There's a distinct wave of nostalgia as I board the human craft. The ship Raka gifted to the human StarFleet is older Argonian technology. I haven't seen a ship like this since I was young and training in the academy. I step into the welcoming bay and I’m instantly met by three humans. Two women and one man. An earthling female with long black hair steps forward and offers her hand.

"Greetings, my name is Rose McClaren. Welcome aboard StarFleet one."

“Vax Enzala,” I say, nodding. “Glad to take your call. StarFleet One?" I take the earthlings hand momentarily and muse at her words. "I didn't realize Raka had given you more than one of these things."

"Oh, he didn't! Just a force of habit I guess. We did hope we could expand the fleet in time, but..." she trails off, her eyes dropping to the floor. 

"Anyway, how can I be of assistance? I saw that your ship had signaled its assistance flare. Was it a mistake? I know our technology is beyond yours. Perhaps I can show you how to properly operate the machinery."

"With all due respect sir, we can operate your technology just fine." I look over at the solitary earth man. He holds his hand out and I take it. "Vincent Chung, Head of Research. Our radars detected signs of unusual activity a few hours ago and we wanted to check it out. We messaged to the mothership for assistance but received no answer back."

"Clearly, he's the assistance, Vincent." The last staff member says. She has sharp green eyes and a face that looks... mad. The red-haired woman nods her head at me and crosses her arms. "Zoe Richards, Head of Medicine. You got our call, right?"

"Uh... no." I say. "I was flying this way and came across your signal by chance. You say you picked up radar activity?" That was unusual. There was a chance it was just space-debris and the humans had calibrated their equipment incorrectly. 

"That's right," Rose says. "Come to the bridge. We'll show you."

I follow the party across the small ship to its rather vintage looking bridge. "Just you three on board here?"

"Negative," Zoe says, turning her sharp green eyes on me. "There are four, but Captain Jones is in the medica. He was injured on a spacewalk when a pressurized valve blew open. Damn thing tore his hand clean off."

I grimace at the unfortunate picture. Raka had given a lot of technology to the humans, but even advanced Argonian medicine had its limits. "That is unfortunate, I can have a look at him if you like. I know you are still getting to grips with our tech. I might be able to help heal him, his hand will never come back of course, but—"

"Oh, I re-grew his hand," Zoe says nonchalantly. "It's as good as new. He's just finishing up the quarantined portion of his treatment. I want to make sure the nanobots don't affect the rest of us."

We reach the retro monitors of the old bridge. I take a seat and start scanning through the starfield. "Nanobot? What in Vutaz is a nanobot?" If what Zoe says is true, then it sounds like a marvelous advance in medicine. Argonian technology can do a lot, but it can only do so much.

Rose McClaren rolls her eyes and takes a seat next to me. "Don't indulge her. She's not shut up about how great she is since she first arrived."

"Don't deny a scientist her bragging rights!" Zoe says and pushes Rose out the way. "I found a way to fuse human technology with Argonian, and I’ve made some amazing progress in turn, I could show—"

"Put a cap on it Zoe," Vincent says before nodding at me. "What do you see, Argonian?"

I twist knobs and dials to quickly scan through the starfield imagery. I'm not sure why the radars have pinged anything at all, but then I see it. The tight-cube formation catches my eye instantly and I freeze on the image. The humans crowd around me, their mouths slowly dropping. 

"What the hell is that!" Vincent says.

"Horkax skirmish," I answer back. The small cube of ships is a few clicks from StarFleet's position. 

"Horkax!" Zoe's voice is laced with fear. She backs away from the terminal. "We need to get out of here! They're the rats that attacked earth! They're the reason we can't go back!"

Rose seems to take issue with this. "Well we're definitely not running. Let's fight these bastards. Let's kill everyone!" Rose definitely has an inner warrior in her. I like it.

"You can all relax. It's a very small skirmish. Maybe only twenty ships. The cube formation is puzzling, I've never seen..." that before. But I'd definitely heard about it. Hadn't Cyrus told me something about a cube attack? This one looked much smaller, but it sounded identical in shape. It was most puzzling. The Horkax were adapting for some reason, and I didn't like the sound of it. 

I stand up from the terminal and pound my fist into my palm. "I will dispatch this skirmish for you. It's only a few ships. Nothing too difficult. You have a fighter ship on board I trust?"

"Damn right!" Rose shoots her fist up into the air and smiles triumphantly. "I'll show you the way. Let me come with you! I want revenge!"

Vincent steps forward. "Rose I really don’t' think that's—"

"Back off Vincent!" Rose says, turning to face her colleague with a glare of fire. "I'm the combat tech on board and I want to kill me some bug men. Just try and stop me if you want but remember this: Zoe has seniority now that captain is in medica."

"So?" Vincent says.

Zoe brushes a hand through her red hair. "So, you must be crazy if you think I’d stop this killing machine from going into battle. Permission granted Rose, not that you'd need it."

"That settles it then," I say. "Show me to the fighter ship. Let's handle this skirmish."

* * *

I thought the StarFleet ship was old, but I hadn't even accounted for the age of its fighters. Rose escorts us to the ship, we strap in and I take the controls, with her at the guns. We lift off from the station and I plug in the coordinates for the approaching Horkax skirmish. 

"You better be a good shot," I warn her. "Looks like there are only a dozen Horkax ships in total, but when we get there they will all start firing. I'll have to do a lot of evasive flying. Can you shoot while I’m moving?"

Rose ties her long black hair back and simply laughs. Her slender face and large dark eyes are probably attractive among her kind. She doesn’t look like a warrior, but she certainly seems to have the spirit of one.

"Don't worry about me Argonian, I can handle myself just fine. They didn't select just anyone for this program. I was top of my class at the academy back on earth. I'm the first earthling to advance combat into space, I know my way around a battlefield."

"I'm not so much worried about you, but more this ship. It's damned old." Really old. There are things on board this fighter that were outlawed years ago. My eyes flick to the Quanto-laser specifically, just as Rose reaches her hand to activate it. "And keep away from that thing!" I slap her hand away and Rose looks at me in surprise.

"What the hell, man? I was activating the guns!"

"Don't use that one. Use the secondary guns. We decommissioned the Quanto-laser years ago because it's too unreliable. It doesn't have a built-in power cap, it's a nuclear bomb waiting to go off." I make a point of disabling the gun through the ship's interface. Too many Argonian lives were lost to the unreliable Quanto-laser. The machine was a beast, but too unstable to use safely.

"All right, chill out!" Rose says. "I'll use the secondary guns..." she trails off as we reach the approaching Horkax skirmish. 

"Buckle up. Get your guns ready. They'll start shooting any moment. You okay?"

She looks slightly pale but nods her head and mounts the gun. "I'm good. I just haven't seen any combat in space yet."

That would have been damned good to know five minutes earlier!

"You'll be fine," I say, hitting the switch for the evasive engines. The Horkax release their first couple of shots. Green laser fire drifts toward us like slow rain, and I dodge it easily enough. "Feel free to shoot whenever you want."

"Right," she fumbles at the controls and locks herself in. "Got it."

Bright bolts of laser fire ripple across the black of space and streak past the dense cube. Her first couple of shots miss, but then she makes a hit.

"That's it! Keep firing!"

I loop the ship across the front of the Horkax cube in a wide figure of eight, setting into a pattern that's comfortable for Rose to fire, but also erratic enough so the Horkax don't figure it out and hit the ship. There's a few more of the ships than I first anticipated. The cube is a good defensive strategy and it hides their numbers well. From the radar it looked like there might be a dozen ships, but now I reckon there's more like fifty. Either way it's not a problem. Horkax aren't great fighters, and their strength only lies in numbers.

"Yee ha!" Rose hollers as she blasts down ships. This is more than fun!"

"Blast them all to Vutaz!" I cheer, getting caught up in her spirit. We make quick work of the cube formation, but as we strip the ships away with laser fire I can't help but notice that something is cloaked at the center of the pack.

Rose spots it too. "What is that thing? It looks like a ball of smoke?"

Smoke isn't a bad way to describe it, but it's not quite right. It's more like a wave of heat, contained in a sphere, bending the light behind it. Vutaz. I know what it is, and it's not good. "Not smoke, it's a cloaking device."

"Cloaking device? What for?"

The answer comes almost as soon as she asks. The heat wave effect flickers from the surface of the ball to reveal the dense spheroid of advanced machinery. As it breaks, a wall of cover disappears behind it too, revealing a wall of one thousand Horkax ships. "Holy hell!" Rose shouts. "They came from nowhere!"

Holy hell indeed. This wasn't good. Where had the Horkax learned a trick like that? The wall shifts forward, and a thousand laser beams start in our direction. "Hold on Rose, we might have to jump out of here."

She nods back at me but carries on firing. "This is crazy! There are way too many! Wait!" I loop the ship along a tight spiral, swoop back through the field and make our movement as complex as possible while Rose fires. "There are different ships here!" she says. "There are red ones... you think it means something?!"

Red! That was it! Rose could see the Horkax rank system too, just like Piper! "Think? No! I know it does! Take out the red ships! They're lieutenants! The rest of the fighters are connected to them!" 

We begin a violent journey through the packed battlefield. Rose seems more in tune with the guns now and is picking ships off with ease, but it's hard for me to tell if she's hit any Red ones. I'm about to ask when she lets out a loud holler.

"Yee haw! Nailed two of the bastards with one shot! What now?!" She looks to me for some explanation, but I simply point at the starfield because two-thirds of the pack has instantly immobilized. Rose's face lights up. "Woah! You weren't kidding! Let's get this last one! There's one more at the back!"

"Which way?" I ask.

"Up ahead! There! Can't you see?!"

I gun the thrusters and point the ship in the direction she points. A cluster of ships are fleeing up ahead. "Argonians can't see the colors the Horkax use. You'll have to guide me, it's this pack, right?" I point at a pack that has turned around and thrust in the opposite direction.

"That's the one! A bit closer and I’ll blast them!"

We chase the fleeing pack until the leader is in range and Rose lets a barrage of bright laser fire loose from her gun turrets. They connect with a ship at the center of the pack and it erupts in a violent explosion. The rest of the ships all fall instantly still. She got it.

"Threat eliminated! Horkax dead!" Rose jumps up from the guns and punches the air with much gusto. I have to laugh. I've been in that position before and I know the feeling. There are few feelings greater than vanquishing your enemy. Rose radios the good news back to her ship and I begin to turn the fighter around. "That was a real rush spaceman! Thanks for the assistance. Thanks for the tip too. Next time I cross paths with those Horkax bastards I'll know where to shoot. Do they always do that cube trick?"

"No—" I begin, but I instantly stop. No. They don't. They don't at all. I've only heard of them doing this once before and that was from Cyrus a few hours earlier. Ice forms in the pit of my stomach as I realize the horrible truth. The second attack wasn't days away. It had already begun. "Vutaz. Vutaz!" I swing the ship around sharply, blasting in the coordinates for the Argonian mothership.

"Hey what gives?!" Rose shouts. "StarFleet is the other way!"

"I left the Argonian mothership a few hours ago and heard news of a similar attack, but on a much larger scale. A few thousand ships approaching in a tight-cube formation. My command will have assumed it was a scouting pack, but if Horkax used the same trick they did now..."

Realization dawns on Rose's face. "It's not thousands. It's millions. They're attacking again!"

I put the ship into full acceleration and urge the ancient engines to go faster. "It's the second wave. They're going to lure the Argonians out and kill them, then earth is free for the taking!" Another pit of ice forms in my stomach when I realize that Piper was part of that team. She was out there, right now, potentially in danger.

"Vutaz!" I shout, slamming my fist against the command table. "Piper is out there, Rose!"

Her face crinkles in confusion. "Who?"

"Piper! My mate! Radio back to your team. I'm borrowing you for a while. I need your help!"

Rose nods quickly and radios back to her team while I hit the coms and connect with the Argonian mothership.

"Delta Coms speaking, how may I assist?"

"Patch me through to Cyrus Ryger!"

The connection switches over and a second later Cyrus is on the line.

"Vax? Is everything okay? Don't tell me you've finished your Remvita already?"

"Give me the coordinates of the scouting pack that Orbis flew to!"

"Vax I can't—"

"Now Orbis!" I roar. "It's not a scout party it's a trap! It's the start of the second assault!" I must sound demented, because Cyrus suddenly starts paying attention. 

"Vutaz!" he shouts back down the radio. "I need to tell command. We need to send back up!"

"And give me the coordinates! Patch them through! Now!"

"Vax I don't know if I can do that. If you come back, you'll violate the terms of your exile. They'll kill you—"

"It's a chance I’m prepared to take Cyrus. Patch the damned coordinates through or i'll come back and kill you myself. Piper is out there. I need to help her."

The line is dead for a moment before he answers back. "Very well. You didn't get them from me though. I'll patch them through now. War be with you, Vax Enzala."

"War be with you."

The connection goes dead and the coordinates flash through to the ship's drive a second later. I enter them into the ship's route and set speed for maximum thrust. The battlefield is ten minutes away at full speed.

"Everything okay?" Rose asks with some concern.

I keep my eyes dead ahead and my hands clenched around the controls. My jaw is hard as steel. My heart is pounding in my chest. It’s all a biological reaction in preparation for war, a time when Argonians feel most alive. Engines roar us toward our destination and the universe before me becomes a background of black. War wasn’t on my mind anymore, the only thing I was thinking about was Piper.

I just hope we aren't too late.