Eric didn’t expect anyone to actually open fire at that range. Targeting was too finicky to be trustworthy over such distances without a real-time lock, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to take a few precautions.

I wish I had a couple squadrons of Double As to launch too. Those parasite pocket destroyers are going to be a problem if this turns ugly.

Eric’s eyes floated to where Lieutenant Kinder was sitting in the helm’s wraparound station, waiting for him to order the ship to tactical state. The young woman was one of the few people on the ship who was qualified to use NICS. The neurological link between person and machine allowed people to run aspects of the ship almost like an extension of their own bodies.

The system had originally been incorporated into his own squadron, the Double A team known on Earth as the Archangels. There had never been enough people qualified to use the system, even before they started slipping NICS into personal mechanized combat units and onto his bridge. Now, with the increased demand—and the lean toward larger capital ships—the days of the Archangels were done.

That gutted him, honestly.

Eric had spent a good many years dedicated to the Double A program, enough that it had become his life; the people in it, his family. He’d never expected the Archangels to be considered obsolete in his own lifetime, not while he was still personally in the prime of his career—or, well, close enough at least.

Fighters were force-projection tools, however, and there was nothing in the universe that projected force quite like a Heroic Class starship.

Times changed, much as he hated it, and the universe didn’t stop its motions because one man was growing old and angry at the kids on his lawn.

►►►

IBC Piar Cohn

► “Captain, signal recording on Oather frequencies.”

Aymes nodded, unsurprised. They were close enough now to make communications reasonable, given the lack of tachyon retransmission emitters in the system.

“Put it on.”

“As you say, Captain.”

The voice and image that appeared on the displays were largely unsurprising. A human male sitting at the center of a rather bright command deck delivering a short and to-the-point message. Aymes mildly approved, actually. No wasted time, no real slips to give away any information.

There was something odd, however. The voice seemed off somehow.

“Analyze the signal,” he ordered. “Something seems odd about the audio.”

“A moment, Captain.”

It took less than that, actually, as his signals officer made a sound of uncertainty.

“Well?” Aymes asked.

“You’re right, Captain. The words don’t match the subject’s jaw or lip motions,” the signals officer offered after a moment. “The voice is artificial. The speaker isn’t communicating in Imperial standard.”

Aymes frowned. “That makes no sense. That ship is an Oather design, using Oather frequencies. Why would they not speak Imperial standard?”