While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 36

  After a couple minutes the door slid open and Kathryn fell back into the bridge and hit her head against the deck.  She could feel the eyes of everyone on the bridge looking at her but she couldn’t bring herself to look away from the ceiling to see.  Someone stepped over her and she felt them grab a handful of her uniform at her chest and roughly haul her torso upright, allowing the door to slide closed again behind her.  In her catatonia her eyes were brought level to see Jaren’s face.  His express was one she couldn’t quite put her finger on despite the decade and a half she’d been intimate with him.  

  Her head fell back against the door as she puzzled at his face, feeling like parts of her brain had stopped working.  They had grown so distant from each other in recent weeks that she had no idea if he was going to hug her or hit her, and at the moment she was so numb she didn’t really care which.  She felt a nothingness she’d never not felt before.

  He slumped down beside her and put his arm around her.  He pullied her head against his chest and she let him.  It was at least somatically comforting, still a body she recognized as comforting, a feeling of safety after all the years they’d slept in the same bed.  In some deep senses they were still them.  She wondered how long it would feel that way, what the half-life was for loving the father of her child, the man she’d built a life with, a family.

  “Now you know.” he said as he seemed to look for something in her eyes.  “This is how I’ve felt since Kobol,” he explained.  

  She nodded briefly before burying her face into his armpit like she was a child, like she’d seen Margaret do countless times as she’d grown up.  He was a good father, and for the first time she acknowledged and more fully appreciated how much that had meant to her after not having had one herself, how soothing his presence had been in that capacity to be around over the years.

  “What the hell do we do now?” she whispered.

  Jaren just nodded for a time as he looked past him into the eternity beyond the window.  

  “Anything you can do won’t be enough, and you can’t do any of the thing you really want to do.”  He offered, still searching for something in her eyes.  “And it’s something you’ll never get over.  None of us were ready for this.  Our training meant nothing.  Despite all the bravado, and pretense to playing soldier, every one of us was a green cadet fresh out of the academy.  Every single one of us, you included.  It wasn’t fair for you or any of the rest of us to be thrown into a situation we were so unprepared for.  He paused for a few moments before distantly adding with a thoughtfully raised eyebrow: “Calm seas make unexperienced sailors.”

  After another few moments of reflection, he rose to his feet and held his hand out to her to help her up.  His head framed by one of the ceiling lights which created a halo around his head.

  “I lost my world.  You lost your fleet, maybe our future.  Let’s go do something about it.”

  Part of her wanted to be angry at him, another part wanted to just turn back to the deck plating and sob, to let someone else carry the burden of history which had broken her.  But another part of her heard Sato tell her that it could be no one else, that if not her it could only be somebody worse, and some extinguished but still smoldering fire in her found some unused fuel and licked up a flame.  A burning returned to her eyes as she summoned what strength eh had left and took Jaren’s hand and allowed him to help her up to her feet, leaning back against the door for support while she rooted herself in her strength again.

  “The people out there may not have the same weight on them as you do but they’re just as scared.” Jaren said.  “And now they feel abandoned by their leader in their darkest moment.  You had your moment, now you need to stow all that shit and get out there and do your job,” he demanded with his fierce, piercing blue eyes, pushing her now that she was regaining her strength, to prompt her to strengthen up further in defiance.  They’d always made a good team…

  “But first you need to fix your face,” he said as he pulled some tissues out one of his coveralls’ pockets.  She laughed in blunted embarrassment for a moment as she dabbed at her eyes and nose.  “And then suck it up princess, we’re not at the academy anymore.” he said with a weird expression that made her glower up at him with a half smirk and slow head shake.

  She closed her eyes and breathed in slowly and as deeply as she could through her nose before slowly letting it out through her mouth.

   

  “Report!” she barked as she stormed back onto the bridge.

  “Ship’s in good shape Admiral,” Brinkerhoff answered as he rose out of his seat in response to his entrance, standing with his feet shoulder width apart and clasping his hands behind his back as he watched her enter.  “That was part of why the battle went the way it did; we’ve been studying telemetry from the data.  As long as our ships had shadow matter to repel the enemy beam weapons, the rest of our ships were relatively unharmed.  Once depleted though it only took one shot of any strength to destroy them.  Replenishing our shadow matter the way we did was a great thought, saved our butts.”

  Kathryn approached the command chairs in the middle of the bridge, and Brinkerhoff respectfully backed away from the centre chair.  She was pleased that it wasn’t going to be a fight.  She’d been the fleet admiral, and now that their fleet was reduced to only them it was her prerogative to take personal command of the remaining ship.  He could easily have protested given his having been in command of this ship in particular and her apparent minor nervous breakdown, but he seemed to have no inclination to.  She held her hand out to the XO’s seat in invitation for him to assume the first officer’s position now that she’d assumed command.

  He seemed to hesitate for a moment and Kathryn now found herself unsure if he was having second thoughts about relinquishing his command to her, or if maybe his pride had caught a bit in his throat at being an admiral serving as first officer.  She recognized the expression he shifted to as he decided to take the seat, one she’d just seen in the mirror before reentering the bridge.

  “Weapons?” she asked once he’d sat.

  “Four remaining anti-matter warheads, Captain.” Sengupta answered.

  “Survivors?”

  Grayson paused for too long before answering.  “None.”  We’ve been scanning, but the ships were all carrying anti-matter when they were destroyed.  When containment bottles were breached the rest of the ship was annihilated.  We’re seeing very little debris out there, just a lot of ambient high energy radiation bouncing around.”

  “That’s not entirely correct,” Bill offered from behind them, prompting Kathryn and Brinkerhoff to swivel their chairs around towards him.  “There are several Bobbin emergency shells out there, thin bubbles of shadow matter with survivors in them.  Not many, but… some.”

  “That’s… that’s good to hear Bill,” she managed to say.  “Do they require our assistance?”

  “No,” he answered.  “They are slowly making their way towards the crystal on maneuvering thrusters and should make their way there in less than an hour.”

  “I’d like to send reports to our command along with them.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” his mirror ball said in an even tone, and she appreciated more fully than she had how devastated he must also be for their losses, if not as total as the human losses.  She offered him a nod which she intended to convey her condolences and her intention to commiserate with him when they had the opportunity.  He seemed to understand.

  “Is there enough shadow matter out there to reconfigure any new warships?” she asked.

  “By volume yes,” he answered.  But the enemy knew where to target us.  Some discrete components we can’t generate with shadow matter, specifically the components which control it.  Without them it’s like trying to activate a rift crystal without any way to contact the solar energy capacitors.”

  Kathryn nodded thoughtfully.  “So does that mean there’s a lot of shadow matter out there just lying around which we could use to replenish our reserves in the same way as before?” she asked.

  “It does,” he answered.

  “Got an idea?” Brinkerhoff asked.  “We’re already topped up.”

  “I might,” she considered, pulling her thumb away from her mouth.  “Have we had a chance to see what forces remain at the target?” she asked as Felix and Margaret entered the bridge with Ralph close behind.  She considered it a good sign that the chief engineer didn’t need to still be somewhere else so soon after the battle.

  “We can see it on our primary telescope,” Lieutenant Tarsus answered as he brought it up to the main display.  A world covered in a swirling blanket of yellow and brown clouds filled the monitor.  Over a few seconds targets appeared on the display marking half a dozen ships slowly moving across and around it.

  “I recognize that deployment configuration,” Bill said.  He came around to the centre of the bridge and stood beside the empty second officer’s chair to Kathryn’s left which was incompatible with the configuration of his body.  There are as many on the far side which we can’t see.”

  Seeing the markings indicating one dodecahedron, three octahedrons, and two cubes, Kathryn asked: “Same classes of ships?”

  “Impossible to say,” he answered.  “It’s only a standard spatial deployment.  It doesn’t give any indication as to the classes of ships.”

  “Very well,” Kathryn said, sighing more on the inside than outside.  “Lieutenant Tarsus, pin that display.  Put a tally of ships and their types to the side and keep updating it as new ships come into view.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Kathryn noticed that she was chewing her thumb again and forced it down.  “Lieutenant Byrne, plot a course.  Best possible speed.”

  Brinkerhoff’s head snapped towards her.

  “Problem?” she asked, then watched him consider for a few moments whether or not to create one.

  “No.” he finally answered.  “Today actually feels like a great day for a suicide run,” he added grimly.

  “Attaboy,” she said, patting him on the back.  “But let’s see what we can do to even the odds all the same.”

  Brinkerhoff let out a slow exhale as discreetly as he could at learning that an outright suicide run wasn’t actually what she had in mind, and she appreciated the man’s resolve and his willingness to follow her through the gates of hell.  He was a good XO.

     She turned back to the other side.  “You’re wrong Bill.”  He tilted his head.  “We still have one shadow matter control interface left.”  It took him a moment, but after a few beats his eye stalks stood up extra rigid, the Bobbin equivalent of wide-eyed excitement.

  “I see what you’re getting at,” he said.  “Give me twenty minutes to see what I can work up.”  

  Kathryn nodded and the alien excitedly scurried away.

  “Mr. Brinkerhoff, I want us ready for operations in twenty minutes.”

  “Yes ma’am.  We’ll be ready.”

  Kathryn stood and headed for her ready room, giving a beckoning hand gesture to Jaren and the others who’d joined them on the bridge.

  Once inside and the door had closed Felix started to say: “Kathryn oh my god, I’m so sor—” but she held up her hand to cut him off.

  “We don’t have time for that shit.”  He backed down but she could tell he was hurt that he was hurt and she put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.  “But there’ll be plenty of time for that later,” she offered more softly.  He put his hand up to take and squeeze hers with a sombre head nod before looking up with more resolve.

  “Bill is working on something which may give us a chance.”  After a few moments of thought she added, “if a small one.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Felix said.  “Maybe I can help.”

  “There’s a lot of stray shadow matter out there but it can’t be configured into any new ships because the enemy deliberately targeted all of our Bobbin control systems for it.  Without it the material can’t be controlled.  I’m not sure what he’ll come up with, but I prompted him to consider that we still have this ship’s control unit.”

  “But our reserves are already replenished,” Ralph’s face image said.

  Considering him more deliberately than she had in a while, she looked at him with an expression which suggested her having an urge to have him as a meal.  Before they had the opportunity to find out if he could be made uncomfortable by such a thing, the door slid open, and Bob entered.

  “Okay, here’s what I got—“

  “Bill,” she interrupted him.  He seemed annoyed at being interrupted as he was gearing up to launch into his info dump, but he stopped short anyways.  “Oh Bill… is there any way you could rig up our friend here as a shadow matter control system?”

  The resulting flash of annoyed pink frustration on its mirror ball gave way to a more yellow colour expressing a similar interest as Kathryn’s in using him as he sized up the robot.  

  “I’ll look into it,” he offered almost mischievously.  “Anyways, I have an idea, but it will require scooping up every stray bit of shadow matter we can from the debris left from the battle.  I’ve already rigged the system to store the material in growing sacs off to the side of the ship.”

  Kathryn reached behind her to press a comm button on her desk.  “Mr. Byrne, we need to collect all available shadow matter out there.”  She pressed another button to mute so Byrne would know she wasn’t finished.  “You can’t mean like, every molecule of it Bill.  Down to what scale?”

  “Oh I’d say every blob down to say… half a meter across?”  Kathryn nodded but as she reached for the unmute button she saw him size up Ralph again and then correct himself.  “Make it forty centimeters,” he said.  Margaret lightly tapped his central mass to get his attention and his stalks stiffened.  “I mean thirty-five.”

  Kathryn scrutinized the interaction before shrugging and unmuting the comms.  “Correction Lieutenant.  We need to collect every blob down to a diameter of thirty-five centimeters so don’t worry about getting the biggest blobs first, just access Bill’s analysis and plot the most efficient course to pick up every bit we need.”

  “That’ll take some time Admiral,” she heard him answer back.

  “I didn’t ask Lieutenant, just get it done with the best possible speed.”

  “Yes ma’am.” he answered before Kathryn closed the channel.

  “My— well you might say graduaet thesis,” Bill said, “was working on trying to figure out how to configure our ships to be larger than an icosahedron.”

  “We did wonder why you stopped there,” Felix said, “why only perfect congruent regular polygons.”

  “It’s a complexity issue,” he explained.  “Using ships designed exclusively out of shadow matter, we haven’t found a way to keep them stable outside of such configurations, at least for larger ships.  My research explored how we might overcome this limitation, and one way I considered was to have a fixed base physical ship to project the geometry from inside in a more stable way.”

  “A ship like ours,” Felix offered, seeming to start to understand.

  “Exactly,” Bill affirmed.  “I believe this ship has a varied enough surface geometry to project something more exotic from it.  I haven’t finished my simulations yet, but I’m more and more confident we can work something up.  Something those #$_@(#)#* won’t )#*)(#_@@ won’t see coming.”

  Kathryn had never seen a Bobbin try to curse before.  It’s mirror ball was clearly either unable or unwilling to faithfully translate.  “Well get to it then.”

  “I’ll gather the other Bobbins onboard, and we’ll develop a workable model as quickly as we can,” he acknowledged.  It then looked over to Ralph and Margaret.  “We’ll figure out something for you as well,” he added, with something its mirror ball suggested of a yellow and orange mischievousness.

  

☼   ☼   ☼

   

  “How you doing kiddo?”

  Kathryn was laid back on the captains’ office couch.  She didn’t hear Margaret come in let alone the door opening.  How she was able to circumvent the door security controls so easily Kathryn didn’t know and had given up bothering to ask.  The answer was always the same, her enigmatically answering ‘upgrades’ as though that was any kind of explanation.  She reminded herself to be annoyed by it later if she was alive and had the energy.

  “Have you ever called me that before?” Kathryn asked.  “That’s usually a Maggie thing.”

  “Well,” Margaret said, flumping down on the couch in a way which required Kathryn sitting up and moving over.  “Maybe right now you’re kiddo.”

  Kathryn gave the old simulant a weird look, quizzical without the energy of pursuing resolution to her confusion.

  “If it’s any consolation, I have no idea what to say to you,” Margaret offered.

  “Why in the worlds would that be any consolation?”

  “Because you’re not alone,” Margaret shrugged.  “This is a situation no human has ever faced as long as there have been humans.  There is no precedent, no reference to call on, no old wisdoms for you to draw on.”  She looked out the window into the deep nothingness.  “Humanity itself rests on your shoulders.”

  Kathryn threw herself over the opposing edge of the couch in a huff like a child.  “No pressure.”

  “No no, all the pressure in the world, certainly.” Margaret countered and Kathryn looked back at her.  “You certainly can’t win the day by hiding from that, and you also can’t save your species if you have a death wish.”  The old woman took a moment to scrutinize her more carefully.  “Tell me… why were you willing to order a suicide run on the planet?”

  “It was the only thing left to do,” Kathryn answered glumly.

  “It wasn’t,” Margaret countered.  “It absolutely was not,” she added, somehow chuckling at her and being angry at the same time.  “There were certainly other factors to consider.  We could have taken what weapons and shadow matter we had left back and made a last stand, see if the Bobbins would assist further after seeing how effective we were in taking so many of their enemies out, maybe even ask to join them in their escape to another galaxy.”

  Kathryn didn’t answer.  She couldn’t bring herself to look up and meet her eyes.

  “Look at me,” Margaret demanded and shaking, Kathryn obliged.  Her eyes kept trying to dart away from woman’s intense scrutiny.  They began to water at her insistence that she continue to stare into a kind of light.  “Thing about people with a death wish is they usually figure out how to get their way and they often take other innocent people out along with them.”

  “I, I don’t have a—“

  “If you’re not up this then get out of the way and give command to Brinkerhoff.  He’s proven himself a competent enough commander and he’s still got the fight in him.  Don’t cock it up for everyone else out of a misplaced sense of obligation.”

  Kathryn stiffened at the suggestion of stepping down.  No, absolutely not.  This was her mission, her command.  But then there was a moment where her heart sank, where she considered dropping the ego, dropping the self-importance, just letting the fate of the galaxy be someone else’s problem for a while, retreating into a dark hole inside herself and just waiting for the cold, firm embrace of death without protest.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Kathryn stated coldly to Margaret, finding some strength and staring into her eyes with matched intensity.

  “Is it working?”

  Kathryn chewed on her feelings for a moment.  “Yes,” she concluded.  “But I’m scared Margaret.  I can’t admit or reveal it to anyone out there of course, but… yeah, I’m terrified.  When we launched this attack I was hoping for victory of course, and I was as mentally prepared as I could be for the prospect of total defeat, but to be left here like this, somewhere in between, having to be a survivor, to suffer losing everyone else, having to come up with some insane last stand strategy, it’s just so overwhelming,” she admitted.

  The old woman took her hand and held it between hers on her lap.  “I have some experience with that feeling as you know.”  Kathryn nodded without looking up.  “Every single person on this ship feels exactly the same way Kat.”  She got that wry smile on her face before adding: “Well, every organic person anyways.”  Kathryn rolled her eyes but smiled.  “And every person on this ship, organic or otherwise, would be very worried if you didn’t feel that way, if you didn’t feel the gravity of the position we’re in.  Running away from that feeling is what leads to wanting to just rush in on a suicide run to just be done with it all, to escape from that anxiety as quickly as possible.”

  Kathryn nodded.

  “You’re only human kiddo.  But these collective Bobbins… they’re something else.  They don’t get scared; they just be and do.  We have to win, so we will find a way.  It’s as simple as that.  We’ll all do our part, and we’ll find a way.”

  “You’re righter than you know,” Kathryn offered cryptically, and Margaret tilted her head in expectation.  

  Kathryn touched a panel on the side of the couch.  “Brinkerhoff could you join us in here please?”

  A moment later the man entered through the sliding door from the bridge and stood at attention.  He seemed to be hiding his nerves well or genuinely didn’t have them.

  “At ease Admiral, please have a seat.”  She gestured towards the matching chair adjacent to the couch and he obliged.

  “Thank you, Captain.  What can I do for you?”

  “We’re about to get underway, I just wanted us to take a moment together and just breathe.  Ground ourselves.”

  “Yes Captain, I appreciate that.”  He seemed to relax a bit more into the couch once he understood her meaning.  

  “Call me Kat,” she offered.  “It’s all a little silly, isn’t it?  You calling me Captain because I’m the one in command while we’re both Admirals?”

  “If you say so ma’am.”  He started subtly looking around the room, seeming to be searching for the real reason he was here.

  “Kat,” she insisted with a wide-eyed air of innocence.  

  He stopped glancing about the room and settled his eyes on her, now without the nerves, finally seeing her as just a person and allowing himself to regard her as just another woman he was sharing space with.  “Kat, then.”  He offered with a warmth that for just a moment made her think he might be sweet on her.

  “I’d offer you a drink Woodrow, but we’re on duty and I’m saving that good bottle of scotch for after we win.”

  Brinkerhoff took on an expression like he’d just been surprised with something sour in his mouth.  “Woody ma’am— I mean Kat.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “The name on file is Woodrow, but nobody’s called me that since I was a kid.  It’s Woody.”

  Kathryn smiled, but her amusement resonated with her nervousness, and she started to giggles which she couldn’t contain and burst out in laughter despite herself.  It caused the other two to likewise erupt in laughter before their collective nerves burned off enough energy and they were left more genuinely engaged as they settled down.

  “My apologies,” she offered with exaggeration.  “Woody then.” She added with a last giggle.

  “You both are crazy,” Margaret said as she stood and walked over to the cabinet behind Kathryn’s desk.  As she pulled the bottle of scotch out along with three of the remaining unbroken glasses.  “A little snoot will do you both more good than it’ll hurt anything,” she insisted.  “No point in wasting good scotch if the ship blows up.  We have plenty to celebrate now.”

  Kathryn and Brinkerhoff looked at each other ready to launch into performative refusal before recognizing in each other that they both rather agreed.

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” Kathryn offered with a mischievous smile.

  “It’ll be a couple hours before showtime,” Brinkerhoff replied.  “I suppose a finger or two won’t hurt.”

  Margaret held the glass up with her index finger against the bottom of one of the glasses before setting them all down and pouring a responsible amount into all three.  She then passed them out before taking a lingering smell of her own glass.  “Hard to get good scotch post apocalypse,” she lamented.

  “You’re not what I expected,” Brinkerhoff told Margaret after taking an initial small sip, judiciously waiting until Kathryn took one of her own.  “You’re…” he shrugged.  “Fun.”

  Margaret and Kathryn chuckled.  “Well, I’m glad my careful impression management has been effective,” she said into her glass as she took a second sip.

  “Surly is more like it,” Kathryn added.  Brinkerhoff pointed at her with a smile in agreement and Margaret shrugged her acknowledgement as she lowered her glass and rolled it slowly between her hands.

  “Woody,” Kathryn said, stifling another giggle.  “I’ve been thinking.”  He placed his glass down to his lap and listened attentively.  “We made a good team back there, with you in immediate command of the ship in combat and leaving me the space to consider the broader strategy.”

  “I’d have to agree,” he nodded.

  “Between us now, you’re the only person with that kind of real-world combat command experience.”  

  He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to the side as he nodded again.  “I suppose you’re right.  Same could be said of you and the position you served in the battle,” he offered.

    “I think we should do the same when we re-engage.  You can be in command of immediate combat operations and I’ll call strategy.”

  “Yes ma’am.”  She allowed the formality this time considering it was in response to her issuing him orders.

  “But let’s trust each other, yeah?  Everything rides on us, and we have to trust each other.  We need to be able to make suggestions to the other in the moment without it feeling like a challenge and able to drop it without ego if our suggestions are declined.”

  He frowned before upping his glass to drink the rest of the scotch and put it down on the coffee table between them.  She noticed that while he’d waited for her to drink first, he didn’t wait for her to finish before emptying his glass, and she wondered how nervous he really was.  “Are you authorizing me to disobey your orders, ma’am?”

  “Woody,” she said without any humour as she leaned forwards towards him, “I’m trusting you to know in the moment the difference between an order and a suggestion.”

  “I can do that.”

  

☼   ☼   ☼

  

 

  “Aaand… that’s the last of it,” Byrne informed with obvious satisfaction as the last of the required shadow matter blobbed onto the enormous sphere of material that now surrounded them.  They’d had to gather so much that they were engulfed in a doughnut shaped mass of the material over a kilometer and a half wide with their engines sticking out one side of the middle hole and their forward instruments out the front.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Kathryn acknowledged.  Although she sat in the captain’s chair they had informed the bridge crew of how they were going to split up command duties for the duration of the operation.  “Commander Grayson, have all of our messages been sent back?”

  “Yes Admiral.  All we got back was the go ahead to operate at your discretion and wishing us god speed.”

  “I kind of thought they’d have more to say,” Brinkerhoff remarked.

  “What else is there to say?” Jaren asked somewhat distantly from his station.

  “Alright Bill, you’re up.”  Kathryn said as she pointed towards the alien.  His eye stalks nodded, and he turned back around to his station.  The main view screen switched to a view from a small sensor drone as it raced out of its launcher and then once at an appropriate distance turned around to show the ship in it’s strange configuration, like an impossibly large red blood cell with a ship lodged in the narrow middle.

  “Initiating transformation sequence.”

  They watched on the screen as the blood cell shape contracted down and formed into a smaller more spheroid shape which entirely engulfed the ship.  On one of the secondary monitors which displayed their actual configuration schematic from the front of the ship, a veil of shadow matter descended and rendered it in total darkness, leaving nothing to see on the forward imager.  The exterior view showed the spheroid shape hardening into surfaces and vertices with pentagons adjacent to squares with triangles between the squares.  The other secondary monitor showed a modelled rendering of the ship’s current configuration from the side as it changed, the ship entombed within the larger object with long thick tendrils wrapped around the structure of the human ship, acting as struts which secured it to the outer shell.

  As the final form locked into place, Bob’s mirror ball pulsed orange with pride and satisfaction in a way Kathryn hadn’t seen before.  “I knew it!” he squealed through the ball.  “I didn’t realize when I was researching before how much easier having a solid base ship like this to project it from would make it, but I knew it could be done!  Why didn’t they ever let me try?”

  “That’s a good question,” Kathryn thought to ask, feeling it perhaps a little too late to be curious only now after letting him do it to her ship.  “Why didn’t they?”

  Its mirror ball took on a green-brown tone of apologetic embarrassment.  “It’s silly really,” he conceded.  “As advanced as we may be, there are still certain…” he seemed to have trouble finding the right word even in his own language for the ball to translate, “something between superstition and religious beliefs about the perfect shapes.  Without any particular reason, there was concern about attempting something more elaborate to be dangerous somehow.”

  “Well thank you for cutting your people down to size a little for us,” Jaren said with a tone so even nobody could tell exactly how he meant it.

  “I’m surprised your enemy held on to such hang ups,” Kathryn remarked.

  “By virtue of their nature as a collective they have less capacity for novel thought and inventiveness,” Bill offered.  “It has already worked in our favour in other previous dealings with them.”

  “Well then let us hope that it also helps win us win the day now,” Kathryn offered with a renewed optimism which turned to resolve as she turned back around to the front and took a moment to marvel at the rhombicosidodecahedron of dark matter encasing their ship.  “Hopefully we’ll catch them off guard with this.  They can surveil us from the planet as easily as we can them.  Hopefully they aren’t particularly concerned about a single human ship and don’t look too closely at our new configuration.  What was the final tally on what we’re facing Tarsus?”

  “We’re lucky,” Lieutenant Tarsus answered.  “Doesn’t look like much more than we initially saw.  All told they’ve got two dodecahedron, five octahedrons, and three cubes.”

  “It’s enough,” Kathryn responded grimly through gritted teeth and resisted the urge to bring her thumb up to her mouth and make a meal of it.

  “But importantly not a suicide mission,” Brinkerhoff offered.  “We’ve got odds,” he said.  “Longer that I’d like I’ll grant you, but we’ve got odds.”

  “What are our final armaments?” Kathryn asked.

  “Six exterior beam weapons,” Commander Sengupta answered, “and based on yield and damage calculations from our last encounter, with some help from the Bobbins I spread our eight remaining anti matter weapons into twelve.  Our study of the initial battle suggests they should still be effective in crippling any ship which suffers a direct hit.  Based on my findings I’ve also enhanced their evasion protocols and we should get an even better success rate reaching the target.”

  “We were only at sixty-two percent in the original battle,” Bill added, “I’m hoping to get that upwards of eighty.”

  “That means at best nine out of twelve,” Brinkerhoff observed, “leaving the remaining 3 to be dealt with by our beam weapons which unfortunately haven’t proven tremendously effective.”

  “Don’t forget our special assets,” Kathryn reminded him, to which he nodded.

  “It’s actually worse than that,” Bill added, “their beam weapons have double the range of our missiles and we can’t fire our own beams all at the same spot.  We’ll take a tremendous amount of ablative damage before were in range to risk firing our missiles.”

  “Any way we can blunt their advantage?” Kathryn asked.  “Can we come in fast enough to negate that or something?”  She looked back at the left-hand secondary monitor which had changed from a black interior view to the CIC display of the target planet.  “How much will they know about how we’ve reconfigured the ship?”

  “Their telescopes must have seen the entire battle as well as our transformation,” Bill answered.”

  “Any way it can help them to know what they’re facing?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Advanced as your ships are you’re still limited by the first law of motion right?” Jaren asked Bill, who didn’t seem to understand what exactly he was referring to.  “I mean as fast as we can accelerate there, we still have to reverse our acceleration halfway to slow down, right?”

  “That is correct,” Bob affirmed.

  “Then I might have an idea.  How does this shadow matter’s ablative process stand up to atmospheric friction compared to the beam weapons?”

  Bill quivered and seemed to understand what he was driving at as he quickly turned to his station to run calculations.

  “Care to explain?” Kathryn asked.

  “We could come in much faster than they’d expect, then fly directly into the planet’s atmosphere and bleed off energy that way.”

  “Oh it’s even better than that,” Bill called out, looking back at them with one eye while keeping the other two trained on his station.  “The atmospheric turbulence would disrupt their targeting sensors as well.  Not entirely blind them, but certainly make it harder for them to accurately target us.”

  The bridge was quiet for a few moments as they waited for Bill to run his calculations.  “This is insane,” he uttered with rigid wide eyes and eye stalks, “but the day does kind of call for insane, doesn’t it?”

  “What have you got?” Kathryn asked.

  Bill presented them with an animated simulation on the primary monitor which he narrated as they watched.  “We come in at full speed.  We accelerate all the way from here to there.  We shoot right past them faster than they can effectively target from their relative stopped position and plunge hard into the atmosphere, deep.  A regular Bobbin ship couldn’t take the impact, not even an icosahedron, but I believe this ship can.  Even so it will exceed the inertial dampeners and give us a rough ride.  But we burn hard towards the planet, way overshoot the other side, but then come back around and do it all over again until we’ve gone through and around the atmosphere for three full orbits before coming up  go around the planet, through the atmosphere for three full orbits before coming up at them from underneath.”

  “How much of our material will that deplete?”

  “Ten percent,” he admitted.

  “I don’t know Bill, that sounds…” Kathryn trailed off, not sure how to finish her thought.  Risky?  Dangerous?  More so than anything else they’d attempted today?

  “I understand,” he explained, but I projected losing fifty percent of our material at best to enemy weapons fire before entering reliable missile range in a direct frontal assault.”

  “Remind me why self-guided autonomous missiles have a limited range?  Couldn’t we just fire them from here?” Tarsus asked.

  “Because their beam weapons can be put to a slight spread and while it weakens them, outside the agreed upon range they can make the beams which travel at light speed wide enough to capture all possible avoidance vectors for the missile.”  

  Tarsus nodded his satisfaction with the answer.

  Kathryn turned to Brinkerhoff.  “The day does kind of call for crazy doesn’t it?”

  Kathryn noticed she was chewing her thumb and brought it down to her lap.  “Bill please transfer your calculated flight path to the helm.  Mr. Byrne, lay in the new course and stand by.”  She then pressed the ship wide button on her chair’s arm rest panel.

  She wished she’d thought of what to say before she’d done so as she now became increasingly aware of the lingering silence as she considered what to say.  She imagined the entire crew stopping what they were doing and waiting for her to say something.

  “We’re about to get underway,” she said, hearing herself over the broadcast channel from sections adjacent to the bridge.  “We have a plan we believe can work but there are no guarantees.  Most of you have served under me on New Horizon II before any of this happened.  Others of you were more recently assigned as part of the task force.  You have all proven yourselves already.  You are now the most experienced and combat hardened human crew to exist in six hundred years.  We may win, we may lose.  But either way there is no one else more qualified to be here or more ready for the challenge.  We make our last stand proudly, the best our species has to offer.  If we go down, se do so fighting, proudly.  But if we win the day, as I believe we can, as I believe we will, a future awaits us brighter than anything any of us can imagine.  Not just for our species in collaboration with our new Bobbin friends, but for us personally.  Win this battle with me boys and girls and I promise you your money will never be any good anywhere in the colonies.  You’ll all be heroes.  A grateful public will be buying you drinks and meals and offering bodies to you the rest of your life.

  “You’re already heroes everyone, but the job’s not done yet.  All hands to battle stations.  We’re going to make the bastards pay for what they’ve done.  Not just for Kobol, but for our valiant brothers and sisters who died to give us this chance to end the war once and for all and to secure our future.”

  “HOO-RAH!” Brinkerhoff shouted, and moments later the ship rumbled with the rest of the crew calling their answer back in unison.

  Kathryn was going to add something, but Brinkerhoff reached over and switched off her comms on her.  “That was perfect,” he explained.  “You could only ruin it from there.”

  She took a moment to not be annoyed by his presumptiveness, but then nodded  as she understood that he was right.

  “Are we ready Mr. Byrne?”

  “Ready ma’am, course laid in.”

  “Then by all means Lieutenant, let’s get after it.”

   

  Even with their increased mass, with the Bobbin propulsion system it took only ninety minutes to reach the planet, and Kathryn spent most of that trip trying to wrap her head around the idea that they were pulling over a thousand Gs and she could only barely feel it.  They were hauling ass even by Bobbin standards, and it was taxing their inertial dampeners so much that even with them operating at full power they were still experiencing over two Gs.  This wasn’t a problem since the ship was designed for acceleration gravity and they’d trained with equipment which allowed them to operate effectively in as high as six Gs, but Kathryn couldn’t shake the eeriness of knowing what forces they should be feeling and were being spared only by some technology she didn’t understand.

  It left her a long time to consider what exactly they were flying into, a long time to review her mistakes so far and to second guess her decisions.  The world took on the air of a surreal dream as she watched Felix, Jaren, and Brinkerhoff argue about the best way to go about the battle over Bill’s shoulder.  They had some good ideas but were currently debating the practicality of launching a volley of missiles as they shot past the enemy fleet as opposed to waiting until they came back around on them.  On the one hand they’d be going so fast at launch that they couldn’t be shot down by the enemy before impact, but on the other they’d be going so fast when they launched that they’d be difficult to reliably aim.  They’d likely miss and have to turn back around and make them additionally vulnerable to being shot down before striking their target.  It was unclear which approach would offer an overall better chance of success.

  They also debated launching all of their missiles at the enemy installation on a close fly by as they aerobraked, but this caused the same concerns and worse, if they missed they’d have none left for the battle.  Even if they did, they couldn’t be certain that the enemy ships would stand down if their link was broken.  Bill explained that they’d still have an internal link amongst themselves which could still coordinate the defence of their remaining forces.

  Nobody seemed to notice when Kathryn left the bridge.  She’d heard of an old Earth navy tradition of the captain touring the ship before a hopeless battle, and as she moved about the ship she see the appeal.  Everything became more real to her somehow as she walked.  She reacquainted herself with the feel of the bulkheads, the faces of the crew she passed.  She was reassured by the resolve she saw on everyone’s faces as she passed them and they saluted her as they otherwise went about their last-minute preparations, probably doing the same checks over and over as a meditative way to better mentally prepare or just to distract.  It was a good ship with a good crew, and remembering this gave her the first inkling of genuine hope that they might actually win this thing and when it came, she realized that she hadn’t really believed they could since her meltdown after the initial battle.

  She toured sick bay and offered an acknowledging nod to Lieutenant Commander Aballos, the chief medical officer she’d served with for years.  She returned a respectful if hurried salute before returning to her duties, directing her medical staff in their preparations to receive wounded while taking care of injured crew members from the previous battle at the same time.  Falling back on training was comforting, but what could be more comforting perhaps was choosing to ignore that if things went badly for them this time, they were more likely to just be vaporized altogether than to have a lot of injuries to treat.

  In main engineering she saw Margaret and Ralph getting ready for their special mission.  Margaret seeming to understand what she was up to and offering nothing more than a respectful nod as she packed her case.  The mess hall was empty aside from the bowl of energy bars set out for anyone needing last-minute refueling.  On seeing them she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she ate anything and although nerves prevented her from feeling at all hungry, she dutifully sat down and opened one of them.  Sitting alone in silence, chewing in the high gravity, she slowly chewed lost in thought as she looked out the window at the darkness which was less absolute than normal.  The dark inner surface of the enveloping shadow matter reflected a small amount of light from the ship, presenting a continuous opaque dim grey out the window, occasionally changing a little as various lights turned on and off.

  Glancing at her wrist scroll she noted that their time on target was just under twenty minutes, and she balled up the energy bar wrapper and threw it towards the bin a couple meters away.  Even in the added gravity she got it cleanly into the bin, and she decided to take it as a good omen for the coming battle.

   

  “Report,” she barked as she re-entered the bridge.  

  “Time on target, five minutes, twenty seconds.” Tarsus answered.  “We’ll be cutting thrust at T-minus one minute.”

  “Are we ready?” she asked Brinkerhoff as they both sat down together in their seats.  

  “Ready as we can be,” Brinkerhoff answered.  “We’ve determined that we can’t risk launching any missiles on our initial approach, but also realized that at the relative speed we’ll be coming in at on them, any matter we lob at them would pretty much be just as destructive.”

  “Interesting idea,” Kathryn considered, understanding where he was going with it.

  “We’re going to eject some shadow matter spikes aimed at their control modules as we approach.  We’ll probably miss aiming for a target that small all things considered but hey, you never know.”

  “We can afford to lose the matter?” she asked.

  “We’ll be shooting off nowhere near as much as we figure we’re saving with our crazy little stunt here.  It only matters if we hit their control modules, and we don’t need to shoot much of the stuff at them to give it a shot so to speak.”

  “Excellent work Admiral.  Let’s do it, well done.”

  “Thank you.  Hear that Sengupta?”

  “Aye sir, targeting set and will continue to refine as we approach.”

  Kathryn glanced up at the clock ticking down at the top of the main view scree.  Just over one minute to thrust cut off.  “What are they doing Tarsus?”

  “Uh, nothing ma’am.  They assumed a defensive formation some time ago and are holding their position between us and the planet.”

  “They have no idea what we’re doing,” Bill proclaimed, his ball gleaming orange with mischievous glee.

  “Good,” Kathryn answered with satisfaction before reaching down to open the ship wide channel.  “All hands, tighten it up.  Thrust cut in thirty seconds, atmospheric entry sixty seconds later.  Time to dance with the angels.”

  Brinkerhoff leaned over.  “I’ve been meaning to ask, the hell does that mean?”

  Kathryn smirked with a distant expression as the thrust cut off and her restraints held her to her seat.  “It’s an old Havenite expression.  It means we’re tempting fate.  We’ve done all we can, and the rest is out of our hands.”

  “Hmm, I like it,” Brinkerhoff replied with a distant smile of his own before his face transformed from wistful to downright mean.

  “Sengupta, fire the volley when in range.  Tarsus, count us down.” he growled.

  “Weapons range in… … …five, four, three, two, one!”

  Kathryn watched the primary display showing the true image as the planet grew larger at an alarming rate, and the enemy vessels grew from pin pricks to large enemy crafts shooting at them nearly instantaneously as they flew past and plunged into the thick atmosphere.  The ship shuddered violently as they hit the atmosphere and she was certain that they would rip apart at the seams and their valiant efforts would accomplish little more than a pretty light show for their enemy as they exploded.

  But it didn’t happen, and when she realized it wasn’t going to she yelled for a report over the noise of the ship trying to tear itself apart.

  “Volley of shadow matter away Captain,” Sengupta yelled out first.  We went around the planet too fast to see if we had any hits.  We’ll have to see on our first pass.”

  “Structural integrity is holding,” Bill’s mirror ball answered next, having to max out its volume to be heard.  “We’re ablating away matter faster than I’d hoped, but within outermost projections.”

  “Coming up on our first pass now,” Byrne reported.

  “Jesus that was fast,” Kathryn muttered, too low for anyone to hear over the noise.  It had only been less than ten seconds since they’d entered the atmosphere.

  “Getting readings now…” Sengupta said as the CIC display began updating its readout of the enemy fleet with new data.  “We took out one of their big ships!” she exclaimed.  “And a cube downed as well!” she added.  “A dodecahedron was also damaged but… it’s still in the fight.” she slumped.  

  “We were hoping for better than that,” Brinkerhoff observed emotionlessly.

  “Still better than nothing,” Kathryn offered.  “Hopefully we have better luck with our missiles.”

  They were already back over the horizon from the enemy fleet, who hadn’t been able to land a single shot on them from orbit as they passed by them underneath.

  “Permission to improvise a little Kat?” Brinkerhoff asked.  “I have an idea.”

  “By all means Woody,” she smiled, electric with the energy of battle.

  “Byrne on our next pass I want you to swing up out of the atmosphere as late as you can before interception with maximum acceleration and put us right through their fleet again like we did when we came in.  When we’re through drop us right back down to the deck again.  Sengupta as we come in, I want you to fire a full volley of missiles.  Target their largest remaining ships.  Wait until the last moment you can to give them as little time to shoot them down as possible.  Tarsus, I want you to release Dark Angel at the same time as we’re firing the missiles.  Is everyone clear?”

  “Yes sir!”

  “Smart,” Kathryn said.  “Still fast enough to make it hard for them to shoot them down, but slow enough to have a good chance to hit the target.”  She pressed a comm button on her chair panel.  “Margaret, you’re up.”

  “Understood.” her voice acknowledged over the intercom.

  Byrne counted them down.  “Pulling up in three, two, one.”

  Kathryn felt herself pushed back into her chair with the same force as she felt when they were hauling ass at maximum acceleration for the planet.

  “Open missile ports!” Brinkerhoff barked.  After Sengupta obliged, Kathryn saw the CIC display indicate small holes in their enveloping shadow matter through which the missiles could fly once fired.  “Timing is critical so we don’t vapourize our team,” Brinkerhoff said.  “Fire as soon as we’re in range and let them accelerate on their own, then release them at the last moment we can so they come in just after the missile detonations.  They should be confused enough to not notice them.”

  This time Sengupta counted down as she watched the clock.  “Weapons range in three, two, one.  Fire missiles.”

  “Missiles away,” Sengupta answered as she fired the missiles and they flew through their openings in the shadow matter, which closed up again behind them.  A few moments later Sengupta excitedly called out what they could all see for themselves on the CIC.  “Three down!  Releasing Dark Angel now.”  

  A moment later New Horizon II protected by its icosahedron shell flew through the remains of the subatomic explosions and Kathryn felt the ship immediately drop back down hard towards the planet.  “Report,” she demanded, finding a little calm in the reprieve of being on another trip around the planet and away from the enemy ships for now.  Things seemed to be going well but she daren’t dwell on that.

  “Unfortunately, we’re still facing a dodecahedron and four octagons up there,” Sengupta answered first, “but we’ve hardly taken any damage at all ourselves.”

  She punched Brinkerhoff in the shoulder.  “Excellent work Woody, excellent.” she offered and the man grinned back at her with obvious bloodlust in his eyes.

  “Hopefully Margaret and Ralph safely deployed,” he offered.

  “Oh, I’m sure they did.  How’s our relative speed Byrne?” she asked.  

  “In the green for our final approach ma’am.”

  They were already halfway around the planet again, but their relative velocity had slowed considerably.  This time around it was taking several minutes for them to make it all the way around the planet.  

  “Maybe this time we come up early and come at them from orbit with a bit more speed, keep them guessing?” Kathryn suggested.

  Brinkerhoff considered this for a moment before nodding his agreement.  “Copy that, Lieutenant?”

  “Aye Captain!” Byrne answered.

  “I want you to do the same thing.  Fly right down their throat and fire a volley on fast approach, then swing back around for standard battle maneuvers.  Do what you can to avoid them surrounding us so we can keep our shadow matter shielding as concentrated towards the direction of fire as we can.”

  “Aye!” he answered again, obviously as coursing with adrenaline as Kathryn and Brinkerhoff were.

  “Sengupta, full volley again.  This time fire two at the dodecahedron, we have to make sure we take that one out.  We can’t risk having to go up against it with just our beam weapons left.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Wait,” Kathryn grabbed his arm and cautioned.  “They might be expecting that, for us to go after the bigger one first.”

  The man looked at her and she imagined he was quickly trying to ascertain whether it was a suggestion or a command.  “I disagree,” he said before turning his head back to the weapons officer.  “You have your orders, Sengupta.”

  The woman’s eyes momentarily darted between them.  “Aye, sir!” she called back after seeing no obvious indication of further protest from Kathryn.  She withdrew her hand from Brinkerhoff’s arm and instead gripped her arm rests in frustration but didn’t press any further.  He’d done well enough so far that she was willing to trust his judgement in this.

  As they came around the planet the CIC updated and the right-hand secondary monitor flickered to a split screen view, showing what Margaret saw on the left side, and Ralph’s vision on the right.  Kathryn watched Ralph’s view wide eyed as Margaret spread out enormous wings of shadow matter wings to either side, each easily twice the size of her body and complete with corrugated guide feathers along their trailing edge, where towards her torso small nodules embedded in each wing propelled her through space.  

  The wings then sharply folded inward towards their centre as they flung a small object towards one of the octahedrons.  Margaret wrapped herself up in the shadow matter wings, cocooning herself in them before Ralph did the same and it obscured the view.  Kathryn looked up at the CIC and saw a modest anti-matter explosion excise enough of the enemy ship to disable it.  Another target down.

  “Coming into weapons range again sirs,” Sengupta called out.  “Firing missiles!”  

  Their ship was rocked by repeated enemy beam weapon strikes as they passed through what remained of the enemy fleet.  “They’ve got locks on us now!” Bill exclaimed.  

  “A cube and octa destroyed Admiral but no hits on the dodeca so far,” Sengupta called out.

  “Dammit!” Brinkerhoff exclaimed as the ship was rocked by another series of beam strikes.

  “We’re losing shielding material too fast now!” Bill’s mirror ball yelled in purple.

  “Keep them to one side of us Lieutenant!” Byrne roared.

  ‘And it was going so well…’ Kathryn thought.

  Brinkerhoff stood and scrambled to his feet to stand behind the ops and pilot stations.  “Fire at will!” he yelled at Sengupta.

  “Mind the angel’s positions!” Kathryn called out to remind them.

  “I’ll try sir,” Sengupta answered.  Kathryn figured it was all she could realistically ask for at this point.

  She looked up at the screen dedicated to Margaret and Ralph, and watched on Ralph’s feed as Margaret configured her wings in to a sharp penetrating shape and dove hard into the remaining octahedron, and then Ralph’s vision become obscured as he followed her in.  ‘Well shit, they’re in for it now,’ Kathryn briefly mused to herself before calling out to Sengupta.  “Paint the last-” a devastating shuddering interrupted her as the ship suffered a full power direct hit from the dodecahedron’s beam weapon.  “Paint the last octahedron as ‘do not fire’ Sengupta, Margaret’s got it.”

  “Aye,” the flustered officer called out while trying to target the remaining ships.

  Kathryn surveyed the overall situation on the CIC.  They were doing okay.  Other than the dodecahedron there was only one cube and one octahedron left.  They were down to only two missiles left though, and mission parameters were to hold those in reserve for the final attack on the link facility.  She did some quick figuring in her head.  She watched through Ralph’s eyes as Margaret fought her way down a corridor, cutting down enemy Bobbins one after another with a large shadow matter sword, nimbly using her wings to block their beam weapons between strikes.  It was hard to make out from his first-person perspective, but Ralph seemed to be holding his own in a similar combat style, seeming to be wielding a shorter bladed weapon in each hand.

  “Ablative material dangerously low,” Bill called out.  “We lose much more, and we won’t be able to effectively angle our shielding to oncoming attack.”

  “Dammit you’ve got to keep us out of the middle between those two ships, Byrne!” Brinkerhoff roared.

  “I’m trying!” the officer called back in exasperation before correcting himself.  “I mean YES SIR!!”

  ‘Do the math,’ Kathryn thought.  ‘One on one we can take the octahedron with beam weapons, but we can’t do it while the big one is still targeting us.’  Another devastating shudder nearly threw her out of her seat.  ‘It’s deliberately maneuvering to prevent us from getting behind it and lining them up.’  She looked up and between the CIC’s abstraction of Margaret’s position in the ship and the views out of their eyes, she recognized that they were near the ship’s shadow matter control system.

  “Margaret’s about to take that octa out,” Kathryn declared as she pushed herself upright.  “With two ships left we can angle our shields fore and aft.  As soon as she’s clear haul ass for the doda,” she ordered.  “Put shields two to one fore to aft and when we’re close enough that they can’t shoot them down, put both of our last missiles down their fucking throats!”

  Brinkerhoff turned around to look at her with a blank wide-eyed expression.

  “At the last minute put our shields full front and fire all beam weapons you can aft at the cube, we’ll punch right through the bastards!” she demanded, excitedly pounding a fist into her other hand’s palm.

  Brinkerhoff noticed some of the officers looking at him expectantly.  “Well don’t look at me!” he roared.  “Follow your damn orders!!”

  A moment later Margaret and Ralph burst through the side of the octahedron, trailing blobs of shadow matter behind them as the ship they’d left began stopped maneuvering and started to deform.

  “NOW!!” Kathryn yelled.

  New Horizon II came about and accelerated towards the dodecahedron.  “Signal the angels to stay clear of the remaining ships,” Kathryn ordered, pointing to Grayson who nodded and turned to her console.

  “Here we go,” Brinkerhoff said as they approached the larger enemy ship.  

  Their own ship rocked and roiled as they suffered repeated strikes from the front and the back, but they were absorbed by the angled shields being able to focus on only two vectors.

  “Remember Sengupta, last minute,” Kathryn reminded her.  “You’ve got this.”

  The woman was too focused on her work to acknowledge the encouragement.  Their own beam weapons were firing fore and aft as rapidly as they could, and the concentrated fire seemed to be taking a toll on the smaller ship at least.

  “Get ready Bill,” Sengupta warned.  “I’ll count us down.  Three, two one, NOW!”

  The moment the missiles exited their tubes, Bob swung every available molecule of shadow matter into a protective dome around their leading edge just before they were rocked by an enormous explosion which threw Brinkerhoff and Kathryn to the ground.  The anti-matter only annihilated matter it came into direct contact with.  Both missiles burned up entirely in the enemy ship, but the resulting shockwave and shower of high energy radiation was terrifyingly energetic being this close to it.  After being rocked by the initial shockwave, they were then further banged around as they crashed their way through the debris that remained of the enemy ship.

  “Come about as soon as we’re clear and fire all batteries at the remaining ship!” Kathryn yelled as she scrambled back into her seat.

  “No need Admiral,” Sengupta called back.  “We took them out in that last volley as we punched through the dodecahedron.”  Her tone revealed disbelief and the energy of mortal danger with nowhere left to direct it.

  “What?” Kathryn asked, confused.  “Then that’ sit?  We actually just won?”

  “Don’t act so surprised,” Brinkerhoff laughed before clapping her hard on the back.  “Never doubted it for a moment!” he lied.

  “We haven’t won yet,” Bill reminded them.

  Kathryn turned around and watched as Margaret and Ralph landed heavily on the outer surface of their shadow matter shell, both crouching to absorb the impact and drawing their wings down before standing up triumphant and stretching their winds out wide.  Margaret was wearing nothing but the shadow matter which enveloped her torso like a sleeveless leotard, the wings projecting out from her back.  The crackle in her eyes completed the image of her as some primordial angel of death.  

  Kathryn pressed her comms button.  “Does Ralph still have his weapons?” she asked Margaret.

  The simulant’s mouth didn’t move, but her thoughts relayed her answer across the vacuum through the comms system, a simple: “Yes.”

  “Then by all means Ralph, please make that Link facility go away.”

  Margaret expressed something between a grin and a snarl before launching herself up and away from the hull and arching back towards the planet, followed shortly after by Ralph.  The CIC showed Ralph deploy a pair of small anti-matter missiles from his wings towards the planet.  Kathryn turned to Sengupta.  “After they impact fire, all beam weapons until there’s nothing left down there.  Raze it to the ground.”

  “Yes Admiral,” the woman answered with satisfaction.  “Be my pleasure.”

  After the facility was hit with anti-matter explosions which excised small hemispheres out of its surface, the ship’s beam weapons had no trouble penetrating the remaining hull.  Kathryn watched on the monitor as a series of secondary explosions erupted across the facility before it all went up at once in one massive explosion.  The bridge crew stood and cheered as Brinkerhoff roughly grabbed Kathryn into a bear hug which she wasn’t expecting.  While being embraced she looked back at Jaren who nodded back at her calmly in what seemed to be more an expression of relief than anything else, which contrasted sharply with the ecstasy of victory displayed by the rest of the bridge crew.  She remembered that Jaren was still a pacifist at heart.  He didn’t celebrate the violence or the death of their enemies.  He could only find some satisfaction in a kind of justice for what had happened to his people, and solace that those who remained would now be out of danger from further violence.  He could find peace in their victory rather than a sense of triumph, and she was grateful that she could allow him to be part of the moment and see the job done with her.