The Practice War [Complete]

Minister for War had seemed such a daunting title twenty and change years ago, but it was nothing when compared to the mental Everest of being directly responsible for the orders that would either save or damn your entire species. You'd enjoyed such success in your initial attack that you'd almost let yourself hope that you might be able to win here. It had been a foolish notion, you'd known that, but you hadn't been able to stop it flowering. Not until Amanda's warning had shattered your plans.

That you'd managed to get Second Fleet out before any of their ships could be disabled had been a mixed blessing, given the absolute focus on the Two Twenty Three that the new Shiplord forces in your battlezone had pursued. That they were supporting someone, instead of fighting a battle at the edge of the SEZ where the system defence fleets couldn't easily reach them was good. That you'd ordered them to First Fleet's aid, instead of Third and Fourth's, though?

But there hadn't been time for anything but a snap decision, Amanda's warning had only told you targets. And there'd been no way to be sure that any reinforcements brought into your battlespace wouldn't have moved against. First Fleet had needed time to recover, and the only way to give it that had been reinforcements. Maybe you could have split Second Fleet, but you knew that that thought was the voice of hindsight speaking.

Not that it had made the situation you'd been left in much better. Somehow, despite Insight's best efforts, the Shiplords had brought something you hadn't known about. Weapons that could somehow hurt Unisonbound, and you'd seen the monitors on a few of them come perilously close to flickering out when those weapons had fired. They were stable for now, but whatever the Shiplords did hadn't let them move as quickly as they should. Which had left you, and Second Fleet, responsible for the battle in front of you.

Compared to the predicament facing Third and Fourth Fleet, however, yours had been light. At least you'd managed to warn Lekan and Kristine before the numbers facing them abruptly tripled. Now surrounded by a larger Shiplord force that was close enough to prevent them from disengaging, the two Admirals were just doing all they could to minimise damage.

Balling up had allowed the two fleets to combine their defensive systems, interlocking to form the largest shield planes possible. Now they were diving below the orbital plane at max drive. It wouldn't let them escape, but holding the range might allow them to hold on long enough for their FTL drives to recharge. Thanks be to small favours that humanity's grav drives were up to that challenge.

With the Regular Fleet so split, holding EWAR supremacy had become so much more important. Thankfully, the FSN had managed to hold that ground against an increasingly proactive Shiplord response, though it had been a close-run thing. The eyes of the young woman beside you on the bridge had lost all aspects of their usual humanity as she fought a literal life-and-death battle in cyberspace against Shiplord assaults that had only increased in strength as more of the Regular Fleet entered the field. Yet she, Vision and the Ministry of Security were holding. Somehow.

And you? You were fully enveloped in the management of the two Fleets around you, even as you cursed the error that had allowed the Shiplord cruiser formations to get so close. You'd lost two dreadnoughts to that, and you were trying hard to ignore losses smaller than a capital ship. You didn't need that sort of horror on your conscience right now. Mourn later, survive now.

Second Fleet was advancing now, its fresh units more than a match for the damaged and unsupported Regular Fleet section that had dealt your command squadron such a painful blow. With the Two Twenty Three otherwise occupied, their drone shell was beginning to reform, but it wouldn't be enough to do more than screen right now. And with the tonnage advantage so far in your favour now, there was no reason to throw away the lives of your fighter pilots.

Admiral Starling had left firing lines for your ships open as he advanced, and the massed volley of disruptor fire smashed the remaining shields of the leading Shiplord capital groups flat. They'd been trying to disengage back towards the groups engaged with the Two Twenty Three, but the fighter groups you'd asked so much of had delivered during your own desperate withdrawal, savaging the drive systems of enemy capitals. They were slower than you now, and their formation tightened as you watched into a narrow wedge. That would minimize their exposure to fire whilst maximising shield strength, but even Shiplord systems had limits.

They'd fought magnificently, but against twice their number, those limits had started to show. First one, then two Shiplord capitals blew apart, with more following. Progress, but not enough of it to make it through to support the Two Twenty Three. Yet after so many years of working so deeply with it, human sensors weren't blind to Practice. Which was why your breath caught in your throat when the surging whirlpool of Amanda Hawk's presence near the centre of the thoughts of billions erupted into view. The most powerful Potential in all of humanity took a breath, and a warning surged out across the fleet. She was about to speak.

Power burst from her lips into the world around her, searing patterns of energy that were almost blinding to your scanners, and hope surged within you again. A single Word from her had all but ended the Second Battle of Sol. Surely almost half a dozen would be enough to see this done.

Except…it wasn't. You never understood what happened until after the fact, when you'd been able to watch replays of the event slowed down beyond even what your implants usually handle. That, and read one of the reports on the matter. Until then…it was all a blur.

The energy patterns had started to come apart, before being completely disrupted by Kalilah Mishra. You'd remembered lurching forward in your seat, the exhalation of shock and fear from Iris as she stood rock-steady beside you, her own hands twisting in ways no human's could.

A trail of devastation behind the blurred image of a woman who'd shattered a Collector single handed, vanishing into the heart of the Shiplord fleet assaulting the Two Twenty Three. She'd drawn their fire, and the attention of the weapons that had disrupted Amanda's words. Impossible numbers on your sensors, as Shiplord craft distorted and warped beneath the touch of a hurricane of light building at the centre of their formation. Whatever their weapons were designed to do, they clearly weren't enough to stop that.

You didn't think you'd ever forget what came next, nor the cry of fear it tore from the throat of Iris. Amanda dived into the heart of that fire, her Aegis rippling with brilliant energy, and the entire bridge surged to its feet as the heart of humanity vanished from every sensor. In that brief moment, as the fire rippled through a wave of prismatic colours, you thought you found what the world before the Sorrows would have called prayer.

Then the light of a soul's burning exaltation blanketed the world in blinding fury, and you knew what that word truly meant. A single tone of perfect sound cut through the moment, born of a voice you knew, and a webwork of brilliant white-gold erupted from the Two Twenty Three's formation. It raced out around the Shiplord fleet, forming a vast polyhedron that cut off just short of your own ships. Somehow you managed to pass the order for all craft not to enter, though it was scarcely needed. The last thing you saw on sensors before every single one of them went blank was a wave of searing energy crashing against the cage of power, sealed by a word of singular purpose.

Peace.

Space around you shook as those forces clashed, the echoes of their conflict enough to drop shields across both fleets to dangerous levels. But if not for that protective webwork, that held for those impossibly lengthy moments, you can't imagine that anything would have survived. There was never any figure put to it in terms of energy output; every sensor pointed at the event had simply overloaded. All that was known was what greeted you, when the light faded.

Where had once been over a third of the Shiplord fleet, there was now nothing but empty space, the final lingering flames dying as they licked against a shelter of peace in harmony. A ragged sound, full of agony, tore from the throat closest to yours as Iris stared at the empty void where her mother had once been, her eyes searching desperately for any sign of her. A sick feeling rose in your stomach as you joined your own efforts to the search, something terrible creeping into your chest. She wouldn't have…she couldn't just die. Not like that.

Perhaps that fear made you blind to it. Others would say that it was the last bursts of brilliant flame that were responsible. In that moment, no one cared. For, at the very centre of the explosion of radiant power, a single shard of light remained. A perfect crystal of silver-green and blue. Amanda's colours. And as you saw it, it fell into itself, compressing down and down again, until a hand grasped all that remained. A gloved right hand, with a bracer of silver metal, holding a staff of translucent light the colour of the sea under sun. In her left, she held the limp form of Kalilah close, crimson and blue-green foxfire chasing each other across the elder Potential's skin.

Amanda Hawk raised her right hand, eyes blazing like sapphire suns as she gripped her staff tightly between her fingers. And when she brought it down, the entire star system rang with the tone of power. And the Shiplords…stopped. Third and Fourth Fleet continued to run, not wasting the chance to get fully out of range. The Regular Fleet ships hovered there, not moving, not firing, even as the remains of their comrades outside of the shell of protective light that had saved you were torn apart by Second Fleet. And for a moment, there was simply silence.

"She's angry," Iris's voice broke that moment, a touch of fear in the young AI's words. "I've," she shook her head, her oddly coloured hair turning drab, as if wilting. "I've never seen her angry. Not like this."

---

:They've stopped.: Sidra told you, their voice a soothing balm to the rage howling in your soul as you looked down at the barely moving form of the woman who had once saved your life. :Mandy, she's alive. So are you. There-: you cut the Unison Intelligence off with growl, sending their presence flinching. Part of you recoiled from the very concept; Sidra was your friend! They were just trying to help.

Another part of you, that you'd never quite realised was truly there, snarled something dark and hateful as you glanced over at Kalilah again. She was alive, somehow. Her soul was intact. And yet she hadn't needed to do that. She hadn't had to almost die, to risk everything she was. That was the Shiplords' fault. What they'd done. You'd seen flashes of what their existence had done to the woman you held, how they'd destroyed her, and forced her to define herself by what had been done to her. How she'd suffered, and somehow found it in herself to overcome, despite the agony.

It would be so easy, you thought, the power of billions singing in your veins. So easy to just reach out, to wipe them away. To take what was yours, a power to heal, and make the Shiplords a disease. They deserved that, for everything they'd done, just to humanity. For killing so many, taking so much, and forcing a friend who had suffered it all to offer herself up as fuel for a fire that had been the only way to stop them.

How many more, Amanda, that part of you hissed. How many more until it is enough for you to accept what you must do, what humanity could become, if you wished it. Your vision blurred, with red and tears, pain and anger, acidic beyond belief. You'd channelled that energy once, when you'd spoken Purify. But now it was seeping into you, cutting and pulling at your soul. Even if you'd meant your actions, and been true to their ideals. To the responsibility that the Elder First had left for you. What good was it if you had to sacrifice so much?

There was a way. You knew it. You could feel it. You had stopped the Shiplord fleet in place. Take the power that had done that, and make it a weapon. A sword of fire to wipe away what had done humanity such wrongs. You could end thi-

"No." The word was barely a whisper, but it came from so close to you that it was impossible to miss. You went utterly still, the sheering flame that had been gathering around the head of your staff snuffed out in an instant. You didn't want to look down, not to your left. But you had to, and when you did…


You found Kalilah staring up at you, her eyes holding an emotion very, very different to what they'd ever held before. She coughed once, and shook her head, hard. Yet it wasn't the motion of a child, for all that she felt so very fragile.

"No, Mandy," you blinked, hard. Kalilah never called you that, not so softly, without command yet utterly beyond your ability to ignore. "I've lost one family," her voice cracked, "don't make me lose another." And the world tilted beneath your feet.

Family.

Kalilah Mishra hadn't had family since the Week of Sorrows. She'd lost them then, along with her entire world. She'd never gotten it back, but that hadn't just been because no one had tried to help her. You'd at least been friends, close enough for her to feel that she could sacrifice herself for you. But family? You'd thought she'd have been angry with you, for taking her sacrifice away. Why was she not?

"You came for me," Kalilah replied, as if you'd spoken the question aloud. "When no one else could, no matter that it could have killed you. You took your life and put it beside mine, and said no. Double or nothing. And then you went and won."

"Of course I did. That's what," and it hit you. That's what family did, in the end. It stood together, and never left anyone behind. Kalilah had been forced to leave hers, and that had shaped her into who she was today. And yet, in what you'd just done, you'd proved through actions what no words ever could have. That the life of Kalilah Mishra was worth just as much as your own. That she wasn't just a self-forged weapon, who had been trying to make her last moments more than the pain and fury that had haunted her for almost seventy years.

That her Focus wasn't a prophecy.

And that she was part of a much bigger family than she'd ever had. Not better than what she'd lost, but not lesser, either. And you'd been standing there above her, ready to throw away everything that had ever defined you for exactly the same reasons she'd become who she was.

"Better." Kalilah nodded, and you felt the presence of the other Unisonbound enfold you as Vega led them down to join you. You looked up at your staff, its head smooth once again, and felt the world around you still burning with the strength of billions.

The Shiplords were still stopped, their attention held upon you by the outburst of raw power. Third and Fourth were safe, far enough way that they'd be able to jump out without needing to risk another clash. For whatever reason, you had a captive audience.

What would you say?

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