Thesska kept his eyes on the star map as he observed his subordinate approach, the man's hands twitching near his strapped blade. Thesska didn't react, but inside, he almost hoped the whelp would finally grow the nerve to unsheathe the weapon. Alas, the man seemed to calm himself as he stopped on the opposite side of the display, bowing slightly. "Grand Commander, the sensor ships have picked up multiple subspace disturbances."

Thesska's lip curled in triumph; the enemy had finally revealed themselves. He hadn't been sure they would be hiding in this system, but his hunch had paid off. "Tell them I want a destination within the hour, and all of the fleet to remain at full readiness."

The subordinate bowed and left.

When the time came to chase their prey, Thesska was seated in his command chair, waiting and glaring at his subordinate. The man flicked his ears nervously as he barked commands at the clones over on the sensor ships to hurry up.

An hour to pinpoint a destination from a few scans was hardly a fair timeframe, but Thesska didn't care. Now that his prize was within reach, he was done waiting.

"We have coordinates, Grand Commander," his subordinate said a few minutes later.

"Then why haven't we jumped already?" Thesska growled.

The fleet jumped shortly after, their target destination nearly two months away through FTL. The fleet would need to make many stops along the route, but it would be worth it in the end.

During the journey, he mentally catalogued the fleet report that he had been looking at before his subordinate had given him the good news.

The Shican armada was nearing where the humans had set up their woeful border sentries just outside of Shican-occupied space. He wouldn't reach his destination before the Armada engaged with the human scouts, but that was fine. They would have standing orders to destroy everything in their path. Even if he already had his prize, the grand armada was assembled. There was no point letting it go to waste. He would still order them to scour the humans from space. It would make expansion in this direction much quicker when they finally outgrew their current worlds.

The human ships that Sivarra had been producing, while woefully inadequate, would be put into use, helping to split the humans' attention. It probably wasn't needed since the human technology was centuries behind the Shican's, but Thesska had the ships and the manufacturing, so he might as well use it.

***

Damien walked through the now-empty halls of the Gravitational Solutions warehouse. Because that is all it was, storage space. There wasn't a single machine in sight, just rows upon rows of crates filled with artificial gravity plating, which was left untouched because Lucas and his engineers weren't sure the stuff was safe to use now that they knew who built it.

The week-long investigation, after Yulia's call, had turned up no evidence. Most people would have called her story crazy at that point, but Damien believed her. He found it hard to believe, but he couldn't find any other explanation for Alex's sudden disappearance. It wasn't like he left through any of the entrances or off-world, because all of those systems were monitored and tracked.

The lack of evidence was key to Damien's belief in what Yulia was saying. Even the most thorough criminal left some trace behind. It might only be a trace of the crime scene being cleaned, but that was still evidence. There was no sign of cleaning agents being used. Lucas said they might have used such an advanced method that it couldn't be detected, but that just proved Yulia's story was true.

Everyone was in a state of panic with Alex missing, but Lucas had been the worst of all. When Damien had asked his brother about it, he said he couldn't discuss the matter.

It was annoying to be kept in the dark, but he knew there were things that Lucas and Alex didn't share with everyone. Honestly, the best thing to happen to him since Alex took over Eden's End had been separating his area of purview from everything that happened in space. While he had made efforts to learn how to do his job better, at the end of the day, he was still just a thug. A blunt instrument to throw at a problem.

Damien wasn't bothered by that fact. He knew his limitations, and he knew that with Alex getting abducted, those limitations were going to be stretched. He didn't want to admit it, but Alex's presence, even when he was openly gallivanting through STO space, was a stabilizing force, especially to those who had seen what he did during the incursion and insurrection events.

He didn't think anyone would get the bright idea to cause trouble like that again, but things were going to change. Now that word was spreading that the Shican had attacked, people might become desperate to flee or look for someone else to take the reins and keep them safe.

Pembrooke had come to speak to him on the matter, and the man was working to head off any such leadership change now that they operated under Union laws. Pembrooke's bright idea was to have Damien step into the role as Jarl, which sounded like a fucking awful idea to Damien, and he told the man as much.

That was the end of the discussion on that topic as far as Damien was concerned. The last he heard, Pembrooke was still trying to find someone to take the reins until they got Alex back. Everyone seemed to think that Alex's return was a certainty, but Damien had a hard time believing it. He was just being pragmatic. Anyone capable of taking Alex by force was not someone they could fight. He didn't voice his opinion on the matter. He wasn't that stupid.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

***

"Chief Benning," the AI spoke.

"What?" Benning asked without taking his eyes off the design he was checking over.

"The Shican have hit our pickets."

That got Benning's attention, and he finally put down the tablet. "Do we have numbers?"

"The picket ship and satellites picked up thirteen hundred vessels before being destroyed."

Benning ground his teeth in annoyance. Humanity should have had fifty more years to prepare for the Shican. Even then, the AI predictions and models had only given them a ten percent chance at survival if they arrived that soon. That was based on old intel and assumptions, and the models only worked if he was in control of the STO. Controlled uplift with strong central leadership, divorced from all the governmental red tape that would have led to humanity's demise against the Shican's eventual arrival.

Preparing for the Shican's eventual return was the entire purpose behind the Assembly's founding, ever since his first generation of AIs predicted that they would one day return. The other corporations in the Assembly weren't aware of that. If they had been told, they would have either scoffed, left the assembly, or fled then and there, destroying any efforts to create a unified humanity that could push back the alien menace.

It should have been simple. His goals had been on track to have everything in place to take on the generational expectation that a war with the Shican required.

The length of the war was the main reason Benning wasted so many resources and credits on outlandish ways to enhance human longevity. While he would admit that living forever was appealing, it wasn't worth all the hassle.

All of that had gone up in smoke when the Shican barged through the gates, causing the unknown alien ship to cripple humanity's ability to transport materials efficiently to existing facilities.

The recordings of the fights had been analyzed, and the AI confirmed the aliens' tech had advanced further than initial predictions. Now they had a general idea of how many enemy ships were heading their way.

The Assembly was already crumbling as people realized a real war was on the horizon, just as the AIs predicted it would. The less forward-thinking members of the Assembly took what assets they could and fled to whatever secret hideouts they had prepared, hoping to weather the aliens' purge of humanity.

It was a foolish move, but that reaction triggered more fear, and soon it would be everyone for themselves. Corporations that had once been part of the group were already hoarding what little they had or making plans to leave as well. By the time the Shican arrived, they wouldn't have to do anything; humanity would destroy itself.

Benning couldn't blame them, but he would hold them to account. The STO was going to need the corporate fleets if they wanted to weather the Shican at all.

"AI, has the timetable on Operation Freefall been expedited at all?"

"No, Chief Benning. With the disruption to shipping, a delay of six months has been added to the project. The estimated completion date is around 2408."

Humanity had to hold out for six years before its ark was ready. The latest projections from the AIs confirmed that winning was impossible given the enemy's demonstration of technology, and that was before the Shican's fleet size was known.

Running away might seem like a cowardly act to most, but surviving meant humanity would have time to match the Shican. When they did, they could return to retake what was lost, or simply look for somewhere else to live. Benning wasn't sentimental about humanity's home world or the current worlds they occupied.

"Activate Project Sandman and send coded instructions to all our sleeper agents to commandeer the closest armed vessel belonging to the corporations they work for. Then add these coordinates." Benning added a location that would place his impromptu fleet in the Shican's direct path.

His former corporate allies would be livid once they learned Omni hadn't been as forthcoming with how effective their mind-altering tech had actually been, but then they shouldn't have fled the moment things looked mildly inconvenient. If they had stuck around, he never would have activated those agents.

"Sixty-two thousand five hundred and twelve agents activated," the AI confirmed a moment later.

Okay, so it had been wildly more effective than he had implied. It was a good thing all of the agents had been implanted with microscopic comm nodes. The design was inert until active and only contained a single paired particle. It was small enough that it avoided all but the most comprehensive scans. Even then, it was usually overlooked because it was buried in medical prosthesis or the occasional cybernetic implant, which was rare among humans.

That one particle was enough to trigger the latent conditioning. Honestly, Benning wondered why Qcomm hadn't bothered to innovate down that path. Then again, he shouldn't be surprised. That company was a relic, which now saw its entire enterprise crumbling around it because it failed to diversify. They had been so secure in the fact that they were the sole proprietors of FTL comms, which hadn't been true for decades, that they failed to react when Kane had swept the rug out from under them. That reliance on old tech and failure to grow and innovate were the main reasons they hadn't been asked to join the Assembly.

The Assembly was for forward thinkers and innovators, or those who thought they were and could be easily manipulated.

Speaking of forward thinkers, Benning pulled up the footage of Kane facing off against the Shican ships. The man had been outgunned and outclassed, but the fight gave a good idea of how an Omni or top-tier corporate vessel might do against the Shican. The answer wasn't great, but it did show the ships wouldn't crumple under the first strike. It also gave a good look at how far Kane had come since the encounter at Petrov Station.

In just a few short years, the man had advanced from a greasy mechanic in a dead-end station to someone building their own custom ships, which rivaled the best the corporations had to offer. Benning was starting to believe the rumors that the man wasn't human.

Was he in league with the silver sphere aliens? It might explain why they stepped in to save him.

The AI models were unclear on that, but they placed Kane's rapid growth firmly beyond anything humanity was capable of, and estimated the man would have technology rivaling the Shicans in seven to ten years.

That was a sobering realization, but it didn't shift the scales enough to allow humanity to weather the current situation. All Kane could do was slightly slow the Shican down, which may be enough to allow the ark to be completed and for it to leave this sector of space for someplace far from the Shican.

Benning chuckled as something occurred to him. If he had succeeded at wiping out Kane using Harlow, there would be no hope at all of holding back the Shican until the ark was done being built.

He took that as a lesson to be less hasty with his decisions in the future.