SES STAR OF DAWN

In low orbit above YORK SUPREME

2185.05.29

For three days, York Supreme pretended.

The fires got put out, or abandoned. Water mains got patched, streets got cleared, and the barricades got rebuilt out of whatever the city still had left to lose. The city pretended to be a city again, and everyone in it and above it pretended the sky wasn't full of warships waiting on a decision.

Aboard the Star of Dawn, the three of them pretended too. Alpha had his saber re-sharpened, Choko re-fueled everything she could get her hands on, Lunar found a deck of cards somewhere and lost to himself at it, loudly, and accused himself of cheating.

The call came at dawn. On Joe's private channel.

"Joe." It was the sergeant. Her voice had nothing left in it. "District Twelve is falling. Every district is falling. The squids came back. More of them than before. More of them than we've ever seen."

Joe was already on his feet.

"We don't have the firepower," she said. "EoS is about to fall."

A pause. The channel carried the sound of rifles, machine gun fire, and not-so-distant alien howls.

"You told us to keep the lights on. The lights are going out."

"Hold," Joe said. "Hold. I'm coming."

He was in the shuttle before the channel closed, and the shuttle burned for the Convene without so much as a goodbye.

SES COMMANDOS CONVENE

In high orbit above SUPER EARTH

2185.05.29

The second time at the table was quieter than the first. There was no argument left to make, and everyone knew it.

Joe stood across from Adamas and laid out the arithmetic of his city. The districts falling. The firepower gone. The renewed onslaught, larger than anything the east had faced. He did not have to say the rest; the map said it for him. If Equality-on-Sea fell, the east fell. Everything they had spent to keep two cities alive would buy them one.

Lia read the numbers off her console. They unapologetically disagreed with the hope everyone had just a few days ago. What they had that could have held two cities under attack, now only can hold one.

Adamas looked at the map for a long time. Then they made the call.

"There is no time for fancy formatting or typeset orders anymore.”

“We move back to Equality-on-Sea. They bled and died for the west, and it’s now time to repay them in kind.”

“It’s not an easy choice to make. But it is the only one we have left. Everything is against us, and if York Supreme falls, then so be it.”

Their trembling voice betrayed the cold tone of the order.

“However, we will now be sending a message to the Illuminate force. A message to the Great Host, a fleet that took a century to build and took us just days to grind down to its last breath.”

“Our longest-standing Mega City will stand to live another day, and they will not be there to see it.”

They grit their teeth.

“They. Will. Pay.”

Lia looked up from her console. "High Command is going to want a word."

"High Command can have the word," Adamas said. "After."

Joe said thank you. He heard how small it sounded next to what it was buying.

"It cost what it cost," Adamas said. "Your city paid for this once already. Spend it wisely." They looked down at the map, at the two lights still burning on it. "Now go home. Bring them home too."

YORK SUPREME

SUPER EARTH

2185.05.29

At York Supreme there was one Pelican left.

It sat on the plaza where the barricades had been, ramp down, engines already whining, and the last soldiers of the city's defense moved toward it in a line that nobody bothered to keep in order.

Alpha had given the orders at the extraction corridor. Second-to-last transport takes the wounded. Third-to-last takes the stragglers. Last one takes whoever's left.

"I'll hold the last one," Lunar had said. "I'm the one with rockets left."

Alpha had looked at him for a moment. Then he had gripped the back of Lunar's neck, once, hard, and boarded his transport without a word.

Choko had caught Lunar by the shoulder of his armor instead. She had said something to him that nobody else heard. Then she had boarded too.

Now there was one Pelican left, and the last soldiers were boarding. But one diver stood apart from the line.

"Move it, diver!" the pilot shouted over the engines.

She did not move. She stood with her rifle slung and her faceplate up, looking at the plaza, and at the street beyond it, and at the two blocks of the city that had been hers before any of this.

"I'm from here," she said. Not loudly. The channel carried it anyway. "My home is two blocks from there. I'm staying."

"Diver—"

"There's a fight over there that can still be won." She nodded toward the sky, toward the east, toward the pods still falling on Equality-on-Sea. "This one's mine. Go win that one."

The pilot looked at her. Then he looked at the ramp, and at the city, and understood that he was leaving someone behind either way.

"Tell them York Supreme sent you," she said.

The ramp came up. The Pelican lifted off.

On a rooftop above the plaza, Lunar watched it go for exactly as long as he could afford to.

Then the horde came around the streets to see what had been. He turned to face it. He keyed the open channel one more time, for everyone.

For Choko. For Alpha. For the ships pulling away. For anyone still listening in the city that had been his for three days.

"Hey," he said. "Save me a seat at the table."

The channel hissed, and nothing except static followed.

The stairwell door was blocked with Voteless and Overseer bodies, piled so high the ones behind it had stopped trying to climb. Spent rocket tubes lay in a row along the parapet, six of them, lined up neat as a man with time on his hands would line them up. The RL-77 rested across Lunar's knees, empty, the barrel still ticking as it cooled.

He sat with his back against the parapet, legs stretched out, head tipped back a little, facing the sky. His armor was scorched black on the left side where the plasma had found him, and his helmet visor was cracked, one clean fracture running corner to corner. Behind the cracked visor hung a frozen grin.

In the distance, Leviathans sang their victory.

The deck of cards laid scattered. Most of them had blown off the roof, but a few lay around him on the concrete, and one had landed face up. The ace he had accused himself of hiding, three days ago, in orbit, in another life.

Around the rooftop the horde milled, and did not climb again.

The Pelican was long gone by then.

EQUALITY-ON-SEA

SUPER EARTH

2185.05.29

Joe dropped into District Twelve mid-fight, at the part of the line that was losing.

The Star of Dawn covered him the whole way down. He hit the ground, stratagem balls in either hand, the Star answering quickly. The Hellpod that contained his autocannon came down on top of an Overseer and drilled it into the earth below. Three seconds later, the flak rounds greeted the incoming squids.

The part of the line that had been losing stopped losing. He fought his way to the sergeant's barricade three blocks at a time.

She looked at him over the edge of it.

"Took you long enough," she said.

"Traffic," Joe said, shoving another five-round clip into the autocannon.

Then the sky filled again.

This time, from the west. Super Destroyers dropped out of warp one after another, until there were too many to count, and between them the air filled with falling fire. Hellpods. Hundreds of them, coming down all over the city. The ground shook with the impacts, and the squids shook with it.

The nearest Hellpod landed beside the barricade, still red-hot, hissing. Joe reached it first. The diver inside looked out at him through a scorched visor.

"Where are you from?" Joe asked.

"York Supreme," the diver said.

Joe looked up and laughed, a hearty laugh from a joy he hadn’t felt since the beginning of the war.

The debt had come home.

Hellpods came down on the avenues of District Twelve, on the rooftops of the factory belts, on the broken plazas the squids had taken in the night. York Supreme divers, ships whose markings Joe did not recognize, and behind them the transports carrying SEAF battalions the west had emptied out of its own garrisons.

The line stopped losing, along its whole length. Then, for the first time since the squids had come back, it started moving forward.

The advance went as if it was rehearsed. SEAF took the ground. Divers took the sky. Liberator volleys kept the Voteless heads down while flak cleared the Overseers off the rooftops. A Harvester turned a corner two blocks from the barricade, and three different squads called in three different strikes on it, all at once. It did not survive. Leviathans, for the first time in the war, felt the fear of mortality, as missiles after strike after cannon round dug into its armor, then its insides. Overships were impaled by the many orbital defense cannons, manned by Helldivers, or SEAF, or even civilian volunteers who wanted a piece of sweet revenge.

The barricades moved.

Disassembled and rebuilt, a block forward every time the line advanced. SEAF soldiers carried the sandbags. Divers carried the guns. Nobody gave the order for it.

They took the school back by noon. Joe stood at the edge of the cratered yard, in the place he had once been glad was gone, and found that he was glad it was back.

The diver from the first pod stayed with them all day. She fought like someone paying something off, and when Joe asked her where she was headed next, she pointed at the next block.

By noon, three blocks. By evening, five. The arithmetic of losing, reversed one block at a time, slow as anything worth doing. Sure, it cost lives like the battles always had. But for the first time since the squids came back, it was buying something.

In the blocks they took back, the lights came on.

SES COMMANDOS CONVENE

ON HIGH ORBIT ABOVE SUPER EARTH

2185.05.29

In the War Room, the feed from York Supreme had been ticking down all day.

At 1742 hours, it stopped ticking.

It did not reach zero. It just stopped being a number, and became a grey screen, and that was worse.

Lia sat slouched, gently sobbing to a report.

Alpha stood at the table, staring at the grey screen with an expression that nobody in the room wanted to stand near. Choko stood behind him, her hands open at her sides, and did not blink. Her armor was covered in soot, and her expression ashen.

Adamas stood on the far side of the table and looked at the grey screen. Their hands rested flat on the table, very still. People in the room gently shuffled themselves to give them space.

Then Adamas looked down at the map. On it, Equality-on-Sea pulsed with life. It was a dim light, struggling to be lit, but it was lit nonetheless.

On the other side, the light went off.