Amidst the steady chatter that always seemed to accompany long stretches of ‘hurry up and wait,’ the Marines filed onboard their assigned assault shuttle, took their seats on the twin troop benches, one squad facing the other, and strapped themselves in. The new, lighter weight combat suits known within the fleet supply system as ‘Combat Armor, Semi-Ablative’, or CASA armor—the Marines naturally referred to their individual suits as their houses—made simple tasks such as walking, stowing gear, sitting down, and strapping into a seat much easier to perform than they had been before, so the decrease in bulk and weight was a welcome change in the short term, but the Marines couldn’t help but wonder if it was really such a good thing. None of them dared say anything aloud for fear of making the worst come true, but to a person they questioned in silence how much protection the new suits were going to give them in the thick of battle. They seemed almost too lightweight to be of much use, except for the TAC helmets that went with them. Those were still plenty heavy.

As soon as Gunnery Sergeant Harrison saw that all his troops and their gear were secure, he sent word forward to the pilot. The standard high-G combat launch followed seconds later, and as the shuttle raced across the perilous open space between the assault carrier Tripoli and the Marines’ objective, one of the Veshtonn armada’s enormous command cruisers, each man and woman fell silent and turned inward to the depths of his or her own thoughts. For those twenty-four Marines, and for the hundreds of others who waited as they did while their own shuttles made the same dangerous crossing, the long hoped for chance to do their small part, to join the epic battle to defend the Tor’Kana people’s home star system from the Veshtonn invaders, had finally arrived.

All so young, Gunny Harrison thought, shaking his head ever so slightly as he gazed at their smooth-skinned faces. Why did they always have to be so young? Even the squad leaders were what, all of about twenty-two or twenty-three years old? The lower enlisted were of course even younger than that. Hell, most of the privates and lance-corporals weren’t even out of their teens yet. They had their whole lives ahead of them.

So what the hell were they doing riding into combat with the Solfleet Marines?

He knew the two-fold answer to that question of course. First, it was only logical that the lower enlisted ranks would be filled with younger people. Such had been the case throughout all of history and would continue to be so. Second, because lately fewer than a third of all Marines who charged into battle against the Veshtonn came out of it in one piece. That fact often made an old-school roughneck Marine like him wonder why the young continued to volunteer, but as he gazed once more at the youthful, tight-jawed faces before him, he realized that he needn’t wonder about that. The answer, though multifaceted, was all too simple. Patriotism. A sense of honor and a self-imposed requirement to answer the call of duty.

Much of the older generation, including many who’d spent their entire adult lives in the public eye, barked and whined a lot about how much softer, more selfish, and less disciplined the younger generation was, and tended to blame the young for society’s continued moral decline when in many cases it was their own actions in the pursuit of their own selfish agendas that were to blame. But from where he sat, Harrison couldn’t have disagreed more. As far as he was concerned, those of the younger generation whom he’d had the opportunity to meet and the honor to serve with were to be commended.

The Marines all leaned sharply toward the bow as the shuttle suddenly slowed, then practically fell into each others’ laps as it came to an abrupt halt with a resounding thud that reverberated through the deck plates.

“We have contact,” the copilot practically shouted over the intercom.

Case in point, Harrison thought as he slapped his harness release and stood up. Their own copilot was a twenty-three year old baby-faced ensign who didn’t even have to shave every day yet. A newlywed fresh out of flight school and on his very first active duty assignment, he’d volunteered for this mission—volunteered to fly straight into hell. Volunteered! His wife would kill him if she ever found out.

“Holy shit, we actually made it,” one of the Marines commented.

“You stow that bullshit right now, Marine!” Harrison shouted at him. More than anything, he hated pessimism. It was a morale killer of the worst kind, and as such could seriously curtail a combat unit’s efficiency and effectiveness. Factually of course, the young Marine was right. They’d made it across wide open space despite incredible odds against them. A barrage of enemy weapons fire had rained down on them all along the way—a veteran of dozens of battles, Harrison had barely noticed it—but the shuttle’s armor plating had held.

God willing, their new CASA armor would hold up just as well.

“Grapplers deployed,” the copilot announced. “Positive lock established.”

“Transfer tunnel secure and pressurized,” the pilot added. “Good hunting, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Thanks, L.T.,” Harrison responded. “Be back as soon as we can.” He pulled off his headset and hung it up, then marched toward the airlock. He intended to lead the way into the enemy vessel. He always led the way. Modern military doctrine dictated he do otherwise, but as far as he was concerned a leader was supposed to lead from the front, not bring up the rear.

“All right, Marines!” he called out. “Prepare to assault!”

Like a well rehearsed dance company beginning its first live performance, the Marines released their safety harnesses and rose to their feet as one, locked and loaded and charged their weapons, slid their visors down over their eyes and ran checks on their Heads-Up Displays, and then double-checked each others’ armor and equipment. Then they turned and faced the airlock, ready to follow their fearless leader—if they only knew—into the enemy vessel as soon as the doors opened in front of them.

Thunder rolled through the shuttle, vibrating the deck plates beneath their boots. An explosion outside. The alien vessel’s hull had just been breached. A second, more distant blast shook them, and a third immediately followed. At least two other shuttles had made it safely across, Harrison concluded. But the fourth apparently hadn’t. Twelve more had headed for more distant parts of the ship, probably too far away for him and his platoon to feel or hear their breach blasts, and still dozens more had set out across the gauntlet of open space toward other ships. He offered up a quick prayer for them, especially for those souls who hadn’t made it, then drew a deep breath and set his mind to the task at hand.

The airlock doors parted fast and he and his Marines charged forward, into the belly of the beast.

The first thing Harrison noticed as he turned and faced the Marines behind him, before his eyes had even begun to adjust to the dim, almost dusk-like and slightly red-tinted lighting, was how strange the deck felt beneath his feet. Soft, even a little squishy, it felt more like a shallow mudflat at low tide than it did the hard deck of a space vessel, and it smelled a lot like a stagnant swamp. The second thing he noticed was the heat and what had to be nearly a hundred percent humidity. So thick with moisture that he could actually see it, the heavy atmosphere made breathing a chore. It collected on his visor, forcing him to wipe it away every few seconds. It condensed on his skin and ran down inside his uniform like rivulets of warm sweat. They hadn’t been aboard for thirty seconds yet and already the back of his collar was damp and chaffing against his neck.

The Marine closest to him looked up from his own feet and asked, “How the fuck are we supposed to fight in this shit, Gunny?”

Harrison slapped him across the top of his helmet and glared at him. The younger man’s wide eyes met his in silent protest, but quickly fell away. He knew without having to be told what he’d done wrong of course. Without the advantage of total surprise, their mission, not to mention their lives, depended on stealth.

Their objective was the main computer core, located less than a hundred meters down the left corridor, then right at the first cross corridor for fifty meters, assuming of course the sketchy schematics Intel had provided them with were correct. Their mission was to copy every scrap of information they could access onto their handheld data compressor—disposition of combat and support forces, advanced tactics and combat doctrines, mission objectives, navigational charts, communications records, cultural information, and whatever else they could find—while at the same time transmitting it back to the Tripoli for immediate backup. Then they were to introduce a high-speed data-wiping virus into the source system. Fleet Command’s hope was that the loss of all data would plunge the vessel into chaos and immediately render it combat ineffective.

Harrison held up one finger and then pointed to his right—a silent command deploying first squad in that direction. Then he held up two fingers, covered his fist with an open hand, and made a karate chop motion toward the deck to his immediate left. Second squad, take up rear guard positions, beginning right here.

First squad assembled into its fire teams and Harrison accompanied them as they moved out, wiping the moisture from his visor once more. Staying close to the warped, uneven walls while being careful not to scrape against them, each Marine crouched as low as he or she could in order to present the smallest possible target. Second squad, meanwhile, headed a relatively short distance in the opposite direction, then deployed to numerous positions along the gently curving and downward sloping corridor.

One apparent advantage they had over the enemy likely crossed the minds of those few among them who had previous combat experience, Harrison realized as they advanced, and perhaps even provided them with a little extra ray of hope. The corridor was indeed sloping downward at a substantial angle in both directions from their point of entry. They held the high ground—always an advantage in any battle, aboard vessel or otherwise.

First squad reached the intersecting corridor without incident. So far, so good.

Harrison glanced at the name stenciled in black across the back of the helmet in front of him as Private Valentino, the squad’s point man this time around, dropped to one knee against the bulkhead and raised his left fist to ear level, signaling the rest of the squad to stop and drop as well. The kid was barely eighteen years old and the closest thing to real combat he’d ever seen was last month’s battalion paintball tournament, and now here he was at the front of the line in the middle of a damned suicide mission.

Valentino activated his HUD and aimed his rifle around the corner, but before he could even begin to make any sense out of what the camera started displaying on his visor, someone—something—grabbed hold of the barrel and yanked him forward, off balance. He screamed in terror as he fell into the open intersection. He let his rifle go, hoping to scramble back behind the safety of the bulkhead, but he never got the chance. A shower of green-white energy bolts rained down on him from both directions of the cross corridor, perforated his torso armor’s thinner side panels and back plate, and eviscerated him.

Small groups of heavily armored Veshtonn blood-warriors—reptilian Kree-Veshtonn from the look of them—suddenly appeared through several previously unseen hatchways on both sides of the main corridor ahead of the Marines. Firing their weapons seemingly at random, they stepped into harm’s way without any apparent hesitation and advanced quickly on the Marines as if none of them cared whether they lived or died. Those Marines fortunate enough to survive the initial volley fired back, their rifles set to full automatic, spraying the enemy with a deadly wall of fully energized mini-explosive pulse rounds. Warriors on both sides fell during the brief but intense firefight, but in the end the Marines emrged victorious, at least for the moment, forcing the few surviving Veshtonn to retreat. Apparently not all of them were so willing to die after all.

“All right, Marines, let’s do this!” Sergeant Harrison shouted into his pin mike—no point in continuing to maintain radio silence now. “Take care of the wounded and regroup. We got a mission to complete.”

Privates Harper and Jennings were up. They moved forward, side by side, and cautiously checked the cross corridor in both directions at the same time while some of the others slung their rifles over their shoulders and carried or dragged the dead and wounded back to the relative safety of the shuttle, where some of the best combat medics in the Corps waited to take care of those who still clung to life.

With all the smoke and humidity floating on the air, seeing clearly beyond the first dozen yards or so was beginning to prove difficult and infrared was useless against the cold-blooded lizards, but the cross corridor appeared to be free of immediate threats. Harper and Jennings looked back at each other, shrugged, and then raised their hands and gave the ‘all clear’ signal together. Van Slyke and Bellasario dashed past their positions quickly, crossed the intersecting corridor, and took up covering positions at the opposite corners. Then they, too, gave the ‘all clear’ signal.

The rest of the squad raced ahead, rounded the corner, and made a run for the computer center, but when they reached the circular hatch that led inside, they found it to be locked down.

Of course, that was exactly what they had expected to find.

“You’re up, Brewer,” Squad Sergeant Graves said, reading the name on the back of the younger man’s helmet to make sure he got it right. He wondered what all the guys around him must have thought about taking orders from someone they didn’t know and had never fought beside, but at the same time he felt pretty sure he already knew the answer. They didn’t like it, and he couldn’t blame them.

He still could hardly believe he was there—could hardly believe the Corps had thrown him into the middle of a major campaign with a bunch of Marines he didn’t know and hadn’t even trained with before, let alone fought with. According to all official doctrine, they shouldn’t have. This wasn’t his unit. He wasn’t even assigned to the Tripoli. He’d only been hitching a ride back to Cirra from Earth when the ship’s captain received orders to divert to Rosha’Kana and join the battle. He’d received his temporary orders attaching him to the unit almost immediately afterwards and had asked Gunny Harrison what happened to the squad’s regular sergeant, but the Gunny had refused to answer, and all his Marines had followed suit.

Lance Corporal Brewer moved up with a prepared explosive charge already in hand. He slapped it over the hatch’s locking mechanism and backed off in a hurry. The rest of the squad took their cue from him and backed off as well and turned their faces away.

“Fire in the hole!” Brewer shouted. Then he depressed the clacker.

The charge exploded and the entire hatch literally spun out of its place in the wall like a coin sent spinning on its edge across the top of a table until it fell against the opposite wall with a clang. The Marines surged forward into the lingering cloud of smoke and dust. One after another they charged single file through the gaping hole in the wall and flooded into the computer center, where they fanned out and prepared to defend themselves. Surprisingly, they met no resistance.

“All right, Stevenson,” Gunny Harrison called out, “your turn.”

Jake Stevenson, a man whose friends had long ago proudly proclaimed to be the best hacker in the entire Solfleet Marine Corps, slung his rifle over his back and made a beeline for what precious few other human beings would even have recognized to be the computer core’s master controls console. He plugged his HDC, a data thief’s most prized piece of equipment, into the board and went to work. Less than a minute later he’d hacked through the security protocols and had gain unrestricted access. “Ready, Gunny.”

“Tripoli, this is Bravo Two,” Gunny Harrison sent. “We’re ready to transmit.”

“Stand by, Bravo Two,” the Tripoli’s communications specialist instructed him. Seconds seemed like minutes as they passed until the specialist finally came back with, “All right, Gunny, initiate transmission.”

“Initiating,” Harrison reported, pointing at Stevenson. Stevenson threw the switch and nodded in silent confirmation.

“Receiving,” the specialist confirmed.

Few things in life made a Marine more nervous than standing around waiting for a fight in the middle of a major offensive. The anticipation was enough to make a guy feel sick to his stomach. Stevenson at least had something to do, but the rest of them could only stand by, stay alert, and wait for something to happen, nervously twisting and turning, eyes darting back and forth, rifles pointing in random directions all around them.

“Bravo... this is Trip...,” the communications specialist called after a few moments. “Your ...smission ...cut off. I ...ot receiving. I say again, ...am not recei...”

“They’re jamming us!” Harrison shouted. “They know what we’re doing. Stevenson, cut off the transmission. Switch to high-speed download. Get everything you can as fast as you can. We’re gonna have to bug outta here fast!”

Private First Class Irons saw it first. “Gunny, look!” he cried out, pointing up at the corner of the ceiling above where the hatch used to be. “Something’s leaking!”

Harrison turned to Irons, then looked up to where he was pointing and saw a billowing cloud of thick, yellow-green smoke expanding rapidly under high pressure from some unseen source in the ceiling. “Breathers, right now!” he shouted over the link as he pulled his own down over his mouth and nose. “Everybody out! Back to the shuttle on the double!”

The Marines all pulled their breathers into place and scrambled back into the corridor—right into an ambush.

Time seemed to slow down before Sergeant Graves’ eyes. He raised his rifle, fired, turned and fired again, all in slow motion. The battle raged all around him, but somehow sounded far off. An energy bolt flashed close past the side of his head. He saw the creature that had fired at him—looked it in the eyes as he brought is rifle to bear and fired back. Its throat pulsed, the back of its neck exploded, painting the bulkhead behind it, and it fell to the soft, squishy deck like a body slowly sinking to the bottom of a pool.

The Marines fought bravely. They fought not for the mission, but for each other. Had it been necessary, they would have fought to the very last Marine. The last much too young to die Marine, Harrison reflected as he dropped the last of the enemy warriors.

“Grab the wounded!” Harrison shouted at those who remained on their feet, knowing that some of those wounded were probably already K.I.A. “No one gets left behind! Let’s go!”

The Marines grabbed up their newest casualties and made their way as fast as they could back through the humid, spongy-decked corridors to the shuttle. Harrison stepped aside when he reached the hole in the bulkhead and guided his Marines through it ahead of him. As soon as the last one passed, he joined them onboard, closed and sealed the doors behind him, and then grabbed the headset off its hook while the others hurriedly dropped into whatever empty seats they could find, if any—the wounded were already filling most of them—and prepared for emergency high-speed withdrawal as best they could.

“Get us the hell outta here!” he shouted at the pilot.

“Initiating ‘get us the hell outta here’ maneuver!” the pilot responded, and Harrison barely had time to brace himself before the shuttle shot backwards, throwing several Marines to the deck.

They’d made it.

But they weren’t finished yet, Harrison reminded himself. They still had an HDC full of data to deliver, and until they did, their mission wasn’t accomplished. All they had to do was make it back across the gauntlet of open space and back aboard the Tripoli. Then and only then they would be able to relax.

Assuming of course that the Tripoli was still in one piece.

Chapter 1

Mandela Station in Earth Geosynchronous Orbit, Two Days Later

Friday, 16 July 2190

An expectant quiet fell over the crowded auditorium as Command Chief Master Sergeant Warren Watson, the highest ranking non-commissioned officer in the Solfleet Naval Forces, emerged from the backstage shadows beyond the edge of the dark blue curtain and stepped up to the intricately carved antique wooden podium—a recent ‘thank you’ gift to Solfleet Central Command from the Congress of the United Earth Federation. Dressed in the space navy’s new black and tan class-A uniform—the black-and-browns had proven to be extremely unpopular with Navy personnel and hadn’t even lasted long enough for their initial issue to be completed—the hulking dark-skinned Jamaican veteran of more than fifteen years of direct ship-to-ship combat looked more ominous and intimidating than ever.

“All rise for the arrival of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he practically shouted into the microphone without even having to lean toward it.

Almost as one, the entire audience rose to its feet. Those military members familiar with the command chief’s infamous ability to spot a slacker in any size crowd, whether in uniform or not, assumed a rigid position of attention and stared straight ahead.

The Joint Chiefs’ hard-soled footfalls echoed through the cavernous room, sounding like an entire platoon marching in parade formation as Fleet Admiral Winston Chaffee, the short, pudgy, balding Executive Officer to the reportedly ailing Command Fleet Admiral, led the six-officer procession out onto the stage and across the front of the single row of chairs that had been set up for them. Each of them was decked out in full Solfleet dress grays, the long-time symbol of total unity among the once separate branches, complete with all medals and accoutrements, with only the colored stripes on their charcoal trousers and their jacket piping to distinguish their individual branches of the service.

They stopped in front of their chairs, turned and faced the nearly three thousand officers, senior NCOs, family members, and guests in one two-step facing maneuver, and then sat down.

“You may be seated,” the command chief announced. Then, as the audience took their seats and settled in again, he stepped away and disappeared back behind the curtain.

Exactly three second later, Admiral Chaffee stood up and approached the podium. The house lights dimmed and the overhead spotlight shone down on him like a golden ray of glory from Heaven, illuminating the top of his bald head so brightly that he appeared to glow with an almost angelic aura. Doing his best to ignore the light’s uncomfortable intensity, he pulled his handcomp off his belt and set it down on the podium, then folded his hands behind his back. He cleared his throat, and the microphone picked it up and transmitted to all the speakers around the room’s perimeter, eliciting grins and a few snickers from the crowd as it echoed through the entire auditorium.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized quickly, and straight-faced. “I’ve been trying to clear that hairball for weeks.”

A wave open laughter passed over the crowd—whether that was because his joke was actually funny, or only because he happened to be the second highest ranking officer in the entire fleet, who could say?—then quickly subsided when he briefly held up his hand. Then he opened the ceremony in earnest.

“Joint Chiefs, fellow officers, N-C-Os, enlisted personnel, distinguished family members and guests,” he began, glancing down at his handcomp to make sure he hadn’t left anyone out. “It is not often that a person in my position gets the opportunity to publicly recognize a fellow officer’s service above and beyond the call of duty in front of such a large audience. As most of you know, that honor is normally reserved for the Commander, Solfleet. So, while I certainly add my prayers to yours in wishing Command Fleet Admiral O’Shea a speedy and complete recovery, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank him for allowing me this honor and privilege.”

Not expecting any kind of response from the crowd, he briefly glanced down at his handcomp again, then got on with his speech.

“By the time an officer makes it to the lofty ranks of the admiralty, more often than not he or she is content to spend the duty day sitting at a desk in the relative safety of a large central headquarters somewhere and commanding from afar. Look at me, for example.” He paused briefly and smiled while more chuckles came from the audience, then continued. “All kidding aside, I mean what I say not as a slight toward any of the fine officers who serve with honor in our great body, but rather as a comparison to those few who, at least in my eyes, stand out above the rest of us.”

He glanced downward again.

“Every so often, an individual comes along who refuses to allow the immense weight of those golden starbursts on his shoulders to hold him down. Despite his newfound status as a flag-grade officer, he insists, sometimes quite vehemently, on continuing to serve alongside those who serve subordinate to him, rather than from some rear area far behind them. This morning we recognize and honor just such a man.”

Chaffee snapped to attention, then turned and marched out to center stage, stopped, and turned sharply to face the audience again. “Rear-Admiral Icarus Hansen, post,” he commanded.

Rear-Admiral Icarus Hansen, longtime Chief and Commanding Officer of the Solfleet Intelligence Agency, didn’t yet own a set of the new black-and-tan class-A’s, and the metal rank pins on his dress grays would have been too difficult to change both expeditiously and in a manner appropriate to the occasion. So, given no other choice, he’d donned his crisp, seldom worn, black and brown class-A uniform for the ceremony, complete with its rows upon rows upon rows of colorful ribbons and all its highly polished gold-plated accoutrements. And in thirty-five years of military service, he’d acquired a lot of ribbons and accoutrements.

In accordance with longstanding tradition, he was sitting in the back of the auditorium. He stood up, straightened his jacket, and then marched down the dimly side-lit right aisle to the stage. He ascended the five plastiwood steps, marched over in front of Admiral Chaffee and faced him, assumed the position of attention, and saluted sharply.

Chaffee returned his salute just as sharply, and then both men dropped their hands back to their sides together. Hansen then executed a picture-perfect about-face to face the audience and remained at the position of attention. Chaffee then posted himself to Hansen’s right and stood at attention as well.

Admiral Rodrigo Martinez-Colon, Chief of Staff of the Solfleet Naval Forces, and General Kristjana Jóhannsdótir, Chief of Staff of the Solfleet Aerospace Forces, stood together and stepped forward. Admiral Martinez-Colon, who held a pair of presentation folders, a medal case, and another slightly larger case in his hands, posted himself to Chaffee’s right while General Jóhannsdótir stepped up to the podium.

“Attention to orders,” Jóhannsdótir commanded, speaking slowly in her strong Icelandic accent. Once again, everyone in the entire auditorium stood up, and as before, those who served in uniform assumed the position of attention. After all, Command Chief Watson might have been watching from wherever it was he had hidden himself.

“Special order number twenty-one ninety dash four thirty-seven,” the general continued, reading from Chaffee’s handcomp. “By order of Command Fleet Admiral Jeremy W. O’Shea, Commanding Officer, Solfleet, Solfleet Central Command announces the following award. The Distinguished Service Cross with Valor device, second award, is hereby presented to Rear-Admiral Icarus Hansen, Chief and Commanding Officer, Solfleet Intelligence Agency.”

She paused and tapped the page button, then cleared her throat, quietly so the microphone wouldn’t pick it up, and continued.

“On eleven February, twenty-one ninety, Rear-Admiral Icarus Hansen was a passenger aboard the starcruiser U.E.F.S. Bokken, returning to Earth after completing an inspection tour of his agency’s facilities in the Caldanra system. While traveling through jumpspace in the vicinity of the Rosha’Kana system, the Bokken was attacked by a Veshtonn scouting party, forced to drop out of jumpspace, and then boarded by several dozen Veshtonn warriors. The Bokken’s Security Forces fought honorably to defend their vessel, but were vastly outnumbered and barely able to slow the enemy’s advances toward several of the ship’s vital facilities.

“At great risk to his own life, Admiral Hansen left the relative safety of his cabin and gathered together a platoon of Solfleet Marines whom he knew to be among the passengers to help defend the ship. After leading those Marines to the armory to retrieve their weapons and equipment, Admiral Hansen broke them into fire teams and assigned a team to each of the ship’s vital areas. Admiral Hansen himself led the team that defended the Bokken’s command bridge. The fighting onboard the Bokken lasted for more than two hours, but in the end, under Admiral Hansen’s command, the Marines and what Security Forces remained successfully prevented enemy forces from capturing or destroying the vessel.

“Immediately following this action, Admiral Hansen assumed tactical command of the Bokken and ordered her captain to change course and enter the Rosha’Kana star system, home system of our Tor’Kana allies. This decision led to the discovery of an observation post the Veshtonn had recently set up there, which in turn led directly to the discovery of their plans for invasion and allowed the Coalition time to gather its forces in preparation for that vital system’s defense—an extremely intense campaign that continues to this day.

“Rear-Admiral Hansen’s unwavering dedication, superb leadership, and distinguished performance of duty is in keeping with the finest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself, the Solfleet Naval Forces, and Solfleet Central Command. Awarded under my hand on this sixteenth day of July, twenty-one ninety. Signed, Jeremy W. O’Shea, Command Fleet Admiral, Solfleet, Commanding. Endorsed by the Honorable Harrison G. Culpepper, Secretary General, United Earth Space Exploration Council. Approved by Madam Mirriazu Shakhar, President, United Earth Federation.”

Admiral Martinez-Colon opened the medal case and held it out in the customary two-handed hold as Admiral Chaffee turned to him. Chaffee took the medal from its case, then he and Admiral Hansen faced one another. Chaffee pinned the medal in place, centered just below Hansen’s ribbons on the lip of his breast pocket, then accepted the empty medal case and one of the presentation folders from Martinez-Colon and handed them over to Hansen in the very official and traditional manner. He then saluted the recipient, and Hansen returned his salute, and when they finished with the obligatory “Congratulations, Admiral,” and “Thank you, sir,” the audience broke into applause.

They faced the audience again and waited while the applause continued. Then, when it finally started to wane, General Jóhannsdótir once again commanded, “Attention to orders.” What applause still lingered ceased abruptly and the service members in attendance returned to the position of attention once more. Admiral Martinez-Colon took a step back and moved behind Hansen to his left side.

“Special order number twenty-one ninety dash four thirty-eight,” Jóhannsdótir read. “By order of Command Fleet Admiral Jeremy W. O’Shea, Commander, Solfleet, Solfleet Central Command announces the following personnel action.

“Madam Mirriazzu Shakhar, President, United Earth Federation, has instilled special confidence and trust in the patriotism, professionalism, and outstanding leadership of Rear-Admiral Icarus Hansen, Chief and Commanding Officer, Solfleet Intelligence Agency. Rear-Admiral Hansen is therefore hereby promoted to the permanent rank of Vice-Admiral, Solfleet, with an effective date of rank of one July, twenty-one ninety. So ordered under my hand this sixteenth day of July, twenty-one ninety. Signed, Mirriazu Shakhar, President, United Earth Federation.”

The admirals at Hansen’s sides each took an epaulet, removed his old rank boards and slipped the new ones on in their place. Once again, salutes, handshakes, congratulations, and thanks were exchanged, and once again the audience applauded.

“You may be seated,” Jóhannsdótir announced. Then, once the audience had settled down, she raised an inviting hand toward Hansen and extended the invitation that he had hoped she would forget, despite knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that she would not. “Admiral Hansen, would you like to say a few words?”

She stepped aside the moment he started to approach.

“Thank you, General Jóhannsdótir,” he began, smiling warmly at her and pronouncing her difficult name perfectly. Then he looked out over the audience, paused for effect, and then said, “In all my years of military service, the one thing I’ve grown to dislike immensely is having to sit in the most uncomfortable chairs money can buy while some over-the-hill windbag like myself drones on and on at infinitum about some intangible topic that doesn’t concern me in the least.” Chaffee wasn’t the only one who could make an audience laugh, as the crowd quickly proved, but he hadn’t said it simply to compete with the fleet X.O. He’d actually meant it. “Therefore,” he continued as the audience quieted, “I’m not real big on making speeches of my own. I would, however, just like to thank President Shakhar, Admiral Chaffee for his extremely kind words, the Joint Chiefs for their participation, and all of you for taking the time to be here this morning. Your support means more to me than you can possibly know. Thank you.”

He stepped aside to the audience’s renewed applause, and as General Jóhannsdótir returned to her seat, Command Chief Master Sergeant Watson reappeared from backstage and replaced her at the podium. “This concludes this morning’s ceremony,” he announced. “Please stand for the departure of the honored member and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Like hundreds of mindless robots, the audience rose to its feet one more time. Hansen led the way as the official party marched off stage.

“On behalf of Admiral Chaffee and the Joint Chiefs, I also would like to thank you all for attending,” Watson announced, bringing the gathering to its official close. “Dismissed.”

Hansen hung around backstage for a while and politely accepted congratulations from the other three Chiefs of Staff, his friends, those of his associates who had been available to attend, and anyone else who took the time to make their way back there, all the while looking for his daughter and waiting for her to find him. Then, when he finally decided that she wasn’t going to show and that no one else intended to come his way, he started gradually making his way toward the nearest exit. Admiral Chaffee stopped him long enough to hand him a bag full of enough new rank bars and pins to outfit the rest of his uniforms, and a few more people offered their congratulations as he happened to cross paths with them, but it didn’t take him very long to break free of the masses and head for his quarters.

The Distinguished Service Cross with Valor device, he reflected as he strolled through the wide earth tone corridors. He’d certainly never expected to be awarded another one of those. Of course, were it not for Admiral Chaffee going to bat for him, he probably wouldn’t have been. For that matter, were it not for the fact that his longtime friend Mirriazu Shakhar happened to be the president, he’d probably still be on the outside of the admiralty looking in. Even after so many years, O’Shea still held a huge grudge against him. The son-of-a-bitch probably wasn’t even sick. He probably just couldn’t stomach the thought of not only having to pin a medal to his old rival’s chest, but also having to promote him on top of it.

Of course, Hansen went on to reflect as he had so many times before, he was damn lucky to still be in the fleet at all at this point, and he knew it. Liz, too, for that matter. The threat of exposure had been hanging over their heads for six long years now, and he’d worried about it damn near every day. He’d worried that the truth might finally come out, and that both of their careers might suddenly come to an abrupt and shameful halt. And yet at the same time, more than once, he’d almost wished for it. At least then the knowledge of what they had done—of what he had done—would have stopped feeding the fear that still haunted his every waking hour. He’d have been freed from his chains. He’d have taken whatever he had coming to him, and he’d have moved on.

But so far that hadn’t happened. Might he actually make it to retirement, he wondered? He was already eligible, but he was not yet ready.

As a flag-grade officer, he’d been assigned family quarters fairly close to the bulk of the fleet’s offices and other non-industrial facilities, so it only took him a few minutes to walk home. He raised his right hand toward the security panel as he approached the door, but instead of waiting for him to log in as a locked door should, it slid aside, disappearing into the bulkhead, and released the ear-splitting clamor of screaming engines and screeching tires, blaring sirens, and blazing guns into the corridor. He sighed and shook his head in disgust. Typical fourteen year old, forgetting to lock the door and playing her beloved virtuavid games so ridiculously loud that she wouldn’t have heard anything if a whole gang of juvenile delinquents broke in and started busting up the place. When was that girl ever going to learn?

He stepped inside and closed and locked the door behind him, then went into the living room and found her stretched out on the couch in nothing but a pair of white flower-print panties and an old threadbare tee shirt that looked about three sizes too small for her—her typical stay-at-home garb—totally absorbed in her deafening game.

“Hi, Dad,” she shouted over the mayhem without taking her eyes off three-dimensional action that she commanded through the elaborate, multi-buttoned game controller she held in her hands long enough to spare him an acknowledging glance—a high-speed multi-vehicle police chase through the streets of old Detroit from the looks and sounds of it.

“Turn that down, Heather!” he shouted over the blaring sirens. “In fact, shut it off!”

Heather hit a button, freezing the action just as one very unfortunate police officer drove his motorcycle off the end of a seaside dock, then turned and stared up at her father as though he were little more than an annoying distraction. “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

“First of all, how did you even hear me come in over all that noise?” he asked.

“It’s not that loud, Dad,” she told him, her tone of voice betraying the obvious fact that she considered the idea that her game might actually bother somebody to be totally ridiculous.

“Yes it is that loud, and I want it turned down before you restart it. Otherwise, you’re going to lose it for a while. Understood?”

Heather drew a deep breath and exhaled sharply and quite dramatically as she rolled her eyes, then said, “Fine. Anything else?”

“Yes,” he answered firmly. “How many times do I have to tell you not to lie around in your underwear before you finally stop doing it? What if I had one of my men with me right now?”

“I guess he’d of gotten one hell of a thrill, wouldn’t he?”

The admiral started to respond, but his words caught in his throat. He didn’t like her answer, but as much as he wanted to disagree with it, he couldn’t. Still about a month shy of her fifteenth birthday, Heather already had the body of a curvaceous twenty-one year old, and she was pretty good at strutting her stuff when she wanted to be, too—a fact that no father could have missed in a daughter so young, no matter how straight-laced and proper he might be. Like her mother, God rest her soul, she was very beautiful, with long strawberry-blond hair and piercing emerald-green eyes. She was, often to his annoyance and exasperation, an incredibly sexy young woman—an incredibly sexy very young woman. Far too sexy for her own good, he often feared.

“That isn’t funny, Heather,” he finally responded. “You cannot lie around here in your underwear with the door unlocked. Anybody could have wandered in here.”

“God, Dad, don’t be so paranoid!” she chided him in disgust. “We live on a space station for God sakes. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

“All right, all right,” he surrendered. “Forget the lecture for now.” It was an old argument anyway. There would be plenty of time to continue it later—again. “Right now I’m more curious about why you didn’t come to the ceremony this morning after you told me you were going to be there.”

“I’m sorry,” she told him, not sounding sorry at all. “I overslept, okay? Congratulations on once again being recognized as the Hero of the Galaxy.”

He stared at his daughter in silence, totally at a loss as to what to say to her. Why did she have to be like that? Sure, her mother’s death had been hard on her. He understood that. It had been hard on him, too. But eleven years had passed since that tragic day. How long was she going to hold onto her anger? How long was she going to blame him for their loss?

She must have seen the hurt in his eyes, because she dropped her gaze to the floor.

“Don’t forget,” he said, changing the subject as he started toward his bedroom, “you have an appointment with your probation officer. Two o’clock.”

“When have I ever forgotten, Dad?” she asked rhetorically.

He stopped short and turned back toward her. “Excuse me?” he prodded as he slowly approached her again. “When have you ever forgotten? Is that really what you just asked me?”

She glared back at him, but apparently knew better than to push him any further.

“Admiral Hansen?” his secretary’s voice called through the link insignia pinned to his collar, heading off what had promised to be a verbal storm of a response.

He tapped the pin, hard enough that it hurt and forced him to swallow and clear his throat before he answered. “Go ahead, Vicky.”

“Sir, Lieutenant Young would like to know how soon you’re coming in.”

“As soon as I change uniforms,” he told her. Then he asked, “Why? What’s going on?”

“He’s holding an incoming live transmission on standby—your eyes only.”

“All right. Have him tell the caller I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If they can’t wait that long, have him make an encrypted recording of the message and I’ll review it first thing when I get there.”

“Will do, Admiral. Thank you.”

He tapped his collar pin again, more gently this time, to close the channel. Then he told Heather, “I have to change and go to work. We’ll talk about your attitude later.”

Heather harrumphed. “What else is new?”

He shook his head, not knowing what else to say or do, then escaped into his bedroom to change. Six more weeks before school started up again. He was beginning to think his patience might not last that much longer.

Chapter 2

Admiral Hansen hadn’t been issued his new class-A uniforms yet, but he had been issued everything else, and as he pulled his new black-on-tan class-B jacket on over the new tan button-down shirt that went with it, he gazed into his full-length mirror and admired its design. It looked a lot better with the fleet’s customary black trousers than the slightly longer brown one had, and he really liked the way the new cut tapered down to his waist and made him look as if he were in even better physical condition than he really was. Whether that effect was achieved by design or simply by happy coincidence, who knew—and who cared? He certainly didn’t. He liked it, and that was all that mattered. Most of all, though, he liked the fact that once he got to his office he could take the jacket off and work in comfort, and still be ‘in uniform’ if someone happened to stop by.

Thank God the class-A’s were the only ones whose fleet-wide issue had fallen behind schedule. Six months of wearing those ugly chocolate browns were more than enough.

Yes indeed, the newest new uniforms were a vast improvement over the previous new uniforms. Now, if Solfleet could just manage to stick with them...

He gazed at his jacket’s accoutrements as he fastened it—particularly at the three shiny gold-plated starbursts fastened to both sides of the black collar. Vice-Admiral Icarus Hansen. Vice-Admiral. Had a nice ring to it, and it had been a long time coming—especially for someone who had started out on the fast track almost since day one out of the academy the way he had. From a young Security Police platoon leader to a tough-as-nails infantry company commander and combat veteran to a field-grade Security Police detachment commander, all in his first seven years of active service. His was a promotion rate that still stood unparalleled anywhere in any of the fleet’s five branches, including the combat arms specialties. If it hadn’t been for all the political fallout over that one horrific incident over twenty years ago...

Except for the little star cluster next to the bronze ‘Valor’ device on his Distinguished Service Cross ribbon, the rest of his accoutrements remained the same. He took one last look, then went back into the living room. No surprise, Heather was still lying there playing her game in her underwear, but at least she’d turned down the volume.

“Clothes, Heather,” he sternly reminded her as he passed her on his way to the door.

“I will, Dad! God!” she exclaimed. “I’m in the middle of a level here!”

He didn’t have time to argue. He set the door to lock behind him and headed out.

* * *

The almost intoxicating fresh brewed aroma of his favorite blend of Columbian coffee wafted over Hansen like a warm summer breeze as soon as he walked into the reception area outside his private office. It might have seemed a bit old-fashioned, the pretty young personal secretary serving coffee to the older executive, but every morning Vicky met him a few feet inside the door with his large personalized ‘official’ black and tan Mandela Station Command Staff mug in hand, and every morning he gratefully accepted it from her with a friendly smile. This morning was no different. Despite the fact that he barely slowed down as he walked by her, she handed his mug to him with all the precision of a relay racer handing the baton off to the next runner, and she did it without spilling a drop.

“Thank you, Vicky,” he said automatically, without even sparing her a glance.

“You’re welcome, Admiral,” she responded pleasantly, but with a hint of disappointment evident in her tone. “Good morning, and congratulations by the way.”

He’d forgotten to greet her properly, he realized immediately—something he’d promised himself a long time ago that he would never do. He stopped halfway to his office door and turned back to her. “I’m sorry, I have a lot on my mind this morning,” he told her. Then, to correct his oversight, he said, “Good morning and thank you.”

“That’s okay, Admiral.”

He drank in the sight of her with a few quick covert glances over the rim of his mug as he took a long careful sip of the steaming brew. She’d dressed in finely tailored dark blue business attire over a silk blouse like mother-of-pearl and a pair of those black pleather knee-high boots that seemed to keep coming back into style every couple of generations or so. She’d pinned her long, wavy, light brown hair back on the sides, away from her soft, smoothly sculpted face, but had left the rest of it loose to flow freely down her back, presumably to help her maintain an air of femininity in the otherwise all business atmosphere. All in all a very professional appearance, as usual, though her skirt could probably have been a little longer.

“Where’s Lieutenant Young?” he asked her quickly when he suddenly caught her eye, hoping he hadn’t made her feel uncomfortable as he realized that his glances likely weren’t as covert as he’d thought they were.

“He said something about meeting with someone from the Criminal Investigations office,” Vicky answered. “He wouldn’t tell me what it’s about, but he seemed to think you already knew about it. He recorded the caller’s message as you instructed before he left.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Hansen passed his mug from his right hand to his left as he turned and approached his office. He punched his access code into the wall panel to the door’s right, then pressed the palm of his hand to the scanner plate and looked directly into the coin-sized camera imbedded in the center of the door. “Hansen,” he identified. The plate glowed white for one second, analyzing his palm and fingerprints while the camera scanned his iris. Then the door slid aside and he went in.

He reached back and tapped the ‘close’ button, then crossed to his desk and set his mug down in front of his chair. Then, as he sat down, he noticed that the ‘message waiting’ light on his communications panel was blinking amber, indicating that at least one message coded as ‘Other Intelligence’ had been received and decrypted. He called up the list of new messages and was relieved to see that the one he’d already been told about was the only one waiting for him. No new update on fleet actions waited for his review, which meant the fleet hadn’t suffered any major losses over the last twenty-four hours—especially significant, given what was currently happening in the Rosha’Kana system. He reached out and tapped the message on his screen, then picked up his coffee and sat back.

One of the large rectangular panels that made up the wall directly across the room from his desk came to life and displayed the frozen image of a red-haired, ghostly white-skinned but rather regal looking woman at least twenty years his junior, but probably more like twenty-five. She was wearing the older brown Naval tunic, which indicated to him that she wasn’t stationed on or around the Earth—otherwise she would have received her new issue already—with the single gold diamond of a lieutenant commander on her collar. Hansen couldn’t see much of the room behind her, but judging from what little he could see, she wasn’t aboard a ship.

“Play recording,” he said.

“Admiral Hansen, sir,” the woman’s image began, suddenly vibrant and full of life. “My name is Lieutenant Commander Kathleen Quinn. I’m the new operations officer at the agency’s Europan office. First of all, on behalf of all of us, congratulations on your award and promotion. Second, the station commander has asked me to brief you on some information we just received.

“Less than forty-eight hours ago, several platoons of Marines from the Tripoli and a few other assault carriers boarded one of the Veshtonn command cruisers currently engaged in combat in the Rosha’Kana star system. One team managed to hack into the enemy vessel’s computer and copy a large amount of data. A lot of them were killed in action, but the rest did manage to make it back to their ship with the data.”

Hansen sighed, then bowed his head and closed his eyes, saddened by the loss of those Marines. Killed in action. She’d said it so coldly, so matter-of-factly, as if the poor souls had been nothing more than empty uniforms to be assigned a casualty number.

“About half an hour ago,” she continued without pause, “one of our best decryption and decoding specialists, a Crewman Stefani O’Donnell—remember that last name, Admiral—came to us with the following audio file, which she stated she’d just received from her counterpart on the Tripoli minutes before. It’s a little difficult to make out, sir, but give it a listen. I’ll be back after it plays.”

Quinn’s image suddenly froze—she sort of resembled a frosted ice sculpture with that pale white skin of hers—and a moment later Hansen’s office filled with white noise and short bursts of thundering static. Then someone began to speak beneath the noise. The voice sounded weak and was barely audible, and not entirely understandable, but every few seconds it came through just clear enough that Hansen was able to identify it as a man’s voice, and the language he was speaking in as English.

“I ho... ...can hear me,” the voice said, still dropping in and out, but suddenly breaking through the white noise much clearer than it had been. “...name is Ro... ...Donell. I was... ...officer aboard the Earth starcruiser... ...caliber. ...alive, somewhere in Vesh... ...ace. The Excalibur... ...NOT destroyed by... ...Vesh... ...epeat, the... ...ot destroyed... ...eshtonn. ...attack was carried out... ...cruiser Albion and two... ...star Corpora... ...ly by surprise. Those of... ...vived were ta...”

The message ended abruptly with one final blast of static, but that, too, quickly fell silent. Then Quinn’s image came back to life.

“That’s exactly how Crewman O’Donnell received it, sir,” she reported. “As I said, she brought it to our attention immediately, along with some very interesting personal information. Turns out her father, Lieutenant Robert O’Donnell, was assigned to the starcruiser Excalibur when it was lost twenty-two years ago. We’ve confirmed that, just so you know. We also confirmed that neither he nor any trace of his remains were ever found, and that his name does appear on the list of M-I-As from that incident.

“As for why the information came to Crewman O’Donnell in the first place, she and the Tripoli’s communications specialist were classmates at their Tech School. Apparently, he sent the Veshtonn computer data to her out of friendship instead of informing his commanding officer like he should have. Otherwise, you’d have received this a lot sooner.

“We’ll do our best to clean it up and see what else we can pull out of it that might be of some use, but the old man wanted you to hear it right away. Let us know if you need anything further, Admiral. Europa Field Office out.”

The message ended and the wall screen winked off and became indiscernible from the rest of the wall once more. Hansen sat back—he hadn’t even realized he’d leaned forward—and gulped another mouthful of his coffee. Was it really possible, after more than twenty years, that a member of the Excalibur crew could still be alive, particularly somewhere in Veshtonn space, where the speaker had sounded like he’d claimed to be? Doubtful—the Veshtonn weren’t known for taking prisoners—but not necessarily impossible.

And what of the rest of the message? Was any of it genuine, or even partially so? True, the recording wasn’t very clear, but it had sounded like the speaker claimed the Excalibur wasn’t destroyed by the Veshtonn at all, but rather by the starcruiser Albion and two other ships from some corporation—the something-‘star’ Corporation, it had sounded like. Shining Star Builders, Home Star Development Corporation, Newstar Corporation—who knew? But the idea that one Solfleet starcruiser had led an attack against another and destroyed her with all hands? That was even harder to believe than the possibility that one of the Excalibur crew still lived. Again, hard to believe was not the same as impossible, but as far as Hansen was concerned, that claim made the entire message as a whole a lot harder to take seriously.

Still, he couldn’t just dismiss it outright, no matter how ridiculous it might have sounded. To do so would be an act paramount to sacrilege in the Intelligence community. The message had to be followed up on like any other scrap of information would be. It had to be run through the gauntlet. It had to be confirmed or positively proven false and dismissed if at all possible. The life of at least one hero and possibly more from the earliest days of the renewed war might depend on it. And if it was true—if forces from within Solfleet itself had in fact led the attack against Excalibur, then Solfleet still had one very big problem on its hands.

But first things first. He leaned forward and tapped the intercom ‘call’ button.

“Yes, Admiral?” his secretary’s voice flowed from the speaker hidden in the center of the ceiling.

“Vicky, I realize it might be a little difficult right now, but see if you can get me an open channel to the captain of the Tripoli. If he has a few minutes, I need to discuss one of his people with him.”

“Right away, Admiral.”

“He’s in the middle of a combat zone, Vicky, so make sure you give him the option to call me back later instead, whenever he has time.”

“Will do, sir.”

‘A lot of them were killed in action’, Quinn had said of the Marines who’d recovered the data from the enemy ship. Cold and emotionless, as if they were nothing more than pawns on a chessboard. Icy words to complement here icy complexion.

Perhaps they were pawns in the grand scheme of things, but they were also Solfleet Marines—comrades in arms, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and perhaps mothers and fathers as well. Gone, like candle flames in the wind. Snuffed out, leaving only the wisps of their spirits to drift off into eternity.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he thought back over the decades. So much death. So many young men and women...

“I have the captain of the Tripoli for you, Admiral.”

Chapter 3

By the time Admiral Hansen finished filling the Tripoli’s captain in on what Stefani O’Donnell’s former classmate had done, he felt confident that the young man, whoever he might be, would quickly receive an education regarding the error of his ways. To say that his captain had been very unhappy about the whole situation would have stood a gross understatement. Understandably, no commanding officer wanted to hear about his people’s misdeeds from an admiral, whether that admiral fell into in his direct chain of command or not, but no sooner had Hansen explained the reason for his call when this particular commanding officer had turned beet red and clenched his jaw tightly enough to bite through the hull of his own ship.

Upon seeing the captain’s reaction—granted, he was in the middle of combat operations and really didn’t need the distraction to begin with—and speaking strictly off the record, Hansen had recommended that he not bust the crewman down in rank over what he’d done, provided his previous track record warranted such leniency. After all, he wasn’t out to destroy the poor kid’s career. But in the end that decision lay with his captain, and while Hansen had no reservations at all when it came to providing information, he would never consider actually interfering with another competent officer’s command.

That done, it was time to get on with the business at hand.

“Good morning, Hal,” he said as he turned on the coffee brewer built into the wall behind him, knowing without having to check that Vicky had already prepared it for the day—yes, it was good to be an admiral.

“Good morning, Nick,” the computer responded in the soft melodic male voice of the artificial intelligence featured in Hansen’s favorite classic science-fiction film, old as it was—the Discovery’s HAL-9000 from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Not long after his wife’s tragic death, Hansen had considered reprogramming the voice to match that of the sequel’s female sounding SAL, but his grief counselor had strongly advised against it. Probably for the best, he’d eventually come to realize. Over the ensuing years he’d come to think of Hal almost as a living being and a friend, and although he’d never lost sight of the fact that he—that it—was just a machine, he’d fast discovered that single fatherhood could be a very lonely world. The idea that he might actually develop feelings for a female artificial personality, as preposterous as it had sounded to him when the counselor brought it up, had begun to make a certain amount of sense.

“How may I be of assistance this morning, Admiral?” Hal asked.

“Sorry, Hal,” Hansen said, apologizing to the computer as if it were a living being. Hell, why not? “I need you to run a records check for me.”

“Certainly, Nick. I would be happy to do that for you. What are the parameters?”

The Lieutenant Commander on Europa—Quinn was it?—had told him that her office had already confirmed the assignment of a Lieutenant O’Donnell aboard the Excalibur. Nevertheless, he decided to start from the beginning and do so again anyway. “Check the crew roster of the starcruiser U.E.F.S. Excalibur, destroyed in combat near the Caldanra star system in late June, twenty-one sixty-eight. I’m looking for someone by the surname of O’Donnell.”

“Checking.” Then, almost instantly, “Confirmed. Lieutenant Robert William O’Donnell is listed as tactical officer. Current status: Missing In Action.”

“Call up his personnel record and read off the names and current status of any listed dependents, please.”

“There are four dependents listed. Spouse and primary beneficiary: Helena Marie Carter-O’Donnell. Current status: Living. Son and co-secondary beneficiary: Robert William O’Donnell, Junior. Current status: Living. Son and co-secondary beneficiary: Thomas Patrick O’Donnell. Current status: Living. Daughter and co-secondary beneficiary: Stefani Marie O’Donnell. Current status: Living.”

“Cross-reference with Solfleet personnel database and identify any commonalities.”

“Checking.” Then, “Two commonalities identified. There is currently a Lieutenant Junior Grade Thomas Patrick O’Donnell assigned to the One-hundred seventeenth Tactical Interceptor Squadron aboard the starcarrier U.E.F.S. Victory as an IF-thirty-six starfighter pilot. There is a Crewman First Class Stefani Marie O’Donnell assigned to the Solfleet Intelligence Agency’s Europa Field Office as a Decoding and Decryption specialist.”

“Thank you, Hal.”

“You’re welcome, Nick. May I be of any further assistance at this time?”

“Yes, you may,” Hansen answered as he spun around to refill his mug. He pulled the old-fashioned glass decanter out of the slot and asked as he poured, “What was the official status of the starcruiser U.E.F.S. Albion in June of twenty-one sixty-eight?”

“Checking. That is odd.”

Hansen froze briefly in mid pour, then finished, put the decanter back in its place, and turned back to his desk and asked, “What’s odd, Hal?”

“According to fleet records, the starcruiser U.E.F.S. Albion was decommissioned on four February, twenty-one sixty-two, and dry-docked at the Mars Orbital Shipyard facility until three April, twenty-one sixty-nine.”

“Why is that odd, Hal?” He knew of one reason of course, but it was always possible that Hal had found something else that he wasn’t yet aware of.

“That information conflicts with that contained in the recording that was attached to the message you received earlier this morning.”

Then again, maybe not. “The authenticity of that recording has yet to be confirmed,” he told his soothing, silicon-based assistant. He gently blew across the surface of his coffee and took a tentative sip—it was extremely hot—as he considered what to do next. Not that it really required much thought. A basic rule of any investigation stated that when faced with conflicting accounts of any given incident or event, an investigator should seek out eyewitnesses. “Hal?”

“Yes, Nick.”

“Do me a favor and compile a list of all personnel who were assigned to the Mars Orbital Shipyards during the time period the record indicates the Albion was dry-docked there. I want both civilian and military personnel listed. And do your best to determine each person’s current status and whereabouts as well.”

“Certainly. It may take several minutes to recall pertinent information from the civilian database, but I will inform you as soon as I have completed my task.”

“Thank you, Hal.”

“You are welcome, Nick.”

Hansen leaned back, kicked his feet up on the desk, and sipped his coffee while he waited patiently for Hal to perform its task. He thought about his earlier exchange with Heather and his heart quickly filled with regret. Seemed all he ever did anymore was correct her misbehavior and lecture her about every aspect of her life. When was the last time they’d gone somewhere or done something fun together? Hard as it was to believe, she was almost fifteen years old already. She’d be a sophomore in high school soon. Time was flying by and he was fast running out of it. Next thing he knew she’d be off on her own, hopefully to college, even more wrapped up in her own life than she already was. Then they wouldn’t have any time for each other at all. Not that they had much now.

He sighed. If she’d just make an effort to improve her overall...

“Nick?”

Hansen looked at his computer console. Finished already? “That was fast, Hal.”

“I have not entirely completed my task yet, but I have discovered an apparent pattern that I think you will find quite disturbing.”

Hansen set his coffee down, dropped his feet back to the floor, and sat up. “What have you discovered?” he asked.

“While compiling the list, I dedicated some of my resources to determining the current status and whereabouts of personnel, as requested. So far, I have determined that one hundred percent of the nine hundred thirty-seven personnel I have positively identified are listed as deceased.”

The little hairs on the back of Hansen’s neck suddenly stood on end as a chill ran down his spine. Nine hundred thirty-seven personnel who served in the same place during roughly the same relatively recent period of time, all dead? The odds against something like that happening had to be...astronomical, and unfortunately, the odds against all of them having died of natural causes had to be even more incredible.

“All of them?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. According to all available information, those personnel were all declared deceased within three years after the destruction of the starcruiser Excalibur.”

Something was definitely very wrong. “Thank you, Hal. Continue with your task. I’ll inquire as to the results later. And Hal, you’re to disclose that information under my voiceprint identification only. Understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

Given a choice, Hansen would have preferred to keep the information completely quiet for the time being—to follow up on it himself and see where it might lead, but his position didn’t afford him that luxury. He was a Sofleet officer, a man of duty, and one of his duties as Chief of Solfleet Intelligence was to advise the Earth Security Council of any potential significant threat to Earth in as timely a manner as possible. The way things were stacking up, he was beginning to think there might be just such a threat.

He reached for the intercom. “Vicky?”

“Yes, Admiral?”

“Get me a direct channel to Chairman MacLeod, please. Priority...priority three should do for now.” In all honesty, Hansen suspected there might be more than just a ‘potential’ threat at this point, but with all that was going on in the world, elevating the situation to priority-two so quickly might have alarmed the chairman unnecessarily, and he wanted to avoid doing that as much as possible. MacLeod had a tendency to be overzealous and get carried away sometimes.

“Right away, Ad... Sir, you have a call coming in.”

“All right. Hold off on calling MacLeod for now and transfer the incoming to me.”

“Go ahead, sir,” she said immediately, apparently having anticipated his instructions.

The wall screen came to life once again, but this time it was neither an agency underling nor a starcruiser captain whose image appeared. In fact, it wasn’t a military service member at all. Well, not a current one anyway. It was Sir Nigel Worthington, retired British colonel, now the sole proprietor of the most exclusive and therefore most expensive jewelry store in the entire Rotunda. He was a pleasant enough gentleman in his own right, but a gentleman with whom Hansen’s dealings had been unavoidably less than enjoyable.

“Uh oh,” was all the admiral managed to say by way of greeting.

“Sorry to call you at your office, Admiral,” the merchant apologized in his always regal sounding British accent, “but I’m afraid ‘uh oh’ is right.”

Much like the captain of the Tripoli a few minutes earlier, Hansen clenched his jaw, drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly to calm himself down before the temper storm had a chance to hit. Then he closed his eyes and asked, “What did she try to steal this time?”

“A gold necklace. Nothing too incredibly expensive, but...”

“But the cost doesn’t matter,” Hansen finished for him as he opened his eyes and looked at the gentleman again.

“Quite so. You’ve always done right by me, Admiral, so I thought I’d ring you first.”

“I appreciate that, Colonel Worthington, thank you.” Hansen almost always addressed him by his rank as a matter of respect. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

The gentleman nodded politely. “We’ll be in my office, Admiral.”

The screen went dark.

Hansen drew another deep breath and sighed, then shot to his feet and stormed out of the office. “Be back as soon as I can, Vicky,” he barked, eyes glaring straight ahead as he marched past his secretary, whose knowing eyes followed him with sympathy.

“She’s just a kid, Admiral,” she reminded him, calling after him.

The simple fact that she knew exactly why Sir Nigel had called was telling, and Heather had finally pushed the boundaries one too many times.

Chapter 4

Worthington Custom Jewelers. Of all the hundreds of private businesses operating on Mandela Station, Sir Nigel Worthington’s always spotless store held the distinction of being the oldest and most respected, as did the gentleman proprietor himself, among both his peers and his customers. Three times a hero of the cyberclone revolt of 2160-61, the British government had awarded him both the Distinguished Service Order and an unprecedented two Victoria Crosses, each for separate and specific acts of conspicuous gallantry. Now, having long since retired from one life of selfless service to another, Sir Nigel enjoyed a reputation for serving his clientele as honorably as he’d served the British Crown.

Admiral Hansen stopped for a moment just outside the gold-trimmed, smoked plastiglass door and took one more deep breath to calm down before he dared go inside. He’d learned a long time ago that if he lost his temper with Heather and started hollering at her, she’d simply shut him out, turn within herself, and refuse to hear a single word that came out of his mouth, no matter how loud it might be. Besides, he was in uniform and in the public eye, in the civilian section of the station no less, and from what he could see through the large pane window, there were more than a few well dressed shoppers inside, scattered throughout the store. It was important that he maintain his professional demeanor, most especially as a member of the admiralty, and represent the fleet in a positive light at all times.

Sufficiently calm, he hoped, and as ready as he’d ever be, he went inside. Some of those well-dressed shoppers threw curious glances his way as he marched toward the back of the store, eyes straight ahead, but quickly turned their attention back to their own business and left him alone. Others paid him no attention at all. As residents of the station—he assumed they were residents, and not just visitors—they’d no doubt grown used to seeing military personnel in the area on a regular basis. In fact, chances were good that at least a few of them were military personnel themselves, or at least military family members.

One man in particular though, a tall and slender Cirran, seemed to go out of his way to avoid him, as if being in close proximity to an Earth soldier might somehow adversely affect him. Odd behavior, considering that Solfleet had led the assault that had liberated their world from Veshtonn domination a few years ago. Oh well. “Guess you can’t please everybody,” he mumbled under his breath as the violet-eyed stranger moved to avoid him a second time.

Putting the stranger out of his mind—he had more immediate concerns, after all—Hansen stepped behind the royal-blue velvet curtain that separated the storefront from the private offices and paused one last time just outside Sir Nigel’s door. Having visited the elderly proprietor there on more than one occasion in the past, thanks to Heather’s behavior, he knew exactly which of the four identical gold-trimmed doors led to the man’s office. He gathered his patience, then knocked twice and stepped inside.

“Ah,” Worthington exclaimed from his seat behind the desk as he looked up. He stood up and reached across the desk to offer his hand. “Admiral Hansen. How nice to see you again, sir.”

Whether or not the proprietor was being sarcastic when he said that, Hansen couldn’t be sure. He certainly had every right to be, given the amount of grief Heather had caused him over the last few years. But knowing the gentleman as he did, Hansen sincerely doubted it.

He approached the desk and shook the man’s hand, and greeted him with a simple, “It’s good to see you, too, Colonel.” Then he clenched his jaw and glared down through blazing eyes at his delinquent daughter, who sat cowering in a chair just out of backhand range to his left, near the corner of the small office, staring silently at the floor in front of her, hair hiding most of her face from view. At least she’d worn some semi-decent clothing for a change, he noted, instead of the too sexy, often too revealing styles that she and most other girls her age usually wore these days. “I only wish our meeting were under better circumstances,” he added.

Worthington let go of the admiral’s hand and picked a sparkling gold chain necklace up off his desk and held it out, dangling it in front of him where Hansen could get a good look at it. “This is the necklace your daughter attempted to steal,” he explained. “One of my clerks saw her hold it up to the light, then drop it down inside the front of her blouse. When he confronted her, she tried to tell him that it was an accident, and that she had intended to take it out immediately. However, given her storied history in my establishment, he found that quite hard to believe. Honestly, Admiral, I do as well.”

Heather slapped her hands down on the arms of her chair and angrily exclaimed, “I swear to you, I wasn’t trying to steal it!” When both men looked at her and didn’t say anything right away, she seized the opportunity to explain to her father, “Dad! That clerk guy grabbed me like two seconds after I dropped it! He didn’t give me a chance to pull it out! And I wasn’t trying to leave the store, either! Hell, I wasn’t even facing the damn door!”

“You watch your language, young lady,” her father told her. Then he looked back at Worthington and folded his hands behind his back. “Grabbed her, Colonel?” he asked. “Your clerk put his hands on my daughter?”

“Damn right he did!” she adamantly asserted.

“You be quiet!” Hansen barked, glancing at her again, but only briefly. She clammed up immediately and averted her eyes.

Worthington dropped his gaze and exhaled as he carefully set the necklace back down on his desk, then looked back up at the admiral. “I’m afraid so, Admiral,” he readily admitted with regret. “Unfortunately, my employee did become somewhat overzealous in his duties, and for that, I sincerely apologize. I would like to add, however, that he only took her by the arm. I can assure you that nothing more inappropriate occurred.”

“I accept your assurance of that, sir,” Hansen told him. “I would never have suspected otherwise in your store.” Then he asked, as he reached into his breast pocket for his identicard, “So, would you like me to pay for the necklace, or...”

“Oh, heavens no, Admiral,” Worthington answered, deflecting the suggestion with a wave of his hand as if the idea were ridiculous. “Not at all. She didn’t damage it a bit.”

“All right,” he assented, slipping his card back into its place. “I do appreciate your calling me, Colonel, as I told you before, but...”

“Well, as I said on the line, Admiral,” the proprietor interjected, “you’ve always done right by me in these situations. You’ve even returned the things she stole without getting caught when you’ve found them. You’ve always acted honorably, and I thought it only proper to reward that honor by not involving the police in the matter. That being said, however, this is growing quite tiresome. I cannot allow this to go on any longer.”

“I understand completely, sir,” Hansen said, “and I assure you,” he continued as he turned and took a single, ominous step toward his daughter, staring down at her, “this will be the last time. You have my word on that.”

Heather gazed up at her father again, mouth open, but didn’t dare say a word. Everyone who knew him knew that Admiral Icarus Hansen wasn’t one to promise anything lightly or recklessly. If he gave his word that something wouldn’t happen again, then he had a plan in mind to ensure that that would indeed be the case.

“As of right now, young lady,” he continued, his voice filled with unyielding authority, “you are confined to our quarters for at least two weeks.”

“You’re grounding me?” she asked timidly.

“Yes, Heather, I’m grounding you,” he assured her. “And for the next six months, you are not permitted to set foot inside this store for any reason unless I’m with you. Do you understand me, young lady?”

“But me and my friends come in here every weekend!” she complained.

“I said, do you understand me?” her father repeated unwaveringly.

She huffed and turned her face away. “Yes, sir, Admiral, sir,” she answered sarcastically, but nonetheless submissively. “I understand you.”

“Good.” He turned back to the proprietor. “And please, Colonel Worthington, if my daughter does come in here without me at any time over the next six months, feel free to contact Civil Security and have her arrested, before you call me.”

“Dad!” she exclaimed, glaring up at him again.

Her father silenced her with a simple look, then continued, still speaking to Worthington, “You’ve been more than patient, sir. I’m truly sorry for all the trouble.”

“I appreciate your saying so, Admiral. Thank you.”

At that very moment, a pair of uniformed Civil Security officers walked in and quickly scoped out the room. Clean cut and muscular, they were two of the most confident and professional looking civilian law enforcement officers Hansen had ever seen. A frightened look of concern crossed Heather’s face as soon as she saw them. She licked her suddenly dry lips and swallowed hard.

“Admiral Hansen, I presume?” the one with the single chevron on his sleeves said in a clear, baritone voice after glancing over the admiral’s uniform.

“That’s right,” Hansen acknowledged with a nod.

“The chief said you needed some help here, sir?”

“Yes indeed, gentlemen,” he confirmed. He pointed Heather out to them. “This young lady here is my not yet fifteen year old daughter, Heather, and she’s gotten herself into a bit of trouble.” It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the officers. But with Heather looking the way she did, and human nature being human nature, he’d thought it prudent to let them know how young she was. “Now, I have to get back to my office, so I’d appreciate it if the two of you would escort her back to our quarters and see that she’s locked inside for the day.”

“Dad!” she shouted. “That’s not...”

“I don’t want to hear one more word out of you right now, Heather!” he scolded, pointing at her almost as if his finger were a lethal weapon. “You’re damn lucky I don’t just march you straight over to juvenile confinement!”

She huffed and scowled and stamped her foot in anger and frustration, but wisely didn’t say another word.

“Sure thing, Admiral,” the other officer said with a shrug of his shoulders. “We’ll be more than happy to take her home for you.”

“Good. I’ll leave it to her to lead the way to our quarters, but if she starts leading you on some kind of wild goose chase or gives you any grief at all, go ahead and lock her up for the rest of the day, on my authority as her sole parent, and I’ll pick her up this evening. Clear?”

“As crystal, sir,” the ranking officer answered. “No problem.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. Please, proceed.”

The officers took up positions on either side of her. “You heard your father, miss,” the second officer said. “Stand up. Let’s go.”

Heather huffed again as she stood up wearing an angry scowl on her face and gave her father a look that would have killed him if her eyes had been laser emitters, then stormed out of the office with the officers flanking her on both sides.

“Thank you again, Colonel Worthington,” Hansen said as soon as they closed the door, offering his hand.

“I hope your day improves, Admiral,” Worthington told him as they shook hands.

“Yeah, so do I,” Hansen agreed. And with that, he turned and walked out.

Chapter 5

Starcarrier U.E.F.S. Victory

Earth Standard Date: Saturday, 17 July 2190

Captain Suja Bhatnagar grasped the arms of her chair and slid forward to the edge of her seat, watching the action unfold on the enormous main viewscreen through unblinking eyes as her vessel’s last four plasma torpedoes soared through space and closed on the wounded and fleeing Veshtonn battlecruiser. Both interceptor squadrons, having already launched and formed a wide defensive perimeter in anticipation of the ambush, had been more effective against the lone enemy vessel than she could possibly have hoped for. No sooner had the battlecruiser jumped in than the interceptors fell upon it like a swarm of angry hornets and quickly knocked out some of its most vital systems, including all of its offensive weapons. Incredibly, the enemy hadn’t gotten off a single shot at the Victory before they’d forced it to turn tail and run.

“Come on, my little babies,” she quietly coaxed, as if her gentle, coddling words might somehow encourage the torpedoes to pursue their prey a little bit faster. “Make mama proud.”

They glowed white-hot from launch, as bright as burning magnesium, but cooled quickly as they sailed through the icy cold of space, cycling through steadily darkening shades of yellow, orange, and red, then disappearing altogether in the distance.

“Tactical display,” Bhatnagar ordered the second she lost sight of them.

Dull green lines instantly appeared on the screen, forming a grid over the image of the exterior reality and breaking it into sectors identified by small numbers in the lower right corner of each square. A narrow, dull red oval marked the location of the shrinking enemy vessel, and four blinking blue dots represented the torpedoes, each with its own set of numbers, rapidly decreasing in value to indicate its distance from target.

In what would hopefully turn out to be their final act of desperation, the enemy suddenly threw what must have been every defensive countermeasure in its inventory at the incoming torpedoes, represented on the viewscreen by dozens of small red dots that formed what looked like a kind of glowing smokescreen over the enemy vessel. But once a Mark-II plasma torpedo locked onto a target, there was no fooling it. Theoretically at least.

Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as all eyes remained glued to the screen. The red enemy vessel continued to shrink in the distance as it somehow still managed to outrun the pursuing Victory, despite the heavy damage the interceptors had inflicted upon it. The blue torpedoes continued to blink in their own, much faster pursuit. Knowing full well that the longer their pursuit dragged on, the less likely it was the torpedoes would hit their mark, the captain began to regret having given the order to fire, fearing that she’d wasted their last four torpedoes for nothing.

Then, just as she was about to proceed as if they had indeed missed their target, a blinding flare of super-heated gases like a small sun gone nova burst forth in the center of the screen and quickly expanded beyond its borders.

“Hell yeah!” the tactical officer exclaimed, waving her fist in triumph as she spun her chair around to face the captain. “Target destroyed, Captain!” she reported victoriously, just to make it official. “Completely annihilated!” she then added for good measure as she turned back to her console.

Lieutenant Julienne Irons wasn’t usually so loud and animated, and Captain Bhatnagar wouldn’t normally have tolerated such an outburst on her bridge. But the younger woman had received word only yesterday that her even younger brother, a Marine Corps PFC assigned to the Tripoli, had been killed in action two days earlier in this very star system, during a boarding action his unit had carried out against one of the Veshtonn command cruisers. Bhatnagar had suggested she take some time off afterwards to deal with her loss, but Irons had respectfully refused, saying simply that she had a score to settle with the lizards. Since that time, her already superior performance of duty had risen to a whole new level. So, as far as Bhatnagar was concerned, Lieutenant Irons’ dedication to her duties had earned her the right to celebrate every moment of her revenge. She was not going to rebuke her for it.

“Mister LaRocca,” she called out, turning to the helmsman instead. “Plot a course to the Tripoli’s sector and engage. Best speed. They need all the help they can get over there.”

“Already plotted, Captain,” the helmsman advised her as his long, slender fingers danced over both his helm and navigation controls at the same time. “Engaging now.”

Bhatnagar turned her chair around to face the fully manned four-station operations deck that dominated the rear of the bridge, and saw right away that the new engineering ensign was working there again—the teenaged-looking one whose name she could never seem to remember. That made three days in a row. Commander Marshall must really have felt a lot of confidence in the young man to assign him that much bridge time. The chief engineer usually rotated his young officers through bridge duty on a daily basis.

“Engineer,” she called out. But before she could say another word, her chair suddenly dropped out from under her and she found herself tumbling head-over-heels sternward across the ceiling as a thunderous crash and the crew’s pained and frightened screams resonated through the bridge. And then, when the artificial gravity promptly compensated for whatever catastrophe had befallen them, she fell backside-first to the operations deck with a solid thud. Excruciating pain like a high voltage electrical shock shot up her right side and down the length of her leg, and she let out a quick yelp of her own.

Purely out of instinct—she’d always preached that a ship’s captain should know her vessel’s heading at all times—she looked up at the viewscreen to find the stars rolling upward rapidly. Whatever had happened had sent the ship into a sudden and certainly unexpected high-speed positive pitch.

“What the hell was that?” she demanded as she picked herself up off the deck, wincing against the piercing pain that pulsed through her right side and shot down her leg again and again with every move she made. Then, glancing around the bridge to quickly assess the situation as she hobbled back to her chair through a thickening cloud of acrid smoke, she saw that those officers and crew who were able to, and who could afford to stay away from their stations for a few more moments, were busy running around the bridge with hand-held extinguishers—the automatic fire suppression system had apparently been knocked offline—putting out a number of small fires that had flared up.

Those personnel not helping with the fire control efforts were picking themselves up from wherever they’d come to rest and would resume their posts momentarily. As far as she could see, no one had been seriously injured. No small blessing, that, and one for which she was very grateful. She could only hope the same held true throughout the rest of her ship.

“Whatever hit us came in from below and behind us, Captain,” Lieutenant Irons reported, standing behind her broken chair and leaning over it to read the computer’s impact analysis. Broken chair? Someone had to have been thrown directly into it for it to have been broken off of and then jammed down onto its shock absorbent mounts like that.

Bhatnagar watched as the tactical officer sat down very gingerly, fearing that the chair might not support her weight. But it did, at least for the present. “Where did the Saratoga go, Lieutenant?” she asked, squirming in her own chair, trying to find a sustainable position that minimized the pressure on her injured pelvis. She expected to have one hell of a bruise on the right half of her backside tomorrow. “They’re supposed to be covering our back.”

Irons targeted her scanners on the corvette. “They’re out of the fight for good, Captain. Both jump nacelles have been severed, and their main hull has been ripped in two and is drifting apart. Multiple fires burning on several decks. Cargo holds and engineering decks are venting atmosphere. Indications of secondary explosions...” She cross-checked the Victory’s onboard sensors. “As a matter of fact,” She straightened and turned to the captain, “our onboard sensors aren’t picking up any residual radiation from direct weapons impacts. I think it was a piece of the Saratoga that hit us.”

“Escape pods?” Bhatnagar inquired hopefully, still squirming. Her hip really hurt.

“I’m on that, Captain,” the helmsman chimed in. It wasn’t really his job of course, but he wouldn’t have wanted to inadvertently vaporize any of the Saratoga’s surviving crew who might have been drifting directly behind the Victory’s fusion cowlings, had Bhatnagar called for speed. “At least ninety escape pods are free and scattered all over the place. About two dozen more are indicating occupied but have so far failed to launch. Various allied vessels are moving in from all directions to pick them up.”

“Very well.” Having finally found relative comfort by leaning on her left elbow, resting her right ankle across the top of her left foot, and pushing off the right arm of her chair to keep the pressure off her right buttock—how long was she going to be able to hold that position?—Bhatnagar looked back over her shoulder as best she could. “Engineer,” she called out again. Try as she might, she still couldn’t remember the kid’s name. “Give me a damage report, please.”

“Massive structural damage to our aft keel, Captain,” the stubble-haired tenderfoot began, reading from one of his numerous status screens. He hadn’t sat back down yet, either. “Loss of atmosphere on deck fifteen aft. Partial pressure only and zero gravity on decks twelve through fourteen aft. Emergency bulkheads...” He coughed, “...in place. Gravity on decks ten and eleven aft at forty-nine and twenty-seven percent respectively. Looks like something really big hit us, Captain,” he commented. He coughed again, and then added, “My guess is Lieutenant Irons is right about it being a piece of the Saratoga.”

“What about weapons and propulsion, Ensign?” she prodded impatiently, addressing two of the most important systems in a fight.

“Aft gun emplacements are all destroyed,” he answered as he continued down the list. First chance he got, he intended to reset the computer’s ‘priority systems’ subroutine back to its default setting so that it always listed weapons and propulsion systems first and second. Whoever had changed it was an idiot, as far as he was concerned. “Rear quarter port and starboard guns took some damage as well, but are still about eighty percent operational.” He coughed yet again, and again, and the others on the Ops deck started as well. “Energy overload in the starboard fusion reactor is approaching critical, but leveling off rapidly. Looks like Engineering’s got that under control. Main weapons and countermeasures, the drive systems, and life support are all still online.” He coughed again, and again, then fell into his chair, suddenly overcome by a coughing fit that he seemed unable to recover from.

“Emergency environmental!” Bhatnagar shouted, barely able to keep from coughing herself as she suddenly realized that the systems hadn’t already kicked in automatically.

She’d been determined before. Now she was angry. She’d been stationed aboard the Victory for more than seven years and had been its commanding officer for the last three. Not once in all that time had any enemy vessel ever gotten close enough to strike directly. Not even a single-seat fighter. Theirs was a record that she’d grown quite proud of over the years. One whose end—even an indirect strike counted, in her book—she took very personally.

“If we’ve still got weapons and propulsion and life support, then we’re still in this,” she proclaimed loud enough for everyone on the bridge to hear. “Miss Irons, locate the sorry bastard who did this and prepare to send them straight to Hell! Mister LaRocca, as soon as Saratoga’s escape pods are clear and we know where the enemy is, go after them!”

“Yes, ma’am!” the helmsman answered with determination as he finished bringing the ship’s attitude back under control.

Unable to reach for her comm-panel without shifting her weight to her throbbing hip, Bhatnagar leaned slightly forward at the waist and tapped the comm-pin on her collar instead. “CAG, this is the captain. What’s the latest on our fighter squadrons?”

“We’ve just lost two more planes from the One-Eighteenth, Captain,” the air group commander answered immediately, “but they managed to take out that Veshtonn capitol ship that was bearing down on the Tripoli first. The rest are hooking up with a fighter wing from the Nimitz as we speak to go after the battlecruisers in that sector.”

“Hold one of the interceptor squadrons back to cover our rear. We just lost our aft guns and we’re going after the bastard who’s responsible.”

“Understood, Captain.”

“Miss Irons...”

The ship suddenly lurched again, tossing everyone who wasn’t sitting down to the shuddering deck as multiple strikes rumbled one after another through her bowels. The lights flickered and dimmed, flared brightly, then went out altogether. Fortunately, the emergency lights came up a second later. Red tinted and dimmer by half than the main lights, but adequate.

“Damage report!” Bhatnagar demanded.

“Main weapons and starboard missile launchers offline, Captain!” Irons shouted. “Port launchers destroyed!”

“Life support on emergency backup!” the engineer added, his fear more than evident in his near panicked voice.

“Damn it!” Bhatnagar exclaimed. “Damn those bloody lizards! Sergeant Noonian, find me a clear channel to Task Force Command and scramble it. I want to talk to Eagle-One Actual.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the cyberclone responded, staring blankly into space as always. Having originally been grown just prior the Brix-Cyberclone Cessation Act of 2162 and enhanced to serve as a combat platoon’s radioman, Staff Sergeant Noonian’s cybernetic implants included a universal communications port hardwired directly to his brain that enabled him to plug himself into his panel and manipulate his equipment simply by thinking about it, which made him the fastest communications specialist in the fleet. Given a choice, he’d have preferred to become a scientist of one kind or another, but when the BCC Act was originally passed all those years ago, eliminating his military obligation, he’d found himself to be one among thousands like him with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Society’s prejudices at the time had prevented him from getting the education necessary to pursue his dreams, so, like many other young men and women of his kind, he’d decided to enlist anyway, though he’d avoided the Army and the Marines. Free to choose from among all of the careers he’d qualified for, he’d chosen the big ships instead, and given the nature of his enhancements, Communications had seemed the logical choice.

“Channel open, Captain,” he informed her. “Routed to your panel.”

Wincing with the pain that shot down her leg again, Bhatnagar let go of the arm of her chair and slammed her fist down on the blinking direct channel switch on her comm-panel. “Task Force Command,” she hailed, “this is Captain Bhatnagar of the starcarrier Victory.”

“This is Eagle-One Actual, Victory,” the rear-admiral in command of the task force’s Solfleet contingent responded. “Go ahead.”

“The corvette Saratoga has been destroyed, sir. S-n-R operations are currently underway. Starcarrier Victory has taken critical damage to several primary systems. All main weapons are either exhausted or offline. Aft guns destroyed. Life support systems on emergency backup. As of this moment, I am declaring the Victory combat ineffective and ordering our withdrawal. My fighter squadrons are still out there, Admiral. I’m recalling the interceptors, but you’re free to assume control over the rest and redeploy at your discretion. Do you copy?”

“Affirmative, Victory,” the admiral answered, clearly disappointed. Disappointed simply in having lost two more ships, Bhatnagar knew. Not at all disappointment in her for having made the call to withdraw from the fight. “I copy and I concur. Starcarrier U.E.F.S. Victory declared and confirmed combat ineffective as of this date and time. So declared by Captain Suja Bhatnagar, U.E.F.S. Victory, Commanding. Confirmation, Rear-Admiral Joseph Wandstadt, Commander, Solfleet Contingent, Task Force Romeo-Kilo.”

“Sorry to be leaving you, Admiral. Good luck.”

With the official declaration reported and confirmed, and before Bhatnagar could sign off for good, Admiral Wandstadt added, “Your fine vessel has made a major contribution to this effort, Captain. Please express both the Tor’Kana government’s and my personal appreciation to your officers and crew after you get them to safety.”

“Will do, Admiral. Thank you. And once again, sorry to be leaving you. Victory out.”

She closed the channel, then launched herself forward to the helmsman’s side. Having forgotten about her injury for the moment, she almost fell into the pilot console when the sharp pain shot through her right hip and down the length of her leg again.

“At last report, the local jumpstation hadn’t come under attack yet,” she told him when she recovered, grimacing, teeth clenched, trying her best to ignore her discomfort. “We can make our most vital repairs there and get back into this in a matter of days. Plot a roundabout route, taking us in the opposite direction until we’re out of Veshtonn scanner range. Then swing us wide around and alternate our route along all three axis.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the young man responded.

Somehow, Bhatnagar didn’t quite believe that he completely understood the importance of her instructions. “Look at me, Ensign,” she ordered. The ensign looked her square in the eye. “It is absolutely vital that we not lead the enemy to the station, at all costs. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Ensign?”

“I understand perfectly, ma’am,” LaRocca assured her. “My sister is stationed there.”

Bhatnagar stared back at him for several seconds. She’d never met his sister, but she’d heard a lot about her over the last few years. Having faced more than their fair share of hardships growing up, LaRocca and his younger sister were very close and contacted each other quite often, sometimes talking for hours on end just to hear each others’ voices. Given the current circumstances, that gave her cause for concern. If the jumpstation did come under attack, how difficult a time might the helmsman have concentrating on his duties? Would the distraction prove too much for him? Might he make a mistake at some critical moment that they would all then pay for with their lives?

Irons had lost her brother and had only grown stronger and more determined as a result, but that wasn’t the same thing. In her case the loss had already occurred. She hadn’t had a chance to fear for her sibling’s life—no more than usual, anyway—but in LaRocca’s case...

She snapped out of it. No time to speculate what might be. What already was required her undivided attention. “How fast can you get us there given those parameters?” she asked him.

LaRocca entered the pertinent data into his board, then explained, “Given the current condition of our fusion drive, we’re looking at an E-T-A of approximately two days. Maybe a little less if I keep the course changes to a minimum.”

Bhatnagar sighed. Two days. Clearly, that wasn’t at all what she’d wanted to hear. But the station had to be protected. “I guess that’ll have to do,” she said. “As long as our life support holds out, that is.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“CAG, recall the interceptors,” she ordered, speaking a little louder as she limped back to her chair. She knew from the immediacy with which the CAG had responded to her the last time that he was monitoring an open channel to the bridge.

“Aye, Captain,” he answered.

Minutes later, as soon as the last interceptor had returned and landed safely, and with great regret filling her captain’s heart, the Solfleet starcarrier U.E.F.S. Victory withdrew from what had quickly grown into the largest and most vital campaign of the entire decades-old war.

Chapter 6

Sweating profusely and writhing in agony on the deck, while at the same time crying for his slaughtered family, Federation Vice-President Jonathan Harkam somehow still managed to reach out and grab the front of Hansen’s jacket in his quivering, blood-stained fist. He pulled him closer, bared his clenched teeth and spat streams of red saliva over his chin as he grunted against the pain, then stared up at him through red, swollen eyes.

“Please!” he managed to force through the pain. “Oh God, it burns! Make it stop!”

Hansen took hold of Harkam’s wrist with both hands and tried with all his strength to pull free of his desperate, vice-like grip, but the dying man only tightened his grasp to the point where Hansen thought he heard a finger snap and pulled him closer. “Mister Vice-President,” Hansen responded as calmly as he could. “I can’t just...”

“Yes you CAN!” the dying vice-leader of the unified free world roared. Then, gasping for every breath, he pleaded, “Please, Major! KILL me! Quickly! Stop the...Stop the pain! STOP THE PAIN!” he screamed.

“Dad?”

Hansen whirled around as far as the vice-president’s grasp would allow and glared wide-eyed at the horribly brutalized, lifeless body of the dying man’s teenage daughter. But she was already dead! The beast had ripped her open from the inside out—from her genitals to her sternum! She couldn’t possibly have spoken! She couldn’t possibly!

Harkam jerked Hansen hard, drawing his attention back to him. “Please, Major!” he pleaded, crying openly, barely able to speak through the agony anymore. “Do it!” He coughed suddenly, spewing a foot-high fountain of dark red-brown blood that barely missed Hansen’s face when he recoiled, then splattered back over his chin and his suit coat. “Do...it,” he begged once more.

“Dad?”

Hansen ignored the dead girl’s ghostly voice. Harkam’s entire family had been brutally slaughtered, and the vice-president himself had been pumped full of...of whatever it was that damn beast had pumped him full of. If the poor man’s cries were to be believed, then he was literally burning to death from the inside out.

He drew his sidearm and slowly pressed the muzzle to the vice-president’s temple. He drew several short, deep breaths and licked his suddenly very dry lips. But he just couldn’t bring himself to squeeze the trigger.

“DO IT!” Harkam shrieked through the pain, his tears tinted red with blood. Then he suddenly started shaking Hansen violently back and forth as he lost whatever control he’d been clinging to and convulsed, screaming and crying even louder than before. “OH GOD!” he screamed, spitting and coughing up blood. “DO IT!”

“Dad, wake up.”

Hansen closed his eyes and turned away. “Forgive me,” he whispered. Then he drew a long, deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.

He gasped and opened his eyes wide, startling Heather, who quickly retreated several feet back from where she’d been sitting on the side of his bed. Then, after taking a moment to catch her breath, she slowly approached him again and asked, “Dad? Are you okay?”

He rolled his head toward the voice to find Heather standing beside his bed, looking down at him. He exhaled sharply—he hadn’t realized he was holding his breath—then drew another deep breath and relaxed as his eyes finally focused on her. “I’m fine,” he answered. Then he asked her, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. At least not with me anyway,” she answered, her voice full of concern as she sat back down at his side again. “But it looked like you were having a pretty bad nightmare. Are you sure you’re all right?”

He nodded, then answered, “Yeah, I’m sure. Sorry if I woke you up.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “you didn’t. I was already up. It’s almost nine o’clock in the morning.” She hesitated a moment, then continued, “Dad...” but stopped right there and looked away.

Hansen gazed at his daughter as the fog of sleep cleared and he gathered his wits about him. She obviously wanted to tell him something, or more likely wanted to ask something of him, but was seemingly afraid to do so. He gave her a few more moments to gather her courage, but when it became apparent that she didn’t know how to say whatever she wanted to say, he prompted her by asking, “What is it, Heather?”

She glanced at him again, hesitated for another moment, then finally looked him in the eye, took a deep breath, and spoke up. “Okay. Now, I know I’m grounded for two weeks, and I know it’s for a good reason, but Candice and Corrine just called me a few minutes ago. They’re getting together with Debra in a little while and going out to brunch, then going to see that new Kent Rowland movie at the Rotunda theater, and they invited me to go with them. I was just wondering if it would be all right for me to go with them, just this once?”

“You’re right, Heather,” he assured her. “You are grounded for two weeks, and it is for a good reason.”

“I know, but it’s only for a few hours,” she calmly explained.

“No.”

“Please, Daddy?” she whined, raising the center of her brow and flashing her baby greens in her best imitation of innocence yet. “There’s no shopping involved, and I’ll come right back after. I promise.”

“You were caught stealing, Heather,” he coldly reminded her, unmoved. Years of near constant training had made him immune to her distraught pleas for leniency. “Again. And this is the last time I’m going to repeat this without additional consequences. You are grounded for at least two weeks, and are not going anywhere.”

“C’mon, Dad!” she practically begged. “Please! It’s Kent Rowland!”

“I don’t care who it is, Heather,” he calmly conveyed. “You’re not going out for at least the next two weeks, and that’s final.”

“But all my other friends are going to see it this weekend, too!” she complained, near tears. “I’ll be the only one who hasn’t seen it, and I won’t be able to talk about it with them!”

“Two weeks,” he said firmly, bringing the discussion to a close, at least in his mind.

But Heather wasn’t finished. “That’s not fair!” she shouted, switching from desperation to anger in the blink of an eye, as if someone had thrown a switch inside her head. “You never let me do anything I want to do!”

“Want to try for three weeks?” he asked sternly, staring her down—no easy feat for most other people when lying on their backs and looking up at the person they’re arguing with, but easy enough for him—confident that she’d finally realize he was dead serious, and that that was that. End of discussion.

She recoiled slightly, stared back at him for a few silent seconds, then slapped her hands down on the bed with an angry grunt and shot to her feet and shouted, “You can be so fucking unreasonable sometimes, you know that! I fucking hate you!” Then she whirled around and stormed out of his bedroom, no doubt wishing there were some way to slam the door as it quietly slid closed behind her.

Hansen sighed, then said to the lingering hostility, “I love you, too, Princess.” Then he yawned.

She was his daughter, his only child, and as difficult as she could be to deal with sometimes, he loved her very much, unconditionally, no matter what. Someday, he knew, that love would pay off and she’d thank him for staying strong and putting up with all the grief she’d caused him over the years. At least, that was what his parenting counselor had always said, back when he still had time to attend their sessions.

Would be nice if today turned out to be that day.

He drew a deep breath, heard the shower water come on as he slowly exhaled, then reached up and wiped a layer of perspiration from his forehead. What the hell was going on, anyway? Had he eaten some bad food last night or something? He hadn’t had any nightmares in a long time, let alone those nightmares. Not in nearly two decades, in fact. So why now all of the sudden?

“Must be stress,” he mumbled under his breath.

He lay there for the next several minutes and allowed his mind to linger on the memories of that horrific tragedy from so many years ago. Then, suddenly, it hit him. Something wasn’t as it should be. Something in the here and now. Something wasn’t right with...with what? What was it? What had caused the little hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end?

He thought about work—about the mystery that had come to light just yesterday. Was it something about the man—the one who claimed to be O’Donnell? Unlikely. The question of his identity was straight forward enough. The alleged originator of the message either was or was not the former member of the Excalibur crew. Period. They’d figure that out one way or another soon enough.

Something about the starcruiser Albion then? No. No, that didn’t feel right either. The question of that vessel’s status at the time of the Excalibur’s destruction, while certainly still an unknown at this early stage of the newly reopened investigation, wasn’t what was bothering him at that moment either.

Was it the fact that more than nine-hundred personnel, all of whom had been assigned to the Mars Orbital Shipyards at that same time, were all long since dead? Clearly, something was very wrong there, but no. That wasn’t it either.

There was something else. Something unrelated to the whole Excalibur question, he somehow knew. Something more...more tangible, and much more immediate. But what was it?

Something to do with Heather? As usual, she was running around their quarters in her underwear again—he hadn’t even realized that until just now—and she was certainly behaving like the same mood-swinging problem child he’d always known and loved, so everything was status quo where she was concerned. Still, if there really was something wrong, there was a good chance she was connected to it in some way.

He listened for a moment to the shower. Then for another moment, and then another...and still another. That was it. The shower water. No splashes, no pauses, no changes in sound whatsoever. Just a constant unvarying flow.

He threw off his blankets and climbed out of bed, adjusted his pajama pants and pulled on his robe. Then he stepped out into the living room and caught Heather, fully dressed—at least what she considered to be fully dressed—with her hands wrist deep in the pried open door panel, apparently trying to bypass the lock code. She looked across the room at him, met his eyes, and froze stiff, unblinking, like the proverbial deer in headlights.

“Go to your room, Heather,” he said calmly. “Right now.”

There must have been something unyielding in the forced calm tone of his voice, because with no reaction beyond a simple sigh of resignation, not even the usual disgusted roll of her eyes, Heather immediately and quite silently complied with her father’s order.

Chapter 7

In order to maintain required manning levels throughout their involvement in the ongoing battle to defend the Rosha’Kana star system while still providing her crew sufficient time off to rest and rejuvenate, Captain Bhatnagar had instructed her executive officer to extend the regular eight hour duty shifts to twelve hours, and to shorten the rotation cycle by one day. While it was true that the modified schedule actually added four hours to everyone’s regular duty week, it also provided them an extra day on standby—an extra day they didn’t have to work, provided the call to battle stations wasn’t sounded. That old but innovative solution to the emergency manning problem—there were a handful of grumblers, of course, who wouldn’t have described it in quite that way—had allowed everyone to enjoy some sense of normalcy, despite having to operate under extended alert conditions.

Everyone, that is, except for Captain Bhatnagar herself. She’d been pulling sixteen to eighteen hour shifts every day, seven days per week, for the past three weeks, and except for an occasional bathroom break she hadn’t left the bridge at all over the last twenty-seven hours. Not even to have her injured hip taken care of, despite the fact that her ambitious executive officer—too ambitious for his own good, she sometimes thought—had shown up for his own shift a couple of hours early and had threatened to have the chief medical officer relieve her of duty for at least a week if she didn’t go to Medbay on her own, and then go straight to her cabin for some much needed sleep.

She knew he was right, of course. Over the few hours of relative calm that had passed since they’d been forced to withdraw from battle, her hip had really started to ache a lot, no matter how she sat, and exhaustion had finally begun to catch up to her. She didn’t doubt that the best thing for her to do would indeed be to leave the bridge in his more than capable hands, have the doctor take care of her hip, and then retire to her cabin for a few hours. Even better, for a few days. But she also knew that her ship and her crew weren’t out of danger yet, and her ship and her crew always...always took priority over her personal needs.

“Captain!” her X.O. sharply whispered.

Bhatnagar jumped at the sudden intrusion and opened her eyes, and felt a sharp twinge shoot through her hip and upper leg, which she then realized had gone numb from the back of her knee to the small of her back. That couldn’t be good, she knew.

She peered up at her second-in-command, towering over her with his massive forearms folded across his broad chest, staring down at her through those narrow, penetrating hazel eyes of his. He looked like an old-time comic book superhero or a frustrated father standing over his disobedient child. An interesting talent, she mused, the ability to shout and whisper at the same time without attracting anyone else’s attention. A talent that he’d made good use of several times over the last few hours.

“Yes, Mister Rawlins, what is it?” she inquired, feigning impatience, even though she knew it wouldn’t faze him in the least.

“What is it?” he asked in return with a snicker, keeping his voice as low as possible. “Are you kidding me, Captain?” Unfazed, as expected, he uncrossed his arms, leaned on the arm of her chair, and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “You’re now working on your third straight shift. Do I really have to spell it out for you?”

She drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled to buy a few seconds, but she couldn’t think of a single argument to support her staying on the bridge. “No, Commander,” she answered, finally surrendering to the inevitable, “that won’t be necessary.” With no small amount of difficulty, she stood up, “The bridge is yours,” and hobbled toward the doors. But before they opened to allow her exit, the ship vibrated and rolled slightly to port. Not enough to throw her off balance, and only for a brief moment, but definitely enough to grab her and everyone else’s attention. She stopped and turned on her good leg to face the viewscreen, which showed nothing but the distant stars ahead of them.

“Report,” Rawlins commanded as he moved behind the command console and sat down.

“Detonation astern, Commander,” Lieutenant Irons responded, checking her instruments. “Approximately eighty meters distance.”

“Detonation of what, Miss Irons?” the captain inquired as she started limping toward the tactical officer’s station.

Irons turned and looked up at her commanding officer apologetically, swallowed hard, and reluctantly reported, “Unknown, Captain.” She knew from her first days at the academy that when the ship’s captain asked questions, the ship’s captain wanted answers, not unknowns, especially when the ship’s captain was already frustrated over having to deal with something that interfered with her ability to command. Having to respond in that way was something no junior officer ever wanted to do. Her least of all, as far as she was concerned.

As a life-long overachiever, Irons expected to rise quickly through the ranks—having made full lieutenant already, she’d gotten off to a good start—and to earn her own command one day. Perhaps even to break Commodore Andrea Johansson’s record and become the youngest ship’s captain in fleet history. True, Johansson had still been a commander by rank when she got her first ship, and that ship had been nothing more than a deep space troop transport that made the training run back and forth between Earth and Lucifer’s Lair, but it had been her ship just the same. At least until someone blew it out from under her ten years ago. At any rate, not knowing the answers to the captain’s questions was not the road to quick advancement.

But at least she was prepared to explain why she didn’t know, and explain she did, before the captain could even draw a breath to say anything else. “Whatever it was didn’t register on the sensors or trip a proximity alarm, and it either flew or drifted right into our fusion blast, so there isn’t anything left of it to analyze.”

“And doesn’t the fact that it didn’t register on sensors or trip a proximity alarm indicate to you that its exterior was almost assuredly made of bolamide, Lieutenant?” Bhatnagar asked, pointing out the obvious.

Irons opened her mouth to answer, but found herself without words.

“Think we’ve got ourselves a shadow, Captain?” Rawlins asked, hoping to rescue the pretty young lieutenant, at least for the moment. But Bhatnagar ignored him and continued staring at Irons, waiting for her answer.

Thoroughly embarrassed over having missed the most obvious explanation—everyone in Solfleet knew that bolamide was the rare, sensor and scanner-invisible element in which the Veshtonn encased their missiles and torpedoes—especially after all they’d been through over the past few weeks, Irons finally dropped her gaze and timidly answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

“So the fact that there’s nothing left of it is therefore irrelevant, isn’t it,” the captain went on admonishing. Then, without waiting for an answer, she started limping back to her station again. Rawlins watched her approach, but didn’t budge to surrender the seat. “Conduct a quick, wide range sensor sweep, Lieutenant,” she ordered as she stepped up to the executive officer’s side. “If the results are negative, then follow up with a tight, short range scan of the surrounding area and expand outward in a...”

The ship rumbled and lurched forward suddenly and rolled hard to starboard. Bhatnagar tried to grab hold of the command console and Rawlins tried to grab her arm, but both of them missed their targets and she fell back and cracked the back of her head hard against the edge of the Operations deck.

Rawlins slapped his hand down on the console’s only green button and shouted, “Medical team to the bridge!” then practically leapt out of the command chair and rushed to her aid.

“Direct hit, port side astern!” the engineer shouted.

“Calmly, Ensign,” the executive officer reminded the younger man. “I won’t understand your reports if you’re hysterical.” Then, being very careful not to move the captain’s neck as he checked the back of her head, he called out, “Tactical report.” No blood. That was good. At least he assumed it was good—he wasn’t a doctor, of course—but she was out cold.

“Veshtonn battlecruiser directly astern, Commander,” Irons reported. “Power building in their main laser cannons. They’re preparing to fire again.”

“Evasive maneuvers, helm,” Rawlins ordered. The enemy was diverting weapons power to their laser cannons. That meant they’d already exhausted everything else. At least they had that in their favor.

“Fusion drive is offline,” the engineer advised, still keyed up, but significantly more composed than before. “All we’ve got are high-speed thrusters.”

So much for the flight half of fight-or-flight, Rawlins concluded. “Sound battle stations,” he ordered as he leaned down over the captain and listened to make sure she was still breathing. “Weapons free, and scramble the interceptors!”

* * *

Lieutenant Junior Grade Thomas Patrick O’Donnell, the Victory’s newest and greenest interceptor pilot, had barely picked himself up off his squadron’s ready-room deck when he heard all six of the alert interceptors power up their main engines and catapult down the launch deck, two at a time, like half a dozen missiles rocketing out of their tubes. He tossed his pool cue onto the table as the room lights turned red and the alert klaxon started blaring—he hadn’t really wanted to shoot pool by himself anyway—then grabbed his flight vest and pulled it on as he fell into line with the rest of the scrambling pilots.

“Battle stations, battle stations,” the all too familiar announcement resonated from the ship-wide as they stampeded out onto the launch deck and dashed toward their planes. “Veshtonn battlecruiser astern. Fighter pilots, man your planes. Scramble all interceptors. Battle stations, battle stations.”

“Lieutenant J.G. Thomas O’Donnell, fit to stick!” he shouted to his ground crew chief as he reached his plane and started up the ladder toward the cockpit, indicating that he was in no way physically impaired or otherwise unable to fly.

“Star Hawk eighty-one thirty-seven, fit to fly!” the grizzled old crew chief responded proudly, indicating that his starfighter had finally been nursed back to one-hundred percent operational status.

O’Donnell had learned early on that, like most other crew chiefs throughout the fleet, Chief Simmons thought of his fighter as his own, and that its overall condition was a matter of personal pride for him. But this was the first time since O’Donnell’s first and very nearly last combat mission that he’d made that proclamation, and it came as such a surprise that O’Donnell actually stopped halfway up the ladder and looked back at him, but he didn’t have to ask.

“We just installed a whole shit-load of new parts in the old girl,” the chief advised him.

“Great,” O’Donnell grumbled. Like all the fledgling fighter pilots onboard, he’d heard all the old stories about untried replacement parts failing in the middle of a fight. In some cases, the planes had actually broken up on their own under the stresses associated with high-speed combat maneuvers, if the stories were to be believed. He ascended quickly and, bracing himself on either side of the narrow fuselage, threw his feet into the cockpit and dropped into the seat. “That’s just fucking great,” he grumbled.

The chief appeared at his side not three seconds later with his helmet, seal ring, and gloves in hand. “You know damn well I don’t like the idea of flying into combat with untested parts, Chief,” O’Donnell sternly reminded him.

“Not to worry, L-T,” the chief assured him as he dropped the gloves into the rookie’s lap and fastened the seal ring in place around his neck. “There isn’t a single story you’ve heard that I haven’t, and there isn’t a single brand new part in your plane. We took them off Sunshine’s bird. Damn Veshtonn shot he hell out of it yesterday. Won’t fly no more, so it’s just a collection of spare parts now.”

“Who installed them?” O’Donnell asked as he pulled his gloves on. He hadn’t learned to trust any of the other deck gang yet.

“Just me and my hammer, boss, and I managed to increase your guns’ ammo capacity by close to ten percent, too.”

O’Donnell looked at the old West Tennessean in a whole new light. As the senior ground crew supervisor, Chief Simmons shouldered the overall responsibility for all of the ship’s small vessels, shuttles, attack fighters, and interceptors alike. The attack fighters had all been handed over to the task force right before the Victory pulled out of the fight, so they at least could stay in the fight, but the chief still rarely ever had time to get his own hands dirty anymore, despite how much he loved doing so. So for him to have devoted the kind of time that job must have taken really said something about how he felt toward his newest pilot.

O’Donnell grinned—he was even referring to himself as belonging to the chief—but before he could say anything more than “Thank you, Chief,” before he could get all gushy and sentimental, the leathery old senior NCO pushed his flight helmet down over his head and locked the seal into place.

“Now you look here, L-T,” he shouted over the din echoing through the launch bayas he started strapping O’Donnell into his seat. “I expect to have to tell my people to paint a few lizard heads under your name when you get back here. With all that extra ammo you’re carrying, you should make ‘Ace’ in no time.”

“I’ll be happy just to make it back home again, Chief,” O’Donnell responded, hollering through his helmet’s face shield, unsure whether or not the chief could possibly hear him over the deafening, high-pitched whine of the other planes’ combined engines as they all started powering up at the same time.

The chief quickly pulled his wired headset into place—it doubled as heavy-duty hearing protection—and opened the comm-channel, then connected O’Donnell’s oxygen intake and personal electronics package to their power sources behind the seat. Then, with a quick but sharp salute for emphasis, he said, “Good hunting, Lieutenant,” and then descended out of sight.

“I thought you never addressed us rookie pilots by our proper rank, Chief,” O’Donnell commented, recalling their recent and quite memorable first meeting with a sense of humorous nostalgia as he closed and locked his canopy.

“After all we’ve been through lately, L-T, no one’s a rookie anymore.”

“No, I suppose not.” He couldn’t have agreed more.

“Star Hawk thirty-seven, this is the CAG,” the air group commander’s voice suddenly broke in. “If you and the chief are finished bonding, Spinner, it’s time to go to work.”

“Affirm that, sir,” O’Donnell responded with a grin.

“Good hunting, Spinner. CAG out.”

“All right, L-T,” Simmons quickly cut in, getting back to business. “Let’s get you in the air. By the numbers now. Main power, initiate.”

“Main power...” He flipped the safety caps up and pressed the switches, “initiated.”

* * *

“Air Group reports all interceptors manned and preparing for launch, Commander,” Noonian reported. “Will advise when they’re all in the air.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Rawlins responded, standing up and backing out of the way as the med-techs rushed onto the bridge, medical kit and antigravity stretcher in tow, and quickly went to work on the still unconscious captain. “Helm, come to course...”

“Enemy vessel firing!” Irons interrupted.

“Helm, hard to port!” Rawlins ordered as he hurried back to the command station and sat down. “Come to course two four zero, pitch plus ten degrees. We’ve got to protect our ass end. All weapons with a solution, target the enemy vessel and engage at will. Weapons free, but for God sake, don’t shoot down our own interceptors!”

The deck shuddered beneath his feet for several seconds as a low rumble that sounded like the distant thunder of an approaching summer storm resounded through the bridge.

“Missile strike on the port side, aft quarter,” Irons reported.

“No appreciable damage, sir,” the engineer added.

“How the hell can you tell?” Rawlins mumbled under his breath. The port side aft quarter was so badly mangled already that any more damage wouldn’t really make much of a difference, unless of course the inner bulkheads were breeched deeper than they already had been. Missile strike, he pondered. Apparently the enemy hadn’t expended the rest of its ordinance after all. Either that, he considered as he glanced to his left to see the med-techs strapping the captain onto the stretcher, or there were more than one of them out there.

God forbid.

“Looks like a pretty serious concussion, sir,” the senior med-tech advised him when he noticed him looking. “She also has a fractured pelvis.” Then, as they powered up the stretcher and raised it up off the deck, he added, “Her head should be all right in a few days, but the pelvis is going to take a while.”

And with that, they hurriedly carted the captain off the bridge.

* * *

As the newest fighter pilot in the 117th Tactical Interceptor Squadron, Lieutenant J.G. O’Donnell always launched as one of the outboard planes in the last group of four. That way, if he inadvertently committed some stupid rookie error that led to catastrophe and fouled the entire deck, most of the rest of the squadron would already be in the air. Exactly what kind of rookie error he could possibly commit when all he had to do for launch was roll up to the line, wait for the catapult, and hang on, he had no idea, but that was beside the point. If he did do something that led to disaster, then the very worst he could do would be to prevent himself and three other interceptors from launching. While it was certainly true that launch accidents were rare, and that the few that did occur from time to time didn’t always involve rookies, the overall percentages were high enough throughout the fleet to warrant the practice.

At least that was what they’d taught him in flight school.

Nevertheless, he hated to wait until last. He wanted to go! Call it youthful enthusiasm, dedication to duty, or just a simple case of the nervous jitters. Whichever one, it didn’t matter to him. All he knew was that when the red lights flashed and alert klaxon blared, he wanted to jump into his plane, get into the air, and go to work.

The narrow indicator bar at the base of the instrument panel that he’d been staring at for the last few anxious moments changed from red to green. His turn, finally.

He gazed out at the space-suited launch safety officer, the LSO, who pointed his bright green guide lamps at him and then waved him forward. Following his signals very carefully, O’Donnell slowly maneuvered his plane forward, turned slightly to the left, then hit the brakes as soon as the man crossed his lamps over his head and switched their color to bright red. Then he watched on the small monitor between his knees as the catapult, still smoking from the previous launch, quickly returned from the far end of the deck and locked into place on his front landing gear strut.

The entire image turned green, indicating a positive lock. He glanced out at the other interceptors to his right, already in position, and rested his head against the extra thick padding inside the back of his helmet. Then he grasped the safety handles on either side of the cockpit, and held on tight.

The thrill of high-G launch came exactly two seconds later, giving the LSO just enough time to duck under the wings to avoid being decapitated. Three seconds after that, O’Donnell found himself in open space once more, which as far as he was concerned was exactly where he belonged...and was where the rest of his squadron had already maneuvered into assault formation and was arching wide left to come around and approach the enemy from their left forequarter. Their sister squadron, O’Donnell knew, would come in from the right at virtually the same time and go low, while his own squadron would go high.

He and his wingman broke hard left almost as one and moved into their positions quickly—for a pair of fighter jockeys who hadn’t flown together for very long, they’d sure learned to anticipate each other well—as did the other pair who’d launched with them.

“All right, boys and girls, heat ‘em up,” the squadron commander ordered. “Weapons free. You know the drill. Stay with your wingman. Concentrate fire on weapons and drive systems as much as possible. And remember, they recently altered their tactics, so you can expect to see enemy fighters in the air at any time. And whatever you do, stay out of the Victory’s firing solution and watch out for the one-eighteenth! Major Landau and I don’t want any more losses in either squadron. Least of all, stupid ones.”

O’Donnell opened the feed ports to his plane’s twin 32mm pulse cannons and energized the ammunition, then powered up the missile launch systems and set countermeasures to deploy automatically if the enemy got a lock and fired on him.

“Incoming ordnance twelve o’clock level!” another pilot warned.

O’Donnell looked up from his instruments just in time to see a missile heading straight toward him from dead ahead. He cut the throttle and threw the stick forward and hard left as the surge of adrenaline flooded through his system, breaking low left and rolling right under his wingman, then quickly throttled up to full and rocketed away like one of his own missiles.

“Jesus Christ, Spinner!” his wingman shouted. “Warn me next time! You damn near cut me in half!”

Spinner. O’Donnell still didn’t care much for his call sign. All through flight school he’d hoped to be tagged with something flashy like ‘Firehawk’ or ‘Viper’. Something that sounded strong and dangerous. Something to be feared. But by the time he began starfighter training he’d already logged over two hundred hours in atmospheric fighters, and he’d developed a tendency to roll out every time he had to pull a hard maneuver. His wingman in training had tagged him with ‘Spinner’ after seeing him do it just twice, and the name had stuck.

“Sorry, Caesar,” he responded to his Roman-born colleague as he caught his breath. “Didn’t have time to talk first.”

“All right, cut the chatter, boys,” the squadron commander ordered. “We’ve got a job to do, so let’s do it. Spinner, get your ass back in formation, on the double.”

“Be there in five seconds, Major, but someone better shoot that thing down. It’s heading right for the ship.”

“That’s what the follow-on team is for, Lieutenant?”

O’Donnell huffed, annoyed with himself. “Way to go, O’Donnell,” he mumbled. “Try concentrating on your own damn job.”

Use of a follow-on team was an unofficial tactic that the CAG had instituted soon after they arrived on station in the Rosha’Kana system. Rather than join their fellow pilots in combat, a single pair of interceptors stayed back to defend the carrier against any hard ordinance that might slip past the rest of the squadron. The assignment rotated with each mission, so everyone got a turn—O’Donnell and his wingman were of course last in line. The tactic had proven quite effective and had literally saved the ship on at least three occasions—a fact the major had already reminded him of once before.

“Splash two missiles,” one of this mission’s follow-on pilots reported a few seconds later. “Now quit lettin’ ‘em, through. We’re tryin’ to get some sleep back here.”

“All right, boys and girls! Here we go!”

Like they had so many times before over the last several days, the pilots of the starcarrier Victory’s 116th and 117th Tactical Interceptor Squadrons, with the single exception of the 117th’s pretty little Asian ‘Sunshine’, who no longer had a plane to fly—she’d spend the duration of this battle at the CAG’s side, watching and learning—swooped in and took full advantage of the Veshtonn battlecruiser’s single biggest design flaw. Its lack of effective close-in defenses. They swarmed the enemy vessel like dozens of angry killer bees, mercilessly stinging every vital and vulnerable section they could target with their 32mm rapid-fire pulse cannons, shield neutralizing proton beams, and even a few armor-piercing hellfire cluster-rockets.

“Enemy vessel’s fighter bay doors are opening!” someone warned as O’Donnell and Caesar soared sternward over the battlecruiser’s dorsal superstructure. “We overshot! Won’t get a clear shot in time to stop the launch!”

“This is Star Hawk thirty-seven,” O’Donnell eagerly responded as he and Caesar passed head-to-head between the caller and his wingman. “We’ll be in position in five seconds.”

They passed beyond the vessel’s main engine baffles, then quickly spun their planes a hundred eighty degrees lateral to face their stern and hit the afterburners. Thank God for G-suits, O’Donnell thought as his plane’s rapidly slowing inertia pressed him deeper into his seat. Otherwise, he had no doubt he would have blacked out. He had to be pulling close to nine G’s!

He flipped the selector switch from pulse cannons to rockets, and his targeting computer immediately started beeping as its reticals tracked toward the target he’d chosen—the left half of the enemy’s fighter deck. Caesar would take care of the right side. Then, just as the last of the excessive G’s eased and he started closing on the enemy, the targeting computer stopped beeping and started emitting a steady tone. “I have target lock,” he advised his wingman.

“Hellfire enema coming right up,” Caesar replied. “FIRE!”

“Firing!” O’Donnell confirmed. He jerked the trigger twice in rapid succession and launched his first pair of hellfire cluster rockets.

“Firing!” his wingman echoed.

Just as the first group of enemy fighters lifted off their deck and launched into space, all four rockets shed their outer shells and dispersed their payloads—twenty glowing, white-hot, hypersonic, dart-like armor-piercing high explosive missiles each, each one on its own slightly different trajectory. The eighty mini-missile shower of death rained down on the enemy barely a second later. Many of them tore into their fighters as if they were made of cheap tin and blew them all straight to hell in a chain of nearly simultaneous bright green explosions that stretched back into their launch bay. Those missiles with no fighter in their path rained down on the launch deck itself and had much the same effect, until one massive orange-yellow blast erupted so brightly that the Star Hawks’ canopies instantly blacked out for a few seconds. At least one of the missiles must have found its way into below-decks refueling tanks, O’Donnell concluded.

When the explosion cleared and the debris field dispersed—O’Donnell had half expected something to hit him—the enemy’s launch bay and all of its fighters had been annihilated.

“Wuhooooo!” O’Donnell shouted ecstatically. “Splash everything! Launch bay and all enemy fighters destroyed!”

“All right, Star Hawks! Let’s blow this devil straight back to hell!”

“Come on, Caesar! Let’s finish this thing off and go have a drink!”

Caesar didn’t answer.

“Caesar?” Nothing. “Star Hawk thirty-eight, this is thirty-seven, come in,” he called, growing concerned. “Caesar, do you copy?”

“Go find him, Spinner,” the major ordered. “The rest of us will finish this.”

“Copy that, sir.”

O’Donnell reversed thrust and turned his plane away from the burning enemy vessel, then stopped. Ahead of him, Caesar’s wrecked plane tumbled end over end, growing smaller as it drifted farther away. “Aw shit, Caesar.”

“Go after him, Spinner. His comm could be down. He might still be alive.”

“Copy that, sir. I’m on it.”

* * *

The older and more experienced combat veterans among the bridge crew knew better than to celebrate their apparent victory too early. So, too, should the younger among them have known, considering all they’d been through over the last few weeks. Nevertheless, their exuberant shouts of victory filled the bridge, but only for a few short seconds.

“Enemy vessel closing on a collision course, Commander!” Lieutenant Irons hollered over the noise, putting an immediate damper on the elation. “Velocity increasing steadily.”

“They mean to ram us,” Rawlins knew instantly, stating the obvious. He also knew from over a dozen years of experience that that could mean only one thing. They had indeed beaten this enemy, and this enemy knew it. For the Veshtonn, ramming was the tactic of absolute last resort.

“Helm, take evasive action. Miss Irons, what’s the status of their defense shields?”

“All readings indicate they’re down, sir,” she reported almost before he finished asking, having already anticipated his inquiry and scanned the approaching vessel for everything she could think of.

“Good. It’s about damn time we caught a break. Arm plasma torpedoes, Lieutenant. I want a full spread...”

“We’ve already expended our torpedoes, sir,” she reminded him.

“Proton cannons then!” Rawlins shouted. “Prepare to carve that thing into scrap metal, Lieutenant!” He slapped the comm-panel. “CAG, X-O. Recall the interceptors. Wide approach. We’ll be firing cannons!”

“Affirm, X-O.”

Rawlins counted down five seconds in his head to allow the CAG time to relay the order, then gave the word. “All cannons, fire!”

Like energized blades of searing blue-white death, three beams of concentrated protons lashed out from the Victory’s port side cannons, crossed the rapidly shrinking gulf between the warring vessels, and tore into the enemy’s weakened, unprotected hull with an angry vengeance. Dozens of small yellow-green explosions with a few larger orange-red ones mixed in flared up all over the alien vessel but faded quickly into oblivion as the pockets of atmosphere or fuels that fed them bled off into space. Then, suddenly, several much larger and more violent blasts erupted amidships, and large sections of the dying vessel started breaking off and tumbling away in random directions.

“Blow, you son-of-a-bitch,” Rawlins cajoled as if speaking the words might actually make it happen. And then, almost immediately after he said it, as if out of blind obedience to the victor, what was left of the burning, slowly tumbling out of control Veshtonn battlecruiser’s main superstructure did exactly that.

Everyone cheered as the massive multicolored fireball engulfed the expanding field of wreckage in a blast so bright that the viewscreen automatically dimmed, then completely blacked out so as not to burn out altogether. But when it lit up again a few seconds later, Commander Rawlins saw immediately that their problems were far from over.

“Oh hell!” he intoned as he watched the huge, still burning section of the enemy vessel’s main hull tumble end over end, coming right at them. “Emergency evasive, Mister LaRocca!” he barked. “Push those thrusters past the red line if you have to!” Then he slapped his hand down on the all-call button and shouted, “All hands, brace for impact!”

* * *

The first thing O’Donnell saw when he maneuvered alongside Caesar’s slowly tumbling wrecked plane and slowed to match its velocity was his wingman drumming his fingers impatiently on the inside of his intact canopy. The sight actually made him chuckle for a second or two, but his sense of relief at not having lost his friend far outweighed whatever humor he saw in the situation. Dented and disfigured, deeply scarred and partially burned black, Caesar’s reinforced cockpit had nevertheless done exactly what it had been designed to do. It had survived the collision with whatever had mangled the rest of the plane and had saved the pilot’s life. And for that, for keeping his friend alive, O’Donnell was grateful. Though probably not as grateful as Caesar was, he mused.

The second thing he saw—realized without seeing, actually, since he couldn’t see his friend’s face very well through his helmet’s face shield—was that Caesar was talking.

O’Donnell glanced at his instruments, saw that he wasn’t picking up Caesar’s carrier wave, then looked back out at Caesar and tapped his fingers to the side of his helmet to let him know that he wasn’t coming across. In response, Caesar motioned as if to check the time on his watch, then threw his hands in the air. ‘About time you got here.’ O’Donnell grinned, then rested his head against his praying hands for a moment. Caesar gave him the finger with both hands, and he laughed.

Then Caesar did something else with his instruments—tried another comm channel maybe, or tried to slow his pitch with the thrusters, or whatever—and a brief shower of sparks suddenly exploded in front of him, like fireworks bursting in the night sky on the fourth of July. Flames began to flicker and rise from his panel, and his cockpit began to fill with smoke. He slapped frantically at the flames, but they would not be denied there life. If something else happened and that cockpit suddenly filled with pure oxygen...

“Caesar, get the hell outta there!” O’Donnell shouted, knowing that his friend couldn’t hear him but helpless to do anything more.

Caesar must have had the same thought at the same moment, because he quickly hit the appropriate buttons on his left forearm to seal and pressurize his flight suit, then reached for the emergency levers directly above his shoulders and blew the canopy. Denied their fuel, the flames quickly flickered and died, and the smoke dispersed into the vacuum of space. Small bursts of sparks continued to erupt for the next several seconds, but soon they ceased as well.

Elementary school science class thought everyone that for every action there was always an equal and opposite reaction. That basic law of physics held especially true in the gravity-free vacuum of deep space. So when his friend’s wrecked plane began to drift slowly away as a result of his having blown the canopy, O’Donnell simply made a very slight but necessary adjustment to his own course and speed to match its new trajectory. Then he carefully maneuvered closer to the wreckage, almost close enough to reach out and touch it, and matched its adjusted pitch.

The rest was easy. He fired his towline at the side of Caesar’s plane, then pressurized his suit and depressurized his cockpit, opened his canopy, and simply waited for his friend to evacuate his own plane and pull himself over.

“I’m in,” Caesar told him over the internal link as soon as he’d strapped himself into the rescue seat and plugged in.

“So what brings you out here so far?” O’Donnell asked him as the canopy closed them in.

“Very funny.”

O’Donnell grinned, then asked, “Seriously, what hit you?”

“I have no...” Gazing out the side while O’Donnell concentrated on safely moving away from the wreckage and turning back toward the Victory, Caesar saw it first. “Oh my God.”

“Oh my God, what?” O’Donnell asked, suddenly very concerned. “What is it, Caesar? What’s wrong?”

“Check the Victory, Tom.”

“Check the...” Then he saw it. “Aw hell.”

All they could do was watch in horror as the huge burning mass of battlecruiser wreckage crashed into their mother ship’s lower portside jump nacelle and ripped it and most of its dual support structures away from the main hull as she tried unsuccessfully to pitch downward and roll out of the way. One small section broke away and smashed into the Victory’s lower scanner array, which then ignited into a brilliant but short-lived web of spastic, electric-blue energy bolts. Then, deflected by the sheer mass of the dismembered nacelle, the wreckage crashed into the rear of the upper nacelle as well, twisted it and tore it away from its aft support structure, and then tumbled off into space.

O’Donnell could only imagine what the whole thing would have sounded like, if sound could travel through space. He could only imagine what terrifying hell his shipmates were going through at that very moment. Miraculously though, despite being severely wounded and scarred, pitching and yawing and rolling out of control, with fires breaking out through the hull in at least a dozen different places, the Victory didn’t explode.

“Jesus Christ!” one of the other pilots exclaimed.

“What the hell are we supposed to do now?” another asked.

“We are totally f...”

“Stand by, Star Hawks,” the squadron commander instructed. “Give them a chance to bring her under control. They’ll issue instructions as soon as they can.”

O’Donnell could only hope the major was right—that someone remained alive onboard their mother vessel. Onboard their home.

* * *

Still lying on the deck beside the helm station where he’d come to rest, Rawlins looked up at the viewscreen and saw the stars racing by in an upward arch. They were pitching forward again and rolling at the same time—tumbling completely out of control. But at least they were alive. Some of them, anyway.

“How bad is it, Ensign?” he asked, quickly surveying the entire bridge as he picked himself up. Somehow, with the exception of one of Lieutenant Irons’ scanner displays, which had shorted out when the array was hit—she’d put the fire out quickly and saved the rest of her instruments—the bridge appeared to have been spared any further serious damage.

“Don’t ask me how, sir, but we’ve still got our high-speed and maneuvering thrusters,” LaRocca answered as he wiped a small trickle of blood from his chin. “Give me a minute or two and I’ll have us under control again.”

“Life support is fluctuating, Commander,” the engineer added, holding his hand over a small bleeding cut on his forehead. “We’ve got fires breaking out all along the port side. Damage control and medical teams are responding, but the damage is pretty extensive. Port gun emplacements have all been knocked out and initial reports indicate we’ve lost both port nacelles and the entire lower scanner array.”

“Bridge, this is the CAG.”

Good, Rawlins thought as he moved to the front of the command station. They still had at least partial internal communications. “Rawlins here,” he answered. “Go ahead.”

“Status report from Flight Operations, sir. There’s some minor buckling across the width of the portside landing deck near the threshold, but our interceptors should be able to overfly it and land without a problem. Soon as the equipment that broke free and fell all over the place is cleaned up, that is. Starboard deck is in good shape.”

“Does Chief Simmons know how long it’ll be before the port deck is operational again?” Rawlins asked.

A brief moment of silence on the CAG’s end spoke volumes. Rawlins knew immediately that they had lost the chief.

“Master Sergeant Rosas tells me they’ll be ready to recover the interceptors in ten or fifteen minutes,” the CAG reported solemnly.

“Confirm that with him, Commander,” Rawlins ordered emotionlessly, even though as one of several officers in the fleet who had actually learned a thing or two from the chief when they were all much, much younger men, he felt this particular loss most acutely. As the acting captain, he reminded himself, he couldn’t let the crew see any signs weakness in him. “I want our pilots back aboard as soon as possible.”

“Aye, sir. CAG out.”

Rawlins faced the engineer again and asked, “How bad are our main drive systems?”

“Reactors are offline and cooling down quickly, sir,” the young man reluctantly reported. “Mister LaRocca’s thrusters are all we’re going to have for a while.”

“How much time to bring them back online?”

The engineer turned and faced his superior officer with a grim expression. “Commander Marshall says they’ll need about three months repair at a proper shipyard before we can even try to bring them back online, Commander.”

Rawlins sighed. Three months. And that was just for the reactors. Much of the ship had sustained substantially worse damage. He snickered and shook his head. First time in complete command and he’d broken his captain’s ship. He’d broken it but good. “That’s it then,” he finally said. “We’re out of this one for good. Mister Noonian, call some medics up here to... No, belay that,” he amended, realizing that the Medbay probably couldn’t afford to spare anyone. “Call another engineer and a helmsman up here.”

“They’re on their way, sir,” the cyberclone advised him almost immediately.

Rawlins then turned to LaRocca and the engineer in turn and said, “As soon as your relief shows up, I want you two to head down to Medbay and get patched up.”

“Yes, sir,” they answered in unison.

Rawlins turned back to the helmsman and asked, “Mister LaRocca, how soon can we make it to the jumpstation on high-speed thrusters?”

LaRocca did his best to lick the fresh blood from his chin as he entered the query into his nav-comp. “About three and a half days, sir,” he answered. Then he looked up at the commander and added, “Maybe three flat if we can cut down on the course changes significantly enough.”

“All right. We’ll do that, as long as we don’t pick up any signs of...” He looked over at Tactical. “Do we have sensors and scanners, Miss Irons?”

“The Z-minus forward array is a total loss, sir,” she answered. “And the Z-minus aft has sensors only. No active scanners. Other than that, we’re good, sir.”

“All right,” he said as he turned back to the helmsman. “Direct course, as long as we don’t pick up any signs of pursuit, Mister LaRocca. But under no circumstances will we lead the Veshtonn toward the jumpstation. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“Make sure your relief understands it just as clearly when he gets here, too. Initiate as soon as the last of our fighters has landed.”

“Aye, sir.”

Three and a half days, Rawlins reflected as he stepped around the command console and finally sat back down. Perhaps three, if they were extremely lucky. About four hours for station personnel to outfit the ship with two emergency nacelles for the jump home, provided they had them on hand and waiting for them when they arrived—two days work for that prep. Three at the most. All right. They’d send the request to the station immediately. Then they’d maintain strict communications silence and hope—and pray—that the Veshtonn didn’t spot them enroute.

And that the jumpstation would still be there when they finally arrived.

“I want casualty and damage reports as you get them, people,” he advised the bridge crew in general. “Sergeant Noonian, send a request for two emergency nacelles to the station and give them our E-T-A. Tell them not to respond, and maintain strict communications silence after you send that message.”

“Aye, sir.”

The next three days were going to be three very long days indeed.

Chapter 8

Rather than go through the trouble of shaving—beard retardant made him break out like a teenager with a bad case of acne, so he never used it—pulling on a uniform, and going into the office to work like he’d done every other Saturday for the last several months, Admiral Hansen had decided to work from home to ensure Heather didn’t try to sneak out again. As it turned out, his plan worked too well. Not only had she not tried to sneak out of their quarters, she hadn’t even come out of her room once all day. She’d even refused to open her door long enough for him to pass her a plate of food at lunch time. As one of the lucky ones, one of those people who could eat all they wanted of whatever they wanted and still not gain any weight, it wasn’t like her to skip a meal. She must really have been upset. Was that movie she’d wanted to go see, or more precisely that actor, really that big a deal?

Given a choice, of course, he would have preferred to let her go. Or even better, to have spent at least part of the day with her himself, outside their quarters, doing something fun at one of the station’s recreational facilities—when was the last time they’d done anything together?—instead of playing warden to her. Then again, she probably wouldn’t have been very pleasant company on this particular day. But Earth and the Coalition were still very much at war with the Veshtonn Empire, and the resultant workload hadn’t allowed him that luxury in a very long time.

Using a secret back door password that he’d written into the programming himself, back when he first assumed command of the agency, the admiral had tied his home terminal through Hal into the fleet intelligence net and had spent the day looking into the Excalibur situation and all that related to it. To his surprise he’d discovered that working from home had actually enabled him to get much more than his typical amount of work done a lot faster than usual. Just why that was the case, he couldn’t guess. After all, it was Saturday. If he’d gone into the office like he usually did, he still would have been alone and undistracted. Well, except for Vicky, that is...and the duty officer, whoever that might have been. Vicky would have shown up a few minutes before him and made a pot of coffee—how she always knew exactly what time to be there was a mystery unto itself—then left him alone to work, and whoever the D.O. happened to be would have bid him a good morning and then done his or her best to avoid him like the plague for the rest of the day. Beyond that there would still have been nothing to distract him.

Oh well. It had worked out well, regardless, and working barefoot in shorts and a tee shirt was no unpleasant benefit either. In fact, the only downside he’d noticed at all was that his coffee tasted noticeably inferior to Vicky’s. He used the same blend at home as she did in the office, but for some reason it just didn’t taste as good.

Apparently, he lacked her magic touch.

“Excuse me, Nick,” Hal’s voice said through the terminal speakers, startling him.

“What is it, Hal?” Hansen asked.

“You have just received an encrypted and scrambled transmission burst from Lieutenant Commander Quinn of the Europan field office.”

“What does she say?”

“She has forwarded an enhanced copy of the same transmission record she sent earlier.”

“Oh, good,” he commented as he straightened slightly in his chair. “Download it to my home terminal and play it for me, please.”

“Certainly.”

The playback began almost immediately.

“I hope you can hear me,” the man’s voice said, coming through much clearer than it had before, now that most of the white noise had been eliminated. Hansen could even hear the stress and exhaustion in it now, which made it sound a lot more genuine than he expected. The man might or might not have been Lieutenant O’Donnell—the jury was still out on that question—but he was definitely human. Whether that made him Terran, Cirran, or Sulaini, who could say? But he certainly sounded like a Terran. More specifically, he sounded like a North American.

“My name is Robert O’Donnell. I was a tactical officer aboard the Earth starcruiser Excalibur. I am alive, somewhere in Veshtonn space. The Excalibur was NOT destroyed by the Veshtonn. I repeat. The Excalibur was not destroyed by the Veshtonn. The attack was carried out by the starcruiser Albion and two former Solfleet vessels in service with Newstar Corporation. They took us completely by surprise. Those of us who survived were taken by...”

As before, the message ended abruptly at that point with a short burst of loud static that made Hansen jump. Why couldn’t they have toned that down, too?

“Does Commander Quinn add anything new to what she said before, Hal?”

“Only that her technicians were not able to restore any more of the message beyond what you just heard. There is nothing further.”

“All right. Thank you, Hal.”

“You are welcome, Nick.”

Hansen leaned back in his chair with a sigh and stretched the kinks out of his stiff neck, then tried to relax. The Newstar Corporation...again. Back in late ‘82 Newstar had made an illicit deal with Hansen’s predecessor to develop the recently encountered ‘Morph Virus,’ as it had promptly come to be known, into a sort of techno-biological weapon for use against the Veshtonn. A few months later, after something went terribly wrong at the facilities where the company was carrying out its illegal research, that illicit deal subsequently became a matter of public record and proved to be the S.I.A. Chief’s guillotine—the one mistake that decapitated his career and landed him in prison, and opened the door for Hansen to step into the job that he’d secretly coveted for so long.

About a year and a half later, after several secret and unsuccessful attempts at executing a hostile takeover of the Dunn Corporation’s operations on Procyon IV, the new denizens of Newstar had hired dozens of mercenaries and raised that hostility to a whole new level, and that, as it turned out, proved to be not only their guillotine, but Newstar’s as well. Their aggression became the guillotine that decapitated the entire company—the singular cause of the company’s rapid downfall and ultimate demise.

The Newstar Corporation had been one very shady company to say the least, especially in its final few years of life. But to attack a Solfleet starcruiser directly, particularly in the middle of an interstellar war when they were counting on that very same fleet for their own defense? That simply didn’t make any sense. Even with a rogue starcruiser on their side, what could they possibly have stood to gain by committing such a foolhardy act? If in fact the message was true, why had they done it?

“Excuse me, Nick.”

“Yes, Hal?”

“Please do not be alarmed. There is no danger to your quarters or to this station. The environmental sensor and control systems in your quarters have detected a small concentration of a potentially carcinogenic gaseous chemical substance dispersing within the atmosphere of your second bedroom. Shall I... Wait a moment. Heather has just activated the filter vents. The room’s atmosphere will be clear in a few seconds. There is no further need for attention.”

“Wanna bet, Hal?” Hansen commented, feeling the heat rise in his face as he stood up.

“I am incapable of gambling,” Hal informed him.

He approached Heather’s bedroom door and, despite the fact that she had locked him out several hours ago, tapped the ‘open’ button, just in case. As expected, the door didn’t budge. It was still locked. “Security and safety override,” he said to the door’s blank, Earth-brown surface. “Icarus Hansen, father, code Heather zero one alpha.” To the right of the door, the panel’s green indicator lit. The latches released and the door slid aside, just in time for him to catch a glimpse of his daughter, wearing only her underclothes as usual, throwing something into her sink right before she whirled around to face him under the dimmed lights. Standing rigidly before him, almost at the position of attention, she seemed afraid to move another inch.

At first, neither one of them said a word to the other. They just stood there, not ten feet from each other, and stared silently at one another like a pair of manikins in one of the station’s department stores. After about thirty seconds of that, the admiral folded his arms across his broad chest, but he still didn’t say anything. Sooner or later, he knew, she was either going to exhale or pass out. Either way, she wasn’t going to win.

Fifteen more seconds. “Lights. Full,” he said.

His daughter squinted against the increased brightness, but not enough to hide her eyes’ glazed, reddish discoloration. As he continued to glare at her, unblinking, a thin coat of sweat began to appear, first on her forehead and then on her upper lip.

Any moment now.

Her statue-like posture began to falter as she struggled to hold the air in her lungs. She licked and then tightly pursed her quivering lips. She swallowed. She clenched her fists.

Any second now.

Finally, after almost two whole minutes, Heather let it go and seemed almost to deflate, dropping her gaze to the floor as a cloud of gray-green smoke poured from her mouth and nose and slowly drifted toward the filter vents. No doubt feeling a little dizzy, she leaned back against the sink.

Hansen unfolded his arms and approached her, but she stepped away, without taking her eyes off the floor. He peered into the sink and saw the remains of a single, mostly smoked hand-rolled cigarette floating in about an inch of water. He stared at it for several seconds, then turned to his daughter.

“Look at me, Heather,” he demanded. Although he was sure she didn’t want to, he knew that at that moment she wouldn’t dare defy him.

She looked up, hesitantly but immediately, and gazed at him with genuine fear in her unfocused eyes. “You’ve certainly gotten yourself into more than your fair share of trouble over the years, Heather,” her father began, speaking very calmly, “but I always thought you were smarter than this. I am very, very...disappointed in you.”

Tears welled up in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks as she dropped her gaze back to the floor. ‘Disappointed’ was a word he hadn’t used with her in several years, despite all the trouble she’d gotten into. The last time he had used it, in fact, it had nearly broken her heart.

“Perhaps it would be best for the both of us if I sent you back to Westcott for the year,” he added, reminding her of the one place he knew she never wanted to go back to.

The Westcott Boarding School for Troubled Teens, New Haven, Connecticut. He’d sent her there for most of her eighth grade year after she and some of her friends—some of her former friends, now—had formed a sort of gang at Mandela Middle School and started beating up and stealing from their fellow students. She had absolutely hated the place and had gone out of her way to try to become a disciplinary problem there, hoping to get herself kicked out. But after about six months, once she’d finally realized that that wasn’t going to work, she’d straightened up and quickly become a model student. The change in her had been so pronounced in fact, that the Dean of the school, convinced that she had truly learned her lesson and changed her ways, had contacted the admiral and recommended that he withdraw her early, take her home, and re-enroll her in her regular school for the rest of the semester. He had done so, and for the next several months her behavior had been exemplary. Unfortunately, by the time she started ninth grade, she’d also started slipping back into her old ways.

Threatening to send her back to Westcott had been his absolute last resort. If she called his bluff...

But she didn’t. Instead, she looked up at him, her eyes filled with horror and rivers of tears flowing down over her cheeks, then ran to him and grabbed the front of his shirt. “No, Daddy, don’t!” she pleaded desperately. “Don’t ever send me back to that place! Please!” She buried her face in his chest and sobbed.

“I’m sorry, Heather, but I don’t know what else to do with you,” he told her matter-of-factly, fighting the fatherly urge to embrace her and hiding the fact that her tearful pleas were nearly tearing his heart out.

“Please don’t send me back there again!” she continued pleading. “I hate it there! All my friends are up here! You’re up here! I don’t have anybody down there!”

“That’s not my problem, Heather,” he responded coldly, trying hard to sound unmoved by her pleas. “I can’t have you up here with me anymore if you’re going to keep breaking the law and getting into trouble.”

“I’ll stop,” she proclaimed, looking up at him. “I promise, Daddy. I won’t break any more laws, I swear. I won’t get in any more trouble, ever again. Just don’t send me away to boarding school again, please!”

Daddy. The one word in the entire English language that she could use on him like a blunt instrument to weaken his resolve, and he knew that she knew that as well as he did. He gazed down at her for a moment, then finally lost the battle and wrapped his arms lovingly around her and sighed. Surrendering again. But she was his daughter. His only child. His flesh and blood. How could he possibly not give in to her desperate, tearful pleas?

“All right,” he acquiesced. “We’ll give it one more try, and I do mean one more. But if you get into trouble again...”

“I won’t, Daddy. I promise.”

“All right. But you are going to be punished for this. And first thing Monday morning we’re taking whatever stash you’ve got in your room and turning it over to the Civil Security’s narcotics agents. You’re going to tell them everything you know about your dealer and anything else you might know about drug trafficking on this station. Understood?”

“Understood.” She looked up at him, her red, glassy, unfocused eyes like those of an innocent puppy, albeit a puppy high on narcotics. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, Princess.”