The holographic display filled the command bridge of the *Resolute* with a constellation of death.
Rylee Voss stood at the tactical table, her hands pressed flat against its cold metal surface as she watched the data streams update in real-time. Three hundred and forty-seven ships in formation around Earth's outer defense perimeter. Humanity's entire remaining fleet, gathered in one place for the first time since the war began. It would have been impressive if it weren't so terrifying.
"Final count is in, Admiral." Commander Torres approached from the communications hub, his datapad clutched against his chest like a shield. "All vessels accounted for. The *Defiant* arrived fifteen minutes ago with the Mars contingent."
Rylee nodded without looking up. The numbers told the story clearly enough. Against them, the Dominion fielded a force estimated at twelve hundred vessels, not counting the smaller interceptors and drone swarms that accompanied every major engagement. The mathematics of this battle had been calculated weeks ago. They were not favorable.
But mathematics had never accounted for Kate Morrison.
"Where is she?" Rylee asked.
Torres gestured toward the display, highlighting a small shuttle positioned near the center of the formation. "The *Whisper* is holding at coordinates delta-seven. Escort wing is in position."
The shuttle looked impossibly small amid the capital ships surrounding it. Twelve years old, Rylee thought. Kate was twelve years old, and they were sending her to do what three hundred warships could not. The thought should have filled her with shame, but she had burned through shame months ago. Now there was only the cold clarity of necessity.
"Signal from fleet command," Torres reported. "Admiral Chen is requesting final confirmation of the operational parameters."
"Tell him the parameters haven't changed." Rylee straightened, her spine protesting the movement after hours hunched over tactical projections. "We hold the line. We give Kate a path to the nexus. Everything else is secondary."
Torres hesitated, and Rylee could see the question forming behind his eyes. She had seen it on a hundred faces over the past week, in briefing rooms and mess halls and quiet conversations that stopped when she approached. The question no one wanted to ask: What happened when Kate reached the nexus? What happened when she confronted the Hollowing directly?
No one had an answer. Not even Nigel, with all his theories and calculations. Not even Kate herself.
"Relay the confirmation," Rylee ordered. "And Torres? Make sure every ship commander understands what we're protecting. Not Earth. Not the colonies. We're protecting one shuttle and the girl inside it. Everything else can burn if it means she gets through."
Torres nodded and retreated to his station. Rylee returned her attention to the display, watching as the fleet icons pulsed with idle readiness. In six hours, they would engage the largest Dominion force ever assembled. In six hours, many of these icons would go dark.
She thought of Marcus, gone now for eighteen months. Marcus Reeves, the documentation specialist who had been there from the beginning—the quiet, steady presence who had helped Kate make sense of her transformation when everyone else treated her like a specimen. He had spent hours with her, teaching her to control her abilities, listening without judgment when the whispers got too loud. The Hollowing had claimed him slowly, the corruption from his exposure eating away at his cells until nothing remained but pain and memory. She had held his hand at the end, watched him slip away into whatever darkness awaited those who touched the void between worlds. He never complained. Even at the end, he smiled and told her to keep fighting.
She intended to honor that request.
A priority alert pulsed across her tactical display. Rylee tapped the acknowledgment, and Admiral Chen's face materialized in holographic projection above the table. His features were drawn, aged beyond his years by the weight of command decisions that no human should have had to make.
"Admiral Voss." His voice carried the formal cadence of official communication, but his eyes betrayed something softer. Concern, perhaps. Or fear. "The Council has authorized final implementation of Operation Lighthouse. All assets are at your disposal."
"Understood, Admiral. We'll proceed on schedule."
Chen paused, his image flickering slightly as interference from the outer system disrupted the signal. "Rylee." The formality dropped from his tone. "This plan... the survival odds for the primary fleet are—"
"I know what the odds are."
"And you're still confident?"
Rylee considered the question. Confidence seemed like too strong a word for what she felt. Certainty, perhaps. The certainty that came from having no alternatives. They had tried diplomacy, but the Dominion did not negotiate with prey. They had tried conventional warfare, but no weapon humanity possessed could harm the Hollowing itself. They had tried running, but the warp routes the Dominion controlled allowed them to pursue any target across the galaxy.
Kate was their only option. Kate, who could sense the Hollowing across impossible distances. Kate, who carried something inside her that the darkness recognized. Kate, who had volunteered for this mission with the quiet resolve of someone who had already accepted what it would cost.
"I'm confident that we're doing the only thing we can do," Rylee answered. "Everything else is in Kate's hands."
Chen's expression shifted, something old and tired moving behind his eyes. "My granddaughter was supposed to have a normal life. Alexis was supposed to grow up studying stars, not tracking the movements of extradimensional parasites. And now..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "Now I'm asking her to help send a child into the heart of something we don't understand. What does that make me?"
"It makes you human." Rylee met his gaze through the holographic projection. "We all made choices that brought us here. Kate most of all. Honor her choice by giving her the chance to see it through."
Chen was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded, the motion heavy with resignation. "Operation Lighthouse is officially authorized. God help us all."
The connection terminated, leaving Rylee alone with the flickering display and the weight of three hundred forty-seven ships under her command.
She pulled up the operational timeline. T-minus six hours to engagement. The Dominion fleet was gathering at the warp nexus, drawn by Kate's presence like predators sensing wounded prey. They knew what she was. They knew what she represented. The Hollowing had been hunting her since she was seven years old, and now she had finally stopped running.
"Commander Torres." Rylee's voice carried across the bridge. "Begin fleet-wide briefing. I want every ship captain on secure channel in fifteen minutes."
"Aye, Admiral."
Rylee stepped back from the tactical table and crossed to the observation window. The stars hung motionless in the void, ancient and indifferent to the drama unfolding beneath them. Somewhere out there, beyond the edge of human space, the Dominion waited with their stolen gods and their armies of corrupted slaves. They had conquered a hundred worlds. They had existed for longer than human civilization had drawn breath.
And they were afraid of one twelve-year-old girl.
The thought brought something like a smile to Rylee's face. Fear was a weapon, Marcus used to say. Learn to recognize it in your enemy, and you've already won half the battle.
The Dominion was afraid. The Hollowing was afraid. After years of running, of hiding, of watching humanity's defenses crumble piece by piece, their enemies were finally the ones who felt terror gnawing at their certainties.
Kate had done that. Kate, who barely reached Rylee's shoulder. Kate, who still slept with a stuffed animal that Chelsea Park had given her years ago. Kate, who had faced more horror in her short life than most soldiers experienced in decades of combat.
The briefing channel activated, and faces began appearing in the holographic array—ship captains from across the fleet, each commanding vessels crewed by men and women who knew they probably wouldn't survive the coming battle. Rylee saw determination in some, resignation in others, and something fiercer in a few: the look of people who had stopped counting costs and started counting enemies.
"Commanders." Rylee's voice cut through the quiet static of the connection. "You know why we're here. You know what we're facing. I won't insult your intelligence with inspirational speeches or false promises."
She pulled up the tactical display, projecting it across the briefing channel so every captain could see the disposition of forces.
"In six hours, we engage the largest Dominion armada ever assembled. Conservative estimates put their strength at three to one odds against us, and that's before we account for their technological advantages." She highlighted the central nexus point, a swirling mass of gravitational distortion where the warp routes converged. "Our objective is simple. We hold the line long enough for Kate Morrison to reach this nexus. Everything else—our ships, our lives, our chances of ever seeing home again—is secondary to that objective."
Silence across the channel. Rylee let it stretch, watching faces process the reality of what she was asking.
"This is a suicide mission for many of us," she continued. "I know it. You know it. The tactical projections don't lie. But those same projections told us we couldn't survive the Mars offensive, and we're still here. They told us the outer colonies were indefensible, and we held them for six months. They told us Kate Morrison couldn't possibly reach adulthood with the Hollowing hunting her, and she's twelve years old and still fighting."
Captain Reyes of the *Indomitable* was the first to speak. His face was scarred from a Dominion raid that had killed half his crew three years ago. "What's the girl supposed to do when she reaches the nexus?"
"That's classified above my pay grade." Rylee smiled grimly. "But I've seen what she can do. I've watched her walk through Hollowing manifestations that would have broken any of us. I've watched her face down things that shouldn't exist and come out the other side still standing. If anyone can end this war, it's her."
"And if she fails?"
"Then we've lost nothing we wouldn't have lost anyway. The Dominion isn't going to stop. The Hollowing isn't going to stop. Either Kate succeeds, or humanity joins the long list of species that the darkness has consumed." Rylee paused, letting the weight of those words settle. "But I don't think she'll fail. Call it intuition. Call it faith. Call it the desperate hope of someone who's run out of other options. I believe she's going to do what she was born to do."
More faces appeared as late arrivals joined the channel. Rylee recognized many of them—veterans who had served with her since the early days of the war, young officers who had grown up in a galaxy already bleeding, commanders who had lost families to Dominion raids and Hollowing corruption. All of them carrying their own reasons for being here. All of them willing to die for a chance at victory.
"Our role is simple," Rylee continued. "We form up around Kate's shuttle and push toward the nexus. The Dominion will throw everything they have at us. They'll try to cut off our advance, surround our flanks, punch through our formation to reach Kate directly. We don't let that happen. We absorb their attacks, draw their fire, create openings for Kate to slip through."
She highlighted the approach vectors on the display. "First wave will be their drone swarms and interceptor screens. Captain Martinez, your squadron handles that. Second wave will be their cruiser groups, trying to establish engagement bubbles that slow our advance. Captain Okonkwo, that's your responsibility. Third wave..." She paused, studying the projections. "Third wave will be their capital ships. That's where it gets ugly."
"Define ugly," Captain Chen requested. His voice was flat, professional, betraying nothing of whatever he might have been feeling about sending his cousin Lucas's protégé into the heart of the enemy formation.
"Twenty-three confirmed dreadnought-class vessels." Rylee watched the number register across the channel. "Each one outguns our heaviest battleship by a factor of four. Each one carries enough Hollowing-corrupted troops to overwhelm a planetary defense grid. And each one has been modified to channel the Hollowing directly, which means they can tear through our shields like tissue paper."
"So we're dead," someone muttered. The voice was anonymous, lost in the channel static.
"We're committed," Rylee corrected. "There's a difference. Dead means we've stopped fighting. Committed means we understand the stakes and we're willing to pay the price. I'm not asking any of you to die for nothing. I'm asking you to die for Kate Morrison, and for every human who comes after us."
She pulled up a final image: Kate's shuttle, small and fragile against the vastness of space. "That shuttle carries the only weapon that can hurt the Hollowing. Not missiles, not energy beams, not the entire combined firepower of every ship in this fleet. Just one girl who never asked for any of this and has spent her whole life fighting anyway."
Rylee let the image hang in the projection for a long moment. Then she deactivated the display and faced the assembled captains directly.
"We launch in six hours. Use the time well. Tell your crews what we're doing and why. Give them the choice to transfer to non-combat vessels if they want out. No judgments, no repercussions. This mission is voluntary for everyone." She paused. "But I don't expect many transfers. I've served with you long enough to know what kind of people you are."
Captain Reyes spoke again, his scarred face resolved. "My crew stays. We've been waiting five years for a chance to hit back at the Dominion where it hurts. This is that chance."
Other voices echoed the sentiment. One by one, ship captains confirmed their commitment. Rylee watched the count rise—one hundred, two hundred, three hundred vessels declaring their intention to stand and fight. When the last voice fell silent, not a single ship had requested transfer.
"Then we're decided." Rylee felt something shift in her chest, pride and grief intertwined. "Operational briefing packages are being transmitted now. Study them. Prepare your crews. And commanders..." She met each face in turn through the holographic projection. "It has been an honor serving with you."
The channel closed. Rylee stood alone on the bridge, surrounded by the soft hum of systems and the distant stars that watched without caring.
In six hours, she would lead three hundred ships into battle. Many of them would not survive. Many of her friends, her colleagues, her family in everything but blood, would die in the void between Earth and the nexus.
But Kate would reach her destination. Rylee had made that promise to herself, to Marcus's memory, to every human who had died fighting this war. Whatever it took, whatever it cost, Kate Morrison would reach the heart of the Hollowing.
And then humanity would finally learn whether the darkness could be broken.
She returned to the tactical table, pulling up the operational timeline again. T-minus five hours and forty-seven minutes. The countdown had begun.
Behind her, through the observation window, Earth hung blue and white against the black. Eight billion people sleeping, working, living their lives in blissful ignorance of what was about to unfold. They didn't know about Kate. They didn't know about the Hollowing or the Dominion or the fleet gathering to protect them. They simply existed, trusting that someone else would handle the monsters in the dark.
Rylee intended to prove that trust justified.
"Torres." She didn't turn from the window. "Signal Kate's shuttle. Tell her... tell her we're ready. Tell her the path will be clear."
"Aye, Admiral."
The message transmitted across the void, reaching a twelve-year-old girl who held the fate of humanity in her small hands. Rylee wondered what Kate was thinking right now. Was she afraid? Was she resigned? Was she still that same quiet, determined child who had walked into Rylee's briefing room years ago and announced that she could hear the darkness calling?
It didn't matter, Rylee decided. Whatever Kate was feeling, she would do what needed to be done. She always had.
The countdown continued. The fleet waited. And somewhere in the darkness between stars, the Hollowing stirred.
The final battle was about to begin.
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