As Captain Amari emerged from the hallway, Derek gave her a nod. "You have the bridge, Captain." Her body was just subtly different than her old one; no significant differences, but the limbs moved differently in a way she might not have been able to identify if she had been organic.


    *She nodded as he vacated the seat, stepping off to the side; just a touch awkwardly, as  he didn''t actually have a bridge station while the captain was on duty; they normally simply swapped out the seat, or in a crisis where both were up, he''d be on the secondary bridge.


    Amari smiled, shifting in her chair. "So, we have at least one confirmation the Mimic works. We can do a few more intercepts to be sure, but go ahead and tell Dorian we have his weapon to finish the job."


    "..Dorian?" The Comms officer blinks for a moment. "Oh. Commodore Peterson."


    "Yes. Commodore Peterson. Put together a data packet for him and we''ll move on to a new target."


    Derek studied the data packet for a few moments as the comms officer was piecing it together. "Are you sure we want to do more of these deep-space intercepts? Its good to get confirmation that something other than a carrier can fall for the ruse... but what we really need is to test how a Defender responds. The Defenders tend to hang around in the heart of the system, near the star... if they spotted the difference, and there were enough of them..."


    "They could intercept our doomsday weapon. It seems very likely that the more dense systems would be able to do such a thing. Well then. It seems like our next target is obvious. Set course for the Bravo system. We''ll see if the ones that took out the Minotaur can spot the difference. And if they let them close enough... we might be able to just clear this system out on our own."


    She glanced up at the central screens for a moment, tapping her icon. "Danvers."


    "Yes, ma''am?"


    "Any progress on that hypercannon?"


    "We simply used insufficient iridium on the intake channels. Once it discharged, the power flowed too quickly and it all fell apart. We should be able to fire all three cannons before the ship blows, and I can modify them to give us a few additional shots... but I still wouldn''t bet on either Mimic giving us more than six to eight shots from all three hypercannon combined."


    She smiled. "Have at it. We''re going to be deploying both of them in a few days... and if we''re lucky, cleansing the Beta system."


    ***


    For Kelsey, this was a nightmare. She knew full well that the old her had died on one of these deathtraps; and that was going to see only one of these Mag ships. Now they were going to deliberately pull a flyby on the substantially more capable Defenders... and intentionally fire until their cannons were spent or the enemy all destroyed.  She knew the odds.


    She was about to die. Part of her was tempted to go to the robot bay, steal one of the empty shells, and make a copy of herself to send instead. Let some -other- Kelsey go die for it. But... that might get her shut down. And while dying was bad... at least part of herself was left behind this way.


    She boarded a Mimic; the haphazard way they were built meant they looked just a bit different inside, as opposed to, say, the way the Minotaur and Tisiphone had looked virtually identical, or the Alecto had probably looked just like the Megalodon; while she''d served on the Alecto, she''d never seen the inside of the Meg before it left.


    Most of the internal structure was made up of the three long, skeletal Hypercannon structures. They looked strange, not built into a gun-barrel or encased in a ship. Delicate frameworks that probably wouldn''t handle any extreme acceleration. She rested her hand on the spot she''d ''fixed'' earlier. Damn. She knew full well her ''fix'' would last three shots, at most. No way Amari would leave it at that. They''d be firing until they died.


    She heard the captain stepping in behind her. "Alright, Danvers. Are we ready?"


    "Yes, captain." In her head, she considered asking for a transfer. Somehow, she was too cowardly to broach the subject. Ridiculous.


    "Well, we have just a few days before arrival. Might as well underclock it once we''re ready for..." She stopped.


    Her icon blinked. A tiny orange exclamation point; an incoming message. "Go for Amari."


    Kelsey could see Derek''s face appear in midair, facing the captain. On his end, Amari likely appeared in the same way. "Captain, I see another intelligence-gathering opportunity. We have these hyperspace relays that hop in and out every hour. If I hook a bomb and some telescopes to one, we can drop them on the edges of the systems we pass, and get more data on these things; and if they notice, the whole mess will just destroy itself. We have five relays... we could drop off four of them at other Mag systems, and come back here to drop the fifth before our own test."The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "Excellent idea, Thompson. Get it done. How long will it delay us?"


    "We can drop one off on a system thats very lightly occupied with only an hour''s delay. Deploying in four systems would take us an extra week."


    "More than worth it. I''ll remain on the Mimic until then and simply underclock until the time comes."


    Amari slowly nodded to herself as Kelsey looked on. "I know you don''t like him, but he''s an excellent XO. Once that ship is being used for what its meant for, he''ll be an equally excellent captain."


    "I suppose. I know that what happened wasn''t really his fault. It... sank in a bit more firmly after the last time I died. But its still hard to look at a face that''s been covered in blood and snarling like some sort of vicious animal in your nightmares."


    "I can feel you on that. Go ahead and perform a full system''s check, then you can underclock until the time comes."


    ***


    For Derek, the time passed fairly quickly. The star systems here in the cluster were typically only a few days away; a distance that, if humanity settled and colonized this region, would make trading and travel far easier, and securing the area against threats actually possible. That black hole at the heart of the cluster had seemingly picked a bunch of useful stars up in its orbit as it travelled.


    They would reach the right spot in hyperspace; simply shove the relay out of the airlock, its sleek design now made bizzarely distorted with the addition of a telescope and a small-scale nuke. The batteries and the hyperdrive would last for tens of thousands of transits; enough to give them years worth of data on the Mags.


    The first system reported back in. Only a few solar panel clusters. Not even a single Defender in sight; the 13 could easily clean that system out on its own. Still; potentially useful data.


    By the time they arrived at Bravo, they had four maps of the other stars, looking at various concentrations of enemies; including one star system which had literally millions of civilian vessels, and thousands of Defender-class ships. A sobering promise of how badly things would go if they couldn''t slip a mimic past these aliens to reach the star.


    He contacted the captain. "Ma''am, we''re ready for emergence in Bravo. All systems green?"


    "All systems green, XO. Keep my ship safe for me. Lets start the test."


    ***


    The system looked a touch chaotic when the 13 emerged, and the Mimics detached. Light-hours away, twelve Defender-class ships were clustered around the remains of the Minotaur and their brethren; very little of the debris remained. It seemed that, in all liklihood, the remaining ships had absorbed what was left of the damaged and the destroyed; a few of the Defenders read with higher mass than they had when the Tisiphone had fled the system. The two Mimics began their slow, steady progression; a path that would lead them within Hypercannon range of the cluster of Defenders... but also right past.


    As the 13 pulled further out of the system, the Mimics sent out the standard civilian radio pings of location and destination; indicating they were heading towards a solar panel cluster.


    Onboard the Mimic-2, Kelsey was quietly containing herself; keeping her emotions muted. Twelve enemy ships. Two mimics, six hypercannon. If everything went perfectly, and they got the jump on the Defenders, she might just live through this. They''d need to kill every single Defender in one shot, and each Hypercannon would need to fire twice... but it was possible. Hypercannon being so ridiculously deadly was, after all, the reason the Enemy had stopped building bigger ships; what was the point of spending ten times the resources on a Battleship if a Destroyer could still kill it in one shot.


    With each passing hour, the two Mimics drew closer to the gathering of Defenders. Signs looked... good. They were already past the range at which the Defenders had begun actively seeking to fight the flotilla that they''d previously encountered.


    She glanced over at the captain. "Ma''am... honestly, while killing these things would be good... this is honestly good enough. If they were to react to us now, clearly the fake hull fooled them for a while. Even if there were tens of thousands of Defenders in a system, this would be good enough to get us within range of the star."


    "Possibly. But at least one of those ships has taken on what was left of the Minotaur. Someone over there might be wondering what configuration of iridium and platinum let her reach this system so fast. Besides... these are the only ships that are actually dangerous at Hypercannon range. How long til we''re in range?"


    "Honestly, based on the Tisiphone''s reports, we''re inside the outer edge of their plasma lance. Give us... two more minutes and we can nail them, ma''am."


    "Good. Full charge on all three ships. Share targetting with the other Mimic; lets not waste our shots."


    Something eventually gave them away, it seemed. Whether it was the charging hypercannon, or simply a matter of proximity; the group of Defenders abruptly closed in together, mere kilometers between them, forming a group that, if the terrans were using missiles, would be optimal for striking down swarms of missiles coming in from every direction.


    But one which meant that a single hypercannon shot might strike two targets at once.


    Even as they started to fire; lower-power spirals of plasma bursting out towards the two mimics; six hypercannon fired simultaneously. Eight Defenders were struck; six head-on, the other two in glancing blows. As the Mimic-3 began to come apart from incoming plasma fire, she let loose another volley; and when the Mimic-2 started to melt apart around Kelsey, causing the entire ship to self-destruct... she clenched her fists, gripped her controls; and died once more.


    **


    Out at the system''s edge, the light-show was spectacular. The twisted purple ribbons of torn space-time, the rupturing Defenders, the sprays of deadly green plasma...


    Knowing Kelsey was aboard the mimic gave him a twinge of fear, and regret... even if he knew she was probably starting to wake up down in the robot bay already. She was fine. She''d just acquired a new body.


    More importantly... all but one of the Defenders was done for. And the last one? Heavily damaged, leaking atmosphere.


    "Go ahead and set a course for that last Defender. Captain Amari can override me if she wants... but I think we want to get a closer look. Laser warheads already loaded?"


    "Of course, sir. We only have eighteen tubes, but even if she were intact we could probably kill the one solo before it reached range."


    "Check for the aperture that plasma weapon comes out of. If its still intact, set our missiles to try to nail it. If it isn''t... we''ll fire one to just miss them. See if it has any other defenses. Either way... soon enough we''ll hopefully figure out how these plasma lances work. Imagine if we could use that stuff ourselves.."