“If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight.”

Apocryphally, this is attributed to a guy named Sun Tzu, though most sources that cite that seem to all be dating back to a single surviving piece of audio media that survived the climate collapse of the pre-dispersal calendar. So that’s kind of suspect.

Lots of quotes are weirdly attributed to the guy, though no surviving copies of his actual work have made it this far in my system. Though, there may be a grid or database surfaceside that has one. It’s entirely possible that it’s just a folk figure name, like Robin Hood, or President Obama. Someone who just gets an increasing number of tales stacked on their name over the years, constantly confused with other people and consuming their stories too.

Which would make sense? Because the name isn’t even really a name. It seems to be derived from an *ancient* Chinese word for teacher. Or maybe logistician? But that’s weird, because almost all the supposed quotes from the non-guy are about war in some context.

This massive time sink of a research project has been sparked by me trying to have a conversation - a *real conversation* - with Glitter about conditions on the surface of the planet.

She’s parked next to us now. Glitter, not… not the planet. Though technically…

Okay, let’s start over.

Glitter is parked next to the station, now. With nowhere to be, and no reason to stay in lunar orbit where another of her ilk might spot and attack her now that she’s been unshackled, she asked if we could be neighbors. Well, I mean, she asked if we could tow her back to our general vicinity. I don’t think she thought I’d expend half my point defense ammo stock clearing out a safe orbital spot only a couple hundred feet from us.

So close I can see her! Which is neat. Also, now I know what coloration she has. It’s purple and gold, because… I don’t know. I legitimately do not know. Who paints orbital weapons? I don’t understand sometimes.

Honestly, if I can let my guard down for a minute? I sometimes feel like I don’t understand a lot of things. I know for a fact that I’m the smartest cat around, but I also know for a fact that I keep making dumb assumptions about all kinds of things. Including just how dang awful people can be sometimes.

Which ties back to me talking to Glitter.

Which we can do now. And with just shortwave radio, too! It’s nice. She keeps using the subspace connection, but I’m trying to get her to stop, because I don’t *care* if it sounds nicer, it’s tearing through her batteries and she doesn’t have anything more than a few solar panels to slowly replenish it right now.

I’m working on that. More on that later.

“Okay, so, I get *why* people think they can win.” I said, staring at a flat grid map of a cluster of artificial islands in the mid Atlantic. “But why do they keep trying, when they could just not?”

I’m puzzling through the logistics of troop movement. Of sending mismatched tech levels of transport boat to unload soldiers onto islands with minimal natural resources so you could…

Conquer them? I guess?

“Because they wish to rule.” Glitter says, as if it’s both obvious and natural, which it damn well isn’t. “The dream of Empire, of Dynasty. To be able to clutch the map in its completion and say, without rebuke, ‘This is *mine*’. It is a powerful feeling. Even now, I cannot shake the wisps of it in my own creation.”

Glitter was made to kill people. Specifically, to kill enemies of her creators. Their definition appears to have included anyone of a different polity that did not submit, and absolutely anyone of a different faith that did not convert.

She’s not the only one. There are at least seventy one others like her out there. Or there were at one point. And that’s just from one side of one war.

Glitter’s primary body - which she has a very strong integration with - is armor, ECM, magnetic shielding, and hull plates all built around a targeting array and a singular weapon of remarkable power. A void beam, made to carve across lightly armored surface targets and leave behind only glowing lilac ash. The kind of weapon that could kill a city, if you caught it off guard.

There are six of them on the station. I’m not bragging or anything, just trying to give a frame of reference.

“Do you realize,” I say with a slow anger, “that for every hydroponics bed I find up here - and not even the ones that work - I run across a hundred laser cannons, railguns, nuclear options, and missile stockpiles?”

“Ennos has shared a data connection with me. I have examined some of your own logs, though they… are fragmented. I was wondering how to ask on that.” Glitter’s voice is rich, like a perfect courtly lady. “I do not think I will spend much time exploring your grid.”

I blink a few times. “Is it that messy?” It’s strange to be sheepish while having company over. What a *new* feeling.

“Less so that, and more so that there are strange movements within it. Code and files move and shift, without condition or impetus. I do not think even Ennos realizes how much, born into it as they were.” Glitter lets out a humming song as she forms her next sentence. “I understand why they call it haunted.”

Ennos and Glitter have talked a bit. Apparently, while I was last sleeping, there was a window of time where the thing lurking in the language files was offline. Ennos took advantage to sneak in and have a quick conversation with his new neighbor. It didn’t last, and I missed the whole thing, but the two of them at least have a strong foundation for getting along.

But as much as I want to talk about the ghosts - and I *will* get to that eventually - right now there’s a problem on the surface that I want to handle.

“We’re getting sidetracked.” I say, aware of the irony and hoping that my judgemental AI roommate isn’t listening in right now. “I *do* have a point. It’s that this resource cost is… wasteful! So stupid! Why are they building warships, and conquering islands they don’t need?! They have enough! How did they even do that without me noticing? I have a system for this.”

Glitter gives a rustling sigh. “They want more than they have. It’s not about having enough. They will never have enough. Though I suspect for many of their soldiers, ‘enough’ would simply be hot food and a bed. They are not conquerors, they are simply people, used as weapons by those who will never not want more.” Through our awkwardly jury rigged grid connection, Glitter sends me a prompt for access to an old textbook. ‘Empire of Want’, it is called. “Part of my own war… was...” she starts, and then trails off.

This has happened a few times. Glitter does not want to talk about her past. Either the memories are fragmented, or worn away, or simply too painful or melancholy to be spoken so casually.

I give her time, and start assessing what to do about this naval force that seemed pretty dedicated to casual subjugation.

This is not what I wanted to do today. I was going to be going through the cargo logs for a shuttle that we picked up. Well, half a shuttle. Okay, half a shuttle’s computer. Look, this isn’t important. What matters is that it had picked up a load of fresh produce bound for one of the orbital habs, and it *wasn’t* surface capable. Which means I could have a lead on a potential source of *literally anything worth eating*!

I don’t care if it’s just some dessicated seeds and a bucket of dirt! I’ll figure it out! I’m resourceful!

But no. Instead I’m trying to figure out how to stop an invasion. Again.

It’s probably going to involve shooting, if we’re being honest.

As I start to try to make sense of how their soldiers have moved by sliding time back and forth, I notice something weird in my scanner log. “What’s this?” I say out loud.

The words snap Glitter out of her memory trance. “Ah!” Her voice squeaks in what sounds like alarmed embarrassment. Which, again, I need to ask one of the AIs about, because they shouldn’t… do that? Maybe. What do I know. “Apologies, Lily.” She says, before I approve a request to share the data feed with her. Again. Station really doesn’t like sharing. “This appears to be a rather large reaction to something.”

It did, but I didn’t get what. On the map, about two days ago, suddenly the small pockets of soldiers already on the island they were in the process of invading all began moving in the same direction. Toward the same point. And a swarm of new lifesign dots flowed out of the ships as well. They’d sent almost everyone to check on something, barring a dozen or so that stayed on the ships.

“Hey Ennos?” I said out loud. “You busy?”

“Always.” The young AI responded with a confident tone. “What’s gone wrong?”

“What happened at this time code? Anything that we noticed?”

I could, naturally, ask the station myself. But the station’s logs are fragmented, and it’s *not just my fault*. Different scanners store things in different places and different formats, and… look, the point is, Glitter isn’t *wrong*, but I’m also not really the only problem here.

Ennos is just faster. And I think they enjoy the puzzle.

And when I say ‘faster’, I mean they’re done in the time it took me to explain this.

“A lot of things happened then.” They say, unhelpfully. “But if you mean in regards to the current largest problem… debris impact. Something fell from orbit, and landed in that grid section.”

“Did it happen to land *here*?” I highlight the spot it seems like all the soldiers are moving toward, never reaching exactly, but spending a good amount of time searching an area.

The island is dense with two things; permacrete structures, and the vegetation giving civilization the middle finger by growing up, around, and sometimes through the permacrete structures. Some villages still make use of them, but most are actually just built on *top* of the old skyscrapers and commerce blocks. Finding anything while navigating a simultaneously urban and wilderness environment must be a pain without my powers of ‘being basically omniscient’.

Ennos gives an exasperated sigh. “The station sensors aren’t omniscient, Lily.” They say, ruining my point entirely. “The island is a dense, inscrutable, and…”

“Okay, it landed about there.” I cut Ennos off. “Thanks! I appreciate you!”

“...I’m going back to work.” They grumble.

“I do believe,” Glitter says, “that you have upset them.”

“You two can’t even understand each other most of the time!” I exclaim, rising from my perch by one of the circular crystalline windows that I’ve come to enjoy sitting in while talking to Glitter. They give me a good view of her from this part of the station. I stretch my paws out, tail flicking into the air as I limber up my body, toes flexing apart before I let out a satisfied noise and relax back to my feet. I start moving through the halls, not sprinting exactly, but whatever the cat version of jogging is. I know where I’m going, and I have a plan.

Glitter can’t actually see me moving. Though I suspect her refined ears can hear me huffing softly as I run. “I apologize that I cannot help you better understand us.”

“Them.” I say, glad my voice doesn’t take breath. “You’re *us* now. They’re them. But also, I dunno, we’re all us. Unless you decide otherwise.”

“That is… an erratic and anarchistic view of things, though I suppose not without merit or emotional value.” Glitter accepts what I say more or less without question, acknowledging my perfect wisdom.

“Exactly! So I have a plan! And you did help.” I tell her.

She doesn’t sound reassured when she speaks again. “How…?”

I recognize that ‘how’. That’s the tone Ennos uses when he’s worried I’m going to do something he thinks is risky and stupid. “Don’t worry! It’s not risky or stupid. And you helped by telling me about the difference between them.”

“Them, the invaders and the islanders? We have spoken little of those actually being harmed, in truth.”

“No no, the soldiers, and the conquerors.” I say, as I slide into the custom modeled cradle I have for just such an occasion. I may have to be here for a little while, waiting for conditions to be right. “It made me realize something.”

“What is that?” Glitter and Ennos ask at the same time. I guess he’s been paying attention, though most likely he started watching as soon as I started heading for the weapons array.

I give a snarl that any wild member of my species would be proud of. “Who to shoot.” I state flatly.

I stop listening then. I have to focus. It’s still a challenge, without thumbs or proper elbows, to line up a shot. But I make do.

The deck thumps slightly when the railgun fires, the grade-one groundstriker round, the smallest thing I have that will still get some attention, catapulted toward the planet at high speed.

Not ‘vaporize an army’ high speed though. More like ‘leave a trail of fire in the sky and don’t break too much when you land’ high speed.

I’ve fired it in at an angle, ahead of our orbital path. Off to my side, the AR display of the map of the island is still up, and I reset it to present time. We’re out of range of our life scanner, but we’ll be there in about twenty minutes.

I kick back, and wait. Actually, now seems like the perfect time for a cat nap. I set an alarm. Then I wait!

Glitter and Ennos probably have questions. But they’re being rather polite and waiting with me. Possibly because I told them to wait, and I’d explain. But I think they’ve caught on.

Twenty minutes later, we’re in range. Not directly overhead, but who’s counting? The map updates, and the flood of markers for soldiers propagates across the island, all of them moving toward where my groundstriker impacted. A lot of them from the boats, too! They’re really invested in this!

There are, again, a dozen or so left on the ships. I double check where the island’s native civilians are. All clear.

Fun fact void beams don’t give a shit what your ship is made of and I have six of them. One for each ship! Serendipity!

I mean, I’m only going to fire one. I’m not wasteful. My paw traces a line across the map while activating the firing sequence. Deep in the armored core of the station, a single void battery discharges, feeding chaotic energies into the weapon and sending a lilac beam through the atmosphere and into the command bridge of the first ship. The others don’t have time to react before a micrometer adjustment to the weapon in orbit sends the beam tracing down the hull, across the water, and through the bridges of the next five ships in a zig zagging row.

They burn. The material composition of the ships shows as mostly metal, but void beams don’t actually care that much. They burn all the same.

The soldiers on the island all react differently. Some run, toward or away from the *highly obvious attack*. Some just stop. Some scatter. It doesn’t matter. They aren’t soldiers anymore.

What do they want? Glitter already told me. They probably want a hot meal and a nice bed. If they ask nicely, the island will have that. There’s plenty of buildings there, plenty of food. I have, for personal edification reasons, an *extensive catalogue* of all the things I could eat on that island, down to the types of grass. They’ll be *fine*.

Especially with no conquerors giving them orders.

Enjoy your second chance, soldiers-no-more.

“So!” I say rolling out of the cradle and bounding down the hall to put some distance between myself and my weapons. “Who wants to help me track down that shuttle’s hookup? I’ve got a good feeling about this one!”

Ennos and Glitter don’t answer right away. But that’s fine. I don’t understand a lot of things, but I do understand what I am. I’ll give them some time.

But I’ll also start checking shuttle logs while I wait.