Onoelle was sitting down on the bed with her friend next to her. Well, next to her might be an understatement. Jane had all but crawled on top of her for comfort. She didn't hold it against the woman. What the Empire had done was... Well, genuinely beyond words. Trillions had been murdered by their hands. Which was such a ridiculous number it became a mind numbing statistic. Which of course, it ceased to be when you were confronted with actual footage of those people being killed. When you threw children into the mix... She gulped down the bile rising in her throat. She really wasn't looking forward to this. Exhaustion aside, she had seen similar images once before and had no desire to see a repeat of it. Yet what choice did she have? Mentuc, and Nightmare besides, had committed those crimes. Her husband had, at one point in time, been a mass murdering war machine. One she didn't associate with the man he was today, but it didn't make what had happened any less of a fact. And for Jane to understand Mentuc, which was the ultimate goal of all of this, that meant she had to see the same things she once had. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the nightmare-inducing atrocities. She couldn't let her friend face the next hurdle on her own. Mentuc would not be happy with her choice, but he would understand.

Huh, she thought. To approve of a thing, but not liking it. It was a thought that fit the theme.

"Start the footage," she told Nightmare, taking a measure of pride in keeping her voice steady. It wouldn't last. She knew that already. She had cleaned up the room, opened the windows and put buckets at the ready. Stars above, they'd need them.

"I will not show the entirety of the footage," the AI replied. "The entire mission lasted three weeks and four days. I will only show the more important actions that were taken."

"Don't—" began Jane, before pausing to swallow. "Don't hide the worst bits," she stammered. "I... I want to see it. The truth. A galaxy burned. I am..." She closed her eyes. When she reopened them, a steely determination lay in them. "I am a Historian," she stated. "I need to live up to that title."

"Are you sure, Jane?" Onoelle whispered. She knew what was coming, knew the traumatic nightmarish it would spawn.

To her surprise her friend sat up more straight and gave Onoelle a look that only slightly wavered. "History is not there for us to like or dislike," she said, keeping her voice level. "It is there for us to learn from. And if it offends or disgusts us, even better, because it means we will be less likely to repeat it."

Despite the severity of the conversation, Onoelle grinned. "That's a quote, isn't it? No way you came up with that on your own."

Jane gave a weak smile. "Yeah, it was taught in uni. Still, it's pretty spot on." She turned back to the black box. "So show me. Show me what the Empire did that disgusted the galaxy and kept everyone else from waging massive wars for six centuries. Show me the truth."

"As you wish," was Nightmare's only response, lacking her usual counter-arguments.

As the screen flickered to live, the AI could not resist throwing in one final barb after all. "I will show you the truth. Of everyone involved." Onoelle rolled her eyes at the once Genesis and made a 'get on with it' gesture. She could feel Nightmare grin as the familiar scene of massive power armoured soldiers popped into view.

"Playing battle-cam footage of Genesis soldier X-12845621."

Admiral Verloff looked at the display, sighing deeply as several dots congregated, surrounded by a ring of frigates, a handful of capitals and four carriers. "You're mad for doing this. I won't budge from that point," he told Admiral Cindy, who was now suited up and standing in the midst of a loading bay filled with Genesis soldiers. "But, given that I failed to talk some sense into you, I can only wish you good luck. And for you to be in one piece for the pick-up!"

"I plan to survive this, Verloff," Cindy replied, the speakers on her suit warping her voice slightly, giving her an esoteric image. "And in case I don't, well, relay how I died to my superiors."

"As if you need me for that. I'd bet a year worth's of bar rations that you've got at least three systems in place to inform them should you get crumped in actions." It earned him a soft laugh. She was nervous, he knew. It was hard not to be. Frontline duty was stressful at the best of times. Now, she'd go in virtually blind, behind enemy lines, with nothing but supersoldiers for companies. People whose allegiance she actively questioned. And she had to survive for several weeks until Nemesis would be able to pick them up. And then only if their mission was successful. So she buried her nerves under a façade of bravery and a light dose of gallow's humour.

"See you around, Verloff. Blow up a shipyard for me, would you?"

"Is that how flirting works, nowadays? Woo them by naming self-created scrap heaps after them?" he grinned.

"I'm NavInt," she shrugged, which looked significantly more impressive and sinister in power armour, and turned around. "Special girls like special gifts."

The communication ended and Verloff let out another sigh. "Mission starts in thirty-six minutes." He looked at his gathered command staff. "Here's hoping it all goes to plan. Ladies and gents, start going to your posts. We have a dagger that requires urgent delivery to the heart of the Novican fleets and it would not do for us to be tardy." He gave them a wolfish grin. "I have a reputation to uphold. Dismissed!"

Cindy knew the two Genesis flanking her. As her combat readiness training had escalated, the Genesis commander had dragged her, literally given how badly mauled her suit was at that stage, into the battalion's preparations. She had seen up close how Genesis prepared and it had been humbling. They planned, plotted and theorised. Every possible tactical encounter they could think of was incorporated. Fallback tactics were drilled, evacuations, people getting wounded, mass assaults, tactical repositioning under fire, ... They trained and trained and trained some more, barely sleeping. Those who had been wounded during the previous battle had returned to the secretive unit and had smoothly slid into the rigorous training regimen.

While she had maintained her neutral stance towards them and looked for anything that might betray where their true loyalties lay, she had been impressed. Their victories hadn't come from simple superior genetics. They spent every waking moment working for it. No matter what the truth behind Genesis might be, no matter how alien their behaviour, they took their mission seriously and prepared for it with a discipline that outstripped even the most zealous units in the rest of the military. And she was stuck smack in the middle of their avalanche of mission-prep exercises.

During it she had come to recognise a few of the supersoldiers. She was part of the command squad, which would be functioning as a normal squad this time. Dreamer was, by now, easy to recognise, despite sharing behaviour patterns and armoured look with his brethren. The dream clouds that were painted on his armour were easy to spot once you knew where they were. For her benefit, the seven others she'd be fighting alongside with had all put a number of stripes on their helmets, at the same spot the dream clouds were at, allowing her to tell them apart. Two stripes equalled his second in command, the female Genesis. The others, she knew their designation, but not their name, with the exception of the one with five stripes, who had earned the name of Stalker during the wargames with the Special Boarders. He had a skull symbol engraved onto his helmet, besides the stripes. The rest simply didn't have names yet. That had taken some getting used to.

As she boarded the custom made landing craft, she paused briefly while the soldiers around her walked into the flying death-trap without hesitation. Shield projectors, flares, a smattering of counter-missiles, jammers, gel cushions, drop pods, engines and massive inertial dampers all required a fair bit of space. And a high speed, semi-covert insertion required both velocity, acceleration and stealth. So the engineers of the Special Projects Regiment had compromised by creating a very narrow, uncomfortable craft that barely permitted its passengers to board. Still, it would be essential to getting them to ground in one piece. She knew what was awaiting them. Tough orbital defences and several hundred vessels, including four dreadnoughts, that made up the system's mobile defence force. At least there would be no mass of satellites orbiting Nagalan. Those would have hindered the smooth transport of goods. Still, it would be a dicey entry. Eighteen Kaperna-class stations surrounded the planet and a not inconsiderable number of groundside missile silos, orbital guns and other nasty surprises were waiting for them on the surface. And enough shield generators to make a quick orbital bombardment useless.

She shook her head, shaking the feeling of dread off, and walked into the landing craft. Within moments she was tucked away into her drop pod, Dreamer himself doing a final tour to make sure everyone was properly locked away. She had the impression he didn't fully trust her to take care of herself. She wanted to be offended at that, but the last week had really brought home the point that Genesis simply was superior in every which way. Supersoldiers in every which way. But are they really loyal to the Empire? she wondered once more. Or to Eisel? That was the question that needed answering, and the very reason she was about to embark on what was potentially a suicide mission. Then she heard the blaring sound of the warning as the troop transport jumped into hyperspace, and she found herself worrying less about Genesis' loyalty, and more about whether Verloff's gambit would be pulled off successfully.

Admiral Vaslow grinned as his task force dropped out of hyperspace and into the far edge of the Nagalan system. There were plenty of Novican ships around, but they weren't combat vessels. Dozens of convoys traversed the area, jumping in and out of system as they performed the boring yet vital duty of delivering supplies to the forces of the Novic Confederacy. A handful of patrol cutters were the only ships that were somewhat combat capable, but even so they were woefully outclassed by the Imperial frigates. He and his unit could do a fair amount of damage here. Wreck hundreds of supply ships before the garrison could ever bring the battle to them. Had Nemesis jumped in, they likely could have wiped out thousands of ships before the buggers could either tally it back to the planet or jump out to safety. That, however, was not the plan.

"Swordstrike, engage," was all he had to say, and the dozens of frigate captains leapt to obey. "Beehive, tag along, but keep your sensors active. Parasyte, stick to the front." The small fleet moved, the carriers taking up positions behind the capital ships. The frigates rushed out, diving headlong into the sporadic fire of the titanic freighter ships. Despite that the frigates were theoretically outclassed in firepower, it availed the Novicans little. The frigates were nimble, lightning quick and only few rounds struck their targets, while the frigates harassed them remorselessly in turn. Small missiles buzzed through the void of space, sneaking through shields and ignoring what feeble defensive capabilities the Novicans had at their disposal. The targets were carefully chosen and soon enough small holes marred the superstructure of the freighters, their turrets blown apart. The frigates began to close in on the first declawed targets and began to open fire with their own batteries. The freighter's shields began to take a concentrated beating as the Imperials focused their fire. Within ten minutes the first freighter broke apart under the sustained barrage.

"Good," Vaslow remarked, seeing the convoys cluster together, creating overlapping fields of fire. It was standard behaviour and the best option they had. It was also precisely what the Imperials had counted on. "Beehive, engage," he ordered. The carriers, surrounding the troop transport, leapt forward, their engines lighting up the dark of space with long, bright streaks. Inertial dampeners creaked and groaned aboard the large warships as they steamed towards the Novican vessels, heavy armour plates slowly sliding apart to reveal their massive hangars. Navigators communicated with wing-commanders, engineers ran final checks on the small fighter craft and pilots cracked jokes and made offensive gestures at one another as the Imperial Second and Third Strike Forces primed themselves for action. The signal was sent, the lights turned green and out the fighters went. They hurled themselves into space with all the reckless abandon they were known for and raced towards the enemy freighters. This was child's play for them. Like a pack of wolves they descended upon their hapless prey, sidestepping point defence fire and ramming home missiles of their own. Defences were torn off, sensors were blown clean off the hull, airlocks were reduced to debris. The first gambit of Homerun had begun. The old Admiral chuckled at the name. Verloff's naming sense was the stuff of legends and people were still debating whether it was ingenious or just plain simple. Regardless, it drove the point home.

As the fighters rendered the enemy freighters utterly defenceless, the first capital ships began to close in. Cannons swivelled in their mounts, but remained silent. Closer and closer the Imperials came, their drives slowly but surely outpacing those of the Novicans. The fighters peeled off, their work done, and cleared the now blinded prey for their heavier brethren. Finally the cannons spoke, well aimed shots slamming into the shields. Within moments of the bombardment starting, they began to weaken and fire slipped through. A breach was formed, then, as the shield projectors began to buckle, it became a vast hole. A moment later the freighter ceased function, its superstructure cored by Imperial fire. Twenty minutes later, the first large convoy was utterly demolished, the sensitive cargo destroyed. And while the ships themselves were thoroughly ruined, their superstructure was intact, allowing the fighters to move on to their next targets with little hinder from debris.

For the next two hours convoy after convoy fell as the Imperials drew closer to the planet. The Novican commander had at first held his own ships back, but as it became clear that the Imperials were coming deeper and deeper into the gravity well, without other forces showing up, a counterattack was finally launched, setting sail towards enemy lines. For another half an hour Vaslow's forces went on unopposed, destroying more hapless vessels, before he finally decided to call it a day and made his small fleet turn around, leaving a mauled convoy behind. As his ships turned and his fighters docked, he left behind a small present in the forms of a missile barrage aimed at the enemy fleet. It would do little considering that the enemy would have over an hour to prepare themselves and the missiles' engines would burn out long before that, but damaging them wasn't the point. It was more of a tactical middle finger. We blew up your ships and you didn't even touch us.

As he watched the damaged convoy flee to the planet with their tail tucked between their legs, he hoped that the fighters had been thorough. Once more his brave pilots had flown dangerously close to the enemy hull to scour it clean of anything useful, except this time they had also hit the engines. Not too much. Just enough to slightly set them on fire and make them somewhat dysfunctional.

The Novican commander, upon seeing the Imperials retreat, halted his forces, but kept them in a battle-ready formation, earning him Vaslow's respect. His opponent was playing it safe. Most of the convoys had either jumped out or retreated in time, and the enemy commander was not taking risks with his own fleet either, instead accepting the brutal truth of the numbers game that war was. He had lost over a hundred freighters, but thousands were safe. Given that it was a hit and run attack on a logistical supply line, the Novicans had defended themselves well and made no tactical mistakes, ignoring the screams, cries and desperate begging that had poured of every struck vessel.

Or so one would think.

"Godspeed," he wished the men and women aboard the hundreds of transports, hiding between the wounded convoy ships. Then he turned back to his display. He wouldn't leave just yet. Not until he had confirmed whether Genesis would successfully make landfall. And to play distraction Citadel. "Because the Novicans weren't going to look too closely at their damaged ships as long as we're still here," he grinned, watching with glee as a pair of frigates amused themselves by picking off a set of communication satellites as his fleet began a zig-zag retreat, as if they were daring the Novicans to give chase. "Coms?" he asked, calling out to the middle-aged woman manning the station.

"Yes, sir?" she asked, never taking her eyes off her displays.

"Send a message on all channels. A short before and after video of Lufer. Accompanied with the intercepted communications of Admiral Idrina when she was torn to shreds."

"Yes, sir," came the eager reply.

"We managed to catch their attention," the old veteran told his officers. "May as well make sure we keep it."