Captain Jacques Sunderland sat comfortably in his chair, a self-satisfied smirk on his lips. It had been two months since his promotion to Captain and he had already been issued command over his own ship. The Nuclear battleship Honorable Servant had left the berth as the pride of the Nuclear fleet. Clean bulkheads surrounded a veritable treasure trove of cutting-edge technology. The Honorable Servant was a bold design. A construction that defied classification. Nuclear engineers had called her a catamaran-style cruiser. Two main hulls, connected by pressurized retractable trusses, allowed the Honor to split in two when the situation demanded it. Two battleships for the price of one. Each hull was outfitted with state-of-the-art manifold engines. Jacques could not pretend to understand these machines. All he knew was that they made his ship go faster than any other in the fleet. Even now, Jacques felt the vibrations emanating from them at the port bulwark. Two Maverick-class fold reactors drew unthinkable amounts of energy from manipulating spacetime geometry in the stern of both hulls. Enough energy to make Jacques giddy with anticipation for his first battle. While he knew conflict was always better avoided, part of him wished some low-life raider tried to take on the Honor. They would be met with salvo after salvo from her fifteen particle beam arrays and annihilated by an antimatter torpedo before they could even put a scratch in the Honor’s powerful shields. Jacques mused that he could even take on the previous Nuclear flagship, the Glory to the Emperor. A few well-placed particle strikes to her shield array, a torpedo into the fold reactor and she would crumble like dust. The Honor was an instrument of war, a demonstration of power. Jacques’ grin widened. He served the Emperor happily. After all, he was his cousin. And as nepotism had reigned supreme in the Nuclear Empire for centuries, so it did with Emperor Marcellus Arcus IV who was now onboard the Honor, blessing her maiden voyage with his presence. The Emperor sought to test his new ship with a trivial mission. Transport from the Nucleus across the Orion arm to the outer rim. As was tradition, the Nuclear Emperor would surprise one of the frontier planets with his arrival. Using his infinite wisdom bestowed unto him by the Sister Goddesses, Emperor Marcellus would guide the settlement efforts and create a core world out of some rimworld otherwise forsaken by the same Goddesses. Jacques thought the tradition silly, although he would never admit so to his cousin. He basked in the knowledge that this assignment, his first, would be a total success. Jacques would walk away with a personal commendation by the Emperor, a successful entry in his service record and most likely, as it was tradition, a sizable plot of land on whatever planet the Emperor chose to assist. Jacques breathed a contented breath. His future was golden.

Jacques’ wish for a battle came true at their next stop. It was time to refill the fuel tank. Skimming some hydrogen from a star’s corona was the fastest way to do so and the Honor was fitted with the most efficient fuel scoops ever designed. The pilot reported an imminent drop out of the Paralaexon in a nearby star system. An astrometric report informed Jacques about the eight planets and the relatively small G-type star in their middle. Perfect scooping grounds. The ship rumbled and shuddered as the engines dropped it into the void not far from the star. Jacques straightened himself and dismissed the report.
“Begin scooping maneuver,” he said, trying to project command from his rather high-pitched voice.
“Aye, sir,” the pilot replied.
The star shifted in the forward view port, rotating and sliding downward as the Honor obeyed the pilot’s commands. A low whistle went through the ship, like the wind haunting an old mansion, as the corona was sucked into the scoop. Blazingly fast atmospheric scrubbers separated the hydrogen from everything else and exhausted the remains upward through ports resembling a whale’s blowhole. The resulting ion trail was a stunning sight that lifted Jacques’ spirits. The Honor became enveloped in an ethereal white glow as her shields were fully immersed in the star’s outer layer. Even while the vessel was blasted with stellar radiation, the bridge remained at room temperature and free of dangerous rays. Where other ships had to close their window shutters to safely refuel from a star, the Honor’s real time projection screens, which replaced all windows, were able to render the view perfectly. Jacques reveled in the spectacle. This was his ship. Serene in its functionality and beautiful to behold. The Honor remained in the star for half an hour before retreating back to the void.
“Fuel levels optimal,” the technical officer said behind Jacques.
“Very good, gentlemen. Resume course,” Jacques said.
“Captain, there is a reading on starboard sensors,” the tactical officer barked through a thick beard. Jacques raised an eyebrow. What a vague bit of information. His officers should have been trained better. He thought back to his days in the naval academy on Norfodl and the dozen classes that had been focused on nothing but the art of communicating with a superior officer. Yes sir was the shortest acceptable response to an order. Always start a sentence with sir or a mention of the officer’s rank. Never waste time on useless formalities beyond that. And most importantly of all, if you have something to report, report it concisely, precisely and make no space for vagueries. Clearly there were some holes in the tactical officer’s education.
“Well, what is it, crewman?” Jacques asked as he turned to the officer.
“Sir, it’s… I can’t tell. It looks like a small ship but it’s a signature I’ve never seen,” the officer said.
Jaques furrowed his brow at the news but did not pass by an opportunity to fill the gaps in his crewman’s education.
“Then you report an unknonw vessel approaching starboard, not a vague sensor reading,” Jaques said.
“Yes, sir!” barked the tactical officer.
Jaques refocused on the matter at hand.
“Is the ship moving?”
“Yes, Sir, it’s approaching. 870 million kilometers.”
Jacques sighed. He was going to get his first fight. And then he would send that inexplicably highly ranked officer back to the academy to finish his courses.
“Raise shields, prepare weapons,” he said.
“Shields already up, Sir,” said the systems control officer. Jacques had noticed him early on. A competent man. His name escaped Jacques in the moment but he made a mental note to offer him the tactical position after the other officer went back to training.
“Weapons ready, Captain,” said the tactical officer. A tiny rumble went through the bridge.
“They are firing on us, Sir. No damage,” said the syscon officer.
Of course there was no damage, Jacques thought. As if some puny raider ship could-
“Another one just showed up,” the tactical officer said, lacking decorum, “Another one now. Three in total.”
Jacques balled his fists. The audacity of these raiders. He couldn’t wait to pulverize them. But there were protocols.
“Wide band,” he said curtly. A thumbs up from the syscon officer told him his voice would be transmitted across all frequencies.
“This is the Nuclear Empire Navy vessel Honorable Servant of his Highness, the Emperor Marcellus of Arcus IV,” Jacques began his official broadcast, “Cease your hostilities or you will be annihilated,” he finished.
No response. More ships appeared out of nowhere, like insects following a swarm. Dozens of small impacts rattled the shields every second now. Enough niceties. Jacques had done his duty. He had warned them. Now it was time to eradicate the pest. He felt a rush of adrenaline rise to his head.
“Destroy them,” he said with a smile.
“Deploying particle beams one through fifteen,” said the tactical officer, “Individual targeting locks. Firing.”
Dozens of white beams emanated from the Honor, no thicker than a climbing cord. The view port showed the beams ripping through the enemy vessels, sending them to Kharkun one after the other. Within a few seconds, the enemy was defeated. The tactical officer had done some good shooting. If only he had shown more communication discipline before, Jaques would have given him a commendation.
“More are appearing,” the man said.
“More?” Jacques asked, surprised, “Are they tired of breathing?”
The Honor fired hundreds of beams, every single one hitting one of the endlessly manifesting enemy ships. Jacques ordered the systems control officer to give him a close-up view of one of them. The picture appeared on the view port. A toroidal hull surrounded an inner cylindrical bulkhead. The craft was no bigger than a shuttle and it bore one singular energy blaster at the front and one engine at the back. Small, maneuverable, but no match for the Honor’s quick targeting computers. Hundreds of the small ships exploded in a steadily growing fireworks show off the starboard hull. Jacques’ instincts as an officer told him to just retreat into the Paralaexon. But his sense of honor as a servant of the Emperor told him to stand his ground and decimate these insolent fools.
“Where are they coming from?” he asked the tactical officer who was frantically calculating targeting solutions.
“I don’t know, sir. One second there’s nothing and the next, one of them shows up on sensors.”
Jacques shook his head. He hated not being in total control of a situation. The ships kept coming out of nowhere and the Honor kept killing them. All fifteen particle arrays were now active as hundreds of ships turned into thousands. Dozens of them appeared at the same time, bursting through an ever-growing cloud of debris.
“Captain, they aren’t stopping. We need to retreat!” said the tactical officer, glistening with sweat.
“Nonsense!” shouted Jacques, “Destroy them!”
“There are too many, Sir, the Honor can’t keep up!”
Can’t keep up? Jacques would be damned if he let these parasites get the better of him. An idea struck him. A maneuver he had seen his old commanding officer use to put an end to a similar attack. Jacques turned to the systems control officer.
“You. What’s your name?”
“Lieutenant Hubertus Mansell, Sir!” the officer answered.
“Mansell, do you know what external folding is?”
Mansell nodded, “Yes Sir. Theoretically, you can focus a fold reactor’s geometric domain outside of a ship.”
“Not only theoretically. I’ve seen it done. Coordinate with engineering to prepare it.”
Mansell nodded and left his station to run to engineering. Jacques knew he had to buy time for his crew to prepare the maneuver.
“Pilot! Reverse engines. All power to stern.”
The pilot shouted his acknowledgment and the ship lurched as it reversed course. It may look like running away, Jacques thought, but it would pay off. Jacques sat back down in his chair and studied the ongoing battle report. There was a wall of destruction between the Honor and the enemy vessels. A wall that none of them could penetrate. But even as the Honor retreated, the wall was closing in. It was not long now before the ships would be able to touch the shiny new hull of Jacques’ ship.
“Captain, fold displacement is ready on your command,” a voice said from a speaker in the ceiling.
“Target the death zone,” Jacques said, “On my mark.”
Jacques held his breath, feeling his heartbeat rise in his chest. His first battle was supposed to be just a few raiders instantly destroyed by the might of the Honor. But the bigger the battle, the sweeter the victory. The Emperor would surely be impressed after this.
“Now!” Jacques shouted.
A spectacle unfolded. As spacetime bent and warped around itself in front of the view port, the enemy horde was crushed by gravitational waves and gravimetric eddies. The void itself pulverized the ships by the dozens, hundreds, thousands. The debris cloud ignited in a thunderstorm of ionizing materials, blinding everyone on the bridge for a moment. The wall of death had turned into a curtain of pure energy, impenetrable and expanding in all directions. The Honor was seconds from being swallowed by it herself when it stopped. As quickly as it had started, the energy curtain dissipated into nothingness as the geometric domain was projected back into the fold reactor where it could be controlled.
Jacques let out the breath he’d been holding. Had it worked?
“Report!” he shouted over a silent bridge.
“They’re gone,” said the tactics officer, “I don’t pick up any of them.”
Jacques had done it. His first battle won. One of many, he knew. A collective sigh of relief washed over the bridge crew. Jacques was in a good mood now. They had all earned promotions. Even the tactical officer. He had done some damn fine shooting. A woman, the science officer, spoke up.
“Sir, may I suggest collecting some of that debris for study?” she asked.
Jacques could not have cared less about the science but if he had the chance to attach his name to some sort of discovery, he would take it. He nodded to her.
“Sure, go ahead.”

The bridge door opened and the Emperor strut on deck. Jacques jumped to his feet and bowed deeply.
“Your Majesty,” he said. He straightened himself after the Emperor acknowledged his gesture.
“You have outdone yourself, cousin,” Marcellus said, “I followed the battle from my quarters.”
“Thank you, your Grace.”
“It is I who must thank you, Captain Sunderland,” the Emperor said as he walked to the view port, “You have proven not only your honor today, you have demonstrated the merit of my confidence.”
Marcellus turned on his heel, his hands clasped behind his back.
“When will we resume our course?” asked Marcellus.
“Straightaway, your Grace,” Jacques said, his promise to collect debris already forgotten.
“Pilot, lay in our course and get us out of the void,” Jacques said with force. Never a bad time to demonstrate solid leadership in front of the Emperor.
“Yes, Sir!” the pilot said as his fingers danced across the navigation console.
The ship turned slowly, the maneuvering balancers pushing against the fabric of the void around the ship. The Emperor’s face wore a bright grin as the manifold engines spooled up. He walked towards the bridge door with a true Emperor’s strut. He never made it there. An eardrum-popping crash rang through the Honor as she violently lurched backwards. The movement overwhelmed the inertial countermeasures, or maybe they had failed entirely, Jacques didn’t know. He and everyone else on the bridge was thrown forward. Jacques’ midsection impacted the navigational console with immense violence. He could feel his ribs crack and his intestines pop before he slumped to the ground, close to unconsciousness. Another man was flung from the bridge gallery into the view port, shattering the screen. His body still hung there, suspended by shards of glass. His blood slowly dripped on Jacques’ face. Jacques felt the adrenaline finally starting to circulate through his body. He shot back to full awareness and used the short-lived reprieve to look around his bridge. Dozens of men lay dead or dying many meters forward from their station. The science officer, who had asked for debris samples just moments before, had rotated her chair against the force. While she remained seated, her head hung backward at a grotesque angle, blood spewing violently from her split neck. Her head had been almost entirely severed by the impact of another flying crew member who lay behind her, unconscious, maybe dead. Jaques’ gaze drifted upward. The pilot lay slumped over his console. The steering yolk, made of prisitine steel, had been pushed into his eye so forcefully that it had exited on the other side of his head. His other eye wore the surprised expression of a man who had died suddenly and within an instant. Next to the pilot, the tactical officer’s head still tumbled back and forth on the floor. Jaques looked to the tactical console and spotted a headless torso exsanguinating the last of its blood through the neck. The bridge gallery railing in front of him was obscenely covered in fresh blood, dripping silently onto the floor. Jaques took in the sight. The death, the utter destruction to the bodies of his crew. He imagined the rest of the ship had not fared any better. Just as he wondered why he was even still alive, his thoughts took a turn for the worse.
The Emperor, Jacques thought, where is the Emperor? He scanned the bridge, trying to visualize the path Marcellus’ body would have taken. He spotted the holy man, lying face down in a pool of blood. A piece of gallery railing stuck out of his back. With his remaining strength, Jacques crawled over to the Emperor on all fours. He crawled and crawled for an eternity before he reached the man’s body. He turned over his Emperor’s head and saw no life in him. Dead eyes stared into nothingness. Blood pooled in his mouth. Jacques saw his Emperor’s death and with it, his own demise. He had failed in the most devastating way any man could. The Emperor was dead. Defeated, he fell to his back. What had even happened? What was going on? Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it. The shattered view port flickered to life for but a moment, turning the dead man’s body that was still suspended by its shards into a silhouette. It showed one of the ships. Enlarged to thousands, no, tens of thousands of times its own size. A malfunction. Or… Maybe… Jacques raised his head. Not a malfunction. The way it moved, the way its thrusters emanated gas. The way it slowly turned its forward weapon towards the bridge. Not an illusion. Not a malfunction. It was one of the ships but it was bigger, many times the size of even the Honor. Ten miles, maybe 20 in diameter. And it charged its weapon. A glowing red circle stared right into Jacques’ soul. A monstrosity. A Kharkunian horror. And he had angered it by murdering its children. Jacques closed his eyes, lay back next to his Emperor and prayed. Seconds later, the void consumed him, Marcellus, the Honor and everything else.