“Consider this,” Captain Felder began, his rigid face showing cracks of agony. Before he could speak anymore, Miran cut him off.

  “Captain, how dare you!” she spat. It was one thing for events out of her control to spiral as they did, but for her own subordinate to disregard her direct orders as he just had…

  “Matriarch, if you’ll allow me to–” he said, trying to get a word past her firewall.

  “Allow you to, what, derelict the orders I explicitly laid out for you? Tell me, Captain,” she said, highlighting his rank, “are you the one with the burden of leadership?”

  “No, Matriarch,” he said, apprehensive.

  “Then, pray tell, what is so important that you would risk court-martial in spite of it?” she chewed.

  “We have been studying your engagement with the enemy,” he said, not wasting any time. “I believe I have a way to strike back at the enemy.”

  Miran felt that was too good to be true, but she had questions first.

  “Captain. The support fleet?”

  “Safe and gone from here,” he assured her. “My ship met them on the edges of the system and led them out to safe jump distance. They have orders to jump for Lavalle and then on to Ganon. They are to await you there.”

  “Await me, surely you mean await us?”

  “Not if my plan works,” he said.

  “Okay, Captain. I’ll bite.”

  “After leading the support fleet to safety, The Hammerfist and several willing vessels have sped to meet you. We have dropped out a safe distance behind you, though I should warn you about incoming riftwake that will catch you in the next few minutes.”

  Miran checked the telemetry on her terminal. Eleven ships were now trailing one light-hour behind hers with The Hammerfist at the central point of the formation.

  “And the damage your little jump has on the planet ahead of us?” Miran said, concerned.

  “That will be of little importance if our plan takes effect,” he clarified. “We mean to make one last jump. Dropping us out on top of the enemy just as they reach atmosphere should force them down the well. If we’re lucky, it will pound them into the sand.”

  Miran let out an exasperated sigh. An attack like that would surely hurt their enemy but would have catastrophic consequences on the world below. There was a reason an act like this is considered unthinkable. But seeing as how the population of the planet and all those she cared for left down there were most certainly beyond reproach, she caught herself leaning in his direction.

  “I will not excuse your discretion in dereliction of your duty, Captain.”

  “I understand,” he confirmed.

  “And, under any conceivable circumstance, I would not condone any action such as the one you are proposing.”

  She saw the man lament at this. She wavered, for a moment, thinking about the numbers she lost in the past few hours. So inane was the volume of it all that she found herself desperate for Soren’s timely advice. Of all the years she spent kneading him with the ways of leadership, it was him who had been teaching her to retain her calm humanity. Her eyes welled at the thought of never seeing him again, the finality of it all.

  She took a deep breath before finally, she continued.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “–but the matter we find ourselves living through is so far gone from conceivable,” she said, “Captain, you have authorization.”

  “Confirmed, Matriarch,” he said, a smile on his lips. Miran thought that self-sacrifice was an odd thing to be smiling about.

  “From all of us here, you have done your flock proud. Hail the herd!” Miran said, standing. Her fist raised up in salute.

  “Godspeed, Matriarch,” he said as the connection dropped.

  “What now?” said Captain Danesh, echoing the disquiet of his watchstanders.

  “Now, we hope,” said Miran.

  “And of the planet? Surely any left down there will be cast into far more terrible a fate,” Captain Danesh questioned.

  “We’ll just have to assume that the enemy was correct, that all of our citizens were now lost to us.” She thought of General Gerard and his dwindling forces, though she knew they were beyond help now.

  “Captain, open a wideband to any survivors,” she ordered, “if there’s anyone left alive in the valley, I want to know.”

  The watchstanders busied themselves, opening channels and broadcasting distress pings. Over the next several minutes, all attempts came up empty.

  “What about The Spire elevator’s orbital station?” Miran asked.

  “Nothing,” answered another watchstander.

  “Shit,” Miran said, finally retaking her seat in exasperation. There wasn’t anything left for her to do but wait for Captain Felder’s and The Hammerfist’s plan to be enacted. Until then, she was helpless.

  Twenty-nine long minutes later, a general bulletin from The Hammerfist opened on the wallscreen ahead of her. Miran leaned forward.

  “Friends of the flock,” Captain Felder said, “I count myself in good graces having spent my life amongst you; that and all of my crew. We have been privileged to call ourselves family to you. We take this leap now, not for hubris, but to give those escaping this nightmare a fighting chance. I ask only that those strong people that do this now be remembered. For the Herd.”

  “For the Herd!” the watchstanders aboard the Hammerfist called out in unison as the connection dropped. Without further delay, The Hammerfist and its escort ships dropped out of existence, passing into a rift.

  “Telemetry shows The Hammerfist has entered rift,” a watchstander near Miran confirmed.

  “It’s done then,” Miran said.

  Seconds later, a rift opened above Bordeaux’s atmosphere, just above the enemy ships who had only just arrived in orbit. The Hammerfist and its escorts pushed their way back into realspace and immediately dumped speed to relative zero. The wake caused by this maneuver tore The Hammerfist and the other vessels apart, sending a shower of debris and enormous wake squarely on top of the waiting enemy ships.

  With no time to respond, the enemy vessels careened into each other as they were forced down into the planet’s atmosphere, tumbling as they did like logs in a torrent. The central ships in the enemy formation, along with what Miran presumed was their flagship, broke apart and added to the gathering hailstorm of debris. Ships on the perimeter were spared much of the blast. They instead remained intact, rolling outward and slamming into Risen’s outer districts and farmland.

  The city’s central core was flattened almost immediately, erupting with the force of a cometfall. The Spire, having been missed by the bulk of falling ships, took several direct hits from errant debris and ejecta tossed up from the surface. The elevator that had extended out of the top of the Spire broke apart, shattering as it did, its accompanying orbital station severing its anchor point prematurely as it drifted lazily out of geostationary orbit.

  From deep within the city’s lower levels, several eruptions opened up the earth that contained them. Several dozen fusion reactors, which had at one time supplied the city’s citizens and industry, breaking containment conveyed an outburst of earth and structural components into the air along with powerful EMPs. As the discharges reached The Dream’s sensors, all telemetry suddenly went silent.

  Miran found herself on her feet again, standing less than a meter from the bridge’s primary wallscreen.

  “Well, that was something,” Captain Danesh admitted from over her shoulder.

  Miran nodded. She had no words and doubted that there were any to describe this. All land inside the valley was now either on fire or pummeled into dust; all life along with it. Inside the valley…

  “Captain, expand the range of the wideband. See if we can’t find anyone else outside the valley,” she ordered.

  “Right,” said the captain, snapping back to duty.

  After several minutes, telemetry returned to reveal a cloud of settling ash and dust in the city, pockmarked with the vague outlines of ship bows embedded in the earth.

  “Matriarch,” a watchstander said after several more minutes. “I’m showing three unique signals across the continent outside the valley.”

  “Tell me,” Miran urged.

  “One is Vasser, on the coast, matching Halah Alteretla of Omeyemo House. The second is coming from Malfjordur Research Outpost in the southwest.”

  “And the third?”

  “The third is registering as Captain Djucovik’s personal distress signal.”

  Having been rendered numb by the enormity of the last few hours, Miran almost didn’t register this information.

  “Wait,” she halted, “repeat that last?”

  “Matriarch,” Captain Danesh interjected, “it’s Soren.”