New Orders

  The next few days bled into a rhythm of iron and pain. When Ralaen wasn’t on duty, she was in the gym—under a bar, on a mat, or strapped into one of the machines Artemis had tuned to Einherjar levels.

  She’d just finished a set on the bench when she heard claws on the deck behind her. Three Asuari scents reached her a moment before the voices did—fur, soap, a hint of stress-sweat. Ears low, tails held carefully neutral.

  She racked the bar, sat up, and grabbed her water bottle.

  “Captain Ralaen?” the one in the middle asked. Her voice had the familiar Confederacy cadence.

  Ralaen took a drink before answering. “You’ve got a minute,” she said. “Use it.”

  They traded quick glances. The one on the left stepped forward half a pace. “We wanted to apologize,” she said, a little rushed. “For Asula. What she did… it was out of line.”

  Ralaen’s ears tipped back a fraction. “She already paid for it.”

  “We know,” the middle one said quickly. “We talked to some of the human Jaegers after. They were… not impressed.” Her tail flicked once. “They said she was lucky you only broke her arm.” The third woman nodded, her ears dipping. “They said you could have… you know. Crushed her.”

  “Said you’re not really Asuari anymore. Something else. We should have understood that.”

  Ralaen held up a paw-hand. “Stop there,” she said. “I’m not your captain anymore. We’re not in the Confederacy. I’m just Ralaen.”

  The three of them straightened almost in unison, ears lifting a little. “Understood,” the middle one said. “Ralaen. We’re sorry.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Ralaen said. “If you’ve learned not to pick fights with people in power armor, good. That’s all.”

  That got a small, nervous huff of laughter out of them.

  “Thank you, Ca—” the second one started, caught herself, and finished, “Thank you, Ralaen.”

  They backed away, shoulders a little looser than when they’d come in, and left her to the weights.

  Ralaen lay back on the bench again and glanced at the display.

  “Four hundred,” she told Artemis. “Let’s see it.”

  Confirmed, Artemis said. Four hundred kilograms.

  Ralaen wrapped her paws around the bar, braced her shoulders, and lifted. The weight came up smooth and steady, no shake, no panic in her muscles. It was work, but not a struggle.

  Eight reps, then nine, then ten. She racked the bar and let out a slow breath, feeling the pleasant burn spread through her well-developed back and the thicker more powerful set of her shoulders.

  Back in Confederacy special forces, before Jaeger school. Before Ascension, eighty kilos had been a good day. This was five times that, and she still had more in her.

  She stared up at the ceiling for a moment, catching her breath.

  "Yeah," she muttered. "Different life."

  The days after that settled into routine—iron and rest, drills and meals, the quiet rhythm of a ship in transit. Fifteen days out from Earth, Draupnir reached their first waypoint: an uninhabited system on the edge of the frontline. Sixth Fleet was somewhere ahead of them, deeper in-system. Draupnir was scheduled to rendezvous with them here.

  Ralaen stood with the rest of Wolf Squad in the observation blister, watching their emergence.

  She’d seen recordings before. Training feeds, fleet briefings, edited clips with voiceover. This was the first time she was at a viewport for it.

  “Trust me,” Thomas had said when he herded them up here. “First live emergence is worth the walk.”

  Outside the transparisteel, the view was still all Bifrost: the faint, oily shimmer of the field, wrong colors at the edge of vision, stars smeared into streaks by the way the bubble bent light. Her depth sense itched in a way she still hadn’t learned to like.

  Then the translation hit.

  The smear snapped into clean points scattered across deep black. The itch in her sense of distance vanished as the Bifrost bubble collapsed. A moment later she felt, rather than heard, the low thrum of the gravity drive settle into its normal subluminal rhythm as the ship's velocity bled off.

  “Alpha wall crossed,” Artemis’s voice stated in her mind. “Welcome back to realspace.”

  Ralaen let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. Seeing it on a screen hadn’t done it justice.

  “Yeah,” Thomas said quietly beside her, arms folded on the rail. “Never gets old.”

  She believed him.

  About three hours later, Draupnir was sliding in-system, her drive rings pushing her toward the rendezvous point with Sixth Fleet, a set of markers on the tactical plot.

  Ralaen and Eirik were in the mess, halfway through lunch. The room was a low hum of voices and cutlery, coffee and hot food hanging in the air. Ralaen was more focused on the warmth of the mug between her paws and the familiar presence of Eirik across the table than on the actual taste.

  He'd kept his promise. Over the past few days, in the quiet hours between drills, he'd told her about his past. It came out in fragments, usually late at night, his voice low and his hands busy with brushing her tail like he needed something to do while he talked. He told her about deployments that had gone sideways, when he'd been sent on a scouting mission that had lasted for weeks. His previous relationship with a woman on Vega Station which had lasted eight months before she couldn't handle the absences and had broken it off with him. I just can't handle not knowing if you're coming back or not. The year after he'd spent thinking about leaving the service entirely, before his sister talked him out of it. None of it changed who he was. But knowing about his past made it feel like she knew a piece of him he'd kept hidden from her.

  She caught him watching her and raised an eyebrow. "What?"

  "Nothing," he said, but his mouth curved. "Just thinking I'm a lucky bastard."

  She kicked him lightly under the table. "You are. Don't forget it."

  Her attention was drawn inward by a gentle, non-visual pulse—the unmistakable touch of Artemis.

  Message for you, from Anastasia, Artemis stated, and the words began to unspool in Ralaen's mind, neat and clean.

  From: Anastasia Dragomir, Einherjar Wolf Squad To: Wolf Squad Subject: Tasking update – diversion to Kryssar

  Forwarded order:

  From: Rear Admiral H. Karras, Commanding officer, TF 6 To: Commanding Officer, battlecruiser Draupnir (BC-662-J) Subject: Change of orders

  Effective immediately, battlecruiser Draupnir is detached from scheduled rendezvous with Sixth Fleet main body in System H-114.

  Draupnir will proceed to system hyperlimit and rendezvous with destroyers Spearhead, Halberd, and Aegis.

  Task group will translate to Federation system Kryssar.

  Mission: investigate and confirm or deny reported Rilethi activity in Kryssar system. Rules of engagement attached.

  End order.

  Ralaen snorted softly looking over at Eirik. “Change of plans,” she said.

  His eyes unfocused for a moment as he read, then came back to her. His jaw tightened just a fraction. “Frontline work, then,” he said.

  “Looks like it,” Ralaen replied. Her ears tilted forward slightly.

  “We’re going to Federation space.”

  “First deployment for you as Wolf,” Eirik said.

  "First deployment for us," she corrected, meeting his eyes.

  His mouth tipped up, just a little. "Fair enough."

  They finished their meal in comfortable silence, the weight of what was coming settling between them like a shared breath.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  * * *

  Rendezvous with TG Six Four

  By the time Draupnir reached the hyperlimit, the lights on the ship’s tactical displays had changed.

  Ralaen sat with Wolf Squad in their common room, half-listening to the background noise of the ship and half-watching the holo repeater on the bulkhead. The main plot showed the system as a pale sphere of light. Draupnir’s marker sat on the edge of it, just outside the line that marked the hyperlimit.

  Three new symbols waited nearby, tagged with ID codes.

  “Tin cans are here,” Thomas muttered. “Right on schedule.”

  Artemis highlighted the contacts for her. Destroyers Spearhead, Halberd and Aegis. On external cameras they were just hard points against the dark, but the zoom feeds showed long, lean hulls with smaller drive cones, the faint shimmer of their gravity fields visible at the stern as they slid in toward Draupnir on tidy approach vectors.

  On the plot, they took up position around the battlecruiser with practiced ease: one ahead, one trailing, one off to port. A simple escort box.

  Task Group designation is TG Six Four, Artemis said. Draupnir as core asset. Three destroyers as escort and support.

  Ralaen filed the number away. Another label in a war full of them.

  It wasn’t long before Wolf Squad and Cobra Squad were called up to a planning session. A soft chime from the wall panel announced the tasking. At the same moment, Anastasia's voice and the orders unspooled directly in Ralaen's mind, a private channel that bypassed the ship's general network.

  “Briefing,” Anastasia said, her voice cutting through the low hum of the room. She was already on her feet. “Let’s move.”

  Wolf Squad fell in behind her, moving out of their common room and into the main corridor. The ship’s internal traffic was a low murmur of activity, but they moved through it with a clear purpose. They didn’t have to go far. Fifty meters down the passageway, they reached a dedicated access node. A set of heavy doors marked "INTERNAL TRANSIT - NODE 7" was set into the bulkhead.

  Anastasia placed her palm on the adjacent panel. A light turned green, and a moment later, one of Draupnir’s elevator capsules slid into view behind the transparent doors, its internal lights glowing. The doors hissed open.

  Wolf Squad filed in, the air inside cool and recycled. The capsule paused, and a moment later, the doors opened again to admit Cobra Squad, who had arrived from their own quarters at the same time. Once both squads were in, the doors sealed with a quiet hiss.

  The floor gave a gentle lurch as the car detached and accelerated along the internal spine. There were no windows, just a simple display on the wall showing a line moving inward toward the ship’s center of mass. In under a minute, the capsule slowed, coupling to another node with a solid clunk of magnetic locks.

  “Bridge and CIC,” the panel announced.

  The doors slid open onto thicker bulkheads, heavier doors, and the unmistakable presence of more security. The briefing compartment was just off the Combat Information Center: no windows, just a holo table and a few rows of chairs bolted to the deck.

  Wolf took one side, Cobra the other. Ralaen slotted in behind Anastasia, opposite Eirik and the Jaeger officers.

  At the center of the room, a holo showed a stylised wireframe of the Kryssar system. Beside it stood Draupnir’s captain and the Jaeger major.

  The captain, Victoria Clarke, looked like someone who’d been trimmed down to essentials. Late thirties by face, uniform neat but not fussy, dark hair pulled back in a short knot. Her voice had a clipped British edge. Beside her stood Major Markus Schneider, broad-shouldered, close-cropped dark hair, jaw set. When he spoke, his consonants had the weight of old Germany.

  “Einherjar Wolf. Cobra,” Captain Clarke said as they filed in. “Thanks for coming.”

  Three smaller panes floated above the holo, each showing a destroyer captain from the shoulders up. The overlays tagged them by ship: SPEARHEAD, HALBERD, AEGIS. Spearhead’s captain still had his headset on; Halberd’s looked like he lived on coffee; Aegis’ captain watched the holo like he expected it to do something unpleasant.

  Clarke gestured at the system display. “You’ve all seen the basic tasking,” she said. “TG Six Four will translate into Kryssar on a Zeta-band insert, standard profile. Destroyers take initial screen. Draupnir anchors the group in mid-system.”

  She tapped a control. The system view tightened to show the star, four orbital tracks, and one highlighted world.

  “Kryssar has one habitable planet with a Federation colony,” she went on. “The reason we’re going in is simple: they lost contact with that colony. There’s no confirmed Rilethi presence on record. There’s also very little useful detail. What we have from Federation Naval Intelligence is this.”

  The holo shifted to a flat projection: a report header and a lot of black.

  Major Schneider stepped forward, expression dry.

  “As you can see,” he said, “our friends in Federation Naval Intelligence have been careful with what they share.”

  The header read: ORIGIN – FEDERATION NAVAL INTELLIGENCE. SUBJECT – LOSS OF CONTACT, KRYSSAR COLONY. Under that, heavy redaction blocks chewed through the text. Schneider scrolled slowly enough for them to catch a few scraps:

  “…contact lost at 0400 local…” “…unidentified energy readings detected in upper atmosphere, consistent with non-standard propulsion…” “…no confirmed visual on hostile forces… last transmission contained fragmentary audio: [REDACTED]…”

  Everything that mattered—population, garrison strength, ships—vanished under black.

  Ralaen’s ears edged back. The Federation seal in the corner sat there like a familiar weight, half pride, half bruise. She wasn’t one of theirs anymore, not by flag or uniform, but watching them ask for help and then cover half the page made something in her tighten anyway.

  You call us to clean up your mess, and you can’t even be straight with us, she thought, a familiar bitterness rising. This is exactly why I left.

  “The short version,” Schneider said, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he gestured to the redacted blocks. “Is that they’ve lost a colony and have kindly blacked out every useful detail we’d need to plan an insertion. Garrison strength, population, ship presence… all gone. A very efficient way to ask for help.”

  He looked around the room. “TG Six Four is going in ahead of any heavier response. We’re not there to start a war alone. We’re there to find out if there’s one already in progress.”

  One of the destroyer captains—Spearhead—leaned forward slightly in his feed. “Our ships will handle initial system recon,” he said. “We’ll spread on light profiles and sweep the in-system routes and outer approaches. If anything big is parked where it shouldn’t be, we should see it first.”

  “Draupnir will hold to mid-system until we have a clear picture,” Clarke added. “I don’t intend to bring a battlecruiser into low orbit unless there’s no alternative.”

  Ralaen watched the wireframe of Kryssar spin above the table. One colony marker. No ships. No defense platforms. A line of text: FEDERATION COLONY – POP. [REDACTED].

  Clarke turned her eyes to the two Einherjar Squad leaders. “Anastasia? Ramirez?” she said. “Your take?”

  Anastasia glanced across at Ramirez, Cobra’s leader. He met her look and gave the smallest of nods. “It depends what we find,” she said. “If the colony’s intact and it’s a comms fault, you won’t need us. If there’s been a raid and it’s already burned out, that’s recovery and security work. If there are Rilethi still on the ground or in orbit when we arrive…” She let one shoulder rise and fall. “Different conversation. We’ll decide once there’s real information.”

  Ramirez spoke up, voice flatter and more clipped. “Same from Cobra,” he said. “Bring back real intel and we’ll see. Until then, it is purely academic.”

  Ralaen kept her face neutral, but her ears felt hot. She had plenty of experience with plans written on bad intel. None of it good. And the redacted Federation seal on the holo made it worse. She wasn’t Federation anymore, but their shame still felt like it was burning a hole in her gut.

  Clarke nodded once. “Understood,” she said. “Initial plan is simple: we translate into Kryssar, we see what our sensors tell us, and then we talk again. If there’s an active hostile presence and there are targets where Einherjar deployments make sense, I'll send the request.”

  She turned her gaze up to the three destroyer feeds. “Any concerns from escort?”

  Halberd’s captain shook her head. “No, ma’am,” she said. “If it comes to ground work, I’m happy to let the people in power armor handle it.”

  “No ma'am, unless there's a large Rilethi fleet presence, no issues,” Aegis’ captain added.

  "Negative ma'am," Spearhead's captain said.

  “Good,” Clarke said. “We translate in twelve hours. Use the time. Go through what little we have, run your sims. Once we drop into Kryssar, We'll see which side the penny drops.”

  She gave the table a short nod. “That’s all.”

  The destroyer feeds blinked out one by one. Chairs creaked. Jaegers and Einherjar started to file out.

  On the way back to the elevator, Artemis nudged the edge of her thoughts.

  Bridge and CIC on your left, she said. Heart of the ship. You did say you wanted a look.

  Ralaen’s gaze went to the BRIDGE / CIC stencil on the bulkhead. She glanced at Anastasia.

  “Since we’re here,” Ralaen said, “mind if I see the bridge?”

  Anastasia considered it for a heartbeat, then nodded. “Stay out of the operators’ way. That’s it.”

  They stepped through.

  Draupnir’s bridge and Combat Information Center were nothing like the Confederacy carrier bridges Ralaen had stood on. No grand forward display pretending to be a window, no extra deck space kept clear so senior officers could pace and look thoughtful. This was a compact, layered room buried in armor. The air was cool and carried the faint, clean scent of ozone and recycled electronics. Consoles and chairs dropped away in shallow tiers toward a central holo tank... Status boards wrapped the walls in tight rings of changing figures, their light casting a shifting, multicolored glow over the crew.

  As her eyes moved, Artemis slipped labels into her mind, calm and precise. Helm. Navigation. Tactical. Fire control. Comms. Electronic warfare. Bifrost control. Each tag arrived just as she registered a station, a soft overlay of context that went straight into recall without ever touching a visor.

  Helm and nav sat closest to the tank, strapped into rails so they could slide between banks without unbuckling. Behind them, tactical and fire control watched their own fields of light. On the upper tier, comms and EW crews worked half-turned to their displays, hands moving in small, economical patterns, voices kept to low threads on internal circuits.

  Captain Clarke stood on a slightly raised patch of deck with a clear line of sight across the room. A single command chair behind her, no dramatic height—just a position where repeaters on the rail fed her the same stitched picture everyone else was building.

  Confederacy bridges liked space and spectacle. Big views, distance between stations, room for rank to be obvious. This felt closer. Denser. More like a bunker that happened to fly a warship.

  “Thoughts?” Anastasia asked quietly.

  Ralaen let herself take one more slow circuit of the room with her eyes before answering.

  “My old COs would complain there’s nowhere to pose,” she said. “They’d miss the big window. They’d also be the first ones ventilated when someone put a rail-shot through it.” Her ears tipped forward a little. “This looks a lot more… efficient.”

  Anastasia’s mouth twitched. “Good thing. You’re stuck with it.”

  They didn't linger. A minute later they were back at the elevator node, the hatch sealed behind them, and there was still gear to check and a system full of question marks waiting ahead.

  The hours before translation passed in the usual pre-mission blur—gear checks, load-outs, a final walkthrough of their pinnace with Thomas muttering about "making sure the tin can doesn't rattle." Ralaen ran through her own routines, letting muscle memory carry her while her mind circled Kryssar like a wolf around an unfamiliar camp.

  Twelve hours later, TG Six Four left the system.

  Draupnir took the center of the formation, destroyers settling into their escort slots around her hull.

  Hyperlimit reached, Artemis said in her mind. Translation in three minutes.

  In the dim cabin, Ralaen lay on the bed she shared with Eirik, the steady rhythm of his breathing a quiet anchor beside her. She stared at the ceiling, feeling the first faint vibrations through the hull as the Bifrost core spooled up deep in the ship's guts.

  His hand found hers in the dark, fingers interlacing. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

  Three weeks ago, she might not have reached back. Three weeks ago, she hadn't known what she was holding onto. Now she did.

  "Here we go," she whispered.

  Three minutes later, the familiar wrongness of Bifrost wrapped itself around the ship again, a low hum vibrating up through the deck plates. TG Six Four stepped out of normal space, heading for a colony that might already be silent.