The longer negotiations on Bakura wore on, the more Shado was impressed by Geral Storr's aplomb. He and the Imperial ambassador sat through over a dozen long discussions, half of which were pronounced in the fluting Ssi-ruuvi language and simultaneously translated through their earpieces, which gradually began to give Shado a headache. The talks went around in circles, with the Ssi-ruuvi delegate Ovipekkis clamming up whenever anyone tried to pry about the situation on his homeworld. Despite some nudging, Shado still hadn't gotten confirmation that the Ssi-ruuk had lost their entechment abilities. Even when he tried questioning Vlothaw in private, the P'w'eck delegate obfuscated.
Still, progress was being made. In a conversation where Ovipekkis was- by Storr's careful scheduling- absent, Vlothaw conceded that if his people did migrate en masse back to Lwhekk, they'd consider leaving some of their technology behind so the Bakuran repulsorlift industry wouldn't suffer. In exchange he'd asked to take some Bakuran materials with them, which General Koregion had flatly denied. Storr insisted that they could find a way around the impasse by trading information only, rather than material resources, to which Koregion had relented.
It was a good thing, Shado supposed, but he still felt useless.
The situation changed abruptly overnight. Shado awoke to the buzz of his comlink and new sunlight glowing against his bedroom curtains. He sat upright, fumbled on the comm, and said, "Jedi Vao here."
"Get outside and get dressed," Storr snapped. He sounded actually angry, a first from the unflappable diplomat.
Shado threw back his sheets. "What's wrong?"
"The Ssi-ruuk are gone."
"Gone? Gone where?"
"Lwhekk, I'd think. They didn't explain."
"Then how-"
"Get dressed, Master Jedi, and meet me in the president's office right away."
Shado hurriedly put on his tunic and rushed into the hall. A security officer met him on the way to the upper level of the executive pyramid and escorted him to Recado's office. The old man seemed shrunken behind his desk, surrounded by Storr, Koregion, and even Vlothaw, all on their feet.
"What's happened?" asked Shado. "How could the Ssi-ruuk just leave?"
"They took off shortly after midnight," Koregion said. The bald-headed general had his arms crossed and face twisted to a scowl. "Our ships in orbit warned them to return to ground but they kept going. It was either let them go open fire and start a war."
"But why would they leave? Did something happen at negotiations yesterday?"
He looked around the group. Eyes went to Vlothaw, and the P'w'eck titled his snout up and released a series of whistling noises. No sound chimed in Shado's ear, and he silently cursed himself for not putting in his translator.
Storr politely explained, "The Ssi-ruuk did not depart alone. They took over fifty P'w'eck volunteers with them."
"Back to Lwhekk?"
Vlothaw whistled and bobbed his head, which Shado took as affirmative.
"You let them leave?"
Vlothaw spoke again, and Storr translated, "Those P'w'eck did not ask permission before leaving. They simply left. These were some of the most ardent supporters of reunification."
"So they go and leave the rest of the P'w'eck behind? That doesn't sound like unification to me."
Vlothaw fluted again, and Storr said, "The delegate is trying to ascertain the truth. He was taken completely by surprise and insists their actions do not represent the P'w'eck as a whole… Even though some were elected to the P'w'eck legislature."
That was hardly a comfort. Shado asked the ambassador, "Have you informed Coruscant?"
"Not yet. I was hoping to get a better idea of what to tell them." Anger leaked into Storr's voice again. "If you'd join me, Master Jedi, I think we have a call to place."
Shado nodded. Before following Storr out of the office he looked at Recado, slumped in his desk. Perhaps he was pondering what price the Balance demanded he pay for whatever deal the Ssi-ruuk and those rogue P'w'eck had struck. Whatever his thoughts were, he wasn't sharing them with anyone, especially not the Jedi.
-{}-
Located at the confluence of the Corellian Trade Spine and the Hydian Way, Terminus was often cited as the last port of civilization before reaching the wild edge of the Outer Rim. That edge was itself home to thousands of systems and billions of beings, including the Nagai. Fifteen years ago, Relik K'sharn had set his sights on Terminus and launched an all-out attack to capture the populated, industrialized, strategically useful planet. He'd fancied it would be his crowning achievement as a warlord. Instead it had been a disaster; combined Imperial and Alliance fleets had smashed his to bits, ending both the Nagai conquests and, in many ways, the life of K'sharn himself.
As Darth Nihl, he stood on the bridge of his Krish'nakt and set eyes on the planet for the first time since that disaster. Its green sphere was marked by dozens of visible gray clusters marking sprawled urbanization, and with his naked eye he could even pick up the glint of spacecraft and defense stations in the planet's orbit.
Despite the battle here fifteen years ago, and despite the rash of Nagai attacks in nearby sector, the denizens of Terminus had tried to carry on their lives as usual. That was hardly surprising; most beings fell into stubborn denial at the thought their lives could be upended. Nihl hoped that the admirals on Coruscant were smarter; otherwise this carefully staged return to Terminus would be anticlimactic.
Everything was going to plan so far. The Nagai fleet had split into five battle groups and decanted from hyperspace at different angles. Their fast ships were breaking formation and spreading wide to encircle the planet. Their craft weren't designed for prolonged sieges, but their sudden appearance and surrounding of the planet seemed to have stunned Terminus into submission. Nihl's ships quickly surrounded and destroyed the handful of local defense vessels, then moved on to picking off the weapons stations in orbit. Within thirty minutes Terminus had been rendered supine, and no ships were launching from the surface.
"Do we have any communication from the planet yet?" asked Nihl.
"Nothing, warlord," came the reply from the comm station. "Should we hail them?"
"Negative. Keep the jamming field at low intensity. Let them call for help."
Terminus may have been populated by fools, but they still must have been paying attention to Nihl's recent conquests. They'd picked up the pattern of each attack, where the Nagai raced in, quickly subdued the meager local defenses, then commanded the planet's government to surrender or face harsh consequences. The last worlds Nihl had taken had surrendered without a shot landing on their surface.
Terminus wasn't offering surrender, but Nihl hadn't requested it yet. He was waiting for it to make its call to whatever Federation fleets were waiting, and he was sure they were someplace. His spies in the Core had reported fleet movements out of Fondor and Rendili, and he had no doubt they'd be stationed nearby, waiting for the moment to act.
After nearly an hour Krish'nakt's crew began to grow impatient, and so had Nihl. The Nagai told the comm station, "Open a hail to the planetary government. Give them the standard surrender message."
"Yes, warlord."
As the officer got to work, Nihl took a look at the tactical display. With all of Terminus' defensive stations destroyed, the Nagai fleet had rearranged itself to form a loose corona around the planet. They had situated themselves fairly deep within its gravity well, effectively trapping themselves close to the world, but also ensuring some warning when Federation ships dropped out of hyperspace at the well's edge.
After a few minutes, Nihl asked, "No response?"
"Nothing, warlord."
"Then we should open fire." Nihl stalked over to the tactical station, where Darth Vurik's black-cloaked form loomed. "Don't aim for the government district. Aim for the spaceport. Scatter barrages on their shield barrier and around it. Put fear into them."
As the crew hurried to comply, Vurik asked Nihl in a low voice, "Are you sure our allies will come when we call?"
"I'm certain of it. They're being well compensated for their efforts."
"I'm not worried about the Mandalorians. The other ones-"
"Are receiving far more than credits can buy. Have faith, Lord Vurik."
The Sakiyan nodded stolidly. Krish'nakt reduced altitude and began to fire directly on the planet. Some laserfire scorched the energy shield erected over the spaceport while more roused fiery destruction beyond the dome's edge. Nihl let it go on for good five minutes before commanding the gunners to halt.
"Still no surrender?" he asked the comm station.
"Negative."
"Weapons, wait two minutes, then begin again. We'll keep up the pattern until-"
"Ah," said Vurik. "It's starting."
Nihl looked at the tactical holo. Sure enough, star destroyers were emerging from hyperspace at the edge of Terminus' gravity well. He counted three battle groups of three destroyers each, plus support craft. As they veered down on Terminus the destroyers split formation and began to vector for clusters of Nagai ships. Apparently the Imperials were confident they could handle the smaller, faster craft.
"Excellent," Nihl stepped eagerly to the comm. "Hail Yaga Auchs. Tell him it's time to join the fight."
-{}-
The jump from their staging area in deep space to the edge of Terminus' orbit took the Mandalorian fleet all of two minutes. It was just enough time for them to patch the battlefield telemetry from Darth Nihl's flagship into their tactical computers and survey the firefight they'd be jumping into.
When they exploded into realspace they were instantly thrown into a dazzling light-show. The incoming warships- mostly wedge-shaped Pellaeon-class star destroyers and smaller Ardent-class frigates- had their bright-glowing afts turned toward the incoming Mandos, but they had their rear shields ready and threw up protective screens over their engines. At the same time, smaller Imperial corvettes and attack frigates pivoted away from the bigger ships and raced out to meet the newcomers.
The Imps hardly acted like they'd been caught with their pants down, and that worried Yaga Auchs. His flagship frigate dove right into the fray with the rest of the Mando fleet, though it bore no markings to outwardly distinguish itself from two dozen other Teroch III-class assault ships. Mando frigates were small, fast, and tough, and Yaga was less worried about himself than the hundreds of pilots currently racing forward in their nimble T-shaped Beskads. His daughter was among them, leading an entire wing of starfighters.
He pushed worry about Sora aside; she was an adult now and a blooded warrior. She could take care of herself. He needed to focus on giving the Sith exactly what they'd demanded.
The data feed from his frigate's sensors had been patched directly in his helmet, and as he looked out the viewport his visor's head's-up-display tainted the Imperial ships red, and Nagai ones green. As Nihl has promised, the Nagai had dipped their ships into low orbit, giving the Imps plenty of space to charge. Even though the Mandos were falling behind them they were barely slowing their approach on the Nagai fleet. It seemed like they were planning to trap the fast-moving raiders close to the planet, pound them to pieces, and then pivot to fight the Mandos nipping at their tails.
Yaga intended to do more than nip. He barked out commands, splitting his ships seven different divisions, each one harassing a star destroyer. Though the Nagai ships were more numerous and the Imperials' more powerful, the Mandalorians' excelled at striking hard and fast, then withdrawing, and only the Mandos had free range of movement. As they made a run on the nearest star destroyer his flagship's inertial compensators strained as its pilots tried to maneuver the frigate like a snubfighter. Yaga gripped the observation deck railing to keep from falling.
They failed to punch a hole in the larger ship's shields, but Yaga was unconcerned. He watched through the viewport as an Imperial Ardent-class maneuvered to block their path, exposing its starboard flank and unleashing with broadside cannons. What Yaga's frigate couldn't evade it absorbed, and the shield scatter lit up the viewport so brightly he had to look away. He watched the tactical holo instead as two Mando corvettes, plus three full squads of Beskads, dove down on the Imperial ship's port side and overwhelmed its shields with a single bombing run. The frigate's starboard defenses stuttered and died as well but Yaga's ship kept charging and unleashed all of its missile and turbolaser batteries at once. The explosions that followed was once again blinding, but this time it tore through the Imperials' hull and wrenched billowing flame out of its scorched armor plating.
Some Mandos on the bridge cheered, others pumped fists. All did it silently within their helmets. Yaga, patched in to transmit on all freqs, told them, "Let the corvette pick apart the frigate. Have the Beskads follow on us. We'll go hunting for more Imps."
As his frigate peeling away Yaga watched a frenzied battle-scene pan by: star destroyers with aft shields lit bright, swarms of dogfighting snubs, the Nagai ships pushing violently away from Terminus, as though they intended to break through the Imperial blockage. With the Mandos' help they just might do it, though as Yaga saw it they didn't have a hope of taking Terminus now. It seemed to him folly to have even tried, and he wished Nihl had never strongarmed him into this pointless fight. He glanced at the tactical holo and marked Sora's fighter wing weaving between two star destroyers, largely undamaged. That brought some relief.
Lightness in his gut turned to lead in a second. His eyes were still on the tactical holo as a second wave of red shapes appeared. They emerged from hyperspace as three distinct battle groups on different sides of the planet. Some plunged eagerly to join the fight while a few ships lingered far outside of Terminus' gravity well.
Yaga snarled inside his helmet; he knew what those ships were before the tactical sensors figured it out. He felt the deck shudder beneath him as the ship's artificial gravity adjusted to the new pull coming from outside Terminus' orbit. The tactical holo resolved new detail, marking those ships hanging outside the battle as MC135i Mon Calamari interdictor cruisers.
The Alliance had brought its share to the fight, and it had come to finish. With those artificial gravity wells online, no ship anywhere near Terminus was going to lightspeed. It would take over twenty minutes of running at full sublight to reach the edge of those wells, and the Alliance ships were spreading wide to prevent any such escapes.
Darth Nihl had warned Yaga not to interrupt him unless it was an absolute emergency; in his view, this certainly qualified. He routed a communication with Nihl's flagship directly through his helmet, and in the privacy of his brown-and-green buy'c he snarled, "This is the Mand'alor. I need to speak to the warlord. Now."
He got no reply, not even one telling him to wait. His hands tightened on the desk railing as he watched the first explosions of the Alliance ships joining the brawl. If his Mandos could punch through the Imps, meet up with the Nagai, and form a few collective battle groups, they just might have a chance.
Nihl's voice came on, sooner than expected. "Are you surprised by the new development, Mandalore?"
The shabla Sith sounded disturbingly calm. "You're not? They're coming down hard on us. We're about to get squeezed between their lines. I recommend we form breakout parties and try to push free, maybe take down a drag ship on the way out."
"Hold the line, Mandalore. That is an order."
He bit back a dozen Mando'a curses. "They're going to grind us to atoms. We need to get as far from Terminus as we can before they crush us."
"Calm down and do as I command." Somehow, through the scratchy audio link he could tell the Sith was smiling. "We have them exactly where we want them."
-{}-
"We've got them right where we want them now," observed Admiral Yage as he looked at the tactical display. The huge hologram lit up half the situation room located inside the defense headquarters as observation satellites on the edge of the Terminus system tight-beamed every blow of the fight back to Coruscant.
Nonetheless, Gar Stazi felt aggravatingly far from where he needed to be. The empress was away on Bavinyar but most of the Federation's other senior officials had been crammed into the observation room, including intelligence director Hogrum Chalk, Imperial admirals Yage and Fenel, and the Alliance's Jhoram Bey. Stazi and Bey stayed close, crowded in as they were by so many humans, but everyone's attention was fixed steadily on the relayed reports from Terminus.
Stazi himself had commanded there fifteen years ago, when they'd turned back Relik K'sharn and apparently killed him. Chalk reported that they still couldn't confirm who was leading this renascent Nagai, but they all hoped to stop it at Terminus again. The battle was going well thus far; General Jaeger's fleet had successfully trapped the Nagai inside the planet's gravity well, triggering the enemy to call their reinforcements.
The appearance of the Mandalorians was not unexpected; Chalk's intelligence sources had picked up reports of large-scale movements from the Mandalorian sector. The arrival of Admiral Slossar's fleet, and the activation of its three interdictors, played out as planned. The combined Alliance-Imperial fleets had the Nagai-Mandalorian forces severely outgunned, and with the expanded gravity wells brought up, they had no place to run to either.
Victory was clearly theirs, and satisfaction showed on the face of the Imperial admirals, but Stazi didn't feel any himself. The Mandalorians were mercenaries, and he was sure that if things got dire they'd cut and run, even if they had to slog through the interdiction field to get out. The Nagai, however, were ferocious fighters. At the first battle at Terminus they'd had to be beaten into submission and the fight had been costly for all sides. He hoped but doubted their attitude had changed since.
The battle raged on, and to his surprise the Mandalorian and Nagai ships didn't try to work around the Imperials and form joint clusters. Instead the Nagai fought the Imperials while the Mandalorians fought the Alliance ships, and none seemed to be making a break out of Terminus' frenzied orbit. The interdictors sat far past the planet's moons, unmolested as they kept the enemy from fleeing.
After some fifteen minutes, Stazi muttered, "Perhaps we should try hailing the Nagai and demand they surrender."
"I doubt that would work," Yage said. "Besides, our tactical computers can't even identify their flagship."
"Nor the Mandalorians'," Bey added.
Stazi's mind drifted back to the first battle at Terminus. With a pang he remembered his old ship and his old captain. Indomitable and Jaius Yorub were both long gone, perished together in battle against Krayt. Back then the stout, unpretentious Sullustan had figured out a way to trace Nagai communications and from their pinpoint the root of their command tree.
He tried to recall the details but was interrupted by the sudden appearance of yellow markers in the middle of the tactical holo. The symbols flashed as the computer tried to decide what to make of them, and Stazi thought was that the holo was experiencing a glitch. The markers had appeared out of nowhere at the edge of Terminus' natural orbit, behind Admiral Slossar's battle groups and well within the interdiction field. That was impossible: any ship racing to Terminus would have been wrenched from hyperspace at the edge of the artificial gravity well, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.
Everyone in the room was stunned speechless. When the computer decided on a designation for those newcomers, the admirals still stared in wordless shock.
With surprising calm, Hogrum Chalk said, "There must be a mistake. This is impossible."
Admiral Fenel slapped the controls at the edge of the table and patched in a direct line with the Imperial flagship. "General?" he said. "General Jaeger, do you copy? Please respond."
After a long thirty seconds, a small holo-image of the Imperial formed beneath the main display. "Reporting, Admiral."
"Oron, what the hell just joined the fight? Our tactical display says they're-"
"Ssi-ruuk, sir," Jaeger confirmed the impossible. "Twelve of their warships have just jumped into the middle of the fight."
-{}-
"Are you happy, Mandalore?" Nihl whispered, sharp teeth bared in a feral grin as he bent close to the comm station. "Do you trust me now?"
Yaga Auchs was stunned past speaking, just like most of the Krish'nakt's crew. Nihl reveled in it; the Second Battle of Terminus had been a carefully arranged drama, mounting tension and upping the stakes with one surprise after another. Finally he'd made the climactic reveal, one which neither his enemies nor allies had expected.
Finally the mercenary said, "What are you orders?"
"Targets of opportunity. The Ssi-ruuk will take care of the interdictors. I recommend focusing on the Imperials. Hurt the enemy as much as you can."
After another pause Auchs asked, "Should we capture their ships or destroy them?"
"Destroy," Nihl said. He'd weighed the value of prisoners versus that of shock and awe, and come down in favor of the latter. "Happy hunting, Mandalore."
Auchs grunted and closed the link. Still grinning, Nihl stalked to the front of the bridge so he could witness the carnage with his own eyes. From the position of the Nagai ships the Ssi-ruuk were far out, beyond the clusters of Alliance, Imperial, and Mandalorian ships. Nonetheless, he could make them out for their usual ovoid shapes, vaguely resembling insectoid faces with sensor- and weapon-packed blisters for eyes and vehicle launch bays for jaws. They'd joined the battle exactly where and when he wanted them to, a sign that his months of negotiation with their Shreeftut hadn't been in vain. Neither, clearly, had the Ssi-ruuk's recent overtures to Bakura, the closest major Federation planet to their interstellar Imperium. The Ssi-ruuk had successfully wooed some of their P'w'eck ex-slaves and convinced the lesser saurians to steal key scraps of Bakuran technology, most notably hyperwave inertial momentum sustainers.
The HIMS devices, developed by Bakuran engineers over a century ago, created a sustained static hyperspace bubble around equipped ships, which allowed them to continue through an artificial gravity well on inertia rather than being immediately yanked out of lightspeed. Theoretically a game-changer in interstellar warfare, the HIMS devices were prone to malfunction and only of use in limited situations. Unreliable supply and low demand had led to the experimental technology being nearly forgotten, but not by Nihl.
The Ssi-ruuk seemed to have adapted the HIMS wonderfully to their ships. The Alliance vessels were responding slowly, no doubt due to crews who literally didn't believe their eyes. The Ssi-ruuk hadn't waged war in the charted galaxy for over a century, and their bizarre craft would be recognizable only by military historians.
The most critical part of the attack, however, was invisible from Nihl's range. The ovoid Ssi-ruuk vessels were currently belching out thousands of small droid starfighters, each pyramidal drone barely larger than a standing Nagai, incredibly maneuverable and very difficult to hit. Their deployment would mark the finishing blow of this fight; in a sense, Nihl could have never started his campaign without them.
The sudden silence in the Force had unexpected side effects across the galaxy. The vampiric Anzati, he'd been told, could no longer drink their victim's minds with the Force dead; rumor said many had gone mad. The Ssi-ruuk, who'd never been known to touch the Force, had nonetheless relied on it when transferring their prisoners' essences via the entechment scheme. Some Sith researchers suggested they'd appropriated ancient Rakatan technology to convert life energy to fuel. True or not, the system of technological slavery on which their empire was built had collapsed overnight, throwing the entire Imperium into chaos.
It was into that situation that Nihl had arrived, promising stability for the Ssi-ruuk and a replacement for their lost entechment. The aliens were warlike and xenophobic, used to seeing outsiders as either threats or prey. In that they were not unlike the Nagai, but like Nihl's people they had a practical streak beneath their violent fanaticism. To sustain their empire, they'd allowed Nihl to help. He'd delivered them a chance to expand beyond their wildest imagining.
Even before he'd lost the Force, Nihl had been planning for conquest. He'd quietly made allies among another secretive and neglected race, the Geonosians. The insectoid droidmakers had been laboring in obscurity for over a century, devising new machines and selling them to private clients, but a lack of raw materials had made it impossible to construct the droid armies they once had. Through Nihl's intercession, they'd agreed to modify their droid brains for use in the Ssi-ruuk's already-existing droid starfighters. Thus the Geonosians and Ssi-ruuk opened new doors to each other, and in turn the Nagai gained opening for such conquest as they'd never seen before.
It was all such impressive serendipity, Nihl couldn't help but wonder if the Force was working its will through him, even if he could no longer hear it.
He liked to think so. As he stood on Krish'nakt's bridge and watched the explosions light up across the Alliance fleet, he felt like a true Dark Lord, master of all he saw.
-{}-
In the Coruscant situation room, aghast silence had been replaced by choruses of frantic orders interspersed with long minutes of tensely watching the display holo. There was little the admirals could do from half a galaxy away except, and Jaeger and Slossar were doing the best they could with the situation they'd been given.
The Ssi-ruuk were essentially an untested foe, and the Alliance vessels were the first to be thrown against them. When Slossar's Mon Calamari cruisers got close enough they were able to deal substantial damage to the strange ovoid battle cruisers, but not enough to knock any out of the fight. Few capital ships got close enough for direct combat; the Ssi-ruuk's tiny droid starfighters swarmed like piranha beetles around smaller corvettes and frigates, tearing them to pieces, and the squadrons of Crossfire and Twintail fighters that attempted to engage were similarly ripped apart. The heavy cruisers' shields deflected laser attacks and suicidal dive-bombing by the droids, but the craft were staggered by constant attacks and unable to mount a coherent counter-offensive against the Ssi-ruuk.
The Imperials, meanwhile, were struggling against the combined forces of the Nagai and Mandalorians. Both enemies used small, fast, heavy-hitting attack craft, and while the star destroyers could defend themselves it was the smaller capital ships that again took the brunt of the assault. Frigates and corvettes were blasted apart by concentrated assaults, and the Imperials began to lose their protective fighter screen.
When it became too much, Slossar hailed Coruscant and said he was withdrawing. He didn't bother to ask, but at that moment none of the admirals would deny him. Stazi and the others watched as the tactical holo, with clinical precision, showed the three interdictors drop their artificial gravity wells, returning Terminus' own to its natural state. They interdictors then fired their hyperdrives and jumped out of the Terminus system, the first ships to escape.
Slossar and Jaeger tried to coordinate an orderly withdrawal, but it quickly turned to shambles. Alliance ships tried to push through swarms of Ssi-ruuvi war droids. None escaped without damage and several ships were utterly destroyed. The Imperials fared even worse. Despite having no apparent coordination between their fleets the Nagai, Mandalorians, and Ssi-ruuk fell on the fleeing star destroyers and savaged them. One two-kilometer-long warship was destroyed outright after being trapped with a Ssi-ruuk cruiser on either flank and a Nagai attack pack on its aft. A second destroyer was crippled and, on Jaeger's permission, broadcast a surrender signal. The Coruscant war room watched in wordless horror as it was surrounded by the Ssi-ruuk and pounded to lifeless debris.
As the first of Jaeger's ships finally escaped to hyperspace, Admiral Fenel finally muttered, "The bastards. The despicable bastards…"
"I don't understand," whispered Bey. "I thought the Ssi-ruuk powered their droids with life energy from slaves. They had their…"
"Entechment process," Chalk supplied. "There have been… indications the process no longer worked."
"Those droids worked damn fine just now," Fenel snarled. "How did it happen? How?"
The intelligence director looked away, ashamed. The other admirals watched as Jaeger's flagship jumped out of the system. The surveillance satellites, which had been recording the whole battle, hung further out, well clear of the battle zone, and after all the Federation warships had left Terminus they remained to broadcast the planet's holo-image, surrounded on all sides by hostile red.
"May the gods help the people down there," Bey muttered.
Because we can't, Stazi thought. Weariness settled over him. For the past few years he'd dared hope it was done, that the galaxy was finally free of fighting that tore apart entire star sectors. War never ended; he knew that deep in his bones, but still, he'd dared hope.
As the admirals watched the holo with grim expressions, a ping sounded. Admiral Yage turned toward the door and called, "Enter."
A human lieutenant stepped in. He seemed surprised by the sight inside, though whether it was all the admiral's bars that impressed him or their uniformly grim faces, Stazi couldn't tell.
The young man swallowed, then delivered another blow. "Sirs, we have news from Bavinyar. I'm afraid something terrible has happened."