He was truly mediocre as an Admiral, barely worthy of his braids. The fact he had achieved his rank was due to longevity and luck for never being involved in a truly dangerous fleet action before.

If it had not been for the Ranthas, he would likely be dead even now, and they both knew it.

He hated it, but he owed them, and they were fully aware of it. They could break him now, or they could offer him a lift past the First Ceiling that had vexed him his entire life.

He was not a great commander, a fine leader, or even a decent manager. He was only ambitious, but did not have the tools to deliver on that ambition, and the craving for glory behind it.

“I agree to your terms,” System Admiral Colos finally breathed out.

Well. Well, well, well... Francesca found herself smiling, and the Admiral went cold on seeing it, despite himself. A smiling Rantha was a very dangerous thing to see... “Very good, Admiral.” She rose to her feet without his leave. “The first item you will need to know is that breaking through to Seven... requires you to be subordinate to a Rantha.”

One step, two... Her presence and aura were swelling, Diamond Vajra Mark IV behind a 50 Charisma, Intimidation and Diplomacy Ranks, Masteries, Skill Focus Feats... she was overwhelming him on many, many levels. He was a Six, a penultimate normal human at the edge of what was humanly possible thanks to his cybernetic grafts... the same grafts that had been holding him back from Seven, his crutch to cover his own lack of ability.

He could only stare as she came up over him, tall and powerful in so many ways, and he was just a small man in a high position, and realizing it just now.

A +55 modifier to social Skills did not give a damn if you were a Fleet Admiral, one of the great officers of humanity.

He was a little man, she was a Ten, and he was going to be one of hers.

She reached down and grabbed his lapels, stepping down onto the chair which was more than wide enough and sturdy enough to accommodate them, having been designed at least partially with that purpose in mind. After all, the names of the women under his command he had liaisons with had been listed out in the file...

She was far, far stronger than him, and he wouldn’t have been able to resist even if he wasn’t completely stupefied by her at the moment. Her tongue filled his mouth, extended past and up to his nasal cavity as the aphrodisiacs on it sent his eyes rolling up in joy, bypassing all those little nanofilters that were supposed to protect his brain from such biological attacks. Her lilithi Tail, already glowing red at the tip, emerged from her tailbone, and arced over and past her precisely to deliver the first of the Brands on his spine.

He jerked in ecstasy as he was Marked and Branded, body and soul, for there wasn’t going to be any backing out of this agreement.

------

An hour or two later, Francesca left the office of System Admiral Colos, who was now sleeping very soundly and rumpled up indeed in the small chamber to the side of his office. She looked as perfectly turned out going out as she had been going in, and Ensign Jillia Haberrings held out her hand as Francesca walked past, the Spire-born Marked who had seen direct action against zwilnik gangs in Downspire snickering despite herself.

Francesca touched Jillia’s hand, taking over Jillia’s Marked link to her sister Olivia with Olivia’s blessing. Jillia set about sending out the transfer paperwork that would move her new Rantha to the Admiral’s personal tactical team, laughing quietly to herself that she was now equal in Marked Rank to the Admiral of the whole Janus System Fleet...

System Admiral Colos was going to wake up Awakened, Opened, Branded, Marked, a Noble/7, a Human/3, a Source Psion, and magnificently motivated to get rid of his cybernetics, retrain his Class Levels, and actually get good at his job. All that Karma he had accrued and simply failed to apply was now going to be put to work.

He was plugged directly into the Markspace network of hundreds of thousands of Good people, if not millions of them, and connected directly to a woman so far his mental and spiritual superior everything he had ever thought about his life was crushed just standing before her.

His Rantha would be right there, holding his hand as he pulled himself out of the mire of his own ambitions and started walking on the road to greatness, because a true Source could do no less, and she would be rock and steel as she supported him on the long road of glory now shining before him.

It would be the best deal he had ever made in his life. If it meant he had just sold his life, soul, loyalty, and position to some force outside the Empire... he just couldn’t bring himself to regret it...

=============

A barren hillside some miles outside Kiloplex Abepb...

Space whorled and receded before a dark vortex from underneath the system’s Veil. A conduit from beneath normal space reached up for the first time in over six millennia, and established a connection to something lost and silent on the surface of Janus III.

The first figures stepped through the Portal, which looked like little more than an extension of shadows. They were naturally in full armor, sealed against the corrosive environment. They looked around with sharp eyes, their gazes inevitably drawn west to the shield walls and oscillating energy dome guarding the human city on the horizon.

Kiloplex Abepb was small as the human arcologies went, only mustering a few hundred million souls, many of whom had died recently in the Xenosym invasion whose after-effects were still extant in the remaining cities.

The warriors of humanity were tired, dispersed, and fractional. Such situations were ideal to exploit and take advantage of.

Cruel smiles blossomed beneath faceless helms painted with skulls, and word was sent back to begin the next stage.

The jetbikes, sheathed in shadows, came zipping out of the long dormant Portal, scouting out the lay of the land and making sure there were no surprises in the area. All their intelligence and eavesdropping on the humans’ information network indicated that the humans were much more concentrated on threats from within the city than from without, and would not be expecting an attack that had already reached planetside.

----------

Gyre Briggs looked up sharply at the notification that had appeared in his mind.

When he was reborn and his Talent was indicated, he had gotten some sympathy from his brothers. There were odd spreads of Talent that often had little or nothing to do with the modern world, and especially Janus III. For instance, Natural Woodcarver was only even possible if you went inside the Warp Zone, or you had to put up with inferior wood you couldn’t harvest yourself from off-world.

But Bird Whisperer?

Certainly mankind had some sort of relationship with birds, going back millennia, and Briggs Brothers were Ancients and slanted towards those kind of ancient linkages.

But there was only one set of birds on Janus III, outside the random pets raised by wealthy on the Spires, let go, and sometimes managing to find one of their own and reproduce.

Gyre knew that, and so he set about getting himself to Ten, while also quietly building up a Marked legion of small songbirds, raptors, and fanciful alien avian species from many worlds. He paid the Karma to accelerate their Marks, as they were barely able to do such things themselves without sapience.

But an Intellect Rating of 1 or 2 still hit 5 or 6 with a Mark, which was low sapience, but sapience nonetheless.

His collection of songbirds, parakeets, raptors, gulls, terns, and even ducks, turkeys, pheasants, and chickens, provided him with eyes and ears in many, many places. Sure, he had to place all the Marks himself, and there were limits on what he could do, but he was slow and patient and he took good care of his flocks and their simple desires.

They didn’t fight for him, but they were excessively good at taking cover and just watching.

Naturally, his patient additions to the eyes of the Ranthas was only a set-up for what came after.

When the Ranthas finally got about sending out teams to harvest the Caches Sama had left behind of her kills and discoveries while doing her awesome mapping run around the Warp Zone, he had been on the team.

His goal hadn’t been the Caches... anybody could do that. Naturally enough, nobody had the Caches as their goals, actually... those just basically paid in advance for the efforts they were making. Those trips had been all about more exploration of the land, mapping out veins of E-minerals to a higher extent, getting a better lay of the land, and charting out what and where to go in the future.

His had been about making contact with the Crystal Rocs.

The kings of the skies, the Crystal Rocs were low on the sapience scale, but sapient nonetheless. As apex predators, they were naturally lofty and arrogant, generally hungry, and aggressive about territorial rights.

However, a +50 Animal Empathy modifier worked just fine on them. Even the most ornery of the big birds warmed up to Gyre Briggs almost instantly, sensing a friend of their kind immediately... and once Marked, and their Intelligence reaching up to human average while finding they could suddenly communicate freely with others of their kind, Gyre was soon at the heart of a continent-wide network of the great predators of the Janus III skies. There was very, very little they didn’t soon see, although they kept a healthy distance from the walls of the human mega-cities and their trigger-happy wall defenses.

It naturally took him months to circle the continent and make contact with them all, and there were others on the far side of the planet he would like to visit, but didn’t have the time when the wars broke out.

It was the rocs who first saw the subterranean armored cavalry and mobile artillery of the ‘vores coming out of the depths of the salt-covered seas, later verified by satellites. Their motion-sensitive eyes, which could see right through the charged Haze well outside the cities as if it were not there, basically rapidly noticed every little change within their domains... details that the Ranthas were keen to capitalize on.

The Xenos and ‘vores had set up multiple staging areas in the wastes and out in the Spiked Plains, which the rocs had naturally spotted, and strike teams or missile fire had equally rapidly disposed of.

Ranthas hunting Sand Wurms and other goodies also made sure to notify the local roc or rocs, who would happily head over for the buffet being laid out for them... carefully out of sight of any of the non-Rantha affiliates, who the rocs were quickly enlightened about, wary of, and deeply analytical of movements through their territories.

It had already been more than two years since a crystal roc was killed by humans on Janus III, and it was all thanks to Gyre constantly talking with his big friends. Every roc had at least one Rantha or Briggs they glommed onto and were constantly looking out the eyes of, fascinated by human society, and repelled by the xenos and vore invaders whose devouring, dominating nature they could sense and see without even needing a psensitive to play it up for them.

---

Twenty miles away from the invaders and five miles up in the hazy sky, Shirekell noticed the new shadow in his domain, and the motion of invaders where none should be. Their shadowed, concealed vehicles couldn’t escape his notice, and his raptor’s instincts instantly noticed the predatory manner in which they dispersed, like hunters a-wing in search of prey.

Naturally, he asked his good friend Gyre about exactly what was going on.