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replaced, and it seemed that the fear of the unknown ‘weapon’ used was pushing a movement to expand the fleet.
    With fleet numbers having been regulated since the war with the Ross, any expansion was enough to make suppliers practically enter a mating frenzy.
    That vote for expansion was at risk, however, if this treaty went through.
    With wealth surpassing the entire domestic product of some of the smaller stellar empires, there was significant value in preventing it from being passed… at least for the time being.
    The being almost pitied the… Humans, was it?
    Whatever.
    They had no clue what they were flying into, but that was what made it all the better. If he did things right, not only would there be no treaty signed but shortly the Alliance would be in an official shooting war for the first time since the Ross War.
    Small skirmishes were fine for business, but nothing sold ships and weapons like the real deal.
    It’s time to use up some of the stockpiles the Fleets have been storing anyway, can’t have them sitting there in the warehouses too long. They might get the idea they don’t need to buy new toys if the old ones aren’t played with from time to time.

Chapter Four
    The USV Mexico was a third Generation Terra Class starship and, like her sisters, something of a monster in space.
    Constructed from meteor iron in a solar forge, the ship had little concern for the worries that plagued space ship builders generations past. Size, weight, overall mass… these factors were hardly a consideration in any of the Terra class ships.
    Inside and out, they were huge.
    Laid out more like an office building than a conventional starship, the Mexico had ninety decks from stem to stern, not counting the observation spires that arced forward from her aft. The ship only looked sleek from a distance, from up close her fourteen hundred meter mass was enough to make even the oldest hand gape just a little.
    Her core, however, is what gave the Mexico her fighting trim.
    Without the alien singularity design that formed the base of her gravity core, the Mexico would have been limited to the same few gravities of acceleration as her ancestors. Even at their best the Los Angeles, Hood, and Cheyenne class ships were little more than stationary targets to a ship like the Mexico.
    For Sorilla walking the decks of the still gleaming ship was a bittersweet homecoming.
    She’d served on all of the last several generations of ships, beginning with the Los Angeles herself. They’d all been great ships, crewed by incredible people, but the Mexico and the Terra class as a whole were in a completely different league and there was absolutely no question of that in her, or any, mind.
    The Terra ships were the finest every built by human hands.
    So what the hell happened to Valkyrie?
    It was the burning question that everyone wanted to know, especially those who served on Terra class ships. Was it some alien weapon that did them in, or was there something unknown with the singularity mass that resulted in the disappearance of the task force?
    Since she’d recently been cleared for some of the intelligence reports coming back from negotiations, Sorilla was one of very few to know that it was almost certainly not some secret alien weapon. In fact, the aliens seemed as confused and concerned as anyone else about the whole matter.
    Which left the ships themselves, she supposed, and the spectre of alien technology that helped give them their incredible speed and maneuvering, not to mention steady gravity. If there was something wrong with the singularities, something catastrophic in the system or the software, at least she supposed that none of them would likely every realize it before whatever it was vanished them too.
    It was cold comfort, but that was all the comfort Sorilla knew she was likely to get.
    So it wasn’t a surprise for to feel tension as she walked the decks of the Mexico, nor to feel it faintly in the air. Alexi had told her