“We, we want to sign up to fight the invasion!” Peter blurted out breathlessly, as if he was getting something big off his chest.

DiDi sat back, looking at him and MJ sitting there in her office. Peter was naturally far more nervous than his fiancée. “And why are you asking me?” she asked them, eyebrow arched.

“Direct line to the top without being in the chain of command!” MJ replied promptly. “You’ve been taking turns in Negative Zone raids after your work day is done, right?” she grinned at DiDi knowingly.

“I have an Ultra Lightning Core, and so am by default a member of the Ultra Corps and obligated to uphold the responsibilities it was issued to me under,” DiDi confirmed calmly. “Granted, I am managing tens of billions of dollars of assets here on Terra, so there is some leeway in my contributions.”

“You’ve got one of the specialized Cores?” Peter squeaked. “How big?” he asked hesitantly.

DiDi sighed. “I’ve a Ten Lightning Core.” Both of her guests blinked despite themselves. They knew how powerful a Ten Core could be, as Dynamo had one and was an absolute monster because of it. “Because of it, there is no way they can let me sit on the sidelines. When the fighting starts in earnest, I’ll have to take leave and have a couple Simulacra take over for me.” She regarded the two of them. “Red, you’re a Sixteen now, but that’s a Melee Primary. You’re literally made to be an infantry commander and champion. Peter, your reflexes and danger sense mean you’re made to be a fighter pilot. If you do this, you won’t be fighting together. You’ll be in separate spheres of combat.”

“There’s actually going to be infantry engagements?” MJ asked, startled. “Isn’t that, like, really stupid at this level?”

“Yes. Nevertheless, the N-Zoners are techno-barbarians and biodrones, and love their horde tactics. Furthermore, it is totally possible to fortify a world and make it very hard to break with energy bombardments, at the same time keeping it vulnerable to army actions.

“Additionally, the Negative Zone’s invasion will be both ship-based incursions and planetary Portal invasions, if they can do so.

“The goal is not to win the battles; it is to kill as many of the enemy as possible. An enemy who doesn’t hunker down, prosecute a proper siege, and attempts to win with numbers and fanaticism is the perfect enemy to eradicate in massive numbers.

“If they use massive bombardment, they destroy the planet they want to seize and use for their own. Thus, if they want to take the living world, they have to commit troops and forces, and we have to kill them.”

“So, carpet-bombing is fine, just not with nukes?” Red MJ reasoned with a nod. “And in the end it will come down to fortifications, firearms, and fists...”

“At which point our troops will inevitably lose and die, it just remains to see how quickly. We expect the fighting on D’bari to be horrific. Red, if you want to sign up, that’s where you’re going to be assigned,” DiDi warned her.

“But-!” Peter started to speak out, and then DiDi’s cool eyes fixed on him, stilling his tongue.

“You don’t have the experience flying in combat, Peter, which is mostly because you don’t have the mindset. But if you want to do this, you’re going right on the front lines, outnumbered a hundred to one and more, and you’re going to be flying through Hell. Your spider-sense is going to be screaming at you all the time, for hours straight, you’re going to be pulling g’s that would pulp normal people, your reflexes are going to be severely tested, and it doesn’t matter how many of them you kill, we are still going to lose.

“Your goal isn’t to win, and it isn’t to hold. It’s to utterly slaughter as many as you can, in any way you can.

“There’s an emulator on Venus of something like we expect the first fight to be like. I can send you to it if you like. You’ll be in it for twenty-four hours straight, and if you can’t survive that, you’ve no chance in actual combat.” DiDi’s lips thinned. “Less than five percent of the pilots last that long, but most of them aren’t superhuman enough and don’t have the endurance. In actual combat, we’d have to cycle them in and out of combat due to exhaustion, or they’d just die within an hour.

“You don’t have formal Top Gun training for airborne vehicular combat. You do have tons of edges others don’t, and I’m sure you’ll start picking up tricks very quickly.

“But you’ll have to be a soldier, Peter. You have to go through at least basic training on the organizational side. You’re going to have to learn to use firearms properly, squad and company tactics, and then take those into vehicular combat.”

Peter took a deep breath. “I’ll do it,” he agreed, and MJ gave his arm a squeeze.

“I’ll need to redo some basics, too,” Red MJ stated as well. “I presume at least some things have changed since the Hyborian Age, while others remained relentlessly the same.” Her tone was whimsical. Red Sonja had a great deal of medieval-level soldiering experience.

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“Yes. We can really accelerate the process with telepathy, of course. The Rogers’ telepathic indoctrination course is incredible for post-humans. Then, of course, we have to get you into an appropriate ship.” DiDi gave Peter a catlike smile.

“Should I have looked into our ship designs more?” he asked cautiously.

“No, we have something for post-human pilots. We’re already doing genemods for reflexes, but the endurance and strength enhancements are somewhat harder without moving to cybernetics. We give it another year or two before the whole physical setup is ready. We can’t Erskine broadly, because that would lead to disaster, so one step at a time.

“Sticking Shields and Widows into standard starfighters is a waste of talent, so we specifically came up with a post-human gunship design, single and multi-seater models. The multi-Seater is the Scutum-class, made for Shields working with Widows or other high-reflex gunners. The single-seater is the Buckler-Class, made for people like you, or Shields flying solo.

“It isn’t a fighter, it’s a gunship. It can take hits no fighter can, it has a whole lot more firepower, and if it isn’t quite as agile, in the hands of a great pilot, it can do everything it needs to.

“It’s Xandaran-Stark tech, so it’s got all the firepower it needs, too. Reqs on it are pretty high, especially since it has a living pilot. Most of the other smaller ships are drones, linked up through the Nova Force.”

Peter blinked. “Will that neutralize the jammers?” he asked quickly. Using drones in space battles was hugely vulnerable to jamming of all types, so it just wasn’t done unless your opponents had vastly inferior tech.

“As long as there’s a Nova Corpsman within a million miles to serve as an anchor, there’s no issues. It downgrades to a psi-link otherwise, and that becomes susceptible to jamming, particularly from the hiveminds among the aliens, and is impossible if we’re jamming their swarm-links ourselves. We aren’t even trying hyperwaves.” And we all knew electromagnetics would be entirely too slow, while AI’s would be running into standard causality shifters and be nigh-on useless for targeting.

“We can definitely make drones faster than crewed fighters, too,” he nodded. “The gunships won’t work the same way?”

“The reactor pumps out too much energy to keep a link stable through the Nova Force. It’s also why you can’t drone-pilot capital-class vessels, which frankly would be ideal.”

“Yeah, that’s a lot of room and power wasted on living space and life support,” Peter agreed. “Am I rolling for a single or triple?” he wondered.

“Unless you’ve got gunners who can keep up with your reflexes and stamina, you’re better off with a single.”

MJ nudged him. “Gwen and Cindy?” she said knowingly.

“Yeah, but they’d be better off with their own ships, if they can pilot them, right?” Peter glanced at DiDi.

“It would be like having three Shields on one vessel. Definitely overkill. Of course, there’s a mindset you need for that sort of thing. Gunning is video-game shoot-‘em-up stuff, when it comes down to it. The pilot is going for the throat, plotting out what to hit, to destroy, throwing themselves into the teeth of the enemy and believing they can live through it.

“Neither of the girls have that mindset, but they can both play video games.

“So, yeah, go ask them.” DiDi drummed her desk absently. “If they want to sign up, we’ll make a custom model Scutum for you, just so as to not waste their talents.

“Also, you’ll be in armor, not a uniform. Wire up Fixer and ask for the specs, you can make the modification designs yourself, we can print them off on Venus. First priority survival, last priority fun fwip-fwips.”

“Aww...” Peter murmured, and MJ leaned over against him.

“She means don’t spend a lot of time agonizing over uber upgrades to your webshooters, honey. This is war.”

“Oh, right.” He nodded quickly. “I’ve got someone really annoying around to keep me on track for that stuff, Di!” He gave his fiancée a nudge, and she nearly elbowed him out of his chair in return.

“You, Red, need to ask Sama if there’s anything you need to bring along or have made. I’m pretty sure you won’t wear hard armor, but you’re going to need some protection from shrapnel and the like. Monomolecular cutting edges are no joke.”

MJ bobbed her head. “Got it. Knowing her, she’s already got me covered.”

DiDi knew Sama had storerooms full of Stuff she’d Crafted over the decades, and since she never really stopped, there’d be plenty of useful stuff there, and doubles of it.

“You’ll get your orders by tomorrow, so get packed up and ready to move out to Venus for training. Where you’ll end up deployed for training, well, we’ve got places.” DiDi eyed them both. “Did you ask your brothers about this?”

He fidgeted slightly, and MJ sighed and elbowed him again. “Uh, they said they were gonna sign up if I was going to, they didn’t care about the family rules!”

“Except Terry and Jessica,” MJ added. “Ben and John both declared they’d be going, too.”

“And you can’t stop them, so don’t try. They’ve already stared death in the face, thinking they might dissolve into goop and slime at any moment because a madman pushed a button. You may have put the dust of that bastard in an unmarked grave, but that doesn’t mean you can tell them to piss off looking after you.

“If the girls don’t want to go, and they probably don’t, then bring your brothers along. They can handle it.”

“I can’t imagine Gwen and Cindy not volunteering...” MJ frowned.

“Oh, me either. But they’ll want a nice, big capital ship around them, where they can put their skills to work. The two of them can run a whole battery of lances and point defenses with no problem. While zipping around in space is cool, they’re going to be shooting ducks out of the sky... a LOT of ducks.” DiDi glanced away. “Mandatory cryokinetic training for a lot of Psions right now, you know?”

Big guns needed to be cooled, after all.

“All right, I’ll go tell Ben and John. MJ, you tell the girls?” he asked her.

“Of course!” she nodded.

DiDi smiled slightly. “Qualify for Darkhawk Squadron, and I might see you in the Negative Zone! Also, see the Justice of the Peace before you go.”

Peter’s eyes popped. “The Justice of...” Even MJ blinked.

“You can have the real wedding later. Nobody needs to know but you, but if something happens, those Rings will mean something.”

They looked at one another, saw the agreement in the other’s eyes, and left her office without another word, hand-in-hand.