Quoted By:
>L2/LUNAR
The third planet races forward until it fills your viewscreen: a portrait of dune swept ravines and winding hydrothermal rivers. Your eyesight pares through layers of erosive atmosphere to pick out the telltale scars of early colonization. You see an untampered planet – a world where humanity still yielded to the whims of storm and sand. A single transfer station occupies geosynchronous orbit, its spindles unadorned. Below, a curious network of atmospheric towers emerges from the central continent like a fairy ring, billowing streams of hazy particulates into a rotating polar weather system.
A poor candidate for conquest. An even poorer one for suppression.
And yet someone had still chosen to come to this world to take it. You examine the unknown fleet arrayed in front of you. Three light carriers sit in high orbit, hugging a pair of blocky escort frigates currently scanning the planet’s surface. Tight spacing – good for defending against surface threats, but exceedingly vulnerable to the type of attack you are conducting.
Your vessel rams into outer orbit with a wrenching flash of off-blue light and accumulated solar wind. Before you, armored hulls crackle with electromagnetic feedback, sensors temporally blinded by the bow-shock of your arrival.
You suffer no such circumscription. Within several minutes, your entire strike complement launches from the forward hanger, bearing ordinance on centerline hardpoints and metal-edged pinions. Newborn squadron commanders coordinate with newborn bridge crew like old companions. Targeting reticles bloom across the enemy fleet.
As you prepare your opening barrage, your transponder declares your vessel and affiliation like a warhorn:
SOLSTICE, of the 12th suppression fleet.
SOLSTICE, which bears the treasonous name of the last solar hour.
SOLSTICE, who was executed for setting the skies ablaze for six days and seven nights.
