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Brooks’s eyes were fixed at the main bridge screen, his features caught in an expression halfway between focused determination and awe. The screen was feeding a magnified view of a patch of space in the general direction of Mopu Prime, a slight shimmering of the starry backdrop was visible there accompanied by ghostly flashes of bluish light. It seemed as if space itself was boiling and bouncing off speculars of an unseen disembodied light source. No matter how many times Brooks had seen a fleet surfacing from zerospace, it was still wondrous to witness every time. In an instant he snapped out of his reverie.
“Over five hundred ships,” Cenz said. His face was flat; emotionless with the gravity of the situation. “Sensors indicate no fleet tenders, troopships, or supply ships.”
“It is a pure combat fleet,” Jaya noted. “From the quality of ships I believe this to be the personal honor guard fleet for Overlord Ks’Kull.” Her eyes went to Brooks.
“I use the term ‘quality’ loosely, Captain. These ships are junkers by our standards.” She looked to the magnified view of them. They were still five light minutes out, close to ninety million kilometers in distance, and so were tiny dots on their screen.
But for all they knew, the fleet had launched missiles three minutes ago, and they’d just not be seeing it. It would take time for any object to travel that distance, longer than light – but the point remained that they did not have current information.
“Those numbers make up a hell of a lot of difference,” Urle noted dryly. “Run tactical simulations for different scenarios – just to be sure. Should we prepare to jump out when the zerodrive is charged, Captain?”
“No,” Brooks said. “We wanted to see Ks’Kull, and he’s come to us rather than us having to go in to meet him. If anything this works to our advantage. Have the Bright Flower move into our shadow at a decent distance – just to be safe. But we’ll all begin moving deeper into the system. In the meantime, learn everything you can about their fleet, starting with Ks’Kull’s flagship.”
“Aye, Captain,” the officers replied, getting to work.
Brooks leaned forward, steepling his fingers.
Ambassador Decinus leaned closer. “What do you make of it, Captain? Normally I’d consider this a good sign, but I would like to know what your experience tells you.”
“It’s a surprisingly bold move. Most Hev warlords are constantly worried about assassination attempts, and coming to meet us technically puts him at more risk – that is, if he’s even aboard.”
“You think he’d hide?”
“Absolutely, if he felt he was in danger. Still, a fleet of five hundred ships is no small force. He may just feel confident enough, even against the potential threat of an enemy fleet jumping in.”
Decinus considered that and leaned away.
“Have we received any signal from them?” Brooks asked.
“No, Captain,” Eboh said. “I am monitoring all frequencies and keeping all comm sensors active to catch a tight-beam, but I am getting nothing save for some inter-fleet chatter – very broken up and weak due to distance. They are communicating via lasers and though they’re spilling a lot of that heat we can only decipher a little.”
Urle turned to face Brooks. “Preliminary scans missed their heat vanes – they’re actually melting some on the flagship. She powered up her zerodrive in one hell of a hurry – must have used a fewother big ships to help him charge faster. They’re pointed away from us, but the residual heat makes us very confident in the assessment.”
“Have we put together a better image of the flagship?”
“Yes, sir.” Urle put it up, zooming in.
Ks’Kull’s flagship was not a sleek, thin combat ship like most, but a monstrous hulking command ship. She had clearly been several ships in the past, crudely attached together.
It reminded Brooks of the haphazard construction of the trade ship from another Hev clan that N’Keeea had been on, but amplified a hundred times.
The nose cones of half a dozen big ships were fused next to each other, and estimates on her proper width and length were sketchy at best; when so many gantries and random parts came off a ship, it became somewhat arbitrary. It was enough to know she was very large, much larger than the Craton. Probably a dozen kilometers long, length enough that she would handle terribly. But packing enough weapons that she could probably overwhelm even a Sapient Union battleship through sheer weight of fire.
“That is one ugly ship,” Urle said.
Brooks said nothing, but simply watched. “We’ll wait for him to make the first move.”
“They are accelerating towards us – not using much delta-v, but they are approaching, sir,” Cenz noted.
“But still no- ah, sir, we are receiving an FTL communication,” Eboh said.
Brooks composed himself and stood. “Show it.”
Other Terrestrial 
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