Two Bards: The Forum!

WORKERS PROCEED TO THE NEAREST SHIP. WORKERS PROCEED TO THE NEAREST SHIP. THIS IS THE RESISTANCE; EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. I REPEAT, BEGIN EVACUATION IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WORKERS PROCEED-

Victor tuned out the stationwide emergency broadcast that had been one of the first programs he'd set to run when the shipyard had given him limited access to the system. It would repeat three times in League Standard before flipping over to the Hosh native language for three repeats and then back again. Neither he nor Mya had been too sanguine about the United League giving translators to every Hosh on the station - or, of the ones who did have translators, those translators being active while working. Gruul had provided them with the audio translation while Mya had recorded the announcement in League Standard.

More important were the alarms shrilling underneath the broadcast; Victor could hear at least three different intrusion alert sounds, and his data feeds were practically a symphony of danger signals. M’t'fdlth had managed to set off not only every intrusion and security alert that the shipyard's systems had hooks for, but also a number of maintenance and basic system triggers as well. Fire suppression systems were going off randomly, at least two armory locations had their maintenance locks on (the camera feeds for those were carefully sectioned and saved for perusal later), and the communications system was currently undergoing a massive reset/defrag that rendered all internal communicators static-filled and useless.

With his fingers flicking quickly over the surface of his tablet, system after system buckled under the force of their combined assaults. Where before Victor had had to rely on quiet infiltration methods, with the computing power of Sarcorxious he could now switch to more overt attacks. Security was the highest priority, of course, but M’t'fdlth wasn't human, and didn't suffer from the same biases towards vectors of attack that the designers of the shipyard had clearly planned for, and so M’t’fdlth came at it from a number of directions Victor wouldn't have thought of himself - or thought of too late.

Routing through the waste disposal system, for instance, got them access to the low-priority routines that made sure every League Standard ounce of material in the waste system was accounted for. Those routines, in turn, ran in the same cluster as the programs that controlled security priority queues.

Randomly shuffling those spawned a thousand threading errors as routines which relied on the priority queues to run in the correct sequence suddenly began to run out of order. Systems which relied on the routine execution tokens began firing erratically, and the effect snowballed as Victor and M’t'fdlth rode the digital avalanche into even deeper access to the systems.

So absorbed was he by the data that was scrolling before his eyes, he almost missed it when Gruul's tail lashed violently.

Almost.

Victor blinked and looked up at the tall alien. Her head was cocked to the side as if she was listening to something he couldn't quite hear. A brush of his fingers reduced the volume of alarms shrilling outside their erstwhile sanctuary by half, and a strange hissing snarl suddenly rang clear throughout the room. Mya flinched but gave no other outward sign that she'd heard, her head currently tucked against her chest as she chewed on a thumbnail; her father simply continued to prowl the room restlessly. Victor could only hope he'd stay put long enough to establish a security corridor to their target.

Something clicked in the back of his mind, and Victor returned his gaze to Gruul.

"Never heard a recording of yourself before?" He asked quietly.

She paused for a long moment before shaking her head.

"No. No, I - no."

Her tail lashed again.

"It… loses something. Without the visual portion. It… doesn't sound like me."

She stated, with a matter-of-factness that would have fooled anyone else.

But Victor knew her too well.

"If it's missing something, do you think your people will listen?"

He asked seriously, fingers drifting over his tablet to begin hacking into the various schedule and schematic displays wired throughout the station.

She blinked, looking almost pensive before finally nodding.

"Yes. With the other alarms, they will have to listen."

She shot him a dry look.

"Though the fact that it is in a language they understand, even if it does lack context, would be enough to ensure that they listened."

Victor pursed his lips and nodded slowly.

"True. I'd be willing to bet the United League doesn't broadcast much in their language."

"In the future, we will change that."

Both of Victor’s eyebrows rose at the conviction in Gruul’s voice, but he was spared from having to answer by a custom alert popping up on the tablet he'd been working with. The system-wide alarms were still scrolling through the backdrop of the window, but this was a flag he'd set specifically on the Blue teams' progress.

Only one of the marked ships hadn't changed to a green captured status on his monitoring systems - a quick glance through docking camera feeds showed port berth 15 engaged in a shootout with one of the Blue teams - but the five starboard haulers they had managed to capture were currently being blockaded by shipyard security forces. They had - he glanced at the chronal display - eight more minutes of M’t'fdlth's help, and then however much time Carcen and Victor could buy after that to load almost seven thousand people onto each ship. They had to get people moving into those cargo bays, and now.

"Mya, we have a problem."

She was beside him even before he stopped speaking, and Victor wasted no time in pointing out the security forces blocking the workers from reaching their escape ships.

"These two squads; it looks like they were together before everything went to hell and they've set up a hard point beside these cargo crates."

Victor poked a few keys and caused an overlay to ripple into place over the camera feed. Pulled from the station manifests, the overlay identified the crates as containing heavy engine valves - heavy enough to be almost armor in their own right. On the other hand, that also meant the crates couldn't be moved without special haulers which the security people distinctly lacked.

Victor watched as Mya bit her lip, eyes darting around the display for a moment that stretched in agonizing fashion before she blew her hair away from her face with an explosive sigh.

"Signal Red Eight and Gold Three to pull back to the cargo bay. The workers have to be a priority."

Victor felt his eyebrows crawl up his forehead at the orders. That was their entire tactical backup for this half of the wing; if those teams fell back, there'd be no-one in place for them to call for support if they needed it.

Fortunately, it seemed like Victor wasn't the only one who'd noticed, though Lothar hadn't stopped his restless pacing.

"That is not wise. We risk becoming cut off from the rear if you do that."

Gruul's voice was even, measured, and if Victor hadn't known her as well as he did, he would probably have missed the reproach in her tone.

Mya took a step back and still had to lean a little to look the proud Hosh warrior right in the eyes.

"I trust you."

Gruul's tail stilled and for a long moment neither said anything. Mya broke the gaze first, eyes dropping down and away from Gruul's brilliantly yellow eyes, instead going across the room in a motion that seemed almost involuntary as she looked at the man who'd sired her.

"Between you and my father, I'm sure we'll be fine."

She looked back at Victor.

"Give the word, and get ready to move out. We don't have all that much time."

Victor nodded and got to work.

Mya POV

Gruul, at the front of their loose formation, was the first to spot them.

The past few minutes had been tense, but there were remarkably few security teams roaming the halls. According to Victor's tablet, most of them were either trapped where they'd been when the alarms started, or had fallen back to specific hardpoints inside the structure. The ones that had ended up within visual communication range of each other had organized to try and take back the shuttle bay, and Mya was assured of her choice to send both their back-up teams to assist the shuttle crews. Those major cargo transport shuttles were going to be their main way to get workers off the station, and that exit strategy needed to remain viable or the whole thing would have been for nothing.

Fortunately, eight extra fighters coming up from behind the security teams had been more than enough to break the logjam on their side of the shuttle bay, and according to Victor, the extra forces were making a real difference on the other side as well. Well over ten thousand workers had already been loaded onto the huge cargo ships and more were streaming in.

The hallways they'd been passing through had also become a stream of workers and laborers heading for the nearby Capital ship. It had been mostly humans at first, but as they'd gotten nearer to the docking tube that let people onto the ship to work - and that was their intended entrance - the stream had become more mixed with Hosh towering over the shorter humanoids. Each Hosh was a riot of colors, greens and reds and oranges and yellows accented with daring splashes of blue, teal, or purple, and so Gruul remained easy to pick out with her almost monochrome appearance.

Mya had been filing that question away to ask later when Gruul suddenly gestured for them to stop. Indeed, the flow of workers around them had stopped as well, and even begun to try and move backwards. That alone was enough to tip Mya off to what was happening ahead, and Gruul's hissed warning of "security team!" was simply a confirmation. It made sense that one of the security checkpoints a team would fall back to would be the entrance to a nearly-complete Capital-class ship, but it was still a difficulty that Mya would rather have avoided.

She stole up beside Gruul, the multiple Hosh in the crowd - that was growing ever thicker, as more people tried to get to the ship - concealing the movement nicely.

"What do you think?" she asked in a low voice.

"Can we sneak up close enough for you to deal with them? They don't look inclined to fire on the workers yet, maybe we could-"

CRACK! BOOM!

Mya staggered as a wash of heat and pressure turned the corridor into a sauna, blinking the spots from her eyes in the wake of a brilliant explosion. The smell of charred meat filled the air alongside blaster bolts as the remaining two people on the security team opened fire.

Mya slammed herself flat against the wall of the corridor as the workers attempted to stampede back the way they'd come and Gruul surged forward, blade flashing out of its sheath. Mya watched with watering eyes as the proud Hosh warrior decapitated one of the standing security people with a single sweep, then carved halfway through the other one on the backswing.

The fight was over almost as soon as it had started, and more than a score of bodies littered the floor - most of them civilians.

"What in the name of empty space happened?" Mya croaked, the lingering smoke in the hallway roughening her voice.

Lothar was standing in the middle of the corridor, gauntlets fully visible where the sleeves of his overalls had been burned away. The trail of scorched meat started right in front of him and extended all the way to where the security team had been, with six smoking bodies in the remains of security armor marking the end of the trail. Around him lay the corpses of workers, clearly victims of the hail of fire the last two League goons had responded with. A few of which were still moving and groaning, which were good signs; Mya made a mental note to get some of the other workers to help them onto the ship.

Lothar Kaldegga gestured to the now-exposed docking tube entrance.

"The plan called for us to get into our assigned ships ASAP. They were in the way, and now they aren't any more."

He spoke in such a matter-of-fact tone that Mya could hardly believe her ears.

"We're supposed to rescue the workers too! Not barbecue them!"

Gruul punctuated Mya’s point with a deep growl that the translator declined to translate.

Her father looked at her coolly.

"The ships are the priority. Without them, we won't 'save' anybody."

Mya didn't like the way his voice twisted on the word "save", but now wasn't the time to fight it out.

"Next time, only take the shot if you have a clear one," she ordered, biting back the horrified yelling that tried to well up her throat.

Instead of acknowledging her order verbally, he merely inclined his head and strode straight towards the docking tube in front of them.

Mya cursed as Victor came up beside her, and he bumped her shoulder with his.

"Good news," he said quietly - loud enough to include Gruul, who had stalked back over to Mya with her blade at the ready once she'd finished with the security team, but soft enough that Lothar wouldn't hear them from where he was rapidly heading toward the entrance to the docking tube.

Mya nodded at him, obscurely comforted by his display of camaraderie.

"I'll take any I can get," she replied, matching her tone to his.

Victor flipped his tablet over so she could see it. A simple schematic blinked back at her, with three glowing lines drawn on it. She studied it for a moment before it clicked that he was showing her this docking bay and the locations of the tubes on the ship.

"According to what I've found, this is the main docking tube; it's closest to the bridge and the only one that had a security team reach it. The other tubes show no security presence whatsoever, and the workers have been steadily loading up since the announcement. If security wants to retake the ship, this is most likely the tube they'll use."

Mya blinked as several trains of thought ran full-speed through her head. On the one hand, even if it was highly unlikely that security forces would use the other docking tubes, the thought of having exploitable weak spots at her back made her skin crawl. On the other hand, the workers - who were starting to cautiously trickle down the corridor again now that the shooting had stopped - needed this tube to remain open if they had any chance of getting off the station alive.

Gruul's train of thought had apparently been running parallel to Mya's. With a lash of her tail, she turned to face the stretch of hallway that was slowly beginning to fill with workers once again.

"Go."

Her voice brooked no argument, but Mya still hesitated. Gruul was a fully capable Hosh warrior, and if any single person in their group could be relied upon to keep the way clear and secured, it was her. But for all that, the armor she'd managed to sneak under the worker coveralls was minimal and it felt wrong to leave her here without back-up. It also made capturing the ship seem all the more unlikely; terrible scenarios playing themselves out behind Mya's eyes. But this was Gruul. Gruul, whom Mya had wanted for a squad leader in the first place. Gruul, who had walked through the capital ship to rescue Mya's father without breaking the Hosh equivalent of a sweat. Gruul, who was the finest sword-wielder in the entire Resistance.

If anyone could do it, she could. And Mya wasn't about to disrespect her choice.

She didn't have to like it, though.

Mya reached out and grabbed the warrior's elbow, meeting her penetrating yellow gaze squarely.

"When I give the order, you drop whatever you're doing and get on the ship. It won't matter if a few have followed us onboard once we jump, but I won't leave you behind."

Gruul kept her gaze for a few long moments before nodding and Mya returned it before releasing her grip and gesturing to Victor. The two of them jogged after Lothar, who had by this point already disappeared into the docking tube.

The tube itself was made of some flexible, vacuum-resistant metal weave, but the floor was tiled exactly like the station they'd just left. It was wide, but not as big as some of the engine parts Mya had seen in the cargo bay; presumably those would be floated out and attached before the hull was pressurized. Were it not for the odd material of the walls, Mya could probably have convinced herself it was just another corridor - it was certainly long enough.

While she and Victor had only paused for a moment to talk to Gruul, Lothar was already a third of the way towards the doors at the other end of the tube. His footfalls were steady, his head high and pace brisk; both Mya and Victor had to continue jogging until they mostly caught up with him and then fell into a loose formation.

With Gruul guarding the entrance to the docking tube, they were unlikely to be attacked from behind, so Mya let Victor take up that position naturally while she readied her plasma shotgun to help her father. While he probably neither needed nor particularly wanted the help, it made her feel better to have something to do with her hands - let her feel less useless.

She could hear Victor muttering to himself from his position in the rear as they approached the ship-side door, but Lothar didn't even break stride as they came up to it - a confidence that was vindicated when it whooshed open at their approach, coinciding with a satisfied noise from Victor.

The halls were much like Mya remembered them being, and she couldn't suppress a shiver. The last time she'd been on a Capital-class ship, she'd been the head of a ragtag team of misfits in a last-ditch effort to try and save her father from the United League; now, she was trying to capture one so her father could blow up a space station. Mya shot a covert look at her father, but Lothar seemed unperturbed by their surroundings - in fact, if she had to put a name to it, his expression was almost gleeful; not an outright expression, but tucked into the corner of his mouth and the glint in his eyes.

Mya shook her head and focused her attention on the task at hand. Disquieting thoughts later, dealing with the mission now.

The halls themselves were rather empty, as they traversed the deck towards the bridge. No crew had been assigned yet, so that wasn't surprising, but Mya had somewhat hoped that more workers would have made it onto the decks by now. Still, she couldn't complain at the stillness; while it set her teeth on edge, it beat being shot at. Of course, that probably also meant that if there was any security on the entire ship, it was going to be on the bridge.
Mya glanced behind her.

"Victor. Bridge?"

He was silent for a long enough moment that she glanced at him again and found his fingers flying over his tablet as he remained silent. Finally, he looked up with a grim expression.

"Two squads," he said, loud enough for the foremost member of their group to hear him as well.

Lothar didn't even break his stride.

"I'll handle it."

Mya remembered what he'd done to the squad outside the docking bay tube and shifted her grip on her shotgun.

"Please remember we have to also pilot this thing out of here after we finish loading up."

Lothar didn't look back.

"Of course."

Somehow not reassured but not seeing a way around the necessity of it, Mya slung her shotgun and pulled out a blaster instead. The plasma shotgun was an excellent weapon for the kind of close-quarters fighting they'd inevitably be facing on the bridge, but if she missed even one shot, she ran the risk of melting something required to make the ship function, and her father was likely going to cause enough damage as it was. The blaster didn't have the same heft and she wasn't as good of a shot with it, but it shouldn't damage anything important when she missed, and that mattered more at this point.

She did miss the comforting weight of her shotgun in her hands though.

She missed it even more when the doors to the bridge opened - likely courtesy of Victor, though Mya wasn't about to turn her head and check - and a hail of blaster fire spilled out. Mya could only be grateful for the lack of civilians as she pressed herself up against the wall to avoid most of it. If they had loaded the ship this far, that would have been a bloodbath and while she was willing to haul injured people out, dead weight would have to stay behind; when using translocational magic, every ounce counted, and she already was unsure if she could shift a ship of this weight.

But she resolutely wasn't thinking about that right now.

Lothar had ducked out of the way of the first barrage, but as the rain of bolts slackened, he stepped out into the open again, lightning dancing up and down his gauntlets. A single gesture was enough to have it arcing towards the United League security with a hideous, whining tone that simultaneously made Mya's teeth itch and her eyes feel like they were about to pop out of her head - which was still better than what it did to the security team.

Lightning licked around them hungrily as they were catapulted out of cover by their own spasming muscles. The sizzle of burning meat was lost under the rising, wavering tone of the electricity, but the smell of it wafted down the corridor and made Mya retch. Fortunately the noise was lost underneath the same tone that drowned out everything else - until it suddenly cut off and Lothar lowered his hands.

Mya hadn't realized how close he'd gotten - the lightning had drowned out nearly everything else, but he was standing close to the doors to the bridge. Mya ran to join him. He hadn't gotten himself shot yet, but by her estimation, it was better safe than sorry.

She needn't have bothered, however; while the fact that Lothar hadn't been shot while she was running up had been a pretty decent indication, nothing had quite prepared her for the sight that met her eyes on the bridge. She'd worked with elementalists before, of course - not many, but a few - and most of them had been pretty handy with fire. It was the sheer surgical precision that took her breath away, the amount of control it must have taken. Ten security people lay sprawled on the deck, still smoking - but the only char marks on the floor were from where they'd fallen. Her father's control had been fine enough to keep the volatile lightning away from the conductive materials of the deck and consoles and confine it to the human bodies he was intent on flash-frying.

Mya shuddered as Victor walked past her, eyes firmly glued to his tablet as he headed for the main computer hardpoint on the bridge. It was his time to shine; not only did he have to keep the disruption of the main shipyard systems, he also had to hack and take control of the ship they were on or they weren't going anywhere. If anyone could do it, it was Victor, but she was loath to interrupt him.

With a sigh, she holstered her gun and went to start dragging the security team out of the bridge. Lothar glanced over with a careless eye and frowned.

"Leave them. No point in putting them anywhere else."

His tone was curt, with a thick layer of tension over it, and Mya huffed some hair out of her eyes before replying carefully.

"Once we have enough workers onboard, I want to jettison the corpses. No point in carrying any dead weight."

Lothar looked at her for a long moment before turning back to the main screen at the front of the bridge. It was a dismissal, but at least he hadn't objected, and Mya breathed a silent sigh of relief. It probably wouldn't matter much either way, given that they were planning on cramming the ship almost wall-to-wall with living bodies - the thought of which made her hands shake. She'd never tried translocating that much before, what if-

But every little bit helped, and it gave her something other to do than stare holes in the back of Victor's head like her father was doing.

Of course, that meant she was off the bridge minutes later when everything started going to shit.

"Mya!"

Victor's shout was in perfect time with the crackle of her comm in her ear.

"Red leader, this is Red Three. Repeat, this is Red Three."

While the comms they'd brought along with them had all been tuned to the same encrypted frequency oscillator, Mya had left orders to keep all comm traffic to a minimum. What the United League didn't know was there, they couldn't hack into, after all, and thus far the comms had been largely quiet beyond the few times Mya had been forced to update team orders on the fly. That one of the other teams would be reaching out to her now was not a good sign.

Mya ran back onto the bridge even as she answered the signal.

"Red Three, this is Red Leader. Report."

Victor was tapping away frantically at the computer hardpoint he'd commandeered, hands busy at the console as his eyes flickered across eight displays. Mya couldn't make heads or tails of most of them, but the look on his face said nothing good was happening. Combining that with Red Three reaching out was enough to have a yawning void open up in Mya's gut.

"Red Leader, resistance was heavier than we expected in this section. I don't know what happened to Red Four or Red Five, but security on this side just got a lot fucking more organized - reinforcements are piling in. I don't know how much longer we'll be able to hold the docking tubes."

Mya flipped the input off on her comm and cursed, a sentiment that Victor echoed.

"The network is re-establishing."

Mya's blood froze in her veins.

"How-"

"Carcen. That coward. I don't know what happened, but he's stopped repressing the network response on that half of the layered networks - the M'Pell are disrupting what they can, but the layering means they can only do so much. Without Carcen maintaining the foothold M't'fdlth established, those nodes are starting to come back online and there's nothing I can do to stop it from here."

A thousand and one thoughts flashed through Mya's head, but only one made it out of her mouth.

"How much time do we have?"

Victor's mouth was a grim line.

"Ten minutes, maybe one or two more. But the alarm's going to go out in five."

Mya rocked back on her heels.

"How long after that until reinforcements arrive?"

Victor's eyes closed like it physically pained him to say it.

"Not long enough."

Mya glared at the displays in front of Victor.

"How many more people do we have to load?" she asked.

They had to get the workers off this station before they destroyed it; Mya hadn't been about to just blow them up along with it when the whole mess started, and she'd be damned if she did it now. They had an obligation to the galaxy, to the Hosh, to Gruul, and to themselves to save the workers; while her father might think otherwise, Mya couldn't believe that much collateral damage was justifiable.

Lothar Kaldegga spun in place to glare at his daughter.

"We need to lift now," he snapped, every word clipped and aimed like a bullet straight at Mya.

Mya stiffened her back and matched him glare for glare.

"We have to save the workers," she snapped back, and he snorted in disbelief.

"If we don't lift now, we run the risk of not being able to finish the mission. The workers knew what might happen to them when they signed up for this job," he growled, taking a step towards Mya.

Mya stepped back in spite of herself, but didn't break the gaze they shared.

"You think even half of these people 'signed up' to be here? You know as well as I do that the United League runs on a combination of slavery and indentured servitude, especially in the manufacturing spaces. That's why we're here, why we're fighting in the first fucking place! I'm not going to leave-"

"Sixty-three thousand and falling," Victor interjected with impeccable timing.

Mya didn't miss a beat. "-sixty thousand people here to die just because some assholes decided they needed their labor to make ships on the cheap! We have to wait for the workers."

Her father took another step forward, and this time Mya held her ground.

"If we don't lift now, then we won't escape with anyone,” Lothar hissed, eyes narrowed.

“We'll be shot out of the sky along with anyone else who manages to lift off, and then the whole workforce purged as a precaution anyway!”

He waved at the viewscreen currently displaying the station.

“Then this place goes right back to making ships capable of destroying planets. Sometimes you have to make the hard decisions, and that means leaving people behind no matter what your objectives were to begin with!"

Lothar straightened up and gave her a cold look.

"If you don't have the spine to give the order, then I will," he stated flatly, reaching for his comm unit.

Red warnings flashed into place on Victor's screen and the man cursed roundly. Mya closed her eyes for a brief second, then reached out and caught her father's arm by the elemental gauntlet that covered the lower half.

"No, I’ll do it. My people, my mission, my choices, my fault. My call," she said, and reached up with her free hand to flick her comm onto the all-call frequency.

"All units, this is Red Leader. Hostiles inbound with an ETA of less than three minutes. Withdraw all forces and lift now."

Without waiting for a response she flipped her comm over to the unit frequency.

"Gruul, I mean it. Disengage and join us on the bridge, we have to cut loose in the next three minutes or we're all dead."

There was a pause that felt like an eternity, then Gruul’s end of the line clicked.

“There are still people on the station.”

It wasn’t a question, but Mya answered it like one anyway.

“Something happened in the other wing; Carcen’s stopped scrambling the network in that half, and security is coming back up. There’s an interceptor fleet inbound, Gruul, we have to go now.”

There was a much shorter pause.

“Acknowledged. On my way.”

Gruul’s tone was flat, and the click of the comm line sounded like the crack of a broken trust. Mya had to breathe carefully around the lump in her throat; now was not the time.

She clicked the line back over to the general frequency, noticing the tension easing just slightly in Victor's shoulders. She distantly contemplated the fact that she should be feeling the same kind of relief he clearly was, but she couldn't find it in the gaping void that had overtaken her chest.

Her teams. Her people. Her mission. Her choices. Her call.

Her fault.

Mya walked mechanically over to the pilot's station and settled herself into the chair. While most of the ships she'd flown in her life had integrated the Captain's chair and the piloting console into one larger station, this ship had the two separate. Her father had already taken up the weapons station and was elbow-deep in the circuitry designed to let him magnify his elemental powers ten thousand-fold.

Enough power to blow up a planet.

Mya shuddered and reached over to engage the piloting controls as Gruul stalked onto the bridge. Her overalls sported some new burns and tears - and a light sprinkling of human-red blood - but she herself appeared unhurt. The Hosh warrior looked around the bridge for a moment, taking in Mya where she was sitting and Lothar where he was caressing the weapons controls, and went over to loom behind Victor. He glanced up at her with a look Mya couldn't decipher, but then it didn't matter.

There was no more time.

Victor pushed a few buttons on the console in front of him and three ringing pops vibrated through the ship in quick succession. Mya could feel it when the last tether to the base was cut, the controls responding to every slight move and gesture she made. The actual movements of the ship were several long moments behind, of course - there was only so easily you could move something the size and weight of this monster, after all - but the controls themselves were responsive in a way that none of the old junkers Mya had flown for the Resistance ever had been.

Mya had a navigational display on the console in front of her, and she could see two other Capital ships begin to peel away from their berths. Three, of the five they'd intended to capture; given the odds of getting even one, three was an unlooked-for boon, but Mya couldn't bring herself to find anything optimistic in that.

Not with the price they were paying for them.

It didn't take long before more contacts were registering on her sensors; the flurry of cargo ships hauling ass out of the cargo hanger helped ease Mya's conscience a little bit. The contacts at the system boundary, however - just past the translocation beacon - were enough to have her stomach churning afresh: eight frigates in a spreading pattern supported by four cruisers and two Capital-class ships. None of them particularly fast at sublight, and at least three minutes from engaging distance with any of the ships around the shipyard, but - there was no going back now. No changing her mind and getting any more workers off.

There were more cargo ships pulling away from the station than she'd sent Blue teams for, but she wasn't about to begrudge any of the cargo captains they hadn't summarily deposed from hauling ass while they could. Whatever happened now, they were tarred with the same brush as everyone else who was about to escape this hellhole, and a distant part of Mya thought to have Victor look up the captains of those ships later and offer them the possibility of joining the Resistance in lieu of summary execution when the United League caught up to them.

Mya adjusted the controls and the sublight maneuvering engines hummed as they began to respond. Slower than she would have liked, the huge warship pulled away from the dock and began the half-circle that would let them bring the elemental batteries to bear.

One of the other Capital ships from the 'yards simply pulled away from the base without beginning the turn; Alejandro's squad had lacked an elementalist to run the weapons system, and it had been agreed that they would simply cut and run. Lothar had been adamant that he alone was enough to destroy the entirety of the base, but Mya had chosen to hedge her bets and the other commandeered Capital ship was beginning to make the turn as well.

The cargo ships were starting to disappear from her scope as their translocationists took them out of danger; if all went well, they'd meet up at the approved rendezvous point. Mya watched them go one by one as the United League frigates strained to close the distance between them. They were faster than the rest of the United League contingent, but not by much, and anything smaller than a frigate would be easy meat for the two Capital ships - even if they weren't currently pointed in that direction.

As the last of the cargo ships disappeared from her scope, Mya looked up to give her father a nod, only to have to shield her eyes from the sudden, hideous glare on the main screen. Lothar roared as he poured magic down into circuits that sucked it up greedily and spat red beams of death through space. The same red beams lanced from the other ship as well, splashing across shields that Lothar's shot had punched right through before finally breaking them to meet the superstructure of the station itself.

In anticipation of the vast amount of shields and armor the place had, the decision had been made to target the solar siphon at the bottom of the station. Mya had spent hours pouring over the schematics, getting advice from the engineers on Sarcorxrious; when she'd told her father of their findings, he'd simply looked at her with a shuttered expression before nodding and continuing on his way.

He'd apparently remembered their brief meeting now, as the red lances of his magic danced over the shield and antigrav emitters that hung pendulously below the station. Carbon scoring followed in the wake, until a soundless explosion rocked the station.

Mya watched as the whole station seemed to shudder in place, the energy of the binary star system reaching up past the siphon containment in deceptively delicate veils. The station was starting to list visibly, one wing of hangars rising higher than the other as the entire sub-station began a slow dive into the gravity well beneath it. The whole thing had a great and terrible beauty to it, enhanced by the transfixed silence on the bridge; even Lothar had gone quiet at the weapons station. It was the kind of sight that wanted for a grand orchestral soundtrack, or at least some kind of awful noise as the pressure of the twin suns' gravity began to crumple the lower wing of the station like a tin can. But there was nothing. No terrible screams broke the air as more than sixty thousand people - most of them workers - died, their lives snuffed out because there hadn't been enough time to save them.

Mya swallowed around the sour taste in her mouth as she shifted her grip on the Capital ship controls. While the wreck currently happening in front of her would likely delay the United League frigates by at least two minutes, the sooner they were gone, the sooner they could begin deciding what to do next. All she had to do was get them there.
Mya took a deep breath as her hand connected with the translocational buffer circuits integrated into the ship. As she let her magic stretch through the circuits of the ship, Mya closed her eyes; now was her turn to attempt the nearly impossible. If she failed, they were all dead, and she couldn't say whether or not she would succeed.

Until now.

Her magic spun through the circuits of the ship, feeling out the size and shape of the thing - and the number of people onboard. Not the 700 she'd been hoping for, but close; around 670, if she had to guess. Plus the ten corpses made for 680. Mya caught her tongue between her teeth as the seconds ticked by - she'd finished her calculations, she was just stalling now - they had to go-

The last thing Mya saw in the system was a brilliant flash of light, only partially compensated for by the viewer filters, as the station's nuclear reactor finally lost containment. Then, they were somewhere else; between one breath and the next they were in a small, single-planet system that boasted a sullen white dwarf at its center. Her knees felt weak and she was suddenly glad she'd been sitting all along.

They'd gotten away safely.

Now, the real work could begin.

Transition to the rendezvous point hit him like a punch in the chest, and Draven coughed as he felt his heart stutter. He was a good translocationist, had done all the math and calculations to get the ship to the rendezvous point, but… He coughed again, louder this time. Even with only a third of the people they'd hoped to load it with, the cargo ship still held a hell of a lot of people - far more than Draven had ever tried to move before. He had managed to do it, but the effort had left him feeling like someone had taken a scoop to the inside of his ribcage. If the pilot's chair had been padded in any way, shape, or form, he'd be falling asleep right now.

A hand landed on the back of his neck.

"Draven?" His sister's voice was soft, worried, and while he couldn't find the energy to lift his head, he did manage to dredge up a smile for her.

"Can't believe we made it!"

Brix's voice boomed across the bridge, and Draven winced as it drilled between his ears into a brand-new headache.

"When those ships showed up, I thought for sure we were done for, but nope! Instead we got away clean."

Draven would have echoed the sentiment, if Brix's shout hadn't gone straight through the center of his forehead and into his brain like an icepick. He closed his eyes against the throbbing pain in his head and covered his eyes to try and block out some of the walking, talking headache that was Brix. He could almost feel the sympathy and concern radiating from his sister as her grip tightened a little on the back of his neck, but she was smart enough not to say anything as she poked him with what felt like a ration bar.

"Other contacts in the system. Pinging them now."

Altanna's voice was measured, with a certain tension underneath it that Draven would have shared if he hadn't felt wrung out like a damp sock. There was no way he was going to be able to jump them anywhere else, and if the United League had somehow managed to get here ahead of them- if they'd been laying in wait- if-

"I'm getting back Resistance codes. Looks like Blue Three, Seven, and Eight made it here before us, with Red Eight on with Three; they say everything's been quiet - new contact, three degrees down the plane of the ecliptic. And another, 100km off our bow."

Draven grabbed the ration bar from Thea, mostly to stop her from poking him with it; it'd gotten more insistent the longer he'd ignored it, until she'd been jamming it somewhat painfully into his ribs.

He tore the wrapper open and took a bite, resolutely ignoring the taste. He was starving, but he wasn't about to give Thea the satisfaction of knowing she was right by gulping it down in front of her. Not that he really had the energy to gulp; even chewing felt like a chore, despite the fact that his stomach was definitely interested in the contents of his mouth.

"It's Blue Two and Nine; Nine reports they have Red One on their ship as well."

Thea stepped away from Draven and towards Altanna's console, apparently mollified somewhat by the fact he was eating.

"Open up a communications channel, with everyone who's here," she ordered, stopping just behind Altanna's chair.

"Bring people on as they show up."

Altanna glanced briefly back at Thea, eyebrow raised, but didn't object, and it didn't take long for the main screen to shatter into a collection of floating ship bridges, the star it had originally been showing reduced to mere background. Being civilian ships, every bridge was different. Ships were expensive and hard to come by, so they tended to get patched and fixed and passed along from hand to hand until they literally fell apart at the seams.

Draven could see at least three in the display who still boasted the neon running lights that had gone out of fashion more than seven decades ago. Another one had a collection of small figurines lined up in front of the bridge camera, lending a weirdly whimsical frame to that view.

Blue Eight spoke up first, the tall team lead looking sickly in the glow of the green neon running lights.

"That was too close. Do you know what the hell happened?"

There was a general shaking of heads; from what Draven could remember, all of the teams had launched from the same row of berths as they had. It had all seemed to be going to plan, once reinforcements had arrived and driven the security teams back.

"New contacts, near the primary for this system," Altanna reported as similar notifications rippled through the shared comm channels.

"One of them is coming up on my scanner as damaged - odd, looks like small arms fire rather than ship to ship."

"I mean, I dunno about you, but I was doing a fair amount of shooting at those security assholes trying to keep us from taking off," Brix said before anyone else could respond.

Altanna rolled her eyes.

"Yes, but that means they were trying to shoot you and not the ship. This looks like someone managed to concentrate a lot more firepower than what you were up against." She paused, then said sweetly, "Don't worry. I'm sure what you had was just hard enough for you."

Someone snorted offscreen on one of the other channels and the entire comms link burst into laughter. It hadn't even been that funny, but for some reason it was hilarious and Draven could feel his ribs protest as he doubled over in his seat laughing. Thea was leaning on the back of Altanna's chair howling, while even Brix had gotten in on the humor of the situation and was clutching at his sides while he wheezed.

It took a hot minute for the laughter to wind down, by which point the last four ships they'd been expecting had arrived. Blue teams One, Four, Five, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve all sported varying degrees of damage from ground weaponry on their ships' hulls - more so than even the most heavily damaged of Blue Three, Seven, Eight, Nine, Two, or their own. Once the channel was - mostly - free of residual sniggers and cackles, Altanna added the newcomers into the general call.

That sobered the rest of the fun out of the atmosphere. While the first six teams to arrive had most of their complements on the bridge of whatever ship they'd commandeered, the six teams who'd taken ships from the other row of berths looked like they'd been chewed up and spat out. Blue Five only had one Resistance member on their bridge, slumped in the pilot's chair and barely conscious. The Kala'Kah and one human whom Draven vaguely remembered as being on Gold Two, plus a couple of Hosh who looked like some of the factory workers they'd been tasked with evacuating, filled out the rest of that bridge. Other bridges showed signs of fighting, and Draven could see at least three corpses from the angles on the projection cameras.

"What in the event horizon happened?"

Draven wasn't sure who'd spoken - it might even have been him - but it was the team lead from Blue Twelve who answered.

"Something happened on our side of the docks. I don't know if there was more security or if they were just better organized or what, but things suddenly started getting rough a few minutes before we got the liftoff order. Security teams started coordinating strikes, all the good stuff from the armories starting showing up - the works. If we hadn't pulled out when we did, we wouldn't have pulled out at all."

The fact that Blue Twelves' bridge had smoke still rising from some of the consoles, and a corpse in the corner, only served to put an even grimmer edge on her words.

"We've got what's left of Red Four on our ship."

The unexpected addition came from Blue Ten, the spokesperson for whom was a short, almost skeletal man who still had a precision fire extinguisher in his hand. Draven remembered him vaguely from the briefing as being a funny guy, but none of that good humor was showing now.

"The tech specialist for our wing, guy by the name of Carcen - he says he and his team met unexpected resistance in their section - Red Five was overwhelmed, and the heat fell on his team. They had to fall back, and he was the only one who made it to the hangar."

Silence reigned for a moment, then the Kala'Kah - whose name Draven was pretty sure was Toron’Mkesh - spoke up.

"Red Three died with honor, as did Gold Four. I do not know what happened to the other Gold teams."

The lead from Blue Nine leaned forward.

"I'm sorry to report that Gold Three didn't make it. They took down three security teams before we had to lift, and kept a fourth from cracking us like an egg."

The Kala'Kah was silent for a moment before nodding slowly.

"Then they, too, died with honor."

Thea looked over the pastiche of bridges projected through the comm link.

"Golds One or Five?"

Slow head shakes all around. Everyone was silent for a moment; while Gold Five was another mixed Kala'Kah-human team, Gold One had been the exuberant little M'Pells. Draven wasn't sure if their constant chattering on the way to the mission had been nervousness or something else, but it'd been surprisingly endearing instead of annoying. His heart caught for a moment at the thought of what might have happened to them, and he forced a cheerful tone to override the nasty little voice in his head telling him all the worst-case scenarios.

"M'Pell are hard to spot at the best of times, and Gold Five was small. They probably snuck onboard a ship and are just hiding out for a laugh."

"Yeah," Thea said, taking a step towards the screen and spreading her hands.

"They'll probably show up when we least expect it because they've been reading up on human customs again. Remember when-"

"New contacts at the system's edge," Altanna yelled, cutting her off.

"These are warships! Capital-class!"

Tension caught in the air as Draven's hands tightened on the grips of the pilot's chair. Even one Capital ship was a death sentence if they couldn't jump. There wasn't enough firepower between the twelve cargo ships to even take out the shields. Draven ignored his throbbing headache and pushed a little preliminary energy into the translocation circuits under his palms. Black spots danced in front of his eyes; another jump would stop his heart, he didn't have enough energy but Thea-

"Registering Resistance IFF! They're friendlies!''

Altanna's voice bubbled with joy and Draven felt the vise around his heart abruptly give way.

She'd done it.

"We've done it!"

Brix's shout precipitated a wave of cheers. Hooting, howling, applause, tears - they'd won. They'd done something. Draven could feel a grin threatening to crack his face in half, and he couldn't even care that his sister was throwing him a sly look. Mya had just pulled off the most daring raid in Resistance history. The United League hadn't been able to stop her.

Draven gave into the mood and raised his voice with the others. Watch out fascists, the Resistance is coming to get you!

Mya sagged over the arm of the pilot's chair, exhaustion sapping all the energy from her limbs. She felt oddly hollow, like someone had taken a vacuum and sucked out everything between her back and her front, leaving an empty space in their wake. Each exhalation felt like it brought her sternum closer to her spine, like a slowly collapsing tent.

She'd managed to jump the Capital ship to one of the randomly-chosen away points - in this case, a sullenly spinning white dwarf system that only had one rocky planet in a wide orbit - and then had spent five nerve-wracking minutes eating her way through a dense ration bar while Victor made sure nothing on the ship was broadcasting their location. Or laying in wait to do so. Or could possibly do so at any point in the future.

When he'd given the nod, Mya had swallowed the last of the bar and pushed her power through the ship a second time, bringing them to the rendezvous point. The glimmering Resistance signatures on the main viewscreen display were the only things keeping her from sliding off the chair. Each glint of light was a success, a team that had gotten away safely, and at least a few rescued workers - but not enough. Not nearly enough.

Sixty thousand people. Mya wheezed as the weight of their lives settled on her chest, curdled in her gut. Sixty thousand Hosh, Yttarans, humans - any M'Pell who'd been lurking - dead. On her orders. She closed her eyes and the blindingly white, yet utterly silent flash that had signaled the death knell of the station played out once again behind her eyelids. Evacuating more than seventy thousand workers was always going to be a monumental task, but if they'd managed to keep station security disrupted, they could have done it. She'd run the projections herself with the station schematics; the biggest choke points were the entries onto the cargo ships, and even then they'd been designed to let bulk cargo on and off. They should have been easily capable of allowing the workers on in two hours or less.

Mya couldn't look away from those lights, didn't dare look at the side of the bridge Gruul and Victor were on. She'd promised Gruul that she'd rescue the workers. Now that promise lay broken between them like a gulf, one Mya was unsure if she'd ever be able to cross. The Hosh had been used and betrayed so often by the United League - the thought of behaving like them was enough to kick the roiling in Mya's stomach up a notch.

The worst thought, though, was - what if Gruul didn't blame her enough? They'd achieved two out of three objectives on the mission, after all. The United League wasn't going to be making planet-cracking Capital starships again any time soon, and the Resistance had successfully gotten away with three of them. Mission success, if all you measured by was the material gain. If you discounted the sixty thousand lives spent buying that advantage.

Mya knew that that's what the United League would say - and call it cheap at the price. Sixty thousand lives, most of them nonhumans or undesirables? That wouldn't even be a footnote in the United League's cost-benefit ledgers. The accounting bureaucrats would care more than the people who were supposed to legislate such things. The cost of what they might have produced, if they'd lived longer, would weigh more with the League than their deaths ever would.

That was the last straw, and Mya only barely managed to slump over the arm of the pilot's chair before the heavy ration bar made its reappearance. The edge of the arm dug into her side as she heaved, the spasms continuing long past the point of anything coming up.

And if there was salt water mixing with the bile, well, that was her business.

Victor's hands danced over the console in front of him, even while his mind was curiously blank.

The blinding flash in the forward viewscreen still dotted his vision. Sixty thousand lives, snuffed out in an instant. Yet another in a string of terrible failures, of massive casualties that he could have prevented. If only he'd recommended someone other than Carcen, if only he'd been quicker to help M't'fdlth establish control over the security system, if only he'd put a more complete lockdown on the security protocols.

If, if, if.

Victor felt like he was sinking slowly in a pool of blood. For more than twenty years, he'd worked with Lothar Kaldegga. In the beginning, the man had treated every casualty like a personal affront, an excuse to get angrier, do more, retaliate and make the United League pay; now Victor had to wonder if the other man could even see the dead laid out at his feet.

Victor could.

Hidden away in his personal servers, he kept a count. Every single reported casualty. Every single civilian "sacrificed to the cause". Every single person he'd let down, to whom he could never make amends. Victor didn't look at it often save to update it, but he never forgot. Some days, some missions, it felt like he might be able to stop updating it. That maybe he'd become good enough that he could just stop failing people, start making his way to the edge of the sea of blood he'd become responsible for over the years.

Today, he felt like he was drowning.

His hands never stopped moving. Sixty thousand people had already died because of his mistakes. The blank numbness that tasted like copper wouldn't stop him from doing a good enough job to ensure that the rest of the Resistance wouldn't follow them. He'd already found and disabled three code traps that would have activated in six months to broadcast the ship's location to the entire United League; they were surface-level, easy to find traps clearly meant to lull an intruder into a false sense of security if they were found. For all he felt like he might go under if he moved too suddenly from his seat, Victor wasn't going to be fooled so easily.

While he searched for the deeper traps he knew would be lurking in the code, Victor also began pulling up his personal servers. For all he could do nothing for those already dead on the station, he did have access to resources that would let him help those left behind. Money was no replacement for people, but it was a place to start and Victor set up a script to start chewing through the worker logs from the station to mark any next of kin. He would feed those names to his servers later; cash disbursements would flow once the final tally was set.

Time seemed to vanish around him; hours could have passed without his notice, though the soft rustling of a food wrapper behind him suggested it had only been a few minutes. He wasn't sure exactly what had brought him out of himself, but some subliminal instinct had him look up and around. Gruul stood silently next to him, a few drops of dull red blood staining the maintenance coveralls she still wore. When she had made it to the bridge he wasn’t sure, but Victor felt the knot in his chest unclench - the one that had been there since she volunteered to stay behind and guard the docking tube.

Still, she looked angry, with her tongue flickering and tail lashing. Disengaging one of his hands from the console, he reached out and caught Gruul's hand in his own. Her hand dwarfed his, his pale skin stark against her almost-gold scales - yet, for all she could have snapped every bone in his hand by squeezing too hard, her grip wasn't overbearing. It felt… warm. Secure. Where Victor drowned in the blood he'd spilled, her grip felt like a promise of safe harbor. He wasn't there, not yet, but with his hand in hers it felt like, for the first time in a long time, that he might be.

“All we can do is be better next time,” he told her softly, exhaustion coloring every word.

They couldn’t save the ones they left behind; they could only be better so they wouldn’t have to leave them behind in the future.

It was the only way he’d managed to keep moving forward. Be better next time, and never forget a mistake so it wasn’t made twice.

Gruul’s gold eyes snapped to his, resting on his face for a long moment as her tail stilled.

“We will,” she stated.

Victor had never heard two words that sounded more like a promise. They needed to be better, so they would be. It was never that simple, but Gruul made it sound that way and Victor wanted to believe it more than he had believed in anything for a long time.

“Yeah,” he replied softly.
Four of his scanning programs chose that moment to flash green in completion, while another three reported quarantined files that Victor would have to deal with later. He hit the acknowledgement and looked back at Gruul.

“Confirmed, no trackers, tracers, or traps. We're clean.”

He heard Mya shifting in the pilot’s chair but kept his eyes on Gruul. He didn’t have the energy to deal with the recriminations that would inevitably stem from his recommendation of Carcen to the team.

“Acknowledged.”

Between one breath and the next, they were in the rendezvous system. Sensors screamed about hostile contacts, and Victor frowned as he turned back to adjust the IFF filters. It was the work of a moment to change the frequency listings - the fact that he hadn’t set that up before was just another thing to add to the current shitshow.

He squeezed Gruul’s hand again.

They’d do better next time.

Gruul looked around the bridge as the broken remnants of the shipyards disappeared from the forward viewscreen in favor of a small, white dwarf star. Mya appeared to be listing in her chair, though the human's hands were already pulling some kind of nutrient bar from her pocket. Victor's hands were flying over the console in front of him, red warnings giving way to smoothly scrolling lines of text that went by too fast for Gruul to even try and decipher. Lothar still stood at the weapons station, eyes fixed on some point that was clearly not the viewscreen in front of him, with a look on his face that made Gruul's tail lash.

While Gruul was perhaps not the best judge of human behavior, Mya was clearly not looking in her direction and seemed to be trying to shrink out from under Gruul's gaze. Victor seemed absorbed in his task, eyes fixed on his screens, but his shoulders were hunched in a pose that she had seen him use before when he felt guilty about something.

Gruul's tongue flicked the air reflexively. She was angry, yes, but not that they hadn't saved as many workers as they planned for. That feeling was merely frustration; to have victory in their grasp, only for the failure of another to rip it out again. Whether that failure was truly unavoidable, unacceptable cowardice, or perhaps simple spite, would be seen in time.

It would be corrected, and moving forward they could account for such things and make better plans.
Her anger was towards Mya's father. Nine lives, snuffed out in the name of getting to the security team. Nine workers - all human - burned to chunks of unidentifiable meat by the fire he'd used so inelegantly, sacrificing efficiency for expediency. Gruul knew she could have removed the entire security team as easily as she had dispatched the last two, and with far less collateral damage. And yet Lothar did not seem to care, his casual disregard for the lives of others evident even now.

Gruul's tail lashed again, and she fought down a growl. Lothar Kaldegga was clearly not listening to anything happening on the bridge, and Mya would likely mistakenly assume the noise was meant for her. Mya had made mistakes, but she had shown herself willing in the past to learn from them. Hopefully that pattern would continue, for Gruul had many things to say about how this current mission had gone. Still, that was a subject for later, when they had some time to recover.

A cold hand slid into hers, interrupting Gruul's chain of thought. Victor hadn't looked up from his console, but now only one of his hands moved over the console, bending it to his will. The other one was firmly wrapped around her own.

"All we can do is try and be better next time," Victor said softly, the strength of his grip belying the exhaustion in his words.

Gruul had no frame of reference for the look on his face now; somehow, the lines around his mouth and across his forehead seemed to be etched more deeply than she had ever seen them before. His hair drooped, sweat-matted, and his glasses had slid down his nose.

She could fix at least one of those things. Reaching over, she adjusted his glasses to the position he normally wore them.

"We will," she stated firmly, matching his volume. The casualties on this mission had been unacceptable; they would do better for the next one.

The lines around Victor's mouth relaxed a little.

"Yeah," he agreed, sounding less exhausted.

"Confirmed, no trackers, tracers, or traps. We're clean." Victor raised his voice a little, but still didn't let go of Gruul's hand.

Gruul could hear Mya rustling behind her in the pilot's chair.

"Acknowledged." Mya's voice was flat and lifeless, but the front viewscreen changed again.

A warm yellow primary stood out like a beacon among a rash of red dots. Victor's free hand danced across the console as he adjusted settings, and the viewscreen glitched for a moment before the red became a friendly blue.
Gruul's eyes were glued to the display.

Each dot was a success, each worker saved a new priority. Her people had been used by the United League for so long, treated as little better than chattel and a cheap source of labor, that the sight of so many ships loaded with newly-free Hosh… Gruul's anger was not gone. Her frustration still churned below her breastbone. She was still disappointed that the choices had been made that had caused so many deaths.

But also, for the first time in a very long time, she had hope. And that would have to be enough.

Lothar stared sightlessly at the white dwarf that slowly revolved on the forward viewscreen. His hands were still clenched tight on the controls for the ship's weapons, and his breath came light and quick - almost panting, though the bridge was not warm.

The bright flare of destruction still played across the spots in his vision. The lances of fire that he had sent out to wreak vengeance upon the station, the brilliant light of his rage made manifest - now that was power. The kind of power that would make even the United League sit up and take notice.

Firing the weapon had been a rush unlike any other. Even with specially-modified bracers designed to allow higher power input than the standard model, Lothar had never been able to channel his full might into any of the spells he cast through them. He could feel it, every time he approached the limit of the machinery that caged his arms - it felt like a dam, an obstacle, something holding him back from cutting loose with his full potential. He'd overwhelmed a few sets that way in his younger years - pouring too much power through unworthy metal. He still had the scars from those incidents too, though he made sure his newer bracers covered those marks.

Channeling his power through the ship's systems, though, meant he didn't have to hold back. He could simply unleash his rage, and the circuits could take it all. No more holding back, no more "safe" levels of power; this ship was freedom. These weapons would bring the United League to its knees.

He blinked as a shadow crossed his vision, and finally registered the new view on the viewscreen. A white dwarf star, and one rocky planet. Lothar's hands clenched on the weapons system; it would be easy, so easy, to make this just a white dwarf star. To once again unleash his fury on the universe and have it bend to his will.

He forced his hands to relax, though he couldn't bring himself to take them off the system entirely. Destroying one rocky near-asteroid in a system nobody knew about would serve no purpose, despite how good it would feel.

Destroying one of the United Leagues' precious garden worlds? The ones held up as jewels in the United Leagues' crown?

Lothar felt his teeth bare in a pleased smile. That would make a statement the United League couldn't ignore, deny, or refute.

Still, he couldn't bring himself to take his hands away from the controls. Not yet. While his second experience in firing a Capital-class ship's weapons had ended in glorious victory, he couldn't forget the first time he'd done it - and his subsequent capture on that ship. His smile twisted into a snarl. His first Capital ship had been stolen from his grasp; he would not make the same mistake with this one.

This time, he would not be denied. This time, the Capital ship was his to do with as he liked. The first step was, of course, the garden world. That would rock the United Leagues' foundation and lay the groundwork for his next steps. Strategic hits on major United League bases would follow, starting with the non-Capital ship manufacturing. If they shifted military production to civilian facilities, he'd shut them down too. It would all be so, so easy.

Lothar blinked as the view on the screen in front of him changed from a white dwarf to a yellow mid-range. More pressing, to his mind, were the other two Capital-class ships pictured off to one side; he gripped the weapons systems and began letting his energy flow through the circuits to warm them. The display flashed red circles around them for a moment, with a rash of red dots further away that didn't concern him, before the whole thing flickered and all the red dots went blue.

Friendly.

Resistance.

Lothar felt a grin stretch his face.

The end of the United League started now.