STAR PEREGRINE

The Green Zone War – Book 2

By Jake Elwood

Copyright 2018 by Jake Elwood.

This is a work of fiction. A novel. Totally made up. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, space battles or interstellar wars is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Author Notes

Chapter 1

Stars, cold and lovely, pressed in on every side.

Tom Thrush, acting captain of the frigate Kestrel, tore his eyes reluctantly from the view and looked down at the hull plates beneath his boots. A hole the size of his fist yawned in the steel just beyond his toes. The torn edges of the metal bent inward, showing this was an entry hole. This might be the place where Spacer von Halsey had died, though he couldn’t be sure.

“I've got this one, Sir,” said a quiet voice over the radio in his helmet. Tom nodded and stepped aside, popping his boot magnets loose and reattaching them with slow deliberation. A spacer knelt, the magnet set in his knee holding him in place, and stretched a flexible patch over the hole.

My poor ship. Focussing on the damage to the Kestrel helped Tom distract himself from the real horror, which was the body count from the recent battle and the danger his crew still faced.

His gaze drifted upward, toward the stars so serene and pure. He wanted to lose himself in that vastness, where suffering and conflict and even interstellar war were trivial and fleeting.

Duty, however, called.

He was on the side of the Kestrel's hull, “sideways” from the point of view of the crew inside. He stood on the forward section, about where the mess hall would be. Instead of smooth deck plates, though, a battered wasteland surrounded him. The Kestrel looked like a toy that had tumbled down several flights of stairs. Laser burns marred the metal on every side. Lines of dents and divots showed where streams of bullets had struck the ship. One hull plate was deformed, as if it had been struck by a giant hammer, the middle pushed in, the edges curling outward. Tom shook his head, wondering what kind of weapon could cause that kind of damage.

At least they didn't nuke us. He shuddered at the thought. The Dawn Alliance had used a nuclear missile against the Kestrel in the opening minutes of the war, dooming half her crew and almost all her officers to a lingering death from radiation poisoning. Either the DA's nuclear arsenal was limited or they'd decided to belatedly honor the interstellar accords, because they'd only used conventional weapons when the Kestrel went toe to toe with a light cruiser.

He walked aft, reminding himself that his helmet mic was live. He couldn't curse to himself. He couldn't voice the gnawing fear that grew as he took in the scope of the damage. He couldn't scream, or it would be broadcast to the entire repair crew.

From the aft edge of the forward section the hull fell away like a cliff. Beyond that point the ship looked like a real mess, but most of the damage was to the ship's cargo pods, not to the ship itself. He'd already given the order to abandon the pods, so the damage mattered even less.

As he watched, an intact pod drifted away from the ship. Forty meters long, it was as long as the spine of the ship, the narrow bridge between the bulbous forward and aft sections. The pod turned lazily as it drifted, and he saw it wasn't quite intact. A long black line marked a split in the skin of the pod, and a powder of some sort floated out, leaving a trail behind the pod. Flour, Tom supposed, originally meant for Sunshine Base.

As the pod moved away from the ship it exposed the pods on either side and the spine of the ship beneath. Six pods in total encircled the spine. From where Tom stood he could see two pods that were still attached, more or less. One had taken a direct missile strike, and was pretty much demolished. It had saved the ship from a lot of damage. Not much remained of the pod, just a long section of curved metal and the jagged remains of a circular disk at each end. Whatever cargo had been in the pod was long gone.

The second pod showed several holes. It had taken only minor damage, because the next missile had hit the spine directly. Long sections of hull plate were gone completely, exposing the girders beneath. Tom could see directly into the upper-level corridor that ran along the spine.

Was anyone there when the missile hit? What if a body got sucked out into space? Has anyone done a roll call? We might be missing a crew member and not even know it.

He grimaced at the thought, then crouched, grabbing a handle next to his feet with one hand and shutting off the magnets in his boots with the other. The forward and aft sections of the ship were four decks high and proportionately wide. The spine was only two decks. Rather than walk down the aft face of the forward section, Tom launched himself through the void, soaring along the hypotenuse of a triangle formed by hull plates.

For several wonderful seconds every thought of command and responsibility vanished from his mind. He was fully absorbed by the moment, by the giddy terror of racing through the void, completely separated from the ship. He sailed head-first toward the spine, hands stretched in front of him, and landed palms-first, trying to absorb the energy of impact without bouncing away.

It mostly worked. His helmet banged into the hull harder than he liked, and his chest hit a moment later, triggering an involuntary grunt. He rebounded, but slowly, drifting away from the ship with the speed of a falling snowflake. There wasn't a handle in reach, so he turned on his boots and shoved the soles of his feet at the hull plates.

With a click he could hear through his suit, his boots connected.

“Is somebody injured?” The worried voice on the helmet radio made Tom cringe. It sounded like Sawyer, the Engineering officer. “I heard somebody moan. Is anyone hurt?”

It wasn't a moan. I just … breathed out kind of loudly. Tom stood there, silent, wondering if anyone had noticed his rough landing. He certainly wasn't going to admit to anything if he could avoid it.

“Everybody, check your teammates,” Sawyer said. “Make sure they're okay.”

A few voices spoke up, spacers checking on people who weren't in view, others announcing they were fine.

“Captain?” said Sawyer. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine too,” Tom said. “I think somebody coughed.”

“I guess so,” Sawyer said. “Keep alert, people. We've all had a rough day. Let's not make it worse with a stupid accident.”

Tom double-checked that the magnets on both boots were working, then started along the spine. To his left, the skin of the shattered cargo pod stretched up, ending in a ragged line just out of reach of his fingertips. Above and to his right he could see the vast curving brackets of the cradle for the cargo pod that was now drifting away from the ship.

The worst of the damage was midway along the spine. Tom walked along, seeing only minor scrapes and dents, until he was almost halfway to the aft section. That was where he encountered the first work crew, half a dozen figures in vac suits swarming around the exposed steel struts that formed the bones of the ship. There was no clear path past them, so he turned off his boots, kicked off from the spine, and drifted up until he could grab a safety line five or six meters above the hull plates.

He pulled himself along hand over hand, looking down on the battered spine of the ship. He could see into crew cabins, and he breathed a quiet prayer of thanks that the crew had been at Battle Stations when the missiles struck.

There was no direct view into the brig, but he knew that shrapnel had torn through that part of the spine. There was further caused to be grateful. When he took command of the Kestrel, sixteen prisoners, captured pirates from the Free Planets, had filled the brig. Desperate for crew, Tom had released fifteen of the prisoners and put them to work. Only the last prisoner, the captain, a fanatic named Fagan, had been in the brig when the shrapnel came tearing through. He was in the surgery now, his survival still in doubt.

Quieting an ugly corner of his mind that said Fagan deserved what he got, Tom kept pulling himself aft. An artificial gravity field ran along the spine, and he felt the occasional tug when one of his feet swung too close to the ship. It kept him cautious, kept him from giving the safety line a good hard tug and flying along parallel to the spine.

The far end of the safety line was clipped to a handle on the forward face of the aft section of the ship. Tom planted his boots and stood, the spine rising in front of him like a tower from this perspective. A dozen meters away a spacer worked with a mop, spreading foam along the hull plates. That, Tom knew, was to remove any lingering fuel residue before the crew put patches in place.

A wide tear marred the hull plates near the spacer's feet. The damage was almost inconsequential, the hull breached into a compartment that wasn't even pressurized. It was, however, quite possibly the most significant damage the ship had taken.

That small rip had allowed the Kestrel's main fuel supply to vent into space. The ship had auxiliary fuel storage, enough to get her to a safe port during peacetime, but the majority of her fuel was gone.

And this was not peacetime. The Kestrel was deep behind enemy lines. With the fuel she had left, friendly ports were far, far out of reach.

First things first. That was the mantra Tom had been repeating ever since the battle to distract himself from a rising desperation. The ship was stranded, but he wouldn't worry about it until the wounded were in the surgery. Until every major hull breach had been dealt with. Until emergency repairs were in progress.

He circled around the spacer with the mop and made his way to the circular opening of the tiny airlock. He started the lock cycling and touched the radio controls on the sleeve of his suit. “Ms. Sawyer. This is Captain Thrush. I'm heading inside.” Lieutenant Sawyer, who was overseeing outside repairs, was keeping careful track of who was outside the ship.

“Acknowledged, Sir.”

The hatch to the lock slid open, releasing a puff of vapor, and Tom lowered himself inside. He deactivated his suit radio and heaved a sigh.

He was fresh out of distractions. He had to figure out how to get his ship home.

Chapter 2

Alice Rose sat alone at a table in the back of the Kestrel's mess hall, staring at a battered air pump. The Kestrel's crew had intended to throw the pump away, ignoring the fact that they didn't have a replacement. It seemed to be the Navy way of doing things. Don't conserve, don't repair, just discard and replace. It felt incredibly wasteful to Alice, and a bit frightening. We were trying to fight these people. They're so rich, they can throw away damaged components without even trying to make repairs.

What chance did we ever have?

They're our allies now, she reminded herself as she turned the pump over in her hands. The Dawn Alliance is a nightmare. You need to celebrate the fact you've got an ally who's this rich and powerful.

In theory, anyway. The United Worlds had taken a bloody nose in the opening days of the war. She was trapped now on the Kestrel, a ship in worse shape than the Free Bird, the tiny raider she'd served on until it was captured by the Kestrel.

“Ho, Alice.”

She glanced up, grateful to hear a friendly voice. The Dawn Alliance people weren't hostile, exactly, but they made it pretty clear they saw her as a necessary evil. They certainly didn't trust her.

They certainly weren't her friends.

“Ho, Sean.” Sean Collins had served with her for a year and a half on the Free Bird. Sixteen people on a small ship couldn't help but become close. “I see you came through the battle okay.”

He nodded. “I've been doing the rounds. We all came through in one piece, except Fagan.”

Alice nodded, unsure of her feelings. Fagan had been her captain. He'd been her shipmate, and more or less her friend. But he was a fanatic, so lost in hatred for the United Worlds he was oblivious to the fact that everything had changed. “Have you heard any news about him?”

“The surgeon says he'll pull through.” Collins's lips thinned. “They took off his left arm, though.”

Alice's stomach twisted. “Oh my God.”

Collins nodded grimly. “Thrush has a lot to answer for.”

She looked at him, startled. “It's not his fault.”

Collins's bleak look darkened into a scowl. “Of course it's his fault! Who put Fagan into the brig? Who flew us into battle?”

“Who shot up the ship?” she retorted. “The Dawn Alliance, that's who. The same people who are probably invading Novograd right now.”

“We don't know that.”

She threw her hands up in frustration. “You know what they're like! Do you really think the Free Planets are still free?”

He gave her a stubborn look, but she knew him too well to be fooled. He knew she was right.

The problem was, he was right, too. They didn't know what was happening back on Novograd. Seventh-dimensional travel allowed spaceships to vastly exceed the speed of light, but communication technology hadn't kept up. The fastest way to send a message was still to put it aboard a ship.

“It's war,” she said. “People get hurt in wars. We've got a captain who takes the fight to the enemy. Our enemy. And I'm okay with that.”

Collins looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn't speak.

“At least the Bird is clear,” she said, and he nodded. The Free Bird, crammed from bulkhead to bulkhead with refugees from a threatened United Worlds outpost, was on its way to Garnet, the massive United Worlds base in the heart of the Green Zone. That meant three of her old shipmates were safe.

As safe as anyone could be during an interstellar war, anyway.

Her fingers played with the pump, turning the exposed blades, feeling for resistance. Collins looked at her hands. “What're you doing?”

“It's broken.”

His upper lip developed a hint of a curl. “So why are you fiddling with it?”

“I'm hoping to fix it.”

The curl in his lip became more pronounced. “Why?”

“Because it's broken,” she said with a bit less patience.

He shook his head. “What do you think, they'll be so grateful for your help they'll let you join their Navy?”

She set the pump down, gave him a hard look, and began counting off points on her fingers. “One. These people are our allies. Two. We're stuck in deep space on a damaged ship. The better the ship functions, the longer we're likely to live. Three. If we act like allies, maybe they'll treat us like allies. If we act like spoiled children, maybe they'll decide they had the right idea, treating the Free Planets like colonies, like we're trespassing in our own homes.”

“They don't think we're allies,” Collins said, scowling. “They think we're lackeys. The more you do for them, the worse it'll be.”

“You're starting to sound like Fagan,” she said. “He was always an asshole. Admit it, you know it's true.”

He did, too, but he wasn't going to concede it now. “Give up, Alice. They don't respect you, and they never will.”

She stared at him, filled with frustrated exasperation. For him it was true. He would be petulant and quarrelsome, and the Navy people would never trust him. They certainly wouldn't respect him. She was losing respect for him herself.

Even as she wondered if he might be right.

Behind him, a figure in the dark blue uniform of a Navy officer stepped into the mess hall. It was Tom Thrush, the man who'd boarded the Free Bird as a sublieutenant, then showed up outside the brig as the new acting captain of the Kestrel. He looked ridiculously young, barely older than Alice herself, but he was growing rapidly into his position. The burden of command seemed to weigh quite heavily on him, which was hardly surprising. He wasn't having an easy time of it.

His gaze fell on her, and he smiled, the solemn commander momentarily replaced by a cheerful young man. “Alice,” he said. “I'm calling a meeting of department heads in the boardroom. Do you know where that is?”

She said, “Department heads?

“I forgot to tell you. You're a department head now.” He gestured upward with his thumb. “The boardroom is one deck up on the far side of the corridor.” He left the mess hall.

Collins made a face. “So maybe you'll get a little bit of respect. It won't last, though.”

“Here.” She pushed the pump across the table to him. “Fix this. You were always better at mechanical gadgets than I was.” She stood up and hurried after the captain.

Alice let herself into the boardroom in time to see Tom take a seat at the head of the long table. O'Reilly sat on one side of the table with Harper, the Marine lieutenant, across from him. Alice took a seat beside O'Reilly, as far from the dangerous-looking marine as she could reasonably be.

Vinduly came in next, his red surgeon's uniform rumpled, looking weary and old. He sat beside Alice, slumping and looking at his folded hands on the table in front of him. Sawyer came in almost on Vinduly's heels and took a seat beside Harper. Sawyer didn't look much better than Vinduly, with dark circles under her eyes, her pale hair flattened across the top of her head.

Alice was struck once again by how young the captain looked. As she looked from one person to another, though, there was no question who was in command.

“Our biggest topic for discussion is our destination,” Tom said. “I want to cover the basics first, though.” He looked at Vinduly. “Doctor. Would you like to begin?”

Vinduly sighed, his already-slumped shoulders sinking even lower. “Poirier died on the operating table.” He spent a moment just staring at his hands. “Fagan pulled through, but I had to take off his arm.”

An unpleasant silence filled the room.

“I've got four people on limited duty with light injuries,” Vinduly went on. “There's five or six more with bruises and scrapes and minor cuts.” He shrugged, lifting his gaze for the first time to look at Tom. “That's all.”

Tom nodded. “Oh, that reminds me.” He looked at O'Reilly. “We need to do a roll call. Several sections of the spine went through explosive decompression. We might have lost someone and not even know it.”

“It's done,” O'Reilly said. “All hands are accounted for.”

“Oh, that's a relief.” Tom smiled, then looked at Sawyer.

“We're fully airtight,” Sawyer said. By the expression on her face, she wasn't as pleased as her words might indicate. “We can handle hyperspace, but I would try to stay out of storms.” She shook her head. “She's about ready to fly apart.”

“I would ask if she was safe to fly,” Tom said, “but we can't stay here.”

“We'll be all right,” said Sawyer, “so long as we're careful.”

“How much fuel is left?”

Sawyer shook her head. “Maybe two thousand gallons. That gives us a range of eight, maybe nine light-years if we don't try for top speed. The problem is, we can't just fly anywhere in a straight line. We need to steer around the storms.”

“All right. Anything else?”

“I've got Khashar working on a detailed damage report.” She grinned bleakly. “It'll be quite a report. We have an incredible amount of minor damage. There's nothing major, though. The ship will fly.”

“Good,” said Tom. “What's the weapons situation?”

Sawyer hesitated, clearly gathering her thoughts. “The missile bay is fine. I don't know how many birds are left, but once we put the fire out the bay didn't have any serious damage. We've got damage to both forward laser turrets. We can probably pillage one for parts and get the other one fully functional. The guns are fine. The aft guns and lasers are all undamaged.”

“All right,” said Tom. “Good. When we know our destination, we'll know our approximate arrival time. That's your deadline for the forward turrets. I need us ready to fight when we come out of hyperspace.”

Sawyer nodded.

“Mr. Harper?”

“There's not much to tell you, Sir,” Harper said. “My people are adjusting well enough to their new roles, and we're doing all right without Azadi and Carmody.” He glanced at Alice. “There's no significant onboard security concerns at the moment. When Mr. Fagan was injured, it freed up a marine from doing guard duty on the brig.”

“All right.” Tom looked at Alice. “Ms. Rose. How are your people doing?”

She wanted to tell them everything was great. It felt disloyal to her shipmates to say anything else. But with Tom's eyes on her she couldn't make herself lie. “They're fitting in as well as can be expected, I think. Some of them are … disgruntled. I think everyone understands the need for us all to work together, though.”

“All right,” Tom said. “Let me know if there's anything we can do to help with integration. I need for us to be one crew, undivided.”

She nodded.

“Mr. O'Reilly,” Tom said. “Anything to report?”

“The duty roster is in chaos,” O'Reilly said. “A lot of the engineering staff need some down time. They've been putting in some brutal hours doing repairs. In fact, just about anyone with the basic skills to run a laser cutter or a bonder is overdue for some down time. Everyone's been pitching in.”

Tom nodded. “Well, we should have some quiet time for a day or two while we're en route to our next destination. That should help.”

O'Reilly nodded.

“Which brings me to our next point,” Tom said. He spread his hands. “Where the hell are we going?” He looked from one face to another. “O'Reilly?”

O'Reilly stretched a hand out, tapping a control panel set in the middle of the table. A holo-projection sprang into life above their heads.

“Here's where we are,” said O'Reilly. A blue dot flashed in the projection. It was almost touching a white dot with a green halo. “As you can see, we're practically next door to Sunshine. I'll have to update the map,” he added. “It's still marked friendly.”

The map was huge, more than two meters long. Toward the head of the table Alice could see Garnet, a green point of light alone in a sea of darkness. It seemed very, very far away.

There was nothing between Garnet and Argo but empty space. On the far side of Argo, though, points of light bloomed as thick as blossoms on a cherry tree. This end of the Green Zone was crowded, a rich garden of stars, most of them only a handful of light years apart.

Most of those systems showed green, a fact which annoyed her. The planets she thought of as the Free Planets were, on paper at least, possessions of the UW. The United Worlds had always ignored the fact that the people who actually lived in the Green Zone didn't think of themselves as members of the UW. It was a level of arrogance she'd always found infuriating.

Now, her perspective was a bit different. Beyond the scattered emerald garden that was the Free Planets loomed the crowding red lights of the Dawn Alliance. The Alliance only held five systems, according to the map. By now, though, three times that number should probably show in red. The thought of her home world and the home worlds of her friends being invaded by the ruthless armies of the Dawn Alliance filled Alice with a furious impatience. She wanted to strike back, to take the war to the enemy, to free her home.

Instead, she was drifting in space with a crew who only wanted to get to safety.

It was realistic, she knew. A frigate couldn't liberate a planet. The United Worlds needed to consolidate their forces, not dash impulsively toward the nearest captured planet.

But still, it chafed her.

“Let me zoom in,” said O'Reilly. He worked the controls, and the starfield expanded. First the red planets of the Dawn Alliance vanished from the edge of the projection, then the green circle of Garnet. More and more colony systems faded as the map expanded. Finally only five star systems remained, Argo at one edge.

“There's a small military outpost at Jonqing,” O'Reilly said. “That makes it an obvious destination – but it's an obvious target for the DA, too.”

Tom looked around the table. “Any thoughts?”

Vinduly ignored him, staring at the table. Sawyer shrugged. “I know hardware. Not strategy.”

“There's no way the base at Jonqing is still intact,” Harper said. “It's too valuable to the UW. I guarantee you it got clobbered first.”

“I expect you're right,” Tom said. “If it's not already taken, at the very least it's blockaded.” He looked at O'Reilly. “What's next?”

“Zin's a brown dwarf with nothing in the Goldilocks Zone. They did some mining there, maybe fifty years ago. There hasn't been anyone in the system in decades.”

“All right, we'll forget about Zin. What else?”

“Parkland and Hapsburg.” The corresponding systems flashed in the map. “They're both colonized. They have ports; they'll be able to supply us with fuel.”

Sawyer looked up the map. “I like Parkland. They have a full shipyard. If we could spend even a few hours in dry dock with proper tools we could do this ship a lot of good.”

O'Reilly nodded. “That would be nice. The other advantage is, it's the closest system to us. If we get there and find a Dawn Alliance fleet, we'll still have enough fuel to try something else.”

Tom looked around the table. “Anyone else? Is there anything we're overlooking, anything else we should consider?”

Tell them. The voice in the back of Alice's mind was urgent, insistent. Tell them about Rivendell. They need to know.

But the secret of Rivendell wasn't hers to share. It was a Free Planets base, and the Free Planets existed to fight the United Worlds. Revealing the base would be treason.

But aren't we all on the same side now? She squirmed, then made herself stop. Maybe we are, and maybe we aren't. Helping these people out, fixing an air pump, is one thing. Telling them about Free Planets bases? That's something else entirely.

“It looks like Parkland is our destination, then,” Tom said. “We'll come out of hyperspace on the fringe of the system and look things over from a safe distance. The cockroaches can't invade every planet at once. With any luck they haven't made it to Parkland yet.” He looked at each person in turn, and Alice made herself meet his gaze without flinching. “Is there anything else? No? Then the meeting is adjourned.” He stood. “Ms. Sawyer. Dr. Vinduly. Make sure you get some rest.”

Alice stood and slipped out before anyone could ask her if something was bothering her, and force her to lie.

Chapter 3

The funeral was a quiet affair, much smaller than the mass funeral several days before when half the ship's crew had made their final departure from the ship. Tom watched as four bodies floated through the force field at the front of the shuttle bay and into the void, then waited, weary, as the crew dispersed. He'd gone over his decisions countless times, asking himself if he'd done the right thing. He had. He was almost sure of it.

But still, the dead reproached him.

One last knot of spacers broke up, trickling toward the exit, and revealed a grim figure at the back of the bay. A lone spacer stood there, glaring at Tom as if he'd personally murdered all four of the fallen crew.

“Hanson,” Tom said. When Hanson didn't move Tom added, “What do you want?”

“I'd like to stay alive,” Hanson said. “Doesn't look like it's going to happen, though. Not until we get a real officer in charge.”

A rising wave of fury washed away Tom's fatigue. A quick glance showed him the bay was empty except for the two of them. Hanson knew better than to goad him like this in front of witnesses. Tom took a step toward Hanson, fists clenching, fighting for calm. You can't brawl with a crew member. Not if you want to keep any credibility at all. “The funeral's over, Hanson. Get back to your post.”

“I'm off-duty,” Hanson said, and smirked. “Got nowhere I need to be. Or are you going to call in some marines, and confine me to quarters again?”

The brig. I'll have him tossed in the brig. If it's been repaired. Or should I just confine him to quarters again? He pictured having to order a marine to stand guard outside Hanson's quarters, while Hanson himself loafed and enjoyed life. What the hell do I do?

Hanson saw the indecision in Tom's face, and his smirk deepened. “What's the matter, Sublieutenant? Are you out of your depth?” He gestured around them. “In a nice peaceful shuttle bay with one little spacer? You can't be much of an officer if you can't maintain discipline with one crewman.” His expression changed to mock sympathy. “But it's not your fault. You're not even a real lieutenant, after all.”

Tom took another step toward him, and saw Hanson's posture change, ever so slightly. He expected Tom to take a swing at him. He wanted it. He was poised, ready. He wouldn’t throw the first punch. He was too cunning to stick his head in a noose. He'd goad Tom into crossing that line.

For a moment the realization made Tom even angrier. He took another step without realizing it, stopping when he felt Hanson's breath hot against his own chin. They were nose to nose, Hanson's eyes wary but eager as they stared into his own.

I will not give him what he wants. Tom had to repeat the phrase to himself over and over before his rage began to ebb. The two of them stood there, close as lovers, as the seconds ticked past. Hanson's eyes narrowed, and Tom thought, He doesn’t know what to do. He can't hit me, and he can't back away, not without losing face. He tried to provoke me and it didn't work, and now he doesn't have a move.

Of course, neither do I.

“Tell, me, Hanson.” To his own astonishment Tom's voice came out mild and pleasant, and it brought a flush of irritation to Hanson's face. “What do you want?”

The man stared at him, a complex mix of emotions flitting across his face. Frustrated annoyance was a significant component. My calmness is my weapon in this fight. He's trying to goad me. I can make him fail.

Tom lifted his eyebrows, projecting sincere curiosity, and Hanson scowled. “I want you to stop pretending you're a real officer.”

There seemed to be no answer to that, so Tom just stared at him, bland as broth.

“You're a bloody half-bar! You've got no business lording it over the rest of us and acting like a captain.”

“Would you like me to step down?” Tom said. “Refuse to lead? What exactly do you think will happen then?” He put an amused expression on his face.

“You were supposed to take us straight back to Garnet!” Hanson's hand came up, and Tom flinched before he could stop himself. Hanson gave him a contemptuous look, then took a half-step back and gestured at the bay doors behind Tom. “You just dumped four dead bodies into hyperspace. That's four people who would still be alive if you had any common sense.”

That was close enough to Tom's own thoughts to drive any clever comeback out of his head. He said, “Is there anything else? You might as well get it all off your chest.”

Hanson didn't speak.

“There were civilians on Sunshine Base,” Tom said. “You took a vow. You put on the uniform. That makes civilians your responsibility.” Hanson opened his mouth and Tom leaned in, cutting him off. “I'm all done explaining myself to you. If you say one more word I'll have you arrested for gross insubordination. You'll get back to Garnet in irons. Is that clear?”

For an endless moment the two of them glared at each other. Then Tom turned and stalked out of the shuttle bay. As he reached the corridor Hanson muttered something behind him, the words not quite intelligible.

Tom pretended he hadn't heard and kept going.

A day later the ship came out of hyperspace several hundred thousand kilometers from XBR, the red giant informally known as Parkinson's Star. The system held no planets ideal for terraforming, but one world, Parkland, was a marginal candidate. Too far from the star to get an adequate amount of heat, Parkland was also cursed with a very slow rotation. Any point on the planet would have several months of constant sunshine, followed by several months of frozen darkness. The tenacious settlers had coped by building a chain of settlements around the equator. Each time the sun neared the horizon they moved west and took up residence in a place where it was still morning.

“What do you see?” Tom drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, then made himself stop. A tense silence filled the bridge as everyone waited for the answer.

“There's no radio traffic so far,” O'Reilly said. “A quick scan shows no ships.” He twisted around in his chair to look back at Tom. “I'll need more time to give you a definitive answer.”

Tom nodded impatiently, then stood and walked to the front of the bridge. It was pointless, of course. Parkland was invisible at this distance. Parkinson's Star hung in the void to his left, like the angry eye of a forgotten god glaring at these interlopers into his domain.

“Move us away from the portal.”

O'Reilly nodded and tapped his console. The red star moved to his right and dropped out of sight below the windows as the nose of the ship swung around. O'Reilly would move the ship several thousand kilometers in a random direction, in case hostile eyes had seen the portal they'd created as the ship made the transition to normal space. Tom hated to burn the fuel, but he'd hate to be attacked by a Dawn Alliance ship even more.

No radio traffic. What does that mean? Does it mean we're the only ship in the system?

Are we the first ones here? Should we race in, grab some fuel, warn them about the war, and get out of here?

“There's a ship in orbit around Parkland, Sir,” O'Reilly reported. “No transponder.”

That probably means they know about the war. But whose ship is it? Is it a Dawn Alliance warship, or a freighter?

Could it be one of ours?

The thought filled him with a sudden eagerness. The United Worlds had dozens of ships at Garnet. Surely some of those ships would have left immediately for every colony, base, and outpost in the Green Zone. That could be a United Worlds frigate peacefully orbiting the planet.

There would be officers aboard. Plenty of them. They would be able to spare one – hell, several – to help get the Kestrel home. Tom imagined turning command over to a seasoned commander, even a lieutenant with some real experience. He imagined letting go of the crushing weight he carried.

Signal that ship. He wanted to give the order, wanted it with a feverish intensity. Oh, how he wanted the lonely ordeal of leadership to be over. But Hanson's barbed words echoed in his mind, reminding him of his responsibility. Ironically enough, Hanson himself would no doubt demand that Tom send a signal. Anything to get him out of the big chair. But that would be foolhardy.

He had to be sure, first.

Onda gave him an inquiring look.

“Maintain radio silence,” Tom said. “For now we'll watch and listen.”

After a time O'Reilly said, “Captain? I'm as sure as I can reasonably be that it's the only ship in orbit around Parkland.”

“Take a look around the rest of the system,” Tom said. “I want to know if we're the only ship skulking around the fringes.”

O'Reilly gave him a dubious look – an entire star system was a massive area to scan – but he nodded and turned to his console.

Tom looked at Onda. “Contact the Forward and Aft Observation Rooms. I want them helping with the scan.”

Onda murmured into a microphone. After that, silence descended over the bridge. Tom returned to his seat, where he brought up a tactical screen and zoomed in on a random spot in the sky. It was a fairly pointless exercise, but it kept him busy while he waited.

What if we don't see anything? What if that ship doesn't move? How long will we sit here, waiting?

He had no answers for the nagging voice of his doubts, so he pushed it to the back of his mind and kept peering into his console.

“Captain?”

Tom jerked his head up, momentarily disoriented. He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but O'Reilly was staring at him. “Yes?”

“You're right, Sir. We're not alone.”

“What? What's that?”

“There's another ship.”

Tom stiffened. “Where?”

“Quite a ways off. We're still working out the range, but it's at least two hundred thousand kilometers. Probably a lot more.”

“Have you got any details?”

“Just a star that got covered for a moment.” O'Reilly was distracted, gaze fixed on his console. “Nothing on a preliminary visual scan, so it's either a very small ship or it's very far away.”

There was no urgency to Tom's next decision, so he took his time, weighing his options. A ship flying directly toward an observer was comparatively hard to spot, the bulk of the ship hiding the burn of the engines. You were most visible when flying directly away from another vessel, or when braking on an approach.

He checked the angles. If the Kestrel made the maneuver he had in mind, the ship would be side-on to the planet. Not impossible to spot, but at least the engines wouldn't be pointed directly at the planet and the orbiting ship.

Considering the range, the odds of being spotted were vanishingly small. And it would take quite a while for a Dawn Alliance ship to respond, even if they were spotted.

“Point us at that ship,” Tom said.

O'Reilly lifted an eyebrow. “The new contact, Sir?”

Tom sighed. “Designate the ship in orbit around Parkland as Contact One. Designate the second ship, the one in deep space, as Contact Two.”

“Got it,” said O'Reilly.

“Point us at Contact Two.”

The stars shifted as the Kestrel turned.

“Now, let's head in that direction. Give me a … moderate amount of thrust?” I should really know the syntax. Dammit, I was never trained for this post.

There might have been the tiniest hint of a grin on O'Reilly's face as he turned away. “Moderate thrust, aye.”

“We're in no hurry,” Tom said. “Let's save fuel and keep a low profile.”

O'Reilly nodded. “I'll give it about fifteen minutes of thrust. Then we'll coast.” He glanced over his shoulder, lifting an eyebrow, and Tom nodded.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait and watch, scanning the vast empty expanse of the star system, hoping that if more ships were out there they would reveal themselves.

Hoping the mysterious ship ahead of them – and the ship in orbit around Parkland – were friendly.

Or at least neutral. Tom no longer thought of ships from the Green Zone worlds as friendly, even if they were nominally part of the United Worlds. Well, if the war does nothing else, it'll unite us all.

Scanner data trickled in as the Kestrel coasted through the void. Long-range telescopes showed the other ship as a tiny metal oval, much too distant to discern any details. The range was something like a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers, though it was impossible to be precise. At their current velocity, the two ships would rendezvous in about nine hours.

Onda suggested sending a tight-beam message, and Tom was tempted to agree. If the ship was hostile, they could bug out from a safe distance. However, the Kestrel was undetected, at least as far as he could tell. His instincts told him to hang onto that slim advantage. He had Onda record a brief message and prepare it for immediate broadcast if the mystery ship opened a hyperspace portal.

Otherwise, he decided he'd keep the Kestrel's presence a secret for as long as he could.

The shift changed, new crew filing in to take their posts. Tom didn't want to leave the bridge, and he could see that most of the bridge crew felt the same way. However, he didn't need exhausted people staying stubbornly at their stations and making mistakes. He stood reluctantly and decided to set an example by walking out of the bridge.

He lasted thirty minutes. He ate, spent five minutes jogging around the shuttle bay, took a quick shower, and returned to the bridge. He made O'Reilly leave, then sat in the captain's chair and watched as nothing happened.

Two hours later, worn down from a combination of tension and growing boredom, he stood, stretched, and decided to take another break. O'Reilly was back at the navigation console, so Tom told him, “You have the bridge.” Then he headed for the exit.

He had one foot on the bridge and one foot in the corridor when O'Reilly said, “Hyperspace portal opening!”

Tom spun. “Onda. Send that message.”

O'Reilly said, “Belay that.” To Tom he said, “It's not Contact Two opening the portal. It's new.”

Onda gave Tom an inquiring look. Tom said, “Stand by,” and hurried to his chair. He sat, checked the navigation display, and felt his pulse quicken.

The portal, which would have looked like a glowing rectangle to the naked eye, appeared as a vivid white circle on his console. It was a scant couple of thousand kilometers from Parkland.

The circle vanished as the portal closed. O'Reilly said, “I've got one new ship, heading for the planet. Her transponder's on. It's the Laureline, out of Earth. She's a freighter.”

Tom smiled, feeling a tremendous weight of tension slide away. A UW ship was approaching the planet openly. Parkland had to be in friendly hands.

He almost told Onda to turn on the Kestrel's transponder and announce their presence. There was still that mystery ship ahead, though. It was best to be discreet until he knew who all the players were.

A cold prickle ran up his spine. It's best to be discreet. To be cautious. Conditions change rapidly during the war. Only the most foolhardy captain would open up a portal that close to the planet. He should have come out in deep space, like the Kestrel. Radioed the base, and verified it was still in friendly hands.

Popping out of hyperspace that close to the planet was downright stupid – unless the captain didn't know about the war.

It was possible, he realized. He'd been living with the reality of war day and night, with such intensity he'd lost track of just how short a time had passed since the opening of hostilities. If this freighter had bypassed Garnet and come straight to Parkland, they might not know the war had started.

“Onda! Contact that freighter. Tell them to keep away from Parkland. Tell them there's a chance of hostile forces.”

“Contact One is moving,” said O'Reilly. “It's moving toward the Laureline.” He looked up, eyes wide. “Her transponder just came on. She's Dawn Alliance.”

Oh, hell. “Onda, did you send that message?”

The man nodded.

“Did you send it tight-beam, or broadcast?”

“Broadcast, Sir. Tight-beam takes time to set up, and it sounded urgent …”

“That's fine,” Tom said. It meant Contact Two knew about them, but every second counted if the Laureline was to have any chance of escape. “You made the right call.”

I should sound Battle Stations. I should tell O'Reilly to open a portal. We need to get out of here. With adrenaline flooding his bloodstream, Tom felt the frantic need to do something. But the Kestrel was tens of thousands of kilometers from the nearest ship. She was in no immediate danger, and there was nothing she could do to protect herself or help the Laureline.

Not soon enough to matter, anyway.

“The Laureline's changing course,” O'Reilly said. He shook his head. “Took 'em long enough.”

The crew would have trouble believing there was really an interstellar war. They would have squandered precious seconds grappling with shock. Tom looked at his console, watching the range between the two ships drop. The Laureline had a lot of forward momentum that she had to overcome before she could even begin to flee. If the DA ship was a warship, and it almost certainly was, it would be faster than a freighter, and more maneuverable.

It would be armed, too.

“We're getting a distress call from the Laureline,” Onda said. By the hollow sound of his voice he knew what Tom had already figured out.

There was nothing the Kestrel could do.

“They're taking fire,” said Onda. “They've lost engines.” Several seconds passed, and then he said, “They are surrendering unconditionally.”

Damn it. I announced our presence to the Dawn Alliance. I put the ship in danger, and for what?

For nothing.

He watched helplessly as the red triangle marking Contact One on his display moved closer and closer to the blue circle that indicated the Laureline. Finally the two symbols merged. The warship was docking with the freighter. Troops would be pouring into the captured ship, rounding up her crew, locking them up.

And there was nothing Tom could do.

Chapter 4

“Sir.” Onda swiveled his chair around and looked at Tom. “I'm getting a message from Contact Two.”

Tom's head snapped up.

“They want to know who we are.”

Tom stared at Onda for a long moment, weighing his options. The other skipper was being understandably cautious, unless he was Dawn Alliance, in which case he was stalling for time.

The DA already knows we're out here somewhere. They don't know who we are, but does it really matter? We're not going to stand and fight. The realization tasted bitter, but he couldn't deny it. We're going to bug out, so it doesn't really matter if they know who we are.

And if it's not a DA ship ….

“Send a reply,” Tom said. “Tight-beam. Give them our ship name and registration.”

The reply came back a moment later. “It's the Hollister out of Jasmine,” Onda reported. “She's an armed merchantman.”

Which meant she was worried about pirates, or she was a pirate herself. Well, it hardly mattered. “Ask them if they have any news.” Tom thought for a moment. “Tell them about Argo, and tell them what we know about Garnet.” Sharing what they knew seemed like the quickest way to get the Hollister talking.

“The Hollister apologizes and suggests leaving the system promptly,” Onda said. “They're requesting a rendezvous.”

Tom thought furiously. A rendezvous was a risk. Contact Two could still be a Dawn Alliance warship trying to lure them into a trap. But blundering around, knowing nothing, was also a risk.

“Pick a location,” he said. “Something fairly close by, but not too close. In hyperspace.”

Onda nodded, conferred briefly with O'Reilly, then murmured into his microphone.

The Hollister's portal, when it opened, was too far away to see with the naked eye. Tom watched a white circle glow briefly on his display, then wink out. “Contact Two is gone,” said O'Reilly.

“Take us into hyperspace,” Tom said. “Then bring us toward the rendezvous by a nice roundabout route.”

He checked his tactical display. The captured freighter was in orbit around Parkland now, still docked to the warship. Her crew would all be in custody, facing a nightmare that wouldn't end for a long, long time. He stared at the blip on the screen, fuming, then did his best to push it from his mind. It's too late for that crew. Concentrate on your own crew. Concentrate on the people you can still help.

Light flooded through the bridge windows as a hyperspace portal opened in front of the Kestrel. “Take us through,” said Tom, and the ship plunged into seventh-dimensional space.

“How far away is our rendezvous?”

“Fifty thousand K,” O'Reilly said. That meant fifty thousand kilometers within hyperspace, which would translate as much further in normal space. “That's as the photon flies. We'll go a bit farther.” He peered through the bridge windows. “We'll start by circling around that mess.”

'That mess' was a hyperspace storm, a sphere of dark red shot through with streaks of pure black. It loomed in their path, big as a planet, quivering with energy.

“Give it lots of room,” Tom said. “I don't like the look of it at all.”

“Roger that.” The storm slid sideways as the Kestrel turned.

“Let's not dawdle,” Tom said. “Don't give me top speed. Try to go somewhat easy on the fuel. But I want to get to the rendezvous before anyone has time to set up an ambush.”

“Aye aye,” O'Reilly said, and the ship began a long, graceful curve around the bulk of the storm. “Should take us, let me see, maybe a quarter of an hour.”

Tom nodded. “We'll stay at Battle Stations, then.”

After that there was nothing to do but wait, and worry. His best guess was that the Hollister was legitimate. It was, however, a guess. There was no way to be sure, either. All he could do was approach the rendezvous with caution and hope for the best.

“Stop us five thousand kilometers short of the rendezvous,” he told O'Reilly. “We'll take a good look from a safe distance.”

Safe was a relative term, but O'Reilly acknowledged the order without offering any further comment.

The rendezvous point turned out to be on the fringes of a light storm. That reassured Tom. The Kestrel could flee into the storm if necessary. There would be enough ambient energy to make a ship difficult to spot, but not enough – he hoped – to damage the Kestrel.

The problem was, they'd never find the Hollister in the storm, not without going blindly to the exact rendezvous point. But the Hollister, if it was legitimate, would have similar concerns.

“Take us around the fringe of the storm,” he told O'Reilly. “Keep us close to the storm front.”

The Kestrel followed a meandering path around a bank of glowing saffron storm energy, trying to find the closest point to the rendezvous coordinates. From time to time the storm would fluctuate, a finger of energy stretching out to engulf the ship. Each time it happened O'Reilly steered the ship into clear space and they continued on their way. The Kestrel took no damage, but Tom fretted over the fuel they were burning.

“Keep a sharp outlook,” he said. “I want to see them before they see us.”

Almost immediately Onda said, “We've got a call from the Hollister.” At Tom's nod he tapped his console and a woman's voice crackled over the bridge speakers.

“Kestrel, is that you approaching?”

So much for seeing them first. Tom nodded again to Onda, who said, “Your mic is live.”

“This is Captain Thrush of the United Worlds frigate Kestrel.”

“I'm Captain Moussa. I'm sorry about what happened to the Laureline.”

“Thank you.” Tom took a moment to check the tactical display on his console. O'Reilly was keeping the ship close to the storm front. The Hollister was finally visible, a yellow triangle a hundred kilometers or so distant. “We're pretty sure Garnet has been attacked by Dawn Alliance bombers. We know Sunshine Base at Argo has been attacked. Aside from that, we're starved for news. What can you tell us?”

“Garnet survived the attack,” Moussa said, and Tom had to force himself to keep listening as a wave of relief crashed over him. If the base at Garnet had been destroyed the Kestrel would have been doomed.

“There was a passenger ship from Jasmine at Garnet during the attack. We heard about it from them. Apparently it was pretty bad. The majority of your fleet was damaged or destroyed, Captain.”

Tom swallowed. “Go on.”

“They ignored our passenger ship. Bigger fish to fry, I guess. The captain and crew didn't stick around to gather a lot of details. They made a run for it as soon as the worst of the fighting was over.”

Tom said, “I understand.”

“I don't know anything specific about other UW ships or bases, I'm sorry.”

“All right.” Tom thought for a moment. “We have some Free Planets people on board. I'm sure they're worried about their homes.” He hesitated, afraid to ask the question. “Do you know what's happened to the colonies in the Green Zone?”

When Moussa replied, her voice was surprisingly chipper. “It hasn't been too bad. The Free Planets met with ambassadors from the Dawn Alliance. Most of the Green Zone colonies have negotiated a peace with the DA. There's a Dawn Alliance presence on every world, but no invasions, no atrocities.” After a moment she added, “Mostly.”

Tom leaned forward in his chair. “What do you mean, 'mostly'?”

“There are rumors,” said Moussa. “We don't know anything for sure. But a couple of colonies opted out of the détente. Neorome and Tazenda.”

“Have you heard anything about Hapsburg?”

“Nothing specific,” Moussa said. “But it's a pretty significant UW colony.” She clicked her tongue. “I wouldn't go there if I were you.” There was a moment of silence. “Captain Thrush? I'm really not comfortable prolonging this conversation. Just meeting with a UW ship at a distance like this might be enough to provoke the Dawn Alliance. I wish you luck, Captain. But I have to go.”

“Contact is moving away,” O'Reilly said. Tom watched the yellow triangle on his tactical display as it receded, faded, then vanished into the background static of hyperspace. O'Reilly said, “Contact lost.” He glanced over his shoulder at Tom. “What now, Sir?”

“Hold this position.” Tom stood. “Keep us out of the storm, but don't burn any more fuel than you can help.” He headed for the bridge exit. “I'll be back.”

He left the bridge, walking briskly with no destination. Ideas crowded his brain. Ideas and conflicting impulses. He needed time to sort it all out, so he walked, distracting himself while his subconscious went to work.

After a quick tour of the forward section he walked down the spine. When he got to Engineering he turned around and retraced his steps. By the time he returned to the bridge his mind was made up.

“Listen up,” he said, dropping back into his chair. “We're returning to Parkinson's Star. Now, this is going to require some pretty careful navigating …”

Chapter 5

The ship came into normal space on the far side of the star from Parkland. They took their time fixing their position, then slid back into seventh-dimensional space. The ship re-emerged a short time later at a point directly between the star and the planet. The light from the star would drown out the light generated by the portal.

They accelerated hard toward the planet, coasted for several hours, then turned the ship around and decelerated hard. The ship was still a good hundred thousand kilometers from Parkland, but Tom wanted to brake while they were still a long way out. He wanted the engine flare lost in the light of the star.

At last the engine went quiet and the Kestrel let her momentum carry her toward Parkland at a stately several thousand kilometers per hour. At that speed it would take a day to reach the planet, which suited Tom fine. Time was one resource he had plenty of.

He left the bridge and headed for the wardroom, where he found Sawyer, her feet propped on a chair, staring out the window with her hands curled around a cup of cocoa. She looked half-asleep, and Tom was careful to make as little noise as possible. Sawyer was carrying an impossible burden, and she'd been carrying it for a while. If she'd finally managed to relax for a few minutes, he wasn't going to disturb her.

He wanted yet another cup of coffee, but the smell of cocoa wafting from her cup was suddenly the most wonderful thing he could imagine. He made a cup for himself, then lowered himself into a chair and gazed past Sawyer at the stars.

When the hatch opened behind him he turned his head and raised a finger to his lips. Harper came in, nodding his understanding, and moved softly to the side counter. For a large man the marine lieutenant could be remarkably light on his feet. He pocketed an apple and turned toward the exit.

Tom, filled with a sudden restlessness, grabbed his cocoa and followed. When the hatch to the wardroom closed behind him he said, “Harper? Do you have a minute?”

The marine nodded. “Sure, Sir.”

Tom led the way to the boardroom, then paused in the doorway and said, “What the hell?”

The boardroom table was covered in disassembled pieces of marine armor. A trio of marines were at work, tinkering with the components.

“We usually do this in the shuttle bay or the scramble room,” Harper said, sounding embarrassed. “Lieutenant Sawyer's people are using both rooms for hardware repair, so I commandeered the boardroom. I want all the suits inspected before tomorrow's operation.”

“That's fine.” Tom retreated to the corridor, thinking. “Follow me.”

He led the way to the spine, where he stopped in front of the first cabin at the forward end. He had to use his bracer to order the ship's computer to override the default security settings before the hatch finally slid open.

Tom and Harper stepped into the captain's cabin.

He wasn't sure if the air smelled stale and dusty or if it was his imagination. The cabin wouldn't have been opened since the last time Nishida left it. It was the largest cabin on the ship, with a tiny meeting room in the front and a hatch at the back giving access to her sleeping quarters. It felt somehow disrespectful to be here. A corner of Tom's mind kept expecting the captain to come bustling in, outraged to find a junior officer in her quarters.

But she's gone, and I'm the captain now. And it's just a room. Three chairs sat around a small circular table. Tom pulled a chair out and sat down, gesturing for Harper to do the same.

“I thought about making this the new wardroom,” Tom said. “We don't need all that space. Not for five of us.” He shrugged. But with half the crew gone, no one else needs the wardroom either.”

Harper didn't speak, just raised an eyebrow.

Tom sipped his cocoa, thinking about what he wanted to say. Delaying it, if he was completely honest. “Tomorrow's operation,” he finally blurted. “It seemed like a good idea. I thought my mind was made up. But I'll be here on the Kestrel. I'll be safe, more or less. You'll be out there risking your neck. So tell me.” He made himself look Harper in the eye. “Am I doing the right thing?”

Harper started to speak, hesitated, and closed his mouth. He thought for a moment. “I don't know,” he said at last. “That's your decision to make, not mine.” When Tom opened his mouth Harper held up a hand, interrupting him. “I will say this. I don't feel like you're taking foolish chances with my life or the lives of my people. And I appreciate that.” He shrugged, the movement strangely impressive from a man with such large shoulders. “We needs fuel, and there's fuel down there. Can we get it?” He lifted his hands, palms up. “It's doubtful. But flying to Hapsburg is doubtful too. There's no safe choices. So we might as well run this down the chute and see if she floats.”

Tom nodded, not sure if he felt gratified or disappointed by this watered-down vote of confidence. “I-”

Harper leaned forward, interrupting him again, pointing a thick finger at Tom's chest. “You needs to get one thing through your head, Sir.” His face was suddenly stern, and Tom leaned back, intimidated in spite of himself.

“We's at war,” said Harper. “We's in a tough spot, and before it's over there's likely to be casualties. No matter what you do, no matter what decisions you makes, it's pretty much a done deal that somebody is going to die. Maybe it'll be me and half my team on Parkland. Maybe it'll be the gun crews during a ship action. Or something neither of us has thought of. But we's not getting home without a fight, and people dies in fights. Understand?”

“Yes …”

“No you don't,” Harper said. “Not really. But you needs to try to wrap your head around it. We can't have you freezing up when somebody dies.” He waved a hand around. “If I doesn't make it back from Parkland, you still needs to act like a captain.”

He glared until Tom nodded. Harper's voice was softer when he continued. “The war's not your fault, Sir. If I dies on Parkland, that's not your fault either. You're doing all right as captain. If we dies, we dies. It's not on you.” He stood. “Was that all, Sir?”

Tom nodded, and Harper walked out. The door slid shut behind him, and Tom sat there alone, thinking about what the man had said. The room was quiet and peaceful, full of the comforting smell of cocoa. It was also just about the only place on the ship besides the head where he could be sure he wouldn't be interrupted. But the strangeness of sitting in a dead woman's cabin was too much for him. He stood up and walked out, back into the corridor, back to the weight of his duty.

“We's all set, Sir. Ready to launch.”

Harper's voice, blurred a bit by static, came from the speaker on Tom's bridge console. He frowned, unable to quite bring himself to give his next order. The strike shuttle held seven people, and he couldn't shake a nagging feeling he was sending them all to their deaths. The marines had signed up for hazardous duty – which didn't make their lives any less precious – but the shuttle didn't just hold marines. Alice Rose was on the shuttle too, charged with acting as a liaison to the colonists on Parkland. Harper and his marines were thoroughly competent, but Alice was a good deal easier to talk to.

He remembered how he'd first met her, her ship firing at the engines of a fleeing merchant ship until the Kestrel swooped in. She was a pirate. She'd signed up for hazardous duty, too.

If we dies, we dies. It's not on you. “Easy for you to say,” he muttered.

“Sir?” O'Reilly glanced over his shoulder at Tom.

“Nothing.” He activated his mic. “You're cleared to launch.”

O'Reilly tapped a screen, then said, “Shuttle's away.”

Tom stared at his First Officer. “Why are we both on the bridge, O'Reilly? Shouldn't you be resting? I can't have you exhausted during your shift.”

“It is my shift,” O'Reilly said cheerfully. “You're supposed to be off duty for the next two hours and fifteen minutes, Sir.”

Tom gave him a dirty look, which O'Reilly ignored. There's no point in taking a break now. I won't be able to relax. He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. Of course, if all I'm going to do is fidget, it's better if I do it somewhere else. He stood. “Fine. I'll see you in a couple of hours.”

“I'll be here, Sir.”

He left the bridge, thinking about the strike shuttle, which was hurtling toward the planet and God only knew what dangers. The plan had seemed nice and simple when they'd discussed it in the boardroom. Send a team to the planet, make a discreet landing, and start visiting spaceports. All they needed was one poorly guarded fuel tanker and their problems would be solved.

Now, with seven people irrevocably committed, the plan felt like folly. One disaster after another rose up in his mind's eye, presented in excruciating detail by his treacherous imagination. He was starting to think only a miracle would allow him to see Harper, Alice, and the others again, except for scenarios that ended with the Kestrel destroyed and everyone in the same prison camp, or facing the same firing squad.

“Why?” he muttered as he headed for the spine. “Why did I ever think I wanted to be an officer?”

Chapter 6

“Parkland, my ass.” A plume of vapor formed in front of Alice's face as she spoke the words. She was bitterly cold, uncomfortable in a thick, poorly fitting coat borrowed from the Kestrel's slop chest, and unimpressed by the company she had to keep.

Harper, standing beside her, shifted his weight, making the snow around his boots creak. “It's not the most convincing name,” he admitted. “I'm sure it's nice during the day.”

A day that lasted for months was beyond Alice's ability to imagine. She turned in a slow circle, looking at the marines around her and the tiny pools of light shining from their helmet lights. The helmets, patterned in gray camouflage, had furry ear flaps and built-in speakers and microphones. Alice wore one herself. The flaps, designed to interfere with hearing as little as possible, were so thin her ears burned with cold.

Somewhere behind her the shuttle crouched in a snowy field, a solitary marine inside. Every light on the shuttle was out. The craft was no more than a hundred or so paces away, but she couldn't see any hint of it.

Above her the stars sparkled, almost as clear as they were from space. Parkland had very little air pollution, and although they had landed on the outskirts of a city, there wasn't a light bigger than a helmet lamp in a thousand kilometers.

“Still showing nothing,” murmured a voice to the left.

“Okay, let's move out,” Harper said. “Don't get sloppy. We doesn't know what the residents left behind to discourage looting. And the DA might send out patrols.”

He led the way into the darkness, the legs of his insulated trousers making a faint zip-zop sound as they rubbed together. Two more marines followed, staying a good dozen paces behind the lieutenant, and Alice followed them. Harper had told her in no uncertain terms that her place was in the middle of the squad, keeping quiet and doing exactly as she was told.

She wore a pistol somewhere under her coat. She figured it would take her a good minute or so to get at it in an emergency. It was her only weapon. The marines around her carried enough firepower to make any contribution from her superfluous. They were here for fighting; she was here for talking. She figured the division of labor was probably wise.

The spaceport was their goal. It stood on the outskirts of the city, but they had touched down almost ten kilometers away, on the far side of a jutting suburb. The best scanning equipment in the city would be at the spaceport. Harper hadn't wanted the shuttle anywhere near it.

The marine ahead of her was almost invisible. His helmet light cast a sort of halo a couple meters above the ground with his head forming an umbra in the center. Two more halos, fainter, showed ahead of him, one to the left and the other to the right. As she watched, the halo on the right brightened on one side as the marine turned her head.

“I think I found a road, Sir.”

“Good,” Harper said. “We'll take it.” A new light source appeared, swinging through the air in a short arc. It was a hand-held light, and Harper was using it to direct the squad to the right. She changed course, trudging through snow that deepened suddenly as the ground beneath it rose.

The road was invisible, covered by several centimeters of snow, but she knew immediately when she'd reached it. The surface beneath was perfectly smooth and refreshingly solid. The snow seemed a bit less deep, too, perhaps cleared by the wind.

“Let's not drag it, shall we?” Harper said, and broke into a trot. The squad moved with him, and Alice jogged, planting her feet in the boot tracks of the marines ahead of her.

A click in her ear told her someone had activated the radio. Harper's voice murmured, “Are you all right with the pace, Alice?”

She wasn't used to running – there was little call for it on small ships – but she figured the faster she went, the quicker she'd warm up. She fumbled with gloved fingers, trying to find the boom mic on the side of her helmet. Finally she gave up and called, “I'm fine.”

“Good,” said Harper over the radio. “Let me know if you need to slow down.”

The air was cold enough to burn her nasal passages as her breathing quickened. She inhaled through her mouth, felt the cold sear her lungs, and went back to breathing through her nose. The tension of creeping around on a hostile world had filled her with an aimless stress, a maddening urge to do something. She poured all that frustrated energy into jogging, as her nose went numb and her legs settled into an almost pleasant rhythm.

Starlight gave her only the faintest impression of her surroundings as the road turned and wound through a suburb. She thought she could see the shape of buildings on either side, but she might have imagined it. On and on they jogged, her initial nervous energy giving way to a growing exhaustion. Stubborn pride kept her from showing weakness in front of the marines, so she gritted her teeth and kept going. Her temperature rose and she unsealed the front of her jacket, wishing she could tie up her earflaps. A trickle of sweat made its way down her back, and she thought longingly of the cold that had seemed so pervasive such a short time before.

With every weary step she sank deeper into herself, until she didn't notice when Harper finally called a halt. Only when she ran into the marine ahead of her did she come back to herself and stumble to a halt.

The marine turned, grinning. “What's the matter, Rose? You having so much fun you couldn't bear to stop?”

No snappy comebacks occurred to her, which was just as well, since she was panting too hard to speak. She sagged forward, put her hands on her knees, stared at her boots, and focused on breathing.

The marines, to her intense annoyance, weren't even short of breath. It seemed they had reached the last row of houses before the spaceport. They were creeping through someone's yard to take a look.

“You know, there's a fine line between pulling your weight and being a damned fool.” Harper's voice came over the radio in her helmet. “Next time, tell me you need to slow down. Don't make me guess.”

Alice, not having the breath to reply, ignored him.

She was standing upright with her breathing almost under control when Harper gathered the squad around him. “There isn't a single ship there, and if they has fuel tanks they's underground and locked tight. It looks like we's doing it the hard way.” Alice couldn't see his face, but she could hear the grin in his voice. “At least we'll get some sunshine.”

They hiked back to the shuttle, moving much slower now. Alice's legs were exhausted, but energy filled her. They were going to cross the dawn line and head for an occupied city. There would be no discreet theft from an abandoned city.

They would have to fight for their fuel.

The shuttle, covered in armor plating, had no windows in the main body. Instead, screens on the inside surfaces showed a view from the tiny cameras that covered the outside of the hull. The screens set into the deck plates were a little disconcerting, creating the impression of gaps in the floor. Alice looked down and watched the ground gradually lighten as the shuttle approached the dawn line.

The ghostly shapes of trees, their branches bare and stark, emerged from the gloom beneath. As the shuttle flew on it was as if the seasons were changing. Snow gave way to brown grass, and buds appeared on the trees. When the sun was completely over the horizon the buds became young leaves, and the occasional patch of open ground showed glints of green in the brown grass. As the shuttle flew on the sun seemed to rise, and the ground came to life beneath them. Before long the forest was a cloud of green leaves a few meters beneath the shuttle.

The forest ended and farmland appeared, the dividing line as straight as a laser beam. The shuttle promptly dropped several meters. Alice couldn't see what the crop was, but it stretched as far as she could see in every direction, the surface rippling like ocean waves.

The shuttle slowed, and she looked up in time to see a farmyard surrounded by a rectangular windbreak of trees. She glimpsed a house and barn and several outbuildings before the line of trees hid it all from sight.

The shuttle changed direction, dropping low and keeping a shallow ridge between the ship and the yard. A small hill thrust up perhaps a kilometer from the farmyard, a round knob furred with small trees. The shuttle swung around to the far side of the hill and touched down at the edge of the crop, in the shade of the first trees. The side hatch slid open.

“O'Hare. Jones. Head up to the top of that hill and take a good look around.” Harper gestured upward with his thumb. “The rest of you sit tight.”

Alice watched as a couple of marines hurried out of the shuttle. She sat, silent and impatient, wondering how the rest of them could be so calm. Then O'Hare's voice said, “We're in position, Lieutenant.”

A screen near the front of the shuttle changed, showing a wobbly, out-of-focus view from the top of the hill. O'Hare said, “Uh-oh,” and the camera steadied.

A vehicle came toward them from the direction of the distant farmyard. It was a battered-looking thing, a disc about three meters across that hovered just above the crop. A solitary figure sat atop the disc, steering with a couple of levers.

The vehicle headed straight for the hill.

The camera zoomed in, making the image wobble and jump. The driver was a man, middle-aged and dressed in simple work clothes. He had a tanned, weathered face and an expression of calm boredom.

“He doesn't look dangerous,” Harper said. “We won't take any chances, but we won't be in any hurry to shoot him, either. Understand?”

No one spoke.

“O'Hare. Jones. Keep your heads down and your eyes open. I'd rather he didn't notice you.” Harper's gaze swept the inside of the shuttle. “Unger. Stark. Rose. You're with me.” He indicated the hatch with a jerk of his head. “Let's go meet the locals.”

Chapter 7

Every world had its own kind of sunshine. Parkland's star was white, and although it looked small in the sky it was bright and hot, casting sharp shadows. The air was warm, almost too warm, and smelled of soil and green leaves. Alice lifted a hand to shade her eyes as the farmer's vehicle came around the base of the hill.

She didn't quite know what to call the contraption; she'd never seen one before. It moved at the speed of a brisk walk, humming softly and spreading ripples through the crop as it approached. It drifted to a halt a dozen paces away, and half a dozen stubby metal legs extended from the bottom. The machine descended a handspan or so, and the hum of the engine went silent.

“You set off a sensor when you touched down.” The man had an accent Alice hadn't heard before, a strange way of flattening his vowels. If he was alarmed by the sidearms the marines wore or the rifles slung across their backs, he gave no sign. “We get deer wandering in from the forest sometimes. They make a mess of the crop, so I usually herd them back where they came from.”

“We might have mushed a few plants,” Harper admitted. “Sorry about that.”

The farmer inclined his head but didn't speak. The silence stretched out.

“I'm curious,” Harper said at last. “What might be your opinion on the Dawn Alliance occupying your planet?”

The farmer didn't speak, but his lip curled and he leaned sideways to spit a gob of saliva past the edge of the vehicle.

“That's how we feel, too,” said Harper.

Alice, whose only purpose on the mission was to talk to colonists, found herself shut out of the conversation. The farmer's name was Jules, and although he hadn't actually seen any of the invaders, he had strong opinions on the subject. He considered himself a loyal citizen of the United Worlds, which seemed offensively naïve to Alice. It was convenient, though. Jules, without being asked, offered to help them in any way he could.

Harper gave him a carefully edited description of their mission. Without actually telling the man a single useful thing about where they had come from or what they needed, he expressed interest in looking at the nearest spaceport while avoiding Dawn Alliance attention.

“You better take the Big Red Dog,” Jules said. “No one will look at you twice in that thing.” He looked around at the shuttle and the hillside. “Is this all of you?” When Harper didn't answer he said, “Never mind. The Dog will seat four in the cab and a bunch more in the back. Takes about an hour to get into town.”

“We'll have to leave the shuttle here,” Harper said. “We'd like it if you didn't mention this to anyone.”

“Set her down in my yard,” Jules said. “She won't stand out near as much there. And you won't have to trample my crops getting over to the Dog.”

The pilot set the shuttle down so close to a long yellow barn that he almost scraped paint from the boards. One marines stayed behind with the shuttle. Alice and the others climbed out to look at the Big Red Dog.

It was another vehicle that Alice didn't quite know how to name. She supposed “truck” was the closest she could come to an accurate label. It was a ground vehicle, with half a dozen fat rubber tires. Two tires supported the cab, a glass and metal bubble with a short ladder on either side to reach the doors. The other four tires supported the box, a long filthy rectangle covered in rust spots that blended into the bright red paint.

Harper and a couple of marines took a minute to change into civilian clothes. They kept light body armor and sidearms, covering both with long, loose-fitting shirts. The rest of the marines stayed in full combat gear and clambered into the back.

Alice got into the cab, where Harper took the controls. The Big Red Dog was entirely manual, and Harper spent a couple of frustrating minutes trying to get the hang of the controls. Alice looked from him to Jules, who stood beside the truck with an expression of growing anxiety. Finally she said, “Oh, for pity's sake, haven't you ever driven one of these?”

Harper shot her an irritated look. “It's a museum piece. Of course I've never driven one.”

“I have.” When his eyebrows rose she said, “Okay, not a vehicle exactly like this. But the crater jumpers back on Novograd have the same basic controls.” When he didn't move she gestured out the window at Jules. “Come on. Let me drive, before Farmer Joe out there decides we're worse than the Dawn Alliance.”

Harper traded places with her, not without some frowning and grumbling under his breath. She ignored him, settling in and moving the seat forward so she could reach the pedals. The dash controls were completely unlabelled, but there were six red levers that had to correspond with the Dog's six tires. Harper had somehow gotten two tires going forward and two in reverse. Alice got all four tires stopped, then switched them to “forward” mode, two at a time, starting at the front.

When the last pair of tires activated the Big Red Dog started to move. She sped up the tires on the left and the truck turned ponderously to the right. She glanced back at Jules, who looked profoundly relieved, and gave him a wave.

The truck rolled out of the yard, down a long gravel driveway, and onto a paved road.

She gave Harper a running commentary as she drove, explaining every control she touched. He listened intently and repeated every detail when she quizzed him. Finally he said, “Why don't you pull over and I'll drive?”

She rolled her eyes, the only reply a suggestion like that deserved.

Very little traffic moved on the roads, and she saw no movement in the skies above. Fields made a multicolored patchwork quilt on an epic scale. By the look of it the land had been shaped by glaciers, sculpted into gentle rolling hills and long smooth plains.

The endless farms made her think of home, although Novograd looked much different. Her home planet was a crater-pocked wasteland with little atmosphere before it was terraformed. Fields tended to be circular, with hardy trees around the border of each crater. Parkland was strange, but it was a Green Zone colony, so she felt as if she more or less belonged.

At last they crested a ridge and saw the city before them. It looked like a child's collection of toy blocks, every building cubical, laid out in tidy rows.

More details emerged as the Big Red Dog rolled closer. The buildings were colored in soft pastels, each one a different shade. A few taller buildings jutted up in the center of the city, but the nearer buildings were all precisely two stories tall.

There was no sign of the Dawn Alliance. It had to be here somewhere; the fate of the Laureline was proof of that. So far, though, the occupation seemed to be using a light touch.

Alice slowed the truck as they neared an intersection. A broad highway, empty of traffic, crossed their own road at right angles. “Here's the turnoff,” she said to Harper. “What do you think?”

“I think we stands out too much,” he said. His gaze scanned the horizon. “There's no traffic to blend into.” He glanced at Alice, then gestured straight ahead. “Go on through.”

She nodded and gave the tires a little more power. A left turn would take them around the outskirts of the city. It was a quieter way to approach the spaceport, but going through the city might be a little more discreet.

The cab of the Dog smelled of dirt and grease and sweat. Alice longed to open a window and smell the green farmland outside. The padded seat beneath her, which had seemed perfectly comfortable when she started driving, now felt lumpy and hard. She was suddenly desperate to get out of the vehicle, to stretch, to walk, to do something.

It's just nerves. Pull yourself together. She took a few deep breaths, found it didn't help, and frowned through the windshield instead.

“It'll be fine,” Harper murmured, just loud enough for her to hear. “You'll see.”

She glanced at him, nodded, and went back to staring down the highway.

Back on Novograd every building had its own design. Here on Parkland every building seemed to have been built from the same template. As the Dog rolled into the city she saw cubes on every side, with doors and windows in precisely the same place. Residences and businesses had the same structure, only the signs in front identifying them. People made some attempt at variety, adding awnings or decks and decorating their yards, but the city had a repetitive uniformity that set Alice's teeth on edge.

“Turn here,” Harper said, and Alice massaged the bank of levers, bringing the Dog around in a gradual turn. The big vehicle didn't corner well. She'd have to keep it on wide roads without too much traffic.

They rolled north, Alice dividing her attention between her driving and the city around her. There was some light ground traffic, a mix of wheeled cars and hover vehicles. The Dog was the biggest thing on the road, and a few pedestrians gawked as it went past. Alice cringed at the attention, but told herself the truck was too bizarre, too absurd, to incite suspicion.

People on the street wore a mix of local and galactic fashions. The local look was natural fabrics in bright colors. Novograd clothing tended to be baggier, but the palette was just as bright.

She'd expected the people to look furtive and sullen, as if they were suffering under the yoke of a savage invader. She'd expected troops on the street corners and armored transports rumbling back and forth. But there was no sign of the Dawn Alliance, and the locals just looked … ordinary.

It was strangely unsettling, and she tried to puzzle out why. I should be relieved. If it's like this here, it might be like this at home. Things might be okay.

But we've been invaded. It's not supposed to be okay. It's not supposed to be ordinary.

“Why aren't they angry?” she muttered. “Why's everything so peaceful?”

“Well, there's a détente,” Harper said.

She glared at him like he'd insulted her, and his eyebrows rose. Her hand tightened involuntarily on a lever and the Dog shuddered as one wheel sped up. She edged the lever back and stared through the windshield, embarrassed.

“Not everyone can go charging off into space to play pirates,” Harper said.

She gave him a dirty look. “I wasn't playing pirates. I was-”

“A free-range revolutionary, I know.” He grinned. “Most people doesn't get to do that. Most people needs to get on with their lives.” He gestured around at the street. “That's what they's doing. Just getting through another day.”

They should be fighting. She wasn't being entirely fair, but she didn't care. They should do something.

“Take the next left,” Harper said, peering into his bracer. “The spaceport should be straight ahead.”

She nodded, putting all her concentration into a corner that was tighter than she liked. A horn chirped, and she lifted a hand from the control levers long enough to make a rude gesture through the window. As she got the Dog straightened out Harper said, “Off to the right. There's a place to park.”

Alice pulled the truck into a parking lot, maneuvering among smaller vehicles, and rolled to a stop. She rolled her shoulders, releasing tension, and looked at Harper.

“Jones, you're with me. The rest of you wait here. Stay sharp.” Harper swung his door open.

“Hang on,” Alice said. “I thought I was supposed to talk to the locals.”

“We isn't talking,” Harper said. “We's doing reconnaissance.”

“Sure,” said Alice. “That's fine until someone comes over to talk to you. The first time you open your mouth they'll know you're United Worlds.”

“You doesn't sound like a Parklander either,” Harper pointed out.

“True. But I sound like I'm from the Green Zone.” She gave him a pointed look. “I don't sound like a marine.”

Harper sighed and closed his door. “Fine. Keep your eyes open, and do whatever Jones tells you, all right?”

“Of course,” Alice said, and opened her own door. A treacherous part of her wished he'd stood his ground and made her stay behind. She squashed it. I can handle this.

Chapter 8

Jones was a tall young man, made solid by the armor under his shirt. His presence comforted Alice as she walked beside him down a wide sidewalk toward a high fence that marked the perimeter of the spaceport. He seemed to feel the same tension she did. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the way he scanned the street. She could see it in the way other people reacted to him. A woman with a child in a stroller stepped into the street to give him a wide berth.

Janice reached out impulsively and grabbed his hand. He looked at her, startled, and she whispered, “You're frightening people. You look …. You look like a marine.”

His eyebrows rose.

“You're attracting too much attention,” she said. “Smile at me, for God's sake.”

He stared at her, his brow furrowed. Then his lips twisted in an unhealthy grimace.

“Well, it's a start.” She pointed at a random store window. “Nod your head. Good. Now point at something.”

“Uh …” He looked around, then pointed at a store across the street.

“Good man.” She smiled up at him and patted his shoulder playfully. “You're not a marine doing reconnaissance in occupied territory. You're Farmer Jules' hired hand, seeing the sights with your girlfriend. And this is the biggest city you've ever seen. Understand?”

For a moment his tension increased, his face contracting in a frown of concentration. Then he laughed, a surprisingly loud sound, and stepped in front of her, leaning down to peer at something in a store window. When he straightened up his shoulders were almost a handspan lower, and his smile looked genuine.

“Atta boy.” She squeezed his hand. “Now let's go see this big fancy spaceport. They sure don't have those back on the farm.”

The fence around the spaceport embodied the contradictions that defined life in the colonies. The posts were wood. In fact, they were hand-cut logs with knobs and protrusions where branches had been cut away. Wood was a plentiful resource here, after all.

The panels that stretched between the posts were polymer, colored to resemble wood but clearly turned out in a factory. The blend of high technology and rustic handicraft was the kind of thing Alice took for granted, but it triggered baffled amusement in visitors from the United Worlds.

They walked along the fence, which stood just taller than Alice, until they came to a gap for vehicle access. Just beyond the gap was the terminal building, made of two of the standard cube buildings side by side. At the terminal entrance she saw her first Dawn Alliance soldier, a bored-looking man in dark fatigues with a laser rifle slung from his shoulder.

Jones' shoulders rose to their previous altitude, so she tugged on his hand, turning him until they faced the landing field. She pointed at the first ship she saw. “Is that a passenger ship?”

“No,” he said. “That's the Laureline.”

The freighter was smaller than she'd imagined, a squat bulbous thing with a long scorch mark down one side. By the look of her, most of the internal space would be cargo holds. The crew areas had to be tiny. She thought of the crew, now probably locked in cells somewhere nearby, and wondered if they were enjoying an increase in personal space.

“Come on,” said Jones, and stepped toward the terminal, tugging on her hand.

“Wait,” she said, stumbling after him. “The guard-”

“He's not really doing anything,” Jones said. “He's just letting people walk past.”

She wanted to ask if he was sure, but of course he was. She gave the soldier a nervous glance, then remembered herself and gazed up at Jones instead. He had a long, wide, horselike face, but she put on her best dreamy schoolgirl look and fixed her eyes on the lumpy outline of his jaw. He reached across with his free hand to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear and the two of them walked into the terminal, smiling like fools.

As the doors slid shut behind them she straightened up and let go of his hand. Half a dozen passengers sat in a lounge in one corner with luggage resting on hovering carts near their feet. No one else was in sight. No staff, no travelers, and certainly no Dawn Alliance soldiers.

A wide doorway across the terminal gave access to the field, with a smart sign flashing warning messages about the dangers of ship thrusters and cargo robots. There was no other access control. Alice and Jones crossed the terminal, watched the doors slide open as they approached, and stepped out onto the landing field.

The Laureline perched on a rectangle of asphalt to the left. The rest of the field held about a dozen small craft, mostly atmospheric ships. There was another cargo ship, an intra-system craft by the look of it, and a sleek passenger ship.

“Look,” said Jones, and pointed. “There, behind the tourist bird.”

The 'tourist bird' was a fat ship with bulbous windows on every side, designed for aerial sight-seeing jaunts. Beyond it a squat cylinder of gray metal stuck up like a silo. It took Alice a moment to realize the gigantic tank was in fact a ship.

“That's a fuel ship,” Jones said. “I'd bet my shirt.” He looked around. “I wonder if we could-”

“Not so fast,” she said. “We don't even know if it's full. Hell, for all we know it's full of water, or grain or something.”

Jones took a single step toward the tanker. “We needs to get a closer-”

His voice broke off as she put a hand between his shoulder blades, grabbing the top of his armor through his shirt, and pulled him back. “Cool your jets,” she said. “Let's try something a little more discreet, shall we?”

He frowned. “Like what?”

She gestured to one side, where a man and a woman in baggy coveralls were crossing the field, heading for the terminal building. “Let's ask them.”

They followed the two pilots to a little automated café at the far end of the terminal. Alice couldn't have said why she was sure the two were pilots; they just had a look to them, a swagger completely at odds with their rumpled coveralls that said they soared above common people. They were the only two customers in the café, and neither of them looked up when Alice and Jones walked in.

Jones kept his mouth shut as Alice waved a credit strip in front of a sensor and filled a couple of cups with coffee. She handed a cup to Jones and led the way to the table where the pilots sat. The pilots looked up at last, and Alice said, “I'm sorry to bother you. Would you mind if we joined you for a minute?” She sat without waiting for an answer, and Jones took a chair across from her.

“I'm Alice.” She nodded at Jones. “This is …” Her voice trailed off. I have no idea what his first name is. “Jay,” she finished. “We were supposed to make a short stopover on the way to Tazenda. But the Dawn Alliance showed up, and our ship bugged out, and now …” She lifted her hands in a “what can you do” gesture. “We've been keeping our heads down. Staying with someone on a farm in the sticks. We're not really sure what the, ah, political situation is.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice, although the four of them were the only ones in the café. “We're not sure how safe it is.”

The two pilots looked her up and down. The man was in his forties, the woman perhaps ten years younger. He had a genial, homely face, currently creased in sympathy. The woman's features were a good deal sharper. She pursed her lips, looked from Alice to Jones and back again, and said, “You should present yourself to the local commander. He's got offices in the police station.”

“You don't want to do that,” the man said. “Nothing good ever came from trying to deal with the Dawn Alliance.”

“Nothing good ever came from whispering with strangers in a café.” The woman stood, took a swig from her cup, grabbed a last slice of fruit from her plate, and sniffed.

“Ease up, Brenda,” the man said. “The DA's haven't done anything to you yet, but they'll probably get around to it.”

“They're the authorities,” Brenda said. “Like it or not. While these two …” Her gaze swept over Alice and Jones. “Come skulking in here like thieves trying to drag us into whatever it is they're involved in.” Her lip curled. “What are you, fugitives from the law? Smugglers? Free Planets terrorists?”

Alice bristled in spite of herself, and Brenda flashed a spite-filled smile. “I knew it. You're a couple of professional troublemakers. Well, you're not pulling me into whatever it is you're doing.” She looked at the man. “Are you coming?” When he rolled his eyes by way of reply she sniffed again, shoved the slice of fruit into her mouth, and stalked out, head high, her back as straight as a laser beam.

“Bloody woman,” the man muttered. He stuck out a thick hand, the blunt fingers fuzzy with blond hair. “My name's Sean.”

Alice shook his hand. Jones did the same.

Sean glanced over his shoulder, checking that Brenda was gone, then leaned forward and gave Alice a roguish grin. “Okay, give it to me green. What's really going on?”

For a moment she stared at him, her mind racing in circles, trying to come up with a plausible story. Then she blurted, “We're from a United Worlds ship. It's almost out of fuel. We need to steal enough fuel to get back to Garnet.”

Jones shot her a scathing look. Sean gaped at her, then nodded. His grin reappeared. “Wow,” he said. Then again, “Wow.”

Jones gave her a final glare, then turned to Sean. “That tanker out there.” He jerked a thumb, pointing. “Is it full?”

“About half,” Sean said. “Give or take. We use it for local fuel storage. There's a refinery by the pole, and when it gets below twenty percent or so they drain it off into the local storage tank and head up to the refinery for more.” He looked from Jones to Alice with the glee of a small boy with his first slingshot. “Are you going to steal it?”

“The thought may have crossed our minds,” Alice admitted.

“Amazing.” Sean's eyes went out of focus for a moment, and he cupped his chin in his hand. “It should be ready to go. It's been, let me see, two and a half weeks since the last flight. She'll need time to warm up, but she should be ready to fly.” He glanced in the direction of the tanker. “They usually do a tuneup before each flight, but that's more of a best practice than a strict necessity. All you need is a key strip and five uninterrupted minutes and you'll be free and clear.”

Jones said, “Key strip?”

“They use a key strip system for government ships,” Sean said. “The strips are locked up in the manager's office.” He gestured toward the main terminal area.

“I think we can get into a locked office,” Jones said.

“I can fly the ship,” Sean said. When Jones gave him a dubious look he said, “I was getting bored with short-haul flights even before the Dawn Alliance showed up. But this?” A wicked gleam showed in his eyes. “This won't be boring at all.”

“No it won't,” Jones agreed. “Well, I won't try to talk you out of it. Truth is, we could use your help.”

For an instant a flash of terror showed on the pilot's face, vanishing as his excitement returned. Pilots, Alice thought. They're lunatics, every one of them.

“Show me this manager's office,” Jones said, and stood.

Sean and Alice stood as well. “Right through here,” Sean said, and led the way through a sliding door into the main terminal area.

The place had filled a bit since Alice and Jones had passed through. A dozen or so people milled around, some fiddling with luggage, others exchanging hugs. A transport had to be leaving soon. Alice saw a young woman in a green jacket not unlike her own, and wondered if she was a Free Planets sympathizer. There was no way to be sure. Some people just liked the color green.

Sean said, “The office area is … Uh-oh.”

Alice looked at him, saw him staring at the front of the hall, and turned her head to follow his gaze. She was just in time to see a pair of vehicles roll to a stop outside. They were ground cars, big solid-looking things, and they stopped almost close enough to touch the front wall. She knew it was trouble even before the doors flew open and soldiers in dark fatigues burst out.

On an impulse she moved away from the others, thinking she might protect Sean by looking as if she wasn't with him. She managed seven or eight steps before the terminal doors slid open and armed men came pouring in.

Jones swore and hauled up his shirt with one hand, reaching for his pistol with the other. A soldier fired, a single shot from a blast carbine. The shot took Jones low in the chest and he grunted, his arms flying out to the sides as he tumbled to the floor. Soldiers dashed forward, two of them pinning his arms, a third grabbing his pistol.

Sean raised his hands, but the soldiers ignored him, rushing past to point their carbines at the travelers. Someone screamed, others raised their hands, and a pair of soldiers slung their rifles so they could grab the arms of the woman in the green jacket.

Only when Alice's shoulder bumped a wall did she realize she had never stopped moving. She was at the back wall of the terminal, not far from the doors to the field.

“That's not her!” The voice belonged to Brenda. She strode into the terminal behind the soldiers, hands planted on her hips, her face a mask of righteous indignation. She glared at the soldiers holding the woman in green. “That's the wrong woman.” Her gaze swept the terminal and came to rest on Alice. Her arm rose, index finger pointing like the barrel of a carbine. “There! That's the other one, right there!”

The doors slid open with a hiss and Alice fled onto the field.

She ran toward the nearest ship, thinking to dart around it and hide. It was the Laureline, and she angled a bit to the right, heading for a fat landing strut. Only when she was half a dozen paces from the strut did she see the man. He wore red technician's coveralls with fat reflective stripes, and he stared at her, a p-wrench forgotten in his hand, as she darted around the strut. She pressed her back to the thick metal leg, panting, and stared at him, waiting for him to point her out to the soldiers who had to be dashing out of the terminal.

He gaped at her, his face blank with astonishment. Voices shouted behind her, and the man turned his head. An angry voice said, “You there! Where did that woman go?”

The technician said, “Woman?”

“A woman in a green coat. She just ran out of the terminal.”

“She's right there.” And the red-clad arm rose, pointing.

But not at Alice.

“She ran along the back wall of the terminal and around the corner. You just missed her.”

That's what I should have done, Alice thought. I should have run around the building.

Feet thumped on asphalt behind her. All she could do was stand frozen and wait to see if the technician's gambit would work.

Something sailed through the air and clattered on the asphalt at her feet. “Use that on the fence,” the technician said. “Don't go yet, though. Wait till I tell you.”

She knelt and picked up a plastic rectangle molded to fit her palm. There was a fat yellow button by her thumb, and a smaller red button on the far side. The red button was a safety; when she pressed it she was able to push the yellow button. A short circle of metal emerged from the end of the handle, and she felt warmth against the tip of her thumb. It was a heat cutter. It would make short work of the fence.

“Now!” said the technician. “Quick.”

There wasn't even time to thank him. She fled for the fence, terror chasing away the ache in her legs. Three quick swipes with the cutter made a triangular opening in the fence. She squeezed through, pocketed the cutter, then stripped off her jacket and dropped it.

Her jangled nerves demanded that she run. She made herself stroll instead. Only Brenda had seen her face. The soldiers would have had only the briefest of glances before she dashed outside. They wouldn’t remember much more than a running woman in a green coat.

Angling away from the fence, she circled a building and returned to the main boulevard that ran in front of the terminal. She risked a single glance toward the terminal and the military ground cars parked in front.

She was just in time to see Jones come out of the terminal, a soldier on either side. The front of his shirt sported a ragged, blackened hole, and his body armor was badly scorched, but he was walking unaided. He didn't seem hurt.

Every civilian in sight gaped at the soldiers, so Alice gaped too. Turning away would only make her more conspicuous. She watched as the soldiers shoved Jones into a ground car, then climbed in after him.

Sean came out of the terminal. He folded his arms and glared at the last of the soldiers as they got into the other ground car. To Alice's relief they ignored him as both vehicles rolled away.

A moment later Brenda came out of the terminal. Alice turned quickly and walked away.

Chapter 9

“You're sure he's alive?”

Alice, sitting next to Harper in the cab of the Big Red Dog, nodded. Then, for the benefit of Unger and O'Hare who were in the back of the truck, she put on the little radio headset Harper had given her and said, “Yes. I'm certain.”

“We needs to find out where they's holding him.”

“The police station,” Alice said. “Sean said the DA's using it for a headquarters.”

Harper stared at her, his eyes going out of focus. “Right,” he said at last, and opened his window. “Hey,” he barked to a passing couple. “Where's the police station?”

“Two blocks up and turn right,” a man replied. “You don't want to go there, though. It's been taken over by …”

Harper started the Dog rolling, and the man's voice trailed off. “Gear up,” Harper said. “Stark, I wants you ready to lift off.”

“Roger,” said Stark over the radio. He was back at the farm, sitting at the controls of the shuttle.

“Wait,” said Alice. “Aren't you going to – I don't know – put together a plan? Gather intel?”

“Got all the intel we need,” Harper said. “Two blocks up and one over, remember?” He glanced at her, and grinned. “Yes, we could use some time to prepare. But so could they. If we spends a couple hours preparing, they spends a couple hours looking for us. And maybe they finds us. Or maybe they starts thinking we might try a rescue, and they calls in reinforcements.” He hauled back on three levers, bringing the Dog around in a sharp left turn. A woman with her arms full of shopping bags leaped back as the Dog's tires rolled across the sidewalk. “No, we'll do what they calls an 'improvisation-oriented' extraction. In and out before they knows what hit 'em.”

The Dog lurched to a halt. “You stay here,” Harper said to Alice. “Pete's crater gun is behind your seat if you need it.” He swung his door open. “Let's go!”

Alice watched, frozen, as Harper and Lachance hopped out. She heard a distant creak and thud as the back of the truck swung open, and then all four marines hustled up a broad flight of stairs and into a building with DISTRICT ONE POLICE HEADQUARTERS emblazoned above the doors.

They were gone from sight in a moment, leaving the street strangely quiet. A fat elderly man stood just in front of the Dog, his mouth open, staring at the station entrance. Aside from him, no one seemed to have noticed a thing.

Alice slid over to the driver's seat, taking a moment to review the basic controls. She didn't want to throw the Dog into reverse in a moment of panic while the marines were piling in.

She started to reach for the crater gun behind the passenger seat, then hesitated. What if somebody sees me with a gun? She felt strangely indecisive, overwhelmed by the moment.

A moment later she wished she had the gun in her hands. A low black ground car came racing up, squealing to a halt with two tires on the sidewalk, and a pair of men leaped out. They wore black uniforms, not the fatigues of the soldiers she'd seen, but they were clearly military. They ignored the Dog completely, drawing sidearms and hurrying up the steps.

They paused, one on either side of the doors to the station, and Alice stared at them, filled with a sense of unreality. I'm in a gigantic red farm truck. How could they possibly not notice? The truck just looked so … harmless, though. If either soldier had taken a moment to think, they would have taken her into custody or shot her out of hand. But their attention was focussed on the station.

One man nodded to the other, then yanked open one door. The other man sprang through, and his partner followed him inside. The doors swung shut.

And Alice grabbed the crater gun, an ugly, snub-nosed thing with a shoulder stock and a fat magazine just below the muzzle. It was heavier than she'd expected. She opened her door and hurried around the front of the truck. A terrified voice in her head screamed at her to stay where she was, but the marines didn't know they had two new enemies coming at them from behind.

Only later would Alice remember she was wearing a radio headset. Caught up in the moment, she hauled the door to the station open and stepped inside.

Ahead of her was a staircase, one flight leading up, one leading down. The crack of gunfire came from somewhere above. The two soldiers were on the stairs, several steps up, both of them turning to face her. Two handguns swung around, the muzzles looking as big as tree trunks. She didn't know she was lifting the crater gun until it jerked against her hands and the stock thumped against her ribs. There was a sound like a paper bag popping and one soldier flew backward, his weapon clattering on the steps.

The second man fired, Alice jerked her head sideways as crimson energy filled the air beside her head, and she frantically squeezed the trigger of the crater gun. It was point-blank range, but her first shot blasted tiles from the stairs behind the man and the second shot just managed to scorch his sleeve. The next two shots punched into his chest and he tumbled forward, landing with his head almost touching Alice's foot.

For a moment she stood frozen, every muscle rigid, filled with an urge to scream and unable to make so much as a peep. It reminded her of her first pirate raid, when panic had scrambled her thoughts. The memory was enough to snap her out of the worst of the shock, and she did what she'd done on that long-ago day. She took a deep breath, exhaled, then shook her head. She shook her limbs one at a time, and by the time she was done the paralysis was gone and her mind was almost clear.

The doors banged open behind her, and she sprang forward, dashing for the down staircase. Blasts of energy flashed past her head and she screamed, leaped into space, and cleared the first flight of stairs, coming down hard on the landing. She sprang sideways as shots tore apart the wall, then made another leap, landing at the bottom of the stairs. Feet thumped on the stairs above her and she sprayed the stairs with wild shots from the crater gun.

“We've got more coming in the front door.” The voice in her ear made her jump. “Alice, are you all right?”

“I'm in the basement,” she said, her voice a frightened squeak.

“Alice? Do you copy? Get clear if you can.”

Belatedly she reached up and activated the radio. “I'm downstairs.”

“There's a back door,” Harper said. “And another staircase. Come up to the top floor. Stark, get over here and extract us.”

Alice fired another few shots up the stairs, then turned and moved deeper into the building. She expected to hear booted feet coming down the stairs. Instead she heard a clatter, like something small and metallic bouncing from step to step. She thought about throwing herself flat, and opted instead for dashing through the nearest doorway and pressing her back to the wall.

An explosion turned the world to heat and blazing red light. The impact on her eardrums stunned her, and the crater gun tumbled from her hands. For a moment she stood there, numb and disoriented. She knelt, snatched up the gun, and stood, wondering why she was still alive.

Cells filled the corridor ahead of her, and a distracted corner of her mind put the pieces together. She'd found the cell block. The walls would be reinforced. They'd protected her from the blast. Why the door was open was beyond her.

She glanced back through the doorway. The corridor behind her burned, flames dancing across the carpet and writhing along one wall. Would it be enough to slow the soldiers upstairs?

Perhaps. She wasn't going to wait around to find out.

Four cells lined each side of the corridor, old-fashioned things with steel bars. Every cell was full, one prisoner each, a mix of men and women in merchant spacer uniforms. A burly man stretched an arm through the bars, gesticulating, his lips moving, the sound lost in an echoing buzz that seemed to fill Alice's entire skull. She shook her head and kept going, looking from cell to cell.

Jones was in the last cell on the right. They'd stripped him to a singlet and trousers. Even his boots were gone. He was speaking urgently, hands gesturing to emphasize each word.

“I can't hear you.” She reached for her radio headset, wondering if she should turn it off. Instead she tugged it from around her ear and shoved it through the bars to Jones. “I can't hear,” she said again, not sure how loud she was speaking.

Jones' hand closed on her shoulder. He shook her for a moment, waited until she looked him in the face, then pointed to her left. He pushed her in that direction, and she stumbled forward, stopping at a metal box the size of her palm mounted chest-high on the wall. She wasted a moment staring at it, then fumbled until the front of the box swung up.

Eight fat red buttons filled the box. Eight buttons, and eight cells.

I sure hope these aren't the emergency prisoner electrocution buttons. She grinned at her own weak joke and started pressing buttons.

Cell doors slid open and prisoners poured into the corridor. Alice heard a faint clatter as the nearest doors retracted, and felt a flutter of relief. I'm not completely deaf. Jones rushed out of the nearest cell, plucked the crater gun from her hand, and stepped past her. He fumbled at a panel, and the door at his end of the corridor slid open while the door at the far end slammed shut.

Jones led the way down another corridor, and the other prisoners rushed after him. Alice brought up the rear, feeling a mix of relief and annoyance that he'd taken her gun and taken charge as well. Well, it's his gun, after all. Still, I was doing all right.

An office on her right held a couple of civilians cowering behind a desk. Alice ignored them, following the crowd of prisoners as they rounded a corner and hurried up a narrow staircase. The crater gun banged twice, the sound as faint as the snapping of fingers, but the line of fleeing prisoners didn't slow down.

As she reached the ground-floor landing a door swung open, almost frightening Alice to death. O'Hare stepped through, nodded over the barrel of a crater gun, then followed her up the stairs.

The shuttle took them from the roof of the police station. They swept low over the spaceport. The port seethed like a kicked anthill, soldiers filling the open area between ships, and Alice heard the rattle of small-arms fire hitting the hull.

“Well, that's torn it,” Harper said glumly. “Stark. Get us out of here. We won't be getting any fuel today.”

The shuttle fled for deep space.

Chapter 10

“Here they come.”

Tom, who was watching the shuttle on his own display, didn't look up as Harris spoke. “Accelerate,” he said. “And watch for that-”

“There's the cruiser,” Harris interrupted. After a moment he muttered something under his breath, then looked at Tom. “It's a cruiser and a corvette now, Sir.”

The three ships appeared as icons on Tom's display, two in red, one in green. He zoomed in and watched as the shuttle fled toward the Kestrel with the two warships in pursuit. “Get us over there,” he said. “I want that shuttle safely back on board before they get crisped.”

“We can reach them in a few minutes,” O'Reilly said, “but we'll be hurtling toward the planet when we do.”

And burning fuel at a horrific rate, with more to burn slowing down and changing direction. Not to mention the impossibility of docking with a ship whipping past at thousands of kilometers per hour. “Match velocities with the shuttle,” Tom said. “They'll just have to take their lumps until we get there.”

It would take longer to reach the shuttle, but the Kestrel would be moving away from the pursuing ships, not toward them, by the time the shuttle came on board.

After that there was nothing to do but wait and fight a growing tension as four ships conducted a life-and-death race in maddening slow motion.

“The shuttle's actually gaining ground,” Harris said after a while. He whistled. “That thing can really go.”

“Their fuel won't last,” O'Reilly said. “Does anyone know how long an assault shuttle can maintain maximum acceleration?”

“Thirty-four minutes with full tanks,” someone said. “But they used some fuel getting down there and moving around.”

“I'm going to hope for the best and plan on them still accelerating until rendezvous,” O'Reilly said. “Intercept in, let me see, eight more minutes.”

As the shuttle entered the landing bay the cruiser fired a trio of missiles in a token display. The Kestrel's lasers destroyed the missiles easily. O'Reilly opened a portal into seventh-dimensional space and Parkland and the pursuing ships vanished.

“Head for that storm front to starboard,” Tom said, and the ship turned. “Any sign of them, Harris?”

Harris shook his head. “No portals so far.” Thirty long seconds passed, and he looked at Tom. “I don't think they're following, Sir.”

For a moment Tom was baffled. They have us outgunned. Why wouldn't they chase us down?

Because we might be trying to lure them away from the planet, he decided. They won't let us draw them away from their post. He exhaled, letting go of quite a lot of tension. “O'Reilly, you have the bridge. I'm going to talk to Harper.”

Tom found the marine lieutenant in the corridor outside the landing bay. Harper looked weary, his usual perfect posture drooping almost into a slouch. Sweat plastered his short-cropped hair to his skull. “We made a right hash of it, Captain,” he said. “We stirred 'em right up, and we didn't get a drop of fuel.”

“Any casualties?” Tom said, and felt a great weight slide off his shoulders when Harper shook his head.

“We all made it out in one piece. And not just us.” Harper jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We brought back the crew of the Laureline, too.” Tom gaped, and Harper grinned. “We got all seven of them. We sort of stumbled across them, and they decided to come with us.”

“Well, that's good,” Tom said. Unless we get them all killed. He pushed the thought away. I'll get us all back to Garnet. I'll find a way. “Are they all right?”

“They's fine,” Harper said. “Come in and I'll introduce you.”

“Thank you, Captain. We're most grateful.”

Anderle was a fleshy man in his fifties, the rigid epaulette boards on his shoulders the only part of his body that wasn't soft and rounded. He had a bristling gray mustache that wobbled when he spoke. It was almost hypnotic, and Tom turned away to keep himself from staring. “This is your crew?”

Anderle nodded to a slender young woman. “This is Janine Greyeyes. She does navigation and logistics for us.”

Her eyes, of course, were not gray. They were brown, and they crinkled in the corners as she smiled up at him. He smiled back, feeling suddenly foolish. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Anderle kept talking, introducing the rest of his crew, and Tom nodded and said polite things while forgetting their names and faces immediately. He managed not to stare at Janine, but she had almost all his attention. A voice in the back of his head told him he was a fool, that he'd just met her, that his reaction to her was ridiculous.

It didn't matter. He was smitten.

“We'll need to get you cabins,” he said. “Clothes. Things like that.” He scratched the top of his head, unreasonably embarrassed. “Let me see. I could put O'Reilly on that, but he's pretty busy.” He lifted his hands in an apologetic shrug. “We lost a lot of crew. Half the crew, in fact. The Kestrel's first battle was pretty ugly.”

Anderle and his people stared at him, shocked.

“So we lost a lot of infrastructure,” he went on. “Let me see. I know the captain's cabin is vacant.” He tapped at his bracer. “There. I've unlocked it. You've got a place to freshen up, at least. I'll have to arrange for cabins.” He blushed, which embarrassed him so badly his blush deepened. “I'll, ah, send someone to find you as soon as I figure out who's handling cabin assignments.” He thought for a moment. “If anyone is handling cabin assignments. Ugh.” He grimaced. “I need a ship's clerk or something.”

Harper, the marines, Anderle, Janine, the other rescued merchant spacers, all of them were staring at him. He said, “The mess hall is that way,” and pointed. “The captain's cabin is in the spine. Upper deck. Excuse me, I have to go.” He spun, hurried to the doorway, then froze. “Um, Lieutenant Harper?”

Harper, poker-faced, said, “Yes, Captain?”

“I'm calling a meeting of department heads. You'll need time to change and shower, I guess. Is half an hour good?”

Harper nodded.

“Alice?” He looked around and spotted her sitting on the deck behind the marines.

“Half an hour is fine,” she said.

“Great.” He wanted to take one more look at Janine Greyeyes. Instead, he fled into the corridor.

This time when the department heads met in the boardroom the map was much smaller. O'Reilly kept the projection zoomed right in, reflecting the Kestrel's much-reduced range. Only four star systems could still be reached: Parkland, Hapsburg, Zin, and Jonqing.

“I'm still inclined to avoid Jonqing,” Tom said. “The base at Williams' World means it's a prime target for the enemy.” He looked around the table. “Does anyone disagree?”

No one spoke.

“All right. There's nothing at Zin. That pretty much leaves Hapsburg. What do we know about it?”

“It's a bigger colony than Parkland,” O'Reilly said. “It's closer to major shipping lanes, too. If the DA is at Parkland, they're at Hapsburg.”

Tom nodded. It made sense. But what else could they do? He looked around the table. “Anyone else?”

Harper met his gaze and gave him a fatalistic shrug. “Maybe we should go back to Parkland. Hit 'em with everything we've got. It's bound to be easier than Hapsburg.”

“That's suicide,” O'Reilly said.

Tom said, “Do we have enough fuel to go to Hapsburg, take a peek, and come back to Parkland if the DA is there in force?”

O'Reilly found a live area on the tabletop, tapped it awake, and did some quick calculations. “Maybe,” he said at last. “If the weather is good. One big storm in our path and we'd be sunk. And it means we'd be starting a fight here with empty tanks.”

Not good. Tom frowned, staring into the distance, trying to figure out what to do. Go to Hapsburg and hope against hope the Dawn Alliance wasn't there? Or stay, and start a fight the Kestrel was almost certain to lose?

What I wouldn't give to not be the one making this decision.

As he stared he gradually became aware that his unfocused eyes were pointed at Alice. And that she was fidgeting like she needed to go to the bathroom. He blinked, focused, and found she was staring right back at him. Looking just as trapped as he felt.

He said, “Alice? Do you have something to say?”

There was a long, tense moment of silence. Then she nodded. “Yes, Sir. There's another option.” She took a deep breath. “It's at Zin. On the fringe of the system. There's a planet called the Boot. It's got one moon. The Slipper. They're lifeless hunks of rock way out in deep space. You can't even pick out the sun from there. It's just another star.”

“What's there?” he said.

Alice hesitated, but seemed to realize the cat was already out of the bag. “There's a Free Planets base there. We converted the old mining facility on the Boot. We made it into a supply depot. There's even a bare-bones shipyard. We call it Rivendell.” She looked around the table. “Because it's a place for secret meetings?”

The others gave her blank looks, and she frowned. “Anyway, it's a closely-guarded secret.” Her lips twisted as she said those words. “The Dawn Alliance probably doesn't know it exists.”

Tom said, “Will they welcome us?”

Alice lifted her hands in a shrug. “A couple of days ago, I would have said yes. But if the DA really isn't attacking the colonies …”

“Is the base defended?”

Alice shook her head. “We don't have the resources.”

Harper said, “So, if we have to, we can just take the fuel we need.” He looked at Alice. “Sorry, Alice.”

“We'll ask nicely,” Tom said. “We have to have fuel, though.” Alice looked utterly miserable, but he had the entire crew to worry about. “Alice. What else can you tell us about this base?”

The ship was in hyperspace moving toward the Zin system and Tom was in the wardroom eating breakfast when his bracer chimed. He looked at his forearm and was startled to find “Message From Janine Greyeyes” displayed there. Someone must have added the civilians to the internal com net. He spent a few seconds savoring the moment, then tapped the notification.

The message was brief and to the point. She apologized for interrupting him and asked if she could see him before his shift started.

Tom felt his cheeks stretch in an ear-to-ear grin. He glanced around, double-checking he was alone, then did a quick fist-pump in the air. He wouldn't have believed he could be so besotted with someone he'd barely met, but she'd haunted his thoughts since their introduction the day before.

It was a perfectly idiotic time to be lovestruck, but since he couldn't help himself he decided to relax and roll with it. He considered inviting her to the wardroom, or suggesting they meet in the captain's cabin. Finally he sent her directions to the boardroom, then finished his breakfast and spent a couple of frustrating minutes trying to get his hair to all lie down. Then, filled with a giddy mix of nerves and anticipation, he went to meet her.

To his abject disappointment Anderle was in the boardroom with Janine. Both of them wore Navy work uniforms. Neither uniform was a perfect fit, but they were close. They rose as he came in, then sat back down as he took a seat.

Tom leaned back in his seat, doing his best impression of a dignified frigate captain rather than an infatuated schoolboy. “Captain Anderle. Ms. Greyeyes. What's this about?”

“Please.” She smiled. “Call me Janine.”

“I'm here in case I can help,” Anderle said. “It's Janine who's done all the work, though. She's a dynamo when she gets started.” He waved a hand at Janine and leaned back in his chair.

“I was thinking about what you said yesterday, Captain, about needing a ship's clerk. I hope you don't mind, but I've been talking to a lot of your crew and asking questions about your procedures.” She frowned, making a line appear between her dark eyebrows. “In most cases, there was one set of procedures before the radiation incident, and quite a different set of procedures after.”

Tom nodded, wondering where this was leading.

“My background is logistics,” she said. “I thought I might be able to help.” She looked at him, her expression a bit anxious, and he gave her an encouraging nod.

“I sorted out cabin assignments,” she said. “There's a list in the ship's computer now. There were crew sharing rooms while dozens of rooms went empty. I split up all the doubles, and I left empty rooms between people where I could. Since you've got the space, people might as well get some soundproofing.”

“All right,” said Tom. “That's good, I guess.”

“We only had the clothes we were wearing,” she went on, glancing down at her borrowed uniform. “So I started organizing clothing and laundry. The ship used to have a pretty good laundry system.” Her face went sad for a moment. “But the people who ran it are mostly dead. Now most people are doing their own laundry. It's really inefficient. Sometimes the washer units are idle, and other times there's lineups, and nobody can plan ahead.”

Tom fidgeted. “We've had other priorities …”

“Of course,” she said. “I completely understand. But I wanted to be useful.” She gestured at Anderle. “We all did. And we wanted laundry, of course. So I made us – the crew of the Laureline, I mean – I made us into a laundry team. We've got a roster and a schedule, and people can drop off their laundry in the bins like they did before. We're washing everything and delivering it to people's quarters.”

“Oh.” Tom blinked. “Really? That's great.”

She beamed. “I was hoping that was what you'd say.” The smile vanished. “Um, I took an additional liberty.”

An awkward silence stretched out until Tom said, “Yes?”

“There's a bit of a slop chest,” she said. “Most of it went to the pir – er, the Free Planets crew. But there's dozens and dozens of uniforms and clothing just sitting in drawers in the empty crew quarters.”

In the quarters of the dead, in other words.

Her cheeks reddened. “I didn't want to be disrespectful. But I really wanted to change out of my old uniform. So I started my people making an inventory of clothing and the like from your … lost … crew. We've been moving things out of the empty rooms. Three or four rooms are set up now for clothing storage. You go in, you find something in your size, and you register the tag.”

Tom said, “Register the tag?”

“So we can get it back to you after it's gone through the laundry,” she said. “Everything's tagged. Otherwise you'd never get your own shirts back.”

“Oh.” He considered that, feeling foolish. He'd never thought about the mechanics of laundry on a large scale before. “I see. Well, I guess that's … I guess it's the best thing to do.”

Janine nodded, solemn and sad. “Your shipmates wouldn't want their quarters to become shrines. If I was lost during a voyage, I'd want my friends to put my stuff to use.”

She's about the size of Brady, he thought, remembering the lieutenant who'd been his mentor and his friend during his first days on the Kestrel. I wonder if she's wearing anything of Brady's. She wasn't, of course. Janine wore a spacer's uniform, not an officer's. Still, the idea disturbed him.

However, she was right. There was nothing healthy or practical about refusing to touch the quarters or the possessions of fallen crew.

“Tell him about the database,” Anderle said.

When Tom raised an eyebrow Janine said, “I want to create a database of skills. Who's good at what, beyond their basic job description. So when you need a vibration welder you don't have to ping the whole crew.”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, her voice warming with enthusiasm. “On a little boat like the Laureline we all know what everybody can do. On a big ship like this, if I understand it correctly, it's your crew chiefs and lieutenants who know it all. But they never wrote it down. They carried it all in their heads, and now it's lost. So you need a more formal system. Someone has to interview your crew one by one, or maybe send around a questionnaire. And then we'll enter it in a database.”

“She says 'will'“, Anderle said with a wry grin. “Like she hasn't already started.”

Janine flashed a sheepish grin. “I couldn't sleep last night. So I put together a basic database and I entered what I could think of for the crew of the Laureline. It won't be difficult to add records for your crew.”

“Thank you,” Tom said. “We should have thought of all that stuff on our own.”

“I'm a bored logistics expert,” she said. “You and your crew have other skills, and other priorities. I'm just glad I could help.”

Tom nodded, then grinned and said, “Do you have any more suggestions?”

He meant it as a joke, but she nodded back. “Yes. You should start a memorial wall.”

“A … what?”

“We lost a couple of people last year,” she said. “It was rough. The Laureline's a small ship. We were pretty tight. We had to use their cabins. Their gear. Someone else sat in their usual chairs at mealtimes. It was necessary, but it hurt.” For a moment her eyes stared into the past. “But we couldn’t just pretend they'd never been aboard. So we picked a section of bulkhead by the forward cargo hold, and we made a memorial.”

“A memorial?” He felt foolish parroting her words, but he had no idea what else to say.

“Nothing obtrusive,” she said. “We wrote messages. Jerry did a couple of sketches. The rest of us just wrote things. Goodbye. I miss you. I still laugh when I remember that time you spilled the noodle soup. That kind of thing.”

“It helped us hang on,” said Anderle. “And it helped us let go.”

“It's not really the Navy way of doing things,” Tom said.

Janine shrugged. “Most Navy ships don't lose half their crew in one engagement. These are special circumstances.” Her voice became brisk. “Anyway, that's my other suggestion, since you asked.”

Tom nodded. “Thank you for that. And thank you for the rest of it. Everything you're doing.” He looked at Anderle. “That all of you are doing.” Then, reluctantly, because he was enjoying Janine's presence and didn't want the meeting to end, “Was there anything else?”

“No, that was it,” Janine said, and stood. “We won't take any more of your time.”

In a moment both of them were gone, leaving Tom alone in the boardroom. He gazed at the doorway, remembering the shape of Janine's silhouette as she'd left, and smiled. “What a girl!”

Chapter 11

“Everything's clean and green, Sir. Looks like you've got clear sailing for a while.” O'Reilly rose from the captain's chair as Tom stepped onto the bridge.

“Thank you. You're relieved.” Tom took his seat, looking around the bridge. Naomi Silver had the helm. The former pirate looked out of place in gray trousers and a flamboyant yellow shirt. The rest of the bridge crew was in uniform, Onda at Communications and a spacer named Partridge at Tactical.

The command structure had become quite flattened, Tom realized. The marines answered to Lieutenant Harper. The former pirates looked to Alice Rose for leadership. The engineering staff had Lieutenant Sawyer. The rest of the crew looked to O'Reilly in his position as acting First Officer, and to Tom himself.

The old command structure was gone, and it was part of the reason he couldn't figure out how to deal with Hanson. A captain was supposed to be able to delegate problems like that. A quiet word to Hanson's direct supervisor should have been enough.

But Hanson's direct supervisor was Tom himself. Tom and Lieutenant Brady, who was now dead.

It was the same frustrating issue he'd been dealing with since the original disaster. The intermediate levels of leadership were gone. He couldn't count on junior officers to handle issues with the crew.

Or to notice issues, he thought. He would have to keep his eyes open. If there were problems brewing, he needed to spot them before they blew up.

Suppressing a sigh, he looked around the bridge. He knew O'Reilly was overworked and feeling stressed. It was part of the reason Tom hadn't talked to him about Hanson. O'Reilly was off-duty now, and leaving him alone was the only thing Tom could think of to do for him.

Onda, he saw, was quietly playing chess against the ship's computer while his console automatically scanned for comm signals. The ship might have been short of manpower, but the truth was, there was very little to do during most of the bridge shift. I'll let him play.

Partridge seemed to be running combat simulations set in the Vin system. She seemed content, and she was familiarizing herself with their destination.

Naomi Silver also seemed fine. She was the only one on the bridge who actually had something to do. She had the ship set on a gently curving path that took it around a swelling bank of tea-colored storm energy. Meanwhile, she switched among various navigational scans, plotting the ship's best course through endlessly shifting storms.

Tom was about to look away when he noticed Silver's left hand, which rested on the woman's thigh. That hand was clenched into a fist. Tom looked closer, noticing the tense set of her shoulders, the way she tapped his console with quick, angry gestures.

“Silver?”

She turned, giving Tom a tight-lipped look. “Captain?”

“Is everything all right?”

“Fine, Sir.”

What do I do? Wait for an opportunity to speak to her alone? Ask Alice to speak with her?

To hell with it.

“You seem tense, Silver. Is something bothering you?”

Silver hesitated, clearly considering whether to speak.

“Come on,” Tom said. “Get it off your chest.”

After a long pause Silver said, “It's Alice.”

“You're having trouble with Ms. Rose?”

“Well … not exactly.” By the look on her face, Silver regretted having opened her mouth. “It's Rivendell. She shouldn't have told you about it.” She scowled. “We don't tell people about Rivendell. Especially not UW Navy people.”

“I see.” Tom stared at the woman, flummoxed. How the hell do I deal with this? He glanced around the bridge. Partridge and Onda were carefully looking only at their consoles and pretending not to listen, but they couldn't help but overhear. Why didn't I wait until I could talk to her alone?

“You know, there really isn't anywhere else for us to go.”

Silver nodded sullenly.

“I think she's looking at the larger picture. The Free Planets can't drive the Dawn Alliance out of the Green Zone without help. I think Alice understands the necessity of helping with the war effort.”

“But we're not at war with the Dawn Alliance!” Silver glanced around the bridge, flushing. “I mean, you guys are, but we're not. The Free Planets are negotiating.”

“Some of them are,” Tom agreed. “But you're living in a fantasy if you think the Dawn Alliance will leave you alone. They want you on their side for as long as they're at war with the United Worlds. But what do you think they'll do if the UW decides to pull out of the Green Zone?”

Silver stared at him, looking unhappy.

“I think Alice realizes that a UW victory is the only hope the Free Planets have for anything like freedom in the long run. The Dawn Alliance is going to annex every colony in the Zone, and they won't do it gently, either. I think you know that.”

Silver didn't speak.

“At any rate, the decision's been made,” Tom said. “Now we all have to live with the consequences.”

“It looks like you're settling in nicely.” Tom leaned against the wall of the captain's cabin, now claimed by the crew of the Laureline as a sort of lounge. No one slept in the bedroom, but the merchant spacers used Nishida's meeting room for general socializing.

Tom had asked to meet with them, mostly as an excuse to see Janine. He'd secretly hoped no one else would show up. Anderle and three more crew were lined up on Nishida's little couch, but at least Janine was there, perched on a guest chair.

“I hope you don't mind the liberties we've been taking,” she said, her face solemn. “I know Ms. Nishida was your captain.”

“The last time I was in here it felt … stuffy,” Tom said. “It was unpleasant. Like some kind of crypt. But you've made it cheerful.” He looked around the little room. “I'm not sure what you've done exactly. Maybe it's just fresh air and human voices. But it's much nicer now. I don't think anyone minds. I know I don't.”

Details came to him as he looked around the room, things he hadn't noticed because he'd been distracted by Janine. A vase on the little table held a bouquet of paper flowers. They had a hand-made look, as if someone had been absolutely determined to cheer up this bleak, functional space. A bright red bow decorated a light fixture. Little things, but they changed the atmosphere of the room completely.

“We took pains to make the Laureline homey,” Anderle said. “Plants, wall hangings, that sort of things. It doesn't seem to be the Navy way to do things, but it's what we're used to.”

“I like it,” Tom said. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, wanting to prolong the meeting but running out of things to say. “I appreciate the work you've been doing.”

Anderle waved that away. “We're used to working for our upkeep.”

“So, ah, is there anything you need?”

Anderle shook his head. Janine said, “Nothing material.”

Tom looked at her. “Nothing material?”

She met his gaze, hesitated, then blurted, “We need to know what's going on! You've been taking care of us, and we're completely dependent on you. But the ship isn't actually heading for Garnet, is it?” She pursed her lips, looking forlorn. “We have no power over our own destiny. And we don't even know what's happening.”

“Ah.” Tom scratched his head, thinking. “O'Reilly's been posting updates on the internal network. You won't be getting those, though.”

“Those updates might not be as good as you think they are,” Janine said. “Every time I ask one of the crew what's happening I get a different answer.”

Tom frowned. That wasn't ideal, but it was a problem for another day. He considered the ethics of sharing Alice's secret, then decided that if the United Worlds military knew about Elrond, some merchant spacers hardly mattered. He outlined the basic situation. “We'll be there shortly. We'll take some fuel and head directly for Garnet. We'll all be safely behind United Worlds lines in a few days.”

Janine said, “Take?”

“Pardon?”

She frowned, a familiar vertical line appearing between her eyebrows. “You said you would take some fuel. But the Free Planets people don't really like the United Worlds Navy.”

“I think I can persuade them we're all on the same side now,” Tom said.

The line between her brows didn't fade. “But what if they don't want to help you?”

Tom spread his hands in a shrug. “We'll do our best to persuade them. I think it will work. But don't worry. We're a warship, after all. We'll get our fuel one way or another.”

Her expression darkened. “You mean you'll take it by force?”

He stared at her, baffled. “We'll try diplomacy first. We'll try hard. But I intend to get this ship back to Garnet.”

She looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “But it's their fuel. And they see you as an enemy.”

“Maybe.” He struggled to keep frustration out of his voice. “We won't use any more intimidation or violence than we have to.”

“But you will,” she said. “You'll use as much intimidation and violence as you have to.”

“Now, Janine,” Anderle interrupted, putting a hand on her forearm. “Let's not-”

She jerked her arm away and silenced him with a glare. She was still glaring as her gaze returned to Tom. “Violence always begets violence.”

Tom found himself speechless. He stared at her, completely stumped, trying to smother a rising anger. Let her take responsibility for more than a hundred people in desperate danger! Then maybe she'd have the right to second-guess him. “I intend to get you home safely,” he said. He sounded stiff, pompous. “I'll do it as gently as possible.” His hands opened and closed. I'm finally having a conversation with her. And it's turned into … this. “If there's nothing else?”

Anderle looked apologetic. Janine looked annoyed. The others just looked embarrassed. No one spoke.

Tom turned and marched out.

He stomped down the spine, heading aft, almost wishing he could run into Hanson. Chucking the twit into the brig sounded like an excellent cure for his frustration. There was no sign of the irritating spacer, though. The crew he saw passed him in tense silence, obviously sensing his mood.

Near the aft end of the spine he found a young spacer with a laser drill working on a section of bulkhead. She glanced up, saw him, flushed, and lowered the drill. When he was half a dozen paces from her she gave him a polite nod and hurried away, stuffing the little drill into her pocket.

Tom stopped when he reached the place where she'd been working. The ship had taken some serious battle damage in that section of the spine. The molded polymer wall panels were gone, exposing the inside of a steel hull panel. Several lengths of pipe and some plastic tubes holding wires traversed the gap, with patches showing where Sawyer's crews had replaced missing sections.

On the exposed raw steel he found messages. Dozens of them. They were inscribed in ink, in plastic dab-stick, or scribbled on paper and taped in place. He saw sketches of faces, an outline of a hand, lists of names, and notes.

Goodbye, Jeremy. Scott – you are not forgotten. Anisa and Karin – You will always be in our hearts.

I miss you.

We love you.

You live on in my prayers.

The girl with the laser drill had burned a picture into the steel, a shallow line drawing that was simple but incredibly powerful. An angel, her wings just a couple of quick lines, carried a slack-limbed figure up through a storm of shattered hull plates. The figure in her arms was blank-faced, almost formless. It could have been anyone.

Tom was horrified to find his eyes filling with tears. He glanced quickly up and down the corridor, then wiped his eyes. After that he tried not to look at the angel.

His eyes scanned the endless names on the hull plate. When they began to blend together he closed his eyes. He started to turn away, then paused.

There were no officers. It made sense, he supposed. You shared experiences with your peers, with your colleagues. When someone was your supervisor there was always a distance between you. No one formed the same kind of bond with an officer, except for another officer.

And most of the other officers were dead.

He found a marker resting on one of the steel ribs that held the hull plate in place. He thumbed it on, then wrote across the edge of the rib. Goodbye, Brady. You were my friend.

The inscription looked sad and inadequate when he was done. But mere words could only do so much. He turned off the marker, returned it to its place, and continued aft.

The Aft Observation Room was empty. Tom let himself in and sat down, staring out into the void. The room was tiny. Without a floor-to-ceiling window it would have felt claustrophobic. His knees almost touched the window, and if someone took the other seat it would be difficult not to bump elbows. With all the vastness of seventh-dimensional space in front of him, though, he felt as unconstrained as a bird.

A storm raged just to his left, an expanse of lavender energy deepening to purple as the clouds thickened. To his right was clear space with distant storms making swathes of faded color in a fantastic backdrop. It was a glorious view, and he shook his head, baffled that this room could ever be empty.

A finger of soft color burst from the storm front to the left, stretched through the void, came closer and closer, and at last bathed the ship in light of softest violet. It was too little energy to do any harm. Tom watched sparks dance around the outside of the screen on his bracer. When he moved his arm closer to the window the screen took on an eerie glow. He moved his arm back, lifting it over his head until he could touch his knuckles to the bulkhead behind him. Even that short distance was enough to make a difference; the sparks faded and his bracer went dark. He tapped the screen to make sure the device still worked, the put his hand back in his lap.

The finger of storm energy vanished as abruptly as if a balloon had popped, making the view through the window suddenly sharper and brighter. The storm moved gradually aft, falling away behind the ship as the Kestrel moved on. Much of Tom's frustration went with it, left behind as the focus of his thoughts shifted. He was disappointed by Janine's attitude – deeply disappointed, if he was honest with himself – but it couldn't be helped. Civilians got strange ideas sometimes. They embraced the idea of military violence and wanted to scrap the accords and nuke every world in the Dawn Alliance, or they became obsessed with the horrors of war and wanted the United Worlds to unilaterally surrender.

Well, they could feel any way they liked. They were civilians. They didn't have to make the hard choices, and they didn't have to face the consequences that came after.

Still, Janine had brightened his life in the short time she'd been aboard. There was a gulf between them they could never bridge – but he felt her absence keenly. The observation room was nice, but it would be nicer if he could share it with her.

Forget it, Thrush. It's not as if she's going to-

The gentle tap of knuckles on the hatch interrupted the thought. He stared, knowing it would be one of his crew and not Janine. But still …

The hatch slid open. “Captain?” Janine stuck her head through the hatch. “I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

A smile rose inside him but withered before it reached his face. She was likely here to harangue him further. He said, “Come in,” and shifted into the other seat. She stepped through the hatch, spent a moment taking in the tiny room, hesitated, then lowered herself into the seat he'd just vacated.

The hatch slid shut and they were alone.

“I'm …” She glanced at him, then bit her lip and looked out the window instead. “I'm sorry about before.”

He looked out the window as well. Instead of the storm, however, he found himself watching her reflection in the glass. The set of her shoulders and the way her hands clutched each other in her lap betrayed her tension. He said stiffly, “You had an opinion and you expressed it.”

She looked at him, and his head seemed to turn of its own accord to meet her gaze. She said, “It was presumptuous of me. You're the one with the final say. I can't imagine what it feels like, the responsibility you have. I had no right to play armchair quarterback. To tell you you were doing something wrong.”

Something in his chest loosened, like a knot coming untied and releasing a terrible weight of tension all at once. He sagged a bit in his chair, staring at her, wanting to say a thousand things and unable to utter a single word. The silence stretched out, and Janine put her hands on the arms of her chair. “I won't take any more of your time.” She started to rise. “Sorry to interrupt you.”

“Wait.” She stopped half out of her seat, and he took a deep breath, feeling as if he stood on a precipice. If he kept quiet he could pretend she was nothing more to him than another passenger.

He said, “I wish you would stay.”

For a long moment she didn't move. Her eyes searched his face, and then she smiled. “All right.” She lowered herself back into her seat.

Tom looked at the storm without seeing it, every nerve in his body tingling with an awareness of Janine Greyeyes. I'm alone with her. She stayed. She stayed to be with me.

Don't screw this up.

He racked his brain for something clever to say, something witty and suave. His brain offered him nothing in the way of suggestions, and the silence went on and on. Does it feel like a companionable silence? Is this getting awkward? Is she wondering what's wrong with me? Maybe I should-

“Ay-hay,” she said.

He looked at her, baffled. “Pardon?”

She blushed. “Sorry. I thought you were Nehiyaw.”

“I'm Cree,” he confirmed. “But I don't really speak it.” He shrugged, embarrassed. “I understand more than I can speak. And I can say a few things. Tanisi. Ekosi maka. And I can count to ten.”

She cocked her head, puzzled. “But I thought you were from Earth.”

“I am.” He shrugged. “I grew up at Spirit Lake. My parents tried to speak Cree at home a little bit, but most people just spoke English.”

“Really?” She lifted an eyebrow. “We only speak Cree at home. Everyone's worried we're going to lose our language and culture. There's only about thirty of us on the whole planet, after all. So people frown at you if you speak English to another Nehiyaw.” The line between her eyebrows reappeared. “I always thought it would be different back on Earth. I thought the culture would be stronger.”

He grinned. “It's different back on Earth, all right. Just not the way you think.”

He told her about life on the Spirit Lake Reservation, and she told him about a little town called River Forks on the outskirts of the colony on New Panama. The Cree community formed about a quarter of the town's population.

He forgot about his nervousness, forgot about their early argument, and forgot completely about his responsibilities. They talked about their homes, and then they talked about space travel and how life in the Navy differed from life on a merchant ship. Janine was clever and funny and insightful, and when a soft chime came from his bracer he looked away from her wide brown eyes with a sense of real loss.

“I'm due on the bridge.”

The corners of her mouth turned down in a display of disappointment that warmed him to his toes. She got to her feet and opened the hatch, stepping through to let him pass. “We should talk again.”

“I'd like that.” He smiled and stepped past her, then headed back to the bridge and the burden of his responsibilities.

Chapter 12

When the ship was two hours from Zin Tom told O'Reilly he was in charge and left the bridge. He went to his cabin and stretched out on his bunk, hoping for a nap. He'd been exhausted for so long he couldn't remember what it felt like to be rested. Now, as so many times before, he stared up at the ceiling with his mind racing, completely unable to sleep.

Finally he gave up, swung his legs to the floor, and stood. Who needs sleep when there's coffee?

He headed for the wardroom. One of the stewards who'd been in charge of the wardroom before was still alive. With most of the officers gone, though, he wasn't making the wardroom much of a priority. Tom figured the odds of finding fresh coffee in a pot that had been cleaned recently were fairly poor.

Still, coffee was coffee.

He entered the compartment that had seemed so small the first time he saw it, with Nishida, Brady, Carstairs, and a couple of others all crammed in there. Now it seemed cavernous. A wave of melancholy washed over him as he remembered the fallen officers. He'd barely known Carstairs, but the man had seemed cheerful and likable. Nishida had terrified him, while Brady had been his mentor and guiding hand. The ship had held more than a dozen other officers, most of them nothing more than faces he'd seen in the corridor or in the wardroom. Now they drifted through hyperspace wrapped in shrouds.

“Here's to you guys,” he murmured as he crossed to the coffee maker.

“Hmmm?”

Tom started, looking around. The long table that ran the length of the room was empty, but someone had dragged a chair into a corner. A figure sat slumped there, motionless, peering at Tom with bleary eyes.

“Dr. Vinduly. I didn't see you there.”

Vinduly didn't speak, just grunted.

A tray beside the coffee machine held an impressive number of dirty mugs. A few clean mugs still remained, so Tom poured himself a cup. The coffee was murky and had an oily sheen he didn't like. He dealt with that by not looking too closely. He added a couple of glucose pellets and some powdered cream, then looked around, wondering if Vinduly wanted company, or to be left alone.

The man looked as if he wanted solitude – but Tom walked over and sat in the closest chair to the doctor. He took a sip of coffee, grimaced, and set the cup aside. “What's up, Doc?”

Vinduly shrugged.

“How's Fagan doing?”

“Better than he deserves,” Vinduly muttered. His breath washed over Tom, sour and reeking of whiskey.

Tom stiffened. “You're drunk!”

“Not yet,” Vinduly said. He glowered into his coffee cup, then took a sip. “I'm working on it, though.”

Tom stared at him. “But you're on duty.”

Vinduly shook his head with the ponderous solemnity of the truly soused. “According to Mr. O'Reilly's schedule, my shift ended three hours ago.” He snorted. “Are we calling him Mr. O'Reilly? Or is he Acting Mr. O'Reilly?” Vinduly giggled, the sound shocking coming from a man who was normally so dour and dignified.

Tom stared at him while the doctor ignored him and took another sip from his mug. “Is something … bothering you, doctor?”

Vinduly peered at him. “You mean, for instance, is anyone pestering me endlessly when I'm trying to enjoy a quiet drink?” He glared at Tom until the glare collapsed in a smirk. Vinduly chuckled, then twisted in his chair. There was a counter mounted to the wall beside him, and he reached behind a napkin dispenser and drew out a flask. “Here. Freshen up that drink.”

“I have to be on the bridge in less than two hours.”

Vinduly gave a derisive snort. “What are they going to do? Report you to the captain?”

Tom took the flask from him, opened it, and sniffed. It was whiskey, all right. He poured a few drops into his mug, just enough to placate the surgeon, then capped the flask and set it on the table.

“Oh no you don't. Give that back.”

Tom returned the flask, then lifted his mug in salute and took a sip. The coffee was bad enough that he briefly wished he'd been more generous with the whiskey.

“We all have our burdens,” Vinduly said. “But you and me, we're a couple of special cases. An awful lot of bucks stop with us.”

Tom took another sip of coffee and listened. The surgeon had a sharp mind, even blunted by whiskey.

“According to the official command structure,” Vinduly said, pronouncing each word with exaggerated care, “I'm the head of the medical department, the department consisting of myself, three medical corpsmen, and one nurse who is also a qualified spacer and spends most of his time doing maintenance work. Officially, I report to the captain.” He made a vague gesture with his mug, then muttered a curse as coffee splashed across his knuckles. “The thing is, though, the captain has no idea. No offense, but you're not qualified to tell me how to run my surgery. Neither was Nishida. You're not surgeons. So it all stops with me.”

He set his cup down on the edge of the counter, then immediately picked it up again and took a sip. “I don't get to consult with anyone. There's nobody qualified to help me make a decision. And if I make a mistake …”

He lapsed into silence, and Tom stared at him, feeling completely out of his depth.

“It's the same for you,” said Vinduly. “You don't even have a First Officer. Not a real one. You've got a jumped-up helmsman. You've got no one who can give you advice when you make the tough choices. And no one you can talk to afterward if you make a mistake.” He leaned forward, peering at Tom. “Nobody except me.”

“I …”

“Quiet!” Vinduly snapped. “I wasn't done talking.”

Tom closed his mouth.

“Sir,” Vinduly added belatedly. He frowned to himself. “I'm the only person you can tell,” he said at last.

Tom said, “Huh?”

“That you don't know what you're doing.” Vinduly grinned. “You're a sublieutenant, for God's sake. Of course you don't know what you're doing! You don't even know how to be a lieutenant yet, never mind sitting in the big chair.” When Tom opened his mouth Vinduly held up a hand. “I'm not saying you're doing a bad job under the circumstances. Of course, what do I know? But it seems like you're doing all right. But that's not the point.”

Tom looked at him, waiting.

Vinduly stared into space, seeming to lose his train of thought. “The point,” he said finally, “is that you are in way over your head, and you can't admit it. You have to be the captain. You have to be confident and in charge. All the time. Because if you ever admit how scared and lost and confused you are, this ship is going to fall apart.”

Tom stared at him, then reached for his cup. He gave the flask a speculative glance.

“But you can tell me.” Vinduly gave Tom an exaggerated wink. “I'm outside your command structure. And I can see right through you, so you don't have any secrets from me anyway.” He chuckled, then became serious. “Everyone else has someone above them. Some kind of supervisor or superior they can confide in. Or a peer. Someone at their own level. You're the only one who doesn't have that. But you've got me.”

For a time the two of them sat there, not speaking. The doctor had effectively put into words some of the terror Tom had been feeling, the unrelenting pressure to always make the right choice.

The pressure to never let anyone see that he was under pressure.

Strangely enough, the doctor had dragged it all into the open, and now Tom felt no great need to speak of it. He said, “That's my issues covered. Now, what's eating you?”

The smile Vinduly gave him was tinged with so much sadness it broke Tom's heart. “They were my friends,” Vinduly said. He was looking at Tom, but his eyes were focused on something else. “I served with them for years. They were my friends, and they relied on me, and I couldn't save them. I couldn't do a God-damned thing for them. All I could do was watch them die.”

Chapter 13

When Battle Stations sounded, Alice headed for the mess hall. She didn't have a weapon to operate or a role to play in damage control, so her job was to wait and be ready to use the tables in the mess hall for triage in the event of heavy casualties.

“I did the rest of the tables,” Collins told her as she came in. “Do you want to get the last one?” He pointed to the back of the hall, where empty cups cluttered one table.

She grabbed a tray, cleared the table, then wiped it down, first with soap and water, then with disinfectant.

After that there was nothing to do but wait. The mess hall had windows along one bulkhead. She went to the window, half a dozen crew joining her, and stared out into hyperspace. A crackling wall of storm loomed in front of her, looking dangerously close. Then the light of a hyperspace portal dazzled her, making her close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, the ship was in normal space.

“Looks quiet,” said Collins at her elbow.

She nodded. There was nothing in sight but the gleam of stars in the bottomless blackness of deep space.

The stars didn't move, which meant the Kestrel wasn't manoeuvering. Which meant they weren't under attack. So far, so good. Alice told himself sternly to relax.

It didn't work, of course.

“You shouldn't have told them.”

Alice glanced at Collins, startled, then looked past him. The rest of the kitchen staff stood at the window, along with several other crew assigned to emergency triage. None of them seemed to have heard Collins's low murmur.

“You mean about Rivendell?”

He gave her a tight-lipped look. “You're damned right I mean about Rivendell. They're UW Navy. How could you tell them?”

She stared at him helplessly. It wasn't as if she hadn't given the question any thought. She'd agonized over it before she spoke up at the meeting, and she continued to agonize over it. She knew why she'd done it, but all her reasons rang hollow in her mind. She looked at Collins and didn't speak.

“Are you so desperate to impress them?” he said bitterly. “Or is it because you want to save your own skin?”

Some of the closer crew were beginning to glance in their direction. Alice moved farther along the window, out of earshot of the spacers. Collins followed.

“The Dawn Alliance is our real enemy,” she said. “I'm going to help the war effort. The war against the Dawn Alliance is our war too.”

“I might have believed that a couple of days ago,” Collins said. “But the Free Planets are negotiating for peace. We're not at war with the Dawn Alliance.”

“Neorome is a Free Planet,” she said. “Tazenda is too.”

That made him squirm a bit. “They could have negotiated. It's not our fault they didn't.”

She didn't speak, just raised an eyebrow.

Collins flushed. “Anyway, we don't know what's happening on Neorome or Tazenda. It might not be bad.”

“Do you really believe that?”

He shrugged angrily. “We don't know if we have to fight the Dawn Alliance. But we know we have to fight the United Worlds. They had their boot on our neck for a hundred years.”

She said, “How much do you want to bet the Dawn Alliance has killed more of our people in the last three days than the United Worlds ever has?” The United Worlds insisted that they owned the colonies in the Green Zone, and maintained military bases throughout the Zone, but they were fairly benign masters.

“You don't know that!”

“Neither do you!” she snapped. The Navy personnel were staring at them now, but she no longer cared. “The DA is a cancer in the galaxy, and you know it.”

He stared at her, looking mulish, but he didn't argue.

“I did what I thought was best,” she said softly. “I still think it was for the best. I understand that you don't agree. But I didn't do it to impress the UW Navy, and I didn't do it to save my own skin.”

Her voice hardened a bit on the last few words, and Collins lifted his hands in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay.” He scowled. “I don't think you should have done it. I wouldn't have. But I understand your reasons.”

She turned away from him and stared out into space, angry and frustrated and a little ashamed. Something precious was slipping away from her, something so fundamental it had never occurred to her she could lose it. The simple trust of her shipmates was eroding. She'd shared danger and hardship with them, victory and defeat. In many ways they were closer to her than family. Those bonds had been damaged. She could imagine a time when the intimacy she'd taken for granted would be gone. Collins and Silver and Fagan and the others would be people she'd once worked with, and that's all.

Collins murmured, “Have you been to see Fagan?”

She shook her head.

“He's looking pretty rough. His arm ….”

She nodded again, not knowing what to say.

“He's up and around, though.” There was a note of false cheer in Collins's voice. “He's learning how to do things with one hand.”

Fagan, who'd always been so competent, so full of confidence, wouldn't like being an invalid. God, who would?

“Maybe I'll go see him after Battle Stations.”

Collins shook his head. “I don't think …. He's pretty bitter.”

You mean, he knows I told the Navy about Rivendell. And he'll never forgive me.

“I count five ships total, Captain.” O'Reilly looked up from his console, eyes bleak. “We're screwed.”

Tom nodded. He wanted to ask if there was any possibility O'Reilly was wrong, any chance at all that these were neutral ships, or friendly. The fleet at the Boot, however, was making no attempt to hide. The ships had their transponders on.

They were Dawn Alliance ships. Every one of them.

“I get a light cruiser, a heavy cruiser, and a corvette.” O'Reilly tapped his screen. “Make that two corvettes. And a light carrier.”

That meant probably half a dozen fighters or bombers. Not that it mattered. The Kestrel was hopelessly outgunned.

And out of fuel.

No one spoke. No one looked at him. But he could sense the bridge crew waiting to see how he would react.

And he had no idea what to do.

“We'll wait,” he said, trying to sound calm, confident. Anything other than hopeless. “We'll gather intel, and we'll see what happens.”

In his mind he ran through one scenario after another, knowing each of them was hopeless. In normal space, a body in motion would remain in motion. The storms in hyperspace affected matter in strange ways, though. It took energy to pass through a storm without losing velocity. If he made the transition to seventh-dimensional space and started the ship moving, it would eventually drift to a stop. He would never arrive at a destination of his choosing, not without burning fuel he no longer had.

Zin was the Kestrel's last stop. They were here until they found a way to steal some fuel.

We have to surrender. We have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the Dawn Alliance and hope for the best. His mind recoiled from the idea – they would get no mercy, not from the Dawn Alliance – but what was the option?

Starvation?

Would it be better to die in a hopeless battle?

“Things change.” He said it to bolster the morale of the bridge crew, and also to bolster his own flagging courage. “The Dawn Alliance doesn't need five ships in the middle of nowhere. This is a fuelling stop, nothing more. They'll move on.”

It sounded plausible once he said it. That all five ships would leave seemed a bit much to hope for, but it could happen. If a single corvette remained behind, well, that was a fight the Kestrel could actually win.

“Stand down from Battle Stations.” He looked around the bridge. “Silver. Onda. You two have been here the longest. Take a break.”

O'Reilly's amplified voice came over the bridge speakers, instructing the crew to stand down from Battle Stations. Word of their situation would filter slowly through the ranks, starting with whomever Silver and Onda spoke to. Tom looked at the arm of his chair and the microphone stowed there, wondering if he should make an announcement to the ship's company. The problem with reassuring people was that you sounded as if you thought they needed reassuring.

He left the microphone where it was. Let them see that it's business as usual.

O'Reilly said, “How long do we wait, Sir?”

Tom shrugged. “We wait until something happens.”

Tom was in the spine of the ship, walking toward the aft section, when a rattle in the corridor behind him made him stop and turn. Another spacer, a young woman named Secrest, stood thirty or so paces behind him, staring at the port bulkhead. She backed away a couple of steps, then stood frozen as a couple of loud bangs came from behind the bulkhead. The rattle stopped, and dark smoke seeped out through a seam between panels.

Secrest, to Tom's dismay, whirled and ran in the opposite direction. He swore, then headed toward the smoke. In the back of his mind he did a frantic cataloguing of the systems that ran along the spine. There were water pipes, electrical cables, some hydraulic systems, and data lines. He couldn't think of anything explosive. There was some chance of electrocution, he supposed, but the bulkhead panels themselves were non-conductive.

He reached the seam where the smoke originated as the blare of an alarm sounded and hatches slid shut, sealing off fifteen meters of corridor. Tom was alone with the fire. He was in no danger, not unless the fire got a lot worse. The hatches would still open if he hit the panic switch. Emergency crews would be able to get in, too.

The alarm means someone qualified will be on their way. He wondered if he should stay back and wait, or even mimic Secrest. It galled him to do nothing during a crisis, though.

He touched a fingertip to the panel on the left, a quick tap in case it was hot. The panel was warm, but not dangerously so. He pressed a cautious fingertip to the panel, then knelt and fumbled for a release. The smoke wasn't thick yet, but it was nasty, stinging his eyes and tickling the back of his throat. He blinked, coughed, then squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pry the panel open by touch.

“Here, Sir.”

He opened his eyes. It was Secrest, wearing a mask, a fire extinguisher in one hand, an emergency kit in the other. The kit held several filter masks, and he pulled one over his face. He sealed the goggle section over his eyes, then exhaled to force smoky air out of the mask. “That's better. Thank you.”

“You press up on the top corners,” she said, and put a palm against one corner of the panel to demonstrate. He put a hand against the other top corner, and together they popped the panel open.

Smoke billowed out, blinding him for a moment, then dissipating. Tom stared at the exposed components inside the bulkhead, seeing nothing but a confusing jumble of tubes and wiring. Secrest, though, was already pointing the nozzle of the fire extinguisher. She blew a single controlled blast of carbon dioxide, then set the extinguisher aside.

“There,” she said, her voice muffled by the mask. “That's the fire taken care of.” She looked at Tom. “There's a breach in the argon tube.” She grinned. “Ironically enough, the fire melted a hole in the plastic pipe.”

Ironic because argon was used for fire suppression. The gas, inert and invisible, would be pooling around their feet. Stopping the flow was the first order of business. Tom straightened, thinking. This had come up when he drilled with the marines, doing damage control simulations in his early days on the Kestrel. The argon tank was in the aft section, which meant he had to shut the flow off aft of the breach.

He trotted down the corridor, scanning the panels on the bulkheads. Labels covered the panels like graffiti, a jumble of visual clutter that he usually tuned out. Painted stripes showed where conduits and wires ran inside the bulkheads. He spent a moment trying to remember what color indicated argon, then spotted a tiny text label next to a powder-blue line.

ARGON

He quickly traced it back until he reached the emergency hatch that blocked the corridor. Right by the hatch he found an icon of a powder-blue spigot. He pried open an access hatch, saw half a dozen handles, and grabbed the blue one. He twisted the handle counter-clockwise, then glanced down the corridor.

Secrest had brought in a toolbox along with the emergency kit. She knelt beside the site of the fire with a hand scanner, then gave him a thumbs-up. “That's got it, Sir.”

“Captain? What's your status?”

The voice, tinny and mechanical, seemed to come from empty air behind Tom. He spent a moment looking around foolishly, then spotted a face pressed to the window set in the emergency hatch. It was a marine named Lachance, her face obscured by a firefighting helmet. The hatch had a speaker and microphone built in.

“We're good for the moment,” he told her. “There's some smoke and argon gas in here, but the fire is out and the leak is contained.” He ran through the protocol in his mind. If no crew were in danger and no urgent repairs were required, the correct procedure was to keep the hatches sealed, containing the smoke and gas. The ship's air systems were designed for situations exactly like this. The ship would clean the air in this section, and the hatches would slide open when the last of the smoke and gas were gone.

“I'll stand by here, then, Sir,” Lachance said.

Tom wanted to tell her it wasn't necessary, but the truth was, it was comforting to know she was there. He nodded and headed back to join Secrest, who was lowering herself into a seated position in front of the opening in the bulkhead. He sat down beside her.

“I'm patching the argon pipe,” she said. “Normally we'd pull the whole section of pipe and replace it, but that's a lot of overhead to take on under the circumstances.” The circumstances being the fact that they were in enemy territory, in constant danger of combat. It was no time to have a dozen crew tied up, the argon system disabled, and a corridor blocked for hours.

“I'm not even sure we have a replacement pipe,” she said, leaning forward to wrap a long strip of pipe patch around the damaged section. “Our stores took some damage in the battle. I don't think anyone's done a complete inventory yet.”

She leaned back, waiting for the pipe patch to harden, and he said, “Can you tell what started the fire?”

“I'll have to clean things up a bit before I can be sure. I'm going to wait for the patch first. But we're pretty close to where the worst of the damage was.” She gestured at the ceiling, where tiles gave way to the hardened polymer of a large emergency patch. “I bet the insulation on some of the wiring got damaged.”

She leaned sideways to pick up the panel they'd removed. The inside of the panel was blackened by smoke. She turned it over, examined the outside of the panel, and tilted it to catch the light. “Aha.”

Tom leaned closer, peering at the panel. “Aha?”

“Look here, Sir.” She pointed at a spot near the edge of the panel. “There's a tiny hole. Do you see it?”

Only when she tilted the panel a bit did he spot the puncture, a pinhole in the plastic.

“Shrapnel,” she said. “It went through the panel, probably damaged the insulation on a power cable.”

It wouldn't be the only problem waiting to be discovered. The ship needed a complete overhaul, which it wasn't going to get any time soon. It was a discouraging reminder that the Kestrel had taken a beating, that their situation was desperate, and deteriorating.

They were kneeling side by side, wiping black residue from the narrow space inside the bulkhead, when the emergency hatches on either side slid open. Tom stood. “Can I leave this with you, Secrest?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Part of him wanted to stay. Having actual work to do was a welcome distraction from brooding over the trap they were in. However, it seemed his most important duty as a captain was simply acting like a captain. That meant he couldn't be seen kneeling in a corridor, wiping up soot.

He continued aft, thanking Lachance and assuring her she could stand down. He toured the aft section, looking in on the engineering crew and poking his head into the missile bay. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, just getting a sense of crew morale and the general state of the ship.

The crew seemed edgy, but not unreasonably so. Of course, they wouldn't necessarily let their captain see if they had issues.

I should find out who the surviving crew chiefs are, the non-commissioned supervisors. Those are the people who will really have the pulse of the ship. They don’t have junior officers to talk to now, no way to pass along their concerns. I need to make sure they feel able to talk to me.

He left the aft section, taking the lower deck of the spine this time. He passed the brig, which stood empty. That meant Fagan was still in the surgery. I should see about getting him transferred back to the brig. He's a fanatic. He's crazy enough to sabotage the ship and do his best to get us all killed.

As he crossed from the spine to the forward section, raised voices caught his attention. He followed the sound to the mess hall, where he hesitated for a moment in the corridor. Was this a situation where the presence of an officer would hinder more than it helped? Pressure had to be building in the crew. Should he look away when the crew found ways to vent?

“Maybe I should bust your head for you. Would that change your attitude?”

“Why don't you come over here and try it, spacer boy? I'll carve you up right here on the counter. I'll make cutlets. That'll solve the food problem right quick.”

So much for letting people vent. Tom stepped through the doorway. Half a dozen spacers made a half-circle around a burly technician Tom didn't know by name. The man had his fists up and his belly pressed to the counter that separated the dining area from the kitchen.

Across the counter, Bridger held a butcher knife with a blade nearly as long as his forearm. He was sneering at the spacer with a look of utter confidence, as if slicing up angry Navy personnel was all part of a day's work. When his gaze flicked momentarily to Tom, though, relief showed in his eyes.

“Stand down!” Tom bellowed the order with all the menace and volume he'd learned from his cadre trainers during Basic, and the six spacers behind the big man turned as one. He saw dismay and chagrin on their faces, and perhaps a hint of resentment.

Tom stared at the closest spacer. “Harris. Get back to your post.”

“I'm off duty, Sir.”

“Then go to your quarters!”

Harris blanched and hurried past him.

“I'm handing out punishment duty,” Tom said to the others. “I've got something pretty nasty in mind, too.” He didn't, but he was sure he could think of something. “Whoever's still here in thirty seconds gets their share.”

The rest of the group rushed after Harris.

The big man turned to face Tom, lowering his fists. He looked angry, but also a bit abashed. “Sir, this pirate-”

Tom said, “Shut up!”

The man went silent.

“What's your name?”

“Hamilton, Sir.”

“You threatened to split this man's skull.” Tom gestured to Bridger, who'd made the big knife disappear and now wore an expression of angelic innocence. “Explain to me why you shouldn't spend the next couple of weeks in the brig.”

“Captain, he threatened me with a knife!”

“Before or after you said you'd split his skull?”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. “I … forget.”

In a softer voice Tom said, “What's this about, Hamilton?”

“These pirates are hogging the food, Sir!” One beefy arm swept up, and he pointed an accusing finger at Bridger. “He wants to put the rest of us on starvation rations while he and his pirate friends eat like kings!”

Tom looked at Bridger. He could see the rest of the kitchen staff behind the man, peeking timidly over his shoulders.

“You can't believe anything he says, Sir,” Hamilton said earnestly. “He says we're running out of food, but there's plenty. He's a pirate, Sir. He steals. It's what he does.”

Bridger, his face growing redder with every word, advanced until the apron around his waist pressed against his side of the counter. His hands came up, fingers curled like he was about to lunge for Hamilton's throat.

“Bridger.”

Bridger showed no sign of hearing, his eyes locked on Hamilton's face. He put a hand on the counter, palm down, ready to vault over.

“Bridger!”

Bridger's head jerked back, and he looked at Tom, startled.

“Take a step back.”

Bridger stared at him.

“Don't make me tell you again.” And what will I do if he ignores me? How do I get myself into these situations? “Step back from the counter.”

For a long moment the former pirate glared at him, looking as if he was going to argue. Then he took a deep breath and stepped back.

Tom scanned the kitchen, looking for a face he recognized. “You.” He pointed to a large woman, the only surviving member of the Kestrel's original kitchen staff. “What's your name?”

“Stein, Sir,” she squeaked.

“Come here,” he said, and gestured her forward. She squeezed past Bridger and stood at the counter, looking uncertainly from Tom to Hamilton.

“Have you ever been a pirate, Stein? Or a revolutionary?”

“What? No, Sir.”

“Any piratical tendencies?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me about the food situation.”

“Well …” She looked at Tom, then glanced over her shoulder at Bridger. “We've been doing an inventory. We have enough to get back to Garnet. More than enough. We could go all the way to Earth with the food we've got.”

Hamilton nodded, a smile of vindication lighting his face.

“If we leave right away,” Stein continued. “But we're not going anywhere. They say we have to wait here until help arrives. That we don't know how long that will be.” She lifted her hands in a shrug. “We have two weeks of food. We only have half as many mouths to feed as before.” Her chin trembled for a moment. “But we never really stocked up in Garnet. We had a lot of grain and stuff for delivery to Sunshine Base. We were going to load up on fresh supplies there. But we never got the chance.”

Hamilton said, “Two weeks is lots.” He sounded less belligerent than before.

Stein ignored him. “So Kenny,” she glanced at Bridger, “he said we should start rationing. Because we don't know how long the food has to last. When the last group came in, he told them they could only have half portions.” She winced. “They didn't like it very much.”

Tom turned to face Hamilton. “Does that line up with what Bridger told you?”

“Um, yes, Sir.”

“Do you want to call Stein here a liar?”

Hamilton seemed to shrink. “No, Sir.”

Tom sighed. “We're all in this together, Hamilton. The revolutionaries are your shipmates now. Do you understand?”

Hamilton frowned, but he nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

“Go on,” Tom said. “I need to talk to the kitchen staff.”

Hamilton fled, and Tom turned to glare at Bridger. The ex-pirate stared back at him, unruffled.

“This isn't the first time I've broken up a fight with you in the middle of it, Bridger.”

Bridger lifted his hands. “The big ape didn't give me a whole lot of choice.”

“He's right, Captain,” said Stein. “It was awful.”

“I want you to try for a diplomatic solution next time. I want you to try hard.”

Bridger shrugged, then nodded. The pirates – or “free-range revolutionaries”, as they liked to call themselves – weren't much on salutes or the other trappings of military etiquette. Tom decided to be satisfied with a nod.

“Now, about the food situation.” He rubbed his jaw, thinking. “I think half-rations are a bit extreme.”

Bridger frowned.

“But you're right. We need to do something. Aim for three-quarter rations for now. If we're still here a week from now we'll do a further reduction.”

“All right,” Bridger said. “Do you think we'll get out of here before then? Is help coming?”

Stein and the other kitchen staff leaned forward, ever so slightly. “Help's not coming,” Tom said. “No one in the UW Navy knows this base exists except us, and the Free Planets don’t have anything but small raiders.” When Bridger's face fell Tom added, “But I've got a few ideas. We'll wait and watch for now. When the time is right, we'll make our move.”

He could see the urge to ask questions writ large on their faces. He didn't elaborate, just gave them a confident smile and headed for the exit. “Carry on,” he said. “Try not to carve up any crew. We're short-handed, remember?”

Chapter 14

“Captain.”

The call woke Tom from a nightmare where the ship broke apart around him and the crew screamed as they flew into the void. Although exhaustion pressed down on him, he was relieved to be dragged into wakefulness. He found his bracer on the bedside table and tapped it. “Thrush here. What is it?”

“We've got ship activity.” There was an edge of excitement to O'Reilly's voice. “A hyperspace portal just opened.”

They've spotted us. As soon as the thought occurred to him he knew it was true. Any military commander worth his salt would be doing constant incremental scans of the sky, checking for stars that disappeared. A missing star would mean a ship, and it would give a direction. The Kestrel had been spotted, and the enemy fleet was on its way.

“Sound Battle Stations.” The alarm howled as he pulled on his clothes. He stepped out into the corridor, snapping his bracer into place around his left forearm. Spacers rushed past in both directions, hurrying to their posts as Tom headed for the bridge.

“Status,” he barked.

“For ships have gone. One remains. The corvette, according to her transponder.”

Tom shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “Four ships went into the portal? Where did they come out?”

O'Reilly stared at him blankly. “They didn't come out, Sir.”

Tom dropped into his chair, woke up his console, and brought up a tactical display. According to the console, the Zin system held only two ships: the Kestrel and a Dawn Alliance corvette.

“I don't understand.”

“They moved out!” O'Reilly checked his own console one last time, then swiveled his chair around to flash a gleeful grin. “You were right, Captain. Why would an entire fleet hang around a nowhere outpost like this?” He glanced at Naomi Silver. “No offense.”

Silver inclined her head.

Tom stared at him, wishing he didn't feel so wool-headed. “You mean they … just left?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Change our position. Take us straight toward the Boot.” The fleet could be waiting in hyperspace, giving the Kestrel enough time to relax their vigilance before opening a portal right beside them.

His instincts told him the fleet was gone, though. There was no need for so many powerful ships to take elaborate ruses, not against a frigate. They're gone. It's just us and the corvette. We need to attack. Right now. Before those ships come back. Or another fleet arrives.

Or should we wait? Even a corvette could do us a lot of damage. Maybe it will leave. We should stand down from Battle Stations. I should go back to bed. I'm in no shape to make good decisions.

He would never get back to sleep, though. He stood. “Stand by. I'll be back shortly.”

There was no coffee in the wardroom. He started a fresh pot brewing, then went into the head, wincing when he saw his reflection. His hair was plastered to his skull on one side, standing up in tufts on the other. He looked dreadful, with dark bags under his eyes and crust on his eyelashes. He scrubbed his face, then filled the sink with cold water and plunged his whole face under the surface. He shook his head back and forth under the water, banging his nose on the curved steel of the sink, then stood up straight, feeling cold drops trickle down his neck.

He felt a good deal more awake. It was a trick he'd learned during Basic Officer Training, when getting enough sleep had been a pure impossibility. He did what he could for his hair, then dried his face and went to see if the coffee was ready.

By the time he returned to the bridge he felt alert and reasonably clear-headed. He resumed his seat. “Any fresh developments?”

“The corvette is adjusting its orbit,” Harris said.

Tom leaned forward in his seat. “Is it moving to a higher orbit?” That could mean it was getting ready to leave the system – or attack the Kestrel.

“Lower orbit,” O'Reilly said.

That was a pity. He'd really been hoping the corvette would leave. And if it attacked the Kestrel, well, he'd have one less decision.

The Kestrel's main engine was still engaged, he realized, sending the ship hurtling faster and faster toward the distant planet. The odds of being seen were fairly small, since the bulk of the ship would hide the burn of the engines.

Still …

“Cut thrust.”

“Cutting thrust,” O'Reilly acknowledged.

“What's our time to the base?”

“One hour, fourteen minutes,” O'Reilly reported. “We'll need a small course adjustment when we're closer, but we're pretty much pointing straight at the Boot.”

If we don't attack, we need to decide now. Make a course adjustment early, while we're harder to spot. But turning away would be a mistake. This was their chance, and it would be foolhardy to squander it. “Maintain course,” he said. “We've got an hour to gather intel. We'll accelerate when we get close.” The risk of being spotted would grow as the distance closed. He wanted the Kestrel moving quickly by the time she was detected. “Stand down from Battle Stations.”

“Standing down,” Onda said, and tapped his console. The “All Clear” signal sounded over the bridge speakers.

Now that I'm awake with a stomach full of coffee, I should really try to take a nap. Acid burned at the back of his throat, reminding him he'd been getting by on coffee and stress instead of real food. He looked around the bridge. The crew was alert without being tense, ready without being too afraid. He could leave the ship in their hands.

“Let me know if anything changes.” He stood. “I'm going to get some breakfast.”

There was a note on the cooler in the wardroom, reminding everyone that the ship was now on reduced rations. Tom ignored it, dropping a couple slices of bread into the toaster and putting water on for oatmeal. The overworked steward hadn't been in for a while. Tom, Vinduly, Harper, and Sawyer were largely fending for themselves.

I need to tell O'Reilly he's got wardroom privileges. He's Acting First Officer, after all. And he's more likely to start a fresh pot when he empties the last one. Tom sat down, tapped his bracer, and sent a message to Bridger while he waited for his breakfast to cook.

Cancel rationing. Let people eat as much as they want.

One way or another, everything was about to change.

The toaster beeped, telling him his toast was ready, the sound almost drowning out a chime from his bracer. “Captain. The corvette is landing.”

Landing? What does he mean? Maybe I'm not as awake as I think I am. “What are you talking about?”

“The corvette. It's going into Rivendell. It's landing at the base.”

For a long moment all Tom could think was that he would have to abandon his breakfast and hurry to the bridge. He was hungry, and he hated to walk away from hot food. “I'll be right there.”

By the time he reached the bridge his vexation was gone. The corvette had just handed him a massive tactical advantage. With luck, the other ship was going in for a complete overhaul. More likely it was refuelling, or rotating crew. It probably wouldn't be docked for long, but if he could get there in time …

“Accelerate hard,” he said as he walked into the bridge. “I want us at close range before they can get back into open space.”

“Accelerating,” said O'Reilly, sliding a finger across the navigation console.

“How quickly can we get there?”

“Fourteen minutes if we keep accelerating,” O'Reilly said. “Twenty if we want to stop when we get there.”

That meant ten minutes of hard deceleration, with the Kestrel's blazing engines pointed straight at the base. They would be spotted immediately, and ten minutes was plenty of time for the crew of the corvette to react.

“I want … let me see … four minutes of deceleration when we get there.”

O'Reilly promptly tapped his screen. “I'm cutting acceleration now.” He did more tapping. “At our current velocity, we'll arrive in twenty-seven minutes. We'll need four minutes and thirty-eight seconds of deceleration.”

“I can live with that.” Tom, standing in the centre of the bridge, looked at his chair and decided not to sit. “Sound Battle Stations when we're ten minutes out. Oh, and I want people in the Forward and Aft Observation Rooms.” He looked around the bridge. “Am I forgetting anything?”

After a moment of silence O'Reilly said, “I don't think so, Sir.”

“In that case, I'm going to finish my breakfast.”

The Kestrel plunged toward the Boot tail-first, engines blazing, with nothing visible through the bridge windows but empty space. Tom put a tactical display on one screen of his console and the view from a tail camera on the other screen. He watched the Boot emerge from the darkness of deep space, a black smear barely discernible from the void behind it. Zin was inconsequential at this distance, hardly brighter than any other star.

As the planet grew he leaned closer to the screen, trying to pick out the base. It took him a couple of minutes to figure out that the base was over the horizon. That gave him a rush of hope mixed with fear. The corvette wouldn't see them coming, not unless someone had set up scanners on this side of the planet.

On the other hand, it meant the Kestrel wouldn't see Rivendell until the last possible moment. There could be a heavy cruiser sitting on the planet's surface. There could be anything.

“Cutting engines,” O'Reilly announced, and the stars moved as he turned the ship around. The dark bulk of the planet swung in from one side, then tilted and dropped as the Kestrel levelled out just above the surface.

Tom tapped at his screen, switching to a view from a ventral camera. The surface of the Boot swept by, too dark to make out any details. It was an airless world, he knew, about the size of Earth's moon. The surface would be crater-pocked and arid, the regolith dark brown.

“The base should be just over this ridge,” O'Reilly said, his voice tense. Tom couldn't see a ridge ahead of them, just a dark line where the stars ended, but he caught a glimpse of a bright wireframe display on O'Reilly's console showing the contour of the ground below. How do I get that view?

“There it is,” said Harris.

Three points of light appeared in the distance, growing and spreading as the ship rushed closer. Tom glanced down and saw that his tactical display had changed. It now showed a view of Rivendell constructed from radar and infrared scans.

A perfectly conical mountain dominated the view, a vast heap of tailings from the long-ago mining operation. A spindly superstructure stood beside it, a frail-looking thing almost a kilometer high. At the base of the superstructure, close by the skirt of the mountain, huddled a cluster of buildings.

He zoomed in the display. Domes surrounded a large rectangular structure, with warehouses and blocky workshops scattered around it. The biggest structure, the rectangular building at the heart of the base, had a roof that opened like the lid of a box. The lid was at about forty-five degrees, and it was rising.

“I see the corvette,” Harris said. “Permission to fire missiles?”

Tom couldn't see the ship, but he was prepared to trust Harris. “Do it.”

He looked up in time to see the blazing tails of three missiles as they raced away from the Kestrel. They hurtled straight toward the top of the large rectangular building, then vanished one by one. Tom saw the glitter of a laser beam and watched one missile crash without exploding against the inside surface of the rising roof.

Only then did he realize that the corvette was inside that enormous building. She was, in fact, about to launch through the opened roof.

“She can't see us over the top of the wall,” Tom said. “Fire the next missile straight ahead. Blow a hole in the side of that building. Put the next missile through about half a second behind it.”

Harris didn't respond, just worked his console. Two more missiles flashed out, so close together the glow of their rocket engines almost merged. They were visible for barely a second before an explosion erupted against the side of the large building. Tom threw a hand up, shielding his eyes, and lowered it in time to see a second explosion glowing over the top edge of the wall.

Then the corvette rose into view. Four more missiles flashed out from the Kestrel, Harris not waiting for permission. Several alarms sounded at once, announcing laser strikes and incoming missiles. Tom looked down at his tactical display and saw that the Kestrel's automated systems had destroyed half a dozen missiles in the blink of an eye.

The corvette had done just as well, taking out all four missiles in the Kestrel's second volley.

For a moment it was a battle of lasers, the Kestrel jerking from side to side to throw off the aim of the enemy ship. The corvette, only just clearing the walls of the rectangular building, couldn't dodge, and Harris crowed in triumph. Three more missiles flew toward the corvette, and this time, one missile struck.

We must have destroyed one of their laser turrets. We've got them now.

“Slow us down,” Harris said. “We'll overshoot.”

O'Reilly tapped at a screen, and the Kestrel's forward navigational thrusters fired. Tom felt the faintest hint of a tug as the ship's internal force fields absorbed the change in momentum. He could see the corvette with his naked eyes now, a compact, rounded shape that made him think of a shark. It was lit by its own running lights, and by a light high in the superstructure above.

It was also lit by flames. A cone of fire sprayed from the nose of the ship on the lower port side. They had a fire on board, and a slow air leak.

A shower of sparks erupted from the side of the corvette's hull. “That's their last forward-facing laser turret,” Harris said. “They're sitting ducks now.” Without taking his eyes from the tactical console he said, “Shoot them down, or see if they want to surrender?”

Then he cursed as an alarm sounded, and lifted a finger, holding it poised over his console without quite touching. “Missiles,” he said. “But we got them.”

“She's turning,” O'Reilly warned, and Harris said, “That'll bring their aft turrets to bear.”

A navigational thruster flared just above the wound in the nose of the corvette as it began to spin. Tom said, “Shoot them down.”

The missile was free of the Kestrel and hurtling toward the corvette before he finished speaking. It took the smaller ship halfway between nose and tail, and the explosion was spectacular. Hull plates spun away and the corvette dropped. It landed hard on the slope of the mountain of tailings, then rolled down, turning over several times before it came to a stop against the base of a scaffold.

For a long, frozen moment silence reigned on the bridge. Then Harris said, “I think we got him.”

Chapter 15

“Remember, we're all on the same channel. So keep the chatter to a minimum.”

Alice Rose stood in the Kestrel's shuttle bay with a laser rifle in her hands, listening as Lieutenant Harper lectured the team that was about to storm Rivendell. He'd created four squads, each led by a marine and bolstered by a mix of spacers and revolutionaries. Her own squad consisted of Unger, herself, Collins, and five tense-looking spacers, all of them armed, all of them in vac suits.

“Notice that our suits don't match,” Harper went on. “Take a good look at your squad. Look at the other squads. I don't want any friendly fire incidents.”

The marines wore matte black suits with plenty of armor, the same gear they'd worn when they stormed the Free Bird. The spacers wore suits designed to be visible, in blue with padding and fixtures done in white.

Among the revolutionaries, every suit was unique. Alice's suit was burgundy, with heavy black abrasion pads along the forearms and across the chest and back. She'd painted tiger stripes on her helmet. She knew the suits of her shipmates by heart, but the spacers and marines wouldn't. Don’t be the first person through any doorways, she told herself. The marines are all right, but these navy types look jumpy.

The marines carried some kind of souped-up super rifle, a massive thing that would no doubt make them grateful for the Boot's reduced gravity once they got out onto the surface of the planet. By the look of it, Unger's weapon could fire slugs, flechettes, grenades, or laser beams.

The rest of the squad carried either crater guns or laser rifles, but she noted cynically that she and every revolutionary she could see held a laser rifle. The crater guns were much more dangerous, and it was clear the marines wanted them kept away from people they viewed as pirates.

They hadn't let the revolutionaries join up in a single squad, either. Alice and her shipmates had served together for months, some of them for years. They made a good team. But they were divided among all four squads, and Harper had shut down any discussion of that fact.

Distrustful cockroach.

“Keep your eyes open,” Harper said. “Watch your targets. Be sure before you pull the trigger. And don't fixate on the first target you see. Keep looking around. Now, let's move out.”

Harper led the way through the force field at the front of the bay, hopping down to the umber soil of the Boot. A pair of marines flanked him, and the three of them set off at a kind of bouncing trot, each step carrying them high above the surface.

“Fingers off triggers,” Unger said. “Remember to watch your step as you leave the ship. It's quite a big gravity change.” He lifted a finger to the side of his helmet. “Close faceplates and follow me.”

Alice closed the faceplate of her helmet and felt cool air blow across her lips and chin as the suit's air system activated. Someone swore, the sound transmitting through her helmet radio, and a different voice said, “Cut the chatter.”

Unger strode across the deck, Alice and the rest of the squad falling in behind him.

She'd scoffed inwardly at his warning about the gravity change. She wasn't some pampered navy slob spending months at a time on a huge ship with perfectly reliable gravity. Still, the combination of an eighty-percent gravity drop and the need to hop down more than a meter to reach the ground meant she staggered as she landed.

Collins landed better, but he spent a moment wobbling before he took his first step. A spacer came down behind him, falling to one knee. The next spacer fell flat, dropping his crater gun. Alice turned away to reduce the woman's embarrassment, but she couldn't suppress a grin.

The squad loped across a short stretch of rusty regolith, puffs of dust rising from their boots. Ahead of them, Harper and his two flankers reached the base of the large rectangular building. The marine on his left took a fist-sized object from his belt, fiddled with it, then released it. Alice watched as the little machine rose, then zoomed into the ragged hole the missile strike had left in the wall.

A tap on her shoulder made her look to her left. Collins made an impatient gesture, then followed the rest of the squad as they circled to the left. She looked around. Another squad was circling right. She hurried after Collins, then dropped to one knee, rifle ready, as Unger positioned the squad members with waves and a pointed finger.

Strangely, there was no conversation from the three marines. They had to be using a separate channel, she decided, only broadcasting to the others when they chose.

Harper checked the screen on the sleeve of his vac suit, then touched a pad on the wall in front of him. Only when a vertical bar of light appeared did she realize the three marines were standing in front of an airlock.

Knuckles rapped her helmet. She looked up into Unger's face. He gave her a disgusted look, used two fingers to indicate his own eyes, then pointed around at the shadowy landscape. The message was clear.

Stop staring at Harper. Look around.

She flushed and obeyed, noting from the corners of her eyes that the entire squad was fixated on the airlock. Unger went from one person to another, getting their attention, telling them to look around.

“Alpha squad. Move in.”

When Collins stepped in front of her she remembered that Alpha was her squad. She rose to her feet, taking a last glance around. The Kestrel loomed in the background, a huge shape made tiny by the gargantuan superstructure above it. Two more squads were arrayed between the ship and the buildings of the base, tense figures with rifles in their hands, watching as Alpha Squad started to move.

She followed the rest of the squad as Unger led them toward the airlock. She could see inside the lock now. It was brightly lit, an empty rectangular space big enough to accompany a large truck. There was plenty of room for the squad.

As she reached the entrance to the airlock she saw the faint shimmer of a forcefield. As she stepped through it the air quality indicator light inside her helmet turned yellow, indicating air pressure, then green, meaning the air was clean and breathable.

Still, they waited for the outer doors to close before the inner doors slid open. It was a wise precaution, she supposed. The building had been clobbered with a missile. A mechanical failure or an angry saboteur could shut down the force field without warning. Having both doors open simultaneously would be convenient – but foolhardy.

The outer door rumbled shut, and Unger turned to face them, opening his faceplate. Alice opened her own faceplate in time to hear him say, “Keep your helmets on and your suits sealed. The roof is still wide open. We could lose pressure any time.”

They followed him through the lock's inner doors and into a cavernous building that smelled of grease and metal. It hadn't been designed as a docking bay for ships, but it served as one now. This wasn't Alice's first visit. She'd come to the Boot several times over the years in the Free Bird. At first the bay had been filled with abandoned mining equipment. The revolutionaries had removed it piece by piece, freeing up more and more room. Now the bay had space enough to accommodate even the Kestrel.

“So far we've met no resistance,” Unger said. “We've done scans, but scanners can be fooled. This building is probably empty. But 'probably' isn't good enough. Our job is to make sure.”

They broke into pairs, Alice and Collins earning a frown by choosing each other. “Don’t shoot your shipmates,” Unger said. “But you can shoot anyone else. Look in every corner, every cabinet, every duct. I don't want any surprises popping out later and biting us on the ass.”

Gantries and balconies lined all four walls, and scaffolds and moveable towers cluttered the middle of the vast room. Unger sent teams climbing. Others headed for the middle of the room and the equipment there, a mix of abandoned mining machinery and apparatus for servicing ships. He sent Alice and Collins along the front wall at ground level.

“Look sharp,” he reminded them. “Don't stare at your teammates half way across the bay. Look at what's in front of you. Look at anything that might hide a person with a gun. Think about where you might hide a booby-trap. Stay paranoid.”

They moved off, bouncing along a dozen meters apart so that one ambush was unlikely to kill them both. Alice glanced up at the sky, faintly blurred by a force field, exposed by the open roof above them. All that vacuum made her shiver. She liked honest steel and glass between herself and the void.

They picked their way through the blasted rubble of the front wall beneath the gaping hole where the missile had struck. More detritus littered the floor of the bay, including something that looked like a warped hull plate. She shivered, imagining it blasted free of the corvette by a missile. She hadn't seen the battle; the windows in the mess hall only gave a view to the side. She'd heard all about it from a spacer stationed in the Forward Observation Room.

Collins waved a hand, and she looked at him. He gestured to a booth set in the tangled metal against the front wall. She nodded and circled around as he approached a narrow doorway. She took a quick glance behind her, then lifted her rifle to her shoulder, took aim at the doorway, and nodded to Collins.

He launched himself forward, sailing through the air in a long slow dive that carried him through the doorway. There was a moment of tense silence, and then his head and shoulders emerged. He looked at Alice, then jerked back inside the hut. He would have been looking pretty much straight down the barrel of her rifle. She tilted the gun up a few centimeters.

Collins peeked out, then emerged from the booth. He gave her an 'okay' hand sign and they continued their search.

“Rose. Where are you?”

The voice belonged to Unger. Alice moved toward the middle of the bay, and saw him waving to her from a doorway along the far wall. “We need you over here.”

She crossed the bay in long, bounding strides, her head swiveling as she scanned for danger. When she neared the doorway she slowed to a cautious shuffle. There would be full artificial gravity once she moved beyond the bay. Low gravity was useful for servicing ships, but the offices and living quarters had the heavier gravity that people needed for bone density and muscle tone.

Unger backed through the doorway, gesturing for her to follow. She stepped over the threshold, her limbs suddenly heavy, the laser rifle dragging at her arms. Unger tapped a panel on the wall and a hatch slid shut behind her. He tapped his bracer. “Make sure your radio's off.”

She nodded.

“We found some of your Free Planets people. We need you to talk to them.”

Déjà vu washed over her as she followed Unger into the station's mess hall. Harper and another marine, looking menacing and indestructible in their armored vac suits, stood at either end of a long table. Nine tired-looking people, helmetless and wearing unmatched vac suits, filled the benches on either side of the table. They kept their hands palm-down on the tabletop and watched the marines with wary eyes.

These same marines had captured Alice with the rest of her crew and had held them in the kitchen of the Free Bird. The scene was so similar that it raised goosebumps on Alice's shoulders, and she asked herself for the thousandth time if she was on the right side.

“Alice Rose.”

She scanned the line of prisoners. Seven of them were strangers, but the eighth, a young man with auburn hair and a spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose, was familiar. He was also staring at her.

“It's you, isn't it? You're Alice Rose. You were on the Wild Goose.” The young man's brow furrowed. “No, wait. It was the Free Bird.”

All the prisoners were looking at her now, with expressions ranging from curiosity to open resentment.

I'm not a bloody traitor. It's not us against the United Worlds anymore. You must be able to see that. Suddenly weary, she sighed and leaned her rifle in a corner. That drew a sharp look from Harper, which she ignored. She pulled out a chair and sat down across from the young man with the freckles.

“You're Jimmy something or other.”

“Cartwright. Jimmy Cartwright.”

“I'm Alice Rose.” She addressed it to the entire table. “I was on the Free Bird when we were captured by a UW Navy ship. Then the war broke out. The crew of the Free Bird is helping the United Worlds Navy, at least until we get out of the war zone.” She swept her gaze up and down the row of prisoners. “The way I see it, the Dawn Alliance is our common enemy now. Once we've sent them packing, well, we can go back to fighting these boys if we have to.” She jerked a thumb at the marines. “In the meantime, they're our allies.”

The woman beside Alice shook her head, but didn't speak. A man across the table nodded, drawing a scowl from the woman beside him. Jimmy shrugged and said, “Maybe you're right. I don't know.”

A gray-haired woman said, “I thought the Dawn Alliance was our ally now.”

That drew a derisive snort from another man. “When there's a weasel in the henhouse, it doesn't help the hens much to make alliances with him.”

“The Council made an alliance,” the woman said stubbornly. “We should honor it.”

Jimmy looked at her. “Tell it to Garth Ham.”

Alice lifted an eyebrow. “Who's Garth Ham?”

“He worked with us,” said Jimmy. “Then the Dawn Alliance came storming in here. They started asking us where we were from.”

A gloomy silence settled over the table. Alice endured it for a few moments, then said, “And?”

“And Garth was from Neorome. They dragged him away. And we haven't seen him since.” He looked at the woman who'd argued with him. “That's the kind of allies they are.”

“He's from Neorome,” she said. “So long as you're not from there, they treat you okay.”

“Neorome had the guts to stand against these scumbags,” Alice snapped. “I might just change my citizenship. I'll stand with Neorome and Tazenda.”

The woman stared at her, not speaking. Finally she said, “There were dozens of them. They had guns. Lots of guns. What were we supposed to do?”

“They're gone now,” Alice said. “The United Worlds is who you've got to deal with now. I suggest you cooperate. They think they own the Green Zone, but they're not the ones using nukes.”

That drew a startled gasp from the prisoners. The gray-haired woman said, “They wouldn't.”

“They did,” said Alice. “I've seen the bodies.”

A babble of questions and arguments filled the air. The prisoners calmed down considerably when they realized the Dawn Alliance had used a nuke against a UW ship, not a Free Planets colony. They were shaken, though. In all the history of humanity, very few governments had been barbarous enough to use nuclear weapons in war.

It took the starch out of them, and they started to talk. Harper set a small recorder on the tabletop and the prisoners poured out their story. It came out in a jumble, people talking over one another, interrupting each other, jumping back and forth in time.

Nine people had been manning the station when the Dawn Alliance arrived. The invaders hadn't been gentle, but they hadn't killed anyone, either. They'd locked up the Free Planets personnel, then released them a day later. They'd played a vid clip, a selection of speeches from colony leaders announcing the new arrangement with the Dawn Alliance. Then a DA officer had interrogated them one at a time, and ordered Garth Ham dragged away.

That was eighteen hours ago. The DA people hadn't answered any questions about Garth or his fate.

After that, the prisoners had gone to work. Under careful supervision from DA troops they'd serviced one ship after another, refuelling and doing basic engine maintenance. There's been dozens of DA personnel around, but most of them had gone, departing on the refuelled ships. They weren't sure how many remained.

Alice wasn't sure what made her look up from the table. Jimmy was talking, describing the last ship he'd worked on, a light cruiser.

The marines, though, were no longer listening.

Harper had his faceplate closed, as if to block out the sound of Garth's voice. Unger had a hand inside his helmet, a finger plugging one ear. The other two marines were gone. Alice hadn't noticed when they left.

Harper retracted his faceplate. “Rose. You're with me. Unger, stay with the pris- with the liberated personnel.”

Unger nodded, and Harper headed for a doorway leading deeper into the complex. He made a curt gesture to Alice and she hurried after him. Once they were out of earshot of the mess hall she said, “What's going on?”

“We found Garth Ham.”

The corridor opened onto a machine shop. It seemed to be the place where the Dawn Alliance had made its last stand. Laser burns decorated the walls and some of the machinery, and a line of pock marks showed where slugs had hit the ceiling and one wall.

The bodies lay stretched in a tidy row along one wall. There were five of them, three men in infantry uniforms and a man and a woman in coveralls. The weapons of the marines had done terrible damage to all five bodies, and Alice looked away, taking deep breaths to keep her stomach under control. Blood and offal filled her nose and coated the back of her tongue, with just a hint of gunsmoke and machine oil underneath it.

Alice took a deep breath and held it, not exhaling until they were well past the charnel house.

Someone had died in the corridor beyond. She didn't notice the blood trail until she'd been walking in it for half a dozen paces. Her boots made a sticky sound with every step, and she decided it was too late to be squeamish. She kept on walking, swallowing bile, until she came to three jagged holes in the wall of the corridor, a scattering of cartridge casings, and a thick splatter of blood on the wall and floor.

Blood and … tissue?

She screwed her eyes shut and walked toward the sound of Harper's footsteps ahead of her. When she was sure they were past the gore she opened her eyes, just in time to see Harper, glancing over his shoulder, meet her gaze. She flushed.

“It's pretty bad,” he said. “You're handling it just fine.”

Alice, unsure if she could speak without throwing up, just nodded.

“I have to show you something that's pretty bad in its own way,” he warned her. “But maybe it'll help you feel better about what happened to her.” He nodded in the direction of the bloody mess behind her.

She stared at him, wishing she could turn around and run all the way back to the Kestrel. With her eyes closed.

“It's through here,” he said, and stepped through a doorway.

The sight of a figure stretched out on a table made her think she was in a hospital bay. She stopped in the doorway, momentarily disoriented. This wasn't the surgery. That was on the far side of the base. This was a meeting room.

Which had been converted into a torture chamber.

The man on the table was a bloody mess. He wore nothing but a pair of ragged denim trousers. His feet were toward her, and his toes had been broken. All ten of them. No, all nine. One toe was missing, just a ragged, scabbed stump remaining.

Burns covered the soles of his feet. More burns made a haphazard pattern across his stomach and chest. There were cuts too, a dozen or more, shallow furrows on his stomach and arms and shoulders. One nipple was gone completely. A chunk of skin the size of her palm was missing, hacked away, and Alice closed her eyes. At least he's dead now. His suffering is over.

She took a couple of slow, deep breaths. Then, feeling like it was somehow her duty, she made herself open her eyes and look into Garth Ham's face.

His own mother wouldn't have recognized him. His face was a lumpy, swollen mess, bruised and abraded, with the black circle of a burn showing on one cheek. His eyes were swollen shut. She stared at the slits and whispered, “Oh, my God.”

The puffy skin around his left eye twitched. That eye wouldn't open, but his right eye opened, just a crack. She watched his eye swivel around, and his head turned until his gaze was fixed on her. His lips curled in a gallows grin, splitting a scab under his nose. A single bright drop of blood appeared, and he rasped, “What took you so long?”

Chapter 16

Tom stood on the bridge of the Kestrel, staring through the windows at the corvette and fidgeting, wishing he could be out there. He'd broached the idea with Harper. The marine lieutenant had vetoed the idea with such scathing disdain that Tom hadn't even considered pulling rank. And Harper was right. Tom, as the only command officer left on the entire ship, was much too valuable to risk.

Still, it chafed him to remain onboard.

The crashed corvette lay at almost a thirty-degree angle, nose and port side down, at the base of the pile of mine tailings. She was right-side-up, which would help the scavenger team that stood waiting on the regolith.

The crew of the corvette were still trickling out through the ship's main airlock. The ship had other locks, and breaches in the hull big enough to let a person slip through. Each of these points of egress was guarded by a spacer from the Kestrel. The main airlock was the only way out, and a marine stood waiting with a trio of spacers, searching each vac-suited prisoner as they emerged.

Dozens of prisoners had come out already. They knelt in a dejected circle, ringed by a dozen armed spacers. Another marine perched in the gantry high above, watching the prisoners through the scope of his rifle. The marines weren't taking any chances.

Not that the prisoners looked like much of a threat. They were battered and defeated, most of them staring at their own knees. They weren't dangerous, not individually, but there were so damned many of them! Tom shook his head, wondering what he was going to do with them all. Herd them into a storage room or something inside the base, he supposed, and leave them there. He had no way to deliver them to Garnet, and he couldn't order them all shot.

The trickle of prisoners leaving the ship died away. The marine at the airlock sent in a couple of drones, one flying, one rolling, and spent a few minutes watching the screen on the sleeve of his vac suit. Then he gestured to the spacers with him and led the way onto the corvette.

Tom realized he was holding his breath and made himself exhale. He couldn’t tear himself away from the window, though. He stared at the dark maw of the corvette's airlock until the marine's voice came over the radio. “Ship's clear. There's a medical team and nine injured in the surgery. I've got Hoskins keeping an eye on them. Aside from that, the ship is free of hostiles.”

Before Tom could speak he heard O'Reilly over the radio. “Roger that. I'm bringing in the salvage team.” He would know what to look for, too. Tom stared through the window, watching O'Reilly enter the ship with half a dozen spacers behind him. They'd strip the ship of anything useful, starting with missiles. Whether the Kestrel would be able to fire a Dawn Alliance missile remained to be seen, but they certainly wouldn't leave any missiles behind.

The urge to help, to give obvious orders just so he could participate, was almost overwhelming. Tom bit his lip to keep himself from speaking, then walked over to his chair and sat down. Onda and a woman named Ng were the only crew left on the bridge, and even they were more than was required. The Kestrel held less than a skeleton crew. If the Dawn Alliance fleet returned their goose was cooked.

“Captain? Sawyer here.”

Tom toggled the radio in his helmet. “Go ahead, Sawyer.” With the faceplate up his voice echoed weirdly. Wearing a vac suit on a pressurized ship was always exasperating, and he wondered if he would ever get used to it.

“I'm sending a crew onto the top of that corvette. We're going to grab a laser turret. They're using Bose guns. They're almost identical to ours.”

Well, that's a stroke of luck. But we'll have to talk to the Bose people. Get them to stop shipping weapons to the Dawn Alliance. “Sounds good,” he said.

“The installation would go faster if we brought the ship into the bay,” Sawyer said. “We could do a proper repair on the hull, too.”

It was a tempting idea. If they grabbed the fuel they needed and anything handy they found lying around, they could be away from Rivendell in an hour or two. But the trip back to Garnet would be long and fraught with danger. The Kestrel had enough hull damage to make hyperspace travel dangerous. They'd have to skirt storms the whole way, and if a shifting storm front engulfed them, it could be disastrous.

A light flashed inside his helmet, telling him he had a call on another channel. “Grab the laser turret for now,” he said. “I'll get back to you about going into the bay.” He switched channels. “Thrush here.”

“This is Harper. Can you come over to the base, Captain? We have a rescued prisoner here. I think you should hear what he has to say.”

Much of Rivendell resembled a scrapyard. Tom picked his way through the main service bay, stepping around a giant steel stump where some piece of ore-processing equipment had once stood before the place was repurposed. He wondered if there was really a point to bringing the Kestrel inside. There were some quite serviceable-looking maintenance bots and machines, though. Maybe it would be worthwhile.

He moved deeper into the base, and the impression of dirty, improvised restructuring persisted. The place seemed less like a quasi-military base than an abandoned building taken over by rambunctious children.

Rivendell's medical bay, though, caught him by surprise. It was a large, airy space with high ceilings and plenty of light. A dozen modern medical pods lined the walls, top-of-the-line machines built into the walls and floor. That had to be why the original mining company had left them behind.

Everything seemed to be in working order, too. There was a patient in every pod. Crew from the corvette, judging by the uniforms discarded on the floor. He glanced into one pod and saw a woman's leg emerge for a moment from a cloud of medical foam. Her skin was red and cracked. She'd been terribly burned, and he looked away, filled with sudden regret.

Until an image rose in his memory. The Kestrel's mess hall, with men and women lying shoulder to shoulder on the tables and along the walls, dying slowly from radiation poisoning.

No regret, he told himself. We didn't start this war.

But still …

He moved through the bay, eyes straight ahead, but something in his peripheral vision made him pause. He glanced sideways and saw a familiar face glaring at him from the third pod on the left. It was Fagan, the former leader of Alice's crew, and there was murder in his eyes.

Dr. Vinduly must have decided the pods were a better option for treating the stump of Fagan's left arm. Tom looked away from his unnerving gaze. The man was rabid in his hatred of the United Worlds. Nothing would change that fact.

Vinduly was at another pod, tapping the pod's control panel as he peered inside. Tom moved past him and entered a small private ward at the back of the bay. The hulking form of an armored marine filled much of the available floor space. It was Harper, and he moved aside as Tom entered, then palmed the door shut.

“This is Mr. Ham. He's from Neorome.”

Ham, lying on a cot in the middle of the little room, lifted a bandaged hand in a weak wave. Drying medical foam covered every part of his face. Bandages swathed his feet where they jutted from under a thin blanket. More foam daubed his lower legs. He looked as if he'd just been dragged out of a collapsed house.

“The Dawn Alliance,” Harper said dryly, “have been asking Mr. Ham some pointed questions.”

Tom stared down at the man on the cot and felt the last of his regret for the casualties on the corvette evaporate. “You're safe now,” he said. “We'll take you with us when we leave. We'll do what we can to keep you safe. We'll take you back to Garnet.”

Ham opened his mouth, struggled to speak, and closed it again. His eye closed for a moment as he gathered himself. Then, at last, he spoke. “Meeting,” he said. “Trap.”

The effort seemed to exhaust him, and his eye drooped shut. His lips kept moving, though, as if he was still trying to speak.

“It's all right.” The voice belonged to Alice Rose. Tom, thoroughly distracted by the man on the cot, hadn't noticed her standing against the wall. Now she stepped forward, resting a hand gently on the back of Ham's bandaged hand. “It's okay,” she said. “You told us. We'll explain it all to the captain. We'll do what needs doing.”

Ham's head moved ever so slightly in what might have been a nod. His lips stopped moving and he relaxed, his eye remaining shut. Alice looked at Tom, her face stricken. She nodded toward the doorway behind him and raised an eyebrow.

He nodded and led the way back out, through the medical bay, and to the corridor beyond. Harper and Alice followed.

“There's an office over here,” Alice said. She moved past Tom and tapped the touch pad beside a closed door. The door slid open a couple of centimeters and stopped. Alice grabbed the edge of the door and heaved, dragging it open.

The office within was dusty and forlorn. A table with a dead plant stood beside a steel desk and a single chair. Alice perched herself on the desktop. “The controls on the inside work.”

Tom tapped the door panel and the door slid shut. Harper kicked the chair toward him, then sat beside Alice on the desk.

Sitting on the chair would put his head well below the other two, so Tom stood. “What's this about?”

“They tortured him,” Alice said. Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away impatiently with a quick swipe of one hand. “They tortured him, and he broke. He told them about the meeting.”

She was clearly upset, so Tom hid his impatience and waited.

“There's a meeting point in deep space,” she said. “That's what Ham told us. The last ship here before the Dawn Alliance arrived was an armed freighter from Neorome. They told him about the meeting. And now he's told the Dawn Alliance.” She scowled ferociously at Tom. “It's not his fault! You didn't see what they did to him.”

“I saw enough,” Tom said gently. “I'm not judging him.”

“The rendezvous is tomorrow,” she said. “Half the free ships from Neorome and Tazenda will be there, and any ships from the rest of the Free Planets that are willing to fight the DA. Now the Dawn Alliance will ambush them.” She punched the desktop beside her hip, making a surprisingly loud thump. “They're probably already waiting. Right after Ham broke, all the ships here left.”

Tom stared at her for a moment, thinking. “How far away from here is the rendezvous point?”

“I don't know!” Her hands rose to shoulder level in a quick, frustrated gesture. “What does it matter? It's already too late!”

“It's at a place called Black Betty,” Harper said. “He says it's a rogue planet.”

Rogue planets were rare, or at least were rarely discovered. Drifting through the vast empty gulf between stars, they were frozen lumps of rock almost impossible to detect except by chance. Humanity had stumbled across no more than six or seven of them in all the long decades they'd been exploring the stars.

Tom turned on his suit radio. “Onda? I need you to do some research for me. I'm looking for the coordinates of a rogue planet. It might be called Black Betty. That might just be a local nickname, though. It'll be somewhere in the Green Zone.”

“There's only one rogue planet in the Zone,” Onda said promptly. “I forget the name, though. Stand by, Sir.” There was a long pause, during which Alice stuck out her lower lip and frowned at the floor. Finally Onda said, “It's gotta be the same one. The official name is BLB 417. It's about five light-years from here.”

“Thank you,” Tom said, and cut the connection. He was tempted to fuel the ship and race off for the rendezvous. He would do no good, though, by blundering into a Dawn Alliance ambush and getting the ship destroyed. No, the wisest choice was still to slip away and go quietly back to Garnet.

But his instincts told him the Kestrel wasn't quite done here. It might yet be possible to disrupt the ambush, or rescue survivors. It seemed doubtful he could achieve anything worthwhile, but it felt cowardly to sneak away without even trying.

Whatever he did, he would need a sturdy ship, one that could survive the rigors of combat, never mind the paltry threat of hyperspace storms.

A creak of fabric made him look down. He was startled to see that his fists were clenched. He'd been carrying around a sour knot of anger ever since the capture of the Laureline, and it had grown worse when he saw the tortured colonist. He wanted to act. To lash out. He turned, staring at the wall beside him, staring in the direction of the Kestrel. I'm going to kill some of you shit rats. I'm going to blow your hulls apart and leave you sucking vacuum. And I'm going to laugh while you're dying.

He shook his head, dispelling the rage. The days when he could indulge his temper were long gone. Still, if the chance presented itself ….

I need to be ready to act. I need a ship that's ready for anything. He poked at the radio controls on his forearm. “Onda.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to move the ship into the repair bay. Recall a helmsman. Whoever is least busy. And coordinate with Sawyer. Don't do anything fancy, but make her spaceworthy. Get her ready to fight.”

Chapter 17

The Exchange Pit was the deepest, most distant part of Rivendell. Alice had to squeeze her way through a gap between massive hinged doors that had rusted in place and descend a filthy staircase to reach a jumble of machinery and control stations in a broad chamber with metal walls and a stone floor. The machines and stations had long since been pillaged for usable parts, and now sprouted dangling wires and jagged cuts where components had been sliced away.

The base's artificial gravity generators hung from the ceiling, which meant she had only the planet's natural gravity as she shuffled across the floor. The ceiling hung low enough that she was in real danger of banging her head if she took an incautious step. A frustrating feature of the force field generators was that they exerted a slight upward pull from their undersides. Each time she took a step directly underneath a generator she would hang suspended for a moment before drifting back to the floor.

Once she made it past the bulk of the machinery, though, the floor dropped another meter. Some huge machine had once squatted here in this shadowy space. Now only the mounting brackets remained, steel blocks that had to mass a couple of tonnes each, with bolts sunk deep into the stone floor and steel rings above for attaching whatever machine had once been here.

An exchanger, she supposed, whatever an exchanger was. She wondered how the mining company had removed the machine without demolishing half the base.

Beyond the brackets, against the back wall of the pit, stood a set of old-fashioned metal-working machines. There was a laser drill, a drill that used titanium bits, a bender, a press, and a lathe. Made almost obsolete by modern fabricator technology, these relics had been banished to the deepest corner of the base. They still had their uses, however, for modifying or repairing something you didn’t want to create from scratch.

Behind the bender she found a bin of metal scrap. She knelt and started to rummage, looking for a large adjustable wrench. She'd seen one on her last visit to Rivendell, seen the handle bend in the grip of a robot that was too strong for the tool. The wrench was not in any of the tool racks upstairs. She hoped to find it here, banished to the scrap heap until someone needed it.

She needed it now. It would be just the thing for removing chunks of hull plate from the laser battery they'd cut from the hull of the corvette. She figured she could use the bender to straighten the handle, or cut the bent part away and weld on a new handle if she absolutely had to. It was the kind of improvisational problem-solving that colonists excelled at, but the Navy boys didn't really understand. When something broke on a Navy ship, they just requisitioned a replacement.

Alice sneered to herself as she started lifting chunks of metal scrap from the bin. If the United Worlds crew wanted to survive in the Green Zone, they'd have to learn from the people who lived here.

Footsteps scraped on stone as someone shuffled across the floor behind her. She called, “I'm back here,” but didn't get up.

“Alice.”

She froze, startled. The voice belonged to Fagan. What was he doing up and around? Wasn't he supposed to be in the medical bay?

And under arrest?

“I need to ask you something.” Fagan's voice sounded odd, kind of strained. Well, he was barely back on his feet after losing an arm.

She wondered if she should stand up, look at him. But she was annoyed with him, and she didn't want to face the accusation she knew she would see in his eyes. So she stayed on her knees and lifted out another scrap of metal. “What?”

“You were always a loyal member of the crew. I know the Navy boys have turned your head. But I need to know. Deep down inside, where do your loyalties lie?”

For some reason cold prickles danced across her skin, and her first impulse – to tell him off – died away. “I'm loyal to the Free Planets,” she said impatiently. “First, last, and always.”

For ten long seconds he stood there, somewhere behind her, breathing loudly through his nose. Then he said, “Good enough.” She heard the soft scrape of his feet as he shuffled away.

She couldn't see him from behind the bender, but she stared in his direction anyway, trying to shake the feeling that she'd just had a near-death experience. Fagan was crippled, unarmed, and without followers. He was harmless.

Wasn't he?

“Bloody fool,” she muttered, not sure if she was addressing Fagan or herself. Then she returned to her work.

It took another minute or two to find the wrench. The bend in the handle was less than she remembered. Either someone had already tried to straighten it or her memory was tricking her. She hefted the wrench, glad for the reduced gravity. It was a big piece of steel, as long as her arm, with a business end that could be spun open wide enough to fit around a bolt head bigger than her fist. The handle had a bend of about twenty degrees. It was usable, but awkward. She looked at the bender and decided she'd at least try to straighten the thing.

Voices rose in the distance, and steel clattered against steel. She couldn't make out the words, but several people were shouting. They sounded angry, and Alice shook her head. Repair work was frustrating and stressful at the best of times. With no idea when the Dawn Alliance fleet might return and kill everyone, nerves had to be fraying badly.

She opened the top of the bender, peered inside – and stiffened as a gunshot echoed through the pit. She wasted a moment standing rigid in shock, then dropped to a crouch behind the bender, the wrench still in her hands. Her laser rifle was upstairs somewhere. The wrench was the only weapon she had.

More shouts. Then silence. Then an amplified voice that might have belonged to Harper, echoing from the walls and the stone floor. “Lay down your arms. This won't end well for you otherwise.”

Alice stood, wondering why she felt so relieved. Because it's not the Dawn Alliance. Or if it is, it's a pocket of DA personnel who escaped, or who hid during the original sweep. Most likely it's that idiot Fagan. The main thing is, the DA fleet isn't back. We're not all dead.

She headed across the pit, the wrench dangling in one hand. When she clambered up to the raised part of the floor she saw people, almost a dozen of them, scattered near the staircase leading up to the rest of the base. They were using the old machines and consoles for cover. Several people were armed, uncertain expressions on their faces, holding laser rifles or pistols but not pointing the barrels in any particular direction.

They were all colonists, she saw as she drew close. Fagan must have handled this very carefully to avoid the notice of the Navy and Marines. He hadn't managed to gather every colonist in Rivendell, but he had almost half of them, a mix of former Free Bird crew from the Kestrel and liberated prisoners from the base.

There, at the bottom of the staircase, was Fagan himself. He wore blue hospital pyjamas, his left sleeve neatly pinned up, his right hand gripping a silver handgun. He must have found it somewhere in Rivendell. It wasn't Navy issue. It was an old-school gunpowder slug thrower.

His head swung around as she approached, and she found herself staring down the muzzle of the gun. The air seemed to thicken around her until she stood frozen, her pulse thumping in her ears, sudden terror turning her limbs to ice.

Beneath the terror, though, was an ember of rage. Who the hell did he think he was? She'd served under him loyally for years, and he was pointing a gun at her?

Her fingers tightened on the handle of the wrench, but she didn't move.

“Alice,” he said. “Good of you to join us. I wasn't going to invite you. Not so sure of your loyalties, you see.” He grinned. The expression looked bizarre on him, like someone behind him was pulling on the skin around his mouth. He looked intoxicated, distant. She wondered if Dr. Vinduly had given him something that was interfering with his brain functions.

“I'm staging a small revolt,” he said, the gun wobbling a bit in his grip but continuing to point at her face. “Do you have any objections?”

For an awful second she couldn’t make herself move. She imagined staring at him, frozen by terror, until he lost patience and pulled the trigger. Then, slowly, millimeter by millimeter, she shook her head.

“Good.” He lowered the gun until it was pointing somewhere in the vicinity of her knees. “I could use your help, after all.”

“What …” She hated the timid squeak of her voice. “What are you going to do?”

“We,” he corrected her. “We're taking over the base.”

His voice rose a bit at the end, and Harper called from outside, “That's not going to happen. You're outnumbered and outgunned. It's time to wake up and smell the cordite, son.”

Fagan whirled, pointing the barrel of the gun up the stairs at the gap in the steel doors. For a moment he stood panting, his arm straight and rigid. Then he lowered the gun. “You'll give me what I want,” he called. “Or I'll finish him off.”

Finish him off? Alice looked around, then felt her breath catch in her throat. There was one more person in the room, a man sprawled behind a console just past the staircase. He wore a Navy uniform, and he clutched his thigh with both hands. Blood, red and bright, coated the backs of his hands and leaked between his fingers. Alice couldn't see who it was. His face was lost in shadows, but he looked chunky and middle-aged and thoroughly ordinary.

Just one more person who'd signed up to serve in the Navy. Someone who didn't deserve to be shot, then left to bleed while an idiot made wild demands.

“Your negotiating position's not as strong as you thinks,” Harper drawled. “It's your own life you'd best be worrying about right now. But I's willing to listen. Briefly. What is it you wants?”

Fagan had jerked the pistol back up when Harper started to speak. Now he lowered it again. He didn't seem to know what he wanted. Finally he said, “I'll start with the rest of my people. Send down the other colonists. And no tricks!”

“I don't think they really wants to die with you,” Harper said. “That's what's going to happen, by the way. We're going to chat for a bit, and then we're going to run out of patience, and then two or three marines in full battle armor are going to come down these steps and kill every last one of you. I'd do it by myself,” he added. “I don't actually need any help. But it's good training for the others. So I'll let them come along.”

Fagan had the pistol back up. “I'll kill him! I'll kill your man!”

“You live as long as he does,” Harper said calmly. “And about two seconds longer. So you think real hard before you pull that trigger.”

“I … I …” Fagan lapsed into silence. He looked around at the other colonists without seeing them. The whites of his eyes showed all around the irises, and Alice almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

“I want the ship,” Fagan said. “We're taking the Kestrel.”

Harper laughed. By the sound of it he was genuinely amused. The laugh went on for several moments, and then he said, “Try again, Mr. Fagan.”

“I want …”

“I'm running out of interest in what you want,” Harper said. The laughter was gone from his voice. “We're under a deadline here. I'll be coming down there pretty soon.”

“We're all staying,” Fagan said desperately. “We're staying here. You can have the rest of the base. We'll stay here. It's a Free Planets base anyway. You shouldn't even be here!”

“Fine,” said Harper. “Just bring up your hostage and we'll leave you be.”

“You'll kill us all!”

“Maybe,” Harper conceded. “But if you keeps dicking around, I guarantees you'll be dead as the vacuum of space in less than five minutes. So make up your mind.”

Alice shook her head, then shook it again as she realized her terror was gone. It should have grown even worse, she supposed. In addition to Fagan shooting her for being loyal to the Navy she now had to worry about the marines storming in and shooting her for being with the colonists.

But her fear was gone. Instead she felt weary and frustrated and above all angry. Harper was right. They had a deadline. The Dawn Alliance was on its way, and Fagan was interrupting repairs. He'd shot an innocent spacer. He'd pointed a gun at Alice. She was suddenly fed right up with him.

She looked at the others. Most of them looked scared. A few looked ashamed. Not one of them, she was sure, shared the fervor that drove Fagan. Most of them probably hadn't realized what he planned when he took them aside and urged them to join him in the pit.

“Fagan,” she said. When he ignored her she raised her voice. “Fagan!” He didn't turn to look at her, but she could tell from his posture that he was listening. “What the hell is this about? What do you think you're doing?”

Now he looked at her. His eyes glittered. He looked exhausted, but he vibrated with energy. He was high, she realized. Not on any drug. Well, there were undoubtedly some medical concoctions in his bloodstream, but he was high on adrenaline and power and conviction. He was a fanatic. She hadn't realized it before. Maybe it hadn't been true before, until he lost his ship, his crew, his arm.

Nothing mattered to him now but his twisted vision of the cause. He'd had that gun in his hand when he walked up behind her at the bending machine and asked her about her loyalties.

If she'd given a different answer he would have killed her without hesitation or remorse.

Instead of frightening her, the realization made her weary. “Put the gun down,” she said. “Just drop it.”

His eyebrows rose. He shook his head as if he couldn't believe his ears. “Drop it?” His shoulders rose in a bewildered shrug. “Don't you see? I'm doing this for all of us.”

“We're all going to be dead in a few minutes,” she snapped. “Stop doing us favors!”

“Not us.” He made a circling gesture with his hand, indicating the cluster of colonists. Since he held a gun in his hand, several people flinched as he pointed. “Us!” His next gesture had him pointing at the ceiling as the gun made a circle in the air. “Everyone in the Free Planets.”

“The Free Planets are occupied by the Dawn Alliance, you idiot! That's our enemy!”

His voice rose to a shout. “We're allied with the Dawn Alliance! The United Worlds is the real enemy of the Free Planets.”

“Neorome is a Free Planet,” she said. “So is Tazenda.” She grimaced, remembering what she'd seen in the medical bay. “Garth Ham is a citizen of the Free Planets.”

The gun swung up and centered on her face. He was wild-eyed, trembling. “If you're not with me, you're against me!”

Metal scraped against metal somewhere at the top of the stairs and Fagan whirled, pointing the gun at the gap in the doors. Alice took a step forward, brought the wrench up high, and slashed down, using both hands. The tool might have weighed less in the reduced gravity, but it had plenty of mass, and she got that mass moving at a hell of a clip. Fagan started to turn, the gun swung toward her, and the fat end of the wrench slammed into his forearm. She heard his radius break, and then the gun clattered onto the floor.

He cried out, then shrank back as she lifted the wrench. He tried to lift his arm to protect himself, then moaned and let it fall. He settled for scuttling backward until his shoulder blades were against the back wall.

Alice turned to the others, wrench above her head. “Does anyone else want to point a gun at me?”

No one quite met her gaze. A woman said, “We never meant for-”

“Shut it,” she snapped, and turned to the stairs. There was no need to tell Harper anything; he'd been listening. Strong hands were already hauling the rusted doors farther apart. A moment later three marines came surging down the steps, Harper in the lead.

Alice gestured at the injured hostage. Then she put her wrench down, retreated to one corner, and let her legs sag until she was sitting on the floor, utterly spent.

Chapter 18

Tom stood in the ship repair bay, watching vast robots pull hull plates from the Kestrel. The robots were a marvel, gangly long-legged things that could lift plates from anywhere on the ship's hull. They could reshape warped plates as well, even curved plates, by scanning the mounting struts and the adjacent plates. Step by step, they were smoothing out the damage done in the battle at Sunshine Base.

The ship looked ugly. Frigates always looked ridiculous with their cargo pods removed, the spine absurdly small, like the handle of a dumbbell connecting the forward and aft sections. The Kestrel looked bad even for a frigate without cargo, though. Bright unpainted blotches showed where the robots had filled in holes in the hull plates. Some hull plates were brand-new, fabricated in the last few hours. They gleamed a discordant silver. Other plates showed black marks where the paint had been burned by lasers or by missile strikes. Beneath the discolorations, though, the entire forward section was smooth. The robots were currently refurbishing the aft section.

Not everything could be done with robots. Off to one side Alice and a couple of colonists were putting together a collection of metal struts and a large tube. Alice wielded a massive wrench with a bent handle, tightening a nut on an enormous rusted bolt she'd scrounged from somewhere.

The end result, she'd assured him, would be a missile launcher able to accommodate the missiles they'd scrounged from the corvette. According to Gunnery Chief Franco, the Dawn Alliance missiles couldn't be fired from the Kestrel's missile tubes. Alice, though, was sure her contraption would work.

Unfortunately the missile launcher could only be fired from the ground. Still, it would give them a defense while the ship was helpless inside the bay.

She's proven her loyalty, he thought. She's becoming indispensable. He trusted her, he realized. Some combination of instinct and observation of her actions had won him over completely.

Not everyone shared his faith. Unger stood a dozen paces or so from the group of colonists, pretending to look up the ship as he watched them from the corner of his eye. His assault weapon was in his hands.

Tom sighed and decided not to interfere. The marines didn't have much to do, after all. The prisoners were in the Exchange Pit with the doors closed and a single marine keeping guard. There was only one way in or out. They were no longer a threat.

A chirp in his ear drew his attention to the screen built into the sleeve of his vac suit. He had a message from Vinduly, succinct and to the point. I want to send a cast kit into your improvised brig for Mr. Fagan.

Tom frowned and sent a brief reply. No. A voice in the back of his head told him he was being childish, even unethical, but the truth was, he was furious with the injured former pirate. Fagan had shot Spacer Fox in the thigh. The man had almost bled to death. He'd suffered terror and agony during Fagan's hopeless little uprising. A broken arm was the very least the man deserved.

“If he wanted medical treatment, he shouldn't have shot anyone.”

“Pardon?”

Tom looked up, startled. A man stood beside him, a stranger in a beige vac suit with hand-painted stars on his helmet. A marine named Lachance watched from several paces away, looking relaxed with her assault weapon cradled in the crook of her elbow. But the muzzle of the gun just happened to point directly at the man in beige. He must have noticed her, but he pretended she wasn't there.

“Can I help you?” Tom said.

“I'm Dupuis,” the man said. “I was here when you people came in and, er, liberated us.”

Tom nodded.

“I talked to your Lieutenant Sawyer. She had me rig a bomb in the powerplant. She said I should tell you when it was ready.”

Tom blinked. “You did what, now?”

A look of alarm crossed the man's face. “Your lieutenant said …”

“Yes, yes.” Tom shook his head. “Just tell me what you've done.”

“I put a lot of work into this place, over the years,” Dupuis said. “I hate to see it go to the benefit of those sons of bitches in the Dawn Alliance.” His face collapsed into a furious scowl that made Tom suddenly glad they were on the same side. “Especially after what they did to Garth.”

Tom didn't speak, just nodded.

“I went to see your Lieutenant Sawyer,” Dupuis went on. “I told her I wanted to smash this place but good, when we left. She said it was a good idea.”

“Engineers do like wrecking things,” Tom agreed.

“Anyway, the powerplant is the weak point. It's more expensive than the rest of the base put together, and it'd be a real pain to replace. Take away the power, and this place is just about useless.”

Tom said, “So you …”

“Set a bomb,” Dupuis said cheerfully. “I used a warhead from one of those missiles. Right now it's snuggled up against the power core in the main generator.”

Tom said, “Um, good?”

“It's on a timer,” Dupuis went on. “It's set for thirty minutes. Every fifteen minutes or so, I go and crank the handle back to thirty. That way, if we have to leave in a hurry, we don't have to do anything. We just leave, and the base blows up behind us.” Seeing the look on Tom's face, he said, “It's perfectly safe. It's not like I'm going to forget to go turn the timer back.”

“No,” Tom said doubtfully.

“You Navy boys are always doing things by the book. But there's no book for a situation like this. You need us to teach you how to make do and improvise.”

Tom glanced over at Alice. She and her helpers seemed to have finished the missile launcher. They were carrying it toward the airlock, a robot trundling along behind them with a dozen captured missiles. “You may be right, Mr. Dupuis.”

“Course I am.” He shot a resentful glance at Lachance. “We're on your side, you know.”

“Of course you are.” Tom clapped him on the shoulder. “You're a valued member of the team.” He gestured at the marine. “She's just following you around to make sure you don't get bitten by a rat.”

Dupuis stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. “A rat. Right.” He shook his head, then became serious. “I'd like to come with you when you leave, Captain. If you'll have me.” He scratched the side of his nose. “I think most of the gang wants to leave with you.” A wry smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “It's not the Dawn Alliance we're scared of. It's Alice and her wrench.”

Tom grinned back. The grin faded, though, as he thought about the ramifications. “It won't be comfortable here after that bomb goes off. But you'll be alive. If you leave with us?” He shrugged. “There's no guarantees. Frankly, staying would be safer.”

An ugly look came over Dupuis's face. “I'd go with you if your ship was leaking air and the whole DA fleet was breathing down your necks.”

Tom felt his eyebrows rise.

“I heard about what happened to Garth.” Dupuis leaned to one side and spat. “I'm ashamed I helped those dirty cockroaches for as long as I did. I won't help them again.” He folded his arms. “God help me, I won't do it. I'll fight 'em with my bare hands and make them shoot me if that's what it takes.”

Tom stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “You can come with us.”

“Good.” Dupuis glanced at his forearm. “I should go.”

“Wait. Your bomb. Will it endanger the prisoners in the Transfer Pit?”

Dupuis shook his head. “The lights will go out on 'em. That's all. Oh, we should seal the hatch leading into the repair bay.” He gestured around them. “This place will lose pressure. The rest of the base will still have air, though.”

The prisoners would suffer, but so long as the Dawn Alliance returned within a few days, they would survive. That, Tom decided, was good enough. He nodded.

“Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go reset that timer.” Dupuis gave Tom an ironic salute and moved away.

“Captain?”

He didn't know the name of the young woman in a Navy vac suit who came walking up with a tray in her hands. Plates covered the tray, each plate overflowing with sliced fruit. He saw bananas, strawberries, mangoes, and his mouth started to water.

“The galley here is full of fresh food. We didn't want to leave it for the enemy.” He reached for a slice of banana and she said, “Take lots. There's plenty.”

More figures with trays moved through the bay behind her. He saw men with teapots and women with some sort of pastry. He scooped fruit from the tray in front of him, mumbling his thanks around a mouthful of food.

“We couldn't find anything better to do,” she confessed. “We're not engineers or technicians. There's nothing we can do for the ship. So we raided the kitchen, and we started baking.” She smiled. “There's pumpkin bread coming in a few minutes.”

Tom swallowed, grabbed a handful of strawberries, and said, “Great.”

“Is there anything we should be doing instead?” she said. “Normally we're supposed to ask supervisors and team leaders.” Her face went sad. “My team leader is dead, though. We appointed Krystal our new team lead. But she doesn't know what else we can do.”

“This,” said Tom, holding up a strawberry, “is an excellent example of initiative.” He popped the strawberry into his mouth and mumbled, “You're doing fine.”

She beamed and walked away, carrying the fruit tray to where Sawyer and a group of technicians stood beneath one of the gangly robots.

Tom tried to savor the rest of the strawberries, but he found himself gobbling them in spite of himself. He ate the last one and looked around for the woman with the tray of pastries.

Instead, he saw Vinduly, face drawn and haggard, plodding determinedly in his direction.

“Forget it, Doc. You can keep treating the prisoners who are already in the medical bay, but you're not sending any supplies into the pit.”

Vinduly shot him an irritated glance. “That's not what I'm here for.” He finally reached Tom's side. The man looked dreadful up close, his face deeply lined, the skin under his eyes nearly black. By the look of him, a good sneeze would be enough to knock him flat. “I need some people to move Mr. Ham. We can't leave him here.”

“No.” Tom thought of the terrible injuries inflicted on the man. “We can't. I'll find you some people and send them to the hospital bay.”

Vinduly nodded and turned away. Tom looked around and spotted a handful of people with empty trays, heading back toward the base kitchen. He intercepted them. “The surgeon needs your help. I need you to go to the hospital bay.”

“Right,” said a young man, collecting trays from the others and dumping them on a nearby bench. “Where is it?”

“It's …” Tom hesitated, thinking of the route to the medical bay, which was convoluted and difficult to describe. He shook his head. “It's this way. Follow me.”

Ham looked … not good exactly, but better than he did before. He was sitting up, with his back resting on a pillow and his mangled feet mercifully covered by a blanket. His bruises had faded and spread, giving him a jaundiced look. The medicinal foam was gone, replaced by bits of bandage and skin sealer. He held himself quite still, as if moving hurt him, but his eyes were clear and he looked alert.

His bed had antigrav machinery. Vinduly positioned one of the newly-arrived volunteers at each corner of the bed, then knelt and started fiddling with the controls.

Tom looked down at Ham, who squinted up at him, still only able to open one eye. “I'm Tom Thrush, acting captain of the United Worlds frigate Kestrel. We liberated this base, let me see, twelve or thirteen hours ago?” Looking at the man's battered body, he added gently, “I'm sorry it took so long.”

Ham said, “How big is your fleet?”

Tom winced. “There's no fleet. Just one damaged frigate that ran out of fuel and had nowhere else to go.”

Ham closed his eye for a moment, a pained grimace on his face. “I broke under torture.”

“I know.” Tom kept his voice gentle. “You couldn't help it. No one could have.”

A curl of Ham's lip revealed his self-disgust. “I told them about a meeting for the snow geese.”

“Alice told me,” Tom said.

Ham didn't seem to hear him. “That's what we call the ships that got away from Neorome and Tazenda. Snow geese. The Council decided we needed to get together, compare notes and pool resources.”

“I know.”

“But it's not too late!” Ham started to lean forward, then winced and sagged back. “You have to go there. Warn ships off as they arrive.”

Tom said gently, “A fleet of Dawn Alliance ships left from here just before we came in. They'll already be at the rendezvous. I'm sorry. It's too late.”

For a long terrible moment Ham stared at Tom. Then his eyes closed. He didn't stir as the volunteers guided his bed out of the hospital bay and into the corridor. Vinduly stood at Tom's elbow and watched them leave.

“How is he?” Tom murmured when Ham was out of earshot.

“He'll live.” Vinduly rubbed his eyes. “He won't make a full recovery. He'll have scars, and his feet will hurt every time the weather changes. But he'll live. Physically, he'll mostly be all right.”

Physically. But hundreds of his countrymen were going to die because he broke under torture, and that knowledge was a burden no man should have to bear. Tom shook his head, feeling as weary as Vinduly looked. “What a mess.” Vinduly nodded his agreement, then moved away as Tom's radio gave a chirp.

“Thrush here.”

“It's O'Reilly, Captain. I just got a call from the scanner crew. A hyperspace portal just opened, and a ship came through. We're out of time.”

Bloody hell. He activated his radio. “Sawyer!”

“Captain? Sawyer here.” Her voice came to him in stereo, from his helmet speakers and from behind him.

He turned around. She was nowhere in sight. “Sawyer? Where are you?”

“Medical bay.” A hand appeared from inside the medical pod in front of him. The hand gripped the edge of the pod, and Sawyer's head and shoulders rose into view as she sat up. She was in her shirtsleeves, and she started to lift her bracer to her lips, then saw Tom and lowered her arm. “Hello, Sir.”

“Are you injured?”

“No, Sir. Just exhausted.” She looked it, too, her eyes bleary and her face drooping. She braced her elbows on the sides of the pod. “What's going on?”

“There's a Dawn Alliance ship in the system.”

That shocked the sleepiness out of her. She was out of the pod and standing before him in a moment. “Robinson!” she barked into her bracer. “What's X-Time?”

“Nineteen minutes if we drop everything now,” came the reply, the voice faint and tinny.

“Drop it,” she said. “We need to fly.” To Tom she said, “We can lift off in nineteen minutes.” She turned away and dragged her vac suit from a shelf above the pod.

Tom looked around the medical bay. Vinduly was already gathering his medical staff, which included a surgeon and a couple of corpsmen from the corvette. By the sound of it he'd be turning the bay over to the Dawn Alliance surgeon.

“Do you need me here, Sir?” Sawyer was pulling her suit over her shoulders, her helmet dangling from one hand.

“No.”

She nodded and hurried past him into the corridor.

“Now hear this.” The voice belonged to O'Reilly, and it boomed from speakers set in the ceiling. “Enemy ships are inbound. If you have no other duties, get yourself aboard the ship. We'll be leaving in a hurry.”

Tom found himself standing in the middle of the surgery, unsure what to do next. Finally he decided his place was on the Kestrel. He hurried to the repair bay, where he found an air of controlled chaos. People were hurrying onto the ship while the big robots replaced a last few hull plates. He spent a minute watching the action, then boarded the ship.

The bridge felt claustrophobic with the looming walls of the repair bay just beyond the windows. The full bridge crew was present. O'Reilly rose from the captain's chair and moved to the helm station as Tom entered. “Just one bogey,” he said before Tom could ask. “And he's holding position at about five thousand K.”

Tom dropped into his chair. “Does he know we're here?”

He meant the question rhetorically, but O'Reilly replied. “He knows something's wrong. The base isn't answering his calls, and neither is the corvette.”

“So he's waiting,” Tom said, thinking out loud. “Is he hoping we have an antenna down and we're about to fix it, and start replying? Or is he waiting for more ships?”

“Don't know, Sir.” O'Reilly shrugged and glanced at his forearm. “If he's waiting for friends to show up, will they be another eleven minutes?”

Tom realized he was grinning despite the strain of the situation. He hadn't dared hope the arriving ship would give him time to lift off. “Do we have an ID?”

“It's a corvette or a frigate,” O'Reilly said. “We might even have a fighting chance. Especially if those land-based missiles of Alice's work.”

That, it seemed to Tom, was a long shot. He turned to Onda. “Contact her. Tell her to abandon the missile launcher and get to the ship at X minus five minutes. Tell her to leave the missiles. We can't use them.” He thought about ordering her to fire all the missiles she had, just to avoid leaving them for the Dawn Alliance. He didn't want to tip his hand, though.

“Same message for the other teams, Captain?”

Tom looked at Onda, baffled. “Sorry?”

“There's three teams with missile launchers, Sir. They set up about a kilometer away in two different directions.”

“Three?” The colonists had been busy. “Yes, recall everyone. Make sure they're back in time for us to launch. I don't want to wait.”

Onda nodded and murmured into a microphone.

“We'll take off, stay low, and get over the horizon,” Tom said. “Use the planet for cover and open a portal.” He looked around the bridge. “Any thoughts, people?”

O'Reilly said, “It seems a shame to not even try those missile launchers. There's a chance we'll catch that ship napping. And all it'll cost us is, what? Thirty seconds to stop and pick up the last crew? It might make them keep their distance, too. They'll wonder what else we've got up our sleeve.”

Tom's instincts told him not to let anything interfere with their departure. The angry knot in his belly, though, told him to strike while he had the chance. He nodded. “You're right. Make it happen.”

They were just under a minute from Sawyer's deadline when Onda said, “The marines report everyone is on board.” He looked at Tom. “Mr. Harper says the other two missile crews brought their launchers and all their missiles in on a mini-cat.”

Tom, thinking of Dupuis and his bomb timer, said, “Are all the Free Planets people aboard?”

“Most of them,” Onda said. “Sheffield and Scott decided to stay and take their chances.”

“What's that ship doing?”

“Still nothing,” Harris said, sounding a little aggrieved. He would have spoken up, of course, if the enemy ship had made the slightest move.

I should call Sawyer. Ask her what the delay is. But I don't want-

“Lieutenant Sawyer says we're good to launch,” Onda said.

“Go!” Tom snapped. The engines hummed in the distance, barely audible from the bridge. Tom felt the faintest hint of a tremble through the deck plates. He had to sit, fuming with impatience, while the ship's systems powered up.

And then, with agonizing slowness, the Kestrel began to rise.

“I'm getting energy readings from the bogie,” Harris announced. “He's manoeuvering.”

He's seen us. Let's give him something else to think about. “Tell that missile crew to fire everything they've got.”

As the ship rose above the walls of the repair bay Tom watched on his tactical display as one missile after another flashed up from the surface. Eight missiles in total hurtled themselves toward the enemy ship, and he smiled, pleased. It wouldn't have surprised him if the launcher failed completely.

It's a pity the missiles will arrive one at a time. I wonder if we could reprogram them, get the first missiles to wait so they can all fly out together. It would make them harder to shoot down. He dismissed the thought. Getting Dawn Alliance missiles to launch at all was a major accomplishment. He wouldn't add reprogramming to the list of impossible tasks his people faced.

The Kestrel cleared the top of the repair bay and advanced, turning as it went. For an awful moment Tom was sure the ship would collide with the gantry beside the mountain of tailings. They cleared the obstacle with several meters to spare, however. A moment later the ship raced out across the regolith.

On his tactical display the missiles vanished, one by one, shot down by laser fire from the enemy ship. Well, he'd expected that.

He had a quick glimpse of the missile crew, three tiny figures waving up at the ship. Then the Kestrel touched down with a thump that made Tom grunt. He carefully didn't look at O'Reilly. Speed was what mattered right now, not delicacy.

“They're in,” said Onda. O'Reilly didn't answer, just dragged his fingertip across the screen on his console. The Kestrel rose, then raced forward, chasing the horizon.

Chapter 19

“Contact lost,” said Harris. That meant the bulk of the planet was between the two ships.

“Keep low,” Tom ordered. The Boot had no surface features to avoid. There were no hills, no tall trees. The planet may have had mountains, but there were none nearby. The Kestrel raced along, scant meters above the regolith. Each passing moment put more of the planet between the Kestrel and the enemy ship.

At last he said, “Take us up.” The crater-pocked surface of the planet vanished as the nose of the ship rose.

“Ready to open a portal,” O'Reilly announced.

Tom started to tell him to go ahead, then hesitated. “Any sign of the bogey?”

Harris said, “No, Sir.”

“Cut engines,” said Tom. “We'll go stealthy.”

O'Reilly glanced over his shoulder, but didn't speak. Tom said, “Let's see who turns up.”

“Bogey's in sight,” Harris announced some ten minutes later. “Looks like they're in a low, fast orbit.” He looked up. “There's no indication they can see us.”

That was one advantage to flying without cargo pods, Tom reflected. The ship became harder to detect. They'd had plenty of momentum when O'Reilly cut the engines. The Kestrel was quite a ways from the planet now, and the range was still growing. He tapped at his tactical display and watched the Dawn Alliance ship as it drifted around the Boot.

He might not know we're here. But maybe he's spotted us. We can't see Rivendell from here. What if another portal opened, and there's an entire fleet sitting there?

“I want us to move just as soon as that ship is over the horizon,” he said. “Turn us, let me see, ninety degrees on the X axis.” He paused, orienting himself. 'Ninety degrees' translated as ninety degrees to starboard. He wanted ninety degrees to port, which was ... “Make that two seventy degrees on the X axis. I want a view of Rivendell.”

“Two seventy, aye,” O'Reilly said.

“Give me, oh, ten seconds of burn,” Tom said. “Then shut the engines down again.” If a fleet came around from behind the Boot he wanted the Kestrel to be hard to spot.

He opened a calculator as he waited, and made a projection of the ship's movement based on his orders. He was chagrined to find that ten seconds of burn would leave the Kestrel behind the planet for more than an hour. “Belay that last order,” he said. “I need four minutes of burn.” That would give him a view of Rivendell in less than ten minutes. It would also give the Kestrel a comforting amount of velocity if they saw hostiles.

The Dawn Alliance ship had reappeared and Rivendell was about to come into view over the horizon when Tom's console beeped. At the same instant Harris said, “Portals opening!”

A pair of portals appeared, widely separated, in the void above the Boot. The nearest portal, at a range of a few thousand kilometers, was visible to the naked eye as a flattened rectangle of dazzling white light.

“I've got four ships total,” Harris reported as the white rectangles winked out. “Two from each portal.”

O'Reilly was hunched over his console, fingertips almost touching the screens, ready to goose the engines or open a portal at an instant's notice. Tom, his heart in his throat, almost gave the order. Instead he said, “Any indication that they see us?”

For a long, terrible moment Harris didn't speak. “No missiles inbound,” he said at last. “No active radar scans.” He glanced at Tom, then returned his gaze to his console. “They might have missed us.”

The Kestrel was close enough to detect, at least for the closest pair of ships – if they looked in this direction. Their attention might be focussed on Rivendell, though.

“I'm getting an engine burn,” Harris said, and O'Reilly twitched. “They're moving toward the planet.”

O'Reilly moved back slightly. “I almost hit the engines.” He looked at Tom. “Should we bug out?”

Yes, we probably should. We're really pushing our luck. Tom took a deep breath, imagining a box in his mind. He imagined his fear going into the box, and the box closing. “We'll stay here for the moment. Let's see what we can see.” Tom looked down at his console. “What's our relative momentum?”

“We're moving toward the nearest portal,” O'Reilly said. “The enemy ships are moving away faster than we're approaching, though.”

Then every moment makes us safer. “Keep the engines cold for now,” Tom said. “Don't anyone doze off, though.”

That elicited a wry chuckle from Harris.

Four red dots showed on Tom's tactical display, in two pairs. A fifth dot appeared as the original ship reversed course and cleared the horizon. All five ships seemed to be converging on a point not far above Rivendell.

According to the tactical display, Rivendell was over the horizon now. Tom switched to a scanner view of the base and zoomed in.

He was just in time to see a flash of light that turned the middle of the screen white. It wouldn't have been visible to the naked eye, but the scanners picked up a spike in heat energy. At the same instant Harris said, “Enemy ships are changing course.”

They saw the flash, Tom realized as all five ships halted their advance. There was a jumble of confused motion that puzzled him.

“I think they're doing evasive maneuvers,” Harris said. “I'm not sure what's going on.”

“The bomb just went off,” Tom said, smiling. When Harris gave him a blank look he explained about Dupuis and the rigged warhead.

For twenty minutes he watched as the fleet made a cautious approach to Rivendell. More and more data trickled in with every passing minute, as the Kestrel's computer sifted through the input from the scanners and pieced together a picture of the enemy ships. The first ship to arrive was indeed a corvette. Now she'd been joined by a light cruiser, two heavy cruisers, and a light carrier.

Tom watched the tactical screen and shivered. Don't let them see us. We are so badly out of our league.

Finally the carrier and one heavy cruiser moved in low over the base, and the light cruiser touched down. Tom expected more of the fleet to land. He expected the DA force to begin the long, laborious process of bringing the station back online. But they surprised him.

The light cruiser lifted off within five minutes of landing. Then all five ships moved away from the planet, breaking into two groups. A pair of hyperspace portals appeared, and the entire fleet disappeared.

“Huh,” Tom said. “What the devil just happened?”

“They landed troops,” Harris said. “I'd bet my dinner on it. They put down enough people to retake the base, and then they bugged out.” He leaned back in his seat, thinking. “They didn't stay to support the ground-pounders. So wherever they went, they were in a hurry.”

“The rendezvous,” O'Reilly said. “They went to join the ambush at Ham's rendezvous.”

Harris said, “Maybe they are the ambush.” When the others looked at him he shrugged and said, “Why not? It's a big enough force. We assumed that when the last fleet left, they were going to set up an ambush. But maybe they went back to their main fleet to report.” He spent a moment poking at his console. “There's probably a Dawn Alliance fleet at Hapsburg. It's that way.” He pointed to starboard and down. “Black Betty is that way.” He pointed to port and forward. “So Rivendell is on the way. It's an obvious place to stop for fuel.”

Tom felt suddenly hollow, as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. “We could have beaten them there. We could have warned off any friendly ships.” He shook his head. “But it's too late now.”

“Currents,” said a voice, and Tom looked around. The speaker was a Naomi Silver, former UW Navy spacer, former Free Planets revolutionary. She looked at him, pink-cheeked, flustered by all the attention. “The Navy never bothers with currents,” she said. “We use them all the time, though.” Her blush deepened. “The Free Planets ships do, I mean. Hyperspace currents make a huge difference when you're in a small ship.”

Tom said, “You mean there are stable currents that can increase a ship's speed?”

“Kind of stable,” she said. “A good current might last for a couple weeks before it shifts or just falls apart. But, yeah, for a small enough ship it can make a huge difference in speed.”

Frigates had a difficult time predicting arrival times, Tom knew. Hyperspace storms could slow a ship down considerably. He'd never heard of a storm speeding a ship up, though. “Do you know where there's a current we can use?”

She shook her head, and the brief spark of hope he'd nourished fizzled. Then she said, “The people who were stationed here would know. They'd keep track of all the local currents. If there's one we can use, they'll know about it.”

Tom turned to Onda. “Get Dupuis up here, fast.” He thought for a moment. Ham was in the surgery, hating himself for letting down his comrades. He needed to know there was a chance of limiting the damage.

He needed a chance for redemption.

“Call Dr. Vinduly too,” he added. “If Ham can be moved, I want him up here as well.”

Silence fell as they waited. O'Reilly said softly, “Are you sure we want to get to that rendezvous just ahead of that fleet that just left?”

An image of Hanson flashed through Tom's mind. Hanson would be furious when he learned that Tom was taking the ship on yet another dangerous detour instead of hauling ass back to Garnet. Tom smiled. If I achieve nothing else with this little side trip, at least I get to cause that prick some stress. “We'll be fine,” he said. “We'll pop out of hyperspace, blast a radio warning, and bug out. Any friendly ships that got there early will have time to get away. I won't put the Kestrel in any danger.”

The bridge hatch slid open, putting an end to the conversation. Dupuis stood on the threshold, looking uncertain. Then he stepped aside as a medical corpsman appeared, pushing Ham in a hoverchair. Ham looked pale and tight-lipped, but a glint of determination in his eyes told Tom he'd made the right choice.

Tom quickly described the situation, and the two Free Planets men exchanged glances. “The Atticus Ridge?” Ham said, and Dupuis nodded.

“It's a front where two storms touch,” Ham said to the bridge at large. “The Blackbird and the Finch are what we call them. Your Dawn Alliance fleet will bull its way right through the Blackbird storm. It'll slow them down. If we go a bit to starboard, we can follow the ridge where the storms meet. The energy builds up along the contact line, and it tries to equalize by spinning around the perimeter of the larger storm.” He made a twirling motion with one finger. “We get into that current, we'll double our speed.”

He looked around the bridge. “Well, a small ship would double its speed. This thing?” He shrugged, then winced and touched his chest. “We'll see.”

The Kestrel entered seventh-dimensional space, and Ham and Dupuis gave directions. They couldn’t give precise coordinates. The storms moved constantly, and precise coordinates weren't the way small ships navigated.

The storms of hyperspace, not much more than scenery to Tom, spoke volumes to the Free Planets men. They peered through the windows, conferred briefly, then pointed. O'Reilly got the ship moving in a broad arc that would take them around the bulk of an enormous tangerine energy storm.

“Wait,” said Dupuis, and glanced at Ham. “We're telling them to go the way we would go. We'd be avoiding the heart of the storm.” He stamped a foot on the deck, making the deck plates ring. “This thing can plow right through.” He pointed at the middle of the storm. “Take us that way. Stop when the clouds turn dark.”

O'Reilly glanced at Tom, who nodded. The nose of the ship swung to port and rose several degrees, then surged forward. Tom had a moment to fervently hope the repairs to the hull were as good as Sawyer claimed.

Then the storm engulfed them.

For more than an hour the ship flew blind, nothing visible through the windows but seething red-yellow light. Ham sagged back in his hoverchair, staring through the windows with slitted eyes. Dupuis stood beside the hoverchair, arms folded, looking uncomfortable. Tom watched the storm and tried to picture what might happen when they reached Black Betty.

The windows went dark, and for a moment Tom thought they'd broken through into open space. This was a darkness born of seething storm energy, though. There were no stars, just tendrils of pure energy, midnight blue mixed with an orange so dark it was nearly black.

When the view faded to a softer blue Ham said, “You have to turn. Stay in the dark stuff. Right between the storm fronts, that's where the action is.”

O'Reilly's hands danced across the helm console, braking the ship and turning it. The blue continued to lighten. Then, by gradual degrees the windows darkened until the ship might have been flying through muddy water.

“You'll have to do actual flying for a while,” Ham rasped. “You don't get to just punch in a course and forget it.”

“I'll manage,” O'Reilly said dryly.

For the next twenty minutes very little changed. O'Reilly steered the ship, his hands constantly moving as he made tiny course adjustments. From time to time the storm would lighten slightly, the fingers of energy smoothing out and taking a tint of either blue or orange. Each time, O'Reilly would adjust the course and the storm would darken again.

“I don't think I can help any further,” Ham said. “I only know how to get into the current. From here all you can do is go where it takes you.”

“That's fine,” Tom said. He looked at the medical corpsman. “You'd better take him back to the surgery.”

As the hoverchair began to turn Ham caught Tom's eye. The expression on his face was difficult to read, but there might have been some gratitude mixed in with a lot of pain and exhaustion.

Tom nodded and watched as the corpsman pushed Ham out of the bridge. Dupuis trailed after them.

“How's our speed?” Tom asked as the bridge hatch slid shut.

It was Harris who answered, O'Reilly being busy with the helm controls. “We're definitely moving quickly. I can't really tell how fast. The storm energy moves with us, and we can't get readings on the stars.” He shrugged. “Sorry, Captain. I can't be precise.”

“That'll have to do. O'Reilly, are you going to need a break?”

“I’m good for now, Sir,” O'Reilly said without looking up. “I've finally got the hang of it. I'd rather not stop. It'll be hard to get back into it.”

“Good enough.” Tom rose and stretched. “What's our current ship status?”

“High Alert, Sir,” Harris said.

“Put us on Low Alert.” Tom rubbed his eyes, which felt gritty. “I'm taking a break. Mr. O'Reilly, you have the bridge.”

“Aye aye,” O'Reilly said, his eyes still on his console display.

“If anyone needs a decision made, call me directly. Don't break Mr. O'Reilly's concentration,” Tom said. Then he left the bridge and headed for the wardroom.

Chapter 20

The Kestrel was out of the worst of the storms and flying through mostly clear seventh-dimensional space when Ng opened a portal and brought the ship back into normal space. The shimmer of distant storms vanished, replaced by a spray of cold white stars on a field of deep black.

“The rogue planet should be dead ahead, Sir,” Ng said. “I can't make it out from here, though.” She peered through the bridge windows, then turned her attention to the nav console. O'Reilly was off the bridge, taking a much-needed break. “Found it,” Ng said. “Dead ahead, just under point one of a light year.”

Tom cloned her display and looked at a magnified, highly processed image of a planet. Without a star to light it, Black Betty was a featureless orb. He zoomed out, then leaned forward as another shape appeared. “Is that a moon?”

“More or less,” said Ng. “You could call them twin planets. The two orbit each other. Betty's about five times bigger.”

“The supply depot's on the bigger planet?” Tom looked around the bridge.

It was Harris who replied. “Yes, Sir. Far side of Betty from Little B. That's what they call the moon. The two are tidally locked, so the depot always faces away from the moon.”

Tom spent a moment looking at the display, considering his options. “Okay. Since we don't know what's there, we'll come out of hyperspace on the far side of Little B. The far side from Betty, that is. I want us to come out as close to the moon as we safely can. I want us invisible when we arrive.”

Ng nodded her understanding.

“Sound Battle Stations,” Tom said. “With any luck we're first, but anyone at all could be there. Let's make sure we're ready for anything.”

A portal opened before them, the ship slid through, and for several minutes the Kestrel moved through seventh-dimensional space. O'Reilly came in, zipping up his vac suit, and took over the helm station. Then a second portal opened and they dropped back into the normal universe.

Tom tried to inhale, discovered he was already holding his breath, and made himself breathe out. He badly wanted to ask Harris if he saw anything, but it wasn't as if the man would keep it a secret. Tom turned his attention to his own console instead.

No ships showed on the plot.

“Looks clear,” Harris announced.

Well, keep your eyes open. Tom managed – barely – not to speak the thought aloud. He's a professional. You don't have to tell him to do the obvious.

He looked out the windows, saw only darkness, and looked back at the tac display. Little B should have been directly ahead, at a range of less than two thousand kilometers. He looked up, puzzled, then shook his head as realization hit him.

The sky in front of him held no stars. He was staring at the moon. This far from the nearest star, the moon was completely dark. There was literally nothing to see.

This is the obvious place to come out of hyperspace. Little B is the only cover in the neighborhood. We're lucky there wasn't a ship here lying in wait. There was something about that thought, something his subconscious wanted him to notice. He frowned, trying to tease out whatever his mind was telling him. The more he chased the thought, though, the more it eluded him, and he gave up.

“Take us around the moon,” he said. “I want the engines cold by the time we're in line with the planet.”

O'Reilly nodded, and a sprinkle of stars appeared as the Kestrel turned.

“Let's not waste any time,” Tom added. He had no idea how long they had before the DA fleet arrived.

“Right,” said O'Reilly, and increased speed. The swath of stars grew as the surface of the moon raced by beneath them, and then O'Reilly tapped his console and the distant hum of the engines disappeared.

Black Betty was a big round hole in the starfield. Tom checked the tactical display, then glanced at Harris. Harris looked up and said, “We appear to be alone.”

“We have a simple radio code we use on Free Planets ships,” Naomi Silver said. “It'll identify us as friendly if there's anybody out there from the colonies.”

“Send it,” Tom said, and she moved to the comms console.

A reply came back thirty seconds later, just a repeat of the same short code burst.

“We know they're listening on that frequency,” Tom said, and nodded to Onda. “Put me through.”

Onda tapped at the communications console and nodded.

“This is Tom Thrush of the United Worlds Frigate Kestrel. I know we've been enemies in the past, but in my mind, we have a common enemy now, and that makes us allies. There are Free Planets personnel aboard the ship. That's how we knew about this rendezvous.”

There was silence from the other ship.

“I'm here because your meeting has been betrayed to the Dawn Alliance,” Tom continued. “In fact, a Dawn Alliance fleet is on its way here. I recommend you bug out immediately.” He thought for a moment. The anonymous ship still hadn't appeared on the Kestrel's scanners. “Or stay where you are, and warn off any more ships that arrive. You can hide more easily than we can.”

There was a long silence. Finally the bridge speakers crackled and a voice spoke. It was a woman, with the familiar drawl of a colonist. “This is Captain Brubeck of the Morning Breeze. I appreciate the warning.”

“You're welcome.”

“Problem is, if we leave now, anyone who comes in later gets ambushed. We can warn one ship, maybe. After that, they'll get a fix on us from the radio broadcast.”

Tom glanced at his tactical display, which now showed a directional arrow for the Morning Breeze. The range was unknown, but a fleet would have no trouble triangulating and getting a fairly precise location.

“We'll have to leave. And that means late arrivals don't get a warning.”

Tom nodded, though she couldn't see it. “We can only do what we can do.”

“That's easy for you to say, Captain,” she said sharply. “They aren't your friends.”

He bristled. It wasn't Brubeck he was angry with, though. Not really. She was right. He'd achieved very little by dashing to Black Betty. And now he was going to slink away.

“I don't suppose you have a fleet with you?” she said.

“No.”

“Pity. We know they're coming, after all. Be nice if we could set up an ambush of our own.” Her voice grew thoughtful. “There are some mines in the stockpile, too.”

Mines? What the hell? They're more militarized than I realized. Space mines were not a terribly effective weapon. They had to be tiny or they'd be detected. That meant small payloads and not much maneuverability. The biggest problem, though, wasn't the mines themselves. It was the sheer magnitude of space. The UW fleet could come out of hyperspace anywhere within tens of thousands of kilometers. It would take trillions of mines to give any semblance of effective coverage.

“We'll touch down and detonate the whole lot,” she said. “It's a pity. But at least they won't go to the Dawn Alliance.”

A yellow circle appeared on the tac display as the engines on the Morning Breeze lit up. Tom watched as the ship headed for Black Betty, moving fairly quickly. Brubeck would want to get in and out fast, before the fleet arrived.

An idea was piecing itself together in the back of Tom's mind. An idea that scared him. It also filled him with a hot fierce joy, which he distrusted. He was angry at the Dawn Alliance. Angry at what they'd done to the fleet at Garnet, to the Kestrel, to Garth Ham. He was furious and frustrated at the way he'd been forced to hide and cower and flee.

He wanted to hit back. He wanted to strike. And he knew himself well enough to know that his temper was a poor guide for his actions.

People will die. If you stay in the system, if you try to take the fight to a superior force, people will die. You may die. Or Alice, or O'Reilly, or Janine and Anderle and their crew. You swore you'd get them safely back to Garnet. You can't ask them to stay.

But if you go, if you slip away, people will die. Different people, but they'll die just the same. While you're slinking back to Garnet and protecting your own precious skin, people right here at Black Betty will die. They'll blunder into a Dawn Alliance ambush, and they'll be killed.

And there's another factor. This is war. There will be a battle fought here, a battle with ramifications for the rest of the war. If you leave, it will be a one-sided battle between the Dawn Alliance and a lot of ragged-ass armed freighters. The freighters won't stand a chance, and the only home-grown resistance in the Green Zone will crumble.

But if you stay …

Tom took a deep breath, trying to force himself to be objective. Because the truth was, he wanted to talk himself into doing something rash. His anger demanded it.

If you stay, you'll be in a position to ambush a couple of cruisers and a corvette. You'll strike a real blow. You'll save the Free Planets fleet, and you'll give the Dawn Alliance a bloody nose.

He looked around the bridge, wishing desperately that Captain Nishida was still here, or anyone else to take the burden of this decision from his shoulders. He looked at the bridge crew. I have a duty to them. To the whole crew. To keep them safe. To get them back to Garnet unharmed.

His gaze fell on Naomi Silver, looking out of place in her red vac suit. I have a duty to the Free Planets as well. They're our allies. Or they could be. If we help them now. He looked at the spot where Garth Ham's hoverchair had floated, and he made his decision.

On the tactical display the yellow circle showed a red underline as the Morning Breeze's engines flared when she touched down. Tom said, “Onda, get me the Morning Breeze.” When Onda nodded he said, “Captain Brubeck? Wait a moment. I have an idea.”

Chapter 21

“You can't do this.”

Tom looked around the mess hall. He stood with Janine near the back wall, far enough from the half-dozen or so people sitting at tables that their conversation would be private if they spoke quietly. Janine, however, was not speaking quietly. He said, “Maybe we could discuss this somewhere-”

“No!” She stood rigid, her fists clenched, radiating fury. “You're not postponing this or sweeping it under the rug! What you're doing is wrong, and someone needs to make you see it.”

“I know it's dangerous,” he said. “But I swear, I'll do everything I can to keep you safe.”

“I'm not worried about my own safety!” She wasn't just angry now. She was offended as well. “You're planning to kill people. You have to see that it's wrong.”

He lifted his hands in helpless frustration. “Somebody's getting ambushed,” he said. “Somebody's getting killed. It's either Dawn Alliance warships or it's Free Planets revolutionaries. I choose to save the revolutionaries.”

“And what gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies?”

He stared at her, gritting his teeth and fighting a rising exasperation. It was a fight he quickly lost. “This.” He tapped the rank stripes on the front of his uniform. “This gives me the right. And the responsibility. I command a warship, and I have my duty.”

“You're a human being!” she snapped. “That gives you responsibilities too. Like an obligation not to kill people.”

“There's a war on.” He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Couldn't she see what was right in front of her face? “People are going to die. There's no way to avoid it.”

“But you don't have to kill anyone,” she said. She sounded just as exasperated and impatient as he felt. “Can't you see? You can choose not to kill. If everyone did that-”

“Everyone isn't doing that! If only decent people lay down their arms, then the very worst people get to decide what happens to everyone.”

Her hands came up, chopping at the air in quick, fierce gestures. “Can't you see you're part of the problem? You're making things worse!”

Tom glanced past her. No one in the mess hall was looking their way, but it wasn't as if they couldn't hear. “You don't understand.”

“No, I don't understand!” Her voice rose. Now the kitchen staff would hear the argument as well. “You seem like a decent person. But you're plotting murder!”

“It's not murder!”

“You're planning to kill people, aren't you?” She looked as if only a massive effort of will kept her from punching him. “You could fly away, couldn't you? But you're not flying away. You're scattering mines and readying weapons and trying to figure out how to kill as many people as you possibly can.”

“I'm trying to save lives!” Now his own voice was rising.

Her lip curled. “You don't save lives by killing people.”

“Oh, for-”

“Tom.” Her voice was soft now. “Don't do this. Look past your excuses and your rationalizations. You're going to kill people. Innocent spacers who are just following orders, the same as you. They don't deserve to die. And you have no right to kill them.” Her right fist unclenched and she reached out her hand, touching his chest. “Please. You're better than this.”

She said it so earnestly, so sincerely, that he made himself consider her words. Could she be right? Could adrenaline and testosterone be clouding his judgement? Would it actually be better to fly away?

The idea tempted him. He could be back in Garnet in a few days. He'd be safe. His crew would be safe. Janine would be safe.

And she would see him as wise, decent. She would look at him and see a hero instead of a murderer.

But that wouldn't last. The realization left him feeling sick and hollow. The war was far from over, and his role in it was far from complete. Unless he got reassigned to a fuel barge he was going to do things Janine Greyeyes wouldn't approve of. There was simply no way for him to do his duty in wartime without earning her revulsion.

He tried to imagine heading for Garnet and abandoning the Free Planets fleet to its fate. And he knew he couldn't do it.

“Janine …”

Sorrow suffused her features. “I thought better of you,” she said. “I really did.” Then she turned her back and walked out of the mess hall.

The surface of Little B looked black at any distance, but shone pale gray in the circle of illumination cast by Alice's helmet light. The ground felt crunchy under the soles of her boots, and it fractured with every step she took, exposing a layer of dark sand under a frangible crust a centimeter or so thick.

If the surface had features of any sort she couldn't see them. No hills, no trees, no distant mountain ranges. Not even a crater. For a moment, as the little freighter lifted off behind her, the plain around her was lit up for a hundred meters in every direction. Shadows shot out, elongated crazily, then faded as the ship gained altitude. Three people, an improvised missile launcher, and a pallet of missiles faded into deepening gloom until the ship vanished into the darkness of the sky and they were alone.

“All right, let's get ready.” Alice grabbed the base of the missile launcher, testing it for wobble. “We don't know how much time we have.”

Somewhere directly above her the Morning Breeze was scattering thousands of mines through the void above the back side of Little B, the back side being the side farthest from Black Betty. Thrush was taking a huge gamble. Two gambles, really. He was betting the Dawn Alliance fleet was going to pop out of hyperspace right where the Kestrel had come out, using the moon for cover. And he was betting that no Free Planets ships would do the same.

Not my decision, thank all the gods for that. I just get to implement his crazy scheme. Or my part of it, anyway.

There'd been two armed freighters in the system when the Kestrel arrived, not one. The Sunbeam had stayed quiet, listening to the conversation between the Kestrel and the Morning Breeze until her captain couldn't deny there was work to do. Now Sunbeam was dropping two missile launchers and their crews on Little B. If all went well, she'd pick them up after the fight, too.

Alice didn't think there was much chance of that happening, but you never knew.

“Wasp Nest One, ready to go,” said Jimmy Cartwright in her helmet radio. He and two more colonists from Rivendell were at the other missile launcher, several kilometers away. The idea was to separate the launchers so one missile or barrage from a warship couldn't hit them both.

A grunt came over the radio as Collins lifted a missile. Bridger helped him lower it gently into the launcher. Alice knelt by the launcher and fiddled with the console she'd made from a maintenance robot controller. It was able to communicate with the missile's brain, and it gave her a screen where she could enter simple commands. The console connected with the missile and flashed green.

“Wasp Nest Two, ready to fire,” she said, and got an acknowledgement back from the Kestrel. She squatted, trying to ignore the adrenaline singing in her veins. She'd done what she could for now. All she could do was wait. What will it be? Hours? Days?

Minutes?

It was, in fact, less than that. The sand lit up all around her, not the sharp white light of the freighter's landing lights but a soft glow, tinged with red. Someone swore over the radio, and her head tilted back.

A portal opened directly above her. The range had to be hundreds of kilometers at least, but with nothing to give a sense of perspective it felt like the hand of God was slicing the heavens open just above her head.

It's too close, she thought. Insanely close. The mines will all be too far away. Because who would put mines this close to a moon? It's a crazy place to open a portal. The ships could collide with Little B.

Then a ship came through, and her head tilted to the side as she tried to understand what she was seeing. It had to be a fighter. It was too small to be anything else. But it didn't look like a fighter. It looked like a proper warship.

Only when a second ship loomed in the portal did she understand. The portal was huge, and much farther away than she'd realized. The first ship through was a corvette, looking tiny because the portal was so big.

Behind it came a ship so vast it nearly filled the portal, and Alice stared at it, dimly aware that her mouth hung open. This was no cruiser coming through the portal. This was a battleship.

“Alice. Do we fire the missile? Alice? Alice!”

She jerked her gaze away from the monster in the void above her and looked at Collins. There was silence from the Kestrel, and she stared blankly at Collins. The idea was to attack in tandem, overwhelming whatever ships came through with simultaneous attacks from the surface and from the Kestrel. Without a call from the ship she didn't know what to do.

Sparks appeared in the faceplate of his helmet, flashes of light reflected from above. She looked up and watched dozens of mines erupt in flames against the hull of the battleship. Then a column of white fire appeared, a finger stretching for an instant from the surface of Little B to the underside of the ship where it exploded in a spectacular ball of flame.

Wasp Nest One was firing.

She jabbed her gloved finger against the console and the missile fired, blinding her completely with an eruption of white light. She lifted a hand to protect her face and felt heat through her glove and along her thighs. The missile was gone in an instant, and she looked up, much too late to see it explode. The battleship was invisible, hidden by the white circles that danced across her vision. She could just make out the glowing rectangle of the portal – until it shrank and vanished.

“We're ready, Alice.”

She looked down, saw only a blur, and stretched out a hand. Her fingers touched the launcher, then the missile inside it. She found the console by touch, squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them and leaned close to the screen.

She couldn't read anything, but she could make out a hint of green.

Good enough. She squeezed her eyes shut and pushed a fingertip against the screen.

By the time the third missile went up her vision was largely recovered. The three of them worked with grim haste, the men loading one missile after another into the launcher. The console had no trouble linking to each missile in turn, and the battleship was a huge target, dominating the sky above. She let each missile target the big ship by default and launched them as fast as they were loaded.

More light flashed in the corner of her eyes, the ground leaped beneath her, and Collins and Bridger stumbled, dropping a missile. She looked in the direction of that flash of light and saw a pillar of dust rising from the surface of the moon. That's in the direction of Wasp Nest One. She tried to gauge the distance. Maybe halfway between us?

Something flitted through the void, a speck of light too fast for her to properly see, lashing down from above to touch the ground somewhere over the nearby horizon. And the ground shook again, less this time. There was no flash from the explosion, since it was hidden by the curve of the little moon's surface. Then another glowing speck came down, and the ground shook one more time.

The battleship was firing missiles at the pests on the surface.

“Alice!” A hand slapped her shoulder and she looked up. The next missile was in the launcher, Collins and Bridger already lifting another one. She glanced at the console, saw the battleship glowing green as the selected target.

I should look for damage. Try to hit something vulnerable. But the battleship was hitting back, and she didn't know how much time she and her team had. So she jabbed the screen and the missile erupted in a burst of white flame and raced into the sky. Another missile dropped into the launcher – and a mighty hand slammed into her left side, bowling her over, sending her tumbling across the unforgiving surface of Little B.

A strange static filled her mind, terror and shock overwhelming all thought. Some buried part of her brain knew what to do, though. She scrambled up, watching bits of rock and sand fall from her arms and shoulders, and started to run. Any direction was as good as any other. Safety lay in distancing herself from the missile launcher. She bounded across the regolith, fighting the urge to make panicky running motions with her legs while she soared above the surface.

A missile slammed down ahead of her, the flash blinding her, and she crossed her arms in front of her face, protecting her helmet. Debris peppered her. Then her feet touched down and momentum carried her forward, stumbling. She wanted to change direction, to run away from the site of the missile impact. Instead she ran toward it, stumbled on a chunk of stone blasted free by the explosion, and fell sprawling. The crater lay just beyond her outstretched hands, and she rose up on palms and toes, skittering forward until she could dive into the shallow divot left by the explosion.

Missiles rained down around her, and she cowered in the meager cover of the bomb crater, arms curled around her head, and waited for the strike that would blast her into Kingdom Come.

Tom had a death grip on both arms of his chair, his fingers digging so deep into the fabric that he thought he might damage the electronics underneath. It didn't look too good to the rest of the bridge crew, but he couldn't help it. Hell, he considered it a great achievement that he was gritting his teeth in silence instead of screaming, or giving voice to the ocean of curses bubbling up inside him.

Three ships. It was supposed to be five small ships. We were supposed to have a fighting chance! We weren't supposed to face a bloody battleship and a massive fleet. I've made a fatal mistake. We're all going to die.

It was an unproductive line of thought. In some distant corner of his mind he knew it, not that the knowledge helped. Not that long ago he'd sat board in a classroom while an instructor droned on about adrenaline and panic and how you needed to learn to keep on thinking when the sewage hit the air circulation machinery. At the time Tom had been afraid of only one thing: he might fall asleep in class, and start snoring.

Now he scanned the bridge, trying to figure out what orders to give. O'Reilly was hunched over his console, hands moving across the screens as he made the Kestrel jerk and dance as it fled the barrage of lasers and missiles blasting at the ship from behind. O'Reilly needed no instruction, and Tom felt a moment of envy. Lucky son of a bitch knows what to do.

Harris was busy as well, calling instructions to the gun crews and listening to reports from spotters and weapons crews. Onda had his eyes screwed shut, one finger plugging his left ear, his right hand cupped around the earpiece in his right ear.

The rest of the bridge crew looked as terrified as Tom felt. For the moment there was nothing any of them could do, and Tom let that thought sink in. We're running, and we're shooting back. For the moment, we're doing everything we can.

I'm doing fine. I'm not dropping the ball. I can take a moment and look at the big picture.

He told himself sternly to release his grip on the arms of the chair. His fingers refused to unlock, so he shrugged inwardly and took a deep breath. He counted the seconds as he inhaled, held it, then exhaled. It was a stress management technique that had seemed silly when he learned it in Basic Officer Training. Now, though, it helped a tiny bit. Terror's stranglehold eased ever so slightly. Most of his mind was still awash in panic, but some part of his brain was his again.

The tactical display looked like gibberish. A distant voice in his mind told him that was another stress reaction. He was overwhelmed, too frightened to understand what he was seeing.

Unlocking the fingers of his left hand required more concentration than he ever would have believed possible. He managed it, though, his thumb dragging reluctantly across the fabric and almost triggering the intercom button as he tugged his hand free. His fingers refused to straighten completely, so he used a knuckle to zoom out the display.

The familiar, automatic action seemed to flip a switch in his brain. Suddenly the display made perfect sense. He'd spent a couple of hundred hours using a display like this in one simulation after another. Telling himself to treat this as another sim, he took another slow, deep breath and made himself analyze the tactical situation with all the calmness he could muster.

The battleship was barely visible dead aft, the bulk of it already half obscured by Little B. Her guns would still be able to fire on the Kestrel.

“Take us toward the moon.” The sound of his own voice startled him, and he was relieved to find that he sounded far more composed than he felt. O'Reilly didn't answer, but the ship turned and the battleship sank beneath the horizon.

“Hug the surface,” Tom said. “Keep our speed up.” The curve of the horizon might provide a bit of cover, and the moon's gravity would interfere with targeting.

O'Reilly grunted, and the Kestrel dropped. A proximity alarm warbled, warning them their altitude was dangerously low. Tom silenced the alarm.

What had seemed to be a forest of red blips on the tactical display behind them began to resolve itself into something a bit less terrifying. For starters, there was no sign the battleship was pursuing them. It was gone from the display, hidden by the bulk of the moon. Several more ships were hanging back, perhaps to protect the battleship. Tom saw a light cruiser and a light carrier growing more distant as the Kestrel fled.

They were still in plenty of trouble, of course. A corvette, a heavy cruiser and a light cruiser still pursued them, and a pair of fighters that must have launched from the carrier. The situation was merely desperate instead of utterly hopeless, and he felt himself grin. Progress! 

The corvette, more nimble than the larger ships, was the closest. In fact, it was tight on the Kestrel's tail, and Tom said, “Focus your fire on that corvette. See if you can take out her forward gun turrets, and then paste her with a couple of missiles.”

“Aye aye,” Harris said, then spoke to his gun crews. “One turret's definitely destroyed,” he said a moment later. “I know the other one's taken some damage.”

“Missiles,” said Tom. He had to deal some damage while the enemy fleet was at least partially separated.

“Missiles away,” Harris said, and Tom bit back a curse as one missile vanished, destroyed by laser fire an instant after it left the frigate.

The other missile hit, though, a white circle appearing on the nose of the icon representing the corvette on Tom's tactical display. He switched to an aft camera and saw a blackened crater in the nose of the other ship. One side of the crater glowed red, flames fed by oxygen escaping from the ship.

The deck jerked beneath him, his chair twisted, and Tom grabbed the arms of the chair once again. An explosion boomed somewhere behind him, and the bones of the Kestrel gave a squeal of protest as they twisted.

At first he thought the damaged corvette had managed one last attack, but when he switched back to the tactical view he saw it was the cruisers that were firing. A missile had struck the back of the forward section. O'Reilly was already reacting, sending the Kestrel skimming above the surface of Little B in a series of S-curves.

The corvette fell behind, abandoning the pursuit. The cruisers were much higher, firing down on the frigate from above, and Tom saw a flare of light as a missile raced past the bridge windows. The ground erupted ahead of the ship, and rock chips rattled against the windows.

Something thudded against the hull directly above them, and Harris let out a low whistle. “That was a missile,” he said. “Lasers got it about half a second before it hit.”

Tom shuddered. A direct hit to the bridge would have been game over for all of them.

A series of metallic impacts echoed through the bridge, starting in the distance and coming closer. Then three holes appeared in the ceiling above Tom's head. The communications console exploded, components spraying across the deck plates in a shower of sparks. Onda screamed.

“Fields are holding,” said Trenholm, his voice unnaturally calm. That meant the bridge was still airtight, despite three jagged fist-sized punctures giving a direct view of cold vacuum. Three matching holes decorated the deck plates, and God only knew what carnage those shots had done in the rest of the ship.

A spacer named Farnham knelt by Onda, pressing a med patch to a terrible wound in the man's thigh. Tom jerked his eyes away, fighting panic. “O'Reilly! Get us out of here!”

O'Reilly shot him a quick glance over one shoulder. “Where can we go?”

Nowhere. There's nowhere to run. But we can't just keep racing along like this. We're the star attraction in a shooting gallery. And if we keep going we're going to circle the moon and fly up to the battleship from behind. He spent a moment staring helplessly at the tac display, which showed only one other feature.

“Take us to the planet.”

There was a moment when O'Reilly didn't react. He didn't argue, but Tom could imagine the thought in his mind. What good will that do?

Then the stars plunged as the nose of the Kestrel swung up. It caught the cruisers by surprise, and Tom watched on the tactical display as three missiles exploded against the surface of the moon behind them. Three missiles and who knew how much other ammunition. What are the odds their magazines will run dry?

It didn't take the gunners long to recover, and the change of course put the Kestrel at right angles to the hunters. It made her a beautiful target, and Tom heard more echoing impacts as projectiles raked the top of the hull. A missile raced toward the ship, missed the forward section by no more than a meter or so, and sped away into the void.

The Kestrel fled toward the bulk of the distant planet, quickly changing the angle between herself and the cruisers. For a moment their roles were reversed, the cruisers exposing their tops to the frigate while the frigate showed only her tail. Three missiles left the Kestrel, either Harris or the missile crew not bothering to wait for orders, and Tom watched them burn toward the cruisers before winking out, one by one.

The cruisers changed shape on his display, shrinking as they turned their noses toward the Kestrel. And the pursuit began. The sudden change of direction had opened up the distance between ships, which gave the Kestrel a bit of breathing room. She had plenty of space to shoot down incoming missiles, and a bit of basic evasion meant that not many smaller projectiles would find their mark. Tom leaned back in his chair and stretched, trying to force some of the tension out of his muscles. I need to pull myself together. I need to think!

Why? The voice in the back of his mind was insidious and all too convincing. Why bother? You're in a completely hopeless situation. What good will thinking do?

The bridge doors slid open and a medical corpsman hurried in. The corpsman knelt beside Onda, checked Farnham's work, then murmured into his bracer. A marine with a stretcher appeared a moment later, and they got Onda loaded up as gently as they could. Onda's moans faded as the marine and the corpsman carried him out.

Farnham rose to his feet. He might have been in his fifties, but he looked like an old man, lost and overwhelmed, staring at the blood that coated his arms and chest. There was an appalling amount of it, and more covered the deck plates and the remains of the Comms station. Farnham looked around the bridge, then went back to staring at his hands, his face slack and lost.

“Farnham.” Tom had to repeat himself, louder, before the man looked up. “Go clean yourself up. Then come back here and clean up that mess.” He gestured at the blood on the deck plates.

The spacer stared at him, then nodded jerkily and stumbled from the bridge.

The interruption had jarred Tom from the dark spiral of his thoughts. We're not dead yet. I said I'd get us back to Garnet. So how the hell am I going to do that? He zoomed out the tactical display. “Mr. O'Reilly.”

O'Reilly, fingers moving in delicate patterns on the helm console as he kept the ship dodging and jinking, responded without looking up. “Yes, Captain?”

“Point us at the horizon of Black Betty, please. We'll come in at a low altitude and hug the surface, just like we did on Little B.” It hadn't worked on Little B, but a plan – any plan – and orders that sounded decisive, were better than helpless, blind flight.

“Aye aye.”

“Harris,” said Tom.

Harris squared his shoulders. “Captain.”

“Any thoughts on our tactical situation?” You bloody well better have something, because I'm getting desperate.

“The fighters could overtake us,” Harris said. “They're hanging back, though. If they get close enough to hurt us, they'll be close enough we could crisp them. It looks like they'll let the cruisers do the hard work.”

Tom nodded thoughtfully, pretending he hadn't completely forgotten about the two fighters. “One less thing the worry about, for the moment at least.”

“If we can avoid them for long enough they'll have to turn back,” Harris went on. “They'll be low on fuel. That is, unless the carrier comes closer.”

“Which it won't do,” Tom said, working it out as he spoke. “Because they don't know what we're up to.” He chuckled, a cold mirthless sound. “After all, our ambush doesn't make any sense, not from their point of view. One frigate and some mines?”

Harris gave him a death's-head grin. “It's … unconventional.”

“They must assume we've got more ships,” Tom went on. “I bet they're going crazy, trying to figure out what we're up to. Wondering when the rest of the fleet is going to drop out of hyperspace and crush them.” The concept seemed utterly hilarious to his tight-stretched nerves, and he fought the urge to laugh. If he started, he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop.

A line of red starbursts appeared in the void ahead of them, tiny bright explosions that vanished quickly, the flames extinguished by vacuum. “Terrific,” muttered Harris. “Now they're using explosive shells. So long as they keep missing, though-”

The ship shuddered, a distant explosion echoing through the bridge from somewhere aft, and Tom lost all inclination to laugh. They're keeping half their fleet back to protect against an imagined threat.

And it doesn't matter. Because the two ships that are chasing us are more than enough.

“That one hit our engines,” Trenholm announced. “We're losing power.” He looked up. “And they were already gaining on us before.”

Better and better. Tom switched to a navigational display. The Kestrel was more than halfway to Black Betty. Not that it matters. It's not like the planet represents safety.

They kept flying, because there was nothing else to do. O'Reilly continued to jink and dodge. A dozen loud clangs rang out, and Harris said, “Ricochets. No damage.”

“Lieutenant Sawyer reports we've lost one engine. She says there's casualties in engineering, too.” Tom didn't recognize the voice, and he looked around the bridge. It was Naomi Silver. She seemed to be handling internal communications now that Onda was gone.

The bridge speakers crackled, and a voice said, “Damage control to Engineering.” It wasn't Sawyer. It was a man, his voice shrill. “The engine room is on fire. We need some help down here.”

The speakers went silent.

Black Betty was invisible in the darkness, but she had to be close, because Tom could see no stars dead ahead. He glanced at the nav display, switched to tactical, and said, “Alter course.”

O'Reilly's head jerked up. “To what?”

“Anything. A different spot on the horizon. Just make a course change.”

O'Reilly stared at him, then returned his gaze to the helm controls. A line of stars appeared at the top edge of the bridge windows, then raced to starboard as the ship turned.

“They're dropping back.” Harris looked at Tom, his face puzzled. “Not by much, but they're giving us room.” He peered at his console, frowned, and said, “What the hell?”

“They think it's a trap,” said Tom. “They think we're leading them into something.” He rubbed his forehead, thinking. “As soon as we're over the horizon, I want you to put us down.”

“What?” O'Reilly gaped at him, then gathered himself. “I mean, can you clarify that order, Captain?”

“I want you to land the ship the moment we're over the horizon,” Tom said. “Get us on the ground fast. Kill the engines, kill any lights. While they hunt for us we'll get that fire put out and see how bad the damage is.”

O'Reilly stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “Aye aye.”

Tom switched to an aft camera view. The cruisers were barely visible, a pair of glowing shapes almost lost against the stars behind them. He couldn't see the fighters at all.

The horizon of Black Betty rose like a spreading pool of ink, engulfing stars, and then the cruisers.

“We're hidden,” said O'Reilly. “Here goes nothing.” And the Kestrel plummeted.

Chapter 22

Alice couldn't breathe.

She couldn't see or hear or move, but it was breathing that held her attention. She panted, fighting to inflate her lungs and failing. Panic washed over her, but since she couldn't move her arms and legs, couldn't even scream, it hardly seemed to matter if she panicked or not. So she lay in darkness, muscles frantically contracting as she tried to run, to struggle, to do something.

Her disorientation was complete, fueled by darkness and terror and oxygen deprivation. She couldn't have said which way was up. She couldn’t remember where she was or how she'd gotten there. All she knew was fear and the absolute imperative to breathe.

Why am I still alive? Why am I conscious? Unless I'm dead, and this is what death is. An eternity of lying in darkness, paralyzed …. Her train of thought was taking her nowhere useful, and she fought against it. I've been in tough spots before. At least I'm alive, which means there's hope.

If I'm alive.

I will assume I'm alive, she decided firmly. If I'm dead, well, there's no harm in making the wrong assumption. And if I'm alive ….

I'm breathing. Not proper breaths, not deep breaths, but some air is getting in. She concentrated on her lungs, her diaphragm, and panic eased its grip on her mind. She discovered that she was, in fact, taking tiny, rapid breaths. Why can't I properly inhale?

Why can't I move?

Some memory returned. The surface of Little B, the missile launches, the return fire from the battleship above. I jumped in a crater. And now I'm paralyzed.

That thought scared her, scared her badly, and for a time her panic returned. Pain shook her out of it, pain from her fingertips which were scraping against the insides of her gloves as she tried to dig her fingers into solid rock. My finger are moving. Not much, but they can move. She wiggled her feet, felt them press against the insides of her boots. Okay. I'm in trouble, but I'm not paralyzed.

Somewhat calmer, she set about testing her limbs one at a time. She found she could bend her left knee. Her lower leg could swing behind her, then straighten. She bent it and straightened it several times, savoring a sweet rush of relief. I'm not crippled.

Then her leg stopped moving, arrested by some outside force. She endured a momentary return of her panic, then relaxed as she recognized the grip of fingers. Someone squeezed her foot, then released her.

I'm not alone. The thought filled her mind, even chasing her terror away for a moment. It must be Collins and Bridger. They'll know what to do.

Something changed, a weight that was pressing down on her making itself apparent by suddenly easing. A band of pain encircled her ribs, making her gasp. But she was able to gasp, her lungs filling almost half full. It hurt, the pain almost washing away her sense of all-consuming relief.

Her helmet vibrated around her, and she heard metallic clangs transmitted by the air inside the helmet. Something pinched her left arm, and she moaned.

“I've got you.” The voice belonged to Bridger, and it filled her with a blissful sense of hope. “Hang on,” Bridger said. She heard him grunt with exertion and felt fresh bands of pain around her chest. Then he muttered, “Oh, fuck, please be alive.”

I'm alive. She tried to say the words, couldn't quite do it, and moaned instead.

“Oh, thank God. Hang on, Alice. You're almost free.” Fingers scrabbled against her back, blunted by the fabric of her suit. “Okay, you're pretty much clear. Can you move?”

She bent her arms. She couldn’t have said what position they were in, not until she managed to move them. Now she found that her left arm was tucked against her side and her right arm was curled around the top of her head. She moved her elbows first, then her shoulders. Some hard surface was just ahead of her, and she braced her palms against it. Her elbows jutted out behind her, and she revelled in the freedom of motion.

Then she pushed.

Hands curled around her shoulders, lifting as she pushed, and she discovered she was lying face-down in the bottom of the missile crater. Rubble spilled from her back and shoulders as she rose, someone helping her up onto her knees. Then Bridger moved around in front of her and squatted, peering into her face. His faceplate was dusty. Hers was utterly filthy, but she could make out his worried brown eyes. She made herself smile. “Much better now. Thanks.”

Relief broke across his face and he smiled. He stood, reached down a hand, and said, “Can you stand up?”

Even in Little B's inconsequential gravity, standing was a real chore. She managed it, then held onto Bridger's arm for a moment while her legs steadied themselves. The crater was almost waist-deep, and she stared around, taking stock. There was no sign of the missile launcher. The plain she remembered was transformed, pocked now by missile craters and littered with blast debris. She was lucky she'd survived, and she shivered.

“Sean didn't make it.”

She looked at Bridger, wanting to deny it, wanting to argue. Sean Collins had been a fixture in her life for more than a year, and she couldn't quite imagine the galaxy without him in it. Bridger gazed back at her, his face full of grief and sympathy, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

A sudden thought brought her eyes open again, and she tilted her head back, scanning the sky. The battleship burned above them, a dark shape with flames glowing in a dozen places across the underside of the hull. That much damage would have sent the Kestrel tumbling from the sky, but the battleship, so massive she couldn't quite grasp how big it was, didn't really look that bad.

“Half the fleet went over the horizon a good five minutes ago,” Bridger said. “Beyond that, I don't know what's going on.” He gestured at the ruin of craters and rubble around them. “The radio beacon's smashed.”

Alice gulped. That wasn't good. The suit radios didn't have much range. Without the beacon there'd be no way to call for a pickup. No way even to let the Kestrel and the Morning Breeze know they were still alive.

If those ships are even up there anymore. They weren't expecting a battleship. It was a depressing thought, but she'd just been dug from an improvised grave. She could breathe, something she'd wondered if she'd ever do again, and it buoyed her with an optimism her desperate circumstances couldn’t quite erode. She clambered out of the crater, feeling her abused muscles gradually unclench. She would be sore later – if she was alive later, of course – but she wasn't seriously hurt.

“What do we do now?” Bridger sounded weary and defeated.

“How far do you think it is to Wasp Nest One?”

He shrugged. “At least a few K. Maybe five? Ten?” He shook his head mournfully. “I don't know if we have enough air to make it on foot.”

“Then we better not stand around here gabbing.” She turned in a slow circle, orienting herself. “They've got the only other radio beacon on this godforsaken rock, so let's go.”

Bridger stared at her for a moment, looking like he wanted to argue. Then he shrugged and nodded and the two of them went bounding across the dark plain.

Metallic clicks came from the ceiling above Tom as he walked down the spine of the ship. There were repair crews outside on the hull, their footsteps reminding him of raindrops on a tin roof. The ship was a mess, the newly repaired hull plates shot full of ragged holes, her compartments shredded by explosive shells. The engines were shut down completely, even the internal force fields turned off, which meant he was at the mercy of Black Betty's gravity. It was a good twenty percent higher than a standard G, and it pulled at him, making him feel weary and old.

He reached a spot where the deck plates were torn up by shrapnel, and pressed his back to the side of the corridor as he edged his way past the worst of the damage. Across the corridor a big chunk of bulkhead was missing, and he could see into a bunkroom. A spacer lay on the floor, unrecognizable, ripped apart by the same explosion that had demolished the corridor.

You said you'd get them back to Garnet. You said you'd keep them safe.

He suppressed the voice as best he could. Solutions. I need to focus on solutions. I need to see what's left of my ship, and if she can be repaired. I lost some people, but people remain.

I have to get them out of here.

O'Reilly had landed the ship on a slope, and the deck plates tilted several degrees to starboard. Tom kept wanting to stumble, and he trailed his gloved fingers along the bulkhead beside him to help maintain balance. A cold fist squeezed his guts, and he felt an overwhelming urge to duck into one of the cabins that opened off this corridor. He wanted to find a dark, private place, curl into a ball, and wait for this nightmare to end.

Instead, he kept walking.

If the spine was in rough shape, the aft section of the ship was a shambles. He found every bulkhead closed, every compartment filled with smoke. He overrode the hatch controls one at a time, stepping through quickly and letting the hatches slam shut behind him. He found another body, a young woman with a hole in her stomach that went all the way through her body. He stepped over her legs and continued on his way.

A dozen people crowded the intersection where two corridors crossed just outside Engineering. A couple of spacers recognized him and tried to give him room. The rest didn't notice. He stopped at the back of the crowd, peering through a haze of smoke, trying to figure out what was happening. A readout inside his helmet told him every suit radio in the room was on the same frequency, and he changed channels to match.

“Okay, the lock is clear. Next batch. Come on, people, move.” The voice belonged to Sawyer, and she didn't sound good. Her voice was tight with pain and stress, and he scanned the crowd, trying to spot her.

People moved toward the port side of the ship. Toward the aft port airlock, he realized. This wasn't a random collection of stunned spacers wondering what to do in the aftermath of disaster. They were waiting their turn to head outside and work on repairs.

Movement from above caught his eye. A rent in the ceiling gave him a view of the stars, blurred by smoke that swirled up and escaped through the opening. Black Betty had an atmosphere mostly composed of inert gases. The atmospheric pressure was about five percent lower than the pressure inside the ship, which meant air would flow outward and not much of the local atmosphere would get in. The loss of oxygen would eventually become a problem, but an influx of nitrogen would have been much more serious.

As he watched, two figures in vac suits stretched a polymer sheet over the hole in the ceiling. It was a good deal weaker than the hull plates, but it would hold even in vacuum. In hyperspace, well, he supposed they would just have to be careful about avoiding storms.

It's enough. The trip back to Garnet will be slow, but we'll make it. He clung to the thought as he watched a handful of people move down the corridor carrying toolboxes, polymer rods, or polymer sheets. We'll lift off and make a straight run for deep space. All we have to do is slip into hyperspace without them seeing the portal and we'll be home free.

The hatch to the engine room slid open and a wall of heat rolled out. Tom felt it through his vac suit, a furnace blast that made him want to stagger back. Sweat sprung up on his face and chest, and a fan whirred to life in his helmet. Three figures came out, two marines in bulky firefighting gear dragging a limp figure in a regular Navy vac suit between them. They laid the body on the deck plates as the hatch slid shut, blocking away that terrible heat. The marines carried the limp figure to the port bulkhead and laid it out, face-down, on the deck plates. They slid the body over until it was against the bulkhead where it would be out of the way.

Another death. Dear God, how many more? Tom brought his hand up, trying to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and found his helmet in the way. He lowered his hand and sighed. “Sawyer. This is the captain. What's your status?”

“We're venting all the air in here,” she said. “It's taking time. The pressure differential is too low. But the fire is dying down. I can give you an update in a few minutes.”

In here? Good God, is she inside the engine room? No wonder she sounds like hell. He feared it was something even worse, though. She sounded injured, and that scared him. He liked Sawyer, but even more, he needed her. Every survivor on the ship did.

The corridor went dark, just for an instant. His helmet light came on, along with every helmet in the corridor. The ceiling lights came back on, brighter than before, and the smoke began to swirl. Soon it was spiraling toward a vent set just below the ceiling. A man's satisfied voice said, “Core power's back on.”

“Not a moment too soon,” Sawyer said. “That means the force fields are back up. Get that hatch open.”

A spacer stepped up to the hatch controls leading to Engineering and spent a moment tapping at a small screen. The hatch slid open.

He couldn't see the force field that isolated Engineering from the corridor, but he could see the smoke on the far side swirling against the invisible barrier. Without a transfer of air the rise in temperature wasn't so abrupt. Tom could still feel it, though, like standing too close to an open oven.

Soon the air in the corridor was almost clear, and a green light appeared inside Tom's helmet. He retracted his faceplate, winced as hot air touched his face, and blinked, his eyes stinging in the residual smoke. The air stank of burned plastic and overheated metal, and he coughed once, thinking about closing his helmet again. The suit didn't hold much oxygen, though, and the air in the corridor was safe enough to breathe, if unpleasant.

A low voice said, “I see you've got another corpse to add to your collection.”

Tom turned his head. Hanson stood beside him, face twisted in spite. Black Betty's gravity suddenly seemed to double. Tom spent a bare instant trying to think of an appropriate response, something worthy of a ship's captain. Then he sighed and said, “Fuck off, Hanson.”

The young man seemed not to hear. “You won't be satisfied until we're all dead. Just so long as you get your glory, isn't that right? You think they'll pin a medal to your chest after all this? The big hero who went after a battleship with nothing but a frigate. You must be dreaming of a Titanium Starburst.”

Too tired to be angry, Tom said, “The ship's damaged, Hanson. Why don't you find something useful to do?”

“No, I think I'll stay right here and watch you work. How will you get the rest of us killed, Captain Sir?” Hanson's lip curled. “But you won't get hurt. No, nothing ever happens to you. I'm going to stay right here at your side, because wherever you are, it'll be safe, isn't that r-”

Tom stalked away from him. Four quick strides brought him to the Engineering hatch, and he stepped through the force field. His faceplate snapped shut, but not before a wave of hot, noxious air washed over his face. He coughed, stomping forward, his throat raw and his abdomen clenching, trying to double him over. Tears filled his eyes, and he blinked furiously to clear them. At last he straightened up, holding his breath to suppress his cough.

Only a few emergency lights still functioned. He stood in a cavernous space lit from aft by a red glow. Tom headed in that direction, unsure of his purpose, knowing only that he had to show Hanson he was willing to do the difficult, dangerous jobs.

Not Hanson. Himself. Hanson was a fool and a threat to the ship. But his words had real barbs, because he wasn't completely wrong.

A grim smile touched Tom's lips. He'd shut the man up for the moment. It wasn't like the little shit was going to follow him into-

A shape moved in the gloom beside him. He turned his head and found Hanson staring at him, eyes a bit wide behind his faceplate. Tom gave him a withering glare that was spoiled by a fresh fit of coughing.

“Who's coughing over the radio?” The peevish voice belonged to Sawyer. “Who just came in? This isn't a break room, you know.”

Tom looked around, leaning to peer past Hanson. The heat was all-pervasive, completely overwhelming the thermostat in his suit. If Sawyer had been here for a while, he couldn't understand why she was still conscious. He coughed one more time, drew in a ragged breath, and then spotted her. She sat with her back against a burned console, her legs stretched across the deck plates in front of her.

Tom hurried over and knelt beside her. Hanson dropped to one knee on the other side, and Tom reached for her shoulder. “Let's get you out of here.”

“Ah! Dammit! Don't touch me. Sir.”

Tom pulled his hand back quickly.

“My legs are broken. Don't you dare try to move me.”

“Sorry.”

“Besides,” she grumbled, “what can I do out there?” She waved an arm, making Tom flinch. “The fire is dying down. We can restart Engine Two in a minute. Someone needs to monitor it, and I'm the only one who's qualified.”

“Fine,” said Tom, and stood. The engines had a thousand delicate components that were beyond him, but he understood the basics of cold and hot engine starts. “Where's the ignition controls?”

“In pieces all over the floor,” Sawyer snapped. “It'll have to be completely manual.”

Terrific. Tom headed aft, wishing the light was better. It was improving, if slowly, as the smoke cleared. The heat grew as he neared the looming bulk of the engines. The deck plates ended and he moved onto a catwalk, two engines above him and two engines below. They were massive cylindrical shapes, bristling with a jumble of components. The damaged engine was above him and to port. “Damaged” was an understatement. The engine was a mess, the usual components replaced by a glowing mass of slag. He couldn't see what was burning, but as he watched, the rosy glow from inside the engine faded away and disappeared.

“Fire's out,” he announced. “Which one is Engine Two?”

“Starboard top.”

He clambered up a staircase to the catwalk's second level. “I don't suppose there's an external igniter?” He scanned the exposed engine components and spotted a red handle familiar to him from training. “Never mind. I found it.”

“The igniter's not the problem,” said Sawyer. “Fuel's the problem.”

Tom's stomach dropped. “We're out of fuel again?”

“No. But the ignition fuel line is gone. Some genius made it out of plastic, and it didn't survive the heat.” She made an irritated sound deep in her throat. “It made the fire a damn sight worse when it melted through and started spraying fuel.”

Tom put his hands on his hips, trying to remember his long-ago engine room orientation. The ignition fuel line fed fuel to a priming chamber. There, it would ignite and start the main fuel line flowing. He couldn't remember why the priming chamber was necessary. Something about simultaneously moving a piston and filling another line with hot exhaust gases. All he remembered was that it worked, and there was no workaround. “So how do we get fuel into the priming chamber?”

“We fill the main chamber with fuel first, and we run some back into the primer.”

Tom tried to picture what she was describing, failed, and said, “You'll have to talk me through it.”

“Start by opening the back of the engine tube.”

How the hell do I do that? Before he could open his mouth to ask, a hand against his back shoved him forward so that he staggered against the catwalk railing. Hanson pushed past him, leaning against the railing and stretching out his hands. He tapped at the engine housing, quick flips of his fingers to check for heat. Then his fingers slid into gaps Tom couldn't see. He strained, and the suit radio briefly transmitted the sound of a grunt.

A large section of the engine swung open, a lumpy mass of components attached to a hinged steel plate.

“I'm going in,” Tom said, but Hanson was already clambering over the railing. A perverse stubbornness made Tom say, “Hanson. Get out of there. I'll do it.”

The man slid into the engine cylinder feet-first, ignoring Tom completely. He said, “I can see the access panel. Hold on.” Tom heard a faint metallic rattle, which must have been quite loud for the sound to carry through his helmet. “Almost got it.”

The catwalk vibrated, and Tom looked over his shoulder. A marine in firefighting gear stood behind him, made anonymous by the bulky gear. A young woman in a vac suit stood on the steps behind the marine, both of them watching in silence.

I should get out of the way. They actually know what they're doing. But did they? The marine would be trained in damage control, not engine operation. And maybe turning a knob and flipping a switch didn't require a trained engineer.

Hanson said, “The panel is open, but I can't see anything. It's pretty dark.”

“You wouldn't be able to see it anyway,” Sawyer said. “You'll have to work by touch. There's a big wheel. Wider than your hand. You're not going to turn it, understand? But behind the wheel is a tap. Let me know when you find it.”

There was a moment of strained silence. Then Hanson said, “Okay. I found the tap.”

“I need you to turn it counter-clockwise in a moment,” Sawyer said. “It should only go a couple of degrees. You should see a light, either green or red. If you get the green light you can go ahead and twist it clockwise. If you get the red light, climb out of there right quick. It means the line from the main chamber to the primer has a leak. If that happens, the fuel could ignite while you're in there.”

“Great,” Hanson muttered. Then, after a moment, “Okay, that's it. I twisted it counter-clockwise.”

“Well?” Sawyer said impatiently. “What color is the light?”

“There's no light.”

She swore. “You turned counter-clockwise, right?”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

“And it moved?”

“A little bit, yes. A couple degrees, like you said.”

“Rock it,” Sawyer said. “Carefully. Back to where it was, then counter-clockwise again. Do it a couple of times. But be careful. You go too far clockwise, you'll start the fuel flowing. Then we'll find out the hard way if there's a leak.”

A long, tense moment passed.

“Still no light,” Hanson said. “What's Plan B?”

Sawyer muttered a curse. “Plan B is a shipyard, frankly.”

Tom said, “Let's light Engines Three and Four. Leave Two.”

“I wish,” Sawyer “Three ignites from Two. Four ignites from One. And we're not igniting One.”

Tom glanced at the melted remains of Engine One.

“No, it's Two or nothing,” she said. “Damn it. That means there's no more putting it off. I need someone to drag me out of here. And that's going to hurt like a son of a bitch.”

“I'm opening the handle,” Hanson announced.

“What!” Sawyer said. “No! You have no way of knowing if it's safe.”

“Staying here's not safe,” he said. “Face it. There's only one way we're getting off this rock alive, and that's by having me twist this tap.”

“It's too dangerous!”

“Not doing it is more dangerous,” he said. “I'm doing it.”

“Hang on.” She sighed loudly enough for her suit mic to pick it up. “First the captain opens the main feed valve. That's directly above Engine Two, but facing the other way. Big yellow rocker switch.”

“Found it,” Tom said.

“Don't press it yet. You have to open the safety cover anyway. Hanson, you need to twist the tap clockwise, just long enough for the captain to close the valve again. Then you have to close the tap.”

“Got it,” Hanson said. “I'm ready.” A mocking tone entered his voice. “Are you ready, Captain? You have to flip a switch. Twice, even. It's more complicated than ordering us all to our deaths.”

Tom's hands curled into fists. “Come on out of there, Hanson. We'll switch jobs. I'll take the risk.”

“What, so you can get another medal? Tell everyone how glorious and brave you are?” Tom started to answer, but Hanson spoke over him, his voice rising to a screech. “Forget it! I'm doing it! I'm counting to three, and then I'm opening the tap. One! Two!”

Cursing, Tom flipped the fuel valve open.

And the engine cylinder erupted with flame.

Hanson screamed. The flames lasted only an instant, but the scream went on. A strong hand shoved Tom sideways, and he stumbled to one knee. The marine swarmed past him, and Tom reached over, closing the fuel valve. Metal clanged as the marine planted his boots on the end of the engine cylinder, locking himself in place with the magnets on his soles. He pulled Hanson, still screaming, out of the engine. Hanson's suit was black from helmet from boots, and he thrashed weakly as the marine stepped back down to the catwalk. He took off running with Hanson in his arms.

The screams stopped before the marine was out of Engineering.

There was a long, terrible moment of silence. Then Sawyer said, “Get that hatch shut, or it was all for nothing.”

Indicator lights glowed green and amber all over the front of Engine Two. It was reignited and powering up. Tom swung the access hatch shut and jerked on one of the handles, making sure the hatch was locked in place. Then he turned, weary and drained, and plodded away from the engines.

Chapter 23

“It depends on their scanners.”

The impromptu staff meeting had convened in a storage room in the aft section, because it allowed Sawyer to attend without making her trek all the way to the forward section. She sat in a hoverchair, her legs straight out before her, a blanket covering the polymer casts that covered her from thighs to ankles. Her face was pale and drawn, and she stared at the bulkhead across from her, ignoring O'Reilly as he gave his report.

“There's no sign of the fighters,” O'Reilly continued. “Just the cruisers. The heavy cruiser's in a polar orbit, so it'll cover the whole planet eventually. The light cruiser is doing close-range scans, but I can't see a pattern to it. It's zipping around all over the place.”

Tom leaned back in one of the flimsy chairs they'd dragged in for the meeting, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He was utterly weary, and was having trouble focussing on O'Reilly's words. “Two cruisers,” he repeated. “One up high, one down low.”

“The heavy cruiser probably has better scanners,” Harris said. “That's why it's up high. As for the light cruiser, I bet it's checking out geothermal sources.”

Tom blinked at him, feeling foolish. “Geothermal? Why?”

“Heat is the best way to find us.” Harris gestured around at the bulkheads. “We're not giving off light, or radio signals. There's no sunlight on this godforsaken ice cube, so they can't spot us visually. There's one thing about this planet, though.” He pointed down. “It's cold. No sunlight at all. It's colder than Pluto here. We don't lose all that much heat, really, but we're the hottest thing on this planet by far.”

Tom nodded, willing his sluggish brain to catch up. “Except for geothermal stuff.”

“Right,” said Harris. “Hot springs, volcanic activity, fissures, whatever this rock has for irregularities in its crust. I bet that light cruiser is running from one warm spot to another, trying to find us.”

“But …” Tom pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. “But, a geothermal vent or a hot spring doesn't look like a ship from above.”

“No, but it's an obvious place to hide. In fact, it's the only way to hide, short of finding a great big cave or burying the ship in rock.”

Silence fell as his words sank in. To an infrared scan, the Kestrel would glow like a beacon. Only the sheer size of the planet had kept them from discovery so far. Now that the Dawn Alliance ships had overcome their fear of an ambush, discovery was only a matter of time.

He turned to O'Reilly. “Any idea when that heavy cruiser is going to pass overhead?”

“Ten, eleven hours,” O'Reilly said. “This rock has a pretty slow rotation. That's both bad and good. Good, because they need almost forty hours to cover the entire planet. We're not that far from the start of their search pattern and we're still ten hours away. The slow rotation is bad, though, because it means really thorough coverage if they don't alter their orbit. They'll make three, four passes within five hundred kilometers. There's no way they'll miss us, unless their scanners are junk.”

“And if they had junk scanners,” Harris said, “they'd be flying grids over the surface at low altitude, just like the light cruiser.”

“All right,” said Tom. “So we have ten hours until they spot us.”

“Or less,” O'Reilly said. “The light cruiser is in this hemisphere. It might stumble on us. Like I said, it all depends on how good their scanners are.”

Tom looked around the little room. Trenholm sat beside Lieutenant Harper. The marine lieutenant looked as weary as Tom felt. His left hand was swathed in bandages so thick he wouldn't be able to get the glove of his vac suit back on. He had a “sticky bag”, a polymer sack with glue strips along the edges, jutting from the thigh pocket of his suit, ready to wrap around his wrist if the ship lost air. 

Vinduly wasn't there. He'd be much too busy to leave the surgery for the foreseeable future. Naomi Silver sat at Harper's elbow, representing the Free Planets crew.

It made him think of Alice and the others who'd landed on the far side of Little B. He could only hope they'd been evacuated by the Morning Breeze or the Sunshine. Both ships were gone now. The Kestrel's computer had scanned and reported the portals as the little freighters slipped into seventh-dimensional space. Alice was safely away, or she was dead.

The civilians were gone. Janine and Anderle and the rest of the freighter crew were on the Sunshine, along with the wounded. The little pirate ship would deliver them to Garnet, along with news of the battle. At least a few people will make it back.

“We can't go fast.” The voice, low and gravelly and full of pain, belonged to Sawyer. “But we can go.”

“Sure,” Tom said. “Sooner or later both cruisers will be on the far side of the planet. We'll take off and make a run for deep space. If we can get a portal open while we're still hidden we'll get away clean.” A sudden thought chilled him. “Can we still open a portal?”

Sawyer nodded gravely. “First thing I checked, before we even got the fires out.”

Tom's shoulders slumped as relief washed over him. “That's good.” He looked at O'Reilly. “We can predict the movements of the heavy cruiser, right?”

“Regular as clockwork,” he confirmed. “They're just floating in orbit. I can tell you exactly when they'll come over the horizon, and exactly when they'll disappear.”

“Then it's just a matter of watching that light cruiser and picking our moment.”

“That one's a lot trickier to predict,” O'Reilly said. “It could come back over the horizon at any time.”

Harris leaned forward, showing his teeth in a rather nasty smile. “Actually,” he said, “I might just have an idea about that.”

Crossing the endless, featureless plain of Little B was just about the most boring thing Alice had ever done. She couldn't let her mind go blank, either. Not in this murky darkness. Her helmet light cast a glow that extended just a few centimeters past the toes of her boots, and every once in a long while there was a rock. So she had to concentrate, staring endlessly into the darkness with every bounding step.

Here in the depths of interstellar space there were no comets, no meteors, no stray chunks of rock. In the countless eons since the planet and moon had broken free of whatever star system had spawned them, any craters that might have decorated the surface had long since been smoothed out. There was certainly no plant life, and no water. Not one thing to vary the plain beneath her, except once in a while a rock.

Cold white light lanced out from beside her, swept around in a circle, and vanished. Bridger had a hand light, which he turned on for a few seconds once every several minutes. This time, like every other time, it showed nothing but a flat, dull plain.

Alice pushed off with her left foot, sailing up and forward in a lazy arc. She landed on her right foot, pushed off again. Then her left, then her right. And with every step she yearned for distraction, because she wanted to take her mind off her diminishing oxygen supply.

She couldn't even chat with Bridger. They had their suit radios turned off, just in case. She glanced at Bridger, then upward, taking in the reason for their caution.

The battleship was a behemoth in the sky above them. Vast and shadowy, it glowed from a combination of running lights and fires. The ship had rotated somewhat, putting it sideways to the moon and exposing the upper hull. Hundreds of mines had hit the battleship, most of them exploding harmlessly against thick armor plating. Even the missile strikes had mostly been wasted against those massive hull plates.

A few mines had hit vulnerable points, though. Some of the missile had done real harm, too. She could no longer see the underside of the ship where the missiles had struck, but a rosy glow told her something on the battleship still burned.

The light carrier, a fair-sized ship in its own right, looked inconsequential next to the juggernaut bulk of the battleship. It trailed behind the larger ship, which seemed odd to Alice. Surely it would be better for the ships to be side by side if they had to fight together?

Then she saw the reason, and grinned sourly to herself. The carrier, only lightly armored, was using the battleship as a minesweeper.

Bridger's light flashed again. It swept around in a circle, just like every other time.

And then it froze.

“What is it?”

He didn't answer, and she remembered her suit radio was off. She moved to Bridger's side and looked in the direction of the light.

The plain ahead was strewn with rubble.

“It's a missile strike.” He couldn't hear her, but she didn't let that stop her. She squeezed his upper arm, and he looked at her. “We found them. They must be here somewhere!”

There was no way Bridger could have heard her, but he nodded. They bounded forward, stumbling a bit on the detritus that littered the ground. They found the impact point, a low crater that made goosebumps rise on Alice's back. Bridger stepped onto a large rock and moved the light around in a slow circle.

There was nothing around them. No space-suited figures, no missile launcher, and no radio beacon.

Bridger turned the light off and let his arm sag.

“They must be here. We'll do a search. We'll work our way out from here, go in concentric circles.” Her voice trailed off. “Wait a minute.” She tried to scratch her head, scratched the outside of her helmet instead. “There's no more rubble.”

Bridger met her gaze, tapping the side of his helmet to remind her he couldn't hear her.

“There's no rocks,” she said. “No craters.” She swept her arm out in an arc, pointing at the plain around them. “There's no more missile strikes around here.” But she could remember the attack. One missile after another had poured down from the sky, until Wasp Nest One had gone silent.

Except for that first missile. She frowned, remembering. At the beginning of the attack, one missile had slammed into the ground somewhere between the two missile launchers.

Her shoulders sagged. “We're only halfway there.” For the first time in quite a while she shifted her gaze to the displays inside her helmet.

Her oxygen level was well below half.

“That's all right,” she said, the heaviness of her voice belying the optimistic words. “We used a bunch of air setting up the missile launcher, and then we just stood around for a while. And maybe this crater isn't at the halfway mark. Maybe we're almost there.”

Bridger didn't answer, just tapped the side of his helmet again.

“You're right,” she told him, and looked up the sky, checking her orientation against the stars. “Let's go.”

“I think we're ready.”

Tom nodded to Harris, but didn't speak. Instead he looked around the bridge. Tense, expectant faces looked back at him. He sighed quietly, wishing for the thousandth time that the buck didn't stop with him.

“The heavy cruiser's still up there,” O'Reilly said. “Soon, though.”

Tom nodded absently, tapping at one of the screens on his console. He brought up a video feed he'd already watched half a dozen times. It was the view from an aft camera as the Kestrel fled from Little B toward Black Betty.

In the video, the heavy cruiser was ahead of and slightly above the light cruiser. Three missiles appeared, rockets flaring bright before shrinking as they raced away from the Kestrel. One by one the missiles vanished, destroyed by laser fire. The last one was quite close to the heavy cruiser by the time it went dark.

It was possible to zoom in and see the glow of laser batteries, the muzzle flashes from projectile weapons, as the heavy cruiser fired on the approaching missiles.

The light cruiser didn't fire even once.

He zoomed in even closer. Tom could see quite a lot of damage on the nose of the smaller ship. There was other footage, showing the moment when the Dawn Alliance fleet had come through the portal beyond Little B. By chance the heavy cruiser had avoided the worst of the minefield. The light cruiser, however, had plowed face-first through a storm of tiny explosions. Her hull plates were pocked with small craters. Her windows were opaque, covered on the inside by emergency patches.

Her guns were smashed.

The aft end of the ship was probably fine. If a missile came at her from behind, she'd shoot it down without a problem. She could even spin around to use her aft guns on threats that came at her from ahead, if she saw them in time.

Her nose, though, was unprotected.

Probably.

There was visible damage to her gun turrets, and no sign that she'd fired her forward guns, even with missiles coming at her. It didn't mean her guns were disabled, or that they hadn't been repaired since she cleared the minefield. There was no way to be sure.

But staying put was no option. They could wait for the light cruiser to cross the horizon, take off, and hope for the best.

Or launch a missile at her nose, and hope for the best.

“All right,” Tom said. “Let's do this. How long until the heavy cruiser is out of sight?”

“Six minutes,” O'Reilly said. “Franco says the missile is programmed and ready to go.”

Tom nodded. “We'll launch in seven minutes.”

O'Reilly muttered a curse. “The light cruiser's changing course.” His body curled forward as he peered into his console. “She's turning east. She's almost over the horizon.” He watched intently for a moment, then straightened up. “She's gone.”

Tom scowled, toggling his display. The heavy cruiser was still in sight, a red icon just above the black line of the horizon. He watched as the icon touched the horizon line, then disappeared.

Trenholm said, “We could run for it.” He had the look of a small hunted animal as his gaze darted from face to face. “Now, while both ships are out of sight.”

With no idea when the light cruiser would come back around the planet and spot them. Tom shook his head. “No. We'll stick with the plan.”

As the minutes ticked by, though, his regret grew and deepened. He couldn't help imagining where the ship would be right now if he'd acted the moment Trenholm made the suggestion. He pictured the range from Black Betty increasing, bringing them closer every moment to the point where they could open a portal and escape.

The decision's been made. Let it go. Focus on what comes next.

“She's back,” O'Reilly announced, and Tom couldn't be sure if his imaginary escape would have succeeded. It doesn't matter.

“She's a lot closer,” said O'Reilly. “The range is maybe eight thousand kilometers.”

How long since the heavy cruiser went over the horizon? How long until she appears again? It didn't really matter, Tom decided. Once they shot down the light cruiser, they could move the ship. A moment of flight just above the atmosphere would buy them a good ten or fifteen minutes extra. “Let's do it,” he said.

The missile left the ship as the Kestrel rose from the surface. The missile sped away, hugging the surface of the planet, looping in a wide, fuel-exhausting arc. Only when it was directly ahead of the light cruiser did the missile begin to rise. It climbed by gradual degrees into the highest levels of the atmosphere, finally reaching the same altitude as the warship. The tiny onboard computer made minute adjustments, lining up on the nose of the ship.

Then the missile's rocket engine went cold. Momentum carried the missile forward. It was tiny, moving at fantastic speed, and, without the heat of its engine, nearly impossible to detect. Radar must have picked it up in the last few moments, and perhaps the ship began to turn. There was no way to tell.

Just less than eight seconds after launching, the missile exploded against the forward hull of the cruiser.

By that time the Kestrel was no more than a dozen meters above the surface of Betty, but she was rising fast. O'Reilly turned her toward the stricken cruiser and accelerated hard.

Tom, his gaze fixed on the tactical screen, watched as the Dawn Alliance ship wallowed, losing altitude. “It's a good hit,” he said. “We clobbered them.” He watched, nerves stretched tight, as the cruiser continued to drop. She wouldn't be able to communicate with the heavy cruiser, not until it cleared the horizon.

By that time, the Kestrel would be long gone.

“She's going down,” Harris said, staring into his own console. One fist rose, began to pump the air.

Then his fist faltered. His fingers uncurled as his arm dropped to his side. “Uh-oh.”

Tom zoomed in his display and swallowed a curse. The cruiser was recovering. It was gaining altitude. “Hurry,” he said to O'Reilly. “We need to finish her off.”

“I'm not holding back,” O'Reilly said testily. “We'll be on them in a minute.”

Tom thumbed a button on the arm of his chair. “Franco. What's the status of that next missile?”

A woman replied. “Mr. Franco says wait a few seconds. It looks to me like it'll take a minute or two, though.”

The missile bay was a shambles, Tom knew. He hadn't seen the damage, but Franco had described it vividly. They were clambering over chunks of smashed machinery to load missiles by hand. It took time.

“Tell him we need another shot as soon as possible.”

“He can hear you, Sir. You're on the ceiling speakers.”

“Fine,” Tom said. “Franco, we need the next bird to go past the cruiser and circle back. She's running away, so her tail's toward us.” Tom thought for a moment. “Better get it to circle wide. We don't want them shooting it down.”

“He says, what range, Sir,” the woman said.

“Close range,” said Tom. “Less than five hundred K. Probably less than a hundred. And we'll have a fair bit of forward momentum when we launch, compared to the target.”

“Okay,” she said. “He says he can do it. Er, Sir.”

“One more thing,” Tom said. “We're still in atmosphere. It's pretty thin, but it's there.”

The woman murmured something, and a man's voice spoke in the background, curt and impatient. Then she said, “He understands. It looks like the missile's pretty much loaded. Should be less than a minute, Captain.”

“Great,” said Tom. “Fire as soon as you're ready. Don't wait for orders.” He cut the connection and leaned back.

“Just in time,” O'Reilly said. “We're catching up to them now.”

Tom checked his tactical display. The Kestrel was about to overtake the cruiser, but the cruiser was giving them a good run for their money. Her early sluggishness was gone. She was moving quickly and picking up speed, and Tom saw that if this missile didn't finish her she'd escape completely.

Until she turned around with the heavy cruiser beside her and brought the fight once again to the Kestrel.

The view from the forward cameras showed five engines blazing away as the cruiser fled. Tom thought of the damage done to the Kestrel's engines and wondered if he should send the next missile into that vulnerable grid of engine cylinders. The missile would never find its target, though. The guns on the back of the cruiser were undamaged, and they'd have no trouble shooting down a missile.

As if in reply to his thought, a laser turret on the aft hull glowed crimson and an alarm blared from the Tactical station. Bursts of flame appeared just beyond the bridge windows as the cruiser fired a salvo of explosive shells.

Well, if they're shooting at us, they're not shooting at the missile. “Hold her steady,” he barked. “And return fire.”

“We lost Turret One,” Trenholm announced, and Tom ground his teeth together. One laser turret was a significant portion of their remaining anti-missile defenses. “Hold steady,” he repeated. “Just another-”

“Missile's away,” Harris cried. For an awful moment Tom thought the cruiser had fired a missile. His display showed a missile racing away from the Kestrel, though, and he said, “Evasive maneuvers.”

The ship slewed and bucked, her evasions made more violent by the impact of atmosphere. A thump directly above Tom's head told him a shell had ricocheted without exploding, and he winced. The truth was, the Kestrel was badly outgunned even by a cruiser that had lost half its weapons. The frigate would never survive a toe-to-toe slugfest. “Break away,” he said. “Take us out of here.”

Either the missile would hit or it wouldn't. The cruiser would crash, or it would slip over the horizon and warn its sister ship. He'd done all he could. There was nothing left to do but flee and hope they could escape into hyperspace.

The vibration of atmosphere faded as the Kestrel gained altitude. Tom watched his tactical display, his heart sinking as the cruiser continued to flee. They must have shot down the missile.

Then a red circle appeared on the icon that represented the cruiser, and Harris let out a whoop. “Got her!”

Tom watched with growing satisfaction as the cruiser lost altitude. He switched to an aft camera view, zoomed in, and watched smoke billow around the hull of the cruiser as she sank toward the surface of the planet.

Chapter 24

“I think we did it.” O'Reilly spoke without looking up from his console. “Were we in time?”

“I think so,” Harris said. “There's no sign of the heavy cruiser.”

The damaged light cruiser vanished from the aft camera view, occluded by the horizon. The ship would be sending frantic radio messages, but the heavy cruiser would never hear them, not if she was on the other side of the planet. Of course, the light cruiser had run quite a ways before the second missile brought her down. He switched to a navigation display and said, “How far did we-”

A fresh icon appeared on the display, a red triangle that rose over the horizon and raced toward the Kestrel.

“Well, that's torn it.” Tom didn't know who had spoken, but he shared the sentiment. He wasted a moment staring at the heavy cruiser as it hurried after the frigate. There would be no escape into hyperspace. The other ship wasn't just better armed, it was faster too.

“Back to the planet,” he said. “Take us down.” The curve of the planet was the closest thing to cover he had. It wouldn't save them, but it might put them out of missile range for a few more precious minutes.

O'Reilly dove the ship toward the planet, angling away from the approaching cruiser as he did so. For a moment the Kestrel picked up speed, assisted by Betty's gravity. Tom watched the planet loom closer and closer, fighting a rising despair. This was their last chance, and they'd blown it.

They hit the upper edge of the atmosphere, bounced, then hit again. The ship vibrated madly, a corona of heat appearing just beyond the bridge windows.

“Take us up a bit,” Tom said. “Keep us just above atmo.” The frigate wasn't designed for air. She was about as aerodynamic as a brick.

O'Reilly nodded, and the nose lifted. In a moment the rattle and glow faded.

And there was nothing Tom could do but watch his screens and fidget.

“They're firing,” Harris said. After a moment he gave a dry chuckle. “Looks like gravity and atmosphere are playing hell with their ballistics.”

Tom tweaked his tactical display until he could see the trajectories of the streams of shells pouring from the heavy cruiser. Projectiles were simple weapons in the depths of space, where shells would fly as straight as laser beams. Black Betty's mass put a curve in those trajectories, making simple shots just about impossible.

“Okay, we're safe from lasers now,” said Harris. “For the moment, anyhow.”

Tom tapped his console. The Kestrel was following the curve of the planet, flying just above the atmosphere. The cruiser was higher up. As the Kestrel curved around the planet, it put a slice of atmosphere between the two ships. It wasn't much, but magnified by a thousand kilometers of distance, it was enough to make lasers useless.

“Can we get out of sight of the cruiser?”

“Hang on,” said O'Reilly, his voice tight with strain. “Maybe,” he said at last. “Briefly. For a minute or two.”

Tom stared at the tactical display, frustrated, searching for a solution. For a brief time they would be over the horizon and hidden from the cruiser. It would be their last chance to hide. The cruiser was closing with them. Soon it would fire on the Kestrel at point-blank range.

This is my very last chance. The last card I have to play. I need to make it count.

But how?

He could land the ship, but the cruiser would know within a few hundred kilometers where the Kestrel had set down. Landing would only delay the inevitable, and not by much, either.

“Change course,” he said. “The moment we're over the horizon.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, wondering if he should put his gloves and helmet back on. He decided not to bother. “Turn us ninety degrees to starboard. Then keep running, just above the surface.”

“Aye aye,” O'Reilly said.

No one else spoke, and the silence pressed in on Tom. He imagined that it held an accusing note. You're the captain. You're supposed to get us out of situations like this. You're supposed to know what to do. Instead, you're giving the helmsman pointless maneuvers. What good will turning do? They'll spot us instantly.

“Belay that,” he said. Once we're over the horizon, maintain your course.” He thought for a moment. “For, let me see, sixty seconds. Then point us straight up, away from the planet. Give the engines thirty seconds at maximum burn, and then shut them down.”

O'Reilly looked up, meeting Tom's gaze. His eyes were full of doubt, but he nodded and turned back to his console.

There was a chance – a tiny chance – the heavy cruiser would be slow to react. That it would overlook the Kestrel for a few precious moments, searching for her close to the surface of the planet. If they could slip away, get a little farther from the planet, open a portal into hyperspace …

It was hopeless, he knew. The cruiser would have no trouble following them into hyperspace, and it could plow through storms that would shatter the badly damaged Kestrel.

Still, there's a chance. I'll run us straight into the heart of the biggest storm I can find, he decided. It might rip us apart. But if we survive the storm, they'll never find us.

“We're over the horizon,” O'Reilly said. He muttered something under his breath, then said, “Hang on.”

The dark line of the planet vanished and the windows filled with stars as the ship turned its nose upward. It kept all the momentum it had had before, but the straining engines added a new vector. They sped away from Black Betty, and then O'Reilly tapped his console and the engines went silent.

On his console Tom saw the red icon of the heavy cruiser rise over the horizon. And alarms blared as lasers touched the hull of the Kestrel.

Damn it. They spotted us immediately. “Full power to the engines. Evasive maneuvers.”

The Kestrel twisted and jerked as it fled, while behind them the cruiser raced along, just above the surface of the planet. At any moment her nose would tilt up and she would close in on the Kestrel and finish her off.

Tom watched in helpless frustration as the cruiser moved closer and closer to the point where she would have to turn to begin the final stage of her pursuit.

And he watched, baffled, as the cruiser continued to follow the curve of the planet.

“What the hell?” said Harris. “They know where we are. Why aren't they ….”

“They're losing altitude,” O'Reilly said. “They're sinking into the atmosphere.” He looked up at Harris. “Did we hit them?”

“Maybe, with a laser,” Harris said. “We sure didn't cripple them.” He looked from O'Reilly to Tom, baffled. “I can't explain it, Sir.”

“It's the cruiser,” said Trenholm. “The light cruiser, I mean. It's in trouble. They're rescuing survivors.”

Tom straightened in his seat. “Well, whatever the reason, we've got a chance now. Let's make the most of it. How long until we can open a portal?”

“Five minutes, twenty seconds,” O'Reilly said promptly. “But the cruiser will see it.”

“That's fine. Open it up as soon as you can.”

Several minutes later he watched with a sense of profound relief as the familiar rectangle of light opened ahead of the ship. And then his heart sank.

“We'll never survive that,” Trenholm said. “Not in the shape we're in now.”

Light filled the portal, surging vermilion clouds laced with threads of black. It was an intense storm, as bad as anything Tom had ever seen. He would have hesitated to fly the Kestrel into it if she'd been fully repaired. In her current state, it would be suicide.

“Close the portal,” he said dully. “We'll keep going. We'll try again in ten minutes or so.”

“Sir?”

Tom looked around, trying to place the source of the voice, and saw Naomi Silver looking at him. He raised an eyebrow.

“I have a suggestion.” She pointed out the window to port. “We should go behind Little B. Then the cruiser won't know if we opened a portal or not. And when we finally open a portal and go through, they won't be sure where.”

Tom looked in the direction she pointed and saw the bulk of the moon as an inky circle where no stars shone. The Kestrel's desperate flight around the planet had disoriented him. He'd assumed they were still heading away from Little B. But there it was, ahead and off to one side.

“There's a battleship and a carrier on the other side of Little B,” Harris objected. “It's the last place we should go.”

“If they're still there,” said O'Reilly. “It seems pretty strange that they're staying out of the fight. I bet they opened a portal and bugged out.”

Harris shook his head. “Why would they do that?”

“The battleship's damaged. They'll want to get her safely away. And they need to get word out about the ambush.”

“I don't know,” said Harris.

A beep sounded, and O'Reilly looked down at his console. “The heavy cruiser is moving. Whatever they were doing, it looks like they're done.”

“That settles it,” said Tom. “I'm not going to be hounded through hyperspace by those maggots. We need some cover, and there's only one place we're going to get it.” He pointed at the black starless circle. “Take us to Little B.”

Chapter 25

Alice was gasping for breath by the time Bridger's light illuminated a pile of rubble on the plain ahead. She turned on her suit radio, shot a worried glance at the warships in the sky above, and said, “Cartwright! Can you hear me?”

There was no reply.

“Singh?” She couldn't remember the name of the third member of Wasp Nest One. “Anyone?”

“Cartwright won't be answering.” The light flashed back and forth, and she turned to look at Bridger. He was a dozen meters away, kneeling beside a pile of rubble.

Except it wasn't rubble.

“Give me a hand here. I'm almost out of air.”

Swallowing a rising sense of dread, she hurried to his side. Cartwright was dead, one arm completely missing. The oxygen tank would have shut down when the suit lost integrity, and she felt a rush of shame as she realized how thankful she was that he had died quickly in the first fusillade of missiles.

It meant there was more air left for her.

Frost coated the inside of Cartwright's helmet, mercifully making his faceplate opaque. She helped Bridger turn him gently onto his stomach. It felt wrong to take from the dead, but life in the colonies had never been easy. Alice knew how to be pragmatic, and the needs of the living always took precedence over the needs of the dead.

Her fingers found the seal on the back of his suit, and she peeled the fabric back, exposing a small, flat metal tank. Bridger detached the tank and held it up. “How's your oxygen holding up?”

Alice tried to answer, and found she was panting too hard to speak. Bridger's eyes widened, and he stood. When she tried to stand as well he put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her down. Then he knelt behind her and warning lights appeared inside her helmet as he pulled apart the fabric and exposed her oxygen tank.

It seemed to take an endless time, but at last oxygenated air flowed into her helmet. She hadn't realized how fogged her mind had become until it began to clear. Did I really use the radio? That was foolhardy. She glanced up. What if they're listening?

If they're listening, she realized, it's probably for the best. My options right now are capture by the Dawn Alliance or a lingering death from asphyxiation.

If a portal opens and those ships fly away, Bridger and I are dead.

She pushed the thought away. First things first. I've got oxygen for a while, but Bridger's almost out.

We need to find another body.

It was, she realized, too late for the remaining members of Wasp Nest One. If they found someone still alive, he'd be out of oxygen. There was no longer a way to keep three people alive.

Shoving the bleak mathematics of survival from her mind, she walked away from Cartwright's body and started to search. She did her best to move in a straight line, scuffing her feet with each step as she landed so she'd have visible boot prints for reference. She bounded forward thirty hops, turned ninety degrees, took three more hops, and started back, doing her best to stay parallel to her original path.

The search didn't take long. When she found Singh he was no more than a dozen meters from Cartwright. He was alive, the side of his helmet dented in, his face covered in blood. His skull had to be crushed, but she could see vapor on his faceplate as he exhaled.

“I found Shannon.”

Alice looked up. Bridger was a dark silhouette nearby, lit from behind by his hand light. He was on his knees, already unsealing the back of someone's vac suit. “I need a hand. My tank's pretty much empty.”

Alice, weary and sad, forced herself to her feet. She trudged over to Bridger, took the oxygen tank he handed to her, and swapped it for his empty tank.

“That's better. Look at – Alice? Where are you going?”

“I found Singh,” she said. “He's dying.”

She knelt beside the fallen man and took his hand, wondering if there was anything she could do. If she could signal the battleship, would they get to him in time? Would they try to treat him?

If they did, would it help? She looked at the dent in his helmet. Could anyone survive that?

Bridger knelt across from her. “I think he's dead.”

“No, I can see vapor when he …” Her voice trailed off.

There was no more vapor on Singh's faceplate. She put a hand on his chest and closed her eyes, focusing her attention on her fingertips. For an endless minute she waited, and his chest neither rose nor fell.

He was dead.

“I found the missile launcher.”

Alice looked up.

“It's right beside Shannon.” He shook his head. “The radio beacon is there too, but it's smashed.”

“So we're dead.”

He shrugged.

“I suppose launching a missile is one way to let people know we're here.”

She couldn't see Bridger's eyes through the faceplate of his helmet, but his eyes crinkled as if he was grinning. “Did they leave us any missiles?”

“As a matter of fact, there's a missile in the launcher.”

“Huh.” She stood. “Well, let's go take a look.”

Little B loomed directly ahead of the Kestrel, coming closer and closer until darkness filled the bridge windows and there wasn't a star in sight. Somewhere behind them the heavy cruiser had resumed its pursuit. The Kestrel had a head start of almost twenty minutes, more than enough if she could slip into hyperspace unobserved. Tom had a different plan, though. He was going to do a fast burn for deep space, then shut the engines down. By the time the heavy cruiser made it around Little B, the Kestrel would be a distant speck, almost impossible to detect.

He figured the cruiser would hurry into hyperspace and look for the Kestrel there. Then she might do a careful search of the moon's surface. The depths of normal space would be a distant third priority. We'll coast until we're impossible to see. We'll coast for days if necessary. Then into hyperspace, and head for home.

All he had to do was get the ship to the far side of Little B and the options for escape would be so numerous the cruiser would never find them.

“Changing course,” O'Reilly said, and stars appeared as he turned the ship to follow the surface of the moon. There was no atmosphere here to drag at them. The Kestrel whipped along a scant five or six kilometers above the surface.

Tom watched the tactical display as Little B slid between the Kestrel and the pursuing cruiser. He stared until the cruiser's red icon vanished.

“That's it,” Harris said, looking up from his console. “We're free and clear.” He turned in his seat, looking back to grin at Tom. Then his head whipped around and he stared through the bridge windows. “Oh my God.”

A vast shape rose over the horizon, a monster of a ship, her running lights making her gleam against the void behind her. It was the battleship, so big, so ominous, that Tom didn't even notice the carrier until he looked down at his tactical display. He was just in time to see a quartet of fighters launch from the carrier and move into position as a buffer in front of the battleship.

I should have known. It wasn't a productive thought, but it filled his mind, driving out every other idea. We knew it was here. Why did I assume it would be gone?

Because it had to be gone, or you were dead anyway. But it's still here, and now the fight is over.

We're dead.

He sat frozen, staring through the bridge windows, and the distance closed with every passing second. Somewhere deep in his brain, buried under a paralyzing terror, he knew he needed to order O'Reilly to change course, to get them back over the horizon, away from this new threat. But he sat, unable to speak, as the battleship grew and grew.

“They're firing,” Harris announced, and the Kestrel twisted sideways before Tom could give the order to evade. The ship did a barrel roll, the moon briefly above them, then straightened out. And a little bit of reason returned to Tom's brain. Battleships didn't have much in the way of weaknesses – but their guns were concentrated on their top sides.

“Take us low,” he said. “Under her belly. We'll try a missile at point-blank range. We'll hit them with everything we've got.” Which isn't much, I have to admit. But we'll go down swinging.

The Kestrel dove, then rose, then did another barrel roll. The battleship was closer now, making the Kestrel harder to miss, and the hull boomed and echoed as shells found their mark. A laser strike burned a hole in the hull just forward of the bridge windows, and a cloud of vapor puffed out before the ship's force fields sealed the puncture.

Then they were in too close for most of the guns. One turret belched fire at them, a last salvo that streamed past the nose of the ship as O'Reilly fired braking thrusters.

An instant later, the Kestrel was below the battleship.

Tom found himself staring up at a laser turret with barrels almost as thick as his leg. The range was terrifyingly close. The battleship was no more than thirty or forty meters away, and the two ships were almost stationary in relation to each other. There was no way that laser could miss.

A weapon like that would put a hole right through the Kestrel and punch fairly deep into the moon beneath them, to boot. The turret didn't move, though, didn't take aim, didn't fire. A ragged hole showed at the base of the cluster of lasers. Mine damage, he realized. The gun's disabled.

“She'll spin,” Trenholm said. “She'll rotate on her axis and blast us with the top guns.”

The battleship was turning, pointing her belly at the moon. She was turning with painful slowness, though, and Tom had a sudden wild urge to laugh. The battleship's thick armor had made a mockery of almost every mine she'd hit, but even a battleship had its weak points. Her navigational thrusters had to be as badly damaged as that laser turret.

“I think I see a gap in her hull plates,” Harris said, pointing. “We should hit it with a missile.”

Tom looked where he pointed. For the most part, the underside of the battleship was a smooth plain of thick armor plates. One plate, though, hung loose. The metal was pitted and scorched, whether by mines or by missiles from the surface Tom couldn't tell. It was the closest thing to a weakness he could see, and he barked, “Do it.”

“We've got company,” O'Reilly said.

Tom looked down at his tactical display, which showed four red triangles sweeping under the hull of the battleship.

“Fighters incoming!” Harris said, then leaned into the microphone on his console and started giving orders to the Kestrel's gun crews. One fighter vanished immediately, destroyed by laser fire. The others scattered, zipping around the frigate like swallows.

A flash of motion in the corner of his eye made Tom turn his head. He was too late to see the missile strike, but he saw the loose hull plate rip free and spin away toward the moon below. The battleship didn't seem seriously damaged, and he wondered if he could keep the Kestrel in position long enough for Franco to get another missile loaded.

A moment later he had his answer. It was not the answer he'd hoped for.

Directly ahead, the carrier sank below the nose of the battleship, putting herself at the same level as the Kestrel. She had no missiles, but four separate gun turrets swivelled around to point at the frigate.

A fighter flashed past the nose of the Kestrel, firing. A line of shells bounced from the bridge windows, making Tom flinch and pitting the glass. Then the tactical display showed all three fighters moving away from the Kestrel, getting out of the way of the barrage that was about to begin.

Tom reached for his helmet, reflecting wryly that leaving it this late was pretty stupid. He was pulling the helmet over his head when the bridge windows exploded. Something hit the back of his hand, he heard a clatter as more shrapnel bounced from his helmet, and then the helmet slid into place just in time for him to see clouds of broken glass go sailing out through the gap where the windows had been.

The ship's force fields, able to handle small hull breaches, were completely overwhelmed. He jammed the helmet down as far as it would go, twisted it from side to side, and knew it had sealed when the faceplate slammed down. There was a knifing pain in his ears, unnoticed in the turmoil of the moment until it disappeared as air flooded into his helmet.

Strong fingers closed around his wrists, and he looked down, startled. His hands were bare, the sleeves of his suit constricting around his wrists to keep air from escaping.

I didn't know the suits did that. He fumbled at his thigh pockets, pulling his gloves loose, tugging them over his exposed hands with desperate haste. A red bloom appeared on the back of his left hand as a capillary burst. He got the second glove on, sealed it to his sleeve, and felt the suit release its grip on his wrists.

A babble of voices filled his ears, at least a dozen people trying to speak over one another on the suit radio. He looked around the bridge, saw no casualties, then glanced over his shoulder and felt his blood run cold.

The aft bulkhead of the bridge was gone. Shattered bits of polymer stuck up from the deck plates, but he could see into the next compartment. It should have been the wardroom, but it was hard to tell by looking. The room was an utter shambles.

Never mind that. What's happening outside? He looked at his console, saw nothing but static, and looked out through the frame of the window instead.

The Kestrel was nose-down, the carrier barely visible through the top edge of the window frame. Tom saw flashes of light as the carrier fired another salvo, and he gripped the arms of his chair, bracing himself.

He felt nothing but a faint vibration through his fingers.

The radio chatter had died down. The suit radios would be networking with each other, working out who was close to whom, and switching suits to different channels. By this time the bridge crew had a channel to themselves.

“We just lost the engines,” Trenholm announced. “We're going down.”

“They're holding their fire,” Harris said. “I guess they know we're finished.”

Tom stood, then grunted in surprise as he rose almost to the ceiling of the bridge. The force fields that gave the ship artificial gravity were failing. He waited for his feet to descend to the deck, then took a long, gliding stepped to the front of the bridge. Careful. One miscalculation and you'll go sailing out through the window.

He gripped the edge of the window frame, feeling the jagged edges of glass splinters through his gloves, and peered up at the battleship. He could see a dark rectangle where the Kestrel's last missile had ripped away a hull plate, and wondered if there might be time to strike one last blow. “Can you reach Franco?”

After a moment of silence Harris said, “There's no reply. I think the missile room took a direct hit.”

A memory flashed through Tom's mind, an orientation session in the missile bay during his first days on the Kestrel. Franco had reminded him of a rooster, a short, graying, prickly man completely unimpressed with Tom's rank. He'd been proud of his missile bay, proud of the people who worked with him, and ready to tear into an upstart sublieutenant if Tom had been foolish enough to open his mouth.

Tom tried to remember those other faces, the ones who'd served with Franco in the missile bay. He couldn't remember them at all, and that saddened him.

“I've got some lateral controls,” O'Reilly said. “Do you care where I put us down?”

Tom shrugged. “No, I guess it doesn't make much difference.” He turned back to the view through the window frame.

He was just in time to see a point of light appear on the surface of Little B far below. The point became a line of white, tinged red at the center. The line rose, gaining speed, and shot past the nose of the Kestrel, bright enough to make him squint.

An explosion blossomed against the underside of the battleship. Armor plates burst outward, spinning and somersaulting into the darkness. The belly of the ship burned, and she tilted, her port side twisting toward the moon. Tom stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

Trenholm said, “What happened?”

“One of the missile crews is still alive,” Tom said. “And they just made a very good shot.” He turned to O'Reilly. “Can you set us down close to the origin point of that missile?”

The man nodded. “I think so.”

“Do it.” We may as well reunite what's left of the crew. He let go of the window frame and made his way cautiously to his chair, where he belted himself in. “Someone call that battleship. Tell them we surrender.” Speaking the words felt like chewing on glass fragments from the bridge windows, but he couldn't deny the truth. This fight was over.

“The battleship's firing her engines,” O'Reilly said. “One engine, anyway. Looks like they're going into orbit.” He twisted around in his chair. “I think we crippled her, Sir. She won't be able to make hyperspace.”

Tom nodded, too weary to reply.

“It'll be enough,” O'Reilly said.

“What?”

“They can't hide her,” O'Reilly said. “They can't keep her behind the moon. She'll be right there, in orbit. Impossible to miss. Every Free Planets ship that pops out of hyperspace will see her instantly. They'll have plenty of time to bug out.”

By this time Tom had all but forgotten about the Free Planets rendezvous and the danger to the stream of armed freighters and small gunships that would converge on Black Betty over the next day or two. He glanced over his shoulder at the ruin of the wardroom and the rest of his dying ship. It better be enough. We paid a high enough price.

Several seconds passed in silence as the ship descended. Tom used the screen in the sleeve of his suit to contact the ship's computer and request an all-hands broadcast. Finally a chime sounded in his ears and he began to speak.

“This is the captain speaking. We've done our best against overwhelming odds, and I'm proud of each and every one of you. The battle is over. The ship is crippled, and soon we'll be landing for the last time on the surface of Little B.

“We are surrendering unconditionally. When Dawn Alliance forces arrive, I want you to offer no resistance.”

He paused, thinking. “I want all Free Planets personnel to report to the brig. I want the marines to lock you up. You're prisoners, not members of the crew. And none of you are from Neorome or Tazenda.” Tom sighed. “Maybe that will get you some better treatment. Everyone else, lay down your arms and wait for Dawn Alliance forces to arrive.”

He broke the connection, then braced himself as the Kestrel thumped onto the surface of Little B.

She wouldn't be rising again.

What now? Will they swoop in and take us into custody, or will they shoot us to pieces from orbit?

Or ignore us completely, and leave us to die when our air runs out?

He undid his seatbelt and walked to the front of the bridge. He stared out across the dark expanse of the moon, then tilted his head to look up.

The heavy cruiser floated beside the carrier, directly above him. The battleship was several kilometers away and receding.

A bright spark appeared on the underside of the cruiser. It descended toward the moon, and another spark appeared behind it. One after another they dropped from the belly of the cruiser, a couple of dozen points of light that scattered in the last moment before they touched the ground.

The last handful of lights was still descending when the first skirmish line appeared. It was heavy infantry, eight huge figures bouncing across the plain toward the ship. Massive enough to dwarf Tom's marines even in full battle armor, the approaching figures wore exo-suits that made their arms and legs as thick as a man's torso.

A line of crimson light flashed out from the nearest armored figure, and the roof of the bridge exploded. Tom dropped into a crouch, bringing his arms up to protect his head. When he looked up there was a mech standing on the battered hull plates just beyond the window. One arm pointed at Tom; the other arm pointed into the bridge behind him. Both wrists bristled with weapons, a mix of gun barrels and mini rockets.

Tom raised his hands and exhaled wearily.

It was over.

Author Notes

The adventures of Tom Thrush and the crew of the Kestrel continue in Prison Planet, available now – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CNRS28H/.

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/