The only thing a lot of species wanted the Terrans to do was just die.

They weren't really interested in doing that.

Even the Atrekna could not keep them down forever.

Now they are back.

And they taught me that when other people looked at me and said: "Just die!"

I could say: "No." -Meditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Imna, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Emergence

Imna wove around the massive bulk of the Warbound, carrying two trays carefully in her hands. They had warming lids on them, so she could stack them, but still, the last thing she wanted to do was drop dinner.

She came around one particularly large and battered looking Warbound in the Dark Neko colors to see Wrixet standing to the side of N44/Naxen, standing there talking to himself.

When she moved up to him she nudged his foot with her boot. "Who ya talking to?" she asked.

Wrixet turned and frowned. "This guy right here," he said, waving at the emptiness in front of him.

"What guy? There's nobody there. Maybe a retinal keyed hologram?" Imna said.

"No, he's right..." Wrixet turned and looked. "Wait, he was right here," he looked around. "Where the hell did he go?"

Imna shrugged sitting down. She pulled a pair of narcobrews out of the pockets of the uniform a helpful Treana'ad had pulled from a nanoforge. "Brought beer. So, who was it?"

Wrixet frowned. "Dammit, I don't remember," he sat down, leaning against Naxen's foot and lifted the cover off of the food.

It smelled amazing.

He tasted it as Imna dug into it. He closed his eyes and sighed.

"Better than what I'm used to," Wrixet sighed, smiling. "That smells like real meat, real noodles, not flavored and shaped nutrigel or nutripaste."

Imna smiled. "It's good," she said. "Are you remembering more?"

Wrixet shrugged, chewing. "Some. Not much. I don't remember where I lived, just remember it was a pretty crappy place. Bottom of the social ladder."

Imna nodded.

"You?" Wrixet asked.

Imna closed her eyes. "I remember a fairly large house. I had two brothers, born in the same litter. Had a broodmommy, a mom, and dad," she took a bite and chewed, sighing. After she swallowed she looked at Wrixet. "You?"

"Mom. Dad left when I was fairly young," Wrixet said. "One older, one younger sister."

"No broodcarrier?" Imna asked.

Wrixet shook his head. "No," he sighed. "I can remember my mom telling me that if it hadn't been for the mandatory breeding mandates she would have never have had any of us."

Imna frowned. "No broodcarrier?"

Wrixet shook his head, chewing. When he swallowed he looked away. "They transplant the eggs from mom to the broodcarrier. Once we're born and weaned, they send us back to our parents."

Imna's eyes opened wide. "Oh, that's horrible!"

Wrixet just shrugged. "It's the way it is."

There was a thudding noise from inside the main part of the heavily armored and armed chassis.

Leaning back slightly, Wrixet reached up and rubbed the thick leg. "Easy, brother, easy. The pain will pass."

He went back to eating.

Imna waved at the other Warbound. "Some of them have artwork on their hulls," she said.

"Mm-hmm," Wrixet said around a mouthful of noodles, sauce, and meat.

She leaned forward slightly. "I made him a stencil. One of you, one of me, for him to have sprayed on his hull," her expression was slightly mischevious.

"Hmm?" Wrixet asked.

"It's undergoing approval from the Maintenance section, but the person I talked to said it should pass since it isn't obscene and fits in with the other sprays," Imna said.

Wrixet just nodded, still eating, one arm around the tray as if he was protecting it.

Imna pointed at where a lush bodied Terran woman with dark hair and gunmetal gray eyes was stenciled ona Warbound. She held a smoking pistol in one hand and had blood splattered across her naked breasts. Her tongue was sticking out and pressed against the end of the barrel of the pistol.

"She's on a lot of the 'newer' Warbound," Imna said. She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. "They say she's 'The Detainee', ever heard of her?"

Wrixet shook his head, moving to the vegetables. They were hot, coated in butter and light spices, and tasted amazing. He closed his eyes and sighed as he chewed.

"Apparently, she's some kind of deity that punished the wicked and the guilty," Imna said. She pointed at another spray, this one of a short woman with a tricorner hat and a frock coat that was open to show she was nude. She held archaic flintlock pistols, one in each hand, and her look was stern. Below it was "THE GUILTY FLEE WHEN GNOME ANNE PURSUSES!"

"She's featured a lot too," Imna said.

Wrixet just nodded.

"I wonder who she was?" Imna said.

Wrixet shrugged and swallowed. "Gnome Anne, it says right there."

Imna just laughed.

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Hetmwit stepped through the doorway and onto the bridge and came to a sudden stop.

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Captain Decken, in his dress uniform, stood in front of a figure in heavy and blocky power armor. The armor was festooned with chains, spikes, strange burning glyphs that hurt Hetmwit's eyes, and scraps of paper and tattered and scorched banners.

"You must be disappointed in me with how far we have fallen," the large armored figure rumbled. He wasn't wearing a helmet. His head was bald, gray skin and thick black veins. Metal stitches held together ancient wounds and in two places the skin was bulged at the edges of black metal plating set into the skull. One eye was cybernetic and a tube went from the armor and up into the figure's nose.

Hetmwit realized that the deep bass rumble of the armored figure's voice was close to Captain Decken's when the Captain spoke.

"Over forty-thousand years have passed for you while I slumbered," Decken said. He reached forward and put one hand on the armored chest that was eye level with him. "It is not my place to judge the decision we made during my slumber."

There was silence a moment. "I am relieved. Strangely so."

"I am just glad to see we yet live," the Captain said. He looked at Hetmwit. "If you will excuse me, brother, my executive officer is here."

"You must attend to your duty," the armored version said. It set one massive power armor gauntlet on Captain Decken's shoulder. "Go in the Digital Omnimessiah's Grace, brother."

"And you," Decken said.

The massive figure turned and left, passing by Hetmwit, who could smell scorched blood and overheated warsteel.

Hetmwit moved over to the Captain. "Was that you?"

Decken nodded. "The version of me that was not in slumber. He sided with Daxin the Unbowed and the Martial Orders of Holy Terra, serving with the Dark Crusade of Light in the civil war that shattered the Imperium. Joined Daxin and the rest of the Martial Orders when they retreated to Crusade Space," the Captain gave a deep sigh. "He wished to see me."

Hetmwit just nodded.

"Days gone by, Number One," Decken said. He moved over and sat down. "What did they say?"

Hetmwit shook his head. "I ran into my problem. I was talking to one, he blinked, then asked me who I was and wanted to know what I wanted. When the female showed up, she couldn't even see me and distracted the male, who then couldn't see me either."

Decken shook his head, smiling. "lt is what it is," he said. "I'll go speak to him. What about the Warbound?"

"It's coming along. The Dark Neko Sorceresses said he can be moved when we are ready," Hetmwit said. He looked around. "My mother and sisters want to stay here. They feel safe around all the Terrans now that the Crusade is here."

"All right," Decken said. He reached out and tapped an icon in the holotank. "If I'm right, this is the next world from your people that will come under assault to build this fence."

"Will we reach it in time?" Hetmwit asked.

Decken nodded. "We should."

"We need to find where they are coming from," Hetmwit said.

Decken nodded again. "That we do," he folded his hands, staring at the holotank. "We'll be taking on a full crew once the printers are up to speed. We're priority right now."

"And me?" Hetmwit asked, expecting to be replaced.

"You're my XO. You stay," Decken said, still staring at the star map in the holotank.

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"Entering Realspace in three..." the Lieutenant (SG) said from Navigation.

Captain N'Skrek nodded, even though he knew the LT wasn't looking at him.

They had jumped to original system the Mar-gite were coming in from, saw all the Mar-gite still warping in, ran a back plot, and had moved to hyperspace.

That was three weeks ago.

He knew they were faster than the Mar-gite. A lot faster.

"Two..."

The question was, what would be out here?

The first set of stellar systems between the galactic arms were gone according to temporal lensing. Whether by demolition by the defenders when all hope was lost or devouring by the Mar-gite was unknown.

What mattered is that the first system they had warped into, the system that N'Skrek had been forced from first, appeared to be the locus point. The stellar systems toward the other galactic arm had winked out, one after another, from the Confederate side, not the galactic arm side.

But the backplotting led to the empty space between the galactic arms. A fifth of the way back.

This would be the tenth drop along the possible cone, a third of the way across. Mathematically, it was also the closest angles to a cluster of stars that extended out slightly from the other galactic arm.

"One..."

The world suddenly went flat, like a painting, and N'Skrek found himself feeling like he was being slammed forward against the painting. He hit it and it shattered, reality painted on glass, the shards tumbling around him and showing him various versions of himself.

The pieces suddenly fragmented and pulled away to form the bridge.

A few of the crew were picking themselves up off the floor, glaring at the restraints which had done nothing.

The ship had entered realspace without the normal roar and the compensators were howling, but from the sounds of them none of them had blown out or were overstressed.

"Analyzing passive scan data now," Scanning and Targeting stated.

N'Skrek just nodded.

"Three... two.. one..." the tech said.

The holotank went live and N'Skrek lit a cigarette as he stared.

It was all he could do.

"By Menhit's voice," someone whispered.

"I'd say we were right on the money," LT (Junior Grade) Scarlet Strontium Sunset-6371992 said from the next over holotank.

"Indeed," N'Skrek said. The self-light caught and he inhaled the smoke.

"Look at the size of them," someone else said softly.

Data was appearing.

Mega-Clusters. Giga-Clusters. Tera-Clusters. Petra-Clusters.

They were serenely floating through the darkness, going to superluminal speeds, or coming out of it.

There were hundreds, thousands of them in the system.

That wasn't what had N'Skrek's attention.

There were eight constructs. Massive ones.

Rings, twice the diameter of a Petra-Cluster, held in succession by thin (by comparison) strips that kept each ring in line and hundred of miles distant from one another.

Each ring was part of a 'chute' of a dozen rings.

"Data coming back, analyzing," the Sensor technician said.

Captain N'Skrek just nodded, staring at the massive constructs.

A Petra-Cluster was moving through one and N'Skrek could see how it was lit up by visible light emanating from the inside of the ring even as it slowly rolled.

The data started appearing in the holotank.

The Petra-Cluster was roughly 2,000 miles at the wide end, a hundred at the narrow end, nearly twenty thousand miles long. It was longer than some planets were wide.

None of them had unrolled in any of the documented attacks.

They had all pushed through the system and warped out at the far side.

The Petra-Cluster was moving through the rings, which were five thousand miles in diameter, two hundred miles wide, and a fifty miles thick. The bands that held the rings in place were one hundred-fifty miles wide and twenty miles thick.

According to estimations they were under extreme sheer stresses, even though there was twenty of those strips evenly spaced around the massive circle. They were also over five hundred miles long.

"Now we know how they're refueling," LT(JG) Sunset said.

There were twenty of the massive constructs.

"We can't fight all of those clusters," Commodore Sesslinshar said from his Master Guns station.

"Gravity singularity mass driver broadsides will destroy a lot, but we'll be overrun by them before we destroy half," Captain N'Skrek said, nodding. He looked up. "Are the singularity cannons even working yet?"

Commodore Sesslinshar nodded.

"I have an idea," Captain N'Skrek said, staring at the holotank. He turned and faced the Bridge crew. "Run this by Nav-Int and our tactical analysis section."

There were nods.

"We launch fruit-flies. They're up and running. Each with a C++ cannon single shot vessel, armed with a singularity shell, as well as a dual pack of C+ missile launchers loaded with high impulse graviton inversion shockwave weapons," N'Skrek said. "We have a superluminal com-buoy loaded up and move it here," he tapped a section in between where he'd boxed the area for the fruit-flies. "Once the fruit-flies are in position, we launch the buoy. When it arrives, we run targeting for eleven seconds, no more, no less, and the fruit flies fire."

He moved around, pulling out the types of constructs and arranging them smallest to largest, then numbering them from two up.

"Each construct gets this many fruit flies full load," he tapped the rings of one of the constructs. "Each 'ring' gets four hits each."

"We have a decoy torpedo loaded into the fruit fly area. As soon as they fire, the decoy fires up and takes off for," he tapped the middle missing system in the string. "This system."

"We set a course for this direction, distance to be set at one half of known Petra-Construct maximum distance in warp," N'Skrek said. "We wait to see the results of our fire via the superluminal buoy, then we wait. If we are undetected, we start arranging a second salvo to clean up, otherwise, if we even suspect we are detected, we jump."

Everyone nodded.

"Have Nav-Int and Analysis go over the plan," he said.

"Those constructs are big. Nav-Int might want a better look at them," Commodore Mervak said.

"Then tell Nav-Int to print out a rowboat with one of the creation engines and feel free to row right over there," he said. He tapped one of the constructs moving through the rings. "That single construct contains trillions of Mar-gite, all happy to eat anything they find."

He turned away.

"Let's get to work."