2022 Hours 14 April 2430
Rasalhague Station, Rasalhague System, Commonwealth of Man
Observation Deck C9
Anya Beauclair stood before the vast transparisteel window, and watched the parade of lights outside.
Almost all of them were stars, of course, as was inevitable when looking at space. Blue, white, yellow, red. Pulsars and neutron stars. Many of them she ruled. Most of them she didn't. Some weren't even of this galaxy; she wondered if she was seeing the original home of the Scourge without knowing it.
But not all of the lights were natural.
Some were the station's outer defense platforms, orbiting the main station at distances of up to thirty kilometers; just barely at the edge of her sight, but practically touching the station in terms of astronomic distance.
Some were the cargo ships, light tankers, and pleasure craft that carried all that remained of the Zu-Lokkan, Khemplar, and Glebsig species. They'd been organized by Navy military policemen into a tight queue for a brief search for contraband and a quick decommissioning of any heavy weapons the craft carried before being allowed to begin the hyperspace jumps to their designated refuge planets, all under the guns of several capital ships and Rasalhague Station itself. They were being searched five at a time, taking no more than fifteen minutes per vessel and most more like five… but still she felt it was taking too long.
But of the artificial lights she could see, by far the majority belonged to the fleets of the Commonwealth of Man.
Her star nation. The one she'd been entrusted with by her father, and her grandmother before him, and her great-grandmother before her. The strongest and most technologically advanced of all the nations of the galaxy, with a military that could face down the next four powers of the galaxy (and had), with an economy that could support a significant expansion of that military if she deemed it necessary. Which, four years ago, she had.
At this moment, Rasalhague was the most fortified system in the galaxy. Three of the four great battlefleets of the Commonwealth were arrayed here; six of the ten great Titans, forty eight of the sixty battleships, with all of the cruisers, destroyers, and innumerable corvettes that attended them. The fourth fleet was being held in reserve to guard against the faint possibility of something unexpected arising from a different quarter. It was a collection of firepower sufficient to vaporize anything any other species native to the galaxy could muster before a single shot could be fired in retaliation.
She knew every bit of it was about to be needed.
When she had assumed power following the death of her father fifteen years ago, among the top-secret, eyes-only things she had become privy to was the detection of certain "subspace echoes" in dark space beyond the galaxy's horizon by experimental long range detection arrays in 2370, in the waning years of her grandmother's rule. They'd faded out after a few weeks, only to reappear in 2390, and again in 2405. Those later two appearances had confirmed that whatever was causing the echoes, it was moving closer to this galaxy… and the 2405 contact had been strong enough to confirm that the "echoes" were being caused by a very large mass of "something".
Ten years ago, in 2320, five years after she'd become Grand Marshal, that "something" began to pour in along the northeastern rim of the galaxy, in the space that had at the time been inhabited by a particularly annoying fungoid species known as the Blorg Commonality. Immense numbers of space-borne organisms the size of warships, spitting acid that could bypass shields and burn through armor plating, hosting swarms of strike craft analogue creatures, and capable of seeding planets with waves of toothed and clawed horrors that ate their way through anything living on the surface. These creatures, it quickly became apparent, were coordinated by some kind of incomprehensibly vast hive mind… and its goal was nothing less than the consumption of the entire galaxy.
The Blorg had been small lumps of fungus that varied between knee and waist height on a human, both looking and smelling like rancid piles of shit, and obsessed with "befriending" all other sentient species in the galaxy. As disgusting and irritating as they were, however, what replaced them was far worse.
Within four months of the initial attack, the political entity known as the Blorg Commonality had ceased to exist. Within five, the last holdouts on what had been its worlds were overrun and devoured. The remainder of the species fled to their neighboring powers for refuge, only to be devoured when the swarm turned to those nations in turn. The last Blorg had been consumed some six years ago.
For the last ten years, the extragalactic invaders had slowly eaten their way through the northeastern third of the galaxy. Occasionally they had paused to consolidate their gains, turning certain planets into massive writhing breeding grounds for more of their abominable kind. Occasionally they were slowed by particularly fierce resistance; the Zu-Lokkans, to their credit, had stalled the swarm for a full three years. But no one had come close to stopping them.
The Psionic Conclave on Unity had attempted to touch the hive mind of the swarm once, about a year after it appeared. The effort had killed a third of the conclave and rendered another third gibbering lunatics. Those who survived with their faculties intact reported only one thing that could not have been learned from spy drones: the mind referred to itself as "Prethoryn".
"Lady Imperatrix?" A man in a dark blue dress uniform approached from the observation deck's entrance, stopping a respectful distance away.
"Yes, Admiral?"
"I felt you should know that the examination and sorting of the xenos refugees is proceeding on schedule, ma'am. We estimate that the last of them will be cleared to jump to their designated receiving worlds in approximately five hours."
"Have there been any incidents?"
"Nothing major, ma'am. The Khemplar in particular have been showing an inclination to whine about our so-called 'infringement of their rights', but none have been so stupid as to attempt to offer violence or hinder the boarding parties."
"Good. When are the leading Prethoryn ships estimated to emerge from hyperspace?"
"Approximately six and a half hours, ma'am." Cutting it close. The Admiral hesitated. "Ma'am, the Chiefs of Staff are in agreement that you should yourself embark for Unity within the next hour."
"Duly noted, Admiral. You are dismissed." She returned her attention to the viewport.
Several hundred kilometers away, beyond the range of the Grand Marshal's sight, the long line of civilian ships pressed forward to the Navy checkpoints that were the last obstacle between them and safety. At that very moment, in the hold of one of them, a young male Khemplar was giving a rousing speech to a collection of his fellows, denouncing the humans as tyrants who would force them into servitude and crush their culture, begging his brethren not to show any allegiance to the alien oppressors or the cowards who had sold their people to them.
But if that was the reaction aboard one ship, aboard another, three rows to the left and five back in the queue, a female Glebsig checked on her clutch of eggs for the third time that hour. She ran a tentacle over them, knowing each would hatch and live and grow, and gave thanks to a god the humans did not acknowledge for touching the heart of Anya Beauclair.
Beauclair herself kept staring out of the great window of her space station at the endless array of lights, not really seeing any of them. When the Prethoryn had first appeared, a decade ago, the Blorg had begged anyone and everyone in the galaxy for help, even those that were not on friendly terms with them (which, despite the Blorg's best efforts, had been most everyone). They had approached the Commonwealth too, in their desperation, wanting the mightiest fleet in the galaxy to sail to their aid.
It had not sailed. Nor had it through all the years that followed, despite the entreaties of the other species that came under attack and were devoured, one by one. The Navy of the Commonwealth of Man had stayed firmly within its own borders, on the orders of the Grand Marshal by the advice of her top commanders. The only things that had left human space in that time were spy drones, gathering information on Prethoryn capabilities.
Her admirals were firmly of the opinion that it had been the right call. Much had been learned that way, and put to good use in refining anti-Prethoryn tactics and refitting ships for the purpose of killing the beasts of the swarm. Across the fleet, kinetic batteries had been dismounted and replaced with high intensity plasma cannons suitable to melt through Prethoryn carapace. Psionic shield arrays, which gave Commonwealth ships the strongest shields in the galaxy but were useless against acid that ignored energy shielding entirely, had been torn out and replaced with layers of chemical resistant armor plate. The list of changes, major and minor, was immense.
But she could not suppress her doubts.
If I had answered the Blorg when they threw themselves at my feet, if the fleet had sailed then, could this all have been avoided? Could we have met the Prethoryn at the galaxy's edge, denied them any sustenance, cast them back into dark space?
Did I make the right choice?
She did not know.
She knew what her ancestors would have chosen. Her father, her grandmother, and all the Beauclairs that had ruled the Commonwealth since the Chrysanthemum first landed on Unity, nominally elected from among senior military personnel but hereditary in fact, had striven to keep their nation utterly free of alien influence in any way possible. They would never for a moment even have considered sending aid to xenos, and would most likely have turned the refugees back at the border to be devoured.
She still wasn't sure why she'd let them in.
Because three more planets paying taxes was inherently a good thing?
Or because part of her regretted that she hadn't done more to help them earlier?
The battle that would commence in this system in a few short hours had the potential to decide everything, but only if the Prethoryn won. Defeat would mean the shattering of the last obstacle between the swarm and total victory over the galaxy. She'd humored her commanders by agreeing to evacuate, but knew there was no real point; lose here, and she'd be dead within the year anyway. Victory, on the other hand, would be but the first step in a long, brutal slog to reclaim the galaxy, with no allies to call on, and many fights as hard or harder than this.
Did I make the right choice?
She did not know. She knew she never would.
"Ma'am? It's time." The admiral had reappeared in the observation bay entrance, but to her at that moment he might as well not have not existed.
She had never felt so alone.
A/N: This story has been floating around in my head for the last year and a half, since the summer of 2019 when I was working as a service agent for Enterprise Rental. You'd be surprised how much time you have to think when you're working in the sun all day cleaning cars. At the time, I was playing a whole bunch of Stellaris, and the idea for this brief two-shot popped into my head and onto my to-do list. I'm glad to see it finally take shape on the page, and even gladder to cross it off the list.