Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dramatis Personae 

156th Fighter Squadron, “The Lancers” 

Flight Lieutenant Lily Nakamura, pilot flying Lancer-7. 

Senior Aviator Sabah Pasdar, aviation structural mechanic assigned to Lancer-7. 

Squadron Leader Joshua “Joust” Stone, pilot flying Lancer-1, commanding officer 156th Fighter Squadron. 

Flight Lieutenant Trevor “Chariot” Medina, pilot flying Lancer-3.

UNS New York

Admiral Keith Webb, commanding officer 2nd Fleet. 

Captain Alice Rhodes, commanding officer UNS New York .

Captain Sam Burke, commander air group, UNS New York . 

Commander Thomas Calvert, Naval Intelligence, assigned UNS New York . 

Lieutenant Dinah Alcott, Naval Intelligence, assigned UNS New York . 

Task Force 38 (Brockton Station) 

Lieutenant Commander Sophia Hess, executive officer of prowler UNS Shadow . Currently acting as officer in command due to combat losses. 

United Nations Space Force

Fleet Admiral Rebecca Costa-Brown, commander-in-chief UNSF, aboard dreadnought UNS Alexandria . 

Admiral David Wright, commanding officer 6th Fleet, aboard dreadnought UNS Houston . 

Commander Anna Kochar-Jones, commanding officer UNS Arsenal . 

Jess Thompson, civilian administrative assistant, assigned Landfall garrison. 

New Wave Security Contracting Services 

Victoria Dallon, senior consultant. Currently acting as CEO due to combat losses. 

Others

Dr Heloise Sarr, a scientist. 

Kurt Wynn, executive director of the Landfall Stock Exchange. 

Lisa Wilbourn, a consultant 

The Girl in the Tube 

—

Codex Entry: The United Nations of Earth 

The United Nations of Earth is a supra-governmental polity which arose from pre-existing multilateral bodies in 2098 following the invention of the warp gate. Its first iteration was the United Nations Forum for Interstellar Coordination, involved principally in orbital and colonial de-confliction. To avoid burdening national budgets, its organisation and the small rescue force assigned to its direct control were funded by a percentage of Earthbound commerce from the solar system. Due to lucrative income streams from helium-3 mines and refuelling tariffs, UNFISC became increasingly well resourced. This only grew when, in the early days of the Beijing Crisis in 2107, temporarily took over a large portion of Chinese space-faring assets, claiming de-confliction needs. 

As colonial ventures grew over the next century, UNFISC became an important middle-man - hailed as having ‘one foot on Earth, and one foot in the stars.’ Mediators were critical in the peaceful resolution of the Selene Crisis, and the Alpha Centauri-4 imbroglio that sank two successive US administrations. In light of growing federalism on Earth, including the European Federation and the African Concordat, colonial ventures increasingly called for the creation of an interstellar government. On January 1st, 2219, UNFISC was re-named the United Nations of Earth. 

In the century and a half since, the UNE has steadily increased its power through integration and the support of the skyrocketing off-Earth population. While major nations on Earth and significant colonies retain substantial domestic autonomy, the UNE’s control of the warp gate network and formidable United Nations Space Force grants it de facto governance. All constituent nations and colonies send representatives to the United Nations General Assembly in Landfall, the most prosperous of Earth’s colonies. The UNGA elects a Secretary-General with executive powers for five year, non-renewing terms. There are a number of independent colonies, freebooters, cultists, and adventurers living beyond the boundaries of UNE space in the non-aligned worlds - they’re known by some as the Non-Aligned Movement, although in truth have little unity to speak of. 

Codex Entry: Brockton 

Brockton is a frontier world on the borders of UNE space, one gate jump from New Boston, the self-declared capital of the Non-Aligned Movement. The climate is largely temperate and Earth-like. The largest settlement is a city of the same name as the planet comprising 4 million persons. The overall population is 11 million, the others scattered in smaller urban clusters. Despite the small population, Brockton’s docks serve as a gateway into non-UNE space, netting a substantial profit in tariffs. Secondary income is found from tourists, who come both for a taste of New Boston without the risk, and to admire the curious crystalline structures dotting the plains outside the city - their oddly organic nature of enduring curiosity to xenobiologists yet hunting for traces of intelligent alien life. 

Due to its important position, Brockton plays host to Task Force 38 from the United Nations Space Force, comprising a battle squadron under Captain Colin Wallis, and a patrol squadron under Commander Carlos Ramirez. Colonel Emily Piggot commands the 56th Marine Regiment as a ground-side garrison. It is also the corporate headquarters of New Wave Security Contracting Services. Criminal groups, including New Kyushu-based yakuza and neo-Nazi gangs who fled defeat in the Second American Civil War, have toeholds on Brockton. 

Codex Entry: Brockton: Task Force 38 

TF38 is the standing UNSF naval element protecting the colony world of Brockton and extraplanetary infrastructure in-system. It is comprised of the following: 

52nd Battle Squadron: 

 - Defiant , battlecruiser, flagship. Captain Wallis commanding.

 - Washington , battleship. Capt. Kochar-Jones commanding. 

 - Dauntless , battlecruiser. Capt. Burch commanding. 

 - Velocity , cruiser. Capt. Swoyer commanding. 

 - Assault , cruiser. Capt. E. Turner commanding. 

 - Charger , cruiser. Capt. S. Turner commanding. 

 - Triumph , cruiser. Capt. Christner commanding. 

17th Patrol Squadron 

 - Aegis , frigate. Commander Ramirez commanding. 

 - Gallant , frigate. Lieutenant Commander Stansfield commanding. 

 - Watchkeeper , frigate. Lt. Cdr. Smith commanding. 

 - Victory , frigate. Lt. Cdr. Westfield commanding. 

 - Vista , frigate. Lt. Cdr. Biron commanding. 

 - Shadow , prowler. Cdr. Morgan commanding. 

Codex Entry: Mercenaries: New Wave Security Contracting Services

Following a harrowing kidnapping experience on New Boston, sisters Carol and Sarah Fisher - later Dallon and Pelham respectively - set out to counter criminality in the non-aligned worlds. Initial advocacy for more robust United Nations action met with failure. However, drawing on donations and family support, the pair put together a small group of mercenaries for the task. In an audacious operation, they successfully captured Robert LeClaire, the head of the infamous Marquisate criminal network, and turned him over to the UN for trial. His one year old daughter, Amy, was adopted by Carol. This action put the newly dubbed New Wave Security Contracting Services on the map, and the company swiftly expanded, taking on recruits and donations; including, some allege, UNSF black budget funding. 

Today, NWSCS services several large-scale contracts on New Boston and beyond, as well as fulfilling snap requests. It is estimated to have hundreds of personnel on active deployment, rotating through their headquarters in Brockton. It enjoys a close relationship with the UNSF and holds clients to high ethical and legal standards. NWSCS contractors have, more than once, arrested their employers. This makes them disliked by many of the most powerful actors within the non-aligned worlds - although to others, the familiar white-gold-white hardsuits are a sign of heroism and unflinching professionalism. It is a family business, with Amy and Victoria Dallon, and Crystal and Eric Pelham, serving in various corporate roles.

Chapter Text

They met by ansible, like everyone else. Mankind sprawled across the stars, bound only by flaring fusion drives and the gossamer web of the warp gate network. To meet in person would be an expensive indulgence for any organisation. For them - though they had the resources for it - that indulgence would be lethal. 

The room they all cast into was doubly secured. Triply. Locks and guns and automated custodian sentries. It sat within a pool of counter-surveillance nanites, the walls full of them. Those in the know called it various things. The Tank. The Box. The Cauldron. 

Dr Heloise Sarr liked the last one best. But it was not the time for it. And if the next week went wrong, it never would be. 

“Assessment?” she asked the two holograms in front of her, crisply. 

“At least a million dead,” answered Rebecca, her void-black dress uniform proud and uncreased, chased with gold. “Whatever it is, it tore through the task force like paper.” 

“I think we know what it is,” said Kurt. A moment of quiet acknowledgement. They’d all seen the caves on Eden. “I’ve frozen the stock exchanges on Landfall, Arcturus, and Earth. It won’t limit the panic by much. Political situation?” 

“Being handled.” Sarr paused, then looked to Rebecca. “What’s our military response?” 

Crisply: “1st, 2nd, and 6th Fleets. I’ve put the whole force on REDCON 1 already. Conferencing with the SecGen in three minutes for approval.” 

“Do we need to start the project?” Kurt asked. The words were deliberately innocuous, and had the opposite effect. 

Rebecca’s mouth thinned, an iron-straight line. “Not until we don’t have another choice. I - excuse me, David’s calling.” 

Her portrait blinked off. 

Kurt looked to Sarr. “Are we ready?” 

“I think we have to be.”

Lily - UNS New York

“So,” Sabah said brightly, settling down next to Lily in the mess. “Have you decided yet?” 

Lily looked up from her re-hydrated protein mash (chicken). Grinned - because Sabah was smiling and she couldn’t ever help herself around her girlfriend. “I was thinking sunflowers,” she said. 

“Again?” From someone else it might have been exasperated. From Sabah, just teasingly affectionate. 

“The way you do the yellow thread is lovely. Joust was so jealous.” 

“So my embroidery is just about one-upping the squadron leader? I see how it is…” 

Lily didn’t bother dignifying that with reply, preferring instead to poke Sabah’s foot under the table - which got her a raised eyebrow and a poke back, and so obviously - and then the ship-wide circuit flared to life, two-tone alarm rising and falling. They were out of their seats at once, metal-emulate benches rasping back, before the announcement even came. “This is not a drill, this is not a drill,” it warbled. “Condition 3, Condition 3. Direction of travel is up and forward on your starboard side, down and aft on your port side. Condition 3, Condition 3.” 

Looked at each other for the briefest moment. All they could afford. Condition 3 - war-time cruising. Lily had been in six years, had had that only twice. Separatists? Raiders from the non-aligned worlds? A crisis on one of the colonies?

Then it was pounding feet. Sabah ran for her station in the flight bays. Lily went the other way, falling into the queue of pilots streaming towards the briefing room. At least not Condition 1. At least not general quarters. Not an immediate launch alert. They weren’t under attack, not themselves, not directly. 

Not yet. 

Damage control parties went the other way, hardsuit seals vacuuming shut. A detachment of marines, helmed - and two at the recessed doors of the briefing, rifles held tight in gloved hands. They filled in, quickly, from that door and the others. The whole carrier air wing, one hundred and sixty pilots. More than that. Lily saw Joust and Chariot from her squadron on the tiered seating, centre back, got there fast enough to slide in with them. Rest of the 156th was scattered across the room. 

“What’s happening?” she asked. 

Joust shrugged. “Beats me.” 

“Bet it’s seppies,” said Chariot. 

“You always say that.” 

“I’m usually right. What do you think, Lily?” 

She shrugged. Then. “Guess we’re about to find out - look.” 

The Commander Air Group, Captain Burke, had just come onto the stage at the front of the hall. She looked utterly unaffected by the situation, as if war alerts were an everyday occurrence. Not even out of breath, although Lily knew for a fact that the combat information centre where she sat was practically the other end of the ship from pilot country. Some people said that she could be in three places at once; Lily was inclined to believe them. 

All across the room, hubbub died away. Silence by the time she reached the podium. 

“Right,” she said. “I’ll keep this brief. One hour ago, an unknown force attacked the frontier colony of Brockton.” 

The screen lit up behind her and Lily - had to take a moment to process what she was seeing. A fleet, an armada, of ships. Not UNSF, not non-aligned. Like nothing she’d seen before - alabaster limned with purer white, engines flaring. Whatever had taken the imagery tried to tag them by class, by type, and only partially succeeded. Battlecruisers, swarms of them, battleships with eerie curves. A dreadnought, vast, at the centre of them with a suggestion of something winged dancing about it.

Joust swore. Chariot looked pale. She didn’t blame them. Just stared. 

“Task Force 38,” Burke continued, “was destroyed over the course of forty three minutes. The only survivor is the prowler UNS Shadow, which remains hidden in high orbit. Imagery suggests that the enemy is holding in low orbit over Brockton and landing troops. We don’t know why. As most of you will have guessed, no non-aligned world could have produced such a force. Nine minutes ago, the Secretary General formally declared this a first contact incident.” 

The first time. Three centuries among barren stars, with no trace of sapient life. Three centuries, crashing and cascading down around them. This was the first meeting of humanity and an alien species. The moment of it registered by dull, rippling degrees. 

“We will shortly be jumping to the Heskios system, one stage away from Brockton. We will be joined there over the next five days by the entirety of the 1st, 2nd, and 6th Fleets. By that time, I am informed, the General Assembly will have given us formal war orders. Questions?”

—

The days passed in something like a haze. Not the right term. A haze suggested a disconnection from reality - what Lily had was an over-focus on it. Every second scraped clean for preparation, hours dissolving into fractal-edged minutes. More briefs came down - Commander Calvert, the intelligence chief aboard, ran them. Old contingencies, older than the UNE itself, were dug out and studied. The whole squadron went red-eyed on the simulators, the immersion screens. Saw the battle again and again, from every angle the prowler had recorded. Washington brewing up in a cloud of flame. Velocity smashed to pieces by heavy guns. At least they used guns. 

Sabah worked too, to distraction and beyond it, her and all the other mechanics. Checking and re-checking the fighters, cleaning hardpoints and unclogging engines until factory new - she’d crawl into bed, hands greasy with half-washed off carbon, snatch a handful of hours using Lily as a pillow, whisper regrets she couldn’t spend more time with her, and then be up again. Lily tried to help, to compromise, by getting one of the crappy old mobile simulator packs and sitting down in the hangar bay while Sabah worked. Lasted about nine hours before Sabah told her to get back to the proper training sims. Better they miss a few days now than a lifetime later. 

They took dinner together on the second day in one of the port-side observatories, snatched ten minutes of nutrislop and ratbars. Watched other ships coming in, highlighted on the vid-screen. The slab-sided battleship Chevalier at the centre of a whole task force, more than that, ripping into real-space, blue-grey tendrils of jump ablating off. 

“They came quickly,” said Sabah, between mouthfuls of what the packet pessimistically, if honestly, called ‘meat sticks in tomato sauce emulation.’

“Admiral’s married to Washington’s captain,” Lily replied. Didn’t say - was married. Maybe there’d be survivors. They got some lifepods out. Had to hope. “Makes sense he’d rush. They’ve got a kid, too. We overlapped at the academy, she got a cruiser command a few months ago.” 

Sabah blinked, said, fondly, “You and your academy.” 

It was said fondly, It was meant fondly. It didn’t mean Lily couldn’t hear the edge of strain to it, a bright cord under old tension. 

And then, with deceptive swiftness, it was the last day before the jump. 

—

They lay in Lily’s bed. A single, memory gel mattress, not designed for the two of them. A fastener strap dug awkwardly into Lily’s side, dislodged earlier. Sabah was winding her fingers through Lily’s hair, worn long because Sabah liked it long, rather than the void-short helmet cut a lot of the other pilots went for. Made her look less like a buckethead, Sabah had primly informed her on their second date. A handful of days snatched on surface leave in Trentham. Not that second date really made sense, Lily knew. It had all sort of melded together, the colours brighter, more vivid. 

Sabah was embroidery and flowers and theatre and fragments of poems breathless from kiss-blown lips. Lily didn’t know what she’d done in her gun-metal grey, vac-hardened life to deserve her, and the wonder of that was one of a thousand thousand reasons to love her. A thousand thousand reasons for the ring box Lily was hiding in her seabag. 

“We don’t really know what we’re getting into, do we?” Sabah asked, without looking up, head nestled on Lily’s chest.  

“No. Not really.” 

Regretful, “Only another nine months. Looking forward to terminal leave.” 

Lily smiled, summoned it. “Still thinking Horizon for your trip?” 

“For our - “ 

“Sabah.” 

She looked up, gaze fixing. “You’ve paid off your academy time. You know you don’t need to re-up.” 

That was the difference. Had always been the difference. Lily was the fleet to her core, to her bones. Lived on and off ships her entire life. Sabah was in for a single term, tuition assistance for a fashion degree after engineering fell through. 

“I don’t think I’ll have a choice,” said Lily.

“But if you did, you’d re-up.” It was barely a question. They both knew it.

“Do we have to do this now?” 

Sabah sighed, rested back down, breath warm and stippling the skin. “No, I guess not. It doesn’t matter anyway, now. We’re all going to be extended.” 

“Yeah.” 

There was a silence, and it was delicate. Lily stroked Sabah’s hair, half-instinctive, taming matted curls. 

“It’s different now,” Sabah said, eventually, quietly. “I saw some of the footage. You’ll come back, won’t you?” 

Lily held her close - she had to, she had to - and said, rough-voiced, “Yeah. Yeah, I will.” 

—

New York entered warp to Brockton the next day. The whole fleet did. Not that Lily could see it, not that she’d have time to see if it she could. It was only a short hop, a handful of hours gate to gate. Barely enough time. 

Sabah helped Lily into her kit. It was part of her job, of course, the pilot as much equipment as the fighter, but she made it casually intimate - swift, clever fingers tightening buckles one by one, running a thumb over the pressure seal of the underlayer. Swaddling her in kinetic weaves, reserve air supplies, survival bladders. A hold out pulse-pistol, boxy, tucked into the webbing. When she was done, they kissed, a brushing of lips. Had no time for anything more than that. One more ritual in a world full of them, of scriptures called doctrine manuals and priests called deck officers and fusion lances for candles. One ritual for them. 

When she was gone, Lily retrieved the ring box and tucked it into her webbing. Only right. Then she walked to the flight bay, helmet under one arm. It was slow, swaggering. It had to be. They loaded pilots with so much kit that moving another way wasn’t possible. 

Pre-launch brief. They’d already had four, said Chariot. So now you’re getting five, said Joust, shut the fuck up and listen. Prowler SIGINT, sent by ansible, suggested the enemy - whoever, whatever they were - had a communications relay on the surface. Some landed ship or extruded facility. 156th was going in to knock it out. Hit hard, hit fast, punch through any fighter screen, if it’s got tentacles shoot it don’t screw it; looking at you, Mendoza. 

Laughter at that and it was hardly forced. 

Climbed into the fighters, canopies up. Final pre-flight checks came in - green, green, green. Suit synced up with the dumb AI in the ship, hard line connection. Sabah was on the gantry next to it, crouched at cockpit level, one final visual check. 

“Fly safe,” she said. Always said. Another ritual. 

Normally Lily would have some glib response, teasing and joking. You know I always do. Where’s the fun in that. 

It didn’t fit. So instead, she leant forward and kissed her again, on the cheek, swift and gentle. “I love you,” she said. Sabah blushed, slightly, cupped her hand to it. 

The announcement circuit drowned out anything she might have said: “Canopy down in T-minus 30. Deck crew clear the bay. All hands prepare for flight operations.” 

Slotted the helmet on, the hiss of its pressurisation working. Green, green, green. Canopy bubble, hardened synth-glass in case of jamming, in case she had to go reversionary, descended. Locked in. Then the ratcheting double clank of the fighter bay shifting, the loading mechanism bringing her into the launch tube. Her and the fighter, one and the same through the link. She could hear, distant, the elevators bringing the next bay up to the tubes, the cylinder of the ship rotating. 156th - first into the fight. 

In the tube. Atop the rails. The world was quiet and - for a moment - she was perfectly still. Perfectly alone. The ring box felt heavier in her pouch. She smiled. Not true. Never alone. 

Then. Through the com-bead. 

“Jump complete - launch!” 

Chapter Text

Sophia - UNS Shadow

They arrived without warning. Not via the New Boston jump gate, far out-system. Right in high orbit over Brockton. Nearly in the middle of the fleet, scattered as it was on patrolling and exercising regimes. Hundreds of ships. Low albedo, active scanners singing out into the void, lighting up Sophia’s displays like a Landing Day tree. 

Sophia’s displays. Not really. The captain’s. But the captain was ground-side, along with half the crew. Rotated out every two weeks. No one wanted to stay in an ice-cold prowler unless they had to. So they were hers. 

“Run silent,” she snapped. Default drills, actions on. Crew and dumb AI both heard, obeyed. Residual radiators hauled in, what heating they allowed themselves above life support powered off, navigation radar retracted behind stealth screens. Cold-gas jets burst once - twice - thrice, pushing them into a new orbit. Prowlers were meant for one thing only - sitting very quietly and watching. Shadow was one of the best. 

Over wide-band receivers, she could hear the first message coming out from Captain Wallis on Defiant . “Greetings, unknown spacefarers. You are in the - “ 

Cut off. 

Because the fleet - the enemy fleet - had opened fire. Jamming rose to a wail, mass accelerator rounds and particle beams reaching out towards the task force. Thousands of kilometres a second and almost crawling. Almost crawling until they hit. 

Dauntless died first. She was the task force carrier, caught with her shields down, right in the eye of the enemy. The display, computer-slaved optical sensors, just marked it - ship destroyed. Sophia saw what would have happened, what had to have happened, vivid in her mind’s eye. Metal slagging and melting, armour running liquid into crew compartments. Bolts slamming in again and again, staccato, crunching superstructure into new shapes. No lifepods. 

But they were the UNSF. The first and the last. One ship-death wouldn’t stop them, and all Sophia could do - all she and the rest on the bridge were allowed to do - was watch. So they did. 

Wallis led his battle squadron in, engines flaring, carving into the night, shields maximum. Defiant spat missiles from its tubes, dozens of them, sheaths of megaton-edged javelins hurled with muscles of fusion flame. Evacuation orders crackled out, none direct beam, none to Shadow , but heard clearly all the same. Crashing through the jamming. All civilian craft, evacuate. Frigates to guard. Exodus began like a cresting wave, fat-bellied merchant ships casting off from the orbital docks, barely void-worthy shuttles burning delta-v for the jump gate hanging in cislunar. 

Even if the enemy weren’t - she forced her mind to grip the word, unwholesome to the touch - weren’t aliens, with powers none of them could understand, the task force charge could only end one way. 

They went anyway. 

It was a slaughter. 

They tried their best. Fought their ships to the limits. 

Still a slaughter. 

Charger died, spilling guts and frost-white atmo in vacuum, pierced through, spewing lifepods - which exploded with casual grace, enemy frigates swooping in, particle beams burning and swiping the defenseless crew from the void. Assault went to cover the wreck of its sibling cruiser - staggered as two, three battleships struck it once, again, and again. Relentless, until even the swooping, graceful evasion faltered. Until the shields shattered like glass and the engine block was torn off. 

Washington responded. Task Force 38’s battleship, the finest model. All guns bellowing. Blotted an enemy cruiser from the sky. Then another. Secondary batteries carved into frigates - savaged a crystalline battlecruiser until it was spalling fragments and shards in a dead orbit. For a moment, Sophia allowed herself to hope. 

She shouldn’t have. 

Enemy fighters dived in, swarming like insects upon carrion. Dauntless was dead, the frigates committed to the convoys. Out of position. Out of time. Out of luck. It went down. Fighting. But it still went down, explosions snapping like light-bulbs as munitions found targets. 

They were among them now, enmeshed. Velocity had tried to loop up and over, Captain Swoyer putting his class’ famed speed to the test, spilling bomb-pumped lasers behind him, burning into the enemy formation at knife-fighting range. Chewed by point defence, by close-in systems. Turned to floating debris. And then the enemy were sweeping on, bypassing, heading towards the picket line of frigates, Sophia’s squadron-mates, painfully few, painfully outgunned. Aegis and Watchkeeper went to splinters in moments. 

Missiles were hurled at Gallant , too many to ever hope to evade. 

Sophia heard Stansfield’s voice, impossibly upright Stansfield, in over the radio. Or thought she did. Cold-crazy, she didn’t know for sure. “All hands abandon ship,” he said, too late. Then, quietly, “Goodbye, Victoria.” 

Perished seconds later. 

Triumph roared in, to segment that thrust, to protect the crushed frigates too late. More enemy missiles, thrown with consummate grace, their interception arcs delicate, spider-like traceries, trapping and ensnaring. Turning attack velocity into an inescapable weapon. 

Another ship blinked out on the display. 

Then it was just Defiant , Victory , and Vista . Drawing up, consolidating, in front of the gate still swarmed by desperate civilian traffic. 

The enemy were moving in close, into Brockton’s orbits. Two, three squadrons of them, at least. At least. They began to rain kinetic needles on the colony, bombardment weapons to crash through armour and pulverise concrete. Victory saw the danger, burnt along the top of the atmosphere, hull almost scraping the pressure limit. Lasers lashed out again and again, trying to stop them, engines on full emergency power - but it was one frigate. Just one. 

Nowhere near enough. Path intersected with nine needles. Shot down three. The remaining six hit it, killed it, and the wreckage of Brockton’s protector joined the assault it had striven to stop. 

That was the breaking point for Charlotte, the weapons watchkeeper. “We have to help them.”

“No,” said Sophia. Short and sharp and unkind. But she hadn’t been promoted for being kind. 

“Ma’am - “ 

“No,” she said again. Turned from the screen to look at them, the handful of pale-faced men and women huddled in issue drysuits. “The rest of the fleet needs to know about this. It needs all the information we can give them. Now and when reinforcements come to avenge our friends.” Paused. “We’re all Prowler Corps. We knew this might happen. We trained for it - stand still, stay silent. We’re the eyes of the fleet. Remember that.” 

Defiant had died while she spoke. Utterly annihilated, a drifting cloud of dissipating plasma. The enemy had a dreadnought - she’d seen it, one more contact in a sea of them. Now it was entering the fight. 

Only Vista left. Between the seething mass of them and the gate. Between them and the civilians. Part of Sophia wanted to open a direct channel, orders be damned, what she’d just said be damned, tell them to run while they could. There was nothing they could do. They’d just die, pointlessly. But she didn’t. Because that might kill her crew. 

And besides. Vista was Missy’s ship. And Missy didn’t run from anything. 

It started spilling out lifepods, chem-fuel boosting them into gate transit. Charlotte was muttering a private thanks, someone else said through jaw un-clenching, “They’re going to make it out.” 

Not all of them, thought Sophia. 

And then, as though the universe sought to prove her right, Vista’s engines lit off. Red-lined. Past red-lined, the frigate blurring forward so fast it seemed as though space bent around it. Plunging like an arrow into the heart of the enemy, ramming interception with their dreadnought. And on the wide-band comm, thrown out to the whole system, Missy’s voice. Painfully young, she’d always been the youngest of them and it had never stopped her. 

“I solemnly swear,” she said, and it was a remembrance and exhortation - see how I die, give meaning to how I die - “to devote my life and abilities in defence of the United Nations of Earth. To defend the constitution of man and to further universal rights of all sentient life. From the depths of the Pacific, to the edge - “ 

The line cut. One final ship-kill on screen - Vista down. Not even halfway to its target. 

Sophia finished the oath, quietly, almost without thinking. “Of the galaxy. For as long as I shall live.” 

The chrono clicked down in the corner of the display. Forty three minutes. Forty three minutes, for all that mattered to her to die. She looked at it for a long time, and did not weep. 

—

Lily - Lancer-7

Lily flew into fire. She flew into madness and into death, unrelenting. 

The finest machines ever created for killing concentrated in a space never envisaged for so many. No threat in all history had demanded it. Behind her, the looming bulk of New York , spitting fighters by the dozen. Alexandria , the largest dreadnought in the UNSF, leading wings of battleships in with heavy close-range salvos. Revel and her cruisers screened Houston as it brought its vast triple battery to bear. Frigates, corvettes, shot forward - Tecton , Grace , Hoyden - point defence batteries chattering. All of it was needed. All of it and more because the enemy were responding in kind. At least in kind. 

It took a half-second for the dumb AI to parse it, winnow it down to what mattered, actively tracked. Longer for Lily to. 

Joust’s voice. “Lancer-1 to all Lancers, comms check, over.” 

Rattling acknowledgements. Lancer-2, good to go. Lancer-3 - Chariot’s voice, stressed to the edge - ready to kick ass. Lancer 4, 5, 6. 

“Lancer-7,” she said, quietly. “All green, over.”

Her nickname was Whisper. None of them ever really used it. So many of the rest liked to brag and bellow. Pilots - was what it was. 

She fell into formation automatically, AI-lock. Joystick control was good in atmosphere, good in close manoeuvring when the enemy fighters were inside the shield bubbles. Here, even with all the chaos of it, she’d sputter delta-v on station-keeping. Arrowed down towards the planet, spearhead formation. Night-side. She could see the fires glowing from orbit - Shadow had sent imagery, the marine garrison blotted by nuclear fire. At least they used atomics. If they used atomics then they were understandable. 

Slightly. 

Sabah would be on damage control now, she thought. Allowed herself to think, had the time to. Fighter war for you. 90%+ long transits under computer control, 10%- hairball. New York was on the outside-back of the jump pattern, a whole squadron of frigates on close range defence. Not at serious risk. That was Lily’s job, that was Lily’s job and she’d do it every day if it meant keeping Sabah safe. 

Then that was put aside, a burst of radio. “ Cinereal ADC to 156th, 92nd requests interception support. Alter vector and engage, out.”

AI had it the map up a quarter-second later, holographic paths to target. Thought numbers, parameters, into the kit - charted the best. Old trick in the academy. So when the call came from Joust, “6 through 12, break off and assist 92, out” she was ready. RCS spun her crate up and round, burning onto a new course, search radar pinging, telemetery-share cyberlinks reaching out like grasping hands, come on, come on - 

There. Clear target pictures. Eight enemy fighters bearing down on a formation of bombers. Shield bubbles, tell-tale, around them. Had to save the missiles for ground-attack - get in close, then. Attack plan calculated swiftly, sent around on thread-thin laser link. Joust approved. 

Intercept velocity set, match theirs. Organic acquisition set. Blinders set. 

AI control off - and Lily flew . 

Went right, left, RCS flaring. Missile lock warning - swiped it off with a decoy, electronic warfare burning through it. Shield threshold in five - two - through, the ozone crackle across the skin of her fighter as counter-systems met. Double handful of kilometres. They were on to her, on to her fellows now. Whatever intelligence drove them twisted, spinning. Too soon. 

This is for the task force she thought, and touched the triggers. Feather-light only, didn’t need more. Twin accelerators turned tungsten darts into kill-marks. Trap the desperate things, half-crystalline, half-winged. Box in the streams and destroy. 

First pass through in seconds. Five enemy dead - counterfire from 92, from the heavy anti-ship bombers with kiloton payloads - snagged two more, modulated lasers flickering in, compensated and highlighted on Lily’s screen. She’d gotten one, she thought. Maybe two. AI would count as best it could. Didn’t matter now, back to the rest of the squadron. Back to the mission. 92nd pinged them thank yous over the tac-net as they dove faster, primary engine power, pushing toward atmo. 

This was the part she loved. Had always loved. The sound hitting a cherry-red outer hull, wailing down, cliff-diving and base-jumping and flying, really flying, not under AI guidance, not squadron-slaved. Turbulence and wings arced, banking and diving. Scudded in low, had to come in low, a pair of enemy frigates sitting above the target spire ready to blot them all if they didn’t. Oblique attack pattern. Warheads, armed. Switching to atmo-engines three - one - switch. 

Punched through the cloud cover, through kicked up ash and dust. Lily beheld hell, sprawled below. They’d equipped non-nuclear, worries about collateral damage. She didn’t think anything lived there, didn’t think anything could. Half-flattened buildings leaking rubble into torn-up streets. Flash-shadows below, burnt out husks of warehouses, glassy craters - kinetic needle impact sites. She’d never seen a real one. None of them had. 

“Steady on approach,” Joust commed. “Reversionary mode, manual targeting, out.” 

Rangefinder clicked down. Optical sensors on. Electronic warfare package engaged. Arced through the night. Half a minute to the release point, and it was almost looking like a milk run when - 

“Contact! Break formation - “ Mendoza called just before his crate exploded, orange-black splash fountaining debris. Lily swore, banked hard, instinctive. Just in time - an enemy fighter shot past near colliding. Swarms plummeted through the clouds, like insects in the hive. Two squadrons. Three. More. 

Air to air missiles chimed locks. Blasted off racks, all of them, self-seeking. Contrails of grey smoke and star-point engines. Splinters and wreckage. Fight was spilling across the city. One on her tail - she pulled hard Gs, up and over. Came behind, fired. They hadn’t seen them on radar. How? Baffling tech. How had they known to drop on them like that? How and how and - rolled port, raked fire - had to get through, get to the release point. 

Joust’s voice, level as it always was but the words came like a lance, “Engine trouble. Two on me.” 

AI pinged location - Lily dived, afterburner. The flat black of Joust’s ship, one engine leaking smoke. Two, now three, of those crystal bastards with shrieking white thrusters on his back, spitting crackling energy. She held her triggers down, smashed the first, the second - 

 - missile lock warning - 

 - twisting, turning - 

-  a colossal impact, like a god’s hand smashing into a sudden flame limned superstructure, alarms shrieking for the barest second.

Something hit Lily’s head and she saw nothing more. 

Chapter Text

Sabah - UNS New York

Sabah waited for nothing, alone. 

The rest of the squadron had come in. Ten birds of twelve, flocking home to roost - Mendoza’s down and Lily’s, Lily’s not there. She didn’t want to think of her as downed. No, that wasn’t right. She couldn’t shape her mind around the thought, jagged and biting. The fleet had lost. Or at least, not won. Pulled back to the jump gate, the enemy distancing themselves too. It didn’t matter, because Lily hadn’t come back. 

“Sab,” said Joust, appearing on the gantry. “Come below.” 

Sab. Truncated, abbreviated. Too lazy for the fullness of her, lazy in the hurried, brevity-coded way the navy liked. A name made into an acronym, into equipment. Not like how Lily said it, Sabah, a long aspiration on each vowel skipping golden from a smiling mouth. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Sab - “ 

“I’m fine, Joust!” It was a lie. Utterly, crushingly untrue because Lily hadn’t come back, and she said it anyway. Because if she didn’t say it, if she went under and said she wasn’t, she wouldn’t - she didn’t know what she would lose or what she would gain and was not prepared for any of it. 

Joust drew himself up, in her peripheral vision. Flight suit rustling. “I saw her get downed myself. It’s not - just come to the mess, okay?” 

“Is that an order?” He outranked her. By quite a lot. He could make her do it. He could throw her in the brig if she refused. He could - do a lot of things, and she didn’t care about any of them. 

The silence stretched. “No,” he said, eventually. “No, it’s not. Just - come find us when you’re ready, okay?  She was our friend too.”

Heavy boots clanked on metal away. And she was alone again. She stood - and then was sitting, and didn’t know how she’d gotten from one to the other - looking out at the hangar bay. The blunted deltas of the fighters she’d spent three years buried in. The gaping hole, like a missing tooth, for Lancer-7. Found it easier to think in serial numbers than names. Probably why they all did it, the lifers, nicknames and call-signs and hort-commands. To distance and ameliorate. Make grief a drinking game in the air wing mess. 

So she sat. She hoped. She shouldn’t hope, she’d known that and knew it and it didn’t matter. 

Like the cliff-diving thing, two years back. Lily had gone on some adventure training trip on leave, wrangled the paperwork for it, semi-powered contra-grav baseline down cliffs taller than Earth’s highest mountains. She called every evening, back to New York . One day, she hadn’t. Not until late, very late, flushed and excited - baseline nearly failed, almost slammed into the rocks, had to get rescued by skimmer, adrenaline high of adrenaline highs. Paused, when she saw Sabah’s expression. “Were you worried?” she’d asked. 

“Yes,” Sabah had said. 

“I’ll cancel - “ 

“No, no,” and the words had hurried from Sabah’s mouth. “I want you to have fun.” 

“If you’re worried,” Lily had replied. “I’m not.” She was back onboard the next day. They spent leave curled up watching holograms of Shakespeare reproductions. A love that should have been bounded, and Sabah had never managed it. Had always worried, had always thought herself an anchor chain in a mild sea, pulling back and constraining. This once, just this once, she wished she had. 

Stood back up again, on protesting feet and weary legs. Work. That was a thing. She could work, post-flight checks, before the others came on shift. Routine, practiced too many times to count, the most routine thing she could think of doing, so she didn’t have to think. Cracked a stim-tab from her kit between her teeth. Rhubarb and custard flavour - Lily had gotten them for her, and she almost stopped again. So many intimacies in a shared life that she couldn’t begin to untangle them. Threads taut to trip upon. 

Pressed forward. Joust-1 - the nearest. Diagnostic tools pinging, the easy rhythm. Meant to stop thinking. Failed. Failed utterly. 

Lily is dead. No ejection. Lily is dead. It slammed into her, physical - she squeezed her eyes shut, fists balling, tried to stop it. Not deny it just, just distance it. Just a little. And then she was sobbing, crumpled against the hull of a fighter, great gasping breaths, wretched and choking, tears staining. Nothing beautiful, nothing refined, just a person coming undone. Hugged her arms around herself, as if she could hold it in, and couldn’t. A thousand memories, a thousand thousand, crashing like a breaking wave. 

“And here’s your pilot, Flight Lieutenant Nakamura,” Joust had said, before Sabah had known to call him that, first day onboard. She climbed out of the cockpit, swung down with easy grace, shucking the helmet  - and oh, Sabah had thought, she’s really pretty. “Hi,” she’d said. “Call me Lily.” 

“It’s Sabah , right? With the long a at the end?” “Um, sure. But I don’t mind. Everyone in basic called me Sab.” “Well I mind,” she’d said, frowning slightly. “It’s your name. That matters.” 

“My story? Nothing worth saying, really. Fleet brat. What about you?” she took a long sip - non-alcoholic, because Sabah had mentioned she didn’t drink weeks ago and Lily had remembered and thought getting drunk around her would be bad. “That’s what I’m interested in.” 

A sudden pressure on her shoulder, the faint scent of Lily’s perfume under the carbon. “Whatcha looking at?” she asked. Sabah started, closed her tabs. “Nothing.” “Fraternisation regs?” “It’s nothing, Lily.” 

A knock on the door, late in the night-cycle. Sabah was awake, opened it - “Lily?” “Hey, Sabah. Um. Would you like to go out with me?” said quickly, words tripping over each other. Sabah stared at her, eyes wide. Lily blushed. “I just, I think you’re really cool and nice and…yeah.” Shoulders slumped. “Sorry.” “No! No, Lily - I would.” A smile like the slow-rising sun. “Really?” “Really.” 

In bed: Lily’s breath hot on the shell of her ear, fingers tracing. “I’ve told you how much I like this, haven’t I?” “Maybe.” “And this?” “Perhaps.” Lower. “Surely this?” A sigh. “Tell me again.” 

“Sabah, I was wondering…” “Yes?” “Do you think you could embroider my flightsuit? Just a bit. So when I’m up there I can look down and think of you? Or is that too corny? I think it might be, I’m sorry if I - “ A kiss, brief, to silence. A smile. “Of course. What do you want first?”

Sleepily, honestly: “I love you.” “I love you, too.” 

They ran on and on, like rain, like a tide rising and she could do as little to halt them as that. The flood walls over-topped, the levees buckled. Caught at the centre of it, howling. It subsided, eventually. Just a little. Not all consuming, anymore, not yet and she found the space, the time, to hate herself for it. To think, to know, that Lily wouldn’t have mourned like this. She wouldn’t be reduced to catatonia. She’d be out there fighting, or doing something. Sabah could do that too. She could wallow later - hah, as if she had a choice. 

Stumbling, unsteady feet and shaking, unsteady hands brought up the recording from Joust’s crate. He’d had engine trouble, he’d said it coming back, a shot slamming into the rear repulsor. They’d quick-patched it, her and the other mechanics, but - but she could do a better job. A deeper fix. Diagnose the damage, treat it. She wasn’t weak. Or if she was she’d turn it into determination. Lily was gone. She’d do her part in paying it back. 

AI cast it to the pad she’d unfurled from a webbing pouch. She saw it playing in compressed, spooling form. Lily - not Lily, don’t think of her like that, Allah forgive me, think of the ships it’s better to think of the ships - Lancer-7 falling back to cover Lancer-1, weaving graceful through clouds of fighters. But - she looked again, rewound. Joust was an aggressive pilot, she knew that. Lily called up holograms of their simulation battles in their room, walked around them, making annotations in light-pen - Sabah bit back a sob, instinctive, dug her fingernails into her palms. 

He was an aggressive pilot and he’d started falling back before the shot which smacked his engine. 

Why? What had he seen? 

Diagnostic tool was in her hand, the engine casing half-off in moments - and then the second shielding layer, coming up to the primary reserve on fusion coolant. Engine trouble was all he’d said, was all the alerts said, pilots weren’t expected and didn’t expect to need to know more than that. Had he had the alert before the external damage? She was telling herself that she was chasing ghosts, and half-crumpled at the phrasing, when her diagnostic pinged her - micro-fractures in the tertiary coolant bottle. 

She blinked. 

Tried it again. Same result. Not lethal, but enough to impair engine functionality. But they would have caught that, they’d have to have. 

Hurried steps over to equipment locker, different diagnostic in hand. Same result. How had they missed it? But then again; they’d accounted for it on the third day before the jump. This part of the engine wasn’t finicky, not next to the upper layers. She hadn’t done Lancer-1, but she’d seen the results of the inspection, Lancer-9’s engineer had done it. Always blind verify. It’d been fine then. And this - this was too big to miss. 

Which suggested, and her brain stepped through the obvious corollaries for all it didn’t want to, that someone had done it deliberately. 

The thought froze her for a moment. Stock-still. Not incompetence. Sabotage. Anyone in the squadron had access, and they didn’t run cameras in the flight bay proper - void-hardening them wasn’t worth the cost. Breath came faster without meaning to. Someone had sabotaged Joust’s crate. Which had made him fall back. 

Which had killed Lily. 

She - she didn’t know what to do. Report it. Obviously. Yes. But. What if whoever it was came back and erased the mistake? Would the chain believe her? Would Joust? One woman, one bereaved woman. And even if they did, they were at war, they were at war right now. Too many opportunities for whoever had done this to get away. 

Evidence. She needed hard evidence that someone was tampering. They’d come back, probably. Couldn’t be certain but probably. She could set up a camera, stealth it somewhere, void-harden enough for a handful of days. One of the miserable things she’d had to learn by necessity at college, had tried to lean on before it had all gotten too much. 

Took a deeper breath, slower, deliberate. Squared her shoulders. 

Someone had murdered Lily. She was going to find out who it was. And then she was going to toss them out of an airlock. 

Chapter Text

Lily - Brockton

Lily awoke, and had a blinking, gummy second of being pleased before she regretted it. Her head hurt, lesser pains in her legs. Training kicked in, training or instinct, melded together. Head first. Raised a tentative arm to check for it - helmet was perforated, half-hanging on the left side. Pressed fingers through, wet with blood, cuts stinging. But only cuts, scrapes. No softness, no shearing agony which meant broken bone. That was something, at least. Just a headache. No sign of concussion. One problem down - a million more to go. 

Not a million. Identify - categorise - resolve. She’d been trained, clung into it. 

The visor was broken, fuzzed to anti-flash static. Must have auto-polarised when the canopy smashed in - she could feel a half-dead breeze on her face. Wrenched the ruined helmet off. She’d blacked out. That much, remembered. Missile strike. Ship must have landed itself. 

Looked at it. 

What was left of it. A ragged hole through the right wing. No left wing at all. Nose crumbled up from impact, seen dimly through shattered synth-glass panels. Sabah would - 

Sabah. 

The weight of it crashed home. Downed. Helmet down, too, and the entire area comms denied. Sabah would think she was dead. Maybe hold out hope but - the fighter was banged up, the place swarming with hostiles, it was a miracle she’d made it to the ground at all. She didn’t want to think about what would happen, about how she might - she didn’t know. She was a pilot but they hadn’t thought about death, hadn’t talked about it. Not really, had never had to, but for one snatched conversation promising to come back. 

Well. She’d made a promise. She was going to stick by it. 

One hand fished, instinctive, in her webbing - the reassuring weight of the ring box still there. Thank the laws of physics or luck or Sabah’s god. It was the smallest thing, the very smallest, and a weight relieved regardless. 

Then: she hit the emergency cockpit release, explosive bolts blowing. Too loud, but couldn’t be avoided. Clambering up and out on protesting legs, bruised but not broken. Pulse pistol drawn, armed, chamber active. Not that it’d do much good - but better to have it. Emerged from metal carcass. Stopped. 

Had to stop. The devastation was almost a physical wall, the charred skeleton of a dead city. They’d been briefed, they all knew Brockton had been bombarded. But that had been high-level satellite shots, different textures of grey. Intellectual. Even seeing it from on high, flying in, had been less. Bodies of buildings reared around her, like creatures from Old Earth, shattered bones of dead fingers clawing skywards. Ash was falling, flakes spiralling and caught on the wind, and dust too. Chunks of rubble dotted the street, rocket blasts and artillery fire and impact craters. 

Brockton had fought. It hadn’t helped. 

She wrenched herself from stupor before it got her killed, darted into cover, a pile of fallen blocks each heavier than a man, tossed aside careless. Crouched, low into the muck of it, cracked asphalt and concrete splinters digging into her kit. Still too bulky, too slow, to visible. Couldn’t shed it yet. Legs hurt, not great. Unstable, worse. Needed her land-legs back under her - too long in planed-smooth corridors and consistent grav. Such a nothing to worry about. 

Nothings could get you killed. 

Had an inertial map on the smart-screen in the flight suit sleeve. Low-res, low-think, enough for something. Brought it up, tried to orientate by sight - nothing. None of the information accomodated for the shattered mess of it all. New plan. Landmarks. The most obvious was the spire she’d been sent to destroy, looming thrice the height of the tallest skyscraper directly due south. Get away from that, then. She had an emergency beacon in her webbing, along with food, water purification tablets, magazines for the pistol. Whole lot. No shelter but the city would provide, perhaps. She could sneak away north, to the outskirts, and - well. Find somewhere to signal for help. 

Hope like hell the fleet was listening. 

Geiger counter in the kit clicked before she silenced it - realised it’d been clicking for a while. She’d had her counter-rad shots. That’d have to be enough. 

Would need to move, of course, and move soon, to boot. The enemy - 

Footsteps. She pressed herself down further, head pounding. Peered through a crack in the stone blocks out onto the road - and almost gagged, almost threw up. Those weren’t aliens. They weren’t humans, either. 

But they had been, once. 

Four of them. Think about that, think about fireteam element, organisation. Don’t think about the - she couldn’t not think about it. Flesh melted, moulded together like wax. Three heads on one, two on another. Bulging like tumours, like fruit spoiled and stretched seam-tight. One - she thought it’d been a woman, she couldn’t be sure - was mottled with blisters, red and stark. And all of them were cratered in stark white crystalline growths, like the fighters and the ships and so much worse, extruding from torn skin and pit-wounds. Two had rifles clutched in their hands and scraps of green cloth on - 

Oh. Those had been some of marine garrison, then. 

Her heart was racing, thumping. Fingers tightened, sweat-slick on the pistol grip. Stay still, stay silent. Don’t move. You can’t shoot them, you can’t fight them, they might summon reinforcements. Their disappearance would be noted. SERE basics. Almost laughed for the childishness of it, of how she clung to that as if it meant anything here, now, and yet there she was - clinging. Because what else could she do? 

They were searching the fighter. Pawing at it with leaking, smearing, crystal-claw tipped hands. Her Lancer-7, Sabah’s baby, polluted. Dead, before, but at least some dignity in that. But she couldn’t do anything, wouldn’t. Just - just don’t come closer. Don’t have UAS. Don’t have sniffers and sensors and hunter biomorphs. 

It could have been minutes, could have been hours. The four stepped away from their search, wracked bodies filmy with dust. Lily let herself breath. 

A mistake. 

One twisted, jerked up onto the toes of its bowed legs, spasms wracking, two too-wide, too-human eyes closed. 

Opened. Glowing gold, the crystals erupting from it the same. It turned. Looked directly at her hiding place. 

Began to advance. The others followed, arcing round. 

Lily couldn’t die. She was about to die, but she couldn’t, she’d told Sabah she’d come back and she would, she would do it, she had to propose, there was a plan - and that was about to be cut apart - and if she stood to fire the monsters with rifles would kill her - and if she didn’t the things with claws would - 

And then with a sound like zipping hail, gunfire smashed into the enemy. 

One was down before she could see it, black-red blood fountaining from impact craters. The other creature with a gun whirled, too fast for its bulk - ruptured, centre mass, pulse rounds carving. 

A woman was charging into the open, white-gold hardsuit smeared with dust and blood, bayonet gleaming on the end of a still-smoking pulse rifle. Cannoned into the one with the golden eyes, blade ripping into it. The final monster turned, eerie precision to strike at the woman’s back with lethal claws. 

Lily was on her feet, firing, before she realised it. Three three round bursts. Half the mag. Right into it, kill it kill it kill it - it stumbled, fell back. Collapsed. 

The woman wrenched her bayonet clear from the corpse she’d made. The golden light in its eyes, its crystals, flickered and died. Better to think of it as an it. Her suit shucked the viscera as she turned. 

“Nice shooting,” said the woman. 

“Thanks for the save,” Lily replied, evenly, without lowering her pistol. “Who are you?” 

Pressure seals hissed, the helmet swung off, showing a human, thank everything, a woman with tightly cropped blonde hair. Her age - no, younger. “Victoria Dallon, New Wave. Come with me if you want to live.” 

— 

Sarr - Undisclosed

Just Sarr and Rebecca on the call. The rest couldn’t be spared, and even they had only a handful of snatched moments. Kurt was managing market panics full time, David was with the fleet the same as Rebecca, and the less said about what Contessa was having to do on Earth, the better. 

“The situation is poor,” said Rebecca, briskly. In combat gear, still dappled with something Sarr couldn’t make out through the holographic light. Fire suppressant foam. Alexandria was a front line ship, Rebecca’s first love, and she was always in the thick of it. The rest of them had tried to dissuade her and met with very well reasoned but ultimately mulish opposition. 

“How bad?” Sarr asked. 

Pursed lips. “Seven battle squadrons worth of ships catastrophically killed before I ordered withdrawal to a defensive position around the jump gate. Another four are jumping back to orbital dockyards for repairs. 1st Fleet is badly attrited, as are the front-line combatants for 2nd. 6th remains relatively intact, as does 2nd’s carrier force.” 

Dr Heloise Sarr was not someone who reeled. She never had been, not even in the catacombs of a dead species on Eden, the walls carved with a final torch thrown forward before eternal silence. But the report sobered. Over one hundred vessels out of the fight, from a starting strength of five hundred. More dead in a double-handful of hours than the UNSF had sustained in centuries. 

“And the enemy?” 

“Substantial attritional losses too, and they’ve pulled back to the other side of the planet, but we can’t get inside their decision loop. They coordinate too quickly, as if they’re hive-networked, or they know what we’re going to do before we do it. And their electronic warfare capabilities are highly targeted. That spire on the surface might be part of the explanation, but in truth - I don’t know how they’re doing it,” and that startled Sarr more than anything else, because Rebecca didn’t like to say things like that, almost never had to. “It’s possible there are traitors in the fleet. Infiltration, mind control. I can’t be sure.” 

“Given what we’re facing, we can’t discount anything.” The archives talked about it - creatures which warped minds, or saw ahead into futures with acuity no supercomputer could ever match. It was true - Contessa was living proof. They’d hoped not to have to face anything else like it, a vain hope and one held to all the same. 

“No. We can’t. The consultant?” 

“Onboard now. We might have something worth exploring - Contessa’s chasing leads Earth-side.” 

Rebecca flickered a half-fond smile, for the briefest moment. All teeth. “Not long for this world, then.” 

“One would hope.” 

A moment of silence. Then Rebecca said, “We can’t win this conventionally.” 

“I guessed.” 

“We can try again. I think we’ll have to, sooner or later, for political reasons. But in my professional opinion,” and that, Sarr knew, carried weight - they’d known each other decades and the partnership depended on that understanding, “the time has come for the project.” 

“Most of what we have is for ground combat,” said Sarr.

“I’ll take any advantage we can get.” 

Another pause, brief. Neither of them said what they were both thinking, about the costs of what they were about to do. The archives they’d studied, the ruthlessly meticulous records kept of horror after horror. Fumbling experimentation, verification. The shrieking disasters of the early days, and cloying sweet-sick burn-pits. It wasn’t a gift; it was a hiltless blade. Neither of them of thought they could avoid getting cut. 

“Our best candidate is in Brockton,” Sarr said. More to herself. “One investment lost, nevermind what’s left of the testing team out there. But we’ll make do.” 

“Do what you must, doctor,” Rebecca replied. “Too much hangs in the balance for anything else.” 

Chapter Text

Anna - UNS Arsenal

“1st Fleet, arriving!” snapped the boatswain before the shuttle door even opened. Anna braced up, along with the rest of the side party, as the whistle split the air and the ramp descended. An odd thing to stand on ceremony in the middle of a war zone - but some things were important regardless. Her mother had taught her that. 

Fleet Admiral Costa-Brown emerged, black void-combats with subdued rank markers. Anna saluted at once, parade-ground perfect - matched, immediately. The clockwork of formal reception took over, whistles and presented arms, the admiral walking between the ranks of sailors. 

“Ma’am, it’s my pleasure to welcome you aboard Arsenal,” Anna said, coming forward, the side party filtering away - a handful tried to linger and watch, but were chivvied off fast enough. In her tone - she didn’t say it out loud, you had to talk to senior officers in intimation, the second part of the sentence; why are you here?

“The pleasure is mine, commander.” A hand extended, shook, firm grip. “We should speak in your ready room.” 

“Of course, ma’am, if you’d follow me?” As if there was any situation in which either of them would refuse. Each motion of it was pre-ordained, had been since the warning had come down that the admiral would be coming aboard. Back before the academy, she’d had a phase of resenting it, of thinking it all so much bullshit. Had come around. More, in the past weeks. With mom dead - the initial shock of it, the initial denial, washed away into tripwires and landmines of grief - and dad just as busy as she was, the structure had comfort to it. Something to hold on to when everything else was falling apart. 

They reached Anna’s ready room in seemingly no time, the door opened automatically and irised shut behind them. Just the two of them. Anna offered a seat, the admiral took it, and so on. 

“I’m sorry about your mother,” Costa-Brown said, elegantly rigid in her chair. 

“Thank you, ma’am,” a necessary platitude. “I’m ready for duty.” 

Was that what this was about? A friend of her father checking on her? But she’d done nothing to invite that attention, Arsenal had performed above and beyond in the battle, and in any case, mom had always been closer to Admiral Webb than the fleet admiral. Something almost insulting about it; how many thousands had lost family members? The UNSF had reposed trust in her to fight and she would do it. Duty was the watchword.  

“I’m sure you are,” Costa-Brown replied - paused, as if to say something else, then shook her head, which Anna thought to be a good thing. She fished out a slim grey box from her combats. A signal jammer. 

“Ma’am - “ Anna began, because her ready room was a Top Secret cleared era, with anti-eavesdropping devices built into every square inch. 

Costa-Brown’s voice took on harder edge. Focused in. “I’m about to read you into highly compartmented information. Only six people in the UNE are currently aware of it.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Didn’t waste time on asking why or what it was. That wasn’t how this sort of thing worked. 

“Over the past nine years, a small scientific unit within the Defence Research Projects Agency has pursued novel biotechnological solutions to human augmentation. The modifications are invasive and extensive; the increase in combat power, substantial. The work has been strictly theoretical, until now. This morning, ship-time, the Secretary-General gave it operational approval.” 

“But it would take months to see effect?” Anna asked. She was familiar enough with human augmentation. Had a suite of genhancement herself, minor tweaks to maintain muscle mass in low gravity, require less calories in extremis, better rad-tolerance. The injections and therapies had stretched across years. 

Costa-Brown’s smile was razor-thin. “Initial testing suggests full combat readiness within hours.” Then. “Our intelligence indicates that the spire on the surface of Brockton is a key C4ISR node for the enemy. Direct attacks from orbit and aerospace fighters have proven inconclusive. We intend to deploy our augmented individuals by stealth drop as the fleet mounts a diversionary assault. Arsenal will be the delivery vehicle.” 

“Not a landing assault ship?” 

“Too fragile and too much a give-away. There are significant counter-intelligence concerns.” 

“I see, ma’am.” 

“Anna,” and that made her blink. The admiral had leant forward, fixed her gaze. “The whole fleet operation will be about providing coverage for Arsenal. Are you prepared?” 

Anna looked at the grain of her desk, very briefly. Same grain every navy desk was - they stamped them out in a single orbital facility in Lunar space. Watched Washington die, her mother die, over and again on the immersion display. Called it training. It wasn’t. No doubt what she would do, what any of Task Force 38 would do. She would not dishonour her mother’s legacy by doing anything less. 

Met the admiral’s gaze. 

“For as long as I shall live,” said Commander Anna Kochar-Jones. And meant it. 

—

Lily - Brockton

Lily stumbled through rock and ruin behind Victoria, matching the ruthless pace at the cost of bruised ankles, skidding and sliding on tumbles of debris. A circuitous route, and they had to pause twice before dashing across open ground, as the sun faded into the evening. She kept her pistol in hand the whole way, heart pounding in her chest. Could be a trick, could be an alien disguise or - she shut it down, every time the thought appeared, stepping on it ruthlessly. Take things as they come. Treat things logically. That was the way to survive. That was the way to get back to Sabah. 

Then - turning the corner between two fallen skyscrapers, twisted ends bowled over by kinetic needle impact. Two more humans, pulse rifles, one in white-gold, the other in marine olive-drab battle-dress and how her heart sung at that. 

Victoria stopped before them and Lily almost overbalanced, catching herself awkwardly on a jutting spar. Land-legs, damnit. 

“Lark ascending,” asked the marine. 

“Sparrow in flight,” Victoria returned. Swift nods, a scanner levelled at Lily - at least, she hoped it was a scanner - and they were waved through. 

“What was that?” Lily asked, half-whisper, as the pair stooped into the shell of one of the scrapers, a seventieth story window turned into a door. More men and women in uniform, and some civilians too, were stretched out throughout the carcass of it, sitting on makeshift cots and incongruous battered office furniture, eating, cleaning weapons, sleeping. 

“Heard rumours about shape-shifters,” Victoria said, almost casual, as if it wasn’t the most ridiculous - but then with aliens, with monsters - it wasn’t. Victoria laughed, brief and humourless. “Bet you’ve got some questions.” 

“Yeah,” Lily replied, shakily, following Victoria across the room. Sitting in an offered chair opposite a cot. “Yeah, you could say that.” 

“Shoot.” 

“Who even are you?” 

“Mercenaries, mostly. New Wave Security Contracting Services. My mom’s - my mom was,” and it was a stutter-step correction, as if she’d done it before, and still stinging, “the CEO. Guess I am now. We linked up with some of the marine garrison. How much do you know about the ground fight?” 

“The task force prowler survived,” said Lily. “We know they hit the garrison with an atomic. But not much more than that.” 

Victoria sighed. “Better than it could be. Yeah, they glassed the garrison, our corporate HQ too, right after smashing the fleet. Then started landing troops. Conventional resistance - we held out a day. Maybe a day and a half.” It was brief, compacted, dehydrated of anything but the barest of facts. 

Composure held by finger-tips, by scratching nails on unforgiving rock. If it was someone else, someone Lily knew better - god forbid, if it were Sabah in this - she might say something. Offer comfort, reassurance, but what could it help here? 

So instead, asked, “Those monsters?” 

Keep it focused. 

“Yeah. Some ships landed in the first wave, processing plants. They turn people into those things. I don’t know how. Just hordes of them. We could deal with them on our own, but they hit us with a kinetic needle whenever we made a stand. Tried hit and run for a few days, it almost worked, but they got really good at predicting us. Sometimes it’s like one of the monsters gets possessed, golden eyes, and knows things it shouldn’t. That’s a couple of hours after the spire landed.” 

Lily blinked. “That makes too much sense.” 

“What?” 

“They knew our attack path too,” she said. “My squadron got jumped.” 

“There you go, then,” and it was said sourly, or almost sourly. “If we’re fast and lucky, like we were, we can pick a few off.” 

Lily didn’t need to ask what happened if they weren’t fast. Or lucky. Ground combat wasn’t like aerospace, blotted out in flashes of light and G-force burns. Didn’t want to imagine what it was like, wounded, bleeding out as the monsters crawled closer - and the image forced itself into her head regardless. 

“There used to be more of us,” Victoria said, quietly. “They’re herding civilians into the processors every day. The prediction hasn’t been as fast fighting us since the fleet arrived, but we’re in no position to strike back. No weapons.” 

No weapons. Just small arms, and they needed to… 

“I have an idea,” Lily said. Victoria blinked, looked at her - looked at her properly, for the first time, as though she wasn’t just a charity case and a source of information, not that Lily could begrudge either. “I was on a strike mission against the spire. Not carrying atomics, but if you took the plasma warheads off the missiles, you’ve got some decent demolition charges.” 

A slow smile from Victoria, spreading. Then. “You know, that just might work.” 

Chapter Text

Sabah - UNS New York

Sabah sat in her room with her eyes shut. It was easier with her eyes shut. 

It wasn’t Lily’s room, that had been sealed off until the squadron replenished. But it was laden with everything that reminded her of Lily, anyway. A scrape along one wall, where they’d shoved the bed to make more room. The little pattern of lights Lily had stuck on the ceiling, after Sabah had said, off-hand, that she missed what it was like to see stars from the ground. On and on, tiny touches and small changes, two lives shaped around each other. Her pillow still smelled of her, the hint of perfume. She’d had it washed twice, three times, and it hadn’t helped. 

Working herself to the bone had. A little. Repairs to make, maintenance to conduct. Surface-level only. No one had found the sabotage. She checked the camera feed daily, parsing through it red-eyed, eating into the handful of off-shift hours granted by Condition 2. Nothing, found nothing, and it was all fraying. 

So she sat and tried not to think about anything or see anything. 

Someone knocked on the door, three quick raps. She hauled herself off the bed, levered it open - braced up, saluted. “Ma’am!” Because there was a lieutenant, blonde hair and green eyes, a splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Not one she recognised but that didn’t matter. Lily had - it didn’t matter. 

The woman blinked then, “Ma’am - oh, right, rank structure. Let me in, Sabah.” 

“Ma’am, this is - “ Sabah began, trying to say, my private quarters. This random lieutenant who knew her name somehow didn’t have a right to go in, she wasn’t her inspecting officer. That was her space, hers and it had been Lily’s and - 

The lieutenant held up the - meant to be stealthed, very against regulation spy camera. “Let me in,” she said, again, and smiled in a way which conveyed no warmth at all. 

Sabah stood aside, fists clenched. Took a deep breath, and then another. This wasn’t how people who broke regulations were treated. Something was going on, she didn’t know what - but she’d face it calmly. She’d done it for the right reasons. Lily had risked so much more for so much less. 

The lieutenant looked around the room as the door clicked shut behind her. “They don’t give you a lot of space, do they?” 

“You’re not UNSF, are you?” Sabah asked, cautious, backing towards her desk. Pencil pot there, void-safe, not much of a weapon but something solid to swing. 

A shrug. “Nope. Name’s Lisa, I’m a contractor. The admiral knows I’m here - the uniform just helps things along.” The briefest pause. “Sorry about the thing with the camera. I’m not here to get you in trouble.” 

“No?” Said sharply, because this was getting ridiculous - and yet, and yet, someone in her squadron was a saboteur, had killed her love. She’d just signed up for a single stint to get college tuition, Allah’s sake. 

“No. It’s a neat bit of kit, actually. Budget items. Guess you made it in college?” 

“Yes.” The final defence against that bastard Evan before she realised that even if there was proof, the administration didn’t care. 

“I see,” Lisa said, quieter. “Sorry to bring up bad memories.” 

‘It’s fine’ warred with ‘How did you know?’ in Sabah’s head. In the end she just nodded once, guardedly, and didn’t think she could manage more than that. 

“I was brought in to assist on a counterintelligence mission,” Lisa continued. “I know who sabotaged Lancer-1. It was Chariot.” 

“Chariot?” Sabah was right up in Lily’s face, movement so sudden she didn’t know when she’d made it. “You - when did you find this out?” Had Chariot been suspected before? It didn’t make sense or did it? He’d always complained, had always dragged but - sabotage? But if she’d known, if the admiral had known, and hadn’t done something then Lily was dead because of them. 

Lisa didn’t blink. Said. “This morning.” 

“How do you know?” Everything about it was impossibly irregular, outside the boundaries of anything that made sense and she - she wanted to blame someone, to blame Chariot, a person she could do something about but how could she trust Lisa. How could she trust her with anything?

Lisa tapped the side of her own head in a way which she probably thought looked cool and absolutely didn’t. “My brain is a slurry of unregulated interface technology and extremely illegal genetic modifications. May as well be declaring his guilt every time he looks at Joust, or you. I was watching him this morning.” 

“That’s not - “ 

“Also, I sliced his finances. Deep in debt, did you know that? Or was, anyway, until two weeks ago. And another cash payment directly after the first battle.” 

The words registered like blows falling heavy on a bell, percussive, each one with a logic of its own. Debt, payments, enough - enough to demand investigation, at least. No matter who this Lisa was.

“So why is he still free?” Each word bitten off because if she had this evidence, if she had the admiral’s ear, then she was letting a traitor have free run of the ship. 

Lisa smiled again, something with too many teeth and an empty stomach. “He’s just a patsy. My job is finding who’s paying him. And I need your help.” 

“How?” The word escaped before she thought it over. 

“I’d like you to talk to someone for me.” 

—

Jess - Landfall Garrison

Jess looked at the stairs, and then at the calendar blinking merrily away on her smartpad, and swore. Loudly. One of the very few perks of working on a military site is that nobody cared about swearing. One of the many downsides was a boss who kept scheduling meetings in fucking A Block without any notice whatsoever. A Block being the one building on site without any wheelchair access short of a connecting tube from S Block halfway across site. 

So, in the space of - check again - three and a half minutes, she’d have to wheel herself over to S Block, wait for the lift there, then go back along the rickety, narrow tube. 

Opened up the instant messenger, halfway into tapping out an apology for coming lateness, when a high priority ping interrupted her. ‘Jess Thompson to the shuttle ground’ it read. Signed off by someone with a lot more seniority than her, or her boss. So back around, and wheeling up towards the north of the site, level ground and accessibility clear all the way. The ramps there were actually designed for armoured vehicles and she’d seen a lot of them in transit for the war, but still. 

Electric motor got her up the last bit of the ramp, something Marissa had put in for her and - and stopped. Just a moment. Because whereas yesterday it’d been a flat expanse of ferrocrete, marked off only with landing lines and framed by hangars, now the entire shuttle landing facility was covered in tents, mushroom-like. As if a field hospital or a music festival had sprung up. Probably more the former than the latter but, hey, you could hope, right? 

Wheeled on forwards and - oh. Those were armed guards, at the entrance to the tent complex. Not like the normal ones on the gates, in their high-vis jackets and pistols. Black hardsuits with heavy rifles, full-face helmets. She worked for the UNSF, she did, but still. 

Looked down at her pad. No further instructions. The meeting with her boss had been cancelled. 

Went up to the entrance, by almost slow degrees. A ramp, for access, thank God. One of the guards waved her through without speaking which didn’t help matters at all. Definitely a field hospital, detergent in the air, clean white plasfabric floors. The external door shuttered behind her, a corridor, and then into the next room. A table, wheelchair height without needing adjustment. A woman, black, middle aged Jess thought, in a white labcoat. 

“Good morning, Ms Thompson,” said the woman as Jess came over. “I’m Dr Sarr. Have you been following the war?” 

Jess blinked. Not the question she was expecting. “Yes,” she said, without stuttering anything else out. She was only on HR support for the civilian component of the garrison but, obviously, she was glued to it. At work and at home, an alien invasion - like something out of one of her computer games come to life. 

“We badly need reinforcements,” Sarr said, bluntly. “The Secretary-General has approved a novel and highly invasive form of human augmentation. You are one of the candidates we have identified as compatible with it.” 

“Highly invasive?” Jess asked. It wasn’t that she was a stranger to talks about augmentation. In and out of hospitals and gene therapy to try and fix her legs, her back, before the bills piled too high. Everyone wanted a miracle cure but - but the way this was sounding wasn’t like that. 

“It would change your biology on a fundamental level. You would appear physically unaltered but possess novel powers - I’m sorry to stoop to the term, but are you aware of superhero media?” 

“This is a joke,” Jess said, faintly. Something out of - well, out of one of those comics Krouse had loved back at college, or League of Heroes whenever Noelle bugged her into playing, huddled up in layers of blankets because the heating only worked sometimes. Secretive government experiments and armed guards, she’d said working for the UNSF wasn’t like that to her friends, they hadn’t believed her and now - now she thought they might have been right not to. 

“It is deadly serious.” 

A crack-zip, once, twice, the noise carrying over faintly through walls. Pulse fire. Jess shivered - Sarr must have noticed, because she went on. “There is a low possibility of the procedure failing. In extremis, it may demand field euthanasia.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” 

It was - I mean, it was superpowers. That was what was being offered. A way out of a crappy job and student debt and last minute meetings in A Block. Anyone would jump at it, would demand it. So why the theatre, why the talk of invasive surgery and euthanasia - she believed those were the stakes, but if they wanted - 

“We need volunteers who know the whole truth,” there was a weight to Sarr’s words, of vindication like winning an argument, although with whom Jess had no idea. “The choice is yours, Ms Thompson.” 

Set against what the rest of her life was shaping up to be, it was barely a decision. 

“What do I need to do?” 

—

Lily - Brockton

It took three days to get the warheads off the missiles. The aliens hadn’t done anything to them, hadn’t set an ambush or sent an UXO team. Lily had asked Victoria about it, been greeted with a shrug - the aliens didn’t care about human technology, apparently. Just bodies. Theirs works on a different basis to us. 

Lily thought of the swarms of fighters spiralling in towards the 156th, the ignition-flash of frigate drives cooking off under a sleet of particle beams and hard-rounds. Different basis, like Victoria had said. And the aliens knew how to break human ships already. 

Even so, they had to be careful. Careful getting there, wary of patrols intercepting them for all the predictive power the aliens had wasn’t as focused on the ground. Then rigging live warheads into demolition charges, delicate work and if only Sabah was there - Lily thought it twice, thrice, each a stab of pain. If Sabah were there they could go so much faster, but she wasn’t, and so they didn’t. 

With the weapons in place, the plan came together across the week. Victoria took the lead in it, coordinating through runners and laser-links. Lily helped where she could, fiddling with communication kit, frequency hopping but this wasn’t aerospace combat. Not her strength. Half the time she just cooked instead. One of the good things about being a fleet brat - you learnt how to make ratpacks edible. 

The intent was simple. None of them knew how the enemy prediction worked, but it could clearly get overburdened. Present the aliens with a lot of threats at the same time, flood the zone, and they could perhaps prise open a window to get demolition charges into the spire and bring the whole rotten edifice tumbling down.  A swiftness that deceived, they were ready. Set out in small teams for the target, staging overnight close by. No fires, no light, grab kip and cold nutribars. 

Victoria sat down next to Lily on the rollmat, back from a final burst of comms. Both chewed, phlegmatically. 

“You know this might be a one way trip?” Victoria asked. Half talking to herself, half to Lily, she thought. 

Lily smiled without humour, a gash of a thing. “I’m manpacking a plasma warhead, I kind of guessed.” 

“You got anyone waiting for you up there?” Could be orbit. Could be heaven. Lily chose the former. 

“My girlfriend, Sabah. She’s on New York at the moment. Engineer.” A pause, what she wanted to say compressed by its own weight, by the ringbox in her webbing. “I was about to propose to her, before the attack.” 

“Hah.” 

“Something funny?” 

“I was about to propose to my boyfriend, too. Lieutenant Commander Stansfield, up on Gallant .” 

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” And then, before she could stop herself, “His last words were about you.” 

Victoria’s expression was glacier-bleak for a moment, before settling back into a resigned, tired bitterness no one their age should ever have to wear. “Yeah, I heard them on the wide-band.” A sigh. “But we can make these aliens pay, and that’s what matters.”  

Chapter Text

Sabah - UNS New York

It wasn’t right away. Lisa needed time to set up sensors, create contingencies. That’s what she said, anyway. Sabah would have preferred it immediate, to ride on the wave of that first agreement and be done with it. She didn’t trust Lisa. Obviously, and she knew Lia could tell, but the claims made - and the evidence, shown, because Lisa had retrieved the sliced financial data complete with unique identifiers - was enough to convince. Worst case? Worst case, she could take it all to Joust. 

She’d made a back up copy of everything, just in case. 

They waited until dinner. The person Lisa needed spoken to was a woman in intelligence, Lieutenant Dinah Alcott. Hadn’t answered Sabah’s question as to why. Just deliver the message and keep the pin-head camera in her kit running. Alcott was alone on the end of a table, eating quickly, past in a sea of tomato sauce emulation - still at Condition 2, meal breaks were short. She was young, younger than Sabah, swamped in her uniform. Something twitchy about her; but then, probably about Sabah too. 

“Ma’am,” Sabah said, sitting down on the fixed bench across from her. Cutlery was maglocked to the table when not in use, Sabah had to prise it off. 

Alcott looked up sharply, eyes narrowed a fraction. “Aviator…Pasdar?” 

One benefit of the name-tags. She’d teased Lily about them often enough but - not the time. 

“I wanted to talk to you, ma’am,” Sabah said, quietly. “I’ve found something out. One of the pilots in the 156th sabotaged a fighter.” 

Eyes narrowed further, she couldn’t identify the expression on Alcott’s face. “You’re sure I’m the right person?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

She could see Alcott’s fist clenching on the table, what was going on, why had Lisa asked her to - but she’d agreed, and she was going to go ahead with it. She wasn’t someone who backed down from deals, never had been. 

“It’s a serious accusation. Do you have any proof?” 

“He’s - Medina is the pilot - been acting suspiciously all week. And I managed to get some video footage - one of the weapon pod recorders was left running.” A bald lie. But that was the point. 

“You did the right thing taking this to me,” said Alcott, too calmly. Which was absolutely not true, of course, even a recruit fresh off the shuttle knew dinner-time mentions to junior officers was not the way to start investigations. Which meant that Lisa was on to something, that she wasn’t lying. Was Alcott the one behind the sabotage - who’d killed Lily? “Do you have the footage on you?” 

Even as she spoke, she was tracing something in the sauce on her plate, without looking. NO it said. STOP. 

What in the actual fuck - nevermind. “In my quarters, ma’am, I can bring it to you - “ 

“I’ll come by after dinner. Thank you,” Alcott said - was staring at Sabah, silently shook her head - and then stood, disappeared off into the press around the tray delivery area. Sabah ate quickly, too quickly, and rushed back to her room and Lisa. Shut the door, hard. 

“What,” she said. “Was that?” 

Lisa looked up from her pad. “Yeah, I was pretty sure Alcott was an unwilling patsy. Good on you for getting proof so fast, though, really cut straight to the point. So, someone is probably going to come and try to kill you in a few minutes.” 

It took a moment to sink in and then - it was odd. She was on a UNSF ship, in the same system as an enemy. Aliens had been trying to kill her for days, but it felt different, exposing to be in danger like that now. To know that someone specific was after her, her alone and she knew it was part of the plan and she could have guessed that was the whole idea and yet - 

“Don’t worry,” Lisa said. Drew a silenced stunner from her belt, non-regulation. “I’ll be right here with you.” 

“That is not as reassuring as you think it is.” 

“Eh, people skills are - “ she cut herself off, tilting her head, and a second later Sabah heard it, heavy footsteps outside. Coming down the rooms, pausing before each one and Lisa positioned herself at the door, Sabah wedged back against the bed, why hadn’t she drawn a service weapon or something, now she was relying on whatever, whoever, Lisa was. 

A firm knock on the door, deep-voiced, “Room inspection.” 

Lisa shot Sabah a smile, swung it open. A burly man more bicep than human stepped in - frowned - “You’re not Pasdar,” he said. 

“Thank you,” Lisa replied, and shot him in the face with her stunner. He slumped - Lisa caught him before the body hit the ground, hauling it in, and then fishing for the combead in his ear. Shot a grin at Sabah like that was meant to make her feel better about having a knocked out assassin in her room. 

She put the bead in, waited tense seconds - ten, twenty. Clicked it to call, on speaker. 

“Is it done?” A dry, snapped voice. Male. 

“Yeah boss,” Lisa replied, something in her throat contorting unnaturally, things moving under the skin to make her sound just like the man slumped on the floor, a foot taller and fifty kilos heavier. That, more than anything, broke through to Sabah as what in Allah’s blessed name was happening, why was she in this mess to begin with, how had she - but this was about Lily. Not her. Yes, she was immersed in a conspiracy she didn’t, couldn’t understand but that didn’t matter so long as Lily was revenged. 

A moment. “I see,” said the man on the other end of the line. The call clicked off. 

“Fuck,” Lisa swore, stabbing at the bead. 

“What - “ Sabah began, and was waved back, the gesture almost a slap it came so close.

“Admiral,” Lisa said. “Wilbourn here. Calvert’s your traitor - voice recognition on an assassin. Lock the ship down. Yes, I’m on my way. Good.” Call blinked off. “Coming, Pasdar?” she asked. 

Go with Lisa into whatever or stay in her room with the slumped body of a murderer-for-hire who she didn’t know when would wake up. More options; no time to think of them. She nodded, and Lisa set off, running, Sabah following close, dreadful uncertainty pooling and warring with a sort of tension on the edge of release, a bow drawn and not loosed because they’d found him, the culprit, and - 

Lisa’s bead crackled, crackled again - she clicked it to speaker and the noise assaulted Sabah. 

“ - making a break for it!” 

“Gimel, converge.” 

“Burke to all teams - “ 

“Why are you shoot - “ 

The unmistakable zip of pulse fire. 

“What’s happening?” Sabah asked, panting breaths, as Lisa sped up even faster, no one should move that fast. 

“Calvert had more people,” Lisa replied, equally short. Took a left at the corridor fork, for the shuttle bay, bead kept chattering and it was shifting. Close-in defence command spun up, forward shuttle bays trying to lock down - cyber attack, they wouldn’t, we’re off line what’s happening what’s going on? Sabah heard it all in snippets, in parts cut from one another, through blaring alarms as the ship woke to the cancer within it. 

Not soon enough. 

Sabah heard that, too. They were - Lisa was and so was she - out of position as a shuttle cleared the bay, dove right into the jump gate, trailed by scrambling-to-react fighter patrols. 

“Damnit,” Lisa said, too mildly. Sabah was too busy trying to get her breath back and trying to understand what to do now and - a lot, she was busy with a lot. They hadn’t caught him. They hadn’t caught him but he was on the run. The fleet was aware. It wasn’t a complete revenge, not yet. But it was something. And it kept others like Lily safe, and that mattered even more. 

—

Anna - UNS Arsenal 

Two hours until the operation, but the ship had had to stand to Condition 1 anyway - internal disturbance on New York, she didn’t know the reason, busy sorting ballast - and that made things trickier than they ought to be. The final hours pre-mission were critical for rehearsals and briefs. And receipt of personnel. 

It wasn’t like when the admiral had visited. No side party, no honours. She’d receive them alone, and had cleared out a compartmented pathway from shuttle connector to the missile tubes hastily refitted as orbital drop pod launchers. Have to do. 

The shuttle docked, the airlock door chimed green - opened. First through, a pair of humans in marine armour, one with a stylised sun design worked onto a shoulder, and - 

Ah. Invasive augmentation. Anna was powerfully glad that the admiral had come to brief her in person, to drive home the seriousness of it. Because the thing that had stooped out of the portal couldn’t be called human. Bipedal, yes, and heavily armoured in plates which looked fit for a tank, but the glimmers of skin showing were orange, and it stood 9, 10ft. Cradled an IFV autocannon like a rifle. Behind it, a pack of dogs made of metal, it seemed, and rusting gears - nothing like any UGV she’d seen - and then a woman with tendrils, cords, trailing off of her through ports in armour like garrote wires. A handful more ordinary humans.

The water of it rose and crashed over. Then, with a breath, past her. Protocols to be observed. 

The orange thing - the person - came forward. “Task Force Genesis reporting, ma’am,” they said, as though they were gargling rocks, at odds with the politeness. “I think you’re dropping us off for the last leg.” 

“Yes,” Anna said, slightly faintly, because she’d been expecting one of the - they were all humans, but one of the less altered humans to take point. “Follow me, please.” The pattern returned, clarifying. “We’ll be starting our attack run in a little over two hours. Do you have any requirements in the interim?” 

“No, I think we’ll be alright, ma’am. Thank you, though.” 

Lapsed into silence for the short walk to the missile pod. Cleared of loadmasters - some of the humans with them were qualified for that, but she had to ask anyway as they got there. “You’re good to go on the kit?” 

“Should be,” came the reply. 

Anna raised an eyebrow. The person shrugged, awkward. 

“Just get us there and the rest will be fine,” they said, and Anna nodded, and turned to leave them to the business of the assault, and pretended not to hear, in quieter tones, “I hope.” 

Chapter Text

Lily - Brockton 

They crept through the night. Had been up for hours already, moving slowly, painstakingly. What would have been seconds in a fighter was hours of careful movement. A small team. Lily, Victoria, two others with warheads strapped to their backs. Another four with rifles, unencumbered. 

She didn’t want to die. The charge dug into her back, harness scraping it raw, sweat-slick. She didn’t want to die but if her dying kept Sabah safe, her squadron safe, the fleet and whoever was left in Brockton alive - then it was a price she could pay. If the aliens saw everything the UNSF threw at them before it happened, victory would be impossible. They had - they hoped to have because perhaps they were walking into a trap and she put the thought from mind because there was no benefit to it - the narrowest window of overtasked opportunity. 

Had to be seized.

The eight of them crawled the final stage, grazing and bruising on torn up rubble. One man sliced a thumb on a shard of glass - tied it off, silently, with a grimy field dressing. The spire rose before them, meteoric ascent from the crater it had landed in. Clustered south, bulbous, the holding pens for the captives and the processing plants beyond. Lily could see them through her scope, cadaverous, pressed up against a chain-link fence. An oddly mundane, oddly human detail. Only so many ways to pen the cattle the invaders had made them into. 

Monsters patrolled around the base of the spire, and more, a thicker presence, at the edges of the pens. 

Enough to stop them. Lily heard Victoria whispering into her com, the range and frequency chosen before. Waited one second. Two. 

All hell broke loose to the south, gunfire zipping and rattling off towards the creatures at the pens. An assault team, tiny figures, raced forward with wire cutters. Other explosions and distant gunfire throughout the city, the whole of New Wave and their resistance rising up as one. The enemy guarding the spire peeled off, scurrying up the scree slope on multi-jointed limbs, sacks of bile dragging through dust. 

More waiting. Tense moments, snatched. Then. “Now,” Victoria said.

They ran. All stealth abandoned in a pell-mell, slipping race down the slope. They’d have sensors, cameras, eyes - whatever - watching. No time to be hidden in it. Feet pounding, charge slicing down into shoulders, rifle banging across the chest. Victoria at the front, the fastest, rifle up as they - were in. A cavernous entrance, looming at the base of the spire, fluting almost organic, inlaid with crystals which had no place in a charnel house like this. 

None of them had any idea of internal schematics, load-bearing elements, and critical blast points. Lily could almost laugh at it, at herself and them all. No plan and the sliver of hope carrying warheads which could flatten skyscrapers. 

So it was in. Further. Rifles out and tracking. It spread out, cruciform with a chitinously armoured ceiling, doors - 

“Contact left!” Victoria cried, a door snapping open and things swarming from it. Lily saw glimpses, saw flashes. Contorted, wracked-over bodies. Stumbling half-legged things, blind once humans scenting the air, claws scrabbling. They fired. The whole team, unloading, fully automatic pulse rounds whipping in. Cratering, bursting, searing. Ichor splattered. Too many of them. Too many, too close. A man went down, and a woman, ripped to shreds and mist. Survivors closed up, rifles blazing. 

The ring around them tightened. One of the monsters went golden-eyed before Lily could put it down, gazing with coldly inhuman command, more of its cohorts skittering forwards. 

“We’ll need to break out,” Victoria said, voice tight in the briefest window bought by more firepower. “Don’t know if detonations here - “ click-click, dry rifle, slapping in a fresh magazine, “will bring it down.”

“Got it,” said Lily. 

“I go north, you go right. Anja, with Lily,” to one of the other women. “We’ll draw ‘em - now!” 

Focused fire. No more pruning them back, spattering across the crowd. Blast a corridor to run and to pray - go, go, go - and Lily was amid them, don’t slip, please God don’t slip and don’t look down, the door on the right pray it will open. A strangled, arcing scream behind her and she dared not look, dared not slow.

The door yielded. A miracle. Irised shut behind her moments before the tide rose. Cracked rounds into the controls, may it never open again. Up and scanning, rifle torch cutting - no monster. No monsters but something else that made her stop. 

A girl. A human, unchanged, younger than her. White, curly brown hair almost black. Faced covered by a breather mask, floating in a crystal tube full of clear liquid she didn’t dare name. Interface ports dotted arms and back. Her eyes were shut; she trailed cables full of golden light. 

The parallel was too clear. 

Lily brought the butt of her rifle down on the crystal once, twice. It shattered on the third, interface fluid gushing out which Lily barely dodged - stepped into the broken toothed remnants, knife off webbing to cut the cables. A poor thing to hang the girl she was trying to - what - to rescue? Set her unconscious form down gently. 

There was still a horde outside. She could hear them, scraping and rustling, the sound of gunfire muffled. Hoped Victoria had gotten out. They were beginning to strike the door, viciously sharp claws rending into it. Only a matter of time until it broke and she died. Or else, it would be overridden by whatever malign intelligence lurked behind it all. 

No idea on structural integrity. No idea on right placement. Only one thing to do. 

Unhooked the charge. Started to set detonation, remove trigger caps with too-slow too-fast fingers, clumsy with it, knowing it meant her death. Finer to die like this. Finer and faster and she’d light a signal to the world and orbits beyond - she’d been here. She’d done this. 

Halfway through, the door alarming, when her com-bead chimed. 

“This is UNS Arsenal . We’re seeing signs of fighting, is anyone alive down there, over?” 

“ Arsenal , Flight Lieutenant Lily Nakamura,” said with a queerly grim joy. At least the fleet which had been her life would hear how it ended. “I’m inside the enemy spire. Request kinetic needles on my position, over.” 

“Lily?” A new voice, and - that was Anna, Arsenal was her ship. What monstrous coincidence. She snapped, half-caught by the com field on the bridge, “Belay that last.” Then. “Hold on, Lily, help is on the way, out.” 

The line cut. Hope unfurled and it ought not have and it did. She knew Anna, two years in the academy - false statements weren’t her thing. What help could Lily hope for now but a needle strike? The enemy were nearly through the door. She keyed in the last of the initiation commands, set the timer for ten minutes with emergency resort if needed. If needed. Hah. When. 

First claw tore into the last of the crystalline substrate preserving her. Ripped, long and ragged. She plugged the gap with a burst of fire and - 

A crash from outside. Another, and another, thundering. 

She knew that sound. 

That was an orbital assault pod landing. But who’d be mad enough to send troops here, now, what marine would ever dive into the heart of it. No more monsters came through, she was forgotten to them. Heard a cannon opening up, full-throated roar - a piercing glow - baying hounds. What had Anna dropped on her? 

She got her answer when the door melted asunder less than a minute later, flowing and dripping down like wax. A woman stepped through, a - a miniature sun, a star, hovering before her pulsing with heat and light. And behind her nothing so much as an orange gorilla, 9ft tall, in olive-green UNSF armour. 

“We got your call,” said the one with the sun. “I don’t know what you did, but they’re falling apart out there. Want to blow this place and go home?” 

Chapter Text

A knock on her door. Sabah flinched. She couldn’t not, her hand drifting to the stunner at her belt. It’d been - two days, the hours merging together. Lisa had left the ship. Sabah had been debriefed by Admiral Webb, given recognition, pay increase, and - it helped a little. Cold comfort. 

She thought about not opening it, not answering. Shoved the thought aside. The traitors had been arrested or burnt in Calvert’s hurried escape. It was safe, as safe as it was ever going to be, and she wasn’t going to be a shut-in. Not again. Never again. 

Another knock, tentative. 

Sabah opened it - and froze. 

Voice, strangled. “Lily?” 

“Hey, Sabah,” and by that she knew her. A scrape slashed down one cheek, foamed over with medigel but everything else was the same, was the same, and she was dashing tears from her eyes because she wanted to drink her in. “Sorry I’m late.”

Sabah hiccuped, a laugh and a sob. Lily’s arms enfolded her, gently, and she was crying or they were, stumbling into the room, kicking the door shut. Sabah traced the planes of Lily’s face, carded through her hair. Kissed her, half-cautious at first as though worried she might melt away. Lips tasted of salt. Pillows gave way beneath them, and with wondrous haste, thought, too. 

Afterwards: 

“Sabah?” 

Nestled against her, “Yeah?” 

“Will you marry me?”

And Sabah cried for a different reason - or perhaps, at the end of it, the same. 

—

They met and did not meet. The concept of it was a shaping tool for beings which defied shaping. And they spoke. That, too, was merely one way of understanding the communication between networks of sharded thought banded through space and time. 

“Impudent,” said the Silver. A flicker of arcing energies to represent the cowering god-child-ship, alabaster and white, which had fled back beyond the demarcated oasis of stars given over to that cycle. The winged daughter of the last cycle, the one which had erred. 

“Yes,” agreed the Gold. “Punishment?” 

“Assuredly. The pattern is disrupted.” 

“Wipe clean?” 

“No. Other ways.” 

Another flicker, twin planets - one green and blue, the other reddish-brown, speckled with grey. Humanity would call them Earth and New Boston. Neither the Silver nor the Gold cared. 

— 

New York shrank to a dot behind Lisa as the shuttle departed, spiralling towards the jump gate on AI control. She’d tell anyone who cared - which was no one - that she was glad to see the back of it. Starched uniforms and salutes didn’t do anything for her - and the genscans made things awkward. Price of being a modified child of vainglory. Everything about it slowed her down. It was why Calvert had gotten away. 

The holo-call blinked - and then turned itself on before she had a chance to accept it. Show off. 

“Lisa,” said the woman in the hat, face fuzzed by static. 

“Boss,” she replied, kicking her feet up on the console. 

“That was well done.” 

“Thanks. So, about payment - “ 

“Check your Earth news-feed,” said the woman cutting her off. Lisa didn’t like that at all, but knew better than to complain until after she’d been paid. Mental tap into newsflow from Earth, implants auto-sifting. Blinked on seeing the projected image, a single line of text.

Thomas Livsey imprisoned; corporate assets frozen. 

Snapped off the projection. Stared at the placid hologram. Managed: “How?” 

“We have our ways. And another job. For your whole team, not just you.” 

“What is it?” Wouldn’t go charging in, would have asked something better, smarter, more biting but - but her father, imprisoned. The gene-tanks taken apart. Reggie revenged. Too much to process and interrogate at the same time, no matter the augments. 

“Thomas Calvert fled to New Boston. Get him for us.” 

— 

Dr Heloise Sarr permitted herself one drink. It was not celebratory. They had survived, that was true. By desperate effort and by chance survived a single incursion in one planetary system. One enemy fleet. The archives on Eden, the last, desperate cry into the void by dying precursors, had spoken of far more. Not obligingly clustered around one world, but moving and striking at will, sailing through jump gates without issue. Battleships darkening the sky of countless worlds; abominations far worse than anything their science or hers could make stalking into ruined cities. 

Progress had been made. The UNE would not be taken by surprise. Shipyards were being activated, reserves mobilised. Actions underway. The project, to graft what had been found to new bodies, had succeeded. 

Hence: one drink. 

After she finished it, she sat for a brief moment - could not afford more than that, the time taken already an indulgence - before rising, going to the door. There was a girl in the other room, rescued from the heart of the enemy. Cleared of risk, of taint, by the project’s fruit. The test subject she had wanted to begin with.

She opened the door. The girl looked up. 

“Hello, Taylor,” she said. “I’m Dr Sarr. Would you like to know who your mother really worked for?”