Contents

Prologue
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
Epilogue

SHADOWS IN THE SKY

Battlecruiser Alamo: Book 26

Richard Tongue

Battlecruiser Alamo #26: Shadows in the Sky

Copyright © 2017 by Richard Tongue, All Rights Reserved

First Kindle Edition: May 2017

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.

Join the Triplanetary Universe Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/A9MdX

Prologue

 The woman walked across the fringes of the eternal desert, endless footprints following her through the sand. She wore the tattered remnants of a uniform jacket, ripped and torn in a dozen places, with a battered cap perched on her head to protect her from the sun. Pausing to take a drink of precious water from her canteen, she looked around the horizon, tired eyes scanning the environment, seeking something she could only barely remember.

 And all around her, the universe unfolded. Endless land curving to the heavens in every direction, lush forests, green fields, blue-green oceans, black, angry wastelands. Every environment she could possibly imagine and a dozen more besides, all out there to explore. Lands that would take thousands of years to reach.

 She ran a hand across her forehead, wiping away the beads of gleaming sweat, and took a second drink from her canteen before returning it to her belt. Her hand ran across the pistol still in its holster, three cartridges remaining, and her combat knife next to it, notches on the blade from constant use. Her best survival tool, in an environment where she could depend upon nothing other than herself.

 Behind her, the trail stretched, across the thousand miles she had already walked, thousands, millions more awaiting her up ahead. An infinite realm, or at least as close to infinity as she could ever want or need. She didn't know how far the desert might stretch. She'd been following its perimeter for weeks, trying to find a path past it, periodically dipping back into the lush grasslands to the east to hunt for game, to refresh her canteen.

 Her goal, her destiny, still lay ahead. Whatever it might be. Her past was a distant memory, but a name still flashed into her mind, forcing itself past the shadows of yesterday. A single name, and one that had once meant more to her than life itself.

 Alamo.

Chapter 1

 Clarke raced down the corridor, rifle in hand, desperately struggling to evade the beast that was chasing him through the alien ship. Safety lay somewhere ahead, a shuttle that would take him back to all that was familiar, to his friends and comrades, but for now, he was on his own. Faint whispers seemed to call to him from the shadows, cries for help echoing down every corridor, but there was nothing he could do. His only chance to survive was in swift flight, and that was scant enough as he charged around a corner. As he looked down the gloomy corridor, he could see something swinging from the ceiling, and after a moment, as he grew closer, he realized with disgust and horror that it was a body. One of his crewman, Sergeant Fox, lifeless eyes glaring at him in the dark.

 He pushed past her corpse, the roar of rage of his pursuer echoing from the walls. The voices seemed to be stronger now, ripping into his very soul, protests for help, cries that he was betraying his friends by seeking to save his own life, whispered threats of his imminent annihilation. The walls seemed to close in on him, flickering green lights casting strange shadows in the air, and he felt himself slipping, falling, sliding to the floor as tangled cables reached out towards him.

 Turning to face his pursuer, he raised his rifle, ready to spend his final bullet in a bid to extend his life for one more instant, one more breath. His feet were helplessly caught, and his panicked cries filled the air as he saw the creature racing towards him with rending claws held high, a beast with a human face.

 His face.

 Sub-Lieutenant John Clarke greeted the morning with his customary scream. Baked in sweat, he looked up at the clock on the wall. Almost oh-six-hundred. Time for him to be reporting to duty, anyway. One benefit of being a department head was that nobody would question him heading to his office hours early. To an extent, it was expected, welcomed. The mark of a good officer.

 Staggering over to the mirror, he saw his face staring back, eyes heavy, weary, his hair a tangled mess, lines of worry on his face. He was a nineteen-year-old man who looked thirty years older. Every night, it was the same basic story. Sometimes he was back in the jungles, fighting the United Nations troops once again, watching the men he had led into battle die, one by one. Sometimes on the bridge of a ship, surrounded by enemies he couldn't defeat, tearing his ship apart. And sometimes he was alone, abandoned, the voices of the dead calling on him to join them.

 He splashed icy water on his face, trying to wake himself up, then reached for a bottle of emergency oxygen, strapping on the mask and taking a dozen deep breaths of the elixir-like air, instantly sending a surge of energy through his body. A month ago, he'd only needed one breath. Now, a canister was only lasting him a couple of days, and he knew he'd soon be topping up his supply every night.

 Looking at himself again, he ran his hands through his hair, trying to straighten himself up, then selected a clean uniform from the rack on the wall, sliding on the uniform jacket and fumbling with the clasp. At least the figure in the mirror now looked as though he could pass as an officer, as long as nobody made too close an inspection.

 He reached for his datapad, calling up the mission specifications for the day. Alamo would be emerging from hendecaspace in fifteen minutes, another new system to explore, their fifth in less than two months since leaving behind the lost human colony they had found. Captain Salazar and Lieutenant Harper had managed to piece together a trail from a series of hints on an abandoned alien city, but so far they'd found nothing other than empty worlds and enigmatic ruins, a path that seemed to have no end.

 It had been almost three months since they'd been stranded here in Andromeda, hurled through a phenomenon they couldn't understand, lost in space millions of light-years from home. They couldn't even see their own galaxy from here, hidden in a sea of stars. Two months since he'd earned his field promotion, an honor that was rapidly becoming a curse.

 The door slid open, and Sub-Lieutenant Mortimer stepped inside, her face cold. She'd been a double agent when first they'd met, infiltrating the enemy craft that Alamo had destroyed, the United Nations Dreadnought that Captain Marshall had given his life to bring down. They'd worked together on the planet, and occasionally, he caught her looking at him oddly, as though seeking something she couldn't quite detect.

 “I'm on to you,” she said, as the door slid shut.

 With a sigh, he replied, “I've got to get to my duty station.”

 “Not for two damned hours, John, and we're going to have a conversation first.” She sat down on the rumpled bed, and said, “Have you looked at yourself lately? When was the last time you actually had a good night's sleep?”

 “I only just woke up.”

 “Not what I asked.” She closed her eyes, ran her hand across her forehead, and said, “It hurts, John. Trust me, I know. Better than you. But you've got to live with the consequences of your actions, and I think you can.”

 “I'm fine, Ronnie,” he said, trying with limited success to brighten his tone. “Maybe I haven't been sleeping that well lately.”

 “What did Doctor Strickland say when you asked him about this?” she asked. At his expression, she continued, “You haven't been to see him.”

 “I'm not sick.”

 “Yes, you are, and you don't really think that I'm the only one to notice, do you? You're wandering around the ship like a damned zombie, and I'm certain that the Captain is beginning to realize that he's going to have to do something about it.” Putting her hand on his shoulder, he said, “Nineteen years old, and you're carrying a burden meant for someone ten years older.”

 “I can handle it.”

 “If you choose to,” she countered. “Right now you're stuffing it all into a box, burying it deep inside your soul, and hoping that it won't escape at the wrong moment. I've seen this happen to friends of mine, John, and sometimes it's a road you don't come back from. As it stands, you're on a one-way ticket to a nervous breakdown.”

 Rising to his feet with an effort, he replied, “I'll work it out.”

 “You don't have to do it alone.” She shook her head, and said, “Typical kid. You still think that you can take on the entire universe before breakfast. Let me tell you...”

 “No,” he snapped, gesturing dangerously with his finger towards you. “Take my word for it, I've had more proof than I care for that I can't handle everything by myself. In fact, I've had ample proof that I can't handle anything! I'm a curse, Ronnie. Everywhere I go, people seem to end up dying, people I'm supposed to be responsible for.”

 “You can't save everyone,” she replied, quietly.

 “Maybe not, but the fact remains that I've screwed up, more times than I care to count, and people have died as a result of my mistakes.” He pulled the rank insignia from his shoulder, clutching it in his palm, and added, “How much blood do you think this cost, Ronnie? Because that's a price I don't think I'm willing to pay, not any more. I ought to go to the Captain and put an end to this farce right now. I'm not an officer, and I never will be. Better that I get put somewhere where I can't do any harm.”

 Mortimer rose to her feet, and slapped his face with sufficient force to send him tumbling to the deck. She looked down at him, a sneer on her lips, her eyes blazing with fire.

 “You sniveling coward. I thought you were an officer, actually thought you were a man, but I guess I was wrong. At the first sign of weakness, at the first setback, you go running home to mama.” Gesturing at the door, she said, “Go see the Captain. Tell him he was wrong, that you're not an officer, that you're just a worm. Then you can spend the rest of your career in hiding, buried somewhere on the lower decks. And all of those people will have died for precisely nothing.”

 The wind knocked from him, Clarke lay on the floor, then looked up at the savage Mortimer, tears glistening from his eyes. He struggled to speak, and she knelt down beside him, contempt smeared on her face.

 “What?”

 “It hurts!” he yelled. “It hurts so goddamned much!” He looked up at her, and said, “That planet, three weeks ago. Remember? Just a collection of alien ruins on an airless world, and I took down a team to run a quick survey.” He gulped, then said, “One of the rocks was unstable, and when we landed, it must have been disturbed by the thrusters. The whole pylon came down, and I watched as it fell, and I froze. I couldn't move a muscle. If Ballard hadn't been quick off the mark, three people would have died.”

 “It happens.”

 “It can't happen!” he yelled. “Hell, if it happens at the wrong time, we could all die!”

 Her face softened, and she replied, “It isn't fair, is it? You should be worrying about passing a test, whether that girl will go out to dinner with you. Instead, we've placed the weight of the universe on your shoulders.” With a sigh, she continued, “I can't tell you that it gets any easier, John, because that would be a lie, but after a while, you do get used to it. And if it is any consolation, when you are in action, you're hell on wheels. I understand completely why Captain Salazar named you Security Officer, and I'd happily serve with you any time.”

 “Three times,” he muttered. “Three times, and I've come damn close to killing everyone. It didn't seem to matter as much at first. When it was only my life at risk, not anyone else, but they keep raising the stakes, and I don't know what to do about it.”

 “Trust your instincts,” she replied. “You know what your real problem is?”

 “No.”

 “You think too damned much. After a while, it gets in the way, and you start second-guessing yourself. Bad enough when you're sitting alone in your cabin with a bottle of something in front of you.” Looking around the room, she asked, “Where is your stash, by the way?”

 “I don't drink.”

 “That's another mistake,” she replied. “A good officer knows that there is a time and a place to get well and truly drunk.” Cracking a smile, she continued, “Why do you think they give everyone a flask of emergency oxygen? Just accepting the reality of the situation. John, ultimately you are right about one thing. You're going to have to fight your way past this, but that doesn't mean you have to do it alone.” She sat down next to him, and said, “You think you've got problems? Try walking in my shoes for a while.”

 “It must have been tough.”

 “The man I loved, the man I'd planned on having a future with, died. Along with most of my friends, and the others are lost to me forever. You've got somewhere to go home to, kid. I don't. I'll never go back to Earth again.” Tugging at her uniform, she added, “And I'm not sure this really fits, either. Everyone knows I used to be United Nations Fleet, and I don't think most of the crew believes that I'm really one of them. I'm not even sure if I am.”

 Looking up at her, Clarke said, “I trust you. If that helps. Or I don't think that we'd be having this conversation.”

 “I'm sure enough of that,” she said. “And that does help, a little. That's why you're going to have to straighten yourself up, kid. I don't have many friends on this ship. I can't afford to lose one of the few I have, and that's what will happen if you don't pull out of this spiral.”

 Nodding, he replied, “I just don't know what to do.”

 “Want some free advice?”

 “Sure.”

 “Talk to Doctor Strickland. Get some REM suppressants, and treat yourself to a few real nights of sleep. You can't use them for long, but just a couple of days will help you more than you know. And I know we don't have a psychiatrist on board, but there are counseling programs. Use them. You think most of the crew don't need that release from time to time?” She paused, then asked, “I almost never see you around when you aren't on duty. The paperwork backlog can't be that bad. Captain Salazar doesn't seem like the sort to let the clutter back up that high.”

 “It isn't,” he replied. “I just...”

 Nodding, she said, “I get it. You take any self-defense classes?”

 “Just the usual Academy curriculum, more at Intelligence School. Dirty tricks stuff, mainly.”

 “You fence?”

 “Fence?” he asked. “I tried out for the Academy fencing team. Took a few classes. I was planning on taking it further, but the next term, well, never came.”

 “Foil or epee?”

 “Foil.”

 Her eyes gleamed, and she replied, “Good. I've been looking for a new sparring partner, and you just got yourself volunteered. We have a date with the gym tonight, nineteen-hundred. Don't be late.” She paused, smiled, and said, “And don't get any other ideas. I've got fifteen years on you.”

 “Huh?” he replied, blushing crimson red.

 With a chuckle, she said, “Never change, kid. Really, never change. You're too damn much fun as it is.” Reaching down with a hand, she pulled him to his feet, and said, “We're meeting up for lunch, as well, twelve-hundred. I'm going to drag you out of your shell if I have to get the whole damn crew to help. I'm not the only one worrying about you.”

 “I don't...”

 “You made a hell of an impression on quite a few people when you rode that scoutship down. Pretty much everyone with you on that moon would quite happily follow you to Hell, and that's a good start. Tell me. Did you spend hours agonizing over that decision, or did you just do what you thought was right?”

 “Just instinct.”

 “Then you don't have anything to worry about. And as for the planet, I'd bet that you froze because of fatigue, not any inherent weakness. Go see Strickland. Don't worry, he doesn't talk. Not unless it would affect the safety of the ship and her crew, and you aren't there. Not yet. Keep walking down this road, and you will be.”

 “Yeah,” he replied, nodding. “I'll swing by later this morning, after sick call. Don't want to get caught up in the rush.”

 “Or for anyone to see you,” she countered. “Fine, but I expect to hear a full account in the mess. Got that? I'm going to be riding you on this.” Cracking a smile, she added, “Even if technically, you're two spots above me in the chain of command.”

 “Don't give me another nightmare,” he replied. “Command is the last thing I want.”

 “Pity,” she said. “It suits you. I really mean that.” The overhead speaker barked into life, the voice of Max Francis, Alamo's Executive Officer, echoing through the room.

 “Attention. All decks prepare for emergence to normal space. Sensor crews to full operational readiness. Proceed to standby alert. Sub-Lieutenant Clarke, report to the bridge on the double.”

 “Looks like someone else wants you,” she replied. “Take a moment to shave, first. If we're about to run into the Supreme Overlord of Andromeda, you want to make a good first impression.”

 “It's probably just another empty system,” he said, moving to the sink, reaching for his razor.

 “Maybe,” she said, with a shrug. “I think we're overdue for something a little different.”

Chapter 2

 Lieutenant-Captain Pavel Salazar sat in his command chair, his eyes fixed on the viewscreen, waiting for Alamo to return to normal space. He looked around the bridge, saw the familiar faces at their consoles, working to prepare for emergence. Harper, his partner, sat at Defense, ready to employ the might of the ship's countermeasure systems, with Lieutenant Scott sitting next to her, holding down Tactical as though she'd spent her life at the station.

 At the head of the bridge, Sub-Lieutenant Quesada sat at the helm, working under the watchful gaze of Senior Lieutenant Francis, preparing to rip open the fabric of reality once again. Salazar glanced at his datapad, looking over the report that Lieutenant Carpenter, his Science Officer, had labored to prepare. Five planets in this system, no sign of anything special. Just another step on the road to their next real target, a stepping stone through an alien galaxy.

 When they'd first arrived in Andromeda, they'd almost immediately found evidence that there was a way home, that a century ago another human starship had managed to traverse the endless void and return to the Milky Way. They'd also found a selection of stars that might have been the home of the wormhole builders, seven of them. Of which five had turned out to be dead-ends, and one distant enough to be many months distant.

 Frowning, Salazar settled back in his command chair, trying to project an air of confidence he didn't truly feel. The crew needed something to hope for, something to work towards, and the longer they stayed, the greater the temptation to find a place to set down. They'd already found one human colony, had liberated it from its oppressors, and it had been tempting to simply stay there. He found himself mentally plotting a course back, four jumps to be back among civilization again, their own kind.

 “Sir,” Quesada said, breaking him from his momentary reverie. “Emergence in one minute.”

 “Very good, Sub-Lieutenant. You have the call.”

 “All decks are at alert status, sir,” Scott reported. “Ready for anything.”

 “Let's hope I don't have to take you up on that, Kat,” he said. “Ballard, I want full sensor sweeps of the system as soon as we emerge.” He paused, smiled, then said, “I'm sure you've got the whole drill down by now.”

 “Aye, sir,” she replied. “Sweep ready. I'll have a full picture of the system for you in a couple of minutes, and Lieutenant Carpenter is standing by down in Astrogation to interpret what we find.”

 “Sir,” Quesada said, frowning, “There's something strange here. The mass readings from the gravitational source up ahead just changed. Dropped by two percent. I've never seen anything like it.” Anticipating Salazar's first question, he added, “Diagnostic checks show no error.”

 “Will it interfere with our emergence?” Salazar asked. They were close to the maximum possible duration for a hendecaspace transit, and stories of ships that lingered too long were the stuff of drunken debates in the bar, of low-budget horror flicks. Not something he wanted to personally experience.

 “I don't think so, sir, but it might make for a rougher ride.”

 “Now hear this,” Salazar said, stabbing a control. “Prepare for turbulence. All decks to battle stations. I say again, all decks to battle stations.”

 A siren sounded, and Francis turned, warning, “We won't be at full readiness before we return to normal space, Captain.”

 “I know, Max, but this way we at least get a bit of a head-start if there is another nasty surprise waiting. Have engineering prepare for a full sensor recalibration, in case this turns out to be a glitch. We've been running those systems pretty hard lately.”

 “Aye, sir,” he replied, moving over to Fitzroy at the Flight Engineering station.

 “Pavel,” Harper said, quietly, “That sort of sensor glitch doesn't happen.” She threw a control, and said, “Our firewall is firm. No sign of infiltration.”

 “That's something, anyway,” he replied. “Keep watching out.”

 “I always do.”

 “Emergence, sir,” Quesada said, and a blinding flash of blue light rippled across the bridge, Alamo tumbling through the jagged gash in the fabric of space-time, the stars swirling around it as it spun end-over-end. Struggling with the controls, Quesada fought to stabilize the ship, playing the thrusters carefully as he tried to return to a normal trim.

 “My God!” Ballard said, throwing a switch. Before he could question her statement, Salazar looked at the image she'd thrown on the viewscreen, and rose to his feet in shocked horror at the sight unfolding before him.

 The tattered remains of a planet, half a hemisphere ripped away, with blinding flashes of laser beams tearing it apart, while a trail of debris faded into the horizon, puffs of gas hurling it towards a distant point. Someone was tearing an entire world to pieces, chopping into neat, million-ton chunks, and Alamo had a front-row seat.

 “Spaceman, tell me this is a scene from a bad movie,” he said.

 “All checks confirmed, sir,” she replied, her voice hushed, as though someone outside might be listening in. “I'm picking up thousands of small ships, moving in a firing pattern. Laser projectors, shuttles. More tonnage than every fleet in known space. Gigawatt lasers, sir. The heat discharge is tremendous, almost off the scale.”

 “No sign of comm traffic,” Bowman reported from the communications station. “Nobody has tried to contact us, and I can't detect any signs that anyone out there is talking to each other either. I suppose they could be using tight-beam, but even so, I'd expect to pick up something, even if it is just unintelligible overspill.”

 “Two of the other planets in the system are gone, Captain,” Ballard added. “No trace at all. The gravitational fields are shifting, out of position.” Looking at the viewscreen, she continued, “Our friends out there have been busy.” She frowned again, then said, “They're on the move! Three targets, heading our way! One laser projector, two shuttles. I think.”

 “Quesada, get us out of here, right now, any heading!”

 “Aye, sir. Main engine sequence start.”

 “All decks are cleared for action, sir,” Scott reported. “I can have a firing solution in a minute.”

 “No,” Salazar said.

 “But...”

 “Agreed,” Francis added. “Lieutenant, we're facing an enemy that appears to have hundreds of gigawatt lasers, capable of tearing entire planets to pieces. They could destroy this ship by accident and never even notice. I think we need to be contemplating how to get away from them.”

 “We'd better think of something fast,” Harper said. “They've got ten times our acceleration. They'll be on us in a couple of minutes.”

 Frowning, Salazar said, “Take us towards the planet. The remains. We can use the debris as a gravity slingshot, try for one of the other hendecaspace points.”

 “You want to head towards the enemies?” Scott asked, eyes wide.

 “It's the best chance we've got to make through. Do it, Quesada, and for God's sake, try and avoid the laser beams. Make sure we stay out of direct line of sight.” Stabbing a control, he said, “Bridge to Engineering.”

 “Chief Santiago here, sir.”

 “I need all the power you can give me to the engines. Strip it from the weapons and defense systems. Right now I need every scrap of acceleration, or we're as good as dead.”

 “Just another morning on the Battlecruiser Alamo,” she replied with a sigh. “Power transfer initiated, sir. Please try not to cause too much damage to my ship. I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with the maintenance routine as it is.”

 “No promises, Chief. Bridge out.” He looked up at the trajectory plot, watching as the incoming ships altered course, trying for an intercept. At the critical second, Quesada stabbed his controls, sending the ship veering to the side, away from the rippling pulse of energy that threatened to destroy them.

 Harper frowned, then said, “We're getting overloads. Sensor malfunction.”

 “What's wrong?”

 “Got to be a few billion pieces of debris out there, Pavel, and we're flying close enough that each one is being individually resolved. We don't have the processing power to handle that for very long.” She looked up at her systems monitors, shook her head, and added, “Getting worse, not better. We've got to get through this soon.”

 “Energy spike ahead!” Ballard said, and Quesada hurled the ship to the side an instant before a beam of laser light raced through space. Alamo dived for the swarm of planetoids ahead, Salazar watching implacably as the ship hurtled towards danger. Even under normal circumstances, this would be an extremely hazardous maneuver. Under combat conditions, it was damned near suicidal, but he didn't think they had a choice. The strange ships were sweeping the system clear, a quick glance revealing an absence of asteroids and comets that didn't appear to be a coincidence. Engineering on a planetary scale, out here in the dark.

 “Planet in one minute, sir,” a harried Quesada reported. “Losing sensor definition. Autonav struggling with trajectory plot, skipper. I can't guarantee our end course.”

 “Just get us through, Sub-Lieutenant. I'll be more than happy with that, I assure you.”

 Alamo gathered speed as it approached the shattered remnant of the world ahead. There was nothing anyone could do now. They were committed to the course, and all Salazar could do was wait, and trust in the skills of Quesada to see them through to the other side. He briefly caught himself wondering about the planet they were flying towards, spotting the faint outline of continents visible on the exposed hemisphere, any atmosphere long since boiled away into space.

 Was it inhabited, once? Did people walk on its surface, have hopes and dreams of their own, before the strange machines arrived to destroy their paradise? Or had it been a barren chunk of rock, destined to drift through space for untold billions of years before finding a final, fiery end, its fate simply coming sooner than it had otherwise been destined to be. He'd never know, but the thought kept him distracted for the critical seconds.

 Beams of light filled the screen, flashes of laser energy as the machines continued with their work, heedless of the comparatively tiny starship dancing through the rubble of creation. The trajectory plot rose and fell, projecting them to fly all across the map as the influence of gigaton hunks of rock tossed them from side to side, brief flashes on the viewscreen as they tumbled through the ruin. Quesada's face grew pale as he played the thrusters like a virtuoso pianist, pinpoint pulses of gas to guide them through the worst of the rubble.

 The hull rattled as they passed through a dense cloud of debris, too fine to detect, but enough to cause a series of warning alerts to sound, Fitzroy jerked into life to deal with the tiny fractures before they could become catastrophic hull breaches. Salazar leaned forward, ready to face the end, convinced briefly that he'd made a terrible mistake.

 And then, almost without realizing it, they were through, out on the far side, leaving the machines far behind. He waited for a moment, turning to the sensor station, watching as Ballard worked her controls, smiling as she finally turned with a nod.

 “We're clear, sir. No sign of pursuit.”

 “Damage report, Fitzroy?” Salazar asked.

 “Nothing serious, sir. Chief Santiago would like permission to put a work crew on the outer hull when we next get a chance, certainly before we attempt another hendecaspace transfer, but aside from that, we passed through in one piece.”

 “Excellent work, Sub-Lieutenant,” Salazar said, rising from his seat and walking over to the helmsman. “Damn good flying.”

 “She's a good ship, sir. Makes it easy.”

 “Sure,” he replied, with a smile. “Sure.” Behind him, the elevator doors opened, Carpenter walking onto the bridge with eager glee in her smile, a datapad clutched in her hands.

 “This is amazing,” she said. “Just unbelievable.”

 “I'd say that was putting it mildly,” Salazar replied, still looking at the display on the screen. “What possible reason could there be for something like this? Have we stumbled into a war?”

 Frowning, Scott replied, “I suppose there could be strategic goals in mind, removing possible hendecaspace points, but this seems a rather extreme way of doing it.”

 “Building materials,” Carpenter said.

 “For what?”

 “That is an excellent question, sir, and one that I think we're going to have to answer.” She walked over to the sensor controls, and said, “All of that debris is being hurled into interstellar space, well over escape velocity.” She worked her console, and added, “A visual check reveals nothing for thousands of light-years on that course, but if you take a look at the gravitational grid, we get something very different.”

 The viewscreen flashed, and a pinpoint gravitational source appeared on the screen, just within hendecaspace range, seven light-years distant. The readings were off the chart, and Salazar looked back at Carpenter, wonder in his eyes.

 “Is that what I think it is, Lieutenant?”

 “A quantum singularity, sir. Large enough to be detected easily at interstellar distances, and close enough that we can actually take a look at it.” Tapping another row of controls, she added, “It gets better. There's something else there, about the same size, but invisible. Not another singularity, but the largest object I've ever seen. Millions of miles across.”

 Harper whistled, then said, “We wanted to find something strange. I'd say we've found it.”

 “And the debris is being thrown in that direction,” Salazar mused. “The largest construction project in history? Fuel for the black hole?”

 “There's only one way to find out, sir, and that's to go and take a look. I've already started calculating the course. It'll take a little more work than normal, but it is certainly well within our capabilities to make the attempt.”

 Francis looked at Salazar, then said, “I can't help but remember an old pre-space phrase. That there are some things that Man is not meant to know. We've just stumbled through the most powerful striking force I've ever seen, a technology thousands of years ahead of ours, and there's an obvious danger in looking further. I very much doubt that we're of any importance to them now, but I'm certain that they could destroy this ship and everyone on it in a heartbeat if they chose.”

 “We've been looking for the creators of the wormhole network,” Carpenter countered. “And we know that has to be a technology way in advance of our own. Whoever is doing this has the power to destroy worlds, and potentially to control black holes. That's got to be worth a look.”

 Rising to his feet, Salazar said, “We can't leave the system for five days anyway. Helm, set a course to the nearest safe hendecaspace point, timed for our arrival as soon as we complete dimensional stabilization.” Turning to Carpenter, he continued, “I want all the data you can gather, Lieutenant, but stick to passive sensors only. Let's try not to attract too much attention. Max, you have the deck. I'll be in my office.”

 “Aye, sir,” Francis replied, as Salazar moved to the exit, taking one last look at the viewscreen. For centuries, humanity had feared the day when they'd encounter a more advanced alien race. That day, it seemed, had finally dawned.

Chapter 3

 Salazar sat at the fringes of the gym, watching Mortimer and Clarke spar, the clash of steel drawing the eye of everyone in the room. He'd been on the verge of taking official notice of the deterioration of the young officer until a few days ago. That Mortimer had apparently decided to make him her project had bought him a little more time to pull himself together.

 “It isn't his fault, you know,” Harper said, taking a vacant seat behind him. “It's ours.”

 “Mine” Salazar sighed, then continued, “He's too young for his rank, and I'm pushing a promising officer far too hard. If I had anyone else I could use in the role, I'd relieve him.”

 “I doubt that,” she said. “You're thinking that you can see a young Pavel Salazar, maybe six or seven years ago, and that the fire forged you, and will do the same to him. You might be right about that, but it will be a hell of a thing to push him through.”

 “We survived. So will he.”

 “A lot of our friends didn't.”

 Turning to her, he replied, “There's nobody else I can assign. I need Foster handling Operations, Scott at Tactical. Mortimer would be my second choice, but given the, shall we say, unusual circumstances by which she came on board, I don't think the Admiralty would approve.”

 “We're a long way from that being a problem.”

 “Perhaps, but on rare occasions our Lords and Masters are known to make the right decision.” He paused, smiled, then added, “Very rare occasions.” Clarke ducked in, with a long sweep that forced Mortimer onto the defensive. “I wonder if he isn't hustling her.”

 “I don't think he's got quite that level of guile yet, though he is learning fast.” Turning to him, she added, “All I'm saying is that he's going to require supervision. That you probably need to make sure someone else is with him the next time you send him off on a mission. Carpenter, maybe. Or Mortimer, actually.”

 “I had something like that in mind.” He frowned, then said, “You didn't come down here to talk about Clarke.”

 “No.” She paused, looked at the fight for a moment, and continued, “It's been two days. We're still waiting on your decision. If we're not going to investigate the anomaly, then we've got to come up with a different search strategy.” Glancing across at him, she said, “Though that's academic, because we're going in.”

 “It isn't that simple. Not this time.”

 “That's not the Pavel Salazar I'm used to.” She smiled, then said, “If this is a case of command jitters, then...”

 “You know me better than that,” he replied. “Look, I'd never have sought a command. I might be the least ambitious officer in the Fleet, but that doesn't mean I don't feel capable of serving as Alamo's Captain. If I didn't think I could handle the job, then I'd turn it over to someone else. Francis, you, Foster. We have other options.”

 Resting her hand on his, she gave him a quick squeeze, and said, “Don't turn over command to me. Not ever. I don't want the damned job.”

 He flashed a smile, and said, “Careful, love. You might end up with it yet, before this party is over. Though I assure you I will do everything I can to postpone that day.”

 “You'd damned well better,” she replied. “I've got plans for you, and glorious duels to the death aren't among them.”

 Shaking his head, he said, “Should I be nervous?”

 “Yes. But back to the point...”

 “Max is right,” Salazar said. “And at the back of your mind, you know it as well. We're in danger of stepping right into the lion's mouth. We came far closer to instant annihilation than I'm comfortable with back at the shattered planet, and I'm not sure that there's any wisdom in going back for a second attempt. If the anomaly is the heart of some technological advanced empire, then maybe we ought to just quietly tiptoe our way out of the area, and hope we haven't attracted too much notice already.”

 “Captain Marshall once said that risk was our business.”

 “If I recall the records, that was just prior to a mission that almost got everyone killed.” As the duel continued in the background, he said, “And yet there is something to that, and I know how close this crew is to the edge.” Fishing out a datapad, he continued, “We're two jumps from the penultimate target. And if I'm honest, I don't have high hopes. Just another anonymous red dwarf. The final target looks better, but it's a long way away. I'm not sure we'll make it.”

 “The crew will follow where you lead, Pavel.”

 “Will they? I'm not so sure of that. We've got a safe harbor, and that's a very seductive thing. How many of the crew are wondering about setting up shop there. Hell, I could make some very strong arguments to support that. We could bootstrap them to an interstellar civilization in one shot, construct new starships, really get them in gear. Maybe our descendants could find a way home.”

 “You don't really believe that.”

 With a sigh, he added, “A part of me would be willing to consider it, Kris, and if it was the best thing for the crew, I'd do it without a second thought. Thirteen jumps to the final target. Six months, at best, assuming no detours. That's lot to ask on the longest of long shots. We've got no real proof that there is anything there at all.” He shrugged, and said, “For that matter, the anomaly could be just as big a bust.”

 “We just watched a planet being eaten, Pavel.”

 “And a sane man would run.” Rubbing his forehead, he said, “We're getting depressingly close to not having anything left to lose.”

 “While there's life, there's hope.”

 “True enough. True enough. But there has to be more to life than that.” Tapping a control, he added, “We've got a wedding to go to, by the way.”

 “I thought we'd had that discussion.”

 Rolling his eyes, he replied, “Not ours, damn it. Though I still say we haven't made the final decision on that. I was talking about Spaceman Webster. She wants to marry Private Simons. Apparently they had a thing going before we left, and it's gotten serious enough that they want to take it to the next step. They met with me this morning, and I granted my permission. Ceremony scheduled three days after we jump, to give them both a chance for a least a short honeymoon.”

 “That's a good thing, surely. For morale, if nothing else.” She grimaced, and said, “You're going to make me wear my dress uniform, aren't you.”

 “Yes,” he replied, bluntly. “Besides, it suits you.”

 “No, it doesn't.”

 With a twinkle in his eye, he said, “Consider it an order.”

 “Aye, sir.” She threw him a mock salute, smiled, then said, “What's the problem, though?” 

 “The crew's pairing off. There's always an element of that on any long voyage, of course. No real problem as long as it's kept low-profile and doesn't affect anyone's performance. God knows I'm in no position to protest on this issue. It just feels a little more permanent this time. This isn't the usual assortment of flings. Simons told me that four others in the platoon are thinking along similar lines.” Looking at the duel once more, watching as Mortimer scored a graceful point with a nimble jab at Clarke's chest, he continued, “They're beginning to think that this is all there is going to be. That we're either going to end up going back to the colony, or settling one of our own.” 

 “Are we?”

 “Doctor Strickland assures me that genetically, that isn't an option. Not for more than a couple of generations, in any case. Realistically, we don't have a choice. Cosmograd or nothing.”

 “I'm guessing that means you've made a decision.”

 Nodding, he replied, “I owe it to this crew to give them the best possible chance to get home. Failing that, I consider it my duty to give them the best odds of survival I can, and as far as I can see, there's only one option.”

 “And that is?” 

 “Damn it!” Clarke exclaimed, as a sword strike caught him in the arm, breaking his concentration.. 

 “That's it, I think,” Mortimer replied. “Close, this time. You got within two points.”

 “Next time, Ronnie, I'll take you. Same time tomorrow?”

 “I hope so,” Salazar said, as the crowd began to disperse. “These little tournaments are becoming pretty popular attractions. You ought to start thinking about selling tickets.” Rising to his feet, he said, “I'd like you both to get to the briefing room on the double. Don't worry about changing. This isn't going to take long.” Pulling his communicator out of his pocket, he tapped a control, and said, “Senior officers, report to the briefing room right away.” He made for the door, Harper, Mortimer and Clarke following close behind him.

 “You going to keep us in suspense?” Harper asked.

 “Might as well tell everyone at once,” he replied, stepping through the doors. Looking at Clarke, he said, “You're really improving.”

 “I was out of practice,” the young officer replied.

 “Not what I meant,” Salazar said, flashing him a thin smile. He looked down at his datapad again, glancing at the most recent stream of data coming in from the sensors. The planet behind them was visibly smaller, billions of tons of material being thrown towards the anomaly. At best guess, it would be forty thousand years in flight. Whoever wanted the minerals didn't seem to mind the long delay in delivery.

 The doors slid open, and he stepped out into the briefing room, Francis, Santiago and Foster already waiting for him. He took his seat at the head of the table after a momentary hesitation, and gestured for the others to take their places. It still felt odd to hold this meeting himself; he kept waiting for Captain Marshall to walk into the room, ordering him back to his old position. After a moment, Carpenter walked in, followed by Scott, Lombardo and Rhodes, completing the collection.

 “I presume you all have some idea why I've called this meeting,” Salazar began. “Lieutenant Carpenter, have we any more information than before about the nature of the anomaly?”

 “Nothing definite, sir. Only that it's the largest body I've ever seen, and that it seems to be an almost perfect reflector of heat. Nothing's making its way in or out. No signals, either, though that could simply be distance. I find it hard to believe that nobody in that system is transmitting.” She looked around the table, then added, “My whole department is ready to go, sir. The chance to study a black hole at such close range alone is worth the risk. We could gather data that would take centuries to analyze, throw cosmology forward by a couple of generations.”

 Shaking his head, Francis replied, “I can't get past the danger involved. We don't have perfect data on the size of the black hole, and we've got no solid idea what it is we're heading for. There's only a pair of hendecaspace points out there, and both of them are close in to the anomaly. If there is anything strange out there, we'll be running right into it. And with gigawatt lasers flying around, we could be wiped out of existence in an instant. Without ever knowing what had happened.”

 “Realistically,” Foster said, “I don't know if we have a choice. We can't keep stumbling around Andromeda forever, going from one desolate wasteland to another. If I see another set of enigmatic obelisks, I swear I'm going to go crazy.” Looking at Salazar, she added, “I think we need to investigate.”

 Nodding, Salazar replied, “I agree. I think we're about at the end of the line, people. So far we've seen no trace of either Monitor or Nautilus. The trail is well and truly cold, and there's only one lead left to follow up. The anomaly. It's close enough to the wormhole that we can make a plausible case that it is the home of the wormhole builders, and that being the case, we've got to investigate further. To do otherwise would not be fair to the crew.”

 “Then we're going in,” Francis said, nodding. “I'd recommend a complete diagnostic of all ship's systems before we make the attempt.”

 “Agreed,” Salazar said. “Chief, draw anyone you need from any department to conduct it. I want all possible checks done before we leave the system.”

 “Not a problem, sir,” she replied.

 Looking around the room, Salazar said, “I want to emphasize that I am more than aware that this is a high-risk mission, and that we will take any possible means to mitigate that. We will not venture any closer than ten million miles to the black hole under any circumstances.” Looking at Carpenter, he added, “I am well aware that we could theoretically go somewhat closer, but I will not place the ship at risk. You'll have to do what you can with probes. I could be talked into the deployment of a modified transfer shuttle if you want something with greater capacity.”

 “Thanks, sir,” Carpenter said. “My people will get to work on the modifications immediately. The scientific payoff...”

 “Doesn't mean a damn thing if we don't have any way to report back our findings, Lieutenant. Remember that. As for the anomaly, we will keep well clear of it unless we have good reasons to go closer. Understand that I am perfectly happy to leave our target system with no more information than we entered it with, as long as we do manage to get clear. I hope that is clearly understood by you all.”

 “What if we don't find anything, sir?” Scott asked. “Where do we go then?”

 Folding his hands together, Salazar said, “We go back to Cosmograd, and take the local administration up on their offer to join their colony.” A babel of protests erupted, and he raised his hands to silence them. “I'm not taking this decision lightly. Chief, how's the ship?”

 “Operational.”

 “And how long can we operate without resupply. How long before we start running into real trouble with the maintenance routine?”

 “Nine to twelve months. Dependent on any other damage we suffer, of course.”

 Gesturing at the blank spot on the star map, the location of the anomaly, Salazar continued, “Even from here I can tell you something we didn't know for sure a few days ago. There are civilizations out here so far ahead of us that we might as well be swinging clubs. We are a long way from home, stranded in an unknown galaxy, and I will not place the lives of this crew at unjustified hazard. Visiting the anomaly is, in my judgment, worth the risk. Wandering blindly through the galaxy is not. From our target, we will be able to return to Cosmograd in five jumps, and conduct a full survey of all the surrounding stars as well.”

 “We can't give up, sir,” Rhodes said. “We know that Nautilus made it home.”

 “But we don't know how, Ensign,” Foster said, “and as much as I hate to admit it, Captain Salazar is quite correct. We could stagger on for two or three years, I suppose, the ship's condition worsening by the jump, but it wouldn't be long before we'd be forced to settle somewhere, and not a planet of our choosing. We'd be stranded. At Cosmograd, there is a functioning human civilization, and a world upon which we can walk, can breathe the air. That's not something blind luck will give us.”

 “That's my final decision,” Salazar said. “Unless we find something at the anomaly, then we'll head back to a safe haven. The safety of the crew must come first.” Looking around, he continued, “Lieutenant Carpenter, I want your research plan outlined and on my desk in twenty-four hours. Scott, I want half a dozen battle stations drills held over the next four days. Don't tell anyone when, not even me. Let's make them as real as possible.”

 “Aye, sir,” Scott said.

 “You'll have that report ready in six hours, sir,” Carpenter replied with a beaming smile.

 “Dismissed, then,” Salazar said, with a quick glance at Harper to confirm that she should remain in her seat. A faint murmur of conversation rippled through the officers as they left the room, Rhodes pausing at the threshold, turning to Salazar.

 “Even when we got back to Cosmograd, sir, some of us could take Alamo out again. Have another try.”

 “I know you've got the wanderlust, Frank. Don't worry. They'll have their own starships in ten years, and I suspect that someone will be able to talk them into another attempt to find the way home. Don't think of this as giving up. We're regrouping, nothing more.”

 “Yes, sir,” he replied, turning to leave the room. The door locked shut, and Salazar looked at Harper.

 “Thoughts?”

 She frowned, then said, “I'm not sure what else you could do. I'd guess that about a quarter of the crew will welcome it, probably about the same number will hate it, and the rest will follow the trend. Had you opted to go endlessly on into eternity, I suspect we'd have run into serious trouble in a few months, but as it is...” She paused, then continued, “What you said to Rhodes will take the pressure off. This isn't some virgin settlement where we'll be gathering berries and nuts. It's a technologically advanced civilization on the brink of starflight.”

 Nodding, he replied, “I'd guess that Captain Rhodes and a few others would be heading off on the first starship, five, six years from now.”

 “Not Captain Salazar?”

 “Alamo's my ship now, and her crew are my responsibility. I'll help them build their first generation of starships, but I'll stay with my people. Besides, there's probably a better than even chance that another ship from home will be heading through at some point.”

 “Also true.” She looked up at the slowly rotating star-chart, then said, “I just never thought it would end like this. With retreat.”

 “We're just changing the direction of our attack,” Salazar said with a forced smile. “No, I agree with you. It doesn't feel right, somehow.” Looking up at the screen, he continued, “Let's just hope that the anomaly proves to be the answer to all our prayers. But either way, I think it's the end of the line.”

Chapter 4

 Clarke sat down in the second row of chairs, taking his position with the rest of the officers, Mortimer, Lombardo and Carpenter on his right. His dress uniform itched, and he had to fight the temptation to scratch as the music began to play. One of his instructors had once confessed that it was meant to irritate as a test of endurance, and the worst of it was that he wasn't entirely sure that she'd been joking at the time.

 They'd cleared the hangar deck for the occasion, most of the crew wanting to attend the wedding, and he'd noticed more than a few people casting rueful glances at their partners. Something in the back of his mind suggested there would be more weddings taking place in the near future. While rare in normal service, such ceremonies were not that uncommon on longer cruisers, the natural result of a hundred and fifty people thrown together in confined environments for a year or more. Periodically, there was a long debate in the Senate over the propriety of fraternization, but a rare combination of the psychologists and the ship drivers had always won the day, thus far.

 At the head of the room, a beaming Salazar stood at the dais, somehow looking completely comfortable in his full-dress outfit, waiting for the wedding party. The doors at the rear opened, and all eyes turned to see Private Simons, looking dazed, with Corporal Quiller, his best man, half-dragging him towards the front, his ceremonial sword rocking against his leg as they walked.

 Then came Spaceman Webster, wearing a resplendent white dress, a beaming Francis on her arm, acting as father of the bride for the ceremony. At the rehearsal, a few of the more musically-inclined members of the crew had played the Wedding March, and the result had been such that taped music had been introduced instead for the actual ceremony at the apologetic request of the groom. As the couple stood next to each other, facing Salazar, the Captain glanced down at his notes, a datapad built into the dais to avoid detection, then looked back up at the crowd.

 “Since the days of the earliest voyages through space, all starship commanders have had one joyous privilege. To join two people in the bonds of matrimony. And for that purpose, we are gathered here today to honor the union of Private Andrew Simons and Spaceman Second Class Diane Webster, in the sight of their shipmates, and in accordance the laws and traditions of both the Triplanetary Confederation and the Triplanetary Fleet.”

 He glanced to the right, receiving a curt nod of confirmation from Foster, then continued, “In this instance, the couple have elected to write their own oaths for the ceremony,” pausing with a smile, he added, “so if Private Simons is quite ready to begin, we will...”

 Abruptly, sirens blared, overriding the music, and all hands instantly stood to, Salazar racing to a wall communicator. Before he could speak, the ship rocked, and Clarke felt sick to his stomach,  the familiar sign of a bad dimensional transition. He glanced across at Mortimer, shared panic on their faces. They weren't due to leave hendecaspace for two days, but something seemed to be dragging them into normal space immediately.

 “Salazar here,” the Captain said, slamming into the wall by the communicator, Harper instantly up and by his side. “What's going on?”

 “Don't know, sir,” Santiago reported. “We're in the early stages of a dimensional transition, but we didn't do anything up here. First checks suggest that our velocity through hendecaspace has increased by a factor of twenty. I've never seen anything like it.” She paused, then added, “I've locked down all space-tight doors, other than those permitting you and the senior staff access to the bridge, sir.”

 With a regretful look at the couple, clutching each other as though it might be their last moment, he replied, “I'm on my way. All hands to battle stations. I repeat, all hands to battle stations.” Looking at the crowd, he continued, “We'll have to continue this another time. Get to your posts. Clarke, you're with me.”

 “Aye, sir,” he replied, sliding out of his aisle seat and racing to the elevator, slipping in the shifting gravity field as the ship began to tumble, threatening to dive out of control. More sirens sounded, this time stress alarms from the outer hull, the ship taking more pressure than it had ever been designed to handle, struggling under the burden of the unusually severe transition.

 Clarke held the door for Salazar, Harper and Francis, then released the control to send them hurtling to the bridge. He looked at the frowning officers, only to be thrown against Harper by a sudden shock that sent them all sprawling to the wall.

 “Sorry, ma'am,” he replied. “What's happening?”

 “I honestly don't know, John,” Salazar replied. “We can't take a lot more of this, though. That much I do know.”

 The doors opened, and the quartet raced out onto the bridge. Midshipman Petrova was holding the helm, and looked with terror in her eyes at the newly arrived officers. At a glance from Salazar, Clarke raced forward to take the controls, smoothly relieving her and logging into the helm. The irony that she was four years older than him, that she'd completed the Academy where he had not, only caught him as he was firing up the stabilization program.

 Maybe Mortimer was right. Maybe his main problem was that he spent more time thinking and not enough time doing, and that if he simply allowed himself to trust his instincts, everything would work out for the best. Though no instincts could prepare him for what he was facing now. None of his training had even remotely covered a situation like this, with the computers flashing waves of garbage data at him, meaningless text that could have no resemblance to reality.

 Even after a century of interstellar travel, humanity only barely understood the nature of hendecaspace, struggled to comprehend the alternate dimension through which they traveled. The discovery of the drive that accessed it had been a historical accident, the records lost in the fire of nuclear war, and even now, there were only a handful of top-level scientists that even approached a rudimentary understanding of the technology involved.

 Anything could be out there. Sometimes ships disappeared, even following the known rules of the road. It was rare, very rare, but the stories still passed from crewmen to crewmen, hushed whispers late at night of strange ships, odd sensor ghosts picked up at extreme range, even flashing glimpses of planets and stars lost out here in the darkness.

 “Report, Clarke,” Salazar barked.

 “Chaos, sir,” he replied. “None of this makes any sense, but our velocity has jumped off the scale. We're suffering serious damage, Captain, and we need to shut down as soon as we can.” Glancing at a control, he added, “If I'm reading this right, we've got the potential for emergence in two minutes, but it's going to be the roughest transition we've ever experienced.”

 “Ride it through, Sub-Lieutenant. You have the call.”

 “Aye, sir,” he replied. “I have the call.”

 Which meant that the lives of everyone on board now rested in his hands. It was pointless attempting to slow the ship. Petrova had tried the usual techniques, and none of them had proven effective. He had to use the momentum they were gathering to their advantage, making pinpoint adjustments to their track in a desperate bid to guide them to safety, to reach that microscopic spot of hendecaspace that would allow their return to reality. If he missed, if he failed, then they were dead. Even if they lived through the growing acceleration, there was nowhere else for them to emerge, and they'd be lost for ever in an endless sea of chaos.

 “Ninety seconds,” he said, throwing a control. “Helm to all personnel. Stand by for violent shock upon transition. Brace for severe turbulence.”

 “Damage control teams on standby at critical areas,” Fitzroy added. “Chief Santiago reports that no significant damage has been sustained yet, but she can't make any guarantees if we remain in hendecaspace for much longer.”

 “Seventy seconds,” Clarke said, his hands dancing across the controls, the limits of his universe confined to a handful of switches and the trajectory track, slowly sliding into their target position. They were eating up space at a rate never before known, had crossed a light-year in a matter of minutes. The thought did not escape him that they might have found a way home, if they were able to harness this technology. The Holy Grail they had been looking for, and at last, there was a chance that they had located it.

 “Thirty seconds,” he said, almost to himself. The ship itself seemed to be fighting him, dragging him to the side, and he was struggling to keep even a vestige of stability. They were going to emerge with more velocity than anyone had ever managed before, and he reached down to his seat restraints with a free hand, tugging them into position.

 “Hang on, everyone!” Salazar yelled, as Clarke worked the controls to rip a hole in reality, allowing Alamo to slide through with as much grace as possible. A wild flash blazed on the screen, and the battlecruiser swam through a sea of bitter Cerenkov radiation as it dived into normal space, the stars wildly dancing as the ship spun end over end, thrusters firing in semi-random patterns in a desperate attempt to restore a measure of stability.

 From behind him, he heard a thud, someone falling to the deck, but he couldn't worry about that, not now. A dozen stress warnings echoed throughout the ship, the hull battered from the transition, and he carefully played the thrusters against each other, gradually restoring a trim, bringing the ship under control. He fired the forward engines, killing the thrust, then fired a longer pulse, gravity waves rippling across the sensor display, throwing their trajectory into a wild tangent.

 “Stable, sir,” he replied, only then looking up. Salazar walked towards the viewscreen, glancing down at him before returning his view to the sight on display, something unlike anything he'd ever before encountered. The anomaly was a structure, the largest structure ever designed, so large that they could only see a small fraction of it on the viewscreen, even at minimum magnification. A barely-perceptible curve of metal, intricate patterns of light dancing across the perimeter, only a quarter of a million miles distant.

 “Spaceman,” Salazar said, turning back to the sensor console while Clarke continued to stare at the viewscreen, transfixed by the image on display. “Is that what I think it is?”

 “A sphere with a diameter of thirty million miles,” Ballard said in awe. “I'm picking up some heat readings, looks like radiators at the poles.” Shaking her head, she continued, “Radiators a hundred million miles long.” Tapping a control, she added, “Alloy doesn't read as anything we know, and I'm getting periodic gravity waves from the structure.”

 “A Dyson Sphere,” Harper said, a smile on her face. “Someone really built one.”

 “I've never heard of anything like that,” Petrova said.

 “You should read more science-fiction, Midshipman,” Salazar said. “During the early days of spaceflight, a scientist-philosopher named Freeman Dyson came up with the concept that at some point, a civilization would need to harness the total output of its sun, by completely enclosing it, surrounding it in a shell. Naturally, the design would be ferociously complicated, requiring a technology orders of magnitude greater than our own, but it would appear that someone has actually built one.” Looking at Francis, he added, “As I recall, the concept requires controlled gravity.” 

 “That's impossible,” Francis replied. “I mean...”

 “Someone's found a way to do it,” Harper said. “And we get to be the first to see it. Any outgassing, Spaceman?”

 “Not a trace, ma'am, but that could just mean it's below the threshold of detection.” She paused, then said, “Wait a minute, that thing could have an atmosphere?”

 “And almost certainly does,” Salazar replied. “Living space for trillions of beings. More land area than on every world and moon in a dozen systems.” He paused, then said, “What about the black hole?”

 “I've got it, sir,”  Ballard replied. “About a hundred million miles away.” Her eyes widened again, and she added, “I've found the debris, as well. Chains billions of miles long, and it looks as though they're using the black hole as a slingshot, to guide it into a parking orbit. There's an outer belt of debris a couple of billion miles away, and a trio of superjovians. This whole system has been engineered, sir. They're using gas giants ten times the size of Jupiter as shepherds!”

 Nodding, Salazar said, “And if we go out there, I'd bet we'll find refineries processing the debris into materials. Even the best system degrades over time, and they're supplying the largest technological civilization ever dreamed of in there. Must be. Bowman, any signals, any contact?”

 “Nothing, sir. I've been listening out since our arrival, but there's no sign of anything.”

 Clarke looked up at the screen, still in reverent awe, and said, “We've got to find a way to get inside, sir. To get boots on the ground.”

 “Wait a minute, Sub-Lieutenant,” Francis protested. “That sphere is the product of a technology infinitely more advanced than our own, and...”

 “All we've seen so far are automatic systems, sir,” Clarke said. “How old is that structure?”

 “Impossible to calculate,” Ballard replied. “If we had some samples from the surface, we might be able to make a guess.” She paused, then added, “Old, though. And some of incoming debris is from stars far enough away that they must have been in flight for hundreds of thousands of years.” She looked up at the viewscreen with reverent awe, and added, “There's no sign of any other planet in the system. Just the outer ring.”

 “Any hendecaspace points out there?” Salazar asked.

 “Dozens, sir,” she replied. “Lots of places to hide.”

 “Request permission to take a scouting team to the surface, sir,” Clarke said. “We can keep it tight, just four people, and be ready to pull out at a moment's notice.” Looking back at Salazar, he added, “Anyone for a light-year will have seen us leaving hendecaspace, Captain. Like it or not, the inhabitants of that sphere already know that we're here. Assuming there is anyone down there at all. I think we can risk a visit.”

 “Besides,” Harper replied, “If we aren't going to take a look at the surface, then there probably wasn't much point in us coming here in the first place.” She paused, then added, “Nevertheless, I would recommend against moving too quickly. Let's hang back and get some good sensor readings for a while, launch a few probes, see what we can find out before putting boots on the ground.” With a smile, she added, “Though for the record, I'm as eager to get inside that place as anyone else.”

 “I'm with you on that,” Salazar replied.

 “Ask permission, sir,” Clarke suggested. Turning from the helm, he added, “They know we're here, and they might be waiting for us to contact them.”

 Nodding, Francis said, “It's probably worth a try, Captain.”

 “Very well,” Salazar said. “Bowman, I want to transmit on as many frequencies as possible, and have Carpenter translate my message into Proto-Indo. Get someone to use a Neander dialect as well. We might as well try as many tricks as we can.”

 After a moment, Bowman replied, “You're on, sir.”

 “This is Lieutenant-Captain Pavel Salazar of the Triplanetary Battlecruiser Alamo. We come in peace, on a mission of exploration, and seek contact with the inhabitants of the sphere in this system.” Turning to Bowman, he added, “Put that on a loop, Spaceman.”

 “Done, sir,” he said. After a moment, he added, “We're getting a reply, sir!” Everyone on the bridge held their breath, as the technician worked his controls, a frown spreading across his face. “Triplanetary distress beacon, Captain.” Looking up at Salazar, Bowman said, “Monitor, sir.”
 “My God,” Harper replied. “We've found them.”

 “Ballard?”

 “Got her, sir,” she said. “Space-cold, and drifting a couple of million miles from our position. Too small to show up on initial scans. She's in pieces, sir. At least a dozen fragments, but some of them are large enough that compartments could have survived.”

 “Sir…,” Clarke said, but Salazar shook his head.

 “No, Sub-Lieutenant. This time I've got to go. Kris, you're with me. Just the two of us.” Before Francis could protest, he added, “This has to be, Max, so make peace with it. Continue scanning. And Clarke, prepare your landing team. Just in case we find something over there to give us a lead. I want to be ready.” Looking around the bridge, he added, “I guess we found what we came for.”

 “And her crew?”

 “There's only one place they can be,” Clarke said, “assuming they survived. Down there. Inside the sphere. We've got to go get them.”

 “We will,” Salazar said. “If they're still alive, we'll find them. Somehow.” 

Chapter 5

 Salazar worked the controls of the transfer shuttle, gently nudging the craft towards the drifting remains of Monitor. Months ago, when they had left Mars for the last time, he'd learned at the last minute that Alamo's secret mission had been to track down the missing starship, one of the most advanced in the Fleet. Now its shattered remnants drifted around the Dyson Sphere, likely destined to remain there forever, or until one of the scavengers they'd met before tore it apart for the raw materials it held.

 Harper turned to him, and said, “I suppose that ship still being here is some evidence that all isn't well inside. Surely someone would have taken a look at it before this, or cleared it from the system. Sooner or later, the orbit will degrade, and that could present a problem.”

 Shaking his head, Salazar replied, “More likely it'll end up in the black hole at some point. Besides, if the civilization down there has mastered some sort of gravity control, as impossible as that seems, setting something up to ensure that collisions are impossible would be child's play.” He looked up at the sphere again, wonder still in his eyes, and added, “It would take thousands of years to explore the interior, even from the air. Uncounted generations to walk around it. Room for civilizations to rise and fall, never knowing what lies on the far side of the map.”

 “And yet, still no response to our signals,” Harper replied. “Maybe they're all dead in there. Some sort of catastrophe. Maybe it was never even used at all, or the interior wasn't finished. Hell, we're dealing with a culture so far ahead of us...”

 “They built the wormholes,” Salazar said. “They must have done. No other explanation makes sense. And probably are the source of most of the ruins that we've found out here. Surveying expeditions, something like that.” He paused, then added, “Though that doesn't even make complete sense, not with the terraforming we've found.”

 “There's a mystery here, Pavel,” Harper replied, “and I can't help but think that we won't find a way back to our own galaxy until we've uncovered it.” Gesturing at Monitor, she added, “We should think about sending in a full salvage team, once we've completed our survey. Given the circumstances, I think any concerns about security restrictions are meaningless.” Glancing at Salazar, she added, “Though I know that isn't why you came.”

 “It isn't that I don't trust Clarke. Hell, I'm planning to give him command of the first surface team, and yes, there is going to be a surface team. It just feels like this is something I've got to do for myself, and I'm not even sure why.”

 “I can tell you,” Harper said with a smile. “You were always going to end up commanding a starship sooner or later. Monitor was scheduled to go back in for more work, another eighteen months in the shipyard, based on the results of the trials Maggie was putting her through.”

 “Wait a minute,” Salazar replied. “That was meant to be my ship?”

 With a shrug, she said, “Not many command-track officers of suitable rank with the right security clearance. Though it would have been two years. After Alamo returned from whatever her original mission was meant to be.” She paused, then added, “Odd. I'm not thinking of home any more. I wonder what happened back there. For all we know, a full-scale war between the Confederation and the United Nations started when we and Waldheim failed to return.”

 “The diplomats would have kept them talking for far longer than that,” Salazar said. “Though I know what you mean.” Looking back at the slender lines of Alamo, just visible in the distance, he continued, “I'm luckier than almost everyone. Most of my friends are out here with me, and Alamo's the nearest thing to a home I've ever known.” He paused, then added, “Wedding's rescheduled for this evening, by the way. Smaller, this time. Lower key. Just a dozen or so of us. I offered to wait until we could put on more of a show, but I think the two of them just want it over with.”

 “Closing on target,” Harper said. “First good scans of the debris. Interesting.”

 “What?”

 “They lost a battle, Pavel. Signs of attack by a laser cannon. A damned big one, at that.”

 Salazar's face fell, and he said, “Given what we've seen thrown about recently, that's not good news.” He glanced across at the sensor screen, and added, “No sign of activity at the moment, and we haven't picked up any sign of laser emplacements on the surface of the sphere.” 

 “You're assuming that we'd recognize them if we saw them.”

 “True.” He tapped another control, slowing the shuttle to match speed with the drifting debris, and said, “Only one way we're going to know for sure. Salazar to Alamo.”

 “Alamo here,” Francis replied. “All sensors clear. Carpenter's gathering all the data she can, and requests permission to commence probe bombardment of the black hole.”

 “Fine,” he said, “but find something else to call it. It sounds more like a planetary assault than a scientific expedition. We're about to head over to Polaris. Have us tracked at all times.”

 “Will do. And Ensign Rhodes is in Shuttle One with a squad in case you run into anything you aren't expecting. Fighter squadron is on standby as well.”

 Frowning, Salazar replied, “Under no circumstances is any aggressive action to be taken unless I give personal authorization. We've just found evidence that Monitor was destroyed by laser bombardment, and I have a feeling that Alamo wouldn't last for a second if someone decided that we posed a threat. Maintain passive stance, and if attacked, run for the outer belt.”

 “It'd take months to get to another hendecaspace point in normal space.”

 “Better delayed than dead, Max,” he replied, rising from his couch, reaching into the compartment over his head for his suit. “We're about to head over. If anything happens out there, no matter how insignificant, I want to know immediately. Understood?”

 “Aye, sir,” he said. “We've got your back.”

 Salazar locked his helmet into position, and grabbed the portable generator before running his eyes over Harper, doing a visual check of the integrity of her suit while she returned the favor. At a thumbs'-up, he turned to the airlock, tapping the controls to cycle him through the double hatches, sending him drifting out into free space, leaving the shuttle behind. Harper followed a moment later, grimacing.

 “I still hate these things,” she said.

 “After all this time, you haven't got used to a spacesuit yet?”

 “Don't worry, I'm fine, I'd just be happier with a nice solid hull between me and instant death.” She tapped her thruster controls, moving towards the largest piece of debris, a sealed hatch facing them. “Cold, space cold, and no sign of outgassing. I guess there's no danger that somebody has survived in this mess.”

 “They'd have found a way to signal us if they had,” Salazar replied, carefully following, tapping a lateral thruster to send him clear of a piece of tumbling debris. “It doesn't look as though there's going to be much to salvage. Certainly no signs of power.”

 “I just hope the holographic memory survived. At the very least we ought to be able to get a look at the command logs. See if there's any sort of a message.” She pushed over to the hatch, wiping the control surface clear of dust with a wipe of her glove, and tapped the controls. “Nothing. No real surprise. Plug in the jenny, and we'll see what we can do.”

 Nodding, Salazar reached down to the kit, fumbling with the cable as he rammed it home. Instantly, lights flashed on the panel, a tidal wave of red flickering on the display. Harper tapped the controls twice to clear the alerts, then entered an override code to open the door. Salazar braced for a release of air, but it never came, and he ducked inside, his eyes widening as a figure floated out towards him, a tumbling, desiccated corpse, wearing a Triplanetary uniform.

 “Spaceman First Class Stewart,” Harper said, running her datapad over the man's face. “Shuttle technician. I'll tag the body for retrieval.”

 “Why?” Salazar asked.

 “Burial.”

 “We'll say words for him, Kris, but there's nothing we can do for him that hasn't already been done. Let him rest with his ship and his comrades. That's what I'd want in his place, and I suspect you'd feel the same way.” Reaching out, he carefully tugged the corpse back, wrapping a strap around its wrist to secure him to the airlock. “We'll make sure he's tucked back in when we leave. Rest in peace, Spaceman.” He gently slid through the hatch into the corridor beyond, shining his helmet torch over the burned and blackened walls.

 “They really did a number on her, didn't they,” Harper said with a sigh. “She was something pretty special.” She paused, shining her touch on a control surface, and said, “That's strange.”

 “What?”

 “Those panels were new. Holographic projectors for the corridor, designed to overlay schematics and for specific damage reports. Some real high-tech, and they just left it there.”

 “Kris, we're floating a quarter of a million miles from a Dyson Sphere. This probably looks like a flint knife to them.” He looked again, then said, “No, wait a minute. I get it. They'd want to establish a technological baseline, work out what they had to deal with.”

 “Unless they never made it out here. This hasn't been touched.” Turning to him, she said, “I'm more and more convinced that we're looking at some sort of automated system, Pavel. I don't think there is any supervision, or we'd have been contacted, or destroyed, long since.” Gesturing down the corridor, she continued, “If I remember the layout, one of the Auxiliary Control bunkers is that way.”

 “One of them?”

 “There were two. At opposite ends of the ship. And theoretically, almost any room could be used as one with a few minutes to prepare. A completely distributed command network. I told you this ship was state of the art.” Swinging over a collection of tangled cables, floating limply from the wall, she ducked through a shattered hatch, into the empty space beyond. “Notice anything else?”

 “No other bodies.” Sliding to the wall, Salazar pulled open a panel, and said, “Escape pod is still in place. They must have pulled out in the shuttles. Or someone took them.” Flicking a control on his wrist, he said, “Salazar to Alamo. Any change out there?”

 “Nothing, Captain,” Francis replied. “Screens are still clear. At least for the moment, we're all alone out here. Aside from the obvious, of course.”

 “Here it is,” Harper said. “Internal network's still working. I can feed power through from the generator outside. Wait one.” She tapped a dusty control, and the ceiling lights flickered into life, stark white illuminating the room. One by one, the consoles started up, all of them reporting the disaster that had overwhelmed the ship, emergency alerts flashing on the monitors, red lights everywhere. Salazar pushed over to the helm, working the controls.

 “Someone tried evasive action,” he said. “Last course change entered in put the ship on random walk. Time index reads a hundred and one days, nine hours, and an odd number of minutes ago. They've been here for quite a while.” He frowned, nodded, then said, “If they didn't tarry in any of the other systems, that means they were here for a couple of weeks before whatever happened, happened.”

 “Long enough to give us an element of reassurance,” Harper replied. “Wait one, I think I'm getting somewhere. There's a lot of degraded data, but I think I can push through to the backups.”

 “Short-range communications are working. Alamo, this is Salazar. Stand by to accept a data dump from Monitor, fed in through the transfer shuttle. Dump it into an isolated database until the hacking team can take a good look at it, just in case any infection's crept into the systems. I don't want any risk of Alamo getting contaminated.”

 “Understood,” Francis said. “We're ready to go when you are.”

 “Beginning transfer,” Harper replied. “Should be enough in the generator to complete the upload, but it's all so scrambled that it could take weeks to work through it.”

 “Weeks?”

 “Combination of degraded data and tough encryption. I'm going to have a hard time putting this all back together again, but I'll get there. I see a lot of very late nights ahead for the security team.” Tapping in a control sequence, she said, “I can call up a few of the last command logs now. Active in the system. We're missing most of them, but some of them are accessible.”

 “Do it,” Salazar said. “Feed it into our helmet pickups. I think we're safe enough here for the present. There's still no sign of activity anywhere else on the ship, and we've made our presence clear enough that any theoretical intruders would already have come looking.”

 “Here we go,” she said, and the face of Captain Margaret Orlova appeared on his heads-up display, sitting behind a desk in an unfamiliar office.

 “It has been a week since we were thrown through the wormhole,” Orlova began, “and our science team has conclusively determined that there is no way back from our current location. Examination of the ruins on the surface has given us a few leads, but Lieutenant Riley has noticed an anomaly six jumps from here, a black hole that appears to be orbiting some sort of large-mass body. Our best guess is that this represents some sort of macro-engineering project, and given that the same level of technology would be required to build a wormhole network, I am proceeding directly to that location at full speed. If we fail to find anything useful, we can always double back. End Monitor Log Nine-Seven-Six.”

 “I'll be damned,” Salazar said. “They jumped right to it.”

 “Monitor had a brand new sensor package,” Harper replied. “Better than ours, especially at long ranges. She was designed for operations out on the Frontier.”

 “Any more?”

 “Two more. Number Two coming up now.”

 This time Orlova looked harried, her hair disheveled, and the previously pristine office was a wreck. A half-empty cup of coffee sat in front of her, next to a scattered collection of datapads. Instead of opening at the beginning of the log, this time they were cutting in well into it.

 “...attack knocked out our main reactor and the secondary laser array. We've got clear for the moment, but I'm not convinced that we can stay out of range for any length of time. Still no contact with our team inside the Sphere, but I don't know how much longer that will matter. Repairs to the hendecaspace drive are proceeding, and Lieutenant Lieu is confident that we can leave the system in a matter of days. Assuming nothing else goes wrong. End Monitor Log Nine-Nine-Four.”

 “Then they were attacked,” Salazar said. “Though if it had been one of the gigawatt lasers we saw, I find it hard to believe that there would be any wreckage left for us to find.”

 “Perhaps they have other defensive systems, or maybe they were deliberately pulling their punches. There's a chance they wanted prisoners.”

 Frowning, Salazar said, “It sounds like they already had them. Play the last one.”

 “It is the last one, by time index,” Harper said. “I'm fairly certain about that.”

 This time Orlova was half-wearing a spacesuit, and klaxons were sounding in the background, the unmistakable whine of a decompression alarm. There was no doubt that Monitor had been on the brink of disaster when the log was recorded. One look at Orlova's face said that.

 “Final entry. The last attack crippled us, and they're coming around for another pass. We are forced to abandon Monitor and seek sanctuary on the surface. Still no contact with the first landing parties, but at this point, we don't have a choice. If anyone gets this message and understands it, please contact Triplanetary Fleet Command if you can. Our landing coordinates are enclosed, if whoever finds us has the ability to attempt a rescue. End Monitor Log, Nine-Nine-Nine.”

 “Didn't even make the thousand,” Salazar said. “Do you have the figures, Kris?”

 Nodding, she said, “Down to within a mile, I think. At least that's a reasonable area to search.” Looking across at him, she said, “We know that a team from Monitor made it down there.”

 “And we also know that they didn't make it back.”

 “Pavel, we've gone this far. You know that we've got to take a look for ourselves. Otherwise all of this was for nothing.” She pulled out her datapad, and added, “That landing spot is less than half a million miles away. A few hours' flight on a shuttle if we leave now. I can't see any reason to wait any longer, especially not if there might be hostile ships in-system.”

 “We haven't detected anything,” he replied, but then nodded. “One shuttle, and we keep the landing team tight. I guess it's time to let Clarke go for a walk. I just hope we're doing the right thing.” Tapping a control again, he said, “Salazar to Alamo. Prepare Shuttle Two for immediate launch, and put Sub-Lieutenant Clarke on the line. We're going in.”

Chapter 6

 Clarke looked out of the viewport at the sphere, the shuttle slowly curving down towards the surface, the pilot cautiously covering the remaining distance. At every moment over the last five hours, he'd been waiting for something to leap out at them, or for Alamo to issue a last-minute recall. Now, they were only a few moments from landing, potentially from reaching the inside of the sphere itself.

 Everyone on the shuttle was a volunteer, though it was a team he'd have happily picked for himself if necessary. Mortimer as second officer, Fox as bodyguard, Garland as paramedic. With Koslowski flying them in, though the mission profile was quite clear that she should remain in the cockpit at all times.

 “Suits on, everyone,” Koslowski said, her voice echoing from the speakers. “We'll be landing in two minutes. I'm still looking for the airlock. Can't see anything yet.”

 “You aren't thinking big enough,” Mortimer said, eyes wide. “I'm looking at it right now.”

 “Where?”

 “That target wasn't somewhere within a mile. That's the size of the airlock.”

 Clarke looked out of his viewport, and after a moment to adjust his sense of scale, he saw it. A long crack running down the structure, with the faint outline of a hexagonal hatch. The builders of this sphere had thought on a massive scale, and that this was probably only one of a large number of similar structures filled him with a sense of astonishment.

 “Hold on!” Fox said, and Clarke grabbed for a handhold just as weight abruptly returned, the shuttle's engine faltering for a moment before roaring to full power, landing jets struggling to keep them stable. “Should have thought of that sooner. We're in an artificial gravity field.”

 “I still say that just isn't possible,” Garland replied.

 “Better tell that to the people who built the sphere,” Clarke said. “Midshipman, how are we doing? Can you adjust to the increased gravity?”

 “That's affirmative,” she replied. “Not a problem. Lieutenant Lombardo was expecting this, and we loaded up with plenty of additional fuel. There's a flat area just ahead, clear of the airlock. I'm taking her down there.” She paused, and added, “And I'm not the first one to spot it. I can make out a beacon, and it looks suspiciously like one of ours. Triplanetary design.”

 “I see it,” Garland said, gesturing out of the window. “And for the record, people, this is Point Nine G. Not quite Earth, but close enough that anyone living here wouldn't need any medical help. Adaptation would be easy.”

 “Let's hope that isn't information we need for a long time,” Mortimer said, tugging on her helmet. “Anyone got any ideas about how we're going to crack that airlock open. Monitor didn't exactly leave us an instruction manual.”

 “They figured it out,” Clarke replied. “If they did, we can. And they'll have probably left a few clues around for us to find if we're careful. On that topic, nobody touches anything until we've had a proper analysis. And don't make any threatening moves, not at all. We don't have any idea who might be watching us.”

 “You too?” Mortimer asked. “I've felt like there's someone peering over our shoulder since we came onto final approach.”

 “Final burn!” Koslowski said. “That's it. Touchdown. We're on the surface. I don't believe it. We actually made it.”

 “Don't sound so shocked,” Clarke replied, moving over to the airlock. “Sensors on, people, and full transmit back to Alamo.” He tapped a control, then said, “Shuttle Two to Alamo Actual. We're about to step out onto the surface. Awaiting final authorization.”

 “Shuttle Two, you are Go for EVA,” Salazar replied. “I think everyone on board is watching you. Not to add to the pressure, or anything like that. Just thought you'd like to know.”

 “Thank you, sir,” Clarke said with a smile. “Cracking inner hatch now.” He stepped inside, Fox next to him, and waited for the air to be withdrawn from the small room. He peered out of the small window in the outer door, looking at the endless surface reaching out for what appeared to be an eternity in every direction.

 Finally, the hatch slid open, the faintest puff of air leaking out into space, and he took his first step out onto the surface. Whatever he had thought it would feel like, he'd been wrong. He couldn't quite reach the ground, something repelling him away, and the effect was as though he was sliding on an endless plain of ice. Careful not to press against the shuttle, he took an uncertain step forward, and almost went flying before Fox grabbed him by the belt, her thruster pack firing to lock her in place.

 “Strange stuff, sir,” she said. “Never seen anything like it.” 

 “Yeah,” he replied, turning to her with a smile. “Thanks.”

 “I was expecting it. You've got a habit of leaping before you look.”

 “Saves time,” he said with a grin, before turning back to the hatch. “Let's make our way over to the beacon first. If there's any message left for us, that's where we'll find it.” He reached down with a toolkit, ready to get a sample of the hull, but the blade bounced away just as his boot had. “We're not going to be able to get anything for analysis, Alamo. At least, not from the outside.”

 “I'll break it to the geology team,” Salazar replied. “To be honest, I'm not unhappy about that. I'd be upset if someone started slicing chunks out of my ship without warning.”

 “Agreed,” Clarke said. He fired a single, quick burst from his thrusters, gliding smoothly over the surface, the strange flashing pattern beneath him, brief glimmers of green and purple. “Any idea what these lights are?”

 “Computer can't even get started on that,” Salazar said. “I think the only answers we're going to get today are the ones you bring back for us, Sub-Lieutenant. We're still trying to crunch the data from Monitor, but its going to be days before we have anything from that. Right now we're dependent on you. I hope I don't need to make it clear that you are to take no unnecessary risks.”

 “One look at the horizon did that, sir,” Clarke said. Behind him, Mortimer and Garland stepped out, this time going straight to their suit thrusters without suffering the embarrassment he had suffered. The single repeating red light of the beacon drew them closer, and with a puff of gas from his forward thrusters, he brought himself to a stop by its side, leaning down to look at the device. It had been modified, a suit pack bolted to the underside to keep it in position, the fuel all but exhausted.

 “TSS Monitor,” he read, the lettering already fading. He carefully reached down to the control panel, and added, “I was really hoping for a big button to push. This is definitely the site, though, and whoever placed it went to pretty extraordinary lengths to make sure that it remained in position.”

 “Over there,” Garland said, pointing. “Looks like a control panel. A series of switches.”

 Shaking her head, Fox replied, “It can't be that simple.”

 “Who said that opening a mile-long airlock had to be complicated?” Clarke said, pushing over to Garland's discovery, a raised platform that pushed above the field on the surface, a series of buttons in sequence, each of them neatly labeled in vaguely recognizable hieroglyphs. “Alamo, are you getting the image from my helmet camera?”

 “We are, but I'm not sure that I quite believe it,” Salazar replied. “That's Proto-Indo, right enough, dating back about thirty thousand years.”

 “You're saying that our ancestors built this?” Mortimer said in disbelief.

 “No, but they might have been here, and they might have managed to work out a way to get inside. Or perhaps they met the original builders.” Clarke looked down at the controls, and asked, “Can we get a translation?”

 “Already on it,” Salazar said. “Wait one.”

 Clarke looked up, taking in the phenomenal view around him, the endless sea of gray punctuated by the constantly alternating lights.

 “I wonder what they are for?” he asked, gesturing at the nearest pattern.

 “Who says they have to be for anything in particular?” Mortimer replied. “They're beautiful. Whoever built this place must have had a real sense of aesthetics.”

 “John,” Salazar said, slightly stunned. “You know you wanted a big button?”

 “I was only joking, sir.”

 “I'm not. The middle button on the console, if our translation is correct, will open the doors. The outer doors, anyway. None of the controls seem to have anything to do with the inner hatch, assuming there is one. I'm sending through an updated translation database to your suit computer, so that you can operate independently. Get this clear, Sub-Lieutenant. The decision to proceed is entirely at your discretion, and if you want to pull the plug and head for home at any time, you will have my full and complete support.”

 Shaking his head, Clarke replied, “We could wait for weeks gathering every last scrap of sensor data, sir, and probably still end up right where we started from. My intention is to proceed as planned and see what happens next. Let's at least get a good look at the insides of the airlock. I'm trying to picture what that sort of machinery must be like, and I'm failing.” Without another word, he tapped the button, and a beam of light seemed to erupt from the floor as the hatch instantly began to slide open.

 Something in the gravity field sent them tumbling, sliding them in all directions, safely clear of the opening hatch. Reaching to his sleeve, he fired a quick blast from his thrusters to arrest his movement, sending him on a slow glide back to the fringes of the hatch. He struggled to return to his feet, finally giving up and sliding on his front across the surface of the sphere, dignity yielding reluctantly to practicality.

 “Report, everyone,” he said.

 “Embarrassed but alive,” Mortimer replied.

 “That goes for me,” Fox said. “In spades, sir.”

 “I'm at the edge, Sub-Lieutenant,” Garland said. “You won't believe it. I'm not sure I believe it. It's fully opened, sir, and it goes down forever.”

 Sliding over to the side of the paramedic, carefully playing his thrusters to ensure that he didn't abruptly fall into the gap, Clarke looked down the hatch, his helmet reader suggesting a depth of a hundred miles. As though falling into a planet's atmosphere. A biggest surprise awaited him as he looked at his pressure indicators, and he turned to Garland in shock.

 “Spaceman, are you reading this?”

 “I know, sir. I didn't think you'd believe me if I told you.”

 “Report, Clarke,” Salazar pressed.

 “This isn't a conventional airlock, sir. I think it's more of a safety mechanism. We should have realized that a normal system wouldn't be necessary. There's atmosphere down there, sir, about fifty miles down, getting denser as it falls. The gravity field must be keeping it attracted to the surface. No surprise that there isn't any outgassing, Captain. This is as near as you are ever going to get to a perfect system.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a portable sensor, and dropped it down the shaft, the device sending measurements as it fell, finally burning up in the atmosphere below a moment later.

 “We're not going to get down there on thrusters, are we,” Mortimer said, moving to the far side. “Even if we didn't have the atmosphere to worry about, there's no chance in hell that we'd survive re-entry.”

 Nodding, Clarke said, “I recommend we use the shuttle, sir. She's capable of the descent, even under conditions such as that. What do you say, Midshipman?”

 Koslowski instantly replied, “Raring to go, sir. We've got enough fuel to go down and up if we're careful. Based on the sensor data, we won't use too much on the descent. The ascent might be another story, but you could always drop down additional tanks if we needed it.”

 Looking around the smooth shaft, Clarke continued, “No sign of the mechanism. It must all be built into the system. Though it doesn't have to be robust.” He paused, then said, “Don't think airlock, sir. Think customs and passport control.”

 “Might be truth to that,” Harper said, breaking in. “We're getting data from the interior. Atmosphere is breathable, slightly higher levels of oxygen than on Earth, but a slightly lower pressure as well. It seems to just about even out. You won't need the suits on the surface.”

 “Do we have permission to proceed, sir?” Clarke asked.

 “With caution, Sub-Lieutenant, and I expect you to abort if there is any sign of trouble. Leave some portable sensors on the surface, just in case.” He paused, then said, “Shuttle Three is already on the way to your location with additional fuel. They'll be able to rescue you if you run into anything unexpected. Good luck.”

 “Yes, sir,” Clarke said, looking at Garland with a smile. The paramedic's face was loaded with dread, but he reluctantly nodded as Clarke pushed back to the shuttle, smoothly gliding across the surface of the sphere. This was what he had signed up for, the promise of seeing unknown worlds, strange new races out among the stars. The recruiter had offered him a chance of adventure, and all the nightmares seemed to recede as he allowed himself to settle back and enjoy the ride.

 The airlock door was already open, and the four of them tumbled inside, Clarke pulling off his suit as soon as he cabin pressurized, making his way up to the cockpit. Koslowski offered him the controls with a wave of her hand, but he shook his head, happy to settle into the co-pilot's seat, bringing up the sensor display.  

 “Nice and steady, Connie,” he said. “No sudden moves, and don't wait for the order if you think something is wrong. That said, let's do this.”

 “Aye, sir,” she replied, a wide smile on her face. She felt it too, the same sense of exhilaration, of exultation. “Thrusters firing, one-tenth power.” The shuttle gently slid across the surface, gliding towards its target, and Clarke strapped himself in, waiting for the lurch. After a moment, it reached the gap between the airlock doors, and the fall began, wing surfaces opening to arrest the descent.

 “Parachute ready,” he said, his hands on the controls. “Looks like we might get a free landing out of this. Fuel status?”

 “All green,” she replied. “Eighty percent.”

 “Good,” he said, as they slid down the shaft, only a brief correction required to bring them down the center axis. The tunnel was opening out, now a dozen miles across and growing fast. There was nothing at the bottom other than more sky, blue and white with clouds that might be hundreds of miles across waiting for them at the end of the journey.

 “That's odd,” Koslowski said. “Gravity's dropping.”

 “No surprise,” Clarke replied. “I was expecting it. My guess is that it will drop to zero and then reverse. Something's got to be keeping that atmosphere pinned down, and our orientation is about to change.” Looking at the baffled crew, he added, “Don't get the idea I understand any of this. I'm just trying to apply some logic to the situation.”

 “Looks like you're right,” Mortimer said. “Zero for a second, and now we're falling faster. Being pulled towards the other side. I've never seen anything like it.”

 “Altering orientation,” Koslowski added. “Damn, if we can work out how this artificial gravity field works, it'll change everything. Think of the ships we could build!”

 “Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves,” Clarke said. “Watch your heading.”

 The tips of the wings began to glow as the heat build-up began. Aside from the walls of the shaft on either side, it might have been a normal re-entry. Their speed rose, then dropped as they slammed into ever-thickening air, warning alerts sounding as the walls continued to recede. To the left, Clarke briefly glimpsed what appeared to be a passage, carved into the hull, but it was gone before he could be sure.

 “Ten miles to go,” Koslowski said. “All looks good so far.”

 “Alamo, this is Shuttle Two, can you read me?” Clarke asked. He paused, then repeated, “Alamo, this is Shuttle Two, can you read me?”

 “Shuttle Two, this is Alamo Actual, reading you loud and clear. We're all cheering you on up here, and getting some great readings from the sensors.”

 “Thank you, Alamo. We'll try and give you a good show.”

 With a loud report, the shuttle went subsonic, and Koslowski brought the engines up to minimum power, ready for their emergence into the outer sphere. Only a few miles to go, and Clarke tensed up, not sure what he was going to see, only that it would be something that would defy any expectations he might have had. That much, at least, was certain.

 “Two miles. Deploy parachute,” Koslowski said, her composure returning.

 “Doing it,” Clarke replied, and the carefully packaged compartment at the top of the shuttle opened, releasing a massive parachute, their speed instantly dropping as it unfurled, gently guiding them down. “We'll probably need a burn to take us to the surface on the far side. Be ready. This is going to be a tricky landing.”

 “Now he tells me,” Koslowski muttered.

 “Getting some wild readings back here,” Mortimer said. “Temperature, pressure, all suitable to life. You could crack open the window and take a breath quite comfortably.”

 The shuttle fell through the widening gap, residual velocity sending it hundreds of feet into the air. The brief glimpses of the view that Clarke saw were astonishing, but he didn't have time to enjoy them as the shuttle lurched around, Koslowski firing the engine to rotate the ship and kick it towards the nearest landmass, miles distant.

 “Come on, old girl,” she muttered. “Come on.”

 With one final shunt, the shuttle settled into position at the edge of a hundred mile cliff, a shaft that seemed to go to nowhere, and Koslowski turned off the engines with a relieved smile, beginning the post-flight checks.

 “Fuel is at fifty-two percent, though that gravity field should make leaving a lot easier than arriving. All we'll have to do is jump. Maybe we came in through an exit.” Throwing controls, she added, “The shuttle is clear, sir. All green.”

 “Look at it,” Mortimer said, peering out of the cockpit viewscreen. “My God, look at it.” 

 Outside, the land seemed to endlessly run, the shuttle perched on a grassy plain that could easily be thousands of miles across, lush forests on the perimeter in every direction. It felt as though they were at the bottom of a huge bowl, and all around they could see glimpses of the sphere, vast deserts, sheets of ice, mountain ranges, immense, hundred-thousand-mile oceans, black wastelands.

 Up in the sky, the sun was surrounded by crescents of black, slowly creeping towards them as they watched. In the shaded areas, there were pinpoints of light, cities that must be hundreds of miles across to be seen at this range.

 “Well,” Clarke said. “We're here. Let's take a look.”

Chapter 7

 Salazar looked at the viewscreen, eyes roaming around the image transmitted from the shuttle, transfixed at the wonders unfolding. Standing next to him, Carpenter beamed, looking periodically down at her datapad, scanning the reports coming in from her science team. She placed her hand on his shoulder, and sighed.

 “So far we've found fifteen thousand potential points of interest. We could spend a hundred lives and still not reach them all. More than three thousand cities, and those are just the ones we can see. And look at this.” She reached over to his armrest and touched a button, bringing up an ice-covered sea with strange blue lights dancing across it. “Computer can't work it out, but there's a good chance that it's some sort of form of communication. Non-human aliens.” She frowned, then added, “Of course, that sea is three million miles away. Might be a while before we get around to it.”

 “The place is littered with signs of civilization,” Foster added. “I'd say that Koslowski's guess that we found an exit, not an entrance, is probably right. Sending supplies down won't be easy, but I think we could come up with a trajectory that would allow unpowered soft landings. Getting back will be child's play. Just drop into the hole and burn for null-grav.”

 “Our first priority must be to get Shuttle Three to set up some sort of staging area on the surface. Then we can move the ship closer, and...”

 “Wait a minute,” Salazar said, interrupting Carpenter. “Someone down there is playing with induced gravity fields, Lieutenant, and I'm not risking Alamo by getting too close to them. You'll have to content yourselves with shuttles for the moment. More than that, until we get a favorable report from the first team, I'm not sending anyone else inside. Lombardo can wait out on the surface until we get the all-clear. Bowman, what about communications?”

 The technician looked up, dazed, then turned a dial, inundating the bridge in the babel of a million conversations at once, gabbled in every language imaginable and a thousand more, a wave of static roaring through the heads of every listener.

 “Isolating anything in that mess is going to be a nightmare, sir. Lots of encrypted chatter, signals that I suppose are languages, beacons...” He shook his head, and continued, “I'm having a difficult enough time picking up our own people in all of that, Captain. I've got the computers trying to break it down, but it isn't going to be a quick job. Though I have picked up snatches of Russian, English some Proto-Indo-derived languages, and what I think is a Neander dialect.”

 “Maybe we could install some detectors inside. Over a large enough area, it would make triangulation possible,” Scott suggested.

 “We're talking thousands of miles, though,” Francis said.

 “In a shuttle, that's a matter of a few hours,” Harper replied.

 “Haven't you noticed that, Lieutenant? No sign of any aircraft. No shuttles, nothing.” He gestured at the image, and said, “We're seeing only a small portion of it, and what appears to be an uncivilized region at that, but it still seems rather strange.”

 “Our shuttle made it down to the deck well-enough.”

 “Sir,” Clarke said, breaking into the conversation from the surface. “We've picked up something interesting. A cluster of ruins, and a shuttle. Triplanetary design, same make as ours. Could be someone from Monitor down on the deck.”

 “If there was anyone there, they'd have signaled, surely,” Francis said.

 “Unless they were forced to leave it behind. Sir, I'd like permission to go and take a look. It's about six miles away, but we can be there and back in four hours, and it would be a good place to start. I'd rather not move the shuttle, but if the other one is intact, we can bring it back. Salvage the data.” He paused, then added, “We haven't seen any sign of intelligent life in the local vicinity, but a herd of what looked a lot like bison are traveling about ten miles away.”

 “Bison?” Francis asked.

 “That's what the computer said, sir. I'm just taking its word for it. The grass outside is Terran as well. I suppose we might have stumbled on an area friendly to humans.”

 Turning to Salazar, Francis replied, “Sir, I like this less and less by the moment. We don't know what brought Monitor here, and if there are a million different environments down there, stumbling onto one friendly to humanity sounds like the longest of long shots. More than that. If this is an entry point, someone else must have seen it as well. I'd expect it to become the hub of some sort of interstellar civilization.”

 Nodding, Foster added, “I'm afraid I must agree. We should proceed with caution, sir.” She paused, then said, “Though getting to the shuttle would be a good place to start our investigation, and sooner or later we're going to have to spend extended periods on the surface if we're going to get anywhere with our investigation.”

 “Very well,” Salazar said. “Sub-Lieutenant, proceed with caution. I want Koslowski to remain on the shuttle at all times, and be prepared to launch at a moment's notice. Take no risks, John. I mean it. And don't attempt to salvage the other shuttle unless you are absolutely certain that it is flight-worthy. I'm perfectly happy to get the data stored inside.”

 “Aye, sir,” Clarke replied. “We'll head out now.”

 “And no heavy weapons, Sub-Lieutenant,” Salazar pressed. “Sidearms only, and for God's sake, don't fire first. We could have a couple of thousand First Contact situations coming up, and how we act today will influence all of our dealings with the inhabitants of the sphere. We don't want to earn ourselves a bad reputation.”

 “Aye, sir. Koslowski has a plasma carbine armed and ready, just in case, but it will be remaining in the shuttle, and so will we. Pre-flight has been completed, and she's ready to launch on your order.” He paused, and said, “I've set up a sensor relay, and would like permission to deploy a few remote sensor packages on our way.”

 “Feel free, Sub-Lieutenant,” Salazar replied, with an affirming nod from Carpenter. “Good luck, and don't talk to any strange men.”

 “Yes, sir,” Clarke replied. “Shuttle Two out.”

 Carpenter walked over to the sensor console, and said, “With all of this, we haven't taken a proper look at the black hole yet, but it's got to be artificial. Or at the very least, moved into its current orbit. The system is too dynamically perfect.” Gesturing at the display, she added, “And another thing. The interior primary is a red dwarf, a very stable one.”

 “So?” Scott asked.

 “If the primary purposes of this sphere is to collect and harness the maximum energy of a star, I'd have assumed that the builders would have picked one to provide the most energy possible. With a little work – and distance – you could live on one of these spheres if you slung it around a super-giant, and the amount of raw power that could be collected would be extraordinary.”

 “Lieutenant,” Salazar said with a wry smile, “are you complaining that the designers of this structure were thinking on too small a scale?”

 “No, sir,” she said. “Only that there must have been more considerations than we're realizing at the moment.” Tapping the console, she added, “Something else. We haven't yet seen anything inside with remotely the level of technology that would be implied by the construction of the sphere. That suggests that the builders may no longer be in control.”

 “Or they're simply hidden,” Francis replied. “Or this is all some sort of trick on a huge scale.” With a frown, he added, “For that matter, we've seen less than a hundredth of the surface, and that at a low-enough resolution that we've got no real detail. Face it, Lieutenant, even if we could take Alamo inside...”

 “Which we are not going to do,” Salazar pressed, looking at Carpenter's expression.

 “Then it would take centuries to complete even the most cursory survey of the interior. We're going to have to rely on a combination of luck and detective work.”

 “Will we?” Scott asked. “Someone will have seen us by now. Our hosts might already be on the way, ready to roll out the red carpet.” Turning to Salazar, she added, “Or drop an annihilation bomb. You see that black landmass, maybe a million miles away?” His eyes widened as he realized what she was saying, but she continued, “That's the aftermath of a major war. Picking up some radioactivity, and judging by the rate of decay, it was extraordinarily high. Maybe anti-matter bombs were used.”

 “And they didn't crack the structure?” Foster asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

 “We still haven't managed to analyze the alloy, and we're talking about a culture with gravity control, as unimaginable as that seems. You might as well call them magicians. Compared to us, that's exactly what they are.”

 “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger,” Foster muttered. At Salazar's look, she said, “Tolkien. Lord of the Rings. Seemed appropriate.”

 “I can't help but agree,” Francis said. “We're playing with a raging inferno.”

 “Come on,” Carpenter replied. “This is the discovery of the millennium. It more than justifies everything we've gone through so far.” She tapped the control, and added, “We just sent a probe down a black hole. A black hole. The data we're collecting will revolutionize our understanding of the nature of the universe. Our transit here told us things about hendecaspace we'd never dreamed of before. The possibilities...”

 “Unless we can report our findings back, Lieutenant, there isn't really much point to gathering them, is there?” Francis said. “All of this is for nothing unless we can find a way home.” Gesturing at the sphere, he continued, “That has to be our primary objective.”

 Salazar nodded, and said, “Susan, I want you to focus all your efforts on finding the source of the wormhole builders. Hell, we're not even certain they came from this system. For all we know, this is just a colossal coincidence, or the wormholes were built by someone else to access the place. That's the problem. We don't know enough.” Turning to Ballard, he added, “What's the status of our sensor drones?”

 “It'll be weeks before we get a look at the far side of the sphere, sir, though I can't imagine it could be any different from this side. Naturally, resolution is going to be a problem, but we can certainly get a good overview.” She paused, and added, “I'm running into problems with computer time, sir. I'm going to need a bigger share of the processing power.”

 “Wait a minute,” Bowman replied. “I'm struggling to break down this mess of communications as it is. I was going to put in a request...”

 Before Carpenter could add to the argument, Salazar said, “Priorities, people. We can't magic more processing power out of the air, and we're going to have to make do with what we have. Unless someone has a definitive case that giving them a bigger share of the network will help get us home, we leave things as they are. And before anyone asks, rescinding alert status is not under debate at this time. I will not put the ship and her crew at any additional risk.”

 “Koslowski to Alamo,” the young officer said. “Sub-Lieutenant Clarke and his team have left the shuttle and are preceding to their target. I've got a positive track. I'm also picking up ruins in three other directions, at fifty, ninety and a hundred and thirty-five miles, and all of them look substantially different. The furthest one matches the images I've seen of Neander settlements on Driftwind. The others I don't recognize, and neither does the computer.”

 “Three more targets for exploration, then,” Carpenter said, looking around the bridge. “We can't leave them without an investigation. Proof that our people were out here thousands of years ago would be almost beyond price.”

 “Fifty miles might just be within walking distance,” Francis mused. “Though even then, it would mean more than a day away from the shuttle. More than a hundred miles will require some sort of transport. Using the shuttles too much would risk detection.”

 Nodding, Salazar replied, “Have Chief Santiago start working on some modified buggies. We won't need a life-support system down there, so that can be discarded. I want an emphasis on maximum range and ability to cover rugged terrain.”

 “How many should we build?” Francis asked.

 “As many as we realistically can, Lieutenant. I think it likely that we're going to be here for some time.” Rising to his feet, he said, “You have the deck. I'll be in my office. Let me know if anything changes.”

 “Yes, sir,” Francis replied, smoothly taking the command chair as Salazar made for the exit. Harper followed as he walked into his office, sitting behind his desk and running a hand across his forehead. He looked up at her, and she sat opposite, waiting for the door to close.

 “It's too much, Kris,” he replied. “How can we hope to understand something like this. I feel humbled. Like a caveman shown around a starship.” Looking out at the sphere, he continued, “We could easily spend the rest of our lives and still not be any further forward.”

 She paused, nodded, then said, “I know this will have occurred to you...”

 “I'm a very, very long way from thinking about making this place our permanent home.”

 “We're explorers, Pavel, and in there is a whole universe to wander through. You said that this was the end of the line. Maybe you were more right about that than you knew.” She frowned, then said, “You're thinking about what Francis said, aren't you.”

 “This all does seem pretty convenient, doesn't it.” He forced a thin smile, then added, “That doesn't mean that I'm not desperate to take a look at it for myself. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd be on the next shuttle down there.” Shaking his head, he added, “Exploring a planetary surface is time consuming enough. We'd never finish surveying that. How many billions of square miles, how many civilizations? And humans, as well, somewhere inside.”

 “Contacting them should be a priority. They'll have a greater understanding of this place than we do. They may even have met the original builders, assuming they are still alive. Though I get the sense that this is old, Pavel. Older than humanity, perhaps. And it was built to last.” She glanced out of the viewport, then said, “Monitor.”

 “Something destroyed that ship, and Margaret Orlova is not the sort of commander to put her crew at unnecessary hazard, or to start a fight she couldn't handle. We're missing something, Kris, and until we know what it is, I...”

 “Sir?” Francis said, calling from the bridge. “We've got a problem. Long-range sensors are picking up increased tachyonic disturbance. Something's coming into the system. And the hatch on the surface...”

 “What about it?”

 “It just closed, sir. Locked tight.”

 “Damn,” Salazar said. “I'm on my way.”

 “I guess Francis was right about those wizards,” Harper said.

 “Maybe. I think we're about to find out.”

Chapter 8

 The four of them walked quickly across the terrain, the shuttle disappearing behind them into the background. Soft sunlight shone down upon them, drifting clouds floating in the sky to cast momentary shadows. On the air, Clarke could hear what had to be birdsong, a distant chorus coming from the forest to the north, maybe a hundred miles distant.

 Up ahead, he could make out the ruins, jagged rocks jutting up from the ground, strange symbols large enough to read from even a mile away, with the shuttle they were seeking nestled at their heart. He glanced at Mortimer, then placed his hand on the butt of his weapon, a frown growing on his face.

 “And there I thought you might be enjoying the walk,” she said.

 “There's something wrong.”

 “Paranoia is a healthy enough personality trait, John, especially under this circumstances.” She swept her arm around, trying with little success to envelop the horizon, and said, “Look at where we are. Cruz would have dreamed of conquest, of an empire that could have encompassed millions, billions of beings. I just want to see some of them. There could be no end to it.”

 “I don't know,” Fox said. “I agree with you, sir. This all seems a little convenient, as though we're being handed the clues we're looking for on a nice shiny platter. Permission to scout ahead, check for an ambush.”

 “No,” Clarke replied. “We're better off sticking together, at least for the moment. Though we'll be heading back to our shuttle on the double. Garland, get a sensor package ready. We'll have to do as much as we can remotely.” He looked up at the dark shapes in the sky, and replied, “I think it'll be dark soon.”

 “Imagine the engineering required for that,” Mortimer said, looking up, eyes wide. “Damn it, this is what I signed up for.”

 “Me too,” Clarke said, “but I'd like to live long enough to enjoy it.” He redoubled his pace towards the waiting shuttle, now easily able to make out 'Monitor' scrawled on its side, the paintwork rubbed and faded. One look from outside convinced him that any attempt to take off would be futile, the landing legs dug in deep, buried in the dirt, and the wings beaten and battered.

 “No signal from the on-board systems,” Fox said, holding up a datapad. “Could have been left on standby, isolated from outside infiltration, which would suggest that there is a serious threat in the area.” She frowned, then added, “Could just as easily be a catastrophic systems malfunction. That ship doesn't look to be in very good condition.”

 Clarke's communicator chirped, and he placed it to his ear, saying, “Go ahead.”

 “Shuttle here, sir. I'm out of communication with Alamo. The data feed has died, and they're overdue on their last message. Request permission to leave the shuttle. I want to drop a sensor package down the shaft, see if something is interrupting our signal.”

 Looking at Mortimer, he replied, “Not yet, Midshipman. Give it fifteen minutes first, and run a full diagnostic check on the shuttle's systems. This could still be a malfunction at one end, so let's do our best to rule that out first. Contact me before you leave. Clarke out.”

 “Trouble?” Fox asked.

 “At a guess, the hatch overhead has closed.”

 “That was to be expected, surely,” Garland said. “It was probably on some sort of a time delay. Shuttle Three should be up there in half an hour, and they can open it again without any trouble, even if we don't find another set of controls down here.”

 “I hope so,” Clarke replied. “I really hope so.” Looking up at the ruins, he added, “There's nothing much we can do about it in any case. We continue as planned, but I hope you've all been putting in your time on the treadmill, because I want to be back at the shuttle in an hour.”

 “Six miles?” Garland protested.

 “A bit of exercise will do you good, Spaceman,” Fox replied with a gleaming smile.

 “Sergeant,” Clarke said, “I want you and Garland to investigate the ruins. Take as many images as you can, and collect samples for analysis. We've got to get this area dated. And naturally, if you see anything that looks like writing, feed it back to the shuttle's computer. Given time, we might be able to translate it even if we can't reestablish contact with Alamo. Ronnie, we'll take the shuttle. You do a systems check, I'll get the database fired up.”

 “Right,” she said, following him through the labyrinthine ruins, as Fox and Garland curved away, taking a tangled path around the debris in a bid to get the fullest possible analysis. The shuttle's airlock was open, waiting for them, and they stepped inside, the musty smell of the air within hitting them like a thunderbolt as they walked into the cabin.

 Dust and decay was everywhere. Judging by the smell, animals had been using it as a place to hide, and scurrying eyes looked out at them from dark corners, a chattering noise from the cargo compartment followed by a loud squeal. Shaking her head, Mortimer walked up to the cockpit, while Clarke headed for the rear terminal, brushing a tangle of fur and dirt from the seat.

 The emergency power came on almost instantly at his command, enough residual energy left in the batteries to run the console for a time. Data flooded onto the screen, and he tapped controls to set up a datalink back to the shuttle, draining the computers of every scrap of relevant information. The last reported entry in the maintenance logs was three months in the past, after the abandonment of Monitor. This had perhaps been the last refuge of her crew, seeking sanctuary in the massive alien structure.

 “I've got thruster control,” Mortimer said, shouting back from the cockpit. “Hull breaches in four places, but we could seal them if we had to. Long-range communications are shot, and the sensor array is gone. Looks like it was removed. Along with the emergency hydroponics tank and a lot of other stuff. Technically, I suppose we could make this ship ready for space, but I wouldn't want to try unless we absolutely had no other choice. Too big a risk.”

 “Everything's working back here,” Clarke said. “Midshipman, are you getting this?”

 “Loud and clear, sir,” she replied. “All systems green, I have a good datastream. I still haven't reestablished contact with Alamo, though, and there's no malfunction at our end. It must be the hatch cover.”

 “If it is, there's nothing we can do about it for the moment, Midshipman. We'll be back in a little over an hour. Clarke out.” He looked around the room, and continued, “They've stripped out a lot of the portable equipment. Anything that might have been used. Even the spacesuits.”

 “That seems reasonable. If they knew they'd lost their ship, there'd have been no choice other than to make the best of the situation down here on the surface. Which would mean totally committing with everything they had.”

 “I don't disagree, but if that's the case, where are they? They must have known that there was a chance that someone was going to follow them sooner or later. If I'd been in command, I'd have stayed close to my entry point, used this as a base of operations. Even if it wasn't suitable for long-term occupancy, I'd at least have stationed someone here, or left some sort of message.”

 “Maybe we're missing something obvious,” she replied, as the diagnostic check finished its cycle, a parade of depressing news flickering on the screen. “Perhaps there were only a few survivors, and they wandered off somewhere. Maybe they were rescued already, or they died.”

 “The bodies?”

 “Plenty of scavengers around here. I doubt carrion would remain where it fell for very long, even if it was human.”

 “That's disgusting,” Clarke replied. “Though you've probably got a point, I must admit.” The terminal winked twice, the data download complete, and he rose from the chair, looking around the cabin again. “We'll know more once we've analyzed the data. Maybe they left a log entry, or recorded some of their explorations. That ship was in orbit for weeks before the attack. They must have managed to find out something we can use, even if it just rules out a few dead ends.”

 “Diagnostic check complete,” Mortimer said. “About as I said. Give me a few hours, and we could maybe fly it back to Alamo, but I certainly wouldn't want to risk it. I think we're better off just leaving it abandoned in place. Someone's already made sure that the critical items have been removed. No need to consider setting charges or anything like that. Besides, it might make a good forward base for us. Once someone's cleaned out the livestock.”

 Peering out through the hatch, Clarke saw the light levels falling, the shadows creeping in, and said, “We'd better make a move. Sergeant, we're moving out.” He looked around, stepped out of the shuttle, and said, “Sergeant?”

 A pinprick of agony caught him in the side, sending him tumbling to the ground, limbs twitching as a surge of fire swept through his system. He longed to scream, but he couldn't find the breath, drifting in and out of consciousness with momentary flashes of clarity. First a bouncing buggy, glimpses of trees, then a face peering down at him, a mask of concern. Finally, what seemed like hours later, he opened his eyes, at last able to focus once again.

 “What the hell happened?” he asked, looking around. They were suspended in the air, in a cage made of wood, swinging from the branches of a massive tree, hundreds of meters up. A dull green globe, some sort of bio-luminescent light, provided strange illumination, and he could see dozens of others scattered around, rocking back and forth. He looked up, saw Koslowski, and cursed. “They got you, as well?”

 “I'm afraid so, sir,” she replied.

 “Don't blame her too much, John,” Mortimer replied. “It's been six hours since they got us. There were a couple of dozen of them, mostly on horses, with a buggy following up.”

 “We'd already been taken before they reached you,” Fox said, her face a fixed scowl. “They sneaked in from the far side of the ruins. Or maybe they had a few people waiting in ambush already. Garland and I bought a dart each before we could warn you.”

 “Did they get you?” Clarke asked, looking at Mortimer. 

 “I surrendered,” she replied. “I was outnumbered about twenty to one, and I'd already seen what they'd done to the rest of you. I figured it made more sense for one us to be conscious while they took us to wherever it was we were going.”

 “Did it?”

 “We came about a hundred miles...”

 “A hundred miles?” Clarke said, eyes wide.

 “About that, about ten miles into the forest. I've no idea how deep it is.” Gesturing through the bars, she added, “It's a substantial settlement, lots of structures, all of them built high up, off the ground. And Neander, as well. There are a lot of them down there, working in what look suspiciously like slave labor gangs. Under humans. Like us, I mean.”

 “Great,” he replied. “We stumbled into a nice little tyranny. What's your story, Koslowski?”

 “After an hour, I still hadn't made contact with Alamo, or with anyone else. I locked down all the systems on the shuttle, and went out to have a look. I got about a third of the way to the ruins before they got me.” Looking down at the ground, she added, “I'm sorry, sir. I screwed up.” 

 “Don't be,” he replied. “Do they know where the shuttle is?” 

 “They must have seen it land,” Fox said. “They probably set off as soon as they saw us. Even then, they had to have moved damn fast, but this is their home ground. They know the terrain.”

 Patting his pockets, Clarke said, “I take it everyone else was thoroughly searched?”

 Nodding, Mortimer said, “No communicators, datapads, weapons, or anything else. I didn't even have any covert bits of pieces with me, but they did a very through job of searching, so it might not have mattered in any case. We're on our own.”

 “Help me up,” Clarke said, reaching for Fox, who dragged him to his feet, setting their cage swinging back and forth more violently than before. “Any sign of our captors?”

 “Don't look now,” Garland said, gesturing at the central trunk, “but we've got people heading our way.” Turning to Clarke, he asked, “Orders?”

 “Name, rank and serial number, Spaceman. And Alamo will send someone after us. By then I mean to be well away from this place.”

 “Bold words,” a sneering man said, looking down. “Shame you don't have anything to back them up with. Though if you want to leave, feel free.” Gesturing at the surface, hundreds of feet below, he added, “Just watch out for that first step. It's a killer. Quite literally.”

 “Sub-Lieutenant John Clarke. Serial number...”

 “Spare me. What ship are you from.”

 “HMS Pinafore.”

 Shaking his head, he replied, “I'm not interested in musical numbers right now, Sub-Lieutenant. I'll make a deal with you. If you tell me what I want to know, I will see you safely back to your shuttle. All of you.”

 “I've got a better idea,” Clarke said, looking up at the grim-faced man. “If you release us immediately, then I will offer you a fair trial, rather than simply killing you where you stand.” Fixing a scowl on his face, he continued, “Don't think I don't mean it.”

 “Crazy,” he said. “Sometimes the darts...”

 “I'm deadly serious, and quite sane.” 

 “That offer applies to all of you, of course,” he said, looking at the others. “If any one of you decides that you want to live through all of this, then I'll be only too happy to release you. Even the madman there.”

 Nodding, Mortimer moved over to him, and said, “I'll tell you what you want to know.”

 “Good,” the man replied, as the others glared at her.

 “Outside that hatch is a ship loaded with very dangerous people, all of them heavily armed, and by now they are already looking for us. Soon enough, they will find us, and then you will die, probably from a plasma bolt between the eyes, and when I see your corpse, I will smile. Does that help?”

 Looking daggers at her, he replied, “If you change your mind, tell the creature bringing you your food. These savages aren't good for very much, but they can pass messages. Better keep them simple, though. Not much brain capacity. Though probably infinitely superior to yours.” As the man walked away, Clarke looked at Mortimer with a smile. 

 “You had me worried there for a second.”

 “No worse than he was,” she replied. “Moving to more practical matters, we still have a rather major problem waiting for us. How exactly are we going to get out of here?”

 “These bars are tight,” Fox said.

 “Good,” Garland replied. “I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm way behind on my flying lessons, and I don't even have a medical kit with me.” He frowned, then said, “Maybe we could rush whoever is bringing us the food?”

 “Even if we did get out of here,” Clarke replied, “We've got to pick our way through the forest.” Looking at Mortimer, he asked, “How confident are you of making your way back without getting hopelessly lost along the way?”

 “Not very, if I'm honest. There aren't any good landmarks to use, though we might be able to follow the ruts of the buggy.” She smiled, shook her head, then continued, “Which, of course, they will immediately use to follow us. That isn't an option either, is it?”

 “Let's just say that our escape plan is going to need a little bit of work,” Clarke said, rubbing his head. “Speaking purely personally, I still have one hell of a hangover from whatever it is they shot us with. There's nothing we can do for the moment. Just wait and watch.” 

 “Check the guard schedules, and see if we can find a weakness,” Fox agreed. “There's bound to be something we can exploit. There always is. And Alamo will be looking for us.”

 “He spoke English,” Garland said, “And like a native. That means he's found his way here, just like us. I didn't recognize the uniform, though.”

 “Plenty of ships have gone missing over the decades,” Mortimer said. “Maybe one of them decided that this was a good place to set up housekeeping. Though for the moment, does any of that matter?”

 “Sir?” Fox said. “Someone's coming along the branch. A Neander.”

 “Probably bringing supper,” Mortimer said, looking up. The figure approached, peering down at them, then a smile burst across his face, eyes registering disbelief.

 “I don't believe it!” the Neander said, in perfect English. “You're Fleet! After four months!”

 “Who are you?” Clarke asked.

 “Lieutenant Maqua, Security Officer of the Starcruiser Monitor.”

 “Sub-Lieutenant Clarke, Security Officer of the Battlecruiser Alamo.”

 “Alamo?”

 “She's outside the sphere.”

 “I'll be damned.”

 “I'll make a deal with you,” Clarke said. “You rescue us, and we'll rescue you. Sir.”

 “You're on, Sub-Lieutenant. You're on.”

Chapter 9

 “Still no sign, sir,” Ballard said. “The interference is growing steadily, but so far it hasn't reached a threshold level. Best guess is that it will end up as a capital ship of a size similar to our own, but I don't have any hard figures on how long that is going to take. Could be seconds, could be hours.”

 “I still recommend adopting a full-defensive posture, sir,” Scott said. “To keep our options open.”

 “We're well clear of the hendecaspace point, Kat, and we'll have plenty of time to get to battle stations if necessary. Until we know what we're facing, there's no point rising attracting any unwanted attention. Bowman, contact Shuttle Three again. I want an updated report.”

 The technician worked her controls, and after a second, Lombardo's voice echoed from the overhead speakers, saying, “There's still nothing more to say, sir, just like the last three times I've tried. The controls aren't working, and I'm no further working out why, or even how they work. I can't get at the connections because of this damned repulsion field. Right now I've got teams moving around the local area to see if we can find another way in. Request Transfer One be dispatched to provide a higher-orbital pass.”

 “Negative, Lieutenant,” Salazar replied. “Not with the possibility of hostile forces approaching the system. We don't dare take the risk, not yet. And be prepared to pull out yourselves at short notice. We might have to leave in a hurry.” Looking at Harper, he said, “We've lost five people. I don't want to lose any more.”

 “Agreed,” she replied. “We're no further along in our analysis, but I don't think we can expect any quick results. This is going to have to take about as long as it takes. At least there aren't any concerns about consumables. They can live off the land down there, probably indefinitely.”

 “Sir,” Ballard said, “Tachyonic spike. I think we might be able to get something.”

 “Focus all sensors on the incoming ship,” Salazar ordered. “Bowman, hail them as soon as they enter the system, and ask for their intentions.”

 “Will do, sir,” he replied. “Same set up as before, ready to transmit automatic messages in nine languages, with translation available on request.”

 “Here it comes!” Ballard said, and a bright flash filled the screen, far larger than normal, as a new ship tumbled into the system, end over end just as Alamo had the day before, struggling to manage their return to normal space. The screen zoomed in to get a clear picture of a brutal, dull-brown ship, with turret weapons mounted along the hull. This was no scientific ship, but a warship in its own right. Though, of course, so was Alamo.

 “No sign of energy spikes, sir,” Scott said. “They're just sitting there, trying to orient themselves. Best guess is that those turrets are mounting mass driver cannons. I can't see any launch tubes for missiles, and no sign of laser weaponry either.”

 “Interesting, given what happened to Monitor,” Francis noted.

 “Any response to our signals, Spaceman?”

 “Wait one, sir,” he replied. “Got them. In English, as well. Request to speak to our commanding officer on a matter of grave and immediate importance.”

 “Put them on the screen, then,” Salazar said. “Let's hear what they have to say.”

 The image of the new ship disappeared, replaced by a bridge that looked like something out of the last century, chairs hanging from the ceiling, technicians floating between antiquated consoles with bulky datapads. At the heart of the command center was a thin-cheeked woman with a halo of red hair around her head, wearing a uniform bearing an urban camouflage pattern. 

 “This is Major Moran of the Hegemonic Cruiser Endurance. Identify yourself.”

 “I am Lieutenant-Captain Salazar, commanding the Triplanetary Battlecruiser Alamo.”

 She nodded, and said, “I take it that you've lost a team inside the Dyson Sphere as well.”

 Glancing at Francis, Salazar replied, “We have. And the wreckage you can see is the remains of one of our ships. Our mission was to locate her.” He didn't see any need to add the detail that they weren't in their own galaxy. “I guess we succeeded.”

 “We share the same problem, Captain. One of our ships is missing as well, though we've seen no sign of debris.” She frowned, then replied, “Naturally, your first thought is that we might be responsible.”

 “You'll understand why I would come to that conclusion, though I suppose the same could be said of you. Might I suggest that the best course of action is for us to meet on neutral territory?”

 “I don't believe that to be necessary. I'm willing to take the leap of faith, Captain, and offer to come on board your ship with a single aide, both of us unarmed. I'll even agree to make the last mile of the journey in my spacesuit, rather than one of our shuttles. Would that be acceptable?”

 Salazar glanced at Francis, then turned back to the screen, and said, “In fifteen minutes?”

 “Very well. I'll see you then. Endurance out.”

 “Scott, you have the deck. Harper, Francis, you're with me. And have our Espatiers on standby for an honor guard. Let's show the flag a little.” He moved into the elevator, the others following, and tapped the control for the hangar deck.

 “This is all rather sudden, isn't it?” Francis asked.

 “No point giving them time to prepare a cover story. I want them on the run.”

 “And if their story is true?”

 “Then it's always nice to make a few new friends, and for that reason we will treat them with all appropriate honors. Even if we don't have time to change into our dress uniforms for the occasion.”

 “What a pity,” Harper replied with a grin. “Hopefully they won't know the difference anyway. She seemed rather eager to meet us on our own terms.”

 “I'm not surprised,” Francis said, holding up his datapad. “First tactical impressions have us seriously outmatching them. Alamo would be able to bring them down without working up a serious sweat, and they must know that. I've only seen military mass drivers in museums.”

 “Unless they've found a better way to make them work,” Salazar warned. “Let's try and avoid another desperate battle to the death unless we truly have no other choice.”

 “Not a problem for me,” Harper said, as the doors slid open onto the deck. The trio walked out, Rhodes already rushing his platoon into position, the troopers struggling to tug on their dress uniforms as they made their way to the airlock. Salazar calmly walked over to the hatch, the others beside him, and glanced up at the monitor screen, watching as the shuttle from Endurance approached.

 “Conventional type,” Chief Kowalski said. “Looks like an evolution of the Puffin. Good little lighter in its day.” Turning to him with a smirk, he added, “Of course, that was a good eighty years ago.”

 “I flew one once,” Salazar replied with a nod. “Some of the cadets restored it. Special project. I think it was carried on the first mission to Triton, or something like that.” Memories of simpler times flooded into his mind.

 “They're coming to a relative stop,” Francis said. “Just as instructed. They're really making a move, though. Well ahead of schedule.”

 “I guess we're not the only ones hoping to catch someone by surprise,” Harper replied. “To be fair, they have no more reason to trust us than we have to trust them.” Glancing around the deck, she added, “Not much they can see that will be of any tactical use, but we ought to get them into a side office as soon as possible. I've already locked the network down as tightly as I can.”

 Pulling out his communicator, Salazar said, “Hangar deck to bridge. Anything else on our friends out there?”

 “Endurance is a human-derived starship, sir. Same drive design as we use, but not quite as advanced. Some commonality with designs from the turn of the century, but our scans suggest that it's a lot younger than that. Maybe five, ten years at the most. One more thing, though. She's been patched up a lot of times. Signs of hasty repairs all over. For whatever that's worth.”

 “Tough little ship, then,” Harper said.

 “Prepare for boarding,” Rhodes said. “Present arms!”

 The platoon snapped into position as the airlock cycled, Salazar, Harper and Francis standing at parade rest to welcome the visitors. The hatch cracked open, and Moran walked out, a short, stout man in the same uniform by her side. She seemed confident, self-assured, but his eyes roamed suspiciously around the deck, as though looking for invisible snipers.

 “Major Moran?” Salazar said, extending his hand. “Welcome to Alamo.”

 “A pleasure,” she replied, shaking the offered hand. “My I introduce my Staff Engineer, Lieutenant Hanson.”

 “Senior Lieutenant Max Francis, my Executive Officer,” Salazar said. “And Lieutenant Kristen Harper, Intelligence Officer. It's a pleasure to greet you.”

 Raising an eyebrow, she replied, “You're certain that it wasn't a pain in the neck, Captain?”

 He smiled, and said, “Diplomacy forbids an answer, Major.” Gesturing at a side door, he said, “Perhaps our conversation would best be held in private.”

 Nodding, she said, “So that none of your deep, dark secrets risk being exposed. Or more accurately, your technological advantage. I'm no fool, Captain, and I know the comparative strengths of our two ships. I know that you could wipe us out, but I also believe that you wouldn't unless you had a good reason to. Or you'd have attacked as soon as we entered the system.”

 “I never did believe in shooting first and asking questions later,” he replied, stepping into the hastily-cleaned office of Lieutenant Lombardo, additional chairs scattered across the room. “My Deck Officer's office, but guaranteed as secure.”

 Taking one of the seats, Moran said, “Forgive me, Captain, but you seem awfully young for your rank.”

 “Flattery will get you everywhere, Major. We Salazars have never shown our age.”

 “I envy you.” Looking at Hanson, she added, “Perhaps we should get more rapidly to the point. We have people down on the surface, and a ship that has gone missing. So do you. I propose that we work together to rescue them, and share any information that we gather in the process.” 

 “Don't take this the wrong way,” Francis said, “but wouldn't we be at a disadvantage in such an exchange?”

 “Not when you consider that we've been investigating the sphere for half a century, ever since our original founders arrived from the Milky Way galaxy. I'm guessing you found the wormhole as well, rather more recently.” At the shocked expressions of Salazar and Francis, and the wry grin from Harper, she continued, “Come on, I wasn't born yesterday. If some Triplanetary Confederation existed anywhere within easy reach, I'd know about it. I've been riding starships for twenty years, and we've never found any sign of another human empire out there. A few scattered, non-starfaring colonies, but that's about all. You've come straight from home.”

 “Meaning that you're going to need friends out here, soon enough,” Hanson said, his tone guttural, low. “We might be in a position to provide you with some.”

 “That sounded suspiciously like a threat,” Francis replied. “Perhaps I might arrange a demonstration of our laser cannon? We're not up to the level of the builders of that sphere out there, but we're more than capable of ripping through hull armor with dispatch.”

 “That will not be necessary,” Moran said, silencing Hanson with a glare. “Let me guess what happened. You sent a team down, found a control panel, and opened the hatch. Then that team, or another, went inside, and after a while, the hatch closed once again. How am I doing?”

 “Pretty good,” Harper said. “Tell me how the story ends?”

 “We spent years examining this structure, mapping the exterior, and finally found a possible entrance. One of our ships, carrying a hand-picked team, came out here five months ago to conduct an investigation, to finally enter the sphere. They were overdue two months ago, and we came out here to take a look.”

 “If this place is of that much importance to you, why not commit more resources to it?”

 “This can be a dangerous system to loiter in, Captain. As Monitor has undoubtedly found out. Sometimes the Collectors can be less than discriminatory about what they harvest for the station. I presume you've seen the debris stream?”

 “And one of the systems they're tearing apart.”

 “Another one?” she replied, looking at Hanson. “There are a lot of systems around here with no hendecaspace points, and evidence that they did have planets at some time in the past. We actually saw one being destroyed, a few years ago, but that's as far as it got.” She looked at the viewport in the office, at the mass of the sphere close by, and said, “We're both looking at the handiwork of the Gods, Captain, or we might as well be. And we'll both be trying to crack open the sphere, and it seems crazy not to do it together.”

 Nodding, Salazar replied, “Put that way, I suppose I can see your point. Very well. Max, you can liaise with your opposite number on Endurance and work out the details.”

 “Excellent,” Moran said, rising from her chair. “I'll have a technical crew join your team by the portal at once. Given that I've got a long walk back to my ship, I'd better be leaving at once.” She pulled out an old-fashioned datarod, and said, “The state of the galaxy. At least, that part of it we've explored. To get our information exchange off to a good start.”

 “I'll have my Science Officer reciprocate at once,” Salazar replied. “Safe journey.” As she walked out of the room, he looked at Harper, and said, “That was far too easy.”

 “Not much of a trap if we're suspicious already,” Francis said.

 “Doesn't matter whether or not we're suspicious. It only matters if we get caught. Watch them, Kris. Like a hawk.”

 “Don't worry,” she replied. “I was planning to.”

Chapter 10

 Clarke was back in the alien ship once more, racing through the corridors, his feet sluggish and slow. Somehow, the walls had become tangled trees, their branches reaching out to grab him, scratching long gashes down his arms as he desperately ran for safety. Everything seemed so heavy, each stop an effort he could no longer bear. He turned, and saw the creature again, the beast with his face, razor claws in the air. With a last effort, he tried to escape, but the tendril-like branches snatched at him, sending him sprawling to the muddy ground, and he felt the beast slashing down at him, ripping into him.

 A hand clamped over his mouth, and his eyes snapped open, looking up at the face of Mortimer looming over him. The others were still asleep, each in their corner of the swinging cell. Her eyes narrowed, and she released her hand, letting him take a deep breath of the rich, forest air, laden with exotic scents that invigorated him, soothed him.

 “Don't do that again,” she replied. “Another nightmare?”

 “Yes,” he said.

 “You should have brought some of those pills with you. Then we might all have got a good night's sleep.” With a sigh, she said, “The same as before?”

 “Different, somehow. It was almost as though I wanted the beast to get me. Maybe I'm more screwed up than I thought.”

 “We're all screwed up, kid. Something you'll learn when you get a little older.” She looked around, scanning the darkness, and said, “No sign of Maqua yet. If I'm right, we've got a couple of hours to go until whatever passes for dawn in here. I suppose we haven't ruled out that this is some sort of trap. I mean, just because someone claims to be a Triplanetary officer doesn't make it so.”

 Shaking his head, Clarke replied, “Garland recognized him, and besides, he knew too many details of Monitor's mission. I suppose they could have interrogated someone else, but if they know that much, they hardly seem to need us.” Rubbing a hand across his sweat-laden forehead, he added, “Anything else to report?”

 “Nothing much. One guard walking back and forth on the gantry, armed with a rifle. I guess they don't think they need anything else.” She gestured at the central trunk, and added, “I spot three ways down the side, none of them especially safe. I don't know who came up with the idea of building a city in the trees, but it's crazy.”

 “If you'd rather, Sub-Lieutenant,” Maqua said, “We could always leave you behind.” He crept along the gantry, knife in hand, and continued, “I'm sorry I took so long. Getting through the security was harder than I'd expected, and I had to make sure that I wasn't being followed. We're safe, at least for the moment.”

 Mortimer prodded Garland and Fox, then said, “What's the plan?”

 “I cut you free, we kill the guard as quietly as we can, then climb down the tree and run for cover.”

 “That's it?”

 “I figured it was smart to keep it simple. We're not going to get too far before dawn, though. Not out of the forest, anyway. The plain beyond is wide open, and they'd be able to track you down in a heartbeat. We'll have to stay in cover for as long as we can.” The Neander started to saw at some of the vines, cutting through the material. “Get ready to move when I give the word. I'm going to rig this to break completely a few minutes after we get out. We're going to need a distraction.”

 “And if you get it wrong?” Mortimer asked.

 “Then the five of us plunge to a certain, horrible death. Feel better?” 

 “Much.” Turning to Clarke, she added, “I don't know why I doubted him. He acts like every Triplanetary officer I've ever met.”

 “Well, they give good courses in sarcasm at Advanced Tactical. Required part of the course.” He continued to work, and the first vine snapped free. “Four more, and I'll have a gap big enough for you to get through.”

 The cage was creaking alarmingly, and seemed to have developed a list to the left. Clarke gestured for Fox to stand underneath the rapidly opening gap, deciding that the close-combat expert had to be out first, and moved to the rear, careful to watch the weight distribution. Mortimer glanced at him, shaking her head.

 “You don't need to be a hero, kid.”

 “Last time I checked, I was in command of this mission team. That means I get the privilege of taking the stupid risks. You want the job, check in with Captain Salazar.”

 “Pavel's commanding Alamo?” Maqua asked. “How did that happen?”

 “Long story, Lieutenant,” Clarke replied. “When we get out of here, I'll brief you.”

 Another vine snapped free, and the Neander said, “One minute. Got to hurry. The guard will be back at any moment.” He continued to work, Fox climbing up, ready to scramble onto the gantry at a second's notice, the third vine releasing with a loud report, enough that the prisoners in the next cell began to stir.

 “What about the others?” Fox asked.

 “Nothing we can do about them for the moment,” Clarke replied. “If we're free, we might be able to help them out. Imprisoned, there's nothing we can do for them.”

 With a sigh, Mortimer replied, “Then I guess we're not heading right back for the exit, then.”

 “If things are as bad around here as they look, then I don't think we have a choice.”

 “Trust me,” Maqua said. “They are.” Finally the last vine broke under the onslaught of the blade, and Fox quickly pulled herself through the gap, emerging onto the gantry, gratefully accepting the knife from the Neander. While the others hastily followed, she stalked into the shadows, heading towards the guard, racing to catch him before he could make the turn.

 It was all over in seconds, without even the faintest noise. Her hand clamped over the man's mouth as her blade sliced into his back, piercing his heart with disturbing accuracy. She gently lowered him to the gantry, rolling his body to the side and reliving him of his pistol, her hands snatching through his pockets to take his ammunition.

 “Primitive, but effective,” she said, holding up her newly-acquired sidearm. “Should do the job nicely enough.”

 “Come on,” Maqua said, pulling out a second knife and slashing at two more vines, weakening them at the top. “We've got to motor if we're going to get out of here. Right down the central tree, then follow me. Don't get out of sight whatever happens, or you'll either be captured or lost beyond recall.” He frowned for a moment, then added, “And watch out for the wolves. There's a reason this place is built high.”

 “Wolves?” Clarke asked, but the Neander was already away, sprinting along the gantry, and he followed him without a second thought, careful to keep down low. Somehow, the place was even more impressive from this view, and he briefly looked around at hundreds of structures built in the tree-tops, illuminated with flickering constellations of green light. Guard towards surrounded the complex, searchlights using the same bio-luminescence washing through the night with bright beams, bouncing back and forth.

 He reached the tree, and made the mistake of looking down, eyes bulging at the descent. The ladder was hacked into the tree, metal posts sticking out in all directions, a frame he could use to scramble to the surface. There was no safety rail, no additional handholds, and oozing sap covered some of the high posts with a slick sheen. Doubtfully, he looked across at Maqua, who shrugged in response.

 “Doesn't get used that often. If you'd rather stay here?”

 “Not a chance. Lead the way.”

 Nodding, Maqua slid onto the improvised ladder, carefully swinging down the posts, and after another moment of fearful contemplation, Clarke followed, testing the first rung with his foot before putting his full weight onto it, a loud crack stopping his heart for a moment before he realized it was coming from the far side of the gantry, their erstwhile cell preparing its own descent to the surface.

 He slipped and slid down the ladder, almost falling when he saw eyes peering out at him from a twisted branch, only belatedly realizing that it was a chipmunk, another import from Earth, tens of thousands of years ago. Then, with a loud crack, their cell finally fell, smashing through the lower branches on its path to the surface, instantly attracting the attention of the searchlights. As his feet mercifully hit the ground, he looked around for Maqua, watching the Neander retreating into the darkness, picking a twisted path through the trees.

 Glancing up at the rest of his people, he followed their new friend into the darkness, wincing every time his feet found a dry branch on the ground. Suddenly, he had a flashback to his nightmare, and he could almost feel the monster at his back. For a heartbeat, he froze, then forced himself on, chasing after Maqua, a chorus of shouts all around as the guards discovered that their captives had escaped. They had a small head-start, and he had to hope that it was enough.

 Shadows chased him through the night, and he turned to catch brief glimpses of Fox, Garland and Mortimer, moving in between the trees as they struggled to keep pace with him, while he struggled to keep pace with Maqua. He glanced up, still surprised not to see the stars above him, just an endless, inky blackness. Somewhere beyond the night were lands beyond measure, but this forest could have been on any one of a dozen worlds. It took very little imagination to place himself back on Earth, an Earth that hadn't truly existed for a century.

 For a split second, he thought that he had lost Maqua, but he caught the fleeing form up ahead, and managed to redouble his pace, dropping down into a deep ravine, tunnels and shafts all around. The Neander had taken one of the nearest, and Clarke followed, dripping water running down the back of his neck as he escaped underground, the tunnels ducking and diving around. The upper levels were natural, eroded, but the lower levels were obviously artificial, hewn into the rock, with strange symbols carved into the walls.

 “This way,” Maqua said, urging them to another ladder, this one dropping into total darkness. Clarke sighed, then followed the Neander down the new shaft, hand over hand. This time, the material was different, harder, the rungs solidly welded to the wall. Up above, what little light there was blurred away as the others followed, until finally he reached the floor, Maqua waiting for him below.

 They were in the mouth of a huge cavern, a few of the green balls scattered around to provide rudimentary illumination, serving more to cast strange shadows around than to provide any useful light. Mortimer dropped down the last few rungs, moving by his side, and looked around with a frown on her face.

 “Creepy.”

 “It's not really intended for the casual visitor,” Maqua replied. “Wait here. I'll be back in a moment.”

 “I think we'd be better off sticking together,” Clarke said.

 “No,” the Neander said. “Don't worry. The guards won't follow this far. The caves aren't especially safe, and we've made sure that enough of them have paid the price for coming this far down to put them off the idea. We're safe. For the moment, anyway.” 

 “I still think...”

 “I hate to break it to you, Sub-Lieutenant, but I outrank you, which means that we're going to do this my way. Understood?”

 “Yes, sir,” Clarke said, glancing at a distrustful Mortimer. “We'll be here.”

 “Good,” Maqua replied, running into the darkness as Garland dropped in beside Mortimer, Fox carefully picking her way down the final rungs of the ladder.

 “Spaceman,” Mortimer asked, “Are you sure that's the man you knew?”

 “Yes, ma'am,” Garland said. “I patched him up often enough. He was a Sub-Lieutenant, commissioned during the Xandari War, just before the recapture of Alamo. I guess Captain Orlova must have given him a field promotion at some point. Monitor was out here long enough.”

 “And you never had any reason to doubt his loyalty?”

 “No, ma'am. Absolutely not.”

 “People can change a lot over time,” Fox mused.

 “Not him. He gave up everything to join the Fleet. I think he'd rather die than betray it.”

 “I hope you're right,” she replied.

 “I wish we had a datapad,” Garland said, looking up at the walls. “Those look familiar. Like some of the relics I've seen back home. Back in the Milky Way.” He frowned, then said, “Still seems strange, even now.”

 “Sir,” Fox said, “I'm less sanguine than Lieutenant Maqua about our safety. In my experience, threats of unknown horrors are less terrifying than the threats of a good non-com.” She raised her pistol, then said, “I'd like to go back up the to cave, keep look-out.”

 Clarke nodded, then replied, “Stay at the top of the shaft, and call down every few minutes. If I call for help, get down here as fast as you can. And leave your knife behind. I'd feel a little happier with something to defend myself other than my fists.”

 Fox passed her newly-found knife to Clarke, handle first, and as she climbed up the ladder, he looked it over, feeling the weight in his hand. A good, solid weapon, though with a notch to the blade and a rough handle, not properly sanded. Local manufacture, not the product of an advanced civilization. He looked around the walls, and said, “This is a fallen culture, isn't it. In the middle of a Dark Age. I wonder...”

 “Not bad,” a gruff voice said, stepping out of the shadows, a gray-haired Neander flanked by two others, all holding rifles, all trained on Clarke and the others. “Where's the other one?”

 “On guard, up top,” Clarke said.

 Taking a step forward, Mortimer replied, “Thanks, Lieutenant. Out of one trap and into another.”

 “Lieutenant Maqua has vouched for you, but in the circumstances, you must understand our need for additional precautions. Our captors spoke softly when the first arrived, and only turned against us when they detected an opportunity for gain.”

 Raising his hands, Clarke said, “What exactly is it going to take to convince you?”

 “Blood, Sub-Lieutenant.”

 “Blood?”

 “We have a plan to eliminate the enemy once and for all. You will join us in the attack, and will assist us in exterminating any survivors. They must pay in blood for what they have done.”

 “Massacre them all?” Garland asked. “What have they done up there?”

 “Enslaved our people. Killed some of our warriors, conquered our city. Every one of them must die if that insult is to be redeemed.” He glanced at the Neander on the left, and said, “If you agree, we will accept your word, though you will be watched. I will expect you and your men to take part in the execution squads.”

 Taking a deep breath, Clarke stepped forwards, his hand still raised, until he was only a few paces from the rifles, and said, “Go ahead and pull the trigger. I'd rather be dead than take part in a massacre like that.”

 “This is war.”

 “Yes, this is war, and yes, people die, but you are talking about a cold-blooded massacre. Have all the enemy troops committed such acts of murder?” The gray-haired Neander shook his head, and said, “Of course not. Some have. In battle, and perhaps later. And they can pay for their crimes in whatever measure is appropriate to your people, but neither I nor any other member of my people will take part in an act of mass murder.”

 “You were right, Lieutenant,” the Neander said.

 “I told you as much.”

 “But I had to be sure.” As the guards lowered their weapons, he said, “Welcome to our Undercity, Sub-Lieutenant. My name is Kepteros. I apologize for the deception, but I had to test your character, and this seemed the most expeditious method. We do have a plan to retake our home, but it does not involve such brutality. In fact, if it works, nobody will die at all. But we're going to need your help to pull it off.”

 Clarke looked at Mortimer, who rolled her eyes in response, then said, “What exactly did you have in mind?”

Chapter 11

 “Interesting,” Harper said, scanning through the end of the report. “You had a chance to take a look at this yet, Val?”

 Foster shook her head, then turned back to the controls, saying, “That the material Endurance sent over for us?”

 “Yeah,” she replied. “And I think that what they aren't telling us is a lot more interesting than what they are. Let's just say it looks rather sanitized, and leave it at that. And the material on their homeworld is basically a damned tourist guide, right down to the ten best restaurants in First Landing.”

 “What's the story?”

 Glancing down at the datapad again, she said, “Short version, and my God, the version I've got takes its time about it, a ship left Earth during the First Diaspora, staging out of the European Federation. Found its way through the wormhole, and ended up on a planet with humans already present. A fallen civilization, recovering from a nuclear war.”

 Shaking her head, Foster replied, “They fled one war and ran into another.”

 “Something of a historical irony, but they were at least able to skip over a few centuries of Hell. The two populations quickly mixed, the culture they brought with them became dominant, and about twenty years ago, they returned to space, built starships, the usual.”

 “Fast work if they only arrived fifty years ago.”

 “Reading between the lines, there was a substantial industrial base when they got there, especially orbital installations. Most of it was a question of getting things running again, and an influx of three thousand engineers and scientists was about what was needed.” She frowned, then added, “I don't mind that they've made themselves look like paragons of virtue. Have you ever read the briefing pack we've prepared for First Contact situations?”

 “Never got that bored.”

 “Masterpiece of propaganda. It makes sense that the Hegemony would be essentially the same, but there are two questions I would like answered.”

 “Oh?”

 “First of all, why is that ship of theirs armed? According to this,” she said, waving the datapad, “They haven't encountered any other starfaring civilizations. Our first starships were unarmed, just a few hand weapons, the occasional experimental piece of kit. We didn't arm our deep space vessels until the Interplanetary War, aside from the odd prototype.”

 “Maybe they had internal problems they aren't talking about. Hell, maybe they're just paranoid. If I remember correctly, there were a few people who wanted our first ships armed to the teeth in case they ran into slobbering green monsters.”

 Shaking her head, Harper said, “I might buy that, but why have they called themselves the Hegemony. For a supposedly democratic government, it seems a rather despotic name. And it doesn't have any origins back on Earth from any of their founder countries. I checked.”

 “Then you think there's more to this than meets the eye?”

 Gesturing ahead at the approaching Dyson Sphere, she added, “Enough that you're going to be giving me a distraction when we get down there, long enough for me to play a few little games with their shuttle's database. If there's something strange going on, I should be able to find out what in relatively short order.”

 Raising an eyebrow, Foster said, “You're that confident you can slice into their systems?”

 “Either they are what they appear to be, and I won't have any problems at all, or they've got more than their wrists up their sleeve, and I'll work that out just as quickly. Maybe I'm worrying about nothing. Sometimes a name is just a name. There's only one way to work that out that I know, though.”

 “And if you get caught?”

 “I'll work that out on the fly. I'm really hoping not to be. Just give me cover for a few minutes, and I'll see what I can do.”

 “I hope you know what you are doing,” Foster said with a soft sigh. “Transfer Two to Dyson Base. Preparing for landing.”

 “Roger,” Lombardo replied. “Clear on Beacon Three. Make sure you land dead or you'll skid all over the place, and have your thrusters set to station-keeping the whole time you're on the surface. We'll be waiting.”

 Harper looked out at the collection of shuttles scattered across the surface, most of Alamo's craft transferring personnel and equipment back and forth. They'd spent more than a day trying to crack open the hatch with no success, and while Foster had hopes for the laser torch they'd brought with them, Harper did not. Any race capable of building the sphere was more than capable of wrecking any attempt they made to breach it, especially with the crude technologies at their disposal. 

 She ran her eye up and down the endless metal wall, barely able to distinguish even the faintest curve. Even for an ultra-technological culture, this must have been the labor of centuries, thousands of years. Longer than human civilization had even existed. The magnitude of the task daunted her as much as the technology involved.

 “Alamo to Transfer Two,” the speaker barked. “Scott here. We've got the latest results from the deep star survey. Do you want the news?”

 “Go ahead, Kat.”

 “We've found signs of three more.”

 Harper looked at Foster in shock, then said, “Three more? You're joking.”

 “No joke. Nearest is about eight hundred light-years away, furthest three thousand, all with matching black holes attached. Just in case one of these things isn't enough for you. That just about confirms that we're dealing with a galaxy-spanning culture. And we went over the charts from home again. No sign of anything like that in the Milky Way, nothing we've ever spotted, anyway.”

 “Four of them,” Foster said. “Is there anything in the Hegemonic files about that?”

 “Nothing, but they are a bit spartan on scientific information,” Harper replied. “We're dealing with an interstellar civilization that built multiple Dyson spheres. I'm beginning to agree with Max. Maybe we ought to run as far and as fast as we can.” She looked at the sphere again, and said, “What about this system, Kat?”

 “Still nothing. We've run good checks of about a thousandth of the outer belt, and we've got a couple of probes heading in that direction, but it'll be weeks before we get any decent readings from them. Carpenter's cosmologists are still lobbing sensor packages down the black hole, and every time they do we get a nice big spike of processing power. They're having the time of their lives, I think. I'm just sitting up here waiting for the axe to fall.”

 “I know what you mean. Keep listening out, and stand by for a secure datalink in a few minutes.” She paused, then asked, “Any progress on the Monitor data?”

 “Nothing new. It's going slowly, but it is moving. I guess we'll get there sooner or later, but I don't think there's much we can do to speed the process along. The fragments are getting larger, though. We're making progress.”

 “Good. When it comes, it'll likely come all at once, so let me know at once when it does. Harper out.” Turning to Foster, she said, “This just makes it more likely that we've found the wormhole builders.”

 “I don't see that,” Foster said. “If we're talking about an intergalactic culture, as unimaginable as that seems, then why wouldn't they build structures like this in the Milky Way? And more to the point, where are they now?”

 “Probably laughing themselves to death at our pitiful attempts to understand them.”

 “Maybe,” Foster replied with a smile. “Engaging landing thrusters. This is going to be fun.”

 The shuttle slowly dropped to the surface, landing legs engaged, periodic bursts of gas as the thrusters killed the last traces of their lateral velocity, allowing them to smoothly touch down. As they reached the repulsion field, they skidded for an instant, before Foster's quick corrections stabilized them, seeing them secure on the surface of the sphere. A pack of engineers walked forward, a mix of Triplanetary and Hegemony spacesuits, as Foster carefully made the final adjustments.

 “Down,” she said. “Or as much as we're going to be. We're still moving, but only a millimeter or so a second, and the thrusters are working on it.” She looked up at Harper, and said, “Did I mention yet that this is a weird place to visit?”

 “I think I've got that impression,” Harper replied, looking out of the viewscreen. “Still glad I made it down here. Poor Pavel is desperate to make the trip, but can't quite justify it. Yet.” She started to tug on her spacesuit, grabbing her helmet out of the overhead compartment.

 “He'll just have to live vicariously through the rest of us for the moment,” Foster replied. She reached into the locker for her spacesuit, throwing a control to open up the cargo bay, allowing the engineers to start unloading. The shuttle lurched to the right as the doors slid open, only steadied by a series of frantic corrections.

 “Damn, this world is strange.” She paused, then added, “Clarke's shuttle didn't have it this bad. Something must have changed down there. Maybe we're finally having some sort of effect.” Running her eyes over Harper, she added, “Your suit looks fine.”

 “Yeah, I'm all green.” Tapping a control, Harper stepped into the airlock, datapad in hand, and slid through the narrow passage out onto the surface, falling onto her back before her thrusters could fire, struggling to return to her feet.

 “Don't worry,” a new voice said. “Happens to us all the first time. Welcome to the BDB. I'm Lieutenant Maxwell. Structural engineer.”

 “BDB?” she asked.

 “Big Damned Ball,” he replied. “Can't think of anything better to call it.” Looking around, he added, “I've been here five times. Inside once. It's strange in there. Like nothing you've ever imagined.”

 “Cut the chatter,” Hanson said, moving over. “Let's get the cutter unloaded and see if we can crack through the alloy.”

 “I'm going to take another look at the control panel,” Harper replied.

 “Suit yourself,” Hanson said, “but it won't work. We've tried it every few minutes. Something inside must be keeping it closed. We're working on the theory that if we can crack it open even a little, we might be able to force it free. At least wide enough to get someone down there, or contact anyone still alive inside.”

 “Still alive?” Foster asked. “It's that dangerous down there?”

 “Sometimes,” Hanson replied. “Sometimes. Let's get working. And Lieutenant, as soon as you've finished wasting your time with the controls, I think your Lieutenant Lombardo could use some help with the drill. He doesn't seem to be having much luck anchoring it.”

 Flashing him a scowl, luckily invisible through her helmet, she walked over to the controls, pulling out her datapad and placing it carefully on the surface. On instinct, she tapped the release button, unsurprised when nothing happened, and looked behind her to watch Hanson staring at her, only breaking away when he realized she had spotted him.

 She glanced over at the fist-like shuttle from Endurance, parked on the far side of the airlock, and lined up the transmitter on her datapad. If they were from Earth, then their software would at least have common ancestry, and have inherited at least some of the weaknesses of earlier versions. First access was simple enough, and she smiled as she saw a familiar loading screen, the image of a company still selling software today. At least that part of their story was true.

 Now for the fun part of the exercise. She started to tap in commands, sending in some of the intrusion software she'd brought along, dug up from deep in the historical archives, programs that hadn't been used for long decades pressed into service for the occasion. She grimaced at the frustratingly slow speed of the shuttle's network, her attack hindered by the physical limitations of her target, but a piece at a time, she started to slice into the system, access growing stronger and stronger by the second.

 Then new text flashed up, writing in an unfamiliar language, one that her systems recognized as the same sort of Proto-Indo dialect used by Neander settlements back in the Milky Way, the offshoots of that long-ago interstellar war. For some reason, it was set as an optional language for the command processor, and it took a few commands to clear it out of the system.

 On a hunch, she called up the life support settings for the shuttle, and frowned. The aft section had configuration options for Neander. Dimmer lights, lower temperature. Alamo had similar settings in the crew quarters, for the comfort of Neander crewmen. She reached for her sleeve, ready to open a channel, but felt a gun in the small of her back, underneath the double oxygen tanks.

 “So you worked it out,” Maxwell said, his voice transmitted through physical contact. “If you do exactly what I tell you, I won't hurt you. You're going to have to listen for a moment.”

 Harper reached out with her tongue, and rubbed against a hidden button in her helmet. A second later, her suit thrusters fired, the blast slamming into Hanson and sending him tumbling across the surface of the sphere, end over end, his suit thrusters unable to cope with the pressure. Harper's compensated instantly, pinning her against the controls, and she turned around to face the stunned collection of engineers, reaching for the pistol in her holster.

 “Don't move, anyone,” she said. “Lombardo, Foster, corral our supposed friends from the Hegemony together.” She looked down at her controls, and said, “Someone contact Alamo. My antenna must have been damaged in that little fracas.”

 “Wait a minute,” Maxwell protested. “Look, it isn't what you think, I swear. If you just wait a moment, I'll try and explain.” She sighed, and added, “I said we should have told you right from the start, but I was overruled.”

 “It had better be one hell of an explanation.”

 “Damn it, Kris, my communicator is out as well!” Foster yelled. 

 “Mine too,” added Lombardo.

 “Someone head over to a shuttle,” Harper replied. “Try one of their systems. Maybe...”

 Before she could finish her words, a loud, deep rumble echoed from beneath her, and a thin crack of light appeared, flashing into the night. Somehow, the hatch was opening, and they were all trapped upon it. With a hundred mile drop waiting for them underneath.

 A voice crackled into her helmet, overriding her systems, and barked, “Surrender in the name of the Hierarchy, or fall to your deaths. Your call.”

 “Some choice,” Foster said. “In the name of the Confederation, I surrender our landing party.”

 “Wait a damned minute,” Hanson said.

 “While there's life, Lieutenant, there's hope,” Harper replied.

Chapter 12

 Clarke followed Kepteros, the rest of the team behind them, walking along the narrow corridors, carved deep into the rock many thousands of years ago. Ahead, they could see a flickering flame, dancing from the ground, with shapes gathered around it, kneeling in homage. Kepteros walked ahead, and one of the figures at the fire rose with an effort, his shape indistinct in the shadows beyond.

 “Sub-Lieutenant Clarke,” Kepteros said, “This is Sekura, Guardian of the Flame.”

 Nodding, the figure moved forward, age weighing his limbs. His eyes were distinct from his body, quick and alert, gathering every scrap of information about the newly arrived group, before looking questioningly at Maqua.

 “Then it is so,” the old man said. “You do work with our ancient enemies.”

 “That war was untold centuries ago,” Maqua said. “These are my friends, my shipmates.”

 “I see.” Turning to Clarke, Sekura continued, “I have a sacred responsibility, young man. Kepteros leads us in war, but the soul of our people is mine to protect, and I will risk everything to see that it is kept safe. Do not doubt that even for an instant.”

 Nodding, Clarke said, “We're here to help.”

 “Words mean nothing without actions.”

 “Lieutenant Maqua will have vouched for us,” he protested. “Our mission was one of exploration. We're trying to find a way home, back to the Milky Way.”

 “There were others, long ago, who ventured here on the same quest. They were here for a time, and then moved on. It was said by my grandfather that they had found what they were looking for through consultation with the Builders, though most of us believed that those were fables, legends. I still doubt. Though I see hope in your eyes, and would not remove it. Our universe is boundless, and all secrets confined within.” Gesturing at the flame, he added, “Take a seat. Maybe a little wisdom will leech its way into you.”

 Nodding, Clarke sat down, the others following, Mortimer grimacing as she dropped to the ground. The fire seemed to dance, and as he watched, Sekura threw a handful of dust from his pocket, causing it to flare and burn more deeply. Phosphorus, Clarke thought, but it had the required effect, drawing all eyes to stare into the flames.

 “It is surprising what you can see in the fire,” Sekura said. “Times long past, and time to come. And time eternal, such as we enjoy here.”

 “We did,” Kepteros spat, “until the Hegemony came.”

 “How long have they been in occupation?” Mortimer asked.

 “They first arrived a decade ago,” the war-leader said. “A few of them, trading parties, offering manufactured goods.” Looking up at Clarke, he added, “We aren't savages. We know what steel is, even if we've temporarily lost the ability to make it. Naturally, we accepted the offer, and at first, the trade was mutually beneficial. Slowly it began to change, and they came in larger and larger numbers, finally establishing a permanent station. That was the turning point.”

 “And eventually they had enough people to take over permanently,” Clarke said.

 “About a year ago. Where once there were a dozen, suddenly a hundred arrived, and in the middle of a shadow, we found ourselves conquered. Some were killed, those who attempted to resist. The rest surrendered, for want of any realistic alternative.” Looking around at the others, he added, “We were on a pilgrimage to the Hall of the Builders, far from here.”

 “About nine thousand miles,” Maqua said, shaking his head. “And they walked it.”

 “It is our tradition that all of our people should behold the works of the Builders once in their lives, if they are physically able to do so. My father was war-leader, and it had always been intended that I should take his place when I grew old enough to do so. When I learned of his death, I assumed that responsibility and began to fight back. They are many and we are few, but our blades are sharp, and our eyes quick.”

 “Won't work,” Mortimer said, bluntly. “They've got all the hostages they could possibly need. Including cages that I suspect are rigged to drop on demand. Ours fell easily enough. They could kill hundreds of your people any time they wanted. You might get away with the occasional assassination, but if you push it too far, they'll wipe you all out.”

 Nodding, Maqua added, “Ultimately, I suspect that's their plan anyway. They're learning everything they can about the resources of the forest and the local area. Not to mention the other ruins scattered in this region. Their final goal will almost certainly be colonization. And the Neander reduced to slaves or corpses.”

 “That will not be allowed to happen,” Kepteros insisted. Looking at Clarke and the others, he added, “Though I must admit, matters will be a lot easier with more trained warriors fighting our side, even if you have been unarmed. We have weapons for you, blades wielded by heroes in the Final War, suited for hands such as yours.”

 “Blades?” Garland said, raising an eyebrow. “Against guns.”

 “Valor, and more importantly, surprise, will be on our side,” Sekura insisted.

 “The Final War?” Mortimer asked.

 “Forty generations ago, two of our tribes battled for the land near the Portal. In those days, starships still visited, and there was rich trade. Sufficient that it was worth waging war over.” The shaman's eyes seemed to mist over, and he continued, “We began fighting with machine guns, tanks, churning up the soil. Soon we were reduced to swords, and the reasons behind the war were forgotten, other peoples either joining our conflict or leaving our lands forever.” He smiled, then added, “There is room, you see. Room that there is no need to tarry in a land in which you do not wish to live.”

 “Who won?” Garland asked.

 “The survivors,” Sekura replied.

 “But…,” Koslowski began.

 “The only winners were those who lived through it. After many years, there were few of us left, and plague and famine battered the survivors. They were forced to join together simply to stay alive through the harsh times, and finally, two generations later, we had intertwined to the point that the war was over. And our land, our culture, had been destroyed. Once, millions of us lived on the plain, in the forests, and on the hills to the north. Now this is the last outpost of our people.”

 “We shall come back,” Kepteros insisted. “In my grandfather's generation, we had barely resumed smelting ore. Our numbers increase, our herds multiply, and we shall reclaim the plains. The starships are returning, and with them, the prosperity we once knew. And by defeating our invaders, we shall gain the knowledge we need to take advantage of our territory, drive back the Hill Tribes.” 

 “Be wary of knowledge without wisdom, young one,” Sekura warned. “Or you will reap the same bitter harvest as our ancestors, and with the same ultimate result. We will take time, for there is always time. An eternity, here in the sphere.”

 “Have you always lived here?” Fox asked.

 “There are stories that our ancestors were snatched from their lands by angels. Beings with great wings who swept us from the forests of our ancient homeland and brought us here, taught us the ways of the sphere, and showed us how to live. Lessons we quickly forgot, wisdom forgotten. Just stories.”

 “Beings with wings,” Clarke mused. “Starships? Shuttles?”

 “Possibly,” Maqua replied. “My people had not dissimilar beliefs, though of course the details were very different.” Gesturing around, he added, “These tunnels date from that time. The sphere is honeycombed with them, miles deep into the alloy. Though even then, they are far younger than the sphere itself.”

 “There are beings here who claim that they have seen hundreds of thousands of generations,” Sekura said, as though reciting ancient lore. “Beings alien of shape and form, whose very visage will rip a man's soul from his body, but legends suggest that our ancestors once spoke to them, communicated with them.”

 “And the Hall of the Builders?” Mortimer asked.

 “A sacred place, where relics of the creators of the sphere reside, guarded by an ancient priesthood. A worthy goal for one wishing to quest. I visited it once myself, many cycles ago,” Sekura said with a weary sigh. “Many who attempt to trek fail, the hardships more than they can bear or the dangers besting them, leaving their bones scattered on the soil.”

 “Old ruins, and older men tending them,” Kepteros replied. “I should have been here, protecting my people, not wandering the wilds looking for answers to questions that only fools would ask.”

 “And had you been here, young one, you would be dead,” Sekura said. “As it is, you are a hope for the future of our people, one that we would not have had under other circumstances. You might be grateful for the opportunity, not resentful of it.”

 Kepteros sighed, and said, “I know. It's just...”

 Placing a hand on the young man's shoulder, Sekura softly replied, “Hard enough for a son to see his father die. Harder to learn of it cycles after the fact, and know that his murderers still roam free. I promise that you will have your revenge.”

 “And how,” Mortimer asked, “do you propose to bring that revenge about. I understand that we are to be an integral part of it.”

 “You see around you the Free Warriors of our tribe,” Kepteros said. “Each of us has wet his blade in our enemies' blood, but that is not enough. The Hegemony uses powerful detectors, technological devices that we do not understand, to warn them of approach and treachery. There are others hidden in the slave pens, ready to rise up in revolt when we give the signal, but first we must remove their advantage. You have the expertise we need.”

 Clarke looked at Mortimer, and said, “What about Lieutenant Maqua?”

 “There are three installations, Sub-Lieutenant, and one man cannot hope to cover them all, not with equipment.” Maqua sighed, then said, “I was commanding our first reconnaissance team. There were four of us, our mission to examine the ruins and conduct an initial survey of the area. I presume you had the same idea.”

 “We did,” Mortimer replied.

 “That was about five months ago, shortly after we arrived. Our team completed our initial survey, and started out for the nearest set of ruins. We figured we could be there and back in a couple of days, and Captain Orlova was planning to expand base camp while we were away. Naturally, it didn't work out that way.”

 “They were waiting to ambush you,” Clarke said.

 Nodding, Maqua replied, “At first, it was peaceful enough, and they presented themselves as traders, willing to trade information. They had thirty men hidden in the ruins, most of them with sniper rifles. We never had a chance. I was captured, I suspect because they thought they could break me more easily.” He smiled, then said, “I managed to relieve myself of my rank insignia and identity card. As far as they was concerned, I was just a maintenance technician, and an incompetent one at that. Bastards bought the whole damned story.”

 “We contacted him shortly after his arrival,” Sekura said. “The original plan was to secure assistance from Monitor, but we were unable to arrange an escape before that crew vanished.”

 “Vanished?” Garland asked. “What happened to them?”

 “I wish I knew, Spaceman,” Maqua replied. “All we know is what the guards saw. That the base went from three shuttles to six overnight, and then that the crew dispersed. Packed up and moved out, leaving only one wrecked shuttle behind.”

 “And that had been stripped down,” Mortimer replied. “By someone who knew what they were doing. We thought they were planning to use it as a base.”

 “It wasn't our captors,” Kepteros said. “They were extremely annoyed to learn that other scavengers had beaten them to the prize. They're fascinated by any scraps of technology they can find, obsessed with learning the secrets of the Builders. Fortunately, those secrets are far beyond their understanding and comprehension. Even our ancestors, born to these lands, never solved those mysteries.”

 “Spotting your shuttle landing was the answer to a prayer,” Maqua added, “Though I'm sorry to find out that Alamo is stuck out here was well.”

 “We were looking for Monitor,” Clarke said. “So I suppose we are going to ride to the rescue after all, though not quite in the way we were expecting. Though we haven't had any contact with the ship for hours. I assume Captain Salazar will send a search party sooner or later, probably in force. Can the guards up here respond to that?”

 “How much force are we talking about?”

 “Potentially a full Espatier platoon, armed with plasma weapons,” Fox said, a smile on her face. “I'd like to see them stand up against that with machine guns, and every man in the platoon is a combat veteran now. We're blooded, and we know what we're doing.” She paused, then added, “I'm surprised they haven't already arrived, actually. At least a second shuttle.”

 “We don't have any way of knowing what's going on out there,” Clarke said. “For the moment, we've got to assume that we're going to have to free your people without help.”

 “Then you will commit yourselves to our cause?” Sekura asked, worry lines forming on his aged face. “We're not used to receiving help from outsiders.”

 “Trust me,” Mortimer said. “The Triplanetary Fleet specializes in lost causes.”

 With a thin smile, Kepteros replied, “I certainly hope we don't count as one.” Gesturing around, he added, “I spent most of my childhood running around these caverns. I know them better than anyone else, and I know all of the openings to the surface like I know my dwelling. There are secret passages that lead right into the heart of the settlement, and we can use those to free our people. If you can disable the sensor network, we can do the rest.”

 “Though we won't turn down any additional help you wish to offer,” Sekura said with a smile. “We certainly have enough weapons to spare.”

 “I think you can count on us,” Maqua said. “Right, Sub-Lieutenant.”

 “Ready, willing and able, sir,” Clarke replied, snapping a salute. “What's the plan?”

 “And is it blasphemy to cook something over that open fire?” Mortimer asked. “I'm starving.”

Chapter 13

 Salazar looked across at Bowman, and said, “Report, Spaceman!”

 “Still no contact with the surface, sir, and the datastream was interrupted before we could complete the upload. We've got some preliminary notes from Lieutenant Harper, but that's about all.” He paused, then added, “Our last signals suggested some sort of surface conflict was under way, but I couldn't get any details.”

 “Portal is now fully open, sir,” Ballard added. “I can't get any good shots of the surface, but the shuttles have been scattered all across the map. One of them drifted three hundred miles before the thrusters could kick in. I've got positive track on all of them.”

 Francis frowned, then said, “We could guide them back to the portal remotely.”

 “No,” Salazar said, shaking his head. “Not until we've got some sort of idea what is happening down there. Any contact from Endurance?”

 “Nothing, sir,” Bowman replied, “And I've been trying to contact them constantly since this happened. I'm just getting a recorded response requesting that we stand-by.”

 “Distance to Endurance?” Salazar asked.

 “Ten thousand miles, sir,” Scott replied, turning from her station. “Ten minutes at full acceleration. I can plot an intercept course right way.”

 “Do it, Lieutenant. Quesada, execute the course as soon as you get it. Scott, bring the crew to battle stations, and make sure that our Hegemonic friends know precisely what we're doing. I don't want any doubt in their minds that we're ready for action.”

 “Aye, sir,” Scott said, tapping a control. “All hands to battle stations. I repeat, all hands to battle stations. Report combat status to the bridge on the double.” She ran her fingers down her console, and added, “Radiators deployed, laser cannon charging, sir. Missiles ready to fire, point-defense systems coming on-line.”

 “Is this wise, Captain?” Francis quietly asked, moving to his side. “We don't know what is happening down on the surface, and we don't know what Endurance is doing. For all we know, there's a perfectly good explanation for all of this.” 

 “If Major Moran wants to explain it all to me, I'll be more than happy to listen, Max, but all I can see is that our supposed allies seem to be going to a lot of trouble to conceal information about their past, and that it looks suspiciously like they've captured our landing team. I think a little brinkmanship is called for at the moment.” He looked up at the screen, and added, “Have Ensign Rhodes prepare First and Second Squad for immediate launch.”

 “Where are they going?”

 “Either Endurance or the surface, depending on what happens next.”

 “Sir!” Ballard. “Incipient dimensional instability, Captain! Something's coming into the system.” Flicking controls, she added, “Same basic pattern as before. Looks as though they'll be arriving at some time within the next hour. More controlled then when Endurance emerged.”

 “They might have managed some modifications to their hendecaspace drive,” Fitzroy suggested. “Chief Wu was working on that. She thinks we can alter our extra-dimensional flight profile to smooth out the ride.”

 “Have her take a look at the sensor readings, and let me know if they match her proposed drive modifications,” Salazar said. “Any reaction from Endurance yet?”

 “No course change, Captain, but she's clearing for action stations, if I'm any judge. Power spikes to the turrets, and her firewall's firming up.”

 Frowning, Scott said, “I can't help but wonder if we're about to get into a battle that neither side wants to fight.”

 “Always a possibility, Lieutenant, but there's little enough we can do about that until they decide to start talking. Time to target?”

 “Nine minutes, thirty seconds to firing range, sir,” she replied. “They're turning towards us now, but no sign of acceleration as yet. Maybe they're keeping their options open.”

 “Hell,” Francis said, “Maybe they've had communications trouble.”

 Frowning, Salazar replied, “Or maybe there's more going on over there than we know about. Ballard, we've got at least an hour before we have company, correct?”

 “Yes, sir.”

 “Could we reduce speed, delay time to contact?”

 “Of course, Captain,” Ballard said. “That would mean longer in combat range, of course, but...”

 “Good. Re-plot trajectory to bring us into firing range with Endurance in fifteen minutes, not nine, and implement change when ready.” Rising from his seat, he added, “Have Ensign Rhodes standing by in Transfer Three, and instruct Chief Kowalski to have it ready for launch as soon as I get down there.” Looking up at the viewscreen, he added, “If Endurance won't respond to our signals, I'll go and speak to them personally.”

 “Captain,” Francis protested. “You'd be wide open to an attack, and there would be nothing we could do to protect you. If they decided to fire first...”

 “With mass drivers?” Salazar asked. “I'll dance around them, Max. But just to be on the safe side, I'll take some friends with me. Have Green Flight prepare for immediate launch, to escort me to Endurance and surround the cruiser on arrival. Let's see if we can get some more good cards into our hand. You have the deck.”

 “Aye, Captain,” Francis replied with a barely-perceptible sigh. “I have the deck.”

 Stepping into the elevator, Salazar tapped the control to send him speeding down to the hangar bay, waiting impatiently to reach his destination. Francis was right. This was a risk, and probably he shouldn't be placing himself in such danger. Except that he couldn't simply sit back on the bridge and watch others fly into the fire, not this time.

 “Attention,” Scott's voice said, over the speaker. “Green Flight to prepare for immediate scramble on request. All launch crews to their stations.”

 Glancing up at the wall monitor, Salazar quickly called up a tactical view of the local environment, frowning at the display. Alamo was racing towards Endurance, with the hendecaspace point half a million miles behind. They'd both potentially be open to an attack, should some superior force emerge, and given the growing levels of dimensional instability, he had to assume the worst.

 Though in that case, he'd have only one realistic option. Flight. To one of the distant hendecaspace points in the outer belt, billions of miles away, months away under conventional power. There'd be no chance to rescue his people, those lost inside the sphere and those evidently captured on the surface. A stray thought crossed his mind, and he did his best to dismiss it, to push it away.

 There was every possibility that all of them were already dead.

 The doors slid open, and he walked onto a crowded deck, the harried Kowalski shouting at the launch crews as they prepared the fighters for launch. Rhodes stood next to the open airlock of Transfer One, a rifle on his back and another held by its strap, danging towards the floor.

 “Thought you might want a toy of your own, skipper,” he said.

 “Stow it on board,” Salazar said. “Let's hope it doesn't come to that.”

 “I agree,” the Espatier replied. “Two against the whole crew of Endurance? Too easy.”

 Shaking his head with a smile, Salazar stepped through the airlock, squeezing into the cramped cabin, and settled down into the pilot's seat, hastily strapping a headset on as he completed the pre-flight checks.

 “Salazar to Bridge. We're ready to go. Requesting launch clearance.”

 “Granted, Captain,” Francis replied. “Good luck.”

 “Let's hope we don't need it. Cycling vehicular airlock.” He tapped a control, and the shuttle began to drop through the decks, the upper hatch opening to send the vehicle sliding down to the lower hull, atmosphere sucked back into the ship as the launch cycle began. The status board to his left lit up, reports from the fighters flooded in, a proposed escort pattern appearing on the screen, confirmed with a quick flick of his wrist. Lieutenant Murphy knew her job well, and three fighters should be more than enough to deal with any threat posed by Endurance. Sufficient at least to get them quickly out of danger, should it be necessary.

 The lower hatch cracked open, and the shuttle fell away from Alamo, kicked clear by the centrifugal force of the ship's rotation. As he fired the main engine, racing towards Endurance, he looked across at the sphere, the structure that dominated the sky. If they could unlock even a few of the secrets it held, then there would be a revolution in spaceflight greater than the development of the hendecaspace drive. No more rotational gravity, and the breakthroughs that implied suggested forms of propulsion an order of magnitude better than anything they possessed.

 And yet it was not something that he could conceive fighting over. It was far too big for that. All of humanity would barely fill a thousandth of the surface area inside. All of known humanity, anyway. Bowman had been working constantly on the communications chatter he'd recorded from within, and while making contact with anyone was not yet possible, they'd detected thousands of intelligible signals.  Most of them Proto-Indo dialects, but someone was speaking English, French, Russian inside. They'd known that one colony ship had made it here, and found its way home. Others must have taken the same road, and brought their journey to an end, right here.

 “Credit for your thoughts, sir,” Rhodes said with a smile. “You looked as though you were getting a little lost, and we're four minutes from docking.”

 “Sorry,” Salazar said. “It's a little daunting. I feel so damned small.”

 “We are,” Rhodes replied. “Sometimes it really hits home just how insignificant we can be, but that's no reason to let ourselves be swallowed up.” Gesturing at the sphere, he said, “Maybe it'll take a thousand years, but we'll explore it. Contact everyone inside. Eternal exploration.”

 “Any signal from Endurance?”

 “Nothing, but they aren't making any aggressive moves either. Aside from arming their turrets, they're just sitting there.” He threw a switch, bringing a best-guess schematic onto the screen, and said, “There's a series of airlocks on the top side, near what looks a lot like a heat radiator. My guess is that it's a transverse corridor, connecting key facilities. A good place to come down.” He shrugged, then said, “We going in armed or not?”

 “Not, but have them ready if we need to fight our way out. I'm assuming that Major Moran will realize that she's holding a tiger by the tail if she tries to do anything stupid.” He frowned, looked at the sensors, then said, “That's interesting. One of those airlocks of yours just opened. Outer hatch cycling. As though we're being invited in.”

 “Maybe we're over-thinking this,” Rhodes said. “It'll be downright embarrassing if this turns out to be nothing more than a simple systems failure. We didn't even bring a toolkit with us.”

 “Salazar to Murphy. We're going to accept their invitation. I want you to do a close flyby ahead of us, then match course and speed with Endurance. If they twitch, knock out the turrets. In the event it becomes necessary, shoot to disable, not destroy. Understood?”

 “We've got your back, Captain,” the pilot replied. “Don't worry about us. We've got this covered. Watch yourselves in there.”

 “Will do, Lieutenant,” Salazar replied, nimbly turning the ship, slowly reversing into position to match the docking airlock. The standard design of the exterior hatches hadn't significantly changed in a century, the requirement for backwards compatibility overriding any potential upgrades, and the two computers mated in a heartbeat, Endurance now gently guiding the shuttle into place.

 “Thirty seconds,” Salazar said, rising from his seat. He walked over to the airlock, Rhodes moving by his side, hand poised over the hatch controls. With a loud report, the two ships linked, and a series of clangs heralded the clamps locking into position, securing them to the hull. A light winked green, and he lightly tapped the release button, keeping a hand next to the pistol nestled in the holster at his belt.

 The first thing he saw inside was a body, blood splattered on the deck, hands reaching for a salvation that would never come. Without a word, Rhodes passed Salazar the rifle, and the two of them tentatively stepped through the airlock, weapons nestled in their arms, eyes sweeping for a potential ambush.

 A figure moved across the corridor, and Rhodes moved to take a shot, stopped only by a brief shake of the head from Salazar. The two of them raced forward, turning to follow the fleeing crewman, when a loud crack echoed through the air, the sound of a gunshot. Salazar peered around the corner to spot Major Moran, pistol in hand, the man dying almost at her feet. She looked up, and raised her gun to cover Salazar, who matched the action with his rifle.

 “You may or may not believe this, Captain, but I'm actually glad to see you,” she said.

 “Then lower your weapon.”

 “As long as you do the same, I'll be willing to consider it.”

 “Skipper,” Rhodes said, “I can have the rest of the platoon here in five minutes. They're on immediate stand-by.” Looking up and down the corridor, he added, “We can secure the ship well before the new vessel arrives, put a prize crew on board.”

 Nodding, Salazar replied, “Major, I've just lost a dozen people on the surface, and in all honesty, I don't like being lied to. Nor am I disposed to trust someone who just executed one of her own crewmen. So if you please, raise your hands, and instruct your crew that they are to immediately surrender, and we won't have any further trouble. Ensign, bring on the cavalry.”

 “Aye, sir,” Rhodes replied, tapping a single button on his communicator. At Salazar's quizzical glance, he added, “Thought I'd better be prepared. Corporal Burns will be here any time now.”

 “Well, Major?” Salazar asked. “It's your move, but unless you concede the game, you won't have any chance of a repeat match.”

 “Do I have a choice?” she asked.

 “Of course you do, but I don't think that you'll enjoy the consequences of your actions, and I think you'd rather be alive to see your reinforcements entering the system.”

 “They aren't my reinforcements,” she replied, coolly. “Trust me, Captain, this isn't what...”

 “Right now, Major, I don't really care. I can see a clear and present threat to the safety of my ship and her crew, and I intend to deal with it, one way or another.”

 “Sir!” Rhodes said. “Something coming towards us, rear corridor, distance ninety feet.”

 “Warn them off, Major,” Salazar insisted. “Rhodes and I are expendable. If you consider yourself in the same category, then feel free to continue playing this little game of yours.”

 “I'm not playing a game, Captain.”

 “Sure you are,” he replied. “You just haven't realized that you've lost, yet. Now call off your people, and surrender your ship.”

 “I want your word of honor, Captain, that as soon as your people arrive, you will allow me to explain all of this to your satisfaction, and that if I do, you will return command of Endurance to me. We're allies. You've got to believe me.”

 Rhodes glanced at Salazar, and said, “Probably wouldn't hurt, skipper. Words are cheap. Lives aren't. We can take this ship, but it might get expensive if we have to hold it for any length of time. Of course, we could simply leave and blow it up. It doesn't look like they're in much shape for a fight right now.”

 “True.” Looking at Moran, he added, “Very well, Major, I will agree to accept your surrender subject to those terms. You'd better have one hell of a story to tell.”

 “Trust me, Captain, I do,” she said.

 “Trust doesn't come easily, Major, and right now you aren't doing a particularly good job of earning it.”

 She shrugged, walked over to a communicator, and said, “This is the commander. All hands, stand down. I have temporarily surrendered this ship to Captain Salazar. You will obey his orders until further notice. I say again, all hands, stand down.” Looking back at him, she added, “Shall we have that talk now?”

 “Sure. Make it good. Or that surrender will be very, very permanent.”

Chapter 14

 The gunmen ushered their captives into the waiting shuttle, Harper taking the lead, a procession of prisoners following. They'd managed to break into their communication frequencies, had isolated them from each other, making any contact impossible. Any movement resulted in an instant response from the guards, rendering even hand signals useless. Since the portal had unexpectedly opened, disgorging a collection of armored figures with strange rifles in their hands, she'd had her distress beacon at full power, but aside from an irritating red light in the corner of her heads-up display, it didn't seem to be having any effect.

 As soon as she stepped on board, it was obvious that the shuttle had been designed to carry prisoners, each of them locked into a tiny metal cocoon, further isolating them from their surroundings. The familiar hiss of pressurization never came, and snakelike tubes reached out to her backpack, supplementing her remaining oxygen. They'd be riding in vacuum, just one more method of preventing escape.

 It had been less than fifteen minutes since their capture. Any help was hours away, and she knew that Salazar would be reluctant to commit ground forces unless he had some idea where they were going, could be convinced that there was a chance of success. In his place, she'd have done exactly the same. That meant that she was reliant on her own salvation.

 The shuttle's engines roared, diving down the shaft towards the inside of the sphere, and she quickly called up the records of Clarke's original descent. At about the twenty-mile mark, she remembered glimpsing what appeared to be caverns, carved deep into the sides of the shaft. There'd been no sign of activity on the surface when their team made it down. If their captors had a hidden base somewhere inside, she figured it almost had to be in those caverns. Not that the knowledge necessarily helped her, given that all she had to work with was a brief glance from a descending shuttle, an image that could easily be a sensor ghost.

 Her suit controls were recording every detail of the situation, no attempt by her captors to deactivate them. Meaning that they had to be extremely confident of the potency of their communications block, and that they were planning to strip them of their suits upon their arrival. Hard vacuum was more effective than any security system, and the glares issued by her captors left her little confidence that they'd ever be allowed to leave the prison that was waiting for them alive.

 Unknown to them, of course, she did have a few tricks up her sleeve, but at best, she'd only have one chance to make a break for it, and unless everything worked out perfectly, she'd be on her own. There was no chance to encourage anyone else to follow her, not without risking attack and foiling her plan.

 She counted time as the engines roared, gently guiding them to their destination. The pilot had to be confident of his knowledge of the tunnel, given the astounding fuel expenditure. She'd had a good look at the shuttle, and it didn't look to have expanded tanks, not to mention the heavier-than-normal passenger cabin. Imprisoning fourteen crewmen, all in bulky spacesuits, was anything other than straightforward.

 Finally, after what seemed an eternity but was only a matter of moments, the shuttle's thrusters fired again, guiding them to the side, and she realized that they were about to land. Her sensors reported a slight increase in external pressure, far too little to breathe, but enough to indicate that they'd reached the upper levels of the atmosphere, as good as confirming her suspicions.

 The cocoon opened up, and she stepped onto the deck under the guns of her captors, one of them gesturing towards the open airlock. After a brief pause, she did as she was bid, and swung carefully across the threshold. Beyond, she saw a huge rock bridge, fifty feet wide, leading deep into a huge cavern beyond, thousands of meters deep. The gravity was low, and every step was a huge bound, a guard leading the way towards a shining light at the far end. Doubtless their base, and judging by the low rumble she could make out from her helmet speakers, also the source of the interference that was jamming communications.

 She risked a quick glance at the cavern below, jagged rocks miles down, tunnels and passages snaking off in all directions. A perfect place to get lost in, if she could manage to get clear. Each step took her closer and closer to irredeemable captivity. With her left hand, she reached for a touch-pad at the end of her glove, sliding a hidden lever that started a ten-second countdown, while using her tongue to activate a control inside her helmet.

 Without warning, her suit thrusters fired, sending her soaring towards the guard, an obsidian blade sliding out of a hidden compartment in her glove. She slashed at the figure, ripping a gaping hole in his suit, then hurled herself from the bridge, diving into the hidden depths below. Instantly, her thrusters started firing, working to stabilize her, but she overrode the system with the tap of a control, instead randomly dodging from side to side, the guards overhead quickly reacting to her escape.

 A bright beam of light raced past her, slamming into the floor, and her eyes widened. Laser rifles, in combat. Nothing they'd ever made work. Something to take a look at, even if the power drain would be prohibitive. She risked a glance up, watched three of the guards carefully aim, choosing their targets and waiting for a clear shot that she had no intention of offering. Her goal was down in the caverns, hoping to lose herself in the twisted tunnels, on the basis that if she didn't know where she was going, neither would they.

 Another laser blast slammed into the ground to her right, briefly melting the rock, exposing the dull hull metal beneath, an alloy capable of withstanding any weapon they had. A part of her was curious about the effect of a plasma explosion on the material, but she quickly decided that such an investigation could wait until she could be well clear of the sphere.

 On her heads-up display, a sensor blip appeared, a figure following her into the abyss. She glanced behind her, working her camera controls in a bid to get a look, but all she could tell was that it wasn't a crewman from Alamo. The guards and the other prisoners wore fundamentally identical spacesuits, in itself a matter that raised her eyebrow. Futilely, she tried her communicator again, only receiving the same roar of static in reply. Her beacon was still transmitting, but getting no further than the mouth of the cave. Belatedly, she turned it off. If she managed to escape, the last thing she needed was to guide her pursuers directly to her position.

 A final laser pulse caught the rock, and she tapped her thrusters to speed her descent, sending her dropping into a low spiral, down to the floor of the cavern. Before she could reach the button, she tapped another control to send her back up, diving into the nearest passage, flicking on her helmet light to reveal nothing but inky, endless blackness beyond, as far as she could detect. Her sensors showed turns and junctions aplenty ahead, and she entered a command into her suit computer to guide her on a random course, while she returned to her heads-up display, trying to work out her position.

 Pressure and gravity matched the readings they'd obtained from Clarke's descent. The surface was eighty miles away, and they were only twenty miles from the surface. She looked back at the shaft, but an attempt to break out that way would be doomed to failure. Even if she did manage to get past the guards once again, and her thruster fuel held out long enough to reach the gravity field beyond, Alamo was five hours away at best acceleration. The odds of any of their shuttles still being in serviceable condition seemed remote, certainly nothing she would want to bet her life on. Though even one brief signal back to the ship might be worthwhile.

 She allowed herself to drift on, only the suit computer monitoring her path, then glanced behind her to spot a shadow in the darkness, moving close by. Overriding the automatic controls, she gently guided herself into a tunnel her sensors told her curved back on itself, taking her back to the central corridor, then killed her velocity, drifting into a hole in the rock, killing her helmet lights.

 A figure moved on, the jumper from before, with a patch slammed over his leg where an angry black burn had ripped through the fabric. Convincing, but not conclusive, and with communications dead, she had no way of talking to him, finding out what side he was on. Her stealth was almost a waste of time if his on-board sensor package was anything like the match of hers, but the suit design was primitive enough that she thought she might have an advantage.

 Reaching out with her glove, the blade still in position, she waited for the figure to move past her, then slashed forward, missing the figure's suit by inches, reaching out with her other hand to snatch at his controls, stabbing what she thought was the pressure regulator, instantly cutting it to a level that would leave him unconscious in a minute. The figure quickly grew limp in his suit, and ceased to struggle, allowing Harper to drag him into cover, and look through his visor.

 Hanson. With bruises on his forehead from the battering given to him by the guards. The suit was a new model of an older type, but a quick check of the controls allowed her to slave the life support system to her pack, connecting a cord to interface the two computers. It was sluggish, slow, but after a few minutes she had drained all the information she could find from the figure.

 She looked at the rip again, and cursed under her breath. At first glance, she had thought that he was the luckiest man in the galaxy, that the beam had missed his leg while tearing his suit, but a cursory check revealed that the patch had been in position for long enough for the flexible outer seal to dry in place, more than ten minutes. There'd been no fighting on the surface. He had to have planned this, all in advance, perhaps with a spare suit waiting for him in the shuttle.

 The next step had to be swift. She reached into her pocket for a sensor drone, then downloaded the codes for Hanson's distress beacon onto it, setting it to randomly walk its way through the tunnels. It had enough fuel to last for hours in this gravity, more than enough time to lead any group of pursuers a merry chase, and put them well and truly off the scent. She tossed it into the air, watching with a smile as it drifted away, then looked up at the ceiling, her helmet light flashing back on.

 All the walls were covered with pictograms, the same design she had encountered on the surface, and her computer quickly began the translation process, warning of the low accuracy rate. One by one, words began to appear, but it would take the better part of an hour to decode them all. Not a problem. Time was the one thing she had plenty of. Her suit had enough air to last for forty hours, more if she was careful. Either it would all be over by then, or she'd have no choice but to turn herself in. A decision she would postpone until the last possible moment.

 Her sensor pinged for a moment, detecting figures in the darkness, a quarter-mile away, and for a heartbeat she thought that she'd been spotted, that somehow the guards had managed to track her in the gloom. She released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding when they turned away, obviously following the sensor into the deep caverns. As a bonus, she could switch into the data feed at will, get a good look at her pursuers. Five of them, all armed with normal rifles. Evidently the laser rifles were more for show than actual use.

 Content that she was safe, at least for the moment, she looked at Hanson's life support system again, and frowned. There didn't seem any chance that he could get away, but a little reprogramming of his suit control systems would lock him into the most secure prison she could imagine. That would take about as long as the translation, and allow her to wake the traitor up at her leisure. Pulling another datalink out of her pocket, she jabbed it into the access port in his pack, and smiled as data started to stream in.

 “Just relax, Lieutenant,” she muttered with glee. “Trust me, this won't hurt a bit.”

Chapter 15

 Moran sat down at her desk, looking up at Salazar as he took the seat opposite her, one eye on the status panel overhead. Two of his troopers stood outside at parade rest, weapons at the ready, anxiously watching the corridor beyond. He placed his communicator down on the table, sliding a control to activate the speaker.

 “Salazar to Francis. Report.”

 “Bridge, Engineering, Weapons are all secured, sir. We're moving into close formation with Alamo, and estimate maneuver complete in ten minutes. Incoming ship will be arriving in the system thirty-one minutes later. All signs show two ships, cruiser-type, roughly the same scale as Endurance, if our readings are correct.”

 “Thank you, Lieutenant. Inform me immediately if there is any change.” Looking across at Moran, he continued, “Well, Major, the floor is yours.”

 She nodded, sighed, then said, “I should have told you from the beginning. Maxwell recommended it. I didn't think that I could take the risk, and I'd hoped that we'd have completed our mission before you'd have a chance to find out.” Sitting back in her chair, she continued, “I was an officer in the Hegemonic Fleet. We all were. Until eight months ago.”

 “What happened?”

 “An outbreak of sanity. I portrayed our people as being a peace-loving power. We aren't. When we arrived, as our documentation showed, we found another human race down there. Neander. I understand that you have some in your crew.”

 Nodding, Salazar said, “We made first contact with a Neander world five years ago. There are quite a few serving in the Fleet now, more in training. Thousands of citizens.”

 “And they are treated equally?”

 With a thin smile, he replied, “As equally as I'd treat any other Recruit Spaceman. With kid gloves and harsh language where needed. I take it that isn't true for your people?”

 “When Tempest, our colony ship, arrived in orbit, we immediately saw evidence of a primitive civilization on the surface. They'd barely learned how to smelt bronze, but there were orbital installations everywhere. We quickly learned that there had been a global nuclear war, five hundred years before, enough to knock civilization all the way back to the Stone Age.”

 “And you decided to take advantage of the situation.”

 “It wasn't that way at first. We thought we were helping, bootstrapping them to our mutual advantage. Over time, it all went wrong. Gradually, they went from becoming our partners to our servants, then our slaves.” With a bitter laugh, she added, “The irony? At their height, they were centuries ahead of us. The faster-than-light drive we use was pieced together from old records, damaged in the Final War.”

 “What happened, eight months ago?”

 She sighed, and said, “I signed up for deep-space to get away from all of that. Maybe I hoped things might be different eventually, that as they caught up with us, equality would happen.”

 “More realistically, a massacre.”

 “Probably,” she replied with a nod. “We're heading for it, I think. And the worst part is that I don't know which side I'd be on.” Looking down at the deck, she continued, “We've found a few scattered worlds, but recently, we found another Neander world, and this one was on the verge of spaceflight, an expanding technological civilization.”

 “My God,” Salazar said. “Your people declared war, didn't they.”

 Nodding, she added, “Endurance was there. We refused to obey the order, tried to buy the locals as much time as we could, but in the end, there was nothing we could do. We jumped away, licked our wounds, and hid. Outlawed and hunted. Since then, we've engaged our old comrades five times, and the best we've been able to manage is a stalemate.”

 “You wanted to hide out on the Sphere?” Salazar asked. “Give up the fight?”

 “The thought had crossed my mind, but that wasn't the idea. We know that there are advanced civilizations in there, and some of them are Neander. I'd hoped to enlist some of them to help us, provide us with equipment, technology, volunteers, anything to give us an edge.” She ran her hand over her forehead, then said, “Though to be honest, I'm not sure what we're going to accomplish. If we do destroy the Hegemonic Fleet, the best-case is probably a massacre that will wipe out every non-Neander on the planet.”

 “Does that mean you're giving up?” Salazar asked. “And I think I can guess where we come in. You wanted to enlist us in your fight, or at least make use of our technological expertise in getting into the sphere.”

 “That's the idea,” she replied. “I was going to tell you more, as soon as I was convinced that I could trust you. We've been going over all of the information you sent us on your history, your culture. I had to be certain I wasn't inviting in a worse conqueror, but we've run out of time.” She paused, looking out at the corridor, then added, “As soon as we detected the incoming ship, I found myself facing a mutiny. A dozen key people, but it was enough to disrupt communications. My presumption is that they hoped to force the two of us into fighting each other, and they came a lot closer to accomplishing that than I feel comfortable with.”

 “I presume you have proof of all of this?” Salazar asked.

 “My team are compiling it now...”

 “Not enough,” he replied. “You will give Senior Lieutenant Francis complete and unfettered access to your systems, and if I find that there is so much as a gigabyte he doesn't have access to, my people will remain in control.” He paused, then added, “The surface team?”

 “We know that the Hegemony has some people inside the Sphere. We've been visiting since we first discovered it, more than a decade ago. I didn't have any idea how many, but they must be behind the capture of our people. It's the only explanation that makes any sense.” Leaning forward, she said, “Captain, I know that I haven't given you many good reasons to trust us, and I know that you could simply walk away from this...”

 “That's one thing I can't do,” he replied. “Not with my people captured down there, and certainly not with a ship coming into the system. I assume that one of your ships has decided to come looking, and that they are the same people who destroyed Monitor?”

 “I assume so,” she replied. “If I'd anything definitive, I'd have told you. Hell, it would have been to my advantage, given you more of a reason to join our fight. I had no reason to lie about that. But the weaponry is consistent with some of our heavier cruisers, and they did lose a ship out here about four months ago. If it is any consolation, your people arranged their own revenge.”

 “Revenge won't bring them back,” Salazar replied, rubbing his eyes. “So let me get this straight. You've dragged us into the middle of a civil war, and expect us to intervene on the losing side, with the reward for victory the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and have managed to get a dozen of my people locked into a technological artifact the like of which neither of us have ever seen.”

 “That's about it, yes.”

 Taking a deep breath, Salazar replied, “I don't have any more latitude in this than you do. I'm operating independently, which does give me a little more freedom of action, but we're going to have bad guys coming into the system in a matter of moments, and I have the idea that they won't be discriminating between us. We're stuck with your war whether we like it or not.”

 A smile spread across Moran's face, and she said, “Then you will help us.”

 “Let's just say that we're in an alliance of convenience for the moment, and leave it at that for the time being.” Raising a hand, he added, “Don't get the idea that all of this is going your way. I still don't completely trust you, so these are my terms. First of all, one Espatier squad will remain on board until further notice, and they will be monitoring all areas. Senior Lieutenant Francis and Midshipman Petrova will also remain, and I assure you that they will be watching your actions extremely carefully, with orders from me to assume command of Endurance if they think it necessary. Tactically, we will operate as a two-ship squadron, and I will be in command of the formation. This arrangement to hold until after the fight. We can talk again later about a longer-term relationship. As far as I am concerned, my priorities remain the same. To recover my people, protect my ship, and find a way back to our own galaxy. Anything else would be a nice bonus prize.”

 She nodded, then said, “Right now, I suppose that's about the most I can hope for.”

 Salazar's communicator chirped again, and Scott's voice echoed through the room.

 “Emergence in fifteen minutes, Captain.”

 “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he replied. “I'm on my way.” Looking at Moran, he added, “Send over all tactical data on ships in your fleet, with a strong emphasis on any exploitable weaknesses.”

 “Will do, Captain. And thank you.”

 “Good hunting, Major,” he replied, walking out into the corridor, turning towards the docking airlocks. Francis was waiting for him outside, arms crossed, with an Espatier standing behind him as bodyguard.

 “I take it the meeting went well?” Francis asked.

 “As well as could be expected,” Salazar replied, taking the lead down the corridor. “At least the problem reduces down nicely. Kill two enemy ships. A tactical problem like that I can deal with. We can sort out the politics later.” He paused, then said, “Go over their database with as much detail as you can in the time we have.”

 “I'm not going to be able to get anything definitive in fifteen minutes. Not with a battle coming up, and troopers running all over the place.” He shook his head, then added, “I haven't even had a proper chance to check over the ship's schematics yet.”

 “You want me to send any more people over?”

 Shaking his head, Francis said, “With Foster, Harper and Mortimer off the ship, I think you're short-handed enough as it is. We'll manage with what we've got. I'm hoping that my role will consist of standing at the back of the bridge and pretending that I've got some idea about what I'm doing. Basically the same as usual.”

 Cracking a smile as he stepped into the airlock, Salazar replied, “I wasn't going to be the first one to say that.” Pausing before working the mechanism, he added, “Good hunting, Max. And don't get too far from that bodyguard of yours. I don't exactly trust Moran yet.”

 “Neither do I,” he said. “Though if her story is true...”

 “How much of it did you hear?”

 “I might have been listening in over the communicator,” Francis replied. “If her story is true, Captain, then what are you going to do about it? Granted that we have a significant technological advantage over Hegemonic vessels, they'll have us outnumbered a hundred to one, and we'll still have the problem of what to do if we win the war.”

 “Your judgment?”

 “The same as yours. That getting home has to be our top priority, though I suppose it has occurred to you that Cosmograd isn't that far away, and that sooner or later the Hegemony will make it out that far. Though I suppose the sphere remains a safe haven.”

 Nodding, Salazar replied, “I can't help but think that Captain Orlova might have come to the same conclusion, and so far we've heard nothing from any potential survivors. I suppose it's possible that they managed to get lost in there somewhere, but until further notice, we stay on Alamo.” With a sigh, he added, “Let's just get this battle out of the way first. We might know a lot more afterward, and be in a better position to make some sort of informed decision.”

 “Or, of course, they might beat us.”

 “In which case all of this ceases to concern us in any case.” He looked down the corridor, and said, “If it all goes to hell, if you really don't have any other choice, try and make it down into the sphere. At least it will give us a chance to regroup. But only as a last resort.”

 “Understood,” Francis said. “Good luck.”

 “And to you.”

 Salazar slid into the pilot's couch, throwing the controls to release the docking clamps and send the shuttle on its way to Alamo, tactical updates flooding the screen. For once he left the autopilot to work alone, guiding him home, while he concentrated on the battle to come. Months ago, Captain Orlova had almost certainly faced the same basic problem, and the result had been a wrecked ship and a lost crew. They'd yet to find any evidence that there had been any survivors. The absence of dead bodies wasn't necessarily conclusive, not after all those months.

 On the face of it, the problem was simple enough. Two ships entering the system, likely with laser armament, opposing two ships in the system with fighter support. On paper, it should be an easy victory, but Captain Orlova was a skilled tactician. She wouldn't have been defeated easily. As the shuttle slowly cruised between the ships, Salazar looked out at the sphere again, a frown on his face.

 There was nothing he could do for the people trapped down there, not now. He couldn't spare a single trooper. And yet something nagged at him, at the back of his mind. Reaching across for a control, he brought up the newly-arrived schematics from Endurance, confirming his initial suspicions. They had laser-armed cruisers, less powerful than Alamo's weapon. While they'd be lucky to escape sustaining some damage, they ought to be able to smash the enemy force.

 And the enemy commander would know that. Or at least, the people he had in the system would be aware of it. If they didn't think the incoming force could win, then they'd have done a lot more than they did to work against Alamo, timed their attempt to take Endurance more precisely. Rather than preventing a battle, it almost felt as though he was being urged on.

 Tactical doctrine was clear. He had the ability to engage the enemy as soon as they arrived in the system, opening with a fighter strike to disable their primary weapons before moving in for the kill with Alamo and Endurance. It could all be over in seconds. But it could never be that simple.

 It was a trap. It had to be. There had to be something else on the table, something that would allow the incoming ships to overwhelm Alamo. Assume that Endurance alone had originally been the target, assume that the agents on board that ship had sufficient intelligence and autonomy to modify their plan. And that there had to be a reason that their team on the surface had been captured, something they were about to discover.

 “Salazar to Alamo and Endurance,” he said. “Alter course. Proceed as close as possible to the portal. Astrogation to calculate just how close that is without risking being drawn to the surface. Engage as soon as ready, and all fighters are to return to base.”

 “Scott to Salazar. Request confirmation.”

 “My orders stand, Lieutenant. There's an additional factor we don't know about, and my guess is that it's something down in the sphere. We're going to find out what.”

 “And the enemy ships?”

 “We'll have a good head-start on them, and if I'm just being overly paranoid, we'll still be able to attack them at a time and place of our choosing. Start crunching the numbers, Lieutenant. Before our friends can arrive and gatecrash the party.”

 As the ships started to alter course, Salazar worked the controls, adjusting the shuttle's trajectory to ensure that he wasn't left behind in their wake. He looked out at the sphere, strange and serene in the distance, and frowned. Anything could be buried inside, secrets that the Hegemony might be ready to use against them. Though his original fear still held strong. If the builders of the sphere had decided to take sides in the impending battle, no amount of tactical trickery could save them.

 “Transfer One to Alamo,” he said, as the battlecruiser loomed ahead. “Requesting landing clearance.”

 “You are cleared for Airlock Two, sir,” Quesada replied. “Welcome home.”

 “Thank you, Sub-Lieutenant,” he said with a smile, as the shuttle drifted smoothly into position between the docking clamps. To the rear, thirty thousand miles away, the dimensional interference was growing rapidly, ready to disgorge the ships lurking in hendecaspace. As soon as they arrived, the fun would really begin.

Chapter 16

 Clarke hefted the sword in his hand, the tempered steel blade perfectly balanced for battle. Strange symbols had been carved onto the metal, blessings to ancient gods, according to Sekura. He just hoped they were looking down on him with favor tonight, assuming they had ever existed. As he crept along the tunnel, crouching low, he glanced back at the rest of his team, at Mortimer and Garland, and could hardly stop himself from laughing.

 The situation was absurd. He was an officer on an interstellar spacecraft, trained in the use of automatic weapons, plasma carbines, laser cannons. And he was creeping into an enemy compound, sword in hand, as though the clock had been turned back hundreds of years. He caught a twinkling gleam from Mortimer's eye. She felt it, as well. The same sense that they were out of their own time, had stepped back into history.

 In the flight out here, they'd had half a dozen fencing bouts in Alamo's gym, but that was totally different. Light, thin blades, stylized rules of combat, and protective armor. All he was wearing was his battered uniform, tears in the fabric on his arms and legs, and he knew he couldn't count on any of the guards up above obeying any rules other than those of pure survival. And unlike his party, they were equipped with a cornucopia of deadly and advanced weapons, and would not refrain from using them. 

 Still, the swords did give them the advantage of stealth. The designer had incorporated something into the metal to take away the gleam, turning it into a cold, dark blade, and in the total darkness above, there was no danger of a stray beam of moonlight giving them away. Silence and stealth were about the only advantages they had, and they were going to have to use them to the full.

 They'd walked for what felt like hours, down twisting tunnels, at one point waist-deep in the icy waters of an underground lake, before finally starting to curve back up towards the surface. He glanced at his watch and redoubled his pace. Fox and Maqua were somewhere on the other side of the settlement, getting ready to prepare a distraction for the guards, and they would only have a handful of minutes to press their attack home. They had to use them to the full.

 “Almost there,” he said in hushed whispers. “You all know what to do.”

 “We're ready,” Mortimer said. “Let's get this over with.” She held up her sword, then said, “We'll have to match with these when we get back to the ship. Ought to be an interesting bout.”

 “As long as we've got Doc Strickland on standby,” he replied. “Let's go.”

 The three of them raced from the tunnel as a roaring explosion erupted from the far side of the settlement, a handful of stolen grenades carefully modified by Fox to produce the loudest possible report. A pillar of smoke raced into the sky, and the siren call of a warning alarm began to wail, searchlights racing around. In the wrong direction.

 There were three sensor monitoring stations, scattered on the perimeter of the settlement. And a couple of dozen Neander, all armed and ready, waiting for them to be disabled to allow them to launch their attack. Clarke raced into the night, ducking from tree to tree, keeping in the shadows as he made for his target, while Garland and Mortimer dashed in different directions, out of sight in an instant.

 Most of the guards seemed to have been drawn away, just as they had hoped, and staccato blasts of machine-gun fire echoed into the night, shouts and calls as their enemies reacted to the wrong threat. He could see the sensor relay, only a single figure standing guard, rifle at the ready, eyes nervously darting around.

 If he'd had any useful ranged weapons, this would be easy. As it was, he was going to have to trust to speed, and he raised his sword, taking a deep breath as he charged forward, sprinting madly across the open ground. The guard reacted, swinging his rifle around to cover him, but he was too late, and Clarke's sword swept through the air, hacking into the man's side, sending blood streaming down his jacket. Snatching the rifle with one hand, he reached for the sensor panel, quickly glancing around to watch for potential attackers as he began to work.

 It was a familiar design, a much older model of the same systems used in Triplanetary installations, inherited from the days of the Interplanetary War. Without hacking software, there wasn't much he could do to permanently wreck it without explosives, but he quickly started a diagnostic check, disabling it for a critical ten minutes. By then, the battle would be over.

 He heard another explosion, somewhere in the darkness, and turned to see flickering flames running through the night. That hadn't been in the battle plan. The enemy were regrouping, responding fast. Leaving the sensor station, he sprinted for the nearest cover, hurling himself behind a cluster of bushes, his newly acquired rifle raised and at the ready. Ahead of him, he saw a trio of enemy guards sliding down a tree.

 Three easy targets.

 Leveling the rifle to his shoulder, he squeezed the trigger, a loud report echoing from the trees as his first target fell, slumping to the ground. His comrades attempted to make for cover, but he felled the second one before he could make it, leaving only a sole figure left, transfixed, knowing that he was taking his final breath. Once more, Clarke squeezed the trigger.

 Nothing happened.

 He cursed, looking at the weapon, and struggled with the clip release. Jammed, and beyond his ability to repair without tools. The third guard, unable to believe that he was still alive, charged forward, pistol in hand, taking a wild shot towards him, the bullet slamming into a tangle of tree roots by his side.

 Swinging the rifle in the air, he hammered it down on the man, smashing the butt into his shoulder with sufficient force to dent the metal, a loud crack announcing that he'd broken the guard's collarbone. He looked down for the pistol, lost in the shadows, then tossed the useless rifle away, drawing his sword once again.

 The crack of gunfire filled the night, but there was no order, no rhythm to the shots. This wasn't an organized battle, but a collection of individual firefights, and that was a fight the Neander could win. By now, if all had gone to plan, Garland and Mortimer would have disabled the rest of the sensor network, and Kepteros would be leading his force across the perimeter.

 His assigned mission was over, but he still had a job to do, and he raced towards the tallest tree, looking up at the swinging cells, waving back and force in the breeze, loaded with dozens of hostages. Already, shapes were moving around the treetops, and he feared the worse. That once the occupying force had realized there was no way for them to win, they might attempt to execute a bloody revenge on their captors.

 He took the first rungs of the ladder in a single bound, the sword safely in his hand as he scaled the side of the tree, frantically attempting to reach the top before an atrocity could take place. Beneath him, the battle raged, cordite and wood smoke filling the air, flickering flames all around. Sleek shapes raced below him, and he realized belatedly that they were horses, freed during the combat, stampeding into the enemy lines. Somehow, he detected the handwork of Mortimer in their escape.

 Panting for breath, he struggled ever higher, sweat pouring from his brow, as he tried not to think about the hundred-foot fall beneath him. This ladder had obviously only been intended as an emergency access, the slippery sap forcing him to test each handhold before he dared trust his weight to it.

 Finally, he made it to the top, staggering onto the gantry, and looked around to see two guards, one at each end of the platform, both with knives in their hands. There were two long cords, and if they were cut, the final result would be inevitable. The cages would fall to the ground, killing everyone inside.

 The guards had pistols in their hand, and there was no cover. Just a killing ground, fifty feet long. He'd be target practice if he made the attempt, but if he didn't hundreds of people would fall to their deaths as he watched. He glanced at the nearest cage, half a dozen children nestled against a woman, covered by a blanket. That they were Neander didn't even register to him. A red rage washed across him, and he charged down the gantry towards the nearest guard, sword high, knowing that even if he could delay the guards for a moment, that might be enough.

 His feet ate up the gantry before the guard could notice him, his sword swinging dangerously around, threatening to throw him off-balance. The pistol rose, firing two shots into the night, one of them close enough that he felt the air racing past, but he reached the figure first, the sword slicing into his leg, knocking him off-balance, sending him tumbling from into the darkness below. He tumbled end over end, smashing into the branches of the tree on his way down, facing the fate he had planned for the trapped Neander.

 On the far side of the gantry, the other guard was moving up, anxious to both avenge his comrade and avoid sharing his fate. He had Clarke cold, pistol raised and steady, carefully moving closer to take the shot that would end his life. A bullet cracked through the air, and Clarke looked down at his chest, missing the second guard tumbling to the ground, falling to the side, a bullet neatly ripping into his neck.

 Maqua clambered up to the gantry, a beaming smile on his face, and said, “Great work, Sub-Lieutenant! Damned great work!” Gesturing to the ground, he said, “It's all over down there. Just a few of them fleeing into the woods, but they won't be any trouble.”

 Clarke dropped to the ground, shaking, and said, “I thought I was dead.”

 “Sergeant Fox found a sniper rifle. I think she had the same idea as you, but was planning to use different tactics to achieve it.” Looking down at Clarke, he said, “Hundreds of people are alive because of what you just did.” He reached for him with a hand, and said, “Come on. We've still got work to do.”

 Nodding, Clarke scrambled to his feet, making for the ladder, this time taking his time to descend with care. Up above, eyes were tracking him down, beaming smiles on the faces of the captives, a murmur of conversation as they awaited their escape. Dropping down to the ground, he looked around at the carnage in the village, scattered bodies, human and Neander, being dragged into long columns, groups of erstwhile warriors racing to douse the spreading fires before they could threaten the huts in the trees. Kepteros walked forward, arms outstretched, and hurled himself around Clarke in a tight bear hug.

 “I'm sorry,” the Neander said.

 “For what?” Clarke asked.

 “I shouldn't have doubted you.” Gesturing at the prison tree, he said, “What you did up there was heroic. Epic. We'll be signing your name in ballads for generations.” Tapping the sword, he added, “That belonged to Stoklos. Four generations ago, he led us in battle against the Hill Tribes, recaptured a hundred prisoners that had been taken as slaves. I think it fitting that you should retain it. I know that it will never be wielded against the interests of our people.”

 Holding up the weapon, Clarke looked at Maqua, then nodded, saying, “Thank you. That means a lot.”

 “Sir,” Fox said, dragging a man behind her. “We've got a few prisoners, and some of them seem to have decided to start cooperating.” Looking down at the battered man, she said, “Talk.”

 Looking up, panicked eyes darting about, the man said, “I didn't do anything.”

 “Talk!” Fox insisted. “Tell him about the captives.”

 “Captives?” Clarke asked.

 “Up on the surface. Our people captured about a dozen engineers from Alamo and Endurance. They're being held in the high caverns, to be used as hostages.”

 “Endurance?”

 “A rebel ship. One of our missions was to capture it. We knew they were coming here, and we were to take prisoners and lure them into range of the jammer. Commander Klein is hoping to take both ships as prizes.” He looked up, and said, “Don't kill me. Please. I didn't do anything!”

 “Is that true?” Maqua asked. 

 “Sensor maintenance technician. No record of any atrocities, but that doesn't mean he's on the side of the angels,” Fox said. “I found him hiding in the stables after the fighting.”

 “I guess that explains the smell,” Clarke said, wrinkling his nose. “Where are these caverns? Up in the shaft?”

 “Yes,” he replied. “We set up a monitoring station there, years ago. To watch for any other arriving starships. That's how we found your two shuttles.”

 Stepping forward, Maqua said, “What happened to Monitor?”

 “You'll kill me if I tell you.”

 “I'll kill you if you don't.”

 Looking down at the ground, he said, “Two of our ships managed to catch her by surprise. She was destroyed by our forces when they failed to surrender. I know that some shuttles made it into the sphere, but they headed out into unknown country, away from our territory, before we could capture them. They had better weapons than we did, so Klein ordered us to let them leave.”

 Maqua nodded, then turned to Kepteros, and said, “What are you going to do with them?”

 “There are a couple of dozen that we have specific plans for,” the Neander said with a dark scowl on his face. “Those who committed crimes, atrocities. Most of them seem to have died in the fight. A mercy they frankly didn't deserve. As for the others, we don't intend to allow them to rejoin their comrades.” Looking at the sniveling man, he added, “They will be taken, one at a time, to a spot a hundred miles from here, blindfolded to prevent them from finding their way, and released. With a warning that if ever one of our people sees them again, they will die.”

 Nodding, Clarke replied, “I can't argue with that. I have to admit...”

 “We are not savages, Sub-Lieutenant. We do not murder out of hand, or we'd be no better than they were.” Clapping Clarke on the shoulder, he said, “It lacks two hours until shadow's rise.”

 “We can't wait for that,” Clarke said. “If Alamo is under threat, we've got to take action first. This jamming device,” he asked, turning back to the guard. “It's in the high caves?” Taking a breath, he added, “If you tell us everything we need to know, then I will see that you are given a knife and some food before you are released. That might keep you alive a little longer.”

 “Or if you prefer,” Mortimer said, “A pistol with a single bullet. That's what they used to give to sailors marooned as a punishment, back on Old Earth.”

 Frowning, Kepteros said, “We're not going to be ready to move out for hours. We've got wounded, and we need to make sure those bastards don't try for some sort of counter-attack.”

 “I understand,” Clarke said. “What can you give us?”

 “Horses,” Sekura replied. “Fast horses, as swift as the wind. They could cover the distance between here and the shuttle in a few hours. They were bred for raw speed.” A smile crossed his face, and he added, “You will find them eager mounts.”

 “Horses?” Fox said, looking uncertainly at Clarke. “Sir, I don't know about this.”

 “What about their buggy?” Maqua asked.

 Kepteros gestured towards one of the larger fires, and said, “They tried a last stand there. A pair of captured grenades brought their battle to an end, but I'm afraid there's nothing much left to salvage. I can spare a couple of guides for you, and I'll follow with everyone I have as soon as I can.”

 Nodding, Clarke said, “Garland, you'd better stay behind and help with the wounded. Koslowski can act as liaison with the second wave. See what sort of weaponry you can come up with. What's the situation with firearms?”

 “Plenty of rifles, damn little ammunition,” Fox reported. “We all spent it like water.”

 “Then we'll just have to make do with what we've got.” Turning to the cringing guard, he added, “And while you corral us some horses, you and I are going to have a conversation.”

 “You know,” Mortimer said, “Sometimes you have a real mean streak, John.”

 “Whatever the occasion demands.”

Chapter 17

 Harper gave the data cord a brief tug, making sure that it was in position, then reached down to the control pad on her wrist, carefully bringing up the pressure in Hanson's suit. The traitor's eyes jerked open, and he found himself sprawled on a rock, with Harper a hundred feet away, sitting in the shadows. She raised a hand as he struggled to his feet, and shook her head.

 “I wouldn't. You see, I have complete control of your suit's life support system, and at the touch of a single button you'll find yourself breathing vacuum.” Gesturing at the cord, she said, “Your communication system is fried as well. That cord is the only way you can talk to me. Pull it out, and, well, let's just say that bad things happen.” She smiled, and added, “In the remote chance that you did find some way to overpower me, it wouldn't do you any good. Unless I enter a ten-digit code every three minutes, all of your oxygen will be vented into space.”

 “My people will come and get me.”

 “If you're talking about the beacon on your suit, it's five miles away and getting more distant by the moment. You really didn't cover your tracks very well.” She paused, glanced to the side, then said, “Have you ever read the Arabian Nights?”

 “What?”

 “The Arabian Nights. You must at least be aware of the basic premise. The Sultan's Wife told stories to her husband, making them interesting enough that he elected not to have her executed. Well, today we're going to be taking part in a reenactment of that story. I will be the part of the Sultan, you the wife. And you'd better keep me interested, or I might decide to stop entering that coded sequence. I will give you one brief ray of hope, though. Scheherazade had to keep her husband occupied for a thousand and one nights. I'll settle for an hour or so.”

 “And if I talk, it's just a slower death. You won't let me live.”

 “Not necessarily,” she replied. “Yes, you're not leaving this spot under your own power. I already dumped all of your thruster fuel into my suit, and you've only got six hours of oxygen left at the outside. Should my side win, I'll send someone to come and get you, and promise that you will be treated as a prisoner of war.” She settled back, and said, “I already cracked most of your database, so I'm aware of your relationship with Endurance. And for the record, knowing that you have chosen the side of slave-holding mass-murderers hasn't endeared me to you.”

 “I wouldn't expect you to understand our situation, our problems. If you let me go, then...”

 “That isn't going to happen, Lieutenant, and I think we both know that. As I was saying, I've already managed to brief myself about the basic situation, but there was remarkably little on the actual reasons for our capture, and the purpose of this installation. I assume you were concerned that we were going to find a way to crack through the sphere, potentially discover this place, but so far all I've found are the same sort of ruins that our landing teams reported on the surface. They don't seem to be worth dying for.”

 “I'm going to need more than a theoretical promise of survival to help you.”

 Scowling, Harper replied, “Now, Lieutenant, I'm afraid I'm not finding these protests particularly interesting, and I might have to start considering withdrawing your oxygen. I'm certain that I can find my own way out of here, and will almost certainly defeat your plans without you.”

 “If you're so certain of that, kill me now and get it over with.” 

 She looked at him with new eyes, nodded, and said, “You'll make things a lot easier, I'll admit. So, let's go to another old story. Think of me as your Fairy Godmother, willing to grant you a single, realistic, wish. Though if I decide you are asking too much, I'm afraid our conversation will be forced to come to an unceremonious end.”

 “Freedom,” Hanson said.

 “Define it,” Harper replied.

 “You'll release me down on the surface, with emergency rations and a survival kit. There are billions of humans out there. I don't have anything holding me to the Hegemony.”

 She paused, nodded, and said, “Nothing else changes. If I don't win in six hours, you die. If we win, then I'll see that you are released down on the ground, and you can take your chances out there. Though you'll forgive me for not wishing you luck. Now you get to earn your freedom. Talk.”

 He frowned, nodded, and said, “Originally, the plan was to capture Endurance. My commanders are afraid that it could become the nucleus of a major revolt. Already there have been incidents, and the results are verging on catastrophic. Ending the rebellion before it can truly begin is the only option acceptable to my government.” He paused, then added, “Of course, if your ship would assist us against Endurance, we could come to an agreement.”

 “No. Carry on.”

 “We've been exploring the sphere for years, and while we aren't any closer to understanding any of the technology involved, we have been able to activate some of it. Specifically, a jamming field capable of blocking all communication and sensor input, rendering a ship blind.”

 Harper's eyes widened, and she said, “Details.”

 “It's area-based. We can't target it. And naturally, we can't use any equipment of that type ourselves while the field is in operation. There are limitations. We found it in one of these caverns, four years go. Our guess is that it is a part of the sphere's own defense system, but we've never really been able to understand the psychology involved. All we know is that it works.”

 “Any other fun surprises waiting for us?”

 Shaking his head, he replied, “Not really. The laser weapons were acquired by a scouting party down on the surface, traded with an advanced culture in exchange for information on the state of the galaxy. We've explored out to a radius of a thousand miles, covering areas of interest.”

 “And you have a base on the surface?”

 “About a hundred miles from the entrance. A captured settlement. That's where the first team we captured were taken. If you allow me to send a signal...”

 “I can assure you, Lieutenant, that I am not that stupid. This device. Is it man-portable? How does it work?”

 “I don't know. It took a team of experts years just to activate it, and the process is not simple. It's about twelve miles from here, I think. Marked as Point Theta on the charts you'll have stolen. Heavily guarded, of course. You won't even get close.”

 “Let me worry about that,” she replied. “I want you to remember something. I might have wrecked your transmitter, but the receiver is still working fine. Meaning that I can control your fate at a nice long range. If I find out that you've lied to me, even by omission, then I promise that I will find time to make some interesting alterations to the composition of your atmospheric mixture.”

 “There's nothing more,” he replied. “Except that I know we're planning to lure Endurance and Alamo into the trap. We've got reinforcements coming in, enough to deal with both of them, especially with the jamming field. The same system worked on Monitor.”

 “That was your people?” she said, her voice harsh.

 “We tried to capture them, but something went wrong. I wasn't here at the time. I only know what was in the reports, and that wasn't much.” He grimaced, then said, “If I knew anything else I would tell you. I'm no fool, and I don't have any wish to die any time soon. I know that the best chance I have is if you manage to beat my former friends.”

 “Only chance. And my heart is warmed by my loyalty.”

 “I'm showing the same loyalty to them as they did to me. They promised that I wouldn't be taken prisoner with the rest of the crew of Endurance, then changed their mind at the last minute. I think they were expecting you to kill me.”

 “You never know, Lieutenant, they might yet be right about that.” Gesturing down the tunnel, she said, “This takes me back to the main passages? And on to Point Theta, later on?”

 “Yes, but you'll have problems getting through the security. If you take your time...”

 “Neither of us have the time, and I'm not getting close enough to you to top up your oxygen reserve.” She reached for the cable, then said, “Anything else you want to tell me, now is the time.”

 He frowned, then said, “If you make it, let me know that help is on the way. And if you can't, don't let me die slowly. Just cut off my oxygen and get it over with. I think I've at least earned the right to determine the means of my execution.”

 “Very well. Sweet dreams.”

 “What?”

 She tapped a control, turning the oxygen level down, enough that Hanson rapidly slumped into unconsciousness. While she was reasonably certain that her reprogramming would hold, there seemed little reason to take a risk. Tugging out the data cord, she wound it back down, then flicked up the charts she'd stolen, plotting out a route through the tunnels.

 The Hierarchy had done a thorough job of mapping, if nothing else; there were half a dozen good routes through, most of them with guard posts marked. She looked at the obsidian blade concealed in her glove, and smiled. That wasn't going to be any good against armed guards, not unless they displayed a level of incompetence that was far too much to hope for. Before anything else, she needed weapons.

 On a faint hope, she checked her communicator again, only receiving the same roar of static as before. Likely the jammer was already working, albeit at limited range. That would explain the lackluster response to her escape, and gave her a weakness in the defenses that she could exploit. As long as she was careful to cover her tracks, the enemy would have no way of knowing they were under attack.

 Less than a mile away, according to the chart, there was a small storage area, a single guard on duty. That was her first target. She kicked off, letting her thrusters fire, gentle pulses of fuel to send her drifting down the corridor, easily overcoming the microscopic gravity field. Turning a corner, she spotted a light in the distance, off down a side shaft. Her pursuers, still blindly following her beacon. Just to reassure herself, she flicked onto the camera view of the drone, catching an image of three suited figures rushing after it, struggling to catch up.

 That race wouldn't last for much longer. As far as she could tell, the drone was almost out of fuel, and they'd learn about her deception as soon as they caught up with it. There was nothing she could do about that, and they were still far closer than she would have liked. At least her current objective was in a different direction. 

 She drifted onwards through the corridors, periodically glancing up at the text on the wall, her computer still struggling to translate the original images, flashing occasional alerts to inform her of its progress, still barely one word in twenty successfully decoded. If she'd had access to Alamo's computers, it would have been the work of a matter of moments, but the processing power of her spacesuit, even with her own creative modifications, was far more limited.

 The Hierarchy hadn't even got that far. From the notes that she read, they viewed them as little more than unintelligible decoration, had made no serious attempt to translate them. One more potential advantage for her, assuming she could find a way to make use of it. She ducked around a rocky outcrop, then spotted a green light in the darkness, far down the passage. The supply dump.

 All she needed was the guard's weapon, and maybe the thruster fuel in his backpack. A quick inventory flashed down her screen, all interesting items, food, oxygen, spare parts, but nothing she could find any practical use for. At maximum magnification, she could just make out the figure, moving back and forth, sweeping a searchlight around.

 Her suit sensors could track his every movement. She still didn't know the capabilities of the enemy suits, but even at this range, she'd have expected to be spotted. Cautiously, she fired a quick pulse of fuel, sending her lazily drifting down the corridor, cutting her helmet lights as she moved slowly towards the guard, her hands well clear of her empty holster.

 At fifty feet, the guard turned, aiming his rifle at her, and she quickly corrected her course, hanging dead in front of him. For an instant, he looked away, glancing at a dataport on the wall, and Harper's eyes lit up. There was a way for her to signal Alamo, albeit one that would risk giving away her position. A wired communications network, running through the passages. Likely with a link to a relay out of range of the jamming field.

 Time was not on her side. The guard moved forward, gesturing for her to drift to the side, and she briefly complied, cautiously playing her thrusters as she settled into position. Then she gestured at her life support gauge, shaking her head, throwing a confused frown on the face of the guard, who tentatively began to approach her.

 When he was within range, she stabbed her thruster control once again, hurling herself towards him. His gun fired, and alarms started to ring through her suit, a puncture on her leg, burning agony from her shattered bone. Momentum and instinct carried her attack home, and she slashed her blade through the guard's suit before he could fire a second shot, the force of exploding air popping seams, leaving the man's body exposed to the near-vacuum beyond.

 Harper reached into a side pouch, panting for breath, and looked down at the breach. A single puncture, nice and clean, right through her leg. She took the largest patch she had, wrapping it around the two holes, holding it in position for long enough to ensure a good seal before risking the release of her hands.

 While she worked, the auto-med in her suit started pumping her full of drugs, painkillers and stimulants designed to keep her moving, while the diagnostic computers began their work. For a time, she would feel fine, and with the gravity as low as it was, her thrusters could carry her around the caverns, but as soon as the drugs wore off, she'd almost certainly fall unconscious from the pain.

 Taking the pistol, she carefully pushed forward towards the dataport, keeping her wounded leg clear of obstructions, plugging in a cable and linking it up to her suit. She paused for a second, knowing that she was certainly giving away her position, but getting word of the danger back to Alamo was worth the risk.

 “Harper to Alamo Actual. Come in at once. I don't have much time.”

 “Alamo Actual here!” Salazar said. “What's happening?”

 “You're heading into a trap. They've got some sort of jamming field that blocks communicators and sensors. I'm going to try and knock it out, but I'm going to need help. Anything you can send me. I'm not sure I can pull this off alone.”

 Despair filled Salazar's voice as he replied, “We're currently being pursued by two enemy cruisers, with Endurance in fast pursuit. Our course is taking us back to the portal, but it will be hours before I can get any shuttles down to you, even if we could get the damned thing open.” He sighed, then said, “We'll do everything we can. Are you alright?”

 Looking down at her leg, she replied, “Not a problem, Pavel, though I could use some company. It's a little lonely around here, though I suspect it won't be for much longer. I'll call if I can. Harper out.”

 At least she'd passed the warning, even if it hadn't changed the situation. One crippled officer against dozens of trained soldiers. Cold comfort that these weren't the worst odds she'd ever faced. With a sigh, and a quick look at the distressing reports feeding in from her medical monitor, she fired the thrusters again, sending herself racing down the corridor.

Chapter 18

 The horses thundered across the plain, almost skimming over the grass as the group raced towards their destination, their shuttle just visible in the distance, close to the pit leading to the surface. Clarke was holding on for grim life, but he had a wide smile on his face, the wind rushing through his hair as he and his team sped towards their way home.

 Their equipment was a strange mix of the primitive and the advanced, all of them retaining their swords, the rifles slung by their sides only loaded with a single clip for each. Mortimer had scavenged some binoculars from somewhere, but she hadn't dared to reach for them in hours, fearful of falling from the fast-galloping mount.

 Fox was taking up the rear, her face a mask of terror, and Clarke struggle to suppress a smile. All the battles they had fought together, and this was the first time she had ever evinced any flicker of fear, riding a horse across wide grasslands on a beautiful morning. Somehow, for the first time he soaked up the enormity of the sphere, the lands surrounding him on every direction, and a part of him longed to simply ride on, to continue into the unknown reaches beyond.

 Duty held him back, but a quick glance at the agile Sekura, the shaman who had talked himself into accompanying them on their journey, showed a shared vision. The old man felt as he did, his aged eyes somehow sharing Clarke's youth. There were figures moving around, a small cluster of guards watching the shuttle, and crates scattered by its side. By the looks of it, they were just in time.

 “Should we dismount, sir?” Fox asked, hopefully.

 “Not a chance, Sergeant!” he replied. “Swords high! Let's get them?”

 “A cavalry charge?” Mortimer asked. “We're actually charging the enemy on horseback with swords? How the hell did we get this desperate?”

 “Come on, Ronnie,” Clarke said. “This is what I signed up for!”

 “We must have had different recruiters,” she replied, but she pulled out her sword, following him into battle, a disbelieving Maqua watching them as they charged. He outranked Clarke, could stop this, but instead he shook his head, unsheathing his blade and following into battle, gunshots ripping into the ground on all sides as the guards belatedly realized they were under attack.

 Clarke's sword swept into the nearest trooper, the figure crumpling to the ground, shock on his face as he died. To the right, Maqua and Fox charged into the flank, while he and Mortimer pressed into the heart of the enemy, eating up the distance between them and the shuttle. He heard a crack, and a grunt of pain, turning just in time to watch Maqua fall to the ground, clutching his side, but Fox quickly avenged the injury with a savage stab, dropping the guard instantly.

 “Surrender!” Clarke yelled, and the remaining two guards looked at each other, hesitating for less than a minute before emptying their clips into the ground at full automatic, then tossing their rifles away and raising their hands.

 “Damn!” Fox said, swinging from her horse, tumbling onto the grass. Her horse looked at her with disdain before moving away, and Clarke guided his mount towards the surrendered troops. “How the hell did you get so good at riding, sir?”

 “Too many cowboy games when I was a kid. Those VR programs were really realistic.” He dropped carefully to the ground, sore and stiff, and walked over to the guards, saying, “Any more ammunition?” They shook their heads, and he gestured to Fox, still brushing herself off, and said, “Search them. Take anything interesting.”

 Mortimer was already climbing into the shuttle, and she peered through the hatch, saying, “Not good news, John. It looks like the bailiffs have been.”

 He walked into the cabin, then cursed under his breath. Much of the equipment had been stripped out, all of the emergency supplies and weapons removed, and several of the panels were smashed, broken beyond obvious repair.

 “Fuel intact,” she said. “And the lower thrusters. There's nothing wrong with the basic structure, but we've got no guidance, no navigation, and the life support system is in pieces. We'd have to ride in our suits. And they aren't here.”

 “I think I can help,” Sekura said, peering into a crate. “Most of the equipment seems to be here. Perhaps you can repair your craft.”

 With a shrug, Mortimer replied, “Probably, but it's going to take time if we're hoping to get back to the ship. Without automatic navigation, we can't plot a path through free space.” She paused, then said, “Maybe Alamo could come to us. Or at least send out a tanker.” Walking over to the console, she said, “Communications are intact, and we've still got power.”

 Fox walked in, and said, “Lieutenant Maqua's out cold. I've got Sekura watching him and the others at the moment.”

 “How badly was he hurt?” Mortimer asked, as Clarke slid on a headset.

 “Just a graze from the bullet, but it knocked him off his horse. Broken leg, broken ankle, broken arm, all down his left side. I've strapped him up, but aside from that, about all I can do is give him some painkillers. He could use real medical attention if we can manage it.”

 Clarke turned to the console, and said, “Let's see if we can rustle some up. Clarke to Alamo Actual on emergency frequency. Come in, please. Clarke to Alamo on emergency frequency. Come in, please.”

 “Clarke?” Scott's voice said. “Stand by for the Captain if you can. He'll be up in one minute. Where the hell have you been?”

 “Swinging from a tree, ma'am, and I only wish I was joking about that.”

 “Salazar here,” another voice interrupted. “Report, Sub-Lieutenant.”

 “We were captured by agents of something calling itself the Hierarchy, but with the assistance of local insurgent force were able to wipe out their garrison and recapture the shuttles. They're broken on the surface, sir, but my understanding is that they are planning some sort of an attack on Alamo, and that they are holding prisoners in some sort of a base.”

 “That matches what we've heard. How many people do you have?”

 “Not many, sir, but I have reinforcements coming on horseback. Should be here in a few hours.”

 There was a pause, and Salazar asked, “Did you say horseback?”

 “Yes, sir, I did. Fastest method of transport we can find. We're short on ammunition, but we've got close-quarters weapons.” 

 With a deep sigh, Salazar replied, “I've got a mission for you, John, but I'll have to stress that it is strictly volunteer, and if you don't think you've got the capability and equipment to pull it off, tell me. No false bravado. Is that clear?”

 “Yes, sir.”

 “What's the status of the shuttle?”

 “Damage to the internal equipment, sir. I think we can clear the sphere, but for anything else we're going to be reliant on Alamo coming to get us.”

 “Never mind that, not for the moment,” he replied. “Can you make it to those caverns you saw, twenty miles down from the portal? Our information suggests that the hidden base is there.”

 Looking at the controls, Clarke glanced at Mortimer, who nodded, then said, “Can do, sir.”

 “Lieutenant Harper has managed to get free, and is currently heading to destroy a piece of equipment that is capable of knocking out all sensor and communication systems. On our current course, we're dead if they manage to activate it. I can't send any reinforcements other than you and your team.” He paused, then continued, “We'll be going to battle stations in less than half an hour.”

 “We're already on our way, Captain. You can count on us. Can you send through any data you have?”

 “Will do. You'll be entering the jamming field not long after you launch, so I'll wish you the best of luck. The lives of everyone on Alamo and Endurance are riding with you.”

 “Understood, sir. And Lieutenant Maqua sends his regards.”

 “What? Maqua's alive?”

 “Wounded, sir, but stable.”

 “I'll be damned. Thank you, Sub-Lieutenant. Good hunting. Alamo Actual out.”

 Shaking her head, Mortimer replied, “John, are you out of your mind?”

 “You nodded.”

 “Because I didn't realize quite what you were talking us into.” Pulling out her rifle, she said, “I have five bullets for this thing. After that I'm back to my sword. We can't all go up to the base anyway. Someone's going to have to stay behind to watch Lieutenant Maqua and the prisoners.”

 “Not a problem,” Fox said. “I can give them some twenty-four hour shots from the medical kit. They'll sleep nice and sound until our reinforcements arrive, and Garland will be able to help him a lot more than I can anyway.”

 “Then that just means that there are four of us, wielding swords and wearing spacesuits, going into a network of unknown caverns against a vastly superior force.”

 “You want to stay behind?” he asked.

 “Hell no. I just want to make sure you realize just what you're getting yourself into.” Turning to Fox, she asked, “Is he always this crazy, or is there something in the air down here?”

 “Oh, he's always this crazy,” Fox replied. “I'll go get the spacesuits.”

 “We're assuming that there are four of us,” Clarke said, turning to the old shaman.

 A beaming smile filled his face, and he said, “I haven't had an adventure like this in years. You don't think you are going to leave me behind, do you? Besides, my people explored those caverns, ten thousand years ago, and we still have the songs and stories of those times. I may have knowledge of those tunnels that you will find useful.” Pulling out a sword, he added, “And I've bathed my blade in blood already today.”

 “Got the suits, sir,” Fox said, tossing them aboard. “I'll run Sekura through the drill.”

 Frowning, Clarke replied, “Are you sure that…,” before watching the shaman reach for the lower section, struggling his legs into position.

 “During my quest, I came across several advanced cultures. One of whom took me on a trip to the surface to see the stars.” His eyes glazed over for a moment, and he said, “I'd like very much to do that one more time, if I live long enough.”

 “You will,” Fox said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I'll take you up to the surface myself, as soon as this is over.”

 Sitting down at the controls, Clarke looked over the status board, red lights flashing on as he brought the systems on-line. He struggled into his spacesuit, checking every system, while the shuttle completed its preflight checks, warning alerts flashing at every turn to warn them of systems failures.

 “All ready?” he asked.

 “We're good to go,” Mortimer said, sitting next to him. “Let's get this insanity over with.”

 “Main engine sequence start,” Clarke replied, firing the lateral thrusters to kick them clear of the surface, careful to drift across, balancing the power on manual control. Most of the control computers had been either removed or damaged beyond easy repair, and simply keeping the ship stable was proving a far too difficult task, and wasteful of the precious fuel in their tanks.

 “Come on, John,” Mortimer said.

 “I've got to get a feel for her, or we'll never make altitude. Not easy flying without full computer-assistance. I can't even monitor the systems that are working properly.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “Here we go.”

 He fired a quick pulse from the engine, sending the shuttle skidding towards the shaft, and angled the nose down before running the throttle as high as he dared, making quick corrections with his thrusters in a desperate bid to keep them on a straight heading. The viewscreen flickered, some of the sensor pickups failing, and his eyes widened as Mortimer's fingers danced across the engineering console, trying to keep power to the external systems.

 “The portal,” he said. “It's closed. No way out.” Glancing at the fuel gauge, he added, “And I'm pretty sure this is a one-way trip. We'd never be able to make a landing. Five miles and rising.”

 “Got a lock on the caverns,” Mortimer said. “Alamo's data is good.” She frowned, then said, “There go our communications. I hope nobody wanted their last words broadcast.”

 “Mine would be much too boring,” Fox quipped. “I can't decide between 'Argh' or 'Mother'. Any thoughts?”

 “You want something more distinctive, enigmatic. 'Rosebud', maybe,” Mortimer quipped.

 “Ten miles,” Clarke said. “Sergeant, you'd better be ready to open fire as soon as we arrive. Stealth isn't going to be a realistic option.” He frowned, then added, “I've got an idea.”

 “Those are words I am really getting to dread,” Mortimer replied. “Fuel stabilization failure. Correct lateral thruster. There's something wrong with the distributor.”

 “Correcting,” Clarke said. “Try funneling additional fuel from Tank Two.”

 “On it,” she said. “Damn. Half this console is wrecked. I swear someone took a hammer to it.” Swiping controls, she added, “Better make this quick. We're going to lose stability soon.”

 “Full burn,” Clarke said, and they raced through the atmosphere, more lights flashing on.

 “Shall I reduce cabin pressure?” Fox asked.

 “Do it,” Clarke replied, “and fill the tanks as high as you can. We might not be able to breath it in here, but I think the vents are still working.”

 “Would this be that plan of yours?” Mortimer said.

 “Something like that. We're going to have to move damned quickly when we set down. Just run like hell.”

 “I've got the location from Lieutenant Harper's plans,” Fox added. “Just as well. Not much point the cavalry riding to the rescue if we don't know where we're going.”

 “I never thought we'd be able to use that expression literally,” Mortimer quipped. “Thirty miles, rising fast. Fuel falling, aft thrusters failing.”

 “On it,” Clarke said, carefully guiding the shuttle onwards, fighting the growing weight imbalance as the center of gravity shifted. Under any circumstances other than the must desperate, he should have aborted the flight as soon as the fuel pumps failed. They had enough in the active tanks to get to where they were going, but the helm was growing more sluggish by the second.

 “Forty miles. Air thinning. Getting smoother. Gravity dropping off,” Mortimer reported. “We're getting some good data on the gravity generator. Makes for a damned strange flight profile. Polarity reversal coming up.”

 “I've got visual contact on the caves,” Clarke said, easing back on the throttle. “Seventy-nine miles, for the record, so correct your maps.” Sweeping his hand across the display to magnify the image, he added, “I make twelve people up there waiting for us. Correction, fourteen. Fifteen. They might have turned out most of the garrison. I hope so.”

 “There's a chance they'll think we're one of theirs,” Fox said.

 “Which will probably prevent them from killing us out of hand, but no more than that.”

 Throwing a lever, Clarke said, “Leveling off, switching to lateral thrusters. Stand by on the life support controls. In fact, slave them to my console.”

 “Doing it,” Fox said, walking over to the rear controls. “Done, sir.”

 “Five miles to go. Going a little fast.”

 “Yeah. Got it.” He reached for the fine thruster throttles, easing them up, balancing one against another in a desperate bid to keep the ship stable, finally bringing the level of the caverns into view. He could see a row of troopers lined up, weapons at the ready, most of them with the man-portable lasers he'd seen before.

 “Those might penetrate the hull, sir,” Fox warned.

 “Not a problem,” Clarke replied, tapping the control to purge the life support system. A fountain of high-velocity gas ripped from the tanks, slamming into the unprepared troopers, scattering them in all directions. A lucky trio fell backwards, into the caverns, where they had at least a chance of survival, but most slid into the shaft, dropping to their death, destined to burn up in the atmosphere after an eighty mile drop.

 Mortimer looked at Clarke, then at the now-empty platform, and said, “I'll say this for you, John, you really know how to make an entrance.” 

 “Twenty minutes left,” Clarke replied. “Let's move.” 

Chapter 19

 Salazar's eyes were locked on the viewscreen, watching the trajectories dance around as the four ships maneuvered into position, each trying to get a fractional advantage over the others, an edge that might make the difference between life and death in the battle to come. He glanced around the bridge, frowning, most of his senior officers away from their posts. Only Scott was riding her customary station, Carpenter standing in for Francis at the rear of the bridge. That Alamo's Science Officer was acting as Executive Officer illustrated just how short-handed he was.

 Bowman turned from the communications station, and reported, “We've just lost contact with Probe Five, sir. That's the last of them. We'll be running into the jamming field in seven minutes, ten seconds.”

 “Combat range nine minutes away,” Ballard said. “We could still alter course, sir.”

 Shaking his head, Salazar replied, “We'll stay on this heading. At least we have some idea when the jamming field is going to hit us as long as we remain on this course, and if Kris can pull off another one of her miracles, we'll be able to give them a little surprise. Carpenter, I want our fighters to scramble three minutes before we hit the bubble, orders to skirt what we think the edges are and attempt to engage the enemy at long-range.”

 “Aye, sir,” she replied, turning to the communications station to issue the orders.

 “All missiles are switched to dumb-fire, sir,” Scott said. “Nothing we can do about the laser cannon. I can try a shot, but the odds of us hitting anything without fine sensor resolution are next to nothing. I think we'd be better off saving the power.”

 “They must have a way to fight in there,” Quesada said.

 “Those mass drivers of theirs are perfect for that environment, Sub-Lieutenant,” Salazar replied. “Rapid fire, high speed impact, and without sensors, we won't be able to dodge them. Which means I'm going to be dependent on you implementing the best evasive course I've ever seen. You'll have to anticipate the firing pattern, and remember that they'll be spreading it out over a wide area. Probably wide enough to cover the usual evasive arcs.”

 “Already plotted, sir,” the helmsman replied. “I've had a look at the historical profiles of those weapons, and Endurance sent me over some good data.” He paused, then added, “Though I'm also acting on the assumption that they'll know we have that information. It's useful, not not definitive.” Tapping a control, he added, “We'll have to be careful, though. I plotted the original course to take us pretty tight in. There's no margin for error.”

 Scott turned to Salazar, and said, “We could cut acceleration. Catch them by surprise.”

 “And they'd do the same, and we'd have longer in combat range.” 

 “But we'd give Harper longer to work a miracle.”

 “If she doesn't pull it off in the time we have, then I doubt it will make any real difference anyway. One more minute more or less could kill us. Quesada, pull us out of the dive as rapidly as you can, and make sure that all of your simulations are as up to date as you can manage. We'll be reliant on dead reckoning all the way.” Turning to Carpenter, he asked, “Are the observers ready?”

 “Positioned in the forward and aft airlocks with image intensifiers, connected to the bridge by data cable.” She shook her head, and said, “I can't believe that we're being reduced to sending crewmen to look out of the window to gather data for us.”

 “I think we're getting a taste of what it is like to fight Foster's wizards. I can't say that I like it very much. Has the probe data given us any sort of a lead on how the jamming field operates?”

 “Not in the slightest, sir,” Scott replied. “Hell, it might as well be magic. All we do know is that it creates what amounts to an instant data overload, slicing right through the firewall.” She frowned, then added, “Meaning they could do all sorts of nasty things to our system if they wanted.”

 “I got the impression that the Hierarchy don't understand the systems any more than we do.”

 “Lucky for us.”

 “Sir, I have Major Moran,” Bowman said. “Tight-beam, encrypted.”

 “Put her on,” he said, and the image of Endurance's commander appeared. “What's your status, Major?”

 “Cleared for action, Captain, and ready to begin the battle plan on your order. I'm still not sure about this, but I'll follow your orders. We've had no signals from Roanoke and Darlan, not officially, but I know they've sent a few messages to the lower decks. I guess they're under the assumption that they might still have friends over here.”

 “Let's hope so,” he replied. “Our figures have us running into the jamming field in a little under eight minutes. All of your combat systems are ready?”

 “Mass drivers are loaded, set for wide-proximity and visual tracking. Don't worry, Captain, we've got you covered until your Lieutenant Harper can disable the jammer.” She paused, and added, “I had another rummage through our database. We've got no overt information on it, but it explains some of the odder personnel assignments to the outpost on the Sphere. I'd love to take a look at it. Might give us an advantage next time we take them on.”

 “I think we ought to win this battle before we start planning the next. We'll be sending you tactical updates right to the last minute. Good hunting. Alamo out.” Looking up at Scott, he said, “What's the count?”

 “Seven minutes, forty seconds.”

 Tapping a control on his chair, he said, “All hands, this is the Captain.” It still felt strange to say that, even after six weeks. He couldn't help but expect to see Captain Marshall or Captain Orlova walking out of the office, ready to assume command. “We'll be going into action in a few minutes, and expect to lose all internal and external communications. That means that each and every one of you will be reliant on your own initiative, your own skills. Trust your instincts, and if you see something that needs doing, don't wait for the order. Get it done. I have faith in your judgment and your abilities. Both will be tested to the utmost today. Good luck. Battle Stations.”

 “All hands,” Scott added, “Stand by your battle stations. This is no drill. Department Chiefs report to Lieutenant Carpenter on the double. Fighters prepare for scramble on request.” Turning to Salazar, she said, “Not many department heads at their stations today.”

 “Not a problem,” Quesada quipped. “The Chiefs do most of the real work anyway. We're just here to make it look good.”

 “I'm glad to see you paid attention during your cadet cruise, Sub-Lieutenant,” Salazar replied. “I've met commanding officers who haven't worked out that little secret.”

 “All decks reporting in,” Carpenter said. “I think the crew was already on the alert.”

 “Good,” Salazar said.

 “Sir?” Bowman said, “I have a signal from the surface. A Commander Klein would like to speak with you. He's transmitting via the relay we spotted.” Tapping a control, he added, “I've plotted the location now. We could try a missile strike if you wanted to isolate them.”

 “Bad idea,” Scott said. “If they can't talk, they can't surrender.”

 “Good, optimistic thinking,” Salazar said. “How long?”

 “Six minutes, thirty seconds,” Scott said.

 “Then put Commander Klein on, by all means, Spaceman.”

 The image of the sphere flickered out, replaced with a man standing in front of a white background, obviously digitally enhanced to remove any hint of his location. Salazar sat back on his chair, forcing a smile to his face.

 “Is there something I can do for you, Commander?” he asked. “I'd be more than happy to accept your unconditional surrender.”

 “It won't work,” Klein said, bluntly. “Your assault team is good, but I've still got thirty men down here, all of them combat veterans, and a group of sword-wielding maniacs isn't going to break through our defenses. I don't know what game you think you are playing, but I'll tell you right now that unless you surrender at once, I'll have to kill all of our prisoners.”

 “Sword-wielding maniacs?” Scott asked, baffled.

 “Don't act as if you don't know!” Klein yelled. He paused, took a deep breath, and said, “I'm willing to be reasonable. I can imagine that you might have been sucked in by Moran and her people. We've got plans to deal with them. If Alamo veers off, heads out towards the outer belt, I'll load all of your people onto a shuttle and set them to an intercept course. That's a ticket out of the fight, but the offer expires in one minute. Unless you want to share the fate of Monitor, I suggest you seriously consider your decision.”

 “I don't need anything like that long to think about it, Klein. You know my assault team is coming for you, and we both know that they're already carving through your defenses. With that jammer in operation, you're as blind as we are. Turn off the jammer, surrender, and I'll guarantee you a fair trial. That's the best I can do.”

 The viewscreen unceremoniously winked out, replaced by the original view of the sphere, a wall of dull metal rising seemingly to infinity. Carpenter walked over to Salazar, a frown on his face, then looked up at the tactical plot.

 “Sword-wielding?”

 “I'm guessing Clarke has decided to improvise. Don't ask me why or how.” He paused, then added, “At least we know that he made it into the caves. Kris has her reinforcements, even if they are somewhat unconventional.”

 “I can't wait to get a look at the after-action report on this one, sir,” Scott said, turning back to her station.

 “I'm with you on that one,” Carpenter added, shaking her head in disbelief.

 Salazar nodded, and turned his attention back to the tactical display, watching as the four ships slowly slid towards the dotted line that indicated the sensor and communication dead area. A pair of crewmen stepped onto the bridge, moving to either side of the elevator, datapads in hand. Runners, in the event he needed to contact any other part of the ship. Though even optimistically, it could be ten minutes before he received a reply.

 He'd fought battles under difficult circumstances before, but this was something new, something different. The idea of going into action without even being able to contact Engineering was strange, to say the least. All he could do was put his trust in the battle plan, and hope that either Harper or Clarke could reach the jammer in time to allow them to put Alamo's advantages to good use. With lasers and missiles at full operation, the two enemy ships wouldn't have a chance.

 As he watched, Endurance slid into position behind Alamo, her turrets swinging around to aim at the enemy, preparing to launch a salvo when they came into range. Quesada frantically entered commands into the helm, fine-tuning his evasive course, constantly reworking the parameters, compromising between the gravity of the sphere and the need to avoid the impacts that would be coming from the two mass drivers.

 He looked out at the sphere again, a frown flickering on his face. He should be down there, leading the assault team or the reinforcements. Not sitting up here on the bridge, waiting for the battle to begin, knowing that he would be little more than an observer as soon as it started. He might be comfortable with the idea of command, but it had never been a dream of his, no matter how many others might try and push it upon him. He could be Alamo's Captain, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

 Scott glanced across at him, and a look of concern appeared in her eyes, some trace of his inner feelings evidently leaking through. He smiled, nodded, and she turned back to her station, satisfied with his response.

 “Probe Six away,” Ballard reported, a new target appearing on the screen. “It'll be running thirty seconds ahead of us. Should give us advance notice if the jamming field drops.”

 “Four minutes, ten seconds to go,” Quesada said.

 “Come on, Kris,” Salazar said. “Shut that damn thing down.”

Chapter 20

 Harper eased herself down the corridor, glancing at the countdown clock on her heads-up display. Sneaking through the tunnels had slowed her progress drastically, and she now had only a handful of minutes left before Alamo would be trapped in the dead zone, vulnerable to attack. She'd spotted few guards in her flight, easily able to dodge those she'd spotted, and even the decoy had been left alone, the pursuers racing to some unknown destination, well out of range of the pickups.

 A part of her dared to hope that somehow, against all the odds, Alamo had managed to arrange some assistance, but she had to assume that the mission was hers and hers alone. Her leg brushed against a rocky outcrop, the briefest touch causing her to wince in pain, and sending another dose of painkillers pumping into the affected area. She couldn't keep using them, not at the current rate. As it was, she was starting to feel light-headed, and the pistol nestled in her hand would be useless if she couldn't draw a bead on her target.

 Her face locked into a grimace as she fired her thrusters, pushing herself down the middle of the corridor, heedless of the risks of detection. A warning light flashed on, and she cursed, her fuel down to the emergency reserve. She'd never make it back to the landing pad, even if there was a shuttle to rescue her, and whatever happened, she'd have to disable the device on site. Hopes of salvaging it were falling away, replaced only by a cold determination.

 Up ahead, she spotted a shape moving in the distance, her image intensifier revealing it as another Hegemonic suit. She couldn't make out any weapons, and the figure was moving in a random direction, heading down a corridor that ultimately terminated in a dead-end, two miles away. Nowhere to hide, no significant cover, no sign of storage.

 Throwing caution to the wind, she fired another pulse, leveling her pistol on the target, and flashed her helmet lights three times in quick succession, the fastest method she could think of to attract attention. With a start, the figure turned, holding his hands high in the air as he saw the weapon, his previous momentum sending him slowly gliding towards the wall.

 She carefully eased towards him, then pulled out a data-cable, tossing it towards him, gesturing for him to plug it into his access port. He reached tentatively out for it, slowly sliding it into position, and a series of lights flickered across her screen as she logged onto his system.

 “Lieutenant Harper? Is that you?”

 “Maxwell?” she replied, with a sigh. “Not you as well?”

 “What? No, I'm no traitor! I managed to get away from the others about fifteen minutes ago. We were being taken from one holding cell to another, I guess, and suddenly two-thirds of the guards just ran off. Heading towards the landing area, I think, though I'm not sure. There weren't enough of the bastards left to cover us, so two of us made a break for it. They got White, but I got clear. I was just trying to get my bearings when you found me.”

 She frowned, then said, “Hanson had a similar story, but I suppose I'm going to need the help. I hope you don't mind if I decide to take out a little insurance policy.”

 “As long as I get to read the terms and conditions.”

 With a thin smile, she replied, “Simple. I'm taking full control of your lifesystem. If I decide you're doing something I don't approve of, or the cord gets cut, you automatically fall unconscious. If you have any problem with that, let me know now, so I can think of something else.”

 Reaching into a pocket, Maxwell pulled out a second cord, and hurled it towards her, saying, “As long as we've got a backup, I'm willing to go along with it. I still can't believe Hanson was a traitor. He always was a loudmouthed bastard, but I didn't think he'd sell us out to the Hegemony.”

 “You'll have a chance to ask him about it, assuming we live through this fight.”

 “Something to look forward to,” he replied. “I don't have any weapons.”

 “Hopefully our friends will provide some equipment for us later on, but we don't have time to hunt around for something now.” She entered a series of controls, and said, “I'm slaving your thruster controls to mine. Enjoy the ride.”

 “Where are we going?” he asked.

 “Alamo and Endurance are moments away from running into some sort of hyper-tech jamming field. The generator is about a mile ahead, right down this corridor, and we've got to get there before our ships are disabled.” As she drifted past him, the thrusters on their two suits firing, she said, “I think there might be reinforcements on the way, but we can't count on them.”

 “Got it,” he replied, sliding in behind her. “Lead the way.”

 The pair flew down the passage, ducking and diving around, puffs of gas from their suits carrying them around corners as they raced towards their destination. All the time, the countdown clock relentlessly ticked down, as they closed on Point Theta, directly ahead. She glanced back at Maxwell, the engineer steadfastly following, snatching a chunk of rock from the wall as they passed. She looked at the pistol in her hand, and grimaced. Nine shots was all she had. No explosives, no plasma weapons, nothing. Unless this device had an obvious off switch, they were finished, and both Alamo and Endurance with them.

 With five minutes to go, she reached the final corner, tapping controls to slow them to a stop, careful not to expose themselves to detection. Most of her internal systems were scrambled, amber warning lights dancing across her heads-up display, warning her of imminent systems failures. Her monitoring systems had failed, and her data access to Maxwell's suit had deteriorated, even through the cable.

 “Can you hear me?” she asked.

 “Just about, but I think it's just through the cable, not the data connection,” he replied. “I take it we've arrived.”

 “They might have stripped guards from the rest of the base, but this is one area that will still be heavily protected. We don't have time for anything fancy. We're going to go right in. I'll fire off my clip at anything I can see, try to keep them pinned down, while you concentrate on snatching a weapon. Anything you can find, no matter what. All we've got on our side is surprise, and we're going to have to make all the use of it we can.”

 “Wait a second. That's the plan? Dive in and hope that we distract them long enough that they don't shoot us?”

 “Yeah.”
 “Aren't you meant to be some sort of tactical expert?”

 “I'm just doing the best I can with what I've got. Look, if we don't move now, it won't make a damn bit of difference. Alamo and Endurance will end up going the same way as Monitor, and if we don't have a ship to go back to, all of this is pointless. We go on the count of five.”

 “Wait,” Maxwell said. “Let me go first. It makes more sense for me to act as decoy. You're the one with the gun.”

 “You sure?”

 “No. Let's get on with it.”

 She slammed the controls, sending his suit ahead of hers, then drained the last of her thruster fuel to throw the two of them down the tunnel. The two guards standing at the entrance jerked into life, firing their rifles at the approaching suits, but a single touch of her controls sent the two of them bobbing from side to side, taking a wild evasive course along the tunnel that dodged the incoming bullets.

 Raising her pistol, she returned fire, the force of the blast sending her tumbling as the bullet slammed into the rock above the closest guards, Maxwell's thrusters recklessly squandering fuel in a desperate bid to keep them moving, keep them speeding towards their target. She caught a brief glimpse of a glowing blue column behind them, decorated with intricate symbols, as they raced past the guards in the rear, diving into the cavern beyond.

 Spinning around, she fired another shot, this time catching the guard in the rear, neatly severing one of the feeds from his oxygen tank, sending him diving into cover while he hastily attempted to repair his damaged suit. His comrade moved to the far side, keeping down low, his rifle raised towards them, and for the first time she noticed that he was plugged into a data terminal, doubtless reporting their presence to his superiors.

 Three more shots flew past them, and Harper looked desperately around for cover, finding a cache of crates stacked by the far wall. It took the bulk of Maxwell's thruster fuel to drag them to at least temporary safety, but two more figures moved up the corridor towards them, weapons at the ready, one of them equipped with a laser cannon that could burn through the fragile crates in a matter of seconds.

 “We can't just sit here,” Maxwell said.

 “Wait one,” Harper replied, looking around the room. Aside from the column and the crates, identified only as containing emergency ration packs, she saw a complicated console on the far wall, connected to the column with bulky data lines, more heavily shielded than anything she had ever seen. It took little imagination to realize why, and she instantly realized that she was meters away from her goal.

 For a second, she inched away from the safety of her cover, but a pair of bullets pinned her down. The enemy knew they didn't have to advance, didn't have to risk the remaining ammunition in her pistol. Soon enough, Alamo and Endurance would be reduced to drifting debris, and they'd have no choice but to surrender. She glanced at Maxwell, who reached for the data cable, smiled, and gestured at the far wall.

 “Move when I do,” he said. “You aren't the only one to come up with crazy ideas.”

 He reached across, pushing off, sending the two of them flying in opposite directions, then waved his hands in the air as he swung around, using the data cable as a makeshift rope, swinging Harper towards the console. Bullets flew through the air all around them, slamming into the crates, one of them catching Maxwell squarely in the faceplate. The young officer had no time to react, dying before he could even know what was happening, his body limply bouncing off the wall.

 Harper quickly disconnected the cable, firing a round to send her towards the console, able to quickly look over the controls before hiding behind it. By accident, she'd found the perfect cover, the one piece of equipment in the room that the enemy wouldn't dare touch, but it didn't make any difference. Poking her head around, she saw the dull red gleam of the laser cannon and rapidly ducked back into safety.

 Any move out of cover would be instantly fatal. Four rifles and one cannon were trained on her position, ready to fire at a second's notice, and the late Maxwell had proven rather effectively how little chance she'd have if even a single bullet found its mark. She looked down at the patch on her leg, legacy of her last firefight, and felt another stab of pain shoot through her body.

 The countdown clock remorselessly continued to trickle down, less than two minutes to go, and there was nothing she could do. Even if she could access the controls, she didn't have any idea how to disable the column, but even that was out of the question. Her pistol would hold the guards back for a little while, but she'd never fight them all off alone.

 Then, at the far end of the corridor, she saw something that forced her eyes wide with shock. The glint of steel, as though from a sword, in the hands of a spacesuited figure peeking around the corner. Somehow, their reinforcements had arrived.

Chapter 21

 “We're in time, I think,” Clarke said, looking at the control room. “I can see a big glowing blue thing, and I'm hoping that's the jammer we came here to find. I make five guards, one of them equipped with a laser, and someone in a Triplanetary spacesuit hovering behind what looks to be the control console. Probably Harper.”

 “A big glowing blue thing,” Mortimer said with a sigh.

 “I really don't know how else to describe it,” he replied, “and I think we can worry about the details later.” He pulled his clip from his gun, and tossed it to Fox, saying, “Everyone pass over your ammunition. Sergeant, I want you to consolidate the remaining rounds in your weapon. You're going to give the rest of us covering fire.”

 Raising an eyebrow, Fox replied, “You're going to charge right in?”

 “I'm counting on you to keep them from reacting until it's too late to make any difference. How many rounds do you have?”

 “Nineteen. I don't think I can get them at this range, not with the gravity field. This rifle won't interface with my suit, so I'm going to have to fire dumb-shot.”

 “As long as they don't know how bad your aim is in these conditions, we'll be fine.” He turned to the others, and said, “Set to maximum thrust, point down the corridor, and dive right for them. Weave from side to side as much as you can, and with a little luck, we'll be on them before they can get us. They'll be having the same problems with their weapons.”

 Gesturing up the corridor, Mortimer said, “Laser guy is clipping his weapon to his helmet.”

 “Then maybe one of them will be shooting straight, but at least it's the one with the longest recharge time on his weapon.” He smiled, then added, “Come on, one last charge.”

 “That about describes this perfectly,” Mortimer replied, with a sigh.

 “We've got two minutes to get that device disarmed,” Clarke said, “and it isn't as though we've got anywhere to run to anyway. If this goes wrong, we're all dead. Let's go down swinging our swords.”

 “The Twenty-Second Century,” Mortimer said, “and we're about to charge the enemy with swords. I'm surprised you didn't improvise lances for us.” Reaching for her wrist controls, she added, “All ready here.”

 “I am prepared,” Sekura said.

 Nestling into cover, Fox added, “Good luck, sir. I'll do what I can to keep you covered.”

 Leaning forward, Clarke briefly contemplated the sheer insanity of what he was attempting. Logically, he should have died two or three times since landing in the sphere, but somehow he'd managed to fight his way through, every time. He looked at Mortimer and smiled. She had been right, all the time. His instincts were good, and the nightmares only came when he second-guessed his decision. Somehow, it felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and even though he was about to fly into battle against near-impossible odds, he couldn't stop himself from grinning.

 “What are you so happy about?” Mortimer asked.

 “I'll tell you after the battle,” he replied, swinging his sword forward, ducking his head towards the column. “Allons-y!” 

 “Crazy,” Mortimer muttered, as the three of them fired their thrusters, expending the bulk of their fuel in one quick burn, warning alarms ringing as they exceeded recommended safe speeds, red lights flashing down their heads-up display as the gathering interference battered on their systems, sliding into their firewalls and rendering the readouts nothing more than random gibberish.

 Bullets raced past him, Fox firing carefully placed shots to pin down the enemy, distract them for long enough to allow the trio to make their move. They'd been positioned to attack Harper, hanging by the console. Simply turning to face the rear bought Clarke's team a few precious seconds, and their enemy's bid to find safer cover gave them more.

 As he dived towards them, he raised his sword. Bullets flew through the air all around them, and a blast of laser energy smashed into the wall to his side, sending fragments of molten rock cascading through the air. Mortimer and Sekura were right behind him, and almost before he realized it, he reached the barricade, hacking his way through two of the astonished guards, aiming not for the tough fabric but the delicate apparatus on their rear, smashing their breathing gear with neat, precise thrusts. Mortimer had been more ambitious, colliding with a guard and knocking his rifle free, her sword neatly interposed between the weapon and the erstwhile user's hand.

 The trio collided with a collection of crates at the rear, killing their momentum, giving Clarke a brief second to survey the carnage they had wrought. Three of the guards were dead, one disarmed, only the laser-armed man still able to fight back, swinging the barrel of his lethal weapon around to cover them. Mortimer snatched the rifle, tried to turn in time, but before she could move, the figure slumped down to the ground, a shot in his back, the triumphant Fox waving her rifle into the air before moving up.

 Harper slid towards Clarke, passing him a data cable, and plugged it in, saying, “You're the reinforcements? The ones who've got the entire complex on alert?” She gestured at the battered sword in his hand, and said, “There's a story there that I'm going to want to know when we've got a chance. Take point and cover me. I've got to try and figure out a way to bring that damn thing offline. By my reckoning, we've got less than a minute.”

 Mortimer connected herself to Clarke's suit, and said, “At least we've got real weapons now.” Gently tossing her sword to the side, she added, “I'm almost disappointed.”

 “One prisoner, as well,” Clarke said, drifting over to him, clipping on a data cable. “You've got ten seconds to talk. How many more of you are on the way?”

 “Fifteen,” he replied, reluctantly. “The whole garrison's turned out. They'll be here any time now.” He looked around, nervously, and said, “If you surrender, I'll...”

 “What makes you think we're going to do a stupid thing like that?” Mortimer asked. “Armaments, my friend. How heavy?”

 “Twelve rifles, three lasers, one machine gun. I don't know how they'll deploy them, but they'll be heading down Corridor Bravo, from the landing pad. We were told that more reinforcements were on the way, that a large task force had arrived. That was you?”

 “I guess so,” Clarke admitted. “Weapons check?”

 “One rifle each, three clips per weapon,” Fox said. “Pretty primitive kit, though.”

 “It has to be,” the nervous prisoner admitted. “Nothing sophisticated works in here, not while the field is activated. Even the laser needed special equipment.”

 “You know how it works?”

 “No, no, I'm just a shuttle technician! That's why they sent me back here. I guess they didn't expect that you'd make it this deep into the compound. None of us did.” He looked around, and asked, “What are you going to do to me?”

 “Night, night, buddy,” Mortimer said, turning down his oxygen mix, waiting for him to slump to the floor. “He won't be going anywhere in a hurry. I guess we'll have company soon.”

 “Suggestions, Sergeant?” Clarke asked.

 Looking around the threshold, she said, “Staying here isn't going to work out. The barricade isn't well-built, and they already did quite a number on it while they were going after Lieutenant Harper. We need to go further down the corridor, up to the junction, and work our way into whatever cover we can find.” Gesturing at the crates, she added, “We can toss these ahead. Anything to help break up line of sight.”

 “First a sword fight, now a food fight,” Mortimer muttered, reaching for one of the few intact crates. “We'd better move.”

 Turning to the Neander, Clarke said, “You'd better wait here. It's possible you might be able to help Lieutenant Harper deactivate the device.”

 Nodding, Sekura said, “Much of it is decorated with the ancient language of my race. I think I can identify some of the pictographs.” Gesturing at the rifle, he added, “May the souls of your fathers fight alongside you this day.”

 “And with you,” Clarke said, clapping the old man on the shoulder. “Is this the adventure you were hoping for?”

 “They'll be singing of this day for a hundred years.”

 “Make sure they get my name right,” Mortimer said. “Come on.”

 The trio pushed back down the corridor, firing pinpoint bursts from their depleted thrusters as they settled into position, hastily assembling the crates into a makeshift barricade, running the data lines that connected the three of them on the ground, covering them with fragments of plastiboard to provide protection. With the jammer still operational, most of their systems were still out.

 “These rifles look pretty easy to use,” Fox said. “They're really stripped down. Basic optical sights, semi-auto option. Not designed for use in this environment, though. You're going to get quite a kick when you fire, so work yourself into some sort of firing position, feet braced on the floor. And try and shoot up, so that the recoil will push you down, rather than knocking you out of cover.”

 “Got it,” Mortimer said. “Would this be a good time to point out that I won three all-Fleet awards for zero-gravity marksmanship?”

 “We can have a competition when we get back to Alamo,” Clarke replied.

 “Fine,” Fox said, turning to him with a smile. “You can have your sword.”

 “Don't say that,” Mortimer said. “We're going to have a hard enough time wrestling the damn thing out of his hand as it is.”

 “Sometimes,” he replied, “you've just got to go with what is most effective. You're just worried that I'll beat you in our next tournament.”

 “Not a chance.”

 “You're on. Noon tomorrow, assuming neither of us are otherwise engaged.”

 Fox glanced at Clarke, and said, “You're really learning, aren't you.”

 “What do you mean?”

 “Usually, waiting for a battle is the hardest part. Veterans work out ways to get around it. Ronnie and I have both had enough time to get used to it. I'm finding it hard to remember that you've only been commissioned for a couple of months.”

 “If what I heard about his cruise on Churchill is anything to go by, I'm not particularly surprised by Captain Kid's cool demeanor,” Mortimer said with a smile.

 “Captain Kid?”

 “You're in charge, aren't you?”

 “Odd as that sounds...”

 “There you are, then.”

 “Does this mean I've got buried treasure hidden somewhere?” He looked at the two of them, shrugged, and said, “Why do you think I took up fencing? I used to watch all the old swashbuckling movies when I was a kid. When I was ten, I was determined to become a pirate.”

 “A space pirate?”

 “No, just a pirate. Sailing ship and everything. I even badgered my folks to get me a parrot.” 

 Chuckling, Mortimer said, “I bet you had it sitting on your shoulder, as well.”

 “I tried. I still have the scars. That thing had really big claws.”

 Fox gently tossed pieces of plasticrete down the corridor, careful to position one at each entrance, and said, “Sighting markers. Tough to shoot in this gravity. There's just enough to give a little curve. You'll probably hit the body you are aiming at, but not the organ.”

 “Dead is dead,” Mortimer said. “How long have we got?”

 “Sixty seconds until Alamo hits the dead area. Then probably a few minutes more before battle, assuming Captain Salazar hasn't altered course,” Clarke replied.

 “Wait a minute,” Fox said. “Down there, in the shadows. A point heat source.”

 Clarke flicked on his infra-red visor, and cursed, replying, “Someone's charging a laser cannon. Good luck, everyone. This is going to get real bad, real quick.”

 “Not so bad,” Mortimer replied. “We've only got to hold out for sixty seconds.”

 “Might as well be sixty years,” Fox said, as the first bullets smashed into their position.

Chapter 22

 Salazar looked at the screen, watching Probe Six as it raced towards the dead zone, hoping with every fiber of his being that the small vessel would remain on the screen, continue to transmit its beacon signal. Thoughts flashed through his mind, the beginnings of a new battle plan, turning to face the enemy, catching them by surprise. All of the happy thoughts faded as the beacon abruptly died, only the physical probe remaining on a course that would eventually lead to a touchdown on the surface of the sphere, hours into the future.

 “Thirty seconds to dead zone. Two minutes, ten seconds to firing range,” Scott said. “If you've got any more inspiring words for the crew, skipper, now would be a good time for them.”

 “Not today,” he replied. “I'll save them for the victory speech. Still nothing from the assault team? Nothing at all?”

 “No signal, sir,” Bowman said.

 “That's it!” Carpenter said. “Sensors down, long-range communications down. I already arranged for Chief Washington to start work analyzing the attack. There might be something we can do about it.” She paused, then said, “Kowalski suggested a towed sensor array, but there wasn't time to put it together with the length required.”

 “You aren't joking,” Scott replied. “It'd have to be ten thousand miles long to do any good.” 

 “Perfectly possible in theory,” Carpenter said with a straight face. “In practice, I doubt there would be very much left in our raw material stockpiles when we were finished.”

 “Quesada, execute random walk evasive pattern. Do we have contact with the lookouts?”

 The screen flickered on, showing a low-resolution image of the space immediately behind Alamo, and the helmsman replied, “Midshipman Petrova is back in the aft thruster control room with a pair of image intensifiers, hooked up by data cable. We're not going to get much in the way of magnification, but it ought to give us some sort of idea of their attack pattern. Though we're still vulnerable to a lucky hit. Not much we can do about that.”

 “Activate point-defense batteries in one minute, saturation fire at close range,” Salazar ordered. Before Scott could reply, he said, “I know, but a long shot is better than no chance at all.”

 “Our last images showed Endurance altering course,” Ballard said, frowning. “Vectoring to the right, turrets moving towards Alamo.”

 “Good,” Salazar said. “Lieutenant Scott, please input the battle plan into the computer, and alter our simulations accordingly.”

 “That was the plan?” Quesada asked.

 “With a little luck, the last thing that our friends behind us will see before they enter the same dead zone is Endurance apparently changing sides. With a few final signals suggesting that a mutiny is taking place on board. We can hope that it will influence them to throw everything they've got at us.”

 Eyes widening, Fitzroy said, “Is that a good idea, sir?”

 “The mass drivers on Endurance are a lot more use in the battle than our weapons are at the moment. With a little luck, that'll change as soon as Harper turns off the jammer, but we've got to preserve Endurance until then. We can't do it with guns, so we'll have to use guile instead.”

 “Fifty seconds to combat range, assuming no course changes,” Scott said. “I've switched the missiles to visual tracking. Clumsy as hell, and we'll be lucky to have any control over the point of impact on the enemy ship, but this way we should at least hit whatever we aim at.”

 Salazar looked at the viewscreen, the projected chart of the battle displayed upon it. Normally, the tactical computers were forced to some level of guesswork, of interpretation, if only because of the light-speed limit, but most battles were fought at ranges that made that only a minor factor, the ships usually thousands or tens of thousands of miles apart, flashing past each other at speeds that made them dependent on the battle computers.

 That he didn't have any concrete idea of what the enemy ships were doing was unnerving, to say the least. He'd done his best to compensate for contingencies, knew that both Major Moran and Senior Lieutenant Francis were seasoned combat commanders, but one midshipman standing by an airlock with an image intensifier couldn't compensate for the loss of Alamo's powerful sensor array. He was going into battle blind and dumb. There hadn't been any time to rig up realistic alternatives to the internal communication system, and the only way any messages were going to reach him from the lower decks were on foot.

 More, he had no way of finding out what was happening down on the sphere. He could guess that Harper was still wreaking havoc, and heard mad reports of Clarke and his team slashing their way through the outer layers of the Hegemonic defenses, but until he had some sort of confirmation, he couldn't know for certain whether or not any of his people were still alive.

 He couldn't dwell on that. Didn't have the time. He looked back up at the viewscreen, thirty seconds still remaining until combat could begin, and started working out contingency plans in his mind. They'd be in the jamming field for five minutes, a little more. If they survived the passage, they could come around for a second pass, hours in the distance. Assuming that the enemy couldn't prepare another surprise for them.

 Still, it worked both ways. They didn't know what Alamo was doing, couldn't monitor the evasive flight path that was sending the battlecruiser lurching through space like a drunkard, or spot the fighters that were hopefully settling into an attack pattern right now. The trajectory plot on the screen might merely be guesswork, but it was at least informed guesswork.

 “Firing range!” Scott said.

 “Execute battle plan,” Salazar replied. “Fire at will.”

 Alamo rocked as eight missiles raced from her launch tubes, turning back on their flight path to aim towards the projected track of Roanoke. They lost contact with the missiles instantly, only a brief flicker from the image intensifiers to make it clear that they were on the way to their target. Salazar switched to the feed from Petrova, the stars jerking around as the midshipman swept the sky, trying to make out the dots of the enemy ships in the sky, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the starfield.

 “After we get through this,” Salazar said, turning to Carpenter, “I want Chief Santiago to work on a real auxiliary system based on visual scanning. I never want to be caught out like this again, and it would be a useful backup system to have.”

 “Aye, sir,” she replied. “I guess nobody ever thought that we'd face this sort of a problem.”

 “Incoming!” Scott said, gesturing at the screen. Salazar's hands gripped the armrests of his chair tight enough for his knuckles to grow white, bracing himself for the expected impact. Quesada's hands were furiously dancing across the helm controls, but there was far too little that he could do, lacking the information he needed about the approach vector. All they could do was wait, and hope.

 Alamo's hull growled as one of the kinetic warheads slammed home, sirens blaring across the bridge as the ship lurched, the rush of escaping atmosphere tossing the ship to the side as Quesada struggled to bring her under control, playing the thrusters against each other.

 “Damage report,” Salazar said, turning to Fitzroy.

 The engineer shook his head, then said, “Aft, sir. Sensor array and hendecaspace drive, as far as I can tell. No combat-critical damage, but we've got hull breaches somewhere down in the lower storage bays. I presume Chief Santiago will send someone up with a more detailed report.”

 Frowning, Carpenter said, “This jamming field is pretty damned selective.”

 “At a guess, designed to force a surrender to a boarding party,” Salazar replied. “Maybe we're fallen foul of a customs inspection. Quesada, can you keep us stable?”

 “Trying, sir, but we're really on a random evasion pattern now. I keep getting pulses of atmospheric release from the lower decks. Stress fractures, I think, sir.”

 “Ride it out, Sub-Lieutenant,” Salazar ordered.

 “We've got a hit!” Scott said. “Just picked up a couple of flares! I think they must be Roanoke.” Tapping controls, she added, “That gives us more material for a course projection. Updating plot to match.”

 The image on the viewscreen jumped as the brief influx of real-world data flickered into view. Roanoke abruptly jerked a thousand miles to the right, and Salazar nodded in satisfaction, the course remarkably close to that which the tactical computers had projected. Scott looked across, fingers poised on her controls.

 “Second salvo ready.”

 “Let 'er rip.”

 Alamo rocked once more, the second wave of warheads shooting into the sky, again targeted at Roanoke. Salazar looked at the pinpoint on the screen, frowning. There was no way to know how much damage they had caused, whether they had taken out any critical systems or simply ripped into unimportant components. By now, a second wave of kinetic projectiles were almost certainly on their way, and there was nothing they could do about it. Quesada struggled to maintain control, trying to keep the ship on course, holding trajectory past the sphere, its gravity field dragging Alamo down towards it.

 “Impact in thirty seconds minus, sir,” Scott said.

 “I think we've spotted the fighters,” Ballard added. “Adding data to projection.”

 Two more dots appeared on the screen, elements of Alamo's fighter formation moving into position, setting themselves up for an attack run on Darlan. The computer guessed that they were Hurricanes, part of Red Flight, but Salazar held little reliability in that assessment. At extreme range, one small ship looked very much like another.

 “Point-defense impacts, I think,” Scott said. “Close aboard. Might have been missiles or shuttles.” She turned to him, and said, “We might have just stumbled across their master plan.”

 A boarding action from the Hierarchy ships would have been a desperate gamble. Attacking an unprepared ship with no internal communications could provide a strong initial advantage, but it wouldn't take long for Alamo's crewmen to rally, using their knowledge of the ship to maximum effect to force the invaders away. That was the hope, anyway.

 “Sir, if they're trying that with us, they're probably trying with Endurance,” Scott said.

 Carpenter nodded, and added, “There's no way to warn them. We'll just have to hope that they can fight them off.”

 “There is a way,” Salazar said, “but the message will have to be hand-delivered.” Turning to one of the figures standing by the elevator, he said, “Spaceman, go down to the Hangar Deck, and inform Ensign Rhodes that he is to take his platoon and proceed to Endurance in support, on the assumption that there is a hostile boarding action in progress. He is to act as he thinks best.”

 “Aye, sir,” the young man said, stepping into the elevator, the doors closing behind him.

 “We don't know what sort of battlespace we're sending them into, skipper,” Carpenter said.

 “No, but we can make a guess, and with all the chaos and confusion out there, I think it's realistic to hope that we can sneak three shuttles through. They won't be expecting it, and those mass drivers will struggle to hit anything that small anyway.”

 “Wow!” Fitzroy said. “Hull temperature just went through the ceiling!” Alarms sounded, and Alamo spun on its axis, outgassing tossing it around. “Damage to the outer hull in nine areas. I think we just sustained a laser impact, sir.”

 “A laser shot?” Salazar asked. “How the hell did they manage that?”

 “They had a chance to prepare for this battle, months, in fact,” Scott replied. “We didn't.”

 “Information from Endurance suggests that they'll be ready to fire again in less than a minute, sir,” Carpenter said, running to the engineering station. “It's bad, skipper. Lots of damage to the outer areas, sensor arrays, two of our launch tubes. They managed a hell of a good shot.”

 “It could have been a lot worse,” Fitzroy said. “A few meters to the left, and they'd have gone right into our oxygen reservoir.”

 “We can't take much more of this, Captain,” Scott said. “We've got to retake the initiative.”

 “Come on, Kris,” Salazar muttered. “What's the damned hold-up?” 

Chapter 23

 Harper looked over the pictographs carved onto the column, worry lines etched into her forehead as she struggled to interpret them, trying to blot out the battle that was raging in the corridor, the echoes of gunfire running down the tunnel. Beside her, Sekura implacably poked at the console, finally turning and gesturing her to his side.

 “I believe I have found an access code,” he said. “Look.”

 The screen flickered, symbols replaced with images, a display of the sphere, strangely deformed, appearing on the display. Belatedly, Harper realized that she was watching the construction progress, streams of material thrown across interstellar space to be assembled by teams of robots, the greatest engineering project in all of history, laid out for her to see.

 Then the view flashed away, and she saw a ship passing through a stylized wormhole, racing through space towards the non-completed sphere, then strange-suited figures disembarking onto a wide-open plain, the history of a colonization mission displayed in a matter of seconds. She looked across at Sekura, wonder in her eyes.

 “This is a learning tool,” she said, nodding in understanding. “Designed to feed this information into any approaching ship, taking over its sensor and communication systems to make sure that there is no chance of the material being ignored. Somewhere, buried in all of this data, is the information we came here to find. They did build the wormholes, or at the very least, understood them. If I'm right we've found our way home!”

 Frowning, Sekura said, “It would appear that the Hierarchy has struggled to assemble this data. It appears to me as though this is suitable for a child, not an engineer or a scientist.”

 “What else are we, to the builders of this sphere?”

 “There is perhaps wisdom in that thought, but how can you be sure that the information you seek is truly within? And even if it is, it might be buried deep in the database. How can you duplicate the work of decades in a matter of seconds?”

 Looking around the room, Harper frantically raced to the connectors, checking the contacts, and saying, “They've got good equipment here, but I think I can make better use of it than them.” Reaching across to the controls, ignoring the stabbing pain from her leg as she brushed against the floor, she added, “Given time, I should be able to download everything in this column. I've seen something very like it before. Holographic memory crystals. We found fragments of them, a few years ago. With a quantum computer...”

 Turning to the corridor, Sekura said, “I'm not sure that our attackers will give us that much time. Our people are pinned down, and I can see heavy armament bring brought forward, into the fight. Before much more time passes, they will have control of this facility once again, and the mission we came to complete will have failed.”

 “I just need a few minutes,” she said, frantically tapping buttons, her hands dancing across the controls. “Don't you understand? This is what I was born for! And I can't pass up the chance to find a way home. The secrets of the wormholes could be right here! Even if we can't work out how to create them for ourselves, there must be a star chart.”

 “Perhaps so, but will you not require a starship to reach it?”

 “Get to the door,” she said, her fingers moving swiftly across the controls. “Watch for attack, and cover me. I'm going to be vulnerable while I'm working through this.” With one quick glance at the Neander, she said, “Go on!”

 “As you say,” he replied, drifting to the entrance to the room, while Harper frantically continued to work, dumping data into every spare scrap of storage space she could find in the systems, easing fragments of information from the ancient repository, images flashing on the screen as she worked. Maps of unfamiliar worlds, diagrams of strange chemical compounds, brief glimpses of alien cities under strange, green skies. Knowledge that must have been gathered over the course of centuries, dumped randomly into her files for later analysis.

 She watched the images dance across the screen, entranced by what she saw, the roar of battle fading into the background as her hands continued to work, digging deeper into the holographic memory of the column, seeking anything Alamo could use to find a way home. More than that. The secrets of the construction of the sphere, information on the builders, all of it would be accessible, the answers to all the questions posed by this place.

 Two years ago, at the onset of the Xandari War, she'd discovered fragments of a holographic memory crystal, with hints that it could contain terabytes of information, stored for centuries, longer. They'd never found enough to complete the device and decode its contents, only sufficient to know that the bulk of the data was astrographic. Now that mystery was solved, at least. This was the same technology on a far larger scale, and those crystals had been markers, designed to show the way to this sphere, millions of light years away.

 With one hand, she continue to gather the information, struggling to distribute it along the memory storage on the base, wiping everything she could to create more room, more room, knowing that every scrap of data was critical, that the holographic nature of the storage meant that everything had to be collected, or none of it would be legible.

 “Lieutenant,” Sekura said. “Lieutenant, they're breaking through. We've only got minutes, at best. And Alamo will be deep into the jamming field by now.”

 “Just a little longer,” she insisted. “We're so damned close. One more push and I'll have it all. If I interrupt the sequence before the download completes, we won't get anything.”

 “Can you deactivate it?”

 She glanced up at the panel, and said, “I don't see how. Not without finishing the sequence.”

 “Are you saying that because you cannot, or because you will not?”

 “Don't you realize how important this is?”

 “Perhaps better than you,” Sekura replied. The diminutive Neander had picked up the discarded laser cannon, swinging it around as though he'd always wielded it, lining up on Harper for an instant before turning towards the column. Realizing what he was about to do, she pushed towards him, arms flailing, desperately trying to stop him, but he squeezed the trigger before she could reach him, one pulse of laser energy burning into the crystal matrix, ripping angry gouges down its side. All the panels flicked off, then returned to their default settings, no longer able to access the power of the destroyed computer.

 “What have you done?” she said, looking up at the Neander. “What have you done? That column could have held the secrets of the universe, and now we'll never know what it contained.”

 “The forgotten knowledge of my ancestors was hidden inside,” he said, sighing, a tear running down his aged cheek. “Do you think that I would destroy it easily, without knowing the cost. It had to be done, Lieutenant, and once you have a chance to consider it calmly, I think you will agree with the wisdom of my decision.”

 A beam of light crashed into the wall ahead of them, instantly melting the rock into dull, glowing slag, and Harper replied, “But we were so close. We could have had it all.”

 “And now, perhaps, we have something more,” he said, looking over the patterns on the wall. “That is a textual map. I recognize some of the landmarks. Given time, and access to high-altitude data, I might be able to tell you where it leads.” Gesturing at the console, he added, “And incidentally, the jamming field is down.”

 Harper's eyes widened, and she reached for the controls on her wrist, bringing her communications system back online, a roar of conversation filling her ears, the sounds of the battle being waged only meters away.

 “Harper to Alamo,” she said. “Harper to Alamo. Come in, please.”

 “Alamo here,” Salazar said. “I'd almost given up on you. Is it down for good?”

 “Smashed to pieces, Pavel. You won't have to worry about it any more. How's the ship?”

 “Battered and bruised, but now we can really begin to show them what we're made of. I'll try and get some people down there as fast as I can. Help is on the way. Can you hold until then?”

 “We'll manage. Good luck. Harper out.”

 “Clarke to Harper,” the disbelieving voice of the young officer said. “Nice to get the tactical network up and running again. The enemy is retreating in order, ma'am, pulling back to what I think is the prisoner's quarters. Do I hold or follow?”

 “Get after them, Sub-Lieutenant,” she said, looking back forlornly at the shattered column.

 “Aye, ma'am!” he said.

 “And Sub-Lieutenant,” she said. “Rifles, not swords, if you please.”

 “If you insist,” he replied with a chuckle. “We're on the way. And may I speak freely?”

 “Of course.”

 “Might be best if you stayed behind to guard the room.”

 “There's nothing useful anymore.”

 “Ma'am, he's right,” Fox said. “I saw that leg of yours, and your suit must be beginning to run out of tranquilizers. If your wound is as bad as I think it is, you'll only slow us down.”

 “You don't believe in pulling punches, do you, Sergeant.”

 “Not my job, ma'am, and leading this charge isn't yours. Leave it to Captain Kid.”

 “Captain Kid?” she asked with a sigh. “Keep in contact, and listen out for Alamo. Pavel's promised us reinforcements, and they'll need to know where to run.”

 “Will do, ma'am. Good luck.”

 “And to you.” 

 “Lieutenant,” Sekura said, running his gloved hand along the wall. “I think I might have found something. This was not the only column built for this purpose.”

 Harper turned to look at the pictograms, and replied, “I suppose that's logical enough. Theory of mediocrity, especially on something as big as this.” With mounting excitement, she added, “Can you find the location of the other device?”

 “I think so,” he said. “Some of these pictograms are of familiar locations, sites I visited on my quest to the Vault. It was many years ago, but those memories will be fresh forever.” Pointing at an image, he said, “The Shattered Lands, there, and the Endless Desert. The Graveyard of Dreams.”

 “Sounds lovely. A real tourist spot.”

 “It's a chart, a map, Lieutenant. One that we can follow.” His eyes lit up, and he continued, “There will be other locations, as well. Given a little time, I can give you a hundred places to search, thousands of secrets to find. The column might have been destroyed, but my ancestors have given us guidance to seek out others.”

 Looking at a strange symbol, a spiral with an arrow diving from it, she asked, “What's that?”

 “I've never seen it before, but if I had to guess, I would say that it was a wormhole.”

 Frowning, she replied, “How does a village shaman know...”

 “The legends of my people are, in some circumstances, surprisingly specific. We were not always savages, you understand. Civilization might have been beaten for a while, but we will walk the stars ourselves again one day. Perhaps sooner than you think.”

 She looked up at the images again, and asked, “How much did you know of this place, before you came up here?”

 “Once our wise men fell into the dark depths of the sphere, and donned their armor to quest for knowledge, and uncover the secret clock of chaos and death. But once acquired, they were doomed, doomed on an endless quest, for they forgot that to gain knowledge without wisdom is to immerse yourself in a flame hotter than the sun.”

 “Based on that, I'm surprised you volunteered.”

 “Oh, but it is heroic, Lieutenant. I think it simply loses something in translation.”

 “And how do you speak English, any way?” 

 “It is the language of the Hill Tribes. A trading tongue in this region. And of course, our Hegemonic captors spoke it. We had recent reason to gain fluency.”

 A screen flickered on, and Harper moved over to the console, tapping the controls once again. “I think I can get a shot of the battle, link up to Alamo's sensor network. If we can't help, at least we can get a front row seat for their victory.”

 “Or defeat.”

 “Pessimist.”

Chapter 24

 “That's more like it!” Salazar said, as the sensor display flickered into life. Scott was throwing controls, extending Alamo's wing-like radiators and feeding power to the laser cannon, bringing the combat systems on-line. “Carpenter, full status report, if you please.”

 “Roanoke has been badly hurt, Captain,” she said, “Nine detectable impacts, and she's listing badly to the side. Thruster failures, and only accelerating at half power. She'll be lucky to stay clear of the surface unless she can make repairs in a hurry. Darlan is in better condition, three impacts, none of them critical, and she's bearing directly.”

 “Anything from Endurance?” he asked, turning to the communications station.

 “Nothing, sir, but she's sustained several hits to her antenna complex. They might not even be hearing us, still less be able to respond,” Bowman replied.

 “I'm picking up unfamiliar shuttles attached to the outer hull in three locations,” Ballard added. “I think your guess about the enemy boarding action was right, sir. Looks like there's a firefight in progress.”

 “Try and push through to Ensign Rhodes,” Salazar ordered. “We've got to get some sort of a status report. Find out how much control of Endurance they have.”

 “Her mass drivers are still firing, sir, but she's ranging at Roanoke, not Darlan.”

 “Which could mean her sensors are damaged as well,” Carpenter said. “She's taken a lot of critical hits, sir. I don't think she'll be in a fit state for battle for quite a while.”

 “Hopefully, that won't be a problem for much longer,” Salazar said. “Fighter status?”

 “Red Flight launched its attack on Roanoke, Green Flight being held in reserve.”

 Nodding, Salazar looked back at the screen. The battle had been closer to his projected plan than he had feared, but there were still wild variances, the computers struggling to update their simulations to match the recently revealed reality. Roanoke and Endurance had essentially canceled each other out in the battle, and much as it pained him to admit it, rescuing their ally had become less important. If it looked as though they were going to lose that fight, one laser blast would end them as a potential threat.

 Frowning, he turned back to Carpenter, and said, “Have Midshipman Petrova round up half a dozen crewmen, grab any spare plasma armament, and send them down to the surface on Transfer Four. They ought to be able to make it down if they're careful to stay well clear of the deep shaft. One quick, easy burn.”

 “Ordinary crewmen?”

 “There's nothing ordinary about Alamo crewmen, Lieutenant, and our Espatiers are looking rather busy at the moment. Scott, how long before we get the laser charged up?”

 “Forty-five seconds, sir, and I'm switching all of our warheads back to salvo control.”

 “Then, Helm, hard about, and place us on a direct intercept course with Darlan. Take us as close as you can. And watch out for those mass drivers. As soon as they realize what we're doing, they'll throw everything they've got in our direction.”

 “Aye, sir,” Quesada said with a smile. “Bringing her around. Intercept will be in two minutes, five seconds, minus, Captain. I'm still having trouble with the lateral thrusters, but damage control seems to be getting the atmospheric leaks under control.”

 “Anything from engineering, Fitzroy?”

 “You'd court-martial me if I repeated it, skipper,” the veteran engineer replied.

 “I think Chief Santiago is cross with you,” Carpenter said with a wry grin.

 “Let's see if we can find a way to brighten her day. Fire at will, Scott, missiles and lasers, and instruct Green Flight to attack in support. A few missile strikes should turn this whole battle around. See if you can get pinpoint control back, and take a look at Roanoke. If it worked once, it'll work twice.”

 “Aye, Captain,” Scott said. “Locking on weapons and engine systems, salvo launching.”

 This time, as the missiles raced towards their distant target, Salazar could track them in real-time, no longer reliant on computer projections as they dived for Darlan. Alamo swung around, altering her course to bring her close to the enemy craft, ready to flash past only a few miles distant. Seconds later, the laser fired, a beam of light pumping energy across cold space to the enemy ship, ripping a savage tear down the side of its hull, tossing the ship around from air release.

 It almost felt as though Alamo herself was taking revenge for the blows struck earlier, her fighters swinging in from the side on a parallel course, moving slowly ahead as they prepared to launch their attack. A salvo of kinetic projectiles raced from the enemy ship, but this time Quesada could spot every detail of the engagement, was easily able to swing out of the way, allowing them to harmlessly fly past.

 “Signal from Endurance!” Bowman said. “Corporal Quiller reports that they have retaken the bridge, and now have attitude control. Requests instructions.”

 “All turrets are to continue to target Roanoke. Pound it to pieces. We can handle Darlan as long as nothing else changes.”

 “Sir,” Carpenter said, “Transfer Four is ready to launch.”

 Tapping a control, Salazar said, “Bridge to Transfer Four. Good luck and good hunting.”

 “Thank you, sir,” Petrova replied. “Initiating launch sequence.”

 Shaking her head, Scott said, “Darlan's badly hurt, sir.”

 “Maintain firing rate, Lieutenant,” Salazar replied. “We've got to finish them now. For all we know, a second jamming field could snap on at any moment.”

 “Energy spike!” Ballard said. “Power surge!”

 “Evasive, Quesada!” Salazar ordered, and Alamo dived to the side, dancing under the helmsman's control, swinging nimbly around once again, easily dodging Darlan's laser beam. Alamo swept onward like an avenging angel, unleashing a second wave of destruction on the enemy target, just as the first salvo was striking home, eight shots neatly lined up on the port side of the ship, punctures that spewed air as the hull armor ripped apart.

 “Hail them again, Bowman,” Salazar said. “Let's see if they're any more interested in surrendering after that hellstorm.”

 “No contact, sir,” the technician replied, a moment later. “No signal at all.”

 “Could be that they're too badly damaged,” Carpenter suggested. “Look at the side of their hull. Do you want to abort the second salvo?”

 “No,” Salazar said. “If they get clear of the system, they'll be back with reinforcements, and I think we're going to be here a while. Any word on the hendecaspace drive, Fitzroy?”

 “Tangled mess, sir. Repairs possible, but it's going to take a while.”

 “That's about what I was afraid of,” Salazar replied. “Fire second pulse, Kat, as soon as you can. Let's finish them off.”

 “Roanoke's gone, sir!” Ballard yelled, gesturing up at her monitor. “Three impacts from Endurance, right into her mid-section. She's torn to pieces, Captain.” Glancing across at a second display, she added, “Some escape pods, sir, but I'm not sure whether or not they'll get out of the blast wave.”

 “Launch SAR shuttle to retrieve prisoners,” Salazar said.

 “Firing laser, sir,” Scott said, a second pulse of energy slamming into Darlan, this time forward, running close to its nose, more gas escaping from ruptured bulkheads, shards of molten hull armor flying in all directions. Alamo's radiators briefly glowed white-hot, rapidly cooling as Scott prepared for a third shot that they hoped would not be necessary.

 “Second salvo impacting in ten seconds, sir,” Scott reported.

 “That should just about finish them off, Captain,” Carpenter added. “Green Flight launching now. Though I suspect that they won't have much to target.” Her voice was rueful, and she was looking everywhere other than the tactical display.

 “Lieutenant, I don't like killing ships any more than you do, but they're the ones who chose battle. We're just finishing the fight that they started. And given what we've learned about the Hegemony, I don't think we need to worry too much about the ethics of warfare today.”

 “Impact!” Scott said, and the crew watched Darlan die, an explosion ripping through the decks, shredding the ship to fragments, a swarming cluster of debris from which there could be no escape. The three fighters of Green Flight swooped past, flying a smooth arc on their return to Alamo, the bridge silent, watching.

 Salazar looked around, then said, “This fight isn't over yet, people. I want all of our birds back on board on the double, rearmed and prepared for a strike mission. Quesada, take us towards Endurance, matching course and speed as best you can. Scott, I want a firing solution on Endurance with the cannon, set to miss by two miles. I want everyone on board to know what's happening.”

 “Will do, sir,” Scott said, nodding in confirmation. “Going to be a minute and a half before we can fire again. I pushed it a little with the radiators to take that second shot.”

 “Understood. Just make the magic happen,” he replied.

 “On it,” she said.

 “Ballard, contact Endurance. I want to speak to Ensign Rhodes if you can get him.”

 After a moment, the technician looked up, and said, “Contact established, sir.”

 “What's the story, Frank?” Salazar asked.

 The rattle of gunfire echoed in the background as Rhodes replied, “Not good, Captain. We're under heavy fire, and we're in danger of losing the bridge again. I'm afraid our idea of simulating a mutiny worked a little too well. They must have had some sleeper agents on board already, and they managed to take five decks before we could rally. I prioritized weapons control, but there's not much more I can do. We're taking heavy casualties, and short of wrecking the ship, I think we're going to lose her.”

 Nodding, Salazar said, “Get out of there, Frank, and take everyone with you worth saving.”

 “Sir,” Scott replied, “There's got to be something we can do to save Endurance.”

 “That ship will be able to leave the system in three days, and unlike Alamo, she has a working hendecaspace drive. I know exactly what whoever is commanding that attack force is planning, and I have no intention of allowing them to proceed.” He paused, then said, “There are still a few options left on the table. Quesada, can we intercept?”

 “Four minutes, Captain, but we'll only have time for a single salvo and one shot from the cannon. And after that, the best rendezvous time is hours away. Someone's coaxed extra acceleration out of that beast, and they're heading away on a wild vector.” His eyes widened, and he said, “I think they're trying for a slingshot around the black hole.”

 “Brave,” Scott replied.

 “Crazy,” Quesada said. “With their attitude thrusters damaged, they'll struggle to get onto the right trajectory, and have an even harder time staying on it.”

 “Ballard,” Salazar asked, “Can you patch me through to every working speaker on Endurance? The whole ship?”

 “I think so, sir, but they've sustained a lot of damage to their interior communications network.”

 “Do what you can.”

 After a moment, she replied, “You're on, sir.”

 “This is Lieutenant-Captain Pavel Salazar of the Battlecruiser Alamo. You are on a doomed course, and I have the full power of our weapons system locked on to you. There is no way that you are going to escape from this system. I instruct you to immediately surrender, proceed to the escape pods, and abandon ship. I will guarantee your safety if you choose to follow this course of action. Otherwise, I guarantee your destruction.”

 He looked up at the trajectory plot, and said, “Alamo will be in range in four minutes. I will be destroying Endurance then. I suggest you are somewhere else when that happens. Salazar out.”

 “Is this necessary?” Carpenter asked.

 “We're not going to have a second chance at this, Lieutenant, and Endurance is barely holding together now. Fitzroy, can you give us an engineering assessment?”

 “Shipyard job, sir, and not an easy one at that. If we were hope, they'd probably end up junking her. Cheaper and easier to start from scratch. She's certainly lived up to her name, though.”

 “No argument there, Spaceman. Ballard, report.”

 “Picking up three shuttles departing Endurance, sir, and multiple escape pods. Nineteen members of our Espatier platoon have checked in, but Ensign Rhodes and Senior Lieutenant Francis have yet to do so. Reports had them deep inside the ship, sir. They might not be able to reach the escape pods before we launch our attack.”

 “We could double back with the fighters,” Carpenter suggested. “Buy ourselves some more time.”

 “And give the traitors a chance to get the mass drivers working again,” Salazar replied. “Kat, commit to the attack. Full spread, laser as well.”

 “Ensign Rhodes…,” Carpenter protested, before Salazar interrupted.

 “Lieutenant, I've known Frank Rhodes a damned sight longer than you, long enough to know that if he was sitting in this chair, he'd give the same order as I am for the same reasons. Either get used to the idea or leave the bridge.”

 Carpenter nodded, then looked down at her station, her face pale, saying, “All fighters preparing landing sequence now, sir. We should have Red Flight home in two minutes, Green Flight three minutes later. SAR has retrieved four escape pods, eleven crewmen in total, all wounded. Doctor Strickland is able to accept casualties for triage in Storage One.”

 “Thank you, Susan,” Salazar said, struggling to retain his cool. He was as concerned about Rhodes and Francis as the rest of them. Both men were people he called friends, and he'd fought alongside Rhodes all through the Xandari War. He'd served on Salazar's first command. That didn't, couldn't change anything. For the sake of Alamo and the people who were still flooding out of Endurance, he didn't dare take the risk.

 “One minute, thirty seconds, sir,” Scott said.

 “No direct reply from the mutineers, sir. Lots of beacons checking in, and we're still getting escape pod launches,” Bowman said.

 “Rhodes and Francis?”

 “Nothing, sir.”

 With a sigh, Salazar said, “Lieutenant Scott, destroy Endurance at your discretion.”

 “Aye, Captain,” Scott replied, her face ashen. She'd known Rhodes as long as Salazar had. 

 Remorselessly, Alamo continued on course, racing towards the dying ship, trajectory plots scattering in all directions as escape pods and shuttles flew to safety, carrying a precious cargo of crew with it. A stream of medical reports raced across the screen, almost too quick to read. Sickbay was going to be overcrowded for some time to come. 

 “Ten seconds, sir,” Scott said. “Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Firing.”

 Her finger lightly tapped a control, and Alamo's laser cannon discharged once again, neatly slicing Endurance in twain. She glanced back at Salazar, who shook his head. There had been no need for the missile salvo.

 “Stand down from battle stations,” he said. “Maintain standby alert until further notice. I'm heading down to the Hangar Deck.”

 “Sir,” Bowman said, a smile on his face, “We just had an update from Shuttle Three. Ensign Rhodes and Senior Lieutenant Francis are both aboard. Critically wounded, but alive, and stable.”

 With a sigh of relief, Salazar said, “Thank you, Spaceman.” He turned to face the screen, then said, “Have any Espatiers ready to fight on meet me aboard any shuttle capable of making the transit to the surface standing by. I'm going down myself. Scott, you have the ship.”

 “Sir?” she asked. “Lieutenant...”

 Taking a quick glance at Carpenter, Salazar said, “You have the ship, Lieutenant. Consider that an order. And let me have status and casualty reports as fast as you can stream them.”

 “Aye, sir,” she replied, as he stepped from the bridge. He'd sat up there long enough. Now he had to get into the thick of the action. He owed that to both his crew, and to himself.

Chapter 25

 Clarke flew down the corridor, leading Fox and Mortimer through the twisting passages beyond, now almost familiar to him after the battles they had waged along them. He kept one eye on his thruster fuel, heading perilously close to the red line, and forced himself to hold back to careful, precise pulses from his suit jets. Just sufficient to keep him moving forward and to keep him clear of the tangled rocks below, sharp points longingly reaching up to snag his suit.

 He checked the clip on his rifle once more, testing that it was secure. He was using the same type of weapon that he had stolen before on the surface of the sphere, and his prior experience was poor enough that he felt comfortable that he still had a sword at his belt, though both Fox and Mortimer had left theirs behind at the control room. Swinging around a tall outcrop, he drifted into the smooth-walled section, knowing that they were getting close to the landing ground and the holding area.

 “Left,” he said.

 “Likely they're trying to escape, sir,” Fox said.

 “If they are, then Petrova and her team from Alamo will be in a perfect position to cut them off. I'm more worried that they're thinking about taking hostages and bartering their way out.”

 “They've got a good headstart on us, John,” Mortimer warned.

 “All the more reason not to waste time now.” He tapped his thrusters again, racing heedlessly down the corridor, rifle nestled in his arms. His suit sensors were working properly now, and he could pick up moving targets out at extreme range, figures bustling through the corridors. He tapped a control, and said, “Clarke to Sekura.”

 “I hear you,” the Neander replied. 

 “Are there any legends of tunnels leading down to the surface from here?”

 “That's eighty miles down,” Mortimer protested.

 “And still quite possible to walk, especially if the slope is gentle enough.” He paused, frowned, then said, “Good God, I'm talking about walking down to the surface of a world.”

 “This place is really distorting our sense of scale, isn't it, sir,” Fox replied.

 “Some legends of creatures descending from the sky,” the shaman said, “though nothing specific. Mind you, that's the whole problem with relying on myths and legends. The truth gets tangled and distorted through all the centuries, until finally you realize that you can have little faith in them at all. Still, there's usually something buried beneath all the superstition, if you look hard enough.” He paused, and said, “One lesson for you, Sub-Lieutenant. Don't let an old man ramble.”

 “You think they've got an escape route?” Mortimer asked.

 “We'll swing past the holding area first, but I've got a horrible feeling that I know what we're going to find down there.” Drifting carefully through a narrow passage, they came to a plastisteel door, an obvious recent addition to the structure, an airlock clumsily fitting into position. Fox moved to the front, reaching for the panel, and started to enter in code sequences, turning with a grin as the outer door slid open.

 “Let me guess,” Mortimer said. “Password.”

 “Close,” Fox replied. “Change On First Use.”

 “Brilliant,” Mortimer said. “Just brilliant.” The three of them slid into the cramped airlock, their suits hanging limp and flabby by their sides as the external pressure rose, filling with oxygen. None of them made any move to remove their suits. Not only were they the only effective armor they had, but any atmosphere given could be taken away just as quickly.

 At least the floors and walls were smooth, and they no longer needed the thrusters to emerge. Turning a corner, they spotted a pile of rags scattered on the floor, the remains of a dozen spacesuits, shredded into pieces. Clarke glanced at Mortimer, then carefully stepped forward to the end of the corridor.

 “No doors. Must be concealed,” he said, tapping the metal. “This is hollow.”

 “There must be a hidden catch somewhere up there,” Mortimer said.

 “We don't have time to find it,” Clarke replied. “Sergeant, tell me you have some armor-piercing rounds with you?”

 “Always packing, sir,” she said with a smile, ripping what looked like an old patch from the side of her suit, revealing a trio of bullets carefully stitched into place. “Old covert ops trick. Better stand well back.” She looked over the wall, and added, “There's some heat leak. Looks like a seam. If I can catch it, the force should rip through the plate.” Pounding the surface, she turned her speaker up as high as she could, shouting, “Hit the deck!”

 All three bullets slammed into position, and the door jerked open, wide enough to reveal a dozen people lying on the floor, wearing nothing other than their underclothes. Lombardo looked up, disbelief on his face, and pushed himself immediately to his feet.

 “They cleared off, John,” he began. “About fifteen minutes ago. Slashed our suits and ran for it. I don't know where.” He paused, and added, “They took Foster with them in a rescue ball. As a hostage. Just her.”

 “Alamo's forces hold this base now, near as damn it,” Clarke replied. “We've beaten them in space and it looks like we've got them on the run down here as well.”

 “We'll have a look around,” Lombardo replied, “see if we can find some suits and weapons, or at least some command systems. I'll feel a lot happier when I've got the life support systems under control myself.” Gesturing down the corridor, he added, “They turned to the right.”

 “Thanks, sir.”

 “Good hunting, John.”

 Turning back to the corridor, Clarke raced in long bounds for the airlock, Fox and Mortimer struggling to keep up with his rapid pace. He slammed his hand on the control console to activate the cycling sequence, Fox just sliding in before the doors crashed shut.

 “Come on,” Clarke said. “Come on. Open, damn it.”

 “Harsh language won't make the systems work more quickly.”

 “Sergeant, you have not get begun to hear my harsh language.”

 She grinned, then pushed to the lead as the doors opened, saying, “I'll take point. You two set your sensors to medium-range. I'll keep mine on short. That way we shouldn't miss anything. I hope.”

 Nodding, Clarke hung back long enough to let Fox move ahead down the corridor, covering her with his rifle. He could still pick up contacts out at extreme range, moving into one of the distant access corridors. The network of tunnels and corridors was tangled enough that working out which direction they were traveling was next to impossible, and all the trio could do was push forward on what they hoped was the right path, and hope for the best.

 “Petrova to Clarke,” a voice barked in his ears. “You're heading the wrong way, John.”

 “They've got another way down to the surface, and are holding Senior Lieutenant Foster hostage,” Clarke replied, dismissing any attempt at an argument. “How many people do you have?”

 “Six. Two armed with plasma, the rest conventional.”

 “Leave two riflemen to guard your shuttle, the rest of you to advance in our direction. We'll try and catch them in a crossfire. Remember that they've got a hostage, and we don't want any friendly fire incidents. Don't shoot unless you are attacked or I order it. Got that?”

 “Where's Lieutenant...”

 “Got that, Midshipman?”

 “Yes, sir,” she replied. “We're on our way.”

 “Hard on her, weren't you,” Fox said.

 “I've meet her,” Mortimer replied. “That's the sort of person who needs to be crunched underfoot a few times until they get the point. Thinks she's God's gift to the Fleet. She's got a few shocks coming in the very near future, now that I'm her direct supervisor.” With an evil grin, she caught her thruster, drifting ahead of Clarke, and for a moment, he almost felt sorry for the hapless midshipman.

 Up ahead, the readings were stabilizing, curving away from the landing area. He'd guessed right. There was a hidden way down, leading far enough away that the men they were pursuing believed they could escape. A red warning light flashed on, and Clarke cursed. His thruster fuel was well into his final reserve now, only a few long pulses left. Sliding his rifle over his shoulder, he started to kick out from the walls and floor, nimbly ducking and dodging the outcrops of rock.

 “Getting them now,” Fox said. “Less than a quarter-mile, straight run. Watch it, sir. If you get too much momentum, then...”

 “If we don't, they'll get away.”

 “We've got reinforcements coming,” Mortimer replied, before pausing, then kicking from the walls with equal severity, adding, “Damn it, you're right. They'll know that as well. They must have one last trick up their sleeve.”

 “You can't fall eighty miles and live,” Fox protested, but she joined in the pursuit, the three of them bouncing through the corridors, reaching out with arms and legs to any handholds they could find, traveling in a succession of long arms under the microscopic gravity. Any thought of stealth was dismissed in favor of raw speed as they tumbled onward.

 Soon enough, they found the answer to the question. A long cable, with a car attached, and a crowd of spacesuited figures herding themselves inside, leading their prisoner. One of them spotted Clarke, tumbling ahead of the pack, and the young officer only just managed to raise his rifle in time to match them.

 “Stay clear, or we'll shoot you,” a voice said. “You can inform your commander that we'll be negotiating with him for the return of his officer directly. Our terms will be quite reasonable.”

 Clarke looked back at Mortimer, flashed a smile, then said, “You can talk to me right now, if you want. I'm Captain Clarke. Go right ahead and offer your terms.”

 The figure looked around, then said, “You will give us two shuttles, and offer us safe passage to the far hendecaspace point. We'll have ships of our own coming soon enough to take us home. I'd suggest you were a long way away when they arrive, but then, your hendecaspace drive was damaged in the attack, wasn't it.”

 Frowning, Clarke replied, “Release Lieutenant Foster, and we'll talk.”

 “Do you think I am a fool?”

 “Then trade me for her.”

 “John, what the hell are you doing?” Mortimer hissed on a private channel.

 “That's Captain Kid, remember. Call Petrova and get her to hustle.”

 “We agree, Captain,” the man said. “One hostage serves as well as another. Get rid of that weapon.”

 Clarke tossed his rifle to the ground, and carefully passed his sword to Mortimer, replying, “I'll step forward. So will Foster. We will both keep walking until we've traded places. If you try anything, my people will shoot you.”

 “Rest assured the same is true for you.”

 Nodding, Clarke stepped forward, trading glances with an astonished Foster, careful to keep his pace as slow as possible, each bound only taking him halfway to the ceiling. He took the chance to take a better look at what looked suspiciously like an elevator, suspended over a shaft heading straight down, as far as he could see. Dozens of miles, certainly. Even if it couldn't take them all the way to the bottom, it could certainly take them far enough to evade pursuit, and until the atmosphere grew too thick, they could travel as rapidly as they liked.

 He glanced to the side, Petrova still too far away to help, and with Fox and Mortimer looking helplessly on, stepped into the elevator, the last two guards following. The doors slammed shut, and he fell into captivity, catching a glimpse of the long-awaited reinforcements arriving, seconds too late to save him. Wherever he was going, there was nothing they could do to save him. Not yet.

 “You're a fool, Captain,” the man said, as the elevator pressured.

 “Maybe,” Clarke replied, pulling off his helmet. “But don't worry. My people will be following in a matter of moments. You don't have a chance. If you want to surrender now, I'll be happy to accept it. Though don't feel you have to. There are a few hundred Neander down on the surface looking for a fight. It would be a shame to disappoint them.”

Chapter 26

 “I'm not joking, sir,” Scott said, her voice tinny over the small speaker in the shuttle's cockpit. “We just got a signal informing us that Captain Clarke had been captured, and that we should prepare to satisfy the captors' demands.”

 “Cutting in, Captain,” Foster said, as the shuttle dived into range, closing on the portal.

 “Val? I thought you'd been captured?”

 “Sub-Lieutenant Clarke managed to bluff the guards, sir. I think he was playing for time, but the reinforcements didn't make it. He's in some sort of an elevator, running all the way down to the surface. There was an emergency exit we didn't know about.”

 “Can we track them?”

 “Clarke left his distress beacon turned on,” Mortimer said. “We're getting a positive track, but it's well away from our reinforcements on the surface. I already contacted Midshipman Koslowski, and she's riding towards their projected emergence point as fast as she can, but it's going to be the best part of an hour before we can get there.”

 “Not a problem,” Salazar said. “Send me the location and I'll give them a little surprise. With luck, we might even beat them to the target. Leave a garrison force behind, and follow as soon as you can.”

 “That'll be some time, sir,” Foster said. “The one working shuttle we do have hasn't got the range to get down to the surface.”

 “What about the shuttles scattered on the outside of the sphere?” Salazar asked. “Have Alamo remote one down to you on the double. Most of them have enough fuel for the descent, and we can always send down emergency tanks if we need to. Get moving.”

 “Yes, sir!” Foster said. “Good luck, sir.”

 “And to you. Shuttle Three out.” He turned to Corporal Quiller, sitting in the co-pilot's seat, and said, “Up for another party?”

 “Always, Captain, you know that,” the trooper replied.

 “But?”

 With a sigh, he said, “We've just come out of a pretty intensive firefight, sir, and we didn't have a chance to even draw our breath. Or restock with ammunition. Most of us a riding light, and I've got two walking wounded back there. We had a hell of a time on Endurance, skipper.”

 “Am I being unrealistic, Corporal?”

 Shaking his head, the veteran said, “No, sir, but I don't think we're going to win a war of attrition. Whatever we do needs to be fast and deadly.”

 “Sounds like my kind of mission,” Salazar said, deftly guiding the shuttle through the portal, nose down towards the interior of the sphere. Beneath him, he could make out the cool blue atmosphere of the surface, and he burned his engine harder, slamming to full acceleration in an effort to wrest maximum speed from the shuttle. As they passed the gravitational threshold, he pulled up, killing the thrust, and the heat shield immediately started to glow as they slammed into the atmosphere, warning alarms flashing as the external temperature soared beyond normal safe limits.

 A pinging dot appeared on his sensor display, twenty miles west of their first landing. They only had a few low-resolution images of that area, but as far as he could tell, their target was a low hill surrounded by a thicket of trees. Good cover, if he could beat the bad guys to the draw. The scene looked astonishingly familiar, until it became obvious that the horizon curved up, not down.

 The ringing klaxons grew more insistent, a wry smile crossing Salazar's face as he realized that the shuttle was going to be one more task for Chief Santiago's crew when he nursed it back to Alamo, the damage to the underside too severe to ignore. On his heads-up display, his altimeter flickered through the miles as the air grew denser, and he glanced across at his fuel gauge, his smile turning to a frown as he saw the rapidly-dropping levels. They wouldn't have much flying time once inside, though with any luck, they wouldn't need much. Though at this rate, they'd probably end up having to walk home.

 Finally, the heat died, and Salazar let the shuttle drop, nose down, ready to fire the engines again to kick the ship onto trajectory. A vortex of wind buffeted the ship from side to side, and he struggled to keep her steady, one eye constantly on the rapidly-diminishing fuel gauge. Almost without warning, they dropped through the shaft, and he turned the ship, his hand on the throttle, throwing the engines full-on.

 “We're in time, sir,” Quiller said, looking at the sensor plot. “They're still ten miles from the surface. If we're quick, we should catch them by surprise.” He glanced back, and said, “Shuttle One's following. Five minutes behind us. That was fast work.”

 “Foster's one of the sharpest officers I've ever known,” Salazar said, briefly remembering the long-ago days when they had been bitter rivals, when he had first arrived on Alamo, four years ago. He looked over the landscape, astonished by the view that rolled out before his eyes, an endless expanse of forest and plain that stretched for thousands of miles, a black desert to the north, rising mountains to the west. And beyond, eternity. Millions of miles of terrain, points of light in the shadowed regions that had to be cities.

 “We really are small creatures, aren't we, Corporal,” he said with a sigh.

 “That we are, sir. That we air.”

 “Fuel at fifteen percent,” he added. “Clearing for landing. Deploy as soon as you hit the deck, tactical envelopment.”

 “Rules of engagement, sir?”

 “Take down anyone who isn't Clarke. Fire discipline, and if you get a chance to take anyone alive, do it, but don't put yourself at risk to do so. From what I've been told, these bastards were running a slave empire down here. And given that their former prisoners are on the way...”

 “Yes, sir,” Quiller said, moving to the rear compartment. “Listen up! We've got a chance to finish this, right now, and we're damned well going to take it. Standard deployment, and let the miserable bastards burn!”

 Shaking his head at the ferocity of the squad leader, Salazar concentrated on the landing. Atmospheric flight was nothing new to him, but the artificial gravity field beneath him was strange. The readings might have looked familiar enough, the numbers the same, but the feel of the flight was somehow completely different. Something else for the scientific team to work on, as soon as they could start operating on the surface.

 He carefully played the landing thrusters against each other, gently guiding the ship down to the ground, kicking deep ruts into the soil as the landing legs locked into position, sinking into the soft ground as he cut the engines. Reaching over his head, he threw a control, opening both hatches of the airlock together, the smell of fresh, clean air rushing into the cabin, mixed with the usual smoky aftertaste of the landing jets.

 Tapping a control to begin the post-flight sequence, he threw off his seat restraints and rose to his feet, reaching to the side for a rifle, as the Espatiers poured out of the shuttle, boots pounding into the ground as they raced for their cover positions. Salazar followed, keeping down low, running for the far side of the thicket at the direction of Quiller. In orbit, he was the Captain, but in the middle of a fire-fight, he knew better than to argue with the senior non-com.

 A quick glance at the hill showed the shaft, a narrow gap that rose to the top, shining silver metal covering the entrance. The place had been recently cleared, footprints scattered everywhere in the soft ground. Immediately, the possibilities of the entrance flooded through Salazar's mind, but planning for the future was going to have to wait for a while. With a loud, angry whine, the hatch was sliding open, and the squad ducked into position, ready for the attack.

 “Let them get good and clear before taking a shot,” Quiller said. “Everyone take a bead on a single target, and at my order, take them. We'll only get one chance at doing this clean, and they'll spot the shuttle seconds after they emerge. Got it?”

 A chorus of nods were the only reply, and Salazar hunkered down, dropping behind a pair of bushes, a strange, soft smell rushing into his lungs. It was a beautiful day for a battle, not a cloud in the sky. Up ahead, a silver column rose from the ground, and a pair of wide doors slid smoothly open, a group of suited figures stepping out. It was easy enough to recognize Clarke, the only man in a Triplanetary uniform.

 “Wait for it,” Quiller muttered, but Clarke advanced their timetable, elbowing one of his captors in the chest and racing for cover. The troops waited the barest of seconds for the young officer to get out of the kill zone, then opened up with everything they had, the rattle of gunfire echoing through the hitherto silent glade, bullets ripping into the last remaining group of Hierarchy soldiers.

 As the front rank fell, a pair of their enemies tried to escape, racing into the distance, but two bullets ended their final bid for freedom, catching them in the back, sending their bodies sprawling to the ground. Salazar looked over his sights, seeking out any remaining targets, then let his rifle drop as he realized the battle was over, almost before it could begin. He'd fired one shot, and didn't even know if he'd hit anything. Not that it mattered at this stage.

 “Cease fire!” Quiller said, unnecessarily. “Medics, forward!”

 Pushing himself to his feet, Salazar wiped his muddy hands across the front of his uniform, then walked up to Clarke, who snapped to attention, offering a parade-ground salute as his commanding officer approached.

 “Captain Clarke?” Salazar asked.

 “It seemed like a good idea at the time, sir,” Clarke replied, his cheeks turning crimson.  “I had to come up with something on the fly.”

 “By the looks of it, you've had a lot of experience of that.” The two men turned back towards the pit, a silver arrow bursting into the sphere, the second shuttle following up, reinforcements that were now no longer needed. A cloud of dust was rising from the plain, and Salazar could make out a hundred riders racing towards them, rifle- and sword-wielding Neander.

 “Sub-Lieutenant,” Salazar said, “At some point we're going to have a conversation about the nature of small-scale recon missions.”

 “It seemed like a good idea at the time, sir.” Looking up at the far horizon, he added, “What do you think, Captain?”

 “I think we're going to be here a while, Sub-Lieutenant,” he replied. His communicator chirped, and he said, “Salazar here. We've secured the landing site.”

 “Pavel, it's Kris,” she said. “I've got something. Something big. This is the source of the wormhole builders, I'm sure of it, and I think I know where we can find a map of the network. Pavel, we can find our way home from here.”

 “I'll be damned,” Salazar said, a beaming smile on his face. “Damn it, Kris, you really know how to bring a smile to my face. What's the catch?”

 “It's ten thousand miles away. Close to somewhere that Sekura calls the Vault of the Builders, or something like that. The translation is chancy. I'm getting Carpenter down here to help run a more precise analysis, but I think we've found what we're looking for.”

 “Thanks, Kris,” he said, with a deep, satisfied sigh. “Nice to know we're finally heading towards the end of our journey. I'll be up there as soon as I can get one of the shuttles fueled up.” He turned, looked at the elevator, and said, “What am I thinking. I'll be up there in a few minutes.”

 “I'll have someone waiting for you at the other end. See you in a minute. Out.”

 “Did I hear that right, sir?” Clarke said, as the second shuttle dropped to the ground. “A ten thousand mile flight?”

 “You did,” Salazar said, raising an eyebrow. “I take it this is your subtle way of volunteering for the mission?” 

 “Well, I am Security Officer, sir, and...”

 Raising a hand, he replied, “Just try not to start a war this time.”

 “I'll do my best, sir.”

Epilogue

 The last week had been a frenzy of activity on the formerly-peaceful grassy hill. A trio of shuttles now rested on a hastily-constructed landing pad, a dozen scattered prefabricated structures scattered around, dormitories and laboratories for Alamo's ground force. Almost the entire science team were on the surface, only the astrophysics department remaining on the battered battlecruiser, eagerly firing probe after probe at the quantum singularity, still working to unlock the secrets of the universe.

 Aside from Alamo's team, a growing population of Neander had settled into the camp, eager partners in their exploration of the sphere, working with the ever-increasing array of scientific equipment constantly sweeping the area. Over to the south, a buggy roared, carrying a survey team on a mission to one of the distant ruins, a hundred miles away, three Alamo crewmen and three Neander visiting the shattered remnants of their fallen civilization.

 Clarke walked towards the modified flyer, running his hand over the smooth metal, then peered into the cockpit at Mortimer, already nestled into the co-pilot's seat. Rubbing his hands down his uniform jacket, smearing mud on the fabric, Salazar walked over towards them, datapad in hand, a limping Harper by his side, propped up on a crutch.

 “Your mission plan, the final draft,” he said, passing Clarke the datapad. “Nothing much has changed since the last version, but there are a couple of other targets we'd like you to take a look at on your flight back. No landing, just a lower pass over some of the more distant ruins. It's optional, so if you're low on fuel, don't worry about it. We can always go up again when you get back.”

 “We'll do what we can, sir,” Clarke replied, sliding the datapad into his pocket. He looked across at the flyer, and said, “We're ready to go. She's a beautiful ship.”

 Nodding, Salazar replied, “I can't help but be a little envious, Sub-Lieutenant. I'd love to take that bird up myself. So bring it back in one piece, because I'm getting the second flight for myself.”

 “Don't take any risks,” Harper said. “Keep at a good altitude, and watch your course and speed. And don't forget that you are a long way from any help. We won't have the second ship ready for at least a week.”

 “We've got supplies to last that long,” Clarke replied. “If anything happens, we'll find somewhere to land, light our beacon, and wait for you to get us. Assuming we lose radio contact.”

 “Which you can take as a given, at that range,” Salazar said with a frustrated sigh. “Until we get the long-range antenna complex set up, we won't be able to break through the chatter. There are just too damned many people having conversations out there, and all of our frequencies are swamped. And probably a thousand times as many tight-beam transmissions.”

 “One more thing,” Harper said. “A few of the local Neander have gone out that way. I've put all of their accounts on the datapad. They're more like fireside stories than useful geography, but you might be able to puzzle something out of it, with a little luck.”

 “Thank you, ma'am,” Clarke replied. “How's the leg?”

 “Hurts like hell. Though it's worked out well for you. If I was in one piece, I'd be flying that bird myself.” Clapping him on the shoulder, she added, “Watch yourself.”

 As Clarke climbed into the cockpit, Salazar spotted something familiar hanging on the wall, and asked, “That isn't your sword, is it?”

 “Sekura asked me to take it with me, sir. Something about taking it to meet the ancestors of his people. Besides, it would feel strange not having it along.” 

 Shaking his head, Salazar pulled the hatch closed, and said, “Good luck, kid. Have a beautiful ride.”

 “Will do, sir,” he replied. “Will do.” As the launch crew dispersed, he reached down to the engine controls, turned to Mortimer, and asked, “You ready?”

 “No, but that's never stopped you before.”

 “You know you wouldn't miss this for the world.”

 “True.”

 The engine roared into life, twin propellers rotating, a low-tech solution to the exploration of a hyper-tech world, and the flyer skidded down the makeshift runway, hundred-feet wings dipping, the solar panels shining in the sunlight as it reached takeoff velocity, soaring into the air. Clarke looked across at Mortimer, a beaming smile on his face, as the flyer soared to its cruising altitude, thirty thousand feet above the surface, untold thousands of miles of terrain opening out before them.

 Up ahead, almost lost in the distance, he could see the beginnings of a wide desert, at least thirty thousand miles long and three thousand miles wide. Their destination, at present nothing more than a pinpoint location on a map, was on the far side, twenty-four hours away at their hoped-for velocity. He looked down at the battery pack, nodding in satisfaction. The panels would keep them flying in sunlight, the battery enough to keep them in the air while the shadows skimmed overhead.

 “How's she handling?” Mortimer asked.

 “Smooth as silk,” he replied. “I'll take the first shift. You can take over in three hours. Pass me some coffee, will you?”

 Reaching for the flask, she said, “Not going to last the trip out if you drink it that quickly.”

 “You'd rather I fell asleep?” he replied.

 She looked at him, and asked, “Any more nightmares?”

 “No, ma'am,” he replied.

 “That's more like it.” She paused, then continued, “You were right, you know.”

 “About what?”

 She passed him the coffee, and said, “This is what I signed up for. I guess I just never realized that I could ever get it. Look at it, John. Just look at it.”

 “I know,” he replied with a smile. “Let's see what's out there.”

* * * * * * * * * *

 Silently, the lone figure stood at the fringes of the desert, the sands giving way to scrappy scrub-land, desperate plants struggling to survive in the arid environment. She looked up at the eternal horizon, taking a hot, dry breath, and walked on, her footsteps an endless trail behind her, as far back as she could see. Any thought of pursuit was gone. She was alone, a wanderer through eternity, walking towards a horizon that she could never reach.

 Somewhere in the distance, she could hear a faint noise, one that recalled distant memories, buried deep in her subconscious. The low, murmuring hum of a motor, high in the sky. Fumbling in her pouch, she retrieved her goggles, snapping them in position, red lights warning that she didn't have enough power in the batteries to run them for long. With luck, she wouldn't have to.

 Throwing the controls to maximum magnification, she swept the sky for the object she was searching for, finally spotting it at extreme range. Some sort of flyer, heading her way, doubtless seeking the same objective that she had spent months trying to reach. A smile crossed her cracked lips, and she quickly plotted the course in her head.

 Then, a second object appeared in her field of vision, a projectile racing towards the flyer at high speed. The pilot was good, dodging back and forth, but the warhead was homing on its target, and the end was inevitable, a flickering explosion that took out the rear of the craft, a column of smoke trailing across the sky. The craft was coming down, and close to her.

 She tracked the flyer down to the ground, a spot less than five miles from her position, and raced into the desert, taking a quick swig from her canteen to fuel her chase, her pouch slamming against her side as she ran. Tugging off her goggles, she sped to the column of smoke still rising into the sky, her paranoia working on overtime again, knowing that the unlucky pilot had given her pursuers a clear beacon to follow. She'd get there first, have a head-start, but she was going to have to use it to the full if she was going to save all of their lives.

 Onward she sped, rising over the crest of a high dune to get a good look at the crash site. Her admiration for the pilot ratcheted up another notch as she saw the landing, the flyer almost in one piece, a trail of scattered debris behind it. It had skidded across the sand for the better part of a mile, but she could just make out a figure moving in the debris, limping on one leg, trying to set up a signal rocket.

 She sprinted down the hill, waving her hands, using her voice for the first time in weeks to shout barely-remembered greetings. A second figure emerged from the ruins of the flyer, rifle in hand, raising it to cover her as she approached, but the first figure shook his head, pushing the barrel down towards the ground.

 Closing on them, she recognized their clothes, the uniform of the Triplanetary Fleet. The same uniform that she was wearing, though hers had long since been reduced to little more than tattered remnants. Taking the final paces towards the pair, she stopped, silently looking at them, struggling to think of what to say. It had been so long since she had spoken to anyone, she'd almost forgotten how.

 “Who are you?” the woman asked, rifle still in hand. “Did you launch that damned missile?”

 “Fleet uniform,” the man said, eyes wide. “We've found a survivor.” Stepping forward, he held out his hand, and said, “Sub-Lieutenant John Clarke, Security Officer of the Battlecruiser Alamo. This is Sub-Lieutenant Veronica Mortimer.”

 “Alamo?” she said, half-whispered, clutching the offered hand. “Alamo?” Taking a deep breath, she said, “My name is Margaret Orlova. And my God, I am pleased to see you.”

Thank you for reading 'Shadows in the Sky'. 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.

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The saga returns in Battlecruiser Alamo: Secrets of the Sphere, available soon…