The universe, for all intents and purposes, is an endless black void.

A subzero vacuum of deadly radiation storms and cosmic dust that spans the incomprehensible distances between the galaxies spiraling within its frozen depths. An ever-expanding tapestry of star systems spinning their way toward entropy.

Most of this space is wasted, utterly void of anything tangible.

Perhaps, a rogue comet or two can be seen streaking here, or there, possibly an asteroid, or one of the other celestial objects that might be found floating about out there in the darkness. Maybe even an ancient Terran probe, or a strange relic from some long-dead civilization, but for the most part, there's nothing but endless vacuum spanning the stars.

Now, somewhere amidst all of that infinite blackness, is a tiny speck of light that flickers wanly.

So insignificant is this light, so, infinitesimally small amidst the countless other pinpricks glittering within this endless expanse, that your eye is likely to slide right past its faint spark without ever registering that it was there.

It would be just another dim star lost amongst the billions of other suns winking at any who might care to gaze up at the night sky from some distant planet. Their offspring might point up and ask what it is.

Good question...

Have a seat and I'll tell you a story.

If you zoom in on that wavering little dot and watch it grow through the mind-boggling distances that flash by, it will eventually expand into the brightest object in the night sky.

Go further still, and it will resolve into an exceedingly ordinary star system called MX-Zeta Prot. Continue deeper, and the magnificent, shimmering rings of Decimus Proximal will take shape, perhaps even, one of her many moons.

An insignificant star system in the grand scheme of things, but for one important little detail. Magnify further still, and you will see tiny sparks and threads of light that flash and glimmer all-around a moon called MX-1.

These little lightning flickers are not the product of colliding asteroids, or some celebration commemorating a significant event from the past.

They are the devastating weapons fire exchanged between vast warring fleets sprawling across high orbit over the aforementioned moon, MX-1. Smallest of six sister moons caught within the gravity well of MX-Prime, a colossal gas-giant nestled perfectly within the habitable zone of the system's star, which just peeked over the immense, fiery-blue curvature of the planet, sending a shockwave of sparks glittering across the warships.

Clouds of spiraling starfighters swarm like gnats within the dead zone seperating the opposing fleets, an area of space interlocked by a maze of turbolaser fire and blazing warheads.

Within that sea of flak bursts, lancing particle beams, and blasts of energy-dispersion, is a squadron of starfighters that desperately battles against a seemingly endless wave of Nek'var bioraptors.

From the inside, the battle is a storm of desperation and explosions, and bile-black knots of fear that sit heavy in your gut until you can no longer ignore the burning reminder of your impending doom.

It's a rush of adrenaline, and panic and the crippling horror that seizes your heart when people you've lived with, shared meals with, bickered with, admired and loved, and considered family for what seems like your entire life; perhaps, even shared a family with, irretrievably vanish in a terrible blast of finality and flash-frozen gases before your very eyes.

Space is endless.

But at that moment, it felt very small to Lieutenant Ahmya Shi, who fought her starfighters control yoke against a blast of energy-wash that threatened to throw her into an uncontrolled spin.

Her jawline clenched firmly, and she banked hard left, triggering her cannons, and bolts of crimson stitched their way across her enemy's hull until it vanished in a cloud of debris that she spun through and dived after her next target. Shrapnel clanged and pinged against her starfighter's hull, a loud reminder of those who'd made the ultimate sacrifice.

Friends she'd known for years, gone in a rush of fire.

The galaxy was a darker, lonelier place, in the shadow of their absence. An absence that ached so that she thought the universe itself must weep with sorrow, but it didn't. It coldly marched on, unfeeling, uncaring. Never taking notice of the untidy affairs of the mortal beings who flicker in and out of existence within its endless borders.

She banked sharply to port, maneuvering for a shot on one of the enemy raptors ripping space with disruptor fire behind her wingman, Lieutenant Apollo Pharis, and the blackness of the void closed in around her.

Their starfighters spiraled across a grid of deadly particle beams, some bigger around than her starfighter, which would scatter their atoms across the system with the merest of glances. Flak bursts erupted on all sides and an ocean of energy waves rocked her ship like a raft in a raging river.

She was pivoting for a high-side gun pass, when suddenly, a stricken starfighter, or what was left of one, flashed between her and the bioraptor her cannons were hammering at, so close she could read the serial number stamped into its fuselage, venting sparks and ice crystals in twisting gouts, before spiraling off into the darkness.

"Fuck!" She shouted without thinking. "Who was that?!"

"Who was what?" Apollo's edgy voice wanted to know.

"Nothing, nevermind."

That answer was unacceptable to Apollo, and he let her know that without hesitation.

"Just all of this energy wash out here," she lied smoothly, and almost felt guilty about it too. But explaining what she just saw would only make matters worse for Apollo considering his current frame of mind. It was, in fact, her job to protect her wingman, even from himself. "I'm gonna need new transteel panels installed on my canopy by the time this is all over."

Apollo's nervous laughter seemed to lance a fester within him. And his uneasy chuckle slowly rolled into a deep, rich basso.

"Yea, same here, Rain," he responded using her call sign, his voice still brimming with laughter. "My canopy has helmet-sized dents all over it."

Apollo spun low away from a wave of disruptor bolts and streaked for an Alliance cruiser whose expansive missile batteries launched a continuous stream of antimatter warheads at a distant Nek'var world ship.

She nudged her control yoke and followed him into a split-s that skimmed along the vast curvature of the battlecruiser's dorsal hull with only inches to spare between her starfighter's ventral plates and the thin layer of paint flakes and cosmic dust that swirled up from the cruiser's armor when her drive-glows flashed past.

Her ships Tracklock reticle bounced and wove around the canopy, unable to lock-on to the bioraptors wheeling in front of her.

"I can't peel them, Rain," Apollo growled into his mic, frantically spinning and wheeling to stay ahead of the deadly disruptor blasts that blew burning chunks of metal from the battlecruiser's armor. "And I'm running out of tricks."

"Slip cage!" She called out over the mic.

Apollo snap-rolled down below the battlecruiser with Ahmya following closely behind, and together, they rolled across the ventral hull to the other side where scores of starfighters swarmed all around the ship's massive starboard side slip-drive, diving, and twisting and vying for an advantage over their enemy.

They broke apart into a defensive split that sent the sun's unfiltered rays glinting off their curved A-frames. A sight that was quite mesmerizing. A dance of moths in the blazing sunlight.

Then they streaked toward the battlecruiser's maintenance trench which ran the full length of its dorsal hull and snap-rolled over the running board down into its trough. The enemy raptors trailing behind Ahmya attempted to follow, only to have their wing clip the right side wall sending them into an uncontrolled wobble that crashed down onto the deck plate sliding and tumbling across it in blinding fast flips that ricocheted off the walls until they disintegrated in a skidmark of wreckage.

"Scratch three!" Ahmya gleefully shouted into the mic.

"Roger that!" Apollo responded and clenched his teeth in concentration. "Now to get these bastards off my six."

Training, Ahmya decided, as they shot up out of the trench meters before they would have blasted into the armor plating of the tactical bridge.

Yes, Fleet training was what prepared your mind to compartmentalize all of the chaos surging around you so that a pilot could effectively do their job. It would never do to have one seize up with sensory overload out here in the middle of a dogfight.

Ahmya pivoted and rolled, her cannons blazing, but her target snapped into a defensive spiral that evaded the deadly crimson blasts.

Shit.

Ahmya sat up straighter in her seat, jaw clenched tightly and methodically went about her grim work of clearing Apollo's six.

Twice more she tried to clear the bioraptors from Apollo's tail, but each time her cannons hit only empty space.

"Get'em off me, Rain!" Apollo shouted over the mic, cutting sharply right and rolling into a defensive dive. "They clipped my starboard drive that time!"

What do you think I'm trying to do!... She screamed in her head, but that was just adrenaline talking. When she spoke aloud, it was with a somewhat normal voice.

"I'm trying, Apollo," she cried out and ground her teeth, muscles flaring along her jawline. "I'm trying."

Her cannons hammered scarlet blasts into the blackness, stitching glowing holes across the lead raptors hull, but the damage was minor and the raptor seemed unaffected.

"Can't dodge forever," she muttered and unleashed another flurry of bolts.

I hate these damn bioraptors! She raged silently, fear for her wingman beginning to creep in around her consciousness.

She would never understand the twisted evil that drove some beings to pursue such an unnecessary undertaking as interstellar war. Not for the first time, the absolute absurdity of this war, or any armed conflict for that matter, stained her eyes with hate.

All of that real estate out there, countless star systems and planets and asteroid belts to be had. An infinite supply of raw materials, energy, and space to grow, and the intelligent life of this galaxy still sought each other out to waste life on an unnecessary war.

Literally, millennia could pass before we accidentally ran into each other, if ever. Yet, here they were, purposely tracking each other down to pick a fight?

Why?

It was all so utterly preposterous that she couldn't begin to unravel the foolishness behind it all.

She would be the first to admit that Earth had a history steeped in blood shed with various extremists from the past using religion as a means to justify the incorrigible actions they thrust upon the world.

Fate, they would call it. Or perhaps, karma was the word they used.

Ahmya shrugged and mentally waved this aside. Maybe none of those.

She accepted long ago that some things were lost in the mists of time.

But the one thing that absolutely could not be refuted was Earth's bloody heritage. Now, when they were finally making progress, talking peacefully rather than fighting. Doing better, I mean really trying to be good and not bicker amongst themselves, and along come these Nek'var bastards to ignite a terrible war.

Zha Krsst'tz is what they call it. If she remembered the information in her briefing correctly. Or perhaps it was Ick'Ta that they used to justify thrusting the horrors of war upon Humanity's doorstep.

Whatever you want to call it, whatever your beliefs, using a set of principles or tenets, whatever they may be, as justification to wage war, all boils down to the same thing once distilled into their core elements.

I'm right, and you're wrong, either you agree with me, or I'll kill you, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Ahmya snorted in disgust. War. When were the supposed greater minds of the galaxy going to transcend such a primitive concept?

Ahmya's starfighter suddenly rang like an antique telephone when a crackling particle beam fired from a distant capital ship lanced past her fighter so close it left a scorch mark bisecting the Alliance seal emblazoned across the hull behind her canopy.

"Shit!" She gasped over her shrilling computer, fighting the control stick to keep from falling into an uncontrolled tumble. "Come on..."

Suddenly, Ahmya saw an opening and jumped all over it.

"Bad move!" She cried out at the bioraptor who just inexplicably swung in line with her cannons.

Ahmya banked wide and rolled to follow, her cannons flaring crimson, and the enemy bioraptor vaporized in a cloud of swirling debris.

These guys were good, Ahmya was better.

"That's one down, but I can't get a clean shot on the rest," she muttered over the mic and locked a string of curses behind her teeth, kicking her fighter into a pitchback that followed the remaining bioraptors through a series of spins. "It's like these guys know my moves."

Her mind flashed back to training, to the instructors who went out of their way to help her develop the kind of potent offensive skills needed to survive this kind of harrowing engagement without the aid of computer-controlled tracklock systems. Although, she suspected it had more to do with Fleet tracklock AI being ineffective against the Nek'var than an acknowledgment of her latent abilities.

Decades of relying on autonomous AI tracklock software left Fleet with a metaphorical blindspot. A devastating weakness that the enemy readily exploited. Unmanned fighter drones that were useless against the Nek'var bioraptors and a force of pilots who lacked the inherent dogfighting skills to mix it up with the invading Nek'var interceptors without being turned into space dust.

They lost scores of starfighter pilots before the eggheads at Fleet finally figured out why their systems weren't working on the enemy interceptors. Why they didn't show up on radar or put off significant heat signatures, sonar didn't work in space, nothing worked.

Fleet scientists and engineers were utterly baffled.

They assumed it was some high-tech piece of equipment hobbling their systems.

But it wasn't. It wasn't a piece of technology at all.

In the end, it was so simple yet, so utterly alien that it made sense why they couldn't figure it out.

They were alive. The Nek'var ships were not composed of alloys and circuitry, but living creatures, organic.

Some type of bizarre space raptor from wherever it is the Nek'var come from.

"Rain!" Apollo roared into the mic, space around his ship flaring with disruptor fire. His breathing went hard and short, blasts of white noise in her ears, and the fear edging back into his voice pulled her back to reality. "That last volley skimmed my ventral plates!"

Shit, Apollo, was in serious trouble.

Ahmya rocked and spun through a cloud of rattling flak bursts, maneuvering for a kill shot.

She could remember a time when the sound of his voice would have infuriated her. A time, not so long ago when she utterly despised that man.

Training again, she decided and allowed herself a ghost of a smile. It all went back to training.

She first met Apollo back in flight school, years ago.

She was a newly minted Ensign, overly proud, who thought she had it all figured out. By the book, dedicated, and disciplined, that was Ensign Ahmya Shi.

There was no grey area.

Apollo Pharis? Not so much. He was always late, disregarded rules, skated by on nothing and treated life like a neverending party, and all with that stupid grin on his face.

"Almost there," she whispered absently, banking sharply to line up her cannons.

She was convinced that he would eventually be shown the door. She even found herself memorizing the words that she would say to him on that fateful day. A day that never came to pass...

Because Apollo had something she didn't, a hook.

A mother with deep pockets who used the great power of her fortune, and the vastly greater power of her political connections, to ensure the hounds of discipline stayed at bay.

Ahmya hated him so much for that, in some ways, she still did.

She grew up scraping and scrounging after the scraps left by wealthy industrialists for the impoverished masses to squabble over.

She did everything right, worked twice as hard as her peers. Sacrificed so much to get there. And then, in walks Apollo Pharis, all swagger and charm and full of entitlement. It was absolutely appalling.

"Rain!" Apollo's voice blasted into the mic. The bioraptors were pounding space behind him so close the energy dispersion from their disruptor bolts made his rear fuselage glow with accumulated heat.

Shit, better pay attention here, Ahmya.

She activated her cannons, and a blaze of crimson fire swept across the lead raptor and transformed it into an expanding fountain of debris and boiling gases.

"Come on, Apollo," she laughed to ease his tension. "Quit messin' round and slip these guys already. You lose a bet or something?"

Before he could think of a retort, a jagged chunk of debris spiraled out of the darkness and skipped across the starboard side of his fuselage, carving gashes into the plating that sparked and fountained into space.

"Shit," Apollo hissed. "I'm hit!"

Ahmya's heart thumped once painfully against her sternum when she heard those chilling words.

The bioraptors smelled blood and went berserk.

Oh no, you assholes don't! Ahmya practically snarled, gripping her controls so hard her wrist ached and whipped through a series of suppressing maneuvers that slammed her around in the cockpit like a ricocheting bullet.

To Apollo, she shouted, "Slip! Slip hard left, NOW!"

Apollo wheeled, went inverted, and dove sharply to port, his starboard wing trailing a cloud of glittering ice crystals behind him. Disrupter blasts tore space where his fighter had just been.

"Come about!" Ahmya yelled into the mic. She saw something back there that gave her an idea, one that Apollo wasn't going to like, but it was their only chance now. "Did you see that debris field we passed back there? I marked it on your Nav."

Apollo didn't like where this was going. He said as much.

"Yea, why?..." His wary voice came over the mic with more than a little suspicion coloring it.

"Just do it, head for the field."

Apollo sighed in resignation.

He had a sudden, overwhelming bad feeling about this, but Ahmya had better instincts than any pilot he knew, so he had to trust she knew what was best.

He adjusted his course, and soon they were streaking toward the debris field with a pack of frothing bioraptors directly behind him.

Ahmya laid down a furious, continuous torrent of cannon fire that kept the bioraptors from scoring anything meaningful on Apollo's starfighter.

She frowned down at her instrument panel, which shrieked madly at her.

Shit, her cannons were overheating.

She worked several keys on the screen, and emergency heat sinks initialized with a clunk and a low hum. Jets of superheated gas poured from a port system located to the rear of each wing and dispersed into space.

"Now what?" Apollo wanted to know over the shrilling klaxon of his warning systems, glancing out of his canopy at the ice crystals billowing from his fuselage. "Life support is down to fifty-eight percent. I'm not going to make it, Rain. You should get out of here while you can - go, now."

"Don't even talk like that, Apollo," She shot back into the mic, the idea that she would abandon him to save her own hide was unthinkable, even insulting. The thought struck a molten dagger to her heart. "I'm not going anywhere. Now pay attention."

Another flight of bioraptors tore past them on the starboard side.

The enemy raptors wrenched their vessels into pursuit maneuvers that practically tore their ships apart and put them several hundred kilometers behind Ahmya.

"Shit," she heard Apollo growl over the comm. "Just what we needed."

"Yea," she agreed, ice water running down her spine. "More bad guys."

Disruptor bolts blasted molten slag from Apollo's dorsal plating.

"Rain..."

"Don't worry," She said coolly, her voice going cold as stone. Let's see if these bastards have the stones to follow us into that field, she thought gravely. "We're going to lose them in that wreckage."

"WHAT?" Apollo practically choked on his tongue, barrel-rolling madly toward the debris field. "My starboard control jets are down; I can't pull that off!"

"I've got four inbound bioraptors on my tail," Ahmya replied flatly. "We can't win this fight. Our only chance is to run and lose them in that wreckage."

More disruptor fire raked across Apollo's starfighter, leaving a trail of glowing pockmarks directly behind his cockpit.

"There goes my weapons system!" He shouted. "They're all over me!"

The other flight of bioraptors slowly gained on them, not quite in range yet.

"You're doing great, Apollo," the coldness in Ahmya's voice surprised even herself from where she sat locked behind a prison of concentration. "We're almost there, snap roll, NOW!"

The roiling debris field loomed before them, ominous and deadly.

Ahmya's advanced AI object tracking system screamed with a suggested route through the whirling debris. It suggested that she avoid it altogether. But that wasn't an option, so she worked a few keys on her instrument panel, and the tracking algorithms fell silent.

Ahmya watched from beneath a raised brow as the group of bioraptors actually followed Apollo into the debris field like he was pulling them with a tow cable. She'd expected them to break off at the last moment and veer away to avoid the wreckage. Maybe, they weren't as cowardly as she'd hoped, or what's more likely is that they were too stupid to realize following them into a space junkyard was a bad idea.

She sighed bitterly, this turn of events complicated things for them, and now she had to figure out a way to deal with it. Because there they were, hot on his heels, blasting and weaving through the gauntlet of spinning wreckage.

Apollo banked wide, dodging disruptor bolts and looping in evasive spirals as he led the way through a veritable maze of crashing hull sections and hurling debris of all shapes and sizes.

He sliced through a sea of shimmering particles that hung in the empty spaces between the larger pieces of wreckage.

Ahmya clenched her jaw and followed him through, her canopy cracking and snapping with the sounds of a brutal hailstorm.

"Shit," she heard Apollo shriek into the mic. "You see it?!"

Ahmya's eyes widened in horror.

A massive section of Nek'var cruiser slowly tumbled out of the blackness directly into the path of their oncoming starfighters.

She scanned frantically, only seconds remaining to make a decision, but large debris surrounded them on all sides.

Nowhere to go...

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