“So, these are your quarters,” said General Karl, “That virtual pod is keyed for you and only you to access, and its default virtual space is constantly linked to the other 5 members of your team.” They were slightly larger than normal officer’s quarters, and rather spartan save for the wall pattern having been painted in some soothing shades of blue and purple. Other than the pod, there was a normal bed and a desk and chair with a 3D Fednet terminal, and even pens and a pad of paper. “The bed and net terminal are mostly for backup, in case we lose virtual space connection somehow.”

“And the pen and notepad?”

Karl shrugged. “Some ensign left them in here, I think. I think he said something about it completing the room.”

“It does add a slightly humanizing touch,” I admitted, “thank them for me.” I realized what I just said and caught myself instantly. “Or well, have them thanked, obviously you wouldn’t go in person.”

“Your commendation will be logged. Now, the real reason this is here is for the desk.”

“The desk,” I said, blankly, then starting to realize what he was getting at, “ohhhhh. I thought we’d just use a safe, or something.”

“Too conspicuous,” said Karl, “something like that in the room could lead to the crew asking questions.”

I grinned. “So, where’s the secret compartment?”

“The center drawer.” I opened it all the way and sure enough, I could just make out what looked like a thumbprint scanner in the back. “Press your thumb there,” said Karl, “and it’ll open. And when you close it, from then on it will only open for you. It keys to your Tower name and character data, not your thumbprint or your Federation ID, so there’s no chance of anyone fooling the scanner. But if someone else scans while the compartment is open, it’ll overwrite the key to them. That shouldn’t happen, though.”

I nodded and pressed my thumb to the scanner. There was a high beep and a slight hiss, and another drawer, clearly made of much stronger and more modern materials, slid out. I placed the dossier inside and shut the drawer.

“Next, I’ll explain the overall rundown of the ship.”

The rundown was relatively brief, given with a map instead of actually taking me all over the ship. He pointed out the location of various gunnery stations, of which there were a large number, the location of the bridge in relation to the rest of the ship, and other fairly bog-standard places like the galley. The Engineering section with the ship core, the place the Kinetice or other enemies would need to reach to destroy the ship, was in an excellent defensive position in the ship’s center. Not that we anticipated that they would be coming to us often.

“Finally, it’s time to inspect your wheelhouse,” said Karl. The place he referred to was a section of the ship known as the Incursion Deck. Whenever a gunship like this one went into battle, the crew’s designated boarding party would stand by there. When the ship was boarded or we prepared to board an enemy ship, our Incursion Deck would connect with theirs. It was basically the entry point for that stage of battle.

And the Incursion Deck on the Firebrand was abnormally small. “I think I get why this ship had to be designed from the ground up,” I said, “Admiral Bruzigan did say that with the way I fought in the sims, using a standard or even elite boarding party would most likely just slow me down.”

“Exactly. That’s the unique feature of the new Firebrand class Battlecruiser,” said Karl, “its central doctrine of engagement relies on a one-man wrecking crew, AKA you, captain. Almost all the space that would have gone to the Incursion Deck increased the ship’s armament instead. This baby has enough firepower to suppress an entire squadron formation of standard Kinetice vessels all by itself.

There’s no standard boarding party in the crew compliment, either. Most of the crew is tough enough to take down at least an individual Kinetice, but if you mess up a boarding, we’re basically screwed.”

“My simulation experience is extensive, General,” I said, feigning amusement at this blatant lack of faith, “and lest we forget, I clear Floors on Extreme difficulty. I think I’ll manage.”

“My apologies, captain. Now, let’s return to the bridge for now. I want to discuss our itinerary, as well as the fact that we’ll be building forces on the fly.”

“It’s like this,” said the General, as we went on our way back to the bridge, “the Kinetice have always had the numbers advantage compared to the Federation military.”

“Being a hive mind species that’s 100% militarized tends to do that.”

“In the past, though, we’ve been able to outnumber them or otherwise outmaneuver them in individual skirmishes, though, because they never committed a huge portion of their population to an attack while the safe zones were operating. Now, though, we estimate more than 80% of the entire population of Kinetice drones in Area 1 have been mobilized. In other words, we’re stretched too thin to reliably protect, aid, or liberate all but the most important planets with our usual doctrine. There are a certain number of ships that are usually stationed in most systems, and more that have been sent to reinforce them, but in all cases they’re outnumbered 2 to 1 or more by Kinetice presence, reduced to harassing patrols and such tactics at best, or going to ground and hiding and defending the ships planet side at worst.”

“That’s why we need to liberate planets and systems in order to add more ships to the fleet,” I said, “if we expunge the Kinetice, they’ll be free to join us. But what if more Kinetice move in to re-invade the system after we leave?”

“If they do that, they’ll be the ones who’ll stretch themselves thin. At least, we figure that will happen. We’re not 100% sure, but we think the Kinetice have sent absolutely every drone they can into space while making sure their Hive Worlds still function. Hopefully it’s true.”

“Hopefully? Well, we can hope I guess. So, about the itinerary.”

He showed me on a holographic pocket device he carried. A list of 7 systems appeared, as well as a star map that displayed the course we’d take to reach all 7 of them.

“Right. I took the liberty of selecting an initial route of 7 total systems. They’ll take us progressively further from the Federation’s core worlds. According to intel, each system on the schedule is occupied by greater numbers of Kinetice than the last.”

“So that the first system is one our fleet of 20 can handle, and it’ll free up ships in that system to join us. Then we’ll have a large enough fleet to handle the next system, and even more ships will join. Our total battle power will snowball throughout the journey. You’ve really thought of everything.” I tapped the 6th entry in the list. “You even made sure to include the Erkolls system, that contains the planet where people from my Earth enter from the Tutorial. I was going to order that if you hadn’t done so.”

It was sobering. According to the list, more than 1,000 Kinetice ships were in the area, including roughly 80 on Erkolls-13 alone.

It was going to take more than a hot minute to get to that point, I felt. How many new challengers from Earth would escape the Tutorial, only to be greeted by a hellscape of terror and death? Depends on how many times 3 months passed. And I knew an outfit like this couldn’t just rush into battle over and over. Even acting as a one-man army, I couldn’t possibly take every Kinetice ship we faced. There would be casualties that would need to be replaced, even with the Tower’s extra life system. There would be periods of refueling, resupplying. Possibly waiting for reinforcements, if we got to a system and its designated Federation forces had been decimated.

How long before we could restore the safe zones? Would it take a year? A year and a half? Two years? Possibly two years or more in which even the smallest glimmer of hope offered to millions of people from Earth taken by the Tower no longer existed. Two entire years, eight inductions of more of us into the Tower, during which we, the people of Planet Earth, would have absolutely no real safety, no matter how much ass I could kick individually.

If it was even that quick. Even if all six of us succeeded in this mission in just that time, there were still four more Sanctuaries that I did not and would not have any idea what the Federation’s plan for them was. It just went to show that no matter how strong or powerful you were, you could still be made to feel helpless.