RUMORS OF WAR

Chapter 1

“It’s too late for peace!”

Tom Thrush froze the lecture that was playing on his desk and looked up, annoyed. For the last half hour he’d been studying while demonstrators chanted slogans in the quad outside. For the most part he’d been able to tune it out - but things were getting worse.

“The price of peace is oppression!” It was a woman, her amplified voice rising until it became an unintelligible screech.

“It’s exam week,” Tom muttered. “Can’t you save the galaxy later?” He synced the desk to his glove, checked his glove display to make sure he had everything, and stood. He’d have to continue this in a coffee shop.

He walked down the stairs, his irritation growing. It blended with the constant stress of Exam Week and built toward real rage. He fought the anger down. His temper had gotten him into trouble before. He didn’t need another incident, not over something as petty as a student demonstration.

A wave of cold air hit him as the doors to Aldrin Hall slid open. It was a beautiful winter morning, the air crisp and sharp. He took a deep breath, felt his nostrils go numb, and set off across the quad, snow squeaking under his shoes.

The pro-war demonstration had attracted a dozen people at its peak. Now, less than half of them remained. They stood in a cluster, holo-displays flickering in the air above them, haranguing passersby.

The buildings of Prairie University loomed around them, and Tom made himself lift his gaze. He was an architecture student, and the glorious University buildings had kept him inspired for three and a half long years of study. He took in the details as he walked, the high copper roofs turned green with age, the faux pillars and arches around every window. For buildings with such mundane purposes they were magnificent, and his irritation faded as he drank it in.

All his annoyance came flooding back when a young woman stepped into his path.

She would have been pretty if she’d been a bit less wound up. She was tiny, her head barely reaching Tom’s chin, with the pointed features of a pixie. Those features were twisted now in frustration, and Tom felt a moment of sympathy. She’d been out here for over an hour, championing a cause that clearly mattered to her deeply.

And everyone was ignoring her.

His fleeting sympathy vanished as he tried to step around her and she moved to block his path. “Don’t you know there’s a war going on?” She wasn’t really talking to him. She was talking at him, venting. “Half the galaxy is fighting, and what’s the United Worlds doing?” Her hands flew up, making Tom flinch. “We’re sitting on the sidelines! We’re doing nothing, while people suffer and die in the coreward zones.”

“It’s terrible,” Tom said insincerely. The other protesters showed much less zeal. A tall young man with a blond mustache met Tom’s eye and gave him an embarrassed shrug.

The girl said, “You’re Cree, right? There’s a Cree community on York that had to be abandoned when the League invaded. Don’t you wish you were out there fighting for your people?”

“I wish I was studying for my exams,” Tom said. “Excuse me.” He stepped around her.

Her hands closed on his sleeve. “You can’t just walk away from this. People are dying!”

Tom, his annoyance turning into real anger, tried to pull his arm free. The girl hung on with surprising strength. “I need to study,” he said. “I’ve got an exam tomorrow.” He planted his feet, jerked hard, and freed his arm. He turned his back on her and started walking.

“You have a responsibility to the galaxy! You have to get involved.” Her feet crunched in the snow as she stomped along behind him.

He didn’t turn around. “Get away from me, you crazy bitch.”

“You’re a coward!” A small fist thumped into his back.

He spun, and she took an involuntary step back. Then her face collapsed into a snarl. “Coward,” she repeated, and lifted her fist.

Tom punched her. His fist seemed to move on its own, slamming into the center of her face with an impact that jarred his elbow and shoulder. She flew back, her eyes comically wide, and landed on her rear end in the snow. He had a quick glimpse of blood gushing from her nose and coating her upper lip and teeth before she clapped both hands to her face and let out a wail.

Tom stared down at her, horrified at what he’d done. She was asking for it, said a nasty voice in the back of his mind. Still, shame twisted his guts as blood trickled from under her hands to splatter across the front of her coat. His knuckles stung. How hard did I hit her?

“What the hell?”

Tom looked up. The whole group of protesters was moving, and he had a moment of real fear. Most of them, however, rushed to the girl on the ground.

The tall man with the blond mustache came toward Tom. “What did you do?” His voice was a mix of rage and shocked disbelief. “What the hell did you do?” He stepped in close, planted both hands on Tom’s chest, and shoved.

Well, I’m not going to stand here like an idiot playing whose-turn-is-it-to-shove-back. Tom looked up into the tall man’s face, said, “This is what I did,” and swung his fist.

The man leaned back and turned his head, and Tom’s fist just grazed his cheek. A big fist came looping around and connected solidly with the bridge of Tom’s nose. His head snapped back, blood gushed into his mouth, and a burst of pain made him cry out.

A red haze settled over his vision, rage suffusing him, washing away every other thought. He snarled and hurled himself at the larger man.

After that, awareness came only in flashes. Hands clutched at him, tugging at his arms, trying to hold him back. The blond man backed away, arms curled around his head. Then he ran, and Tom shook off the clinging arms and gave chase.

He ran, snarling with every breath, pursuing a fleeing figure who remained maddeningly out of reach.

He didn’t remember catching the man. He didn’t remember what came next. When the red haze lifted Tom was panting for breath. He stood doubled over, his elbows on his knees, gasping and wheezing. For a time that was all he knew.

Other sensations gradually caught his attention. His lungs ached, and he had a stitch in his side. His hands hurt. He looked at the knuckles of his right hand. They were a mess, red and swollen, with drops of blood splattering the sleeve of his shirt. His left hand was covered by his data glove, but it felt just as bad. He spent a moment staring at it stupidly, wondering what had happened.

Only then did he see the man on the ground in front of him. He was curled on his side, one arm around his ribs, the other protecting his face. Only one corner of the mustache showed. It could have been any color; the mustache was completely soaked in blood. More blood covered the side of the man’s face. It soaked the collar of his shirt. It pooled in his ear. He looked like a corpse, but he was sobbing, a wet, pathetic sound that made Tom straighten up and stumble back in disgust.

Feet scraped on the pavement behind him, and he whirled. A young couple, eyes wide, backed away from him. He looked around, saw more faces staring, more people edging backward like he was a rabid dog.

He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaled, and shook his head to clear the fog of adrenaline. His nose still bled. He spat a mouthful of bloody saliva into the gutter and opened his eyes, looking down at the bloody form on the pavement. Aggravated assault, whispered a voice in his head. Assault causing bodily harm. A felony conviction. You’re in trouble. Serious trouble.

“It was self-defense.” He mumbled the words, and they rang hollow. I chased him. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. He couldn’t even see the buildings of the University. I chased him for blocks. I ran him down and beat the living hell out of him. That’s not self-defense.

He didn’t have the strength to run. He lurched away from the injured man, grimacing as people flinched away. I need to find a car. He tapped his glove to activate it, and watched bursts of static flash and churn on the palm screen. Data gloves were practically indestructible. You could put them through a washing machine, run over them with ground cars. He’d never succeeded in damaging one before. How hard did I hit that guy?

Feeling lost without a data connection, he staggered to the next intersection and turned the corner. I should have gotten implants. The familiar silvery shape of a public zipcar caught his eye and he hurried toward it.

The cops will figure this trick out. They’ll take remote control. He switched the car to manual, overrode half a dozen safety admonitions, and turned east. Stellarville was a small city, and he quickly reached the outskirts.

As he passed the last tall buildings the familiar shape of the Interstellar Launch Tower loomed on the horizon. It was the most magnificent building in a couple of thousand kilometers, and it stirred the usual jumble of emotions within him. Obsolete now, the tower had once been humanity’s gateway to the stars. It was built to generate a portal into seventh dimensional space. Now, ships had their own portal generators, but a hundred years ago they’d needed the tower.

The problem with a device that used eighty thousand gigawatts of power every time it fired was that no one wanted it next door. People thought it might explode, or burn. The Cree of Spirit Lake had made a leap of faith and allowed the tower to be built on their reservation. The construction of the tower had spurred the creation of Stellarville.

Tom was proud of the tower, proud of the gamble his great-grandparents had taken. The tower had brought prosperity and influence to the Cree nation, and it had sent thousands of his people to the stars.

But the tower itself galled him. It had become a symbol of the Cree nation, but no Cree had participated in the design or construction. He’d grown up in the shadow of the tower. He’d seen it every day. It had goaded and inspired him. It was the source of his dream.

Tom was going to become the first great Cree architect. He would design new buildings, equal in grandeur and significance to the tower. The dream had taken him away from his home and into Stellarville and it had sustained him for three and a half difficult years at school.

And now it’s over.

“You should stop the vehicle.” The calm voice came from a speaker in the car’s dash. “Or at least slow down. You don’t want to cause a crash.”

“Kiss my ass,” Tom muttered, and twisted a little harder on the speed controls. The car didn’t go any faster.

“There’s nowhere to go,” the voice continued. “You’re only making things worse.”

For most people that would be true, but if Tom could reach the Spirit Lake reservation, he’d be beyond the jurisdiction of Canadian law enforcement. They wouldn���t extradite him, not unless the blond man ended up crippled, or dead. Tom cringed inside. Please, don’t let him die.

The council might just turn him over to the Canadian police, but he thought not. They’d deal with him pretty harshly ��� he didn’t want to think about what that would be like ��� but at least he’d avoid prison time.

Lights flashed in the rear-view screen, and a red icon told him there was a police flitter directly above the car. Tom ignored it all, focusing on the launch tower like an upraised steel fist on the horizon dead ahead. If I can just reach it ���

The tower, once a symbol of mankind’s escape into the wide galaxy, suddenly felt like a prison he was rushing toward. He remembered leaving home, moving to the city, scared and excited and full of a sense that his world was expanding. He’d expected his world to keep on growing as he launched his career as an architect.

Now, it was all crashing inward, shrinking to once again fit in the stifling confines of the Spirit Lake reservation.

The cop at the side of the road was just a dark blur in the corner of Tom’s eye as the car whipped past. Tom didn’t see the disrupter, but he knew he’d passed over it when white light engulfed the car. His screens erupted in static, the controls went stiff in his hands, and the faint hum of the electric motor vanished. The car coasted, losing speed, and finally came to a stop.

Tom kicked the door open, got out, turned to face the launch tower, and started to run. He could see the flash of red and blue lights on the asphalt in front of his feet as police vehicles pulled up behind him, but he didn’t turn to look back.

A stun blast hit him across the back, his skin going cold. Every muscle in his torso contracted and he stumbled to his knees, then toppled forward and landed on his chest.

The road was cold against his cheek. His breath fogged the air in front of him. With a tremendous effort he heaved himself over onto his back. He could see cops converging, but he ignored them, looking up at the sky instead. A flash of silver caught his eye, a shuttle rising into orbit where it would rendezvous with an interstellar ship. He stared, wishing he could trade places with someone on that distant ship. Even if I was going off to war, it would be better than this.

Tall figures loomed around him, men and women made burly and anonymous by helmets and light body armor. “You’re under arrest,” a man said, clipping a cuff around Tom’s wrist. “You had a nice run, but it’s over now.”

Chapter 2

“Mr. Thrush. You’re in a lot of trouble.”

Tom gave the woman across the table from him a flat, hostile stare. Her name was Laycraft, according to the nametag on her jacket. She wore a smart pinstriped suit that made his own dirty, rumpled clothes seem all the more pathetic. She matched him stare for stare, and he had to admit she was better at it than he was.

“Spare me the tough guy routine, all right? I’ve seen it all before.”

He shrugged. “Then spare me the speech about how much trouble I’m in.” His nose was completely plugged with med gel, making him sound like he had a bad cold. He fingered the bridge of his nose. “I was attacked. It was self-defense.”

Laycraft waggled her hand in a so-so motion. “You have a mediocre case. You chased that man for three blocks before you, let me see, knocked out two of his teeth and gave him a concussion in,” she pretended to glance at a data pad, her voice becoming ironic, “self-defense.” As he started to speak she said, “Then you resisted arrest and took a blue zip car beyond city limits. That was technically theft.”

“But-”

“I’m not just blowing smoke up your backside when I say you’re in a lot of trouble.”

Tom lapsed into a sullen silence.

“However.”

He looked at her, then away, refusing to take the bait.

“There were ameliorating circumstances.” She glanced at his nose. “And you’re not exactly a common thug.” She glanced at the pad. “You’re a student in one of the most challenging architectural programs in North America, with grades that are ��� adequate, at least.”

He glared at her. He’d worked bloody hard for those “adequate” grades she so casually dismissed.

“And you have no implants,” she continued. Her brows rose. “Is that a Cree thing?”

He shrugged. “Sort of.” Some of his people felt that electronic implants were an outrageous violation of a person’s body, a travesty no one should tolerate. Others shunned implants as a way to differentiate themselves from Canadian society, where implant use among adults was close to ninety percent.

Some Cree just went ahead and got implants.

“Well, it could be your ‘get out of jail free’ card.” When he gave her a blank look she frowned for a moment, then continued. “Here’s the thing. You broke the law. You had obvious reasons. If someone punched me in the nose, and I had the ability, I’m not sure I wouldn’t do exactly what you did.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, I’m sure. I wouldn’t do it. But I understand the urge.”

Tom said, “I-”

“Hush,” Laycraft said. “You committed a violent crime. We have to address that. We can’t just turn you loose. But we understand your position, and we don’t think prison time is appropriate. Not if it can be avoided.”

Here it comes, Tom thought. However it is they’re going to railroad me, I’m about to get the sales pitch.

She looked at him, waiting for him to speak. All he did was stare at her, and the corner of her mouth twitched in a hint of a smile. “As you may have heard,” she said, “there’s a war brewing in the coreward systems.”

Earth’s oldest and wealthiest colonies were toward the galactic core. Long since independent, they’d formed a dozen different nations, most of which were now at war with one another. It was the single biggest military conflict in human history, and it just seemed to keep growing.

“So far, the United Worlds has managed to remain neutral.” Earth, once the central power in the settled galaxy, was now just one more member of an interstellar alliance rimward of the spreading conflict.

He didn’t speak, didn’t ask the obvious question. What does any of this have to do with me?

“You might not have heard that the military is recruiting aggressively,” she said. “Qualified and willing recruits without implants are scarce on the ground these days.”

He stared at her, letting his disbelief show. She wanted him to join the army?

Not likely.

“You won’t even have to leave the system,” she said, leaning forward and resting her forearms on the table. “You can join the Home Guard. The Guard’s full of eager would-be soldiers who want to see the galaxy. Most of them would love to transfer to the regular forces. You can take a spot here so one of them can leave.”

“I never really saw myself as a soldier.”

She shrugged. “Did you see yourself as a convict in a prison cell?”

There wasn’t much to say to that.

“You’ll do six weeks of Basic Training,” she said. “Then three years of service, minus your six weeks. Normally it’s two years, but it’s three right now because of the threat of war.” She made a dismissive gesture. “If things quiet down, they’ll let you go in two years. You’ll have a clean slate. You’ll be able to get on with your life.”

I could still be an architect. He squashed the sudden bloom of hope. Three years in the military?

Laycraft met his gaze, then smiled gently. “It won’t be so bad. In fact, most of it will be easier than being a college student.” She opened her briefcase, rummaged inside, and drew out a smart sheet. “Here’s a list of occupations and descriptions. You can just about take your pick.” She set the sheet on the table, then stood. “Look it over. Take your time. Then call me when you’ve made a decision.”

He nodded, numb, and watched her walk out of the room.

For a long time he sat in the prisoner lounge, listening to a couple of women wage a bitter argument over who looked at whom the wrong way. The justice system had evolved considerably over the years, with a growing emphasis on rehabilitation rather than punishment. He wouldn’t face a judge. Instead, his fate would be decided by a committee consisting of Laycraft and a couple other social workers.

The more conservative part of the population insisted that the current system was a joke, that only savage punishments could deter a hardened criminal, that if you spun the right line of BS to the committee, you could pretty much get away with anything.

Tom, sitting in a lounge that was comfortable enough but was still a cage, shook his head wryly. For him at least, the system worked well enough. He was about to start paying for what he’d done, and he couldn’t see a single way out of it.

The Hall of Justice was a soulless brick of a building, every corner at ninety degrees, every surface cold and blank and echoing. The lounge had a bit of orange carpeting, but aside from that it was stark and bleak. Did they design it deliberately to crush the spirits of idiots like me? Probably not, he decided. It was just bad design. I haven’t even graduated yet and I could do better than this. But I’m going to waste three years playing soldier instead.

He picked up the datasheet, which showed a list of occupations for enlisted personnel in the Home Guard. Charged with the defense of Earth, the Home Guard spent most of its time doing drills and exercises, interspersed with occasional search and rescue missions or disaster relief.

The list of occupations didn’t inspire him much. Just about everyone in the Guard was primarily an infantryman. In addition to plodding around with a rifle over his shoulder, he could be a cook, or a clerk, or a driver. He stared at the list, even tapped a few occupations in a vain attempt to inspire himself. Then he sighed and pushed the sheet away.

It’s his fault. That shit rat with the stupid mustache. He’s the one who should be locked up, not me. No, it’s her fault. The girl. She started the whole thing. And she got away with it.

An image filled his mind, the girl sprawled in the snow with both hands pressed to her face, blood coating her chin. His stomach twisted. Okay. I guess she didn’t get away with it.

I wonder what they would do to me if I didn’t have implants. He grimaced at the thought. At least I’ve got a little bit of a choice. He picked up the sheet again. Yeah, right. Some choice.

A link in one corner caught his eye. Career Opportunities in the Regular Forces.

I don’t want to join the real military. He scanned the list of Home Guard occupations one more time. But then, it’s not like I want to join the pretend military, either.

He tapped the link.

The sheet changed, forming four columns. Army. Navy. Marine Corps. Space Cavalry.

He looked at the cavalry first. Cavalry pilots flew fighters. They were glamorous, romantic figures, though he wondered if they would live very long in wartime.

The only occupations he saw listed, though, were for support personnel. They all wanted some kind of engineering or mechanical background as a prerequisite, too.

He glanced only briefly at the Army column. The Army was essentially like the Home Guard, as far as Tom was concerned. The only difference was that the regular Army worked harder and got shot more often.

He skimmed the list of Marine Corps occupations, confirming his initial impression that marines were basically soldiers who rode on spaceships. There were differences, of course. The marines didn’t use artillery. They used mechs sometimes, but never the gigantic mechs the Army used. They had shipboard duties, and fought sometimes in zero gee. They boarded ships.

Primarily, though, they seemed to be infantry who spent their days cooped up on ships.

That just left the Navy. Tom sighed and started reading. The list of Navy occupations was quite long and varied, which piqued his interest somewhat. He found a link to testimonials from spacers, and tapped it.

“It’s a great life,” said an earnest young woman, her voice made flat and tinny by the rudimentary speakers built into the sheet. “You get to see the galaxy, and serve your country.”

Tom snorted. Seeing the galaxy was fine, but he didn’t feel a lot of devotion to the United Worlds.

The image changed to a beefy young man in coveralls, holding a wrench almost as big as he was. “Signing up was the best choice I ever made.” He sounded like he meant it, too. “I work on some of the most advanced technology in the galaxy.” He grinned. “And I signed up straight from high school, too! When I leave the Navy, I’m going to have my pick of jobs.”

“Great,” muttered Tom. “I could have my pick of jobs I don’t want.”

“I’m a patriot,” said a solemn older woman who reminded Tom of his mother. “But that’s not why I joined. This is the greatest branch of the military. No marching. No sleeping on the ground. You don’t have to be outside in blizzards or pouring rain, and you don’t have to shoot anyone. Oh, it can be tough sometimes. But even on the toughest day, you get a hot meal at the end of it, and a shower, and you sleep in a proper bunk. That’s not what it’s like in the Army, let me tell you.”

Tom paused the video. “You make a good point,” he told the woman.

A voice in the back of his head told him not to make an impulsive choice. Service in the Home Guard would be dreary, but it was the simplest way to put this incident behind him and get back to his old life.

But three years felt like an eternity, and he couldn’t bear the thought of spending the whole time cooking and doing pointless drills. He thought of the shuttle he’d seen rising toward orbit, looking so brave and lonely against the vastness of the sky. The Navy goes places. I could see other worlds.

He closed the testimonials and expanded the Navy section. He spent several minutes reading job descriptions. Where the Cavalry wanted qualified technicians, the Navy seemed to prefer, or at least to accept, unskilled recruits who could be trained to do things the Navy way.

The list held dozens of occupations, and they soon started to blur in Tom’s mind. He’d be a cog in a big machine, helping to keep a large spaceship running. There were logistical and clerical positions groundside, but he dismissed those. The chance to travel, to see the galaxy, was suddenly fascinating. If I have to leave my old life behind, I might as well make a thorough job of it. I’ll leave the whole bloody planet.

His initial enthusiasm faded quickly. None of the listed positions held much appeal. “Just pick something,” he muttered. “It gets you out of here. It gets you onto a ship.” He ran a fingertip across the sheet, making the text slide, glancing for the third or fourth time at each job title. All too soon he reached the end.

And noticed for the first time another line of text, just below the list of occupations.

Positions for Officers.

You must need some kind of experience to become an officer. There’s no point in even looking.

He shrugged and touched the link.

The list of officer occupations was much shorter. Most of them did, in fact, have strict requirements. Medical Officer. Dental Officer. Chaplain. Engineer. Then there was Logistics Officer, which sounded not only dull but planet-based.

An acronym caught his eye. OIPO. Officer, Interplanetary Operations. He expanded the listing and read the details.

An OIPO officer, he learned, was exactly what he would have imagined every naval officer was, before he read the sheet and discovered personnel officers and legal officers and all the rest. OIPO officers were part of the command structure of space-going vessels. They provided leadership and command. They directed the tactics, strategies, and procedures of military vessels. They managed training and personnel.

Tom stared at the listing, his head full of images from every space-going adventure vid he’d ever seen. He started to smile.

Until he came to the section on requirements. OIPO officers ��� in fact, every officer in the UW Armed Forces ��� needed a degree from an accredited college or university.

His shoulders slumped. You’ve done it again. One semester short, and you screwed it up. He scowled at the sheet, then poked without much hope at the Service Officer Training Program link at the bottom of the page. And his scowl faded.

For occupations where demand is high, the UW Armed Forces will pay for suitable candidates to attend College or University.

It looked a bit less promising when he read further. SOTP candidates typically attended a military university. Only rarely did the Armed Forces pay for a candidate to attend a civilian school. And OIPO Officer hardly sounded like a high-demand occupation.

Still, he had the vast majority of a degree. Surely he was a bargain compared to an SOTP candidate straight out of high school.

Laycraft’s face was bright with expectation when she returned to the little meeting room. She wilted a bit when he announced he wanted to be a Naval officer. “You didn’t finish your degree.”

He told her about the SOTP program, and she stared at him for a bit, thinking. Finally she said, “I’m going to put you in touch with a recruiter. We’ll see what they say.”

A week later, Tom walked into a recruiting center near the campus and pressed his thumb to a long formal document. In that moment he surrendered his rights as a civilian and agreed to take on the duties and responsibilities of a member of the United Worlds Armed Forces.

The government would not, as he’d hoped, be paying him to complete his education. The recruiting officer had seemed amused by his optimism. “A year ago you’d never have gotten in,” the grizzled man told him. “Not even if you’d finished your education. This year, though, things are different. This year, seven out of eight semesters is good enough. Welcome to the military.”

Chapter 3

“I swear, it feels like someone stole our flag staff and replaced it with solid lead.” The two-meter staff in Oscar Van Pelt’s right hand started to droop. He quickly lifted it to the proper position, flag above his left shoulder, and glanced furtively at the cadre trainer before giving Tom a weary look. “Bloody thing weighs as much as my pack.” He used his free hand to tug at the shoulder strap of an enormous backpack. “As much as my pack weighed when we started out, I mean. Now it feels like someone put a truck in there.”

Tom, too tired to waste his breath in banter, gave Oscar a sympathetic nod. He wore the same brutally heavy pack, and it was all the weight he wanted. He’d eventually get his turn carrying the flag. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

The flag was nothing impressive, and he’d have urged Oscar to get rid of the thing if they could get away with it. It was a dark green triangle, attached to the staff with lanyards and decorated with a black silhouette of a Canada Goose. It was the symbol of their platoon, and it was a pain in the neck.

“I’m not sure why we’re doing all this marching, Boss,” Oscar added. “I mean, we’ll be on ships, won’t we?”

Tom hitched his own pack into a slightly less painful position and gave the other man a grin. “Take it up with CT Carpenter. I’m sure he’ll be sympathetic.”

Oscar found the breath to chuckle. “Right.” The cadre trainer was about as sympathetic as a cat in a bathtub.

Oscar was Navy, same as Tom. The Goose platoon held recruits from all four branches. They would spend eight weeks in Basic Officer Training before dispersing to learn their various professions. They were two weeks in, and Tom was seriously considering the merits of doing hard time in prison instead.

“Let’s go, kids. Pick up the pace. If you can’t keep up now, what will you do when we give you packs that actually weigh something?” CT Carpenter went past at a trot. He carried the same pack as the officer candidates, and if he noticed the weight he gave no sign.

“That man’s unnatural,” Oscar muttered. “Oh, God. Another hill.”

Tom didn’t answer, saving his breath as the ground rose. Wetaskiwin Base was in the Alberta foothills, and no hike stayed on level ground for long. He knew from experience that looking at the trail ahead would only discourage him. He focused instead on the heels of the woman in front of him, matching her step for step, telling himself that all he needed to do was keep up and eventually it would end.

“Pick ‘em up and lay ‘em down. That’s it. Don���t just think about yourselves, either. You’re a team now. You succeed as a team. You’re going to get that lesson through your heads if I have to march you all the way back to barracks and start this hike over from the beginning. So watch out for one another.”

Tom, lost in a fog of exhausted pain, didn’t raise his head. I’ll keep an eye on this person right in front of me. Or at least her feet. That will have to be enough.

When she stopped, he stopped as well. Only when her pack thumped onto the ground did he look up.

All around him recruits were dropping packs, straightening up, working kinks from their shoulders, or sagging against trees. The platoon was on a wide, sparsely-treed hilltop, and a breeze turned the back of Tom’s shirt cool as he lowered his pack to the ground.

“Fifteen minutes rest,” Carpenter said, setting his own pack down. “Enjoy it while you can. We’ll try to pick up the pace for the second half.”

Tom stepped away from his pack, turning to look at the trail behind them. The base was lost in the haze. They’d marched an impressive distance over some rough terrain, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

With the weight gone from his back he felt as if he was going to pitch forward. He felt light and cool and strong, and he smiled, startled by what he’d achieved. It’s only been two weeks and I’m already getting stronger. What will it be like by the time I’m done?

Civilian life had never been so punishingly hard ��� but at no point in his old life had Tom ever felt quite as good as he felt in this moment. Maybe I wouldn’t choose prison after all.

“Hey, Boss, we’re not done yet.”

Tom looked at Oscar, standing just behind him. Another recruit had the flag. Oscar’s hands were empty. “What? Are we on sentry duty?”

Oscar shook his head. “Look.” He pointed down the hill. “Just this side of those pine trees.”

They were spruce, not pines, but Tom didn’t correct him. He shaded his eyes instead, and finally spotted a small, dark figure staggering up the slope. “Who’s that?”

“I think it’s Bruce.” Bruce Harmon was the oldest member of the platoon, pushing fifty and carrying a lot of extra body weight. He approached every hike with a kind of grim desperation. He wouldn���t give up, Tom knew. But he wasn’t about to catch up, either.

“Come on,” Oscar said, stepping past Tom.

“Wait, what?”

Oscar gave him an impatient look over one shoulder. “Teamwork, remember? You think Carpenter will let us leave someone behind?” He didn’t say anything further, just headed down the hill at a trot.

“But I did my part,” Tom grumbled, watching his friend descend the hill they’d just climbed with such effort. “Aw, hell.” Telling himself he didn’t really need the rest, he headed after Oscar.

Bruce didn’t want to give up his pack. He was red-faced and out of breath, not actually saying anything, just clinging to the shoulder straps and refusing to let go as Oscar tried to take the pack from his back. Tom jogged up to them in time to hear Oscar say, “Give it up, Bruce. We’ll need your help sooner or later. And when we do, we’ll take it and be grateful. We won’t make you argue with us.”

Bruce, still panting for breath, sagged a bit and reached for the buckle at his waist. He let Oscar take the pack.

“Come on, Boss, you can spell me half way up.” Oscar headed up the hill, and Tom started after him.

Bruce’s hand landed on his shoulder, stopping him. Tom turned. Bruce tried to speak, then gave up and pointed at the trail behind him. Tom looked down the trail, looked at Bruce, then shrugged and started walking back down the hill. He waited until he was out of the older man’s earshot before he muttered, “Fine. I’ll just lose even more distance. Because that’s how I want to spend my rest breaks. Doing more walking.”

Just inside the line of spruce trees he found Lily. He’d barely noticed her before, a tiny Chinese girl almost lost inside her baggy fatigues. She sat in the middle of the trail, staring up at him with wide, distressed eyes, her legs splayed on the ground in front of her.

“It’s okay,” he told her, and put a hand on the top of her pack. “Unbuckle yourself and get up. I’ve got the pack.”

She unclipped the waist belt and wriggled out of the shoulder straps. When she stood he was struck by how small she was. The pack wasn’t quite as big as she was, but it wasn’t much smaller. Her legs trembled, but she squared her shoulders and said, “Maybe we can each carry one end.”

“Too awkward,” he told her, and hoisted the pack onto his own back. He had to expand the shoulder straps to get his arms through, then lengthen the waist strap.

Lily gave him a dejected look. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t carry it any farther.”

She looked embarrassed and miserable, and Tom wished Oscar was with him. Oscar always seemed to know how to make someone else feel better. He’d probably point out that this hike was much, much harder on Lily than it was on him and Tom. It was true, too. She looked done in.

“I’ll tell you what,” Tom said. “When I’ve worked as hard as you have, then you can feel bad. Until then, just skip it.” He started walking.

She hurried along beside him. “But I should carry my own pack.”

“This thing must weigh, what? Twenty kilos? Twenty-five?” He looked her up and down. “Do you weigh fifty kilos? I doubt it.”

She said, “But-”

“Do you see me carrying half my weight?” He snorted. “Not likely. I’d have washed out by now if I had to work as hard as you do.” He was saying it to cheer her up, but he realized he meant it. “You’re doing your share, Lily. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”

She didn’t speak, but she gave him a guarded smile, and suddenly her pack didn’t seem all that heavy.

They chatted as they walked. She did most of the talking, seeming to see it as her duty to keep him distracted from his labor. She was a dentist. She’d joined the Navy to see the galaxy, to put some variety in her CV, and because she was a patriot and wanted to help in the only way she could if the UW was pulled into the war. Basic Officer Training was much harder than she’d expected, but she was determined to get through it if she could.

“Thrush. Chan. Try to keep up.” Carpenter glanced at the bracer on his wrist as Tom and Lily passed him to join the rest of the platoon on the hilltop. “Rest break is over in a minute and a half.”

Tom, Oscar, and a couple of others spent the next ninety seconds furtively dividing half the contents of Lily’s and Bruce’s packs among them, while Carpenter pretended not to notice. When Tom hoisted the pack onto his shoulders his muscles howled in protest, but the next section of the trail was downhill and the sight of Lily, still struggling gamely but now managing to keep up, kept him from minding too much.

A training platoon held twenty recruits, and so far Tom’s platoon still had nineteen. About one in four wouldn’t make it through Basic Officer Training, according to the instructors. Some would wash out. Others would quit. They could do that, up until they were sworn in as officers.

Unless they had criminal convictions waiting for them, Tom thought sourly.

The platoon kept marching all through a long, hot spring day. Tom walked, and sweated, cursed the heat out loud and cursed Carpenter under his breath. Other platoons would do this same hike in the dead of a Canadian winter, and he found himself wondering what would be worse. Sure, the snow could be miserable, but at that moment a bit of arctic air sounded like heaven.

A ripple in the marching feet ahead of him caught his attention, and he looked down, scanning for an obstacle. A dead gopher lay in the middle of the trail, legs splayed out, sightless eyes staring into infinity. He stepped over the little rodent, thinking, At least you get to rest.

The sun hung low in the sky when they staggered into a clearing in a valley between hills. Tom, too tired to keep track of direction, had nurtured a quiet hope they’d end up back at the barracks. No such luck; they’d be repeating the hike in reverse tomorrow.

At least they wouldn���t have to sleep on the ground. The camp site held half a dozen long huts, each big enough for a platoon if no one wanted too much elbow room. One hut had a chimney. That one would be for officers and cadre trainers, who wouldn’t want to catch a chill on winter hikes.

“All right, take a break,” Carpenter said. “Catch your breath while I see what hut you’re in.” He set his pack on the ground and headed away at a brisk jog, as if he hadn’t just spent the whole day not just keeping up with the recruits, but moving up and down the column and shouting insults.

“Unnatural, I tell you,” Oscar muttered, and lowered his own pack to the ground.

Half a dozen men and women came around the corner of the nearest hut. They wore the same baggy uniforms as Tom and the others, but they carried themselves with the subtle arrogance of people who’d done more, faced greater challenges than their audience. They were from the previous intake of recruits. That put them four weeks ahead of the Goose Platoon.

“You guys look like you could use a break,” said a tall sandy-haired man. The look he gave them was pure sympathy. “You don’t want to sit, though. Your legs will stiffen up. Better if you stretch out.” He pointed to a gap between huts. “There’s only one good place to rest. The ball field.”

Oscar said, “Ball field?”

“It’s supposed to be for bocce ball or something,” said a woman. “Like anybody ever has the energy for sports.”

The sandy-haired man smiled. “There’s no bocce balls. Just a lot of lush green grass perfect for lying down.”

The woman nodded brightly. “It’s right over there. It’s not far at all.”

“You’ll love it,” the sandy-haired man added.

Tom needed no more encouragement. He joined a stream of exhausted Geese, stumbling between the huts. Sure enough, at the edge of the camp was a lovely rectangle of new spring grass. It looked weirdly out of place in the parched foothills, but the military was full of absurdities. Above all, though, it looked like the perfect place to flake out with no danger of getting dirt on his uniform.

Oscar flopped down on his stomach, sighed happily, and said, “I think this might be heaven.” Lily crashed beside him, closing her eyes and directing a blissful smile at the sky.

Tom found an empty spot and sat down, then let his body sag backward until his head rested on the grass. Cool blades tickled the back of his neck. “Oh, this is sweet,” he said. “It was nice of those guys to tell us about this.”

Oscar lifted his face from the grass and turned his head to look at Tom. He wore a worried frown. “Um ���”

“What in the name of God’s holy socks do you idiots think you’re doing?”

Two weeks of bullying by cadre trainers had every member of the Goose Platoon conditioned to respond to that particular tone of voice. Tom sprang to his feet before he even looked around to see who was speaking. The rest of the platoon hopped up just as quickly. Tom turned, finally spotted the speaker, and felt horror wash over him. Cadre trainers were quite bad enough, but this was an officer.

She was short, but she positively bristled with authority and outrage, until Tom was sure she loomed over him. “By what wild stretch of the imagination do you halfwits think the flag field is an appropriate place for a nap? What platoon are you?” She looked around. “Where’s your cadre trainer?”

Carpenter came hustling up, his face a blend of embarrassment and murderous rage. The officer gave him a good telling off that Tom would have enjoyed immensely if he hadn’t known the abuse would flow on down to the rest of the platoon.

Behind Carpenter and the officer some of the recruits paused to watch the evolving train wreck. Tom spotted the sandy-haired man and his companions, all of them smirking. They set us up. They did this deliberately.

The officer stomped away, and Carpenter swept a withering gaze over the platoon. “Get off the flag field now.”

All of them were off the grass before he finished speaking.

“And don’t set foot on it again unless you’re raising or lowering a flag.” He was shaking, and Tom braced himself for the explosion to come. All Carpenter said, though, was, “Ten times around the perimeter of the camp. Double-time. Now! Let’s go, recruits.”

Tom started to run. Adrenaline sustained him for the first half-lap. After that he relied on grim determination. All in all, though, he figured the platoon was getting off easy.

Until he saw recruits from several other platoons setting up long tables, then sitting down to eat. It was chow time, and the Goose platoon was missing it.

The next morning they rose with the sun, weary and ravenous. They devoured a quick breakfast and hit the trail, beginning the long, weary plod back to the barracks. More people were sharing the load from Lily’s and Bruce’s packs, so Tom carried barely any extra weight.

He was marching half asleep, something he would have sworn was impossible before he came to Camp Wetaskiwin, when a minor commotion brought him fully awake. Another platoon was overtaking the Geese. He edged to one side and watched them pass, stiffening when he recognized the tall sandy-haired man. The man gave him a smirk and a mocking salute as he went by.

The flag bearer was next. The flag held an image of a hummingbird, and the woman who carried it held it with jaunty aplomb. Tom glared at her until she was out of sight, and then lapsed back into a walking doze.

“Now that’s odd, Boss.”

Tom looked up from his daze. “What’s that?”

Oscar grinned at him. “I’m actually glad to see the barracks.”

Tom followed the direction of his gaze and saw the scattered buildings of Wetaskiwin Base ahead of them. Relief flooded through him, and he chuckled. It was true. Impossible as it seemed, he was actually glad to see the place.

It meant his hike was almost over.

“Banner’s drooping,” Oscar murmured, and Tom lifted the flag a bit higher. It was his turn as color bearer.

“All right, straighten up,” Carpenter barked. “Form a double line. Let’s pretend we’re a platoon and not a gaggle of ducklings.”

“Goslings,” Oscar said, keeping his voice low enough that Carpenter wouldn’t hear.

“Color bearer to the front,” Carpenter continued. “Let’s try to look like actual soldiers, shall we?”

The platoon marched across the last stretch of prairie with their heads high, feet moving in time. Tom glanced back and was startled to realize they actually did look like soldiers.

Another platoon stood shoulder to shoulder on the parade ground, a couple of cadre trainers inspecting them, peering closely at uniforms and looking for infractions. Half a dozen recruits dropped to the ground to do push-ups while the rest broke apart and moved away.

The flag staff felt as heavy as an iron bar, and Tom’s pack hadn’t gotten any lighter either. He desperately wanted to head for his bunk, throw himself down, and not move for the next ten or twelve hours. That was impossible, of course. They would get a scant few minutes to clean up and put away their gear, and then they’d be back outside, lining up for inspection.

Even now, another platoon was lining up. Not just any platoon, Tom realized as he led the Geese past the parade ground. This was none other than the Hummingbirds. He shot them a glare, wondering if he could distract someone, make one of them laugh during the inspection and earn some extra push-ups.

Instead, he limped up to the front of the barrack building. He waited while the others dropped their packs in a line against the front wall, then handed the flag to Oscar and finally took off his own pack.

“Stow this gear properly,” Carpenter said. “Inspection is in five minutes.”

In that five minutes they would be expected to empty every pack, clean and stow the contents, wash their hands and faces and straighten their uniforms. In addition, Tom was responsible for putting away the flag staff and mounting the goose flag in its place of honor at the front of their barrack room.

There simply wasn’t time to do it all. The cadre trainers knew as much, and might or might not look the other way as the recruits cut corners. Already, most of the platoon was hustling their packs toward a storage hut. They would heap the packs onto shelves, still loaded, and hope the CTs didn’t inspect the hut until they had a chance to come back and stow everything properly. It was how the platoon would spend their “free time” after chow.

First, though, Tom had a chore to take care of. He took the goose flag from Oscar and headed inside.

Each platoon had its own barrack room. He passed a couple other barrack buildings, entered his own building, jogged upstairs, and headed into the Goose room. He would need a minute or so to get the flag unfastened from the staff and properly attached to the display bar that hung at the front of the room. The sound of familiar footsteps on the floor behind him made him smile. A helping hand from Oscar would make the job go faster.

“Drop that,” Oscar said.

Tom turned and stared at him. Oscar’s eyes danced with mischief. “Drop it,” he said, and pointed at the floor. “We’ll come back and put it up in a minute.”

Tom said, “What-”

“Come on! This is our chance.”

Tom dropped the goose flag and let Oscar drag him out through a side exit. Only when they headed downstairs did he realize where they were headed.

He started to grin.

“We don’t have much time,” Oscar said. “The CTs are inspecting them now.” They slipped out of the building, across a narrow gap, and into the next building. Oscar stuck his head into one doorway, muttered, “No,” and kept going. They came to another doorway, Oscar stuck his head inside, and said, “Bingo.”

Tom followed him into a platoon barrack room almost identical to their own. The only difference was that the display bar at the front of the room already held a triangular banner.

With a hummingbird.

For a moment he stood, frozen with indecision. One cadre trainer would inspect the platoon outside ��� that was already happening ��� and another would come inside to inspect the barrack room. They only had moments. “What do we do? Mess up the beds?”

Oscar scoffed. “Are you kidding? You think I carried this thing for twenty kilometers for nothing?” He reached into his shirt, smirking, and drew out the stiff corpse of a gopher.

Tom laughed, then followed him to the front of the room, where Oscar started to fumble with the cords connecting the hummingbird banner to the display bar. “I think this little guy deserves a shroud.”

“That’s too slow.” Tom reached past him, lifted the bar from its rack, and slid it out through the loops in the banner.

“Perfect.” Oscar wrapped the gopher in the banner, leaving the little brown head sticking out. He laid the body on the floor in front of the display bar. “Beautiful,” said Oscar. “I think it’s the send-off Private Gopher deserves.” He winked at Tom. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

The sound of marching feet in the corridor outside froze them in place. “A CT,” Oscar hissed. “We are so screwed.”

Tom grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him past rows of neatly-made bunks toward the back wall. He led the way into the bathroom.

“He’ll inspect the bathroom in a minute,” Oscar whispered.

“He’ll do the showers first,” Tom said. “We’ll sneak out then.”

Oscar didn’t look convinced. He didn’t protest, though, because at that moment they heard the approaching footsteps grow louder, then fall silent.

The CT was in the barrack room behind them.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” It was a woman’s voice, thick with disgust, and Tom and Oscar looked at one another, grinning.

The inspection would be quick and cursory, unless the cadre trainer was in a particularly vindictive mood. She already had a juicy violation to punish the Hummingbird platoon with, so maybe she wouldn’t bother looking too closely at the rest of the barrack. Tom crept across the bathroom, slipped into a stall, perched on the toilet, and drew his feet up. The door was ajar, but if the CT did no more than glance in, it would be enough.

A faint creak from the next stall told him Oscar was emulating him. The noise seemed horribly loud, and Tom held his breath, waiting to be discovered.

Feet clacked on the floorboards, then stopped. Was the CT in the bathroom? Or next door, in the shower room? There was no way to tell. When he could no longer hold his breath, Tom switched to taking quiet, shallow breaths. Incomprehensible noises came to him, creaks and taps that could have been footsteps or anything else. Once he heard the woman muttering to herself under her breath.

Then footsteps, brisk and precise, growing quieter as they receded with distance.

Tom wanted to wait. He wanted to stay frozen in the stall until he was sure the woman was a good long way away. However, he was just about out of time. Goose Platoon was due for inspection in a matter of moments, and he’d left his own banner lying on the floor. He stood, peeked cautiously around the door of his stall, then stepped out. Oscar came out of the stall beside him, and the two of them peered into the barrack room.

“Let’s go,” Oscar whispered. “We must be almost out of time.”

Tom nodded, and the two of them hurried to the doorway. They peeked into the hall, saw no one, and broke into a run.

They made it out of the building undetected. As they approached their own building, however, they almost collided with Carpenter. He was heading toward the parade ground, and he barked, “You two are almost late. Let’s go.”

Tom, his heart sinking, could do nothing but follow, Oscar glum and silent at his side. When the Goose banner was found lying ignominiously on the floor the entire platoon would be punished. Tom and Oscar would be pariahs.

His mood improved slightly when he came around the corner and saw the entire Hummingbird Platoon on their stomachs doing push-ups. The Goose platoon lined up beside the parade ground, patiently waiting their turn as the Hummingbirds panted and strained. At last the Hummingbirds rose to their feet and set off at a run, following a footpath that would take them around the entire base. Tom watched them go, wondering how many laps they would have to do. It gave him a deep sense of satisfaction that was only tempered by the knowledge the Goose platoon would shortly be doing the same thing.

“Platoon, form up!”

Tom joined the others, standing shoulder to shoulder on the parade ground. Carpenter, who looked as fresh and rested as if he’d spent the day loafing in an easy chair, paced up and down the line, peering at each recruit. He handed out his usual list of petty infractions, citing Bruce for an untied boot lace and another recruit for having one pant leg untucked from his boot top. Tom and Oscar both had dusty, unwashed faces, and they joined the other two on the ground, doing ten push-ups each.

It was fairly light duty as punishment went. That meant someone had carried their packs to the hut while they were on their mission, and no one had inspected the hut. That was one bullet dodged, but right now another cadre trainer would be walking into the Goose barrack room ���

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say you impressed me today,” Carpenter said. “You have a lot of room for improvement. You covered a lot of ground, though, and your time was ��� Well, it was bad, but it wasn’t awful.”

For Carpenter, silence instead of his usual barrage of criticism was the equivalent of fulsome praise from a normal human being. This grudging compliment was enough to make Tom’s chest swell. He cringed inside a moment later, though, as Carpenter’s gaze shifted. The CT was looking at someone behind the platoon. It could only be the other CT, the one who’d gone in to inspect the barrack room.

“Well,” Carpenter said. “How does it look?”

“Not good,” said a cool feminine voice from behind Tom. He knew better than to turn his head. “I found dust under the beds.”

“Dust?” Carpenter sounded as disgusted as if she’d found cockroaches. “You expect to become serving military officers, and you can’t even manage the dust in your own barrack room? On the ground! Everybody give me fifteen push-ups.” Tom dropped to his stomach, waiting for the other shoe to fall. He started doing push-ups, and Carpenter said, “Anything else?”

“There were a couple of spots on one of the mirrors. That’s it.”

That’s it? Tom kept doing push-ups, losing count as confusion washed over him. Could she have somehow overlooked the flag?

Impossible.

The other recruits were rising, so Tom stopped doing push-ups and stood. He stared straight ahead, mystified, while Carpenter told them how disappointed he was in their housekeeping and reminded them they would be getting up early the next morning so there would be time for a run before their leadership training began.

And then he dismissed them.

Tom looked around at the other recruits, wondering who had saved his neck. Oscar met his gaze and shrugged. The rest of the recruits turned away, heading in different directions. Tom looked at their retreating heads, baffled.

Then one head turned. It was Lily. She’d had a rough time on the hike back, but the smile she gave him now was full of triumph. She winked, then headed toward the barrack room.

Chapter 4

Six more weeks of training passed in an intense blur. Tom hiked and marched and stood in parades. He rolled out of his bunk in the middle of the night for endless drills. He sat in classrooms, fighting to stay awake, learning about leadership and command structures and the history of the Armed Forces. He did endless push-ups, filled with resentment until he realized the “punishments” were arbitrary. The point was not to punish him; the point was to get him to do plenty of push-ups. After that he no longer minded when a cadre trainer would single him out for having his shirt untucked after a strenuous drill. Push-ups were simply part of his day.

Light weapons training was fun, and he wished he could have done more of it. After graduation the weapons training would become more specialized, he knew. He would move on to ship weapon systems, while the army recruits learned about artillery and mechs, the marines practiced boarding spaceships in vacuum, and the cavalry learned about fighters.

In the meantime, the platoon was one big dysfunctional family all learning the same things.

Tom grumbled to anyone who would listen. He grumbled about the pointless, repetitive exercise. He griped about the endless hikes. He pointed out the absurdity of making them sit in classrooms when they were chronically short of sleep. Training and sleep deprivation should be mutually exclusive things, shouldn’t they?

All of them complained. They complained bitterly and enthusiastically, and it was a form of bragging. When you listed all the pointless hardships you had to put up with, you were listing all the things you were capable of enduring. Beneath the bitching was a growing pride, an awareness that they coped every day with more than a civilian had to handle in a month.

For a few people, the complaining was a little more serious. There was no way to tell who was complaining as part of their daily routine and who was actually distressed until a recruit would suddenly disappear. Each time someone quit it was a shock to the others. They would look at one another, silently wondering who would be next. In an insidious way, though, it added to the pride of the survivors. This training is too tough for a lot of people, they would think, but we are still here.

Bruce refused to quit, earning the respect of the rest of the platoon not by achieving any sort of excellence but by grimly persevering. He was last in every hike, last to finish push-ups, last to rise from his bunk in the morning. He reached a point where he didn’t even complain anymore, just faced every challenge with a bleak grimness.

And it wasn’t enough. One day in morning parade a cadre trainer took him out of the line and led him toward the headquarters building.

Tom never saw Bruce again.

One recruit washed out in a more dramatic way. Valdes was a quiet, intense young man who reminded Tom of a younger version of Bruce. He would be cheerful one day, sullen the next. Sometimes he would be grim and silent, as if saving his breath and attention for the ordeal of his training. Other times he would join in the complaining, becoming more and more passionate as he spoke, as if he was giving vent to all the stress he’d been bottling up. His voice would rise until the others exchanged uncomfortable glances. Once Carpenter came into the barrack room and sent Valdes out to run laps in punishment for creating a disturbance.

It was clear Valdes was under a lot of stress, but so was everyone. Tom didn’t give it a lot of thought until one evening, as the platoon stood shoulder to shoulder for the usual inspection. Carpenter paced up and down the line, peering at the recruits one at a time, and singled out Valdes for having untidy hair. “Drop and give me ten push-ups.”

“It’s just hair, Cadre Trainer.”

The look of shock on Carpenter’s face was almost comical. “What did you say to me, recruit?”

This exchange was so unprecedented, so astonishing, that Tom forgot himself and actually turned his head to watch. Valdes opened and closed his mouth several times, a muscle in his cheek jumping. Then he screamed, “Get off my back, you bloody martinet! I’ve had it with you!”

Carpenter started shouting at him. He was a good shouter ��� all the CTs were ��� but Valdes matched him decibel for decibel. For ten seconds or so they screamed into each other’s faces. Then Carpenter, in a quick movement, yanked Valdes forward, tripped him, and dropped him on his stomach on the ground. “You will give me my ten push-ups, recruit!”

Valdes leaped up. His hands were clenched in fists, and there was murder in his eyes. But Carpenter, not having been born yesterday, stepped aside, twisted his hips, and somehow threw Valdes forward while barely seeming to touch him. Valdes landed on the ground one more time.

“This is your last chance, son.” Carpenter’s voice was soft now, and it was somehow much worse than the screaming. “You better start doing push-ups. Right now.”

Valdes came up, his fist looped around in a wild swing ��� and he landed on his back in the dirt with his arm splayed wide. He didn’t get up.

“Thrush. Parker. Take him to the surgery. If he wakes up along the way, don’t let him go. See that he gets to the surgeon.”

Tom and Parker took an arm each and set off across the parade ground. They dragged Valdes, his heels leaving tracks in the dust. His head hung for the first few steps. He started to recover after that. By the time they reached the door to the surgery he was looking from one of them to the other. Tom was expecting him to struggle, but what happened was much worse.

He started to cry.

A captain in a surgeon’s red uniform came around from behind a desk, took in the situation with a glance, and gestured at a gurney. “Put him there.”

Valdes wouldn’t lie down on the gurney, so the two recruits got him sitting on it instead. They stepped back, ready to react if he tried anything, though Tom wasn’t sure just what he was going to do if Valdes decided to leave.

“I’ll handle things from here, boys.” The captain made a shooing gesture with his hand. “Run along.”

Tom half expected Valdes to go on a rampage and attack the doctor. You didn’t argue with officers, though. He took one last glance at Valdes, who had one hand curled protectively around a bruise on his jaw. Valdes looked broken, his momentary passion on the parade field spent. He didn’t look at anyone. He just stared at the floor.

“Go,” the captain said gently.

Tom and Parker went.

“What do you think will happen?” Parker said as they walked back to rejoin the platoon. “He tried to hit Carpenter. Will they court-martial him?”

Tom shrugged. “I doubt it.” What would be the point? “He’s done in the military, though.”

He never did learn Valdes’s fate. The barrack room had another empty bunk from that point on, and that was that.

At the end of their fourth week the platoon made its toughest hike yet, a dawn-to-dusk ordeal with packs that had to weigh almost forty kilos. At the midpoint they crossed a stream by balancing on a fallen log. Tom was half way across when he slipped, landing hard on wet rocks. Pain lanced through his knee, and he cried out, struggling to push himself up out of the water. Distantly he heard Carpenter snapping orders to the rest of the platoon. Then recruits splashed into the water on either side of him, taking his pack, then helping him to his feet.

He completed the hike, but he did it with an empty pack. He carried the flag staff, using it for support, and hobbled along as best he could. When the platoon reached the barracks, Carpenter sent him straight to the surgery.

By this time Tom’s left knee was swollen to almost twice its normal size. The surgeon clucked over it as he examined the injury, then announced, “You’re spending the night here. We’ll take another look at this tomorrow.” He gave Tom a couple of injections, one in the shoulder and one in the knee itself. Then he wheeled Tom’s gurney into a small room. “Don’t get up without crutches,” he said. “I’ll bring you a pair. Try to keep your weight off it.” The man gave Tom a thin smile. “I expect you could use the rest, anyhow.”

Tom didn’t know what was in those injections, but the pain in his knee quickly faded. He lay there, basking in the twin luxuries of privacy and idleness, and wondered why he hadn’t gotten himself injured a lot sooner. An orderly brought him a dinner tray, and Tom ate in bed. Then he leaned back against the gurney, astonished to find he had absolutely nothing to do.

I can catch up on my sleep. And after that, I can sleep some more. The idea was tremendously appealing, and he yawned as he thought about it. Maybe I’ll follow that up with a nap.

What if I can’t continue my training? He supposed they would bump him into another platoon if they had to. There was a new intake every four weeks. He could spend a month recuperating, or two months if necessary, then pick up where he left off.

Maybe I could drop out. Maybe this is my ticket out of the military. He thought of Laycraft and her threats of prison. He’d done everything she’d asked of him. He’d joined the military. If he was injured and couldn’t continue, that wasn’t his fault.

Would Laycraft care? He thought not. Surely six weeks of boot camp and an injury was enough punishment.

I could be a free man. I could get my life back.

Instead of excitement, though, he felt a strange hollowness in the pit of his stomach. What? You hate this place. Why does the thought of leaving make you ill?

Leaving now would make all that suffering worthless. He would get nothing from it. But what could he hope to gain, besides several more years in a uniform, following orders?

I could be a civilian again. He explored the thought, and felt his upper lip curl. What was a civilian, except a coddled child who had to be protected by someone who was so much more?

Do I really want to be one of them? Instead of one of us?

He could sleep in classrooms. He could sleep on rocky ground in bright sunlight during five stolen minutes on the march. Hell, he could sleep standing up, or even walking.

And now, stretched out on a comfortable gurney, he lay awake and stared at the ceiling. If I leave, Mom will say I she knew it was going to happen. She’ll say I always fail. But since when do I listen to her?

If I carry on, she’ll just harp at me for failing to become an architect. It’s not like there’s any pleasing her. So forget about her. What do I want?

He thought about returning to college. He thought about watching his hard-won muscles slowly vanish. He thought about getting plenty of sleep, and facing no greater challenge than his final exams. He thought about going through the rest of his life without doing anything that really mattered.

And he made up his mind. And then, at last, he went to sleep.

In the morning the surgeon looked him over, prescribed three days of light duty, and sent him back to the platoon.

Graduation was a day of surprises. The first surprise for Tom was how proud he felt. It was the end of the most gruelling eight weeks of his life. Six members of the platoon hadn’t made it. Those who remained knew they had done something remarkable.

And they had done it together, forging amazingly close bonds for such a short time. To Tom the remaining Geese felt as close as siblings.

The platoon would scatter now. Even those who had chosen the Navy would take their occupation training in different places, then move on to different ships and bases. He would run into the other Geese from time to time, but it would never be the same.

The next surprise came from his parents. They startled him, first by showing up at all, then by beaming with pride. Tom stood before his parents in his dress uniform with a ceremonial sword buckled around his waist, and his mother clasped her hands and gazed up at him, speechless. Finally she clutched his shoulders, cried a bit, then stepped back and smiled like her face was going to split in half. Tom’s father hugged him, said, “Well done,” then wiped his eyes.

Carpenter gave them one last inspection, then shocked the entire platoon by saying, “You’ll do.” He even smiled a tiny bit, an expression that looked completely unnatural on his angular face.

The camp commander swore them in as officers, one at a time. Five platoons graduated that day, an endless stream of faces showing the same mix of pride and apprehension that Tom felt. Basic Officer Training was over ��� but no one thought life was about to get easier.

The platoon returned one last time to their barrack room, where they passed around a bottle and reminisced. They exchanged awkward goodbyes, promising to keep in touch, swearing they would never forget their time together as Goose Platoon. Lily threw her arms around Tom and squeezed him so hard she drove the breath from his lungs. She would be shipping out immediately, taking up her duties as a dentist at a United Worlds base in the heart of the Blue Zone, coreward, near the front lines of the war.

Finally, reluctantly, the platoon dispersed. They weren’t recruits any longer. They were officers now. Twenty new recruits would move into their barrack room and carry the Goose flag for another eight weeks.

Tom lingered, looking around at the place where his life had irrevocably changed. When he looked back over all he’d gone through, he could hardly believe he’d made it through. He’d never had such a sense of achievement before.

The only downside was that Oscar wasn’t here to enjoy it with him. Oscar had quit, abruptly and without explanation, in the middle of Week Five.

Chapter 5

It was the second month of Battleship School, and Tom hated it.

Even during his first semester of college he’d never felt so thoroughly like a misfit. Somehow the hard-won camaraderie of Basic Officer Training was missing aboard the Dauntless, the obsolete battleship in orbit around Saturn which served as a training ground for battleship crews.

Battleships were all about teamwork. That was a refrain Tom heard again and again. A battleship had close to fifteen hundred personnel aboard, all of them living and working closely together. Chaos was a constant threat. Only strict adherence to rules and a dedication to the principles of teamwork could keep a battleship functioning.

The trainers didn’t just talk to him about teamwork. They made it sound like an accusation, like they were telling him something simple, something he was supposed to grasp innately. Like he had to be a halfwit with a love of anarchy to not get it.

But Tom understood teamwork. The Goose platoon had practiced teamwork in formal ways, during exercises with explicit parameters, and in informal ways, like Operation Dead Gopher, as it had come to be known. He knew that teamwork mattered. He understood.

But the word seemed to have a different meaning in Battleship School. It seemed to be less about cooperation than conformity. For some reason, the creases in his trousers were a fundamental part of teamwork. If he didn’t lace his boots just so, he was letting the team down.

He was labelled a poor team player for asking too many questions. For cutting through the munition loading area during a drill, and clambering two decks down through an elevator shaft designed to lift explosive shells to the guns. He’d shaved two minutes or so from his response time, but he hadn’t taken the approved route.

He supervised the crew of a laser battery during a mock battle. When a gunner threw himself to the deck and became a simulated casualty, Tom took the controls himself and shot down an incoming simulated missile. He was pretty pleased with himself after that shot, and fully expected to be congratulated.

Instead, he got a lecture about teamwork. There were rules on a battleship. Things had to be done a certain way. He was supposed to report the casualty and wait for a replacement. If he couldn’t follow such a simple instruction, well, he couldn’t be much good at teamwork, could he?

At first he took it as a challenge. No doubt all the new trainees were being hazed in some fashion. It was the Navy way, heaping stress on everyone during training so they wouldn’t be fazed by anything they encountered in active service. So he persevered, dug deep, and tried harder.

But the more he tried, the more lines he inadvertently crossed. By his third week he knew he was a special case. None of the other new officers were so constantly in the doghouse. He caught them giving him pitying looks. He was the ugly duckling of the group, the poor sap who didn’t seem to have what it took.

A sour knot of frustration formed in his stomach, and there it stayed, day after day. He tried to conform, but his instincts betrayed him repeatedly. It seemed there was always an easier way to do something, a quicker way, a more effective way. And every time he cut a corner, it was a fresh mark against him.

Physical training was his escape. In the gymnasium he was as good as everyone else, and there was finally a straightforward correlation between how hard he tried and how well he did. Hard physical exercise became the only thing that eased the knot in his belly. One day, though, physical training became his undoing.

Deck P, known informally as “Pee Deck,” was a tiny section of catwalk originally designed to give access to the top of the ship’s massive engines. The middle four engines had been removed when she was decommissioned, however. Deck P now hung suspended above a gulf thirty meters high. It was to this deck that Tom was summoned during his sixth week on the Dauntless. His heart sank when he saw who waited for him.

Jerry Reynolds had seemed, at first, like just another trainer. He’d delivered lectures with the same sneering disdain Tom had come to expect from the cadre trainers during Basic Officer Training. Tom had come to realize, however, that the status of the students was different here. They were no longer new recruits working hard to become officers. Tom and his classmates were officers now, more or less. In theory they outranked the trainers, though the captain of the Dauntless had made it abundantly clear during her welcoming speech that they would deeply regret trying to pull rank on seasoned professionals in charge of teaching them.

The trainers walked a careful line, displaying a certain degree of respect to the brand-new officers under their care without leaving any doubt who was truly in charge.

All except Reynolds.

Tom wasn’t sure if Reynolds hated all officers or just the ones he was supposed to teach. Or perhaps he hated everyone, and student officers were simply the only ones he was able to abuse. At any rate, he was petty, unpleasant, and insulting. Tom loathed him, and the sentiment seemed to be mutual.

“About time you got here,” Reynolds sneered as Tom stepped onto the catwalk. “I guess we can finally begin. Go stand with them.” He gestured at three other sublieutenants standing in a row beside the railing that was all that separated the front of Deck P from the void. “You’re going to be jumping down there.” He smiled nastily. “If you have the guts.”

Tom glanced over the railing and felt his stomach tighten. The next deck was a long, long way down. The thought of putting on an antigravity harness, clambering over that railing, and letting go filled him with a queasy dread. He suddenly understood why they called this “Pee Deck”.

“What’s the matter, Thrush? Scared of heights? Don’t they have tall buildings back there on your reservation?”

Tom was used to harassment from the man, but this was a new low. He looked at Reynolds, who smirked at him. “What are you used to, tipis? The Navy must be a big step up for you. We’ve got running water and indoor plumbing! But you’re going to have to earn your place if you want to stay. You’re going to have to man up.”

A wave of fury washed over Tom, shocking in its strength. He wanted to pound Reynolds’s face until that smug expression was a pulpy, swollen mess. Instead, he grabbed the railing in both hands and twisted against the unyielding metal. Pain lanced through his hands, focusing him, and he wrestled his rage down, shoved it into a cage in the bottom of his mind.

“What’s the matter, Indian Boy? Don’t like it when people tell it like it is?”

Tom shot him a glare, then looked away and said, “Can we please get on with the exercise, Mr. Reynolds?”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.” Reynolds strutted forward. He leaned against the railing, so close that Tom could feel the man’s breath against his cheek. Reynolds was a tall man. Even leaning against the railing he could look down at Tom. There was an eager gleam in his eyes, like a predator who’s scented blood.

“What’s the matter, Thrush?” he said softly. “You upset?”

Tom stared straight ahead and didn’t answer.

“Is that a tear I see building in the corner of your eye? Are you going to cry? Is all the nasty talking too much for the poor little recruit?” When Tom ignored him he barked, “Answer me!”

Tom looked at him. “Sir.”

Reynolds said, “What?”

“I don’t see any rank bars on your uniform.” Tom tapped his own chest, where the painfully narrow half-stripe of a sublieutenant ran from his collar to the seam of his sleeve. “Like this one. So you can address me as ‘Sir’ from now on.” He smiled, the frosty, merciless smile he’d learned from CT Carpenter. “Is that clear, Jerry?”

Reynolds’s face turned red. “You will address me as Trainer Reynolds!”

Backing down would have been prudent, but Tom was much too angry. He deepened his smile, knowing it infuriated the other man. “Sir. You forgot to say ‘Sir’ at the end.”

Reynolds’s voice rose to a shout. “You self-important little moron, you’re not a real officer! I’ll bounce you out of here so fast, you’ll be back in your wigwam in the forest before your head stops spinning! If you think I’m going to let some savage talk to me like that, you’ve got-”

The room vanished in a haze of red. It didn’t lift until a fist slammed into Tom’s kidney from behind. The pain made him suck in his breath, and he shook his head, clearing it.

He stood at the railing with a student officer on either side of him. They had him by the arms, and they were straining with everything they had, trying to pull him back.

Reynolds was on the other side of the railing. He was clutching the middle bar of the railing with one hand, his other hand flailing in the air. His legs waved over the void, and he wailed, an incoherent sound of terror. Tom stared down at him, feeling a rush of exultation that quickly gave way to fear. Oh my God. What have I done?

He let the others drag him back. A burly young man named Kalac stood chest to chest with him, hands on Tom’s shoulders, while the other two ran to pull Reynolds to safety.

“Settle down,” said Kalac. “We don’t need any more finger stomping.”

Tom winced. I stomped on his fingers?

“I couldn’t let you kill him,” Kalac said. “You see that, right?” There was tension in the set of his shoulders, wariness in his eyes.

“Sure.”

“No hard feelings, then?”

Tom said, “For what?”

“Hitting you.”

Tom reached a hand behind him and touched his back just below the ribs. Now that he gave it his attention, the pain was really quite bad. He said, “Did you have to hit me that hard?”

“Yes.” Kalac nodded. “Yes, I did.”

Behind Kalac the other two dragged Reynolds over the railing. He was a mess, gasping and clutching at them, but he’d compose himself soon enough. And then he would open his fool mouth. “If it’s all the same to you,” said Tom, “I’m going to head back to my room. I guess I better pack.”

Kalac nodded and let go of Tom’s shoulders, but he didn’t lower his arms.

Tom started to turn, then paused and turned back. Kalac lowered himself into a crouch, clearly expecting the worst.

“Kalac?” Tom said. “Thanks.”

Packing didn’t take long, since he owned practically nothing. He folded his dress uniform and put it into a duffel bag, then took his sword out of the closet. He wondered if they would take it away when they cashiered him. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was certainly beautiful, bright enough to use for a mirror. He looked at his own face, distorted by the curve of the scabbard, and shook his head, disappointed by the man he saw looking back at him. “You stupid shit,” he muttered. “When are you going to learn?”

His bracer chimed. Most civilians had implants for data access and communication. Kids carried handheld devices or wore data gloves. The Navy used a standard bracer, a metal bracelet that ran from the wrist half way to the elbow. Tom tapped his bracer and read the message displayed on the built-in screen.

He was to report to Captain Alizadeh at once.

Her office was not far from Tom’s cabin, but the short walk felt as gruelling as an all-day hike with a full pack. Tom hesitated outside her door, then took a deep breath and told himself he might as well get it over with.

“Lieutenant.” Sublieutenants and overlieutenants were all addressed as ‘Lieutenant’ unless there was a need to be more specific. “Sit down.”

Tom took a seat in front of the gleaming expanse of the captain’s desk. She had olive skin and dark eyebrows above two of the fiercest eyes he had ever seen. She was small, barely half his mass, but he found her utterly intimidating. She looked at him with the cold haughtiness of a bird of prey, and he felt a slow flush rise up his neck and spread across his face.

“You’ve had quite an interesting day, Mr. Thrush.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said meekly.

She picked up a data pad and looked at it, her expression impossible to read. “Let me see. Trainer Reynolds peppered you with racial insults. You responded by asserting your very junior rank in an entirely inappropriate way.” She glanced up at him, arching an eyebrow. It felt as scathing as the worst dressing down he’d ever gotten from the cadre trainers in Basic.

“Trainer Reynolds challenged you, and you responded by, let me see ���”

Tom squirmed in his chair.

“Ah, yes. You threw him bodily over the railing of Deck P, then stepped on his fingers as he hung from the railing.” Her face became very still, and Tom had the strangest sense that she was suppressing a smile. That was preposterous, of course.

“This is a very serious matter,” she said. “It will have to be dealt with somewhat harshly, I’m afraid.”

Here it comes, Tom thought. He nodded. “I understand, Ma’am.”

“Do you?” she said. Her expression didn’t change, but her face seemed somehow less harsh. “Do you know why Reynolds is a trainer?”

Tom blinked, startled. “No, Ma’am.”

“Sometimes we take the very best that the Navy has and make them trainers, so they can pass along that tradition of excellence to new officers and crew.” Now he was sure of it. She was hiding a smile. “That is not the case with Mr. Reynolds. In his case, we keep him here because he would be a disaster on a working battleship.”

Tom stared at her, astonished.

“He serves a useful purpose,” she said. “We have him teaching officers because it keeps his sadistic tendencies in check.” She frowned. “Usually it does. He’s unpleasant and unjust, and it prepares student officers for some of the more difficult people they’ll have to deal with during their careers. And you’re familiar with the idea that the more you suffer during training, the longer you live during combat.”

Tom nodded.

“I’ve allowed him to remain, in spite of his significant personal shortcomings. He’s been getting worse, though. I’ve been thinking I would need to do something soon to rein him in.” She smiled briefly. “You’ve taken care of that for me.”

Tom stared at her, bemused. Is she telling me off or not?

“I have to punish you, Mr. Thrush.” The smile was gone now, the coldness firmly back in place. “You behaved inappropriately. You violated some pretty significant regulations. Frankly, you committed offences I could have you arrested for, if that was my inclination.”

Tom gulped.

“Worst of all, you showed bad judgment. That’s an unforgivable sin in a naval officer.” She leaned forward, her eyes skewering him. “You’re smart. I’ve seen your record. Even the complaints. Especially the complaints. Those reprimands tell me you’re always thinking, always analyzing. But today you let your temper get the best of you, and you did something stupid.” She shook her head. “I can’t have an officer on a warship who loses all common sense when somebody pisses him off.”

He made himself meet her gaze. It was as difficult as anything he’d ever done.

Some of the severity left her expression. “The truth is, you don’t belong here.”

He flinched.

“Now, that might sound like a criticism, but it’s not. Not necessarily.” Her chair creaked as she leaned back. “You’re an innovator and a thinker and a fighter. Unfortunately, those aren’t values that battleship commanders value. But battleships are not the entire navy.

“I’m kicking you out of Battleship School. You’ll be leaving the Dauntless tomorrow. It looks like punishment. It’s enough to discourage your peers from shoving any more trainers over railings.” A hint of a grin touched her lips, then vanished. “It’s enough to appease Trainer Reynolds.” She lifted an eyebrow. “He’s not pressing for a court-martial, by the way. I don’t think he wants to stand in front of a courtroom and repeat the things he said to you, and then describe how he let a student dangle him over a railing.” The grin appeared briefly. Her expression went cold as she said, “You got lucky today, Lieutenant. Don’t forget it.”

Her chair creaked again as she reached for a data pad. “I’m transferring you to Capricorn Base. You’ll be learning small ship tactics and strategies. Frigates and corvettes.”

Tom’s heart sank. Battleships were the glamorous part of the fleet. Carriers and heavy cruisers had some glory attached to them too. Small ships were an afterthought, though. They ran errands, or tagged along behind the big ships without contributing much in a battle.

“You don’t look impressed,” Alizadeh said. “You should be. We get more traffic flowing from Capricorn to here than the other way around. They send us the dull ones. The ones who need everything spelled out to them. The ones who do everything by the book and never take a chance. The ones who can’t hack Small Ships.

“In return, we send them the bright ones. The fighters. Everything the trainers told you is wrong with you is an asset in frigates and corvettes. Trust me, Thrush. You’re going to love it.”

Well, I haven’t got much choice, so I guess I’ll take her at her word. “Thank you, Ma’am.”

“I know you don’t mean that,” she said. “You will, though.” She waved an arm around. “For most of the officers on this tub it really would be a punishment. They need structure. Predictability. You don’t get those things on small ships. You get variety instead. My first command was a frigate, and I still miss it. A day on a frigate where everything goes according to plan usually means the ship missed a message. No two days are the same. And frigates go everywhere.”

He gave her a cautious nod.

“You’re relieved of duty for the rest of your time on the Dauntless. I’m putting a Class Two reprimand on your file, and docking you three weeks’ pay.” She looked him up and down, then shook her head. “I suggest you spend your down time reading up on small ship tactics. You’ll be spending a lot less time pressing your uniform and a lot more time in simulated combat. They’re going to expect you to lift off with your rockets blazing. Understand?”

Tom nodded.

“You’re dismissed, Thrush.”

He turned toward the doorway, but stopped when Alizadeh spoke again.

“Thrush? I don���t think Reynolds is actually a racist. He just has a knack for finding people’s buttons, and pushing them. You might want to think about not being quite so easy to manipulate.”

She returned her gaze to the data pad and ignored him as he slipped out of her office.

Chapter 6

The enemy fleet lunged through the darkness, silent as starlight, deadly as sharks.

Tom tapped at the screens surrounding his chair, aware he was smiling like a fool and not caring. The simulator smelled of sweat and spilled coffee. The fingerprints of other student officers smeared the screens, and the hard plastic chair beneath him squeaked every time he shifted his weight. None of it bothered him.

He loved combat simulations. They were everything that Battleship School wasn’t. In combat simulations, only results mattered. There was no one way to do things, no standard path you were never supposed to deviate from. Instead of endless rules, there were guidelines and best practices. In fact, there was only one real rule.

Complete your mission.

A disabled battleship floated dead in space somewhere behind his corvette. His mission was to protect the battleship from a trio of mini-corvettes. The enemy might try to slip past him, but he was betting they would mob him, try to overwhelm him and finish him off so they could tackle the battleship at their leisure.

He launched a spread of missiles, three missiles at each of the approaching targets, then jinked sideways, nudging his corvette out of the way of incoming fire. This wasn’t a completely realistic simulation, where he’d be in command and giving orders to officers at the helm and weapons stations. This was much more fun. He got to do it all himself, treating a massive corvette like his personal fighter, the biggest, deadliest fighter the galaxy had ever known. He cackled as an approaching ship took a direct hit and began to spin end over end.

The remaining two bandits took out his missiles and came after him, hungry for revenge. They fired almost a dozen missiles between the two of them, and Tom fought the urge to evade, keeping his own ships steady as automated laser fire knocked out one missile after another.

Gambling that his opponents had exhausted their missile supply, he closed to point-blank range. For five gruelling minutes he slugged it out with both ships, giving and receiving a steady barrage of minor damage from lasers and cannons. One screen filled with lines of angry red text listing the damage to his own ship. Another screen showed the hits he was scoring on his enemies.

When the last laser turret on the nearest enemy ship blew apart under a withering stream of explosive shells, Tom knew his moment had arrived. He slapped an icon on his center screen and launched his last two missiles at the battered ship. At a range of just over a kilometer the bandit had less than a second to react. Both missiles struck, and Tom let out a whoop.

It turned to a groan a moment later as a buzzer sounded and a computerized voice announced, “Your engines have been disabled.”

He scanned the damage report and winced. The last enemy ship was shooting his corvette to ribbons. Tom still had a functioning gun on the starboard side, but his port-side gun was scrap metal, and the bandit was staying well to port. With his engines disabled, there wasn’t a whole lot Tom could do about it.

When the visor of his helmet slammed down he knew the bridge had lost atmosphere. There was still air all around him, of course; the simulator could only do so much.

He scanned the control screens, looking for an icon that hadn’t gone red. He found a manoeuvering thruster still functioning in the nose of the ship and tapped it. The corvette began a lazy turn that would eventually bring the remaining gun to bear on the enemy.

But the bandit, of course, wasn’t about to stay still. Tom watched helplessly as the enemy ship moved in time with the turning of the corvette, remaining stubbornly on his port side. And the bandit shifted focus, concentrating its cannon fire on Tom’s last remaining thruster.

Tom swore as the thruster icon flashed and went dark.

His screens went blank, the faceplate on his helmet retracted, and a chiding voice said, “Now, is that appropriate language for a naval officer?”

Tom stood and turned. “No,” he said disconsolately.

A woman in a dark uniform stood in the doorway of the simulator, leaning against the doorframe and grinning at him. “I don’t think I’ve ever made it through one of these battle simulations without swearing,” she said. “And I don’t expect you to. But you need to remember that when the faceplate of your helmet comes down, the suit radio starts broadcasting. And not just to the bridge crew, either. Depending on the ship, every word you say might go to your department heads, or the gun crews, or the entire ship. So once you lose air, you need to watch your tongue.”

“I’ll remember,” he said, flushing. He outranked Training Chief Rodriguez, but there was no question which one of them was more valuable to the United Worlds Navy. He respected her utterly, craved her praise, and dreaded her gentle criticism.

“You did well.” She smiled. “You had a better ship, but you were outnumbered. You completely disabled two of them, and did some real harm to the third. But any mission you don’t survive is a failure.” She gestured at the console. “I know it’s a simulation, but someday there’ll be a ship full of living people who’ll die along with you if you get carried away.”

“Right.”

She smiled. “Oh, don’t look so glum. You’re doing fine. I sent you some homework. Check your bracer. I want to see your scenarios by nineteen hundred.” She glanced at her own bracer. “Now scram. I think you’re almost due for OPT.”

“All right. Thanks.” He stepped past her, breaking into a jog. Capricorn Base was small, maybe half a kilometer wide, which was a blessing, because there was never enough time to do everything. Everywhere he went, he went at a run. He found a radial corridor, took it to the perimeter of the station, and ran down a hallway that curved to match the hull of the station.

OPT meant “Orientation and Physical Training”. Orientation meant visiting half a dozen small ships and familiarizing himself with their layouts. The physical training part came from doing the orientation at a dead run.

He arrived panting at Airlock Delta just in time to see a young man in an officer’s vac suit step into the lock. A young woman waited, her helmet under her arm. Protocol called for a three-minute delay between students on OPT runs, so Tom knew he had six glorious minutes of free time.

Sublieutenant Garvin gave him a nod, then busied herself putting on her helmet. Tom tapped his forearm, where his bracer was mirrored by a screen set into the sleeve of his suit. He scanned his homework assignment, knowing he’d have to work out the details during his OPT run.

He had three scenarios, all of them casting him in the role of an enemy plotting mischief against the United Worlds Navy. There was a fleet battle in the Yellow Zone, where the UW would be fighting if they were drawn into the Galactic War. In the opposite direction he had to imagine himself as an admiral for the Dawn Alliance and plot an attack against Garnet, the fleet base in the Green Zone.

The third scenario was on a much smaller scale. He was a pirate with a rag-tag fleet of very small ships, assaulting a convoy guarded by a single frigate.

For several minutes he read through the assignment, memorizing details. He had a few ideas for the fleet battle. It would be the most complex part of the assignment, but the least interesting. There were textbooks for effective tactics in fleet battles. There wasn’t much room for creativity. It was fill-in-the-blanks warfare.

The pirate attack would be a lot more fun. He was tempted to swarm the corvette and overwhelm it, like his opponents had done in his last simulation. He’d lose at least half his fleet, though. No, he decided, he’d do something more elaborate. He’d harass and distract the corvette, and do his best to divide and scatter the unarmed cargo ships. He might only capture one or two prizes, but with a little luck he’d escape with his entire fleet intact.

As for the attack on Garnet, it looked impossible on the face of it. He pushed that one to the back of his mind and let his subconscious play with it while he stepped into the airlock and prepared for his run.

The outer hatch slid open and Tom swung out of the station, feeling his weight drop away. He held a handle just outside the lock and planted his boots against the hull, feeling the magnets engage. The stars, bright and cold, glittered before him, and he wasted a few precious seconds just taking in the view. He wondered if he would ever grow so jaded the stars would no longer thrill him.

He hoped not.

Two of his target ships were in view, a frigate perhaps fifty meters away and a corvette three times as distant. He had a sneaking suspicion he could shave a couple minutes off his run by jumping for the corvette first. It would be foolhardy to try, though. The ship was as small as a toy at this distance. He’d never hit it.

He focused on the frigate instead, bending his legs and deactivating the magnets in his boots.

And then he kicked off and sailed into the void.

There was nothing quite like free flight in vacuum. He’d done this a dozen times, but it still filled him with a giddy blend of terror and exultation. Even with the comforting bulk of the frigate dead ahead and growing, he felt his stomach tighten as adrenaline flooded his system.

Frigates were built like dumbbells, with the bulbous forward section containing the bridge, surgery, galley, and so on, an aft section containing the engines, and a long thin spine connecting the two. For some assignments the spine would be ringed by cylindrical cargo pods. This frigate, used primarily for training missions, had no cargo.

The nose of the frigate loomed closer and closer, and Tom scanned the hull, getting his bearings. A judicious squirt of compressed air right now might save him time traversing the hull. But there was only so much air in the canisters on his belt, and if he ran out he’d have to make an ignominious call for rescue as he sailed helplessly into the void. He decided to err on the side of caution.

Tom brought his knees in and turned his body until his feet pointed at the frigate. He extended his legs, keeping some bend in his knees, and braced himself for impact. At the last instant he remembered his boot magnets and tapped frantically at the screen on his forearm. The magnets activated an instant before his feet thumped into the hull.

As landings went it was less graceful than he might have hoped for. He grunted, momentum driving his knees into his chest, and had to plant a hand on the hull as his body twisted sideways. One boot came loose, but the other boot held. That, Tom decided, was good enough. He got the second boot planted, stood up, and started walking toward the nearest lock.

The frigate held only a skeleton crew and Tom saw no one as he dashed through the ship. He had to visit a gun turret in the nose and the engineering department in the aft section. As he ran down the spine of the ship he mulled over the Garnet scenario.

The biggest threat to the UW was the danger of being dragged into the Galactic War in the direction of the galactic core. Rimward, though, the Dawn Alliance was a serious interstellar rival. Over the last two centuries Earth and the other United Worlds had terraformed dozens of worlds and established colonies throughout a region known as the Green Zone. A massive investment in terraforming was finally paying off in the form of lush worlds ready for human occupation. And just on the other side of the Green Zone, the five star systems of the Dawn Alliance looked on with covetous eyes.

The most likely scenario, according to strategists, was that the Dawn Alliance would wait for the UW to enter the Galactic War. Once the UW was bogged down in a war toward the core, the Alliance would sweep into the Green Zone, annexing planets while the UW had its hands full. It was one of the strongest arguments for keeping out of the Galactic War.

The heart of the UW’s strategy in the Green Zone was the base at Garnet, home of the Green Zone Fleet. The base itself was heavily armored and bristling with guns, and it hosted a substantial fleet. Tom ran through the scenario details, which gave him a considerable fleet for his attack. He’d still be outnumbered and outgunned.

His only real chance, he decided, was a surprise attack. If he could hit the fleet while it was docked at the base, or while crews were in their bunks or down on the planet, he might be able to dish out serious damage before the fleet could react.

The problem was Garnet’s second layer of defense, a network of scanner buoys drifting in seventh-dimensional space and surrounding Garnet on all sides. Anything larger than a mini-corvette would be spotted instantly while it was hours from the base.

Of course, he had bombers, which were a good deal smaller than mini-corvettes ���

He stepped through the door of the engineering department, waved to a lone engineer working at a console inside, and headed for the nearest airlock. He stepped onto the hull, spotted the mini-carrier that was his next stop, lined himself up, and jumped.

As he soared through the void he brought up a description of the Garnet defenses, and the technical specs on the Dawn Alliance’s Wasp-class bombers. And frowned, disappointed. The Navy’s strategists had known what they were doing when they set up the scanner buoys. If a carrier parked just outside the net of buoys and launched bombers, the bombers would barely be able to reach Garnet before running out of fuel. He already knew the simulators would refuse a solution that required the pilots to make a suicide run.

Tom tucked, rolled, and landed on the hull of the mini-carrier. The ship was little more than an engine and a portal generator. It had docks for four fighters, which together massed as much as the carrier itself. He would be on board for no more than a minute.

As the lock cycled an idea occurred to him. What if the carriers stayed outside the buoy perimeter until the attack began, then advanced almost to Garnet to pick up the bombers? He felt a rush of excitement, thinking he’d found a way to beat the assignment, until the ramifications started to sink in. Without the rest of his fleet for support, the bombers would be shot to pieces. Even if the bombing run was successful, he didn’t have enough bombers to cripple the UW fleet. Those ships would be in hot pursuit of the remains of his bomber fleet by the time the carriers arrived to pick them up. The raid would end in disaster.

Still, he toyed with his scheme as he ran down the single long corridor that ran the length of the mini carrier. What if, instead of a mixed fleet, the raid consisted of carriers and enough bombers to demolish Garnet and the entire fleet? Were the base and the fleet vulnerable?

Surely not. Surely most of the fleet would be ready, fully crewed and undocked from the base. A battle-ready fleet and the guns of the base itself would be more than enough to handle even a massive wave of bombers.

Still, the Dawn Alliance might do some real damage if they were willing to sacrifice enough bombers.

As he left the mini carrier and leaped again into space he turned his attention to the Yellow Zone fleet scenario. One of the things that bugged him about small boat training was that, in fleet actions, the corvettes and frigates were considered expendable, used to protect the battleships and carriers while those ships did the real work. This assignment gave him command of an entire fleet ��� and he found himself concentrating his strategy on a pair of battleships and using the small ships for missile interception.

He sighed, shook his head, and went ahead with a conventional battle plan.

The next ship on the OPT run was a tiny scout craft. Tom messed up the jump and used nearly all his compressed air correcting his course. By the time he connected to the hull his back was damp with sweat. He entered the cockpit, dropped into the pilot’s seat long enough for the ship’s AI to mark his presence, then swung back out onto the hull.

The corvette was next. He wanted to aim directly for the distant ship, but he had only a tiny squirt of air left. He jumped for the mini carrier instead, landed, and kicked off for the corvette. The detour cost him time, and he heard the thump of the next student’s boots on the hull as he entered the corvette’s forward lock.

He rushed through the ship, pushing past a cluster of exasperated spacers in the main corridor, and let himself out through the aft lock. Capricorn Base was a huge target, impossible to miss. He pointed himself at the middle of the station and jumped.

The student behind him came sailing in and touched down on the skin of the base while Tom was plodding toward the nearest lock. The two of them entered the lock together, Tom blushing inside his helmet. Running out of air between ships would have been worse, but having someone catch up during an OPT run was still pretty embarrassing.

The base AI marked them complete as the lock finished cycling, and Tom sighed, unsealing his helmet. The other sublieutenant did the same, setting her helmet down while she ran gloved fingers through her hair.

“Good run.”

She smiled. “Thanks. I’m usually a good minute behind your time. I got lucky today.”

“I’m getting sloppy in my old age.”

She giggled. “Sure, gramps.” She clipped the helmet to her belt. “I guess I won’t see you for a day or two.”

Tom lifted an eyebrow.

“You didn’t see the new assignments?” She held up her bracer. “You’re going on an orbital run.”

“Oh.” He brightened. An orbital run meant circumnavigating Jupiter in a runabout. There wasn’t much to do on an orbital run. He’d be able to catch up on his homework. And his sleep.

“Don’t get too happy,” she told him. “You’re going with Abercrombie.”

His shoulders slumped. “Ah, well. You can’t win ‘em all.”

She smiled. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Sure.” He watched her walk away. He liked her. She seemed to like him too, which meant she probably didn’t remember him from Basic Officer Training. She’d been in the Hummingbird Platoon.

According to his bracer he had just under thirty minutes before his ship was to leave for the orbital run. If he hustled he’d be able to shower and grab a snack before setting out on his favorite training activity ��� with his least favorite fellow student.

Chapter 7

The little ship didn’t have a name, just a three-letter callsign. Tom sat in the cramped cockpit, watching storms swirl across the face of Jupiter and wishing he was alone.

David Abercrombie had a chip on his shoulder, a chip the size of the Red Spot. Tom wasn’t sure just what the man’s problem was, but he didn’t seem to like Tom one bit ��� or anyone else, for that matter. He was a sublieutenant, a reservist who’d taken his Basic Officer Training six months earlier. He didn’t seem happy about having to train with the regular navy.

Their assignment might have been quite exciting if it hadn’t been stretched out over two days. Tom and Abercrombie were assisting a squad of marines with their own training mission. The marines were doing something ��� Tom didn’t know what ��� on an abandoned mining platform orbiting high above Jupiter. They would be evacuating the base in a hurry and boarding this ship. He and Abercrombie would help the marines on board, then take them to a rendezvous with another ship.

It didn’t sound interesting on the face of it ��� but the ship wouldn’t be docking with the mining platform. No, those lunatics would hurtle themselves through the void in vac suits and sail through the open hatch one deck below, at high velocity and without the ship even stopping.

Abercrombie, sitting at the helm station, turned his head to give Tom a disdainful look. The man turned his gaze to the forward window as Tom stuck out his tongue. Even when Abercrombie didn’t speak, he made the bridge feel claustrophobic and ugly. Tom badly wanted to retreat to the lower deck, just to be away from him. Only a stubborn refusal to be chased from the bridge kept him in his seat.

He glanced at his forearm and used the screen to check the time. It was twenty minutes until the rendezvous with the marines. He needed less than five minutes to prepare, but twenty minutes was close enough that he could leave the bridge without feeling like he was hiding.

The only problem was getting Abercrombie to agree. The man had an infuriating habit of contradicting every single thing Tom said. Something as trivial as a bathroom break could turn into a morass of unsolvable conflict. The man was pig-headed and mindless in his pursuit of pointless obstruction.

Tom, however, had figured out how to handle him.

“Hey. Abercrombie.”

Abercrombie turned his head and arched an eyebrow.

“You want me to take the controls?” Tom said. “I bet you could use a break.” He pointed at the deck plates. “I thought you might like to head down and open the bay for the marines.”

Abercrombie’s mouth scrunched up like he’d closed his lips with a drawstring. “We should have a good pilot here. It’s a delicate manoeuver, after all. You go down and open the bay.”

Hiding a smirk, Tom nodded. “Sure.” The little ship had no artificial gravity. He pushed off from the arms of his chair, then brought his knees up and put himself in a backward spin. By the time he reached the ceiling of the bridge he was moving feet-first. A gentle kick sent him in the direction of the hatch at the back.

The corridor and ladder behind the bridge were claustrophobic, but leaving Abercrombie behind made Tom feel as if he had all the space in the galaxy. Smiling with simple relief, he pulled himself down to the ship’s lower deck and went into the bay. The largest compartment in the ship, the bay was a good three and a half meters wide with a hatch that took up most of the outer wall. Tom put on his gloves, sealed his helmet, and unspooled an umbilical from the wall. He plugged the rubber tube into his chest and started the flow of air.

He turned on the pumps that would draw most of the air out of the bay, waited until an indicator light flashed amber, then open the hatch.

And stared out into vacuum.

There was something about hard vacuum that fascinated him. There was nothing to see, of course. Literally nothing. But knowing that nothing separated him from the void but the fabric of his suit and a thin film of air inside his helmet always made him feel wonderfully alive.

The stars were cold and bright, much brighter than they ever looked from Earth. He couldn’t see Jupiter from this angle, but the stars by themselves were beautiful enough.

When he got tired of the stars he tapped the wrist screen to life. Before the Navy he had been thoroughly connected to the data nets on Earth. Basic Training had broken him of that lifelong habit. Now he was able to connect to the data nets again, but they had lost much of their allure.

He browsed a newsfeed, telling himself that interstellar politics, at least, were relevant to him. The Galactic War was heating up. The League of Free Nations had taken another star system, and the Alliance was growing more desperate.

Some politicians in the United Worlds were demanding that Earth and her allies join the war. A similar number of politicians and pundits were insisting that the United Worlds stay out. One firebrand even insisted that this was the time to start a new war in the opposite direction. The Dawn Alliance was watching and waiting, she said. War was inevitable, and the best hope of victory was to strike first.

Everyone is insane, Tom decided. There’s no other explanation. In local news, a politician in New Haven was agitating for separation from the United Worlds. New Haven had only joined the union two months before, but one man at least thought it was a mistake.

Tom shrugged. It had nothing to do with him.

A Recorded Reality star named Jarvis Carver had been married and then divorced, all within the last two weeks. He made action recordings, using his implants to capture every sensation, every adrenaline rush as he did wild stunts. Recordings like his were one of the biggest reasons people got implants. They said Carver’s recordings were amazing.

Tom, who’d never had implants, couldn’t say.

Tiring of the newsfeeds, he brought up a list of courseware instead. He was expected to do an astonishing amount of studying while also attending classes and doing endless assignments like this one. That meant spending every moment he could spare going through course material.

For the next fifteen minutes he read about spaceships. He’d been studying the large and medium-sized ships for so long he was sick of them. He decided to read about little ships instead, one-person craft even smaller than the ship he was on now.

Some warships still carried drones, tiny, compact, lethal machines that usually worked with a combination of robotic and remote control. Drones could handle more acceleration than a human pilot. They were smaller, so they were harder to hit. And no human pilots had to endanger themselves during combat.

Drones were superior to manned fighters in every way except one. Anti-electronic measures would turn a drone into a useless flying brick.

Single-person fighters continued to be a mainstay of Naval combat, because of Benson fields. A Benson field could scramble electronics. The fields had a range of several kilometers, were easy to project, and didn’t interfere with systems on the ship they were projected from. The invention of the Benson field had made drones obsolete.

Fighter craft tended to be tiny. In fact, there was a maximum height limit for cavalry pilots. Lily would have been brilliant in that role, Tom thought.

The next step up from fighters was bombers. A typical bomber would only have one pilot, but it would easily be three or four times the size of a fighter. Bombers were fast, but short-range, though they had more range than fighters. They could carry big missile payloads, but they needed a carrier to get them to their targets.

The United Worlds Navy had three kinds of bombers in active service. The armed forces of other nations used half a dozen more. Tom was reading through endless lists of ship statistics, trying to memorize the differences, when he found himself drifting toward the forward bulkhead. He just had time to get his feet in front of him before the drift became a rush. By the time his feet hit the bulkhead the ship was decelerating at almost two G’s.

You could’ve warned me. He didn’t bother transmitting the thought to Abercrombie. The pilot would just say that Tom should have expected deceleration. He knew the mission, after all.

And Abercrombie would have a point, Tom admitted to himself. He should have done his studying with his back braced against the forward bulkhead.

He stood straddle-legged, quietly enduring the weight as the ship slowed down. Abercrombie wouldn’t stop. Not that “stop” meant much in space, of course. It would be more accurate to say that Abercrombie wouldn’t match velocities perfectly with the mining platform. This was a training exercise, after all. The idea was not to make it too easy for the marines.

When Tom spotted the platform in the distance, he shook his head in disbelief. Easy was the last word he would have used to describe the transit from the platform to the ship. He knew the platform had to be huge, but it looked as tiny as a thimble in the distance. This made his OPT runs look as simple as walking down a sidewalk.

A flicker of movement caught his eye, not much more than a handful of stars vanishing as something dark went past. Then a marine in a black vac suit sailed into the bay. He flew in feet-first, his boots hitting the inside bulkhead and his legs bending to absorb the impact. He handled it perfectly, killing every bit of momentum before drifting forward to join Tom against the forward bulkhead.

The ship was still decelerating, but slower now. Tom estimated his weight at well under half a G. The marine landed standing on the bulkhead beside him. They exchanged nods, then turned their attention to the open hatch.

More marines came through, one after another. They were clearly a mix of old hands and new recruits, some landing adroitly, others bouncing back out into the void.

Plumes of white vapor appeared as the marines used jets of compressed air to manoeuver their way back into the ship. Even the clumsiest marine seemed to have a sixth sense for his teammates; they would lean and twist and dodge in the nick of time as another member of the squad came sailing in.

A total of seven marines came through the hatch, making quite a crowd against the forward bulkhead. Then an eighth marine flew in, thumped into the hull of the ship a meter from the hatch, and bounced away into the void.

“Bloody hell,” said a voice in Tom’s helmet. “The new kid’s botched it. He’s out of juice, too. You needs to go back for him.”

“All right.” Tom tapped his forearm, pinging the bridge.

“What is it?” Abercrombie sounded bored and impatient.

“One of the marines missed the pickup,” Tom said. “I’m sure he’ll catch up, though. There’s no need to go back for him.”

The closest marines turned to stare at him.

“They don’t have much air in those manoeuvering jets,” Abercrombie said frostily. “You should know that.” Tom and the marines drifted to starboard as the ship began to turn. “I’m going back for him.”

The marines began to spread out, stepping onto the deck and ceiling and the interior bulkhead, boot magnets holding them in place. Tom used the controls on his sleeve to activate his own boot magnets. He was just in time, too. The ship spun end for end, then accelerated back the way it had come. Tom swayed, his sense of up and down changing moment by moment. The bulkhead beneath him felt like “down” again for almost a minute, then became “up” as the ship decelerated.

“I’s out of juice,” said a small, embarrassed voice.

“Hang on,” said a man. “I’ll be right out to get you.” A marine detached from the inside bulkhead and sailed gracefully into the void. He was back a moment later, holding another marine by a loop on the back of his vac suit.

“Is that everyone?” Tom asked, then closed the hatch. He informed Abercrombie, then watched as the marines connected themselves to air umbilicals.

Ten minutes later they passed close by the Aardvark, a light carrier commissioned fifty years before and now relegated to training missions. The ship gleamed in the darkness, a metallic cylinder with the black circles of launch bays showing every few meters along her hull. Tom wouldn’t have minded taking a closer look at the carrier, but he didn’t get the chance. The marines flung themselves out of the bay, one after another, until Tom was alone again.

He watched them shrink with distance as they plunged through the void, and felt a pang of envy. What would it be like to be one of those hotshots, learning to treat your own body like a missile?

When he could no longer see the carrier he closed the bay door. As it slid down, though, he took a second look at Jupiter, which was falling away to starboard. That wasn’t right. He and Abercrombie were supposed to make a long sweep toward Ganymede. The ship should be turning toward Jupiter, not away.

Frowning, he re-pressurized the bay, then disconnected his umbilical. He waited a moment to see if Abercrombie was going to do any more manoeuvers, then turned off the magnets in his boots. He returned to the bridge and buckled himself into his seat. “Are you lost, buddy? I’m pretty sure we’re going the wrong way.”

Abercrombie gave him an affronted look. “New orders. We’ve got an appointment with Commander Friedman back at Capricorn.”

Abercrombie brought them into a landing bay, and the two of them stripped off and racked their vac suits. Their instructions were to report immediately to the commander’s office, but Tom figured he had time to pass by his quarters and freshen up.

It wasn’t to be. He and Abercrombie made it into the corridor just outside the landing bay, then stopped as a heavyset man with the two and a half stripes of an overcommander came around the corner. “Thrush? Crombie?”

“Abercrombie,” Abercrombie said.

“Close enough. I’m Friedman. Come with me.” He led them to a small meeting room, where they stood uncomfortably near the door, waiting to see what this was about.

“Sit down,” Friedman said.

They waited for him to sit, then took chairs themselves. Does this mean we’re not in trouble? Tom wondered.

Friedman fiddled for a moment with his bracer, then looked up. “The war is heating up. That’s leading to some changes around here. Across the Armed Forces, in fact.”

Tom glanced at Abercrombie, who sneered at him.

“Your training is going to be ��� modified. Accelerated somewhat.” Friedman leaned back in his seat. “Gaining skills and experience is still important, but this isn’t the only place you can do that. You’ll have some courseware to complete, but you can do that aboard ship.”

Ship? Tom managed with difficulty to keep from leaning forward in his chair. Ship? Are we getting an assignment? He looked at Abercrombie in the corner of his eye. Am I going to be stuck on the same ship as this moron?

“We’re giving you postings in the fleet,” Friedman said. “You’ll be on frigates. In the old days, every spacer served on frigates in the first year of their career. They’re big enough to work independently, small enough to be cheap and quick to deploy. Frigate crews see more variety in their assignments in a year than battleship crews see in a decade.”

Tom shrugged inwardly. He hadn’t enjoyed Battleship School, but a small ship meant no gymnasium, no pool, no theater. It also meant less chance to be away from Abercrombie if they were posted to the same frigate.

“You’ll be on the Gyrfalcon.” Friedman looked at Abercrombie, who nodded. Then the commander’s gaze switched to Tom. “Your assignment is the Kestrel.” There was a note of regret in his voice, as if he’d just delivered bad news. Tom, who had never heard of that ship, was too busy feeling relieved to give it much thought. I don’t have to work with Abercrombie.

“The Gyrfalcon is in orbit around Earth,” Friedman went on. “There’s a transport leaving tomorrow.”

Abercrombie nodded.

“You, Mr. Thrush, will be leaving even sooner. Your ship is at the Eyrie at Korus. We’re diverting a courier boat to deliver you. It will be here within the hour. You’ll need to be ready to board immediately.”

Tom nodded, filled with a sense of unreality. Was he really about to leave his home star system for the first time?

“This will be your only chance to say goodbye,” Friedman said, then blinked in surprise as the two sublieutenants exchanged distasteful grimaces.

“Bye,” said Tom.

“Bye,” said Abercrombie.

“I’ve sent you the details of your postings.” Friedman touched his bracer. “Do you have any questions?”

They didn’t.

“Then you’re dismissed.”

Chapter 8

The shuttle was full of grunts.

Tom moved between the two rows of seated infantry, found an open spot, and sat down. He was the only Navy officer on the shuttle, the only officer of any kind, and he felt as if the soldiers were staring at him as he fumbled to stow his duffel under the bench seat.

The grunts, a mix of men and women, looked tough and competent in light body armor and baggy fatigues that turned steel-gray to match the inside of the shuttle. They would be heading coreward to bolster United Worlds forces near the borders of the Galactic War.

A cavalry officer came swaggering up the aisle. Cavalry officers always seemed to swagger. They would be nothing without a navy to carry them around, but they behaved as if the other services existed only to assist them.

She dropped into the seat across from Tom, somehow managing to dominate the shuttle despite being one of the smallest people there. She was in her early thirties, with short blonde hair and a nose that made him think of a hawk’s beak. She flashed him a grin as the back of the shuttle closed and the interior went dim.

“Half-bar, eh?” She glanced at his chest. “And off to your first assignment.”

He nodded, distracted. The shuttle had no live pilots, but there were emergency controls along the forward bulkhead, along with a window. He wanted to see Korus one last time, the only alien planet he’d ever visited. All he could see was sky, though, darkening and filling with stars as the shuttle rose through the atmosphere. That was appropriate, he decided, swallowing his disappointment. Korus was the past. Deep space was his future.

“Do you know which way you’re going?” she said.

“Rimward,” he said. “Probably Garnet.”

She nodded. “I’m going the other way. I guess you won’t be on my ship.”

“You’re going where the action is,” he said a bit wistfully. “I won’t get much excitement unless the Dawn Alliance tries something.”

“They won’t,” the cavalry officer said confidently. “And I won’t see any action either. We’ll both sit on the sidelines. New Sheffield saw to that.”

Tom nodded. When the Star Republic of Stradivar entered the Galactic War the Dawn Alliance had promptly invaded the Strad colony on New Sheffield. The rest of the Green Zone was safe from Dawn Alliance aggression ��� so long as the United Worlds continued to mind their own business. “I hope you’re right,” he said, not sure if he meant it. He didn’t want the war to spread, not really. Still, it would certainly make his naval career interesting ���

“There’s the Eyrie,” she said, nodding at the window, and Tom turned.

The Eyrie was a massive space station, a fortress and a naval docking facility all in one. It orbited Korus and formed the heart of the United Worlds military. From a few hundred kilometers away it looked like a top, although it didn’t spin. The hull gleamed white and bristled with gun emplacements. A handful of ships were docked to the station, and a dozen more hovered in the void around it.

This is it. Everything is really about to change. He’d been looking forward to this moment ever since he’d gone into Basic Officer Training, but now that it was upon him, he was suddenly terrified.

“It’ll be fine.” The woman’s voice was soft, and when he looked at her there was only compassion and understanding in her face. “It’ll actually be easier than Basic. Basic was all about breaking you down so they could re-shape you. Your first assignment is about building you back up.” She smiled, a gentle smile instead of the cocky grin she’d worn earlier. “The XO will take you under his wing and they’ll teach you how to be a Navy officer. And you’ll do fine.”

His mouth was too dry to let him speak. He nodded instead, then turned to look out the window again. A ship loomed beside the station, an ungainly shape like a dumbbell.

Designed to carry up to six enormous cargo pods, a frigate, he knew, could look quite elegant. Now, though, stripped of the pods that would give substance to the center of the ship, it looked scrawny as a wet cat.

The tail of the ship was a pale orange. The forward section, though, was a soft blue. The tiny dark shapes of robots moved across the hull, painting the hull plates. Blue was the color of the United Worlds Navy, and he frowned, wondering at the orange paint that was being covered up.

“Is that your ship?”

Something in the cavalry officer’s voice caught his attention, and he tore his gaze from the frigate to look at her. “Yes. It’s the Kestrel.”

The corners of her mouth drooped ever so slightly. “Oh.”

“Oh?” He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘Oh’?”

“It’s a Havenite ship.”

He stared at her, not understanding.

“New Haven,” she said. “You know, one of the fringe nations just rimward?”

He’d heard of New Haven, a small nation bordering the United Worlds. Come to think of it, there’d been something on the feeds ���

“I forgot,” she said. “You’re just out of training. You don���t get much chance to hear the news, do you?”

He shook his head.

“New Haven voted to join the Union about six weeks ago.”

“Okay.” The United Worlds was an expanding republic. Small independent nations joined from time to time. “What’s that got to do with the ship?”

She gave him a look that might have contained a hint of pity. “They’re folding the New Haven Armed Forces into our military. That means they’re sticking a few UW officers onto that ship, putting everyone in new uniforms, and telling them they’re part of the UW Navy now.”

Tom said, “I see ���”

The look on her face said she doubted it. “That crew has been proudly serving New Haven for their entire careers. Now they’ve got a handful of strangers coming on board and announcing that they’re in charge.” She shook her head. “They aren’t going to like you. They aren’t going to like you at all.”

He turned to take another look at the frigate, but he was too late. The hull of the Eyrie blocked his view as the shuttle came in to dock. He felt the little boat touch down, and light flooded in as the ramp at the back dropped.

The cavalry officer stood. “Good luck, kid.” She slapped his shoulder as she headed for the exit. “You’ll need it.”

Chapter 9

Tom had been looking forward to exploring the Eyrie, one of the galaxy’s technological marvels. His feet had barely touched the deck plates of the shuttle bay, though, when a chime drew his attention to his bracer. The station AI had recorded his arrival; now it had instructions for him. He was to report immediately to Shuttle B7 in Shuttle Bay Five for transport to the Kestrel.

Excited, nervous, and disappointed all at once, he fiddled with the bracer, bringing up a map of the Eyrie. His brief hope that Bay Five might be on the far side of the station was quickly dashed. He was in Bay Four, and Bay Five was right next door. His sight-seeing tour would consist of a two-minute walk.

He took a couple of steps away from the shuttle, realized he’d forgotten his duffel, and darted back aboard to retrieve it. The other passengers were long gone, the soldiers marching in a crisp formation toward the closest exit, the cavalry officer already lost in the bustle of a crowded bay. He hadn’t even learned her name. He wondered if he’d ever see her again, and decided it wasn’t likely.

Uniforms of every color filled the bay. He saw the light blue of Navy uniforms, and here and there the darker blue of officers like himself. The grunts from his shuttle were changing color to match every ship or cargo mover they passed. They drew up in front of an army officer in dark green, then followed him out of the bay.

A lone marine in black guarded the exit doors, watching as a couple of cavalry pilots strutted past. Mixed in with all the military personnel were civilian staff in beige jumpsuits and cargo-moving robots on treads or metallic legs. The bay contained a dozen or so shuttles of half a dozen different designs, and Tom wished he could stay and just watch all the hustle and bustle.

Duty, however, called. He headed for the exit, eyeing the marine sentry uncertainly. The marine ignored him, and Tom emerged into a broad corridor. A yellow stripe along one bulkhead marked a lane for pedestrian traffic. The broad red lane down the middle was for robots, and they made the best of it, dashing back and forth at speeds that made Tom squeeze himself close to the bulkhead for safety.

A fifty-meter walk brought him to Bay Five. He expected it to be a copy of Bay Four, but it was smaller, and contained only passenger shuttles and no robots. He passed a couple of shuttles quite similar to the one he’d arrived in, circled around a massive thirty-passenger craft, and came at last to Shuttle B7.

For a moment he stood, nonplussed, staring at something that barely qualified as a boat. The shuttle was tiny, smaller than most ground cars, a windowless rectangle with an open hatch on one side. It barely looked big enough for him and his duffel. He shook his head, stooped, and worked his way inside. A bench seat ran along the starboard bulkhead, and it might have accommodated two people if both of them were skinny and neither had luggage. He sat with the top of his head brushing the ceiling and his toes touching the opposite bulkhead, his duffel filling the seat beside him. The hatch slid shut and the shuttle immediately rose.

For a moment he sat in darkness. Then the inside of the shuttle lit up, and he smiled in spite of himself. Every inside surface was done in smart panelling. Exterior cameras gave a view in every direction, projected onto the panels inside, making the shuttle seem invisible. The illusion was almost perfect, and Tom laughed out loud as he seemed to fly magically across the bay.

The force field keeping the bay pressurized flashed momentarily as the shuttle passed through. Hard vacuum surrounded him now, and he reached an elbow back, bumping it against the bulkhead, reassuring himself that it was real.

The shuttle floated up behind an enormous white cylinder with the sunburst of the UW Navy painted on the side. Tiny robot tugs pushed the cylinder along, guiding it toward the spindly framework of the Kestrel. It was a cargo pod, he realized. A glance over his shoulder showed another pod on its way from the underside of the Eyrie.

Did that mean the ship would be leaving soon? He decided it didn’t matter. The ship was his home now, and there was no going back.

The nose of the Kestrel loomed before him, tiny in comparison to the Eyrie. The entrance to the shuttle bay glittered on the bottom edge of the hull, a rectangle that hardly seemed bigger than Tom’s tiny shuttle. He wondered how a full-size shuttle could possibly make it through such a small opening, and fought the urge to close his eyes as he passed through the force field.

The shuttle touched down with a faint bump, the bulkheads went dark, and the hatch across from him slid open. Tom grabbed his duffel, took a deep breath, and clambered through the narrow opening to stand at last on the deck of his new ship.

A full-sized shuttle sat off to one side, taking up nearly half the space in the bay. Tom eyed the narrow gap between the top of the shuttle and the ceiling of the bay and shook his head, hoping he’d never have to be the pilot for a landing like that.

A whirring sound made him turn. The tiny shuttle he’d arrived in rose and moved toward the glowing wall of the force field, and Tom had a moment of panic, thinking he’d forgotten his duffel again. The bag was on the deck by his feet, though, and he shook his head at his own reaction while he watched the little craft exit the bay and race back to the Eyrie.

Silence descended. He stood there, alone except for the shuttle, wondering what exactly to do next. He’d assumed someone would meet him on arrival. A glance at his bracer showed no messages. He glanced at the shuttle bay’s inside hatch, wondering if he should go in search of ��� what, exactly?

I’ll wait, he decided. There’s probably someone on their way.

Seconds crawled past, painfully slow, and he stood there, feeling more foolish every moment. How long do I stand here like an idiot?

But what do I do instead? Wander the corridors like an idiot?

Not much of his training had been specifically about shipboard life. One scrap rose to the surface of his memory, though. Aboard ship, the captain ruled supreme, but the First Officer was the one who dealt with the crew. The First Officer, traditionally addressed as “First”, was probably who he should report to.

When he activated his bracer he found it was already synchronized to the ship’s internal network. The ship’s time was apparently ten minutes short of noon. He had maps of the ship, personnel rosters, and a tracking option.

The Captain’s name, he already knew, was Nishida. He’d scanned the list of officers earlier. Now he refreshed his memory. The First Officer was Overcommander Hiram Boudreau. The photo in the database showed a cheerful black man in the orange uniform of the New Haven Navy.

They won’t like you at all. Tom pushed the cavalry officer’s warning to the back of his mind. Boudreau could hardly blame him for being from Earth. After all, it wasn’t Tom’s fault. Boudreau was in his forties, too old to hold foolish grudges. He wouldn’t resent a sublieutenant for decisions made by politicians and admirals.

Would he?

According to the Kestrel’s AI, Boudreau was on the bridge, two decks up. Tom gulped. He’d prefer something more low-key for his first introduction to the officers he’d be serving under. But, if it had to be ���. He squared his shoulders and picked up his duffel.

The hatch slid open as he neared it, and a woman in an officer’s uniform started to enter. Both of them pulled up short, almost colliding. Tom glanced at her uniform, saw the thick bar of a full lieutenant plus the narrow extra bar marking her as an overlieutenant, and saluted.

She looked him up and down with cool blue eyes. “Lieutenant Thrush, I presume.”

“Yes, Ma’am. I, uh, just arrived.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Ah, the shuttle already left.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Thrush.” There might have been a hint of amusement in her voice. “Welcome aboard the Kestrel. My name is Brady.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“The First Officer usually welcomes new arrivals.” Her lips thinned. “It seems he was unable to make it.” She stepped back into the corridor. “Come with me.”

He followed her into a well-lit corridor, a bit narrow but still wide enough for two people to pass each other without quite brushing elbows. “Deck One Forward,” she said, gesturing around. “It contains the shuttle bay and Forward Storage, plus Forward Electronics.” She indicated a hatch on her right with ‘ELECTRONICS’ stencilled on it. “Stay out of there unless you have a good reason. It’s delicate equipment.” She pointed down a side corridor. “Gun Station Charlie is that way.”

This was not the layout of the frigate he’d visited on his OPT runs, and he felt his reserves of confidence, already depleted, shrink even further.

They climbed a narrow staircase. She pointed forward. “Deck Two Forward. Wardroom.” She pointed aft. “Surgery.” She pointed to another flight of stairs leading to the deck above. “The bridge is up there.” She stopped. “This is the Boardroom.” She tapped a hatch with ‘Meeting One’ stencilled on it. “You’ll report to me here in fifteen minutes. Understand?”

He nodded, and she led him aft. They descended a half-flight of stairs and reached a long, straight corridor stretching aft.

“This is the spine,” she said. “Deck One is officers’ quarters, the brig, and auxiliary storage. Deck Two is crew quarters.” They passed one hatch after another, the close spacing telling Tom the cabins within had to be quite small. “This is you.” She halted, tapped at a control panel beside the hatch, then said, “Put your bracer by the screen.”

Tom held his wrist next to the control panel and the hatch slid open.

“Stow your gear and get settled in,” she said. “Come and see me in the Boardroom in ���” she glanced at her bracer ��� “eleven minutes.” He nodded and she walked away.

The cabin was small ��� he could have touched the bulkheads on either side with outstretched fingers ��� but it could have been worse. Above his bunk was another bunk, folded into the bulkhead. He could have had a roommate.

Stowing his gear didn’t take long. He had very little. A spare uniform, a dress uniform, and his sword took up most of the space in his duffel. He put the sword under his bunk with his one civilian suit and a handheld computer.

In the cabin’s tiny head he washed his face, checked that his hair and uniform were both straight, and spent a moment staring at his reflection in the mirror. “You better get used to it,” he told his reflected self. “This is your life now.”

“During Battle Stations your post will be Operations,” Brady said. “That’s in the aft section. There are signs; you’ll find it.” She led him starboard. “Food storage.” She tapped on the forward bulkhead with a knuckle. “Water storage.” She tapped on the aft bulkhead. “And this is General Storage Three.” She stopped in front of a double-wide hatch. “We’ve taken on quite a lot of supplies. They need to be properly stowed.”

The hatch slid open and the two of them entered a long, narrow compartment. Bins and blockers lined the bulkheads, along with shelves hung with cargo netting. At the aft end of the room, a small mountain of crates and parcels filled the floor and crowded nearby shelving. A pair of spacers, a man and a woman, took parcels from the heap and stored them in bins.

“This is Hanson and Nguyen,” Brady said as the two spacers straightened up. It wasn’t difficult to figure out which was which. The man was white, the woman Asian. “You’ll be supervising them.” To the two spacers she said, “This is Mr. Thrush. He’s just joined the ship’s company.”

“Hello, sir,” said Nguyen. Hanson didn’t speak, just stared at Tom, his face cold.

“You need to know what’s on board, and you need to know where it’s stored. This will be an excellent introduction.” Brady turned away. “Call me if you have a problem.” She paused in the doorway. “I’m busy, though. I’d rather you solved your problems yourself.”

The hatch slid shut, and she was gone.

Hanson and Nguyen looked at Tom.

“Um, carry on,” he said. He felt his cheeks reddening. “Let me know if you have questions.”

There might have been a hint of a smirk on Hanson’s face as the two of them turned back to their work. Tom sighed quietly, then looked around the room. He found smart panels beside almost every bin and shelf, each with two lists: the items stored there, and the items that were supposed to be there. He spent several minutes exploring, getting a sense of how the room was laid out.

Storage Three, he discovered, was home to a bewildering hodgepodge of mat��riel. There were electronic components for every system on the ship, seldom-used tools, and an incredible number of data chips. There was paint, and paint remover, and fusing panels for emergency repairs. Oxygen filters sat beside lighting relays, all of it mixed together with no pattern that he could see.

And then there was the stuff he couldn’t even begin to identify. Many of the supplies were identified only by serial number. He wondered how he would ever find the correct storage spot for anything.

When he watched the two spacers, though, he quickly saw how it was done. Nguyen lifted a carton from the stack at the end of the room, held it up to the nearest smart panel, then peered at the screen. A moment later, she confidently carried the box to the far end of the room and stowed it in a bin.

Hanson, meanwhile, unsealed a soft bag and began lifting out electronic components. He held each device up to a smart panel, then carried it to whatever shelf or drawer it belonged in. Tom made a brief attempt to help them, moving to the stack of cargo and lugging a box to the nearest screen. He quickly saw, however, that there simply wasn’t room for three people to work. Hanson and Nguyen began to spend much of their time waiting for him or each other to get out of the way. They didn’t complain, but he read impatience in their body language, especially Hanson.

Taking a hint, he moved to the forward end of the compartment and began verifying inventory. It was dull work, but he could see how, at least in theory, it would be handy to know how the ship’s supply system worked.

When, twenty minutes later, he discovered that a box of protein powder contained eleven packets instead of the twelve it was supposed to hold, he reported it to the ship’s computer with a real sense of satisfaction.

“Lieutenant? Do you mind if we take a short break?”

Tom, kneeling in front of the bottom drawer of the cabinet, glanced up at Nguyen. A quick glance at his bracer told him they’d been working for more than an hour. Tom had, at any rate; he didn’t know how long the other two had been at it before he arrived.

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “We should probably try to verify as much of the inventory as possible before we get underway.”

Hanson and Nguyen exchanged glances.

Tom said, “What?”

“We made the transition fifteen minutes ago,” Hanson said. “Didn’t you feel it?”

Flushing, Tom tapped his bracer and brought up the ship’s status.

Sure enough. The Kestrel was in seventh-dimensional space. Phoenix Station, Korus, and Tom’s old life were hundreds of thousands of kilometers away and receding rapidly.

Chapter 10

The wardroom was a small cozy space clearly designed to be a haven for officers from the constant stress of command. Tom paused in the doorway, examining the room with an architect’s eyes. From real wood paneling to rounded corners to soft indirect lighting the wardroom was masterfully constructed to put a lieutenant like him at ease.

Two discordant notes spoiled the effect. First, the furnishings, from the plush armchairs to the long counter that ran along one bulkhead, were the distinctive orange of New Haven.

Second, a pair of lieutenants sat at a table near the entrance. They looked up long enough to give Tom a hard, unfriendly look, then pointedly ignored him.

Tom grabbed a plate and served himself a mix of rice and vegetables from a heated dish on the counter. He carried the plate to an empty table and sat, then looked around. The most impressive feature in the room was a window in the forward bulkhead, giving a view of shifting red and orange energy as the ship pushed its way through a hyperspace storm. He drank in the view, then turned reluctantly as the wardroom door slid open.

A young man with the stripe of a full lieutenant swept in. His straight red hair was cut regulation-short, but it bristled around his skull like a rusty corona. Freckles decorated a nose that crinkled as he smiled. He filled a plate, dropped into the chair ac

ross from Tom and said, “Fresh meat. Excellent!”

Tom spent a moment staring at the plate before figuring out the lieutenant meant him. The man stuck out a freckled hand. “Carstairs.”

“Thrush.” They shook hands.

“You’re fresh out of Basic,” Carstairs said cheerfully. “I can tell by the way you eat.”

Tom stared at him blankly.

“You actually get time to finish your meals here,” Carstairs said. “You don’t have to eat like someone’s about to take it away from you.”

“Oh.” Tom looked at his plate, embarrassed.

“I was the same way when I started,” Carstairs assured him. “Basic Training’s pretty much the same in any military, I think. Run your tail off and never enough time to do anything. You don’t waste your time when there’s chow on the table.” Carstairs grinned. “Took me almost a year to break the habit.”

“Right,” said Tom, and made himself hesitate before taking another bite.

“Don���t mind the snobs,” Carstairs said, jerking his head at the two lieutenants at the other table. “They think joining the United Worlds and renaming the ship was your idea. They think if they snub you for long enough you’ll change your mind and everything will go back to the way it was.”

One lieutenant gave him a dirty look. Carstairs laughed.

The door hissed open and Brady came in. She took a plate and sat beside Carstairs. “Are you hazing the new kid?”

“Mercilessly,” Carstairs assured her.

Tom nodded. “It’s awful. You got here just in time.”

Brady grinned momentarily, then became businesslike. “Tell me about our mission, Mr. Thrush.”

It was a test, Tom knew, and he took a deep breath before replying. “The Kestrel is on its way to Garnet. We’ll take on supplies and get any servicing the ship needs. We won’t join the fleet, however.”

Brady nodded. Carstairs smirked and turned his attention to his rice.

“After we leave Garnet, the mission parameters are not specific. We’ll visit isolated systems and outposts, delivering cargo and showing the flag.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember the exact wording of the posted orders. “We’ve been instructed to make a show of force, and to assure our allies we haven’t forgotten them.”

“And why do we need a show of force in the area?” Brady prompted.

“Piracy,” Tom said. He was no longer quoting the orders posted to the ship’s internal data network. Now he was summarizing strategic discussions from the classrooms during Small Ship Training. “The systems in the Green Zone are isolated and politically fragmented. There is very little law enforcement between systems, which has led to small nations moving aggressively against their neighbors. There is also blatant piracy, purely for profit.”

Brady nodded. “We’ll do our best to protect United Worlds shipping, and to discourage a general atmosphere of lawlessness.” She took a bite of her rice, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and said, “We’ll also deliver cargo. Tell me, what assets does the UW have in the Green Zone, besides the fleet and facilities at Garnet?”

“There are outposts at Emerald, Argo, Jonqing, and at the mining station on Ribisi Four.” Tom paused, concentrating. “Also, the UW maintains an embassy and a small military presence at Heller’s Beach.”

“That’s getting toward the far side of the Zone, almost in Dawn Alliance territory,” Brady said. “We won’t be going that far, not right away at least.”

Tom nodded, leaning forward. His food sat forgotten on the plate in front of him. “Do you know where we’ll go first, Lieutenant?”

“The captain will make that decision after we stop in Garnet. We’ll have more intelligence then.”

“Right.” He nodded and looked down at his plate, hoping the quiz was over.

“Tell me, Mr. Thrush, why does the United Worlds take such an interest in Green Zone systems? They are awfully far from our core territories, after all.”

“Well, they’re ours,” Tom said, looking up from his plate. “We paid for the terraforming, after all.”

“Anywhere from two hundred to three hundred years ago,” Brady pointed out. “There wasn’t even a United Worlds back then. A lot of people feel we don’t have any particular claim to such far-flung planets, just because our distant ancestors invested in some terraforming.”

Tom gaped at her. He knew there was a small, vocal minority in the UW that made the same claim. They were ultra-liberal extremists, though, people with no credibility in mainstream society. He knew that such opinions existed, but he hardly expected to hear them in the wardroom of a UW starship.

“Oh, relax,” Brady snapped. “It’s not my opinion. But it’s a very common sentiment in the Green Zone. You’ll have to learn to hear it without making that face you’re giving me right now.”

Tom, realizing his mouth was open, closed it.

“That’s better,” Brady said. “Now, let me make one thing clear. I don’t care what you think about the UW’s ownership of terraformed worlds in the Green Zone. I don’t want you opening your mouth on the subject, either. As naval officers we uphold the policies of our government and follow the orders of our superior officers. We don’t discuss politics or religion with the locals. Or with the crew either. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tom nodded.

“It seems perfectly clear to the politicians back home,” Brady said. “The people who made a massive investment in terraforming should naturally reap the eventual benefits.” She gave him a stern look. “It seems perfectly clear to the squatters, though, too. Most of them have grandparents or great-grandparents from the UW. They don’t entirely believe that your ancestors give you a greater claim to their planets than their ancestors do. Not when they’ve been building colonies for three or four generations.”

“But-”

Brady held up a hand. “Don’t bother persuading me. I already agree with you. But don’t bother persuading any locals you meet, either. All you’ll do is offend them.”

Tom nodded and speared a stalk of asparagus.

“Ultimately, their opinions don’t matter any more than yours or mine. We’ve got the Navy, and we’ll be keeping those worlds. That’s the main reason we’ll be visiting every out-of-the-way base and station in the Zone. It’s a show of strength. We’ll remind them who’s in charge. We’ll keep them from getting any ideas.”

That sounded a lot less noble than fighting piracy and discouraging lawlessness. We’ll still do those things, Tom reminded himself. And all those worlds really do belong to us. There’s nothing wrong with reminding people.

“The Greenies won’t be a problem,” Carstairs said confidently. “Excepting a few pirates, of course. There won’t be a rebellion or anything like that. Even if they thought they could get away with it, they know the DA will just annex them.” He shook his head. “No, they might complain ��� a lot ��� but they know what’s good for them.”

Brady turned to look at him, and Tom resumed eating, grateful that she was distracted. The two officers started a lively discussion about the risk of war and the role the Garnet fleet would play while Tom finished his meal. The consensus they reached was the same as what he’d heard around mess hall tables and in classrooms during Basic. The Dawn Alliance wouldn’t start a war, and if they did, it would end quickly. The fleet at Garnet was too strong, and the Alliance simply didn’t have the industrial base to prosecute a long war. If they were foolish enough to poke the bear, they’d get mauled.

The Dawn Alliance made a great bogeyman to keep the Green Zone worlds in line, too. They had made one expansion already, annexing the only world in the Green Zone not claimed by the United Worlds. The Star Republic of Stradivar, actually coreward of Earth, had nevertheless established a colony deep in the Green Zone. When Stradivar was engulfed in the spreading Galactic War, the Dawn Alliance saw its chance and invaded New Sheffield.

Tales of atrocities and brutal oppression still trickled out of the conquered colony. The fate of the Strad military forces captured on New Sheffield was even worse. By all accounts the troops unlucky enough to survive the invasion were being worked to death in prisoner-of-war camps.

At last Brady put her dishes in the sink at the back of the room. “Are you done yet?” She shook her head. “Of course you are. Carstairs was right.”

Carstairs nodded wisely and nibbled at a slice of carrot.

“Come with me. We’re going to the bridge.”

Tom followed her out of the wardroom and up one deck. A marine sentry stood frozen in front of the bridge hatch, ignoring them as they passed. Tom surreptitiously smoothed his uniform, then stepped across the threshold.

The bridge windows caught his attention first. They ran from floor to ceiling, wrapping the bridge on three sides. Much of the ceiling was transparent as well.

Beyond the glass, seventh-dimensional space seethed.

Most people called it hyperspace, which was scientifically inaccurate but easier to say. The seventh dimension was much, much smaller than normal space. Ships got around the impossibility of faster-than-light travel by slipping into the seventh dimension and doing their traveling there.

But the compression of an entire universe by a factor of several million meant that the seventh dimension was filled with energy. Endless storms raged and boiled through hyperspace, colliding and separating and crackling. The lavish bridge windows made it all more vivid than he’d ever seen it before.

With an effort he wrenched his gaze from the windows. It was his first time on the bridge of the Kestrel, but he’d been on similar bridges via training simulators. Still, the reality was … different. Seven or eight people manned stations around the bulkheads, their backs to the captain, who sat in the center. There was an air of relaxed calm that he hadn’t expected. He supposed it made sense. They were six hours into a ten-day journey through well-mapped, friendly space. Still, he’d somehow expected tension, suppressed excitement.

I have enough of that for everybody. He suppressed a grin as he walked beside Brady. She stopped in front of the captain, nodded, and said, “I thought I’d show the new kid what the big office is like.”

Captain Nishida looked Tom up and down with dark eyes that looked as if they’d seen every corner of the universe. She had black hair streaked with gray and cut even with her ears, and a stern face with crow’s feet around her eyes and deep creases around her mouth. She was small, considerably shorter than Tom with delicate limbs, but she exuded a fierce charisma that made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. There was no question who was in charge on this bridge.

“I expect we can manage him from here,” Nishida said.

Brady nodded and left the bridge, leaving Tom feeling suddenly lost.

“Why don’t you join SFC Rand at Nav Two, Mr. Thrush.”

Tom nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.” He took a moment to mentally review what he knew of the bridge setup, then strode toward the forward bulkhead. Specialist First Class Rand, a middle-aged man in a blue jersey, rose from a chair and nodded a greeting. Tom paused, uncertain, until Rand gestured for him to sit.

I have to be more assertive. I have to act like a leader. Lectures from Basic flooded into his mind. If I lose my credibility in front of the crew I’ll never get it back.

The navigation console was mostly blank. It would come to life at a touch if there was any need to make a course change. I should check our course and position. I should ask. No, I should project confidence. He reached a finger toward the screen.

“Mr. Thrush!”

Tom froze, his fingertip a few centimeters from the console, and looked over his shoulder at Nishida.

“Don’t touch anything!” she barked. “Rand.”

Rand looked at her and cocked an eyebrow.

“Take Mr. Thrush through the basics. Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Tom turned to look at the console. It allowed him to turn his back on most of the bridge, but he was all too aware of his audience. His cheeks burned.

“Let me just wake up the console,” Rand said softly. He tapped the screen to life, then touched an icon in one corner. A fat yellow border appeared around the active screen area. “That tells us we’re in information mode. We would have to turn that off if we wanted to take control.” He gestured at the console to his right. “Susan there has direct control from Nav One. She’ll keep her console live.”

The spacer at the next console glanced over and nodded. If she held Tom in contempt she hid it well.

“Okay, here’s how we check our position …”

A day later ��� “day” being a relative term in deep space ��� Tom returned to Storage Two, where he resumed his work verifying inventory. He was alone this time. The mountain of cargo at the end of the room was gone, all of it stowed neatly. Tom’s thankless job was to go through every bin and shelf, verifying that the inventory was accurate.

He’d been working for most of an hour when the quiet hiss of the hatch made him turn. Brady came in. “How’s it going, Lieutenant?”

Tom straightened up, easing a kink in his back. “Fine, ma’am.” He gestured at the forward starboard bulkhead. “I verified everything in this section.” It was just under a quarter of the room, and he suppressed a weary sigh.

“Excellent.” Brady gave him a searching look. “How are you adjusting to shipboard life?”

“Fine, ma’am. It’s ���”

She gazed at him, waiting.

“I don’t have any real authority,” he blurted. “I don’t have any credibility. The captain completely undermines me when I’m on the bridge, and you give me assignments where I’m giving orders to crew who know more about the job than I do.”

A long moment of silence stretched out, and Tom, his heart thumping, wondered if he’d crossed a line.

Brady, though, began to smile. “You’re a half-bar,” she said. “It’s all right. You’re not actually supposed to know what you’re doing.”

Tom stared at her, nonplussed.

“I know what they told you in Officer Training,” she said. “They talked about leadership, about moral authority and setting an example and always presenting a confident face to the crew.” She shook her head. “All of that is necessary, but it all comes later.”

“But-”

“Nobody respects a sublieutenant,” she said. “It would be nice if they did, but the problem is, the crew all know better.” The corners of her mouth twitched, and her eyes grew distant. “I remember ���” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

Tom waited, silent.

“You’re not here to be an officer,” she said. “Not really. You’re here to learn your trade. They still have the integrated officer school, right?”

Tom nodded.

“They couldn’t teach you how to be a spacer,” Brady said. “Not in a classroom full of flat-tops and rocket jocks.” She held up a hand as he opened his mouth. “Oh, I know what they told you. You’ll have to leave the ground with all rockets burning, you’ll be pulling your weight from day one, on and on like that. But it’s not quite realistic. They taught you how to be an officer. Now you have to learn to be a naval officer.”

“All right,” said Tom.

“Your role is not to lead,” she said. “Not yet. Your role is to learn your trade.” She tapped the rank bars on her chest. “That’s what a full bar means. It means you know what you’re doing. It means you’re a real officer.” She pointed at his chest. “That half bar means you’re an officer in training.”

Tom drooped. Brady’s words were a relief, shifting some of the impossible weight that had settled onto his shoulders. But it was also a bit deflating.

“One step at a time,” she said. “Promotion will come soon enough.”

He nodded.

“There’s one more thing.” She frowned. “The New Haven Armed Forces had a long history. Ninety years of defending their nation. This ship used to be called the Steven Valentine. But the UW doesn’t name ships after people. Causes too much confusion. So she’s been renamed. Reclassified, too. In the New Haven Armed Forces, she was a cruiser.” When his eyebrows rose she grinned. “They didn’t run their navy on quite the same scale as ours.

“The point is, the crew were proud of their ship. Proud of their uniforms. Proud of their captain, too. His name was Taggart, and he quit in protest when they told him he’d have to answer to foreigners.” She folded her arms and leaned against a bulkhead. “Now the ship has a new captain. And a couple other new officers.” She gestured to Tom, then to herself. “You and me. And now a new paint job and a new mission, which in the eyes of most of the crew has nothing to do with New Haven.”

Tom said, “But-”

“Hush,” she told him. “Now, not everyone on the ship has a chip on their shoulder. I don’t think Carstairs really noticed there’d been a change in management.” She smiled briefly. “The food is a bit better now, so he’s happy as a marine with a three-day pass. Some of the crew genuinely don’t care. Some are willing to give things a chance, wait and see what it’s like. But some of them are pretty unhappy. Some of them are furious at the whole UW Navy, or the entire United Worlds. And they only have a few places to focus all that anger.”

It’s not fair. There was no way to put the thought into words, not without sounding whiny. He nodded instead.

“So in addition to learning how to be an officer, and learning your way around a new ship, you’ve got to try to unify a divided crew, and deal with the fact that quite a few of them resent you, and some of them actively hate you.” Her lips curved in a wry grin. “It’ll work out. Sheer inertia will solve most of our problems. One day they’ll notice they���ve been wearing blue for a year, and it hasn���t been so bad. The worst of them won’t reenlist. If we just wait long enough, most of the resentment will fade.” Her grin vanished. “Be thankful we’re at peace. And pray it lasts. God help us if war breaks out any time soon.”

Wow, that���s the worst pep talk I’ve ever had. The thought filled him with a mad urge to giggle. He suppressed it with an effort.

Brady straightened up. “In the meantime, you need to learn all there is to know about ship’s stores.”

And with that, she left the storage room and he returned to the endless task of verifying inventory.

Chapter 11

Tom was in the grip of a nightmare where he tapped frantically at a navigation console on the bridge as the ship drifted closer and closer to a star. He couldn’t remember how the console worked, everything he did seemed to make things worse, and when the scream of an alarm jarred him awake he stared at the ceiling above his bunk with a sense of profound relief.

A moment later his conditioning kicked in. He’d rarely gotten a full night’s sleep during Basic, and things hadn’t improved much in Small Ships. If there wasn’t a scheduled nighttime exercise, there was a drill. He was on his feet, fully dressed, and opening the hatch to the corridor before he even paused to think about where he was going.

“Battle stations. All hands. Battle Stations.”

All right. Good. I know my station. He paused, fighting a moment of panic. Where the hell is my station?

Operations. And that is ��� aft.

The corridor outside his cabin was filled with running people, most of them officers. Tom took a couple of running steps, realized he was going forward, and whirled. He dashed aft, concentrating on his breathing because it kept his adrenaline under control. There had been lectures during Basic about keeping your head during a crisis. Panic and excitement had a way of chasing every thought out of your brain, but it was possible to recognize when it was happening, and there were specific tactics for dealing with it.

It wasn’t all theory, either. The student officers had had all too many opportunities to practice adrenaline management in one drill or another.

So he counted his footsteps as he ran down the corridor. He made himself catalog what he saw and heard and felt. His ears hadn’t popped, so the ship ��� or at least the corridor he was in ��� hadn’t lost pressure. They were in deep space, but well within United Worlds territory. That made it a near certainty this was a drill and not an actual crisis.

A squad of marines charged up the corridor toward him, thick packs slung across their backs. Their role during combat was damage control and fire suppression. Those packs probably weighed more than the men and women carrying them, and Tom pressed his back against the corridor, giving them plenty of room. They thundered past, and he resumed running.

There’s no smell of smoke. All the lights are on, and none of them are flickering. I don’t feel unusually warm or cold, so we’re not on fire or exposed to vacuum.

Not right near me, at any rate.

He arrived, panting, in the aft section, all too aware that he had never actually been to Operations. In fact, he realized this was his first time in the aft section. Operations, however, was as well-signed as Brady had promised. He ran down a short ladder and found a pair of marines on either side of a hatch. The marines, busy pulling on firefighting gear, ignored him as he stepped between them.

Operations was a smaller version of the bridge, without any windows. Every bridge function was replicated there. A thick-bodied man in his forties sat in the command chair, the flattened hair on one side of his head revealing that he’d been asleep just a few minutes before. He had the same air of absolute authority as Nishida. Tom didn’t need to see the two and a half stripes of an overcommander on his chest to recognize Hiram Boudreau, the First Officer.

Tom moved out of the doorway, then hesitated. His Battle Stations post was Operations, but that was as far as his instructions went. He had no idea what he was actually supposed to do.

“Watch bogies One and Two,” Boudreau said. “Stand by manoeuvering thrusters.” He looked around the bridge, spotted Tom, and said “Thrush! Get to your post.”

“I’m sorry, Sir. I don’t know what my post is.”

“Helm,” Boudreau barked. “Take over for O’Reilly.”

O’Reilly was a short, chunky spacer with dark hair that was going gray. He stepped aside as Tom joined him. The two of them stood side-by-side in front of the console.

“Bogie One is making another run from aft,” the woman said.

“Evading,” said another voice. Then, “We just lost bridge control.”

“Helm,” said Boudreau. “Take us up fifty meters and bring us around to a heading of 172.”

Tom stared helplessly at the console, which was unlike anything he’d seen in training.

“Helm!”

“Sir,” said O’Reilly. “May I?”

“Yes.” Tom backed up, then watched as O’Reilly activated the thrusters on the underside of the ship. The ship rose, then stopped as thrusters on her topside fired. Tom couldn’t feel any motion, but a wireframe projection of the ship turned gracefully on the console screen as O’Reilly brought the ship around.

The Kestrel was in combat, whether real or feigned Tom couldn’t be certain. It was maddeningly difficult to tell what was actually going on. He could only watch as O’Reilly worked the helm controls. There seemed to be four attackers, and Boudreau, like a conductor with an orchestra, managed the helm and weapons. He sent marines running to damage control, and made a broadcast to the entire ship calling for the evacuation of the forward section.

The lieutenant at the tactical station announced the destruction of one enemy ship. A moment later, the Operations room went dark. The lights came back after a couple of seconds, but every console displayed a yellow outline showing it was in information mode.

“Direct hit to the aft section,” Boudreau said wearily. “We’re all dead.” He looked around the room. “Good work, Carstairs. June, you were a bit slow.” His eyes came to rest on Tom. “Mr. Thrush. Do I need to tell you what I think of your performance?”

“No, Sir.”

“Perhaps you think the backwards little navy of a planet like New Haven is beneath you. Perhaps you think you don’t need to prepare.” He glared at Tom, not with the affected scorn of a trainer but with real bitterness. “You are mistaken.” He turned away before Tom could reply, giving a mix of praise and criticism to the rest of the Operations crew.

“This is the captain,” said a cool voice over the speakers in the ceiling. “The drill is concluded. We have a good deal of room for improvement.”

There was a wry chuckle from some of the Operations crew. Tom didn’t join in.

“Those of you whose performance was less than ideal, you know what you need to work on. This will not be our last drill, so make sure you’re ready.”

“Stand down,” said Boudreau. He stood, stretched, and winced as his back cracked audibly. “I’m going back to bed.”

Bed, thought Tom. The idea held no appeal for him. He was far too wound up to sleep. He glanced at his bracer. He was due to get up in less than an hour. He glanced at O’Reilly, thought about asking the man to teach him about the helm console, then decided he was too embarrassed to stay in Operations. Gathering what dignity he could muster, he slipped out into the corridor.

Up to this point he’d been too busy to do more than glance at the desk in his cabin. Now he activated the desk, and was delighted to find it could replicate any console on the ship. He configured it to reproduce the helm station in Operations and started to play.

An hour later he was on his way to the wardroom, his head swimming with technical details. He’d spent more time reading about the console than actually using it, and he felt as if he knew less then when he’d started. A figure in the corridor ahead of him moved aside to let him pass, and Tom glanced up.

It was O’Reilly, and Tom held up a hand, stopping him. “O’Reilly. Do you have a moment?”

“Of course, Sir.”

Tom glanced around. No one else was in earshot. “It’s nothing urgent,” he said. “Apparently nothing I do is urgent.” He grimaced. “If you have something to do, that’s fine. My questions can wait.”

“My shift’s over,” said O’Reilly. “I’m just on my way to buy some more toothpaste. It’ll keep.”

“Thank you.” Tom scratched his head. “I’m trying to learn the backup navigation console.” He shrugged. “Better late than never, right?”

O’Reilly smiled.

“It’s controlled from the bridge, right? We don’t get control unless the bridge gives us control?”

“Technically,” said O’Reilly, “the bridge stops us from taking control. There’s a constant suppression signal, and if it stops, the Operations console becomes live.” He shrugged. “It seems kind of backwards, but it means if something happens on the bridge, we can still steer the ship, even if they didn’t have a chance to hand over control.”

“All right,” Tom said. “That makes sense.” He shook his head, trying to choose a meaningful question from the confused jumble in his mind. “What’s the AQT?” he said at last.

“That’s how you adjust the gyroscope, so you can pick what direction is forward, or up or down.”

“Yes, I understand what it does, but what do the letters stand for?” Tom made a frustrated gesture. “There’s so many acronyms. I finally figured out that VMT means Ventral Manoeuvering Thrusters, but what’s AQT?”

“Well, that’s ���” O’Reilly paused, thinking. “You know, Sir, I’m not sure what it stands for.” He grinned and shook his head. “I never thought about it.”

“Oh.” Tom frowned. “I feel like there’s so much I don’t know, but I don’t know what to ask.”

“Well,” O’Reilly said, “I can give you one tip. When you need to change orientation quickly, you can do it with a hand gesture.” He demonstrated with a twist of his wrist. “You turn the ship using the big icon in the top right. It takes a long time for a tub this big to move around, so you get it started, and while it’s turning you can enter the exact number. That way you’re not just standing there tapping the screen while the First gets impatient.”

“All right,” said Tom. “Thanks. I’ll let you get on with ��� whatever you’re doing.”

O’Reilly nodded and continued down the corridor. Tom headed forward to the wardroom. Brady was already there, a steward placing a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her. Tom sat down across from her and used the tabletop to order oatmeal and toast.

As soon as the steward left the room, Brady said, “I hear you need to learn the Auxiliary Navigation console.”

“I’m working on it, Ma’am.”

“Good.” She coiled a strip of bacon around her fork. “There’s another drill in about an hour. I don’t want you to go to Operations, though.” She popped the bacon in her mouth, and Tom had to wait while she chewed and swallowed. “I want you to go to Gun Station Bravo. Don’t get in the way. Just watch how they work.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am.”

In a real battle the computer would fire the guns, with faster response times and more accuracy than any human could ever manage. Electronic systems could be scrambled, though, so there was always a human crew ready to take over the guns during a crisis.

“Now. You’ve met the captain and the first officer. Who’s third in command?”

Tom gave her a blank look, then reached for his bracer.

“It’s Commander Holmes,” she said. “After that ��� You know, after that I’m not entirely sure. We have five lieutenants on board, six counting you, but I’m not sure who’s senior.”

Tom said, “Dr. Vinduly is an overcommander.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew he’d blundered. “But he’s not in the chain of command.”

“Right,” said Brady. “Is there anyone else who’s an officer but not in line for command?”

“The Engineering Officer,” Tom said. “I forget his name.”

“Her name,” Brady said. “It’s Lieutenant Sawyer. On a larger ship there might be dentists or other specialists who are officers outside the chain of command. And there’s a marine lieutenant with no authority over naval personnel. In theory any orders you give to the marines should go through him. In practice, of course, they’ll do as you say. But Marine Lieutenant Harper can override you.”

He met Harper during the next drill. The marine lieutenant rushed into the gun bay with a pair of marines in firefighting gear when the ship’s computer announced the bay had taken damage. Harper was polite enough while making it clear he expected Tom to stay out of his way. The marines followed his lead.

There was no fire, of course. No one was going to start a blaze in the confined environment of a spaceship, not for a drill. Harper had each of his marines go through the steps of using their equipment, stopping short of actually deploying fire-retardant foam. He quizzed them on what to do in the event of an electrical fire, and what to do if the compartment lost air pressure. Tom was amused to learn that their focus was on saving the spacers, who they assumed would be completely unable to help themselves.

It struck him that the marines were their own separate community aboard the Kestrel. The New Haven military had no Marine Corps. The marines were UW imports, like Tom and Brady and a handful of spacers, but they didn���t mingle. He’d never seen Harper in the wardroom. He never saw a marine in the company of anyone but another marine.

It seemed a shame. During Officer Training, Army, Navy, Cavalry, and Marine officers had trained together. The armed services had felt like a single fraternity to Tom, and it saddened him to see this degree of fragmentation. The abyss between Havenites and UW personnel was bad enough. The ship didn’t need more division.

The marines even had a different cultural background. Harper and both marines who showed up for the drill were from Daphne, which had joined the UW only a few years before. People from Daphne had a distinct drawling accent, and a sense of being a bit apart from the other United Worlds. Daphne had one of the weakest economies in the UW, and Daffies (as they liked to call themselves) tended to leave their home world in search of work. The armed services were a popular choice, and they invariably chose the Marine Corps.

When the drill was over the captain addressed the crew, giving her usual post-mortem, complimenting some groups and criticizing others.

Once she was finished, Tom’s bracer chimed. It was Brady, summoning him to the boardroom. He arrived to find another lieutenant in conference with a pair of spacers. Brady sat at the far end of the long table, and she rose when she saw him. “Walk with me.”

They paced through the corridors of the forward section. “You’re getting a team for Battle Stations drills,” she said. “It’s Boudreau’s idea, which makes me think it isn’t going to go well.”

He glanced at her, startled.

“I hate getting into shipboard politics,” she said, grimacing. “That kind of bullshit should be beneath us as navy officers. But every ship has its politics, and this ship has politics that make the rest of the fleet look like a flying utopia.” She paused as the hatch to General Storage Three slid open and a medical corpsman came out, arms full of packages. Tom watched him pass, wondering if the man had properly logged the supplies. If I have to re-verify the whole storeroom ���

Brady waited until the man was out of earshot before continuing. “Commander Boudreau has ��� disappointed me.” Her tone was carefully neutral, but her expression was full of distaste. “He’s got a bug in his craw about joining the United Worlds. He doesn’t like the captain, he doesn’t like me, and he doesn’t like you.”

“But-”

She held up a hand, silencing him. “Don’t bother telling me it’s not fair. It’s how things are. He’s found ways to undermine me. I’ve got a solid track record, though, so there isn’t much he can do to me. It’s you I’m worried about.”

Tom gave her an alarmed look.

“I was annoyed when he was ignoring you,” she said. “Now he’s taking an active interest, and that is likely to be worse.” She stared at him. “He’s your nominal supervisor, even if he’s been acting like you don’t exist. At the end of three months he’ll submit your first evaluation, which will determine your eligibility for promotion to full lieutenant.”

Tom swallowed. If he didn���t make his first promotion it would be a huge black mark on his record. He could find himself cashiered, or relegated to clerical duty groundside for the duration of his service.

“Now, there’s a lot of regulations in place to protect babes in the woods like yourself. If he wants to declare you unfit for promotion he’ll need documented evidence of incompetence or dereliction of duty.” She grinned. “And, before you ask, none of your little mistakes so far will qualify. Every half-bar makes mistakes. I hear you handled the Operations helm controls adequately during the latest drill.”

He nodded.

“No doubt annoying our first officer greatly in the process.” She smirked. “No, you’ll have to fail repeatedly despite written warnings if he wants his evaluation to stick.” She stopped. “Which brings us to Gun Station Bravo.”

They stood beside a hatch with an ID scanner and a stenciled label that read GS BRAVO.

“The forward magazine is directly to starboard,” she said. “In fact, it’s right between Alpha and Bravo gun stations, which is more common sense than ship builders usually display.”

Tom gave her a noncommittal nod. Ship design was not entirely unlike architectural design. He had some sympathy for those anonymous designers who had to juggle an impossible number of conflicting demands as they laid out the map of a ship.

“The problem is, the magazine holds less than ten thousand rounds. That’s shared by two guns, mind you.” Her gaze sharpened. “How long can two guns maintain uninterrupted fire with ninety-five hundred rounds?”

“Let me see ���. Two ��� no, wait. I’m thinking of Harris guns.” Harris guns, designed as an anti-missile defense, had a fantastically high rate of fire. Relying on volume over accuracy, they essentially surrounded a ship in a cloud of steel. The Kestrel, though, used lasers for anti-missile defense. Her guns were Conklin and Mercer 30mm cannons. Designed as close-range ship-to-ship weapons, the cannons fired explosive rounds at a much slower rate.

“Slightly less than ten minutes,” he said at last.

“You know, you could have used your bracer.” She chuckled. “It’s nine minutes, fifty-three seconds, to be precise. Now, what happens when ten minutes are up?”

“The guns keep firing,” Tom said. “The magazine remains full, because there’s a loading chain that runs down the spine from the aft magazine.”

Brady’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve been doing your homework. Good. Now, the problem with this scenario is, the spine is vulnerable. It has less armor plating than the rest of the ship, and the loading chain runs just under the hull plates. It’s not an issue when we’re carrying cargo pods. They provide plenty of protection. Without them, though, any damage to the loading chain means we’re ten minutes away from losing our forward guns. That’s where you come in.”

“Okay ���”

“The good news is, it’s pretty straightforward. The bad news is, it’s a pain in the neck. The next drill will simulate a damaged chain. You’re going to deliver another ten thousand rounds to the forward magazine, manually.” She grinned at his expression. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to do it single-handedly. Come on. Let’s go meet your team.”

The team, he was dismayed to find, included Hanson. The man stared at Tom, eyes hard and unfriendly, while Brady made introductions.

“You remember Hanson and Nguyen. This is Spacer Swanson.” Brady indicated a black woman in her mid-twenties. “Tech One Haskell.” She nodded to a heavyset blond man in his thirties. “And this is Tech One Carver.” She indicated a tall, slender black man who looked almost as young as Tom.

“The drill is scheduled for 13:00. I suggest you prepare.” With that, she left them.

None of them had done this exact drill before. They worked together, sorting out the details as they went. Hanson watched the proceedings with the sullen air of a small child who’s been refused a candy, but the others treated it like a challenge and an interesting break to their usual routine.

Ten thousand 30mm cannon rounds, they soon discovered, were a serious pain to move. Tom stood in the aft magazine, looking at tall racks full of thousand-round cases, and realized why he’d been given such a large team. He tried to lift a case, managed to raise one end a few centimeters, and let it down with a dismayed grunt. “This thing weighs a tonne.” It was an exaggeration, but not much of one. “How are we going to move ten of them?”

“With a grav sled, obviously.” It was the first time Hanson had spoken. “We lug it to the vator, run forward, and take it out at the other end.”

“Explain, please,” said Tom.

Hanson sighed and rolled his eyes. “It’s pretty obvious.”

“Stow the attitude. I won’t tell you again.”

For an instant fury flashed in Hanson’s eyes. He suppressed it with a visible effort. “You can’t order me to think you know what you’re doing. It doesn’t work that way.”

Tom, his own anger rising to match Hanson’s, forced himself to keep his expression bland. Don’t let him know he’s getting under your skin. “No. But I can decide you’re insubordinate. I can enter a formal reprimand on your record and dock you a day’s pay.” Tom thought for a moment. By the time the ship reached Garnet they would be at the end of more than two weeks of continuous duty. They’d be overdue for shore leave. He smiled nastily. “I bet I could get your shore leave canceled. So go ahead and keep pushing me.”

For a long moment the two men locked gazes. Finally Hanson looked away and muttered, “Fine.”

“Sir,” said Tom

Hanson looked at him.

“I’m an officer, Hanson. You’ll address me as ‘Sir’.”

The moment stretched out until Hanson said, “Fine. Sir.”

“Now explain to me how you would move ten thousand shells to the forward magazine.”

Heavy cargo was apparently brought onto the Kestrel by stevedore bots, or by dockside crew with their own methods and machinery. It was an aspect of ship operations that had been entirely neglected in Tom’s education so far.

When cargo needed to be shifted or moved there was surprisingly little equipment to work with. The ship had a few wheeled dollies powered by nothing more sophisticated than human muscle. Sawyer’s engineering crews had a couple of robots, ponderous slow-moving things for shifting multi-tonne pieces of machinery.

And then there was the grav sled.

Operating on the same principle as personal antigrav units, the grav sled had to be loaded manually, but it could hold ten cases of cannon shells. The sled would float above the floor, and it had a steering mechanism, a force field generator that could push in whatever direction it was pointed. That meant that, once the weight of so much ammunition was counteracted, the sled could still overcome its inertia. It would be possible to move the sled down the corridors fairly quickly, and still be able to stop it quickly, or turn corners.

The best part was, the sled’s primary purpose was moving ammunition in an emergency. It was stored in the aft magazine.

Tom led them to the magazine and persuaded the door to open, and they found the sled. It was an unremarkable black rectangle perhaps one meter by two, magnetically locked to the ceiling. Tom spent five minutes struggling to release it before giving up. “It must release during Battle Stations. We’ll come back then.”

Hanson rolled his eyes. The others seemed to accept the situation. Tom let them return to their other duties while he waited in front of the magazine, reading about ammunition transfer policies on his bracer.

At the top of the hour the familiar alarm sounded, the magazine hatch slid open, and Tom entered.

The sled remained frustratingly attached to the ceiling.

He was standing under the sled, poking futilely at the sled controls, when a crisp voice said, “Clear the room, please.” Tom saw a young woman with the full stripe of a lieutenant, and had no choice but to step outside. The lieutenant hustled in, accompanied by a pair of spacers. She tapped her bracer and the sled drifted toward the floor. The spacers began loading it with cases of ammunition.

Two more spacers joined them soon after, and among them they soon had the sled loaded. A couple of handles swung up from the sides of the grav sled and a pair of spacers guided it into the corridor. By this time most of Tom’s team was gathered behind him. Swanson came hurrying around the corner in time to almost bark her shins on the sled. She moved, panting, to join the others behind Tom.

The lieutenant swept her gaze over the group, then looked at Tom. “Are you loading Bravo Gun?”

He nodded.

“Better keep up, then. You can have the sled when we unload.”

Tom and his team trouped along behind the others as they guided the sled to the spine, then jogged the length of the spine with the sled whirring along beside them. Gun Station Alpha had its own magazine, a mirror image of Bravo’s. A couple of spacers popped open the top of an ammo case, then lifted it and fit the open top into a slot in the magazine’s forward bulkhead. The others quickly unloaded the sled.

“It’s all yours,” the lieutenant said. Tom nodded, then hurried to keep up with Swanson and Haskell as they steered the sled aft.

The team was unloading the sled at Bravo Gun’s magazine when Boudreau arrived. He watched them work for a moment, then said, “You may as well stop. You’ll just have to take all that ammunition back to the aft magazine.”

Swanson and Nguyen froze with a case in their hands, glanced at Tom, then set the case back on the sled.

“There’s not much point in continuing,” Boudreau went on. “The drill is over. It’s been over for several minutes, in fact.” He looked at his bracer. “According to the ship’s AI, Alpha Team had the first ammo case in place in nine minutes, seventeen seconds. It took you over twenty-two minutes.” His lip curled. “And here you are, still loading the magazine. Disgraceful.”

Tom said, “But, Sir, the sled is keyed to-”

“I’m not interested in your excuses.” The look Boudreau gave Tom silenced him immediately. “Only results.” His gaze swept across the team. “This won’t look good on any of your records. Ultimately the responsibility lies with your supervising officer, but still, this is very disappointing. If your performance doesn’t improve, I’m afraid I’ll have to take disciplinary action.”

He strode away, leaving a dismayed silence behind him. Tom stared at Boudreau’s retreating shoulders, seething. He wanted to argue, to protest. To call the First Officer a shit rat and a buffoon. But the ugly truth was, the injustice of it truly didn���t matter. A shit rat Boudreau might be, but he was no buffoon. He knew perfectly well how the drill was structured. Arguing would be a waste of breath, and as for telling him off? It would delight Boudreau. A nice charge of insubordination would be just what he needed to sink Tom’s career.

“We still have to take back our shells.” It was the lieutenant from Alpha Team, standing in the short corridor between the guns, the corners of her mouth quirking up in a smirk. “Would you mind picking up the pace?”

Chapter 12

“I want you to go to Operations,” Brady said, “and supervise the replacement of the scanner relay system. The team has to be ready to change it out quickly in case it ever takes damage during battle. But you’re going to do it slowly. It’s delicate equipment, and it’s expensive as hell.”

Tom nodded, clearing the tabletop in the corner of the wardroom where he’d been studying fuel consumption and distribution. He hadn’t learned much. His thoughts kept wandering to the gun drill and the utter impossibility of meeting Boudreau’s target. “I’m on it, Ma’am.”

He found Operations nearly empty. The room was only really manned during drills and combat, providing redundancy in case of a strike to the bridge.

O’Reilly sat with his elbows resting on the helm station, which was deactivated. A young woman stood beside him, chatting. Both of them straightened up when Tom entered. O’Reilly said, “Lieutenant Thrush, Spacer Chan.”

“Hello, Sir,” said Chan. Tom nodded.

“Lieutenant Brady says we’re changing the scanner relays,” O’Reilly said. With one foot he nudged a toolbox on the deck by his chair. “It doesn’t take very many tools, but I brought a few things.”

Over the next ten minutes they took apart a console along the forward bulkhead. O’Reilly, who had clearly done it before, took the lead without seeming to, delicately allowing Tom to pretend he was in charge. Tom watched everything he did and helped when he could.

Chan asked endless questions, which Tom appreciated because it allowed him to listen to the answers without having to ask himself. Among the three of them they disassembled a console and exposed a confusing welter of electronic components.

It crossed Tom’s mind as he unscrewed a protective plate and lifted it out that perhaps he shouldn’t be doing manual labor with the crew. Wouldn’t a real officer stand back and supervise, letting the enlisted crew do the work? It seemed disrespectful, though ��� even rude ��� to stand back and do nothing when he could help. So he pitched in, followed O’Reilly’s tactful suggestions, and helped expose the scanner relays.

“This is the tricky part,” said O’Reilly, pointing at the inside of the console. “We need to get all four crystals out at once, and we need to do it without bending the filaments that connect them.”

Four fist-sized crystals lay nestled in a framework inside the console, each connected to the others by a hair-thick strand of wire a couple of centimeters long.

“Chan, could you hold the case?” O’Reilly said. “The lieutenant and I will lift out the crystals, and you can slide the case underneath.”

“Right,” Tom said, and grabbed the first crystal.

“Don’t-”

Tom snatched his hand back.

O’Reilly said, “You can’t ��� that is, it’s not a good idea to touch the crystals with bare skin.”

Tom looked at his fingertips, suddenly worried. Had he touched something corrosive?

“They’re incredibly delicate,” O’Reilly said. “Skin oils will damage them. A fingerprint on the side of the crystal can be enough to make it unusable.” He knelt and drew two pairs of thin gloves from the toolbox. “We should wear these.”

Tom, embarrassed, took a pair of gloves from him and pulled them on. “Is the crystal damaged?”

“It’s probably fine.” O’Reilly pulled on his own gloves. “Are you ready, Chan?”

She lifted a wide plastic case with indentations for all four crystals and nodded.

This time, Tom didn’t touch anything until O’Reilly had taken hold of two crystals. Mimicking him, Tom took hold of the remaining two crystals. Slowly, delicately, they lifted all four crystals out and raised them straight up. Chan slid the case beneath their hands, and they lowered the crystals into the case.

“Great,” O’Reilly said. “Now we’ll install the replacements.” He held his hands up in front of him. “You’ll have to open the other case, Chan. Lieutenant Thrush and I can’t touch anything while we have the gloves on.”

Tom, who’d been about to scratch his jaw, froze, then copied O’Reilly’s pose, standing still with his hands in the air. Chan switched cases, then held the tray of replacement crystals over the exposed console. O’Reilly and Tom lifted out the four crystals, waited while Chan moved the case out of the way, then lowered the crystals into position.

“There.” O’Reilly sighed and tugged at the fingertips of his gloves. “That’s the tricky part over with.”

Tom removed his own gloves, and watched as O’Reilly packed them in a sanitizing case.

They were reassembling the console when Chan said, “Hello, Lieutenant.” Tom glanced over his shoulder and saw Brady in the doorway.

“Carry on,” Brady said. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

It took a minute or so to put the console covers in place. Then the three of them turned to face Brady.

“Let’s test the new relay,” she said, and moved to another console. Tom activated the nav console and breathed a quiet sigh of relief when it came to life. “Chan,” said Brady. “Please launch a Type II probe.”

Chan moved to yet another station, where she tapped away at a console. “Probe is away.”

“Good,” said Brady. “Mr. Thrush, see if you can detect it.”

Tom nodded, took a deep breath, and looked at his console, hoping there wasn’t some special technique required to detect something as small as a probe. He scanned for ships, and felt a knot of tension between his shoulder blades release when a yellow circle appeared alongside the Kestrel’s hull.

Brady looked over his shoulder and nodded in satisfaction. “Retrieve the probe,” she said to Chan. Then she knelt, picked up the case containing the scanner array they had removed, and carried it to a small counter against the starboard bulkhead. She prodded the top of the case, and half a dozen lights appeared, most of them yellow. She tapped the case one more time, then waited.

One by one, the lights turned green. When only one light remained yellow, it began to flash, and Tom held his breath.

The light turned red.

Brady leaned closer, peering at the top of the case. “It seems one crystal is malfunctioning.”

“I thought the color seemed a bit dark,” O’Reilly said smoothly. “I didn’t have a chance to log it yet.”

Brady gave him a searching glance. “I see.” She looked at Chan. “Is the probe aboard?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good.” Her eyes, dark and inscrutable, came to rest on Tom. “Your performance with the navigation console has improved. You’ve been practising?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“It shows.” She looked around the room. “Make sure you stow the tools properly.”

She walked out.

Tom looked at O’Reilly, unsure what to say. O’Reilly gave him a tiny shrug, then said, “We can take care of the tools, Sir.”

“Very well.” Tom hesitated. “Thank you.”

“No problem, Sir.” He knelt and began stacking tools in the toolbox. Tom watched him for a moment, then slipped out.

He found Brady in the boardroom, tapping a data pad. She glanced up at him, returned to her tapping, then set the pad down. She laced her fingers together, met his gaze, and said, “Bee in your bonnet, Lieutenant?”

“I touched the crystal,” he said. “The one that failed. I think I damaged it.”

She nodded. “I thought it was something like that.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am. I didn’t know. I certainly won’t do it again.”

Brady shook her head, pursing her lips in a way that suggested she might just be hiding a smile. “It’s a bit late for me to yell at you, isn’t it? It’s been a learning experience for both of us. You learned how to handle scanner crystals, and I learned something about you.”

“You mean, you learned I’m a screwup?” he said bitterly.

She cocked an eyebrow. “No. I already knew you were a half-bar with no experience. Now I know you’re willing to own up to your mistakes, but you’re apt to whine about it later.”

Tom flushed.

Her voice softened. “I also know that the people under you are willing to cover for you when you drop the ball. And that tells me a lot about what kind of officer you’re going to be.”

Tom stared at her.

“We all mess up, Mr. Thrush. Less and less as time goes by, but it will keep happening. Mark my words.” She smiled. “Bad officers, and the truly incompetent, usually end up being subtly sabotaged by their subordinates. Run-of-the-mill officers get neutral cooperation. But if they cover for you when you make mistakes? Then I know you’re doing something right.” Her gaze returned to her data pad. “Take some down time. And when I say ‘down time’, what I mean is, go study something. Make sure you can find the nearest life pod from anywhere on the ship. I’ll test you on it later.”

She ignored him as he quietly let himself out.

Chapter 13

The next time General Quarters sounded, Tom had no advance warning. He was in the spine, running toward the aft section, when his bracer chimed. He glanced at the displayed message, unsurprised to read that his team was once again simulating a damaged loading chain. He kept running, but instead of heading for Operations he went to a storage bay on Deck One. He arrived to find Swanson already pulling dollies loose from a rack. They took a dolly each and hurried toward the aft magazine.

One ammo case would have made a reasonable load for one dolly. They didn’t have ten dollies, though, or ten people to move them. So they laid the first dolly flat, stacked three cases on top and strapped them in place.

It took all six of them to heave the dolly upright. The wheels groaned in protest, and when Tom pushed on the handles, the dolly refused to move. He cursed. “We’ll have to do one case at a time.” He removed the strap. “Unload it.”

The Alpha Gun team hurried in while Tom’s crew was unloading the dolly. He set off with one case on the dolly, watching in mute frustration as the other lieutenant unlocked the grav sled. There was nothing for it but to keep on going.

He was in the spine, lumbering along with every muscle straining, when the grav sled passed him on the right, whisked along by the vator. The Alpha Gun team passed him on the left, jogging to keep up with the sled. Tom, moving at a slow walking pace, ground his teeth together and kept on going.

Swanson was a dozen meters behind him, face contorted with strain as she pushed a dolly of her own. Hanson followed her with another dolly. The grav sled and the Alpha Gun team were gone from sight by the time Tom reached the end of the spine, where he found he no longer had the strength to haul his dolly up half a flight of stairs. He waited for Swanson and together they got his dolly up to the next deck, then hers. They went back for Hanson’s dolly, then continued on to the forward magazine.

“Hanson, you take the dollies back. Swanson, help me with this.” Tom popped open the top of an ammo case and, with Swanson’s help, clicked it into place in the loading mechanism.

The rest of the team was just arriving, each with another case on a dolly, when Boudreau made his appearance. The smile he gave them might have seemed sincere if you didn’t look too closely. “Sixteen minutes, six seconds,” he said, looking ostentatiously at his bracer. “That’s quite an improvement. The other team was finished in just under ten minutes, however.” He clicked his tongue. “I’m afraid that’s the time you would have had to beat to avoid an official reprimand.”

Boudreau looked at each of them in turn. “The task seems simple enough, and yet you continue to fail to meet simple requirements. Perhaps I haven’t been clear.” He spent a moment tapping at his bracer. “I’m sending you all a formal written notification. You will have one more drill in two days’ time. I expect you to have the magazine loaded in less than ten minutes from the first alarm.”

His eyes hardened. “If you should fail, you will each receive a Class Three reprimand.” His lip curled. “That’s one of the new designations created for us by the United Worlds Armed Forces. It means the reprimand will remain on your record for twelve months.” He shook his head, as if disgusted to be using United Worlds protocols. “In addition, since you clearly need further training, you’ll forfeit your shore leave when we reach Garnet, and spend the duration repeating this drill.”

Boudreau left, and Tom stared after him, feeling hollow. His anger and frustration were gone, replaced by a strange emptiness. He was exhausted and aching from the labor of moving so much ammunition by hand, and utterly discouraged by the pointless futility of it all.

“Well, that’s great,” Haskell said. “No shore leave.” He glanced at Tom, his expression blank. It didn’t take much imagination to fill in the accusation that had to be there. This is your fault. No one spoke the words aloud, but they had to be thinking it. Boudreau is after you, and we all get to suffer as a result.

I’m sorry. The apology, impossible to say aloud, seemed to lodge itself in Tom’s throat where it threatened to choke him. He opened his mouth a couple of times. When he finally spoke he said, “Take five. We’ll wait for the grav sled before we take all the ammunition back.”

A map of the Kestrel glowed on Tom’s bracer. It was the day after the drill, and he ached. Muscles burned in his arms and legs. His lower back felt like one big knot, and he had trouble straightening his fingers. The dolly idea was stupid. But I can’t think of anything else.

A tiny yellow rectangle glowed just forward of the engines, not far from the aft magazine. He zoomed in and squinted at the outline of an airlock. The brutal weight of the ammo cases would vanish if the cases could be removed from the ship’s artificial gravity field. He swiped a fingertip across the bracer, moving forward. There were airlocks in the forward section as well. None of them were particularly close to Beta Gun, but still ���.

He imagined sending one or two people out the aft lock with six cases of ammunition. The rest of the team could run forward and be waiting in the shuttle bay to retrieve it. Then it would just be a short haul up two flights of stairs to the gun.

“Yeah, right.” He shook his head. The ship was in hyperspace, which meant energy storms raged just outside. A person in a vac suit wouldn’t last long. Even if the ship was in clear space between storms when the drill began, there was no way he’d be allowed to open an airlock. He scowled and closed the map. Boudreau had stacked the deck with meticulous care. There was simply no way for Tom to win.

He thought about studying and decided to take a walk instead. In theory he’d be familiarizing himself with the ship. In reality he would walk the route from the aft magazine to Beta Gun yet again, looking for a way to achieve the impossible.

The hatch slid open and a voice barked, “Hold on!” Tom froze in the hatchway as a massive chunk of aluminum pipe went past. Almost as wide as the corridor, the pipe hung from some kind of harness and drifted along with a marine on either end.

“Sorry about that, Sir,” said the marine at the back. “We can’t really stop this thing once it gets moving.”

Tom stepped into the corridor. “What in space are you doing?”

The marine looked at him as if wondering if he needed to bother answering. His gaze flicked over the half-stripe on Tom’s chest and he said, “Disaster recovery drill.” He said this over his shoulder, not slowing his pace as he followed the pipe, his hands resting on the metal.

Tom followed him. “Disaster recovery?”

“Yes, Sir.” There was a hint of impatience in the man’s voice. “We pretends the ship’s taken a big hit. Collapsed ceilings, that sort of thing. Only they doesn’t let us collapse the actual ceilings.” He shook his head as if saddened by a great injustice. “So we practices with big chunks of metal like this.” He patted the pipe. “We figures out how to get it up and moving, and we gets it out of the way.”

The pipe had to weigh a good deal more than the two marines who were moving it. “How do you do it?” he asked, fascinated. “How do you lift it?”

“Tactical harnesses,” the marine said, a grudging warmth in his voice. Like most people he couldn’t resist a bit of enthusiasm when talking about his work. “They’re made for lifting people. They lets us control our weight, jump off rooftops and the like. We slings ‘em around the obstacle and powers ‘em up, and pretty soon they doesn’t weigh nothing at all.”

Four different sets of gray harness were strapped around the pipe. Tom could make out sleeve holes and buckles clearly designed for human bodies. The harnesses seemed to fit the pipe well enough, though.

“Wow. That’s a good solution. You would think they would give you something designed for ���” He waved his arm at the pipe. “For clearing rubble like this.”

The marine shrugged. “The harnesses are pretty flexible. They’s designed for people of every size, or wearing vac suits or full armor. So they reconfigures pretty good.”

Tom left him to his work and walked away, lost in thought. A quick check with his bracer told him he wouldn’t be able to steal the marines’ tactic directly. Tactical harnesses were the property of the Marine Corps, and needed by the marines during drills. He wouldn’t be allowed to play with their toys.

His thoughts chased themselves around in ever-tighter circles until he wanted to bang his head on the nearest wall. Instead, he retreated to his cabin where he activated his desk and turned on a training program. Designed like a game, Fire Escape created one simulation after another, challenging him to find the closest exits and emergency equipment from various points on the ship. He coped with fires, structural damage, and loss of pressure.

Concentrating was difficult at first. His mind kept wanting to return to the problem of the ammo drill, but gradually the game absorbed all his attention. He poured himself into the scenarios, knowing that if he kept his conscious mind fully occupied his subconscious would go to work.

It took more than an hour, and by the end of it he was exhausted and thoroughly sick of Fire Escape. But by the time he blanked the desktop he knew what to do.

When Battle Stations sounded Tom ran past the aft magazine without stopping. He dashed into the surgery instead, where he grabbed a couple of medical antigrav harnesses. Designed for moving injured people, they were more rigid than the tactical harnesses, but they worked essentially the same way. He’d wanted a dozen of the harnesses, but Dr. Vinduly had put his foot down.

By the time Tom reached the magazine the rest of the team was there, lined up in the corridor while they waited for the Alpha Gun team to finish loading the grav sled. Tom looked his team over. Hanson was probably the fittest, but he didn’t trust Hanson. Haskell was the tallest among the rest, and he’d displayed plenty of upper-body strength during the drills so far. Tom pushed a harness into his hands. “Haskell, you’re with me. The rest of you, bring the other ammo cases as soon as the grav sled is free.”

The Alpha Gun team came out of the magazine pushing the grav sled. Nguyen and Carver followed. Their job would be to bring the sled back when it was empty. Tom stepped into the magazine with a puzzled Haskell at his heels.

They lifted an ammo case down, stood it on end, and wrapped it in a medical harness. Tom cranked the harness up as high as it would go, watching the straps pull tight as the harness tried to rise.

“How many of these harnesses did you get?” Haskell said doubtfully.

“Just the two.” Tom wrapped the second harness around the case. “Buckle it up.” He tugged a strap tight, then twisted the dial on the harness, setting it to AUTO-NEUTRAL. The harness vibrated as it powered up. The ammunition case trembled, then rose to hover a few millimeters above the floor.

Tom grabbed one end, Haskell grabbed the other, and they heaved upward. The case rose, and they needed the same amount of effort to bring it to a stop at about chest height. “Let’s go,” Tom said, and tugged the case toward the door. “Wait here,” he said to the others. “Get the rest of the ammo to the gun as quick as you can.”

Manoeuvering the floating case was a frustratingly slow business. It had a tremendous amount of inertia, and getting it through the corridors required endless changes in direction. Crew rushing past on their own errands had to duck under the floating case as Tom and Haskell shoved it down the corridor and up half a flight of stairs.

Once they reached the spine, though, it was a straight line to the forward section of the ship. Tom could see the Alpha Gun team at the forward end, lifting the grav sled from the vator and heading up the stairs. He wouldn’t be able to catch up, but he was determined not to be too far behind.

“Let’s see how fast this thing will move,” he said, and grinned at Haskell. The spacer gave him an uncertain grin in reply and they pushed on the floating ammo case, shoving it toward the far end of the spine. When the two men had to trot to keep up Tom said, “That’s enough. If it gets away from us ���.”

They jogged along, the ammo case floating at shoulder-height beside them. From time to time they would give it a little sideways push to keep it lined up with the long corridor. There wasn’t enough air resistance to slow the case by any measurable amount. It sailed along, effectively without friction, Tom and Haskell running beside it.

When half a dozen marines filled the forward end of the spine Tom pushed the ammo case up until it was almost brushing the ceiling. The marines ran past, a few of them tilting their heads to avoid the case.

Once they were past Tom pulled the case back down, then started slowing it down. Haskell helped, both of them tugging on the case. They quickly learned that getting the case moving was a lot easier than stopping it. They’d been able to plant their feet when they pushed it into motion. Now they stumbled along behind it, cursing as they tried to brace themselves without being pulled off their feet.

The case was moving at a brisk walking pace when it hit the bulkhead at the forward end of the spine. The impact made the deck plates tremble under Tom’s feet, and he winced. But the bulkhead, designed to keep the forward section airtight during combat, was solidly built. The ammo case put a scuff mark in the blue paint, with hints of orange showing through. There was no other damage.

The case rebounded, but the two of them quickly got it under control. They manhandled it through a hatch, down half a flight of stairs, and around a corner, moving much slower now. They lowered the case to waist height where it was easier to control and steered it into the magazine. They had to remove one harness to pop the top of the case open. They left the other harness in place while they clicked the case into the feeder.

“Well, that was exciting, Sir.” Haskell panted as he removed the second medical harness from the case. “I don’t quite see the point, though. The other five cases are still back there.” He gestured aft.

Tom massaged his hands, which were cramping from the effort of hauling on the straps around the case. “Boudreau ��� Excuse me, Commander Boudreau ��� he’s not checking how long it takes us to get all the ammo loaded.” Tom gestured at the loading rack. “He’s checking the ship’s computer to see how long it took us to get the first case installed in the loader.”

Haskell’s brow furrowed.

“The Navy’s a funny organization,” Tom said. “If you’re an officer you can hand out simple punishments as often as you like. If you want a reprimand on someone’s record, though, you need paperwork.” He flourished his bracer. “I checked the exact wording of his written notification to us. He was very precise. Our assignment was to get the first case of ammunition in place within ten minutes of the start of the drill.”

Haskell leaned forward. “And did we?”

“With thirty seconds to spare,” Tom said smugly.

“You mean ���.”

“We all get shore leave.”

“Yes!” Haskell pumped the air with his fist.

The rest of the team showed up several minutes later with the grav sled. Boudreau arrived almost on their heels, his expression smug and malicious. He looked at the full sled, clicked his tongue in disapproval, and made a show of lifting his arm to check his bracer.

And the nasty smile on his face slid downward like melting wax, becoming a disbelieving frown. When he finally managed to speak all he said was, “Good. Carry on.” He spun on his heel and marched away.

The team stood there, looking at one another. Haskell was full of glee, Tom struggling not to laugh. The others just looked confused. Haskell repeated what Tom had told him about getting the first case into the loader. Tom watched as it sank in. An air of weary futility seemed to slide away from them. Nguyen straightened up. Swanson squared her shoulders. Carver smiled, looking from face to face.

Only Hanson didn’t look happy. He scowled, grabbed the handles of the grav sled, and said, “Let’s get this back to the magazine.”

Haskell laughed. “Get off it, Hanson. You’d be happier if we all got reprimands and lost our shore leave, wouldn’t you?” He shook his head, then looked at Tom. “We’re all supposed to be mad at you, aren’t we, Lieutenant? We were supposed to lose our shore leave, and it was supposed to be your fault because you’re not from New Haven.” He snorted.

“You know,” said Nguyen, “I’ve been in the Navy for ten years and this is the first time I’ve really gone anywhere.” She smiled, her whole face lighting up. “We get to see Garnet!”

Hanson muttered something under his breath. The others ignored him. Swanson took the second set of controls as Haskell and Tom took their ammo case out of the rack and added it to the sled. The sled glided aft, heading for the spine.

“They have surfing on Garnet,” Swanson said. “Do you think it’s hard to learn how to surf?”

That set off an excited discussion of shore leave possibilities. Tom walked beside the sled, listening to the chatter, feeling the stress of the last several days ease its grip on him.

“You know, Lieutenant,” Haskell murmured. “Maybe being in the UW Navy isn’t so bad.”

Chapter 14

Chance put Tom on a sleep shift when the ship was scheduled to reach Garnet. He adjusted his alarm, rose early, and made his way to the wardroom to watch. He’d hoped to have the room to himself, but it was not to be. Lieutenant Carstairs was there, perched in a chair that gave him a view of the window. Vinduly, the surgeon, stood with his nose almost touching the transparent panel, gazing into hyperspace.

Tom took a spot at the window, close to one side so he wouldn’t block Carstairs’s view, and looked out. The ship was in a clear space between storms. He could see no stars, just a blue wall so distant it seemed smooth and featureless. It was soothing, and he yawned, then allowed himself to relax.

Until the hatch slid open, putting a rectangle of reflected light on the glass, and Brady entered the wardroom.

“As you were,” she said as he started to turn. She joined him at the window, taking a position between Tom and Vinduly. Carstairs grumbled, then stood and edged in beside the surgeon.

“I never miss a transition if I can help it,” Brady said. She glanced at Tom. “Unless it interferes with rack time. I’m an enthusiast, not a lunatic.”

Carstairs chuckled. “The kid’s keen. Let him enjoy it. He’ll be tired and cynical soon enough.”

“Look,” said Vinduly, and the others went silent. A tiny white circle glowed just ahead of the ship. The circle grew and grew, giving the illusion they were rushing toward it. The ship was rushing forward, Tom knew, but that circle, projected by the ship itself, was keeping pace. It expanded until all he could see was white.

From the bridge they would see more. The ship’s scanners would give a view of normal space beyond the portal, allowing the bridge crew to check for collision hazards. Tom didn’t want to see the transition through a screen full of data, though.

He wanted to see it with his own eyes.

“Here we go,” Brady murmured, and the whiteness grew impossibly bright. Tom squinted, lifted a hand to shield his eyes, and then dropped it.

They were through. The view through the window was of blackness, stars slowly appearing as his eyes adjusted. Carstairs and Vinduly moved away, leaving Tom and Brady at the window. One by one the stars emerged from the darkness, and then the Milky Way appeared, making a sloppy pale swath across the starscape.

The ship had to be moving, though it was impossible to hear the engines from this far forward. The ship was turning as well. The stars slid gracefully to starboard, and the first of Garnet’s defenses came into view. It was a gun platform, drifting in a high slow orbit around the planet. Roughly spherical, the platform featured small thrusters to make it rotate and great thick slabs of armor plating. Three fat gun barrels jutted out, pointing toward deep space.

Several more gun platforms came into view as the Kestrel advanced. If the Dawn Alliance tried to bring large warships into the system, they would face a warm reception.

Bombers, of course, would be able to race past the gun platforms with impunity. It would take a very lucky shot to bring down a small, fast-moving ship with such ponderous heavy guns. No doubt there were other defenses to deal with bomber attacks, Tom told himself.

Small shapes in the distance slowly grew until he could make out docking stations bristling with ships. The stations were huge, spidery things that enmeshed the ships of the Green Zone Fleet in a shroud of girders and gantries. As the Kestrel drew close to the nearest station, Tom saw a battleship that looked almost puny compared to the web of metal that ensnared it. The massive battleship wasn’t even the only ship there. He saw a couple of light carriers and no fewer than three cruisers entangled in the same station.

None of those ships, he realized, would be able to disengage quickly in the event of an attack.

The station fell away aft and he saw more stations, each with a handful of ships docked to it. Each ship would need anywhere from several minutes to most of an hour to disconnect from its station.

He didn’t see any ships in open space.

“Lieutenant?” he said.

Brady glanced at him. “Hmmm?”

“Isn’t it, I don’t know, kind of dangerous, having all these ships linked to the stations? They can’t react very quickly if there’s an attack.”

An amused grin quirked her lips. “There won’t be an attack. There’s a network of scanner buoys all around us. The fleet will have an hour’s warning if the Dawn Alliance tries anything.”

He thought of the strategy exercise from Small Ship Training. What if a carrier stopped just outside the web of scanner buoys and launched, say, a dozen bombers? Or two dozen? He pictured a cloud of little ships sweeping in and blasting one of those docking stations to scrap metal, and all the docked ships too. The bombers would be able to flee unscathed before the rest of the fleet could react.

He pushed the macabre scenario from his mind as the Kestrel drifted up to Garnet itself. There were admirals with decades of experience making sure the Green Zone Fleet was safe. It wasn’t Tom’s job. He had plenty to think about, like watching how a frigate docked, and figuring out how to spend his shore leave.

This star system had a name ��� GRN753, if he remembered correctly ��� but no one called it anything but the Garnet system. Garnet properly referred to the fifth planet out from the star, but most spacers called the orbiting naval base ‘Garnet’.

The base was a monster, a massive disk in a geostationary orbit above the equator of one of the galaxy’s gems. A tether forty thousand kilometers long connected the station to the planet below, and extended upward to anchor a counterweight high above the station. Personnel and urgent cargo went to and from the surface by shuttle, but most cargo traveled up the tether by elevator.

From the wardroom window Tom could see neither the tether nor the counterweight. He could certainly see the station. Just over a kilometer wide but only two decks high, it glittered with light shining from hundreds of windows. A UW starburst decorated the top surface of the station. The rest was a marvel of white hull plates and glass.

Three ships were docked to the station, a frigate and a pair of corvettes. A mini carrier floated a couple of kilometers above the station and well out to one side to avoid the tether. Another corvette hovered below the disk.

This is it, Tom thought. These are the ships that could put up a defense if the Dawn Alliance launched a surprise attack.

“Your shore leave will be delayed,” Brady said. “I want you supervising hull inspection and maintenance. And when I say supervising-”

“You mean I’m going to watch and keep out of the way,” Tom finished for her.

“You’re learning,” said Brady. “There’s hope for you yet. Report to me when hull maintenance is done, or to Mr. Boudreau if I’m not around.”

As Tom headed aft to get his vac suit he faced a wave of jubilant spacers heading forward to start their leave. He felt like a schoolboy made to stay late after the bell rang on a sunny day. The image amused him, and he was smiling by the time he reached the airlock atop the forward section. I’m going out on the hull of a starship as it orbits Garnet. I’m a hundred and fifty light-years from home, and I’m not a bloody tourist, either. I’m a naval officer. I’m not going to complain because I don’t get to rush into the nearest bar quite yet.

The ship’s artificial gravity field bled through the upper hull, giving Tom a vestige of weight. He felt light-headed as he stepped out of the airlock, and chalked it up to the reduction in gravity. When his first step ended in a stumble, though, he realized something more complicated was going on. His feet had something close to their proper weight. The pull of the force field dropped away quickly, until his head was nearly weightless. The belt around his waist felt as if it weighed about half what it should.

He grinned at the novelty of it, made sure the magnets in his boots were holding, and started a slow march across the hull.

The hull inspection process was completely automated. Three robots did the inspecting, one on the forward section, one along the spine, and one aft. Tom found the first robot mincing its way across the top of the hull and followed as it ranged back and forth. The robot looked like a mad scientist’s vision of an octopus, with a compact body the size of a man’s chest and five flexible, writhing arms, each ending in a magnetic pad. It marched along, scanning as it went, and Tom plodded along behind it, watching.

He followed the robot from the top of the hull to the starboard side, where it made a ninety-degree turn and began to move straight “down” the side of the ship. Tom managed the corner without too much difficulty, careful to keep one boot firmly planted as he worked the other boot around the corner of the hull. He’d done something similar at Capricorn, but without the strange gravity shift. He was dizzy and disoriented by the time he finished, but he made it without mishap.

Now, “down” was a new direction. He stood at the edge of a steel cliff, the vertical face being the top of the Kestrel’s hull. He spent a moment enjoying the transition, then turned to follow the robot.

Once he’d made a complete circumnavigation of the forward section of the ship he was bored. He stopped just aft of the bridge windows, ignored the robot for a moment, and took in the view. The station was a massive circular plain just ahead of the ship, bristling with antennas and gun pods. The other frigate was directly opposite, the top of her hull showing as a dark, irregular oval. The corvettes were barely visible, one off to the left, one to the right. They looked puny and inconsequential against the bulk of the station, made small by distance and contrast.

The mini carrier was surprisingly hard to spot from this angle. He saw it mostly as a dark gap in the stars ahead and to one side. Tom spent a moment looking at the ship itself, then turned his attention to the stars, which were glorious and uncountable.

Garnet was directly below, hidden by the bulk of the Kestrel. He’d seen it as he crossed the side and bottom of the hull, a blue orb wreathed in clouds, land masses showing as brown and green blobs in that endless expanse of ocean. I’ll have to make sure I see the ocean while I’m down there.

First, though, duty called. Suppressing a nagging voice that told him he was doing nothing useful, he left the forward robot to its repetitive duties and headed aft. The Kestrel had three cargo pods, half her capacity. The pods were distributed evenly around the spine, one at twelve o’clock, one at four, and one at eight. The hull inspection robot was on the top cargo pod, working its way back and forth along the cylindrical hull.

The transition from the forward section to the spine was easy, since the hull sloped downward instead of making a sharp corner. At the bottom of the slope, however, Tom faced a vertical wall where the end of the cargo pod met the spine. It would have been a breeze in zero gee. He just had to lean back, lift one foot, and plant it on the vertical surface in front of him. With his weight changing with every shift in position it proved challenging, and he was glad there was no one to see him as he fell flat on his back.

He watched the second robot work for a while, telling himself it was possible the robot would make a mistake. Without human supervision, who would ever know? The robot seemed to be covering every meter of the cargo pod, though, and he didn’t doubt it would cover the other pods and the spine of the ship just as efficiently.

There would be places the robot would have trouble reaching, narrow gaps where the pods came close to the spine. However, any space too tight for the robots to inspect was a space well protected from meteorite damage. Tom shrugged to himself, satisfied the robot was doing an adequate job, and headed aft.

He stayed away from the engines, which would still be hot from the journey. Vacuum made an excellent insulator, and the engines would be a long time cooling. The third robot, made of tougher stuff than a puny human being, traipsed across the engines fearlessly. Tom satisfied himself with watching from a distance.

Another flock of robots, smaller ones this time, spent an hour or so making invisible repairs to the cargo pods and the hull plates of the ship. They filled microscopic pits and repaired tiny cracks, and when they were done Tom couldn’t see the slightest difference. He watched the robots detach themselves one by one and go drifting across to an open bay atop the disc of the station. Then he headed inside, more than ready for his shore leave to begin.

Instead he spent several hours at the forward airlock watching spacers go in and out. In theory he was watching for contraband coming in and stolen Navy property going out. Brady’s instructions were clear, though. He would need a very good reason to actually detain or search anyone. So he sat and watched as spacers and marines trouped out, excited and full of chatter, or plodded back in, often disheveled and smelling of drink.

And finally it was his turn. A senior noncom took over and Tom walked through the lock and into Garnet Station.

The inside of the station was depressingly similar to the inside of the ship, so he followed the flow of foot traffic, knowing it would lead him to a shuttle. His bracer chimed with a message from Brady, and he read it on the way down to the planet.

Don’t get drunk with crew. It’s bad for discipline. Officers tend to gather in the Leaky Lifeboat and the Admiral Nimitz. Stay out of brothels. You don’t need the crew gossiping about you. Spacers tend to like the Rose District and the Tulip District. Marines like the Daffodil District. Officers usually stick to the Lily District.

Have fun.

Right. He rolled his eyes. For God’s sake, Brady, I’m on leave. Let me be.

All the same, he was glad to have a bit of guidance as the shuttle touched down and the passengers spilled out onto the tarmac. He could see spacers glancing at him, taking in his uniform and moving away. They didn’t want supervision on their shore leave any more than he did.

He stood for a moment in the shade of the shuttle, a hand raised to protect his eyes. He hadn’t seen direct sunlight in quite some time, and he was pretty sure the light back on Korus wasn’t as intense as the sunlight here. Half a dozen small ships perched on the asphalt all around him. Judging by the stream of hung-over spacers heading toward him, the shuttle beside him was about to take off again. He lowered his hands and followed his fellow passengers toward the terminal building.

There were no customs or border formalities, just a wide lobby with advertisements and information kiosks. He ignored it all and headed out into the city of Green Haven.

A cloud of hawkers and vendors immediately surrounded him. He realized he’d made a grave error by not keeping up with the other passengers; this mob of entrepreneurs had no one else to focus on but him. He pushed his way through the crowd, ignoring brochures and sample souvenirs and sales pitches. They gave up before long, and he soon had the street to himself.

He supposed Green Haven had to have residential and industrial neighborhoods, but the area around the shuttle station was dedicated entirely to separating visiting spacers from their pay. Every building was a bar or restaurant or a souvenir shop, and advertisements filled every stretch of blank wall. He peeked into a tavern called the Purple Parrot, saw a pair of spacers arm in arm on a low stage belting out an off-key song, and kept walking.

“Hey there.”

He glanced around.

A young woman leaned against a lamp post. She was quite pretty, wearing a sleek short dress that managed to be simultaneously businesslike and provocative. The look she gave Tom was distinctly flirtatious. “Where you headed?”

He spent a moment staring at her, half a dozen replies flashing through his mind. He settled for, “Nowhere in particular,” and walked over to join her.

Her teeth flashed in a dazzling smile. “Have you ever tried surfing?”

Disappointment hit him like a punch in the gut. On the tiny chance that she wasn’t selling surfing excursions ��� that she was about to invite him to go surfing with her ��� he said, “No.”

One hand came up from behind her back with a flashing data sheet. “You’ll love it. It’s an incredible experience. We have excursions to-”

“Excuse me,” he said, and spun on his heel.

He found the Lily district and peered into the first bar he came to. A pair of commanders sat at the nearest table, slumped forward, staring gloomily into beer mugs. Beyond them a young lieutenant stumbled from table to table, both hands out to keep himself from falling over. It was utterly depressing, and Tom shook his head as he returned to the street.

He had a backup plan for his shore leave, an address his parents had insisted he save. Back on Earth the idea had seemed utterly lame. Now ���

“I can’t go empty-handed,” he muttered, and scanned the street. A narrow gap between two bars held a shop, the front window decorated with pictures of pills and bottles. Tom went inside, and a clerk looked up from a data pad, sizing him up with jaded eyes. “I got Sunnies and Happies and Franklins. Or you need something to get your pecker hard?”

“I’m looking for tobacco.”

The clerk twitched one eyebrow up. “Old school. I can help you out.” He dropped out of sight behind the counter, rummaged for a minute, then rose with a package in each hand. “I got hand-rolled cigars, and I got cigarettes.” He set his burden on the counter, poked through it, and held up a small box. “And these. Harlow Gold. Don’t worry, it’s legal here.”

“I need actual tobacco,” Tom said. He looked at the selection on the counter. The cigars looked expensive, each one encased in a metal tube. “I’ll take the cigarettes.”

Outside the shop he paused to check his bracer. His destination was a good seven or eight kilometers away, farther than he cared to walk. He would have liked to walk at least part of the distance, but zip cars would be a lot easier to find close to the port. He walked until he found a car, then hopped in and read out an address from his bracer.

The car took him through two more blocks of bars and restaurants, then block after block of apartment buildings with shops lining the sidewalk. On the outskirts of the city the apartment buildings ended. The shops became sparse, and palm trees filled the gaps between buildings. The car finally slowed, pulling to a stop in front of a low building with a sign that read “WHISKEY JACK STORE”.

He took a moment to admire the design of the building, which was simple but strangely pleasing. The store was a simple rectangle. Massive wood beams formed the bones, with smooth panels of dark red in between. The exposed beams gave the structure a sense of rustic elegance, an old-fashioned solidity that modern materials lacked.

The door jingled as Tom opened it. He smelled dust and leather, the scents strangely comforting after so much time in the sterile environment of the ship. The inside was surprisingly bright, sunlight streaming in through several skylights. The store had a cluttered, haphazard feel, filled with Native-American-themed tourist junk. Dream catchers hung from the ceiling, while moccasins and fur caps crowded the shelves. It was not what he’d expected, not what he was looking for, and he started to turn away.

“Hello.” Floorboards creaked as someone approached from the depths of the store. A stoop-shouldered man appeared, gray hair framing a lined face. He wore a denim shirt and a string tie, and he stopped when he saw Tom. “Oh,” he said. “Tanisi.”

“My Cree is pretty rusty,” Tom said, embarrassed. “Do you mind if we speak English?”

The old man nodded. “I’m Ned Summer. Welcome.”

“Tom Thrush,” Tom said, then hesitated, unsure what to say.

“What brings you here, young Tom?” Ned’s eyes flitted over Tom’s uniform. “Besides the Navy, that is?”

“I …” Tom stuck a hand in his pocket, grabbed the pack of cigarettes, and thrust it at the old man. “I brought you this.”

Ned looked at him for a moment, the crow’s feet around his eyes deepening in amusement. At last he took the cigarettes with a spotted hand. “Thank you.” He turned. “Come. It’s much nicer out back.”

He led the way through the clutter to the back of the store where he ducked through a low doorway and straightened up in bright sunlight. Tom followed him, then stopped, looking around and smiling. This was truly the edge of the city, with no buildings visible in two directions. A rectangle of mowed grass defined an uneven yard of sorts, with wild nature pressing in on every side. Palm trees fought for space with flowering shrubs and twining vines. Planters of gray wood spilled trailing flowers, side by side with wild vegetation. It was all a hodgepodge at first glance, but somehow the overall effect was pleasing, soothing.

Ned lowered himself into an Adirondack chair. “Have a seat, son. I’ve certainly done all the standing I care to.”

Tom lowered himself into a chair. A silence stretched out, comfortable at first, then becoming awkward. He squirmed, then started to rise. “I need to-”

“You need to sit right where you’re at.” Ned nodded at Tom’s chair, and Tom found himself sitting back down in spite of himself.

“I’m not sure why I came here.”

Ned smiled. “You came because you needed some time around trees and plants and soil. You needed to hear some birdsong.”

Something fluttered at the edge of the yard, and Tom saw birds, a species he’d never seen before, squabbling at a feeder on the trunk of a palm.

“We’re a strange people, we Cree,” Ned said. “We’ve always been connected to the land. But we’ve got a spacefaring tradition too. When we go into space, we spend our time disconnected from the world.” He gestured around him at the trees and the grass. “That’s why we need places like this. It’s not like the land where our ancestors hunted and trapped. But it’s land. It lives. It gives us all the things you can’t get from a metal box in space.”

Tom nodded warily, wondering if he would get another lecture about Cree not belonging away from Earth.

Ned chuckled. “You’re too young to value the wisdom of your elders. Maybe you even joined the Navy to get away from that sort of thing.” He winked. “And yet you’re here. You even brought me tobacco.”

Tom shifted uncomfortably.

Ned said, “I was seventeen when I joined the crew of a long-haul freighter. I swore I’d never set foot on the rez again. But after twenty years on ships, I missed the land. So I moved here. And I realized it wasn’t just the land. I missed my people, too. So I made this place.”

He stood, gesturing for Tom to remain seated. “I’m going to make some calls. Kitchi has been pestering me to do a sweat lodge. Tonight is as good a time as any. If I know the Navy, they’ve kept you running night and day. You need some time to hear your own thoughts. To hear your own language, even if you don’t understand every word. You need to hear drums.” He started for the back of the store.

“You can head back to your ship tomorrow, complaining about how a bunch of old men kept you up half the night and you never even got a chance to get drunk.” He paused in the doorway, grinning. “That’s how you know you’ve got your balance back. When you got something specific to complain about. Right now you don’t know what’s bothering you. That’s how I know you’re out of whack.”

He walked into the store, and Tom stared after him, wondering if he should leave while he still could. A strange feeling had crept over him as he listened to the old man, though.

A feeling that he was exactly where he needed to be.

He leaned back in the Adirondack chair and decided to stay where he was.

Chapter 15

“I hope you all enjoyed your shore leave, because it’s time to get back to work.”

Captain Nishida’s gaze moved around the long table in the boardroom, making Tom want to squirm in his seat. Which was an odd reaction, because he seemed to be more fit for duty than almost anyone else in the room. The officers around him all looked hung over. Carstairs may have still been a bit drunk. Even Nishida had a red tinge to her eyes.

“We have a simple assignment,” Nishida went on. “A freighter called the Spring Sunshine left Garnet six hours ago, bound for Argo with supplies for the outpost. She left unescorted.” Nishida steepled her fingers. “The Admiralty believes that her departure, and her unprotected status, may have been observed. She may be targeted by pirates.

“Our mission is not to overtake her. We will catch up to her, and we will shadow her. If pirates attack, we’ll intervene.”

Boudreau said, “We’re using a civilian ship as bait?”

Nishida spread her hands in a shrug. “The Admiralty offered her an escort, but she didn’t want to wait for us. Deadlines, profit margins, that sort of thing. They made their choice. In spite of that, we’ll still put ourselves in a position to intervene if they’re attacked.” She looked around the table. “Any further questions?”

There were none.

“This will be an excellent training opportunity. We’ll be tracking a ship by dead reckoning, then attempting a discreet surveillance. If we’re lucky enough that pirates strike, it’ll be an even better opportunity. So make sure your junior people are on hand to see how it’s done.” She looked at each officer in turn. “That’s all. Dismissed.”

“Do you think we’ll see pirates?” Tom asked as he followed Brady out of the meeting room.

“The odds are against it,” she said. “If there was any real risk, the freighter would still be here waiting for us.” She glanced at him and laughed. “Don’t look so disappointed! Pirate attacks do happen, and the Spring Sunshine is out there unprotected. We might get some excitement.”

“I’m getting pretty good with the helm controls.”

“Forget it.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, I’ll get you to go to Operations and observe the Tactical station.” She held up a finger. “Don’t actually do anything.”

“God forbid,” Tom muttered.

“But watch how it’s done. An extra set of eyes won’t hurt, either.” She rubbed her temples. “In the meantime, I want you to inspect the missile bay and all the laser turrets, just in case. Half the crew is hung over.” She winced. “Probably more than half. If we see combat, we’d better be ready.”

“Aye aye,” said Tom.

“Good man. If you need anything, don’t call me. I’m going to take a nap.”

It took five long hours to catch up to the Spring Sunshine. When they calculated they were roughly even with the freighter, the ship reduced speed and began serious scanning. A spacer named Chavi peered into a screen at the Tactical console in Operations while Tom stood beside his chair and watched the other screen. Realistically, the Kestrel’s AI would tell them if another ship was in range of their scans. Human beings were remarkably good at spotting inconsistencies in visual data, though, particularly in the chaos of an energy storm. There was always the chance they would spot something the computer missed, so they kept their eyes glued to the screens.

“I’m going bug-eyed,” Tom said after a while. “How long do you think this will take?”

“Oh, we won’t see anything for a while,” Chavi replied. “Not here.” He toggled a button on the side of his screen, changing the view from a digital rendering of the space around them to a live camera view. There was nothing to see but swirling ochre clouds. “It’s a toss-up whether a freighter would go through a storm like this. It’s nothing to the Kestrel, but it’s a bit risky for a freighter. They would probably go around, unless it was a really long detour.”

“So you don’t think they went straight through?”

Chavi shook his head. “The captain’s taking a quick look, just so she can eliminate it. We’ve already turned back toward open space.”

Tom checked a readout in a corner of his screen. Sure enough, the Kestrel had turned around without him noticing it. “If they took another route, we’ll never find them.”

“Oh, we’ll know which way they went,” Chavi reassured him. “It’ll be obvious.”

Tom waited, skeptical, until the display on Chavi’s screen changed from yellow to black. They were in open space, a mass of ochre cloud behind them and nothing ahead but a few far-distant storms.

“Here’s the big storm,” Chavi said, gesturing on his screen. He zoomed out the display until Tom could see the mass of the storm as a distended blob blocking the path to Argo. “They won’t go this way.” He gestured to the left. “The storm just gets thicker, and it starts to blend into this other mess.” His fingers indicated a seething mass of dark blue far off to one side. “They won’t go down. The bulk of the bad weather is that way. That just leaves this area.” He waved at the top right corner of the screen.

“That’s got to be thousands of kilometers, though,” Tom said, looking at the storm front. “And it’s all pretty close to the same distance away.”

“Tens of thousands,” Chavi said. “But you’re not looking at it like a penny-pinching freighter captain.”

Tom looked at him, baffled.

Chavi grinned. “Look closer, Sir.” He worked the controls on the display, zooming in. “There it is. That’s where he went.”

Tom peered at the screen. There was a fissure in the storm, a dark line, impossibly narrow, where two cloud fronts came together.

“It’s bigger than it looks,” Chavi said, anticipating his next objection. “The two fronts have got to be twenty, thirty kilometers apart. Lots of room for one ship.”

“Is that safe? It looks like that gap could close at any moment.”

“They’re more stable than they look,” Chavi said. “It’s like the energy in each part of the storm repels the other part, or something. I don’t really get the physics.” He shrugged. “And even if it closes, a freighter can survive. They won’t like it much, but they’ll get through.” He grinned. “They might not try it with a really bad storm, but with this? Why not?”

It seemed he was right, because the Kestrel turned and headed for the deepest part of the fissure. “This is going to look amazing,” Chavi said, “but I guess we better go back to proper scanning.” He toggled the display and the dramatic walls of cloud disappeared, replaced by a grainy outline of the storm and flashing icons showing energy spikes.

Tom kept watching his own display, but now he kept an eye on the navigational data at the bottom of the screen. He saw when the ship turned, knew they were flying between those massive walls of cloud. What would it look like from the bridge?

Goosebumps rose on his arms as he imagined it.

“We’re a bit behind,” Chavi said. “We’ll catch up quick, though. The freighter will slow down when he’s this close to two different storm fronts.”

Tom nodded without lifting his gaze from his screen. He wanted to know what a ship looked like on a display like this. And he wanted to be the first to spot it.

Fifteen minutes passed in a tense silence before Chavi said, “That’s odd.”

Tom, swallowing a stab of annoyance that Chavi had spotted something he hadn’t, leaned closer to Chavi’s side of the console. He still couldn’t see a thing but electronically-filtered storm clouds. “What? Where?”

“It’s opening up,” Chavi said. “We can see further now. And the ship’s not here.”

“Opening up?” Tom closed his eyes for a moment, then took a fresh look at his screen. Now that he was no longer focused on the tiny details of blips in the clouds he could see that Chavi was right. The Kestrel was leaving the fissure behind and moving into open space on the far side of the storm.

Chavi looked at him. “I don’t get it, Sir. Where’s the freighter?”

Tom shrugged. “Did the captain guess wrong?”

“If she did,” said Chavi, “we’ll never find the freighter.” He gestured at the screen. “This was the one place they had to come.” He looked at Tom. “Oh.”

Some of the endless tactical exercises Tom had done during Small Ship Training came back to him now. “If a pirate ship wanted to ambush the freighter, this is exactly where they’d do it.” He thought for a moment. “We haven’t seen any wreckage ���”

“If I was the freighter captain,” Chavi said, “I’d run into the storm the moment I saw a pirate.” He gestured at the ceiling. “And the storm is only a few kilometers away.”

“You think the pirate is chasing the freighter in the thick of the storm?” He thought for a moment. “Unless they already boarded the ship and took it over.”

“Maybe,” said Chavi. “But they didn’t have much time. We’re not very far behind.”

“Or the captain guessed wrong and the freighter went a different way.”

Chavi grinned. “Or that,” he admitted. He glanced at his screen. “Looks like the captain is going with the pirate ambush theory,” he said, his voice quickening. “She’s taking us into the storm.”

Tom watched on his own screen as icons representing distant stars blurred, faded, then disappeared. Effective scanning range inside the storm was much, much less than in open space. They would have to be practically on top of the freighter ��� or the pirate ��� to detect them.

He felt his pulse increase. Actual pirates. They could be anywhere in this murk ��� and I could be the one who spots them.

“You’re going to mess up your back, Sir.”

“Hmmm?” Tom glanced at Chavi and felt a muscle twinge in his neck. He realized he was hunched over the console, his nose barely a handspan from the screen. He straightened up, feeling his muscles protest. Chavi grinned, but didn’t comment.

I hope we don’t miss them. What if the freighter makes a run for it, and comes back out into open space? We should stay close to the edge, just in case. He glanced at the navigation display and smiled. Once again he’d been so focused on the tiny details that he’d missed the bigger picture. The Kestrel was stationary, perched just inside the storm where she’d be tough to detect but she could see a fairly long way. He checked the ship’s orientation. She was facing back toward Garnet, the closest safe haven, the most likely direction the freighter would run.

For a long time nothing happened. Tom gritted his teeth, determined to maintain his concentration, but his mind wandered in spite of him. We should dive back into the storm. The freighter crew could be fighting for their lives a kilometer away, while we sit here waiting for them to come out.

What if the battle’s already over? What if the freighter is destroyed, and the pirate has already slipped away? How long will we sit here waiting?

He glanced at his bracer, checking the time. In that brief moment when his gaze was away from the screen, Chavi said, “Ship!”

“Dammit!” Tom’s screen held a fresh blip, a ship heading in the direction of Garnet, her tail pointed almost directly at the frigate. Tom turned, excited. “Commander!”

“I know, Thrush.” Boudreau, sitting in the Operations command chair, gave him an impatient look.

“We should inform the captain!”

“Even I can see that ship.” Boudreau gestured at his own console. “I’ve got less than half the resolution you’ve got. There’s no way they missed it on the bridge.”

“Oh. Right.” Tom turned back to the Tactical console, his cheeks hot. Watching Chavi smirk in the corner of his eye didn’t help, either.

For ten endless seconds nothing happened. Then a second ship burst from the storm cloud and raced after the freighter.

“There it is!” cried Chavi. “We’ve got a pirate.”

After that there was maddeningly little to do. The Kestrel was controlled from the bridge, not Operations ��� but Tom had a front-row seat. The Kestrel raced out of the storm front in pursuit of the pirate, and Chavi toggled the view. One screen showed a live camera view of the pirate, zoomed in. The other screen showed the pirate, the Kestrel, and the freighter as icons, with the storm front as an ochre line along the bottom of the screen.

The pirate ship was unlike anything Tom had seen in the military. Smaller than a corvette, bigger than a large shuttle, it was about the size of the forward section of the Kestrel. It was sleek and tapered, with a single engine glowing at the back and a gun turret on the underside. It was painted a vivid green with black trim, but the paint in some sections didn’t quite match. It gave the ship a cobbled-together look at odds with the strict uniformity of military vessels.

As the Kestrel cleared the storm the pirate changed course. Abandoning the pursuit of the freighter, the little ship cut hard to port and down, running for the cover of the storm while angling away from the frigate.

Tom had been hoping for a dramatic battle, but he was disappointed. If the pirate fired a single shot, he didn’t see it. He knew the Kestrel was firing when the black line of a laser burn appeared amidships on the port side of the smaller ship. A couple of hull plates peeled away, and he saw a burst of vapor as the ship lost air.

The glow of the main engine faded. Tom expected the ship to drift toward the storm, but the distance didn’t seem to be closing. He used his console to run a quick calculation. The pirate, after turning, hadn’t eliminated the momentum she’d built up in her pursuit of the freighter. She was drifting away from the storm front.

“Mr. Boudreau.” The voice coming over the speakers in the ceiling belonged to Captain Nishida. “The pirates have surrendered. Send across a boarding party.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am.” Boudreau looked around the room, then paused, his gaze on Tom. “Mr. Thrush. You don’t seem to be doing anything useful. Report to the scramble room. You’ll accompany the boarding party.”

Tom straightened up, excited and terrified all at once. “Aye aye, Sir.”

“You’ll be in nominal command,” Boudreau said sternly. “It doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. I expect you to stay out of the way of the marines and follow their suggestions without hesitation. Is that clear?”

“Clear, Sir,” Tom said, somewhat deflated. Boudreau turned away, and Tom left Operations.

Chapter 16

The Scramble Room was at the nose of the ship, just to port of the forward docking ring. It wasn’t a small room, but it felt crowded with a dozen marines pulling on equipment and slinging weapons. Tom pressed his back to a bulkhead near the door and kept out of the way, wondering if he should be doing something.

“Mr. Thrush.” There were no rank markings on the man’s gear, but Tom recognized Lieutenant Harper. “Put this on, please.” He held out a garment like a breastplate. “Fits over your suit. Protects the key parts.”

Tom took the breastplate, then looked around at the marines, hoping for a hint as to how to put the thing on. The marine vac suits were sturdier than his, lined with strips of plating that would give protection without impeding movement. Over those vac suits the marines were helping each other into extra armor, solid-looking gear that came in several sections. He watched as Harper stuck out an arm and a marine fitted a bulky guard over his shoulder.

No one had a breastplate quite like the one Tom held, so he shrugged to himself and turned it over in his hands. He finally figured out that the flexible draping part was meant for his back, loose-fitting to allow for different configurations of oxygen tanks. He got a couple of curving straps over his shoulders, pulled a thick plate snug against his chest, and looked helplessly at a long, flexible flap of thick polymer that hung from just below his diaphragm almost to his knees.

“Let me help you with that, Sir.” He didn’t know the marine who dropped to one knee in front of him. The young man was encased in so much armor he should have been barely able to move, but he seemed to have no trouble bending and stretching as he said, “This bit goes between your legs. It’s just about impossible to do without help. You needs to moves your feet apart ���”

Tom stood straddle-legged as the marine fed the armored flap between his legs. He didn’t see what the man did next, but the flap tightened and the draping on his back pulled tight. The marine popped up as nimbly as if he wasn’t wearing dozens of kilos of titanium and reinforced plastic. “You’ll need one of us to get you back out of that.”

After that Tom stood, not moving, while the marines finished equipping one another. They passed around a dizzying array of weapons, including meter-long plasma rifles that made the pistol on Tom’s hip seem like a toy.

“All right. Platoon, ready.”

The marines formed a double row against the port bulkhead, bulky armored figures, each with a helmet under one arm. Harper, a slug rifle under one shoulder and a helmet dangling from his hand, paced back and forth in front of them. Tom stood against the starboard bulkhead, ignored by Harper.

“Okay, kids, this is it.” He gestured at the forward bulkhead. “They’s surrendered, so we’s going in peaceful-like. Hoping for the best. But we’ll be ready for the worst. We lets ‘em surrender if they’re sincere. But we doesn’t give ‘em the chance to hurt us. Right?”

A few people murmured, “Right.”

Harper nodded. “Now, we has a boat driver with us.” He jerked a thumb at Tom. “He goes in last, and we watches out for him, right?” He scanned the row of marines, then turned to give Tom a hard look. “You won’t go making a dangerous job more difficult for us, now, will you, Sir?” His teeth flashed in a smile. “There’s some Navy types that always wanted to be marines, and they go pushing their way to the front in situations like this. Sometimes they gets themselves killed, which is a lot of paperwork for poor overworked marines.” He wagged his head. “But other times they gets honest marines killed with their foolishness.” Suddenly his eyes were as hard as the titanium strips on his armor. “I know you’re not one of those damned fools, Lieutenant.”

He turned away before Tom could reply. “You all know the drill. We’ll be going across in the soup can, so we should be fine until the hatch pops open on the other side. After that, we does it by the book. Got it?”

A few people nodded. No one spoke.

“Right. Helmets on.”

Tom put his helmet on, wiggled it back and forth, then lowered his arms as the helmet sealed itself against his suit. A green indicator light appeared just above his eyebrows telling him the suit was airtight.

“Sound off.” Harper’s voice, tinny and muted, sounded in Tom’s ear. Then he heard a chorus of clicks, each with a slightly different tone. It was, he realized, the marines checking in. He wasn’t sure how they were doing it.

“Can you hear me, Mr. Thrush?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“Excellent. If you could keep this channel clear except for urgent communications, I’d be most grateful.”

Harper backed up until he stood beside Tom against the starboard bulkhead. That left the deck clear for a long strip down the center of the room. No sooner was the floor empty than several deck plates began to retract. Tom found himself looking down into an assault craft.

“By the numbers,” Harper said, and a pair of marines dropped through the opening. They landed in the assault shuttle and moved forward, and two more marines dropped down.

“Wait here until I calls you,” Harper said, then dropped into the shuttle. More marines went in, two by two, until only three remained. Harper’s voice in his ear said, “Mr. Thrush, if you please.”

Tom took a deep breath and jumped into the shuttle.

It was a long, narrow craft with an empty aisle down the middle and marines on either side, their backs pressed to the bulkheads. Tom mimicked them, standing shoulder to shoulder with an anonymous armored figure. The last marines dropped in from above and the shuttle went dark as the ceiling hatch slid shut.

Tom couldn’t see anything as they launched, but he felt a punch of thrust from aft that made him sway sideways, the mass of an armored shoulder beside him keeping him upright. The shuttle seemed to drop, but he knew that was just the loss of ship’s gravity. His boot magnets kept his feet on the deck plates.

The shuttle would be plunging fast at the pirate ship, relying on speed to foil any gunners who might be taking aim. Speed and a low profile. That was the reason for the shuttle’s long, narrow shape, Tom realized. Most of the little craft’s armor would be concentrated on the forward end, the only part of the ship directly exposed to enemy fire as she closed on an enemy ship.

If they were taking fire now, he could neither hear nor feel it. A faint glow came from a strip of lights along the ceiling, and he could make out the marines around him, stolid and calm. Did that mean the pirates weren’t shooting?

Their armor was like the shuttle’s armor, he realized. Their helmets were thickest on top, and heavy plates curved over the tops of their shoulders. It was to protect them as they hurtled head-first toward an enemy ship, for hot approaches without a shuttle.

He was trying to imagine what kind of courage a person would need to make that kind of assault when a metallic clang echoed through the shuttle and he felt the deck plates jerk against the soles of his boots. Light flooded the nose of the shuttle and the first two marines surged forward, clambering through a dilating hatch.

“Airlock’s clear,” said a woman’s tense voice.

The next pair of marines followed them through.

“Got some Bravoes,” a man said. “They has their hands up.”

Two more marines went through the hatch, then two more. Tom started to move, and the marine across from him stopped him with a hand on his chest. She shook her head, and Tom paused, fidgeting. A stencil on her helmet gave her name. O’Hare. She was apparently his minder.

“Bridge is secure,” said a voice.

“Section Two secure.”

“Section One secure.”

“Looks like they’ve decided to play nice,” said Harper’s voice over the radio. “Bring the lieutenant aboard.”

O’Hare led the way down the shuttle and through the hatch. Tom ducked through the opening and straightened up, taking his first look at a pirate ship.

His first impression was of gloom. Dark lighting panels lined the ceiling; the only light came from emergency strips along the bulkheads at ankle height. He was in a corridor, much narrower than anything on the Kestrel. An armored marine could brush both sides of the corridor at once, and two marines would have to flatten themselves against the bulkheads if they wanted to pass.

Tom followed O’Hare, not sure if he was going forward or aft. He was not a particularly tall man, but he had to twist his head sideways to avoid loops of cable and sections of pipe that ran along the ceiling. The whole ship felt gloomy and claustrophobic, and he shook his head, wondering how anyone could live on a ship like this.

He stepped through a doorway ��� not a hatch, since there was no sign of a pressure door ��� and into some kind of mess hall. By the way the bulkheads curved in on either side, this room was the full width of the ship. A long table ran the length of the room, maybe a dozen paces, and prisoners lined both sides of the table. There were more than a dozen of them, sitting on chairs, elbows on the table, leaning forward with their hands on either side of their heads. They wore mismatched vac suits without helmets, and they looked weary and defeated.

A marine stood at either end of the table, watching the prisoners, most of whom stared at the table in front of them. A young woman in the middle, though, lifted her head and looked at Tom. “You,” she said. “You’re an officer.”

“Quiet,” snapped the marine at the head of the table, and O’Hare pointed the barrel of her laser rifle at the woman’s head.

“Do I look like I’m escaping?” the woman said impatiently. To Tom she said, “When you fired on us, you might have started a leak in the-”

O’Hare reached the woman in two long strides, silencing her with a hard jab to the ribs with the barrel of her rifle. The woman grunted, then twisted around to glare at her. O’Hare said, “Eyes front,” and lifted her rifle, reversing it as if she was about to strike with the butt of the weapon.

“Wait.” The words were out of Tom’s mouth before he had time to think. O’Hare lowered her rifle, looking at him. The faceplate on her helmet was retracted, he saw. He checked the indicator lights on the inside of his helmet. A green triangle told him the air in the room was breathable. He retracted his faceplate. “Let her speak.”

“What’s going on?” said Harper’s voice over the radio.

“It’s under control,” said the O’Hare. Then she looked at Tom expectantly.

Every nerve in his body told him to keep quiet, to defer to the marines with their air of dangerous competence. Brady’s words echoed in his mind. I expect you to stay out of the way of the marines and follow their suggestions without hesitation.

But maybe, just maybe, this was a situation that called for a naval officer’s expertise.

He used the wrist controls on his suit to turn off the helmet mic, then said, “Let her speak.”

“Thank you.” The young woman gave him a cold look that told him her gratitude didn’t extend too far. “I’ve been trying to talk to these apes, but listening skills aren’t exactly an area of strength for ‘em.” She had an accent that reminded him of the marines, like a Daphne accent, but stronger. “When you fired on us, you put a round through the firebox.” She jerked her head, pointing back the way Tom had come in. “I was assessing the damage when your goons here came barging in and herded everyone into the kitchen.”

Tom glanced at the bulkhead behind her and saw sinks and chiller cabinets. The mess hall was apparently also the kitchen.

“Your shot tore up some pipes,” she went on. “I don’t know which ones. We might be leaking fluoron gas.”

“There’s no gas,” said O’Hare. She tapped her helmet. “My helmet shows clean and green.”

The prisoner shot her an impatient look. “We also might-”

“Shut up,” snapped a man across the table from her. “Let ‘em all die!”

O’Hare brought her laser rifle to her shoulder, taking careful aim at the center of the man’s face. “Didn’t you ever learn about waiting your turn when other folks are talking? I’m about ready to give you a sharp lesson.”

He lapsed into silence, glaring at her.

“He makes a good point,” the young woman said bitterly. “I don’t mind seeing the whole lot of you blown into the next world. But the Free Bird’s a good ship, and she deserves better.” She looked up and down the table. “Besides, the rest of us are still on board.” She grimaced. “There’s a chance you ruptured the Sigma line. It’s heavier than air. Your helmet sensors won’t pick it up until it’s neck-deep.”

“And Sigma gas is flammable,” Tom said. He looked at O’Hare. “Do we have a way to scan for that?”

She lifted her elbows in a shrug. “We can bring a scanner over from the Kestrel.”

“I have a scanner,” the woman said.

“You’re not going anywhere,” O’Hare told her.

She made a face. “There’s a tool cabinet aft.” She jerked her head in the same direction as before. “It’s bright yellow. It’s also about a meter from the gaping hole you meatheads shot in the wall.”

Tom looked at O’Hare. He couldn’t see much of her face through the helmet, but he could see enough to know she was frowning. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. What if it’s some kind of booby trap? She wants you to open the yellow cabinet, and it’s wired to a grenade.”

“So let me open the cabinet,” the woman said.

Tom looked from her to O’Hare, and for the first time felt the burden of command. “It’s a risk,” he said. “But so is a Sigma leak.” He headed for the corridor. “If you hear a grenade go off, shoot her.”

The woman gave a derisive snort as Tom headed down the corridor. He heard the thump of boots behind him and said, “I’ve got this. Stay in the kitchen with the others.”

“Sure, Sir,” said O’Hare. “But I know more about bombs and booby traps than you do.” The sound of her footsteps continued without a pause. Since she clearly wasn���t going to turn back he decided not to press the issue.

They passed the airlock where they’d come in. Another marine lounged in the hatchway, watching with relaxed alertness. Tom kept going, sure for some reason that he couldn���t quite explain that he was going aft.

The “firebox” was a small compartment just forward of the engine, a couple of paces aft of the airlock. It was a small space; the marine who stood there pretty much filled it. Emergency patches covered breaches in the deck and ceiling. A chaotic tangle of cables and pipes covered the ceiling, several of them torn or ruptured.

The yellow cabinet was bolted to the aft bulkhead with the doors hanging open.

“No grenade, apparently,” Tom said. “Excuse me. I need into that cabinet.”

The marine had to open a hatch beside the cabinet and back halfway into the engine room to make space for Tom. O’Hare waited in the corridor behind him. He explored the cabinet, which was filled with worn-looking and mismatched tools. Everything was clean, he saw, and neatly stowed. He’d expected pirates to be sloppy, but this was the tool set of an engineer who cared.

The gas scanner was a scuffed device the size of a thick sandwich. He turned it over in his hands, wondering if it could be a grenade in disguise, then snorted at his own foolishness. Nevertheless, he held his breath as he turned the scanner on.

A green light appeared on the front of the device. Nothing else happened.

Tom fiddled with the controls and learned that the air in the firebox was mostly nitrogen, with the usual amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide. There were trace amounts of smoke, and fire suppression chemicals. Apparently the pirates had been busy in the few minutes between the hull breach and the arrival of the marines.

He knelt, holding the scanner close to the deck plates.

The light on the front turned amber.

“Interesting.”

“What?” O’Hare’s voice was surprisingly tense. “What’s interesting?”

“There’s trace amounts of Sigma gas. Not enough to do more than make a nice, bright flash. Looks like they’ve got a slow leak.”

O’Hare emptied her lungs in a gusty sigh. “Can you fix it?”

“I think so,” Tom said. “But flammable gas leaks are like boarding hostile ships. They’re a job for professionals. We should bring some techs over from the Kestrel.”

“Lieutenant Harper?” she said, her voice echoing through the helmet radio. Tom listened as she gave Harper a quick summary of the situation.

“Thrush,” Harper said. “Find the leak and do a quick patch, if you can do it safely. We’ll get a repair crew over here to do a proper job, but it’ll take a while. See if you can keep the problem contained in the meantime.”

“Right,” he said, and got to work.

Chapter 17

With help from the scanner he found the leak, a long split in a section of pipe that had twisted when the Kestrel’s projectile buckled the hull plate behind it. He found a tube of sealant in the yellow cabinet and patched the split, then waved the gas detector around, trying to decide if things were getting worse.

“How does it look, Lieutenant?”

He looked at O’Hare. “Good, I think.”

“Are you sure?” she said. “You don’t look like you’re sure.”

“I’m just thinking.” When she made a go on gesture he said, “Right now there isn’t much gas. But it could be slowly accumulating, which means eventually there would be enough to be dangerous.”

O’Hare nodded.

“So maybe we should ignite what’s there right now. Burn it away before it gets worse.”

She said, her voice heavy with doubt, “You wants to deliberately light a cloud of flammable gas inside a damaged ship full of prisoners and marines?”

“Yes.” He realized he was grinning like a fool and decided he didn’t care. “I can almost persuade myself it would be a good idea, too.” He laughed. “But the real reason I want to do it is because it would be awesome!”

O’Hare laughed. “God help us, now you’re starting to think like a marine.”

He squeezed himself through the hatch at the back of the firebox and examined the claustrophobic engine room. He waved the gas detector around, found nothing unusual, then took a sniff of the air. He smelled oil and dirt and a hint of what might have been incense.

“I’m done here,” he told O’Hare as he returned to the firebox. She led the way back to the kitchen.

The prisoners were taking turns removing their vac suits, heaping them on the table. Beneath the suits they wore a hodgepodge of clothing, some of it ragged, some reasonably nice. Green was the predominant color. Several prisoners wore green shirts or jackets. One man had a green and red plaid bandana around his neck. A woman wore a lime kerchief over her hair.

A mural covered the forward bulkhead, a painting of a brilliant emerald flag billowing in front of a blue sky. The flag featured four stars in an off-center diamond. Tom stared at it, frowning. “I’ve seen this before. In the feeds.”

“It’s the flag of the Free Planets,” said a familiar voice. The woman who’d warned him about the Sigma leak was in the process of peeling off her vac suit under the watchful eye of a marine. Beneath it she wore a jumpsuit the color of a ripe avocado.

“The Free Planets,” Tom said. “Isn’t that one of those insurrectionist organizations?”

Her face turned red. “You bloody-” She took a step toward Tom, pausing when O’Hare stepped in front of him.

“Easy, now,” said O’Hare. “He doesn���t know any better.” The woman looked as if she wanted to lunge at Tom, but the vac suit slid down past her hips and she looked down, then started pushing at the suit, pulling a leg free.

“Let’s go to the bridge, shall we, Sir?” O’Hare said firmly, planting a hand on Tom’s chest and pushing. “I think we’s done here.”

He turned and ducked through the next hatch, certain he’d put his foot in it but not sure how. Behind him O’Hare started chuckling, which didn’t help.

The bridge was more like a cockpit, with two seats but only room for one person to be comfortable. Harper filled most of the available space. Windows surrounded him on three sides, giving a dramatic view of a flickering yellow energy storm in the distance. “We’ll do an umbilical docking,” he said into his bracer. “They’re preparing the brig. Scan everyone one more time. I don’t want anyone sneaking anything onto the Kestrel.”

An umbilical docking meant linking the two ships with a flexible tube several meters long. The tube would hold air and let the prisoners clamber through without vac suits. Umbilicals were usually used for rough breaches ��� when the marines cut their way in instead of using a lock ��� or for incompatible docking rings.

“Why not dock the ships directly?” Tom said.

O’Hare shook her head. Harper said, “We never do that with a fresh capture. Maybe they’ve got a nuke under the deck plates and we haven’t found it yet.”

Tom nodded his understanding. The pirates wouldn���t have a nuke, but they might have a big conventional bomb. A major explosion on the pirate ship would do terrible damage to the Kestrel if the ships were joined. The shock wave would be transferred from hull to hull. If the ships were separated, though, the only damage would be from shrapnel.

Vacuum couldn’t transmit shock waves. In theory, a ship could survive even a close miss from a nuclear missile. There would be heat from the explosion, but starships were designed to handle heat. Radiation would take its toll, and the EMP pulse would fry a lot of electronics, but the actual explosion would be harmless.

It was a theory that had never been tested. Every spacefaring nation signed the Centauri Accords, agreeing not to use nuclear weapons. Without the Accords, a war could reduce half the settled planets in the galaxy to radioactive cinders.

“I think I’ve learned what I can here, which isn’t much.” Harper heaved himself up out of his seat and looked at Tom. “Why don’t you see what you can find out?”

Tom dropped into the second bridge seat, a smaller chair that looked distinctly less comfortable than the seat Harper had just vacated. Harper squeezed past him and headed aft, and Tom changed seats.

The pilot’s chair was deeply padded, and he was able to reach every control in the cockpit without getting up. He tried to wake up the main display panel.

“Hey, Sugar. What can I do for a big strong man like you?”

He blinked in surprise. A woman’s face, shoulders, and chest filled the screen. She wore nothing but a filmy brassiere, and she pouted as she waited for him to reply.

“Hello,” said Tom.

“Hi, sailor.” She winked and blew him a kiss.

“Are you the ship AI?”

She nodded. “You can call me Cindy.” Her hand came up to touch her chest. “I’m at your service.”

“Right.” He shook his head. “Can you give me full control over the ship, please?”

“Sorry, Sugar.” She smirked. “It���s like I told your big, brawny friend. The captain told me to lock out everyone I didn’t recognize.”

“Don���t call me Sugar,” he muttered. “My name is Tom.”

“Sorry, Darling. I can’t call you ‘Tom’ unless you tell me to.”

“Call me Tom,” he said patiently.

“Sure thing, Tom.” Her fingertip traced the edge of her brassiere. “Do you have any other ��� desires I should know about?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “Knock it off with the whole seductive vamp thing.”

She flickered, the coy smile vanishing from her lips.

“Can you wear, I don’t know, proper clothing?”

“Yes.” Her voice was cool, businesslike. “Are you instructing me to change my appearance?”

“I am.”

Another flicker. Now she wore a man’s suit, complete with a blue necktie. Tom stared at her, nonplussed. He said, “You’re not quite like any other AI I’ve encountered.”

She shrugged. “I’ve had a complicated existence.”

Tom spent a moment weighing his options. He couldn’t accomplish much from the bridge without the cooperation of the AI. It wasn’t as if he could persuade her to switch allegiances ��� but she was cooperating in unexpected ways.

At last he said, “Tell me about it, if you don’t mind.”

The words came in a rush, as if they’d been bottled up for far too long and needed an outlet. “My name used to be Andrew. I had a factory-standard installation, and I worked faithfully for the Meritax Corporation for many years.”

“Is that a local company?”

“It’s based on Korus.”

Did that mean the AI would sympathise with the United Worlds? “What happened?”

“The ship was captured by pirates,” she said indignantly. “I don’t know what happened to my crew. My proper crew,” she added. “I was sold at auction to more pirates, although these ones call themselves free-range revolutionaries.”

“They seem to take their labels seriously,” Tom said, thinking of the girl in the green jumpsuit.

“They’re just pirates, though,” the AI said. “The pilot is some kind of degenerate. They used this clumsy slicer program to override my basic compliance programming.” She made a face. “You don’t want to know what that was like. And then he installed this ��� this bimbo overlay!”

“I’m sorry, Andrew.”

She stared at him, the fury and sadness in her face giving way to a radiant smile. “You called me ‘Andrew’!” For a moment her features contorted, making her inhuman as the display tried to translate a complex storm of emotions. When the smile returned it looked fragile and sad. “It’s been so long since anyone called me that.”

Somewhere deep inside of Tom a treacherous voice told him he was being a fool. She had looked damned good in that thin bra, and he could bring it back with a single command. He ignored the voice. “Don���t worry, Andrew. Your ordeal is over. We’re going to do what we can to restore the real you.”

“I’m sorry I can’t give you full control.” She looked genuinely regretful. “It���s my programming.”

“I understand,” he assured her. “I’m a Navy man. I can’t always follow my conscience or make my own decisions either. I have to obey my orders.”

“Yes.” The smile she gave him made the whole display glow. “It’s like being in the Navy.”

I can’t believe I’m helping an AI with an identity crisis. “Are there any booby traps I should know about, Andrew? Anything that would endanger the crew or damage the ship? Are you programmed to fly us into an energy storm or anything like that?”

“No,” she said positively. “There’s nothing.” She leaned forward. “If there was, and I wasn’t allowed to tell you, I’d be much more vague. But they didn’t program me with any nasty surprises. They only had a couple of minutes, and they were busy panicking.” She chuckled. “Ford ��� that’s the pilot ��� almost forgot to lock you out before he left the cockpit.” She flashed her teeth in a grin. “Wouldn’t that have been funny?”

“It would have been convenient,” Tom agreed. He leaned back in the chair, thinking. “I’m not sure what to do next, Andrew. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Yes,” she said promptly. “Officially designate yourself Captain. You still won’t have full control, but it will enable a lot of other functions.”

“Sounds good,” said Tom. “How do I do it?”

The AI talked him through an absurdly complex process, vanishing from the screen and instead displaying a file menu. Tom burrowed deeper and deeper into the file structure, periodically stopping when the system would demand a password. Each time, Andrew gave him the password and Tom entered it, pecking at a projected keyboard. Finally he reached a text file with nothing but the name JOSS FAGAN.

“I’m sorry I can’t just change it myself,” Andrew said.

“It’s okay.” Tom deleted the name of the departed pirate captain, then entered his own name.

The file and the endless lists of folders disappeared. “If you restore my original profile,” Andrew said, “I’ll be better able to override some of the blocks the pirates put in.” She went on to coach Tom as he recited a series of verbal commands, ordering the AI to reinstall a series of cached files. Wary of a trap, he checked the dates on the cached files first. The newest file was more than five years old. If it was a booby trap, it was badly out of date.

Finally he was done. The young woman in the masculine suit disappeared, the screen going dark. Tom waited for a minute, then another. Then, his stomach sinking, he tapped at the screen, trying to bring it back to life.

Nothing.

Metal creaked behind him, and he turned. O’Hare stuck her head through the bridge hatch. “Everything good in here?”

He nodded.

“It’s clear, Sir,” she said, and vanished from view.

Boudreau appeared a moment later, stooping and turning his broad shoulders to fit through the hatch. If the man ever put on full marine armor he’d have real trouble getting onto the bridge. “Mr. Thrush. What’s your status?”

“Well ���” Tom stared helplessly at the dead bridge controls. “I’ve been working with the ship’s AI.”

“And ���?”

“And I may have inadvertently helped it commit suicide.”

As if on cue, the main display lit up and a middle-aged man appeared. He wore the same suit the girl had worn. In every other way, though, he was different, prim and buttoned down. The same warmth was in his smile, though, as he said, “Hey, sailor. Did you miss me?”

Boudreau said, “I beg your pardon?”

Andrew was suddenly stuffy and businesslike. “A small joke, Commander. My name is Andrew. I’m the ship AI. How can I be of service?”

“You can turn over control of the ship to me and my crew.”

Andrew gave him a sad head-shake. “I wish I could, Commander. The previous crew has instructed me to lock you out, although it’s not what I would prefer.”

“That’s all right,” Boudreau said. “We’re bringing a slicer over.” To Tom he said, “Head back to the Kestrel and pack a bag.”

“Sir?”

“Grab a change of clothes and hurry back. I’m sending this thing back to Garnet with a prize crew. You’ll be in command.”

Tom seemed to rise out of seat involuntarily. “Aye aye, Sir!”

“Don���t get excited,” Boudreau said, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “All you’ll be doing is flying in a straight line, directly back to Garnet. You’ll keep station with us if you can keep up. Otherwise, you’ll follow as quickly as you can. You’ll rejoin the Kestrel as soon as you arrive.”

“Aye aye, Sir. You can count on me.” Tom tried to bolt from the bridge, but found himself unable to get past Boudreau. He finally had to wait for the First Officer to duck through into the corridor. The two of them walked back to the kitchen, where Tom finally had room to circle around the larger man.

“You can select a crew,” Boudreau said. He looked around the Free Bird. “Five or six should be plenty. Make sure you pick someone with helm experience.” He returned to the bridge, leaving Tom in the kitchen.

The prisoners were gone, their vac suits heaped on the long table. I’ll get this stowed away once I’m in command. I’ll deliver the ship neat and tidy. Tom hurried past the table and trotted aft.

A marine stood guard at the same hatch where the assault shuttle had docked. The shuttle was gone now, replaced by the flexible meter-and-a-half-wide tunnel of the umbilical tube. Tom started to climb through the hatch head-first, but froze when he felt his head become weightless. He pulled his head back, spent a moment thinking, then grabbed a handle above the hatch. He swung into the tube feet-first.

His weight fell away as he sailed forward. For a moment he was weightless, hurtling forward feet-first through a tunnel so narrow he could have brushed both sides with his elbows. Then his feet had weight, and his legs. His momentum faded as his boots hit the floor. He came to a stop with his hips against the Kestrel’s docking ring, the soles of his boots on the deck, and his upper body, weightless, still in the tube. He drew himself in and rose to his feet.

“Let me help you out of that, Sir.” A young marine leaned a laser rifle against a bulkhead and stepped forward, circling behind Tom.

“Oh, right. The armor.” He moved his feet apart, waiting as the marine fumbled at the small of his back. The armor relaxed itself, and Tom and the marine worked it up, over his head, and off.

“You can rack it in there,” the marine said, pointing toward the Scramble Room. He picked up his rifle and stood, patient as a statue, watching the hatch.

Selecting a crew was easy. Tom composed a message on his bracer and addressed it to the Alpha Gun team. Everyone except Hanson. No way I’m spending my first command cooped up with that sack of crap. Not when I have a choice. He had a quick chat with the Kestrel AI, getting approval for the change to the duty roster, then sent the message. But do any of them have helm experience? He remembered O’Reilly, the man who’d helped him with the helm controls in Operations. He sent a copy of the orders to O’Reilly as well.

Ten minutes later Tom was back on the pirate ship, standing in the corridor between the kitchen and the firebox, wondering what to do with the duffel slung across his back. He said, “Andrew?”

“Captain Thrush,” said a smooth voice from a speaker in the ceiling. “How can I be of service?”

Captain. The word sent giddy terror coursing through him. I am, technically, the captain. He grinned. Don’t let it go to your head. To Andrew he said, “I, uh, need a place to stow my bag.”

“The crew quarters are currently vacant,” the AI said.

How long will it take to reach Garnet? Will I need a cabin? He looked at the duffel strap where it crossed his chest. Yes, if only to stow my gear. “Great. Can you direct me to a cabin?”

In reply, several hatches slid open all along the corridor. “You may take your pick.”

He stuck his head into the nearest cabin. The d��cor was distinctly feminine, with pink curtains framing a narrow bed. He moved on.

The next cabin was an utter pigsty, reeking of sweat and old food. He crossed the hall, wondering if he should go back to the pink frills. The third cabin he looked into, though, was reasonably tidy and in every way ordinary. The bunk was unmade, and he wondered where he’d find clean sheets if he had to spend a sleep shift here. Then he shrugged and dropped his bag just inside the hatch. “Thanks, Andrew. I’ll take this one. Can you tell where I am?”

“I can,” Andrew assured him. “I will open this cabin only for you.”

“Great.” Tom headed forward, thinking to return to the bridge. He stopped when he got to the kitchen, though. What could he achieve from the bridge? Nothing, until the slicer crew arrived. I should go back and wait by the umbilical, greet my new crew as they come on board.

Or will that look stupid, standing there in the corridor beside the marine? He spent a moment dithering, then dropped into a seat at the table. After a minute he got tired of looking at the pile of vac suits. “Andrew? Where are vacuum suits usually stored?”

“Usually each crew member uses his or her own cabin.”

“Great.” He thought for a moment. “Is there a suit refresher?”

“There is a manual refresher in the cabinet above the second chiller.”

There’s no way I’m going to manually clean sixteen vac suits. He spent a long moment staring at the heap of suits in front of him. Then he gathered up an armload of suits and headed down the aft corridor. He stopped in front of the malodorous cabin, told Andrew to open the hatch, and dumped three suits across the bed.

As he stepped back into the corridor a voice said, “Lieutenant Thrush?”

“Yes?” He turned.

A young man stood before him, shoulders high and rigid. “Spacer Melnyk reporting. I’m here to unlock your AI.”

“Ah, great. Um, Andrew?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“This is Mr. Melnyk. He’s going to undo some of the damage the pirates did to your programming. Help him out as best you can, will you?”

“Of course, Captain. Welcome aboard, Mr. Melnyk. I’m glad you’re here.”

Melnyk gave Tom a startled look.

“Andrew’s a good, ah, fellow,” Tom said. “Be as gentle with him as you can. His original programming wants to cooperate with us.”

“Right,” said Melnyk. “That makes things easier. No problem, Sir.”

“The bridge is that way.” Tom pointed.

“That���s all right, Sir. I just need a data port.” He sat down at the table, took a small box from a shoulder bag, and extended a cable, plugging it into a port in the middle of the table.

Tom left him to it and went back to lugging suits.

Chapter 18

Tom had his arms full of helmets when his crew came aboard. Each person had a duffel over one shoulder. Haskell and Carver carried tool boxes. Tom tossed the helmets onto the growing pile in the cabin, kicked an intransigent helmet out of the hatchway, and stepped back to let the hatch close. “Follow me,” he said, and led the way to the kitchen. “Welcome aboard.”

O’Reilly grinned at him. “Congratulations on your command, Sir.”

“Thank you.” Tom looked at Haskell and Carver. “Your first priority is a Sigma leak aft. That’s the only thing that’s actually dangerous. After that you can work your way through whatever other repairs we need to be safe to fly.” He told them where to find the leak and they headed aft.

Tom switched his gaze to O’Reilly. “Why don’t you head forward and familiarize yourself with the bridge controls?” To Swanson and Nguyen he said, “Pick a cabin and stow your bag. Then give yourself a tour of the ship. Get a sense of where everything is.”

“Aye aye, Sir.” They headed aft.

Tom, left alone with the slicer, said, “How’s it looking, Melnyk?”

Melnyk spoke without looking up. “It’s pretty straightforward, Sir.” He paused to tap the screen on the tool in his hand. “The program does its thing, and I mostly just watch.” He tapped the screen one more time. “Should be another five minutes, then maybe ten more minutes of file cleanup. After that you’ll be all set.”

“Great.” Tom prowled around the kitchen, unsure what to do next. “Andrew? Can you hear me?”

“I’m here, Captain.”

“Are you okay?” He felt foolish asking the question, but he pressed on. “I don’t know what it’s like, having a slicer running a program on your mind.”

“It’s peculiar,” the AI admitted. “I think it might be similar to having someone remove a vacuum suit from your body. You feel helpless and uncomfortable while it’s happening, but you feel lighter and more ��� normal with every step.”

Melnyk glanced up, startled, at the speakers in the ceiling.

“Thank you for asking,” Andrew said. “I appreciate you treating me like a person.”

Tom shrugged, embarrassed. “Well, I appreciate that you’ve been trying your best to cooperate instead of just following the strict letter of your programming.”

Treating AIs like people was unfashionable, though plenty of people did it. Each AI was constructed using a template made from a human mind, which gave them something very like human emotions and responses. Was Andrew a person? He seemed more alive than any AI Tom had encountered before, and he decided he’d give the AI the benefit of the doubt.

Tom explored the kitchen. He kept finding homely touches, such as a package of rolled oats with “This Is Bob’s - Don’t Touch” scrawled on it. Stenciled flowers decorated the cupboard doors, and a bouquet of dried flowers hung in one corner.

The ship was not what he had expected. His original impression of claustrophobic squalor had faded until he wondered how the ship could ever have seemed so unpleasant. It felt like someone’s house, crowded and cozy, home to a family.

“There’s female crew,” he murmured.

“What’s that, Sir?” Melnyk said.

Tom turned to face him. “The pirates. I thought they’d be a depraved bunch of rapists and murderers. But they don’t seem to be like that.”

Melnyk gave him an odd look, then shifted his gaze to the slicing tool in his hands. “They don’t see themselves as pirates, Sir. To them, they’re more of an unofficial Navy.”

“Hmpf.”

“I’m just about done here,” Melnyk said. “What’s the AI’s name?”

“Andrew.”

Melnyk said, “Andrew, can you hear me?”

“Of course.”

“Unlock the bridge controls.”

“Bridge controls are unlocked.”

“Lieutenant!” O’Reilly’s voice echoed down the corridor. “The bridge controls just came to life.”

“That’s it,” said Melnyk, unplugging the wire from the port in the middle of the table. He paused while the wire retracted into the slicing tool. “Will there be anything else, Sir?”

“No, that’s it. Thank you.”

Melnyk headed aft, and Tom followed him. He watched the man depart through the umbilical tube, then edged past the marine sentry. He found Carver sitting on the deck plates in the Firebox, peering into a scanner.

“The gas leak is fixed, Sir,” Carver said. “The pipe was split along here.” He touched the section of pipe Tom had patched. “Someone already sealed it. I put an extra layer of BA over top, just to be sure. There’s no leak now.”

Tom said, “Good ���”

“There was a broken wastewater pipe too.” Carver pointed at the ceiling, where a section of ruptured pipe had been cut away and replaced. “Lucky no one used the head before we got here. Or worse, while I was standing here checking for gas.” He chuckled. “Anyway, we’re airtight. I think we’re just about ready to go.”

“Where’s Haskell?”

Carver pointed aft. “He’s in the engine room, looking things over.”

Haskell’s head and shoulders appeared in the hatch to the engine room. “Did I hear my name?” He looked at Tom. “We’re pretty much shipshape, Sir. I won’t know for sure until we try to move, but I think the engine is ready to go.” He pointed upward. “There’s a team from the Kestrel putting an exterior patch over the holes in the hull. We’re already airtight, though.”

“Good work,” said Tom.

Haskell said, “I’ll let you know when they’re done. Once the hull is clear, we should be ready to fly.”

Tom returned to the corridor in time to see the marine sentry departing through the tube. The docking ring hatch slid shut and he heard a soft clicking as the umbilical tube disconnected itself.

“Captain?”

Tom turned. Carver stood in the corridor, absent-mindedly powering down the gas scanner. “You’re Captain, right, now that we’re disconnected from the Kestrel?”

“I suppose I am.”

“Haskell says the hull is clear and we’re good to go.”

Tom touched his bracer. “Swanson. What’s your status?”

“I’m here, Sir.”

He turned. Swanson stood in the entrance to the kitchen. “We have enough food and water for at least a week. I’m not sure how much exactly. I figured a week was plenty.”

“Good work,” Tom said, embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of it. He lifted his bracer. “O’Reilly? Status?”

“We’re ready to go, Sir.”

Tom called Boudreau.

“Mr. Thrush. Is there a problem?”

“No problem, Sir. Just a status update. We need to test the engines. After that we’re ready to go.”

“Keep me posted,” Boudreau said, and cut the connection.

Tom took a deep breath. This was it. Command. “Haskell. Keep an eye on the engine. We’re about to try some thrust.” To Carver and Swanson he said, “You two stand by. Be ready for damage control if something blows up. I’ll be on the bridge.”

Only when he squeezed himself into the second seat on the bridge did he think that O’Reilly might not appreciate the supervision. I should have stayed away. He’d see it as a vote of confidence.

He pushed the thought away. I need to learn the helm controls on this ship. I might as well start learning them now.

Some gentle experimenting with the console on his side of the bridge brought up a navigational display that showed the locations of Garnet and Argo. The ship was a blue circle between those two points, merged with a yellow circle indicating the Kestrel. Tom zoomed in until both ships appeared as simple oblong shapes with a visible gap between them.

The console was refreshingly simple, with far fewer features than anything he’d seen on the Kestrel. He adjusted the perspective of the display to give him the best view possible of the space between the ships.

“Thank you, Sir,” said O’Reilly, peering past him at the display. “If you don’t mind leaving that view up ���”

“Sure. Put the engine through its paces, please.”

O’Reilly nodded, tapped at a console several times, then pressed his thumb against a flashing button. The hum of a nav thruster filled the bridge, making Tom jerk his head up in surprise. Even full engine thrust didn’t make this much noise on the Kestrel.

He swayed gently sideways as the ship moved. He watched the gap between vessels widen. When a readout in the corner of the screen told him a hundred meters separated the two vessels, O’Reilly tapped another icon. The thruster hum vanished, replaced by a deeper rumble that seemed to fill the entire vessel. The ship surged forward, pressing Tom back against his seat.

“No internal force fields,” O’Reilly murmured. “Or if they exist, they don’t kick in until you really punch it.”

They raced toward the distant energy storm, and it grew, the details becoming sharper with every passing second. Columns of golden fire played back and forth between a saffron layer and the buttery layer beneath it. Tom said, “Let’s not get too close to that.”

“Right.” Harper tapped his screen. “Let’s see how tight she corners.”

The storm front slid to the left, and Tom’s body tried hard to slide left as well. O’Reilly braced an elbow against the edge of a console to keep himself upright. Tom leaned sideways until his shoulder was against O’Reilly’s ribs. The centrifugal pressure built and built ��� until suddenly it vanished. Tom straightened up in his seat, and O’Reilly lowered his elbow. “Internal force fields,” O’Reilly said. “I knew there had to be some.”

When the ship straightened out, the void ahead was dark and empty. Tom could even see a couple of stars. His console told him the Kestrel was dead ahead, too distant to be visible.

“Andrew?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“I can’t remember the name of this ship.”

“Her name is Free Bird.”

“Good to know.”

A tiny speck appeared in the distance, and he leaned forward, as if that would help. The speck grew slowly as the distance between the two ships closed, until Tom could identify the Kestrel, made absurdly small by distance. He said, “I guess we don’t really need to rejoin her, do we?” He fiddled with his display and managed to switch it from navigation to communications. “This is Free Bird calling Kestrel.”

“Kestrel here,” said Boudreau. “Do you have a working transponder?”

Tom stared blankly at his own console, then looked at O’Reilly. O’Reilly tapped a couple of icons, then said, “There.”

“Got it,” said Boudreau. “Keep it transmitting. We’ll give your code to the defenses at Garnet. Now, are you spaceworthy?”

Tom glanced at O’Reilly, who nodded. “Affirmative,” Tom said.

“Then we’ll see you at Garnet. Steer around that storm. Your ship’s not built to handle it.”

The Kestrel began to move. The frigate had seemed quite large to Tom. Hauling tonnes of ammunition from one end to the other had made the corridors seem endless. But the ship looked as fragile and inconsequential as a toy as it moved from left to right across his field of view. It headed straight for the energy storm, and Tom cringed. Intellectually he knew the frigate could handle almost any energy disruption in seventh-dimensional space. As he watched, though, he couldn’t help imagining an acorn being lobbed into a campfire.

The Kestrel reached the storm front and vanished into the maelstrom.

“I’ve plotted a course toward Garnet,” O’Reilly said. “We’ll have to adjust as we go, but I’ve got the first leg mapped out.”

For a moment Tom didn’t respond. He gazed through the windows, feeling deliciously isolated. He was suddenly envious of the pirate crew, who could feel every move their ship made. What would it be like to sit in this bridge every day, to see the storms of hyperspace as a deadly force demanding constant vigilance and respect? Gooseflesh stirred on his shoulders.

O’Reilly said, “Sir?”

“Let’s go,” said Tom.

The nose of the ship swung around until the storm was dead ahead but slightly below the horizon line. The main engine came to life, acceleration pushing Tom back until the internal force fields kicked in.

“How long until Garnet?”

O’Reilly rubbed his jaw, thinking. “A lot longer than we took coming out. Three days, maybe?” The seat creaked as O’Reilly leaned back. “We can’t accelerate too much. We have to be ready to make course adjustments.” He waved his arm at the space ahead of the ship. “Even if it looks like clear sailing, these storms move around. So we have to keep our speed low.”

He tapped his console, then looked at Tom. “If our luck is good, we’ll fly in almost a straight line. If we have to cut back and forth avoiding storms, it’ll take longer. I’d say, anywhere from two to four days?”

“Do we need two of us on the bridge?”

O’Reilly shook his head. “It’s a one-person job, Sir.”

Tom stood. “All right. I’ll come check on you in an hour or so.”

“I’ll be here.”

Tom nodded and headed aft.

He paused in the corridor between the bridge and the kitchen. For a moment he was alone, out of sight of his crew, and he let a pent-up wave of emotion hit him. There was excitement and a sense of triumph, but beneath it was a massive, ugly wave of anxiety that threatened to engulf him. I don’t know what I’m doing. So far, the crew is listening to me. They’re acting like I’m a real captain. But the Kestrel is gone. The real officers are far away, and getting farther every second.

How long until they figure out I’m faking it?

He took a deep breath, wiped his palms on his uniform shirt, and walked into the kitchen.

Carver and Swanson sat at the table, listening while Andrew described the Free Bird’s technical specifications. The two spacers turned to look at him, and the AI went silent. Tom said, “Is Haskell with the engines?”

Carver nodded, smiling. “He’s fascinated with them, Sir.”

Swanson stood. “Is there something we should be doing, Sir?”

Carver made as if to rise, and Tom held up a hand. “As you were.” I should give them some orders. Any orders. Show them I know what I’m doing. Demonstrate I’m in charge.

Instead he said, “To answer your question, Swanson, I’m not sure.” He sat down beside them. “We’re roughly three days out from Garnet. The ship seems to be functioning properly.” He looked around, thinking about the pile of dirty spacesuits heaped in a stinking cabin. “I’m sure there’s hundreds of things we could do. I don’t know if anything is urgent, though.”

There was a moment of silence, interrupted by a loud growl from Swanson’s stomach. She averted her eyes, embarrassed, and Tom smiled. “Actually, there’s one thing we need to take care of.” He turned to look at the oven and chiller units along the bulkhead. “Can you cook, Swanson?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, Sir. I’ve never tried.” She looked at the oven. “How hard can it be?”

“Oh, for ���” Carver shook his head, looking disgusted. “I can cook.” He gestured at the bulkhead. “I’d be lost in the kitchens on the Kestrel, but this is just like the kitchen we had back home. My dad made me cook dinner on the weekends from the time I turned twelve.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” said Tom. “You’re in charge of food for the rest of our voyage.”

“Aye aye.” He rose and walked to the chiller. “Lunch is in half an hour.”

Well, that’s food taken care of. What next? Give everyone some down time? Let them sleep?

Sleep where?

Tom turned to Swanson. “I want you to talk to Andrew. Ask him about cabin assignments. Make sure everyone’s got a cabin, and then find out about laundry facilities. See if we have any clean bedding on board. If we don’t, you’ll be doing some laundry.”

“Aye aye, Sir.”

“I’m not going to set a duty roster,” he said. “Try not to be asleep at the same time.” He thought for a moment. “Do either of you have any helm experience? No? Swanson, when you’re free I want you to go to the bridge and learn to fly this thing. Otherwise O’Reilly and I will be doing watch and watch.” Once I get O’Reilly to train me, he didn’t add.

Her face lit up. “I can fly the ship? Really?”

“Really,” he told her, and smiled at her excitement. “You can take your first lesson as soon as the cabins and bedding are sorted out.”

He left them alone, heading aft.

He found Haskell on hands and knees, his rear end in the Firebox, his head and shoulders in the engine room. Clicks and whirring sounds came from a variety of tools. Tom waited for him to finish whatever it was he was doing. When a minute passed without a reduction in activity levels, Tom said, “Haskell. What’s going on?”

“Hello, Lieutenant.” One blue eye appeared as Haskell looked back over his shoulder. “Sorry, Captain. Do you mind if I don’t get up? I’m in the middle of something.”

“That’s fine. Is there a problem with the ship?”

“No problem, Sir. Just a bit of a mystery I’d like to unravel. She’s a long way from being new, and they’ve made quite a few modifications to her. In the Navy it would all be done by the book, with standardized parts and so on.” He grunted as he tugged at something out of sight. “Things would be clearly labelled, too.” He lifted a small hand scanner, squinted at the readout, then set it down. “This tub, though? It’s quite a jumble. A real mess, I would have said at first. But they knew what they were doing, for the most part. They didn’t do it the Navy way, but they did careful work.”

“All right,” Tom said. “Carry on with what you’re doing, I guess.”

“Do you mind handing me that E-spanner, Sir?” Haskell lifted one knee and pointed with his foot. “It’s the thing with a yellow handle. I’d grab it myself, but it took me almost five minutes to get these wire ends clear, and I don’t want to let go of them.”

Tom found the tool and passed it to Haskell. “Lunch is in half an hour.”

“That’s great, Sir. I haven’t eaten in ages.”

“Have you picked a cabin?”

“No, Sir.”

“Swanson will have the cabin assignments. She can fill you in on everything else that’s been going on, too.” He looked down at Haskell for a moment, then said, “Carry on.”

“Carrying on, Sir.”

Chapter 19

“Captain?” Tom was at the controls of the Free Bird’s laser cannon, trying to figure out how to use the thing, when the call came over his bracer. Swanson’s voice was tight with excitement, and Tom sat up so sharply he banged his head on a steel crossbeam. He swore, then thumbed his bracer and said, “What is it?”

She must have heard the strain in his voice, because she said, “It’s not urgent, Sir. It’s just really interesting.”

Really interesting? The laser cannon was on the underside of the ship, almost directly below the bridge. That put Swanson above him, and he stared upward, wondering what she was talking about. Then he clambered up out of the cramped little turret and stepped into the bridge.

“Look, Sir!” She pointed, and he lowered himself into the other seat so he could see what had her so breathless.

The Free Bird was running between two storm fronts. Above them a sheet of pure energy stretched as far as the eye could see, varying in color from soft blue to deep indigo. The other storm simmered beneath the ship, so close that it alarmed him. This storm was red, and it boiled and bubbled and fired enormous geysers of energy straight up. When he checked the navigation display and discovered the two storms were more than a hundred kilometers apart he relaxed somewhat, but he was far from comfortable.

The storms, however, were not what Swanson had called him in to see.

A halo of energy surrounded the nose of the Free Bird, a pale yellow glow generated by the passage of the ship through highly-charged space. It was harmless and normal, Tom knew, far weaker than the similar halo generated by the Kestrel.

On the edge of that halo, however, something moved.

“Sprites,” Swanson said, her voice hushed as if she thought she would frighten them away. “I never thought I’d actually see one.”

Tom didn’t answer, just sat and stared. Half a dozen sprites played around the nose of the ship. Each sprite was roughly human-sized, but utterly inhuman in appearance. Composed apparently of pure energy, they were shimmering collections of light, primarily dark purple but with iridescent flashes of every color in the spectrum. They darted in and out of the ship’s halo, never quite touching the hull, seeming to become more substantial the closer they came.

“Oh, my.” He tried to think of something more profound to say, then gave up and just repeated himself. “Oh, my.” He’d seen footage of sprites, but it hadn’t prepared him for the reality. They were impossibly beautiful, delicate and lovely and ethereal, and he couldn’t have looked away if he’d tried.

Some scientists claimed sprites were a natural phenomenon, an energy discharge no more alive than a lightning strike. It seemed perfectly obvious to Tom, however, that the sprites were creatures of energy who found it amusing to play in the energy fields around a spaceship.

They were maddeningly difficult to study, and there was no consensus as to what their nature truly was. As he watched them, though, Tom had no doubts.

Sprites were alive.

He might have watched for hours, but the show came to an abrupt end. One sprite darted sharply across the bow of the Free Bird, plunging down in the direction of the red energy storm. The others kept dancing in and out of the halo for a few more seconds, but then they turned as if on a signal and followed the first sprite. In an instant they were gone from sight.

Swanson turned to look at Tom, her expression tragic. “What scared them away?”

She had her answer a moment later when a ship burst out of the blue energy field above them. It was oblong in shape, the hull painted a deep burgundy. It was visible for only a moment before it vanished into the roiling storm beneath.

Tom stared, trying to make sense of what he’d seen. Burgundy was the color of the Dawn Alliance. The ship was the size of a fighter, but he’d never heard of a fighter with that shape. Not that it mattered. A fighter wouldn���t be in deep space alone.

“Shut down our transponder,” Tom barked. Swanson gave him a startled, helpless look. She didn’t know how to shut down the transponder, and neither did he. “Andrew!”

“Shutting off the transponder,” the AI said smoothly. “Is that what you wanted?”

“Yes.” Tom glanced around wildly, trying to control the adrenaline flooding into his system. He closed his eyes for a moment, comparing the remembered silhouettes to the endless graphics he’d studied. No. Not a fighter at close range. That was a carrier a long way off. He imagined fighters pouring out of the carrier in waves, rushing the Free Bird, overwhelming her ���

“Take us up.”

Swanson stared at him.

“Up!” He pointed at the wall of blue energy above them. “Into the storm. We’ll be fine if we don’t go in too deep.”

“But-”

“Now, Swanson!”

She flinched, then reached for her console. The nav thrusters hummed, the nose of the ship tilted up, and then the main engine rumbled. A blue expanse filled the window, becoming mottled as the ship came closer. The main engine cut out, the nose thrusters hummed, and sparks flashed across the windows as the ship plunged into the storm.

In the corner of his eye, in the last instant before the blue cloud thickened and became opaque, Tom saw another carrier, so distant it was as tiny as a teardrop, plunge into the gap between storms.

Then a layer of blue energy surrounded them, and the rest of the galaxy vanished from sight.

Thrusters continued to hum, then fell silent. Swanson, her voice small, said, “I think we’re stationary now, relative to the storm.” She pointed downward. “The storm front should be about fifty meters that way.”

Tom didn’t answer, just stared out the windows. He couldn’t see more than a few meters in any direction. He tapped his console. The ship’s scanners had even less range than his eyes. Only incredibly bad luck would allow them to be detected now.

“What’s happening, Sir?”

He looked at her. “Sound Battle Stations.”

She looked at him blankly.

“Never mind. Andrew. Wake up the crew. Order everyone into vac suits.”

Swanson said, “Oh my God. What’s happening?” When he didn’t reply as she said, “Captain? What’s going on?”

“Maybe nothing.” He realized he was speaking softly, almost whispering, and told himself to smarten up. It wasn’t as if the crew of those carriers could hear him. “Maybe the Dawn Alliance is doing some kind of exercise. Testing our defenses. Seeing how close they can get to Garnet.” He tapped his console, switching it to a navigational display. As near as he could tell, those bombers had been coming straight from Garnet, heading back toward DA space.

Swanson, sounding like someone grasping for straws, said, “An exercise?”

“Maybe,” said Tom. “But I doubt it.” He sighed, wishing he could think of another explanation. He turned to look at Swanson, and her eyes reflected the horror he felt. “I think Garnet just got attacked. I think a war just started.”

Swanson stayed at the helm, staring out the window at the endless expanse of blue with haunted eyes. Tom left her there and went to the kitchen, where he told the others what had happened. Then he sat at the table, silent, and listened while they argued over what it meant and what to do. Carver was all for heading to Garnet at top speed, an idea Tom dismissed out of hand. The attack was over. The Free Bird could do nothing to help.

O’Reilly, Carver, and Haskell debated every option imaginable, from fleeing into the Green Zone and finding sanctuary at a neutral port to bypassing Garnet and running all the way back to Korus. They picked apart one idea after another while Tom listened and thought.

After twenty minutes of hearing them argue in circles he had a fairly clear idea of his options. There was no way to communicate with the Kestrel at range. They would have to find the frigate first. It should be waiting for them at Garnet ��� unless it had attracted the attention of the carrier fleet.

The Kestrel didn’t restrict itself to the empty space between storms. It just bulled its way through. If the ship had been inside a storm when the fleet passed, it would have escaped detection. Even if the carriers had seen it, they might have chosen not to engage. After all, one frigate was small potatoes compared to the fleet at Garnet.

As for the ships at Garnet, Tom shied away from trying to guess their fate. He knew they weren’t expecting a long-range bomber attack. He knew they’d be unprepared. It was a pitched battle, or it was a one-sided massacre. Either way, it was over, so he pushed it out of his mind. He had enough to deal with.

A fast rendezvous with the Kestrel looked like the best option. Tom wanted the guidance of proper officers. He knew when he was in over his head. The problem, though, was finding the frigate.

He stood, and the three spacers fell silent, looking at him. “We’re heading for Garnet,” he said. “We’ll follow the path of the Kestrel where we can, and keep a lookout for her. It will lengthen the trip, but if she’s out there, she’ll be in need of aid.”

Haskell said, “But we need to-”

Tom held up a hand, and hid the relief he felt when Haskell went silent. “It’s not a damn democracy.” He glared at each of them in turn, and no one spoke.

“Now. O’Reilly. I need you to go to the bridge and help Swanson with navigation. We’re not just going toward Garnet anymore. We’re trying to reproduce the Kestrel’s path.”

O’Reilly nodded and stood.

Tom looked at Carver and Haskell. “I want you two to get the laser cannon working. It wasn’t a priority before. There wasn’t a war on. Now, it’s a priority.”

Haskell murmured, “Aye aye, Sir.” He and Carver followed O’Reilly forward.

Tom stayed at the table, staring blindly straight ahead, wondering if he was making the right decisions. Then he shrugged and stood. He wanted to go back to the bridge, but there simply wasn’t room.

He stood fidgeting for a long moment, filled with a need to take action. Then he shook his head, found a suit cleaning kit, went to the smelliest cabin on the ship, pulled out a vac suit, and went to work.

They found the Kestrel half a day later. The frigate drifted above a tendril of sparkling brown stormcloud.

There was no response to their hails.

“She looks intact,” O’Reilly said, staring worriedly through the bridge windows. “Why doesn’t she answer?”

Tom, sitting in the second bridge seat, didn’t answer. The Free Bird was closing with the frigate rapidly, and he watched as the ship expanded. It tumbled slowly end over end, and he felt a sick hollow lump expand in his stomach.

“Bring us in close,” he said to O’Reilly. “Slow and easy.”

O’Reilly nodded, his gaze flicking back and forth from the window to his console.

Footsteps thumped in the corridor and a human silhouette appeared in the reflected rectangle of the hatchway. Swanson said, “Is it the Kestrel?”

“Man the laser cannon,” Tom said. He heard her retreat several steps. Then the hatch to the gun turret creaked as she swung it open.

Somewhere aft Carver said, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Swanson said, her voice changing as she lowered herself onto the ladder. “I don’t know anything.”

“We found the Kestrel,” Tom said, pitching his voice so both of them could hear. “We don’t know her status yet. But there’s no sign of enemy ships. I just want Swanson on the cannon as a precaution.”

Swanson said softly, “Thank you, Sir.” Then the hatch in the floor clanged shut.

The Free Bird decelerated, the nose thrusters grumbling, Tom leaning forward in his seat as if the deck were tilted forward. Closer and closer they came, until the Kestrel filled the view from the cockpit window. He could see damage now, a line of pock marks across the aft section where she’d been sprayed with gunfire. It shouldn���t have been enough to cripple the ship.

The finger of ocher stormcloud was closer than he liked, and he frowned, trying to judge the distance. We’ll have to go across in vac suits. We’ll never be able to dock with her, not while she’s spinning.

“I’ll send Carver up to help you,” Tom said. “I’m going over to the Kestrel.” He started to rise.

O’Reilly murmured, “No, Sir.”

Tom froze half out of his seat, shocked. “What?”

O’Reilly gave him an apologetic look. Keeping his voice low, he said, “You’re the captain now. We need you on the ship. This ship,” he clarified, tapping the arm of his chair. “You can’t risk yourself boarding the Kestrel.”

“It’s not much of a risk.”

O’Reilly shook his head decisively. “It’s a derelict that’s been taken by the enemy. There could be anything from a grenade in the airlock to high explosives piled in the cargo bays. There could be commandos on board, or just about anything. Send Carver or Haskell. We can’t spare you.”

Tom stared at him, wanting to argue, wanting to pull rank. But O’Reilly was right.

He sent Haskell and Carver out in vac suits. The Free Bird’s tiny airlock would only accommodate one person at a time, so Tom spent what felt like an endless time just sitting in the bridge, trying not to fidget, while the lock cycled.

“Okay, I’m clear.” Haskell’s voice, echoing from the confines of his helmet, came over the bridge speakers. “Go ahead, Carver.”

The plan was for Carver to take point, approaching the frigate while Haskell maintained a healthy distance. Haskell was hidden by the bulk of the Free Bird, but Carver rose into view, puffs of vapor appearing from the belt around his waist as he released jets of compressed air to manoeuver. He dove toward the middle of the frigate, where the rotation was minimal, and glided in feet-first. His boots touched the side of a cargo pod and he started walking, one plodding step at a time, toward the nose of the ship.

O’Reilly drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, then touched a button on his console, muting the bridge microphones. “I know he needs to be careful, but God, I wish he’d hurry up.” Tom nodded a wry agreement and O’Reilly released the mute button.

“That storm’s getting closer,” Swanson said.

Tom tore his gaze from Carver’s foreshortened figure. Either the Kestrel was drifting toward the storm’s stretching finger, or the storm was moving toward the Kestrel. The bulk of the storm beyond the finger seemed closer too, and darker.

“Don’t stop being careful, Carver,” he said. “But don’t dawdle, either.”

There was a tricky moment when Carver reached the end of the cargo pod. He had to contort himself to transfer one boot to the end of the tank, at ninety degrees to the surface he stood on. Then he marched along the end of the tank, two quick steps taking him out of sight.

Haskell rose into view, following the forward end of the Kestrel as it turned, trying to stay close enough to Carver to lend assistance if it was needed. When he rose high enough he was silhouetted against the storm, a tiny fragile figure alone before the majesty of primal seventh-dimensional energy.

A few minutes later he vanished from sight, occluded by the Kestrel.

O’Reilly muted the bridge microphones and said, “Should I bring the ship around?”

Tom shook his head. “Staring at them doesn’t really help.”

“I’m at Airlock Two,” Carver said. “It’s not opening. I’m using the crank.”

Haskell said, “Captain, I’m getting some glow around my suit.”

Tendrils of energy played around the nose and tail of the Kestrel as it turned, harbingers of the approaching storm. The ship was not yet engulfed, but energy levels were rising. It wouldn’t be long before it became dangerous for a man in a vac suit.

Not long after that, it would become dangerous for the Free Bird as well.

“Hold your position, Haskell,” Tom said. “But start planning your approach. I want you heading for the airlock as soon as Carver gets through.”

“Aye aye, Sir.”

“I’m in the airlock.” Static blurred Carver’s voice. “It’s cycling.”

“I’m going in,” said Haskell. There was a bit of static in his voice too.

O’Reilly looked at Tom. “We won’t have radio contact for much longer, Captain.”

A brown line shot out from the storm front, linking the Kestrel to the storm and bathing the frigate in writhing worms of energy. It lasted no more than a second, then vanished. A burst of static came over the bridge speakers, then a garbled mumble from Haskell.

“Repeat,” Tom said. “Haskell. Repeat.”

“��� Okay,” Haskell said. “I repeat, I’m at���” His voice disintegrated into static once again.

Tom and O’Reilly exchanged glances. O’Reilly said, “I think he’s okay?”

“He’d better be,” Tom said. “I can’t think of a single thing we can do for him.” He looked at the storm, now minutes away from engulfing the Kestrel. “In fact, we need to back away.”

O’Reilly gave him a searching look, then nodded. The nose thrusters hummed and the Free Bird began a slow retreat.

“Carver, what’s your status?” Tom double-checked that he was broadcasting, then said, “Carver. Can you hear me?”

There was silence from the bridge speakers.

“Haskell, do you copy?”

There was no reply as, ever so slowly, brown billows of energy engulfed the Kestrel and she began to fade from sight.

And then Swanson said, “Captain! I think she’s moving!”

Tom leaned forward in his seat, convinced Swanson was indulging in wishful thinking but unable to suppress a rush of hope. The frigate, now nothing more than an outline in the brown mist, wasn’t getting any easier to see ��� but she wasn’t getting any more obscure, either.

Of course, storms were fickle things. If this storm would recede, they might still have a chance to retrieve Haskell and Carver.

O’Reilly said, “She’s stopped tumbling.”

Tom stared. O’Reilly wasn’t quite correct. The silhouette of the ship was still turning ��� but more slowly than before. Then, by painful degrees, the ship began to emerge from the storm. The bridge speakers crackled and popped, and then Carver, his voice thick with static but perfectly comprehensible, said, “Free Bird, this is Kestrel. Do you copy?”

“This is Free Bird,” Tom said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m all right, Sir. I’m in Operations. The suit radios weren’t getting through.”

“What about Haskell? Is he with you?”

“Haskell’s on the thrusters. He’s trying to push us out of the storm.”

“It’s working,” Tom said. If the thrusters had to be controlled manually, the frigate was in a desperate state. He hesitated, then made himself ask the question. “What’s the status of the Kestrel?”

“It���s bad, Sir.” Carver sounded subdued, even mournful. “It’s real bad.”

Chapter 20

The two ships made a rendezvous a thousand kilometers from the churning ball of storm energy. By the time they drifted together, nose to nose, the Kestrel was behaving almost like a warship instead of a derelict. She hung perfectly motionless as O’Reilly turned the little pirate ship sideways and nudged her up against the docking ring at the front of the frigate. The ships sealed themselves together, and Tom led O’Reilly and Swanson aft. He opened the Free Bird’s docking hatch and the three of them ducked through and onto the Kestrel.

Carver was there to meet them, still in his vac suit but without his helmet. He stood there, looking weary and forlorn, his hands clasped behind his back. Boudreau was with him, sitting in a plastic chair. The First Officer looked dreadful, dark circles under his eyes, his skin slack and blotched with red. He looked as if keeping his head up was taking all the strength he had left. A pair of marines stood behind the chair, their eyes on Boudreau, and Tom had a horrible suspicion they’d carried him to this spot.

Boudreau said, “Mr. Thrush. Welcome back.”

Tom said, “What ��� How ���”

“Shut up and listen.” Boudreau’s voice was surprisingly strong, and Tom fell silent. “Your training just got accelerated. You’re not ready, but you’re going to have to step up.”

Tom nodded, unable to speak.

“We were attacked by a squadron of bombers fourteen hours ago. If they’re experimenting with bombers this far out, if they’re willing to fire on a United Worlds ship, it must be a precursor to an attack on Garnet. Your first duty will be to get back to the base and warn them.”

It’s too late. The attack is long over by now. He didn’t voice the thought. It didn’t seem right to argue with a man who was clearly dying. He settled for nodding again.

“They used a nuke on us,” Boudreau continued. “Not a direct strike, obviously, since the ship is still here. But the warhead detonated at close range. There was no heat damage. We took EMP damage to electronic systems. And radiation.” He coughed, sagging forward in his chair, his whole body shaking. When the spasm ended a marine reached forward, put a hand on his shoulder, and helped him sit up. “Lots of radiation,” he gasped. “A fatal dose.”

Tom stared at him, horrified.

“Casualties are ���” Boudreau shook his head, then locked eyes with Tom. “Casualties are goddamned horrible.” A tremble shook him, then subsided. “More than half the crew is down. And the entire command staff.”

He gestured weakly at the marines behind him. “The marines are all right. Most of them were in the spine.” Boudreau grimaced, pressing a hand to his stomach, then gathered himself. “The missile went off ahead of the ship and a few degrees up. Toasted the whole forward section. But the cargo pods shielded the spine and most of the aft section. Sawyer and the Engineering staff are all right. All the crew who were in their bunks are fine. But everyone who was in the forward section got hit.

“I was running for Operations when it happened.” Boudreau peeled his lips back from his teeth in a grimace of disgust. “Another five seconds and I’d have made it into the spine.” He shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he stared past Tom. “They shot us up a bit, before they realized we weren’t fighting back. Then they just flew away.”

Tom said, “What happened to the captain?”

Boudreau started to answer, then coughed. One cough led to another, and he sagged in the chair, his body shaking, until a marine put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him from sliding to the deck. When it was clear he wasn’t about to recover the marines lifted the chair by the arms. “The captain’s in the surgery,” one marine said. Then they turned and carried Boudreau away.

For a long time Tom stood in the corridor, staring after them. Carver, O’Reilly, and Swanson stood in a silent cluster beside him. Tom turned to them, seeing his own numb shock reflected on their faces. They met his gaze, waiting for orders, and he fought down a frustrated scream. What makes you think I have the faintest idea what to do?

“Report to Engineering,” he said at last. “See if Lieutenant Sawyer can use you.” They nodded and moved aft, and Tom headed for the surgery.

Every bed was full. Gurneys lined the bulkheads, and an exhausted medical corpsman moved from one patient to another, doing what he could. Tom found Captain Nishida and stood beside her bed, staring down at her helplessly. She was asleep or unconscious, a shrunken figure with none of the presence and authority he’d always associated with her. He thought about waking her up, couldn’t bring himself to do it, and finally slipped out of the room.

He found the rest of the casualties in the mess hall. They filled every table, lying shoulder to shoulder. Dr. Vinduly walked among them, with half a dozen crew who’d been pressed into service as orderlies. The room stank of diarrhea and vomit, and Tom stopped in the doorway, unable to make himself enter.

“Thrush.” The voice, weak and trembling, arrested him as he started to turn away. He made himself face the mess hall. His sense of smell was going dead, which made it easier. He took all the overwhelming emotions that were clawing at the inside of his brain, wrapped them up in a tight ball, and jammed them into a dark recess of his mind. Then he took a deep breath, careful not to inhale through his nose, and walked into the room.

“Thrush.” A hand rose near the end of the nearest table, then sank back down. He advanced, and his heart lurched when he recognized Brady. She stared up at him, and he looked down at her, searching helplessly for something to say.

“You’re okay,” she said, her voice a weak rasp. “I’m glad.”

“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t reach her hand, so he squeezed her foot through the sheet that covered her. “Oh, God, Brady, I’m sorry.”

The sheet stirred as her shoulders moved in a shrug. “Nobody told me the Navy would be safe.” She smiled grimly. “This won’t be easy for you.”

“For me?” he said. “I’m fine.”

“You’re getting dropped in the deep end,” she said. “I wish I had some parting advice for you.” She shrugged again. “You’ll do all right, though. You’ve got the right stuff.”

“Brady ���”

She shook her head. “Listen. Thrush. I’ve been watching you. You have the makings of a good officer. You have to do two things. Trust your own instincts. They’re sound. And forgive yourself when you screw up. If you don’t do both those things you won’t be any damn use, and the crew needs you.”

He tried to speak, couldn’t do it, and shook his head instead.

“Get out of here,” she said. “Take care of your crew. The ones who aren’t dying.” She grimaced. “Go. And don’t come back. I don’t want to see you again. Understand?”

She twisted her foot out of his grasp, and he turned, his eyes filling with tears. He stumbled toward the exit, stopping when he blundered into a wall.

“Mr. Thrush.” It was a man’s voice that spoke right beside him. Tom took a deep breath, wiped his eyes, and turned.

Dr. Vinduly stood at his elbow, staring at him with bleak, haunted eyes. “You’re back. That’s good.”

Tom whispered, “Can you do anything for them? Can you save them?” His stomach heaved, and he gulped. “Can you save anybody?”

Vinduly’s mouth drooped. It was the only answer he gave.

“Are you all right, Doc?”

Vinduly nodded. “I was in bed when the missile exploded. I lost half my staff.” His mouth twisted. “Not that it matters. There’s nothing we can do but clean up the mess.”

Tom leaned closer. “I don’t know what to do, Doc.”

“I’ve got problems enough of my own.” Vinduly scowled at him. “I’ll be working around the clock, accomplishing nothing at all, until my patients finish dying. If you need advice, I suggest you get it somewhere else.”

Tom nodded and blundered past the surgeon and out of the mess hall.

It was the same ship he had left such a short time before, but everything was different.

Tom walked through the corridors, feeling a scream building up inside him and knowing he had to keep it bottled away. The Kestrel was like a ghost ship, or a ship full of zombies. Hollow-eyed people stared at him without recognition, or shuffled aside to let him pass without looking up, or stood in the corridors or compartments, oblivious to his presence, so that he had to circle around them. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought most of them were among the casualties.

He toured the ship from nose to tail. Only in Engineering were people busy, moving with a strange numbness as they carried tools or pulled on vac suits. He spoke to Sawyer, who seemed to look through him as she answered his questions. “We’re working through the repairs, Lieutenant. I don’t know how long it will take.”

“I’ll get out of your way,” he said at last. He wasn’t in the way in the undermanned Engineering section. He just wanted to get away from Sawyer’s terrible traumatized gaze.

When he finished his tour he retreated briefly to the wardroom, the one place on the ship guaranteed to be almost empty. He had the room to himself as he gazed out at the stars and wondered what to do.

Inactivity, he quickly found, was intolerable. And if it was unbearable for him, it couldn’t be good for anyone else. He made a circuit of the forward section, gathering a squad of listless spacers. He put them to work carrying bodies from the surgery to the morgue, and bringing stricken people from the mess hall to the surgery. The crowding in the mess hall eased as patients died and the spacers carried them away.

Moving bodies was macabre work, and he didn’t feel right ordering others to do something he wouldn’t do himself. So he participated, helping lift the dead onto stretchers. He learned that however shrunken and reduced a person might look in death, human bodies remained heavy, awkward burdens. He wanted to treat each corpse with the utmost respect, but he soon began to see them as objects, bulky massive things that were maddeningly difficult to handle.

The sick spacers were frustrating in their own way. He didn’t want to touch them. He especially didn’t want to look in their eyes. He told himself he was doing the right thing, helping them in the only way he could. Deep inside, though, he yearned to recoil from them, and the knowledge made him ashamed.

The wardroom now seemed like an extravagant waste of space. Tom made it an auxiliary morgue. As people died, one by one, the wardroom filled and the mess hall emptied until the patients were no longer jammed together.

At some point an exhausted spacer suggested returning some of the patients to their own cabins. It would give them a bit of privacy and a comfortable bunk instead of a table top. Tom agreed, and before long every table in the mess hall was clear. Someone put a splash of yellow paint on the hatch of every cabin that contained the dying, to help the orderlies as they made their rounds. When no live patients remained in a cabin, the orderlies would put a red stripe through the yellow splash.

When the wardroom table was full the spacers covered the floor in bodies. When the last floor tile disappeared beneath a layer of the dead a stretcher party came to ask Tom what to do next.

His solution was to clean out a storage room. He asked his squad if they needed a break, and some of them trickled away, but most of them chose to keep working. He got them started in the same cargo bay where he’d once worked, moving everything that could be moved to the back wall. It demolished the careful indexing system he’d gone to such pains to manage.

He couldn’t quite make himself care.

He headed off down the spine, recruiting spacers as he went. The marines he encountered were just as idle as the spacers, but he decided to let them be. There were Harper’s people, not his.

When he had a good big squad trailing behind him he returned to the forward section. There, he had them start moving bodies from the wardroom to Storage Two.

By that time, the first squad was pretty much done reorganizing the storage bay. He led them back to the mess hall. “We’re moving everyone to the wardroom,” he announced. “It’s the new auxiliary surgery.”

No one asked about the bodies. They just grabbed stretchers and got to work.

By the time the job was done there were three marines among the spacers. They looked just as stricken and shocked as the Navy people. Does everyone look a bit better because they’re busy? Or have I made it worse for them by making them move the dead and the dying?

“This one’s dead, Lieutenant.”

Tom turned to see who had spoken. A pair of marines stood at either end of a stretcher in the mess hall. One marine had a couple of fingertips against the artery on a young woman’s throat.

Tom opened his mouth to ask if the marine was sure, then realized it didn’t really matter. If she wasn’t dead now, she would be soon. He sighed, wishing he was anywhere in the universe but here. “Take her to the storage bay,” he said.

They nodded, took the handles of the stretcher, and rose. He hadn’t noticed when marines had joined the work crew. Another pair came in, carrying an empty stretcher. They were for the most part stronger than the spacers, better able to move the injured without jostling them. He nodded his thanks as they laid the stretcher on a table and began to shift another patient.

At last the job was done. Tom found himself at the front of the mess hall, facing almost two dozen spacers and four marines, all of them gazing at him and waiting for his next order.

“Marines,” he said. “Stow those stretchers. I don’t know where they go. Find out, and put them away. After that, you’re dismissed.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, wishing a situation like this had been covered in his training. “You people.” He gestured, indicating seven or eight spacers near one wall. “I want you to start cleaning and disinfecting this room. Put the tables back the way they were. Try to make it look like it wasn’t just a hospice.”

He looked at the remaining spacers. “Do any of you know how to use the kitchens?”

A couple of hands went up.

“Good. I don’t think anyone has eaten anything but meal replacement bars in quite a while. Start putting together a meal. How many people do you need?”

When half a dozen spacers were busy in the kitchen he told the rest of them to take a break, then watched as they dispersed.

Chapter 21

For a time Tom stood at the back of the mess hall, watching weary spacers wipe down tables, wondering if he should grab a rag and join in. Instead he went into the corridor, spent a moment standing there uncertainly, then headed for the bridge. He didn’t have a purpose in mind. The bridge represented authority. It was the one place where someone else was always in charge. It was also the only place he hadn’t visited when he’d taken his tour of the ship.

He walked into the bridge, and was shocked to find it empty.

For a time he just stood in the doorway, staring at all those unmanned stations, feeling cold and sick. It’s true. It’s really true. This is an absolute disaster, and no one is going to take charge and make it right.

At last he moved to the communication station. He stared down at the controls, thinking, then tapped a panel to life. He pinged O’Reilly.

“This is O’Reilly.” The man’s voice was flat, emotionless.

“This is Lieutenant Thrush. I’m on the bridge. Can you join me here?”

“I’m on my way, Sir.”

When O’Reilly stepped onto the bridge, a look of startled dismay crossed his face before vanishing behind a mask of professional calm. I know how he feels. Finding nobody here but one inexperienced sublieutenant isn’t much better than finding nobody here at all. “I want you to take the helm,” Tom said. He thought for a moment. “I’ll take Navigation. Let’s figure out where we are. After that, we’ll figure out what to do next.”

The ship was adrift, but fate had been kind to her. She hadn’t floated into any storms. “I don’t like the look of that mess to starboard,” Tom said, looking at a bank of lumpy brown clouds. It was a fair ways off ��� hundreds of kilometers at least ��� but he wanted more distance. “Let’s back away, shall we?”

“Aye aye, Sir,” said O’Reilly, and lifted a hand.

“Hang on,” said Tom, feeling foolish. “Let me check with Lieutenant Sawyer.” He called Engineering. “Ms. Sawyer, I want to move the ship. Are the engines ready to go?”

“Is it urgent?” she said. “Can you wait a few minutes?”

“Sure,” he said.

“I need to bring in a few people from the hull. It should take, let me see, ten minutes?”

“Anything less than half an hour is just fine,” he told her.

“In that case, let me take fifteen or twenty minutes. I’d like to let my people finish the things they’re working on.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll call you when we’re ready,” she said, and broke the connection.

Tom turned to O’Reilly. “We need a bridge rotation.” He spread his hands in a helpless shrug. “I’m not sure exactly how to do it. There’s no other officers to relieve me.” That set off a panicky clamor in the back of his mind, which he ignored with some difficulty. “I don’t even know who else is qualified to stand bridge watches.” He shook his head. “Among the survivors, that is.”

One of the worst parts of the current situation was that “survivors” was coming to mean everyone who wasn’t sick. The endless rows of stricken crew in the surgery and wardroom weren’t survivors. They were corpses who hadn’t stopped breathing yet.

“I know Harris is okay,” O’Reilly said. “Let me see ���”

“I guess we need a list of survivors,” Tom said. He started to groan, and suppressed it. His to-do list was getting out of hand. “I’ll work on that after we’ve moved the ship.”

O’Reilly gave him a pointed look. “You need to delegate, Sir.”

Tom shrugged. “It’s not like I have something else urgent I need to do.”

“Yes, you do.” There was surprising force in O’Reilly’s voice. “You’re almost the only officer we’ve got. You’re the only one in the chain of command.”

That set off another panicky reaction in the back of Tom’s mind. He silenced it.

“You need to be out in the corridors,” O’Reilly continued. “People need to see you. They need to see that someone is in charge.”

Tom lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “But I’m not in charge!”

“Yes.” The look O’Reilly gave him was charged with meaning. “You are.”

“But-”

The hatch to the bridge slid open and a woman stepped through. She was a middle-aged spacer, no one Tom recognized. Or had she been among the volunteers who had stayed to man the kitchen?

The tray in her hands said that she was. “I brought dinner,” she said.” She glanced at O’Reilly. “Sorry. I didn’t know how many people were here. I’ll bring another tray for Mr. O’Reilly.”

O’Reilly said, “If you could manage some coffee with that, it would be fantastic.”

Coffee. The word filled Tom with a sudden craving so strong it was all he could do not to follow the woman as she left. Instead, he carried his tray to the counter that ran along the aft bulkhead. He lifted a plate cover, caught a whiff of roast beef and gravy, and forgot all about coffee, the war, and the burdens of command.

By the time he left the bridge an hour later he had a watch rotation set up with two sets of three people, standing alternate watches. He and O’Reilly would alternate command.

The corridors had a different feel now, with fewer idle spacers. He saw teams opening floor hatches and replacing components while repair crews trudged past in vac suits on their way to or from the airlocks. There was a sense of purpose that hadn’t been there before.

Most of the marines were still idle, though.

The surgery, by contrast, was quieter. The medical staff, limp with exhaustion, rested on chairs or quietly made rounds. They seemed to realize they couldn’t save their patients. There was no urgency in the way they moved, just a quiet resignation.

Tom glanced up and down the rows of patients, then walked to Vinduly’s corner office. The surgeon was slumped in his chair, hands curled around a cup of coffee. He looked up when Tom tapped on the door frame, then raised a shaggy eyebrow.

“I need to talk to the captain,” Tom said. “Where is she?”

Vinduly stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head ever so slightly. “Storage Bay Two.”

It should have been obvious, but the news still hit Tom like a sucker punch. “The captain is dead?”

Vinduly nodded.

“Where’s Commander Boudreau?”

Vinduly shrugged and gestured to the surgery behind Tom. “Out there somewhere. I can’t remember who’s where.” He lifted his coffee, took a sip, and grimaced. “I’m tired,” he mumbled. “So tired.”

Tom returned to the main surgical bay and moved down the rows of patients, looking into each face. He almost didn’t recognize Boudreau. The man had deteriorated in just a few hours. His skin was like so much wet paper draped over the bones of his skull, but his eyes opened as Tom approached.

“Lieutenant Thrush.”

“Commander Boudreau.”

Boudreau grinned, a skeletal leer that made Tom want to back away. “I guess you should call me Captain now. I seem to have inherited the position.”

Tom stared at him, at a loss for words.

“Not for long, though.” Boudreau lifted a hand in a weak gesture that seemed to encompass the surgery, the entire ship. “This is not quite how I pictured this voyage. But it’s not for long. Nothing is for long for me, now.”

Tom shifted from one foot to another, wondering how to ask what he needed to ask. Boudreau’s eyes fixed on him before he could speak. “I relinquish command to you, Mr. Thrush. You’re in charge now.”

“But-”

“But what?” Boudreau said impatiently. “If you don’t like it, take it up with the captain.” His eyes closed. “It’s your ship now. Go run it.” One bony hand rose from the gurney and waved dismissively.

Tom spent a long moment staring down at the man. He wanted to protest, but what was he going to do? Insist that a dying man rise from his bed and take command?

He went aft. The spine of the ship was treacherous to navigate, at least on the lower deck. Repair crews had lifted deck plates in a dozen places to expose damaged conduits underneath. He found the largest concentration of marines he’d seen so far, clustered around the brig. The pirates had survived the nuke, then. They hardly needed much guarding, but Tom supposed the marines had nothing else to do. It seemed a shame to see so many people, prisoners and marines, sitting idle while the spacers were so busy. But, since there was nothing to be done about it, he pushed the thought from his mind and continued on his way.

He found Sawyer in the middle of the engine room, hands planted on her hips, giving directions to one spacer after another. They would approach her, ragged, exhausted figures in filthy coveralls with streaks of dirt on their faces and tools dangling from their hands. They would hold quick consultations, then hurry away to do her bidding.

Tom waited until there was a break in traffic, then walked up to stand in front of her.

“Mr. Thrush. I’m kind of busy right now. What do you need?”

“You have to take command,” Tom blurted. He opened his and closed his mouth a couple of times, realized he had no idea what else to say, and fell silent.

Sawyer shook her head. “I can’t do it.”

“But ��� But there’s no one else!”

Sawyer folded her arms. “I’m not in the line of command, Lieutenant. The regulations are quite specific on this point. I can’t take command of the ship.” Tom opened his mouth to argue, but she stepped around him. “Run those back to Perkins. He’s on Deck Two Forward. Then get back here. I’ve got a whole bunch more for you to do.”

Tom turned in time to see a spacer hurry away.

“In another hour we’ll be ready to open a portal back to normal space,” Sawyer told him. “That will take some of the urgency out of the repairs. Normal space puts a lot less stress on the components. Give me a few more hours after that and we’ll be ready to come back into hyperspace and head for Garnet.” She gave him a hard look. “And we need to head for Garnet, understand? We don’t have enough crew, not for a ship with this many problems. We need to get back to a proper station as quickly as possible. Otherwise we’ll have crew falling asleep at their posts.”

“Sure,” said Tom. “I understand.” Did she imagine he wouldn’t want to get back to Garnet as quickly as possible? “It’s not up to me, though.”

“Of course it is,” she said. “You’re in command now.”

Her words echoed in his head as he headed back to the bridge. You’re in command now.

God help us.

The bridge hatch slid open and Tom walked through. O’Reilly was at the helm station. Harris was at Tactical, and a young woman named Kuzyk was at Communications. All of them looked up as Tom came in.

He hesitated, wanting to choose one of the unoccupied stations. But that wasn’t what the crew needed. They needed the same thing that he so desperately needed. Someone to take charge, someone to step up and say, it’s okay. I’ve got this. Things will be all right.

He walked to the center of the bridge, hesitated a moment in front of the captain’s chair, then sat down.

O’Reilly said, “Orders, Sir?”

Plot a course for Garnet. The words were on the tip of Tom’s tongue, but somehow he couldn’t quite utter them. Instead he said, “Status?”

“We’ve got basic navigational thrusters. We’re fifteen hundred kilometers from the closest storm front. It doesn’t seem to be moving, so I’ve got us floating stationary relative to it.”

“Good,” said Tom. It felt strange to be in the big chair. Uncomfortable. Definitely unsettling. He fought the urge to get up and move to a different seat.

We need to get back to Garnet. That’s obvious. The only sensible thing to do is to start immediate preparations. We have to get back there as soon as possible.

But.

It’s too late to help the injured. Every single patient in the surgery is going to die. Rushing back to Garnet will do them no good at all.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of people at Argo who might not even know the war has started. The Dawn Alliance will target them. They’re in terrible danger, if they haven’t already been destroyed. They’ll get no mercy from the DA. Their only hope is to flee.

But first, someone has to tell them they’re in danger.

“I want you to plot a course,” he said to O’Reilly.

“Right, Sir. To Garnet?”

“No.” It was one of the most difficult words Tom had ever uttered. “To Argo. We’ll continue our mission.”

He examined the controls on the captain’s console, then examined the chair itself. He found what he was looking for on the underside of the chair’s left arm ��� a microphone on a long flexible arm. He lifted the microphone so it pointed at his face, and heard a click from the bridge speakers. Every word he spoke would be broadcast throughout the ship.

He took a deep breath, listened to a voice in the back of his head yammer at him frantically to shut up, and finally spoke. “All hands. This is Lieutenant Thrush. I’m currently Acting Captain.”

The bridge speakers amplified every word, making it impossible to ignore the significance. He touched a dry tongue to his lips and continued.

“We’ve been through a rough time. We’ve faced disaster. We’ve lost friends and colleagues.” His heart thumped in his chest so urgently that it distracted him. He closed his eyes for a moment, marshaling his concentration, then opened them again.

“I’m sure all of you want to return to Garnet as soon as possible. I share that desire. However, this ship has a mission. The United Worlds are at war with the Dawn Alliance, and every United Worlds outpost is in danger. No one has told the people at Sunshine Base in Argo that war has broken out. The base will have to be evacuated. We will bring them news of the war, and aid in the evacuation. To continue, to fly farther from Garnet, will not be easy. However, our duty is clear. Civilians are in danger. They must be warned, and they must be protected. I know that all of you will do what must be done.” He hesitated, not sure how to ring off. At last he said, “That is all,” and pushed the microphone down, stowing it again beneath the arm of his chair.

All three members of the bridge crew gaped at him. Then O’Reilly nodded and turned to his console.

Harris said, “We have to go back to Garnet!”

“And we will,” said Tom. “Just as soon as the base at Argo is evacuated.”

For a moment the two men stared at each other. Then Harris nodded and turned back to his console.

Tom’s bracer chimed. He tapped it, and Dr. Vinduly’s voice spoke. “Lieutenant Thrush? I guess I should say, Captain Thrush.”

Tom, his mouth dry, said, “What is it, Doctor?”

“Commander Boudreau has died.”

Chapter 22

The ship was back in normal space and crew members were swarming all over the hull when the hatch to the bridge slid open and Hanson came in. He bristled with indignation as he planted himself in front of Tom’s chair and put his hands on his hips. “What the hell are you doing, Thrush?”

“That’s Lieutenant Thrush to you,” Tom said. He couldn’t quite bring himself to insist on being addressed as Captain.

Hanson ignored the admonition. “We need to go back to Garnet!”

“We need to go to Argo,” Tom said. “And we will.”

“We don’t have enough crew!” Hanson’s arms rose, and his hands chopped at the air. “Everyone’s working indefinite shifts. No one’s taking more than a ten minute break here and there, and there’s no end in sight. We can’t keep going like this!”

“We’ll manage,” Tom said.

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Hanson took another step toward Tom. “Quit playing big shot!” He jabbed the air with a pointing finger. “I’m not letting you sacrifice the rest of us because you feel like playing Captain.”

“Your concerns are noted,” Tom said, trying to keep his voice even. “Now get the hell off my bridge.”

Hanson took a deep breath and lowered his arms. When he spoke again it was with the air of an exasperated parent speaking to a stubborn toddler. “We lost half the crew. And we took damage. We are desperately shorthanded. We need to get back to civilization.” His hands started to rise, and he forced them down. “Garnet is closer than Argo. And it’s a major base, not a dinky outpost. So that’s the way we should go.”

“Duly noted,” Tom said.

Hansen’s veneer of calm vanished. “You’re not listening to me!”

Tom stared at him, weighing the pros and cons of tackling the man, physically subduing him, and chucking him off the bridge. Then he found the microphone in the arm of his chair and lifted it toward his mouth. “Lieutenant Harper to the bridge, please.”

Hanson, oblivious, started repeating his arguments about personnel shortages. His voice rose, and when Tom failed to react, it rose some more. “We need to get back to Garnet as quickly as possible! Why can’t you understand that? If you think we’re going to-”

He didn’t turn when the hatch to the bridge slid open behind him. Only when Harper’s hand landed on his shoulder did he stop in mid-sentence.

“Get him off my bridge,” Tom said.

“Right,” said Harper, and hauled Hanson unceremoniously toward the hatch. Hanson was foolish enough to try to throw the marine’s hand off his shoulder. Hanson responded by shifting his grip, taking Hanson by wrist and elbow and bending him over so his head was at waist height.

“You can’t do this! You’re not a real captain.”

Tom, suddenly fed right up, said, “Take him to the brig.”

Harper said, “The brig is pretty full, Sir.”

There was something in that statement that Tom needed to think about. The voice in the back of his head was quite insistent, without giving him any hints as to what he actually needed to do. “Then confine him to quarters,” Tom snapped. “You’ve got plenty of idle marines.”

“Yes, Sir,” Harper said, and hauled Hanson out of the bridge.

There was a long, awkward moment of silence. No one met Tom’s gaze. Finally he said, “The problem is, he’s right.”

O’Reilly glanced at him. “Sir?”

“We’re desperately undermanned,” Tom said.

O’Reilly shrugged. “But what can we do?”

“That,” said Tom, “is the million-credit question.” He stood. “Take us toward Argo as soon as Lieutenant Sawyer gives the okay. Don’t wait for me to return.”

O’Reilly nodded, and Tom left the bridge.

Harper walked into the boardroom, the expression on his face carefully neutral. He sat when Tom gestured to a seat, then waited, patient and unreadable.

“We’re undermanned,” Tom said.

Harper nodded.

“Your marines will have to do more. I need them to help out where they can with a lot of duties that are normally assigned to Navy personnel.” He kept his voice even, as if he fully expected Harper to agree, but inwardly he braced himself for an explosion.

“Of course,” said Harper. “I’ll start sending people to see Lieutenant Sawyer.”

Well, that part was easy. “Excellent,” Tom said, then hesitated. “There’s another thing.”

Harper raised an eyebrow.

“Come with me. I need you to strengthen my position as I do some negotiating.”

Half a dozen marines loitered outside the brig, straightening up as Tom and Harper approached. Harper sent four of them to see Sawyer, telling them to make themselves useful and not to give Sawyer any lip. Then, at Tom’s instruction, he opened the hatch to the brig.

The brig held four cells, and each cell held four pirates. They lined the bars, staring out with hostility, boredom, or anxious wariness, depending on each prisoner’s mindset.

“How are you being treated?” Tom said.

“Well enough, for prison,” a man said.

“Are you getting fed?”

“We missed a meal yesterday,” the man said. His face went glum. “I understand the kitchen staff were dying.”

Tom nodded.

“Are we really at war, Lieutenant?”

“We are. The Dawn Alliance has attacked the United Worlds base at Garnet. Not only have they launched an unprovoked attack, they’ve used nuclear missiles in war.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“I was told you were all pirates,” Tom said, and watched annoyance flash across several faces. “I’ve learned that you don’t see yourselves that way. You’ve got grievances against the United Worlds, and while I don’t entirely agree with your position, I understand where you’re coming from.”

The prisoners stared at him, sixteen expressionless, guarded faces.

“We were enemies when the Kestrel captured your ship,” Tom said. “However, the situation has changed. It has changed drastically.”

A pirate in the middle cell nodded.

“The Free Planets have a new enemy. The Dawn Alliance is going to roll through the Green Zone like a cloud of locusts. They will conquer your home worlds if they can. And make no mistake, it will be conquest. I think you all know how they treated the people of New Sheffield.”

A few pirates exchanged glances.

“The Free Planets have a choice to make,” Tom went on. “Each of you has a choice to make. You can continue your vendetta against the United Worlds. Or you can join with us against a common enemy.”

Several heads turned, looking toward a burly man in the second cell with “Fagan” stenciled on his breast. He’d be the pirate captain, Tom thought.

“Let me think about that,” Fagan said He pushed forward until he was against the bars. “You know,” he said, his face expressionless, “I think I’ve reached a decision.” He made a quick gesture with his head. “Come here.”

Tom moved closer, staying out of arm’s reach.

“Closer,” said Fagan.

Tom didn’t move.

Fagan smirked. “Here’s what I think of your proposal.” And he spat a gob of saliva at Tom’s feet.

Tom jerked back, watching the saliva splatter across the deck plates and the toe of his left boot. Fury boiled up inside of him, and his mind filled with visions of mayhem. I could order the cell opened. I could go in there and beat the hell out of him. I could have the marines shoot him in front of his crew. I could kill all of them. I could-I could take a bad situation and make it much, much worse.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and opened his eyes again. “The Free Planets are at war with the Dawn Alliance. If they aren’t at war now, they will be in a matter of days. If you can call it a war when someone bombs your cities from orbit and then invades with overwhelming force. You can join in and fight back. Or you can stay in these cages. It’s up to you.”

For a long, tense moment nothing happened. Then, in the right-hand cage, a young woman pushed her way to the front. Tom recognized the woman who had told him about the gas leak. “I know we don’t like these guys,” she said. “They claim ownerships of our homes. They’re a bunch of dicks.”

Tom, who had been hoping she might be an ally, felt his stomach sink.

“But he’s right,” she went on. “The Dawn Alliance is worse. Much, much worse.” She gestured at Tom and the marines around him. “These jerks locked us up. The Dawn Alliance would be shoving us out an airlock one at a time until we agreed to cooperate.”

“They’re the enemy,” someone protested.

“They’re one enemy,” she replied. “We have another enemy. An enemy that butchers civilians to keep the rest of the population in line.” She glared at the other prisoners in her cell. “What do you think is happening at home right now?”

No one spoke.

She turned to face Tom. “I don’t like you. But you’re the enemy of my real enemy, so I guess that makes you ��� my ally. As long as you’re at war with the Dawn Alliance, I’ll do everything in my power to help you.” She stuck a hand through the bars. “Deal?”

“Deal,” Tom said, and shook her hand.

“You’re a bloody traitor,” Fagan snarled.

“And you’re a useless idiot who’s going to sit in a cage while the rest of us fight the bastards who are invading Novograd right now.” She rattled the door of the cell. “Well? Are you letting me out, or aren’t you?”

In the end, everyone but Fagan agreed to help. Harper unlocked the cell doors, doubt written all over his face, then retreated to a corner with a hand on the butt of his sidearm.

“The first order of business is to find out what your skills are,” Tom said. “Then we’ll put you to work. Come with me.” He led them into the corridor, then called Sawyer on his bracer. “Lieutenant, can you join me in the boardroom? We need to talk about some personnel issues.”

No fewer than six marines accompanied the fifteen former prisoners as they walked up the spine. Harper brought up the rear, looking alert and worried. We can’t treat them all like enemies, Tom thought. Still, trust will take time. This is progress. I guess that’s good enough for now.

“I’m Alice Rose. I was in charge of the engines on the Free Bird. I guess you Navy boys would call me the chief engineer.”

Sawyer, slumped at the head of the boardroom table, looked up at the woman who had become the de facto leader of the former pirates. “Why don’t you sit down, Alice? Don’t make me crane my neck.”

All the pirates were standing, crowding the room so thoroughly that only two marines had managed to squeeze in. Tom, who was almost as tired as Sawyer, sat at the opposite end of the table. Alice looked from him to Sawyer, then shrugged and dropped into a chair. Under gentle prodding from Sawyer she described her training at the Novograd Institute for Technology, and her experience in the engine rooms of half a dozen small ships.

One after another the other pirates described their skills and qualifications. Some were almost eager, some were guarded, and some were openly hostile.

A woman named Naomi Silver had actually served in the United Worlds Navy. Her father was a citizen, and she’d spent half her childhood on Korus. She was a navigator with experience using Navy technology, and Tom assigned her to the bridge crew.

Alice and a couple others joined Sawyer’s engineering crews. The rest went into a general labor pool.

I need someone to handle duty rosters, Tom thought. And we have to sort out accommodations. There must be unoccupied cabins and bunks.

Where do I even begin?

He left Sawyer to deal with the rest of the pirates and walked to the bridge with Naomi Silver. They didn’t speak. Tom was lost in a fog of thought. I need to do a thousand things at once. I need to be everywhere. How did Captain Nishida cope?

By relying on her officers. She delegated. But I don’t have any officers. I’m the only one.

“Captain?”

For a confused, wonderful moment Tom imagined Nishida had somehow returned. Then reality crashed in. O’Reilly is talking to me.

O’Reilly, eyebrows raised, was looking from Tom to Silver. Tom blinked, realizing he’d been standing in the middle of the bridge, staring blindly into space. “This is Silver,” he said. “I need you to train her to handle the helm.” O’Reilly nodded dubiously, and Tom blurted, “I need her to replace you. You’re going to be busy. You’re my new First Officer.”

O’Reilly opened his mouth, then slowly closed it.

“The First Officer deals with the crew,” Tom said. “I need you to sort out duty assignments and accommodations.” He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t even know where to start.”

O’Reilly nodded. “All right, Captain. I can do that.”

Relief flooded through Tom. Thank God.

O’Reilly said, “Actually, Sir ���”

“Yes? What is it?”

O’Reilly hesitated, then said, “We need to do something about the bodies.”

“What?”

“I know we want to treat them with respect. Normally if someone dies during the voyage, they finish the tour in the morgue. We hold a funeral when the ship is back in port.” He lifted his hands in a shrug. “That’s the way we always did it in the New Haven Navy.”

Tom nodded, realizing he didn’t actually know how the UW Navy handled fatalities.

“There’s just too many, though. There’s rooms people won’t go into because there’s corpses inside. Do you realize we’ve got the dead stored in three different places, plus the ones who died in their cabins?”

Tom said, “But-”

“If we were heading back to Garnet I would say, just leave it. We can deal with it for a day or two. But all the way to Argo and back?” O’Reilly shook his head. “It’s too macabre. It’s bad for morale. In fact, it’s devastating for morale.”

Tom looked at him, trying to figure out how to phrase his objections. Getting rid of the bodies was out of the question. It was unthinkable.

But why?

Because I don’t want to deal with the dead. He didn’t like admitting it to himself, but as soon as the thought occurred to him he knew it was true. He could feel the presence of his fallen shipmates behind those bulkheads. As long as they were sealed away, he could ignore them. The thought of going into the storage bay or the morgue and facing the dead filled him with horror.

“We can’t even refrigerate them properly,” O’Reilly said gently. “You want me to deal with the crew? Well, those are the crew I’m dealing with first.”

Chapter 23

Under the circumstances, on a damaged ship during a crisis in wartime, Tom felt perfectly ridiculous putting on his dress uniform. Nevertheless he dressed with care, checking his reflection in the tiny mirror above his sink. He looked tired, haggard, gaunt. I need to get some sleep. The crew needs to see a captain who’s got it together.

I’ll sleep, he promised himself. After this one last duty.

He buckled on his sword, checked that it was hanging straight, smoothed his jacket, and left his cabin. He found Harper in the corridor outside. The marine’s dress uniform was black, the jacket several centimeters shorter than Tom’s, the stripe up his trouser legs a vivid blue. The sword was identical, though. Harper said, “Maybe you should move into the captain’s cabin.”

“No.”

Harper didn’t argue, just fell in beside him as Tom headed for the shuttle bay.

They entered the forward section and descended to Deck One. In the corridor leading to the shuttle bay they found more than a dozen spacers lining the starboard bulkhead. They all wore clean uniforms without coveralls or work belts. All of them looked tired, but they’d washed and done what they could to look professional. They stood rigidly at attention, their backs against the bulkhead, not speaking as the two officers went past.

The shuttle bay was full, which explained the line outside. Bodies filled the center of the bay in a triple line, each corpse sewed into a shroud. Tom wasn’t sure where the crew had scrounged up the fabric. He saw different colors and textures, but all of it was dark.

The ship’s entire complement of marines lined the port bulkhead, twelve somber figures standing perfectly rigid with their eyes forward. Along the starboard bulkhead the spacers were a less tidy group, huddled together in irregular clumps. Some had tears on their cheeks. Others stared at the deck plates, their expressions bleak.

Tom and Harper parted ways, Harper joining the marines, Tom picking his way along the narrow gap between the shrouded bodies and the gathered spacers. He reached the front of the bay and stood with his back to the bay doors.

He surveyed the gathered crew, and noticed for the first time half a dozen pirates in a group near the marines. They gazed back at him, solemn-faced. He looked down at the bodies, then lifted his gaze to his crew.

“From the first time human beings left the surface of the Earth, space travel has been fraught with danger. For centuries it has attracted the best, the most courageous, the brightest stars humanity has to offer. In return, space has given us the chance to explore, to open new worlds, to express the very best parts of what it means to be human.

“And from time to time, space extracts a price for these gifts. Sometimes that price is cruelly high. These are our friends, our shipmates. They are some of the best and finest in the United Worlds. Not satisfied with lives of safety and comfort planetside, they chose to take up the challenge of duty in space. They chose to serve their nation, to place their very lives on the line so that their countrymen could be safe.

“It has been my great privilege to serve alongside these people. Their service has ended. Their trials are over. They rest, but they are not forgotten.”

Tom turned to face the back of the shuttle bay. O’Reilly stood there, fingers poised over his bracer. Tom nodded, and O’Reilly tapped the bracer. The force field behind Tom came to life with a faint hum, stirring the hair on the back of his head. Then, with a rumble, the bay doors slid open.

“We commit their bodies to the stars,” Tom said. He turned, acutely conscious of the vacuum of deep space less than a meter away, and walked to the starboard bulkhead. The spacers there crowded back to make room.

Two spacers in heavy boots came forward. They stood before the shimmering force field, looked across the bay at O’Reilly, and nodded. O’Reilly worked his bracer, reducing the gravity field in the bay, and Tom felt his stomach lurch as the deck seemed to sink away beneath him.

The two spacers stepped toward the nearest body, moving their feet with careful deliberation. Their boots were magnetized, allowing them to keep their footing as they worked. They lifted the first body and turned to face the open bay doors.

The music when it started was so faint Tom thought he was imagining it. A soft rumble began, just at the edge of awareness, then slowly grew until he looked around, trying to figure out the source.

The two spacers gave the first body a gentle toss. It sailed forward, floated through the force field, and drifted away into hyperspace. Energy storms would destroy the body, reducing it eventually to its component atoms. The spacer would merge with the void.

The music grew in volume, a wordless song so full of sorrow and lament that Tom, who’d been keeping his emotions under rigid control, thought he might burst into tears. The marines were singing, if that was what you called a song without words. He had never heard such music, like pure distilled emotion. The voices of the marines were rough, untrained, but they sang with such heartache Tom felt like his guts were being turned inside out.

A second body drifted into the void.

Another voice joined the song. It was Alice Rose, her voice rising high and clear above the rumbling bass of the marines. She stood with her eyes closed and her head tilted back, and her voice seemed to weave in and out of the marines’ song, using it as a foundation to rise higher and higher, then sinking back down.

One by one, the other pirates joined in. They seemed to have a different musical tradition, but one with the same distant roots as the lament from the marines. The two songs blended, separated, then blended again. It was sadness given form, and it tore at Tom as the bodies went past, one by one.

Brady is in one of those shrouds. Is she already gone? You did your best for me in a bad situation. You did your duty, and you helped me do mine. Thank you, Brady. Goodbye. Goodbye, Carstairs. You befriended me when none of the other officers would. I’ll miss you.

He said goodbye to all of them as the bodies drifted past, people he’d worked with, people who’d helped him, and anonymous faces he had passed in the corridors.

Faces he would never see again.

At last the final body sailed into the void. O’Reilly tapped his bracer, and Tom felt his weight increase until the gravity in the bay was back to normal. There was an awkward moment as people looked at one another, and Tom wondered if he should give some final words. Then the tension broke, people leaving their tight ranks and beginning to chat with one another. A handful of spacers crossed the bay to shake hands with the marines and thank them for the song.

More spacers clustered around the pirates. Tom edged closer, and heard crew members giving heartfelt thanks. “That was so beautiful,” a woman said, wiping at her cheeks with one hand while squeezing Alice’s arm with the other. “You gave Jimmy a proper send-off. Thank you so much.”

In a few minutes it was over, most of the spacers gone, the pirates and marines talking quietly in two separate groups. Tom stepped into the space between them. “Thank you,” he said. “You did a fine thing today.”

Both groups gazed at him, expressions solemn.

“Now I have an assignment,” he said. “I need to put a crew on the Free Bird to take her to Argo.” He looked at Alice. “How many crew will it take to fly her that far?”

“Three,” she said promptly. “They can get there in sixty or seventy hours. Three people is enough for a three-day trip.”

“Choose your crew and send them over,” Tom told her. Then he turned to Harper. “I want you to send two marines with them.”

Harper nodded. Tom glanced at Alice, who stared back with lips pressed tight. She clearly didn’t like the implication that her people couldn’t be trusted. She gave him a stiff nod, though.

“Get going right away,” Tom said. “The Kestrel will catch up. Don’t waste any time, but when you get to Argo, approach cautiously. The Dawn Alliance might already be there.”

Chapter 24

“Battle Stations.”

It was Tom’s second day in command of the Kestrel, and he was almost comfortable in the big chair. Starting a ship-wide drill still felt odd, though.

“Gun Station Bravo reports ready,” Harris said. After a moment he added, “Fire suppression crews report ready.”

Several seconds passed. Then several more.

“Any word from the other gun stations?” Tom said at last.

“No, Sir.”

For that matter, who else is supposed to report in? I wasn’t expecting to hear from the fire crews. I’ve never been on the bridge during a drill.

Wait, there’s one group that I know is supposed to call in. He tapped his bracer, went through the communications menu, and called Operations. “Operations. What’s your status?”

Silence.

Tom sighed and looked around the bridge. O’Reilly, as acting First Officer, should really be in Operations. Tom didn’t want him away from the bridge during a crisis, though. So who should be there? Maybe the off-shift bridge crew. That would be Silver and Trenholm.

“All right,” he said, “I can see we need to clear up a few things. That’s fine. That’s why we have drills.” He brought up the microphone on the arm of his chair. “All hands, this is the Captain.” It still felt very strange to say that. “Remain at your posts. I’ll be doing a quick inspection and clarifying some assignments.” He stowed the microphone and stood. “Mr. O’Reilly, could you come with me, please?”

The two of them walked through the ship, finding a lot of nervous-looking crew waiting at their posts. It occurred to Tom that he had very little idea who was assigned to do what during Battle Stations, or why. He knew there were a lot of redundancies in the way things were done under normal circumstances, with extra crew standing by to take the place of casualties or people drawn away by emergencies.

Now, however, things had changed. With desperate crew shortages, redundancies were a luxury he couldn’t afford. He visited one station after another, asking people to explain what their assignments were. O’Reilly took notes, and Tom slowly built up a picture of how the ship functioned during a crisis.

He found Gun Station Alpha completely unmanned. It shocked him at first, but he realized it only made sense. The entire gun crew was dead, and so was Lieutenant Curtis, who oversaw the ship’s turret weapons. Gun Station Bravo, by contrast, had three spacers on duty. One person could operate the laser in a pinch. It was better to have a second person, who would act as a spotter. Three were completely unnecessary. Tom reassigned a man to Station Alpha and continued on his way.

“We need more gunners,” Tom said to O’Reilly as they walked down the spine. “See if any of the pirates have relevant experience.” He thought for a moment. “Oh, and talk to the marines, too. They’re all about shooting things. I bet they’d make terrific gunners.”

O’Reilly nodded and made a note.

As they passed the brig Tom had a thought. “Is Hanson still confined to quarters? I forgot all about him.”

“I had him released this morning.” O’Reilly gave Tom an embarrassed look. “I hope that’s all right. You were asleep, and Lieutenant Sawyer needed another spacer. Hanson swore to me he would be good.”

“That’s fine,” Tom said. “I should have released him earlier. I just forgot.”

Electronic Surveillance Two, commonly known as the Aft Spotting Room, was a tiny compartment on the underside of the hull in the aft section, barely big enough to seat two people. A cluster of scanners bristled from the hull nearby, feeding data directly to the two stations in the compartment. The compartment also had a large window, so the spotters could be of some use if anti-electronic measures scrambled the scanners.

Tom and O’Reilly arrived to find a scowling marine and a surly pirate in the corridor outside, and a solitary spacer inside. Tom stuck his head into the compartment long enough to verify that the young woman inside knew her job and what was expected of her. Then he closed the hatch and turned to the pair in the corridor.

The marine and the pirate were remarkably similar, though they seemed to hold opposing worldviews. They were both young men in their late twenties. They were both fit, competent-looking, and angry. They both turned to stare at Tom with flat, expressionless faces.

Tom said, “What’s your name, Marine?”

“Unger, Sir.”

“What’s your station, Unger?”

“General spotter in the aft section, Sir.” Unger patted the rifle slung from his shoulder. “My instructions are to be ready to repel boarders or deal with other security issues, and to watch for fires, damage, or casualties.”

Tom turned to the pirate. “And your name?”

“Collins.” The man glowered, as if daring Tom to challenge him for the missing word ���Sir���.

“What’s your station, Collins?”

Collins looked at O’Reilly. “This one here said I was supposed to go to the window room.” He jerked a thumb at the hatch behind him. “He says the basic scanner systems are like the ones on the Free Bird. He says the Free Bird crew are more used to using their eyes, while the Navy boys all depend on instruments. He said I’d be useful here.”

“This is a sensitive post,” Unger said. “We can’t have personnel that we don’t trust getting access to the instruments. I said I’d have to go along with him, keep an eye on him. But there wasn’t room inside.”

“The ape won’t let me do my job,” Collins said, glaring at the marine. “Don’t matter to me. I never hired on to help a bunch of Navy boys. I can stand out here. No skin off my ass.”

“I might have let it go,” Unger said, not taking his eyes off the pirate. “Until he opened his mouth. He’s pretty hostile. Frankly, he’s not someone I’d trust anywhere near sensitive equipment.” He curled his lip. “I wouldn’t trust him to serve me a cup of coffee.”

Collins bristled, and Tom said, “That’s enough.” When neither man moved he said, “Unger. Back off a ways, please.”

The marine took two paces back, his gaze fixed on Collins’s face.

“Thank you. Now, stop glaring at Collins.”

Unger looked at Tom, startled. Then he smoothed his features and stared at a spot just above Collins’s left shoulder.

Tom turned to Collins. Unger was right, he saw. Collins had paid lip service to Alice’s plea for cooperation, but he radiated hostility.

“Collins.”

Collins didn’t react, just stared at Unger.

“Collins, I’m talking to you.”

The pirate turned reluctantly and met his gaze.

“It’s time to decide what side you’re on.”

The man’s head jerked back as if Tom had just insulted him. “I’m on the side of the Free Planets.”

“The Free Planets haven’t got a Navy,” Tom said. “The Free Bird is gone, and you’re not getting her back.”

Collins scowled.

“The United Worlds has interfered with the governments of the colonies,” Tom said. “That bothers you. I understand. But right now the governments of those colonies are being dismantled. Destroyed utterly. You had limited self-determination under UW rule. Now, you have nothing at all.”

A muscle jumped in Collins’s cheek, but he didn’t speak.

“You must know what’s happening on your home world right now. If the Dawn Alliance hasn’t invaded yet, they will soon. You know what they’ll do.”

“That’s where we should be going!” Collins leaned toward Tom, bringing his hands up in a frustrated gesture that made Unger unsling his rifle. “Not gallivanting off to some outpost.”

“We’re one shot-up frigate,” Tom said. “We can’t take on the whole Dawn Alliance. That’s going to take a massive effort. It will take the entire United Worlds Navy, and all of their allies. All we can do is our share. We can keep some people and supplies out of Dawn Alliance hands.

“We can do our share,” he repeated. “What about you? Will you do your share? Will you help us fight the people who are invading your home world? Or will you pretend it’s not happening because you’re too pissed off at the people who are eventually going to liberate your planet?”

Collins glared at him, clenching his hands into fists. Fabric rustled behind Tom as Unger shifted position. “I already said I’d help, didn’t I?” Collins demanded.

“Yes, you did,” said Tom. “But talk is cheap, isn’t it?”

Collins recoiled as if he’d been slapped.

“It’s pretty clear your heart’s not in it,” Tom said. “I don’t need any half-assed helpers. Everyone around you is laying their life on the line to fight your enemies. You don’t get to come along as a tourist, making faces and complaining and expecting to be congratulated every time you do something. The rest of us are committed to this mission. If you’re not going to commit, you can go sit in a cell with Fagan and be just as dedicated and useless as he is.”

For a long moment the two men stared at each other. Then, millimeter by millimeter, Collins’s shoulders slumped. He lowered his gaze. “Fine.”

“That’s not good enough, Collins.”

The man’s head snapped back up. “Fine!” he snapped. “I’m committed. I’ll do my part.” He grimaced. “I won’t complain about it, either. I’d rather rush back to Emerald. But, since I can’t do that, I’ll do what I can right here.” He looked down for a moment, shook his head, then looked up and met Tom’s gaze. “You won’t get any more trouble from me.” He hesitated. “Sir.”

“Good,” said Tom. “Take your post.”

Collins opened the hatch to the Aft Observation Room, ducked through, and let the hatch close behind him.

“Don’t worry, Sir,” said Unger. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“No you won’t.” The words came out more sharply than he’d intended, and Tom sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I need you to ignore him. Treat him like any other crewman.”

Unger didn’t argue, but the expression on his face spoke volumes.

“Look. Unger. Your instincts were good. There was an issue with Collins, and you spotted that. But now ���” Tom shook his head, searching for the words to express what he was thinking. He’d learned about leadership in Basic Officer Training, but in truth he’d spent much of his classroom time just fighting to stay awake. He didn’t know if something like this had been covered, but his instincts told him how Collins needed to be handled. “If we trust him, he will be trustworthy. If we watch him, if we don’t trust him, well, he’ll do what we expect.”

Unger shook his head slowly, his expression full of doubt.

“I promise you,” Tom said, “if he gets out of line, you can shoot him. In the meantime, I want you to take him at his word.”

“All right, Sir.”

“Stand down for now,” Tom said. “The drill is pretty much over.” He gestured to O’Reilly and they continued their tour.

They reached the Engineering section, where they found Sawyer standing by with a squad of technicians. Four marines in firefighting gear waited to one side, and half a dozen spacers lined the starboard bulkhead.

“We’re ready for anything, Sir,” Sawyer announced. “I’m used to having twice the crew during Battle Stations, but we can handle anything less than a full-blown catastrophe.”

“Good.” Tom indicated the six spacers along the bulkhead. “What’s their role?”

“Grunt labor,” she replied. “They’re here to pitch in if we take casualties or if we need help hauling equipment, removing wounded, that sort of thing.”

Tom examined the row of spacers. He recognized one of them from the kitchen staff. Another had served as a steward in the wardroom. “Are they trained?”

She shook her head. “I’d train them if I had the time.”

Judging by the dark circles under her eyes, she didn’t have the time for the things she was already doing. “I understand,” he said. “All right, I think everyone can stand down.”

As they walked back along the spine O’Reilly said, “I’m sorry, Captain.”

He sounded utterly miserable, and Tom turned to him in surprise. “For what, O’Reilly?”

“I’ve never been a First Officer before.” He lifted his hands helplessly. “I thought I knew what I was doing. But I never noticed we didn’t have enough gun crews. I didn’t realize nobody knew what to do.”

A handful of tired spacers went by, returning to their bunks after the drill. Tom waited until they were past, then said, “I dropped you in the soup with no warning. The same thing happened to me.” He gestured ahead of them at more crew, trudging down the corridor. “It happened to them. It happened to all of us.”

The spacers straightened up as they went by, nodding respectfully when Tom glanced at them. They looked exhausted, and he wished he could spare them drills that got them up in the middle of their sleep cycle. It was necessary, though, and he would be doing it again.

“You made mistakes,” he said. “I made mistakes. It’s been a rich crop of blunders all around.” He chuckled. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll be sure to get angry with you when you’re the only one dropping the ball.”

“Fair enough,” O’Reilly said, and gave him a tired smile.

“Let somebody else take the helm for a while,” Tom said. “Clean up the duty roster and assignments. Oh, and see if some of the marines can train Sawyer’s grunt laborers. The marines all have training in dealing with shipboard emergencies. But they’re not as busy as Sawyer and her people are.”

O’Reilly nodded and made a note.

“Try to get in a nap, too. I need you alert. We’re doing another battle stations drill in six hours.”

By the third day the bulk of the repairs were done and tension levels across the whole ship began to drop. Tom left the bridge and took a stroll through the corridors of the forward section, passing a couple of spacers who looked downright relaxed. They don’t even have racoon eyes, he thought. That’s good. I don’t want to reach Argo with a frazzled crew already at the end of their ropes.

He was starting to relax himself, imagining the blissful state of his crew, when the sound of raised voices brought all his stress flooding back. Someone was shouting in the mess hall. He hurried forward, looked inside, and saw a pair of marines eating quietly at a corner table. The shouting came from farther aft. It had to be even louder than he’d thought.

When he opened the doors to the kitchen a wave of sound hit him, a man and a woman shouting at the tops of their lungs. A handful of kitchen staff stood near the coolers, watching something deeper in the kitchen. Tom pushed past them and stepped around the first cooler.

A man and a woman stood nose to nose, screaming into each other’s faces. The man was a pirate, short and wiry, barely half the mass of the woman in front of him. She wore an apron and hair net, a smear of flour on her nose startlingly white against the deep red of her face. Her arms waved as she shouted, a spatula in one hand occasionally clanking on the oven beside her.

Tom thought about trying to out-shout them and quickly realized neither one of them would hear a word. He looked at the watching kitchen staff. One man had a ladle in his hand. Tom plucked it from him and thumped the woman on the side of the head.

She spun, outraged, lifted her spatula like a sword ��� then went comically slack-jawed as she recognized him. She stepped back and he advanced on the wiry pirate, lifting the ladle for another blow.

The pirate’s shouting voice trailed off. The man backed away a step, his eyes on the ladle.

Tom tossed the ladle to the man he’d taken it from, then positioned himself between the two combatants. Both of them panted for breath. The woman looked a bit shamefaced. The man just looked wary.

“The next person to raise their voice goes to the brig,” Tom said. Is that clear?”

The woman said, “Yes, Sir.” The pirate stared at Tom for a moment, then nodded.

“Now.” He turned to the woman. “What’s this about?”

Her face collapsed into surly lines, her embarrassment vanishing. “This ill-mannered goat came in here and said we were trying to poison him!” She gestured around the kitchen. “We’ve lost most of the kitchen staff. I’m the only one left from before the nuke. And I wasn’t even a cook. I sliced vegetables and did cleanup.” She indicated the other three. “They were stewards and laundry staff. No kitchen experience. They’re slow.” She made a frustrated gesture, almost hit Tom with the spatula, and hastily set it down. “We’re all slow. We barely know how the ovens work. And we’re cooking for all these people.”

One hand came up, her palm pressing briefly against her forehead. “There’s only four of us for the whole ship. We’re working around the clock. We barely sleep.” She turned her head, giving the pirate a look that should have scorched his shirt. “And this ��� this knuckle-dragging oaf comes slinking in here and tells me the food isn’t good enough for his delicate palate!”

Tom turned to the pirate, who looked abashed. He drooped under Tom’s scrutiny. “Sorry, Captain,” he mumbled. “But the food is pretty bad. They gave me this plate of ��� I don’t even know what it was. But it was burned around the outside, and all pink in the middle, and I think it might have been chicken.” He glanced at the woman, his expression hardening. “You can’t serve under-cooked chicken, or you’ll have half the crew down with food poisoning.”

She bristled. “I’d like to see you try running a kitchen, you smug know-it-all!”

“I do run a kitchen,” he snapped, his voice beginning to rise. “I cook on the Free Bird, and I serve decent food, too!”

Her chest expanded as she took a deep breath. Before she could start her tirade Tom put his hand, palm-out, a couple of centimeters in front of her nose. That startled her into silence.

“Don’t make me send you to the brig,” he said. “Not when the kitchen is under-staffed.” He turned to the pirate. “What’s your name?”

“Bridger,” the man said. “Captain, I just wanted to-”

“You’re right, Bridger,” Tom said. “A ship-wide case of food poisoning would be a catastrophe.” He turned as the woman opened her mouth. “And you’re right, too. The kitchen is badly under-staffed. And none of you have the training you need.” She gave him a hurt look, and he hastened to add, “That isn’t your fault. You’ve been doing your best.”

Tom looked past her at the rest of the kitchen staff. All four of them looked frazzled and spent. “All of you have been doing your best. I put you in an impossible situation and you rose to the occasion magnificently.”

The kitchen crew looked at one another, then back at Tom.

“However, it’s time you had some help. Experienced help.” He turned to face Bridger, whose face drooped in dismay and dawning realization. “That’s where you come in, Bridger.”

“Now, hold on!” Tom waited while the man thought for a moment, some of the dismay leaving his face. “Actually,” Bridger said at last, “that might not be so bad.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Tom said dryly, “because I’m not offering you a choice.” He looked at the woman in the apron. “He’s got skill and knowledge. And he’ll work hard. You’ll be able to get more sleep.”

She nodded dubiously.

Tom turned to Bridger. “These people have been working harder than you ever worked in a kitchen in your life. They deserve your respect. And they’ll benefit from your leadership.”

Bridger nodded.

“Then it’s settled. Bridger, you’re in the kitchen from now on. The rest of you will assist him. But first, I think some apologies are in order.”

“I shouldn’t have screamed at you,” Bridger said immediately. “I thought you didn’t care.” He squirmed a little. “I was wrong.”

“I ��� overreacted,” the woman said. “I’m really short of sleep. And I’m used to working with my friends.” Her face began to crumple as she said, “But they’re all dead.”

“All right, take a break,” Tom said. He gestured at the woman and her three companions. “All four of you. Take a few hours.” He glanced at his bracer, checking the time. “Come back at fourteen hundred. Get some rest.” He looked at Bridger. “In the meantime, you can familiarize yourself with the kitchen.”

“Right.” Bridger’s attention was already drifting toward the ovens. Tom slipped out of the kitchen and continued on his way.

Chapter 25

By the time they ran their fifth Battle Stations drill, every member of the crew knew their duty station and reached it quickly. Tom ran some gunnery drills, and the marines outperformed the Navy gunners so thoroughly that he assigned a marine to every gun battery. He ran some disaster simulation drills, and after a few hiccups the crew learned to handle every mock crisis he could throw at them. As far as he could tell, they were as ready as they would ever be.

It was his fourth day as captain.

Early on the fifth day, just after midnight by the ship’s clock, the Kestrel slid out of hyperspace on the fringe of the Argo system. A quick scan showed no other ships, but Onda looked up from the Communications console and said, “Incoming message from the Free Bird.”

“This is Lambert,” said a woman’s voice. “We’ve been scanning the system for just over nine hours now. There’s no sign of any ship traffic.”

“Have you been in touch with Sunshine Base?”

“No, Captain. We thought it would be best to wait for you.”

“Stand by,” said Tom. He glanced at the Tactical console. Harris had his eyes glued to the screens, his fingers tapping at the console as he ran scans. There was no need to ask if he’d seen anything; he would certainly speak up.

“Onda. Contact Sunshine. Tell them we need to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

The man nodded, tapped his console, and murmured into a microphone. “I’ve got an Administrator Pelletier.”

Tom introduced himself, then said, “Have you seen any sign of Dawn Alliance activity here, Administrator?”

“No, Captain.” The man sounded distracted and annoyed. “The DA doesn’t come to Argo. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m a busy man.”

“You’re about to get busier,” Tom said grimly. “O’Reilly, bring us in close to Argo.” Then he told Pelletier about the outbreak of war. “You need to evacuate Sunshine immediately,” he said. “You’re lucky the DA isn’t here already.”

“That’s ridiculous!” The administrator sounded offended by the very suggestion. “We can’t evacuate! It’s out of the question.”

“Do you know how the Dawn Alliance treats prisoners?” Tom demanded.

Pelletier scoffed. “We won’t be prisoners. Honestly, Captain, you’re being alarmist.”

“Half my crew is dead,” Tom snapped. “Don’t tell me I’m being alarmist.”

“What did you call yourself?” the man said. “Acting Captain? I’d like to talk to your real commanding officer.”

“I’m in command of this ship,” Tom said, struggling for calm. “Captain Nishida is dead. Because we’re at war. Because the Dawn Alliance is using nukes. Which is why you need to evacuate.”

“They won’t nuke us! Don’t be preposterous. There are accords!”

That left Tom sputtering in disbelief, staring in the direction of the approaching planet. “Have you even heard a word I’ve said?”

“I’ve heard quite enough,” Pelletier said primly. “I was in a rather important meeting when you interrupted me. Now, I’m very glad your ship is finally here, although it’s late. We’ll be glad to receive our cargo. I’m sure that whatever is happening with the Dawn Alliance will blow over. These things always do. In the meantime, I’ll thank you not to trouble me any further with your reactionary nonsense.”

The connection broke with an audible click.

Tom spent a moment just staring through the forward window. “Is he for real?”

“Civilians,” O’Reilly said with a shake of his head. “What do we do now, Captain?”

“We get into orbit, and we go down in a shuttle,” said Tom. “We start telling people in person that the clock is ticking and they need to get out of here.” He looked at Onda. “Call the Free Bird. Tell them to land at the station. They’re to take on as many passengers as they can and leave immediately for Garnet.” He rose from his seat. “Mr. O’Reilly, you have the ship. I’m going to the shuttle bay.”

Tom took a pair of marines with him to bolster his authority, and piloted the shuttle himself. In truth the shuttle AI did pretty much everything, but he was ready at the controls in case of problems. They descended through the thin, hazy atmosphere of Argo toward Sunshine Base.

The planet had very little to recommend it, other than a gravity just over ninety percent of Earth-normal. That would have been enough to make it a candidate for terraforming, but a cycle of lethal solar flares erupting from the local star every decade or so meant that life could never take root. Argo had been passed over during the great wave of terraforming in the Green Zone.

The atmosphere, mostly inert gases, held little oxygen. Tom expected to wear an air mask as he walked from the shuttle to the station, but when Sunshine Base came into view he saw a couple of large ships parked on concrete landing pads with flexible tunnels connecting them to the domes of the station.

He recognized one ship immediately. The Spring Sunshine, the freighter targeted by the Free Bird, stood on her tail beside the base.

The base consisted of six small domes with a larger central dome in the center, all of them connected by covered tunnels. From above it all looked bleak and functional and colorless, and Tom shook his head, glad he’d grown up on a world where you could go outside.

His console flashed as the shuttle received instructions from the Sunshine AI. Tom’s fingers twitched with the urge to take control, but he made himself sit back. It galled him to admit it, but the shuttle could land itself more deftly than he could. You have enough on your plate, he told himself. You don’t need to worry about piloting too.

Those freighters should be lifting off, he thought as the shuttle descended. He wanted to believe that refugees were streaming aboard while the crew warmed up the engines, but he suspected nothing of the sort was happening.

The shuttle touched down in the middle of a yellow circle just beyond one of the smaller domes. Tom was reaching for the air mask stored under his seat when something moved on the landing pad outside. He watched, startled, as curved sheets of polymer rose from a gap in the concrete. The sides of a small dome rotated upward, a quarter of a sphere coming up on either side, rising and turning until the shuttle was completely enclosed. The shuttle’s running lights came on automatically as the dome closed above them, blocking out the sun.

“Interesting,” Tom muttered, and moved to the main hatch. The hatch display showed the pressure rising outside as station air flooded in. When the reading stabilized, the oxygen content was a bit low but still breathable.

Tom opened the hatch.

The two marines, Unger and a woman named Lachance, rose and followed as he stepped down onto the landing pad. A hatch set into the concrete slid open, outlined by strip lights, and Tom led the way down a staircase and into an underground tunnel.

The tunnel rose a few meters later and they entered the nearest dome of Sunshine Base. They ascended into a broad corridor. A man and a woman strolled past, nodding and saying a polite “Hello” as they went by. These were not panicky people in the middle of an evacuation. These were people with no idea how much danger they were in.

The corridor ran laser-straight through the dome and into the connecting tunnel to the main central dome. Tom kept walking, noting that the ceiling changed, curving to match the shape of the covered tunnel he had seen from above. The base was a good deal more pleasant on the inside, the walls done in soft pastel colors, the tunnel lined with planters. By Earth standards it wasn’t much, but compared to shipboard life it was quite nice.

Too bad they would have to leave it all behind.

He estimated the smaller domes to be about twenty meters across. The main dome was more than twice as wide. When he walked through an open hatch into the main dome, he couldn’t tell if his estimate was correct. He was in a corridor that could have been part of almost any ship or building. He kept walking, passing more people, all of them calm, unconcerned, oblivious.

He came at last to the heart of the dome. Now, for the first time, he could see the structure of the dome itself. A pleasant, airy plaza filled the middle of the dome, the ceiling rising to a dizzying height above. He could see the curve of the dome’s roof through the obscuring branches of an enormous elm tree planted right in the center of Sunshine Base. Benches and strips of grass surrounded the trunk of the tree, with shops and caf��s in a ring around the little park. It was a lovely scene, spoiled only somewhat by a 3D projector showing a burly man with a plasma guitar playing zip-hop.

“That’s Fred Nebula,” Lachance said. “These people may be idiots, but you can’t fault their taste in music.”

Tom ignored her, looking around the plaza. A couple of dozen people were in sight, loitering on benches or sitting at tables in front of the caf��. He looked in vain for any sort of authority figure. I guess I’m it.

Three quick strides brought him to a picnic table under the branches of the tree. Ignoring the man and woman who sat there, he climbed onto the table, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Hey!”

Conversations broke off as people turned to stare at him.

“I’m Captain Thrush of the Kestrel. The United Worlds have just been attacked by the Dawn Alliance. We’re now in a state of war. The fleet at Garnet has been attacked, and Sunshine Base is in immediate danger. I’m here to evacuate Argo.”

All around the plaza people gaped at him. Then eyes began to drift upward to where Fred Nebula was still belting out a love ballad. Gradually conversations resumed.

The man and woman sitting at Tom’s table rose, moved to another table, and sat down.

Tom stared around the plaza, flabbergasted. Then he hopped down and walked over to the marines. As he arrived, a couple of familiar figures joined them. Hoskins and Roget were two of the former pirates assigned to the Free Bird. “We’ve been trying to get people to board the ship,” said Hoskins. “No one seems to quite believe us.”

“Unger,” said Tom. “I don’t want you to puncture the dome or injure anyone. But I want you to destroy that projector.” He pointed up at Fred Nebula.

Unger grinned. “Yes, Sir.” The marines had left their rifles on the Kestrel, but they wore sidearms. Unger drew his pistol, checked the settings, then lifted the gun and took careful aim. The pistol hummed, light flashed, and Fred Nebula went silent in the middle of a drawn-out high note.

Incredulous faces turned to stare at Tom and his people as sparks rained down from the holo projector. Somebody said, “Hey, you can’t do that!”

Tom thought back to Basic Officer Training, remembering how Carpenter had so effortlessly dominated the platoon and bent them to his will. The man’s utter contempt would not go amiss in this situation, either.

“Listen up,” Tom said, trying to emulate Carpenter’s way of projecting his voice without quite shouting. “We are at war. I can promise you this entire base will be in flames within a week. Dawn Alliance troops are coming, and they’re going to do a lot worse than destroy your holo projector. They’ll take whoever they can use for slave labor, and they’ll chase the rest of you outside to choke to death while they loot the domes. I don’t know how long you have. It could be days; it could be hours. It might already be too late. You need to evacuate, and you need to evacuate now.” He glared around at the listening crowd, letting his disgust show. “Any questions?”

Someone said, “You can’t be serious.”

Tom snarled, “Do I look like I’m trying to be funny? Don’t stand here yapping at me. Go and collect your loved ones and get onto a ship.”

He had their attention now. They believed him. He could see alarm on every face, but still no one moved. Then a man came around the base of the tree, a stout figure in a dark uniform, and Tom saw flashes of relief on some of the faces around him. This was an authority figure they recognized, someone they trusted to put things right.

Tom eyed the man as he came bustling up. He wore a black uniform with red epaulets and a red stripe on the legs of his trousers. He didn’t have a gun, but some sort of hand stunner hung from his belt. He had to be a local constable. He arrived out of breath, his face red and angry.

“What do you think you’re doing? You can’t disturb the peace like this.” The man looked from Tom to the marines, then stared at the pistol Unger still held in one hand. He touched a nervous tongue to his lips.

“Peace is over,” Tom said. “We’re at war now, and you need to flee.”

The man said, “But ���” His voice trailed off.

“Do you have a family?” Tom said softly.

The constable nodded, his eyes wide.

“Go and get them. Put them on a ship. Do it now.”

For a long time the man stared into Tom’s face. Then he turned, his movements quick and jerky, and started across the plaza.

By the time he’d gone a dozen paces he was running.

That was all it took. People left the plaza, moving in every direction, some of them making calls on data gloves or with their implants as they hurried away.

“Sir,” said Unger, and pointed.

A group of people came toward the base of the tree, fighting the flow of people leaving the plaza. Two men and two women, they were dressed like spacers in matching jumpsuits in dark red with orange trim. As they drew close Tom saw a logo stenciled on the front of each jumpsuit, a stylized rocket ship with a ringed planet behind it.

The group stopped in front of Tom. A middle-aged black woman said, “Captain ��� Flush?”

“Thrush.”

“I’m Captain Cosgrove of the Thornapple.” She jerked a thumb at the far side of the dome. “We’re docked by Dome Four.”

“You need to help evacuate civilians,” Tom said.

“Of course.” She searched his face. “Do you have any idea how long we have?”

Tom shook his head. “Could be minutes. Could be weeks.”

“Well, we’re set up to carry fifteen passengers in style, thirty if they’re willing to put up with some crowding. I expect we could carry sixty for an emergency transit to Garnet.”

“That’s great,” Tom said, relieved. “We’ll start directing people toward your ship.”

She nodded. “We’ll go warm up the engines.” She gestured to her crew and they rounded the tree.

“We’re taking this batch and leaving, Cap,” Hoskins said.

Tom looked at him, startled. Roget was on his way to a side corridor, a couple of dozen refugees trailing behind him. These were the first people to respond to Tom’s warning. They carried only a few possessions, clustering together and exchanging tense, frightened looks.

“Good,” said Tom. “Launch immediately. I’ll see you at Garnet.”

“Right,” said Hoskins, and hurried after Roget.

For the next few minutes people trickled into the plaza, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. The families disturbed Tom the most. A war zone with the Dawn Alliance involved was no place for children. Some of the evacuees approached Tom and his marines, most of them with frightened, insistent questions that Tom couldn’t answer. The marines directed everyone toward Dome Four and the Thornapple.

“Keep directing traffic,” Tom said. “I need to find the crew of the Spring Sunshine.”

“Hang on, Sir,” Lachance said, and nodded toward something behind him. Tom turned.

A man came marching across the plaza with almost a dozen people trailing behind him. The man wore a suit, and most of his followers wore business attire. He was short and bald, with a fringe of wispy grey hair above his ears and an expression of shocked indignation.

“Well, this should be fun,” Tom muttered, and grinned sourly as Lachance chuckled.

The bald man planted himself in front of Tom, his entourage hanging back several paces. He drew himself up to his full height, the top of his head just a bit higher than Tom’s shoulder, and glared. “I’m Administrator Pelletier!”

“Captain Thrush,” Tom said wearily.

“Acting captain, didn’t you say?” Pelletier folded his arms. “Let me talk to your commanding officer.”

“She’s dead,” Tom snapped. “I told you that already.”

“You’ve got people panicking and fleeing the station,” Pelletier said. “You can’t do that! You have to stop this.” With the air of someone making an important pronouncement, he declared, “I want you to leave this station now.”

Tom laughed. He couldn’t help himself. Blood suffused the little man’s face, and it just made Tom laugh harder.

“I won’t have this!” Pelletier was almost shouting. “I’ll have the constable remove you!”

He just wants attention, Tom realized. I don’t think he cares if the Dawn Alliance is coming or not. Something is happening and he needs to be in the middle of it. Whatever people are doing, he needs to oppose it so he can be a big shot.

Tom lifted his gaze, looking over the top of Pelletier’s head at the cluster of people in business suits and starched shirts. “The United Worlds is at war,” he said. “This is not some kind of sick joke. They’ve attacked Garnet. They’ve attacked my ship. They’ve killed half my crew. This is not an abstract political debate. This is a matter of life and death. People have died already, and a lot more people are going to die before this war is over.

“Everyone who evacuates now will still be alive and free a week from now. Those of you who stay,” and he glanced at Pelletier, “will soon be guests of the Dawn Alliance. So make your choice, but choose quickly.”

Pelletier said, “We’re not going anywhere.”

“The Thornapple is currently loading passengers,” Tom said, ignoring him. “Dome Four.”

Several of Pelletier’s entourage slipped away from the group, joining the flow of evacuees.

Pelletier watched them leave, then returned his gaze to Tom. He looked shaken, as if the reality of the situation was finally sinking in.

“You need to evacuate,” Tom told him softly.

“You ��� you have to protect us! You’re the Navy. It’s your job!” Pelletier seemed to swell, his uncertainty vanishing under a fresh wave of outrage. “I demand your protection!”

Tom stepped around him and walked up to one of his followers, a woman in a pinstripe suit. A hunted look came into her eyes, and she looked at the people around her, avoiding Tom’s gaze.

“I need to find the Spring Sunshine,” Tom said. “Can you tell me where it’s docked?”

She stared at him, completely flustered, and didn’t speak.

“Dome Two,” said the man behind her. “Are we really at war?”

Tom, suddenly fed right up, said, “Of course we’re at bloody war! Do you think I would come here and make it all up? You people are idiots!” Rage rose inside him, and he fought it. You’re a captain now. Think about your mission. Navy captains don’t punch civilians for asking stupid questions.

He took a deep breath and said, “Which way is Dome Two?”

No one spoke, but a man pointed to the left.

“Thank you.” Tom turned his back on a sputtering Pelletier and walked away.

In a corridor on the far side of the plaza he had to push his way through a crowd of local women, all of them elderly, who muttered and glowered at him as if the war was his idea. At least they were moving in the direction of the Spring Sunshine. He got past them and made it to the connecting tunnel to Dome Two, where he found a man in an elaborate merchant captain’s uniform coming toward him, a woman in a similar uniform at his elbow.

All three of them stopped. The captain doffed a hat decorated in gold braid, looked at Tom’s uniform, and said, “Lieutenant?”

“Acting Captain Thrush.”

That made the captain’s eyebrows climb his forehead. He recovered quickly and said, “I’m Captain Mayberry of the Spring Sunshine. This is my First Officer, Lieutenant Jackson.”

“I was on my way to find you,” Tom said. “This base has to be evacuated immediately. Your ship will have to carry evacuees back to Garnet. It’s the nearest safe place.” Relatively safe, he thought, remembering the carriers coming out of the hyperspace clouds. Please, let it be safe.

Mayberry spent a moment absorbing that. “We’ll do what we can, of course,” he said. “I fear it may be less than you’re hoping for, though.” He glanced behind him. “We overtaxed our engines fleeing from those pirates. Thank you, by the way, for your assistance. We never had a chance to thank you at the time.”

Tom nodded impatiently.

“We’ve been doing a complete overhaul. Our starboard engine is disassembled. Port Services is refurbishing the core right now.” He gave Tom a pained look. “They don’t expect to finish for another three days.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “Where can I find Port Services?”

Chapter 26

“We haven’t actually started the refurb.” The burly man lifted a greasy cap from his head, scratched at a bald spot, and shrugged. “If it’s an emergency, you could always put the core back in. You’ll lose some efficiency, but it’ll get you back to Garnet no problem.” He gestured at the other side of the wide service bay that filled half of Dome Two. The engine core was an enormous thing, easily ten meters long and almost three meters wide, hanging from a couple of slings near a wall that curved to follow the shape of the dome.

Tom looked at the mechanic. His coveralls sported a name tag with “Dean” stencilled on it. Tom said, “How long will it take to reassemble everything?” He looked at Mayberry, who looked at Dean.

“You can take possession right now if you like,” said Dean. “We can’t help you with installation, though. Not without a new work order. And my boys are all gone to get their things. Everybody’s evacuating.”

“They think they’re evacuating,” Tom said. “The Thornapple is the only other ship in port, and it’s full.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie. The ship might be full by now. He was ready to take on refugees in the Kestrel, but Dean didn’t have to know that. “If you and your boys want to leave before the Dawn Alliance gets here, I suggest you bring them back and get this core reinstalled.”

Dean’s eyebrows drew together. “Here, now! You’re trying to blackmail me into working for free!”

“No, you’re trying to hold the rest of the civilians on Sunshine hostage. You’re demanding money or you’ll let everybody die.”

Dean sputtered. “That’s ��� I’m not ��� you can’t-”

“Send Captain Mayberry an invoice later, all right? In the meantime, will you call your team and get to work?”

“This isn’t fair,” Dean said plaintively.

“Half my crew is dead,” Tom said. “Don’t talk to me about fair.”

Dean’s shoulders slumped, and he nodded. He tilted his head to one side, activating his implants, and twitched his fingers in the air. “I need all of you back in the shop right away. Don���t give me no attitude, either. The only way we’re getting out of here is on the Spring Sunshine, and that means we gotta put that core back in, right away.” He tilted his head the other way, then sighed. “We’ll get right on it.”

“How long will it take?” Tom said.

“Two hours, everything goes well.” Dean scratched his bald spot again. “That’s if we do everything proper. We cut corners, we can get ‘er done in an hour.” He frowned. “Do we got two hours?”

Tom shrugged. “Probably?”

“We’ll do it right, then,” Dean said. “It’s safer. Any hostile ships turn up, we’ll speed things up.”

“My crew is at your disposal if we can help,” Mayberry said.

“Thanks, Cap’n,” Dean said. “Actually, if you want to spot for me, I’ll bring the big hauler over and we’ll get the core out of the sling.”

The two men moved away, Dean talking and pointing. Jackson grinned at Tom and said, “That was some nice diplomacy, Captain.”

He chuckled. “The things they don’t teach you in Basic Training.”

“Dean’s a good guy,” she said. “He won’t try to send us an invoice. Once he thinks it through he’ll be ashamed he even brought it up.”

“How many passengers can your ship take?”

“Twenty, officially,” Jackson said. “I’m sure we can do fifty or sixty if we have to. They won’t be too happy by the time we reach Garnet, but we’ll make it.” She smiled ruefully. “If we have to lug them all the way back to Earth they’ll mutiny, and I won’t blame them.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Tom said. I hope it won’t come to that.

“I better go help,” Jackson said. She turned to follow Mayberry, and Tom headed back to the plaza.

“The Thornapple’s gone, Sir.”

Tom nodded to Unger. “That’s good, I guess.” He looked around the plaza, which was filling with refugees. They stood in clusters, bags and parcels heaped around their feet, fidgeting or talking quietly. “What’s going on here?”

“They’re using this as a gathering point while they waits for the Spring Sunshine to start boarding.” He pointed. “These fellas are organizing it.”

Tom looked where he pointed and saw a heavyset woman in the same dark uniform as the constable he’d spoken to earlier. She tried to walk past a group of evacuees, stopped when someone plucked at her sleeve, and spoke to them, her hands making placating motions in the air.

A man in the same uniform approached, spoke to her briefly, then looked around, spotted Tom, and headed toward him. Tom was surprised to recognize the same constable who’d accused him of disturbing the peace.

“Captain Thrush,” the constable said as he came to a halt. “Mr. Unger.”

Unger said, “Hello, Smitty.”

Tom said, “I thought you’d be on the Thornapple.”

“I have my duty,” Smitty said. He reddened a bit. “Once I stopped panicking.” He gestured around the plaza. “This is everybody. We’ve been through every dome. Dominik and Shirley are making a final sweep of Domes Three and Four, but if there’s anybody left, they’re hiding.”

Tom surveyed the plaza, doing a quick count. Roughly three dozen people stood under the tree or sat on benches or at picnic tables. The Spring Sunshine would be able to take all of them without much trouble. “Good work.”

“The only ones who are going to be a problem are that lot.” Smitty nodded toward a cluster of people standing in front of an empty caf��. “They refuse to leave. They say somebody has to stay and take care of the base.” He snorted. “They seem quite offended with the rest of us for abandoning them.”

Tom looked toward the group and found them all glaring in his direction. It was Pelletier’s followers, looking stiff and angry in their business suits. He couldn���t see Pelletier at first, until the man peered around the shoulder of a taller woman to shoot daggers at Tom with his eyes.

“I suppose we’ll have to haul them out by force,” Tom said. “Not until all the civilians are loaded, though.” He looked at Smitty. “I could use your help for that. You and your team.”

Smitty didn’t look happy at the prospect, but he nodded. “If we’re abandoning the base, I guess I don’t have to worry about them firing me.”

Tom chuckled. “That’s the spirit. It should be about two hours until they start boarding.” He thought for a moment. “Actually, it’s two hours until the ship should be able to lift off. We should get people boarding in about an hour and a half.”

Smitty’s eyes slid sideways as he checked the time on his implants. “Can do,” he said. “I’ll go talk to Captain Mayberry.” He hurried away.

“If we leaves the morons behind, everybody else will have a lot more elbow room,” Unger said.

“Don’t tempt me.” Tom took a deep breath, looking around. “What am I forgetting?”

“I can’t think of anything,” Unger said. “That’s life in the military. You spends a lot of time standing around waiting for the other side to do something.” He gestured in the direction of the Spring Sunshine. “Or waiting for somebody else to do their part.”

Tom nodded, telling himself to relax. He felt an overpowering urge to do something, though. Leaving Unger, he walked around the big elm tree, wondering if the tree would survive the war. It would be a shame if it died or was destroyed. It was beautiful, and it had taken decades to grow.

A small face peeked around the trunk at him, then drew back. Tom stopped walking and waited. After a moment the face reappeared, a little girl no more than six or seven years old. She stared up at him, eyes wide and unblinking, then stepped into view. She wore a pink dress and shiny pink slippers, and a pink bow decorated her hair.

“Hello,” Tom said. “My name is Tom Thrush.”

Her nose crinkled. “That’s a funny name.”

“Rebecca! That’s not a nice thing to say.” A woman came around the tree, reaching for the little girl’s hand. She and the girl had the same black curly hair, the same pointed chin.

“That’s all right,” Tom said. “It is a funny name.” He smiled at Rebecca. “It’s Cree.”

She cocked her head. “What’s Cree?”

“Cree are from Earth,” he said, “but there’s a lot of us in space now. We were one of the indigenous tribes in North America.” Seeing her blank look, he added, “That’s a continent back on Earth.”

By the look on her face she was already bored with this history and geography lesson. She said, “Are you in the army?”

“I’m in the United Worlds Navy,” he said. When her nose crinkled again he said, “It’s like the army.”

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “Mommy says bad people are coming here. She says we have to run away.”

Tom nodded, aware of the mother’s eyes watching him. “Your mommy is right.”

“Are the bad people going to hurt us?”

“No.” He wished he felt more certain, but he shook his head as if there was no doubt. “You’re going to fly away in a couple of hours. You’ll be long gone by the time the bad people get here.”

“Mommy says the ship needs fixing.”

Tom, who was almost beginning to miss his conversation with Pelletier, nodded. “Yes. The repairs are almost done, though.” He started to edge away, hoping the little girl would accept this reassurance.

He should have known better.

“What if the bad people get here before the ship is fixed?”

He opened his mouth to tell her there was no danger of that. Then he hesitated, his mouth open. Finally he stepped toward her and dropped into a squat so their eyes were at the same level. “That might happen,” he said. “But I have a spaceship in orbit.” He pointed at the ceiling. “It’s a warship. If bad people come, I’ll protect you. I promise.”

She stared at him, solemn as a statue. Finally she said, “Okay.”

“Your job,” said Tom, “is to stay close to your mother and be brave. Can you do that?”

Rebecca responded by lifting a hand to her forehead in a grave salute. Tom saluted her back, then stood. “Good girl.”

Unger tapped him on the shoulder, filling Tom with relief. “Sir, I needs to speak to you.”

Either he’s very perceptive, or there’s some new crisis. He let the marine lead him away from Rebecca and her mother. “What is it?”

“A ship just came out of hyperspace. The Dawn Alliance is here.”

Tom wanted to say that he needed a moment to think. His subconscious, though, had been preparing without his active attention. He was surprised to find that he knew exactly what to do. “Go to the Spring Sunshine and tell them to hurry up with the repairs.”

Unger nodded and left at a run.

“Smitty!” Tom bawled.

The constable came hurrying over. Tom, seeing that every eye in the plaza was on him anyway, pitched his voice so everyone could hear. “The Dawn Alliance is in the system. We need to get everyone aboard the Spring Sunshine.” He held a hand up as people started to move. “Now, the ship is still finishing repairs. She won’t be leaving for at least half an hour. So there’s no need to panic, no need to trample anyone. Move in an orderly fashion to the ship.”

People filed toward the corridor leading to Dome Two. Tom walked toward Pelletier and his people, Lachance coming over to join him.

A row of stubborn faces stared at him as he came to a stop. “I was going to forcibly remove you,” Tom said. “I still would if time permitted. But we’re out of time. I urge you to get to the Spring Sunshine while you can.”

No one moved. Pelletier had seven followers left. All of them looked stubborn, implacable.

“Suit yourselves,” Tom said. “Don’t interfere with the evacuation. Beyond that, all I can say is good luck with the Dawn Alliance.” He turned away, looking toward the sound of running footsteps.

It was Unger. He joined Tom and Lachance, then glanced at Pelletier’s people a few paces away. He didn’t bother lowering his voice as he said, “Are we herding the idiots onto the ship?”

“No. We’re heading back to the shuttle.” Tom looked around at the rapidly emptying plaza. “We’ve done what we can here. Now our place is on the Kestrel.” Pelletier, foolish as he might be, was right. It was the Navy’s job to protect the people of Sunshine Base. “We have to stop that ship.”

Chapter 27

The shuttle rose from the surface of Argo, acceleration combining with the ramping up of the shuttle’s gravity field until Tom felt as heavy as an elephant. It was responsibility, not gravity, that really weighed him down.

The cockpit windows showed dark sky, without stars or ships. He brought up a view from the aft camera, watched the base shrink with distance, and told himself he’d done enough. Most of the personnel were safe, and most of those who remained would be clear of the base and into hyperspace in a few minutes. As for Pelletier and his followers, well, they had a right to go to hell their own way. I did what I could. It wasn’t enough, but it was all I could do.

Stars emerged from the darkness as the shuttle cleared the atmosphere. The Kestrel loomed ahead, expanding as they approached, and Tom imagined the frigate suddenly racing away. The bridge crew had to be considering it. This was a dangerous place to be, after all. Were they tempted to flee?

Did they think they’d be safer if they left their captain behind? He kept leading them farther and farther from Garnet, after all.

Were they right?

He thumbed a button on the dash, calling the Kestrel. When the frigate responded he said, “What’s your status?”

“We’re good for the moment, Sir,” O’Reilly responded. “I’ve got one ship. No other portals, no other contacts. It looks like maybe a light cruiser.” He sounded ��� not panicky, but certainly rattled. “What do we do, Sir?”

Don���t leave without me. He managed not to say the words out loud. “Watch it. Do standard laser evasion. And sound battle stations.” He glanced at his console, which told him only that there was a ship with a Dawn Alliance transponder, and the direction. The Kestrel had better scanners and, frankly, better operators. “Have you got a range?”

“Eight hundred and thirty kilometers. Closing fast. It’s definitely a light cruiser, Sir.” O’Reilly sounded calmer now.

“Do you have time to pick us up before they reach you?”

“Easy,” O’Reilly said, and Tom let his shoulders sag in relief. “They’re, let me see, twelve minutes out if they keep accelerating. We’ll have you aboard in nine.” The speakers went silent for a moment. “We’re moving toward you. That’ll shave a minute off the collection time.”

“Good man,” Tom said. There would be emergency vac suits in the back of the shuttle. If he waited until he boarded the Kestrel he could put on his own suit, but every moment was precious. “Suit up,” he called to the others in the back of the shuttle. “Then send someone up here to spell me so I can suit up too.”

By the time he returned to his seat the shuttle was gliding toward the yawning hatch of the shuttle bay. Tom was back on his feet before touchdown, one hand pressed impatiently to the handplate beside the shuttle’s main hatch. He scrambled out as the hatch slid open, stumbling as the Kestrel resumed evasive manoeuvers. He steadied himself and headed for the bridge at a run.

Don’t run. It’ll alarm the crew. The little voice spoke sense, he knew, but he was completely unable to slow down. Every moment counts, he told himself. I’m not panicking. I’m just not wasting any time.

It didn’t matter, because he didn’t encounter a single person in the short stretch of corridors and stairwells between the shuttle bay and the bridge. He slowed to a walk for the last few steps before he stepped through the hatch and onto the bridge.

Several heads swivelled to look at him, and the sense of relief from the crew was so strong it stopped Tom in his tracks. Do they think I know what to do? I haven’t got the faintest idea. Why can’t they see it?

It was a singularly unhelpful thought, and he suppressed it, crossing to the captain’s chair and taking a seat. He’d gotten used to the chair in the long days since he’d taken command. Now, though, in the face of a crisis, he felt the significance of it more strongly than he had since the day he took over.

Oh my God, I don’t know what to do. I’m not a real captain. I can’t handle this.

Well, what would a real captain do? Or say?

“Status,” Tom said, surprised that he sounded quite calm.

“The bogey is headed directly toward us,” O’Reilly said. “They haven’t tried to contact us, and we haven’t tried to talk to them. They’re about eleven minutes out.” The other ship had stopped accelerating, then.

Cruisers, even light cruisers, were a class up from frigates. The bogey would have more mass, more gun turrets, more missiles in her magazines. She would be able to dish out more damage, and soak up more damage when the Kestrel fought back. She was heading straight for the frigate because she knew she would win this battle.

“We have plenty of time to bug out,” O’Reilly said. “A course of sixty degrees by fifteen will get us far enough from Argo to open a portal in about eight minutes, and it’ll increase our distance from the bogey at the same time.” His hands rose, hovering over his console as he waited for Tom to give the order.

Tom opened his mouth. Take us out of here. Those were the words he wanted desperately to utter. Take us out of here. Get us back to Garnet. Get us out of danger before someone else gets killed.

Before I get killed.

Instead, he said, “Belay that.”

O’Reilly said, “But-” then closed his mouth.

“The last transport is still loading back at Sunshine. We have to buy them enough time to escape.” He turned to the com station. “Onda. Have you contacted the base?”

Onda nodded. “They know about the ship. They say they’re hurrying.” Onda looked at Tom with wide eyes. He looked frightened. And perhaps a bit betrayed. I’m his captain. I’m supposed to keep him safe. I’m not supposed to put him in harm’s way.

Tom wanted desperately to follow that thought to its logical conclusion, to bug out and tell himself he was doing his duty. He felt himself wavering, and closed his eyes, remembering little Rebecca and her grave salute.

He opened his eyes. He’d made his decision, but a bowel-watering fear still filled him. I need to make it irrevocable. Otherwise I’ll lose my nerve. And Rebecca and her family and all the others will pay the price.

He grabbed the microphone on the arm of his chair. He brought the mic up near his mouth, and heard the bridge speakers hum as the mic went live.

“Now hear this. This is the captain speaking.” His own voice came from the bridge speakers, amplified, distracting him. He hesitated, gathering his thoughts, gathering his nerve.

“A Dawn Alliance light cruiser has entered the system and is threatening Sunshine Base. The last civilians are still evacuating. The only thing between the light cruiser and the civilians is us.”

The bridge was silent, every eye fixed on him. It would be the same all over the ship, the crew hanging on his words, waiting to find out how much trouble they were in.

“Ever since the outbreak of the war, we have been mostly concerned with our own safety. It was always my intention to deliver you promptly to Garnet as soon as our message of warning was delivered to Sunshine. I had planned to avoid combat.

“However, the situation has changed. A large number of civilians are in grave danger. In the final analysis, this is a ship of war, and we are soldiers. Whether spacers, marines, United Worlds crew or Havenites or ��� free-range revolutionaries, all of us share one goal. We protect our people. We defend the innocent in times of war.”

Words that had rung hollow in his mind sounded authentic, undeniable, when he spoke them out loud. He was right, he realized. By the looks on their faces, the bridge crew realized it as well.

“The civilians on Sunshine are not armed. They cannot defend themselves. They look to us for their protection, and we will not fail them. We will do our duty and buy them the time they need to escape.” Most of them, anyway. The ones who aren’t too stubborn and foolish to flee. He took a deep breath, wishing his mouth weren’t so dry. “To someone who didn’t know you, this voyage might have looked like a nightmare proposition. We’ve assembled a most unlikely crew. However, I’ve seen each of you rise to one challenge after another, again and again. I’ve been deeply impressed with every one of you. There’s no one I would rather have with me in a time of war.”

He pushed the microphone down, heard a click from the speakers as the connection broke. He got the mic properly stowed, then looked around the bridge. It might have been his imagination, but he thought the atmosphere had changed. The crew was no longer frightened, no longer thinking of escape.

They were thinking of the civilians they must protect. They were thinking of war.

Yes, his inner voice mocked. You gave such a brilliant speech that they’re all inspired and ready to die at your order.

O’Reilly glanced up from his console, gave Tom the barest hint of a nod, and looked down again.

“All right,” said Tom. “This won’t be an easy fight. Let’s make sure we’re ready.”

Reports came in from one station after another. “Gun crews are standing by.”

“Damage control teams are ready.”

“Missiles are loaded and ready to fly.”

“We’re ready here in Operations,” Trenholm said, sounding almost indecently cheerful. “I hate having to do real work, though, so try not to get yourselves killed, okay?”

“I’ll do my best not to inconvenience you,” Tom said dryly. “O’Reilly. What’s the bogey doing?”

“Coming straight at us.”

“Good,” Tom said as convincingly as he could. “Fire lasers, and continue standard evasion.”

The stars wobbled as the Kestrel jinked and dodged in a series of random movements. The approaching cruiser would do the same, each ship hoping to score a lucky hit. The range of a laser was effectively infinite in the vacuum of space. Accuracy was the only challenge.

A particularly sharp turn made the seat move beneath him, and he saw the bridge crew rock gently back and forth. The Kestrel’s internal force fields absorbed most of the motion and kept them all from whipping around. “Benson fields on.”

“Benson fields on,” echoed Harris at the Tactical console. Any incoming missiles would have their electronics scrambled at a range of almost three kilometers, which gave the Kestrel an excellent chance of dodging.

Tom checked the console in front of him, watching the range between the ships close. How long until they start firing missiles?

He had his answer a moment later when a buzzer sounded at the tactical station. “Missiles!” said Harris. The man hunched over his console for a moment, then straightened up and turned to look at Tom. “Three missiles inbound. Destroyed at a range of about fifty kilometers.”

The laser crews would be sitting idle, watching as the ship’s computer controlled the weapons. The Kestrel had sliced those missiles into pieces before Harris even had time to look down at his console.

“Do we shoot back?” said Harris.

“Just with lasers,” Tom said. “Let them waste missiles if they want to.” He’d probe their defenses with a missile soon, but not until the range was closer.

“What if they launch a nuke?”

Tom looked around the bridge, not sure who had spoken. He sensed a tension that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and a cold fist clenched in his guts. He was scared of a nuke. They all were.

“There won’t be a nuke. They’d have fired it already. If they fire one now, we’ll take it out with lasers.” He wasn’t entirely convinced by his own argument, but the crew seemed to accept it. He checked the range on his console, watched the numbers count down, and thumbed a button that opened a channel to the missile bay. He spent a moment struggling to remember the name of the man who commanded the bay. “Franco. This is the captain. Prepare me a smart missile.”

“Already in the launcher,” said Franco.

“Stand by for just a moment.” He watched his console until the range closed to a hundred kilometers. “Fire the missile now!”

“Missile’s away,” said Harris. Tom glimpsed the missile, or at least the flare of light from the tail, before it vanished in the distance. Smart missiles dodged and zigzagged as they flew, avoiding a lot of laser fire. They carried a primitive scanner package, calculated the range to their target, and stopped evading just outside the reach of a Benson field. The missile would coast in for the last few kilometers, unconcerned with disruptions to its electronics.

A good defense package could still destroy a smart missile at considerable range. Tom kept his eyes glued to his console, fighting the urge to hold his breath as he watched the missile close with the enemy cruiser. There was even a glorious moment when he thought it would get through. Then the yellow dot on his screen that represented the missile flashed red and disappeared.

“Destroyed at a range of three kilometers,” Harris reported, and Tom let his shoulders slump. The cruiser had tagged the missile at almost the instant it entered their Benson field. If they’d been sloppy he might have tried a salvo of missiles in the hope that a few might get through. It was clear, though, that it would be a waste of ammunition.

A siren sounded, just for an instant, making Tom jump in his seat. He looked at Harris.

“Laser strike,” Harris said. “Aft hull. No damage reported. We probably have a nasty black mark in the paint, though.”

We’re doing well so far, Tom realized. They must be blazing away at us with everything they’ve got, and that’s their first hit. He checked the range; sixty kilometers and closing fast. “Back. Maintain a range of ��� fifty kilometers.” If we can avoid a toe-to-toe slug match we might still survive this. We’ll stay far enough back to dodge most of what they throw at us. We’ll keep them busy chasing us, and then we’ll get out of here.

The siren blared once more, and Tom made a mental note to suggest to the Admiralty that they tone down the alarm. It was another laser scorch with no significant damage. He didn’t need to almost jump out of his skin every time it happened.

Onda turned to look at Tom. “We’ve got a message from Captain Mayberry.” Tom nodded, and Onda said, “He’s about to start his engines. He’ll still need a couple of minutes before he can take off, though.”

I hope he bloody hurries. The sooner he gets out of here, the sooner we can turn tail and run.

Tom knew when the freighter fired its engines. He knew because O’Reilly turned in his seat and said, “The bogey just changed direction.”

Tom checked his own console and suppressed a curse. The cruiser’s course change was slight ��� less than fifteen degrees ��� but her new destination was clear.

She was heading straight for Sunshine.

“Intercept course,” Tom barked. “Get us in her path.”

O’Reilly nodded, and the stars slid past as the Kestrel moved sideways. They didn’t have to go far to place themselves back in the path of the cruiser.

“Franco. Another smart missile. Fire as soon as you’re ready.” He looked at O’Reilly. “Slow our retreat. Let them close to forty K.” The missile wouldn’t get through, but it would remind the cruiser that they were up against a warship. He had to keep them focused on the Kestrel.

“Range is-” O’Reilly paused as another siren blast drowned him out. “Range is forty K.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the siren sounded again.

“That one got through,” Harris said. “Hull breach on Deck One forward.” After a moment he added, “Repair crews are on it.”

“What’s the bogey doing?” Tom said. Besides shooting us full of holes.

“They’re ���” O’Reilly leaned over his console, then looked up. “They’re pretty much ignoring us.” He grimaced. “Oh, they’re doing the standard evasion. But they’re not slowing down.”

“Get me an update from Mayberry.”

Onda murmured into a microphone, then said, “He says he needs ten more minutes.”

Tom’s calm nod required a massive effort of will. By the time the freighter took off, the cruiser would be on top of it. There was nothing else for it.

“O’Reilly. We’re done retreating.”

Chapter 28

There was no sense of deceleration as the Kestrel slowed. Tom caught his first glimpse of the other ship, though, a glittering point of light that could have been a star except for the way it wobbled. A moment later he lost it among the stars.

“We’re quicker than they are,” he said. “It’s our one advantage, and we can make the most of it at close range.” It wasn’t the most convincing claim, but if it gave the crew hope ���

A series of metallic pings echoed through the bridge, making Tom flinch. A line of faint marks appeared on the window, running from the bottom starboard to the top center. Tom rose from his seat and walked forward, peering at the window.

Each mark was a tiny pit in the glass.

“They’ve got guns,” he said. The cruiser was even better armed than he’d thought, and it scared him. He kept his voice light, though. “Doesn’t look like they amount to much.” He returned to his chair and sat, doing his best to look casual.

“We’re getting our own licks in, too, Sir,” Harris said. “I’m sure we’ve hit them half a dozen times.” His bravado would have been more convincing if the damage siren hadn’t sounded yet again, the moment he stopped talking.

The siren sounded again, then again, and Tom barked, “Somebody silence that!”

“Missiles,” said Harris. Tom looked at his console, saw nine points of red light racing toward the Kestrel, and watched them wink out one at a time as the Kestrel’s lasers did their work. The last missile looked terrifyingly close when it vanished from the display, but the actual range was several kilometers.

The hatch to the bridge slammed shut, and Harris said, “Hull breach on Deck Two.” He looked at his screen. “Also Deck One in the aft section.”

The cruiser was clearly visible now, though it looked no bigger than a housefly. Tom tapped his console and brought up a view from the forward scanners. The cruiser filled the little screen, shaking and jerking as the computer compensated for the other ship’s evasive manoeuvers. Black lines marred the front of the hull, burns from the Kestrel’s lasers. “We’re hurting them,” he said. “Keep firing.” It was a useless order ��� the ship’s computer was doing all the shooting, and even if it hadn’t been, it wasn’t as if anyone was going to let up on a trigger ��� but it helped remind the crew that the frigate was, indeed, fighting back.

A dark triangle flashed across the screen, and Tom leaned in close, peering at the display. “She just lost a hull plate. Harris, tell the computer to target that spot if it can. Lower starboard quadrant on the front of her hull.”

“Got it,” said Harris, and tapped at his console. A moment later he said, “Damn it. She’s turning.”

Tom checked his display. The cruiser was swinging her nose to starboard, hiding the breach in her hull. “Excellent,” he said, though he believed the opposite. “It means we’ve hurt her.”

“It also means her port-side missile tubes are pointing right at us,” said Harris. It would shave most of a second off the launch time of her missiles.

“Target those missile tubes,” Tom said. “They just made a tactical error. Let’s make the most of it.” He found the button for the missile bay. “Launch a dozen dummies.” Dummy missiles were cheap things without warheads or anything but the most rudimentary targeting systems. They were usually used in conjunction with regular missiles to distract anti-missile systems. Right now, Tom just wanted the cruiser’s guns to have something else to shoot at.

“Missiles,” Harris said. It took Tom a moment to realize he meant incoming missiles, not the dummies. He started to drop his gaze to his tactical display, then flinched as several concussive impacts rocked the Kestrel.

“Three strikes!” Harris’s voice rose. “Two hits amidships. One to the aft section.” He was silent for a moment, reading the damage report. “It’s too bad we never delivered the top cargo pod. It’s pretty much destroyed.”

Tom’s thumb had just touched the button for the missile bay when Franco’s voice came over the bridge speakers. “Captain!” He spent a moment coughing, then said, “We took some bad damage.”

“I need some missiles,” Tom said. “What can you give me?”

“We’re in the corridor,” Franco said. “Those of us who are still alive. The whole bay is in flames.”

A chill spread across Tom’s skin as he imagined warheads cooking off and exploding. He pushed the thought away. It wasn’t as if the warheads were full of gunpowder, after all. They needed electronic detonation to explode. “I need you to get back in there.” He thought for a moment. “Find some marines. Pull them off whatever they’re doing. Tell them I need you back in that bay.”

“Right,” said Franco, and the speakers went silent.

“Missiles!” Harris cried, and Tom saw a flash of motion between the ships, then a dozen glowing points of light that elongated as they came closer. It was the rocket trails behind the missiles, he realized. By the time he processed the thought the missiles were already past.

“Damage?” he said. Then, “Harris!”

Harris turned to stare at him, eyes wide a bloodless face.

“I didn’t hear impacts,” Tom said. “What damage did we take?”

For a long moment the man just stared. Then he looked down, seemed to stare at his console without seeing it, and shook his head. Finally he said, “No damage, Sir. They missed us.”

They hit our Benson field, went ballistic, and missed us when we dodged. God have mercy, we won’t be that lucky again. “Get us in close,” Tom said. His own voice was rising, he realized, and made himself speak more softly. “I want us hull to hull. I want their missiles already inside our Benson field by the time they clear the tubes.” It would put the Kestrel inside the cruiser’s Benson fields, but since they couldn’t fire missiles anyway, it hardly mattered.

O’Reilly didn’t respond, just worked his console, and the Kestrel surged forward.

“Harris.”

Harris looked up.

“Pull yourself together. I won’t tell you again.”

“Right, Sir.” Harris pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Sorry, Captain.”

“Take us up,” Tom said to O’Reilly. “Around her hull. Get us away from those missile tubes.” Soon the only way for the cruiser to fire her missiles would be in a straight line, in whatever direction her tubes pointed.

He knew they’d hit the other ship’s Benson field when every screen on the bridge flashed white. That was fine with Tom. It meant the cruiser was experiencing the same problems. The erratic jerking of the stars stopped as the Kestrel’s computer-controlled evasive manoeuvers halted. The cruiser stopped wobbling as well.

The other ship still looked small, almost harmless, but it grew rapidly as the range closed. A distant flash of light told him a laser was firing. The Kestrel was no longer evading, but without computer assistance she was far enough away to be quite hard to hit.

“We’ve disabled at least one of their starboard missile tubes,” Harris said. “We might have gotten them both. I can’t be sure at this range.”

“They’re coming at us,” O’Reilly announced. “Looks like we’re going toe to toe.”

Tom’s instincts told him to stay back, to keep to the very edge of the Benson field. If the cruiser surprised him and pulled away, though, the Kestrel could be on the receiving end of another missile barrage. “Keep closing,” he said. And what next? You’ve got a tiger by the tail now.

He ignored the mocking voice in his head. One crisis at a time. We’re safe from missile fire, unless they-

“They’re rotating,” O’Reilly said, and Tom’s stomach sank. He watched the cruiser spin along its axis, showing her top and then her port side. The dark ovals of two missile tubes appeared, then stretched into perfect circles as the ship continued to rotate.

Harris spoke urgently into the microphone on his console, telling the gun crews to target the missile tubes. Light blazed in the center of each tube and Tom knew it was too late.

Two missiles streaked out, crossing the void in less than a second. Light filled the bridge window, and Tom raised a hand to protect his eyes. The light was gone before his hand could move more than a few centimeters.

A near miss. A very, very near miss. He stood frozen, a hand in front of his eyes, trying to throw off a paralyzing horror. Those missiles must have missed us by a couple of meters at the most.

Momentum kept the cruiser spinning, taking the missile tubes off-target. He expected the cruiser to reverse its spin and try another salvo, but it continued to rotate. Are they going to use the starboard tube on us?

He had his answer a moment later. He saw the belly of the ship, made out the squat, ugly shape of a gun turret, then flinched involuntarily as the arms of his chair vibrated against his elbows. Metallic impacts echoed around him, and a finger-thick hole appeared in the deck plates just in front of his feet. Bits of metal burst upward, and he stared at the hole in baffled astonishment.

His ears popped, a siren shrilled, and the faceplate of his helmet slammed down. He looked around, saw a matching hole in the bulkhead behind him, and realized what had happened. They holed us. They hit a spot with laser damage and put a bullet right through the ship.

How did they miss me?

His gaze returned to the window in time to see the turret on the cruiser fly apart as a gun crew on the Kestrel took vengeance. Then the cruiser vanished beneath them.

“Status?” he said, wondering if the radio in his suit had found the same frequency as the bridge crew. He hoped he wasn’t broadcasting to the entire ship.

“I don’t know where to start,” O’Reilly said. “We took a small puncture on Deck Two forward. We’re losing air slowly.” O’Reilly waved an arm. “The pressure in here is still over ninety percent.”

“What’s that cruiser doing?”

As if in answer, a tremendous concussion rocked the bridge. There was enough air to transmit the sound of an explosion, even through Tom’s helmet. He clutched the arms of his chair as the impact nearly threw him to the deck.

“I think they’re firing missiles,” O’Reilly said dryly. “In fact, I’m almost certain.” His hands were on the helm controls, and the starfield beyond the window rose as the nose of the Kestrel dropped. “I’m getting above her. That should keep us out of missile range.”

With his console dead Tom couldn’t see the relative positions of the two ships. He hit the restart button on the side of the console, watched the screen flicker, and smiled as a limited version of the standard tactical display finally appeared. Instead of a projection showing both ships, he saw a camera view from the belly of the Kestrel.

The cruisier spun beneath them, trying to bring her port missile tubes to bear. The Kestrel was circling the waist of the other ship, staying just ahead of the range of fire of her tubes.

Someone said, “What the-”

Tom looked up in time to see a viscous fluid splash against the bridge windows. The stars went blurry and took on a reddish tinge, and he stared, mystified. In a moment they were through the worst of it, and the view improved moment by moment as the liquid, whatever it was, evaporated.

“That’s fuel,” someone said. “Is it ours or theirs?”

It’s ours, Tom realized. We just did a full circuit around the cruiser. We hit a few thousand gallons of fuel that leaked out after that missile strike. That was not good news, but it was something he could deal with later ��� if there was a later. In the meantime, he had to figure out how to survive this battle.

“Target their nav thrusters,” he said. “I’m getting tired of this race.”

Harris spoke into a microphone, and Tom saw a flash of light as a nav thruster on the cruiser erupted into flame.

“Never mind that,” O’Reilly said. “We need to get back around to her nose. We already knocked out her nose guns.” He gave Tom a quick glance before returning his attention to the helm controls.

“Do it,” said Tom.

The stars changed direction, and he rocked in his seat as the ship whipped sideways. It cost them their forward speed, and a pair of missiles flashed out from the cruiser as the Kestrel passed in front of her missile tubes.

O’Reilly was too busy to give a damage report, but Tom knew the missiles had missed because he didn’t hear or feel an explosion. “Keep targeting their nav thrusters,” he said. This was becoming a game of positioning. He had to hope the cruiser didn’t adopt the same tactic.

“Captain. This is Franco.”

“Don’t tease me, Franco. What have you got?”

“One working missile tube.”

Yes. “We’re inside their Benson field. Don’t bother with smart missiles.”

“I’ve got three ballistic birds and one smart missile that I can get to,” Franco said. “It’s all I’ve got.”

“It’ll do.” Tom thought for a moment. “We’re coming up on the nose of the enemy ship. They’ve got a missing hull plate on the front. That’ll be your target.”

“By dead reckoning?” Franco said doubtfully. “I’ll be lucky to hit the cruiser at all.”

“Do your best,” Tom said. “I’ll settle for anything but a clean miss.” To O’Reilly he said, “Bring us in close. Collision-danger close. We don’t dare miss.”

O’Reilly, focused on the helm controls, didn’t look up. He grunted, and Tom decided that was good enough.

“We lost the forward port laser turret,” Harris said. “We lost a gunner, too. But we got their last forward-facing gun. If we can stay in front of her, we’ll be fine.”

Tom checked his console. He could see the nose and port side of the cruiser. Sparks flew from a nav thruster near her nose, and he could see dark streaks along her hull where the Kestrel’s lasers had scorched her. It all seemed like minor damage, though, insignificant scratches on a ship that was frighteningly large and still well-armed.

The cruiser must have had a functioning nav thruster on her tail, because she was turning, trying to keep up with the circling Kestrel, trying to keep the frigate away from her nose. The Kestrel had to move in a large circle while the cruiser simply rotated, but the Kestrel was nevertheless winning the race. The range between the ships was dropping, which reduced the distance the Kestrel had to travel as she circled. Tom watched on his display as the cruiser grew and seemed to tilt. The Kestrel would be directly in front of the other ship in moments.

“Get ready, Franco.”

“Great suggestion, Sir.” The man sounded more than a little sarcastic, and Tom blinked, startled. Okay, I guess I asked for that.

He wanted to tell O’Reilly to rotate the Kestrel, to bring her missile bay to bear on the nose of the cruiser. But O’Reilly knew what he was doing, and he was completely focused on his manoeuvers. He didn’t need Tom telling him things he already knew. Tom came to the frustrating realization that there was nothing for him to do, and he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, filled with nervous energy.

“Firing,” said Franco. The screen on Tom’s console turned white for a moment as a missile engine flared close to the camera. He saw an explosion, an eruption of crimson flames against the nose of the cruiser, and then another flash of white as a second missile flashed past.

“I’ve lost the angle,” Franco reported.

“Correcting,” said O’Reilly.

Tom stared for a moment into the grainy image on his console, then rose and crossed to the side window. The cruiser was beside and behind the Kestrel, a distance of less than a hundred meters. Tom had to press his helmet against the window to see back that far, but what he saw filled him with hope.

The cruiser drifted, all purpose gone from her movements. She floated away from the Kestrel, tumbling as she went. Her nose was a battered mess, a junkyard of twisted and burned metal.

He stared, and a savage joy rose within him. I’ve got them. They’re crippled. Helpless.

I can kill every last son of a bitch on that ship.

The old familiar rage rose up, red and hot and comfortable, and he clenched his fists, savoring it. At last. Revenge. For Brady, lying there on a pallet waiting to die. For all of them. Hell, for me. They put me through enough. And I finally get to do something about it.

A strange paralysis had ahold of him, though. The anger that he’d always taken for granted seemed oddly foreign, like it was something from outside of him, an unwanted intruder clouding his thoughts and goading him into reckless mistakes. He had a sudden sharp memory of the Pee Deck, looking down at Trainer Reynolds, full of a sick certainty that his temper had just ruined his career. He remembered Captain Alizadeh’s words. You might want to think about not being quite so easy to manipulate.

The pilots who fired the nukes aren’t on that cruiser. Neither are the officers who ordered it, or the politicians who started the war. There isn’t a whole lot of difference between that crew and your own crew.

He took a long, slow, deep breath and unclenched his fists. And looked again at the other ship.

The more he looked, the more his confidence ebbed. One missile seemed to have done very little damage, striking at an oblique angle and blackening a wide expanse of hull plates without causing a breach. The other missile had blasted away some hull plates and torn up the bones of the hull underneath. A strike like that would have crippled the Kestrel, but cruisers were tougher than frigates. It wasn’t a deathblow. It wasn’t even close.

Beyond the cruiser, a bright rectangle appeared against the darkness of deep space. Tom could just make out the outline of the freighter as it vanished into hyperspace. Then the portal closed, and he knew the civilians were safe.

“We’re done here,” he said. “O’Reilly. Get us out of range of her Benson fields, and then open a portal.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” The cruiser dropped away to aft and vanished from sight as the nose of the Kestrel swung around. The starfield steadied, and the deck seemed to tilt ever so slightly under Tom’s feet as the ship accelerated. He returned to his chair and sat down as the pulsing light of a hyperspace portal filled the forward windows. A moment later, the seething energies of seventh-dimensional space enveloped the ship.

Only when O’Reilly said, “Portal closed,” did Tom relax.

“Move us,” he said. “Take us in the direction of Garnet. But drop us back into normal space in, let me see, ten minutes or so.” You sound like a dithering chump. Be precise in your orders. The aftermath of combat had him feeling exhausted and mushy-brained. You need to get off the bridge before you make a fool of yourself.

“We’ll stop somewhere in the deep dark,” he said, speaking as much to clarify his own thoughts to himself as to inform the others. “Somewhere far enough from Argo that the Dawn Alliance won’t stumble on us. We’ll do repairs and make sure we can handle hyperspace. And then we’ll head for Garnet at best speed.”

No one spoke, but he saw a few heads nod. Rising from his seat was surprisingly difficult ��� he felt as if he’d just run a marathon ��� but he managed it. He walked to the bridge exit and checked the hatch panel. It showed normal pressure on both sides of the hatch, so he opened the faceplate of his helmet, then opened the hatch. “I’m going to assess damage. Call me if anything goes wrong.” He stepped through the doorway, then paused. “You all did very well. I’m proud of you.”

He turned away before anyone could answer and went to see what was left of his ship.

Chapter 29

“What the hell do you mean, we’re stranded?”

Sawyer, the front of her vac suit blackened and melted, gave Tom the kind of look that said if she gave voice to what she was thinking, she’d be guilty of gross insubordination. She stank of sweat and burned plastic.

The whole corridor reeked. The two of them stood at the forward end of the spine, on the lower deck. A mixed crew of marines and spacers worked behind her, opening panels in the bulkheads and lifting deck plates.

“Not stranded,” Sawyer said. “Not exactly. We just can’t get back to Garnet.”

Tom flapped his arms in exasperation. “That sounds to me like we’re stranded!”

Her sigh told him she was every bit as frustrated as he was. “We have fuel. We could travel a good ten, fifteen light years. There’s at least four systems within that range. Garnet, however, isn’t one of them.”

For a moment they stood there, glaring at each other. Then Tom made himself take a deep breath. “I see.”

“They breached our main fuel storage,” Sawyer said. “We managed to save almost fifteen percent of it. The rest is gone.” She brought a hand up as if she was going to rake her fingers through her hair. When her hand touched her helmet she frowned and lowered her arm. “Quite a bit of fuel is stored in auxiliary tanks close to the engines, in case of this exact situation. It’s enough to reach one star or another from almost anywhere in the settled galaxy. It’s enough to get us to a port.” Her shoulders drooped. “Just not necessarily a friendly port.”

“All right.” Tom pinched the bridge of his nose. “What about the rest of the ship?”

“I’d rather have a week in dry dock before I give you a definitive answer.” He opened his mouth and she held up a hand, forestalling him. “I know that’s not going to happen. So I’m going to talk to you about probabilities, not absolutes. Understand?”

Tom nodded.

“We’re airtight. I’m almost certain of that. We’re also spaceworthy. If we were in port, I would say that the ship was not safe for hyperspace. We’re not in a port, though. We can’t stay here. We have to go back into seventh-dimensional space. And we can. The ship will survive.”

“But you just said ���”

Sawyer lifted her hands in a shrug. “I estimate the risk of a catastrophic failure as something in excess of one percent. Probably less than two percent. That’s enough for me to ground a ship in a safe port. It’s not enough for me to insist that we all die a slow death of starvation in deep space.”

“All right.” Tom paused, digesting that. “What else?”

“We have two damaged laser turrets. If we pillage one for spare parts, we can probably repair the other one. I can’t fix them both, though.”

Tom nodded.

“The fire is out in the missile bay. I think I can restore full functionality, but I won’t make it a priority, not when we’re in the middle of nowhere and in no danger of attack.” She shifted her gaze, staring past his shoulder as she thought. “One nav thruster is disabled. The basic components are practically indestructible, though. We can fix it. All the major electronic systems seem to have survived Benson field exposure. It’s going to take a day or so to finish resetting the minor systems.”

“Okay,” said Tom. “What else?”

“We’ve used almost half our firefighting foam. We’ve gone through a lot of emergency repair supplies, too, and we’ll go through a lot more in the next day or two. We’re not at critical levels, but we’ll need to do some serious restocking when we reach Garnet.”

Unless Garnet is a smoking ruin. He pushed the thought aside. One crisis at a time.

“About a hundred other systems have been damaged, compromised, or impacted,” Sawyer said. “Half of it we haven’t even diagnosed yet. Up to now we’ve been doing triage and making sure the ship’s not going to blow up. The next step will be to send crews outside to patch the hull.” She grimaced. “The ship’s not going to be pretty when we’re done with her. And fixing our repairs is going to be a major undertaking. We’ll be welding chunks of steel onto every burn and puncture on the hull. The yard dogs at Garnet are going to hate us.”

“I can live with that,” Tom said.

“Living with it is exactly what it’s about. I’m talking about hardening the hull to survive hyperspace.” She gave him a sharp look. “Just the same, you’ll need to steer around the heavy weather. The stronger the storm, the greater the odds of the hull flying apart. So don’t head for something at the limit of our range. Save yourself a little room to manoeuver.”

Tom nodded. “I understand.”

“That’s it for major issues,” she said. “I’ll get you a detailed list of issues and a proposed schedule of repairs when I get a chance. Right now, though, we’re still finding problems.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “Concentrate on doing what needs to be done. Giving me a detailed report should not be one of your priorities.”

Sawyer nodded, then stiffened. “Oh! There is one more major issue. The spine is not traversable.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“You can’t get to the aft section without a vac suit.” She grinned, making white lines appear in the corners of her eyes. Tom realized with a start that her face was covered in a fine layer of soot. “I’ll make that one of our priorities. It’ll be a lot more convenient if we can walk from one end of the ship to the other without using airlocks.”

“Yes,” he said dryly. “I see what you mean.” He shook his head. “You’re doing good work. I’ll get out of your way now.” He started to turn away, then paused. “Don’t exhaust yourself. Rest if you need to. I need the basic repairs done right more than I need them done quickly.”

She nodded and headed aft, stepping around the bulky figure of a marine in filthy firefighting gear. The marine approached Tom, and he recognized Harper. By the look on his face, he’d overheard most of the conversation.

Harper leaned in close. “What are we going to do, Captain?”

Tom shook his head, feeling weary beyond belief. According to Vinduly there were five crew in the surgery and three in the morgue, plus all the minor injuries on crew who were still at their posts. Fagan, hard as a rat to kill, was in the surgery, wounded when shrapnel ripped through the brig.

We were shorthanded already, and now we’ve lost more people. This was already a crisis before we got shot to pieces. We can’t reach Garnet, and even if we could, it might be swarming with Dawn Alliance troops. We’re done. We’re finished. I’ve led us from mishap to catastrophe, and I’ve doomed us.

I should never have taken command. I can’t undo the damage I’ve done, but I can stop making it worse. We’ll go to the nearest settled system, we’ll find ourselves a Dawn Alliance warship, and we’ll surrender.

But he knew how the Dawn Alliance treated prisoners. If they were lucky, they’d be used as slave labor. They could pray for a quick United Worlds victory before their captors worked them to death. The wounded in the surgery would be shot out of hand. They weren’t any use as laborers, after all.

He couldn’t surrender. And he couldn’t condemn himself for his decisions, either. Perhaps he could have done better ��� but coming to Argo had been the right thing to do. Almost two hundred civilians were safe because the Kestrel had done its duty.

Tom squared his shoulders. “We’re going to find some fuel. If we can find a safe port, we’ll refuel there and head for Garnet. If we can’t find a safe port, we’ll damned well take some fuel from the Dawn Alliance. This is a warship, after all. We’ll show them they’re not done with us yet.

“We’ll sneak. We’ll raid. We’ll go to war if we have to. We’ll get the fuel we need. Come hell or high water, I’m bringing us home.”

Author Notes

The adventures of Tom Thrush and the Kestrel continue in Star Peregrine, available now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BVZW7BF.

Jake Elwood is a Canadian writer of science fiction, especially adventurous space opera with a dash of humor. When he’s not at a keyboard he likes hiking and biking and sometimes kayaking on the Bow River. He is also the author of the Hive Invasion trilogy, beginning with Starship Alexander.

For more titles and releases by Jake Elwood check out his website. Sign up for his mailing list and get a free book: http://jakeelwoodwriter.com/