Epilogue

Federation Logistics Admiral Naime Naime sat at his desk and blinked rapidly to keep his eyes moist.

It wasn’t a commonly known fact, but erivada eyes were somewhat irritatingly fragile when it came to ambient humidity levels, and the standard screens the Federation used at most of its terminals had the unfortunate habit of drying one’s eyes out.

He didn’t need the moisturising spray in his desk just yet, but even after a mere hour, he was considering it.

He couldn’t complain too much. His office was situated within one of the larger Federation-standard stations, one with multiple centrifuge rings.

Another disadvantage his species had was related to their bones. They were designed for flight, something that the species had been unable to do for a thousand generations. Still, their once-flying ancestry meant that their bones were thin and hollow, and continued time spent in low-or-no gravity only weakened them further.

There were several things that made it difficult to be an erivada. Despite all that, his species was one of the great ones within the Federation. They made up for physical frailty and low rates of hatching with a superior intellect.

There were supplements that could be taken to prevent loss of bone density, and time spent exercising and in gravity could assist or reverse any issues. There wasn’t much that could be done for stupidity.

Stupidity like what he was looking at now.

A little over four standard days ago, just outside the edge of Federation space, a Commodore Bellowsti of the Special Quadrant Nine Stealth Task Force had executed a plan that, on the surface, seemed halfway competent.

It had, of course, blown up spectacularly.

He wouldn’t be looking over it himself if the plan had gone off without a hitch, of course.

The worst part was that he couldn’t even dismiss the entire thing as poor planning and poorer risk management. The commodore had taken steps to mitigate obvious issues and had presented the plan to analysts who gave some suggestions before eventually giving the commodore the go-ahead.

It was only a terrible plan in hindsight.

Those were the worst cases to go over. Now the admiral would have to dissect exactly why the operation had failed.

With a warble of suppressed displeasure, he opened all the files related to the incident.

The start was simple. The racers came in, encountered a Bolgian blockade, and fought past it. He was tempted to skip past that. All the sensor data they had of that part of the incident was taken from long range, or donated by some of the surviving racers themselves. Some of that data was surprisingly good.

He had a lot more to work on on the Federation side of things. The commodore had spread out his forces to defend the asteroids he was using as kinetic kill vehicles. That was a massive violation of several treaties, but they technically didn’t apply outside of Federation space.

The commodore, it seemed, had a gift for skirting what was or wasn’t legal. The admiral made note of that in part of the commodore’s file which would be classified to anyone below his own rank. There were some sections of the Federation where that kind of thinking was prized.

The event continued to play itself out, and he idly made notes, tracking small mistakes on the Federation’s part. Mostly those amounted to poor use of standard equipment, or slower-than-advisable communications.

Tiny, minuscule mistakes that wouldn’t even earn a captain a reprimand under normal circumstances.

While the rigidity of the Federation and its many protocols had their place, they were often set aside in favour of more natural movements.

The asteroids were launched on their hours-long voyage across the system, guarded by a mix of lighter vessels.

The blockade over the system’s inhabited world broke apart as it responded to the aggression of the Tyrant Cracker racers. He made a few notes about that. The Federation, like the Bolgians, were used to combat being either entirely one-sided, such as when they chased down dissidents and pirates, or against a properly organised force.

It had been a long time since they’d seen a proper war, but the training they did and the protocols they followed prepared their people for that kind of fighting.

What the racers were using was pure, disorganised chaos. The kind of thing that was useless to attempt to predict. No two ships were alike, and none of the pilots were operating under the same rules and instincts.

It, surprisingly, allowed them to be far more effective than they should have been.

There were a few stand-outs, ships which were far superior to what the Bolgians had, but that was to be expected. The race had a fair number of fans, for all its dubious legality. There was prestige in winning it. It stood to reason that some of the participants would have good backing.

The race continued planet-ward while the Federation’s fleet approached.

He skipped ahead a little. There wasn’t much worth noting, not with the terrible data they had collected. There was an interesting weapon deployed on the planet, but the actual cause wasn’t certain. He flagged that for another analyst to study at a later time.

Things got a lot more interesting afterwards, as the Bolgians reacted to the Federation’s presence and the Federation fleet started to speed up their operation.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He judged that to be the correct course of action. They had caught their opponent unprepared. They had to capitalise on that.

Had the Bolgians discovered the fleet themselves? If they had a system in place to detect incoming traffic, they’d need to know if they ever planned on taking the system later. No, he discovered that wasn’t the case. Someone had warned them, one of the racers.

The admiral added a note and moved on. It was possible the racer had been lucky, or they had a better sensor suite.

He listened to the unencrypted broadcast sent by one of the racers and cawed disapprovingly. That complicated things for the fleet, but it was a logical move for the racer. Tying up an adversary for a temporary advantage.

Some would have seen it as dishonourable to press the Federation like that, but in the moment, one’s only ally was often themselves.

The race continued. The Bolgians reacted as planned. Commodore Bellowsti must have researched the Bolgians extensively. He added a very minor commendation to his record.

Finally, he came to the point where everything fell apart.

It was interesting to see the flood of data from the fleet turn into such a garbled mess. Interesting, but always disconcerting. There wasn’t much he could personally do about it.

The racers actually destroyed some smaller Federation ships on their way by. A crude but clear sign of disrespect. Almost fair, seeing as how the Federation had stepped into their event and subjugated it for their own use, but… no, there was no way to punish them directly for it, but some form of reprimand would have to be used.

One of the racers split off from the rest: the same one who had made the broadcast warning the Bolgians.

He made a note to his future-self to rewatch the entire event and follow that particular craft and competitor. And, because he was wise and knew better than to trust only himself, he added a note to have a few analysts do the same.

The small ship nimbly dodged around the fleet’s anaemic fire, then it delivered disproportionate damage for its size. Not because of the power of its weaponry, but because of their precision. Another strange anomaly.

The fleet continued on with its plan. And that, perhaps, was the mistake.

Too often the introduction of a chaotic element was ignored. After all, they tended to be minor issues at best. But chaos, he found, was multiplicative and exponential.

The ship dropped a bomb near the centre of the Federation formation, an electromagnetic pulse bomb. Their ships would be hardened against such a crude thing, but it nonetheless seemed somewhat effective. Enough to allow the vessel to crash though a cruiser’s shields.

The admiral cawed in displeasure. A cruiser injured so much by a ship a hundredth its size.

The rest of the plan carried on as Commodore Bellowsti desired it to. Then the broadcast from the cruiser began.

He knew there was already a legal team poring over that, but he made a note to see the results of their findings.

Of interest was the person’s voice and language. A few known species could imitate the voice and tones correctly enough that they couldn’t point to a species in particular. The language though, was entirely unknown. They had linguists working on it. Another note.

The chaos was perfectly timed to multiply itself ten times over.

The admiral sat back as he read about Federation ships being destroyed from within their formation, ships having their shields struck from behind with unerring precision. The flagship’s engines were ripped apart with what some might have called a few lucky shots, but he didn’t believe it.

Then the Bolgian fleet was on top of them.

The captured cruiser was destroyed, but not before a small, unknown craft escaped it.

He didn’t know what to think of that. Where had it come from, and who was on board? If it escaped from the hangar, then why wasn’t it destroyed? Was it all a coincidence? Someone planted in the cruiser, somehow, with a crew to take the craft over and who then escaped?

He decided not to draw any conclusions yet.

The chaos continued to roll onwards. Federation ships were knocked aside or disabled. The Bolgians were losing vessels too, but the numbers were on their side.

By the time the two fleets were inside of each other’s engagement range, the plan was in shambles. Half the Federation fleet had sustained moderate to serious damage.

The commodore made the right call, he realised, when he called for the fleet to escape.

It still cost them. They had to evacuate the flagship, and its scuttling charges failed to detonate.

They’d just given the Bolgians a modern stealth warship. That had some potential to complicate things in the future.

Still, nearly half the fleet made it out of the system, limping and injured, but still capable.

The admiral closed his eyes. They were burning from the strain.

He opened his drawer and pulled out a moisturising spray. It hurt to apply, but he needed it, and the pain was temporary. A lot of the chaos came from a single source: Diana Slowbane, the last winner of the Tyrant Cracker.

There was footage of a strange, pink-skinned bipedal alien cheering next to some of the other racers. For some reason, it was spraying the others with the spray from a glass bottle while baring its teeth.

What kind of strange monster were they dealing with here?

***