48. Dancing in the Dark

The trip to Bloodhaven was not as fast this time – hardly surprising, since the Eventide now had a few thousand other ships hanging off its backside. Nevertheless, the voyage was proceeding reasonably well.

To Hayate's mild surprise, their Alpha Quadrant allies had agreed to continue with the mission after the fiasco with the Spiral Driver intelligence leak. No one was under any illusion that it was a gesture of respect, though – they apparently just felt that the Bureau couldn't be trusted to drive out Chaos on their own. The Federation and Klingons had purposely distanced themselves from fleet strategy meetings (though the Aldebaran Alliance had remained oddly enthusiastic), and it wasn't quite clear which chain of command they would be operating under when the shooting started. I'm just glad it's not my problem to deal with.

It was said that Fleet Admiral Thundra had taken to the bottle again, but Hayate privately doubted it. That would require him to have given it up in the first place.

Nevertheless, fate (with a small f) seemed insistent on making the ever-expanding diplomatic quagmire at the heart of Operation Guardian her problem. Leeron had been assigned to her ship as a technical supervisor, under the pretext that he would be most comfortable with the ship that had brought him from the Spiral Nation in the first place. Yuki Nagato had shown up as their liaison with the Integrated Data Entity, accompanied by a squad of time-traveller marines led by Itsuki Koizumi, and Yuuno had arrived on board half an hour before they left Vaizen, glancing around nervously as Arf hauled along a trolleyful of massive grimoires behind him.

In other words, the three people at the heart of two of the biggest diplomatic disputes in the alliance were on board the lightly-defended scout ship that had fired the first shots of the war, and was likely to be leading the first wave in the attack on Bloodhaven. Hayate didn't believe in coincidences. Not ones like that. Thundra probably wasn't at fault, though – it wasn't his style – and Lindy… well, that was just unthinkable. She thought back to her conversation with Yuuno in the White Dragon. You were right. We didn't get everyone three years ago. Some of them are right here in this fleet.

That, of course, brought her attention back to the other events of that… memorable evening. No, not the time for that. Not now, not ever. At least he hasn't brought it up yet. Maybe he doesn't remember? We both had quite a bit to drink…

But what if he does remember? What happens then?

Hayate had a problem, and the problem was this – she was twenty-three years old, and had never been in anything resembling a romantic relationship. Most of her teenage years had been occupied by TSAB officer training, where the closest thing to burning youthful passion had been the occasional doddering, half-senile general trying to look down her shirt. It was said that between the hours-long drills, bewildering theory exams, and interminable lectures, some people had managed to eke out a rudimentary social life. It was also said that two of Mid-Childa's moons were made out of congealed mozzarella. She was more inclined to believe the latter.

Perhaps I should ask some of my friends? They seemed to manage well enough.

She reviewed her options. Nanoha's advice she could already predict, and immediately ruled out – unleashing that level of magical firepower in confined quarters would severely jeopardise both the mission and her ship's hull integrity. Besides, Yuuno might get the wrong idea. Shamal was, of course, completely out of the question, and she had to suppress a shudder at the thought. Asking Signum could go one of two ways – either she'd go as pink as her hair whilst hurriedly explaining that advising her mistress on her love-life was not one of her functions, or she'd suggest something absolutely ghastly like presenting him with a hundred enemy foreskins (and where were you supposed to get that many foreskins at short notice, anyway? Was there a catalogue or something?). Asking Amy for tips so soon after her husband's death seemed like the height of poor taste. Finally, there was Zafira. Ah, yes, he's with Arf now, isn't he? If you can call that 'being with'. Maybe some 'what not to do' tips?

Her finger hovered over the call button to her Guardian Beast's quarters for a moment, but eventually her conscience prevailed. Guess I'm on my own, then.

She turned to her paperwork, hoping to distract herself – and immediately wished she hadn't. The crew roster loomed in front of her, a list of over a hundred people. Roughly one-third of them were completely unfamiliar.

It would have been impossible to ignore the casualties that the First had taken – especially if you were their commanding officer – but seeing it displayed so bluntly was something else. She could almost fill in the gaps – that berth had once belonged to Private Clio, eviscerated by a Hellhound during the battle for the central office's life-support centre, whilst the one next to it had been occupied by Sergeant Xige before he was forcibly escorted to a psychiatric hospital on Fedikia. To put it simply, they had been chewed up and spat out, and now they were going back in.

That's why they brought such a big fleet, isn't it? To absorb all the losses we're going to take.

When the Bureau got into a fight, its foremost priority was to minimise the casualties on both sides. Diplomacy tended to be less messy than warfare, and if diplomacy wasn't an option, the combat mages' job was to wade in and cool some heads until it became an option. Consequently, the number of people who died in such situations tended to be very low. The Scaglietti Incident had resulted in roughly a hundred deaths. The Mariage case had resulted in three hundred, mostly because the dead kept getting back up and stabbing people. The Varduk Prime Massacre, their worst disaster in recent decades, had barely topped a thousand.

The Chaos invasion had killed three billion people and counting.

It was, simply, a meaningless amount. The human mind was not equipped to process numbers that big, and no human government was equipped to take those kinds of losses into account. She suspected, though, that the Bureau was even less equipped than most. We're not going to survive this, are we? Not as a civilisation. Not as we were before.

Shamal had arranged regular therapy sessions for the crew following the battle of Mid-Childa. With the workload involved in preparing for the Bloodhaven operation, Hayate had not been able to attend one in weeks.

She scrolled through the roster, her fingers moving mechanically across the display. Far away, an alarm chimed. The first phase had begun.


"Hold on," the tech-priest said. "That's weird."

Thirteen days had passed since his return, and Toji had been awake for all of it. Marines didn't need to sleep in the normal manner – they could shut half their brains down at a time and keep going as they were. For the enhanced models known as Primarchs, it was more like a quarter, and even then they required less time dormant overall.

He had mostly been occupied with putting the finishing touches on Carmine Hollow's defences – positioning the zombie pens, mapping out lines of fire from the fortress-city's gun batteries, and explaining to an ascended Mislaatite daemon from the nineteenth century that 'roger that' was an acknowledgement, not a request. Every few hours, though, he stopped by the primary sensor complex to check on the enemy's progress, which had proven rather more difficult than expected. The prediction of individual ship classifications had proven over-optimistic, the colossal mass of ships comprising the allied fleet remaining frustratingly indistinct, and the tech-priests suspected deliberate interference. Now, though, it seemed they had struck gold.

"What is?" he asked, leaning over the screen.

"The fleet. You see? It looks like they're… splitting."

It was true. The blotch representing the allied ships was elongating and collapsing inward at the middle, like an amoeba that had just decided it wanted to be in two minds about something. One half was smaller and brighter, the other broader and duller.

He blipped his comm-unit. "Nureyev, we've got something. Any noise from our agents?"

The lieutenant's reply was as swift and crisp as if he'd only woken up an hour ago. "They'll be in range in forty minutes, sir."

"Roger that. Diaz, have you mapped their trajectories?"

"One moment, sir," the tech-priest replied. "There we go. The big group's still heading for us, on the same course as before. The small one, though? They're headed for the Suzumiyaverse gap, but the angle's kind of oblique – they'll be scraping the very edge of the opening. Sir… it'll take them to our universe. They're headed for Earth."


The Carmine Hollow operations room was never supposed to be terribly elaborate – just a low concrete box with enough sensors, tactical/strategic forecasting, and communications equipment crammed into it to coordinate the defence of an entire planet. Nobody was quite sure where the vaulting had come from. Or the gargoyles. Or the spikes. In any building operated by Chaos, there appeared to be a mandatory minimum requirement of gothic, and if the architects weren't obliging enough to provide it, the structure itself would make… arrangements.

Toji had lost thirteen construction workers to predatory transepts whilst building the city. It was far from the strangest entry on the Hollow's list of casualties.

They had pulled apart some of the smaller consoles in preparation for the morning's activities, and set up a small summoning circle in the resulting space – a flayed human skin surrounded by an intricate arrangement of carefully-sliced organs, their reddish-grey flesh pulsating as if still alive. The raw materials had, of course, been vat-grown, deliberately imperfect clones, without sufficient neural development to feel or even conceptualise pain. Over the months since they had set up shop, the Bloodhaven detail had become quite skilled in humane sacrifice.

Toji had assembled all his senior officers for his briefing – Admiral Rong-Arya, the four Marines of his honour-guard, General Huang and his unaugmented human staff, Magos Diaz from the sensors department, and a twitching, eyeless lump of meat that served as Princeps Stahlheim's avatar.

"So what's this about, then?" the latter growled, the lips of its mouth-cavity narrowly failing to sync up with the words. "We know the enemy's out there – why isn't little miss daemonhost chasing after them already?"

Toji winced. Stahlheim commanded the planet's Evangelion detachment, and whilst there were numerous criteria that one had to meet before being wired into a forty-metre-tall death-machine, possessing a basic measure of tact was not one of them.

Rong-Arya, however, simply smiled. "It's simple, my lord princeps. We know something's out there, but we don't know who, what, or how many of them, and 'little miss daemonhost' would prefer to find out before sending her fleet halfway across the multiverse to chase after them. We can't ignore a threat to our homeworld, sure, but that's one of two fleets, and whatever we send after them won't be able to get back here before the second fleet hits this system and starts scratching the paintjobs on those shiny Evas of yours. And we can't have that, can we? Not after all the time you spent on them."

Their commander held up a hand. "Easy, you two. The admiral's right – we need more intelligence about what we're up against. Diaz, you ready?"

The red-robed priest saluted as best his modified physique would allow. "We're all spun up, sir. They should enter range and start broadcasting in three… two… one."

A loud crack echoed across the room as the static discharge began, oddly-coloured lightning leaping across the summoning circle. A moment later, the flayed hide's stretched, flattened face twitched, its lips flapping out strange, alien syllables.

Diaz nodded. "We're linked, sir. Getting the data now. Mostly stuff we already know – ship performance, squadron sizes, and the like – but there are some interesting discrepancies. Either they switched things around a bit since they left port, or there are hidden shipyards en route that we don't know about. I'm betting a bit of both."

"That is interesting. Run an analysis on their course and logistical histories – see if you can backtrace where those yards might be. Do we have any positional data yet?"

"That's a negative, sir – not only are they failing to tell us anything, but I can't even trace their locations from the signals. I can give you numbers – we've got roughly a hundred broadcasters, almost the full complement – but that's it. They haven't even mentioned the split yet."

"Everyone broadcasting at once?" Rong-Arya asked. "Isn't that kind of sloppy?"

"Only if they stood a chance of being intercepted and traced," Stahlheim replied with what Toji thought to be unnecessary smugness. "The messaging ritual was designed by Lord Tzintchi himself. It's totally undetectable."

The admiral's face registered doubt, but she kept her mouth closed. The gods were usually quite relaxed about blasphemy, but 'usually' was very much the operative word.

"She's got a point," Toji said, pretending not to notice her triumphant glance at the princeps. "Diaz, see if you can get some of these guys to switch off – at the very least, we don't need so many people yelling down the line at once. Oh, and try to call up one of 'em on an audio feed. Let's get some questions answered."

"Roger that, sir."

The face in the summoning circle bulged outwards, assuming normal human proportions. Its empty eyelids blinked, and it cleared its non-existent throat.

"This is Corporal Brougham, TSAB vessel Flame of Ruwella. Who am I speaking to, please?"

"Primarch Toji Suzuhara, Bloodhaven defence force. Any idea about your location, corporal? We're trying to figure out who went where after your fleet split."

The eyeholes widened. "M-my lord! Sorry, I wasn't aware I'd be talking to someone quite so illustrious. You say our fleet… split? That'd explain a lot. I'm Army, not Navy, I'm afraid, and we've been stuck in the passenger bays for a week now. The ship's gone completely silent – no external images, no communications, and when we get a chance to talk to the Navy boys, they seem just as confused as we are. Sorry I can't help you more, my lord."

Stahlheim's avatar hawked up a luminous gobbet of phlegm. "Well, that one's a bust. You, priest, cut the-"

"Hold on a second," Toji interjected. "Corporal, can you tell us more about this blackout?"

"Sure. Like I said, it… huh? The lights went out. Why did the lights go out?"

Oh, shit. "Brougham, break off. Break off and get out of there now."

"Wait, my lord, what's- gnaaaghhh…"

The sacrificial circle writhed, convulsed, and flew apart, scattering Warp-fire and dead flesh across the room. Most of it landed on the towering Primarch.

A hush fell across the operations room, punctuated by the slow, insistent dripping of something unnameably organic. Slowly, deliberately, Rong-Arya lit another cigarette.

"'Totally undetectable', huh?"

Toji gingerly wiped his face, trying not to speculate about the sticky goop that clung to the back of his gauntlet. At least, he thought, Stahlheim had the decency to look embarrassed.


The smiling blonde girl withdrew her fingers from Corporal Brougham's forehead, the skin perfectly reforming as his corpse slowly, inelegantly fell over. The Flame of Ruwella's dull red emergency lighting was ideally suited to conceal a multitude of unpleasantnesses, but in this case, it did not have to make the effort. The whole process had been both remarkably clean and disappointingly brief.

The process by which living organisms ceased functioning was a quite fascinating source of data, after all. She would clearly have to revisit it at some point.

The Humanoid Interface waved a hand, and the dead spy disintegrated, a layer of near-invisible dust setting across the room. Our source's information was accurate. I have isolated and identified the signal. Details are as follows. All units, cross-reference with sensor logs and eliminate any entities that broadcast along this frequency within the past day.

She paused a few nanoseconds. Be sure to record the details of the terminations. It will be a useful addition to the Data Integration Thought Entity's archives.

It would also, she reflected, be a useful addition to her own private files. This voyage had certainly not been short on interesting new experiences.


"So what went wrong then?" Rong-Arya asked.

Diaz spread his hands. "Inside job. Had to be. Stahlheim was right – those transmissions should have been totally undetectable. Those Humanoid Interface thingies are good, but they'd still need to know where to look first. For the record, that's also why I want to quarantine and delete all the data we got from our fleet assets."

"Oh?" Toji raised an eyebrow. "Go ahead, but what's the reasoning?"

"The communication ritual uses conceptual encryption. Basically, you don't just have to know the steps you need to carry out to receive, transmit, or modify a message – you have to have the right sort of personality type and mindset as well. That's pretty handy if someone stumbles over your line by accident, like, say, if a telepath gets a headache in the wrong place at the wrong time – even if they pick up on it, they won't be able to make any sense of it. It'd just be background noise. Thing is, that's not what happened here. The bad guys played it smart and methodical, systematically shutting off signals across the EM and metaphysical spectra until they could isolate and trace ours. Not only that, but the timing suggests they had a rough idea of the ritual's maximum range. The conceptual encoding means that they couldn't have ripped the instructions out of the head of one of our agents. Our boy had to brief them of his own free will, and if he told them that, it stands to reason that he told them everything else as well... including how to edit our messages. Even if the data we got isn't loaded to the gills with viruses, it's probably been tampered with enough to be worse than useless. Sorry, sir – don't think we're going to find out about those other shipyards after all."

The Primarch swore quietly. "Any idea how many people we lost?"

"Estimates only. I'd managed to get about half of the broadcasters to switch off by the time they got Brougham, but the Humanoid Interfaces are basically living recording devices. It'd be trivially easy for them to go over the data and hunt down anyone they missed the first time. We might get a bit of use out of the ones smart enough to keep their heads down once we engage them with our own fleet – some minor sabotage, maybe – but otherwise, it's a total loss."

"So we're still blind, then," Rong-Arya stated calmly. "Orders, chief?"

Toji paused for a moment. For all that they followed the self-styled Gods of Chaos, it was actually quite rare for Earth's military to be put into a position where they had to take risks. The Impacts had halved their population and ravaged their planet, leaving them as a fragile, fledgling empire that only got into fights it was absolutely, positively sure it would win. Then this war had started, for reasons he still didn't fully understand, and suddenly things weren't nearly so safe any more. He had zero information and a limited timeframe, and if he made the wrong choice, thousands of people could die. At minimum. I never asked for this, Shinji, you know that? I never asked for this.

But then again, I never said 'no', either.

"Admiral," he said at last, "how strong are this planet's naval defences at present?"

"With the whole fleet here? Pretty strong. I'm not going to use words like 'impregnable' or anything, but I honestly can't imagine anything that could get past us. Even a high-end Spiral construct would have trouble – Lady Reigle's plague-bombs are out of the prototype stage, and I can assure you that they're definitely working as intended."

"OK. Next question – assuming that the intel we got when their fleet left port is conservative on numbers and firepower but otherwise accurate, what's the minimum you'd need to hold Bloodhaven against them?"

"For an absolute guarantee? Three-quarters. For an even fight weighted in our favour? About half, maybe less if the gods can help manipulate the Warp in our favour. I'm discounting any assistance this universe's native population might be able to offer us, of course."

General Huang whistled. "That's kind of high, isn't it?"

"I like to err on the side of caution. Less people end up dying that way." A broad, fang-filled grin. "Our people, anyway."

"Then fifty-fifty it is. Half the fleet stays here, half goes after the ships headed for Earth. The interception fleet's orders are to ascertain the enemy's strength, before engaging in either an all-out assault or an extended delaying action depending on what they find. It's absolutely imperative that they don't reach our universe before the gods have had time to prepare."

"And if one of the two enemy fleets turns out to be a bluff?" Huang asked.

"Well, we know something's out there – we wouldn't be getting a reading otherwise. That just makes it a question of relative strength. If there's a clear discrepancy, the force facing the weaker fleet should see about annihilating them as quickly as possible and then hurrying to support our other half. They'll take a while to get there, sure, and the others shouldn't rely too much on their assistance, but hopefully the gods will be able to offer a hand – not having to defend two places at once should free them up a bit. Sound good?"

Rong-Arya nodded. "Sounds good. One last thing, though – who do you want to command the intercept and defence forces? I can't be in two places at once."

"You'll be staying here. The gods can handle Earth, but out here on the borders, we need all the command talent we can get. I'll leave picking the commander of the intercept up to you, though – they're your people, after all."

He glanced at the sensor screens again, watching the blobby masses of the two fleets drift ever closer, and shut off another quarter of his brain. He suspected he'd need the rest.

"Oh, and Pedro?" he said, leaning back.

Diaz looked up. "Yes, sir?"

"This wasn't your fault. Get your team a little something next time you head to the quartermaster's. My authority, if he asks."

"Yes, sir."


Author's Notes: It's my hypothesis that all Humanoid Interfaces are off in some significant way. The Entity just doesn't do people well.