ACES HIGH

Battlecruiser Alamo: Book 13

Richard Tongue

Battlecruiser Alamo #13: Aces High

Copyright © 2015 by Richard Tongue, All Rights Reserved

First Kindle Edition: July 2015

Cover By Keith Draws

With Thanks To Ellen Clarke

All characters and events portrayed within this ebook are fictitious; any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

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When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child,

And Death looks you bang in the eye,

And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle

To cock your revolver and . . . die.

But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"

And self-dissolution is barred.

In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . .

It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard.

"You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame.

You're young and you're brave and you're bright.

"You've had a raw deal!" I know — but don't squeal,

Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.

It's the plugging away that will win you the day,

So don't be a piker, old pard!

Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit:

It's the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard.

It's easy to cry that you're beaten — and die;

It's easy to crawfish and crawl;

But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight —

Why, that's the best game of them all!

And though you come out of each gruelling bout,

All broken and beaten and scarred,

Just have one more try — it's dead easy to die,

It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

Robert Service

Chapter 1

 Fleet Captain Daniel Marshall looked through the viewport at the Battlecruiser Alamo, the great ship floating serenely in space at a discrete distance, making the final preparations for departure. A few small pinpricks darted back and forth, shuttles transferring last-minute supplies and personnel. In just a few hours, they’d be on their way to the far frontier.

 Turning away, he looked around the concourse at the bustling crowds. Three years ago, Hunter Station hadn’t even existed, with the planet it circled, Ragnarok, out of touch with the rest of humanity in sullen isolation. Now it was turning into a major military base and economic artery, a key ally of the Triplanetary Confederation.

 “Captain?” a familiar voice said, and he turned to see Ensign Cooper, the commander of his Espatier contingent, walking towards him.

 “Good morning, Cooper,” he replied.

 “I wanted to check in with you before Alamo left.”

 Raising a hand, Marshall said, “I know what this is about, and don’t worry about it. I wasn’t expecting your troopers to be ready for active duty yet. You only had three months.” 

 “True, but it seems strange to be left behind while my ship goes off to its duty station.” He shook his head, and continued, “This time I want to get this right, though. Twice I’ve gone out into the dark with a platoon, and twice we suffered because we hadn’t been properly trained. Not again, skipper. Never again.”

 “How are the rooks coming along?”

 “Pretty well. I’ve got them out on the hull at the moment, simulated insertion drill down in the lower levels. Maintenance took the construction crews out for the day. Hell, I think they were glad to have some time off.”

 “Can you give me a figure?”

 “Eight weeks, I think. Once we’ve finished up here, it’s back down to Ragnarok for outdoor survival training. I just wish I had a chance to take them to Jefferson, get some jungle experience.”

 “Every world is different,” Marshall replied. “You can’t give them field experience of every world in the galaxy.”

 Looking down at the cold, ice-swept planet below, Cooper said, “Aside from the four Rockies I managed to recruit, all of my people were born in protected environments. They know what they are doing on space stations and starships, but when it comes to working outdoors they’re just babes in arms.” He snorted, then said, “As are our design engineers. I’ve managed to scavenge some Ragnarok kit, but that’s only suitable to one climate.”

 “Improvisation, Ensign. We’re supposed to be good at that.”

 Glancing back up at Alamo, Cooper asked, “How’s the ship?”

 “Ready to go. Just waiting to transfer everything that came in on the Don Lind.”

 “And the rest of the task force?”

 “The scouts will be joining us in a few weeks; we’re still repairing the damage they sustained at the Battle of Hades Station. More bits to follow.”

 “May I make a suggestion, sir?”

 Nodding, Marshall said, “By all means.”

 “Why are you leaving now, Captain? The orders give you plenty of flexibility. You could wait for the scouts, and for my platoon, for that matter. Spend some more time getting ready. I know Quinn would welcome it.”

 “Three months sitting out here has been bad enough already. The crew are going to lose their edge if they don’t get back out there soon, and frankly, so will I. As for Quinn, he’d gladly spend the rest of his career working on getting the ship to absolute perfection, but Alamo is ready, the crew is ready, and I’m ready. We leave in six hours.”

 A beep sounded from Cooper’s datapad, and he pulled it out of his pocket, scanning the message.

 “Trouble?” Marshall asked.

 “Not really. A few of the troops seem to have wandered into the wrong area. Looks like there’s a problem with the relay beacons on the outer hull.” With a sigh, he said, “I’d better go and sort it all out.”

 Offering his hand, Marshall said, “I’ll see you in eight weeks, then.”

 Taking it with a firm grip, Cooper replied, “Don’t get into too many fights, skipper. Not without my big, scary platoon to back you up.”

 With a smile, he said, “I’ll do my best. Good luck, Ensign.”

 “And to you, sir.” Cooper turned, walking down the ramp and vanishing into the crowd, pushing his way towards the elevator. Marshall supposed for a second that he should also be on his way, but turned back to look at Alamo again, floating in space a hundred miles away. Soon she’d be out among the stars once again, on a mission of exploration. A chance to see something new, something no human had ever seen before. Just as long as the peace treaty with the Cabal was worth the paper it was printed on.

 He glanced down at his watch, cold reality breaking him from his reverie. There were a thousand things he still had to do before Alamo could leave, not least signing off on the recently arrived supplies. Pulling out his datapad, he checked the current location on Saunders, commander of the Lind, and smiled. A small worker’s bar on the lower levels. At a guess, the freighter captain had found a hidden gem; either that, or he was conducting some sort of illicit business.

 Following the directions, he stepped down the ramp into the tumble of the crowd, pushing his way through. Even after two years, this station was still a work in progress. The Triplanetary Senate had opened up the purse strings of late, enough that another habitation ring could be built, more spacedocks constructed, more personnel recruited. Enough to turn this into a key facility. Whilst this was a good thing, it did mean that the place was barely organized chaos at the moment, and would be for months to come.

 He stumbled into the elevator, tripping over a wayward foot, bracing himself with his arms at the last minute, then selected for his level. He felt a brief surge of queasiness as the elevator shot across to the central tunnel, briefly dancing into zero-gravity as it transferred to the lower ring. Most of it was airtight now, though barely occupied.

 The doors opened onto an empty corridor. Marshall glanced down at his datapad, but before he could check that he was on the right level, the elevator doors closed behind him. Strange. He was three levels up from where he should be been. With a sigh, he tapped a control to log the problem for the local maintenance crews, only to receive an error message. Loss of signal. Glancing up at the wall, he saw a pair of dangling fibreoptic cables, an empty space where the repeater should have been.

 Something about this didn’t add up. He tapped for the elevator, but wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. Either the maintenance crews were guilty of willful negligence, or this was some sort of trap. Looking at his datapad again, he quickly mapped out a route down to the bar, at least giving him a reference point to aim for, somewhere he knew he would find people.

 He set off down the corridor, and as he walked, the lights went out, leaving him in total darkness. Swearing under his breath, he quickened his pace, running his hand against the wall to keep him in a straight line, and pulled out his datapad again, turning the searchlight up to full. It’d drain the power in less than an hour, but that should be all he’d need, though all it did was give off a glow that left shadows dancing in the gloom around him.

 Turning a corner, he heard footsteps up ahead, coming towards him. He glanced around, trying to find cover, a weapon, something he could use, but there was nothing around that would serve.

 “Who’s out there?” he yelled. “Identify yourself.”

 In a soft, sibilant tone, a voice replied, “I could ask you the same question.”

 “Fleet Captain Daniel Marshall. Your turn.”

 “No, I think not.”

 Marshall dived to the ground as a bullet tore through the space he had been standing in, instinct taking over just in time. He looked up to see a figure racing towards him, a gun in his hand, the barrel lowering to take another shot. Jamming the intensity to the brightest setting, he flashed his datapad at him, blinding him in the glare for a critical second, enough for the next shot to go wide and for him to charge into his assailant’s legs, sending him toppling and the gun rattling away across the deck.

 “Talk,” Marshall said, trying to pin him. “Who are you? Why do you want me dead?”

 The figure pushed back hard, sending Marshall tumbling into the wall; his lithe figure belied his strength. Looking up, he dived for the gun, reaching up with his fingers to grab the barrel, but his assailant was first, stepping on both the weapon and on his hand, crushing him underfoot.

 “We can’t have that,” the figure said. “You aren’t getting away, Captain. If you cease resistance, I will make this less painful.”

 “No, thanks,” Marshall said, sweeping across with his other hand. He could just get his fingers to the trigger, and he managed to pull it hard enough to fire, a shot slamming into the deck. His fingers burned, but his attacker leapt up in surprise, before striking down at Marshall’s wrist, breaking it with a loud snap.

 Grunting in pain, he tried to roll out of the way, pushing off with his other hand and snatching back the shattered wrist, trying to protected it. The figure reached down, picked up the gun, and pointed it at Marshall’s chest.

 “Any last words?”

 “Why?”

 Before the figure could answer – or simply pull the trigger, which seemed more likely, another crack echoed down the corridor, and he toppled back to the deck, blood pouring out of a wound in his shoulder.

 “Drop your weapon!” Cooper’s voice called out, as the Espatier raced up the corridor. “Get onto the floor, do it now!”

 “Not a chance,” the figure replied. Sweat was beading on his forehead, but his face was a stoic mask as he raised the gun again, firing down the corridor, sending Cooper diving for cover, returning fire to try and pin him down.

 “You’ve nowhere to run,” Marshall gasped. “Give it up.”

 Wordlessly, the figure turned, sprinting with superhuman speed down the corridor away from the action. Cooper rose, glanced down at Marshall, who nodded back at him, then pursued. Reaching into his pocket, he managed to fish out his communicator, opening it to the emergency frequency.

 “Marshall to any station. Medical emergency. Lower ring, fourth level. Security alert.” He stopped, gasping for breath. “Urgent reply. Over.”

 “Relax, Captain,” the drawl of a local security officer replied. “Help’s already on the way in force. Is Ensign Cooper with you?”

 “In pursuit of my assailant.” A siren began to echo across the corridor, a decompression alarm, and the communicator went dead again. Over on the far wall, a seal popped and a plastic bubble bounced out into the corridor, slowly beginning to expand, a rescue ball released by the automatic systems. Already he was beginning to pant, having trouble breathing, and his wrist burned like fire as he dragged himself across the floor, trying to save himself.

 He rolled through the seal, and managed to secure it behind him, taking deep breaths as the bubble reached full pressure, looking back at the trail of blood where he had been, still spilling from his hand. A siren sounded, the emergency beacon ringing to alert everyone for a million miles to the emergency, overkill in this case, but welcome nonetheless.

 Cooper was still out there, out in the now-decompressed corridor beyond. He’d have had a much easier time finding safety, assuming his assailant hadn’t stopped him. A thousand scenarios raced through his mind, none of them good. At least there was a medical kit, and he snatched out a painkiller, swallowing the pills dry and hoping that they would take effect, anything to dull the agony racing through his body.

 Time dragged. Outside pressure had dropped to nothing, but that was all he knew; the only viewport was facing the floor, and he didn’t dare roll the ball to try and get a look outside. After a few moments more, he felt himself moving, something dragging the ball along the ground. Rescuers. Or his assailant, back to finish him off.

 The question was answered a moment later as he was dragged into the elevator, the door closed behind him, and he saw the outside pressure quickly rise again. The seal popped open, and a spacesuited hand waved through, looking down at him.

 “They really made a mess of you, mate,” the suited figure said, reaching for his helmet; the voice was the one he had heard over the communicator. “Medical team’s up at the top with a stretcher and some nice strong painkillers. Have you fixed up real quick.”

 “Cooper?” Marshall asked.

 “Fine, mate,” he replied. “Got into an airlock and suited up in plenty of time.” 

 “What happened?”

 “Look, you’re in shock. You’ve got to try and relax.”

 “Someone tried to kill me. I’ll relax when I know why.”

 “Might be a while then, mate. The bastard blew a hole in the side of the station and got sucked out into space. I don’t think he’s going to be telling anyone anything.”

 “Get someone out to retrieve the body.”

 Shaking his head, the man said, “We’ve got a hell of a mess…”

 “Do it! That’s the only piece of evidence we’ve got. Do it right now.”

 The door opened, and Doctor Duquesne, over from Alamo, looked down at him with a disapproving scowl, saying, “We haven’t even left yet, and already you’re getting yourself into fights.”

 “I’ve given…”

 “It can wait, Captain,” Duquesne said.

Cooper was standing behind her, a smile on his face, and he nodded, saying, “Better do as she says, skipper. I haven’t got any close infantry support to back you up.”

 He felt a prick into his shoulder, looked down to see a hypodermic being withdrawn, and said, “I need to...need to…”

 Duquesne reached down and closed his eyes with her palm, saying, “You need to rest. Don’t worry, we won’t leave without you.”

 With a last gasp, he admitted defeat, and let the darkness take him.

Chapter 2

 “What the hell is going on over there?” Senior Lieutenant Margaret Orlova said, racing over to the communications station where the duty technician, the long-suffering Senior Spaceman Weitzman, sat working the controls.

 “The Captain’s on his way to the station medical facility, ma’am. That’s all I can get out of them. There’s a lot of comm traffic at the moment, a full-scale alert.”

 Lieutenant Nelyubov, over at the Tactical station, said, “Maggie, they’ve probably got a lot to worry about right now. As long as the Captain and Cooper are safe, we can settle for that, can’t we.”

 “Not by a long shot. Take us to battle stations.”

 “In spacedock?” Nelyubov replied.

 “Good practice if nothing else.”

 “Fine,” he said with a resigned sigh, hitting a control. “Tactical Officer to Crew. All hands report to your battle stations. I repeat, all hands to battle stations.”

 The elevator door opened, and Senior Lieutenant Caine, Acting Executive Officer, stepped out with a look of fury on her face, racing over to the communications station.

 “Report, Weitzman,” she snapped.

 A helpless look on his face, he said, “Nothing new, ma’am. The Captain’s stable, and Doctor Duquesne is attending to him right now. Ensign Cooper has not sustained any injuries, and the assassin has committed suicide.”

 “Battle stations, Maggie?” Caine asked, looking over.

 “It seemed like a reasonable precaution,” she replied. “This could be the start of a full-scale attack. All hell seems to be breaking loose on the station.”

 “I’m going over there,” Caine said.

 Nodding, Orlova replied, “I’m with you.”

 “Wait a minute,” Nelyubov said. “Who’s commanding the ship while you two go flying off?”

 “Feel free to take the conn,” Caine said.

 “He’s right,” Orlova said, shaking her head. “Someone has to stay behind.”

 “You,” the two of them said simultaneously.

 Caine’s face locked into a scowl, and she said, “I’m the senior officer.”

 “Which is why you need to stay behind. You are in command while the Captain is incapacitated, and we’re scheduled to break orbit in six hours,” Orlova replied.

 “As Operations Officer…”

 “I could go,” Nelyubov said. “While you two are arguing, I mean.”

 “You know I’m right, Deadeye,” Orlova said.

 Caine looked up, shook her head, and said, “Go. Before I change my mind.”

 Without waiting for a second, Orlova raced for the elevator, sprinting through the doors and slamming the controls to take her down to the hangar deck. She reached for her datapad, ready to order a shuttle to the pad, but Nelyubov had already organized one, pre-flight already underway.

 It seemed to take several years for the elevator to proceed on its track, Orlova tapping her toe on the deck while she waited. For the last three months she’d helped supervise Alamo’s long-awaited refit, helping Quinn and his engineers tear the ship apart and put it back again, for the first time in years having an opportunity to properly repair every system, upgrade where they could, even get the paintwork pristine. It looked like a new ship, ready for action. Maybe now they’d get to see what she could do.

 The doors smoothly slid open, and she stepped out onto the hangar deck, bustling with activity, supplies and personnel moving back and forth from the station as Alamo prepared to depart. Everything had slowed to a halt with the combat alert, technicians scrambling to get systems ready for battle.

 “Want us to go up?” a voice said from the ceiling; she looked up to see Lieutenant Grant, the recently arrived fighter commander, climbing into his cockpit.

 “Not yet,” she replied. “You and Tanner had better get into launch stations, though.”

 “Who are we shooting at?”

 “Anything that moves,” she replied, stepping into her shuttle. Lounging in the cockpit was a green-haired figure, her fingers moving across the controls.

 “Still got that forged flight certification, Harper?” Orlova said, moving up behind her.

 “Figured it might come in handy,” the hacker replied, getting up from the console. “I thought you could do with the help.”

 “I haven’t got time to argue with you. Clear us for launch.” She glanced down, then said, “Did you plot the course?” 

 Shaking her head with a smile, she said, “I’d have taken us somewhere more interesting. Frank’s got it all programmed in for us, and Caine called down with clearance for launch. We can go whenever you want to.”

 “Good.” She tapped a series of controls, and the outer hatch slammed shut, the elevator airlock moving into position to drop them through the hull, releasing them outside with a gasp of atmosphere tossing them away. Within a second, the ship stabilized, and Orlova executed the course to send them racing towards the nearby station.

 “Three minutes,” she said, the acceleration pushing her back in her couch. “All systems go.”

 “Just out of interest, aside from harassing the local security boys – which isn’t something that bothers me, don’t get me wrong – what exactly are we going to do?”

 “Damned if I know,” Orlova replied. Noting Harper’s expression, she said, “Hell, you wanted to come.”

 “It’s been a very dull three months. This beats sitting around.”

 “Couldn’t Logan find you anything to do?”

 Blushing, Harper said, “I couldn’t tell you about it if he had.”

 “What the hell happened to the kid I left behind at Spitfire Station?” Orlova asked, shaking her head. “How high is your security clearance these days, anyway?”

 “That’s…”

 “Classified,” Orlova interrupted. A light flashed onto her console, and Caine’s face appeared on the heads-up display.

 “Change of plan,” she said. “I’m sending you a new course.”

 “At least now we have a plan,” Harper muttered.

 “Where are we going?” Orlova asked.

 “Corpse retrieval.”

 The color drained from her face, and she asked, “Whose?”

 “No-one we know. The assassin apparently suicided by blowing himself out of an airlock, and he managed to put himself on a trajectory that gives him only a few more minutes before he gets into Ragnarok’s atmosphere. I know it’s a bit of a risk…”

 “Executing course change now,” Orlova replied, working the controls to spin the shuttle around, the engines firing again to kick them into a descent trajectory. “What sort of time constraints are we talking about here?”

 “You’ll be alongside the body in thirteen minutes, with six more to retrieve. Then come back to Alamo.”

 “That’s going to be tricky,” she replied, furrows growing on her forehead. “Margin will be tight on the fuel. Can’t I top up down on the deck?”

 “The locals are asking for the body to be turned over to them.”

 “And you think we ought to run the investigation ourselves,” Orlova said, nodding.

 “It was two of our own that were attacked. I don’t want to hang around for weeks waiting for some Rockie investigator to poke and prod his way through the evidence. We’ve got everything we need on Alamo for a full analysis of the corpse, the same equipment they have over on the station.”

 “What do I do when they order me to head up to Hunter Station instead?”

 Raising an eyebrow, Caine said, “You’ve demonstrated suitably selective hearing in the past, Maggie. I wouldn’t dream of ordering you to reject orders given by higher authority…”

 “I’m already locking in the communication discriminators,” Harper said. “No-one else can talk to us.”

 “How did you…,” Caine began, before saying, “Never mind. Don’t take too many risks, Maggie. We don’t need to add to the body count today.”

 “Sorry, Deadeye. That selective hearing again. Shuttle out.”

 “Got it, I think,” Harper said, looking up at the scanner. “Hard to pick out at this range, but that must be it. On a descent trajectory.” Frowning, she said, “He really did want to get rid of all the evidence.”

 “What do you mean?”

 “That’s an optimum descent track he’s on. This wasn’t an accident, an unintended consequence. This was deliberate.” Shaking her head, she said, “How the hell did he do it?”

 “Shaped charge, placed to throw his body out at the correct course and velocity. I suppose technically it wouldn’t be that difficult…”

 “In practice, he had seconds to do it.” Harper interrupted. “Unless that was his plan all along.”

 Looking up at her console, Orlova said, “That window of opportunity looks to have been a little optimistic. I’d say we’ll have less than three minutes to get the corpse inside before we have to accelerate.” Glancing across at Harper, she added, “I’ll go and get suited up. Can you handle her?”

 “I guess we’ve only got one way to find out,” she replied with a smirk. “Don’t worry, I did take a few lessons.”

 “As long as you took the right ones.” Orlova unstrapped, climbing out of the couch with effort under the variable acceleration, and made her way back to the rear cabin. The passenger information display was flashing a series of warning alerts, unsurprising as right now they were on a descent trajectory that would lead to an unsurvivable re-entry. Even if they did decide to head down to the surface, it wouldn’t be easy to bring this bird down to a safe landing from here.

 Five minutes to get suited up, plenty of time. She ran through the familiar sequence of checks and procedures, forcing herself to relax as she donned her spacesuit. As the helmet locked into position, a series of green lights flashed up on her heads-up display, all the readouts indicating that her suit was working as it should. Clumsily, she stumbled into the airlock, clipping her safety line onto the interior catch.

 “Harper,” she said, “Send all the information on the course of that corpse to my suit computer. How close are we going to get?” 

 “Closest approach will be a hundred and nine meters. You’re going out at four hundred. Velocity differential of twelve meters per second.”

 “Textbook. Give me a countdown from fifteen.” Behind her, the inner airlock door closed, and there was a fading hiss as the atmosphere was drained away, ready for her to jump.

 “Coming up,” she replied, as Orlova refined her approach trajectory. This was going to be close.

 “Fifteen seconds, mark. Fourteen. Thirteen.” She braced herself, hands over her thruster controls. “Nine, eight, seven.” The outer door slid open, bathing her in reflected light from the surface. She could clearly make out surface details rushing below, the white and brown of Ragnarok laid out beneath her. Looking up, a green rectangle popped up on her helmet, surrounding a small dot in the distance. Her goal.

 “Now!” Harper yelled, and Orlova jammed on her thrusters to hurtle her out towards the corpse. More warning alarms sounded, her suit registering her altitude. They were low enough that the first faint wisps of atmosphere were beginning to tug at her, slowing them down, and her thrusters were struggling to keep her stable.

 The seconds raced by, and she could see the body up ahead, slowly rotating, its arms outstretched as if the corpse was reaching for her. Another warning flashed onto her helmet display, sixty seconds already gone, less than a hundred and fifty to go. She started to decelerate, matching velocity with the target, slowing to an apparent halt, though Ragnarok was still moving beneath them, a white carpet above which she was flying.

 Contact. There was no obvious place for her to secure a line, so she quickly made a loop and wrapped it around the torso of the dead would-be assassin, giving it a tug to make sure it was secure. Gathering it in her arms, she turned, looking back at the shuttle. It seemed an awfully long way to go.

 “Maggie, you’re at the half-way point,” Harper’s voice echoed through her helmet. “Better get a move on.”

 “Roger,” she said, tapping another control to activate the shuttle’s winch, pulling the cable back to drag her and her grisly cargo home. There was a kick of acceleration as she began to move, the shuttle slowly drawing closer, and she glanced down at the body. There was a look of grim determination fixed on the corpse’s face, leering up at her, as though challenging her to fail.

 She reached forward with a hand to grab the airlock as soon as she approached. There would be no second chance if she messed this up, she had to get inside the shuttle on the first try. Ten seconds to contact. Five seconds. She could see the handle she had to grab, and swung down to snatch at it, locking her fingers around the bar, sending herself slamming into the hull.

 Taking a deep breath, she tossed the corpse into the airlock and dove in after it, letting the re-pressurization cycle begin its work. As soon as the door closed, she could feel acceleration building, Harper wasting no time. Quickly tossing the corpse into one of the rescue balls to keep it intact, she raced through the inner hatch, still wearing most of her suit, and made for the cockpit.

 “How’re we doing?” she asked a nervous Harper.

 “Not good. We’re lower than estimated, beginning to get some heat building on the outer hull.”

 Glancing sharply across for a second, she looked down at the panel, her fingers dancing over the controls as she changed the angle of attack. They were too low to simply accelerate out of the situation, they couldn’t gain speed quickly enough for that. The only answer left was an atmospheric skip, altering their trajectory to get the planet itself to do the work for them.

 “Strap in,” she said. “This might get a little rough.”

 “What about our passenger?”

 “His problems are over. Ours are just beginning.”

 Tossing her suit gloves across the room, she concentrated on her course plot, trying to pull the shuttle up and onto the correct course, burning the thrusters for everything they could give her, one hand making manual corrections while the other started reprogramming the navigation systems. Harper was looking out of the viewport shaking her head.

 “Hell of a wild ride!” she yelled.

 Nodding, Orlova tapped the final control, then sat back, saying, “We’re in the hands of the computers now. Nothing we can do but sit back and watch.”

 “And if it goes wrong?”

 “Ragnarok gets a new crater.”

 There was nothing she could do to change anything now. The computer was flying the ship, making millisecond-to-millisecond adjustments in course and speed to keep the shuttle in the right path. The lower hull was beginning to glow a dull red, the ground racing away beneath them as they sped through the outer atmosphere.

 “Message from Hunter Station,” Harper said with a smile.

 “What do they want?”

 “Asking what the hell we’re doing. I’m wondering the same thing myself.”

 The force of acceleration was pushing them back in their seats, warning alarms rushing across every terminal, the hull stressed beyond the usual safe limits. An altimeter popped up on the screen, numbers running down, and she shook her head.

 “I take it that isn’t a good sign,” Harper said.

 “Not if you’re shooting for orbital rendezvous,” she replied, forcing a brief grin.

 Her eyes locked on the numbers, slowly starting to slow as the computer struggled to compensate, and then began to reverse as they pulled back out of the atmosphere. For a heart-rending second, the numbers dropped again, before finally beginning to rise at an ever-increasing rate.

 “Call Alamo,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Tell them we’ll be coming on board shortly, and that Quinn’s boys had better take a long look at this ship when we get home. I think we just advanced the maintenance schedule a little.”

Chapter 3

 Midshipman Pavel Salazar raced down the corridor to the hangar bay, his footsteps echoing on the deck platings. He was late for his shuttle, not of his doing, but that wasn’t going to matter if he managed to miss his ship. Bursting into the room, he raced for the nearest open airlock, trusting that it was the right one.

 “Hold the launch!” he yelled, speeding across the deck, his carryall swinging by his side, smashing against his legs as he ran. As he reached the airlock, a hand reached down and pulled him in, just as the hatch began to close.

 “Thanks,” he said, panting for breath. He looked up at the man who helped him, and added, “Sir.”

 “Not a problem, Midshipman, we all run late sometimes. You heading over to Alamo?”

 “Yes, sir,” he replied, nodding. “I just arrived on the Forrestal.”

 Raising an eyebrow, the man said, “That ship only arrived half an hour ago.”

 “I hustled.”

 “Evidently. The other midshipmen arrived on the Don Lind. You miss your transport?” “No, sir,” he said, red-faced. “My orders were changed at the last minute. I was halfway to Carter Station when someone back home changed my mind; the Forrestal was the best I could do.”

 “I love it when the top brass decides to play their games. Who’s the unlucky one, or don’t you know?”

 “Sir?”

 “As far as I know, Alamo has three midshipmen on board already. We’re rated for three, so I assume you’re replacing someone.”

 “Not as far as I’m aware, Captain.” He looked up at the insignia, then said, “I thought Fleet Captain Marshall was commanding Alamo.”

 “That’s a long story,” he said. “I’m Lieutenant-Captain John Cunningham, and my position in the command structure is rather complicated.”

 “Midshipman Pavel Salazar.”

 “How’d you end up with a name like that?”

 “Martian father, Callistan mother. I grew up on Titan, just to make it more interesting.”

 The shuttle was on the move, and the two of them made their way over to two of the vacant couches, settling down for the short flight across. Salazar peered out of the viewport, taking his first look at the long, sleek ship up ahead.

 “I’ve never been on a battlecruiser before,” he said.

 “I thought this year’s cadet class did a tour on the Gilgamesh?”

 Blushing again, Salazar said, “I missed it.”

 “Medical?” Cunningham said, raising an eyebrow.

 With a sigh, he replied, “Disciplinary.”

 “I have access to your records…”

 Facing forward, he said, “I was in flight school, and I washed out. Catastrophically. Two other cadets were killed, but they decided to transfer me over to the main academy to finish my course. And no, sir, I haven't the first idea why I am still in the fleet.”

 “Don’t take this the wrong way, Midshipman…”

 “I don’t know how I ended up on Alamo either, sir. I was heading for Carter Station to work in their admin section when I found myself transferred. I didn’t put in for it.” Looking up, he said, “Are you going to be my commanding officer?”

 “Maybe.”

 “Then I guess I’ve managed to get off on the worst possible foot. Again.”

 Cunningham broke into a smile, and said, “Every middie has a problem on his cadet cruise, kid. Maybe you just got yours out of the way right at the start. Relax. I don’t know what we’re going to do with four midshipman, but I’m sure we’ll think of someone interesting for you to do.”

 Alamo was growing closer in the screen, the shuttle drawing in underneath it, and Salazar found himself tightening his grip on his carryall.

 “There’s no ship like your first,” Cunningham said. “Want a piece of advice?”

 “Certainly, sir.”

 “Savor this. Enjoy every moment of it. You’ll think we’re working you to death, but once you get your commission, it only gets worse.”

 “I’ll remember that.”

 “Don’t worry, I’m not going to test you on our conversations.”

 The shuttle drifted into the locking cradles, and the elevator airlock began to draw it up into the hull, the atmosphere outside equalizing as the shuttle rose to the deck. After another minute, a green light flashed on and the hatch slid open, a tall man wearing Lieutenant’s insignia standing at the entrance.

 “Morning, Frank,” Cunningham said, stepping out.

 The man frowned, then said, “Sir? I didn’t…”

 “Nor did I. Long story. Where’s the Captain?” 

 “In sickbay, unconscious,” he replied. “Someone tried to kill him a couple of hours ago.”

 “You see, Midshipman,” Cunningham said, turning back inside. “Never a dull moment on this ship.”

 “Ah, so you made it after all,” he said. “Lieutenant Frank Nelyubov, Midshipman, Tactical Officer. And right now sitting in for Senior Lieutenant Margaret Orlova, Operations Officer, who you are going to get to know very well, I think.”

 “Where’s Maggie?”

 “Coming back from a corpse retrieval op, on a half-wrecked shuttle. She should be home in half an hour, she’s riding her engines carefully. Had to do an atmospheric skip.”

 “You’ve had quite a day so far.”

 “We’re not even at noon, yet. God only knows whether we’re going to break orbit on schedule.” He glanced across at Salazar, and said, “We got the updated orders, Midshipman, and I’m frankly impressed you made it at all.”

 “It was rather touch-and-go, sir.”

 “I bet. Report to the briefing room, Midshipmen. Your counterparts are waiting.” He glanced at the carryall, then called over to one of the crewmen running around in the background. “Over here, Spaceman.”

 “Sir?” the technician said, a slightly portly figure bounding over.

 “What's your name?”

 “Benjamin Bartlett, sir. Spaceman Second,” he replied.

 “Take our new Midshipman’s baggage to his quarters, will you? He’s got an appointment to keep.”

 “Aye, sir,” the man said. Salazar passed him the holdall, then watched him head across to the elevator.

 “Better get moving,” Nelyubov said. “The Executive Officer’s waiting for you, and she isn’t in a good mood this morning.”

 Glancing across for a second, he nodded, saying, “Yes, sir,” and sprinted for the elevator, rushing across the hangar bay, soaking in the pandemonium of a ship preparing for departure. As he stepped through the doors, it only belatedly occurred to him that he had no idea where he was going, and he fished out his datapad to call up a layout of the ship.

 “Sir,” a voice said, and he realized that he was riding with the technician, who was still carrying his bag. “I’ll call for the briefing room, if you like.”

 “Thanks,” he said. “Midshipman Salazar.”

 “Bartlett,” the man replied, tapping a button. “You new aboard, sir?”

 He nodded, saying, “Just arrived for the first time.”

 “Me too. I just transferred across from the Lind. Last-minute replacement when one of the communications crew broke an arm, so I get to spend the next five years running around the frontiers of space.” He shook his head. “So much for a quiet life.”

 “Most of the fleet would kill to be in your shoes, Spacemen.”

 “If they want my shoes so badly, sir, they’re welcome to them.”

 Salazar smiled, then said, “I’m a last-minute addition as well. I only found out I was coming here a week ago.”

 The doors opened, and Bartlett said, “Here you are, sir. Third door on the left. For future reference, this is officers’ offices country.”

 “Officers’ offices?”

 “Tactical, Operations, Security,” he said. “Safety in numbers, I guess. Good luck, sir.”

 “Thanks,” he said, turning off down the corridor. He paused at the door, taking a trio of deep breaths, before hearing footsteps behind him, turning to see a raven-haired woman with a furious expression on her face.

 “Late, Midshipman?” she said. “You had ample notice of this meeting.”

 “I only just arrived, ma’am,” he replied. “I…”

 “Well, get inside,” she said. The door opened, and he walked in, looking at three familiar faces sitting at the table. Valerie Foster, Yuri Petrov, and Arturo Vivendi, the top graduates of the first class of the combined Triplanetary Fleet Academy. He’d only just scraped through, and they looked at him with a mixture of surprise and scorn.

 “Sit down,” the woman said, and he hastily complied. “My name is Senior Lieutenant Caine, Alamo’s Executive Officer, at least for the moment,, and if you are very lucky, you won’t be seeing much of me. Normally, you will be under the tender mercies of Senior Lieutenant Orlova, but for the present, she’s off the ship, and I’ve had to take her place. This does not fill me with pleasure.”

 She looked at the four of them, locking eyes with each as though trying to take their measure, and continued, “Simple mathematics reveals that there are too many of you for each to take a regular watch. It would make things easier if one of you has a burning desire for some other career path, Systems, Tactical, something like that. Anyone?”

 None of them raised their hands, and she said, “Pity. Very well, we’ll have to go with the three best, then.”

 Foster looked at Salazar, and asked, “When do we start, ma’am?”

 “I’m sorry, was that an implication that you were one of the ones picked for shift duty, Midshipman?”

 “I came top…”

 Caine smiled, and said, “I don’t care. Get this through your heads, all of you! None of you are officers, not yet. Your respective fleet academies and the Triplanetary finishing school have got you here, but don’t think that any of your experience means a damn compared to the other officers on board. Your rank is a courtesy title, nothing more, and it does not give you any respect or authority. Those you are going to have to earn for yourselves.” She paused for a second, then said, “Run to the back of the room.”

 Salazar was the only one who moved, sprinting to the rear, and felt like a fool when he saw he was alone, the others still sitting with puzzled expressions on their faces.

 “That’s damn depressing,” Caine said. “Midshipman, why did you do what you did?” She looked at Salazar, giving him a withering look.

 “You told me too, ma’am.”

 “Good. Good answer. Mr. Salazar has just earned one of the coveted bridge positions,” Caine said, as looks of outrage passed across the faces of the others. “There will be times when your commander tells you to do something you think is nonsensical, wrong. That officer will have ten times your experience, and is ten times more likely to be right than you. You can ask – afterward, when the crisis is over – why, but at the critical moment, you have to follow orders. Sit down, Salazar.”

 He returned to his seat, as Petrov said, “Surely, ma’am, we are entitled to use our experience and judgment.”

 “You can feel free to use your experience when you get some, Mr. Petrov. Until then, do as you are told.” Caine looked at the four of them, then said, “Two spots left open.”

 “Mr. Petrov and I ranked in the top three in our graduating class, ma’am,” Foster said, and Caine shook her head.

 “Excellent, it would appear that I have a volunteer to assist Mr. Race down in Astrogation. He’ll enjoy having an assistant down there, and I’m sure your experience, Miss Foster, will prove very useful to him.” She glanced down at her datapad as Foster’s eyebrows rose, and continued,  “Salazar, I see that you are simulator-rated on this type of ship, so you might as well report for duty on Alpha Watch. That’s in about twenty minutes, so you have time to get something to eat first. We’ll likely be breaking orbit in a few hours; the rest of you can get some rest. Any questions?” No-one answered, and she added, “Not even you, Miss Foster?”

 “No, ma’am,” she replied, gritting her teeth.

“Good. I’ll see you on the bridge, Midshipman.” She strode out of the room, the doors smoothly sliding shut behind her, and Foster turned to face Salazar, fury on her face. 

 “This is nothing other than victimization. Just because my mother was a General. I’ve half a mind to write to her about this.”

 “That how you passed your exams, Foster?” Vivendi asked. “That was a test, and by God, you flunked.” Looking at Salazar, he said, “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

 “I don’t have the slightest idea. I was halfway to Callisto when I got a new set of orders. That’s all I know.”

 “Almost late. Just as incompetent as ever,” Foster snapped.

 “Give him a break,” Vivendi said. “We had three weeks’ notice, he didn’t even get a week, and still just about managed to make it.”

 “I’d like to see him give Simmons and Wolverton a break,” she replied.

 Leaping to his feet, Salazar said, “Don’t you think I’d bring them back if I could?”

 “You screwed up,” she said, “and two good people died. Why the Fleet kept you in the uniform is a mystery to me, and how you had the effrontery not to simply resign when they gave you the chance is a bigger one. This uniform means something, and you disgrace it.”

 “I doubt it means trying to brag to senior officers about your famous relatives,” Vivendi said.

 “No, she’s right,” Petrov said. “We earned our class standing. He waltzes in here, a bare pass, and gets to fly this ship while Val cools her heels down on the sensor deck? It doesn’t make sense.”

 “I think the Lieutenant was trying to teach us a lesson,” replied Vivendi, “and it appears that for at least two of us it has yet to take. I’ll catch you later, Pavel.”

 Glancing down at his watch, Salazar nodded, saying, “I’d better get up to the bridge.”

 “Enjoy it while you can,” Foster said. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to screw it up before long.”

 “When I do, I’m sure that you’ll be the first to know.”

 “Damn right. Good news always travels fast. More fun for you, by the way. Guess who’s running the fighter contingent on this ship?”

 “No.”

 “Lieutenant Grant. Wasn’t he the one who threw you out of flight school?”

 Salazar left the room without a word. He couldn’t trust himself to speak.

Chapter 4

 “How do you feel, Danny?” Cunningham asked, leaning over Marshall’s bed as he struggled to regain consciousness.

 “John?”

 Shaking his head, his friend replied, “You try and head off without me, and look at what happens to you.” He perched at the end of the bed, continuing, “I’ve warned you about getting into fights before.”

 “What are you doing here?”

 “Getting asked that a lot, at least at the moment. You up for a talk?”

 “I think so,” Marshall replied, looking over at Duquesne at the far end of the room, who threw him her trademarked scowl. “Is this good news or bad?”

 “That depends whether or not you like having me around.” He pulled out a datapad, handed it over, and said, “I’m your new second-in-command.”

 “I hate to break it to you, but you’re a Lieutenant-Captain.”

 “And you are a Fleet Captain,” he replied, “with more responsibilities than just this ship. According to the manual – the admittedly only recently-rewritten manual – this is quite acceptable. Besides, you aren’t the only commander to hang onto his ship after a promotion. Flynt’s a full Captain now, and so is Gorski. Both still battlecruiser commanders. Rank inflation is beginning to build up a bit in this fleet of ours.”

 “Getting promoted just to stand still. Seems a little unfair.” Marshall frowned, then said, “I thought you were getting Gilgamesh.”

 “That was the plan. I requested this assignment, believe it or not.”

 “What?” he exclaimed, and Duquesne came running over.

 “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to put you back together – yet again – and I’ll thank you to not undo all of my work. Besides, there are people trying to rest in here,” she said.

 Looking around the otherwise empty sickbay, Marshall asked, “Who?”

 “Me. Now keep it down.”

 “Why did you do that?”

 “Honestly? Danny, I’ve commanded ships and fighter groups. I’ve held commands similar to the one you’ve got now. If truth be told, I don’t have any particular need to do it again. I don’t have anything to prove, especially not to myself.” With a smile, he added, “I think I’ve earned the right to be where I want to be for a while, and that is on this ship.”

 “It’ll mean shuffling a few things around.”

 “Tell me in all honesty that Deadeye wants to be your Exec.”

 “She only took the job provisionally. I think she wanted Orlova to have it.”

 Nodding, he said, “She’d be up to the job. Hell, she had the job for a while, when Alamo was laid up at Hydra Station.” Marshall’s face darkened, and Cunningham said, “But I agree with you. She hasn’t got the time in uniform yet.”

 After a moment, Marshall said, “Deadeye’s been running Tactical as well as the Exec slot, with a bit of help from Frank Nelyubov. I don’t actually have to move anyone around that much; he can stay as Security Officer, she can take Tactical full time. It all drops into place rather well.” Shaking his head, he said, “I can’t quite get used to the idea of being over-manned, but it makes a nice change.”

 “Based on past experience, we aren’t likely to stay that way.”

 “No, I guess not.” Turning to Duquesne, he said, “Can you give me my uniform?”

 “Why?” she asked. “Want to play dress-up or something? Because there’s no chance in hell that I’m letting you out of sickbay today.”

 “I feel fine.”

 With a deep sigh, she walked over to him, gesturing at the tube running into his arm, and said, “You feel fine because I’ve got you on a nice high dose of pain-relief, to say nothing of the anti-nausea medication to counteract the drugs I gave you when I repaired your wrist. You realize that bone was snapped in eight places. Eight. There’s a lot of titanium in there now.”

 “It can’t be that bad.”

 “Did you graduate medical school when I wasn’t looking? Last time I checked I was the only medical doctor on board. This ship is hip-deep in qualified command officers, Captain. You can be spared for a day. By tomorrow morning, you’ll be fit enough to go back out into the big wide world and disobey the best medical advice money can buy, but not right now. If for no other reason than that the maintenance technicians have better things to do than cleaning the carpets. Clear?”

 “Yes, mother.” He looked over at Cunningham, and said, “I need your communicator.”

 “Sure,” he replied, passing it over.

 Flipping open the channel, he said, “Senior Lieutenants Caine and Orlova, report to sickbay on the double. Mr. Quinn?”

 After a brief delay, the engineer replied, “Captain?” in his newly-adopted monotone.

 “Is this ship ready for extended flight?”

 “All systems are go, sir. In my judgment, we are clear to proceed on our mission.”

 “Good. Make ready for the jump; head up to the bridge and assume command. I want you to break orbit, proceed to the hendecaspace point, and get us to Yeager Station as fast as we can. Understood.”

 “Understood, Captain. I’m on my way to the bridge now. Quinn out.”

 “He sounds rough,” Cunningham said.

 With a frown, Marshall replied, “He lost his wife in the worst possible way. There wasn’t even much of a body left. I tried loading on the work, but that’s all he does now. The magic’s gone for him, and I don’t know any way to get it back.”

 “Time will do that. Speaking of which, why are we in such a hurry? Our orders give us another month before we have to leave Hunter Station. The scoutships won’t be here for three weeks. Why not proceed as one unit?”

 Orlova walked in to sickbay, smiled, and said, “Glad you’re feeling better, sir.”

 “I don’t remember authorizing additional visitors,” Duquesne said.

 “That’s because you didn’t.” He paused, then said, “Look, Doc, there are a few things I need to settle. Once I’ve got this over with, I promise you that I will take the rest of the day off.”

 “If you’re planning to listen to some of that hideous music of yours, either you wear headphones or I put you in the isolation unit.”

 “Headphones it is. Maggie, any word on what happened?”

 “Frank’s over on the station now, liaising with the local authorities. I don’t think he’s particularly impressed, and from what I’ve seen, neither am I. They’re a bit too interested in sweeping everything under the carpet.”

 “So someone screwed up.”

 Pulling out her datapad, she said, “Our John Doe arrived on the station last week, on the transport Herschel. She’s with the Four Worlds Line, the company that had the license for Yeager Station.”

 “Had?” Cunningham asked.

 “Failure to keep up the schedules. The contract was pulled from them last month. This was their last trip.”

 “Are you telling me that my assassin came from Yeager Station?”

 Nodding, she said, “I’m afraid so.”

 “A small military outpost in the middle of nowhere? Didn’t that cause any red flags?”

 “Apparently there is a little passenger traffic. It’s two jumps from UN space…”

 “And Ragnarok is so hungry for anyone with advanced technical and scientific training, they aren’t asking too many questions of would-be immigrants. Better get a report off to Intelligence, Maggie.”

 “Already done. I just sent it to the Don Lind. Headquarters will have it in less than a week.”

 “Good work. I presume there are no other documents, nothing that would give any idea of where this man actually came from?”

 “He didn’t have anything on him, just the clothes he was wearing. I found the man who sold them to him, but he doesn’t know anything. The man paid in cash, United Nations credits, and bought a single worksuit. As for the weapon, it was a Republic low-recoil pistol, nothing special about it.”

 “Republic? That rings a few alarm bells,” Cunningham said.

 “Not really,” Marshall said. “They sent a hell of a lot of small arms down to Ragnarok during the last stages of their civil war. Not surprising that the local dealers are trading in them. Have we found who sold it to him?”

 “Not yet,” Orlova said. “Frankly, I expect we won’t get any more from that lead either. Our Mr. Doe was excellent at covering his tracks.”

 Caine walked in, smiled at Marshall, and said, “Started the staff meeting without me?”

 “Sorry,” he replied. “Quinn says the ship’s ready. What about the crew?”

 “Maybe half a dozen over on the station on the investigation team. Aside from that, everyone else is ready. I’ve already integrated the midshipmen, and by the way, why do we have four of them?”

 “I was going to ask about that,” Cunningham said. “One of them came on the shuttle with me, a last-minute transfer.”

 “Given the circumstances, I think a careful check of their bona fides is in order. Run through their personnel records and look for anomalies, Maggie, and a careful interview with each of them. Make it seem routine, this could easily just be a personnel screw-up.”

 “Will do,” she said.

 “I want the crew recalled from the station immediately, and once they are on board, proceed to the AD Leonis system. I want to get to Yeager Station as fast as we can.”

 “What’s the urgency?” Caine asked.

 “That’s where my assassin came from, and that’s where the trail leads. We aren’t going to find out anything here. Besides, there’s something else. Why try to kill me?”

 “To weaken the task force,” Cunningham said.

 “Would it, though? There are a half-dozen people of the same rank with similar experience back at Sol. Hell, you could take Alamo out yourself, John. I’m not that special, so why target me?”

 “You have accumulated plenty of enemies over the last few years,” Caine noted.

 Shaking his head, he said, “There’s only one good reason I can think of, and that is to delay the fleet. What would have happened if I had died?”

 “We’d have contacted Admiralty for instructions, and torn Hunter Station and Ragnarok apart looking for the murderers,” Caine said, matter-of-factly.

 “Critically, you’d have stayed here. Our sailing orders give plenty of latitude about our time of departure, and you’d have taken advantage of that. Hell, just wounding me has slowed us up. We were meant to break orbit three hours ago.”

 “You think it could make that much difference?”

 “I think it might. If something is about to happen at Yeager Station, we need to be there to stop it. For all we know, this could be a Cabal trick.”

 “Or the United Nations,” Cunningham said. “AD Leonis is only two jumps from UN territory.”

 “In any event, I want this ship ready for battle. At least four surprise battle drills while we’re in hendecaspace. This crew has been in dock or on leave for the last three months, and we don’t want to find out they’ve lost their edge when it’s too late.”

 “This isn’t going to be the most popular move,” Caine said. “I’ll organize it. I presume you don’t want to know in advance either?”

 “You presume correctly,” he replied. “In addition, we will jump into AD Leonis at battle stations. I’d rather scare the hell out of a traffic control officer than be the victim of a surprise attack.”

 “Right, I’ll get to work,” Caine said, standing up.

 “Wait a moment,” he replied. “Maggie, you go up to the bridge and get things moving, will you? I need to talk to John and Deadeye for a minute.”

 Rising to her feet, she said, “Yes, sir. I’ll let you know when we break orbit.”

 As she left the room, Marshall said, “John’s come here to take over as Executive Officer.”

 “Thank God for that,” she replied. “I never wanted the damn job in the first place.”

 “I was hoping you’d feel that way about it,” Cunningham said. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

 “Positive. I presume I drop back to full-time Tactical Officer?”

 “Correct. Nelyubov doesn’t have to moonlight at your station now.”

 “Then I still have a lot of work to do,” she said. “When are you taking over, John?”

 “Start of the next watch seems sensible enough, give me a chance to settle in.”

 “I’d like a favor,” Caine said.

 “Anything,” Marshall replied.

 “Leave Maggie as third-in-command. I’m happy at fourth.”

 “You’ve got a lot of seniority over her,” Marshall said.

 “She wants the job,” Caine interrupted. “I don’t. In the unlikely event that something happens to the two of you, I’ll serve under Acting Captain Orlova with no arguments or complaints. I’m happy to put that in writing.”

 “If you insist.”

 “Right,” Duquesne said, “That’s it. Meeting adjourned. My patient needs to rest, and certainly needs to think about something other than work. And no, he isn’t getting any reports, status updates, or anything else until tomorrow morning.”

 “I see we have our orders,” Cunningham said, standing up. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Danny.”

 The door slid open, and Lieutenant Carpenter, Alamo’s Science Officer, burst in.

 “Not you as well,” Duquesne said. “Visiting hours are over.”

 “No, no, I want to see you, Doc!”

 “Sick people,” she said, “disgust me. What’s the problem?”

 “It isn’t me, it’s the corpse. I was running a genetic test, and I need a second opinion.” She thrust a datapad towards her, and said, “If I’m not seeing things, he wasn’t human!”

 Her eyes widening, Duquesne snatched the datapad, scanned through it, and said, “If you’re imagining things, I am too.” Looking back at Marshall, she said, “One of you keep him company for a bit. I have work to do. Come on, Lieutenant.”

 As she walked out of the room, Marshall said, “I think I’m going to have to insist on at least one report today, Doctor.”

 “Once I know whether this is real or a systems glitch, you’ll be the first to know.”

Chapter 5

 “I think that’ll be all, Midshipman,” Orlova said to Vivendi, sitting opposite her. “Everything seems to be in order with your record. I’m sorry it went on so long.” Glancing up at the clock, she said, “You still have half an hour before your watch starts, so you should have time to snatch something to eat.”

 “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, making to rise, before returning to his seat. “There is something I’d like to talk to you about.”

 “I don’t know much more about our mission profile than you at the moment, Midshipman.”

 “No, no, I understand that there are things I don’t need to know about. I’d like to talk to you about Midshipman Salazar.”

 Her face darkened, and she said, “I have no intention of changing the current bridge rotation, Midshipman, and frankly…”

 “No,” he said, frantically shaking his head, “That wasn’t it, ma’am. I wanted to, well, speak on his behalf. He won’t do it himself.”

 “That’s a little different,” Orlova said. “Foster was quite vehement on the subject of Pavel Salazar when it came up in the briefing.”

 “I’m not surprised,” he said. “How much do you know about what happened?”

 “There was an accident during the practice exams, near the end of fighter training. Mr. Salazar was acting as flight leader, and he made a mistake with a close-ground approach. The other two pilots died.”

 “That’s basically it, ma’am. Except that I don’t think it was entirely his fault.”

 “Are you suggesting that the court-martial was conducted improperly? Mr. Salazar accepted full responsibility for what happened over Phobos.”

 With a sigh, Vivendi said, “I don’t think he should have been placed in that position in the first place, ma’am. Being a flight leader is something that takes years of training and experience, and they gave him months. It’s not surprising he made a mistake, and I think it more surprising that it’s taken this long for someone to die as a result of this practice. I looked at the old records, and instructors used to fly as flight leaders in maneuvers. That stopped a couple of years ago when they re-opened the training pipeline, though I understand the policy was quietly reinstated for this year’s class.”

 “And you think Mr. Salazar was a scapegoat.”

 “I wouldn’t put it that harshly, ma’am. Only that while I admit that he was responsible for what happened, others were as well, and I don’t think they were punished for it. Then when he was transferred to the Academy...it was hell for him, ma’am, and he didn’t deserve it. The whole class shunned him, and most of the professors too. It’s left him rather combative, and I can understand why.”

 “Two of their friends were dead.”

 “One of them was still alive. At least, he used to be their friend.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “Salazar should either have been dismissed from the Academy or treated as any other cadet, ma’am. He was punished, dropped from fighter training and given enough demerits that one more would have resulted in expulsion.” He shook his head, and said, “People would stop talking when he came into a room, move away from him in class, and the lecturers just let it happen.”

 “Such things are hard to legislate against. What’s your interest in all of this? Are the two of you close?”

 “Not especially,” he replied. “I don’t think Pavel’s close with anyone, not any more. He doesn’t even have any family to talk to about this, his parents were killed in a shuttle accident three years ago. I just think that he needed, well, someone to look out for him, and I thought that in this Fleet, we were meant to look after our own.”

 Nodding, Orlova said, “I won’t, can’t give him any special privileges or treatment, Midshipman, especially given the circumstances, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t looking over his shoulder a little at the helm.”

 “I’m not asking for anything special, ma’am, just that you understand where he is coming from. Why he acts the way he does. The Fleet broke him, ma’am, and surely we have a responsibility to help fix him, as well.”

 “The deaths of two of his friends broke him, Midshipman, and there isn’t anything we can do about that.” She paused, then said, “One day, you’re going to be in a command situation, and unless you have a very boring career, people under your command are going to die. It’s happened to me on more than one occasion.” With a sigh, she continued, “You never get over it, not really. You always think that there was something you could have done different, that you could have moved more quickly, sent five men instead of three, anything. You can’t get past that. Mr. Salazar is getting it ahead of schedule, and it is the greatest test any officer – or potential officer – has to face.”

 “I understand, ma’am.”

 “No, you don’t,” she said. “I’m very much afraid that one day, though, you will.”

 “Ma’am?”

 “Never mind. You’d better hurry if you are going to swing by the mess on your way up. And see that you do. There’s nothing worse than a duty shift on an empty stomach for distracting you, and we’re all in your hands when you sit at the helm.”

 Glancing up at the clock, he said, “Yes, ma’am. By your leave?”

 “Dismissed.” As he sped from the room, she tapped a control on her desk, and said, “Mr. Kelso, are you up on the bridge yet?”

 After a slight pause, the reply came, “Yes, ma’am. Just arrived. I haven’t taken the watch yet, though. Should I put…”

 “No, not necessary. Mr. Vivendi is liable to be a few minutes late for his watch rotation, and will probably have sticky fingers when he gets there. Our interview over-ran, and I told him to get something to eat before coming up. My fault, not his. Got it?”

 “No problem, ma’am.”

 “Good. Orlova out.”

 She looked around her office, down at the terminal on her desk with dozens of reports still unread, most of them marked urgent for no good reason that she could see, and stood up, reaching for her uniform jacket. Two more days before they emerged from hendecaspace, plenty of time for her to clear the backlog, and she needed a breath of fresh air to clear her head. A change of scene, in any case. She’d spent far too much time in her office over the last three months.

 Stepping down the corridor, she almost tripped over a portly technician working at one of the wall communication panels, his equipment scattered around the floor. He looked up, red-faced, when he saw who she was.

 “Sorry, ma’am. Bit of a mess here.”

 “Don’t worry, Spaceman, but try and tidy up a little. How much longer?”

 “Not long. I’ve traced the fault, just running a few tests before I put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. Twenty minutes, maybe.”

 “Fine.” She walked off, mentally noting to wait for half an hour before trying to return to her office, and stepped into the elevator, frowning at the destination list. She wasn’t particularly hungry, so no point going to the mess, and going to the bridge would probably just worry the duty crew. In hendecaspace there wasn’t that much to do anyway. Finally she tapped for the science lab, Carpenter’s domain.

 The doors opened, and she stepped out onto the deck, almost walking into a white-suited technician heading into the opposite direction, his attention fixed on the datapad on his hand. Stepping around him, she walked into the lab, Carpenter sat at a desk at the rear, the body lying on a slab in the middle of the room, covered by a protected dome, decorated with cuts and incisions.

 “Evening, Maggie,” she said, gesturing for her to take a seat. “Welcome to my lair.”

 “I love your decor,” she replied, nodding at the corpse. “Looks like a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing.”

 “We took out the heart, Duquesne’s got it down in sickbay right now to do a fuller analysis. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

 “Non-human? He looks human enough to me.”

 “Only superficially.” She tapped on a console, and a hologram of a DNA strand appeared in the air. “See?”

 “Pretend for a moment I don’t have any training in genetics.”

 “Ah. Well, he’s as different from us as we are from the Neander, though there are common elements with both species.”

 “Some sort of cross-breed?”

 “That’s only part of the story, and not the most interesting part.” Leaning back in her chair, she said, “Our best guess right now is that we’re looking at two interbreeding populations, stranded on some sort of barely-habitable planet, a primitive one, who had to claw themselves back from the brink.”

 “How can you tell that?” 

 Looking at the corpse, she said, “I’m calling it homo sapiens novus, at least for the moment. Better eyesight than you or I, a much broader spectrum. He can see chords of colors, Maggie. Imagine that. More efficient heart, double our lung capacity, better muscle tone. All the trump cards. Look at the pale skin, as well.”

 “Meaning?”

 “He sees a lot further into the reds than we do. My guess is he comes from a world where the light levels are lower, less protection needed from solar radiation. A red dwarf, maybe.”

 “So natural selection could have done all this?”

 “Think about it. So far we’ve only encountered two colonies abandoned by those long-dead aliens, Haven and Driftwind. Both places where technology was maintained, at least for a while. On Driftwind, losing a technological culture was relatively recent.”

 “So?”

 “They didn’t have to adapt to their environments. They could adapt their environments to suit them. That slows evolution right down.” Gesturing at the corpse, he said, “He didn’t have those advantages, and natural selection would do its work.”

 “Faster than Earth?”

 “We spent millions of years evolving to suit our environment, and for the last fifteen thousand years things have been pretty tame. Imagine a world where survival was barely possible, a daily life-or-death struggle. His ancestors won.”

 “The implication being that we’re going to find abandoned colonies out there. Any idea where he might have come from?”

 “Take a look at the starmap. There are a thousand possible sites out there. I can’t narrow it down too far, and the best I can do is guesswork. Ultimately we’re going to have to ask them.”

 “He killed himself rather than face interrogation,” Orlova said. “And in such a way as to try and destroy the evidence. If he’d been successful, we’d have written this off as a UN or Cabal plot, and been looking in the wrong place. How much more are you going to get out of him?”

 Shrugging, she said, “A few years of research papers at a guess, maybe a book or two. Morales is doing the heavy lifting on the genetic survey work, his specialty. Strange to have a team under me for this. I’m used to working alone.”

 “How do you feel, actually running a department?”

 “Like trying to herd cats. Five individualists, all thinking that their work is more important than anything else on the ship. At least they all went through basic training before coming on board. More than I got that first time.”

 Looking around the lab, Orlova asked, “What are you doing here, anyway? I was expecting some old greybeard.”

 “Not happy to see me?”

 “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it. They threw down the red carpet for you when we got back, your own team back at headquarters, tenure at any university in the Confederation, and you choose to stay on this ship.”

 Frowning, she said, “I’m twenty-five, Maggie. That’s a hell of a time for your career to peak, and if I’d sat back on Mars, that’s what would have happened. Forty or fifty years rotting away in some college somewhere, going over my notes and dreaming what might have been. I didn’t want that to happen, and when I found out where Alamo was going, I signed up instantly.” Smiling, she said, “Off into the dark again for five years, on a mission of exploration. You must feel the same way, Maggie. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have pushed for your own command, because I don’t believe you.”

 “I’m a very junior Senior Lieutenant…”

 “With independent command experience on no less than three occasions. I was there, remember. You’re on this ship because you want to be, as simple as that, and your actual job title doesn’t mean a damn thing. You’d have shipped out as Second Assistant Janitor if that was the only position open.”

 “Maybe.”

 “Look at Captain Cunningham. He did turn down a command of his own to ride out on Alamo again. A lot of the crew feel the same way. Captain Marshall could hand-pick, and from what I’ve seen, he did a good job.”

 “Apart from the middies,” she said with a sigh.

 “You’ve been spending some time with them, I guess.” She shook her head, and said, “Want any help? I spent the last three months setting up the Academy curriculum on paleontology, and I taught most of the classes last semester.”

 “Hell of a thing to teach the space cadets. Your impressions?”

 “Vivendi’s highly competent, but doesn’t quite have the drive. Good department head, not a command candidate. Petrov goes with the flow a bit too easily, and Foster’s the best. Trouble is that she knows it, and she’s got General Foster of the Battle of Ceres riding her back.”

 “Her mother wants her to succeed in the family business.”

 “Going all the way back to the United States Space Force, apparently. Five generations. I’m not sure that’s healthy,” she replied with a smile.

 “Hey, I'm second generation, remember,” she said. “And Salazar?”

 “Tough call. He’s good, knows his stuff, learns well, but he’s been through several kinds of hell in the last few months, not least from his classmates. I don’t think he’s going to be attending any of the reunions, let’s put it that way.” 

 “Is he worth salvaging?”

 “That’s going to depend on him. Right now, haven’t we got bigger things to worry about?”

 “Such as what’s waiting for us when we arrive at Yeager Station in,” she glanced down at her watch, “forty-seven hours?”

 “He isn’t native to AD Leonis. I know that much. No inhabitable planets.”

 “The base commander’s got a bit of a reputation, but I think he’d have noticed a sentient race living on the planet under his station. There’s nothing in the Cabal records about him?”

 “Not a thing. In a way.”

 “What does that mean?”

 “I spent a lot more time going over those records than you did, Maggie. They dragged me onto the investigation committee. For some reason, the Cabal decided not to expand out in this direction, and they got a bloody nose when they tried, reading between the lines. Why?”

 “Our friend and his people?”

 “Seems reasonable.”

 Shaking her head, Orlova said, “We head out in one direction, and we find a hostile empire of humans wanting to conquer the galaxy. Now we’re heading out in another, and we find another empire of near-humans whose first contact is an assassination attempt.”

 “It’s a big galaxy, Maggie. I’m sure eventually we’ll find some nice neighbors.”

Chapter 6

 “All decks report clear for action, sir,” Sub-Lieutenant Kelso said from the Watch Officer’s station. “Also ready for hendecaspace emergence.”

 “Combat systems are in the green,” Caine added, obviously glad to be back at her usual station at Tactical. Her hands moved across the familiar controls, and Marshall nodded.

 “Mr. Salazar, how much longer?”

 “Transition in ninety-two seconds, mark, sir.”

 “Very good. Stay loose, Midshipman. Anything could be waiting for us out there. Spinelli, I want…”

 “An immediate analysis of local space, and a full tactical overview,” the veteran spaceman said with a soft smile. “Systems already running, Captain.”

 “We’ve both sung this song before, haven’t we,” Marshall said.

 “I’m word-perfect, skipper.”

 “Weitzman,” Marshall said to the communications technician, “No signals to anyone until we get the all-clear. Even if we get contacted by the station, you do not reply until ordered. Understood?”

 “Aye, sir. I’ll just sit back and relax for a minute.”

 Salazar looked around, frowning, and Marshall stepped forward from his seat, saying, “These people know their jobs, Midshipman, and they also know the value of blowing off a little steam before battle.”

 “Aye, sir,” the young man replied. “Sixty seconds, Captain.”

 “Damage control status?” Marshall asked, turning back to the Flight Engineer, new to the ship.

 “All teams positioned, sir,” she replied.

 “Different from a tender, isn’t it, Spaceman.”

 With a beaming smile, she said, “Lots more toys for me to play with, sir.”

 He returned to his chair, looked up at the clock, and tried to relax. No point giving a speech to the crew, or anything like that; he’d run out of time, and they all knew what they were doing. Hopefully all of these precautions would turn out to be unnecessary, and in an hour he’d be sitting in the Station Commander’s office having a drink. Fifteen seconds to go.

 Eyes locked on the viewscreen, he waited for the familiar flash that heralded their return to normal space. The tactical hologram by his side winked on, displaying the four planets of the AD Leonis system, a green dot indicating the orbit of Yeager Station around the innermost world, a burned-out desert planet. Just another barren system like a thousand others, but with a strategic position that made it valuable.

 “Emergence, sir,” Salazar said, and Alamo leapt back into its home dimension, the stars returning to the viewscreen. Dead center, the planet loomed, its single moon close-by as the engines began to warm up.

 “Hold position, helm,” Marshall ordered. “Spinelli?”

 The sensor technician frowned, then said, “Something’s wrong, sir. No ships in system I can see, but the station’s dead.”

 “Dead?”

 “No signs of power generation, no attempts at communication, nothing.” He frowned, then said, “Debris field in the station’s orbit, sir. Small, but there. I’m also picking up some outgassing.”

 “Then there is still life support. Could it be a systems failure?”

 “I suppose so, sir, but it’d be a fatal one. Temperature over there is falling fast.”

 Caine’s eyes darted over, and she said, “Falling?”

 “Yes, ma’am.”

 She looked at Marshall, who said, “Evasive maneuvers, Salazar, right now! Whatever hit that station, it must have happened within the last few hours at the most.”

 “More like minutes,” Kelso said. “Give me a second, I’m plotting a curve.” His hands furiously ran over his controls, and he said, “Try forty-nine minutes ago.”

 “Blind spots?” Marshall snapped, turning back to Spinelli.

 “Behind the planet ahead, behind the moon. Anywhere else we’d get plenty of warning.”

 “Right. I need a course to get us to a safe distance from both. Implement at once, Salazar.”

 “Working, sir.” 

 “Work quickly, Midshipman.”

 A course flashed onto the screen, and Alamo’s engines began to rumble as the ship maneuvered onto its new trajectory. Marshall looked at Salazar’s work, nodding with approval. Almost exactly the route he would have selected, giving them a wide margin of error.

 “Try a hail,” Marshall said. “To anyone in system. By now anyone close into the planet will know exactly where we are.”

 Tapping a control, Weitzman said, “This is the Triplanetary Battlecruiser Alamo, to any ships or facilities in system. Reply at once.” He frowned for a moment, then said, “No reply, sir. I’m not picking up anything.”

 “Could they have been and gone?” Caine asked.

 “I hope not,” Marshall said. “They’d have much better dimensional stabilizers than we do. We’re stuck here for five days at least, and I really hope that our theoretical enemies have the same problem. What about the station? Any telemetry?”

 “Nothing, sir,” Spinelli said. “I’m picking up damage in the lower ring, several hull fractures, with no attempts to repair. Internal heat is falling fast, but there is atmosphere.”

 Looking up at a console, Erickson said, “Looking at the schematics, there’s a good chance that eighty percent of the station is still habitable. The main reactor is intact from external appearances.”

 “Boarding party?” Caine asked.

 “Not until we see what’s at the far side of the planet. How long?”

 “Threat warning!” Spinelli yelled. “Vessel coming around, far side of the moon, on direct intercept course. Time to firing range, nine minutes and thirty seconds.”

 “Deadeye, deploy radiators and get the laser charged. Missile salvos on my command. Salazar, turn us to face the enemy, dead on, then continue random evasive sequences.”

 “Implementing course change,” the eager midshipman replied, his focus totally on his controls and the viewscreen.

 “Caine, assessment of that ship’s threat potential?”

 “Your guess is as good as mine,” she replied. “I’m not seeing any obvious missile tubes, lasers or particle beams. Lots of shuttle bays, though, six of them around the center of the ship.”

 The door slid open, and Harper stepped out, adding, “No sign of attempts at hacking as of yet.” She glanced down at Weitzman, who at a nod from Marshall yielded his station to her. “I’ll start working on them.”

 “Good. Let me know as soon as you get anything.” He frowned, then said, “Give me a channel to them.”

 “You’re on, sir,” Weitzman said, reaching over and flicking a trio of switches.

 “This is Fleet Captain Daniel Marshall, commanding Triplanetary Battlecruiser Alamo, to approaching vessel. You are violating Triplanetary space; please state your identity and intentions immediately.”

 “You won’t get a reply,” Caine said.

 “Probably not, but we’ve got to make the gesture.” He tapped a series of controls, and a flickering image of the approaching ship appeared by his side, blurred in places where the sensors had yet to get good resolution imagery. A long, squat cylinder, with the six large ports Caine had mentioned around the outside of the hull, a single, large engine at the rear, and a few oddly shaped antenna. The general effect was of a brutish fist slamming into space, quite unlike the graceful lines of Alamo, but as of yet, they had no idea whether or not the strange ship was even armed.

 “Launch fighters,” he said, “on a patrol course.”

 “Aye, sir,” Kelso said, tapping a control. “Demon Flight, immediate launch. Clearance on request.” The ship rocked a few seconds later, the fighters racing out to their patrol positions, one either side of the battlecruiser. “Time to contact now five minutes, sir.”

 “Suggestion, sir,” Salazar said. “We could buy some more time and meet them in orbit.” Glancing down at his console, he continued, “That would give us an additional eleven minutes to make combat and evaluate their tactical potential.”

 “And reduce our room for maneuver,” Kelso noted.

 “We can’t leave the system in any case, and there’s nowhere else to go,” Marshall said. “Execute course change as you suggest, Midshipman. I presume you already have it worked out.”

 With a nod, Salazar replied, “Implementing course change, sir. We will be in orbit in seven minutes. Fighters informed.”

 Marshall glanced across at Caine, who gave a quick smile in response. At least something was going right today. Spinelli looked up at his console, frowned, and started to tap controls.

 “Sir, we’ve got energy spikes from the incoming ship. Not missiles, though. Shuttles at my guess, but I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

 “Show me,” Marshall replied, and the hologram of the ship vanished, replaced with an image of the approaching craft, all six of them, flying in a tight formation. He gestured with his hands to focus on one of them, another stubby craft, with an intricate antenna facing forward. The little vessel was festooned with thrusters, but was keeping its straight heading, and at the current course and speed would impact Alamo in nine minutes.

 “Can we outrun them?” he asked Caine.

 “I doubt it,” she said. “Engines aren’t running that hot, and they’re already moving faster than we are. Want me to get a missile salvo in the air, try for an intercept?”

 “And if they are unarmed shuttles?” Kelso asked.

 “You don’t really believe…” Caine began, but the watch officer shook his head,.

 “It could be a set-up. Trying to get provocation for a war.”

 “No, sir,” Spinelli said. “I’m getting radiation readings from those missiles, and big. Megaton range.”

 “Launch missiles,” Marshall said, all doubt cast aside. “Salazar, try for a high orbit, get us to the far side of the planet as fast as you can.”

 Turning, the young officer said, “We could head into the upper atmosphere, sir. Those things would wallow like pigs in that sort of environment.”

 “So would we, Midshipman. Execute course change as instructed.”

 “I can compensate for that, Captain. We can do it.”

 “Midshipman,” Marshall snapped. “I have given you a direct order. Execute it at once.”

 “Sir…” 

 “Kelso, take the helm. Salazar, leave the bridge.”

 The midshipman froze for a second, nodded, rose, and walked silently to the elevator, all eyes watching him as he departed. Caine glanced at Marshall, a brief gaze of reproof before returning to her station. Tapping a control, Harper yielded the communications station back to Salazar, dropping into Kelso’s vacated seat as he moved across to the helm.

 “Can you handle that, Harper?” Marshall asked.

 “I can do anything, skipper. At least this way everyone gets a seat.”

 “Course change implemented, sir. Far side in nine minutes, eight seconds.”

 “Which gives them an excellent firing window.”

 “Why megatons?” Caine asked. “I’ve never seen a missile with that big a yield. What’s the point?”

 “Maybe they want to make sure of the kill,” Kelso said, adjusting the controls to his usual positions. “Could they be aimed at the planet?”

 Spinelli shook his head, then said, “If they were, they’d be going into featureless wasteland. We must be the target.”

 “Getting a message, sir,” Weitzman said. “From the enemy ship, in English, asking for you.”

 “For me?” Marshall asked.

 “By name, sir.” 

 “Now they’re just showing off,” he said. “Put them on.”

 An image flashed up on the viewscreen, a tall man who could have been the twin brother of his would-be assassin. Behind him was a sea of static, obviously blanking out the view behind him without even an attempt to camouflage it.

 “This is our system. Leave at once or be destroyed.”

 “This system is claimed by the Triplanetary Confederation, with a facility in occupation.”

 “We have already dealt with your garrison, Captain Marshall. Now we are more than willing to deal with you.”

 “You know that we can’t leave the system for five days.”

 With a leering smile, the man said, “Not our problem.”

 Marshall made a chopping motion with his hand, and Weitzman cut the channel. Harper worked her borrowed console, frustration in the furrows on her forehead.

 “Any chance of hacking them?” Marshall asked.

 “None,” she replied.

 “Harper…”

 Turning, she said, “Give me a top team of hackers and four months with the quantum computer at Phobos and I might be able to help you. I had enough trouble with the Cabal, and they at least had common ancestry of design. I’m dumping anything I can get into Carpenter’s databanks; she might have better luck.”

 “We’ve got a paleontologist trying to hack the enemy computers,” Caine said. “Brilliant. Enemy missiles are still approaching.”

 “Launch a salvo for interception, best speed. Fighters to follow suit.”

 “Roger.”

 Marshall switched over to his tactical track, watching the battle develop. The enemy ship seemed to be holding back, moving into a higher orbit, letting its missiles do the work. No sign of a second salvo, no sign of anything else at all. The ship rocked as Caine’s first salvo roared away, the missiles racing off to intercept those of the enemy, tracking back in a tangle of course plots and intercept trajectories.

 “First impact in one minute, ten seconds,” Caine said. “I don’t get it. The enemy missiles aren’t trying any evasive action.”

  “No attempt at enemy hacking, either,” Harper added. “They must have the same disadvantage as we do.”

 “Nice to know.”

 “Grant to Marshall,” a voice crackled. “We’re lining up right now. Permission to break and attack enemy ship? Our course will intercept about a minute after your missile impacts, so we’d have a chance to pull back around if needed.”

 “They’ve fired at us,” Marshall said. “I have no problem returning the favor.”

 “Laser charged, sir,” Caine said. “Kelso, give me a firing solution on one of those missiles. Let’s reduce the odds a little.”

 “Ready on target lock in ten seconds, mark,” he replied, frowning as he brought Alamo’s nose around, the acceleration fading away to nothing. “Five seconds.”

 For the briefest microsecond, the two ships were linked by a laser beam. Alamo’s radiators glowed red-hot as they dispersed the surplus energy, and where one of the missiles had been diving towards them, now there was just tumbling wreckage.

 “Good God,” Spinelli said. “Energy spike from the remaining missiles.”

 “Energy spike?” Marshall replied. “Kelso, random walk, now! Be where they aren’t!”

 Five balls of light filled the tactical display, beams of laser energy racing towards Alamo, sending alarms running throughout the ship. Erickson started to run her hands across the controls, her eyes darting from one readout to the next.

 “Radiators are shredded, sir,” she replied. “No impact on the hull, but we aren’t going to be firing any time soon.”

 “Our missile salvo has also been destroyed, sir.”

 “What the hell was that?” Marshall asked, his question directed at no-one in particular.

 “X-Ray laser, I think. Powered by a nuclear bomb, with a yield of forty megatons. Nasty. I’d guess they do double duty as impact missiles and lasers.”

 “Enemy ship is moving off, sir,” Spinelli said. “I think they’re trying for the far side of the planet.”

 “So they want to remain hidden from us,” Marshall replied. “Clever, as far as it goes. Have Grant and Tanner come back at once. They wouldn’t stand a chance in an unsupported attack.”

 “They might have fired their only shots,” Kelso said.

 “Or they might be reloading right now, as fast as we can,” Caine replied. “We were damn lucky.”

 “No we weren’t,” Marshall said. “If they’d wanted us dead, we’d be drifting debris right now. They don’t want to kill us, they want to drive us off.” Looking at Kelso again, he said, “How near are we to the station?” 

 “About four hundred kilometers, sir. We’re on the right side of the planet and in the same orbit.”

 “Make sure we stay that way. Put up a couple of probes, high orbital path. Let’s see what they’re doing. And another one behind the moon, just in case.”

 “We’re going to wait?” Caine asked.

 Gesturing at the station’s image on the tactical display, he replied, “Not quite. There’s a mystery here, and I think I know where we can find the answer.” Tapping a control, he said, “Bridge to Auxiliary Control. I want to speak to Senior Lieutenant Orlova.”

 “I’m here, sir.”

 “Put a small boarding party together, no more than four people.”

 “The station, Captain?”

 “Go see what you can find. And be careful, don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

 Caine rose from her station, walking over to Marshall, and said, “If they did attack, then they could have left some of their people behind as a nasty surprise. You know that.”

 “I also know that there are...were thirty-nine of our people over there, and we need to find out what happened to them. We owe them that much.” Looking at the retreating ship, he said, “Start working on a tactical analysis, Deadeye. Get a team together. The next time we cross swords, I want to have the advantage.” Standing up, he said, “You have the bridge.”

 “Where are you going?”

 “I have to see someone.”

 “Salazar? Want me to come along?” 

 Shaking his head, he replied, “This battle I’m going to have to fight alone.”

Chapter 7

 The wall facing Salazar’s bunk had one-hundred and sixty-four rivets. He knew, he’d counted them three times since he’d come down from the bridge. His uniform jacket was tossed in a corner, slumped on the floor having slid down the wall, and a cup of coffee with a single sip taken from it sat on his desk.

 Lying next to him on his bed was a datapad, a simulation of the battle displayed on it. He’d gone over it five times, running the comparative battle strategies, and each time he came up with the same answer. If his course had been adopted, Alamo would not have suffered any damage; the laser would have been dispersed sufficiently that the radiators would have survived intact, and they could have pressed their advantage.

 The door slid open, and Captain Marshall stepped in.  

 “Can I take a seat?”

 “Of course, sir,” Salazar replied, making to stand up. 

 “Stay where you are,” he said, and he slumped back again as Marshall sat down.

 “About what happened on the bridge, sir,” he began.

 “Don’t,” he said. “Insincere apologies are almost as bad as insubordination.”

 Passing over his datapad, he said, “I was right, sir. Had you followed my advice…”

 “I know,” he replied. “I ran the same simulation myself. That doesn’t make you right. It doesn’t for one single second excuse what you did.”

 “You listened to me the first time, Captain.” 

 “The first time you made a suggestion, quickly and succinctly, and I accepted it. If you had limited yourself to a brief suggestion the second time, dropping it when I rejected it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In fact, I’d have come away from that encounter rather impressed, you were certainly working up to it before I had to put Kelso in your place.” He frowned, then said, “Frankly, that’s why you are still in uniform right now. I haven’t given you a down-check.”

 “Thank you, sir.”

 “Tell me, Midshipman. And be honest, for God’s sake. Would you do it again?”

 After a brief pause, he said, “Honesty will cost me the uniform.”

 “Off the record, then.”

 “Yes, sir, I would do it again.”

 “Why?”

 Closing his eyes, he said, “Two friends of mine died because I made a mistake, Captain. I made the wrong decision, and I didn’t even pay for it with my own life. They paid with theirs. If I see someone making a similar mistake, one that I think will cost lives, I have to speak up. I can’t sit back and let it happen.” He shook his head, and said, “If you want to down-check me for that, I’ll understand. In your place, I probably would have done it already.” 

 Shaking his head, Marshall said, “I’m not down-checking you. You’ve been on this ship for just over a week, Midshipman, and you still have more than eleven months to go before I decide whether to put you before the Commissioning Boards or recommend that you be discharged from the fleet. I’ll be honest when I say that your disrespect for authority…”

 “It isn’t disrespect, sir. I’ve looked at your record, and I admire it. I…”

 “Go on,” Marshall said.

 “I didn’t expect you to make a mistake, sir.”

 “I didn’t make a mistake, Midshipman. We’re still here, still alive, and still ready to fight. You can argue that I failed to attain the optimum outcome if you wish, but in battle it is rarely a matter of the right decision and the wrong decision. There are always shades of gray. Tell me, what if those missiles had turned out to have hidden atmospheric capability. Retractable wings, something like that. Then what.”

 “We’d have had more time to shoot them down.”

 “Perhaps,” he said, a faint smile growing. “Answer me another question. Do you want to be discharged?”

 “No, sir.”

 “Are you certain of that, Midshipman? That there isn’t a voice in your head wanting to get out, resentful that the court-martial didn’t end all of this for you?” Standing up, Marshall said, “I will give you an honorable discharge if you wish. Right now that’s probably a better outcome to your career than you’ve earned, but if that’s what it will take to resolve all this, I’m willing to do it.”

 Shaking his head, Salazar said, “I want to stay in the fleet, sir. Lieutenant Grant made me a similar offer six months ago, and I turned him down as well.”

 “I see,” Marshall replied. “You may change your mind later on. I’m taking you off the bridge duty roster, effective immediately. Foster will take your place.”

 “I understand, sir.” 

 “I’m appointing you to assist Mr. Quinn, instead, down in the Systems division.”

 Nodding, he replied, “I will report for duty immediately, sir.”

 “No arguments, no complaints?”

 “It is not my place to complain, sir.”

 “At least you understand that much. There is a time and a place for everything, Midshipman. You have a suggestion and there’s a lull in the action, make it. I’ll listen. You want to come to my office afterward and discuss a battle we’ve fought, I’m more than happy to do that as well. But when the commanding officer makes a decision, no matter what you think about it, you follow orders. Is that understood?”

 “Yes, sir. May I ask a question?”

 “Ask.”

 “Does that apply to you as well, sir?”

 Marshall’s face turned red, and he stood up, making for the door. After a second he paused, turned, and said, “After a while, Midshipman, you earn the right, have the experience, to know when you must ask the question, and I won’t pretend that there aren’t times when it doesn’t come up. There are people on this ship who have earned it, one way or another. Caine. Orlova. Harper. A few others. You have earned exactly nothing, and your insignia doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

 “I see, sir.”

 “No, you don’t. One day, perhaps, you might, but I doubt it.” He took a deep breath, then said, “There is still a way back for you from all of this, despite everything, though I have a feeling you won’t take it. Work like a demon in your new role, prove to me that you can be trusted, and I’ll let you back up onto the bridge.”

 “I understand.”

 “Or do something amazing enough to put you back in my good graces. That’s the other option.”

 Nodding, Salazar said, “I don’t suppose that you believe this at the moment, sir, but I won’t let you down.”

 “Words and deeds are very different things, Midshipman. Let’s see if one can match the other. I understand that Mr. Quinn wants you down on the hangar deck. Our fighters are coming back on board, and they’re going to need to go through post-flight. Report down there at once.”

 “Yes, sir.”

 Marshall walked out of the room, leaving him alone for a moment. He stepped down from the bed, reached down to his jacket, then pulled it from the floor, shaking it to try and get rid of the new creases before putting it back on. He glanced at the tiny midshipman’s insignia on the shoulders, and sighed. The Captain was right. Those things didn’t mean a damn thing, still less to him than to the others.

 Stepping out of the door, he was unsurprised to see Foster standing there, a grin on her face, walking slowly towards the elevator, obviously loitering to wait for him to emerge.

 “Didn’t take long, did it,” she said. “Talking back to the Captain during a battle? Good God, Salazar, that’s bad, even for you.”

 “I did what I thought was right.”

 “If that was the case, you’d resign.”

 With a sigh, Salazar asked, “Aren’t you wanted on the bridge?”

 “I’m heading that way. Where are you going, waste reclamation? Elevator control?”

 “And to think, you didn’t even have to write Mummy a letter to get what you wanted,” he snapped.

 Grabbing him by the shoulders, she said, “You don’t know what the hell you are talking about.”

 “Neither do you, Foster. Now let me go, or I’ll report you for assault.” 

 Barking a laugh, she replied, “I’d love to see you try.” 

 “Then carry on.”

 Shaking her head, she said, “You aren’t worth it.” Spitting on the floor by his feet, she walked towards the elevator, her head held high. He waited for her to leave before tapping the control himself, happier to wait for a moment than to share the trip. Finally the doors opened, and another eternity passed as he traveled down to the hangar deck.

 Quinn was waiting for him as the doors opened, a toolkit in hand, a frown on his face.

 “At last,” he said. “Start with Demon One. Full post-flight and diagnostic assessment. Bartlett and Grogan are assigned as your work team. Once you’ve finished, report to Weapons Control and check over the targeting systems.”

 “Aye, sir.”

 Quinn looked him up and down, then asked, “Do I need to check your work?”

 “That won’t be necessary, sir.”

  “I damn well hope not. I assure you that the first mistake you make will be your last. Do I make myself clear?”

 “You do, sir.”

 “I hope so. Carry on.” Quinn stepped past him into the elevator, leaving Salazar on the hangar deck, looking at the two fighters rising through the airlocks as he watched. He shook his head, sighed, and stepped forward, looking for his team. It should have been him flying one of those fighters, just back from a mission. Technological dead-end they might be, but becoming a fighter pilot was what he dreamed of when he was a boy, a dream that he’d managed to destroy with one last mistake.

 “Over here, sir,” Bartlett said, waving a testing kit in the air.

 “Thanks,” he said, walking over to him. A disapproving woman stood by him, brown hair loose on her shoulders. “I guess you must be Grogan.”

 “Yes, sir.”

 “I’ll handle the cockpit settings. You two start the exterior visual inspection.”

 The fighters settled on the floor, and the pilots stepped out, two people he knew very well, Grant and Tanner. Old war buddies who’d taken their friendship into the Academy as lecturers, and now back out into space again on Alamo. He caught Tanner flashing a look at Grant as he walked off towards the elevator, helmet in hand.

 “I guess you screwed up again, huh,” Grant said.

 “Are your settings in landing mode, sir?” Salazar asked, ignoring the statement.

 “I did my job, Midshipman. You just see you do yours.”

 “Yes, sir,” he said, as Grant walked off after Tanner, hurrying to catch up. He looked back at them, shaking his head, and climbed up into the cockpit, settling down in the pilot’s seat as he started to run the post-flight diagnostics, trying to engross himself in his work, in the mindless tedium of the checklists.

 Bartlett’s head poked up over the cockpit, and he asked, “Are you all right, sir?”

 “The last shreds of my career just got thrown out the airlock, Spaceman. Other than that, I’m fine.”

 “There are worse jobs, sir,” he replied. “You could actually have to fly one of these deathtraps.”

 “The Mark Sixteen Interceptor was the finest fighter they ever made,” Salazar said.

 “Give me a good half-meter of hull armor every time, sir. My mother didn’t raise me to take crazy risks like getting in one of these.”

 “Yet you joined the Fleet?” he asked, running a test on the missile systems.

 “Well, a job’s a job, isn’t it? Bit of glut on space crews at the moment, too many people and too few berths, but at least the fleet is hiring. Besides, I like to move about a bit, see new worlds and that sort of thing. As long as no-one’s shooting at me.”

 “Is something wrong, Spaceman?”

 “No, sir, nothing at all.”

 “Have you finished your check then?”

 “Well, no, sir…”

 “Then hadn’t you better?”

 “Well, you see, sir, I thought I’d better check up on you.”

 “Why?”

 “Because that’s the third time you’ve run a test on the weapons systems, sir.”

 Salazar recoiled, looked down at his checklist, and shook his head, replying, “I guess I’ve got too much on my mind at the moment to focus on this properly.” Tossing the datapad to the side, he said, “Just one more thing I’ve managed to botch today.”

 “People get distracted, sir, and no-one’s perfect, are they? I mean, I’m not.”

 “No kidding,” Grogan said from the rear. “We’ve got to do two of these, and I’m supposed to be going off duty in an hour.”

 “Me too,” Bartlett said. “Look, sir, what I’m trying to tell you is that things could always be worse. You’ve got to do the best you can with the hand you’ve been dealt.”

 “Trouble is, Spaceman, that I threw away all my high cards.”

 “Game’s not over while you’ve still got something in your hand, sir.”

 Salazar smiled, nodded, then said, “I don’t know when my shift ends, but would you both like to catch something to eat afterward? I could do with some company, I think.”

 “In the officer’s mess, sir?” Bartlett said, shaking his head. “Not going to fly.”

 Shrugging, he said, “I’ll go to yours. I’m not really that much of an officer, anyway.”

 “Bartlett can go if he wants,” Grogan said. “I’m a little more particular about the company I keep. Sir. Can we just get on with this.”

 Tapping his shoulder, Bartlett said with a smile, “I’m not particular, sir. I’ll hold you a chair at the mess.”

 With a faint smile, Salazar replied, “Thanks. Now come on. Let’s get this done.”

Chapter 8

 “Wait!” Carpenter yelled, running down the corridor. “Hold on, Maggie, I’m coming with you.”

 Pausing at the port-side airlock, Orlova turned, replying, “I’ve already got my three crew, Susan. Why do you want to come, anyway?”

 “I’m the nearest thing you have to an expert on that weird new alien race out there. If you come across any of them, you’re going to need me.”

 Frowning, Orlova pulled her communicator out, tapping for the bridge, “Orlova to Marshall.”

 “Cunningham here. Captain Marshall’s in his cabin. Will I do, or do you want me to transfer over?”

 “You’ll do, sir. I’m taking an extra over to the station. Lieutenant Carpenter.”

 “Whatever you think best, Maggie. I’ll let the Captain know next time I see him.”

 “Thanks, sir. Orlova out.” Turning back to Carpenter, she said, “Well, get in.”

 Orlova went first, moving forward into the cockpit, sitting next to the waiting Harper. She tapped a sequence of controls, priming the systems and locking the best-speed course over to the station into the computer.

 “Last minute addition?” Harper asked.

 “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Get clearance to launch.”

 “Already done,” she replied. “Ready on your order.”

 “Good.” Hitting another button, the shuttle detached from the side of the ship, tumbling away into space for a few seconds before the engine fired on autopilot, sending them hurtling towards the station.

 “Aren’t we going a little fast?”

 Orlova smiled, then replied, “When did you get so jumpy? I want to get this over with as fast as we can. The sooner we’re over on the station, the happier I’ll be.”

 “Nervous?”

 “Damn right.”

 “Good.”

 Shaking her head, Orlova said, “Keep trying to hack into the station computers. There must be something working over there.”

 “None of the primary or secondary systems are functioning, but there isn’t enough damage for them to have been destroyed. Someone turned them off. I am getting feeds from a few datapads over there, mostly private, but their sensors aren’t telling me anything we don’t know already. There is some atmosphere, but it’s getting damn cold.”

 “As soon as we dock, you take Cook and Morris and see about getting the systems back on-line.”

 “Cook can handle that.”

 “She can’t check for booby traps.”

 Frowning, Harper said, “If those weird not-aliens knew our systems, they’d have tried to hack us when they attacked.”

 “I’m not worried about them. If that station was deactivated by our people, then whoever did it might have decided to throw in a few safeguards. Just in case the wrong people came over for a visit.”

 “Good point.” She glanced up at the sensors, then said, “Lower airlocks are damaged; you’re going to have to come in at the ring.”

 “Great, that makes it nice and tricky,” she replied, entering orders into the computer. Her eyes ran across the station as the shuttle drifted in, closing rapidly on their target. Nothing particularly unusual about the design, a normal Triplanetary prefabricated structure, a rotating disk with a central core, connected by half a dozen spokes. These stations were operating from Proxima Centauri to Wolf 359, built to be constructed in a matter of weeks by a pair of tenders.

 This one had definitely been fired upon, damage to the lower section of the central core, almost torn apart, and other markings to the ring in a few places.

 “Something’s just occurred to me,” Harper said. “If this station had been hit by one of those lasers…”

 “Then there’d be nothing for us to find,” Orlova interrupted. “Get a close-range look.”

 Manipulating the sensor display, Harper zoomed the image as far in as she could, revealing the extent of the damage, and the torn fabric of the hull pointing out into space like a thousand dead hands grasping at the escaping air.

 “Blown out, not in. That was done from inside the station. This is worse than I thought.” Reaching for a headset, Orlova said, “Shuttle to Alamo.”

 “Cunningham here. Go ahead.” 

 “We’re getting close to docking now, and I’m pretty sure that the damage to the station was done during a firefight, not in a battle.”

 There was silence for a moment, then Cunningham replied, “You’ve got permission to return to Alamo, if you want. That increases the chance that there are hostiles present on the station.”

 Shaking her head, Harper said, “If there was anyone on board, life support wouldn’t be shutting down. Why fight in spacesuits if you don’t have to?”

 “Unless those systems were damaged in the battle,” Orlova replied. “Sir, I’m going to proceed to the station.”

 “I thought you’d say that,” Cunningham said. “Proceed with caution, Lieutenant. Remember we don’t have any Espatier back-up to help out.”

 “I’ll be careful, sir. Shuttle out.” Turning to Harper, she said, “Let’s hope you’ve got it right.”

 “When do I ever get it wrong?”

 “I’m not going to answer that. Stand by for hard dock.” She tapped a button, and warnings lights flashed on in the passenger cabin. The shuttle’s thrusters pulsed to match the rotation of the station, putting them into a parallel course as the ship grew closer, the docking clamps moving into position. Finally, with a soft tap, the shuttle made contact with the station, the airlocks mated, and the docking was complete.

 “Let’s get on with it,” she said, unclipping her restraint and standing up, walking to the rear cabin. “I’m going first,” she announced to the assembled crew. “Susan, you’re with me.”

 “Hey, Maggie,” Harper said, but Orlova shook her head.

 “That pilot’s license of yours is a double-edged sword. If I don’t make it back, you’ve got to fly this bird home. Lieutenant Carpenter and I will go to the end of the entrance corridor, take a look around, then come back and get the rest of you. Or run back screaming so we can beat a hasty retreat. Understood?”

 “Yes, ma’am,” Petty Officer Cook said.

 “Everyone might as well get suited up,” Orlova said, moving over to the locker. She and Carpenter checked each other over as they pulled on each component, sliding into the suits and locking gloves and helmets into place. After a few minutes, they were ready, and stepped into the airlock together. Carpenter moved her hand to engage the lock control, but Orlova shook her head.

 “Wait a moment,” she said, unholstering her pistol, checking that the ammunition clip was tight. “Go ahead.”

 “Paranoid.”

 “Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean everyone isn’t out to get you. And if you can tell me what’s waiting for us on the other side of that door, we’re wasting an awful lot of time.”

 Carpenter tapped the control and the hatch slowly slid open. On the other side, Orlova saw what could only be improvised cover, burn marks on the walls testament to some sort of a firefight, spent clips on the floor, splatters of blood everywhere. Stepping over a trio of welded-together crates, she saw a body lying on the deck, looking up with a maniacal grin.

 “Christ,” Carpenter said. She reached down, moving the corpse’s hand to reveal its nameplate. “Alamo, this is Carpenter. Identification on a Warren Tompkins.”

 “Reading you, Lieutenant,” Cunningham’s voice replied. “Senior Spaceman, assigned to Yeager Station as a life support technician.”

 “List him as deceased,” Orlova said, stepping forward. “Likewise a Martha Grayson, Anton Bielski, Phillipa Strong.”

 “Copy,” Cunningham said in a monotone. “What do you see, Maggie?”

 “Battle. The remnants of one. Looks like they were trying to stop a boarding action, but they lost.” Looking around, she said, “I don’t see any signs of the enemy, but that doesn’t mean anything. If they won, they’d have taken their bodies with them.”

 “Interesting that they didn’t take ours,” Carpenter said. “Means that they must have had contact with us before. Otherwise they’d have wanted to do autopsies.”

 “Come on,” Orlova said. “Let’s keep going. Harper, you and Cook come out here with four body bags. If nothing else, we can get them back to their families.”

 “Roger, Maggie,” a subdued Harper replied. “We’re on the way.”

 Orlova stepped forward, gun still in her hand, and reached the main corridor, the ring around the station. It seemed strangely neat in comparison to the airlock section, no sign of disturbance or battle wherever she looked. Evidently the battle had been short, perhaps a last stand.

 “Wait a minute,” she said, turning back. She looked at the position of the bodies again, and said, “They weren’t trying to stop someone boarding the station, they were covering an evacuation. The station would have had a shuttle out there.”

 “Not the escape pods?” Cook asked.

 “With an enemy ship hovering around outside with megawatt lasers to throw around as expendable munitions? I’d want to be in something I could maneuver. I’ll bet that we find the same sort of mess down below, on the lower level.”

 Sighing, Carpenter said, “A shame they died for nothing.”

 “What do you mean?”

 “As soon as we jumped in system, they’d have seen us. Besides, all of this didn’t happen long ago. We’re talking about, what, an hour? That’s barely time for them to get down to the surface.” She paused, then said, “We could run a sensor sweep, take a look?”

 Shaking her head, Orlova replied, “If I was commanding that shuttle, I’d hide. Hide and wait for something to happen. Remember, we weren’t scheduled for another month. They’ve got no reason to think that there is a Triplanetary ship in orbit. Besides, if they did signal, they’d give away their position, and the enemy ship might get there first.” Tapping a button, she said, “Orlova to Alamo.”

 “I’m still here, Maggie,” Cunningham said. 

 “I think there are survivors hiding on the surface. Have Kelso run a check on possible launch trajectories, see if he can find likely places that would elude sensor sweeps.”

 “On it. Out.”

 “Harper,” Orlova said, “I think we can assume that no-one’s going to come out and jump at us, or they would have by now. Go and see if you can get life support working again, look at what might be needed to get this station up and running.”

 “Is that really a priority?” Carpenter asked. “I thought this was a smash and grab.”

 “Right now it is, but this station does have defensive systems and armament we can use. If the damage wasn’t too severe, it could be a help, even if just as another target. Besides, long-term we’re going to need it. Come on, let’s take a look at Operations.”

 The two of them walked around the ring, a shiver running down her spine as they passed out of sight of the airlock, one closed hatch after another as they moved on.

 “Shouldn’t we be checking these out as we go?”

 “Not if we want to get this over with today.”

 “At least let’s look at one at random, just to check,” Carpenter said, walking over to a hatch labeled ‘Enlisted Mess’. “This one.”

 Shrugging, Orlova said, “If you’re hungry, go ahead.”

 Tapping the button, Carpenter stepped back as the hatch slid open, her pistol in her hand. Inside were the chilled remnants of lunch, meals left half-eaten on the table, drinks frozen solid in their mugs, uniform jackets left thrown over the backs of chairs where they were left. Orlova stepped into the room, looking at the far corner, then turned back.

 “They had a little time, at least. The emergency ration packs for this area are missing.”

 “Could they last a month on those?”

 “At starvation rations, maybe,” Orlova replied. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. Harper?”

 “I’m listening,” the hacker replied.

 “How are things going back there?”

 “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the life-support systems from a malware point of view. Cook’s working on testing the units now.”

 “Then follow me up to Operations. I’m going to need you up there.”

 “Roger. On my way. We found another body, by the way. Sub-Lieutenant Collins, Systems Officer. Guess he decided to stay with the station. Morris has gone to get another body bag.”

 “Understood. Orlova out.” She turned to Carpenter, then said, “Five dead. That leaves thirty-three unaccounted for.”

 “Three shuttle flights, if they crowded them in.”

 Stepping out of the mess, they walked on around the ring, stopping near another barricade outside Operations, the door sealed shut. Another body lay in front of it, grasping a rifle in a death grip, Senior Lieutenant’s insignia on his shoulders.

 “He went down with his ship,” Orlova said. “Alamo, we just found Senior Lieutenant Diaz’s body.”

 “Read you, Maggie,” the voice of Captain Marshall said. “We’re watching and waiting, and the enemy ship isn’t twitching.”

 “Thanks, sir.” She reached to a wall panel, entered in a twelve-digit sequence, and the hatch opened to the nerve center of the station. Stepping over the late commander’s body, she walked into the room, looking around. No sign of damage, no sign that anything had been touched, and no sign of any bodies.

 “Tactical’s been locked onto computer control,” Carpenter said, looking over at the far side. “I can’t even get a status report.”

 “Harper can handle that when she gets here,” Orlova said. “Let’s see if the station commander’s log is salvageable.” She tapped in a control sequence, then shook her head. “Damn.”

 “What is it?”

 “Requires a hand-print DNA test.” Orlova reached down for her glove, but Carpenter was there first, grabbing her arm.

 “Tell me you aren’t planning on doing anything that stupid.”

 “Pressure’s still fine, and the temperature’s only ninety below.”

 “Only.”

 “Suit heat outgassing will resolve some of that, and I’ll have my hand back in the warm in less than a minute.”

 “Or you could wait for the life support systems, which will be back online shortly.”

 “Not for a couple of hours. Take that long to bring the station safely back to temperature. I’m not sure they’ve got that long on the surface, and before you suggest doing something noble yourself, this requires a Senior Lieutenant’s authorization.”

 Shaking her head, she said, “Fine, but I’ll take off your glove, and put it back again the second you get approval.”

 “Makes sense.” Reaching over to the console, the system still waiting for the required identification, she said, “Do it.”

 Carpenter unlocked the glove, snatching it loose from her hand, and Orlova jabbed her finger down into the slot, waiting for the machine to do its work. It was cold, incredibly cold, biting at her skin despite the warm air seeping down through the gap in her suit, and alarms started going off in her helmet, warning of pressure and temperature leak. She almost missed the green light flashing on the console, the test successful.

 “Move, Maggie! I can’t put it on while it’s stuck on that console,” Carpenter yelled, and Orlova snatched it away as she rammed the glove back on, locking it into place. The suit ramped up the heating compensating for the loss, and her hand immediately started to warm. Flexing it a couple of times experimentally, she looked up at Carpenter with a smile.

 “No harm done.”

 “I hope not.”

 “Alamo, I’m dumping the station’s log entries to you now,” Orlova said. “See what you can get out of them. Some sort of location would be useful.”

 “Will do, Maggie.”

 “No!” another voice cried, and the two of them turned to see an unfamiliar spacesuited figure rushing towards them, a knife in his hand, glistening in the darkened room. “I won’t let you find them!”

 “Wait, damn it!” Orlova yelled, “We’re Fleet! From the Alamo!”

 He stopped, looking at the two of them, then shook his head, saying, “You aren’t here. Not for another month. You can’t be here. It wouldn’t be fair.” He took a step towards them, screaming, “It wouldn’t be fair!” Without warning, he crumpled to the floor, revealing Harper standing behind him.

 “What did you do?”

 “Turned his oxygen down enough to knock him out,” she replied, holding up a datapad. “Is this a good time to report that I’ve found a way to remotely hack into our spacesuit computers?”

 “Maggie,” Marshall’s voice said. “What’s happening over there?”

 “We’ve found a survivor. I repeat, we’ve found a survivor.”

 “Vital signs look fine,” Carpenter said, pulling the knife away and tossing it into a corner. “He’s just asleep.”

 “Wake him up,” Orlova said.

 “Is that a good idea? Shouldn’t we get him back to the ship?”

 “We don’t have the time. Wake him up.”

 “Be careful, Maggie,” Marshall said.

 “Roger, Alamo.”

 The man’s eyes flickered open, Harper and Carpenter holding him back as Orlova knelt in front of him. He looked around again, as though he couldn’t quite accept what was happening.

 “Identify yourself, spaceman,” Orlova said.

 “Sub-Lieutenant Maurice Delgarde. Tactical Officer.”

 “Senior Lieutenant Margaret Orlova, Operations Officer of the Battlecruiser Alamo. We’ve been in-system for the last twenty minutes.”

 “The enemy ship?”

 “On the far side of the planet.” 

 Nodding, he said, “Hiding. That’s what they did the first time. Came into the system and hid, took out our orbital relays and waited. Then they attacked, without warning. Diaz wouldn’t let me fire.” He looked at the door, then shouted, “I told you we should resist, you dead bastard! I told you! Help was on the way!”

 “Calm down, Sub-Lieutenant. Keep going.”

 Blinking back tears, he said, “We decided we couldn’t hold the station. Just a few missiles on board, a fighter, nothing we could use. Not long-term. Worked out their missile lasers when they took down the Science Relay.” He looked up, then said, “It was hopeless, damn it. Hopeless. Abandoned the station. Two shuttles, twenty-four, squeezed them in, the rest of us to hold them off.”

 “We’ve found six bodies,” Harper said.

 Looking across at her, he replied, “You’re going to find more. They hit us through four airlocks, hit us hard, while we were still trying to hold them off. They had boarding shuttles, tore through the hull like paper down on the lower spoke.”

 “We never checked the damage in that area,” Carpenter said. “Good place to come in, down in the zero-gravity section.”

 “Ten minutes and it was all over. Ten damn minutes. I was up in Weapons Control, wanted to fight to the last, but main power failed. Then, I...I hid.” He looked down at the deck, then said, “My friends were fighting, dying and I crawled into a bunker and hid, damn it. I should have died with them.”

 “You didn’t,” Orlova said. “You can tell us what happened. What happened to the two shuttles?”

 “They launched after them, atmospheric fighters I guess, went down into the murk. That place has just enough atmosphere to be annoying, like Mars but with more dust, more damn stinking dust. That whole planet reeks of death.”

 Carpenter looked at Orlova, who said, “Where, Sub-Lieutenant? We can’t get them back if we don’t know where they are.”

 “We called it the Fisura del Diablo. Near the northern ice cap. It’s marked on the charts. There they could go down deep enough to be safe.” He looked up, the tears streaming now. “Those fighters did their job. The shuttles crashed. They’re dead. They must be.”

 “Not necessarily, Sub-Lieutenant,” Orlova said. “There’s still a chance they survived, and if they did, I’ll bring them home. That’s a promise.”

Chapter 9

 The senior staff filed into the briefing room, taking their assigned places at the table. Caine, Grant and Quinn down the left-hand side, Nelyubov and Race on the right, Cunningham taking a seat at the far end, facing him. Orlova’s chair was empty, but Marshall had her words on a datapad in his hand, and knew that over on the station, she would be anxiously waiting for his signal.

 “First of all,” he said, “Mr. Quinn, ship status.”

 With his newly-trademarked frown, he said, “The only damage is to the radiators, and under the current conditions, there’s nothing I can do about them.”

 “Surely that’s a simple repair,” Grant said.

 “One that will involve my engineers being half a mile from the ship for several hours,” Quinn said. “Should Alamo have to maneuver, they’d be left behind. Unless you can guarantee me at least seven hours in free orbit, I will not expose my people to such risks.” He looked defiantly at Marshall, who nodded.

 “We’re just going to have to do without the lasers, then. Deadeye, what’s your tactical assessment of the enemy ship?”

 “From what we’ve gathered from the records on the station as well as our own encounter, the only weapons they possess are those laser missiles.”

 “That’s enough, isn’t it,” Race said.

 “They don’t seem to be able to change course quickly enough to avoid intercept, but can fire the lasers at any time. Each one is almost as powerful as our own cannon, and they have six of them. We haven’t a clue what their recharge time is, but we know that they can reload.”

 “For all we know, they’ve only got a few left,” Nelyubov said. “Though we can’t count on that. So far all we have to show for our hacking attempts is an increased vocabulary of swear words in six languages, and I’m not optimistic that will change in the near future.”

 “And in another battle against them?”

 “Without our laser, we have a tactical disadvantage. We can mitigate that by fighting the battle at a time and place of our choosing, and having some missile salvos already in the air. That and some careful maneuvering should give us a good chance.”

 “They’ll know that,” Cunningham said. “I doubt they’ll let us get that chance.” Looking at Quinn, he replied, “I recommend taking the risk and repairing the laser.”

 “I’d lose ten of my best people if we had to fight,” Quinn said. “I’m not willing to take that risk.”

 “We can mitigate that by moving closer to the station. If we hold position at a distance of, say, fifteen hundred meters, they can make that easily on their suit thrusters. Or we could have a shuttlecraft standing by to pick them up and break for the surface.”

 “I don’t like it.”

 “Nor do I,” Marshall said, “but I’m ordering it. As soon as this meeting is concluded, we’ll move closer to the station and commence the repairs to the radiators. Make sure that everyone involved is fully briefed on what to do should any attack take place.”

 “Yes, sir,” Quinn said, his eyes boring into Marshall. “I would like it entered into the record that I oppose this action.”

 Caine looked at him, and asked, “What the hell, Jack?”

 “So noted,” Marshall said. “Now for the major business, and there are two points, as far as I can see. Maggie’s report indicates that the station will be straightforward to salvage, and she suggests that an eight-man repair crew should be able to get it back into fighting condition in twenty-four hours.”

 “I’ve looked over her reports,” Cunningham said, “and I concur. That’s another six missile tubes we can throw into a fight, and it isn’t much of a risk.”

 “Easy to say, when my people are the ones taking it,” Quinn said.

 “That’s enough, Lieutenant,” Marshall snapped. “As far as I’m concerned this is an easy call. Pick a team, and get it sent over to the station as soon as we’ve completed our maneuver. Lieutenant Nelyubov, you will take command over there for the present.” Raising a hand, he added, “Don’t worry, this isn’t permanent.”

 “I certainly hope not,” he replied. “All of this is preliminary, though. What about Maggie’s plan?”

 “I wondered if she’d sent it to anyone else,” Marshall replied with a smile. “Short version is this. We know where the crew of the station went down. Our sensors have picked up a crash site, though whether there were any survivors is unclear.”

 “We have to rescue them,” Nelyubov said.

 “In principle, I agree,” Cunningham said, “though I am rather less than convinced about our capability to pull this off.”

 “The idea is to launch the rescue mission from the station. In three and a half hours, they’ll be in a position to be reached in about twelve minutes in a full-speed burn from orbit.” Nelyubov looked around the room, then said, “The return will be direct to Alamo, once we’ve retrieved the survivors. Four-man team, two on each shuttle.”

 “Commanded by Orlova, no doubt,” Quinn said.

 “She’s the best choice for the job, and is already over on the station,” Nelyubov said. “More to the point, this was her idea. She deserves a chance to carry it out.”

 “We know that the enemy ship has fighters with an atmospheric capability,” Race noted.

 “Not lower atmosphere. From what we saw from the records, they can’t go below thirty thousand feet.”

 “In theory. They could have been faking it,” Cunningham said.

 “No,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “We got some good images of those craft. No way they could go any deeper, not and come back up again.”

 “I would point out that our first encounter with them demonstrated their willingness to give up their lives for the cause,” Race said. “We can’t be sure of the safety of the shuttles.”

 “We’d have to distract them,” Grant replied, leaning forward. “Tanner and I can launch to engage their sentry satellites in high orbit. If we take one each…”

 “Splitting yourselves up and becoming vulnerable,” Cunningham interrupted.

 Pressing on, Grant said, “Then we have an excellent chance of drawing them out. Captain, I don’t think there is much that our fighters can do here. At least we can contribute to the rescue of the survivors on the surface.”

 “If there are any. There is no evidence of that,” said Cunningham. “Also, we’re not talking about a snatch and grab here. The landing team will have to find them, and that will leave them exposed on the surface.” Looking at Marshall, he asked, “What’s the urgency? They were expecting to be down there for a month. I’m sure they can wait for a couple of days until we’ve beaten back that ship.”

 Caine glanced at Marshall, then said, “I’m not quite as optimistic as you are that we can beat them. At best, I think we can probably even the odds.” Looking around the room, she said, “Long-term, the smart play is to wait out the five days and break clear of the system. If we time it properly, we should be able to reach the hendecaspace point without coming under fire, and then we can return with reinforcements later on.”

 “And if they followed us to Ragnarok?” Nelyubov asked.

 “Then they’d run into us, Hunter Station and its two fighter squadrons, and six lasersats. I don’t think there would be much left of them when they tried,” Caine replied. “We don’t need to win this battle today.”

 “We don’t even know why we’re fighting this battle,” Race said. “They attacked, and we don’t know why.”

 “If they had a good reason, something that we would listen to, they would have told us already,” Cunningham said. “Turning and retreating sends a bad message to them.”

 “Getting blown up would be considerably worse,” Quinn said. “One of our duties must be to warn the Confederation of this threat to the borders of our territory.”

 “This system is strategically important,” Nelyubov began.

 Interrupting him, Quinn said, “Potentially. It isn’t worth the loss of life, not at the moment. Hell, if an alien race wants to smash the Cabal to bits for us, I’ll sit on the sidelines and cheer, and we can corral them in that direction with our defenses in adjacent systems.” Turning back to Marshall, he said, “This isn’t that important a mission, sir.”

 Nodding, Marshall said, “He’s right, but I have no intention of leaving anyone behind if we have to leave. It could be months before we return.”

 “Conceivably, it might be never,” Caine said. “The Fleet is spread damn thin at the moment. I’m not sure the Admiralty will commit the reserves to the job, and I’m certain that the Senate won’t want to start another war.” She looked up at Marshall, nodded, and said, “My opinion is that we launch the rescue attempt, and leave the system if we can do so without facing attack. If we find a weak spot, then it might be another matter.”

 “I agree,” Quinn said. “Though I still think going down to the surface is an unjustifiable risk unless we are certain there are survivors down there.”

 “Noted.” 

 “I’d take them on,” Nelyubov said. “After we’ve rescued the survivors. It seems wrong to pull out of the system without a fight.”

 “You’ve been hanging around with Maggie too long,” Race said. “I’m with Quinn and Caine, by the way.”

 “For the record, this is not a democracy,” Marshall said. He glanced across at Cunningham, then said, “Keep working to find a weak spot in their defenses. Anything we can exploit. I’d rather not leave them in possession of the system unless we don’t have any choice. At least we need to find out why they are here.”

 Nodding, Caine said, “Aye, sir.”

 “Mr. Quinn, I want you to take a look at our fighters. See if you can…”

 “Give them at least a limited atmospheric capability,” he replied. “I think so, sir, but they’ll need a full servicing when they come back. We won’t be able to use them again for a while.”

 “Mr. Grant, better brush up on your atmospheric flying. We’re not doing the decoy mission, I want you to fly escort for the shuttles. Alamo can take care of itself.” He looked at Caine, then said, “Work out a defensive plan, and as far as I’m concerned, you can spend missiles like water.”

 “We’re going ahead, then?” Nelyubov said.

 “That we are,” Marshall replied. “Just out of idle curiosity, is there any point to me ordering you to remain on the station during this operation?”

 “Probably not, sir.”

 “Then I wish you and Maggie the best of luck. You can ferry over the engineering team at the same time, and I want plenty of communications chatter about it. Keep the real mission a secret as long as you can, no point spreading it around too widely.” 

 “Understood, sir. I’ll speak to Doctor Duquesne, get her to recommend a paramedic.”

 “We’d better get sickbay on standby,” Cunningham said. “And accelerate the shift change so that we’ve got fresh hands on duty for the operation. Frank, alert Mr. Kibaki that Gamma Watch will be coming on duty in two hours.”

 “Will do, sir.”

 “Any questions?” Marshall asked. “No? Then dismissed, everyone. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the next few hours.”

 The officers stood, saluted, and walked out of the room, Nelyubov taking the lead in eager steps. Cunningham stopped at the door, turned, then sat down in Orlova’s seat, waiting for the last one to leave.

 “Let me guess,” Marshall said. “You don’t think I’m being aggressive enough.”

 “It isn’t that,” he replied. “Yes, I think you are getting a little gun-shy, but I’m not sure that’s a problem. Hell, if our roles were reversed I’d almost certainly be doing exactly the same. I’m not overjoyed at the rescue mission, but we can’t leave our own people stranded on the surface.”

 “Then what’s the problem?”

 “The composition of the station team. Frank will be going down with Maggie, there is nothing so certain. Orders or no, he won’t sit around and wait, and I can’t blame him.”

 “Neither can I. Frankly, having two senior officers down there wouldn’t be a bad idea in any case. One of the shuttles could easily have to abort.”

 “Or get shot down. There’s a realistic chance of that.” 

 “Which is why we limit it to four people. I’ll leave it to Maggie to select the fourth hand, preferably someone who knows how to use a gun.” He paused, then said, “Make sure there are four plasma rifles on those shuttles. We might as well get some use on them.”

 “Will do,” he replied. “Look, we’re going to have to send another officer over with the engineering team, someone to take command.”

 “Lieutenant Carpenter is already over there.”

 Breaking into a smile, Cunningham said, “You know her better than me. Where is she going to be sitting when those shuttles launch?”

 “Next to Orlova,” he replied after a moment. “If there are any answers to be found in this system about the enemy’s motivations, the surface is a good place to start looking.”

 “Which means that Harper is the senior crewman over on the station, and I really don’t think that’s a very good idea, do you?”

 Nodding, Marshall said, “I don’t want to send one of the watch officers. We’re short-handed enough if we have to fight a battle without Maggie or Frank. To think I thought we were over-manned a few days ago. It’ll have to be one of the midshipmen.”

 “I agree. Salazar.”

 Marshall’s face darkened, and he replied, “Not a good idea.”

 “Why not?”

 “I can’t trust him. Not after his performance on the bridge.”

 “Then this is the perfect job for him. Look, right now he’s down on the sensor decks doing makework. We can spare him.”

 “And if he screws up a third time?”

 “Then nothing much is lost. Getting the station back on-line is a nice extra, but it isn’t really mission-critical at this point. We’ve got Harper going through the databanks sending everything she can find across, but that will be finished in a matter of hours. We can certainly use six more missile banks, but if we’re leaving the system anyway, then we’d probably have to scuttle the station before we go.”

 “I’m not sure,” Marshall said.

 “Either we give him a chance to redeem himself, or you give him a down-check right here and now. I agree we can’t put him back on the bridge, and this seems to me like a good compromise.”

 After a moment, he replied, “Very well. Have a word with him before he leaves, though. Make sure he knows what is expected on him. If he performs well, then I will reconsider the bridge duty roster.” Shaking his head, he continued, “There’s something in him worth looking for, but he’s only got one more chance to find it. In any case, we’ve got bigger problems.”

 “Damn right,” Cunningham replied, tapping a control on the desk, flashing a holographic image of the enemy ship into the air. “I don’t think they’re going to just let us leave the system.”

 “Neither do I,” Marshall said. “I guess we’re going to have to fight our way out, whether we want to or not.”

Chapter 10

 “Watch it, Ben, that damn board’s live!” Salazar yelled, his hand recoiling from the exposed circuitry he was about to remove.

 Shaking his head, Bartlett replied, “Looks like we’ve found the fault. The malfunction detector’s broken. According to the readings, that whole section is dark.”

 With a sigh, Salazar ran a greasy hand across his forehead, then said, “Log it, and we can move onto the next one. How many more today?”

 “Eighty-one. That’ll see the sensor decks just about finished.”

 “You’d think they’d have tested this all properly before we launched.”

 Shrugging, Bartlett said, “Only so much you can test in dock. This usually happens soon after launch. That’s why we do shakedown cruises.”

 “Some shakedown. We ought to shake down the people who did this and get our money back.” Grabbing the toolkit, he said, “Next one’s just down the corridor, isn’t it?”

 “It can wait, Midshipman,” a booming voice said, Cunningham walking down the corridor. “Mr. Quinn is detailing someone else to handle it. The two of you are needed elsewhere.”

 “Not waste management,” Bartlett said. “I thought that was just a bad joke.”

 “We’re sending you both over to the station, part of the clean-up crew to get it back to full operational readiness. When we fight that ship again, we could really use the missile tubes that station carries, and it looks as if getting the tactical systems up and running again won’t be that big a job.”

 “A bit exposed until we’ve finished, though, sir,” Bartlett said with a frown.

 “All the more incentive to do it right, Spaceman,” Cunningham replied. “Pack everything up, will you. I need to speak to Mr. Salazar in private.” Gesturing towards an open door, he said, “Come on.”

 With a quick glance at Bartlett, Salazar pulled himself to his feet and followed Cunningham into the cramped storage room, squeezing himself in beside some crates marked ‘Fragile: Do Not Touch’.

 “I understand, sir,” he said.

 “What is it you understand, Midshipman?”

 “That this is the Captain’s idea of getting me out of the way. I understand, and I think I’d probably do something similar in his position. I’ll do my duty, sir.”

 “Midshipman, this is not a permanent transfer, nor is it likely to transition into one.”

 “Sir?”

 Glancing at Bartlett through the open door, he said, “Officially, you are heading over as the second-in-command to Lieutenant Nelyubov, who will be overseeing the repairs and assuming command of the station. Unofficially, that’s going to be your job; Frank has other things to do.”

 “You’re putting me in command of Yeager Station?”

 “Only very temporarily and unofficially, but that’s the general idea, yes. Depending on which of the senior officers you talk to, this is either giving you enough rope to finally hang yourself with, or a chance to prove yourself at a task that in all honesty is not mission-critical.”

 Nodding, Salazar said, “I see the logic, sir. How many people will be over there?”

 “Eight, including yourself and Mr. Bartlett out there. I’m not sure you need a communications technician, but the two of you seem to have hit it off, so I’m going to let you take a friend along for the ride.”

 “Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.”

 “Well, appreciate this, Midshipman. This isn’t going to be an easy assignment, far from it. Everyone knows what happened on the bridge, and everyone knows what happened back at Phobos. It’s fair to say that you don’t have many people on your side, and you’re going to have to earn the loyalty of that work crew.”

 “I see, sir.”

 “Want to back out?”

 “No, sir,” he said, his face fixed.

 “Good lad. Shuttle’s heading across in fifteen minutes. You should have enough time to go over there. As a special bonus, you get to fly it.”

 “Thanks, sir.”

 “Good luck, Midshipman. Dismissed.”

 Saluting, Salazar left the room, almost tripping over the crates, then almost walking into Bartlett as he picked up the last of the tools.

 “Look out, sir,” he said, “That was almost my hand.”

 “Sorry,” he replied. “Come on. We’ve got fifteen minutes to make the shuttle.”

 “So I heard. Comm-techs tend to have excellent hearing.” Standing up, he said, “I’m ready.”

 The two of them walked down the corridor, stepping into the waiting elevator, and Salazar tapped the control for the flight deck. Bartlett looked at him, hesitated for a second, then turned away.

 “Go on,” Salazar said. “You want to ask what happened at Phobos.”

 “Most of the crew’s talking about it.”

 “I’m sure Foster’s spinning plenty of tall tales about my willful incompetence.”

 “I don’t believe them.”

 Looking sharply across at the technician, he replied, “Perhaps you should.”

 “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.”

 “But you want to know.”

 “I’d like to. I don’t need to.”

 With a sigh, Salazar said, “We were doing a flight proficiency exercise, doing a practice swing around Phobos. The idea was to elude a pursuing force in higher orbit, the rest of our class. I figured that we could use the slingshot to affect our trajectory in an unpredictable way, get past the blockade that way, and we went into the maneuver.”

 “What went wrong?”

 “I overestimated the finesse of our controls, the skill of the other pilots. We wanted to get the maximum boost, so we went in as low as we could. I made it out the other side. The others didn’t.”

 “Didn’t you file the plan with your instructors?”

 “Of course I did.”

 “Then it isn’t your fault, sir, it’s the people who approved it. You were in training, you weren’t supposed…”

 Salazar snapped, “Of course it was my fault! It was my idea, my concept, my command. I cannot and will not pass the blame for what happened onto anyone else.” Taking a deep breath, he continued, “I said as much at the court-martial, and my instructors agreed.”

 “Cowards,” Bartlett said. “The word being spread around is that you disobeyed orders, went lower than you were meant to.”

 “Technically that’s true, I guess. The others did go lower than planned. They couldn’t pull around in time. I only just made it. Two lives thrown away because I screwed up, and then I go and do it again on the bridge.” He shook his head, then said, “The Exec told me that I’d have to earn the trust of the work team. I can’t think why the hell anyone on this ship would trust me with anything.”

 “Well, I trust you,” Bartlett said.

 “That means a lot.”

 “Though perhaps I just don’t know any better,” he said with a smile. “Look, whenever a ship heads out, there’s always gossip going around about new hands for a while. It lasts for a couple of weeks, then something else replaces it. Always happens. You just got a little unlucky, that’s all.”

 The door opened, and they stepped out onto the hangar deck, two shuttles ready for takeoff. A file of crewmen were heading into the first, led by Nelyubov, and Grant was standing next to the other, holding a datapad.

 “Launch clearance for you, Midshipman,” he said.

 “How many are going across?”

 “Ten, in total, on the two shuttles.”

 Ruefully looking at the queue into the other shuttle’s airlock, Salazar replied, “I see. Ben, feel free to head over with the rest of them.”

 “No fear,” Bartlett said. “I always wanted to have my own personal shuttle. I’m going up in the world.”

 Barely managing to suppress a smile, he said, “Better get on board, then. I’d recommend a nice window seat.” He tapped his thumb-print down on the datapad, looked up to Grant, then said, “All set?”

 “I ran through preflight for you, logged a course into the navigation computer. You shouldn’t have a problem.”

 “Right. Thanks.” Stepping on board, he walked past a smiling Bartlett, sitting with his feet up on one of the chairs, looking out of the window, he made his way into the cockpit, sliding down into the pilot’s couch. Grant had done everything other than get in beside him, but at least he could enjoy the ride.

 “Shuttle Three to Alamo,” he said, strapping on a headset. “Requesting launch clearance.”

 “Clearance granted,” an unfamiliar voice replied from the bridge. “Launch when ready.”

 Throwing a pair of switches, he engaged the elevator airlock and the shuttle dropped down through the levels, emerging to float free in space, slowly moving away from the battlecruiser. He looked down at the planet below, the vast wilderness of desert with a few tenuous clouds struggling in the thin atmosphere, then beyond at the slowly rotating space station up ahead.

 “It might not be much, sir,” Bartlett said, “but it’ll be your first command.”

 “First and last, most likely,” he muttered under his breath. “Stand by for acceleration.” He threw a switch, and the autopilot fired the engines, a gentle kick to throw them out towards the station ahead. There was no point wasting fuel, not with a mission to the surface planned, and they had plenty of time.

 Glancing behind him, he saw a trio of suited figures moving out along one of Alamo’s radiators, towing a long sheet of replacement material behind them, ready to repair the damage sustained in the battle. He shook his head, sighing. He’d been right, and if he’d had his way, that damage would never have happened. Not that Captain Marshall wasn’t correct, the commanding officer had to have the final say, but it still frustrated him.

 For a second, he glanced back at Alamo, then something caught his eye on the sensor display, an object moving away, speeding away from the battlecruiser at increasing speed. Sliding his fingers across the screen, he saw a suited figure tumbling end over end, arms flailing around, gas leaking from its suit.

 “Alamo, this is Shuttle Three, breaking trajectory on rescue priority.”

 “Rescue?” Foster’s voice replied.

 “What’s happening?” Bartlett asked.

 “Get suited up, and watch for changing acceleration,” he replied. He turned the communications link to Alamo off, then disabled the navigation computer. There was no time for him to follow procedure, no time for him to program a new course. If suit gas was leaking that quickly, whoever had tumbled off the hull probably only had a few minutes left.

 “Firing thrusters,” he said, spinning the shuttle around, then firing the main engines in a series of quick pulses, slowing them down, bringing their orbit into alignment with that of the lost crewman.

 “Shuttle Three, this is Lieutenant Caine. What’s happening?”

 “Alamo, this is Shuttle Two,” Nelyubov’s voice replied. “Salazar’s going after one of Quinn’s gang, looks like someone’s tumbling.”

 “Shut up and let me concentrate,” he mumbled, his eyes locked on the sensor readouts, his fingers poised over the thruster controls. He fired quick bursts, slewing it around, trying to match the trajectory, heedless of the fuel he was spending. The navigation computer was protesting, updating its trajectory calculations to try and bring the shuttle in, but he tried to tune out the alarms. His universe consisted of one readout, nine buttons, and a lost crewman heading out into the night.

 “I’m ready, Pavel,” Bartlett said.

 “Get into the airlock, and lock your safety line on. We’re getting close.”

 “He’s doing what Orlova did,” Nelyubov’s voice said, soft as though it was a billion miles distant. “And with the same risk. Look, he’s getting close to below escape velocity.”

 “Salazar, watch yourself,” a voice said.

 One more long burst, and the shuttle moved into position beside the figure, its struggling ceasing as the air inside began to drop. Gently, the two dots on the sensor display merged into one, and he turned back to nod to Bartlett.

 “Get moving. Nice and simple.”

 “Just the way I like it, sir,” he replied, stepping out through the outer door. Salazar tracked him on the external feeds, watching him cradle the crewman in his arms, the two of them heading back inside. He glanced down at his readouts, realizing that Nelyubov was right, and wiped the original course from the computer. They needed to gain speed, and quickly.

 “I’m in!” Bartlett said.

 “Stand by for a burn,” Salazar replied, and he fired the engines at full power, watching the shuttle’s velocity rise as the estimated perigee crested up over the planet again, bringing him back into a high orbit. Cutting the power, he recalled Grant’s programming, locked the autopilot back on, and breathed a sigh of relief as the ship moved back onto its old trajectory.

 “Shuttle Three to Alamo, do you read?”

 “At last,” Cunningham said. “Sorry if we distracted you earlier.”

 “You heard that?” he replied, his cheeks turning red.

 “I think we can forgive you that very minor transgression. Nice bit of work, Pavel. Good flying. I couldn’t have done better myself.”

 “Likewise, Midshipman,” Nelyubov said. “Good work. I’ll see you on the station. Or do you need to head back to Alamo?”

 Looking at his fuel readouts, Salazar said, “I'm better making for Yeager unless our new passenger needs medical attention. Wait one while I take a look. Right now I don’t even know who I rescued.”

 Behind him, he heard a series of violent coughs, and he threw off his restraints, stepping back to see Bartlett beginning to tug the helmet clear of the suited figure on the deck.

 “Spaceman Grogan,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

 She looked up, eyes struggling to focus, and replied, “They sent you to rescue me?”

 “Not a bit of it,” Bartlett said. “No-one had to tell him to come get you. He saw you and we went swooping down like a bird.”

 “How do you feel?” Salazar asked.

 “A bit dizzy, but I think I’m fine. Better with some decent atmosphere to play with.” She shook her head, then said, “I got caught up in a bit of wreckage out at the end of the radiator. I’ve got to warn the others.”

 Bartlett tossed her a headset, and said, “I’ll get you Quinn.”

 “Thanks, Ben.” She looked up at Salazar, then said, “Thank you, as well.”

 “I made a promise that I wouldn’t sit back and watch while anyone on my crew was under threat, and I meant it. I’d have done the same for anyone.” He smiled, then added, “You’re welcome.”

 “Thanks. I think.”

 “I’ve got him,” Bartlett said. “He seems very anxious to speak to you, Kate, but he wants you first, sir.”

 “Me?” Salazar asked.

 “On the front console.”

 “Sure,” he said, frowning, donning his headset again. “Salazar here, sir.”

 “Quinn here. I’ve already suspended work on the radiators, and I thought you should know that I don’t intend to reinstate them until all the wreckage is clear. I’ll speak to Grogan, but she can rest easy.”

 “I’ll pass that on, sir.”

 “Good. And something else; I don’t intend to double-check any of your work again. Evidently you seem to be competent enough. Feel free to borrow Grogan for a while; I can spare her for the station. Consider that a reward.”

 “Thank you, sir.”

 “Quinn out.”

 “What was that all about?” Bartlett asked, as Grogan began to brief Quinn.

 “I’m not sure, Ben, but I think I might have just had a complement.”

 “You don't sound sure, sir.”

 With a thin smile, he replied, “Well, it's been a while.”

Chapter 11

 The ring of the station was becoming active again, the remnants of the recent battle being tidied away, technicians working to repair the damage to the airlock walls. Salazar stepped through the hatch, noting the glances in his direction, then turned back to the shuttle.

 “Ben, can you handle post-flight? I’d like to report in. And Grogan, there was a paramedic riding on Shuttle Two. Go get yourself checked over, just in case.”

 “Feel fine, sir.” 

 “Consider it an order, not a request.” He paused, then said, “It’ll make me feel better. Then get yourself something to eat before you start work. All this mess can wait for half an hour.”

 “You get going, sir,” Bartlett said. “I’ll handle things back here.”

 Walking down the entrance passage, he looked at the remains of the battle. A junior technician, a Recruit Spaceman, had drawn the job of cleaning off the bloodstains from the wall, but he stared for a moment at a patch he hadn’t yet reached. People fought here, died here. And now he was passing through as though it was just another new posting. Strange.

 Orlova and Nelyubov were heading in his direction, smiles on their faces having shared a private joke, breaking away as they noticed him coming towards them.

 “Welcome aboard, Midshipman,” Orlova said. “Good bit of flying out there, I was monitoring it from Operations.”

 “Thank you, ma’am. Has the sensor malfunction been corrected as well?”

 Frowning, she asked, “What sensor malfunction?”

 “Alamo should have picked up what happened to Grogan instantly. I’m concerned that no-one spotted it. I know she didn’t have a chance to activate her emergency beacon, but there must be something wrong with the data feeds as well.” Left unspoken was his suspicion that there was nothing wrong with the equipment, just the operator.

 Nodding, she said, “I’ll get that checked up right now.” With a smile, she added, “The Captain’s having an argument with Quinn over getting crews back out on the radiators again, last time I spoke to them. I’m sure they’ll both be grateful for something to change the subject.” Turning to Nelyubov, she said, “Brief him, Frank.”

 “Will do,” he replied, gesturing to an empty room, someone’s cabin. “Seems like as good a place as any.”

 They stepped through the door, and Salazar looked around at the decoration. Someone had lived here for a long while. Half a dozen uniforms hung on a rail in the corner, next to a couple of garish shirts, a picture of a woman and two children was framed in bamboo over the workstation on the wall, bits and pieces of precious junk scattered everywhere.

 “Did the owner…”

 “Down on the surface, as best we know. Maggie’s got a team going through the quarters of the known-deceased already, getting everything shipped back to Alamo so that we can return it to their families.”

 “And the station?”

 He passed over a datapad, saying, “Full report on there, but Petty Officer Cook can give you a more detailed briefing. I think she’s down at life support right now, setting up the secondary monitors.”

 Nodding, Salazar said, “I understand an expedition is heading down to the surface in a couple of hours, a rescue mission.”

 “Cunningham briefed you,” Nelyubov replied. “Well, yes, that is so.”

 “Which shuttles are going?”

 “One and Two, I think.” 

 “Request permission to pilot Shuttle One, sir.”

 “Denied.”

 “May I ask why?” 

 “We already have two pilots for the mission. Your zeal is appreciated, but not necessary. Your place is here.”

 Looking down at the deck, Salazar took a deep breath, then said, “May I speak freely?”

 “Yes.”

 “My place is flying that shuttle, sir. I’m a Midshipman. This is the sort of thing that I’m supposed to do. Your place, on the other hand, is up here on the station, fulfilling the role that you have been ordered to undertake. I understand that you have been given permission to disregard those orders, but you shouldn’t.”

 “You presume to tell me my duty?”

 “I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t.”

 A smile cracked across Nelyubov’s face, and he said, “I have a lot more experience than you…”

 “Which is precisely why you should remain in command up here on the station, instead of serving as Senior Lieutenant Orlova’s deputy. I presume Lieutenant Carpenter is going down as well?”

 “You are unusually perceptive for a rookie, I’ll give you that.”

 “I had a chance on the flight out here to go over the unclassified portions of your personnel records, sir. The three of you have worked together in similar situations in the past, and it only makes sense that you would seek to do so again.”

 “I’m glad we agree.”

 “We don’t, sir. I’m sorry to continually disagree with you, but it doesn’t make any sense for you to be flying that shuttle. With respect, my pilot rating is higher than yours.”

 “You flunked fighter training.”

 “Not for lack of skill, sir.”

 “No. Judgment.”

 “So the court-martial said, sir, yes. Though if I may say, sir, that really doesn’t seem germane to this conversation.”

 Shaking his head, Nelyubov replied, “You have a talent for getting on people’s nerves, kid. Has anyone ever told you that before?”

 “Frequently, sir.”

 That elicited another smile, and he said, “Maggie and I have been on a lot of missions together. We know each other well, know each other’s responses, how we will act under critical situations. Such knowledge is extremely valuable in a combat environment. I don’t doubt Lieutenant Carpenter’s abilities, but her specialty is of limited use down there.”

 “Then…”

 “No, I’m not leaving her up here and having you take her place. Her rank is essentially honorary, though in my opinion she has earned it. I’d rate you as better qualified to command this station than her. What are you worrying about, anyway?”

 “Sir?”

 “This has nothing to do with me, Midshipman, and I don’t think this is you wanting some sort of glorious adventure either. You don’t strike me as the type.” He looked at him, eyes boring into his, and said, “You don’t feel competent to command this station. Am I right?”

 “I’m a recently…”

 “Am I right?” he pressed.

 “Yes, sir. I have every reason to doubt my abilities in an independent command situation, and based on my record, so should you.”

 “Strange. You’re quick enough to tell senior officers what they should do, but you aren’t willing to take that big step yourself. I’d have thought you would be raring at the bit to get your first command assignment.”

 “The man I was a year ago would have been. Not any more.”

 “What you went through would change anyone. Want some advice?”

 “Yes, sir. Always.”

 “Use it. Don’t let it dominate your life.” He gestured around the room, and said, “Not much, is it? A small, tumbling station with less than a dozen people on it, but it will be yours in about an hour, and I’m not going to let you argue me out that decision.” Pausing, he added, “If it helps, I understand that Maggie has already filed the paperwork for you to get a commendation for what you did outside.”

 “All I did was my duty, sir.”

 “True, but you reacted extremely quickly. I loved the part where you told everyone else to shut up and let you think.”

 His face reddening, Salazar said, “I didn’t know the channel was still open, sir.”

 “You were right to do so. We were back-seat driving, and it evidently wasn’t necessary. You knew what you were doing, and there wasn’t much we could do to influence the situation. No-one else was in range to pull Grogan back.”

 “I just did what had to be done.”

 “You did it, though. Another man might have frozen, waited for instructions. Waited too long.” Nodding, he said, “I have confidence in you, Midshipman, and so do a few others. Don’t let us down.”

 “I’ll do my best,” he replied. “Can I ask a question, though? A personal one?”

 “I won’t guarantee an answer, but feel free to ask.”

 “Does she know?”

 “Who?”

 “Senior Lieutenant Orlova? Does she know how you feel about her?”

 He frowned, shook his head, and said, “Let me tell you about Margaret Orlova. She took a ship full of out-to-pasture officers, myself included, one that was falling to pieces, surrounded by hostile vessels deep in enemy territory, and not only did she proceed to capture a Cabal space station and discover the first Neander world, she managed to swing around and attack a full enemy task force, saving Alamo and everyone on board. She did that as a Sub-Lieutenant.”

 “I saw the movie.”

 Shaking his head, he said. “That doesn’t tell the half of it. She’s the best commanding officer I’ve ever had, and I am privileged to call her a friend, as well. In a few years from now, she’s going to have a ship of her own, likely wearing Lieutenant-Captain’s insignia, and I’m going to be on that ship whatever it takes.”

 “With all due respect, sir, you don’t convince me for a minute.”

 “I’m not here to convince you of anything, Midshipman.”

 “No, sir, of course not,” he replied, shaking his head. “I just remember Wolverton.”

 “Who?”

 “He was one of the people who died, that day. He’d spent the last three months trying to decide if he was going to ask his girlfriend to marry him.”

 “And he was going to do it when he landed?”

 “No, sir, this isn’t a cheap romantic holomovie. It’s worse than that. He still hadn’t decided. Oh, he was going to do it, but there was the perfect time, perfect place, and he didn’t have the chance.” Looking down at the deck, he said, “I told her. After the court-martial. I felt she had a right to know how he felt about her. I’ve never heard from her since then, and I still don’t know if I made the right decision. Perhaps that ghost should have stayed buried.”

 “I think you made the right call,” Nelyubov said, placing his hand on Salazar’s shoulder. “I think it’s what Wolverton would have wanted.”

 Nodding, he replied, “That’s why I did it in the end. I didn’t think there was going to be another chance, I expected to be out of uniform the next day.”

 “You took the time to do that in between judgment and sentence during your court-martial?”

 “I had to do something, sir.”

 “It still speaks well for you that you did. I presume that you are attempting to bury a moral in this story.”

 “Something like that, sir. Look, I won’t presume to tell you how to run your own private life…”

 “Little late in the day for that, isn’t it.”

 “...but I can only tell you what I see.”

 Nodding, Nelyubov said, “You’d better get up to Operations, take over officially. I’ve got to start preparations for the rescue operation.”

 “Aye, sir,” Salazar said, making to leave.

 “And Midshipman?”

 “Yes, sir?”

 “It is not impossible that both my statements and yours in this matter are perfectly true. One day, this will happen to you, one way or another. You’ll find someone that you are content to serve under, or you will find that there are people willing, even eager, to serve under you. I don’t know which.” He paused, then said, “Perhaps I do.”

 “Sir?”

 “Nothing, son. Go take command, and there’s one more thing.”

 “What is that, sir?”

 “I know how you’ll feel. Hopefully, the next twenty-four hours will go by uneventfully, and someone will come over to take the load off your shoulders again, maybe even me, but there’s a hostile ship hiding behind the planet, and anything could happen.”

 “I appreciate that, sir.”

 “You’ll doubt yourself, your abilities, your skills, your instincts. When that happens, remember this. Don’t think about what Captain Marshall would do, or Orlova, or for that matter me. All that matters at the end of the day is what Midshipman Pavel Salazar would do. I’d say he’s worth listening to.”

 “Thank you, sir. I’ll remember that.”

 “Good. Now run along.”

 “Aye, sir,” he said, snapping a salute before leaving the room.

Chapter 12

 Orlova looked back at the station corridor, then down at the datapad again for one last look at the mission plan. Not that she should need to read it, she’d written it only a few hours ago, but she wanted to make sure that every detail was correct, that she’d prepared for every contingency. Nelyubov walked up, a smile on his face.

 “You spent a while with Salazar,” she said. “No problems?”

 “No, the kid just wanted a bit of reassurance, I think. Everything fine at this end?”

 “The shuttles are ready to go, preflights completed, and our fighter escort is standing by.”

 “So are our friends on the far side, I suspect,” he replied. “Shall we get on with it?”

 “I think it’s about time. I’ll see you on the ground. Good luck.”

 “You too. Be careful.”

 Climbing through the side hatch, she almost crashed into Carpenter, stowing a pair of crates into the rear section.

 “Almost done,” she said.

 “Dare I ask?”

 “I thought we’d better take some precautions, in case we couldn’t get back up again. A hundred and eighty man/days of emergency rations, as well as some medical supplies as well.”

 Tapping the top box, Orlova read, “Surveying equipment?”

 “You never know what we’ll get a chance to do. Look, we can always just cache it on the deck. We’ll want it at some point, and we might as well take it down now. It won’t affect our flight performance, I made sure to check the center of gravity.”

 “More to the point, are our guns ready?”

 “According to the manual, they’re charging nicely.”

 “According to the manual?” Orlova asked, and Carpenter replied with a shrug.

 “I’ve never done it before. Relax, Maggie. How hard can it be?”

 “Hard enough to rip a hole in the side of the hull if you got it wrong,” she said with a smile. “Never mind. I’m sure it will all work out in the end.”

 “I hope so,” Carpenter said, moving up to the cockpit, dropping into the co-pilot’s seat. Orlova sat beside her, flicking switches, looking down at the desolate planet below. Not somewhere she’d want to be marooned, not even for hours. The prospect of spending a month down there didn’t appeal.

 “Weather check?”

 “Some dust storms, but they’re quite a long way from our trajectory. Alamo’s keeping an eye on them for us. I wish I’d picked a meteorologist for the science team, though.”

 “All experience for next time,” Orlova replied. “Alamo, this is Shuttle One, ready to begin our descent.”

 “Shuttle Two, I’m ready.”

 “Demon Flight is go,” Grant’s voice said.

 “This is Captain Marshall,” another voice said, breaking into the channel. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks. Good luck, and you all have clearance to launch.”

 “Roger, Alamo, and thank you,” Orlova replied. “Launching now.”

 The shuttle dropped away from the station, the rotation tossing them free, and she turned the ship around into the deceleration track, the navigation computer doing its work. Behind them, the other shuttle was following suit, the two ships linked together, and with a roar, the engines fired, slowing them down to drop out of orbit.

 “Burn successful.”

 “Demon Flight is launching,” Grant said. “See you down there.”

 The station was soon left far behind as the shuttle curved down towards the planet, filling the viewscreen as the engines hurled them into the descent trajectory. Orlova looked across at her status panel, checking on the progress of her sister ship, and nodded. Everything seemed to be going fine for the moment, but it couldn’t last for long.

 “Threat warning!” Caine’s voice yelled from Alamo, loud enough that she almost didn’t need the communicator. “We’ve got enemy targets incoming from the enemy ship, three of them, heading in low over the planet, backed up by two of those laser missiles.”

 Glancing across at Carpenter, she said, “Worry about those, Alamo. We can handle the fighters.” She tapped a series of controls, then continued, “I had a feeling this might happen. We can spend more time in the atmosphere, burn more quickly. I think the heat shield can take it.”

 “I’m not worried about the heat shields,” Nelyubov said. “That's going to cost us a hell of a lot of fuel, though.”

 “Let’s get down on the deck first,” Orlova said. “Details later.”

 “I didn’t know fuel was a detail,” Carpenter said. “I’ll get on the physical countermeasures. Looks like we’re going to need them.”

 “Don’t worry, Shuttle One, we’ve got your back!” Tanner’s voice boomed. “Burning now.”

 With an effort, Orlova looked down at her board, focusing on her own ship. A battle was going to be taking place above her, Alamo’s fighters trying to block those of the enemy, and no matter how she calculated it, three against two suggested that one of them would get through. Something to worry about. Later.

 Resting her hands on the controls, she watched the monitors as the ship spun around again, sliding into the atmosphere heat shield first. If she’d tried this on a bigger world, they’d be nothing but a fireball, and even now, licks of flame were beginning to seep around the sides of the shield. As it was, she was more concerned that she’d be able to shed her speed in time for the landing.

 “Damn!” Tanner’s voice cried. “Scratch Demon One, but Grant got out. Request SAR shuttle in the air.”

 “Already in the works,” Marshall replied.

 The shuttle was buffeting up and down, alarming creaks coming from the hull plating. Carpenter’s face was locked on her panel, but her knuckles were gripping the armrests of her chair, white as a ghost.

 “Keep it together, Susan,” she said.

 “As long as this ship stays together.”

 “Crap, crap, crap!” Tanner’s voice yelled. “I’m out!”

 “Report!” Marshall barked.

 “Had to bail out, boss. Last-minute collision with my target. I got a hit on the other one with my first missile, though.”

 “Alamo, this is Shuttle One,” Orlova said. “Tell me the news.”

 “One fighter, damaged, on its way down to you. It’s going to have a short firing window before you can get below safe altitude.”

 “Let’s see if we can do something about that,” she replied, looking at the hull temperature reading. It was dropping nicely, so she had a little room for maneuver. “Frank, you up for a bit of fancy flying?”

 “Sounds like fun,” he replied.

 “Right. Do what I do.” Turning off the autopilot, she flashed up the planned trajectory on her screen to use as a guide later, then pointed the nose down towards the deck, ramping the engines up to full power.

 “Maggie, what the hell?” Marshall asked.

 “Got to shed altitude quickly. These birds aren’t up to much in a fight, and the best way to dodge a missile is not to be where it is. We should be able to pull out.”

 “Should?”

 “I think.”

 The altimeter started to spin around as alarms sounded throughout the cockpit, Carpenter slamming override switches to turn them off while Orlova focused on her flying. They’d broken through the few, high clouds, and a rolling brown landscape unfolded beneath them, craters, mountain ranges, open deserts, and a few faint patches of softer, marshier ground, where a little water lingered in this drying world.

 Up above, she could see the enemy fighter diving after them. If it went below thirty thousand feet, there’d be no way back for it, but she couldn’t expect that to stop her pursuing foe.

 “There must be something down there,” Carpenter said. “Something important. It isn’t the station or the strategic location of the system.”

 “Tactical analysis later, Susan,” Orlova replied, sweat dripping from her forehead. Another light snapped on, the shuttles now dropping below safe altitude, but now came the difficult part as she struggled to pull the nose up, the stubby wing surfaces of the shuttle giving her at least a little help, something to use, the atmosphere contributing more and more as it got thicker.

 “Come on, come on,” she muttered, glancing across at the monitor. Nelyubov was having the same trouble, and the rocks below looked to be getting closer and closer, the surface appearing in greater detail through the faint haze, dust roaring up as they approached. Less than ten thousand feet to go, and even she had to admit that the computer had something to worry about.

 Just as she finally managed to pull the nose up, she saw something shining on the surface, a dull blue glimmer that was gone as soon as she noticed it. She spared a quick second to glance across at the sensor display, but it showed nothing.

 “Did you see that?” she asked. 

 “Nine thousand feet and dropping,” Carpenter replied.

 “No, on the surface. The light.”

 “Didn’t see a thing. Eight thousand, five hundred.”

 “Damn.” Putting what she had seen to the back of her mind, she pulled up, firing the nose thrusters to kick the shuttle up, riding the throttle, as the rate of descent slowly slowed, finally leveling off at six thousand feet, lower than some of the mountains, but safe for the present.

 “Frank, what’s the story?” she said, glancing back.

 “Coming up,” he said. “Did you see that on the surface?”

 “At least it wasn’t just me.”

 “Leveling off at seven thousand feet.”

 “Better than I managed. I’m pulling up.”

 “Maggie,” Carpenter said, “We’re five hundred miles from target, just about.”

 Glancing back at the sensor display, she said, “And that fighter is holding above us.” She paused, then said, “Damn it.”

 “What?”

 “He isn’t going to attack us, he’s going to report where we land.” Tapping a control, she said, “Orlova to Alamo.”

 “Recommend you pull up, Shuttle,” Marshall said.

 “Never mind about that. That fighter, up overhead, can you do anything about it?”

 “That’s a negative.”

 “I think they’re using it for recon, to work out where we land. Are you sure you can’t knock it down?”

 “Our missiles won’t work at that altitude.”

 “Only one chance, then. Frank, continue to target, and I’ll meet you on the ground.”

 “Are you about to do something crazy?”

 “How well you know me. Shuttle One out.” Glancing across at Carpenter, she asked, “Up for some dogfighting?”

 “I’m no expert, but usually aren’t armaments considered a good idea?”

 “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something. Keep an eye on the fuel.” She pulled up the shuttle’s nose, swinging around to line up on the enemy fighter, turning the protesting engines back up to full.

 “We’re heading the wrong way,” Carpenter said. “Five hundred and twenty miles, increasing.”

 “Just ride that fuel gauge.”

 The shuttle soared above fifteen thousand feet, and she could just make out the fighter ahead, a black dot moving across a scattered cloud, curving away. At any time, the enemy ship could end this by pulling up out of the atmosphere, but it would leave itself open to a missile salvo from Alamo. He had no choice but to stay and fight.

 “Threat warning!” Carpenter said. “Missile launch, coming right for us.”

 “Ride those countermeasures, Susan.”

 “Impact in one minute. Firing flares.” She paused, then said, “No effect. No point trying the electronic defenses, they won’t do a damn thing.”

 “As long as it’s locked onto us,” she said, pushing the engines across the red line, warning text racing down her heads-up display, far-off engineers protesting by remote about the misuse of the equipment they had designed. The missile swung around, following the shuttle up through the atmosphere as she closed on the fighter, the enemy ship belatedly attempting evasive action as Orlova set the controls for a ram.

 “On my mark, Susan, start throwing out the chaff.”

 “Ready,” she replied.

 Collision alerts joined the host of other warning signals covering the display panels, time to impact dropping to seconds. She took a series of quick breaths, trying to relax, to let the systems do the work for her. She couldn’t break too late, or all of this would be wasted.

 “Now!” she yelled, turning the engines off, sending the shuttle curving back. The missile flew into the sea of chaff, and when it emerged, the only object in its path was the fighter. She didn’t manage a direct hit, hadn’t expected to, but the shrapnel damage was easily apparent, the fighter’s hull pitted and burned, smoke spilling out in a long trail as it headed down towards the surface.

 “Fuel warning light just came on,” Carpenter said. “I don’t think we can make it back into orbit as it stands.”

 “Something else to worry about later,” she said. “Frank, how are you getting on?”

 “Close to target, Maggie,” he said. “About three hundred miles west of you. These birds can really move. Can you get to me?”

 “I’ll going to try,” she replied, swinging the shuttle around, kicking the engines onto the lowest power she could manage. There was nowhere near enough atmosphere for her to glide in, but there was enough to help conserve a little power. One by one, warning lights faded away, the computer displaying a series of alternate landing sites beneath her. There was little danger of a crash, she’d have enough warning to bring the shuttle down without that being a hazard, but she’d come here to do a job, and one way or another, she was going to do it.

 “Susan, we’re coming down by where Frank and I saw the light earlier. Little cluster of hills, all close together. Keep an eye out when we go past.”

 The shuttle raced by at a thousand miles an hour, slowly descending towards the surface, and Orlova’s attention was elsewhere, nursing the shuttle to its destination, and Carpenter looked across in surprise as they flew over the hills.

 “I saw something. Managed to get a good focus on the sensors, as well. I’m sending it up to Alamo to take a proper look.” Glancing up again, she said, “Getting deep into the reserves, Maggie.”

 “Twelve minutes and we’ll be on the deck.”

 “Then what happens?”

 “Then we work out a way to get back up to the surface. We might be able to get enough fuel from Shuttle Two.”

 Glancing at the telemetry, Carpenter shook her head, saying, “He’s going to have enough trouble getting back into orbit himself.”

 “We’ll think of something. Start looking for signs of life on the surface. We’re going to be able to cover a hell of a lot more country from up here than we will once we’re down on the ground.”

 “What are we looking for?”

 “At this point, a fuel dump would be nice,” Orlova said. She ranged over the landscape as the browns turned dark, taking them over one of the marshy areas, looking for any signs of life, or even signs of a crash. Glancing at the sensors, she saw that the fighter had come to a sad end about a hundred miles back, slamming into one of the mountains as it tried to land. At least they were alone up here now.

 “I’m touching down, Maggie,” Nelyubov said. “Just on final sequence now. How are things with you?”

 “Three minutes, and I ought to make it. What’s your fuel status?”

 “Just enough to get into orbit as long as everyone on board goes on a diet. You?” 

 “Less good. We should just make it down.” She paused, then said, “You’ve seen my telemetry.”

 “That’s it. Down.” He took a breath, then said, “I was hoping it was wrong. You’d better transfer over to my shuttle. We’ll head back up, and try again.”

 “Not an option. You may have noticed that we just lost our fighter screen. This is our one chance to find the survivors.”

 “Done it! Maggie, can you swing her around a little?” Carpenter said. “A few degrees to port, I see what looks like a crash site. Maybe two or three miles from Nelyubov’s landing spot.”

 “We can come to you,” he said, listening in.

 Shaking her head, Orlova replied, “We’ve already complicated this enough. I’m getting close now, Frank. I think I can come down alongside.”

 “Why not come closer?”

 “Let’s just say I’m getting a little suspicious in my old age.”

 Carpenter looked across, frowning, and said, “Doesn’t much matter. Final warning light’s on, Maggie. We need to land right away.”

 “I see Shuttle Two,” she said, gesturing ahead. “Thirty seconds to landing.” She played the thrusters around, kicking up clouds of dust that filled the air, and guided the ship gently down, one step at a time, keeping a single eye on the fuel gauge.

 “Almost there, Maggie,” Carpenter said. “Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten. Down.”

 “Engine off, legs anchored.” She took a deep breath, then said, “Well, that’s that. Alamo, this is Shuttle One. We’re down on the deck, but we’ve got a problem.” Nothing but static replied, and she repeated, “Alamo, this is Shuttle One. Come in, please.”

 “Alamo, this is Shuttle Two,” Nelyubov said. “Do you copy.”

 “I guess we’ve got two problems,” Orlova said. “No problem with the communicator.”

 “Someone’s jamming us,” Carpenter said. “We’re not alone down here.”

 “Get your gun,” Orlova replied. “We’ve got some survivors to rescue. We’ll worry about the next bridge when we reach it. Let’s move.”

Chapter 13

 Marshall looked up from the datapad sitting on his desk, Quinn, Cunningham and Grant standing around his office, impassively waiting for him to speak. He scanned the last few lines of the report again, then pushed it to one side, leaning back on his chair.

 “First of all, Lieutenant. You and Tanner were wiped out quite comprehensively.”

 “Yes, sir. They moved a lot faster than we were expecting, and their missiles were resistant to our countermeasures. I don’t see how anyone could have done better under the conditions we were under.”

 “Bull,” Cunningham said. “We had the same situation at Haven. You were slow, Lieutenant, and that came damn close to wrecking the operation.”

 “You weren’t out there, sir.”

 “I was watching every move from the bridge. Hell, Tanner doesn’t even agree with you! The first thing he did when he climbed out of that SAR shuttle was start swearing about how slow he was.” Looking at Marshall, he said, “It’s a bit of a moot point, of course, given that we’ve lost our fighters.”

 “What about the shuttles?” Marshall said, looking at Quinn. “Any communications at all?”

 “Nothing,” Quinn replied. “Everything went dead when the shuttles dropped below fifteen thousand feet. No voice contact, no telemetry, nothing. We’re working on it, but frankly we don’t even know where to start. We need a probe network, to try some experiments, but as things stand I don’t see how we can deploy them without the enemy interfering.”

 “Next question. Is this the work of our friends on the far side?”

 “I doubt it,” Cunningham said.

 Nodding, Marshall replied, “I agree.”

 “Wait a minute,” Grant interrupted. “This plays to their advantage a bit too much for us to just write it off, surely.”

 “I suppose it is possible that they knew about the effect,” Quinn said. “Though then why risk a fighter strike at all? They’d know that we weren’t going to get any information from the surface, and the shuttles will be a lot more vulnerable when they come back up.” Looking at Grant, he continued, “Certainly, they will be now.”

 “This isn’t my fault, damn it!”

 “Lieutenant!” Marshall said. “If you can’t contribute anything to this discussion, then leave the room.”

 The door slid open, and Harper walked in, a frown on her face, almost walking into Grant on his way out.

 “Get out of my way,” Grant said, and she took a neat step to the side as he stormed onto the bridge.”

 “What the hell is his problem?” she said. “Morning, skipper.”

 “Harper, this is a briefing for the senior staff,” Cunningham began, but she walked past him, dropping a datapad onto the table.

 “Summary of the alien computer programming.”

 “Can you crack it?” Marshall asked.

 “Not now. But eventually, I might, given enough processing power. The quantum computer on Phobos would do nicely.” Looking around, she said, “I didn’t even really try. No point wasting time. I did manage to work out a few interesting things, though. First of all, they’re paranoid about security. I found what have to be firewalls and redundancies.”

 “Which means they think that we might be able to hack their systems,” Marshall said. “Interesting.”

 “Their language is a derivative of our old friend, Proto-Indo-European. At least it shares some of the same assumptions. I guess that gives us a common ancestry, just like Carpenter figured.”

 “They’ve got an enemy,” Marshall said. “Someone who knows them better than we do. The Cabal?”

 “No, no, there’s more to it than that,” Harper replied. “Our network is built to work together, that’s the whole damn point of it. This one isn’t, it’s as if they are paranoid about letting the system talk to itself. Plenty of exterior feeds, thousands of them, but all going to different locations.”

 “We have a redundant network for emergencies,” Cunningham said. “And some of the key systems are isolated from the rest of the ship.” 

 “Yes, but this is if we’d decided to separate, say, Elevator Control from Waste Processing. What’s the point? There’s something more to this, skipper, and I want to know what.”

 “So, how long?” he asked with a smile.

 “Without more processing power…”

 “You’ve told me it’s impossible,” Marshall replied. “So, how long?”

 Glancing up at Quinn, she said, “I’ll be making some pretty damned intensive use of our systems.”

 “I think we can get around that,” Quinn replied. “We’ll have a talk when this meeting’s finished, try and work out some sort of a schedule.”

 “Fair enough. No promises, skipper, but this might be fun. I’ll need to borrow some of Carpenter’s science staff, her tame linguist for a start.”

 “Take anyone you need who isn’t vital to our combat status.”

 “Which pretty much means the science staff and our erstwhile fighter pilots,” Cunningham added.

 “Douglas will be fine,” Harper said. “What about Maggie?”

 “Shuttle Two, we estimate, should have enough fuel to get back to orbit with a full load. Not necessarily to Alamo, but we can always meet them halfway,” Quinn said. “Shuttle One did a hell of a lot more maneuvering in the atmosphere before landing. Not in the mission profile. My guess is that she’s on fumes.”

 “Projections?”

 “She might manage a few hundred miles surface-to-surface, but there isn’t a chance in hell of her reaching space.”

 “On a suborbital track?” Cunningham suggested. “It’d be tricky, but I think we could manage an intercept with Shuttle Three, either transfer the crew or boost the whole lot into a stable orbit.”

 “Not into space at all,” Quinn said. “I’m surprised she managed to get down on the deck in one piece, but it was definitely a controlled landing. She brought Shuttle One down within a hundred meters of the target site.”

 “Is there any way we can contact them?” Marshall asked. “There must be something.”

 “Not using our communicators. We tried lasers, but the atmosphere’s just too damn thick. Besides, even if we could talk to them, that doesn’t solve the essential problem.”

 “I don’t get it,” Harper said. “Can’t they all just pile into Shuttle Two and head back up? Try again?”

 “We had enough trouble getting them down on the deck last time,” Cunningham said, shaking his head. “This time we’d be doing it without fighter support.”

 “Not that it helped us much the first time around,” Quinn said. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

 Marshall thought, at least for a second, that a flash of the old Quinn was back, a faint trace of engagement, something outside of the routine that he could get his teeth into.

 “What have you in mind?” he asked.

 “I think I could adapt half a dozen of our missiles for high-altitude flight. It’d do serious damage to their performance, and they’d have a limited range, but it could be done reasonably quickly.”

 “Timeframe?”

 “Six hours.”

 “Frank might try and lift before then,” Cunningham said.

 “I don’t think so,” Marshall replied, shaking his head. “They’ll wait for orders, and start to look for survivors, continue the mission as planned.” With a frown, he said, “Say, if the range is so short, how do you intend to deliver them?”

 “From Alamo,” Quinn replied. “Flying just outside the atmosphere on a low orbit. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble pulling it off. I’d like to take the helm for the maneuver, though.”

 “Is that really necessary?” Cunningham asked, but Marshall flashed him a glance.

 “I think so, sir. For the best, in any case.”

 “I’ll leave it to your judgment., Jack. That’s not the only problem, though. Right now we have a dead bird on the surface, and the likelihood that we have a lot of people to bring up.”

 “I was assuming that we’d send down Shuttle Three.”

 “That would mean abandoning one of our ships on the surface,” Quinn said.

 “We could load it up with extra fuel, put it into tanker configuration. That wouldn’t take long,” Cunningham said.

 “The fuel transfer would take an hour, at least,” Quinn replied.

 Nodding, Marshall said, “That’s too long for us to be out of our orbital position. The station would be defenseless without us to protect it, at least for the moment, and I don’t like the idea of stranding the crew up there with no way to get out.”

 “Pull them out, then?” Cunningham suggested.

 “That would slow down our operations over there by hours,” Quinn said. “They’ve barely got started as it is.”

 “Then we leave them on the station, but in a position where they can evacuate if they have to. Which means we can’t use Shuttle Three for the operation. I don’t like risking another pilot in any case, not unless we can get some sort of solid idea of what’s happening down there.”

 “Damn it, one probe lander would give us what we needed,” Quinn said. He paused, his eyes lit up, and he said, “That’s the answer.”

 “What?”

 “A lander. All we need is a fuel tank, and we’ve got plenty of them in stock. Fit some parachutes, retro-rockets and a heat shield. Flying it from Alamo, I don’t think we’d have any problem getting it within a mile of the shuttles, and they can get that far themselves.”

 “What about the data we need?”

 “Fit an upper stage, to return to orbit and broadcast its information when it gets above the jamming field, or whatever it is,” Quinn said, gesturing with his hands, warming to his topic. “We can launch six of the missiles to accompany it down, all the way. They’ll slam into the planet, and that will be the signal we can use to attract Maggie’s attention!”

 Nodding, Cunningham said, “We can attach a message as well, tell her when Alamo will be overhead to get them back off the planet. I think this is going to work, sir.”

 “How long to get the drop tank ready?”

 “Three hours, sir. I can do it at the same time as the missiles, no problem. And make enough missiles for both operations into the bargain.” He glanced at the door, and Marshall smiled.

 “Go get to work, Jack. Keep me informed. You too, Harper.”

 “Huh?” Harper said, looking up from her datapad. “Sorry, did I miss something?”

 “Dismissed, both of you.”

 “Sure,” she said, walking towards the door, her attention still focused on the device in her hands, Quinn steering her carefully out of the office. Cunningham perched on the edge of Marshall’s desk, shaking his head.

 “That was good to see.”

 “Jack Quinn always reacts well in a crisis. Let’s hope it shakes him out of his fugue.” A light on the desk glowed green, and Marshal tapped a button, “Captain here.”

 “Kibaki, sir. We’re getting a signal from the enemy spacecraft, bounced off the moon. For you, sir.”

 “I’m on my way.” Getting to his feet, Marshall walked out of his office, followed by Cunningham, and walked out onto the bridge. Kibaki rose from the command chair and walked over to his station, allowing Marshall to take his place. “Put him on.”

 The figure reappeared on the screen, and immediately said, “I call upon you once again to evacuate this system.”

 “This system has been claimed by the Triplanetary Confederation,” he replied. “If you have some reason for demanding this evacuation…”

 “This is our territory, not yours. We expect you…”

 “I would be happy to accept independent arbitration by a third party, and to accept this as an open system to both of our governments.” Leaning forward, he said, “Presuming that you accept responsibility for the unprovoked attack of Yeager Station.”

 “If we placed a station around Mars, you’d be quick enough to complain,” he replied. “You have no moral high ground.”

 Frowning, Marshall said, “You are aware that we have people on the surface.”

 “Intruders on our territory.”

 Taking a deep breath, he replied, “Let me make two things clear. Our ships are evenly matched, and I know that you agree with that assessment, else we would not be having this conversation. I will not, under any circumstances, leave any Triplanetary personnel behind when I leave this system.”

 A scowl crossed the other man’s face, and he said, “Recall your people. I will grant you half an hour’s grace.”

 “It will take far longer than that to evacuate the survivors. Why do you want us off that planet? Does it have some special significance to you?”

 “It belongs to us. We need no other reason.” The man glanced across at a console, then said, “Why do you want the planet?”

 With a thin smile, Marshall said, “It’s well positioned to defend our territory. If you have similar goals in mind, then it might still be possible to co-operate. Don’t rule that out yet.”

 “Blood has been spilled. So must it be.” The screen flicked out.

 “Transmission dead at the source, sir,” Austin, the new communications technician said. “Should I try to call them back?”

 “No point,” Marshal replied. “I think they’ve told us everything they are going to.”

 “Threat warning!” Fox, at the sensors, said. “Something coming around the curve of the planet, down low. Configuration similar to the laser missiles.”

 “Battle stations,” Marshall said. Cunningham slid into the vacant tactical station, throwing switches and bringing primary systems on-line. “Midshipman Vivendi, I want an intercept course with that object.” 

 “Best I can do is within five hundred miles, sir. I think it’s heading for the planet.”

 “Confirmed, sir.”

 “Danny, those laser missiles have megaton loads. If they wanted to knock over the table…,” Cunningham said, urgently.

 “Get me as close as you can. Kibaki, tell Quinn’s team on the hull that Alamo is maneuvering, and they should make for the station on their suit jets. Midshipman, nice and slow until we’re clear, then give it everything you’ve got.”

 “Firing thrusters,” Vivendi said. “Minimum power.”

 “Hull crews are on their way out, sir,” Kibaki said. “Mr. Quinn is less than amused. I think the general idea was ‘I told you so’.”

 Nodding, Marshall looked ahead at the course projection on the screen, watching as Alamo’s trajectory moved down towards that of the missile. The firing window was going to be extremely short, on the order of a few seconds. If they’d had the laser operational, it would have been very different.

 “I have a salvo in the tubes,” Cunningham said, as though reading his mind. “Firing in one hundred and ten seconds. It’s going to be marginal, though. It’ll be pretty close to the atmosphere by the time we get impacts.”

 “Is there any way we can warn our people on the ground?” Kibaki asked. “Any way at all?”

 “Even if we did, there isn’t anything they could do about it. Even if they had the shuttles ready to launch, they’d never clear the blast radius in time. What are your projections?”

 “Try a hundred megatons. That’s what we could put in a missile of that size. On that order, anyway. I suppose if they are better at miniaturization than we are, you might be able to double that.”

 “Enough to devastate an area a hundred miles across, render it untouchable for generations,” Marshall replied. “Damn.”

 “Moving to full acceleration,” Vivendi said. “Taking the spin off the ship.”

 Glancing across, Kibaki tapped a control, and said, “Bridge to crew. Stand by for variable gravity.”

 “Sorry, sir,” Vivendi said. “I guess I got carried away.”

 “Next time remember, Midshipman. People get injured that way. Try and keep focus.”

 Hands gripping the armrests on his chair, Marshall stared at the viewscreen, as though he could will Alamo to move faster, buy them a little more time in the firing window, anything to improve their chances. The door behind him opened, and Caine stepped out, taking a place behind Cunningham. No point switching seats now, not with only a few seconds left to go.

 “All missiles show ready, sir,” she said, looking over the controls.

 “Fire at will, Mr. Cunningham,” Marshall said, trying to maintain his cool, at least outwardly. Inwardly he was no different from the nervous midshipman at the helm.

 “Five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Fire.”

 Alamo rocked, and the missiles flew from the tubes, a new salvo immediately dropping into position as the fabricators hastened to build their replacements. Six tracks shot forward, moving towards the target. Just not quickly enough.

 “Pull us up, Midshipman, and return us to the station,” Marshall ordered. “There isn’t much more we can do at this point.”

 “All missiles running true, but I’m worried about the intercept. Going to be in the upper atmosphere. First impact in thirty-nine seconds.”

 “Sir, something strange,” Fox said. “Enemy trajectory changing. I’d say they’re going into a dive.”

 “Unless their hull material is a lot tougher than anything we’ve got, they’ll burn up. Even Orlova didn’t manage that steep a trajectory.”

 “Compensating with missile tracks. First impact now in twenty-two seconds, descending.”

 “Keep them going, John,” Marshall said.

 “New objects on the scope, sir,” Fox said. “Six spheres, emerging from the object. I’m picking up retro-rockets.”

 “Re-target the missiles!”

 “Too late,” Cunningham said. “Impact in five seconds.”

 Marshall watched as all six missiles slammed into position, their target dissolved into its component atoms, to be scattered across most of a continent. The spheres continued to descend, moving into a tight formation, before parachutes opened up.

 “They had the same idea,” Cunningham said. “They can’t be fuel dumps, though. Bombs?”

 “No,” Marshall said, shaking his head. “Why bother fitting retro-rockets and parachutes. Those are boots on the ground, John, and by the looks of it they’ll be coming in within fifty miles of Maggie and her team.” Still staring at the screen, he said, “Tell Quinn to expedite work. We’re running out of time, and down there, they don’t even know it.”

Chapter 14

 Nelyubov walked back to the shuttle, and Orlova’s radio began to crackle as he approached, a faint voice struggling to make itself heard over the roaring static.

 “...read me?” he said.

 “Just about, right down at Strength One. Getting better as you approach. Where are you now?”

 “About a hundred and ninety meters. Damn it, Maggie, this is going to make it next to impossible.”

 “Up above!” Carpenter’s voice yelled. “Look up, right up.”

 High in the sky, a bright light glowed, an expanding cloud that could only be low-yield nuclear weapons detonating in the upper atmosphere. Orlova glanced at Nelyubov, who shook his head.

 “Should we take cover?” he asked.

 “I’m not picking up any serious radiation, certainly nothing that will affect us in the shuttle or the suits. Not much chance of fallout either, the wind’s blowing well clear of us.”

 Orlova’s heads-up display tracked objects moving through the sky, the zoom leaping forward to make out a billowing parachute descending towards them, a small canister hanging underneath.

 “Susan…”

 “Got them. Six of them, with descent trajectories scattered in an area around sixty miles across. I’d say the nearest might be twenty, twenty-five miles away.”

 “Let’s get on with this, then. Garland, close out Shuttle Two and come with us. We might as well all head out together.” 

 “Shouldn’t we leave someone with the shuttles?” Carpenter asked.

 “What’s the point?” Nelyubov replied. “It isn’t as if we can go anywhere for the moment.”

 “Fuel status says that Shuttle Two should make orbit,” Garland replied.

 “We came here to do a job, and interference or no, lack of fuel or no, we’re going to do it,” Orlova said. “The crash site is less than two miles north of here. We can do that in twenty minutes in this gravity.”

 “Then what?” Garland asked.

 “Then we’ll worry about what happens next, Spaceman. First things first.” 

 After a moment, the airlocks of both shuttles opened, and Carpenter and Garland joined them outside, each weighed down with a pair of plasma guns. Orlova took hers, strapping the power pack around her waist, plugging it into her suit’s power and computer grid, and waited a second for it to register. A target appeared on her heads-up display, moving as she moved the barrel of the gun around.

 “Everyone ready?” she asked.

 “I hate these things,” Carpenter said.

 “Peace through superior firepower,” Nelyubov replied. “We’ve got six enemy contacts heading our way, and we still don’t know what’s waiting for us over the hill.”

 “Come on,” Orlova said. “Let’s move out. Carpenter, you and Garland take the rear. I’ll take point.” With a smile, she added, “No protests, Frank.”

 “Suits me,” he said. “Waste of time anyway.”

 The group trudged away from the shuttles, initially taking careful steps in the low gravity before settling into a steady bound that saw them rapidly moving over the terrain. The landscape looked bleaker on the ground than it had from orbit, a collection of browns and grays, broken by cracks, some of them meters across. On the horizon, tall, craggy mountains looming high, like the skeleton of some long-dead alien creature.

 “I know,” Nelyubov said, glancing across at her. “Eerie, isn’t it.”

 “I wouldn’t want to be stranded down here.”

 “Look,” he said, gesturing in the distance at a small object, coming down just on their side of the mountains. “Is that what I think it is?”

 “Maybe twenty, thirty miles away. Let’s hope we have an advantage in small-arms.”

 “Numbers would be nice, as well,” Garland said.

 They continued over a rise, looking down on half a dozen inflated pressure tents, a dozen more spacesuited figures, Triplanetary by the look of them, and about a hundred crates of various sizes. Someone was directing the construction of a barricade, facing in their direction, and Orlova ducked down below the ridge before the others could reach her.

 “Problem?” Nelyubov asked.

 “Say that was you over there, and a strange figure in a spacesuit came up?”

Nodding, he said, “Especially if they just got through fighting for their lives a few hours ago, with explosions and landing pods all around.”

 “They must have seen the shuttle land,” Carpenter said.

 “Certainly, but they won’t know whose shuttle it was, and we have no means of contacting them.” Looking down, she said, “I’m going down there.”

 “And if they shoot you, what happens then?” Nelyubov said. “I’m going.”

 “Same objection,” Orlova replied.

 While they were arguing, Carpenter moved to the top of the rise, raised her plasma gun, and before anyone could stop her began to fire, three short pulses then a larger one at full power.

 “What the hell?” Nelyubov said, grabbing the gun as the last pulse fired.

 “Smoke signals,” Carpenter said. “Look.” Over the ridge, another gun responded, this time three short pulses, three long, and three short.

 “Even I know that one,” Orlova replied, bounding over the hill. Four of the suited figures were climbing up towards them, two of them with weapons that were the match of hers, and closed into communications range.

 “Identify yourselves, or we will fire,” a woman asked.

 “Senior Lieutenant Margaret Orlova, of the Battlecruiser Alamo. We’re here to rescue you.”

 “Alamo? Thank God! We weren’t expecting you for weeks, we were digging in for a long stay. Those were your shuttles?”

 “Yes, but the pods you saw coming down weren’t. We’ve got a bit of time. Who are you?” 

 “Midshipman, Acting Sub-Lieutenant, technically, Stephanie Evans. I assumed command of the party after the crash.”

 “Then you did crash land?”

 “Just over the rise. I have to report four wounded, five dead, thirteen able. Can you fit us all in the shuttles?”

 Nelyubov reached the ridge, looked at Orlova, and said, “We should be able to fit you all in, but there is a complication.”

 Her face dropped, and she said, “What? Some problem on Alamo?”

 “No,” Orlova replied. “There’s no problem with Alamo. The problem is that we were intercepted by fighters on our way down as well, and though we managed to evade them, we used up a hell of a lot of fuel getting here. Right now there’s only enough for one of the shuttles to get away. Say twelve of you.”

 Nodding, she replied, “The wounded and four others, drawn by lots.”

 “Hate to break it to you, Sub-Lieutenant, but I’m in command here now, and I’m not going up while anyone stays behind.”

 “I’d better go down and see to the wounded,” said Garland. “Where’s your Medical Officer?”

 “He died in the crash,” Evans replied.

 “Wonderful,” the paramedic said, hefting his medical kit. “Excuse me.”

 “Let’s have this from the top, Sub-Lieutenant,” Orlova said. “From the evacuation. Sub-Lieutenant Delgarde filled us in on what happened before.”

 “He’s alive? Were there any more?”

 Shaking his head, Nelyubov replied, “I’m afraid not.”

 She closed her eyes, looking at the ground, and said, “I shouldn’t have expected it, of course. The ones who stayed behind knew what they were doing. We drew lots.” With a sigh, she continued, “I should have stayed. Delgarde swapped with me at the last minute, said I was needed on the ground. Damn.”

 “The enemy are closing on our position, Sub-Lieutenant,” Orlova said.

 “I know, I know. We piled into the three shuttles, twenty-four of us with supplies to last six weeks. Hell of a squeeze, and we knew that we were overloading them. We thought you’d be here in a month.”

 “Then the fighters attacked.”

 “Six of them. The station launched a missile salvo to try and intercept them, but they botched the timing. Four of them made it through, and they tore us to pieces. The lead shuttle turned and attacked, tried to fake them out.” With a thin smile, she said, “At least, that’s what Fitz said. Lieutenant Fitzpatrick. I think he knew what he was doing. They got him in two shots.”

 “The others?”

 “We got down under the cloud layer, and then started to have trouble with our instruments. Communicators don’t work for more than a few hundred meters down here.”

 “We noticed,” Carpenter said.

 “Then both of us saw something strange, a blue light shining from the middle of a crater.” Orlova and Nelyubov looked at each other, and she said, “It’s still there, then.”

 “It is indeed.”

 “Everything went crazy when we passed over it, and it was all we could do to bring the shuttles down in one piece at all. Both of them lost atmospheric containment, so we had to take to the suits, and we’ve been getting everything out of the wreckage. The next plan was to bury the shuttles, try and camouflage the domes.” 

 “How had you planned to contact Alamo?”

 “We hadn’t got that far yet.”

 Nodding, Orlova said, “And your other officer?”

 “Lieutenant Carrera was piloting the lead shuttle. He lost consciousness just after the crash, and named me Acting Sub-Lieutenant before he passed out. I’ll be very happy to drop back to Midshipman.”

 “As far as I’m concerned, you performed extremely well.” Glancing around the domes, Orlova continued, “We’ve got about a mile to get the first party back to the shuttle. How long is it going to take to pack everything up?”

 “Well, that’s an interesting question,” Evans replied. “While we were setting up the camp, we had to dig down a little to secure the domes, and we were digging some slit trenches in the event of a ground attack.”

 “You found something,” Carpenter said.

 “Lieutenant Carpenter is our Science Officer,” Orlova explained. “And a paleontologist, by profession.”

 “Then I think she’s going to be interested in this.”

 “Frank,” Orlova said, “Start getting everyone ready to move out. The wounded, and three others.” She froze him with a look, and said, “No protests.”

 “We’ll talk later,” he replied, heading over to the far side of the camp. Evans led Orlova and Carpenter to the perimeter, where a pair of crewmen were cautiously digging at the soil, moving it almost a handful at a time, peering down at their discovery. Leaning over, she could see what could only be a spacesuit, a completely unfamiliar design, a skeleton leering through the cracked helmet.

 “Amazing,” Carpenter said, her eyes lighting up. “Let me in.” She dropped down the hole, pulling out her datapad, and said, “I know we can’t take the body up, but I’m going to get some samples.”

 “We need to keep weight to a minimum, Susan.”

 “This could be the key to everything. Best guess is that it must be a few thousand years old. I don’t see any commonality to the Neander remains we found.”

 “Human, you think?”

 “Not Neander,” she replied. “Could be our new friends, though. I’d need to make a full analysis.”

 “DNA you can take,” Orlova replied. “And a few fragments of the suit.”

 “I think it was deliberately buried,” Evans said. “Lying flat on the ground, arms and legs placed just so, and no signs that one area was exposed more than the rest.”

 “Someone buried him in his spacesuit,” Carpenter said. She frowned, then added, “If this is a spacesuit.”

 “It certainly looks like one to me,” Orlova said.

 “Where’s the oxygen tank? The air intake? In fact, there’s no sign of special equipment at all. I grant you that it might not be recognizable, but I think this was designed to preserve the body.”

 “Is that the answer, then?” Evans said. “God, have we disturbed a burial ground, or something like that?”

 “There’s evidence from some Neander cultures on Earth that they used the remains of their people to mark their territory,” Carpenter suggested. “Though why this place would have been significant, I couldn’t guess. If this body was meant to be preserved, it could add a lot to the age of this corpse, though. I won’t know until I can do a full analysis.”

 “Something’s just occurred to me,” Orlova said. “Look at the way the body is pointing. Right towards the crater with the blue light.”

 Her eyebrow raised, Carpenter tapped a few controls and her datapad, and replied, “You aren’t kidding. Within a quarter of a degree. That can’t be a coincidence. This is some sort of a marker.”

 “Was there any evidence the body was here before you found it?” Orlova asked, turning to face Evans. “Any marker on the surface, something like that?”

 “Not a thing,” she replied.

 “After all this time, it could have been disturbed,” Carpenter said.

 “Maggie, look up!” Nelyubov said. “Something up in the sky, coming down fast and hard.”

 “Weapons ready!” she yelled. Her heads-up display locked onto the target, some sort of missile, heading right for the camp. The trajectory plot had it landing within a quarter-mile of their position, and it wouldn’t need much of a yield to wipe out the camp.

 “I make landing in one minute,” Carpenter said. “Anyone care to disagree with me?”

 “Afraid not,” Orlova replied. The seconds ticked down, and then a parachute opened, retro-rockets firing as the object swung in closer to their position. As it descended towards the ground, a voice began to crackle over her communicator.

 “Marshall here. We’ve sent down a probe to analyze the communications blackout, and to relay this message. We’re going to get all of you out. In five hours from now, we’ll be dropping a fuel tank close in to the shuttles, within half a mile, we estimate. Two hours later, Alamo will be in a position to get you back up into orbit. Make sure you stand clear. This probe is heading back up with its findings. Good luck, and hang on. Marshall out.”

 With a blinding blue flare, the parachute dropped away and the probe accelerated again, boosting back up into space. Orlova and the others watched it race over the horizon, gaining speed, until it disappeared from view.

 “Right, you heard the Captain,” she said. “Get everyone to the shuttles. We’re moving out.” Turning to Carpenter, she added, “I guess you can take our buried friend up after all.”

Chapter 15

 Salazar crawled out from under the master panel, brushing dangling wires out of his face, and looked around Operations. He wiped the sweat and grease from his forehead and reached for a toolkit, just out of reach, cursing as he struggled to his feet to clamber over to it.

 “Ben, where the hell have you gone?” he yelled

 “Over here,” a voice replied, coming from around the corner with a box in his hands. “It’s way past fourteen-hundred, and neither of us has had anything to eat since breakfast. I knew you’d tell me not to bother…”

 “So you decided to just go. What is it?”

 “Sandwiches,” he replied, waving a half-eaten one in the air. “No idea whether this is ham or beef. Or chicken. I think there’s lettuce, though. Fabricators don’t seem to have heard of the concept of flavor.”

 Reaching into the box, Salazar fished one out and took a bite, finding to his surprise that he was hungry. Bartlett dipped his hand into a pocket and came out with a flask of fruit juice, passing it over to him, before sitting down at the Tactical station.

 “Any news?” he asked.

 “Nothing,” Salazar replied. “I’m beginning to get a bit worried.”

 “You can’t do anything about what’s happening down on the surface. Unless you’re thinking about launching some sort of a daring rescue mission on your own initiative, and I can just imagine what they’d say about that over on Alamo.”

 “It should be me down there,” he said, taking a bite. “That’s all.”

 “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?”

 “Sorry,” he said, seeing crumbs drop onto the floor. “Damn.”

 “Don’t worry about it, sir. Cleaning up officers’ mess is what we enlisted types are here for.” He broke into a grin, but Salazar shook his head. Before he could reply, he saw a series of readouts flash across the tactical display, and frowned.

 “I didn’t know you’d got the sensors back online.”

 “I haven’t,” Bartlett replied, turning to the console. “I guess the damage wasn’t as bad on the lower decks as we thought. Oh, Christ.”

 “What?”

 “Incoming targets, coming around in a low orbit.”

 “Battle stations,” Salazar said, and sirens started to sound across the station. Unsure of what to do next, he stood behind Bartlett, poking at the console to try and get a more detailed report.

 “This really isn’t my line,” he said. “Four contacts, same pattern as the fighters that attacked our shuttles, heading for us, direct.”

 “We know they had troops on board,” Salazar said, stabbing a button. “This is Operations. All hands arm yourselves. Prepare to repel boarders.” 

 “Repel boarders?” Bartlett asked. “We’ve only got sidearms, and the last crew that tried that trick ended up dead.”

 “I agree,” a throaty voice added as Petty Officer Cook walked in. She looked around, then said, “We’d better make our way to the shuttlecraft. This facility isn’t worth dying for.” She glanced at Salazar, making it clear that she didn’t think he was worth dying for either.

 “Eight missiles suggest that the shuttle isn’t safe at the moment,” Salazar replied. “We’re better off right where we are. Go and organize a damage control party.” When Cook hesitated, he said, “Move it.”

 After a quick glance at Bartlett, she turned, walking out into the corridor, almost knocking down Grogan as she entered Operations.

 “Let me take it, Ben,” she said, moving to Tactical.

 “I’ll be a lot happier at communications,” he replied, switching stations. “Want me to call Alamo for instructions?”

 “They’ve got a lot to worry about at the moment,” Salazar said. “Time to contact, Grogan?”

 “Three minutes, nine seconds,” she replied, her eyes locked on her work. “Collision course.”

 “Kamikazes?” he muttered. “That doesn’t make sense. Counter-measures?”

 “Physical counter-measures are working, but I doubt they’ll do much good. Missiles are still off-line, and so are the combat fabricators.”

 “Define off-line.”

 With a frown, she said, “Targeting computers are out.”

 “But we can still fire something.”

 “We don’t have anything to fire,” Bartlett said.

 “Sure we do,” Salazar replied, pulling out his communicator. “Operations to Cook.”

 “Cook here. Are we heading for the shuttle?”

 “You really want to get away from me that badly? Head down to the storage locker and pull any spare spacesuit backpacks you can find, then load them into the launch tubes.”

 “What the hell for?”

 “Before you put them in, make sure that the control circuits are all set to remote activation. Operations out.”

 “I’m going to go ahead and ask the same question she did,” Bartlett said.

 Moving over to one of the unused stations, Salazar replied, “I’m going to make us a little anti-missile defense.”

 “With spacesuit backpacks? You realize that they only have a maneuvering threshold of…”

 “It doesn’t matter what their threshold is. Relative velocity, right? I’ve just got to make sure that the missiles hit them first. Or set up the computer to do the same thing.”

 “It’ll never work,” Grogan replied. “They just aren’t agile enough.”

 “Ben, I want to speak to Alamo,” he replied, his hands furiously typing. “Make sure that the transmission is broadcast.”

 Turning, Bartlett said, “I can get a message laser on with no trouble.”

 “And uncoded.”

 With a smile, Grogan said, “I get it. This is a very old trick, though.”

 “Maybe they haven’t heard it before. Give me my channel.”

 An image flashed onto the screen, and he frowned when he saw Grant staring back at him, evidently helping out on the bridge during the battle.

 “Why aren’t you evacuating?” he asked. “Get over to Alamo now.”

 “That’s a negative, sir. We’ve got the primary weapons system back on-line, and we’re deploying the array now.”

 “Array?” Grant looked across, then said, “Midshipman, this is an open channel!”

 Attempting to blush, Salazar replied, “Damn. Wait a moment, I’ll switch to a message laser.” Reaching across, he closed the channel, then said to Bartlett, “If anyone asks, I’m out. Grogan, launch the backpacks.” 

 Shaking her head, she said, “Away.”

 “Right,” he replied. Tapping a series of controls, he spun them into a circular formation, moving them away from the station to point towards the incoming fighters, as though ready for some sort of attack. Cranking up the thrusters to maximum, he sent the backpacks spinning, faster and faster.

 “Looks impressive, anyway,” Bartlett said.

 “Alamo is moving in,” Grogan replied. “Fighters still heading right for us, and they’ll be in firing range in ninety seconds.”

 Nodding, Salazar moved over to another console mounted on the wall, leaving the backpacks to do their thing, and started to throw switches, watching lights wink from green to red, one after another.

 “Shouldn’t we be getting into the escape pods before we launch them?” Bartlett asked.

 “I’m not launching them, just arming them,” he replied. “Give me a count from twenty seconds to firing range. Ben, I want to speak to Alamo again. Open channel.”

 “That’s a coincidence,” he replied. “Grant wants to speak to you.”

 Grant’s face flashed on, and he yelled, “What do you think you are doing? Get off the station right now. That’s an…”

 Raising his hand, Salazar replied, “Escape pods will be launching in sixty seconds.”

 “You’re still on an open channel.”

 “Problems with the message laser, sir. Salazar out.”

 Shaking his head, Bartlett said, “I guess you’re still not home when he calls back.”

 “Isn’t this a little obvious?” Grogan asked. “Seventy seconds to go.”

 “Maybe. Right now I want them to think that I’m panicking.”

 “I’ve got news for you, sir,” Bartlett said. “I am.”

 “Feel free to broadcast a few anguished screams to the enemy.”

 Tapping a series of controls, Salazar started to enter in a command sequence for the escape pods. Normally, with a friendly ship so close, they’d simply aim for that, wait for the SAR shuttles to come and pick them up, but that was the last thing he wanted. Instead, he set them to head directly for the planet, down to the same location as Orlova’s rescue party.

 “Thirty seconds,” Grogan said. “Nearly there.”

 He looked up at the clock, a hand poised over the controls, waiting for the seconds to tick away as the fighters approached. If he’d read the situation wrong, they might be dead in a couple of minutes. There’d be no chance to try anything else.

 “Now!” Grogan said, and he lowered his hand, sending a dozen escape pods tumbling away into space, their attitude jets firing to start their descent towards the planet, on a course that would take them close to the approaching fighters. He moved over to stand behind Grogan, his eyes locked on the sensors.

 “Come on,” he said. “Come on, take the bait.”

 “Energy spike! Missile launching!” After a brief pause, she said, “Alamo is responding.”

 “Targets?”

 “The pods,” she said, turning to him. “How did you know?”

 “If they wanted to destroy this station, they could have done it already,” he replied. “They had enough of a chance. They want it intact, either because it saves them the bother of building one or because there is something on board that they want.”

 “They’d begun a search,” Bartlett said.

 “Exactly. They want us dead, and they want Alamo distracted, and shooting at helpless escape pods will do that job nicely. Get a message laser on Alamo now, Ben, tight-beam and all the encryption you can manage.”

 “There go the escape pods,” Grogan reported. “If we’d been in them, we wouldn’t have had a chance. And the backpacks?”

 “They had to think I was panicking, trying any dumb idea I could think of. From what I’ve heard, our enemies have a bit of a superiority complex. I figured they’d assume the worst of us.”

 “I’ve got Captain Marshall, sir,” Bartlett said.

 “Smart play, Midshipman!” Marshall said as his face appeared on the viewscreen. “You had a few of us worried over here for a moment.”

 “Only play, sir. Only thing I could think of.”

 “Doesn’t matter. You can sit back and watch the show. Moving in on enemy targets. You still don’t have weapons on-line?”

 “Sorry, sir, too much damage. They should be operational soon.”

 “Get your damage control ready, just in case, but they seem to be concentrating on us, now.”

 Grogan nodded, and said, “Second salvo is heading for Alamo.” Then, with a smile, she added, “Two fighters destroyed.”

 “I’ve got things to do,” Marshall said. “Bridge out.”

 The image flashed across again, and Grant’s face appeared in Marshall’s stead. He looked down at Salazar with a sneer, and said, “You might be able to convince Danny Marshall, but I don’t buy this for a second. If your plan had gone wrong there was no second chance, no backup, and you’d have been responsible for the deaths of another eight people.”

 “I did…”

 “You obey orders. I told you to evacuate the station, and that’s what you should have done, not execute some Rube Goldberg bullshit. The next time that you disobey an order from a senior officer, I’ll see to it that you are court-martialed, and that the job is done properly this time. Before anyone else pays for your arrogance. Alamo out.”

 Salazar looked down, Bartlett reaching across to put a hand on his shoulder.

 “Don’t listen to him, Pavel. He’s wrong. Captain Marshall was happy enough, wasn’t he?”

 “Where the hell does that arrogant ass think he’s coming from?” Grogan asked. “You got the job done, and did it well. End of story.”

 “I killed two of his cadets,” Salazar said. “It was my mistake, my responsibility. I know exactly where he’s coming from, and he isn’t wrong.” He looked up at the escape pod controls, the red lights glaring at him, and said, “I could easily have got you all killed.”

 “But you didn’t,” Grogan pressed. “It worked.” With a quick glance at her board, she said, “Only one of the enemy fighters left, now. And just a single hit on Alamo, in a non-critical area. We won the battle.” 

 “This wasn’t a battle,” Salazar said. “Just a little skirmish, and I could have got you all killed for nothing, for a station that isn’t worth a damn thing, around a burned-out rock in the middle of nowhere.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “Secure from battle stations, will you, Grogan.”

 “Aye, sir,” she said, pulling out a microphone. “Operations to Station. Secure from battle stations. If anyone is interested, we won.”

 “Yeah. We won,” Salazar said. “You have the deck, Grogan.”

 “Where will you be, sir?” she asked.

 “I haven’t the faintest damned idea, Spaceman.” Looking up, he took a deep breath, and said, “Weapons Control. I want to see what’s wrong with those missiles. Next time it would be nice to be able to shoot back.”

 Nodding, Bartlett said, “I’ll get my toolkit.”

 “No, you stay here and finish up,” he replied. “I’ll be fine.”

 “Liar,” Grogan said.

 “Just keep an eye on things up here,” Salazar said, making for the door. “And you might arrange for the shuttle to be warmed up. If we need to bail out, I’ve left us with only one escape route.”

 “Pavel,” Grogan said. “He was wrong.”

 Shaking his head, Salazar left the room.

Chapter 16

 “Damage report, Mr. Quinn?” Marshall asked, walking into the engine room. Technicians were bustling about, moving from console to console, checking readings and making adjustments.

 Turning to face him, Quinn said, “Nothing too bad, skipper. The missile caught us in the aft sensor levels. Mostly superficial damage on the hull armor, but I’ve got another work crew out on the hull checking over the sub-systems. That’s why we’re a little short-handed in here today.”

 “Time to repair?”

 “About two hours, total.” He walked over to a display, and said, “We’re about ready to launch the fuel pod as soon as you give the all-clear, as well as the missile escort. I’ve gone over the figures again, and I’m pretty sure we can do that part from this orbit.” Pointing at the rear of the pod, he said, “I fitted the engines from three missiles onto it. Estimated time to the surface is a hair over five minutes. As for the shuttles, that’s going to be trickier.”

 “That’s when they’ll attack,” Marshall said. “We picked off another of their probes before I left the bridge, but they’re replacing them just as quickly.”

 “As are we. There isn’t much we can do about that, I’m afraid. If we still had fighters, we might be able to put those on station, but as it stands we’re going to have to take the few glances we can. Though I did have an idea.”

 “I was hoping you’d say that.”

 “We could use the same basic package as we are for the fuel dump to land a tracking station up on the moon. They’d have to go out of their way to knock that down, and we’d certainly get plenty of warning if they were.”

 “Enough that the replacement could already be on the way.” Nodding, Marshall said. “How long to build it?”

 Briefly cracking into a smile, Quinn replied, “If I don’t stop for lunch, we might get it done in a few hours. Easier than the fuel pod, we don’t have to worry about heat shielding and precise trajectory control. Anywhere on this side of the moon will be just fine.”

 “Get working on it. Anything else I should know about?”

 Passing over another datapad, he said, “Cook sent over a report of the repairs on Yeager Station.”

 “And?”

 “Sir, Cook sent it. Not Salazar. I tried to have a word with him, but Bartlett said he couldn’t be reached.”

 “Maybe he was in the head.”

 “I don’t know. One more thing to worry about, I guess.”

 “That station is way down my list of priorities.”

 “I think that might be a mistake, sir,” Grant said, walking in, Tanner in tow. “I’m at a loose end here. Request permission to assume command of Yeager Station.” Gesturing back, he said, “Tanner can come with me.”

 “How do you intend to get there?” Quinn asked. “Walk? We’ve only got the SAR shuttle left, and I seem to remember that regulations require us to keep that for emergency use only.”

 “We could float across,” Grant said. “It’s only a mile. I’ve done longer spacewalks.”

 “What’s the urgency?” Marshall asked.

 “You heard Mr. Quinn. Salazar’s handed over his command to a Petty Officer. Evidently he’s in over his head, and his activities during the battle…”

 “Were commendable,” Quinn said. “That was quick thinking in a crisis. Fooled the hell out of me.”

 “And me,” Marshall added.

 “Nevertheless, sir, I am available, and have the rank to do the job. Mr. Salazar does not impress me, Captain, and requires supervision. Field regulations support me on this.” 

 “You want to know what doesn’t impress me?” Marshall replied. “Junior officers attempting to give me lectures in how to do my job. Lieutenant Nelyubov will take command of the station when he returns from the surface, unless one of the station’s own officers is in a fit condition to do so. Given that we expect to have them back in four hours, I don’t see this as a critical problem.” 

 “Captain…”

 “Your objections and concerns are noted. Dismissed.”

 “Relax, Pete,” Tanner said. “You did ride the kid a bit hard.”

 “Excuse me?” Marshall asked.

 Tanner looked at him, a deer caught in the headlights, and said, “Nothing, skipper.”

 “No, I’m extremely interested.”

 Quinn turned back to his console, typing away, and after a moment, said, “I’ve got the communications logs, Auxiliary Control to Station Operations. Want me to play them?”

 “I informed Mr. Salazar that I thought his actions were reckless, and that he was jeopardizing the lives under his command,” Grant said.

 “Mr. Quinn, I’d like to borrow your office for a moment, if I may. And your presence as well, if you can be spared.”

 “Delighted,” he replied.

 “This way,” Marshall said, gesturing towards the nearest door. “You too, Mr. Tanner.”

 In all the years he had been on Alamo, Marshall couldn’t remember ever seeing Quinn’s office. Somehow, he’d expected the shambolic mess that his own office was perpetually in, but everything was neat and precise, all in its place. Including the image of Quinn’s late wife, surrounded by a black border, hanging on the wall. The door slid shut behind Tanner, the last one in the room.

 “Captain, I…”

 “What in God’s name did you think you were doing, Lieutenant? Mr. Salazar is outside your chain of command. Mr. Quinn can criticize him. Mr. Cunningham can criticize him. I can criticize him. You cannot. If you have concerns about him, then you go through his division officer or directly to me. You do not speak to an officer in front of his men and tell him that you think he’s going to get people killed.”

 “He is,” Grant replied. “I watched it happen the first time. He shouldn’t be here, sir, and he shouldn’t be wearing the uniform, and he certainly should not be in any position of responsibility, or you are as much to blame as he is when something goes wrong.”

 “Captain Marshall will tell you how reluctant I am to risk my people,” Quinn said, glancing up at the picture of his wife. “Salazar’s already rescued one of mine, and took a risk to do it, and what he did on the station was sound tactical judgment.”

 “He should have followed my orders, boarded the shuttle, and returned to Alamo.”

 “You gave him an order?” Marshall asked.

 “Yes, sir, I did.”

 “And he disobeyed?”

 “Yes, sir. And I formally wish to…”

 “Good,” Marshall said.

 “What?” Grant replied.

 “You had no right to give him that order. He reports to Mr. Quinn, and then to me. Not to you. When I asked you to keep an eye on things over there during the battle, I meant you to offer advice, not try and micromanage him.”

 “Besides, what makes you think that the shuttle would have fared any better than the escape pods?” Quinn asked.

 “We could have provided him with cover.”

 “That would have been a hell of a lot easier if we still had fighters to escort him back.”

 “We were tactically outmatched.” 

 “No you weren’t. I’ve been in that seat, I’ve ridden fire, and you can fool a lot of people, but not me. And for the record, Mr. Quinn has fighter wings as well.”

 “Is that all, sir?”

 “No, it isn’t. You want to speak your piece? Get it over with, right now, and it had damned well better be the last word I hear on this subject.”

 “Two of my cadets are dead, and he killed them,” Grant said. “I was there, and I watched it happen. The court-martial was lenient, for God knows what reason, though I attempted to appeal. I did pull strings to put him somewhere where he could do no harm, but for some reason that decision was countermanded, and I intend to find out why. He is a danger to this ship and to any people unfortunate enough to be under his command. That’s all, sir.”

 Taking a deep breath, Marshall said, “You’ve made your objections clear. Do you want me to note them formally?”

 “Wait a minute, sir,” Quinn said. “That will go on Salazar’s record.”

 “So it will, but ultimately I have the final decision on whether he gets to face the Commissioning Board or not. Besides, the regulations provide Lieutenant Grant with this option, and I am duty-bound to offer it.”

 “Thank you, sir. I so request.”

 “I will enter it in the log.” He paused, then said, “Along with my belief that your performance in the battle was substandard, and my recommendation that your flight waiver not be extended. I believe it comes up again in three months, does it not?”

 “Wait a minute,” Grant said. “That isn’t fair.”

 “I think it’s very fair,” Quinn replied. “And is the Captain’s decision.”

 “What about Tanner?”

 “Anything to say, Sub-Lieutenant?” Marshall asked.

 “I screwed up, but no-one got hurt. No fighter pilot thinks he’s anything but the best, so I guess I’m not qualified to sit in judgment on myself. I’ll leave that to you. Sir.”

 “Not a bad answer. At least you’re willing to admit you made a mistake.” Turning back to Grant, he said, “You will continue in your station at Auxiliary Control, and will not communicate with the station again unless I expressly order it. Is that understood?”

 “This is a mistake, sir, and people are going to get killed as a result.”

 “Do you understand my order, Mr. Grant, or do I have to relieve you of duty?”

 “I understand, sir.”

 “Then dismissed, both of you.”

 Without a further word, Grant walked out of the door, Tanner lingering for a while, watching his friend storm out of the room. He turned back and shook his head.

 “I’ve known him for years, sir. He’s...he feels responsible for what happened. He cleared Salazar to lead that flight.”

 “Then he made a mistake as well,” Quinn said. “I didn’t see anything about him standing up to take blame during the court-martial records.”

 “He just…”

 “I understand, Mr. Tanner. Believe me, I do. And if...when he calms down and changes his mind, you can tell him that I’ve forgotten to update my log, and that I probably won’t get around to it until this evening.”

 “Thank you, sir.”

 “Dismissed.”

 Nodding, Tanner left the room, and Marshall dropped down into a chair, looking up at Quinn, who moved over to sit behind his desk.

 “No point ending his career for nothing.”

 “Will it?”

 “He isn’t going back to the Academy any time soon, and if he doesn’t have a flight waiver, the fleet won’t use him operationally. All he’s ever done is fly fighters. No other assignments at all, not even Staff College.”

 “Captain, this isn’t for the record, but…”

 “If he keeps his waiver, I can find him an operational job that doesn’t involve riding fire, but keeps him out in the field. Tanner’s another story, at least, if he chooses to be. Though that isn’t the real issue, is it?”

 “You’re worried about Salazar.”

 “He seems competent enough, and if it hadn’t been for what happened up on the bridge, I’d be pleased with his performance. I’m not sure I trust him, and he can’t hide away on the station forever.”

 “Want me to have a word with him? Technically he is my deputy at the moment, after all.”

 “No, let it be. He’s going to have to deal with this, or not, sooner or later. I just wish it didn’t have to be now. Not with an enemy ship hanging around, waiting to strike.” Looking up at the picture again, he asked, “What about you?”

 Sighing, he said, “I’m hanging on, same as always. It hurts, though. Like hell. I guess it always will.” Shaking his head, he replied, “Though if she was here, I suspect she’d be telling me to snap out of it and get on with my job.”

 “Not bad advice, Jack.”

 “Don’t worry about me, Captain. I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll do my job. And when Salazar gets back I’ll see if I can turn him into a real officer for you. He’s got potential, that’s for sure. More than the others, from what I’ve seen.”

 “The only question is whether he wants to use it.”

 “This still isn’t the real issue though, sir. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

 Nodding, Marshall replied, “You’ve known me too long.”

 “I’m worried about them down on the surface as well. I...somehow...found the time to take a look over the data that our first probe sent up, and as far as I can tell everything should be working. Which doesn’t mean anything other than that the jamming field is extremely sophisticated. I’d suspect our old friends in the Cabal, but they’ve never managed anything like this.”

 “What about Harper?”

 “Buried in her cubby-hole with emergency rations and datapads. Given enough time, she might come up with something.” He paused, then said, “Tell me something.”

 “What?”

 “Are you planning to fight to the last in this system?”

 Shaking his head, Marshall said, “Not once we’ve got our people up from the surface. Not unless I find out that there is something worth dying for out here. If they want a barren wasteland so badly, they can have it. Until we assemble sufficient overwhelming force to retake it without serious risk, that is.”

 Nodding, the engineer replied, “I’m glad to hear you say that. I was beginning to wonder.” Looking down at his watch, he said, “We’re getting close to launch time. You still want to commit to this?”

 “With enemy forces closing in on them down on the surface, the sooner the better. You can start the countdown just as soon as you are ready.”

 “I’ll go pass the word,” Quinn said. “And don’t worry. You’ve got the right people on the surface to get out of this sort of a scrape. They’ve done it before.”

 “I know. I’d still rather be down there myself.” He stood up, tugging on his jacket, and said, “I ought to be on the bridge.”

 “No need for a little while. Why don’t you head up to the mess instead, get something to eat. Cunningham can handle the drop, this part is just routine. You’re going to need to be fresh when we make the pickup.”

 “You’re probably right at that. Tell me, are you and the Doctor working together?” 

 “We’ve got the same job, skipper. Keep the machines on this ship in good working order. Biological or mechanical, what’s the difference?”

 “Thanks, Jack. I mean it.”

 “We’ll get through it, sir. Have faith.”

 He walked out of the room, leaving Marshall on his own. He glanced up at the image of the dead woman on the wall, trying to picture her when she was alive, before he’d sent her on the mission that led to her death, just a few months ago.

 “Not again,” he muttered, under his breath. “Not this time. Not for a worthless piece of rock.”

Chapter 17

 Orlova raced across the terrain, Carpenter struggling to keep up, keeping her rifle raised to face anything that might jump out at her. As she climbed over a rise, she saw the cylindrical fuel tank resting in a crater, red-and-white parachutes draped over it, the brightest object for miles. No point trying the communicator, so she raised her pistol to the sky, tilting it in the direction she had come, and fired a trio of shots in quick succession.

 “Come on,” she said. “Let’s check it out.”

 The two of them sprinted down the hill, bouncing in the low gravity, and made their way over to the fuel pod. Quinn had kept it simple, just a status indicator and a pair of hoses connected to a pump. She tapped the side of it, and heard a satisfying clang.

 “That’s that,” she said. “All set. In a little over an hour we’ll be on our way home.”

 Turning, she saw an object moving over the terrain, the first of the shuttles on its way to top up its tanks. The other, Evans at the controls, was just behind them, both loaded with the survivors from Yeager Station. She fired off another shot, then tapped Carpenter on the shoulder.

 “Let’s move,” she said. “No point making the landing harder than it already is.”

 She watched the two of them set down with an expert’s eye. Nelyubov was a hair closer, just over twenty meters away, but Evans was still well within range, both gently settling onto the ground. So far, this was going well.

 “Nelyubov to Orlova, do you read me?”

 “Loud and clear. Nice landing. Let’s get topped up and get the hell out of here.”

 The two airlocks opened, and four figures came out, moving towards the tank. While the engineers started to connect the hoses to the shuttles, Orlova looked out across the horizon, shaking her head.

 “Five hours they’ve been down on the deck,” she said.

 “We don’t know what condition they were in when they landed,” Carpenter replied. “And they must have been scattered to hell, and likely have the same communication problems we do.”

 Shaking her head, Orlova replied, “That wouldn’t stop me. One person with a plasma rifle could ruin our whole day, and leave us easy pickings for the rest. Alamo can’t risk dropping down to pick us up more than once.”

 “We both know that the Captain will take that risk.”

 “If he thinks we’re dead? And that assumes that we’ve got something we can ride up into orbit if we need to.” Tapping a button on her sleeve, she said, “Gennaro, Bates, get out here with the plasma guns and stand guard to the north. Carpenter and I will handle the south. Watch for anything that moves, and feel free to shoot first and ask questions later. Everyone I like on this rock is in the shuttles. Move.” 

 Gesturing for Carpenter to move back the way they had come, Orlova stepped carefully up to the top of a rise, kneeling on the ground and holding her rifle in a ready firing position, scanning the horizon with her helmet sensors. They should be able to pick up any movement, any activity, but down here in atmosphere, nothing worked as well as it did out in space. Here it was possible to be stealthy, and that worried her.

 Over to the north, a plasma bolt shot across the landscape, and she turned to see Bates looking out over the horizon, before turning back to Orlova and shrugging. 

 “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I must have been looking at a shadow.”

 “Don’t apologize,” she said. “No such thing as friendly fire out beyond this crater, if you see anything it’s a bad guy. Take shots when you see them, and if you blow up a few rocks, I’d rather that than be caught by surprise.”

 “If I can interrupt,” Nelyubov said, “Pumps all working, full power. We’ll be fueled up in forty-five minutes.”

 “That’s cutting it a little tight, isn’t it?” she replied. “Alamo begins its descent in fifty-two.”

 “We’ll make it, Maggie, if all goes well.”

 “See that it does.”

 She turned back to the horizon, glancing briefly up at the gathering clouds. Night was falling, and she could see the stars begin to gather, twinkling in the dark. One of them was Alamo, though she didn’t take the time to work out which. She glanced across at Carpenter, still looking out, in the direction of the mysterious light they had seen on their descent.

 “There’ll be another chance to take a look, Susan,” she said, selecting a private channel.

 “Assuming we don’t end up abandoning this system altogether.”

 “I can’t see the Fleet doing that. Sends a bad message, with the Cabal and the UN on our borders waiting to pounce. We can’t show any weakness.”

 Shaking her head, Carpenter replied, “If that’s our only reason for being out here, then I’m worried. This has got to be about more than just that.”

 “It is,” she said. “We just have to think of some sort of excuse to sell to the top brass.”

 “That light is exactly why I came out here.”

 “At least you’ve got the spacesuit and its occupant to examine when we get back to Alamo. Ought to be good for a paper or two.”

 “Maggie, one of the better things about being in the service is that ‘publish or perish’ isn’t something I have to worry about. Most of my work is classified anyway.”

 “At least you got a good security clearance out of it.”

 “Ma’am,” Gennaro said. “Something in my sector, out at extreme range, maybe two miles.” 

 “Throw me your helmet feed,” she said, and the landscape seemed to shift as her display switched to Gennaro’s field of view. “What am I looking at?”

 “Over by that mouse-shaped rock, the big one. I thought I saw something moving over there, a disturbance in the terrain.”

 “I don’t see…,” she began, and then she did. “Take out that rock, Gennaro. Let’s see if anyone twitches.”

 Nodding, the technician raised the gun to his shoulder, carefully lining up his target, and then gently squeezed the trigger, sending a green pulse flashing across the landscape, ripping the rock into a cloud of dust that rose into the air. There was a shadow on the floor, a brown shape that seemed to settle into the ground before starting to move again. It seemed to dance around, flickering from one position to another, giving her no chance to examine it.

 “There’s something there,” she said. “Bates, you head over to Gennaro. Fire at will, saturation bursts.”

 “It isn’t holding still long enough for me to draw a bead,” Gennaro protested.

 “Never mind that,” she replied. “If enough death is raining down from overhead, he’ll keep his position, and there’s always the chance of a lucky shot. Nail him.”

 “Want me to go over there?” Carpenter asked.

 “If I was in their position, I’d have us surrounded,” Orlova said. “Especially if my suits had some sort of camouflage built-in.” As waves of fire began to fly towards the south, she continued, “Stay sharp. Frank, get someone out to act as spotter in Bates’ position. Someone other than you, I need both shuttles to have pilots at the controls.”

 A figure stepped out of Shuttle Two’s airlock, waved at Orlova, and walked over to the vacant guard post, a small pistol in his hand. She turned back to the landscape, trying to ignore the suppressing fire behind her, and attempted to focus on the view. Brown on brown, different shades running together, and the light fading fast. Something in the back of her mind warned her that surprise attacks generally took place at dawn or dusk.

 The communications problem was the most frustrating of all. Alamo would be watching all of this from orbit, and with its sensors could likely spot the incoming enemy soldiers. If they could just link up, she could use the plasma rifles to take them out with a handful of shots, guided from the Tactical Station. Their suits were designed for it, but no-one had figured on this sort of a communications blackout. It must be worse up there, though, powerless to do anything but watch. At least here she had a gun in her hands to influence the situation with.

 “Maggie,” Carpenter said. “Something in my area. I think. Down by that near-pyramid, you see it?”

 Turning to face it, she threw her highest zoom into position, seeming to race forward across the landscapes. It was quite clear, the same as she had seen through Gennaro’s camera. The image seemed to dance across the landscape, some sort of optical trick. Holograms, perhaps, though that would use up a lot of power. Some way of rendering him invisible.

 “Suppressing fire, Susan,” she said. “Try and nail him. Maximum dispersion, and aim at the ground. Anything to make him lose his feet.”

 “That’s two,” Carpenter replied, raising her rifle and squeezing off the first shot. “Four to go, I guess.”  

 “Assuming that there was only one in each pod.”

 “I love the way you always manage to cheer me up.”

 “Frank,” she asked, “What’s the score?”

 “Tanks filling nicely, we might even be ready a little early.”

 “We go as soon as we can attain orbit. I don’t care if you blow out the pumps doing it, we need to be off the ground as fast as we can.”

 “Without Alamo waiting to pick us up?”

 “If we lift off, they’ll be on the move. We might be out of position, but I’m beginning to feel like I’m in an ever-tightening noose down here.”

 “You’re spotting them easily enough,” he began, before saying, “Damn. You’re right.”

 “I think we’re seeing exactly what they want us to see. If they have that sort of technology…”

 “Then we shouldn’t be spotting them at all.” He paused, then said, “Fifteen minutes for Shuttle Two, thirty-five for One. That’s the best we can manage.”

 “I’m not sure we’ve got that much time,” she replied. “Get everyone onto Shuttle Two, right now.”

 “Maggie, we’ll never make orbit with that much weight.”

 “Throw out the spacesuits, throw out everything that isn’t nailed down. Lighten the ship, and do it quickly. We’ll have to gamble on Alamo managing a suborbital snatch.”

 “Risky as hell.”

 “Ma’am?” the new guard said. “I think I’ve got something.”

 “Bates, switch firing position. Gennaro, cease fire for a few seconds and see if your target is still there.” 

 “Aye, ma’am.”

 “You know what?” Nelyubov said, “I’m suddenly convinced of the hidden genius of your plan. What about Shuttle One?”

 “Keep topping it up as long as you can. I’ve got an idea.”

 “Now I’m really worried.”

 She looked back over the landscape, shaking her head, wondering what she wasn’t able to see. There could be someone standing right behind her, and she might struggle to see them. Experimentally, she moved through the light filters, going from ultra-violet to deep infra-red, but that didn’t seem to help.

 “Cease fire,” she ordered. “Fall back to the shuttles.”

 Behind her, a pile of objects was steadily growing outside the airlock to Shuttle Two, ration packs, medical kits, spacesuits, even seat cushions. Anything that wasn’t needed for the flight. From a topside vent, a white plume began to rise, Nelyubov getting rid of most of the oxygen in the tanks. In an hour, either they’d have been picked up by Alamo, or they’d be dead in an uncontrollable re-entry. They didn’t need air for three weeks, not any more. Shuttle One began a similar purge, on remote, as a group of spacesuited figures made their way across.

 “I need a volunteer to remain outside,” she asked. 

 “You have to ask?” Carpenter said.

 “Fine. Gennaro, Bates, get to the shuttle. Drop your guns down away from the shuttles.”

 “We might as well keep firing until the launch, ma’am,” Gennaro said.

 “You’ve done your job, Spaceman. Get inside.”

 Looking around at the landscape, he nodded, then said, “Aye, ma’am,” turning for the airlock.

 Orlova took up a position just beyond Shuttle One’s airlock, looking out over the landscape, periodically firing a burst at random. She started to tap a series of controls on her wrist, accessing the navigation computer of the empty shuttle, entering commands. Time seemed to drag, and she knew that the enemy was getting closer, setting themselves up for an attack. The only thing remaining in their favor was that they couldn’t know when they planned to launch.

 “Maggie!” Carpenter yelled, firing a burst at the edge of the crater, high on the ridge. This time, the bolt struck true, and the tattered remnants of a humanoid figure crumpled to the dirt.

 “Good shooting, Susan,” Nelyubov said. “I’m getting rid of your friend, I’m afraid.”

 “Make sure he’s put clear of the guns,” Orlova said. 

 “Will do.”

 “At least we’ve still got the samples,” Carpenter replied. “Damn this.”

 For a heartbeat, Orlova saw something flickering by her side, only a few meters away, and she rolled on her side, firing a shot that flew over Shuttle One, taking out its communications antenna. Her second shot, blind, hit home, and the top half of a figure flew backwards, smashing on the crater wall.

 “Two down,” Carpenter said. “I guess their invisibility isn’t perfect, after all.”

 “Give me good news, Frank. Things are getting serious out here!”

 “We’re stripped down, Maggie. Three minutes before I can risk it. That’ll only give Alamo eight minutes for the pick-up, and I don’t dare give them any less time.”

 “Right,” she said. “Count me down at sixty seconds, and I’ll move. Susan…”

 “I’ll go when you do,” Carpenter replied, flashing her a glance. Orlova replied with a grin, both of them well aware of what she was about to do.

 “Coming up, Maggie. Ninety seconds,” Nelyubov said. “Pre-flight...behind you!”

 She spun around, firing a pair of wild shots, but felt hands reaching for her, sending her tumbling down to the ground. A shot cracked overhead, close enough that she could hear it even in this thin atmosphere, and a figure recoiled backward, giving her room to fire a third pulse with her rifle, dispersing her attacker to the winds.

 “Now! Maggie, come on!”

 Without a backward glance, she sprinted for the ridge, firing a shot ahead of her to clear her path, then turning to blast the two plasma rifles on the ground into slag before she got away.

 “Damn it! Get back here! We’ve got to go!”

 “Go, Frank! You’re going to need that extra fuel, and someone’s got to say behind to make sure you get away.

 “I’m not leaving you behind.”

 “Lieutenant, that’s an order! Lift off! Alamo can retrieve us later. Get moving.”

 “Get out of here, Frank,” Carpenter said, and Orlova glanced across to see that she was following her. “We’ll manage.”

 “Ten seconds. Come on, Maggie, we can make it!”

 “Damn right you can. Susan…”

 “Not a chance.”

 “Frank, get moving! Go!”

 There was a pause, one that seemed to last for hours, and then he replied, “Lift-off sequence engaged. We’ll be back. Good luck.”

 Playing on its landing thrusters, and sending a couple more figures tumbling to the ground, both of which Orlova finished off with a pair of quick shots, the shuttle began to rise, the nose pointing up onto its trajectory before the main engines roared, smoke and flame billowing out across the landscape. Raising her arm, Orlova pressed a pair of buttons, and Shuttle One used what little fuel it had to follow suit, rising for only a few hundred meters before she cut the thrust, sending it tumbling back to the surface.

 “Over the ridge!” she yelled, leaping for cover, Carpenter just behind her as the shuttle exploded behind her, shrapnel flying through the air, shredding anything in the crater to pieces. Above, Shuttle Two continued its launch sequence, gaining height as it struggled on its trajectory, almost visibly struggling under the extra weight.

 “Go,” Orlova said. “Go, Go, Go!”

 “They can’t hear you,” Carpenter said.

 “I know,” she replied. With a sigh, she turned to her friend, and said, “I believe there’s somewhere on this planet you want to see. With a little luck we won’t be disturbed, at least not for a while. Shall we?”

 “I haven’t got any other plans for this evening,” she replied, and the two turned, leaving a scene of devastation behind them, heading for the horizon.

Chapter 18

 Marshall lay on his bunk, looking up at the ceiling, keeping one eye on the clock. There was still more than half an hour before the shuttles should be launching, but he couldn’t relax, no matter how much he tried to force himself. When the communicator chirped, it was almost a relief.

 “What’s up?” he asked.

 “Something’s happening on the surface, sir,” Kelso said. “We’re picking up substantial weapons fire from the area around the shuttles.”

 “Get Quinn and Caine to the bridge on the double, and bring the ship to battle stations. I’m on my way.”

 “Aye, sir,” he replied. A moment later, his voice started to echo over the loudspeakers, “All decks, stand by your battle stations. This is no drill. Repeat, this is no drill. All decks, battle stations. Prepare for variable acceleration and turbulence.”

 Tugging on his jacket, Marshall jogged down the corridor to a waiting elevator, Caine stepping out of her quarters and running alongside, the two of them almost knocking a technician to the floor in their haste. As soon as they stepped through the door, the elevator began on its way, not waiting for direction; Elevator Control was on the job.

 “What happened?” she asked, and Marshall shrugged.

 “We ran out of time. All we can do is watch until they begin their launch. They can’t possibly have had a chance to fuel up yet.” 

 “There must be something we can do.”

 “If you have any suggestions, I’ll listen.”

 The door opened, and they stepped out onto the bridge, Kelso rising from the command chair, walking over to his station in three quick paces as Caine hastened to Tactical.

 “Report,” Marshall said, still standing by the door.

 “We’re now picking up three plasma rifles firing, sir,” Spinelli said. “No sign of activity in orbit, so I don’t think this can be a coordinated strike. Our resolution isn’t good enough to pick up any details, but there’s a hell of a lot of heat spikes down there.”

 “Keep trying,” Marshall said.

 “All decks are clear for action, sir,” Caine said.

 The elevator doors opened, Quinn stepping out, adding, “We’ve got the laser back on-line, and the crews are coming back on board right now. Ninety seconds before they’re all secure.”

 “Good work, Jack,” Marshall said, waving towards the helm. “Feel free.”

 With a smile, he nodded, heading towards the front of the bridge. Foster looked up, frowning, then turned to Marshall.

 “Sir, I am qualified to fly the ship through the dive.”

 “I don’t dispute that, Midshipman, but Mr. Quinn is a lot more qualified than you are.”

 “I…”

 “Let him have it, Midshipman. Stick around and watch, you might learn something.”

 Standing up with careful poise, she looked across at Quinn, her frown growing deeper, and stepped across to the standby crewman’s position. As the engineer settled into the helm, the communicator on the command chair beeped, Marshall reaching across to answer it. 

 “Auxiliary Control here,” Cunningham said. “We’re ready whenever you are. Aren’t we a bit early?”

 “The bad guys are setting the timetable today, John,” he replied. “We’ll have to go by their schedule or not at all.”

 “Energy spike!” Spinelli said. “Massive heat signature from the shuttles, I think they’re taking off. Yes, confirmed!”

 “Now?” Marshall asked. “Damn. Jack, get us there, right now. Spinelli, I want full trajectory analysis, and we’re going to need a course to get us as close as we can. Weitzman, they ought to be transmitting as soon as they get out of range of the jamming, so listen out on all frequencies.”

 “Already on it, sir. Yeager Station wishes us good luck and good hunting.”

 “Oh, God,” Spinelli said. “Shuttle One, it’s losing height. Engines have failed.” He turned across, his face pale, and said, “They’re falling back to the surface.”

 Shaking his head, Marshall said, “Damn it, Maggie. Damn it.”

 “Impact, sir. Total loss.” He looked across at a second monitor, and said, “Shuttle Two is going well, but they’re climbing awfully slowly. Overweight, at a guess.”

 Marshall leapt to his feet, his face lighting up, and said, “Clever!”

 “What?” a glum Caine asked.

 Gesturing at the screen, he said, “Maggie knew they couldn’t get Shuttle One ready in time, so she must have loaded everything into Shuttle Two. The other one was just a distraction, something to clear the ground underneath them and stop any ground fire.”

 “I hope not,” Caine said. “They’ll never make orbit with that big a load, and I don’t see how Shuttle Two can possibly have filled its tanks in the time.”

 “Executing course change,” Quinn said. “This is going to be fun. Weitzman, I’d love to speak to the pilot as soon as I can.”

 “How low can we go, leaving Alamo combat-ready?”

 “I don’t dare risk going below twenty-five miles,” he said, his hands locked on the controls. “At least we’ve got good atmospheric modeling. The computer should be able to do a lot of the work.”

 Alamo’s engines roared, the ship decelerating, dropping out of its orbit. Marshall walked over to his chair, remembering to strap himself in as he sat down, looking around to make sure the others had followed his example. Quinn was cautiously tapping controls, his eyes fixed on the panel.

 “I have Lieutenant Nelyubov, sir,” Weitzman said.

 “Frank,” Marshall said, “What’s your status?”

 “Not so good, sir. I have nineteen people on board, including four wounded. I also must report that Senior Lieutenant Orlova and Lieutenant Carpenter elected to remain on the surface.”

 “Not in Shuttle One?”

 “No, sir. I saw them get clear of the explosion. We were…”

 “Never mind your report, we’ll worry about that later. What’s your fuel status? We don’t even have telemetry yet.”

 “Coming up now, sir,” Erickson said from Flight Engineering.

 “We haven’t got anything like the fuel to make orbit. The best I can do is a high suborbital trajectory, maximum altitude forty-two miles.”

 “And if we can’t hook up?”

 “I had to jettison most of our oxygen, sir. Not that it matters. We’ve used almost all our fuel, I kept a little back for a maneuvering reserve. If we don’t dock on the first try…”

 “Understood, Frank. Make sure that every scrap of data on your course and the atmospheric conditions gets to us. That’s our top priority.”

 “Aye, sir. I’m also sending over everything we have from the ground. Just in case.”

 “Belay that,” Marshall said. “As far as I’m concerned, we are going to pick you up, and you are going to be stepping onto the hangar deck in a few minutes. Is that understood.” 

 “I’m looking forward to it, Captain.”

 “Good. Alamo out.” Looking at Spinelli, he asked, “Well, Spaceman?”

 “He’s being a little optimistic, sir. I read his maximum altitude at forty-one-point-five.”

 “I can do it,” Quinn said. “Someone shut down the safety overrides. I don’t want any distractions.”

 “Working on it,” Kelso said. Marshall looked up at the two trajectories overlaid on the screen, the shuttle heading down to an uncontrolled crash-landing in twenty-one minutes, and now Alamo moving onto a similar course. The difference being that Alamo had the fuel to boost them out of there.

 “What about Shuttle Three,” Caine asked, quietly. “There’s time for Salazar to head down.”

 “I don’t think he can do it, ma’am,” Foster volunteered.

 Marshall turned to look at her, asking, “What do you base that on?”

 “Starting higher than Alamo with a lower fuel reserve, sir. That’s all I meant.”

 Kelso nodded, and said, “I agree. He might link up, but then they’ve got to transfer everyone across, and they’ve got wounded on board. I don’t see them doing it in the time. Best case they end up back on the surface, and we’re back to square one.”

 “Continue with the plan,” Marshall said. “Spinelli, I know you are busy, but any sign of activity from the enemy ship?”

 “Not at the moment,” he replied. “As far as I can see, they’re just sitting there.”

 “Waiting,” Caine said. “This is a high-risk maneuver, and they know it. They’ll be assuming that we lose the shuttle, and hoping that we lose Alamo.”

 “Down below fifty miles, sir,” Kelso reported. “Beginning to bite into the upper atmosphere. I’ve boosted the thrusters to compensate.”

 “Keep monitoring,” Marshall said. He could feel the ship rocking a little, unaccustomed to an environment other than a vacuum outside. Quinn played the helm like a virtuoso pianist, moving from one control to the next, his hands dancing across the console playing music only he could hear, his eyes half-closed, not once looking up at the viewscreen.

 Marshall couldn’t blame him. The planet filled the screen, desolate wasteland racing below with a few clouds high in the sky. The ground rushed past, Alamo gaining speed again as it descended, Quinn making quick adjustments to keep her on course.

 “Got them on short-range sensors,” Spinelli said. “Course information to the computer. Shuttle altitude now nineteen miles.”

 “Contact in two minutes,” Kelso said. “Opening elevator airlock, number one.” 

 “Frank, if we get close, can you get in?” Marshall asked.

 “Give me one shot and I’ll make it,” he replied.

 “Need to kill speed,” Quinn muttered, dipping Alamo down, cutting down the acceleration.

 “If we go too low we’ll never get back up,” Foster said.

 “He knows what he’s doing,” Marshall replied.

 “Closing to contact. Ninety seconds,” Kelso said.

 The shuttle was just visible on the screen now, a small black dot rising to meet them, Alamo braced to snatch it out of the sky. The view shifted to the side, more turbulence, and Quinn swore under his breath as he compensated.

 “Getting heat build-up,” Erickson said. “Growing steadily. Still below the danger level for the moment.”

 “Sixty seconds,” Kelso said, looking across at the helm, where Quinn almost seemed to be sitting still, only making occasional adjustments to the course and speed, letting the ship coast steadily towards the shuttle.

 “Enemy ship’s on the move!” Spinelli said. “Breaking orbit, increasing speed. I’d say they’re going for the high ground, sir.”

 “Do we abort?” Foster asked.

 “No we do not,” Marshall said. “Get us there, Jack.”

 “Thirty seconds to go,” Kelso said. “Elevator airlock cycled. As soon as they’re in, I can run the sequence and get them home. Our altitude is now twenty-five miles.”

 “Heat now approaching limits, sir. I’m losing some sensor resolution on the lower hull, damage to the outer monitors.”

 Abruptly, the shuttle slowed, burning its last reserves of fuel to bring it to Alamo’s side, just by the hatch. For a heart-breaking second, Marshall thought he’d missed, but Quinn swung Alamo over to the side with a tap on the port thruster, and that gave Nelyubov the opportunity he needed.

 “Got him!” Kelso yelled. “Outer hatch closed.”

 “Increasing thrust,” Quinn said. “Overrides off. Hang on.”

 The acceleration pushed Marshall back in his chair as Alamo picked up speed, Quinn pulling her back up out of the outer atmosphere, fleeing for the safety of space. One by one, warning lights began to wink out as the ship gained altitude, the stars once again appearing on the screen.

 Waving a hand, Quinn said, “You can take it now, Midshipman. I have a feeling I’m going to be wanted below decks.”

 “Yes, sir,” she replied, carefully walking over to the helm and sliding into position. “Orbit in nine minutes, sir. It’ll take us a little longer than that to get back to the station, though.”

 “What about the enemy ship, Spinelli?” Marshall asked.

 “Moving between us and the station, sir,” he reported, frowning. “I’m not picking up any energy spikes, nothing at all. I’ve got a course to get us past them.”

 “How close?”

 “Eight hundred miles at closest approach, sir.”

 Shaking her head, Caine said, “That would leave us open to a surprise attack.”

 “Sir, Yeager Station is requesting instructions,” Weitzman said.

 “Tell them to sit tight for the moment, and get their shuttle ready for immediate launch if an opportunity presents itself. They may only have minutes to take advantage of it.” 

 “Aren’t we going to do anything, sir?” Foster asked.

 “We’re going to wait, Midshipman. There are still another three and a half days before we can leave the system in any case, and I’m not inclined to hand a tactical advantage over to the enemy for no good reason. If we have to run the gauntlet to pick them up, we will, but not yet.”

 “Sir, I have Lieutenant Nelyubov for you,” Weitzman said.

 “Welcome home, Frank,” Marshall said. “Great flying.”

 “Captain, I’ve unloaded the passengers, and the wounded are on their way to sickbay along with some samples for the science team. The shuttle is in good shape, and I can be fully refueled in five minutes with the equipment we have up here.”

 “You can give me a full report in a…”

 “Requesting launch clearance, sir.”

 “What?”

 “I left two people down on the surface, Captain, and I want to go and pick them up.”

 “Request denied, Lieutenant. Report to the bridge.”

 “Sir, I need to go now, while I know where to look for them. Odds are that there are more troops on the surface.”

 “I volunteer to accompany Mr. Nelyubov,” Quinn said, turning from the elevator.

 “Denied, both of you. All you’d be doing is giving the enemy a chance to have an easy shot at a shuttle on descent trajectory. Unless you can guarantee that they haven’t got any more fighters on board?” He looked at Quinn, who stared down at the deck. “I feel the same way as you do, and if it was just a matter of a risky landing, I’d be flying that damn shuttle myself. There’s more at stake here than the lives of two crewmen, no matter who they are.”

 “Yes, sir,” Nelyubov said, ruefully.

 “Report to the bridge, Lieutenant. That’s an order. Someone else can handle the post-flight checklist. Mr. Kelso, secure from battle stations, but maintain alert status.” He sat back on his chair, then added, “All we can do now is wait for the other side to make a move.”

Chapter 19

 The tactical display was almost distressingly simple. Alamo on one side, the station on the other, and the enemy vessel in between, blocking line-of-sight for laser communications, and able to jump one way or another at a moment’s notice. The crew had been at alert stations for twelve hours, longer than ever they should, and it was beginning to show in delayed reaction times and heated tempers.

 Rubbing his hair from his forehead, Marshall looked around his office, at Cunningham sitting in the corner, poking at a datapad, and Caine not even trying to conceal her boredom as she stared out of a window. Nelyubov, sitting opposite him, simply fumed, staring straight ahead.

 “There must be something we can do,” he said. “Come on, this is the team that beat the Cabal. One ship shouldn’t be too difficult to crack.”

 “It’s all a question of orbital mechanics. They’ve put themselves in a position where they are daring us to make a move,” Cunningham said.

 “We could launch a salvo of missiles, use them to escort Shuttle Three back from the station,” Caine began, before shaking her head. “No. They’d just think that a hostile act, and we’d be fighting a battle. And be one salvo behind. We’ll need them to knock down the laser missiles.”

 “The answer is still on the surface,” Nelyubov said.

 “If that is so, then the team we have down there is the best qualified to investigate it,” Cunningham said. “If I’d picked two people for the job, they would be the ones.”

 “Rescuing them is out of the question,” Marshall said. “At least for the moment.”

 Shrugging, Cunningham said, “We could just break for the hendecaspace point, cruise past the station and pick up the shuttle in the same way we rescued Shuttle Two. That was some damn nice flying, but from what I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure Salazar is up to it.”

 “And leave two of our people down on the surface?” Nelyubov said, shaking his head. “We can’t even consider that.”

 “Come on, Frank,” Caine said. “This isn’t permanent. We’ll be back. And they’ve got enough supplies down there to last for months if it comes to it. Hell, we could even do another supply drop on our way out if you want.”

 “This isn’t sentiment,” he replied. “I still maintain that the key to all of this is down on the surface, and if we yield it to the enemy, we’ll lose whatever it is.” Looking around the room, he said, “Yes, I suspect we could return in a few months and find Maggie and Susan down on the surface on one piece, though I would point out that it wouldn’t take many of those megaton missiles of theirs to rule that possibility out. We’d never know the answer, though.”

 “There’s one person who might know,” Marshall said, tapping a button. “Captain to sickbay.”

 “I’m busy,” Duquesne’s voice said.

 “Don’t you have minions to handle the cuts and bruises? I need you to send up the senior officer able to talk to me, right now. I’m not talking about returning to duty yet, just for a debriefing.”

 “I haven’t finished all of the medicals yet.”

 “Evans is fine,” Nelyubov said. “She flew right seat on Shuttle Two.”

 “Send her up, right away.” 

 There was a deep sigh, and she said, “Make sure she comes back as soon as you are finished, and don’t keep her too long. Everyone on that station has been under extreme stress for the last two days, and they need a chance to recuperate.”

 “Stress? There’s a ship floating a few hundred miles away that could blow us away in a matter of minutes. That’s stress, doctor.”

 “Point taken. Sickbay out.”

 Shaking his head, Marshall said, “How the hell did we end up with her running medical?”

 “Just lucky, I guess,” Caine said, and he cracked a smile in response.

 “What about your Tactical assessment? If we fight that ship, can we win?”

 “It’s not quite as simple as that. If we’re talking missiles against missiles, then we have a better reload time, and we have the laser as well. We win. The factor I can’t do much about are those laser missiles. If one of those hits us, then the game is over. Computer simulations give us about a seventy percent chance of victory, and I’m not sure we can improve on that much.”

 “They’ll have made the same projections,” Cunningham said, but Marshall shook his head.

 “Which means that either they are trying to pull a bluff, or there is something they know about that we don’t. Right now I wouldn’t like to bet on it, not unless I have to.”

 “So that leaves us back where we were.”

 “What about the object on the surface I saw?” Nelyubov asked.

 Shaking his head, Cunningham said, “We’ve gone over the whole area five times, and drawn a blank. No sign of anything unusual, and certainly no sign of any sort of blue light.”

 “Everyone flying over it saw something,” he pressed. “We couldn’t all be wrong.”

 “Did you see it again when you were on your way up?” Marshall asked.

 “No, but I wasn’t looking.”

 “We could send a probe down.” Caine suggested. “If we were careful about it, we could make it clear that we weren’t launching at the enemy ship.”

 “Except that we’d be letting them know that there was a part of the planet we were especially interested in. I’m almost certain that they still have boots on the ground, and we can’t be certain that they aren’t able to communicate with them. As it stands, they have enough advantages already.”

 There was a knock on the door, and Evans cautiously stepped in, looking around at the officers as Nelyubov rose to his feet, gesturing her to take his chair. Still hesitant, she sat down, perching on the edge of the seat as though expecting to be tipped out of it.

 “You wanted to see me, sir,” she said.

 “Quite right. First of all, my compliments on what you did down there on the surface. Good work.”

 “I didn’t do very much, sir.”

 With a smile, Marshall said, “I understand you’ve opted to return to Midshipman rank. I’d be perfectly happy for you to continue as Acting Sub-Lieutenant.”

 “I only had the job for a little while, sir, and there are plenty of better officers around.”

 “That’s a matter of opinion. You’re up for your boards in a few weeks, aren’t you?”

 Nodding, she replied, “Yes, sir. My tour of duty is about up.”

 “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, and we’ll get you home as soon as we can. I’m sure all of you are up for some leave.”

 “Thank you, sir.”

 “At the moment, you are the only officer we have from the station, so we need to ask you a few questions. Are you up to it? The doctor seemed uncertain.”

 “I’m fine, sir. Honestly. I was going to ask if you wanted me to man a duty station.”

 “Appreciated, but that won’t be necessary.”

 “In that case I volunteer to return to the surface to rescue the…”

 Raising a hand, Marshall said, “If that mission launches, I’ll be at the controls myself, and that isn’t in prospect while that ship is here.”

 “I’m sorry, sir.”

 “Don’t apologize, Midshipman. What we especially want to know is any theories you have about what might have drawn that ship here.”

 She paused, shook her head, and said, “I can’t think of anything, sir, or I’d have told you before this. To be honest, the last year has been rather tedious.”

 “Nothing wrong with a boring tour of duty on occasion,” Cunningham said. “I must try it some time.”

 “Speaking purely personally, I find boredom overrated,” Nelyubov replied.

 “Sorry, Frank, I forgot.”

 “There must be something,” Caine pressed. “What long-term projects were you working on? The station, I mean.”

 “The Commander was surveying the system. He and the station geologist went back a long way, I think they were old war buddies, and he had some idea of finding sites for potential commercial exploitation.” She looked around, and said, “I think we all thought that we were stuck in a bit of a backwater, and were trying to find some reason for it to open up a bit.”

 “Mineral deposits?” Cunningham asked. “Did they find anything?”

 “Not that I know of, but they were keeping it to themselves a lot more lately. I think because they weren’t finding much, but I know that they were spending a lot of time in the science labs.” She paused, then said, “There were some rumors flying around.”

 “Go on, Midshipman.”

 “I don’t know if I…”

 “Speak,” Caine said. “The dead won’t care, but I will if we add to their ranks unnecessarily.”

 “There was talk that they’d found something, and the rumor was that they were planning to keep it to themselves.” The words tumbled over each other, all in a rush. “That the Commander was leaving the service in a year or two, and that they would make use of it then.”

 “Do you believe it?”

 “I didn’t want to, sir, but they were spending more and more time locked up in the geology lab. I know there was a mission down to the planet scheduled for, well, today, actually. That’s why we landed where we did, we already had some supplies down there, and the courses had been pre-loaded.”

 “That sounds very specific.”

 “It was, sir,” she said. “It was just going to be the two of them, and it had been made perfectly clear that we weren’t to ask any questions.”

 “The light,” Nelyubov said. “I’d bet it had something to do with that. Who started these rumors?”

 “Do we need to know, Frank?” Cunningham asked.

 “We do if that might be how someone found out about what they had found. All of this sounds like too much of a coincidence to me.” Turning back to Evans, he asked, “We know that people came through the station from UN territory on occasion. How did that happen?”

 “There were a couple of freighters that stopped off here. Again, the Commander told us not to ask too many questions about it, but I had the impression that it had something to do with Triplanetary Intelligence. They’d pick up cargoes at times, and a few people would pass through on their way to Ragnarok. Only one way, inbound. Never back.”

 “Where the hell is Logan when we need him?” Caine asked, shaking her head. “It does sound logical enough, if we’re helping out the UN rebels. A quiet, out of the way station not far from the border. It fits.”

 “Which means that someone has got into the intelligence networks,” Marshall said. He tapped a sequence of buttons on his datapad, then passed it over to Evans. “Do you recognize this man?”

 She looked down at the face, nodded, and said, “He came in on the Maltese Falcon, about three weeks ago. They took a load of materials out again, just left him behind. I think he’s on Ragnarok, sir.”

 “He’s in our morgue, Midshipman. He died in an attempt to kill me on Hunter Station.” Looking at Nelyubov, he said, “I don’t think we have to look far to find the source of the intelligence leak. When did the Commander start acting strangely?”

 “About a month ago, after he’d done some digging on the planet.”

 “Then they picked up on the rumor, did a little investigating, and decided to come and take a look.”

 “I don’t buy it,” Cunningham said. “They wouldn’t got to all this trouble for some mineral deposits, even valuable ones. Unless it was something amazing, and even then, why keep it a secret?”

 “If he was planning to exploit it himself…,” Nelyubov began, but Marshall shook his head.

 “He wouldn’t get away with it in a million years, and he’d know it. And unless his pension is a hell of a lot bigger than mine, he wouldn’t have anywhere near the money he’d need for anything other than a little light prospecting. Hardly seems worth it. No, there’s something more here.”

 “We need to go and look for ourselves,” Nelyubov pressed. “We have Shuttle Two, and I can be on the way in fifteen minutes. I’m willing to run the gauntlet. I think I can get down into the atmosphere before they can launch missiles.”

 “We had three shuttles when we started, and we’re down to one. I’m not willing to risk the equipment, and frankly, I’m not willing to risk you either,” Marshall replied. “Is there anything else, Midshipman? Anything else we need to know?”

 “I can’t think of anything, sir.”

 “Then go back to sickbay, get yourself checked out, and get some rest. If you still want to return to duty, let Mr. Cunningham know, and he’ll assign you a station.”

 “Thank you, Captain.”

 “Dismissed.”

 She stood up, walking out of the room, the others waiting for her to leave. Nelyubov walked over to the viewport, looking out at the slowly rotating planet below.

 “We can’t leave, sir. Not without the secret. If it is important enough for them to attack one of our stations, we need to know what it is.”

 “Can we talk to the station? Let them know?” Caine asked.

 “Know what?” Marshall replied. “All we have at the moment is guesswork, and communicating with them would be difficult in any case. Go and have a word with the science team. Maybe the samples we got from the surface will give us something to go on. Until then, we wait.”

 “For what?” Nelyubov asked.

 “If I knew that, Lieutenant, I wouldn’t be waiting for it, I’d be doing it.”

Chapter 20 

 Bartlett stepped cautiously into Weapons Control, Salazar sitting inside frantically typing commands into a console, shaking his head and swearing under his breath in four different languages. He turned with a start and gestured for him to come in.

 “Misery loves company,” Salazar said.

 “What’s the problem?”

 “You mean aside from us being cut off from the ship, with an enemy vessel blockading the station and able to wipe us out at the blink of an eye, and nothing we can do to stop them, unable even to take to the escape pods because of a damn-fool stunt of mine that threw them away?”

 With a grin, Bartlett said, “Yes, sir. Apart from that.”

 Thumping the console, he said, “I’ve got the combat fabricators working.”

 “That’s good news.”

 “It would be if we could actually make missiles with them.” He gestured at the screen, watching blueprints spin around on the display. “See here?”

 “What am I looking at?”

 “That’s where the guidance system should be.”

 “I don’t get you.”

 Shaking his head, he said, “Guidance technology is evolving all the time, a lot faster than missile tech, so our lords and masters in their infinite wisdom decreed that guidance systems are plug-in modules for the missiles, both in separate files. It usually doesn’t matter much, if at all, because the system just does all the construction work for us.”

 “And?”

 “I just got back from the databanks. Someone tried to do some hacking down there, and I mean the kind that uses an axe. I don’t know whether our friends out there were trying to steal components, or someone decided to secure classified information, but the end result is that we don’t have any guidance system designs on board. Or about a thousand other things, but fortunately only one of them is critical.”

 “I wondered what was up with the coffee.” With a shrug, Bartlett said, “Contact Alamo, let them know the problem, and they can send us some new data.”

 “How?”

 “The communications system is working fine, sir. I’ve gone over it twice. All green.”

 “With an enemy ship blocking our line of sight, how do we fire a message laser? They positioned themselves very carefully, I suspect for precisely that reason. As for the normal systems, we can’t guarantee that Alamo is the only other ship that can hear us. Besides, guidance control is extremely complicated. It’d take at least fifteen minutes to transmit the data, maybe more.” Shaking his head, he continued, “And not that it matters, but even that would violate regulations on the transmission of classified material. It’s supposed to be physical delivery only.”

 “Not to mention that if the enemy ship thought that we were vulnerable, and that the vulnerability would be ending any minute…”

 “It would probably force their hand, and they’d launch an attack, wiping us out before we could be a threat.”

 “Tricky. There must be an answer.”

 “Maybe, but I haven’t got the first idea where to start looking for one.” Tapping a control, he said, “No point even depleting our stores.”

 “Can’t we launch them without guidance systems?”

 “Shotgun? That would only work if they were really close, I mean a few dozen miles away, and didn’t have a chance to maneuver. Not really practical, except as a last resort.”

 “Then right now, we’re unarmed.”

 “That’s pretty much it.”

 “Can we put together something new?”

 His eyes widening, Salazar replied, “Not without a hundred-strong research team, a few hundred million credits, and a top design laboratory. And about six months.”

 “We must be able to come up with something that’ll do the job. Adapt something.”

 “Not a chance. Not in the time.”

 Frowning, Bartlett said, “You said that the actual physical memory had been removed.”

 “Yes.”

 “Could it be repaired?” 

 After a pause, Salazar nodded, and said, “If the actual datachips were intact, then we could just plug them in somewhere else. I think I know what you are getting at.”

 “No reason why they wouldn’t hide them somewhere on the station.”

 “Assuming it was our people that took them, not the enemy.”

 “If the enemy’s got the chips already, then Alamo might as well take the risk of sending them to us, I guess.”

 Pulling out his datapad, Salazar started to flick through blueprints, and said, “No-one’s been into the mineralogy lab yet. That might be worth a look.” Sliding off his chair and to his feet, he said, “Come on. I need to clear my head, if nothing else.”

 “You need to be a bit more visible as well,” Bartlett said. “Everyone’s beginning to get worried.”

 “They’ve got good reason,” he replied, stepping out of the room. The central corridor was deserted, everyone either at combat stations or deep in the bowels of the station, trying to get it operational again. The duty roster suggested that most of them felt like Salazar, wanting solitude, scattering themselves around.

 “The shuttle’s ready for launch,” Bartlett said. “We could have a try with that, couldn’t we?”

 “As a last resort, I would, but I’m not that optimistic.”

 “Come on, sir, I’ve seen you fly.”

 “And I’ve seen the enemy missile systems. Fast and deadly, and we haven’t got any countermeasures to outrun them. Suddenly trying to hide out down on the planet makes a lot of sense.” He frowned, then said, “We will try it, though. No point making a last stand down here, not if we don’t have anything to shoot.”

 “That’s the spirit! Don’t go down without a fight.”

 “I’d really rather not go down at all.”

 Running footsteps echoed from behind them, and they turned to see the severe face of Petty Officer Cook, clutching a datapad in her hand, thrusting it towards Salazar.

 “Repair reports, sir.”

 “Just give me a quick summary. We don’t have a lot of time.”

 Scowling, she replied, “Sensors and communications are nominal, life support and power are at full operational condition, and the shuttle is on pre-flight and ready to launch at thirty seconds’ notice. I’d like to start moving everyone right away.”

 “Moving them? Where to?” Salazar asked.

 “The shuttle, sir. When a window to launch opens up, we’re to make full use of it. Captain’s orders.”

 Shaking his head, he said, “I think it more important to keep the station running.”

 “The automatic equipment is capable of handling it, sir. We need to think of the men.”

 Closing his eyes for a second, Salazar took a deep breath, and said, “I need to think of the operational performance of this station. We need to be able to provide information to support any attack Alamo makes, as well as continuing to monitor for any sign of the people still down on the planet.”

 “Sir, I…”

 “Did Captain Marshall specifically orders us all to sit in the shuttle for the next three days, waiting for a launch window that might never come?”

 Shaking her head, she said, “No, sir.”

 “Then set up a watch schedule in Operations, and another for a damage control team, two and two, and the others can go off-duty and get some rest. Those not at a duty station will be in the shuttle, they can rest in there. Is that understood?”

 “Yes, sir. Understood.”

 “Then go get to it.” He sighed, then said, “And put yourself off-duty for this watch as well. We’ve all been working around the clock, and you can’t live on stimulants and coffee forever. Even NCOs.”

 Nodding, she replied, “Aye, sir,” turned, and walked away down the deck.

 “You really are good at making friends, sir,” Bartlett said. “She’s already writing her report to Captain Marshall, you know.”

 “It’ll fit nicely in with the rest of my service record.”

 “Doesn’t it bother you?”

 “If I worried about what other people thought of me, I’d have been in civilian clothes long ago. We’ve got a job to do.” Drawing level with the laboratory door, he said, “Let’s see what the geologist was playing with.” Frowning, he asked, “Did he make it down to the surface?”

 “Killed in the crash,” Bartlett said, “according to our last report from Alamo. They haven’t got around to debriefing the survivors yet. What about a relay?” 

 “What?”

 “A relay satellite. We could fire it out, and it could bounce a message laser. No danger of it being intercepted that way.”

 “Even if they didn’t misinterpret it as an attack and blow us into lots of very small pieces, they’d knock down the satellite before we could transmit a megabyte of data. Keep thinking, though. We’ll come up with something yet.”

 The room was chaotic, but the chaos that came from long-term untidiness rather than any attempt to ransack it. A dozen used coffee cups were arrayed on a table by the wall, and the monitors were displaying incomprehensible scientific data. Bartlett headed over to the computers, starting a quick inventory check, while Salazar made his way to the equipment lockers on the floor, kneeling down and opening them one by one.

 Lots of sample jars, each carefully labeled, presumably not by the person in charge of this office. Samples from the surface, from the moon, even from a couple of the other planets in the system. Whether in the interests of science or simply in an attempt to stave off boredom, they were conducting a pretty thorough research program out here.

 Three of the lockers yielded similar treasure troves, samples ranging from grains of sand to large rocks, with no sign that some of them had been disturbed for months. He looked around the room again, at the equipment scattered around. He’d had the usual Introduction to Space Science course at the academy, and even the new Introduction to Paleontology in his final year, the last thing he’d been expecting, but some of this stuff seemed new. As though it had been custom-built, rather than simply fabricated from stores.

 “They’ve been busy!” Bartlett said. “Lots of stuff requisitioned in the last two weeks. A big backlog as well.”

 “What sort of stuff?”

 “They were just about to manufacture some sort of message laser. I’ve never seen tolerances like this. It’s as though it was designed to only be used over meters, not millions of miles.” Shaking his head, he continued, “Massive data capacity, though. An order of magnitude greater than what we normally use.”

 “Someone’s come up with a data transmission breakthrough out here in Shangri-La?” “Where?”

 “Never mind.”

 “No, anyway. I could knock this together. It’s all a question of range, and why would you build a message laser that can only transmit a signal across a small room? Doesn’t make sense.”

 Turning back to the lockers, he opened the next one along to find a dirty jacket, covered in grease and grime, and pulled it up to the deck. Inside, tightly wrapped and sealed in protective wrap was a green crystal, cracked down one side but still beautiful, the unbroken sides perfectly smooth. He squinted at it, and could make out a series of small lines inside it, thin filaments made of some sort of silver material that interlaced through it.

 “Ben,” Salazar said. “Come take a look at this.”

 “Data crystal,” he replied, looking over. “Broken, though.”

 “Have you ever seen a data crystal anything like this size? They’re usually about as big as a finger joint. This must be two feet across, and I don’t think it’s a quarter of the whole we’ve got here.” He looked at the label, reading, “Harriett Crater. Some co-ordinates. Down on the planet below. See where those shuttles came down. I want to know if these readings match.”

 Nodding, Bartlett turned to the nearest terminal, typing in a sequence of commands, and said, “Within three miles. That can’t be coincidence.”

 “No it can’t.”

 “That man they found on board, he didn’t say anything about this.”

 “He was a junior officer, and in a state of shock to boot. He might not have known about it, and even if he did, he wasn’t in a condition to talk. I think he’s still under heavy sedation.” Tapping the jar, he said, “This would have to be classified. The station commander would know, but he’s dead, and the station geologist died on the planet.”

 “You think they were working together?”

 “I think we just found the reason for the attack on this station.”

 “One chunk of crystal?”

 “This isn’t just a crystal. This is raw data, and a hell of a lot of it. Yottabytes, maybe. We’ve never built anything that big.”

 “Of course we haven’t,” Bartlett replied, shaking his head. “That’s more storage capacity than in the whole of the Confederation. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.” He frowned, then said, “You think that’s what our friends out there did?”

 “I think they found something down on that planet, and were in the middle of investigating it when the station was attacked. They hid it as best they could.”

 “No wonder they haven’t destroyed the place. They were looking for the crystal!”

 “Don’t be too confident about our immunity,” Salazar said. “They could easily conclude that we haven’t found it after all. Hell, if they were that certain it was still here, they’d have sent a boarding party across.”

 “Alamo would stop them.”

 “Maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn’t. I’m not sure they could.” Shaking his head, he said, “We can’t use this as a bargaining chip, and we can’t even tell Alamo that the crystal is on board.”

 “If the crystal is all they want, couldn’t we do some negotiating ourselves, offer to trade it in exchange for our lives? Or even the system? If it was just this bit of jewelery, wouldn’t it be worth it?”

 Looking up at Bartlett, he said, “Yottabytes of data. As you pointed out, more than the entire storage capacity of the Confederation. Who knows what could be on here. Weaponry, starcharts, engine designs?”

 “A billion bad novels.”

 “Unless we can find out what is stored here, we don’t dare hand it over to the enemy. In fact, this just means I have to do something else.” He pulled out his communicator, and said, “Salazar to Cook.”

 “Go ahead, sir.”

 “I’ll be sending this order to you in writing in a minute, but I want you to get started on it right away. No questions, no hesitation. Am I understood?”

 “Yes, sir.”

 “Go down to Weapons Control and fabricate warheads for twelve Mark IX missiles.”

 “Bunker-busters?”

 “Twelve of them. Then position them so that they will destroy the station if detonated, and rig an arming switch in Operations. Set it so that only I can activate it, use my DNA and voice print.”

 “Sir…”

 “That’s an order. I don’t like this any more than you do, but the tactical situation has just changed for the worse. I assure you that I’ll give you all a chance to get away before I set it off. And make sure one of those warheads is in the geology lab.”

 “I’d like to register a formal protest to this action, sir.”

 “Noted and logged. Now execute my order.”

 “Yes, sir.”

 His face pale, Bartlett asked, “Would you do it?”

 “If it came to it, yes. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Next question. You said you could put together that message laser. Were you serious about that?”

 “Are you doubting my abilities as a communications technician, sir?” he replied. 

 “Then get to work, right away. I want that laser, or an improved version, ready as quickly as possible. If there is any chance that we can find out what is on that device, we might be able to settle this whole thing once and for all.”

Chapter 21

 The ground opened up ahead, the trudge up the rise to the crest of the hills seeming never-ending. Orlova was constantly jumping over fissures and cracks, some of them dangerously wide, breaking her stride. Up ahead, Carpenter was managing somewhat better, eating up the terrain in long, loping jumps.

 “Come on, Maggie,” she said. “We’re almost there.” 

 “Being stranded down here doesn’t bother you at all, does it?”

 “The Fleet will come back and pick us up. Eventually. And we’ve got plenty of supplies until they do. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

 “Up in orbit.” Glancing around, she said, “I don’t see anything behind us. Not that it means very much. We need to get hold of one of those suits if we can.”

 “That might be difficult if we’re going to keep throwing plasma bolts around, and if you want to try hand-to-hand combat in suits, feel free. I’ll give you covering fire.”

 “Thank you very much,” she replied, panting. “We’ve done about six miles. We must be almost there by now.”

 “A few more steps, and we’ll be at the top.”

 Nodding, Orlova pushed on, taking a sip of water through her helmet dispenser and climbing the last paces to the ridge. Finally, she made it, standing beside Carpenter and looking out over the barren landscape beyond.

 “This looks a lot like the desert we’ve just passed across.”

 “I marked the position on my navicomputer, Maggie. It’s out there, somewhere. I’ve got it down to a radius of a mile.”

 “That’s still a lot of area to cover on foot, especially if hostiles are around.” Pausing, she said, “Let’s go back to the shelters. We can break camp in the morning and move one of the domes to this side of the ridge, and some of the supplies as well. Build up a base of operations.”

 “All of this sounds worryingly long-term,” Carpenter replied, shaking her head. “I’ve still got forty hours left in my suit, and you must be about the same.”

 “Ever tried to sleep in a spacesuit?” Orlova said.

 “That’s what stimulants are for.”

 “Susan, this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. I thought archaeological digs were supposed to be slow and cautious.”

 “With people chasing after us, I feel an increasing need to sprint.”

 “Nevertheless,” Orlova began, before catching something out of the corner of her eye. She looked down on the plain again, and a glowing blue light shone from the ground, as though part of the desert itself had turned into a searchlight. The beam turned, rotating towards them, shining right in their helmets.

 “Do you see it, Susan?” Orlova asked, nothing but static for a reply. “Susan, do you read?” She could see her friend’s lips moving, and a series of alerts began to sound in her suit computer, something trying to hack into the software. Trying and succeeding, but as rapidly as it began, it faded away, and the interference stopped.

 “Maggie, come in,” Carpenter said.

 “I hear you now,” she replied. “What the hell was that?”

 “I think we found what we came for. A quarter mile ahead, at the base of this ridge.”

 Frowning, Orlova said, “We found something damn dangerous, Susan. Something that I suspect could turn off our spacesuit controls at will. I’m not sure that we shouldn’t go back.”

 “Go back? To what? We’re committed, and given the power that...whatever it is...must have, what makes you think that we’ll be any safer on the other side of that ridge. For that matter, we’d be going back to the…”

 “Exactly,” Orlova said. “If we saw that, and they are following us, then I’m willing to bet that they saw it too.”

 “Then we’d better get there first.”

 “I’m not sure they’ll respect a salvage claim,” Orlova began, before shaking her head. “Nevertheless, you are quite right. Let’s go and take a look. One thing, though. If I say we pull out, I don’t care if you are on the threshold of the greatest discovery since Howard Carter, we pull out at once. You hear me?”

 “I hear you.”

 “Then let’s go.”

 The two of them bounded down the ridge, the descent proving far easier than the climb had been, and stepped towards the source of the light. The ground turned into a series of bumps, and it gradually occurred to her that they were regular in shape, a pattern carved into the surface.

 “I see it too,” Carpenter said. “Ruins, at a guess. Some sort of surface settlement, like the adobe shelters the first Martian settlers built.”

 “They built half a dozen of them to shelter sensitive equipment from dust storms,” Orlova said. “This must be a mile across.” She gestured into the distance, the pattern noticeable as far as she could see. “This was a city, and a large one.”

 “Aliens, Maggie. It could be almost anything. Look at that.”

 Opening up in the ground up ahead was a chasm, perfectly round in shape, heading vertically down. Orlova peered down it, nothing but inky blackness beyond, then looked at her computer. Down to the millimeter, this was the source of the light.

 “Shall we?” Carpenter asked.

 Nodding, Orlova secured a piton into the ground, attaching her safety line to the hook. She gave it an experimental tug, and then pushed it deeper, down into the rock. Another tug, and it came free in her hands.

 “Too soft. We can’t abseil here.”

 “Radar says it’s only a hundred meters.”

 Looking down the hole again, Orlova replied, “We can get down with our suit jets to slow the descent, but we’ll never get back up again that way.”

 “There must be another entrance, one that we can use to get out.”

 “For all we know, these aliens of yours could fly.”

 “We’ll think of something.”

 After a second, she said, “Plant a beacon. If Alamo comes down for us, it’d be polite for us to let them know where we are hiding.”

 Carpenter reached down into a pouch in her belt, then paused, saying, “You’re actually going along with this?”

 “This is why we stayed down here. We’re marooned on this planet anyway, at least for the present, and I don’t see how we can make our situation worse.”

 “The supplies…”

 “If I was hunting us, I’d have had them staked out right from the start. It’s the only place on the planet they know we have to go, eventually. If I hadn’t simply destroyed them.”

 “You think…”

 “Actually, no. They’re as stranded as we are, and my guess is that they’ll want to make use of them instead. We’ve just got to trust to luck.” With a smile, she took a step out into the void, tapping her suit jets to arrest her fall. “Do you want to live forever?”

 Carpenter leapt in after her, as Orlova dropped down into darkness, slowly rotating to get a look at each wall. Her helmet lights flashed over strange hieroglyphics, though some of them seemed oddly familiar.

 “Looks human,” Carpenter said. “I don’t recognize it, though. If we can get a good enough sample, our computers ought to be able to manage a translation.”

 “We might come across a native speaker down here,” Orlova replied.

 The two of them continued to descend, pulsing their jets to slow themselves, careful not to make the bursts too long lest they cause damage to anything down below. Just as the bottom became visible, a dust-covered flat surface, the blinding light flashed on again, and as before, their suit systems failed, sending them dropping down to the ground, staggering to their knees. The whole floor was illuminated, an eerie blue, before abruptly winking out once again.

 “Any damage?” Orlova asked, but Carpenter shook her head.

 “I’m going to bruise, but my suit’s intact,” she replied, gasping. “Let me get my wind back.”

 A single tunnel pointed north, more of the strange writing on the walls, and Orlova looked down at her suit radar display, not surprised when she didn’t get any reading.

 “Same as Desdemona,” she muttered, and Carpenter looked up.

 “I’ve seen the reports. Didn’t Captain Marshall almost go mad back there?”

 “Severe xeno-psychosis. How’s your suit pharmacopoeia?”

 “You think it might get that bad?”

 “I think it might. Can you stand? We need to get moving. I’m feeling rather exposed out here.”

 Nodding, Carpenter climbed to her feet, tugging on Orlova, and the two of them started down the corridor. The walls seemed to soak up the light from their helmets, and within a few minutes they couldn’t see the shaft they had descended, walking through a sea of darkness, the only sound their own breath.

 “We’re going down,” Carpenter said. “One-in-thirty gradient.”

 “I wonder how deep we'll be going,” Orlova replied.

 After what seemed like hours, the corridor started to open up, leading them into a huge cavern, small points of light illuminating key areas, the chamber decorated with intricate carvings on every surface. Kneeling down, Orlova swept the dust clear from the floor by her feet, and was greeted by a face looking up at her, unmistakably that of a Neander.

 “I guess that solves the problem,” she said.

 “We don’t know they lived here,” Carpenter replied. “Look over there.” She swept clear another section, and this time a human looked up from the floor, his eyes filled with an impossible-to-describe sadness, as though weeping for his lost world. “And another,” she said, this time revealing a smaller humanoid, barely four feet high, covered in hair but unmistakably with intelligence in its eyes.

 “What the hell have we found here, Susan?”

 Gazing up at the ceiling, she said, “A treasure trove. You mentioned Howard Carter? I want to let off a flare. See if we can get a recording of all this.”

 “Be my guest,” she replied, and Carpenter pulled a small cylinder out of her pocket, placing it on the floor and resting a pair of datapads next to it, set to cover as much of the chamber as possible.

 “Five seconds,” Carpenter said, and Orlova dimmed her helmet as much as she could. Even then, the glare made her eyes water for a second, but briefly she could see everything. Every surface had the same detail, figures and carvings interlaced with hieroglyphics, of humanoids and animals of a thousand types, some of them familiar, some strange. At the far side of the room, she could see someone standing, watching them.

 “Over there,” she said.

 “What?” Carpenter said. “He isn’t wearing a suit.”

 Looking at her monitors, Orlova replied, “Atmospheric pressure is the same as it was.” She started to walk towards the figure, still standing and implacably watching them as they approached. He was tall, almost seven feet high, and willowy, thin arms and legs, but otherwise appeared human, wearing nothing but a thin black robe. His mouth started to move, and reaching down, Orlova turned on her exterior pickup.

 “Cratos ana Kemelom. Ego kei ana, deiko dhoubnom.”

 “Susan?”

 “Give me time, give me time.”

 The figure dissolved, turning into a starmap, oddly distorted. One of the stars, near the middle, glowed, then seemed to shatter into pieces, the objects racing away, scattered across the map.

 “A hologram,” Carpenter said, shaking her head. “After all these centuries.”

 “Hard to believe, but whoever built this place did it to last.”

 “Do you recognize the stars?”

 “Frankly, no, but I’m sure Race will be able to make something of it.”

 The figure reappeared, a smile beaming across his face, before changing into a Neander, and then one of the smaller creatures, standing on his toes. He pointed at Carpenter, then at Orlova, then behind him, his head turning to face the wall.

 “Gnotis galnos.”

 “Knowledge,” Carpenter said, “and power.”

 “Let me try something,” Orlova said, and she threw another switch on the front of her suit, setting it to broadcast. “I am Senior Lieutenant Orlova of the Triplanetary Confederation. Who are you?”

 “You don’t think…”

 The room lit up again, and everything went dark, her suit filters snapping on. A trio of red lights began to glow in the side of her helmet, and then the light faded, everything returning to normal.

 “My suit computer just crashed,” Orlova said. 

 “Mine too. Reading an Error 932.”

 “Too much data. Our suits had to restore to factory settings.”

 The figure, a Neander once again, shook his head, his face dropping into despair, and said, “Bhidhos alpos.”

 “Susan?”

 “Factory default, remember,” she said. “I don’t have my translation programs any more. We won’t know until we get back up to Alamo.”

 “Something we do know, though. There’s a working computer system here. Nothing else could have lasted for all this time, and that it is still operational is incredible.” Shaking her head, she said, “Once we get a proper look at this, we’ll have a few revolutions in computer design, I suspect.”

 “Maggie, this is the biggest discovery we’ve made yet. We need to get a full research team here, right away. A major effort. For the last three years, since we first discovered the scattered human races, we’ve been working on scraps of information, meager ones at that. Look around you,” she said, waving her hands. “This is a feast, and it could take us decades to uncover its secrets.”

 “There’s an alien ship in orbit.”

 “And now we know what they are after, don’t we!”

 With a sigh, Orlova said, “Empires and Confederations are rarely commanded by archaeologists, Susan. Would you start a war for this place?” Smiling, she added, “Don’t answer that. I’ve a feeling I’d be afraid of the reply.”

 “Gnotis galnos,” the figure said, nodding.

 “Do you think it is talking to you?” Carpenter said.

 “It didn’t respond when I spoke to it before. Damn it, I should have tried a translation program. That is proto-indo, isn’t it?”

 “Basically,” she replied. “I’m not conversationally fluent, Maggie. It’s a language dead ten thousand years, that we thought was spoken by a few nomads in Asia. That something very much like it is out here among the stars…”

 “Is one of many amazing things you are to discover,” a new voice said, seeming to step out of nowhere, a weapon covering them both. “Though perhaps I must refer to your race instead of to you, personally.”

 “This planet is the territory of the Triplanetary Confederation,” Orlova began, but the figure shook his head.

 “I beg to differ. This planet was the territory of our ancestors, many thousands of years ago, and we are here to take back what is ours. Specifically, we are looking for the crystal. It would save us much trouble if you were to simply hand it over now, or arrange for its transportation to our ship.”

 “What crystal?” Susan asked.

 “Do not trouble to feign ignorance,” he replied. “Or perhaps you are unimportant enough that your commanders have not seen fit to brief you. Though I understood that Senior Lieutenant was a key rank in the hierarchy of one of your ships.”

 “You seem to have us at a disadvantage,” Orlova said. 

 “Excellent. So it will remain. Now if you would come with me, perhaps we can have a fuller discussion. I would promise you more comfortable surroundings, but I do not think you will find them so.”

Chapter 22

 Salazar looked at the cumbersome apparatus that Bartlett had rigged up, almost filling the geology lab, then across at the expression running across the face of Fox, who was shaking her head with apparent disbelief.

 “We’re going to need a lot of the station’s power,” Bartlett said.

 “How much?”

 “Let’s go ahead and say all of it,” he replied. “Just switch out life support and other critical systems. Oh, and you’d better make sure all of the firewalls are up and running. I don’t know what sort of data we’re about to try and access.”

 “Should we be doing this at all?” Cook asked. “Sir, this is something we ought to get permission for. In my belief there is a serious potential risk to the safety of the station.”

 “Noted,” Salazar replied, “but in my belief there is a greater risk to not attempting this. We need to know what is on that crystal.” With a smile, he said, “Think about it this way. If it turns out that the data isn’t valuable, we can turn it over to the enemy and perhaps bring all of this to an end.”

 “I think you’re being optimistic,” she replied. “What was that projection of the storage capacity again?”

 “Are you ready, Ben?” Salazar asked, turning back to Bartlett.

 “Just about. I’ve tied in everything I can dare, and we’re ready to activate the laser on your command.”

 “One minute.” He pulled out his communicator, and said, “Grogan, are you and the others still standing by on the shuttle?”

 “Ready to go, but I’m not a pilot. Pre-flight looks fine.”

 “Just let the autopilot do its thing. I’m sure you’ll be good.”

 “I thought we’d ruled out escaping on the shuttle.”

 “Spaceman, if the shuttle is heading out with you on it, I can guarantee that the enemy ship will be far too distracted to care.”

 “Based on what?”

 “The destruction of this station.” He looked at the others, and said, “Time to go.”

 “Wait a minute,” Bartlett said. “You don’t know the first thing about how this works.”

 “All I have to do is switch it on, and you can talk me through everything over the communicator if necessary. Cook, I want you to monitor station functions on the shuttle. Get a telemetry feed. I’ll give you three minutes.”

 Shaking his head, Bartlett said, “I go through hell putting this thing together, and I don’t even get to know whether or not it works?”

 Salazar replied, “If it doesn’t, you’ll be the first to know.”

 “Sir, we could set this up for remote activation,” Cook said.

 “That would take time, and we’re running out of it.”

 “What do you base that on?”

 “Instinct. And the impatience of youth. And growing jitters that someone on that ship will decide to break the stalemate and pay us a visit.”

 “That sounds like a comprehensive list.”

 “I’m rather proud of it. Now get going.”

 Nodding, Cook left the room, Bartlett pausing at the exit, saying, “You can get to the shuttle in thirty seconds. If something starts to go wrong, run for it.”

 “Don’t wait for me, Ben. You can get a hell of a long way in thirty seconds. Get going.”

 Glancing back for a second, he raced down the corridor, leaving Salazar alone in the room. He took a seat in front of the laser, admiring the craftsmanship. Bartlett had done a great job in a very few hours, even if it did look like a tangle of cables and wires wrapped around a long, glowing tube. The most important line led to an airlock, and on the other side an improvised radiator was ready. This was going to give off a lot of heat.

 He glanced down at his watch, counting the seconds. By now the others would be on the shuttle, the hatch closed, ready to take off at the first sign of trouble, assuming they didn’t try and do something foolish. As he held his hand over the controls, ready to throw the switch, the irony of that thought made him smile. Then, at the correct second, he tapped the button.

 It didn’t look very impressive, at least, not at first. A thin beam of ruby-red laser light, a faint mist sprayed along the length of the beam to make sure that an inadvertent hand didn’t get in the way, raced down to hit the crystal, following the pattern that the late commander of this station had laid out. Presumably he had known what he was doing.

 Then some of the terminals began to wink out, flickering on and off, and the lights in the room died, leaving him in darkness. His communicator began to urgently beep, and he pulled it out of his pocket, tapping the control.

 “What’s happening?” Cook asked. “We’re getting critical computer failures all across the station, and something’s smashing the hell out of our firewalls.”

 “Bail out,” he replied.

 “Negative. Nothing’s wrong with the structural integrity.”

 Looking up at the displays, the only source of light in the room, he could see a series of strange hieroglyphics flickering across the screen, moving too quickly for him to read them even if he could make any sense of them, before they all died, one after another.

 “What the hell!” Cook said. “Power surge, and a big one! The whole network just went dead.”

 The laser had died with the displays, all flickering out. He threw the control switch, rendering it safe, then tried the manual overrides. Nothing was working, even the door stuck at half-open, only held in position by the thick cables blocking it from moving.

 “Sir, what’s your status?”

 “Everything’s dead,” he replied, reaching for a nearby torch. “I’ve got no power at all. What does your telemetry show?”

 “The same as yours. Sir, you’ve got plenty of time to make for the shuttle.”

 “There must be a way to bring it back,” he replied.

 “Pavel,” Bartlett said, “That enemy ship will know that we’re dead. If they’re going to launch their attack, this is the time. We’ve got to go.”

 “I agree. Launch, and talk me through the startup sequence.” He stepped through the door, shining his torch down the corridor, and started to make his way along it. “I’m heading for Operations.”

 “You should be able to activate the emergency overrides from there,” Cook said. “Based on the last few readings, my guess is that the computer crashed, catastrophically.”

 “That doesn’t sound particularly promising.”

 “It should have restarted by itself. Something must have stopped it. It could be a simple malfunction, something that can be fixed by throwing a switch, or it might be something more fundamental.”

 He increased his pace, sprinting down the corridor, and replied, “Can you get anything from the enemy ship?”

 “Not for another minute. We’re on the wrong side of the station, and exterior sensors are all off-line. We'll have to wait for the rotation.”

 “Great.”

 The door to Operations was closed, locked down, but the manual override worked. He pumped the lever up and down, cranking the door open just enough that he could slide through into the empty room beyond, almost tripping over something on the floor as he stepped in. There was no light at all, just the torch in his hand, and he struggled to find his way around the unfamiliar room, feeling his way around.

 “Where am I heading?”

 “Monitor One, by the far wall,” Bartlett replied.

 “Ben? Where’s…,” he paused, then said, “How long?”

 “She left about thirty seconds ago, muttering under her breath. I’ve still got everything ready for launch, just in case.”

 Finally, his fingers reached across the required station, and he positioned himself in front of it. placing the torch to light most of the controls. The first control he tried was ‘manual restart’, but nothing happened.

 “Ideas, please,” he said.

 “You need to reboot the system. From scratch.”

 “No, no,” Grogan said. “That takes too long. Go for the default backup.”

 “He’ll lose all the data!”

 “To hell with that, there won’t be any data to read if the station is blown up.”

 “Grogan,” Salazar asked. “What am I doing?”

 “Flip over a panel on the end of the third row of switches, and depress all three buttons at the same time. Then wait for twenty seconds, and you’ll have to enter in your command code.”

 Nodding, he turned over the panel, exposing the controls, red writing cautioning him not to touch them except in absolute emergency. Looking around the darkened control room, he figured that if anything counted, this did, and jammed his fingers on the buttons.

 “Give me a twenty-second countdown from now. I can’t see my watch.”

 “On it,” Grogan said. “Five seconds and running. Anything happening yet?”

 As she spoke, a series of green lights began to wink on at the top of the panel, running from one system to the next as the check programs began their work.

 “Ten seconds. Things should be working by now.”

 “Some activity on the board. Looks pretty random.”

 “It will be. Everything’s switching over to the original settings from when they first brought the station on-line.”

 “How much data are we going to lose?”

 “Everything not in the protected storage.”

 “Grogan, that area was ripped to shreds, remember.”

 There was a pause, and she said, “Fifteen seconds. Would it help if I told you we were passed the point of no return now?”

 “Not really,” he replied.

 “Twenty seconds.”

 On the central panel, a request to enter his access code flashed onto the screen, green-on-black text in the crudest font he had ever seen, likely some programmer having a joke at his expense. He entered his code, and waited.

 “Maybe you should think about this, Dave,” appeared on the screen. Definitely a programmer having a joke.

 Then, as one, the emergency lighting flashed on, and all the consoles erupted into life, displaying test patterns and fault tracking, as Fox ran into the room, grabbing on to Monitor Two.

 “Hang on!” she yelled.

 “Why?” he asked, but he instantly had the answer as he started to drift away from the ground, his hands just snatching the console in time.

 “Damn it!” Grogan yelled. “We almost got thrown from the station! What the hell happened!”

 “Original default,” Fox said, shaking her head. “Which means no rotational gravity. The first thing the system did was stop our spin.”

 “Get it started again,” he ordered, “and then get me some sort of status report. Grogan, you and the others stay on the shuttle until I give the order.”

 “On it, sir,” Fox replied, pushing herself across the room, reaching up to tip herself towards a station on the far wall. “Thirty seconds.”

 Salazar pushed off towards the sensor station, still running through test programs. Ignoring several safety warnings, he overrode the start-up sequence and wildly threw switches, bringing the external sensors on-line. As though disapproving, the monitors took a few seconds before they co-operated, manufacturer’s warnings still recommending that he should follow the proper procedure.

 “It’s dead!” he yelled. “The enemy ship is off its rotation, moving away from station-keeping.”

 “What?” Fox said, turning to look at him.

 “They must have been monitoring our computer traffic. Whatever hit us, hit them just as hard!” Looking at the next console, he said, “Damn it, the communications station is still wasting its time.”

 Bartlett drifted into the room, and said, “That’s my cue.”

 “I told you to stay on the shuttle!”

 “Technically, my interpretation was that you told Grogan to stay on the shuttle. Besides, you need me, don’t you?”

 “Get me a message laser to Alamo, right now!”

 “If you are interested, I found out what happened,” Fox said. “Didn’t take long.”

 “What hit us? Some sort of virus?”

 “Data.”

 “Data?”

 “That crystal was sending out information about a billion times faster than any data crystal I’ve ever seen. In less than a second it had filled every bit of unused capacity.”

 Bartlett whistled, “No wonder all the control systems failed.”

 “If it’s any consolation, I doubt we’d have had any choice other than a reboot in any case. The databanks would have been scrambled to hell and gone.”

 “So we still have no idea what’s on it,” Bartlett said. “Message laser coming online, I just need to swing it around at Alamo.”

 “We don’t know what’s on it, but we know we can’t give it up. Right, Fox?”

 “Storage capacity like that would provide a revolution in computer design. Every starship could have its own quantum computer-equivalent, maybe every missile. A tactical edge that we don’t dare give up.” She looked across at him, and said, “I understand why you wanted that destruct sequence now.”

 “I’m glad you didn’t ask whether or not I would have used it.” He looked back at his monitor, and said, “They’re still struggling.”

 “I’ve got Alamo, sir. Captain Marshall, for you.”

 Marshall’s face appeared on the viewscreen, and he said, “Midshipman, what the hell is happening over there?”

 “Long story short, sir, we found an alien artifact on board, and while testing it, managed to crash the station computers. All of them.”

 “That’s…”

 “I’m pretty sure that the enemy ship had some sort of a monitor on board, and by the looks of it they were hit by the same thing. If ever we’re going to knock them down, I think the time is now, sir.”

 “Have you got weapons back?”

 “Negative, sir.”

 “Damn. Well, at least you gave us our shot. Sit tight, Salazar, and bail out if anything nasty heads in your direction. Good luck. Alamo out.”

 “And that is that,” Fox said. “Restoring gravity.”

 A series of thrusters fired, Salazar carefully lowering himself to the ground, the slight sick feeling of a constantly changing gravity field until it began to settle down. He turned to look at the sensors, and shook his head. The enemy ship was beginning to orient itself, heading to face Alamo.

 “Fox,” he said. “Take the spin off the station when I give the order.”

 “Why?”

 “And cut all external power. I want it to look as though we’re dead again, as if we’ve failed to repair any of the faults. Can do?”

 “Play dead, you mean?” Fox said. “No problem, I can have that done in less than a minute.”

 “Get started. Ben, I want you and the others to go and get those warheads. The Petty Officer will tell you where they are emplaced. I presume you set them for remote activation?”

 “Of course, but I think we might still need them. We can’t let that crystal get into enemy hands.”

 “And the best way of doing that is to blow their hands off. I want all of those warheads loaded into the shuttle.”

 “She’ll never maneuver on autopilot well enough to guide it in.”

 “Probably not,” he replied. “That doesn’t matter. Right now it’s the only shot we’ve got in our locker, and I mean to pull the trigger.

Chapter 23

 “Battle stations,” Marshall ordered, leaning forward in his chair, staring at the enemy ship slowly tumbling on the screen.

 “Radiators out,” Caine reported. “Laser charging to full capacity. Ready to fire in thirty seconds. Missile salvo is ready to launch once I’ve taken the first shot.”

 “Should I accelerate, sir?” Foster asked.

 “No, Midshipman, but begin your random walk.”

 “Doctrine…”

 “Random walk only.”

 He looked across at Caine, and said, “We’re going to have to slug it out. There’s no way that either of us can build up enough distance to get out of firing range, so short of some sort of mutual ceasefire, only one of us is getting away from this one.”

 “In other words,” she replied, “make each shot tell. Got it. Foster, I’ll want a firing solution in twenty-one seconds. Aim for one of those launch tubes. If we get lucky, we might get this out of the way in a single shot.”

 “I don’t think we’re going to get that sort of luck,” Kelso said.

 “Sir,” Weitzman said, “I’m getting chatter from the surface! It looks like the jamming field has been deactivated.”

 “Anything from our team on the surface?”

 “Nothing, sir. Lots of stuff in a language I don’t understand, and not on our usual frequency. Best guess is their people checking in.”

 “Damn it,” Kelso said.

 “Belay that,” Marshall replied. “Odds are neither of them is thinking to talk to us at the moment.”

 “Should I try to hail them, sir?”

 “Negative,” he replied. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about. How long, Deadeye?”

 “Ten seconds, sir.”

 “Power generation from the enemy ship, Captain,” Spinelli said, eyes on his panel. “Looks like they’re coming about.”

 “I guess we’re run out of time. Fire when ready, Deadeye.”

 “Foster, feel free,” Caine said, and the midshipman slowly, painfully slowly, swung Alamo around on its thrusters, for a brief second lining the two ships up. A microsecond would have been enough, and the lights dimmed for a second as Alamo’s primary weapon fired, its radiators instantly glowing red-hot as the laser made contact with the enemy, gouging an angry line down the side of the ship.

 “That’s got to hurt,” Caine said.

 “No idea, ma’am,” Spinelli said, “but I’m getting a lot of outgassing, and some organic material drifting away from the enemy ship.”

 “Bodies, in other words.”

 “First missile salvo firing now. I’ve set them to hunt for anything they decide to throw at us, the second salvo can head for the enemy. Laser recharge cycle under way, next pulse can be fired in sixty seconds.”

 Looking at Foster, still looking at the screen, Marshall said, “Midshipman, resume random walk! This battle is a hell of a long way from being over.”

 “Sorry, sir,” she replied. “Resuming random walk.”

 “Energy spikes, sir,” Spinelli said. “Missiles launching, a salvo of four, new type.”

 “Let’s take a look,” Marshall replied, and a hologram of the new target appeared next to his chair, floating in thin air, details slowly adding on as the sensors gathered more data.

 “Moving very fast, sir, and aiming directly at us.”

 “Guiding missiles across now,” Caine said, but Marshall shook his head.

 “Get them to the enemy ship. Blow bits off him.”

 “Danny?”

 He pointed at the trajectory plot, and said, “Look at them, curving straight in, and small. Decoys.”

 “I hope you’re right,” she replied, tapping a control and sending the missiles diving towards the target, fanning out to give the widest possible coverage.”

 “Those are moving fast enough to do some real damage if they hit,” Erickson warned.

 “I’m aware of that, Spaceman. Midshipman, make my lady dance.”

 “Sir?”

 With a sigh, he said, “Increase the radius of our random walk pattern. Treble it.”

 “We’re burning thruster fuel very quickly, sir.”

 “Doesn’t help us if it’s stuck in the tank, does it?”  

 “No, sir,” she replied, turning back to her work. The first wave of missiles was ranging close, diving in towards Alamo, gaining speed with every second. Now they were beginning to move on their track, spreading out to target key systems as Foster tried to pivot the ship, showing it the most vulnerable areas.

 “Laser firing in twenty seconds. Make sure they don’t hit our radiators,” Caine said.

 “Impact in five seconds, sir,” Spinelli said. “Our first impact in fifteen.” He looked up at his panel, and said, “Energy spike, two objects launching, laser missiles.”

 “Deadeye…,” Marshall began, but she nodded.

 “Already on it.”

 “Two seconds,” Spinelli said.  

 Alamo rocked from stem to stern, warning sirens blaring as the protesting deck plates ruptured, decompression alarm sounding. Erickson’s fingers began to race along the controls as she checked damage reports.

 “Well?” Marshall asked.

 “Wait one.”

 “We got the laser missiles,” Spinelli said. “I guess sensors are fine. Registering three impacts from our missiles, all nice and clean, but I’ve got no way of evaluating damage. Looks bad, though. They’re having trouble maintaining attitude.”

 “Laser ready! Foster, give me a shot.”

 Alamo lumbered around, Marshall glancing back at the status boards, one area a sea of red warning lights. As it swung past the enemy ship, the laser fired, and another black line raced across its hull, brief trickles of flame as air raced out into space, sending the ship tumbling in another direction.

 “Direct hit,” Caine said, unnecessarily. “Second salvo in the tubes now, ready to fire.”

 “Damage report, Captain,” Erickson said. “The missile had no warhead, kinetic only. It went in four levels before stopping, we have decompression in seven sections, but the bulkheads are holding.”

 “Firing salvo,” Caine said, and the missiles raced away, homing in on the enemy ship.

 “No casualties reported,” Erickson continued. “We’ve lost two of the maneuvering thrusters, and have sustained significant damage to the secondary life-support system. Also, our combat fabricator is out.”

 Marshall looked at her, wide-eyed, then tapped the communicator control on his armrest, saying, “Quinn…”

 “I’m already on the way, but from what my damage-control team tells me, it’s been ripped into pieces. Total loss. I can build a new one with the other fabricators, but that will take the better part of a day, and before you ask, I can’t speed that up.”

 “What about the other fabricators?”

 “A lot slower than the combat fabricator, and they don’t usually use those materials. Best guess I can get your first new missile to you in a quarter-hour. I’ve got Chief Bogodin on the way down right now.”

 “Do anything you can, Jack.” Looking at Caine, he said, “That means all we’ve got to play with are the missiles already in the tubes. Eighteen shots, counting the ones you just launched.”

 “We can buy time,” she said. “Try and move away from the field of battle. We’ve done a lot of damage, and they might withdraw.”

 “Energy spike!” Spinelli said. “Two more laser missiles on the way. Forty-one seconds before our missiles can intercept them.”

 “Put on a little acceleration,” Marshall told Foster.

 “Course, sir?”

 “Right down their throats.” Turning to Caine, he said, “We’re not going to let this go. If we retreat here, then they’ll come back. There’s evidently something in this system worth fighting for, and even if there wasn’t, we can’t afford to risk showing them our tail. Get on the laser, and husband those missiles.”

 “Probes, sir,” Kelso said. “They lobbed kinetic weapons at us, why not return the favor?”

 “Good thinking, Sub-Lieutenant. Get a salvo into the air.”

 “They won’t do any real damage,” Caine said.

 “They’ll confuse them, and right now, that’s what we need.”

 “Initiating interception course, sir. Closest approach will be one hundred and twenty-nine miles. Current distance, three thousand and ninety.”

 “In space combat terms, close enough to spit in their eye,” Caine said.

 “Make our closest approach zero, Midshipman,” Marshall said.

 She turned back at him and said, “Ramming speed, sir?”

 “Chicken, Midshipman. Let’s see who blinks first.”

 Gulping, she turned back to her controls, and said, “Impact in five minutes, nine seconds.”

 “Another energy spike, sir,” Spinelli said. “They’re firing another three laser missiles at us, one of them from a new source. I’d say they’re getting to work on their damage control systems.”

 “That’s all we need,” Marshall said. “Deadeye, get on it.”

 “Big spike!” Spinelli yelled. “First laser missile fired, missed us by less than a hundred meters. They’re going to get better the closer we get.”

 “So are we. Get another salvo in the air.”

 Turning, Caine said, “Shouldn’t we save them for deflection?”

 “They can build missiles a lot faster than we can, Deadeye. If this comes down to a war of attrition, we lose. We’ve got to bring this to an end as fast as we can.” Gesturing at the damaged ship up ahead, he said, “Right now we’ve done a lot more damage to them than they have to us, and I’m going to push that advantage for everything it’s worth. Besides, if they’re throwing kinetic warheads at us, the closer we are, the less chance they have to accelerate.”

 “Closing on target, sir,” Kelso said.

 “Quinn here,” echoed Marshall’s communicator. “No luck on the fabricator at all, sir. No chance of a repair.”

 “Thanks,” he said. “You’d better get back to Engineering.”

 “Probes in the air,” Caine said. “I’ve got them on a standard attack vector. I can probably use them as flying countermeasures, try and disable some of their laser missiles that way.”

 “Massive energy spike!” Spinelli said, and alarms began to sound.

 “The ship’s tumbling!” Foster said. “I can’t keep attitude control.”

 “Try and compensate,” Caine replied. “I’ll have a laser pulse ready in thirty-one seconds. At least that’s still working.”

 “No significant damage, sir,” Erickson said. “The laser hit the outer hull, just about parallel. We’ve got damage across a hundred and ninety meters of surface, and hull breaches in nineteen places. Control teams are on the case.”

 “Damn, we were lucky,” Kelso said. “A couple of meters more and we’d be dead.”

 “I’m losing it,” Foster replied, frantically hitting controls. “We’re outgassing from too many places, and I’ve lost too many thrusters.”

 Jumping to his feet, Marshall stepped over to her, saying, “I’ll take her, Midshipman.”

 She looked up, nodded, and said, “Aye, sir.”

 He slid into the helm, running his fingers over the controls as they swung around to his preferred settings, and started to work, trying to guide her back onto the correct course. He didn’t need to worry about random walk, the ship was doing an excellent job of that for him.

 “Erickson, see what you can do about the leaks. If you can’t get them patched, evacuate the air from affected sections. We’ve got settle down this ride.”

 “Got one of the laser missiles, a probe slammed right into it. My missiles are still running true,” Caine said, “and I guess I know where you want them.”

 “Blow holes in them, and see if you can target the launch tubes.”

 “Trying, Danny, but they’re quick on their thrusters. Ready to take my next shot in five seconds, and I’ve got the next salvo ready to launch.”

 “Go ahead and get them into the air. We must be close.”

 Alamo rocked, the next batch of missiles diving towards its target, the enemy ship getting awfully close. He played his hands across the thruster controls, using the few remaining options to try and guide the ship towards its target, trying to bring the nose into line to allow Caine to get her next shot. He glanced up at the clock over the viewscreen, and shook his head. So far, all of this had only taken two and a half minutes.

 “Sir?” Spinelli said. “The remaining laser missile has moved behind the enemy ship.”

 “They must be trying for the station,” Kelso said.

 “Maybe,” Marshall replied. “Deadeye, coming up in three seconds, I hope.”

 Alamo’s nose crossed in front of the enemy ship once again, the laser scoring another line down the side of its hull, tearing through into protected areas. This time their target pivoted wildly out of control, all the thrusters firing at once, sending it into an uncontrolled spin.

 “That looks decisive,” he said, before a brief flash shot across the screen. “What the hell was that?”

 “Laser missile detonated,” Spinelli said. 

 “I’ve lost control of the missiles,” Caine said. “Heading off on their own, straight-line course. Best guess that they used a short-range EM pulse to knock them out.”

 “Get the last salvo ready to fire,” he replied. “Maybe we can finish them off. Laser status?”

 “Radiator damage, sir,” Erickson said, shaking her head. “Looks like shrapnel.”

 “Can we use the laser?”

 “Negative, sir.”

 “Six shots left, Deadeye. Make them good.”

 “Energy spike from the enemy ship, sir,” Spinelli reported. “Good God.”

 “What?”

 “Nine, correction, eleven laser missiles in the air, sir. I think they dumped them out of some of the hull breaches. I’m reading power fluctuations, almost everywhere. I’d say they’ve sustained a lot of damage.”

 “Eleven lasers,” Caine said.

 “They’re heading into an enveloping pattern, trying to surround us.”

 “Initiating full acceleration,” Marshall said. “Dump the last of the missiles, Deadeye, see if you can manage some fratricide.”

 “Doing it, Danny, but I don’t think it’s going to help. Long before we can hit them, they can sacrifice one of their missiles to knock ours out.”

 “Full power, then. Get the radiators retracted. Can we outpace them?”

 Spinelli looked across, shaking his head, “They’ve got ten times our acceleration, sir. Best guess has them getting into firing position in three hundred and nine seconds.”

 “Hold the missiles until the last minute,” he said, turning to Caine. “Then fire them at the enemy ship, safeties off, top speed. Program them to fire when we register the energy spikes.”

 “Last shot, Danny?”

 With a smile, he replied, “We might as well take them down with us when we go.”

Chapter 24

 Orlova looked across at Carpenter as the two of them walked across the cavernous room, two more of the figures waiting for them at the far end. They seemed to be building some sort of shelter, not inflatable like the Triplanetary designs, but some sort of modular build, forming a hexagon.

 She paused, looking at their guard, and said, “Our two ships are going to fight it out in orbit.”

 “They already are,” he replied. “You are losing, if it is of interest to you.”

 “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she replied. “In any event, what we are doing down here is meaningless compared to that. Whoever wins up there is going to win down here, no matter what happens. If you kill us, Captain Marshall will tear the planet apart to find you.”

 He nodded, and said, “As would our commander.”

 “No-one else has to die here today,” she said. “Why don’t we wait and see what happens in orbit?”

 Shaking his head, he replied, “That is not an option I am willing to consider. Contact your ship, and have them yield the crystal. We now have positive proof that you have possession of it.”

 A crackle sounded in Orlova’s helmet, and she briefly heard, “Alamo calling. Stand by for emergency evacuation. All hands…”

 “I heard that!” Carpenter said. “The jamming field is down!”

 “Exactly,” the figure said.

 Shaking her head, Orlova replied, “This was not your work. Or you would have done it long ago.”

 “What makes you think that we didn’t?”

 “You’d have called for reinforcements. And no, you don’t have anyone else up on the surface. This is the only place on the planet that actually matters, and you brought everyone you had left after we smashed your force to pieces during the escape of our shuttles.”

 “Would it help if we told you that we respected you as a warrior? You fought bravely, Senior Lieutenant, but ultimately, we are victorious, as is only right and proper. We are the future, whereas you represent a regressive past that will soon disappear into history.”

 “Or you are a dead-end,” Carpenter replied. “Like the saber-toothed tiger or the mammoth.”

 “Perhaps. I am content to let the future judge us. The stronger will survive, the weaker will perish. Such is the way of all things in the universe.”

 An amber light started to flash in her helmet, and Orlova replied, “Radiation alarm. What are you doing?”

 “If we cannot have this installation, it is our duty to deny it to the enemy.”

 “You can’t do it!” Carpenter yelled. “These secrets here may never be recovered again.”

 “Walls, Lieutenant,” he replied. “Walls with ancient carvings upon them. Only the crystal matters, only that which we have sought. What does the rest of it matter?”

 Taking a step towards him, her fists balling, Carpenter said, “We will never know where we came from without the knowledge here. This might be the last refuge of a dead race. Without…”

 “It is,” he said, his voice implacable. “Our ancestors wiped them out. This place is ours by right of conquest. Take one step further, and I will kill you.”

 Orlova turned towards Carpenter, raised her arm as if to speak, then slammed her hand down on her suit thruster, sending a high-pressure blast of nitrogen crashing into the figure, sending him tumbling across the ground. Before anyone else could react, she snatched up the weapon from the floor and turned it on the two assembling the bomb. They scrambled to rise, and she had to gamble that she could work out which control was the trigger. With a pair of loud reports, she realized she had judged correctly, and the bodies crumpled to the floor.

 “Stay clear of them,” she said, pointing at the bodies. “Secure our prisoner.”

 Nodding, Carpenter moved over to him, but he was quicker than she, tumbling out and pulling a weapon out of a hidden pocket, a small pistol that he raised towards her helmet.

 “One move and she dies,” he said.

 “I can say the same about you,” Orlova replied.

 “Then I believe we have attained the goal you sought. We are caught in a stalemate that will only be resolved by the arrival of reinforcements by one side or another. Unless you are willing to sacrifice your colleague.”

 “Not a chance,” she said. 

 “Strange,” he replied. “You demonstrate strong instincts for survival, but when it comes to taking the ultimate decision, you stumble. I marvel that your race has prospered given the restrictions you have imposed upon yourselves. I suppose, though that the universe will decide as it wishes, and that it is likely you have not encountered a suitable adversary as yet. After all,” he said with a smile, “this is the first time we have faced each other in battle.”

 “I’d glad you’re enjoying it.”

 “Maggie, I’m picking up power generation,” Carpenter said. “Up on the ceiling, heat sources.”

 Moving to cover the enemy crawling on the ground whilst turning to look, Orlova saw a point of light at the roof of the cavern, one that erupted into a beam, bouncing from a series of hidden mirrors to form an image, floating in mid air.

 “A tactical hologram,” Orlova said, as it coalesced into points of light, one of them obviously Alamo, another the enemy ship. A series of smaller objects were moving into position around the battlecruiser, which was moving away at speed.

 “Alamo, this is Orlova,” she said, switching through the frequencies. “Let’s hope that last transmission wasn’t just a freak effect.”

 “I have been in constant contact with my ship for minutes,” the enemy warrior replied.

 “Maggie, this is Marshall,” a voice, thin and crackled through with static, said. “How are things down there?”

 “They’ve been better. I don’t suppose that there is any chance that you can manage some reinforcements down here?”

 “The prospects of that are excellent,” he replied. “We’re preparing to abandon ship. Best guess is that we’ve fought ourselves to mutual destruction. With a little luck we won’t take the station with us.”

 “That bad, sir?”

 There was a brief pause, and he said, “Right now we’ve got eleven laser missiles moving into position to surround us, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”

 “I can see them, Captain. Right now I’m looking at a tactical hologram.”

 “The enemy had one?”

 “No, sir. The original inhabitants of this planet. My guess has Alamo being hit in about two minutes.”

 “Something like that. I’ll have Shuttle Two head down to your position. Help is on the way. Though I’d guess that will be all for the next month or so.” 

 “We’ll be waiting, watching, and hoping, sir.”

 “Appreciated. Good luck.”

 Turning to the enemy, still lying on the floor with his pistol, she said, “Call off the attack.”

 “No.”

 “If you don’t…”

 “I heard everything you said. My ship is on the brink of victory. You don’t think that is the only vessel in your fleet, do you? We can have more ships here to exploit your weakness in short order, and now that we have had a chance to evaluate your defenses, the next battle will be very straightforward. Your time is passing, just as I predicted.” 

 Text started to appear, floating in the air, and Carpenter said, “I’ve got a couple of the words. Something about ‘Fire’ and ‘Command’.”

 “That’s impossible,” Orlova said. “This place must have been abandoned for thousands of years…”

 “Ten thousand years,” the figure interrupted.

 “There’s no way that any sort of system could exist, not working correctly, not without maintenance or support.”

 “The computer’s working,” Carpenter said, gesturing at the hologram, “and evidently so are at least some of its systems.” She glanced down at the man, the pistol still pointed at her helmet, and said, “Do it.”

 “What?”

 “Do it. Right now.”

 “Move and I will kill her,” the figure said.

 “You’ll die as well.”

 “Wouldn’t you give your life for your comrades?”

 “A hundred seconds, Maggie!” Carpenter yelled.

 Before Orlova could do anything, Carpenter threw herself to the right, and the figure fired, Orlova getting in her shot a half-second later, tearing a bloody gouge into his suit. Carpenter was crumpled on the floor, and she raced over, tearing open her suit maintenance kit.

 “Leave it, Maggie,” Carpenter gasped. “I can handle this. Ninety seconds!”

 With a last glance down, Orlova said, “Alamo, are you still there?”

 “We’re here. Just about to launch the first escape pods.”

 “Belay that,” she replied. “I think we’ve got an answer. I need a translation into Proto-Indo-European, right now. The phase, ‘fire at the small objects’.”

 “What?”

 “Do it, sir! We might win this battle yet!”

  She looked back at Carpenter, struggling with her suit patches, then ran over to the far side of the cavern, jumping over the body on the floor, sprinting to the figure who was still standing alone by the wall, now looking up at the hologram with his arms opened wide.

 “Maggie, I don’t know what the hell you have in mind, but we’ve got the translation coming down to you now. It should be appearing on your heads-up display. I just hope we got the pronunciation right.”

 “Only one way to find out,” she said, turning her external speaker to maximum. “Ecnis alpos weqtis.”

 “Jai,” the hologram said, nodding.

 The floor burst into light, a blinding blue beam that killed all the systems in her suit once again, and small fissures opened up into the roof. On the hologram, still hovering in the air, she could see eleven thin beams of light winking up, enveloping each of the laser missiles, holding them long enough for them to fall irretrievably off their course, spiraling away into the deep.

 As rapidly as it came, the light faded away, and all the remained on the hologram was Alamo, slowly turning away from the enemy ship, both of them just sitting serenely in space as though nothing had ever happened.

 “You did it!” Marshall yelled. “I don’t know what the hell happened, but the laser missiles just lost their course and self-destructed. I’m canceling the evacuation, it shouldn’t be needed now.” He paused, then said, “We’re still going to be a bit busy for a while. I’ll get some help to you when I can.”

 “Well done, Maggie,” Carpenter gasped, and she looked over to see her friend lying on the ground, the seam of her suit flapping as her air escaped. Frantically, she dashed back, pulling out her suit repair kit, pieces of it tumbling to the floor as she tugged out her patches.

 Carpenter was twitching, her face blue, warning lights flashing on the front of her suit to indicate that she was about out of air, the on-board systems having tried and failed to maintain local pressure despite such a severe leak. Clutched in her left hand was the patch, the sticky section half-exposed, and Orlova took it from her hand, slapping it across the damaged area. Still there was plenty left open, and she gently positioned a second patch, then a third, then a fourth.

 Now her suit had at least a vestige of integrity, but there was nothing left inside to protect, and her friend lay there, terribly still. Turning her over, Orlova pulled out the tubes connecting the suit to the backpack in the rear, pulling it as far as it would go and jamming it into the auxiliary connector on her own backpack.

 Her suit systems protested, but not too much. This was something it was used to, an emergency procedure that it understood, and it rapidly began to drive air through the new outlet, the oxygen flow up high in a bid to stimulate it. Carpenter’s suit began to wake up, injections from her medikit now trying once again to save her life.

 “Susan, do you hear me?” Orlova said. “Susan, you’ve got oxygen now. Your suit pressure’s coming back up.” The tears began to flow, and she said, “Damn it, Susan, don’t you dare die on me. Not with all this to study. The find of a lifetime!”

 “What’s happening down there?” Marshall asked, but Orlova ignored him, reaching down to throw in an emergency override on Carpenter’s suit. Her life-signs were there, faint, but still stable, and her eyes slowly began to flicker, struggling to focus.

 “Susan, say something. Anything.”

 Carpenter coughed, and Orlova could hear a series of deep, hacking breaths, slowly beginning to at least reach a vestige of consciousness.

 “Susan, speak to me.”

 “Ship…,” she muttered.

 “Safe, at least for the moment. Help will be on the way soon.” She looked down at the improvised repair on her suit, and frowned. The was a thin mist spilling out around the outside, and she was out of patches. An amber warning light winked onto her heads-up display, air being used up too quickly.

 “Liar,” she said. “And not soon enough. My systems are telling me some bad things.”

 “Mine are just fine.”

 “That’s a lot of crap. Look, Maggie, you’ve got enough air to last for twenty-five hours. Get out of here, and get back to the supply depot. This way you’ll be lucky if you make it for two hours, and Alamo might not get here in time. At the depot you can live for months.”

 “Not going to do it,” Orlova said. “If you want to help, just sit back, and relax. The less oxygen we use, the better.” Tapping a button, she said, “Orlova to Alamo. Come down as soon as you can, once the battle is over.”

 “No problems?”

 “Carpenter had a suit malfunction, but it’s all fine now.”

 “Understood. Things are beginning to happen up here. I’ll get back to you later. Alamo out.”

 “Why didn’t you tell them?”

 With a thin smile, Orlova said, “If I had, someone would probably have got themselves shot down trying to rescue us. I didn’t think that would help. Now just relax. Someone will be here in time.” Gesturing at the hologram, the huge display still hanging overhead, she continued, “At least we’ve got a good view.”

Chapter 25

 Salazar drifted up to the shuttle, a datapad in his hand, as the last of the warheads was loaded through the airlock, Cook nervously supervising the technicians as they worked to carefully place them in the cargo section.

 “Just about ready, sir,” she said. “Any news?” 

 “Alamo and the enemy ship have battered themselves down to a stalemate, with a little help from...some sort of mysterious force from the surface.”

 Pausing, she frowned, replying, “Some sort of mysterious force?”

 “Don’t ask me. All I know is that they drifted out of their trajectory, then self-destructed. At least the laser missiles aren’t a threat for the moment.”

 “Then we can abort,” she said, nodding.

 “No,” he replied, stepping into the hatch. “Stalemate, with Alamo having suffered some critical damage. The race to see who completes their repairs first is on, and I’m not sure that we’re going to win. Besides, they could still launch a boarding action.”

 “Midshipman, this is something that Captain Marshall can worry about.”

 “He isn’t here. Head up to Operations, and set-up the detonation. I’ll be along presently.”

 She glanced at him, nodded, and floated off down the corridor, two technicians following her. Sliding into the cockpit, he started to throw a series of controls, checking the preflight sequence, and then tapped a ten-digit command override, setting the detonation controls to the shuttle.

 “What the hell are you doing?” Bartlett asked, drifting in beside him.

 “I could ask you the same question.”

 Looking at the panel, he said, “I don’t think the fleet does kamikaze missions.”

 “We don’t have the fine control we need to get this shuttle home, not with them still able to maneuver and throw laser missiles around. All it would take is one hit, and the game is lost. Someone needs to ride this one down to the end.”

 “You’ll be killed.”

 “One life for hundreds seems like a reasonable trade.” He paused, saying, “I ought to have died with my friends, back at Phobos. It would saved a hell of a lot of trouble. If this is what it takes, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

 “No-one’s asked you to throw your life away.”

 He smiled, then said, “I’ve no intention of dying unless I have to. I can set a thirty-second time delay on the detonation, and once I get in that close, they won’t be able to dodge. With a little luck, I can bail out.”

 “The shrapnel…”

 “Is a risk I’m willing to take.”

 “Fine,” he replied. “Then I’ll take right-seat.”

 “No, you won’t.”

 “If you aren’t following orders, you can’t expect me to.”

 “I’m going to have enough to worry about for myself.”

 “I can look after…”

 “This is a one-man mission, Ben, and I’m the man. Get out of here, I need to get moving before they work out what I’m doing up in Operations.”

 Shaking his head, Bartlett said, “No, sir. I’m not leaving. You need a co-pilot, and it looks like it’s me. Now get that hatch closed, before I call Cook and tell her to lock down the docking clamps.”

 “You’re crazy.”

 “Maybe.”

 Nodding, Salazar tapped a control, and the hatch slid shut, locking into position with a loud clang, and he tapped in an override code to disengage the docking systems, sending the shuttle tumbling away.

 “Operations to Shuttle,” Cook said. “You’re still on board.”

 “Well spotted,” Salazar replied. “All hands are to report to the primary airlock and prepare to bail out if necessary. Jump as clear as you can, and hopefully Alamo will pick you up. You have command until...someone gets back.” He looked down at a control, and said, “Ben, there’s a cautionary warning on the airlock. Go and take a look at the outer seal, will you?”

 “Sure,” he replied, grabbing a toolkit and gliding back into the lock. Glancing back for a moment, Salazar threw another switch, closing the inner hatch, and cycled the outer door, sending Bartlett hurtling back towards the station.

 “Damn it!” Bartlett yelled.

 “Sorry, Ben, but I did tell you that this was my mission. Get back inside and head up to Operations. I’m going to be a little busy right now, but for the record, thanks. For everything.” He tapped another control, and the primary engine fired, sending him speeding towards the enemy ship, leaving the station and the floating Bartlett behind.

 “You son of a bitch,” Bartlett said.

 “Probably,” he replied. “Shuttle Three out.” He looked ahead, the trajectory plot showing a line heading right for the enemy ship, just as he'd planned. A series of warning alarms began to sound, alerting him to the imminent collision, but he filtered them out. Another noise blared from the panel, someone trying to contact him, either back at the station or on Alamo. He didn’t have anything to say to them right now, and if he didn’t listen to orders, he couldn’t disobey them.

 The enemy vessel started to move again, its engine glowing as it started to accelerate, and he adjusted his course to compensate. At full acceleration, it could definitely outpace the shuttle, but he wasn’t going to give them the chance to make use of that advantage. Impact in a hundred and ninety seconds. No time at all. 

 He reached over to the control panel, tapping in the sequence to arm the warheads. It felt strange to be sitting just in front of six hundred kilotons of shaped nuclear charge, all strapped gently into the cargo compartment behind him. He was as safe as he would be in his own apartment back on Mars, but that was going to change in a very short time.

 More warnings from the panel, kinetic missiles on the way, heading on shotgun trajectory. His guess had been right, they were trying to draw Alamo in, lure them into a false sense of security. The last shot in their locker had been expended, and was heading right for him.

 Throwing the ship into a series of wild evasive maneuvers, he continued his course right for the heart of the enemy. This big a warhead didn’t need much in the way of accuracy, even if he had known where the critical systems were located. Anywhere would be enough to rip a nightmarish gash in their hull, and hopefully leave them ready for Alamo to finish the job. With luck, he’d have a front-row seat for the event, the best seats in the house.

 One hundred seconds to go. The kinetic missiles were still ranging towards him, still diving in his direction, but he was moving as fast as they were, pushing his acceleration past the red-line, making it hard for him to move. He forced himself up and away, heading for the airlock, tugging out a rescue ball and placing it in position. No time to don a spacesuit, and it wouldn’t be much help to him anyway.

 That done, he struggled back to the console and continued making adjustments, correcting his course as the ship grew closer and closer on the screen. Alamo was visible behind it, tempting and inviting, and a glance across at the communications system indicated that they were still trying to talk to him. Not that he could think of anything to say, not even any decent last words.

 Sixty seconds to go, and the kinetic missiles were losing their track, giving him the window he needed. They’d hit him, alright, but two and a half seconds after impact. Smashing into the side of the enemy ship. All four of them self-destructed, his opponent evidently having come to the same conclusion.

 Forty seconds, and he tapped the control to lock the arming sequence into position, ready to detonate at the exact millisecond of impact, getting the maximum effect. Just the crash of the shuttle would do some damage, but it was the sting in the tail that would do the job. In about thirty-two seconds.

 In four steps, he made it to the airlock, taking a last look around the shuttle as he stepped into the rescue ball. Reaching out of the seal, he tapped a button marked ‘Emergency Decompression’, and quickly pulled it shut, starting the inflation procedure. The outer hatch opened, the inner still flung wide, and the ball was fired out into space, sucked out with the atmosphere, tossing it clear of the shuttle.

 Within the advertised ten seconds, the ball was up, and slowly tumbling. There were no controls inside, just a very basic sensor array and communications system, and he ignored the latter to concentrate on the former, watching as the shuttle carved towards its target. He was still close, very close, and as the single viewport lined up, he could see the enemy ship looming large, almost near enough to touch.

 The fabric walls looked awfully thin, and he knew that any shrapnel impact would almost certainly finish him off, though he pulled out the emergency patches on the off-chance that they would come in handy. He was still counting seconds, just five to go, and he peered out of the window, hoping that at the very least he would get the chance to see his handiwork, see what he had risked his life to accomplish.

 He was lucky. Just as the shuttle slammed into the side of the enemy craft, it hove into view, and a bright flash heralded the detonation of the warheads exactly on time. A cloud of escaping air and debris briefly obscured the view, but he could easily make out a massive gouge in the side of the craft, flickering flames for a few seconds as compartments on fire lost their air. Bodies drifted clear, and the enemy ship slowly began to tumble, totally out of control.

 Then he turned to the sensors, and saw debris field spreading out fast, in every direction. Neither the station nor Alamo would be seriously affected by it. By the time it got that far out it would be dispersed enough that it would merely scratch the paintwork, but he was directly in its path. With a sigh, he smiled. He knew what he was doing, knew that he’d taken a long shot in waiting to bail out for as long as he had, but if he hadn’t taken those risks, he could easily have missed his target entirely.

 Clutching the emergency patches in his hands as though they were a safety blanket, he looked at the sensor display, alarms sounding as the cloud approached, warning him that he was in a dangerous position, slowly tumbling to his fate. Then red lights winked on, and he entered the debris field.

 Looking through the viewport, he could see some of the larger pieces, though the view rapidly became blurry as particulate matter knocked out the external feeds. He could hear the rattle on the hull, as though it was raining outside, small objects bouncing off the tough fabric. Then a familiar siren, a decompression alarm. He could see where, a small hole where a piece of metal had lodged itself. The first pad went into it, slapping home, sealing the gap, and the alarm ceased, at least for the moment.

 Oddly, the puncture had helped. The little leak of air had sent him drifting off to the right, out of the main path of the fragments. The second one was close by, this one just ripping a gash before deflecting away. The alarm seemed more urgent, the pressure leaking more quickly, and he could feel himself drifting towards it as he carefully positioned the second pad. Only one remained.

 A few seconds later, he had to use it. This time a smaller fragment that pushed through and into the cabin, bouncing off the sensor display, shattering it into pieces, and returning almost in the direction it had come. Technically, he was meant to place the center of the pad over the hole he was trying to repair, but this time he had to make it cover both of them. With some protest, it sealed into position, and he started to sweep all of the remains of the sensor display together, gathering them up into a waste bag and pushing them into a corner.

 Now he was blind. The viewport was so fogged over that he couldn’t see a thing out of it, and the sensor display was useless. Likely the pickups had been damaged anyway. The air pressure was holding, and the telltales were working fine. Counting seconds, he shook his head. By now he was out of the debris field, floating in free orbit.

 He reached up for the communicator, at last willing to talk to someone, but he couldn’t pick up anything other than static. Either there was some sort of jamming taking place, or more likely there was more damage to the antenna outside. Nothing he could do now except wait, and see who picked him up. Much to his own surprise, he’d lived, and somehow, the battle was over.

Chapter 26

 Marshall watched the devastation unfolding on the viewscreen in front of him, as the enemy vessel exploded, the aft section torn asunder while the forward section broke away, tumbling end over end. It was more of a surprise that there was anything left, any fragment of the vessel still in one piece. He stood up, taking a step towards the image, shaking his head.

 “Report, Spinelli.”

 The dazed sensor operator shook his head, then said, “Nothing can have lived through that, sir. Even if any escape pods made it clear, they’d have been shredded to bits by the shrapnel.”

 “What about Salazar?” Caine asked.

 “I registered three hits on his pod, and we lost all telemetry feeds after the third.”

 “Get the SAR shuttle to him, as fast as you can,” Marshall ordered, stepping back to his chair. “In this fleet we don’t declare someone dead until we’ve been to the funeral. Anything from the planet?”

 “Nothing, sir. I haven’t received any signal from our ground team since those beams went off. It is possible that the jamming has resumed.”

 “She said that everything was fine,” Foster said.

 Shaking his head, Marshall replied, “Knowing Margaret Orlova, she’d have done that to stop me doing something silly like ordering Shuttle Two down to the planet. Which is precisely what I intend to do now. Contact the hangar deck, and have them get it ready for takeoff. I’ll be flying it myself.”

 “I’m going with you,” Caine said, but he shook his head.

 “You and Cunningham are needed up here, just in case the story hasn’t ended yet. Have Frank Nelyubov meet me in the shuttle, he can fly as co-pilot. It’ll be nice to have someone who’s already been down there to show me the way.”

 “Why not let him fly, sir?” Kelso said. “There’s a lot of debris in orbit, and we’ve got no idea what’s going on down on the planet.”

 “He’s right,” Caine added. “It’s our last surface shuttle until we can get replacements from Ragnarok. You don’t need to do this.”

 “Yes I do,” he replied. “Get Cunningham up here. Foster, take us back to our position close to the station. Weitzman, find out who is in command over there, and get me a full status report. Particular emphasis on what the hell caused the computer failure that started this battle in the first place. It would be nice to find out what we were fighting for.”

 “Aye, sir.”

 “In that case, Deadeye, you have the deck.” As he stood up, there was a blinding flash on the viewscreen, the image filters only just switching on in time. “What was that?”

 Blinking to try and clear his eyes, Spinelli said, “The enemy ship just exploded. Estimated yield of two hundred megatons.”

 “Two hundred?”

 “They wanted to make sure we wouldn’t steal any of their secrets,” Marshall said. “A dead man’s switch, rigged to explode if the ship was in danger of being captured.”

 “What the hell are they afraid of?” Caine asked.

 “I have the horrible feeling that we’ll find out. In any case, I think you can secure from battle stations, but maintain standby alert. Good work, everyone.”

 He stepped into the elevator, pulling out his datapad to start scanning the damage reports. Miraculously, it seemed that they had managed to fight the battle without a single fatality, though half a dozen crewmen had sustained severe injuries when the combat fabricator was destroyed. It could have, should have, been far worse than it was.

 The door slid open, and the deck looked surprisingly empty with only a single shuttle waiting on it, the fleet of small craft they'd left Ragnarok with wiped out in the battle. A pair of technicians were stepping out of the craft, a smiling Nelyubov waving him on-board.

 “Come on, skipper,” he said. “Preflight checks are completed, and we have clearance to launch.”

 “Right. Let’s go.”

 “Want me to take it?” he asked, gesturing towards the pilot’s seat, but Marshall shook his head.

 “I think I’ve earned a little fun, Lieutenant. I presume you’ve already triangulated the position of Maggie’s last transmission?”

 “Down to the meter, sir. The course is already programmed into the navigation computer.”

 Nodding, Marshall slid into the pilot’s couch, running his hands over the controls, while Nelyubov sealed the hatch and sat down next to him, activating the elevator airlock. The shuttle cycled through the doors, dropping free and clear of Alamo, and as he looked up, he saw the battering his ship had taken, a huge, angry gash running the length of the hull, the hull plating burned and melted away.

 “Quinn says that it’s nothing he can’t fix, sir,” Nelyubov said as the shuttle began to drop down, the engines firing to push them out of orbit.

 “Even he has his limits. We came damn close to pushing them today.”

 He turned to look at the planet, watching it growing in the screen as the shuttle soared towards the surface, a light flashing on to indicate that they had entered atmosphere. This time they were in no mad hurry, and he settled the ship into re-entry position, watching the glow from the heat shield as it slammed into the rapidly thickening atmosphere, before leveling off back onto its descent trajectory.

 “A hundred and nine miles to target,” Nelyubov said. “Closing rapidly.”

 “Grant to Marshall,” a voice said. “I’ve just picked up Midshipman Salazar. Alive and well. I’m taking him back to Alamo for a full medical checkup and debriefing.”

 “Thanks, Lieutenant.” Turning to Nelyubov, he said, “Lucky kid.”

 “I think he’d earned it.” With a smile, he continued, “Down there, you see?”

 A faint blue glow was appearing up ahead, on the horizon, and the shuttle was already curving towards it, following Nelyubov’s plotted trajectory. Marshall took a look at his system monitors, but everything seemed to be working.

 “I’m bringing us in a half-mile short.”

 “They might be in urgent need of help,” Nelyubov pressed.

 “A wrecked shuttle and two dead fools won’t help them, Lieutenant. I watched that beam knock eleven missiles out of the sky by killing its instrumentation, and I’d bet that it is also responsible for the jamming field. We’re not getting too close.”

 “I still think,” he began, before looking at Marshall and shaking his head. “I’ll go back and start getting everything assembled.”

 Nodding, he replied, “I’ll try and make it a soft landing. We’ll be down in three minutes.”

 “Danny, this is Alamo,” Cunningham said, his voice echoing, slightly distorted. “We’re settling into our new orbital position now.”

 “Good. Mr. Salazar will be coming aboard in a few moments. Once he’s finished his medical check-up, I want him confined to his quarters until I send for him.”

 “Sir?”

 “I want to go over his case file again before I speak to him. There are a few things I think need checking.”

 “I was thinking the same thing myself. For the record, you’re under the jamming field now, and I can still hear you. Telemetry all intact.”

 Nodding, Marshall said, “Nothing from Maggie?”

 “Not a thing.”

 “Let me try.” He flicked frequencies, and said, “Marshall to Orlova. I am landing in one minute. Report.” Waiting a few seconds with no reply, he repeated, “I am landing in one minute. Report your status.” Frowning, he switched back, and said, “John, I’m coming into land. Have all sensors focus on this area, get as accurate a map as possible.”

 “It’s a big planet, Danny.”

 “Knowing her, she went right for that light. Certainly her last transmission was in that area. We’ll just have to do a little praying, that’s all. Shuttle out.”

 He played the landing thrusters carefully, watching it drop the last few hundred feet to the surface, before gently coming to a halt, sending clouds of dust flying off in all directions. Flicking the engines off, he quickly ran through the post-flight checklist, letting Alamo handle as much as possible remotely, then unstrapped from the couch and made his way back to the rear compartment, where Nelyubov had almost finished suiting up.

 “We’re down six hundred and nine meters south of our goal,” he said, passing Marshall his suit. “I think we’ve got everything.”

 “Should have brought a paramedic with us,” Marshall said, shaking his head. “I moved too damn quickly.”

 “They’re probably just sitting there in the dampening field. Nevertheless…”

 Waving a hand in the air, he replied, “I’m going as fast as I can, Lieutenant. Have a little patience. And get those plasma rifles checked out. Maggie and Susan might not be the only ones down there waiting for rescue.”

 A moment later, the two of them stepped out of the airlock, each with a hand on a rescue trolley being dragged along the ground, its wheels bouncing over the sand. It was immediately obvious where they were heading, five sets of footprints heading for a deep shaft.

 “Two sets of Triplanetary footprints,” Nelyubov began.

 “I think I can guess who the others belong to,” Marshall interrupted. “Weapons at the ready. Let’s not be surprised.”

 Peering down the shaft, Nelyubov shook his head, saying, “We’ll never get down there with our suit jets. Not and have a hope in hell of getting out again.”

 “Lock down the trailer,” Marshall replied, reaching over to turn on the winch, tossing the coiled line into the darkness below, watching it slowly drop to the bottom. Grabbing an emergency oxygen bottle, he said, “I’m going down on my suit jets. You stay on top and keep in touch with Alamo.”

 “But…”

 “Captain’s privilege, Frank. I’m the one who sent them down here. If you don’t hear anything from me within the next twenty minutes, head back to Alamo and come back with a bigger party. No desperate heroics, not with only one shuttle still functioning. Understood?”

 Nelyubov paused for a moment, as though trying to come up with an argument, before finally nodding his head. “Aye, sir.”

 Taking a backward step, Marshall began to play his suit jets around, slowing his descent to a crawl, reaching across to the safety line. If he saw a bogeyman at the bottom, there would still be time for him to get away. His rifle still in his hands, he cautiously dropped, looking around at the strange symbols on the wall, a chill running down his spine at the thought of the last time he had entered an alien city. A part of his soul was still back there, and always would be.

 “I’m on the bottom, Frank,” he said, waving an arm. “There’s a tunnel heading off into the gloom. More footprints heading into it, the same sets, I think.”

 “Watch yourself,” Nelyubov replied.

 He followed the steps along the tunnel, eagerly pacing forward, playing his torch around, watching the darkness almost swallow up the light. The shaft down quickly faded from view as he bounded into the gloom, and when it was gone completely, he stopped.

 “Can you still hear me, Frank?” He waited, then said, “Marshall to Nelyubov. Marshall to Alamo. Any signal?” He could hear a faint pulsing, a repeating noise up ahead, and then continued his advance. There was only one noise he knew like that, a spacesuit emergency alarm.

 The corridor opened up into a huge chamber, and he saw a trio of bodies scattered on the ground, his heart skipping a beat before he saw two other figures sitting on the ground further along, one of them looking up as he approached.

 “Hang on,” he said, racing forward. Orlova and Carpenter, both of them alive, if not by much. He could quickly see why, Carpenter’s suit leaking air from some hastily applied patches. Their chest monitors showed they still had a little left, so he pulled out his kit and started to apply more comprehensive patches, sealing where every trace of leak showed. No-one would ever wear this spacesuit again, though it ought to be enough to get them back to the shuttle.

 Next, he dropped the oxygen tank on the ground, resting between the two of them, and started the filters to absorb the nitrogen from the atmosphere to make the mix work, tossing the absorbers left and right, well out of the way, before plugging it into their suits and turning the gain onto full.

 “Either of you read me?” he asked. Looking down at them. Up ahead, another figure approached, and he instinctively reached for his weapon, tossed onto the floor in his hurry to save his shipmates, but the figure, which looked strangely like a combination of Orlova and Carpenter, raised its hands, smiling as it strode forward.

 “Ego cemjo en pags.”

 Shaking his head, Marshall said, “I don’t understand.”

 The figure smiled, nodded, then said, “Tu weltis. Gnotis ciwos.”

 At the far end of the cavern, a light shone as a panel opened up, revealing a piece of crystal buried within it, illuminated by a trio of lasers. Abruptly, the lasers shut off, and the figure disappeared, the light beginning to fade. Marshall stepped over and cautiously picked it up, looking at it in his hands, admiring the intricate web-work within, though obviously, it was incomplete.

 “Captain?” he heard a voice gasp, and turned to see Orlova struggling to her feet.

 “Don’t worry, Maggie,” he said. “You rest a while and get your tanks topped up.” 

 “What happened?”

 “We won our battle, everything’s intact, and I think we may even have some idea what all of this was about.” Glancing down at his watch, he said, “I’d better get moving. If I don’t report in, Frank’s going to take off with our ride out of here.”

Chapter 27

 “Are you sure you feel up to this?” Nelyubov asked as the two of them walked down the corridor.

 “Susan came over here,” she replied.

 “We’re trying to crack open an archive of material from tens of thousands of years ago. I think she’d have floated across from Alamo without a spacesuit quite happily.” Shaking his head, he said, “I still think we should have done this over there.”

 “The Captain didn’t want to risk our only fighting ship in-system. I do think that hiding on the other side of the planet might be a bit extreme, but then I wasn’t up here for the first blackout.”

 The two of them stepped into the minerology lab, where Bartlett was still making final adjustments to his laser, Harper behind him running a series of tests on the systems, while Quinn looked over the whole affair with a worried frown.

 “Relax, Jack,” Harper said. “There’s no way that the data surge can make it to the station mainframe.”

 “That’s what we thought last time,” Bartlett said. “Firewalls at maximum.”

 “There isn’t any network connection at all this time,” Harper said. “Besides, we’ve got people up on Operations ready to do another hard reboot if we have to.”

 “I really hope we don’t,” Quinn said. “It took six hours to get everything working again properly, and it’ll take weeks before everything settles down.”

 Marshall stepped in, flanked by Cunningham and Caine, and took a position on the far side of the room, flashing a smile at Orlova as he walked past her. Carpenter, still in a wheelchair, emerged from behind the apparatus, a smile on her face.

 “How much longer?” she asked.

 “Almost there, Lieutenant,” Bartlett said.

 Orlova could hear footsteps behind her, and turned to see Salazar walking down the corridor, standing by the door. She gestured for him to come in, and after a moment, he entered the room.

 “I’m not sure I should be here,” he replied.

 “The Captain told you to come over to the station, didn’t he? Besides, this is your show as much as it is mine. You’ve got a right to be here.”

 “But…”

 “And if anyone asks, I gave you an order. Understood?”

 He nodded, replying, “Thanks.”

 “I think we’re almost there,” Quinn said. “I’ve gone over the few records we have from last time, and I’ve slowed the data transmission rate as much as I can.”

 Thumping an almost featureless box, Harper added, “We brought over the largest portable databank we have in the stores, ten exabytes. That should be enough for us to at least get a good sample of the material we’re looking at.”

 “Won’t it overload, like last time?” Marshall asked.

 “No, sir,” Bartlett said. “I threw in a filter. The transmission will stop as soon as the storage unit is ninety-five percent full, to give us a margin of error.”

 “Well, what are we waiting for?” Carpenter asked. “Throw the switch.”

 With a smile, Marshall nodded, adding, “Go ahead.”

 Bartlett moved over to the control panel, looked around the room for a moment, then timidly tapped the button. The laser raced across to the crystal, the two pieces secured in a metal cage to keep them together, and readouts started to flash on the monitors, the same strange hieroglyphics as before. After only a few seconds, it stopped.

 “What happened?” Cunningham asked. “Systems failure?”

 Bartlett and Harper started to check controls and readouts, before looking at each other in surprise. Bartlett shook his head and turned back to the laser, but Harper stood up, wiping her hands on her trousers.

 “We filled the databank.”

 “Ten exobytes!” Marshall said. “That would take Alamo…”

 “About half an hour. As far as I can figure, it took that crystal seven seconds. And that was at the slowest possible transmission rate.”

 “Let’s get at the data,” Carpenter said, turning to a nearby console and starting to type. “I’ve thrown in a translation matrix, though it’ll take weeks, months to translate it all.”

 “Captain, I think we’ve got something remarkable here,” Quinn said. “My estimation agrees with Harper’s. The complete crystal could have a storage capacity of something on the order of a thousand yuttabytes.”

 “I don’t…,” Marshall began, but Harper shook her head.

 “Last month, there was a lot of celebration in the hacking community, the sort of milestone only we would celebrate. The total storage capacity of all computers in the Triplanetary Confederation passed two yuttabytes.” Pointing at the crystal, she said, “That hunk of glass has more potential storage than five hundred Confederations.”

 “There must be some sort of mistake,” Caine said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

 “A leap forward as great as that of the transistor,” Quinn said, reverently. “Imagine if Alamo had one of these at its heart. Every starship could have a quantum computer on board. Not to mention durability. I don’t know what that material is, but it’s damn near indestructible.”

 Harper reached over, gently opening the metal cradle and taking it out. As she lifted it, her eyes widened, and she almost dropped it, Quinn racing forward to secure it.

 “It’s one piece!” she said.

 “I thought we hadn’t worked out how to bind it,” Orlova said.

 “We didn’t, Maggie,” Harper replied. “That’s why we built the cage. The damn thing has fused together somehow.”

 “I’ll have to check, but that looks seamless,” Quinn said. “Add that to the technological breakthroughs we’ve got here. No wonder our late friends were so eager to get their hands on it.”

 Carpenter whistled, then said, “First results, people.”

 “And?” Orlova asked.

 “Most of the data is gibberish.” Raising her hand as a tide of disappointment swept the room, she added, “I think it must have holographic memory.”

 Nodding, Harper said, “Double my estimate of the storage capacity, then. The bad news is that most of the data won’t be readable without the whole crystal.”

 “What I have got is the manual, I think. There are six thousand copies of the same file here, and tens of thousands more partial ones. Whoever loaded the data on this must have wanted to make sure we had a copy.”

 Harper leaned over her shoulder, and said, “There’s an operating system in there as well. Must be, to power that computer complex down on the planet.”

 “I haven’t finished,” Carpenter said. “Captain, this is a linguistic breakthrough as well. The manual is in a couple of dozen languages. Proto-Indo is one of them. You realize what this means?”

 “A Rosetta Stone,” Caine said. “By God, if we’d just found that, all of this would have been worth it.”

 “It’ll take months before we get all of that analyzed…,” Carpenter began.

 “Decades to work out the operating system, at a guess,” Orlova said. “I’ll start work right away.”

 “Wait a minute,” Marshall said, taking a seat. “What you are telling me is that we have a repository of knowledge that encompasses breakthroughs in laser, storage and materials technology, and we still don’t actually know what is on it.”

 “Scientific data,” Quinn said. “The secrets of the universe.”

 “More likely a cultural archive,” Caine replied. “This was built to last.”

 “Principle of mediocrity, Deadeye,” Cunningham said. “There must be more than one of them.”

 Orlova looked around the room, then said, “We’ve got to find the other fragments. That hologram on the surface indicated that they were spread about all over the place.”

 “Race has analyzed the recordings you made, and I’m afraid they seem to be essentially stylized. They don’t correspond to any known star patterns.” Shrugging, Cunningham said, “We’ll keep working on it.”

 “If for no other reason than that this technology must not fall into enemy hands, we’ve got to find the rest of it,” Orlova pressed. “Jack, you said a quantum computer could fit on a starship. What about a fighter, or a missile?”

 “No reason why not.”

 “Speaking purely personally, I don’t want to fight a wave of missiles with that level of processing power. Hell, if an enemy force got this and spent any time with our computers, he’d own every databank in the Confederation in a matter of minutes. There’s a reason we put our quantum computer in the middle of a military base.”

 “She’s got a point, Danny,” Caine said.

 “I know, and I agree,” he replied. “We need to set up some sort of a search pattern.”

 “Wait a minute,” Cunningham said. “There are nine systems within one jump of here, and half of them are in enemy territory. Most of the rest are unexplored. Go beyond that, and we’re getting into a few dozen within two jumps. More than a hundred within three. It’s a very big galaxy.”

 “It isn’t getting any smaller,” Orlova said. “And think of the prize.”

 “We’d have to invent whole new indexing techniques just to study it,” Harper said, her face in reverie. “Not to mention devise bigger databases, working in parallel. I suppose there’s no reason why we couldn’t build one of a comparable size…”

 “You’d need ten thousand databanks working in parallel,” Quinn said, frowning. “No-one’s ever done anything that big. And the connections would have to be perfect.”

 “Details, Jack,” she said. “We can do it.”

 “With a couple of theoretical breakthroughs,” he replied. “We’d need a massive research project just to work out how to properly access this.”

 “Not to mention a substantial project to make use of the data when we found it. It could literally take centuries just to scratch the surface.”

 “I’m rather more concerned about the here-and-now security implications,” Cunningham said. “We already know that we aren’t the only ones with knowledge of the crystal.”

 “Which suggests that our new friends already have a fragment, or at least access to one,” Caine interrupted.

 “Exactly, and we’re on the border with both the Cabal and the United Nations out here.”

 Nodding, Marshall said, “This is classified Top Secret. No question. Everyone in this room who doesn’t have the necessary clearance will have to take their oaths again.”

 “Fine for the short-term, but we have to consider that inevitably a leak will take place. Whereupon this is going to be a far more active station than planned. We’ll have to strengthen our defenses.”

 “Speaking of which,” Carpenter said, “I’m going to need an archaeological team for some work on the surface. Those murals are a problem that we can tackle right here, and there may be some clues about the location of other crystals. Not to mention the other corpses I'm pretty sure are down there.” She looked up, and said, “The one we found was one of our friends, or at least his evolutionary ancestor, say, ten thousand years ago.”

 “That figure sounds familiar,” Orlova said.

 “I was thinking the same thing,” Carpenter replied, nodding.

 “A nice quiet station,” Caine said. “A chance for a straightforward tour of duty. I should have known it wouldn’t work out that way.”

 “It was never going to work out that way,” Marshall said with a smile.

 “I certainly hope not,” Orlova added.

 “For the present, I think Alamo is safe enough. Dragon is scheduled to arrive in ten days, and we can transfer the crystal back to the Confederation.” Looking around to forestall the expected protests, he continued, “They can put a full Espatier company around it for security, we can’t. Moreover, they’ve got a lot more capacity to properly start a research program than we do.”

 “I can handle it,” Harper said.

 “You want to be transferred back with it?” Orlova said. “Spend the rest of your life in a military research facility?”

 “No,” she said. “I just don’t like…”

 “Don’t worry,” Marshall replied. “Finding the rest of the crystal just became our number-one priority. You’ll have a chance to see some more of it. Mr. Quinn, how long before Alamo is ready for space?” 

 “Two weeks,” he replied. “By a miracle, there’s no damage we can’t fix with the station to back us up. I’ll have her factory-fresh before you know it. I think I might be able to make some modifications as well.”

 “Why didn’t you do them at Ragnarok?” Orlova asked.

 “Out here, no-one’s going to ask me any difficult questions about ship specifications.”

 “Feel free to pleasantly surprise me with your wonders,” Marshall said. “In that case, Maggie, you and Race start work on a survey plan. I want a course to take in as many of the unexplored systems as possible in a single sweep. I think it’s time to take a look across the border again. We've got some scoutships coming, let's get good use out of them.

 “Aye, sir,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. “I think we can come up with something interesting.”

 “Good. Now I suppose I’d better get back over to Alamo and relieve Mr. Grant.” Looking at the rear of the room, he said, “I see you decided to put in an appearance, Midshipman.”

 Salazar nodded, and said, “I hope…”

 “No, not at all. Why don’t you go and get the shuttle ready for launch. I’ll be along presently.”

 “Yes, sir,” he said, saluting, then walking off down the corridor. After he left, Orlova walked over to Marshall, a frown on her face.

 “Sir, about Mr. Salazar…”

 “Don’t worry, Maggie. I know what to do.”

Chapter 28

 Salazar ran his hands across the controls, running through the pre-flight checklist, focusing on the task in a bid to calm himself. Hardly anyone had spoken to him since Grant had escorted him back to Alamo, just a quick medical check-up before he was taken to his cabin, and Grant had taken him down to the shuttle for the transfer over to the station.

 He hardly heard Captain Marshall step in beside him, looking at the controls, then sitting down in the co-pilot’s chair.

 “Looks fine, Midshipman,” he said. “Begin launch sequence, please.”

 “Aye, sir.” he replied, tapping a control. “Shuttle Two to Operations. Request departure clearance.”

 “You have clearance, Shuttle. Launch when ready.”

 With a loud crack, the docking clamps disengaged, and the shuttle dropped away, falling from the station. Salazar reached over to fire the engines, but Marshall shook his head, pushing past him to engage the autopilot.

 “I think we can let the computer handle it this time. It’s only a five-minute ride.”

 “Aye, sir.”

 Looking him squarely in the eyes, Marshall said, “I’m sorry you’ve been incommunicado for a while. Doctor Duquesne thought you might need some recovery time after your ordeal, and I thought you could use the time to consider your position.”

 Nodding, he said, “I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

 “Indeed. You disobeyed orders, placed the station and my ship at risk, and precipitated a battle with a hostile vessel. Then you left your crew behind, quite literally tossing one out of an airlock, and in violation of fleet directives smashed your shuttle into that same hostile vessel. We'll skip over your refusal to respond to hails.”

 “Yes, sir,” he replied, with a sigh.

 “You realized what you were doing, I presume. This is what happened on the bridge all over again, Midshipman. You disregarding orders and following your own path, regardless of what your commanding officers thought.”

 “No, sir,” he said. 

 “Oh?”

 “I was placed in command of the station following the departure of Lieutenant Nelyubov. I believe he will testify that I advised against him going on the mission, and that I requested to take his place.”

 “After some glory, Midshipman?”

 “No, sir. I am a cadet, not a real officer, as has been made quite clear to me on more than one occasion.”

 “And you think you were placed in a position you were not qualified to hold. Specifically, you think that this is the disaster at Phobos all over again.”

 Salazar closed his eyes, quietly replying, “What happened there was my mistake. I have never questioned that, and I have never ceased to accept responsibility for it. Just as I am perfectly willing to accept responsibility for my actions on the station. All I will say is that unlike what happened on the bridge, for better or for worse, I was the officer commanding.”

 “Quite so,” Marshall said. “Let’s talk about Phobos.”

 “What more is there to say?”

 Pulling a datapad out of his pocket, Marshall replied, “There was another reason I didn’t want to speak with you until now. I wanted a chance to go over the case files once again, and in case you are interested, so has Mr. Cunningham. We had a talk on the shuttle ride over, and I think both of us came to the same conclusion.”

 “I made a mistake.”

 “Yes, you did. We both conclude, however, that you should not have been placed in a position where you were able to make such a mistake, certainly not in a real-world environment.” Raising a hand, he added, “Not for a moment does that excuse your actions, nor does it mean that I think your court-martial was unfair. Let’s just say that both my Exec and I feel that there should have been more than one court-martial over the incident.” With a thin smile, he continued, “I’m going to guess you agree with that assessment.”

 “Only that it can’t be permitted to happen again, sir.”

 “Good answer. Mr. Salazar, having evaluated your record at the Academy, as well as my assessment of your performance on this mission, I must regretfully say that in my opinion, you do not in any way match my perception of a Midshipman in the Triplanetary Fleet.”

 “I see, sir.”

 With a deep sigh, Marshall continued, “That being the case, I am left with no choice,” he paused, reaching into his pocket, “but to commission you.” He handed Salazar a small, wooden box, and beamed a smile. “Congratulations, Sub-Lieutenant.”

 Salazar took the box, opened it, and tipped the contents into his hand. A set of wings, arched high. The insignia of a fighter pilot.

 “Silver eagles.”

 “Given some of the stunts you've pulled with a shuttle, and that you were set to pass your exams with flying colors prior to Phobos, it seemed reasonable enough to award you your wings. Moreover, it was the most expeditious way of commissioning you.”

 “I don’t understand, sir.”

 “Tell me, Mr. Salazar. What is the purpose of your tour of duty as midshipman?”

 “To gain field experience, sir.”

 “Partly,” he replied, nodding. “But that’s far from the whole story. When you graduate from the Academy, through a series of lectures, seminars, simulations and field exercises, you have the skills you need to be a commissioned officer. That’s the whole purpose of the training program, and speaking from experience, they’re usually very good at it.”

 He gestured back at the station, and said, “The reason we don’t just give you your commission right away is because of something that we can’t teach you, something that you can’t learn in books, something you don’t even know you possess. A question for you, Mr. Salazar. In one word, what is the most important aspect of being an officer?”

 “Responsibility, sir.”

 “Exactly. We need to know how someone will react under fire, how they will cope with the worst possible situations. Why do you think the best cadets get the front-line postings? We need to know what the pressure will do to them, and no matter how good the simulation, there is no replacement for real-world experience.”

 “I wasn’t the best, sir.”

 “I’ll get to that in a moment. What did you expect to happen following your court-martial?”

 “A dishonorable discharge, sir.”

 “And why didn’t that happen?”

 “I don’t know, sir.”

 “The presiding officer made it quite clear to me.”

 “To you, sir?”

 “Lieutenant-Captain Dietz is an old friend of mine. He indicated that he saw within you something that might be worth salvaging, something that could be worth keeping in the fleet. At the end of the day, you made a mistake, a critical one, but it was not lost on him that you should not have been put in a position to make it in the first place. So he slapped you on the wrist as hard as he could, and gave you a chance to screw up. When you managed to complete the Academy, you passed your first step on the road to redemption.”

 Shaking his head, Salazar said, “That road goes nowhere, sir. Not with those two lives on my conscience.”

 “I can’t tell you it gets any easier, son. It gets harder. A commanding officer is responsible for the lives under his command, and everyone you lose is slow torture.” He gestured at Alamo, and said, “We kept a lot of the details of my first mission under wraps, but I presume you studied at least some details of them.”

 “Heavy casualties, sir.”

 “Extremely. Thirty lives, right there. More at Desdemona, more at Jefferson, more still on our cruise through the Cabal. No matter the details, there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t wonder if I could have done better, made a faster decision, done something a little differently. I’ll do that for the rest of my life. That’s the price. The price we pay for wearing the uniform, and it’s a hard one. The biggest test of any officer is how he deals with it. Some crumple, break down, give up. Others face it head-on.” Clapping him on the shoulder, Marshall said, “You faced it earlier than anyone should.”

 “All that proves to me…”

 “Is that when the crunch comes, you do what must be done. Don’t think that I’m commissioning you for what you did out there. Crashing that shuttle into the enemy ship was heroic, but that’s the sort of thing we give out medals for. Not promotions. You got promoted because of how you handled yourself here.” He smiled, then said, “Though I must admit, I was fairly sure that you would act the way you did.”

 “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

 “You don’t have to, Sub-Lieutenant. Not yet. You’ll still be learning, all your life. Let me tell you a little secret. No officer is a finished product, and the day he thinks he is, he should resign immediately as a danger to himself and others.”

 Shaking his head, Salazar said, “I still don’t think I’m worthy, sir.”

 “No-one ever does. Nevertheless, you’ve exercised independent command, and you’ve done a good job. Good enough to convince me that you have what it takes to be an officer in the Triplanetary Fleet, and that being the case, I don’t see the need to make you wait for eleven months for the rank.” Turning to face the viewscreen, he continued, “Now, we need to work out what to do with you.”

 “Sir?”

 “Well, you’re still mine for a year.”

 “I assumed I’d be returning to bridge duty, sir. Back to the helm.”

 “I’ve still got three midshipmen, Mr. Salazar. Besides, they need their chance to prove themselves under fire, as well.”

 Salazar smiled, then said, “That’s why the helm is the usual position for a midshipman.”

 “Precisely. Just in case, you have a seasoned officer ready to take over at a moment’s notice, someone who can keep an eye on your performance. That officer needs to be battle-tested, cool under fire, and ready to exercise independent command, should the situation arise.”

 “It makes sense, sir, though I’d not thought of it that way.”

 “Of course not. In your heads, most of you middies are ready to command fleets and take on the galaxy when you graduate. Though you were different, I think. Now, most of the crew of Yeager Station are heading home as soon as it can be arranged, though a few of them have agreed to stay on for a while. That’s leaving me a little short-handed, notably in one key area.”

 “Sir?”

 “I’ve named Mr. Kelso Acting Lieutenant, and assigned him to command the station, at least temporarily. It might stick, depending on what sort of replacements we can get. That leaves a gap in the duty roster, and I think you’d be excellent choice to fill it.”

 “A watch officer?”

 “Why not? You seem to know how to run a battle.”

 Shaking his head, he said, “You said it was a place for a seasoned officer, sir.”

 “Isn’t that what you are, at least compared to others in your rank? It might well be temporary, depending on the situation over on the station, but I think you’ll have the job for a while.” A light flashed on, and he said, “Docking in one minute. You’ll find your new uniform hanging up in the airlock. Go and get changed. Lieutenant Grant is standing in for the moment, you might as well take up your new position right away.”

 “Now, sir?” he replied, eyes widening.

 “Alpha Watch is on duty, isn’t it?” He paused, then said, “I suppose I should make the point that no matter what happens here today, no matter what I put on your record, you’re always going to have Phobos on your back. Tomorrow, next year, ten years from now, people are going to bring it up.”

 “They’d be right to, sir.”

 “Perhaps, or perhaps not. If you want, you can leave right now, with your head held high, and an excellent record of service. Or you can go up to the bridge and take the watch. Your call.”

 Taking a deep breath, Salazar said, “I’ll stick it out, sir.”

 “Good lad. Now go and get changed. I’d hate to have to cite you for infringement of uniform regulations. I’ll handle post-flight.”

 Salazar paused, then said, “I don’t know what to say, sir.”

 “I believe ‘thank you’ is traditional.”

 “That hardly seems to cover it.”

 “Well, I’ll tell you what. You just carry on as you are. You’ve made a good beginning here, but it is just a beginning. You’ve got a long way to go, but I think you have potential. If you want to thank me, then make use of it.”

 “I will, sir.”

 “Oh, and as for what you were doing here in the first place, I pulled a few strings back home.”

 Salazar froze, replying, “But you said…”

 “I trust Mr. Dietz. He told me you were worth saving, but there wasn’t anything he could do to rescue you from a backwater posting. I, on the other hand, had other options.”

 This time he did know what to say. “Thank you, Captain. I won’t let you down.”

 Marshall turned back to the controls, guiding the shuttle up to dock with Alamo, while Salazar stepped into the passenger cabin. Just as promised, his new uniform was waiting for him, the tiny midshipman’s insignia replaced with the slender silver bar of a Sub-Lieutenant. He paused for a moment, then took off his jacket, swapping it with the new one.

 He didn’t feel any different. The same Pavel Salazar he had been a few minutes ago. Perhaps he was standing a little taller, something new in his eyes. Carefully folding his old jacket, he placed it on the seat, then stood in front of the airlock as the docking cycle completed, the hatch opening up onto the hangar deck, where Bartlett was waiting for him, a smirk on his face.

 “Payback, sir,” he said, “for throwing me out of the airlock. Now they’re really going to put you to work.”

 “Isn’t this insubordination?” he replied with a smile.

 “Probably. Congratulations, anyway, sir. I know the lads will be pleased.”

 “Oh?”

 “You should have seen the report Cookie wrote on you.”

 “I bet,” he replied, his face darkening.

 “Damn it, sir, it was like a love letter. You done good.”

 “Thanks, Ben,” he said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’d better get to the bridge.”

 “Catch you in the mess later?”

 “Count on it, Spaceman. The first round is on you.” He stepped into the elevator, buoyant. For the first time since he’d arrived here, he felt at home, as though he was a part of the crew rather than just an observer looking in. Reaching into his pocket, he pinned his wings on his chest, and smiled. That was the difference. Not the rank, not the wings. He was part of the crew.

 The doors slid open, and Grant stood at the threshold, a scowl on his face. For a moment, Salazar thought he was going to stop him from entering, but instead he shook his head, stepping to one side.

 “The Captain has informed me of his decision to commission you,” he said. “I suppose congratulations are in order.”

 “Thank you, sir,” Salazar replied.

 “Don’t thank me,” Grant hissed, too softly for anyone else to hear. “I think he is making a mistake, and I’m going to be watching you every step of the way. When you stumble, and you will, I’ll be there. Understand?”

 “Yes, sir.”

 Raising his voice, he said, “Well, Mr. Salazar, you have the deck.”

 Gulping, he replied, “Aye, sir. I have the deck.”

 Grant stepped into the elevator, the doors closing behind him. He looked around the bridge, at the crewmen working at their stations, at the planet slowly revolving beneath them, and Foster sitting at the helm, muttering under her breath.

 “A problem, Midshipman?” he asked.

 “No problem. Sir.”

 “I’m very pleased to hear it,” he replied. “Steady as you go.”

 He looked at the command chair, empty at the heart of the bridge, and with two cautious steps, moved in front of it, carefully sitting down, testing his weight upon it as though afraid it would collapse underneath him. Leaning back, he looked out at the viewscreen again, Yeager Station just coming into the view, and smiled.

 Somehow, he seemed to get a flash of the future in his head. Of him sitting in that chair, his hair beginning to gray, lines on his forehead, more ornate insignia on his shoulders. That one day that this could be, would be, his ship. Something to think about, work towards, something for the future.

 For today, this would do.

Appendix A: Alamo Senior Staff

Commanding Officer: Fleet Captain Daniel Marshall

Executive Officer: Lieutenant-Captain John Cunningham

Operations Officer: Senior Lieutenant Margaret Orlova

Tactical Officer: Senior Lieutenant Helena Caine

Systems Officer: Senior Lieutenant Jack Quinn

Security Officer: Lieutenant Frank Nelyubov

Astrogator: Lieutenant Peter Race

Science Officer: Lieutenant Susan Carpenter

Medical Officer: Sub-Lieutenant Adrienne Duquesne

Deck Officer: Sub-Lieutenant Barbara Bradley (Detached Duty)

Espatier Commander: Ensign Gabriel Cooper (Detached Duty)

Appendix B: Ranks of the Triplanetary Fleet

O10: Admiral

O9: Vice-Admiral

O8: Counter-Admiral

O7: Commodore (Commandant)

O6: Fleet Captain (Colonel)

O5: Captain

O4: Lieutenant-Captain (Major)

O3: Senior Lieutenant (Lieutenant-Major)

O2: Lieutenant (Lieutenant)

O1: Sub-Lieutenant (Ensign)

O0: Midshipman

W2: Technical Officer (Warrant Officer)

W1: Technical Sergeant

E9: Master C. P. O. (Fleet Sergeant-Major)

E8: Senior C. P. O. (Sergeant-Major)

E7: Chief Petty Officer (First Sergeant)

E6: Petty Officer (Staff Sergeant)

E5: Junior Petty Officer (Sergeant)

E4: Senior Spaceman (Lance-Sergeant)

E3: Spaceman, 1st Class (Corporal/Senior Specialist)

E2: Spaceman, 2nd Class (Lance-Corporal/Specialist)

E1: Spaceman, 3rd Class (Private)

E0: Recruit Spaceman (Recruit Private)

(Equivalent Espatier ranks in parenthesis where present. Warrant Officer ranks in the Triplanetary Fleet are generally honorary, used for placing civilian personnel under direct military authority. Specialist ranks are restricted for medical or technical personnel from the Fleet operating under an Espatier chain of command.)

Appendix C: Author’s Notes

‘Aces High’ is, in many ways, the culmination of a plan that formed in my head about a year ago, when it became obvious that the ‘voyage through the Cabal’ plot that began with ‘Not One Step Back’ and ended with ‘Ghost Ship’ was going to run longer than I had originally anticipated. Sending the ship and its crew into unknown space felt good, and though I knew that there was unfinished business waiting back home, the Cabal arc to – at least to a degree – resolve, I knew that I wanted to move the series back out onto the frontier, as rapidly as I could.

Further, I wanted to expand the range of activities of the crew of Alamo, to give them a wider canvas to draw on. Spitfire Station was an experiment in that regard, but although I was very happy with how ‘Triple-Cross’ turned out, new stories in that particular line didn’t seem to happen. I came up with a few plots, but they all seemed to fit better as Alamo stories, even when I needed to use some of the Spitfire characters to make them work. The first of these was ‘Ghost Ship’, incidentally, and the second, ‘Not In My Name’, is to be the next book in the Alamo series, to be released in September.

So, Yeager Station was born, intended as a base of operations for Alamo’s adventures into the frontier, as well as potentially a source of some adventures itself. By combining the two concepts into one storyline, I’m rather hoping to have the best of both worlds, and my intention is to continue to develop the station over the course of coming novels. Indeed, a good portion of the next novel is set there, though naturally I won’t give any spoilers at this stage!

Midshipman/Sub-Lieutenant Salazar came about for two reasons. The first was that I wanted this book to be friendly for newcomers to the series. One problem I have had myself with longer series is that it can be a little daunting when you see that there are ten, fifteen, twenty books to work through before you become current. The goal this time was that this could serve as an introduction to the series, allowing you to work forward to future books. The tricky part was balancing it so that it continued previous storylines without requiring too much past knowledge of the part of the reader. I’ll leave it to you to judge how well I did. Salazar, a newcomer to the series, was intended as a gateway for new readers.

In addition, I wanted another junior-ranked point-of-view character. At one point, Orlova filled that role very well, but she’s heading off in other directions now, and it’s harder to put her down on the lower decks. Ensign Cooper (who will be making a full return in the next book) can fill that role, but as one of the space marines, Alamo’s Espatier commander, he has a rather specialized function. With Salazar, I now have multiple POV characters to play with: Captain Marshall, Captain Winter, Senior Lieutenant Orlova, Sub-Lieutenant Salazar, and Ensign Cooper; there’s a Harper story coming up as well in book fifteen, ‘Cage of Gold’, but aside from saying that I’m really looking forward to writing that one, I’ll say no more.

The current loose trilogy of books – thirteen through fifteen – are to introduce the themes of the books to come next year, and beyond, bringing in new enemies and missions for Alamo, her crew, and the accompanying task force. Naturally, old foes such as the Cabal will continue to appear, and that storyline still has plenty more elements to explore. Again, it’s really a matter of giving me more tools to work with. Speaking of which, I suppose I’d better get back to work. ‘Not In My Name’ won’t write itself!

Thank you for reading 'Aces High'. For information on future releases, please join the Battlecruiser Alamo Mailing List at http://eepurl.com/A9MdX for updates. If you enjoyed this book, please review it on the site where you purchased it.

The writer's blog is available at http://tinyurl.com/pjl96dj

Look out for Battlecruiser Alamo: Not In My Name, coming in September 2015...

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C