Derek was.. relaxed. He was likely going to either be commanding the 13 on her way to deliver a pack of Mimics to one of the systems, with Captain Amari once more flying in... or he''d be commanding one himself. They had samples of the aliens to go over, a constant string of data coming on, every hour, about the activities of the Mags in their systems... and a plan.


    It was all going to work out. The bad guys would be crushed, humanity would expand and start to build real, flesh and blood, colonies on new worlds.. and even if they didn''t, hell. The fleet could gather up its operations and repeat the whole Outreach scenario with the Anvil. Go off to some other part of the galaxy.


    He was the one who came up with the idea to drop relays in the alien systems; so he was in charge of interpreting the feeds and putting out any useful information. He''d pulled in Dr. Kent; occaisionally annoyed at the doctor for using an idealized handsome blond-haired version of himself from his youth... and been disappointed that the doctor had absolutely nothing to contribute, insisting that fleet movements were a tactical, or perhaps economic issue.


    In the end, Derek was watching things on his own. Every time another of the hourly bursts was delivered, tacking it onto his existing video to build out more of a pattern. As much as he hoped to find something interesting, it seemed that the Commodore was right; all that needed to happen was a strike from off the ecliptic. No oddities at all.


    The display flickered. A team was modifying the 13 right now; Kelsey included. A few minor power reroutes going on. He shook his head and turned back to the display, noting some... strange activity in the swarms of defenders. Two of the groups were starting to move towards each other. What were they doing?


    ***


    "Look. There''s a reason we don''t just leave exposed power cables hanging out in open air. One micrometeorite impact and all the power going to whatever system you want can end up... anywhere. Crew walking down the hall? Engines? Everything needs to be secured and protected."


    Kelsey crossed her arms, glaring with irritation at the two intruders on her engineering deck. The men hadn''t been awoken until recently; apparently part of the experimental weapons projects back in Sol.


    "We have months to do this right. Give me the power requirements and we''ll either cut open the walls, or just remove the entire subsection to run cables. We don''t do jury-rigged mods like this at the shipyard."


    One of the men gave a low chuckle. While both seemed vaguely similar; aside from one being perhaps darker-skinned than the other, they both simply reeked of ''arrogant old idiot''; this was the first time one had the audacity to actually laugh at her.


    "Look, young lady. We were building railguns before we had all this alien technology available. We know this system better than anyone alive, because I invented it."


    At a cough from the other scientist, he added.. "With my friend Dave''s assistance, of course; he was vital in combining gravity and magnetic tech to hold the rail together."


    Dave, apparently, continued the foolishness. "The sort of power draw we need, while significant, simply isn''t enough to be hazardous on a ship like this.. and we don''t have enough time to disassemble every ship. We''ve got dozens of ships to put these systems in. Yours is only the first because its the oldest. Just... stay out of the way and let us do our jobs."


    She gave a slow nod for a moment, looking the two men over. Punching them would be pointless. It wouldn''t really hurt them. No. She needed a better approach. She tapped her icon. "Commodore Peterson. I''ve got a couple of scientists here trying to do a slipshod job of installing a jury-rigged mix of a railgun and a gravity gun. They want to bolt cables to walls... including one to the wall immediately adjacent to the secondary fuel tank. The design has some promise... but these two clearly have no place working on a warship. Any vessel they work on will be substantially more likely to suffer a catastrophic failure if it takes damage."


    She hit a few buttons. Relaying the men''s proposed diagram to the Commodore.


    Seconds later, the two men stood abruptly upright. She could only hear half the conversation; but the men looked to be on the verge of panic. "Yes sir. No sir! I meant no disprespect sir, its simply that the odds of... But..."


    Looking deflated, ''Dave'' turned to Kelsey. "Ahh... Officer Danvers, I apologize for our behavior. We... have been advised to request your assistance in optimizing these weapons for the Destroyers."


    She shakes her head. "Great. Look, tweedle-dee. This is an extremely complicated system. It needs power run to every part of the barrel, an auto-loader, and enough gyrojet rounds to choke a herd of elephants. But. Every ship has its own engineering officer and numerous techs. Four of whom have more experience with these ships than I do, and we''ve got plenty of time. The 13 is going to be a unique one-off. She has so much open space and rooms dedicated to non-combat equipment that I can simply tear out a.... Deployable dehydration tower array? and we can add it onto the side. We need to call in those other four officers and work out a design, together. In a warship, every cubic centimeter is accounted for. "


    "So lets get down to basics. How important is this thing, and how big do we want it to be?"


    ***


    At first, Derek was confused. Every time he received another hourly update from the relays, he saw sighs of conflict between multiple groups of Defenders... and now that he even considered such a thing possible, he saw what looked like the remains of a Carrier-class ship that had been torn apart by a Defender.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Civil war? Pirates?


    Three months into his study, he started flagging individual civilian ships, backtracking them to the initial observation. Spotting an unusually small Tug-class ship, he backtracked it... to the swarm of Gunships moving around a Carrier. Sorting through the ships, looking for size variations, he came to a realization.


    These ships had organic elements, yes. But more than that; they were alive. Aside from these Defenders, the rest of the ships all seemed to be the same ship. At first a gunship... then once it grew big enough, becoming a tug... then the Constructor... and finally, the Carrier. At which point, it created the Gunships, continuing the cycle.


    Were these things ships at all? Were the Mags actually their crew, or perhaps some sort of larvae, a step before becoming the gunship? Were the Defenders a seperate species, or yet another life stage?


    He called in Kent. This... might be important.


    ***


    Objectively only 12 later; but subjectively weeks worth of intent study of the figures, during which Derek requested another officer cover his admittedly unimportant shift watching the bridge while the 13 was at dock; Dr. Kent and Derek had contacted Commodore Peterson... and flown by shuttle to meet him on Anvil station.


    The structure had been here for years now, constantly tunneling deeper into the enormous chunk of rock. Numerous hangars and construction bays were present, and the facility had the lived-in feeling of a real human settlement. Wide open spaces; even an indoor park in progress, where they were carefully creating the first living versions of terestrial life that this particular band had seen in over a century.


    Ideally, in a few years, they''d have a full-fledged forest growing inside the rock; though organic human bodies weren''t yet on the agenda.


    Commodore Peterson had built an office for himself just off the docks; a nice, easy stroll from where the Tisiphone was undergoing her own refit; but still, Derek saw hundreds of people moving busily about, enjoying their lives and getting off to work in the sort of crowded bustle he hadn''t seen since the bad old days of the apartment building.


    He stopped to watch it for a moment outside the commodore''s door. It was nice to feel so... alive again. Human. But still. Something was... off.


    It wasn''t until he stepped into Peterson''s office that it hit him. Of course. No children. No particularly old, no disabled; just... hundreds of perfectly fit, capable machines. The station might be huge; and house thousands of people... but it was still navy, even if not the UN navy.


    ***


    "We''ve spent weeks looking over the data. Mr. Thompson here had the initial idea... and once I saw what he was looking at, I realized the pattern. We haven''t been looking at some hyper-advanced alien race at all. We''re looking at a spaceborne ecology."


    For a moment, Peterson looked dumbfounded. Startled. He just stared at the two for a moment. "I... Thompson, is he going crazy, or am I? Are we talking about a living, breathing, organism that flies around in space... and has a plasma lance for a face?"


    Derek grimaced. "Almost, sir. From what we can tell, there are three seperate species of spacegoing life. The first, we''re tentatively calling the Hexes. Almost completely immobile, they basically eat rock and sunlight, and make more baby Hexes. The second... we''re calling the Mags, simply because thats what we already call them... fly around, absorb sunlight, eat Hexes, and whatever proto-Hex material there is."


    Dr. Kent smiled as he brought up the images of the different size disparities among the ''Mags''; ranging from Gunship all the way up to Carrier. "These things probably live for millions of years. They probably start as the caterpillars we saw... and then bud off to the ''Gunships'' inside their mothers. They grow fairly quickly at first; then more slowly, and as they get bigger they take on different jobs in the herd... til they start having babies themselves."


    "And the Defenders?"


    Derek shrugged his shoulders. "Actually... quite the opposite. If the Mags are the fish, the Defenders are the Sharks. They mostly stay near the sun to keep their temperature up... and very rarely go out as a pack to eat a Mag. The remains in-system suggest they last did this.. out of the thousands of Sharks in the system... at least a decade ago. Maybe more. We''ll probably need to watch for years to witness an actual hunt. But.... they aren''t uniform."


    "Aren''t uniform?"


    "The sharks have... packs, as it were. We haven''t seen it in the sparser systems, but in this one... they split up into territories, and while they don''t seem to kill each other, fire plenty of warning shots and harass at some sort of imaginary line. In the months since we started observing, there have been five such minor clashes along one of these ''borders''. The sharks most likely see our own ships, since we don''t seem to be Mags, as rival shark packs."


    Peterson looked at the data, piece by piece. While the suggestion sounded ridiculous on its face... it certainly seemed to be where the evidence was pointing. "Interesting. What implications does this have on the campaign?"


    The two men started speaking at the same time, overlapping each other, before Peterson held up a hand. "One at a time, children. Dr. Kent?"


    The blond-haired doctor smiled, spreading his arms. "These aren''t a hostile alien race. They aren''t going to develop hyperdrives. They aren''t a threat. They certainly aren''t endangered; clearing a few systems for us to live in should be fine; but aside from that, I think we need to call the whole operation off. Killing any that aren''t coming at us is just mindless butchery."


    "I suppose I can see where you''re coming from. Thompson?"


    "They need to be eradicated or controlled. The fact that they aren''t an empire with some central organization means it will be a longer, more difficult process to track down all the sharks scattered around... but however long it takes, every single one of them needs to be captured or killed."


    "Thats... a very dramatic difference of opinions."


    Dr. Kent glared at Derek for a moment. "This lunatic thinks that either one of them will someday, randomly, evolve a hyperdrive, or humanity will devolve to lose space travel, or some other equally unlikely claptrap."


    Derk looks coldly at Dr. Kent. "The third possibility was that despite being slower than light, when they consumed all the resources of that Dyson Sphere system, they''d eventually consume the sphere itself, unleashing swarms that we simply couldn''t stop. The spreading we see right now is just a few random lost stragglers. Imagine dealing with billions of sharks and trillions of Mags... slower than light, yes... but pouring out in an endless, unstoppable tide. We need to kill that system before it reaches that point... assuming it hasn''t already."


    "We have no indication that will happen!"


    Derek''s cold gaze never wavered. "We didn''t when we thought they were an empire that might try to build a dyson sphere as some sort of long-term settlement project. As non-sentient animals? I''d say its inevitable."


    The commodore looked between the two men for a moment. He tapped a button on his icon. Dr. Kent... suddenly seemed frozen into immobility. "I agree with you, Derek. More importantly, I think if we let this get out, we might have more people agree with Dr. Kent."


    "..Yes sir. I''m assuming he''s being downclocked til after the campaign?"


    "Perhaps. Go ahead and shut down the relays. We''ll have to deal with the good doctor long-term, one way or another."