Two days later they received the message they’d all been dreading. Captain Inaba called an emergency meeting of all officers and NCOs of Golf company and gave them the news.

“We just got word from the Ixian flagship,” she informed them. “They’ve spotted a Task Force headed our direction with at least fifty ships. Initial telemetry indicates they’re a mixed group, composed of Tu’udh’hizh’ak, Eleexx, and Aggaaddub vessels, based on their energy signatures. They’ll be in orbit in less than twenty-four hours.” No one said a word as she surveyed her audience, her jaw clenched in grim acceptance.

“I know no one wanted this, just as I know everyone here has already given more than they ever have,” she said quietly. “There are too many empty seats as it is, and there are likely to be more before we’re through.”

No response.

Shrugging, she pressed on. “I’ll spare you the recruiting speech. I’m not here to psych you up or tell you there’s nothing to fear. You’re professionals, you know the drill. So let me just say this.” Walking into the midst of the gathered leaders, she did her best to make eye contact with each of them. “I know I have no right to ask anything else from you. In a just universe, I’d gladly give those who wanted it a discharge and a ticket out of this place before the hammer falls.”

There were sober nods scattered amongst the crowd. “But here’s the thing; we don’t live in that universe. In this one, Terrans have been getting shit on for two hundred years, and by sunset tomorrow there’s a damn good chance none of us here will be around to see it. Like I said, I’ve got no right to ask… but I’m asking, anyway. One more battle, to give our brothers and sisters across the Perseus Arm a chance at a better future. Just a chance.”

She bent down and picked up her helmet, strapping it on, then unslung her rifle and checked the magazine. “I came here to fight, and getting even one of those arrogant bastards in my sights will be a victory. I’m doing this, no matter what. So my only question is this; who’s coming with me?”

There was a pause as those gathered looked around at the others, waiting. Inaba didn’t rush them or pressure them or threaten them. She simply waited until finally, someone stood.

Rúna slowly rose, cradling her weapon. “I’ll go,” she said softly.

Kai was only a second behind, but even as he climbed to his feet, others were already in motion. One after another, they stood with her as they made their decision.

The captain nodded once, giving them all a ghastly sneer.

“Then let’s do this.”

The squad barely reacted as they heard the news. Knowing that the last chapter in their story was finally here was almost a relief; at least there would be no more lying awake at night in existential dread. They took to their positions with terrible purpose, settling in as they readied themselves for what was to come.

Glancing over at Arthur, the newbie, Rúna cocked her head. “How are you doing, kid?”

“I’m okay,” he said.

“You sure? Cause you’re allowed to be scared. You know that, right?”

“I know,” he nodded.

“So, are you?” she asked, curious. “Scared, I mean?”

“No,” he shrugged, and then reconsidered. “I mean, sure, of course I am, but…” His brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of his emotions. “After everything that’s happened, after Cemetery Ridge, and the retreat, and the counterattack, I dunno… maybe I’m just numb to it.”

“Could be,” she admitted. “It’s been known to happen. Is that what you really think?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered, shrugging once again. “But I won’t let you down, corporal,” he said at last. “I won’t panic or freeze up. I’ll do my part.”

“Good enough,” she nodded, before digging in her ruck and tossing him a Soya bar. “Here, eat up. Terra only knows when we’ll see another hot meal.”

He looked at her as he unwrapped it. “You mean if we see another hot meal,” he said candidly.

Rúna closed her eyes and turned away. “Yeah, Arthur… if.”

The ships in orbit watched and waited as the Troika fleet bore down on them. Outnumbered three to one and outclassed in almost every regard, their options were few. The system itself offered few places to hide, and none for very long. Meeting them in force would likely prove to be a very brief and one-sided affair, while scattering was tantamount to suicide. Possibly they could delay their adversaries, and they could certainly harass them, but actually defeat the enemy? Not a chance.

So as the ships approached, they did the one thing the Troika wasn’t expecting. They attacked.

Lighting off their drives, they plotted a reciprocal course and aimed for the very heart of the enemy formation, building up speed as they closed the distance. The Troika were sluggish to respond; they had counted on the size of their fleet to scare the defending ships out of the system. When the Alliance forces refused to cooperate, it set off fierce internal debate between the three races about how best to respond, the bitter infighting costing them precious minutes. Once they decided to meet them head-on… a tactic they were now committed to by this point, because of the delay… they opened fire the moment they were within range, hoping to quickly finish the Alliance forces.

Aboard the Ixian flagship Ataraxia, Mirza Xain observed the Troika fleet’s incoming fire with aplomb. Despite the limited time they’d had to train together, experienced warriors comprised the bulk of the Alliance naval forces. In the cutthroat world of the mercenary, anything less meant the organization in question would die a quick and nasty death.

“Tighten up the fleet,” the Mirza ordered, “and tie in each ship’s defense grid to our own.” His staff hurried to comply, relaying his instructions to the other units. The Alliance squadron, already huddled close for mutual protection, drew in even closer, overlapping their shields and fields of fire to wring out every drop of protection they could manage with their meager forces.

The incoming beams and missiles hit the armada like a gut punch, despite their best efforts. Luminous, Cosmos, and Vandal tumbled out of formation, bleeding atmosphere and shedding lifepods until the Troika hammered them into scrap. Those that remained pulled in even tighter, struggling to fend off the withering fire the enemy was pouring into them.

Then it was their turn.

The Mirza ordered the squadron to hold until the last second, just as the two fleets were about to roar past one another… except that wasn’t the plan at all. With the command, “Alter course and fire,” the Allied ships turned as one and dove straight into the enemy armada, breaking apart and pouring everything they had into their formation, slashing through their ranks like sharks. The sudden change of trajectory caught the enemy ship commanders unawares, as they scrambled to get clear of the onrushing craft. Several Troika ships accidentally rammed their neighbors in their haste to withdraw, their cores overloading and detonating like miniature suns. The Alliance fleet raked the enemy with their claws as they accelerated and burst out the other side, sprinting away and leaving chaos in their wake.

“Mirza, we are receiving a transmission from Yīqún’s Scourge,” the communications officer reported.

“Forward it to my display,” he ordered, as the face of Navarch Vexqoonq appeared on his screen. “What is our status?” he asked the Legionnaire.

“Not good,” his second in command, grimaced. “Zenith and Sublimity are out of it. We’re evacuating both ships before their captains scuttle them. Acquisition and Crescent Moons are both going to need a lot of work before they’re space-worthy again, but they’re salvageable. Eventually.”

The Ixian prince nodded, taking that in. “And the Terran vessel?” he asked.

“Fiddlers’ Green took several hits, but she’s still in this,” the XO reported. “Just don’t ask us for another battle anytime soon.”

“I’m afraid that is up to the Troika,” he admitted. “We may hope they will grant us time to our lick our wounds, but experience suggests otherwise. Expedite your repairs, Navarch,” he urged him, “and ready yourself for a counterstrike.”

“The Troika fleet is still sorting itself out, so we’ve a little time,” he pointed out, “but your concerns are well founded. We’ll get started immediately.”

“Very good,” the Mirza nodded. “We have done what we can. It is up to those on the surface now.”

The Alliance attack had thrown the Troika’s plans into disarray. Untangling themselves and reorganizing took time, just as they’d hoped. Unfortunately, they took this minor setback in stride, resuming their formation as the scattered vessels were called back home. They made hasty repairs to their ships and pressed onward; the fleet reforming into a new configuration as they neared Sonoitii Prime.

As they entered orbit, the Alliance forces on their ground watched and waited. One question remained; would they send forces down to take the planet, or would they remain in their ships and throw rocks at them instead? If it were the latter, there was little they could do. What few weapons they possessed that could hit a target a thousand kilometers up would barely scratch the paint, and none of them would prevent a kinetic bombardment. The best way to take out a ship was to use another ship, and they’d already given the Troika their best shot. If preserving the precious sea beds was still important to them, they’d land troops to prevent their destruction, but it was possible that no longer mattered.

So instead, they watched the skies and prayed.

Minutes ticked by, then hours. The anticipation, the not knowing, was eating away at them all, and no one doubted for a moment that it was intentional. The Troika wanted them on edge, wanted them to wait and worry, questioning themselves if it had all been worth it. They wanted the Alliance to sit and suffer through every agonizing second until they grew tired of the game. When the skyward-pointing radars exploded at last with multiple images in the pre-dawn hours, it was almost a relief. The computers tracked the return’s trajectories and velocities in microseconds and spit out the answer.

Soldiers were coming for them, not asteroids.

Colonel Holme faced his commanders. “We’re on. Operation Monsoon is a go.”

Once the Troika decided to land military forces on Sonoitii Prime instead of simply raining down fire from the heavens, they faced yet another obstacle. While they could use their shuttles to put troops on the ground, it was a less than optimal choice. Shuttles were thin-skinned and lightly armed, making them tempting targets. While armed assault shuttles did exist, with heavier armor and better weapons, they also carried fewer warriors. It would take multiple trips to ferry down the entire contingent, and those that landed first would be cut off and alone. If the Alliance could gather a strong enough force to greet them, they could conceivably gobble up each packet like so much candy.

So instead they fabricated something quite different; drop pods. Each pod carried a trio of soldiers and their gear, allowing them to land safely on the surface, armed and ready to fight the instant they touched down. It had required extensive modifications to their troopships, another reason for their delay, but at least it had given the soldiers who would use them time to train.

In simulators.

But as any seasoned veteran will tell you, simulations and reality are two vastly different beasts. They had programmed every variable they could think of to make them as realistic as possible, but no one, no matter how ingenious they might be, could foresee everything.

And they’d made mistakes.

While the Eleexx, as the recognized scientific experts of the Troika, had designed the drop pods to be as generic as possible, they’d unconsciously configured them for their own form, a lapse that went unnoticed until the warriors entered them for the actual drop. The reptilian Aggaaddub discovered they were far too cramped to fit their larger bodies, forcing them to downsize from three warriors to two. The mammalian Chell, on the other hand, servitors of the Tu’udh’hizh’ak Empire, learned to their dismay they’d set many of the controls and data uncomfortably high, because of their shorter stature. They scrambled to come up with a workaround, dragging in crates and boxes to stand on, altering the carefully calculated weight ratios programmed into the pods’ computers. With their smaller crews, the Aggaaddub also had the same issue, but in reverse. When both species complained angrily to the Eleexx about the problems, they’d shrugged their insectoid shoulders and informed them it was far too late to do anything about it... unless, of course, they wished to postpone the attack until they’d redesigned the pods. Unwilling to take such a drastic step, the other races swallowed their resentment and forged onward.

As the launch clock counted down, the fleet moved into position, intent on saturating the area held by the Alliance forces with thousands of pods. The sooner they could end this insurrection the better, for the longer it dragged on the greater the risk of other species signing up to join the fight. With the Oivu continuing to broadcast the Alliance’s call to arms... a situation that had left them stymied for a solution, given the merchant race’s influence across the sector… crushing their ground forces was the only viable option left open to them. It was a risk but letting the cancer of rebellion spread was an even greater one. When the timers across the fleet hit zero, the great ships began belching out their pods, sending them screaming down to the surface as the invasion of Sonoitii Prime began.

What few anti-space and anti-air weapons the Alliance still possessed were immediately brought online, targeting the pods as they entered firing range. Energy beams and missiles lanced upward, with only moderate success. Hundreds of pods were destroyed but given the fact thousands were being launched against them, it was a mere drop in the bucket.

That’s when the Sonoitii water dragons got involved, showing their hand at last.

There were few things they wanted from other species that they could not provide for themselves. The oceans gave them everything they needed, and outside of medicinal cures there was little else they desired. But when outsiders came, first to strip mine their world, then to steal and murder their very children they realized that solitude was no longer an option. There would always be some hostile force determined to take what was theirs, so they began preparing for the day when negotiations and concessions and mercenaries would not be enough. Their conversation with Colonel Holme convinced them that day had finally arrived.

So as the Troika pods rained down from the skies, the water dragons and their weapon batteries rose to greet them. Huge blasts of energy exploded from the sea, carving vast swaths of destruction in the invasion force, sending thousands of Troika to their deaths. No one, not even among those of the Alliance guarding them, had realized the firepower at their disposal. Certainly, the Troika hadn’t, as they’d programmed the pods to enter the planet’s atmosphere over the oceans in order to avoid the Allied weapons.

It was an intelligence failure of the first order by the Troika, and the battle was just getting started.