Derek studied the operations plan for the upcoming assault. Someone had divided the original number of estimated Mimics needed by 20 somewhere along the line; by picking out 85 star systems which had stars that, if caused to go nova, would eradicate all Mag activity within a substantial radius. Unlike the incident at Sol, most of the star's mass would be left in real-space; but still. The resulting detonations would make hyperspace travel difficult in the region for years to come, and possibly even cause a few secondary supernovas; a few of these stars were over 200 times the size of Sol, and would create a radius of almost 100 light-years in which few, if any, of the Mags would survive.

If he'd caught the change of plans before the revelation, he would likely have argued against the idea; just in case the enemy had FTL comms, and could build hyperdrives to escape. Instead, he was going along with it; and carefully shutting down the hyperspace relays and scrubbing their data. For the moment, things needed to be kept secret. These relays could be re-used as a communications network once humanity started colonizing the cluster.

As he looked over the patterns with a grim acceptance of the sheer amount of life that would be wiped out in the coming years... a knock came on his office door. A knock? He shut down the display, and glanced at his icon, no message alerts waiting... and then looked up at the opening door. Of course he hadn't set any sort of security. Its not like... Kelsey?

As she stepped into the room, he stared at her face for a moment. Pale skin, long black hair, green eyes. A more muscled, athletic form than when he'd first met her... but she'd acquired most of that in the academy right alongside him. Even Onyx, the tiny black dragon who he'd helped design for her... and was surprised she kept. But then, even if it wasn't real, it was probably rude to stare.

"Ahem. Ahh... Officer Danvers. How can I help you today?"

"Oh, screw off with that. The version of me that hated you died on the Shanghai, and the version that pretended to still hate you died in the Beta system. God knows how many of me will die before this is over. We were friends once. Should still be. Derek."

He smiled. "Well. I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't been hoping for that for a while...Though. Well. You didn't so much die as just.... switched bodies."

"I was alive, then I died. Then a new me woke up in a machine body." She lifts up her fingers, studying them. "One of ten thousand robots jammed into a ship to go build a new world. And... I was still clinging onto this fact. Which I knew was false. That the old you was some homicidal maniac, hell-bent on hijacking a ship and turning pirate, or causing some mass-murdering terrorist attack with its engines. I knew you for over a decade... and let what that brain malfunction did to you ruin any chance for us. I knew you weren't a killer the whole time. I just refused to admit it."

Derek glanced down at the console. "I don't know. Maybe I am a killer after all. How many people... and how many Mags.. are going to die from my decisions?"

She gave a low chuckle. A sound that he could remember his fake Kelsey AI back home give as she reported the news. A beautiful sound... but..He abruptly decided that she did not, under any circumstances, need to know about that.

"Look. I've died to kill these things now. And I'm gonna do it again. I'm not just a killer, I'm a suicide bomber. Did you know they aren't even sticking full bodies on the Mimics for the final run? I'm just going to be a computer box, running the controls, and as soon as the mimic leaves... I wake back up on the destroyer. And get two sets of memories later for its terminal dive into the sun. Both diving in... and watching myself dive."

"That.... seems like it would be a bit unnerving. Being unable to walk, move, or feel..."

"Oh, it's not as bad as it seems. It'll feel like I am the ship... the guns my fists, the engines my feet... swimming through space, with emotions dialed down so I don't panic. Tons of people had emotion overrides, but everybody gets them for this part."

She rests her hands on the desk. "The me thats here, right now... I know the truth. But with my emotions turned up... I can't handle being around you. I'd still like to talk. Be friends. But... when this is over, and we get flesh and blood bodies again... I want to die one last time. I want to get rid of this robot... erase all my memories of the war... and go back to who I was at the academy. Start over."

"I..." He thought back to his last conversation with Commodore Peterson. Who was, even now, selectively editing Dr. Kent's memories. "They can do that. But are you sure you want to?"

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"Yes. And honestly, I think you should, too."

***

The gathered fleet was massive; back in Sol, the five hundred and seven ships gathered together would have called for an Admiral to lead them; even if most of them were Mimics, essentially single-use weapons platforms. Even so; some of the members had yet to be built. It would take 2 years to reach the outermost Mag systems... so while the ships destined to cleanse the close-in systems, and nova the mid-range ones; were still being built, this fleet would move for the very heart of the Mag presence; or, at least, its presence in the Milky Way, as it was very possible the initial source was extragalactic.

Compared to what they were facing, however... it was tiny. The idea that it would work was absurd... but they had to make it work.

In a now-familiar pattern, most of the ships had substantial chunks of asteroid or other raw materials attached or stuffed into the mostly hollow Mimics; allowing them to continue fabricating weapons and parts throughout the journey. The 13, of course, was following suit; and in addition to three mimics, had a giant chunk of rock secured against its side.

An enormous wave of purple and red formed in front of the fleet; the strange bright purple of local hyperspace flickering in the darkness in the moments before the fleet departed. The most dramatically outnumbered assault in all of human history; making even the last stand of the 300 at Thermopylae look like a fair fight; was underway.

Once there in hyperspace, the fleet split off into dozens of subsections, at different acceleration rates; all aiming for different stars, at different speeds. Only the dyson spheres and absolute most concentrated stars had multiple Destroyers heading their way; any of the lesser systems that the mimics failed at... would simply have to be left be until a new attack could be formed.

***

Captain Derek Thompson. It should've been a moment of joy. He'd dreamed of being a captain someday; and while playing Earthforge, he'd always dreamed of commanding exactly this sort of ship. But now... here he was. Captain of the 13, cruising off to command one of four potential dyson spheres that they needed to cleanse.

Ones which, if he were right, might have already consumed everything in their systems and be ready to burst open in a tide of death for every non-Mag life-form in the galaxy. Or have already done so; radio strictly traveled at lightspeed, after all.

Even more impressive, he was technically a commodore himself at the moment; when Captain Amari moved on to command the Anvil station rather than the 13, she'd placed him in charge of the 'Task Group' sent to the target system. He had a moment's thought that perhaps Peterson had wanted her safely out of harms way for personal reasons... but no. Two destroyers, nine mimics. And enough raw materials to build a veritable host of railgun slugs; and even some smaller, Gunship-class mimics.

Which, Derek fully knew, were essentially Mag children. They were disguising weapons to wipe out all of the Mags as those that the they would most want to protect. Looking at the video of the marine boarding encounter... it even seemed thats what the carrier had tried. Once it was wounded, telling its children to flee, to hide behind it, as it tried to hold off its attackers.

He put aside the moral ramifications of that... though it did make Kelsey's idea of turning back time on his memories a touch more appealing... and focused on the future. To him, the two years of the transit were speeding by. The engineers knew what they needed to do; and were fabricating things at, to him, an insanely rapid pace. He sped up now and again to respond to questions... but the cruise through hyperspace wasn't the time for any of that.

Some of the crew were concerned about the timing; that the enemy might be able to figure out what they were doing, and defend against it, if some systems fell while others lived. He wanted to reassure them that the Mags simply weren't that smart. That they didn't have guns, shields, or point defense systems; but essentially teeth and claws.

Best get this over with. Days ticked down like minutes as he watched the screen. Kelsey; commanding one of the Mimics attached to the 13; had pinged him, once, at the beginning; but then left him alone. He'd responded, after a while, with a simple, terse message.

"I'll think about it. If you'd asked me when I first saw you, I'd probably have said yes without a second thought. But right now.. we need to focus on the work."

***

Derek's task group emerged from hyperspace a full light-month away from the Mag system designated 'D-3'; the third of four massive clusters of radio signals with no associated star, believed to be a Dyson sphere. When the group arrived... it established almost instantly that that was, in fact, the case.

So many trillions of solar panels encircled the star that it was only visible through modest cracks and gaps in the continuously swirling sphere of panels; most of those gaps at the top and bottom of the star relative to what was, once, the ecliptic; with no more planets, it was clear there was no true ecliptic anymore; the only evidence of its former existence was the pattern of spinning objects.

"Task group D-3, advance. Launch all probes, active scans, in a good circular pattern around the star. Fire up railguns. Once we get a good picture of whats going on inside that sphere, we can ready our plan of attack."

This thing was massive. Sure, it was an organic, living thing, rather than some artificial construction. But the sheer scale of such a thing... it almost seemed blasphemous to destroy it.

And there was always the possibility that there was some later life-stage of the Mags he didn't know about; but if there were... he'd find out soon enough.