The last of the nearly two-dozen Ysleli soldiers filed into the briefing room, crowding together in a press of yellow scales and drab uniforms. Jesri hadn’t noticed a particular smell from the lanky aliens prior to the meeting, but with this many of them crowded together she could detect a faintly spicy fragrance in the air. To her left, Rhuar sneezed violently and grumbled.

As she stood, the soldiers snapped to attention instantly. “At ease, take your seats,” she said, receiving a few confused looks in response.

To her right, Tarl straightened up with a growl. “You are commanded to sit!”, he bellowed. The assembled soldiers immediately found seats, shifting around to find a comfortable position in the hard-backed chairs.

“Thank you, warfather,” Jesri sighed. They were going to have to find a happy medium between the relatively laissez-faire professionalism of the human military and the slavish obedience and fear of the Ysleli.

She didn’t mind the prompt response, but the degree of deference shown to Tarl and to her by extension was off-putting - and that was before one took into account the casual ease with which he repaid minor infractions with violence or even death. She was reasonably confident that at least three of the troops had sworn themselves to her in some sort of formal blood oath after she convinced Tarl not to kill them for failing to salute her. She hoped Qktk was familiar with the concept, because asking Tarl about matters of Ysleli honor usually cost her an hour or so of listening to him elaborate the finer points of proper conduct.

She looked over the nervous faces in front of her and cleared her throat. “Good morning,” she said, her voice quieting the hushed noises from the crowd instantly. Behind her, the room’s display flickered to show an image of a large ring floating against a starfield. “This is our mission target,” she explained, pointing to the ring. “It is an advanced-model hyperspace accelerator, an improvement on the launch ramps you may be familiar with from our transit stations. It has a very lengthy official designation, but as the sole remaining example of its kind it has become more commonly known as the Cygnus Gate.”

A murmur went up around the room; evidently even the Ysleli had heard of the famous station. Rhuar was eyeing the display with interest, and Tarl was stroking his chin thoughtfully with two shiny talons. She tapped a button on her console and the display was overlaid with statistics.

“The gate is a roughly regular toroid with an interior diameter of one kilometer.” Seeing blank looks, she did some conversions in her head. “That’s, ah, slightly more than one thousand two hundred Ysleli lesa.”

There was another chorus of concerned murmurs from the troops as the scale of the structure became apparent - although not nearly as large as the city-sized transit stations, the gate was large enough for the Grand Design to pass through comfortably.

Jesri smiled at their consternation. “You may ask questions during the briefing if you would like something clarified,” she said. The soldiers shifted uncomfortably and remained silent, provoking a growl from Tarl. “No questions is also fine,” she added hastily. As much as she appreciated Tarl’s support, she would spare the troops the indignity of being commanded to question her.

“The gate is currently being used as a waypoint within the Seventh Kitan Free State in the system of Albireo. The system itself is only sparsely populated, with a small agricultural colony operating in-system. The only relevant forces are the security and operations teams manning the gate itself, which will be our primary opposition both before and after boarding.” She tapped her console and the display shifted to a structural diagram of the gate.

“Records indicate that there are approximately one hundred and twenty personnel aboard the gate on any given day, mostly part of the small garrison of soldiers that secure the gate against intruders. We will be forcing entry to a hangar near central operations, clearing a path through the soldiers and commandeering the station controls.”

The room had grown restless again with her mention of the station’s garrison, and one of the soldiers slowly stood upright at attention. Jesri looked at him curiously before realizing that the Ysleli probably weren’t the hand-raising sort. “Yes, ah, spearbrother?”, she asked, “Do you have a question?”

“Captain Jesri Tam,” he said shakily, one eye on Tarl’s looming presence over her shoulder, “I would ask if we are the full extent of the forces you would bring against such a large garrison.”

“An excellent question, spearbrother,” Jesri said quickly, swooping in with praise before Tarl could berate the poor man for cowardice in the face of duty or something. “We will be heavily outnumbered during the station assault. There are few docking bays available and we have a limited number of capable assault craft. We will be compensating for the discrepancy in two ways,” she said, walking to the back wall of the room where a number of plastic crates had been stacked. She reached into one and withdrew a sleek-looking carbon-grey rifle. She swore she could hear an audible click as forty-nine Ysleli eyes locked onto the rifle with intense scrutiny.

“Our first advantage is in weaponry,” she said, hefting the rifle so they could see it clearly. “This lovely lady is a Tharsis Arms Corporation Model V Field-Configurable Modular Battle Rifle, commonly called a TAC-5. I understand that all of you have been trained with kinetic rifles using chemically propelled metal ammunition?”

Tarl swept his claws in an affirmative gesture. “Correct, Jesri Tam,” he rumbled, his eyes not leaving the rifle. Indeed, most of the Ysleli were nearly salivating as they stared at the clean lines of the gun. Jesri smirked, not quite immune to the gun’s allure herself.

“Allow me to demonstrate the difference,” she said, aiming at the bare metal of the briefing room’s bulkhead. A quick press of the trigger sent a burst of fire cracking against the wall, bright flashes of ablating metal and a treble-beat staccato crack ripped through the room, causing everyone but Tarl to flinch back involuntarily. There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at the scorch mark on the wall, then the soldiers looked back to the gun with renewed interest.

“A kinetic rifle has some disadvantages in spaceborne combat,” Jesri explained. “In a close-quarters scenario like this, it’s likely that one or more of you would have been injured by ricochets or spalling if I had done the same thing with kinetics. Directed energy weapons can be used without that risk. They also have no recoil, which means that they can be used with increased accuracy even in zero-gravity conditions.”

She suppressed another smile. If the Ysleli had been nervous and unsure before, they were rapt and laser-focused now. “Spearbrother,” she said, indicating the one who had spoken earlier. “What is the standard ammunition capacity on your service weapon?”

“Thirty-six shots, Captain Jesri Tam,” he replied.

Jesri let her grin slip through as she detached the gun’s energy cell, a square block that fit easily in the palm of her hand. “This cell contains enough charge for three hundred shots at high power, seven hundred and fifty shots at standard power and over five thousand shots at low power. My earlier demonstration was at low power, which is effective against personnel and other soft targets. Standard is lethal even through body armor, don’t use it on anything you don’t want to scrub off a bulkhead. High power…” She trailed off suggestively, her eyes twinkling. She had them totally spellbound now. “Well, we’re not going to be engaging vehicles in combat on this mission, so let’s save that for another time.”

She replaced the power cell and returned the rifle to the crate, noting the way the Ysleli tracked it back every centimeter of its journey. “That’s our first advantage,” she said theatrically. “We’ll be issuing each soldier a rifle and you’ll be expected to train to proficiency during the coming weeks. My sister will coordinate your training schedule.” She sent a silent message to Anja over her link.

A low, ominous impact vibrated through the briefing room. The soldiers stared at the door with trepidation as it was followed by another, and another, massive footsteps resonating through the room and raising sympathetic vibrations from the stacked crates.

Anja walked into the room in a suit of full Valkyrie armor, rifle ready and bayonet affixed. The suit added nearly a meter to her height, dwarfing even Tarl’s lofty stature and far outclassing him in sheer bulk. She paused for a moment to let the troops stare open-mouthed at the gleaming white-on-silver armor before she sprang forward in a dash that left her standing next to Jesri, seeming to blink across the room in a thundering crash of metal-on-metal. An ephemeral halo of white plasma enveloped the suit, crackling into coherent bands across its forearms and flaring dramatically from the pauldrons. Rhuar had to take an indignant step back from the sudden burst of heat - Jesri thought she detected a faint smell of burnt hair mingling with the thick odor of nervous Ysleli.

The look on Tarl’s face nearly sent Jesri into a laughing fit, although she had to admit the demonstration was impressive. Something that massive moving that fast was downright counterintuitive unless you knew the sorts of forces that the suit’s artificial musculature could provide. Rhuar, still rubbing his singed fur, was nevertheless staring in wonder at the shiny crescent-shaped scrape left by Anja’s foot where she had pushed off the deck.

Jesri smiled beatifically at the stunned troops, her hair blowing in the sudden wind caused by Anja’s sprint. “Anja and I will be our vanguard,” she said. “We will deal with any hard targets or fortified positions. The operation will be a fast strike, seizing control of the station before an effective resistance can be organized. Any questions about the general details?”

The room continued to stare dumbly at Anja.

“Okay then, let’s proceed. Thank you, Anja,” she said brightly.

“Sister,” Anja said, her voice a sinister mechanical rumble through the suit’s speakers. She walked out of the room with a practiced stride, her feet whisper-quiet except for the low whine of the servos. The troops were mostly too shocked to notice the distinction, but Tarl very definitely noticed and watched Anja leave with renewed appreciation.

Jesri shook her head ruefully as the room’s intense atmosphere mellowed a few notches. “All right, gentlemen,” she called out. “Next topic is routes of ingress.” The Ysleli leaned in to listen, giving her their full attention.

Three Ysleli soldiers crept forward in an arrowhead formation, rifles held high against their white-armored shoulders. The barrels of their weapons tracked sharply along sightlines, clearing corners and sweeping doorways with precise, methodical movements. They were silent save for the whispering shuffle of their feet on the deck, a calm broken violently as a burst of white light flared against their front member’s chestplate.

He fell flat to the floor, two more shots thudding into his side as he fell. His teammates scattered to the side and returned fire down the hall from against the exposed walls. Another withering hail of fire forced them back, sparking off the metal panels and winging one of them in the upper arm. He hefted his rifle one-handed with a muttered curse, his scorched arm falling uselessly to his side as he fired blindly down the hall with his free hand-

“Tiln, what the fuck are you doing?”, thundered a voice from above. The sounds of gunfire stopped as a buzzer rang out in the cargo hold to signal the end of the exercise. The remaining members of the team emerged from cover to help out their fallen teammates, hoisting them roughly to their feet and assembling in a line in front of the viewing platform.

Anja glared down at them, her face radiating disapproval. “Gentlemen,” she called out, “recite Anja’s Fourth Rule for me.”

Tiln’s team shuffled their feet sheepishly, black scorchmarks liberally dotting their armor. The opposing team, sporting only a few black marks, stood at parade-perfect attention. “Sir,” one of them shouted back, “‘Heroes get shot’, sir!”

Anja shifted her glare to him, then nodded fractionally. “Correct, Neryn. In a scenario where you have one man down and one man wounded, the tactically sound choice is to retreat and regroup rather than fucking around with cowboy trick shots down the hall. Tiln, do you disagree?”

“Sir, no, sir!”, Tiln barked, wisely refraining from clarifying questions about what precisely “cowboy” meant.

“And you three,” Anja said, rounding on the opposing team with a glower. “You smug bastards think you did well? You had these three walking targets dead to rights with an ambush and you all shoot at the same man?” She shook her head. “Neryn, Anja’s First Rule.”

Neryn gulped. “Sir, ‘Someone will get shot’, sir!”, he said tremulously.

Anja jabbed a finger at Neryn’s team, punctuating her words. “Exactly. And if you let the enemy choose who gets shot, they pick you. You guys were so close to being halfway decent, but you forgot to shoot the damn enemy and you all died.” She thumbed a button on her tablet and the black spots flaked off their armor, leaving it shiny and pristine.

“We reset in five minutes,” she sighed. “Grab a drink and take your positions. Tiln, keep both hands on your rifle or drop it for your sidearm. I want to fix the problem with training but failing that I will fix it with adhesive. Dismissed.”

She sighed and slumped back against the wall as the six troops shuffled off to grab water. A slight scraping noise caused her to crane her neck to the side; she found herself staring up at Tarl as he approached her position. He was standing far enough back on the platform that the troops below couldn’t see him, his head cocked slightly to the side in curiosity.

“I must say that I find your training methods impressively effective, if a bit odd,” he rumbled softly. “Was this normal for human warriors?”

Anja laughed tiredly, stretching her neck to the other side and closing her eyes. “The distinction is that we never really had warriors. We had professional soldiers. It was a job, albeit an atypical one. There is a place for honor on the battlefield or valor in combat, but when it comes to the business of soldiery we addressed it with the same tools as physics or engineering. You use science, testing, logic, constant incremental improvement. A gun is a tool, the enemy is a problem. Arrive at what works.”

Tarl bared his teeth in distaste. “It feels wrong, even as I see the results. Cold, unfeeling. Battle should be about rushing blood, the conflict of strength and will. I am honestly surprised my men have taken to it with such… gusto,” he muttered. “They did not ever respond like this when I attempted to discuss strategy with them.”

She popped up to her feet and smiled, still quite a bit below his eye level. “Tarl, were you ever an enlisted soldier?”, she asked. “A junior officer, perhaps?”

“No, of course not,” he said, looking mildly offended. “My uncle was the baron of Lrin, I began my career at the Royal Naval Academy.”

Anja said nothing, but smiled wider. Tarl looked at her in mild confusion, then blinked. “Ah,” he said. “I see. My experience may be somewhat different from theirs, it’s true. But the core values of honor and valor-”

“Tarl, honor and valor are a luxury,” Anja said, cutting him off. Tarl tensed, his arm flexing slightly, and Anja’s smile took on an icy aspect. “Oh? You want to punish me for that, Warfather?”, she asked softly. “If I was one of your men you wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, I hear the stories. What makes me different?”

“You are not Ysleli,” he retorted, irritated at being toyed with. “As a commander you are my equal. My men know their place-”

“And what determines their place, Warfather?”, she said, cutting him off again. Tarl gave her a dangerous look, but said nothing. Anja’s face lost its smile, leaving her looking very old and tired. “Tarl, I have seen a lot of death in and out of combat. Much more than you. Some people invited it, played with it, took chances that were as good as putting a gun in their own mouth - and some did that too. None of them deserved death, even if they were looking for it.”

She stared him in the eye, all levity gone from the conversation. “Your men never had the luxury you did, Warfather. They never had considerations like honor and valor. Theirs was to fight and die for your honor, and because you made them do less of the latter they follow you. Some of them even love you for it, your loyal pieces on the board.”

She took a step closer to him, eyes narrowing. “But then again, some over the years may have felt constrained. Some may have contradicted you, spoken over you, placed a foot into territory where only your equals may tread,” she spat, contempt dripping from the word. “We have words for that. Curiosity. Inquiry. Initiative. Leadership. Qualities your navy seems eager to prune where they arise.”

She looked out at the cargo bay where the six troops were clustered around the water tap on the wall, animatedly reenacting the firefight from the last session. Tiln was posing dramatically, his teammates nearly paralyzed with laughter as he tried to demonstrate his one-handed firing stance.

“We promoted based on those qualities,” she said, her voice returning to a conversational tone. “We chose our leaders the same way you choose who to slaughter for impudence and insubordination. How many of the ones you killed were as good as you, Tarl?” She met his eye again, looking at his expressionless face. “How many of them were better?”

They stood watching the trainees for a minute more before the buzzer sounded again, signaling the start of the next exercise. They finished their drinks and jogged back to the mock corridors, their strides loose and relaxed.

“I will think on your words, Anja Tam,” Tarl said quietly, turning to leave.

“Do,” Anja said flatly. “And Tarl?” He turned his head, looking back at her. “These are also my soldiers now,” she purred. “They may be prone to exhibit those qualities I talked about, now that they have had a taste. Kill them for it and I will feed you your eye. Not a threat, just a consequence.”

Tarl held her gaze for a long moment. “Tell me, Anja Tam, because I have also heard stories. Long before I arrived here, although I thought them untrue at the time. Was this how you were trained as well?”

Anja’s face was a neutral mask as she stared back. “No,” she said. “It was not.”

He studied her for a moment more. “I thought not,” he said. “You may train professionals and I may lead warriors, but you and your sister are bred killers. Sneer at my people and our customs as you will, but I find it oddly comforting to know that even the vaunted humans had uses for such as you.”

She held her implacable mien for a few seconds more before smiling brightly at him, flashing her teeth. “Wait a few thousand years before you try to play that game with me, Tarl,” she said sweetly, although her eyes were deep and empty. “I slit my first throat before your people knew cold iron. You have no word for what I am.”

Tarl bared his teeth and took a step back, then caught himself and shook his head. “Ah,” he said ruefully. “Terrifying, perhaps. For whatever you are and for how unlike it you appear. I will leave you to your training, Anja Tam. And as I said, I will think on your words.” He inclined his head and walked out of the bay, moving perhaps a touch faster than his usual stride.

“All right, hold on to your yellow butts!”

Rhuar’s voice crackled over the Huginn’s intercom as the space outside began to leak starlight through a frothing white skein. With a jarring thump they hammered back into normal space and immediately darted towards the giant ring of the Cygnus Gate.

“Wow, that’s a big fucker,” Rhuar’s voice said again, sending a ripple of nervous laughter through the ship. “We got a landing pad?”

“Yep, just registered with the gate,” Jesri replied, her voice filtered into a harsh rumble by the armor’s helmet. “Crew privileges are pulled. Most of the doors were inoperable, so they’ll be mobile. Get ready for a hot landing.”

“Great,” Rhuar drawled. “Ah, shit. Hey, I think they know we’re here!”

He keyed up a display that showed two ships rising from behind the gate, previously hidden by its bulk. Anja leaned forward in her armor to study the profiles of the new contacts. “Kitan customs,” she said, “has to be. They’ll try to stop us from closing with the gate.”

“Hah!”, barked Rhuar. “Even this little boat can take those slow bastards apart. I’ve always loved the idea of small-ship combat, so fast and agile-”

“Rhuar!”, Jesri shouted. “Maybe just blow them up?”

“Yessir, aye-aye cap’n,” he muttered, shifting into a steep arc that stressed even the Huginn’s impressive dampening systems. Anja and Jesri were somewhat shielded by their armor, but the Ysleli groaned as they were pressed harshly against their restraints.

“Sir,” Neryn gasped from next to Anja’s hulking form, “Did he say he liked the ‘idea’ of small-ship combat? He has done this before, right?”

“Neryn, twelfth rule,” Anja said.

“Second-guessers get shot, sir,” he grumbled. “I was just-”

His words were lost in a cacophony of noise as Rhuar opened up with the twinned spinal-mount railguns, tracing plumes of atmosphere and glittering metal along the keel of one Kitan vessel. A secondary explosion rippled through the aft of the ship and sent it spinning helplessly into the void with fragments of hull and dead crew trailing after it like a macabre comet.

“Woo, that has a kick!”, Rhuar cheered. “Not like the big guns on the Grand Design, of course, but so much more fun to aim-”

The ship shuddered as a Kitan round from the second vessel impacted them amidships near the top line, the cabin interior deforming slightly as the hull dented to nondestructively absorb the impact. “Rhuar!”, Jesri shouted.

“Fucking ow,” he grumbled, sending the ship into a dizzying corkscrew as more Kitan rounds streaked past. The customs ship couldn’t match the power of the human guns, but the turreted mounts on their vessels gave them much greater freedom to fire and maneuver. The Huginn continued to weave and bob until Rhuar flipped them around and burnt the engines hard at a cross-angle to their velocity.

Even Anja and Jesri felt the pull of that maneuver. A few of the troops vomited, a particularly messy affair for a species with dual stomachs.

“Sorry,” Rhuar grated, wheezing. “Had to line up for…”

They streaked past the customs vessel only a few ship lengths away moving too fast for the turret to track their progress. Rhuar angled the ship towards their opponent as they passed and sent a stream of fire through their port bow. The high-speed rounds transected the ship completely, sending massive chunks of the hull spiraling away on the exit side as the engines flickered and died.

Rhuar’s cackling laughter echoed through the ship. “Hah, you dumb fucks,” he crowed. “All right, landing time, landing time…”

He burned away some of their velocity with another bone-crushing trajectory change, then neatly shot towards a small squarish portal on the near side of the ring. The ship crashed through the barrier rear-first and pulsed the engines to do a hot-stop in the dead center of the dock.

Jesri was rapidly paging through the outside feeds with her suit displays and noticed a small squad of Kita manning a mounted gun near the back of the dock. She started to shout, but was brought up short by the rhythmic chugging of the ship’s antipersonnel turrets. Bolts of invisible energy crashed into the emplacement, liquifying the metal and splattering the crew across the rear wall.

“Zero for two with the dock guns,” Anja chuckled, shaking her head. “All right, get ready to move!”

The Ysleli shakily straightened up from their seats, undoing their harnesses and slinging their weapons as Rhuar lowered the FAC with a feather-light touchdown on the deck.

“Good luck!”, he shouted. “Door open in three, two, one…”

The door hissed open. Anja and Jesri waited a half-beat, then charged down the ramp.