Onoelle made Mentuc put her down, carefully, and was glad when he didn't withdraw his support as soon as her legs touched the ground. She had gotten a bit too eager at the end of their sparring and had launched a nasty kick at him while he was busy turning her sister upside down. It would have been a nice hit, except he had taken one step back, closer towards her, and rather than hit him properly her upper leg had collided with his thigh. And when a soft, squishy thing hit a very hard thing...

She slowly shifted more weight onto her hurting leg until she got used to the pain and then took a few careful steps, relying on her nearby husband to catch her should she fall. When she didn't, which she was glad for, she walked towards the door while readjusting her clothes, covering her bruises as best as she could, not wanting to freak out Jane any more than the woman already was. She paused and turned to look at Mentuc, who shook his head slightly. For all the trouble he often gave her, his ability to pick up on her unspoken questions was downright magical. Now she could enter the house without worry, knowing Jane hadn't done anything inappropriate. Otherwise Nightmare would have known instantly and she'd have informed Mentuc within seconds.

'Jane? We're back,' announced Onoelle, taking care to hide the discomfort her body was feeling.

'Oh! Ah, hi Leonne. Welcome back,' came a far too timid answer, causing Onoelle to sigh.

She hated seeing this side of her friend. The usually happy-go-lucky, head strong woman had gone into hiding ever since she had confronted Mentuc directly. A small part of her couldn't help but remark that given how people typically ended up after doing that, her friend had gotten off reasonably well. She walked into the house and saw her friend sitting behind the bed, tapping away on her datapad. Instinctive behaviour, she realised. Looking for safety and shelter, even if it is an illusion. It was a cruel thing to analyse your best friend that coldly, but at this point there was very little left of Jane anyway and not just because of Mentuc. If even Nightmare was suspicious of it, then Onoelle knew her gut feeling had been right on the money. There was something else going on here and she was going to get to the bottom of it, but it would require a careful excavation of her friend's mind.

'How are you?' she asked, carefully, moving slowly both because she didn't want to spook her friend and because she didn't fully trust her legs.

'I am good,' came an equally careful answer, neither side willing to be fully open towards the other. The conversation of the night before had caused both of them to hardline their sides. Jane refusing to admit that the idea of murdering innocent people was retarded, Onoelle unwilling to accept such idiotic behaviour from her friend and calling her out on having a blind, emotional hate on people she had no relation with. Now that the anger had faded the two were less hostile towards one another and neither party was willing to risk reopening the hostilities.

'What have you been up to today? You've not been bored, have you?' In retrospect she should have asked Nightmare what her friend had been doing. Or rather, ask her husband to ask the AI. The enigmatic being didn't so much monitor Jane's surfing habits as that she was them. It would have given her a minor advantage in this subtle battle of wills.

'No, I've been good,' came the hurried response. The woman shrank as she realised what she said. 'I've been searching things,' she hurriedly added.

'Oh? What things?' pressed Onoelle, sitting down on the bed while facing Jane.

She fidgeted nervously, eyes rapidly darting back and forth between Onoelle and the datapad. 'The past,' came the vague answer.

'About the war?'

Silence.

'Jane?' Onoelle added, tearing apart the void that was forming between them with her voice.

'Yes,' came the demure answer. 'About the war.'

That was a victory. A minor one, but a victory none the less.

'Would you like some tea?' she asked, redirecting the conversation.

A bit of silence snuck back into the conversation before Jane finally responded with a whispered yes. Onoelle moved to the stove with more alacrity than before and was happy to find the fire still burning, a minor smattering of coals glowing softly as they provided the room with a pleasant warmth. She waited patiently as she began restoking the fire and preparing the tea, only partially distracted with the process. Part of her pride was prodding her and telling her to have a proper go at it, find out how well she could make it compared to her husband, but the majority of her mind was focused on the much more important task at hand. She didn't have to wait long, the water hadn't even begun to boil yet.

'I have been looking at the list of enemies that the Empire went to war with. The Novic Confederay. Brutan Alliance. Zelzut Union. Alchambrist. The list is really long,' Jane quietly said, a subtle nod that she still would not see the Empire as anything but evil incarnate.

'But no Kra'lagh,' Onoelle offered softly, not letting the conversation become derailed.

'No,' Jane sighed, looking dejected. 'Not on conspiracy boards, not in historical topics. The name itself holds no sensible hits either. A few random stories, but nothing coherent. Nothing tying them together.'

'So nothing?' asked Onoelle, feeling the hairs on her arms stand up. She wasn't a tactician but she was intelligent enough to be able to imagine just how huge the Kra'lagh threat had been. There had been more than two thousand of the Genesis soldiers, a force to be reckoned with, and both Nightmare and Mentuc had dismissed their own combat strength as unfit for mainline duty due to their small number. The Empire had been an enormous nation spanning thousands of worlds. For them to be engaged in a war where survival itself was at stake, the Kra'lagh had to have enormous forces at their disposal. And nothing could be found on them. Something or someone had deliberately hidden the existence of one of the most powerful races to inhabit the galaxy.

'No,' replied Jane, a bit of vigour returning to her voice as she talked about her favourite subject. Not much, but enough to give Onoelle hope. 'Which is almost enough to make me doubt they were real in the first place.'

Onoelle threw her friend a curious look, but the woman was biting the stylus while looking at the datapad. She looked concerned but not doubtful. It was hidden under an amalgam of other emotions, but present none the less. Good, she thought.

'I have also looked up the names of the battlegroups—' she trailed off and her eyes darted to the closed door. '—mentioned,' she continued, not saying Mentuc's name. Which Onoelle found fair. She couldn't imagine what it was to be on the receiving end of a Genesis soldier's wrath and was damned sure she didn't want to. She wasn't a trained soldier, facing death was not something she was qualified for and it was the same for her friend.

'As well as the admirals. The order classification. I can't find confirmed sources on the latter no matter how much digging I did, but I did find the rest.' Jane shifted again, visibly unnerved as she tapped away on the datapad, motioning Onoelle closer. She obliged and sat down next to her friend, wincing slightly as her bruised body protested and hoped that Jane hadn't noticed. She needn't have worried, her friend was far too consumed by the data scrolling past the screen. A lot of passwords were typed in and as Onoelle watched over Jane's shoulder she began to realise her friend had put considerable resources towards digging up the truth. She smiled at that. The fight hadn't gone entirely from her friend.

As a professional historian Jane had access to materials that were locked away from the public. The Imperial war wasn't a happy memory, but nobody denied the importance of remembering it. Never again had been redefined in the wake of the all consuming conflict and given that the galaxy had gone for centuries without major conflict was proof that the surviving species took the lesson to heart. To that end an intense study of the war had been greenlighted and massive archives had been constructed to give the researchers and historians access to what was supposed to be unaltered data that was free from political and personal bias. While Jane had never fully believed them to be free from that, she had always taken them serious. She had been raised well and a good part of her classes had been about how to avoid letting your own subjective views slip in, which were classes shared with the psychology students such as Leonne, but even more had been devoted to telling truth from lies. How to objectively and critically analyse the evidence at hand and dissect it properly until you only had cold, hard facts remaining.

Those archives were locked away behind several layers of protection, enough for even Nightmare to stay clear of them. Of course, if you had the passwords and weren't an AI who didn't care for having her existence revealed, all that protection wasn't an issue. So Jane had gone on a hunt, her innate curiosity and desire for the truth engaging in a running battle with her pure hate for anything Imperial.

After Onoelle had left she had done a bit of soul searching, her friend's unwavering conviction troubling her. She still didn't believe that her relationship with Mentuc was in any way positive, but if she wanted to pull Leonne away from the monster in human skin she'd need hard facts. Double checking some military reports while compiling a very impressive list of atrocities committed by the Empire as well as writing a minor thesis on just why they didn't deserve any pity and that their family lines needed to be erased from the galaxy just to make sure and because the survivors deserved some measure of justice, was a small task on the side.

She had gone into the archives expecting to find that Mentuc had been spouting nonsense. Instead she had run straight into a wall of facts and she had felt very violently ill for a good while. It all but confirmed her suspicions that Mentuc had Imperial ancestry. How else could he have known all that?

She jumped slightly when Leonne leaned slightly against her, her body still primed for flight, but relaxed when she was met with her friend's reassuring smile. She didn't hold it against her. Not really. Leonne had a penchant for attracting disaster in the form of events and boyfriends alike. And Mentuc… Imperials were scum. Monsters. Demons ascending from hell to wreak havoc upon humanity. Yet for all that they were also frighteningly capable, otherwise they wouldn't have held the entire galaxy in their grasp. Only their constant infighting in their ever growing lust for power had kept them from completing their crusade of annihilation and had, in the end, been their downfall, freeing what few people who had survived their atrocious assaults and giving them a shot at a heroic and near-suicidal counterattack.

Mentuc was one of them. Leonne, for all her smarts, was far more susceptible to abusive bastards than she thought. She had proven it time and time and again during her years at the university and it didn't surprise her that she had fallen for it, again. Except this time she really got the worst possible outcome. A fucking Imperial.

'Well?' asked her friend, jolting Jane back to the here and now.

'The battlegroups and their position were all present. The Novican intelligence made that clear. Icarus and Perseus were known in the area, but Nemesis came as a surprise. They didn't know they were in the area until an operation called Angry Comet was brought into effect. They hadn't really known about the latter, much less that it would be executed by Nemesis. Hell, they didn't even know that those bastards were in the area.'

'Is something special about them?' Onoelle asked, with all the innocence of a child.

'God yes!' Jane shouted. 'They were the best space force the Empire had. They were everywhere during the war! One of their worst as well, the atrocities they committed...' Jane shuddered as she recalled the estimated death toll. Once upon a time humans had coined the phrase that one death is a tragedy, but a million was but a statistic. Then the Empire had come along and multiplied that by a thousand. She shook her head and forced the thought out of her mind. If she kept thinking back on how horrid they were she'd only get angry with Leonne's stubborn refusal to accept the facts, which didn't solve anything. She had to get her friend out of here. Succumbing to anger over her ignorance wouldn't help anyone. She decided to disregard the little issue of her being a de facto prisoner.

'Anyway, that's not the point I'm trying to make,' she continued, redirecting the conversation. 'The thing is, all the information in that regard was right. So why can't I find anything on the Kra'lagh?'

'You don't think he's lying?' Leonne asked, sounding surprised.

Jane glanced at her friend, feeling her annoyance stir at the mere thought of an Imperial speaking the truth, but she willed it down. It wasn't easy. 'I consider it unlikely. I'm seen as an upcoming expert in this field. The battlegroups he mentioned aren't really known outside the circle of researches and Historians who studied the war, never mind the rest. There is no way for him to guess all that correctly. Or to even know of it. Unless, y'know,' she added with a snark in her voice. 'He somehow has family records that no doubt glorify the heroics of the Imperial Navy. That's what they're like.'

The look Leonne gave her made her shut up. It wasn't that it was vicious or even aggressive; it was calm, collected, mature, and made Jane feel like a child. As if Leonne understood something primal about it all that she would not understand in a hundred years. It was unnerving, humbling and served to annihilate all further anti-Imperial remarks she had ready at the tip of her tongue. Leonne didn't look away from Jane, her blue eyes wide open and her intellect and trust in Mentuc both shining brightly within them.

'So you are saying that he knows too much to just dismiss what he said as false?' she summarised.

'Yes,' Jane replied, swallowing further commentary. She knew better than to risk another frontal assault. 'Speaking of, where is he?'

'Oh, probably outside somewhere,' Onoelle replied, gesturing towards the door. 'Playing with Cassy or teaching her how to set up the tent. He moves it daily,' she said, smiling, before catching Jane's horrified look.

'You're hurt,' her friend whispered breathlessly, spotting the large bruise on her arm. Onoelle pulled her arm back, feeling terribly exposed. 'He hurt you!' she continued, aghast. She was staring at her friends with her eyes wide open in pure shock and horror.

'He is teaching me how to fight,' Onoelle defended. 'And most of these are my own doing. He's not the softest thing to punch.'

'He hurt you,' Jane repeated, more insistent this time.

Onoelle's face contorted in annoyance. 'He trains me. Shows me how to fight. At my insistence and I had to argue quite a bit to even get him to do so.' She winced when Jane grabbed hold of her arm, pressing down on a purple spot and hissed at her friend, forcing her to let go. She rubbed the bruise and looked at her friend, a sudden smirk appearing on her face. 'Why do you think I'm capable of beating you so easily now?'

'Leonne...' her friend appealed, but one quick glance at Onoelle's features was enough to tell Jane that this was a futile approach. How was it possible that she didn't see the truth for what it was? She was bruised all over, visibly hurting and she just dismissed it all. This wasn't the first time that she had learned 'how to fight' either. One of her short-lived relations at the university, one that Jane had bluntly ended by calling in a few favours from her friends in the rugby team, had caused her no small amount of bruises as well. And that had been nothing compared to how badly she was looking now.

'God dammit Leonne, can't you see you're in it again?' she asked, nearly begged. 'You can still go back. I'll help you. You can still break free.'

'You misunderstand,' sighed her friend, more tired of Jane's nagging than her bodily exhaustion.

'He'll always be an Imperial, Leonne. Violent and hellbent on death and destruction.'

'Stars above, you know nothing of him,' Onoelle hissed, the sudden burst of emotion taking Jane off guard.

'Because believe me, Jane,' she began, her voice quiet but no less serious for that. There was a subtle quavering that Jane couldn't place, making the comment become laden with emotion. Onoelle's eyes were clear and clouded with sadness as she looked straight at her friend.

'

There is nobody alive who hates war more than he does.'

He was counting on being the last of the assorted officers to arrive. For once the meeting wasn't scheduled in the gigantic strategic room on the dreadnaught; there were far too many people for that. Instead the logistics department had rapidly altered a freighter into a floating meeting room, filling it with slightly uncomfortable chairs, an internal network that had no connection to any outside source, several enormous screens that dotted the walls and dozens of holographic projectors, as well as a very impressive surround sound system that would probably result in the freighter being used as a cinema for the battlegroups afterwards. The men could use some stress relief.

Rather than being the last he had bumped into a high ranking spook. Typical for them she had not given him her name, merely smiled at him and let her dark blue uniform and rank insignia speak volumes. He had replied with a non committal grunt. He didn't mind Naval Intelligence, on the contrary, he knew how much their spies risked and how overworked the analysts were trying to break down the profiles of enemy commanders or their vessels, their command structure, logistics stream, anything they could get their hands on. Operation Angry Comet was built upon the intelligence they had acquired and he wouldn't have committed the millions of men and women at his command to this if he didn't have absolute faith in their ability.

What he did mind was their tendency to interrogate his soldiers and to be generally incredibly stubborn to sharing anything other than what they wanted to share. That, and they had an infuriating habit to show up in meetings that were supposedly secret without appearing on the list of invitees. He understood the why of it, their paranoia wasn't unfounded and there were many foreign intelligence departments out there who'd love to get their hands on one of their Imperial counterparts, but that didn't mean he liked it. Usually, he thought. But not today. He made sure his face didn't show it.

He walked alongside her, neither of the two Admirals exchanging words. He had expected one of the top spooks to show up, Nemesis was the elite Battlegroup and operation Angry Comet would see the entirety of them in one place so Naval Intelligence would be similarly committed to the attack. Several younger officers all but ran once they spotted the dark blue uniform and there wasn't a soldier that didn't freeze in place and offered the woman a perfect salute. It seems his own reputation was still offset by that of Naval Intelligence, something he quietly vowed to remedy. It didn't take long for them to reach the shuttle, not the one he had intended to take but given that Admiral Spook was accompanying him he had expected it, really. This was a high end stealth shuttle. He'd be surprised if the bridge even knew that it was docked. They were carded and probably scanned half a dozen times by the armed security guards that sported body armour in the same dark blue hues that their admiral wore and then they were off. It was a short flight and he was only slightly surprised when a very neutral voice he had come to associate with the Genesis soldiers came through the speakers, demanding their security codes as the shuttle wasn't listed. The pilots seemed shocked at having been spotted, but quickly obliged and a minute later the shuttle docked with the freighter turned meeting centre.

Admiral Verloff gracefully motioned Admiral Spook to go first. He wasn't being polite in the slightest and he knew that his counterpart sensed it. They had a decent psych profile on the enemy admirals, but they had a damn near perfect one on him. She didn't know what he was up to, however, but she was about to find out.

She didn't even make it out of the airlock before a handful of heavy repulsor carbines were pointed at her and her escorts, but not at him. He couldn't hide a grin, which broadened when the spook glared at him.

'You are not allowed on board, return into the shuttle,' came the emotionless voice through the filters of the heavy power armour.

'I am an Admiral of Naval Intelligence,' she said sternly, glaring at the soldiers barring her way. Normal soldiers would have jumped to and started to regret being born, but the Genesis troops didn't even flinch. Even better, they didn't even reply. They just stood there, motionless and menacing.

'Well?' she asked, haughtily, still not understanding what was going on.

'They're not going to move,' Verloff laughed as he stepped past the thin line of superhumans. 'You're not on the list.'

'Of course I'm not on the list!' she hissed, taking care to not step forward. The men in front of her looked as if they'd shoot her if she tried, her uniform be damned. She had never received such a cold welcome. That she didn't see any unit markings made things worse. These were soldiers that she did not recognise and that was anathema to the know-it-alls in her branch.

'I'm sure they'll gladly let you pass if I were to announce you as my guest, but I'm afraid I didn't catch your name, miss?' he trailed off, sporting a massive grin. He knew he was likely going to get some form of payback for this, admirals weren't above carrying petty grievances, but God in heaven he was having the time of his life seeing the spook so out of sorts.

'What unit are you?' she demanded, not dignifying Verloff's suggestion with an answer.

'You have five seconds to comply,' came the neutral response. Verloff froze, not having expected that to occur, then hurriedly stepped in between them.

'Don't insult the guest, boys,' he coughed, clearing his throat as he gave the female admiral a very unsubtle glance, making clear that if she didn't accept his proposal in the next few seconds they would open fire.

She took one look at the incredibly heavy weapons the soldiers were wielding, none of which had even wavered since they had pointed them in her direction and decided to err on the side of caution. She nodded. 'Very well then. I am Admiral Cindy,' she introduced herself with what was quite probably a fake name. 'Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Admiral Verloff.' Before she could blink the soldiers had melted back into the shadow and she couldn't suppress a shiver. She finally connected the dots. These were Frankenstein's men. General Eisel's very own battalion of crack soldiers. The infamous and enigmatic Genesis battalion. A unit so secret that Naval Intelligence was kept out of the loop, something that irked them to no end.

Without saying a word she accompanied her fellow admiral towards the meeting.

The storage space usually containing tens of thousands of tonnes of whatever cargo the vessel usually transported was now filled to the brim with thousands of officers. A handful of admirals and generals were present as well, reinforced by over five dozen vice-admirals, each of them either a second in command to an admiral or the commander of a task force of their own. Then came the captains and their second in command, thousands of men and women who steered the powerful warships of the Imperial Navy into battle. There were also other ground pounders, colonels and majors mostly and a handful of lower ranked officers that led special units. The enigmatic Lieutenant Dreamer was standing at attention as well, not quite hidden in a corner of the room. He was a bit too tall and rigid for that. All around the room were also another five hundred of Genesis soldiers, each quite easy to discern from the crowd due to their Svalinn power armour and the heavy repulsor carbines they sported, the only armed people in the room. They were technically present to provide security, which was a bit redundant even by the ridiculous standards of Naval Intelligence. They were in the midst of the massive Battlegroup Nemesis and in space. A handful of overpowered bodyguards weren't going to be of much help. That didn't stop the disturbingly quiet supersoldiers from scanning the entire room and keeping a very close watch on everyone.

Admiral Verloff took his spot in the centre with Vice-Admirals Lessirk and Gand to his side. Captain Lannic was standing right behind him, taking the place of honour that was rightly his as he commanded the Per Aspera Ad Astra. The displays jumped to life and the system of Lufer appeared in view. Nearly every man and woman in the large room was under his direct command and that was something that pleased him tremendously. He could be himself here rather than play the prim and proper admiral that he really wasn't.

'Men and women of the Empire!' he began in an official manner. Then he grinned. It was feral, primal and spoke to the hearts and souls of the soldiers under his command. 'And all you bastards of Nemesis. Welcome. This is the start of operation Angry Comet, which is a fitting name because that's what we'll bloody well be! The lay about of the plan is endearingly simple. Icarus and Perseus are going to launch an all out offensive. We're going to hit their lines and make them weep. They're going to fall back, crying, burning, dying. Confused and scared. Whenever they form up we'll slither around. Whenever they split up we'll devour them whole. But that's them, not us.'

He paced back and forth, the years falling off him as he stalked around the tactical display in a predatory manner.

'Our task is far more glorious, important and significantly more violent,' he said through gritted teeth, relishing in his role. 'We're going to bypass the entire front line. Any task force in our way is going to be in for one hell of a surprise when they spot our full armada dropping out in front of them. We'll make two stops to refuel before we hit Lufer. I want you to imagine the sheer shock and horror those bastards will have on their faces when they spot thousands of Imperials ships barreling down on their position. Biggest 'oops' in history.'

He highlighted the expected stop locations where they'd refuel and was now moving on to the final point in the first stage of the plan. The planet of Lufer and the headquarters of the Novican Navy, the centre that coordinated the fleet movements on the entire front. A wealth of defences appeared, forming a massive wall of red on the display. Satellites, minefields, a massive guard fleet, gargantuan space stations that could easily contend with a dreadnaught in size and mass, the planet had everything. On the planet itself were several heavy missile launchers embedded into the surface and hundreds of their lighter cousins were sprawled around the numerous shield projectors and their generator complexes. It was a fortress world, much akin to the average planet of the Empire, making it an incredibly tough nut to crack.

'Our first real obstacle will be the enemy fleet guarding the planet, the Second Fleet led by a Grand Admiral Kolpovka. From now on known as Kola because screw saying the full thing.' A round of chuckles went through the room. 'For the record, Nemesis has been thoroughly reinforced and we've bled but little. Sure we may want to all sleep for a day or so after playing hide and seek for two weeks, but who gives a damn about that? In the end we have a glorious three thousand four hundred and fifty-six ships. We have twenty-nine dreadnaughts, a full hundred and eighty battleships, three hundred eleven battlecruisers, another two hundred eighty heavy cruisers, four hundred eleven light ones, nine hundred and twenty destroyers, twelve hundred and sixty-five corvettes. Further I convinced the Council, which translates to me sending them a letter of acquisition, to part with forty carriers and I've been given a present I shan't disclose yet of another twenty vessels which will be incredibly fun to play with. Watch for fireworks folks, there'll be plenty of them.'

He paced around the display as it showed the long lists of units, hundreds of ship and unit names appearing on them. 'Joining us on this assault will be a few logistical units, which involves so many different corps that I've just sent you the list rather than spend an hour listening them all. These men and women will hang behind us with our frigates whom you notice I didn't add to the ship tally, will require our protection and are absolutely vital to the mission. Any ship that gets mission killed but isn't turned into subatomic particles or dust will be dragged along for the rest of the op. We're not leaving anyone behind this round. Similarly we're having the Fourteenth, Seventeenth and Twenty-third Armies tag along, as well as the Genesis Battalion, which for the record is a reinforced unit meaning there's more of the bastards than you'd think. Their transport ships will be amongst us as we attack, and I'd take it as a personal favour if you didn't get them killed because their command staff is on board and I'd hate having their administrative crap being shoved onto me. I prefer shooting enemies, not burying them in damnable paperwork.'

More chuckles followed. In the background Admiral Cindy nodded along. She hadn't known about the numbers that Nemesis had at their disposal. She had been close, but the final count was slightly off given that the reports only went to Admiral Verloff and that there was a decent amount of ships was running patrols beyond where Naval Intelligence had eyes. She had creased her eyebrows in annoyance upon hearing about the twenty new vessels though. She hadn't been given any information on those, even though they had been spotted in the midst of the gathering armada, well protected by a vast array of planetary defences and warships. They were as mysterious as the elusive Genesis.

She had spotted the odd one out in the room almost immediately. The only unarmoured Genesis soldier in the room was tall, imposing and gave absolutely nothing away in terms of facial expressions or body language. He seemed tense, ready to move and kill in a heartbeat, but most special forces had that look. His body itself was another curiosity that she desperately wanted answered. His eyes look wrong although she could not tell in what way due to how far away he stood. Then there was the sheer mass that he possessed. He didn't look like a bodybuilder, he was far too normal looking for that, but there was something that warned her that he could hit far above his size and he wasn't a small guy, towering above the nearby officers. His head kept turning around and he seemed to be scanning the room just as much as his armoured compatriots were.

Genesis, personal battalion of General Eisel, a doctor who had been seen as a key asset of R&D and was now rapidly gathering vast swathes of power. She had been aware of the attempt assaults launched on the Kra'lagh ships and had feared for her husband's life when he had been called out to join the third attack. She had understood the necessity even though she had hated it. Their goodbyes had been passionate, but all too short. Neither of them had really believed they would see one another again. They had been right. The sole exception had been that the attack had ended as a major success with all vessels safely transferring ownership.

Genesis had been credited with the victory and her husband had died bravely during it. She liked to think that she didn't hold it against the Genesis soldiers. That she had been able to attend his funeral and touch his body for a final time rather than have to shed tears over a name plaque was because of them, after all. But she was an honest woman and she knew that was a lie. It was unfair to blame them, but she still did. So she shouldered on, accepting her grief, accepting her imperfect emotions as a human and then shoved the entirety of that into the furnace of her heart to fuel her pure hate and desire to see the Kra'lagh and any other enemies of the Empire burn. That why she was here. To help Admiral Verloff and Battlegroup Nemesis to strike against a large bunch of traitors who stabbed the Empire in the back at the most critical of junctions. She didn't feel pity for her opponents, only sadness at the continuously mounting losses the Empire suffered.

And on the side there was the General himself, who was seemingly up to something she couldn't grasp yet, which had Naval Intelligence worried. The doctor was eccentric, which had been tolerated because he was mostly an unrivalled genius who had looked at the upper limit of Imperial technology, hadn't been happy with what he saw before promptly deciding to knock it up by several miles. His work in the biological field was especially amazing and the military had seen a mass influx of income after he had made a few minor gene therapies available to the market, shortly followed by a series of cures for annoying niche diseases. The Houses ran their merchant empires the way they wanted, but anything the military kicked out into the civilian field wasn't within their grasp and the taxes those products generated directly flowed back into the military's bottomless coffers. He had attracted more geniuses as well and his lab had quickly grown to lay at the centre of the entire R&D department, money and resources flowing in and advancements trickling out.

Lastly there was Admiral Verloff on the other side, a man who was a firm believer, if a bit of an unorthodox one, who frequently clashed with the atheist doctor about a million and one topics. Then Genesis had been called into existence and all of a sudden the two seemed to be getting along. One man was a scientist who held unrivalled power and who had climbed up through sheer intelligence. The other was a man who had started as a special forces officer and had raced up through the ranks by constantly fighting on the front lines and proving his skills every single time, no matter the odds.

Together they were a worryingly powerful combination and their reluctance to share with Naval Intelligence had the agency worried. Eisel more so than Verloff. The Admiral was a very straight up man in terms of morals. Eisel was more of an enigma and his computer security and reluctance to appear in public meant they had very little information on him.

Cindy was pulled away from her thoughts by the thundering voice of Admiral Verloff, or rather its absence. She rewinded her memories a bit and realised he had asked her about the enemy. She smiled kindly at him and stepped forward, gracefully accepting the microphone. She was glad for it. Spooks didn't like to shout. It was bad for their reputation.

'We have studied the enemy carefully and have made a psych profile on most of their commanders, including Grand Admiral Kolpovka,' she began, only to be rudely interrupted by Verloff coughing loudly and reminding her that he was now reduced to 'Kola'. She sent him a withering glare that didn't affect the boisterous man in the slightest, before turning back to the public.

'We have also analysed the enemy defences. The strength of their space stations. Fleet composition.'

'We're going to need so much ammunition guys. It's gonna be the party of a lifetime,' Verloff interjected.

She held back glaring at him again. He was taunting her and taking visible delight in it. It bolstered morale as well, further cementing the Admiral's reputation as fearless and inspiring the men and women under his command.

'In short, they have, by our last estimates, roughly six to seven thousand vessels in the vicinity when the attack will take place. Sixty-eight dreadnaughts and eight hundred battleships forming the heavy core of that. They also have considerable stationary defences. Forty-three Kaperna-class space stations that are surrounded by hundreds of satellite defences. each.'

'Really not a fair fight as you can tell, they don't even outnumber our Citadels by three to one and those space stations are sitting targets.. Poor buggers.'

Cindy fumed on the inside. She was young for an admiral, but the man's brazen confidence was simply infuriating. He was going up against a massive force that could very easily overpower Nemesis through the sheer amount of firepower they could throw at them, yet he was approaching the battle as if was a done deal. Then she realised why he was doing it. She recalled his psych profile. He led from the front and had gone up against supposedly impossible odds plenty of times. He was mentally preparing his troops. They were disciplined, well trained, the best of the best. Veteran crews and officers to a man, but they, like everyone else, were susceptible to morale. They were going to assault a fleet that outnumbered them nearly two to one, backed up by a fortress world that would further unbalance the scales. They needed to have an unshakeable belief in victory.

'Most of our information was focused on the ground forces, however. Three armies are down there, the First and Second Mechanised Infantry and the Second Armoured. Veteran forces. The enemy HQ is mostly located underground, everything you see on top,' she called up an image of the fortified headquarters. 'Is meant to deter attackers. Artillery, bunkers, minefields, honestly the approach is a tactical nightmare.'

'Lieutenant Dreamer?' came Admiral Verloff's interruption. 'How long do you need to breach it?'

Before Cindy could dwell on the strange callsign and the lack of using his name, the lieutenant replied.

'Sir!' came the loud voice, echoing through the cargo bay. 'Genesis will be operating on a time table of twenty hours, sir.'

That caused widespread murmuring.

'Twenty hours?' shouted the general of the Seventeenth Army. 'Have you lost your mind? We'll need at least three hours to properly organise after making landfall, let alone the time it'll take to actively approach the damnable thing! You'll never reach the HQ within twenty hours! You'll get bogged down before you even get sight of it!'

'Sir,' came Dreamer's response, unaffected by the storm of emotions that was raging all around them. Cindy caught the Admiral smirking in the background but couldn't follow. He couldn't reasonably assume they'd actually stick to that timetable, could he?

'Twenty hours is not our estimated time to reach target alpha, sir. It is the maximum duration for the entire operation.'

'To clarify,' coughed Verloff. 'The man means he'll be back aboard the troop transport after twenty hours. At most. From start to finish.'

That caused an utter storm to be unleashed within the confines of the cargo bay. The navy officers were chattering to one another, none of them an expert on the matters of ground assault but having worries of their own. They had to keep the ground forces from being obliterated by the planetary defences and preferably without being blown to the sky by them. Given the time table the ground pounders would operate on, this would leave them little chance but to launch brutal and costly assaults. The officers of the army reacted a bit more blunt and direct, outright calling them insane.

'And where the hell is your superior?' barked the general of the Twenty-third, finally managing to shout loud enough for the room to quiet down again.

'Sir, I am the highest ranking officer of the Genesis battalion, sir.'

'Alright!' shouted Verloff, nearly bursting some eardrums and forcing everyone to shut the hell up.

'I've already discussed the plan of attack with Genesis. We go in, crack a hole in their defences in a neat circle around the HQ, drop our ground forces and then we'll support the armies. Genesis will be operating on their own. And I won't be answering questions, they'll do what must be done and they'll do it in the timeframe they gave us. If they say so, it can be done. We'll have enough to worry about without people starting to eat their fancy uniforms on the account of the very soldiers who massacred a significantly superior force of Kra'lagh in order to hijack their ships!' he reminded the others. He gave the generals a withering glare. 'And I do mean massacre in the most beautiful execution of the word. They're still cleaning bug-bits off the ceiling.'

Silence returned to the room as those words were sinking in, along with a handful of chuckles from other naval officers and Verloff was damned glad for his reputation. Were there going to be doubts in regards to the ability of the Genesis soldiers? Of course! Did it matter? Hell no! They were a solo unit and they had actually informed him and him alone of how they were going to tackle it. They were going to hit hard, hit fast and slip through the enemy lines. Their small number would be an advantage in this battle as they'd draw little attention compared to the massive armies that would be landing and attacking from four directions at once.

'Now then, with that hiccup out of the way, let me explain just what I'll need everyone to do. Listen well folks, because tactics are going to win this battle. If we attack them like we always do our guns are going to melt off before we even get halfway through their damned fleet!'

A light round of laughter rippled through the room as the gathered officers shifted their attention back to their admiral and paid close attention as he disclosed his plans.

By the time he was done even Cindy was looking at the man with a newfound respect while simultaneously doubting his sanity. She knew better than to try to engage the admiral in a discussion about it though. She knew him well enough to recognise it was a lost cause. She would, however, try to have some words with the so called Lieutenant Dreamer. She didn't hold much hope, on account of how her other experiences with the Genesis soldiers had gone, but she had a bit more leverage with him. She recalled Herden mentioning the man. He hadn't intended to drop the name, but he had been hopelessly outclassed by her, thought it stung her that she had used her late husband as leverage.

To her surprise though, the admiral wasn't done yet, and as he quickly gathered the rapt attention of all present he began explaining phase two of Angry Comet.

The remainder of the evening was spent in relative peace. Onoelle didn't exactly use a lot of make up given that extreme exercise just reduced it into a total mess, but she still had some laying around and expertly applied that on Cassy's bruises, covering them up. She also explained to her younger sister to pretend that she was just exhausted rather than bruised. After a bit of bickering she managed to establish that, yes, the bruises looked really cool, abut it still was a really bad idea to show off her really cool bruises to Jane, forcing the younger girl to finally acquiesce. Cassy wasn't entirely unreasonable. She was simply a bit overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness, as she named it, that actually learning how to fight entailed. It was a good thing she was totally exhausted or the younger sister would have been bouncing all over the place.

After dealing with that risk and giving Mentuc the all clear sign the three of them had gone back inside the house and begun preparing dinner. Jane made her predictable retreat to a far off corner and kept herself occupied by glaring daggers at him, which bounced off him without bothering him in the slightest, while he guided Onoelle and Cassy through the process. It was a bit of an adjustment for him, given that he didn't rely on recipes but his enhanced senses to pick out an appropriate amount of herbs and he really had no way to translate that. It was instinctive to him, but his fully human counterparts had to rely on recipes and their much weaker senses of smell and taste.

It was made worse by his inability to properly enjoy food. To him calories mattered more than the taste, which didn't hold true for the Gyhad siblings, who much preferred taste over anything else. Onoelle was having fun, however, and her ability to understand her husband even when he ran out of ways to express himself helped her achieve a rapid growth rate. It was a soothing balm on her wounded pride, further helped by Mentuc constantly running into walls when he became lost for words. It was incredibly endearing to see him start half a dozen sentences with increasing exasperation before just sighing and shaking his head, giving up. She was vaguely aware of Jane throwing angry glares at her as well, but she did her best to ignore them, even if they still hurt.

Cassy got bored with the slow moving cooking fairly quickly and ran off to pester her sister's friend. She seemed less bothered after the minor beatdown, something Onoelle was slightly jealous off, and was bouncing around Jane in no time and trying to convince her to play martial arts videos on her datapad. Jane might have been annoyed at the entire situation, but that was quickly overshadowed by having to deal with a completely balls-to-the-walls hyper Cassy, who really couldn't contain herself and had gone from exhausted to all over the place in record time. Onoelle idly mused that her husband tended to have that effect on people and wondered how much of that was his innate training and how much of it was his personality. He was a leader who got the best out of anyone who worked with him, she didn't need to know his past to have discerned that by now.

Jane finally got some relief when Onoelle told her younger sibling to set the table, something the wild teenager rushed to do, nearly slamming headfirst into the cupboard as she kept looking at Jane and talking about the videos rather than looking in front of her, much to Onoelle's amusement.

Dinner itself was uneventful, with Cassy chattering enough to compensate for the silence of the three others. Mentuc rarely spoke of his own accord, Jane was perfectly content to sit, eat and dart furtive glances at him and Onoelle was still nursing her bruises and too exhausted to do more than just eat. She was also clinically analysing the results of her cooking. It wasn't as good as her husband, but it had exceeded her expectations and further improved her already good mood. After that the dishes were handled by Cassy and Mentuc while Jane retreated to her corner again and Onoelle took the time to take a much needed prolonged shower.

She relished the warm water running past her bare skin and was surprised when she looked in the mirror to see the large collection of blue and purple spots colouring her body. She had been hurting all over but she had no idea she looked this horrible. Cassy looked a lot better in comparison. She toyed with the thought that Mentuc somehow went easier on her sister, but had to discard it. The honest truth was that her husband wouldn't do that. He didn't pick favourites and if you asked him to train, he would push you to your limit. Cassy had simply been more reluctant while she had often launched an all out assault on him without holding back. He had punished her for her reckless aggression, but most of her bruises were of him simply blocking her strikes with his own limbs.

She was in a significantly better mood than this morning and she could understand why. Emotions tended to wane when you were kept busy, your body simply redirecting its priorities. Self pity didn't suit her and that was honestly what bothered her the most. She and her husband both had their own strengths and both of those were unassailable to the other, but her pride didn't accept the idea that someone outclassed her in so many areas laying down, which was incredibly stupid, but that didn't annoy her any less for it. Her husband didn't understand that, but tried to help in his own way. She had higher demands for herself, however. She was drawing up plans to regain the initiative. She had already begun with the cooking and would expand the front as soon as Jane had her own house, which would also mean Cassy would return home and she could start mentioning more delicate subjects again.

Jane, she whispered, her thoughts shifting back to her friend. The historian in her had reawakened and apparently more of her words had hit their mark than she had originally assumed, proven by Jane's double checking of the history. Her own knowledge in that area was dreadfully lacking and she'd have to ask Mentuc to give her a crash course. Or maybe even Nightmare. She shivered at the thought of the AI. Nightmare still frightened her to her core and she didn't assume for a second that the two of them were on a friendly footing, but the AI was helpful in a strange way. It seemed to make sense to her husband, but the concept of emotions not influencing your actions was an alien one to the psychologist. Psychopaths who interpreted emotions differently could act that way, but even then it was done with hidden motives in mind. She didn't know in what category the AI fitted or if Nightmare belonged to a unique one. The enigmatic once-Genesis would be helpful whilst simultaneously taking a multitude of stabs at her, but Onoelle was surprised to discover that a tiny part of her looked forward to it.

The AI had emotions and that made her fallible and susceptible to banter, which was a refreshing change from Mentuc and his inability to properly comprehend humour in most forms. Still, most of her wasn't looking forward to engaging in a prolonged discussion about the Empire with Nightmare, even if her rational mind knew that nobody was better placed than the AI. She would have to discuss it with Mentuc first. She'd have time in the evening, not like she was in any condition to do much else.

She finished off her shower and started getting dressed, changing into proper clothes rather than her nightwear. For one it was too damn cold to wear something that thin outside and secondly was that it was slightly too see through to comfortably walk around Jane with. Cassy wouldn't mind much, it wasn't that see-through, but her broad selection of rainbow coloured spots would probably send her friend crawling up the curtains while screaming in fear. Once she got out she found Cassy bouncing all over the place again, excitedly announcing to all who would hear that Mentuc was going to take her out to set traps in the wild! She threw her husband a questioning look.

'Our food supplies are running low,' he replied, a light note in his voice. She blinked and gave Cassy's boundless enthusiasm a more attentive look. Was her sister' wild excitement actually starting to affect the supersoldier?

'So you're taking her hunting?' she asked, a small note of disapproval crawling in her voice.

'No, only setting traps. We will do it in the early morning,' he clarified.

'What about me then? Am I just suppose to play housewife and prepare breakfast?' she asked, surprised at her own annoyance.

'I thought you wanted to do so?' her confused husband asked.

'Not alone,' she snapped back.

'Then you are free to come along,' Mentuc replied, not understanding his wife's displeasure. 'But we will have to mask your scent beforehand.'

Her brows knit in confusion. 'What do you mean?'

'You have a very distinct and noticeable scent around you in the morning. Animals would pick up on it and stay away from the traps. I already instructed Cassy on how to deal with it.'

'Are you saying I stink?' she asked, incredulously, getting a hold on herself and shoving her annoyance deep down. Had to be her time of the month rearing its ugly head for her to be so temperamental.

'I am saying you have a distinct scent,' he corrected her.

'You'll have to elaborate. And be diplomatic or you might find yourself sleeping outside for the night,' she said, a gentle smile taking the sting out of her words.

'Your nose is not as sensitive as mine, so you may not be able to tell accurately,' he began. 'But in the morning you smell of sweat. Strongly so.'

Onoelle had the decency to blush furiously as it clicked and decided to forego any other discussion by shoving him out of the door and wishing her sister goodnight. Luckily enough for her Mentuc let her do so otherwise she'd never have been able to get the big, heavy oaf out of the house.

'You and I are going to need to have a long discussion about what it socially acceptable and what is not,' she sternly told him after they put some distance between themselves and the house, to which he nodded seriously.

'Is this similar to when you told me that it was bad for me to be naked around others?' he asked, his head tilted in question.

'Yes, exactly like that.' She looked at him for a moment, knowing it was a genuine question, then shook her head in exasperation. She stopped. 'Carry me. My everything hurts.'

He picked her up, moving delicately to avoid her bruised spots. She sighed as he pressed her gently against him.

'Are you feeling better?' he asked. 'Compared to this morning?'

She gave him a weary smile, exhaustion catching up with her. She recollected today's events. The construction of the house, playing with Cassy, training with him and her sister, the conversation with Jane and her personal victories in the delicate field of cooking and felt her smile broaden.

'Yes,' she answered sleepily. 'I do.'

She was asleep before they reached the tent and therefore missed the tender smile that tugged on his lips as he looked at his sleeping wife. He took great care not to wake her as he slipped her inside the sleeping bag and then joined her.

Listening to the gentle rising and sinking of her breath he closed his eyes. Reassured by her presence, he slowly drifted off to sleep.