After being hurled from a centrifugal acceleration-sling, housed under the B.A.H.’s main launch deck, the strike-borer Impact silently vectored on an intercept to the Caravel. A small trickle of blood dribbled down Alysa Nang’s left nostril from the gravities pulled in that maneuver. The young Chinese space marine grabbed her shoulder length hair and reapplied her the elastic tie to keep it in a tight ponytail. She then began cycling Essence to heal what was most likely a ruptured aneurysm in her frontal lobe, she silently envied the aquafication gear worn by the pilot Kadal and the other three Vergei on her team.

Per the operation’s protocol, Alysa had ordered Kadal to shut down Impact’s grav-cells, life support, and even the engines to minimize their traceable footprint. Along these lines, they were all wearing their EVAs to deal with the near-vacuum conditions inside.

Command’s primary concern was that the Caravel’s attack had been the feint of a more significant force lying in wait outside Hegemon-4’s sensor range. Alysa and her team’s job was to distract and, if possible—disable the Caravel and its leadership to give the Hegemon-4 an early out before the trap could close.

She knew that command’s decision was the smart move. If the attack by the Caravel wasn’t a feint, then its actions were just short of insanity. It was the kind of behavior that made their opponent unpredictable. An unpredictable enemy was a dangerous enemy. The Hegemon-4 had 200 million active and reservist fighters and was crewed by two billion, with a total complement of 4.5 billion souls. There was no iteration in which one Caravel-strength cruiser, manned with a force of 5,000, with or without a smattering of low-Attuned Cultivators, could take and hold the Hegemon-4.

Yes, the Hegemon-4 was a mundane vessel. Yes, a Cultivator could kill hundreds, even thousands of vanilla mortals... Alysa knew that fact better than most, but the Kaizuko hadn’t even gotten the majority of their first-wave of attackers through the external defenses, be they mundane or Cultivator. No. The Kaizuko’s first wave had been light and loose. While it had cost more lives than Alysa would have liked, the pirates had been beaten off the bridge even before the local internal defense forces arrived. It just didn’t make sense.

“Ten seconds until we’re green, Lieutenant.” Kadal’s low voice came over the comms in the insanely calm way pilots could speak about combat.

“Activate EVAs. Visor-blast shields down. Move for deployment. Kadal’s knocking on their door in ten!”

Alysa and her team moved to the deployment slots in the back of Impact’s passenger compartment. This wasn’t her usual team. She didn’t have one anymore. A week after Josh and Sen left, she was put on the inactive list and advised to focus on mastering her Cultivation.

Obviously, her father had a closed-door discussion with command and it hadn’t been her choice. As infuriating as it was to have her father interfere in her career, it had been another smart move and one she couldn’t argue with after some reflection.

Until she was comfortable with her new-found abilities and limitations, being in the field could lead to... inconsistent results that placed her team at risk. It wasn’t a weight she wanted to carry.

Josh and Sen told her she could only increase her Core six times by absorbing Essence from spirit beings. After that, she would be ready for Attunement. Five days ago, she had hit that milestone while clearing out a tawchar nest anchored on the inside keel skin of the Hegemon-4 that had been plaguing a friend’s research station. A smirk of distaste crossed Alysa’s face as she remembered the foul creatures’ multiple segmented limbs supporting their bloated leather bodies and snapping, ichor-coated fangs. Still... after they had been eliminated, the Core Essence from them had been good.

Finishing her sixth increase, Alysa felt as though her maxed-out pre-Attunement growth was a stable platform for her to return to active duty from. The next day she had put in for operational missions. Command had ‘taken her request under advisement’. This attack by the Kaizuko had finally pressured them into putting her into play.

The four space marines stood over their deployment ports as the launch tubes pressed snugly against them on all sides, oriented for a forward launch. Their initial impetus to the target would use the ship’s inertial velocity. It meant that they were—functionally, no different from unguided missiles—veritable cannon balls on a frictionless intercept course with an unsuspecting and literal pirate ship. It was undoubtedly fast and quiet, but also lacked any room for error. If the Caravel made an unexpected course correction, the distances involved in space combat would compromise their ambush, requiring them to use their own propulsion systems.

“3... 2... 1.” Kadal brought all of Impact’s systems online, including the four top-mounted StarGen plasma cannons linked into joint, interlocking fire. Four solid beams of blue-white plasma energy, each two meters in diameter, became a spike of destruction that very few ships could ignore. Thanks to their stealth approach the attack went directly through the open bay of the caravel’s main hangar.

Alysa could feel the currents of power even through the shielding of Impact’s launch tube and her extravehicular activity armor. The wave of electrostatic charge still managed to propagate through the thin atmosphere and rolled over her like ants crawling on her skin for the five seconds the cannon’s pulse lasted. The burst finished, and Kadal halted his ship’s vector with reverse thrusters, propelling Alysa and her team out the end of their tubes and directly into what was hoped to be a breach in the Caravel created by the destruction that was just unleashed. Retracting her visor’s blast shield, Alysa assessed the penetration...

Stars could be seen through a gaping twenty-meter wide and 200-meter-long hole. Shattered hull plates and other random debris were being propelled out of the ship’s exit wound. The Caravel’s atmosphere was escaping in giant clouds and geysers aimed in all directions. No lights could be seen through any of the ports. The Caravel’s power plant must have been disabled by the strike.

Hundreds of crew were also being ejected from the Caravel’s ruptured compartments. Their movements transitioned from frantic and hopeless to random twitches before asphyxiation in the vacuum stopped them altogether. The caravel’s engines were also clearly offline as the derelict ship’s now lifeless husk drifted forward in a counterclockwise spin.

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Alysa rallied her team. “Doors open! Let’s go! Vangar. Take your team to the bridge. You three are to eliminate all the officers and organized resistance you can find. If any of the operational infrastructure looks like it is still functioning, make sure it doesn’t stay that way. I’m heading to the upper section toward the bridge and command.”

Vangar and his team followed Alysa into the freshly destroyed hangar opening. The static grid separating the manned sections of the deck from the vacuum was nonfunctioning and the grav-cells were also offline.

Alysa and her team swooped silently through the chaotically roiling field of detritus. Equipment, tools of all kinds, attack ships in pieces or whole, all moved on independent vectors. The bodies of the crew were no exception. Stiff and spinning randomly in clouds of their bodily fluids that had frozen into twinkling droplets shining like crystals under the few still functioning lights and sparking power cables.

A few EVA-suited crew members were just getting their feet under them from the shock of the StarGen blitzkrieg. Vangar and his team of Vergei quickly handled them with single shots from their forearm-mounted pulse weapons. Quick and tight—as it should be.

Leaving those crew for the Vergei, Alysa was looking for the people still functioning without suits—Cultivators. She moved in when she saw a half-naked human in a charred flight suit scrambling for an EVA closet at the rear end of the hangar. As he stepped into the EVA hanging from its loading cross arm, she adjusted her vector, silently swooping in from behind. Cycling Essence to her upper body and activating the plasma knife-edge on her right forearm, she elbowed through his neck from behind.

As perfect as she had been, he must have sensed her Essence. His head was turning toward her as she separated it from the rest of his body... dying eyes tracked her for several seconds as his head tumbled into the nearby locker.

She and the Vergei continued to the upper levels through the hole Impact had made. As they continued, it became apparent gravity was down all over the ship. The Kaizuko must have had a centralized grav-unit powered by the ship’s main power plant... cheap and foolish... Alysa stepped onto the bridge level through the wreckage. The blast doors had sealed the forward end of the bridge. There were likely still functioning officers behind them. Pointing with her three fingers, she confirmed her earlier orders for them to handle the bridge’s operations. Vangar and the other two stepped to the doors and mounted their magnesium-shape cutters. They would burn through the doors on a poorly made ship like this in less than half a micro then deploy magnetic grenades with visual and auditory stuns. That, plus the dragging force of the vacuum, should give the three of them the edge... even if there were Cultivators in there. Alysa silently wished them luck and moved for the stairs leading to the level above.

A guard in an EVA was standing on a landing halfway to the next level. Upon seeing her, he launched himself with enhanced strength and speed. Pushing off the back wall with both of his legs. Bladed death came hurtling down the fifteen feet of stairs bearing a short sword and dagger.

Alysa thought the attacker was clever to use the zero-G atmosphere in his favor. But by the same token, he was idiotic to do it in the straight line of fire of a fully armed space marine.

A full-auto plasma burst sent twenty white-blue rounds through him. As he was free flying through the vacuum, with no chance to turn away, his contortions weren’t enough. Her attacker got hit by all of them. Strikes to his head and center body mass formed a tightly packed grouping of black-ringed holes burned through his EVA and helmet. The guard’s Essence-enhanced push-off gave him enough momentum to make it to the bottom of the stairs through her burst. But he was dead upon arrival, dagger and short sword spinning weightlessly into the hole Alysa had come up through.

Using her propulsion thrusters, she made it to the commander’s gallery sitting above the bridge. Standing in the open doorway’s shadow was a tall human in an EVA. The Kaizuko sigil of command was inscribed on his chest plate. He held a 1.4 meter-long sword in his left hand and a sidearm in the right. Seeing her, the tension left his shoulders, and he laughed inside his helmet. His shoulders relaxed and his weapons dropped from their tight guard into a loose-wristed hold. He even replaced his sidearm on its electromag thigh plate.

Narrowing his eyes, he mockingly smirked at Alysa. The message of thinking her easy pickings came through loud and clear. Alysa let loose a full-auto plasma burst and two magnesium grenades.

“Laugh at that!” She mouthed to him through her face plate.

Surprisingly, he did.

Indigo-tinged Essence surged from his Core, and he was suddenly... gone.

Alysa’s rounds and grenades passed through empty space, impacting the furniture in the room through the doorway. Bright yellow overlapping blasts illuminated the threshold as her incendiary grenades exploded and started to eat through the deck plating.

The real bad news, though, was that the Caravel’s commander reappeared directly in front of her while taking an Essence-enhanced horizontal swing with his two-handed sword.

It was an attack that would cut her in half.

Alysa was flatfooted but she, too, was now a Cultivator. She ducked and extended her hand, firing her palm-thrust stabilizers to propel her backward off the landing and provide the necessary space to draw her Titan dory from its leg sheath and braced herself.

As she was propelled backward, her attacker’s sword cut through the lines arcing from her back-mounted O2-mix unit feeding into her helmet. Gas and small amounts of water vapor filled the area, momentarily obscuring visualization over the landing. Her EVA’s comp unit stopped the external loss through the simple expedient of cutting off her main supply of breathable atmosphere... and, until she could fix it, she was limited to the air she currently had in her EVA, which was about thirty seconds for a mundane space marine... For her? She wasn’t sure... Likely longer, but she wouldn’t hold her breath—or rather she would have to for the moment. But what was important right now was that the commander’s strike had told her what she needed to know about him. She smiled slightly to herself, I’ve got your number.

Holding her spear, she extended the practice shaft Sen had attached to it out one meter to accommodate the interior space. Alysa narrowed her eyes at the Cultivator. Behind his visor, he raised his eyebrows before he mockingly cowered in faux fear of her weapon.

Then he vanished again.

Alysa was ready. The commander of the Caravel was obviously a braggart, and she had fought many like him in her past. All had questioned her position as a human female in a role primarily reserved for male Affins and other heartier species. The ones who complained had, to the man, been cowards at heart. Behind their bravado they were afraid she was better and stronger than they were—afraid she would ultimately beat them. The irony was that she was stronger and eventually did beat them, just like she’d deal with this piece of trash.

When she’d originally entered the bridge, the commander hadn’t been running to lead his crew after the Impacts initial assault to repel a boarding crew. No. He’d been white knuckling his weapons and standing his ground because he’d been backed into a corner. He was a grandstander and a coward. Cowards attacked from behind when given a chance. The commander was going for her back with another finishing move like the horizontal cleave he had opened with.

Dropping to her haunches, she spun, her ankles pivoting 180 degrees as she saw his blade pass over her head. Alysa then tightened the muscles of her back and abdominals as she exploded at a diagonal angle inside the man’s guard, her spear tracing the movements of her body in a flat plane with her strike. As she rose, her dory’s head penetrated the durable fabric of his EVA, along with several portions of the anatomy inhabiting his groin. The commander’s blood gushed onto the legs of his suit. Alysa then forced her spear in the Caravel’s zero gravity and flipped him over her shoulder into the room he had come out of.

Using her EVA’s thrusters, she shot up the stairs and saw a new expression reflected in the man’s eyes: Bald-faced terror. His sword was sticking out of the ceiling five meters overhead and the commander himself was on all fours scrabbling backward and away from her like a crab on the beach. His EVA atmosphere and blood vented out of his ruined suit. He was circulating Essence madly to heal his wounds.

She smiled wickedly through her visor... None of that now.

With her boot, Alysa smashed the view-plate of his EVA and pinned him to the ship’s deck through his abdomen with her dory. She then kicked him in the face until he was unconscious. Even unconscious, she could still see his body attempting to heal.

Still alive. Maybe she could get some answers if he survives?

Her EVA’s systems interrupted her musing with warning lights and a low-frequency klaxon. She was below one-percent breathable O2.

Time to go.

She grabbed the commander by the fractured helmet and broke her team’s comm silence. “Marines! We are leaving! Head to the extraction point now. Primary objective complete.”