Sunset: Then, Now, Tomorrow (Maintenance & Role-Play)

[Sunset]

CORE C ExoGalactic Station, In Far Orbit Around GEC-M33-Fafnir*, Outside the Triangulum Galaxy (M33)... Republic Date 176.637.871...

"...the Domain has indicated they're going to deploy one of their Argus Arrays to M33 and this will be their project but while we wait for the details to come through, there's a lot of interesting stuff here to wait for," Commander Doge explained as he went through the evening brief. "Essentially we've got a broad record of what happened but we're missing the details. Argus will give us those but for right now..."

The briefing room was just what one might expect for such a space; an open chamber with a large holographic projector in the middle, a row of seats around it, another of slim standing desks behind that, and an evenly lit circle to one side where the Commander - an Ojeni with slick-looking mottled gray and orange skin - stood with his hands tucked behind his slender body. Three score and five were alternately standing and sitting around the display as their desires and physiology lay; as had been mentioned before, the Defense Force was significantly over-represented by the Republic's non-Human membership and the audience was a forest of different colors and shapes. Aside from the Commander, none of them were truly there - all projections gathered from the various ships and few stations under their command.

"...here's what you need to know." He touched an invisible control and the display lit up with a broad swath of stars. There were thousands and many millions more fading to nothing behind them but attention was on the foreground. For many these would be familiar, if not the particular angle they were viewing them from and some shifted around the room until things lined up. "The collated data from the time-snap assignments indicates that we're looking at an infestation that is less than two hundred years old but the actual source is older than that."

Again a touch of the controls and the image shifted to a cluster of stars that some recognized as slightly off-set from the center of the volume; just a dozen or so relatively close to each other and scattered across the usual range of star-types.

"Which is right here - and what will likely be the primary focus of the Argue Array. Approximately thirteen hundred years ago the stars in this cluster were nearly all encircled by structures broadly similar to the Krȃng structures we're now calling Crowns. Broadly - but not exactly. Architecturally they take more of a cue from the star-lifting emitters, so the assumption is that these were built by whoever built those."

An image appeared above the stellar cluster showing both a particularly sharp view of one of the emitters assembling itself and another of the unclaimed structures with highlighted sections on both drawing comparisons to each other. Even without these it was clear that the two were related with the truncated triangular pyramid shape dominating both forms.

"This happened over a period of five years and then... Nothing," he emphasized. "For the next twelve hundred years. Then at that point;" and the view swung back to the larger cluster, the core stars highlighted and numbered, "under what we can only presume was Krȃng influence, the process started again but this time with the combination of technologies we see now. More importantly these new systems all have Circlets - the core systems do not."

"You'd think a civilization capable of building those wouldn't be susceptible to the Krȃng," a voice spoke up.

"You'd think," he agreed. "And we've already got plenty of theories there but right now they're all theories. All we have for the moment is what we can see and only frames of that. We're looking to go backward and forward from that thirteen hundred year point and see what happened and where they came from. But here's where it comes back to you - we can't see into these systems with any of our FTL sensor systems but some of you are poking around the outskirts. Anything that looks like this," he pointed to the upper image, "that you come across, we need to know about it. Don't go poking your nose into anything though. Remember that your Eien connections are kinda-sorta FTL and you'll drop link if you do."

"In fact, be very careful when you're out there. It is plausible that the Crowns could be re-tasked to project a spot field outside of their individual systems. We don't know this of course - Special Projects is working up various possibilities and scenarios based on what little we do know. At this point we don't know if they know we're here and we'd rather they not until we hit them so we've set a one light-year demarcation around every star in this cluster. Don't cross that line."

"So you're saying we'll be at war in under a year?"

His face curled into a sly expression, "I think that's a good guess. I can't say anything more - because I don't know anything more. I do have an interesting tidbit to distract you though... We all remember a couple years back when a Krȃng installation was discovered on Minamoto, in the Ares system?"

There were nods and gestures of recognition all around. That had been the 'fault', if one could call it that, of one Doctor Stephen Ambrose. The moon - in orbit of the gas giant Hachiman - had been partially cored-out and transformed into a subterranean production facility for horrors birthed from the Krȃng's own DNA. While Ambrose had viewed the initial invasion as a game, leading his own forces in cut-and-thrust battle against the invaders - this had all changed when the i'Halalaentariel had warned that the infection must be purged or the system would be destroyed. A hasty task force - some had been there - had hit the planetoid minutes later and had exterminated the threat.

Ambrose had escaped at some point during the attack but to their knowledge hadn't been seriously pursued; the source of the infection had been traced back to his assistant who had been suborned at some earlier time.

"That incident as well as a growing body of evidence leads us to believe that the i'Halalaentariel have some way of detecting the Krȃng. How... We haven't figured that part out yet. But this number," he pointed to the bottom of the display that showed the now-complete number of infested systems and the date at which they had started their spread across the stars, "tells us something about the range and the sensitivity of that unknown method. Which takes us forward to the i'Halalaentariel offensive..."

[Sunset]

[Restricted]... Republic Date [Restricted]...

"'There is no test of benevolence you can conceive of that we cannot falsify the answer to.' An interesting assertion and one which we will now have the opportunity to test," the individual occasionally known as Admiral Tsheseshu began, her words directed perhaps just as much at herself as they were towards the group assembled around her. "Though 'benevolence' may be the incorrect term; 'legitimacy' perhaps. We are presented here with a rare opportunity and it is only by the careful crafting of many falsehoods that we may succeed in this opportunity. The execution of these falsehoods will often fall on your shoulders and your abilities will be tested to their utmost. One truth in the wrong place and the entire operation may be compromised..."

Turning from them, the Trilat directed their attention to the vessels that seemed to drift just outside. There was no point describing them - their appearance and technologies would be unfamiliar to even the most through observer and that was something of the point.

"You will take on the role of emissaries. As you have already surmised by your extensions, these will be from a civilization unknown to both the Milky Way and to Triangulum and so - presumably - to the Krȃng. They will not recognize your vessels, your language - your forms. Your culture, your language. For the next ten hours you will live inside a simulation of that civilization, learning and adopting its every nuance until they are more natural to you than your own. A lifetime. When you have reached the end of that lifetime, you will find yourselves back in these bodies aboard these vessels outside of a system selected at random. This system has been overtaken by the Krȃng - and it is your assignment to make contact with them, convince them that you are interested in an alliance of some nature, and then..."

She paused and turned back to them, "And then it is quite likely that they will attempt to suborn 'you'. These extensions. Your minds will be safe in an isolated sub-segment of the Eien but this is the central objective of the entire operation - the close observation of this process. Every detail will be recorded, every action monitored. To assist you in this, you will be cut off from your memories of this life - you will only know that this is your assignment and your duty and that your memories will be restored when it is completed. This is a most difficult thing that we ask of you and so I can only ask - those who refuse will be assigned to the monitoring team..."

[Sunset]

CORE C ExoGalactic Station, In Far Orbit Around GEC-M33-Fafnir*, Outside the Triangulum Galaxy (M33)... Republic Date 176.638.223...

"...which will end in a little over a month if our projections are correct. It will end because the i'Halalaentariel will have run out of elements - they'll be out of ships. Whether they'll stop before that or just fight until every last element has been destroyed is unknown. We've tried asking but they won't or can't reply. We think they won't - they've contacted us before - but that doesn't tell us why they won't. Or why they can't, if we're operating under a different assumption than the reality. The teams that have gamed this out think it could be a little bit of both - something about their core purpose as a weapon to destroy the Krȃng."

"And they're willing to completely destroy themselves because that's all they are in the end - a weapon," one of the assembled watchers volunteered. "They don't have any sense of self-preservation."

"That's right," Commander Doge agreed. "We don't know that but that is a pretty solid guess. But for us and for everyone else that's a potential problem given this set of circumstances. As I mentioned just a couple minutes ago - the i'Halalaentariel seem to have some method of detecting the Krȃng no matter where they might pop up. Even a whole galaxy away. If they destroy themselves in this war, we will lose that warning. Unless we figure that out and can reproduce it, we're going to be looking at the possibility that an infestation larger than this one could pop up somewhere at some point. A whole galaxy? At that point they might be beyond containment."

"So we might find ourselves rushing into a war to save an answering machine - great!"

There was general laughter at that and Doge waited for it to settle down before continuing, "Yep. Pretty much. It is a scenario we're looking at. Now, as I said - at this point we're looking at a month. If I were the Krȃng, I'd be feeling pretty confident right about now. Yes, they're losing systems but they can't help but notice that each attack is just a little weaker. They can't go on the offense but they can force the i'Halalaentariel into as many high-attrition battles as possible. Exhaust their resources faster. Because once they're gone, they're gone..."

[Sunset]

OSA High Command, New Jer'Don City, Juniper, The Western Edge of the Eastern Expanse... Republic Date 176.641.613...

Raw disbelief was in every word of General PowEll's response from his first utterance to the last syllable, "You want us to what!?"

It didn't matter that sitting across from him on the opposite side of a desk as neat and straight as the uniform he was wearing was the god-damn Secretary-General of the Republic herself. It also didn't matter not one bit that standing just behind her was another woman he'd never met but had heard plenty of stories about - Katryna Silaco, her daughter and the head of the Republic's nefarious Special Projects division. It didn't matter that they'd come to see him rather than issuing some blandly-worded official summons.

He knew just what she was asking - no, telling him - to do.

Pushing himself back in his seat, he rose to walk over to the window that looked out from his office. It was as it should be - near the very top of the looming triple-tower that was the Outer Systems Alliance headquarters. Below - for the most part - the city spread out at his feet and ran out to the horizon. When he'd come to Juniper with the other refugees from Alice the city had been nothing but a collection of shipping containers and somewhere out there one might still find some of those same, stored behind modern office complexes and sprawling apartment complexes or turned over to the kids for forts and clubhouses. It was a stirring achievement for a people who'd been forced off their homeworld with little more than the fur on their tails to their name but this...

"Now I know what you were getting us ready for," he said to the window, catching a reflected glimpse of the Secretary-General in the glass. She was sitting there calmly, hands in her lap and looking at his back while her daughter stood with arms cross, leaning back on one foot while the other lay casually across her shin. "Invading a Circlet..."

"Each Setting has many times the land-mass of your average terrestrial planet and there are seven Settings. Then there's the structure itself which has its own set of problems. It would be like an extended urban warfare campaign except again across a structure with many times the volume of the largest city I've ever seen - let alone contemplated assaulting. The enemy... Who is the enemy?" he asked.

That was a vitally important question and he half-turned to the Secretary-General, "Well?"

"The Krȃng;" "They built the Circlets," Katryna added.

"So they'll have the home advantage." His face twisted into a scowl, "And we'll be fighting on unfamiliar terrain with a force that's built for field warfare. Can I ask why you want to do this?"

"We don't know that we'll have to," she stated plainly. "It pays to be prepared though. It might help to know that the OSA would probably only be responsible for clearing the surface areas - the Marines would clear the structure. What we need is a force that is equally prepared to fight a determined defender and to assist a sizable civilian population at the same time. After the Nicean War, the OSA is that force."

He gave her a harsh laugh, "A practice run. Have you even seen combat? Do you know..."

She cut him off, "I have, General - though it was fleet combat and I stood back and let the experts do their job. That's what I'm asking you to do here, General," she repeated for emphasis. "I'm asking the professional soldier to do the job of a professional soldier. Admittedly, it is a huge task - and that's not the worst part. But I wouldn't be asking if I didn't think you were up to the job."

"What's the worst part?"

She shared a glance with her daughter; "Should I sit down?"

"You might want to. It should be noted that what I'm about to tell you is classified to the highest level - that would be me. Aside from the officers currently deployed there are only a handful of people in the government who know what's going on and you're in the same room as two of them. Any further discussion does not leave this room - is that one hundred percent understood?"

"I feel like I'm being lectured by my mother," he answered, returning to the desk and sliding into the chair. Scooting forward he put his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on laced fingers, "Alright, I understand. What's the big secret, Madam Secretary-General?"

"The Circlet in question is in M33," Katryna answered, stepping up to the edge of the desk and spreading a handful of projected holograms in front of him. The one in the middle told him everything he needed to know but she continued, "Otherwise known as the Triangulum Galaxy. And it's not 'a Circlet' but potentially thousands of Circlets. The Krȃng have thousands of systems under their control there and each one of them has Circlets either under construction or fully built out. If they're anything like the Circlets in the Milky Way they were built to act as 'cattle yards' for the sentient populations that they need to lay their young in."

"You're talking about a population in the..." Well, he wasn't sure but it had to be a very big number.

"We don't have a number," Erika cautioned. "We don't even know if these Circlets are inhabited, let alone who they might be inhabited by. Any Circlets we might have had the opportunity to examine so far have been utterly destroyed. It is quite possible that our first opportunity to examine one will be the first time we need to invade one. We don't know - but fortune favors the prepared..."

[Sunset]

RDF-Hornet, Same System, Different Verse, A Little Bit Slower, A Whole Lot Worse... GEC-M33-20552, Somewhere in the Triangulum Galaxy... Republic Date 176.635.887...

"...as of this snap-shot," Lieutenant Paldro filled the main screen with an image of the system taken - according to the time-stamp at the bottom - just over two weeks ago when one took into account both the real passage of time aboard 'Hornet and the time it had taken for the light from the system to reach the point in space where the snap-shot had been taken, "there was plenty of life or at least life-signs on those Circlets."

And now there wasn't.

By simple chance, the i'Halalaentariel had chosen GEC-M33-20552 as the next victim in their campaign and the ship and her crew had been on hand to watch the whole thing go down. The initial action had started many hundreds of light-years away in the previous system when the i'Halalaentariel had reformed their fleet into the titanic star-cannon first witnessed in action by RDF-Dogana back in the Milky Way Galaxy. Several shots later and, just as before, the siege gun had dispersed into a collection of warspheres that had followed the shots across space and time to arrive in '20552 just after impact. The first and most important target had been the Crown; broken in two places, it had immediately begun to collapse into its host star.

The next few shots had landed alternately between the gate complexes that would have served to reinforce the system and the Circlets that housed both the regular population and the Krȃng. The defenders hadn't been idle, however - the shots that had destroyed the Crown had been forced out of FTL by the structure's own FTL interdiction field at the edge of the system. Traveling at near the speed of light, it had still taken them minutes to cross the system and these had been used to bring in additional fleets. With little chance of saving either the Circlets or the gates, these had stood back and prepared to greet the incoming warspheres with all the fury they could muster.

To most powers back in the Milky Way, the battle that had unfolded would have been on a scale best described as 'apocalyptic'. Both fleets had elements numbering in the millions and though the outcome was pre-determined - the i'Halalaentariel being designed to counter the Krȃng to near-perfection - the losses on both sides would have set those same powers back millennia. At the end the defenders had been destroyed utterly while warspheres drifted placidly through debris fields that were already sorting themselves out into glittering bands of PTU orbiting whatever gravitational body had been nearby. Even the planets and moons had been swept from the stars; cracked open or reduced to so much rubble, their remains joining those of the destroyed warships in eternal drift.

Already the i'Halalaentariel fleet was reforming for its next assault, depleted in numbers but not in resolve. Soon enough they'd be moving on to their next target while the 'Hornet watched and waited...

"Not that they seemed to care."

Captain Gyuna remained silent. Someone had once said that 'A single death is a tragedy - a million deaths a statistic'. Whether that was true or not, right now she needed to focus on her job and so they were statistics. To prevent further tragedies, they'd need to figure out what was useful and what was not and pass both that and their analysis of the attack back to Fleet.

"So we know they were inhabited but not by what, correct?" she finally asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had crawled across the bridge.

"No," Paldro sounded almost excited, "But we've got some interesting clues! An interesting detail about the Circlets is that they use the gaseous planet they are built around as a storage vessel for atmospheric gases. These gases are then transferred back and forth by something like a 'gravity siphon' as needed. This increases their density and that makes their make-up very easy to observe! So," he flashed a metric up on the screen next to an up-close image of the siphons in action, their compressed contents still little more than a narrow band of brightness against the starry backdrop, "I can tell you that here, in this system and between all three of the Circlets, the same gases and in the same composition were being transferred."

"So..."

"So whoever was living on those Circlets, they were all breathing the same mixture of gases. Not true with the Circlets back home - each Setting typically had a slightly or even occasionally radically different mixture of gases in use - as appropriate to the majority species of that Setting! Which mean that, unless they happened to have twenty-one species that all preferred the same mixture, there was only one species inhabiting this particular set of Circlets. Now, I could see that with one Circlet, but three? I'm going with a single species."

"Which might be the Krȃng," she pointed out the obvious.

His answer was first a shrug, "Might be, sure. We'll see what the correlated data says. It would be odd if that's the case. The Krȃng need a sentient being to lay their young in - the smarter the better. That's the whole point of the Circlets. If these were only inhabited by Krȃng, that would suggest they have moved a large population far from their breeding stock which seems inconvenient. It is far more likely, to me, that what we're seeing here is the gas mixture required by the Krȃng and the gas mixture required by whatever single species they have established here as breeding stock intermingled in the siphons. I'll flag that for comparison - a Circlet that is under construction would likely only be taking on the gases that the Krȃng themselves need. Filter that out of the mixture and we can figure out at least some of the farm species' biology..."

[Sunset]

Defense Force Training Academy 421, Haec Island, The Caolin Archepelago, Yendaf, The Uliav System... Republic Date 176.638.803...

For 597 there was just as much enjoyment to be found at the Academy observing the other Cadets as there was in preparing for his future life in the Defense Force. As an enhanced microcosm of Republic culture and society, there were plenty of opportunities to learn something new, both unique and mundane...

"...after last class we're going into town," the female cadet pronounced, her accent hailing from what he'd been told was the West Coast of the old Earth United States. It was her tone that gave her a measure of authority though and this was reflected in her social status; a group of similarly aged young women tended to follow her around, sticking with her from class to class and in between. "There's a new restaurant and I thought we'd try it out! I think they serve Italian..."

Between classes now, the group was standing in the most inconvenient place possible - the nexus of several hallways and an open staircase and other cadets were forced to detour around them as they stood in an open knot chattering away. This was particularly interesting to 597; he'd observed that the younger males and females tended to stick to their own groups except where they were in an emotional relationship. Humans tended to follow this pattern the closest but this extended to other species as well and the more closely the species was associated with Humans - one of the group was a black-eyed ArAreBee, another was a four-armed Ju-Docri - the more they tended to follow Human cultural norms.

"...all that bread though," she put her hand on her stomach, "have to go light or oof, the carbs!"

Something orange and cream trotted down the stairs, walking right through the group before the leader noticed and looked down, "Hey kitty!" She handed another girl her tote and knelt, "Hey Kitty," she put out a hand and the animal submitted to her hand before curling back onto its hind legs and unceremoniously jumping into her arms. "Aww, aren't you handsome?" she asked, stroking it across the shoulders as it pressed into her chest and she turned back to her friends, conversation quickly resumed...

---

It was time for 597 to recharge his batteries; literally. An outdoor patio provided the perfect venue and while other students sat at the tables to study or laid back in the lounges to study, he instead spread out across a warm square of bare concrete; again, literally. Arms and legs wide, his form began to subside until his surface area had nearly tripled, the light from the nearby star converted into electricity by the solar elements built into the polymorphic cells of his body.

Away from him the low chatter of students at study and conversation continued but shortly he was aware of another presence. An orange and cream form - the cat again - nosed its way out of the flowers that decorated one of the raised planters at the edge of the patio and sat on the concrete lip. Its tail swished back and forth and its eyes were narrow slits - it looked strangely satisfied with itself. Then after a moment it stretched out to roll onto its side, cheek on the warm ground, and then it was asleep.

---

"...I am really looking forward to the next run through the Confidence Course," Kaul'i declared, scooping the mud off her face and hair and letting the flow of water beat the rest from her body as they stood in the locker room shower. "That was a lot of fun and if we're supposed to do the next run in full combat gear... Hey, 597? You paying attention?"

She stopped to look at him and then followed his gaze to where he was tracking a cat as it laced its way through the locker room and then out the door. Even after it was gone, he stood watching where it had passed through the door and after a few seconds she waved a hand in front of his face, "Hello? You there? Water got into your circuits?"

"No..." he blinked and then began to follow her motions and those of the other cadets, all ridding themselves of the grim and muck associated with the class trip through the normally-daunting obstacle course. "I have seen that animal several times now and it is odd - Academy regulations do not allow pets..."

---

597 was early to class. In point of fact, he was always early to class but this time he had a distinct purpose in mind and as soon as he entered the lecture hall he began to look around the room until he spotted it; there, laid out in one of the alcoves that housed a towering narrow window, was the orange and cream cat. To everyone else it might appear perfectly natural for it to have found itself a comfortable place to sleep but to 597 it was now distinctly out of place. A row of chairs sat along the same wall, descending one-by-one to the lecture floor at the bottom, and while he was normally a front-row type he now took the chair closest to the cat, placing his belongings on the provided shelf before purposefully sitting down and looking ahead, posture perfect.

"Excuse me," he said out of the side of his mouth, his voice low.

The cat's eyes opened a slit, golden orange around a narrow black pupil.

"Excuse me," he repeated and one of the animal's ears twisted forward until it was effectively pointed at him. "Are you a cadet here?"

Rolling onto its feet, the cat took a single step and then a graceful leap, ending up on the edge of the built-in desk and looking up at him with its head cocked sideways, definitely listening. Or at least looking at him like he was crazy.

"Are you..."

"Yes," it said, cutting him off. The voice that came out of its mouth was young, male, and clearly Human though there was a subtle hint of 'cat' in there - a certain purr to his words. "I'm a student here. Do you want something?"

No, "Yes - I wanted to know if you were a student here. I've seen you many times but I haven't seen you socializing with the other cadets or interacting in class."

"Have you met many cats?" It was a question that didn't need to be asked, really. 597, despite his humanoid appearance, was one of the more unusual cadets in the current class and it hadn't taken long for any of his classmates to figure out that he was the textbook definition of an outsider. "We're all like this."

"But you're not a cat."

"Wasn't. I was born Human, but I've always liked cats. Big cats, small cats. I've always wanted to go into the military too. Then just last year when I got my Eien transfer, I saw a story about a girl who thought of herself as a dog who made it through the Academy. Well, an EienNode isn't very big so I thought - 'why not a cat?'"

"And so here you are," 597 not-quite-asked as more students began to file past, taking their preferred seats. Out on the floor the instructor emerged from hiding and began to set up for their lecture. "Is it what you thought it would be?"

"I'm a cat," his now-temporary guest yawned, flicked his tail, and turned to leap back into the alcove before circling around and laying down, chin on the edge of the window sill and eyes half-closed. "It's better..."

[Sunset]

CORE C ExoGalactic Station, In Far Orbit Around GEC-M33-Fafnir*, Outside the Triangulum Galaxy (M33)... Republic Date 176.641.500...

'If You Fail to Plan, You Plan To Fail'

If there was a common marking - much as police officers in certain American cities were known to have 'MIRANDA' tattoo'ed across their knuckles - to be found among the high-ranking officers of the Republic Defense Force it would be this. Or - perhaps just as common - 'Economies Decide Conflicts', though the second wasn't as snappy and much less widely quoted. Either way, both were true in their circumstances - which was why some dozen officers were gathered around the long oval of a planning table, a generic star system spread out along its length with the highest ranking standing just next to the over-sized star at one end...

"...our first priority is information, of course. BEARTRAP VDAs will be deployed outside several potential target systems to gather up-to-moment intelligence, though they will be limited to STL information-gathering until the second priority is taken care of - which would be this," Field Admiral Ryudin said, pointing to the offending structure with a single finger. Against the scale of the star it was still a thin band of silver-white dotted with arsenic-gray but everyone know what it was and what they were called; a 'Crown.

"We're going to follow the i'Halalaentariel lead here - these structures greatly reduce our tactical options and so they will be eliminated. Destroyed," he continued, "by our own version of their star-cannon fleet configuration. Construction has begun on several of these around a selection of suitable magnetars - these will be permanent installations and Special Projects wanted to try something new. Exactly what, they didn't say."

"With the 'Crown's FTLi field disabled, we'll be able to move on to our third priority which is the Krȃng Gate Complexes. These are their immediate source of supply and reinforcement and indirect support fire so," he indicated the three mid-sized gaseous planets that sat in the system's middle reaches, "they must be destroyed. Currently the plan is to destroy them with NEMESIS strikes from here;" and by 'here' he meant the enormous horseshoe-shaped station that they were all inhabiting in one form or another, "and failing that with ramship strikes directly preceding the fleet assault. At that point the attack will split into a planning manifold based on conditions in the individual system but the overall plan is to concentrate and destroy their fleet elements while isolating the 'Circlets for either destruction or invasion depending on facts on the ground."

"Those facts are whether or not the 'Circlet in question is inhabited or not," he went on. "While precise details are still being determined, Exploration Command is substantially confident at this point that the 'Circlets in M33 are inhabited by a single species in addition to the Krȃng themselves. Presuming this is confirmed, the fleet actions will then unfold according to just how populated an individual 'Circlet is. Those with a high population will be targeted for ground invasion," Ryudin nodded towards the one member of the collective that was not in Defense Forces uniform, "by a combined OSA-Marine force. The Marines will be responsible for securing the structure itself while the OSA secures the non-Krȃng population. Given the logistics involved in evacuating a population that may number into the billions, these 'Circlets will be secured for eventual evacuation to a secure area."

"You mean to move one of those?" PowEll asked. Previously such a feat would have been shocking but it had only taken a few hours of being involved in Defense Force briefings for his sense of scale to expand accordingly.

"Yes - the planet and the 'Circlet. They'll be moved to a staging system for a deep cleaning and then onward to one of several holding systems."

The Hauyht nodded and Ryudin continued, "Low population 'Circlets will be similarly secured but their populations will be evacuated to facilities currently under construction and the 'Circlets then destroyed, along with any other trace of their former owners..."

[Sunset]

OSAMI R&D Centre, JenLuk City, Juniper, Pinales System, The Coreward Fringe, Ares Cluster... Republic Date 176.654.493... You Think You Can Get Rid of Me THAT Easily? No...

"...alright, so that sucked," the engineer held up his furry hands in the classic mea culpa gesture. "I get that. We all get that. It looked like..."

"An angry chicken chasing the technicians around the yard," his personal sycophant nodded, her head still all enthusiasm despite the ribbing he'd taken and she'd endured as the huge mother-clucker had tromped around, wings spread wide but tips close to the ground as it attempted time and time again to either take flight or (more appropriate visually) defend the hen-house from interlopers. "My fault, really. I should have taken the visuals into account!"

Both the engineer and the supervisor-lead looked at her. There was brown-nosing and there was insertion and she was well-up into the second. But the moment only lasted a moment and the engineer turned back to the source of much mirth; both his LAM prototype and the engineering supervisor had either been laughed at or laughed their stupid face off as the goings-on came undone.

"Anyway. LAMs suck. LAMs are done. I'm done with LAMS. But - but - I think there's a place for some of the concepts here. Particularly some of the folding mechanisms!"

The chief eyed him, face as straight as an arrow, "Are you going to lay another egg here?"

Which lasted about a half-second until he cracked up laughing, tears near running down his furry cheeks as he pounded the desk one, then twice in furious laughter. You might not think it's that funny but you hadn't spent the better part of an afternoon watching a giant mechanical barnyard fowl strut around the yard and you didn't spend the better portion of that better portion making terrible chicken-and-egg puns, "What's wrong, BruNel? Got egg on your face? Well... The yolk's on you!"

...Sigh.

"Alright, alright... Shut up," BruNel broke, snapping at his assistant instead of his supervisor, though he clearly meant both. If there was a terrible thing about brown-nosers, it was that they were perfectly willing to switch arses when they smelled a promotion over a fart and she'd laughed at all of them. Or at least giggled. "Here..."

Once again he unrolled the virtual blueprints, this time taking care not to knock his boss's family portrait off the desk. It was held together now with a generous dose of duct tape and to be honest...

"Well, this looks better, I'll give you that. Looks proper military;" or at least industrial. The design took several clear cues from 'Mechs that had gone before it but this was a good thing, considering the pedigrees on display.

"Thank you, Sir. Now - where can we apply what we've learned?" BruNel asked. "Storage and transport, for one. By-and-large, most 'Mechs occupy a lot of empty volume both in storage and in transport. That means that a given transport might only be able to - despite its lift capability - to move one 'Mech from here to there while it can carry two! Now, clever packing can solve some of that but only so much. But here, we can solve that problem ahead of time and get some value-add while we're at it."

"Such as?"

"Imagine you're a 'Warrior in the field," BruNel copied the displayed mecha's stance, hunching over with his hands out ahead and to either side, fingers curled into gun shapes. Just to add to the effect - and perhaps they'd practiced this and perhaps they hadn't - his assistant brought her paired pistol-hands together into a modified Weaver grip and stood over his shoulders, her arms mimicking the turret that sprouted from the 'Mech's back.

"And you need to get through a narrow space. Urban combat - a dense forest, even. Well, you're going to either need to thread your way through - slow down - which means potentially exposing yourself to enemy fire in a confined space for an extended period or..." He folded his arms in and the arms on the blueprint followed suit, though they instead retracted, the forearm slipping up over the bicep to the shoulder and then folding away into a provided space. "Now you can continue through at-speed!"

"...alright..."

"Now - and here's the tricky part," he readied himself, one hand creeping out just in case he had to grab the desk in front of him to avoid an awkward collapse. "The legs. I copied the design from the prototype but the idea is that the thighs fit into prepared slots in the forelegs, which are longer than the thighs because..."

"It's a chicken-walker?" the boss suggested, a twitch in his nose a barely-contained laugh.

"...yes," and BruNel struggled to demonstrate, attempting to lower himself to the floor without using his hands and with his assistant still riding his back. Then he proved why engineers should not be acrobats, toppling over in a sudden sprawl and ending with a tangle of arms and legs and finger-guns.

His supervisor leaned forward at his desk, then pushed himself up on his arms to look down over the edge, "Alright there? Need a moment?" His face twitched. "You look as comfortable as a hen on a cactus..."

[Sunset]

OSA Fleet Command Headquarters, Ticonderoga Station, Juniper Orbit, Pinales System, The Coreward Fringe, Ares Super-Cluster... Republic Date 176.686.908...

"...to pull off a successful ground assault, we're going to have to thread a very fine needle," the Mission Officer continued, pointing to the large model of a 'Circlet displayed at the front of the briefing room. The rest of the room was filled to the brim with officers - commanding officers and helmsmen - who were all wearing the same pale gray and blue-accented uniform as the Sanglanti. While among the general OSA the Hauyht were dominant, among fleet officers it was instead the French-speaking, hard-drinking, and vacuum-tolerant Sanglanti and thus it was with the room.

But I'm not translating the whole thing into French.

"Any Krȃng fleet elements will be the Defense Force's responsibility but that still leaves us with the 'Circlet's defenses. Built into the super-structure are several very large particle accelerators. These are nominally used to produce the exotic element PTU-557. The same element," he tapped a section of the 'Circlet's segmented exterior at random, "that is used in the construction of essentially every piece of Krȃng hardware. It is incredibly tough and plays merry hell with sensor systems. It also takes a lot of energy and matter to produce, which explains why these particle accelerators are so big - they run the entire circumference of the 'Circlets which themselves have enough liveable surface area to house hundreds of billions."

"The point of this is that those particle accelerators can also be used as guns - very, very big guns. Between each 'Setting there's an emitter block where these accelerators can be directed both inward," he drew his pointer from one side of the interior of the 'Circlet to the other, "and outward, giving the structure significant stand-off deterrence - they are classified as planetary siege-level weapons and I don't need to remind you that the OSA does not have anything on that scale. If they hit you, they will probably destroy you."

The officer let that sink in for a few seconds before tapping the display again, "That said, they do have a weakness of sorts. First is the planet itself," he tapped again and a series of brightly-colored cones and cylinders appeared, showing what were obviously the emitter's field of fire. These started as just visible but rapidly turned nearly opaque where the fields of fire crossed and multiplied. Most obvious was a flat double-cone that shot away from the 'Circlet on both sides of the disk, culminating at an apex where another object - the structure's attendant FTL gateway - floated.

But in the middle; "The planet's mass significantly reduces the number of weapons that can be brought to bear on any vessel that is inside the ring - that is, between the planet and the interior surface. Depending on where one is, this reduces the number of emitter blocks that can fire on any given target in this torus to between three and four. Furthermore - unless the Krȃng are willing to potentially hit their own station and I repeat myself - these cannon have seige-level outputs - the closer a vessel is to the surface, the harder it will be to take a clean shot. Stay as close as you can to the middle and it will be even harder."

"This will potentially open you up to counter-fire from the interior surface but remember that these are going to be populated by whatever feed stock - people - the Krȃng have populated the 'Circlets with. Based on the 'Circlets here at home, any counter-fire will be coming from smaller vessels or even surface vehicles. These are valid targets for your guns - your tactical officers are going to get their own briefings there. Stay within this line," he tapped a blue band that looked extremely thin from where they all sat, "and you should be fine. It will be just like Beggar's Canyon back home," he added with the cheesiest grin he could muster.

"Now, what this means is that you'll be jumping right into the hot seat. We've gone through several scenarios - jumping in just outside the ring, jumping in close to the planet - but they all expose a ship to a significant danger window when it is closing with the interior surface. Remember this and repeat it to yourselves over and over. Your job isn't to fight the Krȃng fleet. Your job is to deliver those eight assault battalions in their dropships to their surface targets. Your job is to get them there. They win, you win, same fight, same glory."

"You're going to jump in right here," he tapped the blue band again, "wind your way past the emitter blocks for the particle cannon - though they are valid targets and a priority for your gunnery - and then drop down to match speed and put your troops on the ground. If the circumstance comes up where you need to ditch, do not try to run. Your best bet is to belly-down somewhere in the interior and link up with ground forces as soon as possible. Remember that the interior might look small from your cruisers, but each 'Setting has the same surface area as several planets. If you set out on foot, this could take weeks. Bring some supplies..."

[Sunset]

CRUX 94 Deep Space Outpost, Near Krȃng Space, The M33 (Triangulum) Galaxy... Republic Date 176.689.468...

"...I mean - that's what I'd do in their circumstances, but we haven't found any evidence that the Krȃng are prone to mass-cloning operations. Or any cloning operations, really. We've gone through six 'Circlets with a fine-toothed comb and while we've found plenty of medical facilities that would conceivably be suitable to support them but we didn't find anything that even looks like a cloning unit in there. I'd say they had - have - some kind of cultural aversion to cloning... Why... Well," 'Gat paused, "We might just get a chance to ask one, I suppose. Very, very carefully."

"Like next system over carefully?" his companion suggested as the two continued with their meal.

The consultant shook his head, "Not even that. If we were able to capture one - if we wanted to capture one - I'd put 'em up in a nice suite somewhere along the sweep path of a neutron star or maybe as deep inside the gravity well of a black hole as you dare. Somewhere where, if they get loose, it is real easy to give it a little nudge and problem solved."

"Toast!"

"Very small toast," he nodded agreement. "Very crunch. Very burnt. Anyway - you remember the Minamoto Incident?"

"Sure," though it was clear The 'Gat was about to supply a new detail. The technician leaned in close, "What about it?"

"Well, during the Incident, the Krȃng managed to worm their way into some Baby-in-a-Box off-the-shelf home cloning units. You know - real red-light special stuff. Now, you'd figure they'd put themselves into some fetuses - nope. They flushed them - even if they were near-term. Why? Doesn't make any sense. I'd say they were 'fine' cloning their young using the 'Boxes, but then they figured out ways to get into a person. Not entirely successfully though - and I think things would have gone a lot worse if they'd have done different. 'Course there could be a lot of reasons why they didn't - things were too stressful to even think about trying to capture one."

"Good thing too," he shook his head. "There were a couple spots where they were this," he pinched his fingers together, "this close to getting into a water supply. At that point we would have had to sterilize a whole arcology or risk a major outbreak..."

[Sunset]

Secretary-General Silaco's Office, RDF-Unconquered Sun, Underway to Assembly Point Alpha, Near Circlet V, The Monoceros Ring... Republic Date 176.705.267...

"...the stated objectives were to allow us to observe the process of Krȃng subornation in-situ. This did not occur, thus the primary mission objective was a failure when considered against its stated objectives," the trilat stated simply, her arms and even legs moving in a multitude of small, subtle ways that added both refinement and complexity to every syllable. To most without an extensive history of interaction with the species, these would be lost as meaningless but there was also the way in which those words were spoken; to those species of evolutionary origin they always seemed to carry more weight and intensity than the same spoken by anyone other than a Kal-En-Vesho. Many found this disturbing or even troubling, though they could not precisely say why.

Erika Silaco did not, for less-than-obvious reasons; "But it wasn't."

"No." Anathema's Director moved around the office, seeming to pace but in reality positioning herself and thus her words according to a careful script. "It is said that one learns more from their failures than their successes; we have learned much and what we have learned will substantially alter coming events. If I may lay out the mission timeline?"

Erika nodded and the Director continued.

"The first data point was gathered as soon as our vessel approached the system. We anticipated that it would be intercepted - and possibly destroyed - then and there by the system's defenders. Instead a vessel was launched from the interior of one of the system's 'Circlets, which was observed to be heavily populated. This was assumed to be a pre-spaceflight civilization and by our continued assessment this would appear to still be the case. The Krȃng have either changed or are employing a new methodology, but that will be clarified further as I continue. This vessel was then escorted to our vessel by a pair of Krȃng 'Nightingale'-Type vessels."

A gesture and a holographic recording - or recreation, it was hard to say either way - of the encounter appeared in the middle of the room. Two of the vessels were imminently recognizable as being of Krȃng manufacture; their silver-white hulls and sleek shape set them immediately apart from the third; "We have not seen any vessel of this type before and, based on this and subsequent observations, it would not appear to be of Krȃng manufacture," she stressed the word.

Blocky and angular, the design stood in sharp contrast to the ships on either side. If one was to arbitrarily assign it an 'up' and 'down' - or dorsal and ventral - then it had a sharply-hanging bow that tapered back into a flattened diamond with two winglets just curving down at the trailing edge. It looked predatory and doubly-so, with what were clear talons, claws, and horns worked into the shape of the hull or serving as shrouds for large emplaced weapons of yet-unknown function.

"As soon as it approached within low-latency distance, the following transmission was sent;" beside the first another hologram appeared. This time it showed what was clearly a two-dimensional recording of a scene set out in what looked to be a ceremonial chamber of some kind. Seven beings stood, six spaced out around one, and all wore what could be reasonably described as tribal vestments and armor with leather, scales, fangs, and horns featuring prominently. The warriors themselves - for they could again only be described as that - were whiplash-thin, feral and nearly-feline with a broad triangular theme to their heads, hands and arms, and long tails that moved with an intense, cat-like flicker. All carried weapons though these were short spear-like weapons with long, serrated-talon blades at both ends and a curved guard of wood studded with fangs that stretched across the length.

"Of substantial interest, there was no attempt made to establish any manner of translated communication. We were able to reverse-engineer the transmission and its translation after mission failure. It is our assumption that the message was meant for internal purposes. Roughly, it is a promise of divine retribution against those who have intruded into the realm of the children of the gods. When the transmission ended, the vessel attacked."

Battles in space being boring things when viewed from anything more than a cinematic distance, the Director skipped straight to the conclusion, "Both vessels were destroyed. The weapon systems employed by the unknown vessel were minimally threatening even to our vessel, which had been designed specifically as to not confer any new or more advanced technologies if the intended subornation had been successful. 'They barely scratched the paint', as I was told by one of our experts. Our vessel responded, disabling and then destroying the unknown in a fashion that - again - may well have been intended to be spectacular before it in turn was destroyed by the escorting Krȃng vessels."

"So both sides were putting on a bit of a song-and-dance routine."

"That is my conclusion as well. What follows is speculation based on what information we now have; my opinions. Based on analysis of the environmental conditions in the originating Circlet's interior, this species is either the dominant or only sentient species to be found across all known Circlets in M33. Their words, tone, cadence, and body language suggests that their culture is one of quasi-religious fanaticism. Quasi, as I suspect the Krȃng have installed themselves as the deities of this particular religion during the process of suborning the original civilization. Succeed or fail, the warriors were dispatched to carry out the will of their false gods."

Erika considered this for a moment, "It reminds me of the Qi."

"With some variation, yes," she answered. "What this suggests is that we are not looking at a population that will welcome us as liberators but instead treat us as defilers and debasers. They do not realize they are being manipulated and preyed upon themselves and depending on their level of indoctrination, we may well be facing a war of double-extermination..."

[Sunset]

Secretary-General Silaco's Office, RDF-Unconquered Sun, Assembly Point Alpha, Near Circlet V, The Monoceros Ring... Republic Date 176.705.599...

"...I'm going to respectfully disagree with the..." Good question; Just whose opinion was the 'Gat disagreeing with? Aside from the fact that the previous guest in the Secretary-General's office was a trilat, he didn't know anything about her other than the opinion she'd offered. Best to go with the safe bet and after a second to re-establish his argument, he continued, "With her. Not the whole thing - these folks could be just the theocratic blood-drinkers she thinks they are. I think we're going to have to wait for our first set of eyeballs on the ground to know one way or the other. But..."

But.

And it was a big one.

"But simple question - who was that transmission meant for?" he paused dramatically, waiting for only a few seconds and the briefest flicker of an answer to cross Erika's face before putting in his own. "Us, that's who. Well, not us - whoever was on that ship. Because I've taken a real close look at the data we've got and guess what? There's nothing. No transmissions in that band and range have been picked up in any of the Krȃng systems in M33 we've got under surveillance. That means that that transmission was sent to us and meant for us."

"Then what's your suspicion?" she asked, turning from him to look 'outside'. A virtual window took up most of one wall of her office, though it was divided up by both frame and mullions so that it appeared just as real as one made of glass and chrome. The assembly point was busy with vessels, craft, and stations of all shapes and sizes and from their shared vantage point somewhere in the middle of the pack, the stars seemed to be nearly out-numbered by the assembling armada. "Will it change any of this?"

"No," and after a second he added, "I don't think so, at least. As I said, the first thing to do is get some actual eyeballs on the ground. That fancy plan with the fake civilization? Good idea, but I'd bet you the Krȃng can do the same thing if they want to. Any evidence we ask for, they can fabricate. But I said 'ask' - the trick is to make sure they don't know what questions we're looking to answer. But I'm sidetracking," he waved himself off.

"Now, I haven't taken a close look at that transmission and the people I'd put it in front of just so happen to work for your kid, so they're probably looking at it already. But I'd guess that there's a payload in there somewhere but we just happened to avoid it by looking at it with the freshest eyes. Someone who's never seen whatever viral nastiness is hidden in it. Probably right at the beginning - that long song-and-dance about divine retribution was meant to keep us watching while whatever did its work. It just didn't work, so they went back to the old Soviet method."

"The Soviet method?"

"Having the problem shot," he answered, mimicking the loading of a bolt-action rifle, aiming it at an imaginary someone standing against the back wall, and pulling the trigger with a mock, "Bang! Violence doesn't solve every problem, but it can sure solve a lot of them. Where this all trips up is the question of the ship. I double-checked - all our data says it came from one of the 'Circlets in the system and that it wasn't of Krȃng manufacture. But..."

He shrugged and stared out the window in the apparent hope that the swarming assault force held the answer. Perhaps it did; a number of ships had just appeared, their arrival heralded by a brief star-shaped flash of light. It wasn't something he recognized so he asked, "Who's that?"

She tapped the window, highlighting the new arrivals and letting the screen identify them, "BUSF. The Bli'ishi. They caught wind of things and invited themselves to send a task force along. Inquisitors - they've been hunting the Krȃng longer than we've been a spacefaring nation. They'll split off as soon as the fleet arrives and go sniffing around - another set of eyeballs, as you put it."

"Interesting. So - there's my point. Just because it was there doesn't mean the Krȃng made it. We don't know M33 very well yet - a whole new galaxy. This could be some random explorer that wandered through and those poor suckers could be the crew, brain-jacked and dressed up for play-acting. If I was anyone and I had any experience at all with the Krȃng, I'd be quadruple-quarantining everything. Even the air. But an unknown vessel? Unknown language? I wonder if the Krȃng do any exploring..."

"What do you mean?"

"Seem kinda odd if they didn't, really. Otherwise they'd just hang around hoping someone with a brain comes across them so they can eat it. Maybe they did what they did because they were already suspicious of our ship - they've been active in M33 for what, a couple hundred years?"

"Around that. They could have been there but not active for longer, but they weren't active-active or else the answering machines would have been on them like white on rice," Erika answered.

"Still plenty of time to look around - and to leave out some traps. We're talking about the Krȃng after all..."

[Sunset]

OSA Drop Ship Knife's Edge Three, Launch Bay Two, Somewhere Over Circlet I, In the GEC-M33-20554 System, The Triangulum Galaxy... Republic Date 176.760.244...

'...Docking Collar Released'

Lieutenant "Chesty" CesTur watched the status lines go past as she stared through the heads-up display, her wide eyes on the words but not as much their content. The cockpit of her Super Mamushi II aerospace fighter was sleek and not-at-all cramped though it could - at times - suffer a bit from information overload.

This wasn't one of those times.

Right now, as she waited for 'Knife's Edge Three to clear the atmospheric boundary between the near-void of space and the clear blue skies of the Circlet Setting's interior, she had time to sit there and think. All of the 'stuff' that might otherwise need to be done in the moment was being handled by someone or something else. For the Heavy Assault division wrapped up in the egg-shaped cocoon their part was to simply sit and wait. All the planning was done, all the training simulations complete...

'...Beginning Atmospheric Transition'

The drop ship and thus the fighter and thus her cockpit began to shake a bit. It would have been nerve-rattling except during the nearly two-week between back home and here they'd run through the simulated operation nearly a dozen times. Each time there had been something new, something different - a 'gotcha' the operation planners had thrown at them. Something to keep them on their toes and interested. Except this time it wasn't a simulation.

Or was it?

Her face was split into a wide smile, part gapping buck teeth and part weird thoughts. In some ways it was still just a simulation, wasn't it? Aside from those weird Blishi'i, everyone along for the ride was plugged into 'their' body through this 'Eien' thing. She didn't quite understood how all that worked but for the RDF and the OSA and the KIDF and the various other services that had amalgamated themselves into the First ExoGalactic Expeditionary Force the requirement was there. No action otherwise, period.

She'd jumped at the chance, no hesitation. An opportunity to go wing-to-wing and gun-to-gun against some galactic terror? You bet your...

'...Atmospheric Transition Complete'
'Launch Catapult Initialized'

She reached up and slammed her visor down, the padded rim just touching her nose. That was the cue for her aircraft to start flooding the display with additional information; systems statuses with everything from weapons to environmental to maneuvering scrolling by in a blur. The only thing she was worried about were the 'yellows' and the 'reds' - no 'reds', only one 'yellow' and that flickered to 'green' as the sub-system caught up and the primary HUD read off 'Launch Catapult Ready'.

A targeting curser appeared, floating in the center of her vision, the helmet tracking her eyes as they moved and adjusting the aim-point of her weapons accordingly. Her hands tightened around the control sticks; 'Launch in 3'...

'Two,' she mentally counted off, her fur-covered fingers moving over the various control knobs and buttons in unconscious confirmation that they were just where they had always been. 'One...'

It felt like a giant hand was suddenly shoving against her entire body and the side of the 'Ship split open just ahead of her fighter as it rocketed out of the bay. Instinctively her pinky found the throttle and pushed it all the way forward, the heat exchangers on the back of the aircraft flaring white-hot in imitation of the roaring jet engines of yesteryear. With her other hand she pulled hard left and with a twist, sending the fighter over and down, just in case someone on the surface had decided that was the moment to light the 'Ship up with whatever air-defense they had.

Ahead and around her the sky was just as crisp and blue as it had been in the simulation but her quick dodge had split that with blue, green, and brown - the interior surface of the 'Circlet now in front of her as the 'Ship and her fighter escort hurtled towards the ground. Somewhere down there...

Yes, she could already see them. Picked out here and there against a broad, curving expanse of wilderness were cities and towns. People lived there. People either under the noodly appendage of or willingly serving their captors. That was one of the objectives of the operation - to figure out which one it was - but it wasn't her objective and so her gaze slid away from the urban to the rural. The Krȃng liked to hide their shit out in the wilderness and it wasn't but a moment before she saw a trio of white-shelled fighter-gunships rising out of the deep blue waters of a mountain lake to nose up and rise to meet them.

Then another set, and another, and another.

Behind and above her the guns of the Drop Ship lit up and in only a few seconds the skies over the 'Setting were due to become a close-range furball between the escorting fighters and the rising gunships. At this range her best bet was missiles and her eyes drifted across the first three, tagging them all and showing a scattering of secondary information where her wingmates had done the same. This was no time for a measured response; her finger brushed the launch toggle and the bays on the underside of her wings emptied in a rapid 'whoosh-whoosh-whoosh' as the computer dividing the long-range missiles up between the marked targets, the pack dividing mid-flight to home in on their individual targets.

She hauled back on the stick and twisted it under, turning a straight-arrow attack into a brief tumble that ended with her nose pointing at another group; hit-or-miss, there were too many targets for her to stick around and make sure. Ahead of her now one of the next three was already missing, the weird bird-shaped craft bereft of one of its engine pods thanks to accurate fire from Knife's Edge Three, which was below them now as it neared the ground. One of the remaining two turned towards her, the ball-shaped turrets under the engine-wings swiveling towards her and she pulled the trigger under her forefinger hard, the cursor already centered on the craft.

Each shot from the accelerator mounted along the aircraft's centerline was like a jolt of electricity through her body; a quick pulse followed by another and another as the gun cycled through the default three-round burst. The gunship was slower but more maneuverable and this barely saved it as the pilot heeled over, two shots passing just wide and the third punching through one of the claw-shaped appendages on the forward edge of its left engine pod, crystal shards sparkling in the false sunlight as they fell towards the ground.

'Chesty cut all forward thrust and the fighter dropped like a stone just as something passed through the space where her gut said she shouldn't have been.

Another trio of gunships had taken advantage of their numbers to ease up on the escort's backside, knocking one of her wingmates from the sky and then putting shots on her just after she'd somehow realized they were there. Pulling a quick twist to one side, she slid the throttle all the way forward again and drifted across their bellies in a fast power-slide, missiles from the bays on the top of her wings rippling past the cockpit to treat the three to some concentrated hatred. One broke in half but the two others remained, their fragile-looking wasp waists tougher than she'd hoped against the quick barrage.

They were too close now.

To line up another shot from her gun, she'd have to re-use an earlier trick but there was nothing for it and...

The last two vanished. Knife's Edge Three wasn't alone in the sky and the fighters from 'One had already cleared their zones and rushed to assist. The odds had suddenly shifted and now they tilted even more towards the attackers as OSA gunships pushed out of their launch bays and rose from the settling drop ship. Orders came through on the HUD; she was to run combat air patrol while the division deployed to play Steiner Scout football with whatever force the Krȃng would send to face them. Against the OSA's 'Mechs and tanks the Krȃng's force of mostly 'compliance'-oriented surface units had proved woefully ineffective over and over.

In the simulations.

The radio buzzed to life, a matching statement suddenly printed across her HUD, "All units, return to your drop ships immediately and prepare for orbital burn! Repeat, all units - return to your drop ships!"

Why? She looked around, head swiveling this way and that as she swept ground and sky looking for a reason. There wasn't anything there... And then she looked over her shoulder to where the sky curved upward as the enormous expanse of the Setting continued into the minute distance, the great silver-white curve eventually disappearing behind the horizon of the gas planet it orbited.

Except that it didn't.

Just where the 'Setting tapered down to join with the next, she could now see open air between the two and her head snapped around to check the other direction - same thing. The entire segment was now drifting free and it was not alone as she could see in the far-far distance the next had begun to drift as well, pulling away from the planet at an awkward angle. Yanking hard on the stick, she flipped a bitch and for a moment the nose of the aircraft pointed towards a distant city on the ground. She couldn't see it but she could imagine it; without the centrifugal gravity provided by the 'Circlet's constant rotation... "...Son of a bitch."

[Sunset]

RDF-Relentless, Somewhere Near the Front Lines, GEC-M33-20554 System, The Triangulum Galaxy... Republic Date 176.763.787...

"...Maxim 20 - 'If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win,'" Fleet Admiral Hennessey recited as she stood alone near the bridge's main display, her back to the rest of the bridge crew and her eyes on the distributed carnage spread across the screen. "Doubt that particular gem of galactic literature has turned up in Krȃng book clubs but they sure seem to have grasped the concept..."

The left hook the system's defenders had thrown at the cross-alliance attack had thrown an enormous monkey wrench into their plans - with the monkey still attached. Now instead of an orderly evacuation of the Circlet's inhabitants to the prepared quarantine and processing facility, the fleet was engaged in a chaotic search & rescue operation scattered between the seven now-separate Settings.

"...and Maxim 47."

'Don't Expect the Enemy to Cooperate in the Creation of Your Dream Engagement.'

Though that was something of a natural axiom and a corollary to the often cited 'The first casualty of any action is the plan.' They had planned and prepared and - in point of fact - fought a brilliant action to sweep the defenders (mostly) from space and the skies in a matter of minutes. Then things had gone all pear-shaped. Now that same force was doing their best to save as many people as possible while still worrying about the (mostly). Military units that had hit the dirt just hours earlier as combat regiments had reached the relative safety of space only to turn around under new orders to evacuate as many civilians as they could before the air ran out.

Or they froze to death.

A functioning Circlet was a giant spinning torus, the pseudo-natural environments built into the seven Settings kept in place by that perpetual motion. As soon as the linkage between the seven had been cut, so too had local gravity disappeared - followed shortly by the atmosphere that had been kept in place by the same. They'd done and were doing what they could but in the end the numbers would likely be staggering. Even here, on one of the newest and thus least populated of the Krȃng mega-structures, there would be hundreds of millions dead.

"All of which might be something of the point," she mused aloud, looking past the disintegrating circle of separated segments to the far distance where another Circlet had been slowly emerging from the diminished atmosphere of its host planet. The gas giant was still a giant - still swirling with brown and copper and gold - but if one focused they could just make out the emerging silver-white band at the equator. "This will set us back. Give them time to act instead of react."

"Which possibly explains why the answering machines just destroy everything," Captain Mercer injected. 'Relentless's nominal commanding officer had crept up behind her while she'd been thinking aloud to herself until the slender man was just at her shoulder.

"Why's that?"

"They'll do this again. Over and over again. To them the population here were cattle - to us, they're people. Every delay pushes the numbers more and more in their direction - they can rally more, improve their defenses, prepare a counter-offensive..."

"Good luck with that. They're all the way out here," her eyes gestured to the spread-out vastness of stars that was the Triangulum Galaxy. "What's important to us is all the way back home! Further than that, even."

He shrugged, "I didn't say they'd win. Not here, not today. We don't know that, of course, but we're tossing a little bit of Sun Tzu into our Howard Taylor, 'Every Battle is Won before it is Ever Fought.' We have numbers and preparation but you could say that the Krȃng are used to losing. They'll take every opportunity to delay our victory here so they can hopefully prepare for victory elsewhere. We injected a complication into our planning that the i'Halalaentariel do not - they're not concerned about the captive population. They're already dead."

"Which makes them monsters."

Again, he shrugged, "I didn't say they're right. In fact, this just raises the chances that there won't be any i'Halalaentariel left before the Krȃng in M33 are extinct. This will delay us a few days. Multiply that by a few thousand 'Circlets and we'll be fighting this war for decades. Decades that they can use to escape, again, and re-establish themselves elsewhere. All with one simple trick..."

"...being the bigger assholes. Which means we need to be better assholes, Captain. We need to get in front of this trick, keep it from happening or mitigate it..." her eyes drifted to one of the free-floating segments. "Enhance," she ordered, her finger drawing a marquee around it on the screen until she released and a crisp zoom swarmed out to fill the display and she drew a quick box around the closer narrow end, "Again!"

"What do you see, Captain?" she asked, bending to examine a certain part of the even-larger image. He knelt next to her, "Not sure, Admiral. What should I be seeing?"

Her finger traced along various shapes, highlighting them, "This isn't a ragged edge. It isn't smooth, but it matches. It was designed to interlock with the next 'Setting - this marriage was designed for divorce! We just need to figure out how to keep them together long enough that the kids don't get lost in the shuffle..."

[Sunset]

RDF-Unconquered Sun, Back in the Ares System, On the Alpha-Beta Border, The Milky Way Galaxy... Just a Few Hours Later...

"...as a recon-in-force, the operation was a success, Ma'am," Grand Admiral Erriki answered, the Secretary-General skipping past any formal politeness and straight to the meat-and-potatoes of the briefing. They were in her office and judging by the various displays and documents inelegantly arranged around the elegant space she was doing her best to keep up with developments both at home and far, far, far abroad without getting directly hands-on.

There was a 'but' in the Grand Admiral's answer though and it showed in her face, "The Expeditionary Force accomplished its objectives. The Krȃng presence in the system has been eliminated and key data on the opposition has been gathered and is now being analyzed. We've also uncovered some interesting new details on our opponent, as noted under 'Enemy Combatants Captured'."

The 'but' was the line above it. Initial estimates were that hundreds of millions of 'cattle' had lived on the target Circlet prior to its destruction and post-action analysis had borne these out. Of these barely one in a hundred had survived - a horrifying tragedy when one regarded it as more than a mere number on the page.

"Zero," Erika read off. "Why is that, Admiral?"

"Hard to say, Ma'am. What we've learned is that the Krȃng - mature adults - really don't like to be captured. There were specialist units on the ground assigned to that very task and they were able to capture multiple specimens who then immediately died. Committed suicide. Post-mortem examination has determined that this was accomplished by an 'enzymatic kill-switch' that is coded into their DNA analog."

It should be noted that the Krȃng DNA analog is only barely that. Vastly more complex than Human DNA, they have both manipulated and expanded on it until it can be used as both a storage and active mechanism with everything from operating systems for their various computer systems, spacecraft designs, and apparently self-controlled suicide mechanisms buried in its twisting depths - and that first bit is very important.

"Unfortunately all we have is speculation as to 'why'. As soon as they throw the switch their bodies begin to break down. They are dead in seconds, unrecognizable in minutes. Some of their DNA survives intact but these appear to be analogous to stem cells - these are encased in hard cysts and would appear to be another method by which the Krȃng can potentially survive extinction."

Erika nodded, "Makes sense. Well," she immediately corrected herself, "it doesn't make sense. Most sentient species have a sense of self-preservation and will allow themselves to be captured if there is a reasonable chance that they will be treated adequately to continued existence."

"One theory is that they assume we will treat them as the i'Halalaentariel do - immediate execution with no questions or.qualms. The monster that destroys other monsters."

"Plausible, though they must have fought other civilizations before. According to some of the combat recordings I've reviewed, the Krȃng were actively engaging our forces even after the 'Cirlet had been cut." The Grand Admiral nodded in the affirmative and Erika continued, "With some units joining the fight after it had been effectively lost."

"Which ties right into this," Alyndra agreed. "Our analysis is that they wanted to keep our invasion force on the ground so as to inflict mass casualties as the 'Circlet broke up. This would have been psychologically devastating to a conventional force as well as militarily disastrous. Even putting enough forces on the ground to fight for and take a single 'Circlet would take decades worth of production and population for many common powers."

"We're not common."

"No Ma'am - but the Krȃng don't know that. The weird thing here is that, if I were them, I would be making the assumption that 'we' are a major power, possibly extra-galactic, and with the capabilities that implies. They've had nearly two hundred years to explore M33. They should be well-aware of any civilization capable of fielding something on the level of the Expeditionary Force. But as I said - no captives. At this point the only way we're going to be able to gain insight into their goals, motives, and methods is observations over time."

"Alright, fair assessment. And what about this," she tapped the line several lines above the 'zero' meaningfully. "I can't have this. What have we got?"

"Nothing for certain yet but there's a couple wild ideas floating around. From what we can tell, the 'Circlets are designed to break up like this. One idea is to weld them together. Another is to count on them breaking up and have FTL 'ferries' ready to move them to a new location for sterilization and evacuation..."

[Sunset]

Defense Force Academy One (And Only), Serpentor, Kline's Hunch System, Somewhere Insignificant in the Ares Super-Cluster... Republic Date 176.839.397...

"...Maxim 71..."

There is, of course, no Maxim 71 - officially, that is. Just as the 'Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries' has become (yet another) unofficial handbook and source of quotable quotes among the Republic Defense Force, the Triumvirate of Yut's Combined Services, and most of if not all the other allied militaries, so too have the usage of various unofficial appendages to their number. Lists are kept of course - and perhaps at some future time the Seventy Maxims will officially become the Eighty, Ninety, or perhaps even a nice, clean, round Hundred.

But for now there are only Seventy.

But.

It has also become something of a tradition for every Academy Instructor, often a fair number of Admirals, and even certain Politicians with a passing knowledge of military culture to create and disseminate their own (very much intentional) 'Maxim 71'. Thus it has become an in-joke - every Instructor has their own Maxim 71 despite however many thousands of Instructors there are. Sometimes the more famous become known as 'So-and-So's Maxim' though many are just rehashings of an existing Maxim or borrowed from another, the original tweaked juuuust a little in the telling. Some even taught entire classes based around their particular applicant; such was the case with Instructor Van Buren...

"...'Your Clever Idea is the Other Fellow's Golden Opportunity,'" he stated firmly, the words written out on the board behind him. It was normally a window but Van Buren didn't like the distraction of Serpentor's wind-swept and harsh but beautiful vistas and so the windows in his classroom became displays, peppered with information that he found pertinent to the education of future officers. "Which means... What?"

"Keep It Simple, Stupid," a hand at the back volunteered.

It was a good answer and Veeb - an affectionate nickname that he despised - nodded and wrote it out on a blank stretch of darkness. "KISS - the more elaborate plan, the more likely it is to fail. And the more likely it is that it will present an opponent with a simple way to defeat you. Anyone else? What's it mean?"

A feminine voice called out, "Greed. 'The Other Fellow's Golden Opportunity,' she read back to him and the classroom in general. "Your 'Clever Idea' doesn't need to be all that clever - greed is near-universal. Offer your opponent a valuable prize and they'll often take the bait, even if it means falling for a simple trap."

"Good take," he again acknowledged. "Flips the obvious around. Anyone else? No wrong answers..."

[Sunset]

Director Silaco's Field Office, CRUX 69 Station, Deep Space, Somewhere in the M33 Galaxy... Just a Few Minutes After That...

"...actually, we've already got a solution for that - at least, in part," Katryna clarified, pausing over the plans that were laid out across her desk to explain to the Admiral. "We had some good timing there. We just completed the Rings around Jupiter - big fanfair, huge success, etc, etc - but to keep the individual plates under gravity we used a tether that tied two together and allowed them to spin around each other. I've already got teams working on getting those ready and in a hurry. Captain Mercer was right and it's worse than that..."

"What do you mean?"

"If we stick to the current plan, making sure to save as many civilian lives as we can, this war won't take decades - it will never end. Against the i'Halalaentariel alone the Krȃng could afford to just sit there and go about their current operations. If we've run the numbers then so have they - they'd lose maybe a hundred systems before the i'Halalaentariel simply ran down their resources. They don't have any infrastructure, no way to recover their losses. Their creators designed them around putting out small-scale fires, not an exo-galactic wildfire. Probably with good reason too."

"An infestation on this scale was all but inevitable. For all we know, the Krȃng could have sent seeder-ships out to every galaxy in the universe. Which was reasonably something their creators realized as well - and then they did the math on how one would counter that... Which is that one then starts converting entire galaxies into warships, stripping them of every resource and consequently every opportunity for life to either evolve or continue. At least from the perspective of fighting the Krȃng this is a 'good thing' as they feed on other sentient life. Two birds, one stone. But I think that the original i'Halalaentariel came to the same conclusion and so put some limits on their chosen battlefield."

"And we're not doing the same thing because we're planning on occupying this universe until it ends," Admiral Hennessey added. "They weren't. The creators were probably all ready to ascend or whatever when they set up their answering machine."

"Right! An interesting point - most every civilization has or is an ideological counterpoint to some other civilization and they're often neighbors. Then it's Welcome to ThunderDome! Two men enter, one man leaves. In this case they had the opportunity to retire before they had to get into the ring. Their creation slowed the Krȃng down but they'd already run the numbers and determined that in order to stop them, they'd have to stop all life in the universe, forever, everywhere. They didn't want that on their conscious so they made the choice to limit their future interference to... Well - to the end of next week or so."

"So we'll always be fighting the Krȃng."

Katryna shrugged; it was not a reassuring gesture, "Probably. Unless we come up with some way to completely eliminate them in one instant, they'll always be popping up somewhere else. Presuming that we stick around, eventually we'll run out of universe and we'll probably be fighting them on the last hour of the last day. We'll be really good at it, of course."

"Which is what the i'Halalaentariel thought," Benni pointed out. "But here we are, a 'week or so' til doomsday. At least for them."

"Oh, it gets worse," the Director held her hands up in a warding gesture. "It definitely gets worse. The Krȃng have done the math and they knew they could afford to just sit there and keep steadily growing; carefully, slowly, methodically. Then we showed up. If I were them, I'd be changing my plans or at least adjusting for the new factors at play. And they've already done that but they could do more. They could speed up their expansion, build industrial 'Circlets, push their technology forward..."

"I don't think they have a really good idea what they're up against," she pointed over the Admiral's shoulder to the back wall where the constant graph of Republic energy generation and consumption constantly ticked up and down like an over-hyped stock market. "But even with our industrial capacity and thus capacity to make war, they can make our lives miserable for a long time. Unless we want to look at larger solutions like the original i'Halalaentariel did..."

[Sunset]

Briefing Room Two, OSA Sigma Draconis-Class Cruiser Windward Edge, Underway to M33 from the Milky Way Galaxy... A Week Earlier...

"...ye gods, what's happened to his head?!"

"It's on backwards!" another officer exclaimed, his jaw laying slump at the end of his line as he stared at the hologram that turned endlessly at the front of the room. Most of the rest of the audience - a broad mix of Sanglanti, Hauyht, and Qi with a smattering of others - was in the same state, either sitting silently staring or turning to look at their neighbor with unanswerable questions on their faces.

"...it is not on backwards, nor is it a 'he'," the briefing officer began as she - an exceedingly feminine Sanglanti with more than a trace of the classic faux French accent the species was famous for - stepped in from a side office and took the podium. "And you'll be seeing a lot more of them so you better get used to it. That said, I should note that this is an approximation - pieced together from long-range sensor data and computer analysis provided to us by the RDF. We don't even have their name for themselves so until further notice they will be referred to as 'Clients'. As you know, the OSA is a services-provider organization and we anticipate providing many services to them on our arrival in M33."

"So where's its head?" the first voice spoke up with the obvious question.

It was time for a description; based on the size of the hologram itself, the being projected stood a gangly two-and-a-half meters tall which put it a head taller than everyone but the Qi. Its skin appeared soft, almost translucent, and as the illustration rotated it constantly shifted through a spectrum of colors from pink to blue to purple. The legs and arms were mostly familiar to those with a bipedal physiology though the legs were of artiodactyl form and ended in two long, split toes with a knob-like extended heel. What was most striking about the figure was that it indeed lacked a head - or at least what most present would be familiar with as such - and instead possessed two fins or vanes that rose from slender shoulders to almost drape off to either side. Like the being's skin they appeared perhaps soft or floppy though they were scalloped along the back edge in a way that reminded some of the fins of a fish. If the second voice was to be forgiven for the assumption that its head was on backwards, this was in the inclusion of an aerodynamic mass on its back that could be excused for a third vane except that it was more sculpted than other parts of the body, perhaps suggesting a mouth or eyes.

"They don't have one," came the ready answer. "Or at least not what we are used to in a central sensory unit. Their primary sensory apparatus are these two vanes," she highlighted the shoulder fins, "which appear to utilize the EM spectrum - like the mass sensors on your 'Mechs and tanks, though presumably far more detailed at a shorter range. No ears, no eyes."

"I don't see a mouth - is that a mouth?" another asked, pointing to the mass on back.

"That appears to be the primary nervous system nexus and presumably where their consciousness resides. Based on long-range observations, they appear to be very intelligent on average - likely why the Krȃng like them as cattle - though with what looks like odd behavior patterns until their senses are considered. While their environment has been purposefully designed to restrict their technology, they have cleverly bypassed much of these restrictions and have essentially industrialized without the presence of metallurgy or fossil fuels. They can't quite build a space ship but they can achieve high-altitude launches and air travel..."

"Bullshit;" she shrugged at the Qi's exclamation, "You'll get the chance to see for yourself. Again, the Krȃng have chosen them as their exclusive cattle stock for a reason."

"How do they eat?"

At least someone was using their own brain. While everyone in the room was eager to level their guns against the slaver, the OSA would also be participating in one of the largest humanitarian relief actions ever with potentially trillions of lives hanging on their ability to keep these people housed and fed.

"Good question," she began to manipulate a summoned panel. Everything goes in the same way it comes out..."

The programmed sequence finished, she queued it up and they all watched as the figure took an invisible something, held it to a long slit on its abdomen that could be mistaken for an elongated belly button, and the invisible something slid inside as lips parted and two tongue-like masses on the top and bottom grasped it to pull it inside. Virtual meal finished, it then relaxed back to the same neutral pose as before, "I'll spare you the reverse..."

[Sunset]

Briefing Room Two, OSA Sigma Draconis-Class Cruiser Windward Edge, Underway to M33 from the Milly Way Galaxy... A Week Earlier...

...continued.

Next question?

"So..." the next hand glanced around the room, an odd trace of anxiety on his square, fur-covered face, "How do they make more? You said it wasn't a 'he'..."

Odd for a Hauyht, certainly. The Leporidae were well-known for their ability to make more - that is, frequently and often. That one of their kind might have some discomfort discussing reproduction seemed unusual and even the briefing officer was put back for a moment by it, remaining silent as she once again manipulated the summoned console.

For those censors eager or worried about a forthcoming frank and/or graphic description of Client sexual relations and/or reproduction I say this; Calm Your Sphincters. The following will indeed be a presentation of such but it will also not be what you're expecting. Unless your particular links and fetishes run in a very specific direction you will not find them realized here!

Bang.

Her fingers finished at the interface and she slide her hands down to the corners of the console to rest there as the image disappeared to be replaced by another. The less-sexually creative might be forgiven for mistaking the summoned projection for a decorative basket or perhaps a hanging ornamental plant but the more adventurous lovers in the audience caught the reference immediately; "They plant them?"

"They plant them," she confirmed with a nod. "Or rather they grow them. From what we can tell, their young start as a growth on the body of a mature individual. This appears to start typically in a warm, moist area such as the armpit, crotch, or occasionally at the base of the shoulder fins. We're not yet sure if they are specifically fertilized or not - Clients do engage in physical relationships for pleasure - but there's no genitalia to interact so we're unsure if there is some transfer aspect to their reproduction or not. What we do know is that if one of these growths reaches a general size it detaches and is then planted in a basket similar to this."

She paused, "'Planted' isn't the right term - there's no soil. You might call it 'aeroculture'. They absorb nutrients from the atmosphere - which then makes them highly dependent on the Krȃng for the maintenance of that atmosphere, as well as subject to possible manipulation - while the basket serves as a growth or support frame. I do mention 'manipulation' specifically. Expedition Intelligence is concerned that the Krȃng are using their control over the 'Circlets atmospheric recycling and composition to accelerate their growth."

A voice spoke up, "Every newly-mature client is an opportunity for them to lay more eggs, right?"

"Exactly. There's no control group to compare what we've seen on the 'Circlets to so this can only be a theory but... The Krȃng are monsters. If the shoe fits..."

[Sunset]

RDF-Merlin, Near GEC-M33-268795, Somewhere in the Triangulum Galaxy... Republic Date... I'd Have to Check...

---

Maxim 24: Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable from a Big Gun...

Grunt's Corollary to Maxim 24: Make Sure it is Your Gun!

---

"...we've identified a..." Amaril paused, holding the next word like a delicate morsel in his mouth, "...deficiency in the design of the 'Crowns. And that is what we're here to test," the Elf stated as he stood next to the Captain's chair, looking towards the front of the bridge where '268795 sprawled out across the screen.

It was rare for him to take to the field - even via a remotely-inhabited body - but to the discoverer should go the spoils - or at least the glory - and so here 'he' was aboard the 'Merlin with both a plan and a weapon.

"A weakness?" Captain Drya restated, shifting her massive bulk around until she could look up at him past over-full cheeks. She and the 'Merlin were not part of the Expeditionary Force and so there was very little risk that they'd see combat. Instead the frigate was attached to the Exploration Command, part of a substantial effort to provide scientific and intelligence support to the combat forces in M33. Since she too was remotely inhabiting 'her' body there wasn't a specific need to keep it up to standards and she was clearly perfectly happy with that lack of need.

"Just so," he nodded. "The 'Crowns are an amalgamation of Krȃng and Lopt precursor technology. The first designed the structure and power source while the second created the faster-than-light interference device and the Krȃng were only apparently able to connect it to their systems - not copy it. This presents a vulnerability because while it is extremely difficult to subvert their technology, it may be relatively simple to exploit the interface between the two."

"You want to destroy their power couplers. But there's a problem," the fat woman surmised. "The FTLi field. To destroy the couplers, you need to attack the 'Crown and to attack the 'Crown you need to go through the FTLi field. Which wastes a lot of time and energy we don't have."

"Exactly. But I don't intend to destroy them."

A tap at the controls beside him and he brought up a hologram of the star and its attendant structures in the central holo-sphere. These were then outlined with a number of data-lines and points before he continued, "As you can see, in order to create a FTLi field of this magnitude the Krȃng are required to use a significant portion of the star's energy output. To us this would be energy wasted - we don't have the habit of eating our neighbors - but for the Krȃng this is their primary defense. To some this is an obstacle to overcome but I see an opportunity."

"What I intend to do is plant a tap or shunt between the two and take advantage of the enormous amount of energy provided. For this test, the energy will be shunted into a destructive process that will destroy the 'Crown. If this works, we may then be able to turn the same tap into a weapon, destroying key pieces of infrastructure such as their gates."

"They'll just shut it down."

"And in doing so become vulnerable to our regular forces. Ideally they will be forced into a decision between two bad choices, Captain..."

[Sunset]

Republic Defense Force Academy 16, Ares, The Ares System... Republic Date 176.996.791...

"...politicians should not be celebrities. It isn't a quote from anyone - unless you want to quote me," Instructor Huibrqtse punctuated this with a grin, "Though that might run counter to the point. First," he raised a hand and pointed out to the class, "What is the purpose of a good government?"

Several hands went up but there was already a general consensus, as that had been drilled into them from Day One, "To serve the people."

"Correct. It's right there in the name - 'civil servant'. So too should politicians serve the people - their constituents. All of their constituents. If a representative government such as our own does not represent everyone then it is as much a liar as the so-called 'communist' governments of Old Earth. And what is the easiest entity to serve?"

Another round of hands and a correct answer, "Yourself."

"Precisely," he tapped out on the board. "Which is why politicians should not be celebrities. That isn't to say they should not be known, but that is a different thing than followed, adored, or worshipped. In the ideal state, the status of politician should be equal with that of garbage collector. Back in the old days, garbage used to be collected in cans and set out on the curb to be collected and transported to a waste management facility. And before that it was sometimes just dumped outside and again collected but this time by shovel and cart."

"This was a necessary function. Garbage is a breeding ground for bacteria and thus disease - and managing this waste is and was an important function of government. Which isn't to say that it was at all glamorous. It was dirty, smelly, and hard - usually physical - work. Interestingly enough and certainly germaine to our discussion, garbage collection and later 'waste management' was also a frequent hot-spot for government corruption and serves as an example of why vigorous internal and external scrutiny of the business of government is required to ensure it functions properly."

"The point is that politicians should be held in the same regards - people who do a hard and necessary job but perhaps not those you might want to associate with until after they've had a shower and changed their clothes. And," he marked down another phrase on the board, this time a quote, "'If you treat them like kings, they will act like kings.'"

"These two points work well together, you see. A politician who is or becomes a celebrity is then often treated and regarded differently than the 'common citizen'. History is cluttered with instances where a celebrity might commit a crime or other misdeed and they are then offered the proverbial 'slap on the wrist'. A lesser punishment - if it was even punishment - than what would be given to you or me. So too would their status bring rewards. Gifts, privileges, opportunities. And when you combine the two... Celebrity and Politician..." he again wrote out on the board.

"You reach a particular confluence where the individual whose first duty was to serve others is now in the easy position to instead serve themselves. Someone else once said, 'No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.' Who does the celebrity serve but themselves? Now, you might be asking yourselves why this is important... It is important because some of you will end up interacting with new civilizations and importantly new governments on behalf of the Republic."

"Beware those who would treat you like a celebrity - it may well be that they seek to turn you to the service of yourself and thus away from service to the Republic. But also beware those societies where their politicians - or their garbage collectors - are treated as such..."

[Sunset]

Republic Defense Force Academy 16, Ares, The Ares System... Republic Date 177.044.978... Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...

"...an interesting point, if I might?"

The instructor looked up from where he had been studying his own notes to find one of the students - a cadet, young and with a bright shock of carrot-orange hair flopped down over one eye - waiting intently with her hand in the air, "Hmm? Yes... Cadet Dyer? What is it?"

"Sir - you mentioned something interesting there. About the old Kardashev scale - Zoltán Galántai, Sir. You said he said 'that such a civilization could not be detected, as its activities would be indistinguishable from the workings of nature - there being nothing to compare them to," she replied, reading off the quote as though it were hanging in the air in front of her.

Perhaps it was - and perhaps that was something of the point.

"Something about that strikes me, Sir. The idea that the presence of a K4 could not be detected because its workings would be indistinguishable from the workings of nature. That isn't an exclusive statement, is it?"

"What do you mean?" Stepping back from the lectern the Instructor began to pace the stage, his long legs carrying him back and forth in only a matter of a few paces while he in turn kept his face to her even as he swiveled at the end of each pass.

"Well, just because we couldn't detect the activities of a K4 doesn't mean that a K4 could not communicate its actions and the motives for those actions to us, does it? Or that it could not then listen to our attempts at communication?"

"No..." he completed another arc, the light falling from the tall windows that stood over the stage alternately casting his lean form in bright shadow or blazing daylight. "It does not. A very good point. I might quickly suggest that we would not then be able to understand these communications, but 'no' again - that would then suggest that a K4 would be so dumb as to not be able to ask 'us' to restate their words so as to be sure that we understood them. Or perhaps - did not. Though again, I would think that a K4 would be possessed of such intelligence as to be far better at communicating and understanding even unknown communications than a K3. Communications being largely a function of computation and computation a function of resources and a K4 having vastly more of those than a K3."

"So it is plausible that we could be in communication with a K4."

"Yes, I would agree with that. Now... That's the trick, isn't it? I could, in fact, be the mouthpiece of a K4. Right here, in this classroom - and I could, in fact, tell you just that exact thing. Now what?"

"I..."

"Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, Cadet Dyer. But that becomes a very thorny problem when one is communicating between vastly different civilizations that operate on a vastly different scale. A K4 might well communicate with a K3 - 'You there, that's stupid. Don't do that.' But to persuade them that whatever they are doing is stupid they may well make the situation worse by revealing some method of technology to the K3 that then results in said civilization's destruction. Now, I would personally doubt that end result - a K4 does not become a K4 by making those kind of mistakes. Generally."

"You think - we don't exactly have a panel of K4 representatives here to interview," she responded to a quick; "Quite right!"

"Not that this wouldn't be extremely interesting, mind you. But again, my suspicion would be that a higher-level civilization would, in its interactions with a lower-level civilization, default to either no communication or - if I might adopt the terms - a system of prayers and miracles. A K4 may well wish to keep a K2 or K1 from accidentally extinguishing itself but it would also be well aware that organic growth and thus experience would be the only way for a stable K2 or K3 - or K4 - to emerge. Save them from the worst of themselves or others but allow them to make their own mistakes along the way... And learn from them."

"So you would suggest that if someone came to the Republic offering up the secrets of the universe then they would probably be..."

"A charlatan? Yes. That feels like meddling and I very much doubt a civilization would - as a whole - evolve to that point while still retaining the aspect of dickhead. Now on an individual level... But even there, at least in the example of a K4, said civilization would have such enormous resources at its disposal as to make the actions of a single individual - or unmaking the actions of a single individual - essentially trivial..."

[Sunset]

The Secretary General's Office, RDF-Unconquered Sun, Somewhere Between Jupiter and what little remains of the Kuiper Belt, Sol System... Republic Date 177.050.993...

"...it's breathtaking," Erika commented, stepping from side-to-side to circle the hologram that hung in fantastically slow motion in the center of her office. And that it was; a great swirl of multi-colored gas that split along the distant edges into seven or eight tendrils - depending on which angle one was viewing it from - and dotted with the brilliant sparks of newborn stars, the nebula was a stunning example of the type.

"I'm guessing you're not just here to show me some pretty pictures though, Professor..?"

There was a question mark at the end and Professor Sckshaug nodded before clearing his throat as he prepared his explanation. As the ranking astronomer at LINT - the Llweyn Institute for National Technologies back home on ePyrk Prime - he was determined to make a strong go at a good first impression with the Secretary-General. LINT was a relatively new addition to the BRAIN network and... Well... Introducing himself as coming from 'BRAIN LINT' had already put him on the back foot as far as introductions go.

"Yes, yes - exactly. It is spectacular but what is more interesting is what came before," the Pyrk began, a note of enthusiasm creeping into his tone despite his starting intentions. "As you know, we are part of a project to gather large-scale imagery of the universe from its origin point right up until the current moment. One of the benefits of this project is a further understanding of the history of the universe - not just as a natural phenomenon but also its peoples, cultures, and civilizations! Take this nebula," he extracted a controller from his pocket and pointed it at the hovering display.

In a matter of moments the spectacular nebula had contracted, imploding and constricting down to an untold billion points of light and a slowly swirling spiral galaxy that much resembled our own.

"What I showed you there was what we here will be seeing in the neighborhood of two million years from now - these images being captured by a very large array some two million lightyears from Sol. This is what that nebula looked like another two hundred thousand years before that. A spiral galaxy not altogether unlike our own! Until..."

He pressed a button and the galaxy began to spiral forward, stars moving through the heavens at exaggerated speeds until a dark patch appeared along near the middle of one of the seven great spiral arms. As it began to spread he explained, "This was not the beginning. At the beginning it was what one might call conventional warfare. If one considers the destruction of millions of mega-structures and presumably the lives accompanying them 'conventional'. Higher-resolution images have captured the destruction of cylinders, moons, planets, rings, discs - even entire spheres..."

He paused for a moment to watch as more patches of darkness appeared at various points across the galaxy, spreading out as though someone had used it as a paper target for a fully-automatic BB gun. Each individual hole was only a tiny fraction of the complete volume but by the time he again paused it, the paper looked as though it was ready to fall off the hay bale, "Stellar disruption and then destruction. The forces in conflict realized that to potentially win, they would have to destroy the structures that ultimately sustained life. Stars in the millions and then in the billions were torn apart."

"A War in Heaven."

"Yes - precisely. At least in that phase of the conflict. But then," he again advanced the image and the conflict began to obliterate the spaces between the spaces, gigantic swaths of stars extinguished in a single sweep of a great invisible hand. "Then they weaponized the binary singularities at the galactic core and the captured super-massive black holes that were orbiting the galaxy itself. Perhaps this was one side - perhaps both sides - but the results..."

The results played out in front of them as the tattered galaxy fell apart, torn into an expanding cloud of gas that was punctuated briefly by dozens of strong bursts of light around the periphery; "Either the destruction of the weaponized super-massive black holes or the last gasps of their evaporation;" and then a single, brilliant expanding point of light from the center that washed over the newly-created nebula before vanishing. "And either the implosion of the weaponized core or its sublimation. I prefer the theory that the super-massive black holes on the galactic periphery were turned against the weaponized core and that the sparks we will see from them were their last 'shots' against the core. Whatever the cause, the results were the complete destruction of the galaxy. This was not a War in Heaven - the stars we will see are new. Nothing survived."

"Nothing?" she turned to him and asked, "Nothing at all?"

"Fair. Nothing on a stellar level survived. We at LINT have requested higher-resolution imagery along those very lines. Perhaps something or someone did survive the destruction of their former galactic home but against the scale of that destruction they would have been very few indeed..."

[Sunset]

Allied Expeditionary Force, M33 (The Triangulum Galaxy)... Between Republic Date 176.763 and the Current Date...

...Between Round Eleven and Round Twelve

"...well, you all know Karl. He's 'terminally brave';" laughter around the table confirmed the Sergeant's description of one their number.

"A recipient of many Darwin Awards?"

"Yes!" he pounded his glass on the table, a thick froth of carrot beer slopping over the rim to further stain the already-sticky surface. "So ol' Karl, he decides that what needs to be done is to use a satchel charge as a hand grenade but... Hand-eye hasn't ever been Karl's strong point, right?"

Karl - who was sitting across from the Sergeant - raised his mug and casually tossed half the contents in his own face, "'Cause of my drinking problem!"

The rest roared with laughter, nearly drowning out the Sergeant as he continued, "So Karl... Karl, he takes the charge, sets the fuse, gives it a twirl," he demonstrated with an empty hand, "and tosses the bag through the doors! But that's just Karl's luck! Bad!" The drunken squad laughed again as he finished, "And it hangs up on the top of the door! I shit you not!"

"No way!"

"Swear on my next paycheck," the Sarg held up an open-palmed hand. "Now Karl, he's just standing there staring at that satchel charge but the rest of us... We're running hell-bent down the corridor the other way, hoping we make the junction before the charge goes off, right? Well, sometimes luck tosses you a quarter because just then a couple roller-balls come slamming through the doors intent on gunning all of us down!"

"...knocked me flat into the wall..."

"...but the satchel charge dropped... on the other side of the door," the storyteller continued. "Just before the fuse went off! So we're face-down at the junction, bits of roller-ball raining down around our ears, and we're expecting to go in there and pick up what's left of Karl when he comes staggering out of the smoke! Funniest thing you ever saw..."

...Round Twelve

"...out with the old, in with the new, right?" Lieutenant Der Vanden grinned as he passed another charge off to his fellow Marine. Expedition Task Force Two had hit the system twenty-three minutes ago and the Crown had collapsed a mere thirty seconds later. Without the constant power provided by the mega-structure, the FTLi field that had prevented entry to the system had retreated to the edge of the system at the speed of light before fading out entirely. At the same moment as the ships of ETF2 had appeared in the system, the 212th Marine Division had appeared inside of the Circlet's super-structure - including the Lieutenant and the platoon under his command.

"I suppose - still feels a little weird to be placing anti-demolition charges," Corporal Miller opined, twisting the cap in the prescribed manner until the green band appeared to indicate that it was armed and ready. It wouldn't matter if one or any number of the charges somehow went off ahead of time - they weren't there to blow things up, they were there to keep things together. "Another?"

Specific things. With experience under their belt, the engineers had figured out how to disable the 'Circlet's separation system by - essentially - welding a pin in place. It was a large pin and there were hundreds of them but it was a lot easier than cleaning up the mess left by an intentional separation. In the future the charges would possibly be laid remotely but for the first go-round it was the job of the 212th to put them down, hold off any Krȃng opposition, then report back with any complications they'd observed.

Like, say, getting rushed by a division-strength opponent with everything from rolling drones to heavy gunships, all while inside the spinning structure.

Before the Lieutenant could even think about saying something the tank sitting next to them on overwatch had fired, a blue-white beam of energy sizzling across his vision to vanish down the corridor. A half-step and he was behind the protective cover of the hovertank's closer pontoon. Drones and smart missiles - the difference being whether they were supposed to report in before or after they had blown something up - churned from the launchers concealed under the tank's bow and it fired again, covering their advance with cyan death as they barreled down the corridor behind the volley.

"Too bad we only have room for one tank..."

"Another!" Miller called out and Der Vanden pulled another charge off the rack bolted onto the back of the tank, tossing it over to the Corporal who caught it with one hand before placing it an exact one-point-two-two meters from the previous charge. There wasn't really a good reason for the Corporal to get under cover. At worst he'd get a respawn timer and be 'downgraded' to one of the ARC units that was currently stretched out on the deck returning fire with their infantry rifles.

Something rattled off the tank's shield and the Lieutenant poked his head out to take a look. A Krȃng gunship had tried flying up the corridor at the Marines, guns blazing, but aside from taking out a couple ARCs it had done nothing more than to provide someone some future cover in the form of a heap of twisted wreckage. It wasn't all wreckage though; as he watched, three ivory-white spheres detached themselves from the underside, rolled away from them, and uncurled into some kind of rolling drone with what looked like a mass of jelly attached to the spine.

"My first face-to-face Krȃng sighting," he remembered aloud as he brought his rifle up and mentally changed the settings. An invisible pull of the trigger and the drones keeled over, their operators suddenly reduced to wispy trails of ash...

...Between Round Thirty-Five and Round Thirty-Six

"...and that's the end of the i'Halalaentariel," Admiral Hennessey pronounced as she watched the final battle between the Krȃng and their ancient nemesis dwindle to an end. The expeditionary force had done what they could but so had the Krȃng; with a sense that the end was near, they'd moved an enormous number of reinforcements into the system as soon as the first shot from the i'Halalaentariel star-cannon had been detected. If the ancient watchers had cared they hadn't showed it, barreling in just as hungry for a fight as they had previously.

That wasn't to say they'd been alone.

They - the Expeditionary Force - had been watching the patterns and they'd had a pretty good idea where the next strike would happen and as soon as the Crown had fallen they'd poured into the system in numbers that had quickly turned it into a one-sided turkey shoot. Between ISS, MIDF, and a host of other three-and-four letter acronyms there'd been enough to make sure that at least some small scrap of the i'Halalaentariel would survive. The numbers would have been staggering for even a decades-long war back in their home galaxy; tens of millions of ships on each side with throw numbers between them that made several fair-sized stars blush and resolve to do better.

The Krȃng didn't care.

"...or they quickly changed their plans," she decided to herself. "Which makes you wonder... Why?"

Against the firepower fielded by the Expeditionary Force they would have stood little chance - so they didn't bother. Talon-shaped warships accelerated to ludicrous speeds and took revenge on their dying enemy by simply ramming them. Whether or not they lost the system had no longer mattered; in the end, the i'Halalaentariel had been destroyed to the last. The Krȃng had lost thousands of ships in the doing and now the Force was mopping up what remained but...

"But why?" she again murmured to herself. "They could have waited until the next battle, the next system. They've weakened a hundred other systems - cut their defenses to the bone - and concentrated a huge force in this system where we can..;" almost on cue there was a flash and the screen darkened. An unusual step but the source was an unusual weapon with the massed vessels that had been gathered around that last WarSphere dying en mass to whatever Maxim 24 had been deployed. "Well, do that."

Again outside there were more flashes of light; OSA cruisers arriving to deploy ground forces to the Circlets. Today had heralded the end of the i'Halalaentariel but at the end of the day the Expeditionary Force would have billions more mouths to feed...

...Before Round Thirty-Seven

"...'why'? Easy answer, Admiral - they're already bugging out," 'Gat answered, his easy patter perfectly at ease with his hands-in-his-pockets stance. He wasn't there, of course - the 'Gat was aboard 'Relentless via holographic projection as he was otherwise semi-bodily engaged back at '94. Semi. When one was remotely inhabiting the body they were then leaving behind to project a near-perfect hologram onto another vessel that was itself inhabited only by remote workers things tended to get a little fuzzy.

"I've been keeping track and between the EF and its operation allies nearly two hundred Krȃng seed units have been engaged and destroyed as they've tried to flee. They know they're going to lose and they're doing their best to make sure this isn't their last stand. Which has me worried;" that was the 'Gat's job, of course - Professional Pessimist; "because we're finding them too easily. We've got sensor arrays laid out up the wazzu. It would take a lifetime's worth of luck to sneak past us and they're smart enough to know that. Which means they've already got lucky and they're trying to distract us from whatever they've got going on. It's weird..."

"How weird?" That was the question from the Admiral's second, Captain Mercer. Nominally in charge of 'Relentless, his confidence in the bridge crew was such that there was no hesitation in stepping aside to listen into the conversation between the Admiral and the Specialist.

"Nah - it's weird," their guest emphasized in reply. "Their motivations. Their reasons. They don't make a whole lot of sense - but I'm not a Krȃng. At least not according to my last check-up. It kinda feels like they prepare to lose more than they prepare to win, if that makes sense. Like they looked at all the history of all the monsters and assholes that came before them and said 'Yep - we're dickheads. Someone's going to come along and try to wipe us out so we need to be prepared for that.' Could be a religious thing. If they have a religion."

Which was still something of the trick. The Expeditionary Force was just about to hit their thirty-seventh Krȃng-held system and they were getting pretty good at it. What they still weren't getting very good at was taking any Krȃng prisoners. Without from-the-horse's-mouth information, all they could do is speculate.

"But yeah - I can at least tell you the answer to that question. I can't tell you the 'why' to the 'why', but they've probably already gone to ground and now they're laying out as many red herrings as they can..."

...Round Forty-Five

...once again the lights came on and the panels lit up, audible announcements following one after another as Lieutenant CesTur checked herself and the cockpit for what she now knew were the most important points on the checklist. By now she wasn't looking to make sure everything was right - she'd done this so often that she was looking instead for the one thing that was wrong. This was her fourth - or was it fifth? - 'Super Mamushi and every one of them from the first to the last had their quirks. It was also her third body and as she's learned on waking up that morning...

It had its quirks as well.

'...Docking Collar Released'

'...Beginning Atmospheric Transition'

'...Atmospheric Transition Complete'

'Launch Catapult Initialized;' and once again the launch bays on her dropship fell open, the hatches behind them splitting wide just before the nose of the aerospace fighter would have otherwise punched through, and she and her fellows were spat out to find themselves in a rolling thunderstorm. This time there were no harsh maneuvers, no evasive rolls; each fighter angled straight towards an unseen foe with some unleashing volleys of missiles against targets that had not yet made themselves known.

"...which is weird, if you think about it," 'Chesty murmured to herself as she lined up a shot on the center of a forest lake and pulled the trigger. The twin railguns mounted under her nose cycled through a half-dozen rounds and she pulled away, one eye on the surface while the other swept her instruments for anything unexpected. "You'd think they'd change tactics..."

Among her squadron, the prevailing theory was that the Krȃng didn't mix things up a whole lot because they were ossified; old, petrified, in a rut. The same persistence that had allowed them to endure for however-many tens of thousands of years had turned into stagnation. It was - some speculated - encoded directly into their DNA. She didn't know about that but she did know that a few seconds after she'd pulled the trigger a pair of gunships had broken the surface and then broken apart, their spines snapped by the incoming munitions.

"But nope!"

Attitudes varied; she was just doing her job but there were a good number of the younger officers who clearly enjoyed the exercise a little too much. Elaborate kill-counts were kept, trophies taken, and contests held with the winner the unit or individual who could rack up the most kills in a single action or battle. This had lead to some unfortunate incidents where people who were supposed to be there to cover other people weren't where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there.

Which was why she was on her third body and fifth fighter...

[Sunset]

Commander Timmon's Cabin, RDF-Tlokselo, Somewhere Random in the Good Old Alpha Quadrant... Republic Date 177.057.007...

"...you know what bugs me about the whole theory? That," Timmons pronounced, pointing to the chronograph that hung on the wall just next to the door. Like most of the furnishings, it wasn't just your standard military issue timepiece but instead had been obtained on one of the many worlds he'd visited. An art critic might label it as a grotesque; the preserved head of some furry, horned animal with the clock set in its open mouth.

"The clock?" Saryan followed his finger, "I kinda like it..."

"Not the clock - the date. Fourteen trillion years. That seems like a pretty precise number, doesn't it? Even for a really big one."

"I suppose. But that's the number we were given."

"Yeah, but it doesn't make sense," he declared, pulling his thick arm from around her shoulders to shift on the couch until he could face her directly. "Because of communism."

One eyebrow shot up, "Communism. Really. Marxist Druth'Haari?"

"No - the problem with communism is that it depends on everyone acting together in good faith. All the time. But people are assholes, right?" the big man explained, his hands moving in emphasis with his words. "The problem with the fourteen trillion year theory, as it currently stands, is us. The theory is that the Druth'Haari will set off a Big Crunch in fourteen trillion years because that's the point just before there won't be enough available energy in the universe to... throw the switch. However they're going to go about it."

"Sure."

"Communism."

She rolled her eyes, "Communism, right. So the problem is..."

"The problem is that, unless the Druth'Haari are masters of time itself, that there's no way that they know how much energy will be used up by all the assholes in the universe before that fourteen trillion year point. They might be, sure, but until we can confirm that..."

"You've got a better theory?"

"I've got the start of a theory," he countered, sinking back into the corner of the couch and holding up an objecting finger. "The theory is that the Druth'Haari will set off a Big Crunch in fourteen trillion years because that's how much energy will be available and that's how much energy they'll need, right? That part makes sense. They need a certain amount of energy. If it were me, I wouldn't count on there being that much energy around when I need it."

"Makes sense. So you'd put some in storage..." A certain look crossed her brow and she paused, "So let's just say that someone figured out how to harvest energy from the singularity event. We think the Druth'Haari came from the last cycle of the universe, right? Maybe? If they did..."

"Then they'd be in the right place at the right time to grab a bunch of that energy and store it away!"

"Yeah! And we also know that the Druth'Haari seem to have a hard-on for manipulated singularities, right? Artificial black holes... And black holes make good batteries, right? But they evaporate over time. A long time. Like say..."

"Fourteen trillion years?"

"Longer than that," she rattled off a number followed by a lot of zeroes. "But maybe they need a full battery! And they'd want a safety margin... So... Fourteen trillion years. You know... We might be able to actually test this theory! The Druth'Haari aren't talking, sure, but if they stored energy from the singularity... Where would I store energy from the start of the universe? At the start of the universe..."