5.5 years after the Armistice

Khesol hopped into the office, her breathing short. "We've got a problem!"

"I run the Dominion, Khesol. We've got a lot of problems. What is it this time?"

"There's a— It's Znos-9!"

"Znos-9?" Svatken felt the alarm grow in her chest. "The mining colony?"

"Yes! The mining colony. They've been receiving coded messages from out of the system."

Svatken rubbed her eyes exhaustingly. "What… kind of… coded message?"

"The kind that gives hints about an upcoming uprising!"

"On Znos-9?! But… no… they— they wouldn't!"

"They've been getting them for over six months now."

"Six months!"

"Yes, Director. The records go back six months."

"Who is supposed to be the receiver?! Did we at least find the people responsible?"

"No, Director. I've been interrogating potential apostates all morning! But it's… been unreliable. None of their confessions have matched up."

"That just means we haven't caught them yet. If there are messages, someone must have been on the receiving end!"

"Yes, Director. We'll keep looking."

Flowdi, the Znos-9 security station commander, stared at the political officer in shock. "Schism attempt?! On Znos-9? Officer Gluknitz, are you— are you sure about this?"

Gluknitz scratched his ear. "That was what I said, wasn't it?"

"Yes, of course, officer. But— but— here?! Inside the Znos system? Surely the schismatics haven't penetrated that far!"

The political officer's eyes bore into hers. "Are you casting doubt on the veracity of my intelligence, Commander Flowdi?"

"Of course not!"

"Good. I thought not."

"What— may I inquire as to the nature of your intelligence? For me to make a determination of responsibility assignment."

"You may. We have intercepted messages from schismatics into this system via FTL radio. We managed to decode them. They are messages of an incendiary nature. They are intended to rile up poorly bred Znosians and induce them to betray the Prophecy."

"Ah. I— I see." Flowdi paused for a moment before she asked, "And where was the response sent from?"

"What? Response?"

"Well, the confidence with which you are levying this accusation… it makes me think that there was a response to the schismatic propaganda originating from somewhere on Znos-9."

Gluknitz suddenly seemed deep in thought. "Hm."

"There— there was an outwards response, right?"

Gluknitz didn't say anything for a few moments as his face scrunched up in more thought. He replied a few seconds later, "That is a state secret."

"A— a state secret?"

"Yes, that means you may not know the answer to that question."

"But… how am I supposed to know who to assign responsibility to if I can't be allowed to know whether someone in my station sent a message out to the schismatics?"

Gluknitz was a slow one. It took him almost a minute to think up a response. This time, he chose honesty. "I don't know."

"You… don't know?"

"Yes, I don't know if there was a response from Znos-9."

"How— how could you not know? Respectfully, Political Officer."

"There's— there's a lot of FTL radio traffic that goes through here. A lot of messages we have to monitor every day!" Gluknitz huffed. "What I do know is that there were messages being sent here from schismatics, and they wouldn't keep sending messages here if there wasn't someone here on the inside communicating with them!"

The security commander couldn't argue with that logic. Even if she was bred to, she wasn't bred stupid enough to. "Yes, officer. But… if you didn't catch the recipient of the messages, how can I assign—"

Gluknitz's patience had run out. "That is your job, security commander! You figure it out!"

"Of course, officer! Right away." The security commander flipped her lapel microphone on and spoke into it. "Attendant, I need every radio operations manager in my office."

Her attendant had obviously not been listening in on the conversation as much as he should have. Because if he had, he would have understood the absolute urgency of the situation, and he would not have asked, "What? Like right now?"

"Yes! Right now! All of them!"

It took twelve hours for Flowdi to brief all twelve of the radio operations managers on Znos-9. A couple of them had to fly over from the other side of the planet. That was the cost of doing business in person. There wasn't an alternative, especially when the remote communications channels were routinely compromised by the schismatics.

All twelve reported no anomalous traffic from their stations, but they all readily admit it wasn't something they could be confident of. It was an entire planet, and each of them was in charge of a major mining region. Millions of people. There were lots of messages every day. If there was a single radio transmitting secrets to the outside every once in a while, it wasn't like they would detect it among all the legitimate messages. By Flowdi's estimation, the scale of computing power required to sustain that kind of surveillance dragnet on the hundreds of millions of people under her control would be staggering. Incomprehensible. Simply absurd. No sane species could dedicate resources to attempt something that colossal.

She was still considering what to do about the problem when Gluknitz barged into her office again.

"Political Officer Gluknitz! How has your day—"

Gluknitz was not in a good mood. "Don't waste my time. Have you looked into the security situation I briefed you about?"

"Yes, officer. It's all I've been doing since then. I've talked to all my radio operations managers, and we've been consulting with Digital Guide experts in my jurisdiction who know anything about FTL radio messages."

"And? What did you find?"

"Absolutely nothing" would have been the honest answer if she wanted to be recycled.

Flowdi had been consuming some of the predator propaganda on the FTL radio. As a high-level security commander, she had access to them and she was allowed to read them to learn to combat the enemy's disinformation. And as a responsibility-loving people, the Dominion wasn't used to to secrets at every level. Inside those vast archives, she did find something of note a while back. There was a book about management and communications, and the mindset and specific phrasing it taught her to use had been extremely helpful.

Especially when she needed to report bad news. Luckily, the book had taught her exactly what to do in this situation.

"The investigation is still ongoing at all levels. My office is fully engaged with the stakeholders and developing a framework to align our objectives. We're pursuing multiple lines of inquiry, including some promising possibilities."

Most of that went over his head. Gluknitz scratched his right ear. "Promising possibilities? What are those?"

"Oh, I wouldn't want to waste your time with potential rumors just yet, Political Officer Gluknitz. Such things are beneath you, I'm sure. I would only report the most accurate information to you. The iterative processes we are employing—"

"Hm… you are right. My time is more valuable than yours. Only come to me when you have definitive results… How long would that be?"

"We are still improving our forecasting model as we explore—"

She overdid it. Gluknitz was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he knew what he wanted. He wanted a number he could report up to his superior. "How many days, commander?"

"I would estimate… about fifty days."

"Fifty?! Yeah, right. You have three days to get me concrete results."

"Three days?!" Flowdi sputtered.

Gluknitz nodded his head adamantly. "Three days. One, two, three. Three days."

Flowdi racked her brain for an excuse, but when the rubber met the road, there wasn't much the buzz words could do. "But— but that's not enough time for us to conduct a thorough, multi-tiered investigation—"

"Three days, commander. Or… I'll have to find someone else who can conduct a— a multi-tiered investigation in your place."

Flowdi didn't find anyone who'd been passing messages to the schismatics in three days. She did, however, find about a dozen low-level radio operators who had accessed restricted archives of predator propaganda without formal authorizations.

After extensive interrogation, a few of them revealed under heavy duress that they might have passed coded messages to the enemy. Though they were unable to verify this information, they were quickly recycled under her orders. It was a tough call, but she did what needed to be done.

Flowdi reported their full responsibility up to Gluknitz — who seemed temporarily satisfied, and he reported this up to his superior.

The messages did not stop coming.

Under orders from his superior, Gluknitz demanded a higher level of accountability, so Flowdi conducted another investigation.

Another two dozen supposedly rogue radio operators were found and fed to the recycler.

The messages did not stop coming.

And this time, in her third investigation into this matter, Flowdi did — in fact — find a small cell of schismatics among her radio operators. Four Servants of the Prophecy had betrayed their oaths and their Dominion. Genuine conspirators. After interrogation, they all talked, and they all adamantly claimed that they only joined up with the schismatics after the last round of radio operator purges.

That was concerning. Flowdi wrote in her recommendation to Gluknitz that the purges might be becoming counter-productive. He did not immediately reply to her, but Flowdi's State Security file grew about a hundred pages thicker that day.

Another two months later, another State Security investigation found over a hundred schismatics on Znos-9. This time, they were not just radio operators. They were laborers, managers, engineers… Even two Marines were implicated. Flowdi took full responsibility, and she was replaced.

Her replacement saw what happened to her, and his first act in office was to crackdown on suspected schismatics on Znos-9. About a thousand suspects were found and fed to the recycler.

More messages.

More purges.

More messages.

Then, it happened.

The code reader beeped a short confirmation as it verified the new deployment directives.

"Codes from the surface confirmed."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Thank you, Seven Whiskers. Direct it to the main screen."

There was a brief moment where the screen flashed as the computer verified the integrity of the new connection, and the familiar face appeared on his bridge screen as she began to speak.

"This is State Security Director Svatken to the New Grand Fleet. There is an ongoing schism attempt on Znos-9. The fleet is to traverse the system to the planet and to quell it. We must set an example here. No quarter shall be given to the schismatics, and all force levels are authorized. Do you understand what I am saying, Grand Fleet Commander?"

"Yes, Director. My fleet is warmed up as per your orders. We can be over Znos-9 in under thirty hours."

Her face was haggard, exhausted. The schism had taken its toll on everyone. On everyone's sanity, some whispered (but not too loudly). "Fleet Commander, I need to make sure you understood me clearly. I am invoking suppression directive 227."

"Yes, Director. I understand. We will carry out directive 227 to the fullest on Znos-9."

That was the controversial schism suppression procedure enacted by Director Svatken just a year ago, amidst a wave of hasty Dominion retreats in the face of a strategically layered assault on core Dominion industrial and shipyard systems.

Not one more world.

When it looked like a planet or colony was about to fall to the schismatics, it would be sterilized. Utterly destroyed to prevent the enemy from using it. At first, some Dominion Navy commanders were reluctant to carry out the directive, but they were quickly replaced, and there were now measures to ensure loyal political offciers on board their ships could quickly take operational control if they were compromised.

Nonetheless, the directive was controversial, not for its morality, but for its effectiveness. More than once, the schismatics enacted clever electronic and intelligence ruses that made it look like heavily-contested planets were lost, forcing Dominion commanders to destroy positions they knew they could still hold. On other fronts, entire systems were lost in quick raids, and when regrouped Dominion fleets counter-attacked, they found the systems and worlds they retook completely annhilated by the units that had been last there, worthless.

Still… the measure was kept in use. And it did have a slight deterrent effect against worlds falling into schism.

But here, the Grand Fleet Commander suspected he would not need to use it. He'd already been given two briefings. One was by his political officer, who more or less told him exactly what Svatken just did. The other was by Dominion Naval Intelligence, which for all its faults never bothered to lie to him the way that his State Security handlers regularly did; the intelligence officer claimed that the schism attempt on Znos-9 was mild at worst. They didn't go so far as call the directive an overreaction — that would be overstepping their apolitical bounds, but the less-than-impressive manpower count they recommended for quelling it told him what he needed to know.

"Good," the director said, leaning back into her chair. "I know there are those who say this incident on Znos-9 is an anomaly. That the schismatics there are somehow lesser than the ones with the fleets and armies encroaching on our Dominion even as we speak. But… we take no threats lightly, do we, Fleet Commander?"

"It will be done exactly as you have ordered, Director."

It took about five Znosian days to fully quell the insurrection on Znos-9. For five days, the New Grand Fleet pounded the surface, non-stop, with their orbit-to-ground munitions. And to the fleet's surprise, Director Svatken appeared to be right. There turned out to be a lot more of the schismatics than everyone expected, but those on the ground couldn't do much against the might of a thousand of the Dominion's new missile destroyers.

Then, the Dominion Marines landed.

The Marines rampaged through the mining colonies, ferreting out the enemies of the state and their sympathizers. Hundreds of thousands of them were found.

Textbook.

Just to be sure, the Director stationed the fleet over the planet to hunt for stragglers.

The entire New Grand Fleet sat there in orbit, idling their engines and occasionally sending a few bursts of munitions down to the planet. Some of those were targeting hardened underground burrows that still had a few cells of holdout schismatics. But most of it was for show, to placate their State Security masters who demanded ever higher body counts.

"Squadron 16 Leader to Squadron 14, our Marines are requesting large-diameter orbit-to-ground on a schismatic burrow."

"This is Squadron 14 Leader. Approved. Have your target coordinators transmit the grids to my fire support team."

"Will do. Appreciate the assist, 14."

Squadron 16 Leader stared at her dynamic map of Znos-9, and as she looked at the blinking icons in orbit, she frowned in slight confusion. "14, are you seeing that?" she asked into her headset.

"Seeing what?"

She pointed at an icon on her map to herself. "Squadron 29."

"Oh yeah, that's… Dirzink's ships. What about them?"

"They're going to—"

"Ah yeah, they're going down to Condition Four."

"Condition Four?!"

"Yup. Just got approved by High Command this morning. His Marines are being cycled back for retraining, and they're scaling back their fire support queue."

"Ah, right." She wrinkled her nose. "Condition Four, huh?"

"Yeah, all the odd numbered squadrons are eligible. Good time for some much-needed maintenance on their ships. The op tempo has been crazy for the last week. I heard they were launching as fast as their batteries could reload for two straight days."

The voice of a new squadron leader joined the gossip circle. "Well, the schismatics down there aren't going to kill themselves."

"Not all of them, at least," Squadron 16 Leader replied dryly. "Our Marines dealt with a nest of them… You wouldn't believe these insane fanatics…"

"Yeah, my political officer says these guys are actually a cakewalk compared to one of the planets he was involved with in the predator border systems."

"Cakewalk? What's that?"

"What? You never had cake before, 16?"

"I've had cake before!" Squadron 14 Leader cut in excitedly. Then his voice turned a little more hushed. "Contraband that we confiscated from the surface. I only sampled it for verifying its authenticity, of course."

"Anyway, my point was, this could be a lot worse. Running your engines hot for a week was the least of their worries out there."

"Ah, thanks for mentioning that, 18. Reminds me. I need to submit a responsibility report for two of my ships."

"Readiness degradation report?"

She sighed. "Yeah, these new engines. We keep getting overheat malfunctions. Why couldn't we just stick with our old engines?!"

"Well…"

"Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. We need them to out-burn the schismatic space superiority fleet out there, but they're such a pain when we're just doing orbital clean-up duty."

"I hear the next-generation ones out of the Design Bureau will have better run time to maintenance ratios."

"They always say that."

"Well, if you're lucky, they're going to expand the Condition Four eligibility criteria to everyone later this afternoon."

"Can't wait," she muttered. "So we can finally take our engines offline and assign responsibility for the heating issue."

Squadron 16 went into Condition Four later that afternoon, as did all but three squadrons in the New Grand Fleet by the next morning.

Condition Four standards in the New Grand Fleet required that all ships in the squadron must be ready to go to combat in twelve hours. Twelve hours was a lot of time, but in the context of space combat, twelve hours wasn't that much in travel distance.

The shortest travel distance by a standard Znosian missile destroyer between the system blink limit and Znos-4 was at least forty hours. During most of the New Grand Fleet's time anchored around Znos-4, its squadrons sat idle in Condition Four or Condition Five. This saved on resources, and in an increasingly desperate war where resources were tight, getting that right was a major priority.

When out of active combat — especially since most of the schismatics on the mining colony below were dead or hiding — there was nothing wrong with Condition Four.

Unless… you were moored around the ninth planet of the star system, right at the edge of the system blink limit.

Condition Four allowed ships in the squadron to shut off and maintain many of its critical systems, the most important being the ship's engines, but there was one component that was never off: the alarm system.

So when hundreds of unidentified blink signatures appeared less than half a light second away from Znos-9, all the ship alarms correctly went off across the whole fleet.

FZNS Vanguard, Znos (23,000 Ls)

Ditvish drank in the tension of the bridge right before battle. The whisper of his crews as they communicated with each other. The rising hum of the computer fans as they began their calculations. The klaxons and alarms that alerted his people of anomalies on the sensor board.

When the predators let him out, Ditvish knew they were merely using him against their enemy. Against the Dominion. Like a tool. But he'd be lying to himself if doing the job now didn't feel completely natural.

It was the one thing he was good at. And was he good at it…

Ditvish looked at the mass of enemy dots on the map, dwarfing his relatively modest fleet. Modest, by absolute terms. This was already almost all the ships the Free Znosian Navy could muster for this surprise offensive.

"That's a lot of enemy ships, almost thrice our raw numbers," Ditvish said. "A completely hopeless situation for us, would you say?"

"Not at all. It appears we've caught the enemy fleet by surprise, Eleven Whiskers," Ten Whiskers Telnokt said as she stepped up next to him. She gave him a toothy and very un-Znosian grin. Ditvish wryly noted that he wasn't the only one who had been touched by the pervasive predator influence in the last four years. "Exactly as you drew it up."

Ditvish matched her smile. "Ah, I can't take credit for all of it."

"Why not? You'll take full responsibility if this fails, will you not?"

"Hm… Fair point. You're right. This was all me."

Telnokt pointed at the mining planet around which the enemy fleet was moored. "Unfortunate that our people on the surface had to be sacrificed for this."

"Their lives…" He sighed. "We knew they were going to be hit hard by the Loyalists. I wonder every day if these sacrifices we've made are worth it."

She looked at him solemnly. "Would you like to see the calculations? What would happen if we fail here… The price of failure?"

"No, thank you, Ten Whiskers. I think I have seen enough of that in this war. At least— at least we're finally here. Znos."

"The birthplace of our civilization."

"And the heart of the rot eating away at it. Today, we have a chance to clear that rot out."

Telnokt nodded again. She examined the map for a moment and pointed a claw at it. "Speaking of rot, there's some more good news, it seems."

Ditvish studied the deployment of the enemy ships for another moment. "Ah. The ships, they're deployed in low and medium orbit. In two fluffles."

Telnokt nodded savagely. "Opposite hemispheres of Znos-9."

"So when we take one out…" Ditvish began.

She finished for him, "The other will quickly lose sensor resolution and be incapable of responding."

Ditvish's whiskers twitched. "If I were in charge over there…"

"You would be derelict in your duties?" she suggested. "You would have a lot to take responsibility for?"

He shook his head, less in disagreement and more in disappointment at the enemy formation. "Another Grand Fleet. The third to face total destruction in my lifetime. Thousands of ships, millions of Znosians, and all it takes is a simple mistake. Telnokt, make sure to never let me forget: when we are in charge of our people, and when we have peace, we will not build one of these again. What a waste. Even if war is necessary, we can't neglect the necessity of force preservation… Our doctrine of a smaller number of high tech ships — it is resource expensive, but it has paid far more in dividends…"

Ditvish glanced at the three bright blue signals on his screen representing his new stealth reconnaissance ships. They were indigenous designs. Put together by the best and brightest scientists and engineers in the Free Znosian Navy, with inspiration from the records of battles between the Dominion Navy and the Republic. While not as advanced as what he knew the predators had, they were advanced enough. He knew this because four of them had been sent to the Granti border for an exercise.

Not an official exercise with the predators, of course; the inner workings of their politics remained a mystery to Ditvish. He just knew that direct cooperation was taboo. But there was a Free Znosian Navy exercise in interstellar space, about a day before the Coalition Navy was scheduled to have an exercise in that exact volume of space. And… well, time-keeping in interstellar space was such a complex technical subject. His stealth recon ships remained hidden, uncompromised, by the red team task force for a full six hours before they brought in their search gravidars.

Now, those same Free Znosian stealth ships sat silent — watching, transmitting — absorbing enemy radar waves and storing their heat in an internal heatsink, just a few light seconds from the enemy fleets. In a few minutes, their deployed missile pods would add some volume into their outgoing volley, but their real advantage lied in their ability to relay real time targeting data to his other missiles in flight, directing them accurately and almost doubling the effective range of his ships.

Not that it would be needed today. The way that the enemy fleet was sitting pretty with their engines offline, Ditvish was pretty sure it was going to be a one-sided massacre.

Telnokt straightened up from her station as she analyzed the latest simulation readouts confirming his instincts. "Should we— should we ask for a surrender, perhaps? Maybe a warning for them to abandon their ships?"

"Transmit the usual offer. Some of them might take it. But there is no need to wait for a reply. They have until we get there in an hour… plenty of time to decide where they stand."

"Yes, Eleven Whiskers. I know a couple of the squadron leaders in that fleet. We'll have some takers, I'm sure."

"Good. Make sure to help them disable their kill code vulnerabilities if they are defecting."

The kill codes used by Dominion State Security often came in handy for the Free Znosian Navy, and the Great Predator spies that had supplied part of their special gear had given them a machine that guessed and tried out a bunch of different sequences in combat, at the worst possible time for the enemy. The Dominion Navy had gotten more careful with those, often varying the codes used for their ships, but State Security had still insisted on them keeping the idiotic measures.

In a few rare cases, it did actually save the Loyalists from defecting fleets, but Ditvish was pretty sure it hurt more than helped in general.

"Yes, Eleven Whiskers. Did we get any more of the code updates from our… predator friends?" Telnokt asked.

"Sure. We've got a pretty hefty list. The codes won't work on all of them. But some of them might still be vulnerable." Ditvish shrugged and pointed a claw at the enemy formation, with most ships still struggling to warm their engines. "For most of these ships, we'll probably never get the chance to find out."

"Yes, Eleven Whiskers… The Free 1st Fleet has completed all preparations. They're ready for you."

"Thank you, Ten Whiskers." Ditvish drew up to his full height of 1.1 meters and activated his microphone. He ordered, "All ships of the Free Znosian Navy, proceed with Strike Plan Alpha. Long-range missiles, target their immobile ships! And full combat burn toward Znos-4. Today, we liberate our homes for our species — for our civilization. I'll see you all down on Znos!"

As he closed the connection, he sat back into his command chair with a sigh as his bones creaked. That was it. Unless something went horribly wrong, that was all his job was today. This final offensive, several years in the making and several months in the planning. Everything had been put in motion.

He picked up his mug and took a satisfied sip.

Hot chocolate. Another one of the predators' ingenious culinary inventions. It wasn't widespread across the fleet yet, but it was getting more popular. And as the fleet commander, he did get access to a wide variety of life's little treats.

He took another sip and placed the mug back into the holder with his shaky paws.

Splash.

"Ah, crap." He rolled his eyes as some of the dark liquid spilled onto his uniform.

Telnokt watched him in amusement as he tried to clean the mess off with his paws. "Clumsy today, huh?"

"Don't laugh at me. You'll be in this seat one day, sooner than you know. Seniority is both a blessing and a—" Ditvish stopped mid-sentence as he stared down at his stained uniform, memory flooding back to him. "Oh. Oh, wow! Ohhhhhh! I get it now."

His subordinate looked at him, with a little bit of concern this time. "What is it, Eleven Whiskers?"

"By the false Prophecy… do you remember when I told you about— about my time with the Terrans, and how I met Eleven Whiskers Sprabr before I came here? About five… six years ago?"

"Yeah. Many times. Sprabr — he refused to join us, right?"

"Right. And at the end of our meeting, he wanted to give me his insignia patch. His eleven whiskers patch."

Telnokt looked confused. "Huh? Why? These insignia patches are not very resource intensive to fabricate."

Ditvish held up his dark-stained patch, fanning it in the air while hot chocolate dripped off its edges. "I know. That's what I told him then! But I just realized something! I just realized why he wanted to give me his!"

"Why— why?"

"So I can have a backup! For when mine gets damaged or… stained by hot chocolate… like now!"

"Oh!" Telnokt's eyes lit up as she pointed a claw at Ditvish. "True! Wow! What incredible foresight!"

"I know. What a pity I couldn't convince him to join the Free Navy with me." Ditvish sighed as he recalled the rest of the conversation with Sprabr. He muttered, "A backup insignia patch! A backup! Of course! How could I not have seen that?!"

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