When the Nexus attacked Archangel, the people realized that the long peace they had enjoyed had ended. The demand for revenge spread through the streets, and on many planets, people marched to the Executive Houses, demanding that the Machines be contained or eliminated. In response, the Federation attacked a mining and industrial node of the Machines. Whether this assault changed the way the Machines thought about organics, no one knew. The people demanded retribution for the genocide on Archangel, and a fleet of thousands of submarines scoured the galaxy, hunting for more targets.

The Admiralty designated the star systems occupied by the Machines with characters from the Greek alphabet. The Beta system had been meticulously ravaged by the Hybrid Supercarrier Galactica and her fleet, leaving the star system unusable. Many officers argued that the Machines could quickly rebuild from such damage, as they didn't need food, housing, or sleep, so pressure needed to be relentless.

In the void between Beta and Gamma, six hundred submarines waited for targets. More than a thousand had already closed in on Delta, where small ships, carrying the old U-boat designations, planned to devastate the worlds of Delta. No mercy would be given to the aggressors.

I-400 and I-402, called Mia and Sia, respectively, had visited eight stars, and the number of planets taken by the Machines continued to grow. The two most promising targets, however, were classified as Shipyard and Incubation.

Epsilon Star System

I-400 (Mia)

Mia exited fold space close to the red giant star of the Epsilon system, whose unstable flux was the primary source of light and heat. In its expansion phase, the star had likely consumed one or two planets already. Only four planets remained: three gas giants and a rocky, atmosphere-less world.

This place is a dump, Mia thought. Why did they waste time colonizing this place? What did they find useful here? Watching with her passive sensors, she saw an old image of the Machines' activity—an orbiting station around the fourth planet, possibly a refueling or ammo depot.

She dived into the dimensional depth and approached the station at sublight speed. With no moons around the gas giant, she had nowhere to hide, but she raised her old periscope—a relic from her Earth-ocean days—risking detection. The station was bigger than she'd thought. Two hours later, a small cargo ship, essentially a series of rings held together by two long pylons and ending in engines, docked with the station.

The ship's EM signature is huge. What a strange ship. What are they carrying? Mia wanted to deploy her sensor arrays but knew it wouldn't help. Soon, the answer became clear. Two electromagnetic rings were deployed—one at the station's docking side and the other on the ship's ring. A plasma ring was transferred from the ship to the station, and once the transfer ended, the EM signature vanished.

She wondered what kind of plasma required such a transfer and recognized that the ship was essentially an electromagnetic confinement device. The only fuel requiring such caution could be antimatter.

Antimatter was dangerous. It would explain the necessity of storing it as far as possible from the enemy core worlds. If the containment field collapsed, the reaction would be violently explosive. If this station was indeed an antimatter deposit, her sisters could create a spectacular light show. Perhaps they could catch a fleet refueling here and increase the counter. Since it was a universal law, some nerd proposed this place be called Praxis, after the old Klingon moon.

Mia moved away from the tempting target, reaching the rocky planet. Seeing no sign of civilization, she felt something like satisfaction. One genocide less, she thought. She placed the planet's mass between herself and the station, deploying a small probe on its surface.

"Mia, where are they producing antimatter?" one bridge officer interrupted her thoughts.

A loud facepalm echoed.

"Then we must keep searching. Our orders from the Supreme Flagship are to find as many targets as possible to inflict maximum damage on the Machines."

"Good," replied the same officer.

She left the planet's orbit and traveled for twenty hours to the star system's edge. But the patient huntress still had to rely on luck to find more targets.

Gamma Star System

I-402 (Sia)

Sia entered Gamma, a small star system with a few rocky planets and a narrow asteroid belt. The system, however, was heavily occupied. Enormous construction rings were visible on the planet's surface, towering hundreds of meters. A vast ocean stretched across the surface, and four orbital elevators reached into space. Given the system's patrol size, its importance was undeniable. Hundreds of cubes and spheres patrolled aggressively, warping in and out as if to surprise any submarines lingering nearby.

Curiously, there were no cargo ships. Perhaps a deliberate precaution to prevent any unwanted observers from following them. Sia merged her course with the asteroid ring, letting her hull drift while her old periscope snapped several pictures. After a brief discussion, she and her crew decided to wait.

Two days later, a cube docked at the top of one orbital elevator, loading cargo. So they are loading something important. She really needed to know what it could be so critical.

"Why don't we put a camera with a quantum comm on an asteroid and push it toward the planet?" a young engineer suggested.

"It could work. It's impossible to get any closer," Sia admitted, somewhat reluctantly. "Well, you came up with the idea; get your device ready."

Blushing, the engineer assembled the probe in his workshop. His table showed a simple cube and the instruments inside. He was working as fast as he could, adhering pieces of asteroids with cement in an irregular way. When he finished, the thing looked quite natural and harmless. The disguise—a cement-and-dust "rock" with a quantum communicator and mechanical detonators—was convincing. Per Sia's orders, he added plastic explosives to ensure it wouldn't fall into enemy hands.

Sia opened the hull and pushed the probe gently toward the planet. Dubbed "Voyager 3" by the crew, the probe needed two weeks to reach the target, during which Sia had to reduce rations. Goodbye, morale, she mused.

Voyager 3 was a lucky probe. The Machines ignored it, and as it approached, a sphere docked with the elevator. The crew stared in awe as the probe revealed that the planet was a Machines factory—a planetary-sized incubator. Sia immediately sent a Priority One message to the Admiralty. Her work was done, and as the probe disintegrated in the atmosphere, she folded away, determined to find Altmark before her crew mutinied. The new target was fittingly named Incubator.

But attacking this star would be costly, almost suicidal. Perhaps, in time, when the Fleet had destroyed most of the Machines, they would return.

Delta Star System.

The star system, a massive system with binary stars at its center orbiting each other, seemed dedicated to building ships. At least fifty shipyards were busy constructing cubes, spheres, and many geometric shapes with unknown functions.

U-379

The crew was glued to the virtual screens showing the star system. The mental model, a tall blonde with short hair, was dressed much like an old submarine commander. Black pants, a white sweater, and a worn gray cap completed her outfit.

Since the old Kriegsmarine never named submarines, she had chosen her own name, or sometimes the crew voted to name them. This time, the chosen name was Valkyrie. She commanded this wolfpack and divided her forces to attack in a synchronized manner. She knew through the Tactical Network that they had detected Iona.

She decided that half the ships would approach from the solar system's outer edge. With at least forty cubes and a hundred spheres patrolling, a prolonged battle was impossible. She emerged slightly and received the low-frequency tachyon pulse. According to the veteran mental model, there was a seventy percent chance of being detected if she emerged. They could detect active scanning, so she needed to raise her array and fire, wasting no milliseconds.

A carefully designed approach protocol had been developed. The submarines would close in pairs without disturbing the dimensional layer too much, simulating a natural phenomenon. I hope this works, or I will be responsible for a disaster.

Twenty-six hours later, the pieces were in place. It was tedious and time-consuming, but apparently, the Machines hadn't detected them. In her small bridge, she sat comfortably in her master ship position, analyzing the locations of every submarine with her crew. The agreement between the dimensional layer and real space was always tricky, and a bit of error was expected.

She had done everything she could to ensure success. At ten a.m. fleet time, the submarines emerged, raising periscopes and targeting arrays. They felt the frantic tachyon pulse searching for them, but they sent a ping of tachyon ECM to saturate the system. I hope it helps, Valkyrie thought. Five seconds later, every submarine emptied their tubes and launched cruise missiles. Then, they dove back and left the system.

The Machines and station defenses reacted quickly, firing pulsed weapons to stop the incoming storm. Thousands of missiles and torpedoes, including ECM torpedoes, overwhelmed the defenses.

Only U-379 remained near the solar system's border. She waited twenty-four hours before emerging. The first images of the attack traveled to her, showing the devastation she and her sisters had unleashed. The crew watched as explosions spread across the planets, changing the atmosphere's colors to the brownish-red characteristic of nukes.

You can hurt us, we can hurt you, she thought. The Valkyrie folded back to Alex.

Gamma Star System

Close to the Gamma star system, the rest of the submarines were waiting for orders. The news about this star being used to produce more machines had made it a top priority. Iona had joined them recently, even though Gunzou had strongly opposed it. So far, the wolfpack attack had worked quite well, but the element of surprise was probably lost, or it would be soon.

One of the submarines, a girl named Harder, was probing a bit of the Nexus's defenses. She had left her human crew with Stingray. If the worst happened, the veteran warrior had decided she would not be captured. The tachyon scanner was more refined, and the sensors focused on her very quickly when she emerged to observe. The system was becoming a fortress, and they needed the cunning instinct of humans for a successful attack. The romantic idea of invading a star system with a fleet of thousands of ships had been plainly rejected. The losses would be terrible, and the impact on morale would be even worse.

Iona was carefully considering her options. If she relocated a fleet far from the star, perhaps the machines would think it was a valuable target. She knew Harder had been discovered, and, unfortunately, the machines would be on high alert. Finally, one officer from her own crew had a brilliant idea. Stephanie, a veteran from Iona's attack on Aquaria during the distant Cylon War, remembered that event well.

"Iona, I have a plan. May I?" Stephanie asked Iona.

"Sure thing. So far, for every good plan we have, they can still kill us," replied Iona. The general feeling of frustration was shared among the bridge's officers. Hours and hours of simulations had ended in a sound defeat.

"Well, we could repeat the defolding maneuver we did inside Aquaria's ocean. We can raze the surface with our missiles. And," she smiled like a little shark, "from the ocean, we have a clear line of sight to the orbital installations. We can destroy them with our SGCs."

Iona ran a few million simulations inside her own core. It should work, in theory. However, "I like the idea, but the cubes' response time is critical," she explained. "If they fire on us from high orbit, we'll be dead in seconds," she added.

"So, we still need a distraction, at least for five minutes. We need two minutes to launch the missiles, but our energy reserves will be low. We must recharge the fold drive and charge the SGC. And, don't forget, we have to keep the shields up," Stephanie admitted, feeling a bit overwhelmed by so many problems.

The engineer got lost in her own thoughts for a while, then added, "The energy issue can be solved by building a capacitor. I can store enough energy for either the SGC or the fold drive. Both at the same time? Impossible."

It was Iona's turn to get lost in deep thought. "There is a way, but we will have to reduce our firepower by half," she said. "Half of us will store energy for the SGC, and the other half for the fold drive. We must operate in pairs," Iona explained. She presented the idea to the other submarines, and they agreed it was the best solution.

"What about the bait?" a girl asked through the network.

"Right, we'll use Harder for that purpose. Since she was already detected, they'll probably be looking for her. She'll leave traces of her presence and lead them away from Gamma-02. This is the best solution I can offer." Her officers nodded in acceptance, and the fleet got to work. The engineers and the girls used an old capacitor design, originally for planetary shelters. Many crew members lost their bunkers, but the space was necessary.

The pairs were assigned, and they prepared to fold into the ocean of Gamma-02. The maneuver, guided by Harder, who had poked the nest with her appearances, making the machines hunt her like crazy, was fast and precise. It took the machines completely by surprise, as an attack from the ocean was unthinkable.

Six hundred submarines defolded into the ocean, taking positions around the globe and surfacing quickly. As usual, the environmental change stressed the hulls, but the tough ships held up. No sailor paid attention to the hulls' odd sounds, but the mental models calmed down the anxious crew members.

Everyone launched their missiles at the infrastructure, and half of them adjusted their hulls' angles, pointing their bows at the orbital installations. They transferred energy from the capacitors to the SGCs, accumulating gravitons inside their rings, while the other half charged the fold drives. One minute later, Iona gave the order to fire. The beams raced across the atmosphere, destroying all the orbital stations. When they had a chance, cubes were also targeted and destroyed. Most of the missiles were still in flight, but nearly a quarter had already reached their targets, obliterating them.

However, after the sudden attack and the futile pursuit of Harder, the cubes moved quickly toward the planet, searching for the attacking ships. The paired submarines, however, were not going to wait. They folded and defolded into the void.

The attack was precise and destructive, and the installations on Gamma-02 were no more. Every crew member celebrated the successful mission, and Iona notified the Supreme Flagship.

After the attack on New Europe, the Federation of Worlds was striking back. Now, in time, the Fleet would visit Praxis.

How the machines would respond, or whether they would escalate the conflict, no one knew.