Since ancient days war has involved vast periods of standing around and waiting, marching to position, and camping in the mud. The battle was always glamourized, but so much of it in practice came down to the transportation of food and the tyranny of the wagon.

No more.

The Nemesis Ring stains the Skies in bloody red and gold. The capital of a foreign empire placed in the heart of the Skies, a fang pressed forever against a throat. A network of ring-gates float around it, swarming with an endless river of ships - the enormous Circulars, massive cruise liners and cargo macrocarriers, bringing in an endless ocean of new Ceronians and carting away an endless ocean of plunder and slaves. 

Everywhere hang Shogunate warships. Taking the opposite tack from the Azura, the Shogunate has revived the lost art of miniaturization. Their engines burn low and quiet, their hulls are plated in reflective mirror alloys and they rarely pass beyond the size of an escort destroyer. They look like bladed mirages, heat shimmers in the blue sky, invisible daggers with crews pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Beyond the daggerships hang the Invasion Plates, continent sized space stations surrounding the Nemesis Ring. The sides facing downwards are armour, weaponry and drop-pod launch systems, the sides facing upwards are dockyards that take in the raw material of war, sorts it, and sends it down to Valhalla. To those poor souls on worlds trapped inside the Ring it is as though ten evil moons hang in the blue sky above them.

"Joyless lot, aren't you?" said the Shogun.

Asking when and how she arrived would be as pointless as asking the when and how of the Gods. She is the bride and chief general of Hermes, she is the unsheathed blade of Mars, she is the master of the galaxy and you are in her home. She sits cross-legged atop the map table of the [i]Plousios[/i], the warm cream fur of her ears bright against blue sunlight. A minute ago you might have thought that the reborn Plousios had no room for shadows, but now you are aware of how many there are after all, and how all of them are filled with wolves.

"For days now my ears have been [i]itching[/i]," she said, scratching her left with her foot like a dog. "Misery! Misery me! Oh, but all the pleasures of the galaxy cannot leave an impression upon us intellectuals! Our precious virtues! Our moral integrity! A [i]bloo bloo bloo"[/i]

She rolls backwards on her butt, and then leaps to her feet. She is red and she is black. She is affront, the antithesis of all things the Skies holds beautiful. She is female without being feminine, she is violence while unarmed, she is a god and worse than a god. Her coat is tanned leather ripped from real hides. The starburst on her cap is gold from real teeth. Her smile is the realization of a promise from a species that invented the devil. 

"Heaven," she held out her hand flat, palm down. "Hell," she flipped it over. "Here in the Skies I have built its opposite. Here there is room for the ugly machines that you have come to adore. Say the word, and I will have my wolves rebuild your ship as you remember it, with sweat and strength and passion! Here is a place freed from the tranquilizing peace of the tyrant. Say the word and I will send a pack to butcher the tyrants you have left in your path! Here is a place where Civilization comes to die! What could be better than watching an immortal order dissolve into entropy? SO!" She stepped down, and her footprints burned. "Tell me, voyagers! Have you had your fill of angels?"