Admiral Corialefter was having a very bad week. No, month. And it was likely going to get worse.

Half his crew was dead or in cells. The rest were quietly seething as they abandoned Hurifaspace to its fate... five billion Imperial citizens, going to be fodder for the Xenosyms. They weren’t even allowed to give them the Imperial Mercy with an Omega Sanction, and deny the swarm its prize.

They were to form up and prepare to invade the seceding Khagan Sector and its upstart Duke. His ancestral Duchy was being similarly targeted by the Imperial Fleet elements from the Pharaoh Sector.

What counterparts he could contact from there had similar misgivings about this enterprise...

“Sir, the Silkspace Beacon is before us. We can emerge from the Warp in minutes.”

The tired Admiral, who had served his Empire and his Emperor loyally for over seventy years, could only sigh in resignation.

Taken from a war for the very survival of worlds and the people of the Empire, and thrown up against a Duke, who from all non-redacted reports was a heroic figure of boundless capability...

His oaths and loyalty had never been tested so strongly...

-----

The Hurifa Fleet tore open the Warp and exited the hell of otherspace in a vomitous mass of energies, thrust out of a space which thought it too real and back into reality.

“Sir!” the navigator blurted out, as the alarms began to blare.

Admiral Corialefter’s breath caught in his throat as the analytical engines threw up views all around him of objects in his space, in tactical range, preventing him from going into Jam.

Some of those objects were Imperial ships. Scores of them... hundreds of them, flaming, burning with actinic fires, tumbling hulks of dead metal and nuclear fire, shattered and torn apart by overwhelming energies.

Even more of those signatures were capital ships of unfamiliar design, but clearly human... and of massive size, with their broadsides presented to him and the fleet coming out of Warp.

They were outnumbered at least five to one. They were outmassed... by at least fifty to one!

There was the Celestial Tribute, the files they’d been sent clearly displaying a modified Expedition-class exploration vessel dating from the expanding years of the Empire. It had been heavily modified, true, but its call signal was clear and true, and there was no denying it.

There were five other vessels like it, and none of them were configured for exploration, with the size of those guns!

“THIS IS ARCHDUKE BRIGGS OF THE CORUNSUN ARCHDUCHY. YOU HAVE FIFTEEN SECONDS TO BROADCAST TO ME AN UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER OF YOUR SHIP AND CREW OR WE OPEN FIRE!”

The wrath in that voice, the hatred and loathing of a man who had to do so something abominable because fools forced him into it, seemed to shake the entire ship. His voice rang out over every speaker and bullhorn, every communication vox, and even the deckplates were rattling with it.

His crew was as paralyzed as he, but his Signals Officer, seemingly as unflappable as ever, queried politely, “Sir?”

He looked at the absolute ruin of Imperial Ships, blown apart as they arrived in the system, or perhaps even afterwards, given the numbers of the Fleet arrayed against them.

He wasn’t aware he’d spoken before he’d actually made the decision, and was slumping in relief. “Signal the surrender of the Brigantia, Lieutenant Bromwin.”

“Sir, sending surrender now.” He could have been sending out for lunch.

He watched as the Mauracia and the Donetta opened fire with a defiant volley and a “For the Emperor!” on all channels. Five seconds later, the incoming fire tore them apart into scrap metal and flames, the nuclear blast of the fireballs sending unrecognizable remains spinning in all directions uselessly.

Useless deaths, useless loss of a ship, useless trip, for a useless fight...

“LOWER YOUR THRONE FIELDS OR BE TERMINATED,” was the follow-up fifteen seconds later. No other ships of the Fleet made a move. Only a dozen of the ships of the surrounding armada had opened up on each of the defiant cruisers.

That voice was an inexorable as a mountain, and about as merciful.

The Throne fields that protected the ships while in the Warp were automatically shifted over to Interdiction fields to prevent hostile teleportation insertions in real space. Dropping them basically meant being boarded instantly by some very elite combat-ready troops.

“Drop the Throne Field. All hands, this is the Captain. We are about to be boarded. Do not resist. Stand away from your stations and await any orders from those boarding.”

He barely got the words out before there was a crack of dimensional displacement and the gust of wind of air being displaced by the entry of... several very large figures on his bridge.

For a moment he thought they were Legionnaires – Emperor, even the Legions had turned against the Empire again? – but no, these suits of power armor were very different in style and ability, although they mapped to equally massive individuals within them.

“Admiral, you will remain here. All other crewmembers, away from your stations.” The towering man in jet black armor, with one massive gauntlet bigger than the Admiral’s head colored scarlet, spoke with a filtered voice that nonetheless made Corialefter’s bones rock, and his cybernetics whine in protest and a haze of white noise.

Smaller figures came out from the middle of the press of large figures, moving with speed and familiarity as his bridge crew hurriedly retreated from their stations. With extremely disconcerting speed, the teleport alarms from a dozen insertions into his ship were shut off, power to key defensive systems was shut down, and all guns were locked down, sliding right past all the command codes that should be needed to do such things.

“Order all crew to head to the primary crew quarters decks amidships,” the towering figure in armor ordered flatly. “Engineering and forward are going to be severed from the ship. If they stay behind, they are going to get fed to the solar furnaces.”

His eyes turned to the screens, where he saw a trio of massive vessels, the size of cargo haulers, with forward maws open, large enough to swallow a full battleship, and the burning white starfire of a recycling furnace blazing in them.

A destroyed cruiser was being fed into it via tractor beams as he watched, quickly vanishing in the raging flames. A whole line of destroyed ships was being drawn into a queue after it in a steady stream.

No honor, just recycled waste, repurposed to a conqueror’s fleet...

“May I ask your intentions for me and my crew, sir?” the Admiral managed before his crew was ushered away.

“You surrendered, you will be treated fairly. We’ll seal off the hull and put you into Silk station. What the Empire does with you there is your problem.”

“Sir, if I may make a request?”

“Be careful, Admiral. We are not happy with you.”

The warning was steely. Corialefter was certain that if his request was excessive, he would immediately get his head blown apart.

“Now that we have fulfilled our duty and fallen in service to the Emperor, perhaps we might be allowed to return to our home system and lend whatever support we might?” he asked with all the courage he could muster.

“Hurifaspace has already fallen,” was the flat response. “I understand you already shot most of your crew who wanted to remain behind. If it were me, I’d drag you all to Hurifa III and drop you into orbit so you can experience the fate of the five billion souls being eaten alive that you left behind.”

Admiral Corialefter could have managed a weak reply about orders, but he was fairly certain he would die instantly if he uttered a single defense of his actions.

“As for your men, there are some opportunistic Marquis who are docking at Silk Station in anticipation of picking up ships and men for cheap prices. Perhaps they will have a use for you, because the Corunsuns certainly will not.”

And how the Empire treated failed flag officers was no secret whatsoever.

“Transfer over your command codes. We don’t need them, but we don’t want you getting ideas.”

The Admiral unclipped his Band after unlocking its files, and held it out. It was TK’d from his hand over to a young woman standing at the command console without even looking at him.

“All crew have fifteen minutes to return to quarters amidships before the ship is sabered. I suggest you all get moving!” the commander’s voice boomed over the speakers, precipitating a general surge towards the mass barracks and hangers at the middle of the ship.

The main guns were there, too, but the main power core was about to be cut loose from the ship. The guns would take forever to charge up, and would be totally vulnerable and obvious while they did so.

His Brigantia, his flagship, was going to be sliced apart and fed into a solar furnace and reduced to raw materials for making another ship somewhere, somewhen. He and his crew would be cast adrift, to fare for themselves before the merciless judgement of the Empire.

As he walked after his crew, he could only imagine what must have happened.

The Archduke must have moved as soon as the Empire started assembling its forces, and simply overwhelmed the Silk Road station and the planet below, as well as any ships that had gathered here.

They had either cut off or intercepted and returned any communications, basically turning the whole system into a gigantic trap for any incoming Imperial ships, who were already in no mood to fight.

They had lost the fight before it even began.

How could the Emperor not have seen this? Were his advisors so foolish?

Was it... was it the God of the Machine? Whispers were that entity has blessed the Archduke in his actions... is it truly so powerful that it could foil even the best diviners of the Empire, fool the best strategists?

This invasion is going to die before it ever begins!

He shuddered, and he looked out, past the hull, towards those hundreds of tumbling, burning hulks, men proud to die for the Empire, for the Emperor.

Now just fodder for a solar furnace, everything going down in flames...

He could only straighten his uniform and his cap, and stride towards his fate. It was with a strange sense of relief that he realized that it was all out of his hands now...