UGT: 7th Ruan 280 a.G.A. / 8:50 a.m.

  ASF Aurora, near Karesh-Ti, Karesh-Ti’Varn system(yellow dwarf), Inner-Noran sector, Ruidan Raider Association, Milky Way

  "Fen how's the weapon reload going?"

  [ We're done in a few seconds. We can jump back in, but the Association already started realigning their own positions. ]

  "Well, then it's best not to waste time. Let's jump back into the fray."

  One should never expect the second strike to be as clean as the first one, and I knew that was going to be the case here as well. Fen had even confirmed it after all. The first strike had been perfect, wreaking havoc in the enemy lines. But war seldom allowed for repeating such perfection twice in a row. By the time the ASF Aurora would be ready for the second strike, the Association would be prepared for them and fight their attack tooth and nail, maybe even pushing them to their own limits. Still, there wasn't much of a choice.

  [ Jump initiated. ]

  The second Fen spoke these words, the ASF Aurora vanished from reality, before tearing its way back into normal space with a ripple of bending light and gravitic distortion, her hull shuddering once more against the violence of sudden re-entry. that came with using the emergency jump-drive. This time we didn’t appear at the heart of the enemy’s formation, but rather at a slanting angle across their line, a position that gave us a strike but not the devastating sweep of before. Even before the jump fully collapsed, Fen’s voice was in my ear.

  [ The Association expected us, they're even better organized than we expected! ]

  “Doesn't matter,” I cut her off, my gaze sweeping across the holoscreen, the countless hostile ships arrayed in their shifting formations. “There's no alternative, stick to the plan.”

  The first beam lances of the Association were already cutting through the void before our fire commands left the ASF Aurora’s guns. Brilliant streams of plasma, antimatter torpedoes leaving searing trails, dense kinetic slugs accelerated past relativistic speeds, all converging on the ASF Aurora in one brutal, instantaneous retaliation for our first strike. The Association wasn’t about to let us humiliate them twice. And for the first time I had to commend the Association Captains for their excellent reaction speed.

  The ASF Aurora’s hypershields bloomed to life in staggered layers, the great sixteen-fold weave catching the storm of incoming fire. For a heartbeat, the bridge was filled with the steady, unshakable hum of shields at work, then that hum shifted, deepened, and began to tremble. One, then two of the folded layers collapsed under sheer stress, cascading into shimmering rings of white light that flared outward before dissolving into nothing.

  [ Sixteen-fold shield dropping! Thirteen, twelve, ten layers! The capacitors are struggling to cycle! They’re focusing fire across all vectors, they're trying to crack us open with saturation fire! ]

  The ASF Aurora shook. Not just the subtle vibration of redirected energy, but a deep, resonant groan that ran through her bones. The ship had weathered time and battles, but for the first time since I had taken command, the ASF Aurora actually seemed strained. “Hold the hypershields steady,” I ordered, my voice steadier than the pounding of my heart.

  The counterfire Fen had prepared was already sweeping outward, though even I could tell the difference between this strike and the last. Our gauss cannons spat their annihilating payloads into the void, Disintegrators annihilating the armor of Association ships, Siphons clawing at their hypershields. But their countermeasures were tighter now, coordinated, their formations interlocked. The ECM beam lashed across an enemy cruiser and silenced it, but only briefly, and our Whirlwind missiles had to weave through a storm of intercepting point-defenses.

  The result was still death, but smaller, narrower, a shadow of our opening act. One Cruiser, hulled clean through and venting fire. Two Destroyers, shields collapsed and their reactors pierced before they could recover. Two Corvettes, caught in the fury of our beams and tore apart almost instantly. Five ships in all. Enough to matter, but nothing like the dozen that had vanished in our first strike.

  Meanwhile, the punishment we absorbed only grew. Every second that ticked by another layer of hypershield folded in on itself, staggering under the focused assault. The shield capacitors screamed warnings through the holoscreen, heat levels rising, hardeners straining at thresholds. We were not invulnerable or unshakable. The ASF Aurora was being battered, carved at, tested in a way she hadn’t during their entire campaign.

  [ Six hypershield layers left and our capacitor bleed is accelerating. Another ten seconds and they’ll start chewing directly into the primaries, soon after into our reserve hypershields. ]

  My hands tightened against the console, every instinct torn between lashing out again and preserving the ship. “That’s enough. Fen, jump us out.”

  The emergency drive answered with its terrible violence. Space twisted, the enemy’s fire distorted, and in a blaze of warped starlight we tore away from the kill-zone. The Aurora reappeared at a distance, far behind the SHF lines, a wounded titan shrouded in the smoke and crackling remnants of her shields. The bridge was quiet, save for Fen’s running assessments.

  [ Six layers fully collapsed. Remaining hypershields are stable but heavily drained. Capacitor charge at forty percent, regeneration delayed. Structural integrity uncompromised. We can take another round like that, but only one. Our emergency jump-drive has one jump left, so I would recommend joining up with Admiral Thorrison again, instead of jumping back into the fray. We were unable to do as much damage as we wanted, but it was respectable damage nonetheless. ]

  I exhaled, finally, the tension bleeding from my shoulders only to coil into something heavier. We had struck, yes, but we had also been painfully reminded that the Aurora could not shrug off a fleet’s concentrated wrath forever. That did not bode well for the coming campaign into the Kingdom of Ferron, but that was what we needed the SHF for anyways.

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  But there was no time to linger on my thoughts right now, because Admiral Thorrison was already pressing the advantage the ASF Aurora had created for him. The fleet moved in waves across Karesh-Ti’s orbit, their lines contracting and expanding with the rhythm of trained discipline, a push toward the Association perimeter. Smaller ships, Corvettes and Destroyers, darted ahead like lances, probing for weaknesses, while the heavier hulls, the Battlecruisers and Cruisers, followed in slow, deliberate steps.

  [ The SHF fleet is tightening their formation. It seems like Admiral Thorrison is not trying to disrupt them until the ASF Aurora is back in action, instead trying to break the Association formation apart with the build-up momentum and confusion. Bold, considering the numbers stacked against them. ]

  I couldn’t disagree. Even with the ASF Aurora’s intervention, the SHF had nowhere near parity. But Admiral Thorrison clearly wasn’t aiming for power parity here. He was a better strategist than that. No, Admiral Thorrison did something far riskier if I was right.

  ?Fen could it be that Admiral Thorrison is betting on us intervening in the battle again? Forcing us to take the brunt of the damage if we want his fleet to survive? He’s trying to pressure us into acting risky so that he can save his fleet. What a bastard…“

  [ You’re… probably correct Captain. Until now, we’ve always let the SHF fleet take the brunt of the attacks. It’s quite possible for Admiral Thorrison to believe he has to pressure us into action to save more of his own fleet. ]

  ?So he still doesn’t believe that I have a vested interest in keeping his fleet intact. Not that I can exactly fault him for that…“

  On the holoscreen I could see Admiral Thorrison’s fleet advancing. And for a moment, as the SHF’s Destroyers pierced into the edges of the Association formation, it looked as though his gamble might even pay off without our intervention. Enemy Frigates scattered, Patrolships burned, Cutters vanished in bright silences of ruptured reactors. SHF Corvettes darted between larger hulls, scattering mines and losing close-range volleys that sent even Cruisers buckling at the knees. Fen’s readouts ticked off numbers of enemy casualties in crisp, merciless tones.

  But then the counterstroke came. The Association fleet shifted like a beast snapping awake, and for the first time I saw the shape of their preparations. What had seemed like disarray, their strange refusal to commit when we had first struck, resolved itself in a single motion as shield matrices lit across their forward line. Not ordinary hypershields, no, these burned hotter, brighter, layers folding over one another in ways my eyes struggled to track.

  [ There’s no mistaking that signature, that’s a basic two-staggered hypershield! Terribly inefficient but definitely too much for the SHF to deal with! ]

  I cursed under my breath. Of course the Association had to have access to better technology then expected! We‘ve even gotten indicators of such far earlier in the Inner-Noran campaign! How had I forgotten that!?

  As if that weren’t enough, the return fire of the Association spoke with a new voice. A lance of energy, thinner than a standard beam, almost needlelike, slipped past one of the SHF’s cruisers before erupting inside its hull with surgical precision. The ship fractured in silence, its entire port section evaporating in a blossom of vented atmosphere and torn metal. Another followed, then a destroyer, hulls pierced as though nothing had ever been there to resist.

  [ New weapons! Gods, they’ve been hiding this as well! Pinpoint cascade laser lances from the looks of it. Designed to bypass hull reinforcement and target vital cores. Of course they didn’t redirect their Eastern Hyperlane fleet as well! They’re confident they can take out the ASF Aurora and the SHF fleet like that! ]

  The SHF’s momentum bled away in the span of a minute. What had been a fierce advance collapsed into a scramble for survival, Corvettes breaking apart as they tried to shield their larger counterparts, Battlecruisers staggering backward beneath relentless fire. The numbers were already brutal, but now they were becoming catastrophic.

  [ Captain, mounting SHF losses are imminent if we don’t act right now! They can’t hold like this much longer! ]

  I didn’t need him to say it. I could see it myself, in the jagged edges of SHF formations, in the desperate cries flickering across comm channels that we weren’t meant to be listening to. I saw it most clearly in the hail that cut across all encrypted bands, priority-marked, voice ragged with urgency.

  “ASF Aurora, Captain Lunaris, this is Admiral Thorrison. We cannot withstand these upgrades without support. You were meant to strike twice and withdraw, but I tell you plainly, we will not hold. I don’t care what it costs you. If you do not return, the SHF will break.”

  The words struck harder than any lance. I had expected, perhaps even planned, for the SHF to face difficulty. But not this. Not to be driven into the jaws of collapse before the campaign into the Kingdom of Ferron had even begun.

  [ May we cannot do that. The emergency jump drive is already running hot. Four uses are pushing it, five would be the ceiling. We could jump back into the fray but not out again. Just supporting the SHF line wouldn’t be enough, we’d have to strike the core of the Association formation again. Their enhanced ships from up-close. I hate to propose that but sacrifice them. Unlike them we can get out of the system, and the Association has no way to follow us. Let’s meet up with Naori again and create a new plan. We don’t have to risk everything for them. ]

  I knew all that too well. I had sworn not to push the ASF Aurora past that edge unless there was no choice. And yet here I stood, with Admiral Thorrison’s plea still ringing in my ears, watching SHF ships burn one by one as the Association’s hidden weapons carved them apart.

  The Bridge fell into silence, broken only by the pulse of alarms. My hands tightened on the rail until my knuckles whitened. I could almost feel Aurora’s heartbeat beneath my palm, steady but strained, waiting for my command.

  “We’re not leaving them to die,” I said finally, voice rough with the weight of it. ?You’ve let your emotions influence your judgement, Fen. It doesn’t matter if we or the ASF Aurora survive. All that matters is making as big of a splash as possible to hide the existence of Naori and the outpost. They’re our hope for the rebirth of the Aetherian Empire, not the ASF Aurora. Our death wouldn’t even be the worst case. But we cannot see us flee and then being hunted across the entire galaxy. No. We stand and we fight.“

  [ …Very well. I apologize for letting my personal opinions compromise the mission Captain. Then we will go in again. Shields are crawling back, but nowhere near ready for another hammering. This will be incredibly risky and might even result in damage or destruction of the ASF Aurora. Do you confirm your orders? Otherwise, the Inheritor-Protocols can and will put a stop to this.”

  “I understand and confirm my orders.”

  Fen didn’t argue further. He didn’t need to. He simply began the calculations, hyperspace coordinates spinning across the holoscreen, timing windows narrowing into razor-thin margins. Each number was another thread in the web we were about to walk, fragile and unforgiving.

  On the viewport, the SHF line sagged under the weight of the Association’s renewed fury, another Destroyer crumpling in silence, its death flash painting Karesh-Ti’s orbit in brief, terrible beauty. My gut twisted, but I did not look away.

  We were going back in. And this time, it would be truly dangerous.