191. The Players Take Their Places

Not for the first time, responsibility weighed heavily upon Admiral Taro Kell as he paced the command deck of the CCS Final Word. It was easy to talk about defending the Coreworlds when the fight was on the fringes of the Exploration Zone. Now that Aglostarros was threatened, his command balanced on a knife-edge. He hadn’t slept; Ciuranizene and officer-grade coffee would have to suffice.

“Admiral,” one of the sensor personnel called out. Kell turned to admonish the officer for not observing closed-comms procedure, but stopped short when she reported, “the Fortitude is inbound, and fast.”

Kell glanced out the bridge’s expansive windows and registered the frigate just kilometres out, overclocked thrusters casting a halo around its boxy silhouette. The Admiral felt pieces finally clicking into place: the Queils were pursuing the Fortitude. Insufferable birds.

As the fugitive vessel rocketed overhead, Kell addressed his comm officer. “Hail them, quickly. We-“

Whatever the Admiral might have said was swallowed by the telltale thunderclap of matter filling vacuum, and Kell’s eye was drawn back to the window in time to see the stars lens, before his view was filled with a wall of starships. The vessels ranged from darting fighters to cruisers that blotted out the stars, but all shared the same sweeping design tapered to knife-like points, and all were adorned in the blue and gold livery of the Empire of the Queil.

Admiral Kell spat a curse, then called to the deck at large, “Eyes up! Go to red alert.”