Commodore Abbas al-Salem was transferred to Battlefleet Chiyou. This was done by the hands of Admiral Tang. Marshal Popov had wrestled a concession from her: to allow parts of her oversized fleet to be used as reserves for the coming campaign. Battlefleet Chiyou numbered 35,000 ships, far outstripping any other fleet. Even Battlefleet Aegis, the fleet defending the capital, only numbered 30,000 ships.

“Well, if my fleet is going to be led by other officers, I will choose the officers for it,” Admiral Tang requested. Naturally, she chose her own chief-of-staff, who in turn picked Abbas as her second-in-command. The two met in one of the fleet’s ships, the Quetzalcoatl.

“Alright, Abbas,” Yue said. The two had dropped the honorifics long ago. “You’ll be leading the snake ships, and some destroyers and smaller craft. Here’s your flagship: the Quetzalcoatl.”

The snake ships were a special sort of ship: more heavily armed and faster than a battleship, but much more fragile. Developed by Admiral Kadita’s hand-picked engineers of Terraria Defence Group, these were first used by Battlefleet Heaven, before spreading to the other frontier fleets. By now, Joint Headquarters had grudingly acknowledged their use and was ramping up production, renaming them “fast battleships”. Imperial authorities, on the other hand, was loathe to copy.

Quetzalcoatl, the name of the Aztec sun god of the ancient past. The ship was colored red and green. “Not the easiest name to say, is it?” Abbas half-joked.

“Well, whoever named it is a genius,” said the mythologically ignorant Yue scathingly. Perhaps an Aztec might be able to pronounce it quickly in the heat of the battlefleet; though, with the ethnic races of the Republic having intermingled to quite an extent, determining the exact ethnicity of someone was a tough task.

For the weeks coming up to the invasion, Yue and Abbas trained together with drills with the fleet. Abbas’ friend, Henry, was even busier. The Rear Service, after hearing of the decision to invade, collectively let out a sigh as they procured supplies and arranged supply lines. The sickly Admiral Karunaratne was, as Henry would recall, “running around like a manic pixie with a magic wand that spawned supply lines and plans”.

In the Republic’s capital of Lephelia, there lied a cabinet that really couldn’t be bothered with it. The Robertson Administration was a fragile compromise between the various parties; Chairman Robertson himself was a largely modest and not-too-popular but uncontroversial chairman, but now he had ideas about a second term.

With that in mind, he had allied himself with one of the two big power blocs in Republican politics. Strictly speaking, there were at least ten thousand political parties, but with the big issue being the war, they had conveniently divided themselves into two blocs: the ‘Flares’, a pro-peace movement named after Albert Flare, its founder, and the ‘Whitmores’, a pro-war group whose name’s origins are unclear.

Right now Chairman Robertson had allied with the Whitmores, whose popularity grew significantly after Alvisa. Ironically, Abbas’ victory had obstructed his own dream of peace. He had hoped that a succesful invasion would propel his own popularity enough for re-election.

It was under this condition that 120,000 ships, alongside almost 800 million men, were sent to fight.

To hear Admiral Potiorek put it, this was a great opportunity.

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“Is it not a good opportunity to bloody the imps’ noses?” he boasted to his subordinates at the dinner party before launch.

The commander of the reserve fleet, Rear Admiral Yue, wasn’t around. She was having a talk with Admiral Tang. She couldn’t quite get the latter’s words out of her head when she returned to dinner:

“It’s not without its positives. The light of greater stars make the lesser stars seem dim; even if the lesser stars might grow to a great light. So long as you’re my chief-of-staff, even if you score achievements, it’ll just end up being credited to me. You’ve got to come out of my shadow, eventually; it may as well be now.”

A silent salute was all she could muster. This was the first time she held independent command. Admiral Tang had lent her her own flagship: the turtle ship Tiangong; besides that she had seven thousand vessels under her direct command and three thousand under Abbas’.

“We sure are awfully young compared to everyone else,” Abbas whispered to her. There was only the two of them at that particular table.

“Oh, certainly.”

Abbas was only twenty-two, and Yue twenty-eight. In contrast, even the “young” Admiral Potiorek was already forty-six. Most others were in their fifties and sixties.

“Everyone, give your all for the glory of the Republic!” Chairman Robertson expended his five hundred years’ worth of charisma in this one sentence, stoking the flames in Admiral Potiorek’s veins.

Admiral Kadita, the most senior of the commanding officers, shook her long, white hair. “Vanity,” she said to herself. Famed as the “Unstoppable Lance”, having broken through imperial defences at the legendary Battle of Istoria, there was now a certain disgust and exhaustedness in her eyes.

There was a bloody intermezzo before the launch. Admiral Karunaratne suffered a stroke and passed away. His position was taken by the freshly promoted Admiral Ali.

The grand invasion—ehem, liberation—fleet launched from Planet Temphoria in the frontier. Abbas was taking in the experience of commanding a fleet from his flagship when a young, blonde woman came to salute him.

“Lieutenant Alice Black, reporting for aide duty, Sir,” she said with a sort of unmatched vigor. Abbas returned her salute rather clumsily. As a lieutenant, Alice Black was three ranks below him. There was an unmistakable tremor on her legs.

“Are you nervous?” Abbas asked, smiling.

“Er, this is my first real combat assignment, Sir, and it’s such a big operation. I’m a little nervous, yes.”

Abbas nodded. “Don’t worry. It’s my first real commanding assignment, as well.”

“Oh, but you’re the Hero of Alvisa, Sir!”

Abbas was beginning to wonder how long this ‘Hero of Alvisa’ thing would hound him.

“In any case, our fleet is just a sub-fleet—of the reserve force, to boot. We won’t be fighting too much, I think,” Abbas said. “You can go.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Ship captain Bon came to greet Abbas as well. “We’re ready to launch, Sir. The signal’s been given.”

Abbas nodded. “Then launch.”

In Quetzalcoatl, whispers were exchanged between the gunners.

“I heard a kid was appointed as our leader this time,” one sneered.

“He might be a kid, but he’s already called the Hero of Alvisa,” another argued.

“It was just one battle,” the first gunner said.

“Admiral Tang trusted him. That is enough for me,” a third one interfered, and silenced the others.

At around this time, Abbas began writing a memoir, or a diary of sorts. The first entry was written such:

I have to admit I have some unease, though it is probably just the nerve of a beginner. My greater unease is the general aim of the campaign, which to me seems a bit far-fetched, to put it lightly. At the very least I am the second-in-command of a reserve fleet; my chance of living, alongside my crew, is higher.

In his office, Wilson Kaufmann watched as events unfolded with delight. A number of the Republic’s governors had ordered a number of patrol boats recently, but more importantly, the two great powers were about to clash once more.

“Who do you think will win?” his younger sister and assistant, Petra, asked as the two shared a bottle of wine.

“I don’t know. That’s part of the fun,” he replied. “But I think the Empire is at an disadvantage. They haven’t mobilized anything, and there are only two fleets in Thalassa.”

25th of October, 2601, the Republic launched its first large-scale invasion fleet in more than four decades.