The scout regarded the Regional Subdirector for a long moment, before carefully removing her helmet and looking at it with her naked skull.

"Regional Subdirector, we are ALL unliving creatures. And there are currently no War Droids - construct forces - within the facility anyway, as they are all deployed in defensive positions protecting us - and your own facility, I might add - from the Azura."

She put her helmet back on.

"So what you are asking is that we expose ourselves to be attacked and destroyed by the Azura, who can then enter your facility completely unchecked and loot it entirely unopposed.

"Regional Subdirector, you are aware that we are currently the only thing standing between your museum and the Azura? If we walk outside, we will be wiped out to minimal losses to the Azura. A task force we have repelled once already, but which your own forces have previusly failed to defeat.

"Do you think that if we are wiped out, you will be able to retake your facility from the Azura which what forces you have left while THEY are entrenched within. Assuming, of coruse, they simply don't destroy it?

"Because it sounds to me, Region Subdirector, that you don't really want your facility protected. That you demand we commit suicide before you are prepared to talk tells me that you are not prepared to negotiate with good faith or with honour. Your attitude also makes you as a bigot, judging others on their physical construction and vitality. Would you make such a demand of any creature not made of flesh, I wonder? Because if you have an objection to the very existance of anything that is not alike and fleshy, I'm afraid you and your people in for a rude awakening. Like it or not, the Azura have arrived here and drawn attention to you. We won't be the first to come, nor will we be the last and the next ones, organic or not, might no choose to attempt to speak to you. So you have a decision to make.

"You can continue and make enemies of us and go back to tell your bosses that you, personally, utterly failed in your duty to protect one of your people's sacred places and that you have assured you will be fighting a war on two fronts against two space-faring powers that are stronger than you - or you get down off your palanquin and we can discuss working TOGETHER to expel the Azura from your planet and your system.

"Choose carefully, Regional Subdirector of Long Term Memory, because you are literally deciding the future fate of your entire people and civilisation."

The scout commander might have been laying it on a little thick... But she really didn't like bigots or arrogant, incompetant buraucrats, and the Subdirector was clearly both.

Behind her, the rest of the scout team, without being obvious, prepared to fight. She was very quick on the draw with her MLA pistol - a legacy of a life spend being picked on for being a female and a half-elf on the petty human backwater planet she'd been born on. If the Regional Subdirector reacted with any kind of kill-them-all-hysteria, she would personally guarentee he wouldn't live to finish the sentence.

* * * * * * * *

"We'll try it," Velinkar said. It cost the Aotrs nothing to provide intelligence on the Strayvians. (What were the going to do, shake their fists and shout "curse you, Undead!" And they had their hands full with the Shardan and their allies as well as their invasion...)

He privately wondered how much of a nasty shock the Azura would come up against the Strayvians. They might be big, but the Strayvians had changed a great deal in the past couple of centuries. They weren't now the runners-up behind the Cybertanks for Most Stupid Stratagists In The Galaxy anymore, not having finally pulled their act together. (There was some concern they might have been taking a few too many leaves out of the Aotrs' own playbook. Strayvians using an Aotrs outlook was only a bit less terrifying than the Shardan and Lazerblasters...)

"My aide will work with you to sort out the fine details. Would it be better for them to negotiate with us, or would you have more effective clout with them if they think that your presense already means we're subserviant to an Azura?"

"Oh, but you don't understand!" said the Regional Subdirector. "This planet is but a rock pool before the vast, endless ocean of the Tides. We span the stars, fight the Azura on a thousand different worlds, and our victory is inevitable. But to destroy your kind, as we will have to one day, we will be forced to equip ourselves with anti-materiel weaponry. This means that we can't destroy your civilization without destroying your artifacts and cities; this means that any materiel that passes in to your civilization cannot be repurposed and so represents a net cultural loss for the galaxy after it has been drowned. So you see how unreasonable your position is? Don't you realize that, if you persist on this path, you will lose something far more important than your lives: your legacy?"

The Regional Subdirector extended its tentacles in a sign of earnest pleading. "Please. Take a moment to consider the big picture. Consider the future generations who will witness you in our museums. All we want is for you to give up this undead foolishness and resurrect into biological bodies which can, at a future date, be exterminated cleanly with poison gas and neutron flaying. Be reasonable about this."

[Friction roll: 6; Aotrs advantage]

The rebuke of the Aotrs scouts is immediate and decisive.

The elimination of the Subdirector is done without casualties - and indeed, the Battlecrab reaction to its death is to retreat rather than attempt to engage. Moreover, the retreat seems to have prompted a reorganization of the Tidal garrisons in the region, which is resulting in a temporary degradation of their anti-ship envelope in the region. The airspace is suddenly much less contested, opening the possibility of Gating in another dropship.

*

But even as the possibility is raised the flickering communications and sensor blackout of an oncoming Azura assault begins. They are coming in airborne, moving extremely fast and low. So fast and so low, in fact, that some of them impact trees or rock formations at high speed and crash spectacularly into the ground, but damn if it doesn't make them hard to accurately target, especially with their sensor-jamming effects.

The force is primarily dismounted airborne infantry, backed by a cluster of close range plasma-vent warspheres. The plan at this stage is to engage on all fronts at close range and pursue any retreating forces savagely to prevent them from falling back into prepared secondary positions. The Knights hold back this time, chastised from their earlier injury, and wait to commit to exploit a breakthrough wherever one occurs. It's an ugly plan. Casualties will be huge. But given that this is a frontal assault against an entrenched and prepared enemy in daylight, while on a time limit, the tactics are hardly objectionable.

*

"Oh, please don't tell anyone about me," said Boldness, rubbing her head as though pained. "Lot of reasons, but chief amongst them is that I represent the central government and everything gets insanely complicated if people out here on the periphery know that the core is watching. It shouldn't be too complicated though; just understand that there is a lot of ritual to Azura politics and it gets more intense the higher you get. The more absurd their demands the more seriously they're listening to you. They politically cannot acknowledge foreigners as equals, so if they are actually interacting with you as equals they need to balance that out with extremely intense fiction. If you hear anything that makes you balk, politely stall them rather than outright rejecting. They won't budge, but they won't break contact entirely either so you can find a different angle."

"Right," Velinkar said. "I thought that might be the case, but-"

The comm system on his scanner peeped. "Vivisector to Velinkar." Vivisector's tone was brusque, which suggested this was important enough the general didn't have time to wait on nicities.

"Here," Velinkar responded shortly. That Vivisector had not apologised for interrupting spoke volumes.

"Short, short version; the planet is home to a second group of hostiles, the Tides, enemies of the Azura, who were responsible for shooting down our first sorty. My scouts killed their local commander which means we have a window for air support, and we could really use some reinforcements ASAP, enemy inbound, jamming in progress; data attached."

Velinkar, ignoring Boldness for a moment, grabbed his scanner to see the information being relayed (via the ship's system). He absently noted that the point of transmission was tens of miles from the base, which indicated that Vivisector must have opened and gone through a Gate presumably to get outside of the jamming field. (Gate XV, a small part of his mind abscently noted, most likely, given it was the lowest level which would do th distance and have a small enough compression factor Vivisector could do it at a run - Gate X had the range, but it would take too long at about fifteen metre per mile to sprint down...)

"Acknowledged," he responded, thinking fast. "Two Murders will be inbound in five minutes."

"Acknowledged; out."

Velinkar gave immediate orders. Two Murders on the LSS Dying Gasp were already primed, and within four minutes and twenty-five seconds, they were loaded with War Droids and Enragers, prepped for a combat drop. He had momentarily considered and discarded asking Boldness if she would accompany them with the Murder he'd prepped for her.) The necessity of time and function restricted the load of troops to what could quickly march on board, as the precious minutes were not available to stack the droids in the de-activated position - but it was still a substantial force. Velinkar had also scrambled two squadrons of Craters. The Murders and Craters were to perform a Gate jump and then split, with the Murders rushing down to the besieged facility (hopefully before the serious shooting started). The Craters, meanwhile, were to conduct an airstrike on the enemy ground force (or accompanying flying support) and do as much damage as possible before retreating back. The Murders had been told they would likely need to stay on station, as Velinkar felt it unlikely they would have time to safely get the robots off and be able to retreat. If they had time, Velinkar knew from decades of workign with Vivisector that the general would find plenty of uses for the Murder's energy beam turrets.

He was writing off all the mechanical troops, but that was what they existed for. If the Aotrs could retain them, all to the good; but if not, they were fundamentally disposable assets.

"Sorry," he said finally returning his attention to Boldness. "right..."

* * * * * * * *

The Aotrs negotiators opened communication to the biomancers, making a counter offer. An opporuntiy had arisen: the Aotrs wished to use their enormous skills to deal a blow to some uppity Strayvian pirates. The location of a major Strayvian military base was provided in full detail (in Velinkar's opinion, this was not remotelt what you'd expect from pirates, but the Azura seemed to have a funny way of looking at things), which needed to be conducted as soon as possible.

In additional to a substantial recompense in resources, the Aotrs were prepared to return the favour with a the deployment of a task fleet (Veliknar limited it to a reinforced attack fleet of around thirty ships) to make a strike at an (Azura or Tide) target of the biomancer's choice, to be determined once the current situation and Tanshin had been resolved.

Velinkar sat back - now it was just a case of waiting; to learn the results of the ground attack, the biomancer's response... And when his chosen strike force was fitted with the anti-magic gear...

[Friction roll: 1]

The negotiations go very well. The Azura negotiator is receptive and an in principle agreement is swiftly reached. It's in the details that she gets you.

Negotiation and commercial technique is a technological branch all of its own. The Aotrs are dealing with a dedicated commercial and underworld trader, genetically engineered for this task from inception. Her understanding of finance, cost, and best alternatives is unbelievably sharp and she has access to more market information than the Aotrs. The way the deal works out at the end is still satisfactory, still a positive thing for the Aotrs and not something worth breaking, but she found a way to take every bit of surplus value right up to that line.

Her primary area of interest was data - geographic and political, all the way down to level of individual relationships between heads of state and the mineral composition of planetary moons. She walks away with details of faction leaders, planetary governments, voting systems and compositions, the minute details of treaties and more besides. Each time these things seemed like small things to give up in exchange for shiploads of rare materials but it's only in retrospect that it seems like she never had any interest in physical goods. She broadly doesn't push on the details of Aotrs worlds or military secrets but still wound up with at least everything that could be considered publicly available.

But in the end, the core principles are unchanged; an attack on the Strayvians, and an attack on one of her rivals, the strikes to be launched simultaneously. She will magically bind herself to the fact that the strike will happen, but the timeframe is not entirely up to her faction. It needs to go up the chain to a regional Imperial Court, and that is a process that would be assisted by a high ranking ceremonial Aotrs delegation.

*

[Friction roll: 6]

The Azura, committed to a rigidly planned assault, had not reacted swiftly to the changing circumstance that left the air unconstested. Their own ships were still on the ground and the Craters were able to destroy them before they could launch.

The Azura commit to their assault. Their plan was already to close in enough to render direct firepower weapons unwieldy, but their plan had hinged on overwhelming the Aotrs position with superior numbers and now they lacked that. The retreat decision comes too slowly and the order comes too late, so when the disengagement finally happens it's with the shredded remnants of the Azura force. It's a clear and decisive victory for the Aotrs, and between the disruption of the Tides and the failed Azura attack, there is plenty of time to recover damaged and disabled war droids from the battlefield and secure a complete inventory of the facility through the Gates.

"Win some, lose some," Velinkar reflected to Boldness. The Azura had gotten a lot of information out of them - most of it, in honst, retrieved from a galactic net search, which while something the Azura could not do themselves, was the sort of thing that the elenthnars had already likely managed themselves since showing up the Aotrs side of the galaxy.

Still, they had something, and if nothing else, it pointed the Azura squarely at the Strayvians, who would NOT be pleased. He wasn't sure what the best case was, the Strayvians disengaging from their invasion altogether to furiously focus on the new aggressors - but then freeing up the Shardan and their allies and the Bright Accord Alliance had already taken a shot at the Aotrs - or the Strayvians continued to fight on multiple fronts and got themselves wiped out again.

It did not, however, seem to help them in the immediate situation by taking the biomancers out of it.

But, on the whole, he considered their diplomatic difficulties of lesser importance than getting his ground force re-embarked, by ship and Gate.

It was clear the situation in Tanshin was increasingly untenable, with two hostile powers - and he wasn't sure how big the Tides were at this point. While the Tides didn't appear to have demonstrated much in the way of surface-to-starship magntitude capability, there also didn't seem to be much gain in spending the time to pound Tanshin I. Tanshin II did not appear to have any strategic value other than being a habitable world, which was not immediately of benefit to the Aotrs. (If they needed a new bulwark against the Azura, there were better and closer places.)

While his - and those back on Fearmore and elsewhere - poured over what they'd recovered from the Tides, there was a little more time before the anti-magic ships were refitted. The Aotrs had kept up the steady pressure on the Azura, now latterly directed to what targets for best phychological damage by Boldness. Hit-and-fade strikes, primarily using energy weapons (and vessels like the Shadowfangs and Dark Fears which had little if anything else), had minimised Aotrs damage and at least confined the supply issues to repair and maintenance, rather than munitions supply. As hampering as having their primary weapons impaired. But hopefully the pressure was still telling on the Azura crews.

No, at this point, Velinkar suspected, the Aotrs' main goal would have to be eliminating the Furnace Knight, rather than claiming the system. Hell, they'd fought wars for less than they'd recovered from Tanshin I on occasion. Getting rid of him (or at least inflicting debilitating damage) would hopefully at least get the Azura to lose a lot of interest in this system.

(If the Azure Skies chose to interfere in the other powers they'd just got data on, that was less of the Aotrs problem. Velinkar even considered, for a moment, the delightful possibility that them doing so would somehow provoke the Manual Fighters (since it as unlikely that the Blastarons wouldn't already take a shot at the Azura if the two powers happened to meet anyway, but they looked like they'd rather decisive lost that war).)

Ultimately, if the Azure Skies were nearly-out-of-context problem due to their size... Well. Damning Echo base existed, and if the Aotrs could hold that and retain themselves undead for howevr long (sadly decades or centuries) it took to work out how to use the technology... But that was a worst-case scernario a long way down the line.

For the moment, they needed to pursuade the Azura to Be Somewhere Else, and that meant dealing with the Furnace Knight. Preferrably at a great distance, and with orbital bombardment, though he was resigned that they would almost certainly need to get Boldness in.

That said... If Tanshin II was not obviously worth fighting over, then it meant they wouldn't have to worry about collateral damage (or reducing their weapons power) shooting at the surface. He'd already have been throwing railgun slugs at it, but the Azura were simply too adroit at gravity manipulation.

"A few more hours, Boldness, and the anti-magic strike ships will be ready. We seem to have cleared the board of the immediate issues and this last round seems to indicate we have accomplished about as much as I think we can here - so it's down to you. You have had full access to what we've got and where it is. If we were going to make a decapitating strike against the Furnance Knight, what would we need to do? I think it's clear at this point that you are the best asset we have for doing that, so I'm essentially putting the fleet at your disposal for a plan. You know best where he likely will be, and where your assets are.

"I'm guessing trying to capture the Diodekoi is not going to work, but you need to get her and the Furnace Knight in the same place and on hostile terms. I think the biggest asset we have in this instance is the Azura don't seem to have a counter to our Gates, short of divination. So we could potentially use one or more of anti-magic strike team to move your toxicrene and oratus around - especially during the heat of an engagement, though we'd have to get a ship within 90 000km" - he tapped the holotable, showing the radius up on the real-time display to show her the relative distance - "to do it, but I feel like there's a very good chance the Azura won't notice a personnel Gate opening inside one of their ships." (He was farily sure, at this point, given their inability to locate Gate drive that the Azura shields were probably closer to galactic standard than advanced enough to block Gate transport, from what had transpired so far.) "That could then place them where they would be most useful, like I dunno, corrupting the Furnace Knight's immediate legion.

"But... At the end of the day, Boldness, splitting off and turning the Diodekoi is not something we can do. We don't know enough about her and Azura society is too mired in politics for an old soldier like me to even know where to begin. Which makes this, essentially, your show, I'm afraid.

"So, how do we manipulate things get you and your assets to the target?"

Boldness comes up with a plan.

It's clear that whatever life cycle assassins of her kind go through, this is the terminal stage. As she works her bright, adventurous personality begins to drop away, eliminated from her mind to make room for ever expanding reams of data. She absorbs information like a sponge; plate tectonics, fleet dispositions, technical specifications, unique capabilities. She ceases to sleep and barely eats, causing resultant deterioration in her physical form. Every resource is poured into her intellect. It's a profoundly unhealthy thing to witness. It's like watching her death and replacement with a piece of biological hardware. Everything goes into power, power, power, stealing the abilities of a god at the expense of everything. She introduced herself as an adept of the Ikarani Temple, and Icarus seems like the correct metaphor for how her mind's wings melt like wax.

She comes up with a plan. In form it is strangely comprehensible, reading more like an extremely high quality intelligence report, written in dry and unpoetic speech, rather than an act of brilliant madness. In content, it is a massive escalation, more than she previously implied was necessary. She has detailed key targets and timing windows. It has three key components:

- The issuing of a high level diplomatic delegation to the Biomancers, which will result in them withdrawing from the system along with 20% of the Furnace Knight's allies and vassals.
- A risky fleet engagement taking advantage of the opened window, combined with a devastation orbital bombardment on Tanshin II. This has the objective of both softening up ground forces for an assault and causing a mass death event as the planet's vast biosphere collapses.
- A covert ground assault on one of the strange necromantic temple complexes that the Azura are currently building. The idea is not to stop the process, the idea is to rapidly complete and then overload the circuit with a massive burst of necromantic energy that will pair with the wave of death coming in from the biosphere collapse.

Militarily, it is audacious but doable. Magically, it is profoundly uncertain. This entire operation hinges on the precision sabotage of an alien magical installation in a very specific time window. A huge amount of magical energy is to be thrown about as part of this operation; the sacrifice of a living planet plus whatever the ground assault team can pack. The side effects are listed as 'unpredictable', which seems code for 'apocalyptic'.

But the primary effect will be a massive necromantic shock delivered directly to the Furnace Knight before he is prepared for it. From a distance it looks like the ugliest, nastiest, worst, most overkill version of the lich spirit binding process imaginable - she's studied the Aotrs process and this seems to be a hideous, weaponized perversion of your technique. This is combined with an operation that she conducts along with her other assassins to murder the Furnace Knight mid-way through the transformation, preventing his spirit from coalescing. If everything goes to plan there aren't better odds than this.

This does, however, require almost total trust. The timing windows for the construction are too narrow to allow testing, and Boldness is barely coherent after designing the plan so she can't be effectively pushed for details or explanation. Various conventional strike options are still on the table but those involve sustained ground assaults and committed conventional warfare.

Velinkar didn't particularly like the odds much... But on the other hand, the Aotrs was nothing if it was to not trust the opinion on experts. A longer, drawn-out conflict seemed unwise, as the longer it dragged on the more resources the Aotrs would be using, and the Azura clearly had overall much more expend. Getting into a way of attrition with a superior enemy was not something they were going to attempt.

He made preparations. He aides would form the diplomatic delegation (to be met with a rather more senior diplomat (Lady Axea) enroute via a dispatch vessel).

The anti-magic strike force would spearhead the engagement, opting to Gate directly to strike at one of the larger, more pivotal Azura ships (in the hopes of disupting both what command and control they had as well as damaging their power transfer system). That ought to give them some element of surprise.

The ground force would be sent in force, via every Murder left in the fleet, Gating right into the atmosphere. A secondary, distrating force (with the fleet's Dirges, Fallen Souls and fighter top-cover) would be hitting another point, and primarily disgorging expendable war droid troops. The specialists would follow via Killstorm's own Gates once the location was secure enough (relatively speaking) to begin the operation; with Boldness is necessary.

Subterfuge scoutship Lich-Black was specifically designated to be on stand=by to attempt to retreve and deploy (via personal gates and a marine team) the oratus and/or toxicrene to attempt to further disrupt the Azura's response to the ground attack or to support Boldness' part of the operation.

Win or lose, however, the Aotrs still had one, very final card up their sleeve.

The Doomskrieg (under Lord Foul Skream's personal direction) and the Harbinger Spacial Splinter Cannon it carried was now within a single Gate jump of the Tanshin system...

There is something magical about a well planned operation carried out against an inert target.

[Friction: 6] The ground assault could not have gone better. Linking up with the kobold commandos who had been making an ongoing catalogue of every Azura movement and ammunition dump, the Aotrs forces achieve total strategic surprise over a vast area. Azura divination is a powerful tool for forewarning troops when and where there will be a battle, but that pales in comparison to a detailed strategic observation. One kick to the door and the whole rotten edifice comes crashing down; the ground battle almost immediately becomes a disorganized rout, enabling the Aotrs to seize control of the target temple complex, numerous anti-air emplacements, and several large munitions dumps and vehicle pools. What does Aotrs doctrine say to do with an initial victory like this?

The necromantic temple the Azura have half-built thrums with power, drawing in the souls of the recently deceased. It's a strangely beautiful thing up close, glyphs flowing and crashing into each other like water, walls embellished with paintings in strange studies of blue turning red to violet. The stones ache with mysterious purpose. The blueprints provided to suborn it need construction work of steel beams and carefully arranged light glyphs, the work of many hours.

[Friction: 2] The antimagic assault team, however, has far worse luck. They emerge not into a quiet corridor of a vast ship but into a fully staffed and very confused military hospital and engineering department. Azura divination had detected an instance of mass death and mayhem occurring in this location but had given them no sign of any enemy forces, so they had interpreted the signs as indicating that there was some sort of technical breakdown happening in this area of the ship and started a full systems check.

Against another species this might have been salvageable, but Azura doctors are biomancers, and biomancers are, as the Aotrs learn, terrifying. They are surrounded by clusters of engineered life forms called drones - whereas a servitor is a full, intelligent, independent and thinking entity made for purpose, a drone is an organic droid. Dull-eyed and lifeless before the biomancers activate their mutagenic triggers, the drones fly into psychopathic, self-destructive berserker rages. Shots go right through them. Horrifyingly, they don't have organs - no lungs, no digestion, no immune system, barely a nervous system that doubles as a distributed brain, meat empowered by a high energy nutrient fuel slurry, stuffed into a bony shell. They burn out in minutes; dozens of drones literally dropping dead atop the bodies of their victims. The incursion is a disaster and there are no survivors, and everything is taken to the vats for recycling.

[Friction: 5] On the diplomatic level, pact made with the biomancer Genetor, Ellis, holds. Immediately upon approach of the Aotrs fleet, Biomancer ships start activating their inertialess drives and leaving the system. Interpreting this as a rout, numerous loyal ships follow them. Before a shot is fired the Azura fleet has lost a third of its force.

The remainder rallies admirably, as far as they go. The Generous Knight asserts the command she won earlier around Tanshin III and collects her diminished force behind the first layer of monitor craft, sacrificing them to patch the holes in her formation. On the sky and in the ground something changes in the Azura as their shock starts to alchemize into determination, a proud and unifying conviction to not allow the shame to define them.

The Generous Knight's battleplan seems to be a prioritization of the ground engagement. The core of her formation are floating orbital barracks spheres that she intends to deliver to various crisis spots on the ground, re-establishing control of the orbital defenses. This necessitates splitting her fleet into three groups to hit each crisis spot, with a fourth mobile reserve group drawing itself into the centre of a cluster of accelerator rings to respond quickly to commitments of force.

Velikar scowled as the shrinking Captain Nymosto of the Bleeding Wound, the Fettered Star which was part of his anti-magic strike ships. Not the senior commander, even, but the nominal second-in-command, who had seen to correct his commander's orders.

This was something the Aotrs did not come down as hard on under normal circumstances (history showed what happened when commanding officers belived themselves infallible) but Nymosto had managed an instance of not only completely failing to understand his orders, but to insist to Captain Vreataiik of the Liche's Wrath Foul Anger that Nymosot's "interpretation" was right.

It was an unfortunate instance. With the time constraints, Velinkar had elected to pick the commanders of ships who had the most technical skill. Vreataiik was a genius in most respects, but he was a better mad scientist than a commander (though he was quite capble in the latter role) but if he occasionally had a short coming, it was second-guessing himself. Nymosto, on the other hand, equally a capable engineer-captain, was abrasive and forthright. Again, not enough to typically get himself in trouble... But in this circumstance, it was a case of one rolling up at the exact time the other rolled down.

Result?

Instead of using the anti-magic-gear equipped strike vessels to conduct a decapitating strike on the target command vessel, Nymosto had gotten it into his head to deposit a boarding party as a hit-and-fade, instead of just blasting the ship apart with one. With the loss of that whole party - AND valuable anti-magic personnel gear AND worse, very likely, the loss of surprise of the tactic entirely.

Velinkar was not pleased.

Nymosto knew he had fumbled. Having originated from the British Stellar Empire, as the lich stared back as his boss, the only thing that came to mind was a exchange about an old Earth general, after the subordinate officer failed; a comrade has asked afterwards what the general had said. The officer had replied "nothing, by god, it was far too serious for that."

Velinkar broke the comms channel without saying a word.

Nymosto had not soiled himself for 156 years, since before he could walk, but suddenly he recalled the feeling with eeriy clarity.

* * * * * * * * *

The engineering teams began frantic work on the temple's destruction preparations. One team, however, was working hard on establishing a local planetary shield. While they had some power sources, this team was focussing on attempting to jury-rig a conversion to draw some of the power from the temple itself to fully establish the shield. The shield, typical of its kind, was designed soley to protect the ground force from orbital bombardment. Such shields didn't - and couldn't - touch the ground, not least because there was never an even, safe surface on a planet with which to attempt to make a hemisphere, save perhaps on the largest of spaceport landing fields, the sort some miles across. So, by nature, as it started some distance off the ground, it could not stop ground forces or low-flying craft from getting in. While a starship might have the accruacy to put a shot through the gap, the incredibly shallow angle required meant that, realistically, it was never possible to do so because of the intervening terrain.

[D100 competance roll for engineering team: 91]

The rest of the forces were either rapidly positioning for defence or securing capture Azrua materiél (with a particular eye to rigging the captured munitions in creatively destructive ways).

* * * * * * * * *

Velikar quickly began to adapt the fleet.

First, he deployed a force (he labbeled it Task Force Arrow) which was heavy on warheads and railguns (comparitively, missiles were among the Aotrs' primary weapons after all), with the bulk of the available Bloody Steels and Sorrow Skeans. This task group was to stand off and start firing at the Azura ground forces deployed in positions away from the War Droid and Temple combat zones. The sustained barrage - since the Aotrs had been husbanding their expendables - was intended less to deal damage to those forces, but for force the Generous Knight (once identified by Boldness) to have to commit one of her task forces to simply protecting those forces or have them destroyed.

Second, he prepared the remainder of ships forces into two strike fleets -Task Force Spear (his commanded) and Vice-Admiral Spawn's Task Force Sword, to engage the other two fleets. As this was, essentially, the final roll of the dice, he committed his reserves, leaving only the resting/maintenace cycle third of the fleet safely ensconced outside the system.

The third part... well, that wasn't an order.

"Lord Foul Skream," he said respectively the the other, aboard the Doomskrieg. "I request you bring in your task force in concert with our strikes."

Foul Skream's eyeglows lightened in the lich equivalent of a tight smaile. "In order to present the Azura with a third target, including the largest vessel they have seen, which is towing something spewing an enormous maount of power. You want me to be bait." Velinkar would have been more unerved, except that Lord Foul Skream just sounded amused.

"I... Wouldn't put it quite that way my Lord but..." He paused momentarily. "Well, actually milord, no, that is basically what I'm asking yes."

"Never fear, Admiral, I think we can handle outselves." The Doomskreig itself WAS a supercruiser, even if it was a generation behind. No, the big risk was exposing the Spacial Splinter Cannon's battery array itself, even though it was quite well shielded, it was still not combat vessel and towing what was essentially a mid-sized starbase full or power cores put a dampner on even a Supercruiser's already limited mobility.

And Foul Skream was the best engineer the Aotrs had, nevermind Lord Death Despoil's personal aide for nearly three millenia. The Furnace Knight might have Foul Skream beaten in a straight fight, but in logisitics and science, Foul Skream had him cold.

The issue was, of course, they didn't really want to have to fire the Spacial Splinter Cannon at Tanshin (i.e. the star) to cause it to not exist while they were anywhere near it, since there was no precise telling how quickly the Laws-of-Physics-Just-Stopped-Happening area could go or how fast. Even a supernova couldn't travel faster than light and the explosion tended to travel a fair bit slower... but a lightspeed propogation only gave the about eight minutes to Tanshin II, being of course, squarely an HPE-L and thus having an approximately 1 AU - or eight light-minute - orbital radius. Even double ot triple that time was cutting it a bit close when ground forces were around, especially since they needed to keep the Azura from likewise escaping...

"We await your signal, Admiral," Foul Skream said.

Lord Foul Skream and the Doomskrieg escort fleet would be Task Force Bullet. (Velinkar was not feeling the time to be fancy.)

Velikar's group (Task Force Spear), the largest of the two, would be making a hopefully killing stroke on his target. Sword would attack the other group, and primarily attempt to hold it in place. A similar sort of role as Task Force Arrow, but one that involved mixing it in with the Azura fleet directly on roughly even odds.

Finally, Velinkar assigned the anti-magic strike fleet - Task Force Dagger - with a new job. He did not make any comments aboutr "getting it right this time" as he outlined calmly to Captain Vreataiik the new orders. A hit-and-fade strike, this time to directly attack (the words "with starships" were said with no emphasis, but none was needed; only one of Vreataiik's bridge crew flinched slightly) the Azura's reserve forces, with the aim of damaging and destroying the accelerator rings themselves. Velinkar did not state their were to be no heroics, but he didn't need to. Both Vreataiik and Nymosto knew the difference between a mistake and an error and that recklessly sacrificing to regain face was definitely make the former into the latter.

A few short minutes later, the 8th fleet was ready.

"Admiral Velinkar to Task Forces Spear, Sword, Arrow, Bullet and Dagger:

"Begin the attack."

Task Force Dagger!

[Friction: 1]

Unfortunately, this is a case of good money after bad.

The Azura chain of command is an ugly thing, full of tangled loyalties, horizontal allegiances, budding coups and dynastic power blocs. Information passes along it like fluid through a broken pipe junction; spraying in places, leaking in others. Sometimes the water does not get to where it is going at all, sometimes it gets to places it shouldn't by routes that seem impossibly quick.

The hit and fade attack is authorized because communications analysis indicates no chatter along command channels indicating preparations to resist an antimagic cloak strike. It is correctly assumed that the information is taking its time to pass up the chain of command and that a window exists before Azura leadership updates their procedures. But even as high command is deaf and dumb, the information spreads like wildfire amidst a small clan-unit hungry for advancement. On a gamble, they detach themselves from the formation and lie in wait in the signature shadow of an accelerator gate.

It pays off. When Task Force Dagger emerges for its hit and fade mission they are ambushed again - this time by a concerted and extremely motivated enemy, exultant that their bet paid off. They get in close just as the ships finish emerging from their Gates and savage them, claiming first blood for the Azura in the battle and sending the wreckage of some very expensive anti-magical technologies crashing down into the planet below.

Task Force Bullet!

As large as the Doomskrieg is, as magnificent, as terrifying - it draws absolutely no response from the Azura whatsoever. As bait, it fails miserably, even as it aims its crosshairs right over Tanshin's sun.

But then, you're fighting an enemy that is strategically blind. Their ships don't have scanners - they can't tell the Doomskrieg from a particularly large cargo ship. They are certainly not willing to leave their gravity well to chase after it, no matter how ominously its cannons glow. Their divination informs them that there is no intention to blow up the sun and so the Doomskrieg is a curiosity at best. They do not even assign to it a ceremonial importance, and their fleets bypass it without incident. In Azura fleet doctrine, size is no indicator of importance and no special consideration is given to the ship beyond what can be observed of its capabilities.

It is still a large, powerful warship, of course, and an effective centre but the Azura make full use of their ability to pass into and out of atmosphere freely in order to evade it while harrying the more mobile fleet elements.

Task Force Sword and Arrow!

With the Ring-Gates still operational, the Generous Knight can patiently observe the distribution of Aotrs forces and reinforce at her leisure. It's a primordial form of generalship - the cavalry noble sitting upon a hill, deciding when to commit her reserves.

Despite the simplicity of its fundamentals, the technique is exquisitely refined for both the strengths and weaknesses of the Azura fleet. It bypasses the shambolic Azura communications by having the general observe each battlefield directly, it checks headstrong aggression and cowardice both by placing control of the gates in the hands of a central authority, it allows her to drip feed in resources to various battlefronts whenever a line crumples or the pressure starts to turn. Overwhelmingly, it seems, that Azura doctrine is built for two things: Taking a lightly defended planet rapidly, and then holding it against a reinforcement fleet. Everyone knows what to do in this situation, deep as DNA.

[Friction: 6]

Despite the best Azura leadership that has been encountered so far, task forces Sword and Arrow perform admirably. Against fierce resistance they conduct textbook maneuvers, launch precision orbital strikes, interdict multiple attempts to land reinforcements, and trade bitterly with enemy fleet elements. Casualties are spectacular on both sides but hour after hour Aotrs ground forces look up at the sky and see no enemy reinforcements descending.

Task Force Spear!

The cost of the earlier rout and the Biomancer defection comes due. The Generous Knight starts to run low on reserves and neither situation is stabilized. The last commitment is that of her flagship and direct retinue, and she chooses to assault Task Force Spear. She departs her vantage point and the vestiges of her fleet commit into battle against Task Force Spear.

The Generous Knight's flagship, the Misericordia, was unusually large, and comically over-armoured even by Azura standards. As soon as she enters the theater and the violet runes aboard her ship ignite the reason becomes clear. Every instance of damage that occurs anywhere across her entire fleet is instead redirected to the flagship. Direct coldbeam strikes disappear into the void when they impact fighter craft and instead erupt, thousands of kilometers away, on the surface of the Misericordia.

The immediate result of this is the absolute mauling of the Aotrs fighter envelope. Azura fighters immediately commit to suicidal, all-out offensives - the ordinance that it would have taken to destroy them insignificant against the Misericordia's wall of armour. At the same time, all Azura large ships commit immediately to extreme evasive maneuvers - any ship-killing weapons that would hit them risk blowing out unacceptably large chunks of the flagship. Every second the Misericordia's shadow lies across the battlefield is another moment for the Azura fighter craft to maul Aotrs pilots and Azura bombers to laugh off point defense weaponry as they deliver their ordinance.

[Friction roll 4]

This is an enormously powerful asset, committed to a force well trained in its use, but the initial shock is not enough to cause the Aotrs fleet to collapse. Velinkar has time enough to contemplate a counter-strategy.

Ground Forces!

[Friction roll: 6]

With victories in the skies and an advantageous position, no assault immediately comes on the Aotrs ground forces. Azura commanders are still rallying their soldiers, organizing logistics from secondary bases, designing plans of attack and sheltering from fleet bombardments. Precious time is bought at minimal cost to rig defenses and work on the temple complex.

At this time, Boldness departs from the Aotrs forces to make contact with her fellow assassins and prepare for the decapitation strike on the Furnace Knight.

As the bridge shuddered under the impact of multiple hits, Velinkar scowled. There didn't seem to be much option. If hitting the flagship was the only thing they COULD hit, then, really the only chocie was to focus-ifre with everything they had an hit it harder, If they couldn't damage it with the combined firepower of the largest portion of the Aotrs fleet - then what could they do?

He knew that the spell protecting the fleet likely had some mitigating effect of the amount of fire going in, because that was fairly typical of damage-transfer magic. How much effective power were they losing? 20%? 50%? More? Who knew.

But there wasn't anyway they could break it. Killstorm was good, but even with the runecores on one of Velikar's Liche's Wraths, she wouldn't be able to to do it. Even if she did, would they be able to re-establish it again instantly?

He breifly contempalted trying to scour runes away with repeated energy beam strikes. But the energy beams were their weakest again such heavy armour and they probably wouldn't be able to sustain an attack long enough to actually disrupt the runes.

Velinkar considered trying to remove the flagship from the fight via Gate. With a concentration of power his Terror-class heavy drradnought might be able to open a Gate big enoguh to fit it through... But the chances of them letting him do that, especially with their thrice-damned prognostication seemed small. They could try tractorbeaming it, but they'd need prpobably need a lot of ships to get very close and try it, and all the while completely exposed to the functionally-invincble Azura, a clear invitation to ram. and even if he could get it through a Gate and there was any kind of distance function to the magic, where would he send it? This kind of situation would mean it would have to be in the system, so where? Into the sun? No, they'd likely be able to stop in time. Even if he closed the etnry point of the Gate so they couldn't come back through and were sedately ejected out of the far end by the collapse, they'd be able to se it coming and evade. By divination if nothing else. Damn it they had the Aotrs beat on magic and they didn't have anyone str-

Wait.

Wait.

Killstorm wasn't the strongest caster in the system.

"Open a channel to Lord Foul Skream now!"

Without even an acknowledgement, his comm officier responded, and Lord Foul Skream appeared seated in his command chair on the Doomskreig on Velinakr's screen.

"Milord! We need a massive dispel on the enemy command ship now! It might be our only chance!!

* * * * * * * *

Velinkar's plan was risky, but two-fold.

First, Lord Foul Skream had assented to th requested. For one of the High Command, a simple insystem Gate to a ship involved ina fericous starship battles was of no moment, so even as Velinkar frantically made the last calculations, the lich-engineer was seated in the ritual chamber of the Liche's Wrath Kreella-Kar and preparing himself for the biggest dispel he could manage (possibly the biggest he'd ever done). A grand dispel that would (Lichemaster please) dispel or disrupt the damage-transfer spell, but also any other active spell on board the Misericordia - including the divination spells.

And in that moment, the Aotrs fleet would hit the Misericordia with everything they had, all at a single point.

To do that, they'd have to slave the fleet's entire firecontrols to one person.

Of course, the best shot in the fleet was Lord Foul Skream, Veliner reflected. But even he couldn't do two jobs at once.

Dammit, he'd have to take the shot himself.

He issued the orders.

If this failed...

Velikar looked out towards the sun, for the briefest of moments. Then he finished the other program he'd been working on.

Then there was Phase Two.

* * * * * * * *

"Foul Skream to fleet: initiating now."

A droplet of blood soars through the air, gleaming and perfect. The Generous Knight catches it elegantly in her wine glass and takes a sip. Courtiers applaud politely and she holds up the glass and grins.

"What do you think?" she asks. "Look like an omen to anyone?"

In the Divination Ring before her an Azura knight clutches the bloody ruins of her eyes. Across from her howls the Beast - a nightmarish amalgamation of bones, souls, and pulsating exposed organs. Its claws run with fresh blood and its jaws open to crush the skull of the knight. The Generous Knight catches its broken eyeglows from behind painted eyelids. She bats her lashes and it flinches as though lashed. It backs up, whining like a dog. The Generous Knight smirks and drains her glass dry even as another crashing detonation rocks the Misericordia. Her serpentine tongue flicks out to lick her lips clean, every drop of red cleaned away leaving nothing but radiant, unreal blue.

"Come then, Rajehvo," she says to her squire. "What do you think this means?"
"It means -" said squire Rajehvo, a young girl burdened under the Generous Knight's dozen swords. "- that there'll be a moment of blindness, that the followers of the Crimson Goddess will triumph, it means -"
"No," said the Generous Knight languidly. "It means that the primitives still have not learned their lesson. Twice they have tried to kill me with antimagic. Now they try a third time. They strike at our eyes, again and again, as though the eyes are all that matter."
She smirked, sliding down the staircase towards the pit. She put her hand on the wounded knight's chin, fingers tracing just around the outside of the blood and the blindness.
"This is the nature of primitives, you see," said the Generous Knight. "They cling. They cling to their strategies. They cling to their senses. And above all, they cling to their knowledge. Knowledge! The highest of barbarian virtues! As though knowing a thing gave them power over it! They are crucified on the altar of cause and effect, of cunning stratagems, of dramatic turnarounds, of precision strikes."

She leaned down to kiss the wounded Knight on the lips. Her mouth came away bloody again. This time she did not clean it.

"We were like them once!" said the Generous Knight, voice rising towards a howl. "But we are much wiser now! We know the skies are bright and full of terrors!"
"The skies are bright and full of terrors!" roared the assembled courtiers in response.
"When we fight we do not need eyes to see!" shouted the Generous Knight, voice cascading through her sermon. "We do not need thought to know! We do not need chains to control! We do not need sanity to rule!"
"The skies are bright and full of terrors!" chorused the ship, the chant filling endless bright corridors filled with the unnumbered ranks of warrior species.
"All hands, brace for impact!" cried the Generous Knight. "For the Endless Azure Skies, for the Shah, for the Furnace Knight -" she threw her wine glass to the ground and it shattered. She took her first sword from the hands of her squire. "- ramming speed!"

*

The Dispel hits the Misericordia as planned. The runes flicker and go still and dark. The damage transfer effect disappears across the entire fleet. Velinkar aims the shot.

[Friction: 1]

But the Misericordia is already moving. It is caught in the focused grip of the Gravitational Emitters of all the surrounding Azura ships, the combined energy tearing space and time apart like the deployment of a battlefield black hole. Shots go wild, tracking is impossible, the interference is unreal. The effect is like building a railgun out of gravitational singularities.

And the Misericordia is hurtled forwards at immense speed. Here and there it is clipped by shots but not enough to kill it, not enough to slow it. It soars right through the heart of the Aotrs fleet. It travels all the way through to the untouched Doomskrieg.

And it splatters like a ripe tomato.

Through some strange quirk of Azura metallurgy the ship's hull has partially liquidized, becoming something like a sticky taffy substance. Ten percent of its mass is sent splashing into the void but the rest ripples and squishes around the Doomskrieg, half encasing it in the alien alloy. Immediately the structure of the Misericordia begins to expand, flowing like water to wrap the Doomskrieg more totally, dissolving components of the Doomskrieg's exterior and hull and further fusing the two ships into one unholy amalgamation.

And at every point along the whole hull of the Doomskrieg, alien metal eats through exterior corridors revealing rows of servitors like kingfishers and the Azura knights that lead them. They board the Doomskrieg in a massive rush from dozens of breaches. Electromagnetic flux flies from every shoulder, concentrated acid grenades from every gun, an avalanche of muscle and steel hurtling down every corridor.

Azura boarding doctrine prioritizes one thing above all: seizing control of the Reactor. The equipment of their breaching teams emphasizes blistering speed and heavy cutting tools that can go through bulkheads like paper. ELF strikes course through the ship's structure, disrupting communications, computer controls and attempts to scuttle. They haul with them heavy high-energy containment gear that might stabilize a critical reactor core. It's an avalanche of force.

A few other relevant details. The Dispel is still in effect and the runes on the surface of the Misericordia were disrupted by the impact but already swarms of maintenance mecha are pouring onto the surface to re-establish the glyphs with cutting lasers. With its circular shape disrupted and the Grav-Rail ruined, the Misericordia is immobile.

The choices, then, are:
- Abandon the Doomskrieg. This scenario is a full evacuation without even an attempt to scuttle. All key personnel will be able to escape, but it is unclear how long it will take the Azura to enact repairs to render the Doomskreig fit for battle.
- Attempt to save the Doomskrieg. Digging in with marine forces and Gating in reinforcements. This will result in high fleet losses but could both recover the ship and kill the Generous Knight in the best case.
- Attempt to scuttle the Doomskrieg. This is the 'compromise' solution - the crew of the Doomskrieg will all be lost, but perhaps they will outrace the Azura breaching teams and render the ship inoperable without the commitment of further resources. If they're lucky, they could buy enough time to start a reactor meltdown that would bring the Misericordia with it.

"Velinkar to fleet. Concentrate fire on the remaining Azura ships while their tranfer effect is down, do as much damage as you can." Even to himself, he sounded defeated.

They'd lost.

Velinkar sat for a dangerously long moment, his eyeglows closed.

And that was it. They were out of back-up plans. There were fighting an enemy immune on the practical level to logitics and supply chains that was also functionally immune to the their primary weapons (rendering all conventional tactics moot); that was much bigger than they were, with much stronger individuals (Lichemaster, they'd put the High Command to flight with only one such individual), who could see their attacks coming; and that had not even seemed to flag under the attritional attacks that should have made living creatures start to flag. The Aotrs had just (at a huge diplomatic cost) sent away a chunk of the enemies' fleet... And they were still losing decisively, due to the amount of damage the Azura had inflicted with invulnerable, while their flagship absorbed all the fire.

And once the fleet lost, the ground force's successes were meaningless, since they'd be mopped up from orbit with no counter. (And even that success felt more due to the whims of fate than Aotrs tactics; already, the tide was turning as the Azura advanced.)

[Friction roll: 3]

This was what it was like to fight an out-of-context problem, in reality. Every strategy he concocted failed; every time he thought he had a handle on what to expect, the Azrua drew out another exotic technique or ability they Aotrs had no counter for.

He'd been prepared for this to fail. The Misericordia had already been taking the fire of the entire fleet the moment the Aotrs had found the invulnerability field had emerged and they'd all switched fire - there had been no real reason to assume a concentrated attack would have been more effective, or even that the Lord Foul Skream's dispel would have worked.

His desperate, literally suicidal Phase Two would have been to open a Gate to right in front of the Spacial Splinter cannon, with the reverse side of the Gate facing it, so the Azrua's visual-only detection wouldn't have seen it past the one-directional gate, whereas the cannon would have a clean shot, and shoving the enemy vessel through with a suicidal ram of his own. And that clearly wouldn't have worked.

He'd been prepared for his plan to go wrong. But the way in which is went was so completely unexpected - so out-of-context - that they had no answer to it.

Other than to do exactly what the Azura wanted. Conform to them.



A long time ago, a young living Velinkar had been in a place where he was surrounded by people who had always just the same attitude. Conform. Where you had to be just like everyone else - oh, you could have eccentricity, but only so long as even in your eccentricty, you had to do all and be all the things that you were expected to do so; ultimately Be Assimilated. To speak out was to be targeted and repressed by the angry horde of the "how dare!" Or you could choose to be silent and meaningless, beneath notice, take your pick. He'd been powerless; in complete isoloation from the alien mindset around him, one driven by an ingrained cultural self-centric arrogance, factionalism and grinding apathy. He'd hated it. He'd hated every moment of being trapped in that place, with no way out and nothing but a long, slow slide into murky grey nothing as the future.

And then one day when the Aotrs had arrived. He'd seen them; seen his chance and gone with them without hesitation. Escaped. He ever regretted for a moment what he'd left behind; but he'd never forgotten, not even after all these centuries. That chance, that escape - he'd been both figuratively and literally prepared to die for it. Then... And again today.

Fighting the Azura felt just like being back there; trapped and powerless, with no control save what you could scrape by yourself in the meaningless and at the whims of fate whether you lived or died, no matter what you did or didn't do. The feeling was an old, familiar and bitter one.

And now, the Aotrs were committed. Smash, without tactics or subtlety, the way the Azura liked it, until the Aotrs were broken or the Azura broke.

Hells, even if they won this round, it was clear that the Azure Skies were far too big for the Aotrs to fight; an apparently minor faction was soundly beating the best the Aotrs could give them. And at this point, any victory would be pyhrric at best; the losses they had suffered over this campaign far out-weighed the limited gains they had made.

The only thing the Aotrs could do now was accept the defeat and try and mitigate that loss as much as possible.

He opened his eyes glows and returned his attention to the losing battle, for the first time for a long time feeling every century of his age.

In the end, perhaps there was no escape after all.

* * * * * * *

The Doomskreig had no counter to that extraordinary attack except one - sheer size. The Azura had not teleported to the power core - and they surely would have done if able - so the only thing the Aotrs could do was make it hard for them to get there.

The Doomskireg shut all systems off entirely. Every bulkhead opened and for a moment the Azura charged fowarded - only to find the bulheads were opening because the Doomskreig was venting its entire atmosphere. No atmosphere, no light, no gravity. And just before the power shut off entirely, every bulkhead shut back down and locked, with the last manual locking system.

The Azura would no doubt get to the power core - from experience, the Generous Knight would likely slaughter her way through personally if nothing else, and the Aotrs had no counter to her if she was even half the strength of the Furnace Knight. But... They'd have a long walk, and have to cut through every bulkhead and door on the way. And then they'd have to make up an interface to get a computer controlled system to work without actually having a computer. The captain, having been continously appraised of events with Lord Foul Skream suspected they had magic that might do that regardless. It might not even slow them down much.

But it bought some time. Time to Gate out to the Doomskrieg's escort what few living crew they had, while the Aotrs crew went to the weapons systems, and pulled out the critical components. Time while the Generous Knight was busy occupied taking the ship to not be in command of her fleet and ground force, in the hopes that some cracks might finally show, and the Aotrs would be able to at least effect a retreat in good order.

* * * * * * *

Behind it, seemingly forgotten, the Spacial Splinter array drifted on the last push of the Doomskrieg's tractor beams, the only weapon the Aotrs had that might prevent the Azura's terrible sun plague from overrunning the galaxy. Despite its size, alone against the dark of the void, it was a seemingly tiny dark shape, silent and fragile.