Right about then, the Ruk Citadel began to move.

I could almost imagine the collective gasp of horror from the remnants of the Compact fleet. The Ruk were abandoning a position? They were leaving the Grimshield behind? The second Citadel was ominously quiet. Anything that had dared to shoot at it had been targeted by overwhelming firepower until it died, and the landing forces meant to seize it had been crushed by a heavy gravity assault that would have pulped any Ruk remaining on it.

The Ruk were leaving it behind, daring them to go and take it.

The Third Fleet was definitely not happy to see them coming. They were in the midst of turning around to address the Corunsun Fleet, and now... the Ruk were coming. They were slow, ponderous... and that much mass was utterly unstoppable.

The anvil was coming to hit the hammer!

Short and long-range firepower staggered, meshing and exchanging killing blows with the Corunsun’s interplay of the same. Corunsun ships pounded on the closest vessels, and long-range shots came in to finish them, and they could only watch it coming. At the same time, long-range needle beams, railgun kinetic loads, and missile fire reached out to harry the weak side of those ships facing the awesome close-range power of the main guns, providing the necessary power siphon for those guns to blow through the shields of the ships and render unto them.

Three psychic resonators sitting on the Grimshield’s hull began to hum, and the horror wave hit, right on time.

Every time it had come in, the Unforgotten had coincidentally been in the shadow of the cursed Citadel, while the Compact had to grit their orifices against the slamming impact. Now they had moved out of range of a certain proximity restraint, and the resonators powered up.

They were attuned to several sets of psychic frequencies and patterns taken from several ships removed from the Sargasso, and drew power directly from the anti-matter reactors still burning happily inside the otherwise silent Grimshield.

All of a second it wasn’t silent anymore. It was SCREAMING.

In High Aklo...

There’s facing a wave of psychic horror of cosmic origin if you are a psi-based species, and there’s facing one that’s specifically attuned to your bio-ships, organic tech, and, oh, yes, YOU.

The horror wave seemed to double, redouble, and double again. The entire Compact Fleet shook, shuddered, and quavered as overwhelming cosmic horror, the deaths of uncounted multitudes of their own people seemed to condense right down out of the Warp, and slam into them and their technorganic ships.

Some of the ships outright exploded as they totally lost control of themselves. Others activated drives madly, and Necrojumps tore apart space... totally out of control in this psychic storm, and so tore themselves apart. Uncontrolled drives sent the ships careening madly in uncontrolled panic and nightmares dredged up from all the horrors elder races could imagine.

Naturally their shields weren’t in much shape to handle defenses.

As their formations and layers of defense crumpled into complete chaos, the Third Fleet of the Compact was reaped with cold, detached precision... and hearts thumping with the fire of stars, the Ruk took that wave of fear, and made it their own.

“Trembel, oh ohhhh oh, Trembel, vir kommen...

“TREMBEL!

“TREMBEL!”

It rang out into the ether, a mocking challenge, backed with the thunder of a mountain’s guns.

----

Those members of the Compact who could flee rationally on seeing the collapsed situation did so, and managed to keep enough awareness to not attempt a Necrojump while the horror wave was assailing them with madness and making the weaker among their people erupt in mindless frenzy and self-destructive insanity.

I coolly watched the sensor readings clearing of hostiles. Some were kamikaze-driving themselves into ready guns, others blowing out from within as they attempted to run, or piloting themselves into patient Kuiper objects waiting for eons just for this chance to be the impact sites for their ships.

Equal opportunity vengeance-takers, the Ruk did not stop firing until there was not a single ship within the very, very long range of their guns.

Cantor, Master Sergeant Rikkle, and I got to our feet, flicked out Soulswords, hacked certain conduits open before the Citadel Curse could react to the fact that there was actually something living inside it, and tossed some vivic charges into the reactor feed before hitting the controls in precise sequence.

There was an instant of mass overdraw by the Curse as it tried to gravity-pancake us... and as it did so, the vivic blew through the entire system in an instant, and chased it right out of the systems it was attempting to corrupt, stopping that in its tracks.

The Antimatter Reactors powered down, and we promptly cut the hard lines to the command circuits and field modulators that could turn them on and were needed to sustain the reaction. The repair job for both would take less than ten minutes, as the Ruk knew exactly what was wrong, but it left the Citadel basically deprived of power once again.

A shuttle pulled up outside as the guns tried to power up, failed, and could only loom menacingly once more. Blip, blip, blip, the three of us teleported onto its hull, and it didn’t even wait for us to get inside as it smoothly accelerated, leaving us standing on its hull outside as we looked out upon the stars and void full of burning, tumbling wreckage.

I put my hand up to my ear. “Your Majesties, I have a business proposition.”

The two Ruk were in extremely good moods at the moment. The Crescents and MF-Gunboats from the Corunsun fleet were harrying all the Compact ships that had managed to lose their Necrojump drives, and the capital ships were flashing in to assist with the chasing. The Ruk were not good at pursuit, but the Mark feed and distant gravity pulses were making it plain the hunt was not yet done.

-What manner of business, Warlord Sama?- King Rargyle /inquired, curious at how I could be bringing up the subject so quickly. I noted the very deferential change in Title with a mental acknowledgement.

“You can do mass gravity sweeps of large areas with your Citadels, Your Majesties?”

-Aye, Warlord- King Rargyle /answered. King Engrad couldn’t do such a thing at this time, but silently confirmed at my polite inclusion.

“There’s a whole, whole lot of exotic materials tumbling through this battle zone right now. I can get a fairly sizable Solar Furnace here within an hour to start smelting and refining them down in real time. I’m aware you have foundries in your Citadels that could do this, but I’m talking a devoted fusion core and refinement engine at least twice the scale of yours, and floating free, not internal.

“That being said, if my furnace can take care of the brute refinement, and then feed them through your systems to further sift them, I think we could rapidly snaffle up a few gigatons of raw material fairly readily, and your enemies might well help you pay out just about the full value of what you owe us for our services.”

Their grim and ironic appreciation of the situation was reaching new heights.

“Fifty-fifty split on the raw materials, split it all, assign fair value on desired materials, and alternating right to swap?” I inquired of them smoothly.

My soul was gold. They knew I wasn’t going to take advantage of them, and I would hold to the spirit of a deal... as long as they didn’t try to twist the wording of it.

------

Shortly afterwards, waves of gravity began to sweep through the battlezone, and the many, many tons of matter tumbling slowly through it began to slow down and turn towards the source of it.

There was a lot of organic material involved in these Compact ships, but it wouldn’t last long under the starfire heat of the Solar Furnace.

The Grimshield’s people hustled back to their Citadel, made sure all the motile equipment wasn’t receiving power, and began to install the vivic generators once again, chasing the Curse away from the key systems once more.

The Zero Point Module that would form a temporary power source for the Citadel arrived at the same time. It would access a point singularity long enough to provide enough power to get the Grimshield back to Ruk space.

The Ruk were very forthright, and paid me what I was owed out of their stores, volumes of Energized materials that basically required me to bring in a fleet of cargo vessels to accept it all. This put a clear line between what we were making and what they owed me, ending an obligation and starting the cooperation out on an even footing.

Cantor and the Great Elder were engaged in theological discussions of great sensitivity during this whole time, the implications of which would rock the whole Ruk people.

They still had no idea that the Sargasso was home to a whole lot of dead ships, and the horror waves screaming out from the star only drove the point home that they didn’t want to get any closer to it.

------

Six days later, the Ruk relief fleet arrived.

There were four of them, three about the size of the Unforgotten and the Grimshield, and one that was half-again bigger in all dimensions.

All of them had scoring from combat on them as they came out of the phlo they were Dark Matter Driving. The need to replace their filters had delayed them an additional two days once the Compact’s harassing fleet had silently slipped off into the Void, but they arrived in good time and order.

We sensed them coming well ahead of time, and the flagships of both the Unforgotten and the Grimshield were there to meet the Everstand, Eldercry, Axe of Honor, and the Glorycrown to the area... which nicely headed off any misconceptions about humans being around the two Citadel ships.

To say the four Citadels were astounded to find humans working busily around the two Citadels, massive clumps of Compact ships being fed into a great solar furnace that was cycling out raw materials for the smelteries of the Unforgotten, was not an understatement at all. You could even say they were gawking.

Of course, having a Citadel that had been missing for ten thousand years showing up safe and sound created the kind of waves you might expect of such impossible news. Revered ancestors who had died in glory at the end of the great age of glory of the Ruk had returned, with all the implications that might have...

There was a Great Elder among the crew of the Grimshield, which had some implications for the Ruk people that were truly world-changing...