SYSTEM: UNKNOWN

  DATE: 2404

  Twelve vessels appeared outside of the unnamed system, their passive scanners quickly cataloging the system traffic before they moved on to avoid detection. Their stealth composite hid them from most sensors, but they knew the enemy sensor ships could penetrate that defense, given time.

  Their job wasn’t to target every single Shican world; it was to locate the enemy’s manufacturing hubs and capital and coordinate a strike package to hamper the Shican war efforts as much as possible.

  The farther they pushed into Shican space, the quicker the computronic cores on board each vessel realized that crippling the enemy’s war efforts wasn’t going to be possible, not with only twelve ships. Six other vessels were shadowing their efforts, but those ships remained in deep space, well clear of any possible detection. Those vessels would only be deployed if the twelve failed in their mission.

  At their next rendezvous, the group shared data and reevaluated the plan. Given the lack of information before they arrived, they had been given a lot of leeway in how to carry out their orders.

  “The enemy is mobilizing new ships,” one of the units said.

  The other eleven agreed. Groups of enemy ships had been spotted heading toward human space to some unknown rally point. Each group was small enough that the twelve EFEC-equipped corvettes could have destroyed them, but that wasn’t in their mission parameters.

  After a quick discussion, they deemed it wise to alert Eden’s End to the buildup. One of the ships dropped a comm buoy, and the twelve ships jumped before the buoy activated, sending the information back to Unokane.

  ***

  Two Shican patrols appeared and scanned the empty area of space where the signal had originated.

  “Report,” the Commander ordered.

  “We are detecting a small debris field. Possibly a satellite or relay of some sort.”

  “Origin of the material?” he growled at the technologue.

  “Based on early scanner readings, it is most likely human.”

  The Grand Commander had warned the home fleet to be on watch for human intervention. It wouldn’t be the first time a hunted species tried to strike back, but they were ready. The outer perimeter of Shican space was heavily patrolled. The human ships would be located in time.

  The commander ordered a second scan, then they departed from the area. If the humans struck, it wouldn’t be out in the vast gulf between stars.

  ***

  It took the twelve vessels a full week to catalog the worlds inhabited by the Shican, even with their ability to fold space and arrive near the next system in minutes. Given the dispersion of enemy forces, it was easy enough to determine the Shican’s borders. Their space was a hundred and ninety light-years across in one direction and sixty wide.

  That shape seemed arbitrary until the star distribution was taken into account. The Shican core systems were bracketed on the short side by a lot of empty space and a massive dust cloud that made traversing in that direction dangerous. It forced the aliens to expand in two directions. There were signs that the width was expanding on the human side as the dust cloud thinned and star systems became more abundant, but the Shican had yet to push too far in those directions.

  The scouts used that knowledge to create a much more efficient search pattern, which allowed them to complete their work two days ahead of original projections.

  “Forty-two production worlds and eight hundred ship yards,” EFEC003 sent.

  “Estimates on completing our primary objective?” EFEC001 asked.

  All twelve chimed in, and none of the estimates came back with anything above a ten percent chance of success. Most were even lower than that. The group focused on unit EFEC012 to find out why it estimated the chance of success to be so high.

  “If we prioritize the destruction of their leadership, our chances climb a few percent,” the unit responded.

  The others factored in that approach and reran the simulations. They agreed with unit 012’s proposal.

  A map of the Shican empire was shared amongst the group, and they spent nearly a minute debating which planet was the capital. They eventually landed on one world. It was well guarded, but there were no orbital manufacturing facilities around the world. Those were all located around other planetary bodies in that system.

  The planet in question also seemed to have the most temperate climate out of the Shican worlds they surveyed, making it an ideal place for biologicals to live.

  They would need to get a closer look to determine where on the planet to strike; their deep space scans didn’t give them a clear picture of surface targets. That would need to be carried out swiftly before the Shican could react to their appearance.

  With a plan of attack laid out, each ship was paired off, and they transitioned outside of the system in question. Once their timers went off again, they transitioned a light hour shy of the target and started active scans.

  If they had been forced to wait for the results, the enemy would have detected them and jumped to their locations. Instead, they waited slightly less time than it would take for the sensor pulses to reach the world, then they warped to their attack range.

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  Moments after exiting warp, the sensor pings returned to each vessel, and they synced processors to crunch the data and select targets.

  EFEC001 noted that about half the enemy defensive forces had jumped to investigate their arrival. The rest, along with the planetary defenses, were already orienting on them.

  Unit 001 wasn’t worried about that. It selected its target and notified 002. Both ships quickly adjusted their orientation to bring the targets in line.

  Less than ten seconds after arriving in orbit around the planet, both vessels fired their cannons. The rounds easily tore through the deflector field over the planet, one very similar to the one over Eden’s End.

  The static barriers didn’t even slow the EFEC rounds, and each slammed into its target a fraction of a second later.

  Unit 001 moved onto its next target and fired just as the enemy static defenses fired on them. It relegated a part of its processing to intercepting the enemy missiles, but it ignored the lasers and plasma bolts slamming into its hull.

  Those were doing minimal damage, and it reduced that damage even further by introducing a slight rotation to its hull as it aimed for the third target. By that point, clouds of dust kicked up by the first two strikes were billowing into the atmosphere.

  EFEC001 only got two more strikes off before the defensive fleet was finally in range to engage them. Calculating their odds of completing a sixth strike as below one percent, it sent a laser comm to unit 002, and the pair flipped so their engine cones were facing the planet. Then they warped away.

  The pair rendezvoused with the remaining vessels. Only eight had made it back, and all were showing minor to moderate damage. They cataloged the loss of units EFEC005, 008, 009, and 010 and shared their strike data before transitioning to the automated Leviathan that had joined the strike group along with the other six ships.

  The mobile repair facility was located nearly twenty light-years away, deep inside the dust cloud surrounding Shican space. Without a Nova drive, it would be impossible to reach. They would take a few days to repair and rearm, but doing so would improve their odds of a second successful strike by nearly five percent.

  ***

  Thesska was in the middle of grooming himself when the ship’s overhead blared to life. If not for his implants, the sound would have made him jump.

  Instead, he growled in annoyance. The only people with the ability to do a ship-wide alert were a ship commander or the emperor. Since he wasn’t on the bridge and there was no other commander aboard his vessel, he knew it had to be an imperial edict.

  His brother, the emperor, spoke. His voice sounded raspy and weak. “There has been an attack on the throne world. I am ordering all ships that are receiving this message to return to hunt down the perpetrators of this attack.”

  That was the end of the communication. Thesska’s first instinct was to give himself over to rage at his brother’s incompetence, but he stopped himself and smiled, exposing his sharp canines.

  Thesska might be able to convince a few of the captains of the armada to side with him and ignore the edict, but that was a risky gamble. If he remained behind in human space without the rest of the Armada to back him up, the human fleets would pick them off with ease.

  Even if he somehow succeeded in eliminating the humans, his brother would ensure he was outcast for blatantly disobeying an imperial directive, and the man would be well within his rights to do so.

  Stopping the hunt galled him, but Thesska was seasoned enough to see an opportunity in their withdrawal, even if it meant giving the humans more time to grow. His brother sounded weak, which meant he was likely wounded in the attack. Even if he wasn’t, some of his sycophants would be dead, and the attackers, probably the humans, had given him the perfect opportunity to depose his brother and take over as the true emperor.

  With a malicious grin, he strode out of his quarters and toward the bridge, wearing only his pants. Once there, he barked orders for the fleet to withdraw to the staging area. As another bonus, the Shican clans that had refused to return to the armada on his orders would no longer dither in human space.

  Thesska would make examples of their commanders before returning to the throne world. As soon as his incompetent brother was out of the way and he was in control, he would gather every available ship and roll over the humans once and for all.

  He rumbled in contentment as he pictured the glorious victory to come.

  ***

  Krieger smiled as he addressed Alexander over the comm. “I don’t know what you did, Alex, but whatever it was, it seems to be working. We’re getting reports from all over the Union of the Shican withdrawing. I’ve even received confirmation from the STO Navy that the Shican attacking them are pulling back. After you forwarded the report that more enemy forces were building up, I’ll be honest, I didn’t hold out much hope for a victory.”

  Alexander remembered that report. It still made him sick to his stomach to know that another fifteen hundred Shican vessels had been spotted heading toward some unknown rally point. That was just the ships they knew about. He almost wished he hadn’t bothered recreating human anatomy after learning that.

  “I haven’t received a follow-up report from the Swordfish I sent into Shican space, so I’m not sure what they did to make the aliens withdraw. We can’t let our guard down, though. They will be back, and in far greater numbers than before.”

  Krieger said solemnly. “I know, Alex, but if it takes them as long as it did the first time, we should have nearly another year and a half to fortify our position. Let’s take whatever victories we can get, okay?”

  “That’s assuming they head all the way back to their border,” Alexander added, “We’ll work with whatever time we are given.”

  Krieger nodded in agreement before ending the call.

  The silence of Alexander’s office was deafening as he worried over the problem.

  He had known the Shican were an existential problem, but he hadn’t known just how large an issue they faced until that report had arrived. He assumed their armada consisted of every ship they were willing to send. Obviously, that was far from the truth. The scale of the Shican empire was something humanity couldn’t simply overcome with a few technological advances.

  Even if Alexander gave every single breakthrough to the STO and the Union, it wouldn’t be enough. They needed time, which is what the EFEC attack was supposed to give them. A few years would have been enough to build up their forces to fight off the initial numbers the Shican had sent. Now he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  The Shican could outbuild them, and when they came back in a few years, humanity would face many thousands more. His rough estimates based on the enemy’s production capacity and already available ships suggested up to ten thousand enemy vessels could descend on human space if the Shican wished to go all out.

  The gravity bombs were only meant as a backup in case the initial attack failed to produce the desired result. That wasn’t the case anymore.

  Alexander made a decision and pulled out a special comm node that led to only one location. He activated the node and sent updated orders and the command code to activate the remaining gravity bomb ships.

  He had sent six of the large gravity bomb ships along with the EFEC corvettes, but that didn’t mean those were the only ones he had built. Alexander received sixty-four confirmation messages, then he deactivated the comm node.

  “Perhaps I went a bit overboard with building so many,” he said quietly.

  Then again, maybe not. That number wouldn’t be enough ships to destroy the entire Shican Empire, but it would cut out a significant portion of their habitable systems. He didn’t want to do that, but it was the only way to prevent their return. A few EFEC Swordfish corvettes would be joining Krieger’s fleet as well once they returned in a few days. Each of the vessels was carrying one of the smaller gravity bomb-capable missiles.

  Once the fleet returned to Unokane, Alexander would have a sit-down discussion with Krieger about the new weapons.

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