The pebble flew through the air, hit the rock, and bounced straight up. Another pebble bounced off of a different rock at a different angle and intersected the first rock, knocking it off course. The pebble flew out and landed in the middle of concentric rings marring the dirt.

"Bullseye," Roca del Yaung y. McDonald said. She looked like a fit blonde woman with green eyes. She was only six-foot-two, shorter side of Terran Descent Human normal, but her body was muscular and well sculpted, with tan skin and freckles on her face. She looked over at one of the other Monster Class troopers. "Your shot."

The other, one Corporal Aziz, who had dusky skin, black hair, and dark eyes, lifted up two pebbles, one in each hand. He threw the first, so that it deflected straight up and the second one while the first was still moving toward the rock. The second connected with the first, sending it arcing out.

It landed on one of the outer rings.

"Two points," PFC Argyle said, leaning down and drawing two lines in the dirt with a stick.

Off in the distance something exploded, black smoke billowing into the sky.

Roca shook her head. "They're still losing it."

Argyle shrugged. "Can you blame them? The Confederacy kicked their asses so hard that apparently they didn't even have airplanes. Hell, they probably didn't even look up at the sky any more."

Roca sighed. "If we try to get close, the either run away screaming, go catatonic, have a screaming melt-down in front of us, or try to kill themselves. What the hell happened here?"

Sergeant Ishiro, with skin so black and shiny it looked almost blue in some lights, rubbed his bald head. "The Confederacy happened, Roca. What do you think?"

That made Roca chuckle. She activated the t-link, which linked squad members together on an unjammable biologically generated analogue FTL frequency kept live by bioware.

Mbutu, still good? she asked.

Bored, Sergeant, the other said, separated by hundreds of light years.

Same here. The locals keep screaming and throwing themselves on the ground and rubbing their faces in the dirt, Roca said. She watched, bored out of her mind, as Sergeant Ishiro took his turn and got it in the first ring outside the center circle.

They're called the Wemtarran*. Got their ass kicked twice by the Confederacy, 1%'d each time,* Mbutu replied. You're probably on their homeworld. It's under 1% Second Chance protocols.

Roca sighed again. Great. She'd violated a 1% Interdiction Mandate. That was going to get her a couple of decades in the penalty box.

Can you get someone out here? We're dying of boredom, Roca said.

Confed's sending a Junker to get you. He can get in and out, everyone else is tied up with some dumb shit called Iron Piglet, Mbutu said.

Roca paused for a second. How's the headache? she asked, referring to the headache everyone had been suffering from since they woke up.

Better. The doctors here, the little guys on the planet we were on, they said it has something to do with the invoked memory stimulator and our SUDS implants. I've got a hormone profile for you that you can have your omnigland start squirting, Mbutu said.

Rather have something else squirting inside me, Roca complained.

Mbutu laughed and signed off.

It took nearly five minutes for the file transfer to finish, even though it wasn't that big. The analogue t-link system was about as slow as talking, so basically it was five minutes of Mbutu's link talking really fast to Roca's.

Roca took a look at it, realized that it was way outside of her knowledge, and passed it out to everyone. After about ten minutes, her 'war told her the omnigland was ready to start printing the updated hormone.

Thirty minutes later the aggravating headache eased up slightly.

The pebbles clicked and clacked for a little bit until Roca heard Alverez and Hong arguing. She looked over and saw both had their palm emitters turned up and showing something to each other, arguing urgently but quietly.

Curious, Roca went over and looked down.

Two animated characters were being shown, one hovering over each holo-emmitter.

"You're as stupid as you are crazy, Kasumi is superior to that knife eared double-chola any day of the week," Alverez said.

"Eat shit, Al," Hong snapped. The holoemitter showed a blond woman with big round breasts, big eyes, and blonde hair. "Rainsong is best girl and you damn well know it, you fish-head eating Gibli-ite."

"She's nine thousand year old bustedness," Alverez said. "Nobody cares about your point eared leaf eating tree hugging wolf riding elderly menopausal waifu, loser."

"Your girl isn't even authentic Animeland," Hong said. "Mine might be Hamburger Kingdom elvish immortal ancient hotness, but your girl is a squeaky voiced jerky movement static background turd juggler that has less than 14 episodes and her production was moved to..." Hong paused slightly, then leaned forward. "Great Herd Studios last year."

"You take that back!" Alverez jumped to his feet, his eyes flashing red.

"Both of you suck," Roca said, pouring fuel on the fire. She held out her hand and an image of a short TDH with bone white skin, one eye violet the other ruby, blue hair, wearing only a thong and pasties under a big jacket with a huge gun in her hands. "Yannasee is best girl."

Alverez threw his hands in the air. "Of course, the real life murder-loli thinks a murder-loli is the best! Color me shocked!"

"Eight hundred episodes of Chrome-Tear Years, Mister Fourteen Episodes," Roca said, putting on hand on her hip.

"Bah, try twenty-thousand episodes," Hong said.

"All of you are degenerates who belong on a cross," Argyle said.

Everyone turned to look at the PFC, who was pulling up his sleeve to show a tattoo. "Three-D Supremacy. Two-D and Two-Five-D losers have to go full eVR. Three-D bros only, losers."

"You got her in a pocket somewhere, Three-Dee-Freaky?" Hong asked. "'Cause I don't see you bio-waifu around here anywhere."

"Pfft, she's probably getting slotted in all holes by some shipboard Marine who can't pronounce the colors of the crayons he's eating," Alverez said.

Argyle laughed. "At least she doesn't have millions of humping pillows printed out every year of her," he said. "More people have seen your shit-tier waifu naked than the Dwellerspawn have managed to eat."

"You calling her a whore?" Hong asked.

Roca moved two where the two men would come face to face.

"Whores get paid," Argyle grinned.

"THAT'S IT!" Hong swung a fist.

Argyle slapped it to the side.

It hit Roca in the mouth. Her head rang, her lip went numb and fuzzy, blood fountained into her mouth.

Laughing, Roca punched Argyle in the face. "Two-Dee Supremacy!"

In seconds the entire six man squad was rolling around the ground, wrestling and punching.

Wounds appeared and vanished, knuckle spikes drove holes into flesh and muscle that barely bled before they resealed, lips bled and healed before they could swell.

Finally the six troopers all collapsed on the grass, breathing heavily.

"Handy-Somme Squee-wark for life," Aziz said. "Tee-Eff-Double-You when you know you'll never find anyone with Crabby Patty thick thighs and clapping cheeks like that."

Everyone started laughing, laying on the torn up grass and looking up at the sky.

Another explosion sounded off in the distance as the Wemtarran collapsed another building higher than four stories.

-----

The dropship settled down on the grass, the runic pattern around it smoking. After a moment the main hatch rolled open and the ramp dropped down.

"Let's go," Roca said, standing up.

The others nodded, standing up.

In the doorway of the ship stood a tall, slender TDH in an armored vac-suit that was covered with dancing and capering cartoon girls, all with exaggerated features and half with pom-poms.

"Man, those are some shit waifus," Argyle said.

Roca snorted.

"Confed asked me to pick you six up," the man said. He waved at everyone. "It's a Millstone class dropship, so the seats will fit you even in monster mode."

"Naw, we'd rather run Gerry'd out," Roca said.

"Suit yourself," the man said.

"Sergeant Roca," she said, shaking his hand.

"Max," the man said. He moved away. "Once you're strapped in, we'll get in the air and get you back to the loving arms of Confed Military Services in a week or two."

Roca just followed silently. Despite the humor in the cartoons, the man's attitude seemed dark, out of place with the garish colors and the cartoon mascots stenciled in moving LED paint all over the vac-suit.

When Max was tightening Alverez's straps he saw the animated tattoo on Alverez's forearm.

"How many episodes do you know of?" Max asked, straightening up. He made some taps with his finger against his leg and lifted his hand.

"Fourteen," Alverez said.

"There's twenty-eight now," Max told him. He made a grabbing motion then tossed an invisible ball to Alverez. "Here."

Max started heading toward the cockpit.

"Thanks," Alverez said.

"Yeah, Great Herd Studios of Great Animation and Great Fictional Works put out Season Two last year," Max said.

Alverez hung is head as Hong pointed and laughed at him.

-----

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

Hey, Trea, Rigel, are you in here?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Yeah. What's up?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

I was looking over old Confederacy Foundation Documents, since it looks like things are changing for my people, and I found something called "The Dovi Accords" that were apparently from a long time. Like, Fourth Republic ago.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Oh.

That.

Yeah.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

What? What's wrong?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That was bad all around.

The war was bad enough, but what we found out afterwards, and what we know now, it's even worse.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

What?

Tell us. I mean, we're probationary members, we should be able to know.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Oh... I hate this story. It's so sad.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

OK. Their people are only remembered as "Dovians", their real name has been lost.

They came from outside the Galactic Arm Spur. Millions of them. They had some bigger ships, we figured out those were tankers that took on mass and gasses from the gas giants.

They hit the Fourth Republic hard. They landed on planets enmasse, killing Republic citizens without exception. They even hit with proscribed weaponry like chemicals.

No atomic or nuclear though.

In hindsight, we know why.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

They were colonizing?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Yeah. But they kept pushing, kept attacking.

The Republic counter-attacked, and things got brutal.

If Republic forces made landfall, the Dovians immediately fled to their ships. Hell, if the Republic's ships showed up in system, the Dovians fled.

And they never returned to any system they'd fled from.

See, the Dovians, they had this dual ship system. A heavy torchship aerospace fighter, always followed by this beautiful crystalline ship that looked like a butterfly.

The thing was, if you killed the torchship, the butterfly exploded.

If you killed the butterfly, the torchship would cost for a few minutes and either self-destruct or turn off their shields on the next attack run, or even do a kamihahazee run.

The butterflies? They weren't shielded.

The Dovians had the best shields in existence for the torchships.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

So you blow up the butterflies. Probably a reactor or solar energy capacitor.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That's what we thought.

It was a massacre.

Then, the Dovians tried negotiation.

That's when we found out.

And we were horrified.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

What?

Were they eating the Federation's people?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

...

...

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Those butterflies? They were full of the pilot's families. The males would take turns flying the ships, that's why they kept spearing further and further into Federation Space.

When the butterfly exploded, the pilots would do their death rituals and self-destruct.

When the ship exploded, the butterfly exploded to keep the families from falling into enemy hands.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Now, we know why.

We didn't until a few centuries ago.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Why?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Hang on.

So, during negotiations, the lead negotiator's kid meets an alien kid. They become friends. The wife of the ambassador meets with the wife of the lead negotiator in secret.

That's when we found out.

See, we couldn't speak each other's languages very well. We relied on VI translation.

The ambassador's wife. She piled a bunch of little piles of grass up. She pointed at the human children playing, then at the grass.

She then blew away all the little piles but one.

She pointed at her son. Pointed at the last pile.

She said "Dovi", the kid's name.

The Republic was horrified.

This was the last child. The ambassador had the last family.

There were riots on Republic worlds protesting that the Dovians had been slaughtered enmasse.

The negotiation ended soon after.

The Dovians were allowed free passage through Republic Space.

They left, and we never saw them again.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

By the Warfather's whiskers.

They didn't blame themselves, did they? They couldn't have known!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Maybe they shouldn't have brought their families into battle.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Except, now we know why.

Thousands of years later, and we learn why.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

Why?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFED

They were fleeing the Mar-gite.