One hundred kilometers above

New Creighton, as the last

Ministeriat ships died.
 Cortez drifted free in the airless void. All he could hear was his breath. He wasn’t gone
yet — good.
Pale blue light from behind washed out the starfield ahead of him, making it difficult to
see the battle that still raged on. The light was from New Creighton, of course. Below and
behind.
Right. It came back to him.
The hard burn of the his carrier struggling against its decaying orbit, the thudding report
of subcompacts inside that dark hull’s corridors, and then —
— a shimmering spray of shrapnel and slag, screams, and the pull of the void as he was
spaced.
He’d kept his eyes closed for a while after. He was tired. The boarding action that
preceded the spacing was exhausting and bloody. The nearest allied vessel, the Ignominer, was
elsewhere, some ninety minutes on the other side of the world, so Cortez floated, drifted. He did
not pair with the battlenet. He ignored the dying fight around him.
He keyed his suit’s maneuvering thrusters and nudged himself around.
Below, between his legs, New Creighton. His home world yawned beneath him, smears
and whorls of white and blue. Clouds over the ocean, and a storm making landfall on some
lonely island chain. His world, for a while. Now he would be taken away from it, sent to kill for
the Armory — a campaign of revenge, justly dealt.
The Concordant Administration was almost the whole world, but not quite. Their
assimilation campaign could not break the Ministeriat’s resolve — liberty could not bend — and
so, it seemed, the Counters were trying to kill the last part of the world that wasn’t theirs.
New Creighton’s day side was scarred with smoke, great pillars dividing whole
continents. The dead numbered in the millions. Cortez was not a sentimental man but he did
feel an ache that he tamped down on quickly; there was work to be done before he could feel
again. An enemy to be driven off, a world to win, and a bruised banner to be raised.
Not a chance under Orion that the Counters had done this on their own — for years they
had boasted that the Houses and Union approved of their works. It would seem that their boasts
were not without truth.
Cortez opened his connection to the battlenet.
“Invictus,” he whispered. “This is Captain Eon Cortez, I am adrift, and the only survivor
of my unit. Requesting pickup at your leisure — any ship will do.”
Invictus, the fleet’s legion, responded with an affirmative. They added Cortez to their
S&R queue, and moved on to more pressing matters.
Cortez watched his world below, the clouds stretching across its surface to mingle with
the smoke of great fires. The warm seas in whose water he once swam, and the remains of the
Ministeriat Second Fleet. The dead and the dying. Those like him. The Counters fleet he could
still see — thin torches burning hard away from the engagement zone.
War, in this way, was calm. He had lived through being spaced — certainly he would not
be killed by an errant kinetic or coherent beam.
So one hundred kilometers above New Creighton, Eon Cortez, Captain in the Dawnline
Colonial Legion, New Creighton, checked his O2, found it ample, and slept.
Pandemonium!
 Colonial Fleet Commander Conrad Schuyler drank it in, serene amidst the furor.
Through the stained glass windows, flame lit the night amber and red. The sirens gave
the general assembly a cold substrate, punctuated by the occasional low rumble of a distant
collapsing building.
The bombs had nearly found the Perfect Ministeriat itself — Schuyler’s personal
shielding would have spared him, of course — and the milieu was incensed.
The halls of the Perfect echoed with the angry shouting and exhortations of the
Ministeriat’s ministers, generals, admirals, and attaches. The Counters had made their move,
landing troops and bombing cities across the Ministeriat’s land. The casualties were uncounted,
but presumed to be in the hundreds of thousands — at least the news so breathlessly described.
Reports flowed in even as the Ministeriat crowed for revenge — the Ministeriat Second Fleet had
been carved through on the day side of New Creighton! The Karrakins had been sighted
departing from Dosantos! Even — and this silenced the clamor for a moment — Union had
dispatched a battlegroup from New Madrassa.
Schuyler sat in the gallery with a small group of Armory fleet captains and ranking
executives, ignoring the apologies from their Ministeriat attache for the spectacle. The attache
told them of order, how decorum usually reigned — they had learned from the best, the Armory,
Ras Shamra of course — but you must understand given the circumstances — and all his
apologies.
Conrad did not mind the scene — he would be angry as well, howling as well, had a
hated rival just bombed Ras Shamra’s cities from orbit. God above, he would have launched a
tenfold retributive attack by now!
So no, Schuyler did not think the Ministeriat rash — to the contrary, this world and its
people had finally become interesting. He watched with a growing smile as the Ministeriat came
to order. As the Prime Minister intoned in a rising, shaking voice, that he would lead New
Creighton to a future free of the Concordant Administration’s Global Plan, how he would turn
the Counters’ cities to shimmering dust, and how — from this moment forward — the Armory
stands with the Ministeriat — the true and righteous leaders of free New Creighton — in a state
of total war.
War.
Schuyler stood to applaud with the rest of the Ministeriat.
Finally, to war!
Battery Three on the FKS Sanspeur
was locked down and prepared for
combat.
 As of ship-morning, the battlegroup was engaged; now, the enemy was in scope range,
and Battery Three’s shift was about to begin.
Dim red safelight illuminated the soft corners and padded walls of the battery, blunting
the grain and grit of every surface. Under thrust, Battery Three had gravity; combat speed
pushed the weight of Lance Gunner Fisher’s hardsuit onto himself. Even with the structural and
internal aids, in order to stay conscious Fisher had to force air in and out, tensing his legs and
gut to keep the blood in his head.
“How long till we engage?” Gunner Parson’s voice hissed in Fisher’s ear, deformed by the
intense gees. “Or you think we’re just posturing again?”
Fisher could only move his eyes — enough to see the subtext chatter flying across the
Sanspeur’s open channels. “Thirty minutes. I feel it this time — you ready?”
Parson hissed an affirmative around the gees.
“Good, load Starkill — CO wants us on fly-swatting duty.”
“A-firm.”
Fisher did the same, queueing up belts of prox-burst. “I got, uh, ten racks before we hit
feed — you?”
“Twelve.” Parson said.
Fisher grimaced. “Let’s hope it’s a short fight.” He settled into his control seat, and
counted down the clock. Thirty minutes before engage, and the helm still had the Sans burning
hard for the assumed horizon.
“Hey Fish —”
“Yeah?”
Parson hissed again. “I hit more Purv flies than you, you’re buying my coffee for the rest
of the week. Deal?”
Fisher would’ve laughed, but for the gees. Instead, he chirped a-firm, and keyed his
cannons into pre-cycle warmup, then into hum, then into ready state.
“All hands, all hands” the Cap’s voice over the allcomm. “Stand down guns. Stand down
stations. We are fast-moving in 5. Square away your stations and prepare to bolt.”
Fisher and Parson both groaned, but complied.
“Posturing,” Parson said. “I think the old man has us racing the Purvs to Odeland,”
Parson laughed.”
“So that’s a wash on the bet?”
“Double or nothing?”
Fisher agreed. The two gunners keyed off their guns, and the Sanspeur bolted, skirting
the edge of the Armory battlegroup.
The gunners of Battery Three ended their shift, alive and ahead — for the day, at least.
End.
Copyright Massif 2020