Prologue, Part 1

  18th of January, 2636

  Terran Federation Fringe, Tarminia System

  Geostationary Orbit over Tarminia Prime

  "Status report." Said Sapphiria as the planet turned under her feet, seemingly suspended in the void of space.

  To anyone looking, it would have seemed like a young woman, with flowing, raven black hair and piercing purple eyes, adorned in the black and crimson uniform of a Federation admiral, was just sailing through the void. Of course, no one could have seen it. It was a mental projection, born out of the ship's computer cores.

  "The elevator is in full working order, and the local government has declared itself fully satisfied of its installation." Answered Cia, and the AI looked over her shoulder at the...simulacrum, was the proper word?

  Sapphiria was a fully fledged, sapient Federation artificial intelligence. Made out of modified and digitalized human neural patterns, she was capable of everything humanity had been, with the advantage of being unburdened by the inefficiencies and weaknesses of biological processes.

  Cia...or more properly, 'Carrier Integrated Assistant' was a program complex enough to pass off for someone. She just couldn't think creatively. Which was her entire purpose, an assistant here to do the busywork, backing up 'true' AIs, and if push came to shove could piggyback some of her host's processes to gain something approaching creativity.

  "Very good. Prepare the fleet, we shall break orbit within the hour." Cia coughed, and Sapphiria sighed. She would have to remember to dial the simulacrum's mannerisms back down. It always...creeped her out when she acted close to what a human would have. "Yes?"

  "The local government has requested your presence for the opening ceremonies, as well as a proper farewell gala."

  "Send them the usual excuses."

  "I have. They were undeterred."

  Sapphiria sighed. Great. More pomp and medals, thanks and stars knew what else.

  Though she guessed she couldn't blame them. Most worlds on the outer edge of Federation space -'half forgotten client states', as apt as it was, wasn't exactly a polite way to describe them- were low population, relatively poorly developed planets. They had the technology to reach space and develop there, even with their relatively primitive tech base they were still centuries ahead of when humanity had begun colonizing Sol in earnest during the twenty-first century. What they didn't have was the population. A few million people could produce a fair amount of engineers and skilled technicians, but even a handful of single fusion powered shuttles, with the industry to support them, could eat up personnel frighteningly quickly.

  Most of these worlds thus retreated within the bounds of their atmospheres, only using a few cheap rockets to keep their satellite network up, and becoming more or less cut off from the greater galaxy.

  She was changing that. The Federation had launched another one of its outreach initiatives, holding out its hand towards worlds that had been established specifically to be as far away and as independent as possible from humanity's dominant power. And this particular one meant bringing orbital elevators to them. Reliable, durable, and more importantly extremely maintenance light elevators that could sustain a pathetic amount of cargo, but still light years ahead of what most of these worlds could manage. Such systems weren't hard for the Federation's Core Worlds to manufacture now, but they had been borderline impossible when most of the colony ships had set out.

  So she came bearing gifts, and more or less reopened these worlds to the galaxy, and the flows of trade, advanced technology and development opportunity that came with it. No kidding they were treating it as one of the greatest milestones of their worlds, because it was.

  Except she was already fifteen worlds down her list and if she had to sit down for another series of speech by indolent politicians she was shoving someone out of an airlock. Probably herself.

  "Very well." Grated out the admiral. "Prepare an honor guard and protection detail."

  "Yes ma'am." Cia bowed, and vanished.

  Sapphiria stayed there, watching the world below for a few minutes, before angrily gesturing, dispelling the simulation, and focusing her attention onto her flagship's bridge, summoning her holographic avatar.

  The bridge was pristine, and utterly empty. As a full AI, she didn't need humans to help man her vessels, and she had the inherited ability to be able to expand and control a multitude of ships at once, almost infinitely. Once upon a time that ability was feared by humanity, and most of her fellows, but now that they had encountered what dwelt inside the void...

  And yet, despite all this, she, a full fleet admiral of the Terran Navy, was stuck in the middle of nowhere, moving orbital elevators to Fringe worlds.

  They could have sent a construction ship. Or hell, a damned cruiser. Thought the AI. They could have done the job just as well, if not better.

  But no, one had to show the flag with a full carrier group. Which was her flagship, the Starprism, as well as two battlecruisers, six light cruisers and around eighty or so escort vessels of various sizes, meant to provide whatever support those worlds might need, which usually meant cleaning up the orbitals of dead satellites or discarded rocket parts.

  To a world that saw perhaps a single starship a year, if not less, that was a veritable armada. Which, of course, was the entire point, reminding the might and power of the Federation to backwaters, while giving them a taste of its benevolence.

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  She flicked her hand as she received a notification, and Cia appeared on the bridge, her hologram showing a white haired, orange eyed woman that would almost look like her sibling if not for the blank look in her eyes and short hair.

  "The troops are gathered and the shuttle is ready."

  Sapphiria sighed. Her 'troops' were automata, like everything else on her ships, but even if it meant she was just surrounded by drones the people below had certain expectations that had to be met.

  "Very well, prepare my ambassador for-" She froze, as she received an emergency ping.

  A full fleet admiral being saddled with a simple carrier group would have been a mortal insult. In her case it was alleviated by several factors.

  First and foremost, most fleet admirals were well into their second century of service to the navy. She wasn't even a hundred years old, let alone spent that much time fighting for her country.

  Secondly, she was the daughter of Arcadia, in so far as parenting meant anything to AIs, constructed from her modified kernel. Arcadia who had founded the entire Federation, and still ruled it. Her other 'parents', AIs that had contributed to her code with some of their own, counted about half of the most powerful AIs in the Federation. In her superiors' minds, that second point handily explained the first, and the third.

  Because lastly, the Starprism was fresh out of the Aurora staryards in Earth's orbit, and contained the best technology the Federation had to offer. Including what was pinging her now, one of the first mobile hyperspace scanner arrays in the field.

  Normally anything that allowed to peer into the dimension the Federation used to travel between the stars was the kind of gigantic sensor station that made capital ships look like gnats. A recent breakthrough now made them able to fit in a cube 'only' a hundred meters on the side, one of which was sitting snuggly in what normally would have been the maintenance bay for an extra light cruiser on her flagship.

  She didn't even order Cia to summarize what the array was sending, she pulled it up herself.

  And her eyes went wide.

  Thirty contacts, maybe more. At least four of those were cruiser sized.

  And that world saw a starship a year.

  "Send my regrets to the planetary governor, and tell them we have an emergency up here." Said Sapphiria as she began sending orders. "Stay light on the details, but imply there may be something coming."

  The compact hyperspace arrays weren't a secret, or at least hadn't been for a while, but she wasn't keen on flaunting the fact that she had one either.

  "Yes ma'am." Said the simulacrum as her hologram flickered, the ship diverting power.

  The entire carrier group swung about as one, and the smaller vessels lit up their drives, forming a screen of point defence guns and scanners between her flagship and whatever was out there. A few seconds later, the more ponderous cruisers did the same, forming the classic pyramid formation of the Federation's carrier warfare, with the flagship at the tip, hidden behind layers of escorts.

  It's not like it was much use in a fight anyway. It wasn't exactly useless either, but long gone were the days of starfighters, shattering navies with waves upon waves of smallcrafts. Now was the age of capital ships, and carriers had one primary purpose: be mobile staryards and maintenance hubs, to be able to sustain fleets of ships thousands of light years away from the nearest naval station. Which was why an engineering track officer like her had found herself in command of such a flotilla.

  The carrier shuddered as drones launched, spreading into a rough sphere, spying for anything trying to sneak up on her and, more importantly, providing a gigantic dispersed sensor array. They were more or less single use, but she was due for another exercise if nothing else, and push came to shove she could replace them.

  After a moment's thought, she gave the order to move out. If it was another Federation flotilla, or some merchant caravan, then she could make light of it all and thank them for the impromptu exercise.

  If it was something more sinister though, there was no way she was putting the squishy biologicals down below in the line of fire if she could help it.

  The Tarminia system, that until then had been a sleepy backwater with the occasional stray radio transmission from its sole inhabited world, came alive. Ship drives on full power and their massive plumes of fusing plasma lit it up local space like a Christmas tree, the drones and ships drinking in every stray photon as they built a picture of local space, advancing towards the outer system.

  Sapphiria nodded as she looked at her ships' status reports. One of the key reasons why there were no humans aboard, or any squishy biologicals, was because none of them could survive the accelerations her vessels used for battle. At least not without massive amounts of technological assistance, which took time to use and ate up volume and mass like nobody's business.

  She loved the squishies, she really did, but they didn't belong on a battlefield. Not anymore. Besides which, she'd seen firsthand how adept humans were at warfare, and unleashing them on unsuspecting foes when one had an alternative had to count as some kind of war crime.

  The contacts vanished off of the hyperspace array's sensors.

  "Hyperspace emergence." Finally said Cia, as the light of their appearance into realspace finally crawled its way to them.

  They had clearly not expected anything to meet them, because they hadn't the slightest bit of formation beyond the most basic of station keeping. Nor were they trying to obscure their numbers or capabilities by running dark or deploying counter measures. Once the flash of their emergence into realspace faded, her computer cores quickly collated all the data, and this time she let Cia do the honors.

  "Four cruiser sized vessels, reading three transports and one naval vessels. Twenty three smaller vessels, four frigate sized, ten destroyers, five corvettes. Most appear to be civilian in nature."

  "Civilian nature my ass." Said Sapphiria as she looked at the ongoing analysis. Contrary to popular belief, AIs didn't 'know' anything that was in their databanks or information system. just like humans they had an immediate and long term memory. Which meant that she didn't just automatically 'know' whatever was sent her way, though she could go through it at speeds no human could ever compete with. "Those 'transport' have lasers or I'm a simulacrum. It's a raiding fleet." She frowned. "An alien raiding fleet."

  "Composition appears to be mostly composed of former theocracy vessels." Confirmed Cia. "One of the cruiser sized transports and most of the destroyers are human designs however. Including several military."

  Sapphiria nodded. The Vanyr Theocracy had been the major galactic power for...what, six thousand years? Of the eight alien species humanity had encountered, seven had been bioengineered and 'uplifted' by the Theocracy. A tenet of their religion was that they needed to bring the gift of sapience to the stars, and that had been interpreted as elevating other beings.

  Over the course of the millennia however, what had started as a remarkably benevolent effort had devolved into creating bioengineered slaves to fill their every need.

  The Theocracy had been partway through a horrific slave revolt and major schism when humanity had stumbled into them. Naturally, the corrupt upper echelons of the Theocracy had seen this non uplifted upstart species, unsullied by their 'guiding hands', as an heresy, and tried to solve their own internal disputes by declaring a holy war against humanity.

  It hadn't ended well. The stars from the Orion arm to the galactic core were littered with the wrecks of their navy, and now the Theocracy was nothing more than an unpleasant memory, its various successor states vying among themselves as humanity slowly carved its way through the galactic core.

  While many worlds beyond the Federation's aegis were being preyed upon by the shattered remnants of its armada, fleets of dilapidated warships sustaining themselves through plunder, slavery and shaking down isolated planets for tribute.

  "Hail them." Said Sapphiria. "And prepare to fire. Let's see if they're smart enough to surrender. If they're not..." She shrugged. She outmassed them almost four to one and she had three capital ships. They didn't stand a chance. "Well, I suppose we could use the target practice."

  "Yes ma'am!"

  "And notify our dear friends planetside that things might get really ugly." Which of course would mean everyone would scramble to watch. "Command wanted us to show the might and benevolence of the Federation? Fine, let's give everyone a live demonstration."