As the sun rose, Police Captain Josiah Lossburg looked around and cursed. Another four officers dead. Sometime last night the people now calling themselves the Forsaken decided to make their move.

They took out three checkpoints on this side of the barrier when they did.

He looked at his fellow officers, all downed with a single shot to the head (or their species’s equivalent).

These were good people, goddammit!…

Not only had they been slaughtered like livestock but somehow their vitals monitors still insisted that they were fine and they had been making their scheduled reports like clockwork. Nobody even knew they were dead until their relief came.

A long white streak shot down from the sky with a frighteningly loud thunderclap followed by three more. It looked like the navy was at it again.

Snipers, orbital strikes, open battle in the streets… This was the capital, goddammit! This shouldn’t be happening! The Sol Wars were a century and a half ago!

And to top it all off, all of the cops on the barricade had now pretty much completely forgotten about trigger discipline and safeties. Cops could handle being pissed off, that was part of the job…

But terrified?…

It was a disaster just waiting to happen. Hell, the last poor family that tried to surrender damn near got killed when the mother reached for her ID. Thank god she was only shot with a stunner!

But word got out and no humans have approached the barricades since.

So, now the entire enclave is a nest of cornered rats and the cops are both angry and scared… It’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose and when it does it’s going to be bad. He knew a lot of the people who are now on the other side and he knew what they could do. When that first cop crosses the line and does something stupid he, she, or it will sign all of their death warrants.

He tried to talk everybody down, tell them that the people who killed their friends aren’t the ones still inside the barricade. That’s why they killed the guys in the first place.

It didn’t help. All humans are starting to look the same to them… including him. He actually overheard some people who he thought were his friends wondering if he was somehow involved with the killings. It was heartbreaking.

Maybe Vance and the others had the right idea. He thought that he could somehow make a difference, make things better but it’s hopeless…

And more of him than he would like to admit wished he was on the other side of that barricade…

Another group of strikes shot down from orbit. He frowned. For them to be throwing that much heat directly into the government district they must be getting desperate.

There was movement on the other side of the barricade. A man holding a white flag was approaching.

“Stand down!” Captain Lossberg shouted. “The white flag means that he is either surrendering or that he wants to talk!”

“Yeah, so he says,” one of the officers sneered as they tightened their grip on their riot-blaster.

“It’s something we take very seriously,” Captain Lossberg replied. “We didn’t lie about a white flag, even during the Sol Wars… usually…”

Seeing that his fellow officers were unconvinced, he set down his weapon and walked through the barricade.

He recognized the other person. He was one of the city councilmen.

“Hello,” the councilman said nervously clutching his flag.

“Mornin’,” Captain Lossberg replied. “You kind of picked a bad time to be walking up on the barricades. We lost some of our own last night but you probably already know that don’t you?”

“I didn’t know for sure,” the man winced, “All I knew was that they were heading out… Which they have. They didn’t want that battleship to start bombarding our home.”

“Awfully nice of them,” the captain said suspiciously. It didn’t sound like something that Jessica Morgan’s people would do.

“When the battleship entered the system they knew that they were done for so they decided to strike instead of waiting to be vaporized, along with half of our enclave. They’re gone! There’s nobody left in here that wants to fight you anymore!”

“Lot of guns still in there though,” the captain replied. “None of those AK’s left.”

“But nobody wants to use them! The real soldiers told our ‘irregulars’ to go home. Said that there was no point in them dying too. Told them to go to their families. I’m serious! We all surrender! We didn’t want to fight you in the first place! We just want all of this to be over with!”

“You and me both.”

“I need to talk to the government,” the councilman said. “I have a map where our noncombatants are sheltering. Nobody in those areas is armed, I swear!”

“You want to talk to the chief then,” Lossberg replied. “Come on...”

***

Ashley watched a brightly colored bug crawl along the roof on which she was lying covered by a shaggy blanket of scanner defeating camouflage.

It was cute. She wondered how a real bug could have big eyes like that. It was like something out of a cartoon!

Her watch silently vibrated on her wrist. The next train should arrive in just a few seconds.

She bid farewell to her little companion and plugged in a thin fiber into the side of the Keralx’s optics and peered through the lens.

A few moments later people started filing out of the underground metro stop just over three kilometers away. As her eyes focused on each one powerful image analysis and multi-species facial recognition software on the attached mini-laptop started labeling the people that were in a very extensive and detailed database (most of which was constructed using public information from thousands of Federation websites and news reports).

Duck… duck… duck…, she thought as she read the names and other information floating over each person’s head, duck… duck… GOOSE!

Ssssszzzzz…

POP

People started to scream (well she imagined they were screaming… She couldn’t actually hear them) and scatter as a female… something or other (Jesus, there are some weird looking boogers in the Federation) … suddenly had a rather large extra orifice in her chest (that’s where the connected species database said was the best place to hit them).

duck… duck… a ducking duck… a running duck… is that… Yep!… Goose!

Ssssszzzzz…

POP

The deputy assistant to the assistant of the minister of finance was nearly torn in half as he made the rather unfortunate discovery that the tinted polymer side of a bus stop doesn’t make for very good cover at all…

Now who is that just inside the entrance?… Is that a duck or is that a goose?… Damn, it’s a duck… But that guy!… Big goose!… Damn… he’s running… Love this thing but the rounds are a bit too slow for... Nice! He just flagged down a car!

POP (car windows aren’t particularly effective either)

Time to scoo-… Oh hello there...

POP

Now it was definitely time to go!

She quickly packed up shop and, still draped in her shaggy covering, threw a small pad attached to a very fine wire onto the masonry at the edge of the building and lept off. The pad spread out to the size of a dinner plate and held fast as the wire payed out on a small friction wheel, slowing her descent as she literally ran down the wall. About four meters from the ground she released the pad and it quickly retracted as she landed in an alley…

Just as a police car screeched to a halt…

The police cruiser's trunk silently opened.

She hopped inside.

***

“(Cough cough…) Is everyone ok?” Colonel Laurent asked as he rolled over into a crouch. That blast almost got them.

“Where’s Jenkins?” Tawnie asked as she gasped for breath.

“He didn’t get out in time,” a bleeding young woman replied. “I was the last one. Everyone else… they...”

“Shit!” Tawnie yelled. “He had the fucking gear!” she kicked a crumbling wall in frustration.

“Is that it, then?” the colonel asked.

“It is from us,” Tawnie replied. “I still have our data but without his signal gear, I’m done.”

“Too bad,” the colonel said sadly. “I would have liked to see them hoisted by their own petard just once...”

“Hey, I said it was it from me,” Tawnie replied as she pulled out her tablet. “It’s not over, not by a damn sight. I got mom in on it and she knows some people. Let me just send her what I have and… shit...”

“What is it?” the colonel asked as he pulled up his combat map. He frowned. It was pretty grim. Then again, they knew how it would end when they started.

“She says that she isn’t doing a goddamn thing unless I go home right now… bitch...”

“You should go,” the colonel replied. “You have done us a great service but things-”

“Hey!” Tawnie replied. “It ain’t over till it’s over and it ain’t over!”

Tawnie grabbed her phone and started arguing with her mother.

The colonel smiled. She sounded a lot like his daughter so many years ago, of course the subject of the argument was just a little different.

An old pain stabbed him through the heart. He still missed her even now.

I will see you soon, my dear, he thought to himself as he reviewed the state of things.

He winced.

He probably wouldn’t. If there is an afterlife then his will be a bit… warmer… than the one his daughter deserved.

He shook himself and stared at the map. He would be able to rest soon enough, flames or no, but for now, he still had a job to do.

“Ok, it’s all sorted,” Tawnie said as she hung up the phone.

“Farewell, mon cheri,” the colonel said with a smile. “Do try to-”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Tawnie grinned. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you just told your mother...”

“I lied,” Tawnie replied. “By the time she figures out I am not on my way back to Porkietown she will have cracked that code.”

“Tawnie, go.” the colonel said firmly.

“I can still help you guys! You need me!”

“I need to know that at least someone survived. Go. Live. People need to know what we did here,” the colonel replied. “I mean it, child. It’s nearly over. I’m sending my final orders now. I’m telling whoever is left to stop engaging the enemy and try to bypass them instead. We will perform one final strike as deep into the Government district as we can, try to make them have to bombard something important.”

“Well if it’s important that you want,” Tawnie replied. “Then go here!” she said pointing at the map.

“That building? It’s nowhere near the command buildings or any of their high value targets.”

“I thought you wanted to do some real damage,” Tawnie grinned. “That building is The Locus.”

“The Locus?”

“I thought you guys did your homework!” Tawnie laughed. “The Locus is the high and holy grand data center for the Federation and is home to the archives… you know… The Federation Archives?… The single greatest repository of knowledge in the entire fucking galaxy?”

“Aren’t there copies?”

“Yeah, copies,” Tawnie scoffed. “But that’s the original source! It’s the guaranteed corruption free gold standard… and it’s the only place that is guaranteed to have all of the information, including the stuff they have suppressed or redacted. If it goes away...”

“But what about the elder races? Surely they have clean copies.”

“Maybe not,” Tawnie replied. “Hacker legends state that there was some really bad blood and some serious mistrust between some of the ‘founding fathers’ and part of it was over who had ownership of the archive, especially the original scans or hardcopy of the really good stuff. In the end it was decided that nobody would own it and it would be housed here. It could be the only source of some things and even if there is a copy this is the only certified source. It’s like in the old days when the kilogram was an actual chunk of metal. There were copies, sure, but there was only one true kilogram. We can get our hands on the Federation’s kilogram!”

“And speaking of big certified standards,” Tawnie grinned, “The Locus has one other thing in there as well, The Clock.”

“The clock?”

“You know ‘Federation Standard Time?’” she asked. “That’s it. It is what sets all of the clocks in the entire Federation. The place has its own hyperspace beacon that sends out constant date and time info, like a heartbeat. Fucking that up doesn’t sound like it would do much but when it comes to hyperspatial networking? It’s kind of a big deal. It wouldn’t take much to really screw things up. How do you not know this?”

“Our mission was to hold the enclave, not go on a vandalism spree,” the colonel chuckled. “But if this place is as valuable as you say, then would the Ascension vaporize it?”

“You know,” Tawnie grinned, “They might not!”

“Now that’s a thought!” the colonel grinned. “I think I need to change those final orders a bit.”

“See, that’s why you don’t fucking die!” Tawnie said punching him in the arm.

“Do you think those of you who remain could get us there unseen, like before?”

“Now that the cat’s out of the bag it would be damn near impossible...” Tawnie trailed off and then her eyes lit up. “I have an idea!”

“Oh?” the colonel asked. “Do tell...”

“We don’t hide you… We do the opposite!”

“What?”

“I gotta call mom!”

***

Jessica frowned as she read the latest reports. She knew this was likely to happen but the fact that it happened so quickly was definitely not a good sign.

Bombardment…

In the Capital City it was being done by the Ascension, an elite ship with an elite crew whose accuracy was on par with any ship in the galaxy.

It was surgically precise and Colonel Laurent drew the fire away from the enclave.

Elsewhere…

It was getting messy, too messy. She knew that the Federation didn’t exactly have a high value assigned to the lives of her people but, damn…

Damn…

She held her head in her hands. Her people… Her actual people… They were targeting the “good ones”… the people in the enclaves… The ones that were the most pure, the most innocent, the most unsullied…

The ones closest to what humanity once was… before the nightmare…

The ones that were the real reason why she became the Devil in the first place…

Fuck.

She knew this was coming. She did. But it didn’t make this any easier.

The damage was already done. Between that whore Patricia and the boots of the Federation their innocence, something that she had managed to protect even through the fucking Sol Wars, was gone.

In the end, even she couldn’t protect them. All she could do was try to frantically gather up all the ones that she could and once again shove them into ships and throw them out into the void.

It was a stupid dream anyway, a nice one, but stupid. Preserve the unpreservable, rebuild the unrebuildable…

But she had gotten so close… So fucking close…

Story of her life, get impossibly close and then fail spectacularly. Make so many deals with the Devil you actually become them only to trade your soul and the souls of countless others for nothing but a handful of ash.

She deserved it, but they didn’t. They didn’t deserve any of this.

They never did.

God-fucking-dammit!

She wanted a bump so bad… Just one little line… something to soothe her soul… lift her spirits… A fucking drink if nothing else… Something…

“Oh fuck me...” she muttered.

“An irregular request, to be sure,” Terrance said as he walked in holding a pot of tea, “but if you think it would help...”

“Don’t tempt me,” she smiled as he poured her a fresh cup. “I need some new vices, something not addictive.”

“And you don’t find… Oh you poor thing...”

“I said don’t tempt me,” she laughed.

***

On the bridge of the Ascension Captain Loqurir looked at his display in confusion.

“Are you certain this is correct?” he asked.

“Yes, Captain,” one of the bridge crew replied. “Those orders came directly from Federation Command. Considering the… scale… of it I have already received verification. These orders are legitimate.”

“…Very well...” the captain said dubiously. “Open fire.”

***

Explosion after explosion rocked the government district as bolt after bolt descended from the heavens.

“Where are they all coming from?!?” the Admiral of the Navy shouted as he read the latest report. “Those fuckers are everywhere! How did they break through our line?!?”

“I don’t know, sir,” an officer whined. “Cameras and sensors all across the district are spotting them but they manage to disappear almost as quickly.”

“Don’t let them another yard closer to the inner district!” the Admiral shouted. “Do whatever you have to do! We can’t let them through! Vaporize them!!! Buildings we can replace. People we can rehire. What we can’t replace is the Federation’s image if those animals sack the fucking capital! What we cannot afford to lose is the senior leadership of the Federation! Do you know how many senior officials have already died today, how may flag officers we have lost?!? Stop them!!!”

“We are trying sir,” the officer replied. “Whenever we detect a concentration of them we lay down fire. We are coordinating with the Army to-”

“The Army?” the Admiral scoffed, “They have been less than useless! What can we actually expect from those losers? They haven’t won a single engagement yet, not without us turning the battlefield to glass first.”

“They are had some success engaging the human forces after they have been softened up with space-strikes, sir. We are trying to use them to confirm the effectiveness of the strikes and to get better targeting data. Right now we are depending on data from-”

He was cut off by his phone ringing. He scowled. It was Federation Intelligence.

What did those assholes want? Didn’t they know he was busy?

“What?” the admiral snapped.

“What the flying fuck do you think you are doing?” Gvx-Taa, the director of Federation Intelligence screeched.

“My job!” the admiral yelled back. “The only person around here who is! The army is useless and you guys...”

“Your job is to be a dumb fuck, then,” Gvx-Taa yelled around a mouthful of bile, “unless you are on Jessica Morgan’s payroll.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are blowing up the fucking government district, you fucking moron!”

“I’m targeting the enemy, something that you would know if-”

“You are targeting static, you stupid shit!” Gvx-Taa screamed his voice bubbling through a throat full of acrid fluid. “It’s the oldest trick in the fucking book and you retards fell for it…”

“Our data-”

“Is corrupted!” Gvx-Taa shouted, “Unless the humans have mastered time and space to such an extent that the same person can be in four different locations at the same time, you are a first class buffoon. Run facial recognition on the fucking camera feeds, jackass. You’ve been targeting exactly where the humans have been telling you to hit! They’ve basically been calling in strikes for the past half hour! Do you even know what you’ve done?!? Do you know how many of our people you killed? If you don’t, give the humans a call and ask them! Maybe they will stop laughing long enough to give you an answer!”

“How dare you-”

“I don’t have time to deal with your ineptitude right now, Krethgar,” Gvx-Taa snapped cutting him off. “You order one more orbital strike without properly verifying the target and I’ll send a kill team over there myself! I’m not kidding. One more fuck up and I will have you killed!”

Gvx-Taa terminated the call.

The Admiral of the Navy started to shake as a long wavering scream escaped his throat.

He turned to face the officer in his office who was just standing there, twitching…

”YOU….” he hissed.

His phone rang again.

It was the Prime Minister…

The Vulxeen turned even grayer as he reluctantly picked up the phone…

***

Gvx-Taa practically vomited into his ever growing bucket as he threw his communicator across the room.

“Fucking dumbass!” he shouted.

“So,” [email protected]@ growled, “Have you taken the admiral off of Jessica’s payroll.”

“Exactly what would it take to actually kill that fucking grey-pig?”

“We do have that nuke in the basement...”

“We have a nuke?” Jaxona asked with big eyes.

“Don’t you already ‘remember’?” Gvx-Taa buzzed with wry amusement.

“Yeah...” Jaxona said with a little annoyed wiggle, “my memories are… just a little pissed off at the moment. I think the words ‘on your fucking own’ might have come up once or twice...”

“Oh, because we did exactly what she told us to do?” Gvx-Taa replied with a buzz.

“Eee!” Jaxona yelped as she thrashed back and forth. “Ouch!… Abyss, Gvx!… You know Void-laying well that what happened was-”

“Just fucking with the evil spirits,” Gvx-Taa chuckled.

“Well don’t!” Jaxona snapped. “Those assholes in those closed door council meetings took what was already fucked up beyond belief and…”

“Yeah, sorry, old eel,” Gvx-Taa replied. “They took what was already a nuke and salted it. On the bright side maybe now they will actually do something about data security. God, what I wouldn’t give to have Sheila on our payroll.”

Jaxona just circled her globe and grumbled for a bit.

“So now that we’ve stopped the burning of the capital,” [email protected]@ said as he reached for his coffee, “We can move on to trying to figure out exactly where those soldiers went. Both our profilers and what little we have managed to intercept online strongly indicates that they won’t try to return to the enclave and that they have pretty much accepted that they are going to die here. They aren’t just going to conveniently roll onto their claws.”

“Shit,” Gvx-Taa muttered. “That’s right. There is a good chance that they want to do more than just have us shoot ourselves for a bit.”

“Well they aren’t pushing further into the Government District. That’s where they sent the bombardment. What are they up to?”

“One last big score before they, what do humans do? Oh yeah, get dragged down into the flames of their Hell?… Something big...” [email protected]@ mused.

“Oh!… Oh Creators!… Oh no!...” Jaxona said as she shuddered. “Map! Map now! Map!”

Gvx-Taa pulled up a holographic display of Capital City with the latest intel overlaid upon it.

Jaxona rushed up to the map in a panic.

“They were here last… Oh please no!...” she said in horror, “… and our forces are here… and the spurious inputs are mainly here….”

She thrashed frantically.

“I know where they are going! Oh Creators… It’s bad! It’s really bad, guys… Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

She thrashed some more blowing a curtain of bubbles.

“What?” [email protected]@ asked urgently.

“The Locus! They are headed to the fucking Locus!” she howled. “They can’t be allowed to succeed!”

“Ok, The Locus is pretty serious but-”

”You don’t understand!” Jaxona said grabbing Gvx-Taa and shaking him. “There is someone at The Locus right now… someone important… someone really fucking important… someone that they cannot be allowed to reach… Oh Creators!… They can’t!!!… Fuck!…”

Jaxona started hyperventilating (and when a fish does that it’s pretty fucking impressive).

“Who is at The Locus?” [email protected]@ asked, rather confused.

“I… I can’t say… but trust me… If anything happens to them the Kalent will lose their fucking minds!”

“And they would blame the humans,” [email protected]@ mused. “Maybe not the worst-”

“No, you don’t understand,” Jaxona gasped. “They will blame everybody. They will go full bore Terran on your ass, the human’s ass… my ass… Everybody’s ass!… Everybody’s ass gets its own personal Terran! I can’t go into much but the Federation is on pretty thin ice with a lot of Kalent as it is. If anything happens to that person they might just decide that the whole thing was a mistake… and fix it… At the very least, lose that individual and you lose the Kalent!… I gotta… I gotta make some calls… sorry...”

Jaxona sprinted from the room.

Gvx-Taa looked over at [email protected]@.

“Figures,” he said after a few seconds.

[email protected]@ picked up his communicator and dialed a number.

“The Locus?” Gvx-Taa asked.

“...And they aren’t answering...”

“Fuck.”

***

“EEEEEeeeeEEEEeeeEEEEeeeEEEEEe!”

Morthshana ran screaming down the hallway of the mound throwing out a huge plume of excitement and pure unadulterated hilarity and joy.

“eeeeeeEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee!” she screamed as she plowed past, through, and sometimes over anything and anyone in her path.

“eeeeeEEEEEEeeeeeee!” she screamed as she slammed against door leading into the Matriarch’s chamber and flailed at the controls.

“EeEeeeeEEEeeeEEEeeeEEEe!” she screamed as she started squeezing between the panels as they slowly separated flattening her body to fit through a deceptively tiny crack.

“EEEEEeeeeEEeeeEEeEEEEeee!” she screamed incoherently as she absolutely flooded the chamber with a thick aroma of pure delight.

The Matriarch looked up from her reports curiously.

“EEEEEeeeeEEE!… EEEEeeeEE!… Eee!… E...” she gasped.

“Well this should be good,” the matriarch chuckled.

“You will NEVER guess what JUST HAPPENED!!!” Morthshana squealed happily.

***

In The Locus four Kalent stood protectively around a large black object as they glared at the humans with pure hatred and fury.

“So, what’s in there?” Tawnie asked as she poked the strange glossy side.

“The death of your entire pathetic species if any harm comes to it!” one of the Kalent hissed.

“It’s been tried, fish-stick,” Tawnie chuckled as she knocked on the side of it. “Hello? Anybody in there?”

“As a matter of fact,” a strange alien voice responded from inside the chamber, “there is.”

It sounded amused.