“Everything on the ship prepped?”

“Yes sir,” Tooley said. Farsus saluted in turn. They’d been in charge of getting the Hard Luck Hermit ready for the big show.

“Alrighty, and the rest of you, done playing phone a friend?”

Corey, To Vo, and Doprel saluted as well. Kamak smiled broadly and turned his chair back to face the helm.

“And is everything playing out as we’d hoped?”

“Looks like it,” Tooley said. The long range scanners all showed about what they had hoped for. It appeared they’d gotten the timing right.

“Well. Only thing left to do is make our entrance,” Kamak said. “Tooley?”

Without a word, Tooley executed their pre-planned route and sent them sailing into faster-than-light travel. It would be a short jump, but they still had some time to contemplate what they were about to do.

“So. Any last words?”

Apparently not. Kamak waited in silence for several seconds.

“Well then. As the captain, traditionally I should say some kind of last rallying cry...but fuck if I know how.”

“Stellar job, cap,” Tooley said.

“Yeah, hold on,” Kamak said. He unbuckled himself and walked out of the cockpit, returning moments later with a fancy bottle of liquor. “Here. Fanciest thing I got.”

Kamak poured out a glass for everyone except Doprel, who still couldn’t metabolize alcohol, even on special occasions. Kamak even poured one out for To Vo, and much to his surprise, the usually sober officer took it. She held the drink for a moment before taking one tiny sip of the dark liquor.

“This is terrible.”

“You get used to it,” Kamak assured her. He took a sip of his drink and tried to stop himself from making a face. It actually did taste terrible.

Tooley slammed the rest of her drink without blinking and set the empty glass aside as proximity warnings started to beep. She began to flick controls and input commands as they approached their final destination.

“Bottoms up, folks, it’s showtime,” she said. “Dropping out of FTL in three, two, one…”

She flipped a switch, and the beige blur of FTL travel faded back into reality. This far outside a galactic system, there were no stars in the sky, just a black abyss in every direction -and a circle of roiling red fire marking the location of Morrakesh’s hidden Bang Gate. The Hard Luck Hermit drifted closer and closer to the fiery gateway as Tooley slowly pulled them to a stop. By the time the Hermit had stopped moving, they could make out the metallic border of the Bang Gate, and the fleet that surrounded it. Three of the Great Wheel ships were stationed at various points around the stellar gateway, joined by hordes of smaller ships, also circular in construction, but on a much smaller scale. Kamak counted out around thirty of the smaller vessels. He also saw, hovering in the middle of them all, a single speck of purple.

“Ooh, the guest of honor is here,” Kamak said. They’d been hoping Morrakesh itself would be present, but they’d had no way of knowing. Hopefully it was the first of many lucky breaks today. “How’s the long-range scanner looking, Tooley, everything on track?”

“Got a drop or two to kill, but everything’s moving.”

“Great! Farsus, put us on open comms. All channels.”

Farsus flipped the switch, and a slight electronic buzz presaged Kamak’s broadcast. He took one more sip of his bitter drink before setting it aside.

“Captain Morrakesh of the Empyrean Absolutist, and, well, whoever the fuck you are piloting all those other ships out there,” Kamak said. “This is Captain Kamak D-V-Y-B of the Hard Luck Hermit. I will now be accepting your unconditional surrender.”

As one, all of the dozens of vessels floating idly in the space around the Bang Gate began to converge on their location. The purple speck of the Empyrean Absolutist grew larger and larger as it led the charge, before coming to a stop just outside of weapons range. All of the other vessels filed in behind it as the comm line finally crackled to life from the other end.

“Captain Kamak, Master Morrakesh commends you on your-”

“Hey there Ol-Voz, good to hear from you, now shut up,” Kamak said. “We know Morrakesh is a Worm. If it wants to talk, it can talk to us itself.”

The other end of the line fell silent. For a moment.

“Surprising work.”

While clearly synthetic, the voice coming across the comm line was far clearer and more refined than the crude speech processor used by Thoth. It projected deep, resonating tones, each word dripping with gravitas. Morrakesh had clearly put a great deal of work into developing its own unique voice.

“I do sincerely commend you on exceeding my expectations,” Morrakesh said. “Though I question what you think you are accomplishing here.”

“Same as always,” Kamak said. “We’re being assholes.”

“Always have been, always going to be,” Tooley said proudly.

“I wanted to get on to your ship and call you a dipshit face to face,” Corey said. “Well, face to tentacles or whatever. But I’m settling for this.”

Morrakesh responded with a stiff, digitized laugh that was carefully programmed to sound entirely insincere.

“After everything you’ve discovered, all the distance you have traveled, you say you’re here just to lash out with petty spite?” Morakesh scoffed. “Tell me the truth, Kamak.”

“No.”

That earned a long silence.

“Perhaps I simply underestimate how spiteful you can be,” Morrakesh said.

“Oh you have no idea,” Doprel said. “I bought him the wrong kind of soup once, twenty years ago, and he still brings it up now and then.”

“It was shakoda soup, I asked for Be-e soup! It’s not even the same color!”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Technically they are both shades of brown,” Farsus said.

“It’s more of a reddish color,” Kamak said.

“Wait, shakoda? I’ve had that before,” Corey said. “It’s shit. Why would you want that?”

“We have different taste buds, Corvash, you eat those weird seed thingies all the time for the same reason,” Kamak said.

“Enough!”

Moorakesh had ten-thousand times the intellectual capacity of the average sentient lifeform, and yet he still had no patience for their bullshit.

“What do you hope to gain by stalling?”

Tooley glanced sideways at their proximity sensors. A few warning signs were starting to flash. Good news. Morrakesh was catching on to their bluff too late. She gave a thumbs up and then spun her finger a few times to indicate that Kamak needed to keep it going a little while longer.

“A few more ticks alive, mostly,” Kamak said. “I’d beg, but I’m medically incapable of doing so. Actual thing, you can call Dr. Theddis, he’ll verify.”

“I’m growing bored of this, Kamak.”

“Well what else do you think I could possibly do, Morrakesh? You got me against a wall here,” Kamak said. He glanced at Tooley’s monitor. More alarms were starting to flash. “Even knowing your entire plan to sic your weird Horuk buddies on the universe and then betray them-”

“What does he speak of?”

“Oh good, you’re listening too, we didn’t actually know if you used the same type of communications,” Kamak said. “Hi, nice to meet you all, allow me to be the first to welcome the Horuk to our little chunk of the universe. Also, go fuck yourself.”

“You understand us?”

“Yeah, we pried a translation chip out of one of the little guys you sent into the Timeka station,” Kamak said. “Hope you aren’t offended by that -actually, no, I do hope you’re offended by that, fuck you.”

“The deaths of the Numberless mean nothing to us,” the Horuk speaker said. “But your accusations offend. You speak of betrayal.”

“Yes, your buddy over there in the purple ship-”

“Don’t listen to them, One,” Morrakesh chided. “This is a last spiteful effort to induce infighting. They cannot hope to match us, and so they seek to turn us against one another. Laughable.”

Morrakesh did intend to betray the Horuk eventually, but that was a long-term plan, after they had already exhausted themselves in an invasion. Kamak didn’t actually know any of that, but he needed to kill a few more ticks. As his stalling tactics continued to work, Kamak looked to Tooley. She held up a few fingers and started counting down.

“Well, you can’t fault us for trying,” Kamak said. “I mean, not a lot of other options here, guys, we’ve been backed into a corner. I mean, come on, Morrakesh, you poured how many millions of cece’s and how many weeks worth of work into making the universe hate us?”

“Less than one would expect,” Morrakesh said. “It required surprisingly little effort to turn the entire universe against you.”

“Understandable,” Kamak said. He looked at Tooley again, and she pointed at the monitor. Every alarm was turning red. “Hey, Morrakesh, just one question, real quick.”

“Go on.”

“You’ve made the entire universe hate us,” Kamak said. “So what do you think is going to happen now that we’re parked right in front of you?”

On cue, Tooley flipped a switch, and unmuted the proximity sensor. A backlog of a few dozen warnings started to play in a long queue, and each individual notice was broadcasted across space for Morrakesh and all his Horuk friends to hear. In that moment, Kamak would’ve given all the money in the universe to see the looks on their faces -if either of them had had faces to see looks on.

The first proximity warning to reach a crescendo fell silent just as quickly. In a relativistic blur, a large warship bearing Galactic Council colors dropped out of FTL and began to drift through space near the Hard Luck Hermit. A pair of escort vessels soon followed it, flanking it on either side.

“Kamak D-V-Y-B of the Hard Luck Hermit, power down and- what in the….?”

As the crew aboard the GC warship noticed they were not alone out in the void, all guns turned away from the Hermit and towards the Horuk fleet. Two more sets of warships and escort vessels also dropped out of light speed and joined it in an armed standoff with the alien fleet.

They were the first, but far from the last. Seconds later, the heavily armed, utilitarian warships of the Structuralist fleet appeared, followed shortly thereafter by a legion of high-tech Timeka fighter craft. The ragtag collection of retrofitted ships used by the Anti-Doccan Front swarmed into space moments afterwards, with the jury-rigged hulks of the Doccan themselves following shortly behind. Gaps in the makeshift fleet were soon filled in by a random assembly of ships from the pirates of Paga For, and the personal crafts of numerous bounty hunters.

“Kamak. Should’ve known this wouldn’t be that easy.”

“Hey Ghul, good to see you,” Kamak said. “Would’ve called you myself, but that might’ve thrown off the whole gambit.”

Making sure everyone showed up on time—and that no one suspected they were being manipulated—had been a herculean undertaking, but good bait was good bait. Morrakesh had given everyone the motivation, all the crew had to do was provide a time and place. Once their scanners detected a Bang Gate that wasn't supposed to exist, it had been all but guaranteed that the various factions would come looking, and bring their big guns when they did so. With a little help from Thoth’s information network, and a few choice messages sent out to the right people at the right time, every major faction in the universe had come looking for the Hard Luck Hermit, all at once.

Keeping in mind that the “fleet” at his back had technically come here to kill him specifically, Kamak cleared his throat and prepared to convince them to not do that.

“Howdy everybody, this is Kamak, and if you’re here, you probably want to kill me,” Kamak said. “However, you might also be noticing a Bang Gate that isn’t supposed to exist, and a fleet of warships belonging to an unknown alien race. You may have questions about that, luckily my helpful buddy To Vo La Su has some answers!”

“Hello! I am Officer To Vo La Su, and I am not a hostage,” To Vo said. She felt it important to clarify in advance. “I have been voluntarily assisting the crew of the Hard Luck Hermit in preventing an invasion plot by Morrakesh, the details of which I am currently uploading on an open server.”

With a few quick taps of a button, To Vo put every detail of Morrakesh’s conspiracy out into the world. Whether anyone else bothered to read it was out of her hands, but she had done her best.

“Now, I don’t expect you to be fully convinced by a few documents,” Kamak said. “But the basic facts are, I’ve got me and my five assholes on this one dinky little ship, and over there there’s a fleet of unknown alien killing machines parked outside the heart of universal civilization, and I think we can all assume they’re not here to play tourist. Which do you think is the higher priority?”

The various ships floated idly in space. Even without being able to see any of the crew on the other vessels, Kamak and company could sense their hesitation, confusion, and fear.

“None of you came here looking for this kind of fight,” Corey said. “I know that. But trust me when I say this fight would’ve come looking for you.”

“There’s a lot of bad shit in our universe, but these bastards actually manage to be worse,” Tooley said. She glanced sideways at the unrefined, artless design of the Structuralist vessels and sneered.

“Not everyone here agrees on everything,” Doprel said. He was keeping a close eye on the Doccan vessels and the ragtag mercenaries and renegades who opposed them. “But right here, right now, we all have one thing in common: an enemy.”

The mismatched fleet of vessels finally showed a single sign of life. One of the smaller vessels drifted to the fore, orienting itself towards the Horuk fleet. Farsus took a quick look and recognized it as the barebones, cylindrical vessel used by Khem. He cast a glance at Kamak, and shared a knowing nod.

As Khem’s movement broke the ice, the first Galactic Council vessel that had appeared raised its cannons and began to drift forward.

“Unidentified vessels,” the captain said. “Power down or retreat though the Bang Gate.”

Every other Galactic Council vessel followed suit, readying their weaponry and moving into position. Slowly, the Timeka fighters and the bounty hunters moved into position as well. In moments, the entire makeshift fleet had assembled itself against the Horuk invaders.

Tooley grabbed on to the ship’s control. Farsus spun slowly in his chair and opened up his weapon console.

At the helm of two opposing fleets, the shining purple hull of the Empyrean Absolutist reflected the beaten-down metal shell of the Hard Luck Hermit. Neither moved. No one moved.

With her hands latched firmly around the Hermit’s controls, Tooley looked at her discarded glass of liquor and watched a bead of condensation roll down the side, all the way to the bottom.

“Nobody wants to break the ice,” Corey said. The tension of the inevitable battle was present, but both sides were too cautious to make the first move.

“Tooley,” Kamak said. “I think it’s time for you to do what you do best.”

“Fly?”

“No, dipshit,” Kamak said. “Cause problems.”

Tooley gripped the controls and split her face into a manic grin.

“I can do both.”

She slammed the controls forward, and all hell broke loose.