Freedom's Fray
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fantasy; War
Description: War in the heavens for freedom on Earth Time to take the fight to the enemy, if they can find the Trog Fleet. The Free Army missed their opportunity to catch the vulnerable Trog Fleet docked together on Ceres with empty magazines after their latest assault on Earth. Now Dylan Kane needs to scout their bases to see where they're hiding. If he can find them, the Free Army has enough assault ships to attack and turn the tide of the war.
Publisher: Beezle Media, LLC

FREEDOM’S FRAY

Book 3 in the Freedom’s Fire Series

A novel
by

Bobby Adair

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Text copyright © 2017, Bobby L. Adair

Credits at the end of the book.

Chapter 1

Level nine is a warren.  Dark and depressing.

It’s an industrial space with tunnels rough-cut through the asteroid’s stone, gritty and wet, with ruts ground into the floor from the passing of heavy machines.  Vast caverns are burrowed out of the rock and packed densely with low-g foundries and high-temp kilns, ultrasonic rock smashers, and ionic particle separators, everything the human mind can contrive for extracting incremental ounces of elemental value and complex compounds from metric-ton loads of raw ore.

At least it holds atmosphere tight against the vacuum outside.

The whole subterranean installation is now sealed, except for half of level seven where I crashed my ship through the asteroid’s surface rock during the battle several days ago.  In an astonishingly quick repair, work crews sealed off that part from the rest of the complex.  Now, the machinery down here burns hot again, warming the air and heating the asteroid’s glacial core that for billions of years waited in stasis for the fervid breath of humankind’s industrial exhaust.

The rugged walls in the tunnel aren’t colored a pleasant pale gray, and they aren’t polymer-sealed.  They’re abrasive and wet, sweating out H2O and humidifying the air.  With my helmet off and gloves dangling from a clip on my belt, I feel the dampness on the little bit of skin left exposed by my suit’s translucent, thermal undergarment.  It coats my hair in gritty wet.  It runs down my forehead and stings my eyes.

Feeling like a cloudy summer day when the air is so thick with promises of rain, you just want the thunder to crash and get on with soaking you to the bone.  Instead, it holds you hostage halfway there.  As earth days go, it’s one of those where it feels gross to be outside, wearing a stink of perspiration that won’t evaporate away, causing your underwear to chafe and sweat to dribble off your nose.

I keep my gripes to myself, though.

For something like a week, I’ve been cocooned in my suit, pampered at a perfect temperature, caressed in comfortable humidity, nearly losing track of the sensation of having skin.  Now the air feels real, like something from earth, so I breathe it in.  I feel it, because icky something is better than the deprivation of absence.

Having spent most of my time away from earth so far in light, asteroid gravity or zero-g, my muscles are already atrophying.  I feel it in my legs.  They’re not quite tired, but they don’t like the exertion of walking.  Just walking! My back aches, and my heartbeat keeps pounding inside my head like maybe on one of the upcoming beats the pressure will surpass the burst strength of my skull bones and explode all over any passersby.  My brain spins dizzily from standing up too quickly or walking too fast.  I’m placing bets with myself as to whether I’m going to stroke out and die, or faint and crack my head on a jagged stone.

What’s earth-g going to feel like when I’ve been out here for a month or a year?

Despite the discomfort of my exertions and the compilation of my fears, I’d love to be out of my suit.  Unfortunately, the Potato is in a war zone.  Being technically accurate about it, earth’s solar system—every inch of every rock, and every cubic meter of nothingness in between—is in the theater of war.  No place is safe.  And having killed countless Trogs by doing little more than exposing a safe interior to the cold vacuum of space, I won’t fall victim to that same mistake.

Ahead in the long, wide corridor, a few miners are bouncing toward me in a low-g skip.  Neither is wearing a suit.  They both have breathing masks attached to the emergency safety packs on their belts.  Both are wearing thick pants and carrying heavy coats, too thick to wear in this environment.  They’ve been working in one of the frigid mine shafts burrowed deep into the rock, chasing a vein of mineral that’s in acute demand by whatever exchange of goods passes for an economy out here in the asteroid belt.

When the two miners draw close, they swerve to give me a wide berth—not out of respect, certainly not out of fear.  The story the MSS made up of my collusion with the Trogs has spread throughout the colony, along with a few dozen versions of what I did during the space battle over Arizona.  Some accounts have the events close to correct.  Others place the credit all in Blair’s intricate planning, describing me as a cancerous cog in her perfect machine.

She’s successfully fooled so many.

The two miners have chosen to believe one of the stories where I’m the villain.  Their glowering eyes tell me that much, and their receding mutters leave me to imagine the words they share as a plot to steal my helmet and toss me into the vacuum.

Nevertheless, I don’t turn to keep an eye on them.  I listen, and I focus on the mass of their bodies walking away.  My bug senses the full three-dimensional space around me, them included.  I don’t see anything as clearly as Phil would be able to.  I’m a long way from matching his skill, yet one thing is for sure, out here in the war with my life becoming more and more dependent on my ability to perceive gravity, my sense is sharpening.

Further ahead, a trio of orange-suited soldiers walks with their suit gravity turned on.  It’s easy to tell by their gait and the glow of their grav through my bug’s eye.  They’re looking around, checking out the industrial spaces, not guarding or searching.  With no military imperative for them to be down here, they’re off duty, spending their free time exploring the colony.  They want to know the terrain if we have to fight for it again.

Like me, all are armed.  Like me, their helmets are off, clipped to carabiners on their belts.  Soldiers who want to demonstrate their loyalty follow my example and wear their suits like me.  They’ve all been through the shit, and they know the price of being out of your suit when the vacuum comes to take your life.

Unfortunately, we’re in the minority on the base.

Eight assault ships with nearly full crews and platoons arrived the day after our victory over the Trogs.  Not one of those ships bears a scratch or ding.  On the morning of the battle over Arizona, they were among the first to rise out of the desert and fly into space.  The eight ships were already above the atmosphere and well away from the coming carnage when those three Trog cruisers peeled off from their attack on earth’s orbital battle stations and started bombing.

I’ve learned that much is true.

However, every question I ask about when those ships bubble jumped out of earth orbit and high-tailed it to the asteroid belt is met with harrumphs, vague hand-waving, and lame misdirections to someone up the chain of command or lateral in the hierarchy, always somebody somewhere else who bore responsibility for the decision.

Each bridge crew I question tells me they were following orders, delivering their stolen ships to the Free Army and cleansing their ranks of MSS lackeys and loyalists.  Just as they were told to do.

Not one of them made an attack run on those Trog cruisers.  None of them made the hard choice to defend their orange-suited brothers and sisters who were being slaughtered on the ground and vaporized in the air.

Had those ships remained to fight, thousands of men and women, teenage boys and girls, would still be alive.  Not only would hundreds of assault ships still be airborne, but with the 20-to-1 advantage in assault craft we started the day with, we could have destroyed the Trog fleet.  The Trog menace in our solar system would have ended, and instead of us trading guesses about how we’re going to find the enemy cruisers and win this war, we’d be fighting humanity’s real enemy, the Grays and the MSS.

Every time I indulge this line of thought, trying to reason through to a better conclusion, I come to only one logical set of choices: My revolutionary comrades from these eight ships are cowards.  Or idiots.  Or incompetents.

It’s unfair for me to believe that about so many when only a relative handful made the choice to flee.  Yet they strut around an asteroid base my soldiers took with their blood and bravery, and they pretend I’m the traitor the rumors paint me to be, all the while closing their eyes to the hypocrisy of it.

A division is running deep into our little revolutionary army, and I fear what will become of us when we’re tested by battle.

Chapter 2

My destination is ahead, Reservoir 9D.  It’s one of the dozen built on this level for storing water extracted from the asteroid’s rock.  Of late, this particular one held more than a hundred human prisoners, put there by the Trogs who’d taken the Potato, and compelled to remain there by the Trog guards stationed in the corridor.

Now, the cavernous reservoir holds only one occupant and one visitor.  The guards outside the watertight door are human.  Not one is wearing an orange spacesuit.  They’re Blair’s people.

Every soldier in the two Heavy Assault Divisions launched wearing an orange suit over a green inner liner.  None of us carried anything but weapons, ammo, and backup H packs—no duffle bags stuffed with personal items, and no off-duty clothing to wear.

These eight, like most of Blair’s bunch, are wearing coveralls scrounged from the stores the mining company used to clothe its personnel before the base went rogue, well before it turned into a Free Army outpost.  The coveralls, like every leftover anything we humans have, are colored in various shades, all faded from some initial hue of matching blue.  Military insignia are stamped on the upper arms and chest in black ink.

It looks like five of the guards are in their teens.  Kids.  That feels more surprising than it should.  I know at least half of both divisions are made up of teenagers.  When we were all in our orange suits and engulfing white helmets, we seemed a little more generically similar.  Two of the adults are in their forties.  One is in her mid-fifties.

Each wears a thin backpack, the detachable microreactor from their orange suits.  The fusion reaction burning in their packs pumps power through the conductive, fingerless gloves each wears.  They need those to power their railguns and the emergency breather masks they each have on their belts.

What the dumbasses don’t understand is the gear will suffice to get them through a short line at an airlock for a chance to save their lives.  It won’t help them into a suit fast enough to combat the most likely cause of a sudden decompression event, attacking Trogs.  I suspect once a group of those Trogs understands the enemy behind each airlock is without suits, well, let’s just say the solution presents itself—break a door, and let the cold vacuum separate the souls from the corpses.

The guards eye me with blank, hard stares one of them learned from an old vid full of twentieth-century actors pretending to be soldiers.  Since most of them are trying for the same look, I figure my guess is correct that one of them saw the old movie and taught the others.

Bravado with nothing behind it that isn’t a lie.

Eight fakers.

Eight fuckers.

I suppress a chuckle.  Both fit.

One boy, a broad-shouldered kid with a flat face and green eyes, hefts his weapon and rolls his shoulders as he stares so hard at me it’s like he’s looking right through.  He pretends like he doesn’t, but I’m sure he recognizes me.  I’m known Potato-wide—hero, or the asshole who betrayed humanity.  Nevertheless, he’s challenging me in the body language of whatever group of bullies he ran with back in school.

He’s bigger than me, and he probably thinks that’s enough, because in his past, it always was.

What he doesn’t understand—what none of these green, sim-trained recruits has any inkling of—is that I’ve already seen real people die.  I’ve killed Trogs, Grays, and humans alike.  I flew into space in the company of soldiers who chose to follow me rather than desert, and most of them are dead, too.

Now an empty black hole gapes wide through my concept of morality and the foundation of my identity.

It started to grow when I murdered that first North Korean.  In that moment, I think I was standing at a fork in the road to two distinct futures.  In one, guilt promised to haunt and maybe rule me.  In the other, the ache of the deaths in my wake would nag my silent hours until the memories faded into tolerable tedium.

For whatever reason a mind does what it does, I subconsciously embraced the path to tedium.

What the bully private in his off-color coveralls doesn’t understand is that he exists outside my circle of loyalty, and if he postures himself as too much of a threat, I’ll kill him.  Not because I’m stronger or faster.  Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.  I’ll put a railgun round through his sternum, because while he’s still running through the slow escalations of grade-school bully behavior, I’ll have already taken the ultimate step in that decision tree.

Something the war as already changed in me.

A sergeant, one of the two older men, looking soft enough to have spent his twenty-five adult years sitting at a desk, steps tentatively in my path.  “Major.”

I stop two paces in front of him and point to the door to Reservoir 9D.  “I’m going in.”

“What’s your business?”

“Let’s not pretend you have the authority to question me.”  I sprinkle some acid on the words to make them sting with an ambiguous threat.

“Our orders are to let no one in without explicit permission from Colonel Blair.”

“Get permission.”

It’s then I notice the gray-haired woman is already talking quietly into her radio.

The sergeant glances back at her.

I tire of the grownup grade-school bully’s glare and turn back in his direction, silently daring him to do something, anything.

His eyes don’t hold mine.  They drift around, looking for something to focus on.  His posture loses its menace.

Apparently, my dare isn’t something he wants to accept.

“Permission granted,” says the gray-haired woman from where she stands near the back of the group.

The sergeant gives me a nod and tells the tall bully to open the door for me.  The soldiers part, allowing me a wide path.

A young girl opens the reservoir’s maintenance door and nearly gags as she gets a face full of the air from inside.

Gray stink.

I pass the guards without another word and enter the reservoir.  I’m used to the smell.

The door closes behind me.

Inside, the room is a big, hollow disc, probably fifty meters across, with a ceiling ten meters above the floor.  A half-dozen thick posts are supporting the ceiling.  Down here near the asteroid’s axis, most of the gravitational pull from the stone below us is canceled out by the pull of the rock above.

The walls, ceiling, floor, and even the support posts are covered in a watertight white polymer, leaving every surface smooth and echoey, though smudged from the boots of all the people the Grays had stored down here after they captured the mining base.

Near the far side of the reservoir, in front of a post, in the glare of several portable lamps, a Gray is basking uncomfortably on the floor.  On a chair, a few paces in front of the Gray, fidgets Phil.  They are the only two in this makeshift prison.

Chapter 3

Without turning around, Phil greets me.  “Hello, Dylan.”

“You never did that kind of obvious mind-reader shit back on earth.  Are your skills sharpening, or did you always keep them hidden?”

“Or I guessed who you were.”  He’s smug about it.  “Who else comes in here?”

“But you didn’t guess, did you?”

Phil turns to look at me.

It’s creeping me out that I’m on the uncomfortable end of a conversation where I know I’m being mentally probed in a way I’m afraid I can’t defend against.  “And the answer is?”

“Both.”

“You sneaky bastard.”

Phil smiles.

I chuckle my way past my discomfort, reminding myself I need to stop seeing Phil as the façade he shows to the world.  “You’re full of surprises.”

He shrugs as I step up beside him.

My attention falls on the Gray who is moving from a lying to a sitting position, trying to expose different parts of its skin to the light.

“He doesn’t like these lights,” says Phil.  “In fact, he’ll eventually die.  These LEDs only emit a narrow band of frequencies.”

“All light is not created equal,” I cleverly muse.  Natural white light is made up of a wide range of frequencies, and humans can only perceive a small percentage of them.

“For a Gray,” says Phil, “depending on the light from a narrow band of frequencies is like putting a human on a diet of saltine crackers and nothing else.  The human will eventually die of malnutrition.  A similar thing happens to the Gray.  They need a full spectrum.”

“How long are we talking?”

“A year or two.”

“So nothing urgent.”

Phil shakes his head.  His face tells me he doesn’t agree.  “It will suffer.”

Of course, I look at the Gray, shifting around and trying its best to resemble a starving puppy.  Well, a big-headed, hairless puppy with a squirmy alien soul that would murder me given half a chance.  Oh, and as lovable as a novelty buttplug—that kind of puppy.

Still, I watch it.

It lies back down and adjusts its position in slow, wretched moves.  The Gray can’t get comfortable on the cold floor.  The light isn’t strong enough to keep it warm.  It’s already suffering.

I don’t want to look at it, but my eyes don’t want to turn away, or even blink.

If it wasn’t for my animosity toward the smelly little planet-conquering bastard, I might feel sorry for it.  Hell, who am I kidding?  I do feel—

Wait!

I step back.

I glance at Phil, epiphanies materializing in my mind.

The feeling of pity surges hard through me, urging me to cry, to get on my knees, and pet the big-eyed, world-buggering Tick and warm it up.

I jump away and take a few more quick steps, never turning my back, not taking my eyes off it.  I know what it’s doing.  It’s manipulating my emotions.

“You feel it?”  Phil’s amused.

“You could have warned me.”  But he didn’t.  I turn away from the Gray and focus suspiciously on Phil.

“Don’t,” he responds flatly.  “I’m not taking its side.”

I’m not sure I believe him.

“I was going to tell you it’s been trying to influence me since I came down here.  After you killed those three in the pool, I knew you had full knowledge of what they can do with their minds.”

I nod, because I can’t argue that point.  “I’d guessed at the time it was the terror and wrenching pain I was inflicting on those Grays…” Oh, shit! I was going to say, ‘gave him the magical power to influence me,’ but I realize right away how stupid that’ll sound.  “I didn’t think they could project their emotions at will.  We’ve never seen this kind of behavior before.”

Or never noticed it.

That thought frightens me.

“I believe they’re usually much more subtle about it, undetectable.”  Phil’s looking back at the Gray now, with intense interest.  “I think you’re right about the stress.  You beating that one drove it into hysterics and made the others desperate.  To save it, they all combined their mental strength to amplify what it was feeling, hoping that if you felt it, you’d stop.”

“Only it wasn’t just me who felt it.”

“Everybody did.”  Phil takes a second.  “Think of a whisper, you can tell just one person, but a shout is heard by everyone.  When you were killing that Gray, they were all screaming.”

“They nearly stopped me.”  It was a supremely painful episode, one I hope I won’t have to feel again.

“This one,” says Phil, “being alone, and being a relatively young one, doesn’t have the control to be able to influence a person in a subtle way.”  Phil reaches up and puts a hand on my shoulder.  “To be honest, I wanted to see if you felt it trying to whisper before I warned you.”

“Whispering?”  I’m back to searching my suspicions, trying to figure out how to feel about all this.  “Is that what you’re calling what they do?”

Phil nods.

My suspicions are winning their mental battle.  I drill Phil with a hard look.  “There’s more to this.  What aren’t you telling me?”

“I figured out pretty quickly what it was up to.”  Phil stands up and scoots his chair back.  He starts walking toward the door, waving me along.  “I’ve been experimenting with communication.  One of the things I’m trying to understand is if it can whisper to anybody and if anybody but me can tell.”

The Gray stands up straight, defiant.

Keeping an eye on the Gray, I take a few tentative steps toward Phil, while I try to guess what he’s up to.

“C’mon,” he urges.

I hurry a few paces to come up beside him.  “What are we doing?”

“You’ll see in a second.”

As we come to a stop just inside the guarded door, Phil turns and says, “Look at him.”

I do, and see the Gray still standing, as placid as a plastic doll.

“You feel it, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

“Defiance,” Phil explains.  “When we came this way, and it stood up, you felt it staring daggers into your back, right?”

I nod.

“Now you don’t.”

I shake my head.

Phil ambles toward the Gray.  I follow along, rolling my eyes as Phil drags me through the proof of some point I’m sure I’ll have no—

Holy crap!

I freeze in my tracks.

Phil stops beside me and grins.  “You feel it now?”

I look at my spot on the floor and glance back at the door.  How could I not know this already?  “Its range of influence is around forty feet?”

“It grows stronger as you walk closer.”

My feet move me toward the Gray in slow steps.  I don’t want to believe any of this, but my resolve crumbles as I start to imagine I see defiance on the little thing’s indecipherable face.

“Back on earth, we spent most of our time around mature ones,” says Phil.  “Their whispers were subtle.”

“They’ve been trying to influence us all along?”

Phil nods.

“How long have you known?”  It sounds like an accusation.  I decide I don’t care.  “Were you aware of this back on earth?”

“I suspected.”

I know he’s lying.

He shakes his head slowly.  “No, I knew about it.  They didn’t know I was aware.  I learned how to block their influence a long time ago.”

“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

Phil is ashamed.  To deflect, he points at the Gray, directing his attention there.  “What I find interesting—”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Phil sighs and hesitates.

“Tell me, Phil.”

“I was afraid.”

“Of?”

“They do more than whisper.”

“I’ve always known that.”  Trying to read a person’s thoughts is vastly different than trying to create thoughts in a person’s mind.

“When they pry into peoples’ minds, they nearly always do it without the person knowing.”

I tap the side of my head.  “You know I have a way to block that, right?”  I laugh harshly because the truth of that should be so obvious.  “I mean, you know how long I’ve been dreaming about this revolution, right?”

Phil nods, as his voice turns into a whine.  “You never know what somebody might say, or when a secret might slip out.”  Phil purses his lips.  His shame of what he’s done has been eating away at him for a long time.  “I didn’t want the truth getting around.  I didn’t want to risk the Grays finding out and sending the MSS to torture me.”

“Or kill you.”  Thoughts of Vishnu cross my mind, surely dead by now, and having suffered more than I want to imagine.

I tell him, “I understand.”  I don’t, but I promise myself I’m going to try.  That personal covenant and a few moments of silence between us settles the matter.  Phil and I are more closely connected than I’d ever guessed.  “Can you always tell when they’re trying to influence you?”

“Yes.  And if you spend an hour or two down here with him trying to sway you, you’ll be able to recognize it, too.  Every time.  Then when a whole pod of experienced Grays tries to influence you in the future, you’ll know.”

I want to believe, but it sounds too easy.

“You know the difference between hearing your voice and hearing someone else’s voice?”  Phil looks smug, like he’s just spun off the best analogy ever.  And maybe he did.

“Really?  That easy?”  No way it can be.

“Eventually.”

The watertight door leading to the corridor unexpectedly opens.

Chapter 4

Brice enters the reservoir, slamming the door behind him, and striding across the white polymer floor with a purpose in his steps.

I know immediately he has the answer I sent him to find.  “What’s the story?”

“She had the other two Ticks put in an assault ship and hauled off to another Free Army base.”

Phil erupts.  “The other two Grays aren’t coming back?  Nick will die!”

Brice tilts his head in an ambiguous gesture.  He doesn’t care.

I skip right past apathy over the Grays’ pending demise.  And Nick?  “Who the hell is Nick?  You named it?”

Phil responds with guilty silence.

“If you knew they were gone,” Brice shoots Phil a dirty look, and then he turns to me, “why’d I have to chase around this rat-maze asteroid to get an answer out of Blair’s people?”

Phil turns his back to Brice, snorting angry breaths.

The Gray drops to its knees and then slumps to the cold floor, laying its head down like it’s dying.

The sight makes me feel its despair.

No!

Not its despair, but the emotion it’s whispering to me.

The Gray is trying to manipulate me, and Phil’s right, I see the difference as clearly as Phil described.  The desperate thoughts are not mine.

“What’s wrong with that?” asks Brice.

I answer, “It understands.”

“He felt them go,” Phil clarifies for us, still looking at the Gray.  “Out of range.  He’s been despondent since Blair’s people came in here and took the other two out.  His depression worsened the farther away they went.  Until now, we thought they were still coming back.”  Phil turns to look at Brice and me.  “Grays can’t survive alone.  Their minds need the social structure of a pod to function.”

“You mean it’ll go nuts without anyone to talk to?” asks Brice.

“More than that,” Phil answers.  “I don’t understand it fully, maybe not nearly at all.  It’s like their brains slowly go haywire when they’re alone.”

Brice makes a face.  “Isn’t that what I said?”

“How long will it last?” I ask.

“Two or three weeks.”  Phil drops into his chair.

“Is that a problem for us?” I ask, switching to pragmatic mode.  In the end, I don’t want the thing alive.  I only want whatever information Phil can squeeze out of it.

“Yes.”  Phil leans in close and taps his fingers against his skull so hard it sounds like a melon.  “The way they store their memories, the way they share.”  Phil throws his hands in the air, huffs, and stomps off.

“What?” I ask, staying in my spot.  “What is it?”

Phil spins around and waves a hand at Nick while he tries to calm himself.  “It’s like watching a movie.  That’s the best I can do.  When Nick shares his memories with me, they come across like a movie.”

“So you really can talk to it?”  Brice seems like he’s just now accepting the truth of this new revelation.

“Yeah,” Phil snaps.  “I can.”

“The movie thing?” I ask, trying to put Phil back on track.

“I’ve only barely tapped into what Nick knows.  Tapping into his mind is like walking into one of those old video stores and seeing thousands of DVDs on the shelves.  Tens of thousands.  I need time to watch them all.  Probably years.”  He turns and glares at Brice as if something about the situation is Brice’s fault.  “And no, I can’t just pry whatever I want out of his brain.  I have to talk to him.  I have to earn his trust.  He has to share.”

“Or lie.”  Brice glances at me to corral me into that supposition.

“They don’t lie the way we lie,” says Phil.  “When you’re a telepathic species, and your brain is open to everyone you know, you can maybe hide some things,” he nods at me, “the way Dylan does, but manufacturing alternate fictions to substitute as truth, well, that’s impossible.”

“Whatever you say.”  Brice shrugs and casts a bored look toward the door.

I need to know more.  “Phil, explain this to me.”

Phil comes closer to make his case.  “He’s starting to trust me.  With the others gone, he has to.  I’m the only one who can bond with him and keep him sane.”

“Is that a good thing?” I ask.  “If it were crazy, wouldn’t it be easier to manipulate?”

Phil is disgusted with that idea.  “You don’t understand.”

“What I do understand,” I tell him, “is this Gray keeps trying to screw with my head.  How do you know he’s not doing that to you?”

“I told you.  It’s easy for me.  I can tell when he tries.”

“And what, he’s going to stop doing that when you become friends?”

“Yes,” Phil tells me, completely believing it.  “Grays aren’t individuals.  They have to be part of a collective mind.  Usually the pod they’re part of.  With the other Grays gone, I’m the only thing he’s got.  And if he bonds with me, he has to change.  He doesn’t have a choice.  It’s part of the thing I told you about their brains.  They keep each other from going haywire.  At least until they mature into old age, and then their brains become more static like ours.  This one was the youngest in the pod.”

“Impressionable?” I ask, joking with the oversimplification.

“Don’t be an asshole, Dylan.  I’m explaining to you how this works.  And yes, impressionable is exactly right, only more deeply and eventually more permanently than you know.  If he fully bonds with me, then his mind conforms to mine.  I don’t conform to him.  He comes over to our side.  I don’t go to his.  He becomes the best resource we’ve ever had for understanding the Grays.”

“That’s too bad,” Brice tells us.

Phil is hurt by Brice’s callousness.

I’m curious.  “Why?”

Looking at Phil, Brice tells him, “You’ll need to pump it for whatever intel you can get by this time tomorrow.  Turning back to me, he says, “I learned a bit more when I was out looking for your lost Grays.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Blair wants us to go out on a milk run for her.”

“A milk run?”  Phil doesn’t understand.

“An easy mission.”  Brice shakes his head in disgust.  “Although I think I know Blair well enough to guess she’s probably sending us on a suicide mission.”

Chapter 5

“She wants us to scout Ceres and a dozen other suspected Trog outposts before we mount an attack.”  It pains Brice to say it, not because he’s a coward.  He sighs heavily as he looks for a way to explain.

“The cruisers will be gone by now,” reasons Phil.  “Right?”

“Yeah,” answers Brice.  “Our plan—maybe I should say hope—to mount a quick attack on Ceres was predicated on the assumption that the Trog fleet would be there replenishing their supplies.  When they’d attacked the Arizona shipyard and bombarded earth’s orbital battle stations, they likely fired most of their railgun slugs, so they’d be nearly defenseless.”

I add, “Unfortunately, our week-long window to exploit that weakness has closed.”

“So, Phil,” says Brice, “to answer your question, it depends on the Trogs’ strategy now.  They’ve always had the strength to attack earth directly, yet they never could do it successfully.”

“Why’s that?” asks Phil.

“Because of our fleet.”  Brice looks around the empty reservoir, searching for an available seat.  “It’s complicated, though.”

It would be more comfortable for us all to sit, but we only have the one chair.

“The Trogs never had more than sixty or so cruisers.  Before Arizona, we had twenty-six battle stations orbiting earth, and any one of them was a match for six, or maybe a dozen Trog cruisers, especially with the supporting fire from the other battle stations.  So, any attack with a small number of ships was bound to fail.  Unless the attackers’ goal was to lose cruisers.”  Brice chuckles.

Phil rolls his eyes and glances at me.  He doesn’t appreciate Brice’s undeveloped sense of humor.

Brice looks at each of us to ensure we’re following along.  “Here’s the important part.  If the Trogs had committed all of their cruisers and attacked in force, then our fleet wouldn’t have to engage.  They’d have waited until the Trogs ran themselves out of ammo destroying a few stations, then followed them back to their bases and attacked them there.”

“What if they only used half of their ammo before going back to resupply?” asks Phil.

I’m tired of being a silent observer, so I jump to the conclusion.  “Same result.  Cruiser battles are about attrition.  With all the ship designs being very similar, the distinguishing difference between winners and losers comes down to tactics.  Either outnumber, outgun, or outlast your enemy.  A cruiser with a hold only half-full of railgun slugs will probably lose to one with a full load.  I mean, it certainly can’t win, all it can do is hope to maneuver and manipulate its defensive grav fields long enough to run the enemy out of ammunition.”

Nodding to confirm my assessment, Brice proceeds.  “That makes the ambush of our fleet at the moon base the turning point in the war.”

“Duh,” blurts Phil, and then he sees Brice’s face turns suddenly dark.  “Sorry.  I didn’t mean it that way.”

“He’s never had much interest in military history,” I explain to Brice, “or anything having to do with the Grays’ tactics.”

Brice nods at Phil to let him know he’s forgiven, and follows it with, “You’re right.  ‘Duh,’ is the reasonable response.  I probably should have spoken more carefully and noted that the destruction of our fleet afforded the Grays the opportunity to change their tactics.  They no longer have to harass our mining colonies to draw our fleet into engagements.  They can attack the earth directly.  That works to our advantage.”

“I don’t follow.”  Phil is shaking his head and frowning.  “Why’s it good for us if they attack earth?”

“We know what they’re going to do,” answers Brice.  “They’ll bring their whole fleet in to attack the battle stations.  They knocked out three last time.  If they can do that every time, then all they have to do is make another dozen or so runs at earth.  You figure two or three days of fighting for each battle, and then a week to resupply and—”

“And,” I do the quick math, “in three months’ time, we’ll be right back where we were when the Grays first showed up thirty years ago, defenseless against a space-based enemy who can pound us with impunity from above.  The only question is, how long until the Grays surrender the planet?  How many more humans will die?”

“Let’s not forget the more important question,” concludes Brice.  “How will these new Grays and their Trog slaves treat humans?  Better or worse than the Grays we already have?”

That’s not a question I’m interested in wasting any thought cycles on.  “All I can say is—”

Phil says this next part right along with me, “—I’m not going to be a slave.”

I ignore his mockery.  He’s probably tired of hearing that song from me.  It has been a few years.  “What Brice is saying is though we missed our opportunity to attack them with their pants down at Ceres, we still have a good idea what the Trogs are going to do.  We can wipe them out.”

Chapter 6

Leaving Phil with the Gray, me and Brice exit the reservoir.  Under the silent glare of the hallway guards, the watertight door clangs shut behind us.  Except for the tall bully with the flat face and a few others, the guards seem respectful as we pass by.

Once we’re well away, Brice says, “Don’t worry so much about them.”

“What?”

“You’re stewing about the way they looked at you.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”  Yeah, how?  Really.  “Do you have a bug in your head you didn’t tell anyone about?”

Brice laughs loudly.

I take that as a no.  Of course, Brice doesn’t have a bug.  Only a warped sense of humor.

“You spaghetti-heads ever wonder if you’ve come to depend on your bug so much you forget how to communicate like a human?”

No.  It never crossed my mind.  Seriously, no sarcasm.  Yet, I don’t confess that to him.  “Why do you say that?”

“We’ve spent enough time swimming in the same sewer.  I don’t need a billboard to see it written all over your face.”

“The stewing?”  I make the genius guess.

Brice glances at me to let me know I’m on the right track.

“What of it?”

“I told you, don’t worry so much about them.”

“Okay, Grandpa Brice, how about you help little DK out with something more than a pontification?”

“Ooh.  Pulling out the big words.  Don’t get mad at me.  I’m just trying to help.”

“My God, Brice.  I think I liked you a lot more before you got comfortable speaking your mind.”

Switching to a formal tone, Brice says, “You can transfer me to another unit, Major.”

“I wouldn’t trade you for the world, Grandpa.”  Heavy sarcasm.

“You ever wonder why officers get fragged so much?”

“Never crosses my mind.  Tell me why I shouldn’t worry so much about the guards.  And everybody else who gives me the stink-eye when they see me.”

Brice shakes his head to dramatize his disappointment.  “This thing with you and Blair, you need—”

“This thing?”  I stop walking and turn on Brice.  We’re pretty far up the hall.  So the guards can see us and most likely hear us, but with the echoes bouncing off the rough stone, they probably can’t make out what we’re saying.  “Blair has mental problems.  She hates me because she sees me as a threat.  I’m her competition for center stage.  She wants credit for everything we’re doing here.  The Queen of the Potato needs to have her needle-y man-fingers up everybody’s ass, controlling every—”

“I agree.”  Brice embarrasses me into nipping my rant short with his placation.  “She’s a vile woman with her priorities in the wrong place but—”

“And here comes the best part.”  I don’t put much of an inflection on my retort, because I know I probably shouldn’t have even said it.  Brice is trying to help.

“But,” Brice emphasizes, “she has this base running like clockwork.”  He inhales the hallway air deeply.  “The breach is sealed shut.  We’re walking around in breathable air.  Pay attention when you’re stalking through the tunnels like a pissed-off teenager.  Everybody is busy.  Everybody has a job to do.  Not just the military personnel—everybody.”

I have the urge to recite my way through Blair’s long list of character flaws and deflect Brice’s point, however, the truth comes out in an unenthusiastic admission.  “She does seem to have an aptitude for administrative tasks.”

To drive the point in a little deeper, Brice tells me, “Armies, navies, any fighting unit you can imagine needs rear-echelon support to make it combat-capable.  Officers like Blair, as much as you want to frag them, make our jobs possible.”

I surrender.  “What should I do about the nine shades of shit she’s painting me in?”

“We can’t know for sure she’s responsible for all of it.  The MSS is always looking for scapegoats to blame their fuckups on.  Have you considered the possibility you were just unlucky, and they drew your name out of a hat?  You have to understand that as much as Blair wants to be in the spotlight, the last thing the MSS wants is a rebel war hero on their hands.”

I nod.  I have considered it.  I don’t want to believe it.  It’s easier to have Blair’s arrogant face to focus my anger on.  “Even if she’s not at the root of this, Blair’s exacerbating the situation here.”

“I’ll give you that.”

“What do I do about it, then?”

“I’ll think about it.”  Brice rubs his chin.  “For the moment, don’t do anything.  Let her administer the base.  You lead the combat operations.  That’s what you said your agreement was, right?”

“Informally,” I admit.  “In the heat of the battle.  Who knows where we are now with the division of responsibilities?”

“Maybe get together with her, work it out like big kids.”

I sigh.  Brice is right.  Again.  “I still don’t know what to do about the troops on base.  I think most of them are buying the MSS line.”

Brice shakes his head as he pushes me to get moving up the corridor again.  “You don’t know what these people think.  Like I said earlier, you depend too much on the bug because you grew up with a bunch of bug-heads, you spent your adult life around bug-heads, and all your friends are bug-heads.  You people feel each other on some telepathic level and don’t even realize you’re doing it.  It’s made you lazy about the way real people communicate.”

“I didn’t forget how to speak,” I argue.

Brice doesn’t let me derail him.  “You can’t read people’s faces anymore to know how they feel about something.  Hell, maybe you never could.  Remember this, morale is good.  It’s good because of our victories, and everybody knows that’s because of you and our platoon.”  Brice shrugs dismissively.  “And our company.  Stop chafing your nads about things you can’t control.  Let me worry about what the troops around here think.  They’re not as against you as you believe.”  Brice stops and takes a moment to consider what he just said.  “If it gets out of hand—”

The floor shakes and a deafening rumble blasts through the hall.

Brice drops to his knee and gravs tight to the floor as he reaches to unclip his helmet.

Klaxons echo louder than the alarmed thoughts racing in my head.  I grav tight and reach for my helmet, too.

Chapter 7

Brice pulls his helmet over his head and seats it as he turns to look at me and make sure I’m following his lead.

I am.

I’m relieved from the deafening clang of the klaxon as my helmet muffles out much of the sound.

Brice has his gloves on and locked at the wrists before my helmet is seated in the neck ring.  In a fluid motion that looks natural for him, he raises his railgun to his shoulder and he’s ready to fire, scanning one end of the hall to the other.

It takes me half a rushed minute, but I fumble through shoving my hands into my gloves and locking the wrist rings before raising my rifle.

Using the grav switches buried in my helmet, I bring all my suit’s systems online and comm Brice.  “Thoughts?”

“No decompression, yet.”

“Attack!”  It’s a voice over the command comm—not Blair, one of her lackeys.

“This is Major Kane.”  The flunky on the other end of the comm link should be able to read that off her display, but her frantic one-word warning tells me she’s rattled.  “Calm down.  Get me Colonel Blair on the line.”

I turn to Brice.  “Round up the platoon.  I want a squad stationed in the hall outside Phil and Nick’s cell, and I want the rest to meet up with us.  Pick a rally point.  On the surface, or just inside one of the airlocks up there.”

Brice nods.

“Colonel Blair is busy,” the girl on the command comm tells me.  “We’re being attacked.”

“Trogs?” I ask.  “How many cruisers?”

“Not Trogs,” she answers.  “There’s fighting in the hangar facility.”

I need information.  “Is Tarlow in the command center?”

“Who’s Tarlow?”

I turn to Brice.  “The main hangar.  A firefight of some sort.”

“Follow me!”  He runs.

As I follow, I comm Tarlow directly.

“Yeah?”  He sounds frightened.

“Are you in the command center?”

“No.”

“Can you get there?”

“No.  It’s locked down.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m standing in the goddamn hall outside.  The doors are locked.  The guards inside won’t open them.”

This situation already has clusterfuck written all over it.  “Can you contact Blair?”

“No.”

“Do you know what’s going on?”

“An attack?”  He clearly doesn’t know.

“Is your secret communications closet still operational?”

I hear Tarlow start to pant like he’s running.  “On the way there now!”

“I need a tactical picture of what’s happening as soon as you can provide it.  I need to know if Blair is okay.  If so, what’s she up to.  I talked to one of her comm officers, and she said there are no Trog cruisers and no Trogs.  Is this some kind of coup?”

“I don’t know.”  Tarlow gulps air.  “The command center didn’t look under attack, just locked down.”

“Let me know a soon as you’re online.”

Brice reaches a set of lift tubes, peers up and down inside one of them, then yells, “Level one! Stay on my heels!”  He jumps inside.

Chapter 8

We pop out on sub level one to see an empty hall.  The alarms are still ringing.

An all-hands announcement comes over the comm.  It’s Blair’s voice.  “A group of SDF loyalists have detonated the explosives shack and have taken control of the maintenance hangar.  By our count, there are twenty to thirty of them.  Every Free Army soldier needs to arm themselves and converge on the hangar as fast as possible.  We can’t allow these traitors to escape with a ship.”

Ironic.

Every one of us on this rock is a traitor who escaped with a stolen assault ship.

Well, except the ones who are trying to re-escape.

Brice isn’t running.  He’s looking at me.  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

He’s focused on the tactics while I’m toying with the semantics.  I make a guess.  “That it’ll be a mess up there?”

Brice nods.  “Not right away.  Soon enough.”

“All the more reason to rally our unit and go in together.  Lead the way, as fast as you can.  I’ll try and raise Queen Blair again.”

Brice engages his suit’s grav functions and flies down the hall.

On instinct, I fly behind him, and jump back on the command comm.  “This is Major Kane.  I absolutely need to speak with Colonel Blair.  It’s urgent.  It has to do with the SDF loyalists.”

“Uh…” It’s the same girl I spoke with earlier.

“Get her on the comm, now!”

“Yes, sir.”

I comm to Tarlow.  “Are you in yet?”

“Powering up my monitors,” he tells me.  “I’ll be online in less than a minute.”

Brice speeds around a ninety-degree turn, and I maneuver along behind.

“I need intel, and I need it fast,” I tell Tarlow.  “You know the situation.  We can’t let those ships escape.”  I quickly tell him which hallway I’m in and where I’m headed.  “Find me the safest attack path.”

Brice decelerates hard, and I collide with him because I didn’t react fast enough.  Neither of us loses our balance.  We find our feet and come to a stop as Brice punches an airlock button.  The door swings open.

In a few eye blinks, we’re inside with the door closed and air hissing out.

“You have six people, all outside,” says Tarlow.

“Outside this airlock?” I ask, looping Brice into the conversation.

“Our rally point is right through here.”  Brice points at the outer door.

Blair connects with me over a private comm.  “Make it quick, Kane.  If you’re still on our side, that is.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” I snap.  “Listen to me, don’t send all the troops in right away.  They’ll end up shooting each other, because in case you haven’t noticed, we’re all in the same orange suits.”

“You don’t…” Blair stops because she realizes I’m right.

“Instruct the lieutenants and sergeants to rally their platoons to a jump-off point they select.  Once they’re together, then go in.  While they’re doing that, figure out some way to identify which ones are stealing the ships, and who is with us.”

“How the hell am I supposed to decipher the loyalty of an officer over a comm link?”

“I can’t answer that one,” I tell her.  “Make your best guess.  If they have their unit together maybe they’re loyal.  I’m guessing there aren’t any full units defecting.”  Total shit logic, I realize.  “I’ll bet it’s a collaboration of individuals who don’t like where this rebellion is headed.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Wait!

Duh!

I ask, “Why don’t you freeze their suits?  Can you identify the loyalists up there individually?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Well, issue a global freeze command on all the damn suits, then.  That neutralizes everything until we can sort things out.”

“I tried to freeze them,” says Blair, “but they’re wearing helmets outside my chain of command.”

“I thought you had the whole division.”  Was she bluffing about how much authority she had when she pushed it on me earlier?

“I, uh.”

“You fucking worthless pile of shit!”  I shout over the comm.  She was bluffing, and I bought it.

“They’re wearing Chinese helmets.”

Ugh! Why didn’t we start there?  The Chinese helmets all have the red PRC flag emblazoned on the side.  “Bad guys and good guys sort themselves by helmet color.  Just tell everybody that!”

Brice pushes the door open to face the business end of a half-dozen railguns.  Thankfully, all the eyes looking down through the sights are familiar—Lenox, Silva, Peterson and a few others.  They’re my people.

“I have a squad up here,” I tell her.  “I’m taking them in, and the rest of my platoon will soon follow.  Keep me apprised.”

Chapter 9

“They’re trying to board your ship,” Tarlow tells me.

Brice curses.

“Not to worry.”  I can hear a smile in Tarlow’s voice.  “Your pilot, Penny, is inside with a few mechanics.  She has the doors locked.”  He was baiting me.

“Direct me to them,” I order, as I glance around at the maze of hulking ships and piles of equipment standing in the dust.  Three days since the Trog bombardment and the Potato is still shrouded in debris.  Visibility is maybe forty meters.  “I need an attack route.”

Brice gives me an anxious glance.  “Orders?”

I point to Peterson.  “You stay here.  Wait for the rest of our platoon.”

“You see the wall to your left?” Tarlow asks.

I glance and can barely make out the wall in the fading gray.  “Yeah.”

“If you follow that wall to the front of the hangar, you won’t see a single orange suit until you reach the assault ships.”  Tarlow quickly describes the tactical situation.

“Got it.  Thanks.”  Looking at my troops, I point to the hangar wall and tell them, “We’re going in fast and hot.  Right at that wall and then left.  Nobody’s there to stop us.  A row of nine ships is sitting down at the open end of the hangar, all lined up and facing out.  From where we’ll come out, the second ship in line is ours.  Penny’s on the bridge, and the bad guys want in.  The rest of the loyalists are boarding two other ships, the fourth and seventh in line.  Once we’re there, shoot anybody with a PRC flag on their helmet.  Don’t trust anybody who’s not us.  For the moment, we’re the only unit here on our side.  The situation will change in a hurry, so pay attention to your comms.  Two fire teams—Brice, Silva, with me.  Lenox, you take the other two.  Let’s fly!”

I jump into the air and run up the power to my suit’s grav and zip toward the wall.  My squad follows.

I cut the turn hard and hug the hangar wall, accelerating on a straight shot for nearly two hundred meters, following Tarlow’s directions.  The dust is so thick in this part of the hangar, every shape fuzzes to gray before I can identify it.

As we reach a huge stack of parts packed in battered metal crates, I spot the stern of a partially disassembled ship.  I reverse my grav and call over my tactical comm.  “We’re here.”

I slow for the turn and rotate to put my feet on the ground, drifting around the corner, weapon at my shoulder.

My squad follows, raising their guns, ready to fire.

I pass the first ship and look into the gap between it and the Rusty Turd.

Flashes from a hundred sparks cut through the gray haze.

I instinctively duck as I spot three orange-suited loyalists standing near my ship, firing their weapons at one of the assault doors.

I take aim just as the Turd surges bright blue.

A gravity pulse knocks me and my squad back against the stack of metal crates.

On the second it takes to clear my head from the effects of the gravity punch, I see the soldiers who’d been firing bounce off the hull of the neighboring ship and drift in apparent lifelessness.

I hear my squad grumble over the comm, and I take their complaints as a good thing.  They’re pissed and bruised instead of injured or dead.

“Lenox.”  I point between the two ships where the soldiers are drifting.  “Take your fire team and handle these.  Check the other side.  Coordinate with Penny.  Make sure the Turd is ready to fly.”

“Brice, Silva, with me!”

I accelerate again.

“The three of us against, what, twenty or thirty?” asks Brice.

“They’re boarding their ships to make a run for it,” I tell him, hoping I’m right.  I link to Tarlow for my next question.  “Are the loyalists all on board the other ships?”

“Can’t say for sure.  Mostly.”

“Can you tell if the reactors are powered up?  How soon before they’re ready to go.”

“I have to guess on that one.  Less than a minute.”

We’re closing in on the other two ships and I see a faint glow of blue emanating from both their drive arrays.  “Tarlow, any more loyalists out here we need to worry about?”

“None that I can find on the cameras.”

I push my suit grav hard toward the nearest ship.  “Brice, Silva, either of you have any C4?”

“I do,” says Silva, “Three charges.”

“Let’s each take one.”  I spin around as I fly and reach out.

Silva shoves one into my hand as she gives another to Brice.

“Attach it to the drive array,” I explain.  “Anywhere, it doesn’t matter.  We just need to damage the array enough that the loyalists can’t bubble jump.”

“You stay here,” Brice tells Silva, “and trigger the charges before they are out of range.”

Brice points at the first ship as he accelerates away.  “I’ve got this one.”

I spin and max grav toward the other.

The whole ship starts to glow blue.  As it rises off the surface, and as the drive array flashes to brilliance, the ship jumps toward the hangar door.

Shit!

I turn into the gap it left and see its stern passing through the gaping doors as the ship angles upward toward the stars.

It’s going to get away!

I over grav my suit’s plates and feel a burst of acceleration.

In seconds I’m out of the hangar and shooting out of the Potato’s obscuring haze.

Silva and Brice are saying something over the comm, but my helmet is generating an alarm and is flashing a series of red lights from my reactor.  I’m pushing my systems too hard.

The ship seems to pause as it searches for the right vector.

My opportunity to catch it.

I only have seconds before it gets away.  I don’t let up.

One of my grav plates pops and punches my leg so hard I think it might have broken the bone.

No time to whine over the pain.

No choice but to push.

The ship is starting to accelerate again as I reach the edge of its drive array cone and grab on.

The array blazes bright, and I feel it pick up speed.

Another grav plate, one in my boot, ruptures and torques me so hard I nearly break my wrist from trying to hang on, but the spin puts me in a position to grasp the outside of the cone with both hands.  I manage to lodge one foot in a gap between two support beams.

Thank the Arizona shipyard for shoddy construction!

Despite my grip, I have to keep my grav plates maxed as the ship accelerates so my momentum doesn’t drag me off the rear.

The ship is burning hard to escape.

It’s then I realize the reason I have two hands precariously gripping the ship.  I’ve let go of the C4.

Dammit!

Looking astern, I see the haze-veiled mining colony starting to recede.

What few desperate choices I have are rapidly degrading to ineffectual, suicidal ones.

No time to dawdle.

I scoot down to the edge of the cone, knowing I’ll be blown off when my next grav plate ruptures.  I let go of the ship with one hand and point my rifle at the nearest grav plate I can see, hoping as I pull the trigger the shrapnel my slugs spall off will be shoved away by the ship’s drive field before they hit me.

I unload a full magazine through a shower of blazing metal, and the ship jerks.

Not much.

But enough?

The shape and intensity of the ship’s blue drive field changes.

With one hand, I try to reload my weapon.

The ship blasts hard on its drive array and jerks out of my hand, and accelerates surprisingly quickly.

With both hands free, I hurriedly load a new magazine and fire.  The stream of glowing rounds veers away from the grav field formed by the ship’s array as it recedes.

I curse, and hope.

It seems like every alarm in my helmet is blazing red and beeping.  Every one except for my hydro pack sensor.  That one is still silent.

I try to adjust my suit’s grav to set a vector back toward the Potato.  My failing suit barely responds.

I curse again and try to raise my squad on the comm.

Chapter 10

Penny comms in, urgent, but not panicked.  “I’m loading the squad.”

“Brice and Silva, anybody there?”  I look back toward the Potato.  I must be five or six kilometers out.

“Almost here.”  Brice crackles over the comm.

I’m relieved they’re both alive.  Brice is more than my sergeant, he’s my friend.  Silva—I don’t know what she is.  I only know what I’d like her to be.

The day after we took the Potato from the Trogs, I saw her and a few others from my platoon in nothing but their translucent undergarments as they were going through maintenance with some of the techs we’d freed.  Bottom line, she didn’t look to be a day over seventeen.  A teenager.  I felt like a pervert for the thoughts I’d entertained about her.  I still do.

I checked my d-pad to pull up what info I could get on her, hoping, maybe a little desperately, she’d be over eighteen.  Of course, the fucking d-pad showed me nothing.  The feature that handles personnel files was on the fritz.

Skimming slowly over the surface of the Potato I see the second ship of escapees.  It’s running down the asteroid’s long axis.  The metal on one edge of its drive array looks torn, and its blue grav field is flickering and misshapen.  It’ll be going nowhere fast.  Brice must have set his charge in the perfect spot.  “Penny, can you see that other ship?”

“I see its grav signature.”

“Knock it out if you can.”

“Will do, boss.”  I see the Rusty Turd drift out of the hangar, floating just off the asteroid’s surface.  The grav blaze flashes to life.

Brice comms in.  “We’ll be on board in ten seconds.”

“Waiting for them,” Penny tells me.  “What’s all that noise on your comm?”

“My suit is failing.  I pushed it too hard.”

She switches into savior mode.  “To hell with those loyalists, I’m—”

“It’s not as urgent as it sounds.  Take out that ship, and then come for me.  I’m not going anywhere.”  Anywhere fast.  I’m still speeding away from the Potato on the vector I was riding when my suit grav decided to switch into useless mode.

The loyalist ship below starts to pick up speed but can’t hold a straight course.  It’s over the open pit mine, and I can’t believe what I see, what I think I see.

Are those captured Trogs still there?  All in the open, lined up in rows, not moving?

I thought Blair took care of them.  Housed them, or something.

I make a mental note to talk to her about the prisoners, not that I have a clue what to do with them.  As Brice tells me, though, she’s the logistics queen.  She should be able to figure it out.

I look up into the blackness to see the blue glow of the escaping assault ship.  It’s as bright as a comet, impossible to miss.  Phil isn’t aboard the Turd to keep track of their grav signature, however, we should be able to see them as long as they don’t cut power to their drive and try to disappear into the background.

“Tarlow,” I call, “can you track those loyalists?”

“I have some equipment I can redirect,” he tells me.  “It will take a few minutes.”

“Do it,” I tell him.

I link into the command comm.  “This is Kane.  I need to speak with Blair.”

“Just a moment, Major Kane.”

“What?”  It’s Blair, shiny happy as usual.  Not.

“One ship got away.  I’ve damaged the drive array so they can’t bubble jump.  The other ship is struggling and heading south.”

“We have it on tracking.”

“Can you track both ships?”

“Yes,” she tells me.  “We have them both.”

Penny cuts in, “We have Brice and Silva on board with the rest of the squad.”

I look down, and I see her pointing the Rusty Turd in the direction of the damaged ship.  “One sec,” I tell her, then I switch back to Blair.  “I think we’ve disabled bubble jump on both ships.  What do you want us to do now?”

“Stop them!”  Blair shouts.

I look around near the Potato, scanning the sky.  “Where are the other assault ships, the ones that brought reinforcements?”

“Not here.”

I rev up to yell at her that she needs to stop with the secrets.  I don’t.  I stick with pragmatics.  “If it’s just us out here, we only have one way to stop those ships.”  I want it to be clear.  “Capture is out of the question.  We have to ram them.  They’ll likely be killed.  Is that what you want?”

She’s silent.

I don’t add that all the men, women, girls, and boys on those ships are human soldiers just like the rest of us.  Maybe all of them are loyalists.  Maybe some of them were unlucky enough to be caught in the herd when the others decided to make their break.  Maybe they just want to run as far from this war as they can.

Finally, Blair comes up with an equivocation she thinks will keep her hands clean.  “Whatever solves this problem the fastest.”

“Kane out.”  I huff on my anger at Blair and then link to Penny.  “Ram that ship, try to aim for the drive array and disable it.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“If it can be done, you’ll do it.  You’re the best pilot in the company.”

Penny laughs.  “Out of both of us left?”

Far below, I see the Rusty Turd’s drive array burst a blue grav pulse that pushes it to accelerate away from the Potato.

I’ve seen this tactic before, but from a different perspective.

The whole ship is glowing brightly from the strain on its internal inertial bubble as Penny pulls a high-g arc to come in perpendicular to the path of the loyalists’ wounded ship.

I guess there’s no grav officer on escaping vessel, because it doesn’t respond to Penny’s maneuver.  A bug-head would have seen the Rusty Turd glowing like a supernova zipping through the sky off their port side.

A few seconds pass, and all that’s left is inevitability.

I see the collision in a blue flash.

All in an instant, the loyalists’ vessel’s grav plates cut from living blue to dead black.  The conical drive array bursts into a thousand shards of deformed metal, spraying in every direction.  The Turd passes through, barely slowing as it zips safely away.  The rest of the loyalists’ ship, most of the bridge, and the platoon compartment remain intact, caught in a flat spin, careening into the void.

I comm to Blair.  “The first ship is neutralized.”

“I know,” she tells me.

“Probably survivors.”

No response.

“Blair, do you hear me?”

No response.

Leaving the grav lens powered up, Penny angles the ship up toward me.  “I can’t make out where you are out there with all this grav blazing around me.  You’ll have to guide me in.”

“You’re headed in the right direction.  Just don’t come in too fast and skewer me with that thing.”

She laughs, I guess thinking how I might look kebab-style.

I turn to confirm for myself the other ship is still burning bright to make its getaway.  “Let’s cut that grav lens off for the moment.”

Chapter 11

Everyone is on the bridge when I get there.  Plenty of room.  No crowding.

“You should take Phil’s grav and nav console,” Penny tells me.

We’re the only two bug-heads on board, so I comply.  “Can you still make out the other ship?”

“Yes.”

I look around the bridge.  “I guess Jablonsky didn’t make it.”

“Why would he?” asks Penny.

“Why wouldn’t he?” I shoot back.  Sometimes we blabber on about nothing, just like any two people who’ve known each other a very long time.  “What are you thinking, tactic-wise?”

She shrugs.  “Same as with the other ship?”

“Ram the drive array from the flank?”

“It’ll be harder with them accelerating the way they are, and, well, with you on grav and nav instead of Phil.”

“You nailed the other ship with no help.”

“It was disabled.  It was slow.”

I’m losing the argument.  I point forward.  “Go that way, fast.”

Penny chuckles politely.

I turn to Brice and Lenox.  “Any ideas?”

Shrugs.

“Anybody know how to use the communication console?”

Silva raises her hand.  Nobody else does.

“Did you train for it?” I ask.

“Not really.  I ran through one of the simulators.”  She smiles sweetly, flirting with me.  She doesn’t seem to mind the age difference between us.  “No guarantees.”

“See if you can raise that other ship.  We’ll be out of range soon for suit comm connections with the base.  So we’ll lose Blair and Tarlow.”  I nod toward the console.  “Get them on the line as well.”

Silva steps over to the comm panel, and Lenox goes with her.

The interior light on the bridge is turning a brighter blue, so I know without looking through my small window that Penny is accelerating and tracing an arc to bring the Turd in from the other vessel’s flank.

“Do we have enough of a speed advantage for this?” I ask.

Penny nods.  “I don’t know if the damage you did to their drive array made the difference or if those Chinese assault ships are just slower.”

I turn back to Brice.  “You’ve spent some time up in the hangar with the repair crews.  Anything you can tell us?”

“Nobody knows for sure.  Everybody thinks they’re slower because of the smaller drive array and smaller reactor, but with no grav lens, those ships have a lot less mass to push.”

Penny chuckles again.

“So,” I summarize, “you don’t know.”

Brice shakes his head.  “There’s something you will find interesting.  About half of those ships are armed.”

“Interesting isn’t the word I’d choose.”  Though I’m stymied for a better one at the moment.  “Do tell.”

“Some of them have a railgun mounted down the axis of the ship.  A big bastard, sixty feet long.”

Penny whistles.

“So that’s how they were supposed to work,” I muse.  “Some of the ships were tasked to shoot holes in the Trog cruisers, and then the Chinese SDF troops were to disembark and pour through the holes in the hull.”

“Sounds like a recipe for big casualties,” says Brice.

Turning to Penny, I say, “If that—”

“It’s not my first day on the job, Skipper.”

“Sorry.”

“You just be ready to activate that grav lens, in case they do get a shot off.”

“I linked back to the base,” says Silva.

“Any updates from Blair?” I regret asking.

“She wants to know why we left so much of the other vessel intact.”

Brice puts a hand on my shoulder to calm my instant anger.  I shouldn’t say what I want to.

Brice answers for me, “Ask her to launch some ships to capture the loyalists.”

“Did you hail the loyalists?” I ask.

“No response,” Silva replies.

Disappointing.

I turn back toward our quarry, which is growing closer as we pick up speed and angle in for our attack.

The other ship’s grav signature shifts.

“It stopped accelerating,” I tell her.  “It killed power to its drive.”

Penny pushes the Turd faster and adjusts her angle.

“They’re spinning the ship,” I tell her.

“Turn on that grav lens!”  she shouts at me.

“Not yet.”

“They’re trying to line up that gun to shoot at us,” Brice clarifies.

That’s one of the things about dogfighting in space that’s distinctly different than dogfighting between terrestrial aircraft, spaceships don’t have to be pointed in the direction they’re flying.  If a ship kills its drive power before turning, it can pivot in any direction without changing course.

“Grav lens,” Penny urges.

I tell her and Brice, “I don’t want to spook them away.”  And I know it’ll be difficult for me to see them once the grav lens powers up and obscures every gravity field ahead of us.  God, it would be good to have Phil here.

“Almost around,” Penny tells us.  “Everybody prepare for impact.”

“One way or the other,” Brice laughs darkly.  He braces himself against mine and Penny’s seats.

The other ship’s nose lines up on us.

I push power to our grav lens as a dozen rapid rounds spew out of the other ship, red and menacing as they bear down on us.

Just as impact seems imminent, the hot slugs skew off their paths and fly harmlessly into space.

Our grav lens did the trick.

I guess the bridge crew in the other ship must be realizing they’ve made a terrible miscalculation.

More rounds fire toward us as the other ship’s drive array fires up and the vessel starts to pivot to a new vector.

They’re still far enough away that they might escape.

“Max grav!”  I command.

The bridge pulses to bright blue, and I feel grav pull me aft as Penny accelerates our ship and adjusts course to keep the escaping assault ship lined up.

Before I can gulp another breath, the loyalist ship grows huge ahead of us.

The grav lens flashes blinding blue and the inertial bubble pulses with the collision.

We ram the other ship just behind the bow, tearing down through the main cabin and blasting out the other side, just in front of the bridge.

Penny’s cutting hard into a turn and decelerating as we come out the other side.

I kill the grav lens.

The squad cheers.  They know what a collision feels like.

I turn to look, and sense pieces of the disintegrated ship careening in every direction.

Penny turns back to Brice.  “Direct hit.”  She looks at me.  “We good?”

I nod.  Of course.

“The ship,” she clarifies.

“Oh yeah.”  Dammit.  Running through a few sims and being competent at a job are two very different things.  I sigh.  “Sorry, I’m no Phil.”

“We only need one Phil.”  Brice smiles widely.  The number of people we just killed doesn’t seem to have phased him at all.

I realize I don’t feel anything either.  I start checking the status of ship systems on my console.

Chapter 12

In the principal’s office.

Well the lobby, really.

It’s my first visit to this part of the asteroid base.  The control room being Blair’s lair, I subconsciously manufactured excuses for avoiding it.  Until now.

The Potato Queen has summoned me.

Ugh.

I’m with Brice, looking through a row of blast-proof windows into a semicircular control room.  On the flat side, a bank of monitors covers the wall.  Inside, a few dozen techs work at computers tracking various aspects of colony infrastructure and equipment.  Others surveil the empty reaches of space surrounding us, while still more scan the comm channels picked up by the assortment of radio receivers packed into the little parabolic dish farm up on the surface.

Altogether, the place reminds me of a launch mission control center from one of the pre-siege space videos.

Along the arcs of the semicircle both left and right of us stretches a walkway providing access to rows of glass-walled offices looking out onto the control room.  The doorway off the lobby to each walkway is closed.  Armed guards in the uniform du jour—coveralls with stamped rank—stand at each door with serious faces and eyes that might as well be comatose except they’re open, staring straight ahead, and blinking so infrequently it makes me uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, like the guards that stand in the corridor outside the lobby, these two are necessary.  We don’t know how many more SDF loyalists are still lurking among us, waiting for an opportunity to throw a monkey wrench into the cogs of our diminutive war machine.

Or hoping for a chance to assassinate the Potato Queen.

Or looking for a favorable circumstance to rid the solar system of me.

“Those guards are a good idea,” says Brice, as though he’s been auditing my thoughts.

Overly dramatic?

I wonder if the bug in my head is somehow broadcasting on a tight thought band that self-activated a connection between us because of all the time we’ve spent together.

More excess drama.

Perhaps a more parsimonious explanation is a possibility, like Blair is making us wait for no other reason than to lord her rank over us, and Brice and me are bored from sitting out here, and our thoughts happen to be wandering in similar directions because the room is white, the chairs are boring gray, and once the control room busywork lost its grip on our attention, the only visually interesting thing left were the two guards pretending to be heartless killers.

“I wonder how she selects the loyal ones?” muses Brice.

I skip right over that question and silently try to guess whether the guards are loyal to her, or loyal to the Free Army?  Either way, not productive things for me to dwell on.  “You’ve been spending a good deal of time up in the hangar with Penny—”

“With the ship,” Brice corrects.

I turn and shoot him a knowing look.

He shrugs and smiles.  “We like each other’s company.”

I let it go.  “What’s the deal with things up there?  How many ships will they be able to repair?”

Brice thinks about it for a moment.  “Seven Arizona-class ships—”

“Arizona-class?”  I immediately make the connection, but I didn’t know.  “Is that the official designation for our class of assault ship?”

“It is now,” answers Brice.  “I picked it up talking to the techs in the hangar.  They’re calling ours the Arizona class as a way to distinguish them from the Chinese ships we saw stored in the bottom of the strip mine.  Those are Beijing-class.”

“Beijing?” I ask.  “I thought the Ticks obliterated Beijing during the siege.  Did they rebuild?”

Brice shakes his head.  “I think it was the only city name any of the guys up there could think of.”  He laughs.  “Come to think of it, that’s the only Chinese city I could name.”

I shake my head to show my disappointment, but don’t admit I couldn’t name more than two or three.  “Are they fixing the Beijing-class ships too?”  Good news, except we don’t have crews for those.

Brice nods.  “Three Arizona-class ships are nearly ready to go.  The others, they think they’ll be able to get airborne in a few weeks.  One needs its drive array rebuilt with scavenged plates.  Most have damaged reactors.”

“Can they use the Beijing-class ones for parts?”

“The Chinese reactors are so much smaller, nothing is interchangeable.”

That’s disappointing.  “I heard a rumor about the number of Chinese vessels that went up.  I don’t know whether to believe it.  Did you hear anything?”

“Three thousand?” guesses Brice.

That’s the number I heard.  Unbelievable.

“Details are sketchy,” says Brice.  The rumors say they tried to assault the known Trog bases in the asteroid belt and on the Jovian moons.  Heard they were massacred.”

“Some of them must have deserted.”  I look involuntarily up toward the surface.  “Those Chinese ships that arrived for the ambush here.”

Brice nods.

“Three thousand ships.”  It had to be an impressive fleet.  The Free Army might have a few divisions of Chinese assault troops floating around out here.  Hundreds, hell, maybe a thousand out here somewhere.  All on our side.”

“Let’s not get too optimistic,” says Brice.  “For all we know, those Chinese are frozen dead like the bunch we found up top when we arrived.”

One of the guarded doors swings open and Blair’s adjutant steps through and summons us.

Chapter 13

I sense it well before we arrive at the door.

I feel it when I enter Blair’s office.  She has g, and it’s set to earth standard.  It fills in the gaps in my suit’s inconsistent field and reminds me what the burden of full-g feels like.

Brice stumbles when he crosses into the office, but catches himself without comment.

Blair sits in a plush chair like a sadistic cat with a passive face, catching mean-ass perv thrills from watching mice squeal after finding their feet stuck on a glue trap.

Or, she’s bored and staring blankly across a desk made from a sheet of polished asteroid rock big enough to dance on.

I go with option A.

Of course, I do.  I don’t have any incentive to imagine charitable thoughts sprouting from her selfish cortex.

I come to a stop at the edge of the shiny slab of rock.  “Yes, Colonel.”  I don’t salute.

She tries to keep her anger under a lid, yet she says nothing.

Her adjutant steps into the hall and heads off on some errand—pointless is my bet.  Blair likes to yank on the reins of her underlings.

Blair tells me, “I need you to scout some Trog outposts.”

“Okay.”  Sounds reasonable.  “What have we heard from earth?  Did the Trogs mount another attack?”

Making no effort to answer my question, Blair’s lips remain mannequin-still on her plastic face.

I challenge her with my own silence and wonder what game we’re playing.

She wears the most inexpressive face I’ve ever seen on a human.

Instead of chasing those thoughts to another derogatory description, I instead recall my conversation with Brice about how she’s doing a good job with the administrative aspect of our revolutionary endeavor.

Is it possible the root of our disharmony is my attitude toward her?

I think about what her life on earth must have been like while I was trudging through my years in the grav factory.  She was working her way up through the MSS, lying more in a day than I had to lie in a week.  Every single person she worked with, or talked to, and probably everyone she socialized with would have thrown her into a torture room if they suspected what she was.

What does that do to a person?

How different, really, was that from my life?

Still, I decide not to challenge her further.  I’ll try and play the good military boy and follow her pedantic, often obscure rules, until things get better.  Putting every ounce of sincere syrup into my tone, I say, “We can scout the locations.  I simply request information so I can better do my duty.”

Without giving an inch of ground, Blair says, “My adjutant will provide the orbital coordinates of Ceres and the other suspected Trog resupply depots.”

Like I can’t find Ceres.

Brice nudges my boot with his.  He’s telling me not to lose my temper with Blair’s implication that my crew can’t navigate.

He is getting very good at reading me.

I keep my calm.  “May I speak?”

The plastic-faced Potato Queen lets my request hang in the ether for a moment before she deigns to grant my request with a nod.

“If we time our scouting run to occur twelve hours after an attack, it’ll give the Trogs plenty of time to return to their resupply bases, configure their guard, and settle into the routine of restocking their holds.  We’ll get a picture of how many ships resupply at which bases, and we’ll better be able to plan our eventual attack.”

Letting the boredom in her tone speak louder than the words she chooses, Blair says, “We know the cruisers don’t resupply at the same bases every time.  Sometimes they go to the same base two or three times in a row.  Sometimes they don’t return for months.”

“This is good intel,” I compliment.  “The Free Army obviously has multiple sources throughout the solar system.  Are they not able to provide a current picture of what’s at each base?”

Blair doesn’t answer my question.  “You’re tasked with scouting the outposts on the list.”

“These other eight ships,” I guess, “are they out scouting bases?”  Knowing I’m not going to be given an answer, I push straight on to the reason why my questions are important.  “If they are, then you need to keep in mind Grays can see grav better then you and I can see visible light.  If the ships come close enough to a base, any Gray looking up at the sky will see them shining like Christmas stars.  That only needs to happen once before the Grays know to keep a lookout for more scout ships to come through.  They might start laying traps.  Worse, even though all of these vessels look alike to us, they don’t look that way to the Grays.  Those big-eyed Ticks can see the unique grav fields generated by each ship’s array—unique because they were all so shoddily constructed back on earth.  What I’m saying is, by scouting them, we’re giving away our strength.”  I realize my argument is turning indignant.  I take a breath to calm myself.  “I know you don’t want to give the Trogs any intel and you don’t want to get any of our people killed.  That’s why I need to know what you know, so I can help you make better decisions.”

Blair’s face shows she’s thinking.  That’s good.  At least my arguments have geared up enough of her brain so it’s incapable of fully maintaining her impervious façade.  “We haven’t been sending ships,” she admits.  “The intel is old, generated from sources we had in place from early in the war.  That’s all I’ll tell you.”  Her face goes hard.  “We still don’t know if you’re a spy for the Trogs or the SDF.”

I shake my head in disgust.  If she believed either of those things, she’d have locked me up by now.

“How many locations do you need scouted?”

“You have orders for three.”

“Not just us.  How many ships are you sending out?  How many suspected Trog bases do you need intel on?”

“You want to know how many Trog bases we know the locations of?”

“My God! Give it a rest.”  That just slipped out in full, exhaustive exasperation.  Sometimes it just happens.  I calm myself before I proceed in a civil tone.  “Let’s stop pretending this spy thing is about anything real.  Play that game with your adjutant and the other officers if you want, but between us, you know what I’m about.  So give it to me straight and let me do my job.  Let me help the Free Army win this war.”

Blair turns her attention to a computer monitor, and the fingers on one hand tap randomly on the keys.  She’s buying time.

My guess.

Finally, she looks at me.  “You’re right.  We don’t want to give away our strength to the enemy while trying to assess his.  My adjutant will send the coordinates of eleven suspected bases to your d-pad.  You’ll be the only ship going out.  Leave tomorrow morning.  Provide me your flight plan.  I don’t expect to see you back here until you need to refuel or you need to participate in the next attack.”

“I need to be in on planning that,” I tell her.

Ignoring my assertion, she continues.  “I need to know where you’ll be and when.  Send us a communiqué every time you come out of bubble jump and before you jump again.  I’ll need photographs of—”

I cut her off there.  “No photographs.  We won’t get that close.  Phil can sense grav like a Gray—well not nearly as sensitive as a Gray.  His long-range grav sense is better than anything we’ll get out of the navigation cameras mounted on our ship.  We won’t be able to keep the Grays from seeing us, but three hundred and sixty degrees in 3D space is a lot of sky to watch.  The farther away we are, the less likely we are to be spotted.  The less likely they’ll be able to do anything about our presence, especially if we only stay for a few minutes before we bubble out again.”

“Send my adjutant that flight plan before you leave.”

Chapter 14

Twenty-four hours pass and I’m in a new—different, but fully functional—orange suit, walking around the ship with Brice, an inspection before we set out on our mission.

Something that feels like intuition makes me want to say I know something’s wrong, yet I can’t.  Because I don’t know for sure.  I only have a nagging sense that becomes incongruously stronger and more ambiguous the closer I am to the Rusty Turd.

Brice points out patches on the hull that look to have been welded by a kid on his first day in metal shop.  Guessing at my apprehensive look, Brice explains, “They hold air.”

I shake my head.  “I guess they don’t make the ship any uglier.  What about the airlock?”

“It functions.”

I had a long list of requests for the ship when they went to work on it in the hangar.  “Extra H tanks?”

“We’ve more than doubled our stores of hydrogen.”  Brice pats the hull.  “They salvaged some tanks from a Beijing-class ship that was never going to fly again.  They’re mounted in one of the storerooms.  And that’s about it, as far as repairs and improvements.”

I point to a new assault door in place where one was blown off in our first attack.  “That’ll come in handy.”

“Yeah, the doors,” Brice nods.  He steps quickly toward the aft section and points to a new radar dish embedded in the side of the hull.

I don’t like it.  “We lose some protection.  They had to cut out a grav plate that was mounted here to put this thing in.”

“The only way to install it,” Brice tells me, “or our ship’s grav fields would rip it off once we started pulling some heavy g’s.”

“How many dishes in all?”

“Six.”

I shake my head, despising Blair for pushing this on us.  It tells me she doesn’t trust the information we’ll get from Phil’s grav scan of any base we survey.  “Did Tarlow run his diagnostics to make sure it all functions?”

Brice nods.  “I don’t like having him on board.”

“I suspect that’s one of Blair’s motivations for forcing him on us.  Is his console set up on the bridge?”

“It looks as jury-rigged as the rest of the ship, but Tarlow seems satisfied.”

“Satisfied is probably as close to happiness as he’ll ever get.  What about the flight plan?”

“You know,” says Brice, “if I’m going to be your XO, you could promote me.”

“I don’t know if I can or not.  I’ll tell the Potato Queen once we get back.  What do you want to be?”

“In the SDF, skipping ranks wasn’t something that was done.”

“Lieutenant, then?”

Brice grimaces.  “I already don’t like it.  Maybe I’ll stay a sergeant.”

“Up to you.  What about the flight plan?”

“Penny and Phil put one together and sent it down to Blair.”

“Communications?”

“Another dish,” Brice glances up and points.  “Up there.  Mounted above the bridge.”

“We lost another grav plate?”

He nods.  “Seven altogether.”

“My God.  We’ll be defenseless soon.”  Is that what Blair has in mind?  To reduce the ship’s defenses by such a degree that we’ll be shredded by railgun fire in the next battle?  “Does Jablonsky know how to configure the dish to send a signal back here?”

“Well, it’s mounted in the hull, so…”

“We have to adjust the orientation of the ship in space.”

“Mostly,” Brice explains.  “The dish can be aimed using a set of controls on Jablonsky’s terminal.  So as long as we orient the ship with the antenna pointed in the general direction of the Potato, he can make the final adjustment and home it in before he sends.”

“And he can do that?”

Brice shrugs.  “He says he can.”

“And receiving?”

“He says he’s got that covered as well.”

“So we could aim it at earth, and send and receive from there?”

“I suppose.”  Brice reaches up to scratch his chin, only to realize the helmet is in the way.  “I don’t know what kind of range we have for communications.  Jablonsky has the details.  You can quiz him on that once we’re underway.”

I nod.  I’ll do that.  “Is everyone on board?”

“Penny, Phil, Jablonsky, and now Tarlow on the bridge.”  Brice looks toward the platoon cabin.  “Lenox, Silva, and Peterson, of course.  And the rest of the survivors of the platoon we came up with.  Seven more in all.”

“So, a squad.”

“Blair wouldn’t spare any replacements for us.  I’d say we were lucky she let us bring along any grunts since she sees this as purely a recon mission.  I argued with the squirrelly prick of an adjutant for nearly an hour to get permission to take the remnants of our platoon.  We’re in a war zone.  You never know when you’re going to run into trouble.”

“Or opportunity,” I tell him, reaching out to pat the Rusty Turd’s steel hull.  “You have to remember, we’re the orcas in an ocean of whales.”

“Or we’re the sharks in an ocean of orcas.  The Trog cruisers bite back.”

Yeah.  So he’s right about that.  I switch back to logistics.  “Do we have enough H and C packs for everyone?”

“Enough to last for months.  And none of that nasty Trog shit.  We don’t want to run short on our cal packs again.”

I laugh, thinking back to our recent adventure on the wayward asteroid.  “How about ammunition?”

“Everyone has a full load, but not much more.  Blair doesn’t want us marauding across the solar system and never coming home, I guess.”

Brice and I both laugh at that.

“Let’s board up and fly.”

Brice opens the door to access the bridge, and I climb in.

Chapter 15

After a short burn and an hour-long, efficient coast, during which I spent most of the time listening to Blair’s adjutant reiterating our orders, I’m thankful I’m able to cut the radio conversation short.  Penny announces to the crew that we’re starting our first jump.  I feel the drive array surge as our inertial bubble glows bright.

We’re riding a wave past the speed of light.

It’s good to be away from the Potato, away from Blair’s overbearing management, and away from all those Free Army troops.  Even though we share the same dream, I don’t feel like I fit in.

Still, something undefinable nags at me.

I glance around the bridge.  Penny and Phil are attentive to their consoles, though there isn’t much to do now that we’re in bubble jump except wait until we exit.  Then their work starts again with determining exactly where we are with respect to where we hoped we’d be.  Jablonsky is leaning back in his chair, having a conversation with someone, one of the soldiers strapped in the seats up front in the crew compartment.  Tarlow is engaged with his computer screens, going through their functions and explaining to Brice how his system is supposed to work for acquiring and filtering information to provide us with a three-dimensional picture of the space around the Turd.  In the midst of a bubble jump, the screens show nothing.

I stand up and announce, “I’m going forward to see how the troops are doing.”  I exit the bridge and enter the central hall.  The hinky feeling is stronger.  Is it intuition?  Is there something about the bug in my head that allows me to sense the future?

I open the storeroom and see the large H tanks that were hurriedly installed.  I look at them and concentrate, trying to imagine how I’ll navigate the path to honing this sensation into something specific.  I step inside and lay my hands on the nearest tank, thinking the feeling is slightly less pronounced.

Good.  That’s progress.

I step away front the tank and back into the doorway.  The sensation’s intensity, if it could be called that, notches back up a click or two.

Maybe, across the hall in the captain’s quarters.  I turn and nearly jump out of my skin.

Phil is standing in the hall, just a few feet away.

“Jesus Christ, Phil.  You scared the crap out of me.”

“What are you doing?”

I don’t have a vocabulary for what I’m feeling.  Even if I did, I’m not sure I’d share.

Phil says, “I thought you were going forward to talk to the squad.”

“Are you checking up on me?”

“No.”  Phil steps back and looks around nervously.  “Nothing like that.  I was… I was coming forward, too.”

“Why?”

Phil hesitates.  “I was—”

I raise a hand to stop him.  He’s lying, though I have no clue why.

I step across the hall and reach for the handle on the door to the captain’s chamber.

“Were you going to see Silva?”

Mention of her name puts me on the defensive from an unexpected flank.  “I… what?”

“Silva?  You like her, don’t you?”

I step back.  “I never said anything about that.”

“You don’t have to.  I’ve known you forever.”

“And that doesn’t make you mad?  You know, considering everything?”

Phil pulls a face and shrugs dramatically.  “She’s seventeen and a half but—”

And a half.

Any girl who has to add that suffix to her age is too young.

“Only six months from eighteen.”  Phil seems to approve.  “That eighteen thing… that’s for old pre-siege prudes, right?  Half the girls are married by then these days.  Half of those already have a kid.  It’s like in the olden days when people used to be married by the time they were sixteen.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Phil?”

“I just don’t think you should let the age thing stop you two.  Everybody can see it.  You like each other.”

“I can barely begin to list the things wrong with it.  For starters, I’m her superior officer.”

“We’re not in the SDF anymore.”  Phil steps forward, seemingly to herd me up the hall toward the airlock leading to the platoon compartment.

I don’t budge.

Phil nods forward.  “You should go talk to her.”

I tap my helmet.  “I can talk to her from here.”

“You know you’d rather see her, right?  She is pretty.”  Phil steps forward again and bumps me.

I push him back with two hands on his chest.  “What the hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I scrutinize his face.  He’s hiding something.  “Do you feel it?”

Phil’s face looks theatrically innocent, all but proof of the falseness.

“You feel it.”

“What?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t.  I know if I can feel it, you can, too.  And whatever it is is stronger out here than up on the bridge.”

“The inertial bubble field,” Phil explains.  “They took out those plates.  Now the field isn’t even.”  He taps his helmet with a finger.  “The non-uniform grav field causes the bug to feel discomfort.

I nod my head to agree, but stop.  “That’s not true.  Our plates were damaged in the battle over Arizona.  I’ve been through much worse fluctuating fields than this.”

“It’s the subtle change that—”

I stop him with a raised hand.  The feeling is getting stronger.  I reach down quickly and fling the captain’s quarters’ door open.

Phil gasps.

I step into unexpectedly bright light, as he babbles something to slow me down.

The feeling is stronger in here.

Phil puts a restraining hand on my arm, says something I ignore, and I step into the room, following the feeling like a Geiger counter.

Further, deeper, toward the corner.

Movement.

Small, gray, startling.

“Goddammit!”  I spin on Phil with rage bursting red on my face.  “You smuggled Nick the Tick onboard?”

Chapter 16

Seething, I turn to Phil.  “You have some explaining to do.”

“It’s not what you think.”

I emphatically turn to look at the little gargoyle.  “I think there’s a Gray on my ship.”

“That’s not what I mean.”  Phil pushes past me and walks across the room to get closer to Nick.

“You’re not explaining.”

“For starters, you need to calm down.”

“Always good advice,” I huff.  “I’m not ready to give up on being pissed just yet.”

“Why?”  Phil is defiant.  “What good will it do?  Are you going to punch me?  Shoot me?  Yell at me?”

Sure, he’s right.  What good will the anger do, except make me dumber the madder I get?

“You want to have a toddler tantrum.”  Phil looks down his nose at me as he crosses his arms and puts his body between me and the Gray.  “Go ahead.  I’ll wait for you to grow up and then I’ll explain.”

Putting a tremendous effort into keeping my words even and measured, I say, “We’ll get to the why in a minute.  First, how?”

“The answers to the why and how are intertwined.”

I labor through a sigh.

“He’d have died if I’d left him.”

“That’s the why question, Phil.”

“You have to understand, I couldn’t let him die.”

“Or just go a little crazy until we got back.”

Phil shakes his head in disgust.  “Nick is not a monster.”

I disagree, but don’t have to voice it.  Phil can read it easily enough from the shining neon thoughts I make no effort to conceal.  “How did you get it out?”

Phil’s eyes start to wander.  His arms uncross, and his hands busy themselves grasping one another.

“Tell me.”

Phil stops fidgeting, and he looks at me.  “I’m going to tell you something, but you can’t freak out.”

I laugh meanly and point at the Gray.  “You brought that on the ship.  You’re endangering us all.  So say I’m freaking out if you want, but I think you were a lot closer with the word ‘tantrum.’”

“Grays, when they get together, have a way of amplifying their mental abilities.”

“They network.  I get that.  So, BFD.”

Phil shakes his head.  “You don’t get it.  What I’m saying isn’t that collectively the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

“That sounds like manager nothing-talk.  Say what you’re trying to say.”

“We don’t have a way to measure mental power,” says Phil.  “When we were down in the reservoir, Nick was able to project his emotional influence to a distance of forty feet.  Do you remember?”

“That was yesterday, Phil.  Of course, I remember.”

“Two Grays linked together can project more than forty feet.”

“So what, like forty plus forty?  Eighty?”

“No.”  Phil’s excited by my guess.  “Twice that, at least.”

“What, did it tell you that?”

Phil nods and then shakes his head.  “At first.  And then he showed me how.  We linked and did it together.”

“You projected emotions onto a bug-head, what, a hundred and sixty feet away?”

“At least that far, and not a bug-head, a normal person.”

My anger gives way to concern.  No, a whole list of concerns.  “Tell me you’re still in charge, here.”

“You asked about that when we were in the reservoir.”

“And?”

“Don’t worry about it.”  Phil looks back at the Tick who’s still squatting in the corner, trying to stay out of my line of sight.

I am worried about it.

“With Nick’s help, I manipulated the guards.  I made them afraid of something in the dark, way down the corridor where it opens up to the mine shafts.”  Phil looks proud.  “They went down together to investigate, leaving the door to the reservoir unguarded.  Nick and I walked out.”

“And nobody noticed.”

Phil shakes his head.

“And what?  You did that with everyone you came across all the way up until you boarded this ship?”

“Some,” Phil admits.  “Mostly, we were able to sense them in nearby hallways, and we just avoided them.”

“It was that easy?  You walked out of the base avoiding people?”

Phil nods.

“That’s bullshit.”

“You say that because you’re mad again.”  Phil pauses and then says, “You think because you can’t do it, I must be lying.”

“No.”  I am struggling with how to put my feelings into words.  “That kind of shit worries me.”

“You’re worried about the influence,” Phil guesses.  “You shouldn’t.  You know what to look for.  We’d never be able to pull that off with you.”

I’m not sure I believe that.  “What I don’t believe is that you made your way off the base without Blair’s people in the control room seeing you on one of their cameras.  A Gray wandering the halls is the kind of thing that catches someone’s attention.”

“We avoided areas covered by cameras.”

“More bullshit.”

“You know nearly half the surveillance cameras don’t work.”

“Yet you don’t know which ones are out.  Fess up, Phil.  Stop bullshitting me.  Give me the whole truth or I’m tossing the Tick out into space as soon as we finish this jump.”

Phil looks at the floor.

“Tell me.”

Phil looks around.

“Dammit, Phil.  Spit it out.”

“Tarlow.”

“What about him?”

“Tarlow mapped out all of the cameras for me.”

“You and Tarlow plotted this?”

Phil turns squirrelly again.

“You did.  Both of you, together.”  My anger is boiling again.

Chapter 17

“You have to understand,” says Phil, “Tarlow helped because he was afraid of Blair.”

That knocks me off track, because I know Tarlow quakes away from Blair the way any sane person would fear a grizzly bear scratching its way through the kitchen door.  Still, the leap from there to helping Phil doesn’t make any sense.  “Keep talking.”

“Those radar dishes they put into our hull.”

More to fume about.  “Are you trying to piss me off?”

Phil shakes his head.  “Tarlow inadvertently mentioned to Blair that he was working on modifying some surplus equipment to try out on the assault ships after he found out how little instrumentation they were built with.  Blair heard what she wanted to hear and ordered Tarlow to install the equipment on our ship even though he didn’t think it was ready.”

“Why didn’t he just tell her?”

“Not everybody’s as ready to argue with Blair as you are.”

I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or something else.  “I still don’t follow.”

“After Blair harangued Tarlow into coming along, he contacted me to see whether I could gather the information Blair needed from a safe distance.”

“And?” I ask.  “You can, can’t you?  From earth orbit on our first day up, you were able to sense the absence of our cruisers defending the moon base.”

Phil confirms it with a nod.  “I explained as much to Tarlow, but manipulated him by telling him that with Nick’s help, he and I could see much farther with more clarity.”

“Is that true?”

“Of course it is.”

“So with the Tick, we don’t have to get as close to get the same information?”

Phil answers with a shake of his head.  “We can keep a good distance.  With the ship bubble jumping the way it does, we won’t have much control over where we come out.  We may be far away, or we may be uncomfortably close.”

Chapter 18

We pop out of bubble jump between Saturn and one of its largest moons.  Iapetus is an odd, half-black, half-gray orb with a 60,000-foot ridge of mountains running around its circumference, giving it something of a walnut shape.

Our drive array is powered down, as are all internal grav systems.  Any Gray looking in our direction would have seen a flash of grav when we pulsed out of bubble, however, if they’re not concentrating on our piece of sky, we’ll avoid detection.

At least that’s how it’s gone on the three outposts we’ve scouted so far.  No Trog cruisers, and no detection we were aware of, although two of the bases were operational, with plenty of surface activity and plenty of Trogs.

“We’re too far away,” Phil tells us, with a cross glance at Penny.  He and Penny are both irritable from struggling with our imprecise navigation for the nearly thirty hours since we left the Potato.

Penny apparently interprets Phil’s observation as a slight and decides to pick up the gauntlet.  “We were in bubble exactly how long you told us to be, Grav Man.”

Standing on the bridge between their stations, I laboriously remind them, “None of this is exact.  If the Rusty Turd had been built with the kind of computing power a starship should contain—”

I leave it hanging there.  Everyone knows the conclusion.

We’ve all seen pre-siege vids, the true-to-life banned ones that revealed the technical prowess of our armies.  We’ve watched the fictions that showed the kinds of spaceships humans should be riding to fight our space wars, ships filled with every imaginable instrument for measuring, understanding, and visualizing the void, its hazards, and its hostile denizens.  Maybe more important than the full-color, high-def fantasy was the computing power that went into generating vids that appeared so incredibly real.

If we could only harness that kind of power now.  With the Gray’s grav tech in our hands, there’d be no stopping us.

Penny asks Phil, “You and Nick can’t scan the moon from here?”

Phil concentrates as he stares into space.  “Something’s anomalous, but I can’t be certain.”

“Cruisers?” I ask.

Phil shakes his head.  “Probably not.”

“And the Tick?” I ask.

“I’m speaking for both of us.”

I cast a glance at Tarlow, but his system went on the fritz when we scanned the last moon.  “Almost there, he tells me.  I found the problem.  Just fixing it now.”

No help there.

“I can power in closer.”  Penny scans around the bridge.  What she’s proposing would endanger us all.

Phil explains, “Powering up our drive array will illuminate us too bright for any Gray down there to miss.”

“We’re too close to Iapetus to try a bubble jump.”  Penny is looking at the instruments on her panel.

Phil shakes his head.  “From a grav perspective, that would flash us brighter than powering to a closer position.”

Bubble jumping right at the moon, or even to anywhere near it would leave us with too little room for miscalculation.  We’d likely end up liquefied by the g-forces resulting from our mistake.  I need more information.  “Penny, leave all the grav systems powered down for now.  Phil, you can’t resolve the structures on the surface for certain, or anything in the air?”

“If there were anything of a substantial size above the surface,” answers Phil, “especially if it was a Trog cruiser, I’m pretty sure we’d sense it.”

Brice crosses his arms.  “We don’t know the Gray won’t lie.”

“I keep telling you,” shouts Phil.  “Grays don’t know deceit like that.  They’re a telepathic race and they don’t have a mental mechanism for conveying lies.  There’d be no purpose in it.  All Grays can read each other’s thoughts.”

Brice points at me, then lets his accusing finger rest on Phil.  “You and him both keep your shit hidden from the Grays.  You’ve done it all your lives.  You’ve told me so.”

“Well, yeah,” Phil stutters.  “Grays can do that, too.”

“Lying by omission,” Brice clarifies.  “Still lying, right?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I guess I don’t.”  Brice turns to me.  “The Gray has been helpful so far.  I’ll give you that.  It’s just the longer we have it on the ship, the more uncomfortable I feel about it.”

No point in getting any further into that right now.  I glance around at the others.  “Okay Phil, it was you and the Tick who sent us on this detour.  Where are these anomalies you sensed, are they on the surface?”

He answers, “I didn’t say they were on the surface.”

“What are we talking about them for?”

“They’re anomalies.”

I open my mouth to shoot back with something stinging, yet I feel like manufacturing an insult is not only counterproductive, it would keep me from spending thought on more important questions I should probably be dreaming up to ask.

“We don’t know what they are,” Phil tells me.  “They’re transient and small.  Sometimes larger and fast.  Mostly near Iapetus.”

“Massive?” I ask.  “Do they have grav fields?”

“Something about grav.”  Phil is perplexed.  “Like nothing I’ve seen before.  More like ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Brice laughs.

“I don’t have a better word.”  Phil looks into the distance again.  “Faint.  They don’t seem to be there.  And then they are again, like something you notice out of your peripheral vision and when you turn to look, it’s gone.”

Penny switches to Phil’s side and shoots Brice a dirty look.  “Sounds like ghosts to me.”

“Phil,” I ask, “do you and the Tick sense anything going on near the surface?”

“We’re pretty far out.”

Sometimes being the boss is frustrating.  I turn to Penny, and pause as I make my commitment.  “Hard-g, right at the moon.  When we get close enough for a fast, tight orbit, slow us down for orbital insertion and then kill the grav arrays and let’s float our way around to the other side, as invisible as we can be to a pair of Gray eyes.  Phil, you and Nick keep your attention glued to that ridgeline.  As soon as you sense even the slightest hint of a grav plume, alert Penny.  Penny, when that happens, you punch it and get us the hell out of here before the railgun slugs start coming our way.”

“If there are hostiles down there,” argues Phil, “any grav plumes we see will probably be from railgun slugs, not ships.”  Phil can’t help it, I know.  I figure he and Blair have a contrary gene in common that just won’t let them allow anything to slide on by.

“Just alert Penny.”  I sigh.  “I don’t want any more holes in our hull.”

Penny gives Phil a glance in the silent language of two people very good at working together.  She powers up our drive array as Phil compensates with an internal inertial bubble to save us all from injury.

Chapter 19

We enter orbit above the black side of Iapetus.

Brice is glued to one of the small viewports, watching through the glass for anything he might see down on the dark surface.

Tarlow turns away from his monitors to glance at me, nodding emphatically to make sure I know his system is online.  “Nothing but natural geological structures.”

Our grav systems are all offline, though Penny sits with her hand on the throttle, ready to amp up the power outflow from our fusion reactor and goose the drive array for a quick exit.

Despite the absence of a field from our hull plates, I’m having trouble with my grav sense making out any but the roughest detail below on the moon’s surface.  Instead, I look over Tarlow’s shoulder and watch the visual feed streaming across two of his six computer monitors, the two that display the quadrant containing the moon.

The terrain creeps sideways from edge to edge, monochromatic but sharp.  In the absence of visual cues, I have to remind myself that the rows of peaks stand twice as tall as Mt.  Everest and twenty times taller than those giant Trog cruisers are long.  What I’m looking for won’t be a row of whale-sized Trog ships docked along the face of the mountain range, but a tiny school of guppies in an Olympic-sized pool.

“No unusual gravity fluctuations,” Phil reports.

“And the Tick?” I ask, “what does he see?”

“Same,” he answers.  “I speak for both of us.”

I nod.  I don’t want to get used to Phil’s implicit mental merger with Nick the Tick.

Penny is watching her external monitors, as is Jablonsky.  Both are tense.

Penny taps her screen, and I step over for a look.

A sliver of light gray is glowing across Iapetus’s horizon.

She says, “We’ve crossed the entire black half.”

That feels like a relief, though one I guess is based purely on the fear of the dark fostered by the lizard part of my brain.

The light gray sliver grows wider, as the black recedes toward the bottom of the screen.

Penny announces, “We’ll be passing over the border momentarily.”

I glance back at Tarlow’s monitors.  His colors haven’t changed.  Of course, they haven’t.  His system is radar-based.  I knew that before I looked.  Still, I had to do it.

Glued to his screens, now that they’re functioning, Tarlow tenses and raises a finger to point.  “Hey.”

I lean closer to get a better view.  I don’t see what he sees.

Penny’s fist grips the throttle.

Brice is looking back and forth rapidly through the window.  “I don’t see anything.”

“Something’s out there!”  Phil shouts.  “Nick sees it.  Coming fast from the stern.”

“There!”  Tarlow’s fingers are sliding across his monitor, tracking a faint smudge.

“Punch it!”  I order.

Penny hits max grav and we all sway with the jolt because the inertial bubble kicks in an instant late, just long enough to make if feel like we were sloshed by a high-speed wall of Jell-O.

“Trogs?” I ask.

“I—” Phil doesn’t have an answer.

“Coming fast!”  shouts Tarlow.

“It’s going to hit us!”  Phil braces for the collision.

Penny swerves hard left and down.  The inertial bubble flashes brilliant blue under the strain, and I feel my stomach do a flip.

“It went past,” Tarlow tells us.  “It’s fast.”

From where I’m trying to keep my feet stuck to the deck, I can’t make out anything on Tarlow’s screen, but that doesn’t change what we need to do.  “Get us out of here, Penny.”

“Another one!”  shouts Phil.  “Right behind us.”

Penny cuts a sharp turn as the ship jolts hard.

Phil hollers.

Jablonsky curses like he thinks the ship is going to come apart.

Penny mutters something and pours power into the grav array.  The ship strains and shudders as her words turn to a string of curses.

“The array,” Phil tells us, “it’s been hit.”

“Penny.”  I drop to a knee on the deck beside her.  “Talk to me.”

“He’s right.  The array is damaged.  We can’t bubble jump.”

“How do you know?” asks Jablonsky.

“Hit to the drive array,” Phil explains quickly as though Jablonsky just came into the conversation.  Phil turns aft and shakes his head.  “I see an unstable deformation in the fields.  If we jump, we’ll disintegrate.”

“Find us something to hide behind,” I tell Penny, quickly.  “Phil, what was that?”

“Not a railgun slug,” he answers.  “The first one tried to turn with us and missed.  The second one followed our turn and exploded.”

“Exploded?” I ask.  “Or hit us?”

“Both,” answers Phil.  “I think it was a missile.”

“A guided missile,” Brice clarifies.

“Missiles?”  I’m taken aback.  We might as well be talking about catapults.  Nobody’s fired a missile in the solar system since the siege.  “How could a missile match our acceleration?  They have chemical drive systems, right?”

“Shit!”  Phil’s head snaps as he looks in a random direction.  “Grav plumes.”  He seems confused.  “I think.”

“I’ve got more bogies,” Tarlow tells us.  “Same as before.  Only different.”

What the fuck does that mean?

“Where?”  The inertial grav bubble glows bright in response to Penny’s high-g maneuver.

“Nick sees them,” Phil tells us, making sure to credit the Tick for the benefit of the rest of us.  “No wait, I see them, too.”

Tarlow points to his screen.  “Here.”

I step over to take a closer look.  Three prominent smudges are accelerating off the side of a mountain.

“Three,” Phil tells me.  “Accelerating hard.”

“Penny?”  She knows what I’m asking.

“I can only get eight g’s.”  She’s worried.

“Phil?” I ask.  “How fast are they coming?”

He’s shaking his head.  “Fifteen…sixteen g’s.”

“What are they?” asks Brice.  “No way a cruiser could move that fast.”

He’s right.  “How big are these ships, Phil?  Tarlow, anybody have an answer?  Jablonsky, radio them, see who they are.”  Trogs and Grays don’t have radios.  If they answer, at least they’re human.

“Can’t tell until they’re close,” Tarlow rattles.

“Impossible to say,” answers Phil.  “The grav fields are foggy, almost invisible.  Only the hard acceleration warping the grav field around them is clear.”

Probably more maneuverable than us.  I’m worried.  “Phil, use the hull plates to help Penny pull some hard turns if we need to.  Get ready to shunt power to defensive grav.”

“Together, me and Nick can—”

“Now’s not the time for Tick shit,” I tell him.  “Don’t give him control of any system on this ship, you hear me?”  That’s when I start hoping I have something to say about it.  The Gray can probably access every grav switch on the whole ship.

Chapter 20

“We’re not going to get away,” admits Penny.

“Phil,” I urgently ask, “anything we can hide behind out here?  Asteroid?  Clouds of shit?  Saturn’s rings?”

“Nothing close.  Wouldn’t do any good.  They’d see where we went.”

“Over-grav the drive plates,” I tell Penny.  If we lose a few, it doesn’t matter.  We’ve already lost our ability to bubble jump.  “Straight line.  Don’t maneuver.”

Worry on her face, Penny puts us on a straight course and pours power into the misshapen field formed by our drive array.  The ship struggles with the vector and the inertial bubble shimmers and flows to make up for it.

“More,” I tell her.

Penny increases the power.

A harmonic hum runs through the hull.  Its frequency starts to build.  Vibrations run along the deck and the array flutters.

“Phil,” I order, “fix that vibration.”

“It’ll tear us apart,” Penny tells us.

“I’m on it.”  Phil is sweating over his console.  The inertial bubble starts to fluctuate nearly out of control.

Putting a ton of effort into keeping a steady voice, I turn to Tarlow.  “What’s the story?”

He stutters.  He didn’t expect to find himself in an active role in a combat situation.  Still, the words find a way out.  “Coming in fast, right up our ass.”

“How far out?” I ask.  “Time to intercept?”

“I… ah… I”

“Seventy seconds,” Phil answers, “unless they accelerate even faster.”

Time for me to earn my pay.  “Who feels lucky?”

Brice laughs darkly.  He knows something unconventional is coming up.

I put a hand on Penny’s shoulder.  “How long to spin the ship around?”

“Spin?”  She doesn’t know why I’m asking.  “You want to fly backwards?”

I nod.

Penny runs an estimate in her head.  “Five, ten seconds.  I haven’t tried it.  I’ll have to cut power to the drive array to make it work.”

Phil is maybe catching on.  “I can assist with the grav plates.”

“Wait until the last second,” I explain.  “When they’re almost on us, spin the ship.  As soon as we’re lined up one hundred and eighty degrees, fire up the grav lens and dump the rest of our power into the main drive array.”

“With any luck.”  Brice leaves the half-spoken thought hanging over the comm.

Tarlow starts jabbering about the technicalities of why the idea is the worst one ever.

Phil and Penny are talking between themselves in clipped phrases before Penny blurts, “Everybody, hold on!”

The fields flash blue.

“They’re firing!”  shouts Phil.

Vertigo spins my head.

Momentum reverses.  The grav lens fires up.  All my sense of gravity outside the bridge goes blind.

I feel the wash of a grav tornado blow past, jolting everyone.

The ship lurches twice in rapid succession.

Phil whoops.

“Was that them?” asks Penny.

“Two!”  shouts Phil, barely able to contain his excitement.  “One turned away.  Two disintegrated when they hit the grav lens.”

Nobody tells me I’m a genius ship captain, but that’s okay.  We’re not out of the shit yet.

Phil cuts power to the grav lens.

“Ninety-degree spin,” I tell them.  “And then, Penny, step on it.”

We need to put some distance between us and our pursuer while he slows down to come back after us.

“Brice,” I ask, “is everyone strapped in up front?”

“Don’t worry about them.  I’m on that.”

I glance quickly around the bridge.  “Everybody buckle up.  Things are going to be bumpier before they get better.”

“Nick is fine,” Phil tells me even though I didn’t ask about the Gray.

I grav tight to the floor between Penny and Phil.  There aren’t enough seats on the bridge for all of us.  “Penny, push the drive plates harder.”

Several pairs of worried eyes look at me.  They don’t approve.

I can’t blame them.  “Phil, spare all the power from the inertial bubble you can.”

I feel the change like a punch in the chest as he immediately complies.

I hear grunts and groans sound over the comm.

“Tarlow,” I ask, “any more coming up from the surface?”

“I… I’m trying to reorient.”

“Get back in the game!”

“We’re pretty far away from Iapetus.”  Phil tells me.  “But those grav plumes, they were powerful.  We’ll be able to see them.”

He’s talking about him and Nick the Tick.

Tarlow is fumbling with his computer controls.

I have no patience.  “Tarlow—your radar is the best chance we have if there are more missiles out there.

He’s shaking his head vigorously.  “We’re probably going too fast, and we’re probably too far out for chemically powered rockets to have a chance of catching us.”

“Unless that ship fires some,” I counter.  “Jablonsky, are you trying to hail these ships?”

He looks at me like it’s the stupidest thing I’ve said yet.

“They’re not Trogs or Grays.  Not with this tech.”

“They’re not humans,” Tarlow argues.

“Tarlow,” I remind him, “you have your job.”

He mutters something and goes back to work.

I turn back to Jablonsky.  “Hail them.  We need to know for sure.”

Interior grav is stabilizing.  It’s pulling hard against Penny’s acceleration, but it’s steady.

Brice unstraps and hurries over to take up a position beside Tarlow, setting his suit to grav tight once there.

Brice gives me a glance to let me know what he’s up to.  Tarlow knows the tech, but he doesn’t know what to do with it.  Brice will make sure he’s focusing on the right threats, which are sure to multiply again.

“That ship has adjusted its course, and it’s coming in fast,” Phil warns.

“Close?” I ask.

“Pretty far away,” answers Phil.  “His momentum took him well beyond us.  There’s a lot of velocity to accelerate against.”

“Stop talking physics, Phil, and give me an intercept estimate.”

“Two minutes, maybe two and a half.”

I turn to Penny.  “He won’t fall for the reverse-spin trick that just killed his buddies.”

Penny laughs.  “I’m surprised it worked the first time.”

“They were too aggressive.”

“We might need to keep our bow pointed at him,” says Phil.  “The grav lens will protect us from his railgun.”

Shit.  I forgot about that.  “You said he fired?”

“Six rounds in rapid succession,” answers Phil.  “Big slugs, right out the front of his ship.”

“So, he’s like some kind of fighter plane?”  I correct myself immediately.  “Fighter spaceship?”

“Seems that way.”

“And his railgun?” I ask.  “We need to worry about it?”

“Big slugs,” Phil answers.  “High-velocity.  Enough energy to turn us into a cloud of debris.”

Crap.

I turn back to Jablonsky.  “Anything on the comm yet?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you scanning all frequencies?”

“No, I’m waiting for someone to dial me up.”

Brice laughs.  Tarlow chuckles.

Point taken.  I apologize with, “Just checking.”

“Phil, can you think of any way we can outrun this guy?”

“No.”  Phil sounds certain.

“Penny,” my next idea coalescing even as the words come, “pick a spot in the sky far away from everywhere and drive toward it.”

The ship swerves as she adjusts course.

“Okay, Physics Boy Phil and Penny, as soon as the fighter has us lined up in his sights again, cut power to our drive array and spin us to keep the lens pointed at him.  Nothing he fires at us can penetrate that field.”

“What are we doing, then?” asks Penny.  “Hoping he’ll chase us until he runs out of railgun slugs?”

“Or runs out of H for his reactor,” answers Phil, nodding as he’s catching on to my current stroke of starship genius.  “In a craft that size, the reactor has to be smaller than ours.  And less efficient.  Much less.  That ship can’t be designed for bubble jumping and not for interplanetary travel.  He’ll have to turn back at some point.  What’s better, the more we make him maneuver to get a shot at us, the more H he’ll burn, and the sooner he’ll have to turn back.  We’re already moving fast as hell, so with every second that passes without Iapetus launching more fighters, the harder it will be for them to reach us.”

“That’s my plan,” I tell them, looking around the bridge as I come up with at least a dozen ways it could fail.  “Any better ideas?”

Crickets.

Something with at least a hint of foolproofery would have been nice.

Chapter 21

Dogfight in space?

Sure, if one dog is a three-legged hound in a neck brace and the other is a sharp-toothed slobber mutt.

Maybe an exaggeration.

“He’s swinging wide to make his turn,” Phil tells us.

Necessary information but not news.  Our attacker just finished his third strafing run with all rounds deflected into space by the powerful field of our well-directed grav lens.  As soon as he passed, Phil reoriented the ship to point down the vector of our escape, and Penny juiced the drive to accelerate us to a faster speed.

“Let me know when,” Penny tells Phil.

“Another few seconds.”  Phil is tense.  He and Penny both are.  They’re doing the work to keep us all alive.  “Now!”

Penny cuts power to the array.

The hull plates pulse uneven blue through the bridge as the internal g fluctuates drastically.

“Damn!”  curses Brice.

“Sorry,” Phil shakes his head.  “He’s getting quicker about bringing his ship around to re-aim at us.”

The deck is shifting beneath my feet so fast I feel like I’m falling, and I push more power to my suit’s g.

Everything stabilizes.

Phil has the ship lined up again, pointing at the incoming attacker.

I glance at Penny.

She takes on the fault of it.  “We didn’t get much speed that time.”

I shake my head.  “You’re both doing a good job.  We’ll make it out of this.”  I turn to Jablonsky.  “Any luck yet?”

“Still trying,” he tells me.  “I’m picking up high static on a few bands.  I think it’s encrypted radio traffic.”

“Radio?”  Brice’s question is full of speculation.  “Grays and Trogs don’t need radio.”  He looks at me.  “Can this be SDF?”

Tarlow gulps.  “Did Blair send us into an SDF trap?”

I shake my head.  “This can’t be an SDF fighter.”  Though I can’t piece together any line of logical steps to disprove my hope.  “Jablonsky, have you tried hailing in Korean?”

He turns away from his panel to show me his mocking silence.  I’m pretty sure he’d punch me if he were in arm’s reach.

“Of course,” I answer for him.  “We’re all frustrated.  Keep trying.”

He turns back to his panel.

“He’s slowing and turning,” Phil tells me.

“Different tactic?”  Without a doubt.  “Keep the bow pointed at him.”

“He’s coming in behind us.”  Phil shakes his head.  “Not behind us exactly.”

“You’re keeping the bow on him?” I verify.

“Right,” Phil tells me.  “He’s coming to a stop, relative to our position.”

“You mean he’s following us?”

“Yes,” answers Phil.  “A quarter mile back.”

“We’re flying backwards.”  Penny confirms.  Two ships, ours pointing backward, the attacker rocketing forward, both careening through space in excess of twenty thousand miles an hour, both in the same direction.

Tarlow has a clear picture of the other ship on his screen.  “What’s he waiting for?”

“He doesn’t want us to accelerate any more.”  I’ve already run through the progression of possibilities, and I’d hoped our assailant would take a while longer to run through them as well.

After we survived the first pass, keeping our bow pointed toward him to protect our ship, I knew we’d be safe.  He could try different angles and different speeds, yet Phil didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping the grav lens between him and us.  What’s more, he was losing ground after each pass because we accelerated a little while he was turning.

He was going to lose that game, and he figured it out.

One of his only alternatives would have been to come in close, orient his ship’s gun toward us, and fire while he tried to use his hull plates to shift sideways for a better angle.  Geometry was against him in that endeavor.  No matter how close he maneuvered the vessel, he’d have to traverse some span of space to set up his next shot.  Our ship only had to spin on its center of mass.  And when his passion for a kill overcame his good sense, he’d move in too close, and we’d have the opportunity to ram him.

Unfortunately, he skipped right over that tactic.

Instead, he positioned his fighter between us and Iapetus.  The best choice, assuming reinforcements are coming.  Now we can’t turn, or we open up our flanks.  We can’t accelerate, or we slow and eventually fly back toward Iapetus.

Our only hope is that no reinforcements are coming.

I already know they will.  Otherwise, the enemy ship wouldn’t have chosen this tactic.

Tarlow hasn’t thought through the possibilities.  “He has to know he can’t win doing this.”

I turn for a better view of Tarlow’s computer monitors.  “Keep a close eye on Iapetus.”

“Bullfight?”  Brice looks at me with a question on his face.  He’s a ground game soldier, not a fleet battle naval type.  He hasn’t worked through it, either.

“Physics.”  I shrug.  “Tactics.”  I shake my head.  “For the moment, a stalemate we’ll win by default.”  I turn to Penny and Phil, however, I know the answer to the question I’m going to ask.  “Can we ram him from here?”

Phil shakes his head.

“I can try,” answers Penny.  “But he’s smaller and faster.”  She doesn’t want to give in.

While we’re waiting, my curiosity turns to another question.  “Phil, why was that ship anomalous?”  With the grav lens blazing brightly on the bow of the ship, I can’t sense the fighter out there.

“I don’t know,” he answers.  “It should be glowing bright back there.  I can only make it out because it’s close.  Its grav field is mostly what I see.”

“Any ideas as to why?”

Phil shakes his head.  “Some kind of stealth technology we don’t know about.”

“Oh, no,” mutters Tarlow, pressing his finger to one of his monitors.

I look to see a trio of smudges moving on the screen with Iapetus in the background.

Chapter 22

“Same type of ships?” I ask Phil.

“Seems that way.”

“Tarlow?” I ask.  “Can you make out enough detail to tell?”

He points to the small, accelerating smudges, turns to me, and shrugs.

“Something you should know,” says Phil.  “Nick can tell it’s a human inside that other ship.”

“The Tick can?” I ask.  “By himself.  Not you two working together?”

Phil doesn’t answer.

It was both of them.  “Good to know, but it doesn’t do me any good.”  I slap Penny heartily on the back.  “You’re up.”

“You hit me that hard again, and I’ll break your arm.”

“Don’t act like a sissy,” I laugh.  “You’re the toughest one on the bridge.”  I point down the ship’s axis.  “I want you to try and ram that ship.”

“But—”

Phil glares at me.  “We talked about this.”

“We’re not trying to hit it.  We just want it to look that way.  Penny, try and ram that bastard, and keep at it until you’ve decelerated us to zero speed with respect to Iapetus.”

“What?” Tarlow shrieks.  “We’re giving up?”

I shake my head.  “Planning for the next phase.”

“By giving up?” he reiterates.  “You’re going to let them shoot us out of the sky?”

“We don’t have a choice in that, Tarlow.  They’re going to catch us.  They’re going to shoot us.  There’s nothing I can do except delay them.  I choose to spend our efforts on the next phase.”

Phil tells us, “Those three ships are pegging the dial at fifteen g’s, just like the ones that first attacked us.”

“Are you sure the drive array is toast?” asks Brice.  “What are the odds if we chance a bubble jump?”

“One-hundred-percent we’ll die,” answers Phil.

I turn to Brice.  “We’ve been through worse.”

He laughs again.

“Comm the squads up front.  I want them to load up with as much H and C and ammo as they can carry.  I want them all as close as possible to the backside of the grav lens, strapped in tight.  Hopefully, when the shooting starts, our friends will aim for our drive array or reactor.”

“Yes, sir.”  He knows I have a plan.

“Tarlow, you go, too.”  I glance at Penny and Phil.  “You two as well, as soon as we’re down to zero speed.  I want all power shut down back here.  Leave the grav lens powered up and the defensive field around the platoon compartment maxed.”  I look at Jablonsky.  He’s already looking at me with a frown, awaiting his instructions.  He’s guessed what’s coming.  “You stay back here with me, just in case they get talkative once they see we’re giving up.”

Jablonsky bravely accepts my orders.

Scanning across their faces, I tell them, “I think they’ll shred our drive array.  The front half of the ship will survive.”  I’m betting on it.  “Once the carnage back here is done, there’s no reason for them to hang around.  They’ll go back to base.  After that, we’ll wait a day or so, and then we’ll say goodbye to the Rusty Turd and use suit power to grav down to the surface of Iapetus.  We’ll go commando on these bastards and make them pay.”  I glance toward Phil.  “The Tick says they’re human, which means their ships have the life support we need if we steal a few.  Now, everybody go.”

Penny and Phil coordinate between themselves, and our ship’s inertial bubble strains as they run their first ramming maneuver.

Tarlow needs no convincing to go forward, he’s out of his chair and wobbling across the bridge in seconds.

Brice has a wide hero streak in him.  Our discussion on the matter turns heated through a second ramming attempt.  In the end, it’s his duty to keeping platoon members alive that convinces him to go forward.  He has experience on a trip through space with only suit grav to keep you moving.  He needs to stay in the game and to lead the others in case I don’t make it.

Jablonsky works a steady rhythm on the comms, hailing the other ships, shifting frequencies, and trying again.

Over a private comm, Penny tells me, “I’m not leaving you up here to go down with the ship, Captain Ahab.”

I laugh.

She doesn’t know about my irrational belief in immortality in war, and I know trying to explain it to her will only serve to expose the folly of the concept.  “I’ll be fine.”

Penny hammers hard on the drive array for another ramming attempt.

I struggle to take over Tarlow’s abandoned seat to keep from falling over in the rough grav.

“Sorry,” Phil apologizes.

They really are trying to hit that other ship.

“Did you get close?” I ask.

Penny shakes her head.

“How’s our speed?”  I’m trying to stay calm.  “Will we be able to shed it all before those other ships arrive?”

“Yes,” Phil answers.

“Leave when they get close,” I order Phil.  “Make sure you have enough time to make it all the way forward.”

Phil ignores my order.

I don’t need to be a mind reader to know he’s not going anywhere either.  “Why?”

He rolls his eyes.  “I can keep the railgun slugs from hitting the bridge.  I’ll make sure they impact where you want them to.”

“You seem awfully confident when you say that.”  I don’t believe him.

Phil snorts and turns his attention back to his console.  “I can be as confident as you can be.”

Touché.

We attempt twice more to ram, and then Penny announces that we are at a dead standstill, at least in the reference frame of Iapetus.

“The three ships are taking up positions around us,” Phil announces.  “Not firing.”

If they were shooting, I think I’d already know it, but I keep that to myself.

“All static now,” Phil relays.

Except for the ship on the other side of the lens from me, I can sense the ghostly grav fields from the other ships, too.

“What now?” asks Penny.

Jablonsky turns away from his panel, his face alive with excitement.  “They’re hailing us in English with a UK accent.

“Acknowledge,” I tell him.

Jablonsky nods to me.  He already has.  “They’re telling us to follow them back to Iapetus.  One of their ships will lead, the other three will hang behind.  They’ll set the speed and the course.  If we deviate, they’ll destroy us.”

“Penny,” I order.  “Do as they say.”

I turn to Jablonsky.  “Find out who they are.”

He talks with them for a moment longer and then passes the answer to me.  “We’re to do as we’re told.  Once we land on Iapetus, they want us to leave our weapons on board and exit the ship.”

Chapter 23

Everyone is quiet.

Like me, imagining a dozen scenarios that might play out when we set down on Iapetus’s surface, fantasizing OK Corral shootouts that leave all my people standing amidst a field of enemy corpses.  I think of the warehouse prison back on the Potato and how inescapable it was for those inside until my platoon came along to retrieve their helmets.  What will my new prison be like?  Will my people be tortured or summarily executed?

And what instructions do I give them?

Save yourself?

Tell all you know?

Go down fighting?

Risk everything to steal some of these faster, smaller ships?

And then what?

We’re skimming the moon’s black surface, maybe a thousand feet up.  Iapetus has no atmosphere to speak of.  Its terrain is rugged and pocked with craters from ancient asteroid strikes.  In front of us, looming larger and impossibly giant is the mountain range we were scanning from orbit when we were attacked.

“If we’re going back to the damn mountains,” asks Jablonsky, “why did they bring us down so far away?”

“Deception,” I guess.  “In case anyone or anything is watching from afar.  Maybe they’re hoping to conceal the location of their base.”

“Stupid,” he mutters.

“Phil,” I ask, “can you and the Tick see what’s ahead?”

He nods.  “It doesn’t make sense to me.”  He points at a cliff face on the mountain that seems to have been sheared in two.  “Just to the left of that canyon about halfway up the cliff.”

I see it, too, yet I also don’t know what to make of it.  It’s a dull grav field of some sort, rectangular and enormous, fifty meters tall, a few hundred wide.

“I count at least a dozen,” he tells me.

I shake my head and squint.

“Only that one is active.  Others are burning at a much lower intensity behind closed doors.  I think it’s a hangar.  There are underground structures all through that mountain.”

“Are you saying it’s bigger than the base at the Potato?” I ask.

“As big as a city,” answers Phil.

“Humans, Trogs, or Grays?” I ask.

“Hard to tell,” he answers.  “There’s a lot of inexplicable interference.  We don’t sense any Grays.”

I hope that’s good news.

The ship ahead of us alters course toward the peculiar rectangular hangar entrance, and we start to gain altitude.  We have thousands of feet to climb to reach our apparent destination.

Penny turns to me.  “We’re going inside when we get there?”

I nod.  I don’t have any ideas to get us out of this predicament.

Silence settles back over us.

Kilometers slide past below.

The rocky cliff face grows to dominate all we can see, black except for the growing rectangle of blue.

The ship in front of us levels out and adjusts its speed.

We do the same.

As we close the distance, I stare through my small viewport.  The hangar entrance is covered with a grav field shimmering dull blue and translucent, but distorted.  It’s like looking through the surface of a wavy pool.  I think I see rows of ships inside a brightly lit space larger than several football fields.  Figures appear to move among the vessels, but the movement could be an illusion of the wavy vertical surface.

When the ship in front of us nears the barrier, it slows to a crawl, and as its nose encounters the rippling blue, its grav drive notches up to push through.  It takes only seconds.

Penny follows and does the same, slightly increasing power to the drive array to pass through the barrier.

In moments, we’re inside a hangar that runs deeper into the mountain than I had guessed.  Several dozen ships of designs I’ve never seen are in rows, some abuzz with mechanics—human mechanics.  None of them are wearing spacesuits, though they all appear to have emergency decompression kits attached to their belts.

There’s atmosphere inside the hangar, held there by the shimmering grav field.

What the hell?

I haven’t heard a peep about this kind of technology existing anywhere except in old sci-fi vids.

“What is this place?” mutters Penny.

We’re guided to an empty area surrounded by squads of orange-suited soldiers with weapons at the ready.  They’re not a danger to us inside the Rusty Turd, but the other four ships are still hovering nearby, their guns trained on us.

Penny sets the Turd down in the indicated spot and reluctantly powers down our systems.

Our instructions are conveyed to Jablonsky.

He turns and looks at us, worry stretching his face.  “They want us to come out one at a time.  No weapons.”

That’s not unexpected.  I open a comm to the crew.  “I’ll go out first.  The rest of you, follow their instructions.  Brice, you exit last.”  I can depend on him to make sure no one screws around and does something stupid.  We’ll all be prisoners soon enough, but we’ll have to find a smart way to turn the situation back to our advantage.

That will have to come later, not now.

Chapter 24

A group of a dozen soldiers stands ten meters away.  All with helmets, defensive grav fields glowing bright, and railguns in their hands, not aimed at me, but pointing in the general direction of the Turd.

Despite their ships and miraculous grav tech, they look like us.  I try to take some comfort in that.

With an assault door pushed all the way open, I stand in the doorway, hands raised.

One of the soldiers steps forward and waves me to proceed.

I hop out, floating on the light-g down to the deck.

The soldier points at Penny, who is in the doorway behind me, and he raises a hand to her.  She needs to wait until summoned.

I comm across the channels, trying to establish a connection with my captors.  Nothing comes back but static, leaving me only hand motions for communication.

I don’t talk to anyone on my ship.  We decided before we landed to keep the comm links silent as they might be monitored.  Unlike our captors, our comm links aren’t encrypted.

Once I’m close enough to the soldier giving the instructions, I’m ordered to stop.  Four of my silent captors surround me, two in front, and two in back.  They lead me away from my ship.

I look over my shoulder as I cross the hangar and hope I didn’t make a huge mistake in surrendering.

Penny is walking away from the ship to meet up with her own set of handlers.  Phil is standing in the doorway with his Gray by his side.  Nobody seems to react any more or less aggressively.  Maybe that’s a good thing.

My guards lead me past a pair of parked spacecraft similar to the ones that attacked my ship.  I take the opportunity to scrutinize both with my eyes and my grav sense, trying to discern the shape of every piece of mass wrapped inside the ship’s thick metal skin.

Unlike my Arizona-class jalopy, these ships weren’t thrown together in a rush.  They’re sleek and tough.  Someone had the time to build them the right way.  Both are black—flat black.  The builders wanted to keep them hidden from human eyes scanning the heavens, not just Grays looking for traces of grav.

I have difficulty making out the internal systems, though I’m sure Phil will see every obscured detail when they bring him this way.

I do see seats for a pilot and copilot, but no room to get up and walk around.  It confirms my suspicion that these are designed as space-based versions of the old terrestrial fighter planes.  They weren’t built for traveling deep space.

I sense tanks, presumably for hydrogen stores.  The fusion reactor sits in the rough center of the craft, and the main drive array takes up the back half.  Like the Rusty Turd, the hull is embedded stern-to-tail with grav plates in various sizes and shapes.  The most notable feature is the railgun.  The ship seems to have been built around it, with the railgun running right up through the long axis, stretching from the reactor all the way out through the ship’s nose.  A pair of magazines is stacked full of slugs, each the size of a bowling pin.  Plenty big to rip a hole right through my ship.

I’m led into an airlock which doesn’t require cycling since the atmosphere in the hanger matches that of the underground complex.

Once through the airlock, we stop in an anteroom and my helmet and gloves are removed.  A bag is placed over my head, blinding me—at least blinding my visual sense.  I can still see the men around me in the room, as well as the wide hall I’m led into.

We walk in silence for nearly half a mile, making turns through broad and narrow halls, passing rooms and what appear to be factory and barrack facilities, store rooms, cafeterias, apartment blocks, everything one might expect to find in a city buried in the ground.

Several times we ride lifts to take us up or down.  We’re in Iapetus’s equatorial mountain range, so I suppose there’s no practical limit to how far up or down the layers of this city are stacked.

Eventually, I’m taken into a room and deposited in a chair with my back to the door.  The bag is removed from my head, and my captors leave, locking the door behind.

I’m alone, nothing else in the room but a nondescript table and a few empty chairs.  A camera is mounted up in one corner, pointed down at me.

Through the walls around me, I sense I’m in a row of cells just like the one I’m in, only for every interrogation room, there sits one next door for observers with their computers and recording equipment.  I can make out the level below me, and it seems to be a holding facility with metal bars—a jail.  Some people are down there, but not many.  Above, rows of desks are lined up in a large room with dozens of people moving about or working.  I can’t sense much past that—the thick floors and ceilings make it difficult to extend the range of what I can extrapolate by grav sense alone.

I figure I’m in a police station or the office of the underground city’s intelligence agency.  Whichever.  And it makes sense, any place this size would have thousands and thousands of residents, hence a need for an organization for keeping the peace.

I wait in silence, expecting the rooms nearby to be filled with others from my ship—Penny, Phil, his Gray, and Brice.  Lenox will be along, as will my platoon’s draftees, whose only sin was their random attachment to my company by the SDF administrators back on earth before being shipped out.

None of them shows.

In fact, the interrogation floor on which I sit is mostly deserted, though I do sense people in the room next door.  I wonder what they’re hoping to see.

I wait.

Boredom sets in.

I scan everything around me again, and again.

I try to make a game of picking out individuals on the floors both above and below.  I’ve never tried before to identify another person from their grav signature alone, but I have time.  My captors seem to be in no hurry to move this along.

Hours pass.

Perhaps my captors have forgotten about me?  The presence of the bodies in the room next door is a reminder they haven’t.

Finally, the door behind me opens.

I don’t turn to look.

Chapter 25

A man and a woman walk around to the other side of the table.  Both are older.  His hair is mostly white.  Hers is silver with streaks of black.  Both wear at least sixty years of wrinkles and sag in their skin.

Wordlessly, without any animosity I can sense, they each scoot out a chair and sit down across from me.  The man reaches a hand across the table to shake.  “Major Kane, I’m Dr. Spitz.  This is Dr. Gustafson.”

“Am I ill?” I ask, keeping my hand to myself.

“I’m a physicist,” says Spitz.  “She’s an engineer.”

“Aerospace engineer,” she corrects.  “We were both on staff at JPL before…”

Before the siege she means.  “JPL?  I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what it is.”

They share the smile of an inside joke.  “Jet Propulsion Lab,” answers Spitz.  “Before the siege we were instrumental in exploring the solar system.”

“You were the ones who dropped the ball by not seeing the Grays coming?”  It’s an unfair jab, but I’m not trying to make friends.  If they’re even telling the truth about who they are.  Who they were.

“The Grays didn’t come from our solar system.”

“They didn’t show up here by accident,” I argue.  “They had to have scouted our system.  ‘Not just passing through.  Must have been some sign they were coming long before they arrived.”

Gustafson bristles but says nothing.

“You may be right about that,” admits Spitz.

I decide I want to push my pointless advantage because I feel powerless.  A hundred insults come to mind but they back up so quickly in trying to get out all I manage to communicate is a shake of my head.  “I’ve been a slave my whole life.”

Spitz short-circuits my nascent rant with, “You’re not one now.”

“Yeah, I’m a prisoner.”

“You’re our guest.”

I decide that despite looking like a nice old man, Spitz must be as contrary as Blair.

Gustafson pushes a few strands of hair behind her ear, then takes a turn at me.  “You have a loyal platoon.”

I decide maybe Spitz is honest, but Gustafson, no.  I poke a finger in spite right at her friendly old eyes.  “Are you torturing them?  Are you beating the truth out of them?”

“What truth?” asks Spitz.

I clamp my mouth shut.  I’m not about to give them anything.

Gustafson is shaking her head, more disappointed than insulted.  “Torture isn’t something we condone.  We’ll not foster the vile aspects of human nature that would make such behavior possible.”

“Not humans,” Spitz clarifies as he glances over at her.  “With Grays and Trogs?”  He shrugs.

“You tortured Nick?”  It’s an accusation, not a question.  Of course, it completely sidesteps my hypocrisy for doing what I did to Nick the Tick’s Gray comrades less than a week ago.

“Who’s Nick?” asks Spitz.

“The Gray.”

Gustafson informs me, “Keeping a Gray as a pet is a risky choice.”

I’m growing impatient with this cryptic fencing.  “Why did you attack my ship?  Why did you take us prisoner?  What is this place, and who the hell are you?  And don’t tell me JPL scientists because that doesn’t tell me anything.”

Spitz leans forward to put him in sincere buddy range.  “I’ll answer your questions in a minute.  First, there’s something I’m curious about.”

I respond to his pause with a deadpan gaze.

“Was your father named Billy Kane?”

I’m surprised by the unexpected tack.  It’s all I can do to keep a passive face and quiet mouth.  This is obviously an interrogation trick to prime the pump so my words will flow more easily.

Then I realize I’ve already been blabbering.  They’ve already primed the pump.

“The birthday would be right.”  Spitz looks down at a thin, flat d-pad with a screen nearly as big as the one on my salvaged computer back home.  “You were born about the time Billy Kane’s son would have been born.”

I don’t respond.

Spitz tells me a birthdate.

Indeed, it’s mine.  I start to suspect Blair has a hand in whatever mess this is I’m stuck in.  This has to be a Free Army base, and Blair must have forwarded my SDF record so they’d have it when I arrived.  Unfortunately, the puzzle pieces for my burgeoning Blair-plot-theory fall apart nearly as fast as I can jigger them into place.

Spitz looks at my eyes and my face, analyzing the details, developing his previous question into unapologetic certainty.  “I knew your father.”

“Not likely.”  I top off my counter-certainty with a harsh laugh to make it clear he’s wrong.  “Maybe all of you JPL scientists worked night jobs at the molybdenum factory up north of Leadville.  Doubtful.  That’s where he was working when the cave-in killed him.”

“No.”  Spitz doesn’t say it like he’s making an argument.  He’s speaking like a grandpa correcting a grade-schooler.  “Billy Kane was a first sergeant and was part of earth’s expeditionary force sent to the moon to combat the Grays at the beginning of the siege.”

I shake my head and decide it’s time to spout the official party line, mostly because I don’t know how else to respond.  “Everybody knows that’s a lie people tell each other to feel some sense of human pride.  The MSS says no such attack ever took place.  After an unexpected meteor shower killed millions and devastated our planet, our brothers from space, the Grays, arrived to lend us a hand to lead us to enlightenment.  No siege occurred.  No war was fought.  We serve the Grays to repay them for their generosity.”

Pure MSS propaganda shit.

Spitz’s mouth hangs agape.

Gustafson laughs.  “Spitz, I think you guessed wrong on this one.”  She turns and glares at me before glancing at her d-pad and reading something there.

Spitz shakes his head slowly before settling his gaze on me again.  “I can see your father in you.  You look a lot like him.”

I sigh and look around the room to emphasize my boredom with the charade.  “Can we get to the point of all this?”

“Your father didn’t die in a mine in the mountains.”  Spitz straightens himself up in his chair.  “I was on the project responsible for the design of the rockets that took your father and thousands of brave men just like him to the moon.  I met Sergeant Kane during a training session for his unit.  I was one of the experts called in to brief the men on the assault vehicle’s capabilities.  As unlikely as it was, we became friends, and after I returned to California, he and I kept in touch.  We met a handful of times during his training, mostly after I was assigned to supervise the vehicle preparation at the secret launch site at the molybdenum mine where you believe your father died.  He even invited me down to Denver once to have dinner with him and his wife, your mother.  Of course, because of the secrecy around the project, I had to lie to her and tell her I worked at the mine with your father.”

“You met my mother,” I scoff.  “This just gets better.”

Spitz puts a hand out in front of his belly.  “You were in there.  She said you couldn’t sit still, you were too anxious to come out.”

That stops me cold.  My mother told me dozens of times when I was a kid how anxious I was to always get on to the next thing.  She said I was that way when she was pregnant, eager to get out, always squirming, never letting her get a full night’s sleep.

“Dark brown hair.”  Spitz snips a pair of fingers over his ears.  “She liked to wear it short.  Boyish, but pretty on her.  She had the most striking blue eyes, and a smile that would melt your heart.”

I’m dumbstruck.  How can he know so much about me, about my mother?

“Your father didn’t work in that mine,” Spitz tells me with confidence.  “Despite what the apocryphal stories of our moon assault tell us, not all of the ships were destroyed on the way.  Your father’s assault craft was one of the few to touch down on the lunar surface.”  Spitz’s face turns sad.  The emotion leaks through.  “They didn’t succeed in destroying the Gray ship, but they fought humanity’s first battle on another world, our first war with an alien species.  Your father died a hero, Dylan Kane.  You should know that.”

Reeling from the story, feeling like it could be true, wanting it to be true, I ask, “What do you want from me?”

“This ship of yours,” says Spitz, “what do you call her, the Rusty Turd?”

Frustration!

Either Spitz and Gustafson are being truthful, or they are ridiculously good at interrogating rubes like me.  “The name is a joke.  The ship is a royal piece of shit, but it is effective.”

“I know.”

Gustafson laughs, but this time it seems she’s laughing at Spitz.

He turns to her and puts a hand on her wrist and pats.  “I know.  I know now.”  He looks at me.  “You rammed those Trog cruisers in what the MSS is calling the Arizona Massacre?”

“Fuck the MSS.”

“You took out three?”

I nod, and figure, why not fluff my cap with all my feathers?  “Two more out in the asteroid belt, though I wasn’t onboard for one, and with the other, we destroyed it without using the ship.”

Spitz and Gustafson exchange a surprised look.  They didn’t know that.

I wonder if I’ve just been tricked into giving away something they were seeking.

“Five?”  Spitz is shaking his head.  “Incredible.”

It’s time to squeeze them for a real answer before their faux admiration wears off.  “Why am I here?  What is going on?”

Both turn somber.

Best to be direct, I guess.  “We killed two of your pilots in that dogfight today.”  Then I figure I better throw in the truth of the matter—the violence was their fault.  “After you fired your guided missiles, came close to destroying my ship, and then sent those fighters after us.”

“Good people, those two who were killed.”  Spitz glances at Gustafson again.  “Nobody’s happy about what happened.  I guess all I can say is we’re at war.  We should be thankful no more were killed.  It’s a good thing you surrendered when you did.”

“All is forgiven?”  I don’t believe it.

Gustafson is looking back at her d-pad again and doesn’t look up when she says, “Probably not the right choice of words.”

“No,” agrees Spitz.  “Still, there’ll be no repercussions if that’s what worries you.”

I raise my hands and wave at the interrogation room.  “What is this then?  Why am I here talking to you two about nothing important?”

Spitz looks disappointed.

Maybe that choice of words wasn’t the best, either.

Gustafson reads something else off her d-pad, turns a pair of hard eyes at me and says, “We’re asking you to join us.”

Chapter 26

Join?

I sit up straight in my chair.  It’s time to take a real interest in the conversation.  “You understand my apprehension here.  First, you attack my ship.  You capture my crew.  You separate us and march me into the bowels of a massive military base buried in a mountain, a place so secret we only stumbled upon it accidentally.  You’re obviously human.  You possess military tech the likes of which I didn’t know existed, and there don’t seem to be any Grays or Trogs around.  Is this the Free Army headquarters?”

Gustafson and Spitz both laugh, and Gustafson tells me, “Good heavens, no.”

“Who are you then?”

“We don’t have an official name,” explains Spitz.  “I suppose we’re just humanity.”

“A better descriptor,” suggests Gustafson, “might be ‘humanity’s hope.’”

“Who’s in charge?”  I ask, looking at Spitz.  “You?”  I turn to Gustafson.  “You?”

Both shake their heads.

Spitz says, “Secretary General Kimura is our elected leader.”

“Secretary General?” I ask.  “The UN, when there still was one, had a Secretary General.  Is this the UN?”

Spitz shrugs.  “Is that a bad thing?”

It’s my turn to shrug.  “I don’t understand any of this.  Is this a UN operation?”

“No.”  Spitz waves his hands at the walls.  “Originally, this was a mining colony.  Back then it was a tiny fraction of today’s size.  As for the people here, well, you already know that Dr. Gustafson and I were JPL scientists.”

The longer I listen, the more certain I am that Gustafson is hiding the most important information about who she is, but I don’t say that.

Spitz says, “In the years after the siege, when we saw how the Grays were looting our planet and turning us into an uneducated slave species, we organized into a movement.”

“A revolutionary movement?” I ask, “Like the Free Army but not the Free Army?”

“No, our goal wasn’t to fight the Grays,” says Spitz, “not unless we could stumble upon a technological breakthrough that would give us such an advantage over them we could win without sacrificing most human lives to do it.  That’s our long-term goal, I suppose, to free all of humanity.”  Spitz shakes his head as though the years in pursuit of that goal have worn him out.  “We focus our efforts on exploring other star systems far from here where we can start anew.”

“Most of our research and manufacturing efforts,” adds Gustafson, “are spent on designing and building ships to find these places and to take us there.”

“Not those big Gray cruisers,” I figure.

Spitz answers with a shake of his head.  “Ships that size would be impossible to hide from the Grays.  The last thing we want is to alert them to our presence here or to give away the location of the system we’re fleeing to.”

“The system we’re fleeing to?” I quote.  “Are you saying you found a planet where we can live, and you’re actively colonizing it?”

Both Spitz and Gustafson nod like they’ve just given me the best birthday gift ever.

Can this be true?

“Where?” I ask.

Spitz turns deadly serious.  “The galaxy is an immense place.  Telling you we have a colony in another star system isn’t giving you any information that will endanger us.  If you were MSS, for instance, that bit of information by itself is nearly useless.  It’s the location that makes it valuable.”

“You think I’m MSS?”

“We’re careful,” says Gustafson.

I can understand that.  “So the big plan is?”

“We reestablish humanity somewhere else,” answers Gustafson.  “Stay quiet.  Keep our heads low until we know who’s in the neighborhood, until we can defend ourselves from the local bullies.”

“And eventually come back here and rescue our people,” finishes Spitz.

“And all the while,” I conclude, “the rest of humanity, at least the ones who survive this war, will live as slaves to either our Grays or the Trogs’ Grays.  For what, years?  Decades?  Centuries?”  I’m turning judgmental, but I make no attempt to rein it in.  “By running away, how many billions do you condemn?”

“By staying,” Gustafson calmly argues, “all of humanity is condemned to bondage forever, or it all dies in a war so terrible nothing survives.  Tell me, saving some and rebuilding elsewhere, is that better or worse?”

“We’re not unanimous on this point,” Spitz tells me.  “However, our policy, our priority, is to colonize.”

“Why do want me?” I ask.

“Maybe the equation has changed,” says Spitz.

Chapter 27

Gustafson glares at Spitz.  “That’s his opinion.  It’s not shared widely here.”

Shaking his head, Spitz cuts in, “Many of us—”

“A minority,” Gustafson emphasizes.

“—believe we can help earth despite our primary mission.  I believe a man like you, using your ship as the weapon it can be, can rally earth’s people to win the war against the Trogs and then defeat the Grays in a revolution.”

Me?  A hero?

I laugh.

Gustafson chortles.  “Dr. Spitz, one unexpectedly successful weapons system may be good for destroying Trog cruisers, however, the main problem remains.  The Grays and the North Koreans control the railgun emplacements on the moon, and they command the remaining battle stations orbiting the earth.  All of those guns can be turned on earth in case of revolt.  No revolution stands a chance.  We’ve had this discussion a million times.  Unless you find a way to neutralize those orbital gun platforms and by some magic of simultaneity take out everything on the moon, no revolution can succeed.  It can’t even start.  Nobody wants to throw their lives away on nothing.”

“They’ll do it for hope.”  Spitz smiles.  He’s a dreamer.  “If people have someone to believe in, if they have victory to believe in, they’ll turn on their masters.  Despite the fact the Grays control the North Koreans and the North Koreans are in command of every significant military installation, most of the SDF soldiers—manning those guns, maintaining the bases, repairing the equipment, marching their drills, wearing orange spacesuits—are not North Koreans.  They’re people just like Mr. Kane here, and they hate that they’ve been made into slaves.  They’ll take up arms against their masters.  That’s the natural human response to slavery.”

Both Gustafson and I are left momentarily wordless in the afterglow of Spitz’s lofty appraisal of humanity.

I find my voice first.  “You seem to know a whole lot about what goes on back on earth, being out here for three decades.”

“Well not three decades, yet,” corrects Spitz.  “But yes, we do know a lot of what goes on.  We keep in touch, you might say.”

“Then you’re aware of what the propaganda videos are saying about me,” I tell him, glancing at Gustafson to gauge her reaction as well.  “The Arizona Massacre?  The MSS claims I’m a spy for the Trogs.  Hell, they’re blaming every loss in the war on me.”

Spitz laughs.  “Utterly ridiculous.”

“People believe that shit,” I argue.

“Some do,” he agrees.  “Some don’t.  Most, who knows?  They stopped listening to the lies so long ago they don’t care.  They just apathetically go about their business, trying to keep their children fed.”

“Not the Free Army,” I tell him.  “The ones who don’t believe I’m a Trog spy think I’m an SDF double-agent because I didn’t murder Lieutenant Holt when I had the chance.”

“You have to know that doesn’t make any sense at all,” says Spitz.  “It’s not logically consistent.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”  I sigh loudly.  “People don’t make decisions with their heads.  They make them in their hearts, and then apply constructed rationale later.  You people have PhDs.  You should know this kind of stuff.”

“You underestimate yourself,” Spitz tells me, “and you underestimate everyone else.  People are better than you think they are.”

I shake my head.

“If you didn’t agree with me, why’d you put on an orange suit in the first place?  Why’d you join the SDF?  Why’d you destroy five Trog cruisers at great personal risk, when retreating to a safe orbit over Pyongyang would have been the easiest path to take, the safest?”

I don’t know how to respond.

“Don’t listen to any of that,” says Gustafson.  “You have your answer already.  What’s the point of rejoining the Free Army if half of them hate you and the other half suspect the stories might be true?  Our military isn’t what it should be.  We develop weapons, yet we’ve never built the kind of army or navy we should have.  All of our manpower has been dedicated to building colony ships and transports.  Our people, when they can, take the opportunity to settle our new homes.”

New homes?  More than one?

I don’t comment on the slip of the tongue.

“We need good military people,” continues Gustafson.  “Convince your crew to go out with the next colony ship.  You’ll take your ship along, of course.”

My bitterness over the attack bubbles up.  “My damaged ship that can’t make light speed?”

Gustafson waves a hand.  “It’s being repaired right now.  Better than before.”

“It’ll perform as it was designed,” says Spitz, “Not as it was shoddily built.”

“Out on a colony world,” says Gustafson, “humanity has a chance.  Go there, fight if it becomes necessary, if we encounter a hostile race.  At least out there, we have a chance.  Here, in this system, you’re wasting your life.”

Chapter  28

Call it intuition.

Call it something like me spending too much time with Phil and picking up a smidgen of his talent by osmosis.

All I know for sure is something’s not right.  “Here’s my whole problem.”  I rudely wag a finger at Gustafson.  “She’s a liar.”  I glare at Spitz.  “You’re telling me stories with too many holes.”

Spitz seems surprised, Gustafson hesitates before she feigns offense, and any doubts I have about her honesty disappear.

I tell Spitz, “She’s a bug-head.”

Gustafson pretends disinterest.

Now that the words are out on the table and nobody denies them, their veracity stretches into full-blown truth.  “I think she’s an early implant, but at her age, it was probably implanted when she was around thirty, maybe thirty-five.  She’s had a long time to assimilate, and she’s put a lot of practice into hiding it.  People like me,” I tap a finger against my temple, “especially people like Phil, we were practically born with bugs in our heads.  They’re as much a part of us as hands and eyes.  This clumsy shit Gustafson is doing might fool you, Spitz, but it doesn’t fool me.”

“Fool me?” Spitz chuckles.  “I know what she is.”

“I’m enhanced,” Gustafson corrects.

I’m thrown off balance.  I was all ready to grill Gustafson.  I didn’t expect such a quick confession.

Nodding, like a happy teacher, Gustafson says, “I received an implant early on, right after the Grays took control of earth.  Yes, I’ve gone to great lengths to learn how to hide it from people like you.  It’s necessary for my job.  And as you’ve likely guessed, I’m no engineer.  I do hold a PhD in psychology.  Before the siege, I worked for the FBI, helping them understand terrorist psyches so we could better fight them.  After the siege, I was given a choice to leave the FBI or accept an implant so I could assist them in tracking down domestic insurgents as the department slowly morphed into an MSS tool.  I took the bug, but I didn’t stay on.”

“Obviously,” chuckles Spitz.

“Here on Iapetus,” she explains, “I’m in charge of what you might think of as the CIA and FBI rolled into one.  Part of my agency’s responsibilities are vetting the people we recruit from earth to either work here or to become colonists.  I don’t think I’m standing too tall on my laurels to tell you we do a good job of ferreting out liars, spies, and potential saboteurs.  We have a system that works well.  We’ve had no major failures in the twenty-something years I’ve been in this role.”

Gustafson leans across the table.  Her voice carries a hint of a threat.  “One thing I’ve learned is that bug-heads can be hard cases to crack.”  She leans back and looks at me with what I think is admiration.  “You, in particular, Mr. Kane, are a challenge.”  She touches her head for emphasis.  “You’ve built a psychological wall we can’t penetrate.  You could be hiding anything.”

“That’s what we’ve been doing here?”  It’s not a question, just a preface to an accusation.  I look at the wall behind which I sense the presence of people sitting in chairs eyeing computer monitors.  “You have three bug-heads over there trying to root around in my mind while you’re in here distracting me with your bullshit.”

“Yes,” she admits, “that’s right.  They’ve been analyzing you the whole time we’ve been talking.”

“And you have, too,” I tell her, “While I talk to Dr. Friendly here and he prods me for responses about my parents, you’ve been getting updates on your d-pad all along.”

She nods.

I smile viciously, “You’re good at it, I’ll give you that.”

“I’ve been at it awhile,” she tells me proudly.

“So,” I decide it’s time to find out what the truth behind all these layers of charades really is, “what have you decided about me?  What’s going on here?”

Spitz leans forward, “We’ve been hiding nothing.  We’ve been honest with you.”

“As I said,” starts Gustafson, “you could be hiding anything in that mind of yours.  We had to see for ourselves if we could find that ‘anything.’”

“And you couldn’t?”

Gustafson shakes her head.

“Then why trust me?” I ask.

“It’s not you who we trust,” Gustafson tells me.  “It’s Phil.”

I laugh.

“Phil is unique.”

I’m still laughing as I agree.

Gustafson doesn’t see the humor in it.  “Phil might be the most talented bug-head I’ve ever come across.  He and the implant have melded to a degree I’ve never seen.  He seems completely comfortable binding telepathically to your Gray.  What’s more, he can telepathically link with a human to any degree the human can.  You see, we’re the weak link when it comes to Phil’s telepathic abilities, he can do so much more than any of us.”

“Okay.”  I knew Phil was talented.  Perhaps our long, difficult relationship blinded me to just how much so.  “More than anything, Phil and Penny are the reasons we were able to destroy five Trog cruisers.”

“Interesting,” responds Gustafson.  “Phil and Penny say pretty much the same thing about you.”

“I did my part.”  I slump in my chair and eye the pair across the table.  I’m feeling outfoxed, and I don’t like it.  “So this telepathic linking, you have people who can link with Phil a lot more than I can?”

“By way of analogy,” answers Gustafson, “if you were to recognize Grays as the premier experts at telepathy and you were to rank them on a scale of one to ten, nearly all Grays would rank above seven.  The young ones and the dullards would be the sevens.  Most others would be in the eight or nine range, and some would rank at ten.  Trogs with an implant—and all we’ve encountered so far have implants—come in around five and run up through seven, with some going as high as eight.  At least from what we’ve been able to determine.  The best person I have on staff—Elizabeth—ranks around five, maybe six on a good day.  A handful of us on the station rank above four.  Most of my staff comes in at three, though we have plenty of rookies at two who show promise.  Dr. Spitz here, along with most humans, aren’t even on the scale.”

“Where does Phil rank?”  The suspense is sarcastically killing me.

“Easily seven.”  Gustafson looks jealous but quickly hides it.  “He could be eight.  More testing would tell us for sure.”

As good as the average Gray.

Good for Phil.

I’m curious.  “You know what I’m going to ask.”

Spitz blurts out a laugh.  “One doesn’t have to be telepathic to know that you want to know where you fall on the scale.”

Gustafson looks at me, silently coaxing me for a guess.

“Two?”  I shrug.  “Two and a half?  I don’t even know what the criteria are.”

“Phil has memories of you when you’re not actively thinking about using your implant, and you do some things that suggest a six.”  Gustafson sighs.  “Unfortunately, you spend so much energy building your mental blocks to keep the Grays out of your mind you stunt yourself.  He says there are more elegant ways to hide your secrets from other telepaths, yet you’ve never been open to any suggestions.”

I find myself on the defensive about Phil’s assessment.

I scan my memories for any cryptic conversations Phil and I might have had through the years where he tried to tutor me into a better method of controlling my mental privacy.  I sigh.  The exercise is frustrating, it seems like half the things Phil and I ever talked about were cryptic.  That’s just how things were when dealing with Phil.  “So what’s my day-to-day number, then?  Four?”

“Your first guess was right,” answers Gustafson, “Two, two and a half.  You could work at it.”

“Yeah.”  I shrug.  I don’t have the first clue as to how to do that.  “What else did Phil tell you?”

“Not so much to tell,” clarifies Gustafson.  “Elizabeth—the six I mentioned previously, the girl on my staff—connected with Phil, and he shared much of your history with her.”

That stops me cold.  “Like Phil was trying to do with the Tick, read the history of his memories.  So you know all of mine and Phil’s dirty laundry?”

“Not all of it, I’m sure,” answers Gustafson.  “If Elizabeth was on the same level as Phil, then maybe.  Sadly, she’s only had glimpses.  She’s seen some memories fully from beginning to end.  For others, she had to ask questions to understand the context.  It was by this process we learned Phil was a person we could trust.  He held nothing back, at least that Elizabeth could see.”

“And how did I fit in?”

“Phil trusts you,” responds Gustafson, as she pushes strands of hair behind her ear again.  “The psychologist in me deduced when his younger brother died, that bond transferred to you as a way for Phil to deal with the loss.  I wouldn’t say he also hates you but—”

“Hate?”  I can’t believe it.  Or, I don’t want to.  He has cause.

“Perhaps ‘hate’ is too strong a word.  Phil fosters a host of unresolved grievances, the most egregious I need not mention.”

“His wife?”  I make it sound like a guess, but I know.

“That’s the most obvious.”  Gustafson leans back in her chair, and her fingers fidget over the screen on her d-pad.  “Even Phil believes it’s the most significant of his grievances.  My guess is it’s the combination of a thousand times when you didn’t treat him as an equal, when you looked down on him, or disrespected him in front of others.  Those things add up in a relationship.”

“Jesus, you sound like a marriage counselor.”

Gustafson cocks her head.  “A relationship is a relationship whether there’s a bond of marriage or not.”

“So despite all of this affection and animosity going on in Phil’s head, you decided you could trust me anyway?”

Gustafson nods.  “Phil trusts you.  He’s loyal to you.  He’ll follow wherever you lead.  Both of you have the same goal, though if it were entirely up to him, he’d go about it a different way.”

“Which way is that?”

“Can’t say.”  Gustafson looks around at the air.

“Why?”

“Phil doesn’t seem to have that answer.  Maybe it’s the reason he relies on you, because you do.  You worked out a way to contact the Free Army.  You set up your network of insurgents among your friends at the grav factory.  All of you trained together, and those of you who lived through the Arizona Massacre mutinied just as you committed to do.  On many levels, your plan succeeded.  Phil’s a follower.  You’re a leader.”

I laugh at that.  It’s something I still feel like I’m faking my way through.

“I didn’t need a summary of Phil’s memories to tell me that,” says Gustafson.  “I saw it myself.  You need some experience, though.  You need confidence.”

I defer to a bromide response.  “Doesn’t everybody?”

Gustafson agrees.

“So your offer to go to the colonies, was that the real deal?” I ask.

Spitz nods.

“It’s as much for you as for Phil.”  She catches herself and admits, “In truth, it’s for Phil.  We need him.  We can’t afford to lose him navigating an assault ship in a losing war.  He can teach us so much, maybe show every human with the talent how to be as proficient with the implant as he is.  The benefit of that for the human race would be immeasurable.”

“Phil didn’t agree to go to the colony?”  I’m surprised.  It sounds like the kind of thing he’d jump at.

“Like I said,” answers Gustafson.  “Phil is loyal to you, and Penny, and Jill Fix and the rest of your people.  He won’t abandon you to die in this war if he can do something to stop it.”  Gustafson’s face turns pensive.  “Maybe it’s tied to the trauma of losing his brother.”

“Or he’s just a good person,” I argue.

Gustafson apologizes.  “A pitfall of my education, I’m afraid, distilling life’s choices to oversimplified reactions to childhood trauma.”

Chapter 29

Spitz walks me down a broad corridor, one of the many my guards followed when I first arrived.  I have no guards now.  I’m not masked.  People, hundreds of them, are going about their business, some hurrying, others strolling.  Some wear coveralls like they’re on their way to work or coming home.  Others are dressed in casual clothes, the kind I’ve seen on earth.

“How many colonists have made the journey to the worlds you’ve discovered?” I ask.

“Worlds?” Spitz asks.  “I don’t think I said anything about having more than one colony.”

“Gustafson slipped once and used the plural.”

Spitz shrugs.

“What does it hurt to answer?” I ask.  “Like you said, the galaxy is a big place, with what, a hundred billion stars?  Who knows how many millions or billions of habitable planets?  Does it matter if I know how many contain human colonists?”

“If you choose to join us out in the colonies, we’ll tell you all you want to know.  Besides, what good would the information do you?  The risk of harm to us is greater if you fall into the Grays’ hands and they figure out how to extract your secrets.”

“I understand the risk, but you have to know the information would help me make my choice.  I don’t want to get dropped in the new Roanoke, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean the British colony in North Carolina that disappeared?”  Spitz looks at me quizzically.  “Is that what you mean?”

I nod.  What else could I mean?

“Do you think we’d leave a hundred people on a strange planet a few dozen light years away and ask them to fend for themselves?”

“How would I know?  I just met you people today.”

Spitz laughs.  “I suppose you have a point.”  He stops and turns to me, putting on his most sincere expression.  “I assure you, we have no intention of abandoning our colonies.  We explained why we’re doing this, right?  To save humanity.”

“What if things go badly here?” I ask.  “What if you have no choice?”

“Fair question.”  Spitz starts walking again.  “I’ll tell you this much.  We have multiple colonies.  Just over a thousand people live in our smallest.”  Spitz’s eyes twinkle.  “Can you imagine, a whole world with only a thousand people there to shape it?”

I can imagine that—well, I believe I can.  In truth, I probably have only storybook inklings of what life like that would be.  Probably more drudgery and boredom than adventure, although adventure would always be waiting just beyond the wall.

The wall?

Would they have a wall?

So many millions of questions come to mind.

“Our largest colony,” Spitz is full of pride, “houses more people than our base here on Iapetus.”

“And I don’t know how many people are here,” I counter.

“Don’t be contrary.  You have an idea of the size of this place.  We have a fleet of vessels that make trading and supply runs between the worlds.  It’s not a large fleet, but it exists so the colonies can support one another.”

“And act as a lifeboat in case things turn sour,” I guess.

“Exactly that,” confesses Spitz.  “We’ve built and supplied countless ships for every purpose you can imagine, both commercial and military.  I think you’d be surprised by our degree of success.  It’s time for humanity to spread across the universe.”

“And abandon our home planet.”  It slipped out on a puff of pent-up bitterness.  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound harsh.”

Spitz is unfazed.  “Collectively, we chose to devote our resources to saving people.  Though I’ve been in favor of taking a more active role in the war here, I know if we had, we wouldn’t be where we are today on colonization.  In fact, I believe if Iapetus were to come to a bad end, the colonies are self-sufficient—not individually so—but working together they can survive.”

Spitz comes to a stop, and the twinkle returns to his eyes.  “No matter what horrors befell earth as a result of the Grays’ arrival thirty years ago, mankind has stepped through the threshold to a dream we’ve had since we put our first human on the moon, that of colonizing the stars, and that, Mr. Kane, ensures the survival of our species more than anything we’ll ever do while stuck on one planet.  In fact, the siege, and now this war with the Trogs, underscores that fact.  A race who lives on just one planet is doomed.  Eventually, something will happen, whether an alien invasion, an unfortunately proximate pulsar, or even a significant asteroid impact—any of those could end in our extinction.  On multiple planets, the odds of extinction turn astronomically small.  I don’t know if we’ll ever have any impact on this war.  I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to rescue the billions who still live on earth.  I do know that if they are the price humanity has to pay to guarantee its continued existence, then it’s worth it.

Chapter 30

Spitz’s words leave me cold and wanting to point a blame finger.

They shouldn’t, though.

Sacrificing the few to save the many is the essence of the choice I make every time I take my soldiers into a fight.  Why should the colossal calculus of sacrificing earth’s four billion survivors to save the trillions of future humans be any different?

Because nothing is certain.

The beating hearts of the people who fight by my side are reality.

The hundreds, maybe thousands of anonymous orange suits in the Free Army—few of whom I’ve met, many who despise me—are my brothers and sisters through a bond I don’t fully understand.

Every man and woman in the SDF is a comrade, in their hearts, if not in their actions.  A certainty I’ve clung to my entire life.  It’s the impetus for every step I take down my mutinous path.  Like Spitz, I believe they’ll aim their railguns at their oppressors when they finally know they aren’t alone.

On that day, a conflagration of freedom will burn across earth and every vacuous rock in the solar system, leaving the ashes of North Koreans, Grays, and Trogs in its wake.

That dream has been the fire in my beating heart all these years.

Can I abandon it to take the easy road out to the colonies and a future any kid on earth would salivate over?

I thought I knew when I had no real choice to make.

Dr. Spitz leads me into an airlock.  When we come out the other side, I see we’re in the hangar where Penny docked the Rusty Turd.  The ship reminds me of my first taste of freedom.  It reminds me of the price so many of my soldiers have already paid.

I can’t run away.

I look around and spot the Turd.  It’s buried in a structure of scaffolds and industrial lifts.  Mechanics swarm all over it.  “What are they doing?”

“Repairing,” Spitz answers.  “Enhancing.”

Enhancing?

“I need my ship.”  Shaking my head, I turn to face Spitz, attempting to engage him in a battle of the wills.  “I don’t know what Phil is going to choose, but I can’t stay here.  I have to finish scouting—”

Spitz raises his hands.

Tamping down my concerns as I look back at my ship, I tell him, “We’re planning an assault.  You may not have any respect for the Free Army, and that’s okay, but they need to gather intel to make their attack successful.”

“It’ll be a week before your ship is ready,” says Spitz.

“A week?”  Despite the damage I know we sustained to our drive array, I don’t believe it.  The techs back on the Potato managed their repairs and minor upgrades in a few days.  “You’re delaying us on purpose so you’ll have time to convince Phil to go to the colonies.”

“Some things are out of my hands,” admits Spitz.

Violent thoughts tempt me to do something stupid.

They call stupid acts stupid for a reason.

“Tell them to finish what repairs they can, and then tell them to get off my ship.  We’re leaving tomorrow.”  It’s a totally arbitrary date, but looking at the current semi-disassembled state of my ship, I’m guessing there’s no way it can be ready to fly in any small number of hours.”

“Impossible,” Spitz says calmly.

“Who can make it possible?”

“No one, now.”  He starts walking toward the ship.  “To be honest, had we just repaired the drive array, we might have had you back into space in a few days.”  He glances at me to take my measure before he proceeds.  “Your guess is correct.  I was directed to delay you.  Lucky for you and all your people, the method I chose to delay you was to enhance your ship.  My apologies, but we all have to answer to someone.”

I’m trying to guess whether yelling at him will hurry things along.

“Now that the enhancements have begun, it’ll take nearly as long to put your ship back to its original state as it would to proceed to completion.  So, you can yell at me if you want, you can go and meet with Dr. Gustafson and voice your complaint to her.  Perhaps you may even meet with Secretary Kimura.  None of that will change anything.  No physically possible path exists for completing the work on your ship in less than a week.”  He points.  “You see, we have as many techs as possible working to get it done as quickly as possible.”

I huff as I walk, and I try to estimate the number of people at work on the Rusty Turd.  A hundred?  And more inside I can’t see.

Anticipating my next question, Spitz says, “Your communications man, Jablonsky, your pilot Penny, and your sergeant Brice have already left to complete your scouting mission.”

That does it.

I stop, plant my feet, and put my fists on my hips, because I know if I don’t keep them restrained, I might punch the old man, consequences be damned.

“They’re all fine.  They went voluntarily.”  Spitz keeps his cool and points toward the ship again.  “Phil will help explain.”

I turn to see Phil emerging from the ship, and smiling as he spots me.

Awkwardly climbing out of the ship behind him is Nick.

They’re letting the Gray wander the base?

Guessing the question in my mind, Spitz nods toward Phil and his companion.  “Notice something different?”

I look again.  The tick is wearing a wide black collar.  “And that is?”

Spitz digs in his pocket and hands me what appears to be an overly bulky wristwatch with a long strap.  “Put this on.  You can wear it outside your suit, right by your d-pad.”

I look at the watch.  There’s no display for the time.

“Phil has one, too.  If at any time, the Gray is more than one hundred meters distant from both of these actuators, the collar around his neck will detonate and send a blast of shrapnel through his skull.  The explosion shouldn’t be powerful enough to harm anyone nearby as long as they aren’t too close, but afterward, there won’t be much left of the Gray’s head but wet particles and mist.”

I nod as I wrap the band around my wrist.

“On top of the proximity sensor, it contains a grav switch and a manual switch.”  Spitz points to three robust buttons.  “You can operate the grav switch mentally, but you know that.  To trigger the manual switch, depress all three buttons.  The order doesn’t matter.  That way you can dispose of the Gray if it becomes necessary.  I’ll have a tech connect it to your undergarment’s biosensors later today.  Once that’s done, if the collar can’t receive a life signal from either Phil or yourself, the Gray dies.  So don’t leave your wristband lying around if you want to keep the Gray alive.”

“You know Phil won’t kill it.”  It’s not a difficult deduction to make.  “I think he’s too close to it already.”

“That’s why you have the second watch.”

“And you didn’t tell Phil about my mine?”

“No,” Spitz tells me, “but he guessed.  Or rather, he probably read it from Gustafson’s mind when she presented him with his wristband.”  Spitz’s eyes turn flinty serious.  “Phil is being allowed to keep his Gray because Gustafson believes what Phil will learn from it may lead our species to a quantum leap forward in our use of telepathy.  The disagreement among our policymakers on this point is stark.  Gustafson had to pull in every favor she was owed to get her way.  You see, Major Kane, our dilemma is that Gray has seen not only the Free Army base on the Potato, but he’s also seen our installation.  The risk we’re taking by allowing it to live is beyond measure.  In effect, we’re betting everything.”  Spitz grabs my arm and squeezes to emphasize his point.  “Make sure it never gets close enough to another Gray to share what it knows.”

I accept the responsibility with a nod.  “There’s no way I’ll put all of this at risk for the life of one Gray.  You can put those worries to rest.”

Phil is within a dozen paces.

“I’ll leave you to talk with Phil.”  Spitz points at the Turd.  “Come over when you’re finished, and I’ll walk you through the enhancements to your ship.”

“What about my platoon?” I ask.

“All fine.  They’re quartered nearby.  I’ll take you to them after we finish here.”

Chapter 31

Phil hugs me.  It’s apparently an awkward new ritual in our relationship, made more so by the fact I’m still wearing my orange suit.

Pulling myself out of Phil’s embrace, I notice the Gray keeping its distance.  “I don’t think your new friend likes me.”

“You killed half his pod.  That’s the closest analog to a family a Gray has.”

It was a bad day to be a Tick.

I keep the thought to myself.  Nevertheless, the disappointed expression on Phil’s face tells me he probably intercepted it.  “What’s the story with Penny, Brice—”

“Don’t worry,” Phil cuts me off.  He points two fingers randomly.  “These people don’t appear to be hiding anything from us.  They are what they seem.”

“Penny is scouting, then?  With Brice and Jablonsky?”

Phil nods.  “Jablonsky will radio the reports back to Blair.  When they finish, they’ll come back here to meet up with us.”

“The ship they went out on?” I ask.  “Will they be in danger if they run into trouble?”

“I guess they didn’t tell you that part?”

I shake my head and silently wait for the next part.

Phil grins.  “They didn’t mean to tell me, either.”  He glances over at the Gray.  “I know you’d prefer that we kill him.  Trust me on this, Dylan.  Please.  I know what I’m doing.  Nick and me, we’re bonding on a level you might understand if you tried.  You wouldn’t believe what it’s like.  Together, we’re so much stronger than alone.”

I’m apprehensive.  No, suspicious is a better word.

I reach over and take hold of Phil’s wrist, putting a declarative finger on the detonator strapped there.  “Will you be able to do what’s necessary if it comes to that?”

“It won’t.”

“Don’t be naïve.  Anything could happen.  Will you be able to exterminate the Tick if we are captured?”

“Call him by his name, okay?”

“He doesn’t have ears, Phil.”

“He understands more than you think.”

“Because you understand.”

“Even without my help.  Nick.  Call him that, please?

I groan and nod.  “Will you be able to do what’s necessary if it comes to that?”

Phil ignores the question again.  “I’m learning from him.”

Disappointed Phil won’t answer my question, I flatly ask, “How so?”

“Their history for one.  How to better understand telepathic communication for another.”

I don’t try very hard to hide the derision running through my thoughts.

Phil steps away from me and shakes his head.

Crap.

I didn’t say anything, and I’ve gone too far anyway.  “I’m sorry.”

Phil recovers from the unspoken rebuke.  “It’s okay.  No, not okay, but I understand.  I’d rather know what you feel than guessing at things you hide.”

Realizing I need to be much more careful with my thoughts, I ask, “The things I hide, you can’t see those?”

“No.”

“Honestly?”

“You know I’m being honest.”

He’s right.  I do.  Looking for a way to change the subject off of me, I go with, “You’ve always seen through people’s words, right?  You always understood what they really felt.”

Phil nods.  “Always.  Now, with Nick’s help, the clarity of other people’s thoughts is coming through like I thought them myself.”

I purse my lips and scratch my chin.  “Do you think that’ll have an impact on your relationships with other people?”

Phil shakes his head.  “Knowing a truth isn’t that different than believing one.  People are who they are.  Just because I see them more clearly doesn’t mean I have to feel differently about them.  Just because I see past their public façades doesn’t mean I have to despise the complex, mixed up human underneath.

I don’t know how to respond to that, so I move on.  “You said Penny, Brice, and Jablonsky won’t be in danger.”

Phil shakes his head.  “I didn’t say that exactly.”

“Okay, you implied they’d be safer than I’m afraid they will be.”

“That’s true.”  Phil has some bit of information, and he’s enjoying teasing me with keeping it hidden.

“Just tell me.  If you’re reading my mind, you know how suspicious I am of these people.”

“They didn’t plan to tell me, but with Nick’s help, I picked it up from Dr. Spitz when he and Gustafson were interrogating me.”

“And the mystery is?”

“They’ve figured out stealth.”

“Stealth?”  I start spinning through a thousand sea-changing scenarios.  “Are you sure?”

“Spitz confirmed it after I questioned him.”

I laugh.  “Was he surprised when you read it from his mind?”

A smile creeps slowly across Phil’s face.  “He was speechless at first, but it was Gustafson who was the most shocked.”

“Is that when they realized how good you are?”

Phil is embarrassed.  He’s not used to compliments.  “Maybe I realized it then, too, though Gustafson was already drilling me about how much I was capable of.”

“Before we run off on that tangent,” I ask, “tell me about this stealth technology.  Are we talking about gravity stealth?”

“Exactly.”  Phil glances down at Nick.  “Grays’ awareness of the universe is shaped more by their sense of gravity than their sense of vision.  It’s the sense they use to resolve the existence and characteristics of distant objects.  Spitz’s stealth makes their ships nearly invisible to a Gray.”

“And Grays really can’t see it?”  Hard to believe.

“They can’t unless the ship is too massive.  Their stealth tech can only do so much.”

I don’t think this stealth business is entirely true.  We didn’t see them exactly when they captured us, but we knew they were there.

“They were attacking us,” Phil argues.

It occurs to me I didn’t say anything.  “Dammit, Phil.  If we’re going to talk, let’s talk.  Don’t respond to my thoughts.  You’re creeping me out.”

“Sorry.”

I sigh.

He explains, “We saw the ships because they were attacking, burning heavy g’s to catch us, and coming in close.”

Makes sense.

“If they go slow, and keep distant, they’re nearly impossible for a Gray to see.”

I switch back to my original concern.  “The ship that Penny, Brice, and Jablonsky rode out on, it’s a stealth ship?”

“Yes, scout ships.  Small and light.  Fast, but not armored and not armed.”

“Because they have to keep the mass down for the stealth to work?” I ask.

Phil nods.

I point toward the Rusty Turd.  “Is that what they’re installing in our ship?”  I’m hoping we’re not too massive.

“No,” he answers, “Ours is too big.  The grav lens is too heavy.”

Oh, well.  “Let’s go see what Spitz is doing to the Rusty Turd.”

Chapter 32

We find Spitz near the aft end of the ship, standing among the drive array plates which were formerly mounted in a conical housing thirty feet across.

“Did you guys take out every plate?”  I dodge heavy discs arranged in rows on the hangar deck, and at first, I think my clever line is a joke.  I realize quickly it’s not.

Spitz smiles widely.  “Yes.”

“Why?”  It’s not an accusation.  I’m curious.  “Were they all damaged in the attack?  Are you testing them?”

“No.”  Spitz kneels down beside one.

Phil and I do the same.

He points to a scattering of small deformations on the surface.  “This plate functions, yet you can see it suffered when the missile debris struck it.”  Looking around at the other plates, he says, “Three don’t work at all, another half-dozen show some damage.”  He stands back up.  “All in all, they are functioning well.  My people have already tested these.  We’ll replace the damaged plates and start remounting and aligning them in the drive array tomorrow.”

“Good.”  I don’t know what else to say.  My eye is drawn to all the techs working inside the drive array cone, at least ten.  “What are they doing if all the grav plates are already out here?”

“Fabricating new mounts.”  Spitz walks toward the cone.  “You see, the static mounts installed when your ship was constructed at the Arizona shipyard are prone to imperfection.”  He turns to look at both Phil and I.  “You may have noticed when you were flying her.  Imperfect performance, maybe.”

Phil laughs.

I can’t help but laugh, also.

“With dynamic mounts, we can adjust the angle of each plate on the fly.  All controlled by an onboard computer-enhanced drive system.”  Spitz points at a nearby ship of a type I haven’t seen yet.  It looks like it’s in a similar state of disrepair.  “We’re cannibalizing that one for parts.  It’ll save us time.”

“Thank you, Dr. Spitz.”  I don’t know what else to say.  They’re losing a ship so my crew can have a better one.

He shrugs it off.  “With the dynamic cone shaping, we can optimize the shape of the gravity field for sub-light speeds.  The ship will be more efficient.  Better still, where it makes the most difference, we can dynamically shape the field for light speed.”

“I like what I’m hearing,” I tell Dr. Spitz.  “I assume you’re not doing this just to improve the mileage.”

“Heavens, no,” he answers.  “The fuel savings we’ll talk about momentarily.  The primary driver for dynamic shaping is performance.”

I smile widely.

“With the drive array enhancements and the others we’re making to the ship, and with the oversized reactor already in the Rusty Turd—” Spitz grins so widely that he can’t talk through it.

“What?” I ask.

“We’ve never put a reactor this large in a vessel of this size,” he reveals.  “Theoretically, your ship might pull twenty g’s of sub-light acceleration.”

I’m dumbfounded.  The twelve g’s we had already was pretty spectacular.

“And faster than light?” asks Phil.

“If the reactor performs as we expect—” Spitz is reluctant to continue, but his excitement forces him to tell us his hope.  “If the reactor improvements behave as expected, this ship might make 18c.”

No Trog or Gray cruiser we know of will do more than eight times the speed of light.

“Eighteen?”  Phil is awed.

I am, too.

Spitz proudly nods.  “Theoretically, when we’re done, this might be the fastest ship in the solar system.”

“With no requirement that we stay in the solar system.”

Neither of the two finds my joke funny.

I laugh, giddy over the ridiculous performance upgrade my ship is receiving.  I nudge Phil.  “We may have to give it a new name.”

“Phoenix?” he suggests.

“Trite.”  I’m not enamored with it.

Phil shrugs.  “We’ll think of something.”  He looks over toward Dr. Spitz.  “How did you figure out all this stuff so quickly?  I mean, this ship was built on earth, not here.”

Spitz looks smugly at Phil.  “I designed it.”

Chapter 33

I turn to Phil, too surprised to make my own guess about Spitz.  “Is he lying?”

Phil shakes his head.

“Obviously, there’s a lot going on I don’t understand,” I admit.

Spitz pats my shoulder.  “I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have about our contact with earth after we finish here.  In short, I’ll tell you we have a network of people terra-side for coordinating our effort to recruit talent.”

Given the colonization effort, it makes sense.  “And the stealth ships?”  I’m making a guess.  “You use those to ferry people from earth to Iapetus?  That’s why the Grays don’t know about any of this?”

“That’s correct.”  Spitz smiles at me like I’m a good student.  “We share information with certain governments on earth when we have something of value to give them.  The design for this ship was created by my team but couldn’t be built here, so we gave it to earth.”

“Why couldn’t it be?” I ask.

“Everyone has resource constraints,” says Spitz.  “Our mineral mining capability here on Iapetus is limited.  Our ability to import ores from the asteroid belt and Kuiper belt is even more limited, given how much attention moving large masses around the solar system would attract.  Then there are the politics of resource allocation that have bedeviled humanity from the beginning of time.  We have to allocate according to our priorities.  Colonization wins.  I want to build more warships, however, I’m not allowed to.  We all have to do what the boss says, right?”

I can’t help but laugh at that.  My boss is a prickly Potato Queen who spends her time checking off items on her secret agenda and misallocating our resources as well.

“This ship with its grav lens,” says Spitz, “required so much metal for construction it was never approved.  Not wanting to waste the work we put in, we smuggled the plans to groups of earthbound shipbuilders in several countries.  Of course, each country modified the plans according to the whims of their engineers, subject to their resource allocations.  Unfortunately, earth’s shipyards were unable to produce the vessels with the precision they required.  The rash of catastrophic failures and underperformance is proof enough of that.”  He pauses to take a breath.  “Not one of the final designs incorporated all of the ship’s features.  Let’s go inside.”

Moments later, we’re all standing on the bridge in a space much more crowded than it was before.

“A bit more cramped,” admits Spitz.

I notice the walls and deck.  “You increased the shielding.”

“Yes.”  Spitz moves over to the pilot’s seat and sits.  “Extra layers of alloy steel, and another layer of grav plates.”  He points to an obtrusive refrigerator-size lump standing in the center of the bridge’s space.  “All of your ship’s new computers are located inside.  The extra shielding is in place to protect them as much as the bridge crew.  The slightest damage to the computing systems will cause the ship to malfunction, possibly with catastrophic results.  If we had more time, we’d install a backup system in one of the forward cabins, however, time is a factor.”

I nod, but don’t succumb to the temptation of asking for a backup system.  I suspect that alone might cost me another week I can’t spare.

“One of the systems controlled is the fusion reactor.  Much like the benefit of the improvements to the drive array, a computer control system on the reactor allows us to burn less hydrogen while delivering more power.”  Spitz smiles.

Time for me to make a big guess.  “More than a little?”

“A lot more power.  As far as I know, no ship has ever been constructed with such a favorable ratio of reactor output to ship mass.  Who knows?  One day, if we all live long enough, we might see ships top 50 or 100c.  Can you imagine?”

One hundred times the speed of light?  Amazing to think about.  So much of the galaxy would lie within reach.

“You also have a computer-controlled bubble jump system,” says Spitz.  “It’s built to assist the gravitational officers.”  Spitz nods at Phil, since that was Phil’s job on the Rusty Turd, “It should drastically reduce the time between jumps, decreasing your overall travel time.”  Spitz nods toward the doorway leading into the central hall, only the door has been moved.  It no longer aligns with the ship’s long axis.  “Let’s go forward.”

Spitz steps through.  Both Phil and I follow.

The central hall running from the bridge to the crew compartment has been widened to accommodate a tube covered in complicated shapes and wires.  The airlock at the far end of the hall, like the door to the bridge, has been moved off-center.

“A railgun?” I guess, though it doesn’t make sense.  From here to the nose of the ship it would have to be over two hundred feet long and cut right through the grav lens.

“Yes,” Spitz proudly confirms.  “It’s not exactly experimental.  We’ve tested.  This is an early production model.”

“Experimental?  Early production model?”  I don’t like the sound of either one.

I start forward, but Spitz stops me and points at each of the aft-most rooms off the hall.  One was the captain’s quarters.  He says, “They’ve been converted to magazines for the weapon.  What’s another twenty tons of slugs in a ship of this weight?”  He chuckles.

“Twenty tons?”

Nodding, Spitz explains, “Twenty-five thousand one-kilogram slugs will feed into the railgun at eight hundred per minute, fired by the pilot.  We’ve added a trigger to her control stick and a safety on the console.”

I didn’t even notice the extra controls.

“If it works as planned,” says Spitz, “this weapon alone will overwhelm the defensive grav fields on any Trog cruiser.  You don’t need to ram anything.”

One-kilogram slugs don’t sound like much to me for attacking a Trog cruiser.  “Unless we want to capture it.”

“A dubious tactic at best, don’t you think?”  Spitz leads us up the hall.  The airlock doors are propped open, so we walk right into the platoon compartment.  The railgun does indeed run right through, past the jump seats, and into the grav lens on the Rusty Turd’s bow.

“What about the grav lens?” I ask.  “Will it still function?”

“Of course,” Spitz tells me.  “In fact, it now serves three purposes.  One, as a particle shield during hyper-light and sub-light travel; a second, as a ram for skewering Trog vessels; and now, as a final acceleration stage for slugs shooting out of the railgun.  Our calculations suggest a final slug velocity in excess of 100,000 miles per hour.”

Phil can’t contain his wonder.  “Holy shit!”

“That’s faster than those big gun emplacements on the moon.”  It’s hard to believe so much firepower could be built into my ship.

“The grav lens is the kicker,” says Spitz.  “The acceleration is so intense, it’ll disintegrate any material we put through it.”

That doesn’t sound good to me, though Spitz isn’t bothered at all.  “Depending on how far your target is, it might be hit by a plasma of heavy nuclei and free electrons that’ll tear through pretty much anything, or it’ll be hit by a kilogram of solidifying metal the diameter of a straw a dozen meters long.”

I nod appreciatively.  It’s roughly the secret behind the effectiveness of the grav lens—its ability to focus the ship’s ramming momentum behind a pencil-point tip.  “Either way, the target is toast.”

“Toast,” Spitz agrees.  “One thing, though.”

“What’s that?”  I hate the fine print.

“You’ll need to take along a few of my techs.  As I said, the railgun is an early production model.  The techs will need to operate it and repair it as needed.”

I turn to Phil.

He shrugs.

“One condition,” I tell Spitz.

“Which is?”

“Phil has to okay anybody you send with us.”

“Cautious.”  Spitz seems pleased by that.  “Agreed.”

Patting the steel railgun tube as we stand in the platoon bay, I can’t help but start to think about the implications of what we’ve done here.  Looking admirably at Spitz, I say, “So this is the fastest and probably most powerful space-based weapons system in the solar system.”

Spitz nods proudly.

Phil seems a little worried.  “It’s not going to blow up on us, is it?”

“Doubtful,” Spitz answers.  “However, that is a legitimate concern.”

I elbow Phil.  “Our odds of spontaneous combustion were one-in-twenty when we first pushed the Turd to light speed.”  I turn to Spitz.  “We’re better off now, right?”

“Much better,” he assures me.

Now, for the most important of the implications I’d just thought through.  “How many of the surviving assault ships can you refit like this?  Can you turn them each around in a week?”

Spitz’s face turns to worry, though I can see his gears turning as he considers the question.  “It takes us several months to construct one of these railguns, and we only have two others.  The most I could convince my boss to spare is the one.  You’ll be on your own when you go back out there.”

I shake my head.  “No, we’ll be with the Free Army fleet.  We’ll just have a better chance of destroying the enemy in the battle to come.”

Chapter 34

Besides the brief hour or so I was out of my suit back on the Potato after frying my grav plates while chasing down the SDF loyalists, I’ve not had the orange antique off.

Now, with nothing covering my skin except a sweatshirt and thick cotton work pants, I feel the kind of naked that torments the dreams of insecure people.  I’m vulnerable.  I don’t know how many doors and airlocks stand between my thin human skin and the vacuum of space, but they are only tidbits of technology that could fail at any second.

Or be destroyed by attacking Trogs.

Or Grays.

Or SDF loyalists.

Who knows how many varieties of hostiles lurk in the blackness, waiting for an inattentive moment to pounce on their prey?

That’s what I feel like without my suit.  Inattentive.  Unprotected.  My life in the hands of others.

I don’t like it.

I wonder, if I ever get back to earth, will I ever feel secure again, even beneath miles of atmosphere coddling me from the cold?

And there’s more.

I have unprocessed calories gurgling their way through my intestines.

Not suit goo, but actual food!

It tasted good when I ate it, though my jaw tired quickly from the chewing.

That was unexpected.

I felt full much sooner than I thought possible.  I guess all the fiber I so rapidly grew used to not having.  I don’t know how the next few days will go with the solid foods.  I expect I’m going to spend a lot of time sitting on or frantically sprinting to the nearest commode.  Cramping.  And maybe, just when my body is starting to adjust back to normal food again, it’ll be time for another intestinal cleanse, the salty syrup treatment for making my system ready for the suit.

More sitting.  More sprinting.

I know this time out of the suit is intended to be a kindness, something I’m supposed to need and want, something to make me feel like a human again.  Perhaps I adjusted too fast to life in the orange.

A knock sounds at my dorm room door.

Even as I look up through the darkness, I know it’s Phil with his Gray in tow.  “Come.”

The door swings open, letting the dim light from the hall drizzle over my darkness.

“Why are you sitting in here with the lights out?”

“Couldn’t sleep.  Too much on my mind.”

Phil steps inside.  The Tick follows.

“Close it?” I ask.

Phil complies.

I reach over to a dimmer switch on the wall beside my bed and illuminate the room in dusky gray.  I motion to a chair.

Phil seats himself and the Gray stands beside him.

“Everyone else asleep?” I ask.  Our hosts have housed us in a barracks facility designed to handle a few platoons.  It’s much too large for our needs, with less than half of one platoon surviving.  We’re all in adjacent rooms on the same floor.  The rest of the barrack stands empty.

“Some are asleep,” answers Phil.  “Some are logged into computers, reading the news.  Six are in a room four doors down, talking.”

“About?”

Phil shrugs.  “Nothing important.  At least not now.  I think they miss the constant communication.”

I nod at that.  As physically isolating as the suits are, you’re never, ever more than a heartbeat away from talking to another person.  It’s a strange sweet-and-sour state of connectedness to exist in.”How do they feel about things?”

“Are you asking if they’re on board?”

“I guess I am.”

“Nothing has changed as far as I can tell.  They’re a loyal bunch.  Several are talking about turning colonist if Spitz lets them.”

“If any ask,” I’m reluctant to say it, but it’s the right thing to do, “tell them they have my blessing.  It’s probably the smartest option.”

Phil silently agrees.

“What about you?”

Phil shrugs.

“Do you want to go to the colonies?  That’s what Gustafson and Spitz want for you.”

“I know.”

“And?”

“I’m staying with you and Penny.”

“But what do you want?”

“I want to go to the colonies,” answers Phil.  “Yet, more than I want that, I want to stay with my friends.”  He looks away so I know he’s going to admit something he’d rather not.  “I think you’re both alive because of me.”

I chuckle.  I’m not sure if it’s because I agree or disagree.

“Well, that’s not exactly right,” he clarifies.  “We’re alive because we’re together.  If any one of us weren’t along for the ride, the other two would have been killed.”

“I think you’re right about that, Phil.”

“What do you want?” he asks.  “I know you’ve built your self-identity around this concept of turning rebel and saving the human race.”

“I’m not a superhero.”

Phil grins.  “That’s what it looks like in your fantasies, though, right?”

Mind readers suck.  “Yes.”

“Don’t glower.  You’re normal.  I think most people have an aspirational version of themselves they picture in their minds, knowing all the while they aren’t that person, and knowing they’ll likely never be that person.  I don’t think that makes them vain or crazy or anything.”

“Thank you, Dr. Phil.”

“Don’t feel bad because I peek at your secrets.  Most of the time I can’t help myself.  The hard part is keeping my mouth shut about what I’ve seen.”

“Don’t sweat it.”  I sigh.  “You’re right.  I want to be the hero.  I know I’ll never—”

“You already are the hero.”

I laugh out loud.

“You don’t see it, do you?”

“Phil…” I don’t know how to continue.

“The things you do.”  Phil shakes his head in wonder.  “I’d never do any of that.  Yet you jump right in like you’re invincible.”

“Well, if you’ve been reading my mind, you know I believe in the lie of my invincibility.”

“That’s just another lie you tell yourself, because it’s easier than admitting that you’re brave enough to risk your life in ways most people wouldn’t.”

I never thought about it that way.  But then, I never had another person giving me a third-party opinion about the thoughts buzzing between my neurons.  “Why would I do that?”

Phil laughs.  “Ask Dr. Gustafson.  It’s hard enough reading people’s thoughts without trying to figure out what they all mean.”

I shake my head slowly and return to the question that troubles me.  “Why don’t you go to the colonies?  Penny and me, we’ll be fine.”

Phil takes a long time to consider his answer.  “I’m not as special as they think I am.  I suspect plenty of Gustafson’s people can use their bug as well as I can, they just don’t know it.  It’s like they’ve been standing on a dark street in the pool of light from a street lamp, afraid to venture into the darkness, thinking of it like a wall they can’t get through.  All I’ve done is walk in from the dark carrying a flashlight.  Now that they see it, who knows what they’ll be able to do?  They don’t need me.”

“I think you underestimate yourself.”

Phil smiles weakly.  “Maybe we have that in common.”

Chapter 35

A week passes in a flash of boredom and anxiety.

Each day brings with it updates from Penny and Brice on the Trog fleet.  The cruisers are nowhere to be found.  They restocked their holds after the last attack, and now they’re gone.  Not back at earth.  Not around the moon.  Nowhere we can find them.

Everybody’s worried, especially Spitz and his people.

Five of my platoon have come to me and asked for permission to stay on Iapetus.  They want to queue up for a spot on a ship bound for the colonies.

It doesn’t anger me, losing them.  I don’t feel betrayed.  In fact, it makes me jealous they can answer the call from the greener grass on some faraway planet and tumble their dice for a chance at peace.

I can’t.

I won’t.

I can only hope to join them one day.

One day.

I’m standing in Spitz’s office, viewing the expansive hangar through a window on a wall opposite the door, while I wait for him to arrive.

I don’t see much activity around the Rusty Turd, and that worries me.

Phil is nearby, silently communing with his Gray.  They’ve been doing that a lot lately—constructing a thought space from the comingling of their minds, a place where they explore their combined strength, a tele-space where they seem to prefer to exist.

The idea of it gives me the willies, and I find myself always aware of my thoughts—always careful to keep them hidden.  I’m guarding my mind with the same diligence I did after my wife brought the Gray hatchling into my house back in Breckenridge.

And I think of Amy.

Those inexplicably lifeless eyes.  Her pearly smile.  The corn silk hair.

The softness of her bare skin.

She was cold inside, but such a beauty to look at.

Before the hatchling started killing her.

Now she’s a wrinkled hag, the outside matching the inside, devoid of life, except by the strictest definition.

Thoughts of her always lead me to sadness.

I turn my eyes back toward the hangar and try to shake the memory.

In less than twenty-four hours, if all goes well with my ship, I’ll be back in an orange suit.  During the week I’ve spent out of it, I’ve not touched another human being skin-to-skin.  The closest I’ve come are Phil’s engulfing hugs.

Those leave me feeling strange.  Dirty.  I can’t explain why.

My mind wanders and I close my eyes.  I’ve thought about Silva more than once.

More than a thousand times, probably.

But God, she’s not even eighteen.

My old-fashioned sensibilities won’t allow me to make an advance, though if I hadn’t been told she was six months shy of her eighteenth birthday—had she lied and told me she was nineteen—then her true age wouldn’t have mattered.

I wouldn’t have known the difference.

I sigh.

“What?” asks Phil.

“Nothing.”

“It’s something.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Phil’s content with that.  He goes back to pretending he’s a Gray.

The door swings open and Dr. Spitz walks in with a big smile.

“Good news?”  It’s the obvious question.  I ask it anyway.

“The work is done,” answers Spitz.  “The diagnostics check out.  All that’s left is cleanup and supply.”

Phil grins about this, and I don’t understand why.

I’d have guessed he wouldn’t be so happy when it was done.  I know he’d prefer to stay on Iapetus.

Spitz walks over to plant himself in the chair behind his desk.

I take one on the opposite side.  “Are Penny, Brice, and Jablonsky still due back tomorrow?”

“You talk to them more than I do,” answers Spitz.  He leans forward and scrutinizes me for a moment.  “You still don’t trust us, do you?”

“No,” Phil answers for me.

I was going to lie, come up with something that sounded plausible, because despite my distrust, I’ve grown to like Dr. Spitz very much.  “Sorry, it’s just—”

“No worries.”  Spitz leans back again.  Casual.  “Perhaps when you fly out tomorrow with your crew aboard, you’ll trust us then.”

I nod.  I will.

“It’ll be best if you allow some of my technicians to ride along and monitor your systems for a shakedown cruise before you speed off into the universe.”

“How long will they need to be aboard?”

“I imagine we can run through all of our tests in three or four hours.”

That sounds reasonable.  “Do ships often fail at this stage of the process?”

“They can fail at any stage,” answers Spitz.  “This one of yours, who knows?  We didn’t construct her, remember?  Earth did.  We’re improving her with our technology.  We have a lot of unknowns.”

“Like we could blow up on our first jump to light speed?”  I smile, but I’m deadly serious.  That was the hand we were dealt when we first lifted off from the Arizona shipyard.

“We built in every failsafe that was practical.  The ship might malfunction, however, the possibility of a catastrophe is extremely remote.”

I glance at Phil to make sure he’s paying attention.  It’s hard to tell.

“We put some extra suits on your ship,” says Spitz.  “They’re in the infirmary.  They’re the same orange ones you wear now, manufactured on earth.”

“Why?” I ask.  “We have ours.”

“War,” Spitz answers.  “We send our ships out with spares.  We thought you should have extras.”

“And helmets?”  I’m suspicious.  I know what a helmet can do.

Spitz guesses right away.  “We can replace all of your helmets if you like.  They’re all coded to your commander, right?  She can freeze your suit, even kill you if she chooses.”

“You’d rather I give that power to you?”

“We disable those functions in every suit we refurbish.”

I glance to Phil, looking for confirmation on Spitz’s lie.

Phil says, “He’s telling the truth.”

Still, I can’t bring myself to trust him that much.  “We’ll stick with what we have for now.”

“Suit yourself.”  Spitz giggles.

I roll my eyes.

“One more thing,” he says.  “This has been a matter of some debate on our end.  We’d like to—”

The office door bursts open and a panting officer rushes inside.  “Dr. Spitz, we need you in the operations center!”

Spitz jumps to his feet as he asks, “What’s going on?”

“We found the Trog fleet.”

Not here at Iapetus.

My heart sinks as I rise, ready to muster my crew, board the Rusty Turd, and fight.

Spitz hurries toward the door.  “Where?”

“They’re attacking the Free Army’s main base.”

Spitz glances at me.

I ask, “Can I come?”

Spitz waves me along as he turns to Phil.  “You stay here with the Gray.  It’s not allowed where we’re going.”

Chapter 36

It takes longer than expected, at least a brisk fifteen-minute walk.

When we arrive, I can’t believe the size of the comm room.  It reminds me of Blair’s control center back on the Potato, only many times larger, with hundreds of people working at small groups of desks and in front of banks of video screens.

A man in a military uniform, a colonel, steps up to intercept us.  “Dr. Spitz.”

“Colonel Hawkins.”  Spitz is looking around for something.

So am I.  I’d expected to see a frantic hive of activity bordering on chaos.  I don’t see that at all.  The control room is divided into a handful of sections and a least a dozen more subsections.  Some of the computer screens display what appears to be a space battle.  Most look nearly static, displaying charts and spreadsheets with row after row of numbers.  Most of the operators don’t appear to be agitated.

Hawkins leads us toward a conference room.  “The others have already left.”

Spitz is surprised, but doesn’t say anything.

“They were here for the weekly meeting when it started.”

Spitz checks his watch.  “Where did they go?”

“The meeting is already over.”

The chairs in the conference room are in disarray.  Rings left by coffee cups spot the long table.  Crumbs surround them among a few crumpled napkins.  I’m guessing these others Hawkins referred to must be some kind of management committee, yet I don’t ask.  I’m more curious about the battle.

“They’re getting together again at five,” says Hawkins.  “After they’ve each had some time to think over the implications.”

Spitz takes a seat.

So do I.

Hawkins walks to the front of the room and powers up a screen big enough to be watched comfortably from anywhere in the room.  He pauses and points at me.  “You want him to see this?”

Spitz nods.  “It’s been approved.”

“Just now?  On the way over here?”  Hawkins is skeptical.

“It was decided yesterday that granting Major Kane access to information garnered from our surveillance network would help more than hurt us.”

Hawkins grudgingly turns to a computer and scrolls around for a video, which subsequently pops up on the screen, frozen, waiting for him to hit the play button.  He turns and looks at Spitz.

Spitz takes his silent meaning and turns to me.  “We have sixty surveillance satellites—”

Hawkins is shaking his head.

“Am I mistaken?” Spitz asks him.

“We lost seven.”

“Seven?”  Spitz is knocked off-balance by this.  “Malfunctions?”

“Six in the aftermath of the battles around earth,” answers Hawkins.  “We have no cause to believe they were discovered.  We suspect debris strikes.”

Spitz understands.

I do, too.  Hunks of metal, stone, frozen bodies, and everything in-between are filling the space around earth, orbiting in every direction at every speed, colliding, breaking up, and crashing into other things.

“If this war ever ends,” muses Spitz, “it’ll take years to make earth-space safe again.”  He focuses back on me.  “We developed a class of surveillance and communication satellites that are very small, perhaps the size of a beach ball.”  Spitz holds his hands out a few feet apart to demonstrate.  “They aren’t particularly durable, nor powerful.  Many versions, like the ones we orbit near earth, can intercept broadcast signals, both audio and video.  Most models can scan the space or solar bodies nearby using an array of sensors.  Some of our satellites operate merely as signal relays for the other satellites.  In this way, we keep an eye on earth and its moon so we have a pretty good idea what’s going on in that part of the solar system.”

“But not the rest?” I guess.

Spitz shakes his head.  “Earth surveillance requires nearly half our satellites.  As for the others, we keep them near points of interest, but we don’t cover nearly enough of the solar system to maintain a comprehensive picture.”

“I suppose you’d build more of the satellites if you could.”  It’s an obvious guess.

“Of course,” responds Spitz.  “We build them as fast as our resource constraints allow us.  However, since the war started, we barely keep up with the mortality rate.  We need a more durable design, but more durable means we either increase the overall size of the satellite with more shielding, or maintain the same size and decrease the functionality by decreasing the hardware to make room for additional shielding.  The problem is the larger we make them, the more likely they’ll be discovered.  That we can’t have, as every discovery might turn into a clue whereby our enemies might discover our base here.”

I have enough background.  “What’s this video we’re about to see?”

Hawkins points at the screen.  “An attack on the Free Army’s main base.”

“Where is that?” I ask.

Spitz looks at me, surprised.

“Colonel Blair won’t tell me anything.”  I feel belittled by admitting it.

“Compartmentalization of classified information is a virtue,” Hawkins tells Spitz.

Spitz dismisses Hawkins’s wisdom with a wave.  “We have three satellites tasked with watching the FA’s main base on Callisto.”

“That’s one of Jupiter’s moons?” I ask, because I’m not sure.

Spitz nods.

“Do you maintain surveillance of the Potato?”

Spitz shakes his head.  “Resources.”

“Do you know how many rebel bases there are?  Do you know the strength of the Free Army?”

Hawkins snorts.  Whatever respect he might have for me, it’s evaporating.  He starts the video.

It’s a base like the installation on the Potato, only much bigger.  Dozens of glass domes glow, scattered in no apparent pattern among other structures.  Several of the buildings are hangars as large as the one back on Blair’s asteroid base.  Many others structures hide their purpose from the vacuum and the prying eyes of Spitz’s surveillance satellites.

In a relatively flat area, between the base and a giant white pock scar where a meteor struck Callisto some millennia in the past, rows of Arizona-class assault ships are docked on the rough, tan surface.  Though ‘docked’ is a generous word.  They lay on the ground where their pilots parked them.  Trails discolor the surface where the feet of thousands of soldiers offloaded and marched to airlocks are arrayed along one edge of the aerodrome.

Also contained within the rectangular border of the landing area are rows of Beijing-class assault ships, all in good order.  All purposely placed.  None crashed.  None damaged.

I start counting as I watch the image.  Altogether there must be over a hundred ships.

I like what that implies.  Despite the number of vessels destroyed in the Arizona Massacre, a significant portion of the American ships made it to the Free Army base.  A large number of the Chinese ones found their way too.  That doesn’t take into account other bases.

Is it possible as much as half of the SDF will turn traitor given the opportunity?

I don’t know, but my God, the numbers imply the proportion is significant.

Hawkins distracts me from the video by walking to the rear of the room and turning down the lights.  “It’s easier on the eyes,” he explains, as he takes a seat in one of the chairs behind us.

“Is this a still photograph?” asks Spitz.

“Video.”  Hawkins points at the screen.  “If you squint, you can just make out the tiny, dark spots of people moving about.  In a few minutes, the angle changes so you can see the view from another satellite just coming up over the horizon.  That one’s camera is zoomed in much closer.  You’ll see all the detail you want.”  He glances at me.  “More than you want, I suspect.”

A few pixels in the screen seem to shimmer like heat coming off a summer highway, and a second later, a Trog cruiser pops into view.  Before I can gasp, its railguns fire down on the base.

More cruisers pop out of bubble jump, all dangerously close to the planet.

I’m leaning forward in my seat, and my words come in an anxious rush.  “We saw the same thing at the Potato.  One popped out of bubble a few kilometers up.  It caused chaos with the local gravity for a moment.”

At least ten Trog cruisers are firing down on the base now.

More shimmers promise the arrival of others.

“Their grav control is...”  Spitz doesn’t finish.  “We’ve never seen this before.”

“We can’t do it,” Hawkins tells him, as more cruisers come into view.  “Not consistently.  Not without losing half our ships to collisions.”

“There must be twenty of them,” I count.  All are firing, and more are arriving.  “They’re going to be slaughtered.”  I don’t mean the Trogs.

More Trog cruisers pop out of bubble jump.

The camera angle abruptly changes.

“The Free Army has some ships in the air.”  Hawkins’s tone sounds more ominous than what he’s telling us.  “You’ll see them coming to the rescue in a minute.”

From the angle we’re viewing, it looks like Arizona all over again.  No, more a nightmare of Arizona.  The Trog ships loom large in the sky, too many to count, and the rain of railgun fire is plowing up the surface of Callisto and obliterating every human construct.

Huge geysers of dirt and rock explode into space.  Pieces of shattered ships fly in every direction.

A ship emerges from the slaughter on the surface in a sudden burst of acceleration, blazing bright blue grav, it arcs toward one of the cruisers overhead.

Spears of red-hot slugs lance across the sky, creating an impenetrable crisscross that destroys the ship before it’s a kilometer up.

Another ship shoots off the ground, followed by another.  Before they meet their fate, I see what looks like hope.  A squadron of six assault ships is raging down from above at impossible speed.

Kamikaze speed.

Oh, no.

Grav fields burst bright blue around the Trog cruisers as they try to evade and deflect.

The first attacker is knocked off course, and it flies past its target in a blur.  It explodes in a titanic plume of rock and dirt when it hits the ground.

A second Trog cruiser takes a hit right through the reactors, and its midsection disintegrates along with the assault ship that rammed it.

The other incoming ships are blazing hard on their brakes to slow down.

Two more deflect, crashing against Callisto.  Another explodes after being struck by railgun fire.  Yet another pierces a Trog hull and the cruiser reels from the impact, spinning and surging so close to the ground I think for a moment it might crash.

More assault ships take off and attack the cruisers.

Others skim across the surface, trying to escape.

There’s so much movement, it’s impossible to keep track of everything.  The sky is blazing red against black with thousands and thousands of railgun slugs.  Grav fields glow blue around white Trog cruisers and streaks of rust mark our ships as they race to their deaths.  The surface of Callisto is turning into a sandstorm filled with debris that floats slowly down to the surface in the moon’s light g.

Only one thing is easy to see—the Free Army is being slaughtered.

Chapter 37

I lose track of the minutes as I watch.

The slaughter, initially horrifying and vicious, turns systematic and numbing.  No more assault ships shoot out of the cloud cloaking the surface to make a heroic attack run.  None streak out over the horizon trying to escape.  The remaining Trog cruisers have stopped firing at small targets.  Only their largest railgun slugs fall, pummeling the base below.  The Trogs are turning it to rubble—rubble infused with the corpses of thousands of humans.

They’re mopping up, and murdering any survivors whose only hope is that the tons of stone above their heads holds longer than the Trogs’ slugs last.

The Trogs don’t want the base.  They just don’t want humans to infest it again.

“It goes on like that,” says Hawkins, like he’s talking through a tin can that stripped all the feeling from his words.

“How old is this video?” asks Spitz.

“Taking into account the time for the transmission to reach us—”

“Is it coming direct?”

Hawkins shakes his head.  “Nothing comes direct anymore.  All of the surveillance drones shoot a tight beam at one of several relay satellites, then it’s bounced to a few more before the signal ends up here.  The transit time for signals from Callisto right now is running nearly two hours.  By the time we put everything together for display down here, we’re running over four hours behind.”

“Are the Trogs still there?” I ask.

Hawkins nods.

“They’ll stay until there’s nothing left,” Spitz tells me.  “Or until they run out of railgun slugs.”

That I know, but I don’t mind the confirmation on the strategy.  “How long do you think it will take?”

“To completely slag the base?” asks Hawkins.  “That’s what you’re asking, right?”

I nod.

He glances at Spitz as if to ask permission.

Spitz silently grants it.

Hawkins sighs.  He’s very unhappy with me knowing any of this.  “The base housed nearly six thousand SDF soldiers and—”

“Six thousand?”  I’m stunned.  With those kinds of numbers, the SDF is both real and significant.  However, at the same time, destroyed.

“This is their main base,” he goes on.  “It’s not unlike our base here.  More crude.  Like most of these pseudo-military complexes, it was a converted mining colony.”

“Back on the Potato,” I tell him, “we were nine levels deep.  Figure each tunnel is two to four—sometimes six—meters from floor to ceiling, plus several meters of rock between, and the deepest levels are at least fifty meters deep.”  My assumptions are running now on a full charge of optimism.  “Simple pounding from above can’t reach the deeper layers.  The rubble from the first several will collapse and act as a shield for those below.  Sure, some of that rock will blast out, but most won’t.”  I’m guessing on this part, knowing I’m basing everything on earthbound intuition and extrapolated guesses from dramatized explosions in old Hollywood movies.

When I look up from my thoughts, Hawkins is glancing at Spitz again.  More confirmation.

“Wait.”  I’m missing more than I know.  “What?  Why do you keep looking at Spitz?”

Spitz tells me, “Not only do we have surveillance, we have people there.”

“Spies?” I ask.

“We prefer not to think of them that way,” responds Spitz.  “We’re all on the same side.”

I shrug off the differentiation he’s trying to make.  “So you know the base in detail.  You know if they’re still alive.”

“It’s not that easy,” says Hawkins.  “Every directional radio dish on the surface has been destroyed.  It’ll be a long time before we hear anything from our people there, even if any survived.”

“But it was a mining colony,” I argue.  “Surely the depth—”

Spitz is shaking his head.  “Callisto is the largest undifferentiated body in the solar system.”

That throws me for a loop.  “At the risk of sounding like the stupid one in the room, not only do I not know what that means, I can’t begin to guess why it’s important.”

“Geologically,” says Spitz, “Callisto never separated into layers.  The earth, for instance, has its core, mantle, and crust.  In the most simplistic explanation, think of it like the layers of stone you see on the side of a mountain.  Elements and like compounds tend to collect in these layers.”

Easy so far.  I’m following along.

“In an undifferentiated body,” says Spitz, “that doesn’t happen.  It might be that any ten-ton scoop of rock you take from the surface might have the same composition as a similar scoop taken from a few hundred meters down.”

“But the Potato—”

Spitz raises a palm to hush me.  “Every geological situation is different.  “On Callisto, they never had a need to dig the mines deep.  Everything they sought, they found near the surface.”

“How deep did they go?” I ask, feeling the ominous answer.

“Two levels,” answers Hawkins.  “Most of the base is less than twenty meters deep.”

Another major defeat.  Another slaughter.  I shore up my disappointment and ask, “How many ships got away?  How many SDF bases are left?  What’s their strength?”

Chapter 38

Spitz nods at Hawkins.  “He knows the SDF better than any of us.”

“By our count,” says Hawkins, “it looks like one hundred and thirty-six ships were destroyed.  Over eighty percent of the SDF’s strength.”

I’m running through calculations in my head.  “Are you saying the SDF now has what—twenty-five, thirty ships left?”  So much hope and so much taken away over such a short time.

“That’s our estimate,” admits Hawkins.  “The SDF has three more bases—the one you and your people escaped to, and two more.”

“Escaped?”  I’m a bit insulted.  “The Trogs had taken that rock, and we had to fight for it.  Escape isn’t the right word.”

Spitz leans forward.  “This is all overwhelming, Dylan, but please remember, Colonel Hawkins is on your side.  He’s trying to give you the information you’re going to need.”

I accept my rebuke and turn to the colonel.  “Sorry.”

“Amateurs get emotional.  I’m used to it.”

I bite back my reply, and ask instead, “Did you know the Potato was in Trog hands?”

Hawkins shakes his head.  “The main SDF base is the only one where we maintain surveillance.  Our information on the others is inferred and delayed.”

“So there may be more than twenty-five or thirty SDF ships left?”

“Or fewer.”

I can’t argue with that.  “What about the other two bases?  Were they attacked by the Trogs?

“Not that we know of.”

Not reassuring.  “So they could both be in Trog hands.”

“Possibly.”

“And if they are?”

“Then the SDF is down to maybe ten ships, depending on how many of the damaged ones at the Potato have been repaired.”

“I’m not going to press the argument,” says Spitz, “but with this attack, maybe it’s time to give up on the SDF, Dylan.  Maybe it’s time to reconsider going to the colonies with your crew.”

“Are you ready to give up?” I ask.

The conference room door swings open and a woman asks to speak with Hawkins.

With a quick apology, he steps outside and closes the door behind.

Spitz continues our conversation.  “As I said, I’m not trying to sell you.  I simply suggest that the situation has drastically changed.  Perhaps the decision you made is no longer valid.”

“What would you do in my shoes?” I ask.

“I can’t answer that.”

“You can.”

Spitz leans forward, stress running through the wrinkles on his face.  “I have my own set of worries at the moment.”

I’m taken aback.  This is the first time I’ve seen him under pressure.  “What aren’t you telling me?”

Spitz laughs without joy.  “We’re withholding nothing.”  He points at the screen.  “The SDF has been safe on that moon for eight years, growing their rebellion ever so slowly.  Now, when they finally have an armada of ships, that if used properly could destroy the Trog fleet, they’re wiped out in a matter of hours.”

I look at the screen and watch as the overkill destruction continues.  “There’s more than that?”

“Maybe the Trogs found the location of the SDF base yesterday.”  Spitz pauses for effect.  “Maybe they’ve known for two years and decided to do something only after the SDF became a threat.  What worries me is whether the Trogs know about this place and whether their fleet is going to come into orbit over Iapetus after they reload their holds.  So you see, Dylan.  It’s not your choice that worries me as I watch this feed.  I’m worried for all the people here.”

Hawkins comes back into the conference room with his eyes locked on me.

“What was that about?” asks Spitz.

“The comm links between the remaining three bases have come to life.  They know about the attack on the main base.”

“And?” asks Spitz.

“A Colonel Blair has declared that having the most seniority, she has crowned herself the SDF’s new military commander.  She has ordered every ship to her base, the Potato.  They’re going on the attack.”

“Colonel Hawkins,” I say, “would you communicate with the scout ship and tell them to get back here ASAP.  Dr. Spitz, I need my ship as soon as you can get it in the air.”

“Well, the tests—”

I shake my head vigorously.  “It works, or it doesn’t.  You don’t know Blair.  She’s one hell of an administrator, yet she can’t keep her head when the bullets are flying.  Worst of all, she doesn’t know it.  I need to get back there.  If she doesn’t have somebody with her to keep things moving in the right direction, she’ll do something stupid.”

Chapter 39

The scout ship arrives eleven long hours after the first railgun slugs fell on Callisto.  Me, Phil, and the Gray are waiting in the hangar as the vessel flies in through the flat grav field that holds the atmosphere inside.

Over the hours, my impatience to get underway has put a rough edge on my mood, and Phil has had to remind me dozens of times to keep it under control.  I’m having difficulty because I keep imagining all the wasted resources and people who are going to die if we don’t execute our counterattack properly.  I feel like our last opportunity to win this war is slipping away.

The scout ship sets down.  The blue glow of its grav fields blinks out of existence.

Colonel Hawkins walks up.  “Kane, I have an update on Callisto.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“The Trog cruisers are jumping out in twos and threes.  It started about an hour ago.”

“The Callisto base is dead?” I ask.  “Completely dead?”

Hawkins barely nods, as if a limited acknowledgment might undo the truth of it.

I understand.  Such a defeat is hard to take.

“We suspect they’re convoying back to their bases as they run out of ammunition.”

“Convoys?” Phil asks.  “No point in that for hyperspace travel.”

“It’s so they won’t be alone when they arrive at their destinations,” I guess.  “We may not be winning this war, but our ships have given them something to be afraid of.”  I glance at Hawkins for his thoughts on my conjecture.

“It’s not unusual for ships to jump down the same heading when they have a common destination, yet these ships are coordinating their departure times.  They’re leaving with in seconds of one another.  They want to arrive together.”  Hawkins nods as he confirms his thought process.  He looks at me and says, “I’d say you’re right.”

“Are they jumping out to random points in space to conceal their destinations?” I ask.  “That’s what we do.  Now that they’re afraid of us—”

“Afraid?” Hawkins asks.  He’s skeptical on that point.

“Concerned,” I correct.  “Respectful?  No.  Not that.  However, they see us as a danger.”

Hawkins agrees.  “They aren’t concealing.  Most are hopping down vectors toward Ceres.  Others are headed out to the Trojans.”

“The Trojans?”  Phil looks at me, and then at Hawkins for the answer.

“An asteroid field scattered in Jupiter’s orbit at the L5 Lagrange zone.”

“They have a base out there, too?” asks Phil.

We had no knowledge of anything out there.

Hawkins nods.

“How many went to Ceres?” I ask.

“More than half,” answers Hawkins.

“They haven’t sent that many to Ceres since just after the Arizona Massacre.  Has this information been forwarded on to Blair?”

Hawkins nods.  “Through your people on the ship.”

“Shit!”

Both Phil and the colonel look at me like I’ve just lost track of reality.

I quickly apologize.  “I was just thinking, they knew a bunch of these Arizona-class ships escaped on the day we all lifted off from earth.  And because of the way that battle turned out, they understood the danger.  I’ll bet that’s why they spread themselves across the solar system.  They were afraid a coordinated attack by all of our ships could destroy their fleet.”

“Makes sense,” Hawkins agrees.

“Now that they’ve destroyed the bulk of our fleet, the concern is gone.  They think they’re better off together than separate.”

The colonel thinks his way through to my conclusion.  “They believe that together they can prevail in any attack the SDF or the Free Army is able to mount with what they have left.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too.”

“There’s one other thing,” suggests Hawkins.

I don’t like the sound of the question.  “What?”

“I’ve been ordered to ask you to allow me onto your ship.”

I point at the Turd.  Spitz’s work crews are loading up the last of the railgun slugs and topping off the hydro tanks.  “It’s right there.”

“He wants me with you when you leave.”

I look him up and down to emphasize the point I’m going to make.  “I’ve been off solid foods for three days already.  I drank down the vile intestinal cleansers.  There’s nothing in my gastrointestinal system left to clog my suit’s recyclers.  Phil and every member of my platoon has been doing the same.  All we need to do is don our junky orange suits and board up.  We can’t wait three days for you.”

“I’m ready to go now.”

That takes Phil and me both by surprise.

“My CO ordered me off solid food once your platoon switched to the liquid diet.”

“So you all made this decision three days ago.”  My edginess pushes me to be annoyed, though being out of the loop isn’t something I have any legitimate cause to be offended over.

“They were considering it, and had to keep their options open.  Look, if you don’t want me on the ship, then say no.  I’d rather go back to the cafeteria and have a pseudo-beef sandwich and some French fries.  I’d much rather stay here where I’m not likely to be killed chasing a losing cause.”

I ease up.  “Why do they want you to come along?”

“Dr. Spitz has convinced the powers-that-be we need an official liaison with the SDF.”

“Now?” I laugh.  “The SDF just got slaughtered.”

“A day is going to come when you’ll have to explain how your ship was upgraded.  There’s no way you can do that without exposing us.”

“So what,” I ask, “you’re just going to tell Blair about the base?”

“We’re not giving her anything like that,” says Hawkins.  “We need to bring along a few flight crews to ferry ships back and forth between here and the Potato.  We’ll upgrade them as much as we can, and send them back to Blair.  We can’t install the axial railguns like the one you have on your ship, however, we can fix the drive arrays and automate the fusion reactors so they won’t be death traps.”

“And they’ll be just as fast as our ship?” asks Phil.

“That’s right.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Why?” Hawkins repeats, like it’s obvious.  He waves a hand at the Rusty Turd.  “I just told you.  You can’t explain—”

“No,” I cut him off and turn to Phil.  “He’s bullshitting me, right?”

Phil nods.  “There’s more he’s not telling you.”

The colonel admits his guilt with a nod.  “If I meet Blair and I judge all is well, then I’m to coordinate more than just the upgrading of the ships.  We’ll share intel with the Free Army.  In exchange, we need the Free Army’s fleet to provide security for our freighters so we can send them to the rogue asteroid mines for materials.  As Spitz told you, we have a hard time mining enough of what we need here on Iapetus.”

I look to Phil to see if he’s satisfied with Hawkins’s answer.

Phil nods.

“So,” I say, “I get you, a couple of techs to work the railgun, and another six or so, the crews to ferry the assault ships back and forth.”

Hawkins nods.

“And they’re all ready to fly within the hour?”

Hawkins says, “You have room in your platoon compartment for all of us.”

I look at Phil again.  “Thoughts?”

“I don’t see a downside,” he answers.

I turn back to Hawkins.  “Welcome aboard.”

Chapter 40

We spend half an hour accelerating to a safe distance from Saturn and its abundance of orbital objects, each exerting a complicating influence on the local gravitational topography.

It feels good to be back on the ship’s bridge again, although it’s becoming crowded.  Penny, Phil, and Jablonsky are at their stations, as is Tarlow, lounging in front of his monitors and taking up too much space.  Brice is standing near me.  Hawkins is in one of several seats along the back wall of the bridge, talking over the comm to his people who are mostly in the platoon cabin in the front of the ship.  Lenox, Silva, and Peterson are up there with the rest of my soldiers.  The Gray is in one of the cabins forward of the bridge, physically alone, but unbreakably linked to Phil.

“Our distance is good,” Penny tells me.

I glance to Phil for confirmation.

“We’ve been a lot closer on both ends of a bubble jump.”  He’s not bothered.

I tell him.  “I’d prefer to be careful when we have the time for it.”

Phil laughs at me but doesn’t bother to explain why he thinks that’s funny.  He turns to Penny.  “I have the jumps programmed into the system.”

Over the ship comm, Penny announces we’re going to jump, and she turns to me.  “While you’re being all safety-minded, you should probably sit down and strap in.”

I’m gripping a handhold on the ceiling, and I have my feet grav-locked to the floor.  I’m in the best position to see across my bridge crew’s consoles.  “I’m fine.”

“Suit yourself.  Can I punch it?”

I nod.

Blue flashes bright all around us, starts to dim, and then flashes to full brightness again.

I glance at Phil.  The strobe is not normal.

“New system,” he tells me.  “At 20c, our jumps only last a few seconds before we pop out of bubble to start the next one.  The computer handles the interim part so fast, it’s doing in seconds what we spent thirty or forty minutes doing manually before.”

“And upgraded equipment,” adds Hawkins, “that helps, too, because your performance is consistent.”

“We’re right where we should be,” Penny confirms.  “The ship flies like a dream.”  She turns to me with a grin on her face.  “We need to rename it.  This not a turd anymore.”

“How long until we reach the Potato?” I ask.

“Thirteen minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” answers Phil.  “If we did it all in one jump, we’d be there before you knew it.”

“Let’s be safe while we can,” says Penny.  It sounds like she’s having fun mocking me.  “There’ll be plenty of time for hotshot risks later.  I’m sure of that.”

“Me, too.”

Chapter 41

We pop out of bubble in a familiar spot, on the far side of the Potato from the mining colony.

“Jablonsky,” I say, “get me Blair on the comm.  We need to find out what we have and—”

Phil interrupts, “There’s no one here.”

That stops me cold.  “They’ve abandoned the base?”

“No,” he answers.  “There aren’t any ships here.”

“Are they docked on the other side?” asks Penny.  “In the hangar?  Maybe down in the mining pit?”

Phil shrugs.  “Possibly.  Nothing’s flying, though.”

“Nothing in the air?”  I can’t believe Blair would be so stupid, especially after what happened on Callisto.  “Tarlow, anything on your scanners?”

He shakes his head.

I see Jablonsky talking, but I’m not linked on that comm, so I ping him “Jablonsky, what’s the word?”

“I’m arguing with one of her minions.”

“Keep at it,” I tell him.  “Penny, bring us in close.  I may have to talk to Blair in person.”  I groan.

“You have to set me and my two crews down,” says Hawkins.  “We need to land no matter what.”

He’s right.  Mostly.  “Jablonsky,” I call, “tell them we’re coming in.  Get us in to see Blair.  It’ll be me, Brice, and Hawkins.”  To Hawkins, I say, “We’ll bring your crews in later after we pave the way with Blair.”  I turn to Penny.  “As soon as the three of us get off the ship, I want you back in the air.  Put some distance between the ship and the asteroid.  I don’t want any of you in danger in case the Trog fleet shows up.”

Chapter 42

Forty minutes later, I’m feeling naked with no rifle in my hands.  I’m in Blair’s office, standing in front of her desk with my helmet clipped to my belt.  Brice is on my left and Hawkins on my right.  None of us has a railgun, a pistol, or a hand grenade.  They’ve been taken away.

Two guards, wearing blue coveralls and lurking near the wall behind us, have their weapons ready to fire.  That disturbs me almost as much as the fact that they’re not in their orange suits.  Indeed, I saw very few in space suits on the way down.  No matter what it says about loyalties, these people aren’t ready for an attack that could come at any moment.

Blair’s eyes are glued on Hawkins, looking him up and down, making it clear with her silence she’s displeased with his crisp orange suit and its unusual appearance.  He has no name and rank stenciled on the chest in Korean script.  He has unusual insignia on his shoulders.

“Are we going to stand here all day?” Brice asks, finally breaking the silence.

Blair glares at him.  “Are we going to stand here all day, sir?”

“Don’t ask me,” he answers, ignoring her intent.  “This is your show.”

“You received our message about the attack on the Free Army headquarters?” I ask, trying to move things in the right direction.

Blair’s interest falls back on Hawkins as she asks me, “How would you know about that?  It wasn’t on your flight plan?”

“This is Colonel Jake Hawkins.  He’s with—”

“Oh,” Blair acts surprised.  “I get an introduction?”

I roll my eyes.  “Colonel Blair, this is Colonel Hawkins.  Colonel Hawkins, this is Colonel Blair of the Free Army.”

“Commander of the Free Army Ground Forces and Fleet.”

Hawkins steps forward and extends his hand to shake, “Good to meet you, Colonel Blair.”

Blair doesn’t reach out a hand.  She doesn’t stand up.  “Who are you, Jake Hawkins?”

He steps back, unfazed.  “You might say I’m with the UN, or what became of the UN.”

“The United Nations?” Blair scoffs.  “There’s no UN anymore.”

“Like the Free Army,” says Hawkins, “we’ve taken our operation off-planet.”

“Where?” she asks.

“Off-planet.”  His tone makes it clear that’s all she’s going to get.

“How am I supposed to trust anything you say if—”

“Let’s not play that game,” Hawkins tells her.  “I am who I am.  Believe it or don’t.  It doesn’t matter to me.  In fact, I hope you don’t, because to tell you the truth, I don’t want to be here.  I was ordered here.  So here I am.  I was told to offer you what assistance we can provide.  If you want it, good.  If not, I don’t care.  I’d prefer to go home.”

“Assistance?” asks Blair, her interest piqued.  “Do you have ships?  Soldiers?  Are you going to fight with us?”

Hawkins shakes his head.  “We can provide technological assistance and intelligence.”

Blair throws her head back and laughs.

The three of us share a look and let Blair finish.

“They modified my ship,” I tell her.

“While you were supposed to be scouting?” Blair shoots back.  “Were those reports you sent back genuine, or made up?”

“While we were gone,” I explain, “we stopped at their base.  They sent out a ship to cover our scout duties, and in the meantime, they modified my ship.”

“This all sounds so convenient.  So preplanned.”  Blair’s glare settles on me.  “Who are you working for, Kane?  The Trogs?  The SDF?  The MSS?  Or this reincarnation of the UN?  Do you wonder why we don’t trust you here?”

Hawkins turns to me.  “This is a waste.  We should go.”

“Who says I’m going to let you?” asks Blair.

Deciding I should have taken one of the ambiguously coded helmets offered by Dr. Spitz’s people, I step forward and lean on her desk.  “Don’t start this shit again.  You’ve made your accusations one too many times.  I’ve proven myself.  I’ve fought, and I’ve bled.  I’ve led my people into war while you sat in your lair and played your games.  I don’t care what you think you’re implying by saying you might not let us go, but let’s get straight to the point.  I’m out of the Free Army.  Right this moment.  I’m done with you and your sad shit.  We’re leaving, all three of us, and if you have the slightest inkling that you’re going to stop me, then spit it out, tell me right now.  Because whatever you believe about us bug-heads, and especially about me and Phil and his little stick-figure buddy, we’re in communication right now.  Phil reads my thoughts like you read a book.  And it won’t matter if you believe my ship was modified or not, you know if you do anything to us, he’ll ram so many holes through this place there won’t be anybody left alive when he’s done.  So you pick—do you want to play your game or do you want to give me a cordial send-off?”

Blair is mortified.

She glances at her guards.

I feel them tense.  They’re ready for violence.  “Don’t do it,” I tell her.  “Don’t put your people at risk for your ego.”

I see the mean defiance in her eyes as her mouth starts to open, and I guess what she’s going to do.  That preemption is my only choice.

I juice my grav plates to max capacity and shoot across the room, slamming one of the guards into the glass wall he’s standing in front of.  The wall flexes but doesn’t break.  I avoid injury by cushioning the impact on my body with defensive grav.

The guard is unconscious before he even knows he’s been hit.  The other guard is shouting something furious and raising his weapon when Brice copies my move and slams him against the glass wall on the other side of the door.

Three seconds later, the guards’ weapons are in our hands, pointed at Blair.  She freezes, stuck in mid-reach beneath her desk.

“Show me your hands,” I tell her.  “Do it slow.”

Blair doesn’t move, but says “No.”

Chapter 43

“They’re looking,” says Brice.

Blair still isn’t moving.  I know she’s trying to guess if she can reach the weapon hidden under the desk before I pull the trigger on the railgun I have pointed at the center of her chest.

In my peripheral vision, I see Hawkins point through the glass wall at the front of Blair’s office.  “Out there in the control room,” he says, “they’re looking.”

Blair decides on the weapon that’s always worked best for her.  “If you think—”

No time for thinking.

I turn a shoulder toward Blair, goose my suit grav, fly over her desk, and slam her into the wall behind before she has time to gasp.

I bounce off her and stumble to my feet as she crumbles to the floor.

“They’re coming!”  Hawkins tells us.

“Brice,” I order, “make sure they know you have that railgun.”

“Do you want me to use it?” he asks.

“You know I don’t.”

“Are you willing to die, so people will think you’re the good guy?”

“No.”  I find Blair’s pistol and attach it to my magnetic belt clip.

I hear the grin in Brice’s voice as he says, “Then we’re on the same page.”

Kneeling down, I check Blair’s pulse, realize I can’t feel the subtle rhythm through my thick gloves and see her chest rise and fall.  She’s not dead.  Her eyes flutter, she’s not even unconscious—not really.  She just had the crap knocked out of her and she’s dazed, but anger boils back quickly in those eyes.

I drag her to her feet and pin her against the wall.  “Hawkins, get over here.”

He hesitates.

“One of us has to manage her,” I tell him.  “One of us has to take this railgun.”

He was just supposed to ask a simple yes/no question and then go back to Iapetus.  He doesn’t want responsibility for Blair.  By the look on his face, he doesn’t want any of what’s going on in front of him.

I can’t blame him.  I nod at the railgun.  “Listen, the faster we do this, the higher the chance it’ll work.

He reaches a conclusion.  “I’m pretty good with a railgun.”

“Can you use your grav plates to fly?” I ask.

“Don’t assume because we’re not in the war we’re not trained.  I’ll do my part.  Let’s stop yacking and get this show on the road.”

“Helmets on,” I tell Brice and Hawkins.  “Do it quick.  Brice, check on those two guards, make sure they don’t need medical attention.”

He looks down at them.  “They’re both breathing.”

Moments later, we’re in front of Blair’s glass door, ready to exit.  Most of her people in the control room are stunned, staring, immobile.  Some are hurrying to the exit.  Others are on their comms, calling reinforcements.  A few of her loyal guard, I sense, are already here.  They’re in the hall, positioning themselves to contain us inside.

“Time to rock,” I tell Brice and Hawkins.  “I’ll lead, you two stay close and watch our six.”

Blair is standing rigid and angry.  I know she wants to resist, yet I’m not going to give her the chance.  Once we’re out of her office and out of its artificial gravity, we’ll be subject only to the asteroid’s nearly null grav.  I’ll carry her by the collar outstretched in front of me, my shield.  She’ll be a hefty mass to shift around, but as long as I keep her hands away from the walls and her feet off the floor, there’ll be precious little she can do to resist.

“Hawkins,” I point with the barrel of the pistol I’m now holding, “grab that mask and breather off the guard’s belt.”

Blair tenses.  “You are not taking me outside.”

I give her a shove toward the door, stopping just before I push it open.  “Life sucks when you’re a conniving pog.  You’ve got no authority over me anymore so keep your orders to yourself.”

“Pog?” Blair asks, like that’s the most important thing I just said.  “What does that even mean?”

“Persons other than grunts,” laughs Brice.

Unexpectedly, Blair tries something different.  Her tone softens, and she affects the voice of a normal, feeling human being.  “We can work this out.”

“We are working it out.”  I push her through the door, amping up my defensive grav as I go.

Chapter 44

In the hall, without the grav field from Blair’s office floor pulling her weight down and my suit’s defensive field pushing her from behind, I have to hold onto her like a helium balloon trying to fly away in a breeze.  I grav my feet tightly to the floor and keep her body between me and the three coverall-wearing soldiers up the walkway, all aiming their weapons at me.

One step forward.  “I’m Captain Sokolov, and I order you to release Colonel Blair.”

I brandish my pistol just long enough for Sokolov to glimpse at it before shoving it back against Blair’s skull.  “I don’t like your toady,” I tell her.  “Make him and his buddies go far away, and remind them, they’ve got no defensive grav.  I can exterminate them as easily as I can kill you.”

Blair blurts out rapid orders, and her men turn and clear the hall.

“Follow me,” I tell Hawkins and Brice.

I hustle up the hall and shove Blair through the door into the control room’s lobby, taking a second before I step through to use my bug to make sure the room is empty of hostiles.

Brice seals his faceplate shut, and so does Hawkins.  I leave mine open, so I can talk to Blair.

Over the comm between the three of us, Brice says, “I’m connecting with the ship, although as soon as someone in the control room realizes we’re on their network, they’ll kick us off.”

“If we move fast, it won’t matter.”  Hurrying across the lobby to the main doors, I ask, “How long do you think it takes to put on one of these suits?”

“In a hurry,” Brice answers, “with help, five minutes?  Three if you’ve practiced.”

“Three to five minutes,” I tell him.  “That’s how long we have to get to the surface.  Then our advantage goes away.”  I glance back at the control room.  “My guess is it’ll take them longer than that before it occurs to them to cut us off the network.”

“What about freezing our suits?” asks Brice.  He and I are in our original helmets, still coded under Blair’s command hierarchy.

“She doesn’t have her helmet on,” I tell him.  “I guess we’d better hope we’re out of range before somebody thinks to use it against us.”

“Three to five minutes on that, too,” says Hawkins.  His UN troops use the same orange suits we do.  Earth produces the uniforms by the million, and the solar system is just awash in them.  “The helmet won’t work independently.  It has to be powered through the suit, which won’t fire up until it has a body inside.”

We’re at the door.

“Once through,” I tell them, “we’ll go left, fly as fast as we can to the end of the corridor, make another left down a short hall, and then a lift will take us up to level one.  We have to pass through the domed recreation pavilion up there to reach an airlock that’ll give us access to the surface.”

“That glass dome we came through after the Trogs first attacked us?” asks Brice.

“That’s the place.”  I turn for a quick glance at each of them.  “Brice, tell Penny to bring the ship down for the pickup.”

Brice laughs.  “I thought you and Phil were connected via bug-net.”

“Him and his Tick might know what’s going on, but they’re too far away for me to sense them.”

Hawkins chuckles as I shove Blair through the door.

Chapter 45

I glance in both directions.  “Shit.”

Brice and Hawkins are out of the lobby and into the hall in seconds, weapons up, one pointing left, the other right.

A handful of soldiers is taking up positions in both directions, weapons readied, making the threat.  More are coming into the hall.

“Well, boss?” asks Brice.

“Shoot if they shoot,” I tell him.  “Stick to the plan, let’s take this witch for a ride.”

Blair glares at me and shouts something I don’t listen to because her shout turns to a scream as I hold her by the collar and take off.  Flying down the hall, I accelerate toward the soldiers arrayed to stop us.

Brice and Hawkins don’t need instruction.  They’re right behind me.

Ahead, I see wide eyes and hesitation.

Blair sounds like a Stuka screaming down from above.

“Max defensive grav!”  I shout into my comm.

Red railgun rounds spray past us from behind, hitting walls after deflecting from our shields.

Brice curses.  Like me, he doesn’t want to shoot.  Despite the situation, these soldiers aren’t our enemies.

“Fire?” asks Hawkins.

A few more rounds hit the wall just ahead.  I hope they’re just trying to scare us.  I shout, “No!”

The soldiers ahead dodge out of our way, diving to the floor or pinning themselves against walls.  We blow past, bowling them over with the combined effect of three strong grav fields.

The fire from behind stops.

We reach the side hall, and I decelerate hard.  I have to grab Blair by the belt to keep her with me as I make the turn.  We both hit the wall on the way around.  My defensive field bounces me off, and I careen forward.  Blair is bumped and scraped, but we stay together.

We reach the lift in a flash and come to a stop, panting.

I glance up to make sure the lift is clear.  “Everybody good?”

Nods from both Hawkins and Brice as they level their weapons at our rear flank.

“Up we go!”  I jump into the lift tube and accelerate.

Hawkins comes in right behind, and Brice follows—all too close, all too fast.

I exit on sub level one.

Hawkins pops out half a second later, knocking me down and sending both Blair and me tumbling into the hall.  Brice is out of the tube next.

I’m tumbling, a victim of my defensive grav field, as I realize three of Blair’s troops are standing just down the hall, surprised.

Blair situates her feet beneath her and pieces the situation together before I do, shouting at the three that she’s being kidnapped.

I bounce off the ceiling, trying to figure out which way is down as my head spins, and I scold myself for using too much defensive grav.

The three soldiers rush me.

Before I know it, I’ve got hands all around, trying to push through my grav field and grip me, grasping at my weapon, my helmet, my H pack.

Brice hits all of us unexpectedly with the full force of his accelerating suit.  The impact sends me spinning down the hall amidst the three soldiers, one with blood and teeth burbling from his mouth, another cursing, and the last dazed, with eyes rolled back in her head.

I focus on orienting my suit and taking control of my trajectory, and turning down my defensive grav.  “Where’s Blair?”

“She was just here,” says Hawkins.

I turn to see he’s on his feet, back by the lift, weapon up, and coming toward us.

Brice is in the hall near me, watching the three soldiers spin off toward a ninety-degree turn ahead of us.  “Only one way she could have gone.”  He takes off in a burst of blue grav wash.

I wave Hawkins to come, and I follow Brice, making the turn just in time to see Blair struggling with him as he grabs her from behind and lifts her.  Brice glances back at me.

“Just through the open doorway ahead of you,” I tell him.

Brice gives me a nod and accelerates away.

Hawkins catches up in a snap, and I give him a smile as we take off together.  I realize he’s exceptionally competent with his grav controls.

We zip through the doorway a few seconds behind Brice and fly up a dozen stairs, and suddenly we’re in the dome in the company of nearly twenty people, all lounging in chairs, taking their leisure time to sit under the stars and watch the low-g fountain undulate its water into living art.

“Everybody stay seated!”  I shout as I wave my weapon at them.

Hawkins brandishes his as he pans across the room, making sure they all know they’re each a trigger pull away from the end of their lives.

Brice pushes Blair toward the airlock door.

She protests and flails her limbs.

“Put on your mask,” Brice orders as he punches the button to cycle the airlock.  “This next part is going to suck for you, but not as much as it will if you don’t have your mask on.”

I don’t know if Blair can hear him through the helmet, nonetheless, she grabs at the mask we gave her.  She knows what’s coming.

A woman and then a man courageously stand.  “You can’t take her out there,” the woman says, pointing at the airlock.  “She’ll die.”

“What are you doing, Kane?”  It’s some guy.  “Is this it?  Are you really a Trog spy?”

“I believed you,” says the woman.  “I thought the propaganda was bullshit.”

“Look,” I shout, “Blair’s going to be fine.  She threatened to kill us.”

“Don’t,” Hawkins tells me.  “You can’t litigate this here.”

The airlock door is open, and Brice pushes Blair inside.  “The comms are down,” he tells me.  “I can’t raise the ship.  It’s just us three now.”

Hawkins taps his helmet as he backs toward the door.  “I’ve got just you two.”

“Inside,” I tell him.

I back in, pointing my pistol outward as I pull the door closed behind me.

Blair has her mask on, and she’s screaming at me about all the terrible things she’s going to have done to me when her wrath comes home to roost.

I pull my faceplate down just as I pick up a telepathic image from Phil.

The ship is coming down outside.

Air whistles out of the airlock and Blair’s panic turns shrill as she grasps her hands over her mask, deathly afraid it’ll pop off and leave her at the mercy of the cold vacuum.

The three of us in suits wait silently as the air drains away.  Brice points his weapon at the outer door, and Hawkins does the same.

All of Blair’s animated protests turn into a horrified stare as she pushes her back to the wall.  “I’m freezing!”  she shouts.  “Don’t do this!”

The airlock finishes.  The outer door pops open.

Brice goes out first, panning right to left with his weapon.

The Rusty Turd is setting down in a cloud of dust just a dozen meters away.

Hawkins follows Brice out, weapon up.

“Clear!”  calls Brice.  “Let’s go.”

Chapter 46

Blue grav surges all around as the ship blasts away from the Potato.

“Still nobody around but us,” Phil tells me over the comm.

I glance at Brice.  He shrugs.  The absence of ships means only one thing.

None too gently, I seat Blair on the exam table in what passes for an infirmary on the Turd.  We’re inside the ship’s pressurized compartments, but she’s still wearing her breathing mask, with eyes searing tungsten hate-needles at me through the glass faceplate as she gasps to the point of hyperventilating.  She’s shivering.  Her skin is blotchy with cold on the verge of frostbite over new bruises.

It’s obvious her short minutes exposed to the vacuum were unpleasant.

I point at a cabinet on the other side of Hawkins.  “Grab me a blanket out of there.”

He cuts his eyes at me disapprovingly as he reaches into the cabinet.  I don’t think he wants me to keep her alive.

“Not that one,” I tell him.  “The ones on the bottom in the plastic wrap.  They’ll automatically heat up when you break the seal.”

He unwraps the blanket and throws it over Blair’s shoulders.

I comm the bridge, “Phil, can you come back here?”

He instantly steps through the door.  “I knew you were going to ask.”

“Everything okay up there?” I ask Penny.

“All’s good.  Where are we headed?”

“Just hide out in the vacuum for now,” I answer.  “We’ll have a destination in a minute.”

I unlock and raise my faceplate, and then remove Blair’s mask.

“You’re an imbecile,” she croaks.  “Do you even know what the hell you’re doing?”

I nod.  “Where did you send the fleet?”

She looks down at her discolored arms and rubs a hand over her skin.  “You are a piece of shit.”

“I know.  Where did you send the fleet?”

She glares up at me.  “If you think I’m telling you that, you’re the dumbest spy who ever lived.”

I turn to Phil.

“Ceres,” he tells me.

Blair gawks at him for half a second before hitting me with a laugh.  “You idiots think you can read my mind?  Ha! You’re morons.”

“Yeah,” I answer.  “When did they leave?”

Blair clamps up and turns away.  “You’ll hang for this.”

“Just over two hours ago,” Phil answers for her.

Even I’m impressed.  Turning back to Blair, I ask, “What about the—”

“Stop asking me questions!”  She tries to pull herself off the examining table, but Brice puts a heavy hand on her shoulder to keep her from standing up.

“The other two bases?” I ask.  “What about their ships?”

“Stop it!”  Blair shouts, angry tears running out of her eyes.  “Stop it, damn you!”

“All going to Ceres,” Phil tells me.  “He looks down at his d-pad.  Looks like the attack started thirty minutes ago.”

“Thirty minutes?”  It’s my turn to shout anger at Blair.  “And you were sitting behind your desk like nothing special was going on?  Your whole fleet is engaged.”

“Not the whole fleet,” Phil clarifies.  “She told them to engage as soon as they arrived.  They’re not going in together.”

“What?”  I grab Blair by the shoulder.  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She’s not intimidated.  “We had to respond, and we had to do it before you and your spy compatriots gave us away.”

“My God!”  I step back.  “You don’t know the first damn thing about tactics.”

I turn to Phil.  “Get back to the bridge.”  Over the comm, I call, “Penny, get us to Ceres as fast as you can.”  I turn to Brice.  “Have three of your people put Blair in a suit, secure her hands, and bring her to the bridge.”  I lean over to face Blair, noses nearly touching.  “Now you’re gonna see what the truth is.”

Chapter 47

My soldiers are good despite their negligent training back on earth.  They do their jobs efficiently.

Blair is in a seat at the back of the bridge, buckled in, wrists bound, and pissed off.  She’s been dressed in one of the spare orange suits loaded along with our other supplies back on Iapetus.  It doesn’t fit her well.  She doesn’t have an H pack installed, so no power.  She isn’t wearing a helmet, though we have one for her nearby.

Penny is in the pilot’s seat, Phil, Jablonsky, and Tarlow are all at their stations.  The Gray is alone, sitting in his brightly lit room, feeling whatever passes for tension along with the rest of us.

We have two techs on the railgun that runs up our axis—a man and a woman whose names I don’t even know yet.  I hope the gun will do what Spitz promised.

Hawkins is in the platoon compartment with his two crews of three—pilots, navigators, and comm officers—all preparing to use their weapons the way they probably haven’t since whatever passed for basic training up on Iapetus.  They seem like good people, not one of them complains.

Brice is up front with them.  He and Lenox divided our remaining troops into two fire teams.  With Hawkins’s people, that gives me three units, not even half a platoon.

We strobe through a final jump, as Phil brings us to a place far enough away from Ceres that he and his Tick are able to tell me what’s going on, but not so close we’ll be noticed.

It only takes minutes to put it all together.

We need to get down there and attack the Trogs.  It’s time for the pep talk.

I open a comm to the ship.  “None of us planned to fight today—war happens on its own schedule.”  I can’t help but cut a glare at Blair.  “I can’t say what we’ll have to do.  We didn’t have time to plan.  We have Spitz’s wonder weapon running through the hull.  We’re riding the fastest, sexiest, turd-textured beast in the whole damn universe—”

That earns me some chuckles.

“—and pretty much the whole damn Trog fleet is waiting where we’re going.”  I take a moment to let that sink in.  “On the bright side, these are the same odds we faced our first day up, and we took out three Trog cruisers that day.”

The platoon whoops and hollers.  We have some confidence against long odds.

“Like that day, the battle is already underway.  The Trog fleet just took out the Free Army headquarters up on Callisto.  They caught us by surprise and destroyed most of the fleet.  They killed over a hundred ships—Arizona-class and Beijing-class—while they were docked on the surface.  Because the Trogs are a bunch of stupid Neanderthals and Ticks, they shot their wad trying to pound the complex to dust.  The cruisers that didn’t use up all of their railguns slugs used up most of them.  That might work to our advantage.  We have twenty-seven assault ships either engaged or soon to be.  By our count, there are more than thirty Trog cruisers down there.  The rest high-tailed it out to the Trojans to resupply.  Things are fucked up, but we’re grunts.  This is just another day at the office for us.”

More whoops.

“Sit tight up there.  We’re going to try to blow as many of these cruisers out of the sky as we can.  We’ll only disembark to take a cruiser if the situation calls for it.  Get ready to fight.”  I close the comm and open a private link to Jablonsky.  “Once we’re down there, find Jill and open up a comm link to any surviving ships.”

“Surviving?” Jablonsky asks.  He’s more of a pessimist than I am.

Chapter 48

We bubble jump one more time.  We’re too close for safety.  However, with our new computerized systems, I’m feeling bold.

The Rusty Turd pops out of bubble a thousand klicks up from the surface of Ceres.  We’re not directly above the captured SDF base, but we’re pretty close.

Far below us, there’s almost too much happening to take in.

“Tarlow,” I order, “get me a picture up.  Phil, max our defensive grav.  Penny, orient us nose down.  Power up the grav lens.”

“They’ll see us,” Phil warns.  And he’s right, once the grav field from that lens flares, every Gray in the fleet will see us shining brightly up here like a brilliant blue gargoyle, poised to swoop down and kill their babies.

“Phil,” I tell him, “you and the Gray make sure there aren’t any Trogs out here trying to flank us.”

That’s our vulnerability.  From the sides and from the rear, our defenses aren’t sufficient to stop their railgun rounds.

“Here!”  Tarlow hollers, pointing at his screens.

“Thirty-three Trog vessels,” Phil announces.

My grav senses are nearly overwhelmed by the number of ships and high-velocity projectiles careening through space.  I look over Tarlow’s shoulder and see an array of bright shapes moving in an intricate dance like a bait ball corralled by oceanic predators.

The Grays in those vessels have already learned the Arizona-class ships are a danger and they’ve adjusted their tactics.  Their formation is roughly spherical with cruisers oriented in different directions, seeming to move randomly.  They’re flying on interweaving paths in every direction, keeping their rows of railguns oriented outward.  They aren’t allowing themselves to be stationary targets and they don’t want their assailants to know which direction the defensive fire will come from.

It’ll be impossible to attack one without opening my ship up to flanking fire from another.

Goddammit!

“Seventeen of the cruisers aren’t shooting,” Phil tells us.

I wouldn’t have guessed that.  There are too many slugs flying out in every direction from the formation.

“Where are our ships?” I ask Tarlow.

“Seven coming in on an attack run,” Phil informs us.  “Two thousand klicks out.”

Tarlow is fiddling with his machines, working on the resolution.  “Here! Here!”  he points.

I see the seven Arizona-class ships.  No, four Arizona-class and three Beijing-class ships, flying in a loose formation down the same vector.

“Three of the Trog ships have taken hits,” Phil tells us.

I nudge Tarlow.  “Find them.”

“One of the Trog cruisers has been rammed by three of the Arizona-class ships.  One Cruiser has been rammed near the bridge by the other Arizona, and one cruiser has a Beijing-class grav locked to its hull.”

“Jablonsky,” I call.  “I need to talk to those captains.”

“Working on it,” he answers, “but they’re busy.”

“I need a status.”

I’m doing the math.  We have twenty-seven ships left in the fleet and twelve accounted for.  “I need to know where those other fifteen are.”

I turn to Penny and tell her, “Pick one of those cruisers that’s still firing.  Line up a course.  We’re going to kill it.”

“Kill it?” she asks me.  “How?  We can’t just blow these things up.”

“I know.”

“I can go in shooting—do you want to aim for the bridge, the reactors, or the drive array?  Each target is half a kilometer apart.  We can’t just strafe and hope for the best.  We need to pick a point and pound it.”

She’s right.  I hadn’t thought this part through.  The reactors in the heart of the ship are my first impulse, yet there are three of them, spread over a relatively wide area.  They’ll be hard to knock out.  My intuition tells me the drive array will be the least defended if we hit it from the flanks.  The bridge, if the Grays are smart, will have the strongest defensive fields around it.  They aren’t strong enough to deflect a ramming Arizona-class ship, we’ve already established that, but they might be strong enough to deflect the plasma fire from our main gun.

“Phil,” I call, “me and Tarlow will work on finding the other ships.  You and Penny pick a Trog cruiser, find its gravity field weaknesses and let’s go light it up.  Penny, how fast can you get us down there?”

“Max grav?” she asks rhetorically, “Ninety seconds.”

I nod to Penny.  “Phil, you and the Tick have ninety seconds.  Give me a target we can kill.”

Chapter 49

“Is it possible they aren’t here yet?” I ask Tarlow.

He’s leaning close to his screens, trying to coax more information out of the pixels.  He points.  “Here.  And here.  I think those are yours.”

I see a broken tube, and a scatter of fast-moving debris.  “Wrecks?”

“Another.”  He stabs his finger at a monitor.

Crap.  Twelve unaccounted for.

“I have Jill,” Jablonsky tells me.

My degree of relief is surprising.  “Connect me through.”

Jablonsky works at his console with quick fingers as he tells me, “Her ship is one of the three responsible for ramming that one cruiser.  They’re going for the bridge.  Here, I have her.”

“Jill?” I call.

“I only have a second,” she tells me.  “We just blew the forward doors.  We’re waiting for the atmosphere to dissipate, then we’re rushing in.”

“You’re taking the ship?” I ask.

“Same as last time,” she assures me.  “Three full platoons.  Light casualties so far.”

“Get it done and get out,” I urge.

“Same plan as before,” she laughs.  “We’ll bounce this bitch through their formation and turn this—”

“Jill?”

Crackles and syllables.

“Jill?”  I turn to Jablonsky.

He shakes his head.  “I’m trying.”

“Don’t bother her directly,” I tell him.  “Keep in contact with the bridge crew on each.  I want to know if they get in trouble.”

More trouble!

“Phil, Penny?” I ask, seeing the inertial field blazing bright around us.  I know we’re on our attack run and we’re accelerating.  “Are we on course?”

“We’ve picked one that seems to have no shortage of ammo,” Penny tells me.

“Over ninety-percent chance we can disable it on one run,” Phil says, “if we aim at the drive array.  Maybe seventy-percent we can take out a reactor, and maybe fifty-percent we can destroy the bridge.  Which do you want?”

“The drive array doesn’t take them out of the fight.”  I clench my teeth as I consider my options.  “Penny, give us a course to come at them from the flank.  I want to use the grav lens to ram right through their bridge and blast out the other side if the railgun doesn’t do its work.”  I turn to Phil.  “One hundred percent.”

“Ramming is a gamble,” says Phil.  “It might destroy us.”

“Penny,” I pat her on the shoulder.  “Max grav.  Let’s see what this ship will do.”

“Those attacking ships are being shot to pieces!”  Tarlow shouts.  He’s freaking out a little bit.

“How many?”

“Two destroyed.  One out of control.”

I look down at Tarlow’s monitors and see a ship flying high-g corkscrews out into space.  “Which ones are left?”  At the resolution on the monitors, I can’t tell the difference between the Beijing-class and the Arizonas.

“Arizonas,” he answers.  “Both.”

I watch as they each impact a cruiser amidships, shoving it so hard into a spin that its railgun rounds pummel another nearby cruiser.  Explosions follow, and the Trog ship goes dead.

“They hit in the reactors,” Tarlow tells me.

“Jablonsky,” I call, “hail those ships and tell them to disengage and ram another ship.  That one’s no longer a threat.”

Chapter 50

“Strap in!”  Penny shouts.

The ship is jerking right to left, and the inertial grav is struggling to keep up.

I reluctantly strap into the captain’s chair.  I don’t have the best view of what Tarlow, Penny, and Phil are doing from the seat, but I’m buckled in tight, which I’ll need once we ram the cruiser.

“Incoming!”  Phil shouts.

The ship shudders.

“We’re deflecting,” he tells us.  Our ship’s defensive field is doing its job, but we still have to fight the momentum of big railgun slugs pounding us from the flank.

Through the tiny forward-facing window, I see a Trog cruiser looming large ahead of us, a web of complex defensive fields wrapped around it in glowing jellyfish tentacles to keep it safe.

“Firing!”  Penny pulls the trigger.  It sounds like a zipper made of anvils ringing through our steel hull.  It feels like a road covered in speed bumps, slowing us and throwing me forward in my seat.

A blazing, thin stream of plasma rips into the cruiser, crossing the distance in an instant, splattering off the blue fields and tearing through.

The hull erupts.

Penny sends another burst, and all I see is a chaos of gravity fields, fire, and shrapnel.

The ship jerks again with another sound, our familiar friend.  We’re taking fire.

“Hit it!”  shouts Phil.  “We hit it.”

I strain my grav sense to see our target cruiser’s bridge.  It’s disintegrating.

Penny pulls the trigger again, and another stream of plasma rounds tears into the cruiser’s bow, easily piercing the disrupted grav fields and turning the hull metal into molten explosive gas powerful enough to bump the cruiser off its course.

“Penny, max grav us the hell out of here,” I order, and our inertial bubble flashes brilliant blue as she pours twenty g’s of acceleration through our drive array and we arc across a course change to get away from a storm of railgun slugs flying across our path.

“One down!”  Penny’s giddy over her kill as we put kilometers between us and her victim.

“Tarlow,” I remind, looking past my excitement to focus on the business at hand.  We’re not the only ship.  “Stay busy, buddy.  Find me the rest of our fleet.”

He looks away from the small viewing window and goes back to work, glancing around with worried eyes.

“Brice,” I call.  “Any damage up there?  We took some hits.”

“Two right through the goddamn platoon cabin,” he answers.  “Can’t those bastards aim somewhere else?”

“Status?”

“All is good,” he answers.  “Nobody hit.  “No damage to the gun.”

Phil glances my way.  “We took a round through one of the pressurized compartments.”

“Where?”

“I can’t find it.  It didn’t damage any system I have sensors on.”

“Brice,” I’m worried about the railgun, “send a few people back to check the rest of the ship.  Tell them to be careful.  We’ll be pulling some serious g’s to get around for our next run.  Phil, find us a target.  Tarlow, I need to know where those ships are.”  I click over to Hawkins.  “I have a question.”

“I’m here to serve.”

I laugh.  “Are you taking smartass lessons from Brice?”

“No.  It comes naturally.”

“Your two flight crews, can they handle a Trog cruiser?”

“They’re just like ours,” he tells me.  “Except the seats are different.”

“If we put one of your crews down on the ship that Jill’s platoons are assaulting, can they fly it?”

“Flying isn’t the problem,” he answers.  “Keeping it is.”

“Yeah,” I agree.  “See if one crew will volunteer.  We’ll take this one step at a time.”

Chapter 51

“Penny,” I make my request, “after we hammer this next ship, try and bring us in close enough to the Trog cruiser Jill is assaulting so I can drop off a flight crew.”

She turns to look at me like I’ve just lost my mind.

I smile in the most reassuring way I can.  “If you can do it without opening us up to too much flanking fire.”

Shaking her head, she says, “Will do.”  Then she and Phil go to work.

“Tarlow,” I ask for what seems like one too many times.  “Where are our other ships?  Are they here, yet?  What about those two that took out the Trog cruiser just after we got here?  I need to know what the hell is going on out there.”

He points at his screen, showing me the surface of the planet as he shakes his head.  Four new craters are still blossoming debris into space.  “Near as I can tell, our ships came in too fast, deflected off the grav fields of cruisers, and couldn’t pull up.  They impacted, here, here, here, and here.”

Shit.

Eight left unaccounted for.  I scan the screen.

He points.  “See this mass of debris drifting into orbit?”

“I do.”  It’s a hundred klicks from the battle and moving slowly away.

“I think one or two ships impacted a cruiser too fast.  Blew the hell out of everything.”

Six or seven left.

“I see four circling out for another attack run.”  Tarlow points at the screen again.  “Two here.”  They’re coming around at the top of an arc and will be impacting in another forty-five seconds.  “There, that one is just getting away.”

As I watch it accelerate from the swirl of cruisers, railgun fire flares all around and it explodes in a shower of debris.

“One more over there.”  Tarlow taps the screen.

It’s moving too slow.  “It’s damaged.”

“They’re ignoring it for the moment,” Tarlow replies.

And that looks like the score right there.  We’re taking out Trog cruisers, however, we’re losing more ships than we’re knocking out.

I think back to the thousand assault ships I saw standing in the Arizona desert, bleaching and rusting while the desert dust settled over their shoddy hulls.  How could we build so many brutal weapons, plenty to destroy the Trog fleet, and then manage them so poorly?  How could the SDF piddle about with their hundred and fifty ships, waiting for some perfect moment to attack, until they were caught with their pants down sitting on Callisto?

And now this, Blair has thrown the last of our fleet into an uncoordinated desperate swing for the fences.

It’s no wonder we’re losing this war.

“Jablonsky,” I shout, “tell every surviving ship captain to get the hell out of here.  Rendezvous at the Potato.”

“They won’t listen to us.”

“Orders from Blair.”  I glance back at her.  She won’t meet my eye.  “Get over there,” I tell her, pointing to Jablonsky’s station.  “Pass the order.”

“What about the ships that are locked in?” asks Penny.

“We’re staying to cover them until they break free.”  I look back at Blair.  She’s not moving.  “Don’t kill the rest of them for nothing.  Tell them to break off and retreat.”

She shakes her head.  “We may not win today, but we’re not cowards like you.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shout.  Really, what the hell is wrong with her?  I think she’s come unstuck from reality.  “Do you see what’s happening?  Are you going to kill all these people for nothing?”

“I called for the retreat,” Jablonsky tells me.  “They’re not paying attention.”

“Buckle up,” Penny calls.  “Twenty seconds to impact.”

The hull buzzes loudly as our axial gun rips through a stream of rounds.

I see them veer off target, pushed by a well-structured defensive grav field.

Penny triggers another stream that doesn’t hit the bridge of our quarry.

“Hold on for impact!”  She shouts as blue blasts so brightly it stuns the bug in my head, nearly blinding me.

Chapter 52

My head is swimming, and I can’t find my balance.

Tarlow pukes inside his helmet.

Blair is screaming and holding on.

Penny is struggling with the ship’s controls.

I shout, “Talk to me, Penny, I need to know what’s going on!”

“We rammed it,” Phil explains, seemingly unfazed by the gravity flux and ensuing disorientation.  “Their defensive field was too well-structured for our rounds to get through.”  He glances at Penny.  “We followed your orders.”

“Are we okay?” I ask.

The inertial field starts to settle.  The sense of spinning dissipates.  Penny accelerates the ship.

“The impact sent us into a crazy tumble,” Phil goes on.  “Penny has it under control now.”

“Did we do some damage?” I ask.  “Or did we glance off?”

Phil is looking out through the hull, utilizing his fine-tuned grav sense.  He nods and smiles.  “Destroyed the bridge.  Tore a gaping hole through the bow where the bridge used to be.  The ship is blasting gas through its forward sections.  That cruiser is out of the fight.”

“Do we know where Jill’s ship is?” I ask.

Penny seems to have the ship flying straight enough I can feel the momentum stabilize, however, I can sense a big cruiser coming up right in front of us.

The axial gun rips through several hundred rounds as the ship lurches backward with the momentum transfer.

The cruiser’s hull erupts in fire and blasting metal fragments.  Penny’s not aiming.  She’s just shooting because the cruiser is unexpectedly there.

More plasma rounds fire, running up the length of the hull as Penny steers our ship away from a collision amidships.

“I have them.”  Phil points over our heads.  “Back that way, eight klicks.”

I turn and just make out a crude image of a damaged cruiser with three assault ships jammed into its hull.

Penny pulls the ship into a tight turn to line up on the cruiser.  “What do you have in mind, Dylan?  How do you want me to play this?”  Her uncertainty over this choice is frazzling her.

Before I can answer, the cruiser bursts blinding blue and flashes out of sight.

“Bubble jump!”  shouts Phil, as a powerful field shoves our ship off-course, careening toward Ceres’s surface.

As I realize we’re headed for an impact, Penny swings the ship into another high-g turn, straining the inertial bubble past its limits and punching me with an eight-g fist that knocks the wind out of my lungs and the liquids through my rectal tube.

We come out of the turn in time to see three of the big Trog cruisers crashing into one another in the chaos caused by the jumping of Jill’s cruiser.

“What was that?” asks Tarlow, shaking his head to get the puke off the inside of his faceplate.

“We still have atmosphere on the bridge!”  I shout at him.  “Wipe that shit off.  I need you!”

He pops open his faceplate and works at wiping the bile away.

I turn to Phil.  “Was that Jill?  Or are the Grays still flying that ship?”

“Can’t say.”

“Doesn’t matter, then.”  Time to make the best of the situation.  “Penny, run straight for the nearest ship’s drive array.  Shred it.  Phil, taking momentum into consideration, be ready to send Penny to the next closest Trog ship.  Target the drive arrays.  Let’s pin as many of them here as we can.  And keep them too busy worrying about us to pay attention to the others.”

We’re blazing blue in the cabin even before I’m finished.

Phil is rattling something to Penny on their shared comm link.  Blair has decided it’s time to interject her mastery of tactical command and she’s babbling crap I’m not listening to.  If only I could freeze her suit or cut her comm.

Brice links in.  “Everything going okay up there?  The ride’s getting pretty rough.”

“We’re stuck in a rat-filled shit pit up here—we’re holding our own,” I answer.  “Stay on the command comm to keep your people in the loop.  We’re not getting off the ship today unless things really go to hell.”

“Aye, Captain.”

I roll my eyes and smile as I tell him, “Major.”

Brice laughs.  He’s always good for that.

The axial gun blazes out three quick bursts, and Penny shouts victoriously.

I glance forward using my bug to see the tail end of a cruiser coming to pieces as we tear through the debris field and cut a hard turn to line up on another victim.

Another cruiser, one with apparently no slugs to fire, makes a jump and sends the local grav fields into momentary chaos.

Penny fights with the control to keep us lined up, and the axial gun rips again.  Plasma rounds stream through wiggly ribbons of fluctuating gravity and veer away from their target.

We fired from too far away, but we can pull twenty g’s to move in for the kill.  Penny is wringing every amp out of our reactor and grav plates, so we close the distance to our victim in seconds and the axial gun buzzes again.

Another drive array blasts to pieces.

“Hell yeah!”  shouts Phil, as he cuts his comm back to Penny and we line up on another target.

Two more ships jump, and one of the remaining cruisers is pushed so far off course it rams the planet below.

While that’s taking the attention of every Gray helmsman in the Trog fleet, we maim another cruiser.

The cruisers with slug loads are onto us and our tricks.  They’re filling the sky with glowing rounds, trying to track us, a ship moving at speeds they haven’t seen before, and trying to put their slugs through our hull, not paying enough attention to what lies beyond, mostly other Trog cruisers.

Yet they all have defensive grav fields tuned for just such an assault, so nearly all of the slugs are deflected through the chaos and sent in every which direction.

The sky is turning into a metal grinder.

More ships jump, and our gun is blazing so quickly it barely pauses for new targets.  Penny’s shooting at anything that crosses our bow.

“Tarlow!”  I holler, “Where are our ships?”

“Hell if I know!”  he shouts back.

“We’re dry! We’re dry!”  shouts a voice over the comm.

“Who’s that?” I ask.

“Benson, the gunner,” the man answers.

“We’re out of slugs?”  I’m frustrated.  The damn thing is turning out to be a seriously lethal weapon.

“Not a one left,” he answers excitedly.

“Shit.”

Phil gathers his adrenaline-soaked wits the quickest.  “We should go.”

Penny swerves hard to avoid a flurry of railgun slugs.

More cruisers make the jump to light speed, and the rest start strobing out of sight.

Guns from down on the surface start to light up the sky with their fire.

“Tarlow,” I ask, “is anybody still here?”

“I can’t tell anything from anything.”  He’s frustrated by the kaleidoscope of deadly metal represented by the dots on his screen.  He mutters, “We’re going to be killed.”

I keep my frustration to myself as I scan across the bridge and see the eyes looking back at me.

“We can ram them,” Phil tells me.  “But you know that’s risky.  We’ll probably survive, or we might incur enough damage that we can’t get away.”

I know he’s right.

We’re better off coming back later when we have a full load of ammunition, when we have a few more ships equipped like this one.  “Tarlow, you have ten seconds to scan the area as thoroughly as you can and get me a full picture of the aftermath.  Penny, max grav us out of here and bubble jump as soon as you feel safe.”

Chapter 53

Our first jump seems to last forever, though it only runs for seven or eight minutes, landing us a billion miles perpendicular to the plane of solar rotation.  Each of us is quiet when we come out of bubble.  We’re all thinking about what just happened, trying to count a score out of the chaos.

“The Potato?” Phil asks, as the vast emptiness settles in.  We’re farther than any of us has ever been from the realm of our world.

I shake my head.  “Not yet.”

Blair unbuckles herself and starts in about something.

“Brice,” I comm, “send a few people up here and get Blair off my bridge.”

It only takes a few moments for Brice to enter with Lenox and Silva in tow.

Looking at them, I ask, “Would you put her in the room with the Gray and stay there to keep an eye on her?”

“Will do,” Lenox tells me.

Silva smiles, and over a private comm tells me, “Good job, sir.”

I smile back.  Dammit.  Just six more months to get past the heebie jeebies over her age.

Brice stays put.  “I notice we’re not jumping.  Where are we?”

I point him to one of the small bridge windows.  “A billion miles from nowhere.”

“We’re doing a lot of that lately,” he laughs.  “What are you going to do with Blair?”

“I don’t know.  I just want her out of my sight.”

“What’s the plan?” Penny asks.  “We can stay as long as you like, but sitting here doesn’t achieve anything.”

I pat her on the back.  “You did a good job, Penny.  I look around the bridge.  All of you did.  Even you, Tarlow.”

He snorts, and I slap him on the back to let him know I really do appreciate the effort.  “Tarlow, I need to know the score.”

“That’s crass,” he sneers, speckles of vomitus still splattered on his faceplate.  “This isn’t a game.”  He doesn’t yet appreciate my sincerity.

“Let me know how many ships we destroyed or disabled.  Not just us, our whole fleet.  I need to know how many of ours got away.  And if you can, I need jump vectors.”

“Why?” Phil asks.  “If they don’t go back to the Potato, does it matter where they went?”

I start to tell him I’ll round them up and give them hope to push on, then I stop.  I see his point.  “You think they’ll desert?”

He nods.

I glance at Penny and Brice.

“After that fiasco,” asks Brice, “wouldn’t you?”

Is our conviction so frail?

Or am I expecting too much of people with more than a mild interest in self-preservation?

“What about Jill’s ship?” I ask, looking at Phil.  “She and the other two that rammed that Trog cruiser.  They were lodged inside when it jumped.”

“You want to go after them?” asks Penny, disbelief huge under her tone.  “She’s our friend too, but…” Her voice trails to nothing.  She believes Jill is dead, or at least chasing her is futile.

“Why would they jump?” I ask.  “The Grays didn’t have anything to gain by it.”

“You mean, you don’t know what they had to gain,” Phil corrects.

He’s right.  “Do you have any ideas?”

Phil shakes his head.

“It only makes sense,” I say, “if they were hoping to go somewhere where they could find help.  The battle was too intense for them to get assistance from any of the cruisers nearby.”

“Or,” Brice counters, “Jill and all the others are dead, and the cruiser’s captain knew he could do nothing to help in the battle, so he bubble jumped to safety.  They could be headed to any of a dozen Trog resupply bases and who knows how many we don’t know about.  They could be anywhere right now, filling their holds, cleaning the bodies out, and trying to unjam those assault ships from the holes in their hull.”

They haven’t been gone long enough for anything like that to happen, still, I take Brice’s point.  That could be their goal.  “What about jumping back to their home world?” I ask, as I look around to let them in on my latest speculation.  “Could they go back and take three copies of our grav lens with them?  What happens when they come back here with ships equipped with those?”

Phil’s thinking and scratching his lips as he puts together a thought.  “I don’t think so.”

“Elaborate,” I request.

“You know as well as anybody how finicky jumping can be.  With all that unbalanced mass and structural damage, I just don’t know.”

“Yeah,” I argue, “but we saw them jump.  Finicky isn’t a problem.”

“They made a hell of a mess when they jumped out,” says Phil, staring off in some random direction, collecting his thoughts, or looking at something with the bug in his head.  “We both saw it, me and Nick, but didn’t put things together until just now.  They weren’t stable.  Their grav field was half-chaotic.  That’s why they caused such a local grav flux when they jumped.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“They might not have the control they needed over direction or speed.  They could be anywhere.”

Phil is right, yet I can’t let it go.  “Jill is our friend.  Her people are our brothers and sisters.  The soldiers in the other two ships are the same.  They’re us.  We’re them.”

Brice laughs darkly and goes to buckle up.  He knows what’s coming next.

“Phil—”

Penny raises a hand to shut me up.  “We don’t have any ammunition for the axial gun.  Didn’t we just decide ramming was a tactic that carried too much risk and should be avoided, given that we now have a much better way to shoot those bastards out of the sky?”

“Yes.”  Of course, she’s right.  I can’t let it go, though.  “I don’t know what we’re going to do if we find that Trog ship, maybe nothing, maybe we’ll ram it.  We’ll decide when we get there.”

“You’re missing a whole lot of ‘ifs’ in there.”  Phil turns to his console and starts working the controls, which I know is mostly just a way to disengage.  He does nearly all of his grav work in his head.

“Calculate their direction,” I tell him.  “We’ll jump down their heading, coming out at intervals of a second or two, look around, and see if we see them.”

“If they haven’t decided to mask their destination by jumping in a random direction,” says Phil.  “You know, like we do.”

“We’re going to check,” I tell him.  “They’d do the same for us.”

“How far?”  Phil sighs.  He’s reluctant, yet he’ll do as I ask.  “Out to the Kuiper belt?  All the way to the next star?  What?”

“We’ll run a few billion miles out.  If we don’t come across the ship, then we’ll go back to the Potato and see who made it.”

“We need another load of ammo from Iapetus,” Penny tells me.  She likes the power that axial gun gives us.

I nod.  “We’ll squeeze it in.”

Chapter 54

We give Ceres a wide berth and come out a half-million miles away.  We’re waiting on a heading to take us down the path Phil calculates is the one most likely followed by the Trog cruiser.

My bridge crew is cooperating, yet with each passing minute, it’s more and more obvious to me they believe we’re wasting our time.

Talking to Phil, I tell him, “Set your jump at intervals you can confidently scan for a cruiser.”

“You think they’ll be waiting out in space for us somewhere?”  asks Penny.

“No.”  I don’t take offense to the question.  I simply explain, “If they’re as damaged as they seem to be, they’ll take smaller hops.  I think they won’t be able to make 8c.”

“They won’t be able to stay on course,” she argues.

“Still,” I counter, “they have to have a destination, right?  They’ll readjust as they go along, always moving toward the same place.”

“Well,” Phil tells us, “the only place down this heading is Pluto.”

Brice laughs.

“They have a base out on Pluto?”  Tarlow asks, not sure what the joke his, not knowing that the joke only exists in the realm of Brice’s dark humor.

Nobody responds to Tarlow.

“Pluto it is, then,” I tell Phil.  “Makes better sense than the Trogs just flying off to nowhere, right?”

“Nothing is nowhere,” he argues.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” scoffs Tarlow.

Phil cuts a sharp glance at him.  “If you go far enough in any direction you’ll run into something eventually.”

“No, you won’t.”  Tarlow isn’t buying it.  “Most of the sky is black.  Or haven’t you noticed?”

Phil sighs.  “I’m just saying there are stars out there.  There are a million, maybe a billion, within a degree of the heading we’re on, though most of what you see in front of us looks black.  For all you know, those Trogs are trying to get back to their home world.”

“Only their home world would be close enough to see, wouldn’t it?”  Tarlow puffs up his chest with confidence on that one.  “Those cruisers will only do 8c.  That’s fast, but still, it limits how far the Trogs’ home star can be, doesn’t it?  Unless you think they traveled for a hundred years to get here.”

“I’m not saying that,” Phil retorts.

“They don’t have any suspended animation pods, do they?”  Tarlow looks at me for confirmation.  Everybody knows I’ve been on one of their ships.

I shake my head.

He glances back at Brice.

“Keep me out of it,” Brice tells him.

Tarlow looks back at me.  “Any female Trogs?  Any space-based agriculture?  These aren’t multi-generational ships, are they?”

I shake my head again.

“What’s the point?” asks Phil, already tired of the argument.

“If they’re going to their home star,” says Tarlow, “it’s not going to be some micro-pixel of faint light from the galaxy next door.  They’ll be coming from less than a few light years away.  So how far are Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri—a little over four light years distant?  Six months at the speeds their cruisers travel?  What about Sirius A or B?  Or Ross 154?  You’re talking about a year to get here.  I mean, what do you think the farthest distance is they traveled?  How much effort is a whole planet full of human slaves worth?”  Tarlow looks around to see if anybody wants to venture an answer to his rhetorical question.

“There are two hundred and fifty-nine systems within ten parsecs,” he says.

“I always wondered how long a parsec was,” mutters Penny.

Tarlow spins on her.  “About 3.2 light years.”

“Good to know.”  She turns back to her controls like she couldn’t care less.

“At cruiser speed,” continues Tarlow, that’s four years, right there.  Anybody think the Trogs made more than a four-year, one-way trip to get here?”  He looks around.  “Anybody?”

I raise a hand to stop him, not because I’m tired of the rant, but because I’m suddenly thinking of a different problem.  “How many of those two hundred and fifty stars are similar to our sun?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” answers Tarlow.”

“Jesus,” mutters Penny.  “How do you know so much trivial shit?”

“Nerd stuck on a rock a billion miles from the sun,” he tells her.  “What else is a curious man going to do but learn about the neighborhood?  There’s so much stuff to learn when you’ve got nothing to do.  You’d be amazed at the random shit I know.  Ever heard of a Prince Rupert’s Drop?  After the Trogs started developing unbreakable glass—”

“Tarlow, focus!”  I interrupt.  “How many with rocky planets in the Goldilocks zone?”

Tarlow’s animated command of the floor stops in a sudden gawk, which slowly turns to a smile.  He wags a finger at me.  “I know what you’re thinking.”

Phil glares at me because he’s reading the wrong portion of my thoughts.

Brice cuts in, looking at me with increased curiosity.  “Now I’m interested, because I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

“He’s trying to figure out where the Trogs’ home world is,” guesses Tarlow.

“That’s right,” I answer.  “Not today, and not tomorrow.  Maybe not even soon.  But I’ll tell you what, we’re not going to win this war until we can take the fight to their doorstep.”

“Oh, shit.”  Phil doesn’t like that idea one bit.

Brice laughs again.

Penny laughs also, but hers is more hysterical than dark.

Chapter 55

We start jumping.  Between each one, we pause so Phil and the Gray can scan the vast empty area around us for the grav signature of a Trog cruiser, and then we jump again.  It gets boring very quickly.

“What if we miss them?” asks Tarlow.

I ignore him, because I don’t want to be drawn into an argument where I’m pretty sure Tarlow has already figured out an answer and cemented himself into a position.

“How so?” asks Brice.

“What if we’re leapfrogging them?”  Tarlow mimics a frog hopping with his hands over one another for all to see.  “What if we’re scanning while they’re jumping and we’re jumping while they’re laying out their next jump?”

Penny sighs, unwilling to hide her sarcasm.  “You’re such a positive guy.”

“You’re not happy to be on this snipe hunt,” Tarlow guesses.  “I’m just speaking everyone’s mind.  That’s all.”

“You’re not talking for me,” Penny tells him.  “You just keep speaking for yourself, okay?”

“You’re not happy about this,” Tarlow argues.  “I know you’re not.”

“Doesn’t matter.”  Penny doesn’t turn away from her controls to answer.  “We’re doing this.  We’ll try to find our friends and see if they’re alright.  They’d do the same for us.  It’s that simple.”

“It’s a bargain, then?” Tarlow deduces.  “We’re obligated because—”

“Because,” Brice cuts in with a tone that conveys his displeasure with Tarlow, “maybe it’s a good time for you to put all that shit back up your ass and do your job.  Didn’t Major Kane ask you to run an analysis on the aftermath of that fight we were just in?”

Tarlow is thrown off-balance.  He’s intimidated by Brice’s veiled aggression.  “I’m… I’m…”

“Where is that analysis?” I ask.

Tarlow huffs and turns back to his computer monitors, taking a few seconds to pull up a series of still shots of the ships in the sky over the Ceres base.  “A lot was happening,” he starts to explain.  “We weren’t in an optimal place to catch everything that was going on.  We may have missed some of—”

“Tarlow,” I tell him, “I get that this may not be perfectly accurate.  Can you skip the qualifications and get to the meat of the answer?”

He deflates even more.  “I’m just trying…” he doesn’t finish.  Instead, he points at the screen.  “This one shows what things looked like when we arrived.”

I sigh.  “I don’t need the blow-by-blow.  Not right now, anyway.”

“But—”

“Tarlow,” I tell him, “I would like a full analysis of the battle.  I want to know which tactics worked and which didn’t.  Just not right now.  At the moment, I need the brief version.  How many ships did we lose?  How many Trog cruisers did we destroy?”

Tarlow’s confidence returns.  “Seven Trog cruisers destroyed.  Five damaged, a few of those unsalvageable in my estimation.  Another four are disabled.  They won’t be leaving the system until they manage to build a new drive array.”

“And us?” I ask.

“Looks like two of them got away.  Maybe three.  All were Arizona-class ships.”

Two?  Three?

I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.  I suck in a sharp breath and try to hide my dismay.

Penny sees right through my hasty mask.  “It’s not your fault.  It was already clusterfucked when we got there.”

Brice is suddenly standing just behind me, boots grav-locked onto the floor.  He pats my shoulder.  “I can go forward and kick Blair’s teeth in if you think that’ll help.”

“Ejecting her into space would help, it just won’t help the right things.”  I turn to Tarlow.  “Are you counting Jill’s ships?”

Tarlow thinks it’s a stupid question.  “Of course not.”

“There,” Phil is suddenly erect in his seat.  He’s focused forward.  “Penny, don’t jump.”

“What is it?”

Tarlow starts fiddling with his controls, trying to focus his dishes forward.

“A debris field,” Phil tells us.

Chapter 56

We grav drive through ten thousand klicks, following Phil’s honed senses.

With my bug, I don’t see anything but vague blurs until we’ve crossed most of the distance.

“Wow,” utters Penny, as we draw close.  “I thought that was a gas cloud or something.”

“Keep going,” Phil tells her.  “I’ll let you know when to slow down.”

“I can see it, now,” Penny responds.  “And I think I know when to slow down.”

“Sorry.”

“Tarlow,” I ask.  “Can you map it?”

“Space junk?”

Phil tells him, “That junk is the Trog cruiser we’re chasing.  And Jill’s ship, and the other two.”

I look through one of the small forward-facing windows.  I can’t make out anything with enough clarity to know what the misshapen bits are.

“I think there are survivors,” Phil tells us.

“Penny,” I order, “get us there as quick as you can.”

She gooses the power.

Tarlow speculates as to what happened, but everyone’s preoccupied.

As we close in, I can see pieces of ship hull, grav plates, and railgun barrels.  Railgun slugs bounce off the hull, sounding like hail.  Trogs in suits, whole and in pieces, fall into our wake.

We swerve to avoid a huge piece of the cruiser’s drive array.

“They’re alive,” says Penny, staring through her forward-facing monitors.  “Some of them are moving.”

“Mostly,” says Phil, “you’re seeing the effects of gas leaks from their suits.”

“Mostly?” I ask.

“I think some are alive.”  Phil says it like he doesn’t quite believe it either.

“More than some.”  Penny points.  “Those up ahead, most of them look like they’re moving.”

“Jablonsky,” I command, “broadcast on the suit frequencies.  See if any of those bodies out there… if any of those suits out there are our people.”

Looking forward, I spot sparkles of blue grav fields in the black sky.  Others come to life.

“What the hell?” asks Penny.

“Power up the grav lens,” I order.  “Do it, now.”

“But—”

“Do it!”

Phil does.  The points of light are lost in the blue glow of our grav lens field.

Every object in space nearby is pushed away.

“Those were disruptors,” I explain.  “Some of those Trogs have the presence of mind to—”

Brice pushes past, going forward, alerting the platoon over the comm.  Just before exiting the bridge he turns to me.  “I need to get our soldiers outside.  If we’re going to search this mess for our people, we don’t want to pick up any hitchhikers, especially Trogs with disruptors wanting to hack our ship to bits.

“Penny,” I order, “you have the ship.  Jablonsky, find our survivors.”

I rush after Brice.

Chapter 57

Blair, unfortunately, is back on the bridge, restrained again, buckled into a seat and out of the way.  I have someone else watching her.  She’s not a priority at the moment.  Silva and Lenox, her recently assigned babysitters, are with me, Brice, and the rest of the platoon, along with Hawkins and his people.  We’re spread out on the Rusty Turd’s hull, boots grav-locked to the metal, weapons aimed at a black sky sprinkled with ten thousand Trogs and the remains of their cruiser.

Most of the Trogs are dead.  Their stiffening bodies don’t move when we fly past.  However, way too many of them are alive, and most of those are ready to activate their suit grav and attack us, despite their inherent fear of flying.  They have to.  They’re drifting tens of millions of miles from nowhere, and the only hope they had before we arrived was to die swiftly, without significant pain.  Now they have a way out—our ship.

Beside me, Silva lets loose a burst from her railgun.

Another soldier fires.

Three hundred meters out, the slugs impact a Trog’s defensive field and send him spinning in another direction.  More weapons fire and light up a section of the void with red-hot arcs through the black.

Silva fires again.

The Trog she’s aiming at is farther away but spun around with his back facing us, his vulnerable side.  The rounds tear through his suit and body and rip him apart.

“Got him!”  Silva tells me.

“Good shooting.”  I point at other Trogs, ten or more, glowing blue with suits pushing hard-g.  “More up there,” I announce to the platoon.  “Port side.  Twenty degrees off our bow.”

Guns start to shoot in that direction.

Brice directs others to fire at a trio accelerating at us from the rear.  On the platoon’s command comm, with just me him and Lenox, he asks, “How did anyone survive this?”

It wasn’t an impact that destroyed the ship,” Lenox deduces.  “No impact.  No broken bones, and no squished bodies.”

Brice laughs.

I don’t see the humor in it, well, not that much humor.  I suggest, “Or one of the reactors exploded like that first one we destroyed over Arizona.”

Lenox disagrees.  “If that was true, I think there’d be a lot more shredded bodies.  Lots more mangled equipment.”

“And what do you call this?” Silva asks, unexpectedly on the channel.

“To me,” says Lenox, “it looks like somebody cracked an egg and spilled the contents all across ten kilometers of space.  Like Phil was talking about, I think the instability in the structure because of the three assault ships caused the cruiser to rattle apart.”

Some of the cruiser’s pieces are a hundred or even two hundred meters long.  In a way, they do look like giant sections of a cracked eggshell.

“The Trogs spilled out with everything else,” Lenox finishes.

More railgun rounds scatter across space, as most of my platoon’s guns erupt.

“No shortage of targets,” laughs Brice.

“We have plenty of ammunition, right?”  I’m pretty sure we do, but with so many things going on and everything happening so fast, I’m not sure.

“Enough to kill twenty-thousand Trogs,” answers Lenox.  “I watched as they loaded each box.”

“Keep an eye on how many rounds your people have,” I advise.  “Maybe assign someone to start ferrying more out here.  I have a feeling we’ll be running through a lot of ammo.”

Lenox passes an order and one of her people heads for the open assault door.

Brice elbows me.  “Don’t worry so much.  This isn’t as bad as it seems.  If things get hairy, Penny will zip ten or twenty kilometers out, and we’ll be fine.”

I nod.  I don’t completely agree, yet I don’t have a good argument against.

“I have survivors,” Jablonsky comms in.

Good.  More than good.  As much as I was hoping we’d find some, I wasn’t a believer.  “Tell them each—”

“Dylan,” interrupts Phil.

“Yes.”

“We can figure it out.”

“Of course.”  I go back to spotting targets and aiming my rifle, just when I spot a spindly Gray.  I fire.  “Silva,” I say, to get her attention, “a Gray.”

She aims her fire at it as well.

“What are you doing?”  Phil is back on the line, and he’s agitated.

“You know what I’m doing.”

Silva hits the Gray, and its big head erupts.

“You’re upsetting Nick.”

The ship accelerates toward the survivor Jablonsky found.

I lower my weapon and connect with Silva on a private comm.  “Kill all of those you see.”

Phil says, “Dylan, you know you’re close enough I can pick up most of what you say.  I don’t need the comm for that.”

“There’s only so much I’ll do to keep your Tick happy,” I tell him.

Chapter 58

It takes most of a day.  We recover seventeen, including Jill.  Unfortunately, no other member of her bridge crew survives.  In the tally of mortality in my head, I tick off two more friends from the grav factory.  Along with them, two more bridge crews, and three platoons of forty soldiers each—we paid a substantial price for one Trog cruiser.

The calculus of trading three of our tiny assault ships for one of the Trog’s starfaring leviathans and swapping a hundred and twenty-nine human lives for ten thousand Trogs would work out dramatically in humanity’s favor if it weren’t for us being the species we are.  The SDF generals and admirals are self-serving MSS functionaries, and the Free Army’s leadership is little better.  Even that might not be a fatal disadvantage if humans were united in their effort, yet we’re still fighting each other, swayed into hating one another by the Grays’ MSS propaganda machine.

It might cost us this war and every generation of human children their freedom.

We make a quick trip back to Iapetus, blinking out of bubble jump and then radioing in to let them know it’s us before they send their defenders up to attack.  Two hours later, we’re back in the air with our hydrogen tanks topped off and the magazine for our axial railgun once again full.  Even better, we have another thousand rounds packed in cases and jammed into every empty space we can find in the ship.

After hearing about how effective the gun was at blasting Trog cruisers, Spitz’s people were only too happy to give us all we could carry.  Spitz even hinted that he was willing to apply pressure on the UN council to outfit two more of our ships with the remaining long-barreled railguns they possessed.  With three such ships working together, we could make short work of our Trog infestation.

The only problem?  Getting two more Arizona-class ships under my command.

We max grav our way out as soon as we have our load, and bubble jump to the Potato.

It’s a fast journey with our newfound speed.

We pop out of bubble a thousand klicks over the asteroid’s surface.

“Three ships here,” Phil tells me before I can see anything but fading blue.

“Three good ships?” Penny asks.  “All functioning?”

“Yes,” Phil answers.  “Reactors burning H, grav fields up, though one is damaged.  Its defensive field is a mess.”

“How far out?” I ask.

“All three a few klicks above the surface,” answers Phil.  “They’re starting to react to us.”

I turn to Jablonsky.  “You’re up.  Send them the message we discussed.  Tarlow, do you have the video ready?”

“Aye, sir.”  He embellishes it with a pirate, “Argh!”

I spin on him.  “You, too?”

He grins and shrugs.

“Jablonsky, send them Tarlow’s file.  Tell those ships to stand down, or we’ll blast them out of the sky.  And set up a meeting with whoever is in charge down there.”

Chapter 59

Penny brings the ship in so fast everyone on the bridge cringes for fear of making a new impact crater.

She pulls it up at the last second and drifts to a static point five feet off the asteroid’s surface.

I’m already in the bridge airlock and I swing the door open as we come to a stop.  Jumping out, I amplify the asteroid’s weak gravity with my suit’s plates, and my boots pound down in the surface dust amid the roiling cloud pushed out by the Rusty Turd’s powerful fields.

More boots hit the ground around me.  Brice, Hawkins, Lenox, Silva, and Phil are on the ground with me in a matter of moments.  A squad of six others exits through an assault door.  They’re all veterans of our attack on that first Trog cruiser over Arizona—men and women who’ve fought with me and Jill in every skirmish since.  We’re as battle-hard-badass as any platoon in the solar system, and we’re brandishing our weapons like we’re ready to shoot down every one of Blair’s coverall-wearing pussies, if not out of necessity, then maybe just for fun.

We’re carrying full loads of ammo, hand grenades, and C4 charges.  We fully packed for the violent side of diplomacy and we’re in no mood to fuck about.  I’m tired of the Free Army’s petulant incompetence, and I’m ready to preach some come-to-Jesus truth at them or leave them to die when the Trogs come in force to slaughter them in their holes.

With Penny at the helm, the Turd flashes bright blue and accelerates away, giving us all a hard-gravity shove as it leaves.

I don’t need to look up.  I feel the ship go.

Penny’s going to a position twenty kilometers up where she’ll wait like a raptor ready to swoop down and kill the three ships that survived Ceres, or the three others that ferried the commanders from the two remaining Free Army outposts.  Besides the half-repaired junkers in the Potato’s expansive hangar, those six are the last of the Free Army’s fleet, the pittance of their military might not squandered at the shrine of their incompetence.

“What a bunch of fucking idiots,” muses Brice, as he looks at the sky, echoing for the thousandth time exactly the thoughts zipping through my synapses.

Getting right down to the practicalities, Jill asks, “Inside or out?”

We’re standing among the colony’s surface structures, twenty meters in front of the familiar recreation dome that’s turning into our favorite path in or out of the Potato’s subterranean levels.  “Anybody see any movement?”

Nobody’s supposed to be on the surface but us.  That’s what the Free Army commanders agreed to before my squads came down.

Now, all of my troops are keeping their eyes sharp and weapons ready, looking for any sign of treachery.

“They’re all inside,” Phil tells me as he employs his enhanced grav sense to scan the area.  Having him along almost makes things unfair.

Jill polls our troops, and they concur.  We’re alone on the surface.

“Jill,” I tell her, “you stay outside with your squad.  Hunker down and don’t hesitate to blast anything that moves.  These knuckleheads need to stand by their word, or we’ll make them regret it.”

“Aye, sir.  And the airlock?”

I roll my eyes.  “Plant the C4.  Blow the charges at the first sign of trouble.  We’ll be standing inside, well away from the door, on grav tight.  We’ll be fine while all the air blows out.”

Brice heads for the airlock door.  The rest of us follow.

Chapter 60

It starts badly.

Jill’s squad is outside as planned.  The charges are planted.  Nothing is wrong there.

The rest of us are inside, under the dome, watching the hypnotically slow water dance in the fountain dominating the center of the floor, and we’re alone.

None of us is standing near the door.  We’re well off to the side.  Me, Phil, and Hawkins have our faceplates open, but our helmets are on.  I have my comm open to Penny up in the ship, to Jill outside the dome, and to my team inside.  Brice, Lenox, and Silva are all buttoned up, spread along the wall, defensive grav glowing, both hands on their respective weapons.  They only need to feel the breath of a threat, and half a heartbeat later they’ll let loose a spray of high-velocity metal on anybody foolish enough to be near.

The Free Army officers have kept us waiting for fifteen minutes, and I’m losing my patience.  I know we’re being jerked around by some kind of power maneuver left over from some pre-siege corporate playbook.  I look down at my d-pad to confirm the time, and I’m immediately frustrated.  I can’t get it to respond to any screen gesture.

Piece of crap!

I glance at Phil.  “I’m about ready to bail.”

He shakes his head.  “They’re on the way.”

“Were they coming from the other side of the asteroid?”

He shakes his head again and points to his right.  “They’ve been down near the end of the hall, arguing with one another.”

“About?”

“Hard to tell with so many of them there and so far away, but I’d say some want to kill us.  Others want to make a deal.  They think you executed Blair.”

“Do any of them know Blair?”  I laugh.

“They’re coming now.  Almost here.”  Phil nods toward one of the doorways on the opposite side of the dome.

“Ready,” I tell the others as I see bodies in the dim light down the stairs.

I step forward several paces until I’m in the wide, clear walkway near the fountain.  Phil stays on my shoulder, Hawkins does, too.

Soldiers in orange file up the stairs, helmets on, faceplates closed, weapons in their hands.

At least they have the good sense to match our readiness posture.  Had they come decked out in their blue coveralls, I’d have been tempted to shoot them down because I could get away with it.

“No you wouldn’t,” Phil tells me.

“What?”

Phil casts a disappointed look my way.  “You’re not the person you pretend to be half the time.”

That’s when it hits me.  “Stop reading my damn thoughts.”

He shrugs and smirks.

“Concentrate on those bastards with the guns.  I don’t want to be surprised if one of them decides to kill me.”

“Knowing something’s coming isn’t the same as being able to do something to stop it.”

“Thanks for bestowing your wisdom upon me, oh great sage.”

Phil smiles but doesn’t respond to my sarcasm.

Chapter 61

Twenty soldiers ring the far perimeter by the time they’re all in.

After what somebody thinks is a dramatically sufficient passage of seconds, the three guys in charge come up the stairs to enter the dome.

Like us, the two colonels and one captain are wearing their orange suits, helmets on and faceplates open.  One is a young guy with dark hair, mean eyes, and a mustache.  His name is Herrera.  Another is as pleasant and plain as a mannequin.  His eyes remind me of Blair’s, and I remember him.  His name is Sokolov.  We met him in the hall outside Blair’s office when I invited her to take a ride on my ship.

I don’t like Sokolov, and I don’t trust him.

The last guy towers over the other two and looks to be in charge as he walks up and takes his stand between the others.  His wrinkled, brown skin is a stark contrast to his bright, green eyes.  His name is Bird.

I decide he’s trustworthy, and I step forward to risk a handshake.  “Dylan Kane.”

Bird takes my hand and shakes.  Herrera follows, and Sokolov goes last, reluctant and ready to jump away.

“This is Phil, and that’s Colonel Hawkins.”  I nod to my three soldiers.  “These are my people.  Let’s get right down to business.  All of you viewed the video I sent of our last engagement?”

“We did,” answers Bird in a deep, rich voice.

“My ship killed four Trog cruisers and disabled three others.  As many as the rest of the fleet.”  I resist the urge to add, ‘What’s left of it.’

Silent nods.

“You know what my ship and crew did over Arizona,” I tell them.

“Propaganda,” mutters Sokolov.

I ignore him and stay focused on Bird and Herrera.  “Everybody knows what my platoon did when we arrived here.  We took this place from the Trogs, and we destroyed two more of their ships.  Now I know what Blair says about—”

“And what about Colonel Blair?” blurts Sokolov.  “You kidnapped her and what, killed her?  Ejected her into space?”

“She’s a guest on my ship.”

“A prisoner,” he retorts.

“Exactly, a prisoner,” I confirm.  “She’s a great administrator, but she’s gone mental.”

“So what is this?” asks Sokolov, waving a hand toward my soldiers with their guns at the ready.

Bird turns and glares down at Sokolov, who suddenly loses his brave mouth and turns squirrelly.

“Blair,” I tell them, “is a separate problem.  But we can waste our time on her and her shit if that’s what you want.”

“You need to free her,” Bird tells me.  “Bring her down to the surface, unharmed.  Right now.”

I shake my head.  “If I wanted to kill her, she’d already be dead.  If I wanted to harm her, she’d already be harmed.  Right now, the only value she has to me is guaranteeing the safety of my people.  When I’m done, you can have her back.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about,” says Bird as he turns to walk away.

I reach out and grab his shoulder.  “Don’t.”

He spins back and glares down at me, yet I don’t back down like Sokolov, I look up and match his silent ferocity with my own.

We stand there like that, measuring one another, until he steps back and suffers through a long sigh.  “Tell us why you brought your highlight reel here for us to see.”

“So you know who I am,” I answer.  “I’m not what the MSS says.  I’m not a spy for the SDF or the Trogs.  If I am, well, I’d have to be just about the worst damn spy in the world, because I’ve been out killing cruisers while the rest of you lazy jackasses have been hiding in your rocks in the middle of nowhere pretending to have a war.”

Bird’s temper flares magma hot, and he explodes toward me in a flash, bumping his chest to mine and looking down at me with flaring nostrils and wide eyes.  “You listen to me you little piece of pig shit.  I’ve been out here killin’ Grays since you were still trying to peep at naked girls in the junior high gym shower.  I’ve lost my friends and my soldiers.  I’ve won my victories and taken my losses.  So don’t you think you’re anything special with your three weeks of time in an orange suit, because you don’t have a clue what life out here is really about.”

He retreats to his spot between his two colonels.  Everybody is stunned by the outburst except Herrera, who mutters, “He’s no soldier.”  He’s talking about me.

I’m puzzled, still looking only at Colonel Bird.  “Why didn’t you take charge after Callisto got attacked?  Why was Blair running the show?”

“She wasn’t,” says Herrera.  “She thought she was.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She took charge,” says Bird.  “She announced to everybody within radio range that she was in charge, and given the urgency of the matters at hand, we sent our ships to participate in her attack, knowing we’d all come here afterwards and work out the details of succession.”

“And her plan was a crock,” I say, because somebody needs to.  “We lost most of our ships and hundreds of good people for nothing.”

“Not according to your highlight reel,” snipes Sokolov.

“You dumbass,” I tell him.  “You are one of Blair’s toadies aren’t you?  Do the math, moron.  We killed plenty of Trog soldiers, but we lost most of our fleet.  We don’t have the strength to go at them again.  Not in that kind of engagement.  All we really accomplished was to show them what a danger we are, to bring their attention down on us.  So you know what’s going to happen now, as soon as those cruisers of theirs refill their holds, they’re coming after us—not the earth—us.  They’re going to root through every asteroid in the belt, and destroy it.  They already know this one is here, so you can expect them any day now.  And then we’ll have just the two.  I doubt they’ll last long.  And then we’re lost, because it won’t matter if we have five ships or fifty, if we can’t resupply them, we can’t fight.”

It’s sobering medicine, hearing that everything you worked for is crumbling to shit.  That’s what’s going through Bird’s head and Herrera’s thoughts.  I don’t need Phil to tell me, yet he does.  He plants those thoughts in my head so deftly I almost think they’re my own.  He also tells me that Sokolov is exactly what he seems to be, a liar in Blair’s service.  He’ll stab me in the back at first chance.

“You didn’t come down here for lecture time,” says Bird.  “Why are we all here?”

I laugh as my goals morph into something unexpected.  “I came down here to tell all of you what a bunch of knuckleheads you are, and that your only chance of making this revolution work is to get behind me.  I came down here to tell you I was taking charge of this clown car.”

Herrera laughs out loud.

Sokolov glares daggers at me.

“But?” asks Bird, offended, but hiding it well.

I look over at Phil.  I know he knows what I’m thinking.  I know he’s already evaluating Bird as deeply as is possible given that Bird doesn’t have a bug in his head.

Phil tells me what I need to know by giving me a slight nod.

“What was that?” asks Bird, on edge.

I look Bird in the eye and say, “I think you should be in charge of the Free Army.”

Chapter 62

Sokolov goes apoplectic as unintelligible words bubble through the spit on his lips.

Herrera agrees, yet he’s wary.

Bird doesn’t react, not at first.  He takes a solid thirty seconds as he evaluates me and contemplates my assertion.  Finally, he says, “I don’t need your blessing for anything I do.”

“No,” I agree.  “You don’t.  I’m putting my cards on the table here.”  I look past Bird at the twenty men and women standing along the wall, pretending to be prepared to kill me.  I know—at least I think I know—nearly half of them are faking it.  Their loyalties don’t lie with Blair and her lackey Sokolov.  “All of you back there, you know who I am.  I know you’ll follow me in to fight the Trogs.  I know you’ll bleed with me.  I know you’ll die for me, just like I’ll die for you.”  I look back at Bird.  “They’re the ones I came for.  They’re the beating heart of the Free Army.  I thought the rest of you were a cancer.  But I didn’t know all of you.”  I glance at Sokolov.  “Now I think it’s him and a handful of others who are the tumors.  For the rest of you, I think if we fight together for what we all believe in—”

“What we all believe in?” Herrera interrupts.

“Freedom,” I tell him.  “That’s why I raised a rifle.  Not just freedom for me, but for all of us, for every human on earth and on every rock from here to the Kuiper belt.  Everyone.”

He nods.  He believes me.

“If we fight together,” I continue, “we might still win this war.”  I fix Bird in my hard stare again.  “I think you’ve got the mettle of a man I can fight for.  You need to take charge of this army, and you need to decide right now whether you’re going to believe in me.  I’m no spy, not for anybody.  I am exactly what I seem to be.  Let me do what I do, take the fight to the Trogs, pound them with our metal fist, and take our freedom back.”

“What about Blair?” Sokolov shouts as he wags an accusing finger at me.  “He’s a kidnapper.  He can’t be trusted.”

Bird turns his angry eyes on Sokolov, and the captain loses his will to talk.  He seems to shrink into his suit.

Bird looks back over at Herrera, who gives him a nod.  Bird turns to me.  “Okay.”

I salute Colonel Bird and say, “Thank you, sir.”

Bird returns my salute and then looks at Hawkins while he asks me, “Now, who’s this guy?”

“This is Colonel Hawkins.  He can give us what we need to win.  He’s our secret weapon.”

THE BATTLE CONTINUES…

Freedom’s Fist, Book 4

Please report any corrections to http://www.bobbyadair.com/typos

The Last Word…

I used to write one of these for every book, but I haven't done one in a while.

As she always does before a book's release, the other half, Kat, asked me this morning if I was going to write a Foreword or Last Word for Freedom's Fray.  I said no.  However, since that whirlwind cruise and unconventional stingray-themed exchange of vows in 2015, I think she’s contractually obligated now to nag me about this. And like any good wife, she asked me to explain why.  So now, I've been thinking about it all morning long.

Bottom line, I stopped after I received one too many bad reviews, not based on the story in question, but based on something I said in the Foreword or in the Final Word section where I took a moment to tell any interested readers my thoughts about the book I'd just created and published.  I used to proudly put this in the front of my books.  One of my favorites was the intro to Slow Burn 7, where I talk about how what started out as “just a zombie series” turned into something more than I ever expected.  I had no idea that my writing had actually changed lives, helping people rekindle a love for reading, and in a few cases giving confidence that led to a reader going back to school to finish.

I guess after talking about it with her, I realized I was being kind of a whiny bitch about the whole thing.

Overall, all of my readers have been very generous with praise and criticisms. And I've taken much of it to heart. It's helped me become a better writer of the kinds of stories you want to read.  After twenty-five books, including several bestsellers, I feel like I’m a better writer than I’ve ever been.  But who am I kidding?  We can all become better at our passions if we strive to learn from both our successes and mistakes.  My readers have certainly taught me a lot about that.

The truth is, I value the connection I have with you all, and it’s why I keep writing.  The overwhelming response about these personal messages has been ‘put it back.’  People are going to be who they're going to be, they're going to behave how they're going to behave, regardless of what I do.

However, all of this does make me wonder about us as a culture.

Many of you have grown up with the Internet and email, social media, constant connection, public platforms in the digital realm both transparent and anonymous.  Many of us were raised in a world where all of these things were concepts that existed even beyond the imaginations of our sci-fi writers at the time.

This type of communication has altered the foundation of our culture, how we interact with one another and how we behave in public. I believe it's the fastest, most all-encompassing cultural shift humanity has ever experienced.

Now every single one of us needs to decide how we fit into this new global culture, and not only who we're going to be in this cyber-enhanced world, but in which directions our multi-dimensional civilization is going to evolve.

Are we going to lay the underpinnings for a nasty, vicious dystopia, or will we reach high for a dreamy utopia? Will our culture be a mirror that amplifies our venal instincts, or will it be the light that illuminates a path to our better selves?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. Perhaps I'll explore them in a book I write one day. Either way, the world will be what we make it.  And I’m committed to make it better.

I hope you enjoyed Freedom's Fray. If you have feedback, positive or things that you’d like to see handled differently, please leave a review. Or, if you want to express yourself simply, tick off the number of stars that matches your feelings about the book and hit submit. I appreciate it all.

Thanks, Bobby

(And Likes on Facebook bring good karma!)

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Amazing people who made this book happen…

Cover Design

Alex Saskalidis, a.k.a.  187designz

Cover Illustration

Illustration © Tom Edwards
TomEdwardsDesign.com

Editing, Proofreading, Book Formatting

Kat Kramer Adair

Super Special Thanks & Moral Support

Mike & Ré Kramer

Paul & Karen Tarlow of Helios Kiln Glass Studio in Austin, Texas

More about Bobby’s other writing…

Slow Burn Series (9 books), a best-seller!

Slow Burn is Bobby’s flagship post-apocalyptic zombie series, but so much more than a zombie book.  Follow the adventures of Zed as he wakes up one morning to find that something’s a little different in the world.  As the world is going to shit, Zed meets up with Murphy, and they try to navigate their new reality through a world of the “slow burns” before they are completely consumed by the virus.  Great reviews, with over a million books sold, readers LOVE this one.

The Last Survivors Series (6 books)

A collaborative series with fellow zombie author T.W. Piperbrook, this series has a little more of a Sci-Fi feel, popular with folks who like Game of Thrones.  It explores what happens 300 years in the future after the apocalypse, when man has rebuilt and gone back to an almost medieval society.

Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (trilogy)

A really great terrorism thriller with awesome reviews.  It focuses on the devastating Ebola outbreak and the possibility of weaponized Ebola by terrorist organizations and nationalized resources like blood with Ebola antibodies.  A more in-depth and complex observation of the real world.  This series follows an American college student teaching in Uganda as the country comes under attack from the deadly virus as he tries to make his way back to the safety of his family back in the United States.

It’s also historically and medically accurate, so you’ll learn a little about the history of the disease as well…did you know that Ebola has been airborne in the US in the past?  Or that it can survive in semen for 90 days or more after a person is declared “Ebola-free?” (This is Kat’s favorite!)

Black Rust, Black Virus (first two in a series)

A newer series from Bobby that also deals with a different post-apocalyptic reality.  Christian Black is a bounty hunter charged with hunting down the infected…a “Regulator.”   When caught in an unsanctioned kill, Christian sets about to clear his name.  A fairly deep character, whose flaws are an important backstory to his adventurous life.

Dusty’s Diary: One Frustrated Man’s Zombie Apocalypse Story (first in a series)

Fun and crass…be careful if you’re easily offended!  Has some great advice about what to pack in your post-apocalyptic bunker (don’t forget the porn!).  Dusty’s Diary has an uncertain future…people like it, so I’ll probably write more in the future.  This is a short story, and the next in the series is coming soon (but Bobby keeps saying this so you never know!).

Text copyright © 2017, Bobby L. Adair & Beezle Media, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties.  Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

This book is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.  Well, maybe Tarlow…but the real Tarlow is way cooler than the character in the book.

Table of Contents

- Book 3 in the Freedom’s Fire Series
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35
- Chapter 36
- Chapter 37
- Chapter 38
- Chapter 39
- Chapter 40
- Chapter 41
- Chapter 42
- Chapter 43
- Chapter 44
- Chapter 45
- Chapter 46
- Chapter 47
- Chapter 48
- Chapter 49
- Chapter 50
- Chapter 51
- Chapter 52
- Chapter 53
- Chapter 54
- Chapter 55
- Chapter 56
- Chapter 57
- Chapter 58
- Chapter 59
- Chapter 60
- Chapter 61
- Chapter 62
- THE BATTLE CONTINUES…
- Slow Burn Series (9 books), a best-seller!
- The Last Survivors Series (6 books)
- Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (trilogy)

- Black Rust, Black Virus (first two in a series)

- Dusty’s Diary: One Frustrated Man’s Zombie Apocalypse Story (first in a series)