"For Earth!" her warriors cried.
Leona took a step closer to the viewport. She clutched her pistol and narrowed her eyes. A holographic display was counting down the kilometers to the Hierarchy. They would be there in seconds.
She touched the seashell she wore around her neck.
I love to sail forbidden seas, Leona thought.
They crossed the border.
They flew through Hierarchy space.
There was no sound, no flashing lights, no assault of a thousand enemy ships. There was just more space. If not for their navigational charts, they would not have known the difference.
Yet here, everything was different.
Here space felt a whole lot darker.
Long ago, Leona knew, the Galactic Alliance had ruled the Milky Way. Once Earth itself, under the leadership of Einav Ben-Ari, had even been a member. But centuries ago, the Galactic War had torn the galaxy apart. Entire civilizations burned. Worlds crashed. The war ended, leaving the Milky Way in ruin. The Galactic Alliance was dead.
For a long time, chaos reigned. Finally a few thousand civilizations formed the Concord, an alliance that spanned millions of stars. The Peacekeepers were founded—a police force to hold the Concord together. Species who joined the Concord tended to respect science, art, culture, and trade. They dreamed of law, order, and peace. After years of desolation, they birthed a galactic renaissance.
Of course, the Concord wasn't perfect. Especially not for humans. But despite the problems, the Concord attempted to restore civilization to the Milky Way, to rise from the ashes of the horrible Galactic War. To bring peace to the galaxy. Today, at the height of its power, the Concord stretched across half the Milky Way.
The Hierarchy was different.
In the aftermath of the Galactic War, the galaxy's brutal, warlike species formed their own alliance. They were apex predators, hunters, barbarians, warlords. They loathed peace. They detested civilization. They lived for conquest and bloodshed. They formed the Hierarchy and soon controlled the galaxy's second half. They became as mighty as the Concord. Perhaps mightier.
At first, thousands of species competed within Hierarchy space, but bitter struggles soon established a pecking order. The Skra-Shen were on top. The scorpions now dominated all aspects of Hierarchy society. The scorpions allowed a handful of other species, the particularly vicious ones, to fight for them. Most species they chose to enslave. Others to exterminate.
Humans were in that last bucket.
But some among us still fight, Leona thought. You will not find us so easy to kill.
"We should be seeing the deathcars by now." Leona narrowed her eyes. "Where are you, scorpions?"
Had she misread the data on the scorpion's memory chip? Had they changed their plans? She was traveling the right way, set to intercept the enemy. Yet she saw only empty space.
"They should be here," she said. "Damn it."
"They might be running late," Duncan said.
She shook her head. "No. I saw their data. They planned this genocide down to the second. Where—"
Boots thudded. An officer raced toward her. "Commodore! Incoming vessels off our starboard bow!"
Leona inhaled sharply. She leaped into her seat, grabbed the helm, and spun the Jerusalem around.
There.
She saw them.
She bared her teeth.
Muck.
Twenty vessels were flying their way. But these were no deathcars. No cargo vessels with trapped humans inside.
These were strikers—scorpion warships.
"They knew we were coming," Leona said. "They knew we had their memory chip." She hit her comm. "All Inheritor ships, assume defensive positions! Prepare for battle!"
They all spun toward the enemy, spreading out. The Firebirds formed the vanguard. The heavier warships flew behind them, cannons thrusting forward like pikes.
From the darkness they came. The strikers. Angels of death.
The ships were shaped like arrowheads, dark and glimmering, nearly invisible in space. Their red portholes shone like wrathful eyes. These were ships built for one purpose: to kill.
The Hierarchy border stretched for parsecs. No civilization could patrol it all.
These ships were waiting for us, Leona knew.
The fleets stormed toward each other. The enemy's cannons began to glow.
"Artillery, fire!" Leona cried.
She grabbed the controls and pulled the triggers. The Jerusalem jolted as the massive cannons fired. Torpedoes roared forward, streaming through space, leaving trails of fire. Around her, the rest of her fleet unleashed its fury. Missiles stormed forth.
The shells slammed into the strikers.
Explosions filled space.
Shards of metal flew. Smoke blasted outward. And the strikers kept charging—dented, cracked, but still very operational.
Leona stared, teeth bared, breath fast.
Those shells should have torn them apart.
"Fire ag—" she began.
The enemy returned fire.
Plasma bolts streamed forward and crashed into the Inheritor fleet.
The Jerusalem's bridge jolted, knocking Leona to the floor. Fire blazed. Smoke blasted from the controls. Alarms blared and people ran everywhere. Through the viewports, Leona saw plasma slam into her other ships, cracking hulls. Warships floundered.
"Fire!" she cried, struggling to rise. "Take them down! Fire everything!"
She limped toward the controls and fired the cannons.
Torpedoes flew from the Jerusalem. Three missed, but the fourth slammed into a striker, and the enemy ship cracked open. The other Inheritor ships were firing a barrage of shells, torpedoes, and photon beams, but the enemy kept charging. The strikers were cracked, a few were burning, but the damn ships still charged.
More of their plasma flew. An inferno of fire blasted toward the human fleet.
Leona screamed, gripped the helm, and yanked with all her strength. She turned the port shields toward the enemy.
"Brace for impact!" she cried.
The plasma bolts slammed against them.
The Jerusalem rocked.
The ship flipped over in space and spun.
"Port cannons!" she cried. "Starboard cannons! Fire!"
The shells rang out, but the strikers kept flying.
With blazing light and raining fire, the enemy ships reached them.
A striker rammed the Jerusalem, and the hull dented. If not for the thick graphene shields reinforced with magnetic fields, the Jerusalem would have shattered. Leona fired the side cannons, shoving the striker back. The ship rammed them again, and the Jerusalem—this mighty frigate—spun through space like a discarded toy.
The enemy ships swarmed around them. The Jerusalem fired from all sides. Above her, Leona saw the ISS Bangkok take heavy fire and crack open. The ISS Jaipur was burning, listing, its cannons dead. Starfighters were streaming back and forth.
"We have to fall back!" Duncan was shouting, singed and bleeding. "Lass, we have to retreat!"
"No!" Leona cried.
She tugged on the helm, teeth gnashing, desperate to halt the Jerusalem's spin. The strikers stormed all around them. The battle streamed with lines of fire. The bridge rattled.
There above, Leona saw it. She frowned.
A striker was charging toward another Inheritor warship. Its exhaust pipes flared on full afterburner, white and blue.
Leona reached up, grabbed a control panel, and pulled herself to her feet. She fired.
Her heat-seeking missiles flew toward the pulsing afterburner of the striker above.
The missiles flew into the striker's exhaust.
The enemy ship exploded.
A million metal shards flew everywhere, interspersed with scorpion claws.
Leona roared with triumph.