A spark, a flash, and a fast-rising cloud all appeared in an instant somewhere beyond the reaches of Eidao.

  From her spot beside Oscar’s resting body on the tallest building for several city blocks, Nora watched as a mushroom cloud bloomed from Miran’s last known location. It would have been beautiful – a spectacle – were it not for what would come next.

  The shock wave arrived moments later, forcing its way through the city streets and the air above like a flowing tide. With it came the cure, carried on dust particles drummed up from the desert floor in its rush to cleanse the city of all incursion. The force of the blast rocked Nora on her feet, causing her to drop her vapour rifle over the edge of the building. It came to rest on the gangway below, the same that was now littered with the corpses of former Herd citizens, once twisted by unconscionable malice, now left crumpled in heaps that blocked safe passage down.

  The incursion on the ground had been halted but was not gone. Kerrigen’s forces elsewhere were still busy cleaning up the out-of-the-way alleyways, smaller alcoves, and underground tunnels of the creatures that had only minutes ago run rampant and unstoppable.

  But stopped they had been, by the sacrifices of many Herd soldiers, of her friend Oscar, of Miran who Nora could only assume was lost in the blast. Tragedy lay all around Nora, from the city streets far out into the distance.

  The slip ships that had been plummeting through rooftops around them had stopped and shifted their attacks out over the planet’s surface. A battle for the skies had begun. And, true to any monster that might lay in wait for its chance to strike, the Ghede ships that had been drifting on the edge of the Ganon System were now on the move.

  “What do we do?” Nora asked Kerrigen after the blast wave had retreated when she told her about the incoming Ghede ships.

  “I don’t know if there is anything we can do. I have seen the recordings and heard second-hand from Miran of their attack on Bordeaux’s Folly; the untold devastation they wrought,” said Kerrigen. “I am afraid we are on our own.”

  “Nin has sensed the shift in the tide,” said an exhausted Oscar as he was being lifted onto a gurney in the medivac. “He has been beaten. His ships move on us to snuff out all that we have wrought.”

  “You think he will just give up here– wipe us all out?” asked Kerrigen.

  “For our defiance, he will do this, yes,” Oscar admitted. “It is now that you might wish to pray to your gods.”

  “I prefer science,” said Nora. “Though, the gods do seem to be angry of late.”

  As Oscar was loaded and the medics returned to their cockpit, Nora gripped his hand tightly.

  “Thank you, Oscar Malis,” she said, “If it’s my trust you were after, I’ll let you know you have it.”

  “You have a brilliant mind, Doctor. One day soon, I wish to answer all questions that may linger about me and my kind. For now, I am thankful for rest, for your friendship, and most surprisingly, your aim with a vapour rifle.”

  “You think so?” she said with a smile, “maybe if we get out of this next bit alive, I’ll patent the thing. We can go into business together.”

  “That is such an offer I would be a fool to refuse,” Oscar said. His eyes began to flutter with the weight of his exhaustion, and Nora knew it was time for him to go.

  “You get some sleep now. I’ll tell Tolly you’re coming.”

  Oscar nodded and closed his eyes as Nora stepped out from the medivac, and it lifted up and away, towards the city centre.

  “Do we just wait here for the end, then?” Nora asked Kerrigen after the medivac left audible range of its whirring engines.

  “Have another idea?”

  Nora considered that.

  “Why don’t we just call them up and ask them to turn around?” Nora asked sardonically.

  “I thought you said Oscar did all he can,” said Kerrigen.

  “For now, maybe.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Kerrigen admitted, though Nora wasn’t sure what she meant. That was until Kerrigen pulled out her terminal and opened a wide band bulletin.

  “To whoever hears this message, be you Herd; rebroadcast this message on a wider bandwidth. Be you of the Ghede ships that now encroach further into our space, hear me and open a dialogue,” she said before closing the message. “Worth a try?”

  “Worth a try,” Nora said. She supposed there was no harm. Dead was dead, after all. If that was their fate, then maybe their enemy could add some sort of clarity before striking the final blow. It was minutes of thumb-twiddling before an unlikely reply reached them.

  “Greetings,” a long, drawn-out hissing voice responded over an audio-only bulletin, “a pleasure it is, Matriarch.”

  Kerrigen, half-shocked, replied, “Well, hello. And who am I speaking to– is this Nin Bonwade?”

  The bulletin flickered, switching to a full video connection. The feed showed a gaunt-looking man with pale black skin, Cattleheart Parade dress pinned with The Dream of Earth’s security officer's insignia, and a haunted look on his face. Nora struggled to make him out but couldn’t place the face or the name.”

  “N– no....” the voice replied, “our former master is indisposed. You may call me Olajide, Olajide Ogunye.”

  “Ogunye… you wouldn’t happen to have been uncle to Chief Podallan Ogunye?” asked Kerrigen in squashed alarm.

  “Pod– a– llan… yes– yes that name is stored within me,” The haunt Ogunye replied, “in a past life, I was Security Chief of the Cattleheart. It warms me to know Podallan has reached such a mantle.”

  “Then it must pain you to learn that he is dead, struck down by Ghede hands in the pursuit of justice.”

  This irked the haunt, causing visible pain to ripple on the creature’s face. “De– dead…?”

  Nora supposed that some distant human part of him was affected by that news, however, buried it was.

  “You said former master when referring to Nin. What has happened– has he been removed?” asked Kerrigen.

  “No. Not removed, simply de– demoted. I have been given charge of this fleet for the present.”

  “Maybe Nin failed one too many times?” Nora whispered in Kerrigen’s ear, to which she nodded in agreement.

  “If your master’s motivations are no longer your fleet’s, why then do you still move on us?” asked Kerrigen.

  “Your world has proven troublesome. The master’s experiments may have been futile, but simple– older methods may still be employed here,” said the haunt Ogunye.

  Nora knew what that meant; they would still try the au natural method of converting the population to Ghede. Though much less violent from how Oscar described it, she knew for certain she would rather it not come to pass.

  “Surely you understand we will fight this. We won’t bow down and accept our fate,” argued Kerrigen. “Many of us on both sides will die in the struggle.”

  “And many more of my kind will be created in the aftermath,” the haunt Ogunye said. “Your resistance only delays this.”

  “And what if we say no and nuke ourselves to hell before you ever break atmo?” snarled Kerrigen.

  “You... will not.”

  “We have done it before,” said Nora, remembering the feed she had seen taken by an operative from the Herd planet Vosaris.

  Ogunye paused at this before replying, “so you have. It matters not. Make your choice.”

  With that, the bulletin terminated.

  Kerrigan sighed and looked down at her terminal. “What a shit day to die,” she said before noticing the blink of an awaiting message. “It’s Lawson. He says the plan did the trick, and Miran managed to move the pylons in time. Though… oh gods.”

  Kerrigan began tapping commands again before turning to Nora. Nora knew that look, one of their own was injured.

  Injured, Nora thought. Injured but not dead.

  “All of my other medics have already been dispatched. Tolly and Rissa are inbound with a shuttle to our location. I need them to take you to rendezvous with Lawson and aide Miran as best you can.”

  Nora nodded, not in a place to argue, nor did she wish to. She may not survive the rest of the night, but what she could do is spend her last moments tending to her friends.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  As the shuttle came, Tolly grasped Nora’s arm and hoisted her in, lifting Nora away. As the shuttle pulled out over the streets, Nora could see the true devastation that had been at her feet. The walls of the apartment complex she had been in were dissolved into the pavement below, where only gaunt pillars remained. Bodies carpeted the streets spread out in the direction of Eidao. And everywhere she looked, Nora could make out whole blocks on fire from the incursion craft as the buildings struggled to use their aged, automated systems to snuff out the blazes. As they pulled further away, Nora looked back at the rooftop where they had made their last stand to see Kerrigen had slipped back inside.

  “Thought we were going to lose you,” said Tolly over the whir of the engines and squeezing her tight across her ribs. Nora squeezed back, happy to see a friendly face.

  “Where’s Oscar?” Nora asked, “We just sent him your way.”

  “I saw them unloading him as we lifted off,” Tolly said ponderously. “I didn’t get a chance to see him.”

  “No matter,” Nora said, “he’s fine, just a touch of pale.”

  “What is the plan to deal with the Ghede ships?” asked Rissa, “did Matriarch Kerrigen share anything with you?”

  Nora shook her head.

  “Figures,” said Rissa, “we go through all this trouble….”

  “We’ll have to put our own heads in the sand,” said Nora, “at least we have a lot of it to go around.”

  The shuttle cleared the last of the buildings, leaving the city behind. Below them, endless fields of former citizens-turned-enemy-combatants lay strewn about and broken by the blast that had ended their final charge, buried by the sands. The mushroom cloud ahead of them had begun dissipating, now spread into a broad canopy that blocked out the sun. The shuttle passed under the cloud cover, and Nora felt a sudden itching oppression as the light outgrew dim.

  “Oh, my gods….” Tolly said with a gasp at a feed on her terminal.

  The Seragam came up quickly as Nora opened the feed on the shuttle’s wallscreen and surveyed the devastation. Any trace of the pylons had gone. The sands had been driven out in a wide arc from the vessel’s portside, flattening and creating new dunes in a ripple that stretched back to Eidao. The Seragam’s broadside was scorched black. Its thick hull was cracked but astonishingly still in one piece, having withstood a blast that should have broken it in half.

  “Are you seeing this?” asked Nora.

  Tolly sighed. “I told her she had to move it closer…” she said.

  “And you were right to. I am only astonished to see The Seragam in such amazing shape.”

  “Are we looking at the same thing?” Rissa asked, “It looks bad to me.”

  “The bomb had a better chance of annihilating the outer layers of the hull being this close,” explained Nora. She turned to Tolly, “Don’t torment yourself, Tolly. You couldn’t have modelled it any better.”

  “She did great, given the circumstances,” said Rissa. “I only hope Miran and Lawson are okay.”

  Nora nodded.

  The shuttle slowed and came to rest on the opposite side from the blast. This side seemed like a completely different ship, untouched and unscarred from the explosion that beckoned out its portside and tethered it to the city. Here, just inside an open cargo bay, Lawson stood next to a body leaned up against the inner wall.

  “Miran!” Tolly yelped as the shuttle doors opened. She squeezed herself out between the widening gap and took off in a gallop towards them. Rissa followed closely behind while Nora made her own pace and admired the size of the warship from the ground. Contrasted by the swath of destruction that emanated out from the portside, and now looking at the untouched side up close, Nora gained a new appreciation for the vast size of The Herd warships. Tolly had mentioned, weeks ago, how the Herd funnelled resources into matters of public good; she only now realized the gravity of what she meant.

  As Nora neared the congregation of friends who greeted and hugged one another, she realized that to these people she was the outsider. Tolly was knelt down, holding Miran’s hand. The former Matriarch, struggling to breathe, coughed as she held an oxygen rebreather to her face. Lawson Ha, who Nora was unfamiliar with, squeezed and wept over Rissa’s shoulder as she buried her face in his arm.

  “Did we– did that do it?” Miran asked of Nora.

  “We did. Our plan worked; the city’s clear. Well, almost. Kerrigan’s people are still busy mopping up the rest,” she said.

  “Good,” Miran said, resting her head back against the hull.

  “Are you alright? You look like you’ve taken a beating,” asked Nora.

  “Miran took a high dose of radiation from the blast,” said Lawson, pushing off a retentive Rissa.

  “Everything hurts,” said Miran.

  Nora leant down while Tolly took some scans with her terminal.

  “You took a lethal dose, Miran,” said Nora, looking over Tolly’s shoulders.

  “So I’m dead. After all that,” said Miran, surprisingly at peace with it all.

  “Aside from various forms of cancer your whole life, not quite. If we can get you into The Seragam’s medbay and into stasis, we can slow the radiation damage. I can likely synthesize you some cancer drugs there as well,” Nora said.

  “You’ll be just fine,” Tolly forced a smile.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Tolly,” said Miran. “I didn’t know if I’d see you ever again after I sent you off to see Hamsen.”

  Tolly gulped and looked at Nora.

  “Yes, about that,” said Nora, thinking through her following words carefully. “Hamsen Smythe isn’t the man I bet you think he is.”

  Miran cocked her head at this, “What’s she saying, Tolly?”

  “Director Smythe was the one who had Oscar. He was keeping him prisoner, experimenting on him,” said Tolly.

  “We had to break him out, something I’ll hazard Hamsen is less than happy about,” said Nora.

  “I see, he always was a bit of an asshole,” said Miran, apparently unwilling to delve any further into another upset at the moment. “Well, let’s get this whale moving.”

  As Nora and Tolly helped Miran to her feet, a rapture of thunder began and spread throughout the desert sky. Nora looked all around, searching for the source of the noise. Had the enemy armada come early?

  Leaning Miran back against The Seragam’s hull, Nora called up a bulletin to Kerrigen.

  “I have a guess why you’re calling,” she said, running through another part of the inner city that was marred with destruction.

  “What’s going on– what’s that sound?” Nora asked.

  “The enemy has begun their attack. They’ve been sending landing craft, not just here, but I have reports coming in that say they are popping into every major city across Ganon. My people are quickly getting overwhelmed. I’ve instructed all that are left to go to ground, as should you.”

  “Landing craft? I thought we had time before the enemy ships reached the planet.”

  “Riftships,” Miran coughed. “Craft that can open rifts and jump directly into the atmosphere. Each of them carries a complement of four or five armed soldiers. We are in trouble.”

  “Is that Miran?” Kerrigan asked in surprise.

  “Hey, Jhen. How have you been?” Miran asked.

  “Been better, Miran. You heard me about hiding? I don’t know how you made it through that hell of a blast, but it’s only a matter of time before the ships start landing near you too.

  “What then– we bury our heads and hope they don’t dig us out?” asked Nora.

  “We can’t hide from them. They will find us,” Tolly said.

  “Unless we find a broom closet,” Miran said, casting a look over to Rissa and Lawson that Nora didn’t understand.

  “Well, we still need to get you to the medbay,” Nora argued.

  “No,” Miran said. “If I’m to die, let it be by my own body failing me rather than by my enemy.”

  “What if we get back to Oscar? Maybe he can protect us from the Ghede soldiers,” suggested Tolly.

  “He could barely walk the last time I saw him,” Nora said. “Why don’t we take the shuttle and break atmo– we can hide out in the depths of the system until The Idle Flock arrives?”

  “It’s a good thought, Doctor,” said Kerrigen over the bulletin, “But the Idle Flock won’t be here for nearly a week. And I’ve already instructed the remaining Cattleheart ships in orbit to flee the system. They should be halfway to Veka by now.”

  “Well, that sucks,” Lawson said.

  “I’m sorry I can’t be of much more help. I’ll have to leave you now. Goodbye and good luck,” said Kerrigen as she ended the bulletin.

  “If this is it... should we take a walk inside The Seragam’s drive plume?” asked Lawson.

  “Lawson, stop,” said Rissa, her own fear poorly masked but evident in the shake of her palms.

  “I–” Nora said before getting cut off. A wide broadcast bulletin request popped up, causing each of their terminals to chime in unison.

  Nora opened the request, joining an active channel with a man with a very unfamiliar accent already speaking.

  “Brothas and sisters!” the voice rang out, like a call from the aether. He was a thin man, with shaggy hair and a certain smirk across his face that rolled along with his notably Highrockian accent.

  Nora looked around her group. Each member had their own terminals out and were glued to the man’s every word.

  “Brothas and sisters,” the Highrockian continued, “my name is Karl, and I come bearing prodigious news. My ship, The Yesteryear, and mine bring well tidings.”

  “That man is Terran,” explained Nora, “I recognize the accent.”

  “What do you think he wants?” asked Tolly.

  “I can hear you,” said Karl, “this thing is on, no?”

  Nora responded with a curt wave.

  “Might I ask what your purpose is here, Karl? We are in the middle of something if you can’t already detect,” said Miran, coughing again into her rebreather.

  “We are here to help,” said another, strangely familiar voice on the connection. The camera panned to reveal another sitting in The Yesteryear’s copilot’s chair.

  “Bruin!” Nora exclaimed with a smile.

  “I got back with help as soon as I could,” said Bruin apologetically, “how are things down there? Jesus– the capital city’s a mess.”

  “Things down here are about to get messy,” said Nora. “We have enemy soldiers landing wherever they please. Not to mention the ships on their way to us.”

  “Yes, I see them,” Karl said. “Nasty bunch, these.”

  “You’ve seen them before?” asked Miran.

  “Oh… once, maybe twice….” Karl said. “Listen, The Yesteryear is just a picketship. We are an advanced scout, meant to grab some data.”

  An advanced scout for what? Nora thought– a thought that was answered seconds later by the arrival of a massive warship several times the size of any of the Herd’s capitalships. Behind it, a rapidly appearing fleet of unrecognized craft drifted out of riftspace at screaming speed.

  “What the fresh hell are those?” Miran asked of Karl and Bruin.

  “The cavalry!” whooped Bruin.

  Tolly and Rissa exchanged looks, and Nora stood there beaming as she looked at the telemetry on her terminal as another more disorienting accent joined the call.

  “Karl, report,” growled a guttural-sounding animal over the bulletin. The creature was large, with thick patches of carefully groomed fur combed back away from its face to show off a pair of lower canines that jutted out from its lips.

  “Vilmogurr! You are looking fine today, brother,” said Karl. “Did you do something new with your hair?”

  Nora recognized Vilmogurr as a quisabar. But much to contrast the thinning hair of the few she had passed in the halls of Belltower station, this one still bore the starkly animalistic appearance of its forefathers.

  Vilmogurr chortled, then replied, “Captain wants to know how many enemy vessels we can expect?” Vilmogurr rumbled.

  “Easy now, big lad. Light has nae reached us out this far yet. I was just about to ask our new friends if they cannae tell us,” Karl said.

  Nora stumbled over her words, unsure how to answer the strange man or the beast.

  “They number eight,” said Miran, “we managed to take down one of theirs weeks ago, through great cost to our own. What do you plan on doing to them?”

  Vilmogurr nodded as yet another body patched into the bulletin. The man that looked back at all of them was old, tired, and bore a thick black mane.

  “You hear that Vilmogurr? There’s only eight,” said the man. “I suppose I should introduce myself. Name’s Saul Calmos, Captain of The Ouroboros, flagship of The Crusader Fleet. You give us a moment, and sure as Earth was green we’ll have this Ghede problem swept under the rug for you.”

  Nora couldn’t believe it, and neither could any of those standing around in the sand with her. Moments before, they had been facing sure death. Now, as The Ouroboros and its ilk rolled into the system out from the mists of deep space, hope suddenly seemed attainable.

  “I bid you farewell for now,” said Saul.

  “If you can pull this off, I’ll see to it you receive a small moon’s worth of liquor,” said Miran.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” said Saul, killing his connection.

  “Hold on, Nora, just a while longer,” said Bruin, as he and Karl dropped out as well.

  As the bulletin closed, Nora switched the feed over to telemetry of the Ghede armada. Just light hours behind them, The Crusader Fleet gained on them. Nora pinpointed the precise moment the Ghede ships became aware of their new enemy, as their own telemetry registered the threat.

  Sensing the creeping tide of their own doom, the enemy that had plagued Ganon, Bordeaux, Vosaris and an untold number of other star systems broke their composure. And then, after a single volatile moment, they slipped away from Ganon and into the black nonspace of rift.