'Move battalions Sierra two, three and four behind that line. They'll remain under the coverage of the main station that way. Have five and six establish a perimeter behind them along the cliffs and perform overwatch,' one of the generals of the Novican ground forces commanded. Grand Admiral Kolpovka let it happen. His own experience was strictly limited to naval warfare and it seemed to be an age old tradition that ground forces and naval forces did not get along with one another. That they had accepted his suggestion that they prepare for an invasion as easily as they had, was already a major concession on their part. Instead he kept himself busy with preparing the counterattack. Orders were sent out to the nearby fleets, both those on standby, those on patrol and the ones already tangled up with a ferocious Imperial attack. The front line was holding, however. It was exactly as he had predicted. The Imperials didn't have the forces to stop the Novicans. Their assault had taken the fleets off guard and had been incredibly brutal, both factions slaughtering the other at will, but the sheer numerical superiority that they possessed overwhelmed any tactical advantages that the Imperials had. Any ship separated from the main force was irrevocably slaughtered, but his admirals had finally begun to cluster their troops. True, they ceded terrain and the tactic made them more vulnerable in close combat, but it also forced the Imperials to meet them head on in prolonged clashes where they couldn't just dash out from. His forces always lost a good deal more ships and men than the enemy with every engagement, but the Imperials could not sustain their attacks. Already Perseus and Icarus had lost over a third of their forces and they had begun conducting hit and run attacks rather than getting fully embroiled in a prolonged melee.

He had used the last few hours to determine his nemesis' strategies and he was certain of Verloff's goals now. It also made him worried. It was a rather desperate gambit for the Empire, not in line with their usual style, but they had succeeded marvellously at damning little cost to themselves. It was a daring plan, but a simple one. They had come here to kill him. The Novic Confederacy's greatest weakness was the rampant nepotism and corruption in its political ranks, to the point it came close to crippling the military. They were scared of losing prestige and face and therefore held back, like frightened children cowering from the Empire's fearsome reputation. Unable to comprehend even the most basic of military tactics. All they had to do was push. All he had to do was keep up the assault. He sighed. He should have ignored the politicians and just taken command. He would have been able to bring the entire region under Novican control before their political appointees would have started figuring out that he had bypassed the Parliament.

A red light began blinking urgently on the display and his comms officer informed him that Lord Veda was on the other end. He signalled for the privacy curtain to be dropped and accepted the call.

'Grand Admiral,' the short, fat, balding man began, giving the high ranking officer a curt nod.

'Lord Speaker Veda, to what do I owe the pleasure?' Kolpovka replied, lacing his voice with insincerity. Neither of them could stand the sight of the other and normally the de-facto leader of the Novican Parliament tasked lackeys with any direct communication, but Veda's relative proximity to Lufer made him the only one capable of conversing directly with the Admiral without a massive time lag.

'You ordered the nearby fleets. What were you thinking? They're not yours to command! They belong to the Parliament and we have given no such orders!' Veda accused him, folding his fingers in front of his chin. The fat man sat on something that could only be described as a throne and an expensive looking mantle flowed around him.

Kolpovka chuckled darkly, idly wondering just how much better the fleets would have been if all the resources that went to frivolities went to the navy's funds instead. 'I deemed it wise,' he simply replied, goading the man on.

'You deemed it wise,' the other man replied, maintaining a presence of calmness, but Kolpovka could easy see that he was fuming on the inside.'It is my sincere hope that you can back that up then. Your reluctance to cooperate with the Parliament has been noted before and whispers have begun to circulate that your loyalty may not be as steadfast as it was once seen.' Veda waved an arm, as if to dismiss the rumours. 'You know how quickly such things take root. They are being given more credibility though, especially with recent events. If I may give you a suggestion, as your peer...' The Speaker leaned on his desk, which creaked threateningly, a dark frown forming on his face while his eyes barely contained the pure rage simmering within. 'I would be very careful, lest you be recalled and trialled for treason.'

'Oh really?' laughed the Grand Admiral. 'I'm afraid you might run into several issues if you were to try that right now though, dear Veda.'

Veda bristled. 'That is Lord Speaker to you, Admiral'

'And it's Grand Admiral to you,' Kolpovka bit back, hiding a grin. 'Regardless, to answer the question you are undoubtedly trying to formulate in some nonsensical manner, you might recall the report I sent half a day ago? The one where I mentioned Battle Group Nemesis launching an attack on our headquarters? I was busy composing a new report for you.' A lie, but a believable one. 'They outmanoeuvred us. That's the brutal and simple truth. They blinded us with dirty missiles, coasted past Admiral Lebriski and shot his engines to pieces, then came face to face with your pet.' He spat the words, a grave breach of decorum but he didn't care. He stood up, his many medals clinking softly. 'She broke. Panicked. Died. Like a bitch, I might add. Ignoring my orders and abandoning her duties, too busy with screaming in fear as the Imperials overran her and it was down to actual competent commanders to try and salvage the situation. A handful of competently led squadrons against the very best that the Empire has to offer. Do you have enough brain cells to connect the dots or do you want me to spell out what a one-sided massacre it became? Right now they're preparing to launch an invasion on the planet. They probably have a plan to get past our orbital defences at this point, so we're digging in as best as we can to weather the coming storm.' He let out a dark laugh as he saw Veda try to make sense of it all. The man was stuck between rancid fear and pure rage. Idrina had served the Lord Speaker faithfully after all. As a favoured bed-warmer.

'This is on you!' the politician bellowed, finally losing his cool. 'You failed! You didn't stop them! You let her die! You're incompetent!'

'You ignored every tactical assessment I sent! You refused to give me full command, or even adhere to the plans I drew up! You gave the Empire the chance to dig their heels in, to consolidate and for fucking Nemesis to get over here! Do you have any idea how much the Empire invests in their military? We either overwhelm them with numbers in a rapid offensive while they're distracted, or we let them rebound from their war and reinforce their borders! Guess which one happened!' He cut off the incoming response with a sharp gesture. 'The nearby fleets are on their way to my location. The Empire will have to launch an all out assault from the very moment they make landfall, or risk being surrounded by our reinforcements. Once Admiral Lebriski manages to turn his ships around, they'll come back as well. They won't be able to manoeuvre much, but they'll either force the Empire away from the planet into facing them directly, or risk getting stuck between the orbital defence grid and the Admiral's fleet. I reckon that will take him two days at most.' As soon as he clears that infernal minefield, he swore softly. Lebriski had assumed he was clear once so far, after they hadn't hit anything for half an hour. Only to run straight more of the blasted things the minute he'd given the order to start turning his ships. 'And I have Admirals Senova and Birkov heading here. I estimate they'll be here in five and six days approximately.

'In short,' Kolpovka summarised, 'we dig in, we hold and we're either crushed within two days or we force the Empire to retreat or they stay, fight and die. In the meantime, I suggest,' he growled, shooting daggers at his incompetent superior, 'that you press the assault on the Imperial lines once more.'

Veda had managed to regain his self control and was once again looking the part of a dignified politician. 'That won't do,' he simply said. 'The Imperial Battlegroups are still pressing an attack of their own. Should they disperse, they can wreak heavy damage on our industry, which is why our fleets need to stay where they are.'

'Icarus and Perseus are on their last legs. The assaults have all but ceased, they're just doing a lot of aggressive posturing without coming to actual clashes at this point. We move our fleets forward, we'll pin them to their planets where we can crush them through sheer force of numbers.'

The Lord Speaker gave a contemptuous snort. 'You'd sacrifice millions of our citizens to claim a single planet.'

Kolpovka slammed his hand down on the desk. 'And how else would you take those planets? Have you even read the reports we have on them? They're blasted floating bunkers. You're the one who started this war and I agreed because we can win, but then you morons need to stop being idiots and accept that high casualties were inevitable the moment we stabbed the Empire in the back!'

'You're bloodthirsty!'

'And you're incompetent! How many millions do you think we lost so far? This is war! People die! It is my job to spend these lives as well as possible! It is your job to get out of my fucking way and let me do it! Now, did you have anything of note to say or did you just call me to waste my time?' Kolpovka was raging as well now, but kept his anger under perfect control. His outburst was carefully calculated, but seemed genuine and that was what Veda needed to see.

'Very well then, Grand Admiral,' Veda said, visibly struggling to keep his composure, which Kolpovka noted down as a win. 'I shall leave you to it. But there will be repercussions for this.' The Lord Speaker bared his teeth. 'Mark my words, Grand Admiral. You will pay for your transgressions.'

'I'll have to live that long first,' he shot back, knowing he'd unnerve the politician with the bold statement. Then the Grand Admiral simply showed Lord Speaker Veda a rather offensive and low-class gesture and ended the call before his counterpart could. He leaned back in his chair and grinned.

The Empire had their plans that they were pursuing with unequalled skill and determination, but at the end of everything? They had less than seven thousand warships at this point and the Novican fleet had them at a generous nine to one advantage. This war would have been over already had those cowards in the Parliament given him proper authority. Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk. Instead he had begun deploying his own agenda. He had never intended to launch a military coup, but now that Verloff was pounding him from above and Veda was being the idiot he always was, he felt that it was not only justified, but also necessary. Enough Novican lives had been sacrificed so far. If they lost the war then all those losses would have been for naught. Not to mention that the Empire would likely exact no small measure of vengeance if they couldn't be locked down by a treaty. An independent colony run by pirates had once made the mistake of kidnapping Imperial citizens. When the Empire had shown up with a fleet above the planet they had calmly demanded that their citizens be returned and that the culprits would surrender themselves to Imperial justice. The planet had, in utter idiocy, refused and opened fire on the fleet.

In the end the Empire succeeded in saving three out of the seven captured citizens, the other four had been executed before the Imperial ground forces had managed to come close. In return, the entire pirate capital and any industrial zone of note had been destroyed during the 'extraction'. It had been a stark reminder of how powerful the Empire was. How lethal when provoked. How little they cared about the lives of those they deemed enemies. The cowards in the Parliament failed to grasp that. They ended over a million souls to take back a handful of citizens. Now millions of Imperials were dead. Their planets assailed. Their fleets violated. The treaty of alliance trod and shat upon. The Empire's retaliation wouldn't be as merciful as just laying waste to the capital of Novic Prime. The Confederacy had betrayed the Empire. They either won or lost everything and they could only pray that the war with the Kra'lagh would damage the Empire enough to keep them from marshalling a proper counterattack. Sadly enough the clear cut, brutally logical and inviolable beliefs of the Empire were inconceivable to people as corrupt as the esteemed members of the Parliament.

'Bugger that,' he said out loud, lifting the privacy curtain. He walked over towards the main display and began sending out messages to his agents, loyal officers and trustworthy allies. He was about to betray a lot of people and consign a significant amount of good men and women to their deaths, but either the military took control of the entire navy or the Novic Confederacy may as well surrender and pray that the Empire wouldn't win the great war they were fighting. If they brought any more Battlegroups into this conflict than they'd be hard pressed to just hold the line. His troops were good, but the battle overhead had shown just how many cards the enemy had in their hands and how well they could play them, and he didn't have a fraction of the capable officers that the Empire had.

When the last order went out the Grand Admiral walked back to his chair and sunk down in it, feeling the weight of his actions pressing down on him. He had just started a coup. One that had been planned for but ultimately remained a contingency measure. A last resort. Well, that plan was in play now. The Lord Speaker would no doubt be rallying his political allies in order to have him declared a traitor. It wouldn't be hard to sell it to the Parliament. Many members had already begin growing fearful of the power he commanded in the military and while he possessed nowhere near the raw levels of devotion that his Imperial counterpart had, his influence was considerable amongst the real officers. Little wonder they had tried to sabotage him by injecting their cronies into his forces.

He let out a deep sigh. This was his Rubicon to cross. Alea iacta est. The men loyal to his cause would attempt to eliminate their political counterparts. Many neutral officers would be forced to pick a side, but as long as he lead the coup most of them would follow. By the time the Parliament would be informed the time for action would have passed already, save for perhaps a few fleets that would still be contested. When they finally stopped arguing and started issuing orders that countermanded his own, it would be far too late. Of course the final goal of that would require him to stay alive. At the very least until he got word of how the coup had gone down. It would shatter the offensive for a while, perhaps even as long as a week or two. Time in which the Empire would reinforce, rearm and plan. Not a pleasant thought, but he had no alternatives left at this point. The Novican Navy needed sanitising.

All of that required that he and the HQ surviving the Imperial attack. He wasn't really worried about that. Between the ground armies, the orbital defences, the planetary defence grid and the massive fortress that the headquarters was… No, the Imperials couldn't harm him. Not within the time frame allotted to them. Even if they had brought ten full armies with them. When Lebriski turned, when the new fleets arrived, the Empire woud be forced to run or be obliterated. Unless they had other cards to play. He pondered that thought for a moment before shaking his head. No, new ships, new technologies, all of that had a limit to how effective it was. Verloff had only won now by sacrificing most of his Corvettes and that little trick wouldn't work a second time. He'd make sure of that.

The only thing he worried about was if the Imperials had a goal in mind that he was as of yet oblivious to. Oh well, he thought. Nothing I can do about that now but watch and play the game to the best of my abilities. He smiled ruefully. Whatever was going to happen, it would be interesting.

'Come on down, Imperials,' the Grand Admiral mused. 'And show me your hand. So that I may cut it off.'