"I know what we're about to do is all kinds of wrong, but I can't help thinking about how cool it will be." I watched through Echidna's sensors as Quick put the finishing touches on our improvised system breaker device.

"Whoa there, Kid. Don't you think we ought to be planning at least one more thing?"

Echidna caught on immediately. "Yes, sir. I've got three systems in range, plotting courses now. Oh, that reminds me, sir! I think I found a planet with a functioning biosphere."

With a thought, I pulled up the information on our critical stores. Even with every miracle Quick had pulled out of his sleeve, we had barely enough to keep the crew going for another two days without putting big swaths of them back into stasis. "Okay. How many jumps to get there?"

"Minimum of four jumps, sir."

"Plot me a least time route, put us as close to that biosphere as possible." The local systems diagram I'd pushed off to the side sharpened, a route filling in as Echidna ferreted out the local effects of gravity, solar wind, and inter-system disturbances. I turned my attention to the ship as a whole. The armored Middies, already buttoned up and ready to launch, engaged in VR simulations based on our current system. The neoincarnate Juniors and the youngest reincarnates played under the supervision of their assigned Middie babysitters. The remainder, the older reincarnate Juniors and the unarmored, unassigned Middies...

You've got them in class?

Guy's response wobbled, stuttering and distracted. You wanted me to commandant... I'm commandanting... Either I'm right... and we're almost back to the fleet... or you're right... and this will be life from now on... Either way... they need classes.

I realized then why he sounded so distracted; all the Middie 'instructors' were armored up, involved in the simulation. Half a thousand students pulled his attention in nearly as many directions. I sent him a burst of thankful encouragement and turned my attention back to our tactical situation.

More 'Sects poured into the system every minute. They inundated the spot I'd decoyed them to, and now the fresher Marapis micro-jumped to other mass concentrations. They didn't jump randomly, either; half of them each chose a separate destination, the other half remaining in reserve. Unusual behavior to say the least. I focused Echidna's passive sensors on their reserve cluster. As I half expected, a single Materner hovered near the middle of the congealed mass of 'Sects. I couldn't be sure at this distance, with this much interference, but I suspected the same one we'd dueled with in the previous system.

"First, can you think of any way we can reach out and terminally touch that one?" I shunted over my system plot, the Materner highlighted. "She's way too smart for me to be comfortable with her around."

He paused a moment, then sighed. "No, sir. Rather, I can think of half a dozen ways, but all of them involve us winding up in the middle of that mass of Marapis and Soros. Even with most of them being -T variants, we still couldn't take them if we're surrounded."

"You mean you think we could take them if we faced them at range?"

He laughed, a short, predatory bark. "Of course, sir. Taunt them into burning off their pocket drive power on micro-jumps, then induce a super nova."

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I grinned, acceleration gel squishing against my cheeks. "I'm sure I've heard that plan somewhere before. Time check?"

"We'll be ready in... about seventy seconds, sir. We'll need another sixty to get clear, and the device will take nearly two seconds to complete the pocket insertion."

I winced at the power costs that insertion time implied. If we only had some way of siphoning that off, we could jump more or less at will. That tickled something in the back of my brain, pink and blue lights flickering as my parents’ memories tried to overwhelm me. I ground my teeth in frustration; I needed those memories, but I couldn't afford to be lost in a flashback now. I added yet another item to my deferred to do list and focused on our enemies once more.

Half of the Marapis micro-jumped to new scouting locations. The remainder micro-jumped back to the central cluster. The moment they arrived half of the reserve jumped out to new locations themselves.

"Far too smart." I muttered, as not one but two of the nearly fresh Marapis arrived on either side of our lump of iron. Forty-five seconds until Quick finished, sixty until he and his crew reached Echidna's protective embrace. Two more for the weapon to activate. If at any point the Marapis figured out our intentions, they could stop us with a single shot at Quick's location.

I nudged Echidna, and she reached out with her projectors, gently pulling us closer to the huge lump of iron. We'd started at minimum safe orbital distance but being closer left less angles for the Marapis to see our engineering work crew on the surface of the asteroid. I took a few seconds to ferret out our enemy's course, ran a quick plot, and ejected half our armored cadets toward the path of one of the two Marapis, routing orders to them as I did. The same motion shoved us gently in the opposite direction, swinging us around toward our other enemy.

The massive chunk of iron, still tethered to us by Echidna's projectors, spun with us. The Marapi on the far side didn't react, but the one I approached spun, focusing its primary eyes on our location. With our absorbers up, it couldn't see us, and with Quick's team in our shadow it couldn't see them either, but it must have noticed an area of the asteroid itself disappear under us. Tentacles writhed in our direction, weapons or communications arrays glistening at the end of each. One twisted around to gain an angle to its partner, hidden by the same hunk of iron we planned to throw into the sun.

Without taking the time to translate my thoughts into words, I shunted the images straight to Echidna. She responded instantly, energy lancing from her projectors to sever the Marapi's communication node mid tentacle. Without pausing to see the results, she fired again, this time splitting her fire to strike out at several of the waving tentacles. As its communications went dark, the enemy ship lashed out at us with its weapons. Echidna shoved herself from the lump of iron, soaking up fire with her absorbers rather than deflecting it, just to give our armored cadets a few more precious seconds to get into position before the second Marapi knew we'd killed its partner.

With Quick on the surface, working to create our weapon, only I had the authority to override Echidna's default power shunting. While she engaged the Marapi, projectors dueling with weapons clusters, I sucked power away from our absorbers, pushing conduits well past their ratings to keep our absorbers functioning.

In the end, it wasn't enough. A single absorber shattered under the load, and before it could cascade to the others, I activated our deflectors, throwing a corona of energy into the face of our attacker. I watched as a single communications node, sheltered on the far side of the Marapi, twisted around to point at the swarm waiting in the distance. I caught the edges of a radio frequency scream just before Echidna's projectors sent power lancing through the center of the Marapi, destroying its nervous system.

Ten seconds until Quick's team finished their work. I fired an update to him, showing him our route, and Echidna pushed herself around the asteroid, tightening her orbit. With bays open save for flickering adamantine force planes we swung through a cloud of our own armor, drawing them in via projector when they couldn't hit a bay themselves. Seconds later we ranged on the second Marapi. Our armor had killed its drive nodes, and only a few of its tentacles could bring weapons to bear. We hammered through it, our projectors chopping it in half as we finished our brief orbit. Quick reported himself aboard, and I sent the signal to activate our system killer.