Chapter One - Ivil Antagonist

  The Imperial Navy's officer uniform was meant to remind people that the Imperial Navy was not something you should fuck with.

  The Imperial Navy's uniform was grey. No fun. Gual. The kind of grey that reminded people of freshly poured crete. It had that kind of texture too. Callous, abrasive, utilitarian.

  The Imperial Navy's uniform was made of a syic fibre weave. A square metre of it cost as much as a script made in a year. It could stop an explosive rifle round like a fly off a windshield. The kid wearing the suit would be pulped. Bones smashed, ans ruptured. But the uniform? Crisp as the day it was vat-printed.

  The Imperial Navy liked its officers. Gave them medals for passing basic. A sed lieutenant had a strip of them across his breast. An admiral had more tihan an old-Earth Christmas tree.

  Wipe your ass well? That's a medal.

  The Imperial Navy's Uniform Ivil Antagonist wore was . That was against regutions. Regutions were sacrosan the Imperial Navy. No one had the balls to tell her that she couldn't, because sacrosanly protected that which was holy. Ivil Antagonist made doing the unholy her life's mission.

  Her uniform was bck.

  Grey was the colour of bureaucrats.

  Ivil Antagonist had once dropped a tungsten rod from low-earth orbit through a bureaucrat and the seventy-six floors of skyscraper beh him. She didn't do paperwork, she left trails of it in her wake.

  Her uniform was the pitch darkness of empty space. It was the colour of pces where stars went to die. No one knew what it was made of. No one asked.

  There was a single pin on her chest. It wasn't a medal. She had medals. They were in a case in her room that required four marines in exo-armour to lift. The pin was a small circle with two wings ing off of it. They'd been silver once, but time had rubbed the shine off, revealed the tin uhe shiny paint.

  It was the pin given to new Valkyries, back when they were all ritz and gmour. Most of them didn't live to be old enough to buy a drink. Ivil Antagonist was thirty-six years old a like she was seventy.

  She waited for just a split sed before an armoured bulkhead. The systems ected to the door noticed her, then the powerful AI trolling the door weighed its options. It wasn't meant to open the bulkhead door. There were several dozen protocols it was desigo follow that said, in bd white, that the door must remain closed.

  It weighed this against the very real possibility that the door wouldn't survive tact with Ivil Antagonist's frustration.

  The door hissed open.

  Ivil stepped onto the bridge of the Imperial Star Dreadnought Purgatorial Oblivion.

  Only ten Imperial Star Dreadnoughts were ever issioned, and of those, only three were actually built. Three was all the Imperial Navy o remind everyone in the system that they shouldn't be messed with.

  The average Earth-made warship was a workhorse. It was a 20th tury pick-up with the fat tires and an up-tuned engine. o them, an Imperial Dreadnought was a 20th tury supertanker .

  The bridge was id out like a giant ring, sole and and areas pressed up against the edges with a raised ptform in the tre for the officer in and of the ship to watch over their crew. It anopti of trol where one person could keep an eye oire and infrastructure of a ship able to go toe-to-toe with entire navies on its own.

  Ivil walked up the steps to the tre of the and plinth. At the moment, the bridge was quiet except for the occasional groan asping breath. The officers were pressed into their seats, sinking into gel pads while maes pumped their blood for them.

  A rge navigation s showed that at the moment the Purgatorial Oblivion's crew was experieng a balmy 7 gravities and would be experieng those for awenty minutes as they slowed down on their way to Haumea.

  "How are things going, Admiral Vestri?" Ivil asked as she came to stao the admiral's crash throne.

  "Hrrr," the admiral replied.

  Ivil raised an eyebrow and looked down at the man who was struggling to keep his eyes open against the weight of his eyelids. A spurt of liquid shot through the pstic artery ected to the admiral's neck. Enough painkillers to give a horse a high that would st a week and the kind cocktail that would make the average tweaker shit themselves with envy. The crash after the dose ent would make the average person's life a living hell for a few days, but there were even more drugs to deal with that.

  The admiral cleared their throat. "All is well, Ma'am," he said. "Haumea is within sing range."

  Ivil nodded sharply, then wandered over to one of the soles to look over the shoulder of the lieutenant in charge of navigation. She moved some hair out of her face with a casual swipe while the brave lieutenant fought to keep scious o her.

  Haumea itiful excuse for a d. It was way out in the fringes of the Sol system, well into the Kuiper belt. It had nic value. It had no natural resources that weren't better found elsewhere. Its moons were little better than some captured asteroids, and it was weeks distant from anyone or anything of i.

  That made it the perfee for the Lunatics.

  There were three rge habitat bubbles poking out of the poid's surface within a kilometre of each other. They were partially protected by a rge crater wall.

  The Purgatorial Oblivion's sensor suite ainting targets as quickly as it could spot them, and that meant that the s Ivil was looking at was filled with several hundred tacts. Large freighters, pleasure barges, transportation ships, warships. The Lunatics had a thriving little unity out here, and all of it was moving away from them like fish spooked by a shark.

  The ing jewel of the Lunatic fleet hovered above the rgest of the habitation domes. The Paradoxical. It was as long as a full oh-Alliance cruiser, and twice as fat. Even that bulk only made it half the size of the Purgatorial Oblivion.

  "Have we been cleared for nding?" she asked as she straightened up.

  No one answered her for a moment, then one of the officers straio sit up straighter. "N-not yet, Ma'am," she said. "There might not be enough room."

  Ivil frowhat was... unfortunately possible. The Purgatorial Oblivion had its own personal berth in Mars' orbit. In a pinch, it could use a super-tanker's space to load and unload materials, but that was a chore. The Lunatics wouldn't have anything to handle her.

  "I'll be heading out in one of our smaller ships, then," Ivil decided before she spun on a heel and walked out.

  With the ship undergoing enough stress to pulp an e us own mass, the onboard elevators and trolleys weren't active. The grand halls of the imperial warship were devoid of crew, passenger, or soldier. Ahat hadn't made it to their crash seat--and there was always one--would either be dead or wishing they were.

  Ivil walked through the lonely corridors with her head held high. She sidered stopping in her suite onboard the dreadnought to freshen up, but dismissed the idea. It would eat up too much time. Ivil did not rush. Instead she walked through the ship at a calm, reasonable patil she made it to one of the hangars.

  Fourteen fully armed and operational Imperial Angel css frigates were sitting in locked berths within the Purgatorial Oblivion's belly. Enough ships to form a plete naval battle-line, or to blockade a small poid.

  She walked past the first two, then paused at the third. The Lucky Despot. She'd never seen, nor heard, of this particur ship before, but the name amused her. The captain might have had a sense of humour, which was a uhing indeed within the Imperial Navy.

  The entire ship groaned in relief as the pressure it was under subsided bit by bit. They were no longer burning hard to slohich meant that they were only hours from their destination. Soon, soldiers would be stumbling out of their couches, engineers would be running around looking for damage, and the Purgatorial Oblivion would be brought to full battle readiness.

  Ivil suspected that bringing an Imperial Dreadnought to visit some space s might have been a little much as far as shows of force went. It was bringing a o a knife fight. But it might just get her the respect that her name cked, and she would need all the clout she could manage.

  In a few hours, if everythi well, Ivil Antagonist would be face to face with one of the sor system's most dreaded adversaries. Cire, the ic of Cirvoyand C-cssed Valkyrie of the Lunatics.

  ***

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