Chapter 5: Taosan and Yu

--October 21, 2017--
--07:40 GST--
There was a chorus of laughter over the comm lines of the entire Supervision fleet along the Botoru front where their ships were trading punches with Zentradi forces in massive engagements with reflex missiles and gunship barrages. Almost every engagement ended in victory for the Supervision Army, but that didn't change the fact that the Zentradi outnumbered them more than ten to one. But still there was laughter, and most of it was directed inwards towards the news from the Gallaron front. Sarride was leading the jests this evening on her command ship. "You'd think he didn't even see it coming! That damned fool…" Sarride said, still collecting herself from a round of laughter.

Kong and Kraso were laughing right along with her, even with half of their respective fleets heavily engaged with enemy ships at this very moment. "Kraken certainly seems to be loosing his touch." Kraso said, his voice saturated with false sympathy.

Kong snickered. "How many ships did the enemy have? Three, four destroyers? You think maybe we're asking too much out of him?"

Sarride laughed again. "Hey, it's not his fault! He just doesn't function as well without Lacul's fingers up his ass every second of his life…"

Kong and Kraso burst into laughter again, and then a new communication window opened on the command bridge of each of their ships showing a still grumpy Admiral Sam Bennet on the bridge of his own battleship somewhere far behind the Botoru line. "Sarride, I have an urgent message from His Lordship Lacul for you and Commander Sarron."

"Oh really?" Sarride still had trouble taking Bennet seriously, and even more trouble trusting him with anything important knowing his devious nature to be the same as Sarron's. "Well then, what does His Lordship want with us now? Does he miss his favorite hand puppet and need somewhere to stick his fingers?"

Bennet snickered. "You know he'd be displeased to hear you talk like that."

Sarride shrugged. "You're more than welcome to tell him. Anyway, what do you have for me?"

Bennet looked at one of the monitors and read off the orders he'd been asked to relay. "We've been hearing rumors about one of the planets in the Kaladan system from captured protoculture ships. Lacul believes one of them might actually be Vorhalas."

Sarride's heart skipped a beat and her palms started to sweat. "Vorhalas? I… he does know how I feel about this doesn't he?"

To no one's surprise, Bennet didn't understand her reaction. "About what Sarride? You have a problem with this Vorhalas place?"

Sarride took a deep breath and steadied herself on the bridge, not wanting to show weakness in front of the others. "No problem, I just don't feel comfortable with… well what does he want from me anyway? He wants me to confirm the identity of this planet for him?"

Bennet looked at her curiously, certain that there was something else going on here he was almost totally unaware of. He knew it was none of his business, but somehow he felt an insatiable urge to know more. "I understand you don't feel comfortable around Sarron…"

"No shit Bennet."

"… so if you would prefer, I could accompany you on the operation to secure the planet."

Sarride would defiantly prefer a cocky Bennet over that meddling Sarron any day. "Lacul won't like it. Kaladan is very close to the left flank of the Gallaron front. I could use the support to help secure the planet but…"

"Lacul won't care as long as I don't engage in frontline combat. I'll only act as a landing force and I'll leave orbital defense up to you."

Sarride nodded. "Sounds reasonable…"

"But I would like to know what's going on here. What's this Vorhalas place anyway?"

Sarride passed orders on to her navigation officers to make a fold jump to the Kaladan system, then turned back to the monitors. "Bennet my friend, I'll explain everything IF this planet really does turn out to be Vorhalas."

--11:45 GST--
The last thing any commander of any space fleet wants is a large scale ground battle. Though it may seem safer to battle in an atmosphere close to the ground where Mecha might have and advantage and ships could better sustain damages, it is actually more trouble than it's worth. Shikari knew this better than most; her fleet of sixty starships was battling over the rough mountain terrain of the planet Fosche, a world surrounded by so much asteroid clutter it was nearly impossible to get a functional space craft into the planet's orbit. The moon of this larger planet had been destroyed by a fold weapon thousands of years ago, the results of which forced hundreds of ships to dog each other in the canyons and mountains of this planet now.

SDF-05 was in battle mode, rising over the peak of an eight thousand foot volcano to fire it's main cannon at an enemy destroyer. The enemy ship was taken totally off guard, and the blast tore through it and part of the mountain behind it where a larger number of enemy mecha had been setting up makeshift repair camps. Shikari noticed immediately on the radar that several enemy warships had already traced the path of her cannons and were now closing in, using rough terrain of this planet as cover for their ships. "Ajax this is Defiant, new enemy formation sighted! Hurry up Harper!"

Harper's face came onto the monitor with too much static for her to see his expression. "I can't get to you from there! Head for point 2-1-1 in the mountains and get between those two peaks and I'll try to get some missiles into that basin!"

When she thought about it, that was a very badly thought out plan, but admirable for also being the simplest. "Helm, head for point 2-1-1. Try and stay bellow two thousand feet."

"Aye sir!"

Shikari leaned back in her chair and gave this situation alot more thought. "Why here? Why this place? There's no strategic value in this system, it's just a pile of rocks..." Nothing made sense to her now. Running into enemy ships here in her favorite hiding spot would make things harder for her from now on, but that still begged the question of what did the enemy want with this system to send so many warships here?

The Ajax was staying in cruiser mode for this part of the battle, and on the command bridge Captain Harper was thinking much the same thing, but when the looming hull of an enemy cruiser came within sight of his guns between two mountain peaks, he quickly snapped back to reality. "Hey Shik, what's that formation that's giving you so much trouble?"

"Four destroyers and three cruisers."

Harper looked at the radar plot again and smiled. "Look at your monitors. You'll love this."

Shikari clicked on the little screen in front of the captain's chair and watched a camera angle on the group of enemy vessels closing in on her and her destroyer escorts. "What am I looking for...?" A single powerful blast erupted from the side of one of the mountains like a volcano and ripped through the first destroyer, and the cruiser next to it, and damaging the other three destroyers in the enemy formation with just that one blast. "Nice shot, Ajax! Missile control, finish off the other four and then move on to the next target. We have to link up with Captain Murath's destroyer group in that crater to the East. You can fire when ready."

There was a short pause, then a signal from fire control. "Missiles away bridge!" Barely a half a second later, Shikari heard the series of sonic booms as the missiles shot out of their launch tubes to finish off the enemy ships pursuing them, as well as two other ships that had been moving around the mountains to attack the Ajax. The warheads detonated in their faces after a moment, massive fireballs as bright as the sun and shockwaves that spread for hundreds of miles. A series of mushroom clouds rose over the now-flaming hulks of her pursuit; meanwhile the Defiant moved quickly with its destroyer escorts to join Harper's group in a massive impact crater almost ten kilometers wide and three deep. Ajax arrived in the crater a few seconds after the Defiant along with each of their destroyer groups forming up around them. The Zentradi cruisers got down lower, closer to the crater floor where they could recover any stray mecha more quickly, and the Thor class destroyers moved right up above them as they came into the crater one by one and opened their missile tubes for a full scale bombardment. The forty destroyers of Shikari's 2nd Advanced fleet had enough firepower between them to completely devastate the surface of this planet in every direction for hundreds of kilometers, but only a few missiles were needed to destroy the enemy fleet once they were all in position. "Ajax, this is Defiant. As soon as you've completed recovery of all friendly mecha, raise your altitude to three thousand feet and begin fold operations."

Harper felt his legs seem to go numb. "General, we can't fold in rough space in a gravity well! We could end up on the opposite side of the galaxy!"

Shikari chuckled. "Trust my judgment. I'll run the calculations to get us into high orbit of this planet, and once we're there we can think of a new plan."

Harper groaned loudly. "Plan nothing! We should just make a run for it!"

"And how do you plan to do that, Mathew?" Shikari said playfully.

"Oh." Harper rubbed the back of his head nervously. "Right, uhhh... we'll think of something."

--20:12 GST--
Something soft yet firm smacked against one of her cheeks, and with an annoyed groan she swept it off the bed to the floor and rolled over on her side. "Not now Taosan," She groaned, eager to recapture her peaceful sleep.

Kai Chan chuckled and put his hand on her shoulder. "Time for your close-up, Minmei."

Her eyes opened fully, and in confusion she rolled back over and glared at him. "Kai?"

He nodded.

Minmei sat up on the bed, suddenly feeling a small array of aches and cramps protesting throughout her body. When she looked around she was more confused than ever. It was her house, her bedroom, but a trio of floor-to-ceiling posts occupied the center of the room, flowers growing out of the sides of them between sets of gemstones imbedded into the wood. "How did I get here? What happened to me..." She tried to sit up, but felt aches and pains all over her body again and, surrendering, lay back down.

"My buddy Gokaran from Alor City has a sister in the defense forces. She's one of the best light dancers I've ever seen, but..." He placed his hand gently on her cheek, "I was startin to wonder if you'd ever wake up."

Minmei took it all in, still barely understanding. "I was shot?"

"Several times."

"I was dying?"

"You were dead. You bled to death before we could bring you help. And if it hadn't been for Sekkai's light dancers you'd be six feet under by now."

A pulse of sadness rose in her chest, as well as an equally strong pulse of hope. "How have I been asleep?"

"Just over four weeks."

All at once the direction of her thinking changed, "What about the boys?"

Kai Chan smiled. "They're fine. I let them sleep in here with you every night. I thought if you woke up in the middle of the night and saw them with you it would make you feel better."

It was all she could do to keep from blushing in absolute admiration. "Kai Chan... you? YOU saved me?"

"Sorta. I just kinda happened to be there at the right time. I mean... well I'm mainly just luck I saw you when I did."

Her eyes started to sparkle, and throwing inhibition to the wind she reached up and grabbed him, threw her arms around him like a long-lost lover. "Kai... you saved me..."

Kai Chan laughed, giving her a moment's joyous outburst before he eased her back down into her bed, "You're welcome... oh, one more thing." He reached down next to the bed and scooped up a newspaper article he'd been saving for just this occasion. He dropped the article in her lap and let her read it, sitting up as much as she could. The headline on the very first page brought a tear to her eye: AT ANY COST: GALACTIC POP STAR KILLED IN FIREFIGHT. Breezing over the story, the journalist had clearly spared no expense in glorifying her. The article called her a hero, a patriot, a model citizen and more, taking up arms to defend her family from enemy invasion. At one point in the article, the writer even went so far as to say, "Lynn Minmei has always remained true to herself and never compromises. Last year she told all of Gallaron she would get her hands dirty, and this weekend she has proven just how far she is willing to go. If this kind of courage and valor were more common among our people, this war would end overnight." She set down the article with fresh tears in her eyes. "I'm not dead."

"They know that. Sekkai did a public dance the day after this article for you and a couple other people. Everyone saw it. It was a big festival."

"What about Pris? Did they bring her back?"

An expression of pain flashed across Kai Chan's face. He struggled to find the words, but relented and shook his head slowly.

She stared at him with a desperate confusion in her eyes, a pleading expression for something she did not know how to ask for. For just a split second, each of them looked into the eyes of the other and saw a sadness and a yearning neither had expected; each felt unconditional friendship towards the other, yet each stared at the other as if to ask, Why can't you be more than that?

Kai Chan heard a sound at the doorway, and glanced over to see each of the twins, one on top of the other, crawling on their bellies at the edge of the doorway, looking up to see if Minmei was awake yet. Miko was right behind them, peaking around the corner shyly as if waiting for permission to exist. Just seeing them here caused her a surge of strength; she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached down to the floor, waiting for the twins to come into range and scooped each of them up and dropped them on the bed. "Hi there little one," She said to each, kissing Taosan and then Yu on the forehead. Both of them cooed contently and snuggled against her; Miko followed shortly with a shark's grin. "Wow, Miko, you're getting big! What are they feeding you?"

Miko grinned wider. "Mr. Kai's been cookin."

"Oh really? What's Mr. Kai been cooking?"

"Rema-cantaro."

"What?"

"Rema-cantaro." She said again.

Minmei looked up at Kai, and he explained, "It's a Protocran dish. It's supposed to make kids smarter." There was a slight jingle in his voice where she could not tell for sure if he was joking.

"Right..." Taosan seemed contented for the first time next to her, while Yu, by contrast, seemed the most excited to see her awake again. "Have you been taking care of them all this time?"

Kai nodded. "Of course. It was a pleasure, really."

"Well..." She shot a glance at the grinning little girl in the doorway, "Why is Miko here?"

Her answer appeared in the doorway behind Miko in a wheelchair, a somber expression on her face but a look of utter relief glazed over his eyes. "Oh damn," Misa said dramatically, "She lives!"

--14:50 GST--
Kraken was thoroughly impressed, both with himself and the performance of his rivals. Ground battles, especially on planets as geographically dynamic as this, were never easy, and yet Shikari had managed to elude most of the fleet on the ground with relative ease. They were currently gathering in the basin of a massive impact crater near the equator, and once there they would obviously fire off a spread of nuclear missiles to catch the bulk of his fleet off guard and then attempt some outlandish ploy to escape from his forces. But Kraken had no intention of letting her get away with this. "Lazuli, enemy ships are regrouping in sector 807. Are you in position yet?"

On Lazuli's battleship closer to the fighting, the Fleet Commander was checking over the last warship and mecha dispositions to make sure everything was happening the way she planned it. "We're in position, Commander. Cruise missiles standing by."

Kraken smiled grimly. "Let's just see how the little pipsqueak likes this one." He said under his breath. "Lazuli, fire away!"

"Yes sir."

Lazuli's battleship, as well as dozens of other ships closer to Shikari's fleet all fired a spread of nuclear reactive missiles over the peaks of the volcano ranges into the crater where the Gallaron fleet was waiting. The missiles rose to a very high altitude to drop in on the Gallaron ships, but at almost the same time as Kraken realized just what was about to come next, two great columns of energy exploded out of the crater from the Defiant and the Ajax along with a flurry of anti-mecha laser fire from the entire fleet. Lazuli's entire missile barrage was destroyed in two heartbeats, and then right behind them the Gallaron ships answered back with their own missiles. "I should have thought of that." Kraken grumbled. "She's using the terrain well. Our missiles and fighters can't get to them, they have to come in from above where she can sweep them all..." And then Kraken noticed something odd about the enemy's missile spread; it was rising strait up into the sky at nothing in particular, leaving towers of smoke in the sky hundreds of miles high. Kraken watched them fire up for a few minutes and then came to the most obvious conclusion. "They must be trying to clear themselves a path through the asteroid belts... a high speed run!" Now that certainly sounded like fun, something to sharpen the skills of his gunners and maybe provide some worthy entertainment for himself at the same time. "Fire control, adjust the ship's altitude up thirty degrees and direct the main cannon towards that crater. We're going to have to hit some very fast moving targets and we'll only get one shot."

"Yes sir." Came the sullen response from the gunnery control.

The Supervision Army command ship immediately started rising out of the small lake it had been resting in and pointed both massive arms of its main cannon skyward, charged and ready to destroy anything bold enough to try and blast its way off this planet. Kraken would not allow them to leave, not with so much riding on their elimination.

But after a few minutes, the Gallaron ships didn't make another move. Lazuli's ships and all of the warships of their battle group all had their cannons pointed upwards, ready to blow the protoculture ships out of the sky before they could even get into space. But nothing happened; five minutes came and went, then ten minutes. Nearly half an hour ticked down before finally Kraken got tired of waiting. "They must have lost their nerve." He thought to himself. "So much for target practice. Lazuli, get all combat mecha you've got over that ridge and down into that crater right now!"

Lazuli acknowledged gladly, apparently frustrated at having to wait so long for the enemy's response. "All pods and Variable armors are underway, sir. They'll make contact in about three min..." static filled the communications channels as a massive energy reaction started building up from within the crater. Lazuli wasn't sure at first, but after a moment when the gravity around them changed and the entire landscape started to shift, suddenly she knew what had happened as much as she couldn't believe it. "Kraken, the enemy fleet just folded!"

"Folded?!" Kraken was sure he had heard wrong, and if he had he would probably have Lazuli tortured to death. "How the hell did they get past you?!"

"They didn't! They performed a hyperspace fold right in front of us sir! Right out of gravity!"

"Out of gravity... is that even possible?" Everything Kraken knew about space warfare told him that this was not happening, that something else must be going on here and that Lazuli had plainly lost his mind. But then the first wave of combat mecha looked over the peaks to see something truly amazing. The relayed the image to Kraken's monitor, showing that the crater they had been hiding in had actually doubled in both size and depth, and that there was no sign of the enemy ships anywhere in the vicinity.

Kraken was speechless. He knew this had to be some kind of bad dream, that none of this could possibly be happening for real, until the moment his radar officers all yelped in surprise. "Lord Kraken, unidentified objects closing on our position at high speed! Profile suggests meteorites!"

"Meteors... dammit Shikari!" He shouted, suddenly realizing the depth of his miscalculation. He looked up above his ship as dozens of small fireballs descended on the landscape around them at twice or three times the speed of sound, blasted out of orbit by Shikari's missile barrage more than half an hour before. The smallest of these little rocks was the size of a bus, but the largest and most numerous were two or three kilometers wide; Shikari had blown up one of the larger planetoids and knocked it's fragments into a path that would send them all raining down on his fleet from above. Even his defense barrier wouldn't stand up to this... "Take evasive action! All ships clear the area right now!" Even as he spoke the first large asteroid, this one about six hundred meters across, came down on one of the carriers next to his command ship, punching strait through the force field and splitting the ship in half before hitting the water bellow it and exploding on the sea floor. Dozens of others rained down on them now, striking the ground at tremendous speeds and exploding with a force much greater than any reaction missile. Supervision ships scrambled to clear the way as asteroids pummeled the ground around them, some of them taking hits and breaking up, but most getting out of the area with minimal damages.

But it wasn't finished yet; Shikari's fleet folded into high orbit of the planet and powered up for another fold. As Kraken's fleet scattered under the bombardment of shooting stars from above, SDF-Ajax and Defiant powered up their main cannons for a parting shot. Both blasts struck down on the unsuspecting command ship from a distance of almost twenty thousand kilometers, punching strait through the ship's defense barrier and striking the hull just aft of the main engineering section. The ship's engines immediately exploded, and the reactors automatically shut down. The great hull of Kraken's command ship immediately fell ten thousand feet to the ground, crashed and slid down the side slope of one large volcanic mountain and finally coming to rest over a large dry lakebed.

Kraken sat in his chair on the bridge of his now derelict ship and rubbed his scalp tiredly. He would never hear the end of this embarrassment, but for some reason he wasn't at all angry with her. Much the opposite, Kraken was already starting to enjoy this game of cat and mouse he had begun with that little spec of a Meltran. Once his ship was repaired and ready for combat again, he couldn't wait to get back into space and get back into the game.

--17:40 GST--
"Things are pretty much getting back to normal," Misa was saying, "The city's rebuilding, and the memorial services are wrapping up. It's amazing, really. With a raid this bad you would think people's spirits would be down, but now they're more optimistic than ever."

"That's probably my fault," Minmei sat down at the kitchen table next to Kai Chan, her guests seated across from her in a cluster. Yu was sitting on Kai Chan's lap, clasping his bottle in both hands, Taosan was in curled up in Minmei's arms, already half asleep. "You remember this one, right?" She gestured towards the groggy twin in her arms, the larger of the two, "This is the little guy who's always giving me trouble. He even used to bite me when I was nursing him." Hikaru could already see why. He was huge for his age, easily twice as big as the last time he saw him, and quickly beginning to dwarf his twin brother in size and strength. Where Taosan seemed blissfully content with his surroundings and his companions, Yu stared at each of them with an interrogating glance, scrutinizing each of them as if deciding weather or not they were worthy to be in the same room with him. After a long moment he seemed to approve, and returned his attention to the bottle in his mouth. "My little dynamic duo." There was a note of partial sadness in her voice, as if conscious for the first time that she had very nearly orphaned the two of them just one month ago. Yet, both of them had lived through the same experience, and neither seemed particularly bothered by it even now.

Hikaru looked at Misa and saw, to his surprise, that her eyes were lit up like a pair of tiny moons. What amazed him, however, was the expression on Miko's face, standing there next to her mother peering over the table. If Miko were twenty years older, he would have sworn they were twins. "They're just adorable, Minmei!" Misa said, reaching out for the little one in her arms. "Taosan seems relatively normal, but why is Yu so quiet? We haven't heard a peep out of him since we got here."

"He's the strong silent type." Minmei said plainly. She handed off Taosan for Misa to hold him, then leaned over to pick up Yu from Kai Chan's lap. As soon as he knew what she was doing, the boy swung his bottle like a billy-club and smacked the back of her arm; she pulled away and left him in peace for the time being. "Taosan like to teach him games. They have this thing now where they roll around in circles on the floor for hours and hours."

"Why?"

"I have no idea, but it looks like fun. One of these days I'll get him to teach ME that game."

Misa laughed, and Miko reached up to investigate her new find. "He's so little..." she said curiously. "Can I have a little brother like him?"

"I'd be lucky to have a baby this beautiful." She handed Taosan down to Miko, who immediately sat on the floor with him and played with his hands.

In the next moment, Yu discarded his bottle and dropped it into Kai Chan's lap, then squirmed off the chair and slunk to the ground to join his brother with Miko. She welcomed the company and extended her hand to him; Yu grabbed a firm hold of Miko's index finger with his right hand, while Taosan reached up with his left hand and started poking her nose. He turned it one way, then the other, then squeezed it, pulled it, rolled her cheeks around with his plump little hands, poked his middle finger into her nostril, then sneezed, and backed off for a moment while Yu performed the same routine. Miko let each of them go through the cycle of playing with her face three more times before she could bring herself to move. "I think they likes me!" she said gleefully, moving his hand around as he clasped her finger. "Hi Yu! Hi Taosan! My name is Miko. Can you say Miko?"

Yu stared at her blankly, then let out a low squeak that might have been some attempt at a word. Taosan coughed, then pronounced a series of nonsensical babbles in his own private language. "That's as vocal as Yu gets. He has Taosan do all the talking for him." Minmei observed, watching from her chair, "In fact I had a doctor check his hearing a few days ago just in case, but aside from a general passivity there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with him."

Miko played with Yu for a few more moments, then looked up with eyes full of hope. "Mom, can I PLEASE have a little brother like this one?"

"We'll see what happens, Miko. I can't always be sure what the baby will be before it's born you know."

Minmei looked at her friend curiously. "Little brother? Misa is there something you've forgotten to tell me?"

"Not yet. As soon I can walk on my own, we're certainly going to try."

Minmei smiled. "So competitive, aren't we?"

"Of course we are. I mean, I did kinda steal your boyfriend out from under you, even though I still have you outclassed on the 'most serious injury' category."

Minmei grinned. "Well yeah, but you haven't been in the paper as much as I have."

"Yeah, I guess you are on all the headlines with your miraculous recovery and all... oh that reminds me! I didn't tell Hikaru this, but something very interesting happened to me last night."

Really? What?" Minmei said.

"We've got this bar over the top of the bed that I can use to pull myself up when I need to get into my chair…" Misa pushed the chair away from the table and locked the breaks on her wheels. "I woke up in the middle of the night and I REALLY had to go to the bathroom, but when I tried to lift myself into the chair…" She reached under her chair for her cane and put her hands on the arms of the wheelchair. "…the bar broke and I almost fell."

Hikaru sat up suddenly. "You know, I was just about to ask about that too."

Misa smiled. "But I landed in a really funny position, like half leaning off the bed. And I didn't want to fall, so I took the bar and posted it on the ground…." Misa used all of her arm strength to heave herself out of the chair, then balanced herself on the cane to push herself the rest of the way up. At first she swayed precariously, her knees wobbled, a few times she almost fell... everyone was staring at her speechless. Miko had tears in her eyes, even Taosan and Yu seemed to stop and stare in wonder. Posting her left had on the cane and the other on the side of the table, Admiral Misa Ichijo was standing strait up for the first time in over a year. "And this is where I ended up."

--November 2, 2017--
--03:20 GST--
Broli's head was starting to hurt from lack of sleep. They were retreating again, outnumbered five to one by the enemy fleet, and even blasting dozens of them at a time with reaction missiles from the fighter wings couldn't slow them down. All the Gallaron forces on a five hundred lightyear front had started fighting the same way, doing their best to stay out of range of the enemy ship's guns and leaving most of the fighting up the Valkyries and most if not all of the defense up to the Lighting fighters. It was just a delaying tactic. Sooner or later the Gallaron fleet would have no choice to go head to head with the Supervision Army, and the only way to win was to have the maximum number of ships available to them. Alpha Factory was handling the load extremely well, with more asteroids being brought in for ore processing and the automated construction equipment increasing it's capabilities every day. And still Broli's head hurt. He couldn't take much more of this.

There as a break in the action now, with the next wave of fighters well off into space and the previous strike still rearming. They would only launch one more attack before folding space again and falling back even closer to Gallaron then ever before. At this rate, the new ship would appear on the front lines just in time to be destroyed. But still, he had a doubt. Enemy behavior as of late wasn't consistent with the overwhelming tactical advantage everyone knew they had. "I wonder…" Broli started thinking again, on the oddly quiet bridge of his ship well engaged in a planet-sized space brawl. He figured as long as there was a lull in activity right now… "Lieutenant Raltha, give me a secure line on the hyperspace relay. Get me SDF-2"

"Just a moment sir…" Broli's communications officer started up the series of small communications satellites dispersed around Gallaron space until at length the signal found it was to one of the relay satellites within rage of the battleship Megaroad. The signal went out for a few minutes, then finally answered by a return signal on the same frequency. "Channel open sir."

Broli put the image on the monitor next to the Captain's chair and squinted through the grainy, distorted image to see Corina on the bridge of her ship, her face illuminated by intermittent flashes of light from explosions somewhere outside the ship. "Hi Kitten." He said.

"Hi Broli."

"Is this a bad time?" He said as another flash lit up the bridge around her.

Corina looked around slowly, and casually shook her head. "Now's as good a time as any. What's up?"

"I've been doing some thinking and I need a second opinion on something."

Corina squinted at him. "About us?"

"That too, but not just yet."

"Okay, what's your question?"

Broli organized his thoughts as quickly as he could so as not to waste too much of her time. "Have you noticed anything strange about the enemy lately?"

"Strange how?"

"Behavior wise. Something about the way they're fighting has been really bugging me lately."

Corina took in the information, and now that she thought about it Broli was right. Even in the battle right here in front of her with the enemy fleet shooting at her from a distance to support their little fighter raid, they seemed especially eager to press their advantage. In fact, they'd been fighting like this for a long time; it was as if they were holding back almost all of their forces for some reason. "What do you think it means?"

"I don't have a clue. Right now there's only a single battle group of a couple hundred ships active in this part of our borders, with the rest of them concentrating on Shikari's division or else scattered across the star systems looking for a week spot on our defense grid."

Corina nodded. "They wouldn't have this problem if they just sent more ships and rolled over us like they did at Gulara... not to rub it in or anything."

"Hah! Well go ahead, see what I care!" Broli said, trying to look offended but laughing instead. "Anyway, I have a hunch that the enemy might not be so strong as we originally thought. I think maybe there might be a way to exploit their weakness before they realize we've caught on."

Corina paused to reply as Commander Ryder reported to her that the enemy fleet was once again falling back out of range of their guns for the 7th time in as many hours. "You could be right. They certainly don't seem to have a lot of momentum these days, not like before where their whole armada would just charge right through us."

"Exactly. Even IF they're holding back a large part of their fleet, we've got nothing to loose by being more aggressive. If we can start pushing them back, maybe we can build up a more permanent defense line."

"Why are you telling me this? Why not send Shikari or Hallas?" Corina already had a working theory as to why he was asking her, but she still preferred to here it from him.

Broli started to grin. "Shikari has enough to do, we shouldn't trouble her with this. Let's make this a joint operation. We'll combine our two fleets and set up a weakness in one of the defense outposts. When the enemy fleet comes to attack it, we'll ambush them and take them all out before they can call for reinforcements."

"And…?" Corina was growing impatient.

"And…" Broli thought about it, trying not to forget anything. "Oh, of course you and I will have to have full cooperation in this operation. We should meet to discuss strategy some time, say… over dinner?"

Corina was satisfied. "Now there's a plan. Can you get Hallas to cover your patrol zone while we set up this ambush?"

"Consider it done Kitten. He's about twelve hours away from my position, so we'll rendezvous at Lima-619 in... thirty hours."