Pushing aside a cadre of medics, Miran stormed her way from the shuttle level up to The Dream’s bridge. Each watchstander and bridge officer stood to offer a salute, which she promptly ignored. Miran’s rage was plain to see. No one wished to step into her warpath.

  Lawson and Rissa followed a pair of medics off to the medbay. Miran didn’t have time for any of that.

  “Good to have you back,” Captain Danesh said, relieved. He offered her his captain’s chair, but Miran was too livid to sit. She was instead pacing back and forth about the bridge mulling over her next steps.

  “Captain,” she said after a few painful moments, “where are the black ships now?”

  “Still four light-hours distant, approaching from the far side of the planet,” he answered.

  “That’s curious,” Miran said, “do you think they know we detected their presence?”

  “Hard to say, Matriarch. Stands to reason that they can see our support ships on the retreat, so they might assume that we have sounded the alarm.”

  Miran pulled up an image of the approaching ships that they had received from the Hammerfist. The ships were flying dark, nearly indistinguishable from the black of the void if they hadn’t passed in front of a few distant stars. Miran switched to the multispectrum telemetry. No radiation of any kind was being emitted by them, which had Miran not seen with her own eyes, she would have thought impossible to have total radiative shielding as they did.

  The black ships hung like a spectre over her, rolling ever closer as a rogue wave in calming seas.

  Miran sent a message to The Hammerfist’s Captain Felder: Stay the course and protect the flock. We will handle the enemy.

  “Captain,” she said, “there’s no sense letting them get any closer to the planet. Take us around the planet. Let’s move to meet them.”

  “Closest intercept path puts us at just under three hours once we’ve hit top speed. That will give us one chance to take them out. If we miss even one ship, we won’t have time to turn to catch them before they reach the planet.” he said.

  “We have one advantage here; not time, nor superior firepower, but numbers. If we can’t overwhelm them with force, then I’m afraid we’ll be scraping the barrel for options,” she said.

  “Aye, Matriarch,” Danesh said. He waved his bridge staff into action, and several of the watchstanders moved about. Nearly all of the navigation was handled by automated systems, but, to ensure perfection, a human eye was needed to triple-check.

  Despite the nature of riftspace, in-system travel was still relegated to regular fusion drives capable of near-light speeds. Tracing and intercepting a body then relies on complex calculations of orbital mechanics in order to match trajectories and speed. That being the case, ship-to-ship engagements happened at such high speeds that they would start and end within a window of time imperceptible to any human.

  Since humans were not evolved to deal with such neck-breaking calculations, automated systems were relied on heavily to keep fleets from outright colliding or missing each other entirely.

  “Coming up on the far side of the planet now. We’ll need to make one complete orbit to slingshot us into a speed matching theirs,” said Danesh.

  “Time to intercept?” Miran asked.

  “Two hours fifty-seven minutes,” said one of the watchstanders.

  “Now you can look at me.” Miran gestured to the two medics who had followed her up from the shuttle bay. Miran followed them to the back corner of the bridge, where they extended a built-in cot. Miran sat, gripping her terminal in her hands and tried to ignore their prodding. She knew she had a duty to her people to ensure her own wellbeing, but that didn’t mean she had to enjoy it.

  Thumbing through the litany of telemetry available on her terminal from ships all over the attack fleet, she scanned any sign of movement in the city before it had disappeared behind the horizon. The streets were empty, save for a few abandoned Parade floats and flaming wreckage.

  A camera on one of the fleet’s corvettes had picked up a feed of Soren’s shuttle as it was shot down. Miran moved the playback forwards and backwards, replaying the moments of his departure from her shuttle to his shuttle veering westward, only to crash as the engines erupted.

  That’s odd, Miran thought; I didn’t see anything shoot it down.

  “Captain Danesh, can you help explain this?” Miran asked, pushing the image from her terminal onto the bridge’s wallscreen.

  Danesh stood from his chair, inching toward the image as if he were stalking some prey.

  “No missile, no rock, nothing thrown. It’s almost as if this shuttle dropped out of the sky on its own accord,” he confirmed.

  “If it wasn’t attacked, then what hit it?” Miran thought aloud.

  “Sabotage, plain to see,” he said. “Watchstanders, please check the shuttles dispatched from our flock when we were attempting to recover the Matriarch for matching patterns.”

  “Shuttles one to five confirmed to experience matching engine failures,” a watchstander said.

  “Shuttles six to nine confirmed as well. No missiles,” said another.

  “There you have it,” Captain Danesh said. “The only question is, how is this possible?”

  “I think I have an idea,” she said, remembering the stowaway and the murdered citizens.

  She thought about continuing to withhold the information but decided that the situation had so far exploded past her ability to contain the panic that it did little to keep this from them now.

  “Several weeks ago,” she started, “It was brought to my attention a handful of missing citizens, both military and civilian alike. Shortly after, some of these persons were traced to a cold storage bay and were discovered deceased. They were determined to have been the victim of a single stowaway, who had slipped through security and gained access via the partially out-of-commission Hammerfist as it lay in dry-dock.”

  The watchstanders grew silent, each reacting to the news through a thin veil of composure. Miran felt that had she not been the one to tell them, they would have responded with far less regality. Captain Danesh was more visibly ruffled, slumping back in his chair stroking his chin in thoughtful absence.

  Miran didn’t have any more speeches nor comforting words to say. Instead, she did the one thing she could do at a time like this. Miran stood, thanked Captain Danesh for his hospitality on board his bridge as was tradition, and left to get some rest.

  Back in her estate room, she didn’t waste any time. Miran disrobed, dropping her bloodied and torn gown and climbed into bed. She was exhausted from the events of the day. The distant images of a battered Vosaris, cratered and barren, seemed like a matter relegated to a lost dream. Miran didn’t see the faces in cold storage anymore. Instead, the look of fear that racked the bloodied faces of Bullman and Sergeants Haqif and Jureau haunted the space behind her eyelids. It was then that she grew forlorn, having realised never getting the sergeants’ names. She would have to remedy that when this was all through if this nightmare ever ended.

  Taking a large dose of the sleeping draft, Miran knew that she should be able to get at least two hours of good rest, if not for her mind, for her weary bones. The draft took effect moments later, and she passed into an ignorant slumber.

  Two hours later, the draft’s effects dwindled, and Miran found herself rocked suddenly awake. She opened a bulletin to Captain Danesh, asking if he got any rest. ‘None’ was all he sent in reply. Miran hoped that he hadn’t just been stewing in his captain’s chair this whole time.

  Miran’s estate room had its own lift, and with it, direct access to the bridge level. She was thankful that she didn’t have to face down hundreds of frightened faces as if she had walked through The Dream’s main promenade that would chip away at her already diminishing resolve.

  Rejoining her bridge crew and a statuesque Captain Danesh still in his chair, Miran opened a bulletin to the entire flock.

  “Citizens and servants of this great flock,” she said, trying her best to mask her agitation. “We have been bloodied, and we find ourselves against an enemy I dare not pretend to understand. What we are about to attempt, I can only say, is something that must be attempted. The Dream of Earth, and the rest of the attack fleet, are posed to strike back at the enemy that plagues us. We have one chance to stop them before they reach our comrades on Bordeaux.”

  She paused, letting down the veil and allowing some of her fear and anger to show through.

  “I don’t even know if what we’re about to do is foolish. However, The Cattleheart is strong; The Herd is strong. So long as we stick together, we will outlast. What we must do is fight. Fight so that our families and friends in the escaping fleet can live and grow past this.”

  With no federation call, nor rallying call of any kind, Miran closed the bulletin.

  “Forty-three minutes to pass-by,” Captain Danesh said, stirring from rumination.

  “Plan of attack?” Miran asked. Taking a seat in a chair behind the Captain’s, she strapped herself in.

  “Throw some rocks, don’t die trying,” Danesh said caustically. “Here, I’ve had a few moments to throw this together.”

  He cast a battle-plan schematic over to her terminal, which Miran scrolled through. The plan took them in close, extremely close to the enemy ships. So close that they were risking outright colliding with any vessel that deviated from their present course.

  “Aren’t we inviting massive damage by getting in this tight with the enemy?” she asked.

  “Only way to affect the maximum chance of hits on their ships. You said it yourself; we have one chance to pull this off. If we are expecting to fail, we may as well just pack up and leave the system to its fate,” he confirmed.

  “We’re going to succeed,” Miran assured him, “we have to.”

  “In that case, we’re sixty to nineteen. This should put our margin for disabling or destroying each and every one of their ships at nearly ninety percent, assuming their ships bear a similar construction to our own. I’m afraid I can’t give you any better odds.”

  Miran knew there was a way to increase those odds to one-hundred by plotting direct collisions with her fleet and theirs, though she hoped things weren’t that desperate.

  The crew on the bridge sat in eerie silence as the clock ticked down. Miran spent most of the time replaying the video of Soren’s shuttle as it exploded and crashed into the city below. Three minutes out, a watchstander called out the remaining time, disturbing her from her trance.

  “Captain Danesh,” Miran said, “you have the full helm of the flock.”

  Miran tapped a command on her terminal, which simultaneously enacted on every corvette, cruiser, and frigate in the attack fleet, slaving their actions to that of The Dream’s.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Aye, Matriarch,” he said, strapping himself into his captain’s chair. Throughout the bridge, clicks and the sound of straps tightening were heard as the dozen or so of them did the same.

  Miran opened her terminal to the feed of the approaching black ships, still barely visible despite their closeness. They were still several hundred kilometres out but closing fast.

  “Ensign Bastrabo, see that our course is laid in,” Danesh said, “and everyone? Gods’ speed.”

  As the clock reached zero, the whole flock awoke. The Dream, along with fifty-nine other warships, moved as a single interwoven body. A winged beast long dormant, the flock shuddered to life pitching and rolling to avoid enemy fire, making timed shots of their own. Alarm sirens roared as reports of hits struck and taken rang out on every screen or soundboard in the bridge. Anything not tied down was strewn about as the inertial dampeners struggled to maintain a pretence of gravity. The Dream’s hull shuddered, having taken several rapturous hits of its own.

  The movements were complete in a matter of milliseconds, and Miran immediately stirred herself back into tangible reality. She scanned the reports coming in from her ships. Several dozen ships had scored direct hits to the enemy on crucial locations.

  Her own ships had suffered far worse. Out of the sixty ships that made up the attack fleet, Miran was nonplussed to see just how few remained. Eighteen vessels, made primarily of frigates and a few corvettes, now careened out of control; their drives disabled, with many outright split open. Seven were no more than clouds of expanding debris.

  Of the remaining ships, twelve were reporting crippling damage to their crew and engineering sections forcing them to dump speed and trail behind. Of the remaining twenty-three, one – only one – suffered no direct hits; The light cruiser, Seragam.

  Miran studied the reports of her own ship. Being the largest capitalship in the fleet, The Dream was able to take the most outright damage, with only two decks being void of atmosphere and half of all defence batteries being rendered inoperable. She was so engrossed with the carnage wrought on her flock; she didn’t notice something was off until Captain Danesh chimed in.

  “Matriarch, are you seeing this?” a harried Danesh said.

  “Yes, I see it,” she said.

  “No. Look,” he urged, flashing a feed up onto the main wall screen.

  Miran unbuckled from her chair and stood. They were now several hundred kilometres past the point of intercept as the attack fleet was beginning to arc back around, but the video coming in from directly above them now showed something Miran’s blood boiled at.

  The black fleet – all of the black fleet – was still there and undeterred from their previous course. They continued moving for the planet as if the sacrifices doled out by her people had been no more than an itch.

  “How is that possible?” A harried Danesh asked, unbuckling and standing from his seat. Miran didn’t know how to answer.

  “What do we know?” she asked.

  “Seems that they employ standard rocks, tungsten like ours. Sensors are showing high levels of radioactivity, far outside the norm,” said Danesh with cold analysis.

  “So they’ve tipped their rounds with uranium. That’s far from abnormal,” Miran said, looking for something. “Anything else? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  Danesh thought for a moment. He seemed to be scrolling back and forth, zooming in and out on an image on the terminal in front of him. The remaining attack fleet finished their turn, lining their trajectories up with the enemy as they raced to the planet. A clock on the wallscreen counting down the time until the enemy reached Bordeaux read three hours twenty.

  “They are too predictable,” he said, “It’s almost as if they don’t care.”

  “Care to elaborate, Captain?” Miran pressed.

  “Here, look here. See the ship in the middle of their formation?” he said, flashing the image up to the wallscreen. “Up until and shortly after the engagement, the ships retained perfect distance from one another, almost like a flock of birds. But look what happened during the few seconds of our exchange of fire.”

  Danesh adjusted the timescale of the image back to the moments leading up to their pass-by of the enemy. The images were blurry, with much of the image being filled in after-the-fact with other telemetry, but it was plain to see what he was pointing at. A single ship, seemingly as analogous to the other eighteen, was suddenly swarmed by the other vessels escorting it. Frame by frame ticked by, and Miran could make out that the other ships took all the hits that Miran’s fleet was able to score, leaving the central ship untouched.

  “That’s their command ship,” Miran confirmed.

  “Like I said, painfully predictable,” Danesh said. “I wonder if we hit them again if they would do the same thing. Especially now that they know how ineffective our weapons are against them.”

  “We won’t have that chance, Captain. They have too far a lead on us towards the planet.”

  “Why was it that our weapons were so ineffective?” he said, brushing off Miran’s defeatism. “We employ weapons not dissimilar from their own.”

  “Stands to reason they’ve figured out a better defence against them than we have,” she said.

  “But why is that?” he thought out loud. Miran didn’t have any indication; this whole mess was so far outside her realm of experience and had been for the last few days.

  Danesh, Miran, and the watchstanders skimmed through more records of the battle over the following hours. With little to do but to continue on their present course chasing behind the enemy fleet, Miran counted themselves lucky that their foe’s max speed – or at least the max speed they were displaying to them – did not outpace their own by any significant factor.

  Miran’s remaining twenty-three ships trailed through space, composed chiefly of light cruisers and her own capitalship, which itself doubled the mass of those remaining. Miran pulled up the readout on the light cruiser, The Seragam. Amazingly, out of all the ships in her attack fleet, this one remained untouched. The roster of the Seragam flashed before her. Miran was surprised to see the name of the Captain in command of the light cruiser; Remus Djucovik, Soren’s cousin.

  She called up Captain Remus Djucovik’s flight record. Impressive, she thought aloud when coming to the bit of Remus’ success record—having commanded dozens of skirmishes between pirates and several heavy supply missions earning him several awards which she had personally awarded him in simpler times. She was amazed she hadn’t been more aware of this man’s career earlier.

  She keyed in a command on her terminal, awarding Remus commendation, which slated him for a command position on a larger vessel. She would have to thank him personally when this engagement was through. It was then that she remembered Soren and his ship, the Winterspell.

  Calling up telemetry of the remaining ships, she grasped the Winterspell’s fate. Lost, all hands. She gripped her chair again, causing a sprain in two of her lesser digits. Forlorn by the loss of so many, she couldn’t help but wonder that maybe Soren was better off staying behind. Despite the dereliction of duty – and inevitable court-marshall that was coming his way – staying clear of his ship aboard the Winterspell may have just saved his life; If he survived the crash of his shuttle, that is.

  “Matriarch?” Danesh asked, redirecting her attention away from hypotheticals.

  “Captain. What do you have?” she asked.

  “A hunch,” he said. “Let me elaborate. From their tactics, armaments, and from what you were able to tell me about the blacks-suited soldiers on the planet, we know that this enemy, whoever they are, is human or at least humanoid.”

  “Sure,” Miran said, entertaining his train of thought. “And?”

  “And– stands to reason that they have communications hopefully not unlike our own as well. Would a call be in order?” he said.

  Miran hadn’t considered that. From the carnage she found herself thrown through several times over, she had to admit that she had not once considered the actions of their enemy human. Though maybe he was right…

  “A call then,” she said.

  “Watchstanders, see that we open a bulletin to the central ship in the enemy fleet. Try all bands, modern and as far outdated as we have a record of.” Danesh ordered.

  “Sirs,” Ensign Bastrabo said after several minutes of the bridge crew’s working silence, “I’ve got a hit. An old wideband frequency used by The Sonne Protectorate adopted into use by legacy Spanish science vessels. I’ve sent out a ping, and they’ve pinged us back.”

  “Seems they're open to communication,” Captain Danesh said.

  “Thank you, Ensign Bastrabo. If you can, open a channel onscreen and in colour. I want to get a look at what plagues us,” she ordered.

  To Miran’s surprise, several moments later and after a quick adjustment to synchronise the feed, a man appeared on the wallscreen before her. A tightly trimmed black dress suit matched the man’s slim face with tasteful golden patterns woven into the lapels. His handsome and clean-shaven, tanned complexion served as a canvas dotted with pearlescent green eyes and vibrant lips. Behind him, a room of golden statues and little else gave Miran a particular, uncanny impression.

  “Greetings,” the man said in a perfect Vosarin dialect, saying nothing else. Instead, he just smiled back at her, such that Miran wondered if he could see her as clearly as she could see him.

  “I do believe the time for greetings is far past,” Miran said, skipping formalities.

  “Such enthusiasm!” The tanned man said, “I would expect nothing less from you, Matriarch Miran-Yi Nagoya.”

  Miran choked. “How is it you know me?”

  “Know you? I do not know you,” he clarified. “I am simply aware of you, as all good leaders should be aware of one another.”

  “And then how is it that I have heard nothing of you?” she quizzed.

  “A notch on your belt, I’m sure. Though you have a point,” he admitted, “You may call me Nin Bonwadé, and I am master of all you see.”

  “And what is it that I see, Nin?” Miran prodded.

  “Now that is a good question, dear Matriarch. It is all a matter of perspective. Before you, what do you see?”

  “I see my enemy; those ships that have laid waste to my family aboard my flock and the world below. I see a menace,” Miran said, maintaining her calm despite the man’s condescending tone.

  “And that is all you see?” he asked, “pity.”

  “Do enlighten me. What should I be seeing?”

  “A cleansing of what once was, a birth of something new,” he said. “Tell me, if what you see before is as simple as a smattering of vessels, and some scorched earth in the well below, then why do you chase us so? Why do you seek to halt our progression?”

  “You are attacking us, killing thousands of us,” Miran spat.

  “Thousands? Thousands? Look again, dear Matriarch,” he said. “A handful have been laid to rest, surely, but not thousands. What I have done is simply opened the rest up to us. They have joined us in the Will.”

  If he wasn’t making sense before, now Miran found herself struggling to follow. Her blood roiled beneath her feet as she looked over to Danesh. Shrugging with his eyes, he was just as lost as she was.

  “You have killed thousands and displaced thousands more underground and out of their homes. You have brought destruction among us, and you will wish you hadn’t,” said Miran.

  “Destruction, no. Rebirth is what we have wrought. Tell me, those of your kin that you claim killed and displaced, where are they now?” the tanned man asked.

  “They have taken refuge with our troops, outside of your grasp. They are defended,” Miran assured him.

  “And here lies your greatest indiscretion. Those whom you claim take refuge behind safety are, in fact, constituents of mine, subsumed into The Will.” said the tanned man.

  Miran’s heart sank. The taste of metal welled in her throat. Without acknowledging the man, Miran called up telemetry from the last moments before their attack fleet had lost sight of the valley on the planet below to the stream of citizens as they made their way into the base of the Spire.

  The man smiled at this. Sensing her distress, he said, “You see, you fight to defend which is already yielded. Those below belong to me.”

  Miran finally got it. The mobs of bodies that moved through the city in uncharacteristic unison were now somehow slaves of the man on the wallscreen before her.

  “How?” she asked, demanding answers.

  “They have joined me. They are now eager servants of The Will,” he said, elaborating little. “Soon, the last holdouts will have turned also, and I will arrive to a world grateful and born anew.”

  “You devil!” Miran spat, her rage boiling over. Her terminal smashed to the floor.

  “You have it wrong again, dear Matriarch. I am liberator to those poor souls, freeing them from all that ails them.”

  Miran didn’t respond. Instead, hateful fury baked in her skull.

  “All that you need to do now, dear Matriarch, is renounce yourself. Admit that your path has been not but trivial, and give yourself over to me. Or, I’m sorry to relay that you will find yourself again on the lesser side.”

  “This is madness,” said Miran.

  “This is The Will. Give up on your Herd, your flock. Don’t let your people continue to wander the dark alone. Surrender yourself to The Will, or perish by it.”

  “You won’t get away with this.”

  “We already have,” he said, “Goodbye, dear Matriarch.”

  The image flickered before cutting out, leaving Miran in a bridge of abject silence. Everyone stared at her; just stared.

  “Fuck.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Danesh. “If you ask me, prick’s got some sort of god complex.”

  Right or wrong, Miran’s thoughts directed back towards the world, to the ground in the well below. All those people she had been fighting to protect were gone, slaves to this Nin Bonwadé’s cause. They had been twisted into some sort of weapon that now climbed the Spire towards Matriarch Lathe’s waning forces. The anger welled up again, boiling over into fury, then spilling over into… something else.

  Miran wretched.

  A medic who was standing in wait had been tracking her vitals and was holding out a bucket in wait. Miran nodded to the medic in a way that said thank you, and please dispose of my vomit.

  Miran knew she had to try to warn Brenna.

  Brenna… pick up, Miran thought as she opened a bulletin to the other Matriarch. Matriarch Lathe’s icon danced in Miran’s terminal for far too long as if eager to answer the call. A bitter taste stuck to the back of her throat.

  The call continued for several minutes until a wartorn General Antoine Gerard answered.

  “Matriarch Nagoya?” he said through a spotty audio-only connection.

  “I’m here,” she answered, “Am I speaking to General Gerard?”

  “The same,” he replied. “Matriarch, I–”

  “Where’s Matriarch Lathe? Have you encountered the mob of citizens that entered the Spire?” she asked desperately.

  “She’s dead. Matriarch Lathe is dead,” said General Gerard, his words like hot knives. “Swaths of demons tore what was left of us apart. I was able to pull the Matriarch to safety, only to lose her to blood loss. If there were anything more I could have done, I would have done so.”

  Miran couldn’t believe it. She had, only this morning, been drinking wine with the woman on her lavish estate level. Only for it to end up like this.

  “Gone… with no goodbye,” she thought aloud.

  “I am sorry,” Gerard answered her. “Matriarch Nagoya?”

  “General?”

  “The battle here is lost. I believe you know what has to happen. I can see the outcome of your engagements, the vessels that now approach. I know they mean to take hold of this world. They must not be allowed the courtesy.”

  “You have my word, Antoine. For Brenna,” she affirmed.

  “For Matriarch Lathe,” he said, dropping the connection.

  She knew what had to be done. The ships had to be stopped, or failing that, the city scorched and left unusable. To an enemy as tenacious as the one before her, only burning the planet to the ground would be sufficient to stop their reckless hate.

  The only question Miran had, the only task left for her, was: how?

  A bulletin opened, and Captain Ronald Felder’s duty-bound eyes and unsmiling lips stared back at her.

  “Matriarch,” Captain Felder said, “Consider this.”