Table of Contents . . .

Stag Beetle; Cockpit
Near Pender's Star-Junction System jump point
The Pender’s Star Systen, Humboldt Quadrant, Gemini Sector
MAR 01 2680/2680.060; 1705 Hours (CST)

“What the hell?!" Falgar tapped his radar display again, then turned his Orion around yet again. The blip on the HUD screen appeared to be right in front of him, about 2,500 klicks away. There was one problem, though—he just could not see the ship. The VDU was showing a Centurion, but Falgar’s eyes told him otherwise.

He switched on the comm system. "Unidentified craft, come in." After a few long seconds, the communicator buzzed, audio transmission only. This was it. The answer. Falgar could feel some cold sweat running down his forehead.

"Falgar ‘Messer’ Rathi, I presume," the voice said without any emotion.

"Yes? Who the hell are you? What the hell are you?" Falgar had already started powering up his shields and weapon systems. This joker wouldn’t pose a problem for a fully shielded Orion with two fusion cannons to boot.

"Who I am is not important. What is important is this: you nuked some poor sods over in Troy some time ago, and they want payback. Will you go back to Troy or will you fight me?"

"Go to hell!" Messer shouted over the comm link and opened fire in the general direction of the ship. He didn’t hit anything, but could finally see something moving in front of his ship, something black.

"Fine," the voice came over the comm, "if that’s the way you want it, that’s the way you’re gonna get it."

Daniel "StormRyder" Sting had already powered up his weapon systems and shields. This was not one of the better jobs in the sector, but it brought in the money for his dinner, his ship...and the Shooters. The Orion he was engaging had already turned towards him, but that was not a problem. StormRyder activated full guns and hit the afterburners. That should have gotten him out of harm’s way. But the ’burners didn’t fire. "Damn! Not again!" StormRyder thought as some fusion blasts ripped through his shields. StormRyder pulled up and to the side, then punched his ’burners again. They fired. The DarkMyst sped away from the Stag Beetle and went into a tight corkscrew turn, then swiveled on its axis and ended up with its nose facing the Orion’s engines.

StormRyder let loose a barrage with the four wing mounted tachyon cannons and the two chin mounted plasma cannons. After the fourth volley, the Orion’s shields expired. Falgar was still looking for the enemy when his engines exploded and his cockpit controls went haywire, showering him in sparks. He hit the ’burners and attempted to turn. As he did, he exposed his fore shields to StormRyder’s guns. StormRyder hit the ’burners and headed straight for Falgar’s protruding cockpit, guns blazing. Falgar was shaken as his front shields also expired and the cockpit erupted in another shower of sparks. This time, he was also dazed by a console that had fallen on his head. He wiped the blood from his left eye and took the flight stick again. Most of his systems were already down, but he was not going to give up.

"Last chance, Falgar," StormRyder offered. Falgar looked at the VDU. He finally saw the face of the man who was attacking him. He was about 30, with black hair and a scar on his left cheek.

"Go... to... hell!"

Falgar fired off all ten of his FF missiles. The missiles turned and sped towards the DarkMyst. StormRyder saw them and reacted, pitching down sharply just under the Stag Beetle. As he came up, StormRyder noted that four missiles had already lost his signal. Six to go. He let loose some decoys and burned in a barrel roll. Five missiles flew straight through the middle of the barrel and StormRyder turned towards Falgar. The last missile was still on his tail, but StormRyder did not mind, his shields should be able to take care of one FF. Now the DarkMyst was exactly to the starboard of the Orion, about 2,000 klicks away. Just right. StormRyder hit the burners and headed straight for Falgar’s cockpit. At the last moment, StormRyder pulled to the right, letting his left wing ram into the weakened metal pylon that held the cockpit to the rest of the hull. As the cockpit tore free, Falgar drew his last breath before he exploded into the vacuum of space.

StormRyder checked his wing visually. No problems, this time. He still had a bit of shield on that wing and it was building up fast. The missile had hit his rear just as he ploughed into the Orion, but the aft shields had held. Now, StormRyder slowed to a stop amidst the wreckage of the Orion, the DarkMyst a black surveyor of the destruction it wrought. StormRyder glanced around and quickly found what he was looking for. He turned the DarkMyst around and locked the tractor beam onto the battered remains of the cockpit. Pulling it behind him, he slowly left the scene of the battle.

As soon as he was far enough, Daniel Sting donned his spacesuit and came out of the DarkMyst. "Come to papa..." StormRyder said as he floated towards the towed wreckage. He examined the fusion cannons that were still mounted on the cockpit. Not much damage. Good. He removed the guns and stored them in the DarkMyst’s cargo bay.

They fit, but barely. As he got back in the cockpit, the comm link buzzed to life. It was Balrog.

"Hello, Storm. What’s going on?"

"Hello, Pavel. I’m just getting some new guns at a reduced price."

"You still trying to collect the parts for your self designed dream ship?" Balrog asked. Sting had been working on the project for as long as he’d been with the Shooters.

"Yeah, we can all dream. The DarkMyst will be a reality soon, I hope. Just need to find a Vaktoth and maybe a Galaxy. What’s up? I don’t think this is a courtesy call."

Balrog laughed. "You can read me like a book, can’t you? Yeah, it’s business. Sharpe is calling a rendezvous for all Shooters on Helen in Troy." He then proceeded to give the time and date. Two days was enough for StormRyder to get to Helen and fit the two new guns on the chin mounts of the DarkMyst.

"Ok, I’ll be there," StormRyder replied. Balrog nodded and the transmission ended. What could Axel Sharpe be up to now? He was an excellent strategist and a damn good pilot, but calling all the Shooters together was strange. The only time something like this had happened before was when the Shooters tried to settle on New Detroit, just before the Kilrathi invaded.

Strange...very strange...

StormRyder’s thoughts were interrupted by another flashback. This time, he saw some Stelteks looming over him. He was in a black room that was illuminated by a greenish light. He was in a chair and they had his arms tied down. One of the Stelteks approached him. As it did, it shimmered into the likeness of Lace. Lace smiled at him and reached out to touch his face.

StormRyder shook himself from the flashback. Strange. What was going on? The flashbacks seemed even more real each time. StormRyder activated the navigation computer, selected his nav coordinates and engaged the autopilot. As the DarkMyst cruised towards the jump point to Troy, StormRyder tried to remember what happened during those few days when he disappeared off the map of known space.

Planet Helen; Pad 38
The Troy System, Humboldt Quadrant, Gemini Sector
MAR 03 2680/2680.062; 1404 Hours (CST)

The meeting had ended. So, that’s what Sharpe’s up to, thought StormRyder. He glanced down the pads and saw Axel’s ship, Sharpe’s Rifle, standing ready. With a sigh, he bent under his ship again. The DarkMyst was not. The chin mounts on the DarkMyst didn’t seem to like the two new fusion cannons, and he really needed to get those afterburners to fire when they were supposed to. Hackwrench was too busy with more pressing cases to handle minor tweaking, so StormRyder did them himself.

Thankful that his Confed training had taught him something about the technical side of ships, if anything else, StormRyder slowly turned up the energy feed to the chin mounts and flicked the ship systems on. As all his ship systems blinked to life, StormRyder quickly checked the onboard computer. He saw the two fusion cannons where they should be: on the chin mounts, right below the cockpit and not on the rear turret. "Yes!" StormRyder leaped with joy, only to hit his head on the DarkMyst’s console.

After nursing his head for a few painful seconds, StormRyder started work on his afterburners.

Two hours later, the DarkMyst was ready, or so StormRyder hoped. The afterburners seemed to be fine. He had found the source of the problem the last time and fixed it. It was time to take her out for a test run.

DarkMyst; Cockpit
Near Gemini-Troy System jump point
The War System, Fariss Quadrant, Gemini Sector
1610 Hours (CST)

As the near blinding light of the hyperspace jump faded, StormRyder glanced at his Heads Up radar. Nothing. He set his navcomputer to the next nav point and maneuvered out from the seemingly endless asteroid field. He was lucky, since he had found a mission to patrol War and eliminate any hostiles encountered. Just the chance he needed to practice maneuvering in an asteroid field and to get some cash at the same time. StormRyder hit the autopilot and waited.

1655 Hours (CST)

The previous nav points were barren. This last one should prove the same. It didn’t.

Out of from behind a large asteroid, two red blips showed on StormRyder’s radar. Pirates. StormRyder accelerated to 400 KPS, cautious of the asteroids yet wanting some speed to aid in the battle. Through experience, he had found that if one turned often and hard enough, one would rarely encounter an asteroid, if one was calm enough to keep one’s head.

StormRyder made quick work of the two Talons, destroying one before it could pick the black shape of the DarkMyst from the darkness of space and hitting the other with its own heat seekers after pulling a tight circle around a medium sized asteroid and flying under the pirate ship. As was his custom, StormRyder slowed down and searched the wreckage for anything that he could use to upgrade his ship. Nothing. Shrugging it off as a minor loss, StormRyder headed for the jump point back to Troy. The afterburners seemed to work fine now, and so did the fusion cannons. He had clocked some recent flying time in an asteroid field, and he had earned 2,500 credits, 250 of which had go into the company coffers. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Now, all he had to do was to listen for the go-ahead from Sharpe to begin the invasion of Oakham. In the meantime, however, StormRyder needed some sleep, and some ice for his still aching head.

The Troy System, Humboldt Quadrant, Gemini Sector
Near Troy-War System jump point
1710 Hours (CST)

StormRyder set the coordinates for Helen and flicked the autopilot on. Suddenly, another flashback drew him from the cockpit of the DarkMyst to that fatal explosion that turned Vyper into StormRyder.

He could see, relive, those few seconds when Lace’s Excalibur crashed into the Kilrathi carrier’s launch bay, taking the fighter, the carrier, and Lace in the explosion that ensued when the fighter’s nuclear core ruptured and cut loose. He could still feel the emotional tempest that arose from Lace’s last words:

"Good bye, Dan... I love you." He could still see that strange green light that sped from the explosion, moving faster than any fighter could have, fly into the jump point and disappear. He could still hear Lace’s voice echo in his mind as though she were talking to him from inside his head as that light faded, "Sorry, Dan. I wish I could tell you the truth."

Shaking himself from the flashback, StormRyder banged his fist on the side wall of the cockpit. What does it all mean?! was his only thought, the only one he was capable of thinking at the moment. He was convinced that all his flashbacks were connected, but how? This was something he could not shrug off. The memories of Stelteks and Lace, the mysterious circumstances under which he disappeared from Delta Prime and reappeared a week later in Troy, his ship recorder, like his memory, wiped clean of the events of that one week. Left only with haunting flashes of walking with Lace in a strange black tunnel.

Yes, this was something he could never shrug off. He needed answers. That’s why he joined the Shooters. They took care of their own. Maybe they, with their wide spread intelligence network, could one day help him to find the answers he needed. In the meantime, he had to be vigilant, eternally vigilant.

Planet Oakham; Sharpe’s Office
The Pentonville System, Humboldt Quadrant, Gemini Sector
MAR 12 2680/2680.071; 1509 Hours (CST)

Danny "StormRyder" Sting had just fueled up. He checked his maps one more time before getting out to pack his duffel into the cargo space. He’d plotted the fastest route to Cynium, and barring any serious problems, he’d get there in a few days.

Jumping out of the cockpit, he walked over to the doors and grabbed the duffel. It contained a change of clothes, first aid kit, concentrated rations, spare power clips for his sidearm and rifle, some assorted toiletries, and a couple of mementos.

Sting was halfway up the cockpit ladder when he heard a power clip being snapped into a pistol. A shadow was thrown on the nose of the DarkMyst, an armed shadow.

"Step down, Danny," ordered the silhouette.

Ignoring the order, Sting took another step up. Milliseconds later, a laser blast slammed into the hull bare inches from Sting’s left shoulder, creating a small carbon scored crater in the Centurion’s armor and leaving an acrid smell of ozone and vaporized isometal. If the warning wasn’t evident, Sharpe clarified it.

"I don’t have to miss. Don’t make me improve my aim, Danny. Step down." Seeing no easy way out of this, StormRyder got down off the ladder and dropped the bag by his feet.

"You’re late," began Sharpe.

"I’ve got some things to take of, Sharpe."

Sharpe’s eyes narrowed. "Working on mysteries without any clues are you, Danny?"

"Yes. Now, if you’ll excuse me." Sting turned around. Another bolt sizzled over his head and obliterated one of the sheet steel rungs. "That’s really starting to piss me off."

"You were to report to debriefing fifteen minutes ago. Ten minutes ago, I wondered where the hell you were. You racked up a nice number of kills, and pulled some stunts I never would’ve tried for love or money. No screw ups. I’d figure any other pilot in the joint would love to hear that out of me, some more than others. But you’re not there. And I suddenly remember some things I’d read, some things I’d heard, and some things that were pretty damned obvious. I put two and two together, and guessed this would be where you were or were going to."

"Well, now that you’ve got my attention, what do you want to say?"

"You tell me what you want to say."

Sting turned around to face Sharpe and glared. "Listen, I came here for a purpose. I had a puzzle, I picked up some of the pieces, now I’m going to go and put them together."

"Your wingman."

"She was more than that."

"Yeah, and probably more than you thought you knew."

Outraged at the innuendo and Sharpe’s delaying of his mission, Sting charged the shadowy form unthinkingly. Sharpe holstered the pistol, then took two steps forward and drilled a left jab right into Sting’s solar plexus. The other pilot staggered back and collapsed against the Centurion’s front landing strut, gasping like a fish out of water for air.

"Are you willing to listen to reason?" asked Sharpe.

"I have to find her," Sting gasped. "Have to find what they did to her, what they did to me."

"Is that what you really want?" StormRyder was silent, so Sharpe continued, "Listen, I’ve got friends in odd places, and when I need to know something, they usually come through for me, and when you joined up, I had a lot of questions that needed answering. Admittedly, the only person who needed to know was Monty Sharpe, but curiosity always gets the better of me.

"For example, your last mission, the one where your wingman died. Your report was buried, and I had to exhaust a few favors to get that report. It doesn’t make much sense, unless you factor in the area, the timeframe, and the circumstances. I had to dig to find the militia report when you were picked up drifting in the Troy system. Your flight recorder wiped clean, you not knowing where the hell you were or how you got there. Curiouser and curiouser. Finally, your flight recorder shows you drifting right after you returned from exercises in War. Just floating through space, not doing anything. Something isn’t kosher, and I’d be willing to bet that it has a lot to do with your old wingman, and the situation in Cynium."

"How?" croaked StormRyder.

"Eleven years ago, everything in this sector turned upside down. Something was torching Confed, militia, Kilrathi, pirates—it didn’t care who got killed. It was hunting somebody. That somebody somehow found a weapon that could do what the entire Gemini Sector Fleet could not, destroy the drone. I met that guy—that privateer. A few years later, a new jump point is discovered, leading to a world that once was held by the Steltek. A world everybody and their dog is going after like the last drop of water in a million square mile desert. Ages ago, the Steltek fought themselves a big old war, and made a hell of a mess. Like children, they left a lot of their toys behind. And now, a new set of children has come to play with them. But I get the feeling that the bigger kids want them back. Eleven years ago, the Steltek began to show themselves. The guy who killed the drone told me as much,—some guy calling himself ‘Brownhair’—said they souped up that gun he found so he could take out one of their leftover ‘drones,’ put in our space to get rid of any trace of their race after they left the Milky Way. It stands to reason that they’re not done. Whether Cynium was a renegade planet or loyal to the throne, nobody can say. But there may be a significant number of them who want to know who the newcomers are, and if they want to play with us.

"Your wingman quite possibly was one of them."

"A spy?"

"Yeah, a spy, and not a very good one. She lost control of the assignment, figured she had enough info to bring home and left, making it look like suicide. She fell in love with you, the first mistake any spy should never make. You couldn’t know, and when you went looking for answers, and for her, you found her. The Steltek couldn’t afford to have you carrying around that knowledge, so they were probably planning to whack you. Only your friend managed to spare your life. They erase your memory, set you adrift, hope somebody either saves you or shoots you. Either way, no blood on their hands and you are out of their lives. No more problems.

"Only you’re starting to remember now, aren’t you?"

Sting nodded slowly.

"You can’t go back, Dan. If you do, you have to face the combined navies of every sentient starfaring species in this part of the galaxy, and if you do make it to the planet, the only thing you’ll find is a death ray beam with your name on it. They screwed up once, they won’t make that mistake again. Dan, they will kill you, no matter how much your friend loves you. Now, I might be wrong, and this could all be the ramblings of a man who’s pissed off because one of his pilots was late for debriefing. Yes, I might well be wrong. But is it worth your life to prove if I am or not?"

Sting was quiet for a long time. He finally looked up with pathetic eyes towards Sharpe. "It hurts. I miss her so badly."

"I see that you do. And it’s going to hurt for a long time to come. From one perspective, I think it was a series of crappy things to do. Bailing out like that, lying to you, wiping your memory clean, it is the worst I’ve ever heard of. But from another angle, I know that she did what she had to do to protect herself and you. Somebody loves you out there, Danny. In time, others may come and go, and you might find yourself loving another, but you never forget the first one." Sharpe walked over to StormRyder and helped him up. "What do you say we go get a drink, and toast old loves?"

Managing a weak smile, Sting said, "After you, Axel."

Planet Oakham; ICU Room
MAR 30 2680/2680.089; 1931 Hours (CST)

The last of the visitors left the ICU. The only people in the room were Sharpe and Balrog.

"So, what happened?" asked Balrog. "Start from the blast."

"Well, after I left you guys in the bar, I hooked up with Kraki. He was starting to tell me about building some kind of passive defense perimeter.

That’s when the bomb went off. I just saw a green flash of light, then nothingness."

"What about the coma?"

"What about it?"

Balrog cleared his throat. "We had a look at your brainwaves. They were off the scale. Your mind was going on full afterburner, and I’m kind of curious about what you were thinking on so hard. Do you remember anything?"

"Yeah," whispered Sharpe. "Kinda wish I didn’t, though."

"Tell me," pressed Yanchenko.

"Are you sure you can handle it?"

"I’ll do my best."

Sharpe’s eyes were downcast for a moment, then he looked straight at Yanchenko. "All right, Pavel, here it goes.

"At first, there was a sense of existing outside of existence. I was and I wasn’t there all at the same time. Then, a faint green light began filling my vision, growing brighter and brighter until it was almost white. Then it fell away, like a curtain.

"I was walking down a corridor, with two beings, one on either side of me. They were incredibly bizarre, I don’t think I can describe accurately enough, so I won’t bother to try. We talked, about who I was, about who they were, other such small talk."

"Who were they?"

"The Steltek, at least they said they were. They showed me some of their technology, and it’s no lie to say that it’s worth killing over. There are star maps of incredible detail in there, not just systems and jump points, but the locations of potential jump points. And they’re rendered in three dimensions, not two like the maps around here. They have engines a hundred times more efficient than anything Kraki could soup up. And their weapons, Pavel, those are so powerful that they are almost unbelievable. Their fighters sport cannon of all kinds, and the weakest one available to them is probably twice as powerful as a fusion cannon. Their missiles are faster, deadlier, and almost impossible to spoof. They have mines that could vaporize Oakham in a heartbeat, along with everything else for thousands of klicks. The most powerful weapon I know of, the phase-transit cannon on board the Confederation-class dreadnought-carriers like the now dead Concordia, is a peashooter compared to the weapons I saw.

"They took me to a room with a large translucent green globe hovering over a pit in the floor. With one touch, they showed me the future."

"The future?"

"A potential future. They said that given the current circumstances, what I saw was likely. Not definite, just likely."

"What did you see?"

Sharpe closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. "I saw pale kings and princes, too. I saw pale warriors, death pale were they all. They cried..." Here, Sharpe opened his eyes and locked a hard stare on Balrog.

"Stay the fuck away from Cynium."

"Huh?"

"I saw a graveyard of ships, Pavel, a real graveyard. This wasn’t a spot where mothballed and decommissioned vessels sat soaking up interstellar radiation. Chunks of vessels tumbling through space. Minuscule fragments of fighters and their pilots. Be damned if I saw anything that was of Steltek manufacture sitting in there. The planet was klicks away, almost entirely green, but there seemed to be small red rivers all over the surface. In a heartbeat, I zoomed down to the surface. Those rivers were made of blood, and they choked the landscape, the few cities that were still standing had sanguineous floods that were chest high, with splotches of dark green decorating the walls, or a portion of an armored limb floating on the gory currents.

"It was a nightmare. They wanted to show me this as a warning. I told them they were showing the wrong guy. I told them that I’d never had any intention of going to Cynium in the first place, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to now. For a few minutes, they parleyed, then two of them started to come after me. They wanted to kill me because of their mistake. But another one intervened, and herded me off back up the corridor. The two who wanted me dead didn’t like it, but they didn’t oppose my savior either.

"So, when we’d gone back up the corridor several meters, the Steltek who saved me touched my head, told me to return to my own people. Everything started growing fuzzy after that. The last words I heard out of it were, ‘Tell Daniel I still love him.’ Then I woke up."

"Daniel who?" asked Balrog.

"Sting, Pavel. Daniel Sting, StormRyder. I gather that the Steltek who saved me was the one he knew as a woman called Lace. And I suppose I ought to pass that along to him." Both men were quiet for a minute.

During the Battle of Cynium...

TCS Baton Rouge; Bridge
The Cynium System, Fariss Quadrant, Gemini Sector
APR 29 2680/2680.119; 2009 Hours (CST)

Good fighting, Invincible. Keep it up, Russ... Commander Lance Crossfire thought to himself as he looked at the Cynium planet right in front of him. He had heard every bit of the dialogue of the battle as the transport’s passive frequency picked it up. He heard of the attack on the Kilrathi group and of the losses of Olympia, Repulse, and all the rest over the frequency. Lance wept for the ghosts of the dead as he hears the radio transmission of the battle.

He couldn’t transmit back, for fear that the Kilrathi would pick up the signal and since so far they hadn’t been detected. He could finally breathe a sigh of relief when the Charleston, and then the Invincible, jumped out back into the Delta Prime System. Then there was no more Terran radio transmissions. It was only him and the Marine, he thought. Crossfire looked at Gunnery Sergeant Damian Bertillion as he stood from his chair, looking at the planet as it got closer and closer.

The Baton Rouge’s engines propelled her faster, faster, through the void of space as Crossfire looked at the autopilot. The little transport had gotten to the point that the two men could now see the Cynium System. Commander Crossfire took a bright and quick look at what is going on. "Impact to the planet now five minutes and closing. Get ready on that button, Sergeant." No answer. "Gunny?"

He looked towards were Gunnery Sergeant Damian Bertillion was staring out of the viewport. Crossfire knew him really well, he was a combat vet who had enlisted almost twenty years ago and had seen action in virtually every land battlefield, the latest being the Siege of New Caledonia. He had a reputation as one of the toughest Marines on the Vin, and he had shown his calm in cool back then in New Caledonia, in which he helped disarm a fusion bomb implanted on Edinburgh Station by Mandarin forces. He was known as a hard-charging platoon sergeant, one who pushed his men to the limit everyday to get them pumped up for war. And he helped his men to get them out of trouble. He was a true leader to his troops, even his Marine officers respected him. The enlisted men wanted to be like him one day, he was that good.

But now he had turned chicken.

"Sarge?" Crossfire walked up to him and said, "What’s up..." even as he looked towards the direction where Damian was viewing. Throughout Lance’s entire thirteen-year career in the service, nothing truly prepared him for what he was about to see. And experience. Lance felt a dead weight on his stomach as it started to turn in knots. He could feel his heart rate pump up to about five hundred beats per minute. He would actually feel the blood draining from his brain and his face as if a black hole within his body was collecting all of the available blood. He could feel his sweat pores on his head work triple time. And for the first time in his life, Commander Crossfire could feel his hands trembling in fear.

Then Lance flashbacked in what happened for the past month or so. That hostage experience with the Mandarins, he was startled. The incident when Captain Greenberg was on the brink of insanity, he was worried. The incident in which he saw his Skipper about to rage an all-out war with the Charleston, he was unhappy. After the fleet action just a few hours ago, when the Cats sent out two whole wings of fighters and a section of heavy cruisers, he was pissed. The incident when there was a spread of torpedoes about to impact on the Vin, Crossfire was depressed. But during the major events throughout his life, Lance Crossfire hadn’t really been afraid or scared.

Sometimes, however, the fear you put behind you for a long time can come back to bite you in the ass.

By now Crossfire was feeling so drained of blood and life that he practically felt like a ghost roaming lifelessly among the ranks of the dead in its never ending journey in depression. This was the first time in his life in which he was truly scared. In which he was truly afraid. Every person has a fear of something, but not everyone knows what exactly it is until it is revealed to them. And there Crossfire was, facing his own fear. Everything now that used to be Crossfire came and went in just a few seconds. Lance turned from a living, breathing human being into a ghostly pale zombie as he stared out the viewport.

Crossfire started to open his mouth to speak but somehow he couldn’t, he couldn’t muster up enough air in his lungs to breathe out even a single word. He tried to speak, but again couldn’t. He did it two more times until he finally mustered up a question. Lance turned to the Marine Gunnery Sergeant and said in a slow, low tone, "What in the name of God... is that thing?"

"I do not know," was all that Gunny Bertillion replied. Nothing, not boot camp, not all of those battles he fought in, had prepared him for what he was seeing. Crossfire took the time to look out the viewport. The subject of the viewing was less then twenty thousand klicks away. The distance was far away but the object was so large that it still stood out. Something that big that far away must be a monstrosity, seeing it up close would be like comparing a tiny frigate to something as big as the Behemoth. The object was nothing that Crossfire had ever seen before, as he looked at the object with horror. There was one word to describe it; that word was "death."

It was a capital ship, but unlike any capital ship that Crossfire had seen before. It wasn’t Terran built, certainly not Kilrathi manufactured. The capship glistened and sparkled as the sun’s light rays reflected off of it, letting Lance see the many colors on the sprinking side of the ship, though the overall color of the ship was a colorful dark green. It was shaped unlike any other capship in existence. While the Terran warships were built in modular skeletons and Kilrathi warships were built with asymmetrical and generally sharp points in mind, this ship was shaped like an octopus. A really big, glimmering, and mechanical octopus with interconnecting struts and eerie green lights at that. A mechanical octopi with armored, colorful shells glistening in the sunlight. It’s "tentacles" reached forward, as if it was ready to grab a hold of its prey and squeeze it to death. The capital ship was resting peacefully in the void of space, it was pointed towards the Cynium planet—maybe it hadn’t even seen them. Not this close to the Cynium planet.

And it was huge! The capship was far larger than the Invincible, and even more than the Vesuvius-class supercarriers. And not only was the ship long, it was thick. It was a massive structure. Crossfire could see various spikes and protrusions along its scales. It was as if this, whatever it was, wasn’t only machine, but also a life-form. As a living and breathing biological entity. It looked like a living breathing monster of death, as Lance noted the opening where the tentacles merged, which bordered the edge of a big hole which kind of resembled its "mouth." Crossfire somehow knew what that mouth was, it was probaly some sort of superweapon. A version of the powerful, but retired and unreliable Phase-Transit Cannon? Hell, it could probably surpass the old Behemoth superweapon from ten years ago.

Was this a new alien race? Was this new capship a ship from a new race? There were a lot of races in the known galaxy other then humanity and the Kilrathi. For example, there was the Firekkans, those birdlike creatures that lived in the Antares Quadrant of the Epsilon Sector, and they were still allies with the Confederation. There were the Dolosians, Mopokes, and Dioscuri, though all had been kept in check for years by Intell. During the 24th century, mankind had fought the Yan, a race of space-faring, squid-like creatures—after the Yan retreat, nothing had been seen of them again. There were also the Hari and the Varni, both two of the main extinct races thanks to the Kilrathi. Maybe the capship belonged to the species codenamed "Double-Helix," located on the other end of a jump point leading toward the Galactic Core, only periodically checked upon. Or perhaps it was the Steltek, the ancient race that had long since disappeared. He’d heard rumors about a Steltek appearance in the Gemini Sector a couple years ago, but Lance couldn’t be sure about the capship before them. He did know one thing—there wasn’t going to be peace anytime soon for Confed.

"Dammit, Gunny! I think it saw us!" Commander Crossfire said to Sergeant Bertillion as he turned his eyes to look at that mysterious ship. Gunny Bertillion had an appropriate response, "Well, shit happens, Mr. Crossfire."

"What is that thing?" Commander Crossfire started to say, then he stopped for a moment thinking, "I do not know. But we are proceeding into the planet even if it is, or isn’t, there!"

The transport rumbled and buckled as the upgraded shields fought to repel the massive heat energy that was now forcing itself wave upon wave on the little capship. The shields flickered and glittered as pure energy tried to repel pure energy. The engines still rumbled, pushing the Baton Rouge on her way to destiny. Crossfire tried to put the thought of that mysterious ship as he checked the countdown on the monitor. The Baton Rouge quivered and shook as an energy flare produced by the planet flew right by it, covering the capship with pure heat energy.

"Time to detonation: less then three minutes," Crossfire said as he looked at the timer. It would be three minutes until the Baton Rouge would be entering the planet’s atmosphere. There, Crossfire would set off the explosives charges placed among the missiles, mines, and torpedoes that the transport was carrying for cargo. The transport was chock full of fusion and anti-matter explosives—hopefully this explosion would do something to the planet, overloading it with pure, raw energy. In just a while, they would find out if they could make Cynium move. Second by grueling second, the Confederation transport moved closer and closer to the planet’s surface and closer and closer to its increasingly dangerous energy and radiation.

This was going to be the longest three minutes, as well as the last, of Commander Crossfire.

"Mr. Crossfire! The object is turning around to face us," Gunny Bertillion said as he watched the object turn around, its bow facing right towards the Confed transport. The distance was increasing, as the object was well over thirty thousand kilometers away, but the capship was still huge enough to be seen. But that was least of the trouble. The Baton Rouge’s shielding was weakening more and more as the intense energy field is finally starting to give in to the pure energy of nature herself. Lights started to light up in the cockpit as an indication of the shields starting to fail.

What came next was a surprise. This close to the planet, another energy flare raced over and impacted right on the Baton Rouge’s stern. The high energy blast, made up of pure heat and fire, slammed into the rear shields. The ship ripped back and forth as the flare ate through the rear phase shields and impacted where the two turrets and the engines were stationed. Crossfire and Bertillion were thrown to the ground by the force of the impact as red lights were flashing. A computerized voice was saying, "Warning. Hull breach to stern of the ship. Engines failing."

Oh my god! Crossfire thought. That damn energy flare had just taken out the propulsion engines! Without engines there would be no more thrust to get close enough to the sun to detonate. Now the Baton Rouge had to rely on sheer inertia to get to its destination. All around him, Lance Crossfire’s master plan was coming apart all around him. He had failed himself. He had failed his men. He had failed Captain Greenberg. He had failed the Invincible. And he had also failed all of humanity.

"Gunny, we’re losing speed and velocity, but we are still going into the planet, we’ll have to hasten the detonation time," Crossfire said as he pointed towards the detonator that was lying on the counter. Bertillion reached over for it as he picked up the little box with his hands, the timer was still ticking downwards on its inevitable road to destruction as he pushed a little switch upwards and pressed the "manual override button." The detonator was already armed, of course, and the timer was still working. What Gunny did was that, if needed, he could prematurely set off the detonation with a push of a button, even if the timer was still winding down. He looked at it and then looked through the viewport.

"Mr. Crossfire! The object is opening up its bow!" Sure enough, the unidentified capship was still pointing at the little transport, but this time it was opening up its frontal bow. The sharp points were now unraveling itself around the little hole as the "mouth" got bigger and bigger, as if the big armored "fish" was opening its mouth. Crossfire took one look through the viewport and immediately knew what was going to happen. "It’s going to kill us, Gunny. But I don’t know with what." Gunny gave a nod as he looked at the timer—it was now one minute, thirty seconds until detonation. The shields were about to give, but what the hell.

"Whatever it is going to kill us with, it is going to do it now, Mr. Crossfire." Bertillion looked at the viewport, as the "mouth" of the mysterious ship had locked into place.

Crossfire stood and looked out the viewport as the pure energy start to pool around the object’s bow. "It... it must really be some type of big-shot energy gun, like the PT cannon or the Behemoth," Crossfire thought aloud, "But those types are usually high energy focused in one point, not as an area destruction weapon. If that thing hits us, it might take us out, but I don’t know if it would have any affect on the sun whatsoever."

The Baton Rouge zipped across space, out of power and the rear stern of hers nothing more then a charred skeleton. Without power, she was just drifting aimlessly in one single direction; on her bridge were the two men that was wondering which was worse: the mysterious capship or the fact that the plan wouldn’t work. Meanwhile more energy started to pool around the object’s bow as whoever—or whatever—on the ship was building up enough power to zap the transport into tiny little particles. Crossfire thought about his dilemma, seeing the insanity. The mysterious capship was about to fire.

At that very instant another energy flare from the planet impacted on the shields of the transport and finally overloaded it, exposing the vulnerable hull to the ravages of pure heat energy. Throughout the entire hull, things caught on fire and started to burn. But most importantly of all, the flare had knocked the transport off course. No longer was the Baton Rouge drifting towards the planet, now it was drifting farther away from it. Crossfire and Bertillion were thrown from their feet and was sent crashing down. During the impact of shock the detonator was thrown from Gunny Bertillion’s hands. It flew through the artificial gravity as Bertillion fell down on the ground hard, twisting his ankle in the process.

The little box of the detonator flew just a millisecond as it landed with a clatter on the deck, just a few inches from now prone Crossfire’s fingers. He grasped at it and held at it as he felt the transport lurch to one side. Now he could see through the viewport at the mysterious object, the green-yellow streaks of pure and raw energy were now focused throughout its bow. The object looked at him and Bertillion, just as a hunter stands upon a fallen prey, slumped over on its feet. Crossfire felt the fear run through him as he grasped the detonator even tighter.

"Blow it! Blow it!" yelled Gunny Bertillion as he saw the mysterious object’s bow light up, just an instant before the ship fired off a concentrated plasma attack on the tiny ship. "Don’t think! Just act!" the voice in Crossfire’s brain said as Lance looked and thought of the entire situation for a millisecond. The stern was gone. The engines were dead. The shields were overloaded. The Baton Rouge was drifting aimlessly now. Alarms flashed and klaxons went off signifying damage to the hull. And on top of that all, the mysterious capship just opened fire and a plasma burst was about to go on the way, impact in less then a second.

The automatic timer reached one minute flat as the mysterious object fired off its main weapon. From its bow, a huge green-yellow ball of electrostatic plasma vomited out and and was hurled towards the Baton Rouge. "Blow it! Blow it!" Gunny yelled even as he watched the green ball of plasma race toward their position. There was nothing else to do. No other choice. No more time left for them.

Commander Lance Crossfire’s finger stabbed the button.

TO : CICCONFEDFLT
FROM : INTELCONFEDFLT

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

This report is to be forwarded to, and only to the Admiral of the Fleet, Wellington "Duke" Leonard. From what it seems, Task Group 36, centered around TCS Invincible, has temporary joined forces with Border Worlds forces based on light carrier BWS Charleston after extreme tension in the Delta Prime System. Both carriers jumped into Cynium System and reported no initial contacts. Hakaga-class supercarrier that destroyed Rygannon colony, the same one said to be responsible for the destruction of the TCS Orion, and was reported jumping into Cynium was never picked up on sensors and was not encountered for the duration of the fight.

Invincible forces pursued by confirmed Ninth Fleet of the Claw, centered around three fleet carriers. Combined Invincible and Charleston fighters repelled the impending attack and then withdrew into hiding. Twelve hours later Invincible and Charleston moved out of hiding and fought their way to the retreating jump point back to Delta Prime. Meanwhile, suicide mission carried out by Commander Lance Crossfire went to the Cynium planet and attempted to destroy planet. During the run to the jump point, remnants of the missing 12th Cruiser Group jumps into assist in fighting. This time, a confirmed two Kilrathi carriers and a number of escort capships were destroyed.

Invincible reports half her crew killed in action and many more casualties. Three quarters of her fighters were destroyed. All escort warships lost in action. Reports confirm destruction of heavy cruisers TCS Mongoose, TCS Olympia, and TCS Repulse; destroyers TCS Gauntlet and TCS Vengeance, and frigates TCS Liverpool, TCS Dunkirk, and TCS Hereford. With the exception of the Mongoose, the escort warships were lost with all hands. BWS Charleston reports that her two destroyer escorts, BWS Franklin and BWS Arizona, were also lost with all hands.

Upon retreat into Delta Prime System, remainder of Kilrathi Fleet centering around one carrier and large number of escorts last reported turning around and steaming towards Cynium main planet. At 2013 Hours, nine minutes after transit to Delta Prime, Invincible’s passive sensors reports massive electromagnetic pulse emerging from Cynium System. Covert listening posts also report same EMP radiating of Cynium System, confirming its existence.

At 2200, lone Excalibur fighter dispatched into Cynium System on high-risk reconnaissance mission. Fighter arrives back to Invincible 0157 Hours without incident. The pilot reports no trace of Cynium main planet, nor any trace of the Imperial Ninth Fleet. Reports confirm destruction of the main planet of Cynium and of the destruction of the Ninth Fleet of the Claw, as well as the cessatation of any energy resources that Cynium would have had.

Invincible now in Nexus System limping to Oxford Naval Base for repairs. Elements of 8th Destroyer Group from 7th Fleet rendezvousing with TCS Invincible for escort back to Oxford Naval Base. BWS Charleston accepts Confed offer of escort back to Landreich space.

As per your request, Duke, we have assigned a covert diplomatic staff to the homeworlds of the Free Republic of Landreich and the Union of Border Worlds, for attempt of peace talks and the improvement of diplomatic relations. Let’s just hope that our allies during the Battle of Cynium will choose to be our allies in the future.

Rear Admiral Joshua Bridger, INTELCONFEDFLT

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