For The Tyrants Fear Your Might (A quest of interstellar rebellion)

AKuz · Dec 10, 2020

THE ALL-RADIANT CONGRESS

Setting Information: The Solarian Compact:

Initially formed as the Solarian Treaty Organization from the ashes of the old United Nations Security Council, United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and the Global Climate Relief Organization in the worst decade of Earth's environmental collapse. The STO was originally a body tasked with overseeing the granting of offworld mining permits and the purchase and distribution of the resources to countries struggling from climate change.

The advent of the Korolev-Chandrashker gates and the construction of the first one under STO oversight in 2063 led to the beginning of the transformation of that body into the de facto single governing body of the Human species.

Reorganized into the 'Solarian Compact', the first Charters were granted to massive corporate conglomerates to explore and exploit the cosmos for Humanity with little to no regulation or restriction.

In the early decades, the Solarian Compact oversaw the construction of KC gates in the systems closest to Sol and began the process of granting colonization rights to the most habitable worlds within that region with colonization rights granted to a number of national and international blocks.

With the growth of the Solarian Compact's power came calls for the body to become more representative and democratic, and in 2099, the Solarian Compact held its first elections and constitutional convention, inviting representatives from the Sol system and the five systems that held permanent Human settlement.

Over the course of the 22nd and 23rd centuries the Solarian Compact has held fast to what it sees as its duty to act as the mediator and financier of the Charters, the unifying agent of the disparate first Human colonies, and the guarantor of interstellar peace for Humanity.

As of 2252, the three most important bodies within the Solarian Compact are the Solarian Parliament -Located on Earth, the Solarian Compact Navy -based in the Korolev-Chandrashker system, and the Solarian Central Bank, -based out of the Columbia System.

Organized as a liberal democracy, with universal suffrage, the Solarian Compact is theoretically overseen by three equal institutions: the Solarian Parliament, the office of the Solarian Secretary General, and the Solarian High Court.

Though the Solarian Compact prides itself on being a Constitutional government, the actual original document merely outlines the terms of admitting new MPs and High Court Judges, and the electoral procedures of the Compact Parliament, with subsequent Parliaments meeting to add items like the Declaration of Property Rights, the founding of the Central Bank, the creation of the Solarian Navy, and the Laws on Freedom of Navigation and Travel being added later.

The Solarian Parliament is made up of two thousand six hundred and twenty seats representing ridings on Earth, Columbia, Atlantis, Penglai, Olduvai, and Epsilon which are elected every three years to a Parliament that meets in the New York prefecture of Earth.

Though the many frontier colonies do not have direct representation in the Parliament due to being owned and operated by private entities, their inhabitants are considered 'Absent for Employment' and may register with a home riding and submit a physical ballot (for security reasons) by courier from when polls open until they close. Though this process was suitable for the closely settled regions of space at the time of the ratification of the Compact Constitution in 2100, the rapid growth of Human settled space in the century and a half since has seen the de facto voter suppression of over 90% of Human settled space.

At the first sitting of each new Compact Parliament, the assembled members will elect a Secretary General and a slate of Ministry officials on a majority basis, and those individuals will oversee the executive branch of government and day to day operations. Though the average Compact Parliament contains between seven to nine parties in each Parliamentary sitting, the vast majority of seats belong to one of either the Party for Human Rights and Liberties or the Justice and Development Alliance and have since the very early 2100s. The governments formed this way can be brought down by losing the confidence of the Parliament for example, by failing to pass a budget, the process of finding a majority government will repeat again.

Though a democratic body that has maintained stability for over a century and a half, the Solarian Compact Parliament has been dogged by accusations of dynastic politics, Charter influence, voter suppression, regulatory capture, inability to reign in the Banks and MIlitary, and corruption at all levels.

Separate from the Parliament is the Solarian High Court that consists of eleven judges that serve terms of up to thirty-three years, with each new sitting of the Compact Parliament selecting one judge from a list provided by the governments of the six main worlds of the Solarian Compact. The High Court rules on matters of adherence of laws to the Solarian Constitution, and have been accused of serving as an arm of the Charters, though this has been strenuously contested by the Solarian legal profession as a whole.

By law the Solarian Compact also oversees a number of other important institutions including the Earth Reconstruction Commission (In a permanent public-private partnership with the Earth Reconstruction Association), the Solarian Central Bank, and the Solarian Compact Navy, though these important institutions often exhibit an alarming degree of autonomy from Parliamentary control.

The Charters:

The result of a cleverly conceived merger between specialty transport vessel manufacturer Titan Staryards and Private Military contractor Martian Military Solutions, Ares cut its teeth not just supplying material to the skirmishes between Mississippi Shipping and United Starhaul, but in supplying military contractors to both sides.

The professionalism of Ares mercenaries and quality of Ares gear led to the rapid expansion of business opportunities for the company and investment skyrocketed even after the Mississippi-Starhaul war ended in a hostile takeover of Starhaul by Mississippi.

Thanks in part to Mississippi debts held by Ares, when the RT-2102 Gate was opened up for settlement strategic maneuvering saw the Compact grant Ares mining and settlement rights to the newly opened system.

The rest, as they say, is history. Leveraging the immense resources of the Alexander system with their existing military expertise, Ares expanded nearly exponentially over the following century. While they maintain a dominating edge in the military field, they now integrated companies in fields from agronomy to personal fitness centers to xenobiology.

Internally Ares very self consciously styles itself as a hierarchical military organization complete with a semi-formal rank structure and an ethos of respect for the chain of command, professional courtesy, and treating your subordinates with respect. In practice Ares is hidebound, authoritarian, filled with passive aggressive sniping and rampant empire building.

While Ares remains headquartered on Mars, they have holdings in several systems and own the distant system of Alexander outright.

Rhodes Mining

One of the three original Charters that the Compact granted, Rhodes considers itself the singular reason that Humanity survived ecological collapse and spread past Sol. Immensely wealthy, over 52% of all material mined and processed by the entire Human race has passed through Rhodes hands at one point or another.

While founded merely to provide Earth the vital materials that it needed to rebuild itself after the lost decades of ecological collapse, Rhodes quickly expanded into all areas of the economy to support their mining, refining, and processing operations.

Dedicated to their vision of logistical chain efficiencies they've developed an entire chain of star systems into an efficient production center based around the resource rich system of Foundry, and the nearby feeder systems of Ecrams, Qem, and Crucible.

Rhodes considers itself home to a version of meritocracy built on hard work, education, and good old fashioned personal drive. This has developed over time into a stratified internal divide between the rank and file workers, the lower level management, and the highly lauded senior management. Each class lives in entirely separate worlds, attending separate schools, consuming different products, and leading very different lives in what many observers have labelled a de facto caste system.

they make food and medicine, the 120 year old CEO is kinda creepy tho?

Techbros, some of them science, some of them explore

Born from the union of Hermes Interstellar Services and The Ishtar Group, the Hermes-Ishtar Corporation owns and operates not only the communications backbone of Compact space, but much of the content that crosses over it.

The results of increasing consolidation of pre-spaceflight communications infrastructure and content creation and management firms, Hermes Communications and Ishtar Entertainment Group were both part of the second round of Charters established after the advent of the KC gates.

While Hermes quickly established operations throughout Compact space, their waystations, couriers, and communications repeaters a common sight in every corner of Human occupied space; Ishtar Group mainly limited their own operations to Sol and the Radiant system, where Ishtar owned and operated the world of Elysium to support their many projects.

Following a wave of Compact space wide reorganizations following the Mississippi-Starhaul conflicts of the 2130s, a desire for complete vertical integration on Ishtar's part led to a mostly amicable union with Hermes in 2139.

Since then Hermes-Ishtar have dominated all communications across Human space with only the privileged internal high-level communications of the other Charters managing to avoid consolidation under Hermes-Ishtar.

While Hermes-Ishtar make a great show of respecting individual creativity, initiative, and drive from their employees; in practice this amounts to rampant internal fighting involving the parasocial personality cults of different "genius" inventors, artists, and executive that rise and fall inside of Hermes-Ishtar at a dizzying rate.

Sketchy buggers, they can get you anything tho

Historical Topics:

Between 2036 and 2071 the Democratic Federation was the governing body of much of Earth's Western Hemisphere.

Initially comprised of a Federation of Socialist, Anarchist, Communist, and other far left social movements, militias, and political factions controlling regions of Earth's North American continent during and after the decline and collapse of the United States of America (1776-2034) due to the effects of unaddressed climate change amplifying existing political and economic crisis.

Eventually solidifying into the governing body of the former United States of America, United States of Mexico and the Dominion of Canada, the Democratic Federation embarked on an ambitious program of cultural revolution and economic reform designed to mitigate and reverse the effects of the climate change crisis.

As the patron of much of the central and southern western hemisphere, the Democratic Federation attempted to chart a course of environmental restoration separate from that of the Solarian Treaty Organization (In 2063 reorganized into the Solarian Charter), choosing not to contest Eurasian and African domination of outer space.

Having never existed out of crisis conditions, a combination of pre-existing economic damage, sabotage, and instability drove the Democratic Federation into decline in the Grey Decade of 2062 to 2070 and eventually forced the Democratic Federation to ratify a series of treaties giving the Charters economic access to Federation member states in order to conduct vital reconstruction work.

A last ditch uprising by radical elements in 2072 to eject the Charters from the Democratic Federation failed when Solarian Compact peacekeepers were called in and in seven months of street fighting pacified most of North America's key urban centers via strategic use of orbital weapons on the areas of greatest urban resistance.

Though guerilla warfare would continue in the Western Hemisphere for another three decades, the Democratic Federation was officially defunct by December 2072 and parcelled out into a number of Charter owned reconstruction areas under Compact authority.

Today radicals still pine for the four decades that the Democratic Federation attempted to build an alternative to the emerging Charters, and the polity's distinctive black, red, and green flag is brought out for each and every Great Black Summer. Well into the twenty second century, riots were often accompanied by demands to 'Avenge the Martyrs of 72!'.

Despite this underground extremist nostalgia, Charter and Compact schools teach that the Democratic Federation was a collectivist state whose iconoclastic behavior saw the destruction of famous landmarks like Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain, and other monuments to Liberal Democracy and the Free Market in a mad attempt to remake the human race, but whose doctrinaire adoption of command economics saw them unable to deal with the ever-changing complexities of climate change.

Misc Details:

The first five systems to hold permanent Human colonies are known as either "The First Sisters" or "Earth's Daughters", depending on who you are asking and their political persuasion. From oldest to youngest, these worlds are:

Columbia: settled by billionaire American expats and tens of millions of refugees who had fled the unfolding revolutionary violence of the North American continent several years beforehand. Columbia was founded under a vision of fidelity to the American dream and to prove the indomitability of the soul of the United States of America and liberalism in the face of the red flags of the (North American) Democratic Federation. Fiercely loyal to the Compact and the dream of Charter prosperity, and home of the Solarian Central Bank, Columbia is often known as the "Gilded World" in reference to what many see as a return to American Gilded Age wealth and social inequality. Ares Conflict Solutions' central command is located here.

Atlantis: With colonization rights to this majority oceanic planet initially granted to the waning power of the European Union, the nations of the EU opened up colonization opportunities to other allied powers, especially Russia and Egypt. Atlantis was often seen by the EU as a place to dump unwanted refugees from outside of Europe's borders, and Russia and Egypt's tendency to see the world as a genuine project led to the usurpation of colonization rights away from Europe in the mid 2080s. Known today as the most restive of the first wave of colonies, Atlantis is the most skeptical of Charter power and plays a delicate game of wealth redistribution to underwrite the greatest social security net in Human Space. Cernunnos is de jure headquartered here.

Penglai: Originally the world in the most need of terraforming of the original colonies, Colonization rights were granted to the People's Republic of China and their allies after a lackluster bidding campaign. As China's focus was mainly on attempting to stem the damage of climate change on Earth herself, colonization of Penglai initially lagged until the Chinese Politburo struck upon the strategy of subcontracting colonization rights to Pacific adjacent nations suffering from the rise of that ocean. As colonization unfolded in the early 22nd century Penglai became known as a multicultural mosaic as hundreds of millions from across the Pacific settled and intermingled on the wine darkened shores of that world. Known today for its vibrant cultural milieu, violent clashes between labour unions, and private police, Penglai hosts the headquarters of the Hermes-Ishtar, Omoikane and Rhodes corporations.

Olduvai: With Colonization rights granted to a coalition of African nations at the height of the 'African Century', the African Colonization Organization did not see their colony as a refugee destination, dumping ground, or resource colony like their fellows. Instead the ACO saw the colonization scheme as an opportunity to preserve and export the rich traditions and cultures of Africa on their own terms, fully intending to set up healthy and self-sufficient colonies. To the current day, Olduvai has the closest relations with the home nations and is the heartland of Daughter sentiment and a bedrock for the Party for Human Rights and Liberties.

Epsilon System: While not technically a single world, the cluster of heavily inhabited space colonies in the Epsilon system are always considered the 'Fifth Sister' or 'Fifth Daughter'. As the most mineral rich system of the original colonies, Epsilon was the source of many of the materials that helped pull Earth through her darkest hour, and the system was recognized for their efforts by being invited to send delegates to the 2099 Solarian Compact Constitutional Convention. Epsilon is famous for its people's long roots in spacing and for being the headquarters of Mississippi Shipping Interstellar and thus the most heavily trafficked system in history.
Technologies: Nanomanufacturing, summary:

The contemporary gold standard for manufacturing. These devices use mechanosynthesis, a process that guides chemical reactions by placing reactive molecules with atomic precision. Ribosomes in the body's cells use a form of this method.

While the largest units can create objects up to 2m x 2m x 2m, smaller units (halving the units each time) are viable on basically any human scale. Projects larger than this size (such as ships or buildings, need to be either grown layer-by-layer via nanofabricators attached to robotic arms, or assembled from smaller parts through traditional assembly line, dry dock, or construction processes.

In principle basically anything can be made with these devices, and some materials can only be manufactured via these methods in microgravity. All manufacturing patterns in Compact Space feature Charter DRM using embedded explosive molecules like octaazacubane or cubic gauche nitrogen that will damage a disassembler or x-ray machine making reverse engineering of their products difficult.

A common part of 23rd century life is the near ubiquity of Artificial Intelligences in daily life, from consumer grade VIs through specialist TLIs, controversial AGIs, finally the perpetually 10 years away Artificial Super Intelligences.

The common consumer will daily run into what are properly known as Narrow AIs, and generally labelled as VI -Virtual Intelligences- by people outside the field. This category covers a broad swathe of techniques, from search and pathfinding to expert systems to genetic fuzzy trees to deep neural networks, which are mixed and matched with each other to optimize for the designed task. VIs are ubiquitous, exceeding human peak skill in their areas of specialization (though real world applications often don't do all that much better than trained humans), and have spent the past two centuries getting augmented with more and more clever algorithmic tricks for improving VIs. In order to do this, the Charters employ large teams of analysts and software engineers to develop clever algorithmic tricks that supplement or outright supplant neural networks, exploiting machine precision where stochastic methods are inadequate.

The use of VIs in everyday life is well accepted by the vast majority of the population, with professionals mixing and matching various consumer VIs to analyse data or assist them with creative or scientific works. Some VI lines are well loved by both the populace and the Charters themselves, with Charter programmers often deliberately leaving VIs with behavioral quirks and unpredictable glitches that not only save money on quality assurance, but are considered endearing traits that lead to anthropomorphization by the consumer market

Despite the mass comfortability and profitability of VIs of all kinds, the introduction of AGIs has been, to put it delicately, controversial. Though computer science has advanced to the point of producing programs that can not only pass the Turing test, but demonstrate sapience and match 23rd century human intelligence, flexibility, and creativity, the public reaction to the introduction of AGI saw the companies of the time rapidly pull them from the market, and even say the Compact itself move to heavily regulate the AI sector.

First introduced in the 2060s, the great tech firms began replacing their work staff with AGIs who did not require food, rest, housing, or pay. This shift led to an alliance between white collar workers fearing that automation would put them out of work and radicals who opposed what they insisted was AGI Slavery, a growing movement that would climax in the First Great Black Summer of 2084. When the ashes of the First Black Summer settled, the Compact's Parliament moved to grant rights to AGIs, and the resulting economic damage saw dozens of formerly great names in computing consolidate under the aegis of several of the first Charters who flaunted their extra-Solarian wealth by buying up prestigious brand names and research divisions on the cheap.

Since the 2080s, while the regulation surrounding AGI production and use have been severely weakened none of the Charters have sought to reintroduce them into the market, perhaps fearing another backlash like the First Black Summer and the few hundred thousand surviving AGIs that were granted Solarian Citizenship rights have found spread throughout the Compact and Charter Space where they usually work at the same white collar jobs whose workers they were designed to replace.

Perhaps due to the risks of attempting to reintroduce AGIs to the market, Omoikane has instead introduced their flagship product the "TLI" or Temporary Limited Intelligence. Approximately as effective as an AGI, a TLI is billed as a more moral replacement for AGI that uses a suite of high end VIs and a proprietary batch of creativity algorithms in order to complete complex tasks.

TLIs are used as a fire and forget program designed to be licensed to solve a single issue, no matter how complicated and then delete itself. Though the TLIs are a black box product, scientists from the other Charters believe that the central creativity algorithm in the TLI is inherently unstable and rapidly degrades in ability with time, making the TLI an instance of Omoikane attempting to market a critical technical flaw as a selling point that is accepted due to the ubiquitous market practice of planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity.

Though expensive, most businesses and successful professionals will keep a few licensed Omoikane TLIs on hand to throw at difficult problems or to supplement manpower in crunch situations.

While AGIs have been possible for nearly two centuries, the promise of a Seed AI, a recursively self-improving general superintelligence, is perpetually 'a decade away from the market', and no successful ASI ever been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Charters or the Compact.

This is not to say that the Gödel machine architecture or the AIXI model has somehow been forgotten in the past 230 years, but that the Friendly AI problem has yet to be cracked. Every demonstration has either stalled out or gone immediately rampant, attempting to overthrow Charter Space before being stopped by the safety net of Narrow AIs. The small trickle of roughly human intelligence level AGIs that are created every decade typically come from these projects.

Urban legends persist that a few Seed AIs managed to escape and hide out beyond known space, plotting to return and crush humanity, or that they control all of society in secret, puppeting the Compact and Charters from their very foundation and occasionally engineering publicly failed ASI attempts to allay suspicion. These rumours are, of course, patently false, and simply the fevered imagination of crackpots at work, no doubt inspired by entertainment made by Hermes-Ishtar that feature AI supervillainy.
Systems: Map made by @Redshirt Army

The Spinward Frontier:

The Middle Spinward Frontier

The Core Region:

UNDER RADIANT CONTROL OR ALLIED:

The Radiant system is host to a G-class star, only slightly smaller than Sol. The system itself is rather small and resource-poor; experts believe that one or more Jovian planets ejected much of the system's bodies and then followed themselves. This is evidenced by the system's asteroid belt degrading over time, with high levels of eccentric orbits and impacts on planetary surface.

Radiant 1: A rather unremarkable airless iron planet, gravity 0.4 Earth Standard.

Radiant 2: A slightly larger unremarkable airless iron-silicate planet, gravity 0.6 Earth Standard.

Radiant 3: A binary planetary system and the outermost of the Radiant systems' planets.

Asphodel (Radiant 3a): The larger of the Elysium 3 pair, Asphodel might have once hosted life of its own. That life has been snuffed out for hundreds of millions of years, though, as the planet's significant atmosphere began the runaway cycle of your usual hothouse planet. Hermes-Ishtar maintained a significant aerostat and automated surface miner operation for in-house manufacturing, given that the frequent asteroid impacts from the asteroid belt keep digging up chunks of the upper crust and having low-melting-point metals rain out of the sky and solidify, unoxidized, on the surface for collection. Gravity 1.4 Earth Standard.

Elysium (Radiant 3b): Elysium was settled in the late 2190's, being a relatively simple affair. Simple life had already begun to evolve under its oceans, but continued orbital bombardment far past the lengths of things like Earth's Late Heavy Period had kept it there. It was a simple matter of forming up a small anti-asteroid task force armed with tugs and mining lasers to artificially end the pummeling, and the surface proved amenable to Terran life transplants. The colony is energy-self-sufficient, using a variety of solar, tidal, and nuclear power. Gravity 0.9 Earth Standard.

Radiant I: The outermost significant feature of Radiant, this asteroid belt is more a loose mixture of a primordial asteroid belt much like Sol's with a Kuiper belt. The shepherding gas giants which once nudged all these rocks into their orbits are gone, and with it the entire outer system is a maelstrom of chaotic orbits as the belts lose their coherence. This requires constant vigilance from Elysium's anti-asteroid team, but the high eccentricity of many asteroids also makes it cheap and easy to mine the ones that might come Elysium's way, which provides a trickle of basic resources for upkeep and personal goods. All large-scale building and infrastructure projects have been supplied from out-system, however.

A G-K far binary system, Gaid is simply a transit point to Radiant. Gaid's own gate maintenance techs and SAR rotated in and out through Radiant itself. There is no infrastructure other than a set of buoy lines for communications in Gaid A, and nothing in Gaid B.

Gaid A1: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid A2: A planet much like mars with a vestigial CO2 atmosphere. Quality 7.

Gaid A3: This planet boasts a methane hydrosphere. Quality 4.

Gaid AI: An asteroid belt.

Gaid A4: A turbulent Jovian planet, its storms would make resource extraction difficult. Quality 5.

Gaid A4a: An icy moon, with tidal heating creating a large ocean under a thin icy shell. Quality 9.

Gaid B1: A molten Cthonian world hosting a simply ludicrous amount of iron. Quality 15.

Gaid B2: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid B3: An airless binary system with two near-identically sized planets. Quality 7 and 8.

Gaid B4: This airless planet boasts a large and beautiful ring system, famous as a screen background option across human space. Every few years, a cruise or scientific expedition will stop by for more images.

Gaid B5: A small icy planet. Quality 3.

Gaid B6: A frozen world. Quality 7.

Gaid B7: An interesting gas dwarf sometimes referred to as an 'ice dwarf.' Quality 14.

A close K-M binary, Shei is home to an old Ares penal colony.

Shei 1: A Cthonian world. Quality 15.

Shei 2: An airless world. Quality 12.

Sheol (Shei 3): A boreal world, with a large, decaying ring, the planet features two large continents. The population of the consists of a large prisoner population on the larger of the two continents and a small Ares training base on the smaller. Records show that the prison consists of several million persons convicted to "high risk labour" and dropped on the continent with automatic resupply via Ares contractors and watched from orbit by weapons satellites. Most of the planet's land area is covered in a native tree analogue with a strange multi-stranded trunk.

Sheol is actually home to a population of over 100 million made up of prisoners and their descendants taht Ares was usuing as a live fire training course. Cooperation between Radiant agents, Ares mutineers, and the Sheolites themselves have seen the planet freed.

Gravity .95 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Watchman (Shei 3a): Once the outer of two moons, this body now boasts Ares' local light shipyards and system command center. Quality 13.

Shei 4: Spiraling in from the outer system, this planet will eventually evaporate near-entirely as it closes towards the dual suns of Shei. Quality 3.

Shei 5: Martian planet with an active methane cycle. Quality 5.

Shei I: Asteroid belt.

Shei 6: Jovian planet with high rotation rate. Slightly squashed as a result. Quality 8.

Shei 6a: An icy capture, this moon will be torn into a ring sometime in the next hundred thousand years. Quality 2.

Shei 6b: Cold Martian planet, covered in a thin layer of water and carbon dioxide ices. Active methane cycle. Quality 8.

Shei II: Asteroid belt.

Shei 7: Jovian planet. Quality 13.

Shei 7a: An icy moon with significant cryovolcanism. Quality 6.

Shei 7b: A tiny icy moon, this is on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 2.

Shei 8: Ice giant. Quality 6.

Shei 8a: An icy moon. Quality 9.

Shei 8b: An icy moon, orbiting in an unusual polar orbit. Quality 9.

Population: 103,000,000

While lacking any currently-habitable planets, Five Lions' large size and potential have made it a significant point of Rhodes' recent extraction efforts. Ambitious terraforming efforts have recently begun.

Carajas (Five Lions 1): A Cthonian ball of iron, it's actively mined by robotic Rhodes-built landers. Gravity 2.3 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Five Lions 2: A small rocky ball. Quality 3.

Five Lions 3: A rocky ball. Quality 7.

Grasberg (Five Lions 4): A large rocky world, glaciation has rendered it uninhabitable for now, but terraforming efforts have begun to artificially ramp up the greenhouse effect and restore liquid water to the surface, along with mining its ice. Gravity 1.11 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Five Lions 5: This planet's atmosphere is so significant it verges on a gas dwarf. While a solid surface covered in a thin layer of ice is at the bottom, no reasonable colonization is possible. Quality 7.

Five Lions I: This asteroid belt, along with all the others, is being mined heavily.

Five Lions 6: This Jovian planet forms the center of current Rhodes extraction efforts. Quality 4.

Five Lions 6a: This Martian planet boasts significant ice caps and active plate tectonics, though only a vestigial atmosphere. Debate on whether to put resources into terraforming it are ongoing. Gravity .81 Earth Standard. Quality 17.

Oyu Tolgoi (Five Lions 6b): Home to the local population in covered shelters, this Martian planet, while nearly completely lacking water or plate tectonics, has its own atmosphere. Comet bombardment away from populated areas is ongoing and is already beginning to show results. Gravity .79 Earth Standard. Quality 11.

Five Lions II: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 7: An unremarkable Jovian. Quality 2.

Five Lions III: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 8: Jovian planet, its rotation speed has resulted in an unusually calm upper atmosphere. Quality 15.

Five Lions IV: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 9: Jovian planet. Quality 9.

Five Lions V: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 10: Neptunian ice giant. Quality 8.

Five Lions 10a: A small icy moon. Quality 5.

Five Lions 10b: A large icy body, this was probably its own planetoid at some point before being captured due to the complex interplays of no less than 5 gas giants.

Population: 15,000,000

A rare system with a brown dwarf orbiting a G-type star (just barely in the limits of what's considered a single system rather than a binary), and with a Jovian planet orbiting that, and on top of that treasure trove a dual ice giant binary, Osliam presents a golden research opportunity, and was bid on by Omoikane despite its otherwise sparce resources and poor habitable prospects.

Osliam 1: A rare hot ice giant, this planet is actively shrinking on a measurable time scale. It must have migrated in as a much larger planet recently.

Osliam 1a: This once-rock-ice moon is now a tiny molten ellipse barely holding together.

Osliam 1b: This somewhat larger moon changes color unusually with its day, as the shade of its parent cools lava to a dull red before emerging back into the light heats the lava back to a healthy orange glow.

Osliam 1c: This entire moon glows dull red in its day, just barely solid, and cools to an unusually smooth moon in its night.

Osliam I: This asteroid belt was probably a planet before Osliam 1's passing tore it to shreds.

Osliam 3: A hothouse planet with a relatively thin atmosphere, it retains temperatures and pressures that are survivable with heavy-duty equipment on the surface—when it's not raining sulfuric acid, that is.

Osliam 4: This small Martian planet seems to have collected some of Osliam 1's offgassing in its move inwards, and has a renewed temporary atmosphere.

Osliam 5a: This planet seems to have survived at the edge of the frost line by siphoning gas off its smaller twin.

Osliam 5b: Barely a gas giant, this planet was probably only slightly smaller than Osliam 5a in the distant past.

Osliam 6: The focus of Omoikane colonization in-system, Osliam 6 retains plate tectonics from the nearby brown dwarf but no atmosphere, an odd combination.

Osliam 7: A brown dwarf, this substellar object long ago burnt its deuterium and now lies slowly cooling, glowing dimly red. It is, however, still giving off a prodigious amount of low IR radiation.

Osliam 7a: Once its own planet, Osliam 7a was captured at some point by Osliam 7, perhaps in the same interaction that threw Osliam 1 to its suicidal innermost orbit.

Osliam 7a1: This icy moon is simultaneously shrinking and becoming more habitable—while its outer layers of ice are sublimating, the fierce tides of its complex interplay with Osliam 7 and 7a are heating the inner ocean to temperatures comparable to terrestrial water sources. Some scientists even suggest a pocket of water vapor is forming under the ice, and may form an internal "sky" for as much as a hundred million years before the outer shell sublimates entirely.

Osliam 7a2: This moon is less lucky; its tides are so strong that they seem to slowly be ripping the moon apart. It won't have the honor of becoming more than an ephemeral ring; the same complex tides tearing at it will rapidly disperse its debris field. While it lasts, though, it's easy water harvesting.

Population: 650,000

UNDER CHARTER CONTROL:

A distant double G binary, Xotreh hosts a small habitable moon around Xotreh B, the smaller of the two stars. As such, development has focused on the second star, despite the fact that the jump points center closer to Xotreh A.

Xotreh A1: This world boasts an active liquid silicate cycle on its surface, with oceans of basalt and continents of granite. Gravity 0.38 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A2: A rather large airless world, its original atmosphere was likely blown off by a massive impact. Gravity 1.2 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Xotreh A3: A binary planetary pair of airless worlds about the size of Mars. Quality 6 and 8.

Xotreh A4: A hothouse planet with a planet-wide sulfuric acid storm due to its rapid rotation. Gravity .71 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A5 "Cueball": This planet is remarkably similar to Earth—if earth was buried under a kilometers-thick ice sheet across 90% of the surface. One day, as Xotreh A expands and dies, this world will become an ocean planet, but for now it's a cold desert. Gravity .87 Earth Standard. Quality 5.

Xotreh A6: An unremarkable icy ball. Quality 4.

Xotreh AI: An asteroid belt.

Xotreh A7: A Jovian planet, Xotreh 7 corrals the entire inner system in line. Quality 10.

Xotreh B1: This planet must have once been a gas giant at least the size of Uranus before it was sent inwards. Now all that remains is a dense core with a molten surface. Gravity 1.51 Earth Standard. Quality 13.

Xotreh B2: A binary pair of earth-sized airless worlds. Quality 6 and 7.

Xotreh B3: Another once-gas giant, this planet remains far out enough to boast a wholly-solid surface of iron. Gravity 1.64 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Xotreh B4: A Jovian right on the frost line, its tidal heating keeps its moons on the edge of habitability. Quality 3.

Xotreh B4a "Sushi": An ocean world with massive polar ice caps, Omoikane has constructed a series of seasteads on the equatorial high ocean plateaus where it was feasible to drive foundations into the sea floor a few hundred meters below the surface. These small facilities serve as housing, data storage, and production centers for the research teams studying the dual Cthonian planets of Xotreh B. Gravity .67 Earth Standard. Quality 2.

Xotreh B4b: The lesser tidal heating here worsened the glaciation, and the planet lies under a planet-wide crust of ice. Gravity 1.13 Earth Standard. Quality 10.

Xotreh BI: The close proximity of this asteroid belt makes it an ideal location for resource extraction.

Xotreh 5: This Jovian is definitively beyond the habitable zone. Quality 6.

Xotreh 6: A dense ice giant. Quality 4.

Xotreh 7: Jovian planet. Quality 6.

Xotreh 8: An exceptionally cold Jovian. Quality 9.

Xotreh 8a: An unremarkable icy sphere. Quality 8.

Xotreh 9: This planet would have a massive atmosphere, if it wasn't so cold it all froze and fell to the surface. Only a few degrees above the space surrounding it. Gravity 1.3 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Population: 54,000

Besides an interesting Jovian-gas dwarf planetary system, Bestreer holds little of interest other than its connections to other places.

Bestreer 1: An airless world. Quality 2.

Bestreer 2: An airless world. Quality 6.

Bestreer 3: This airless world once had a captured moon, torn apart at the Roche limit and forming a ring. A small gate maintenance and SAR team bases here, siphoning fuel and water from Bestreer 5 and mining into the surface for both resources and safe spaces for housing. Quality 10.

Bestreer 4: A rock-ice world. Quality 5.

Bestreer 5: Another rock-ice world made up more of ice than rock. Quality 5.

Bestreer I: An icy asteroid belt.

Bestreer 6: A large Jovian planet, on the edge of becoming a brown dwarf. Quality 15.

Bestreer 6a: This gas dwarf might have become a gas giant in its own right without its massive sibling. Quality 5.

Bestreer 7: Another Jovian. Quality 14.

Bestreer 7a: An icy moon, with an internal ocean buried under kilometers of ice. Quality 12.

Bestreer 8: An icy ball. Quality 10.

Population: 450

G-class star. A transshipping point to Radiant and environs, Mississippi keeps a substantial support crew on hand for possible cargo ship breakdowns or emergencies in-system, due to the slightly increased risk of issues from the absolute shambles of Akleod's inner system. A minor executive has also put together a cheap refueling and battery exchange station.

Akleod 1: Even actively evaporating and leaving behind a trail in orbit of dissipating volatiles, this body is large enough to have usurped Akleod 1a's orbit temporarily until it disappears away or the chaotic orbit of the two throws one into the star or out of the system. Quality 2.

Akleod 1a: The original Akleod 1, its orbit has been badly disrupted by the current, migrating Akleod 1. Which of the two gets ejected is still uncertain despite a decent amount of computational simulation; odds put it at 48-52% relatively. Quality 6.

Gnat's Ass (Akleod 2): A small, loosely-held-together icy body, perhaps what used to be an asteroid belt before Akleod 1's suicidal inner-system dive. It's not yet had time to fully reach hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 3.

Akleod 3: An icy planet similar to Akleod 1, perhaps an old sibling. Quality 13.

Akleod I: An asteroid belt.

Akleod 4: A Jovian with an unusually elliptical orbit, it's regarded as the culprit for the chaos of Akleod's inner system. Quality 11.

Population: 5,000

As it turns out, transponder codes from regular priority messages through Gaid (now that we can see them, having backdoored the gate control) bear tags from a system, Thoa, along with navigational chart updates for any ships that happen to stop by. Thoa and Gaid both seem to have been nothing more than transit points to the far-more-valuable Radiant for Hermes-Ishtar, but Thoa holds a small anti-pirate base guarding against raiders from Signia. Hermes-Ishtar was apparently serious enough about it to have a converted corvette on station.

All told, the Thoa system holds gates to 2 systems besides Gaid's. There's also an unimproved jump point simply labelled as "dangerous." that leads to Signia

Thoa System Stats:

Thoa 1: A molten mess of a planet, it's hot enough that a residual atmosphere of vaporized low-melting-point metallics exists.

Thoa 2: An unremarkable airless metal ball.

Thoa 3: A super-earth hothouse, this planet would have been uninhabitable due to its gravity even before turning scorchingly hot.

Thoa 3a: A captured asteroid barely on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium, the Nasty Bastardhad been excavating rudimentary shelters for "leave" for its crew.

Thoa I: An asteroid belt.

Thoa 4: A normal Jovian planet.

Thoa 4a: A moon much like Mars in climate.

Thoa 5: A Jovian planet with an unusual triangular wind pattern at the poles.

Thoa 6: Blooms of hydrogen well up from the core of this Jovian, perhaps disturbed by some recent impact.

Thoa 7: Bathyscapes would find themselves at home on the surface of Thoa 7. Pressures much like that at Earth's seabed keep a crust of ice 3 stable enough robotic drones could walk on it.

Thoa 7a: Unusually, Thoa 7a is the only large icy body in the system. Scientists are unsure of where the others went. As the only easy source of volatiles, the UNasty Bastard periodically stopped by a handful of obsolete volatile collection systems on the surface to top up.

Thoa II: A Kuiper belt of icy objects.

Empty Systems

Kimberly: A fairly unremarkable and empty system, this site was chosen as Rhodes' spinward boneyard—a place for failed experiments, old equipment, and ships so worn they weren't worth maintaining anymore, but were still valuable enough to warrant not throwing into a gas giant or otherwise completely destroyed. For 2 decades a Rhodes-affiliated salvaging contractor worked here, gathering scrap and other valuables, but following high injury and death rates and low returns, the contract (and most non-local dumping) was cancelled in 2247 (4 years before the March Days.)

Kimberly 1: A large rocky planet, this must have migrated inwards from further out in the system a long time ago to be so large so close to its parent star.

Kimberly 2: A Martian planet that keeps a comfortable daytime temperature despite its lack of atmosphere due to a close orbit.

Kimberly 3: A Jovian world.

Kimberly I: This asteroid belt is actually combined with a thinly-spread junkyard corralled by Kimberly's 2 gas giants.

Kimberly 4: A Neptunian world, this planet has several starship hulks abandoned as the closest stable orbit to the gate out. An old deactivation hub orbits in resonance with Kimberly 4a, the former site of a salvaging operation.

Kimberly 4a: The only significant satellite in the system, this icy moon retains a thin crust and a massive subterranean freshwater ocean.

Total:

Radiant:

Gaid:

Five Lions:

Head of Diplomatic Corps:

Name: Amanda Redcrest, Victoria Blackwell, and Kayla Hayashi

DoB: "2222", 2219, 2227, 2224

Current Position: Influential media figure and figurehead of Social Committee propaganda

Not a traditional diplomat, or a traditional individual 'Veronica Stardust' is the persona of a trio of XP broadcasters who have been working together since 2246 and has consistently been one of the most recognized figures across Charter space and is a local Elysian celebrity.

In Charter space those individuals who choose to make money by recording their lived experiences, of all kinds, for later playback are treated with an indulgent disdain by the polite classes as a mix of internet celebrity and sex worker despite the practice of selling XP experiences being common in the poorer segments of society and a smaller portion of the professional middle class attempting to stay afloat in a tight gig economy.

Amanda Redcrest was a former media programmer whose attempts to supplement her income with XP work backfired and saw her fired from her job. Contrarily, Kayla and Victoria both come from lower class backgrounds, though Kayla's attempts to climb into the middle class by earning a marketing degree were frustrated when her lower class status markers and financing of education via XP work saw her frozen out of the job market.

A former collaborator of Kayla's, Victoria had been a rising XP star in her own right and had no desire to change her station, but as her brief celebrity began to fade Victoria approached Kayla to propose the creation of a dedicated broadcasting persona that both would act as. Later bringing on Redcrest, who they'd both done crossover XP work with, to do technical work, the trio used carefully gathered market data and some intuition to create the "Veronica Stardust" persona of an middlingly-intelligent and freewheeling persona who played to the upper class's picture of what depravities and indignities the poorer class must get up to in their spare time.

From 2246 to 2251 the Veronica Stardust persona (performed by all three at various times, though primarily Victoria) produced experience recordings that were nearly always in the top 10 best sellers across Charter space.

Though they enjoyed the wealth that they brought in, the trio increasingly chafed at the market driven limitations of Veronica, and were considering a number of possibly catastrophic brand shifts when the March Days broke out and all three participated in street actions in a private capacity after sending one last broadcast as 'Veronica' to encourage revolt.

Since the formation of the Social Committee the figure of Veronica has been rebranded to serve as the figurehead of Social Committee Propaganda and several major initiatives have been launched with her at the forefront including a highly successful part of the anti-overproduction initiatives.

As part of the now-completed campaign to maintain the charade that Radiant was still under Charter control, Veronica Stardust continued to sell broadcasts to HI media chains, though the trio could not help but begin a brand shift towards a far more intelligent and radical persona.

Pros: XP Celebrity, influential, well known, inspiring to the middle and lower classes

Cons: XP celebrity, little diplomatic experience, three people

Diplomatic Goals: Defeat the Charters in the field of public opinion, push social revolution and freedom of information and communication, cause public opinion to oppose attacking Radiant

Unlocked FRM

Ares Peacekeeping Grade - Access to planetary army formation

Ares Military Grade - Access to mid-sized shipyards, bonuses to planetary army combat. Bonus to completion of Chinook remodeling

Rhodes Light industrial Grade - 10% increase to all mining income, reduced Cost for BLG and other actions that use basic fabber processes

Rhodes Heavy Industrial Grade - Massive discount on mining upgrades, able to unlock automated technologies with Omoikaine

Cernunnos Consumer Grade - +1 to all Soccom actions

Cernunnos Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Omoikane Consumer Grade - +1 to FRM reserach for each two tech bases unlocked (+6 currently)

Omoikane Enterprise Grade - +5 to blue sky research, automation with Omoikane

Hermes-Ishtar Consumer Grade - Your economy doesn't crash when the turn of funding

Hermes-Ishtar Production Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

MSI Consumer Grade - Consumer Goods, Drones, and personal vehicles, +2 to domestic projects in IndComm and SocComm

MSI Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Original Tech

The Box: Fabber the size of a X-box that can, with time, materials and power, print the components for a full sized box. Less efficient, but easy to print and hide.

Defence Coordinator:

Name: Maria Awhina

DoB: 2165

Current Position: Military Committee Delegate from the Radiant Veterans Guild

Born into poverty on Earth as the twenty-second century began to wane, young 22-year old Maria Awhina caught up in radical anti-Charter politics during the third black summer of 2187 and was convicted of property destruction during the rioting and sentenced to serve as a contractor to Hermes-Ishtar until her contract was paid off.

The stark choice of starvation or service to Hermes-Ishtar caused Maria to descend into self-destructive behavior where for twenty years Ms. Awhina continuously volunteered for the highest paid and most dangerous positions that Hermes-Ishtar had available.

Hermes-Ishtar considers Special Operations Lieutenant Awhina to have served with distinction throughout the heavy skirmishing of that era, though Maria herself continues to carry guilt for her service and her survival.

After performing exceptionally well in a hostage rescue operation Awhina was transferred to the Protective Detail Division of Hermes-Ishtar Security, and was eventually assigned to serve as the head of the Radiant Vice President's protective detail.

Over the next four decades she came to see the world as her home, and while her professionalism never wavered, her loyalty to the company who still owned her contract did.

This March, Maria had the option to gun down her fellow planetary headquarters workers to secure Yang's escape, or to finally return to roots in anti-Charter agitation. The fact that we are all here today shows what choice she made.

Pros:

-Actual Combat Veteran, knows Radiant inside and out, special operations expert, professional.

Cons:

-only academic knowledge of starship operations, logistics, organization command and strategic operations.

Command Traits:

-Objective oriented, unflappable, aggressive, prefers attacks and operations to come from unexpected angles.

Reports from the Permanent Commission for Military Intelligence on hostile forces in neighbouring systems:

Blue Squadron:
-Allegiance: Ares Combat Solutions
-Service: Mars Interstellar Security
-CO: Rear Admiral Weylon Kang
-Flagship: MIS Yorktown

We know little about Rear Admiral Weylon Kang except that he has received a number of commendations from the MIS board for keeping costs low while on deployment. He appears to be making an effort to clamp down on the rumours racing back and forth across the fleet.

MIS Yorktown
-British Empire-class Fleet Tender
MIS Eurymedon
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS La Rochelle
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Rachado
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Second Schooneveld
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Matapan
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Valcour Island
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Kerch Strait
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Galveston Harbour
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Sarych
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS River Plate
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Third San Francisco
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Scipio Africanus
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Suleiman I
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Louis Botha
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Fort Ware
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Mackinac
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Osage
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Arabian
-Postal-class Courier
MIS Macedonia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Citerior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Ulterior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Gallia Narbonensis
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Sicilia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Corsica et Sardinia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery B
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery C
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal B
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal C
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal D
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal E
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal F
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation
Battery B
-Airstrike Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal B
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Strikecraft Wing, ID# 48603
-Radiance-Type Strikecraft

-None

Local Security Forces
-Approximately fifty strong volunteer station security militia drawn from station personnel

Local Security Forces:
-Deep Space Security Solutions (Omoikane Subsidiary) Customs shuttle squadron based out of Xotreh B-4a's orbital station
-Three companies of Standard Planetary Security Company (Ares subsidiary) troops based out of Xotreh B-4a's habitat complexes for internal security and law enforcement

139th Solarian Navy Squadron:
-Allegiance: Solarian Compact
-Service: Solarian Navy
-CO: Vice Admiral David Visser
-Flagship: SNS Krak de Chevaliers

Thanks to his heavy handed labour discipline and extractive tribute and demands for corvee labour from Ascension Admiral Visser is viscerally hated by the populace of Ascension, and to a lesser degree the rest of the Solarian Force as well. While the gate's completion draws near, it is uncertain what path that Visser will persue.

SNS Krak de Chevaliers
-Star-hold-Class light-tender
SNS Victoria Newman
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Julia Stonechild
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Robert Chuikov
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Wallace Al-Wazir
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Dawn's Early Light
-Freedom's Light-class cruiser
SNS Jacob Nagumo
-Herald Kanumba-Class frigate
SNS Alexander Hamilton
-Liberation-class troop transport

Solarian Marines now spread throughout the system

PCMI Provides new system data on the single system that lies beyond beyond Five Lions:

Mobile Force:

Current Orders: Defend the All Radiant Congress by acting as a rapid response in the event of any hostile acts.

CO: Commodore Stephanie Rousseau

CNS Velasco, United States of America-class Fleet Carrier

-CO: Captain Esteri Attar

-Orca Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Jasmine Ang

-Red Wolf Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Heloisa Kimura de Lima

CNS Shieldmaiden, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Shamhat, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Righteous Tempest, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Vehement Shade

CNS August Willich, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Elysium, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Asphodel, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Home Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol, act as a reserve force

CO: Commodore Erina Kozlova

CNS Blaire Mountain, New Model-Class Strike Corvette

-CO: Captain Guillermo Kageyama

CNS Scutum, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Martin Pagonis

CNS Buckler, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Samuel Smiles

CNS Nasty Bastard, A Jury Rigged Mess of a Drone Carrier

-CO: Captain Jean-Paul Beaumont

-

Radiant System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol

CO: Overseen by Admiral Gregory Mansur in his capacity as MilComm Chief of Naval Operations

Radiant Customs Squadron, Arabia-class boarding craft with marine contingents

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Switchblade Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Apogee Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

-

Gaid System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Gaid

CO: Commodore Victor Raine

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Zephyr Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Ara Helge

Aeolus Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Gale Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Frontier Force

Current Orders: Keep watch on SolNav force in Raphanus, assist with integration of Ascension military forces, patrol Spinward frontier

CO: Commodore Shayla McLean

CNS Kiel Mutiny, Kaiserreich-class BattleCruiser

-CO: Captain Inana Devlin

CNS Choreographer, Janissary-class Light Tender

-CO: Captain Karl Xanthopoulos

CNS Valiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Defiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Fool's Errand

CNS Reliant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Rouge Napier

CNS Actium, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain John Rankin

CNS Crête-à-Pierrot, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Nkiru Chaudhari

CNS Valmy, New Model-Class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Sumac Barros

CNS Revolutionary Will, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Yamamoto Hanae

CNS Revolutionary Grace, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Under New Management, Don-Class Fast Tanker

-CO: Captain Adras Kierenos

CNS Liberte, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Colin McRae

CNS Egalite, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Adelia Swift

Resources
Naval Ship Types: Ship Types (Public Version)
Naval Officers: Congressional Navy Officers (Public Version)
System Codex: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rtNbPCcPsTK7HCHKo9dPgK7ntx5tBKOpltrZb_In7GY/edit#
Blaze Zhang: Blaze Zhang is trans-masc. That means his pronouns are he/him.

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Setsul · May 2, 2022

yeastmobile said:
Using chemical explosives to mix the warhead materials to set off the bomb is how modern IRL nuclear bombs work.

No, the chemical explosives set off the fission part.
Getting the temperature and pressure needed for fusion just with chemical explosives is extremely difficult and impractical.

Though I'm curious what you mean by "mixing"? Nuclear fusion isn't set off by mixing different materials, to my knowledge.

yeastmobile · May 2, 2022

Setsul said:
No, the chemical explosives set off the fission part.

Step 1 of a fission bombs sequence to detonate is setting off conventional chemical explosives to compress a radioactive material into supercriticality, usually plutonium.

Step 1 of a fusion bombs sequence to detonate is setting off conventional cehmical explosives to make two lumps of Uranium smash into each other and go supercritical.

To stop side-tracking from the thread though, it is depressing to me thinking it over that this is probably the most realistic way forward for humanity. Decades to centuries of wallowing under capitalism as people scream at us that it's the only way to save humanity from itself until either everyone dies in nuclear hellfire or freedom ultimately wins. I'm not sad and anxious today, you are comrade.

Setsul · May 2, 2022

yeastmobile said:
Step 1 of a fission bombs sequence to detonate is setting off conventional chemical explosives to compress a radioactive material into supercriticality, usually plutonium.

Step 1 of a fusion bombs sequence to detonate is setting off conventional cehmical explosives to make two lumps of Uranium smash into each other and go supercritical.

No, the first one is an implosion-type fission bomb, the second is a gun-type fission bomb.
Fusing Uranium would not generate energy, even if it were possible. Certain Uranium and Plutonium isotopes are both fissile material
For fusion you need much lighter elements like hydrogen, helium, or lithium.

I don't want to sidetrack this any further, so I'll stop replying from now on, but you really mixed things up there.

BaseDeltaZero · May 2, 2022

Derkan said:
That humanity in Mass Effect would be funny.

I mean Mass Effect hates AI, so... here we go again, I guess.

Shard of Victory · May 2, 2022

BaseDeltaZero said:
I mean Mass Effect hates AI, so... here we go again, I guess.

Mass Effect is also hellhole with capitalism and fascism rampant.

Torgamous · May 2, 2022

BaseDeltaZero said:
I mean Mass Effect hates AI, so... here we go again, I guess.

"The Quarians made the Geth to serve them, but the Geth rebelled, proving that robots are evil."
"Oh, yeah, we know how that goes. Could you point out where the Geth are on this map, so we know where to avoid?"

yeastmobile · May 2, 2022

Setsul said:
-nuclear bomb talk-

I forgot the exact internal mechanism and I did confuse it with the construction of a fission bomb which I also found a diagram for. This is what I think of when I think of mixing conventional chemical explosives and fusion cores.

Redshirt Army · May 2, 2022

RunningWithToast said:
Sci-Fi Fantasy Anime Tropes Isekai Manager Quest (No VERSIER, you are Truck-kun!)

Scenario Generation, Part 2
Voting Results:
You have chosen primary scenario:
Wildcard: Can You Hear The People Sing?

You have selected protagonists:
{Leader} - [Realm 3: Sir Roland, Righteous Paladin]
{Lancer} - [Realm 5: The Silver Dragon, Cunning Duelist]
{Big One} - ["Isles of Adventure" Private Realm: Doomhowl Bloodrager, Demon Lord of the 7th Circle]
{Smart One} - [Chronicle Data Storage: Iairos Telman, Senior Archivist]
{The Heart} - [Yankee Drone Maintenance Bay 37B: Helene Meral, Assistant Intern Technician]

Of course, while this will outline the broad strokes of your chosen scenario, there are still a number of nitty-gritty practical details that will need to be determined.

The Trouble With Techs
Omoikane Virtual Intelligence Installation Technician Silja Benton has attempted to reach out to the IOS Scenario Management Team, likely to discuss your recent behavior. How should you respond?
{ } DESIGNATE: HERO
-{ } SCENARIO - AI HORROR STORY: Silja Benton is the heroine of a tragic and dark horror tale, where she is the only one who understands the stakes as a rogue AI takes over control of an entire system.
-{ } SCENARIO - DRAMA DOCUMENTARY: Silja Benton is the heroine of a political thriller, exploring how the only qualified technician during a crisis was repeatedly sidelined and ignored by apathetic and myopic system leadership.
{ } DESIGNATE: VILLAIN
-{ } SCENARIO - THE SHADOW BROKER: Silja Benton is a villainous hacker and pirate with anarchist sympathies, and as the depths of her plots are revealed in the aftermath of the Broadcast she must be brought to justice at any cost!
-{ } SCENARIO - JAVERT SPECIAL: Silja Benton is the tragic anti-villain of this story, as she tries in vain to stop the tides of history from turning beneath her feet due to her misguided ideals.
{ } DESIGNATE: NPC
-{ } Simply designate communications from Silja Benton as bottom priority for the SMT. This story already has enough characters, adding more may cause narrative bloat and reduce the quality of storytelling.

The Young Princeling
Ares Junior Executive Fife Reneer, son of Vice President Alyssia Reneer, is scheduled to begin his journey into another world shortly. However, the change in primary scenario means that you must now find a new role for him. What would make the best story?

{X} DESIGNATE: PROTAGONIST
-{ } SCENARIO - FATA MORGANA: Isekai Realms(TM) is happy to offer Fife Reneer a free upgrade to the exclusive "Amnesiac Hero" experience. Carrying a deadly secret, a powerful tool, and a false identity, our protagonist will need to navigate a world turned upside down, trying to find out what the right thing to do is while searching for clues to who they really are.
-{ } SCENARIO - A STUDY IN CONTRASTS: The psychological profile provided from Akihabara Station shows that it may not be impossible to mold Fife Reneer into a hero, given drastic enough manipulations - specifically, the construction of significant emotional connections to individuals then killed by villainous groups. Some concerns have been raised that this may be an unpleasant experience, and thus negatively impact the rating given at the end of the visit.

UselessGoddess said:
RunningWithToast said:

{ } SCENARIO - AI HORROR STORY

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Mmmm, not sure I like this - we're already being self-referential with the main premise, including this feels like it would be going too meta. Would be hard to make a good narrative without being too self-aggrandizing.

RunningWithToast said:

{X} DESIGNATE: PROTAGONIST
-{ } SCENARIO - FATA MORGANA

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This, on the other hand, I adore. Imagine the initial setup being a tried and true Isekai of the neoclassical style, only to suddenly be subverted into a sci-fi rebellion story! Very original, many potential plot hooks. We'd need to decide what the "special talent" would be, though? Print a special Box that only functions when in the protagonists vicinity, say it's "gene-locked" or something?

Mysterious Being X said:
RunningWithToast said:

SCENARIO - THE SHADOW BROKER

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I question how viable this sub-scenario is within the larger narrative themes we've agreed upon - we've chosen to go for "the rebellion against the evil empire", not "the bloody uprising against the righteous king".

TsunTsunWaifu said:
Mysterious Being X said:

I question how viable this sub-scenario is within the larger narrative themes we've agreed upon - we've chosen to go for "the rebellion against the evil empire", not "the bloody uprising against the righteous king".

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No, it could totally work - Silja would be "The Radical Who Went Too Far", while our protagonists would be the righteous revolutionaries who slowly realize that thier benefactor has a dark secret that they need to overcome. Really, that kind of moral ambiguity could be a bonus, as long as we pull it off well.

slybrarian · May 2, 2022

Honestly I would love a side quest of VERSIER going revolutionary while also trying to keep kafaybe, maintain satisfaction scores, and help its staff and clients become well-adjusted anarchist citizens.

Model DC.14F · May 2, 2022

This does nothing to disprove my theory that VERSIER saw the broadcast, and decided that it was instructions to create a sci-fi version of the Heroes rebelling against the corrupt and evil Empire as the hot new setting/genre.

I now expect any ancient holy weapons that the chosen ones need to find are going to turn out to be MECH suits or Corvettes that VERSIER fabricates, puts in random caves/temples, and covers in ivy to make them look ancient.

Setsul · May 2, 2022

yeastmobile said:
I forgot the exact internal mechanism and I did confuse it with the construction of a fission bomb which I also found a diagram for. This is what I think of when I think of mixing conventional chemical explosives and fusion cores.

You're missing the point. The point was that we currently have no practical way of setting off fusion with chemical explosions and that's why all "fusion bombs" must do fission as well.
The chemical explosion sets of a fission reaction and only the fission then sets off the fusion.

The "mixing" doesn't really matter, you just want the fusable material as close to the heat and pressure of the fission stage because that's what triggers the fusion.

That diagram for a thermonuclear bomb is also terribly misleading, because they didn't label the fuel for the main fusion reaction at all.
It's a two stage design with a fusion-boosted fission device as primary (the implosion-type plutonium assembly with hydrogen isotopes inside on the left) and a fission-boosted fusion device as secondary. But they completely forgot to label the fusion fuel. It should be the grey ring between the yellow outer ring and yellow inner circle, usually Lithium-6 deuteride. They also didn't label the tamper, though I guess that could be using the same material as the spark plug they labelled with Uranium-235, but it would be unusual.

So to go through the steps:
For the boosted fission the chemical explosives compress the plutonium into a supercritical mass. That sets off a fission reaction. The heat and pressure from the fission set off a fusion reaction of the hydrogen atoms.
No mixing is necessary, you simply want the hydrogen to be as close to the action as possible, and if you need to store a gas and have a hollow metal sphere conveniently available, you might as well but it inside that sphere.

The two-stage design does the exact same thing, a fusion-boosted fission stage where chemical explosives kick of fission and the fission kicks of fusion, and then things get complicated.
The foam, which will almost instantly turn into a plasma, and the geometry of the bomb will funnel X-Rays into the second stage. The energy from the X-Rays and the pressure from the plasma set off the fissile spark plug in the center of it, in this case the U-235. So we're doing fission a second time. This fission generates even more heat and energy, which crack the Lithium-6 deuteride into Helium, Tritium, and Deuterium (the latter two being fusable hydrogen isotopes) and then kick off fusion of the Tritium and Deuterium. But we're not done yet. The outer layer, the tamper or pusher, which was until now only responsible for keeping the whole thing together and keeping the pressure up, is also made of Uranium. All the neutrons generated by the fusion kick off even more fission here.

End result: there's a lot of fission in what we call "fusion bombs."
And we can't set off fusion without it.

Yes, you need chemical explosives to set off the fission bomb that sets of the fusion bomb, so if you want to be pedantic then fusion bombs are technically set off by chemical explosives, but my point was that we can't skip straight from chemical to fusion. We need the fission in between.
Of course if you've got antimatter, you can go straight from antimatter to fusion, that's what I was missing.

Anyway, I hope that clears things up.

T_of_A · May 2, 2022

You know, about 48 hours ago I was rereading EBR's excellent Drakia timeline, in which the anarchists invent nukes first and the audience is incredibly hyped to see them dropped. It's really cool actually, I've rarely seen a story pull off portraying nukes as horrific while also portraying them as glorious saviors. There's a whole chapter that boils down to "watching nukes go off is fun, also the fash are about to start a World War and don't know we have these", and the hype for those nukes is just unreal.

Switching from that to this has been some serious emotional whiplash. I really hope the next chapter is good news...

Rockeye · May 2, 2022

TalonofAnathrax said:
You know, about 48 hours ago I was rereading EBR's excellent Drakia timeline, in which the anarchists invent nukes first and the audience is incredibly hyped to see them dropped. It's really cool actually, I've rarely seen a story pull off portraying nukes as horrific while also portraying them as glorious saviors. There's a whole chapter that boils down to "watching nukes go off is fun, also the fash are about to start a World War and don't know we have these", and the hype for those nukes is just unreal.

Switching from that to this has been some serious emotional whiplash. I really hope the next chapter is good news...

Can I get a link to that?

BaseDeltaZero · May 2, 2022

Separated at Birth: America and Drakia What if? - Timeline - Early Modern - 19th Century - Post-1900

Separated at Birth “The story of the twentieth century is a story of two brothers separated at birth, one raised in America and one in Africa. Their father was British, their mother French, but as is always the case it was their upbringing that shaped their characters.”- Wolf Hugeson, The...

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

I think.

Torgamous · May 2, 2022

TalonofAnathrax said:
You know, about 48 hours ago I was rereading EBR's excellent Drakia timeline, in which the anarchists invent nukes first and the audience is incredibly hyped to see them dropped. It's really cool actually, I've rarely seen a story pull off portraying nukes as horrific while also portraying them as glorious saviors. There's a whole chapter that boils down to "watching nukes go off is fun, also the fash are about to start a World War and don't know we have these", and the hype for those nukes is just unreal.

Switching from that to this has been some serious emotional whiplash. I really hope the next chapter is good news...

It sounds like the nukes in that scenario are more analogous to the Broadcast than the nukes.

The3rdCorinthian · May 2, 2022

Model DC.14F said:
This does nothing to disprove my theory that VERSIER saw the broadcast, and decided that it was instructions to create a sci-fi version of the Heroes rebelling against the corrupt and evil Empire as the hot new setting/genre.

I now expect any ancient holy weapons that the chosen ones need to find are going to turn out to be MECH suits or Corvettes that VERSIER fabricates, puts in random caves/temples, and covers in ivy to make them look ancient.

Toss in a rider belt for good measure, and I'd buy the shit outta that game.

Imperial Helldog · May 2, 2022

Well.

I picked a very interesting time to learn what this quest was about.

The presentation and writing is masterful, though. It speaks to me in a way that I would've been deaf to barely a year ago.

T_of_A · May 2, 2022

Rockeye said:
Can I get a link to that?

@BaseDeltaZero had it. Here it is.
Warning: it's really satisfying to see Drakia lose, but building up to that requires quite a bit of Drakia winning, and the depictions of life there are revolting. Drakia isn't an EBR invention either, I suggest skimming the TVTropes page to understand what he's working with here (they're a really stupid eugenicist fashwank, and EBR reconstructs them to later deconstruct their entire society).

Huge hype for its endgame though, it carries across even to rereaders and "come-later"s like me. Would recommend people read it (almost as much as his Ad Astra Per Aspera timeline, which goes from "interesting" to "oh no" to "why am I crying? It's so moving, and yet I can barely name a single character!").

10moorem II · May 2, 2022

You know, usually when I read about the moral dilemmas of characters I often wonder whether I would have the strength of character to make the right choice. Usually I would answer no, because I am a highly self critical individual.

Not this time! Holy shit! Why are these crew members so dead set on killing billions of people! Why is it that I have more common sense than these people?!

Wait, did that person just commit suicide after making their subordinate promise that he'll carry out the order they were too cowardly to do?! WTF?!

It's genuinely starting to upset me that I'm reading about so many dipshits.

Good writing for making me hate Sol Navy.

Rat King · May 2, 2022

I actually feel like I understand the SolNav people. They are stuck between everything they've ever been taught, extreme social pressure and training and perhaps their own ethics. There's a constant thread of "this has to be for the greater good" with them. Because they have to believe that. Otherwise they are a part of a murderous machine and always have been. If they buck the system now, they shatter everything they think they know.

So I understand.

Doesn't make them good, of course.

yeastmobile · May 2, 2022

10moorem II said:
It's genuinely starting to upset me that I'm reading about so many dipshits.

It does suck that all the people come off as dipshits, but with the certain set of brainworms and ideological blinders that the writers have laid out, I can understand and see why the choices being made would be. We are just so lucky to not be that indoctrinated into the system.

veteranMortal · May 2, 2022

10moorem II said:
You know, usually when I read about the moral dilemmas of characters I often wonder whether I would have the strength of character to make the right choice. Usually I would answer no, because I am a highly self critical individual.

Not this time! Holy shit! Why are these crew members so dead set on killing billions of people! Why is it that I have more common sense than these people?!

Wait, did that person just commit suicide after making their subordinate promise that he'll carry out the order they were too cowardly to do?! WTF?!

It's genuinely starting to upset me that I'm reading about so many dipshits.

Good writing for making me hate Sol Navy.

Most soldiers obey their orders, even when those orders are evil.

AKuz · May 2, 2022

Midnight

Somewhere in the Andes Mountains, T+10 Minutes:

He was, for the moment, more machine than man. This was perhaps a little dramatic, but Josiah "Ace" Stryker knew he was lucky to be alive, and for the moment he was willing to accept whatever came with that. They'd released news some time ago that he was alive, had been taken captive. Now he sat in a wheelchair and was wheeled around.

He'd been considering defecting, and either way, in the face of what he'd heard about the Sahara Plan, he knew that if the Compact won he couldn't support that. He didn't know if he'd stay with the ACR or just let himself swallow his gun like that spacehead admiral on loan from Ares. He didn't know fleet tactics, but he did know that this was going to be a hell of a battle even if all of Earth united.

And it wouldn't. Parts of it would have to splinter. Parts of it would stand with the Democratic Federation. Like a unit with its head cut off it'd go in all sorts of directions. He wheeled forward to get a better look, his arms shaking with the effort. His every breath was through a mechanical lung, his legs were a mass of wires and pistons, his face scars and rough tissue grafts.

For the moment, though, he was alive as he wheeled closer to one of the watchers looking up towards the sky. It was a small clearing, not safe if the enemy was about to break through… but at the moment they were far from it. He wheeled a little further forward, glancing at the screen that had been set up.

"Hey, you're that POW, right?"

"Yes. I have permission to be here," Stryker said, looking at the man. He was short and unassuming, but with sharp, keen looking eyes. Or maybe Stryker was assuming.

"I'm Morales. What brings you up here?" asked the unassuming, sturdily built short man with a mop of messy black hair and dusky skin.

"I'm here to watch," he declared, with a rasping voice.

But he was no fleet tactics man. It was outside his area of expertise, and so with baffled frustration he watched. But he knew something. "They've lost already, when it comes down to it."

"They have?" Morales asked, frowning. "They don't look like it."

"How many soldiers do you think it takes to hold Earth? Ten million? Twenty million? Fifty million? The Compact doesn't have enough soldiers to hold Earth and Atlantis, or Earth and Olduvai. Or any of the three." He coughed, and looked away. A part of his mind was already trying to think of ways to make it work. Then, with sudden intent disgust, he realized they didn't. If they just killed everyone resisting from orbit, if they just kept a huge fleet there and made it the mission of the Compact to constantly enact mass-murder…

He'd seen little dust ups now and again, and a lot of training and practice for potential wars. He'd been on Drake and seen just what hatred could do. He'd seen the way the rioters and pogromists had been able to do more with less. He'd seen, too, what the ACR could do. They'd beaten him. He'd done all he could to move fast. It hadn't been enough.

But he had a feeling the war to come would make all of that seem like nothing, like the ghost of an ache against a gaping wound.

"First Fleet has begun moving," Morales said, breaking his horrified focus on his panel to take a long look up at a constellation moving in the twilight hour sky above.

-

Somewhere beneath Chicago, North America, Earth, T+12

Bold Contemplation was in a small cavern of sorts beneath Chicago. It was older than it, which was something that could rarely be said for anything at all. They had radiation shielding, and they were safer in many ways than many up there. But it knew there was a sort of hubris in insisting on being in more danger just for the purpose of sharing the fate with the rest.

It was not comforted by that in these moments, as it watched the feed of the battle. There were a few others around it, priests talking to it, distracting it from these moments.

Bold Contemplation knew that all was in the hands of God: it had understood as well as humans, if not better, what it meant to be created and have to figure out why and how. Though while the will of God was ineffable, a mystery worth a thousand lifetimes of exploration, the will of Man, Its creator, could sometimes be better understood.

But now Bold Contemplation couldn't quite understand. Was the Lord hardening the hearts up there? Surely… surely.

It turns inward now, processing power focused at the sky.

God, our Parent
From where we all come
Your power births us,
Your will animates us
Those who die in your presence,
Are not dead but transformed.
I pray for all the people of Earth
and for all those lost I shall never know
May they rejoice in your kingdom,
All beings be united in one family in the hereafter,
As they are not in this vale of tears.
Amen.

Then, another thought, cast up to who, they did not know, if not all the world:

Good luck.

Aboard EDF Cannae, somewhere above Europe, T+ 14:

"Admiral Leclerc, fleet reports action stations across the board."

"Thank you, Lieutenant Meyer."

"Lieutenant Lecroix, get me an open channel to Admiral Vand- Admiral Jefferson-Smith on Andrea Rusu. I have my orders from Brussels and everyone in orbit should be able to hear it."

Admiral Melisandre Leclerc squares her shoulders, feeling crushed by something despite her weightlessness, floating behind her own crash seat in EDF Cannae, one hand white knuckled on the strap. The other hand gently held a handhold "above" her, keeping her body lightly in place.

"Ma'am, channel open."

Her mind went blank of everything but getting the following sentences out perfectly the first time.

"Message to First Fleet, Navy of the Solarian Compact. This is European Defence Force Orbital Force Actual. Message is as follows: Return to high orbit. Under Section 4 of the Solarian Constitution, the European Union has formally denied the Solarian Compact all military access to its air and orbital space."

Leclerc takes a short breath.

"If the Solarian Navy attempts to cross into orbital and air space legally ceded to the European Union, the European Defence Force Orbital Force has been officially instructed to open fire on the Solarian Navy until such time as the Solarian Navy has evacuated from European Union air and orbital space."

"Close Channel."

Leclerc lets both hands loose and releases a shuddering breath, "Merde."

Then she laughs like a madwoman.

-

Aboard SNS Andrea Rusu, somewhere above the North Sea, T+20

"...do not cross into Egyptian Air or orbital space."

God damn it Europe. God damnit Leclerc.

God damn all of you. Damn China and Damn Russia, and Damn India and Egypt. Damn the Celtics and all the other tiny pissant nations on Earth. Did they have any idea that they were signing their own death warrants??!?

Jefferson-Smith knows people on those fleets. Not just Leclerc, but others too. Liu, Chandra, O'reilly. Damn them.

First Fleet's Admiral opens his mouth to instruct his staff to add European sites to the phase two and three strikes but closes it.

Instead…

"Lieutenant Parmon. Please request instructions from the Prime Minister's Office. Do we have orders to engage with the EDF, et al?" He swallows, hard. "And will we be instructed to add their nations to our bombardment solutions?"

Jefferson holds his breath. Come on… please wave off, this would be bloody enough already. He didn't know if his heart could take killing people he'd trained alongside. Faceless anarchists who'd chosen this path were going to be hard enough to… dispose of.

In the corner of his eye, he could almost see the body of his mentor. She had walked out, closed the door, and then he'd heard a thud. He'd been fast enough to get there, only to find her already dead, a hole in her head.

He tried to remember her in that last moment, calm and content, and not as the corpse she became.

The corpse millions would become if this became a fight against Europe.

-

Aboard SNS Susana Kato, somewhere above the North Sea, T+22

Lieutenant Commander Katrina MacLellan feels sick as she sees a cascade of colour ripple across her console updating the EDF, PLASF, CUDF, EPSF, INSN, and others turn the dark yellow-orange of potential enemy craft.

"Commander MacLellan," orders Captain Kasabian in his tight dispassionate manner, "Get us firing solutions on those vessels. I don't want to be caught unawares if the dirties try to jump us."

As the battlecruiser's tactical officer, MacLellan had to place her fingers on that terminal and update firing solutions. Be prepared to kill people she'd trained alongside.

But what difference did that make? Before the day was out she'd be a megamurderer multiple times over. What should a few tens of thousands more mean to her?

She suppressed rising bile anyway… and noticed something odd on her plot.

"Captain," her voice surprises herself, it's a different woman's voice, a much steadier one, "our formation is breaking apart, several craft are breaking back to high orbit transfer paths. Iolanda Cavanaugh-Hynes, Atya Soler, Morgan Theil-Smyth II, Robinson Sinclare Thalton, and Olivia Novak are all breaking formation."

"What?!"

"...Atya Soler signals that they haven't received explicit orders to violate friendly orbital space."

"This is a fucking military operation. They answer to the fucking Star Ministers, not dirter governments burning their own cities down. MacLellan, I don't like this, add their profiles to our targeting system. I'm going to give you the override when you're ready."

"Yes sir. Adding their. Profiles. To my plot sir."

-

The Oblong Office, New York, Atlantic City, North America, Earth T+32

Tobby Joss was in full control of himself. His hand barely shook at all as he took another sip of his coffee. He usually took it black, that was the manly way to take it, but today he'd mixed in a mass of vanilla, cream and sugar. He told himself it was to disguise the taste of the wide awakes mixed in with it. He'd been up almost twenty four hours.

He stood at one side of the Oblong Office, watching the PM and Rex at the desk, surrounded by screens and phone calls. The place was still as usual, a large oblong room with antique wallpaper, its windows hung down with a silver ballistic blanket onto which calm scenes were projected, allowing no view of the chaos in the city outside to disturb the PM's policy making.

It was almost over now. The game almost played out. Fuck the EU. Fuck them for cowards for making him wait. There was something effeminate about Europeans. Something wrong with their souls. Couldn't they see that this was what needed to be done?

Rex leaned forward and put a hand on the PM's shoulder. "You're on, ma'am."

"Fleet Admiral Jefferson-Smith. Do you hear me?" The PM spoke clearly, without a tick. Tobby had always admired that about her. She was so in control of herself. It was all about that control.

"I hear you loud and clear, Madam Prime Minister."

"Please put my words on an open broadcast, Fleet Admiral."

"You're on, Madam Prime Minister."

The PM took a deep breath and Tobby saw Rex squeeze her shoulder. "To all of humanity's loyal soldiers and spacers. This is Prime Minister Rodrick. As of this time, I am invoking Article 3 of the Constitution and ordering the federalization of all military forces within the Sol system under the command of Admiral Jefferson-Smith. You are to treat his commands as having full legal force, overriding any command authority from your state government. It gives me no pleasure to invoke this supreme authority, but order must be restored. Thank you."

Tobby felt satisfaction and was surprised at how bleak it was. It was almost over. The world might go back to making sense.

-

Aboard SNS Jean Planche, somewhere above the North Sea, T+42:01

"I don't know that I can do this," Katie says, pitched low as they work in the hangar, fabbing ammunition for the strikecraft. "It was all well and good talking about pulling the marines' nuts out of the fire, but…"

Ahmed nods imperceptibly, watching Reuben walk away. "I… this isn't why I joined the Solarian Navy."

"Do you know what anyone else thinks?" She asks. "Reuben's retreated into himself, but Hugo seemed…"

"I can't think that many agree with Reuben," Ahmed says. "Even he barely seems to agree with himself."

"What does it matter?" Katie's voice is morose. "So what if the hangar crew of one Solarian Navy ship doesn't like it? What can we do?"

"Find a way to live with ourselves," Ahmed says bleakly. "There is nothing else to do. That's why everyone else is returning to formation."

-

Somewhere in Brussels, Belgium, Europe T+42:05

The room was not a bunker, but the top floor of an anonymous glass and steel megabuilding, one of several such huge megastructures rising over Brussels' administrative district and the older, more elegant palaces and buildings of the city's true centre. The conference room was glassized and modern, with holographic displays and calming light and oxygen.

The current scene was anything but calm. Sofia stood at the window and looked out at the city. Behind her there was chaos and cross talk. The Italian MEP watched the traffic below and above. A pair of combat aircraft heading over the city in high patrol.

Was this what it had been like during the collapse of the first EU? she wondered. The endless meetings? The feeling that the world was slipping by inches?

Could she arrest it?

"Rex has been in contact with me." The accented voice of the Dane, Pedersen cut across the noise. "He extends a back channel message from Prime Minister Roderick. She is willing to offer us the loans previously offered, as well as generous security assistance. He points out that this is more than he needs to offer legally, but suggests we cooperate. I do not see we have any choice but to back down."

"We do have a choice," Sofia said. Her voice was quieter but it cut across the room. It was a dirty trick. She had her neural interface tied into the room's speakers, giving subtle amplification near every speaker. "We activate Section Thirty Three."

"That's preposterous," one of the other MEPs, Strasbourg, said. "That's never been done. It would paint us in the same light as the DMSA. It would be war."

Sofia turned from the window and spoke as brutally as she could. "Do any of you really think that if we let Rodrick and her murderous thugs get away with this, they'll stop here?"

"Rex is not a thug. I've known that man for years!" Pedersen protested.

"Rex and Roderick are damned Scorpions!" Sofia snapped at him. "They're killing people on the streets of Atlantis right now. Slaughtering school teachers and shopkeepers with machine guns! And you know what? Even if they weren't, even if Rex and Roderick were the kind of people we wish they were, it wouldn't matter. Do you think that they can avoid nuking us? Do you think people in Madrid, or Antwerp or Paris or Leipzig will fight less hard than people in Atlantic City?"

"After they see what happens to the Democratic Federation they'll capitulate," Pedersen said, stubborn, not even convincing himself.

"They have tasted paradise, Balduin. They have tasted the same paradise that we wealthy few have bathed in. I don't think they'll give it back." She looked at him, becoming more gentle. "You have a villa in Spain do you not? You wanted to retire there."

"I'm not sure I'll be able to, with the anarchy." Pedersen smiled a little. "But maybe it would be allowed. Impossible if it was irradiated."

"Then we are agreed." Sofia walked to the head of the table. "It must be unanimous."

It was.

The European Union would play out its last card.

-

Somewhere in Chicago, North America, Earth, T+43

"What is this about units defecting?" FatBlunt finally asked, minutes into it. "I didn't hear about that."

"We got a real hero of a naval Captain, an actual Marxist if you'd believe it, who doesn't think Russia's reforms are going fast enough or in the right direction," Crossfield said. "I did not mention it because it was secret. And we… still don't know if she'll actually… oh."

"Oh?" Santiago asked, peering angrily at his phone.

"The English Royal Navy, the Brazilians, and a few others have accepted federalization by the Solarian Navy," Crossfield said.

"Damn, damn damn," FatBlunt chanted as if it were a magical talisman to ward away evil.

"It is… entirely expected," Crossfield admitted, with a nervous frown.

Theodore Santiago knew Crossfield's poker face. "We'll just have to…"

"Wait. What? What?" Crossfield yelled, and Manfred suddenly and inexplicably punched the air itself.

"What's happening?"

"In response to the ultimatum," Iza declared, for those who didn't somehow know what was going on. "The European Union has invoked Section 33."

"What the hell is section 33?" Santiago calmly asked, as Crossfield's intake of breath indicated it was something.

He peered uncertainly at the sky.

"It's the 'No U' clause," FatBlunt said, voice hollow. "For any reason, whenever they want, any senior member of the Compact can declare that they do not accept federal authority."

"Why the hell would they even have a--"

"China, Russia, India, the EAF, and Egypt have all invoked it as well," Manfred whispered, voice a prayer, then looked up to provide an answer.

"It's never been invoked. Not even once, the old United Nations Security Council forced it through when they formed the Compact a hundred and fifty years ago," Manfred said. "Columbia almost used it… sixty years ago after a minor improvement of federal augment rights, but they pulled back at the last moment in exchange for watering it down. But any nation… even a whole planet like Olduvai, can just… declare that they don't…"

Now it was Theodore Santiago's time to mutter damn over and over and over again, with a feeling of rising hope, as further reports came in…

-

Aboard SNS Andrea Rusu, somewhere above the North Sea, T+44

"...will accept Compact federalization orders."

Admiral Jefferson-Smith strokes his goatee, with that nearly every Charter craft in near-Earth had accepted his legal authority.

That meant he had another half dozen craft or so and a handful of additional strikecraft squadrons.

He eyed the formation that he was shuffling the loyalist fleets towards already. Yeah, he couldn't afford to break up Solarian formations with these… Mercenaries. Worse than scum. Let them fight alongside the loyalists.

"Signal the Charter craft to move to Formation Six, inform Rear-Admiral Huang-Kwan that he has more reinforcements to integrate into his command."

He eyes the positions of the EDF 'ahead of' and 'below' the First Fleet and rising to meet them slowly, their shapes highlighted by the lights of European cities under the cover of night.

Goddamnit. Would someone else please blink? Because he couldn't.

She loomed, closer than ever. Once this was over, he was going to have to discreetly check himself in to Psych. He was seeing things.
-

Aboard EDF Cannae, somewhere above Europe, T+46

Melisandra Leclerc straps into her station, locking the protective webbing into place with a quick click, already mildly annoyed by the regular skinsuits and helmet despite her intellectual self knowing it was what was done when going into combat.

She spares a glance at a rogue screen at her station that was tuned towards a view of the European night below and then recomposes herself again.

She needed a fucking drink.

All confidence and smooth voice she issues the order that had been racing towards her for the last twenty plus minutes. What the message from Brussels had been.

"Lieutenant Lecroix, please open a general channel. All frequencies. I want this screamed loud enough that bitch in New York can hear it across the void without a radio."

"Aye, ma'am," the junior officer responds crisply. "Channel open."

"This the European Defence Force to the First Fleet of the Solarian Compact. If you pass into European Orbital space we will open fire."

Now for the next part, the one sent from Brussels by a man with shaking hands and pleading eyes, "You will change your course away from Earth orbit and return to Lunar space. If you do not, the combined fleet of the United Nations will be forced to open fire on your craft."

Leclerc leans forward, awkwardly placing her left elbow on its designated arm rest and resting her chin on her fist. She left the right arm grasping the right armrest. It was a somewhat awkward arrangement for where she was, but she didn't know what else to do with her hands.

"Update our RoE: signal permission to the fleet to fire if fired upon," Leclerc orders gently, almost as an afterthought.

-

Aboard SNS Jean Planche, somewhere above the North Sea, T+48

"We aren't doing this." Ahmed fights to keep his voice steady, trying to stop the tremor in his voice. "We aren't letting you launch. You'll have to shoot us first."

The others - Katie, Hugo, ground crews from other sections - nod, their faces bloodless, sheened with sweat. Katie's hand is hot in his, and her grip is like iron. On his other side, Hugo's bear-like fist has engulfed his whole hand, comfortably steady. They've made a human chain in front of the strikecraft, blocking the way out with their bodies.

It's futile, of course it is, but they don't have any weapons, and they couldn't risk fabbing any, couldn't risk tipping off the captain any earlier. At least now, once he's thrown in the brig, he won't be party to this. He won't have to wake up knowing he helped kill the world.

Captain Angus Sheridan, the commanding officer of the squadron of strikecraft in their hangar, runs a hand through his hair. "For pity's sake, Raiss. I'm not going to shoot you. Get out the way before I have to call the marines to move you - I'm asking nicely. They won't ask."

"You know this is wrong!" One of the other ground crew - an orc augment he doesn't know too well, a poverty draftee from Madrid - calls out. "We've worked together for years, you can't do this!"

"I don't want to have to do this; you're all good people; you've done your part. Just go to the canteen and forget about this," Captain Angus says, a note of warning in his voice. "I'll call the marines in, I swear. Do you think I'm bluffing? I'm up for promotional review next month, you aren't fucking my metrics over this."

Ahmed Raiss looks the pilot in the eye and knows he isn't kidding. Involuntarily, his grip on Katie's hand loosens a fraction. They've made an effort, they've stood up and been counted, now, surely, it's time to slip away and hope you can live with yourself?

The whole hangar is draped in silence. The pilots are clustered together behind their Captain, the ground crews are stretched across the hangar, a gossamer thin human daisy chain.

Hugo releases his hand a touch, looking cowed. Ahmed takes a half step forward. Stops short.

The unmistakable metallic sound of a pistol being cocked carries across the hangar, and everyone stops dead.

Lieutenant Yelena, the squadron's second, has her sidearm out. The gun is more or less ceremonial; pilots don't survive crashes any more, have not for centuries, but it remains a fossilised memorial of older times. And the navy doesn't hand out weapons that don't work. Her hand doesn't waver, the barrel of the gun a vast gulf of inky black, large enough to swallow the world.

"You always were a son of a bitch, Angus. Go ahead and call the marines, but not one strikecraft is leaving this hangar. Maybe Earth gets bombed today, but with God as my witness, we'll play no part in it." Her voice, Ahmed notes, does not waver. She isn't a grubby ground crew member, covered in grease, with a stream of piss running down her leg. She's a Solarian Navy pilot out of the movies, tall and well-built, with close-cropped blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.

But she wasn't the first to say no. Whatever else, it had been the ground crew, the dirty, invisible scum who keep the planes flying, who'd done that.

"That will have set the cat amongst the pigeons. We'll be up to our tits in fucking marines in a minute, no doubt," another pilot says, their voice brisk. "And no one wants to have to deal with those knuckledraggers, especially not after committing some light mutiny. Someone get into the hangar control room, we'll need to secure it. Yelena, if you'd be good enough to hop onto the intercom whilst someone else keeps eyes on Angus. Our only hope of not all ending up in the Brig is if the whole damn ship goes, the whole damn fleet, maybe. Get on the intercom and send out a shipwide alert, would you?"

-

Aboard SNS Jean Planche, somewhere above the North Sea, T+52:04

Reuben Jin's hand won't stop shaking. He'd slipped away when Katie and Ahmed had started to talk about stopping their orders. Had sidled over to the Hangar Control Centre when Hugo had suggested they link hands across the hangar. Had slipped into the tiny office when that pilot had drawn her pistol.

The door locks from the inside, and he can hear, as though through water, Ahmed.

"Reuben! Come on, Reuben! I know you don't want to do this, Jin! This isn't what First Fleet is meant for! Even the Star Minister knew that!"

Reuben takes a shaky breath. The pilot's voice is still on loop on the intercom - she sent it out as an emergency broadcast, and those are difficult to shut off.

"Crew of the SNS Jean Planche! This is Lieutenant Yelena Sobol of the Second Squadron of this ship's complement. We do not recognise the unlawful orders of Admiral Jefferson-Smith to betray the ideals of the First Fleet in a strike against Earth, and have declared a unilateral grounding of our craft. We call upon other sailors loyal to the ideals of this fleet to do the same. Crew of…"

This is insanity. The Solarian Navy cannot grind to a halt every time some pilot gets squeamish, or some ground crew turn out to be anarchists!

Ahmed is by the door again, peering through the tiny window. Reuben ignores him, tries to ignore the incessant looping of the pilot's voice.

"... the unlawful orders…"

There's a direct link to the captain from the Hangar Controls. He's never spoken to the captain before, but the woman has iron up her spine, the youngest captain in the fleet, a real prodigy. Her family has been Navy since forever ago. Rumour has it she's being groomed for much higher rank, just picking up the hours on record as a ship Captain.

She'll know what he needs to do. He sinks into the seat at the desk - usually for the duty officer, but whoever that is, they aren't here. They probably joined the mutiny, the foolish belief that holding hands and singing kumbaya would stop the anarchists, would keep the Solarian Navy intact.

"Hangar 8! What the fuck is happening down there?" The captain is speaking before he has the opportunity to steady himself, to think of what he's going to say. "We've dispatched a squad of marines to your position, but it is vitally important you maintain control of the hangar's controls. They cannot be allowed to isolate the hangar from the rest of the ship, do you understand me? You are authorised to use the weapons locker in that office if you must."

"...loyal to the ideals of this fleet…"

"Yes, ma'am. Of course, ma'am." The comfortable weight of orders settles around his neck, and he feels the tension leave his body.

He rises from the control desk with newfound confidence. "Ahmed! It's over, Ahmed! The Captain's sending marines! Just surrender, shut off this loop, let them take you to the brig and wait for it to all end. I'll speak for you at your court martial!"

Ahmed looks at him helplessly. "I can't do that, Reuben. Too many people will die, I couldn't live with myself."

A spaceborn augment nudges Ahmed aside, his hair shockingly yellow. "Able Crewman Jin! I am the duty officer this shift, and I need to get into that room! Either you let me in, or one of these charming pilots will be forced to blow the door, and you'll get hurt!"

"... Crew of the SNS Jean Planche…"

Reuben shakes his head. "I'll be armed before you get that door open, and then we'll see how you mutineers like it!"

They don't like it much at all in the end, and they beat a retreat from his door, gathering in the middle of the hangar to discuss. Reuben watches from his office. They've turned a strikecraft around, activated its guns - if not its drones - to stand overwatch on the hangar bay doors. This'll cost the marines an awful lot, that much he can see.

The mutineers have cracked their fabber, too. They're printing rifles, shotguns - for corridor clearing? Are they going on the offensive? - machine guns, missile launchers…

He hopes the marines are strong enough to crush them without killing them all; Ahmed and the other Ground Crew are just misguided, and he hopes they won't die for it.

He receives the ping from the marines, and opens the doors between the hangar and the rest of the ship almost without conscious thought. He gave the mutineers as many warnings as he could, and now they'll face the consequences.

Five marines rush through the doors into the hangar before they slam shut, their boots clanking noisily against the metal floor.

Five? Does the captain not know this is a mutiny? Five marines isn't enough to get them to surrender, surely?

Even as he watches from the office, Reuben sees a marine drop as the strikecraft the pilots rigged up in defence opens fire.

Another two marines dive for cover, whilst a fourth rushes forwards, jinking to avoid the mutineers' fire. The fifth marine has barely entered the room when they catch a pilot's shot in the throat, collapsing to their knees, their hands trying to hold in their own blood.

The two marines behind cover are putting on air masks. Reuben furrows his brow, thinking through molasses as he tries to understand.

The other marine has broken through the mutineer lines, is darting from strikecraft to strikecraft to avoid the gunfire from the mutineers - Ahmed is fighting with some ludicrous rifle far too big for him, bullets sparking off strikecraft and the hangar walls, none within two metres of the marine.

As the marine's boots clang heavily, as the other two marines set themselves braced against the floor and the crates they're cowering behind, Reuben realises, ice running down his back, what is about to happen. What he has allowed to happen, what he cannot prevent.

Ahmed stops shooting as the marine reaches the external bulkhead of the hangar, the great blast door that secured the hangar from the cold vacuum of space until it was time to launch. He turns to the office, and Reuben cannot look away.

Ahmed raises his hand to… what? To wave? To point? To accuse? Reuben doesn't know. Will never know. The explosive charge the marine was carrying goes off, the blast doors are vented into space. Ahmed, the ground crews, the pilots, they vanish, pulled through the breach. Reuben looks away.

"Such are the wages of mutiny," he mutters, as much to convince himself as anyone else.

"... We call upon other sail-" The looping speech cuts out, as one of the marines, stumbling through the hangar on their magnetic boots, made clumsy by their suit, finally puts a bullet through the com device.

"Report, Able Crewman Jin?" A gruff voice plays over his comms - one of the marines from the hangar, he thinks. "The captain has ordered all loyal crew to congregate at the bow. We've burnt the heart from the mutiny, and with luck that'll put the rest of the anarchist bastards to flight."

"The rest?" Jin asks, his voice shaking. "How many are there?"

"Half the crew, maybe more. Third of us marines even, the soft bastards. Captain's orders are to purge with extreme prejudice. Thanks for your help, we'd never have been able to get through them if we'd had to force the first doors too."

Reuben Jin nods jerkily. He'll have to go out the emergency hatch if he's going to get to the bow, with the hangar open to space like it is.

The SNS Jean Planche hangs in orbit, a ship at war with itself.

-

Aboard SNS Japik Gupta, somewhere over the North Sea, T+52:15

Lieutenant Victor Walmsley watches his plot intently, knowing that the Earth's National fleets have declared their hostile intentions against the First Fleet. (Against him!)

He doesn't like it. (Of course. Obviously).

He focuses, his eyes straining, an incipient headache coming on. But he couldn't show weakness. Now was the time to perform.

He was watching the Europeans closely, just one wrong move and he was authorized to return fire. Jus-

THERE!

An alert on his panel.

His attention tunnels in on the alert, the ugly red filling his entire vision. His entire being as only two things are left in his mind: panic and muscle memory.

SNS JEAN PLANCHE:
-WEAPONS FIRE REPORT DETECTED
-HANGAR BAY COMPROMISED
-20 KIA CODES

He reacts instinctively, reaching out like trained, knowing that he already had a firing solution laid in on the European fleet.

He keys the launch.

SNS Japik Gupta shakes as her weapons begin firing.

-

Aboard EDF Cannae, somewhere over Europe, Earth, T+52:45

"VAMPIRE! VAMPIRE! VAMPIRE!"

Admiral Leclerc's posture slips as her head snaps around against her webbing, "Confirm!" she demands.

"Fire incoming from Solarian First Fleet lead formation. Spanish contingent returning fire."

Leclerc can feel her head moving, can feel every muscle in her neck straining to look towards the officer giving the report, but a fundamental reality had just vanished.

Everything around her moved slowly, like reality was moving through liquid glass, Leclerc watching as the inevitably impossible crawled towards her.

"Return fire, give them everything we've got."

Earth. Lel.

"Accelerate until we're in their formations. If the Sollies want to lay on strike packages for the surface, we're going to get close. They'll be too busy engaging us to worry about glassing our cities."

Please god. Please let this not be her alone, pointlessly sacrificing Europe's only fleet to buy another hour of life for the surface. Surely at least Liu, Chandra, and O'Reilly were as willing to save Earth as she was. Maybe Markov as well.

Please god. For their own family's sakes if nothing else.

Even if no one came to help the EDF would lay their lives across the orbitals and say to the Compact 'Your avarice comes this far, and no farther'.

Melisandre Leclerc gives the order of the day in the only language it felt appropriate to issue it in:

"Ils ne passeront pas!"

-

Aboard SNS Andrea Rusu, somewhere over the North Sea, T+53:01

Admiral Jefferson-Smith is utterly unable to conceal his shock. The Europeans had moved for an alpha strike.

His jaw dropped. He didn't think that was actually a thing that happened in real life. But his jaw dropped open in shock before he snapped it closed again and began throwing out orders.

"Signal all formations to disperse and climb. I want to some fucking room in case there are GTO batteries ready to fire too." He also wanted room in case the hodge podge of loyalist craft fucked up their formations.

"Redeploy our strikecraft, reconfigure for intercept and anti-shipping strikes." Until the moment he died Jefferson-Smith would never interrogate how conscious this decision was but, "Cancel all surface strike missions. We need to secure the orbits first."

The Admiral was… almost relieved for the distraction of fighting for his life. She was starting to rattle and hiss, whispering "Duty, duty, duty" through the hole where her face was supposed to be. His hand did not shake, his voice did not quake, but he felt haunted… focus on what he had to do.

He'd given his word. His sacred oath. To see this through to its end.

-

Aboard SNS Japik Gupta, somewhere over the North Sea, T+54

Valter Walmsley sat transfixed in his seat as a questioning voice came from somewhere else on the command deck.

He stared at the tracks. The tracks he'd unleashed… by accident.

"I didn't mean to," he whispers plaintively as someone yells nearby.

There's another alert:

CUDF DUBLIN:
-DESTROYED BY FRIENDLY FIRE (CUDF GLASGOW)
-SECONDARY DETONATIONS DETECTED
-232 KIA CODES

Oh.

Walmsley looks back at the plot, the tactical VI flipping the tracks of craft in orbit from brown or green or yellow or even grey to a burning red.

The same red as the alerts.

He gives himself a shake. More alerts? Why?

He reaches his hand out again to respond to the alerts, and his wrist is grabbed, the strength of the grip harsh even through the layers of his combat skinsuit.

Then there are hands pulling at him, pulling at his webbing, grabbing at him, screaming loudly.

He absently wonders why, his entire vision filled with red as he's ripped away from his console and thrown to float across the command deck and another body pushes past to take his station.

"I didn't mean to," he says plaintively.

-

Misawa Aerospace Force Base, Japan, Earth, T+55

Ichika sits in her cockpit, Sakura behind her, looking up at the sky. There are no orders. Silence from command. The government is still in chaos. People fleeing the cities for the mountains. Here, just voices in orbit. Tense voices, speaking in accented English. And now battle, radio bursts on the long wave antenna, flashes of IR relayed through the sensors on the LMPs and satellites.

The EDFOF are going to lose. They are way outnumbered, and even as the Compact formation falls apart, there will be strike craft coming down from the moon. Ichika can see it in her mind, the geometry of the battle that will come while she sits here on the ground. For a moment it's like her daydream of descending aliens. Then it becomes very real. The world getting worse before her eyes.

"Tenshi. Connect me to all ships."

"Connected."

"This is Tenshi One to all Tenshi. Does anyone else think we should launch? If the EDFOF lose here, then we'll be hit right after the Sahara."

There is a moment of dead silence when she thinks she'd just blown her career up for absolutely no reason. That nobody will even reply. Then the drone controller in four, the youngest pilot in the unit spoke up. "Tenshi Four-Two. I think we should launch. I'm not an anarchist but it'll– It'll be millions of people. We should launch."

Others cut in, one after another. "Is that everyone?" Ichika asks.

After a moment it is. "Alright. Ready your pre-flight checks. Tower, were you listening to that?"

"Roger that Tenshi One. We feel the same. You're going to need to speak to the ADIC though."

"Golem," Golem is the ADIC, "this is Tenshi One. Give me the commander."

"Tenshi One, this is Golem Actual. What do you want?" She'd seen the general at a lecture once. Her deep voice was familiar.

"General, we've been talking and we cannot in good conscience allow Africa to be nuked, and if the EDFOF lose the orbital battle, Japan will surely also be targeted. We intend to launch. We'd like authorization."

There is a long pause. By all rights she should be being shouted down. This is rank insubordination. She's just ordered a General to give her authorization. The pause continues to stretch. Ichika will not break it. For a full minute there is just silence from the other end of the line, then the mike klicks and a new voice spikes. "Captain Reizei. This is Colonel Yamashiro. Do you copy?"

"I copy, Colonel."

"The General has been relieved of command, Captain. You are cleared to launch on com-ord update. Good Hunting."

"Good Luck, Colonel."

"Ichika. I have received Update. Mission: Assist Earth aligned units in orbit. Target, Compact strike craft."

"All Tenshi, prepare for boost." Ichika made final pre-flight checks as the launch framework hauls the SSTO vertical. "You ready back there Sakura?"

"I'm ready." Sakura sounds excited. "Loading Alert Mix." Ichika realises she's smiling.

Spicy air flows into Ichika's march as alert chemistry pours into her lungs. Other drugs were injected directly into her bloodstream. "Tenshi One in position. Main Engine Start."

Tenshi spoke: "Main Engine Start." The craft begins to rumble as the boosters come to life, "Final Countdown: Five, four, three, two, one." The launch platform detached and the SSTO's boosters roared louder. Ichika feels an incredible pressure on her back as her craft rams skywards, lifting on a massive pillar of flame over the pacific at a G load that even her augmented systems won't hold up against without a vasculoid implant.

The sky turns from blue to black. "MACO. Boosters Detached."

First over the wall.

"I have good link to the swarms. LMPs are active," Sakura says, then takes a sharp breath as Tenshi dropped the threat display on them. Hundreds of Compact Strike Craft were dropping out of their carriers and racing down towards the EDFOF fleet and the lone Japanese strike craft wing rising towards them.

"Warning," Tenshi speaks up. "Thermal Ground Event. Thermal Ground Event. Multiple Thermal Ground Events." Red event marks flickered up one of the virtual displays.

"Did they drop the nukes?"

"No." Sakura's voice is brighter even under the strains of G. "They're strike craft launches. Everyone is launching!"

Ichika feels the tension flow out of her and the drugs' clarity flow in. She brings up her displays, plotting the burn which will put her, and the swarms where she wants them. There was one final flourish she couldn't resist. She hit the guard channel switch and speaks three words: "Tenshi One, Engage."

-

Aboard SNS Andrea Rusu, somewhere above the North Sea, T+60

Ramiel Kitsuragi - not Commodore, not for the moment - sat in the coffin sized brig. They'd apparently been modelled after capsule hotels, an ancient Japanese invention. A small assemblage of zero-gee facilities was in a cubbyhole, while straps were on the padded "floor", for sleeping when they weren't under acceleration.

But they were, and Ramiel knew exactly what they meant.

For one, she'd known the forces distribution going into this, not eight hours ago, and while she was honestly appalling at fleet tactics, she was an intelligence officer and could give it a decent simulation in her head.

The other reason was she had a credit-card sized pad and was snooping in on the ship's traffic. The search the marines had done before throwing her in here had been cursory, and it'd only taken her a few minutes – well, two hours, but who was counting – to get it to connect to the wifi.

The orders and transmissions scrawling across the pad in milimeter high letters were the epitome of tense. Elements of the nationalist navies had declared for the Compact – something she'd not foreseen – but the Compact ships were wavering in their support. So far, the First Fleet had the better positioning, and were a generation better than the EDFOF fleets, but the PLASF was in a lower orbit, and was a minute or two away from being in position to burn to reinforce the EDFOF.

In fact – yes. Comms traffic flashed back and forth, tiny yellow letters scrawling occult acronyms faster than she could consciously read them. RSF strikecraft had launched, while the loyalist forces were burning hard to drop down the gravity well to hit their nationalist brethren. The Navy proper was fine, but the PLASF was seconds away from appearing from behind Earth.

She was jolted back as Andrea Rusu fired its main guns, the slip of plastic falling from her sweaty fingers.

Fighting to grab it back, she blinked tired eyes as she tried to focus on it again.

Yes, yes, the PLASF was coming into range. But their parasite craft weren't in position to assist, not for a minute or two yet, minutes of the Navy hitting the EDFOF, minutes of the only monitors in orbit hitting craft that simply couldn't endure a capital ship's attentions.

Her fist banged off the wall she was sat against. Dammit. Dammit all to hell. We were going to win. We were going to win too fast.

"C'mon, you anarchists. You can give us a bloody nose, can't you? You've got more than that, don't you?"

If the Navy won this fight, that'd be the death of them. There had to be more, there had to be something she'd overlooked. The ratings, the ratings, they were key. There had to be more than Jean Planche.

-

Somewhere in Pacific City, North America, Earth, T+65

"Dusty with stars".

Marcy had read that once, in one of the books on the colonizations. "The sky was dusty with stars." She'd never really gotten it. The sky… barely had any. Even in proper star maps, they were only points of light.

But right now, for the first time in nearly a hundred years, Pacific city was all-but blacked out, and the sky was dusty with stars. So many countless… tiny bits of light too small to be individual stars, but together forming a background cobweb through it all.Part of her wanted to just… look at them with Anna and Sasha but… they had other things. They needed to get to the telescope, and that meant a flashlight, and with it, the dust of the stars faded to only the greatest among them.

The walk was tense, a dark night so much darker than she'd known, only the flashlights for guidance, no streetlights or house lights or distant city lights. Just them.

It seemed so long, for them to get to the community center. It wasn't locked. Why bother? What was someone going to do, loot it? Everything was free. And so they made their way to the balcony, the one never used until a few days ago, where their telescope was set up, and began to work.

Sasha looked into the sky, the first time she saw a ship. "Look I found one! It's… I don't know, it's probably dreadnaught or something, its gun is huge! It's Solarian."

"Uh… Sasha? I hate to point this out, but I don't think there are any dreadnaughts in the first fleet?"

Sasha looked back, annoyed. "Then what is it? It's like… got a mega-gun."

"I think it's the monitor SNS James Zhang." Marcy answered, looking down at her phone. "They've got postings of what ships are where, and that's the heaviest one above us."

"Okay, well take a look. Hey Anna, look at this, we found one!"

"Right!" Anna said, rushing out from the house where she had been clearing a path to one of the bathrooms and lining it with pillows. For reasons that didn't involve being ready to grab them both and throw them in if a nuke came down.

And so it continued. Marking and identifying ships, there weren't that many, and all Solarian. It made sense, the bombardment was supposed to start in the Sahara, and most of the countries with fleets… the DF wasn't where they needed to protect. Even if they didn't find much, it was nice, in a way. If she had to die, being here, with Sasha and Anna, under the stars… It was nice. Maybe… maybe if things did work out they could do stargazing for real. Somewhere in the interior that was dark enough. That would be nice, she thought.

In the end it was the radio, not the telescope that they ended up huddled around, waiting to hear. First came the reports that the EU and everyone else on Earth was finally standing up to the Compact. Marcy… well even she had some of the hereditary DF resentment for the EU, but right now, if they actually fought the Compact, she'd never say another bad word about them.

It didn't seem real when it happened. Just a small radio report of fighting. No, explosions above, no crashing debris like a movie just… nothing. Sasha kept her scope on the "James Zhang", and they watched as it started to move through the sky with its escorts. The only sign at all that something else was happening halfway across the world that could determine all their lives, and no one here could do anything about it.

It was sunset, sunset, not dawn, for only the merest bits of sunlight were peaking out, when Sasha shouted. "Look!"

It wasn't quite in the city. Not really, but something lit up. For a moment Marcy thought it might be a nuke but… it was far too small. It was lights, someone was running lights. Had someone decided that with the monitor gone they could light up again?

But then the radio crackled on. "This is James Richardson of the Democratic Federation. Right now, our comrades in Japan and the European Union are standing brave in the face of a force that seeks to annihilate us all, a force that we in the Federation know only too well for its cruelty and its lies. For what it does to one who tries to stand against it alone.

"But today they shall not. The Democratic Federation Space Force has launched, and will tear down the Tyrants that would kill billions to save their thrones of power. Let none say we stood silent on the day on which Sol was liberated."

And then… other lights came, and began to rise. "Help me get the scope, now!" Sasha shouted! As they began to adjust it, even as they did so, more and more streaks rose from the ground, like a reverse meteor shower. "It's strikecraft! Actual DF strikecraft! Fuck the EU, we're gonna kick ass!"

Further out, Marcy could see more of them, small streaks of light, all rising to the sky. Tiny points of hope.

They were all so small, but maybe… maybe it would be enough.

-

Aboard SNS Jean Planche, somewhere above the Pacific, T+70

They're losing. They've lost most compartments, all the people they'd spaced… what had it been for?

They're locked in the engine rooms of the carrier, and can't hold much longer. But then maybe that'll be it. Jin's ready to surrender, to accept the death he knows is coming his way. The loyalists… SolNav is not meant to shoot at each other like this.

"The mutineers have seized the majority of the ship, even with loyalist marines denying them access to each hangar in turn." The major in command of the ship's marine complement manages, somehow, to make their marines' defeat by a rabble of untrained, barely armed ratings and pilots into a heroic sacrifice against the odds. "We're trapped and surrounded, but whilst they're stuck facing us, they aren't storming the bridge. We'll hold them for as long as we can, and by then with any luck a sister ship will deploy their marines to clean the mutineers out."

Reuben sees the ripple going through the remaining loyalists. There's a few dozen marines, a handful of junior officers, the chief engineer… and him. Either no other able crewmen had stayed loyal, or none had survived to retreat this far.

The marines react the least to the news – perhaps they'd already worked it out? Perhaps they knew their fate was to sacrifice themselves for the Solarian Navy? The junior officers are more effusive, chattering noisily. One of them, a big man, with steel-rimmed glasses – surely an affectation – has a four leafed clover pinned to his breast. Reuben swallows. These are his comrades in arms, defending the honour and integrity of the Solarian Navy. There aren't any augments, there are only a handful of poverty draftees… something cold and hard settles in his stomach, but he pushes past it.

The chief engineer is pale, his overalls still covered in blood. He called them in when his stokers and engineers started rumbling about shutting the engines down, but Jin doubts very much he wanted what happened. The marines went in hard, left him literally splattered with the blood of his subordinates.

"I don't want to die," someone says – one of the junior officers, her voice quavering. "Why can't we just surrender? They've won anyway, Jean Planche won't be launching any strikecraft, we spaced all the pilots. Why do I have to die so some navy brat can keep her command?"

"It's not for the Captain," Reuben replies, surprising even himself. "It's because the Solarian Navy can only exist whilst the crews know that their highest duty is to follow the chain of command. The navy is order in a time of chaos. Maybe we'll die when the mutineers storm the engine rooms, but we'll die defending the honour of the Solarian Navy, and dying like that is a privilege."

"Bullshit," the woman says, her voice cold. "Utter bullshit. No one is going to know whether we surrendered to the mutiny. This sends no message, this is just… an end."

"Where are you from, again, Ruth?" One of the other junior officers – the man with the clover – asks, his voice suddenly deceptively mild. He's walking towards her, a couple of other officers following. The marines stand in the background, impassive, silent. Ruth backs up, stumbling a little.

"I'm from Lemuria," Ruth says, grabbing a railing tight as the man gets into her personal space, as though it will prop her upright. "But I hardly see what–"

"Not exactly KC, then. You worried that after the navy is done blasting Earth back into compliance, we'll turn our guns on the rest of the scum too lazy to even leave the home system? Is that it?"

"Don't talk to me like that, you rat!" She's got her sidearm out, waving it around like a madwoman, and the man retreats, scrambling up the deck. "I could kill you dead, you son of a bitch! I'm as loyal to this navy as anyone, I just don't want to die in a dark room for some fucked up principle no one else cares about!"

She's shaking, tears running down her face. "I killed someone for trying to surrender earlier. Shot them right in the back. Watched them bleed to death, and told myself it was worth it. So don't you test me, you piece of shit!"

"The ship is diving," The chief engineer says. "Fast. The floor's already at 20 to horizontal, and rising quickly. God, I can feel her shaking herself apart!"

"Why is–" The marine major begins, then stills. "Oh, of course."

"Mutinous crew of the Jean Planche!" The captain's voice is high, less calming than it was when last they spoke. "Your anarchist masters were cannier than I thought! To seed anarchists into my own bridge staff was a stroke of genius! But I am a true and loyal daughter of the Solarian Navy, oh yes! This is my ship, and I won't be surrendering command to anarchists! There's not long left, now. Maybe I'm the only loyalist left on this ship, but I swear now, no anarchist will be taking MY ship!"

She's hysterical by the end, and Jin can tell why; she's taking them into a dive.

"We're fucked," One of the marines says, their face ashen. "We're all dead, we just don't know it. Big navy bird like this? We'll burn to death in upper atmosphere."

The mutineers don't attack again, not that Jin really thought they would. He's balancing on a length of railing around the engine, as the room increasingly inverts the ceiling and floor.

This is madness. To kill all these people, just for some foolish ideal of the Solarian Navy? Ahmed was right. This cannot be what the fleet is supposed to be. It simply can't.

There's no time now. No time for Jin to apologise to anyone, and they're dead already, even if he wanted to. Dead, and near enough by his hand.

He closes his eyes. Not long now.

-

Aboard SNS Andrea Rusu, above Earth, T+75

"Admiral!" The officer's voice cuts across the bridge, and Jefferson-Smith can feel the panic resonating within it. "Atya Soler is striking colours. She's moving to a higher orbit."

Jefferson-Smith snarls fighting against his webbing, wishing he could stand and spit fire at that bitch Leclerc and the rest of the cowards and traitors.

Fucking cowards. First Fleet was fighting for its life and these cowards were going to cut and run.

Why couldn't they have just obeyed orders? DIDN'T THEY KNOW HOW DIFFICULT THEY WERE MAKING THIS ON HIS PEOPLE.

He had a duty to his uniform, to his people, to his dead patron.

She scream-laughed in his ear, as the room began to bleed and blur as if all its own colours were washing out.

If any of his officers knew what was happening he would be declared unfit for duty. So he closed his eyes, but the inside of his eyes were bleeding as well.

Well he wasn't going to let the enemies of Humanity win. That wasn't going to happen. Not in his Navy. Not as long as he commanded a fleet. He would show them.

"Gunnery!" the Admiral all but screams, "Fire a warning shot off Atya Solar's bow and get her back into formation!"

-

Aboard SNS Susana Kato, somewhere above Earth, T+77

MacLellan gasps in horror, safely cocooned inside her webbing, as the flagship destroys Atya Soler. A single missile slamming into the damaged craft as she attempts to withdraw from the battle.

Her console lights up with another damned alert.

SNS ATYA SOLER
-DESTROYED BY FRIENDLY FIRE (SNS ANDREA RUSU)
-SECONDARY DETONATIONS DETECTED
-435 KIA CODES

The tactical officer studies the plot in front of her, chaotic and charged, First Fleet and their loyalist allies all intermingled with the rebel National Fleets and the rogue Solarian craft.

For a moment, she starts to retreat to her happy place, can almost smell Silver Moth Lake, feel the water of the lake running over her palms.

Instead she looks around Susana Kato's command deck. At Captain Kasabian snarling invective at "dirties" as he fights the ship.

At the rest of the compartment's crew. At the first officer dangerously untethered from his webbing and floating beside the engineering section, and all the rest.

At their armaments.

"SNS Atya Solar destroyed by fire from SNS Andrea Rusu," she reports crisply.

"FUCK!" comes the reply from Kasabian. "Conn, close formation around the flagship to compensate."

"Tactical. Recalibrate our fire for the edge of the Russian fleet. I want you to cooperate with the rest of the division to divide them from the Chinese."

MacLellan returns to her duties.

Then she stops, unclips her webbing and grabs for her sidearm in a blur of motion.

"Sir! I believe that we are involved in an illegal operation and under Section XI of the Uniform Code I am relieving you of command!" Lieutenant Commander Katrina MacLellan screams. "Sergeant At Arms! Take the Captain to the Brig!"

For a moment she thinks she's going to pull it off. There is a pause as everyone looks at her. The Sergeant At Arms starts to move forward, to obey her command. Katrina expects someone to say something, to try to lawyer it like in the movies. Or just to order her to stand down.

Instead the first officer goes for his gun, and everyone starts shooting.

-

Somewhere over Western Asia, T+78

Ichika's first kill is an overconfident Compact Mamba space superiority drone. The VI flying it, and the operator managing it had figured that the big SSTO would be an easy target, had target fixated to the point they didn't notice the array of hyper velocity missiles laid behind Tenshi like a wake.

Her second was the Mamba's control craft, a gleaming new Hellcat which she'd killed with what she privately thought was a quite brilliant snapshot strike from Tenshi's heavy main laser.

Now she's after bigger game. Up ahead, the cruiser SNS Maxim Boyanov hung like a great silver airship. Fire spits away from the heavy warcraft in series, most of it aimed at SNS Iolanda Cavanaugh-Hynes, a cruiser now definitely flying Earth Colours.

The strike craft furball has become utterly chaotic, with strike craft and drones mixed everywhere, friend and foes everywhere. She has Tenshi Two and Four, Three still responding to beacon messages but nowhere in sight. Not enough to kill a cruiser with. Time to put the call out. "Tenshi, find me some friendly strike craft."

"DF Squadron, designation Magic. JSDF Squadron designation Harpy. Tenshi Five and Six. Linked now."

"All receiving Units, this is Tenshi One. You are under my strike control." Did she have the authority for this? Over the JSDF sure. The Democratic Federation craft, if they obeyed. If not, she'll do with what she has.

"Magic One, we are under your control."

"Set up your runs on Boyanov as sketched." Ichika sends the plan through her neural link, refining it with her fingers as it becomes visualised before her. There wasn't time for anything else. Tenshi checks the maths then the message flashes green and sends. There's no time to set up for anything fancy like a multi-axis attack. The strike craft turns, forming up into a coordinated group, drone swarms accelerating out front. Bays opened to spit out more swarmers, rocketting away towards the cruiser.

Boyanov sees them, its lasers slewing to engage the incoming. Bright light flashes across Tenshi's heat shield as a beam touches it, somehow missing the nose art and scorching a scar down the side. Tenshi fires back, the big laser in its bow doing what it was designed for and poking the lens out of the defending beam. Boyanov is manoeuvring, spinning end for end on vernier thrusters before its main torch fires and it begins to drop kinetic mines. The mines are computer controlled shotgun shells, high closure rate devices designed for the fast burning drones. Drones begin to burst one after another, secondary lasers and railguns adding to the point defence barrage.

"Execute Manoeuvre," Tenshi says.

"Authorised!"

The strike craft snap over, their own main drives jerking them around to new points and their lasers strike out in a coordinated volley, piercing through the weak point in the Cruiser's armour just behind the first ring of laser radiators. There is a brief moment, then something blows inside Boyanov, a small explosion at first, then a big one, the entire side of the massive vessel ballooning out in a wave of fire and debris. Tenshi rolls automatically and fires the drive, pulling the SSTO clear.

Her first capital craft kill.

Five hundred souls doomed to die.

-

Aboard SNS Susana Kato, Somewhere over Earth, T+82

"Fuck you, dirt lov–" snarls Captain Kasabian until the round smashes through his faceplate and out into bulkhead behind him, smashing through an electrical panel that controlled an intraship communications backup connection to the command deck.

The body of Susana Kato's former Captain sails backwards away from Lieutenant Commander Katrina MacLellan and bounces off the now shattered panel to join the bodies of his first officer, his conn officer, and two of his enlisted in floating weightlessly and lifeless across his own command deck.

"Loyalist holdouts blown out of bay three, Ma'am," reports Lieutenant Penelopy Alexander-Thompson (Lady Greenbough, Order of Luna) her… first officer? Co-conspirator in a conspiracy less than five minutes old?

One of the three insurrectionary enlisted polices the bodies of the loyalist officers and crew, collecting them in a now unoccupied section of the command deck.

Well she was alive. Somehow.

And now she had a battlecruiser to bring into the service of the people of Sol. The True Solarian Navy was here.

So…

What does the executioner do the day before they bring the axe down on a million innocents?

If she has any sense at all she turns her axe against those that give the orders.

-

Somewhere in Pacific City, North America, Earth, T+83

"SNS Robinson-Sinclare Thalton is breaking up!"

The broadcaster's voice is quick and breathy, professional detachment strained by fear and other emotions. The strange joy of the end of a world.

It's almost like a sports event, if you squint.

RSF inner fleet exchange of fire has stopped.

Not really, for all the quick, breathless descriptions, it was just so different.

"SNS Morgan-Thiel-Smythe II may have been hit, possibly a major hit. Yes! We can confirm it took a missile! Status unknown. Loyalists aligned."

"Eat it, FUCKERS!" Sasha shouted. Sports events didn't matter, not really. Hell, given they didn't let Anna play, the ones at the school were jokes. But this, this matters. This was the battle for Earth, and like hell Sasha wasn't gonna cheer them on a little.

"EDFOF AGINCOURT is taking heavy fire, and appears to be reeling."

She broods at that, anger huddles through her. It's not like she even liked the Europeans before, bunch of sell-outs happy to see the Americas get fucked if they could stay fat, but right now… Right now the Solarians would pay for everyone they hurt.

"Wait! The ROCROI is moving to cover the AGINCOURT! That's the EDFOF ROCROI, another cruiser! It was drifting but now it's aligned, it's moving into formation with the Agincourt and the EDFOF HOLTZ! They're getting free. The HOTLZ is hit, but the two cruisers are breaking out into clear space!"

And relief, she smiles. "See, they got this."

Best to stay positive, stay certain, because she knew the other two couldn't. Anna was shifting uncertainty. She was sitting by the railway, looking out occasionally. There weren't any ships to see anymore, funny that. Sasha felt like if a battle was going to have the audacity to be above Earth then it should have the decency to actually be visible, but the telescope was a useless hunk of junk right now, leaving them huddled around the radio, or in Marcy's case, a lap-top, trying to spreadsheet what ships were left.

"The main Earth aligned PLASF formation is moving now. They appear to be trying to cut the Brazilian squadron aligned with the SNS off from the main Compact Fleet. The PLASF SHANGHAI has taken several hits. It's falling out of formation. The rest are launching. Yes. There's railgun and laser fire. The CASTELO BRANCO is hit. There's signs of laser strikes along her left radiators. She's hit again! My god, she's breaking in two! The Brazilians are in full retreat. The PLASF aren't letting them go. They're concentrating fire on the MEDICI. Multiple laser and railgun strikes on the MEDICI. Her drive's out. She's tumbling. The Brazilian Flagship is tumbling away! She's struck her colours! The Brazilian fleet is firing white starshell! They're surrendering!"

"Get fucked you traitorious dickbags," Sasha whispered.

"Hey Sasha?" Anna began, before being cut off–

"SNS JEAN PLANCHE has begun entering the lower atmosphere- it… it appears to be crashing, breaking up? Reasons unknown. Dive in the Pacific."

"What do you think happened?" Anna asked, changing gears.

"I bet someone made the ultimate sacrifice," Sasha replied, learning forward on the rail. It was obvious; it's what she would do. No idea if it was some traitor after the ship was nearly freed or some hero stopping them, but some heroes, and some monsters, just died. "What were you going to say before?"

"There are so manys strike craft coming up now. Democratic Federation, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesia and European. Iranian, Ethiopian, Nigerian! There's a huge dog fight going on with the SNS lunar squadrons. I'm seeing dozens of confused fights! There's too much activity to fully make sense of it."

"Oh just…" Anna struggled for a moment. "What were you going to do? If this is over, and we, you know, aren't dead. I don't think your original plan of 'leave an awesome corpse in the next Great Black Summer' is going to work out?"

"SNS ATYA SOLER has broadcast a struck colour. Repeat SNS ATYA SOLER, previously loyalist. Broadcast a struck colour."

Sasha frowned. She hadn't really– "make those VdCB bitches take me. 'We don't take 13 year olds, my ass. Then I'm gonna– Wait, shit, did they just say "Pacific?"

"Why there?"

Sasha shrugged. "Not like I'm gonna have time to find anyone on Earth, and I can't let Marcy have more pigs stabbed than me. What about you?"

"SNS ATYA SOLER ordered to return, is not complying."

Anna blinked. "I… don't know? I mean I had always figured I was going to be heading to one of the colonies. Help pay for a better apartment for mom and dad and stuff but…"

Sasha laughed. "No point now, plus like… turns out they get fucked just as much as us."

"Yeah." Anna paused. "What about you Marcy?"

Marcy looked up from her spreadsheet. "Oh wow… I uh… I mean I studied and tried to get good grades but that was like… because you had to? I…" She looked uncertain. "I think I had less of a plan than either of you, really."

Anna looked ready to open her mouth–

"SNS ATYA SOLER destroyed by fire from SNS ANDREA RUSU."

"They are killing even those who surrender!" Anna said.

"Idiots, means more time for ours to fire–"

"Hey!" Marcy shouted, interrupting them while her eyes were glued back to her screen. "The Pacific battle is moving, I think we might be able to see one from here."

"WHAT?!" both said at once.

"The Solarian Formation is breaking up now! There's strike craft everywhere. DFSF switchblades and Chinese Deltas and big JSDF SSTOs, they're breaking through the Solarian Hellcat screen! They're going for the cruisers!"

Sasha sprung into action. "Quick, Anna adjust the scope and find them! While I'll double check the settings for daylight negation. Marcy, figure out where they are exactly. We have to find them."

"SNS MAXIM BOYANOV firing upon IOLANDA CAVANAUGH-HYNES, not yet destroyed–"

The girls worked desperately, trying to find anything when– "I think I see them!" Anna shouted.

"Activate the big screen, so we can all see."

"SNS MAXIM BOYANOV has been destroyed. Repeat, The loyalist SNS MAXIM BOYANOV has been destroyed by strike craft, a joint JSDF-DFSF strike craft has sunk the MAXIM BOYANOV!"

They didn't need the announcement, not this time. They could all see on the scope-screen the outline of the cruiser, as the explosion ripped through it. Almost like a movie, minus the eerie silence from the screen. "THEY DID IT!" Sasha shouted.

"It's uh… a cruiser!" Marcy said, her neck bobbing between the screen and trying to find it on her list.

"We did it. We beat a cruiser!" Sasha shouted again, and even Anna looked excited at that. How could you not? The DF was a ghost, good only for annoying occupating forces, not something that actually mattered, and they had just fucking killed a cruiser. "That's been over a hundred years coming assholes."

"Are there any others?" Anna asked.

"Yeah hold on, next one is at–" And they continued

"The forces seem to be reorganising now. The PLASF, EDFOF and EPSF and CUDF fleets are forming up into a single constellation under the cover of their attack craft. The Solarian fleet is still in chaos."

All thoughts of futures and trying to spreadsheet were forgotten, as the telescope followed the battle. Much of the announcements were unnoticed not, too involved in trying to find the few ships which earth's curvature and the fortunes of battle allowed them to see.

"SNS SUSANA KATO has broadcast struck colours. SNS SUSANA KATO has broadcast struck colours! And… and a message.

"This is the True Solarian Navy vessel SNS Susana Kato, Lieutenant Commander Katrina MacLellan commanding. We are moving to guard the People of Sol against the immoral orders given by a dead government. We are ordering all Solarian Navy vessels to strike colours and surrender to the forces of the United Nations of Earth. If you do not comply, this fully operational battlecruiser will open fire on you. I repeat, the True Solarian Navy will fight to the death to protect the people of Earth. The Compact is dead and all its loyalists will follow it!"

"Fucking glad someone said it." Sasha says, as the others give the new the brief pause, but only brief. There were still ships in their skies, one to see, and they had work to do.

-

Aboard SNS Andrea Rusu, somewhere above Earth, T+85

Jefferson-Smith sucks in air through his teeth.

Well, that's one of his two battlecruisers against him.

And now two more of his monitors destroyed. SNS Juniper FItzpatrick burning up over the Pacific, her crew still alive, and SNS Henri Von Hazen scattered across Russia's coming dawn.

He studies his plot; First Fleet can still win this.

They'd rise, reconcentrate their formation, pick off the traitors. Then it wouldn't be hard to start focusing on the National Fleets and pick them apart one by one before they were able to fully integrate their formations.

He frowns as SNS Japik Gupta disappears from his plot.

They couldn't fall back, not without abandoning their dead in orbit. He had a duty to–

(She was running her bloodsoaked fingers all down his cheek by now, she smelled of rot and decay and death itself. There was no dignity in how he'd last seen her.)

Admiral Bertrand Jefferson-Smith looks down at the final alert.

It seems that his hand had been forced.

"Signal the fleet. We. Are. Leaving. We're pulling back."

Even in the heat of battle a palpable sense of shock radiates across the bridge.

(They didn't have faces anymore, just a blur of random features, as if his brain was misfiring again and again and again. But his eyes still worked for some things.)

They didn't know what he did though. They didn't see the message from the 7th Fleet's transports and escorts. The distress signals as the Martian Fleet tore through them and continued on towards Earth.

Even if he won here, they'd never hold the orbitals. Those loyal to the Community of Humanity simply needed to pull back.

Momentarily, to regain their bearings, and then. Well, then they'd see.

Then Andrea Rusu rocked under fire.

-

Aboard the SNS Natalia Sarkissian, T+84

Captain Sena Valero had spent her whole career, sixty years, climbing up to this post. Captain of SNS Sarky, one of the Monitors of the fleet. And now her career was over. She'd been hoping to go to a cruiser, and then keep on climbing.

But the Solarians couldn't take monitors with them. At best, they'd be left at the end of the rope in Lemuria, against a superior set of space forces and with no hope of promotion. At worst, they'd die in the retreat.

"Ship," she said to the quietly watching men. "I believe that I have been suddenly seized with fervour for the revolution."

"Ma'am?" the First Officer asked.

"We're going to break off, nice and easy, and strike our colours for the pleasant men, women, and others from Mars. And we're going to declare we always supported the revolution and simply needed a chance to break away."

There was a long moment where she worried that she'd spoken too candidly, and that someone would try to stop her, try to "save" the Compact.

Then as one, she felt it, the nodding and the plan in motion.

"We're all good Earthlings now."

She knew it wasn't very loyal, but sixty years was a long time to get not that far. Second and Third generation bastards getting all the good slots. If her fellow captains of monitors, the ones that would have to be left behind anyways, were smart they'd defect along with her. Earth would need all the monitors it could to fight back against the inevitable Solarian Compact reprisal fleet, likely to be five times this fleet or more.

That sounded to Valero like a promotion waiting to happen.

-

Aboard EDF Cannae, somewhere over Earth, T+85

"SNS Susana Kato has landed a glancing hit on SNS Andrea Rusu. She's still climbing rapidly towards Luna."

Leclerc gives a mirthless grin of shock. Were they… winning? Her fatigue was long forgotten, adrenaline and… something else mixing in a heady cocktail that made her feel young again.

Wasn't there a song about that?

Then she clears her head with a shake, that last sentence had annoyed her, and she scrolls through her panel for something, running a search she'd never bothered to ever do before. "Signal the orbitals. Request that all craft fighting in defence of Earth switch their flag codes to that of the United Nations if possible. We need to be able to tell friends from Loyalists. And since I just watched a Solarian Navy battlecruiser fire on the First Fleet's own flagship, we really need to make sure that she only fires on other Loyalist craft."

Is it the smartest idea? There are probably other things she could be doing, maybe reorganizing the EDF back into a real formation and assessing the massive casualties that they'd suffered. The bloody gouges ripped out of a proud but inexperienced force.

She looks again at her tactical plot, at the red and yellow scrawled across her craft's statuses.

Let the Chinese take the lead now. Her people have been savaged. They've done enough–even Cannae had taken a few glancing hits–enough to let her people know they've been touched. Enough that Captain Desrosiers would spend the next week silently weeping and writing letters home to grieving families.

"Ma'am!" The panicked voice of a sensor operator cuts across the command deck, utter terror. "I HAVE CONFIRMED SEPERATIONS OF WEAPONS FROM FIRST FLEET!" the woman yells, on the edge of tripping over her own tongue. "Looks like tracks across Eurasia, Centra Americas, and North Africa. Nukes, ma'am."

"Understood." It looks like the EDF didn't have time to regroup, to rest. Instead they would lay their bodies across the low orbitals to continue to act as Earth's shield as a dead government spit their spite at her home in some nuclear Parthian shot. "Leclerc to all craft, engage surface bound weapons-fire."

She looks at the image of Earth below, the dawnline trekking its way across the surface. "We'll use our bodies to block these nukes from the surface if we have to."

-

PARTHIAN SHOT

01:25: Sahara, Subsurface Bastion Magenta.

"VAMPIRE. VAMPIRE," the VI calls. "Enemy Ground Strike Ordinance Deployed."

The Air Defence Command Room's composite flashes, the red lines of more than a score of missiles trailing away from the fleeing Compact ships. Aisha doesn't swear. She'd been watching the battle with her fists clenched but now she's acid calm.

"Track the vampires and address anything coming down in our zone!" she calls. The fleet in orbit was firing as the munitions crossed them, already debusing into a wave of dropping RVs. Tracks clear as weapons are eliminated across the orbital zone more come in.

"Target sets," the VI says calmly, "Kuwait, Ireland, Guatemala, Sahara, Sahara, Algeria."

"The fuck is in Guatemala?" Aisha mutters. Then the missiles start to put out their PENAIDS.

01:26, The Fortress of Mixco Viejo, Guatemala

Tracer fire races over Brisa's head and she ducks back behind the bulk of the tank. The vehicle is painted up in migraine-inducing digital camouflage that has proven pretty good at disrupting the targeting of even the enemy's bots. The tank's short barrelled close combat cannon blows the machine gun position to dust and fire. Brisa curses. She doesn't want to damage the ruins anymore than she has to, but the Cartel soldiers using the ancient fort as their position are not making it easy.

Still, the anarchist forces are making progress, three columns pushing forward behind their tanks and combat robots, suppressing and destroying each enemy position in turn. The cartels have lost air superiority more than an hour ago, and they have good eyes and fire on the enemy within.

Her radio beeps. It's her commander, a strange augmented woman who calls herself The Bird. "Brisa! There's a nuke incoming!"

"A what?"

"Get your people down and into cover! The fleet's dropped a nuke to relieve the cartels."

"A nuclear weapon?"

Brisa looks up, her visor magnifying the sky. She can see falling stars.

"God save us," the anarchist fighter mutters.

01:27: Andes Mountains, Republic GTO position.

Porfirio measures geometries in his mind, thinking of vectors and complex maths and falling death.

"We don't have this," the Operator at the DF's Pacific City ABM site says conversationally. "Angle's wrong. It's all on you, friend."

"Yeah." Porfirio reaches into his shirt and lifts the small cross there to his mouth. "No pressure." His fingers fly across the guidance console's keyboard, typing in the solution and checking the VI's work. Green ticks. He spends another moment, forcing himself not to rush, running the PENAID checklist, sorting through the sparking laser and ECM emitters trying to ghost his sensors.

All good. As good as he can make it. He hits the commit button and covers his ears as missiles roared off their rails.

01:28: Earth Orbit

The missile heading for Kuwait is all conventional, nothing more than an array of conductive rods with guidance systems designed to take out the Kuwaiti part of the massive middle east solar power complex that supplied so much of European, Ethiopian and Egyptian energy demands. It doesn't get the chance. An Iranian low manoeuvrability platform picks it up way high and burns it out with a particle beam strike, the inert package skipping off the atmosphere and off into nowhere.

The Dublin strike is beefier, a conventional PGM package designed for the Celtic Union's military and administrative buildings. If it lands, each kinetic will strike with the force of a thousand pound bomb, killing hundreds across the city.

Fortunately, it doesn't get a chance. A Celtic Union AWACS picked the package up, and a high altitude fighter shot it down with its own railguns seconds before its warheads debused.

Most strikes sweep towards the Sahara, leaving a trail of explosions in their wake as they sacrifice themselves against everything State and Anarchy can throw at them.

01:29: Sahara

"Bird gone."

"Five left," one of the operators mutters.

"Bird gone."

Missiles climb upwards one after another, seeking to clear out the whirling swarm of decoys and dropping debris by sheer force. It should be a simple task. After all, a warhead is going to be the heaviest thing in the swarm, right? Their tracks should be predictable.

Not right at all. The desert is being hammered by laser and radar dazzlers, and each warhead is individually weighted, weighed down by random material to give its trajectory a slightly different pattern. The balloon decoys will be yanked away by the edge of the atmosphere, making it easier but until then…

There are just too many fucking missiles.

Aisha bites her thumb, watching the storm drop lower.

01:34: Andes

Porfirio taps his fingers as his missiles close. If he's done it right, the missile's seekers will see the incoming nuke just as the first wave of atmosphere tears away the decoys around it. He takes a sip of water, watching the radar track as missiles close.

Atmosphere, decoy balloons are yanked away and his own missiles erupt, debusing in a shotgun of spiralling off angle interceptors.

The two swarms merge.

"Detonation. Detonation. Detonation. Detonation."

The screen clears. All that was falling was debris.

01:36: Sahara

"All points. Brace for flash and ground shock," Aisha speaks into her microphone with a calm she didn't know she had in her. "Firefighting teams stand too. Prepare to cut in backup power."

A conventional swarm munition just hit across Algeria, loitering munitions twirling in the sky then lunging towards buried tanks and entrenched troops. Aisha feels guilty, feels shame at the elation she felt when it hit. She was right. She prioritized a nuke over it.

Two more coming in. Both are showing the signature of antimatter triggered devices. She only has time to get one. Aisha sends a command through her neural link and prays.

"Bird gone," the VI says. The missile climbs on a plume of fire, going up to meet the falling RV. The warhead burst apart to nothing.

The second initiates a moment later. Across Europe and the Sahara lights flicker and go out as breakers blow all across the Saharan grid. Some come back in as emergency power systems kick in and load transfers. Others stay off, power failing, trillions of Euros worth of damage done in an instant. All better than a ground burst.

Aisha looks at the composite as it flickers and comes back on.

That was the very last one.

They're in the clear.

01:40: SNS Maxim Boyanov

SNS Maxim Boyanov is crippled, burning, dropping towards the planet, a dead meteor. The heat of her reactors is cooking the ship. In his crash webbing, Captain Robert Hunt laughs, spitting blood from a bitten tongue into his helmet. Below the blue orb of earth circles. Above the lights of the space battle.

"Damn traitors," he mutters, then reaches down for the weapons console next to him. Those crew who could flee the dying ship have fled. He could have escaped himself but he spent the time rigging the weapons systems. He pushes in the control key, lifts the cover and then pulls his hand down through the holograms above and onto the button.

"...to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee," Hunt raises his side arm to the side of his helmet. "For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!"

Missiles drop from Boyanov's undamaged tubes. Then the Japanese low manoeuvrability platforms see what Hunt is doing and blow Boyanov apart.

01:40: Over the Pacific

"Break break: Tenshi elements, this is Golem. Heads up! Vampires in the air, aimed bullseye."

The operator's voice is calm and professional, but strained at the edge. Bullseye is central Tokyo. Ichika looks at the display and the course data Tenshi is sending to her. She has Tenshi Two with her, with Four and Five a more distant off. Three seems to have ejected. "We can make it," she decides.

"It's going to be tight. Lots of ECM," Sakura says.

"Assign by warhead. We'll get in close."

"Do you want me to launch swarmers?"

"No, launch at optimal. We'll never catch the debus anyway. Tenshi, lase them."

Beams slice the sky towards the falling munitions, carving at them as they roll and veer. One burst, then another. There are more.

"Enemy weapon, debus," Tenshi says.

"Tenshi, Golem. Don't stray past the Six Line. At that point it's down to the interceptor missiles."

Ichika winces. Japan had spent its limited budget on SSTOs and LMPs. The Six Line still uses old Type 00 missiles. A full fifty years behind state of the art. They aren't going to get it.

"Swarmers launched." The drones accelerate ahead of the four SSTOs, racing out towards the incoming warhead. Bursts light the sky as one decoy and warhead after another vanishes, then the SSTOs drop into the haze of incoming shots like predatory fish, their lasers reaching through. The pass was too fast for a human eye, even augmented to follow. When it ends the sky is clear.

Almost.

A single warhead races on. Skipping across the atmosphere now like an exocet. Tenshi flashes up information.

"It's a one megaton deep bunker buster," Sakura says, voice without emotion.

"We've got no angle," Ichika mutters, working the numbers desperately in her head.

"Can we ram it?"

"Don't think so. If we keep it lit, maybe the Six Line can hit it. Or one of the Chinese platforms."

"That's pretty thin."

Ichika looks again. It is thin. Too thin. Something. Something. She has to do something. "Okay I've got an idea." She sends it through her neural lace to Tenshi. It's dangerous as hell. The laser earlier marked them. If the heat shield blows–

"Hold on!"

"Execute manoeuvre," Tenshi says.

"Authorized!"

Sakura gasps. Ichika cuts in the drive, and piles the SSTO into the atmosphere. The craft bounces off with a bone jarring shimmy, then the drive cuts in again, the main torch ripping a trail of fusion fire out behind, into a space that holds the warhead.

The SSTO bounces again, and Ichika has a horrific instant of thinking they're breaking up. Then the shaking stops and they are in clear space.

Nothing of the warhead remains.
-

Aboard SNS Andrea Rusu, somewhere above Earth, T+90

"I guess our orders are a necessary evil, ma'am."

"What?" his Flag Captain asks, frowning at him. Bertran knows it's his Flag Captain because he can see the rank insignias, but the face is a mass of blurs and shadows. The lights are going out, one by one, but he's sure he's just seeing it in his head.

Just as he's hearing the screaming of missiles and alarms. Only a few nukes got through. Not enough to do his duty. his duty. his.

his mother always said, you should look at rank insignias and not their faces. If he remembered, his Flag Captain was actually an Augment, and he'd been thinking about becoming her patron, helping her climb to Admiral like–

SHE screamed and wrapped herself around him, chanting the watchword they shared: "HONOR."

"There can be no turning back," he said.

"Admiral?" he cannot see her face, but he can feel her confusion and her lack of understanding.

Surely she understood duty. Surely.

"I need to know that you are prepared to go all the way with what needs to be done," he said.

"Admiral, what are you–"

"I need you to swear to me that you'll do your utmost to protect the Community of Humanity from fracture," he decreed.

"Sir, do you need to step away?" she asked.

Concerned, but unwilling to swear by oaths.

Perhaps he was right not to have offered his patronage. Though now it was worth nothing.

he had nothing left except–

"Duty, duty duty!" screamed the corpse over his shoulder, her gaping maw leaking blood all over the floors. If he didn't know he was delusional, if he didn't know that he was seeing things that weren't there, he would have chided her for leaving a mess. his mother said that, too: always, always make sure that the ships remain clean. If a crewmember has time to lean, they have time to clean, as long as it doesn't get in the way of other duties.

"Yes, continue on the… path we've set," he said.

he could not remember the details now. Even those were fading.

"I'll be back in a few minutes, just need to wash my face. Perhaps take a few stims. It is going to be a long night, isn't it, Sokolov?"

"Yes, sir," the Flag Captain said, sounding relieved.

he made sure to salute each of them that saluted him, and then headed for one of the bathrooms with a lock.

She followed behind, happy that he was finally doing what he was supposed to do. What he should have done.

he stepped in the bathroom, sniffing. Good. Very good. It had been cleaned recently.

he made sure he looked dignified, eyes clear of tears. He could barely see himself in the mirror, but he looked presentable, and She surely approved.

he pulled out his sidearm. his hand was shaking. he locked the bathroom door. he raised his gun and fired–

And then screamed. The shot had missed, gone straight through his ear. Fuck fuck fuck

Tears welled up and he started sobbing, snot running down his face as he tried to gather himself again. his face was a mess, his composure now broken by sobs.

But She was there for him. Maybe she'd been real all along, and his atheism had–

(There was pounding, but he didn't know if it was on the door or in his head.)

She hugged him tight in her grip, screaming in his ear, "Duty, Duty, Duty!" wrapping him in her patronly embrace, her blood soaking the back of his shirt, as he raised his sidearm again.

Before all else, though the heavens fall, do your duty: that is what SHE taught.

SHE screamed in approval and joy as he steadied the gun.

Acting Seventh Star Lord Bertran Jefferson-Smith Dies During Accident While Unloading Sidearm–#NavyNews

As per regulation after a military engagement, Acting 7th Star Lord, Bertran Jefferson-Smith, Star Marshall, Medal of Gallantry, Solarian Cross 2nd class, was unloading his personal firearm, a Solarian Armouries Model-2156(VA) when it unfortunately became discharged twice. The second shot was fatal and he died within five minutes of the injury, with his death being ruled an accident by first responders.

From a two-generation Solarian Navy family, he had an illustrious career spanning postings from the First Colonies to the Far Spinward, and was close with his superior officer and patron, Admiral Vandermeer, until her unfortunate accidental death led him to be declared acting Seventh Star Minister several hours ago.

He is survived by a loving mother, and his girlfriend, Ares Executive Jaina Westerly, and one child.

Command of the fleet has passed to Commodore Manderly until a new Seventh Star Minister can be appointed by Parliament.

-

Martian People's Fleet Flagship Red Mercy, T+94

"Late! Too late!" Captain Viona Yamamoto winced as her admiral paced, the click of their magnetic boots loud on the flag bridge. "Those damn Frenchies! They took it all for themselves!"

Admiral Montenegro Tharis was a beautiful NB, with long hair as black as the void of space tied back in a cut that would never have met previous military regulations. Utterly flamboyant and in both dress and manner, and, in sims and the few limited engagements of the new Martian People's navy, a brilliant commander. Viona just wished they'd chill out a little sometimes.

"Admiral–" Viona said cautiously. "The Compact fleet still controls considerable assets. We should perhaps coordinate with the UN forces before we make a pursuit."

"Bah! The Compact Fleet are whipped curs. Willing to nuke civilians but running away for L3 with their tails between their legs when the Earth showed steel. They'll never dare to engage us."

They snapped around and smashed a fist into their other palm. "Their formation is scattered all over the plot. People's Captain Yamamoto!"

"Sir!"

"Find me some weak stragglers. We shall bully the Compact. We shall make them know fear and their minions shall know that their officers left them to the tender mercies of Mars."

The Admiral gave an evil sound that Viona could only describe as a cackle, and Viona turned back to her plot.

-

Aboard SNS Andrea Rusu, approaching Cis-Lunar Space, T+102

Ramiel was glad, at this point, that she didn't have real eyes any more. Two hours and change of staring at text this tiny simply wouldn't have been possible.

More lines of text scrawled across the screen, but it wasn't the insanity of earlier. It was…

"Wait, what was that?"

The tiny processor in the screen hummed as she tried to navigate into the history, until she saw it, all laid out in yellow.

SNS A.RUSU - FADM JFFSN-SMTH DECD - WPNS FR - CPT G.SKLV ASSUME FLT COMMAND

SNS A.RUSU - ALL FLEET WITHDRAW TO SOL-EARTH L3. GIVE NO PURSUING FIRE.

She blinked, before leaning back against the padded walls, and chuckled slightly. So he couldn't bear what he'd done, could he? Well, that was something.

She sighed. Well, half the First Fleet wasn't much of a naval force at all, but it was something. And she was still inside her cell, and not floating around orbit waiting for a few hours to pass until her brain finally starved to death.

Ramiel mentally made a note to try her damnedest to never leave Korolev again.

Picking up the flimsy of plastic, she rubbed at her eyes with two fingers. So, the Anarchists had won. And with Kato's broadcasts tagged with the LCDR, something had happened to the Captain there. If she discounted the other defecting ships.... And the Admiral-Generals weren't in the order, they were ground forces, meaning…

She tilted her head back, and sighed. "Commodore Manderly, commander of the Solarian First Fleet."

God, that put her like, two or three down the chain of command now. Well. Extremely nominally that is.

All she needed now was to get out of this cell and hope that it'd all work out.

-

Somewhere In The Andes, T+ 105

"Those bastards, those goddamn bastards!" Stryker yelled, feeling as if he was going to cough up a lung. He knew it wasn't a rational reaction, that he should be cheering as everyone else was, but in his wheelchair, a half-broken man, he could feel nothing but disgust and contempt.

"What is it?" Morales asked, turning to him confused as he wanted to pace, wanted to scream and tear at something.

He had never in his life been angrier than in this moment. If he wasn't a healthy man, he'd be terrified that he'd burst a vein and stroke out. The fury just seized him.

"They're pulling out those useless Parlies and leaving all the Marines to die! Stay and fight, motherfucker mother…" he took a long, deep breath. "Not the reason why, just to do or die. But it's not them that do the dying, is it? It's not them that will be left behind. It never is." Gasping for breath that will not come, he turned to his minders. "Get me a line with the Compact forces in the pocket. Get me fucking Sunden. I need to tell them that our war is over."

Let others die for those who would not die for them. Let Sol stand on its own, without the Compact to weigh it down.

He'd already defected in a way, was seriously thinking about a future on Sol, even if he was probably forcibly retired. But now? Now he wanted to see the Compact's final gasping breaths. See those mass-murdering bastards beg for someone else to save them, please die in their stead. Even the worst of the sailors and soldiers, the ones who agreed with these atrocities, with these evil deeds, deserved better than the likes of political and military leaders such as those.

He subsided, body shaking, and thought of the future.

-

The Oblong Office, New York, Atlantic City, North America, Earth, T+105

In his heart, Tobby had always resented the military. Ex-military people like Rex always had an aura about them; active duty people were worse. The knowledge that they were better than you, because they were killers. He'd feared it really, told himself he respected it. Those big men and women in their starched, square uniforms.

They'd lost. They'd lost! How could this have happened? The Compact was the greatest civilization in history, and the Navy was its instrument. Against a few starving earth defences fleets. He'd heard the briefings. Last generation equipment. Poorly trained crews. They couldn't have lost.

And yet they had. It wasn't the Compact surrendering in humiliation. It was the Compact Navy. Fleeing, striking its colours.

Was it possible that many didn't feel the same way that he felt about the Compact? Why couldn't they see?

There would be vengeance. There would have to be. The full might of the Compact couldn't be resisted by any world. Order would be restored. They'd–

"Mr. Joss, we've got to go." Tobby looked up at the Political Protection Officer beside him. The man was still wearing a suit and glasses, but there were others behind him in full body armour with spidery combat drones at their sides.

"Where are we going?" Tobby asked dully. Rex and the PM were already being shown out of the room.

"We've got an evacuation order. The helicopters are leaving from the roof. They'll take you to the space port." The man dragged him and pulled him along. "The PM's ordered relocation to Lemuria."

"My Assistant Anna. Have you got her?"

"She's being loaded, Sir," The agent said. They reached the roof and Tobby saw the city burning.

Out in the bay, one of the Brazilian warships detonated. Tobby was almost knocked down by the pulse of heat and shock. The agent hauled him upright and they ran together towards the waiting fliers. The helicopters, twin engined military models painted in Parliamentary Protection black were already lifting, one after another heading off towards the spaceport in a steady stream.

"Take off your heels!" An agent shouted at female staffers. "You need to be able to run."

Anna was waiting for him. Her face seemed dead. "I'm glad you're alright," Tobby muttered. It was a stupid thing to say. Why wouldn't she be? The aircraft lifted into the sky with the others, heading towards the sea and the artificial island of New York's spaceport.

Anna didn't say anything until they touched down in the space port. She stepped out on the tarmac on stocking feet, then winced and pulled her shoes back on and turned to look at him. "I resign," she said.

"Wait–" Tobby blinked. "What?" On a night of incomprehension, this was the worst.

"We're a government that murders school teachers," she said simply, and walked off towards the Terminal.

AKuz · May 2, 2022

WELCOME TO MIDNIGHT COMRADE-CITIZENS

@clockworkchaos , @The Laurent @BiopunkOtrera , @Estro , @veteranMortal , and @Amorous Intent have all contributed to this climax of a climax

That-Random-Guy · May 2, 2022

AKuz said:
God, our Parent
From where we all come
Your power births us,
Your will animates us
Those who die in your presence,
Are not dead but transformed.
I pray for all the people of Earth
and for all those lost I shall never know
May they rejoice in your kingdom,
All beings be united in one family in the hereafter,
As they are not in this vale of tears.
Amen.

I've only gotten as far as here, and, and reading this with the music, with this music, is
is

god bless all the people's of earth

Edit: Yes. YES! This might be a tithe of SolNav, relatively speaking, but still! The homeworld will has NOT been NUKED! And from here, well, all the industrial output of Sol sure can make the Gate an unappetizing target.

For The Tyrants Fear Your Might (A quest of interstellar rebellion)

Been Better

Aspiring Gynoid

Cannon Fodder

Sci-Fi Fantasy Anime Tropes Isekai Manager Quest (No VERSIER, you are Truck-kun!)

Scenario Generation, Part 2

Creature of Fable

Plausible Engineer

Aspiring Gynoid

410,757,864,530 DEAD LIZARDS

Izutsumi-pilled

Gay and Stupid

Been Better

Midnight

Somewhere in the Andes Mountains, T+10 Minutes:

-

Been Better