Accord of Mars

Accord Series, Book Two

Kevin McLaughlin

Role of the Hero Publishing

Contents

Copyright

About the Book

Dedication

Introduction

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

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Copyright © 2016 by Kevin O. McLaughlin All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales in purely coincidental.

About the Book

Mars won her freedom from the hegemony of the United Nations of Earth, but can the planet survive the victory?

The ruthless president of the UN will stop at nothing to bring all of humanity under his control. He’s ordered a fleet be built - supposedly to protect Earth against future attacks.

But Nicholas Stein and his son Thomas know better. That fleet is a knife held at the throat of a free Mars. Sooner or later, Earth will be coming to reclaim their colony. A sudden series of attacks convince father and son that their enemies are stepping up the timetable for their attack.

But the truth is even worse.

Earth has a powerful new ship, bigger and more deadly than any weapon humanity has ever constructed. And it’s heading to Mars.

For Rowyn, Dana, and Ewan - may the Mars you someday visit be more peaceful than the one in this story.

Exclusive for fans of the Accord series!

Find out how the story started… When Captain Nicholas Stein set out to stop one enemy ship, and set in motion events which shaped the course of human history for decades to come.

http://kevinomclaughlin.com/accordoffire/

Chapter 1

Thomas Stein

I dove for the dubious cover provided by a heavy steel support beam. It was sturdy, but thinner than I was happy with. Any port in a storm, as they say. Bullets ripped through the air, the reports deafening in the enclosed space. They whistled as they went through the air over my head, or impacted with into the steel beam loud pinging sounds.

“Stop shooting and let’s talk!” I shouted.

The only answer was another burst of gunfire. I kept my head down.

“We’re on a space station, damn it!” I yelled over the booming of his gun. “You hit the wrong thing and we’re all dead!”

I had a hunch the shooter didn’t care, which made him even more dangerous. We’d been hearing rumors about possible saboteurs on Mars Station for days now. I wasn’t sure how seriously the rumors had been taken. It wasn’t like I was investigating them myself. Most of my time was spent supervising the refit of the Constellation.

But I thought a quick personal inspection of my spaceship might be worth the time. Did I really think anyone was out to sabotage it? Nah. The means were there. Constellation was badly damaged in the fight against the pirates. We limped our way back to Mars, but the reconstruction required was significant. Mars Station had one “dry dock” berth, big enough to take in a ship so that repairs could be done in atmosphere. They only used it for really massive repair work. The Connie was a big ship, so big she barely fit the hangar. But we’d have been a lot longer fixing her if she was floating in space the whole time. She’d been rebuilt almost completely, and the work was finally almost done.

A ship in space is hard to get at, though. A ship parked inside a station is pretty easy. The dry dock was right in the hub of the station, too - which is good for working on ships there, because there’s no spin inducing artificial gravity. But it also meant an explosion there could potentially wreck the entire station.

I wasn’t really expecting trouble. But I packed a sidearm these days, just as a precaution. As an officer in the Mars Space Service I was authorized to carry a weapon. And given the events of the past half-year it seemed smart to be armed. Just in case. If I’d known I was going to be facing off against a gunman with an automatic rifle I would have brought something bigger, but the pistol would have to do. I pulled it out now and popped up, squeezing off only a single round before the return fire forced me back under cover.

I remembered thinking that saboteurs on the station were about as likely as space fleas. Boy, had I been wrong. I’d barely started my check when I spotted two men working on something near the engines. I waved, they waved back. I figured everything was OK. I pushed off from the floor, which sent me away from the low gravity part of the hanger “up” into the microgravity part in the middle, where the ship floated.

That’s when one of the men turned back toward me. Only this time he wasn’t waving. He had a machine gun in his hands instead. I got lucky - he didn’t know how to shoot in zero gravity, and the recoil from his shots shoved him back, hard. His bullets all went wide. I flipped over before I reached the ship and hit it feet first. Then I pushed off hard, diving toward the nearest support strut for cover.

Where I was still stuck. Every time I tried to peek out from my hiding spot, the shooter fired another burst at me to keep my head down. I had no idea where the other guy was, or precisely what they were up to. But I was pretty sure I didn’t have long to wait before I was going to find out. The words “bomb” and “spaceship engine” kept floating through my brain. Just how big an explosion would they get if they somehow managed to detonate the fission drive in the Connie?

“Computer, call for security backup,” I said into my smartwatch. It gave me a swirling icon that said it was thinking about it. I half wanted to bash the thing against the bulkhead.

There was another brief lull in the shooting, and I stole a moment to look around. I could still only see the one man. He’d braced himself against the hull, using it to keep him in position while he fired. It gave him a stable position, but it kept him immobile too. Could I use that?

He saw me and fired again. I’d waited too long. I’d never be able to duck away in time. But instead of gunshots I heard a click, and he cursed loudly. Out of ammunition! He reached down to pull out a new magazine and inserted it into his weapon, but he let go of the ship to get the reload. The movement sent him tumbling.

I had only a few seconds. That tumble would take him further from the ship, and then he’d fall gently to the floor. I jumped, pushing up as hard as I could to overcome the effect of the station’s spin. I flew upward, my path not quite intersecting his. I opened fire as we passed by. Three shots, all three hit. His body went spinning away from me.

The recoil from my shots had sent me off course a little, but I was still able to catch the edge of the engines with my free hand. A hatch was open on the rear of the ship. That had to be where the other man had gone. I pulled myself toward the opening. The lights were on inside. I pushed myself through the hatch in one rushed motion, pistol at the ready.

The other man was inside. He was working on one of the consoles inside the engine room, but the noise I made coming through made him look up and gape. I hit the ground and pushed off again, rocketing toward him in the microgravity. I aimed my pistol and started to squeeze the trigger.

“Wait! Don’t shoot!” he shouted. Then he let go of the console, raising both hands in the air. “Don’t shoot!”

I caught a rail with my free hand, braking my forward motion. I kept my gun trained on him, just in case. But when he let go of the console the motion pushed him up and away. Now he was drifting in the middle of the room, helpless. He had a pistol holstered on his hip, though.

“Take the gun out and toss it toward me. Slowly,” I said. He did as I directed and eased the pistol from his holster. He clearly knew how to handle a gun. He lifted it away and tossed it toward me with practiced ease. But just as clearly neither of these men knew the first thing about maneuvering in space. Who were they?

I let the gun drift past me. I was more worried about what he’d been doing to my ship. He’d been installing something, but it looked like he’d only gotten partway through the process. I was no expert, but it sure looked like a bomb to me. I tapped my wrist computer.

“Call Dad,” I said.

“Dialing now,” the tinny voice responded from my wrist.

“He’s going to be really interested in this. And here I was, calling Mars Station boring the other day.”

My hands were shaking a little. Coming down off an adrenaline rush always did that to me. I had things well in hand now, though, and in a few minutes I’d have station security here to back me up and dismantle the damned bomb. I looked down at my smartwatch to see if Dad was picking up.

The man chose that moment of distraction to jump me.

Chapter 2

Thomas Stein

He kicked off hard and launched himself across the room at me, arms first. As he came at me he drew a knife from somewhere. I tried to aim my pistol at him, but I was worried about hitting the device he was setting up. If it was a bomb, and I hit it by accident..! I hesitated a moment too long. His forearm smashed into the pistol, sending it spinning out of my hands.

Then the rest of his weight barreled into me. The inertia threw me backward into the bulkhead behind me. He grabbed a stanchion with his free hand to hold himself in place and slashed at me with the knife. I blocked his arm with mine and snaked my hand around his wrist.

“Not letting you stop me!” he said. “Not now!”

He pushed in, but I had my arm in the way, and his wrist locked up. Strong as he was, without gravity he didn’t have the leverage to push the knife into my throat. At the same time, I couldn’t get free. We were at something of an impasse.

I yanked my legs up and wrapped them around his waist, locking my ankles in the small of his back. Now I had the bulkhead behind me for leverage, and an additional leverage point of his body to use against him. I pushed out, using my abdominal muscles to force the knife away.

And to get my wrist in front of my face. “Computer!” I shouted into the smartwatch. “Activate Stein override 911.”

The watch had been a gift from my Dad after we’d gotten home from the Battle for Earth and his trial that followed. Most smartwatches were good for basic computing, simple AI functions, and video chats. His and mine had a lot more oomph to them. A better processor, state of the art computing - and a set of special programs that I could access if I was in trouble. This one would send a call to station security to override all other duties and come running.

I’d been warned not to use it for anything but the most dire of circumstances. I figured a knife at my throat and a bomb on the station probably counted. Now all I needed to do was stay alive until help got here.

I jabbed him in the face with the heel of my free hand. Then I swung down at the arm he was using to hang on to the stanchion, twisting hard with my legs at the same time. He lost his grip, and we were free-floating, spinning around in circles.

He didn’t give up, though. He had both hands free again, and brought the second hand around to push against the pommel of the knife. With the extra hand driving it forward, he was able to inch the tip slowly closer. He twisted it around as it came, trying to slip over or around the arm I had in the way. I hung on - but barely. He was strong!

“Time to die,” he whispered. His breath stank of garlic.

“Not today,” I said.

Keeping one hand locked tightly on his wrist, I snaked the other underneath the outside of his arm, then up to his wrist. It was just about the perfect lock for this situation. I had him, and I could see in his eyes that he knew it. I jerked down hard with my legs, and pushed his arm back up by his ear with my hands. I kept pushing, driving his arm into a painful lock.

He yelled, and dropped the knife. Then he smashed his forehead down on my face. My nose took the brunt of the impact, and my eyes filled with tears. I lost my grip on his arm, and he used the moment to try to box my ears. I brought my arms in as a guard just in time. Then I slashed out with one elbow, taking him in the chin. I struck with the other elbow a moment later. He was dazed. I didn’t let up, hammering in another blow, and then another.

I wasn’t sure how many times I hit him before his body went limp. Once I was sure he was well and truly out, I relaxed my legs. They were cramped from holding so much tension for so long. I shoved his unconscious body away from me and recovered my gun along with his knife. No point taking any chances. I’d seen how dangerous the man could be.

I heard the tromp of magnetic boots storming across the deck.

“Stein! You in there?” one of them called out.

“Yeah, with a prisoner,” I shouted back. I eyed the device, all blinking red lights and ominous looking. “Better get a bomb squad in here too.”

I stepped clear as the first security personnel came and took my would-be bomber into custody. Then I pulled myself back out of the ship to let them do their job. Besides, station security was excellent, but I didn’t want to be anywhere near that bomb when they started messing with it.

“That is the very last time I complain about something being boring,” I said. “Boring is good. Boring is safe.”

Chapter 3

Thomas Stein

To say that my father and I didn’t always see eye to eye was like saying the sun was warm. It was both obvious, and an understatement.

We worked well together, when we needed to. When there was a crisis.

And the rest of the time? Well, we’ve never been a really quiet family.

“And if I don’t want to go to earth?” I shouted back.

My father glared at me for a moment before replying. His face was set like granite. “Thomas, this is important. There’s no one else I can ask to do this.”

“Of course there are,” I said. “We have lots of company people here on Mars. Any of them would be better suited than I am.”

“It is my company. Is it too much to ask that my son help take up the reins?” he asked.

Since he’d been barred from returning himself, Dad wanted me to go to Earth and take over the direct day-to-day operations of Stein Industries there. It was a great offer, don’t get me wrong. There were tons of people in the company who would love the job he was trying to give me. I just wasn’t one of them.

“I belong in space, Dad,” I said. “Didn’t I prove that, these past couple of months? And today?”

Station security had taken my prisoner into custody and cleaned up the mess. The entire station was in an uproar over the event, though. The device really had been a bomb, and nobody seemed to know how it had been smuggled aboard the station. Security was saying they were going to turn the place inside out before they were done. An attack like this was a nightmare. And the worst thing was that we all knew it was probably just a taste of things to come.

“You did very well,” he said. He sighed, and looked down at his hands. “But Thomas, I need your help with this.”

I looked at my father for a moment. I mean, really looked. The events of the last few months had taken their toll. I could see the stress etched on his face. He was working harder than anyone else I knew. And nobody on Mars was slacking off. There was too much to do. And too little time. But that was why I wanted to be there! And not be shipped off someplace else. It wouldn’t be the first time my father had sent me someplace out of the way when he knew trouble was brewing. He seemed to make a habit of it.

“I want to help, Dad,” I said. “But how many other experienced combat captains do you have? How long before Earth sends a fleet against us? You’re going to need every experienced hand, here on Mars.” Inside I was asking how many times did I need to prove myself to this man? The first sign of trouble and he was back to protecting me like I was a child.

“I think we have time,” he said. “How long? That I don’t know. And that is the real reason I need you on Earth.”

That got my attention in a hurry. The surprise must’ve shown on my face. He smiled, a crooked grin that lit up his face for a moment and shed most of the old stress lines.

“What, did you think I was sending you off skylarking?” He said. He laughed. “Thomas, I need you to take this job because I can’t trust anyone else to do it right.”

I was silent for a moment. That was a lot to take in. It would be a real change, if my father were actually sending me into danger instead of shipping me off as far away from it as possible. Was this for real, though? My father the admiral, my father the strategist? You never could tell just what he was up to. He usually had more than two reasons for everything he did.

“You’re right,” he went on. “Earth is going to come at us. They can’t yet, because they need uranium from Mars for their fission reactors. War with Mars would make Earth a very dark place, very quickly. But they’re putting everything they can into researching alternate sources for power.”

“And as soon as they have them, you figure they’re coming for us,” I said.

“They have to. The United Nations can’t let Mars maintain independence. Our colonies in space are the future of humanity. The UN knows that.”

I still didn’t want to do this, but he was winning me over. And he knew it, damn him. I had to hand it to my father. He knew how to make people agree to do what he wanted. Then again, he’d had years of practice ordering people around. I sighed with full drama.

“So what is it you need me to do?” I asked.

“On the record? Run the company Earth side. I’ll continue to direct all our space and Mars based operations, but we have a lot of infrastructure on Earth. Keep it safe and running smoothly.”

“And in reality?” OK, he knew all the right buttons to push. I was even starting to get a little excited about the cloak and dagger concept.

“We need good intel. On anything related to the UN’s space program, weapons development, and the fusion reactor program they’re pouring so much money into.”

“Can I bring Kel?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her in a bit. She was working on another project for my Dad, something about training new pilots. I couldn’t have thought of a better person for the job, but it meant we saw a lot less of each other than I’d have liked. Besides, I needed someone I could trust along with me.

“I need her where she is for a bit longer,” he said. “But when I can send her along, I will. Fair?”

“Fair. One flaw in your plan though. What makes you think they’re going to let me anywhere near that sort of information?” I asked.

Dad was persona non grata on Earth: exile was the punishment the court had dished out. I wasn’t banned from going back. But I was his son. I wasn’t going to be the most popular person in some circles, either. At the very least, I’d be seen as a serious security leak.

“Oh, we’re going to have a major falling out, you and I,” my father said. “You’re going to leave this office shouting at me. I’m forcing you back to Earth against your will.”

I wasn’t sure that would be enough. But it might be a start. “So I go to Earth and start snooping around?”

His smile vanished. My father’s lips faded to a thin grim line. “You go to Earth. I don’t think you’re going to need to snoop much, Thomas. I think the players there will come to you.”

Chapter 4

Nicholas Stein

I rubbed my eyes for the hundredth time. It didn’t make them feel any better. I wasn’t getting enough sleep, and that wasn’t good. If I was tired, I might miss something. And if I missed something, it might kill all of us. Too many balls in the air, each of them of vital importance. Dropping any of them would be lethal.

Sleep would have to wait. I nodded to George’s secretary, who smiled back in a tight-lipped way. Apparently not everyone here was fond of me. I kept my own smile to myself. Probably the result of my barging in on the Governor of Mars one too many times. Or President-Elect, now. We’d held elections. George had won easily, and I was glad. He was a good man, able to make hard decisions quickly and with wisdom. I had a feeling we were going to need more people like him soon enough.

George was in his office, staring out through a huge window into space. Outside, the steady flow of traffic that was the lifeblood of the Mars colony zipped by. I’d caught him looking out there more than once. It was a terrific view, but his bright eyes snapped up to meet mine as soon as I walked through the door. He was a big man, a shade on the heavy side but not gone all the way soft. Nobody survived in what was basically a frontier without being fairly fit. The quick mind behind those eyes was more what I was interested in, anyway.

“And how’s my Naval Chief of Staff today?” George asked.

I winced. I hated the title. But I’d taken it, because it gave me the authority to do the things that needed to happen. Mars needed a space navy badly. We had far too few people with real combat experience, and far too little time to work with.

“I’m fine. Any word about the prisoner?” I asked.

“Thomas gone?”

“Yes, I saw him off yesterday.” I hoped that I’d done the right thing. Thomas wasn’t one to keep his head down. I knew that sending him back to Earth was likely to stir up something of a hornet’s nest there. But Mars was getting hazardous. If he hadn’t happened across those saboteurs…! The whole station might have been blown to bits. At the very least, it would have been smashed up badly enough that we’d waste months repairing it. “The prisoner?” I repeated.

George frowned. “Being damned tight-lipped. He’s a recent arrival from Earth. Immigrated here on a regular work visa. Nothing about his background that looks odd. No connections to known terror or criminal groups. Hell, Nick - the man doesn’t even have a history of a speeding ticket. And neither did his partner. I smell a rat.”

“Their records have been scrubbed, then,” I said.

“Pretty damned sure,” George replied.

That took money or power. Maybe both. Everyone’s personal information was stored in huge official databases. They were highly secure computer systems, but law enforcement could check out everything about your history. Friends, family, where you lived, who you worked for - it was all an open book. This guy should have had something on his record. And even if one of them was lucky enough to have never been pulled over for speeding, I doubted both had.

Someone had cleaned up their records, carefully edited them to be bland and useless.

“Of course, that tells us who sent them,” I said. “They pretty much have to be from the UN. I doubt anyone else has both the power and the motive to hit us like that.”

“Yes. But it doesn’t do us any good unless we can prove it,” George said. “Which we can’t, because they have no records indicating any contact with UN officials of any kind.”

“So they wanted us to know who sent them, but to not be able to do anything about it.” I chuckled a little. “It’s a cute game they’re playing.”

“It’s not cute. It’s damned dangerous.”

“Not really, George. I read the report. Those two would-be terrorists were not that big a threat,” I said. “Sure, they had a bomb - but security gave it a one in five chance of actually going off, and it didn’t have enough power to penetrate the armor around the Constellation’s fission engine anyway. There was never any real danger.”

“That bothers me even more than the rest,” George said. “The two men Thomas caught were so damned incompetent. If they’d been trained military men with better hardware, we might have been blown to bits. But someone went to a lot of time and trouble to get those two loons up here. Why?”

I pondered that for a moment. He was right. The expense and risk involved in scrubbing those records was no small thing. If you were going to take that sort of risk, it made sense to do it for your best men. Why waste all that effort on incompetents?

The answer was obvious. “George. We need to get you out of here. Now.”

“What?” He stood up. “Why?”

I grabbed his arm. “No time. We’ve got to move!”

There was only one reason to invest so much money and effort into an obvious effort that was doomed to fail spectacularly. There had to be another cell. A second set of terrorists. And I was betting they were the highly trained sort.

George followed along, picking up the pace at the urgency in my tone. I barreled through the double doors of his office and out into the waiting room. His secretary wasn’t there. We raced through the small room to the doors that would let us out. I could almost feel the jaws of a trap closing around us.

The door was locked. And I felt the jaws shut tight.

“Shit,” George breathed. He reached for his wrist com.

“Stop. No calls. We don’t know who’s listening,” I said.

I was carrying a pistol these days. I pulled it out and aimed it at the lock on the doors. Three quick shots later I heard a whining noise from somewhere inside the thing. It was an electronic lock - I had to hope I’d damaged it enough. I shoved against the door again. It moved slowly, metal grating on metal. I’d damaged the lock and the motor as well.

“When we get outside the door, we make for my courier,” I said. “I need to get you someplace safe.”

The door was open far enough. I thought to check the hall before we went out. Just in case. It was a good thing I was feeling extra cautious. Bullets flashed by my face and I ducked back into the room. I couldn’t see the shooter and didn’t need to see him to know he was a pro. We were not going to get out that way.

“Trapped?” George asked.

“Go ahead and use your wrist com now,” I said. He called for security. I was damned sure they wouldn’t arrive in time. The enemy knew we were trying to get out. Whatever they were attempting, it was going to happen any second now.

“George, is there any other way out of here?” I asked.

He shook his head. I stalked back into his office and glared through the plexiglass screen. That gave me the inkling of an idea.

“You have emergency suits in here, right?” I asked.

“Of course,” George said. He pointed at a cabinet. “Every major section of the station has them.”

I opened the thing and hauled out two suits. “Get it on.”

“This won’t save us from a blast,” he said.

He was right, but I was thinking of something else. Why hadn’t the blast happened yet? What was the holdup? I was sure there had to be a bomb. And if there were, I’d have blown it as soon as my target’s nose showed through the door. So why hadn’t they?

I scanned the space outside. A ship was just gliding away from the station. Ironically, it was one of my ships, and I knew just what was inside it. It carried a full load of uranium. A massive shipment, the last part of a big deal we’d hammered out with the UN. We had to keep supplying them with the fuel they needed, or they’d get desperate and attack before we were ready. But we’d won some serious concessions from them in return. I’d had to shuffle its launch from yesterday to today, so that I could fit Thomas’s courier into the launch schedule.

Now that ship - with a good year’s supply of uranium on board - was pulling away from the station, bound for Earth. That had to be it. They were making absolutely sure that the cargo got clear. It was supposed to have left yesterday. If it had, George and I would both be dead already.

We had seconds left. A minute tops, until it was far enough away they felt safe to set off their bomb. I snapped the helmet of my emergency suit onto my head. George already had his on.

I scanned the room, and my eyes found what I was looking for. Fire was deadly in space, so we had all sorts of redundancies to deal with it. Sprinklers of course, but they don’t work if something happened to the station’s spin. So we had special fire extinguishers, which did a great job with gravity or without. I snatched one from where it hung on the wall and aimed the nozzle at the edge of the window, where it met the bulkhead. The window was tough stuff, but junctions between materials were always the weakest link. I pulled the trigger and expelled a long, sustained blast from the extinguisher. Frost crisscrossed over the hard material.

That window was made out of transparent aluminum. It was designed to handle even impacts from micrometeorites. It would shrug off bullets without doing more than scratching it. But I had a heavy caliber pistol that I was betting was tougher than the frozen joint. I pressed the muzzle carefully near my target, just outside the blast of the extinguisher.

I fired. The round ricocheted away.

“Get behind me,” I said.

“What the hell, Nick?” George shouted. But he complied.

I turned on my radio and set it to broadcast on the emergency channel to the station. “All hands, emergency. Prepare for decompression.” I should have done that a while ago. Might still save some lives, but how many would die in the blast I knew was coming?

Then I started shooting again. I fired three more times, hoping I wasn’t going to get my hand shot off by a ricochet. The last shot went through! I was rewarded with the hiss of air escaping the room. The station’s systems detected the leak. Alarms blared, the lights all went red, and blast doors slammed down over the exit. The bad guys weren’t going to come in after us - and the extra protection might help against the bomb.

If it wasn’t right in the room with us, anyway. For all I knew, it might be.

Chapter 5

Nicholas Stein

The freezing gas from the extinguisher was venting into space. I could see puffs of the stuff floating around the small hole I’d made. I kept blasting more gas through it. Icy tendrils were spreading through the glass now. It was a laminate, made up of multiple layers for strength. But with the gas slipping inside and freezing, the lamination was being compromised.

That ship bound for Earth was slipping away from its mooring, building up speed. How far would it have to be before the attackers thought it was safe to blow their bomb? They weren’t taking chances with the cargo. But I had no time left.

I fired again. This time, the bullet went right through, and cracks spread up and down the glass. I fired another time. Another penetration, another spider web of cracks.

I had two bullets left in the gun.

What the hell. I fired both shots in rapid succession. The first created one more set of cracks. The last shot made an impact crater that seemed for a moment to join all of the cracks I’d made together - and then a three foot section of the window simply exploded. What was left of the air in our compartment went out through the hole, pushing the chunks of the window away.

I grabbed George’s hand and jumped. The wind pulled us through the gap, and we were drifting off into space.

Behind us, there was a flash of light. The bomb wasn’t in George’s office, but it was someplace damned close. The blast created a concussion wave that ripped apart station bulkheads. The compression alarm would have dropped sealed doors all over this section of the station, but those didn’t seem to be stopping the blast wave entirely. I watched fires bloom as the force blasted its way through the hull.

Something zipped past my face - a bit of metal shrapnel, thrown our way from the detonation. Another one skimmed past us. The third hit me in the leg. I felt a stabbing pain, and then heard something worse - the angry hiss of air escaping my suit, and the beep inside my helmet telling me that my little life raft had been compromised.

I reached down and grabbed the spot where I’d been hit - the fleshy bit on the outside of my left thigh. I managed to grunt, instead of scream. The metal was still there, embedded in my leg like a splinter the size of a pen. I wrapped my hand around the spot as tightly as I could, and the hissing slowed. I was still losing air, though.

“Nick, thanks,” George said. His voice was shaking, but he was holding up pretty well under the circumstances. “Now what?”

It was a good question. I didn’t have an immediate answer. These weren’t real space suits we were wearing. They were designed to help people survive a short decompression and airlessness if something failed and part of the station was exposed to space. They weren’t going to keep us warm for very long, and they had very limited oxygen supplies. Much of which I was still venting through the hole in my leg.

But we still had a shot. There was a ship in space nearby - the one carrying the uranium back to Earth. And fortunately, it was one of mine. I keyed the radio in my helmet to the Stein company channel.

“Archimedes, this is Nicholas Stein. Reverse course and return for search and rescue immediately,” I said.

The answer took only a moment. I had well trained crews, and I didn’t make direct demands of them often. “Yes sir! We were already diverting to do so. We’ll be on site in a few minutes.”

I tried to relax. We’d be picked up shortly. My leg was on fire, but the injury was nothing that wouldn’t mend. The same could probably be said for the station. I was able to survey the damage well from my vantage point. The blast doors had done their job, limiting the areas where the explosion could go. It looked like some of them had failed - that must have been a powerful bomb! But enough held that the station was mostly intact.

“You’re going to need a new office,” I said. I meant it as a joke, but it was hard keeping my tone light while gritting my teeth against the pain.

“Damn them,” George replied. “I have people trapped in there…in that.” He waved his arm at the mangled mess.

I scanned the area carefully. At least one of the hostiles had been outside George’s office and was likely dead. Were there others? Did they have a backup plan in case we somehow escaped? Amateurs would assume we would just die from the bomb. Professionals would assume likewise, but would have a backup plan in case we didn’t.

Sunlight flickered off something moving over to my left. I squinted. Someone was out there in a space suit with a thruster pack.

“Can you tell if he’s one of ours?” George asked.

“He’s a hostile,” I said, casting about for options. I was out of ammunition.

“How can you tell?”

“I radioed to my ship to come help with SAR. I didn’t tell anyone where we were,” I said. There had to be something I could do besides wait for him to kill us. “The only people who could have heard that message and known right where we were are the ones who planted the bomb.”

He was coming right at us on maximum thrust. It took me another precious few seconds to spot the rifle he was carrying at his side. The sight wasn’t a shock.

“Not friendly,” I said. I looked around for anything that might give us a way out of this mess. We were sitting ducks, floating out here in space without any way to move around. I spotted the fire extinguisher. It must have been pushed out through the gap by the air rushing out, same as we had. Since it had the same initial velocity, it hadn’t drifted far from us. I reached out, trying to touch it. My fingers fell short. Another foot or so, and I’d be able to reach it. But it was too far away.

The hole in my suit might be the answer I needed. I twisted in place so that the hole was facing away from the extinguisher. Then I released my grip on the hole. Air rushed out of my suit into space, and the annoying alarm in my helmet went off again. But the action of the air escaping created a reaction - pushing my body slowly toward the extinguisher. It wasn’t a lot of thrust. I was practically creeping along...

But it was enough. I grabbed the hole again, cutting off the airflow. Twisting around, I reached out. This time, the canister was easy to grab. I latched on.

A bullet pinged off the extinguisher, almost spinning it out of my grip. The enemy knew what I was up to and was shooting. He was still moving at full thrust though, so his aim was crap. I had to hope our luck would hold. I fired a jet from the nozzle, pushing me toward George.

“Grab on to me!” I said. He spun in place, hands reaching - and caught my leg. As soon as I felt both his hands holding tight, I fired the jet again. We shot away from the gunman. It was hard to control our direction of travel though. We were a badly balanced load, and kept spinning off course. If I kept us too close to the station we might crash into the hull, or worse yet impale ourselves on sharp debris floating in space.

Only one other option. I changed course.

“Not trying to back seat drive,” George said. “But where are we going?”

“Deep space. Clear of the station.”

“Right,” George said. “And if he follows us?”

“I’ll deal with that. I’m done with this game,” I growled. I opened up my radio comms again, switching to a secure Navy channel. “Hawk One, I need a pickup.”

“Roger,” came the cool reply.

“Be advised hostile chasing us,” I said.

“One dead hostile, coming right up.”

I kept the link open. No sense trying to hide now. The bad guys knew where we were, and the open link would help my side find us. I just had to hope they’d arrive in time.

The extinguisher gave out. We were a good distance from the station now, but the gunman was still closing on us. His thruster suit was a lot better for flying around out here than my makeshift device. I saw him raise his rifle. There was a flash from his muzzle.

Nothing. No hits. In a vacuum, I couldn’t see or hear where the bullets had gone. But he was changing magazines now. I started to hope we had time to get out of this.

“Nick...” George’s voice sounded harsh, strained. I looked down just as his fingers loosened from my leg.

I grabbed his hand before he slipped away. Blood was blooming in streamers of long bubbles from his chest. At least one round had hit him.

“Damn it, Hawk! Where are you?” I shouted into the radio. I was going to lose George right here if he didn’t get to medical help fast.

“Here,” came the reply.

There was no warning. The thruster suit simply vaporized, turned into a smear by a burst of high velocity rounds. Something black and almost invisible against the dark of space slipped by at high speed.

“Medical emergency here,” I said. George wasn’t going to last long enough for my ship to pick us up.

“I gotcha.”

The Hawk glided into view. My newest ship - a small, fast fighter. It was sleek, black, crafted from the best stealth materials we had. It barely reflected light, and was almost invisible to radar. It was braking hard. I winced, hoping that the pilot was good enough. Otherwise, we were about to become a smear on her windshield.

She was. The fighter slid up alongside us without so much as a nudge. I nodded in grudging respect. I’d given this program to the best pilot, all right.

“Now what?” I asked. I was pretty sure she already had something in mind.

The canopy cracked open, venting some air into space. Inside, the pilot was in a suit of her own. She slid out of her seat, hooking one leg onto her console, and reached out of the ship toward me.

I grabbed her hand.

With a yank, she tugged us both down toward her ship. There was a copilot seat behind hers that was empty. I slid down into the seat and pulled George onto my lap. Above us, the canopy was already closing again.

“Where to, boss?” Keladry asked.

“Station. Max thrust.” I couldn’t tell if George was still breathing or not. We didn’t have time to get him groundside. We’d need to stabilize him here in space.

“We’re risking giving away the Hawk,” she warned. But she was already firing up her thrusters. Acceleration grabbed hold of us as the ship shot toward the station at a speed that would be reckless for just about any other pilot.

“It’s George,” I said. We’d have to take the chance. The fighter program was absolutely secret. Not even George was aware the damned fighters had been built. Thomas didn’t know. It was as need-to-know as my original armed ships had been. Because it was my ace against Earth, if they attacked sooner than we thought they would.

It was starting to look like that was a real possibility.

“Just get us in there,” I said. “Then get out as soon as you can.”

It would have to be enough. George was too important to the future of Mars. If I had to give away my ace to save him, so be it.

Chapter 6

Thomas Stein

Word about the attack on Mars Station reached me about the same time I arrived in Earth’s orbit. I wasn’t sure which emotion hit me harder - worry for my father, or a strong desire to strangle the man.

He’d done it again. He must have known that the attack was coming, and he’d shipped me out just in time to avoid it. But of course he had stayed behind to deal with the threat. It was infuriating. Would he ever take me seriously enough to believe that I could handle myself in a crisis? I had a feeling that he was always going to try to get me out of harm’s way, no matter the cost. If I’d been there, maybe I could have helped. Maybe the station wouldn’t have been bombed.

Hell, maybe there was nothing I could have done. But at least I’d have been able to try.

Someday he was going to push me off to safety and it was going to cost us too much. I hoped that hadn’t been what just happened. Not knowing the full situation was the worst. All I could find were initial news reports about the attack. Dad still hadn’t actually called to update me personally. That wasn’t necessarily bad news; he was good at responding to a crisis, but not always so great when it came to thinking someone might be worried about him.

I had half a mind to turn the ship around and head home. My co-pilot wasn’t hearing a word of it, though. Acres was holding his ground against every argument to return that I could come up with.

“You’ve got your orders,” he said.

“Chief, you’ve broken Dad’s orders more times than I can count.”

“Yeah, when he was wrong,” the big man chuckled. “But he’s not. And you know it. So do your job, and let the admiral do his.”

Chief Acres had been Dad’s friend for…well longer than I’d been alive, anyway. Hell, he’d half raised me as a teen while Dad was off running the company. I wasn’t thrilled to see him sitting in the courier ship when I boarded. He was obviously sent along as a nursemaid. But it wasn’t all bad. Acres and I got along just fine. Most of the time, anyway.

I gave him an exasperated sigh. “How do we even know he’s still alive? It’s not like he called to let us know.”

“If he did, it would blow your cover. You’re supposed to be mad at him, right?” Acres said. “Don’t worry. That man is damned hard to kill.”

“Nobody is going to believe that I am suddenly a petulant child,” I groused.

“Then stop acting like one,” he snapped.

He was right. I wanted to be in on the action, and I was hurt that I’d been set aside. But I did have a job to do, and in light of the attack on Mars Station it might be even more critical than Dad had thought when he sent me out here.

“So you’re still dead set on doing this?” I asked.

“Unless you’re too chicken,” he said, giving me a toothy smile.

I had to grin back at that. “Never.”

“Ah, too bad. I gotta say, I’m not loving this one myself,” he said. “Too much damned cloak and dagger. Give me a straight up fight any day.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” I said. I opened a channel to ground control. I’d already had the computer send them our destination and vector, but it was still traditional to talk to a person when landing. “This is Skylance, on approach.”

“You’re cleared,” they replied over the radio. “Welcome back to Earth, Mr. Stein.”

That startled me. I wasn’t used to being called Mr. Stein - that was my father’s name. I supposed I was going to need to get familiar with the idea fast. I started the ship into a descent vector, and pretty much let the computer take over from there. We had to have our angle just right. Too sharp and we’d glance off the atmosphere. Too deep and we’d build up a lot of heat. It might not burn the ship to a crisp, but it would do a lot of damage. I was a good hand at the controls, but I was still glad to have the computer.

“Thomas, I’m seeing a lot of company on the radar. You sure ground control cleared our path?” Acres asked.

I scanned the console. It looked like normal traffic to me. But there were two small ships on what looked like an intercept path.

“Is it still paranoia if they really are out to get you?” I asked.

“Nope. It’s how you stay alive.”

I watched the screen. Those ships were still closing. I opened the link to ground control. “Control, we’re seeing two ships running awfully close to us. Can you warn them off or send us a new vector?”

There was a long pause. “We see them, Skylance. We’re attempting to redirect them now.”

I wasn’t going to sit there doing nothing. I had resources here on Earth. Working through my console it only took a few seconds to get a priority uplink to Stein corporate computers. I routed the radar data through to them. They’d be able to identify the craft following us easily enough.

“Those ships are falling in right behind us,” Acres warned.

“I see them.” It couldn’t be a coincidence. First a bomb on Mars Station, then this welcoming committee here on Earth for me? I didn’t wait for the ID on our pursuers. With the touch of a button, I flipped the ship off autopilot and took control. “Hang on. This is going to get bumpy.”

I dropped the ship into a straight dive, nose directly toward the ground. It shimmied and bucked a bit as we hit the upper atmosphere. We weren’t going to be able to continue this sort of descent too long, but maybe we could lose the other ships.

“Missiles!” Acres called out. “They’re firing. Launching countermeasures.”

I gritted my teeth together. The courier had some basic defenses, but it wasn’t armed. And all those ships had to do was get lucky with one missile.

We were still dropping like a stone. On my radar, I watched both ships enter the dive after us. The console finally gave me a display on what they were. These weren’t spaceships at all. They were high altitude fighter planes. They must have really been pushing their limits to get as high as they had.

That was good and bad news. The bad news was, they were going to be a lot more maneuverable than we were once we got down into regular air. The good news was they weren’t designed to handle re-entry stresses. I was about to stress them a lot.

“Hang on,” I said. I fired the thrusters on full blast, giving them everything they had. The ion drive we used in space was useless here. But the courier was designed to land and able to handle some flying about on a planet. I could manage Mach 2 in the thing on a good day. With the gravity assist of our dive I was betting I could beat that.

The fighters chasing me could handle a lot more. They were made for speed. But I was gambling they couldn’t take the heat.

“Decoys took out the first salvo,” Acres said. “But they’ve fired two more missiles. Impact in fifteen seconds.”

More than enough time. I watched the external temperature gauges. They were already sitting at five hundred degrees Celsius - and rising. A few more seconds and they’d hit six hundred degrees. That had to be enough. I pulled back hard on the controls, firing the braking thrusters as I did. My ship started a slow swooping motion, coming out of the dive with a load groan of stressed metal as the ship exceeded all its build tolerances.

The missiles shot past us and disintegrated a moment later, little blooms of heat that vanished in an instant. Behind us, the fighters attempted to follow us through the maneuver. Just like I’d known they would.

Those fighters were made of aluminum alloy. It was treated to deal with tremendous speeds while they were in flight, but it was never designed for high-g maneuvers with so much heat. Their wings had to be bordering on melting even before they tried to pull out of the dive, and they both pulled up too quickly, trying to follow our course.

The blips vanished from our radar. I winced, knowing what had happened. Their wings would have sheared off from the heat and stress, and then the rest of the fighter would have exploded a moment later. At least it had been fast. And it wasn’t like I had picked a fight with them.

I exhaled slowly. My hands were shaking in reaction. If I’d kept going another couple of seconds, my ship might have suffered the same fate. As it was, my entire console was lit up with warning lights. We’d suffered some serious damage. I brought the ship back to a level path and then let the computer take back over again. The ship was a bit beat up, but we’d make it to the ground in one piece.

“Good job, Thomas,” Acres said softly.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“Still think the Old Man sent you to safety?”

I didn’t know if that was Dad’s intent or not. But it was very clear to me: if Mars was the frying pan, then Earth was the fire. And we were heading right into the middle of it.

Chapter 7

Thomas Stein

We touched down right next door to the same facility I’d used as a base of operations during Dad’s trial. The spot had a lot going for it. It was relatively out of the way in rural western Massachusetts. There was the fact that I knew the place well - I’d had to defend it against an attack once so I was pretty sure I could do so again if I needed to. The compound had been rebuilt after that event, and fortified so that it was something of a stronghold. It wasn’t like I’d be living in NORAD - but it was the closest thing a civilian version could get.

Besides, I wasn’t worried about a missile strike taking me out. I was on the ground now, on United States soil. Even enemies from the UN would have to walk a little more carefully.

The attack in orbit was worrying me. It was technically in space. Even though we’d been on approach to US airspace at the time, it wasn’t in the US jurisdiction. The UN was supposed to be policing space, and they weren’t answering my calls.

That wasn’t a shock to me. But then I knew a lot more than the average person did about the man in charge of the UN these days. Choi had succeeded Shaunesey as UN president. Officially, Shaunesey had died due to a heart attack when terrorists attacked the prison where my father had been held.

But Dad had watched Choi inject Shaunesey with a drug that had induced the heart attack. Then Choi tried to kill my father as well. It didn’t take. Dad is notoriously hard to kill. Choi had played his hand well though. We knew that he had created the pirate threat as a bid to take over the Earth. And when Dad foiled him, he tried to frame my father for Shaunesey death in a bid to take over the UN.

We’d messed up the frame-up operation, but Choi had still ended up in charge. The man was ruthless and deadly. And he was pretty much in charge of the planet. The US was the one place that still put up any serious resistance to UN policies, and that was more out of stubbornness and spite than any real power.

Luckily I still had a few friends who might help me out. That was the other reason for my choice of location. The compound was a short airship hop to New York City. I might be able to get some assistance from US personnel working in the UN building there.

I stepped out of the Skylance and onto the snowy grass. I’d forgotten that it was winter here and shivered. In space and on Mars, climate is what you want it to be. Down here? A light dusting of snow covered everything. The wind was brisk and cold out of the west. I beat a fast trot toward the main building, Acres trailing behind me.

“I’m going to need an air car,” I said into my wrist com. “Taking a quick trip to New York.”

“It’ll be ready in fifteen minutes,” came the reply. “Anything else, sir?”

“Yup. Who’s in charge of security here?” I asked.

“Mr. Bolton.”

“Have him meet me inside, please,” I said. I wanted to see the state of the facility and update the guy on what was going on.

The snow blown up from our landing was still settling to the ground when I reached the door. I was trying hard not to shiver. I definitely needed to add some time to get into more climate appropriate clothing onto my schedule.

A man was opening the door for me as I arrived. He was a tad taller than me - maybe six feet, and about thirty. Clean shaven, with a military look. He dressed the part too. Building security had worn black combat fatigues the last time I was here, and it looked like the style hadn’t changed.

“I’m Adam Bolton, Mr. Stein,” he said. “Good to meet you. I understand you had some trouble on the way down?”

He was already in the loop, then. I made a mental check mark in the plus column for his competence. “Yeah, but nothing we couldn’t handle. The ship will need a once over, though.”

“We’ve got maintenance crews on their way here who will take care of that. I understand you’re on a tight schedule?”

“Yes,” I said. “I need to snag a coat and go, I’m afraid.” I had in mind to hit the ground running. Back on Mars, it looked like we still had plenty of time. But with the attack on Mars Station and then on my ship during our descent, it was clear that time was something in short supply. “Any news from Mars?”

Bolton frowned. “No, sir. Just the news feeds. Nothing from the company at all. It’s odd.”

“It means Dad is alive,” I said, smiling. He looked confused for a moment. “If he was dead, they’d be calling me. If he was incapacitated, they’d be calling me. But since they’re not calling me, he’s all right.”

“It might mean they were hit pretty hard though,” Acres growled. He stepped in out of the snow behind me. “If he’s having the company on Mars go radio silent, there’s news he doesn’t want leaked.”

“Bolton, this is Chief Acres,” I said.

“We’ve met,” Bolton said with a wry grin.

“Oh?” Acres said, raising an eyebrow.

“Combatives class. A number of years ago. You had a mean right hook,” Bolton said, rubbing his jaw at the memory.

“Still do,” Acres said, returning the smile.

They shook hands. I relaxed a little. If they were going to get along, that was going to make my job a lot easier.

“I’d like you both to go over the security procedures in place here while I’m gone. I picked this spot because it’s good. Make it the best.” Acres seemed about to object, but I held up a hand to stop him. “I’ll bring someone from security. But I need you two working together on this.”

Bolton looked like he was going to object as well. I wanted to sigh, but instead tried to maintain a stern look at both of them. As if Acres wasn’t bad enough, now I had two nursemaids? I was torn somewhere between frustration and chuckling out loud.

Acres broke the silence first. “Better listen to the kid,” he said. “He’s got a lot of the Old Man in him.”

“I’ll get you a coat, sir,” Bolton said.

I was in the air ten minutes later, speeding on my way to New York City. The car was warmed up before I arrived, for which I was intensely grateful. Even with the coat, the weather here sucked. I was feeling homesick for Mars, and I’d been back on my birth planet for less than an hour. It was the strangest feeling.

It was time to warm up my weapon of choice for today. I whipped out my tablet and quickly connected it to the local data networks. From there I linked into the UN building and set up our arrival notice with their air control. Flying an air car onto the UN roof without authorization was a good way to get shot down.

Then it was time to look into what Choi had been up to. Of course, I’d watched some of the news broadcasts from Earth. I’d seen that he was given the presidency, which came with an awesome amount of power. But what precisely had he been up to with all that power?

The biggest work in progress was the UN Navy. It had once been a small and toothless thing. Two ships with no real weapons; it was more of a police force than a military one. Both of those ships had been blown to bits in their first engagement with the pirates - if you could even call the one sided exchange an engagement.

This Navy was different. I could tell that they were laying the keels for a lot of ships, and that these were going to be warships. What I needed to know was how close they were to being finished. That was tough.

There were only a few really big astrospace industry companies in the world, and Stein Industries was one of the larger ones. My Dad’s company had logically been seen as a security risk, so most of the contracts for work had gone to other companies. But it was a small world, and there was too much work being done on too many ships to keep Stein Industries totally out of the business. We’d had contracts to supply a lot of the parts and software for astrogation, for example. Fairly benign stuff that wasn’t going to give away any major secrets.

It still told me more than Choi probably wanted me to know. I had a good feel for the parts going into a warship, so I knew there had to be at least seven being built. I also knew that the astrogation software wouldn’t be a pressing need during construction. The UN Navy had asked us to fast track the software licenses last month, a request that cost them a chunk of extra money. Those packages hadn’t been due for three more months. What had changed? Why the sudden hurry?

All this was still buzzing around in my head as we came in for a landing on the UN roof. The air car settled down gently. I hadn’t caught the security guy’s name, but I ought to catch it so that I could give him good review on his flying. I closed up my tablet and zipped up my coat. It was going to be chilly out there, even if I was only in the wind for a few minutes.

Then doors to the rooftop elevator burst open, and ten armed men spilled out. They were wearing the uniform of the UN Security Forces, and they were all armed with assault rifles. Before I could react, they had fanned out around my air car, weapons at the ready.

Chapter 8

Nicholas Stein

I tapped my foot impatiently on the elevator floor, waiting for the doors to open. Mars Station might not be safe, but I was damned sure the bottom levels of my corporate headquarters on the surface were. Anything short of a kinetic strike wouldn’t even touch us. And we had a little while left before we had to worry about anything like that - although I had a sense that the sand was leaving our hourglass more swiftly than I’d thought.

The doors finally snapped open. The bottom floor was my command center, and it hummed with cool activity. Everyone in the room was a hand picked professional. Most of them had a military background. I felt at home down here, maybe more so here than anywhere but the bridge of a fighting vessel. I was going to be back in that seat sooner than I’d expected, so I figured I would try to enjoy the relative comfort of having ground under my feet while I could.

Keladry was waiting for me already. After saving George and I from the gunman, she’d hauled us in to the station, where doctors had worked furiously to stabilize George. They’d managed, but he was still in critical condition. While they’d been working on him Keladry had somehow managed to make the Hawk fighter vanish and then showed back up in a shuttle. She ferried us both down to the surface at a speed that even I found somewhat uncomfortable.

George was now ensconced in the best intensive care unit on Mars - mine. The doctors there would fight to keep him breathing. He’d only been hit by one bullet, but the damage had been devastating. I’d posted a platoon of security around the hospital to keep the place secure. Nobody was getting in there without authorization.

Keladry Flynn had impressed me. I knew she was an excellent pilot. I’d seen her in action myself, during the Battle for Earth. Then I’d run her through a battery of tests before I placed her in the Hawk program. It hadn’t shocked me when she tested out as the best of the pilots in the program and ended up their squadron leader. But the combination of cool ability to assess risk and take the necessary action at lightning speed was a rare asset. She’d performed flawlessly out there by Mars Station.

I could see why Thomas was smitten with the woman. He had no idea that I’d co-opted her for my secret project, of course. He didn’t even know the Hawks existed. He was going to be furious when he found out. But I couldn’t risk letting the information fall into enemy hands, and he was definitely in harms way back there on Earth.

“Flynn,” I said to her. “Thanks again for the outstanding work.”

She gave me a small nod. Another bonus about her. She knew how to read people, and knew I wasn’t done.

“Keep your cool,” I warned. “Thomas was attacked on his way into Earth’s atmosphere. He’s safe and unhurt.”

I’d gotten the word about the attack when I reached the ground. The timing was very close... Choi’s people had clearly tried to catch us all at roughly the same time. They’d managed to coordinate two strikes in the orbits of different planets well enough to hit within hours of each other. It was impressive.

That Thomas had managed to survive the attack so easily was also impressive, but it didn’t surprise me. My son seemed to have a knack for getting himself both into and out of tight corners.

Keladry took a sharp breath, and then let it out again. “He’s fine, though?”

“Damn it,” I replied. “No, he’s not fine. I’ve sent him into the middle of a bigger hornet’s nest than I ever intended.” For the hundredth time since the bomb had gone off I considered radioing for him to return to Mars. Sending my son right into the middle of Choi’s strong point had turned out to not be my brightest move. I’d thought we had longer. I had been so sure we had months left before they made a move against us.

But I wasn’t sure he’d come home even if I ordered him to. I’d given him a job, and he’d stay there and do it. If I called him home now, he’d think I was coddling him, trying to protect him from danger. And the worst thing was, he’d be right.

“Thom’s smart, sir,” Keladry said. “He might be surrounded by vipers. But I think they’re going to bite off more than they can chew trying to deal with him.”

“I hope you’re right. Frankly, we need the information I sent him after.” I drummed my fingers on a console while I thought. “Now more than ever.”

“You think the bomb was just a first shot,” she said. She didn’t frame it as a question.

“By itself, maybe not. But they hit us here - and then Thomas there - it screams of a coordinated attack. They’re going to blame it on leftover pirates who were never caught or something, probably. But Choi will know that I know better. It means he’s making his move soon. Maybe even right now.”

I wondered about that. It had to mean their ships were much closer to completion than I’d thought. Maybe even finished. For all I knew, they were getting ready to ship out right now. We’d get advance warning when they left Earth’s orbit, but if they left the dock the UN had built there and headed straight for Mars, we’d have precious little time to prepare.

But what about power? They were supposedly working on cold fusion reactors, which would make Earth independent from Mars for its energy needs. Their desperate need for uranium was what I suspected held back Choi’s fist even more than their fleet’s construction pace. But my best engineers had said they should still be months away from finishing the trial reactor. Perhaps even a year or more. And that’s assuming it worked at all, since no previous attempt had succeeded.

“Sir, incoming call from the Council.”

I looked up from my thoughts. That was Brenda Cobert speaking. Captain Cobert now, since she was officially part of the Mars Space Service. Everyone in this room had served with me for a long while. It was the inner sanctum of my operations. There was no way I was taking chances with a bomber getting in here.

“Put them on the main screen,” I said.

One wall of the room was a massive display unit. It had been showing local Mars space until now. It flashed dark for a moment, and then the image was replaced with a video feed from the Mars Council chambers. They were about a hundred miles west and five hundred feet up from where I was standing. Most of the colony was on or near the surface of Mars. The stronghold I was standing in was the only place dug in so deep.

“Admiral Stein, thank you. I know you have to be busy right now, so we won’t take too much of your time. How is the President?”

The council was made up of thirteen people, elected by the populace. The thirteenth was the speaker - a wiry old face I knew damned well.

“He’s still breathing, Tabby, but he’s going to be in my ICU for a while,” I replied.

Tabitha Nelson was an institution out here. The woman had run the comm center on Mars station since its inception. She’d spent decades haranguing pilots making their way in and out, keeping the lanes clear and traffic flowing smoothly. Now traffic control was mostly automated, but that hadn’t always been the case.

After the Battle for Mars, she’d said that things on the station were too busy for her and decided to retire down on the surface. She’d promptly been elected to the newly founded council, and found herself unanimously appointed to the position of Council Speaker. Which meant she only voted when there was a tie - but her opinion held great weight regardless.

She nodded. “You know we’re going to need an interim president while he recovers.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Pick a good one. I have a feeling we’re going to need a modern day Winston Churchill here pretty soon.” George was a man like that. He’d be damned hard to replace. Privately, I was half hoping they’d give Tabby the job. She had the guts and the will for it. She was old, though. Pushing ninety, I’d heard. The council might see that as a reason to make someone else interim president.

If we’d only had a bit more time, we would have had new elections. George was a shoe-in for winning the president’s seat, but then he’d have had a vice president to replace him. Now we were risking disarray right when we could afford it the least.

“The Council has already picked the replacement,” Tabby said. I could tell from her grin that she was happy with the choice. Maybe they’d give her the job after all?

“You?” I asked. I smiled back. “They couldn’t have picked a better person.”

“Oh, not me,” Tabby said. “You.”

I froze. I knew I hadn’t misheard her, and the implications ran through my head at lightning speed.

“Tabby, I can’t. I’m already running our Navy.”

“Yup, and you’ll keep doing that. We’ve already voted to declare martial law if and when those cruisers Earth is building start coming our way,” she said. “We’re not stupid, Nick. We know what’s coming. This is going to be war to the knife. Earth can’t afford to let the colonies slip away. We can’t go back under their yoke.”

“It’s do or die time, and we see you as the best chance of doing, and not dying,” she said. “I know you’re busy, but we need you to come visit for a short bit. Briefings, oath of office, stuff like that. See you soon.”

The screen went blank.

“Well damn,” I said. I sat down heavily in the chair beside me, the weight of an entire world literally coming to rest on my shoulders.

Chapter 9

Thomas Stein

My driver was already out of the car, and he was sensibly holding his hands above his head trying not to be shot. I hadn’t exited the car yet, so I still had a few options. I didn’t have a side arm with me. Taking a weapon into the United Nations building wasn’t an option, so I’d left it behind at the base. Could I jump into the driver’s seat and take off before they shot the car full of holes? I gauged the distance carefully. It didn’t seem like a good plan. The soldiers outside looked well trained, and a little trigger-happy to my admittedly biased eye.

I decided the best bet would be to try to bullshit my way through the situation.

I press the button to open the air car door. Then I stepped out, hands carefully at my sides where they could see them but very definitely not raised over my head. This move earned me the attention of five muzzles. I could feel the black bores aimed at me like an itch on my skin, and wondered if this was going to get me killed after all. But my hunch was that they wanted me alive, not dead. I needed to be seen as in charge, not as a potential prisoner.

“What is the meaning of this?” I said. “I’m here on official business. What sort of greeting is this?”

“Hands above your head!” one of the men said.

Like hell I would. I walked directly toward the speaker instead. It seemed a safe bet he was the man in charge here. I stopped about two feet away from him - any closer and I think he’d have fired. His gun was aimed at the middle of my chest. He wasn’t that much older than I was, and I could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. This whole situation was making him very uncomfortable. Good. It wasn’t making me happy either. I was acutely aware that if I made one wrong move any one of these men could kill me in an instant.

“What are your orders?” I asked.

“I…” He seemed unsure of himself.

“What are your orders?” I repeated myself.

“You are the son of a known fugitive,” he said. “We have orders to take you into custody for questioning.”

Fugitive? Dad had been condemned to exile from Earth. Which I suppose would make a fugitive, if he ever returned to the planet. But since I didn’t think he had any intention of ever doing so, it wasn’t likely that the question would ever come up. As for myself, I had no intention of letting these men haul me into some interrogation room hidden in the bowels of this building. The last thing dad needed was me as a UN captive. They were not going to use me as a weapon against him.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “You and your men will escort me to Admiral Perrault.” He was an old friend of Dad’s, and the man I was hoping to see here today in the first place. He ought to be able to help me unsnarl this mess.

“Those aren’t my orders, sir,” he said. At least he was calling me sir now.

I was stuck. With my hand to hand training, I could probably close the gap between us and maybe even take his gun away. But then the other soldiers would shoot me. I could let them haul me away, but who knew when or even if I’d be able to get out of this place again. Once Choi had me in his grasp I had a feeling I’d be staying there for a while.

The sound of the roof doors opening caught both our attention. An older man in a Navy dress uniform stepped out into the sunlight, taking in the scene with the glare that would melt ice.

It might have been my lucky day after all. That was Admiral Perrault, and he didn’t seem happy with what he was seeing. Assuming he was still on my side he might have the authority to get me out of this. Right now that seemed like it might be assuming too much.

Everyone seemed frozen in place, waiting to see what the admiral would do. He took a few more steps forward. He gave me the briefest of nods in greeting, and I relaxed a little. But only a little. Those men still hadn’t changed where they were aiming their rifles.

“Admiral. Good to see you. I was just coming to pay my respects when these men detained me,” I said.

“I’ll deal with this lot later,” he said. “Mr. Stein, come with me.”

“Sir, we have orders,” the soldier I’d been speaking with protested.

“And they are now countermanded,” he replied. “Lower your weapons. Now!”

They did as he commanded, but there was more hesitation than I was comfortable with. I had a sense that Perrault wasn’t any happier with it than I was. He was used to being obeyed instantly, and I could see the spark of anger growing behind his eyes at the sluggishness with which his command was followed.

Just what the hell was going on, down here on earth? Sure, this was a UN building. And these were UN troops, while Perrault was US military. But I sensed an underlying hostility that I’d never seen between these two forces before. Perrault was the US military liaison to the United Nations armed forces. Pissing him off should have been very bad for these men’s careers, but they were awfully hesitant about obeying his orders.

Learning what was going on have to wait. First I had to get off this roof. Getting away from this building in one piece was high on my priority list as well.

“Follow me, Thomas,” Perrault said.

Unlike the soldiers, I did as he asked without questioning him. The questions burning in my head could wait until later. He headed back for the doors into the building. It wasn’t my first pick of a direction. I’d have given just about anything to be someplace else right now. Preferably some tens of millions of miles away. But I needed answers, and I’d already risked a lot to get them.

I looked over my shoulder. The soldiers were following us in. My driver made a jerking motion with his hand. He wanted to get the hell out of there, and I couldn’t blame him. I nodded to him, and he climbed back into the air car and started the engine. Better for both of us if he headed back to base. He could let Acres know I’d run into trouble. And if it came down to trying to escape this place, I’d be better off without someone else in tow.

Being who I was might make these men hesitant to shoot me. After all, I could be a useful pawn against my father, if I was captured. I’d be less useful dead. The same couldn’t be said for my driver, and I didn’t want his death on my hands. He took off, and I stepped out of the sunlight into the building. I could only hope that my exit would be less dramatic than my entrance.

Chapter 10

Thomas Stein

The elevator doors snapped open. Directly ahead of us was an enormous American flag. We’d arrived at the US headquarters in the building. I was pretty sure the UN soldiers didn’t have any jurisdiction here. This might be the one place in the entire building where they didn’t. One of them moved as if to follow us, but the admiral’s frosty glare stopped him in his tracks.

“I’ll take it from here,” Perrault said.

The elevator doors closed slowly, cutting off my view of the unhappy looks the soldiers were wearing. My elation was short-lived, however. Perrault turned that same look on me, making me wonder for a moment if I wouldn’t have been safer with the soldiers after all.

“Thanks,” I said. I managed a small smile.

“My office. Now,” Perrault said. He didn’t return the smile.

He ushered me down the short hall and into a plush office. Once we were both inside, he shut the door. I started to speak, but he held one finger to his lips urging me to silence. I kept my mouth shut, curious but willing to wait. Perrault went to his desk and pulled a small device from his drawer. It looked like a black box about the size of a thumb drive, with a single button on it and a pair of diode lights. He pressed the button and placed the object in the middle of his desk. A light flashed red on the device for a few moments, and then winked out to be replaced by a green light. Only then did he seem to relax. He settled into his chair, and motioned me to another seat across the desk from him.

“We can speak freely now,” he said. “This room is bugged. Every room in this building is bugged. But this thing will make it impossible for them to listen in for a while.”

“I gather things are not that great here on Earth?” I asked.

“You might say that,” he replied dryly. “The situation here has been deteriorating ever since you and your father left. I’m sure you’ve followed the reports?”

I nodded. It was vital that we knew what was happening on Earth. And we had precious few resources for gathering information here. Our corporate offices were all suspect, so the security clearances of our people had been cut after Dad’s trial and subsequent escape. Most of our analysis came from the regular news. The media wasn’t perfect, but at least to give us a feel for how things were going.

“They don’t even tell half the story,” he said. “It’s a mess, Thomas. I can’t believe your father sent you down here.”

“Earth is the center of everything,” I said, shrugging. “We have maybe fifty thousand people living on Mars. There’s what, eight billion on earth? What happens here matters.”

“That, and your father’s canny enough to know that the UN can’t afford to let the colonies slip away,” he said. “Since Mars declared independence, there’ve been rumblings. Venus, even Luna. If the UN isn’t careful, they might wind up with a bunch of small independent nations out there in space, instead of colonies they directly govern.”

“I hadn’t realized Mars had made that big impact,” I said.

“Choi is playing it down in the media,” he said. “But the first tremblings of revolution have already started out there. People are thinking that if Mars got away with it, and the UN hasn’t done anything, maybe we can too. Not just in space. It threatens the UN’s authority over the nations of Earth as well.”

I wondered if that was something we might use. The colony on Venus was tiny, compared to the one on Mars. The one on the moon was far too close to Earth. Choi would never let that one go. But if the other colonies wanted independence too, could we help them? Could they help us?

I decided to change the subject, at least for now. “What was that all about, up there on the roof?”

“That’s easy,” he said, leaning forward and steepling his fingers. “Choi sees you as a pawn, Thomas. He sees you as a tool. Maybe as a weapon. Definitely as something he can use against your father.”

“That’s more or less what I was afraid of,” I said. “What do you think I should do?”

“You never should’ve come here,” he said. “My best advice? Go back to Mars. The mess on earth is going to kill you if you stay here.”

“I think I can handle myself pretty well.”

“Like you did on the roof?” he countered.

“I’m not locked up in a UN cell someplace, now am I?” I replied. He opened his mouth to snap something back - probably to tell me it was only because he’d heard about my landing and been able to arrive in time, but I jumped back in before he could. “Admiral, I appreciate you saving my ass back there. It was a calculated risk. Coming to Earth at all was a risk, and coming to see you here was another one. But we need information.”

“About what? About who tried to kill your father and the Mars President the other day?” he asked. He frowned. “I don’t know. And I wish I did. The terrorists had someone forge completely new backgrounds for them. Which takes money, expertise, or usually both. But US Navy intel hasn’t been able to tell me who paid for it yet.”

Because they didn’t know, or because they wouldn’t tell him even if they did? I kept the thought to myself. I wasn’t the only one in a precarious place. If Perrault was coming into this office every day, and the US and UN were as at odds as they seemed, he was sitting in a hot seat himself. One he’d probably just made more risky by helping me.

“That, and what their plan is for the ships they’re building,” I said.

He quirked an eyebrow. “They’re working on ships to defend the planet, in case of another attack like the one you and your father thwarted.”

“You don’t believe that line any more than my father does,” I replied.

Earth had repealed the Lunar Accords faster than any legislation had ever zipped through the UN council. The Accord - which barred any nation from having ships in space, and was signed by all Earth-bound nations - had left Earth helpless when someone had managed to secretly arm a bunch of ships. My father had managed to arm a pair of them too, and together he and I had fought the pirates. And won, by a hair.

But now Mars was an independent nation, and the only UN member state that hadn’t signed the Accord. George had flatly refused to sign them, and he had a good case. If someone had been able to illegally arm ships before, nothing was stopping someone else from doing it again. Other nations, the US among them, wanted out of the Accord entirely. But the UN still had control over uranium supplies from Mars - that was a condition of Mars being accepted as a member state. Which meant they controlled energy production on Earth.

The result was the UN was the only Earth-based power that would be allowed to build a fleet. Not everyone was happy about that, my father least among them.

“You know Choi was behind the pirates in the first place,” I said. He’d been the one orchestrating the entire affair behind the scenes. And now he was the President of the UN, and building a new fleet.

“There’s no proof of that,” Perrault replied. “Without proof, the accusation is useless.”

“I know that!” I said. I raised my voice more than I’d intended to, but it was frustrating.

“You have to leave,” Perrault said. “Now. Today. Thomas, you’re the son of an old friend. Trust me, go.”

“I…” I wasn’t sure what it was I would have replied. That I couldn’t leave? That Dad needed me to stay here and find out more? That I wasn’t scared? Which would have been a lie. I was terrified. The more I heard about Earth, the less this place seemed like home and the more it felt like some alien world filled with enemies. I’d been born here, but I was no longer of this world.

Before I could say anything else though, Perrault’s little anti-bug gizmo began flashing red. I took that as a bad sign and stopped talking. He tapped the button on the thing again, and the light went out. Then he slipped it back into his desk drawer. All of the formality came back at once. Whatever protection that device gave, it must have stopped working.

“I’ll arrange for transport to take you back to where you’re staying, Thomas. I hope you’ll keep in mind what we’ve spoken of.”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. I caught the double message. He really meant it - don’t pass along what I’d said here to anyone that might leak it back to Choi’s people. I nodded my understanding to him and turned to go.

Chapter 11

Thomas Stein

The air car Perrault ordered to take me back to my compound was driven by a taciturn old commander who looked like he was pissed from the moment I met him. Probably angry about playing chauffeur at his age and rank. I couldn’t blame him, and I welcomed the silence on the ride. I had a lot of thinking to do before I landed.

He radioed ahead shortly before we arrived to let security know we were inbound. I swear those were the only words he spoke the entire trip. He landed the car, barely spinning down the rotors enough for me to jump out. The door slammed shut behind me and he took off again, blasting me with dust.

Which was about how I felt overall, after the day I’d had. I’d hoped for something out of the meeting with Perrault. Some sort of information, a hint even about what the UN was plotting next. I suppose he had given me something. He’d told me to leave, which meant that as dangerous as my visit to Earth had been so far, he felt it was going to get a lot worse if I stuck around.

I walked back toward the compound building, trying not to feel dejected. Maybe it would be best to head for home. If the courier was repaired and refueled, we could be away from here in a flash. I found I missed being around people who weren’t trying to kill me. I felt like I was surrounded by enemies down here. It wasn’t fun.

Acres met me at the door. “Was worried about you, when the driver came back solo.”

“I sent him home,” I said.

“He told us. He also told us what happened up on the roof,” Acres said.

“I’ll fill you in on the gory details. I think it’s about time to get out of here, Chief.”

His eyebrows went up, but he didn’t comment. I tapped my watch. As soon as I was in range, it connected back into the local computer net. Another great piece of tech that I loved. My watch - and Dad’s - could do a lot more than most smartwatches could. While it was on my wrist and reading my biometrics, I had damned near unlimited access to any Stein computer system. It was a handy tool.

“Bolton? Meet Acres and I in the conference room, please,” I said into the device.

“Be right there, sir,” he replied, his voice tinny through the small speaker.

He was already waiting by the time Acres and I arrived, sitting in one of the chairs. A long table dominated the room. It had been designed for much larger meeting than this, but it would do.

“The room is clean?” I asked. If Choi had Perrault bugged, he certainly wouldn’t be above bugging my offices if he could.

“Just scanned it, sir,” Bolton replied. He held up a small box that looked a lot like the one Perrault had in his desk drawer. I had a hunch there were a lot of those being used these days.

I filled both men in on everything that had happened. My reception, Perrault showing up to rescue me, and our meeting afterward. Including the admiral’s warning that it was time to get the heck out of here.

“And I have the feeling he might be right,” I said. “I’m sensing hostility between the US and UN forces. There are ships in orbit that might be getting ready to head to Mars any day. And the entire UN building sounds like it’s one big bug-infested eavesdropping mess.”

“I dug up a few more bits while you were gone,” Acres said.

Bolton coughed politely.

“We dug up a few more things,” Acres amended with a growl. “Adam’s a good hand with a computer hack, it seems.”

“Legacy of a misspent youth,” he said with a small grin.

“I’m sure. Just using your powers for good now, hmm?” I asked.

“Of course, sir,” he replied, his voice bland.

I grinned. I liked the man. “What did you find?”

“Satellite pictures,” Bolton said. “Of the UN space dock.”

I gaped. “Nobody has those.” That had been a major problem for us. The UN was making damned sure that no satellites were swinging past the dock, precisely so that no pictures were taken. At all. Dad had every hacker and snoop he knew looking for a good shot of the place, but all he’d been able to get were pictures of a dull blob of metal from a long way away.

“It seems the US Air Force might have a few satellites lithe enough to slip past UN security after all,” Bolton said. He waved his hand, and the air above the table lit up with a holographic display. And there it was.

The UN space dock wasn’t what I’d pictured at all. I’d imagined something like Dad’s R&D station. A small hab unit, and a couple of berths in space that were basically a box of girders. You’d assemble the new ship inside the space of the girders. This was something else.

It was huge, first off. It was easily four times the size of Mars Station. But Mars Station was a big wheel that people lived in. Ships docked along the inside of the wheel, where the spin-induced artificial gravity was lowest. Mars Station could dock as many as a half dozen ships at a time inside the hollow of the wheel.

This station looked like most of it was taken up by docks. If there was a habitable area, it was only on the outer rim. The entire inside was taken up by a massive array of docking spaces, dozens of little boxes that a ship could slip into. Or be built in. And an awful lot of those little boxes looked like they had ships in them.

“How old is this image?” I asked, trying to count the occupied docks. There were at least sixteen that I could be sure of, but it looked like some of them might be half constructed still. The image was grainy, so it was hard to tell for certain.

“Time stamp was last month,” Bolton said.

“We need to get this information to Dad,” I said to Acres.

“There’s more,” Acres said. “I hit up some old Navy buddies. Seems like the UN is on a hiring spree.”

“Not surprising, if they’re building as many ships as it looks like they are,” I said.

“Yeah. But what is surprising is they aren’t just hiring ex-military. Scuttlebutt says the US Navy is loaning them some warm bodies, too,” he said. He took a deep breath and let it out. “And officers.”

I hissed in frustration. If that were true, then Perrault surely would have known about it. Which meant he deliberately hadn’t told me. What else hadn’t he said? Worse, if the US Navy was backing this new UN space force, how deep in it was Perrault himself? He was one of the few top ranking men with any experience in space. If I were looking for officers to recruit, he’d be right at the top of my list.

“He’s got to be in on it, then,” I said aloud.

“Perrault?” Acres replied. “Yeah, that’d be my bet, too.”

“Dad needs to know.”

“We can place a call to Mars, jet this info out to him,” Bolton said. “But even with good encryption, we don’t know who else might be able to intercept and decode it.”

“No, better to bring it ourselves. I think we’ve done enough here. This balloon is going to go up any time now,” I said. I thought about that a moment. All of the pieces were in place - why wasn’t Choi already making his move?

“What’s he waiting for?” I wondered aloud.

“An excuse?” Acres said. “He can’t just go declare war with no reason.”

“It wouldn’t take much more to manufacture one, now that your father is President of Mars,” Bolton said.

“What?” I asked.

“The media is all over it,” Bolton said. “Clarke was badly injured in the bombing. He’s alive, but until he’s healed up enough to take up his duties again, Mr. Stein has been named interim President.”

“Choi’s been all over it,” Acres growled. “Hinting that it was a military coup, and now the Mad Bomber is in charge of Mars - and the uranium, and the Mars fleet.”

“Damn it, Dad and I just saved this planet,” I said. “Are people believing his shit?”

“Earth got hammered by the attacks. Whole cities wiped out,” Bolton said grimly. “There’s a lot of scared people out there. It doesn’t take a lot of work to change someone from being afraid to being angry.”

My thoughts were racing. It was the perfect setup. By surviving, Dad was implicated in George’s injury. By taking charge like he usually did in a crisis, he was easy to use as Choi’s boogeyman. All the UN would need now is a spark. And a small spark is easy to manufacture.

My smartwatch chimed with an incoming message. I glanced down out of habit to check it, and froze. Of all the people I’d thought would be trying to contact me right now, he had to be lowest on the list. I stood staring at the message for a long moment.

“Thomas? What’s up?” Acres asked at last. “Who messaged you?”

“It’s Choi,” I replied. “He wants to meet.”

Chapter 12

Nicholas Stein

The chair wasn’t comfortable. For the hundredth time, I shifted my weight in the seat, trying to achieve some relief. I knew it wasn’t the seat’s fault. It was mine. I wanted to be out of this office and back out in space where I belonged.

George’s desk - my desk, for the time being - was covered with paperwork. There was what seemed like a never-ending stream of tasks to accomplish. Fortunately I’d delegated most of it right back to the Council. They’d be the ones really governing Mars, at least until George was well enough to take the post again. I’d told Tabby as much, when she insisted I take on the title of President.

“No shit,” she’d replied. We’d let the matter rest at that.

I looked across at my new chief aide - Keladry Flynn. I still wasn’t sure when she’d become my right hand, but damned if she wasn’t. There were only so many people I could trust completely to have my back, to be on my side no matter what happened. Flynn gave me that feeling. Her quick wit and inability to keep her mouth shut when she disagreed with superior officers would have sunk her in some Navies. But not in mine.

It was much easier to see why Thomas had been so smitten with her, now that I’d worked with her for a while. If we all survived this mess, I was going to owe him an apology. I smiled ruefully. It wasn’t every day that I was so completely wrong about someone.

“You’ve screwed this one up by the numbers, haven’t you?” Flynn asked me.

“What?” I was startled. Her question had tracked entirely too close to what I’d been thinking about, and I wasn’t sure what she was referring to at first.

She pointed at the tablet she held. “This data says we’re fucked. Admiral.” She added the last word as an afterthought. But at least she had added it.

“We were pretty sure that we had more time. Something has changed. Some factor we weren’t considering before.” Personally, I thought they’d simply managed to get the experimental cold fusion reactors running much more quickly than anyone had estimated. “But why doesn’t matter. What we should be looking at is what to do with the situation.”

“What we can bring to defend against an attack?” she asked.

“Yes. Worst case - suppose they launch their ships right now. What have we got?” I knew the numbers by heart. I’d been over them a few times in my head already. But it never hurt to get a second person working the problem.

She studied the tablet a few moments. “We have no assets at Mars except my Hawk. Everything else is at the R&D station.”

“Which is only a few hours away. We can bring the ships here long before anything arrives from Earth,” I said.

“The Defender and Excalibur are under refit in the R&D station, and the Constellation is at Mars Station for refit,” she said, ticking off her fingers as she named them off. “They can be ready in a few weeks. But I don’t think we have that long.”

“Which leaves the Hermes,” she said. “And the rest of the Hawks.”

“Yes,” I said, smiling.

“I don’t know why you’re grinning. If they launch tomorrow, we have one ship. Against at least six.”

I noted that she wasn’t underestimating the size of the enemy fleet. They’d let us know there were six ships by buying the six astrogation packages from Stein Industries. That didn’t mean they only had six ships. Rather, it implied they wanted us to think they had six ships. They might have only two, if they were trying to make their fleet seem bigger than it really was. They might have a dozen.

My line of thinking was veering toward the higher end of the scale. They’d attacked Mars Station and tried to kill Thomas when he went to Earth. They were coming at us soon, which meant they felt confident they had enough ships to do the job. Enough to take out the three ships they knew I had, plus whatever else I’d been able to cobble together.

“I’m smiling because you are right. You are dead on target,” I said. “In terms of raw ships, we’re grossly outnumbered. I took a risk when I threw all our production effort into the Hermes instead of concentrating on the other ships first.”

I punched some keys on the desk, and a display lit up. “Look at the graph.”

It showed our production rate - how many combat ready ships Mars could have ready versus how many Earth could prepare, over time. I’d built this graph right after we’d returned home to Mars, when I was still trying to figure out how we were going to keep this fledgling democracy alive.

There was an immediate spike on the Mars side of the graph: three ships, the three we already had, being repaired. And we’d done quick fixes on all three, because we knew some of the pirate vessels had escaped. We had to be ready in case they struck again.

Earth’s line showed no growth at all for three months. Then the line shot upward. A year in, and Earth had a theoretical production of three dozen ships. After two years, they could have as many as three score. In contrast, Mars might have been able to produce a dozen ships in the same time.

“We were always outmatched. There are about eight billion people living on Earth. They can afford to burn more resources than we can,” I said.

“So you built Hermes,” she replied.

“That’s why I built Hermes, yes. There are only a few people who’ve fought a battle in space and lived. Most of them are here with us,” I paused. “I am counting on the generals and admirals of Earth to fulfill an old military adage.”

“And what’s that?” she asked.

“Generals are always condemned to fight the last war,” I said. “We have to be better than that. We need to win this war.”

I stood up. It felt good to be out of the chair. “Computer, display system map,” I said.

The visual flashed out and came back with a three dimensional display of local Mars space. It showed the planet, the moons - and my hidden station. I traced a line through the image, and it glowed red where my finger passed, connecting the station and Mars with a swooping arc.

“I want you to go bring the Hermes back here,” I said. “All of the Hawks as well. Make it a long, slow course. Earth might see her depart the station. I’m sure they’ve discovered where it is by now. But I don’t want them to know precisely where she is. Bring her into a wide orbit around Mars.”

“I can do that,” Flynn said, standing. “Anything else?”

I shook my head. “I’d say ask them to hurry repairs on the other ships, except I already know they’re working as fast as they can.” I had a feeling there simply wasn’t going to be time to get them into the fight.

I could see her wanting to ask about Thomas. I needed her head in the game on this. The last thing I wanted was for her to go dashing off to his rescue. Time to take some of the worry off her mind.

“I’m going to call Earth,” I said. “See if I can defuse things, slow Choi down. And I think it’s time to bring Thomas home. We’re going to need him here.”

Her shoulders relaxed. Fractionally, but I noticed it. It warmed me a little to be able to give her at least that much.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll bring her back here for you,” she said.

She left, and I sat down in the damned chair again, thinking about sand passing through an hourglass, faster every moment.

Chapter 13

Thomas Stein

Acres and Bolton both tried to talk me out of the meeting. They were convinced it was a trap. And I didn’t doubt they were correct. The whole thing smelled. But at the same time, this was a chance to beard the lion in his den. I might never get another shot at meeting Choi face to face. The idea had enormous appeal to me, and Choi probably had a good enough psych profile done of me to know that.

The invitation was simply written. There was a banquet planned for the United Nations building in New York this evening. Choi would be in attendance. It seemed he’d heard about my ‘difficulties’ earlier today, and wanted to tender his personal apology to me.

And if I believed that, he probably had swampland someplace he wanted to sell me, too.

The thing is, he didn’t need me for anything crucial. Yes, I could be captured and used as a potential threat against my father. But it seemed unlikely that he would snatch me up at such a public venue, not after personally inviting me. No, this was something else. What, I wasn’t quite sure. I intended to find out.

I went prepared for trouble. I couldn’t bring any weapons in with me. The building had scanners that would pick up just about anything I could haul along. But I grabbed a few toys to stick in my pocket in case of problems. Things that wouldn’t trip the scanners.

“Have the ship ready to go at a moment’s notice,” I said to Acres before I took off.

“I will. You ping me, we’ll be there,” he said.

“I do this, then we go home,” I said.

“Better believe it. The sooner the better,” Acres replied. “This stinks, Thomas. Be careful.”

I shrugged. What else could I say to him? I looked over at Bolton. “You’ve done good work here,” I said. “You’re welcome to come along with us.”

He shook his head. “I have family here. Have to stay. But I’ll help Acres get the ship ready.”

And then I was off in the company air car again, jetting back toward New York for the second time today. This time, I was dressed much more formally. It was a black tie deal. I had no idea where Bolton had come up with the outfit I was wearing. I fingered the gold braid on my shoulder. He’d had a dress uniform made - officer dress for the Mars Space Service. It was a blood red top, with black slacks that had a blood stripe running down the leg.

Dad had the thing designed back on Mars. He borrowed heavily from the US Marine dress uniform, and switched the colors. As far as I knew, he’d only had a few sets made, and all of them were back on Mars. Most of the people on Earth had never even seen the uniform I was wearing.

I was going to make one hell of an entrance. Which suited me just fine.

The car landed out in front of the building. I exited onto a red carpet, surrounded by flashes from media cameras. This party was a pretty big deal. The attendees were ambassadors, politicians, a few heads of business. And the UN president, of course. And then there was me.

I stood nervously in the cameras for a few moments, tugging the bottom hem of my tunic to straighten it. I wasn’t used to this level of attention. For a moment, I had the impulse to jump back into the car and skip the party. The hell with meeting Choi. But before I could act on the idea the car was jetting away, and another was cruising in to drop off the next guest.

No help for it now. I had to move forward. My first step was slow, but I gained confidence as I went. It was no time to be timid. Now was the moment to be bold.

I was scanned as I went into the building. First a body scan, and then a security guard went over my body with a hand scanner. The device bleeped a little when it passed over my smartwatch, and again over my pocket.

“Please empty your pockets, sir,” the guard said. I wondered briefly if he was one of the men who’d accosted me on the roof earlier, but he didn’t look familiar. I did as he asked, laying out a small tablet and a pen onto the counter. He examined each for a few moments, ran another device over them, and then nodded.

“There go you, sir,” he said. He handed the devices back to me. “Sorry about the inconvenience.”

“No trouble,” I replied.

I reached the entrance to the main hall and stopped in my tracks. I’d seen things like this before - in movie sets. The room was huge, decked out in soft lighting and full of tables. There was a small stage and podium up front. Presumably someone would be speaking later on, but I’d been too worried to check the event schedule to see. About fifty people were already inside. Some were milling about chatting, and about half had found seats already.

The room was awash with black tuxedos and white gowns. My red tunic stood out in the crowd like a laser beam. As thrilled as I’d been to have the uniform on, I wasn’t sure if the added visibility made me happy or not. Part of me was enjoying the free publicity I was giving my father’s Navy. Part of me wanted to go find a corner to hide in. This was his scene, not mine. I didn’t know how I was ever going to become comfortable in places like this. I just didn’t know how he managed it.

Across the room was a little collection of dark blue uniforms - four officers in the dress uniform of the US Navy. I spotted Admiral Perrault among them, and his eyes met mine. I tilted my head to him with a small nod. He gave a slow shake of his head in return. He looked sad. What was he really up to?

I made my way over to his group. He broke away before I got there, excusing himself to meet me halfway.

“Admiral. Good to see you again,” I said.

“Nice uniform,” he replied. “Your father’s design?”

“Yes.”

“He always did have a good eye for such things. You should have taken my advice, Thomas.”

“To run for home? But I’ve been learning so many interesting things since I arrived here,” I said. I kept my tone cool, pitched just loud enough so that he could hear. I doubted anyone else would be able to pick up what I was saying over the general buzz of conversation in the room. “Like the fact that the Navy is loaning personnel to the UN for their space program.”

“Thomas, I…”

“And loaning officers, too,” I said, cutting him off. “Tell me, are you in bed with them? Are you going to help them attack us?”

“The entire program is classified, Thomas. I couldn’t discuss it with you even if I was involved.”

I looked him in the eye. He looked away first.

“Admiral, you gave me some good advice earlier. As a friend of my father’s, I’m going to return the favor,” I said.

He looked back at me, his face crinkled with worry. And shame?

“Sit this one out, Admiral.”

“I have my orders,” he replied. It was as close to an admission I was going to get. My worst fears were true. They were going to have Perrault in their fleet command. Maybe leading their fleet. It made sense. He was the only person on Earth who might match my father when it came to experience in space combat. What leverage did Choi have on the man, to make him turn like that? Or was it just pride talking? This might be the only way Perrault could ever command in space again. I knew how much I missed being in command of a fighting ship. How much worse had it been for Perrault, who’d been flying a desk for years? With the US effectively barred from putting a Navy in space he might never able to go out there again without joining the UN.

“Betting against my father and I is a bad move,” I said softly. “Choi hasn’t learned that lesson yet, but if he comes at us it’ll be driven home.”

“You can’t win, Thomas,” he replied, his voice bleak. “I’m very good at my job. Your father is…better. I would never come at him unless I was certain the forces were so mismatched that he had no chance of beating me.”

Perrault’s words were chilling. He and Dad knew each other from way back. Was it possible that he was right? If he had a good estimate of Dad’s abilities and resources, could he just stack up so much against us that no matter what we did, we’d lose?

Chapter 14

Thomas Stein

A man wearing a white tuxedo came up and touched my elbow. One of the serving staff working the banquet.

“Sir?” he said. “Your presence is requested.”

He gestured off to the corner to my left, where a table was set on a raised pedestal. I hadn’t seen it when I walked in. Setting it off to the side was brilliant. Someone sitting there could observe the entire room, and see every person as they entered without being noticed first.

There was only one person seated there. It was Choi.

“It looks like you’ll have to excuse me,” I said to Perrault. “I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

“Say hello to your father for me when you see him,” Perrault said. He gave me a wry grin. “You’re so much like him.”

“If you say so,” I replied.

I allowed the servant to lead me over to my enemy. My other enemy, I supposed. It was going to be hard to think about Perrault that way. The man had been to my sixth birthday party. He and Dad were friends from way back. I could rationalize his decisions however I wanted, but it still felt like a betrayal. It hurt.

Choi stood as I approached. He gave the smallest of bows to me, his eyes never leaving mine. “Mr. Stein. Thank you for accepting my invitation.”

“You are a man of great importance, Mr. Choi,” I replied carefully. “How could I refuse?”

“How indeed?” he said. He waved his hand at the only other chair at his table. “Please, be seated.”

I sat, and the white-clad man left us. Choi settled himself back into his own chair and slipped a small device that was now becoming incredibly familiar to me from his pocket. He placed it on the table and pressed a button on the device.

I chuckled. “Does everyone except me have one of those?”

Choi gave me a thin smile. “They are useful, when having conversations you do not wish others to overhear. You may have this one when we are done, if you wish. I have others.”

“No, thank you,” I replied. The last thing I wanted was to carry around any bit of tech Choi handed to me. If the thing could block bugs, who knew what else it might be able to do? I picked the pen out of my pocket and twirled it around my fingers. Having something in my hands kept me from wanting to use them to throttle the man sitting across from me.

“As you wish,” he said. He glanced out at the room and seemed lost in thought for several long moments. Maybe he was hoping I would break the silence first. I decided to wait him out, instead. Long moments passed before he spoke again.

“You are not like your father,” Choi said.

“Admiral Perrault disagrees,” I replied. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. On the one hand, I knew he meant it as a compliment. On the other, I wanted to be seen as my own man, not a copy of someone else.

“The admiral is incorrect,” Choi said. “You are rash. Your father would never have risked coming here to see me.”

“Am I in danger here?” I asked. We both knew I was, but I wanted to hear him say it.

He smiled like a snake. “Of course not.”

“But then, he is back on Mars,” he went on. “And you are here.”

“I do tend to leap in where angels fear to tread,” I admitted.

“Which makes you dangerous,” Choi replied. His face was like a mask. I had a very hard time reading the emotions behind his words. “Your father, I can predict. His taking of the Mars presidency, for example? Classic. He is the cream that will always float to the top. Rise to whatever challenge. You, however?”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “You are more of an enigma to me. You are no one. But you thwarted two ships full of pirates, and then retook a space station with a stolen vessel. Capturing multiple ships, you went on to foil the attack on Earth.”

“Without your actions, your father would have failed. What he did was predictable. You are less the cream and more the annoying clot of curd that shows up unexpectedly,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. I grinned at him. I couldn’t help it. “That’s the most backwards compliment anyone has ever paid me.”

“Have you considered that fighting alongside your father might not be in your best future interest?” Choi asked.

“Not really, no,” I said. “The other options haven’t been appealing.”

“No? Perhaps no one has made you the right offer.”

And there it was. Choi wanted me to switch sides. He’d gained the loyalty, or at least the obedience, of men like Perrault. And now he was after me. And what a coup that would be for him. I was the son of the President of Mars. I was the other hero who’d come swooping in to save the planet. With me at his side, Choi could use me to smash my father’s reputation on Earth completely. If I stood against Dad, would anyone still think he was a hero?

I laughed. Because it was an empty offer. Loyalty to my home, to Kel, and to my Dad aside… If I turned on my father, how would Choi ever really trust me? He’d use me while I was helpful to him, and then cast me away when I wasn’t. This was a man who would do anything to gain power.

He wanted to see if I was like him.

“Not in this lifetime,” I said.

He nodded sharply. Then he glanced down at his smartwatch and tapped the screen before looking back at me. “I thought as much. But it was worth the time to ask, before I destroyed you. You might have been useful.”

“That sounded like a threat,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “It was. Did you discover what this party was in celebration of?”

“No,” I shook my head.

He nodded, unsurprised. “It was a secret. But I will tell you. We were to announce the successful test of the new fusion reactor tonight. Earth will once again be self reliant for its power.”

Which also meant Earth would be free to move against Mars. Was effectively already free to do so. If they didn’t need the uranium anymore, the last impediment to invasion was off the table.

“Sadly, that announcement will have to wait now,” Choi said.

He rose from his seat. I moved to stand as well, but he waved me down. “No, stay. I have other matters to attend to. And in about two minutes, a bomb will go off in this room.”

“What?” I stood so quickly I knocked over the chair behind me.

“Shhh,” he hushed. “You’ll disturb the guests. The bomb will be blamed on terrorists from Mars, of course. And the UN will be forced to retaliate.”

“Damn you,” I said. I spared a glance out over the room. There were close to a hundred guests there now. I noticed that Perrault’s little contingent of officers were nowhere to be seen. Choi would kill all these people to start his war. But I had the feeling he wouldn’t blow the bomb if he were still in the room. I grabbed his wrist.

“What makes you think you’re going anywhere?” I said.

With a quick motion he made a small circle with his arm, breaking free from my hold. His other hand shot out toward my throat. His fingertips stabbed into the hollow of my neck. The blow was so quick that it had been hard to see him move at all, but it hurt like hell. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe.

He eased me back into his chair. I clutched at his arm, but I didn’t have any strength left. He shrugged me off. I choked, trying vainly to draw in even a little air.

“Fool boy. The spasm will pass,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “You have about a minute left. Enjoy the party.”

Then he swiftly left the table. Several security guards joined him at the door, and he was gone.

Chapter 15

Thomas Stein

I gagged, trying to catch my breath. With an effort, I drew one ragged gasp through gritted teeth. It felt like the hardest thing I’d ever done, but that small bit of air was all the payoff I needed. My lungs were starving. I exhaled. The next breath was just a little bit easier.

I glanced around the room. There were so many people in there, and Choi would kill them all just to get his war going. I had no idea where the bomb might be, and only seconds left. I opened my mouth to shout, to warn people, but I could barely croak. There was no time. I couldn’t save these people. Guilt and panic warred in my head.

There might be enough time to save myself. I was willing to bet that Choi wasn’t the sort of person to sit on top of a bomb, even when he had the activation switch on his smartwatch. Too many things could go wrong. Choi might think he had my father’s measure, but I was pretty sure I had his number too. Like the story about the fox and the scorpion, treachery was in his nature - and he expected it of others, too. He’d plant the bomb as far from where he was sitting as possible.

I took one more wheezing breath and carefully tucked my pen away in a pocket. I was going to need that later. Then I grabbed the table with both hands. It was a heavy thing with a steel base and a thick hardwood top. I tried to lift it up - and couldn’t move it. I was too weak, shaken from Choi’s strike.

How many seconds left? I took the best breath I could, then exhaled hard as I tried one more time to shove the table forward. This time it tilted and came crashing down. The cups and silverware tumbled off the tabletop, smashing and clattering across the floor. All around the room conversation stopped as everyone looked at the source of the noise.

I ducked down behind the table and grabbed the base, shoving it back to brace against the corner. Then I reached down and tapped my smartwatch - three taps, three taps, three taps - SOS. The signal for Acres to come running to my rescue. I hoped he had the engine warm.

Then the world lit up.

The detonation must have knocked me out for a few moments. Even behind the table, the concussion had been like a hand slamming me against the floor. The first thing I became aware of was that someone was screaming. I opened my eyes. The room was dark. The lights were gone, replaced by the fitful flickering of scattered flames where things had caught fire in the blast. My face hurt on one side. I winced when I touched it. It felt like the worst sunburn ever, and I probably looked like hell.

I peeked up over the edge of the table. The room was filled with smoke, lit here and there by small flames. People were screaming and moaning in the mess. I had no idea how many had survived the explosion. I couldn’t imagine how anyone had. The wall above my makeshift shield was peppered with chunks of shrapnel. If I’d still been sitting in the chair when the explosion went off, it would have taken off my head.

Some of the sprinklers had survived, dousing fires and sending up jets of steam to further obfuscate the chaos in the room. Somehow I got my feet under me and staggered toward the doorway. Medical teams were rushing in, carrying aid bags and stretchers for the wounded and dead. One of them saw me and rushed to my side.

“This way, sir!” he said. He threw a blanket over my shoulders and held an oxygen mask to my face. Almost immediately I felt a little better from the extra oxygen. I hadn’t realized just how bad the air in here had become until I wasn’t breathing it anymore. He guided me as far as the front steps of the building where I was passed off to another emergency tech. Up and down the street, all I could see were ambulances waiting for the wounded.

Two EMTs came rushing out past me, carrying a stretcher. The woman lying there was still alive, her hands clenched around a chunk of metal protruding from her belly. Her face and arms were a mass of burns. I winced and looked away. If I’d been just a little faster, a little better, maybe I could have stopped Choi. He was so fast that I hadn’t had a prayer of holding him, though. My throat still hurt where his fingers had struck me.

“Sir! Sir, are you OK?” Another EMT was standing there in front of me. I was still dazed, and barely managed to nod in response. He put an arm around my shoulders and walked me over to one of the ambulances, where he hooked me back up with oxygen.

“Stay put,” he said. “I’ll be back to check you out.”

Then he was off again, rushing back into the UN building. Smoke was billowing out the front doors and half the windows on the lower three floors. Glass from shattered windows decorated the front lawn and the street beyond. My god, how many people had been caught in Choi’s games tonight?

My smartwatch beeped, and I held it up to my mouth. “Thomas here.”

“We’re on our way,” Acres said. “You in one piece?”

“Yeah,” I said. My whole body hurt. But I was a lot better off than most of the people I saw being carted past me. For each of them, I swore I was going to take Choi down.

The flash of thrusters caught my eye. Acres was bringing the courier ship down right in front of the damned UN building? Was he insane? There were air defenses. The military had to be on high alert right now. The ship was landing in the field across the street. I half ran, half staggered in that direction.

The ship settled down on lawn. All around me, medical air cars were touching down, disgorging EMS crews. The place was a madhouse. I doubted that anyone was able to track all the air traffic with so many emergency crews flying in and out around the building. They must have called out every crew for miles around to rush to the scene of the disaster.

I considered staying there to help, but I’d just be in the way. If I left, it would make it that much easier for Choi to try to pin the attack on Mars. After all, I’d been very visible at the event. If I mysteriously vanished afterward it might look bad. But I had a good sense that he’d charge me with the crime even if I stayed, and I didn’t have time to be a UN prisoner right now. I’d worked hard at not being a hostage. No sense in giving myself to him.

Besides, from space maybe I could do some damage to him. Give a little payback for all those people he’d hurt.

The ramp was lowering, a faint light showing from inside the ship. I bolted for it, racing for my getaway to the stars with everything I had. The sooner I was off this dust ball, the better. I’d had enough of Earth.

Chapter 16

Nicholas Stein

Mars Station abuzz with activity, and I was glad to be a part of it again. I needed to be out here where things were happening. Too much time sitting in George’s desk on the surface was going to drive me mad. So I’d returned to the station to manage things from there instead.

Work crews had managed to seal off the parts of the station damaged by the explosion. George’s offices were still a wreck, but mine were fine. Not that I was spending a lot of time there. My preferred spot was the control center. It was the hub of the station, and had enough communications and computer gear that I felt confident and connected.

Communications from Earth came at a about a thirty minute delay, thanks to the distance. I got the news about the bomb in the UN building about thirty-two minutes after it went off. I had my command center fully staffed about five minutes after that, men and women pulling down every bit of intel they could from the fragmented news blasts we were receiving. No one was claiming credit for the bomb, and no one was being blamed. I had a sense that would change shortly.

“Incoming priority message for you, sir.”

That was different. Mostly what we were sorting through were scraps of information gleaned from media broadcasts, which were sketchy and confused. A priority message meant someone of importance wanted to speak to me directly.

“Send it over to my screen,” I said.

My screen was half of the wall in front of me. Right now it showed video footage of the explosion. Not of the aftermath - this was actual footage of the detonation. Which told me a lot all by itself. If they already had video of the bomb going off playing across all the major networks, how had that been acquired so quickly?

The message appeared as a small box on my screen. I tapped the screen and my video froze, and then was replaced by a face I knew all too well.

“Admiral,” Choi’s recording said. “Or should I call you President now? You will note that while the United Nations did not support the idea of your taking that august post, we did not take action. Despite your warlike reputation, we hoped you would see the benefits of ongoing peace. Sadly, it seems we were mistaken.”

“We have reason to believe that this attack was made against the UN by Mars partisans, led by your son.”

The screen changed, and suddenly I was watching video of a party. I vaguely recognized the room and a few of the people. It was inside the main ballroom of the New York UN building. This must have been where the bomb went off, footage from before it detonated taken off a security camera. And there was Thomas, right in the middle of it. In Mars Navy dress. Where had he even gotten a dress uniform from? I smiled a little. It looked good in that room full of drab black outfits. It caught the eye and turned heads, precisely as I’d I intended when I designs it. I frowned, recognizing the man Thom was talking to. That was Perrault. I couldn’t see their faces very well, but from the body language it didn’t look like either of them were very happy.

What was Thomas doing there, of all places? My heart went into my throat. He must have been there when the bomb went off. Was he hurt? Was he even still alive?

Choi’s face reappeared on the screen. “The attack by your military forces against unarmed civilians is abhorrent. A state of war now exists between the United Nations of Earth and the government of Mars.”

“Stein, I would ask you to surrender, except I know you will not,” he said. “I will tender the same offer to your people, however. Lay down your arms, surrender to the United Nations armed forces, and you will be spared.”

The message clicked off and the screen went dark. Around the room, no one said a word. I looked at them all. Most of them were in their twenties. A few older faces, but mostly they were young and untried. And scared. Right now most of them were very afraid. Many of them had come here from Earth. Even for those born on Mars, having the UN declare war was like a living nightmare.

I needed to say something that would bolster their morale. Allay their fears. Except as far as they knew, he might be telling the truth. Maybe I really had sent my son as an assassin to kill Choi, they were thinking. I’d made no secret of the fact that I hated the man. Worse, that message had been sent in the clear. It had gone out to all of Mars, and every person on the station and the planet would hear about it in no time.

I wasn’t worried about revolution. I knew my people better than that. But morale was going to count for a lot, and he’d just done some damage.

“Another incoming message from Earth, sir.” It was the same young woman who’d picked up the last one. “Stein encryption on this one.”

“Put it on my screen, Lieutenant,” I said. I tapped it open, and what I saw brought a smile to my face immediately as Thomas’s face filled my screen.

“Dad,” he said. “By the time you hear this, I’m sure you’ll already know what went down in the UN building. And I’ll already be in orbit, getting ready to do something stupid. Don’t worry, as usual the reports of my death will be greatly exaggerated.”

Someone behind me snorted a half laugh. I quirked a little smile myself, even as worried as I was. Was Thomas building something of a reputation for himself among his peers?

“I’m sure they will break this encryption if they haven’t already, but this information is too important to not pass on,” Thomas said. “We acquired images of the space dock. They had at least sixteen ships there in some stage of construction, and that was a month ago. It might be worse now.”

“I hope you’re ready for whatever they have coming,” he said.

Sixteen ships was more than even my worst-case estimate. It would be a difficult fight, if all of them came at us at once.

“This other bit is important, too. Choi met with me. He thought his little anti-eavesdropping device would block any bugs, but everyone out here seems to be using the same damned device. It’s not as hard to foil as they’d like to think,” he said. He grinned and held up a pen. “I got audio of Choi confessing to the bombing. I’m attaching it to this message. Whatever story he wants to spin, he’s a spider. He slaughtered a hundred of his own people without batting an eye. He’ll do much worse to us. We have to stop him, Dad. No matter the cost.”

“I’m going to see if I can narrow the odds a little,” he said. “Wish me luck. Thom out.”

The screen went blank.

I whirled in place, stabbing a finger toward the tech who’d alerted me to the message. “Did that audio come through too?”

“Yes sir, patching it over to you now.”

The audio played. I listened to Choi coldly try to twist my son into joining him, and then confess to bombing his own people.

When it was over, I turned back to the men and women in the room. All of them were silent again. But now they looked alert. Determined. It would do.

“I want that audio sent out to every news network on Mars. Ship it back to any of the networks on Earth that will listen, too,” I growled. “Let them hear what the man leading them is really like.”

“Aye sir!”

“And get me telemetry on Thomas’s ship. We should be able to pick up something from the communications satellites orbiting Earth.”

“That data will be half an hour old.” That was Sergeant Mitchell, one of my older hands and a cool head in this crowd.

“I know,” I replied. “But old intel is better than no intel.”

“Aye, sir, getting it now,” he replied.

My screen showed new images, radar tracking of air traffic over Earth. Thomas’s ship was highlighted in green. He’d made it up into low orbit - thirty-two minutes ago - but he wasn’t pulling away. I saw why, too. Several fast fighters had punched up out of the atmosphere and were moving to cut him off. He was swinging around the planet, trying to keep the curve between himself and the fighters. But they were gaining on him.

Then he changed course suddenly, heading north toward the Arctic Circle. The fighters changed course to match. They’d intercept him in minutes.

“Damn it, Thom,” I muttered. He was heading right for the space dock. “Get out of there.”

New contacts lit up the screen. The fighters were firing missiles. Then the space station fired its own volley - a huge array of missiles for such a little target. There must have been scores of the things streaking through space toward the courier. Toward my son.

A moment later all the red dots showing the missiles converged on the green dot, and the green dot vanished.

“No!” I slammed my fist into my open palm, closed my eyes.

He was gone. My son was gone. It felt like a pit had opened up beneath my feet. I’d sent him to Earth. I’d shipped him off into that, and my orders had killed him. I wanted to rage, to scream, to break something. But I couldn’t do any of those things, not right now anyway. Somehow I reached for a sense of calm, for the mask I always wore to command others into death.

I struggled against tears for a few more agonizingly long moments before turning back to my crew. They all stared at me, horror warring with compassion and anger on their faces.

“Back to your duties, everyone. We still have a war to win.” And I had a man to kill. I found myself wishing I could already have my fingers around Choi’s neck.

Chapter 17

Thomas Stein

The courier exploded behind us in a burst of light so intense that the face shield of my suit’s helmet darkened to compensate. Secondary explosions blossomed as more and more missiles slammed into what was left of the ship, until all that remained were spinning shards of charred steel. The ship was toast.

But Acres and I hadn’t been on board when they blew it to bits.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” he growled at me.

“Come on, Chief. Not like you haven’t done this before,” I replied.

We were in space suits, arms linked and talking helmet to helmet. If you touched faceplates together, you could get enough vibration to carry between the suits so that you could talk without using the radio. The last thing we wanted was for anyone to think we might still be alive out here. Might as well put out a flashing beacon saying ‘come shoot us’ if we used the suit radios. I wanted the enemy to think we were dead without actually getting that way.

“It was a stupid idea when the Old Man did it, and it’s still a stupid idea now,” Acres said.

Decades ago, my father had become famous for pulling pretty much the same stunt we were. He was a naval officer during the last big war. Most of the world was involved in some way or another, but the main players were the US and China. China built a spaceship in secret, loaded it with nukes, and used it to take out the US lunar base, killing just about everyone on the moon and taking the last major source of energy - a handful of uranium deposits people were mining out as fast as they could so we could keep generating power.

Dad’s team waited in space along the Chinese ship’s return path with thruster suits. They course corrected as the ship got closer. Then they used the thrusters to match speeds with the ship and board. Once the ship was captured... Well, Dad sent the nukes home on autopilot. Armed. To Beijing.

The war ended that day.

“It turned out OK for you and him,” I said.

“Not for half of the men who went with us,” Acres replied. “I saw one guy splatter across the front of that ship like a bug on a windshield. Others just got lost out there, and we never saw or heard from them again.”

It worked because no one had ever been nuts enough to try it. I was betting that since there hadn’t been anyone crazy enough to attempt anything like it since that the bad guys still weren’t prepared for this sort of assault. It was a long ride out there in unprotected space. But if the plan worked out we might be able to put a damper on some of Choi’s plans. And Dad would need all the help he could get if they launched that fleet against Mars.

We’d set the courier ship on autopilot and jumped out. Right before it changed course sharply we let go - so we still had all that velocity zipping us along the old vector. Of course, we weren’t moving in a straight line like Dad had been. We were orbiting the Earth. Little human satellites, that was us. And if I’d done the math right, we should be moving on an intercept course with the UN’s space dock.

I’d doubled checked my math, but after thirty minutes had gone by I was starting to get nervous. The station was huge. We ought to at least see it by now.

“You see any sign of it yet?” I asked.

“Nope,” Acres replied. “If we end up circling the planet until our air runs out, I’m going to be a mite pissed.”

“Then quit wasting air. Keep your eyes open,” I said. I started scanning in circles around our direction of travel. Odds were that we wouldn’t be on precisely the right course. We’d have to use our thruster packs to nudge our orbit a bit, get where we needed to go.

I got a lucky break. Up ahead I saw a patch of stars blink out, then back to life again. Something was up there. But if that was the station, we were in a much lower orbit than we needed to be. I pointed it out to Acres.

“It could be,” he said. “Might not be, too. We’ll burn most of our fuel getting up there. If you’re wrong...”

“Then we’re dead. I know.” Or at least, stuck grabbing on to whatever it was. If it was a weather satellite, we were in deep trouble.

I didn’t think it was a weather satellite. Gauging distance by eye was hard in space, but I got the impression of something big out there. There wasn’t much still orbiting the Earth that was large anymore. The pirates had taken out all the orbiting infrastructure they could during their first raids.

“I say we go for it,” I said.

“You’re the boss,” he replied. “Link arms with me and hold on tight. We need to fire the thrusters together.”

Both of us had thruster suits on. We had to bring up the thrust slowly, and in concert, or we’d go spinning off in different directions. We grabbed on to loop handholds on each other’s suits. I said a quick prayer. And we engaged the thrusters.

It wasn’t the ride I’d been expecting. We were a little off balance at first, but once we got that worked out, it was pretty easy. There weren’t any fancy moves involved, no complex flying. Just a straight shot away from Earth. That ought to bring us up into the same orbit as the object I’d seen.

I caught the glint of something almost directly ahead of us. Just the tiniest bit of sunlight reflecting off a panel. Way too close for comfort. The space dock was blacked out, almost invisible against the darkness of space. We were almost on top of it before we’d even seen it. And we were still moving toward it very fast.

“We need to brake!” I said. We flipped around to aim our thrusters at the station and slow down. But in the process I lost my grip on Acres. He went spinning away, working his own thrusters to slow down. I was on my own.

Chapter 18

Thomas Stein

I shifted my feet to orient ‘down’ toward the glint I’d seen. That made the Earth my ‘up’, which was a little disconcerting at first. For a dizzying moment I felt like I was falling headfirst toward the planet. I tore my eyes away, focusing instead on trying to spot the station before I became a smear on its hull.

I started braking, little puffs of air slowing my progress. Acres was well ‘above’ me at this point. He was using his thrusters more and taking a much more cautious approach. Which was probably smart. I remembered his comments about the man who’d been spattered across the nose of the ship when Dad did this maneuver.

I hit my thrusters a little harder.

And then there it was, seeming so much bigger in life than it had in the images. I couldn’t gauge my distance until I recognized that the silvery blotches dotting the main hull were actually ships. The docking area was huge. There had to be room for sixty vessels. Only about a third of the bays looked occupied, but that was more than enough.

Perrault wasn’t kidding. They’d built a fleet of such size that it pretty much defined ‘overkill’. Choi knew damned well that Dad would be able to outfight them, even at long odds. So he’d stacked the odds enough that no matter what my father did, no matter how brilliant his planning, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

I continued to fall toward the thing, using little bits of thrust to slow my descent. As I got closer I could see a little more detail.

There were twenty-one ships in all. I’d missed one at first, because it was painted black and because it was so monstrously large compared to the other ships that I thought it was something else, at first glance. It dwarfed all of the others. In fact, it was perhaps as large as all the other ships put together.

Most of the other ships were identical. They looked a lot like the ship my father had built to face the pirates. Someone on Earth had been taking notes. They were of a good size, and if Earth had copied my father’s design they would be armed to the teeth and bristling with anti-missile guns for defense.

The other six were a hodge-podge. They looked like merchant class ships that had been upgraded. The missile tubes were bolted on in a way that I knew very well. We’d seen a few of the enemy ships escape the Battle for Earth, but my father and I had never been able to track them down. Choi must have tucked them away somewhere, saving them for today.

I used my thrusters to veer toward one of them. My hunch was that the best and brightest of Choi’s people would be on the biggest ship. Then he’d put good personnel on the other made-for-war vessels. The former ‘pirate ships’ would get whatever was left. They were small, too, without a lot of crew room. Lots of missiles, not a lot of hands to run things. Which made them perfect for my purposes.

If I were aiming to make some mischief down here, it would work better where no one could see what I was doing. I just hoped that Acres would see the ship I was trying to steer toward. Otherwise we were both going to be on our own out here.

I was falling fast - too fast. Technically, I wasn’t falling. The relative velocity between myself and the ship I was aiming for was high enough that I was going to break bones on impact. Physics wasn’t going to make the broken bones feel any better, though. I didn’t have enough time to slow down before I impacted the nose of the ship, so I twisted and changed my approach. I jetted off to one side just enough that I fell between the ship and the fence of girders surrounding her.

Once I was tucked into the shadows of the docking area, I felt more comfortable that I could apply maximum thrust without being spotted. I braked hard and brought myself up alongside the ship. Ever so gently, I brought my magnetic boots around and attached them to the hull.

I’d made the same impossible leap my father had. It was an exhilarating feeling. I’d managed to breach the defenses of the secret enemy base, like the hero of some action film. Now what?

I was standing on the outside of one of the missile bays. This was a converted cargo ship, and usually containers were bolted on to the sides, then taken off when the ship reached its destination. The missile pod fitting was easy. Just drop in a missile pod pre-made to match the shape and latching mechanics of the cargo containers, and you had a combat ship.

Sort of. These ships had fared very poorly against my father’s vessels. Against a ship built for war, these makeshift jobs didn’t last long. But they’d add more missiles to the mix, and if they stayed tucked in close to the bigger ships in a fleet, they would benefit from the strong anti-missile defenses those ships were sure to have. I had no doubt this ship would be tagging along when the Earth fleet left dock.

I ventured to the aft end of the ship. There was usually an airlock near engineering, which would make a good way in. I spotted the door and went for it. The outer door didn’t open up like it should have when I tapped the panel, though. They’d thought to lock it. That wasn’t going to stop me, but it slowed me down. I still had the tablet I was carrying earlier in the evening, tucked into a cargo pocket of my space suit. I pulled it out now and began negotiating a connection with the tiny computer managing the airlock.

Everything on a ship was computerized. Even in something as simple as the airlock, you needed to monitor the air pressure, the seal quality, the locking mechanism, and a dozen other things. Rather than over task the central computer with mundane tasks, these sorts of tasks were jobbed out to smaller CPUs around the ship, which then reported to the main computer. I couldn’t have hacked the main CPU from here. But telling the little airlock machine that I was authorized to open the door shouldn’t take too long.

I was almost through the door when a man in a thruster suit jetted down to land immediately across from me.

Chapter 19

Thomas Stein

When one is trying to sneak aboard a spaceship, the sudden appearance of an unknown person is alarming. I almost lost my grip on the tablet, which would have been a disaster. I did lose my grip on the ship. That wasn’t quite as bad. I did have some juice left in my thruster pack. I reached for the thruster controls.

The man lunged out at me. I tried to block, but he was too quick. He snagged one of the grip loops on my suit and pulled me closer. Only then did I spot the logo on the suit sleeve - Mars Space Service.

It was Acres. I tapped my helmet against his so we could have a little chat about sneaking up on people.

“You asshole,” I said. I was still trying to catch my breath and slow my heartbeat down.

He laughed. “Little nervous?”

“Little bit,” I said.

“Not in yet?”

“Obviously,” I replied through gritted teeth. “I was almost in when you jumped me there.”

“Stay alert,” he said more seriously. “I saw personnel moving around near some of the ships. I think they’re getting ready to ship out.”

Which meant we needed to get inside. Once the ship was underway sneaking in would be impossible. The door would alarm the second I got it open. We had a few hours of air left, but the trip to Mars would take days. Staying outside wasn’t an option. I got back to hacking the airlock.

A minute later I had it open, and we both hurried inside. The airlock cycled, and the inner door opened up. We were in.

The ship was dimly lit with low-power emergency lighting. We listened for a few long moments before moving, but I couldn’t hear anything. I looked over at Acres and he nodded. I moved out into the main passage.

The pressurized part of these ships was shaped a little like a dumb-bell. Cockpit and crew sleeping area in the nose. Engineering in the rear, along with the fission reactor that ran the main drives. And a long stem connecting the two points. The cargo containers - or missile pods - attached to the stem part. On the inside, the stem was just a big tube between the two main points of interest on the ship.

There weren’t a lot of places to hide.

I popped off my helmet. “Now what?” I asked Acres.

“You’re asking me?” he said. “This was your brilliant plan. I’m just along for the ride.”

I hadn’t thought much further than boarding and capturing the ship. That had seemed hard enough without worrying about what to do with it once we got it. But getting aboard had been insanely simple. Probably because someone would have to be nuts to try it in the first place.

If we went forward, I could maybe hack the main computer, activate the drives, and get clear of the station. But by the time I did we’d have marines crawling all over the ship. They’d have an even easier time getting in than we had. It wasn’t a workable plan.

Just firing the missiles while we were docked might do something. We’d blow the hell out of the station for sure, and maybe take out a couple of the nearby ships if we got lucky. We’d also almost certainly blast ourselves to bits in the process though. I didn’t feel like blowing myself up was the best plan I could come up with.

“Let’s move forward to the cockpit,” I said. That would give me some time to think, anyway.

“Lead on,” Acres replied, waving an arm.

I hooked the helmet onto my suit and pushed off down the corridor. We floated past a series of little hatches as we went. Those were entries into the missile racks. On a cargo ship, they could be used to inspect the contents of the containers. Here they were probably used to do repairs of the launch equipment and inspections of the missiles.

The nose of the ship was a spartan place. Bunks for four. A small mess area, well stocked with rations. And the cockpit itself which had seating for two.

“Looks like four, maybe five crew?” I said.

“Could be as many as twelve,” Acres corrected. “If they share bunks, they could work in two on, one off shifts. But with the size of this ship, I think they’ll be running a light crew.”

They wouldn’t need many people. Two in the cockpit and two down in engineering. I examined the control panels, all dark and powered down. If I powered those up we could try to bust free from here, but they’d almost certainly know on the station the minute I activated anything.

I moved on. There was a small weapons locker near the bunks. It was padlocked shut. I shook my head. “Can’t hack that,” I said, annoyed. “Who still uses a padlock?”

“Grunts do,” Acres growled. “To keep out people with more gadgets than sense. Move over.” I slid aside and he pulled a cutting tool from his suit. There was a short flash of light, and the padlock came loose in his hand.

“You’re not the only one who brought along toys. Hold on to that,” he said, handing me what was left of the lock. He opened the box and peered inside.

“Small arms only, but they might be useful,” Acres said.

He hauled four pistols out of the locker. Two of them he slipped into pockets in his suit, and he handed the other two to me. I took them, slipped one away and examined the other. They were light caliber weapons. I checked the loads - frangible ammunition, which was good. It would break apart if it hit something hard like the wall of a spaceship. You usually didn’t want your bullets to make holes in the hull when you fired a gun on a spaceship.

Acres took the lock back from me and replaced it over the box. He ran his laser cutter over the lock, carefully welding the padlock back into place again. By the time he was done, you wouldn’t be able to tell it had been cut unless you looked very closely.

I looked back at the pistol in my hand. We were armed now. The lock box for the crew’s weapons was empty, which meant they would be unarmed. I was starting to feel the beginning of a plan. One which might not involve our dying.

“You still remember how to use that, right?” Acres asked. I’d been staring at the pistol a while.

“Yeah,” I replied. After the close combat experiences I had with the pirates, I’d made sure to keep up on my marksmanship skills. You never knew when things were going to get up close and personal. “Just thinking.”

A loud banging noise echoed through the hull. I stole a quick peek out the cockpit window. A tube was extending from the station to the ship’s forward airlock. I caught a glimpse of men in the airlock on the far side.

“Shit,” I said.

A rumbling sound began to thrum through the entire ship. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. Then I saw the source - the monstrous ship I’d seen on our approach to the station was sliding free from its mooring and slipping out into open space. The Earth fleet was getting ready to move out.

“Better think faster,” Acres said. He had one of his pistols out.

There wasn’t time for anything fancy. I slid back to the crew area and snagged a couple of water bottles and a pair of ration packs. “Grab some food and water,” I said. There was a big supply. The crew wouldn’t miss a few.

“Going to feed them to death?” he asked.

“Nope. Going to not starve while we hide.”

“Hide? This ship is tiny. Where the hell…” he started to ask. Then he saw me headed for one of the rear missile racks. I popped open the compartment and slid up into the small space within the missile rack. It was cramped, but there would be room for the two of us in there. Barely. The fleet was launching, which meant they’d probably already done their inspections. With luck, no one would need to peek into our hiding hole.

“Oh hell. I’m gonna hate life for the next couple of days, aren’t I?” he grumbled. But he followed me inside. The airlock was starting to cycle open. The crew coming aboard was almost on top of us. I grabbed the compartment hatch and shut us inside.

Chapter 20

Nicholas Stein

I was at long last back where I belonged. The chair underneath me was satisfyingly firm. I looked around the control room of the Hermes, which buzzed with quiet activity. I knew every face. Was intimately familiar with every nook. This was my domain, more than anyplace else in the universe.

The room had no windows. Too fragile for a combat ship, and useless for space combat anyway. Instead we had a massive holotank installed in the middle of the bridge, which created a three dimensional display of the area around the Hermes. Right now that track showed as clear. The moment we got word that the Earth fleet had left its dock we scrambled all civilian ships away from Mars Station. They’d wait the fight out in the asteroid belt until the shooting was done.

I had no doubts there would be shooting. The UN was calling their fleet a ‘show of force’ on the Earth newscasts. We broadcasted Thomas’s recording and some of the smaller news services had picked it up and played the damning track. But Choi’s people had quickly discredited the recording as a fake, and most of the major networks were parroting the party line.

For now, it was enough that everyone on Mars knew the truth. We knew what was coming. We knew that coming back under the UN yoke would be different from what we had enjoyed before. They would never again allow us the level of freedom we’d become accustomed to. Choi’s UN was prepared to revisit all of the worst offenses of the old colonial era on the new one.

It was up to us to teach them the same lesson that Earth’s European empires had learned centuries before. You attempt to rule your colonies with an iron fist at your own peril.

“Incoming call from Mars,” Lieutenant Harris said. He was my communications wizard, and had a steady laser comm link running to Mars Station. Despite our running radio silent, we had excellent eyes and ears out there.

“Put it through,” I said.

The small screen beside my chair blinked into life and George’s face appeared. He looked haggard. His face was worn and thin, and he had dark circles under his eyes.

“You look like hell, George. Are you even supposed to be out of bed yet?” I asked.

“Not according to my doctors,” he replied. “But my successor took off for deep space at the first sign of trouble, so I thought perhaps I should see what help I can offer.”

I frowned. “Tabby said she had things well in hand. And I need to be out here.” For more than one reason, I wanted to be on the sharp tip of the spear for this operation. There was no way I could ride this out on the surface.

“And we need you out there,” he said earnestly. “I’ll do whatever I can to support you on this end. I’ve informed Earth that I have resumed my office.”

“They haven’t turned around,” I observed.

“No. But then, we always knew it wasn’t just about you.”

It was about control. Whoever controlled the orbitals would control humanity. If Choi had all the armed spaceships under his command, he would have the ultimate authority over every person, on every world. No one would be able to oppose him. It’s what he tried to achieve with his ‘pirates’. And now he had his fleet - legitimately authorized by the nations of Earth. There was only one thing standing in the way of his utter control of space, and with it every human life.

Mars.

“Incoming ships on track!” Ensign Diaz said. We didn’t have active radar running right now - too easy to pick us up if we did, and we wanted to stay hidden. But we had excellent feeds from the Station radar. She updated the holotank from that information. Four contacts bearing for Mars, coming from the inner system. They’d gotten close before we picked them up when they began braking to slow down.

“George, going to need to cut this short. Company coming,” I said.

“Godspeed,” he said. He paused, looked away, then back at the screen. “Nick… I heard about Thomas. I’m so sorry.”

“So am I,” I said. More than I could ever put into words. How could a man ever apologize enough for giving the orders which killed his own son? I shoved the thoughts away with an effort that hurt my soul. This wasn’t the time or the place for them.

“Make them pay,” George spat out. “Make them sorry.”

I was surprised with his vehemence. But my heart agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiments. “Oh, we plan to.”

He cut the link. And it was time for me to get back to work.

“Who is in the alert fighters?” I asked.

“Flynn and her first squadron,” Harris said.

“Order them to launch. Silent running. I want those ships blasted to bits before they get a single message out.”

“Aye sir,” he replied. A few moments later the ship shook as four Hawk fighters burst free and took flight. “Hawks are away.”

“Put them on the plot,” I said. The holotank lit up with four small green points to represent the friendly Hawks. They boosted at twenty gravities, bearing down on the four decelerating red dots.

The Hawks were my gamble, my hope for winning this fight. We couldn’t out produce Earth when it came to building more fighting ships. Instead, we needed to outperform them. We needed to change the dynamic of space combat in a way that unraveled their advantage. So I had the Hermes built, and the Hawks, putting maximum priority over their construction over everything else.

The Hermes carried weapons, but it was primarily a carrier. The ship stored three fighter wings, twelve Hawks in all. Each of the Hawks was a tiny but deadly package. They had the newest engines I could provide, and the ability to accelerate faster than anything else in space. They were armed to the teeth with missiles of their own and equipped with the best stealth technology we could load on board. They couldn’t pack as many missiles as a larger ship, but they could strike like a knife in the dark.

“Can you get me more detail on those ships?” I asked.

“Working on it, sir,” Diaz replied. “Mars Station is saying they look like cargo vessels, but they aren’t transmitting an ID code, and they are not responding to their radio signals.”

I stood and walked to the holotank. They were definitely hostile. A civilian vessel would be replying. I backtracked their flight path in my head, trying to figure out where they’d come from. Somewhere in-system, but where? If Choi had a base out there it was important we find it. These were likely a few of the pirate vessels which had escaped the Battle for Earth all those months ago. Which meant they were armed.

“They’re a probe. Trying to see what defenses we might have in place,” I muttered.

“Hawk wing is closing on target,” Diaz said.

The green dots were swooping in with ever-increasing speed. The red dots continued to slow. Their course hadn’t altered. They were still headed directly for the station and would be within missile range in another minute. Not much time left for Flynn to take them out. If I had to, I could move the Hermes between the station and any incoming missiles and probably take them out. But doing so would expose the Hermes, which was precisely what Choi was trying to accomplish with this attack.

“Hawks are at fifty kilometers from target,” Diaz said. And closing. Even as she said it, I saw more lights appear on the board as Flynn’s fighters fired their own missiles. She’d cut it awfully close.

Her fighters veered away after firing their volley. The red dots saw the missiles and tried vainly to change their courses, but there wasn’t any time. The missiles were fast. Seconds after they’d been fired, they impacted.

The red dots vanished from the tank.

“Confirm those ships are destroyed,” I ordered.

There were a few moments of silence in the control room as everyone waited, hoping.

“Confirmed, sir,” Diaz said. “All four enemy ships are dust.”

Then the cheering started. I allowed myself a small smile and returned to my chair. Let Choi and his people chew on that for a while. With less than three seconds from the missile launch to the ships’ destruction, there was no way any of them had gotten a message out. All his people would know is that they sent in ships, and those ships vanished. Which was precisely the way I wanted it.

“Have the Hawks return to their roosts. And tell them well done,” I said.

It was a good start. But the real battle was still ahead.

Chapter 21

Thomas Stein

The ship was decelerating gently now. Maybe we were getting close to our destination at last? I shifted my leg, trying to work a cramp out of the muscles in my thigh. Moving even a little bit in the enclosed space of the missile pod was difficult. If I’d been alone in here it still would have been hard. Shift too much and I’d bang into one of the walls. While ships in space do occasionally make odd noises, repeated banging sounds from inside the compartment full of explosives would probably get somebody to come check things out.

Which was the last thing we wanted. So far no one had bothered looking into the compartment where we were tucked away. It had been two days, and I was feeling pretty good about our odds. If they were going to look, they would have by now. I was still being extra careful about making noise.

My leg bumped into Acres instead. He woke, snorting a little before opening his eyes.

“Is it my watch?” he asked softly.

“No, sorry,” I whispered back. “Was trying to stretch.”

“You woke me up for that?” he said. We were both keeping our whispers barely audible. Voices carried.

“Didn’t mean to,” I said.

“How much longer are we going to hide in here?” he asked.

I tapped my smartwatch to activate it again. The tablet battery was already dead, but the watch was a computer in its own right. I’d taken to turning it off to conserve what was left of its power, but over the last two days I’d managed to quietly hack a link into the ship’s main computer network. Now it could display whichever ship’s instruments I asked. I called up navigation. Like Acres, I was about done with hiding.

“You stink,” he said, grinning in good humor.

“We both stink.” But not as bad as the ration bags did. We’d finished the last of the food yesterday, and re-used the bags for waste. Ever try pooping in zero gravity? Ever try doing it into a bag? Now imagine living in the small space where you were storing the bag. It hadn’t been a pleasant trip.

I lived in ongoing fear that one of the water bags we’d reused for urine would snag on something sharp and rupture.

“That’s odd,” I said.

“What?”

“We’re not on a direct course for Mars.” The telemetry my watch was showing me was clear. The entire fleet was still on the move, but it was decelerating - a long way from Mars. I was tired, and it took me a moment to realize what else was out here that they could be headed toward.

“It’s the station,” I said. “They’re headed for Dad’s R&D station.”

When I left Mars most of the fleet was still out there at the not-so-secret-anymore station, under repairs. I didn’t know how many ships Dad had ready for action, but I assumed he’d pull anything flightworthy back to Mars to prepare for the attack. Earth must have assumed the same. They were going to try to blow the station and deprive Mars of most of our shipbuilding bays.

“They’re in for a rude shock, then,” Acres said. “The Old Man has so many missile satellites around that thing, even this fleet is going to take it in the teeth trying to get through.”

I gave him a small nod. I’d seen those missiles at work before. “Maybe this is the moment we’ve been waiting for,” I said. “We take the ship now, we can add to the confusion.”

“Kid, that works for me. I’ve been ready to get out of this tin can for days.”

We went over the plan quickly. We had two pistols each. They had no weapons. Acres would go aft to engineering. I’d go forward to the bridge. We guessed there would be two crew on each end, who should be easy enough for us to eliminate. Taking the ship should be simple. The trick was going to be doing it fast and quietly, before anyone on board could get a message out.

“We’re still decelerating,” Acres said. “That’s gonna be a climb.”

He was right. The engines were in the rear of the ship. To brake hard, the ship flipped around and fired its main engine. I figured we were braking at about a full gravity. There was a ladder to climb the central stem of the ship while we were moving. Acres would be climbing down, toward the engines. I’d be climbing up to get to the cockpit. It was a long way up.

“I’ll manage,” I said. What else could we do? If we let them get off even a single message, we were toast.

“Timing has to be just right,” he said. “Ping my watch with yours when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting.”

“You think so?” I said. “Old man, I think I can climb a ladder faster than you can.”

“Old, hmm? We’ll see.” He clapped me quietly on the shoulder. “Let’s do this.”

I drew a pistol and swung the hatch open, quickly peering out into the corridor. It wasn’t likely anyone would be in the central passage right now, but it was a concern. The way was clear. I swung out onto the ladder, trying hard not to look down. The passage was a hundred feet long, and I had about eighty of that to climb.

I slid the pistol back into a pocket. We’d ditched the space suits inside the missile container. It might be nice to have them for an emergency, but I’d never be able to make this climb suited. I was just wearing the tight ship suit we wore underneath.

The first few rungs were easy enough. I was in good shape. Maybe this climb wouldn’t be so bad. Acres swung out beneath me and started to descend the ladder. I looked down and saw him grinning up at me. He gave me a thumbs up, then went back to his climb.

I brought my attention back to the ladder. I still had a long way to go.

About forty feet along, my arms started to shake. I made the mistake of looking down. I was a good sixty feet above the bottom now. If I let go, I’d break myself in the fall. My fingers were getting sweaty, and hanging on was harder than I’d hoped. I pushed on anyway. The sooner I got this done the better.

It didn’t take long to reach the top, even if it felt like forever. There was a little crow’s nest at the crew end of the ladder. I eased my body out onto it as quietly as possible, trying hard not to make a sound. I wasn’t completely silent, but the engines were making enough noise, the ship shaking a little from the braking effort, that my quiet scrapes probably went unnoticed. I sucked down a few deep gulps of air and tried to wipe my slick palms dry on my pants. I never wanted to do that again.

Then I reached over and tapped the watch on my wrist. That was Acres’ signal. He’d be moving. Time for me to do this. I drew the pistol from my pocket and reached for the hatch into the cockpit.

It opened before I touched the handle.

Chapter 22

Thomas Stein

I wasn’t sure which of us was more surprised - me, or the guy I was suddenly facing across the open hatch. He certainly looked shocked enough, but I had the feeling I was staring at him with the same open mouthed look was wearing.

“What the hell?” he said.

I closed my mouth and raised my pistol. He still had the hatch handle grasped tightly in his hand. As soon as he saw the gun, he tried to slam the hatch closed. I squeezed the trigger before he could.

Three shots, just like Acres had always taught. The reports sounded deafening in the enclosed space. Two took his body center of mass, the third went a little high and cut through his throat. He fell forward through the hatch, banged against the rail and fell down the shaft.

There wasn’t any time to waste. I shoved the hatch aside to get into the cockpit. There was one other crewman there, still sitting in his seat. He saw me coming, spotted the gun in my hand and tried to unbuckle himself from his harness.

“Oh God no…” he said. He stopped playing with the straps and raised his hands.

I shot him.

I’d killed people at close quarters like this before. The faces still haunted my nightmares on bad nights. Every time I shot someone, I knew I had been justified in doing it. This was war. These were enemy combatants. They were coming to kill people I cared about.

Sometimes telling myself things like that helped me sleep better. Sometimes.

I didn’t want to touch the body right now, so I slipped into the empty seat beside him and scanned the control panels. Everything was in order. The ship was still on course and no radio messages had gone out to alert the others. It looked like the big ship was coordinating the courses of the entire fleet. I checked radar. The entire battle group was closing on Dad’s station, except the flagship. It was hanging back a little ways to the rear. Someone was playing it safe.

Still, we were about to become a target for an awful lot of missiles. I connected my smartwatch to the main computer. From this console, that was simple. And my watch had all the Stein passcodes built into it. With luck, I could talk to the defense grid and maybe get it to not kill us.

While it was connecting I tapped the intercom. “How’s life in engineering?” I asked, hoping it would be Acres answering.

“Oh, fine.” I heaved a sigh of relief. “You took your sweet time climbing. I had enough time to work up an appetite down here. What’s for dinner?”

I looked over at the body in the seat next to me and felt a little nauseous at the thought of eating. “I think I’ve lost my appetite,” I said.

“Too bad. OK, we have the ship. Now what?”

My smartwatch was connected. My fingers flew over the console keys, trying to communicate with the satellites. I was worried someone on one of the other ships would notice what I was doing, but realized with a start that the ship was already linked up with the defense grid. In fact, every ship in the Earth fleet was broadcasting at them.

“Shit,” I said. I watched on my radar as the first ships in the fleet crossed over into the defense grid’s kill zone without being fired on. “I think we have a problem.”

“What’s up?” he said.

I checked the signal we were broadcasting, but I had a feeling I already knew what it was. Somehow the bad guys had hacked Dad’s security protocols. They were making all of the Earth ships look like they were friendly Stein vessels. The defense grid wasn’t going to activate against them. It was going to sit there useless while they slipped in and blew the station.

Those astrogation packages we’d sold them. It had to be that. I couldn’t think of any other way they could have hacked their way into the system. Someone on their end must have reverse-engineered the software and tweaked it to make the Earth fleet look friendly. I scanned the signal. There had to be something I could do, but each ship was sending its own friendly ID pattern to the defenses. I could override my own, but then the grid would just target my ship.

There might be a way. I fired off a laser signal to the R&D station, hoping someone was there who would pick up. Instead of a person, I got an automated computer firewall. Either Dad had evacuated the station when he saw where the fleet was going, or they were scrambling around in there trying to figure out why the defenses weren’t firing and no one was answering the phone.

Either way Acres and I were screwed if those defenses stayed inactive. We had the ship, but it wasn’t going to take the other ships very long to figure out something had happened over here. When they did, a couple of casual missiles would finish us off. There was no way this bucket was going to escape.

But if I could get the grid to fire on them… Most of the fleet was already inside the kill zone, and moving deeper every second. The attack would be devastating. All I needed was a little time to figure out how to do that.

The console in front of me flashed with new orders from the flagship. They were sending firing solutions. Directions on which targets each ship should fire on. I scrolled through the list. It looked like they had acquired a lock on every single missile platform Dad had seeded out there. Our orders were to hit two targets, unloading four missiles at each. Overkill, but I guessed they wanted to make really sure the grid was down and out forever.

I hesitated. If we didn’t fire, they’d know for certain something was up. If we fired, then we were helping them take down the only way out we had. Several long seconds passed before I pressed the button. A few moments later the ship shuddered as a volley of missiles launched.

“Thom, want to tell me what we’re shooting at?” Acres said over the intercom.

“Dad’s missile defenses,” I replied.

“The hell?”

“The defense grid is down. They hacked it,” I explained.

“Shit.”

“I’m working the problem.”

I had a deadline now though. Every ship in the fleet except the flagship was inside the kill pocket. But they’d all fired a massive volley of missiles. The grid was going down for good. Nothing I could do would stop that now. But maybe I could make it sing one last time before it was blasted to bits.

Chapter 23

Thomas Stein

My watch was plugged into the ship’s computer. I used the computer to ferry the Stein override codes through the laser link.

The firewall opened up. I was in. My fingers flew over the keys, calling up the radar and threat tracking from the R&D station. There it was - the entire Earth fleet, all showing as brilliant green icons. As far as the computer was concerned, those were all friendly ships out there. It was a safeguard built into our ships, so they wouldn’t ever be targeted and destroyed by our own weapons.

Now I had to override that. I swept my fingers over the screen. I had to tap the icon for a ship, change the status, then close the window. Move on to the next icon, repeat. Sweat dripped from my forehead, making the console slick as I went through the process. I tried not to watch the plot as those missiles streaked in toward their targets. I was undoing their masterwork of code, one ship at a time. But any moment now their missiles were going to hit home, and it would be too late. I raced through the last few ships, turning their icons scarlet.

Done. I pressed execute.

The radar exploded in a vibrant burst of new icons. The grid lit up every ship in the fleet as an enemy - except mine, which I’d left off the list. There were dozens of little missile launchers out there, and they all fired salvo after salvo at the attackers.

Then the Earther missiles began striking. One after another, the missile launchers went dead as they were blasted to bits. But it was too late. In the time it had taken to destroy them, they’d managed to fire off hundreds of missiles of their own.

The fleet devolved into chaos. Ships broke from their courses, trying to turn and run. But their ships still had too much velocity. None of them were able to veer away enough. And all that extra time it had taken to bypass their hack had actually paid off to my advantage. If the defenses had attacked at the edge of their range, the Earth fleet would have taken a few hits. But now every ship except the big one hanging back was well inside the kill zone. They were about to get hit hard.

“Acres, brace for hard acceleration,” I said. It was time to use the confusion to see if we could get the hell out of here.

“I’m strapped in,” he replied. “Do it!”

I flipped the ship back over and punched in five gravities of acceleration straight ahead into the teeth of the missile storm. I was counting on two things. First, that our tag was still showing as friendly, and those missiles would ignore us. Second, that all of the other ships were going to try as hard as they could to break away from the missiles. Nobody was going to follow us closer. I gritted my teeth against the pressure on my chest from the sudden burst of acceleration. We’d maintain this for as long as we could, fly right through the middle of the storm and out the other side.

Why stop there, though? I reached out against the force of the acceleration and touched the console again, tapping in a few new commands. My missile pods were loaded for bear, and there were still a lot of targets out there. I started firing at the nearest enemy ships, unloading a volley at each of the larger ones. Anything I could do might help.

My ship would keep firing for as long as the missile bays held out. Nothing more I could do but watch the action.

The missiles streaked across my screen, closing on their targets. The larger ships closed ranks, narrowing the gap between them. It was a good strategy. Closer together, the ships would be able to link their anti-missile systems and present a coordinated defense. I just didn’t think it was going to do them any good against as many incoming missiles as they were facing.

A few of the smaller ships tried to get in near the bigger ships. Some of them tried to break away and run instead. The missiles chased them down. Explosions dotted the screen as the first ones impacted.

The cluster of ships that stuck together was putting up a spirited defense. They took out maybe half the missiles coming at them. Given the raw volume of fire they were facing, that was pretty amazing. Their anti-missile fire was as good as ours. I filed that knowledge away for future reference.

But there were simply too many missiles. The storm hit them dead on. One after another, the icons on my screen flashed and vanished. I fixed a camera on the fight trying to get a visual, but all I could see were flashes of bright light as missile after missile hammered its way into a target.

“We got them, Chief. We took them down,” I said.

“Good job, kid. Now get us out of here.”

The screen cleared. Dad’s defense grid was history. They’d taken out every missile platform with the first volley. But the Earther fleet was gone, too. Most of it anyway. All that was left on my plot was my ship, the R&D station, and the flagship. As I watched, the flagship poured on the acceleration. It was coming in after us, and it was accelerating a lot faster than we were.

“Shit. I think we have a problem, Acres.”

“I see it on the screen down here. Shoot it?” he said.

I checked the board. We’d fired all our missiles at the fleet. We were empty. “None left. Doubt we could do enough damage anyway.”

“Run, then,” he said.

I tapped new commands into the console. I’d pulled this trick once before and it worked out OK. I set the engines to run at fifteen gravities for five minutes and then drop back down. On Dad’s ships, with special suits filled with a breathable liquid, we could manage twenty gravities for a while. On this ship that would kill us. But fifteen gravities for a short while would just knock us out. Probably.

The ship closing in behind us was already doing eight gees. I wondered just how fast they could run, and for how long. I tapped the command, and my ship started boosting even faster, redlining the engines in our effort to get away. Almost immediately I started to get tunnel vision. I wasn’t going to be able to stay awake much longer.

We were closing on the R&D station. It was close enough that I could get a visual. The Defender - Dad’s old ship - was sitting there in the dock. I wished more than anything that I was over there right now. With her refit done, I’d have the missile tubes to do some serious damage to these assholes, and the engines to run if I needed to.

Might as well wish for a comet to hit them. The Defender wasn’t going anywhere.

As I watched the station, a beam of white shot past my ship and slammed into it. Where it touched, the station withered, evaporated, and exploded. The beam only cut on for seconds, but when it was done there was nothing left. The station - along with the Defender and the other ships docked there for repairs - they were all gone.

“What the hell was that?” I said. Talking was an effort.

“Enemy ship. Railgun, I think,” Acres grunted back.

If it was a railgun, it was the biggest damned railgun I’d ever heard of anyone building. It looked like a solid beam of light. Railguns fired magnetically charged chunks of matter down a tube of electromagnets, using the polar charges to propel the bullet at incredible velocities. This was like some sort of rail-gatling gun, firing a burst of rounds in a stream, one after another.

Shit. We were going fast enough that missiles might have a hard time hitting us. But the railgun rounds were moving a lot faster than we were.

“Acres, brace for…” I got that much of the sentence out before the ship shook like something a wolfhound had picked up in its mouth and tossed around. Metal screamed around me as the ship’s structure started coming apart under the stress. Sparks flew from the consoles as everything shorted out at once. A panel flew from the ceiling and crashed down on my head, and I didn’t see anything else for a while.

Chapter 24

Nicholas Stein

The group of people I’d assembled in my ready room was small but smart. We were going to need that intellect if we wanted to work out what the hell had happened out there. I’d grimly watched the Earth fleet gently ease its way toward Mars. Twenty-one ships in all, and the biggest one as large as the rest of the fleet put together. Our situation was even more dire than my worst-case scenarios. I’d run simulations of every battle plan I could think of, but all of them ended the same way.

We were outmatched. Utterly and completely.

And then the fleet diverted from its direct course and gone after my R&D station. As bad as losing the station would be for us in the long run, it could be replaced. If the defense grid could only take out a few of those ships, we might have a shot at winning this after all. I had all the crew abandon the station and run for Mars. If they wanted the station, they could have it - but it was going to cost them.

I’d watched as they sailed right into the kill zone. And…nothing. No missile fire. Somehow they’d disabled the system. I tried to take direct control of the defense grid from my bridge, but they’d been jamming radio signals. I couldn’t get through to activate it from a distance.

Until all at once every missile battery unloaded everything it had in a flurry of violence and destruction. The surprise of the attack - when the ships were so far inside the kill pocket that they had little time to react - had wiped out the entire fleet.

Except that one big ship, which was armed with something we hadn’t seen before.

“I want answers,” I said, looking around the table. With me was my XO, Glenn Chandler. An old friend. The other two people here were Thomas’s friends. Keladry Flynn was my CAG, commanding the entire fighter wing. She’d proven extraordinarily adept at both piloting and command. Andrew Liddel rounded out the team. He was more of a thinker than a doer, but I wanted him out of engineering for this conversation. He might have insights into the tech end of what had happened.

“Should we worry more about how we can take advantage of the situation?” Glenn asked.

“Yes. But if we don’t know why it happened, we might be the ones unprepared next time,” I said. “So answers first. Then planning.”

I pressed a button, and we all watched a replay of the telemetry. The fleet entered the kill pocket. The missiles didn’t fire. Then all twenty of the ships in the main fleet fired almost as a single unit.

“Good coordination of fire,” Liddel said. He pointed at the screen. “See how no two ships are firing on any one target?”

“They might be using the flagship to coordinate that,” Glenn mused.

We watched as the missiles tracked toward their targets. For long moments nothing happened, and the Earth ships continued their slow glide in toward the helpless station.

Then all at once my missile platforms fired. Volley after volley of missiles lashed out at the attacking ships. They kept up a sustained rate of fire for a few moments before the attackers missiles struck home and blasted the platforms into dust. It was enough. If the fleet had held off and pummeled the defense grid from a distance, they might have been able to survive the return fire. But they clearly hadn’t been expecting any defense, and they’d come in far too close. The Earth ships had good missile defense. It just wasn’t good enough, not at that range.

“What’s that one ship doing?” Flynn asked.

That was the next odd thing. One Earth ship was shooting at their own ships instead of the attacking missiles. It was accelerating right into the teeth of the wave of missiles, and somehow passed through them all unscathed. Meanwhile its missiles added to the wave of damage that took out every other Earth ship.

“Malfunction? Confusion? Mutiny? It’s hard to say,” Glenn said.

“It just jumped up its acceleration. See how fast it’s going?” Liddel asked. He looked meaningfully at Flynn. “I’ve seen that before.”

The flagship rolled forward at that point. It never fired a missile, but the R&D station exploded and was gone. Then it fired whatever the weapon was again at the fleeing mutineer.

“Radar says the little ship was burning twelve gees when it was hit, and was still accelerating. The flagship was doing at least eight,” Glenn said.

Flynn looked up from the screen at Glenn. “You said you were pretty sure that those smaller ships were just more converted cargo vessels, right?”

“That’s my best guess,” Glenn said.

“Not a fun place to be doing twelve gravities of acceleration,” she said. “That was a high risk move.” She looked back at Liddel and nodded.

On the replay, the flagship rolled up to the smaller vessel it had crippled and matched speeds, coming up alongside it.

“If those were mutineers, I wish I knew what they’d been thinking,” I asked. If anyone survived on that ship, they were UN prisoners now. “More important: how did the enemy jam our defense grid? And why did the jamming fail? Is that something they can do to our ships?”

“I have some theories, sir,” Liddel said.

“Go,” I replied, waving him on.

“I think they found - or made - a back door in the program. When we added the friendly target failsafe, we created a vulnerability in our defense grid. It wasn’t too big a hole so long as we had someone on station to override if needed….”

“But when we abandoned the station, we left the automated systems in charge,” I said.

Liddel nodded. “Which were vulnerable to a hack.”

“That doesn’t explain why the hack failed,” I observed.

“Sir, I’ve seen some of the code for the grid,” Liddel said. “There’s only one way their hack could have failed. Someone had an override. Probably someone on that little ship.”

My heart stopped. He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was. But really, he was right. It was the only possible explanation. I simply hadn’t been willing to see it. Hadn’t been willing to risk hope.

Flynn gave a sharp bark of laughter, breaking the tension like a glass thrown at the wall. “You’re all beating around the bush here. The override code. Firing missiles at a swarm of enemy ships. Going balls to the wall at enough gravities to knock you out in a ship not built for it. I’ve seen those sorts of moves before, and so have you.”

She stabbed a finger down at the small ship we’d been watching. “That was Thomas.”

I slumped back in my seat. She was very likely right. I felt my heart lurch into motion again, pain from the recent wound of losing my son mixing with the taste of new hope. I almost didn’t dare risk that hope. Losing him twice would be too much.

“Assume…” I started to talk, but my voice was rough with emotion. I cleared my throat. “Assume it was Thomas. If he’s still alive, then they have him on board that ship. It’s still on course for Mars?”

“It’ll be here in an hour,” Glenn said.

“With the biggest spaceship anyone has ever built. Armed with a weapon that we know nothing about,” I reminded them.

“We have a weapon they know nothing about,” Flynn said. “My Hawks will be ready.”

Thomas, alive after all? I wanted to hope. But if he was alive, how the hell was I going to rescue him from that killer ship? The ship I had to destroy, if any of us were going to live through this?

Chapter 25

Thomas Stein

The wreckage pinning me to my seat stirred. That was the first thing I felt as I drifted back to consciousness. That, and the fact that my head was pounding like someone had driven a spike into my skull. I held very still, trying to take stock of my injuries. I could taste blood, but when I tried to wiggle my fingers and toes, they all seemed to work.

“Got one up here,” someone said. I didn’t recognize the voice. More lifting and shoving of the junk heaped atop me ensued. My ears told me that I was in free fall, no gravity and no acceleration. Why was I pinned in place, then? I tried to move an arm, and found I could reach around a little. Sharp, jagged chunks of metal met my fingertips. Sitting tight might be the best option after all.

“The admiral really messed this tub up,” someone else added.

“Good. These assholes fucked over the whole fleet,” the first speaker replied.

“Wouldn’t want to be in this guy’s shoes,” the second said.

I heard a high-pitched whine, and saw a cutting laser light up a few feet from my head. I wasn’t entirely sure if these guys cared if I lived or died, so it seemed like it was maybe time take matters into my own hands. I couldn’t remember where I’d put the pistol I used to kill the two men on the bridge. But I could reach down to the pocket where I’d stowed the second one. It was still there. I eased it out of the pocket.

That laser was cutting closer to my head. With an effort, I got my knees up under the chunk of scrap that had me pinned down and pushed up. Something snapped, and the metal went spinning toward the ceiling. I was free.

Two men in ship suits stood there, one of them with a laser cutter in his hands. He saw the gun and lunged at me with the cutter. I pushed away from the chair, drifting clear to get a little distance between us. Then I fired. My first shot wasn’t well aimed and went wild. My second slug took him in the leg. He yowled and dropped the cutter, both his hands going to the wound. Little balls of blood spun off his injury and floated across the small space. His buddy took the moment to duck out of the cockpit down toward the rest of the ship.

“You asshole,” he said. Fear warred with anger in his voice. “Don’t you know when you’re beat?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Stay put.”

“I’m done, man,” he said. “Just don’t kill me!”

I kept the gun trained on him as I made my way toward the hatch, but he didn’t make any moves. The gunshot had to hurt like hell. I figured he was out of the fight for now, at least. And I didn’t want to kill anyone that I didn’t have to. I wasn’t going to tell him that, though.

I hated to turn my back on him to head out through the hatch, but I needed all my focus forward in case the other guy was waiting outside the hatch. I led with my pistol, keeping an eye out for his friend. The space on the other side of the hatch was empty. And smaller than I remembered. A huge seal had been placed over the tube into the ship’s stem. The center stem must have lost atmosphere when we were hit, so they shut it off while they worked. What about engineering, though? Was Acres still alive down there somewhere?

There was only one place to go from here. The forward airlock was open, leading to a tube. I peeked into the tube, which ended in the airlock door of another ship. The wrecked hulk of my ship was floating next to the enemy flagship. It was their search and rescue operation. The airlock on the far side was closed, and I could see armed men gathering there, getting ready to pour across the gap toward me.

“Shit,” I said.

“Yeah, asshole,” the guy I’d shot said from the cockpit. “You ready to give up yet?”

“Bet I can take out a few of them as they come across,” I said.

“Bet they just toss some gas over and knock you out,” he shot back.

He was probably right. And even if I could take out a couple of them as they came in my best case scenario would be that I’d still be taken captive and beaten to a pulp in the process. I could maybe make them kill me. That way I couldn’t be used as a weapon against my father.

My Dad. The commander of the enemy flagship must have realized that I was aboard here. I’d used the Stein override codes. There weren’t too many people who could do that, and only one of them wasn’t on or around Mars. It probably hadn’t taken them long to realize who I was. They’d wrecked my ship, but not destroyed it. Then they’d pulled up alongside hoping to yank me from the wreck so they’d have a hostage.

I could still deny them that. I looked at the gun, wondering if I could really do it. Either shoot myself, or toss myself out into space. Either way they would lose me as a playing piece in this game.

But I wasn’t quite ready to give up hope. They might have me. But maybe there were still things I could do to mess up their lives and save my own, if I waited until the right moment. I wasn’t ready to die, not today, not if I could find a way out of this.

“OK,” I said. The hatch on the far side was opening up. Rifle barrels aimed down the connecting tube toward me. I shouted down the tube. “I surrender.”

“Throw your weapon over to us!” barked one of the marines on the far side.

I tossed the gun down the tube. They waited as it sailed over toward them, then one of the men reached out and caught it. “Go get him,” the guard said.

Four men pushed off and glided down the tube toward me. I was impressed. These guys were obviously well trained, well coordinated. And the idea that they thought it was going to take four guys to make sure I was taken was a little gratifying. I let go of the airlock door as they came through the gap. Two of them grabbed hold of my arms, pinning me in place. One held his rifle aimed at me.

“No sudden moves,” he said.

The fourth patted me down, checking every pocket before looking back up at his fellows. “No weapons. Just this,” he said, holding up my little spy pen. “He’s clear.”

I hoped that Dad had gotten the data I’d recorded on the pen. I doubted I was going to be able to get it back. They hadn’t seen my watch as being worth taking away. I didn’t disabuse them of the notion. It might come in handy soon.

My next job was to try to make sure they knew who I was, so they didn’t just kill me out of hand. And then to see if I could get someplace where I might be able to make some trouble. It wouldn’t do me any good to end up locked in a cell somewhere in the bowels of the ship.

So I gave the marines my best grin. “I’m Thomas Stein. You’ve got me. Now take me to your leader.”

Chapter 26

Thomas Stein

The marines cuffed my hands behind my back with zip-ties, which basically meant I couldn’t move unassisted anymore. Zero gravity without your hands is messy and usually results in injury, and I’d had my head banged around enough for one day. My skull still throbbed where I’d been hit when they blasted my ship. The men grabbed me by the elbows and guided me across the tube into their ship.

“What about the other man?” I asked. “Was there another survivor, in the engine room?”

They didn’t respond. I had no way of knowing if Acres was alive or not. But at least I’d told them there might be another warm body aboard the ship. Maybe they’d look. Acres was an old friend of my Dad’s. He might not be as good a hostage as I was, but he had to still be worth something. Anything to keep him alive.

If he was. The railgun must have slammed into the middle of my ship. The missile bays were ruined, and the center stem had huge, gaping holes torn through it. They’d targeted well though, from what I could see as we went through the tube. Both ends looked more or less intact from the outside, but the insides of the front had been torn up anyway. Looks could be deceiving.

Once we were aboard the flagship, the marines retracted the tube. Cut adrift, the wrecked hulk started to slip behind a little.

“No!” I said. “There’s another man still over there!”

“Shut up,” one of the marines said. He cuffed me across the face, hard enough to split my lip. I couldn’t even duck the blow, thanks to the men holding my arms. He tapped his radio. “We’ve cut the wreck loose. You can resume spin.”

I watched the stars begin to slip by outside through the porthole in the airlock. They were spinning the ship! As the speed of the rotation increased my feet slowly sank toward the outer hull. My stomach lurched a little, as I reoriented myself to a new ‘floor’ and ‘ceiling’. It was disconcerting.

My discomfort must have shown in my face. One of the men pinning my arms chuckled. “You get used to it,” he said. “Not that it will matter much for you.”

“Why the spin?” I asked. It seemed like an enormous amount of energy to spend just to be able to put your feet on the deck. And once they accelerated everyone would be pushed toward the rear of the ship anyway.

“I said to shut up. You want me to hit you again?”

I shook my head.

“Good,” he said. “Bring him to the bridge.”

At least they weren’t taking me to their brig. The two guards holding my arms escorted me down a long hall, then up a flight of stairs. We were moving toward the center of the ship. I could feel myself getting lighter as we moved up. The spin was set to feel roughly like Earth normal gravity on the outer edge of the ship. But the nearer to the center, the slower you were spinning and the less you were pulled outward.

Then we went up one more flight of stairs into an open space, and all I could do was stand there in awe.

The center of the ship was hollow. From where I stood I could see all the way across to the other side - the length of a football field away. I could, anyway, if it hadn’t been for the rod running down the center of the entire ship. It was like the ship was a tube, with a steel core. I’d seen something like it before. It looked a little bit like the inside of an electric motor.

But this wasn’t electricity going into magnets to induce movement, I realized. They’d reversed it. The ship’s engines powered spin, which they were using to induce magnetism. That rod through the middle was the barrel of the railgun. It was maybe half a mile long. That was a lot of magnets. The shots they fired had to be accelerating to some decent percent of the speed of light by the time they left the barrel.

“My god,” I said. “This ship isn’t armed with a railgun. The whole ship is the railgun.”

“Pretty sweet, huh?” one of my guards said.

“We’re gonna make short work of those rebels on Mars,” the other said. “You folks never should have tried that shit in the UN building.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then left it alone. There was no point trying to tell these men that they were wrong, that Choi had planted the bomb. One of them was carrying my pen with the recording, but even if I convinced them to play it back, they wouldn’t care. Their worldview depended on us being the enemy. I wasn’t going to win hearts and minds out here today.

This ship wasn’t just for beating up other ships though. You didn’t need a gun that powerful to take out a ship. The speed those railgun pellets were fired at, they’d be devastating against a planetary target, too. They could wipe out the entire colony on Mars from orbit.

I was starting to think that I wasn’t going to get away that easy, either. The ship was crawling with people. As we walked along we passed more and more of them. There must have been hundreds of crew on board. And I hadn’t seen any signs that said ‘exit’ or ‘lifeboats this way’ yet. Breaking out was going to be a lot harder than getting in.

We walked a long way along the inner level of the ship, finally arriving at a closed set of doors. One of the marines waved a hand over a panel, and the door snapped open. Biometric door controls meant getting around was going to be a bitch. Even if I got away, it wasn’t going to matter. If my handprint wasn’t in the computer system as authorized personnel, I wasn’t going to get very far.

They hauled me down a short corridor to another set of doors. This one had a handprint scanner too. The guard waved it open with his hand again and stepped into the doorway. “We’ve brought the prisoner as ordered, sir,” he said.

“Bring him in,” someone said over the speaker.

I sucked in a breath. I knew that voice.

The doors snapped open. The inside of the bridge looked like something out of a science fiction film. One wall was dominated by a huge view screen. The center of the room was occupied by a large holotank, showing the area in space around the ship. All around the periphery of the room were manned stations. All of them stopped what they were doing for a moment to gawk as the marines dragged me into the room.

And in the middle of the room, next to the holotank, stood two men I knew very well.

“Good to see you here, Thom,” Acres said. “Sorry about the bad company, though.” He was bound the same as I was, with a guard standing behind him holding the zip ties. Acres looked a little battered. Some of the cuts and bruises on his face looked like they’d been made more recently than the attack on our ship. Of course the Chief would fight back. I’d never in my life seen the man back down.

I glared daggers at the other man. “Admiral Perrault. Why am I not really shocked to see you here?”

“Because I all but told you I would be,” he replied. “Who else would they send after your father?” He made a dismissive motion with his hand. “No one else would even have a prayer of beating the man.”

“So this is how you repay the Old Man’s friendship?” Acres said. “A knife in the back?”

Perrault ignored Acres. He turned and looked me over. “Glad you’re here, Thomas. Maybe with you at my side we can undo a little of the damage you’ve done.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” I said.

He shook his head, anger gleaming in his eyes. “This could have been bloodless. Don’t you see that? With the full fleet, I could have forced your father to stand down. He would have known a battle was pointless.”

He stalked away from me and gestured at the plot. Up ahead Mars was coming into view. “Now he’s out there somewhere, and he still thinks he can win. According to our reports he has one ship. If he engages me, I can break him. If he doesn’t, I’ll be forced to attack the surface to draw him out.”

“You killed my fleet,” he said. “All those men and women, dead because you had to play hero. But now the people living on Mars are going to pay the price for your heroics. How does the hero’s mantle feel now?”

I hung my head. All I’d done was the best I could, the best I could think of in the heat of the moment. Was he right? Were tens of thousands of civilians going to die because I’d screwed up? I didn’t know how I could have done anything differently. But suddenly I felt like a very small player in a very big game.

Chapter 27

Thomas Stein

Then Acres laughed.

My head snapped back up. It wasn’t a sarcastic laugh. He let out with a big, booming belly laugh. The kind that reminded you of Santa Claus - if Santa was into shotguns and explosives.

“You ass,” he said. Then he gave another chuckle. “You pompous old windbag.” He chortled some more.

Perrault was unamused. “Oh?” he said, his voice dangerous.

“You don’t know shit about the Old Man, if you ever thought he would back down from your shitty ass fleet,” Acres said. “The whole time you were taking your sweet time coming out here, he was over there planning how to beat you.”

“And then his son went and did it for him,” Acres chuckled some more. “Your Dad might be a little pissed that you’ve passed him for ship kills now, Thomas.”

The thought made me grin. “I hadn’t realized that,” I said. “But you’re right. I’ve got him solidly beat now.”

Perrault was turning redder by the minute. He shot me a warning glare, then turned back to Acres. No - I realized he wasn’t looking at Acres. He was making eye contact with the guard behind him.

“I don’t think we need two hostages,” Perrault said.

The guard drew his pistol and fired a shot into the back of the Chief’s head.

“No!” I screamed. I struggled against the guards holding me, trying to get to his side.

But it was too late. His mouth was open in shock, his eyes rolled back into his head. There was no exit wound from the bullet, but I could tell Acres was dead before his body hit the floor.

I closed my eyes, feeling almost like I’d been shot myself. Wishing I had been. Acres was an old grump, but he’d been in my life as long as I could remember. When Dad was off running the business, Acres was the one who kept an eye on me. He’d taught me as much about tactics as my father ever had. He’d never once said I wasn’t good enough. Never once implied I was a disappointment.

He’d always had my back. Right up until his last moment, when he stood up for me against Perrault. And died for it.

I snapped my eyes back open.

“You’re an ass, Perrault,” I said. “Worse, you’re an incompetent ass. And a vicious man to boot.”

One of the guards holding my arms elbowed me in the ribs hard. My breath went out, and I dropped to one knee, gasping.

“No, let him up,” Perrault said. “In fact, cut him loose. He’s not going anywhere.”

I begged to disagree, but I wasn’t going to argue the point with him if it got my hands free again. The guard looked dubious, but he snipped off the zip-ties. I stood back up and rubbed my wrists to work away the red gouges the ties left on my skin.

“You were saying?” Perrault asked, gesturing for me to continue. He had a smirk on his face that I wanted to wipe away. He felt like he was in charge here. But I knew differently. He was letting his temper get the better of him, which meant he was already out of control.

“You’d already taken out the station defenses. You could have captured the station, kept it as a resource. Captured the ships there. Stolen the plans for our newest ships and tech,” I said. “But you were so pissed off about losing your fleet that you blasted the station to bits instead.”

I took a couple steps toward him. The smirk was gone. He knew he’d flubbed that one.

“And then you kill Acres. Since when is one hostage worth more than two? With him around, you might have used his life to ensure my good behavior. How do you plan to do that now?” I asked.

“What will you do, talk me to death?” Perrault retorted.

“I’ve done a pretty good job of screwing you so far,” I said. “What makes you think I’m done now? Face it. You’ve lost your temper twice now. You’re pissed and you want to take that anger out on someone.”

He raised his hand to strike me.

I didn’t move or flinch. I just cocked an eyebrow at him.

He froze. Then he lowered his arm and looked away. Something I’d said had struck home.

I wasn’t sure it mattered. He’d been bloodied, and his crew was just as angry as he was. They’d lost so much. This attack wasn’t just about winning anymore. It was about vengeance. Military targets, civilian targets - I wasn’t sure that distinction mattered anymore. Not to any of them.

“You can still end this,” I said. I made my voice softer now. I needed to be the voice of reason. “You were once my father’s friend. You have honor. The man you serve has none. Turn around. Go back to Earth. There’s already been enough death today.”

Inside I was raging. Acres’ body was still cooling on the deck beside me. Perrault might not have pulled the trigger, but he gave the order. I wanted to feel my fingers tighten around his neck. I wanted him dead, almost as badly as I wanted Choi gone. And I wanted to be the one to do it.

But what I said about him was true for me as well. If all we did was avenge our dead, over and over, there would never be an end to it. If the Chief had taught me anything, it was that while you ought to prepare for war and fight your hardest when needed - peace was better.

My gut said he would approve. I trusted my instincts. After all, he’d helped form them.

“I wish I still had honor like you talk about, Thomas,” Perrault said, after taking several breaths. “But now all I have is duty. Duty to avenge my dead. Duty to obey my orders. Duty to end this war, once and for all, before it grows and wipes out humanity.”

Perrault sat down and buckled himself in. He wasn’t looking at me anymore.

I shook my head sadly at him. What else could I possibly say? After all, I understood the emotions he was experiencing only too well. The only difference was that I’d been taught to value honor over duty, instead of the other way around.

“Have a seat, Thomas,” Perrault said, gesturing to the chair next to him.

“Why?”

Ignoring me, he spoke instead to his bridge crew. “Come to two gravities of acceleration. How long until we’re in range of Mars with the main gun at that rate?”

There was a moment of pause before someone answered. “Twenty four minutes, sir.”

The ship began to move. I could feel the engines driving us forward. I sat down and buckled myself in next to Perrault. At two gravities, I’d be tossed against the back wall if I wasn’t strapped down.

“You’re going to strike the surface with your railgun,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I knew what he had in mind. I wondered if even Dad’s deep stronghold would survive a strike from so powerful a weapon.

“Only if your father’s actions demand it,” Perrault replied. “With luck, he will simply surrender and we can stop the bloodshed right away.”

I didn’t believe him.

“Sir?” One of the bridge crew broke hesitantly into our conversation. We both looked at her, welcoming the distraction. “Incoming radio signal.”

“From where?” Perrault asked.

“Somewhere between us and Mars, sir. I’m working to locate the source.”

“I’m betting that’s your father, Thomas,” Perrault said. “Let’s see if he’ll listen to reason once he learns we have you here. After all, what father could blow up the ship where his son was held prisoner?”

I grimaced. How many times had my Dad done his best to keep me out of danger? He’d shoved me off to safety - or at least tried to - more times than I probably knew. I’d managed to get into a good deal of trouble over the past year despite him, but it wasn’t for lack of his trying to keep me in one piece. This was the ultimate test, then. And I honestly didn’t know what my father would do when the chips were down like this. Would he surrender, and sacrifice everything to save me?

“Put him on screen,” Perrault said.

Chapter 28

Nicholas Stein

My ship was buttoned up, everyone at action stations and as ready as we were ever going to get. I looked around, glad of the crew I had. I didn’t know what our chances were of stopping the monster bearing down on us, but they were a hell of a lot better than they had been a little while ago.

The back of my mind was full of worry over Thomas. If Flynn was right and he was responsible for destroying the Earth fleet, where was he now? Best case, he was a prisoner on board the ship I was about to destroy. Worst case…

But I kept those thoughts to the background. My main concern had to be stopping this menace before it could come any close to my homeworld. Because while Mars might not be the planet of my birth, it was certainly the one I called home now.

“Are the Hawks away?” I asked.

“All twelve, yes sir,” Diaz replied. “Running silent at the enemy. I’m displaying their coordinates on the tank now.”

New lights sparkled into existence in the holotank. They were moving fast, like arrows shot from my bow straight at the heart of my opponent. The fighters were agile, but fragile. Once they got close they’d be hard to hit. If the enemy flagship caught them at range, they could potentially be picked off by missile fire. The fighters’ stealth was good, but not perfect. I needed to create a distraction. Keep them looking elsewhere so they didn’t spot the Hawks.

“Harris, put a call in to the enemy ship,” I said.

“They’ll use it to trace our location, sir,” he warned.

“Can we bounce the signal off a satellite, hide ourselves a bit longer?” I asked.

“Yes sir. But they’ll still likely be able to find the source of our signal. They’ll know where we are.”

He was sweating, but he kept his voice steady. I appreciated that. It was a situation worth sweating over. “We need to buy the Hawks some time,” I said. “Put me through.”

“Aye, sir.”

A few moments later my screen flickered to life as the enemy accepted the transmission. I figured they probably would. What I wasn’t counting on were the two seated figures centered in my screen. Perrault - and Thomas. I masked my surprise as best I could, but my mouth felt dry and my heart beat faster seeing that my son really was alive. And right in the last place in the universe I wanted him to be.

“Admiral, I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,” I said. “And Thomas. I wasn’t sure I was going to see you at all. I should have listened when you said that reports of your death would be exaggerated. They treating you well?”

“As well as you might expect,” Thomas replied. He raised both his hands. He wasn’t handcuffed, which was something. “They executed Acres, Dad. Shot him in the back of the head.”

Perrault gave Thomas a look that held daggers before turning back to me.

“An unfortunate incident,” Perrault said, smoothing his uniform with his hands like he was trying to wipe blood from them.

“Is that how we should expect all prisoners of war to be treated now, Admiral?” I shot back. I wasn’t even trying to conceal my anger - and my disgust. He’d clearly ordered the execution. What had happened to the man I’d once known, that he would commit a blatant war crime? He’d been a good man once. I’d thought him a friend. He was poisoned with hate now though. There was no remorse in his tone or manner.

“No, of course not,” Perrault said. He straightened his uniform. Ever the proper one. “If you surrender your ship, you and your crew can expect full protections under the Geneva Convention.”

I barked a laugh. “You only have one ship, Barry. What makes you think I have any intention of surrendering?”

“The UNN Dreadnought is armed with a weapon capable of obliterating all traces of human life on Mars, Nick,” he replied. His voice was like cold lead. “And I have orders to use it to that effect if you resist. Please don’t make me do that.”

I saw Thomas make the smallest of nods. Perrault’s ship did have some sort of new weapon, then. And Thomas was convinced it would be able to do as he claimed. That was good enough for me. The threat was a real one. I glanced back at the tracking board. In another minute or so Flynn’s Hawks would be unloading their missiles at Barry’s dreadnought, and then we’d see how well she’d been built. The thing was monstrous. I hoped the little fighters had enough missiles to take her down.

Not that for one moment I planned on letting the Hermes sit this fight out. Not with so much on the line.

“I think you know as well as I do that surrendering isn’t an option,” I said. “Besides, you’ve always wanted a chance to show you were better than me. Well - this is your shot.”

Barry’s face grew red with anger. His hands gripped the sides of his chair. “You bastard. Just remember that you forced this on me.”

“Thomas,” I said quickly while Perrault was still spluttering. “I’m sending a friend your way for a call. Good luck, son.”

I hoped he understood the subtle hint. When Thomas showed me his wrists I’d seen something Perrault’s men had forgotten, or failed to realize the importance of. Not only were his hands free, he still had his watch. And unlike most smartwatches, Thomas’s didn’t rely on an outside network to communicate. That might make all the difference in the world, if we could just give him enough of a distraction. Which the Hawks were about to do in spades.

“You don’t dare fire on us,” Perrault said. “I have Thomas here. Even if you could somehow beat this ship - which you can’t - you’d never order the death of your own son.”

“I already did,” I replied, praying that I actually hadn’t. I eyeballed the holotank. The Hawks were already danger close. Flynn’s team would be firing any second now. “MSS Hermes out.”

Then I severed the connection.

“Bring the drives online,” I ordered. “Time to get us into the action.”

Chapter 29

Thomas Stein

I felt dazed for a moment as my father cut off the comm link. The message was clear as day to me. He was going to do it. He’d do his damnedest to take this ship down. No matter what, he would defend Mars. Even if I was aboard.

Part of me was strangely satisfied. After all, this was what I’d always wanted. It was confirmation that he took me seriously, that he was willing to risk my life when it really mattered, just like he was willing to put his own on the line. I’d seen my father risk everything over and over again - except me. This was different. I knew that if Dad thought he had a chance of taking this ship out, there was a firestorm coming our way.

The rest of me was scared shitless. I’d never been so totally alone. I’d always had friends nearby. Acres, or Kel, or someone else I could count on to watch my back. Here I was trapped under guard on the bridge of the biggest ship anyone had ever constructed. In the hands of an enemy who didn’t care how many people he killed. With the best tactician alive out there in space plotting to blow up the ship I was sitting in.

And what had he meant about sending a friend my way for a call?

“You’d all better brace yourselves,” I said. I reached up and tightened down the straps holding me in my seat.

“He’s bluffing,” Perrault said. “He would never risk attacking us with you on board.”

I stared at him in disbelief. How had this man known my father for so long and yet never bothered to try to understand how he thought?

“You don’t understand my father at all, do you?” I said.

“Got a contact!” one of the men on the bridge called out. “Large ship, closing toward missile range.”

“That must be his ship,” Perrault said. “Put it up on the holotank.”

The dot appeared as a red mark slowly moving toward us.

“Still think he’s bluffing?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter. If he only has one ship, he’s a dead man,” Perrault said. “Hermes, hmm? Your father always did have a thing for old ship names. What was that one?” he asked, tapping his chin in thought.

It took me only a moment to remember. Dad had bought me a model of that ship when I was a kid. It was the first aircraft carrier. “Oh. Shit,” I whispered, suddenly realizing what was coming our way.

“Multiple contacts, sir! Incoming contacts!”

The holotank lit up with twelve new contacts, all of them just about on top of us. Those had to be fighters. Dad had built a space carrier, and stealth fighters. He’d known Earth was building big ships. He’d known we couldn’t out build them. So he’d built a bunch of small ones instead.

“Incoming missiles! All of the new contacts are firing, multiple missiles inbound!”

“Anti-missile batteries on automatic,” Perrault ordered. “Weapons, lock those new targets and fire.”

“Having trouble acquiring the targets, sir. They’re too fast and too close,” one young ensign replied.

Twelve ships each shot what looked like four missiles. It wasn’t a massive barrage. But they’d fired from so close that the dreadnought’s defenses had barely any time to acquire them. I watched a few missiles blink out as a lucky shot took them down. A few more were taken down by outbound missiles that got too close, explosions annihilating both. Most of them were going to hit.

“Brace for impact!” Perrault shouted. “Multiple -”

The first explosions cut him off. One after another missiles slammed into the ship. Most hit too close together to tell them apart. The consoles to my left exploded in a violent display of light and sparks. The ship shook, metal shrieking as it was stressed beyond its ability to tolerate and tore apart.

The holotank was miraculously still running. I watched as the fighters streaked past the ship. They were already braking, coming about for another run.

“Damage report!” Perrault shouted.

“Forward armor has broken in ten sections, sir. We’ve lost half our missile tubes and about a third of our defensive guns. Venting atmosphere in four sections that we can’t seal yet because of debris.”

I grinned despite the desperate situation. They’d been solidly bloodied. “Still feeling confident, Admiral?” I asked.

“Yes,” he growled. He turned back to face the holotank. “Is the main gun still online?”

“Yes sir,” one of his men reported. That was bad. I’d been hoping one of those missiles might have taken it out. “Some damage, but it should still fire at least once.”

“How long until we can target the surface?” Perrault asked.

“Twelve minutes,” came the reply.

I stared, aghast. “You can’t!” I said. “You’d kill all those people? For what?”

“Without a base of support, your father is just one renegade with one ship,” Perrault said. “One way or another, this war ends today.”

“The Hermes is firing missiles, sir!”

“Target them with our defenses and return fire!” Perrault snapped. “Between our armor and our guns, they can’t do enough damage to stop us.”

The ship shuddered as it launched a volley of missiles, then shook again for another round. It was keeping up a rapid rate of fire. Even with the massive damage they’d sustained, this thing was huge. It had to have the magazines for a long slugfest. I hoped that Dad had built the Hermes to take the pounding he was about to receive.

I watched the fighters on the holotank as they came about. They didn’t bother coming to a full stop and returning. Instead they swung around in fast arcs, retaining a lot of their velocity. Two of them vanished as they turned, tagged by missiles. The rest darted back into the fight, firing at the rear of the ship as they came.

Dad’s fire looked light. I wondered if he was holding back. He was firing fast volleys, but each one only had twelve missiles. In contrast, there had to be at least fifty missiles in each wave of the dreadnought’s attack - and that was with half their tubes down!

The missiles passed each other in space. Dad’s shots were going to hit first. I gripped the sides of my chair hard enough that the metal bit into my hands. But the anti-missile guns were good, and took out most of the shots. Two missiles swung through and slammed into the front of the ship. More klaxons sounded, adding to the general confusion and din, but it didn’t seem like the ship’s rate of fire had been affected much.

I watched as over two hundred missiles sped through the night toward the Hermes, praying my father was able to pull another miracle out of his hat. And the Dreadnought continued firing, filling the space between the two ships with its deadly rain of missiles.

Chapter 30

Nicholas Stein

I watched as Perrault’s ship tore my first volley to bits. I wasn’t really anticipating much from the attack. The Hermes had to sacrifice something to add all the fighter bays, and I’d elected to give it only minimal offensive capability. Everything in ship engineering was a trade-off.

His ship was venting atmosphere like mad. The Hawks had hurt him. If I could keep most of his attention focused on my ship, they’d wound him even more on their next pass. I just had to make sure we survived the experience. The raw number of missiles headed our way was more than I’d expected to be facing. But we weren’t done yet.

“Helm, bring the ship a course perpendicular to theirs,” I said. “I want to almost cross their T, but keep us out of the path of their main gun.” They’d still be able to fire on us. Missiles didn’t have have to shoot in straight lines. But by moving laterally the missiles would have to work harder to acquire us, and harder still to maintain a lock. “Come to five gravities acceleration, and circle around them as we go.”

The speed would make tracking us harder still. With the suits on, we could sustain that sort of burn for a long time. I hated breathing the liquid perfluorocarbon crap, but it was keeping us alive.

Most of the missiles were still tracking us even with the change of course. “Rotate the ship,” I ordered. “Belly toward the missiles.”

“Aye, sir, rotating.”

I’d had to give up a lot of offense in designing the Hermes. Missile magazines took up enormous space, and we simply didn’t have room for them. We could have added more launchers, but then we’d have burned through our entire magazines in just a few volleys.

Anti-missile gun ammunition, and the little rockets I’d developed to seek and destroy incoming missiles? Those were smaller. We could pack a ton of those. So I’d given the Hermes a few tweaks that no one had ever seen before. The attack tubes were on the sides of the ship. The anti-missile defense was mostly stacked on the belly. As we rolled the belly of the ship toward the teeth of the incoming assault, every gun emplacement on the ship was able to come to bear all at once.

The first volley they fired was fifty-two missiles. Ten lost track of us as we moved. The other forty-two died in that hail of lead. Not a single one got through our defense.

The bridge crew cheered. I let them have their moment. I felt a lot like cheering myself; it was the total vindication of the effectiveness of my design. Then I brought them back to their tasks. “Stay ready. There’s a lot more missiles coming our way.”

There were a few murmured “Aye, sir” and “Yes sir” replies, but I could feel the energy of their mood. A few minutes ago the Hermes had been an untried, untested ship. None of us really knew how well the defenses would hold. Now we’d seen it first-hand. Their confidence was running high.

“Keep firing as long as our missiles last,” I said. “I want focused fire on the rear of the ship.”

Flynn’s next attack would strike the back ends. If a few of our volleys landed about the same time her attack did, it would give their defensive fire that many more targets to worry about, and make things that much harder for them. We had to get more missiles through. The Dreadnought was so big, so well armored, that it was going to take a lot of damage before it went down.

Then the second wave of missiles pounded away at us. This time our defenses were almost as good as they’d been for the first wave. Only two of the fifty shots broke past. But then the other reason for rolling the ship came into play.

I’d known the Hermes would take some hits during a fight, even with the best defensive grid possible. I also knew I couldn’t armor the ship everywhere. It would have been as sluggish as Perrault’s dreadnought if I had. So I focused all the armor on the belly of the ship, turning the entire surface into a massive shield of composite alloys and ablative armor.

The two missiles slammed into the armor plates, which ruptured and burst, scattering the blast back into space. The ship shook with each impact, but I’d been through worse.

“Damage report,” I said.

“None sir,” Harris said. “All stations report no damage.” He sounded stunned.

I wasn’t so much surprised as relieved. That was how the armor was supposed to work. But it had never been tested under combat conditions before. There simply hadn’t been time. I’d had it installed anyway, and it was gratifying to see that the gamble was paying off.

Then it was time to check on my fighters. I cursed as two more of the Hawks were destroyed on their attack run. It looked like the dreadnought was using its anti-missile guns on the fighters now. Flynn had brought them in incredibly close. The fighters couldn’t carry a lot of missiles, so she was trying to make this into a knife fight, get her ships in near enough that there was no way the missiles could be shot down before they impacted.

When the Hawks fired they were so close that the missiles didn’t even register on radar for long enough to display on the holotank before they blew. Eight fighters, she’d fired sixteen missiles in at the back end of the dreadnought. Her fighters winged away, splitting and running clear of the ship. One was clipped on the way out and vanished from my screen.

But they’d done the work. The holotank displayed a damage estimate, and it was showing me the plumes of secondary explosions in the rear of the ship. Even better, they’d stopped their forward acceleration. The fighters had damaged something in the engines and crippled the dreadnought. The ship still had the forward velocity it had already built up, but it wasn’t going to be doing any maneuvering.

“Flynn, have your Hawks return to base,” I said. They had to be low on missiles, but they could re-arm on the Hermes or even on Mars Station in a pinch. It would cost us time, but they needed more missiles to get the job done.

“Negative sir,” she replied. “Making one more pass. Gonna try to pick up a missing package.”

“Flynn, return to base,” I said. I knew the package she was talking about. There was no way I was going to let her endanger the entire mission just to save my son. “That’s an order.”

“Sorry sir, your message is garbled. I think the enemy ship is jamming transmissions again,” she said.

“I -” I started to berate her over the radio, and realized that at least two of my bridge crew were shaking in their suits. They were laughing. Part of my wanted to chuckle, myself, both at Keladry’s audacity and my own foolish attempt at calling her home. A lesson I’d learned a long, long time ago: never give an order that you know won’t be followed.

So instead I keyed the mike one more time, and said: “Godspeed, Kel.”

If anyone could bring Thomas home, she was the one who could make it happen.

Chapter 31

Thomas Stein

The fighter’s missiles slammed into the rear of the ship like a pile of sledgehammers. I couldn’t tell if defensive fire took any of them down, but enough got through that we felt it all the way up near the nose of the ship on the bridge. Tremors shook the floor, and I heard more ominous groaning from the structure. They’d built her damned well though. I had to admit, the ship was taking a beating.

Then I realized something had changed. My stomach lurched, and I wasn’t pushed back into my seat by acceleration anymore. We were in free fall. The engines were gone!

A console behind me erupted in showers of sparks. The marine who’d shot Acres had buckled himself in near the offending machine. He let off a string of curses, hastily undoing himself from the chair and batting out sparks where they’d landed on his uniform. Without thinking about it he’d pushed himself away from the console as hard as he could, and now he was drifting toward where I sat.

I looked back to Perrault, who was barking orders to his crew. He was distracted. The crew was busy fighting the ship. And one of the three men in the room with a weapon was floating in the air next to my head.

I unbuckled my own straps with one hand and reached up with the other, yanking hard on the butt of the marine’s pistol. The hard motion sent him into a spin. Rather than reach for his weapon to keep it away from me - which is what he should have done - he flailed his arms around trying to catch hold of something to stop the motion. It was an automatic reflex, one he only would have trained his way out of if he’d spent a lot of time fighting hand to hand without gravity.

Which he hadn’t done. None of these people had trained very long without gravity around them. Even their flight out here had mostly been with the benefit of the artificial gravity from their spinning ship. On the other hand, I’d worked and lived without gravity for months at a time.

I worked the pistol free from his holster with one fluid motion. Then I snagged him by the front of his uniform and hauled him down so I could look the Chief’s killer in the eye. His eyes were wide and terrified. I found that I didn’t care.

“This is for Acres,” I said. Then I shot him in the face. I had a feeling this was one face that wasn’t going to revisit me in nightmares.

The rest of the room froze for a moment at the sound of the gunshot, deafening in the enclosed space even over the sound of alarms and explosions.

“Stop him!” Perrault yelled, rising from his seat and pointing at me.

I aimed the gun at him and fired, but the shot went wide. He ducked down behind his chair. Damn. If I could take him out, cut the head from the snake here, there was a chance whoever took command afterward might be willing to see reason. Or at the least it could cause enough confusion to make things easier for Dad. But there were still two other marines in the room, the men who’d dragged me up here. Both of them unbuckled themselves. They’d be all over me in a minute. I didn’t have time to deal with Perrault.

I shoved off against the seat with both legs, dragging body of the guard I’d killed with me toward the door. My hand might not be able to open the lock, but I had a feeling his might do the trick whether or not he was breathing. I grabbed the dead man’s wrist and waved it in front of the door lock. The doors snapped open, letting me haul myself and the body through. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the other two marines launching themselves toward me. Both of them had their pistols out now, and were taking aim as they came.

Flipping the dead man’s hand up again, I waved it in front of the panel on the other side of the door. The bridge doors slammed shut, and I heard the marines crash against the door on the other side. That would only hold them a moment though. Time to make it a little harder on them. I aimed at the panel and fired the pistol. The first shot only splintered the panel, so I fired three more times. The third round went through and tore up the electronics inside. I saw sparks flash from the panel as something inside the door mechanism shorted out.

I was certain they’d find another way out, but it should hold them for at least a few moments. I’d gotten of the bridge, but now what? They’d be through the door in another minute - or call in more marines from the other side - and I’d be right back where I started. There had to be some way I could get off this damned ship. Or failing that, do enough damage to the ship to take it down with me. It was a grim thought, but if I was going out I wanted my death to mean something.

My smartwatch chirped at me.

I stared at the thing for a moment. At first I thought it was a malfunction. That I’d damaged it at some point. But the watch was trying to tell me I had an incoming message. Could it be Dad, trying to reach me? I tapped the screen to receive the call.

“Thomas here,” I said.

“Hiya Thom!” I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Kel? What are you doing out here?” My watch didn’t have much range. Dad might have been able to get a signal in to me, but I doubted I could broadcast back to him - he was hundreds of miles away in the Hermes. To be reaching me like this, Kel must have been on the ship with me. Or - right outside it?

“I’m blowing up the ship you’re sitting on,” she said. “Wanna come join me?”

“Is that your idea of a hot date?” I asked. Joking under fire, that was me.

“Ha. Funny,” she said. “Listen, the Hawks can do a mid-space pickup. I’ve had practice.”

“Practice?” I couldn’t imagine who she’d convinced to let her try that stunt. But I could totally see Kel giving it a shot. “On who?”

“Your father. Now shut up and listen. There are airlocks fore and aft on both sides of the ship. My scan is showing damage on both front airlocks from our missile barrage,” she said. “Hold on.”

There were a few long moments of silence. I sat there hoping she was all right. Knowing she was out there, fighting for her life, and risking a lot trying to even talk to me. Then I heard noises from the other side of the door into the bridge. It sounded like some sort of cutting tool. They were coming after me.

“Thom? Sorry, it’s a little hectic out here,” Kel said.

“No worries.” Well, lots of worries, but it wasn’t going to help her to tell her that I was scared as hell for her. I’d missed her so much it hurt sometimes. But now, I wished she was just about anywhere other than here. I’d almost lost her in my last space battle. I hated even the idea of losing her now.

Which was probably a little how my father felt whenever it was me in danger. I had a sudden sympathy for his position.

“You need to get aft. Use one of the airlocks to get outside,” she said. “I’ll grab you.”

“I’ll try,” I said. That was half a mile of hostile territory to cover. It wasn’t going to be a fast jaunt.

“Just do it!” she said.

“I’m on my way,” I said. “But Kel. You have to tell Dad. This ship’s main gun can take out the most of the colony on the surface with one blast. It sounds like one shot might be all it has left in it, but Perrault is planning to use it. We’ve got a few minutes before he coast into range, and then…”

“I hear you,” Kel said. Her voice sounded sad. “But damn it, get off the ship before I have to blow it up. Or I’ll kill you myself.”

“Will do,” I said.

Time to get out of here. I waved the dead man’s hand over the second set of doors and peeked out into the hall. Then ducked back twice as fast. Bullets pinged off the wall where my head had been a moment before.

“Shit,” I said. I was pinned down.

Behind me, sparks flew as whatever blade they were cutting through the door with opened a small hole in the steel doors.

Chapter 32

Thomas Stein

I was pinned down from one side, and had armed men coming through the door behind me from the other. Not a lot of good options for escape. I still had a gun, though. I checked the load. Ten round magazine with five bullets gone. The marine’s body had another two magazines hooked to the belt, so I was feeling a little flush for ammo.

I swung my arm out and fired in the direction of the shooters. I burned off several bullets to get their heads down. Then I stole a quick glance while I continued to fire.

There were three men down the hallway outside. They’d set themselves up behind a barricade. Even aiming, I wasn’t hitting anything. I could hear one of them talking. It sounded like he was on a radio - probably coordinating with the men cutting down the door behind me. They didn’t need to kill me. They just needed to keep me there another minute. The saw had already cut a six-inch slice into the door. Not long before they were through.

And the barricade blocked the only walkway out from here. They were pretty confident they’d cut me off. But then again, they were thinking from the perspective of life in a gravity well. And there wasn’t any gravity on the ship anymore - no acceleration, and no spin. There was still one more route away from them that they didn’t have covered.

The entire core of the dreadnought was a massive tube with the railgun barrel running down the middle. In theory, if I could get enough of a push…

I stopped thinking about it. Either it would work or it wouldn’t.

I grabbed the body. It was a little disgusting, hauling his weight around. But I figured he hadn’t quite worked off his karma for murdering my friend yet. He had one more task to help me with. I reloaded the pistol, and tucked my legs against the door, watching the saw blade carefully. The last thing I needed was a gash from the thing.

Fast breaths, hard breaths, I used a rail to pull myself in as tightly as I could, like a coiled spring. Then I pushed off with everything I had. I shot out of the doorway, keeping the marine’s body between the shooters and myself. They opened fire, but I was moving fast. I felt a slug slam into my body shield anyway, and was doubly glad I’d hauled him along.

I returned fire, and managed to tag one of the men. Their barricade wasn’t protecting them now that I was out and above them. And then I was out of range for the pistols. I stopped shooting to save my ammunition. They kept up a steady rain of bullets. Another hit the dead marine, and a few pinged off the railgun tube behind me, but their aim was terrible from this far away.

And then I reached the railgun itself. The smooth metal barrel didn’t give me much to grip. My fingers slid off, and I kept going around the other side. The barrel was huge, maybe ten meters across, but there was nothing on it to grip. I was going to end up across the gap from the marines on the far side of the inner deck. They saw it too, and started sprinting my way. They must have had mag boots, because they were able to make a good steady progress while keeping contact with the deck.

I still had a little time before they reached me, so I cast my eyes about for the tool I needed to get the hell out of here. I spotted one, not five yards from where I would land on the far side.

The worst enemy of every sailor, in every vessel throughout time, has always been the same: fire. It wasn’t any different in space. If anything, fire was an even deadlier adversary than ever. We floated in oxygen rich environments filled with flammable man made materials and explosives. A fire on board a spaceship was every crewman’s worst nightmare. Every ship had fire drills, and every crewman knew how to spot firefighting equipment. Over the years, the storage and placement of things like fire extinguishers had become standardized. So I knew just where to look.

I landed and dumped the body. It wasn’t going to help me anymore. I pushed off the rail and dove for the case holding a fire extinguisher. It wasn’t that different from ones on Earth - a canister filled with compressed gas. Push oxygen away from fire, replace with non-flammable gas, and the fire goes out.

They also make lively propellant for zero gravity maneuvers. It’s all about the action and reaction thing. I’d once seen a new apprentice not brace himself properly for a fire drill and end up slamming against the far deck from the extinguisher’s exhaust.

I cracked the seal on the extinguisher and fired it off. The thrust pushed me back out over the edge. I kept the stream on as bullets flew through the space I’d just been. It was almost a little too much. For shipboard firefighting, the crew would use mag boots to lock themselves in place while they hosed down a fire. For me, the steady stream of gas was pushing me like a rocket.

It was damned hard to steer, though. I tucked the tank against my chest so that I could get both hands on the nozzle. I was coming dangerously close to the railgun again, only this time I was moving a lot faster! Impact at this speed was going to hurt.

I twisted my body, shifting the nozzle and got my vector corrected just in time. I could almost reach out and touch the barrel. A few pounds of explosives would have been more than welcome about then, but there wasn’t anything I could do to hurt the gun. Not from here. I kept blasting the can for as long as it lasted, which was about two thirds of the way down the length of the ship. I was still moving very fast, but without the continuous thrust I’d start slowing down from friction between the air and my body.

If I slowed down too much, I’d be a sitting duck for anyone who wanted to take a pot shot at me. So I twisted around again, turning so I was headfirst. Basically doing a nosedive toward the base of the railgun. By narrowing my profile, the air would slow me down much less. Speed was my friend right now.

And it looked like I had a welcoming committee down there waiting for me. A little group of marines was gathering at the base of the barrel, guns aimed up at me. Every gun I’d seen on the ship so far seemed to be loaded with frangible rounds that would break apart on impact instead of going through. A sensible precaution on a spaceship - but it might work to my advantage.

I still had the empty fire extinguisher riding along with me. I pulled it forward now and stuck it out ahead of me. Then I sucked in my gut, trying to make myself the smallest target I possibly could.

As cover went, it sucked. If they had even a little angle, they’d be able to hit me instead of the canister. But the first couple of rounds they fired did ping off the metal instead of hitting my skull. I crossed my fingers and lay the pistol alongside the canister, taking aim as best I could by using it as a rest for the weapon.

More bullets zinged past me. There were six men down there shooting. One of them was going to hit me if I didn’t do something pretty fast. I took aim and fired. One of them yelled and went down. Another of the marines grabbed him and started dragging him clear. That was two of them out of the action, at least for the moment.

Still four more to go. And probably reinforcements on their way.

Chapter 33

Nicholas Stein

We were leading the Dreadnought’s missiles on a merry chase. So long as we kept the Hermes moving in an erratic orbit around the monstrous ship, half of the missiles it fired weren’t coming anywhere near us. Which made the rest of each volley easy pickings for our defensive guns. The missiles could turn well enough. Faster than the Hermes could, anyway. They were small and maneuverable. But we were orbiting at high velocity, and they didn’t have a lot of fuel to burn. Eventually most of them simply burned themselves out trying to catch up.

We were still expending a great deal of munitions keeping the rest of the missiles from pulverizing the ship. I was aware how much greater a stockpile the Dreadnought likely had compared to the Hermes. We needed to fight smarter than they did. We certainly couldn’t hit harder or outlast them in a shooting match.

“How are we doing on munitions?” I asked aloud.

“Good on the guns. Missiles are down to one half,” Diaz reported.

Damn. We just didn’t have enough firepower. Our volleys were too small to get many of our missiles past their defensive guns, and the Dreadnought’s armor was too thick. The Hawks were buzzing around like flies on a carcass, keeping the monster busy. But they’d all but expended their own missiles. I checked the status board. Only one Hawk had missiles remaining - Flynn’s. I assumed she was too busy doing whatever it was she thought she could do about Thomas to fire them off.

“Flynn, you saving those missiles for posterity?” I asked over the radio.

“No sir. Just looking for a good target,” she replied.

“Make them count.”

“Will do. Sir, I’ve made contact with Thom. He’s warned me that the enemy ship plans to blast the colony as soon as they’re in range,” she said. “Minutes, he said. But we must have damaged it. He said they only have one shot with it.”

Damn. Perrault’s ship was still coasting forward, even with the engines down. It couldn’t accelerate, but it still had inertia and velocity. He was going to take out the colony. From an utterly ruthless perspective it made sense. Whether his ship survived the fight or not, if he destroyed the colony on Mars I’d be without support. I’d have a hard time even repairing this ship, let alone building any new ones. Earth would be free to rebuild its own fleet without any worries. Even if we survived my shipmates and I would be without a world. Homeless and adrift in space.

Unless we stopped him.

I bent over my console, working out a new course for the Hermes. It took a few minutes, even with the help of the computer system. What I had in mind wasn’t at all conventional. But if I couldn’t take out Perrault’s ship conventionally, then I’d borrow a line from an old Earth admiral. Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead! With luck the torpedoes - missiles, in our case - would work. If that failed…

“Sending course data,” I said. “Helm, get us on that new track.”

“Aye sir,” Ensign Jacobs said. “Sir - these coordinates?”

“Are going to put us precisely where I want us to be,” I said. “Right in their teeth.”

“Yes, sir,” he replied.

He sounded dubious, though, and I needed him fully on board. I needed all of them. It was time to let the entire ship know precisely what was going on. They had a right to know what was at stake, and why I was gambling with their lives like this.

“All hands, this is the admiral speaking,” I said over the intercom. “Captain Flynn’s just passed me confirmation of our worst fears. The enemy ship is armed with a weapon of mass destruction, a monster cannon capable of wiping out whole cities. The enemy plans to use this gun to level the Mars colony,” I said. “We are maneuvering to place ourselves between our enemy and our home.”

“He wants to take out Mars, he will have to go through us to do it,” I said. “We stand our ground now, or we won’t have a home to return to. Our families and our friends are back there, counting on us. We will not let them down. Admiral out.”

I hoped we were able to do all I’d said. The new course was going to swing us around directly in front of the Dreadnought. Then we’d use our momentum to keep going forward on a collision course. We’d keep firing every inch of the way, with our defensive belly facing toward the enemy. If they wanted to hit the colony with their main gun, they’d have blast through us first. As close as we were, were might be able to soak enough of the blast to save the colony.

Assuming their missiles didn’t take us out. The Hermes rocked again as another one struck home against our armor. We were going to take a lot more hits now that we were coming straight at them.

But our fire was getting more effective as we came closer, too. Both ships were headed directly at each other now, hammering away with everything we had at our opponent. The Hermes shook again, and then again. More missiles smashing through our defenses.

“Keep us steady,” I said. “And keep firing as long as we can.”

In another minute or two I’d have another decision to make: whether to pull the ship clear and get out of the way, or let the collision course come to its inevitable conclusion. Even a ship of that mass would have a very bad day if it ran into us nose on.

If we could get in just a few lucky hits, it wouldn’t come to that. I just hoped Flynn would be able to work whatever magic she was trying to perform in time. Thomas was out there, somewhere. Every missile my ship fired off might be the one that killed him. I kept up the steady rain of attacks anyway, even though each time we fired it ate away at my soul. There wasn’t any choice.

Chapter 34

Thomas Stein

I shifted my angle a little, and the wind slipped me a bit further from the railgun. Shift the other way, and I slid in closer. I could almost reach it now. I fired my pistol again, but missed the waiting marines. Then I shifted my weight so that I slipped in just a bit nearer - and at last I could touch the barrel. I was only a few dozen feet off the deck now and still falling fast. I fired one last shot, then let go of the canister. It would keep falling down the same trajectory I’d been on.

But I was going elsewhere. I grabbed at the barrel of the railgun, using friction to shift my direction of travel. My hand burned as it slid over the metal, but I was turning, twisting around it. I heard shouts from below, and knew the men were going to give chase. They were still running with their mag boots though, so they had to walk all the way around the interior of the ship to get where I was going.

Most of them were, anyway. Two had gotten the bright idea to turn off their boots and jump across. They fired up and me and I returned fire. I felt a bullet crease my leg, leaving a trail that burned like a brand. I hit one of them, blood blossoming from his chest. The other kept shooting as he sailed across to the far side.

I pushed off hard against the railgun, which changed my angle of descent again. Now I was moving away from the gun almost as quickly as I was falling down toward the engines. Bullets whizzed past me. I returned fire, and my pistol snapped empty. Still falling, I dumped the empty magazine and reloaded. This was my last reload.

But I was so close! I couldn’t let them stop me now. My feet touched down on the deck, and I tucked and rolled to bleed off the impact. It still jarred me to my knees, and made the gunshot wound start burning again like someone was trying to carve chunks from my leg.

“Drop the weapon or we’ll shoot!” one of the marines said.

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” I shouted back at them. They’d already been shooting at me! Their reply came in the form of yet more bullets pinging off the wall beside me.

I came up out of the roll and pushed off for one of the side corridors. There were handholds in the corridor. These marines might not have much experience in space, but whoever designed the ship had been thinking about zero gravity when they did. I pulled myself along down the tube. Somewhere down here was an airlock. I needed to find it. That was my last shot at getting out of here.

The marines gave chase. I could hear their metallic footfalls clanging down the hall behind me. There were a lot more of them than there had been, but I didn’t have time to stop and count. I rounded the corner. Had to keep one corner between myself and their guns, if I could.

A red line appeared on the floor with the note ‘EVA’ next to it. That was where I needed to be going. If I could just get to the airlock in time…! I followed the line around another corner and into a long, straight tube. Just what I’d been trying to avoid. But there didn’t seem to be any way around it. If I wanted to get out, I was going to have to dash down that tube as fast as I could. And pray I could reach the end before the marines rounded the corner and shot me full of holes.

I grabbed a rung and hauled myself forward. My arms were exhausted. I pocketed the pistol again so that I could use both hands, working as fast as I could to pull myself along. But the tube was simply too long.

They didn’t give me a warning shout this time. I heard the clanking of their boots on the deck as the marines rounded the corner, and then they opened up on me. I had just enough warning from the noise they made to pull myself into a narrow space behind a support strut before a hail of bullets slashed down the hall.

I stuck the nose of my pistol out and fired a single shot at them. But I was blind. I couldn’t see them without sticking my head out. And I knew the moment I did that they were going to take it off.

Then the rain of lead vanished.

“Stein!” one of them shouted. “Surrender and we’ll take you in. The Admiral would rather have you alive than dead. But he’s OK with dead if you give us more trouble.”

Just across the tube and down another five meters was the airlock door. Inside, there were space suits. With another few seconds I’d have made the outer lock. With another minute I could have been in a suit and gotten the hell out of this place. Now? I was just flat out of luck.

“I think I’m going to make you come and get me,” I said. The entire ship shook as another missile blew up somewhere close. “That is, if you can do it before we all get blown to hell.”

None of them seemed interested in taking me up on the offer right away. They knew I was armed. If they came after me, at least one of them was going to take a bullet before I went down. For now they had me pinned in place, and that seemed to be enough for them. Which meant I had time to make a quick phone call. If this was the end of the line, I wanted to say goodbye to Kel.

I tapped the smartwatch, hoping to make a connection. She picked up immediately.

“Thomas! You close? I’m losing fighters out here. We need to get clear!”

“Go,” I said, feeling guilty that people were out there dying while trying to rescue me. “I’m pinned down just outside the airlock, love. Not going to make it.”

“Like hell,” Kel said. “Keep talking, I’m getting a lock on your signal. Gotcha.”

I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see it. She was never going to give up. I couldn’t bear the idea that she might be killed sticking around waiting for me. “I’m stuck. You need to go, seriously.”

“Got an idea. It’s a bad idea,” she said. “But if you’re really out of options, it might work. You behind cover?”

“Yes,” I said. “What are you planning?”

“Something crazy. Don’t hold your breath, OK?” she said. “And no matter how this goes…I love you.”

Oh, shit. I had a feeling I knew what she had in mind. “Love you too. Aim well?”

“Always do.”

I started hyperventilating to build up oxygen in my blood. This was going to suck. This was going to suck a lot. I looked longingly at the space suits hanging in the airlock, so close at hand. They might as well be a hundred miles away. No way I was going to get to them without being shot full of holes.

If I’d seen literally any other option, I’d have tried for it. Pinned down as I was, I’d either be killed or recaptured - which was just as bad. If I was right about what Kel was doing, the worst case was that I’d die really quickly. Best case, and Kel could maybe pull off a miracle.

The pistol went back in my pocket. I wasn’t going to need it, and I was going to want both hands free. I made myself a small target near the bottom of the stanchion, and grabbed hold with both hands. I was still breathing fast, and only about half of it was conscious. The rest was raw fear.

Then Kel’s missile slammed into the tube about halfway between the marines and I, blasting shrapnel their way. Flames filled the tube, growling their way in both directions and eating all the air.

Chapter 35

Thomas Stein

I ducked away from the flames as they washed up to corridor. I was already behind the stanchion, which blocked most of the fury of the blast. I felt the tremors through the metal as shards of hot metal pelted it. Heat spread past me like a wave. I pinched my eyes shut as tightly as I could and didn’t breathe for a few long, heart-pounding moments. If I inhaled super-heated air, I’d scorch my lungs. I smelled hair burning, and knew it had to be my own. The ship suit I wore protected most of my body to some degree. But my head was exposed, and my hands needed to hang on to the support beam. The heat only lasted for seconds, but it was searing agony.

Then the wind came rushing in from the other direction. I could feel it like a cool balm - running down the tube from both sides in a furious torrent! I clung to the support as the gale whipped past me. I risked a peek - the fire had been sucked out into the void of space by the hurricane of air escaping the ship. Kel’s missile had blasted a gaping hole in the tube, and the whole section was exposed to space.

She must have sent the missile in at an angle, because the marines had fared far worse than I did. I saw a pair of magnetic boots, still attached to the deck - but the person who’d been standing in them wasn’t there anymore. Two other men were on the far side of the breach, hanging on much the same as I was. Of the others, there was no sign at all. If they’d been knocked loose by the detonation their bodies might have been sucked outside during the initial blast of decompression.

The air kept roaring through the tube. The ship was loosing a ton of atmosphere. Automatic systems should have shut off this section of the ship by now, sealing the breach. They must have been damaged, because they were not responding as quickly as they should have.

I tried for a gulp of air and couldn’t breathe in through the heavy wind. I was surrounded by air, but my lungs were straining, suffocating. My wrist buzzed, and I looked down at my watch despite the rising panic I felt.

Kel had sent one word as text, blinking there on my screen: “Now!”

My body rebelled at the thought for a moment. I was safe here. I could keep clinging to the ship, hang on here like a barnacle. But that security wasn’t going to last. In a few moments the crew would lock down the section manually, and the air would be gone. I’d be stuck in here without air.

I looked across at the airlock. Still too far. The moment I let go the wind would haul me out through the hole into space. Grabbing a space suit was out of the question.

With an effort of will, I made myself release the beam.

The wind picked me up and flung me out into the middle of the tube. I shot down toward the gap. Ragged chunks of metal gaped there. I twisted to avoid being impaled on one, and it slashed my arm open instead. I screamed, losing what little air was left in my lungs.

The wind carried me past the gap and smashed me into the bulkhead. I felt bruised from head to toe. My ears were ringing. And the wind wasn’t done with me yet. I was caught in an eddy that slammed me against the wall a second time, and then a third. Dazed, I clung to consciousness as best I could.

Then the wind died down. At least one of the bulkhead doors had been closed. There was still a strong current of air flowing into space, but it wasn’t as powerful as it had been. The eddy I was trapped in vanished abruptly, and I was pulled toward the breach.

Which looked like a set of giant razor blades all placed in a circle by a crazy person. The missile had torn apart the outer hull and the deck. Now all that ripped metal was bare, exposed, and deadly sharp. I twisted my body so that I was moving feet first and made myself as thin as I could - shooting toward the hole like I was trying to dive toes first into a pool of water.

And then I was through. I’d somehow managed to get past without acquiring any new wounds. The air around me was cooling fast, spreading out into the vacuum of space. The moisture in the atmosphere flowing out around me crystalized almost instantly so that I was drifting outward away from the ship in a plume of frost.

There wasn’t any air left in my lungs. Worse, I knew that being in a vacuum would cause body wide hypoxia very rapidly. I was still surrounded by air escaping the ship, which might extend the seconds of consciousness I had left. My ship suit was designed to help regulate pressure in my body - which would keep me a live a few more moments. But I didn’t have long.

I started counting in my head. One-thousand-one. One-thousand-two. It was taking my mind off the fact that I was dying. Oxygen was leaving my body, hypoxia setting in. One-thousand-three. I felt cold, chills setting in on my hands and face first. One-thousand-four.

And then she was there. Kel’s fighter was in front of me, thrusters bringing her in close. The cockpit was already open. Kel was just inside, in a suit. One-thousand-five. For a moment her eyes met mine, and I knew I was never going to make it to her. She was so close, and simply unreachable, just like the space suits had been inside. On-thousand-six.

She jumped free of the ship, lunging across space. The frozen mist bounced off her suit. I imagined the way it would sound inside her helmet, the hiss as the tiny bits of ice pinged against the glass. She reached out and grabbed me, and she was there with me. I clung to her with freezing hands, grateful to see her again. Then we snapped back toward her fighter at high speed.

She was using a line to reel us both back into the cockpit. She shoved me hard into the back seat, my body screaming at me all the while. She slid back into her seat up front and tapped a control. Air began flowing around me as the fighter’s internal atmosphere tried to compensate for the open canopy hatch. The hatch slid shut with an audible click - by the time it shut the air inside the cockpit was already dense enough that I could hear the sound.

My lungs couldn’t wait any longer. I took a shaky, gasping breath. The air was icy cold, but it was air. My chest hurt. My hands and face were numb. But right now it was enough to suck in breaths of that cold oxygen.

I started coughing, and then I couldn’t stop coughing for a moment, couldn’t catch my breath again.

“You OK?” Kel asked. We were under acceleration, boosting fast.

“Will be,” I gasped out between coughs. “Thank you.”

She whipped the fighter into a sharp spiral, and a small missile streaked past us on the left. The enemy ship was still shooting. Still trying to take out the little fighters nipping at its heels. I got a good look at the dreadnought through my window. Plumes of fire blasted from the rear sections. The engine area had been hammered. There was no way they were going to get the main thrusters back on line anytime soon. The ship was done for. But it was still deadly, still trying to kill the other ships around it in its death throes.

“Hawks, this is Hawk leader, RTB, repeat Romeo, Tango, Bravo,” Kel said. “I have the package.”

Chapter 36

Nicholas Stein

Flynn’s voice came through loud and clear over the radio. I could hear it even over the air venting out of the Hermes, even over the klaxons of alarms blaring one warning after another. My ship might be coming apart at the seams, but the radio still worked.

“Hawks, this is Hawk leader, RTB, repeat Romeo, Tango, Bravo,” she said. “I have the package.”

And thank god it did. I didn’t think I’d ever heard a more welcome message. Thomas was alive, and free. It should have been impossible to rescue him. The last I saw him, he’d been on the enemy bridge surrounded by the enemy. I could only imagine how the hell Flynn had managed to extract my son from the mess over there. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the full story.

But I felt a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. No matter what else happened now, Thomas was off that thing. Flynn had done the impossible and gotten him out. I trusted in her to do the merely difficult and get those both out of danger.

I checked the Hermes’s status again. More and more missiles were impacting us, and most of the armor plating had been blasted away. We were venting air from three sections - then four, as another missile struck home. The nearer we got to the enemy, the less time our defenses had to stop their missiles. Even though we’d destroyed much of their offensive launchers, they were still firing more missiles per volley than we could manage. We weren’t going to be able to take much more of this pounding.

“Sir, picking up a very high energy buildup inside the enemy ship,” Diaz said.

I looked back up at the holotank. “Are their engines losing containment?” I asked. Had we won? Had a lucky missile somehow broken through to their engines?

“No sir,” she replied. “The energy surge seems to be coming from the core of the ship. I think it’s their main gun.”

Damn. They were about to fire. I ran their course through my computer again, although I didn’t really need to. I knew what Perrault was aiming at. Knew what he had to be shooting for. I wasn’t wrong: the Mars Colony was directly behind us, and his ship was lined up for a perfect shot. I didn’t know for certain how much power that gun had, but if it was strong enough the railgun blast might annihilate the entire colony. Without much atmosphere to break up the railgun rounds as they came at Mars, they’d hit with most of the force they had when they left the barrel. The attack would be devastating.

I leaned back in my seat, giving myself a few moments for thought. Thomas was clear, so I was content. If this was the way I had to go then it was enough. I’d done my part, more than once. It would be an honor to die to save all those other lives.

“Bring the nose down,” I said. “Full thrust. I want everything left that the engines can provide us. Take us down their throat.”

My crew froze, but only for a moment. Then they went back to their duties at full speed. The nose of the Hermes came down. The engines lit up, firing the most powerful thrusters I’d ever placed on a ship. We rocketed toward Perrault’s vessel. Our missiles couldn’t take him down fast enough. But we were on a collision course now, building up speed. We’d tear their ship to bits on impact.

I opened up a general channel to the entire ship. “All hands, abandon ship. We are going to ram the enemy to stop them from firing on the surface. Abandon ship.”

With a few taps of my fingers, I routed most of the ship’s controls to my console. It wasn’t as efficient as having crews in place to manage damage control and fix problems right at the source. But I could keep the ship flying for a little longer, and that was all I was going to need.

I looked up from my console around the bridge. Nobody had moved from their stations. “I’ve got it from here,” I said. “Go to your lifeboats.”

They looked at each other. Then Glenn looked up at me from where he sat. “Admiral,” he said - formal now, even though we’d been on a first name basis for over a decade. “We’ve elected to stay and help.”

“You might need us for something at the last minute,” Dias said.

“And if we can help, we want to be here,” Harris confirmed.

Jacobs was silent, nervous, but he nodded his agreement.

I looked them each in the eye as best I could through our suits. “Very well,” I said. I was touched. I could probably have held things together, but they were right. I could use the assistance, and more hands would make us more likely to succeed.

“Jacobs, keep us flying straight up their nose,” I said. “I want to hit them dead center on the bow of their ship, make sure to take out the gun.”

“Aye, sir,” he replied.

“Make sure they can’t wiggle free. It’s going to be tough keeping on course through their missile barrage,” Glenn said. “I’ll help you compensate for the impacts with course corrections.”

“I’m managing damage control,” Harris said.

“And I’ve got the defense systems,” Diaz added.

Which didn’t leave me a lot to do beside supervise. And maybe one last thing. “Open a channel to the enemy ship,” I said.

‘Aye sir,” Harris replied. “Open now.”

My screen lit up as the enemy accepted my call. Perrault’s bridge wasn’t as pretty as it had been the last time I’d seen it. Smoke filled the space, and he’d blown out more of the consoles than remained active. Perrault himself still wasn’t in a suit. His face was sweaty, soot-streaked, and a small trail of blood dripped from his temple. He glared at me from the screen, scarlet faced.

“Damn you,” Perrault said. “Don’t you know when you’re beaten?”

“One last chance to stand aside,” I said. “I’ll let your crew abandon ship before we scuttle her. I’ll pick them up. Send you all home to Earth safely.”

“We’ll blast you to bits,” he said.

“I think we’ll ram you before you can fire,” I said blithely. “Most of my crew has already left this boat, and you don’t have my son as a shield anymore. Your ship is going to be destroyed. Do you want your crew to die with it?”

He cut the link.

“That’s one sort of answer,” I said. I felt a deep sadness. What had happened to the man I’d known to twist him so? Somehow Choi had gotten to him, gotten under his skin and bent him in this way. Perrault had always been proud, but never to such a fault as he was now. That pride was driving him and all his people to their deaths today. Because one way or another, he wasn’t going to survive this.

“Steady as we go,” I said. The ship rocked with more missile impacts, and several near misses that shook us almost as much as the hits. “Harris. Prepare a broadcast of the entire log. I want it sent out to Mars.” George would at least have a record of everything that had happened. For the history books. And maybe to help those who came after me finish this.

I thought of Thomas, wondering how much would fall to his shoulders now. There was no help for it. I know him well enough to know he’d jump into my boots and do everything he could to take my place in defense of our home. But he was ready. He’d done so much in such a short time, and I was proud of him. I only wished I had time to make sure he knew how much he meant to me.

Chapter 37

Thomas Stein

I heard a few confirmation replies and a cheer over the radio. I didn’t have a headset, so I was only catching snippets of the conversation, but the pilots sounded as exhausted as they were thrilled. They must have been covering for Kel as she dove in on her insane rescue mission. I winced inwardly, wondering how many had died to win my freedom.

“You’re nuts, you know that?” I said to Kel. I was still amazed she’d been able to pull it off at all.

“So I’ve been told,” she said.

“Thanks for the rescue,” I said. My hands were starting to hurt, but at least my cough seemed to be under control at last. We were zipping clear of the Dreadnought now, all of the fighters scattering. I saw a few more missiles detonate on the front end of the ship. Dad must still be hammering away at it. It was bleeding air, venting flames. A dying bird of prey.

But Perrault might still have one shot left from his main gun. I hoped Dad could stop him in time.

“Shit,” Kel said. The vehemence in that one word made me cold.

“What?”

There was a long pause before she replied. “It’s your Dad. He’s gone to full thrust, and the Hermes crew is abandoning ship,” she said. “I think he’s going to ram it!”

He would, if he thought he couldn’t stop the ship any other way. He’d blow himself and the ship to bits to save the people behind it on Mars. I couldn’t say he was wrong to do it, either. Hadn’t I just been willing to die myself if I could have taken the thing down, a short while ago?

“It’s the main gun,” I said. “The railgun is powerful enough to devastate the colony, if he fires it.”

“So it’s stop the ship or bust, huh?” she replied. She paused again, and then went on. “I have one missile left, Thomas.”

One missile. It seemed ridiculous to even attempt it. One shot, where so many had failed? But if we could get in close enough, target the gun from inside their anti-missile defenses….

“Can you drop it right down their throat?” I asked.

She scoffed. “Can you handle the gees?”

The engine roared, and she flipped the Hawk around. It streaked back along the route we’d just taken to get away from the ship. Missiles soared out to stab at us. Kel swerved, dodged one. Then she flipped the fighter over and the second passed by the cockpit close enough that I saw it flash by. I gulped and hung on. Both of the missiles turned and gave chase, locked on to our engine heat or radar signature.

But then we were closing on the skin of the dreadnought. Kel didn’t just take us in close. She brought us within spitting distance of the hull. She wove a path over the missile tubes and guns protruding from the vessel, darting between them. We weren’t just going fast - we were running alongside the ship so rapidly that it was a blur next to us. I wanted to close my eyes, but found I couldn’t take them from the view.

The missiles tracking us couldn’t keep up, and slammed back into their mother ship. But they had failsafes and refused to detonate this close to the Dreadnought. A shame - it would have been two more holes in the hull, but at least they weren’t chasing us anymore.

Kel fired the nose cannon on her fighter, taking out an anti-missile gun that had started tracking us before it could open fire. She turned sideways to avoid more rounds from some other source I couldn’t even see. And never once did she slow the fighter down.

“Hermes, this is Hawk Leader,” Kel said into the radio. “I have one shot. Taking it.”

Then we were out, flying in front of the ship. I could see the Hermes out there in the distance. It was being hammered, but Dad was still coming in as fast as he could. Dad’s engines could manage twenty gravities of acceleration, and I thought the Hermes must be doing almost that much. It was only a dot in the distance, but we had seconds left.

And we were right in the middle of the furball. Both of the big ships were shooting with everything they had left. My screen showed missiles everywhere, too many to count, with anti-missile fire blasting most of them to bits. Luckily, we were moving so fast that the little fighter was mostly being ignored. Even so, several of the dreadnought’s missiles locked on and gave chase.

I used the copilot’s console to scan the Dreadnought as Kel flipped the ship over and accelerated back in toward the ship’s gaping maw. The railgun muzzle was a huge black orifice in the center of the bow. You couldn’t miss seeing it if you tried. But it was surrounded by a ring of anti-missile guns that I hadn’t spotted before. That must have been why the gun was relatively undamaged. The entire nose of the Dreadnought was a wreck of twisted metal - but that little ring of guns protected the railgun. We needed to get very close if we were going to have a shot.

“Kel, the anti-missile guns-” I said.

“I see them.”

My scan was showing a massive energy surge in the gun. They were about to fire.

“Energy spike in the gun,” I said.

“I see that too,” she replied. “Stop back seat driving!”

She whipped the ship over to dodge gunfire that was aimed our way. Some of the rounds went through the Hawk’s wing, but it didn’t slow Kel’s flying. We were going fast. Too fast. The front end of the ship was going to be on us in seconds.

“We’re going too fast!” I said.

“Stop. Talking.” She spat out the words one at a time, dodging more missiles and gunfire. I could barely keep up with the incoming artillery she was avoiding. It was unreal, watching her like this. I’d always known Kel was a hot pilot, but I’d always seen her flying large ships before. The Hawk was tiny, nimble, and was dancing in her hands.

I gritted my teeth together and hung on for dear life.

“I need you to fire the missile,” she said. “Going to be too busy.”

The console display switched to fire and targeting control. I used the HUD to target the railgun barrel. “Ready!” I said.

“When I say. Not before.”

We weren’t slowing down. The front of the ship grew larger. I kept my finger over the fire button, ready to launch the missile the instant she called for it. But she didn’t call for it. We were on a collision course with the ship. The tube was getting bigger and bigger, and suddenly I realized how she planned to get the missile through the ring of anti-missile guns. I sucked in a breath, hoping she could pull this off, knowing that no one had the reflexes to do it.

Then our Hawk darted inside the front end of the railgun.

Chapter 38

Nicholas Stein

A shower of sparks exploded from the ceiling as a power relay overloaded and burst in spectacular fashion. The Hermes was built to take serious abuse. But she was coming apart under the lethal missile barrage. And another volley was winging its way toward us. The guns weren’t going to stop enough of them, I could see that already. One lucky hit in a bad spot, and the Hermes might be lost. We couldn’t afford that. Mars couldn’t afford for us to fail.

“Stop forward thrust and bring the bow up ninety degrees,” I said. “Belly toward the incoming missiles, quickly!”

The ship rotated in place. Much of the belly armor was gone, but the Hermes had been designed to take a pummeling on that side. We’d be much more likely to survive the inevitable hits. The trade off was that by rotating, we wouldn’t be able to accelerate any more. We could correct our course a little, but the speed we had was all we were going to get. Every moment counted, and I was loath to give up even a second of acceleration. But if I didn’t rotate the ship, she’d be destroyed before we could ram the Dreadnought.

I hoped the speed we had would be enough, that we’d ram the Dreadnought before it could fire. But watching the energy build up, I had the sinking feeling we were going to be too late. They were about to fire. I’d made my last-ditch rush just a little bit too late, and everyone on Mars was about to pay for my mistake.

We fired another blast of missiles with the last launchers we had at our disposal. They streaked in toward the enemy ship, but I saw the trouble now. Perrault’s vessel had a ring of guns protecting the nose. They’d taken out every missile that might have damaged the railgun. His Dreadnought had taken everything we could throw at it, sustained damage I thought would have destroyed any ship and simply kept coming on. The armor on that thing must have been immense. Nothing we could fire at this point was going to be enough.

“Hermes, this is Hawk Leader,” I heard Flynn say over the radio. “I have one shot. Taking it.”

I watched as she turned around and dove back in toward Perrault’s ship. She wove a twisting path between missiles. Her flying was admirable - amazing even - enough that I could appreciate it even though she had me gripping my chair with white knuckles.

Part of me wanted to order her to abort her run. To get the hell out of there. For her and Thomas to save themselves. I’ve the past few days I’d gone from knowing Thomas was dead, to hoping he might be alive, to knowing he was prisoner aboard a ship I had to destroy - and then at last hearing that he was safe, winging free in Flynn’s fighter. The idea that he was going to live helped make my own impending death more palatable.

Now he was back in danger again, and there was nothing I could do to save him. I felt helpless as I tracked the movements of their tiny fighter on my screen. I could still call her back. I could still order them to retreat. But I knew they wouldn’t listen to me even if I did.

I wasn’t going to give that order. I was willing to sacrifice myself for our world. The men and women who’d stayed on the Hermes were all willing to give their lives as well. If I ordered Thomas and Keladry to retreat, it would dishonor what they were trying to do.

Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to hold my tongue. But hold it I did.

Then they were nose to nose with the enemy ship. I felt the smallest blossom of hope that they might just pull it off, and someone get that one missile in where everything else we had done failed. If Flynn could make that one shot count..!

“Shoot,” I whispered. “Shoot and get out of there!”

The energy buildup in the ship reached a crescendo. Perrault was about to fire the gun. The latest missile volley was moments away from hammering into the Hermes.

And their Hawk vanished from my screen.

For a heartbreaking moment I thought they’d been destroyed, taken out by a missile shot. But their transponder still showed they were in one piece. It took only the next moment to realize where they had to have gone - into the gun itself, the only way to bypass that ring of defensive fire. The Dreadnought’s defensive guns must have been set to prioritize incoming missiles over the Hawks. That last volley from the Hermes was aimed right at the railgun, and it must have kept the anti-missile systems there busy enough that they never had a chance to drench the incoming Hawk with their withering fire.

Then the Dreadnought’s return volley struck us. The Hermes bucked as missile after missile slammed into our belly. The engines shut off, powering down automatically to prevent a catastrophic overload. The lights all over the bridge flickered out, the holotank went dead, and all of our instrumentation went out. Emergency lighting let me see dimly across the stricken bridge.

Another missile slammed in somewhere close. I felt the impact in my teeth. As I watched, one wall of the bridge buckled inward, breaking and coming apart. It was right behind Ensign Jacobs, who was still at his station. Still trying his best.

I undid the clasps holding me in place in a flash and dove across the bridge, taking the young man down in a flying tackle. If I could get us both down behind a console in time, it might protect us from the worst of the blast once it breached the bulkhead. Behind me the wall broke apart, showering the room with jagged chunks of metal shrapnel.

There was pain - sharp, intense. A faint wailing in my ears as my suit notified me that its integrity had been breached, and I was leaking the precious fluid that let me breathe. At first I thought that was why I couldn’t get a breath, but the leak seemed to be slow. My helmet was still full of the viscous stuff. My chest and belly felt like they were on fire, though.

I looked down and saw the tip of a red-tinged chunk of metal protruding from my belly, a little below my ribs on the right. How had that gotten there? I had been face down when the wall blew in.

The fire was blossoming in my back as well. I realized the metal had hit me from behind, and spear-like gone right through me.

There was a roaring in my ears. I was losing consciousness. Too much pain, too much shock and stress. I saw Jacobs under me, struggling to get up, to help me up. His eyes fixed on the metal in my belly and got very wide.

Someone was shouting something over the radio, but it sounded like it was coming from very far away. And then I couldn’t hear it at all anymore.

Chapter 39

Thomas Stein

I couldn’t believe the Hawk had fit into the narrow space of the railgun barrel. If you’d asked me a minute earlier, I would have said it was impossible. But there we were, rocketing down the half-mile tube at high speed.

“Fire!” Kel said.

That wasn’t as simple as it sounded. I didn’t have a lock anymore. There wasn’t anything to lock on to in the darkness of the tunnel. As soon as we entered the railgun barrel the automated systems couldn’t find any one thing to focus on, and I was reduced to manual controls. All I could do was lay the targeting reticle dead ahead, push the button, and pray that the missile would hit something that would do enough damage. The Hawk bucked a tiny bit as the missile leapt forward, blazing a bright trail down the dark tunnel. The trail of fire ended abruptly somewhere ahead in a brilliant fireball. It had impacted something, but I couldn’t tell what at first.

Kel was flipping the ship end over end. She fired small maneuvering jets that simply turned the ship around, pivoting on a central axis perfectly. The nose of the Hawk scraped against one wall of the barrel, spraying bright flashes of sparks as metal tore hit metal. Alarms rang inside the cockpit - compression loss. We were venting air. Kel had a suit, but that might get very bad for me in a few minutes.

She braked the ship with everything she had, throwing on so much acceleration that my vision went down to the smallest tunnel. I was close to blacking out. But I saw light where the missile had impacted. Bright light. I hadn’t hit the bottom of the gun, hadn’t even come close. But the missile had torn a gaping hold in the side of the barrel.

Then all at once the Hawk’s thrusters overcame our inertia, and we were moving forward again. We shot out the end of the tube doing five gravities of acceleration and still building up speed. I hoped it would be enough.

Behind us the gun fired. Or tried to fire.

The railgun used powerful electromagnets to accelerate chunks of metal outward. It was like a massive, half-mile long shotgun. By the time the pellets reached the end of the barrel, they would be moving at a non-trivial percentage of the speed of light. Load enough ammo into the gun, fire it off at a significant enough fraction of light speed, and… Well, force equals mass times acceleration. Even a grain of sand could be devastating if it was moving fast enough relative to the target.

I’d forgotten more than half of the physics I’d studied in school, but I knew there was a flaw with the design. It required careful shaping of the magnetic field. If the field was off, then those fast moving deadly bits of metal wouldn’t travel in a straight line. They’d curve. They’d twist. And we’d blown a hole in the side of the tube which served as their containment field.

Much later, I got to view a computer generated image of what we thought happened when Perrault fired the railgun. The rounds continued up the chamber until they hit an eddy in the magnetic field caused by the missile damage. Then they changed course. Chaos theory took over, causing some of the objects to slam into each other. They were moving fast enough that those collisions caused the shots to explode. The explosions spread shrapnel and shock waves that further damaged the barrel. Which caused more collisions, launching a chain reaction of destruction. Within the first tenth of a second of firing, rounds from the railgun were soaring out in all directions, smashing through the hull plating, blasting their way out of the ship in every direction. At about a seconds after firing, something hit the ship’s engines and they lost containment.

Sitting in the rear seat of Kel’s Hawk, I had a first hand look at the apocalypse we’d wrought with that one missile. The ship bent, twisting around itself as magnetism ran rampant and unconfined, while hundreds of detonations tore it apart from inside. Then the ship exploded, the force of the nuclear catastrophe as the engines went up annihilating the back end of the ship completely and fragmenting what was left of the front into thousands of shards of spinning metal.

It was over.

“We did it!” Kel shouted.

“You did it,” I said, grinning.

“Oh my god. I don’t believe I just did that.” Her voice held a tremor. “My hands are shaking.”

“I bet,” I said. “I’ve never seen flying like that. Never even heard about flying like that.” Which was true. On Earth people did crazy things like fly under bridges, but flying into a tube, then flipping over and exiting on precisely the same vector you entered? It wasn’t even possible on Earth. Aerodynamics wouldn’t let you do it. This was a stunt for the history books.

“Let’s get you someplace with better atmosphere,” Kel said. The alarms were still ringing, and the air was getting a little thin. She shut off the alarms. “Mars Station, or the Hermes?”

I searched my radar for the Hermes and didn’t find her right away. Then I saw why. She wasn’t under power anymore. She was drifting, and venting air. Perrault’s ship must have dealt her one last blow before it went down.

“Shit,” she said, seeing the same thing I was. “I know you want to be there, but if they’ve lost power there’s no way I can land the fighter.”

I coughed again. The air was getting thinner, and I was about done in. I wanted more than anything to go look for my father. He was over there somewhere, I knew it. He and his people needed help. But it would have to be someone else providing it. My thoughts were getting fuzzy, and now that the intensity of the fight was over I felt nauseous as well. I looked down at my leg and realized I was still bleeding from the gunshot wound earlier. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? Probably because I was too busy trying to not get dead. But I was feeling it now. My vision was getting a little grey.

“Kel, I’m still bleeding,” I managed to say.

“I’m getting you to the station,” she said. “Hang on, Thomas.”

Chapter 40

Thomas Stein

The doctors at the station patched me up and let me go. They didn’t even try to keep me there. Under ordinary circumstances I’m sure they would have. They might have tried, anyway. I wasn’t in the mood to lay around myself.

But the station was a the center for a mass casualty event right now. Most of the personnel had been sent to the surface when Earth attacked. The idea was that would be the safest place for them. If the station had been destroyed in the battle, everyone aboard would likely have died. On the surface they would have at least a little security.

Now we had injured and dead being shipped over from the Hermes. Some of the casualties were in very bad shape. The couple of doctors and handful of nurses who’d volunteered to remain behind on Mars Station were doing everything they could just to keep those patients alive while they had more staff and supplies shipped up from the surface.

The hospital wing looked like a war zone. Which was appropriate, I supposed. This was the inevitable aftermath of war. People hurt. People dead. Wreckage, ruin, and devastation. We’d survived this fight by the skin of our teeth. And Earth was still out there, getting ready to come back at us again.

I had mild frostbite. My lungs were going to be sore for a bit - seemed maybe I had tried gulping some frozen air at one point or another. The left side of my face was a mass of blisters from the heat of Kel’s missile exploding. The cut on my arm was superficial, but the gunshot wound on my leg was a bit worse. No bullet - the round went right through - but I’d bled a lot. A nurse bound it up with a pressure dressing, stuck me with an IV, and two liters of fluid later told me to get out so that the bed could be made available for someone who needed it more. I left with orders to rest that we both already knew I wasn’t going to follow.

I wandered out of the triage area with some thoughts about finding Kel, thanking her again, and then seeing if I could help with search and rescue for the Hermes. The ship was still floating dead in space. It was going to take months to get her back into any sort of fighting shape, if it could be done at all. With so much damage, the ship might need to be completely scrapped.

My watch buzzed at me for an incoming call. I looked down and recognized the caller ID at once. George was calling me? I wondered if that was good news or bad.

“Thomas here,” I said. “What’s up?”

“They’ve found your father, Thom,” George replied. For once he wasn’t beating around the bush. His face was beet red, his eyes dark. “It’s not good.”

“Where is he?” I asked. I looked around. Were they bringing him here?”

“On his way to the surface. He was impaled by a fragment of his ship during one of the last missile strikes. He’s alive, but in critical condition. The station doesn’t have the equipment to save him.”

“But down in the base?” I asked.

“Maybe. If they can get him there in time. Keladry is flying him.”

I chuckled. “She’ll get him there in time.”

I felt a pang that I wouldn’t be able to see her right away. But it was good to know that he was in her hands. If anyone alive could deliver him safely in time, it was her.

George grinned back. “I think so. She’s done this before, for he and I. After the station bombing.”

“I’d love to hear the story sometime,” I said. “Right now, what can I do to help?”

“Are you fit for service, Thomas?” George asked. He seemed suddenly serious again.

“Fit as a fiddle,” I lied.

He didn’t blink, although I thought he knew I wasn’t in as good condition as I was saying. George had an uncanny ability to know when someone was lying, bluffing, or otherwise full of shit. He stared at me for a long moment, and then it seemed like he had decided I was well enough, and went on.

“Then as President of Mars, I hereby promote you to Commodore within the ranks of the Mars Space Service,” he said. “Effective immediately.”

I was still a little woozy from the hammering my body had taken over the last few hours. The implications didn’t sink in right away. All I felt at first was annoyed. We had people hurt, dying, even dead. My father might be dying. The Space Service was a mess, what we had left in tatters, and Earth was sure to come at us again as soon as they could.

The last thing I needed right now was a promotion. Who cared? I’d always done what was needed anyway. Rank be damned. I simply took the actions I thought were necessary. It had worked out well enough so far.

“Thanks, George,” I said, keeping the rest of my thoughts to myself.

“Oh, don’t thank me,” George said. His voice had turned positively grim. “You’re now the senior MSS officer until your father returns to duty.”

Shit. That sank home like a pile of bricks. George wasn’t promoting me. He was putting me in charge. We had several Captains. But only one person ranked above Captain - Dad, who was the Admiral and the buck stops here man for the entire MSS. It was still a small service, and Dad hadn’t gone hog-wild promoting people. He’d set up ranks which made sense for the structure that we needed. There hadn’t been time yet for anything more than that.

“Oh,” I said, floored.

“We are at war, Commodore,” George said. “I am empowering you to take any and all actions you deem necessary to protect Mars from United Nations aggression.”

I could think of a couple of actions right off the top of my head. They were not the sorts of things Dad might do if he were still in charge. But he wasn’t here anymore. He might not be here again anytime soon. He might not even survive. The burning pain I felt from that thought crystalized my thinking. I was going to end this. For him and all the other people Choi had made suffer.

And besides, maybe that was why George was handing the job to me in the first place. It was time for a different touch.

“I can do that,” I said slowly. “It might require some extreme measures.”

“Then be extreme, Thomas,” George replied. “We may not survive their next attack.”

He cut the link, leaving me to my thoughts.

I took a walk to clear my head. The main passages were filled with people rushing about, trying to help bring in our wounded, so I headed inward toward the core of the station. Less people there. I needed to think.

Earth still had their massive station. They might be reeling for a moment or two from the loss of their fleet. But they would simply build another. The next would be even larger. Mars would toss together whatever we could in the short time we’d have, but this time we wouldn’t have the R&D station building ships for us. Nor would we have the missile pods there to take out most of the enemy fleet. And now they knew about the Hawks, so they’d be ready for the fighters next time.

If we didn’t come up with something brilliant, the next attack would sink us.

My wandering brought me inevitably back to my ship, the Constellation. My Connie had served well during the battle for Earth. I’d fought against ships trying to control the space around the planet, pirates who’d smashed whole cities by throwing asteroids at them. Only to find out later that the pirates were being controlled by the man who now ran the UN.

This area was still in micro-gravity. I pushed off from the deck toward the Connie, running my hand down her side. She was just about ready to fly again. Another day or two and she’d have been right out there alongside the Hermes in the middle of the firefight. And she probably would have been destroyed. This ship was a converted cargo-carrier. She had some anti-missile guns, and a few new toys the engineers added. But she wasn’t meant to go toe to toe with a ship like Perrault’s dreadnought.

For what I had in mind, she might just do the trick.

I activated my watch, turned on the Stein override again, and dialed up an all-station broadcast. Every radio and public address speaker in the station would play what I was about to say.

“All able bodied Mars Space Service personnel, this is Commodore Stein. Report to the dry-dock immediately for orders.”

I was done standing here and taking whatever Choi decided to dish out.

Chapter 41

Nicholas Stein

Someone was tapping my shoulder. My brain was still foggy with drugs, and it took a few moments for me to realize where I was. I was in my hospital. Safely tucked deep underground on Mars, not up in space fighting that battle. I seemed to be back up there, out there, every time I closed my eyes.

Which was quite a lot. The doctors were pumping me full of pain medication to alleviate the agony my adventures had left me with. I recognized the floating sensation I was feeling as drug-induced. I knew that it, like the pain, would pass in time. That didn’t mean I had to like it.

“What?” I growled. Or tried to growl. My voice sounded weak to my ears, which I hated.

“Someone here to see you, sir,” the nurse next to my bed said.

“I was sleeping,” I groused.

“Yes, but…you left orders…” She seemed flustered.

Finally what she was saying broke through the fog a little. I’d left orders to be woken if Thomas arrived back on Mars while I was asleep. It must be him. I tried to sit up in bed, but the movement made my guts clench in sudden pain.

“Don’t move, Dad,” Thomas said. He crossed the room to stand on the other side of the bed and pressed a button. The head of my bed raised a little so that I could see him better, and the pain slowly ebbed away. Keladry was there, too, standing just inside the doorway.

“Thomas, Keladry,” I said, smiling. “It’s good to see you both.” I reached out a hand for my son’s.

He took my palm in his own. I recalled when his fingers had been tiny enough that they could barely wrap around one of mine. I felt a pang of loss at that. Where had all those years gone?

Thomas pulled a chair over and sat down next to my bed. He kept his warm hand around mine.

“I wasn’t going to have them wake you,” he said. “Just wanted to peek in and see how you were doing.”

“Well enough,” I said, my thin voice belying the words.

“I heard they had to sew about half of you back together,” he said.

“I hear that I have your girlfriend to thank for being alive,” I said. “Again.”

She shrugged. “I’ll expect to see a good bonus in my next paycheck,” she said. But she was grinning.

“I’ll leave you two alone a bit.” She waved and slipped out the door.

“She brought me down here to see you,” Thomas said. “I wanted to check in, see for myself you were all right.”

I felt content and closed my eyes, which was a mistake. The drugs began floating me away again. I heard a few whispered words. If I stayed like this another moment or two, I’d drift back to sleep. They’d leave me to rest. I’d been told I would be weeks recuperating from my injuries. I knew that I’d almost died. And I had certainly earned some rest. But there were other things I wanted to say. With an effort of will, I forced my eyes back open again.

“The battle? Perrault?” I asked.

“Gone,” Thomas said. “His railgun backfired, and then he lost engine containment.”

“Your missile?” I asked.

“Yes. We got the shot in.”

I nodded a little, the smallest movement. It hurt like hell even to shift my body that much. “Thomas, they’ll be back. Have to prepare…”

Even drug-addled, I knew that we didn’t have much time. Earth had blasted apart every space-based defense we had. They’d come back at us as quickly as they could, with the first force they could muster. They’d blow Mars Station. Once they controlled our orbit, they could make whatever demands they wanted. The people on Mars would have no choice but to capitulate.

Even one or two ships might be enough to do the trick. If they set their full effort into it, they could have a tiny fleet of converted merchant vessels here in days. And I was out of ideas. The Hawks might provide some defense, but we were in trouble.

“I know, Dad,” Thomas said. “George put me in charge of the MSS while you’re injured. I have a plan for dealing with Earth.”

I looked at him. Really looked. He reminded me of myself, all those years ago. When I’d had my back against the wall, and made terrible decisions, the consequences of which had resonated through decades. Everything that had transpired in the last year was set in motion the moment I sent the Chinese ship back home armed as a nuclear weapon. And now he’d been handed all of this, suddenly and without warning. I knew all too well what it felt like to have the weight of an entire planet drop on your shoulders.

“What do you have in mind?” I asked.

He looked away from me, his face troubled. A few moments passed, and I wondered what he was thinking. What would I do, if our roles were reversed? If it was my son on death’s door - or dead - thanks to Earth’s attack, how might I have responded? I had a good sense of myself. And the strong feeling that I might not show much restraint.

“If we wait for them to come to us, we’re toast,” he said. “The Connie is almost ready to fly. I’m taking the fight to the enemy.”

“You’re going to do to them before they can do to us?” I asked.

“I am going to stop them from coming at us ever again,” he replied, the fierceness in his tone challenging me, daring me to argue.

He paused again. I didn’t interrupt, willing him to go on.

“The thing is, Dad, I don’t know what I else can do,” he said. “Choi has to be stopped, but he’s almost untouchable. If he comes at us again, we lose. This is the only way.”

I squeezed his hand in empathy.

“I faced a similar set of choices, a long time ago,” I said. “And I hit back in the hardest and most damaging way I could.”

He started to interrupt me, but I waved him down.

“Let me finish,” I said. “I wanted to hurt the enemy. So I did. I made them pay, but I created new enemies in the process.”

I thought about Shaughnessy, who’d hated me with such vehemence right up until the moment he drew his last breath. And Choi, who I’d made powerful entirely by accident. My actions ended the last world war, but the United Nations which came out of the peace that followed was more powerful than any body on Earth had ever been. Too powerful, and ripe for the plucking by an ambitious man like Choi.

When I blew up Beijing with their own nukes, I sowed fear across the planet. So much fear that terrified people were willing to turn anywhere for peace and security. People openly begging to give up too many liberties and freedoms to buy that peace and security.

“I hit them as hard as I could,” I said. “You…can show mercy, Thomas, where I gave my enemy none.”

His eyes were wet with unshed tears. I would have done anything to spare my son the pain he was feeling, to take the burden from him. But I wasn’t leaving this hospital for a long time, and there was no one else who could do what needed to be done. George had chosen well, damn him.

“I’m proud of you, Thomas,” I said. “I know you will do it better than I did.”

“That’s a tall admission, coming from you,” he said, sniffing a little. But I had won a small smile from him. It would be enough, for now.

Chapter 42

Thomas Stein

It had been good to see Dad, but disturbing as well. He’d always been a bastion of strength in my life. The proverbial unmovable object: always there, rigid, inflexible, but constant. Seeing him so weak that he could barely move, his mind dulled by painkillers… It was a jarring experience.

And he’d given me a lot to think about during the flight over to Earth. Just what was I going to accomplish, coming out here? How far was I willing to go? Where should I - and could I - draw the line in what force was reasonable?

I knew that I had all the advantages this time. If Earth had any ships left to defend her, they should be few in number and weak. That was the whole point of our rushed departure from Mars. If we could get to Earth before the UN was able to commandeer a bunch of civilian ships and toss weapons on them, we would have a good chance of winning. But that line of thinking invariable led me back to the harder questions. Like, what was winning going to look like? And how far was I willing to go to save Mars?

Earth was still just a blue marble floating on black velvet at this range. We were closing fast, though. And they’d been trying to hail us for hours as we sped closer. I ignored the radio traffic.

The Connie was fit to fight. Or mostly fit, anyway. Once everyone had assembled in the bay we got to work. Much of the remaining refit involved improvements to the crew sections and missile bays. I’d solved the issue by simply putting up temporary seals over the sections that weren’t finished. They’d be open to space for this trip. We weren’t going to need crew comforts for this run, anyway.

With a handful of volunteers, the ship made a record speed crossing between the worlds. My crew spent the entire trip in the goop-suits so that we could accelerate the whole time. Half the trip was spent accelerating at twenty gravities, the other half spent decelerating at close to the same rate. We crossed the distance in less than twenty-four hours.

Earth’s leaders had good reason to be shitting themselves right now. They had an armed warship approaching from a planet that had every reason to be pissed at them. And we’d crossed the gap more quickly than anyone had thought possible.

Not that I wanted to go through that again. Ever. Even a few hours of breathing liquid still felt strange. Doing it for an entire day was a horrible experience. None of us were in a good mood. The suits mitigated the strain of acceleration, but it still meant poor sleep, and the short breaks we’d taken for food and water hadn’t refreshed anyone very well.

“They’re still hailing,” Glenn said. He’d survived the Hermes bridge exploding, and I’d brought him aboard as XO the instant he volunteered. He was one of a small handful of people with as much experience at this as I had.

“Let them hail,” I said. The full day of travel with nothing to do but simmer had turned my hot anger into something of a cold rage instead. I wasn’t out to punish Earth for what they’d done. Not anymore. My aim was much more simple. I was going to make damned sure they wouldn’t be able to launch a second attack.

The Connie had a small bridge. I was running the show. Glenn was managing radio and signals in addition to being my go-to for someone to bounce ideas off. I had a woman who’d served alongside him on the Hermes named Diaz. Glenn swore she was superb at radar and a deft hand with the defense systems, which she’d run so well for Dad. For this trip she was in charge of our fire control as well.

I wished more than anything that I could have had Kel for my pilot. We could really have used her. But she had a much more valuable part to play in this. Instead the Connie was being flown by someone I hadn’t seen in quite a long time. Scott Wilson was the pilot on the transport ship I was commanding, way back when the pirates first attacked. The pirates took us completely by surprise. No one had seen weapons in space since the Accord was first signed. When they fired missiles at us Wilson froze, and he’d never been able to live it down. I heard people called him ‘Iceman’ now - as a joke, because he’d panicked.

Hell, we’d all panicked that day. He’d just been a little more thorough about it than most of us.

Wilson came up to me before we left and begged for a shot. He’d been left on station duty since that debacle. Nobody wanted him flying their ship. I hesitated, but when I saw the fire in his eyes I thought I ought to give him a chance. He wanted this. He wasn’t going to let anyone down again. And if anyone knew all about the drive to prove yourself, it was me.

“We’ll be coming into orbit in a minute, sir,” Wilson said. “Earth’s Spacedock will be in sight in forty-five seconds.”

“Diaz, I want a firing solution the moment it comes into view,” I said.

“Aye, sir.”

Glenn leaned back and looked at me. “We going to warn them before we fire?”

I shrugged. “Anybody aboard that station is military personnel, or civilians on a military base making ships for the UN Navy.”

“Just asking,” he said.

“Multiple contacts coming up ahead,” Diaz said.

Multiple? What else did they have out here? It was one worry I’d had about this mission. We didn’t know if Earth had held back any ships when they attacked Mars. It was possible they still had something out here waiting for us.

“Getting a better picture now, sir,” Diaz said. “Three ships. They’ve separated from the Spacedock and are maneuvering to intercept us.”

“Game on,” I said. “Drop the Hawks.”

I’d rather liked Dad’s idea of an aircraft carrier in space. But with the Hermes out of action, getting them all the way to Earth was going to be a problem. It wasn’t one without a solution, and I looked to history to find mine. Although the original Hermes was the first design for a wet ship purpose-made for launching fighters, it wasn’t the first ship to ever carry them. Lots of bigger vessels would have a plane or two they could launch from a tower or special deck. The Connie was missing fully half her missile tubes. I had to make up for that loss somehow.

We’d rigged two of the surviving Hawks with couplings that strapped them to the Connie’s hull. We had explosive bolts in place to blow them clear when they needed to launch. Collecting them again after this was over would be a pain, but I figured we’d cross that bridge when we got to it.

Kel was out there, flying Hawk One. With her was a guy she swore was one of the best pilots she’d ever seen, seated in Hawk Three. That was high praise, coming from her. But I figured each of the pilots who made it back from the battle against the Dreadnought had to be excellent. Only five of the fighters had survived. I’d have loved to haul them all along, but there simply wasn’t space to attach them all to the Connie. Two would have to be enough.

I was worried for Kel. Even knowing just how good she was, I also knew that sometimes it didn’t matter. They say it’s not the bullet with your name on it that you have to worry about, when you’re the best. It’s the bullets that are marked ‘to whom it may concern’. Even someone as good as Kel could get unlucky, and all it would take would be one bad break.

The fighters were our best weapons, and she was our best pilot. If we wanted to do this right, I needed her out there. And if I’d tried to have it any other way she would have skinned me alive.

There was a loud pinging sound as the explosive bolts blew. Two new icons showed up on my small holotank, and began accelerating rapidly away from us.

“Let’s give them some cover. Diaz, fire at will. One volley at each ship,” I said.

The Connie rocked as our missile bays unloaded death. My screen showed the enemy ships doing the same.

“Let’s dance,” I said.

Chapter 43

Thomas Stein

Our first volley was away. Diaz had targeted all twelve missiles at a single target. If we could overwhelm their defenses and hammer them to bits one at a time, they’d have a harder time stopping all the missiles. And each ship we took out would be one fewer shooting at us.

Their return fire was surprisingly ragged and light. Each of the ships launched only four missiles, matching our total output missile for missile.

“Wilson, bring us up at forty five degrees from the ecliptic, and run perpendicular to the incoming missiles vector at five gees,” I said.

“Aye sir,” he replied, and the ship immediately lurched forward into the maneuver. I smiled inside my suit. He was taking his duties damned seriously. I’d made a good choice.

The missiles tried to turn and chase us, but they were moving fast by the time their little computer brains detected our course change. They managed, but now they were following us, struggling to catch up with our acceleration. Meanwhile, our anti-missile guns were picking them off.

Another volley launched - from them and from us. Now we had two sets of missiles bearing down on us from two different directions. Diaz was firing off new sets as quickly as our launchers reloaded, but the enemy was firing just as quickly.

Then two of the enemy ships exploded, vanishing from my screen entirely.

“This is Hawk One,” Kel said over our radio. “Two enemy ships splashed.”

“Well done,” I replied. “We’ve got the third. Get me eyes on that station.”

“Aye sir,” the pilot replied.

Our missiles struck home on the last beleaguered ship. It took down half of them, but the other half left it a gutted, powerless wreck. These weren’t combat ships at all. These were the barest combat refits of shipping vessels. They were a lot like the Connie, only smaller and without even the light armor Dad’s engineers had added to my ship.

They still had teeth, though. And I watched my screen as those jaws closed in on us. We’d be just as dead as they were, if enough of those missiles landed.

“Bring our nose down ninety degrees from the ecliptic now,” I ordered. “And increase acceleration to ten gees.” That wasn’t the fastest we could go, but it should make it that much harder for the missiles to track us.

“All hands stand by for rapid acceleration,” I said, I keying the PA system so my words would be heard throughout the ship. For the sort of maneuver we were about to pull, everyone needed to be strapped down.

“Glenn, drop a decoy buoy,” I said.

“Aye, sir,” he replied automatically. I raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. Glenn was my Dad’s age. It felt a little odd having men who’d been in space since before I was born snapping to it when I gave a command. Would I ever be so used to it that I took it for granted? I wondered if Dad still had that sort of issue.

The buoys were a leftover from the last war. They hadn’t been updated much, and I didn’t know if the Hermes had even used them, relying on armor instead. I preferred a little finesse to taking it on the chin. The buoy sat in the space we left behind as we rocketed on our new course. It was giving out a fake radar and radio signal that made it seem like it was really us.

The two volleys of missiles converged and unleashed hell...on the buoy. A handful of the slower missiles escaped the conflagration and spotted their actual target zipping away from them, but our guns took them out without trouble.

We hadn’t taken a single hit in the entire engagement.

“Let’s stay alert. We’re doing great, but this isn’t over yet,” I said. Then, because I knew he needed it, I added a more specific compliment. “Excellent work on those turns, Wilson.”

“Thanks, sir,” he replied.

“Bring us back down to one gravity of acceleration, on an intercept course with the space dock,” I said.

“Aye sir,” Wilson replied.

We started into an arcing course that would bring us back near the station’s orbital path. The fast sprints we’d had to make to avoid the missiles had taken us way off course, so we had a few moments for me to think.

Was that really all they had? I’d taken the Connie to Earth at the best possible speed. Partly that was to inspire a little fear in the enemy. If we could make the crossing that quickly, what else could we do?

But part of my motivation had been to take out their ship production before they could rebuild and launch another offensive. Now my race to arrive here seemed like overkill. All they had three small, mostly toothless ships guarding their only major space station.

“Hawk One, report,” I said.

“We have eyes on,” Kel replied. “They don’t seem to be tracking us, or haven’t fired yet anyway. Detecting over three dozen missile batteries on the station though. Might be a tough nut to crack.”

Not if we never came close enough for them to shoot at us. The station was moving in a slow, regular orbit. In spaceflight terms that meant it was a sitting duck.

“Can you drop a laser on it?” I asked over the radio.

“Yup,” she replied.

“Do it.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Diaz, set our missiles to home on her laser target.”

“Already done, sir,” she replied.

“I want a firing solution that powers down the first six volleys for part of the trip,” I said. “No ragged volleys here. We have the time to hit them with everything at once. Fire once you have it set.”

“Aye, sir,” she replied.

The station was still out of our direct radar range, hidden around the curve of the planet. Which meant we couldn’t get a direct lock on it with our missiles. But using the Hawks as forward observers, we didn’t need to. The Connie shuddered a little as each volley of missiles flew out, streaking into the distance. The first two volleys would pause a little, waiting for their fellows to catch up before re-engaging their engines. Instead of six sets of twelve missiles, the station would face seventy-two incoming rounds all at the same time.

Their defenses shouldn’t be able to stop them all.

“Hawk Three, can you give me a video feed?” I asked.

“Yes sir, sending now.”

Our missiles had already gathered into a huge mass, steaming in toward the enemy station on full thrust. The station was shooting back. It was also disgorging escape pods like mad. Someone had given the order to abandon the place, and I was glad. No sense killing people if we didn’t have to. Some of them might get clear enough before the missiles hit that they would survive.

The Spacedock had good defenses, but I’d seen the place up close. It was too big to defend very well. They only managed to hit two dozen of the missiles before the rest impacted. Scores of fiery nuclear explosions lit up the video feed brilliantly. When the flashes cleared, I got a good look at the devastation I’d wrought.

The space dock had been torn in half. One side was gutted, almost shredded. The other half was more or less intact, but the flames and air venting from it implied that might not last much longer. I called up a computer projection of its new orbit, which showed it in rapid decay. The entire mess was going to hit somewhere in the Indian Ocean with a day or so.

“Time to finish the job,” I said. “Our orders are to ensure they aren’t able to repeat their attack again.”

“Thomas?” Glenn asked. His eyes looked worried. I could see it there, the unasked question: was I about to follow in my father’s footsteps and end a war through nuclear devastation?

“We’re going to minimize civilian deaths,” I said. But there would be some casualties from what I was about to do. I was going to return Earth to a pre-spaceflight era. Abruptly and without notice. It was going to cause problems, even some deaths. I knew that, and it hurt. But I didn’t have a wealth of better options.

Was this how Dad had felt, when he sent those nukes home with the Chinese ship and killed a hundred million people?

“Target every satellite and spacefaring object in orbit around Earth,” I said. “We’re destroying them. All of them.”

“Glenn, send messages to the space commands in Florida, Mohave, Melbourne, Kourou, and Dongfeng,” I said. “Tell them they have six hours to evacuate all personnel before those bases are destroyed.”

He stared at me for a long moment. That was every spaceport Earth had left. All of their remaining launch facilities would be gone. Oh, there were some craft that could take off on a regular runway. But they’d lose all of their heavy lifting ability. No chance to replace the space dock we’d destroyed until they could rebuild those launch pads, which would take years. I was effectively taking Earth out of the equation, at least as far as getting into space was concerned.

“Then contact the UN,” I said. “Tell them to get Choi on the line. It’s time he and I discussed a new set of Accords.”

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