The tactical display bloomed red.
Eight icons. Each one a vessel, rendered by the colony's sensor array as mass-and-energy signatures translating into threat classifications. Two cruiser-class contacts, sitting fat and heavy at the system's edge. Six frigates in escort formation, arrayed in a screening pattern that spoke to professional fleet coordination.
[WAR COUNCIL — ALERT]
[HOSTILE FLEET DETECTED — 8 VESSELS]
[COMPOSITION: 2 CRUISER (MODIFIED BATARIAN SURPLUS), 6 FRIGATE (MIXED)]
[ESTIMATED PERSONNEL: 380-420]
[ENGAGEMENT RANGE: 4 HOURS AT CURRENT APPROACH VECTOR]
[COLONY DEFENSE RATING: 63/100]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 44%]
Webb stood in the operations center. Vasquez was at the communications console, her face lit blue by the incoming signals. Garrus's voice crackled through the comm from his position on the tower — calm, clinical, and already calculating firing solutions for targets that were still hours away.
"Eight confirmed. Formation matches batarian naval doctrine — cruisers in the center, frigates screening. They'll establish orbital superiority before launching shuttles."
"Can the shield hold against orbital bombardment?"
"Probing shots, yes. Sustained bombardment, no. A Batarian cruiser's main gun outputs more energy in one salvo than our generator can absorb in a cycle. But they won't bombard us to rubble — Rolan confirmed Razor wants the mining infrastructure intact."
"So they'll probe, then ground assault."
"That's the playbook."
The colony alarm sounded. Not the shrieking klaxon from the warehouse crew attack — this was the full civil defense alert, a deep bass tone that vibrated through the prefab walls and settled in the chest like a second heartbeat. A sound that meant go to shelter, this is real.
Colonists moved through the streets below the operations center's windows. Organized. Practiced. Vasquez had run three evacuation drills in the past week, and the results showed — families moved toward the administrative bunker in orderly streams, carrying go-bags packed with water, rations, and personal effects. Children held parents' hands. Elderly colonists were guided by younger ones.
The militia moved in the opposite direction. A hundred and forty people, armed and armored in borrowed equipment, taking their assigned positions along the colony's defensive perimeter. They moved with the tense efficiency of people who'd been trained just enough to be useful and knew it wasn't enough.
"Incoming transmission," Vasquez said. "Broadband. They're not even trying to encrypt."
"Put it through."
The voice was batarian. Deep, modulated through a translator that stripped nuance but preserved intent. Every word chosen for intimidation value.
"Colony of Haven's Point. This is Commander Khet'sarn of the Free Terminus Fleet. You are harboring criminals responsible for the deaths of my operatives. Surrender the human known as Webb and the turian known as Vakarian, along with all data stolen from my facility, and this colony will be absorbed into my network with minimal disruption to your population."
A pause. Calculated.
"Refuse, and I will reduce your colony to slag. Your shield generators will not survive my cruisers' guns. Your militia will not survive my ground forces. And your population will not survive what follows."
The transmission ended. The operations center was silent except for the hum of electronics and the distant bass of the civil defense alarm.
Vasquez looked at him.
"Stall," he said. "Give him a response that sounds like you're considering it. Ask for terms, clarifications, guarantees. Buy time."
"How much time?"
"Four hours until they're in bombardment range. Every minute he spends talking is a minute he's not shooting."
Vasquez turned to the comm console. Her voice, when she spoke, was the voice of a woman who'd negotiated with supply vendors, colonial administration, and every species of bureaucratic obstacle the Terminus had to offer. Measured. Professional. Just uncertain enough to sound genuine.
"Commander Khet'sarn, this is Administrator Vasquez of Haven's Point Colony. We are... processing your demands. The individuals you've named are known to us, but the situation is complex. We request formal terms of absorption, including population protections and infrastructure guarantees, before any transfer can be discussed."
Silence on the line. Then a laugh — short, percussive, the batarian equivalent of a bark.
"You have two hours, Administrator. After that, I stop talking and start shooting."
The line cut.
"Two hours," Vasquez said.
"It's enough."
---
The bombardment began at 1423.
Two hours, twelve minutes. Razor had been generous. Or his gunners had needed time to calibrate.
The first salvo was surgical — three kinetic rounds from the lead cruiser's secondary battery, targeted at the colony's sensor array on the comm tower. The shield generator's barrier caught them. The impacts manifested as brilliant blue-white flares across the sky, each one accompanied by a shockwave that rattled windows and knocked dust from ceilings.
[SHIELD GENERATOR — STATUS: HOLDING]
[BARRIER INTEGRITY: 87% → 71% → 63%]
[REGENERATION RATE: 8%/MINUTE]
[WARNING: SUSTAINED BOMBARDMENT WILL EXCEED REGENERATION CAPACITY]
The second salvo came forty seconds later. Different angle — the cruiser had repositioned to test coverage gaps. Two rounds impacted the barrier's western quadrant. The generator whined — a sound that carried through the colony like a wounded animal — and the barrier flickered.
"Barrier holding," Kowalski reported from the generator's monitoring station. His voice was steady in the way that engineers' voices went steady when everything was about to fail. "But the western emitters are running hot. Two more salvos at that angle and we'll get bleed-through."
"Garrus, can you see their firing pattern?"
"Probing shots. They're mapping our shield coverage. Once they find the weak points, they'll concentrate fire."
"How long until they find them?"
"Smart gunner? Four salvos. Standard gunner? Six. These look standard."
The third salvo hit the barrier's northern arc. The impacts registered as shudders in the floor, the walls, the air. Somewhere below, a child screamed. The sound cut through the tactical calculations like a blade.
[BARRIER INTEGRITY: 63% → 52% → 48%]
Then silence.
The bombardment paused. Not a ceasefire — a tactical assessment. Razor was reading the data from his probing shots, mapping the shield's coverage, identifying the western vulnerability, calculating whether to exploit it or shift to ground assault.
"He's stopping," Garrus said. "That's bad."
"Bad how?"
"Bad because he's decided the shield is good enough to make bombardment expensive. Which means he's going to do what he planned to do from the beginning — send people."
The territorial overlay tracked the fleet's movements. The six frigates were repositioning, three of them breaking from the screening formation and moving into low orbit. Shuttle launch configurations. The cruisers pulled back to bombardment standoff range — far enough to provide covering fire, close enough to maintain targeting solutions.
"Shuttle prep detected," the sensor tech reported. "Three frigates in launch configuration. Estimated shuttle capacity per frigate: two shuttles, sixteen personnel each."
"Six shuttles. Ninety-six fighters."
"Plus the three hundred still aboard the cruisers and remaining frigates."
"The first wave is ninety-six. They'll probe, find resistance, and call in reinforcements from orbit."
Webb pulled up the defensive overlay. The militia positions mapped in blue across the colony's perimeter — clustered at chokepoints, anchored by guard posts, backstopped by the shield generator. Garrus's sniper nest commanded the eastern approach. The western approach — the shield's weak point — had Guard Posts Alpha and Beta in overlapping fire zones.
It was a good defense. For a mining colony that had been defenseless three weeks ago, it was a remarkable defense. Against ninety-six professional fighters with fleet support, it was a prayer wrapped in ferrocrete and hope.
"All militia positions, this is Webb. Hostile ground force inbound. Six shuttles, estimated ninety-six fighters. Expect landing zone east of the mining sector — same approach as the first attack. Hold your positions. Do not engage until guard posts initiate. Repeat: wait for the turrets."
Acknowledgments came in. Some steady, some shaking, all present.
He switched to the private channel.
"Garrus."
"Here."
"The western shield gap. If they probe it—"
"I know. I've repositioned to cover the western approach. Guard Posts can handle the east. The first wave will come east — it's the obvious path. The smart move is the second wave hitting the west while we're committed east."
"And if they're smart enough for that?"
"Then I'm going to need a lot of thermal clips."
The operations center hummed. The tactical display painted the incoming shuttles as red icons descending through the atmosphere — six points of light against the grey sky, growing larger with every second.
Webb turned to Vasquez.
"Get to the bunker."
"I'm staying."
"Elena. You're the civilian administrator. If I die, the colony needs someone who knows how it runs."
Her jaw set. The use of her first name had landed differently than he'd expected — not familiarity, but gravity. The weight of being important enough to protect.
"If you die, I'm probably dying too. But fine." She gathered her datapads. Stopped at the door. "Webb."
"Yeah."
"Win."
She left. The operations center felt larger without her.
The shuttles hit atmosphere at 1441. The colony's sensor array tracked their descent — six contacts, descending in a staggered formation that prevented single-point-of-failure engagement. Professional formation. Combat approach.
He spent his last reserves.
[DEPLOYING: GARDIAN BATTERY — ANTI-AIR/MISSILE]
[COST: 100 MP]
[MP REMAINING: 0/200]
[NOTE: FIRST SIEGE MILESTONE — NP BONUS: +75]
The GARDIAN battery assembled on the colony's western rooftop — a quad-mounted laser defense system designed for close-in weapon support. The reality shimmer was visible from the operations center, a brief distortion in the air that Kowalski definitely saw from the generator station and definitely filed under miracles I'll ask about later.
[COLONY DEFENSE UPDATED]
[GARDIAN BATTERY: ONLINE — ANTI-AIR CAPABILITY ACTIVE]
[DEFENSE RATING: 63 → 78]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 44% → 51%]
Fifty-one percent. Barely above a coin flip.
The GARDIAN battery's targeting laser locked onto the lead shuttle. The system waited for his command — automated engagement was available, but the first shot mattered. The wrong target wasted the advantage of surprise.
"Lead shuttle is the command bird," Garrus reported. "The one with reinforced plating on the ventral surface. If we can damage or destroy it, the coordination of the remaining five degrades significantly."
"GARDIAN, target lead shuttle. Fire on my mark."
The lead shuttle crossed the engagement envelope at 1443. One kilometer out, descending at combat velocity, ventral armor pointed toward the colony's defenses. Behind it, the other five spread into a deployment fan.
"Mark."
The GARDIAN spoke. Four laser emitters cycling in sequence, each pulse delivering focused energy into the lead shuttle's ventral plating. The first pulse hit and the shuttle's barriers flared — bright, angry, straining. The second pulse punched through. The third cored the starboard thruster.
The shuttle didn't explode. It lurched — a sickening sideways tilt as the damaged thruster vented plasma — and the pilot fought for control. The descent became a barely-controlled crash, and the shuttle impacted the mining sector's outer edge with a screech of metal on stone that echoed across the colony.
"Lead shuttle down." Garrus's voice carried the predatory satisfaction of a sniper watching geometry become physics. "Survivors exiting — eight, ten, twelve. Disoriented. They expected to land, not crash."
"All militia positions, hold. Let the guard posts engage the crash site. Focus on the five remaining shuttles."
Guard Post Gamma opened fire on the crash survivors. Mass accelerator rounds chewed through the wreckage, pinning the disoriented fighters behind debris that was rapidly becoming insufficient cover. The crash had turned the command element from a coordinated assault force into a survival problem.
The five remaining shuttles adapted. They split — three continuing their eastern approach, two banking hard west. Toward the shield gap. Toward the western perimeter, where Guard Posts Alpha and Beta waited.
"Western diversion," Garrus confirmed. "Two shuttles. Thirty-two fighters."
"Can you hold?"
"Watch me."
The Mantis cracked. Six hundred meters. The lead pilot of the western shuttle grouping slumped against his controls. The shuttle wobbled, steadied — the co-pilot taking over — and continued its descent.
The eastern three touched down in the mining sector. Sixty fighters, well-spaced, advancing through the abandoned processing infrastructure that the first assault team had used two weeks ago. They'd studied the first attack. They knew the terrain. They moved through it with the confidence of people who'd been briefed on every detail and expected different results.
The guard posts taught them otherwise. Gamma and Delta caught the lead elements in a crossfire that turned the processing plant's corridors into kill zones. Mass accelerator rounds hammered into cover that wasn't designed for sustained weapons fire. Barriers flashed and failed. Fighters dove, scrambled, sought angles their briefing hadn't prepared them for.
Garrus's comms crackled.
"Western shuttles have landed. Contact in thirty seconds."
The operations center's lights flickered. Somewhere close, glass shattered — another probing shot from the cruiser overhead, testing whether the bombardment distraction would thin the defenders.
[SHIELD GENERATOR — BARRIER INTEGRITY: 48% → 42%]
[WARNING: WESTERN EMITTER ARRAY APPROACHING CRITICAL TEMPERATURE]
"Kowalski, western emitters."
"I know! Rerouting coolant from the secondary loop. I'll buy you twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes. Ninety-six fighters on two fronts. A shield that was slowly dying. A militia that had never been tested at this scale.
And somewhere on the cruiser above them, Razor Khet'sarn was watching it all unfold with four batarian eyes, calculating whether this colony was worth the cost he was paying.
Webb gripped the operations console. His MP was at zero. His shield was cracking. His militia was fighting. His sniper was holding the west with a rifle and a prayer.
Garrus's voice cut through the noise. Calm. Steady. The voice of someone who'd found the place where fear became mathematics.
"Multiple shuttle launches detected from the cruiser group. Second wave. Fifteen minutes."
The console lights flickered. Another probing shot hit the barrier. The glass that had broken was in the operations center's own window — a crack spidering across the viewport, letting in the thin, chemical air of Haven's Point.
Through the crack, the sky was full of descending lights.
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