Admiral Hideo Sakaki, Commander of the Third Fleet, sat alone in his office watching a small video display.

On the screen, black and white figures were walking around very seriously, inspecting a large array of military machines. One group of men walked up to a medium sized tank and carefully tipped it up on its side and over the other way. It bounced lightly.

Sakaki had read about the Second World War, but mostly from the perspective of his ancestors, who had fought on the losing side in the Pacific theatre. He had not examined the European side of the war in any great detail, and he was fascinated by what he saw.

The deception prior to the invasion at Normandy was one of the largest coordinated misinformation campaigns ever carried out by humanity. Spies were sent into enemy territory armed with incorrect data which they would eventually reveal under duress and torture. Radio messages detailing the entire fictional plan were sent over codes the Allies knew the enemy had already broken. And finally, an enormous “invasion force” consisting of life-sized wooden and inflatable planes and tanks was arranged at the opposite end of the channel where the fake assault was to take place.

Sakaki rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his thumb and forefinger as he watched the old broadcasts. The British, Americans and Canadians had managed to pull off the deception perfectly, to the extent that when the real invasion finally took place at Normandy, the Germans held the main part of their forces back, thinking that it was merely a feint.

So it had worked, but it had taken many months of careful planning and the enemy had access only to low-resolution pictures taken by high-flying aircraft, so the inflatable tanks and wooden airplanes could fool them easily. Sakaki held no such illusions about the chances of his forces. They had mere days to plan before the final battle, and the Deathspawn’s advanced electronic sensors were not going to be fooled by hollow decoys.

The Admiral put his head in his hands. He hated being in this situation, with not enough time to properly prepare, not enough time to consider all the possibilities of action. The whole thing had started out this way, with the Pegasus rushed off to the Zruthy homeworld before it was ready, and they had been fighting to catch up with events ever since. It wasn’t the way he liked to do things at all, yet here they were at the end and they still had no choice. The Deathspawn would not wait for them to prepare at their leisure.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. Somehow they would manage to do it, he thought to himself. They simply had to.

At least the Zruthy had agreed to help out with the plan. They were willing to send enough ships to help destroy both the strike fleets headed towards Earth and their own homeworld, while also agreeing to the strict protocols Andy had designed to make it look as if they had never left the system. It was a clever trick, Sakaki had to admit, to engage in a warp jump while simultaneously leaving your electronic signature behind. To anyone sitting in hyperspace monitoring the distinctive gravimetric disturbances associated with a jump, it would appear as if the ship had attempted to leave the system but aborted at the last moment. The Admiral did not fully understand the mathematics involved, but it has something to do with creating an inverted waveform that would cancel out the natural gravity wave produced by the jump itself.

Of course there was the very real possibility that the Deathspawn would see through this ruse and alter their plans accordingly. The enemy had enough ships to reinforce their Earth and Zruthy-bound strike forces to the point where they could simply overwhelm the allied defenders. But even if the deception worked perfectly, it was nothing compared to what they would have to pull off afterwards.

Sakaki rubbed his eyes and tried to look at the plans on his portable display tablet again. He had not managed to grab more than a few hours of sleep in the last four days, and it was taking a huge toll on his system. As the letters and diagrams blurred in front of his face, he attempted to tap on his watch to release another dosage of stims, but his fingers missed. The tablet slid slowly out of his hands, but he was fast asleep even before it hit the floor.