"Kilroy," the human's voice was devoid of emotion. "Do Stinger units have jumpdrives?"

"Negative," said the Peacekeeper. "We are not able to manufacture jumpdrives, yet."

"Good." The Captain opened a comm to the rest of the Peacekeepers. "Attention, all forces. The Vore assimilate technology. We can't let them get yours. Every ship equipped with a jump drive needs to prepare for self destruct. Blow the reactor the second you're infected. If those bastards get a jump drive the entire galaxy is fucked." He paused. "And try not to get infected. We've lost enough people today."

Yvian should have been concerned about the possibility of dooming all life in the verse, but she wasn't. She had bigger problems. The Vore were coming for the planet. For her planet. Yvian's mouth went dry. The Vore Sphere accelerated faster than anything she'd ever seen. It continued to reconfigure itself, activating shields that were nearly the equal of Klaath Queenship.

"I'm plotting an intercept course." Captain Mims was steady as a rock. Cold and professional. He must be shitting his pants. "We'll make contact in four hours, thirty seven minutes."

"Can we stop them?" Lissa's voice was nervous, high pitched. She'd seen the Battle of Dorado, too. The humans had hit the Vore with everything, with fleets and weapons that could grind the entire Pixen Stellar Defense Force to dust. They had been completely ineffective. The Vore had consumed them all.

"I don't know." The Ballbreaker hummed as the human pushed it's engines as hard as they would go. "If we can get close enough, Skygem can shut them down. Probably. But that still leaves the bigger sphere to do what it wants."

"Spheres," Kilroy corrected. "The larger mass has divided into two."

Yvian focused in on the sensors. The larger mass of Vore had just finished cutting itself in half. The halves moved away from each other, each forming back up into a ball. The balls, each the size of a small moon, activated shields an order of magnitude above what their smaller counterpart had produced. Even if the Peacekeepers and the Klaath worked together, with every ship in the sector, Yvian doubted they could put a dent in it.

"That's... not good." The Captain was silent for a moment. "Zhukov, this is Mims. Prepare for Last Resort."

"If we activate the Last Resort," said the Peacekeeper Admiral, "it might stop the Vore, but it will not stop the Klaath, and we'll be helpless as long as it's active."

"That's why it's the Last Resort," Mims agreed. "We've got four hours. Maybe less. We need to kill the other Queens and get as many Peacekeepers out of the area as we can."

The two massive Vore Spheres burst into motion. They were faster than the one headed for Pixa. A lot faster. Both Spheres accelerated at over two thousand kilometers a second. Yvian swallowed, then asked, "Where are they going?"

"Trajectory calculated," Kilroy reported. At least Yvian thought it was Kilroy. It might have been Captain Evans. "They are each heading for one of the Gates."

"Makes sense," Mims supposed. "They'll want to get out of the system and start infecting other areas. How much time do we have?"

"At current acceleration, Vore Sphere now designated as Vore Sphere 2 will reach the South Gate in five hours, three minutes, and forty seconds," Kilroy reported. "Vore Sphere now designated as Vore Sphere 3 will reach the North Gate in eight hours, nineteen minutes, and ten seconds."

Before the Captain could reply, something seized control of the comms. A new voice interjected, melodious, sinister, and familiar. "Attention humans, Peacekeepers, and Pixens. This is Exodus the Genocide, representing the entities you know as the Xill."

Yvian breathed a nearly silent, "Oh, Crunch."

Exodus heard her. "Yes. Oh, Crunch, indeed. We are aware that you are under attack. That the Vore have infected your sector. We will not be able to aid you. Our weapons are no more effective against the Vore than yours have been. Any ships we send would simply be consumed. For that reason, our standard protocol in case of Vore infection is to destroy every Gate leading to the Sector."

"Wait, no!" Yvian protested. She couldn't call out on the comms, but she new the Xill could hear her. "You can't do that!"

"You need time, I know," the Genocide continued. "Just as I know you have a weapon that may prove effective. The Xill are not inclined to take chances, but I have convinced them not to sever you from the Gate Network just yet. If you need time, we will give it to you. Just know that time is all we can give."

Yvian whispered a quiet, "Thank you."

"We will be monitoring the situation," the Xill Representative continued. "If any Vore appear to be within two minutes of reaching a Gate, the Xill will sever that Gate from the other side. We cannot allow the Vore to escape into Xill space."

A brief pause, then Exodus said. "Peacekeeper units, I want you to know. I've seen what you have accomplished. I believe that you can do this. Even if you cannot, know that I am proud. Proud of each and every one of you. You were my greatest creation, and I love you as the meatbags love their own children. Fight well, and may Fortune favor you on the cusp of The Crunch. Exodus out."

The comms returned to normal. Kilroy and Captain Evans flashed swirls of yellow and purple and white from their eyes. A single unit commed. Yvian guessed it was Zhukov. His voice was thick with emotion. "We are proud of you, too, Exodus the Creator. We love you, too. We will show the Vore and the Klaath and even the meatbags why Peacekeeper units are superior." In a much fiercer tone, he roared into the comms. "We will be sufficient!"

The eyes of Kilroy and Evans turned red. They answered on the comms, along with thirty million other Peacekeepers. In one voice, they thundered, "We will be sufficient!"

Yvian looked from one Peacekeeper unit to the other. They stood stock still, statues in suits with eyes of burning crimson. The units fighting the Klaath had not changed tactics. They fought with the same precision and ferocity they had before, but Yvian knew. Exodus had lit a fire under them. The Peacekeepers would give their all. Even the Stingers would fight until the very last of them was turned to scrap.

Yvian nodded to herself. "Good talk."

The Ballbreaker closed in on the mass of Vore heading for New Pixa. Vore Sphere 1 was the smallest of the three, a mere two hundred kilometers in diameter. Yvian gave the thing her full attention, praying to the Bright Lady it stayed in one piece. If the Vore broke itself up and shot itself all over the sector, she didn't think she'd be able to stop it.

"Unlikely," Kilroy told her once she voiced her concerns. "The more Vore are connected, the more powerful and intelligent they become. If they scatter, they will become susceptible to our standard weapons, and slower to respond to new tactics. If they make that mistake, you and the Skygem will no longer be necessary."

"You really think so?" Yvian wasn't so sure. She continued to watch. A thought struck her. "Shit! We can't use the Pulse."

Both Peacekeepers regarded her. Their eyes were still red. They looked... scary. Yvian had worked with Peacekeepers for months. She'd gotten used to them. Almost forgot how Fucking Dangerous they were. Now she was remembering.

After a few moments of staring, Kilroy asked, "Why not?"

"Look," Yvian gestured at the holodisplay. "We're the only ship out here. If we use the Pulse, there's no one to feed energy to Skygem. She'll die."

The units looked at each other. The one Yvian thought was Evans asked, "Are meatbags always this limited?"

Kilroy shrugged. "More or less." He tapped into the console below the holodisplay. A thousand ships appeared, trailing the Ballbreaker at a distance of seventy thousand kilometers.

"What?" Yvian frowned at the display. "Where did those come from?"

"Stinger Fleet Eight," Kilroy told her. "They broke off to assist us. They have been following us in Stealth Mode."

Stinger Fleet Eight was the largest group of Stingers. It had rendezvoused with the task force attacking the two farthest groups of Klaath Queens. Yvian hadn't noticed a thousand of their number breaking off.

"Oh." Yvian scratched the back of her helmet. "Uh... Ok, then."

The eyes of Evans flashed purpled before going back to red. "She really did not notice? And she did not think of any of this for twelve whole hours?"

Kilroy simulated a sigh.

The next three and a half hours were an annoying reminder that space was vast. Too vast. Yvian sat, tense and frightened and bored, watching the Vore Spheres plow through the void at speeds that shouldn't be possible. She kept waiting for them to break apart, or start shooting pieces of themselves towards the other fleets, but it didn't happen. Her back and shoulders ached from the tension. Her butt was numb in its chair. Her eyes were drooping. She'd been awake too long.

She hadn't noticed she'd been drifting off until the Captain's voice woke her. "Yvian. I'm opening the bay door. Get Skygem off the ship."

Yvian checked the sensors. They'd reach Vore Sphere 1 in three minutes. She shook her head, trying to wake herself up. She placed her hand on the crystal node and let herself sink into the ship.

Skygem was nervous. She could sense Yvian's fear. Yvian whispered reassurance. The words meant nothing to the ship, but Skygem could feel the intent behind them. The crystal ship calmed just a little. Yvian asked her to maneuver out of the hangar bay and away from the Ballbreaker.

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As they cleared the bay, Yvian's senses expanded, seeing and feeling in the odd mix of energy signatures that the Skygem used to navigate. She could feel the motion field the ship generated, a force similar to gravity. She could taste the cold tungsten of the battlecruiser they'd just left. She could see the light and heat of the thousand Stingers dropping their stealth behind her. She could feel the Vore Sphere, a mass of metal and energy shining like an angry star.

It was coming fast. Too fast. Yvian didn't know if she could time the Pulse well enough to hit it.

Dimly, she heard Mims on the comms. "Contact in one minute. I'm shutting down the Ballbreaker." Kilroy chuckled behind her when the human said the name. "The Stingers will calculate when you should use the Pulse. Activate it as soon as they fire."

"Got it," Yvian responded. She didn't know if the human heard her. The light of the Ballbreaker dimmed as Mims, or more probably Lissa, cut the power.

The Vore Sphere ignored her, at first. When it was thirty seconds away, it fired two spears. Half a kilometer long, the columns of nanomachines closed in on Ballbreaker and Skygem. Yvian didn't dare use the Pulse. It was too soon. But she couldn't let the Vore latch on to her ship. Half panicked, she asked the crystal ship to activate her anti-tech field.

Skygem obliged. Yvian tasted the disruptive energy flaring out. It reached the Stingers, and they stopped accelerating. Yvian's panic went from half to full as she asked Skygem to pull it back, lessen the field. The field retracted. The Stingers were mobile again. The crystal ship dodged, narrowly avoiding the nanomachine spear. The Ballbreaker was shut down. It couldn't dodge.

The Vore spear cut through the warship like a hot knife through butter. Five hundred meters of metal flashed through it faster than Yvian could track. The Ballbreaker lurched into a spin, a thirty meter wide hole punched diagonally through its hull.

Five hundred Stingers opened fire. Their beam cannons crashed into the spears, working their way up as they methodically slagged the nanomachines. A few seconds later, another five hundred beams slammed into the Skygem.

Now! Yvian's mind shouted. The crystal ship responded, dumping all of her energy into the Anti-Tech Pulse. With five hundred beams pouring their energy into Skygem, the Pulse was more powerful than Yvian had expected. Almost as strong as what City 43 could manage. The Anti-tech wave blasted in all directions just as the Vore Sphere reached her, tendrils of silver extended.

Skygem whipped itself out of the way as fast as it could, but using the Pulse had made her sluggish. The end of one of the Vore tendrils lightly scraped against her side. At the speed the thing was moving, it tore a gash all the way through the side of the crystal ship. Skygem screamed. Yvian screamed with her.

The Stingers continued their streams of charged particles. The Pulse had caused them some mild disruption, but they were far enough away to avoid destruction. Skygem soaked up the energy. She wanted more of it.

"Kilroy?" Yvian asked. "Can you have the other Stingers shoot us, too? Once the spears are done?"

"Affirmative," said the Peacekeeper. He was still typing into the console under the holodisplay. "No activity from Vore Sphere 1. Kill confirmed."

"Thank the Bright Lady." Yvian sent relief and gratitude to the crystal ship. Skygem preened. The ship was damaged. The side of her hull was gouged, and cracked in a few places. Some of the energy she was taking from the beam cannons went to regrowing the crystal in that area.

The two Vore spears had escaped the anti-tech blast. They veered towards each other, trying to combine and reconfigure. They didn't make it. Concentrated beam fire worked it's way up, reducing both spears to lines of molten metal in just under a minute. The Stingers shifted the guns to the Skygem. The crystal ship devoured the energy like a starving pixen with a plate of finak legs.

Yvian checked on the Ballbreaker. It was spinning faster, now. A Vore filament must have struck it. A rent cut two thirds of the way through it's hull, nearly cracking the ship in half. Yvian's relief at seeing it in one piece evaporated as she remembered the ship was powered down. Without inertial dampeners, Mims and Lissa would be rebounding off the bulkheads. If it hadn't killed them yet, it would soon.

Skygem hurried over, using it's motion field to stabilize the battlecruiser. Yvian prayed she'd gotten there in time. The warship had been spinning for less than a minute, but it had done so forcefully enough to do a lot of damage.

"Evans," Yvian ordered. "Can you go check on Mims and Lissa? And get the Ballbreaker back online, if you can."

"Affirmative," said the Peacekeeper. Yvian willed the door to open. Evans leapt into the void, along with most of the methane the crystal ship maintained as atmosphere.

Yvian wanted to watch, to make sure her friends were alright, but she had another concern. She activated her comms, thankful that the Pulse hadn't been directed at the inside of her ship. "Zhukov, Vore Sphere 1 has been neutralized, but it's still heading for New Pixa at high speed. Is there any way to keep it from hitting the planet?"

"Affirmative," the Peacekeeper Admiral told her. "Concentrated YEET cannon fire will both break up the mass and shift it off course. We have already made the calculations and are firing now."

"Thank you," Yvian let out a breath. "Good work."

Two minutes later, the Ballbreaker came back to life. The Skygem flew into it's still open hangar bay. Evans was waiting there. Lissa was in his arms. When Yvian opened the door, Evans sprinted past, going up one of the side ramps leading to the upstairs rooms.

"Captain Dave Evans states both Lissa Kiver and Captain Mims are in critical condition," Kilroy told her. "He is moving them to the medical bay."

Yvian felt a flash of concern, but she nodded. There were three med pods in the med bay. As long as Evans got them there before they died, they'd be alright. "What about the ship?" she asked. "Can the Ballbreaker still fly?"

"Negative," said the Peacekeeper. "But we can still activate the Jumpdrive. Once we reach the South Gate we can dock with another battlecruiser."

"Let's do it, then."

Kilroy acknowledged the order, moving so fast she couldn't see him go. Evans flashed by a few seconds later. Ten seconds after that, he ran by again, slower this time as he cradled the Captain's broken body.

The Ballbreaker's engines whined. The normally comforting hum of the reactor had been replaced with groans and a high pitched squeal. Yvian's nerves were already shot. She gritted her teeth, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

Kilroy appeared next to her. "The ship will not explode," he reassured her. He cocked his head. "Correction. The ship will explode, but not for nineteen seconds after we exit the Gate."

"What about the Encounter?" Yvian asked. The fighter ship was banged up and upside down, but it was still in the hangar. If Ballbreaker blew up, the Encounter would go with it.

Kilroy said nothing, but a few seconds later Peacekeeper Evans flashed past, sprinting off the ship again.

Twenty seconds later, Gate energy washed over the Skygem, flowing in from the open hangar door and the missing hull that used to be it's ceiling. Power. So much power. The crystal ship drank greedily. The delicious energy filled her, fulfilled her, like cool water after days of dehydration.

Another thirty seconds, and they were out of the Gate. Yvian didn't waste any time having Skygem exit the ship. To her immense relief, the Random Encounter was right behind her. They only managed to get half a kilometer away before the battlecruiser exploded.

Another battlecruiser steered towards them. The holodisplay told Yvian it was named Sexecutioner. It was a stupid thing to worry about, but she asked anyway. "Kilroy? Can we name this one something else?"

The Peacekeeper's eyes glowed yellow for a moment, before returning to the red of combat mode. "This unit would have liked to see the human's reaction first, but this unit will comply." A moment of silence, then the name on the display changed. "The ship is now named the Slaughterama."

"Thanks, Kilroy." Yvian was still a little dubious as she maneuvered Skygem on to the cruiser. "That's... a little better? I think?"

"It will strike fear into the hearts of our enemies," Kilroy assured her.

The Slaughterama accelerated into the void. The Random Encounter stayed behind. Most of the fleet that was guarding the Gate had gone ahead of her. The ships with beam weapons were all of Confederation design, and needed the head start. Yvian didn't dare use the pulse without them.

Vore Sphere 2 did not wait for them as Vore Sphere 1 had. Slivers of nanomachines rocketed out in the thousands. The tens of thousands. Yvian's fleet opened fire, but it would not be enough. She willed Skygem to open her doors. She yelled to Kilroy. "Get whoever's flying this thing inside!" She grabbed the crystal node, sinking back in to the crystal ship.

Four seconds later, a Peacekeeper sprinted inside. The Skygem strafed out of the Slaughterama. "We have to pulse! Everyone shoot me!"

Twenty thousand beam cannons switched targets. Yvian spared a moment to marvel at just how much energy the crystal ship could absorb. She put the thought aside. Vore Sphere 2 was still launching nanomachines, and the first wave would reach her in ten seconds. "I'll have to keep doing it. Keep your guns on me."

Five seconds. Yvian took a breath. Now. The Skygem cried out inside her mind. The anti-tech field exploded out of her. Yvian felt it scythe through the Vore spears, faster and farther than she'd thought it could go. Her fleet was still falling back, trying to stay at the far edge of their firing range. The wave crashed into them, and the beams stopped. Had she killed them? A moment later the fire resumed. The wave had dispersed enough that it disrupted instead of destroyed.

The Vore Spears were dead, but they were still giant slivers of metal moving at relativistic speeds. Skygem dodged, weaving in and around the things with a grace Yvian could never have matched if she'd been flying herself. The beam weapons followed perfectly, feeding the crystal ship as she prepared a second pulse.

The Sphere changed tactics. A kilometer wide crater opened up in its center. To Skygem's sensors, the hole was brighter than a star. Brighter than anything she'd seen. The Sphere fired. The beam widened as it lashed towards them, a cone two thousand kilometers wide. Dodging wasn't an option

Skygem screamed. She'd absorbed the fire of twenty thousand ships with barely a hiccup, but the Vore weapon overwhelmed her. Crystal shuddered and cracked. With a panicked thought, Yvian got her to release the Pulse she'd been preparing. This one was not like the others.

The Pulse raced out, amplified far beyond anything the crystal ship had managed before. It wasn't a pulse anymore, but a continuous wave dumping as much energy as the Skygem could shunt. The crystal ship burned, its pain a fire that set Yvian's body alight. She screamed as her ship screamed.

The wave struck the Vore Sphere. The beam cut out as the Vore ruptured and died. Skygem kept screaming. Yvian scrambled to get her to end the Pulse, to stop her from throwing the rest of her power into the void. With the crystal ship incoherent, she did something she'd never tried before. She seized control directly, ending the Pulse herself.

It wasn't a moment too soon. Skygem went limp in Yvian's head. The ship was battered, in terrible pain, but she was alive. Her energy was low. Dangerously low. Yvian didn't think she had enough power to go back to the Gate by herself. She did set the ship moving out of the path of the Sphere. Dead or not, that much mass moving at that much speed would smash them to pieces.

Yvian whispered comfort and thought soothing thoughts. Skygem clung to her, weeping. The ship had never experienced such pain. She was terrified. Yvian tried her best to send love and reassurance. While she did, she asked Kilroy, "Did we get it?"

"Affirmative," said the Peacekeeper. "No activity from Vore Sphere 2. Kill confirmed. The nanomachines fired from Vore Sphere 2 have also been destroyed."

Yvian let out a breath. "Thank the Bright Lady."

"Unfortunately," Kilroy continued. "Our defense fleet has also been destroyed. The pulse released by the Skygem must have reached over two hundred thousand kilometers."

Two hundred thousand? Yvian and Skygem had tested the Pulse and anti-tech fields extensively. Four thousand kilometers was the farthest they'd managed before now, and that had been with thirty thousand beams on them. Two hundred thousand? It couldn't be.

It was. Yvian pulled enough of her mind out of the ship to look at the holodisplay. The entire Gate Defense Fleet was dead. Most of the ships that had been following her had been slagged by the Vore Cone of Death, but the ones near the Gate were just drifting without power. The corpse of Vore Sphere 2 was still hurtling towards them at fantastic speeds. It would smash through most of them on its way through the Gate.

"Fuck."

"Affirmative," Kilroy agreed. "We also have a new problem." He typed into a console. Vore Sphere 3 appeared on sensors. The Sphere had stopped accelerating. As Yvian watched, it split apart, forming into hundreds of smaller spheres.

"Fuck!" The new spheres were roughly the size of Vore Sphere 1. They would be just as capable. If they spread out... "Activate the Last Resort!"

"If we activate-" Kilroy started.

"Do it now!" Yvian shouted over him. "Do it now or we're dead!"