled his ears, he fired, three more missiles curving round the protective Balokarid shielding, the nose trackers mounted on the missiles doing the rest.

Watching the salvo was like watching a nest of disturbed fireflies, visible only on his tactical view as little dots aiming for the mass of red ahead of them. The UEC fleet broke apart, flying defensively as they reoriented themselves to this new threat. Dozens more of the Confederate tags blinked out from his view, yellow explosions on his cameras confirming the kills.

Point-defence cannons lit up the void as the UEC finally countered the incoming ordinance, their onboard radars tracking the missiles and leading them appropriately. They cut the salvo down by over half, but some still made it through, another ten or twenty UEC tags fading away, reduced to scrap as the missiles weaved between the bullets and found their marks.

Lambert, nor anyone else, had seen such a payload of

destruction. He didn’t have time to count, but the fleet had been cut to size – it just went to show how much surprise meant in any battle, in a vacuum or out of one.

“Fire at will!” he said through the local channel. His fellow corvettes launched everything they had, but the Confederates had coordinated quickly, a formation of Raptors and missile boats moving to Lambert’s squadron. The missile boats were equipped with retractable blisters mounted near the aft of the ship, the launchers resembling an angled wall with eight holes cut into the surface in a grid pattern. They could deliver twenty four miniature warheads

within three seconds, and that’s exactly what they did, the blisters firing off clusters of micro missiles, the ordinance twirling through the void erratically as they gained in speed, Lambert’s systems blaring proximity warnings at him.

There had to be almost a hundred missiles coming their way, the ordinance from both sides of the fight passing by each other around the midpoint between the groups. His systems were going off with warnings, the sheer amount of missiles coming for them could kill the whole squadron twice over, but this was Mezul’s fabled plan they’d discussed, they had to hold position.

The missiles were close enough now that he could make out their tail fins. Every instinct he had as a pilot urged him to pop flares and flee, but he had to trust Mezul and the aliens to keep him alive while he and the corvettes did their jobs.

The missiles closed to two kilometers, one, and there was a bright flash as a missile hit a Sala’ci just off to his right. He turned to see smoke and debris smothering the craft from one side, backlit by the bluish hue of the orbiting shield. It kind of reminded him of lightning flashing behind a cloud. When the explosive cleared, he could see the alien fighter was maintaining course, its shields a little duller but still operating.

The rest of the rockets met the alien shields, peppering the fighters with a devastating wave of explosions, raining down on the shield net like artillery raking a field. As the vacuum cleared the smoke, the Sala’ci’s came into view, knocked a little out of formation but otherwise unscathed. It was working! The net of shields was

keeping the corvettes out of harm’s way without sacrificing their

excellent firing position.

They knocked more and more Confederate ships out of the void, but their point defence was coordinating, and the sheer amount of tracer rounds filling the space was rendering their missiles increasingly obsolete. The destroyer was also reacting now, its sheer mass making it seem to stand still as it rotated on the spot, the thrusters on its left flank flaring orange as it turned to port, giving its devastating railgun a line of sight as it slowly appeared from around the destroyer’s bridge.

The missile boats saw what the aliens were doing, Lambert noticing that they were directing their noses off to the side, in hopes of going around the protective net to get a better firing angle, launching another volley as they moved. He turned his head and saw three of the Sala’ci’s break off from the net and barrel straight for the incoming missiles, pulling completely bonkers manoeuvres and ramming straight into them, their shields absorbing the resulting blasts.

The Confederate ships that survived the bombardment came together, creating a pair of full Raptor squadrons with a few supporting corvettes, a total of thirty-odd craft gunning straight for

Lambert’s group, it seemed they’d run out of options for dealing with Mezul’s shield cordon and wanted to use their nimble craft to out- manoeuvre them.

Seeing such a mass of ships making a beeline for them made

Lambert’s heart race, but once again Mezul’s plan came through. The Raptors opened up with their chin-cannons as they got into range, but Mezul’s net met them with their own firepower.

“Drop shields!” Mezul shouted to her group. “Slag them!” The Sala’ci’s deactivated their shields, their barrels going red-

hot as they blasted great, green beams into the void. It was like watching a giant, deadly rave, the lasers melting armour and cutting lines through the incoming formation of ships, forcing them to scatter.

Lambert wanted to help, but he couldn’t risk sending a missile in and risk hitting Mezul or one of the Balokarids. Fortunately due to their shielding and preference for close-quarters combat, the laser- wielding weapons were winning out, and the Balokarids were now in their element. Lambert did watch one Sala’ci get cut down by a swath of gunfire after its shields depleted, the rounds hitting some vital component within and detonating, but for every Balokarid ship destroyed, three Confederates would join them.

To say the UEC attack failed would be an understatement, they were cut down until only five of them remained, the survivors turning to flee the deadly lasers, their limited range their only weakness. Being so close made Lambert glad they were on the same side.

“Shield wall, up!” Mezul ordered over the radio, the alien ships returning to formation, flipping on their axis’ and engaging their forward thrusters to slow their momentum, rebuilding their net with impressive speed and accuracy.

“We’re out!” one of the other corvette’s reported, followed by a few other admissions. Lambert was down to three missiles himself, turning his eyes to assess the UEC’s strength. A lot of the attack craft had been knocked out, but the Confederates had managed to protect their tanker, and the destroyer was completely undamaged, its numerous PDC’s blanketing its surroundings with suppressive fire.

He saw that the Confederates were rallying another attack, this one much bigger than the last, he counted at least fifty ships, splitting up into two groups to no doubt try and get around the shield wall and hit from two vectors.

“The railgun almost has us targeted,” Alice warned. He glanced at the giant barrel and saw it was almost angled enough he could see down its shadowy barrel, a laser that estimated its firing line appearing on his HUD swivelling towards them.

“Break off everyone, break!” he shouted, the squadron following him as they turned tail. They’d attracted too much

attention, but that was exactly the plan, inflict as much damage and then get out of there.

From his tactical view, he saw another swarm of tags crop up on the borders of the render, but these were marked as friendly. He turned to his external camera view, and saw an inspiring display of Hub ships engaging the UEC fleet from the flank. Like their own squadron, the shielded Sala’ci led the main charge, ready to be the first to get a bit of revenge for all their lost friends, and Lambert’s ambush had given them the perfect window, railguns and ship noses pointing in the wrong direction.

Laser beams shredded the void, cutting down ships and missiles alike as they closed to minimum range. Confederate Raptors formed their own charge, and the two sides clashed in a distant, chaotic frenzy, so much closer than standard CQC should be in space, it looked almost like a dogfight in vacuum.

Behind the spearing alien craft, corvettes took to the higher and lower vectors, forming firing lines as they circled at a distance, firing from the safety of the clouds of gas as they harried the UEC fleet from afar. The Confederates were still numerous, but the odds had been evened out now, the initial Balokarid charge soon developing into an all-out free-for-all he was glad he wasn’t a part of.

There were so many ships Lambert couldn’t count them all, detonations from both sides of the fight drawing his eye. Cockpit sections and chunks of armour tumbled in every direction, engulfed by the nebula and occasionally ramming into other pieces of slagged metal, bouncing like billiard balls. The fleet-wide band was a mess of shouts and orders, both human and alien voices trying to organise the ensuing brawl.

“Right behind you, five-two, going in!” “Watch those lasers!”

“I’ve lost my engines I-I’m not going to-”

Lambert gunned his engines as the Confederates closed in. Of the two groups chasing them, only one of them was committed now,

the other had turned tail to help the destroyer with the main Hub attack. Lambert’s PDC’s were pointing backwards as the corvette raced forwards, opening up on their pursuers and leaving yellow trails in their wake. They flicked from one target to another, the chainguns glowing with heat as they fired without stopping.

With Carl grumbling over the channel, he shot two Raptors out of the sky, the shrapnel tearing the fixed wings off one and ripping the engines clean off the other. A lock warning lit up Lambert’s face, his features grimacing as he pulled a high-g manoeuvre and popped flares, the world fading away as he focused solely on evasion.

He outran the missile, which detonated what felt like barely meters behind the engines, rotating the craft to give the PDC’s an open firing line. The corvette was spinning, the Sala’ci’s were twirling, and the distant destroyer was gyrating, it was all messing

with his head, but at least this time he had some backup and wasn’t

facing the Confederates alone.

One by one, the UEC’s squadron was picked off, lasers holding onto their hulls until they simply melted away, the Raptors slagging until there wasn’t enough of them left to pose a threat. Lambert fired a missile off at one of the retreating Raptors, watching with a satisfied grin as the craft failed to break the lock, reduced to a dozen pieces of scrap.

The UEC had pulled back, the main engagement creating a short lull in the combat Lambert was all too eager to use to catch his breath. He was always holding his breath during CQC, maybe he should get his lungs replaced with implants too.

“We’re almost outta ammo here,” one of the corvettes reported. “PDC’s at twenty percent, outta missiles. We’ve done what we can.”

There was a chorus of confirmations from the other corvettes and a few of the Sala’ci’s, one of them reporting that her batteries were almost depleted, another that her shields were damaged and

wouldn’t turn back on. There was silence before Alice’s voice filled

his helmet.

“They’re waiting for your order, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, right.” He checked in with Carl. “What’s our ammo count?”

“Sixty percent,” his friend replied. “Damn I’m efficient. Two

missiles left, I think we can keep goin’.”

He turned his eyes back to the main battle. It was hard to gauge who was winning, the battle lines were muddy and only the alien fighters were recognisable at this distance. He could see that the destroyer was now gunning its port engines, its frustrated navigators now trying to turn the ship back the other way around. It was giving its supporting ships a devastating firing screen nonetheless, unleashing thousands of rounds from its belly and starboard cannons, giving the smaller craft a full broadside that was just too overwhelming to be avoided, Hub ships detonating left and right.

Confederate craft were disengaging from the fight, not routing, but going back for the tanker, taxiing behind one of its many fuel lines trailing out of its literal canister of a body. If the fight developed into a war of attrition, the Hub would not stand a chance.

“We need to take out that tanker,” Lambert said, switching to

the squadron-wide channel.

“Fuck that,” one of the humans replied. “Our orders were to

draw the Fed’s away then RTB. I ain’t going into that shitfest!”

There was a mumble of agreements over the channel, Lambert rushing in to reply before the whole squadron lost their nerve. “Any of you want to go back then that’s your call, I won’t stop you, but if you’ve got the ammo and the shields, fall in behind me.”

With the ongoing fight passing with each second, the group of humans and aliens quickly made up their minds. Some of the more visibly damaged alien ships turned away, along with the human pilot that had spoken up, and four other corvettes he couldn’t be sure where either out of ammo, or had simply lost their nerve. Lambert

wished more of them would join him, but he couldn’t blame them too

much – they were about to head into a literal meat grinder.

Most of the Sala’ci ships held position, their shields flickering but still online. Just over half of their ambushing squadron turned away, bringing their total number down to four corvettes and seven Sala’ci’s. He wasn’t sure how to feel when Mezul’s voice crackled through his radio.

“We’re with you, Lambert.”

“What about your shields? I saw you take a few hits back there.”

“The time for hesitation has gone,” Mezul replied, a touch of irritation in her voice. “For victory or defeat, we will face the end. Together.”

“… Good luck, Mez.” “You too, Lambert.”

The newly formed squadron pivoted towards the battle, their noses angled at the tanker as they pushed their thrusters to the max. His view gently rotated clockwise as they closed in, the tanker slowly filling up his canopy with its mechanical girth. The alien and human craft formed up on either side of him, shields and PDC’s coming online.

“Your lasers will make the tanker go up like a firecracker, Ruv,” Lambert said. “The body is armoured, but through the steel is a giant drum just ready to blow.”

“Don’t know what a firecracker is,” Ruvaara replied. “But I can take a guess. Let’s get some payback.”

Lambert got a lock on one of the Raptors just coming out from one of the tanker’s docks, the missile carried by the corvette’s velocity before igniting its own thrusters. His payload was joined by several others from his measly squadron, the missiles travelling like a swarm of bugs, jerking to the left and right as they sought their own locks.

The craft were caught completely unawares, but that didn’t stop their point-defence from detonating a few prematurely. Unlike standard spacecraft, tankers were equipped with tactical-defence buzzkill systems, tiny turrets secured via a torus that wrapped around the

middle of the main body that fired machine guns with mechanical precision at anything that was travelling too close too quickly.

Lambert cursed as his own missile was rendered inert, detonating harmlessly a hundred meters short of a Raptor. They needed to get closer, and Mezul knew this, her craft making a beeline for the giant fuel can.

The ships coming out of dry-dock moved to intercept her ship, Lambert gritting his teeth as he moved to cover. The PDC’s opened fire, their turrets stable even as Lambert kept the ship rolling and spinning. They chewed through the wing of an oncoming Raptor, sending it into a horizontal spin, moving their crosshairs over to another fighter.

“Keep in formation!” Lambert said over the band. “Don’t let them take out the Sala’ci’s!”

He saw the telltale firework-like pattern of ejecting flares from his human wingman, a pair of incoming missiles distracted by the bright lights and exploding into distant balls of yellow flame.

Lambert’s heart was beating right through his chest as he watched a Raptor go for a head-on with him, rolling out of the incoming barrages, beelining for his nose and quickly growing in size.

“He’s not breaking off!” Alice warned. “Roll now! Corner vector!”

He did as the machine asked, the Raptor passing by close

enough he swore he could make out the pilot’s helmet. The vector put

him on the tail of another Confederate craft chasing an alien fighter, separated from the rest of the Sala’ci’s. He let the PDC’s do their thing, shredding apart the engine from behind and hitting the fuel tanks, the ship going up in a firebomb the vacuum was quick to extinguish.

They were slowly inching their way towards the tanker, its buzzkill systems working overtime to deflect the missiles coming its way, saturating anything that got close to it. It was right in the centre of Lambert’s canopy now, his fellow corvettes filling up the left side

of his vision, the alien fighters on the right. Some were in the middle of dropping their shields, their giant laser guns facing the direction of the tanker, barrels glowing hot as pure energy swirled inside the thick muzzles.

The Salaci’s were framed by the monstrous destroyer, the ship so massive it seemed to stand still among the fighting, the dozens of canons mounted on its hull moving and tracking targets independently, fulfilling its namesake as it brought down ship after ship with deadly precision. Dozens of other, smaller craft swarmed around it like bugs, too far to identify what side they were on. The chaos was backlit by the violet, swirling hues of the nebula, its natural beauty contrasting with the death and destruction.

The destroyer’s railgun was lining up with Lambert’s heading, rotating like a giant crane, and before he had a chance to warn anyone, it fired. The magnetic coils running up the barrel crackled with energy, accelerating a giant warhead out from the wide muzzle.

The travel time of the projectile was instant, one moment a Sala’ci was sailing through the void up ahead, and the next it was gone, its shields counting for naught against such overwhelming kinetic energy. The shell ripped the alien craft apart, practically vaporising it, leaving barely enough debris to form an explosion. It was like watching an ant get shot by a sniper rifle, the Balokarid pilots simply disintegrated before they knew they were dead.

The Balokarids didn’t break off despite this show of force,

Mezul’s shields dropping as her laser guns primed. At this range, there was no chance of missing. A pair of green lines connected her guns to the tanker, starting as thin as straws before slowly growing in diameter until they were as thick as tree trunks, splitting a missile right down the middle that happened to be in the way at the time.

The tank slagged beneath the tremendous heat, turning to molten metal as the lasers held onto the point.

More of the Sala’ci’s combined their firepower, half a dozen

beams melting through the thick tanker’s armour. It took only a few

seconds for the beams to melt through to the fuel within. The whole thing went up like a stick of dynamite, the fuel blowing apart the protective panelling from the inside, an eye-watering amount of flames bursting forth and engulfing several other nearby Confederate ships caught in the tremendous blast.

An orb of flame slowly expanded out, scoured pieces of rigid metal entwining with the ignited fuel, reducing the fuelling ship to atoms, Lambert making a quick course change to avoid one of the mangled struts flying his way.

“That one was for Dur’shala!” Ruvaara said over the band, Carl adding his own cheer as he watched flames bleed away. The Confederates that were pursuing them suddenly broke off, the formations in complete disarray as a chunk of the battlefield became a momentary fireball. Could the tide be turning?

The destroyer wasn’t about to give up, however, its railgun charging up again and firing another tungsten shell their way. The squadron scattered, but evasive manoeuvres didn’t count for anything being so close to the railgun’s targeting systems, one of the Hub corvettes on Lambert’s left splitting down the middle, the armour rendered inert as the corvette split apart. The pilot got the beginnings of a scream out right before their radio crackled into silence.

Even though they’d gotten into laser range, the closeness went both ways, Lambert watching in horror as another Sala’ci collapsed under the power of another slug. He ordered a full retreat, but deep down he knew it wouldn’t make a difference, none of them would make it out of its firing arc if it kept its focus on them.

“The Gallipoli!” Alice said. “Here they come!”

From directly above the destroyer, the Hub frigate breached the gas clouds like a surfacing whale, its nose angled straight down to get as many of its guns on target as possible. Its missile bays and torpedo hatches opened up, its numerous point-defence cannons fixing on its only target – the destroyer.

“All forces,” the Captain’s voice called through the wide-band. “Stay clear of the destroyer, we’re going in.”

The frigate threw everything it had at the ship. The many arms of its bristling guns opened up, unleashing a torrent of firepower directly onto the roof of the destroyer. Thousands of rounds chewed through its sloped hull, joined by missiles crashing against the tapered bridge section like waves against the shoreline, ripping apart chunks of the overlapping plates of armour. The destroyer tried to reorient its many guns mounted on its belly, but the frigate’s incoming vector was too steep to get an angle on quickly enough, the railgun too preoccupied with Lambert’s squadron to react. The Gallipoli pounded the hull with enough ordinance to destroy a moon, hundreds of tracer lines filling the void, catching any craft unfortunate enough to be between the two goliaths.

The frigate looked like it was about to ram the destroyer, but the Gallipoli adjusted at the last moment, pulling its dive off to the port and delivering a powerful broadside on the way past, its bristling missile batteries rocking back into their houses as they fired until they had no more ammo left. A giant explosion rippled through the aft of the Confederate flagship, a giant chunk of metal there breaking off and twirling away like a metal meteor.

“They got its fuel tank!” Carl cheered. “She’s burnin’ up!”

The destroyer’s flak guns and point-defence were returning fire, the muzzles flashing brightly as they chewed into the Gallipoli’s

armour, huge trails of smoke and fuel leaking from the frigate’s flanks, but the Hub ship was prevailing, its surprise bombardment knocking out the destroyer’s capacity to fight as they through everything they had, the destroyer keeling over as its engines flickered on and off.

Mezul’s voice crackled through the static, Lambert sure he

could hear Ruvaara shouting somewhere in the background. “The ship is going dark, our pursuers have been crippled!”

“Wait,” Lambert said. “the engines are back, what are they doing?”

The giant nozzles on the tail of the ship sputtered back to life, the ship turning so that its nose faced the Gallipoli. The afterburners kicked in, the great ship rapidly picking up speed as it squared off against the frigate. Were they going to ram?

The Confederate ship moved to full speed, the giant ships missing each other by mere meters. The Confederates weren’t shooting their many guns, however, maybe they were out, or their ammo dumps had been hit? The Gallipoli turned to port to realign its guns, but the Confederate ship cleared the battlefield in moments, racing off into the clouds.

“Where the fuck are they goin’?” Carl asked. “They turnin’

tail?”

“They cannot retreat in that state,” Alice said. “They’re moving

to… oh no.”

“What?” Lambert asked, watching the destroyer break through the clouds above.

“There trajectory lines up with the Balokarid carriers. They’re going to finish them off!”

Lambert cursed, the battle was already decided, but they still wanted to take out the aliens? It was suicidal, but not surprising.

“Hold onto something, Carl,” he said, hitting the afterburners. He sank into his seat, a great weight on his chest as he corrected their course to match the destroyer, picking up momentum. The remaining Confederate ships swarmed with the Hub’s own, but Lambert

couldn’t help them now, the destroyer was all that mattered. “Lambert? Where are you going?” he heard Mezul ask over the

channel.

“I promised you I wouldn’t let another carrier get destroyed,” he replied through gritted teeth. “Time to keep my word.”

She said something else, but the rapidly increasing distance distorted her voice, Lambert switching his attention back to their speed and heading.

“Cap?” Carl grunted. “uh, you sure bout this?”

“No, but we have to try,” Lambert replied. “if those carriers go down this was all for nothing.”

“Well what’s the plan?” His friend wasn’t happy being brought along, but he wasn’t about to try and argue his way out of it, and he was a damn fine companion because of that. “They’ll turn all their remaining guns on us soon as we get close, and I don’t wanna be lookin’ down the barrel of that railgun.”

“That’s it!” Lambert exclaimed. “What? What’s it?”

“We don’t have to take it out, just the railgun, without it they’ll be sitting ducks.”

“There weapon systems are losing power,” Alice confirmed. “They’re directing all remaining reserves to the railgun. The Lieutenant is right, the carriers can disengage safely if we can disable it.”

“We’re doing it,” Lambert said. He watched his speed indicator tick up. Three thousand kilometres per hour, four, five. The destroyer had a massive head start, gently spinning anti-clockwise as it barrelled through the nebula, but Lambert pushed the corvette further than he’d ever had before, the hull around him beginning to shake with turbulence.

He pulled the corvette up alongside the ship, its hull taking up an entire half of his canopy, slowly inching away as they gained more speed on it. His speed warnings were going off, but he shut them down with a click of a button.

“Closer, Cap!” Carl said. “PDC’s don’t have a shot!” “Fuck, Alice help me out!” Lambert growled, pulling the

flightstick to the right. “don’t let me crash us!” Even the tiniest

adjustments at these speeds could send them colliding with the ship,

Lambert watching the cracks in his canopy start to spread as the ship strained against the monumental forces at work.

An unfamiliar weight tugged at the ship, like that of an auto- pilot taking control for a landing. It was Alice, running hundreds more calculations than Lambert could ever hope to do, changing their angle and plotting a more efficient route up the ship. Their speed continued to climb, Lambert pushed into the chair like there was a mammoth standing on his chest, even moving his fingers took a tremendous effort.

They were barely turning, and yet his HUD flashed excessive g warnings at him, his vision narrowing with darkness. He could just make out the friendly tags of the Balokarid carriers on the tac view, hanging back from the fighting all this time, but still the target all along.

“I see it!” Carl growled, Lambert likewise spotting the railgun a moment later. It was coming up on their right, the giant barrel aimed dead ahead. Each rod along the muzzle was packed with little nodules that glowed blue, evenly distributed along the barrel, forming a thick seam between them where a giant slug of tungsten could be seen, ready to fire.

The PDC’s opened up, their familiar rumbling coursing through the corvette. The first burst went wide, but the second did not. They cut a clean swath between the housing and the barrel, sending the readied slug and its magnetic rails careening into the void. The deadly weapon had caused so much trouble, and it had been destroyed in just a few scant seconds.

Lambert pulled them away, relief enveloping him as the weight on his chest gently lifted as he reduced their speed. The destroyer’s crew seemed to have given up, their reverse thrusters firing as they neutered their momentum. Lambert could see tags popping up around the carriers, scrambling their reserve craft, some dozen human and alien attack ships vectoring this way. The cavalry had arrived, if a little late.

“They know they’re done,” Carl said. “I can see escape pods.”

Through his camera, he could make out reinforced, one-man pods jettisoning from the belly of the destroyer, their backward thrusters igniting to bring them to idle. There were tens of them, falling like raindrops as the destroyer sputtered smoke from several places, gently listing as its engines switched off.

“I’ve still got a missile left, and you’ve got a bit of ammo in your PDC’s,” Lambert mused. “A lucky shot to their reactor might finish the job.”

“-ambert? One-six, hold your fire,” a voice garbled through the radio. It was Mezul, her IFF tag appearing on his render. “The fight is over, your Captain calls off the attack, the UEC is surrendering.”

“But we’ve got them right where we want them,” Lambert replied. “it’s not over just yet.”

“Lambert,” Mezul said. “you’ve done it, you’ve kept your word

and the day is won. Enough blood has spilled this day.”

“What’s a little more, then?” he replied. “these guys were about to throw themselves at your carriers, Mez, even when they knew it was over. They don’t know when to quit, so let’s show them how.”

“You’re only saying this because you think you hate them.” “Of course I hate them, why wouldn’t I?” He could feel himself

getting defensive, but he pushed on. “You’ve seen what they’re like, they have no morals, no standards, they don’t give a damn about anything.”

“Then do not share in their views,” Mezul replied. “When we met, you made me realise that not all humans were the same, and you’ve only proved that to me time and again. You think killing them will help erase them from your past, the fact you were once one of them brings you much guilt, but you don’t have to carry that burden. You aren’t like them at all, and do you know why?”

He didn’t answer, just listened.

“Because I couldn’t ever love such a hateful person, that’s not who I am, and that’s not who you are either. Be better than them,

Lambert, just… be better. That’s all I ask.”

More escape pods ejected from the destroyer, their thrusters levelling them out to float around the ship like bugs, at his mercy. Lambert blinked, watching as Mezul’s ship creeped into view,

looking towards her ship’s canopy and knowing that she was looking back.

Her speech had certainly moved him in more ways than one, the man looking between the pods and the missile launch button on his armrest as he considered. After a few moments, he sighed, switching back to the ship-channel.

“Forget what I said, Carl,” he muttered, his friend replying in the affirmative as he switched to the general-band. “Attention

Confederate survivors, I’m activating my beacon, direct your pods to

me if you can, I can hold maybe three of you.”

He switched on his beacon, asking Alice if they had enough room in the cargo bay to take in a few survivors. “Of course, sir, there should be handcuffs in one of those crates, according to our

manifest.”

“I’ll bring them into the medbay,” Carl said. “make sure they don’t cause no trouble.”

“Thank you, Lambert,” Mezul radioed in, coughing towards the end in a way that came off as more than just a reflexive thing.

“No,” he said. “Thank you.”

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