Ned POV
The first fleet came before the dead were cold.
Order showed them as pale marks beyond the moon: seven hunters, two heavy carriers, one command spearship, and a cloud of smaller craft moving with the confidence of men who believed grief made their enemy slow.
They were not wrong about grief.
Only about what I had done with it.
"Time to contact," Order said.
"Nine minutes," I answered before she did.
A pause.
"Eight minutes, fifty-six seconds."
My mind was learning the ship. Not gently. I took its camera feeds, heat maps, crew routes, weapon readiness, hull stress, and the wet red fact of its damage into myself until I could feel the vessel the way a swordsman feels weight through a hilt. The mother ship was wounded along the starboard spine. Shield relays misreported. Turret banks four and seven had loyalist dead still inside their seats. Half the crew did not know whether to obey me or pray I would die quickly.
"We cannot outrun them," Varis said.
He stood beside the tactical pit with blood still on his clothes. The acolytes gave him a wider circle than they gave me. Fear of me was clean. Fear of him had memory inside it.
"Then we teach them to slow down," I said.
Omega's voice came through the med channel. "If you roll this ship before I finish sealing the crescent, I will come to the bridge and make your war shorter."
"Noted."
"I mean it."
"That was the noted part."
She cut the link.
For one breath, something almost like laughter moved through me.
Then the Sith opened fire.
Space war is beautiful in ways that should shame the eye. Light crosses darkness with such purity that the mind forgets every beam is an argument for death. The first lances struck our forward shields and spread blue-white over the glass. Fighters fell away from the carriers like seeds cast by a burning hand.
Order laid predictions over the battle.
The lines were elegant.
Too elegant.
"False retreat pattern," Varis said.
I glanced at him.
"Explain."
"They will break left after first exchange. You will think the command spear exposed. It will not be. The carriers will release sacrificial craft into your turn. They want your wounded starboard spine facing the moon."
Order recalculated.
"Probability: thirty-two percent."
Varis's mouth tightened. "Your machine lacks shame in its data."
"Clarify," Order said, cold.
"Sith commanders lie most extravagantly where they feel most humiliated. They came for a wounded prize. If they cannot take it cleanly, they will make a ritual of waste."
I watched the hunters begin to drift left.
Not enough for certainty.
Enough for trust to become a weapon I disliked holding.
"Order, commit to Varis's branch."
"Confidence is low."
"So is time."
The ship groaned when we turned.
Not the turn they wanted. A brutal drop toward the dead moon's shadow, belly exposed for half a breath, stern guns firing into empty dark before the enemy understood that we had answered a move they had not yet made.
The sacrificial craft emerged exactly where Varis said they would.
We were not there.
Our port batteries erased them in a white chain of ruptures. Beautiful. Horrible. Lights falling in a row, each one a cockpit, a body, a last breath made bright enough for gods to ignore.
The spearship corrected fast.
Good commander.
He drove straight through his own debris field and fired at close range. The impact threw half the bridge to its knees. Metal screamed. A console burst. Sorel Vane dragged a younger acolyte away from burning glass with the offended expression of someone inconvenienced by heroism.
"Boarding pods," Order said.
"Where?"
"Medical crescent. Lower engine. Detention spine."
Omega spoke before I could. "I see them."
Her channel filled with decompression alarms.
I wanted to go.
The body prepared: muscle fiber tightening, armor plates shifting, sword hungry in my hand. Emotion regulation rose automatically, sealing panic beneath cold action.
Order caught the decision forming.
"If you leave the bridge, probability of losing ship command rises."
"Omega is-"
"Omega knows."
That was the first cruelty of command after the first law: to trust someone you love in danger because the larger shape demanded you stay where you were.
The boarding feed opened.
Omega stood in the med crescent with pressure doors failing behind her. Wounded Sith, servants, and children were strapped to tables or held against walls by repair arms. Boarders cut through the hatch in red armor marked with the pursuer-lord's sigil.
Omega lifted her blade.
"Do not move," she told the wounded.
The hatch blew.
She entered the smoke before they entered the room.
Her first cut took the lead boarder's knee. Not killing. Lowering. Her second opened the throat of the one behind him. Her third was not a cut at all, but a step into a blaster line so the bolt struck her shoulder guard instead of the child behind her. She turned with the impact, used it, drove her elbow into a helmet hard enough to cave metal.
Order sealed the outer vent.
Omega killed the last boarder against the door with one hand while holding a pressure clamp to a wounded girl's side with the other.
"Crescent secure," she said.
No breath wasted.
On the bridge, the spearship came around for its killing pass.
Varis leaned over the pit. "Now."
"Now what?"
"Make us look dead."
I understood an instant later.
"Order, drop forward shields. Vent the starboard spine. Kill nonessential light."
"That will invite boarding."
"Yes."
We became a corpse.
The spearship advanced to claim us. Sith arrogance loves proximity to trophies. When it crossed the moon's shadow, I gave the ship back its life.
Every remaining gun fired at once.
The spearship's nose vanished. Its body folded inward, engines still pushing for one idiot second before the whole command vessel opened like a red flower.
The fleet broke after that.
Not from cowardice. From mathematics. They had lost command, sacrificed their first wave, and discovered the wounded prize could lie.
We hunted only the ships that stayed dangerous.
I let three flee.
Varis noticed.
"Mercy?"
"Message."
"They will return with more."
"Yes."
The dead moon turned beneath us, cratered and ancient, indifferent to victory. Burning ships vanished behind it one by one. No song marked them. No Core world would read the report correctly. The Outer Rim received only silence, debris, and the first rumor that the vessel above Nereth had not been captured by Sith after all.
Later, when the wounded slept and the bridge lights dimmed red, Omega came to stand beside me.
There was blood across her white sleeve.
"You stayed," she said.
"I had to."
"I know."
That was worse than accusation.
Varis watched the moon through the glass.
"You trusted me," he said.
"I used you."
"A distinction that comforts you?"
"No."
He smiled faintly. "Good."
Below us, the dead moon carried no answer.
Above it, the first Sith fleet burned because I had listened to the man who broke my peace.
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