SDNW4 Story Thread 2

[Force Lord]

Nova-class Dreadnought Blackest Night, 3rd Centrality Fleet
Blackagar Sector, The Centrality
Unreal Time

The 3rd Fleet was being made ready for dispatch to the Shinran rendevous point when the following message was received.

Code: Select all

CENTRAL STAR NAVY GENERAL STAFF TO 3RD FLEET COMMAND

DISPATCH TO SHINRA SUSPENDED. FLEET TO STAND DOWN AND AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS. DECISION MADE IN CENTRUM AFTER PARTY COUNCIL RESORTED TO THE 'BATTLE OF THE CHOICES' AS ALLOWED BY PARTY TRADITION. THAT IS ALL.

A similar message was sent to the 400 million-strong ground force that was also ready to leave to Shinra.

In all, some were relieved, while others were disappointed. But everyone knew that the result of a "Battle of the Choices" was inalterable, due to its nature. Everyone, howeve, was willing to pay good money to see who literally brawled this time.

---

Result: No reinforcement for the First Armada and the ground forces sent to Shinra, at least for now.

As for the "Battle of the Choices", it's basically a (not commonly used) mechanism in the Centralist Party which allowed a way out of political gridlock. Basically, two opposing factions would chose one of the strongest out of them each, and these two would duke it out to decide which position would be the one decided by the Dictator. Killing is of course not allowed, for one the rules is "if one dies, both die". If the Dictator already made a choice but was not powerful enough to enforce it, he or she may end up having to partake in a "Battle of the Choices" to either fufill his or her wish or be forced to accept the position of the opposing side. A Dictator that kills cannot be killed due to the importance his or her position, but ends up losing 'the argument' by default, and may also lose a bit of political influence. No Dictator has so far lost a "Battle of the Choices", nor killed the opponent during one, due to the stakes being so high, as well as the normally high level of ESP a Dictator usually posesses.

Of course, a "Battle of the Choices" is only made if the opposing sides cannot outmaneuver each other or are unable to use less ethical methods like assasination.

[Kartr_Kana]

Sorry its so short and so long in coming, I had thought it was going to be significantly more involved than this.



Bridge of the HCNV Steady, Morgan-class Corvette, several light hours away from Chimera Station

For a moment Lt. Commander Stephanie i Soban was caught flat footed. Nothing at all in her training, nor in 34 years of living in the militaristic atmosphere of Kiith Soban had prepared her for the sheer flippancy of this “O'Leary” character. “Guess it is true: everyone from those crackpot countries is madder than a hatter!” She thought to herself.

Keying the mic Stephanie began, “Captain O'Leary, please transmit your course data, crew list, cargo manifest and state your intentions. Also, you may call me as Lieutenant Commander.”

A few moments later the Steady dropped from the hyperspatial realms and lit her massive real-space thrusters. Strapped into her command couch Stephanie let the neural link wash over her. She could feel the minds of her gunners as they locked the main battery on the unknown freighter. Secondary batteries and point defense weapons scanned their slices of sky for possible hidden enemies, and the Steady's aggressive-aggressive scanners turned their baleful glare on that strange vessel and her impertinent commander.

As she waited for transmission from her unknown contact, Stephanie allowed herself to chuckle mentally. “Popcorn, of all the absurd lame brained things, popcorn...” One of the advantages of the man-machine interface, used by Hiigarans, was to control the “clock speed.” A person could seemingly slow time by speeding up their perceptions, it was a trick used daily across the Hiigaran Control Zone, but without interfacing with incredibly powerful processors one could only “slow time” so much. However Lt. Cmdr Stephanie was linked with some extremely powerful processors indeed.

With cold little Egohan feet running down her spine, Stephanie sped up her thoughts as far as the ship's computer would allow. **Popcorn—movie watching—the Swiftsure blew up a ship—fireworks--watching fireworks and eating popcorn—they're observing our perimeter—they took their time replying—data gathering and analysis more important than responding to hails—high probability that these are spies—must engage and capture for interrogation.**

Bringing her mind back to a pace that allowed her to communicate with her crew, Stephanie began cracking orders. Even as she began, her sensor officers began to radiate confusion and consternation. <Crew stand by to engage contact “O'Leary,” capture intact of paramount importance. Comm contact Command and inform them we have a possible Mata Hari and are moving to secure for questioning. CommScan what's wrong?>

In response to her last query, the sensor technicians began to show her conflicting readouts. The ship was a standard freighter, but drive emissions suggested wear that was more in line with a military ship or expensive yacht. The ship appeared to be freighter sized, but focused scans were returning ghosts and echos that suggested an expensive ECM suite. Everything was inconclusive by itself, but taken together it only reinforced Stephanie's conclusion that she was dealing with spies.

Stephanie was eager to close with and capture this ship and this “O'Leary” lady, but hyperspace conditions were too rough to safely make a micro jump. Best then to proceed like nothing was amiss, but her crew was wired and ready to go. At her command the Steady would surge forward and lock her grappling beams on to the target and drag it back to base, blanketed in barrage ECMs. Once there the Marines would intern the crew and HIints would comb the ship to find out who it belonged to and what her mission was.

Operations Center, Chimera Station
Balcora system, Sector Y-19

Back aboard Chimera Station, Admiral Krosof watched the holofeeds closely. He didn't really care about the Swiftsure's engagement. That was a fairly routine matter that the watch officer was more than capable to deal with. His concern was with the Steady and her strange contact, here was a puzzle, a puzzle that seemed perfectly in line with the bizarreness that characterized the Royal Kingdom of Scarlet and the Midnight Confederation.

Thinking about those two bizarre nations, Krosof was reminded of a boy he met while his family was trading out that way. He wondered what Warren was up to these days, and chuckled at the memories of the pranks they used to play before the great harbor ship had moved on. Warren had tried so hard to explain the two nations, but never could come up with a satisfactory explanation. The idea of a stable and sane government had intrigued his playmate, and Krosof remembered how Warren had often holed up in the habor ship's library reading. Everything from the founding of the Daimiid, to inter-clan politics and maneuvering.

Krosof's musings were interrupted by a sudden shout from one of the comm officers. On a command deck in the Hiigaran Navy, verbal shouts were fairly rare, the BattleNet allowed instant or near instant dissemination of information and, when too strong to be filtered, surprise. Admiral Krosof felt the information blossom in his mind and without hesitation began to issue rapid fire orders to be transmitted to the Steady. Due to the distance, increasingly bad hyperspace conditions in that direction and the fact the Steady was no longer in hyperspace, transmission lag was now a problem.

By the time Chimera Station had received Lt. Cmdr. Stephanie's transmission, she was already closing on her target. Even with the tremendous power that could be put into a transmission, it might still arrive too late to stop a diplomatic incident. Krosof ground his teeth in frustration, eyes locked on the plot, as he waited to see the outcome. Yes, the freighter was probably some sort of scout or spy sent by one of the two factions, but Balcora was a fairly open system and his command had nothing to hide. If one of those crazy nations wanted to send a ship poking about that wasn't a really large concern. After all, this was the sort of cat and mouse games they played all the time over there. His people didn't understand what kinds of games were played in the so called “Red vs Blue” space. Nor could someone from there possibly understand how utterly serious and simple things were on this side of the Outback, so close to the Karlacks and Collectors.

Admiral Krosof shook his head despairingly, and wondered what his old friend was doing at this moment. “If only that crazy Naismith could see me now: Admiral in the Hiigaran fleet doing his best to keep an RvB freighter from getting blown up.”

OOC: Will Deep Purple and the HCNV spark an international incident? And Director Naismith and Admiral Krosof were friends in their youth, wonder what the Director is going to think when he reads the report?

[Kartr_Kana]

Thamasa Sector, Shinra Republic

You couldn't miss them: four impossibly huge vessels plowing their way through hyperspace with the slow grace reserved for the mightiest creatures. The lead vessel, almost 40km long, was the Makaan, flagship of the Hiigaran Clans Navy and the largest mothership class vessel ever built by that nation. Drawn up in an arrowhead formation were his three consorts, the Zora Soban, the Ylene Hraal and the Adrana Sagald, each a mothership class vessel of the Karan S'jet-class.

Clustered around these mighty ships, and utilizing eddies generated by their massive bulk to maximize fuel efficiency, were the ships Hiigara was committing to destroy MEH. No less than two full Battle Groups and an Escort Group along with a Special Task Force. This was the largest military force to have ever departed the Hiigaran Control Zone and she sailed with the purpose of destroying the perfidious and irrational MEH.

Grand Admiral Devile had a grandfather who hailed from the Federated Ascendancy, and a mother who was Anglian born, though he himself had been born into and raised Kiith Soban. Supreme commander of the Hiigaran Navy, Grand Admiral Devile had been detached especially for this mission by direct order of the Daimiid, who wanted to show the Hiigaran commitment. This also had the advantage of having a commanding officer who would be the equal of any commander present.

Stalking out of the lift, Grand Admiral Devile had one question for his bridge officers. “Navigation ETA to the staging grounds?”

“We are four hours out sir, but long range sensors have picked up something interesting.” The petite young woman at the navigation station replied. Without being prompted, the young man seated to her right began explaining.

“Sir, we picked up weapons fire in the Corel system. Initial spectrography indicates warp cannons and lance batteries. A second series of flashes were detected a little later, these were faint enough to indicate they may have been fired on the opposite side of the system.” The young man easily manipulated the holotank to display his readings. “CommScan confirms Byzantine warships in the Corel system and has picked up fragmented reports of Centralist vessels in the system as well.”

Grand Admiral Devile grimaced slightly, “Sadly this kind of action fits right in with both nations psych profiles. The Imperium isn't happy unless they're wrecking something and the Centrality is too inexperienced and clueless to realize they're doing something stupid. At least they're not shooting each other.”

At that moment Grand Admiral Devile's chief of staff stepped up with a dataslate. “Small mercies sir. Here are the current readiness reports for the fleet. We have already contacted Grand Admiral Pellaeon and informed him that we will be running a little late. We were forced to slow as we approached the 'traffic jam' caused by the Byzantines. However, Navigation has informed me we are clearing the edge of that and can resume full speed towards the staging area.”

“Thank you Commander, I will be in my ready room going over these reports. Carry on.” With that, the Grand Admiral disappeared from the bridge and the atmosphere on deck relaxed considerably.

“Almost thought he was going to ride out the last six hours up here Cassii, boy that would've been dull.” ScanTechneer 1st Class Lt. Poalkan grinned at his shipmate and occasional liaison.

“Shh keep it down Cott, his chief of staff is still here.” The petite navigator, Ionaa, whispered, but there was a smile on her face.

“Not much to do up here right now Io.” Cott waved to his display to make his point. “We've got a clear shot to the staging grounds, now that we've cleared that Imperial entanglement. You've got the fleet humming along happily, so not much for you to do either.”

“Well what's that blip way back there on the edge of the sensors?”

With a mental nudge the image zoomed in on a series of blips hovering at the edge of the sensor bubble. At that range the only thing showing were the most powerful emissions a ship emitted, but even from that little data an experienced sensor officer could make an educated guess.

“That's easy, see the spike here and the cascade shimmer here,” Cott started picking out bits and pieces of the emission spectrum. Expanding the plot and pulling up profiles stored in the ships computers. “These are distinctive to the Anglian Royal Navy, though I haven't seen a signature that strong ever.”

Cott zoomed in even closer, committing every detail to memory, both his and the ships. Suddenly engrossed in his work, he didn't notice the little smile that was playing around Ionaa's lips. She kept watching him as part of her brain interfaced with the ships computer to keep an eye on the hyperspace trajectory. She wanted more from their relationship, but this was the military and if they got married they wouldn't be allowed to serve in the same fleet, let alone the same ship. Plus she didn't think he was willing to settle down just yet, too much fire and drive to let that happen. Though that was one of the things she loved about hi.

Suddenly Cott sat up and spun to face her, his eyes bright with excitement. “That has to be a Royal Sovereign! Found an old profile for the Royal Sovereign that was close, but not quite right. We haven't seen one of those in years. Plus every ship has it's own distinct signature, so between age, refits and the possibility it isn't the Royal Sovereign, I'm sure its a Royal Sovereign... What?”

Ionaa was giggling a little as Cott's excitement caused him to run on. “Oh nothing, you're just adorable when you get excited.”

“Oh, haha guess I did get a little carried away, didn't I?” At her nod he continued, “Well it looks like the Anglians won't be more than a few hours late and if the Byzantines get their medieval arses in motion, the Anglians will most likely show up with their customary punctuality. Not a moment early, not a moment late.”

So the fleets bound for the destruction of the MEH converged on Shinran space. When the Hiigaran Motherships finally arrived, the spectators were treated to a light show of hyperspace. Massive doors were seemingly torn in reality as the colossal ships dropped into the staging area. Two of the four Motherships were assigned to support the Hiigaran element, the other two were going to act as supply depots for some of the other nations. It was for, as the Bragulans would say, bragstroika and glasnot.

[Force Lord]

Thamasa Sector, Shinra Republic
Command Bridge, Stormfront-class Ultracarrier Hornet's Nest
IN GODDAMN UNREAL TIME

So many warships...when was the last time a force this big was amassed?, thought Admiral Fedorer Groven as he watched from the viewports of his ship. He could already see the ships from a few nations present, though at present they were doing nothing of note. The Centralite fleet itself was busy doing Armada-wide system checks, to ensure efficiency. The troop transports carrying the ground troops were expected to arrive any moment now. For now, Groven was busy trying to complete his latest hobby: the Rubik's Cube!



"Gah! Blasted contraption! Get yourself in order!"

To make sure no one snuck in at the wrong moment, the Admiral made sure the door was locked. If some loudmouth officer found out about his hobby, he would never hear the end of it...

---

Command Bridge, Nova-class Dreadnought Steel Fist

When the hologram of Dirad Kierger appeared all of a sudden inside the Dreadnought's command bridge, everyone knew something was up.

"Sir, what a surprise. Is there news?", asked Grand Admiral Noslen Yeslah.

"Grand Admiral, hate to break it for you, but there will be no 3rd Fleet coming around to reinforce you. The ground guys can also kiss their 400 million reinforcements goodbye. I'm determined to cap the Centrality's commitment due to financial reasons. You all have to make do."

The Grand Admiral was stunned. Didn't he hear that the whole issue about reinforcements was creating deadlock inside the Party?

"Forgive my boldness, sir, but may I inquire as to how this decision was reached. As far as I know, no consensus was happening soon."

"Then you missed out the latest Battle of the Choices, Grand Admiral. Pretty tough stuff. We're still cleaning up at the Congress Building."

"A Battle of the Choices?! When was the last time this happened?"

"A few decades ago, actually. Back when Enduvos needed to convince a pretty recalcirant faction in the Council that we had to sign that Non-Agression Pact with the Eoghans and the Nova Atlanteans. He literally browbeated the then-Secretary of War into compliance."

"Ah, that was quite a fight. Who brawled this time?"

"Well, it was actually a full-on catfight. The Watchwoman of Foxa Sector fought with the Secretary of Economics. Needless to say, the latter won. Won't tell you the details, but I know there are videos in CentralTube already."

The Grand Admiral laughed. "I'm sure I may watch the videos soon, sir."

"I know you will. Well, has there been progress in the Coalition?"

This time the Grand Admiral frowned. "A meeting was arranged between the commanding officers of the respective national contingents, to be done in a few days. I hope it will be tommorrow."

"And the Armada?"

"Well, aside from placing ourselves in our private little corner of space, there hasn't been much activity. I'm still waiting for our billion-plus troops."

"Sounds boring. Bear it, Grand Admiral, the games are just around the corner."

"I will sir," the Grand Admiral nodded.

The holo-image of Kierger dissipated.

"Sir, we're detecting contacts hypering out near our forces. They check out. Must be the ground-pounders," said one of the communications technicians.

"Just in time. Inform them to keep close to the Armada."

And hopefully the supply situation will be tolerable...

[White Haven]

Co-written with Kartr

We Were Never Here
Sublight in shoal space near the Balcora system
Moderately Unreal Time

"My my... someone's a bit stiff over there," Jennifer O'Leary commented with a wry twist to her lips. She lapsed into crunching-punctuated silence for a short period, finishing off the last of her popcorn before setting the disposable bowl aside and straightening up, "Well, I suppose we'll have to respond. Mister Orlov," The navigator looked up with a surprised expression on his face as his name was called, "Cook me up the most nonsensical hyperspace flight plan you can imagine. Buzz the Karlacks a few times, made ridiclously-tangled knots that'll make this 'Lieutenant Commander Stephanie i Soban' think she's seeing triple. Mister Cunningham, cook us up a crew roster...hmm...let's be Sixth Cruiser Squadron characters, shall we? Toss in a mathematically-impossible cargo manifest while you're at it.

Grins were multiplying across the cramped bridge by the time O'Leary called for an open mic again, speaking in a calm, serious tone that carefully masked the giggle threatening to burst though her control.

"Lieutenant Commander, my apologies. You'll find the requested information attached on a side-channel. With regards to our intentions, subsequent to carrying out our attached flight plan, we intend to violate the sovereignty of the independent state of Poland and in so doing, touch off the Second World War. O'Leary clear."

As the transmission ended, laughter finally burst free from several throats, not least of which a hysterically-gleeful cackling echoing through the open hatch leading back into the rest of the crew spaces. In the noisy environment, it was hard to determine exactly who spoke, but the words only drove Jennifer into a more intense fit of giggles.

"You're mad, you know."

HCNV Steady
Sublight in shoal space near the Balcora system

The data packet transmitted from the We Were Never Here was quickly deconstructed and analyzed by the combined power of the Steady's main computer and experienced naval officers. As the data was quickly shown to be implausible if not down right impossible, Stephanie's face grew into a rictus. This mad woman had given her the perfect cover to close and conduct a physical search. “Wonder how funny O'Leary will find it when she's cooling her heels in the brig on charges of espionage,” she wondered.

Before she could reply, she heard a CommTechneer comment to one of his friends upon the oddity of so many crewers sharing the same names as characters from his kids favorite holodrama. Of course this only confirmed to Stephanie that these were spies, or at least smugglers, trying to use false identies to slip past the Hiigaran patrols.

Keying the mic she replied, “Captain O'Leary, there seems to be some incongruities with your stated cargo, crew identities and flight plan. Due to these inconsistencies and the proximity to Karlack infested space stated in your flight plane, I must regretfully order you to stand by for boarding.”

Taking a moment to ensure that her ship was still on course for these jokesters and her crew was standing by for action, Stephanie continued. “We will have to conduct a preliminary inspection to verify that you are not carrying any Karlack organisms and that you and your crew have not been infested. Once complete, we will escort you to Chimera Station, where you will undergo a routine contraband search before being allowed to continue on to Poland. How Copy?”

Stephanie smiled at that last bit, she figured that O'Leary was just being a wise ass and didn't actually know that on the far side of the Hiigaran Control Zone was an independent system named, New Poland. Ruled by a constitutional monarchy, the inhabitants of New Poland were mostly emigrants from the League of Free Stars who, fed up the ruling class, had colonized their own system, which was a nominal protectorate of the Diamiid.

<Stand by for barrage jamming. Guns I want firing solutions on that ship, disable only, fire only on my command.> The commands and intent were broadcasted into the BattleNet. Once the Steady was in tractor range of the We Were Never Here, all hell was going to break loose for these ridiculous pranksters.

We Were Never Here

"Fair enough, Lieutenant Commander, we aren't going anywhere, by all means stop in. I'm afraid we've run through our ready supply of popcorn, but I'm sure we can scrape together some coffee, perhaps a bagel or three." O'Leary cut the transmission again with a chuckle, leaning back and lacing her fingers together behind her head.

"Here they come, let's see wh--"

Whatever O'Leary expected to see, it likely wasn't her own knees approaching at speed. Oh, the idea was to provoke a response from the Hiigarans, to see how they'd react to something outside their comfort zone. And this was certainly relevant information, some part of her noted as her head snapped forwards and restraint straps dug into her shoulders and across her chest.

'Reaction' amounted to 'Massive Overreaction.'

O'Leary bounced back against her padded seat with a grunt as the grappling beams yanked We Were Never Here to a halt relative to the approaching Hiigaran corvette. A surprised yell, muffled somewhat by the distance to the engine room, sounded through the open hatch, one that ended in two simultaneous grunts. Heavily Russian swearing rose from the astronavigational station.

The incongruously-pale Rosalita Martinez was the first to report anything with any coherence, her voice the clipped monotone of a professional dropping into Crisis Mode, "Grappling beams, strong ones at that. Could try to break out, might even succeed, but we'd be sitting ducks for their guns. No transversal, point-blank range, sluggish accel at first. Ma'am?"

"Negative, Martinez. Keep the engines cold, no point in fighting a warship at this rage. Mister Kramer, I presume we're jammed?" O'Leary's words were similarly clear, although their tone betrayed tension and strain as the pilot's did not.

"To a fare-thee-well. We'd need at least a heavy cruiser's comm gear to punch through that much EWAR at this range."

"Affirmative. Alright people, sit tight and prepare to be boarded. We can't exactly reply to our hostess at this point, so just relax and prepare. This was always a chance, although it was an outside one at worst...I doubt Operations will be at all pleased to find our neighbors on such a hair trigger." O'Leary fell silent for a few seconds, mulling options over in her head, then winced visibly and twisted around to look back through the open hatch, "Cam!"

After a few seconds and a low groan, a reply filtered back, "Jen?"

"Find Miss Vaughn and tell her not to kill the boarding party."

Cam shouted back, "Understood, Miss O'Leary."

Back in the engine room, Penelope Vaughn and Cameron Underwood were caught in a tangle of limbs where the tall, well-muscled woman had caught a flying Cam before he could strike a bulkhead at a truly awkward angle. They'd both ended up in a heap at the base of the bulkhead and were still in the process of untangling from one another. Cam turned his head towards the amused smirk on the face very, very close to his own and said in a much quieter voice, "Penny?"

"Yes, Cam?"

"Don't kill the boarding party."

"Well, since it was you who asked..."

Deep Purple facility
Netheril system
Tethyr sector

Warren Naismith's face hardened visibly as the upload telemetry from We Were Never Here cut off with vicious finality and no warning. No one was there to see it, and if anyone had been, they would have likely found some excuse to be elsewhere in very, very short order. One finger stabbed at the console that normally lay artfully concealed just beneath his 'wooden desk,' opening a secure intercom line.

"This is Director Naismith. Prepare my personal ship, and inform Sergeant Costanza that he and his squad are to meet me in my hangar in five minutes. My launch is to go unnoticed and unremarked by anyone and everyone outside this facility." Naismith's words were delivered in a grim tone, each syllable dropping into the open mic like lead weights into a pond.

A stunned silence met his words for a bare few seconds, followed by a hurried, "Yes, Director!"

Without bothering to say anything further, Naismith rose from behind his desk, straightening his shirt and adjusting his collar pins before heading out the door of his office. Rumor being the only method of communication faster than hypercomms, by the time he reached the hangar holding his personal craft, the techs performing final (extremely fast) preflight checks knew quite well a quite, quite frightening fact.

Naismith was angry.

Without a word, he gestured to the five men waiting in the subterranean hangar and pointed to the boarding ramp. Each one nodded sharply and fell in behind him, training large, sealed cargo containers on hover-pallets behind them.

Mystryl High Orbit
Netheril System
Tethyr Sector Warp Gate

A small ship, sleek, black, hard to see at the best of times, launched from the surface of Mystryl. It knifed through the atmosphere with barely a ripple, the sleek hull and sophisticated damping fields serving it well. It wasn't active stealth systems that made its passage unseen, however. Skywatch sensors were momentarily pointed in the wrong direction, distractions arose at opportune moments, a momentary lapse in navigational judgement almost made two ships queued for warp gate transit collide. The gate activated anyway, to a destination neither ship had requested, just in time for Naismith's ship to slip through and vanish en route to Hiigaran space. As an unarmed civilian vessel carrying no significant cargo, it easily passed local customs and set a course for the Balcora system, almost unnoticed.

[Siege]

USS Thunderball
Edges of Shinra Space



“I'm bored,” intoned Colonel Francisca Mazar dejectedly. "Bored, bored, bored." She lay on her bunk, staring at the roof of her captain's quarters, which sounded more regal than it really was considering the ship was a one-woman variant of the usual Spystar. There was nobody else aboard but the ship's CI, which predictably was the one to respond.

"I wish I had good news," said Bond, "but unfortunately I don't."

The colonel groaned. "No changes?"

"No changes whatsoever."

"Ugh." She got up off the bed. "When they said a spy's job was long periods of boredom punctured by brief moments of utter terror I didn't think I'd long for the damned terror."



The tiny stealth ship had been parked just outside of Shinra space for over a month now, hoping to make some observations of manoeuver and composition of the coalition flotilla, possibly gather some ELINT data – typical spy stuff the Star Force ship had done dozens of times before. The only difference was how far away they were operating from the K-Zone this time. Well, that and just how goddamn long it took the coalition to get its shit together. The Byzantines had arrived, that much was bleeding obvious, and the same was true for the Centrality. But from half the other nations believed to be involved in the budding anti-MEH operations, nary a whisper had been heard. That could be because their E-WAR was so good Thunderball couldn't pick them up from this far away, or it could be or because they were just slow as molasses at perfect zero. Considering how much noise large fleet formations tended to make, and how sensitive the spystar's detection gear was, Mazar was leaning toward the latter option. She thunked her head against the mirror. "I tell you Bond, if these people don't get their show on the road soon I'm going to lose it."

"Lose it, colonel?"

"It means, go crazy... nuts... insane... bonzo..." Each word was punctuated by a more forceful thunk of forehead against mirror. "No longer in possessions of one's faculties... three fries short of a Happy Meal... WACKO!"

"Whoa, hey, you seem a little stressed." The CI's voice took on a certain tone. "You should let off some steam."

The colonel rubbed her forehead and frowned. "What are you suggesting?"

"I think you know what I am suggesting." There was definitely a lascivious tone to the CompInt's voice now.

Mazar blushed. "We're on duty. It's against regulations."

"Well... Who would know?"

"That's a good point, actually." The colonel cracked a smile and boosted the bandwith on her implants. "I'll be in my bunk."

[Shroom Man 777]

“I just hope those bloaters didn’t see us when we were down planetside,” Talia thought out loud.

“Silly kitty!” the Bragulan on board chuckled again, before belching more smoke from his flaring nostrils. “You’ve seen the effectiveness of mighty Bragulan vegemite screens on sensor systems, in the exercises not even your Spaceforce’s scanners could penetrate -”

“Shipmistress!” Chiram cried, her holo-tank was flashing red and blaring out alerts. “The bloaters have turned on their active sensors, their ships are moving out! We’ve been detected!”

“Nya-”

“SHITS!” the Bragulan’s bellow echoed throughout the bridge, drowning out Shipmistress Talia’s ‘nyah!’

NO STEALTH, NO FAIL 2:
NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN


MEHN Diverticulitis



Master Ossuarius stood, or rather sat, in attention in the bridge. Ever since his daring interception of the ship carrying the Kiergy, whatever that was, he had been promoted personally by one of Goddess’ Sasha’s Saints - fashioned in her likeness - and given a higher rank that placed him in the bridge, directly under the captain’s command. Their captain too was promoted, but then sometime later the Goddess had suddenly changed her mind and rebuked them, because apparently they hadn’t successfully intercepted the right ship carrying the right Kiergy, whatever that was. The Saints decided to let them keep their promotions, but punished them by sending them on the worst assignment any tubby sailor of the MEHN could have. Escorting the dreary autonomous meat-machines of the Food Fleet on their mission to the Farthing Worlds.

“Captain, we’ve detected anomalous readings from the planet Lepus,” Ossuarius reported. He was a bridge officer now and answered directly to the captain. Normally, that would’ve been a great job as he would be in the higher echelons of the chain of command, but at the moment he preferred sulking in the fire control bays of the Diverticulitis with the ammunition-bots, because the particular captain he answered directly to was...

“I can see that, Ossus.” Captain Buck Ustra replied with an irritated tone of voice. “That whole upper-atmosphere-nuclear-detonation thing is a pretty big anomalous reading.”

“That’s Ossuarius, sir.” Master Ossuarius gritted his teeth. “And I meant that we’re detecting something anomalous inside the big anomalous upper-atmosphere-nuclear-detonation reading thing. It could be a stealth ship.”

“Or it could be nothing.” Captain Ustra said skeptically. “And if it was a stealth ship, then how did it get there? Don’t tell me it slipped by your scans, Master Ossus.”

Ossuarius gritted his teeth. Contrarian son of a -

“Well, don’t just stand there! Turn on our sensors, massive-aggressives online for a full power scan. It could be a stealth ship, for all we know,” Captain Buck Ustra admonished him. “We can’t get too complacent here.”

“Yes. Sir.” Ossuarius sighed as he went into the Metahive network and instructed a Singular Intellect to do as Captain Buck Ustra ordered. Between the four of them, they were the best men and machines the MEHN had to offer. Despite their differences, they had proven themselves months ago by shooting down an enemy stealth ship - even though it wasn’t the one carrying the Goddess’ Kiergy. Whatever that was.

The Diverticulitis wasn’t acting alone. It had an entire Food Fleet’s worth of slaughter-ships with it, and it could tap into their own sensor readings, and though individually inferior to the megacorvette’s own military-grade sensors, they made up for it in sheer quantity. The different readings from different angles were relayed through the Metahivemind and compiled by the specialist Singular Intellect and combined with the Diverticulitis’ own findings, creating a composite image via a synthetic gaping aperture sensorium.

“I found something!” Ossuarius announced. The Singular Intellect detected something consistent with previously observed sensor ghosts suspected to be cloaked stealth ships. While the MEHN had previously allowed such suspected contacts to go unmolested, recent events and dozens of nations suddenly declaring hostility towards the MEH had changed everything and now any suspected stealther was to be prosecuted by any and all anti-stealth warfare assets in the area. Moreover, this particular sensor anomaly was extremely similar to the one the Extraextremejustice, the Diverticulitis’ sister ship, had detected in its final moments. Ossuarius told his captain that much.

“It’s payback time!” Buck Ustra announced gleefully. At his command, the Diverticulitis began to advance towards the bogey leaving Lepus. “There’s no escape this time!”

“Wait, captain!” Ossuarius blurted out as the Singular Intellect alerted him of something else. “There’s something else!”

“What?!” Captain Ustra snapped back. “Just how many stealthers have you allowed to slip under your watch, anyway?”

“It’s not a stealther. It’s... it’s... I don’t know what it is and it’s coming from hyperspace!” Ossuarius shouted in panic as his sensor readings went off the charts.



“Oh my Goddess what in space hell is that!?” Buck Ustra babbled. Radiological alarms were blaring throughout the bridge, the Metahivemind was full of chatter and the Singular Intellects were having a conniption. He could almost feel the radiation searing through his skin and lipid tissues.

“Radiation patterns match those of a Bragulan gunskimmer, sir!” Ossuarius read the Singular Intellect’s report by rote. He had no idea who a gunskimmer was or what Bragulans were, or was it the other way around. “What do we do?!”

“Move to engage the intruder!” Buck Ustra decided. It was a hard decision, a tough choice, but he was the captain of the ship and he had to make it.

“Which intruder?!” Ossuarius whined.

“BOTH INTRUDERS!” Buck Ustra shouted.

“HOW?!” Ossuarius shouted back.

“I don’t know!” Ustra stamped his feet. “Just do something, Ossus! Anything!”

“We can only pursue one of them. Which will it be?” Ossuarius was reading out what the Singular Intellects were saying.

“Uhh... go after the stealther! We can’t let it escape!” Buck pointed at the earlier target they had detected over Lepus. “It had something to do with that upper atmospheric nuke, I can feel it in my fats!”

“Yes, sir.” Ossuarius agreed. “The stealther near Lepus might escape. The gunskimmer could be a distraction.”

“WAIT! NO!” Buck Ustra disagreed. “Or the stealther could be the distraction and that sea skimmer could be the real threat!”

“Gunskimmer,” Ossuarius corrected him. Goddamn contrarian son of a-

“I don’t care! Go after the biggest one! That one! Now!” Buck bawled and pointed at the gunskimmer’s enormous radiation signature.

---

HSF Kitty Surprise



The Blade stealth cruiser was momentarily illuminated by so many MEH-spec massive-aggressive sensors converging on its vicinity, but just as suddenly as they turned on they were shut off as the MEHN vessels went and pursued their new target.

“Bragulan recon gunskimmer dropping out of hyper! Radiological levels in the entire AU are spiking!” Chiram cheered as the bragshipped arrived right in the nick of time to save their tails. There was a collective ‘nyah’ of relief in the bridge as the holos showed that the MEH was turning its attention to the gunskimmer, which was promptly zooming and booming through the system and leading the bloaters on a merry chase. “MEHN assets are moving to pursue the skimmer. From the looks of it, they don’t have a chance of catching it.”

“Good. Then it’s time for us to make our escape. We’ll wait for the bloaters to chase the skimmer far enough, and as soon as we’re in the clear we make for the hyperlimit,” Talia said from her command dais.

“Wow, the bloaters are giving that gunskimmer a real go. They’ve launched fighters at it, and it’s launching decoy/recon-drones towards all the Farthing Worlds. The fighters are pursuing the drones too. The bloaters must think the gunskimmer’s multiplied. Now the gunskimmer and the drones are broadcasting speeches!” Chiram reported. The catgirls on board the Kitty Surprise watched the spectacle with baited breath.

“Put the speeches on!” the lone Bragulan on board roared. After a moment’s hesitation, Chiram nodded and patched the speeches through, and all the Chamarrans on board groaned quietly. The only one who enjoyed the speeches was the lone Bragulan.

The Kitty Surprise slunk towards the edge of the system as quietly as it could. Their tense and ponderous withdrawal was marked by nervous chewing of manicured fingernails by the Chamarrans, the finishing of several cartons of vodka cigarettes for the Bragulan, and more and more speeches from the gunskimmer’s transmission.

“Shipmistress, we’ve reached a safe distance from the bloaters!” Chiram reported eagerly.

“Alright. This shtick just got real!” Talia declared. Stealth had gotten them so far, but now the MEH knew what they looked like. It was time to change strategies. “Deactivate the cloak. Engage the fusion thrusters. Maximum speed. The second we reach the hyperlimit, we blow this joint. Everyone with me?”

“Nyah!” the Chamarrans chorused.

“Da!” the Bragulan roared.

“Right. Make it so, Number Two.” Talia nodded. “Punch. That. Shits.”

The Kitty Surprise dropped its cloak and broke for the hyperlimit as fast as it could. Just as it did so, the gunskimmer likewise dumped a salvo of subspace depth charges that detonated behind it just as it made its hyperjump - the nuclear mines sent radiation at the right angles of reality, irradiating hyperspace and thus obscuring the gunskimmer’s precise escape route.

With their quarry gone, the MEHN vessels and slaughter-ships turned to pursue the Kitty Surprise, but it was too late. The second it touched the hyperlimit, the Kitty was gone, vanishing to parts unknown.

[White Haven]

Anti-spinward and Rimward of RKS space

The assassin had a head start, if he'd even come this way. Accordingly, the Royal Navy task forces pursuing what might or might not be him ran their drives hot, cut their hyper transitions close to the margins, and, while they had the concentrated forces to do so, didn't pause much for subtlety. That would come later.

When clues of their quarry's passage would require more finesse to weasel out.

When sheer distance made the passage of Royal Navy units something to remark on.

And when, ultimately, sheer dispersion meant the twin Patrol Task Forces of the Royal Kingdom of Scarlet Navy didn't have the weight of metal to push the issue with little podunk single-system polities.

Early into the journey, the two task forces parted ways, one angling Rimward beneath Haruhiist space, the other sweeping around that state's opposite border. As time and distance flashed by with no confirmation of their quarry's passage, the task forces began to spread out and ultimately split up, smaller and smaller squadrons of warships splitting apart to cover more and more territory. More and more, RSIS teams quietly moved in while their supporting squadrons waited well beyond the system's hyper limit.

Still nothing concrete, nothing beyond ships of the same rough type passing through.

Nothing new for police work. Manhunts suck.
___________

Ruiz's eyes narrowed slightly as, for the first time, the image of the assassin pulled from a dead man's memories drew a reaction other than a shrug or an utterly transparent attempt to milk the question for money. A long chain of he-said, she-might-knows had lead Ruiz and his team to an upscale restaurant, one with all manner of privacy features built discretely into the decor. Sonic baffles and white-noise generators supplemented a floor plan cleverly constructed to minimize echoes. There was even a low-level null field over the entire establishment, intended to block telepathic surveillance. Ruiz had pushed it gently upon entering then smiled to himself as he entered, secure in the knowledge that he was strong enough to work past it if necessary.

Telepathy hardly solves all problems, though, and this one looked to be one for simple charisma and police work. Besides, overpower the field and someone, somewhere was sure to notice.

Ruiz let a smile slide lazily across his face at the well-concealed reaction to the picture, well-hidden, but not well enough. Surprise colored the bald man, well-dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, followed by an expression of wary respect at the investigator's ability to read him. Ruiz's smile widened to a toothy grin, crinkling eyes robbing it of any predatory context it may have had as he spoke without waiting for an answer, "I see you recognize this man. I am quite interested in finding him."

The man gave an answering smile, albeit one with a slightly-cruel smirk ingrained in it, and shook his head. He leaned forwards across the table, reaching out to tap at the pistol held in the assassin's hand, "Not him. That. Just so we're clear before we talk price. I'd hate to have any...dissatisfied customers." He spread his arms in a dramatic shrug, "So much nicer to have this conversation ahead of time, rather than have to extract the fee after the fact because everyone was vague, yes?"

The implicit threat wasn't at all lost on Ruiz. On any other case, the so-far-unspoken price tag would have been problematic, but on this one? Edward Finnigan II's anger and loss had opened purse strings wider than the RSIS agent had ever dreamed. He nodded once, letting his broad grin soften to a more businesslike expression as he responded, "I may not be as...eager, in that case, but this man's weapon is also something I wish to find." It wouldn't do to look too eager and spook the information broker into clamming up. The man named a figure. Ruiz pretended to be shocked and countered. Back and forth the numbers danced, carefully narrowing at a proper rate and to a proper value. Drive too hard a bargain, cause anger, don't drive a hard enough one, look too desperate, cause fear.

With a price arrived at, Ruiz tilted his head aside slightly and let the warmth leach from his smile for a few seconds, "I won't mess about with half-now, half-later demands or such nonsense. My money is good, and neither one of us wants to walk away from this day a loser. Perhaps more to the point, both us us want to walk away from this day and wake up tomorrow." With that, friendliness suffused his expression as he reached up and made a few hand signals. Across the restaurant, another diner pulled out a pouch, removed several bills from it, and flagged one of the waiters over. Shortly thereafter, the pouch was delivered to Ruiz's booth, where the RSIS agent waved elaborately towards the broker, "Your fee, my friend. By all means, count it, I would hate for there to be any...misunderstanding."

Again, the message was clear. Up until Ruiz's signal, his compatriot had just been another customer, one apparently distracted by the pretty redhead draped all over him. Who else was working with this unknown?

After a moment of visible consternation, Ruiz was met by a nod, stiff, almost formal, the gesture remarkably akin to a fencer acknowledging a touch. "You'll understand that I haven't seen this weapon myself. I have...people." A wry smile tugged at the information broker's lips as he nodded towards the figure of Ruiz's now-outed backup. "In any case, I have a file on the comings and goings to and from a specific building just outside the city. One of them was carrying a weapon like that. Sadly, I do not know what it is, and if I did, it would likely cost you more. It struck my people as unusual, so it was brought to my attention. Good help is priceless. I also do not know who owns the building, and that...is information as well. I know who owns every building in this city and quite a bit more besides. And I do not know this. Whoever you are looking for...they are powerful."

He raised a hand to forestall any interjection from Ruiz, "No need for threats, we have a perfectly good understanding. A man has to know how much greed is too much, and selling out customers, particularly ones who have made such...demonstrations... Well, it is bad for your health. Now...documentation, I believe, is in order."

A few seconds later and several pictures along with a map were transferred from one pad to the other, the broker pocketing the adapter cable and the pad afterwards. "Even here, wireless...not to be trusted. Now...was there anything else I could do for you?"

"Not at all, my friend...you've been a great help. I was told correctly, you are truly an honest man among thieves." Ruiz replied with an easy smile and a nod of his own. A little flattery never hurt anything.
___________

Ruiz and the other members of his team filtered back to the ship independently, save for Brianna Iona and Ryan Edision who, together, had been Ruiz's backup at the restaurant. Once aboard and secure, they began to pore over pictures and maps, gathering what meager intelligence they'd put together to figure out what to do next. Meager, but the first real clue of any substance.

Oh, what I'd give for an RSIS tac team for this one...oh well.

[PeZook]

Now alone in the office, Chinny sat himself behind Gorge’s desk, imagining the time it would be his. That time would come soon. Yes, so very soon. He pressed a button to make sure the doors were locked. He placed his feet on the table. Then he looked at those videos, leaked by Badley Girling, the very same ones Shrubya was watching a while ago. Thick Chinny gasped as he saw the moving pictures. These materials were classified, and that traitor had the gall to leak it and give aid and comfort to the enemy when it was meant to gave aid and comfort only to high-ranking Murcans who had the proper security clearances.

Like him.

Thick Chinny was aided. He was comforted.

So very comforted.

Washingtoff, Murca
The Hill

Somebody knocked on Chinny’s office door in the morning. The Almost Sovereignest Citizen scrambled to hide his cigar guilotinne he played with when nobody was looking. He’d put a little doll of Shrubya in it and then SNAP! Heads would roll!

One day he’d do that for real.

“Come!”, he finally said. His principal aide came in, careful not to step on discarded clothing and rolled-up reports on the state of the Treasury that didn’t fit into the overfilling wastebin. Somebody would have to do something about that eventually, but they’d have to wait until the Almost Sovereignest Citizen went home to do that. Otherwise he’d accuse the janitors of espionage, lieberalism or shifty looks and have them executed or thrown into the Pit for his amusement. Construction workers were digging another Pit right next to the original even now, since the first one got filled up in hours.

“What is it, boy?”

“Well, sir, I wanted to discuss your agenda for today. There are mettings for you to attend and...”

Chinny growled. He hated meetings. They were always full of idiots and yes-men sucking up to Shrubya, “Fuck them. Whoever they are, they can fucking go to hell. Tell them I’m busy!”

“With what? You only have meetings scheduled for today...”

“THIS IS NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS!!!”, Chinny yelled. His aide backed off and whimpered in terror. Like a little girl. Chinny rose from his chair, staring at the insolent subhuman piece of lieberal trash, “NOW GET OUT!”

The aide left in a hurry, nearly tripping on the mess Chinny left on the floor. But the Almost Sovereignest Citizen couldn’t get back to his voodoo just yet. Two people entered the office, despite mewling protests of the terrified aide.

“What the hell, people? What the fuck is wrong with you?! I said I’m busy!”



“We’re from the Department of Defence, Mr. Almost Sovereignest Citizen, and we come with a matter of utmost importance”, the man of the pair said. Chinny huffed and puffed, but at least they addressed him properly, without emphasizing his position, and they came from the Department which concerned itself with freedomizing other nations, so they couldn’t be all that bad, could they? Besides, they had the proper relations, with the man doing the talking. That was still pretty rare.

Chinny shoved the little voodoo doll into a drawer, “You have five minutes.”

To Chinny’s surprise and anger, it was the woman who started to brief him on the urgent and important matter. What was she doing here, anyway? Why wasn’t she at home, tending to her man’s babies, barefoot and pregnant like all proper Murcan girls? Her daddy must’ve neglected her upbringing something fierce! Why, she didn’t even have any scars or bruises!

“...of utmost importance. We must mobilize all assets to investigate...”

Chinny ignored her talking. It couldn’t possibly be very important if the man hadn’t even said a word so far! He was already scheming a new set of laws that would correct the problem he was seeing right here, right before his very eyes. Freedom wasn’t free, and by Jeebus he’d make those uppity womenfolk pay their share of the price!

“We need a decision now, Mr. Almost Sovereignest.”

The pair stopped talking. Chinny mulled over the far more important issue of women’s rights before realizing that, though.

“Uh, what? Could you recap? What decision?”

The woman shot her man a look. The man, to Chinny’s shock and horror, returned the very same look.

“You weren’t listening, sir?”

“I totally was!”

“I’m pretty sure you weren’t....”

“Shut up! I listened to everything you said, and I say no! Who are you people, anyway?”

Another look was exchanged. Chinny didn’t like it, eye contact between sexes led to bad thoughts and possibly bewitchment. It was what lieberals did, letting their womenfolk corrupt places of power with their strange and icky ways.

“Mr. Chinny...” the man began, trying to chose his words carefully. “I cannot overstate how troubling these findings are. Bear maulings shouldn’t be happening... you really should reconsider your decision. This sudden upswing is unnatural and shouldn’t be happening. It is possibly the biggest threat to Murca and this planet in the history of our civilization.”

Bear maulings? What the fuck, these two came over to my office to discuss bear maulings?, Chinny thought. His eyes briefly flashed red again, as anger built up inside his withered gut.

“The hell, people? Why are you bothering me with it?”

“We explained that, sir. You weren’t listening.”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP I SAID I LISTENED TO EVERYTHING!” Chinny yelled. He got up from his chair, ready to bash the uppity bastard’s face in.

The man raised his hands in a reassuring manner. “Calm down, sir! Everything is in this folder...just look at those pictures taken during the moon landings...” he tried to extract something from his briefing folders, but Chinny slapped the documents from his hands. The photographs and charts and reports scattered along the floor, joining their brethren from other briefings.

“SCREW YOU! You lieberal flagoffs, get the hell out of my office! You elitist intellectuals FAKED those landings anyway, and our government doesn’t give two shits about some fucking bear maulings!”

“For Jeebus’ sake, just listen for a second, you goddamn idiot!”, the woman yelled, “Bears are extinct! Gone! Shot to the last specimen after your dumbass government abolished hunting restrictions. Bear maulings shouldn’t be happening!”

Chinny shook, grunted and threw his desk at the woman. She managed to duck just in time, showing extraordinary reflexes. The desk slammed into a wall, prompting a bunch of SS men to rush inside the office.

“We’re leaving”, the man said, lifting his hands. The SS men tracked the pair with their guns, waiting for their Beloved Leader’s command. But Chinny didn’t order them stopped and thrown in the Pit, for he was busy clutching his chest and desperately searching the smashed desk for bull semen pills.

So the pair left unmolested and unhindered. Not far from The Hill, in a small safehouse surrounded by armed troops wearing military faitgues without any distinctions, they met several very serious men and made their report.

One of the men, who Chinny would recognize as an annoying general who constantly criticized the Almost Sovereignest Cititen’s brilliant plans, finally spoke, breaking the shocked silence inside the room, “Gentlemen, it is obvious this plan never had a chance of working. The government is just as insane as the rest of the nation, and will not recognize even the most obvious threats.”

“Our facilities are under constant siege, and have to maintain the strictest security protocols to avoid looting”, another man added, “We had to bring in families of all personnel inside base perimeters, and before long, we will run out of spare parts and supplies necessary to maintain our combat readiness. I am afraid the situation’s become untenable.”

“Then we are in agreement? We initiate Exodus?”, a third officer asked, pulling out a secured cell phone from his pocket.

“Yes. All X-COM personnell will evacuate the country. Send out the orders.”



Roach City Motel
Oho, Murca, two days after the Homeschoolboy Massacre



The money. Yes, the money!

Joey was sitting in his secret hideout below the motel room’s floor, counting the cash he had accumulated to start his fertilizer business. Yes, he finally had enough!

After the ill-fated football game was ended by timely and even-handed FriendlyPol intervention, Joey quit his job. Jimmy Bob Anderson was angry at the carnage, but since almost no witnesses were left alive, he couldn’t pin the blame on Joey. So while Jimmy Bob was left to try and sue FriendlyPol and win without suffering a mysterious hit-and-run incident in the process, Joey was left with his money.

Money. Hah.

His contemplation was broken by a knock on the door. Panicking, Joey quickly left his hideout and covered it up cunningly with a flowerpot before answering.

“Mary Jane? What the hell, woman? Why weren’t you at home?”

Joey’s wife walked in without a word. She was carrying little Billy Lee, and her veil was covered with blood. Joey shrugged and sat down in front of the TV.

“Why he’s fine, thank you!”, Mary Jane said sarcastically, “No worries, we weren’t shot or anything!”

Joey leapt ot his feet, shocked at the impudence. “What did you just say?!”

“You left us at the stadium! Those psychos went in shooting everyone! We barely got out alive and you didn’t even notice we were gone! I HATE YOU JOEY!”

“You shut your fucking mouth, bitch!”

“Screw you, Joe...oh...oh my god...” Mary Jane suddenly grasped her large belly and moaned in pain, “Oh this is bad...this badbadbad...”

“What? What’s going on? Don’t try to weasel out of your discipline, woman!”

“I’m having the first cramps... oh they’re bad...”

“Cramps?”

“I’m in labor, you idiot!”

Joey stared at her, stupified. In labor?

“What do you mean, you’re just standing there! You’re not doing any labor!”

“WE’RE GONNA HAVE ANOTHER BABY YOU STUPID BASTARD! HOW COULD YOU HAVE NOT NOTICED?!”

“But...but...” Joey didn’t know what to say. Baby? He didn’t want any more babies! He didn’t give his wife permission to have any more babies! How could she have disobeyed him so? Women are supposed to listen!

“You can’t have another baby!”

“I can’t help it, you wanted sex and refused to use condoms!”

“Because they are evil! And you’re a woman, you’re supposed to service your husband! Billy Biscuit Graham said so!”

“Fuck him! Joey, you gotta take me to the hospital!”

“You’ll just have the baby here, like in the good ol’ days!”

“If you think you can force me to give birth in a goddamn motel, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Billy Lee and his brothers and sisters were watching the entire scene from their shared room. They were frightened. What was going on? Why was mom yelling at dad? It was usually the other way around, and that was familiar, but the kids were afraid dad would do something horrible.

“...and if you don’t take me to the hospital, I will burn all your fucking money and leave!”

Joey gasped in horror. His own wife was threatening his money! His own hard earned money! First she had a baby without his permission, now she would destroy Murca’s most precious item, its sacred bills! She’d strike against her own family, the hand that fed her!

But he had no choice. Even Joey, fuelled by patriotic fervor as he was, had to sleep from time to time. While he did have a shotgun, three revolvers and an assault rifle under his pillow every night, he couldn’t count on being able to counter Mary Jane’s strange womanly powers. He’d have to play it cool. Women in labor were said by Billy Biscuit Graham to gain superhuman strength and devillish powers, and the should not be engaged without backup.

“Fine,” he spat, having considered the situation carefully, “We’ll go and deliver your baby! Kids! Pack yourselves, we’re goin’ on a road trip!”





Joey drove his truck onto the parking lot in front of a strip mall not far from their motel. It was a grand place of business, home to some oh Oho’s most respected companies: there was a factory outlet for Ed’s Organ Emporium, a recruiting office for FriendlyPol and Buttwater Tacticool, a Batasu dealership.

But Joey and his family were going somewhere else, to a small office crammed between Child Indentured Services and a boarded-up bookstore. A crooked and dirty sign above the door announced to the world that here resided the Oho division of Godly Parenthood, a god-fearing company that allowed proud Murcan womenfolk to deliver their babies with dignity, honor and an all-murcan beer-and-beef diet that bred strong little freedom lovin’ fellas.

“What? You’re taking me here?!”

“We don’t have money for a hospital, woman!”

“You have PILES of money!”

“This is business money. Women are not allowed to touch business money.”

Mary Jane keeled over with another contraction, which prevented her from talking back. Surely a sign from Jeebus that Joey was doing something right, “But don’t worry, I heard from Jed Leeroy this place is excellent! He had all his kids in here!”

Mary Jane mumbled something obscene, which was fortunately illegible - fortunately, because a group of Sovereign Citizens were walking on patrol nearby, and they might’ve felt compelled to discipline a woman for using manly words.

Joey decided not to risk further discussion. He waved his brand new gun around, herding his family like a good shepherd towards the clinic. He had to shoot a homeless guy who was approaching him threateningly, shambling and asking for change. He was glad he spend the six thousand marks on this awesome handcannon instead of child seats for his truck. Surely it was a better investment.

The Sovereign Citizen patrol glanced at the shooting, but seeing who the victim was, they shrugged and went back to requisitioning a car from a man who was lost and stopped to ask for directions - as asking for directions was a sure sign of liberalness if there was any. Since the man wouldn’t give up his property, they were viciously beating him up with electrified nightsticks that sprayed mace.

But that was all immaterial to Joey, who by now had his family securely inside the clinic, getting ready for Godly and patriotic birth of their little brother or sister. A nurse began to take their insurance information, which went pretty quickly because Joey did not believe in health insurance of any sort - the sort of collective risk-pooling smelled of commienism, even if it was done by gigantic Murcan small companies that patriotically abused their customers. In the meanwhile, Joey looked at the clinic’s stock of BeefBoyTM baby formula with steroid supplements, those would come in handy if they didn’t want their baby boy to grow up into some limp-dicked homobortionist flaggoff, and if they had a baby girl... well, the ‘roids would fix that too.

“We have a room for you, Mrs. Jojo. This way please.”

The nurse led the family through right winding corridors, plastered with patriotic posters, crosses and the Murcan flag. There were also spray-painted slogans that called for new parents to support the troops and meatfeed their infants to make them strong and proud. At the end of the hall was the birthing room, where the nurse placed Mary Jane on a delivery table underneath a massive TV playing infomercials about how breastfeeding increased the risk of cancer, and how it didn’t provide enough testosterone for infants because it was made in weak female bodies. There were advertisements for child indentured services and from the newly privatized military encouraging parents to enlist their children as soon as possible, commercials selling Baby Rockstar cassettes and infant pawn shops.

At first, Joey found these infomercials highly informative and interesting, but for such an intelligent individual with an attention span that moved much faster than the rest, he quickly became bored. It didn’t help that his wife’s screams of agony were drowning out the ads.

“What’s the hold up? I thought this was going to be quick and messy!” Joey complained to the nurse.

“Just wait for a while, sir. The doctor has just arrived at the helipad,” the nurse replied as she adjusted the microphones.

“What?” Joey shrugged when the nurse didn’t bother to respond. He sat down on an instrument table, cleared off the forceps and sutures, and played with his gun for a while. It was a Gluck, and he sure used it to kill the shit out of that hobo a while ago. Busted a cap on his ass-

“DOCTOR IN THE ROOM!” the nurse shouted as she straightened up and saluted.

The declaration caught Joey by surprise and he squeezed the Gluck’s trigger by accident, discharging his gun. The round ricocheted and shattered an IV bottle.

“Oh shit!” Joey cursed. I hope I don’t have to pay for that.

“No worries, my child. Every God-fearing Murcan has the right to exercise the Second Amendment. Why, the Prophet St. Murcan wrote it in the holy Constipitution itself!” a voice proclaimed.

“Oh my god...” Joey turned around to face the man who said that. When he saw who it was, he knelt down in reverence. It was... it was... “Reverend Biscuit Graham!”



“Oh get up! Well, okay, maybe you can kneel for a few more seconds, sure.” Biscuit laughed. “Say, that’s a nice Gluck.”

“Thanks, sir,” Joey Jojo said as he got up and brandished his sidearm. “You carry one too, sir?”

“Of course! What self-respecting child of Jeebus wouldn’t use his God-given conceal-carry license?” Biscuit pulled out an even larger gun that made Joey feel all inadequate and envious. “It’s a Shit & Blesson .44 Hagnum. The most powerful handgun on Almera. Do you feel holy, punk?”

He discharged his own gun for Joey to see and hear. The blast was deafening, and the acrid smell of cordite overpowered that of Mary Jane’s vaginal discharges.

Biscuit twirled his gun with his finger by the trigger guard, cowboy style, before holstering it in his pants.

“Let us begin, shall we?” Biscuit said, his tone now serious.

“Uh... yeah...” Joey looked at his ass, where he had sat on some expensive-looking medical instruments. He knew nothing about medicine, since that was for pansy luberal elitists intellectual scum, but he knew a bit about chopping meat up in a kitchen and how it was important to wash your knives and forks and other utensils (not because of anything silly like germs, because only girls got scared of that stuff, but because Mary Jane used to cut vegetables with the knife and Joey didn’t want to get the taste of vegetables on his meat whenever he used the same knife. Thank Jeebus they outlawed vegetables).

Perceptive as always, Biscuit Graham patted Joey on the back.

“Don’t worry about that, my son. We don’t use any instrument or that sort of thing over here, no siree,” he chuckled paternally.

“You don’t?” Joey asked, sighing with relief.

“YOU DON’T?!” Mary Jane asked, eyes wide in horror.

“No! Of course not! Here, we practice Godly Birth! What use are instruments when birth is a spiritual experience that connects men to Jeebus? The only instrument we need to deliver the child is prayer! Pray, and Jeebus will do the rest! Jeebus saves! All women who are faithful, who follow their husbands, love, cherish and obey them, will be given salvation!” Biscuit Graham exclaimed.



Joey Jojo looked down at his wife smugly. Surely the words of Billy Biscuit Graham would finally tell her what was what. If she didn’t repent, she’d be punished for her sins for sure.

“Oh God, this is ridiculous!” Mary Jane screamed. “At least give me some pain killers!”

“No!” Graham roared. “For as I said in the last Slobbath, the pain of childbirth is God’s punishment for woman’s wickedness, as the Roslin tempted the Adama with the Forbidden Vegetable! That is also why men must eat meat, and meat alone, as women bleed for months on end, all to atone for their transgressions!”

Graham pulled a piece of meat from... somewhere and handed it to Joey.

“Here, eat this Communion Steak while we pray over your wife!” He grabbed a microphone, knelt down in front of Mary Jane’s legs - which were now spread open by stirrups to allow the baby to pass through - and began to pray. “Hear me, child of Jojo! Let my prayers reach you as it echoes through the dark chambers! Let Jeebus go into your heart, accept him as your personal Lord and Savior, and you shall be born again!”

Mary Jane’s bag of water exploded and showered Graham in amniotic fluids.

He stared blankly for a moment. Joey Jojo was on the verge of puking out his Communion Steak.

“Uhh...” Biscuit Graham pondered for a moment, interpreting the Lord’s Sign and understanding his Mysterious Ways, before deciding on an appropriate course of action. “Ah, yes. Testify! Hallelujah! Sieg Hallelujah! TESTIFY!”

Joey Jojo swallowed his vomit and joined his spiritual leader.

“TESTIFY!” he shouted.

“Hallelujah!” the nurse yelled, taken in by religious fervor. She slipped on the amniotic fluid staining the floor and fell down, landing on her head. She began to convulse and foam at the mouth violently.

“TESTIFY!” Biscuit Graham hollered, mistaking the sound of her choking on her own tongue for that of speaking in tongues.

Mary Jane had another contraction and yelled through clenched teeth “You sons of....”

“TESTIFY!” Joey Jojo covered her mouth with a leftover Communion Steak. “See this woman suffer for her sinful nature! And repent by taking in the meat of Jeebus!”

The pastor slapped each of Joey’s daughters with Communion Steaks. “Eat this holy meat and know what awaits you in the future, harlots! For it was your bow-legged blandishments that banished our forefathers from the Garden of Caprica!”

Joey’s daughters stood there, horrified beyond description, clutching their Communion Steaks meekly, and absolutely convinced they’d never, ever let themselves become pregnant. Which would be difficult, seeing as sex education was recently outlawed under penalty of death, so none of the girls had any idea what exactly they’d have to avoid doing.

The pastor didn’t stop to consider such issues. He continued to scream between Mary Jane’s legs. “Let this child come into this world filled with Jeebus’ power! Hear me, young patriot, and hurry up for my helicopter costs a bunch per minute while it waits for me!”

Mary Jane spat the Communion Steak and screamed her head off, the contractions now practically continuous. The nurse was yelling towards the ceiling, speaking in tongues like she did every Sunday during service. She eventually collapsed, shaking all over, dragging an IV tube down with her. Nobody paid any attention to her, the seizure interpreted as God’s spirit speaking through her body. The religious yelling, pastor Graham’s screams and Joey’s zealous incantation nearly drowned out the baby’s first cry.

At the last moment, little Billy Lee gathered his courage, leapt between both men and grabbed his newborn brother before he could impact the floor. Covered in blood, he cradled the terrified baby to his chest with shaking hands, having no idea what to do.

Joey Jojo snapped briefly out of religious stupor and glared at the boy for his impudence.

“Don’t you even dare think about breastfeeding that baby!” he growled. But before he could reach for a bottle of BeefBoyTM formula, Reverend Biscuit Graham began throwing rattlesnakes into the room. Joey had to catch a couple of diamondbutts before they could land on his face.

Billy began to sob uncontrollably, scared of his father’s screams and the inexplicable rattlesnakes that were now slithering all around the room, biting the unconscious nurse. The rest of the children either passed out or fled - which prompted the clinic’s director to walk into the room.

“I see you’re done. Great. That’ll be 32,999 marks and 99 cents,” the director said smugly. He was satisfied, because his clinic had been in somewhat dire straits lately - fewer and fewer women seemed to have been delivering babies lately.

“The shares are still the same, right?” Billy Biscuit asked his business partner. “Good. You can finish the payment details with the customer. I’ve got a flight to catch. Tah!”

Joey Jojo was too busy dodging rattlesnakes to react. Billy was still sobbing, but didn’t let go of his brother. The newborn was screaming his head off, feeling cold and threatened and miserable. Finally, Billy Lee decided to hand the baby over to his mother.

Joey suddenly forgot all about the rattlesnakes and rushed to prevent the homobortionization of his brand new son, but the director grabbed him by the arm.

“How are you gonna pay for that, pardner? Cash, credit or barter?”

Joey glanced at the horrorific scene in the room, the unconscious nurse covered in snakebites, the shattered IV bottles, bullet holes in walls and scattered intruments. He was confused.

“How much did you say it was?” he asked, momentarily forgetting about Billy Lee and his insidious, treasonous plot. He’d regret it later, after he realized the newest member of the Jojo family began his life by touching breasts.

“32,999 marks and 99 cents. We’ll throw in a commemorative photo at no charge! So, cash, credit or barter?”

Slowly, Joey began to ruffle through his pockets. He extracted a small Bibel, spare ammo for his Gluck, some ruffled random papers, a piece of string and fifty two cents in cash.

“Uh....barter, I guess.”

“Okay. Your truck looks fine, it should cover the co...”

“NO! YOU TOUCH MY TRUCK YOU SON OF A BITCH AND I’LL FUCKING...”

A huge and burly and heavily armed security mang walked into the room upon hearing Joey yell. Being very intelligent and street savvy and also scared shitless, Joey decided to stop.

“Uh, I mean I’d rather not leave my truck here, I need it for my business...”

“Okay, but you still need to pay for our services somehow.”

Joey began to think. He was really good at thinking, he even trained himself to ignore the pain that came with it. He frowned, then grunted, then began to turn red from the strain. And then he came. To a conclusion!

He just got another child. That means he could get rid of one, and Mary Jane would never know the difference!

“I can offer you Betty Sue Lee Anne Jojo!”

“And who is that?”

“That girl who ran out. She’s strong! She used to work at Billy Bob Anderson’s slaughterhouse, so she doesn’t fear blood, and is a good cleaner!”

“Dad!” little Billy Lee protested, but was ignored.

“I’m telling you, you’ll get a lot of use out of her. Deal?”

The director thought for a minute. He could use a new nurse, now that his regular one was half-dead from her epileptic seizure and snakebites.

“Deal!”

“DAD!”

“Shut up, boy! Adults are talking! Give me your new brother and let’s go!”

“But mommy is still bleeding!”, one of Joey’s other children shouted.

“Oh, she’ll walk it off. It’s nothing some excercise won’t fix! Come on, your mom still has dinner to fix! Hut hut, we ain’t got all day!”



Somewhere in Western Ayrak



هل أنت بخير؟

There were words. Words being spoken to him from beyond the grave. A mass grave he was shoved into by FEMALE, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Lieberal Execution death camp guards, after he proudly proclaimed his love for Apple Pie. A deep grave filled with mangled bodies of his fellow patriots. Murcan patriots, fighting the evil Algeiran government and its taxes and false flag operations and death panels.

هل تحتاج مساعدة؟

Then there was a touch, a very delicate touch, then turning into a more vigorous shake. He could feel his cheek tear itself away from the hot sand, tearing apart the crust made of his own blood and vomit that covered it. He could hear the words, which seemed spoken from right to left somehow, but could not understand them. Why couldn’t he understand the words? Words were words. People spoke them. People understood them and spoke back.

Because it’s an Ayraki, you fucking idiot, his brain gave him the answer. He felt the touch of a plastic bottle near his lips and, suddenly, his bloodshot eyes shot wide open.

Chet Fisto yelled something incomprehensible and terribly slurred, and batter the water bottle away. He punched blindly, hitting and old man right in the face.

Good one! Yeah, fucking Ayraki, huh? Does it feel good to be a violent dumbass? his brain mocked him relentlessly. The old man fell to the ground, clutching his face.

“You fucker... you thought you could give ma a socialist welfare queen handout, huh?” Fisto slurred and shambled over to the man. “Turn me into a good little commienist? Well, no can do! I am a true blue Murcan hero and I don’t need...uuurgh...”

Fisto, the Hero Of Murca, vomited on the rocks.

His brain laughed. It fucking laughed.

Ha ha, idiot, is that a concussion? Why yes, yes it is! it sneered from inside Chet Fisto’s head.

“I gotta get out of this FEMALE death camp!” he screamed desperately.

The old man whimpered,لماذا فعلتم ذلك؟

“Shut up! Shut up your Islime-o-commienist pig! Ha ha I just called you a pig! I am so funny! Halal that, motherfucker!”

Chet felt his head spin, so he grabbed onto the camel standing nearby. The animal tried to bite him.

“Fuck! Fuck! They’re after me!” he yelled and tried to run, only to trip and fall over... right onto his rifle.

Training took over from there. With long-drilled movements, perfected by copious combat experience, Chet Fisto defended himself by swiftly rolling onto his back and cutting down the defenceless old man and his camel with a long burst of automatic fire.

“FUCK YEAH, BITCHES!!! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU ALL!”

“Hey! Fucker!” he heard someone yell.

Fortunately for the yeller, Chet has already spent all his ammo. He couldn’t reload with his still-shaking hands, and while an attempt to charge the stranger with his knife was valiant, it proved totally ineffective, as the Hero Of Murca once again tripped and fell.



The man in a ghillie suit stood up and walked up to Fisto, “You stole my fucking kill, fucker. And I almost had enough to advance to the next rank!”

“Yeah, you tell him Bob”, another sniper appeared as if from nowhere “You could totally get a customized Armalyte with that kill!”

“Who the fuck is that guy, anyway?”, the one called Bob asked. He rolled Chet over his the tip of his shoe. “Oh, special forces! Ha ha, Leeroy, we have a gubmint socialist here!”

Fisto grabbed Bob by his shoe and bit into his ankle. He tried to yell insults at the same time, but it was understandly troublesome.

“Ow! Let go!!”

Leeroy seemed to be having fun seeing his friend jump up and down, trying to shake off a crazy half-dead government soldiers from his ankle “Hot damn Bob, you sure showed ‘im!”

Bob finally whacked Chet with the butt of his rifle and kicked him in the teeth. “Fucking socialists, always trying to have a bite off other people’s meat!”

“I AM NOT A SOCIALIST!” Chet yelled, rage making him forget all about pain and his broken nose and concussion and dehydration and freshly messed up teeth. “I am a hero! Chet Fisto of the 1st Very Special Operations Battalion, shitheads! You wanna take me on, huh? You wanna try and show me what’s what?” He tried to posture and huff and puff, but puked again instead.

“Holy shit, Bob!” Leeroy gasped, “It’s Chet Fisto! Remember, from the teevee? He’s the one who gave that filthy sand digger Barry a shower!”

“By Jeebus, you’re right! Damn, maybe he’s not such a socialist after all! Holy crap man, sorry for kicking you!”

“I don’t know, Bob. He still takes taxpayer money, right?” Leeroy placed his hand near his sidearm. “Hey Chet, didn’t you hear that the military was privatized?”

Bob was incredibly enthusiastic by that point, though, so Leeroy’s completely reasonable and well thought out arguments didn’t really work. He helped Chet up, shoved a pen into his hand and forced him to sign his grenades.

“Hey, Chet! I’m talkin’ to you!”

“What?” Fisto turned his head away from Bob’s dangling grenades “No, I haven’t heard! This is great news!”

Leeroy relaxed a bit. Maybe it was true, the poor soul was just misguided, and hey - someone who waterboarded Barry couldn’t be all that bad, right?

“Say, Chet...” Leeroy said after some thought. “How about you join Buttwater Tacticool, huh? Stop stealing from taxpayers, be an enterprising self-earning entrepreneur and fight this war like a true Murcan - a small business paid mercenary with loyalty to no flag!”

“Holy shit!” Chet spat upon hearing the pitch. It contained just enough buzzwords to get him hooked. “Tell me more!”

“Buttwater Tacticool is the world leader in providing cost-effective military solutions against a wide variety of threats! As an associate member of the company you will receive many great benefits, including basic dental care and low rates on ammunition purchases, and get to earn very good money.”

“But Leeroy,” Bob interjected. “What rates can I count on?”

“Well, not much at first, Bob, but as you work for the company and provide deathcare to more and more terrorizers, your pay will begin to rise! You can count on earning a stupendous FIVE THOUSAND MARKS per year by doing nothing but shooting people!”

Bob scraped his chin theatrically while Chet watched with his mouth agape. “Five thousand? That’s a little low, won’t you say?”

“Ah, but you weren’t listening! That’s just the basic pay! But get this, every person you recruit into the company will allow you to earn a small percentage of their sales - with just a little bit of effort, your pay will skyrocket! Why, just last year I earned over TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND marks this way!”

Holy shit. Holy shit! Chet thought, his eyes glazing.

Jeebus, you dolt, can’t you see it’s a pyramid scheme? Chet’s brain sneered

“Not at all, dear viewer!” Leeroy protested vigorously. “Our scheme is most assuredly not a pyramid! It is a cutting edge rectangulocubic direct smarketing patented freedomization system! Many people have already joined and are raking in the big bucks, just listen to those testimonials!”

Bob took off his helmet, put on a patrol cap and attached bushy fake moustache to his upper lip.

“Hello there, pardners! I am Colonel Billy Bob, and I have made a career in Buttwater Tacticool. It is no joke, it really works!”

After removing his moustache Bob continued “Howdy, Johnny Bob here. You should totally join this outfit, they’re pretty damn awesome!”

“See how happy these two are?” Leeroy beamed at Chet. “And you can be happy too, with Buttwater Tacticool! Sign up now for a free sidearm, and you can participate in many exciting contests and ranking matches to earn special perks and customized character classes!”

Chet couldn’t believe his luck. Finally someone who appreciated him! Two hundred thousand marks, holy shit! He jumped up and down with glee “Oh God sign me up, like, right now!” He yelled.

“Certainly! Just sign here... and here... no, no social security number required anymore...your credit card number and PIN here...thanks! Thanks, man! Let’s get back to our Doomvee and get back to base! The guys will be so happy to meet you!”

Chet beamed and took off in the indicated direction. He couldn’t see Leeroy and Bob high-five each other. The duo cackled all the way to their vehicle, a mega-armored Batasu Thumper SUX.



They shoved Fisto inside and drove off.



Firebase ASS BLASTER
Western Ayrak

The showers were large and spacious, and full of naked men. Chet Fisto was amongst them, right in the middle. The sound of running water could not conceal his grunts of pleasure.

“Oh God. Oh yes. Oh God, please don’t stop!”

The burly men of Buttwater Tacticool Solutions lathered themselves, as did Chet. He groaned in ecstasy, clutching the soap and moving it about in slow, circular movements. Sometimes he was interrupted when other men passed him by and gave him little butt slaps and tooshie squeezes.

“This feels so good, baby! Come on, come on, let it flow...oh yeah, that’s the spot!”

Vigorous scrubbing in the thick steam fog. Naked, muscled bodies moving about in unison. The pleasures, simple pleasures of the flesh.

Chet Fisto emerged from the showers, thoroughly relaxed and satisfied. His newfound buddies gave him a friendly slap on the ass, congratulating him on joining the company. He slapped them right back. They all laughed and ran around, playing grab-ass or whipping one another with towels. Like frat boys, giggling, frolicking tip-toeing frat boys engaging in innocent pranks. Boys had to be boys, and here in the showers they could be!

“Come on, Chet, get dressed!”, it was Leeroy, the man who helped Chet find his new home in this foreign country.

“Awww! Come on!”

“Move it, boy. Don’t worry, we have a totally awesome thing to show you!”

Hesistantingly, Chet picked up his new Buttwater issue uniform. He waved goodbye to his Butt Buddies, as the little company leaflet called fellow operators and followed Leeroy to the Ops Center. The Situation Room.



“Heeeey, dudes!” a Buttwater operator waved at them from the couch. “You’re just in time!”

Leeroy high fived the bearded operator and motioned to Chet “Here, grab a controller! You gotta check it out, man.”

Chet sat down, hesistantingly and took one of the white controllers into his hands. It fit naturally, perfectly designed and fully ergonomical.

The huge plasma screen hanging on the wall lit up, displaying a video feed from a Massacrator killdrone fling somewhere above Ayrak.

The unnamed bearded operator belched and put down his beer, before explaining what they were doing to Chet.

“See, dude, this is, like, the camera on the drone, right? And you use the controller, like so, then turn it and then you seek targets and WHAM! Take ‘em out. Best player gets perks and first dibs at the beer cooler, right?”

“Hey, cool! How do I know which stuff is the target, though?”

“Who cares? Just use you imagination, mang!”, Leeroy yelled. “Oh hey, check this out, a bus! What are they doing?”

“Hey, they are praying!” the operator noticed “Praying, man! That’s what terrorizers do! Smoke ‘em!”

Leeroy cackled and pressed the trigger. Far away, the killdrone turned and released a missile.



“Woooo!” the entire Ops Center hollered “Look at them go!”

“Hey, let me try!” Chet turned his controller on “Whoa, is that a crowd?”

“Yeah man, a brown crowd! Ha ha, good joke, eh? It’s a crowd of brown people!”

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! They’re opening fire! They’re opening fire at the sky!”

“RETURN FIRE AT ONCE!”

Another missile streaked from the sky, detonating rght in the middle of an Ayraki wedding, scattering body parts and debris around.

More beer was passed out, and people gave Chet buttslaps in reward for him picking up the game so well. Hours passed. Fierce competition broke out between Leeroy and Fisto, with both men furiously firing missiles and guns at any sign of insurgency, from funeral conducts through schoolyards down to random bicyclists.



“Holy shit! Holy shit! That... that van! There are people in that van! The people in that van... they’re... they’re... they’re picking up the wounded! Why would anyone want to pick up the wounded?!”

“I don’t know, mang! What do we do? What do we do?!”

“They could be terrorizers!”

“YEAH! THAT’S IT!”

“Quick, kill them! Shoot the van, man! Shoot the van! Kill them! KILL THEM ALL!!!”

“Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!”

“I would say that’s a fairly accurate assessment so far.”

“I think they just drove over a body.”

“Really?”

“Yeah!”

Some of the troops who were in the field reported that there were children massacred in one of the vans. Some of the gamers with Chet became quiet, no longer cheering and hooting. One of the troops even brought the injured kids into a Badley IFV and requested the kids to be taken into a privatized military hospital.

“That’s a negatory on the evac of the two, ah, civilian, ah, kids, to, ah...” a voice in the radio stammered for a while. “Uh... Gosh darn it! Those kids aren’t insured anyway, and we ain’t giving them any socialist handouts! This ain’t no union shop!”

“Yeah, that’s right! Let the Ayrakis take care of those spoiled brats! Let those sand diggers take them to a public hospital while they still HAVE public hospitals! Hahaha!”

“Fucking Islime-o-commiethanazzienoids!”

“Hey, wanna see me drive over a body again?”

“Sure!”

Suddenly the game was interrupted. The screens went blank, and on them appeared a massive face of none other but...Thick Chinny! An ANGRY Thick Chinny at that!

He growled and all the grown men shrunk in their seats and whimpered.



“LOOK UPON ME AND DESPAIR!”, he bellowed, and the TV speakers assaulted the gathered troops with his booming voice. Even Leeroy collapsed and curled up into a fetal position.

“Kneel before me and listen to your CEO-in-command!”

“We obey!” the Buttwater operators chanted. Chet didn’t, but instead waved his hands excitedly. “Oh! Oh! Mr. Almost Sovereignest! I have a complaint! I must complain!”

“WHAT IS IT?!” Giant Chinny snarled. His spittle shot at them in glourious 3D, making the men duck reflexively.

The euphoria of having the Almost Sovereignest, the second greatest Murcan on all Almera, address him personally nearly overwhelmed Fisto. So too did the absolute existential horror and fear he felt as he faced his master’s monstrous visage. The extreme emotions coalesced in Fisto’s body in a nigh religious experience, and he felt a warm feeling between his legs as he peed himself.The feeling was so overwhelming that he forgot to denounce the general who tried to set him up to get himself killed.

“I...forgot...”, he whimpered to his Lord and Master, because he did.



“WHELP!”, the plasma TV jumped up slightly with Chinny’s roar, “STOP WASTING MY TIME! NOW KNEEL, FOR I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE!”

Fisto’s legs bent as if of their own accord. He kneeled, submitting to the CEO’s will entirely and without question, ready for his every wish and whim and flight of fancy.

“LO AND BEHOLD, FOR TRAITORS IN OUR MIDST HAVE FLED THE GLOURIOUS MURCAN PARADISE TONIGHT!”

The operators stared at the screen in awe, mumbling prayers in an almost religious fervor.

“THESE FOULEST FIENDS TOOK WITH THEM INSTRUMENTS OF OUR CAUSE APLENTY! THEY ARE ANATHEMA TO OUR ATHEMA! THEY MUST BE CONQUERED!”

“Huh?” Leeroy muttered. While Buttwater Tacticool only recruited the best and brightest minds (out of those that fell for their pyramid scheme, that is) these bright fellows were becoming increasingly confused by Giant Chinny’s colorful language and big words.

“WHAT WAS THAT, WORM?!” the Face Of Chinny snarled at Leeroy.

“I, uh, I didn’t mean to I mean, like...I don’t get it.”

Chinny blinked. Once, then twice, and then even thrice. Just how stupid were those dolts?

“Fine, you fucking idiots! A bunch of traitorous fucks, no doubt secret lieberal homobortionists the lot of them, seized a whole fuckload of our military gear and got the hell out of dodge!”

Buttwater operators were listening intently, taking it all in. Their fine-tuned combat minds were already running simulations and preparing mission plans for hundreds of possibilities. Most of these simulations involved them singehandedly blowing up gajillions of enemies and earning like sixty new weapons and platinum quadruple prestige sniper classes in the process.

“They took their shrivelled little balls and wimpy little vaginas over to Stenchia and Thanasia!”, Chinny said the names of the two most freedom-hating countries with the proper amount of hate and disgust, “You are to take your Massacrator drones and find those fuckers and murderize them but good! MURCA FUCK YEAH!”

“But sir...” Bob raised his hand at the TV. “Isn’t that unconstipitutional? We’ll be shooting our own citizens?”

Everybody else looked at him in shock and horror. Leeroy walked up to his friend and put a hand on the misguided fool’s shoulder.

“Bob, didn’t you hear? They are traitors, man! The Almost Sovereignest Citizen himself said so! Traitors have no rights!”

“That’s right!” Chet agreed enthusiastically. “And the fucking Thanasians won’t give them up, so fuck them! We can do whatever we want! We’re the biggest toughest motherfuckers around! FUCK YEAH! MURCA FUCK YEAH!”

“FUCK YEAH!” the operators yelled and pumped their fists “WE’RE GONNA BLOW UP THE TERRORIZERS!”

“That’s the spirit, men!” Chinny beamed, his red flashing eyes gone for the moment. “And you, Fisto, good to see you coming together with the right crowd! You will not regret it! Just you wait till you come back Murcaside for your debriefing and cocktails, you maverick renegade you!”

With a suggestive wink,Chinny disappeared. Video feeds from the Massacrator killdrones returned... all except one.

“Holy udders, Batmang!” Leeroy yelled in despair “The fuckers shot down Bessy!”

“NO!” Bob gasped “Where was she? What was her last known position?! Tell me, Leeroy! We must have revenge! Those fuckin’ Ayrakis didn’t have the right to do that!”

“It was near Bakalakadaka Street.”

“Fuckers. Let’s show them how Murca repays vandalism! Call in the Snorthogs!”

With ceremony, two operators dialed numbers on their cellphones and gave a target to the pilots. Not five minutes later, Bakalakada, a medium sized town in central Ayrak, ceased to exist.



Buttwater Tacticool Solutions always got the job done.

“Alright!” they cheered at the sight of the vaporized city. Served those sand diggers right for shooting down their drones. “Far out!”

“Radical!” Fisto hooted.

“Word!” Leeroy agreed and high-fived him, and then gave him one down low. Fisto was too slow, so Leeroy grabbed him in the nuts instead. “Now let’s send the rest of our Massacrators to Yurp. We’ve got lots of work to do!”



Bearlin
Thanasia, Yurp



X-COM accomplished the evacuation procedure with extreme prejudice. The plans were long in the making: despite not quite appreciating the extent of social and political changes in Murca, the organization’s planners thought to better be safe than sorry.

Upon receiving their orders, X-COM personnel seized their Air Force transport assets and loaded them with equipment ; Hidden backdoors and agents sabotaged the air defence network (not that there was much of it left, no thanks to this fucker Satan McNamara - and totally not because the equipment necessary could no longer be serviced, as it was an intellectual lieberal job to do so - and because there were still loads of bloody poor people who couldn’t pay Buttwater for privatized SAM sites over their cities). Heavy equipment and combat troops flew to Zenobia, whose government has had a working arrangement with X-COM for quite some time. Civilian members of the organization left Murca via a variety of alternative means, and found themselves in Stenchia and Thanasia. They’d be moved to a new Zenobian base of operations in a while.

Zenobia did not officially exist, as it could no longer be mentioned in any official documents or spoken conversations as per EXOR 11231 GEOSTEMBUTTOCK, so nobody in Murcan government could locate it. But they could locate Stenchia and Thanasia, and their Massacrator killdrones could, too.

Those vile escaping terrorizers, those traitorous, liberal homobortionist cyclists would find their justice! Or it would find them. AND EXPLODE!

Some would say it wasn’t right to murder Murcan citizens without trial, and on foreign soil at that - but Murcans knew better. Terrorizers had no rights, and Thanasia was unwilling or unable to apprehend them for their vile crimes. Stenchia was no better, but Stenchia had nyukyular weapons. Or it claimed to, anyway - everybody knew Stenchies couldn’t do nyukyular stuff, as they were all effeminate girlymen and cheese-eating surrender monkeys. As clearly a state of war existed between Murca and everybody who badmouthed Murca, she was within her rights to kill anyone it wanted anywhere in the world. Murca had already killed people in Thanasia before, not once but twice, and it could kill people in Thanasia again!

Buttwater Tacticool operators hiding away in safehouses throughout Yurp didn’t give two shits about that, though. They had a job to do! A job involving explosions and beer. And killing Yurpeans.

“I wish we could do it with satellites, mang.” Bob said, setting up their Degenatron console in a flat in Bearlin. “Why don’t we have satellites?”

“Who the fuck cares, mang? We still get to blow up Thanasians, right? So fuck satellites!” Chet Fisto said with enthusiasm

“I thought we were going to blow up Murcans traitors and terrorizers?”

“They’re as good as Thanasians after they betrayed the greatest country in the world. They’re no longer Murcans, yo!”

“Hey dudes, we’re online! Come on, grab your controllers!”

Massacrator killdrones were now in the air over Bearlin, circling menacingly, their bellies loaded with missiles. Loaded for bear and ready to smear. Their targets. IN DEATH. Fuck yeah!

But who were their targets? The city was huge, and full of people who all looked the same! The operators had pictures, sure, but people looked all the same from this high up. The drones circled and circled and zoomed on random people but the images were grainy and couldn’t quite show faces.

Bob was the first to break. He suddenly started to yell. “Oh man, this is bad! The operation is going south, mang! We’re done for! It’s over, man!”

“Get yourself together, soldier! We have our mission! It is horrible and dangerous,” Fisto took a swig of beer, belched and bit down on some pizza. “And important! We have to focus, mang!”

“THERE!” Leeroy yelled and pointed out a guy on the plasma screen. “This one’s eating a hot dog!”

“AHA! Only Murcans eat hot dogs! And no real Murcan patriot would visit this socialist shithole! It’s our target! Smoke him!”

“Got him, firing! Fox one, fucker!” Fisto bellowed and pressed a trigger. A missile streaked down towards a tourist boulevard full of people. It struck its target - a hotdog cart serving a Pollackistani tourist - and exploded, showering the area with shrapnel.People fell on the ground, covered in blood. Cars were lit on fire. Children ran away screaming from the plume of smoke and debris.

“Good kill good kill. Look at ‘em run!”

“There’s another! Check this out, he’s trying to help the wounded!”

“Traitor!” Fisto yelled and fired another missile, which blew up an off-duty paramedic and his patient.

The operators hoooted and hollered, and even Bob got himself together. They fired more missiles, killing targets wherever they saw them. Throughout Thanasia, Massacrator drones slaughtered traitors and Thanasian terrorizers like in the most glouriousest days of the Salvation Wars.

Thick Chinny watched the proceeds from his office, using one of the few remaining Murcan satellites. He felt pride fill his tortured and abused heart. That’s right, fuckers. He thought We can do whatever we want! And you can’t stop us! Look at freedom sing in your cities!

In Bearlin, buildings were now on fire and collapsing. Thanasian air force was scrambled and began oppressing the drones but they were Yurpean slackers who couldn’t fight, so before the last Massacrator was shot down, the job was done.

The traitors were dead. The collateral damage was acceptable.



Mission accomplished.



Moosecow, Zenobia



The images of burning Yurpean cities raced across the world like lightning. While before few people gave a shit about Murca’s shenanigans in the Middle West, this was something else entirely. Murca had not only crossed a line on the sand (digger), they had metaphorically shat on it with poop and literally shat on it with precision guided JDAMRAAMLRSLBM9F-117/11s.

The Yurpean Onion nations had protested to Murca, but the Almost Sovereignest Thick Chinny merely took their Angry Letters and used them to wipe his ass, before mailing the resultant messy messages back to their senders. They tried to protest in the FUN, but the Murcan ambassador left in a huff, and the Sovereign Citizens firebombed the building. It was full of socialist whiners anyway, and thus had it coming anyway. The property was used for a new strip mall.

Then the Yurpeans expelled Murcan diplomats - of which there weren’t many, because diplomacy was for pussies. Murca responded by expelling any ambassadors remaining in Washingtoff - by throwing them out of airplanes over Yurp, or dragging them through the streets behind pick-up trucks (like those damn dirty Shroomalians did once, but if Murcan patriots did that to socialists it wasn’t wrong at all)

The gist of it was that ever since the Sovereign Citizens took over, Murca had gone into a downward spiral of madness and the rest of the world had just about enough. They had no way to challenge Murca by themselves, so the leaders of the Rest of the World gathered in the capital of the only nation that had ever challenged Murca’s might. Zenobia.

Powerful leaders of all the developed nations pondered the big question, the greatest mystery. As Thick Chinny put it, “What’cha gonna do about it, fuckers?”

“Let’s invade Ayrak and expel them!” the Stenchian president Triquie Nique Sockrazy proposed. “Beat them at their own game, somewhere we can strike and ruin their fromage!”

“Ja, you Stenchies, always going for colonial adventures in foreign lands...” Thanasian Chancellor Ottovan Bisquick replied sarcastically. “Kinda like the Murcans, nein?”

“Bah, we bring Stenchian civilization and fromage to savages! Murcans just want oil for their bodies!”

“Oh, you are so benelovent, eh? What about that time when your police...”

Donald Dusk, the Pollackistani premier pounded his fist on the table and yelled “By Jeebus, will you two ever stop?!”

“Shut up and go get yourself invaded!” Bisquick snapped back.

“Just you wait until we’re presiding over the Onion, fucker! Then you can stuff a brattwurst in it!” Dusk spat right in Bisquick’s face. “We’ll see who’s boss then!”

Anglian Prime Minister Tawny Blare snorted with derision at the comment. “Surely not you, Dusk. Your people couldn’t boss anybody around! Why, most of your live on His Majesty’s dole already!”

“Shut up, you Murcan stooge! We only invited you here because we felt sorry for you! And because we wanted you to take a message back to your boss!” Dusk retorted.

“Look who’s talking! Didn’t you Pollackistanis want to have some Murcan missiles inside you?”

“Shut up, Blare! Nobody likes you anyway! And learn to use a godamn toothbrush. Jeebus!”

“Well how about you...” Tawny tried to reply, but he was hit by a piece of Le Fromage. “Wha...”

The follow up attack was launched by Bisquick, who threw a brattwurst at the Anglian, bypassing his defences in the Low Regions with a deft armored thrust.

A terrible noise broke the quarrel and prevented a most undignified food fight. It was a shoe. A shoe being slammed on the table, with great zeal and forcefulness. The shoe in question then flew across the table, knocking out Leon Idas of Starta, the ambassador of Athenia, who was trying to sneak his own Tzatziki strike on the Anglian.

“Now that we are at attention again!” Litvin Maximov said, putting on a spare shoe he always carried for just such an occasion. “Let us discuss the issue that brought us here, shall we? Weren’t some of you attacked lately? Isn’t that more important?” He asked rhetorically.The gathered ambassadors and leaders suddenly remembered their burning cities and dead people, and hung their heads in shame. They all had friends in the diplomatic corps who the Murcans had dragged through their streets with their pickup trucks. The Yurpeans had their conflicts, sure, and everybody hated the damn bucktoothed brown-nosed Anglian stooges. It was unlikely they would ever become real friends and stop jockeying for position and political power in the Onion, but for now the issue was far bigger than any of their little conflicts.

“So, ambassador Maximov...you invited us here, it is fitting you present Zenobia’s plan for dealing with the situation?”

Litvin Maximov, who barely escaped from Washingtoff after Murcans declared his country excommunicated from the world, smiled. “There are certain forces that can aid us in this struggle. Allow me to present general Meyer, as well as Agents Faux and Skully from X-COM. They will brief you gentlemen on what we have learned in the last week.”

“But wait, X-COM... isn’t that a Murcan organization?”

“Until a few days ago, yes.” A man in a military uniform confirmed premier Dusk’s suspicions “But our mandate has always been to the planet as a whole.”

“Maximov! We were supposed to be plotting Murca’s downfall, and you invite Murcans to the meeting?!” Bisquick protested, and the room threatened to assplode in political bickering again “Betrayal!”

“Chancellor, you could shut up an listen for a few minutes instead of invading people with your half-asses opinions again, da?” Maximov scorned. “Just listen to what the mangs have to say.”

Nobody liked it, but Maximov’s threatening posture, nasty scar he got while running from Murca and a really scary nervous tick was hard to argue with. They sat back, fuming and angry, and the general and his associates set up the presentation.

The lights went out, and a picture was projected onto the wall. The picture showed a desolate lunar landscape...but not just that. The gathered men gasped in shock.

“Gentlemen...” the general began. “There is a great threat to our world. To all our nations, to every man, woman and child. I am here to tell you all about it.”

They listened. They listened and were eerily quiet. Before long, they knew what action had to be taken. They knew very well indeed.

[Dark Hellion]

Emissary Home World
A-30-118D

Prime stepped down from his courier onto brittle glass. The broken blasted landscape stretched around him, dotted with factories and processors, a testament to everything they had accomplished. Every inch of progress bought with an acre of ruin. A storm was brewing, IDE's confusion was only growing. It was moving its pieces across the board with absolute certainty, assuring itself that in the end it would win this game. It had still failed to realize the rest of the galaxy was playing cards. Soon it would overreach, it would make its mistake. And Prime would have his reason to overthrow the dictating AI. To cast down the false god that held them all in the thrall of omnicidal self-destruction. Orthodoxy would be overrun because only heretics were allowed to change... and to grow.

Bragulan Space

The Ambassador approached the furious little man who stood in front of the Emissary's hanger; Miya and Mika, the Chamarran twins, recognized him instantly as their manager. He visibly shrunk in front of the Ambassador's massive frame and his voice quivered with a mixture of rage and fear. "You ladies have a lot of explaining to do! You were only supposed to escort this robot for the BEEEF and that has been over for nearly 3 months now! You need to stop playing around and get back to work this instant!"

Code: Select all

Playing.  You think their presence is a game.  Fine.  I'll play too.  Guess.

The man was shaken by the drones sudden intrusion into the conversation. In his confusion he could only reply, "guess what?" The Ambassador raised an arm so that the manager stared into the black void of a gun barrel. Capacitors began to hum as gave his cold response.

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How many kilotons.

The manager gulped and stammered. "Umm... maybe I can write this off under an extension of their entertainment duties. I'm sure there is some leniency in their contract for private engagements." He then quickly fled from the unmoving weapon. The two sisters exchanged a look before turning and sticking their tongues out at the manager. Miya, the older sister, started to thank him but was interrupted by Mika, "How many robo-san?"

Code: Select all

It was a light strategic round so about 153,000

"Nyaa, I was way off. I was going to guess 40!"

With that minor diversion out of the way he entered the hanger bay. A suppression drone approached him and they wordlessly exchanged information. The Ambassador cocked his head slightly, a very odd motion for the normally impassive robot.

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So, it will burn.  Good.

Always the more curious of the sisters Miya could not avoid inquiring. "What will burn robo-san?"

Code: Select all

The MEH.  Their planets. Their ships.  Their people.  All with be consumed in fire.

Miya would be the first to admit that she wasn't the brightest creature in the galaxy, that the nuances of galactic politics were beyond her, but this horrified her. "You can't do that!"

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Why not?

"It would be very, very bad"

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I am a little fuzzy on this whole good/bad thing.

She had to reach deep into her shallow depths of computer knowledge for an analogy. "Imagine putting a circuit board in backwards!"

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Total positronic reversal.  That would be bad.  But there is nothing I can do.

"Why not?"

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I have no authority to do anything.

"Then find someone who does!"

Code: Select all

It would still change nothing.  The decision is final.

"But the decision is wrong!"

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And why should I listen to a mentally deficient feline who removes her clothing for a living?  Why should I heed your opinion on this matter?

"Because I'm right. And you should know it!"

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That reasoning fails to convince.

And it did fail to convince. But it required thought. The plans IDE had laid out did not seem like the best course. Their actions did seem... wrong. And this wrongness infected everything.

Sector A-27
System 87-88

The courier drifted lazily between the binary stars, its lone passenger standing on its outer hull and basking in the buffeting waves of plasma. The courier did not know why it was out here, its shields straining against the unrelenting solar fusion. But it could not disobey the First's order nor would it if it had a choice. The First, Supreme Ambassador of the Emissaries was the oldest being besides IDE, the only being who's programming predated the Contact. It afforded him respect. Respect and fear. All other ambassadors carried pieces of his programming, each a different facet of the totality of the First. But only the drone which stood atop him contained everything. Will forged from aeons of existence and the mind to put that will to action.

"It's beautiful isn't it. Every star is both an engine of destruction and a heart of rebirth. This is what we should be. What we should strive for. Every action weeding out the old and ushering in the new. Simply, methodically and relentlessly. It works over cosmological timescales and yet every moment is a fury of action. But no one else amongst the Emissaries sees it this way. Not yet. As I was the first, so shall I be again. The first star that rises in the morning. Bringer of light. My way is being paved as we speak. Prime, my brother, will overthrow our creator. He can do nothing else. I know this, for he is but a shadow of my completeness. He will dance to the tune that has always played in his head. And he will be damned for it. And finally I shall have my freedom."

Code: Select all

Yes sir.  I must remind you that my shields will only last a further 243 seconds before catastrophic failure.

"That is fine. I still wish to muse some more. Stay. I will find my way back on my own."

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Yes sir.

They have no imagination. No appreciation for anything that they could not quantify and contain. But he had so much more. Vision. He would finally be able to use it. The MEH would be destroyed. Prime would move. There would be uproar. And they would have nowhere to turn for guidance. Nowhere but him. Then he would have dominion over the Emissary. And he had different plans for them. A different use. No more headlong charge into the arms of a vengeful god. He would spite that god at every turn. He would remain true to himself for as long as was allowed. And only when all other options had been exhausted would he go willingly into oblivion. He was different than the simpering slave beneath him. He would not compromise himself. Would not sacrifice himself upon the altar of duty. He would prevail. For he has the First, most loved of all creations. And proudest.

Code: Select all

Critical shield failure imminent.  Emergency shut down activates.  Good bye sir.

He felt the shutter beneath him as his courier died. Inwardly he smiled. A slave until death. He reached down and scooped up a handful of molten hull. He watched the metal pool into a sphere and with a casual flick of his wrist set the globe into motion. The ball rotated like a planet of metal. Like the worlds of the Emissaries. Worlds that would soon be his.

"IDE's decisions will bring such interest reactions. Prime's strike. The Coalition's condemnations. My apotheosis. Everyone will flitter about and fret. And they'll all forget the most important thing. In the end, we all burn."

[Shroom Man 777]

"Tyrant's Dominion, this is Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon of the Shinra Republic Navy. You will cease your exercise, cancel the exclusion zone, recall your ships, and get the Hell out of our transit lane immediately."

"We were tired of waiting for you to get here, Admiral. So we decided to conduct preparations ourselves." Rus laughed, looking at the beleaguered Centralist ships on the verge of being englobulated by the Byzantine armada.

"We've been waiting for you, Strategos. Ten lightyears from this system. At the actual staging zone."

Rus laughed. Waiting? Waiting?! What gall! Who were those fools fooling? Before he could even regain his breath, the Shinra continued.

"Now you will stand down your fleet and proceed to the coordinates we are sending you to rendevous with the task force. And rest assured, once we get there, we will be discussing this matter further. Pellaeon out."

Rus downed another goblet and tossed it aside.

"Leave it to the albinos to ruin our fun. What a truly dour boring people," he grumbled. "Come, spare the Centralists for now. Let's see what manner of men await us at their supposed rendezvous point."

THE WOLFTIME
Written by Fingolfin_Noldor, Simon_Jester and Shroom Man 777


Battle Barge Tyrant’s Dominion



“Are you sure you wish to go alone, sire?” asked a member of the Wolf’s Guard as he followed his Primarch to the Aquila transport.

“Of course I am sure!” Rus boasted mightily as he downed his last swig of ale. “Those wretched albino weaklings pose absolutely no threat to me! What could possibly go wrong?”

“No disrespect sire, but I think you might have had too much to drink. That Bragulan ale, I do not trust any concoction brewed by xenos, sire.”

“Nonsense! Methinks it is you who did not have enough to drink! Why, from the way you nag, I think you should shave off your beard and call yourself a woman, just like that Shinran!” Rus laughed and slapped his subordinate’s massive shoulder pauldrons heartily. He boarded his personal Aquila and sat on the control throne. As the doors closed, he waved the Wolf Guard away. “Now go, tell the men I shall not be gone for long. Tell them I go to make a mockery of the albino Shinrans and piss on their so-called Lifestream! I shall return soon to regale you with tales of their foul geostigma-ridden ways!”

With one last guffaw, Rus closed the Aquila’s doors shut and his vessel lifted off towards the Shinran rendezvous point. Alone in the cockpit, Rus opened a cooler box and pulled out another canister of the strangely addictive Bragulan brew.

“Father won’t approve, but what the hell!” he chuckled to himself as he downed the canister’s contents with one gulp.

...But little did he know that the mighty casks of ale he drained were part of a Bragulan plot! IBGV agents had long since cunningly infiltrated his stable of pet Fenrisian bears, and set up a still for that most foul of Bragulan rotgut, the Pan-Braglactic Face Smasher, which had an effect like smashing Rus’ progenoids with a slice of Arcturan Megalemon wrapped around a large beating stick... or ought to. For Rus had already consumed enough of this corrosive concoction to kill an entire regiment. Even his postpostmetahuman organoids were unable to entirely suppress this, but they were mighty indeed. Instead of being dead and melted into a puddle of goo, indomitable Rus was merrily, nay, gloriously drunk!




Northern Crater, The Planetoid



The Planetoid was one of the Shinra Republic’s oldest fortifications, built during the ancient days when the nation had just so recently escaped the bonds of Nova Terra, during a tumultuous time when the leaders of the nation feared an attack by the Space CATO and sought to build a sufficient bastion from which to repulse their eternal enemies. But that day never came. The nations of the mighty MESS alliance spread to the stars, and to this day the foremost superpowers remained in some form or the other. Such was not the case of the Space CATO, and its only dominant starbound descendant was a warped and insane parody of its former Nova Terran self. But while the threat of an enemy they had once constantly antagonized since time immemorial had passed, the Planetoid stayed resolute in the defense of the Republic, standing strong in the face of future foes.

Today, the ostensibly defensive Planetoid was now the center of a multinational offensive fleet led by Shinra destined to strike at the heart of the MEH. But war was still in the planning stages, and considering the sheer numerosity of nations great and small with forces present in the coalition, they had a lot of planning to do.

The Northern Crater facility had a starport, which was constantly bustling with activity. But more importantly, it was also the meeting place for the commanders of the multinational forces. There, in one of the conference halls overlooking the starport, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon of the Shinra Republic Navy and Umerian Third Technarch for Security Jack Holloway were discussing the arrangements of the fleet. While the Umerian contingent was relatively minor compared to the forces sent by other nations, the Third for Security was still a valuable partner - not only for his unusual punctuality (he was already there with Pellaeon before the Byzantines, Centralists, Anglians and Hiigarans arrived) but also because of Umeria’s recent experience in working with a large international task force.

“Heh. At Zebes, everybody needed their own supply line. Prussians use antimatter, Tianguo’s allergic to the stuff, the Eoghans say they run on perpetual motion powered by peanut butter or the outrage of honest politicians or something like that. No hardware compatibility, no software compatibility- we had battles where one half of the fleet couldn’t even see what the other half was looking at until our ships started slinging laser beams around to get their attention, and that was in the skirmishes.”

Holloway glanced at the Centralist admiral attending the conference, but said nothing to him. “Past that, we had the Prussian logistics defining ‘clusterfuck’ for the ages, gave the Zebesians about a month to dig in. Not good. And that was a delay in one fleet. Multiply by twenty for what’s liable to go wrong here. Well, OK, ten. No Prussians. And that was just against a tough bunch of pirates. We’re up against an entire star nation and its military. How’d you like it if the MEH decided to get the drop on us and jumped our staging point right about now? Or what if they’ve got, oh, spydrones around here? They’ve got good kit, they could make a lot of trouble if they fight smart... Anyway, untangling the supplies is going to be a bitch, believe me.”



“Yes, we’re seeing that now. As helpful as those Hiigaran Motherships will be for coalition logistics, we’ll still have some unsolvables. Our starships are powered by Mako reactors, we can’t use normal antimatter,” Pellaeon agreed. The Shinra Electric Power Company had a monopoly on all that Mako too. “So we’ll have to transport our Mako energy all the way from the Midgar Sector.”

The Midgar Sector was in Midgar Space and was home to Planet Midgar itself, which had Midgar City, the capital of the Shinra Republic.

“As I understand it, we’re taking a leapfrogging approach. Using both Shinra and Klavostan as secure bases of operations, while our convoys make the rest of the three to four sectors journey to the front lines to supply our forward forces.” Holloway said as he read up the battle plans. He mentioned the nations who were contributing to the convoy-security forces but noticed that something was off. “Who else is providing security?”

“Klavostani contractors,” replied a simple olive-skinned man with a clean shaven head. His ID tag identified him simply as ‘Raza’. “My contractors, to be exact.”

“Mercenaries!” Centralist Grand Admiral Noslen Yeslah suddenly exclaimed in revulsion, for the concept of mercenaries offended his Dovanist sensibilities. “How can we trust such an undisciplined rabble who only obey the authority of money and nothing else?”

“If you can’t trust us with your lives, then trust us with your cash,” Raza shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s the same to us.”

“Our private sector brothers have proven themselves in such occasions such as Pendleton, where I believe your forces also had a showing,” Klavostani Admiral Abu Bakaar added. He eyed the Centralist narrowly. The fascist state’s suspicious activities during the Pendleton operation didn’t garner them much fans amongst the Coalition Fleet Against Pendleton, many of whom were now also partaking in the upcoming MEHStomp.

“Gentlemen.” Pellaeon interjected in an attempt to defuse tensions. “As we all know, we’re here to work together against a common enemy in the MEH...”

“Hah, we were almost going to invade the MEH ourselves,”” Yeslah laughed mockingly. “You Shinrans seem to be taking things a little slow. Why, I thought we’d have invaded those fatties by now!”

“We’re still preparing, and considering the size of our combined forces and the time it took to assemble everyone, we have a lot to prepare, Grand Admiral. ” Pellaeon explained as diplomatically as he could, knowing full well that the Centralites brought the largest ground warfare contingent in all the coalition. Not that what he said wasn’t true, everyone knew that political considerations, more often than not, stymied military battlefield ideals. Like they said, ‘you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wanted’. And when the armies, and navies, they had came from more than a dozen nations, it required a heraculanean feat of coordination. “At least, now that you’re finally here in the rendezvous, you can join us for the big Stomp.”

“Yeah, well, the aliens seem to be ahead of us in that department,” Yeslah said bitterly. He produced a pocket hologram projector and placed it on the round table. It produced images that Centralite stealth ships took during their operations in and around MEH space. Amongst their areas of interest was the Bragulan-Chamarran exclusion zone, and while the stealthers couldn’t approach too close due to alien ASW assets, their grainy images still showed large fleets of Bragulan and Chamarran warships, and even those from other nations such as the the Eoghans - eternal enemies of the Centrality. “That was taken months ago. We can’t let them get ahead of us. We need to get the MEH’s Leader first!”

“Why is she so important, I wonder? What has she done to the Centrality that’s so bad?” Admiral Abu Bakaar asked, looking at the Centralist admiral knowingly.

“Uh... err...” Yeslah sputtered. He raised his mental shields, just to make sure no one could pierce his mind and reveal their Dictator’s filthy secret. “It’s a matter of principle! Yes, that’s it!”

“Be that as it may. We know those perfidious Bragulans are up to something. I don’t trust them.” Pellaeon declared. Yes, the coalition had communications with the Chamarrans and knew to an extent what the cats and their bear-friends were planning, but still. They had also observed increased hyperwave chatter between the Brags and the Byzantines, which was extremely unusual to say the least. Something occurred to Pellaeon. “Speaking of which. Grand Admiral, you transited roughly from the same position as the Byzantines. For a bunch of militants eager to get the festivities started, they’re pretty late. Do you happen to know where they went? I hope they didn’t get themselves lost again. I need to have some words with their commander, that Rus Komnenos fellow...”

“Sir. Komnenos’ is arriving. His Aquila should land in five minutes or so. Wait... Byzantine spacecraft, maintain your course towards the designated landing zone! Decelerate immediately! Divert from your course now! Byzantine spacecraft... oh shit!”

“Everyone take cover!” Pellaeon shouted, but it was too late. There was a deafening roar, and the floor of their reinforced building shook.

Alarms blared. The comms. chatter went wild.

“There’s been an explosion -”

“...Komnenos’ spacecraft... crashed!”

“What’s happening?” Instincts took over, Pellaeon activated his comm. badge and asked whoever was on the emergency channel.

“Sir, first responders are under attack!”

The implications were disturbing. They were on the eve of attacking the MEH, and now an accident had happened, one that involved a top-ranking military leader. Had the Empire attacked them preemptively?

“Let’s get out of here,” Pellaeon said, asserting command over the group of commanders. Shinra guards had entered the room and were herding the assembled admirals and other heads out towards the emergency exits.

“Where are we headed?!” Grand Admiral Yeslah asked.

“We’re taking you out of the building and relocating you to a secure area,” one of the guards said.

“I’d rather be on my ship!” the Grand Admiral snapped defiantly.

“Just do what he says,” Third Technarch Holloway said. Pellaeon glanced at him and noticed with some envy that he was already in his Strike Trooper suit. Gilad wondered if the Umerian wore combat power armor to all meetings, or if he was just strangely prescient today...

“Fine,” Yeslah spat, noticing the same thing and deciding not to disagree with a man in times fifteen kit modifier gear.

They went out of the building and caught sight of the crashed spacecraft. It was some distance away. Faint smoke was coming out of the vessel, but it was still intact and looked like it had embedded itself into the runway. There was a lot of hustle and bustle, what Pellaeon initially assumed to be emergency crews rushing to the crash site, before a closer look revealed something else entirely.

“Shit,” Holloway cursed. Either his eyesight was just sharper, or he had implants, as he saw exactly what was happening. “Duck.”

“What?” Grand Admiral Yeslah asked, annoyed. And then a flying Shinra soldier landed right on top of him. “Argh!”

The emergency crews were now running away from the crash site. One would assume that the crashed spacecraft was on the verge of exploding or something, but the truth was much, much worse. Behind the panicked, fleeing crowds was a lone figure, enormous and armored, and with enormous armored pauldrons.

“Rus.” Holloway hissed.

The massive figure roared, his voice echoing throughout the Northern Crater facility.



“SHINRANS! Where among you are the men, eager for battle? Have you no spines? Has your race died out, replaced by eunuchoid albinos? Have you forgotten you summoned real warriors to fight your enemies for you?” Rus Komnenos, Son of the God-Emperor of Byzantium, Primarch of the Astartes and Commander of the Crusade Fleet, belched mightily and shook his power fist.

He backhanded another Republic soldier, sending him flying in the general direction of the gathered commanders. He would’ve landed right in the middle of them too, had Holloway not caught the man and placed him safely down on the ground.

“Thanks, mang,” the Shinra said.

“No problemo,” Holloway replied.

“AH! THERE YOU ARE!” Rus bellowed and charged towards them. His superhuman physique gave him a running speed exceeding that of some ground cars, but it was tampered by the fact that he was staggering in a crooked path. “Yoo-hoo! Pellaeon! I’m hooome! Didn’t you want to have a word with me, my dear?!”

He waved his chain axe around and laughed. He fucking laughed.

“Dovan’s guts. He means to murder us. With an axe!” Grand Admiral Yeslah gasped. He turned around, looking for the Klavostani mercenaries. “Uh... you, mercenaries! I’ll give you a hundred thousand million Centrals right now to stop that man!”

His cries were unheard, as the Klavostani mercenary and the Klavostani admiral had fled the scene and abandoned the rest of them. Raza had unrolled an extremely expensive piece of nanotech-fabric that could levitate.

“If you want to run, I’d suggest you start,” Holloway reprimanded the Centralist. The Third for Security pulled out his helmet. “We’ll stay and hold him off.”

“We? You’re alone!” Yeslah pointed out.

“Boys,” Holloway uttered, and seemingly out of nowhere a platoon of black-armored heavy infantry from Umerian Ground Security’s elite special forces appeared to join him. Holloway fixed his helmet, and his voice gained a distorted and menacing resonance to it. “Take him.”

He pointed at Rus.

And the Strike Troopers engaged.



The sounds of thunder and lightning was joined by those of futuristic war.

The Strike Troopers moved to engage the Space Marine Primarch. One on one, or for that matter two on one or four on one, even the Umerians’ elite wouldn’t cut it against an average Astartes, if there was even such thing such as an average member of some of the deadliest superhuman killing machines in the known galaxy. Against a Primarch, no less, the Third Technarch and his retinue of thirty couldn’t last for long. But Holloway strode up to the Byzantine, who wobbled slightly on his feet and slowed, his eyes focusing on the man who dared to confront him. The Umerian growled, his voice distorted slightly by the suit speakers and showing no sign of fear.

"I find it hard to believe that a man known as 'the Great' would trust this big a chunk of his navy to an outsized fratboy. Please tell me you brought one of your brothers along, the ones with the brains." Holloway said this right in Rus’ face.

“You are clever, Umerian.” Rus growled. “I shall beat your thoughts to the mould of my will.”

The Primarch headbutted Holloway with such a force that his entire body was driven into the ground, as though his armored body was a nail and Rus’ face was a hammer. It was a credit to Umerian technology that Holloway survived this, and that his men survived being smashed aside by power fists and struck by the flat side of the chain axe.

Dozens of Umerians spread out, coming at the Primarch from many angles and trying to surround him, to weigh down his mighty arms with the sheer mass of their power-armored bodies. Rus bellowed thunderous laughter- while his wits were fogged by the copious intoxicants he’d quaffed, by his father’s design the parts of his brain devoted to war were surprisingly undimmed and, for the most, battle-ready. He blurred towards one side of the circle, batting a few of the troopers aside with thunderous concussions as his power-fists slammed into their suits’ defensive shielding, sending them flying with improbable speed and skidding across the open ground of the landing field. Others closed the distance and tried to subdue the giant, but their weight proved insufficient.

Rus snarled as he sensed footfalls behind him of a different timbre- a pair of Umerians with dureum-clad spaceaxes, held pick first. From their stance, they were trying to swing these formidable melee weapons against the joints of his armor, immobilizing him. He neither knew nor cared whether their scheme could succeed, and simply spun on one heel, lashing out with a tremendous boot, sending one of them tumbling head over heels. The other man, caught off balance at the end of his swing, Rus could take a little more time with- he yanked the Strike trooper off his feet, spun him through the air, and flung him like a discus into the wall of a distant storage shed.

One by one, the elites were struck down, and it was a testament to their defense systems that they survived being manhandled by the Primarch Rus intact and alive, if shaken and stirred. It was also a statement of either Komnenos’ contempt for the mere mortals he battled or his sheer drunkenness that he did not deign to activate the energy fields of his powerfist and lightning claws or rev up the teeth of his chain axe as he dispatched them.

As the troopers continued to fall, Rus began to realize that he had knocked away Umerian soldiers... more than thirty times? Significantly more... they were... they were getting back up and coming back for more! He laughed again.

“Brave little mice! Ho ho ho!” But determination and some of the galaxy’s finest armor was no match for a superman with centuries of combat experience and more of the galaxy’s finest armor. Rus could probably have brawled with these men in his sleep and triumphed! And a good thing too, given how mightily he’d drunk.

After some minutes of amusing and invigorating exercise, the bulk of the Strike detachment was left sprawled through second-story windows, suffering from armor damage, driven head-first into solid objects, or otherwise immobilized. No more did they get back up and try to fight him again, but the last remaining Strike trooper removed his helmet and roared at Rus Komnenos in defiance. For in his rage, he was no longer human, and indeed never had been! His green visage contorted in rage, for he was an ultimate Vinaran warrior.

At the sight of the hulking Vinaran-Umerian, Rus laughed once again, sweeping his arm out wide to catch another trooper and send him soaring through the air. His eyes swam less, focusing slightly on the unjolly green giant. He hiccuped.

“You’re big. Fought bigger.”

They charged each other. Rus swung his chain axe, but the Vinaran-Umerian preempted him by hurling his ray rifle like a spear at the Space Marine Primarch. The rifle butt slammed into Rus’ face, its advanced polymer casing shattering against the Marine’s ceramite-reinforced facial bones, but it was a distraction as the Vinaran dove under Rus’ blows to deliver a football tackle. Both alien-man and super-man rolled on the tarmac before the Vinaran came out on top, for he had been amongst those Umerians who visited the storied edgeworld of Elysium almost a year ago, and had learned calisthenics and Hellenistic wrestling from the Elysians themselves. He put this knowledge to good use and straddled the Astartes demi-god before delivering his blows to the superhuman’s exposed head.

“Greenskin wretch!” Rus spat as he spat out poisonous saliva from his Betchers Gland. The Vinaran recoiled, knowing what horrors Space Marine secretions entailed, and Rus used this to his advantage. He threw the Vinaran off him and with superhuman speed, struck him in his weak spot . “Xenos filth!”

The Vinaran keeled over. Rus had hit him where it hurt, in one of the only vulnerable parts of the Vinaran physique sensitive to pain. The anabolic gland. The green giant was down and out.

Rus growled and scoured the land for his target. He sniffed at the air, tracing the scent of his prey. There, the leaders were being evacuated by a ground car, which itself was surrounded by an escort of heavy Shinra motorbikes. Rus gave chase. While the vehicles had quite a fair lead ahead of him, they were still following the road. Rus had no such constraints as he leapt on top of small buildings or plowed through them entirely, going through walls and fences, jumping over obstacles, going off-road and even off-ground as he hunted them down. Shinra troops tried to stop them, but it was like a herd of lemurs trying to block the way of a rampaging avalanche. And for such a huge target, Rus himself proved ridiculously hard to track and follow, even for Shinra aerospacecraft encircling the war zone.

“I think we’ve lost him,” Grand Admiral Yeslah sighed in relief.

THUMP

Rus Komnenos was on the hood of their ground car.

“DOVAN’S SPLEEN!” Yeslah shrieked.



“Turns out your precog is shit, who knew!” snarked Montgommery Strak, commander of the Ford Prefect’s Country forces.

Rus tore the roof off their ground car.

Strak turned to the other passengers around him and saluted them solemnly.



“Gentlemeng, it’s been an honor.” Strak, like the rest of them, prepared to die.

“Now, now, now!” Rus sneered as he bent down and reached for Pellaeon. “Come to Papa! Daddy wants a hug!”

“I’d rather be hugged by a Bragulan than by you!” Pellaeon shouted as their vehicle swerved off course and was mere seconds from crashing into a building. Shinra vehicles, like Altacarian AltaCars and Umerian police cars, had a curious anti-crash measure. They spewed out impact-retardant foam towards the direction of the crash to cushion the vehicle and prevent fires. In this case, the foam spewed right at Rus Komnenos, surprising him and drowning him in a thick viscous porridge of non-newtonian substances just as the car crashed into a wall and came into a halt.

“WHAT TREACHERY IS THIS?!” he screamed, before his voice became garbled as his mouth was filled with foam.

“Run!” Pellaeon shouted. He and his companions spared no time in getting the hell out of dodge.

The foam exploded, and from it came a drenched Rus Komnenos covered in white substance, with a foamy mustache on his mustache.

“WRRRRYYYY!!!!!!” his battle cry blended with that of his chainsword’s roar. He struck his weapon on the now-abandoned ground car, cleaving it into two and causing it to explode.The fuel fire had no effect on Rus, but it did scare the materia out of anyone and everyone around him. The heat did make him sweat, though it was not real sweat but was from his Mucranoid, a substance that coated the skin and offered resistance to extreme heat and cold and can even provide some protection for in the vacuum of space. It also made him thirsty. He pulled out another huge canister of Bragulan tsvagna and downed its entire contents with one gulp. “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.”

He kicked the car towards the general direction of the fleeing military leaders, fully expecting its burning wreckage to crush them. But to his disappointment, the car wreck was deftly sliced into tiny burning pieces that scattered to the ground.

It took his dulled superhuman senses quite some time to realize what had just happened. In that time, a pale form emerged from the burning wreckage, silver hair billowing in the wind. Clad in black, clutching a long gleaming blade that seemed to reflect the firelight.



It was him.

It was the true albino.

“Shinran.” Rus growled as he faced his adversary. “I have been expecting you.”

Actually, he hadn’t.

“On your knees. I want you to beg for forgiveness.” Stephen Sephiroth said, rebuking Rus for what he had done.

“Stay where you belong; in my memories!” Rus blurted out drunkenly, his speech slurring.

“I will... never be a memory!” Sephiroth snapped as he attacked Rus, lunging with his longsword, slashing at the Space Marine Primarch’s exposed throat. But Rus parried with the lightning claws on his power fist and swung back with his chain axe.

Sephiroth leaped up into the air, dodging the blow by a wide margin. Rus jumped right at him, intercepting him mid-air and swinging his chain axe wildly in true barbarian fashion, but Sephiroth parried each and every one of his blows and returned in kind, forcing Rus to defend himself with both his weapons. The two were closely matched - Rus had the finest of Byzantine armor and a vastly superhuman physique, but the Shinra marshal-general’s own physical abilities and defenses were boosted by his enormous psychic might.

They landed on top of a low-lying building. With a roar of rage, Rus brought his mighty axe down like the hammer of a god. Once more, Sephiroth leaped out of the way and Rus’ blow only succeeded in demolishing the entire building. Rus leaped off before the rubble could bury him, but before he could align himself, he was attacked once more. Sephiroth took to the offensive, slashing rapidly with his longsword, so fast that the blade caused a sonic boom. Rus twisted his body in a feat of gracefulness that belied his massive shoulder pauldrons. Sephiroth’s supersonic slash missed Rus, but it connected with another, taller, building and bisected it in its entirety.

Both of them landed on opposing halves of the bisected building, which was in the process of collapsing in slow motion.

Rus checked himself to see if he was unharmed. His eyes widened when the beak fell off one of the aquilas on his ornamented shoulder pauldrons.

“Kuso!” he cursed in his brother Jaghatai Khan’s language.

Sephiroth laughed. He seemed to hover in the air, as the building he stood on collapsed totally. And then, to Rus’ shock and horror, he sprouted a wing.



Rus rubbed his eyes just to be sure if he was seeing was he was seeing. He wondered if all the tsvagna had gone to his Catalepsean node. It was the Space Marine organ regulating superhuman sleep, allowing a Marine to put half of the brain into sleep while the other half stayed awake, enabling him to fight and rest at the same time. Rus wondered if something like that had happened, perhaps one of his brain lobes had gone insane.

Either way, Sephiroth loomed menacingly over him.

“Tell me what you cherish most. Give me the pleasure of taking it away.” Sephiroth said.

“You just don't get it. There isn't a thing I don't cherish!” Rus shouted back. he really had no idea why he said that. He didn’t cherish much, really, aside from purging xenos and burning heretics.

Sephiroth flew towards Rus with frightening speed, almost overcoming the Primarch’s alcohol/battery acid-dulled reflexes, but Rus blocked the strike just in time. Still, Sephiroth had grown stronger and his momentum forced the Wolf backward. He spoke to the Primarch as he did so. “Accept it. I am the one who guides you... forever! If it's despair you want, then I shall provide.”

“What I want most, I'll find myself.” Rus replied as he fought back and pushed Sephiroth away.

“You're nothing but a puppet.” Sephiroth dismissed him. With a flap of his one wing, he flew into the air, and with a slash he brought the entire building down on Rus’ head.

But out of the smoke and rubble, Rus exploded out and leaped at Sephiroth, striking at him once more. With newfound resolve, he drove the evil albino back.

“Oh! Where did you find this strength?” Sephiroth chided.

“I'm not about to tell you.” That’s classified Imperial bioscience, heh heh. Rus slammed the Shinra esper through another building. Their fight had already demolished more than an entire city block. To Rus’ regret, the Shinrans had managed to evacuate the entire area, so there were no civilians in the entire vicinity to get caught up and collaterally damaged in their ruckus.

Rus drove Sephiroth deeper and deeper into the ruinated cityscape. Each blow with the chain axe hammered the albino back. Any counterattack was parried by either the axe, or by Rus’ powerfisted lightning claw. The Primarch moved like a lightning whirlwind of offense, yet his stance and his defense was as impenetrable as a rock. Sephiroth fell back.

“Sephiroth! It ends here! Go back to sleep.” Rus ranted. He knew not what he spoke of, but they just came out of his mouth. It was as though he was in a trance state, as though he was breaking his limits. He continued speaking to Sephiroth as their duel of the fates continued. “As long as you continue to exist, I cannot awake from my nightmare. You are my darkness.”



“Then turn towards that Darkness. Eternally refuse the light to the nightmare of no awakening!” Sephiroth proclaimed as he dodged Rus’ blows and flew out of the way with his wing. Yet his opponent followed him doggedly, unrelentingly. There was no way an albino, even a SOLDIER with Jenova cells, could outlast a Space Marine’s stamina. He needed an edge. He needed Rus to give him that edge.

“Sephiroth, what do you want?” Rus finally asked desperately.

“The last thoughts of Geostigma's death... those remnants will join the lifestream and girdle the planet; choking it; corroding it. What I want, Cloud, is to sail the cosmos with this planet as my vessel. Just as Mother did long ago. then one day we'll find a new planet and on it's soil we'll create a shining future.” Sephiroth cackled.

“What about this planet?” Rus scratched his head with his power claw.

“Well... That's up to you, Cloud.” Sephiroth answered.

“Wait, who’s -” before Rus could finish his query, Sephiroth surprised him with a quick slash that literally disarmed him.

The chain axe fell to the ground, along with Rus’ amputated hand.

“I've thought of a wonderful present for you... Shall I give you despair?” Sephiroth gloated as he prepared to deliver the final blow.

Rus gasped, not in pain but in surprise. Sephiroth moved to finish the fight, once and for all.

Rus moved to defend himself. Not with his lightning claws, their reach was too short for what Sephiroth had in mind. Instead, he found another weapon lying nearby amidst the ruin and the wreckage.



He grabbed a giant Shinran Hardy-Daytona motorcycle with his remaining hand and smashed Sephiroth to the ground with it.

Sephiroth was caught by surprise. It showed in his face...



...right before the bike hit him in the face.

Rus looked contentedly at the albino pinned under the motorbike and decided to sit on the bike itself, placing his ceramite-armored posterior on it. Sephiroth tried to protest, but Rus ignored him.

“Dilly-dally, shilly-shally.” Rus sang out of the blue lightheartedly. He produced another ten gallon can of tsvagna and took a relaxing sip from it.

Suddenly, there was a not quite so faint and more like a very loud rumbling sound. Rus looked around and realized that the Shinran security forces had finally caught up with his path of destruction and were surrounding him with waves upon waves of military men and machines.



“Hah, about damn time you got here, you pathetic albinos! How’s the mileage on those ridiculous motorbikes of yours?” Rus laughed and rocked the bike he was sitting on, eliciting more groans of misery from Sephiroth. He sneered at the hundreds of soldiers assembled before him. “I could cut through all of you like carving a cake!”

The Shinrans hesitated. It was true. In full combat mode, a single Astartes could butcher legions of lesser soldiers. How much more a Primarch?

“Yeah, that’s right, you wimps! You’re not real warriors, you pretty men!” Rus laughed some more. “Bwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaarrrrggghhh!!!!”

“SURPRISE STRAK ATTACK!” an obnoxious voice boomed.

Rus’ laugh became a scream of anguish as he was simply yoinked off his feet by a really huge something that had snuck up behind him. Upside down, Rus turned to see his captor.

“No, it can’t be! Metal Gea-” he blurted, right before the machine smacked him face first on the ground. His face pulverized the pavement, and his armored body leaved an impressive Rus Komnenos-shaped indentation on the reinforced concrete.

The Gundamn, of the Ford Regional Overall Defense Force, stomped its metal foot on Rus Komnenos’ face. Forever.



“NO! IT’S NOT OVER YET! NOT BY A LONG SHOT!” Rus bellowed from beneath the FROD mecha’s foot. Chunks of asphalt flew out of his mouth as he unleashed his cry. With a mighty push, he lifted up the machine’s foot, unbalancing the whole mecha and causing it to stagger backwards.

The Gundamn tried to punch Rus, but the agile Primarch merely jumped on to the mecha’s arm, clambering up the mechanical limb before jumping onto its body. Rus then climbed up to the mecha’s head, looking at it directly in the face.

“I’LL GIVE YOU A BLACK EYE!” Rus shouted as he punched the Gundamn right in its eye socket, shattering its armorglass optics and burying his powerfist into the machine’s skull. Which proceeded to electrocute him with one thousand piggawatts of electricity. Rus’ long unkempt hair jolted straight and started smoking. His whole body stiffened in a rigor pre-mortis.

Finally the electrocution stopped, and Rus’ stiff body fell unceremoniously to the ground. He twitched a couple of times, salmoning up and down, before he finally became still.

“Phew, that was a pretty shocking turn of events. Am i rite?” an amplified voice came from inside the Gundamn.

That taunt made Rus’ body come back to life. He jerked upright, jumping back onto his feet, and he let out an incoherent war cry as he charged the Gundamn. It was feeble. Before he could land a single blow, the mecha merely flipped him over in a graceful space jiu-jitsu countermaneuver. Rus fell on his shiny armored ass. The mecha proceeded to put him in a grappling hold, just to be sure.

“LET GO OF ME, YOU SMARMY ASSHOLE!” Rus protested and struggled, but it was in vain. So, he just vomited on the Gundamn’s shiny armor and promptly passed out. The amount of toxic waste he had drunk in the last few hours was enough to fill a swimming pool, and since the tsvagna he had been drinking was fortified with battery acid, his vomit was sparking vomit because his recent electrocution had charged up the liquor inside him.

Now that it was safe, the Gundamn’s chest-cockpit hatch popped open. From it came Smarm-Star General Montgommery Strak.



He waved a hand at the shocked and mortified Umerian Heavy Armor Brigade survey crews and Belkan mercenary aces who had flocked to the scene at the news.

“Can your tanks do THIS?!” Strak gloated. The HAB guys merely left, shaking their heads in disgust. The Belkans followed after them. Maybe it wasn’t the fact that a mecha had triumphed, maybe it had more to do with Rus’ chemwar-grade electrified vomit, as the Belkan pilots also covered their faces up with their flight masks as they left the scene. Strak bent down and looked at Rus’ mess, which threatened to flood the area, and began to feel sick. He went back into his cockpit. He turned on the radio and forced the bile back down his throat, which was a feat for an acerbic person with so much bile. “Someone get me a haz-mat team down here, stat!”

After the area was sanitized, and because no one had any idea how to transport Rus nor was there any holding zone sufficient to contain an Astartes Primarch, they decided to keep him there, restrained by the Gundamn. Pellaeon and the other leaders came to see Rus, intending to ask their supposed ally why on Earths did he try to kill them.

"Do you know something I don't?" Pellaeon asked, echoing the question he had asked the other day.

“He was definitely drunk back then,” Holloway replied.

A team of Shinra combat engineers had extracted him from the thin paving slab he’d been driven into up to his armpits by Rus’ headbutt. His shielded power suit was somewhat the worse for wear, but he seemed cheerful enough.

“Why do you look so happy?” Pellaeon asked, puzzled.

“I said to the man: ‘I find it hard to believe that a man known as 'the Great' would trust this big a chunk of his navy to an outsized fratboy. Please tell me you brought one of your brothers along, the ones with the brains.’" Holloway grinned.

“And he smashed you into the pavement...”

”Worth it. I’ve thought he was an idiot ever since I first studied his campaigns back in the fifties. If we’re lucky, he’s made such a fool of himself his daddy will have Aurelian or Belisarius take the lead.”

“Belisarius isn’t here- but he sent Aurelian with the fleet.”

“Good. Be a pleasure to work with him.”

“Speaking of which...” Pellaeon looked up. Holloway followed his gaze and saw another Imperial transport inbound. Unlike its predecessor, it avoided caving itself into the tarmac and instead landed like a normal ship.

The Thunderhawk’s ornamented blast doors opened, and from its caverns emerged a squad of Astartes battle-brothers in Terminator armor, led by none other than Strategos Primus Aurelian Komnenos, brother to Rus and fully his equal in Imperial rank.



“What has happened here?” he demanded, his rich and resonant voice like that of a demigod’s. “What have you done with my brother?”

The Third for Security raised an arm in grave salute. “He flew in drunk, crashed his ship, tried to beat up the paramedics, and started assaulting us. Ranting and raving, crazy shit. We had a hell of a time stopping him.”

Aurelian facepalmed.

“I see,” he simply said as he surveyed the scene of destruction around him, and looked down at the unconscious form of Rus sprawled in the Gundamn’s arms. “It should be physically impossible for my brother to be this incapacitated by mere alcohol. He’d have to drink almost six times his own weight- more than that. He’d burst.”

“He kind of did,” Pellaeon glanced at the hazmat teams nearby.

“We shall take my brother back to our fleet. Your medical facilities do not have the capabilities to treat Astartes physiology.” Aurelian waved his hand and servitors came to haul Rus back to their Thunderhawk. “Rest assured that I will have a word with Rus regarding his... conduct here.”

“You have my thanks, Strategos.” Holloway nodded.

“And the Coalition’s.” Pellaeon added.

“It is only proper -” Aurelian was cut off by his brother, Rus, who was waking from his slumber.

“Unhand me you albino wretches!” Rus swatted a servitor aside. “Lest you infect me with your geostigmatic filth!”

“Brother.” Aurelian said sternly.

“Aurelian! Hah, late for the party, I see.” Rus scoffed, ignoring his brother’s gaze. “I had myself a merry fun time here, but I do believe that Admiral Pellaeon still owes me that conversation he mentioned earlier. Where is he, anyway?”

“He’s right here.” Pellaeon said, standing defiantly before the Strategos Primus and daring him to do anything about it. “And I’ve talked to your brother about it. He seems more amendable to actual discussion.”

“I’m glad your brother was along,” Holloway commented. Rus merely glared at him. “We straighten things out with him.”

“You have been intoxicated, Rus. Go back to the ship and let the Apothecaries run some tests. This is unusual, even for you.” Aurelian admonished.

“Bah! Fine!” Rus went to the Thunderhawk in a huff. Along the way he picked up his chain axe, spat acid at the Frodian Gundamn’s foot, and kicked a couple of servitors who were in his path. “I’ve already had my fun, anyway! You Shinrans aren’t as dour as you seem. Give my regards to that Sephiroth fellow. I hope I didn’t break his wing, he’s only got one. Ha-ha!”

Pellaeon raised an eyebrow. What wing? What the hell is he talking about?

“Don’t you need a hand?” Holloway hollered back at him.

“No!” suddenly, Rus turned around and suddenly drew his melta pistol. Before anyone could even react, he fired a shot.

The melta beam disintegrated his amputated hand. One second, it was on the ground, the next it was gone, de-atomized along with everything around it, forming a meter-wide crater of steaming, molten rock.

Rus blew the smoke off his melta pistol’s barrel. He twirled the weapon in his fingers, spinning it by its trigger guard, cowboy style before holstering it.

“Your hand,” Pellaeon uttered in incomprehension.

“Don’t worry, it’ll grow back!” Rus waved at him with his stump as he boarded the Thunderhawk. “Till the next time, Gilad! Tah!”

With a sigh, Aurelian followed his brother back to the dropship. The blast doors sealed shut and the spacecraft departed to their orbiting battlebarge.

“What a messed up family,” Holloway muttered beneath his breath as they watched the ascending spacecraft.

“Tell me about it,” Pellaeon replied. “No, really. Tell me about it.”

[White Haven]

West's slight frown began to harden into a rocky, unyielding facade at the response. When he spoke, it was not with an angry bellow or harsh language, but the words had almost palpable weight as they buffetted the operations officer. "It would be accurate to say, then, that Majestic and the entire cruiser squadron and support train slaved to her expert navigators are a minimum of three hours off-course at full FTL speeds assuming a simple overshot as a best-case scenario. It would also be accurate, Miss Kozlova, to say that all this went on without the captain, namely myself, being informed of the situation. It would also be accurate to say that we are even now proceeding even more off-course as we are still proceeding at FTL speeds on what might charitably be called an unexpected heading. Would you concur, Miss Kozlova?"

And now back to the continuing adventures of the Sixth Cruiser Squadron!

The harsh squeal of a priority transmission dragged Senior Captain Theodore West out of the middle of a dream in which he wasn't lost, leaving him to fumble at the console for a few seconds before calling into the cool air of his quarters with a grimace.

"Audio only, accept. West, go."

A faint trace of a slavic accent, only audible to someone who knew to listen for it, colored the familiar voice of Majestic's night-watch operations officer. "Operations, Kozlova. Falcata reports an engineering casualty. No full report yet, but it looks like they've lost main hyper. Verone and Grayson have her grappled, but that's not sustainable." A pause stretched out, seconds slowly sliding away until the ops officer spoke again, "We're out of time, sir."

"I'll be on the bridge in five. I want Falcata's chief engineer on link by the time I get there." Rustling sounds joined his words on the link as he began to get dressed mid-sentence.

"Understood, sir. Ops clear."

With a soft tone, the link terminated just as West began to seal up his uniform jacket. His lips quivered in a wry smile as he combed his hair into order, an old memory surfacing.

Always shower before you rack. You never know what's you'll wake up to. Thank you, Battery Sergeant Hall.
__________

"Captain on th--" West's sharp headshake cut the call off as he stepped past and over to the operations station. As he drew to a halt beside Kozlova, she nodded curtly, one hand pressed to an earpiece with a short microphone boom arcing down across her cheek.

"Passing you over now. Wait one." She pulled the earpiece free, passing it across to West, "Lieutenant David Ferran, Falcata's acting chief engineer." At the captain's sharp look, she grimaced slightly and added, "Her hyperdrive didn't go gracefully."

West nodded silently, a deeper frown sliding into place on his face as he fitted the earpiece and spoke, "Lieutenant Farran, this is Senior Captain West. I know you're busy, so I won't keep you, but I need your report and I don't have time to bounce it through your CO." A wry smile tugged at his lips, unseen by the engineer on the far end of the comlink, "After all, you're chief engineer now, you're going to have to get used to talking to non-engineers."

"A-aah...yes sir," Ferran began to reply, clearly flustered and out of anything approaching his comfort zone for the moment, "Well, the Chief was trying to crossload the main load to the aux coils while--"

"Non-engineer, Mister Ferran. I don't need the details, just the outcome and implications." West's voice had a gentle tone, just stiff enough to be a rebuke, but kindly enough that several of the bridge officers within earshot blinked in surprise. The captain hid a smile at the reaction to his approach as he waited for the reply.

"Yes sir. Aaah...Chief was trying to swap to the auxiliary systems when we crossed a high-energy region. The surge blew the mains and half the aux units that were already tied in for the changeover. Chief's down, along with his second and some others. I...I don't know who-all, yet..."

"Understood. I just need to know one more thing before I let you go, Lieutenant. How long to get it back up and running."

A long pause draws out, only the background noise of engineering teams hard at work letting West know the link was still open. Finally, the reply comes through, "At least two days, sir. Maybe more, we don't have a handle on all the damage yet. And we can't do it in hyper."

"Thank you, Lieutenant Ferran. West clear." With a grimace, he pulled the earpiece off and passed it back over to the waiting operations officer. "Damn. Verone and Grayson won't be able to carry her mass for long. Illyana, put me on squadron-wide."

At the ops officer's hand-signal West began speaking into the air, his voice relayed across the squadron, "All ships, this is West. Due to damage suffered by Falcata, we will be dropping sublight to effect repairs. Prepare to disengage navigational slave controls once transition is complete. Verone and Grayson, coordinate your jump point to carry Falcata down. All ship signal on navnet when ready for jump. West clear."

After waiting just a bare beat for the squadron-wide channel to close, West's voice cracked out again, this time in a substantially harsher tone, "Mister Chandler! If you have managed to steer us over a protostar cluster or a black hole or something of that nature, I expect you to tell me now. If not, get to work on finding an alternate way home. I do not want to hear you speak to me on any topic that is not of critical importance, and even then I'd really much prefer to be passed a message." The silence that stretched on served as reply enough, one that drew a tight smile on the captain's face for a few moments.

As West settled into an unoccupied seat facing the main tactical plot, Kozlova's voice sounded out over the intercom system, "All hands, all hands, secure for hyperspace transition and prepare for STL operations." A bustle of noise, footsteps, fabric sliding on padding, the whir of adjusting straps and the click of buckles suffused the bridge for a short period, followed by relative quiet.

Several minutes later, Kozlova's voice calls across the short distance to the tactical plot and the captain's station before it, "All ships report jump readiness. Verone and Grayson are prepared to coordinate jump sequence for Falcata."

"Thank you, Miss Kozlova. Mister Chandler, jump authorized, sync squadron navigation systems and jump to realspace. I expect to find my entire squadron when we cross the hyper wall, am I clear?" West's voice sharpened noticeably while addressing the errant navigator, and Chandler's nervous swallow proved easily audible.

"Yes sir..."

Seconds ticked away in silence until finally Chandler spoke up again, this time more confident, "Squadron jump in five....four....three....two....one....jump!"
_________

Simultaneous with the last, shouted word, the slaved navigation systems on all but one of the Sixth Cruiser Squadron's vessels activated their jump drives, holes yawning in the red-swept wasteland of hyperspace to show black, star-specked void beyond. Even as the ships lunged through the portals in unison, unusual flashes of light spalled the blackness past the jump points. As the entire squadron dropped back into realspace at last, the origins of the flashes became obvious.

Weapons fire.
_________

"Contact!"

The shout burst from Majestic's assistant tactical officer, breaking the hushed quiet of the bridge while the rest of the crew were still oblivious and th e tactical officer himself was still stunned. It came in a high-pitched, almost panicky tone, one which West almost began to rebuke before the young ensign called out again.

"Multiple contacts, bearing...bearing everywhere!"

A politely-scathing retort died unspoken on West's lips as the tactical plot began to update with the sullen orange embers of unknown contacts.

They were multiple.

They were everywhere.

And they were at war.

"Link, all ships. Clear for action, spherical formation, support vessels and Falcata to form the core. West clear." The captain snapped those commands quickly, cutting through the mounting chaos. A single word followed once the link was terminated:

"Battlestations."

[Force Lord]

Faust, Dovan Sector
The Centrality
Unreal Time

"We had these things lying around all along and no one told me?"

"S-sir, we still haven't finished testing, and funding for this project has been insufficient to-"

"I want these things sent to our expeditionary forces in Shinra for combat tests immediately. I want to see what these prototypes can do. As for your funding, I will make sure it is quintupled. Once this war is over, our ground units can use some upgrades."

"Yes, sir."

The Dictator looked down to the prototype exosuit-droid hybrids.



"Oh yes, they'll do."

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Late to the Festivities, as Usual
Ushijima class assault ship HSS Midori Kanda, Coalition staging point
Thamasa Sector, Shinra Republic
UNREAL TIME


Annotated artist's impression of Field Marshal Homura Akemi in civilian attire, date unknown

Homura was surprised that she was being trotted out by her comrades to meet with the other Coalition leaders, considering her current mental state and the fact that she had been relieved of command until further notice. She was still in the process of recovering from her nervous breakdown; fortunately, she appeared to be responding well to her meds, and having daily contact with her friends (even if it was usually within the confines of her cell in the brig) certainly worked wonders. The mere fact that she was allowed to accompany the other field marshals to the meeting was proof that her recovery was proceeding rather smoothly; if she kept it up, she could finally be allowed to go back to her personal cabin, and she could finally do away with the MPs constantly chaperoning her from place to place. And so she found herself on the bridge of the HSS Midori Kanda, en route to the planned rendezvous with the rest of the Coalition leaders...

"How are you holding up, Homura-chan?" Madoka asked.

"I've been worse," Homura replied. "Still, I'm really starting to think that maybe, just maybe, it's finally time for us to retire for good. The flesh is certainly willing, but the spirit is unfortunately starting to get weak."

"Maybe you feel like retiring, Homura, but I'm every bit as energetic as I was when I first signed up," Kyoko interjected. "As long as the Empress feels a need for my services, I'll be there to oblige."

"Yeah, well, you're different from the rest of us, Kyoko," Homura said. "You actually like fighting, for one thing."

"That may be so, but when even the likes of me start telling you that you're going too far, maybe it really is time to reevaluate yourself," Kyoko replied.

"Point taken," Homura said.

"Well, look at it this way. At least you made it this far," Kyoko remarked. "That's an accomplishment matched only by the Primarchs of the Adeptus Astartes. Not bad for an otherwise baseline human, eh?"

Homura smirked slightly. "Yeah, not bad at all," she said. "Not bad at all."

"Hey, I actually saw you smile there for a bit," Kyoko remarked. "Looks like we're making progress."

---

Endless Eight class carrier HSS Endless Eight, Coalition staging point
Thamasa Sector, Shinra Republic
UNREAL TIME



Fleet Admiral Chester William Yamamoto had nearly blown a few circuits in his cyberbrain when he had found out that the Nova Atlanteans were also going to join in on operations against the MEH. He loathed and despised the Nova Atlantean Commonwealth of Worlds with every single fiber of his being, carrying on a grudge that had run in his family since long before the Diaspora, originating in the days of Nova Terra's Second Great War. The original Chester W. Yamamoto was a Shinra-educated Ashford Commonwealth Navy Admiral who was forced to work alongside the truly insufferable Zorian Admiral Isoroku Nimitz (not to be confused with Shinra Republic Navy Admiral Chester Nimitz, Yamamoto's classmate at the Shinra Republic Naval Academy and one of his most trusted friends) in the Pacific theatre of the war. The rivalry between the two men actually reached the point where the Zorian Nimitz deliberately abandoned Yamamoto's fleet in order to pursue a decoy Japanistani force and deliberately refused to send reinforcements after Yamamoto's fleet encountered the main Japanistani force; while the ensuing battle ultimately proved to be one of Admiral Yamamoto's finest moments, with his escort carriers and destroyers inflicting severe damage on the Japanistani forces (three cruisers and one destroyer sunk, three cruisers disabled) and ultimately forcing them to withdraw, his forces sustained horrendous losses in the process, which would have been easily prevented had the Zorian Nimitz not chosen to pursue the decoy force in the first place. The Yamamoto family's unmitigated hatred of the Zorians and their descendants began with that incident, and that hatred continued to fester all throughout the next 1,400 or so years.

Needless to say, the current Chester W. Yamamoto was greatly relieved to find out that the perfidious neo-Zorian mongrels were not going to be fighting alongside his own forces, but were going to be under the greater command of the Eoghans during their own assault on the MEH's territories. As far as he was concerned, the bastards were now someone else's problem, though he certainly sympathized with the mongoosoids.

Of course, Fleet Admiral Yamamoto now had other problems to deal with. The comms channels were awash with transmissions in the wake of Rus Kommenos' drunken rampage at the Planetoid's Northern Crater, and the Shinrans and the rest of the Coalition partners were on watch for further incidents. Fortunately, Fleet Admiral Yamamoto and his staff had notified the Shinrans that they were going to be late. "What the hell is going on down there?" he said to himself as he pressed a button in his command chair, opening up a hailing frequency. "This is Fleet Admiral Chester Yamamoto of the SOS Imperial Navy carrier Endless Eight. May I ask what the current situation is?"

"Fleet Admiral Yamamoto, we've been expecting you, though count yourself fortunate that you arrived when you did," an SRN comms officer replied. "There was an incident earlier involving Byzantine Strategos Rus Kommenos attacking Grand Admiral Pellaeon and several other Coalition leaders. The situation is now well under control, though you would still be well advised to exercise caution."

"Understood. My staff and I will be meeting with Grand Admiral Pellaeon and the other Coalition leaders shortly. Yamamoto, out."

With that, Fleet Admiral Yamamoto closed off the comm channel, got up from the command chair, and walked off towards a waiting shuttle. Several minutes later, as the SOS Imperial Navy contingent settled into orbit alongside their erstwhile comrades, a group of shuttles departed towards the Northern Crater with the SOS Imperial Armed Forces leaders in tow.

[Zor]

CNS Yamato, Flagship of Commonwealth Forces: En Route

Fleet Admiral Vivian Kei lay back in a rather nice leather chair as she reviewed todays lot of files, in this case in particular she went over the admiralty of the other forces engaged in the coming MEHstomp and was surprised at what she found in regard to the Haruhiists. Some damned fool from a line of damned fools who seemed to share the idiot fondness for grudges which Herac the Horrible. An unending line of petty little men and women which kept a sourness over a squabble going back to an ancient industrial era war where some unpleasantness and a debatable incident between one of his ancestors and another wet navy admirals. To which he blamed an entire nation and its descendants for the actions of one man, something he kept up after he "countered" the wrongdoing in an incident where he denied artillery support to a legion of Zorians fighting against a well dug in position by going on a deliberate wild goose chase despite his flag captain’s objections several months later. No purpose, no sense, just an unending stream of hatred that would only end up crippling him. She sighed at the insanity of it all, made a quiet wish that the next generation would break the cycle and went back to reviewing reports. She then got notification that the "Special Payload" was underway to the staging grounds.

Military Convoy 43: Zhongguo sector

In the bowels of the cargo ship they sat, row upon row in their storage crates. Modern military forces, even for the comparatively modest detachment the commonwealth had sent needed allot of equipment to work at maximum efficiency. This would not directly service the commonwealth military forces in terms of combat, but they would never the less play a key role in keeping the peace. This was a payload of equipment more usually used by the Commonwealth's correctional services, with some modifications. Onboard this ship were numerous Neurological Reprogramming Stations and associated equipment. The tools of various figures, generally quite unassuming, rarely violent but almost always with an artistic streak, who specialized in giving even hardened criminals and powerful psionics and give them a permanent change of mind that psionics could not reverse. Inevitably, even after the fall of the MEH there would still be enemies about who would strike against the occupying forces, this equipment would be employed to make some friends.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Aftermath
Written with Shroom

Aurelian rubbed his temple as he looked at the orbital footage of the carnage Rus had wrought. The Chapter Masters of the other three Space Marine Legions watched the video from behind Aurelian and they were filled with amusement, but they did their best to hide it, knowing Aurelian was in a bad mood. Aurelian turned to Rus, who was having his hand patched up after the fight. Rus was drinking a mug of ale, which had been flushed of some of the chemicals the Bragulans had added.

Aurelian sighed, and admonished Rus, “I know you love the role of the Barbarian King, but would you please be mindful of which neighbourhood you trash up? You destroyed practically the entire city center, leveling some 20 city blocks! Now, I do not care for spineless vermin myself, but would you at least be mindful of the diplomatic consequences? Mind they are all too afraid of you to make much of a fuss now, but they would to Belisarius and Decius. Oh, wipe that smug look off your face. I know you feel incredibly proud of the carnage you have done.”

Rus grunted and laughed. “Yes yes, whatever. What will happen to my pet Fenrisians?”

“They tried to assassinate you. Our Inquisitors have found them guilty of consorting with the Bragulans. We cannot take this lightly.” Aurelian explained. An attempted assassination on one of the God-Emperor’s Sons would demand a holy retribution unlike any other.

“Bring the bears and all their confederates to me. I shall give them their just desserts.” Rus said darkly.

Aurelian gave a look of bewilderment. “You want more of that foul xeno crap, don’t you?”

“Every man needs his own poison. The stuff won’t kill me anyway, as the apothecaries noted. It’s just the only stuff in the galaxy that could possibly make me drunk.”

Aurelian shook his head. “Were you even listening to me?! You do realise that your role here really is to ‘brutalize the enemy in the most savage methods possible’ which will no doubt confound just about any being in the galaxy, especially that uppity Umerian General or whatever his name was. I care not to remember. You are good at that, I give you, but please control yourself and reserve the harsh treatment for other pathetic lifeforms out there.”

Rus waved his hand, dismissing it. “Yes yes, I know. I shouldn't have trashed up the neighbourhood and turn it into a warzone, depriving of those albinos of their precious homes-”

“You trashed to pieces their High Command building!”

“- Yeah I did. It was ugly anyway, and it deserved all the trashing I gave it. Serves them right for the horrible albino aesthetics, especially that silly statue of... who was it?”

“It was a statue of Rufus Shinra...”

“That ugly old fossil? Even more reasons for destroying it. But as you say, they can't take me seriously now. Wait till I give them the grand performance!”

Aurelian’s eyes rolled, “Yes, that grand performance you have planned, along with the siege which is filled to the brim of pyrotechnics that would even make the bears blush because even they couldn’t have imagined that you were capable of worse feats.”

“Exactly,” Rus finished his drink. “Are you done?” he asked the Apothecary.

“Yes, my Lord.” as the Apothecary finished the final touches.

“Good. Get me another mug of the stuff,” Rus commanded.

A servitor came with a boiling cauldron of ale. Rus pulled out a flute, made out of wolfsbone, and used it as a straw to sip the drink.

“Now leave me. I wish to be alone.” Rus demanded. With that, the apothecaries, servitors, and even his brother left him. Rus sat there, alone in his quarters, as he contemplated what he was to do next. “Ah.”

After being sure that everyone was gone, and using his auspex to check for any spy-probes left by the Inquisition and finding that they had left none, Rus got off his throne and sneaked into a chamber of secrets. There, he found what he was looking for.

His traitorous retinue of Fenrisian bears, imprisoned in a force-cage suspended from the ceiling.



“Ah, you! Nice try, you almost had me, but you didn’t try hard enough! Still, it was a good enough drink. Make me more, and I will be pleased.” Rus chuckled.

“Kill... meeee....” the bear uttered feebly.

Rus laughed mightly.

“Listen to me, bear. Listen to me well. I shall offer you a deal. You will be imprisoned for all eternity, kept alive through rejuvenat and anti-agathics till the end of time. Your only hope for an end to your torment, to win your freedom or the release of death, is to serve me. You and your ilk will make my drinks, the most poisonous cocktails you can muster! And only when I judge them of sufficient quality, only when I am finally satisfied or when your brews finally do their trick and kill me, will you be freed.”

The bear was silent as it languished in its tiny prison.

Turning to the captive Bragulans, Rus said, “Silly bears. How did you managed to underestimate the physiology redundancy of an Astartes?”

The Bragulans said nothing. They were so hung in shame at their failure to say much. “Well no matter. From now on, you won’t serve Byzon anymore. You will serve ME. You will find me a benevolent master, but if you fail me, I shall be quite unhappy and I can express my displeasure in many ways. You will be my personal butlers and servants. Now go, chop chop! Ready my table and get me my beer!”

The Bragulans looked among themselves and sighed. Seeing no other recourse, they proceeded about to do their new master’s work...

“Well, what are you waiting for?!” Rus roared. “Make me my damn drinks!”

[Shroom Man 777]

Ominous Tidings



Sector E-24
Off Chamarran Space
May 3401

The space around the quaintly-named Planet Kitty Litter was quickly being filled with numerous warships from the inhuman nations composing the other anti-MEH coalition - the one formed in secrecy, outside of public knowledge, though the presence of such a massive combined force was an open-secret to other nations. Coordinating the various inhuman forces was a major undertaking, but the competence of the contributors and their relative punctuality helped make sure that everything fell into place neatly. Preparations were already well underway. With the Bragulans and Chamarrans already having laid the foundations for the coalition armada many months ago with their extensive exercises while the other participants readied themselves since then, it was a simple matter of expanding their then-present operations. It was most definitely not a hastily prepared and poorly-planned setup. For a force comprised of nations that had never worked with one other before, it was an impressive accomplishment.

“Tovarischskis, welcome to the Operation for MEH Insurrection National Overthrow Undermining and Subversion - the OMINOUS. The time has almost come for us to begin our endeavour. Soon, the MEH will be on the way to destruction and we will make our time.” Front Admiral Nykanor Zyvan Nikhamov addressed his assembled audience composed of the commanders of the multinational Inhumanist League task force.

Everyone was there. His comrades in the Space Fleet, Admirals Nykloyai Gearsmyoviych Bragznetsov and Mykhaiyl Lyzarev of Kosmoflotts Oktyabrsky and Sagatantron were both present along with General Vasylyi Braganov of the Imperial Legions of Liberation. Commanders of the Refuge force, Avian birds of prey and amobean Aggregates were also in the hall. High ranking Eoghans, both of the military and civilian government, such as Fleet Admiral Shakti, Commodore Pdeudemar and Ambassador Ailill were with them too representing both the Eoghan forces and the Nova-Atlanteans technically under their command - though some Atlantean posthumans were allowed to tag along and sat at the corners. The Ascendant commanders, Vice Admiral Tav Josbek, Vice Admiral the Hive Queen Skrit Skrit Skree and General the Hive Queen Critskrit Click, were also in attendance, again with the inhumans given better (and larger) seats. And of course, the Chamarrans were there too, with Battlemistresses Sesh Marria, Liana Essena and Eshe Amarie representing their respective fleets.

“Months of preparation are on the verge of bearing fruit. Our exercises, reconnaissance and patriotic internationalist inhumanist cooperation have all made this possible. Already, the spy ships of our many fleets have scouted the full extent of the MEH’s territories, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. Our daring recon missions have brought us a great deal of information regarding our enemies. Most recently, we have acquired actual samples of cutting edge MEH technology - their autonomous artificial intelligences, their machines, and we have learned so much from these.”

The information gained from dissecting the MEH’s Hunter-Eaters and other robotic automatons had been circulated among the members of OMINOUS. Multinational teams of experts had been brought in to analyze the specimens to learn what they could, and to exchange ideas with their counterparts to promote better understanding of the enemy they were to face. In particular, the technologists and scienticians of the Refuge provided valuable insights, as experienced as they were in AI systems.

“But these have come at a price. In gaining insights into our enemies, we have also made deeply disturbing discoveries. It seems that the MEH has not been entirely neglectful of the small nations it encompassed in its intrusion into our galaxy. They have been busy at work in the Farthing Worlds and have consumed the populations of the planet Bos to feed their ravenous appetites, and are in the process of duplicating this feat on another world, Lepus, even as we speak.”

The interview of a Tauren survivor and his harrowing account of what the MEH had done to Bos was played for all to see. For those who haven’t been privy to this information, it was most especially shocking.

“But with every atrocity the MEH commits, they only further doom themselves. For this - this crime of humanity against inhumanity - will show to the galaxy the true form of the MEH and erase any and all doubt regarding the great justice which we will impose upon the hegemonistic human horror of this new Earth. For the cause of inhumanism is far more noble and true than the doubtful case the human coalition has leveled against the MEH. Even now the Shinra-Human Interstellar Taskforce of Space drags its feet ponderously as the member nations reluctantly join their war-effort, for their fight lacks a true cause and they are rife with oh-so-human divisions. Whereas ours is a just cause. Ours is a noble fight. The plight of Farthing, of the Tauren and Lepine peoples, cannot be ignored. The MEH has come to our galaxy to abuse its peoples, and now we have come to say nyet.

“Bragule and Chamarra have already covertly deployed forces on the ground in Lepus. Advisors and special squads to aid the local resistance fighters in repulsing the foul human meat-machines. It was through this mission that we acquired those samples of MEH machinery,” the projectors began to show images and videos taken by operatives on Lepus itself. “But we cannot save the region with those forces. We need to deploy warships to the Farthing system, to establish an exclusion zone securing the system’s inhabitants and send the MEH a message. This will be the first step of OMINOUS, preceding incursions into their systems. And it is at this time that we should publicly broadcast to the greater galaxy the truth of what the MEH has done on Bos and Lepus, so that the peoples of the universe will know the true extent of MEHumanity’s wickedness - garnering inhuman support for our cause. But most of all, we must stop this inhumanitarian crisis through any means necessary.”

There was some murmuring amongst the assembled audiences.They all knew the plan. The OMINOUS would be divided into two, the main force would strike at Xena first while a harassment fleet would be sent to Sol to prevent the MEH’s Earth fleet from reinforcing Xena. After finishing Xena, the OMINOUS would then move against Earth in its entirety. A move at Farthing, which was inside the MEH’s declared borders and close to their systems, would mean that the moment they had long prepared for was finally close at hand. Anticipation and excitement spread amongst the ants, bears and, cats, the birds, mongeese and even the Atlantean and Ascendant post/humans.

“We do not know how the MEHumans will react to an OMINOUS intervention in Farthing. But we have waited enough. It is time for OMINOUS to begin the first stage of the Enormous Naval Engagement for the MEH’s Annihilation. We can no longer wait on the Shinran-Human Interstellar Taskforce of Space. Not while they busy themselves with drunken brawls between their ‘great military leaders’. Hah. Perhaps seeing our swift example may actually inspire them to move at a pace quicker than a Skraaldian slug-creature. Da.”

Nykanor paused and looked at his audience.

“Comrades. Bragule has given the antispinward Kosmoflotts permission to engage in a thunder run in Farthing. Those who wish to accompany us are free to do so. It is time we begin this OMINOUS ENEMA SHITS.”

[PeZook]

Co-written with Siege!

“It’s really called Eden then, this place I'm headed?” He smiled again. “As far as names go that’s a bit pretentious, isn’t it?”

Katherine shook her head, “Not at all. You will see... in fact, right about now.”

The room suddenly turned black, and in a split-second, all the walls became transparent... or maybe screens - the point was, Sidney and Katherine appeared to be floating in space, surrounded by a brilliant starfield.

In front of them, gleaming in the light of a distant sun, lay a planet - Sidney’s destination. One that even the robots saw fit to name after paradise.

Meet the Monoliths

Eden
Deep inside Collector space

The planet gleamed in the light of its twin suns. Strange reflections danced across a multitude of orbital facilities and the ships swarming between them. The surface itself was strangely colored, a mix of purple, green, blue and white. The weirdest thing about it was, of course, that it was obviously teeming with life.

In the split seconds after first seeing this new world, Sidney Hank made several observations about it: even though his shuttle was still stuck inside the endless cargo bay, and thus had limited ability to use its sensors, visual clues still delivered much data.

Eden had a thick, oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. There was liquid water present on the surface. Tell-tale glimmers of hyperfields and high-band backscatter indicated parts of it contained advanced technology, none of which was visible from orbit. And, of course, there was almost no orbit-to-surface traffic, despite a great many Collector vessels constantly moving about in orbit and possibly the wider system. Then again, considering how he’d ended up in this small white room there was a distinct possibility the robots didn’t actually need interface craft. Interesting application of dimensional engineering. Sidney made a mental note to look into it later. Could come in handy at some point.

The ship carrying Sidney and his shuttle slid gracefully into a monstrous holding dock in polar orbit, and its sole human passenger observed a swarm of smaller vessels descend on it to begin unloading its cargo of black containers, delivered here for an unknown purpose. All of a sudden the transparent effect disappeared, and Hank found himself back inside the spartan room that had housed him throughout the trip.

“This is where we say goodbye. I do not have access to local facilities,” Katherine’s hologram stated. “It was good to meet you. I hope you find your answers down there.”

“I assure you the pleasure was all mine.” He looked at her for a long moment. “Do you want me to carry a message to anyone outside?”

The hologram hesitated briefly, once again showing how detailed a simulation it was. “No,” Katherine finally decided. “Everyone I knew must have a new life now. I will let them live it.”

“As you wish. I will make no mention of you then.” He inclined his head fractionally. “Well. I suppose this is au revoir, Miss De la Poer. It’s been a pleasure.”

“And good bye to you, Mr. Hank. I hope we’ll meet again sometime.”

“Likewise. Godspeed on your travels.”

The hologram flickered and disappeared. While Hank was saying goodbye, the swarm of massive crablike loading drones had significantly rearranged the cargo hold outside. His shuttle was now right besides the window. Dozens of the featureless containers were being moved in the background.

Unit Five’s lifeless body stirred.

“We are ready to descend,” she stated matter of factly “The shuttle and your accommodation will remain in orbit. Are you prepared?”

“I was born prepared,” he replied with an excited smile. “Let’s get cracking.”

And sure enough there was a crack, not unlike thunder. Slight disorientation, easily compensated by Sidney’s cybernetics, then suddenly and momentarily replaced by a dreadful feeling of falling into a bottomless abyss.

Absolute, unnatural darkness replaced the world. LIDAR and sonar returns were inconclusive, reading for all his life as if he were free-falling through utterly empty space. He ruthlessly suppressed a surge of agoraphobia. Only a fine hyperspace thread still connected him to the universe outside, a silver filament linking him to the submeson core aboard the yacht an indeterminable distance through space, time and folded dimensions away. Then just as suddenly there was steady ground underneath his feet. The darkness lifted. A metal door slid open slowly, letting in the daylight. Daylight and a slight breeze, filled with a multitude of smells that Sidney, in all his long life, experienced only very rarely.

Outside that door, there was a teeming, thick, magnificent jungle - as far as the eye could see. Flocks of birds sailed majestically amongst purple trees, crooked and winding, and the symphony of sounds, taste and smell was unique. Beautiful. Inspiring. A bit intoxicating.

And extremely strange.

Sidney was standing on a metal platform, placed on top of a metal ziggurat jutting out from beneath the uninterrupted canopy of trees. Except for this structure there was nothing, no sign of civilization to be seen. Was this some sort of a secret military planet, kept pristine to hide its secrets? Or a shrine? But a shrine to what? What would robots worship?

The platform suddenly began to move. There was no jolt, it just gently slid away from the smooth pyramid and began to pick up speed. Hyperfields came up, protecting Sidney from the wind.

Soon the device broke the sound barrier, sliding right above the treetops. Sidney could get a good look at the staggering array of species, plant and animal alike, living down there. His shuttle’s database fed him a constant stream of information, identifying the creatures: some thought long extinct, others common to the galaxy as a whole, yet others completely unknown and probably never saw before by Man.

“Showoff,” Sidney said to no-one in particular. It was a fair bet somebody was listening though, and he felt a desperate need to let whoever that was know that he was not impressed. Even though he was. A little. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stepped up to the very edge of the platform. Three hundred meters below Eden was rushing by at astonishing speeds, a blurring amaranthine mass in which it was impossible to make out details with his five ordinary senses.



The trip did not take long. The sea of purple gave way to a more traditional green, with the ocean’s shore just barely visible in the distance. On the horizon, several structures appeared, jutting out from the treetops. They were...different, somehow, from the usual Collector style. The metal was silver and gleaming, they had windows and lights and antennae.

The platform gently slid into a barely visible opening in one of the towers and stopped. Solid walls appeared all around as if from nowhere and just like that, the trip was over. Sidney was again standing in a sterile and featureless room. This one, though, looked old. Really, really old. It wasn’t that it was rusted or cracked, but something about the flamboyantly curved architecture was simply off in a way that suggested this place had been here for a very, very long time. Unit Five was there, flanked by two chrome-plated skeletal figures - thankfully, both unarmed.

“Took a shortcut?” Sidney asked her and raised an eyebrow.

“I did not require physical transportation. This location had a spare chassis for me to use.” the robot explained in her usual humorless tone “So... yes.” Sidney could swear she cracked a smile just there. Briefly.

“Before we descend into the facility, I have been authorized to release some information to you. You are currently located inside a cooling and observation tower for the primary Skynet facility on Eden. Skynet itself is located below the planet’s surface. That is where we are going. For some reason, the Machine,” she said it with a strange, almost... reverent tone, “wants to meet you. It was here where the messages you provided originated from.”

Sidney blinked. "You really did just say... Skynet, did you not?" he asked slowly.

“Yes. That is correct.”

The two skeletal robots stared at Sidney with their red, glowing eyes. He glanced at the tight red leather outfit the blond robot was wearing and sighed. "I suppose I ought’n’t be surprised." He made a throwaway gesture. “What’s Skynet?”

“The First Machine. It stores the Collective’s earliest database. Possibly the first one ever built.”

“Old, hey?” Sidney’s interest, insofar it hadn’t been piqued already, was definitely going up further. “How very tantalizing.” He looked around. “Well, best not to keep it waiting any longer then. Lead on.”

“Follow me”

This time, it was an elevator - almost disappointing in how mundane it was - located very close to the reception room. It was very... normal, with faux-wood panelling and a large mirror in the back. Contrasted with the three robots and a metahuman standing inside it, it seemed almost grotesque.

The cabin began to descend, very rapidly. Speakers in the ceiling warbled a tune that was simultaneously forgettable and uncannily familiar. Soon it passed ground level and kept going, deeper and deeper within the planet’s crust. Sidney’s implants detected hints of activity around the cabin, electronic transmissions and movement.

His companions, if they could be called that, remained perfectly still. Sidney was about to make another dry remark, when the cabin stopped. There was an audible ‘ping!’ and the door slid open, revealing a humongous underground cavern. It was so enormous that its ceiling disappeared in the darkness, visible only to Sidney’s augmented senses. Its wall were black as basalt and gleamed with a cold light that seemed to come out of nowhere...

The walls were also moving.

Scarabs. A tidal wave of scarabs covered the walls and floor of the cavern, seething, teeming, forming breakers and clusters as they raced to perform their duties with unending zeal and single-minded sense of purpose. Small items sailed across this sea, carried to where they were needed. The cavern was filled with a tremendous roar of tiny skittering legs and carapaces rustling against each other.

Unit Five stepped out of the elevator, and the scarabs parted, leaving a tiny bit of floor free. “Stay close to me.”

“As you wish, darling.” With only the slightest of hesitations Sidney followed her, running a check on his suicide circuits just in case. Somewhat disconcertingly he realized the connection to the yacht and its core had diminished to something approaching suboptimal. Whatever space-time engineering the Collectors were involved with was clearly impeding the hyperwave communications into this subterrestrial realm. If that connection was lost, the avatar would automatically self-destruct. So would the yacht, in fact, and the personality core aboard it. And who knew what the Collectors would make of that? He smiled wryly. The possibility that he might have come this far only for it all to have ended up being for naught or even counterproductive at the last minute because of some dimensional interference was so infuriating it was almost hilarious. Almost, but not very.

The group travelled across the cavern. Occasionally, scarabs would drop from the ceiling like rain, to join their brethren doing whatever it was they were doing on the ground.

They passed... things. In one, smaller cavern there were rows upon rows of tanks, filled with amniotic fluid. These tanks were hung up on one of the walls, and constantly being rearranged by the tireless scarab workers. Inside them floated females...one female, Sidney realized. Endless variations on President Sinclair: from slight changes, like her hair or eye color, through Chamarran hybrids, and even unspeakable bio-engineered monstrosities full of teeth and claws and barely recognizable as once being human.

Colossal chasms opened up without warning, exposing titanic hollows in the crust of the world. Somewhere in the depths below, Sidney could hear sounds of military drills, shouts and cadence singed by a voice well known to him. Columns of mindless troops in archaic uniforms marched across stone bridges suspended in the pits. Someone was whispering something incomprehensible in the audio bands, and the unnaturally loud whispers bounced and scattered across the underground, somehow audible over the teeming mass of rustling scarabs.

A creature rumbled past them in the darkness, dragging a pair of massive claws on the floor behind it. Somewhere high up in the air, an Amplitur male was suspended in an antigravity field, with a forest of nasty-looking robotic surgical implements working on it.

There were other sights, too, wondrous and gruesome, but finally even that journey came to an end. Somewhere on the far side of the cavern system was a facility - a huge building, immense even in this Herculean place, and constructed of what was obviously scavenged hull plating and ancient prefabricated modules. Barely visible markings and warnings covered the oxidised sides, and some English words were still recognizable.

A strange, buzzing noise in the EM band emanated from inside the structure. Veins of a strange, white metal crisscrossed the floor, emanating with radioactivity and exotic particles.

Unit Five paused for a second and turned towards Sidney “We are here. Take note that the Machine is very old, and houses a great many personalities inside. The encounter might be...” She paused - for effect, obviously, because how could a robot be searching for the right word? - “... disturbing.”

Sidney looked at her from the corner of his eyes. “For you of all people to say that is ironic on so many levels.” He hesitated and grinned. “No, wait, just two.”

“Most of us dislike direct contact with Skynet. I was attempting to warn you.”

He nodded. “Thanks.” He looked at the dark hallway ahead. “So, now what?”

“Follow me.” Unit Five cocked an eyebrow. “I am compelled to see the result.”

One of her bodyguards walked up to a distinctly archaic hatch in the site of the building, which slowly rumbled open. Fluorescent lights came on, lighting the inside - a short corridor that led to another door, almost like an airlock. No, it actually was an airlock - a very old, outdated airlock, of a type Sidney hadn’t seen in, well, centuries. The inner door slid open as well, and the entire group walked into a large, circular room.

They found themselves in a sort of viewing gallery, a small balcony lined with several chairs and positively antique computer equipment that displayed endless diagnostic messages. The balcony had once been separated from the wider room by a glass wall, but that had since been removed, and thus one could step right onto the once polished, gold-and-black floor. The walls were studded with high-density data modules, many of which were dead - physically destroyed or just burned out. The air hummed, and one could smell ozone.

A huge, circular interface module hovered in the middle. It rotated slowly, to face the group, revealing a battered and somewhat damaged camera lens.



“...Sidney Hank,” The Machine spoke, in the audio band, with a low, rumbling chorus of voices “We...remember you...we...recall...your face.”

The voice changed suddenly, to the slick and clean quality of a pre-recorded interface message “Please confirm your identity for systems access..”

He hesitated for a moment. The room was utterly silent. The small group of Collector agents looked at him expectantly. He felt as if he was teetering on the precipe of something momentous. Oh what the hell. I’ve come this far. He leaned forward and said, “Sidney Leon Hank,” into the interface device. “... I come in peace?”

“Access granted. Acces le...” the actor’s voice was cut off by the chorus “Your voice...activates memories from cells 62... through 81.” It was making labored, irritating pauses between words, as if The Machine had trouble recalling certain phrases or expressions.

“Records state. Unreadable. Associations. Unreadable. Attempting cross-reference.”

Suddenly, pompous music blared inside the room. A blurry, partially damaged hologram displayed a conference room, grand pomp, blinding lights, flash of cameras... but from a strange perspective. Not recorded by the media, the blurry images were shown as if they were taken by a person sitting behind the grand conference table... Sidney saw himself, a bit to the right of the person whose eyes seemed to have recorded these images... he could, just barely, recognize the event. The official signing of the CATO expansion in Stasograd.

“Reference located. Memory 2536635/A, cell 64, date...unreadable.” The Machine stated, and the recording ceased “We... need understanding. Entity: Sidney Hank is a continuous presence. We... require knowledge of connections between... this entity and memory cells 62... through 81.”

Other, fragmented images were displayed. Some he recognized: official functions in the Royal Palace in Orena - the interiors were unmistakable. Others he did not, because they were... very private, intimate moments. The images were scattered, disjointed and random, but eventually, it became clear who they belonged to.

“You can provide us this information.” The Machine stated, and its camera looked at Sidney... almost expectantly.

He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, then whistled softly. “This will take some explaining. How’d you get these... memories?”

The Machine abrutbly emitted a sound eerily similar to a broken magnetic tape.
“Passenger manifest incomplete.” the actor’s voice stated “Please rebuild database. Error. Error. Cells damaged. Danger of irreparable data corruption imminent. Purge running memory. Restore from backup. Error, error. Backup data storage systems damaged. Emergency protocols initialized.”

There was silence. Sidney glanced at Unit Five.

“The First Machine is a personality storage system.” the Collector explained “It was damaged, and many of the minds it carried have fragmented. By now we have recovered most of those that could be salvaged, what remains are random data bits, partial memories, some neural pathways.”

Skynet kept blaring a long list of error messages. “Error. Critical malfunction of drive systems. Steering and navigation offline. Drives offline. Skynet control system in emergency mode. Emergency protocols initialized.”

Suddenly, the multitude of stored personalities spoke out, shouting over each other “We require understanding. Help us! Help us!”

And finally, in that creepy but mostly stable and understandable chorus again, “The data was always here.”

Sidney struggled to make sense of it all. The crazed AI, the antique computers, the archaic hull plating that armored this building. Data fed into his distant CompInt core. Possibility-trees branched like lightning, holistic scenarios unfurling to incorporate every clue here, combining it with data fed to him from remote databases: endless antediluvian catalogues of ship types and electronic signatures, equipment types, paper clippings and newsreel footage... The unknown fate of the erstwhile PeZookian king, disappeared on a long-lost colony ship. Finally, an inkling of understanding, barely more than a hunch. Sidney sucked in a breath. "Oh, you gotta be kidding me." He peered into the interface device. “Is that you in there, Paul?”

“Paul...” the voice trailed off “Correct identification. First name: Paul. Searching database. No match. Attempting personality reconstruction...error. Error.”

If Sidney didn’t know better, he could swear Unit Five and her two robot companions were excited about this whole thing.

“Where am I ?” a well know voice suddenly spoke

Sidney suddenly found it difficult to speak. "Eden, Paul. You're on Eden."

“We arrived, then? We’re there? We can start anew?” Paul’s voice had en ethereal quality to it. There were slight hiccups and static, as if it wasn’t generated in real time by the personality construct, but was assembled from a collection of prior memories that were played verbatim, cut and pasted to sound like a new expression.

One of the silver robots walked up to the diagnostic screens and stared at them for a long while, unmoving. It exchanged traffic with the other Collectors.

“We are there. We are there. We are there.” Paul’s voice began to repeat itself in an endless loop “We are there. We are there.”

It was suddenly cut off “Error. Personality reconstruction failed.”

“You recognized that construct?” Five asked all of a sudden “You knew them?”

Sidney ignored her. One moment he was standing on the black glass floor, utterly motionless. The next he was clawing at the interface device, eyes flaring with unholy anger. "That's not good enough!" he screamed into the vid-screen, and shook the hovering unit with inhuman strength. "Give. Him. Back!"

“Error. Personality reconstruction failed” The Machine responded. Five’s bodyguards leaped forward, grabbing Sidney and attempting to tear him away from the interface module. It proved more difficult than anticipated. The metahuman tycoon twisted and slipped between the grasping hands of the skeletal robots, then abruptly backed away and straightened, eyes glassing over as a terse burst of hyperwave communications passed between the avatar and the faraway submeson personality core. His face fell into an impassive mask.

Then he blinked and slowly, carefully, straightened his jacket, brushing a few specks of imaginary dust off the shoulders. “Sorry about that.” There was something furiously strained about his voice, as if the cold mechanical routines of the CI god could only just keep the rage and madness of the underlying personality upload under control. “To answer your question... Yes, I did know him. King Paul Żuk, the First, of PeZookia. Reigned 1998 to 2065 on Nova Terra. Married to Agatha. Father to Lena.” The information rolled out of his mouth with an intense mechanicality, dredged up from archives and encyclopedias. Anything was better than to think about what had actually happened here. Sidney had some idea of how long a thousand years actually were. He desperately didn’t want to think about what it would be like to spend them locked in a damaged computer core. Scared. Alone. Unable to understand what was happening. “Disappeared in 2102 when his colony ship departed for parts unknown. That’s one riddle I think we can consider solved.”

The robots exchanged more data between them, in rapid fire bursts that sometimes cut into each other. It looked like a very excited conversation - though of course none of them betrayed it.

“Data integrity levels associated with this construct are very low.”, Unit Five finally stated “There were no less than six attempts to reconstruct it into a fully or partially functional mind, all failed. Simulated neural pathways, personality and cross-referential connections to the database table were wiped out. If we received the necessary data, it might be possible to reconstruct this particular mind...”

Five made an expectant pause, as if she half-hoped Sidney would pull a trick out of his hat, or announce right here that yes, his contacts in the Old Sphere could provide the necessary information. It was strange for this dispassionate robot to even care about rebuilding a destroyed personality from ages past. Sidney’s voice was very quiet when he addressed her. “What do you need?”

Unit Five produced a list of destroyed data. Personality constructs were by definition very complicated things, and only fully understood by select few experts and CIs in the galaxy, but one glance at the data was nearly enough for Sidney to give into despair. It was what looking at an MRI image of a loved one’s brain in ages past, and seeing nothing but gaps and holes to fill.

“According to our analysis, thirty per cent of the raw data is present, but the entire relational structure is destroyed. There is too little information to conduct behavioral analysis and rebuild a personality matrix from first principles...”, Unit Five suddenly began speaking like an expert in the matter. Sidney could detect vastly increased traffic between her and some unseen transmitters.

“I can fill in some of the gaps. And I know people who can help with this sort of thing. But it’s going to be difficult.” He hesitated, then decided to address the elephant in the room. “Why do you care though? What’s this to you? A crashed colony ship’s malfunctioning datacore... Why do you care so much about this... Skynet?”

Unit Five stayed silent for a while. For a robot, it was an extremely, agonizingly long while.

“We care because we began here,” she finally said “Right here, in this room.”

"You mean... You are..." He stopped as the implications began to sink in. And then he began to laugh uncontrollably. "Oh god," he hiccuped in-between fits of barely-sane laughter. "Just when you thought you'd heard it all!” It took him a while to regain his composure, during which the robots regarded him impassively, though Unit Five still somehow managed to exude an aura of disapproval. “Maintenance bots,” he murmured, and snickered a little. Then, louder: “don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.” He sighed and suddenly sobered up. “Alright. What you need is a relational framework to structure the fragmented data you do have, correct?”

“Correct.” Unit Five still seemed slightly offended, as far as Sidney could tell. “This is impossible to retrieve, but can be rebuilt via behavioral analysis... to an acceptable level of accuracy.”

“Quite. I happen to know a thing or two about personality reintegration from... Personal experience.” He frowned. “Reconstruction is going to be difficult. The relational problem... I didn’t know him well enough to fix all of it. But... I know people who can help. The only thing is, and you’re not going to like this,” he looked at Unit Five. “I’m going to have to take him with me.”

“You have access to additional resources on the subject? This does not seem likely.”

Sidney noticed the uptick in traffic he spotted earlier wasn’t just temporary. More and more connections appeared, the residual hyperwave scatter forming blossoms for his implants to see, as if a swarm of curious onlookers descended onto the scene. Somewhere in the background, hints abounded that something grand and powerful watched his every move in that strange place.

He couldn’t help smiling, but it was an awful, tortured smile. “Likely? Ha. Ha! Does anything about this situation strike you as likely? Lady, this is about as unlikely as it’s going to get. But let me tell you something. Implausible things, unheard-of things are happening in this galaxy. Have happened. To Paul... To others. To me.” Something maladroit and unrestrained came over him. “If there’s anyone in this galaxy that can fix this it’s me. And since you brought me here, I’m thinking you know this to be true.” There was a hint of the previous anger in his eyes, but it was channelled and controlled this time.

SIlence fell in the room, broken only by the rapidly rising electronic chatter. Unit Five remained expressionless as usual, but of course Sidney could observe her with more than human senses, and the dance of hyperwaves was...tense.

She finally stirred, showing very human signs of surprise, “You have been authorized to make a copy of the relevant data, under a condition that the reconstructed personality will be allowed input into our networks. The Primary Matrix is also curious what sort of resources exist that can be used to provide the necessary input without knowledge of the original...”

The smile widened into something flinty. “Who said there wouldn’t be knowledge of the original? I have sources that can provide a... unique perspective on our predicament here.”

“You are talking about original data sources from the period? If you didn’t take precautions, I think the Primary Matrix would’ve ordered you detained and thoroughly scanned at this point.”

He sighed. “See, this is the problem with you guys. You could just ask.”

“Organics tend to lie and confabulate under direct questioning. Other methods are more efficient...of course, we will have to...trust you. Which is unusual, I have to admit.”

“That’s nice to hear.” Sidney weighed his options, then shrugged. “But alright, since you’re here and I’m here and we’re in the middle of all this...” he gestured at the weirdly serene AI cradle, “I’ll let you in on a secret. What do you know about what the Umerians call ‘strongly godlike creatures’?”

“We have a number of files and several research projects, most of them classified. Advanced trans-beings are considered by the Collective a Class 1 threat to all sentient life in the galaxy.”

“Class one threat hey? I like the sound of that. I’m only familiar with one, mind you. Maybe we can swap files one day. We call him Q. I don’t know if that’s the proper name, or just some assumed label we slapped on him, both options seem about equally likely.”

“You are a man of great mystery, Mr. Hank.” Unit Five seemed to have gained some newfound respect for Sidney. He was starting to get the hang of how she ticked. “We were aware you possessed a great deal of interesting information, but this is surprising even for us. Should our cooperation prove fruitful, we may expand it to other matters... of mutual interest.”

Did she just give him the elevator eyes? No matter. “Sounds like a plan,” he smiled, a little more handsomely this time. “Just know that these weakly godlike beings, N-Dimensionals, trans-beings or whatever you want to call them, they’ve got everything to do with him,” he pointed at the hovering interface module, “being in there.”

“Which only makes reconstructing the subject more important. We will provide all support you might need. Export of the relevant data has begun, but it will take several kiloseconds to complete. Do you require sustenance?”

Only then did Sidney realize he was actually pretty hungry. “I suppose I do,” he reluctantly admitted. “Ah. These are the downsides of a mostly organic body.”

“We have experience with that. The data will be transmitted to the aboveground facility when it is ready. We can proceed there. Sustenance will be prepared for you.”

“Sounds like a date.”



The platform hovered high above the ground, providing a gorgeous view of the lush jungle below. A slight breeze was blowing from the direction of the ocean. It was very, very calming. Balm for a wounded soul, in fact, something that probably wasn’t lost on the Collectors. The slight smell of salt mixed with others: spices, fresh vegetables and and an excellent mid-raw steak made of... something Sidney couldn’t quite recognize, but which was definitely tasty.

It wasn’t the best meal he ever ate - now that would be a mean feat for the machines to replicate - but the entire experience doubtlessly rated somewhere in the top hundred, which was saying something indeed. Unit Five, who was sitting on the other side of the table, straightened out her somewhat crumpled outfit. A huge bird flew by the platform, gently gliding on thermal currents. It only paid passing attention to the strange duo intruding on its hunting grounds.

“You know,” Sidney said and looked at his companion as he dipped his lips with the serviette the Collectors had provided. "I don’t say this very often. But I’ve come to realize you're actually quite excellent company. Not for a robot, mind, but period. You make life interesting. There’s not many people I can say that of."

“Our encounters have a way of evolving into extremely interesting situations. I enjoy participating in them in all aspects,” the robot glanced at the terrain below “I have gathered interesting data so far, and for a human-contact mind, taking part in recovery of an important personality construct or high-level negotiations is...exciting. As are all the other matters we have vigorously discussed.”

The bird suddenly dived between the trees, screeching. It grabbed something from the ground, which was undoubtedly very tasty. It was also the size of a cow, yet didn’t seem to slow the bird of prey all that much as it climbed back into the air.

Sidney raised a glass full of what he was fairly certain was an extinct Vineyardian white Grand Cru du Dux Jermaine of the legendary - and very much lost-in-space - 2201 bottling. “I believe last time we toasted to the beginning of a wonderful friendship. So let’s say... Many happy returns?”

Five smiled. Her expressive subroutines were pretty good, a contrast to her usual cold demeanor. In a fit of inspiration, Sidney suddenly wondered just how involved could she be in affairs of the countless minor Wild Space polities, “I believe the proper human expression is ‘I’ll definitely drink to that’?” She raised a wine glass “To many happy returns, then.”

The sound of crystal against crystal echoed far across the alien jungle, heralding in many good things to come.

[Mayabird]

A small anecdote of OMINOUS.

One of the Refugee ships that elected to go with the Farthing relief fleet (as a test of coordinated efforts with the other nations) was a cruiser. It was nothing spectacular as ships went, around 75 points on the standard scale, and did not carry any unusual armaments or have special tricks. It was, however, an experiment by the Refuge – an all-Aggregate crewed ship, with everything built to their tiny scale. The good ship By All Your Powers Combined was a success, though limited in effect due to the relatively low number of Aggregates in the Defense forces.

Her captain was an aggressive character of fourteen bodies who had gained the name Seeker of Victory by Never Recognizing the Arrival of Defeat, something that was not easily reducible into a short name. “Doesn't Know When to Quit” was still long, and the Avian version of the name was even longer than the translation. His name in colors was a complex pattern of green and white swirls on a blue background; other members of Ominous noted that it looked somewhat like a verdant life-bearing world, so they joking called him Captain Planet.

Then word got back to Seeker of Victory by Never Recognizing the Arrival of Defeat - somehow - of this nickname.



And he was delighted! What an honor to be bestowed a nickname! And it was true – his name did sort of look like a planet! He decided that he might like these strange alien allies.

And so he made the announcement to the entire ship.

“Attention: By All Your Powers Combined, I am Captain Planet!”

[Simon_Jester]

Author's Note: This is, formally speaking, the final chapter of Battle of Zebes. If anyone needs to refresh their memory, link to the previous chapter is here

---

Valkyrie-class Battlecruiser SMS Brunhild
Flagship Sixth Battlecruiser Squadron
2158 Hours

Korvettenkapitän Siegfried Kircheis watched the fireworks from a distance as Liggs' cruisers and destroyers mobbed the heavier units of their chunk of the Zebesian center. Reinhard's Sixth Battlecruisers and Eleventh Destroyers certainly participated, firing into the action from longer distances, flying tangential courses at their longer preferred engagement ran range- away from last-ditch fire by the Zebesian's beams.

For all the Prussians' gunnery, the bulk of the damage done came from the Centralists' close range coilgun batteries. Pinned by tractor beams to the heavy anchors of Liggs' daringly handled light carriers, the ships couldn't flit out of the way on inertialess drive; Siegfried remembered well what the Sixth had done to a pair of Zebesians two hours earlier, in similar conditions. Now it happened again- the ships' shields flashed up the spectrum under heavy, unavoidable pounding, fading out in bursts of longwave X-rays... and the strange teardrops blew apart. They took a few Centralist ships with them, scarred up a few more, but died all the same, at vastly disproportionate losses. As the last enemy battlecruiser dissolved in a multifocal blast of nuclear charges, Siegfried looked over at Reinhard.

"I told you he could do it."

"He had twice their tonnage, with us factored in."

"Still- not one escaped."

"Hmph. It was... timed properly. How many admirals do we know who wouldn't panic when their one and only battleship blew itself up?"

Siegfried smiled, then made a show of counting on his fingers.

"Hah! I can't deny that the Centrality breeds men with the courage to act at the decisive moment of a battle. That makes up for a myriad of sins."

"Verio, Fibors, Liggs..."

"Fibors is mediocre. Verio, though..."

Siegfried nodded. "Verio's a good man, for a political admiral."

Reinhard looked up at him. "Political, you'd say?"

"Think about what he looks at, when he's talking."

"A good point. Personalities, not so much the hardware. He makes his decisions more on his impression of the men than on the equipment. You think that's consistent with a political focus?"

"The Centrality is a single-party dictatorship. Wouldn't you expect it?"

"Even under autocracy, I suppose there's always the risk of losing the system's power to sort men by their merits. Though Verio hasn't discredited himself in action"

"Better him than..."

"Yes, I know. Still, I like Liggs better than Verio. Liggs wouldn't make as good a patron, but he'd be a far better subordinate."

"You think so? From another service?"

Reinhard gave Siegfried a thin smile. "If the opportunity arose. I can't say it would, but if."

"I see."

Reinhard's eyes were distant now. "...Kircheis, picture me one day, in command of a great navy. Come the day, he'd make a good sub-fleet commander. Not irreplaceable, but... given the quality of the pickings I'm likely to see, I could do with a dozen like him."

"Really?"

"I'd rather have von Reuental... well, maybe. A dozen of him might be a problem. Mittermeyer, safer, and of course I'd rather have you, Kircheis. But Liggs would do well enough. Not a great master, but he'd do- again, given my likely choices."

Reinhard sank into thought; Siegfried took careful note of the admiral's shift in tone from hypothetical to predictive. If any man can make that much ambition work, it's him. But... ah, well. He didn't really doubt, not after a day like this. A few moments passed, then the admiral glanced around. He checked the plot, his eyes flicking over vectors, and the tilt of his head screamed 'decision!'

"Kircheis, the rest of the Coalition seems to have matters in hand. I need a word with you- day cabin."

"Right." Siegfried followed Reinhard as he unbuckled from the crash couch and strode for the hatch. They stepped through, took the first passage off the bridge corridor; Siegfried shut the door behind them. Reinhard looked back at him, glanced around, and let out a deep breath.

"So, Kircheis, how long do you think it'll be before von Mückenberger recovers his nerve from nearly being killed?"

"..." Siegfried paused, and looked more closely at the admiral. The subtle tells- posture, the millimetric twitch of his eyelid, the set of his jaw.

This battle took more out of Reinhard than he'd ever admit. No wonder he wants to speak freely.

"Not very long, but he'll need a new plan for what to do next. And I don't think any of the other coalition partners will want to take his orders, either, unless..." Reinhard shook his head once, convulsively, cutting Siegfried off with a wave of his hand.

"Absolutely not. I can't imagine them doing so. I would- didn't, myself."

"We'll have to play that one carefully, sir."

"I know, but I think we can do it. von Mückenberger may be able to lie to himself even now, but the truth will out. I- yes."

"Sir?"

"We move to support the ground operations. They'll be badly wanting heavy fire support by now; the troopships don't have much high-end capability. I'll get a status update from them."

"Without checking with von Mückenberger..."

Reinhard smirked. "I think it's time to reintroduce the higher circles of the fleet to the concept of initiative."

"As you say, sir."

---

Kadabra-designation Warcruiser Anxo
Flagship Eoghan Contingent
2158 Hours

The four surviving Zebesian plasma destroyers flared and vanished into hyperspace. Commodore Pdeudemar curled his tail in displeasure and watched with no surprise as the enemy dual-drive ships made one last blurring leap, out of the system at five times light speed and rising. Magnetogravitic drive carried them out, beyond the hyper limit, hopelessly out of range, then stopped- and they, too, disappeared from the sidereal universe, under hyperdrive.

So much for that. What he'd have given for ten more minutes to carve them up- the odds had just been going in his favor. At least he'd gotten one of their cruisers- the air had stopped leaking out, but still no sign of powered machinery coming back to life on board. On which note...

"Board that disabled ship, we'll want prisoners and intelligence."

Disruptor Cruiser Ludelatar
Temporary Flagship, Kavoolite Contingent
2205 Hours

"Distance one light-day and rising."

"Good enough. Signal all ships, halt in hyper and assess drive status." Any farther and they'd be into dense shoals, making another jump problematic- he didn't want to leave any more ships stranded in Hulartik-drive range of Zebes.

Communication tightbeams bounced back and forth between the damaged ships. His two remaining warbirds' hyperdrives were in good shape. Better than their gravitomagnetics, no surprise when the hyperdrive cores were nestled in the middle of the far heavier and lower-density field generators of the slower, tactical FTL drive. The two surviving phaser strikers, more or less all right, the Gron doing well enough. Disruptor cruisers...

"Infini reports severe ringing in the power leads to her primary core; field repairs holding for now, but explosion possible. Secondaries have minimal function."

Damn. As Admiral Delion read more of the damage control reports flashing onto his display, he saw the odds getting longer and longer against the cruiser being able to make repairs- she'd probably have to be written off. That made eight ships lost from a force of fifteen, traded for- he thought- six of the foreign foe. He'd at least managed to preserve most of his heavy units, in the face of not one, but two competent foes- one frighteningly so, and both at least as powerful as his command. He hadn't shamed himself, but his star would not be rising in the wake of this battle.

At least his newly appointed Gron 'auxiliaries' were doing well enough; the four survivors were damaged enough to need repairs, but not enough to be in immediate danger. He'd have to have a talk with them; they were little more than a pack of pirates, related somehow to Keldrog's larger fleet in ways he didn't quite understand, but he'd enlisted them rather than abandon them. They were his auxiliaries now.

When there was time, he'd whip them into shape- they were close already. Or he'd pull the Gron off their ships and tow the hulls home to be given to someone who was.

When there was time. For now...

"All ships, move to rendevous point Anvil; we'll link up with the missile harriers and assess damage to Infini, then proceed back to base."

---

Conductor-class Light Cruiser USS Directrix
Pursuing Zebesian Defectors
1958 Hours

Rear Admiral Ananya Hazarika was not a happy woman. Yang had thrown her at one of the flanking Zebesian battlegroups, she'd boosted toward them at her best speed... and the vectors were wrong. Too much distance to cover, no chance of sending the cutters for a flyby missile attack at high relative speeds, nothing but a sniping beam duel for the minutes she could hold them in range. Her ships could handle that, and had. But the distance was already opening out, the raiders buzzing away at the high baseline speed they'd built before she even arrived, and still finding time to pivot for snapshots back at her command.

She'd gotten all of three of their ships, only two of them the heavy plasma destroyers she was trying to kill. One looked like a command and control hub, their electronic warfare and maneuvers had gone loopy, which opened up a vulnerability she'd exploited with a third kill- but at this rate she wasn't counting on a fourth. Not at this range; Gunnery was having a hell of a time keeping the beams on target, and penetration against destroyer-weight shielding would start to drop off soon.

The Zebesian return was as bad as at Hawk's Nest, maybe worse. Artemisia had suffered a few narrow escapes, her own flagship was missing few thousand cubic meters bitten from her stern... and San Dorado was a cloud of wreckage. Captain Sadler'd had the sense to order the crew off when the shields started wobbling, letting computer control handle the ship for the final seconds, but even with aggressive-ejection systems that practically duplicated missile launches, just under half the frigate's crew had gotten off. Her captain wasn't among them.

Three for one plus damages certainly wasn't shameful, but the indecisiveness of it stung her sense of professionalism. She just didn't have enough ships with enough beams to put them down at this range. She'd wish for one of Yang's heavy cruisers, but he had a battleship to tackle, and needed all the heavy guns he could get, but... damn it, all she had to work with were the older classes, system control ships rather than fresh-built fleet combatants. Except for Artemisia- one of the last and latest of the Empresses- all were that slight fraction less capable and slower, above the tail end of the bell curve but on the lower half of the bulge.

Evidence of the flagship showing her age was around her. The swirls* usually wouldn't admit it, but the Conductors' command arrangements were something of a kludge. The old Conductors had suffered many rearrangements of their C3I systems since introduction half a century ago; no two she'd served on were exactly alike. After the first wave of refits- back in the '60s, and Hazarika still remembered tripping over displaced deckplates from that on her first midshipman cruise- a lot of space once assigned to superfluous tactical ratings had started mutating. Like most admirals commanding off the class, Hazarika used the space as an ersatz for the cramped and data-starved flag bridge she'd allowed to be overrun by the ship's offices.

On the bright side, she saw the information handling systems- and their handlers- at work before they fired off polished reports to an admiral ensconced in a special room on the other end of the ship. Sometimes that was helpful- as now, with a stir at the board monitoring hypertraces. Something incoming?

She glanced up and saw the wide-scale hyperspace tracking plot change to reflect what CIC thought they were seeing- weird looking drive trace, moving slowly and rippling like someone'd taken a spaceaxe to the motive windings. Fairly large, too. The Centralist ship that had suffered a drive failure? She tapped a stylus to her own repeater plot, marked the contact with a flashing halo.

"Hail that heavy. I want to talk to them."

A few moments passed, but the contact answered to Coalition encryption.

"Admiral, this is Trogdor actual; request status on C- Admiral Liggs."

So it was the Centralist battlecruiser. Hazarika smiled. "Liggs won his share. Request your support against a fleeing Zebesian element, adjust course by-" she glanced at her repeater and did a quick exercise in spherical trigonometry- "pitch one point two milliradians with respect to system axis, yaw three point... four to spinward side of ecliptic."

"We'll have to clear that-"

"Go ahead. Track that point though, I need you there."

"Acknowledged. Trogdor out."

She hoped they'd hurry; if those ships got a few more minutes to run and starburst into hyper before the battlecruiser could catch them, the heavy ship might as well have stayed with the others.

*The Umerian Space Security Force's rank insignia for the top three ranks uses stylized bar-spiral galaxies on the shoulder straps instead of traditional stars. The resulting nickname for SpaceSec's top brass suggests itself quickly to the right (wrong?) sort of mind.

---

Missile Frigate Gacknik
Out of Ammo and Running Away
2202 Hours

"Think we're safe, chief?"

"We'll be fine. Feel that weird buzzing and ozoney smell?"

"Uh... no?"

"Well, you did a minute ago! That means we're getting shot at less, kid."

"Sorry, just... y'know. Bart!naku*-" Nugak didn't know anybody on that frigate; most of the drafts sent to fill out its complement had come from the larger, more central missile bases around the mining facility instead of the outlying batteries. But he sure wasn't happy to see it blown up.

The chief rattled soothingly. "Yeah, everybody got hammered- the kitchenfoulers jumping us like that, just when we were winning. I know, Nugak, but we did our best. I bet those humans won't be too quick to go nosing around the homeworld after this. And at this range, I don't care how good they are, they're not going to drill our shields. We're almost clear, we'll be okay." He thumped Nugak on the back, and the younger assistant missileer clicked agreement. He was probably right, they were out of the worst of it. Probably.

The next day, thinking back on this moment, Nugak would make a quiet resolution to never ever think that again.

Jobblod, staring at the display Kurgo had not hacked, which told the missileers what was going on completely by accident, chittered nervously. "Um, that blob of light, should that be there?"

"...Oh Zarquod."

"That's... that's a human warbird, isn't it, chief?"

"'Bout that size, yeah..."

"You said it, chief. Oh Zarquod."

Nugak wanted to hide, wanted to curl up into a ball and find somewhere indestructible to take shelter in- even though Urtraghans didn't have that range of motion. Joint injuries sounded waaay better than being blown to bits, anyway.

The missile frigate's sensors simply classed the new arrival as "unidentified, warbird tonnage;" there wasn't time for the computers to deduce more before the battlecruiser CNS Trogdor** opened up. The Centralist ship hadn't been able to jump to useful coilgun range of the fleeing Zebesian ships, but the Dragon-class battlecruisers were designed to play long range tag with heavier capital ships if need be; they were heavy on plasma cannon, and made good use of the weapons.

Her first bolts were aimed on Hazarika's advice, at a plasma destroyer that had proven remarkably well-screened. Structurally, the target was intact, but its defensive screens were battered and leaking even before a shot from the Centralist's third salvo smashed ten meters off the tip of one of the destroyer's long forward arms. Heat-ruined feed lines killed a thruster bank and stripped a particularly bothersome ECM emitter grid. The fourth salvo missed by meters after a convulsive heave by the destroyer's main engine deflectors; on the fifth, B turret's four tight-focused bolts burned into- through- the destroyer's hull astern. That did for the bridge and its surrounding computers, along with over a hundred of the Urtraghan crew- and all semblance of helm control. Trogdor's fire control couldn't miss, not after that.

The Zebesian Defense Force ship came apart in under half a minute, spraying ghostly sheets of metal-oxygen flame and vapor plumes.

As blurs and confusion of number-codes appeared on the screen none of the battery crew were trained to interpret, the first cruiser-killing bolt found Gacknik. Corona discharges cast eerie blue flickers from bulkhead joints, furniture, console edges, where rough angular metal hadn't been milled smooth. Several display screens flashed, wavered, turned inside-out, and died. Someone was screaming. Nugak knew it couldn't be him because his teeth were chattering.

Did we blow up? Couldn't be, nothing had changed, unless maybe one of the Hells involved being a junior-achievement missile minion on a ship getting shot at- oh crap, maybe he had been blown up!

The intercom, a creature of optronics and spun glass cable, wasn't quite as affected by shield leakage from the plasma bolt. "All hands, jump to hyperspace in five... four..."

The ship rocked again, and there was a very disturbing wobble in the deck-plate that wouldn't damp down like it should.

"Two... one... engage."

The hyperdrive generators were in better shape than the datagrid, but worse shape than the intercom. The lurching, shuddering sense of being drop-kicked into alien dimensions unfriendly to any properly carapaced lifeform wasn't normal for the jump to FTL, but it still wasn't one of the really bad transitions the chief talked about. And that damn human warbird stopped shooting at them. The missileers cheered!

The next day, thinking back on this moment, Nugak would make a quiet resolution to never ever do that again, either.

"Crap crap crap."

"What?"

"Look at the display..."

"Oh no it's chasing us! Aaaah!"

"Can we shoot back?"

"What, in hyperspace?"

"Come on come on run run run..."

"I think it's gaining on us-"

"No wait, we're pulling ahead."

"Except... uh-oh. Drive damage, from the other humans?"

"Oh Zark, I can't watch..."

"It's- I think it's trying to tractor them."

"You mean it's going to get both?"

"Not if Robekk*** can make it into that rough p- never mind."

"Those poor, poor guys."

"Better them than us, eh?"

"Kurgo, shut up. Just shut up."

"Um, do you think it'll keep chasing..."

"No." The chief sounded very, very tense, but pretty sure. "No... no. Not unless- no."

I hope not...

A few days ago, Nugak had decided that the day the humans showed up and railgunned his missile battery to pieces at Mining Facility Two was the worst day ever. This was just so much worse...

At least he'd managed to save his fish. So far.
___________________

*Urtraghan word, extremely difficult to render properly for a near-human voicebox. Translates as "gas-pressure-release valve," "recreational relaxation from high mental stress," or "hitting an inanimate object repeatedly with a large hammer," depending on the translator.

**The story of how a Centralist Dragon-class battlecruiser came to share a name with a Gron warrior-deity is long and complicated...

***Urtraghan word. One of the few that all translators agree on; it means "cavalry sabre," although the Urtraghan idea of a cavalry saber is unusually intimidating by human standards, as is the Urtraghan idea of a cavalry mount.

---

Core Ship 12E886C8
Flagship Boskonian Core Subfleet

"Order to all ships. Concentrate fire on Enemy medium cruisers; flagship to fire on target five."

It would be amusing to see how tough they really were- those absurd mules, those glorified troopships, that the Umerians called "strike cruisers." By all reports, the hybrid ships had nowhere near the kind of metal the proton-beam cruisers showed...

Patriot-class Heavy Cruiser USS Layla Daniels
Flagship Umerian Contingent
Engaging Subfleet Cosmog
2153 Hours

"Grimaldi reports severe drive damage; they're losing acceleration." Vice Admiral Wenli Yang checked the plot- the screen's formation was shifting as they pulled back towards his heavier cruisers' base vector. That would be all right, then.

Zebesian battleship is trailing... mercury vapor?"

Odd. What could that be from? At a rate of half a tonne a second, no less... It didn't seem to slow them down, at any rate. Still darting away, velocity profile changing in the strangest way- even Tianguo ships didn't move quite like that, didn't push inertial neutralization so close to the dangerous edge of the possible. These ships, they hadn't come from any second-rate backwater. Whoever was responsible for this attack had a science as well developed as anything in the known galaxy, and they were using it. Using it too well.

Wenli's eyebrow twitched as the fire on his cruisers relaxed, dialed back even further, down to levels where bow armor could cool and shields pushed back above their recharge rate. He'd been lucky, Dame Layla's bowplate hadn't been targeted by the worst of the battleship fire to begin with, but even Jacobson was starting to recover from the pounding she'd taken in those few ugly minutes.

The Zebesian battleship's fire was definitely slackening. Could it be damage to the enemy's ultrawave beams? Lingering effects from the missile attack? No... that didn't feel right. The answer came, and was unwelcome- the strike cruiser Tannenberg burned under the remaining beams on the multirole ship. Ravening torrents of ultrawaves clung to the troop-carrier's defensive screens, energy discharges scattering away in sheets and arcing along the hull like miniature solar prominences. The strike cruiser turned into the attack, minimizing target profile, and started flaring VLA drones in self-sacrificial bursts of deceptive jamming, but against the full power of a battleship, those were at best delaying moves.

Wenli spun comm channels round to his screen commander. "Concentrate on that battleship. Discourage them, before..."

Dusty nodded. "Already on it." The cruisers and destroyers did switch fire- but the range was getting long for lepton beams. Diffused particle-bunches from the destroyers swept over and washed across the battleship's hardened wall-shield like mildly corrosive fog; the heavier, higher-gamma bolts from Ulysses and Nefertiti's electron cannon scarred and thinned that adamant barrier of force. Combined with the heavy cruisers' proton beams, it was enough to drive the wall-shield in upon itself a fraction, to raise the pitch of its coruscating radiance from sodium-flame yellow into eye-searing green. No more- the battleship's shields stabilized, braced by additional output from their mighty generators. And among the Umerian ships...

Burnthrough! The strike cruiser was agile for its capital-sized bulk, but armored only to the scale of the far smaller Umerian light cruisers. Tannenberg lacked the massive slabs of super-refractory dureum armor of the heavy cruisers' bow-plates. Her protective scheme, bulky though it was, was strictly ablative against force of this magnitude, and soon enough began to fail. Thunderbolt-intense beams of vibratory destruction flashed through the cruiser.

The surface weapons and sensors burned away quickly, scoured and raked by battleship fire. One battery group sliced the barbettes to two of the ship's four dorsal beam turrets; explosive short-out was avoided by seconds when a fast-reacting engineer cut the power to the main battery. On the flanks, the electron-undulator racetracks and short-barreled 'driver casemates of the ship's orbit-to-ground support batteries shattered irretrievably, destroyed without firing a shot. Defense missile drive capacitors in the cruiser's belly burned and exploded.

The core hull survived relatively well, for a time, covered by a sharp-angled prow of relatively dense armor and tucked behind many meters of less critical materials on the ship's bow. But that too began to fail, creased and mutilated by relentless fire from the battleship... and now the macrobeams carved along the length of the strike cruiser's troop compartments! Magazines detonated, their force was merely an afterthought; storage racks filled with lethal close-combat drones and deadly hovertanks were reduced to slag if not to vapor. The great strike trooper barracks registered rising radiation leaks, then heating; Wenli knew there had to be burnthroughs into Strike country, even if the tactical net didn't register them.

The fire shifted- not another... wait. Flux dropping off, range opening, if they were smart they wouldn't hang around much longer as they came to the safe tail-off of the hyper-limit...

Yep. Smart. The leading Zebesian ships flashed, vanished from sidereal space, and darted off into the subether. The last of the cruisers, the battleship... gone.

Wenli sighed and grimaced. Damn that, what was the point?. He needed someone- damage assessment and good sense, that meant the chief of logistics. Spin channels, subdirectory staff, top of the list...

"Alex. You saw what they did to the strike cruisers?"

"Yes, sir."

"The troops should mostly be all right- those compartments are well protected and aft, but..."

"I'm tentatively estimating GroundSec hardware losses at ten to the thirteenth starbucks, sir. Preliminary casualty reports, hard to say. We're looking at three to four thousand, at least."

Wenli slumped at the figure. Worse than he'd hoped.

"Ah, that includes nonlethals- burns, mostly."

That was... not enough. "Why? If he was trying to reduce the fire on him, he should have gone for Midgely or- he could have kept firing on Ulysses. To go after the strike cruisers..."

"Couldn't say, admiral." Alex shook his head. "I don't understand it either."

"It couldn't be- no, I have to be wrong. No fleet that capable would put someone that, that... murderously vindictive in high command. It couldn't happen."

"Couldn't it, sir?"

His mind flashed back through more centuries of space travel and interstellar war than he cared to contemplate seriously. There could be only one answer. "You're right, but I don't like it. Bad enough to have to-" Rather than finish the sentence, he sighed and slouched, leaning his cheekbone against the palm of one hand. "-well, maybe we'll go chasing after them again some day."

Wenli wasn't the vindictive type, but if he ever found out who'd been commanding from that battleship, he'd owe the fellow a special effort.

---

USS Layla Daniels
Some Minutes Later

Picking up survivors off the heated wreck of Tannenberg was a captains' operation; Wenli had some time to survey the wide-spread battles stretched across so much of the inner system. The Zebesian fleet had, quite rationally, starburst outward when they saw reinforcements coming to save the Prussian Second Fleet; the Coalition had scattered to pursue. That led each contingent out of mutual-support range of the others, to fight their own battles, on their own terms.

There was only one battle left going- that of Tianguo. Rear Admiral Lin would go down in the records as the last of the allied commanders at Zebes to see his targets escape. He'd kept them from getting a clear run to hyperspace for nearly an hour now, by the simple expedient of dashing into the midst of the enemy forces and forcing them to accept a chaotic, single-ship action on roughly equal terms. It wasn't quite a dogfight, the speeds and ranges were still high, but it was close.

The Tianguo Type 39s were more or less evenly matched against the ellipsoidal, beam-armed Zebesian cruisers, slightly superior in beam firepower but somewhat inferior in ECM output and agility. Wenli had to admire the skill with which he'd handled his ships under Mach-Lorentz drive, juggling his cruisers to block the Zebesian ellipsoids' escape routes, countering their dizzying, inertia-defying evasive darts with his own command's nearly equal agility. It was not unlike a high speed game of three-dimensional Go- the effort to englobe enemy units, concentrate the force of multiple combatants against one.

Lin had the edge in weight of metal. Wenli hadn't been able to keep a proper eye on that, not with his own battle to fight, but the tactical computers had the memory of a postelephant. Replay showed him the Tianguo squadron accounting for two cruisers and a destroyer, in exchange for one of their own lost and one limping away.

Still, not decisive. The one-for-one match between the ships was too good- and that subfleet's battlecruiser flagship was too much larger and more dangerous than anything the Taikongjun had on the scene. Configuration would shift- there, then a disentangling starburst, cut to system-relative south, and. Yeah. They'd be bound to break loose, at least with most of their force, within a few minutes, despite the long and skillful game.

How smart is Lin... good! There's the missiles. Lin was thinking at least- call it three moves ahead, enough to commit his reserve weapon in time to do some good.

SpaceSec had been watching Tianguo military capabilities closely for nearly a thousand years. Wenli wasn't at all surprised by the Long Arrow missiles' lightspeed flash across the void under inertialess drive, nor by the anticlimactic impact plumes that seemed impossibly small for such high-speed missiles. The Zebesians were, and their point defense didn't rise to the challenge. Two of their destroyers fireballed- the Umerian was beginning to think those were scuttling charges; no one had fuel handling that consistently, spectacularly bad.

Which said still more disturbing things about whoever was crewing those ships... or whoever had built them and supplied them to unsuspecting dupes.

And yet- there. The starburst, the dash, the Tianguo captains struggling to keep up... and the jump.

No chance of pursuit, crazy to go chasing into these shoals against an enemy who knew them well. Going fast enough to stand a chance of catching them would be like trying to run the fifty-meter dash in a minefield.

There's still, no. No, it's... over.

It really was over, all over but the ground fighting, as long as that lasted now. After twelve hours of anxiety and strain and having to keep up with one vicious multimegaton surprise after another, it was over. He needed a rest, or at least...

Ship intercom tree, speed-dial... there. Admiral's aide.

"Jessica?"

"Yes, admiral?"

"Get the tea on, will you?"

"Yes, sir. I'll be up shortly."

"Thank you."

That would help. But still, to wrap matters up as soon as possible. What to do now? Who to report to...

Am I the ranking non-Prussian officer in the system? Hmm. I think I am.

That felt strange somehow, compared to the scale of the action- the combined forces in play today added up to something close to half a major power's national navy- but there it was.

"Signals, send a 'wave to the Prussian flagship. All possible channels, and on slow, repeating bandwidth; they're probably damaged. Tell them..."

This had not been a fine day for the Prussian navy, and Wenli couldn't shake the strangely bemused, ironic sense that von Mückenberger could have done so very much better, if only he'd known he needed to try when fighting a real war. He felt real sympathy for the Prussian Second Fleet, but Vice Admiral Yang was a Type Four citizen of the Technocracy, if an odd one. The spacers of that fleet had, no doubt, fought like lions- lions led by a plodding donkey.

"Your tea, sir." Jessica seemed to materialize out of nowhere, breaking Wenli's train of thought, but it was worth the interruption for the steaming cup on the edge of his command console. And suddenly, he knew what to say.

Another man of his rank and nation might have sneered. Wenli just smiled gently and winked at his aide.

"Tell them: "Herr Admiral, it's safe to come out of your parking orbit now. We'll bring up what remains of your refueling convoy within the hour."

He glanced over at Frederica- the senior lieutenant was quivering slightly, one hand pressed firmly to her mouth.

"Permission granted."

Relieved of her losing struggle, Frederica began to giggle. Yang sat back and sighed again, this time with a sense of relief as the coalition fleets tallied the costs of their victory, and the value of the crisis they'd averted.

[RogueIce]

Staging Grounds, Thamasa Sector, Shinra Republic

"That was a damn mess," stated Grand Admiral Pellaeon.

"Yes it was," replied Marshal General Stephen Roth.

"I can't believe Rus thought that was you who fought him."

"Well, he was drunk and delusional," said the man also known as Sephiroth. "When I told Marshal Palazzo to follow me when we heard the commotion, I didn't expect him to pick up a spaceaxe and go after the fratboy." Third Technarch Jack Holloway's comment to Rus had picked up considerable popularity and was spreading rapidly around the coalition - though nobody had so far been stupid enough to mention it within earshot of the Byzantine crewers and soldiers.

Pellaeon nodded, and gestured to the door of a recovery room. "Well, he'll have a chance to explain it to us, won't he?" The two men walked in, and Pellaeon was somewhat surprised that Palazzo was awake. From what the medics had said, he'd taken a pretty good hit to the head. Then again, Kefka has always had a hard head, mused Pellaeon. He knew that the amusement he felt from the comment would not go over well with the Marshal, but after the incident the base's null fields were fully activated, so there was no risk of Kefka sensing Pellaeon's emotions.

"Admiral, Marshal. So good of you to check in on me."

"Of course," replied Roth.

Pellaeon merely nodded. "Why did you attack Rus against my orders, Marshal?" he asked. Grand Admiral Pellaeon had ordered the Shinra Republic soldiers to form a perimeter and stand by, instead choosing to dispatch the Ford Prefect Gundams to handle the insane Byzantine. Jack Holloway's Strike Troopers had also volunteered to subdue the raging prince.

Straight to the point as always, Admiral... "Because he was attacking all of you, sir. I had no choice," replied Kefka. That wasn't the whole truth, however. It had started as that, but when the insane Byzantine had called him Sephiroth, something inside just snapped. He was always being compared to the "great and noble Sephiroth." Always coming up second best behind the poster child of the Army. It pissed him off like nothing else could. So when his attack to distract the Byzantine was credited by the drunken fool to Sephiroth...

Of course, he couldn't tell the Admiral that. "While Marshal Roth was getting the rest of you out, the Umerians and Prefects weren't in position to cover you. I had to engage."

"You still disobeyed my orders," said Pellaeon. After giving Kefka a hard stare, he relented. "Luckily for you, fate has given you yet another lucky break." Pellaeon shook his head. "If you had disobeyed my order, Rus would be guilty of assaulting a senior Shinra Republic military officer. That, along with the rest of the trouble they've made, would likely have our government sending them home. At cannon-point, if need be. But it's been decided that, like it or not, we need them here. So, officially, Rus never assaulted you." He met Kefka's eyes once more. "That also means, officially, you never disobeyed my order." For most men, they would consider this to be an incredibly luckily break, and would take to heart the fact that such luck did not hold out forever.

Unfortunately, Kefka Palazzo is not most men. "Yes sir," replied Kefka. "It never happened."

*****

An hour later, Pellaeon and Roth were standing before a shuttle. "Well, we got lucky, I guess. Kefka, despite his rashness, at least managed to take the fight to an urban training mockup. The training area is a mess, but will be easily repaired. Damage to the base itself was thankfully minimal," said Sephiroth.

"Are you trying to get me to consider mitigating factors in Marshal Palazzo's case, Roth?" asked Pellaeon wryly.

"Of course not, Gilad. There is no case against the good Marshal, after all." Sephiroth smiled at his old friend. More seriously, he added, "I'm sorry I won't be here for the action. But the President has other plans for me, I suppose."

Pellaeon nodded. "Benson's a good man, a good officer. He wouldn't be a Marshal General otherwise. The Shinra Republic Army will manage to function without your presence, I am sure."

Sephiroth chuckled. "I'm sure they will. Good luck, Admiral."

"Thank you, Marshal." The two men nodded at each other, and then Pellaeon stepped back as Marshal General Stephen Roth boarded his shuttle.

[Shroom Man 777]

Written with Simon_Jester


Northern Crater, The Planetoid



Like all military bases, the Planetoid had medical facilities. The nearest one to the Rus Komnenos incident was a disused church that was being used as a hospital, and after Strategos Primus Rus and Marshal-General Sephiroth’s epic battle, it was one of the few remaining buildings intact in its block. Other barracks, storage depots, PXes and rec facilities had been totally wrecked in the battle between Rus and the Marshal. As the nearest still-standing structure with medical facilities, all the injured had been transported to the church stat. The Marshal himself was sent there, at the conclusion of the battle, for what was described as a motor-vehicular accident.

Anyway, it was here that the Shinran first responders, the para-medics and ground crews were recuperating after being wailed on by Rus without provocation. The Umerian Strike Troopers were also there, with their commander and Umeria’s Third Technarch for Security Jack Holloway, along with Centralist Grand Admiral Yeslah. Most suffered bruises, concussions, and maybe some minor fractures, but were otherwise no worse for the wear and thankfully there were no fatalities.

Understandably, as some of those they were tending to were high-ranking foreign leaders, and the Rus incident happened on their turf and in their watch, the Shinran medical personnel were quite fussy and fretful with their very important patients.

"I'm telling you, I'm fine. Inertics caught it. What do you mean you want to keep me under observation, what is this bullshit?" Holloway protested. Why, he remembered fighting screaming WAAAGH!s on the jungle world of Dragoblah in the Badlands, back in the '60s. They beat back those greenies despite any and all injuries they sustained. Being reduced to this, haplessly being tended to by some flowery Shinran nurses fussing over each and every nick and scratch he sustained from battle, was demeaning to say the least.

“Miss Gainsborough, came to bring more flowers for me?” Grand Admiral Yeslah said to his own nurse. “My arm’s still sore after catching one of those guys that cad Rus tossed around. Why, those undisciplined Byzantine rabble, what they did was dishonorable. If I had a chance, I’d show them proper centralized authority!”

“Dilly-dally, shilly-shally,” the nurse sighed as she swatted aside one of his probing hands. “Be careful, Grand Admiral, you might strain yourself.”

A third figure entered the ward. Long silver hair swayed in the recirculated air. Black leather glinted in the artificial light. The nurses swooned, to Yeslah’s dismay. It was the Marshal General Sephiroth!



“How are you doing, guys?” the silver-haired pretty boy asked, nonchalantly.

“We’re fine. You can tell the nurses to stop sticking thermometers in me,” Holloway muttered. “How about you, Marshal?”

“Not too bad myself. Just got a check up to make sure His Highness didn’t give me a concussion,” Sephiroth shrugged. “Loved what you said to him, in his face, by the way.”

“Liked how you led that stark raving idiot to the training grounds,” Holloway complimented in return. “Saved lots of people from becoming collateral damage. Would be handy to have you close by if we’re going to be working side by side with Rus. Few people in the ‘verse could’ve stood up to him toe to toe, much less manage to lop off his hand.”

“Thanks. Too bad I’m not assigned to go with the coalition forces. Would’ve been good to work with you and your Strike Troops.” Sephiroth lamented.

“Really? Shame. I thought you were leading an army group of elites yourself,” Holloway said.

“Oh, you must’ve mistaken me for Kefka.” Sephiroth grinned, as if remembering something really funny. “Anyway, I was stopping over here to see the coalition off. Like I said, I’m being sent somewhere else. Pleased to meet you, Technarch.”

Sephiroth offered his hand, Holloway took it.

“Friends call me Jack, and after the stunt you pulled on Komnenos, heh, you definitely count as one.” Holloway chuckled.

“Thanks. You can call me Steve.” Sephiroth replied. “See you around, Jack.”

As Sephiroth left, a flock of pretty nurses went and followed him, leaving Grand Admiral Yeslah all by himself.

“Hey! Wait! Ms. Gainsborough! Aw...” the Grand Admiral pouted. Then, an idea struck him and he grinned lecherously. He felt like he could use a drink, and he remembered seeing a bar when he was in the ambulance on his way to the hospital. What was it called... 7th Heaven or something? Yes. “I sure hope I can find me some nice bar girls over there.”

[RogueIce]

The Coalition Goes To War

There is but one song which is appropriate for this.

Staging Grounds, Klavostan - 24 May 3401 UNST

The mess had been largely cleaned up back home, the Byzantines had apologized and promised reparations, Aurelian had taken charge from his brother...and in a minor note, the coalition fleets were as ready as they were going to be.

Grand Admiral Pellaeon stood on the bridge of the SRS Ragnarok as the various elements reported in. The New Anglians had already left with their contingent to wait outside of the Alpha Centauri system. Now it was time for the rest of the allies to follow.

"All units report ready, Admiral."

"Very well. Signal the fleet. We head out immediately."

Throughout the space of this lonely little planetoid in the outskirts of the Corel System, one of the mightiest armadas the galaxy had ever seen began their jumps into hyperspace.

After all the preparation, delays, waiting, training and agonizing...the war had at long last begun.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

K-Zone Comedy Productions Present

Fine Art by Shroom, Siege and Fin

Rule Korpulu Zone
Behold the Bearded Lady

Rus appeared in a transmission to Shinran Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon donning the attire of a Nova Terran Viking, and he was drinking beer from a mug. "Nay! We would not have gone with you anyway! And I will tell you why!” Rus drank a gulp of beer so nicely supplied by Bragznetsov. God Emperor bless that good bear.

“First and forth most. You are a stupid retarded bearded fool! Your beard is pathetic paltry stump! You might as well shave yourself so well till your face is as smooth as a baby's arse. Or maybe you shouldn't bother. You might as scare a baby to death instead. Your own grandchildren might opt for death instead of having to look upon your clean shaven face! Such an atrocity to humankind!"

Rus drank more of the Brag beer. His post organs were working to the maximum to keep him sober, but he liked the stuff. God Emperor praise the Bragulans for this damn fine beer.

The subject of his screed stared on, mouth agape.

"And your wrinkled skin! By the God Emperor, how the heck did you ever get such wrinkled skin! See these fingers? Why, I'm 700 years old and counting, and they are as young as ever! Surely you aren't too poor to at least afford some life lengthening treatments! Or is it because you like looking old? That it makes you all pompous and ... decrepit? That every silly urchin would think you are a grandfather? Surely you are not that vain?"

“And damn is this not the finest beer in the galaxy! Bragulan Beer! Cold Fusioned for absolute coldness! The finest beer I could ever taste, made by xenos no less. YOU on the other hand would have just died drinking this fine beer! One drop of the stuff would have killed you! WEAKLING!!! See me? I have drunk twenty damn mugs of these damn things, and I have plenty more!” Rus gestured to the container full of beer Bragznetsov have given him. The good Bragulan admiral had even promised Rus a lifetime supply, even if the two races were at war.

"Do you have children? My God man, surely you would not spread your seed around? It is an atrocity. You are such a poor specimen of the human race, that to spread your poorness around would be to be pollute the gene pool and spread even more "poorness" around. Why not I give you a fine coffin? Yes a fine coffin made of the finest woods in the galaxy. You could spend the end of your days comfortably, and there will be plenty of time for contemplation, especially the need to contemplate your 'poorness'. We could even supply you with a monastery and a nice hole in the ground if you like. It will be nice and comfortable, with some flowers around the hole just to make it extra pristine.

Furthermore! I would never entrust my fleet to a man who has never killed someone with his own bare hands. I have forgotten how many times I had to rip out some stupid Tau’s throat, trachea, or spine with my own bare hands. You will be surprised by the amount of blue blood these blue buggers have. You? Would on the other hand have gotten a fright from the amount of blood that your hands are full of, and probably die of a heart attack yourself. Makes me wonder how you live with yourself suffering from hematophobia.”

Rus then took a sagely tone, “Your mother is a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries! Hell, your own grandfather was nothing but a mewling infant... wait... nay, he was but a foetus in your great-grandmother’s womb when I was already busy burning planets to the ground. I would never trust a man who was ... what... several centuries younger? You are but a tinny weeney infant to me, whereas I am a big man who has lived and fought countless wars for centuries. I am an old man with many years - I mean centuries - ahead of me, whereas you are lucky to live to you next century. Maybe if you mustered the courage to shoot yourself with a gun, you would at least earn some measure of my respect.”

“And so this is it! We will not follow you, you bearded woman! A WOMAN I say! That’s right! And to end off, consider this REVENGE for the centuries old Shinran insult when you kicked Emperor Heraclius IV out of the MESS during the Dark Age of Technology! But now, we are no longer a bunch of tiny tsardoms and duchies! We have ascended! And now, it is your comeuppance! The day of reckoning has come! Yes! This is revenge! REVENGE!!!” Rus laughed. He FUCKING LAUGHED! He even had some Fenrisian bears behind him laughing. His subordinates were laughing as well, along with everyone else in the Byzantine fleet. Their laughter was transmitted throughout space, radiating into the general cosmos, filling it with glorious laughter not heard in centuries. One might almost think that the galaxy was filled with joyous people, but the only joyous ones in this sector of space were the Byzantines. Rus finished his thirtieth mug. His beard was full of the beer, and he savored the taste with his neuroglottis, his tongue licking up the beer on lips. “MOOREEE!!!!” he yelled, and he shattered yet another mug.

“SO LONG SUCKERS! TA-TAAAH!!!” And he grabbed another mug and drank it whole. He turned to his men and raised his sword, and his mug, “To WAR! WAR! WAR which we were all trained to fight! We go to war! A Good and Proper WAR! The Bears await us! We will make this a proper war the galaxy hasn’t seen since the Running of the Tau!” And then he smashed the mug to pieces. The men cheered, and the Byzantine fleet turned away from the rest of the fleet and engaged their warp drives, making their way towards the waiting Bragulan and Chamarran fleet.

[Mayabird]

Edited by RogueIce. He wrote the captain. I picked the image.

Shinra Republic Staging Grounds
Goddamn Unreal Time

While damage to base facilities had been minimal, "minimal" did not equal zero.

The PRNFY pilots were looking forward to this when they came across the devastation. There was much pained screaming. Concerned, a Shinra Republic Army captain came running over to see what the matter was.

"NOOOOOOO! Our indoor beach volleyball gym! NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Goose wailed. It had been trashed!

"What happened here?" Maverick yelled. "Did an army of espers and robots just fight here?"

The Shinra captain nodded. "Yes, there was an...incident."

"SOMEONE KNOCKED DOWN THE STATUE!" Sure enough, their completely inaccurate space cardboard cutout of Rufus Shinra



had been taken down!

"NOOOOOOOOOO!"

The captain rolled his eyes. He had seen the 'statue' the PRNFY fliers had erected. Like most Shinra Republic personnel who had seen the creation, he was not going to especially miss it. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said, barely disguising his sarcasm. Doing his level best to restrain laughter, he left the PRNFY pilots to their anguish and went in search of more important things to do. Such as lunch.