When the results came in from the inner system, showing the contents of that dyson sphere.. everyone on the bridge was shocked; and most of them were confused as well. This star system had an enormous ring of solar panels, billions upon billions of Mags of various sizes... but...


    At the comms station, the young woman glanced up. "Sir... I''m not reading a single Defender-class ship. No planets, either... only the immobile structures and civilian ships."


    A weapons officer; also a new replacement for the one now serving on a Mimic, chimed in. "Maybe they moved out already. This system is so far from any threat, they could have sent all of their Defenders out to frontier worlds. If they were humans they''d keep a fleet here to defend it... but, well. They aren''t humans."


    As he looked over the screen, Derek gave a slow nod. There were two prime possibilities here. Either he and Dr. Kent were disastrously wrong, and the enemy had somehow built FTL drives, sending its Defenders out to swarm the galaxy... or once there reached enough Mags, they became too good at defending themselves from Sharks; and the predatory species eventually died out. Even as hopelessly outmatched as the Mag vessels were against the plasma lance of the sharks, if you had millions of them in a swarm....


    Still. That exacerbated the problem, to an extent. In any natural ecosystem, if you had no more predators... the herds would grow too big to feed, and either starve, or simply deplete all the food and move to a new area.


    He shook his head. "Doesn''t matter the why; aside from meaning we''ll want to keep a careful watch on our rimward borders as we get the cluster fully settled. The only thing that really matters is that we don''t need to deploy many Mimics here. In fact... we can probably just deploy some of the Gunship-class mimics on autopilot."


    He taps his Icon. He had a chief engineer aboard; but his best engineer was commanding one of the Mimics. "Captain Danvers. We''re looking at essentially an unopposed entry. Assuming every unit we send manages to set off its weapons, how many will we need to set off the nova?"


    The response was immediate. "One of our full-scale ones could probably do the job; if we have time to aim carefully and nail the highest density of matter in the core with each shot, we can set it off with four shots; five to be certain. The gunship-scale ships have a smaller weapon... but not enough to matter as much. We''d need to position them more carefully, but six of them would do the job."


    "Get me a programming package for the gunship-class to head in unaided. Aside from the Defenders, the other Mags will let a Mimic just glide right by. We''re probably going to make them all panic and cluster up with the probes we launched; just keep the mimics in the spaces between, just in case. Launch when ready."


    "I''ll coordinate with our other engineers and get it done."


    It was almost instant. A team of engineers between the 13, the two destroyers, and the mimics all overclocked for less than thirty seconds; and the gunship-class mimics were programmed.


    "13, we are go for launch."


    "Repeat, launch when ready."


    All of the larger vessels remained there, clustered far beyond the system''s edge... as six tiny dots emerged from the larger Mimics. Gunship-class vessels, designed to look like a Mag ''child''; somewhere between the ''Tug'' class and the ones still dependant on their ''Carrier''.


    As the six dots moved steadily further in the system, millions of Mag vessels shifted and moved; like an ocean of mass, so great that the gravity distorted the path of the gunships; a fleet that massed more than jupiter moving in response to a set of probes that barely massed a few tons each.


    The Mags... ignored the mimics. The gunships moved to a set of pre-programmed spots, aiming into the star; and firing. The largest hypercannon such a ship could pack was tiny compared to what the 13 could carry, and enormously wasteful of Iridium; but enough to make a path a few light-seconds long, going in one side of the star and out the other; each of the six shots displacing more than the mass of a dozen Sols when they fired.


    The effort destroyed the mimics, of course. And created six enormous solar flares; jets of superheated starmatter that projected out... vaporizing enormous subsections of the dyson sphere, destroying billions of Mags in seconds. But that was only the beginning. Freed from the crushing restraint of gravity, the core matter expanded dramatically... creating shockwaves through the star.


    And the beginning expansion of a ''small'' supernova; one that, for this star, would eradicate any Mags within at least a dozen light years; and likely injure them out to a dozen more. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    The task group hovered there in the darkness, watching, as trillions of lives were snuffed out., the star itself likely shortened in its lifespan by millions of years through this effort... and then re-entered hyperspace.


    So much effort and planning for what was considered to be a vital, incredibly dangerous mission. It seemed... absurd. "Set course back towards the cluster, but take it slow. If anyone ran into trouble, we still have a full load of Carrier-class Mimics to deploy... and the Defenders had to go somewhere."


    The lie hurt more than he''d expected. But then, he''d never really been military, had he? Classified information... this was the first, and only, piece he''d ever had. What kind of secrets had Peterson been forced to keep, in his decades of military career?


    ***


    For Kelsey, watching the starmap on her screen was.. anticlimactic. She''d been expecting to die here; that maybe they''d been on a suicide mission for the whole task group, and the other vessels would die to create an opening for the Mimics to slip in. And after all that work... getting psyched up to die yet again... nothing.


    The other four Dyson Sphere teams had the same results; Peterson''s team even reported that their target had begun to cannibalize the dyson sphere, and there''d been a hole in their sphere light-hours wide at the edge; they could have easily flown in even without the mimics.


    Everyone was heading home. The remaining Gunships were to be deployed in systems they weren''t otherwise going to be targetting; but... it was over. Maybe they''d need to keep defenses, to prepare in case these missing Defenders showed up, or some other threat. But that was years away. If ever. Today? They could start building a home.


    ***


    "I was reasonably certain of mine and Dr. Kent''s conclusions already. The population patterns we''re seeing, as well as traces of old wreckage, confim it. Once the population of Mags gets high enough, some Sharks flee the system, but most of them get killed attempting to hunt. If a system has enough mass to form a dyson sphere... and most won''t.. then eventually there will be no sharks at all. And looking at the one you encountered... in another hundred thousand to quarter million years they''d have cannibalized all the mass there and left. I think we caught it in time. But..."


    Peterson gave a slow nod. Each of them was in their own office; the signal was encrypted. They were in hyperspace. As secure as they could be without speaking in person. "But?"


    Derek looked at him on the viewscreen."There are naked stars out there. No planets at all. I doubt it, but its possible one already had this happen, and a tide of Mags could already be expanding through deep space. Most likely there was never anything there to eat, so the Mags never settled in. But..."


    "But there''s a chance we might be facing a swarm."


    Commodore Peterson looked at the starmap. So much more detailed now, as they made their slow path back to the cluster. "Only a chance. But... we need to be ready for that chance. That won''t be your job, though. Your job will be making us homes. I believe you said there was a world people could walk on?"


    "Ahh... yeah, there''s this one planet with solid timespans where a human could walk, unsuited, if they had a facemask and an air tank. Thats not actually the easiest one to terraform, though."


    "I''m sure you''ll figure it out. I want you to get a team together. Build more Earthforge-class ships if you need them." Peterson leaned back in his chair. "To be honest, when I first looked you up in the system, I thought this is where we''d start. I''d send you off to play with the terraforming tools, and we wouldn''t even need a fleet until we had enough people for human stupidity to take its course."


    Derek nodded.. then had a curious glint in his eye. "Why did you look me up, anyway? I was great at this sort of thing, but not the -best-... and you couldn''t even be sure I''d be useful til we arrived. Hell.. you could''ve trained some of your naval officers on the job."


    Peterson grinned at the monitor for a moment. "Oh, thats easy enough. I knew you from before the fall."


    "Before... What? I never heard of you. Did we meet at the academy?"


    "No. You helped my mother get her computer working. She lived a few doors down from you. Honestly, the fact that you convinced her to learn how to use the headset so she could watch the fully immersive soap-operas, is the whole reason her mind is on file. You''re the reason I''ll be able to see her again, once this is all settled. Once I realized that, well."


    "You could''ve been completely useless and I''d have found -something- for you to do."


    ***


    In the cargo bay of the 13, Kelsey examined the airlock connection to the Mimic. Was it even really an airlock? There was no oxygen. Nobody was breathing; the gas on board was completely inert. Nonflammable. But soon... that would change. Once...


    The airlock sealed with a hiss of escaping gasses. And there he was again. Derek. That cute smile that still gave her flashbacks of pain and hate. She gave a hesitant smile. "So. The mission''s done. It... feels interesting, to be a human again, even if I was only a starship for a while... and never really got to stretch my wings. I almost want to take it for a test drive, but... hopefully everybody has as easy a time as we did, and I don''t have to."


    Derek gave a slow, sad smile in response. "I''ve considered trying that myself. Instead of moving controls around with my hands and icon, just becoming the ship, feeling everything as if it were me. But... I like who I am now. I''ll get an organic shell when the time comes...but I''m not going to be changing anything else. As terrible as the memories are... they make me who I am."


    She sighed. "I get it. Big-shot captain now, living the dream, flying the spaceways and making a brave new home for humanity. But if I get my memories erased, and you don''t... things could never work. I''d always know something was wrong."


    "For the longest time, I clung to you. I.. actually had an overlay of your fave for the news anchor in my little digital living room. Your face, your voice, giving me the news."


    Kelsey gave an amused chuckle, though Derek held up a hand.


    "That wasn''t a good thing. It wasn''t healthy... or even really sane. I needed to move on. And if you really want to change your memories, thats fine. I''m sure we can work things out somehow. But really... neither of us should forget. And both of us should move on."