A council of war begins in the darkness above Scoria.,

  The seniormost integrated officers of the Terra Home Fleet take their places around a long wooden table. Admiral Atsuya commands the head of the gathering, his expression set in a scowl, while Lanis faces him from the opposite end, four ship captains arrayed along either side of the table between them.

  The polished rosewood table around which the officers are seated does not physically exist. Indeed, the whole room—the elegant chandelier overhead, the resplendent Fleet uniforms, and the paintings of past Fleet victories that line the tall marble walls— is a construct, dredged from the deepest traditions of Human naval history for just such gatherings. The effect is surprisingly powerful. Lanis wouldn’t be surprised if a series of white-gloved butlers appeared and started pouring them all tea or wine.

  Admiral Atsuya turns his head to consider the woman who was the last to appear, the red-haired Captain Hughes of the damaged Heracles. There’s a subtle shimmer of light around Atsuya’s head when he does so, echoed in Captain Hughes’ salute back to him. Each of the gathered officers has a similar halo-effect around his or her body, most notable when they move: a representation of two minds, AI and human, existing in a single represented form within the shared construct.

  In one sense, the war council seems superfluous. After all, the Fleet ship AIs have been discussing the most logical course of action since before the last Bellitran ship was even destroyed. What could ten Human minds arrayed around a table hope to conclude that the massive AI minds have already not considered?

  Fleet, however, does not undertake such meetings merely for the pleasure of tradition; there have been numerous occasions when a meeting of integrated minds has successfully produced an unorthodox stratagem, and there’s something to be said for morale as well, for the feeling of camaraderie that the construct produces. Looking around the table at the other officers’ faces, among the best minds that Terra could produce, Lanis feels a sense of reassurance. She knows that they look at her the same way.

  Lanis has already been integrated with Ether for nearly thirty minutes prior to the meeting; more than enough time for Ether to give Lanis her own version of Ash’s tight hug within the elevator, a commiseration that felt even more intimate than crying on Ash’s shoulder. Then Ether brought her up to speed on the situation, a thousand missed details from the Agni’s bridge’s holo-cast that could now be pored over with Ether’s exacting analysis.

  Scoria’s adamite reserves have been plundered. That much was guessed at from Fleet’s first contact with the Bellitran armada, but it is still sobering to have the facts confirmed. The brutal truth is that Scoria’s survivors will be far less useful to Terra’s war effort than the colony’s mineral deposits; regardless, twenty-six thousand, nine hundred and thirty-four of Scoria’s miners have survived the months-long siege. A version of such a disastrous outcome was planned for by Fleet’s logistics officers prior to their jump from Terra, and there is easily more than enough space within the Guanyin’s huge hangar bays alone to house twice as many.

  Lanis’ ruminations are cut short by Admiral Atsuya’s voice.

  “Captains. Admiral,” he says, nodding to Lanis. “The Guanyin has recovered her Insertion Units and the evacuation of Scoria is nearly complete. No data has been retrieved from the Bellitran flagship. And there are no human survivors. Interrogation of the few Trixilii we managed to capture is underway, but they are proving… resistant to traditional methods.” Atsuya’s scowl deepens. “I ask now for a move for an EMI vote, with the acknowledgment that their alien psycho-physiology makes success quite unlikely."

  Lanis inwardly shudders at the mention of the EMI, shorthand for an Enforced Mind Integration. She imagines the Fleet surgeons strapping one of the Trixilii down and implanting a neural shunt, after which the Agni will try to force its way into the creature’s mind. That form of interrogation—torture, really—carries a death sentence for its practice on Terra, and it was banned by Fleet decades ago except by unanimous captain decree during an emergency. Even for a human, the risk of hemorrhagic stroke is high. The odds won’t be better for an alien.

  “Do I have consent?” Atsuya asks, raising his hand. Despite her misgiving, and likely those of the other captains, Lanis immediately raises her hand along with every other captain.

  If Atsuya feels any satisfaction at the result of the EMI vote, he doesn’t show it. He crosses his arms, the shadow of the Agni’s mind slightly distorting the movement.

  “Now that that unpleasantness is behind us, we have a choice to make. Simply put, where next?”

  The room darkens. The officers no longer sit around a table, but rather a star map of Humanity’s colonies.

  There was much debate over which colony Terra’s Home Fleet would jump to first. Some on the Fleet Executive Command Committee, the FECC for short, argued for cutting a direct path for Etana Prime, Xuisen, or Nemoris, the three brightest jewels of Humanity’s constellation of strength amongst the stars.

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  However, there were other considerations to take into account besides the hypothetical reclamation of power: what if one of those colonies was already conquered and garrisoned by an alien force? Or, perhaps worse, taken over by the Rot? Would the freshly trained and rebuilt Home Fleet be able to execute two jumps in quick succession if it found itself in danger? It could be done—it had been done, in several notable cases—but the risk to a Navigator’s grip on sanity was exponentially greater on a second emergency jump.

  In addition, those were not easy jumps to make directly from Terra. This was a concept not easily grasped by those outside of Terra’s Navigation corps, for while physical distance was an artificial construct when traversing through Warp space, some jumps were simply more easily executed than others. A direct jump from Terra to Etana would have taken a far greater toll on the Navigators’ concentration, in addition to dilating time to a greater extent. With the Dwellers’ training, Lanis and her fellow Navigators were an evolution from the Navigation corps that existed before their encounter with the Rot, but they were still desperately inexperienced, and Lanis had made it clear that the ease of the Warp jump should be strongly taken into consideration during war planning. Especially because of what might await them within the Warp.

  Scoria, however, was among the simplest jumps from Terra to make. If Scoria had been intact, the Guanyin would have jumped back to Terra, its stores full of ship-building adamite, while the rest of the Fleet would have continued on to Etana.

  Alas. The star map in the middle of the room shows the blue planet of Etana Prime and its fortress-like network of ships and orbital defense batteries in lackluster grey. Admiral Fencer, forty two ships, and Humanity’s most experienced CDF divisions. Simply gone. The colony is almost certainly dead.

  The next strongest colony is the rust-colored world of Nemoris, home to an orbital dock and the decorated Third Vanguard Fleet: thirty four Warp-capable ships, led by one of the most decorated officers in Fleet’s history, Admiral Mehta aboard her flagship Colossus. It is the largest Human ship ever built, one specifically designed to be able to deliver a killing blow to an Ursox nest ship, whose space Nemoris mostly closely abuts.

  Third is the garden-world of Xuisen, most alike to Terra of all of Humanity’s colonies. It was only colonized some eighty years ago, and its dock was still under construction when the Rot swept over Terra, but it has been a focus of Fleet fortification building, and it is garrisoned by the twenty three ships of Ninth Fleet under the young but widely-admired Admiral Cochrane. If I had to choose one colony where Humanity might begin anew, it would be there, Lanis thinks, staring intently at the beautiful planet.

  The other colonies are barely considered: dozens of worlds and moons, billions of people, rendered insignificant against greater strategic needs. They will have to wait. If they are even still intact.

  There are a few moments of silence, and then the captain to Lanis’ right, Captain Kiln of the heavy cruiser Tyr, speaks. He is a small man, one of the Mars Fleet veterans, and his voice is almost childlike. “A division of forces? To Xuisen, Nemoris, and Terra. We could even peel off a destroyer each to other colonies. Mars Secundus and Agamon come to mind.”

  “Current strategy dictates a consolidation of forces, but all strategies are now malleable. That proposal must consider the Navigators. Admiral Osgell?” Atsuya says, turning his attention to Lanis.

  Lanis and Ether are already shaking their heads as one.

  “Too great of a risk,” Lanis reluctantly says, frowning. “There’s simply too little data from our one jump on how the Rot might respond to repeated jumps, and too little experience among our corps in dealing with emergency realspace re-entry.” Myself included, she inwardly adds.

  After two years of training them, Lanis knows the capabilities of every Fleet Navigator as intimately as the creases of her own face. Only two of them had ever entered the Warp before the jump to Scoria—both from Mars Fleet. Those two Navigators, along with the captains and crews of their four frigates, were a mere afterthought of Terra’s pre-calamity power. However, due to the Rot’s destruction of the vast majority of Terra’s Fleet assets, they now form the experienced core of the Home Fleet.

  The remaining two Mars Fleet Navigators are still on Terra, where they continue to train the next generation at Fleet Academy. Leaving them behind had felt like tempting fate, a wager on the belief that whatever the Home Fleet discovered would still leave room for a future.

  Perhaps the Mars Fleet Navigators integrated aboard the heavy cruisers Heracles and Tyr could attempt independent jumps, but some instinct in Lanis recoils from the idea. Not yet.

  Another silence stretches out, Humanity’s three strongest colonies and Terra slowly rotating in the darkness between the captains. No one offers a new suggestion.

  Finally, Atsuya clears his throat.

  “There is nothing for it then. We must return to Terra, and report what we have found. The Guanyin will unload its survivors, the fleet will refit as quickly as possible, and the Heracles will dock for repairs. Splitting the fleet is simply too great of a risk. The FECC will then determine our next course of action.” He raps his hand on the construct’s table. “Are we in agreement?”

  Each of the captains in turn nods, some more reluctant than others, but none offering a counter-proposal.

  Captain Lin of the carrier ship Guanyin lifts her head, drawing Atsuya’s attention. “Admiral, evacuation of Scoria has just been completed. Ground forces are berthed.”

  “Excellent,” Admiral Atsuya responds. He looks at Lanis, and she feels the other captains’ eyes move to her as well. “Then the course is set. Admiral, prepare the fleet for jump to Terra.”