Chapter 9: The Second Mobilization

—January 1, 2018—
—02:15 GST—
Jikanna-Delcaan is a system of almost unmatched splendor and beauty. There are eighteen planets in this double star system, seven of them solid, the three largest ones being each the size of Neptune and supporting an earthlike eco-system where protoculture colonies once thrived. SDF-2 and the combined first and second fleets had been raising hell in this system, striking enemy ships with fighter waves and reaction missiles to knock out as many of the smaller ships as possible. The enemy countered in kind, having a more than two to one advantage in numbers over the combined Phoenix and Megaroad fleets. After two weeks of battle, the Gallaron forces had lost thirty ships and hundreds of fighters, almost a third of their strength to enemy vessels while still knocking out half of the enemy fleet. The battle was now coalescing into one major brawl in low orbit near Jikanna-III's largest moon where the GSDF would try to support a major fighter strike against the Supervision Army in hopes of damaging more of their smaller cruisers and destroyers, therefore isolating their command ships and battle wagons for their gunners. Even so, it was a daunting task, with over one hundred and forty enemy ships in this system from one of Lazuli's recently re-built action groups that until then had been waiting patiently for her scout units to find a target.

And then there was Victory. The entire ship was already at their battle stations when the 9th fleet defolded in low orbit of the moon with a birds-eye view of the steadily intensifying battlefield. They were making their presence by approaching with their backs to the sun; the enemy would detect the defold but they wouldn't be able to figure out just where they had come from. Victory was about to pounce. "Fighter status?" Imura said, her eyes focusing on the distant lights of battle.

Lieutenant Gouraz was already a step ahead of them. "All designated squadrons now on alert-zero. All mobile infantry standing by on deck."

Imura could already see the powered armors standing in squads on the deck, carefully positioning themselves to stay out of the way of the Victory's many fixed weapon systems; and not one among them was a Queadlunn-Rau. They were all the new Stormlord armors Beecher and her women had been fussing about, but after this battle she would accept no further complaints. "All fighters, commence operation! Major Lao, clear the deck!"

To Kai Chan, the order was music to his ears. "This is Thug-Zero. You all heard her, clear the deck and proceed to targets! We're the final defense line against enemy mecha." All of the armors pushed off the deck by squads, responding only by prompt and spirited action. Most of them were armed with GU-11 gunpods, others with Zentradi energy pistols or small grenade launchers modified from the old Destroid squadrons. All pushed off and rose into space at the same time as the fighters started to launch around them and the missile tubes on the sides of the ship opened up.

Lieutenant Merrick at the tactical consol waited until the fighters had enough of a head start, then pushed the engines to full thrust and moved the entire fleet closer and closer, bringing them into near point blank range. Even with all the interference from Jikanna's unusually violent sun, they would be plainly visible at this range. "Fire control, plot solutions all missiles."

"Already done, sir. Target package 104. All other ships confirm individual target spreads and the destroyers are moving into firing position."

Imura held for a moment to give the rest of the mecha some time to advance. She still had a doubt about all this. The mobile infantry was supposed to be the ship's final line of defense as usual, but here she was doing something so blatantly reckless and keeping a leash on all of those perfectly skilled girls out there... "This is Delta Vee to Thug-Zero. I'm changing your orders. Proceed to forward deployment along with fighter unit and disable enemy carrier units. Fighter units will provide close-air-support, so get in there and take out those carriers any way you can."

Kai Chan licked his lips and clenched his fists around his gunpod. This just kept getting better... "Thug-Zero, acknowledged. Marines, we've got some ass to kick!" He pushed his thrusters forward and shot faster into space towards the enemy fleet, the other four hundred powered armors of his battalion following right behind him. His own squad was right on his heals, all of them itching to find out what these new armors handled like in actual combat. Their screens were already lit up wit the radar blips of enemy mecha closing in to attack them. "Well they're sure glad to see us..." Kai Chan said under his breath.

Imura was getting nervous. Enemy mecha were closing in and even as they got closer, some of the enemy ships had started firing at her fleet from afar. They were already well within medium firing range of the enemy ships, but she wanted to be closer. The ice-cold nerves of a meltran officer were in total control of her emotions, but as she closed in she felt the very real urge to get this fight started. "Mia, green light all target packages and fire all tubes."

"Now sir?"

"Now!"

"Acknowledged... commencing firing." Mia said nervously, sending out orders to the rest of the fleet while Lieutenant Merrick fired their own missile spread. All of the Thor class destroyers each fired off half of their missiles tubes and all of the Zentradi cruisers fired everything they had along with SDF-09. Almost eight hundred reaction missiles swarmed into space and charged in, passing the fighters and powered armors like they were standing still, crossing the rest of the gulf of vacuum between them before finally striking their targets in low orbit.

The missiles didn't all go off at once; for maximum effect they had been programmed for a special pattern. More than half of them cut off their rockets early and fell behind the others, so the first wave detonated amongst the enemy vessels in a kind of nuclear ripple from one end of the fleet to the other to confuse the sensors of the surviving ships. At least four consecutive blasts rocked each of the enemy vessels, sending many of them into a spin and smashing the force barriers on just about all of them. And then the second wave hit their targets a few seconds later, finishing the work of the first and exploding over the hulls of irradiated and suddenly unprotected ships. Over a hundred ships registered direct hits, of which over half of them were either crippled or destroyed.

The light from the explosions burned new light into the hearts of the fighter and armor pilots closing in, and by some odd coincidence the enemy mecha came into firing range at almost that exact moment. "This is Thug-Zero, split up by squads but keep each other covered! C'mon gang, let's kick em!" Kai Chan and his entire squad locked on to the first group; a battalion of Glaug battlepods maneuvering to attack them. He choose three pods and fired all fifteen missiles from his chest launcher, joining them with a burst from his pulse laser and his auto-cannons. The burst of fire smashed the first pod's canopy and shredded its lone occupant, and the missiles slammed into the other two and blew both of them apart before they could even get off a shot. The other fifty or so battlepods in the division targeted all eight powered armors of his squad and opened fire, almost blinding him with the light of plasma cannons. It was all he could do to keep moving in an effort to throw off their aim, and every second one of those beams shot right past his head...

Kai Chan noticed a flash of light from behind him, this one even more brilliant than the one from Victory's missiles. He knew it must have been the counter attack from the Supervision Army hitting the reaction barriers from the 7th fleet, though he was certain that catching the enemy ships off guard like this had limited their capacity to strike back. A spread of missiles from a Beecher and Alakos's armors dropped a more than a dozen Glaug pods in front of him with a single pass and now all 8 of them moved into the midst of the enemy mecha and started firing away with gunpods, some at less than arms length apart from the very mecha they were shooting at. Kai Chan plunged into the mix along with Private Forest and Yuri, each blasting away with gunpods into what could only be described as a spaceborne riot.

Not even a hundred kilometers away, two reaction missiles detonated under the bow of an enemy destroyer, snapping the entire vessel in half like a brittle twig. The VF-1F section banked and started to look for a new target as Broli's fighter wing blasted a group of fighter pods with their laser cannons before they could close in from the rear. He kept one eye on the flight of E-Valks he was flying escort for and one eye on the enemy mecha around him, making sure not to loose sight of either for any period of time. But Victory's timely arrival to this sector was more of a distraction than it was a benefit. "This is Viper 100 to Delta Two, what the hell is Victory doing? She's charging the enemy fleet like she's suicidal..."

Corina wasn't really sure what Imura was thinking, but as the ship closed she could see it was transforming into battle mode, which gave her the general idea of what the great meltran was up to. "Never mind the Victory, just watch out for yourself. The situation is under control."

"Roger that, Delta." Broli shot a glance at SDF-09, still closing in at top speed even as it transformed into its battle configuration, but then turned his attention back as several of the E-Valks came under fire from a few variable powered armors. He fired off a burst from his laser cannons to destroy the first one, but without warning all four of the E-Valks he had been guarding spun around in battloid and blasted away with the particle cannons over their shoulders and their gunpods, surprising their pursuers and destroying all of them with just one burst. "Well then..." Broli chuckled to himself. "Even if they ARE retrofitted for bombing missions, they're still Valkyries at heart..." Broli noticed the lighting change as something eclipsed the sun behind him. He allowed himself just a moments distraction to look at it before he realized something amazing. Running with reaction barriers on, SDF-09 and the entire 7th fleet had closed to within a few thousand meters of the enemy ships, with Victory headed directly for the enemy's flag ship. A Supervision battleship moved into position to cut them off, only to be smashed into atoms by the deadly beam of Victory's main cannon. Broli squinted through the explosion of the blast, then punched up Victory's contact code unable to take any more of Imura's surprises today. "Captain Elensh, what the hell is this all about!"

"We can't give that flagship a chance to escape, but we can't get past their screening cruisers either. This is the most efficient way." she closed the channel again as every ship in the fleet simultaneously dropped their reaction barriers and fired off all of their reaction missiles. Another hundred warheads slipped into space around the Supervision fleet, this time swarming out in all directions around the enemy forces even as Corina's fleet, a bit farther away, added to the bombardment with their own spread of missiles. The powered armors and variable fighters near ground immediately cut in the afterburner and removed themselves from the vicinity of targeted vessels, leaving the hordes of not-so-intelligent enemy mecha to their fates in the nuclear inferno that suddenly sprang to life bellow them. With another sky-scorching display of energy release, dozens more enemy ships were scattered into the solar winds. Suddenly, the enemy fleet was actually outnumbered, and the return fire of reaction missiles was again deflected by the barriers of the Gallaron warships.

Still, Victory accelerated. Imura knew that with the enemy fleet having been taken by surprise like this and suffering such dramatic losses in such a short time, the standard procedure would be to fold the command ship to another location and await reinforcements from Bokata or wherever their forward rallying point had been established. But Imura wasn't about to let them leave... "Engines, give me full power! Get us in closer!"

"Engines at fu..." Three reaction missiles exploded one after another against the barriers, with more of them rising up from the cruisers around the enemy flagship. Two more missiles hit the barrier in unison and then the system snapped off altogether. "Barrier overload! Shields destroyed sir!"

"Grappler program 18D! We'll have to plow through them!" Imura could already see some of the enemy escort cruisers taking positions to target her with another barrage of missiles. There were twelve ships around the command vessel, but it would only take one or two missiles to completely destroy her ship. She needed to disable at least one of them before it got off hits deadly missiles to give her grappler crews more of a fighting chance...

One of the cruisers was surrounded by tiny flickers of light and then it exploded, and Imura could see little points of light moving around a second cruiser as it began to fly apart at the seams. These weren't her fighters, they were the E-Valk squadrons from the Megaroad, apparently breaking off from their normal target package to give her some support. A burst of laser and particle cannons exploded out from the four Zentradi cruisers behind her, striking down three more of the defending ships at once. Another barrage from a different direction—SDF-2's main laser cannons—cut through the enemy formation and shredded five of them at once, leaving two cruisers still standing between Victory and the command ship.

With no warning, a tight, concentrated beam of energy reached out from somewhere behind Victory and struck one of the cruisers on its port side, burning through its defensive barrier instantly before ripping an entire section out of the hull. Everyone in the fleet suddenly looked off towards the source of the blast and marveled at what they were now seeing: SDG-01 Zjendiel, the ship most of the command staff had been calling the "Superdimensional Runt" was diving in on the two cruisers at speeds beyond the wildest dreams of a Thor class destroyer, and as it closed in it fired its portside arm cannon. The second shot cleaved the ship in half amidships, and as a finale the little destroyer roared up to the last cruiser, came to a dead stop four hundred meters behind its engines and fired both shoulder cannons straight up its tailpipe. The beams drilled through the engine room and through the entire hull of the ship before blasting through the bow, leaving the vessel writhing in death throes with fires belching from deep within her hull.

SDF-Victory stormed past this sudden opening, past the triumphant little gun destroyer, past the hulks of the dead cruisers that had been knocked out of its way, right up to the command ship as it powered up its fold drives for its escape route. "Grappler Program Zero! Go for it Merrick!"

The tactical officer entered the program and set the enemy ship as a target; on command, the computer half turned the ship sideways as it closed in, brought back one of the grappler modules and fully deployed the massive fingers of the unit into a fist. And then the strike; The fist of the grapplers smashed right through the outer hull, crushed bulkheads on its way through and smashed through the crew stasis sections in the bowels of the ship before finally grinding to a stop deep within the heart of the ship near the fold drives.

The command ship wasn't going anywhere now, and for that matter neither was Victory; as long as it was locked up with the command ship like this, the enemy fleet didn't dare try to shoot at it. But a multitude of tiny hatches began to open up along the hull of the grappler module on the Victory. From each hatch sprang a tiny rocket-driven warhead, erupting from the grappler and winding down the corridors of the ship in every direction even as Victory began to withdraw the grappler from the hull of the vessel. All of them detonated at once deep within the hull, the explosions gutting the command ship from the inside as the main hull began to disintegrate from the inside and its innards collapsed in fire.

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—January 3, 2018—
—22:34 GST—
Staff Sergeant Horace had a stack of paperwork on his desk that almost touched the ceiling of his office. He didn't want to be here any longer than he had to, but with all the volunteers that streamed into the recruiting office there was simply no end to all the paperwork he had to fill out for these people. Years ago it had been easy, one or two bored youths would wander into his office and ask for some information and of course he would suggest a few possible positions for them, but now there were people coming in to the GSDF Recruitment Office dozens at a time, all of them asking to be placed on either the space forces or the Army Corp. of Engineers. Just as his luck would have it, 11 out of every 12 people who came in only spoke Zentradi, so of course he would have to have one of them interpret for him or else fit all of them with translators as soon as they came through the door.

He had just finished one mountain of papers and was about to move on to another when the door to his office exploded open and his assistant, Staff Sergeant Morris burst into the room. "Horace, check this shit out! You're not gonna believe it!"

"Jack, I got lots of paperwork to finish..."

"C'mon Sergeant, this is important!" Gleason grabbed the man by the sleeve and pulled him over his desk like an old sock, dragged him out of his office and into the lobby of the recruitment office where a dozen people were talking with recruiters about joining the service. "Right over here, you're gonna LOVE this!" He pushed Horace towards one of the desks where a woman was sitting with her hair bound in a waist length braid. Horace was annoyed at being interrupted from his work for another random newbie, but if Gleason thought it was this important... "Sorry that took so long ma'am." Gleason said as they approached her from behind.

"No problem, I'm in no hurry." She said sweetly.

Horace sat down clumsily in the chair on the other side of the desk and brought out a pen and paper. "Okay then, Sergeant Gleason tells me you're..." He looked at her face for the first time and suddenly his mind when blank. "You're... you're..."

"Interested in..." Minmei added.

"Interested in joining the... ummm..."

"Defense forces." She finished.

"Right." Horace took a deep breath and put his notebook on the table. "Ummm... aren't you...?"

"Actually," She jumped in, "I'm not much of a fighter... in fact I hate fighting. I'd like to sign on with SDF-Victory with the Navy band, or maybe the media corp, if that's not a problem."

Horace stared for a few moments. "Oh, yeah... well... are you really sure that's a good idea?"

Minmei stared at him. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well... don't take this the wrong way, but... I mean I don't know you that well, but at a guess I'd say you're hardly soldier material. You should really think about this, you have your family to consider, and a career and..."

"Sergeant, I've had alot of time to think about that raid last year, and I've decided that it's more important to me that the war ends quickly so more innocent people won't be at risk. The Supervision Army doesn't have any culture, maybe that's their only weakness?" Horace stared at her for a moment, then leaned forward slightly and sniffed the air. "No, I haven't been drinking!" Minmei shouted, reading his actions correctly. "And I've been thinking about this for a really long time! I can use my voice the way pilots use missiles, and since we're at war, that's the way it's gotta be!"

Horace nodded. "If you insist. You know, normally we wouldn't be able to send you to the position of your choice... I think in your case I'll make a little exception. But if you don't mind my asking, what's so special about the Victory anyway? Got some guy waiting for you up there?"

Minmei rolled her eyes. "Not that it's any of your business, but no."

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—24:18 GST—
Offensive operations were working well, she gathered from the tactical and situation reports. Shikari's fleet was moving again, and Hallas and Barzam were even advancing forward slightly. The only reason to be even slightly worried was an explosion in Alpha Factory that had halted the assembly of the next group of destroyers for seven hours and disabled one of the assembly lines for several days, but these little snags aside it was all going fairly well. The next group of raw recruits was coming up through training, and in six more months another three hundred Thor class destroyers and twenty more Phoenix class cruisers would be sent into combat with fresh crews and their own variable fighters being manufactured right alongside them. The Monitor and the 4th fleet was the only group NOT creeping into enemy space now, actually taking up the rear and following along just behind the front for the first time in weeks. Misa was in a position to direct fleet operations without worrying about her own command group being intercepted by enemy ships, but this still meant she had to think of some way to quickly exploit their sudden...

"Misa!" Hikaru burst into the door with Miko scampering along behind him, trying to keep up but not quite understanding the urgency of the situation. "Honey, guess what! I think Miko might be a genius!"

Misa sighed and rubbed her forehead. Hikaru did this about once a month now, when at some point he would forget that their daughter would be five years old next March and mistake her for the bottle-feeding baby that had so completely mesmerized him not too long ago. "What did she do this time?"

"Look!" He held up a rough drawing in his hand and slapped it down on the table in front of her. "She did this in school!"

Misa looked at the picture for a moment. It was crayon drawing of Miko, Hikaru, Yu and Misa with each of their names over the heads. On a number of levels, she was impressed; Miko used the words "Mommy Ichijo" and "Daddy Ichijo" when naming either of them, and referred to herself as "Me Ichijo." What amused Misa the most was that she used "Holtora" in Zentradi letters to describe Yu, and also the fact that all the Js were written backwards and there was a smiley face in all the Os. "It's cute." She said, alittle too tired to think about it in depth. "What're you so excited about?"

"She's knows her last name, and she speaks three languages fluently!" Hikaru said, jumping up excitedly. "I didn't know MY last name when I was four, and I could barely speak one language! And look at how she wrote all the words! She spelled them all perfectly and..."

"Hikaru, that's pretty normal for a four year old. Get over yourself, will you?"

Hikaru seemed confused by her reaction, and off to one side of the room Miko was staring at spot on the wall, oblivious to anything else in the world and therefore not much help to him now. "I'm telling you, she's gifted or something! Did you know she can read Zentradi and Japanese? And even a little English at that! And just the other day she was playing in the simulator and..."

"Shot down your entire squadron?"

"Not all of them," Hikaru shrugged. "She didn't get Arriaga this time."

"This time..." Misa sighed. "Hikaru, I know she has alot of fun with those simulations, but I don't feel comfortable teaching our daughter how to fly planes and kill people."

"Why not?"

"What do you mean why not! She's only four!"

Hikaru shrugged dismissively. "C'mon, Misa. It's just a video game to her. In real combat it would be totally different."

"I don't know. I'm not sure she understands the difference..." Then she thought back to Koru's previous evaluation if Miko's mental states, and sighed again, "Or maybe she does understand, and she just doesn't care. Doesn't look at the big picture, right?" Misa looked at the tactical charts again and could already envision the pile of paperwork she was going to have to go through. "Maybe there's no point complaining about it. You can't have Ichijo DNA and not be in obsessed with aviation, and there's also Hayase genetics to consider. When she starts math, they might have to put put her in a special class."

"No way! Try a gifted class!" Hikaru said, running across the room for a refrigerator magnet and posted the picture up next to Miko's other achievements, partially eclipsing the drawing she did of Taosan and Yu that day he asked Hikaru if Minmei was his second wife. "Just you watch Misa! This little one's gonna..." He stopped mid sentence as something on the counter caught his eye, a wooden box he had seen somewhere before in the house, a mystery he alone had once investigated. "Hey isn't that...?"

"Isn't what?" Misa turned half around to see what he was looking at, but her view obstructed by the doorway. "Hikaru, what're you looking at?"

Hikaru picked up the box and looked at it. There was a small lock on one side, with Misa's key chain dangling out of the lock by one small key. "You remember me asking you about this box like... a year ago?"

"What box..." With a gasp of realization, Misa was suddenly very awake. Her wheelchair was set against the wall on the other side of the room, and she didn't have time to try and get to it. Instead, she decided to tempt fate and heaved herself out of the chair with her arms alone. "That's nothing, don't worry about it!" She said quickly, using her walking stick as a kind of third leg to hobble across the floor. She made it exactly three steps before her legs gave out completely and she fell to the ground like a ton of bricks. "Damn...!"

"You okay Misa?" Hikaru came out of the kitchen with the box in his hand. Miko scampered up to her side and knelt down, but the great Admiral Ichijo had no intention of staying put. She pushed up a bit and made a grab at the box, but Hikaru held it just beyond reach. "I'll take that as a yes..." He turned the key to the box and opened it, stared at its contents for a few moments, then down at Misa with a surprised look on his face. "Where'd you get these?"

Misa sighed and rolled over onto her back. "They were gift."

Hikaru reached into the box and pulled up one of the gifts. "A hand-rolled protocran ukei-chaat." He sniffed the side of it and looked over it again. "These are a 20 yulins a pop."

"Are they really? Commander Gashi must be a very..."

"His wife likes these." Hikaru closed the box and locked it again. "When used as incense, it's an extremely powerful aphrodisiac. But of course you're perfectly aware of that, aren't you?"

"They're not mine!" Misa said lamely. "Honestly, they're not mine!"

"Sure they're not. And that little canteen you've been hiding your coat pocket is full of lemonade."

Misa sat up slowly and Hikaru grabbed her hand to pull her back up. "Can't I keep ANYTHING secret around here?"

"Not with our genius daughter watching your every move." She looked first at Miko, smiling shyly at her side, then Hikaru as he pulled her back up to her feet and started to carry her back over to the desk. "I have other spies too you know, but Miko's the most helpful. She notices the little things us big people never see."

"I'm sure she does." Misa shot her an evil glance, to which Miko giggled playfully. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't say anything, I just..."

"I know, I know, but this does explain something else I was wondering about." He set Misa back down on the desk and sat down across the table. "I think now might be a good time to tell you something..."

Misa switched on the holographic projector again and went back to looking over tactical action reports. "Can it wait a couple of hours? I REALLY need to finish this."

"It's about what happened to you on Megaroad-01, something I didn't want to tell you."

Misa looked up slowly, and turned the holographic display back off. "Should I be worried?"

"Koru doesn't think so, but there are... concerns."

"That DOES sound serious. Why don't you take it from the beginning."

Hikaru cleared his throat and thought of a good way to begin. "Well... right before you went into space with the Megaroad-01 and I came to visit you..." Miko climbed up onto Hikaru's lap and immediately started on a new doodle with a crayon and a piece of paper on the table. "You know what I'm talking about?"

"Yeah." Misa eyed Miko to make sure she wasn't paying attention. "What about it?"

"Well when you went into battle with the fleet... you see it turns out you were..."

A light on one corner of the table started flashing and the holographic projector opened a comm window to Commander Gashi on the bridge. "Admiral Hayase, we just received word from SDF-2 in the Jikanna system. Enemy fleets in that sector have been eliminated and the joint forces of the 1st, 2nd and 7th fleets are now splitting up in pursuit."

Misa and Hikaru both forgot everything that had happened until that point. Hikaru was overjoyed, but Misa felt her stomach twist into a knot. "Retreating? That's impossible!" She said, leaning forward more.

"Also, General Hallas reports they've repelled an enemy assault force in the Zjen-Kari system and the new gun emplacements there have been successfully restored. The enemy forces are in retreat and Hallas's ships are splitting up to continue the pursuit. And... another report, the 8th and 9th fleets have established a dedicated defensive screen at two of our advanced outposts close to the enemy front lines. It looks like we're driving them back across the board, sir!"

Another window opened with an updated version of the tactical display she had been looking at only minutes before. The enemy fleets were all on the run now, though an indeterminate multitude of vessels were fighting the Zentradi ships on the opposite front almost a thousand light years away. But while Hikaru's reaction was one of pure elation, but Misa was very visibly on the frontier of a severe anxiety attack. "They're ignoring us! Dammit, why now!"

Gashi seemed confused by the remark. "What do you mean Admiral? Isn't this good news?"

"No, it's NOT good news! It means Gallaron is no longer their target!"

"So?" Hikaru scratched his head,

"Think about it! What was their reason for going after Gallaron before? The secrets of protoculture are down there somewhere, and Lacul wants them for himself! What could possibly make him give up on taking Gallaron?"

Hikaru and Gashi seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same time. "You mean...!"

"Oh my god!" Hikaru said.

"The next batch of cruisers and destroyers won't be ready for another six and a half months! If they attack us before then..." Misa looked at the tactical display again to confirm what she already knew. The enemy fleet wasn't retreating at all. They were regrouping, probably at a major base at wherever it was the Supervision Army was suddenly so interested in. "Gashi, send out a general order to all ships to begin passive pursuit operations! We HAVE to figure out where they're all going or it'll be the end of us!"

Gashi started setting up hyperspace links to the other ships in the fleet, but at the same time he started thinking about the situation. "Why not simply charge the whole line and look for it?"

"There's no time for that! They still want Gallaron so we've got an insurance policy, but if they get their hands on any more of that advanced weaponry like they used at Shiar..."

Hikaru felt his heart sink into his feet, finally realizing what Misa had already figured out. "The Botoru fleet!"

"Exactly! if Lacul destroys them, there's nothing to stop him from turning all of his forces on Gallaron! We won't be able to replace our losses quickly for at least another five months, and if he beats the Botoru fleet before then, we won't have a chance!"

Hikaru could have sworn he had missed something. "But if they renew their offensive against us, won't that leave them open to the Botoru fleet?"

"But only thing keeping the Zentradi's numbers from overwhelming Lacul right now is the advantage he gets from reaction weapons! What happens if he gets his hands on some of those small fold weapons?"

Gashi had already heard enough. "Shikari's fleet is en-route to the Mishalla system for resupply. Should we send her a special assignment?"

"Send it immediately! But make sure it's coded and make it a priority one dispatch... No, wait till I get to the bridge! I'm on my way right now!" Misa started to push herself up as Gashi closed the channel, and in the blink of an eye Hikaru was shouldering the majority of her weight as she shuffled over to her wheelchair on the side of the room.

Miko was barely keeping up with the conversation, but even she could tell enough from the mood in the room that something had gone terribly wrong. "Mommy, are we in trouble?"

Misa looked at her for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Yes honey, we're in trouble. Listen, things are going to get a little dangerous from here on. If anything happens to me or your father or this house, go straight to the life pods down the street. You remember where the life pods are?"

"I remember. My teacher showed me."

"Good. Remember, if anything happens, go straight there and wait for an adult to tell you what to do next. Can you remember that?"

Miko nodded bravely. "Aye, aye mommy."

"Great. I'll be back honey." Hikaru pushed open the door and both he and Misa disappeared through the door, into the hallway, headed for the rail system on the upper level that would take them straight to the bridge. Miko took a seat on the floor and started doodling on a fresh piece of paper something she had seen in her dreams, something that for some reason this entire conversation had reminded her of. She couldn't draw the face nearly as well as she remembered it, but the name was still fresh in her mind so she used her teacher's technique and sounded it out. "H... hih... Hitomi..." She said, writing out the name at last.

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—January 9, 2018—
—18:30 GST—
Kraken felt ill at ease about Lacul's big plan. He didn't like to retreat from anything, even for a good reason, and abandoning the Gallaron front was something of a humiliation after all the damage the protoculture fleet had caused. Of course he could appreciate the simplistic beauty of the plan, even considering all the random factors that it depended on for success, but Lacul was rarely ever wrong about this sort of thing and he was inclined to trust his judgment for the time being. If it all worked out the way he planned, in 6 months the Botoru fleet would be just a memory and the entire Supervision Army would be landing on Gallaron and their entire defense fleet would be rubble beneath his feet. Just, between the three moons of the planet alone, he knew they would be able to build at least 6 million ships and more than enough mecha to support them all in their new war against the Zentradi. It would be the finest hour of their cause, the crack of dawn for the new empire that would dominate the universe once and for all. Maybe, he thought, they might even be able to find Gepernich and the others and awaken them again...

A holographic window opened on the bridge of Kraken's ship, filling the viewer with Jinai's face. "Awake at last are we Jinai?" He said mockingly.

"Why are we retreating?" He said boredly.

"Just got word from Sarride. It seems we've finally found Vorhalas."

"Oh? How exciting."

"Exciting? That's a bit of an understatement. Have you ever been to Vorhalas?"

"Of course I have, I was born there. My family left that planet when it was evacuated for the last time. We were captured by Lacul on our way to relocate to the outer rim."

A vein on Kraken's forehead bulged slightly. "You... what! Why the hell didn't you say anything!"

"Nobody asked." Jinai said evenly. "Besides, Sarride knew what it looked like..."

"But you knew where it was all this time!"

"So what if I did?"

"Then why didn't you tell Lacul!"

"I told you, he didn't ask. I have no obligation to that selfish bastard, I'm only here because I have nowhere else to go."

Kraken would have raised another complaint, but then he seemed to notice something about Jinai he had never noticed before. Something in the way that he spoke, his mannerisms, as if he was talking to him on a higher level than he ever realized. "What would you say if I told you I knew how to exploit Lacul's weaknesses?"

"Lacul has a weakness? Really?" Jinai said, mockingly, "Do you mean his energy deficit, spritia gluttony, faulty dimension organs, or painfully short attention span?"

Kraken was at first surprised, but then it figured that Jinai would have noticed the same things Lacul had programmed just about everyone else not to notice. "You know we could beat him, all we would need is one good shot."

"And one god-awful huge gun." Jinai said, holding up his finger. "And alot of decoys to draw his fire until he gets too tired to maintain that behemoth combat size. But of course he has master override control over the entire fleet protected by a password and some security even you can't crack, and there's the other commanders under partial mind control, and there's the problem that he can transfer his essence into any one of the others if he needed to. So even if we do beat him, we'll have to subdue the other commanders and drive his spirit out of them as well, which takes a very long time and is usually quite frustrating. Then the access codes have to be cracked, and his energy matrix has to be redirected so it doesn't putrefy and drive everyone crazy... you see, Kraken, It's hardly impossible, but it's too much of a headache. I'd rather just keep doing what we've been doing, it's so much more fun."

Kraken was impressed. "You've really thought about this, haven't you?"

"I've had plenty of time to think about it. I also know that this would be so much easier if we had Shikari working with us, but I doubt she'll turn her back on all the perks of protoculture just for some petty lust for power. Once again, it's more to our advantage just to kill the little haw-naug."

Kraken's brow twitched. "You really shouldn't talk about her that way. She's a formidable opponent and a potential ally."

Jinai noticed something in Kraken's voice he recognized from before. He had thought it had just been admiration, but watching him on screen he saw it was something else. "Maybe more to you than I realized."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You contacted her, and you've seen her haven't you?"

Kraken nodded. "Yes I have. What's your point?"

Jinai grinned slightly. "She's very pretty, don't you think?"

Kraken blinked. "Very what?"

"Never mind, Kraken, forget I asked. Anyway, I'm currently twelve light years away from the Kaladan system. Lacul's already begun landing troops on Vorhalas, and his fortress is on its way there. I will be expecting you at the rendezvous point."

"Alright, I'll join the fleet there in four days. Out." Kraken closed the channel and sat back in his chair, pondering the increasingly perplexing mystery known as Jinai. The more he worked with him, the more he was finding that everything he thought he knew about him was completely wrong. Jinai often went into his little fits, where he would sit around for hours not moving, staring at a wall, lost within his own head. Kraken realized it was a function of his less-than-normal brain to often completely space out or make odd decisions at very inconvenient moments, but he had recently observed that there always seemed to be some kind of rhyme and reason behind his actions to the point where Kraken thought that Jinai, if not slightly autistic, may have been extremely eccentric or perhaps just emotionally disturbed.

In either case, he was not only a strange character to be around but also an unpredictable and dangerous wild-card that could change the entire war situation for either side at the drop of a hat. Kraken knew to keep an eye on Jinai from now on, but this still left the question of what if anything to do about him? Every time he pondered it, he came up with the same conclusion: absolutely nothing.