“That bitch!” Captain Gilmorian cursed when the connection line ended, cutting off the projected image of Lady Lorenna. The three commanding officers flinched at his sudden outburst.

“How dare she order me around. But soon, oh yes soon, we will be out of her reach. You, Martin, when do we enter post-light speeds?”

The officer in question paused for a moment, staring blankly ahead before replying. “According to the latest data, in 10 days, Captain.”

“Still some time then,” Gilmorian grumbled lowering his legs from the table. It wouldn't matter. “Well then, go about your day and report for any individual we can use. For Nevara.”

“For Nevara,” The three echoed in kind.

If any of them felt scared of being overheard, they didn’t show it. Their comms were secured, and they were certain no one could listen in—except maybe someone could. With some confusion, he cut his connection, too, wondering what all this was about.

—-

House Orion had fallen. Derkal galaxy was in an uproar–on a path to total and utter annihilation. But who was at fault here?

Was it Overlord swarms? Alien Zith hordes? An opposite faction invading the galaxy?

Half of the reports had different perpetrators. The Fieldrich senate in the Bowance galaxy was in a heated debate. It was a virtual forum, styled after the 3M, Militaristic Minimalistic Modernism architecture–plain smooth marble with prominent edges, long and thin pillars, and decorated in comforting earthy colors and insignias.

The detailed avatars of senators sat in rows, sometimes close together, and on a few occasions isolated from the rest, as was the case with the House Orion and House Arthas delegations.

The Zith had invaded Derkal, bypassing the Alimon galaxy which was the heart of House Fieldrich, the Emperic Polestar as its citizens called it, all without a whiff from any intelligence beacon and satellite roaming the void between the galactic bodies for that exact reason.

Was the Hatt galaxy behind Derkal already infested with Zith? Would House Fieldrich in Alimon galaxy be able to fend off the invading alien species from both sides if that were the case?

There was a lot of shouting and accusing fingers pointed every way one looked.

But that was only half the story, no even less than that. A part of the fleeing House Orion fleet was on its way to Tilgar and the protection the Helion Syndicate offered. The fleet’s holds were at full capacity, carrying refugees, the most prominent, rich, and useful population that could afford their way in one of the vessels before they departed Derkal.

So it was not unexpected the fleet had a smaller capacity to store weapons in case of an unexpected attack during the voyage. Unfortunately for the slower, massive freight carriers filled with people, a relatively small Overlord swarm was gaining on their trail. Maybe it was a remnant from the swarm that had migrated towards Cerebrus, or an offshoot swarm, growing in its shadow. At that moment for the fleeing fleet, it didn’t matter where the Overlords came from.

The spacebeasts didn’t mind their numbers were small, in space they were the apex predators. And their prey was on the run, infusing their drive to chase all the more.

The few combat operational battleships had congregated at the fleet’s tail and had been flinging any available weaponry to their rear to no great effect. After a while, only the heatlazers kept firing beams of energy every time the battery charges came online. Things were looking grim for the Orion fleet broadcasting emergency signals for help.

House Orion was being chased out of Derkal by Overlords.

On the galaxy’s other side, when the closest moon colony to the Hatt received the emergency broadcast, they couldn’t believe what their eyes saw on the screens. Overlords? Derkal had fallen to Overlords? Wait, even if they were in the furthest reaches of Derkal, they were close enough to be considered a part of it. And they had not seen a single Overlord in decades.

What they were seeing, however, was an unknown fleet laying siege to the planet below. The Nevarian Collective, as they called themselves, was bombarding the whole planet from orbit, and the only reason the moon colony was still allowed to observe the carnage unharmed was that they couldn’t do anything about it.

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Derkal was being invaded. Uprisings had occurred in several seed planets with the stark absence of House Orion’s military support. Not to forget the small cluster of planets at the galaxy's borders that had fallen to the Zith, with little hope for survival for any planet-bound population.

In reality, no words could encapsulate the whole situation, but a few came close.

“What a clusterfuck!” Amon exclaimed out loud as he read over the different reports. He made to rise from his bunk, but the proximity of the bunk above him to his head made him rethink his actions. It wasn’t worth the effort. He wouldn’t have the space to pace around the cabin anyway.

He briefly considered going for a walk around the ship, but there was little to see apart from endless corridors dressed in grey metal.

The mainframe of Concordia GG was still being updated and the reports Amon was skimming over were also relatively fresh. But things would change soon when the battleship reached post-light speeds. The Spacenet signal would be lost, unable to reach them at those speeds. They would travel faster than the datapackets, receiving only partially corrupted datafiles from the outside world. They would effectively be cut off from the rest of the universe.

What would happen in a year? Amon was not eager to find out the fallout of the whole thing. It was a damned time to travel in the dark. And they would be so far away from the center of it. Derkal. A place he had never had the chance to visit despite being Cerebrus’ neighboring galaxy. The universe was large and he was quite young. If he so wished it wouldn’t be impossible to travel that way in the future.

Not that visiting Derkal was anywhere near his imminent goals. He had a situation to resolve when they arrived at the Milky Way, and even before that during this trip. A plot was being cooked onboard the battleship. Nevarians were onboard, people Amon did not know of until just now.

Nevarians. Who were they? He wondered out loud by mistake.

“What? What’s gotten into you?” Tommy complained from above. He was trying to sleep.

“Nothing, sorry. Go back to sleep.”

He had to search the mainframe for any report on the name. They were planning something drastic, and the Captain was at the center of it. Guilty of more than what Amon had initially suspected.

A year minus a few days on the outside, but for them inside the ship it would feel quite different, faster to be in fact. The seconds would flow swiftly, time running ahead of itself as if the voyage would end before one could blink an eyelid, but still, in their minds, they would remember the days that had passed to bring them there.

Amon counted down each morning he opened his eyes. Ten, nine, eight…

—-

A year later, Terra Chronometry standard

Outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy

Concordia GG

A lone Dreadnought slowed down from post-light speeds. The system had a navigation path it was following that human eyes could not quite track with the required precision. After all, the void between the galaxies was a vast lightless nothing that had no point of reference but for their destination.

The shine coming from the Milky Way was their only guide. Like the seafaring sailors of old, the navigators of space more often than not relied on the light of the stars to guide their spaceships.

And the lone Dreadnought slowed down. Its engines flared giving power to the thrusters hard at work pushing against the momentum that had been building up for so long it seemed as if the deceleration was an impossible dream.

Until they reached the threshold. Post-light to under-light speeds. Without a warning the Dreadnought reentered realspace. Immediately, as per protocol, the bridge navigation control sent out a scan of the surrounding area and a comms link to the Dreadnought somewhere ahead of them.

It would be some time until they received a reply. But the energized navigation crew was hard at work checking on the monitors. At last something different to do than the systems checks that had been their main occupation for the voyage to the Milky Way.

Amon watched the feedback update on the mainframe with keen interest. They still had a distance to cover, yet the first contact with realspace could spell surprises. They had been essentially deaf and blind to the universe until now.

But from the initial scans, nothing appeared in their near vicinity. He waited for the ping from the preceding Dreadnought. Yet no matter how many hours passed, it didn’t arrive. The bridge became restless.

A little camera observing the control room displayed Captain Gilmorian issuing unnecessary orders to the crew to find the unresponsive spaceship as if it was possible without a direct comm link from the battleship itself. The distances involved were so extreme that no scanning instrument could return a reading without a relay beacon support.

So everyone waited, and when the 12-hour mark passed the bridge navigators sent a comms link backward to the Dreadnought that would emerge into realspace following their path.

An hour later there was still no reply from either battleship. A day later, the comm silence with the rest of the fleet had every bridge officer jump when the monitors updated the scanner readings.

Amon had a very strong suspicion there would be no other contact with the fleet. He suspected it because he had been lucky to intercept a communication, yet even then trying to find the plans of the people involved had turned out nothing.

Company Commander Jin had been as restless as Amon himself. When Amon found nothing mentioning Nevara on the offline Spacenet he turned to Jin Karf with the question only to receive the same answer.

Nevara was not a physical place or a people. Yes, it was a brand of machinery wheels on a far-off planet and a colony restaurant in C3XC1-1, at least two influential singers used the name as an alias, and countless other small insignificant mentions had it but for all his effort the search never came close to finding an actual answer that made sense.

“Remember the Gocka incident? You have that look about you that reminds me of it. Are you going to tell me what the hell’s gotten into you? And stop fidgeting with that leg!” Tommy complained while looking down from the bunk above.

“Oh, sorry about that. Just restlessness now that we are back into realspace and there is no word from the rest of the fleet, it's making my hair stand.” Amon replied repositioning his restless leg to the wall so he wouldn't shake the whole bunk.

“Does your little spywork show where we are headed?” Tommy asked after a moment.

“I wouldn’t trust it.”

Tommy jerked and his face reappeared looking down from the top bunk. “What do you mean by that?”

“I have a suspicion, nothing more. But think, maybe someone changed our flight path or destination. The Dreadnoughts might be lightyears away from where we are now. It would explain why there is no contact.”

“Why would they do that? I mean, do these Nevarians want us to be isolated or what’s the point?”

“I don’t know, and it's bothering me. If it is a trap at least it won’t be us. We have the Captain on board the ship. If I can guess something about him, he won’t sacrifice himself for any cause.”

“So what are you worried about?”

“The rest of the fleet. The Milky Way is dangerous enough with 6 Dreadnoughts, now, for a lone one--”

“Ah, hells, I didn’t think of that,” Tommy cursed out loud.

“We might be on our own from here on out,” Amon said and the suspicion slowly grew into an anxious certainty.