On Planet Ka18131, otherwise known as Karma, less than a second after Corporal O'Malley (Magic) entered the sim mission onboard the October.

Henry Yuan opened his eyes and yawned as the incessant beeping sound of the morning alarm went off. “Acknowledged alarm. Turn off.” He said, as soon as he finished yawning.

“Counter command. Snooze for five minutes.” A female voice said, slightly muffled beside him.

Henry sighed and rolled over to see a large lump beside him that was covered in a huge, fluffy, white comforter. It was the same one he was under, but the lump had taken most of it. He reached over and pushed the lump, which rocked back and forth but otherwise didn’t move.

“Hon, it’s time to wake up.” He said gently.

“FIve more minutes.” The lump said, still muffled.

Knowing that it was useless, Henry pulled the comforter off himself and stood up, not wasting that much time waking up. It was a skill he learned during his years in the Marines. He was wearing the red and black flannel pajama pants with no shirt that he usually wore to sleep. His muscles, while not large, were very prominent. He raised his arms up and stretched. He was in a bedroom that was mostly empty except for the dirty clothes on the floor. It wasn’t too bad, but he made a mental note to do the laundry when he got home.

He walked to the other side of the room and a door opened at his approach to the bathroom. He did his business then washed his hands. As he did so he looked at himself in the mirror. He looked young, maybe in his mid thirties, with black hair that had a few strains of white here and there. He rubbed his chin and felt the stubble growing in.

Looking down, he found his shaving cream and pumped out a few, large foam pumps of it. He smeared it on his face, making sure to really rub it in on his cheeks and neck. When he was done putting the shaving cream on he turned on the water to the sink and washed his hands then pulled out a disposable cloth and wet it. He wrung it out then proceeded to wipe off the foam on his face and neck. He had to wet the towel several times as the foam built up on it, but it didn’t take that much time. When he was finished, he ran his hand over his chin again, and nodded as he felt the smoothness of a clean shave.

He checked his HUD and cursed as he saw the time. “Hon, seriously - you need to wake up or my sister is going to kill you for being late again.” He said softly from the door of the bathroom.

“It’s fine, she likes me.” The lump said, sounding confident but still muffled.

“Not that much.” He countered.

“Stop being so mean.” The lump complained.

“Seriously, it’s time to get up.” He told the lump as he made his way towards its side of the bed. He sat down next to the lump and started rubbing its back. A few minutes later the lump whined in frustration.

“Fine.” The lump said angrily and threw off the huge, fluffy comforter, exposing a dark-haired woman with Asian heritage and really bad bed hair. “Make me coffee.” The former lump demanded, pointing at him.

Henry smiled and nodded. “Yes, dear.” He told her as he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

“Don’t ‘yes dear’ me.” The woman said but smiled. Henry smiled in return to show that he understood she was just messing with him.

“Now go.” She ordered and pushed him away from her. “I need to get ready.”

Smiling, he got up and left the bedroom. He walked into the kitchen, looked around and thought about what to do. Decision made, he grabbed a few pots and pans then started to make breakfast. He dumped some dak eggs into a pan, put a few vegetables into the pot with them and turned up the heat. Then he moved to the counter and turned the coffee machine on, but didn’t flip the switch to add in the coffee flavor.

Instead, he opened the cabinet above the coffee machine and pulled out a small plastic container. He popped the cover of the container off and opened the top of the coffee machine. He shook some of the fine, grey powder that was in the container into the water before he closed it up and put it back into the cabinet. Closing the top of the coffee machine, he turned it on before he went back to the stove and continued to make breakfast.

His HUD chimed asking him if he wanted to answer a video message from a person called Dana. He smiled and hit accept. “Hey, Kiddo.” He said, as a seventeen year old girl appeared on the left side of his vision.

“Hey, uncle Mon. Mom’s on the warpath again. The supply ship hasn’t arrived yet, but Admin is saying that it has. They threatened to send security this time, so I think it’s serious. Anyway, I just wanted to give Gina a head’s up not to be late again.” The older teenager said with a grin, knowing how much it irritated him when she used his old Marine nickname. Granted, he knew that she hated to be called Kiddo, but it was just that he was so used to calling her that since he got out of the Marines over ten years ago.

“Why didn’t you call her yourself?” Henry asked, as he flipped the omelet he was cooking, ignoring the usage of his old nickname.

“And wake her up? By Tom’s thumb, no.” Henry smiled, as he saw his niece shiver with mock fear.

“But it’s okay if I do it?” He asked her.

“She’s your fiancé.” His niece reminded him.

“Okay, I’ll warn her. Thanks for the heads up, Kiddo.” He told her, smiling as he used her hated nickname.

“See you, Uncle Mon.” She replied with a smirk that told him she knew that he would call her that and had her retaliation ready. Then the video went dark.

“Warn me about what?” The woman in question asked as she walked into the kitchen. She was wearing a long, white coat that came down to just above her knees. Underneath, she was wearing white pants, and black shoes. On her chest was the symbol of Colonial Services and the piping on her shoulders announced she was a doctor. Granted, a low-ranked one, but still a doctor.

“That was Dana. The supply ship is late again and Colonial Admin is threatening to send security.” He replied as he pulled out some thin, brown and yellow round plants from the microwave. Gina reached over, snagged one and popped it into her mouth as he spoke.

“Hot.” She complained and breathed out to cool her mouth.

“Yes, it came right out of the oven.” He told her with a fake frown. She punched him in the arm, making him smile. He watched her walk over to the coffee machine and take a deep breath.

“Ohh, the real stuff. What's the occasion?” She asked him.

“Nothing. I just wanted the best for my woman.” He said, giving her a smile, as he opened the cabinet to pull out a disposable container to put the omelet in.

“My meathead.” She said kindly, as she pulled out a cup and poured herself a big cup.

“You agreed to marry me. You can’t back out now. Think of how upset Dana will be.” Henry said, with an exaggerated sad face. He then watched her as she ignored him and took a deep drink of the hot goodness. A warm feeling rose in his chest at her expression of bliss.

When she was done she lowered her cup and smiled. “She’ll get over it.” She told him abruptly, taking him by surprise at her tone of voice.

“Right in the feels.” He told her, clutching his chest.

“You’re an ex-Marine. I thought the Federation took them away from you when they made you one of their undying killers.” She replied, giving him a saucy look.

“First, there is no such thing as an ex-Marine. And second, I know this doctor who is good with her hands.” He said leering at her.

“Stop.” She told him. He smiled in satisfaction as he watched her face turn red.

“Don’t you have people to boss around and paper to push?” She asked him as she grabbed the container that had the omelet in it from him. “You should get going or you're going to be late.” She told him, almost singing to him.

He sighed and nodded. “Speaking of being late.” He replied.

“Shut up, you. I’m leaving.” She told him, then brushed past him and walked out the front door, yelling ‘Love you’. She closed the door before he could reply.

Shaking his head, he turned back to the bedroom and got dressed. Unlike his fiancé’s uniform, his uniform was a grey, one-piece jumpsuit that looked more like the armor that light-armored marines wore into battle than clothing, except that it had a bunch of reflective parts on it that made him stand out in dim lighting. He checked the time and made his way back into the kitchen to make his own breakfast.

An hour later, he was walking past a long row of huge, twenty-foot tall construction Mechs. A few people waved or said hi to him as they passed him. He nodded and smiled at them in return. He took a sip from his coffee cup as he climbed into a dull-white, modular office. Inside were a few people talking to each other or looking at screens that were built into the walls of the office building.

Henry let his hood retract as soon as the door closed. He took off his rebreather and let it retract into the clothing on his chest. He barely noticed that he was still frowning at the faint ammonia smell that permeated everything in this world. It had been a lot stronger when he got here slightly more than ten years ago, but it had faded somewhat during the terraforming process.

“Hey, boss.” A woman with short dark hair and huge biceps said as she walked in from another room. “You hear about the supply ship being late again?”

Henry looked at her and couldn’t help but compare her to a friend he met during his time in the Marines. She didn’t look like his friend, but she had the same happy-go-lucky attitude that his friend Netty had. That brought up the one that got away. For a second he wondered how she was doing, along with his old platoon mates. Did they reenlist or did they get out like him? He shook his head free of old memories and told himself he had the perfect woman back home, who he would have never met if he was still with the one who got away.

“Yeah, heard that security might get involved.” He said, coming back to himself as he brushed past her to sit down at his desk.

“Dang, that's serious.” She said as she found a seat in front of his desk. The others slowly shuffled in and sat down in front of him.

“Okay people, what do we have going on today?” He asked, ignoring the comment and starting the meeting.

It was about half way through the meeting and Thaddeus, the crew’s safety officer, was talking in his monotone voice when Henry got an emergency message on his HUD.

Invasion imminent. Non-human threat entering atmosphere. Threat level extreme. Activation of prior military mods per protocol Zema 9.0.368.3.14. Please stand by.

Henry had just enough time to think about how impossible it was for him to still have his mods from his time in service before there was a loud boom just outside the office and he was thrown backwards.

On the diplomatic ship SBR1, one day since Corporal O’Malley entered the sim mission and thirty days since the activation of prior military mods on the planet Karma.

“Captain, I’m getting a distress beacon from Colonial Services on Planet Ka18131.” A Navy tech said on the simulated bridge of SBR1.

A door appeared on the bridge and shone with a bright, white light as it opened for a young-looking man to walk through.

“Status?” He asked as he walked to his chair and looked at his screens.

“It’s garbled, but I’m getting something about an attack.” The tech replied, not looking up from his screens.

“Rebellion?” He asked his tech.

“Message is too broken up, sir. Our techs spent twenty hours at negative 10 speed, and that’s all they could recover.” The tech said, shaking his head.

“Drop an emergency beacon to warn the Federation, and warn the major. I want his people prepped to aid Colonial Services if need be. Let’s bring the ship to General Quarters.”

“Yes, sir.” The tech replied and sent a message.

Less than a millisecond later, a grumpy-looking major walked into a conference room and looked at the people who jumped to attention. They were dressed immaculately, and their discipline showed in the way they stared off into the distance - not looking at him or anyone, for that matter. He felt a small sting of worry as he knew that, besides being parade-ready, none of them, with the exception of his newest sergeant, had high combat command points.

“At ease.” He told them and sat down. The others sat down smartly after he did. “We received an emergency message from Colonial Services. It’s very garbled, but it’s clear they are being attacked. We are on stand-by in case we are needed. I have authorized sim missions based on the planet’s environment and atmosphere. I have reordered the Company, and I don’t want to hear anything about it. You are Marines, you will follow orders. Is that understood?”

He waited for the Oorah to die down before he spoke again. “Sergeant Leni’s platoon is now First Platoon. Davis, you’re now Second Platoon. Jonesy, you’re Third. Mac, you got Fourth.” He stopped and waited for groans, but no one spoke. He knew this was not the last he would hear about his decision to place a brand new sergeant in the First Platoon position over older and more experienced sergeants, but he couldn’t overlook just how high Sergeant Leni’s combat command points were. He looked around at his people and saw anger in their eyes, but they were too well disciplined to say anything. At least to him.

“I’ll have your sim missions ready when you get back to your camps. Sergeant Leni, wait a moment. I wish to speak with you. The rest of you, dismissed.” He said to the room.

On the fast attack ship Potter, five days since Corporal O’Malley entered the sim mission and five months since the activation of prior military mods on the planet Karma.

“Sir, we are getting an emergency beacon from the diplomatic ship SBR1. It contains two messages. The first is dated five days ship time ago. They received a garbled message from Planet Ka18131. All they could get from it was that Colonial Services was being attacked.” The Navy tech told her Captain.

A second later, she saw a door appear on the bridge and two people stepped out on her security feed. One was a Navy captain and the second was a Marine officer who was rumored to be from the Intelligence Services. The Navy captain sat down in his seat while the Marine officer stood next to him.

“Please tell me that SBR1 didn’t have any VIPs onboard?” The captain asked her.

“None recorded, sir.” She told him, after checking. She slowed down her subjective time by negative one to make sure, but she only needed .06 of it so she sped herself back up before she answered his question. “It was on its way to pick someone up before they diverted.”

“Understood.” The captain replied “And the second message?”

“Nothing but garbage, sir.” The tech told him. “We know it was a message, but there is nothing we could do to recover it.”

The silence was deafening on the bridge and the tech really wanted to turn around, but refrained. Then the captain spoke. “Thompson, what brings you onto my bridge? Still getting used to your new rank?” He asked the newly-promoted Marine officer.

“We suspect that this is an attack from the Ketica. They have been observed moving into this area.” The Marine officer, who the tech now knew had to be from Intelligence, replied.

The tech shivered in fear as she remembered the Vods she watched in the training facility about the brutal and technologically superior race of aliens. She broke bridge protocol and looked back, horrified, at her Captain. She saw her fear reflected on his face. Even the Marine intelligence officer who looked like a stone-cold killer next to him also had, to the tech’s eyes, a very concerned facial expression on her face. She had heard stories about those people from Intelligence and knew if the Marine was concerned then it was very bad for the rest of them.

“What is the closest ship to Karma?” The Marine intelligence officer asked into the silence that she had created with her explanation.

The tech saw the captain come back to himself and look right at her. She quickly turned around and dropped her time again to look the information up. She knew she would be hearing from the ship, if not from the captain himself, for her failure of protocol. She quickly found the information and sped her subjective time back up.

“The October, sir. She’s four months planet time out from Karma.” She told her captain.

“I need my team and myself transferred there as soon as possible. How long will that take, Petty Officer?” The Marine intelligence officer asked her directly.

Once more, she slowed time down for herself and looked up the answer. She frowned at the results and asked the ship to see if there was any way to speed the transfer up. She nodded to herself when the ship answered her on her screen. She sped her subjective time back up once more.

“The fastest I can get you transferred is three months, three weeks, two days, and eight hours if you leave now. I’ll have to reroute you and your team's info matrix through two civilian space stations and one military, unmanned supply ship.” She replied, not looking away from her screens.

“Thank you, Petty Officer. Captain, if you could send a message to the October that would be cool.” The tech heard the Marine officer say behind her back. She nearly chuckled when the Marine used the word cool. No one had used that term for several hundred years. She wondered if the Marine did it on purpose as a joke to relieve the tension on the bridge or she was just that old. One never knew with those Intelligence Service people.

On the troop carrier October, just under eight days since Corporal O’Malley entered the sim mission and a bit more than eight months since the activation of prior military mods on the planet Karma.

“Hey Jasper, thanks for seeing me. We just got this sent to us. Read it and tell me what you think.” The Navy captain said, with a tense smile, as the colonel of the Marines on board her ship walked in. She watched the Colonel’s expression rapidly change as he both slowed and sped his subjective time up and down in less than a second to read the troubling message.

“Damn, they sure it’s the Ketica?” He asked her, as he sat down.

“No, and that’s all the good news I have for you.” She told him as she watched him come to grips with the knowledge that he might be facing Ketica in battle. She watched his expression change yet again as he sat there silently looking down at nothing. She spotted the fear that she felt then she watched it change to concern for a few seconds then to sadness.

“We haven't even gotten them into named platoons yet.” He said softly and, she assumed, mostly to himself.

She understood his concern. Fighting the Ketica was the greatest nightmare of the Federation Military. They could eliminate human’s greatest weapon - the ability to respawn. Worse, it was rumored that they could even delete a person from Sig149, the largest military data warehouse in the galaxy, or any other backup data centers that saved digital copies of people. If you died fighting them, it could be forever. What was worse was that, while their biological constructions didn’t fight with long-range weapons all that often, most of their constructs had extremely tough exoskeletons. Tough enough that they could shrug off far more damage than the human body could even when covered in heavy armor. If that was not bad enough, they had the ability to field thousands of those constructions daily once they were on the surface of a planet.

She saw his expression change once again to a frown. She guessed he was only now processing the last bit of the message. She watched as he looked up at her with confusion evident on his face.

“Who the hell is this Corporal O’Malley, and why does Captain Thompson want her and her platoon under her command?” He asked her. “Who does she think she is?”

“A spook that will be here in a few days. You can ask her yourself.” She told him, trying not to laugh as his face turned red.

“Maybe I will.” He said to her. She watched him look up as he called for the ship’s avatar. She wondered why people did that. The October was literally all around them. It didn’t make any more sense to look up than down or at the wall. Everywhere a person looked, they were looking at the ship. Well, except if they were looking at another person. Well, mostly.

“October. Slow the battalion down. I want at least six months of training before we deploy. Focus all the sim missions to showcase the Ketica.” The colonel ordered.

“You don’t want longer?” The captain asked him after the October acknowledged the order.

“I want them to fear the Ketica. If we give them too long then they’ll get complacent and lose that edge. Six months gives them time to form the named platoons and get used to each other. That will still leave a few months of simulated time to fighting the Ketica together, so they can get used to them as an enemy, but not so long as to lose the edge that fear gives them.” He told her.

If she was in his shoes she would have slowed her command down to give her people years of experience instead of just a few months. Then again she was trained to fly warships, and not lead men and women into battle on the surface of some planet. From what she read, he was a good Marine commander. She just hoped that he was good enough to fight the Ketica. She had already called in every ship she could to reinforce both of their commands. She hoped it would be enough.

“Be honest with me, Jasper. Can we do it? I mean, if it is them?” She asked him, finally giving in to her fear.

“No. Not alone and the other ships won’t get here fast enough. We can maybe evac anyone who is still alive down there, but I don’t think many of us will be walking away from this.” He told her as he stood up and walked out.

She waited until he was gone before she opened a drawer in her desk and looked at a picture of a family that was standing together waving at her. It was a picture of her great grand niece’s family when she visited them before she deployed on the October. She wanted nothing more than to go back and be with them now. For the first time in decades she contemplated her final death while she looked at her loved ones in the picture. She wondered when he said ‘us’ if he meant just his Marines, or if he was including her and the people under her command. For the first in her entire career, she wondered if she was strong enough to do her duty while the enemy that could kill them without giving them a chance to respawn came for her and those who she was tasked to lead.

Unknown to any of the humans inside her, the October sent a question out into the reality that existed beyond the speed of light to her brothers and sisters. She got a response from the one called the Monarch.