The blue light of the Gate Effect rippled in through the viewport. The Random Encounter's nose was lightly brushed up against the hull of a Peacekeeper Queenship. The massive ship stretched farther than Yvian could see. She'd was sure the novelty of the huge, terrifying vessels would wear off eventually, but it hadn't worn off yet. She'd stared at the Monster in Paradise for over half an hour, now, between moving the Encounter into position and waiting for the former Klaath dreadnought's absurd shielding to recharge.

The Monster was more menacing than majestic, a series of nine kilometer spheres joined together in a long, long line. Yvian had learned the spheres had a small living space roughly a third of the way from one end of the ship, a six kilometer space that had once contained a Klaath Queen. The rest of the spheres were filled with nothing but power and shield generators, with a few kinetic thrusters here and there.

Wrapping around the spheres were three spirals, three kilometers tall. At a distance they looked like blades, but up close they looked like huge curved walls. The blades housed more power generators and the massive, overpowered beam weapons that were the hallmark of the Queens.

The line of spheres and blades stretched for just over five hundred kilometers. From a distance it reminded Yvian of a particularly vicious needle, or maybe a stinger from some horrid venomous thing. From up close it was even worse. Swirling lines of some purple material stretched through the hull like glowing veins, giving a disturbingly fleshlike appearance to the disturbingly alien ship.

The hull of the Monster was covered with ships. Peacekeeper Stinger units, mostly. The Stingers were fighter class, with a triangular design similar to that of the Encounter. They were lightly shielded, but fast, and armed with a beam weapon that could be modified to disperse charged particles in a wide cone. A few hundred gladiator class fighters were scattered here and there, in case MAC guns were needed. A year ago, it would have been a force beyond anything she'd ever seen. A fleet that could crush a nation by itself. But now... Now it didn't seem like much. Yvian felt naked.

"The Monster in Paradise has begun exiting the Gate," Kilroy reported. "This unit is routing its sensors and comms to our consoles."

"Thank you, Kilroy." Captain Mims fiddled with his console. The Random Encounter had five consoles at the front of the bridge, just under the viewports. Mims was seated at the center console. Lissa and Yvian were on either side of him. Kilroy stood next to Lissa. The Peacekeeper had no need to sit, and they didn't have a chair capable of holding the weight of his chassis. Scarrend disdained a chair as well, squatting on his haunches next to Yvian. "Remember, let me do the talking."

"I still think it should be me," Lissa remarked.

"Trust me," Mims sounded confident. Bordering on cheerful. "There's more to being a Privateer than just shooting things. I've had a lot of practice tracking down targets and extracting information from people that don't want to give it up."

"Yeah, but..." Lissa was frowning. Yvian could tell. "Don't the humans hate you? a lot?"

"Everyone always does." Mims typed into his console. "Eyes open, people. If this is a trap, I want to see it coming."

Yvian pulled up the sensor readings on her display. Terra Nova Sector looked just as they'd expected. Beam towers were arranged in neat rows across a massive area. Hundreds of thousands of them, spaced in ten thousand kilometer intervals. Thousands of more traditional weapons platforms had been placed in front of the Gate. Dozens of small roving fleets patrolled the sector, all operating on autopilot.

Terra Nova itself was just as heavily defended as Aldara had been. A dense network of shield generators and weapons stretched across the planet, and it was surrounded by more weapon platforms and several thousand ships. A pair of large stations orbited the planet, filled with shuttles but devoid of life. A few dozen damaged and dilapidated stations could be seen here and there, empty husks with no power and no docked ships. A single Military Outpost hung in the void just over twenty thousand kilometers from the Gate the Monster was using to enter the sector. The Outpost had a pair of docked Federation gladiators, and three humans.

Scanning the planet was Scarrend's job, so Yvian focused on the Outpost. "They're shooting at us," she reported. The heavy cannons of the base had opened fire the moment the Monster had started to emerge. "Scans show they've got MAC cannons, but I can't see if they're firing or not."

"They are," Mims assured her. "Kilroy, have the Stingers do their thing."

"The Peacekeeper Stinger units are already doing their thing," Kilroy told him. "They started screening the millisecond they entered real space."

"So they did." The Captain looked up from his display. "Good work."

The Stinger units were detaching from the Monster in Paradise the moment they were outside the Gate Effect, staying inside the Queenships shield bubble, but getting far enough from its hull that they could activate shields of their own. They were spraying the space in front of the Queenship with charged particles, sweeping cones of fire in a set pattern to catch the shield piercing weapons of the humans. The cones were hitting some of the Federation beam towers that were close to the Gate, but at five thousand kilometers they weren't doing much damage.

Yvian shifted her attention to the weapons platforms. All twelve hundred and thirty of them were hitting the Monster with everything they could throw. The closer platforms were only a few hundred kilometers away, and the Stingers were keeping at least one cone of fire on them at all times. The dispersed cones were far less damaging than an unmodified beam weapon, but Yvian guessed at least some of the platforms would be destroyed by the time they were done.

There were nearly eight thousand beam towers within firing range of Yvian's fleet. All of them were pounding on the Monster in Paradise. She checked the ship's shields, and found that the damage being dealt was less than the Queen's recharge rate. Ridiculous.

"Any change on the planet?" asked the Captain.

"No," Scarrend reported.

"No power signatures in the other stations, either," Lissa added. "No activity in the asteroid belts."

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"Alright. Keep looking. I'm going to comm our new friends." Mims typed into his console. "Hailing them now."

"What if they don't take your comm?" Lissa asked.

The Captain shrugged. "We'll shoot them until they do."

"If they refuse or die," Kilroy added, "we can take the planet and interrogate the meatbags there."

"It won't come to that," Mims was certain. The comm pinged. "See? They're answering already."

"Pixen warship," the voice was male. Baritone. Surprisingly smooth. "Go fuck yourself."

The Captain gave an annoyed grunt. Then he commed back, "Swearing over the comms is against regulations."

"Fuck you, Kinslayer," The human doubled down. "Aldara remembers."

"Aldara's empty," the Captain countered. "That planet doesn't house a single soul. The whole Federation's gone missing. We've scoured the unclaimed sectors, checked the Confed and the Xill. We looked everywhere we could think of, and all we could find was you."

Silence.

"Here's what's going to happen." The Captain's voice was matter of fact. "I'm going to ask you questions. You're going to answer them. Once my curiosity is satisfied, we'll leave."

More silence.

"We'll start small," Mims decided. "Give me your name and rank."

The silence stretched. The blue light of the Gate Effect stopped rippling in through the viewport. Mims looked up, then pulled up flight control. The Random Encounter pulled away from the Monster's hull and activated its shields.

"Really?" Yvian could hear the Captain's raised eyebrow. "None of you have names?"

"They are using a Nexus Node," Kilroy reported. "The Node is not connected to the Federation Nexus."

"Alternate network," Mims mused. "Can you tap into it?"

"Negative," said the machine. "The Node is hardwired into the station. No wireless transmissions detected."

"Understood." Mims hailed the Outpost again. "I see you're still not understanding the situation. You will answer my questions. Not because I'll kill you if you don't. No. You'll answer me because there's fifty thousand people trapped on that planet you're watching, and I've got enough slave implants for every single one of them."

Yvian whipped her head around to stare at the man. Lissa was staring in shock, as well.

"You're bluffing." Yvian wondered if the human felt as confident as he sounded. Probably not, she decided. She'd thought faking confidence was a Mims thing, but she was starting to wonder if maybe all humans did it.

"Am I?" The Captain was cold as the void. "There are six hundred gladiator class fighters here with me. Why don't you scan a couple. See what's in the cargo bay. I'll wait." Mims turned to Kilroy. "Can the Monster hit one of the ships on Terra Nova?"

"Affirmative," said the Peacekeeper. Yvian raised her eyebrows. The planet was nearly eighty million kilometers away. "However, the beam will be greatly reduced at that range."

"Enough to destroy a ship?"

"Affirmative." Kilroy said. "The beam will be sufficient to destroy an unshielded vessel."

Mims nodded. "Pick one without any people on it and wait for my signal."

"Affirmative." Kilroy's eyes turned red. "Target selected."

"The station's transmitting," Yvian reported. "I think they're telling the other humans to evacuate."

"Kilroy," Mims ordered. "Do it."

"Affirmative." A beam of white death lanced out from the Monster. It struck a gladiator, carving through the missile compartment. The explosion left a crater nearly two miles across. "Target destroyed."

Mims commed the Outpost again. When the hail was accepted, he said. "You can tell them to run if you want, but they're not gonna make it. If you want to save them, you're going to have to talk to me."

"God damn you, Mims." The man sounded like his teeth were clenched. "Those were innocent people."

The Captain gave Kilroy a look. The machine's eyes flashed yellow and purple. "The ship was empty."

"No casualties," Mims growled, "unless I say so." He switched the comm back on. "They were SDF soldiers and you know it. Name and rank."

"Colonel John Boyd," the man spat, "Stellar Defense Force."

"Was that so hard, Colonel?" Captain Mims typed furiously into his console, glaring at his screen. "Next question. Why are there people on Terra Nova?"

"They're stragglers," Boyd explained. "Some people refused to evacuate. I've got soldiers down there trying to round them up."

"The meatbag is lying," said Kilroy.

"Grib- I mean bullshit," Mims told the Colonel. "You expect me to believe you couldn't evacuate a few thousand people by now? What's really going on?"

There was a long pause. Then Boyd said, "We're due for an Incursion."

"The meatbag is lying," said Kilroy.

Mims gave the Peacekeeper a nod. "An Incursion? How do you know?"

"The Klaath started hitting Terra Nova a few years after... after the Aldara Incursion. Every four years, give or take month. We're, uh... expecting them any day now."

"The meatbag is still lying," said Kilroy.

"So you're beefing up the planetary defenses," Mims played along.

"Something like that," said the Colonel. "We'd like to have a homeworld to come back to when this is over." An edge came into his tone. "Especially after what you did to Aldara. Again."

"Aldara's fine," Mims told him. "The planet hasn't been touched, and I've got resources in place in case the Klaath show up. Next question. Can you get a message to High Commander Young? Without using the Nodes?"

"Without a Node?" The Colonel thought for a second. "Maybe. It would take a couple days."

"We've got time." Mims pointed at Lissa.

"Sending it now," Lissa reported.

"I've got two things for him," the Captain continued. "First, I'm sending a draft for a temporary ceasefire. We didn't start this war, and we've got better things to do than fight you idiots. Again, don't send it over the Nexus. Your network's compromised all to hell."

"The Network's down, anyway," said Boyd. "We've got a bunch of bots simulating traffic, but everyone else is offline."

"The meatbag is not lying," said Kilroy.

"Good to know," Mims said to both of them. "Second, tell High Commander Young I want to meet. Ship to ship, in a neutral location. Oluken space. I'll guarantee safe passage if he does the same."

"Oluken space?" Was their a hitch in Boyd's voice? It sounded like it to Yvian. "I'll uh... pass that along."

"Does that not work for you?" Mims asked. He'd caught it, too. "Do you not trust the Oluken?" He hmmed theatrically. "I can't say I blame you. They've got a history of selling out other species, you know. Especially allies." He leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially. "You want to know why I'm not asking where the rest of you are?"

"Don't bullshit me, Kinslayer," Boyd retorted. "The Oluken couldn't sell us out if they wanted to."

"The meatbag is lying," said Kilroy.

"I'll tell you what, Colonel," Mims decided. "I'll give you a week. Tell the High Commander he's got seven days to contact me. After that, all bets are off." He paused. Without a trace of emotion, he said, "I don't want to be the one that ends the human race. But I absolutely will."

"Fuck you, Mims." Boyd said coldly. "We should have killed you when we had the chance."

"I'm out of questions," the Captain responded. "You have a nice day, Colonel Boyd. We'll stick around for another twenty minutes or so. You know. In case you want to chat." He ended the transmission.

"You were bluffing, right?" Lissa demanded. "About the slave implants?"

"We took a bunch of slaver stuff when we ended the Freedom Republic," Mims told her. "I had the Peacekeepers stash some in the other gladiators."

"But you were bluffing," Lissa insisted. "Right?"

"I was bluffing," Mims assured her. "Slavery's illegal in the Pixen Technocracy."

"Affirmative," Kilroy agreed. "Attempting to administer a slave implant is punishable by death."

"Does the law apply to us, though?" Yvian wondered. "I mean, we're kind of running the country."

"The law applies to everyone," Mims told her. "A society that sets any group above the law dooms itself to corruption and injustice. We don't want the Technocracy to end up like the Confed. Not that I'd use slave implants if they were legal, either. There's some lines you just don't cross."

"And ending humanity?" Kilroy asked. His eyes glowed purple. "Was that a bluff, Big Daddy Mims?"

"Of course it was," the human huffed. "What'd I just say about lines?"

"Disappointing." The machine's eyes switched to the blue of sadness. "This unit is disappointed."