Yvian wondered if the Peacekeepers were as nervous as she was.

In hindsight, it was a stupid question. She already knew the machines could feel. She assumed they had the same desire to live as other sapients, and they'd been waiting for hours to engage an enemy that outnumbered and outgunned them. By a lot. Yvian wasn't even taking part in the fight, and she was scared. She doubted the Peacekeepers were any different.

She looked over the fleet one more time. Fifteen thousand capitol ships and frigates, with a smattering of Federation built fighters, a couple battlecruisers, and a single YEET artillery barge. A month ago she would have considered it an overwhelming show of force. Now it struck her as small. Inadequate. The Confed military had launched an attack with a massively larger fleet, and the pirates had turned them into paste.

"All checks complete?" Mims asked. "Is the new Node network secure?" The Peacekeepers had modified the quantum entanglement of their Nodes before bringing them back online, creating a separate network that Yvian hoped Reba wouldn't be able to access. The ships of the fleet were being flown manually, and the comms were physically disconnected from the other systems to prevent hacking.

"Yes." said Admiral Ender Zhukov. "All systems green. All units ready."

"Then let's get this party started," said the Captain. He frowned and scratched his head. "Do you think we should give some kind of speech or something?"

Admiral Zhukov didn't answer. Nor did he bother with preamble. He simply activated the comms and said, "Begin." Over fifteen thousand ships activated their jumpdrives.

"May fortune find you on the cusp of The Crunch," Yvian whispered. Lissa echoed the sentiment. They watched as the jumpdrives charged. Thirty seconds later, they disappeared in a flash of blue.

Another thirty seconds, and the fleet exited the Gate Effect. The holodisplay shifted, showing the sensor scans of the ships arriving in Tortuga. What awaited them there caught Yvian's breath.

Tortuga was a large sector, with two stars, seventeen planets, and three asteroid belts. On opposite ends of the sector were two Jumpgates. Facing the Gates at a distance of just under five hundred kilometers were the ships of the Freedom Republic. Two fleets, each six times the size of Yvian's. Roughly a third of them were from the Confederation. The rest had been built by the far deadlier humans. A single human capitol ship could destroy a Confed military fleet with it's superior speed and shield piercing MAC cannons. Twenty thousand of them waited at each Gate, along with ten thousand frigates, two thousand YEET artillery barges, and thirty thousand human fighter ships. Why in The Crunch did the humans send the pirates so many ships so soon? It had only been a month.

"Looks like they expected us," Captain Mims remarked.

"Affirmative," Kilroy confirmed. Lissa started swearing. Yvian supposed it made sense. Reba would have known when the fleet was jumped out of krog space. It wouldn't be hard for her to predict Mims would be attacking. Every day the Freedom Republic was getting more ships. Mims couldn't commission more ships of his own fast enough to make a difference. Hitting Tortuga as soon as possible was the only choice he could make.

The Peacekeepers opened fire less than a second after they'd come through the Gate. Mims had insisted the krog build his fleet with beam weapons for all the Capital ships. Yvian was beginning to see why. The enemy were well out of range for conventional cannons, but the beam weapons could hit a target at ninety thousand kilometers, and they were nearly impossible to dodge. Beams danced from one human fighter to another, the Peacekeepers targeting with inpixen speed and precision. Faster than Yvian could track, pirate ships were disabled.

The Freedom Republic responded after a few precious seconds. The entire fleet barreled forward, moving to engage the machines. While she couldn't see them on the scanners, Yvian was sure a torrent of MAC rounds were headed for her fleet, as well.

In perfect unison, the Peacekeeper fleet retreated through the Gate. They had engaged the enemy for exactly eight point four seconds. They had not needed to communicate at all. Each individual machine had calculated the optimal attack time itself, and each had reached the exact same conclusion.

Thirty seconds later the fleet came out of the Gate effect. Two seconds after that, they jumped again. Lissa had figured out it was possible to charge a jumpdrive while still in the Gate, and the Peacekeepers were taking advantage.

This time the fleet emerged from the other Gate. The pirates on this side hadn't moved since the battle began. Yvian supposed she didn't blame them. It had only been a minute and a half. Coordinating a response and giving orders took time, and she doubted the pirates expected the second attack to hit them that soon on the other side of the sector.

The same scenario played out. The Peacekeepers used their beam weapons to disable human fighter craft. They didn't bother targeting the YEETs or capitol ships. Beam weapons had amazing range, but the damage they dealt was far less than conventional weapons. The combined might of the entire fleet would only be enough to down a hundred or so of the larger vessels in the time they had. It was just as well, Yvian supposed. A Gladiator class fighter had the firepower to destroy a much larger ship, and they were fast. Too fast. Close range engagement would spell the end for Yvian's fleet, and that made the fighters the biggest threat.

Eight point four seconds later, the Peacekeepers retreated through the Gate. Two seconds after they emerged, they jumped back to New Pixa.

"Assessment," Mims ordered.

"Eighteen thousand, four hundred sixty Gladiator class fighters disabled." Admiral Zhukov intoned. "All Battlecruisers and YEET artillery barges have been engaged with MAC drivers, but it is unknown if they have been damaged." Yvian noted with approval that the ships had been disabled. Not destroyed. If they won this thing, she wanted as many human ships as she could get her hands on. A hundred fifty thousand Federation vessels piloted by Peacekeeper units would be damned near unstoppable. The perfect defense force for her people.

"So far so good." Mims let out a breath. "Now comes the hard part."

"We will be sufficient," Kilroy assured him.

"You will if we guessed right," the Captain agreed. "If we guessed wrong..."

Commandant Barillas had outmaneuvered them at every turn until today. Mims had played things as smart and as carefully as he could, but they would all be dead if Exodus hadn't intervened. Now Yvian knew the Commandant wasn't the problem. At least, not all of it. A near omniscient sapient intelligence had been watching their every move, devising counters for every contingency. If this fight was going to be won, Mims and the Peacekeepers didn't just have to outthink Barillas. They had to outthink Reba. Yvian still wasn't sure it could be done.

"Do you think she knows what we're doing?" Lissa sounded as worried as Yvian was.

"Unlikely," decided the Admiral. "Peacekeeper units do not register on scans. The previous attack exactly mimicked a preprogrammed attack pattern." He activated the comm. "Split forces. Enact phase two." The fleet powered their jumpdrives.

"What happens if she's caught on already?" Yvian wondered.

"Then our forces will be destroyed," Kilroy answered. "The Freedom Republic will obtain the nav data for this sector. The planet will be taken, and there will be nowhere left to hide." He paused for a moment. "I calculate a ninety two point six four percent probability that neither you nor we would survive in that scenario."

"Way to lighten the tension there, Kilroy," Lissa deadpanned. "For a minute there I was starting to get nervous."

"You are welcome, meatbag." Kilroy's eyes pulsed yellow.

Yvian waited with clenched legs as the two halves of the Peacekeeper fleet went through the Gate Effect. Two maps popped up on the holodisplay when they came out. The Peacekeepers had chosen to jump to the exit points on the other side of the Gates from Tortuga. There they found the response she both hoped for and dreaded.

Federation battlecruisers. Unmanned. Yvian assumed Reba had control of them directly. There were twenty five hundred of them at each Gate, accompanied by a handful of YEETs and five thousand Gladiators. Reba had been expecting the pixen fleet to repeat their earlier attack run. They would have backed into the Gate and come out the other side to a storm of perfectly timed MAC rounds.

On the other hand, if Mims was clever enough to attack the other side of the Gate, the small Reba fleets could fling rounds until they managed to back through the Gate, at which point the Freedom Republic pirates would hit them with a storm of perfectly time MAC rounds. Game over either way.

For the first few seconds it played out as Reba predicted. The Peacekeeper fleets targeted the enemy gladiators with beam weapons. Reba's ships fired their MACs. The Peacekeepers moved back towards the Gate.

Just before the pixen fleet would have entered the Gate Effect, the ships engines flared. They leaped forward and to the side, narrowly avoiding Reba's shield piercing projectiles. The krog built ships leapt into the void, angling away from the Gates and the enemy fleets. Beam weapons had rendered Reba's Gladiators inoperable, and the Peacekeepers got to work pounding on the YEETs and battlecruisers.

Yvian had expected the krog ships to be like the krog themselves. Big, blocky, and tough, but slow. She had greatly underestimated the craftsmanship of the kingdom. The krog built vessels were sleek and fast, with strong shields, decent firepower, and no glaring weaknesses. True, they were slower and weaker than anything the humans built, but they were still better than most of the other ships she'd seen in the Confederation.

Reba's fleet burst into pursuit. They'd started at a range of four hundred kilometers, meaning a round from a MAC cannon needed a full five seconds to reach the Peacekeepers. The pixen fleet was changing speed and direction too rapidly and too randomly to guarantee a hit at that distance. Meanwhile concentrated beam fire was disabling one capital ship after another. It would be a race to see if Reba's ships could either predict the Peacekeeper's evasives or get close enough to nullify them before the beam weapons took them down.

For their part, the Peacekeepers had pre-arranged a randomized set of movements that changed every two to six seconds. Mims and Lissa had helped create the list, removing the mathematical predictability inherent to sapient machines. Reba's ships compensated by firing rapidly in as many vectors as possible, filling the void around the machines with electromagnetically accelerated death. The systematic approach paid dividends, as more and more holes appeared in the Peacekeeper fleet. Nearly two hundred ships were destroyed in the span of thirty seconds.

It wasn't enough. The Peacekeepers outnumbered the remaining ships three to one, and their beam weapons couldn't be avoided. Five minutes later, the last battlecruiser was disabled. Captain Mims let out a sigh of relief.

"Looks like we guessed right."

"Yes," said Admiral Zhukov. "But we also gave the game away. Reba knows those ships are piloted. She's probably already guessed by who."

"Yeah, but I think we neutralized her ace in the hole." The human narrowed his eyes. "She can't take control of the Commandant's ships without revealing herself. With her personal fleet gone, we should be able to take the sector."

"She can still relay orders to the pirates," the Admiral pointed out. "Victory is not guaranteed."

"Incorrect," Kilroy disagreed. "They face Peacekeeper units. They will not be sufficient."

The Peacekeepers retrieved their brethren from the damaged ships and returned to New Pixa. Most of the ships had taken some sort of damage, but only a third of them had lost significant functionality. Those stayed behind as the others formed up for one more offensive.

"Are we ready?" Mims asked the Admiral

"Affirmative."

The Captain nodded. "Resume offensive in thirteen minutes, eighteen seconds."

Lissa frowned at him. "Why the weird countdown?"

The human ran a hand through his hair. "Our biggest remaining problem is that Reba might predict us. If she can guess which Gate we're using and the time, our ships'll be shredded the second they show up. Anything we can do to be more unpredictable is a good idea."

Yvian waited. Once again, the Peacekeeper fleet disappeared into the Gate Effect. Once again, they exited to find a pirate fleet in front of them. This time most of the pirates were out of commission. Apparently, the motherless sons either hadn't noticed the human ships accompanying the fleet, or hadn't thought through the implications. They failed to dodge, and the MAC guns of the Peacekeepers had disabled all but a handful of capital ships. There were still a large number of fighters, but they were dealt with swiftly.

"That's just disappointing as hell," Mims groused. He glared as half the Peacekeeper fleet entered the Gate effect, heading to the other side of Tortuga to mop up the last of the resistance.

"They are meatbags," Kilroy pointed out. "What did you expect?"

"Those assholes have been kicking my ass for months." The human glared at the defunct pirate fleet. "To see them so suddenly incompetent..." He shook his head.

"They are meatbags," Kilroy repeated. "What did you expect?"

"It's better this way," Lissa pointed out. "A stupid enemy is a gift from the Bright Lady."

"Yeah..." Mims sighed. "It's just so..." His face twisted in disgust. "...unprofessional."

"If it's any comfort," said Admiral Zhukov, "the pirates would have easily destroyed our fleet if it had been piloted by organics. They're only incompetent by comparison."

"Meatbags could never have pulled off an attack in such a way," Kilroy added. "Nor could such an attack plan have been automated."

"The pirates were never that great, you know." Yvian put a hand on the human's shoulder. Barillas had been smart and deadly, but the other pirates? They were just pirates.

"Indeed," Ender Zhukov's eyes flashed white and yellow. "Do not underestimate the feat we have accomplished. We anticipated and outmaneuvered one of the smartest beings in the Verse. A peer of Exodus the Genocide. No human or Peacekeeper has ever managed such a thing before."

"I guess." Mims scratched his head. The Peacekeepers finished off the last pirate ship. The fleet's carriers deployed their complements of fighters. The fighter wings were packed with Peacekeeper assault squads. They split into groups and plotted a course to the now undefended pirate stations. "It just feels kind of anticlimactic, you know?"

"You're just mad you got left out. " Yvian gave him a knowing look. "You wanted to go out there and kill some people."

"It sounds bad when you say it like that."

"It is bad, Mims."