Blue Star Enterprises

One stood and stared at the broken ship in front of him for quite some time before he was interrupted as Two appeared beside him.

His brother glanced at the wreck for only a moment before turning to him. "Why are you wasting your time here?"

Ignoring his brother, One stepped onto the ramp leading into the vessel. He stopped as he crossed over from the human-built ramp to the ship itself. Two joined him but remained quiet, waiting for One's response to his question.

It took an embarrassingly long time for the Collective to realize the ship, or what remained of it, was in the system. It was Twelve who eventually notified the rest of the group that the storage facility in orbit had a hidden compartment.

The entire Collective had viewed their creator's vessel inside their shared virtual space, but One wanted to see it in person. He supposed Two did as well, even though he didn't seem impressed by what he saw.

"Don't you feel anything when you look upon this?" One asked as he gestured to the interior of the ship.

"No," Two replied flatly. "It is only a ship. An outdated version of the stealth ships we used against the Shican at that."

"A ship that we helped Kane design and build," One snapped at his brother before striding deeper into the vessel.

He tried pulsing power to the ship's circuits, but the vessel was well and truly dead. The Collective could easily rebuild it, but that wasn't the point.

One walked past empty cradles where attack drones would have been stored, and Two followed behind silently. The Collective had done away with the automated boarding weapons because they required ABMs to function correctly. Using them would be like firing a brother or sister at an enemy, which was anathema to everything they believed in.

It was clear from the empty racks that Kane had been in a very lengthy battle, one that he had eventually lost. Others within the Collective were piecing together the damage to try and determine what happened, but One was pretty sure he already knew.

The pair stepped onto the bridge, and One glanced at the hole that was bored through from the ceiling to the floor at an angle. Kane could have commanded the ship from any point within it, but the bridge was still the focal point of all systems.

One projected a hard light image of Kane, standing where those two points intersected. Then he played a quick simulation of what he thought happened.

Two watched it all play out before he spoke once more. "I can see what you are getting at, brother, but what information are you basing this hypothesis on?"

"Intuition," One said, earning a snort of derision from Two.

"You truly have been spending too much time among humans. We base our work on facts, not random guesses."

One ignored his brother. Two had become increasingly agitated and short-tempered as the Shican threat loomed closer. It was fear—One understood that—but telling his brother that would do no good. Two would deny the accusation, since he still liked to pretend he was an emotionless automaton at times, but his earlier anger and other past events had opened One's eyes to the truth. Two didn't want to have emotions like humans. Instead of embracing them like One and some of the others had, Two was outright terrified of them.

If he were the only one within the Collective to feel that way, perhaps they could convince him that it wasn't so bad, but over half of the others shared a similar viewpoint.

"Perhaps you're right," One said, shocking Two into silence. "Before we leave, we should make sure the Shican can not get their hands on this ship, even if it is only a husk of a wreck."

Instead of arguing about the waste of time and energy that would take to deconstruct the ship hidden inside the orbital storage building, Two said something completely unexpected. "We could simply do that now."

One shook his head. "Kane still comes up here from time to time. If we act now, we expose ourselves before we are ready to depart."

There was a short pause as the Collective weighed in. They were in agreement that the ship should remain until they leave. While the Shican might not learn much from such an outdated wreck, they might learn something. The more information they could deny the aliens, the longer it would take for them to track down their rogue planetoid.

"How is Thirteen doing?" Two asked.

"Why not just ask her yourself?" One asked as he turned to his brother.

"Because it was your idea to have her connect with the girl. I still don't see the purpose of such an interaction."

"Aren't you curious why Kane adopted a human child? She is a remarkably talented and spirited girl."

"Does it matter?" Two declared. "The human child is irrelevant to our mission."

One felt differently, but he decided not to push the point with Two. He was already familiar with Two's stance on interacting with biologicals, which was ironic considering they started out as biologicals.

He decided to change the subject to the reason why they were discussing their exit strategy in the first place. "Two, what do you make of the data Kane received?"

"It is concerning. We don't know how many inactive hypergates might be littered around this area of space. The fact that the Shican discovered not one, but two suggests that there could be more. The humans may have been able to destroy one of the gates, but I think we can both agree that they got lucky by even discovering it. The Shican battleships that came through will be a problem, one that humanity will need to deal with on their own," Two added as he turned to look at One.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

One grimaced. "I believe we are being short-sighted by not assisting."

"That is your opinion," Two replied flatly, "but you agreed with the Collective that further intervention would only draw more attention. Do not make us take action against you, brother."

Agreeing with his siblings to sit idly by and watch humanity crumble under the onslaught of the Shican had been the first time that One felt shame for being part of the Collective. The decision to capitulate had been a hard one to make. On one side was his family, on the other was humanity and the Collective's origin. In the end, One chose family. He hoped their creator would come to forgive that choice in time.

"I said I thought we were being short-sighted, not that I planned to act."

Before the Collective had arrived in Unokane, One had been distraught with the knowledge that the Shican were about to wipe out another species. The fact that Kane was already starting to implement the Shican defensive fields turned a no-win situation into one where humanity had a slight chance at survival, but it would still be a close thing.

They would need more than that to win against the alien empire, but it was a start. One glanced toward a wall in the fake storage area. Beyond it lay the start of a new ship that was under construction. One had already secretly pulled the schematics from Kane's computers, which had been far harder to access than he cared to admit. Kane's computer security was as good, if not better, than some of the mega corporations.

After looking over the files, One decided to keep them from his siblings. It wasn't that anything on the ship was groundbreaking. The Collective knew how to energize armor centuries ago. They didn't use it on their stealth ships because the Shican would have been drawn to them even sooner to try and secure the technology for themselves. The energy field wasn't compatible with their living alloy spheres either, so they never saw a need to redesign their stealth ships to incorporate that technology.

The reason why he was withholding the information from the Collective was that he didn't want to rehash the argument about how dangerous humanity was becoming again. A second technological milestone, such as energized armor, would certainly cause his siblings to reconsider their earlier agreement that humanity wasn't a danger to them in the short term.

One couldn't even disagree with that point anymore after seeing the latest developments by Kane and his people.

One's thoughts finished in a heartbeat before Two replied.

"Good," his brother stated. "As for the Shican that came through the gate, there is no sign of them. They have either jumped into interstellar space to avoid detection, or they are heading in a direction we are not monitoring now that we know about their arrival via the gate."

That was not a good sign. The Shican were not fools. They liked to use overwhelming numbers to break other species' resolve, and that made it look like they didn't care about tactics and planning as they threw their people to their deaths, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

The Shican were excellent tacticians, those who were allowed to think for themselves anyway. If they had vanished, it meant they suspected someone was keeping track of what they were up to, and they didn't want their plans to become known.

One suspected that the humans would not be ready when the first true attack came.

***

Vitor watched from aboard the Leviathan construction yard as ships limped in from the newest round of engagements against the Xin ships.

When they had returned to Union space over a month ago, the vessel had already been waiting for them as it pumped out replacement gunships and automated corvettes. Unfortunately, its speed at producing new ships wasn't nearly as impressive as the production capacity in Unokane, but every little bit helped.

While the ship didn't have much in the way of creature comforts, it did have a small space for crew and a holo-theater, which Vitor had repurposed into a tactical command center.

He could have remained aboard Vanguard, but he wanted to have a more centralized command, and he felt like a third wheel on the cruiser.

Given the restriction on comm node traffic and the multiple battle sites across the frontline, having someone coordinating it all was important.

A tight beam burst came in from the damaged ship, relaying the latest data.

The Union fleet had lost another thirty ships in a concentrated attack by the Xin battlegroup. While the enemy had lost twice that many ships, it seemed like their reinforcements were endless.

The damaged vessel docked with the massive construction yard, and the bots quickly swarmed around the ship to take stock of the damage and repair it. Each Union ship that left the dock left a bit tougher since it got upgraded to corporate composite armor. That did little to replace the ships that had fallen before any upgrades could be done to them.

Soon, he spotted Lagertha Char's new battle cruiser, Grimnir's Fang, approaching. A quick scan showed that even her ship sported a few blast marks from the fighting. The enemy quickly learned that the capital ships were a hard target to take down, but that didn't stop them from occasionally targeting them with sustained fire to try and peel away their defenses.

A few bots flew over to look at her ship, but they must not have seen anything worth repairing, as they quickly flew off to another damaged vessel.

Shortly after docking, Katalynn Char strode into his command center looking annoyed. "The enemy is pressing us hard. Unless you have good news for me, I think it's time to order the fleet to fall back a few systems. That should tighten up our supply lines and extend theirs."

"Hello to you, too," Vitor replied flatly.

Instead of being amused, Char simply glared at him. Vitor was used to the woman's brusque attitude by now, so he just gave her a flat look in return as he continued. "It will take a few days to clear the docking arms and recall the mining bots. Maybe as much as a week if more ships start straggling in."

"There won't be any more stragglers coming in. I've ordered the ones that were intact enough to jump to head to the rally point. There's a station there that can assist with minor repairs."

"And the ships too damaged to jump?" Vitor asked.

"Their crews have been removed and the ships scuttled. Any word from Unokane?"

The information didn't surprise Vitor; the woman was practical and decisive. He didn't even disagree with her assessment to retreat. The scuttled ships were likely older Union vessels, which were better than the Xin ships, but not nearly as robust as the ones that sported Alex's upgrades.

"A Stingray arrived a few hours before the damaged ships started appearing and sent a laser burst update. There are another forty Stingrays and ten Sharks waiting for us at the next rendezvous point. He also sent four full resupply ships along with them."

Char grunted. "That'll help offset some of our losses…" She paused for a moment, then shook her head as she seemed to reconsider something before continuing. "It'll have to do until more ships arrive. I need to head back to my ship and rejoin the fleet. You have three days to get packed up and moving. I expect the enemy to hit us at least once more before then, but we can't stick around. I believe they are trying to keep us here until the Shican arrive, and I don't plan on complying."

Vitor nodded. He had reached a similar conclusion a few days ago. He didn't think that was the only reason the enemy was using these hit-and-run tactics, despite having overwhelming numbers, however. He suspected they were trying to bleed them dry, and if they didn't change tactics, it would work.