“Update me,” Commodore Amemarume ordered as she strode onto her flag bridge, forcing down a mug of black coffee to keep herself from falling back to sleep. The alert had some in the middle of the night for her, and despite her long record of service, she’d never really gotten any better at waking up before it was time.

  “Captain Alvuuth’s sensor team is reporting a task force of thirty ships. Unnac Imperium. They teleported in at the edge of the system near the eleventh planet and seem to be tracing a circle around the rim,” answered Amemarume’s operations officer, Commandor Mukage. Like her, he was an oni, but where Amemarume had red skin and two horns, Mukage had purple skin and only a single horn. Once, Amemarume would have been considered Mukage’s superior simply due to the number of horns on her head, but that was in the distant past.

  “Likely just another intimidation tactic, then,” Amemarume determined after looking over the data from the main bridge. “That’s the most ships they’ve sent so far, but still nothing larger than a cruiser.”

  “Even cruisers can destroy a battleship if they’re willing to take losses,” Mukage objected. “We might have the advantage in tonnage thanks to the GCNS Kasaisekai, but they’ve got more cruisers than we do.”

  “I’m not saying we ignore them. I trust all ships have already gone to battle stations?” Amemarume asked, checking to see if her standing orders had been followed. Mukage nodded.

  “All ships reported battle stations within one minute of the first report coming in,” he confirmed.

  “Faster than the last drill, good,” Amemarume noted with pleasure. She turned to her communications officer. “Tozoran, I want us in a screening formation between Jethroe’s Landing and the mirazar task force at all times. And make sure Third Fleet knows they’re here.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” the demon answered before relaying her instructions. Like most of the rest of the GCNS Kasaisekai’s complement, Tozaran was an oni, but more specifically he was a demon, a race hailing from a different continent than the race Amemarume belonged to. Some referred to her own people as yaksha, but they had never accepted any moniker other than that which became synonymous with their species as a whole.

  “We’re taking a passive stance?” asked Mukage.

  “For now. As much as I’d like to drive them out of the system, we don’t have enough of an advantage to guarantee a victory,” Amemarume explained.

  “The more time we give them out there, the more time they have to set up a relativistic ballistic projectile. And at this distance we won’t know if they’re moving closer until it’s too late,’ Mukage pointed out, playing devil’s advocate as was his role. “If it’s nothing more than an intimidation tactic they should flee when we get close anyway; if not, catching them off guard may give us the edge they need.”

  “By the same token, we can’t know their precise position until we close in. How would you propose we narrow down their location in order to attack them?” Amemarume countered. “Besides, the mirazar may be isolationist, but they’ve never shown any willingness to commit genocide before.”

  “They’ve also never made this large of a display of force before,” Mukage replied. “There’s a very real risk right now that they’re willing to fight for this system.”

  “For what? A small Observer outpost? They hate them, sure, but we’re way too close to GC borders for fighting over it to make any sense.” Amemarume backed away from the tactical plot of the system and took her seat, draining the rest of her coffee. “Now that we’ve got mirazar in a protected system the Fleet should be sending reinforcements any day now. We’ll wait for them to arrive and then we can send the mirazar packing.”

  Mukage nodded in acknowledgement and headed back to his section, likely checking with his subordinates to make sure there was nothing he’d overlooked. Truthfully, Amemarume hated taking a stance like this herself. It was essentially giving the mirazar free reign over the outer planets, some of which had resources that were being exploited by the local colonists. Those were off-limits now, and there was no way of being sure even the inner planets wouldn’t come under threat if the Imperium was feeling aggressive enough.

  That was part of why Amemarume had to keep her task force in orbit of Jethroe’s Landing. It was the only planet in the system with a permanent human population. Technically the colony was independent, but they’d requested protected status when Observer ruins were discovered on their world due to the threat the mirazar posed and that request had been approved.

  Since the colony was so far outside of GC borders, the admiralty had been leery of deploying too many ships there. Every ship sent out here weakened the defensive fleets guarding the borders of the nation, and without going to a full war footing, there was no way to compensate for it. A single task force was the most anyone was willing to agree to, and at the time Amemarume had agreed it should have been enough anyway.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Now, she wasn’t so certain. Normally the Imperium limited itself to raiding independent colonies and harassing their industries to make life difficult enough for them that they might be motivated to leave. It had worked a few times, mostly on colonies closer to the Imperium’s borders than the Gaian Collective’s. Jethroe’s Landing wasn’t one of those, however. It was actually closer to the center of the GC than some member worlds on other sides of the nation- including one species’ homeworld.

  Of course, Jethroe’s Landing was the homeworld of a human species as well, albeit a non-sapient one. Evolution doesn’t progress in a single direction. It was rare, but sometimes intelligence wasn’t important enough for survival for the environment to select for it, resulting in non-sapient descendants of a sapient species. Normally as a species’ homeworld Jethroe’s Landing would have qualified for protection automatically, but non-sapients didn’t get that sort of consideration. Its strategic importance had tipped the scale once it became clear the world was actually being targeted, however.

  Amemarume felt the caffeine finally take effect and shook off her idle thoughts to skim through all the reports coming in from the ships of her task force. Her intelligence officer would collate the important details for her later, but it was still vital to keep abreast of the situation while it unfolded. Mostly it was just readiness reports and sensor data, with the occasional note that a crew member had performed exceptionally in some fashion. None of her ships were reporting any equipment or personnel issues, which was the salient point.

  “Ma’am, the steadholder of Jethroe’s Landing is calling. He wants to know what’s happening,” Tozaran notified Amemarume around ten minutes after the task force had entered its screening maneuver.

  “Was he not already informed?” Amemarume asked; Tozaran’s team should have taken care of that without her needing to remind them.

  “He was, but he wants to hear from you personally,” Tozaran clarified uncomfortably. With a roll of her eyes, Amemarume waved a hand in his direction.

  “Send him to my personal display, then,” she instructed. Moments later the steadholder came up on the screen she reserved for one-on-one communications.

  “Finally!” exclaimed Steadholder Robert. Ironically, the head of state of Jethroe’s Landing was not named Jethroe in spite of the fact that the colony was only founded a few decades ago. In fact, Jethroe hadn’t even survived to see the founding of his own namesake. His eponymous ‘landing’ could only be called one by virtue of the fact that a crash was, technically, still a form of landing. “What’s this I hear about you sitting around while the mirazar circle us like sharks!?”

  “Good morning to you, too, Steadholder,” Amemarume greeted the frenzied man politely. That seemed to calm him a bit as he remembered his decorum; he took a few deep breaths and smoothed his wild bed hair. “Did my staff not provide sufficient details for you?”

  “Erm. Good morning, Commodore. Yes, I’ve received their updates, but I would like to hear your reasoning,” Robert said in a more subdued tone.

  “Their numbers are a match for ours, and if we rush out to the rim, there will be nothing left between the Imperial ships and your planet,” Amemarume explained calmly. She supposed she couldn’t fault the man for not being able to notice that himself; he was a civilian, not military.

  “I…see,” Robert replied as blood drained from his face. “So there’s…nothing you can do?”

  “There are many things I could do right now, but it’s my belief that our objective of defending your planet is best accomplished by remaining as close as possible until we have the numbers for a decisive victory,” the commodore went on. “It’s unlikely the mirazar will be any more eager to fight us with their current numbers than we are to engage them.”

  “What if they get reinforcements before you do?” asked Robert.

  “We’re much closer to GC borders than the Imperium. If they had more ships in range, they’d be here already.” Amemarume found it a bit harder to forgive that question. Basic astrography should have told him that much, but perhaps it was unfair to judge him when he clearly thought his worst-case scenario had just come true.

  “Good, good. Ah…keep up the good work, then,” the steadholder said lamely before ending the call. He’d probably made it in such a panic that he hadn’t really considered what he was going to say beforehand.

  Some more time passed as the two task forces continued to maneuver around each other, one moving as quickly as possible and the other taking a far more leisurely pace due to the vast difference in size of the circle they were traversing. Just as Amemarume was beginning to think that would continue indefinitely and that the crisis was on hold for now, something changed.

  “Commodore, ma’am, the Imperium task force has changed course! It’s strange, though; they seem to be sticking to sublight speeds,” her intelligence officer, a woman named Ruha announced.

  “They want us to know they’re coming,” concluded Mukage.

  “Why give up the element of surprise like that…?” Amemarume muttered to herself. “Is this just more showmanship, or…”

  “A distraction?” finished Mukage. Amemarume nodded her agreement.

  “Inform all ships to be on the lookout for a second detachment,” she instructed.

  “Honestly, I never really expected them to go this far. How can they possibly think the Gaian Collective would allow them to hold this world even if the defeat us?” Mukage wondered as Tozaran relayed Amemarume’s order.

  “You’re right; they seem strangely confident considering they’d be fighting practically on our turf. Even if they send several fleets, we’d just activate the reserves…unless…” Amemarume trailed off in disbelief. “They don’t know. The Unnac Imperium doesn’t know about our reserve fleets.”

  “What? That’s practically an open secret at this point. How could they possibly be unaware?” Mukage questioned skeptically.

  “The Imperium is highly insular and doesn’t take much of an interest in other nations unless the discovery of Observer sites is involved,” Ruha answered for Mukage. “Their intelligence services are woefully underdeveloped as a result.”

  “They’re teasing a dragon while thinking it’s a crocodile. They know they’re in for a fight but have no idea what they’re actually picking a fight with,” Amemarume concluded. “I hope I’m underestimating them, because if I’m not, then they’re dumb enough to force a fight right this moment, and whatever happens down the line isn’t going to do much for us now.”