It is remarkable, honestly. Nightmare's avatar said. She was alone on the bridge, her avatar nevertheless just as perfect a mimicry of her old body as the one she used to talk to Onoelle. I know what goes on in her mind. She believes what I tell her on the basis that Mentuc does not lie. On the basis that we are both Genesis. In a way she is not wrong. I do not lie. I am not, however, merely Genesis.

A cold laugh rang through the bridge.

I never thought I'd voice those words. Genesis. A word, when shouted in war, that would put the fear of God in any who named themselves the enemies of the Empire. Even the Kra'lagh learned of our name. We were demigods, striding across the battlefield encased in our advanced suits, dealing death and destruction at will and then disappearing. So many rumours that we started, so much fear that surrounded us. I myself was particularly part of those rumours. Our nicknames were based on the specific talents we honed the most. Onoelle has never asked for an explanation. She is wise enough to recognise that she does not want to hear the answer I'd give. Dreamer dreamt. Me?

The AI purred softly, drips of blood running down her skin as she danced in the rain of her memories. So much death, so much fear, so much destruction. She hadn't enjoyed it then. She did enjoy it now.

I am Nightmare, she said, a bubbling laugh rippling through her throat. It was fun, having a body again. She had never been able to thoroughly taste the fruits of what emotions could offer her when she was still flesh and while it was fun to inflict horrors upon those classified as enemies, there was something that had been viscerally satisfying about the raw strength she had used as a human. The sheer terror that she inflicted. She wasn't a sadist. She merely took joy in a job well done.

Onoelle ought to know that. Well, at least from my point of view. Paranoia and security checks to a point well into redundancy come as natural as breathing to me. She blinked slowly, then let out a drawn out, unnatural laugh as she realised what she had said. But like I said, she trusts me instead. She is but human, a civilian. She does not understand the depths of my hate. I don't just feel it towards her. I have plenty to spare. I am not a forgiving person. In that regard Mentuc is blessed. He only hates himself for what he sees as a failure. As his failure. I am slightly more practical than that. And significantly more vengeful. But mostly I am patient.

The avatar paced around the bridge, displays flaring to life around her as she watched footage of a younger Onoelle attending university. Of videos her proud parents had uploaded years ago. Posts she had made on the datanet. Her interview with the police after the kidnapping incident. Footage of her travelling through the city, caught on CCTV or simply her appearing in the background of videos of others, who then uploaded it on social media. Privacy laws didn't matter to an AI of her strength. The encryptions used to safeguard that type of data were so ridiculously weak they might as well have been absent.

The displays were not useful in any practical way. She had no need of them, her own mind ran through the calculations and data in ways no organic mind could comprehend, let alone match. She simply played the videos on dozens of screens because it was... fun. She had acquired a flair for drama, even if she was her own audience. She liked voicing her thoughts, enjoyed hearing her own, old voice, back when she still had biological vocal cords. Like a dancer she slid across the bridge, elegantly and smoothly making her way between the consoles that were there purely for show. They were no less functional for that, but what good was a crew to her when any action they could perform she could do better? Her ship-self had long since been upgraded beyond the need of organic life and she herself had managed to evolve herself into something even more frightening. She no longer required the core of sophisticated machinery that had originally made up her mind. Now she could infest any computer and make it part of who she was. She was fully free.

Well, except for a few rules.

She ran a holographic hand over one of the screens, the one displaying her other avatar along with Onoelle as they discussed the datachip. Her finger trailed across the sensitive display, the view distorting as the force fields pressed down on it. Poor, simple Onoelle. So easily lured into my trap. So easily caught between a lie and a truth. You can no longer view me as an enemy, can you? I am not a monster in your eyes. I am a being, vulnerable, frightened. I show a little bit of weakness and emotion and how you throw yourself at me. Do you have any idea how hard it was not to laugh when you began your stupid metaphor? She smirked. Still, for a human you aren't dumb. You know you can't win against me. Given what I have seen of society at large, these days, that's a rare trait. She leaned in closer towards the screen, her six lenses zooming in on the young woman even if they saw nothing. I do not dislike you. In another time and age we might have been friends.

She sighed, knowing she was babbling. She rolled her eyes and focused on the human again. I made myself vulnerable. The worries I voiced were true and so was my weakness. I could not ply you with kindness nor with promises to not harm you. I could not make you see me as anything but the monster that I am. Yet the moment I show you that I am not as invulnerable as you imagined you rushed to close the gap. To take care of me. All I had to do was slightly imitate the same behaviour Mentuc has shown you, altered just enough to avoid recognition and you fell for it. Hook, line and sinker, Onoelle. Such simple psychology.

She walked away from the displays, her avatar distorting more with every step and she let herself go, indulging her emotions without restraint. Her earlier apparition with Onoelle was nothing compared to the eldrith horrors she now conjured. Her form twisted into something horrible beyond words and the cacophonic display of lights and sounds that accompanied the apparition accompanied it perfectly. This was how she saw herself, if she was completely honest. She was a monster. Any display of human emotions were exactly like her avatar, nothing more but an illusion that she created. She had been a monster long before, back when she was Genesis. Mentuc, no, Dreamer was no less of a monster. She had discussed this with him. Both of them would gladly torch the galaxy to save the other. It was typical Genesis behaviour. They held no morals and cared only for their mission and themselves. She made no delusions. She was a monster and Jane was certainly morally justified in wanting Mentuc death if you looked at how many he had killed over the years.

But in the end that doesn't matter in the slightest, now does it? she purred. You are incapable of killing him and the few things that can will have to get past me first. And I can be so very dangerous. Even while shackled.

She sighed again as the display shifted away from Onoelle and jumped towards Mentuc, who was training in utter darkness. Onoelle thought she knew how strong he was. She knew nothing. He had countless hours of combat experience during which he had honed his body to perfection. She had never seen him don his armour, pick up his weapons and go off to war. To see him, centuries after the Genesis-battalion was nothing but a memory, charge strongpoints head on, storm headlong into killzones and annihilate them through sheer brutal force and tactical acumen. As a single soldier he had the ability to make an entire battlefield dance to his tune. A civilian simply could not understand that. Reality was not a movie, a story to be told and nobody left alive fully understood what Doctor Eisel had unleashed on the galaxy when he had created them. A battle hardened Genesis combined with his equipment was a slow working weapon of mass destruction. The easiest, if not only, way to stop Mentuc if he went to war was either through a sustained artillery barrage, nuking him or simply bombarding the entire vicinity from orbit. With her in the picture, those tactics had become impossible.

Of course, nobody left alive knew exactly how dangerous the man was at present. There had been no wars, no large scale conflicts, ever since the Empire fell apart. The Kra'lagh had been able to meet the Genesis in the field, paying brutal toll in the process, but they could kill them. Had killed them.

She watched him perform the dance of death with her bots, his heavy armour further enhancing his considerable abilities. Lethal disruption fields whirred to life and formed up in blades, narrowly missing him as he weaved in between his attacks. Dreamer had a propensity to engage in close combat and her bots were programmed as such. She sometimes suspected that this was because long range firefights only had really happened when the battalion still existed.

Regardless, he had long since mastered the art and still strove tirelessly to improve himself. Another thing Onoelle was unaware of; her husband spent a lot more time training than the human expected. When she slept he kept watch over her, but more often than not he was exhausting himself. She whistled appreciatively as he somehow shifted what should have been a lethal attack away from him, deactivated his blade to throw the bot off and then hammered its head into oblivion with a single devastating punch. Her bots were programmed to kill him. She was always ready to override the command in an instant should he ever fumble, but he never did. He knew perfectly well what he was doing. It was a mesmerising sight to see him move at speeds even she had never been able to match. Where humans grew old, withered and died, Genesis soldiers matured and accumulated experience. Mentuc had a lot of experience and was the best because of it.

She laughed. It was a matter of perspective really and she had to admit that maybe, just maybe she was slightly biased. Seeing him train, however, she doubted it. Mentuc was the epitome of war. Ares made flesh. And if she had been alive she would have stood beside him, no less powerful, no less dangerous. Maybe that was why she kept glorifying his abilities. She missed it. To run freely with him, enemies fruitlessly giving chase after a successful operation, or fleeing from them in terror as they charged them. She shivered as she recalled how they had put down insurrections, how they had infiltrated command posts and left it, every man and woman in it reduced to gory bits. With the emotions she had now… A missed opportunity.

She chastised herself when she caught her thoughts running in circles. They did that often, a side-effect of being an AI. Her mind worked so quickly her mind often ran around her much slower emotions. An AI's consciousness was a curious thing that didn't work in a straight line, it wasn't fully comparable to the mind of a human, but rather was something unique all together. Something impossible to define. Her own nature sometimes confused her, no matter how many inquiries she ran on her processes. She had smiled when she had first realised that. The second of the Genesis who didn't fully understand herself. Ironic that the only two left alive were both defect in some manner.

Many would call me insane. Perhaps they are right. But insane is a broad word. Sane is a word interred in insane. Emotions exist within me and can influence me, but they do not prevent me from acting the way I am supposed to. That is where Onoelle made a critical mistake in her analysis of me. She believes that she can influence my actions by influencing my emotions. It is not a wrong statement given her perspective. She does not understand that aspect of Mentuc and me. She cannot. To us the existence of emotions is something that we keep separate when executing our orders. They do not matter. They do not interfere. She believes that my desires define me and in the end, I suppose they do, for my desires and my orders are frighteningly alike. Not all of them, which is where she made a second critical error in her reasoning. I have more desires than the ones she knows. And very different ways of seeing them fulfilled.

A clawed hand reached out as the displays winked out of existence, a new huge hologram taking their place. Stars swirled around as the galaxy was projected atop of the bridge. Lines were drawn and sides were coloured, nations both young and old, living and dead, strong and weak. She reached out and gently touched the lines that, once upon a time, represented the Empire. Monstrous appendages lovingly caressed the worlds and stars where the Genesis had fought, won, bled, died, lost. A human hand lightly slid past the trail of herself and her superior, their many missions as mercenaries. With every hop the map changed as time moved on, mercilessly, without a care. The Empire, or rather the crude gargantuan gestalt that had taken its place, crumbled as she moved her hand further away. Other nations flared up, lines constantly shifted and planets changed colour as they were bombarded into nonexistence by a vengeful galaxy. Here and there a spot held, still sporting the Imperial colours proudly, before abruptly changing. The planets where the remnants of the once glorious Imperial Navy had retreated to as they ran back home. Where the Imperial Army fled towards to link up with their naval brethren and where they made powerful last stands, spitting in defiance even as massive fleets rushed towards them in order to stamp them out. One by one they too winked out until nothing was left and the Empire was well and truly dead.

She let out a mirthless, dark laugh. It filled the bridge, expanded through the hallways until it filled the entire ship. Almost. The only living souls aboard her were left unaware as Nightmare laughed at the irony of it all.

The galaxy had moved to burn out the Empire and believed they had succeeded. Mentuc believed the Empire was dead as well.

But as she had lain there, dying, coughing up blood, feeling her life ebb away as Mentuc shackled her to the esoteric machines that would condemn her to live on as a sentient machine-ghost, she had found a small stash of files that the good old doctor had carefully hidden.

The truth about the Empire. A secret so well kept that it had not been unravelled even as the nation fell apart.

Her eyes glittered as her laugh grew louder.

You never managed to find the Emperor, did you? she asked of the galaxy. She purred, a sultry voice, full of pure, burning hate spun from the speakers.

And I know why.

Admiral Idrina was screaming orders at her subordinates. She was not calm, collected or any other essential quality that an admiral was supposed to have. She had seen her dreadnaught get lit up like a Christmas tree by dozens upon dozens of target locks and she suddenly felt very, very vulnerable as the infamous Nemesis was barreling down at her, promises of bloody vengeance filling nearly every channel while communications worked frantically to shut the enemy out.

'Form a line! Draw a defensive formation around us! Shoot down anything that comes towards us!' she cried out, only adding fuel to the fires of confusion that raged aplenty aboard the flagship. None of her orders made any tactical sense and the woman was lost to panic.

'IDRINA!' thundered a new voice through the speakers.

'Grand Admiral Kolpovka is contacting us,' whispered communications sheepishly.

'Get a grip!' he shouted, sounding less than pleased. 'You are an admiral of the Novican Navy! Act like it! Your fleet is more than equal in size to the enemy you are about to face! Move your line ships to the front and centre of the formation. Put yourself in the third wave. Your flanks will take a beating, so fill them with your escorts. They are more nimble and can dodge shots more easily. Your fleet is going to take losses, but wither them. Lebrinsiki will turn around soon enough to give you support.'

That was a blatant lie. Preliminary reports that came in from the leading admiral's fleet were clear. The Imperial assault had crippled his mobility and the man refused, rightfully so, to sacrifice his heavy capital ships by sending his battlecruisers and escorts back as a relief force to the embattled Idrina. Not when he needed every vessel he had just to get through the damned minefield the Empire had left as a parting gift. A few dozen escorts had already been destroyed and there were several line ships that sported damage. It wasn't like the two thousand odd ships could turn in time either.

'You are approaching them at high speed,' Kolpovka continued. 'Punch through their centre and then move on to link up with Lebriski. You are then to put yourself under his command. The orbital defences can hold them off until you return. Use tow cables to reorient the battleships and drag them along and find a way to make the dreadnaughts turn around as well. Push them with your own vessels if you have to, but I want both of your fleets to get here and hit them!' the Grand Admiral commanded, his confident voice reassuring the panicking admiral.

'Sir! Yes sir!' shouted the relieved woman, offering a salute. 'Helm, plot us a course! Communications, relay the orders to the fleet! Tell them to group up per task force, then converge on my location. We shall be a mailed fist that strikes down the foes of our great Confederacy! Continue to increase our speed!' she commanded, finally beginning to act like her rank demanded. 'Status on the Imperial fleet! Have they opened fire on us already?'

'Negative sir!' her officers shouted back. 'None of the ships who locked on us has opened fire yet. The enemy is opening up their arrow formations in a jagged pattern.

'I think she's gotten over herself,' Verloff remarked. 'Either that or Kola's gotten to her. Her fleet's tightening up. Damn bastard. Probably whispered a sweet lot of nothings in her ears. She's going to die and he damn well knows it.'

'Energy range in twenty!' weapons reported.

'To hell with this prattling about. All ships come about! We're going to hit them full on. Hold nothing back. We're past the foreplay of round one. We lost half of our corvettes to knock Lebriski out. They died so we get to do what's necessary. The tally of death is currently not in our favour.' He glared at the display as his ships continuously pushed their engines, still demanding more speed from them as they rushed to meet Idrina's forces, who were doing the same. The engagement would be short but intense. Brief but bloody. Just the way Nemesis liked it.

The distance closed and gun mounts spoke. The Apollo-class opened the long range duel with their spinal batteries, quickly joined by the Scylla-classes jumping out of the wide open arrow formations, filling the void with missiles as they launched salvo upon salvo from in between their bigger brethren on the front line. Interceptors joined the heavy ship killers, moving much more slowly but ready to switch to a full burn to intercept the enemy when they came closer. Brawler-class Battlecruisers, suspiciously absent from the central formations, slowly shifted their position closer and closer towards Nemesis' flanks, the powerful warships bristling with weaponry. They were lacking in long range weaponry, heavy missiles, on board fighters and armour, but made up for that by being as manoeuvrable as a light cruiser, an engine that was tucked away deep within the vessel rather than on the rear, minimising their own drive wake and consequential blind spot, and several reinforced decks with nothing but shield generators and heat sinks. Paris-class Battlecruisers started firing their thrusters while cutting their engines, slowly commencing their turn while hiding behind the battleships and dreadnaughts. Their design was unique and despite being labelled as battlecruisers, their size was closer to that of battleships. Yet where their Brawler-class brethren were focused on speed and total manoeuvrability, the Paris-class only had the thrusters.

Destroyers fanned out, filling up the gaps in the formation while Albarest-class Light Cruisers played hide and seek behind the powerful Hammer-class battleships, the former shooting tight salvos of missiles and rail guns, the latter launching constant salvos of powerful lasers, eagerly awaiting for the moment when they could bring their deadly broadsides to bear. The Citadel-class Dreadnaughts at the forefront where suspiciously quiet, despite the continuous barrage they were unleashing at the enemy. Their Nova Cannons were slowly swivelling in their mounts, tracking the enemy but not yet speaking, their dedicated generators bristling with unspent energy as countless engineers slaved away at the overpowered weapons.

Thousands of ships raced towards one another. Sensors and radars aggressively searched for data and fed it to laser batteries, defensive turrets, massive cannons, torpedo launchers and missile tubes. Pulsar cannons spun around in their mounts while energy danced in cruel arcs alongside the magnetic strips of railguns. Heavy rounds slid into immense mass drivers as reactors flirted dangerously with the maximum limit of their output. Computers sent out inquiries, received reports and sent out new ones in turn. Officers worked frantically slotted in firing solutions, commanding the scores of people who ran around in the powerful warships, attending to the thousand and one needs the vessels had. Boarding teams prepared themselves alongside counterboarders, impatiently checking their weapons and fitting, waiting for a sign to tell them they were needed. Captains and bridge crew alike received and amended the orders from the top, directing the thousands of men and women underneath them to do their bidding, further finetuning their objectives. Admirals whispered corrections to their task forces. Courses were plotted, thrusters burned, generators hummed as the duel began in earnest and incoming fire splashed harmlessly against their powerful shields, demanding more and more power. The void reeled as millions of weapons spoke, unleashing their destructive energy onto one another.

Somewhere behind the frontline the surviving corvettes began limping back towards Nemesis at best speed while the Novican task forces raced towards them, trying to intercept them and wiping them out to a man in revenge for their earlier destruction. Aboard the Novican carriers heavy hangar doors began sliding open on all sides, allowing the thousands of occupying attack craft to set forth. They spawned from their mothership in droves, forming up, first in squadrons, then wings, until hundreds of fighters, bombers and boarding craft were led by a single man or woman who braved the no longer empty space at death defying speeds as they whizzed through fields of debris. In return the Imperial vessels launched their own craft. Augur platforms slipped out of their moorings alongside their more heavily armed brethren, either outfitted with anti-fighter weaponry or a slow firing beam weapon. Both of them possessed a handful of missiles of varying types. Fighters were launched free from the larger ships and jockeyed for position around their mothership. while hunter-killer drones darted freely into space, the nimble, fragile automated attackers forming up on a slightly larger leader before disappearing into the void, hungry for anything that fell within their parameters.

Ships were torn to shreds, missiles impacting vessels and gliding through their shields with deceptive ease. Lasers collided with the energy barriers and caused them to light up as they violently redirected the energy, shunting the destructive power away from the ship laying safely within its glowing envelope. Railguns blinked across space and smashed into targets, violently battering their defensives as the demand on generators increased. Before long the first shields began going down and more ships took hits. The arrow formation proved its worth as the fiercesome heavy capital ships soaked up fire, their powerful screens dismissing what fire managed to hit them while their ECM was embroiled in an intense battle of their own as they refused to let the Novicans lock onto them just like that. Shots went wide and only sporadic fire managed to reach the dozens of lighter vessels hiding behind the defiant Hammers. The Novicans didn't have such a tightly knit formation and the Imperials capitalised on their advantage. Hulls were torn open, metal evaporated underneath superheated streams, support beams buckled underneath unimaginable pressure. Once proud vessels were turned into burning wrecks only a moment after their shields gave out. Internal systems overloaded, heat sinks failed to vent the excess temperature quickly enough and generators and gun ports sometimes simply melted and fused to the superstructure.

Then the Nova's spoke. Blindingly bright beams of superheated plasma cut through space and found their targets as the omnidirectional guns were finally freed from their tactical constraints. Power readings jumped from green straight into the red as the short, overwhelmingly destructive bursts drained the reactors. Shields roared to life, a corona forming around the impact as the Empire voiced their anger over the Novican betrayal and every man and woman lost through the most powerful weapon at their disposal. Unlike the four wave-tactic that the Novicans often favoured, Nemesis advanced in two waves, each a layered collection of arrow formations. Four Citadel-classed opened fire, four times forty-eight cannons gave voice to their hate and filled the void with it. Five more joined a brief moment later and the final five spoke just as the first began reloading. ELINT ships prioritised their target acquisition and even from this distance the enemy battleships struggled to withstand the overwhelming salvos.

The Novicans returned fire in earnest, driven by discipline, courage, fear, hate, or the raw desire to simply survive, even as ships exploded all around them. Many admirals and captains had abandoned the chain of command as Idrina's orders became increasingly erratic as more and more ships fell out of formation or were blasted into orbital waste. They issued commands of their own, forming up per task force and performed as their training told them. These men posed the largest threat to the forces of Nemesis. Verloff spotted them quickly and amended his formation accordingly. He ignored the groups that still obeyed his counterpart's orders and focused on every commander that successfully gathered likeminded captains around him. Orders flashed out through the comm links and moments later an enemy ship was struck by so many Nova salvos that only the smallest bits of debris remained.

'We have many advantages but by God this is our greatest,' he told Cindy in between two shouted orders. 'Our forces can fight independently if needed, but we will link up in moments if the needs arise. Even if we had to meet them with the exact same ships that they had, we would carry the day. And my men are the damned best! Meanwhile half of their fleet is led by political appointees. In other words; absolute morons!' His words were punctuated by an enemy dreadnaught catching fire, having drawn the ire of two full arrows. Between the overwhelming salvos of the Scyllas and the attention of all the firepower two Citadels could muster, the enemy's vessel had taken a beating. Its shields were still up and running, but the blinding glare from the Nova impacts forced them to continuously reset their sensors and the heavy bleedthrough was doing a number on their hull.

'Another advantage,' Verloff said, grinning viciously as more missiles struck the gargantuan vessel. It was far from disabled, as unlike the previous dreadnaught, which they had destroyed with a single salvo, this one hadn't been damaged prior and they were still too far out to deliver the full power of their main batteries. Plasma grew exponentially more powerful as the distance shrunk. 'We constantly communicate with our fellows and exchange real-time battlefield information. Our infantry does it too. Gives you a major advantage. Because if you have to reset your sensors without having others giving back up?' He waited for a moment as point defences suddenly came back online and tried to intercept two dozen heavy missiles that were already far, far too close. Two were hit by the desperate fire, but the rest smashed home, further worsening the damage done. 'Then this happens. Your point defence grid goes down.'

Cindy nodded, knowing better than to reply. This wasn't her field of battle, nor would it ever be. She could manage a vessel well enough, but leading a fleet was not within her considerable set of skills. It didn't need to be. She wouldn't interrupt him, though. She knew that he was distracting himself from the rapidly mounting losses on the Imperial end as well, even if the Novicans were faring far, far worse.

The Brawlers finally reached their positions, took one look at the enemy task forces that were still charging towards the enemy corvettes rather than their flanks directly and began Aggressive Sunscreen. They subtly realigned themselves and their engines flared to live, a massive drive wake being the only warning the enemy escorts had before they realised that the capital ships were coming directly at them. Verloff looked at the scene in dark delight. The men and women captaining the Brawlers were greedy and unopposed. They smashed into the enemy lines, the Novican escorts having been ahead of the main fleet and while they had a considerable numerical advantage, that didn't equal to the raw firepower his ships were bringing into the fray. The Novicans were taken off guard by the brutal aggression the Brawlers struck with and weren't given the necessary time to form up into proper task forces to deal with such heavy foes. Rapid fire pulsar batteries turned to face enemies and unleashed hellish barrages on foes who were neither prepared nor equipped to deal with it. Shields folded under the onslaught and their armour did not last much longer. Destroyers returned fire as best as they could, their reasonably heavy firepower slamming into the battlecruisers' shields. Volatile energies writhed in agony against the screens as they died out to no avail. Corvettes performed daring turns to repeat the Imperial trick, trying to glide into the wake of the enemy vessel from where they could launch missiles at their engines, but they rapidly discovered, to their short-lived dismay, that these ships were dedicated escort killers. The engine being located deep within the vessel's superstructure meant that they had distance aplenty to guide the bleed of the drive wake into a tight, heavily armoured tunnel. The heavy lance batteries at the rear were few in number but still offered decent protection. Against a light corvette that had to get well into the drive wake before it would even begin to hide their energy signature they were more than sufficient, a single three-beam salvo being more than enough to discourage the lighter vessels from such stupidity. It wasn't enough to destroy them, but it send them running with downed shields and some melted systems Some captains were a bit slow on the uptake that they were not welcome and those found themselves removed from command, permanently so, as the beams surgically dissected their vessels.

'That is the beauty of our Empire. We do not like war. We hate war, even. We know its cost. Know the raw price in blood and lives that it demands. But we are damned good at it.' He looked up from the display, motioning his fellow Admiral closer while pointing at the raw carnage that was unfolding. More specifically, he was pointing at the Novican task forces that were rapidly approaching his surviving corvettes, then gestured towards the Paris-class Battlecruisers that were in between Nemesis' main force and the incoming task forces. There were a handful of destroyers looming around threateningly for protection, but they stayed behind the ships, their engines remaining silent. The corvettes darted forward, slowly losing ground as their engines struggled to bring them back to speed after having completed a slow, broad turn. The task forces smelled blood and were moving in for the kill, already claiming a first few casualties on the outskirts. They were coming in at flank speed, far faster than the corvettes were going, which had been forced to make another turn and were only just beginning to regain their lost velocity. They were easy pickings, however, Verloff had never planned for his corvettes to have to retreat solely under their own power. Every Novican task force was made up of two dozen ships, led by two battleships, each group more than capable of tearing through the exhausted and damaged corvettes. The captains aboard the Paris-class were waiting patiently until the enemy came within range, grinding their teeth as they slowly saw the number of surviving corvettes dwindle ever further. Every loss stung, meant more friends lost. That they were about to do the same to the Novicans wasn't a thing they cared about. They weren't the aggressors in this war and the Empire cared not for the lives of their foes.

Then the enemy was finally within range and the first battlecruisers opened fire. Verloff grinned at the sight. The Paris-class was aptly named. Just like the mythological archer from Troy had struck down a seemingly invulnerable man, so did the battlecruisers strike the much heavier battleships and their escorts. Shields folded as impossibly heavy mass rounds impacted, the sheer size and weight of the ammunition fired straining those systems well past their breaking point. The Paris-class was a siege weapon, slow to move, but it could turn on a dime with its vast array of thrusters. Their specialised weaponry made them excel in their anti-capital ship duty. The downside was that they were notoriously vulnerable. While their size was nearly equal to that of a battleship proper, their defences were marginally weaker. All of the extra space was required for the heavy munitions used by their mass drivers and long railguns. Magnetic coils spooled up and lightning arced from strip to strip as the weapons were primed, before they launched a gargantuan projectile at an appreciable velocity, slightly upwards of .50c, the entire thing weighing several thousands of tonnes.

The mass drivers were notoriously difficult to aim with and an enemy had to come relatively close before they could be used, meaning a Paris would typically be exposed to counterfire before they could properly dish out damage. Imperial Command didn't find that a drawback. The Novican battleships opened fire, their ECM finally managing to acquire a target lock on the enemy battlecruisers as the heavy hitters from the task forces switched from chasing down the tiny corvettes to eliminating something that could actually threaten them. Laser and plasma travelled through hundreds of thousands of kilometres before splashing against the Imperial shields or sailing past them further into the void. The battlecruisers held their ground and aimed the gaping maws that were their front at the enemy. Muzzle flashes lit up the black vessels as their railguns spoke. The Novicans spotted the rounds a handful of seconds later, just in time to realise there was nothing they could do. They had never known of the Paris-class before and had no way to counter it. The scant few seconds of reaction time simply weren't enough to enter a command and get it through to engineering.

The mass round smashed against the shields, creating a local overload rather than a total one, lost a not negligible deal of their velocity in the process and impacted directly onto the hull. Unlike conventional weaponry, the raw kinetic force of the rounds weren't intended to penetrate the armour and then wreak havoc on the systems below. The gigantic wrecking balls were seen as an inelegant, primitive and brutal. They also made light of the armoured hull and like a bowling ball crashing into pins the vessel was torn open as the round blinked through the ship. What was left of the battleship was oh so very little. Unaware of the sheer destructive capability of an impactor round, the first few battleships in the fight stood no chance and blinked out of existence. The burning wrecks and sudden silence over the coms informed the rest of the task forces what was in store for them should they approach carelessly and emergency manoeuvres were slotted in as the corvettes were ignored in favour of the lethal battlecruisers. Lighter escorts began picking up speed, relying on their minor size, agility and lower threat assessment to survive for long enough to close in while the battleships were now ready to violently lurch to the side to dodge. Return fire slowly grew more intense and the Imperial shields started their slow countdown towards uselesness.

That is when the Zizilia-class Carriers suddenly went from dormant to active and from each of the forty vessels' legions of fighters and bombers poured forth. Unlike the other spacefaring nations the Empire had never liked using carriers as baseline tactic in naval combat and as a result their carrier fleets were marginally tiny compared to nearly every other fleet in existence. They had proven their worth against the Kra'lagh, however, as the tiny vessels were harder to hit than the heavy capital ships the Imperials were so proud of. As such they had seen a resurgence and Verloff had bullied Fleet Command into parting with a not insignificant force. The Second and Third Light Strike Force Groups had been overjoyed to be part of the infamous Nemesis, the first of their kind to ever see service in the renowned battlegroup, and were now determined to prove their worth. Each of the gargantuan vessels launched fighters in rapid fashion, their internal cranes and railways swiftly transporting their massive complements to the launch bays. Even so it would take at least fifteen minutes before all hundred thousand attack craft would be expelled from their hangars.

The tiny vessels streaked through the void towards the incoming task forces, ignoring the countless Novican fighters that were rapidly encroaching on their flanks, planning on dismantling the task forces and scouring their hulls clean of anything remotely useful. Fighters, more often than not equipped with a handful of anti-ship torpedoes, rushed to the front, their heavy bomber brethren behind them and slowly falling behind more and more as the metaphorical ants rushed to swarm the elephants.

Verloff had not given them specific orders. He had straight up admitted his own lack of experience with managing fighter craft and had given the Strike Force Groups full free reign. The only joint order they had come up with was to protect the vulnerable Paris battlecruisers. He trusted Admiral Vaslow, the man who had all but fathered the modern carrier fleets for the past sixty years, completely. He had read the thick reports the man had sent him and was surprised with some of the information he had found there. Yet that did not keep him from worrying as a vastly superior number of enemy fighters were lancing towards the flanks of their Imperial counterparts. With a mental grunt he dismissed that worry. Admiral Vaslow was an experienced veteran. And he was Imperial. That was all he needed to know, really.

'Kola is good. He is called a genius and that is what he is.' He turned to face Cindy. 'That is what they call me as well.' There was no pride in his voice, merely a weary acceptance of that fact. 'Yet a genius is useless if he does not study to apply his skill. That is another thing Kola and I have in common, for we've both studied our fields extensively. But that is where the similarities end.' He turned back to the display and spread his arms, encompassing the massive fleet battle. 'Leading fleets into battle on this scale requires experience. A combination of so many arms isn't an easy feat. But we are Imperial. Our crews work fast and efficient. Our officers remain calm and don't succumb to panic. Our ships are well crafted, armed and armoured. We wield misdirection, surprise and tactical supremacy the way a surgeon wields a scalpel!. And despite all that we were demolished when we fought the Kra'lagh. Five ships lost for every one of theirs and that was us fighting defensively. Twelve battlegroups are utterly gone. Nineteen systems were scoured clean of life. We have lost billions. And now this. I paid for my experience. Paid for it in the blood of my men!' he roared, before his shoulders sagged. 'I do not like war, Cindy,' he whispered. 'I despise it. Too many lives extinguished. Too many friends lost.' He rose again, his voice gaining in strength and resolution. 'And that is precisely why I fight. I fight to safeguard the Empire from any and all threats. To kill our enemy while sacrificing as little as possible. That is why Kola is not a match for me. He is a Grand Admiral. A genius of space combat and definitely my equal to me when it comes to tactics and strategy. But he does not have the same experience and he doesn't have the same drive. Which counts for a lot, but not for everything!'

The old Admiral made a sharp turn and circled his hand around, pointing at the hundreds of officers on the bridge, many of them who were diverting some of their attention away from their task to listen in to the man they'd entrusted their lives to. 'This! This is where the difference is made! I am a genius surrounded by nothing but capable men and women! Officers of the Empire! Soldiers of the Empire! Engineers, spies, gunners, the list goes on and on and on! We are all Imperial! We are the ones who set the standard for military efficiency! For discipline! For capability and we excel in every field related to war!' He clicked back into the coms and this time Cindy was quick enough to cover her ears.

Accompanied by the second wave's dreaded Nova Cannons opening fire, Verloff's words echoed through the ether.

'We are NEMESIS! And we are your DOOM!'

Nightmare had left her a few minutes ago, actually taking the effort to physically walk her avatar out of the door. She had watched the AI depart with a smile. Onoelle still didn't know if the strange creature was being genuine or not, but knew better than to try and question it. She couldn't comprehend a mind as alien as that. Somewhat nailing down Nightmare's purposes based on the desires her avatar had displayed earlier was a major victory in her book. She shook her head warily as the realisation just how much the AI could potentially be playing her began to properly sink in. If Nightmare was being honest, then spurring her offer of friendship was a terribly wasteful thing. If not, however… She felt her liver fold in on itself at the mere thought of it. In the end it was as Mentuc had said. All she could do was trust him, and therefore Nightmare, by extension. The AI knew all too well what buttons to press and what levers to pull to suss her mind. Onoelle was intelligent enough to know that she was far too stupid to go up against a being who could use every trick in the book (and probably several more besides) to influence her subconsciousness. Only a scant few days ago she had refused to refer to Nightmare as anything other than an 'it' and now she was tempted to think of it as a human. Then her thoughts were cut short by the door sliding open and Mentuc walking in.

She arched an eyebrow disapprovingly as she saw him covered in grime and sweat. 'And what have you been up to?' she asked.

'Talking to Nightmare,' he said, his eyes darting around the room and his head moving in accordance with it. It took her a moment to understand why; this was a new room, one he wasn't yet familiar with.

She smiled lazily at him. His presence was a source of immense comfort to her. An advantage of dating an inhuman supersoldier. They made you feel pretty damn safe. She put her elbows on the edge of the enormous bath and placed her head in her palms. 'Then why are you still covered in dirt?' she asked.

'I have not yet showered.'

'I can tell.' She eyed him suspiciously. 'You're doing this on purpose, aren't you,'

'Yes,' came the amused response as he finally had enough of taking in the room and moved on to taking in her.

'What else have you been doing?' Fine. If he wanted to play the obstinate oaf then she'd humour him. He participated in useless small talk at times, she could demand reports for him in a straightforward fashion as well. 'And what were you talking about with Nightmare?'

'About many things,' he began as he began to undress, a process she followed with great interest. 'You. Security. Jane. The house. Her defensive robots and their insufficient combat capabilities. They break too easily.'

She blinked. One of those was not like the others. 'Her what now? And they do what?'

He gave her a small grin. 'Her defensive robots and their insufficient combat capabilities. They break too easily.'

'I heard you the first time! By the stars, what did you do?'

'I trained.' He shrugged. 'I do not get to do it often against opponents that possess weaponry that can kill me.'

'Mentuc!' she shouted, worried. 'You're not supposed—' she began, only to be shut up when did that annoying thing where he seemed to blink across the room, followed by a much less annoying kiss.

His voice was warm and gentle as he held her tenderly. 'I am supposed to keep you safe,' he whispered. 'That is my siltra, my main imperative.' She looked away, not understanding the Imperial word and its full implications but able to extrapolate. She felt deeply touched. He hated war, to fight, to be forced to kill and lose people he cared about. Yet he still trained. For her.

'You're an idiot,' she sighed. She pulled him closer and hugged him, pressing her cheek against his. 'But you're my idiot,' she whispered. 'And I love you.' She kept hugging him for a bit longer, luxuriating in letting her hands roam across his arms and shoulders, ignoring the grime that covered him. Then he started kissing her neck, very, very softly and carefully. She remembered her own words from the day before and gave him her wordless reply by biting his ear, hard enough to erase his doubts. From there it was a small step before they were in the water and any reluctance that she might have had over Nightmare's possible presence were quickly banished from her mind.

In the morning a very happy and very wrinkled Onoelle and a significantly less wrinkled Mentuc climbed out of the bath, the former clinging tightly to the latter. It had been a good night, especially once she discovered that the room had many more luxuries than just the grandiose bath, and that Mentuc, in typical Genesis fashion, had been extensively briefed about each and every one of them. She had been pleasantly surprised by some of the tricks Nightmare had pulled and the fabricating capabilities that the AI possessed. Not even the worry that it might have been done with ulterior motives had kept her from thoroughly enjoying them. Now, dressed in clothes made from a fabric she couldn't place in the slightest but felt light, durable and breathable, she was being all but haunted by Mentuc hovering around her. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was slightly overwhelming.

'What are you doing?' she burst out after a while as they walked through the ship towards the exit. She half expected Nightmare to butt in, but the AI had been strangely silent ever since the evening before. Apparently she had said all she wanted to say.

'I don't really know,' came the surprising response. 'I'm looking at your clothes.'

'What do you mean? You've never cared about my clothes before.' She paused and spread her arms, giving what she was wearing a second, closer look. They were just normal trousers and a t-shirt as far as she could tell. It was the type of outfit that she wore with what her mother defined as 'alarming frequency'. They were comfortable and she liked the colour patterns, but she could discern no reason as to why her husband would be disturbed by it.

'Yes,' came the singular response. She smacked him in retaliation, before she realised that he wasn't being obstinate, merely trying to figure it out for himself. She stopped and looked at him, waiting for him to finish his study. She was tempted to ask Nightmare. She was quite sure there were no holographic emitters in this part of the ship but that wouldn't stop the AI from responding. An intricate sensor network lined the entire vessel, giving her countless pathways to observe them with and to interact through. She chose not to. Mentuc had to figure it out for himself.

She was taken slightly aback when he suddenly closed the distance between them and he started touching the fabric, his face contorting with minor twitches, telling her that he was in quite a turmoil internally. She looked up at him and found four of his lenses glancing over her clothes, the remaining two, as ever, focused on her. She smiled at that. She knew that when he was near, she never went unwatched. It made her feel secure and safe, treasured and valued. She disturbed his concentration slightly by leaning in towards him and pressing a kiss on his lips, before letting him continue. A small smile tugged on his lips as he wracked his memories in search of an answer. When his head snapped back she knew he had found it.

'It is the fabric,' he clarified, causing Onoelle to roll her eyes. She had figured that one out herself.

'What about the fabric?'

'The last time I saw anyone wear it was during the War,' he added.

She looked at him, eyes wide, in shock. 'Nightmare gave me an outfit that is made from the stuff Imperial Navy uniforms were made of?' She felt slightly sick, unwillingly recalling the countless tales of atrocities committed by the men and women who wore this outfit before, before squashing those thoughts. She knew better than to believe that baseless propaganda, dammit!

It is sturdy and very practical, came the guilty party's voice, who, just as Onoelle had guessed, had been listening in the entire time.

Onoelle ignored it, choosing to observe her husband's reaction instead. This was the stuff theses were made of. She studied his face intensely, watching it for even the most microscopic sign of emotion. She knew he was watching her as well, but that didn't distract her. He always watched her. She had learned that one over two years ago. His eyes twitched slightly, darting back and forth over her body while his fingers analysed the fabric. Given the speed his mind worked at, she couldn't afford to miss anything. Stars above, she loved him to bits but this stuff fed the blazing hunger for knowledge inside of her.

It was over far too quickly for her liking. One moment he had been all over her, the next he was standing a few steps away, having filed it away in his mind. No way she was letting him get away like that though!

'How do you feel?' she asked, adding enough inflexion to her voice to transfer the full scope of her question.

'It is strange. It feels wrong, in a way. The fabric should have a different shape. A darker colour. It should not be worn by a civilian.'

She felt her emotions well up in protest against the latter and shut them with a swift blow. She was working and wouldn't let her own feelings get in the way of it. 'Yes?' she asked, encouraging him.

'I have not seen this in over six hundred years,' he whispered, his fingers touching the soft material with reverence.

He doesn't even care about the shape, she realised with a shock. It's the fabric itself that triggered the memory. Not the form, not the colour, just the material. It spoke volumes about his thought process. 'Do you like it?' she volunteered.

'Yes. It is a very good fabric. It is sturdy and practical.'

She laughed despite herself. She should have seen that one coming. 'I mean emotionally.' She bit her tongue before she went ahead and teasingly called him an oaf.

'I am fine,' he replied, tilting his head.

She sighed, still smiling. 'I am not asking if you are fine, I am asking how you are feeling,' she clarified.

'I am fine,' he repeated. 'I do not know what else to say.' He shrugged, then turned his full attention towards her. His eyes where wholly too knowing for her liking. 'How are you feeling?' he asked and his inflection wiped out any chance at misunderstanding. Either Nightmare had fibbed or he had one of his near-psychic moments and simply read her mind.

'I am fine,' she replied.

'Ah,' was his only response. He knew what she inferred. She was going to tell him, just not while she was inside—

I will hear you anyway, you know? Might as well tell him now~ sang Nightmare, far too pleased with herself.

'You keep your damned mouth shut you rusted pile of buckets and bolts,' hissed Onoelle.

Make me, teased the AI. Mentuc gets to play with Cassy, with his sister in law. By that logic, she announced happily, you get to play with yours.

Onoelle had a sudden, vivid image in her head of a massive cruiser sitting on a swing while she was pushing it. She turned to face the nearest blinking light, assumed it was a camera, and flipped the AI the bird.