AMBITION

THE LONG HAUL: BOOK 1

©Geoff North 2017

Cover art by Tom Edwards www.tomedwardsdesign.com

Edited by M.M. Chabot

Other Books by Geoff North:

Thawed (CRYERS Book 1)

Horror (CRYERS Book 2)

Lawmen (CRYERS Book 3)

Live it Again

Make Believe

Children of Extinction

Conspiracy Hotel

Out of Time

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Table of Contents:

Ambition History

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

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Ambition History

Since the days before mankind could harness fire and paint on cave walls, two important questions have travelled with us throughout the millennia—is there life after death, and are we alone? There remains a big, fat blank after the first question, but in the year 2322 the people of Earth received an answer to the second.

We were not alone.

Fifty light years from Earth a planet in the star system 51 Pegasi had intercepted our first radio transmissions sent out through the cold quiet of space more than three and a half centuries earlier. From these primitive initial signals, the citizens of Pega—a name we later gave to this second planet out from 51 Pegasi—inferred that we were a barbaric species, set upon a path of self-annihilation through greed and violence.

The Pegans began to prepare in the unlikely event that we might make it out to the stars and spread our vile way of life along the way. A single message, a warning, was sent back to Earth.

We are aware of your existence. We will end you.

First contact had been made, and the people of Earth didn’t take kindly to the introduction. Mankind had colonized Mars and many of the far moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn. Now their sights set out farther. They would journey from their solar system for the first time and engage the Pegans in something they had done a million times.

War.

Chapter 1

You can’t hear sounds in space.

Hadar Cen knew this was a fact, but the ringing in his ears was saying otherwise. The hit on their starboard wing had thrown the fighter ship into an uncontrollable spin. This added to Hadar’s disorientation, confusing the facts further.

You can’t hear sounds in space. What you’re hearing is inside this stupid helmet, Hadar reasoned. The ringing began to subside. He could hear something crackling. Someone’s voice emerged from the static. Kraz. He’s talking to me… trying to communicate, seeing if I’m all right.

There was smoke in the cockpit. A circuit board had fried somewhere, filling Hadar’s view with a swirling blanket of grey. The stupid helmet may have been constrictive, but it was the only thing keeping him alive.

The crackle cleared and Kraz’s voice came through crystal clear. “Goddamn it, Hadar, recycle your cabin atmosphere! Looks like you’re drowning in the crap from up here.”

Hadar leaned forward, fanning the smoke away from the pilot console with his gloved hands for a better view of the controls. He found what he was looking for and pressed a button on his lower left side. The smoke was pulled instantly away and sucked out somewhere beneath him.

“Good job,” Kraz said. “My secondary pilot controls are out… do you still have main control at your end?”

Most of the console before him was lit in green. “Yes.”

“Well don’t just sit there. See if you can correct this tumble we’re in. I’m going to puke up my breakfast in about ten more seconds if you don’t.”

Hadar wasted four of those ten seconds trying to remember where the ship’s trajectory override controls were. On the right, above my head. There were three colored toggles there—red for roll, yellow for yaw, and green for pitch.

Which one?

“We’re in a roll,” Kraz snapped. “Pull the red one.”

Hadar pulled the red toggle and the fighter ship nick-named Bite came out of its dizzying spin. He could see the stars again. They were still tumbling end over end, but at a much-reduced rate of speed. Hadar adjusted their pitch manually and the ship straightened out.

“Thank you,” Kraz sighed gratefully.

Hadar made one final navigational adjustment. Bite rolled a few more astral degrees until the planet of Pega came into view directly before him through the canopy cover. It was by far the brightest point of light in the cosmic vista before them. They were close. Too close. He read his instruments for distance. 88.45. Less than a hundred million kilometers away. If he engaged the fighter’s fold drive, they could be there and in orbit in under twenty minutes. But an orbital approach wasn’t part of their mission. They were to remain at what was believed a relatively safe distance to see what kind of planetary defense systems the Pegans had in place. Take pictures. Record any energy signatures beyond Pega and its two moons.

They hadn’t spotted a damn thing until it was too late.

Hadar removed the claustrophobic helmet, twisted sideways in the pilot’s seat, and craned his head around for a look at the gunner in the upper turret ten feet directly behind him.

Kraz Corvus had already taken his head covering off. He was an exceptionally ugly man with a bulbous nose and narrow eyes set too close in the center of his wrinkled old face. He gave Hadar the thumbs up, and the seventy-year old gunner’s voice continued through the ship speakers. “So what did you think of first contact, son? I thought it went kind of shitty myself.”

Hadar returned the single digit salute. “No more than I expected. We did come out here to fight, after all.”

There was a pause of crackle before Kraz responded. “Yeah. Part of me was hoping maybe after seven hundred years of just going to war would’ve made the thing obsolete. Wishful thinking, I guess.” Another long pause. “Any word from Nail or Bee?”

Smoke had begun to accumulate in Hadar’s small cabin again. He circulated the air a second time for a clearer look at the navigation screen represented as a three-dimensional map across the glass canopy over his head. The dull yellow grid lines flickered, a million cubic kilometers of space, but no blinking points of blue appeared. “Nothing on screen, and no audio distress calls. I tried calling Nail just seconds before we were hit. They never responded.”

“Could be our tracking sensors have malfunctioned. It doesn’t necessarily mean they were destroyed.”

“I never suggested they had been,” Hadar said testily.

“Well it’s hard not thinking the worst when the pilot of one is an introverted data storage specialist, and the gunner on the other’s a drunk. Command could’ve chosen better. An unmanned video drone or two could’ve done the job better if you want my opinion.”

Nail and Bee were the names of the other two fighter ships assigned to their three-ship scouting mission. Hail Vela was the data specialist piloting Bee; his gunner, Kella Sa, was a milun—short for military unit—like Hadar and Kraz. Nail was under the questionable control of Tor Emin, one of Ambition’s two military colonels, a brawling bully and heavy drinker. At least Emin’s pilot, Rastaban Drac—a conceited but competent squadron boss—was piloting the lead ship. None of them, including Colonel Emin and Boss Drac, had any practical experience. It was, after all, their very first war.

Kraz was half right; video drones could have gathered the information they needed more efficiently, but the Captain and his highest-ranking officers wanted to begin testing their people first-hand, and there was no one amongst Ambition’s crew with first-hand experience.

“I don’t think the worst happened,” Hadar finally replied. “I’m hoping they either took communications damage, or maybe they headed back for Ambition.”

“I could see Tor doing something like that… turning and running. That would explain why he didn’t answer your hail before we were attacked. He’s probably back on Ambition drinking his face off at that filthy bar he’s always picking fights in.”

“You’re a mean old bastard, Kraz. You know that, don’t you?” A small shudder ran through the ship and the crackle returned over the speakers. “Kraz? Did you hear what I said?”

Hadar turned in his seat and looked back over his shoulder. Kraz’s ugly grinning face wasn’t there. The three-inch thick transparent metal canopy dome wasn’t there. All that remained of the gunner started at mid-chest level. Everything above that was gone, save for an inch or two of severed spinal column poking up over the singed edge of his environmental suit.

A sliver of silver over ten meters in length appeared on the starboard side of Bite. Hadar had only caught a glimpse of the alien vessel when it had attacked them the first time. It had been more than a thousand meters away then, and Hadar couldn’t thoroughly convince himself the loss of their wing hadn’t been caused from something other than a second sentient force besides themselves out in the stars.

But he was certain now. The strip of silver revealed more of itself, shifting over like a sharp blade in an endless sea of black, less than twenty meters from Bite’s heavily damaged hull.

What kind of ship is that?

There were no wings, no windows, no gun turrets. He couldn’t see a single rivet or join in the strange metallic surface. The silver brightened, started to glow white. The glow expanded and began to envelop Bite. Hadar turned in his seat one last time and saw the remains of his gunner’s body sizzling away in wisps. He could see the white light creeping towards the pilot cockpit, eating away at the tough Mars-refined carbon steel hide of their little fighter.

Hadar thought he would feel the heat of it before he was incinerated. Instead he felt a terrible cold. He reached for his helmet without looking and clicked it into place over his head with shaking hands. A layer of frost spread across the visor immediately. It cracked down the center and spider-webbed off to the sides. The ringing in his ears returned. It intensified, became a deafening hum that stabbed into his brain.

Kraz had been right about another thing, Hadar realized as consciousness began to slip away. First contact had been a shitty experience.

Chapter 2

Ly Sulafat stared through the glass out into endless black. The captain was sixty-nine years old, and it felt as if every step he’d taken before reaching the observation deck above the bridge had drained him of more life, and he had walked plenty in the last few weeks.

Captain Sulafat was in excellent health for a man of his age. Ambition’s head of Medical had informed him that he would be able to retain his command for another thirty years so long as he looked after himself and reported in for semi-annual checkups. The average life expectancy onboard Ambition was over one hundred-twenty. That was one of the benefits of living in a disease-free environment. People rarely got sick. A man or woman entering their eighties was just on the outer fringes of middle age.

“Your life’s just beginning to get interesting,” he muttered out loud.

The mechanical behemoth, Nash, clomped up the spiral staircase behind him. “Pardon me, Captain?”

“Something Doctor Gulum told me during my last physical. The man’s full of crap.”

“The man is competent enough.” Nash stood next to him. “I believe he was trying to convey the importance of Ambition’s mission, and your role in it.”

“I know what he was trying to do. It didn’t help.”

“You have done well, Captain. These last few weeks have been most beneficial to your health. The bridge crew on duty this morning is anxiously awaiting your return.”

Sulafat leaned against the window. He looked up at the seven-foot tall android and concentrated his gaze at the twin black globes protruding halfway out from its white metal face. “Nash… short for Nashira, a star in the constellation Capricornus. Do you know what Nashira means, old friend?”

“Nashira, the lucky one. Nashira, the bearer of good news,” the robot answered instantly.

“And the good news you bear today is that my bridge crew is looking forward to seeing me once again.”

“I thought it would make you happy to know those you left behind before your Long Walk are excited for your return.”

Long Walk. Captains serving aboard Ambition had each gone on at least one during their commands. It had been a tradition for centuries. This was Sulafat’s fourth.

“Excited,” Sulafat repeated the word with little enthusiasm. “Anxious is probably more likely.” He could feel his shoulder sliding slowly down the window. Nash’s large titanium fingers gripped gently beneath his elbow and started to bring him back up before Sulafat could do it himself. He felt like some ancient infant being steadied by the robot’s ever-faithful assistance. “I’m alright, quit pampering me.”

“Don’t feel embarrassed.” The robot’s tone had softened, gone quieter, even though there was no one else on the observation deck with them. “I am the Captain’s right hand. I have been the Captain’s right hand for seven centuries. Your… predicament is far less debilitating than many other captains I have worked with before you.”

Sulafat looked back into the black sensory-receiving orbs that were meant to represent eyes. “How many captains have you served under?”

“Twenty-nine. You’re the thirtieth.”

Another immediate answer. Sulafat knew the answers to his own questions, of course. He had named Nashira at the beginning of his command almost four decades earlier. The crew had shortened Nashira’s star name to Nash—another tradition the men and women serving aboard the Sol Ship Ambition had picked up over five hundred years ago. Everyone was named after a star or a constellation, or a combination of both.

Ly was given his name after the constellation Lyra from his parents Kep and Eta. The surname Sulafat came from Ly’s great-grandparents a hundred years before the captain had been born. And so it had been year after year, century upon century; people born and named after distant lights in the cosmos. They lived their lives and died amongst the watchful constellations.

Captain Sulafat found it only fitting that a walking, talking machine with human engrams running throughout its cybertronic brain should have a star-given name like all the rest of Ambition’s ten-thousand-person crew. Nashira—Nash—had a much better sound to it than Ambition Automaton Unit 3.

Sulafat pulled his arm from Nash’s grip. “Thirty captains. Seven centuries. And now our long journey is finally coming to an end. Will you miss it? Will you miss this eternal flight out in space so far away from home?”

“I was not programmed to miss anything, and Ambition has been the only home I have ever known.”

“I’ve never called it home. Most people do, but I could never bring myself to. Home is fifty light years behind us. Home is a place I’ve never seen, and never will. And this ship,” he raised his hands in a gesture to encompass its enormity, “…this ship may not be a home to anyone much longer. It’s best not to get attached to things.” Sulafat straightened his black command uniform and clicked his boot heels together. “How do I look?”

“Like the Captain of Ambition. Strong. Noble. Wise.”

“Ass-kisser.”

They headed down the stairs for the bridge.

Chapter 3

“We should’ve stayed with them,” Hail Vela announced. “We shouldn’t have run.”

“We gave it everything we had,” Kella said. “I fired all twelve wing missiles and almost exhausted the laser cannons. It’s hard fighting an enemy you can barely see.”

Bite and Nail—or what was left of them—were more than eighty-million kilometers behind. The moon of Oread loomed before Hail and Kella now. Its jagged surface of endless mountains and bottomless gouges threatened to chew Bee to shreds and swallow them up. Hail checked the landing coordinates again. They would set the ship down in one of the deeper slits on the moon’s ravaged face and wait for Ambition to catch up. He set Bee on auto-land and pulled his hands from the helm control handles. The ship made an adjustment. The stars behind Oread disappeared as the small ship dove down toward the mountains.

“How do we know Ambition will even bother to look for us?” Hail asked. “You saw the hit Hadar and Kraz took before we jumped into fold drive. If Nail took the same kind of damage, there won’t be anything left for them to search for. They’ll probably think all three fighters were lost.”

“Quit being such a pessimist. Captain Sulafat wouldn’t just assume we were all destroyed. Besides, Bee’s tracking beacon will automatically start up once we’ve landed. They’ll find us.”

The twenty-eight-year-old data storage specialist sighed heavily inside his helmet. The inside of his visor misted over momentarily. “This was crazy, putting someone like me in the pilot’s seat of a fighter ship.”

“Seven hundred years ago everyone would’ve agreed with you. Ambition’s original crew was trained with war in mind, but things have changed since then.” Kella paused to fasten the safety belts at her waist and across her shoulders. Hail heard her doing it, and did the same. “More than a dozen generations have put survival ahead of conflict. Our lucky generation gets to remember what it was all for. You’re no different than the rest of us. Look at me. I’ve been in the military for less than six months. This is only my third time in an actual fighter, the rest of my training was simulated. I’m not much more equipped to wage war than you are.”

They had descended beneath the first peaks. Black shards of jutting rock slid past like rotted teeth as Bee took them deeper. “I am different than you. I’m not like all the others on Ambition… I’m a hypochondriac.”

“That’s an old word from an old world,” she tried to reassure him. “We all live in fear now, Hail. It’s what keeps us going.”

He turned to his right as far as the safety belts would allow for a look at her. Kella smiled back at him. Her face was perfection, her dark skin soft-looking and warm. She should smile more often, Hail thought. Kella Sa, you’re so beautiful.

“There’s an aft camera in the back of your head rest,” she said. “Quit gawking and take a picture.”

Hail faced forward before she could see his face flush. Too bad she’s such a hard ass.

Bee dipped further into blackness. Hail tried to fight back the image of them crashing blind into rock. Quit thinking about it. Let the ship’s navigation systems do its job. He leaned his head back and watched their progress on the grid. The terrain below and on either side of them were erratic lines of yellow, the pulsing pink dot in the middle was Bee. He closed his eyes. The computerized image didn’t make him feel any better.

The ship began to rumble and shake. The landing thrusters had kicked in. Hail could feel his chest pressing against the belt restraints. Oread’s gravity had taken hold of them. Beads of sweat were running down Hail’s forehead. Some of it worked through his closed eyelids and stung.

I want to be in my cabin on Ambition. I want to be with my books. I don’t want to die here.

“Get it under control, kid. I can hear you panting back here. Take deep breaths.”

She had taken to calling him kid during their last two weeks of flight and combat training. Kella was only a year older than Hail. It infuriated him. “I’m not a kid. I’m not a pilot, and I’m not a goddamned warrior either.”

He was about to tell her a few more things he wasn’t, but didn’t get the chance. Bee’s underbelly slammed into rock. The force of it drove Hail’s nose against the visor of his helmet. He could hear the ship screaming as metal scraped along the moon’s surface. There was one final deep groan and a jolt that threw Hail hard into his safety harness.

They had come to a stop. Red lights were blinking all around Hail. He pushed his fears back and began addressing the automated alarms. “Cabin atmosphere hasn’t been compromised. Forward landing strut is gone. There’s a drop in the fuel reserves, but I think we’ll have enough left to launch off again.” Hail stopped reporting their situation and listened. Silence only. Kella hadn’t responded. He unfastened his belts and twisted around. He could see her up in the light of the gunner’s turret, slumped over and not moving. “Kella. Talk to me. Kella! Are you alright?”

“Quit yelling, my head already hurts enough.”

Hail watched her slowly straighten up. The inside of her visor was spattered with blood. “Your helmet… are you okay?”

“Did our ancestors back on Earth have pin-sized heads? It would’ve been nice if they’d designed these things with a little more face room. I think my nose is broken.”

“Mine took a good bump too.” Hail turned off the remaining alarms, ensuring first that Bee wasn’t going to blow them both to pieces with a fuel leak or electrical discharge. He checked the pressure levels of his environment suit next. The levels were normal. No tears or cracks, oxygen-nitrogen mixture right where it needed to be. “We should get out and take a look below. Maybe it won’t take long to repair.”

“Repair? Are you serious? This isn’t one of those info storage boxes you’re always working on, kid. You can’t simply swap old boards for new ones. It would take weeks to fix the mess under us, and that’s only if we were back on board Ambition with an entire bay filled with tools and replacement parts.”

“They’re called data storage bins, not info storage boxes. And I’m not a kid.”

“Lighten up, Hail. Do you have to take yourself so seriously all the time?”

He listened as she started assessing the weapons turret controls. Hail could hear buttons being pressed and switches being clicked off and on again. There was a grinding noise moments later followed by soft curses. “What’s wrong?”

“The hatch has been damaged. I can’t get out of the damned ship.”

“You want me to climb up there and try and force it open?”

There was another string of curses. “The frame’s bent. There’s no way you’re getting in here without a cutting torch or a good chunk of metal to wedge underneath it.”

“Well I’m not just going to sit here and listen to you swear until Ambition finds us.” Hail went for the hatch release button on his lower left side. The button that should’ve been lit green was power-dead black. He pressed it anyway. There was a loud pop somewhere beneath the console. Smoke started churning up from under his feet. “My release mechanism has malfunctioned.”

“Try the manual lever.”

Hail reached for it beneath the armrest. There was no handle to grab onto. The smoke was thickening, obscuring his view of the other controls and the lights of the navigation grid. “Uumm, there doesn’t appear to be one.”

“Shit. They should’ve let us give these ships a final check ourselves. That’s the last time I trust those idiots in mechanics section to do anything right.”

The exterior lights on Hail’s helmet activated automatically. Tendrils of black and grey pressed against his visor. Fear took hold of his chest and punched up into his throat. “I’ve got to get out of here, Kella. I’ve got to get out of this thing.”

“You’re alright. There’s eighteen hours of air in that suit. Sit tight and we’ll figure something out.”

“Eighteen,” Hail gasped the word. He closed his eyes again and tried to control his breathing. “Eighteen hours. It may as well be eighteen years. We’re trapped. We can’t get out. We’re going to die down here.”

He waited for Kella’s reassuring response. It never came.

Chapter 4

It had been twenty days since Ly Sulafat had begun his fourth Long Walk—younger captains had done it in less than a week. During that time, he’d visited every section of the refitted mining vessel. The Sol Ship Ambition had been transformed seven centuries earlier into a five-kilometer-long, two-kilometer-wide battle cruiser, and its captain had personally inspected each deck, travelled down every single corridor, and poked his nose into all the mechanical bays and personal sleeping quarters within its massive bulk.

He was now back where he started, on the bridge, with his ever-faithful companion and steady right-hand, Nash at his side.

“You couldn’t have timed your return any better, Sully.” Commander Second Sheratan Ries rose out of the captain’s chair and stepped down from the command dais. “We’re continuing to track the signal from one of the scout ships.”

“Just one?” Sulafat asked as he plopped down into the still warm seat.

Sheratan went to one of the four mapping stations and scooted the officer out of his chair with a look. She called up the coordinates and fed them into the main viewing screen. The Captain swung around and found the single blue dot flashing amongst a backdrop of a thousand yellow stars.

“So far. It’s Nail, and our sensors only picked them up thirty minutes ago.”

Sulafat repressed the urge to rub his temples with his thumb and forefinger. “And why wasn’t I informed until now?”

Sheratan stared coolly at Nash. The robot clomped up the first step of the command platform. “Commander Ries tried to inform you, Captain. I intercepted the message and decided it could wait.”

“The walk was tiring, Nash, but I’m not that fragile. The next time you feel the urge to withhold information due to my age, search within those dusty command protocols of yours, and don’t.” 

He saw Sheratan watching their exchange with the hint of a smile pulling at one corner of her thin lips. She despised Nash, and relished those rare occasions when the robot was reprimanded. But he saw double satisfaction in those light grey eyes. The Captain had been embarrassed—another sign that he was no longer fit to command Ambition—and she was, perhaps, one step closer to sitting in the high chair and staying there.

Sulafat wanted to snap at her as well, but decided against it. A good captain never took things too personally. He looked back to the big screen. “Show me the stats.”

Distance and speed indicators lit up next to the moving blip. The entire ten-person bridge crew remained quiet for the next few minutes as more information became available before their eyes. An audible sigh sounded from all of them as two life signatures registered on screen.

“Try hailing them,” Sulafat commanded.

Argus Cor, Ambition’s head communications officer answered. “I’ve been doing that for the last quarter hour, Captain.”

Sulafat glanced down at the small woman. Was she displaying impatience with his request? Settle down, old man. You’ve been preparing for this moment more than half your life. Hold it together. These people are still with you.

Nail’s fold drive disengaged seconds later. It would take them another forty-five minutes to reach Ambition at regular propulsion speed. Sulafat stood and stepped down from the platform. “Join me in my quarters, Sheratan.” Nash started to follow, and the Captain stopped him. “Remain here, but inform me the second you receive contact from either Colonel Emin or Squadron Boss Drac.”

Sulafat went to the front of the command platform closest to the main viewing screen. A hidden door set in the floor slid open revealing a steep set of steps. Ambition’s captain and second in command entered Sulafat’s living quarters. It was a spacious area, not much smaller than the bridge directly above. 

“They set out forty-eight hours ago on an observational mission,” the Captain said, pouring himself a lukewarm glass of water from the wall dispenser. “Now one ship returns out of three. I had hoped the good people of Pega wouldn’t have been aware they were out there, but it appears that was just wishful thinking.” He drank his water down. “And the people on Pega aren’t all that good, are they?” He poured a second glass and offered it to her.

Sheratan shook her head to the water and his question. “A civilization tracks the advance of an alien civilization into their planetary system. The three ships are small, but armed. It isn’t a question of whether the Pegans are good or bad—what would we have done back on Earth if things were turned around?”

Sulafat sat at the head of a long table set down two more steps in the center of the room. Centuries earlier, the Captain’s quarters had acted as a living space and meeting area for mining officials and corporate representatives. After the ship’s militarized refit, it had become a gathering area for senior officers and section heads. Sheratan sat in the first chair to his right. Sulafat rapped the table’s black surface with his knuckles. “Seven hundred years… Seven hundred years we’ve been preparing for this. Almost a quarter million people have lived and died on this ship, travelling through space to wage war based on a single hostile communication. And now it’s all come down to this last generation… You, me, and a dozen other people must make the decision whether it’s all been worth it or not.”

“They’ve just destroyed two of our ships. The original mission is still a go, as far as I’m concerned.”

He leaned forward and locked eyes with her. “We don’t know for certain Nail and Bee were destroyed. They may still be out there. We’ve been out here so long, the decision to engage Pega militarily shouldn’t be rushed in the last few hours.”

“The decision has to be made sooner now than later.”

“My decision, Sher.”

“You sound like a Turnback.” She immediately lowered her eyes to the table.

Sulafat straightened and sat back. “So there we have it. You accuse me of siding with the mutineers responsible for crippling this vessel more than six-hundred years ago.”

“It’s just an expression,” Sheratan said defensively. “Forgive me.”

The Turnback Revolution had occurred in 2369, on the fortieth anniversary of Ambition’s departure from the Sol system. Turnback was a word eventually used to describe anyone sharing the view of those original mutinous crew members that tried to send Ambition back to Earth. It had been a failed revolution, but not without devastating results; Ambition’s main forward propulsion system, the fold drive—the same drive system that powered their smaller scout ships and fighters—had been irrevocably sabotaged. The seventy-five-year voyage had become a seven-hundred-year odyssey.

“There’s nothing to forgive.” Sulafat rested a hand on the woman’s arm. “There are more sympathizers to that cause alive now than there were back then.”

“I’m not one of them.”

“And neither am I.” The Captain stood and walked along one side of the table. He turned at the end and paced back, searching for the right words. “But everything has to be taken into consideration before we take the Pegans on. It’s why I brought you down here without Nash. A purely human decision has to be made. Are we honor-bound to go to war, or are there alternatives?”

“We’re not turning back.”

“I never suggested that.” He stopped directly in front of her and crossed his arms. “But it isn’t too late to reach out to them… try to talk.”

Sheratan stood and smacked both hands on the table’s surface. “We’ve tried talking to them. We’ve been hailing them for centuries. Damn it, Sully, only one ship of three is returning from our scouting mission. They don’t want to communicate—they intend to destroy us. The evidence is right before your tired old eyes. See this for what it is, or step back and let someone else do what has to be done.”

Sulafat could have reprimanded Sheratan. He could have agreed, and relinquished his captaincy to her. He did neither. “When Tor and Rastaban are safely back on board we’re going to hold another meeting here. I want every section head to attend.” He went around the table and took her shoulders gently into his hands. “You’re a cold, calculating bitch, and you’re my closest friend.”

Sheratan smiled. “And I thought you only had eyes for Nash.”

He brushed back a strand of her silver hair and kissed her softly on the forehead. They had once been much more intimate decades earlier, but those days were long behind them. As Ambition’s top commanding officers, the two had agreed to sacrifice any romantic involvement for a more professional relationship. The idea hadn’t been his, but Sulafat had reluctantly gone along with it. He was almost old enough to be her father—how she’d developed feelings for him in the first place was a still a mystery all these years later. “One day this ship will be yours. But for now, neither you or I have the right to decide how this should end for all of us.”

“You just said the decision was yours to make a few moments ago.”

“The decision on how to proceed now that we’re here. After my long walk, after seeing the crew… the people, I’ve come to the conclusion it isn’t one person’s decision to make. We will meet as a group, and the section heads will put it to a vote.”

“You’re calling the Baker’s Dozen together.”

Ambition’s crew was broken into twelve major work sectors. A single representative from each section had one vote on ship matters. The Command section consisted of two representatives; the Captain and his second officer. Thirteen reps, thirteen votes. The Baker’s Dozen.

“We’ve been heading towards a military conflict all our lives—a tiny slice of Earth’s population. We represent an entire civilization. You know how I feel. I don’t want to turn back, and I don’t want this war, either. A gathering of all section heads may discover an alternative.”

Sheratan pulled away from his hold and shook one of his hands in both of hers. It was a genuine and warm action. “I’m a cold, calculating bitch, and you’re a soft, old fool. You want peace, and I want to carry out our original orders. Let’s see which of us gets our way after the vote.”

What Sulafat’s CS wanted was beside the point. She would vote with him in the end, he was sure. Patching up whatever hard feelings remained afterwards was a matter for another day.

Nash’s deep voice sounded over the speakers. “Nail has finally answered our hails, Captain. We’re bringing them in on automatic.”

“Are they alright? Are they both alive?”

“Colonel Emin is well. Squadron Boss Drac… perhaps you should report to the Medical Center once they’re back onboard and see for yourself.”

Sulafat went directly to the travel tube alcove located behind one end of the conference table. He paused halfway through the open doorway and called back to Sheratan. “There’s no right or wrong in all of this… no good decisions or bad. But there will be consequences. Let’s pray we’re both around at the end of it all to see what they were.”

Chapter 5

Vin Vir had left her station without permission. Her best friend was returning to Ambition, and word had it he wasn’t doing all that well. They don’t need me, Vin told herself as she rushed through the corridors of the sciences section towards the closest lift station. There were a dozen other computer specialists working the morning shift. I won’t be missed.

She ran into the open elevator bay and instructed it to carry her to the Medical levels. She might not be needed or missed, but someone would report her absence to Chort Leo. It’s how crew members assigned in Sciences got ahead in life. If you cozied up to the repulsive section leader, things went well. If you got on his bad side, you stayed there. Vin realized she may have very well just skipped out of her last shift in Sciences. She could be starting out again the following day in Water Treatment and Recycling, or perhaps as a grunt at the lowest of positions in Propulsion. She didn’t give a damn. She was twenty-five years old—young enough to tackle any new challenge. People twice her age were still swapping professions aboard Ambition.

To hell with Chort, that greasy-bearded, fat bastard. Rastaban needed her, and Vin would be there for him.

The elevator came to a halt and the door whisked open. Vin burst out and ran full on into somebody exiting the lift next to hers. “Damn it! Watch where you’re going,” she snapped first without looking. An older man dressed in command black stumbled back from the impact, lost his balance, and ended up ass-end on the corridor floor.

“I thought I was,” Ly Sulafat grumbled.

Rastaban was all but forgotten. Vin no longer cared about Chort, or where she might be reassigned the next morning. She would more than likely be in a jail cell before night for knocking the Captain over. “My God… sir… Oh my God, sir, I am so sorry.”

“Sir will do just fine, I’m not your God.” He waved her away and stood up again on his own. She crumpled back against the wall, her face white. “That was a joke, Vin.”

“You know my name?”

“Vin Vir, from computer sciences. I remember seeing you at work a week ago.”

“It was nine days ago, sir. I didn’t even think you noticed me.”

“I see everything and everyone.” Sulafat scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps I am God.”

The color finally returned to Vin’s face. She laughed out loud. “Again, sir, allow me to apologize. I should’ve been paying better attention… I shouldn’t even be here.”

The Captain nodded. “Skipping duty to check up on your friend, Rastaban?”

“I can report back to work right away, Captain. I don’t want to get in anyone’s way.”

He took a hold of her arm and pulled her along. “You’ve already gotten in my way. Join me, and we’ll see how he’s doing together.”

The Medical Center was one of the biggest areas, after Propulsion, on Ambition. It had originally been a cavernous bay where millions of tons of asteroid rock was brought in and further refined. During the refit, the Sciences section swelled—which Medical was a part of—to accommodate a generation’s worth of future patients and potential casualties of war. An expected generation became dozens of generations, and Ambition’s hospital grew. It became a nursery and a palliative care center, treating tens of thousands of people over the next seven hundred years.

Dr. Hal Gulum was the Chief Medical Officer presently in charge. Sulafat and Vin found the normally cheerful man hunched over the form of Rastaban Drac. Nail’s pilot was lying in a bed, his face covered in dressings.

Vin went to him and took her friend’s hand in hers. “How is he?”

Hal looked to the Captain questioningly.

“It’s okay. She’s with me.”

The fat little doctor shrugged. “Their ship took an indirect hit. According to Tor, Bite was fired upon first, and a piece of its wing smacked into Nail’s canopy. They never saw it coming, no warning on their sensors. Rastaban didn’t even have his helmet on. By the time he managed to get it in place, the damage had already been done.” He was about to go into more detail for the Captain, but decided not to for Vin’s sake.

“Explosive decompression,” the young computer specialist finished for him. “He lost his oxygen atmosphere in seconds. It doesn’t explain the bandages.”

“When the canopy blew, he took a significant amount of shrapnel to the right side of his face.” Hal patted Vin’s shoulder. “Scarring will be minimal with reconstructive surgery.”

Rastaban squeezed her hand. She leaned in, placed an ear close to the squadron boss’s covered mouth. “He’s trying to say something. Can you remove the dressing?”

The doctor looked to his Captain again for approval with an expression that said it wouldn’t be pretty. Sulafat nodded, and Hal did as Vin asked.

The left side of Rastaban Drac’s face was as she remembered, handsome and strong. The right side was an unrecognizable mess of healing gouges and broken flesh bubbles. Vin gasped and to fought the urge to pull back.

Rastaban squeezed her hand harder and rasped. “Not so… pretty anymore?”

Dr. Gulum was right; the cuts would heal. The grotesque discoloration however would likely remain the rest of Rastaban’s life. The entire right half of his skull, face, and neck had been transformed into a mottled mask of purple and blue.

Hal tried to make it sound better than it looked. “Another second or two and we would’ve lost him. Luckily he was able to get his helmet back into place just in time.”

“Luckily,” Rastaban repeated. A single tear leaked down his undamaged cheek. His left eye, a shriveled black orb, remained dry.

They will remove it, Vin thought to herself. Bionics division will give him a new eye. She glanced quickly to the doctor. “Is he in any pain?”

“We’ve given him medication to dull the worst of it. There’s been extensive nerve damage to the outer layers of epidermis… much like a severe case of frostbite.”

Vin touched the discolored skin of his right cheek. Rastaban tried turning his face away. “Don’t touch… don’t look at me.”

Hal guided the Captain away from the bed and spoke quietly. “Let’s give them a few minutes. I’m sure Drac could use a few friendly words right now instead of giving a report to you.”

“Give me some credit, I came here to see how he was. I can get a full report from Emin.” Sulafat looked around impatiently. “Where is the Colonel?”

Hal held both hands up. “Easy now. I was busy with Rastaban. One of my nurses gave Tor a thorough going over and said he was good to go.”

“Good to go? Goddamn it, Hal, they were nearly killed out there. Two other ships and four more crew members are still missing. Couldn’t you’ve held onto him long enough to file a report?”

“He gave his report to the medics that brought them in. I’m sure that information has already been routed to your quarters and appropriate bridge crew. If you want to hear what happened directly, I suggest you go find the Colonel yourself.”

Sulafat had a fair idea where the scouting mission’s leader may have disappeared to. He strode over to a communication console and smacked a button. “Nash, are you still on the bridge?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“I need you to find Tor Emin. Have him in my quarters in twenty-five minutes. Drag him by the scruff of the neck if you have to.”

“Yes, Captain. See you there.”

Sulafat turned back to the doctor. “You too, Hal. I want every section head there.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he called out as Ambition’s highest-ranking officer left the Medical Center. “The last thing I need is that metal garbage can dragging me anywhere.”

Vin was still trying to get Rastaban to look at her. The fighter pilot was doing his best to shut her out altogether. “I’m not leaving,” she stated. “I blew off the last half of my shift to be with you.”

He finally faced her. “Dumb girl. Chort will make you pay for that.”

“I’m not scared of Chort Leo. Maybe I’ll get reassigned, be free of him once and for all.”

Rastaban tried to smile. Some of the dead skin on his face cracked open. “I don’t know about Chort, but I think you’ll be free of me for a while. Can’t imagine I’ll be flying any fighters or ordering miluns around for some time.”

She had never seen him like this—not the physical disfigurement, but the complete absence of the Rastaban Drac she knew. He had always been an over-bearing, arrogant jackass that people either detested or put up with, most often both. But there was a side to the man very few crew members and co-workers got to see. This handful of people were his friends, and Vin was his closest.  She had seen past his incredible good looks—not an easy thing to do—and discovered a caring and loyal soul. Vin had grown to love him, and she was sure he loved her too. The more arrogant he acted, the mouthier he got, only proved it more. She wanted that Rastaban back more than ever now.

“You’ll be back ordering your grunts around soon enough… I know you will.”

The smile on his face weakened some. Rastaban’s remaining eye started to droop shut.

Hal Gulum spoke softly behind her. “He needs rest more than anything. Don’t worry, I’ll get a hold of you when he’s feeling a bit stronger.”

Vin left the Medical Center and headed back towards the elevator. She leaned against the wall before the door and tried to compose herself. The last place she wanted to go was back to Sciences. Chort would have undoubtedly written up her absence already. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream and smash her fists into the wall. She wanted to stay with Rastaban.

Vin closed her yes and recalled the first time they’d met. She had just completed fifteenth grade youth education and was headed for adult career placement. Twenty years old, highly intelligent, with an even greater imagination. She wanted to join the military and rise high in the ranks during the final five years of their voyage, perhaps even reach command level when they arrived in the Pegan system.

Rastaban Drac wasn’t a squadron boss back then. He was a thirty-year old junior grade platoon chief, combing through the fresh youth grads for potential enlistments. It was his job to recruit the smartest and most eager, and none came smarter and more eager than Vin Vir. But Rastaban had steered the impressionable girl away that day, convinced Vin to pursue a career in sciences. Her brains, he’d told her, were far more valuable in front of a computer screen somewhere on Ambition instead of fighting aliens out in space.

Vin followed his advice—any girl her age that had even caught a glimpse of the handsome officer would’ve hung on every word he said. She went into sciences, and had remained there. A part of her always wondered if Rastaban regretted his part in it. Had guilt forced him to keep in touch with her over the years? Had the friendship grown from seeds of regret? Vin no longer cared. He had become an unlikely, but close friend. Seeing him so terribly scarred and withdrawn was tearing her up inside.

Doctor Gulum found her standing next to the elevator two minutes later. “You’re still here? Good. It saves me the effort of tracking you down. The Captain just called. He wants you in his quarters with Colonel Emin and all the rest of us section heads.”

“Me?”

“That’s what he said. I think you made an impression on the old fart.”

I left work and knocked the Captain to the floor. He’s going to make an example of me in front of the others, and throw me in the brig.

The elevator door opened and Hal waddled inside. “You coming or not?”

Vin felt numb. She forced her legs to move anyway and joined the doctor.

Chapter 6

Tor Emin lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed the dark liquid down his throat in one gulp. It felt like a lit torch being forced through his throat and chest. The alcohol made his eyes water, the taste was something he would never become accustomed to. And Tor knew how to drink. It wasn’t his first visit to the Black Hole—one of Ambition’s four after-hours bars, and by far the darkest—and it wasn’t the first drink he’d pounded back in the last few minutes.

He pushed the glass across the counter. “Another one.”

The bartender reached below her station and produced a half-filled bottle. She placed it in front of Tor without pouring more into his glass. “The first three were free of charge,” she said in a deep, sultry tone. “I’ll give you the rest if you tell us what happened out there.”

The Colonel shook his head and took the bottle anyway. “Not until I’m good and wasted, Ma.”

Ma Ades didn’t fight him on it. The attractive forty-year-old brushed a strand of long auburn hair back over her shoulder. “At the rate you’re drinking my wine, that shouldn’t be long.”

“You call this stuff wine? I thought it was recycled urine.”

There were a dozen off-duty mechanics and security officers sitting along the bar and at a few of the tables scattered throughout the dingy lounge area. They had all been watching the Colonel since he’d arrived, listening to his brief exchanges with Ma. Everyone wanted to know what had happened to Rastaban Drac and the two other ships, but Tor wasn’t the type of person you could approach easily to chat with when he had drinking on his mind. Now Tor had gone too far. Sulking was one thing, insulting Black Hole’s proprietor was another. He’d overstayed his welcome.

A burly mechanic pushed away from his table and went to stand behind him. “Tell Ma what she wants to know, or walk your sorry ass out of here.” Rank had little meaning in a place like the Black Hole. It didn’t matter if you were the lowliest of grunts, or Commander Second of the Military. If you shot your mouth off and disrespected the bar’s owner, you became fair game.

Tor took a long swig from the bottle and glanced over his shoulder. Two of the mechanic’s friends had joined him. They were all big, but Tor was bigger. “Sit back down, Neb, before I make you pick your teeth up from the floor.”

Neb Kaitos grinned nervously and looked to make certain his backup was still with him. They were. “Apologize to Ma, then tell us what happened out there. Do that, and maybe we’ll let you stumble out of here on your own.”

Ma forced the bottle away from Tor. She placed it back under the counter along with some others sitting nearby. She knew the Colonel all too well. Why allow merchandise to get bust up if you know a fight’s about to break out?

He winked at her and whispered. “I’ll be quick about it.”

Neb poked one of Tor’s meaty shoulders. “What did you say, drunk? Was that an apology?”

“Kind of.” He waited until Ma disappeared into a back room behind the bar.

Neb poked him harder and Tor broke his finger. The mechanic howled and dropped to his knees. Tor broke his nose and knocked out a couple of teeth with one hit. The other two tried crawling over their fallen comrade but Tor was ready for them. He slammed one’s face into the counter surface where Ma’s wine bottle had been resting moments earlier. The last man standing tried coming in from the other side and ended up with an elbow in his throat. He staggered back, gagging. Tor punched him in the face, once, twice, three times.

“Fall down, asshole,” the Colonel yelled. The man’s hands were clutching at his throat. He was still gasping for air, staring uncomprehendingly through already blackening eyes. Tor kicked him between the legs. The man finally fell down.

The remaining Black Hole patrons had vacated their chairs and stools to take up positions around Tor. He held up his fists as they closed in. “Bring it on, I’m just getting warmed up.” Hardened looking men and women began backing away. Metal fingers clamped around one of Tor’s biceps.

“Hello, Colonel Emin. The Captain would like to speak with you.”

Tor’s blood was up. The wine wasn’t helping.  He took a swing at the robot, and ended up face first down on the floor with Neb’s bloody teeth only a few inches away. Nash’s powerful hands wrapped around his wrists and pulled him back up. “That was a silly thing to attempt, Colonel. You really should consider cutting down on the alcohol.”

“Yeah, I probably should.”

Ma was back behind the bar, surveying the mess. She waved at Tor as Nash began hauling him out of the Black Hole. “I’ll expect you back in this dump at closing to help me clean up.”

Tor had a feeling he wouldn’t be returning all that soon. Nash let go of him as they entered the nearest elevator. He instructed the lift to take them to level three.

“Are you going to report me to the Captain for trying to hit you?”

“Is that what you were trying to do?”

“Of course not… I was attempting to salute.”

“There’s no need to salute a robot, Colonel. I assist in ship functions and hold no rank whatsoever.”

There was no more conversation between the two as the lift carried them up from the ship’s lower decks. They ascended sixty-five levels before transferring to a horizontal travel tube to complete the kilometer-long trip. Nash stood while Tor sat on one of the cabin benches. A man and woman sitting on the bench opposite were staring at the blood spattered across the front of his tunic.

Tor recognized them as a couple of nuts from Religion. He’d seen them at Zosma Lion’s last Sol sermon, waving their hands in the air, chanting along with all the other nuts gathered there, absorbing every sentence that flowed from the crazy preacher’s mouth. Tor was probably the least spiritual person living on Ambition; the connection he shared with Lion wasn’t by choice. He only met with the section head of Religion when he had to. Running into his followers on other parts of the ship infuriated him. If the Colonel had any say in it, they wouldn’t be allowed off level ninety at all. Let them rot in their section.

They continued to stare. Tor shook a bloody fist at them. “You want some of this?”

The tube came to a stop. Nash and Tor stepped into a short corridor with a single door at its end. “Behave yourself here,” the robot warned. “The Captain has enough stress to deal with.”

The door slid open, and Tor saw Ambition’s section heads seated at a long table. He had never in all of his thirty-eight years set foot in the Captain’s quarters, but he had heard stories. This was a gathering of the Baker’s Dozen. He looked at all of them, starting with Ly Sulafat at one end. Sheratan Ries was seated at the Captain’s left. Next there was Hal Gulum from Medical, Communication’s Argus Cor, Security head Homa Sis, Garnet Ceph of Food & Water, and Environment’s Mintaka Onis. The chair at the opposite end from Captain Ly—usually reserved for the head of Military Operations—was empty. Next to the vacant seat was Zosma Lion. Tor sneered and looked away from him quickly to Education’s Sakan Coro, mechanical genius Gacrux Crucis from Propulsion, and Nair Cran, the head of Data Storage.

Chort Leo was sitting to the Captain’s immediate right. Of course he’s sitting there, Tor thought as Nash prodded him closer towards the table. Leave it to that scheming little rat to stay as close as he can to Sulafat to deflect any suspicion.

And then he saw Vin Vir for the first time, sitting on a small bench along the wall behind Ly and Ries. What was Rastaban’s friend doing here, he wondered? Why the hell are either of us here?

The Captain regarded him with a quick glance. “Have a seat, Tor.”

There didn’t appear to be any available. “Sir?”

Sulafat pointed to the end of the table. “Down there.”

Tor hesitated. “That… doesn’t seem appropriate. Isn’t that chair reserved for General Agle?”

The Captain gave Nash an almost imperceptible nod, and the robot began pulling Tor to the empty chair. “I’ve relieved Shain Agle of his command.” There was a collective gasp from the section heads. They started whispering and mumbling to one another. Tor remained quiet as he sank into the chair.

Sulafat tapped on the table with the tips of his fingers for silence. “General Agle convinced me six months ago that a manned scouting mission to the inner planets would be able to gather more intelligence on Pega’s defensive capabilities than a squadron of video drones. He assured me our fighters would evade detection, and that our people would return home safe. The fighters came under attack, and only one ship made it back.”

“You can’t blame Agle for Pegan treachery,” Chort Leo interrupted. “The decision to send our people in was ultimately yours, Captain.”

Sulafat nodded. “It was. Finding and bringing the others home is my responsibility as well. But the General also assured me those three fighters were ready to face any challenge met out there. After reading Tor Emin’s report, I’ve discovered our entire fleet of fighters sorely lacking in many respects—faulty canopies are number one on the list. Having those ships ready and functioning at one hundred per cent efficiency was Agle’s responsibility. We’re in Pegan space now. We must be fully prepared for the challenges ahead of us.”

“War,” Chort said. “Quit trying to avoid the obvious, Captain, it’s what we’re here to do.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“Not an opinion. It’s a fact.”

Sulafat looked down at the end of the table. “Give me your opinion, Emin. If the three fighters had been properly maintained before mission departure, do you believe the outcome would’ve been any better?”

Tor shook his head without hesitation. “Three times the fighters wouldn’t have made a difference out there. It wasn’t ship functionality—it’s what we were up against. The Pegan forces knew we were coming, they were prepared.”

The Captain was still tapping his fingers lightly on the table’s surface. “We’ve had centuries to prepare as well, and here we are now with sub-standard fighting equipment and a crew torn down the middle on whether we should go to war or not.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Tor or those around him.

“It isn’t up to the crew,” Chort said. “Our orders remain clear—wipe out the Pegan threat before they make it to Earth.”

Hal Gulum was shaking his head. “It’s been more than seven hundred years since that threat was issued. Earth is still there as far I know.”

“But you don’t know,” security head Homa Sis interrupted. “None of us know what’s happened back home. We haven’t received a single message from Earth in centuries.”

“Because of the communications blackout,” Chort countered. “They couldn’t risk Pega becoming aware of Ambition’s mission.”

“Even after this long?” Someone else asked.

More arguments broke out over the unknown fate of their home world. Tor finally had to stand to get the captain’s attention. “Excuse me, sir,” he called out. “If you haven’t brought me to your quarters for a reprimand, what am I doing here?”

“I would think that’s fairly obvious. You’re in charge of Military Operations now, General Emin.”

Tor sat back down into the padded chair but found no comfort in it.

The Captain spread his hands out and looked at all of his section heads. “Settle down, everyone. I didn’t bring you here to fight. But before we leave, a decision will be reached, and the fate of two civilizations will be sealed, once and for all.”

Chapter 7

Hadar Cen awoke to complete blackness. I’m dead. The ship was destroyed and I was sucked out into space. It was a peaceful enough revelation until he realized there were no stars. There was no sense of weightlessness in his body. Panic set in. He wasn’t floating in the endless cosmos. Hadar was lying face down on a cold surface.

Pain caught up to his brain a second later. His right arm and leg were burning. It intensified with every thud of his still beating heart. I’m alive. I’ve gone blind.

It made sense. He had seen the remains of Kraz’s body fry as the alien beam had taken hold of their ship. The light had crept outwards, blinded him. But then what?

I was rescued, obviously. Nail had taken too much damage. Bee must have come back and destroyed the Pegan craft. Or Ambition had gotten word of their situation, and rescued what was left of the scouting mission. I must be back home, blind as a bat, but safe.

It still didn’t answer why he was lying on the floor. Had he fallen out of bed somewhere in the Medical Center? He felt with his fingers. Cold. Gritty. It wasn’t deck plating or cabin carpet.

“Hello?” He called out. “Is anybody here?”

There were no sounds around him, no machines running, no people talking off in the distance. Had his ears been damaged as well? He yelled out. “Where is everyone?” His ears worked fine. No one was answering.

Hadar pushed himself up into a sitting position. He wasn’t in Medical Center or any other level onboard Ambition. The pain in his right side had settled to a dull throb. Nothing was broken—minor burns at worst. He felt along his body. The environment suit was still there. He wiggled all ten toes. He was still wearing his boots.

Where the hell am I?

Hadar stood up, tested his knees and ankles. He took a step forward into the darkness. He called out again before taking another. There was an unfamiliar smell in the air, almost acidic. Unfamiliar and definitely unpleasant. Hadar was walking slowly now, his hands and arms extended outwards to feel for a wall. There wasn’t one. He moved faster, listening to the echoless clunk of his boots on whatever floor or ground was beneath him.

Something clicked off to his left. Hadar stopped walking and turned that way. Nothing but blackness. The clicking continued. It was coming from all around, like fingernails tapping on glass. He spun in a circle and saw a rectangular-shaped blob of grey light. It disappeared a second later, but not before Hadar became aware of two things; he wasn’t blind, and he wasn’t alone.

The light had come from a door opening and closing. Hadar had seen Kraz Corvus incinerated before his eyes. The others on Bee and Nail had likely suffered a similar fate. Hadar was beginning to wish he’d died with them.

A hand wrapped around his wrist. Another light suddenly popped on right in front of him. The fingers were grey and glistening. They were too long. Hadar could feel a burning cold working through the environmental suit, onto his skin and deep into bone. A face loomed before him in the weak light. It was enormous and grey, like the fingers, with bulbous, menacing eyes blacker than space.

Hadar tried to scream but another set of wet fingers covered his mouth. More giant heads surrounded him, more fingers dug into his hair, around his throat, and into the singed folds of his suit. They overwhelmed Hadar, pushed him down to the gritty, cold floor. The acidic smell became overpowering, he tried to retch. A finger slithered up one nostril. The clicking sounds intensified; a thousand fingernails tapping incessantly upon glass, scratching, digging, probing into his brain.

Hadar lost consciousness a second time.

Chapter 8

“Duck down.”

“I won’t allow you to do this,” Hail said. “There has to be another way.”

“I can’t think of any,” Kella answered.

Hail tried to control his breathing. The faster he inhaled and exhaled, the faster his environmental suit released oxygen. He would use up what precious air remained in a considerably quicker amount of time. “We’ve been here for less than an hour… we can come up with something better… anything better.”

“Are you ducking down? I can’t see you through all that smoke.”

“Please, Kella. You’ll kill me.”

“We’ll both die if I don’t.”

She had over-ridden the laser cannon’s targeting system to allow it full-field firing access. In other words, Kella could now point the big gun directly at the pilot canopy of their own ship. Fail-safes wouldn’t allow a gunner to accidently fire upon their own pilot. Kella had reprogrammed the safety protocols of that feature as well. She was preparing to give it a try.

“Well if you don’t give a damn about killing me, then maybe you should care about willfully damaging Ambition military equipment.”

She almost laughed. “You were the one that screwed up on the landing. Bee’s already damaged. Besides, we have to get below and see if the homing beacon is still working. Ambition will never find us without that signal.”

“Not necessarily. Some ship systems are still working. They’ll be able to pick up Bee’s power signature.”

Hail’s desperation was causing him to grasp at the weakest of possibilities. Kella didn’t want to fire upon Hail any more than he wanted to be fired at. But there was no other option. She spoke softly, but with final authority. “Only if they’re sitting practically over top of us. Ambition doesn’t know where to look. There are seven planets in this system and over a hundred moons. They won’t find us unless we give them a strong enough signal. Duck down, Hail. I’m pulling the trigger in five seconds.”

She counted down slowly and fired.

The light of the cannon’s single blast blinded her momentarily. “Hail? Are you still there?” Darkness returned. “Hail, answer me!” She saw a dull flash of yellow. Interior helmet lights.

Hail had turned around in the pilot’s seat and was staring up at her. The smoke had cleared and the canopy cover was gone. “I can’t believe you did that. The General’s going to have a fit when he reads our report.”

“General Agle will understand. Besides, he’s the one to blame for sending out fighters with crappy canopy covers. They either jam up too easily, or they get blown to bits in one shot.”

“They probably didn’t take friendly fire into consideration. That was friendly fire, right?”

“The friendliest. Now shut up and come let me out.”

It took him a few minutes to find a suitable piece of blasted canopy frame metal, and another fifteen minutes to wedge it up under Kella’s gunner turret cover. The two pried and pushed until the entire lid popped off unceremoniously and rolled off down into the rocks beneath Bee.

“Shit.” Kella climbed out on the wing and joined Hail. “We’re going to have to drag that thing back up here eventually. Once the air runs out in our suits, we’ll have to take refuge back inside.”

Hail sat on the wing’s edge and began lowering himself down further. “Maybe we won’t have to. Once the beacon’s going, Ambition will come for us.” He let go of the wing and dropped to Oread’s surface. “Oh. That wasn’t so bad,” he said after the softer than expected landing.

“They’re still days away.” She jumped down to the ground after Hail. It was a six-foot drop, but the moon’s gravity was half that of Ambition’s. The impact was easy to absorb. “Bee can supply the weapons cabin with maybe a hundred more hours of heat and air. We’ll be cutting it close.”

They activated the external lights on their helmets. Twin beams cut through the dark, revealing a jagged wall of rock less than two-meters from the tip of Bee’s left wing. It rose up before them for half a kilometer opening up to a narrow strip of stars. “You have to admit,” Hail announced proudly, “that was a damn fine landing.”

“It was automated,” she reminded him. Kella pushed Hail aside and studied the ground. They were standing in an inch of light silt. She found the spot where Hail had dropped down to and bent over for a closer look.

“What are you doing?”

“Camera view.” A heads-up image appeared on the inside of her helmet visor. “I’m taking a picture for the historians. We’re the first people to set foot onto the surface of an alien world outside the Sol System. Maybe you’d like to reconsider your first words… ‘Oh, that wasn’t so bad,’ doesn’t sound all that inspiring.”

She was teasing him again. Hail ignored it and went to the back of the ship. He removed a piece of outer deck plating and started digging into Bee’s insides. He located a small object connected to a heavily insulated wire and snapped it free. “The homing beacon unit appears undamaged. Looks like the signal cord tied into the ship’s main computer has been burned through. I should be able to get it going manually in a few seconds.” Hail turned the device over and began poking at a series of tiny reset switches. 

Kella did a slow survey around the rest of the ship. “I hope so. The damage outside is considerable. This thing definitely won’t be launching off again on its own without help from home.”

Hail couldn’t get the beacon to power up. He smacked it against the ship’s hull and a blinking red light appeared at the center of the unit, indicating there were no ships within range. “There, I got it going,” he called out, shoving the device into a pocket of his flight suit. “Let’s get that canopy cover back on.”

“There’s no immediate hurry,” Kella was twenty feet behind the grounded fighter, walking up the steep chasm floor. “Let’s take a look around.”

Hail screwed the small section of deck plating back into place. “We’re not here to look at the sights. Get back here.”

“Come on, we’re going to be stuck in that turret together for a long time. Don’t you want to see what it looks like up top first? Imagine the stories we’ll be able to tell everyone back home.”

Hail wasn’t the exploratory type, but he didn’t want to be left alone either. He started after her. “Hang on, I’m coming.”

They moved up the incline side by side. It was easy walking in the weaker gravity, but Hail was still breathing heavily. Kella rested a hand on his shoulder. “You’re okay, kid. Relax.”

“Quit calling me that.” He could see her dark eyes shining behind the streaks of dry blood inside her visor. He wished he could see more of that face. Hail wanted to touch her smiling lips. Kid was the last thing he wanted her to think of him as. Why couldn’t she take him seriously?

The kilometer-long walk up through the rocky gouge took twelve minutes. The view waiting for them topside would be remembered the rest of their lives. The planet of Pega sat in space like a green and blue marble nestled in an endless blanket of black silk. Hail could hear Kella breathing heavily now through the speakers.

“My God,” the woman gasped. “I didn’t think it could appear any more breath-taking than it did from the ship, but I was wrong.”

“It’s because we’re standing on an actual planetary body. You were right… no one on Ambition has done that in over seven centuries.” The normally introverted Hail put his arm around her shoulders. “I remember the first pictures of Earth taken from its moon. This is what it must have been like for them. We’re the thirty-first century equivalents of Armstrong and Aldrin.”

They stood there for a few more minutes in silence, staring at the alien world half a million kilometers away. Swirls of white and grey were dappled against the colorful orb like drops of paint partially stirred and left to spread on their own. Planetary atmosphere, Hail thought. Clouds. Those are what clouds look like.

An eruption of light suddenly appeared on Oread’s horizon directly in front of them. Grannus had come into view. It was the closest planet to 51 Peg, and by far the largest. The gas giant continued to rise, its red brilliance bathing Pega over in pink. “I’m glad we didn’t land there,” Kella said.

“We wouldn’t be talking about it if we had,” Hail held out one thumb and blotted the bright light away. “It’s a thousand degrees hotter and the gravity’s a hundred times greater. We’d be little flat puddles by now.”

“Come on, let’s get back to Bee.” Kella started back down into the shadow-filled gouge.

Hail looked out upon Pega and Grannus one final time. He’d been scared to leave the ship, but now that he had, he wasn’t in any hurry to get back. Kella called out over the speakers again. “Now, Hail.”

She hadn’t called him kid, a good sign he figured. Hail caught up to her. They descended further back down the dark trail. The glow from Grannus and Pega became a sliver of dull light behind them. Oread was swallowing them down for a second time. “You said we’ll have a week of air and heat inside the turret?”

“A hundred hours. A little more than four days.”

“The oxygen in our suits will bump it up a few more hours. Surely Ambition will have found us by then.” He was beginning to breathe hard again.

“Only if you keep those nerves under control.”

Hail nodded slowly, causing the exterior beam of his helmet to bob up and down erratically against the rock and dirt a hundred meters in front of them. Bee was seven or eight hundred meters deeper still. He needed to see Pega’s atmospheric swirls again. Hail resisted the urge to stop and take one more look up the gorge.

Had he done so, the reluctant pilot would’ve seen a flash of silver sliding meters above the section of moon’s surface they’d been standing at moments ago.

Chapter 9

Shain Agle entered the bridge and shook his head in disgust. He looked about, from one section to the next, attempting to instill in the skeleton crew remaining some sense of authority he no longer carried. Why hadn’t Sulafat left the place properly manned, he wondered? No one was at Security, Weapons, or Environmental sections. The command chair was empty.

“Kalin Aurig!” He shouted.

The young man at nav-helm turned in his chair. “Sir?”

“What the hell’s going on up here? This isn’t the way to operate the bridge of a warship.” Agle strode towards the command dais. The on-duty officers at Propulsion and Communication watched the overweight ex-General climb the command platform steps and sink into the chair. “Three of you! He leaves three inexperienced crew members to watch over everything at a time like this. Unheard of, I tell you, completely unacceptable.”

“The Captain and the rest of the section heads have assembled directly below us, sir,” Aurig said nervously. He kept his eyes locked on Agle and tapped a button on his control board. “We’ve been assured that if something happens, they’ll be back up here in moments.”

“If something happens?” Agle repeated. “Something has happened, you unobservant little shit. We’re at war! I may no longer hold the necessary rank, but I know a hell of a lot more than the three of—”

Heavy footsteps sounded at the base of the command platform. Nash climbed up onto the bridge. “Shain Agle, may I ask what you’re doing seated in the Captain’s chair?”

“I just found out about Sulafat’s damn meeting.” Agle fidgeted and twisted, attempting to settle his fat rear-end into the too-small seat. “I’d planned on attending until I saw the state he’d left the bridge in.”

“You were not invited to the meeting, and your presence isn’t required on the bridge.”

“I’ve been Ambition’s Military General for twenty-six years.” He dabbed the sweat on his cheeks with the cuff of a sleeve. “I have more to offer than Sulafat realizes.”

“You are no longer a General. You were not invited to the meeting, and your presence isn’t required on the bridge. Please remove yourself from the command chair.”

“I will not.”

Nash took a single step up the dais. Agle wriggled his way out of the seat and stood. “I haven’t sacrificed more than half my life to be treated like this. Let me attend the meeting… I have some ideas that—”

“You were not invited to the meeting, and your presence isn’t required on the bridge. Do not force me to restrict you to your quarters.”

“You don’t… you don’t have the authority,” Agle’s jowls quivered. “Do you?” The robot remained silent with one big metal foot resting on the first step of the command platform. Shain Agle stepped around him and headed for the bridge exit. “To hell with you then. To hell with all of you.”

Chapter 10

“We have sustained ourselves for hundreds of years,” Garnet Ceph proclaimed as Nash returned to the Baker’s Dozen gathering. Sulafat nodded, and the robot resumed his position next to the Captain once again. The head of Food & Water was standing, fat little fists supporting his weight against the table. “And we could sustain ourselves for another ten centuries out in the stars. Hell, we could live out here forever. Our resources are limitless. We’ve dropped out of fold drive less than a hundred times since leaving the Sol system to harvest from comets and stray asteroids. There is an endless supply of water and minerals to draw from. Pick any coordinates, steer this world of ours in any direction. We can survive. I see no good reason to upset this way of life by starting a war.”

Vin watched Mintaka Onis shake her head slowly throughout Garnet’s long-winded speech. The head of Environment obviously didn’t agree with the little man’s hopeful outlook, and she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to talk further. Mintaka patted his fist like a mother trying to calm an excited child and stood. “Sit down, Garnet, and listen to reality.”

Sulafat had allowed every section head seated at the table to make a statement. Sheratan had chosen not to speak at all, which came as no surprise to the others; the second in command would undoubtedly cast her vote alongside with whatever the Captain decided, whether she agreed with him or not. Hal Gulum had taken less than thirty seconds to share his view. He had sworn an oath to save life, not exterminate it. Everyone knew how he would vote before he’d even stood. Argus Cor had stated the obvious—no communication had come from the Pegan civilization since that first dire warning was received centuries earlier, even though Ambition had consistently tried speaking with them. She interpreted this as a sign of closed hostility—as the majority of Communication section heads before her had. Argus would adhere to the original military objective. Security head Homa Sis vowed to protect everyone onboard Ambition, war or no war. No one was sure how she would vote.

Vin sat quietly through it all, absorbing every word. She still wasn’t sure why the Captain had wanted her to attend, but she would be prepared to offer any opinions if he questioned her about it later. She sat motionless on her bench and listened to Mintaka.

“We draw half our energy from the nuclear heart of this ship. The other half is absorbed from distant suns and whatever we can mine from space rocks.” She pushed Garnet Ceph back down into his chair and continued. “Garnet’s cheery view of drifting and picking through space for the next thousand years is a childish fantasy. Living like that is eternal damnation in my opinion. Is it possible? Yes, I suppose it is, but it’s a life that can take a drastic turn towards total disaster in a very short time. There’s no guarantee of finding harvestable bodies the next time we drop into space normal speed. The ship is old; there are system breakdowns to consider. Maintenance is constant, and the workloads being handed out to crew members is doubling almost every generation.”

Garnet was shaking his head now, Vin noted, but he wasn’t going to try and stop Mintaka from finishing her bleak report. Everyone was listening intently.

“And every generation is becoming a little less educated than the one before. Things are slowly coming apart on our world. A few generations from now the ability to just keep the air clean will be a monumental challenge. Maybe it will happen sooner. We’re one major malfunction away from total catastrophe. I say we fulfill our ancestor’s wishes, take what belongs to the Pegans and make it ours.”

Many before Mintaka had said the same words. Every section head seated in the Captain’s quarters had heard the dire warnings since they were children. Ambition could support herself, as Garnet had stated, if all conditions, internal and external, remained consistent. But the Environment head was right; they had been traveling through space for far too long, and eventually their luck would run out. If the Pegan mission was scrapped, if they voted to venture off to the next system, Ambition and her people could very well perish. Humankind was intelligent enough to make it to the stars, but centuries of merely surviving wasn’t enough. Without change, without challenge, men and women stagnated. And relying on the meager offerings of a cold cosmos to provide endless sustenance would only speed up the process of their eventual extinction.

“Tor?”

The newly appointed Head of Military stared at the table’s black surface. Ma’s wine was making his head spin. Mintaka’s statement wanted to make him throw it all back up.

“General Emin.”

He looked up and saw the Captain staring at him. “Sir?”

“Would you care to make a statement?”

Mintaka was sitting again, looking his way expectantly. They all were. Tor saw Vin Vir sitting behind the Captain with a confused expression on her face. He imagined he probably looked a lot worse. “I believe…” They’re expecting me to say something stupid. Waiting for me screw up. Damn Ly Sulafat. This is why he called me here. This is how the punishment begins. “I have nothing more to say on the matter, sir.”

The Captain merely shrugged. “Understandable. It’s your first day after all. Religion… your opinion please.”

There was no confusion in Zosma Lion’s manner. The older man stood slowly, purposefully. He tugged gently at the curls of his white beard and ran his hand over the receding hair on his head. Zosma looked every section head in the eye and offered Tor a sympathetic smile at the end. “We have not travelled into the heavens alone, my friends.” Tor’s head was still pounding, but it didn’t stop him from rolling his eyes. “The men and women that built this vessel along the Jupiter side of the Sol Asteroid Belt didn’t build alone. Their great-grand parents didn’t terra-form Mars and colonize its rejuvenated surface alone.”

Zosma began walking behind the section heads seated along his side of the table. It wasn’t enough for him to just stand and babble, Tor thought. He had to make a production of it.

“We didn’t step on the Earth moon alone for the first time, nor cross the Atlantic Ocean alone in ships made of wood and canvas sails.” Zosma paused behind Chort Leo’s chair, settling his long fingers on the headrest. He cast an impressive image, Tor had to give him that much, dressed in the traditional white cloak that trailed down to his ankles. All the highest-ranking zealots wore them. They’d been floating around like self-proclaimed angels since the ill-fated Turnback Revolution six and a half centuries earlier. They looked more like ghosts to Tor.

Zosma passed by Nash standing like a silent sentinel and stepped behind the Captain. “None of our kind has ever been alone. The Spirit of Sol has been with us always.”

Hal Gulum made an unpleasant sound with his lips.

“You’ve already addressed the section heads, Doctor,” Zosma responded softly. “Allow me my time.”

“The other section heads are people of science… not sun-worshipping mystics.”

Sulafat interrupted. “Let him finish.”

Zosma gave the Captain a polite nod. “I’m not refuting the importance of science. The machines that power this ship, and the air we breathe are supplied by it. But it is the Spirit that allows science to develop. The energy of Sol birthed all of us… Sol let us evolve into the creatures we are today.”

The head of Propulsion spoke out. “We are drawing less than one per cent of our solar energy from Sol. The star in this system is our primary source of power now, has been for decades. How does that work in your universe of one mother star?”

“Peg 51 is Sol’s daughter, Gacrux. Betelgeuse is her son. Polaris, and Rigel are her grandchildren. Every star within the Milky Way are hers, and the stars beyond in Andromeda, Triangulum, Sculptor, and Whirlpool. Her power knows no bounds… her life-giving energy sustains all creatures throughout the universe.”

Tor could see Sulafat shooting warning glances at all the heads. No one would say another word until Zosma was finished. The words were nonsense, but the zealot had plenty of followers. Enough people believed in the Spirit of Sol to allow Religion its own seat at the Captain’s table.

“Peg 51 helps sustain us because it is Sol’s wish to see us expand outwards.” Zosma had made it back to his side of the table. “We should honor that wish, and settle on her second planet.”

“Thank you for your input, Zosma.” The Captain moved quickly to the young woman seated next to him. “Sakan… a statement from Education, please.”

Sakan Coro spoke briefly, as did the Head of Data, Nair Cran. Finally, all eyes settled on Chort Leo. He leaned back and clasped his fingers together over his belly. “I’m a man that lives his life on facts, not fairy tales. But to dismiss Zosma’s powerful words altogether would be a mistake, and that is a fact. Is Sol truly the mother star of our universe? Likely not. But she did give us the strength to pull ourselves out of the oceans and walk on two feet. She brought us out here. All the stars have populated the planets throughout our universe with life. That life continues to spread out. Was war with the Pegan civilization our only motivation to leave the Sol system? We’d already reached the outer planets. We would’ve gone further eventually. Pega is there waiting for us.”

Vin was revolted at the sight of him, sitting there with his short legs spread apart as if the Captain’s quarters belonged to him. He was as pompous as Zosma, but without any of the hypnotic charm. The coward had yet to acknowledge Vin was even in the same room. He wouldn’t reprimand her personally for skipping out of her shift. Someone else would do the dirty work for him, she was sure.

Chort leaned forward, the chair squealed. His beady dark eyes glistened. “We shouldn’t even be discussing this. There is no choice. Sitting together like this, conspiring and second-guessing is how it started with the Turnbacks.”

“Time’s up, Chort.”  Sulafat had heard enough. He glanced quickly at his CS. “That’s the second time today I’ve heard about the Turnbacks. This isn’t the beginning of another uprising. Those traitors were mutineers—they sabotaged the ship, extending centuries to Ambition’s long journey.”

“We attack or we don’t attack,” Mintaka said. “We obey our original orders or we don’t.”

“Or we send an unarmed delegation to the planet,” Sulafat countered. “We try talking to them face to face.” He held a hand up to silence Argus before she could remind him of Pega’s reluctance to communicate. “There could be a million reasons why they’ve chosen not to speak with us, not all of them have to involve sinister intentions.”

“They’ve already attacked us,” Chort blurted out. “Quit being so weak.”

Hal Gulum rocked forward. “How would you feel about leaving this meeting on a stretcher?”

Nash took one heavy step towards the table. “Please, doctor. No violence.”

Sulafat offered Hal a weary smile. “I’ve been accused of worse.” He stood up and went to the three-meter wide observation window. It was still taking him time to adjust seeing the distant stars as points of light and not oval-shaped blurs. They’d dropped out from fold drive three weeks earlier—it had happened only six times before in Sulafat’s life—but the effect was still disorienting. The planet of Pega was the brightest point of light piercing through the back drop of space. Two duller spots, the moons Mantus and Oread, hung under her like pendulums on an ancient clock.

Vin was waiting along with the others for Sulafat to continue speaking. What was taking the Captain so long? Was Chort right—was he weak? Was he too old to lead them into whatever it was they were heading into?

Even Nash was apparently concerned. The big robot thumped across the room to stand beside him. “Are you well, Captain? Do you wish to reconvene this meeting at a later time?”

“The Pegans have only spoken to us once,” Sulafat turned away from the distant points of light and repeated the infamous ten words for all of them to hear. “We are aware of your existence. We will end you.” He waited a few moments to let it soak in. “Nothing before that, nothing since… Why?”

“They’ve been scrambling their transmissions from the very beginning,” Argus Cor said. “There can be no other explanation. They didn’t want anyone else in the galaxy to know they were there.”

“Smart thinking,” Hal Added. “If our ancestors had done the same thing back in the twentieth century, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now. Both planets would be happily unaware of the other’s existence.”

Everyone at the table murmured in agreement. Mankind never should’ve trumpeted out their location without wondering first what might be out there listening. Sulafat started back towards his chair. “Earth has remained silent ever since then as well. They haven’t sent a single message our way.”

“All Earth transmissions have been scrambled since 2322,” Nash pointed out. “Ambition’s original crew was well aware the communication blackout would include them as well.”

“But Ambition’s journey to Pega was only supposed to last seventy-five years. We’ve been out here almost ten times longer than that.” Sulafat sat back down. “Wouldn’t they be wondering what happened? Would they not have broken protocol at least once to see if the men and women they’d sent out so long ago had engaged in a planetary war?”

“It isn’t our duty to second guess Earth Command,” Chort said. “The original mission stands, our duty—”

Sulafat cut the Sciences head off. “Let us assume Earth has adhered to the zero-communication policy. Why haven’t they sent a second ship to discover what became of us? It’s been seven hundred years. Why haven’t they sent an entire armada of warships?”

“What are you saying?” Sheratan asked. “Do you believe Earth has abandoned the mission, that they no longer care what became of us?”

“Perhaps… or maybe there’s no one back there at all.”

Vin had heard that theory many times before. It was a story most people only dared to whisper. If there was no one left back on Earth to fight for, why fight at all? That kind of talk was even less tolerated than the idea of a second Turnback Insurrection.

“Let’s not go there, Captain,” Zosma said. “Perhaps there’s been too much discussion already. Should we put it to a vote?”

Sulafat leaned back and nodded slowly. There was nothing more he could say to sway them. “Yes… time once and for all to see where this will end.” He sighed heavily. “I vote against the war. Sheratan?”

“I vote for it.”

Vin could sense disappointment in the way Sulafat’s shoulders slumped. The CS had obviously taken him by surprise. The Captain tried not to let it show as he looked to Chort. “Sciences?’

Chort was practically beaming. “Original mission, all the way.”

Hal Gulum and Garnet Ceph voted against, Mintaka and Argus for. The vote continued. It was six for war, and six opposed. One vote remained. Everyone looked anxiously at the man seated at the end of the table.

Tor Emin no longer felt like throwing up. His head no longer hurt. Every part of him had gone numb. “Captain… seriously?”

“Your vote, General.”

Vin knew he would vote against it. She didn’t know the man well, but Rastaban had said there was more to him than drinking and brawling. Her best friend had said he could be trusted before the scouting trip had set out. That mission had ended in failure, but Tor Emin had brought him back home. He would do the right thing again now.

Tor closed his eyes and ran his tongue throughout his dry mouth. He knew they were still looking at him, waiting for a centuries-old question to be answered and finally laid to rest. But it was only Chort’s malevolent glare that drew Tor in when he opened his eyes again. The Sciences head was nodding slowly. He was mouthing something—repeating one word with his lips—a name.

Tor could feel bile working its way up his throat. Ma’s wine had a way of doing that. He swallowed it back down and spoke. “War… I vote for the war.”

Chapter 11

Everything had been pitch black the first time Hadar had regained consciousness. This time everything was blaring bright. Cold blue light stung at his eyes and penetrated his brain. Shutting his eyes offered no relief, the light just dug in deeper, working its way past the corneas and climbing along the optic nerves.

“Please, turn it off… Turn off the light.”

The light lessened some, but didn’t disappear completely. Hadar squinted through half closed lids and waited for the agony to subside. “More, please lower it some more.”

The light lessened again by half. It was still bright, but Hadar could handle it. The stabbing agony behind his eyes went away. “Thank you.” He waited for someone to reply. There was no sound. “Hello? Who’s there?”

He was lying down again, but on his back this time instead of on his stomach. He attempted to sit up but something held him in in place. He craned his head up and saw nothing restraining his bare chest and arms. He tried moving again. Nothing. “Something’s wrong… I can’t move.” But he could move, Hadar realized. He could see his fingers wiggling and the muscles in his arms flexing. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. He could move just fine, something was definitely keeping him in place. The blue light dimmed a little more and Hadar could make out more of his immediate surroundings. He wasn’t lying on a cold floor. He was on some kind of raised platform—silver, metallic. A second light appeared to his right. It was softer and white, not blue. The platform he was on was rectangular, like an operating table. “Let me out of here! Wherever this is, whoever you are, you have no right to hold me down like this.”

A third light came on somewhere behind his head, soft orange. A fourth appeared down by his squirming toes, bright red. “What is this? What are you going to do to me?”

The clicking sounds he’d heard before returned. The nails tapping on glass. Hadar wanted to scream again but fought the urge. There was another sound in the background, a slurping noise. It’s what animals sound like, he thought. Hadar had never seen an animal in his life; the last cats and dogs onboard Ambition had died out centuries before he was born. All he had to compare it with were the ancient audio recordings of creatures that lived on earth. The thing or things making the slurping noises and clicking sounds made him think of something amphibious—frogs perhaps. He had seen pictures of the slimy things as a child. He recalled the croaking noises they made. The clicks and slurps were nothing like that, but he associated them with frogs and wart-covered toads anyway. Cold-blooded. Alien. Terrifying.

“I won’t tell anybody about you, I promise.” Hadar had no idea who he was talking to, or what he was talking about. All he could do was beg for his life, concentrate on the sound of his own voice to try and maintain his sanity. He would say anything, do anything, to make this madness stopped. “Let me go. Let me go. Let me go!”

The noises only got louder. He couldn’t see the oblong grey faces, but he knew they were all around him. They were communicating with one another, discussing what kind of animal it was lying on their table, shaking and helpless.

They were going to do awful things to him.

Something small appeared to his left. A person—a child with huge black eyes. It ran at him quickly out of the blue light and jabbed a sharp piece of metal into his shoulder. Hadar opened his mouth to cry out and a hand appeared directly over his mouth. A cold, wet cloth was stuffed between his lips. He tried spitting it out, but the long grey fingers pushed it in further. Hadar began to gag and the child-thing cut at his left bicep with the sharp metal. It removed a section of Hadar’s skin and disappeared back into the shadows behind the blue light.

The orange light over Hadar’s head went out. He looked up and saw another huge head looming over him, less than a foot away, staring directly into his eyes. It had a tiny mouth, nothing more than a quivering black slit. That’s where the amphibious slurping sounds were coming from. It was talking. Hadar could feel the warm push of its breath on his face. He could smell the strange alien sourness of it.

The head pulled back and the orange light returned. The wet cloth slid out of his mouth, leaving his tongue and lips numb. Hadar’s body jerked. Something had grabbed onto his ankles and was attempting to pull him off the table. Hadar looked down towards his feet and saw ropes of glistening black wrapped around his lower legs. Not ropes, they were living things. He could feel the sting of a thousand probing tentacles pinching into his skin as the snake-like monstrosities slithered up further, wrapping tightly around his calves and over his knees. More appeared on his wrists and worked their way along Hadar’s forearms.

All four lights suddenly snapped off. Hadar prayed that he had lost consciousness again, but the stinging sensation in his arms and legs was getting worse. The clicks and slurps grew louder.

Can you hear us?

Hadar caught his breath and held it. The advancing tendrils stopped their movement just short of his crotch and shoulders. He tried to answer, but everything above his neck was frozen and numb. I can’t feel my mouth. I can’t speak.

You don’t have to speak. Use your mind. What is your name?

They were inside his head, reading his thoughts. This wasn’t possible.

Green light appeared all around him. It was dull and pulsing. Hadar felt his limbs begin to relax. The snakes began pulling away. The giant oblong face came back into view above his head and repeated the question.

What is your name?

My name? …. My name is Hadar Cen.

A second face appeared to his left. Cold fingers touched his chest. Why are you here, Hadar Cen? It asked.

I have come… my people have come to begin a war with the civilization on the second planet.

Your people will fail.

The little creature that had cut into his bicep reappeared holding a gun of some kind in its tiny hands. It powered the object up and advanced towards Hadar’s face.

It wasn’t my idea, Hadar pleaded inside his mind. Please don’t do this!

A six-inch needle extended out from the device’s end. The little alien plunged it into Hadar’s temple and started to drill.

Chapter 12

The gathering of the Baker’s Dozen had begun to break up. Argus Cor, Chort Leo, Zosma Lion, and Hal Gulum had already left the Captain’s quarters and returned to their sections. Those still lingering had clustered into smaller groups, talking about the vote and Ambition’s questionable future.

Tor was the only one still seated at the table. Vin made her way to him. She stood before the still-stunned Military head with her arms crossed over her chest. “What the hell was that all about?” She demanded. “You’re sending all of us to war.”

“I… we’ve always been going to war. Besides, the others had a say in it.”

“But you had the power to stop it. Why didn’t you?”

Tor didn’t answer her question. He asked his own instead. “You’ve seen Rastaban, how is he?”

“Damaged.”

“He’s lucky to be alive. We both are.”

“He doesn’t seem to think so.”

Tor knew the two were close. Vin Vir was the closest thing to a friend Rastaban Drac had. “Hal said they’ll be able to patch him up just fine. A few procedures and he’ll be as pretty as before.”

Vin leaned against the table. “I’m not sure he wants to be fixed. You were the gunner on Nail. You were responsible for his safety.”

“So you blame me for the upcoming war and now it’s my fault for what happened to Rastaban. Anything else you’d care to throw on my back?”

Nash joined them before Vin could reply. “I trust the Captain made a wise choice appointing you as Ambition’s new Military leader. I had my reservations.”

Tor rubbed his aching temples. “Thanks for the confidence boost. I’ll try my best not to disappoint.”

Nash turned to Vin. “Congratulations on your new posting, Vin Vir.”

“New posting?”

“As the Captain’s personal assistant.”

She was stunned. “Personal assistant? Isn’t that your job?”

The robot’s head swiveled a few degrees to the left and swung back. “I am Ambition’s assistant. As Ambition’s assistant I advise the Captain. He sees potential in you, and so do I.”

Vin laughed nervously. “Did Chort put a good word in for me, too?”

“I was wondering what you were doing here,” Tor said. “Looks like we’re both moving up in our world, hey, Vin?”

She didn’t know how to reply to that. Vin looked over to Sulafat. He was standing back in front of the observation window with his second in command. I’m the Captain’s personal assistant. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Sheratan leaned in close to the Captain until their shoulders touched. She moved her head in closer still. “You’re disappointed in me.”

“Yes, I am. I’m disappointed by all of it.”

“You knew how I felt long before this meeting was called. Don’t tell me you were surprised.”

“We’ve been involved in two historic events today.”

“I can only think of one. What’s the other?”

He wouldn’t look at her. “For the first time in Ambition’s long history, a Captain’s second has voted against his wishes.”

“Why bother with a thirteenth chair at the table at all if there will always be an even number of votes? It kind of defeats the purpose of a tie-breaker, doesn’t it?”

Sulafat pointed towards Pega and her moons in the distance. “You picked an awful time to break tradition. That planet, our entire world here, and all the people back on Earth will pay for it.”

“Agle would’ve voted for war. You should’ve made sure his replacement was on your side. Not the wisest bit of political maneuvering.”

They stood side by side for another half minute without saying another word. Sulafat and Ries had been friends—and once much more—for as long as either of them could remember. They’d spent decades serving together. Their shoulders were still touching, but she could feel the tension there. This was serious, Sheratan knew. They were going to war and there was a good chance none of them would be alive in a few more days. She rarely agreed with the way her old friend ran the ship, but they had remained close throughout everything. This was different. This would change everything.

“Still friends?” She asked.

“No, we’re no longer friends,” the Captain grumbled. “If I had my way I’d never allow you back on the bridge… I never want to see your face again.”

Sheratan stared at Sulafat but he refused to turn her way. He could see her reflection in the window. She was almost smiling, but her eyes were sad. She feels sorry for me…thinks I’ve become a grumpy old man with a quick temper. Maybe she’s right.

He was about to apologize when a blaring orange light appeared beyond the observation window, blocking out Pega and its moons. His mouth opened but he couldn’t get the word out fast enough.

Sheratan turned towards the others still in the room and yelled it for him. “Incoming!”

Vin felt the floor shudder beneath her feet at the same moment Sheratan issued her warning. Moments later a loud rumble sounded from somewhere below. The ship lurched violently. Vin was thrown off balance and fell on top of the table. Tor grabbed onto Vin’s arms and held her there before she could spill into his lap. His face was the color of Zosma’s robes. “The Pegans, they’ve found us!”

She pulled away from him and got back to her feet. “Great observation, General Emin.”

Gacrux Crucis shoved his way by Sakan Coro who was holding onto Nair Cran for support. “That felt like a hit to Propulsion.” He ran for the travel tube door.

Sheratan barked out orders to the others. “Everyone out of here, get back to your sections! Nash, help me with the Captain.”

Tor was already dragging Vin towards the stairs leading up to the bridge. She could see Sulafat struggling to stand, clawing his way up by the ledge of the observation window. Vin twisted free of Tor’s grip and chased after Nash for the Captain.

“I’m alright!” Sulafat snapped. He pushed his second in command away. Nash, Vin, and Tor clustered around the two senior officers and watched in horror as three more orange globes of energy advanced towards the ship. Four fighters flew into view from the left. The smaller vessels were part of a ten-ship defense net surrounding Ambition. They’d been on active duty ever since Ambition had dropped from fold drive and entered the Pegan system three weeks earlier.

Two of the fighters fired concentrated lasers upon the balls of light to no effect. The other two ships were consumed by the alien weapons. Vin threw an arm over her eyes to shut out the explosion of light. Something smashed into the observation window. Two more massive hits into Ambition’s outer hull followed, throwing all of them to the floor except Nash.

Vin looked up and saw a ten-inch thick slab of steel slowly dropping down from the ceiling. The automated defense system was lowering protective barriers in front of every window throughout the ship. She lowered her gaze and saw a mass of twisted metal plastered against the glass. One of their fighters had collided into it. Tendrils of dissipating energy were running through the ruin, melting into the window. The ship had collapsed nose first, burying itself halfway into the glass. Vin could see grey lines snaking out from the point of impact. It was going to blow out in another moment or two; the bulkhead creeping down at its laboriously slow rate wouldn’t save the Captain’s quarters from explosive decompression.

As if to emphasize her thoughts, Nash started a countdown. “Partition closure in nineteen seconds.”

Someone started to scream. Vin looked over her shoulder and saw Mintaka and Nair holding a hysterical Sakan Coro between them. She’s in charge of Education, Vin thought grimly. How do you teach someone to prepare for this?

Ambition took another massive hit somewhere on its port side. The window cracks spread across the entire surface. Tor grabbed onto Vin a second time—she didn’t fight him as he ran for the bridge stairway. She heard a loud thump and then nothing. It felt as if someone had smacked her hard with open palms over both ears. Her feet left the floor. Tor had made it to the open door. He grabbed onto the edge with one hand and attempted to yank Vin after him with the other. She tried digging into his wrist, but her fingers had grown stinging cold. A million pins pricked at her body. They separated, Tor made it through the door, and Vin was sucked back towards the conference table.

Sulafat had wound up again on the floor, his legs braced up under the observation window ledge. His arms were wrapped around one of Sheratan’s calves, holding on to his CS before she could be sucked out into space. He would fail. The bulkhead wouldn’t lower in time to save either of their lives.

I am too old, too weak. Should’ve given up command years ago.

Something sharp tore into his forehead, the edge on one of his old books, or perhaps a com-pen that had been left on the table. Sulafat’s eyes were shut tight to save whatever moisture there was left in the suddenly freezing vacuum. The Captain continued clutching onto Sheratan as more personal mementos and debris whisked past. They smacked him in the face and on the back of his head along the way, before being sucked out of the ship.

Powerful arms lifted him from the floor. Sulafat instinctively fought Nash’s hold, but the attempt was even less futile than trying to save Sheratan. The woman was torn away from him. He opened his eyes and saw the bottom of her boots disappear through the gaping hole.

The magnetic plating in Nash’s big metal feet kept the heavy robot upright as he strode for the bridge stairway. He made a quick survey of the room to see if was anyone left. A few had made it through the travel tube exit doorway. Homa Sis, Garnet Ceph, and Nair Cran had been pulled out through the destroyed window along with Sheratan Ries. Tor Emin had made it to safety. That only left Vin Vir.

He spotted the girl under the table. She was wrapped around one of its big legs, her waist anchored in. Nash adjusted his hold on the Captain and bent down to pick her up as well. The three made it to the bridge stairway. The door slid soundlessly shut behind them.

The observation window bulkhead clunked down into place three seconds later.

Chapter 13

“Could you shift your knee to the right some?”

Kella moved her entire body over an inch. “That’s all the room there is. Gunner turrets weren’t designed to seat two.”

“This is ridiculous. You could’ve at least let me sit in the chair.”

“What’s the matter, kid, you don’t like sitting on a girl’s lap?” Hail didn’t answer her. “Sorry, it slipped out. We’ll switch positions every hour, okay?”

Hail placed his helmet on the gun control handles next to hers and retrieved a medical kit from the emergency survival console. “Let’s take a look at that nose.” The supplies within the little metal box were meager; a roll of gauze, two bandages, and a canister of disinfectant smaller than Hail’s thumb. He sprayed it onto Kella’s upper lip where most of the blood had gathered and dried. “At least the bleeding stopped. It isn’t broken.” He began wiping at it with the gauze.

“You have a soft touch. Maybe you should transfer to Medical section when we get home.”

“That would be more stressful than fighting aliens. Sick people make me nervous.”

“Is that your hypochondria talking?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He rubbed the last bit of dark red away from her chin. “Data storage is a lonely job, but it’s relatively safe.”

“So was military training. I’d give anything to be back on the simulation deck instead of being stuck in here… no offence.”

Hail grinned. “None taken.” He checked inside the pocket of his flight suit to make sure the homing beacon was still active. The light was still blinking red. “What are the chances of them really finding us?”

“We’re way off course. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

“I might have to.”

They both laughed out loud at that. Kella looked directly into his light blue eyes and considered telling him she couldn’t think of anyone else she’d rather be stuck inside a gunner’s turret with. A band of light passed over his face—a reflection. She looked straight up, through the canopy dome they’d replaced ten minutes earlier, and saw a streak of silver pass over the gorge.

Hail had seen it as well. “They’ve found us! Ambition knows we’re here.”

“I don’t think that was anyone from home.” She handed Hail his helmet. “Get ready.”

A bolt of orange shot down, blinding them. Bee’s left wing was blown to pieces into the rock wall next to them. “We’ve got to get back out!” Kella shouted. She pulled the emergency canopy release handle, and the glass covering popped off and rolled away. Hail pulled himself out and grabbed onto Kella. A second explosion tore through Bee’s back end, throwing the two forward, over the ship’s front and onto the ground.

Kella got to her feet first and dragged Hail up from his knees. “You ever fire a side cannon before?”

Hail reached for the pistol holstered against his right thigh. “In the practice tank, and those rounds were tracking bursts only.”

“Me too.” Kella was already pointing her weapon up the gorge trail. “They said firing live rounds feels just the same. So if you see anything move, shoot.”

Hail’s hand shook as he followed her back to the top. The weapon bobbed back and forth erratically. This was insane, he thought. It couldn’t be happening. Reality set in again halfway up. A streak of blue light punched into Kella from a hundred meters ahead. She fell back into Hail. He lowered her to the ground and fired his side cannon blindly. The concentrated plasma burst struck the gorge wall fifty meters beyond and sprayed melted globs of rock.

Seconds later something appeared in the far range of Hail’s exterior helmet light—something big running on six legs. Hail took better aim and fired two more rounds. The first burst took out one of the legs, the second smacked directly into what looked like its head. The thing collapsed to the rock floor in a shower of sparks. It slid along a few more feet, kicking up grey dust and churning out smoke before coming to a stop less than thirty meters away. 

Hail jammed the weapon back into its holster and began dragging Kella back to the ship. There wasn’t time to see if she was alive or dead. He worked for the next ten minutes in a daze, pulling her back into the gun turret and replacing the canopy cover over both of them.

The cabin pressurized. Hail removed his helmet and spoke to her. “Kella… Kella. Are you still with me?”

Her eyes opened behind the visor. “Yeah… with you still. Looks like… that practice in the tank paid off.”

Hail looked down and saw a dark red splotch spreading out rapidly on her side. The space suits they wore were designed to release a second ‘artificial skin’ beneath the main fabric in case of rupture. That interior membrane had begun to pull away in the cabin’s oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere.

Kella Sa was bleeding out, and there wasn’t near enough gauze or bandages onboard in what remained of Bee to stop it.

Chapter 14

Colonel Geth Cules barked out orders to the squadron bosses around him as he suited up into his heavy-armor space suit. The bosses scrambled away and issued their own commands to the platoon chiefs. The chiefs then instructed their miluns to get in their fighters and haul their sorry asses out into space.

Geth paused a few seconds before lowering his helmet into place for one last look at the mayhem erupting before him. They should’ve been ready for this; they’d been preparing for centuries. Another discharge of alien weaponry pounded somewhere against Ambition’s outer hull. The cavernous military bay walls shuddered. A few more hits like that and there would be nothing left to fight for, the Colonel thought. He pounded each of his boots into the deck plating beneath him for good luck, stood up from the removable stairs set against his fighter, and climbed into the gunner’s turret.

The canopy began to drop down automatically once he was seated. The five bosses, ten chiefs, and five-hundred miluns that had hastily begun to assemble four minutes earlier in Ambition’s primary ‘fighter garage’ were strapping in and powering up their ships as well. Geth spoke into his helmet mic, addressing all of them on an open line. “We’re not sending out anymore goddamned scouting parties… no more training runs in empty space. This is the real deal.”

The thirty-meter wide exterior bay door had begun to lift open. A translucent sheet of green appeared before it—the emergency atmospheric shield had activated, guaranteeing any stragglers not yet safely buckled in had less than thirty seconds to get their canopy covers down and cabins pressurized. Geth’s milun pilot signaled the Colonel with a thumb up that every fighter was ready to go. “Our people have been attacked and killed,” Geth continued. “The last defense net fighter was destroyed less than a minute ago, and I want that race of alien slime to pay for their sacrifice.”

A single beep sounded in his right ear. He was receiving a private communication from Ambition’s Military Commander Second, Seginus Boo. Geth cut the open feed and listened to the soft-spoken man. “Just thought you’d like to know before setting out… The bridge took a direct hit. The Captain, his second, and at least eight other section heads were killed in that first round of attacks.”

Geth ground his teeth. “That puts our newly appointed General in command of the ship.”

“Correct. And it now makes me the Captain’s Second. We’re all moving up in rank, Colonel Cules. If you make it back, chances are you’ll have my old job.”

Geth grimaced. “To hell with that. I’ve been waiting my whole life to take it to these bastards. I belong out there where I can make a difference.”

“I agree wholeheartedly. Make a difference, Colonel. Show the Pegans what we’re made of.”

The communication ended. The atmospheric shield winked out. The Colonel’s ship—nicknamed Shark by his grandfather seventy years earlier—was closest to the fully opened bay door. It was the first in two staggered lines of fighters that extended back into the bay for half a kilometer. Geth instructed his pilot to take them out. “Follow my lead, fighters. For Ambition… for Earth… for our future.”

Shark lifted from the floor and swung to its port side towards open space. Sulafat had been an old fool, Geth thought. Tor Emin wouldn’t be much better, but at least he had a military background. The half-drunk Colonel was even preferable to that bitch Ries, or the incompetent Shain Agle. He pondered why Sulafat had skipped over Seginus and placed Tor in charge. Why Emin instead of Geth himself, for that matter? They were the only two equally-ranked colonels serving on Ambition, and Geth was ten years older.

Who the hell cares? Shark cleared the bay and set off into space. I’m where I need to be… where I want to be. The pilot angled their fighter a few degrees starboard. Geth could see a massive black impact gouge a hundred meters below the garage bay door. Ambition’s entire exterior was undoubtedly peppered with them by now. The alien weapons delivered plenty of punch, but the Colonel was sure they could hit back harder.

Something much smaller caught his eye—a pulsing blue light no bigger than a man’s fist. It was attached to a featureless white cube approximately a quarter the size of an Ambition fighter ship. The cube had adhered itself on the outer edge of the bay door Shark and eleven other fighters had already flown past.

There wasn’t time for the Colonel to train his guns on it. There wasn’t even time to yell at his milun pilot to take evasive action. The alien device exploded, tearing into the open bay and shooting outwards at the departing ships. Geth didn’t feel a thing in the instant he was atomized.

Ambition’s chain of command had lost a few more links.

Chapter 15

Platoon Chief Laris Bear watched in horror as fighter after fighter was incinerated in an oncoming wave of fiery orange. Two-hundred and fifty ships were being lost before his eyes. Over five-hundred fighting men and women taken out in a single hit, and he would be one of them in another moment or two.

The energy from the alien weapon continued to disperse down the length of the bay. It had begun to lose some of its ferocity. Fighters were no longer evaporating one after another, they were being lifted and slammed into the next ship in line. Laris clutched onto the gun control handles inside his weapons turret and braced for impact.

The force at which the neighboring fighter slammed into his ship was still shocking. He felt his left shoulder dislocate against the safety harness. The gun controls broke off in his hands, and the canopy over his head popped off. The inside of his cockpit was folding up against his side. There was a second jarring collision from the right as his ship careened into an interior bay wall. Metal squished up a little more all around him and suddenly stopped.

Smoke billowed out from a hundred cracks in the demolished console and sparks rained down around the stunned Laris for a full ten seconds before he could comprehend that he’d survived. He tried unbuckling the harness locks with both hands but his entire left arm had gone numb. Laris struggled with his right and finally got them unfastened. He called out to his pilot in the cockpit below. She didn’t answer. It took another minute to wriggle his legs out from under the wreckage and climb out onto the crumpled hull of his ship. There were no wings left to stand on.

He crawled down to the pilot’s cockpit, hoping the young flyer was merely unconscious. She had been squished flat, some of her interior organs had oozed up between sheets of buckled steel. Laris turned his head away quickly and fought the urge to gag.

He avoided looking down at her again and surveyed the destruction around him. It was considerable. More than three quarters of the fighters closest to the now destroyed hangar door were gone. Those that remained—the twenty-four ships under his direct command—were squeezed up around Laris in a steaming, half-melted wall that looked like mud. The green atmospheric shield at the far end of the bay had reactivated, attempting to cover a much larger opening than before. The vacuum of space had suffocated the flames and cooled the melting debris enough to re-establish a breathable environment once again. It had all taken place in less than a minute.

He lifted his visor and called out a single name. “Tania!” No one answered. He shouted it again and heard only his echo. Laris removed his helmet and tossed it down to the floor. The visor shattered upon impact. It didn’t surprise him; everything else had broken and failed to work. He called his wife’s name again, but she didn’t answer. He kept yelling, hoping that someone—anyone—had survived besides him. Nothing. He climbed down from the remains of his ship and checked through the wreckage anyway. A booming automated voice called out over the sound system.

Warning… Limited life detected in fighter bay 1. Atmospheric shield will discontinue in thirty seconds to preserve ship power. Warning… Atmospheric shield will discontinue in twenty-five seconds.

Laris made his way back through the debris, limping over the remains of what was once fighter ships and human beings. He looked down at his broken helmet and cursed.

Twenty seconds.

There were three exits at the far end of the bay. Laris made it to the first and discovered the door melted into the joining wall.

Ten seconds.

He ran towards the second exit. There wouldn’t be time to make it to the third. The second door was smeared in black, its surface pitted with shards of glass and slivers of metal. Laris pressed a button on the console pad built into the surrounding frame.

Five seconds.

The door opened and Laris slipped through. He needed to get to Ambition’s second fighter garage and get his hands on another ship. The Pegans would pay dearly for what they’d done.

Chapter 16

“Garage 1 is gone, Captain,” Argus reported from the communications terminal. “An alien explosive attached itself to the exterior and detonated moments after the doors opened.”

Sulafat was leaning against the arm of his command chair, still attempting to catch his breath. He stared at the main viewing screen trying to make sense of it all. Ambition’s automated video drones were displaying the ongoing assault from a kilometer away on nine separate channels. One by one the feeds were blinking out. The Pegans were destroying everything. The drone situated near garage 1 had been the first to go. “How many people lost?”

“I can’t give you an accurate number, sir.” She was listening in on a dozen lines simultaneously, and reading from a dozen more screens around her. “But it sounds bad from what I can make out. More than two-hundred fully powered fighters were still inside, so if you do the math—”

“At least four-hundred lives,” Sulafat finished.

“There’s more. From what I’m hearing it seems that what’s left of Military Command believes the bridge was hit along with your quarters. They think you and most of the section heads are dead.”

There was another distant rumble. Sulafat felt a brief shudder under his feet. Another part of his ship had been hit hard. I should be dead. He tried to take a full breath. The attempt was agonizing. His lungs had been damaged. I should be out there drifting in space… not Sheratan. He smacked an open palm against the chair console, but felt nothing. More suffocated nerve endings. It had been even worse for Vin Vir. She was in good hands, he thought. Gulum would take care of the girl.

“It’s true, sir.” Tor was leaning against the weapons station on the other side of the bridge receiving communications of his own. “They think I’m the Captain now.”

Sulafat spun his command chair around slowly. He took in every major section: communication, weapons, propulsion, environment, and navigation. There was a flurry of disorganized activity at each of them. Faces he recognized but couldn’t put names to were running from console to console, gathering information on the ship’s condition and trying to account for the dead. Where had they all come from? Why had his bridge gotten so crowded?

“Captain?” Nash was standing down on the main deck next to him. “Are you well enough to continue? Perhaps we should go to Medical.”

I should be dead. We should all be dead. But we’re not… I’m sitting here for a reason.

Sulafat shook his head at the robot. “No medical, not yet.” He stood up and yelled. “Everyone that doesn’t need to be on the bridge, clear out now!” He staggered down the steps towards the weapons section. “General Emin, tell your officers the bridge and its command structure is intact. This old captain isn’t retiring just yet.”

“Yes, sir,” the relieved Tor answered. “Garage 2 is awaiting instructions. All ships are fired up and ready to go.”

The Captain glanced up quickly at the remaining drone videos left on the main screen. Garage 2 feed wasn’t among them. “Keep all remaining fighters inside. No one else is going out and losing their life today if I can help it.”

Sulafat picked up speed and confidence on his way to communications. He slammed a fist down on Argus’s console and took great pleasure at the dim stinging he felt there. “Turn off all the goddamn chatter. Keep emergency lines open only. We can’t help anyone with everyone trying to talk at the same time.”

He shouted more commands to the people left around him. “We’ve taken heavy damage, but Ambition is still functioning. Let the Pegans believe she’s dead. Cut all power, except to environmental and medical.”

“Captain, is that wise?” Nash asked. “It will leave us completely open to further attacks.”

“It will, but I’m hoping their curiosity will stop them from destroying us altogether.” Sulafat climbed back up the command dais and sat down again. “Let them believe we no longer pose any kind of threat.”

“That shouldn’t be difficult,” Argus muttered. “We never did.”

“Pardon me?” Sulafat asked. “I didn’t catch that last part.”

“Nothing relevant, Captain. Just wondering out loud.”

The last two video feeds died out on the main screen. Sulafat turned to Nash. “Are any of our fighters still out there?”

It took the android less than a second to lock onto a signal. “One ship twelve and a half kilometers aft of Ambition. The pilot and gunner are both dead, but I should be able to maneuver what’s left by automatic control.”

“See if you can establish video… we have to see what’s going on out there.”

The blank view screen flickered. Moments later an image of deep space filled the bridge. The stars were moving lazily by on a diagonal path. The fighter they’d locked onto was drifting. Ambition came into view a few seconds after. Sulafat heard Argus gasp. Tor cursed quietly.

Their home was a smoking, pitted ruin. But she was still in one piece, Sulafat noted. Not everything was lost. The ship moved off screen as the dead fighter continued to list. Six more objects came into view. They were narrow strips of silver, running parallel to each other in uniform formation.

Tor leaned back in the weapons chair. “What the hell are those?”

They looked like blades cutting through the very fabric of space itself. Nash began reporting. “Those, I believe, are the Pegan vessels that attacked us. Each vessel is eleven meters in length. No discernible propulsion system. No discernible weapons system.”

“They have weapons,” Sulafat said. “And so do we. It’s time to bring the nukes out of storage.”

“Our nuclear weapons will be ineffective out here,” Nash pointed out. “They’re programmed to detonate within a planet’s lower atmospheric pressure only.”

The Captain cursed under his breath. Three hundred missiles at their disposal with the capability of wiping out an entire world, and not one of them worth their weight in destructive energy out in space. The war had been lost before Ambition had even arrived to fight. There was only one option left at Sulafat’s disposal.

He called back to Argus as the fighter continued to drift before them, revealing more of the alien ships on the big screen. “Hail them.”

“The Pegans haven’t answered our hails for centuries. Why try now?”

“Because now we have something they’ll want to hear… Tell them we surrender.”

Chapter 17

“You should’ve voted for war,” Becrux said. “We’ve sided together on almost all things our entire lives, but this… you should’ve said yes.”

Gacrux Crucis paused on the ladder rungs. Every elevator in the propulsion section had shut down automatically as soon as the attack on Ambition had begun. He held on tightly as another shudder ran throughout the ship. Either the Pegans had disregarded the Captain’s call for surrender, or another part of Ambition’s hull had given out on its own as a result of the heavy exterior damage. He called down to his twin brother on the rungs seven feet below. “I love this old ship too much to see it destroyed. I hoped we could find an alternative.”

“Yeah, you could jump into an escape pod all on your own and head back for Earth.”

“Keep your voice down.” Turnback talk in public was frowned upon at the best of times; it was considered near-mutinous in the propulsion and engineering sections. Gacrux steered his brother away from the topic. “I think you’re upset because you had no say in it. I had a seat at the Captain’s table, and you didn’t.”

“I never wanted to be a section head.” Becrux pushed at the bottom of his brother’s boot. “Get up to three so I can help you repair the fold or we’ll both die hanging here.”

Two engineers helped them over the safety railing at the top. The brothers had made it to the third level of the main propulsion system. The ladder they’d climbed had brought them only a tenth of the way up the massive vertical propulsion shaft running through the heart of Ambition. Gacrux patted one of the engineers on the back and leaned against the railing to look up. The fold tower ran up the center of the shaft in its own anti-gravity field for another kilometer. The tower itself was featureless; an immense metal column ten meters in diameter with an inner shaft at its center less than a millimeter wide. There were no ladders attached to the outer casing. There were no metal seals or rivets holding it in place. The fold tower was one continuous piece of heavy lead and titanium composite constructed to hold power comparable to a collapsing star within its single bombardment artery.

The Propulsion chief spotted the only blemish on its outer surface approximately thirty meters above where he and his brother were standing. The ancient scar couldn’t be noticed unless one knew where to look, and Gacrux knew the location better than the back of his hand. It had been almost seven centuries since the Turnback bomb had detonated and crippled the ship. It took two years to fix the column, and another three to get the fold drive working again. But the drive had never been completely repaired. Gacrux and dozens of other Propulsion heads before him had to settle for ten per cent light speed ever since.

Someday, he thought, someday he would know what Ambition’s full ninety per cent light speed capability felt like. But that day would never come unless they survived the hours directly ahead first. “Where’s the jam?”

One of the engineers handed him a tablet showing the interior damage. He pointed at the fold tower before them to drive the point home with even more visual effect. “Right in front of us sir. Three dark matter protons are stacked one on top of the other, and unless they get moving again within ninety minutes, this whole ship will collapse into nothingness.”

“You won’t feel a thing,” Becrux said. “None of us will.”

Gacrux snorted weakly. He may have shared his brother’s dark sense of humor, but this was hardly the time for it. “Then we have an hour and a half to figure out whether there’s been gravitational interference, or if the column itself has taken any structural damage.”

Gacrux showed the tablet display to Becrux. The outline of column was green against black; the stalled protons were represented in red. A light cloud of pink hovered over the three red spots. “Definitely a gravity spike,” Becrux pointed out. “No signs of column damage.”

Gacrux nodded. “Maybe, but I’m not risking the ship solely on what the computers are showing us. There could be stress lines the same size as those jammed protons running through the column casing the program might’ve missed.”

“That’s highly unlikely.”

“But not impossible.” Gacrux handed the tablet back to the engineer and strode quickly into the level three control room. He went to the first big cluster of computer screens and engineers seated before them. “Run it again, Ella.”

The young woman sitting in front of the biggest screen began typing into the engineering keyboard. “I’ve run it twice since you started the climb up from below. There’s been no change, no signs of a breach. This will be the fourth scan.”

“Then scan it ten more times if that’s what it takes,” Gacrux snapped. “I’m not ordering a phased grav re-start around the column until I’m positive those DMPs can’t escape out a goddamned crack in the casing.”

“Easy, brother,” Becrux whispered at his back. “Let her do the job.”

Gacrux ground his teeth until he heard them creak. Sulafat needed the ship moving again, and he didn’t want to disappoint the Captain. But if they rushed things and tried to force active particles through a damaged tube, the results would be disastrous—for both sides. Under normal circumstances, a potential column breach would be monitored for at least twelve hours and a hundred scans. They didn’t have that much time. Three dark matter protons were stuck in there instead of one.

A communication whistle sounded somewhere behind Gacrux. One of the engineers tossed him a hand-held comm seconds later. “The Captain needs to speak to you, sir.”

Gacrux spoke first. “Any chance you could hold this ship still for at least another hour, sir? We need to run some delicate tests down here.”

“A hundred Pegan vessels have us surrounded,” Sulafat answered. “They haven’t replied to any of our hails. We don’t have an hour to play with… we might not even have a minute to spare. You need to get the fold drive working again now.”

The Captain sounded calm enough, but Gacrux could hear the condition red alarms sounding in the background. The bridge crew was scrambling, preparing for one last massive assault. “Sir, it’s risky. A phased grav restart at this time could result in one of the jammed DMPs going off in the column. Have you considered an evacuation?”

“Abandon ship? Did you hear what I said? We’re surrounded by enemy forces. They’d pick us off one rescue pod at a time. No, we stay together. I’m giving you half an hour, Gacrux. Get my ship moving again.”

The line went dead. Gacrux placed the comm down on the console in front of him. “Ella, what are the results from the fourth scan.”

“Gravity disruption only sir. No sign of column instability.”

“Run it one more time.” He looked around at the engineers and propulsion mechanics gathered around him. “Then prepare for a phased grav restart.”

“That could kill us all in an instant,” Becrux warned.

There was an audible groan throughout the ship as the Pegan forces continued to pound at the outer hull. “If the protons collapse inside the column, it’ll be like you said… we won’t feel a thing.”

Chapter 18

Laris burst into garage 2 and was shocked to see every ship still sitting inside the monstrous bay. None of them had set out into space to engage the enemy. Some of the platoon chiefs and miluns were even sitting on the wings of their ships or milling about restlessly on the bay floor. He ran to the closest chief, a man he knew called Schedar Ope. “What the hell’s going on here?”

Schedar stood up from the stair railing attached to his ship. The miluns standing around him cleared away. “Laris? Laris Bear? You’re still alive?”

“I was the only one that made it out.” Men and women had started to gather around him—fellow fighters stunned to see one of their own from the completely destroyed first garage standing amongst them. They were staring at the tears and black smears on his spacesuit. He was a mess to behold, more ghost than man standing before their unbelieving eyes. “Why are you all still here? Why aren’t you out there fighting back?”

“Old Sulafat’s put the entire operation on hold,” Schedar answered. “No more ships off of Ambition. He wants us to play dead.”

A thunderous clap echoed throughout the bay. The floor beneath Laris’s boots shook. “Doesn’t sound like the Pegans are buying it. We have to fight them.”

Schedar shrugged. “When the crazy old bastard comes to his senses, we’ll be ready. But until then every fighter remains put.”

Schedar’s squadron boss heard the comment a few ships down the line. “Watch that mouth of yours, Ope. That’s the Captain of Ambition you’re talking about.”

Schedar shrugged again and whispered. “Won’t be Captain of anything much longer.”

Laris started to walk between the two long columns of waiting fighter ships. Schedar Ope called after him. “Where do you think you’re going? You should haul that burned ass of yours to Medical section.”

Laris waved him off without looking back. He continued walking between the ships, towards the giant exterior door half kilometer away. Let them play dead. Let them obey the Captain’s orders. Laris wasn’t going to listen to anyone anymore. He was going to take matters into his own hands.

Chapter 19

Order had been re-established. Ambition was surrounded by an entire armada of enemy vessels, but Sulafat was in control of the ten remaining men and women on his bridge as the Pegan weapons continued to pummel the exterior of their ship.

“Nash, report.”

“Propulsion has completed its fifth scan of the fold drive column. No structural anomalies detected. All crew members on starboard forward decks four and five have been relocated until hull integrity can be guaranteed.” Decks four and five were the levels located directly above the now open and depressurized fighter garage 1. “Medical section is fully staffed and awaiting further casualties. One of the six main holding tanks in Water Treatment section is reporting impurities. This was likely caused from damage to the interior membrane. The water is unsafe to drink, but the new section head guarantees a complete membrane replacement and fluid re-purification in less than ten hours.”

New section head, Sulafat thought grimly. The previous head of Food & Water was now floating out in space. Poor Garnet. He was the most hopeful of all of us.

The robot continued briefing his Captain with Ambition’s most critical and vital functions until Sulafat raised a single finger to his lips. Nash cut his report short. Sulafat turned slightly in his command chair. “Argus, I know I’ve asked a dozen times, but have you received any word at all from the Pegans? I’d be happy with a smoke signal right about now.”

“Nothing, Captain. I’ve been trying on all frequencies.” She looked over at him. “Smoke signal?”

He waved her off. “Keep trying.”

Tor reported from the weapons station. “The Pegan vessels are still closing in. One hundred ten in total now. Our HCs have locked on and taken a dozen out already.” The ship continued to tremble as the exterior took more hostile fire. Ambition’s heavy cannons—the HCs—unleashed continuous rounds of heat-seeking missiles at multiple targets, shaking the bridge crew officers in their seats even more.

Sulafat knew the odds of establishing any kind of peaceful contact with the Pegans were slipping away quickly, but he couldn’t help feeling a small sense of satisfaction. The old ship wouldn’t last long under these conditions—knowing she could defend herself in the final minutes of their existence gave him some solace at least. The continuous thump of Ambition’s cannons firing was like the ship’s heartbeat, pounding hard and steady, fighting for life. So much for playing dead.

“The fighters in garage 2 are getting restless,” Tor said. “They want to know why they’re still grounded.”

“Without eyes on the exterior of that door confirming the absence of a second explosive device, I’m not risking any more of our people.”

“We’ll all die anyway if those fighters don’t launch.”

Sulafat nodded at his new General. “I understand, but the fighters will remain where they are for now.” Tor turned back to his weapons board. He was a good replacement for Agle, the Captain thought. Less than an hour on the job and he’d already shown more backbone than the previous leader of the military had in a quarter of a century. You did one thing right today, old man. Don’t let it go to your head.

Nash stepped in closer to the base of the command chair platform. “General Emin is correct. The alien ships have set a tight perimeter around Ambition and they’re continuing to close. If each of those vessels is equipped with an explosive similar to—”

“I’m aware, Nash. But I have a feeling if the Pegans wanted this ship completely destroyed, they could’ve done it by now. They haven’t answered our call of surrender… perhaps their curiosity is all that’s keeping this ship in one piece.”

The ship shook as more Pegan fire cut into the exterior. “Ambition’s hull was designed to withstand the rigors of interstellar travel and limited military confrontation. We are not invulnerable. I recommend a hasty retreat.”

“We’re trying, Nash, we’re trying.” Sulafat pressed a button on the communications console of his armrest. “Gacrux, your half hour is up. We need to get this ship moving. What’s the status of the fold drive?”

There was a long pause over the bridge speakers before the propulsion head answered. “Scan six on the column is thirty-five per cent complete. No structural damage detected.”

“Prepare for a cold grav restart on my command. Those protons have to get moving again with a moment’s notice.”

“A cold restart? Phased is dangerous enough under the circumstances. If it was just one DMP stalled in the tube, I’d say it was worth the risk. But three of them stacked together? We’d either implode on the spot or become the first vessel in human history to crack light speed, and I’m not convinced this old girl could handle the ride.”

“Crack light speed?”

“Ambition’s fold drive was designed to collapse one DMP every seven seconds to achieve close to light speed. We’ve only been pushing them through every twenty seconds ever since the Turnback Revolution.”

Sulafat nodded his head impatiently even though the section head couldn’t see him. “I have a slight understanding of how the fold drive works, Gacrux. Get to the point.”

“Phasing pushes the DMPs through gradually. A cold restart will force those protons into the collapse chamber all at once. It will push the ship harder than it was designed to handle.”

Nash reached up and tapped the back of Sulafat’s hand with a metal finger. “Simultaneous DMP crushing has been theorized for centuries, Captain. The risks were always considered too dangerous to actually attempt it.”

“Will the Pegans be able to detect a phased restart?”

“Yes,” Nash and Gacrux answered at the same time. The propulsion head continued. “That kind of power surge would be hard to miss.”

“And am I correct in assuming a phased restart would take close to a minute to accomplish with the three protons stuck inside the column?”

“Yes, Captain,” Gacrux replied solemnly.

“We can’t give the Pegans sixty seconds. They’ll blow us out of the sky before the second proton unjams. We need all three moving at once.” The bridge had gone quiet. Every crew member at their station was staring at the Captain. “Finish the sixth scan, and prepare to initiate a cold restart. We’ll either escape from our enemies, or take them out in the attempt.”

“Captain, a situation’s broken out in garage 2,” Argus reported.

“They’ve discovered another explosive?”

“No, sir.” The woman adjusted her headset and listened further. “Someone’s drawn a sidearm and commandeered one of the fighters.”

Sulafat spun his chair around. “What? Tell whoever’s in charge down there to handle it.”

Argus listened for a few more moments. “That won’t be easy. It’s platoon chief Laris Bear from garage 1. He’s threatening to unleash the fighter’s missiles inside the bay unless the door’s opened.”

Chapter 20

They didn’t think he would do it. None of them thought he would actually open fire inside the garage, but the squad bosses and platoon chiefs had still ordered all fighters closest to the bay doors to evacuate their ships and move back farther into the bay’s cavernous depths.

Laris Bear trained the fighter’s guns on the ship opposite him nearest to the doors and pulled the trigger. He took out one of its wings with a single concentrated laser burst. People scrambled even further down the bay in a wave of panic. Fire and smoke filled the bay’s far end as the last of the wing debris fell around the surrounding ships. Laris opened a direct line to the bridge and spoke. “That was just a warning. Open the doors or it’ll be a missile next.”

“Don’t do this, Laris,” the Captain answered.

“I watched them die… all of them.”

“It isn’t too late for you, son. Step out of that fighter and walk away.”

“We weren’t ready. After all this time…we weren’t ready. We never should’ve left Earth.”

“You may be right, but it doesn’t justify what you’re trying to do now.”

“Something has to be done. We can’t let them get away this.”

“We’re working on it. The Pegans will have our reply soon enough. Get out of the fighter.”

“My wife was four ships down the line from me. There’s nothing left of her now. I can’t let that stand, Captain. I won’t. My thumb’s on the missile switch and the safety’s off… I’ll do it.”

The line went dead. Another ten seconds passed before the green atmospheric shield activated. Moments after that, the doors started to rumble open. Laris throttled the fighter up and took her out into space.

Chapter 21

The multiple images on the bridge’s main viewing screen had coalesced into one giant video of Laris Bear inside the cockpit of the stolen fighter. “At least he’s giving us a view of what’s going on out there,” Argus commented.

Tor looked grim at his station. “He’s going to let us watch him die.”

“Get back inside, Laris,” Sulafat ordered. “We’re preparing to jump away any moment.”

There was a pause as they watched him steer the fighter towards a cluster of Pegan ships. “I’ve been listening to you and Gacrux over the line, Captain,” he finally answered. “These fighters of ours are also equipped with close to light speed drive systems. They may not be able to sustain DMP movement for as long as Ambition, but the principal of stalled protons and cold restarts are about the same.”

Everyone on the bridge saw him set the fighter controls to auto. He was on a collision course with ten of the Pegan vessels. Laris’s fingers continued working on the fighter’s main control panel. Sulafat leaned forward in his chair. “No. He can’t seriously be considering it.”

“Considering what?” Argus asked.

Nash answered. “He’s overridden engine safety and shut down his fold drive with active protons still in the chamber.” One of the enemy ships fired and blasted the starboard wing of Laris’s ship clean away. Nash continued speaking dispassionately. “He no longer has control. The DMP column has become structurally unstable.”

“He’s recreating what’s happened on Ambition,” Sulafat whispered.

Laris’s ship was tumbling out of control towards the Pegan vessels. His hand reached for the engine restart button. “This should buy you all some more time,” his voice crackled over the speakers.

Sulafat tried one last time to talk him out of it. “Don’t, Laris. Please… come back home.”

Laris’s finger pressed down on the button. “Make the best of it.”

The main viewing screen went white. Bridge officers covered their eyes until the brightness winked out seconds later. The view from Laris’s cockpit had been replaced with one of the remaining drone cameras orbiting Ambition a few kilometers away.

“My God,” Tor said, “he’s created a collapse event.”

A red pinprick in space was all that remained of Laris Bear and his stolen fighter. The Pegan ships he was headed towards were being pulled into the gravitational disturbance. One by one, all ten were sucked inside.

Sulafat looked to Nash. “How far are we from it? Will Ambition be pulled in as well?”

“Unlikely, Captain. We’re two-hundred twenty kilometers away and it’s already closing in on itself. As far as black holes go, Laris’s was quite small and short lived.”

Sulafat spoke through the line still open to Propulsion. “Did you see that, Gacrux?”

“Yeah,” he responded quietly. “We saw.”

“What are the odds of us collapsing in on ourselves when those DMPs begin moving again?”

“I’m not much of a betting man, Sully.”

“That good, hey?” The remaining Pegan ships had begun to give the travelers from Earth a wider berth. They would close back in soon enough, Sulafat figured. Ambition had proven itself to be a legitimate threat—dangerous enough to be destroyed completely with a dozen more similar explosives that had take out fighter garage 1.

A young officer at the nav-helm station interrupted the conversation between his Captain and Gacrux. “I’ve plotted a course that should take us just past Pega’s second moon, Mantus.”

“Thank you,” Sulafat said, nodding at the man. His face was familiar, but a name escaped him. We could all be dead in another minute. I should know what to call him. “Gacrux… Initiate cold restart in thirty seconds.”

Chapter 22

Hadar was no longer trapped on a rectangular metal surface. He was seated in a chair of some kind, but unable to move his arms and legs. He could wiggle his fingers and wriggle his toes, but nothing more. Hadar tried to move his head from side to side. It wouldn’t budge an inch. His eyes worked, however. He could just make out small bars of shiny steel in his peripheral vision. Something was attached to his skull, he could feel the pressure of more alien metal pressing into the skin of his forehead. Hadar tried to scream but could only manage a choked rasp. There was something wrapped around his neck, holding him even more securely in place. It was difficult to breathe. Panicking would only make things worse. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. Easy. Steady and slow.

Hadar felt the pounding in his chest begin to subside. After ten more seconds, and after he felt reasonably sure he wouldn’t try and scream a second time, he opened his eyes again. The room was dimly lit, but he could at least make most of it out. The walls, and what he could see of the ceiling and floor, were sickly yellow. There were three more chairs arranged in a crescent formation in front of him. They were ugly things of metal painted dull black. Most of the paint had worn away on the arms leaving dirty blobs of shiny grey. There was no curvature to the seats and backs, no sense of artistry, and even less consideration to comfort.

Hadar moved his eyes to the left and saw a door. It was open a crack, but all he could make out beyond was blackness. To the right was a table littered with strange items and vicious looking little tools. One of them looked like the drill that had been used to dig inside his temple. Hadar moved his eyes away quickly before the panic had a chance to set in again.

Behind the empty chairs was a view screen. Spiking lines of white and grey danced across a background of solid black. Hadar could hear the soft hiss of static through hidden speakers. He continued breathing steadily through his nostrils, attempting to rein in his fear. The smell inside the room was alien and unpleasant.

“Hello?” The restraint around his neck made it difficult to speak, but Hadar worked his way through it. “Could someone please loosen this thing? It hurts and I can’t swallow properly.”

A light appeared through the slit of open doorway. Hadar bit down on his tongue and wished he hadn’t said a word. That little grey-headed thing would burst through any second and run for his table of toys.

The little alien did appear, but it wasn’t running. Behind it were two more grey beings. They loped across the floor, long arms hanging past bulbous knees, and sat in the chairs facing Hadar. He kept his eyes on the small one as it crawled up into the last vacant seat closest to the table of surgical instruments.

“I want to go back to my people,” Hadar insisted. “I want to go home.”

“Home,” the being in the middle repeated. “You want to go home.”

An image appeared suddenly on the view screen before Hadar could reply. It was an ancient black and white video of men at war. Hadar remembered seeing similar videos as a child back in school. These were people from Earth fighting each other to the death. The footage was grainy, and the speed seemed unnatural, almost too fast. There was no sound, only the grisly images of men shooting and stabbing.

The alien spoke again in an oddly muffled tone. “This is your home. This is where you wish to be.”

Hadar tried to shake his head but the bars and straps made it impossible. “I don’t want to be there… That was a war. It happened a long time ago. Earth isn’t like that now.”

The little alien wagged a long finger at him. “Earth has always been like that. We have many images, many recordings of your civilization through the ages.”

The being to his left spoke for the first time. “And now you bring your savagery to us.” Hadar watched the thing’s mouth while it spoke. The tiny black slit never moved. There were no lips. “You were warned. Our people told you to stay away.”

It wasn’t speaking through its mouth, none of them were. The muffled sounds were coming from the view screen speakers, or they were being received telepathically into his brain. Hadar could feel the fear returning, and there was no fighting it this time. He jerked his entire body forward in a futile attempt to stand. They watched him struggle with their black, emotionless eyes. “Let me go! Let me go! I… can’t… breathe!”

The little alien slid down off his chair and went to the table. It grabbed a syringe and headed towards Hadar.

“No! Don’t! Don’t touch me!”

It punched the needle into the center of his throat and Hadar’s tongue went instantly numb. A warmth entered his chest and stomach. It spread trough his lips and cheeks, his arms and legs. Hadar’s fingers and toes ceased to wiggle. A feeling of complete serenity overtook his brain. He began to breathe slowly once again, the fear wiped away. He remained fully conscious and aware as the alien climbed back up onto its chair.

The being to Hadar’s left spoke into his mind again. “There. That should calm you. Do you feel better? Will you be more cooperative?”

“Better,” Hadar answered calmly. He wasn’t sure if he was talking out loud or if the words were appearing in his mind. “I will cooperate.”

The images of men wearing primitive helmets and charging through trenches of mud with barbaric weapons changed on the view screen. In its place were clouds. Hadar was looking down at them from above. One of the clouds at the picture’s center suddenly rose up, pushing all the others away in a massive discharge of energy.

“What is this?” One of the aliens asked.

“Hiroshima,” Hadar answered calmly. “Nagasaki maybe. It could even be the beginning of World War 3—when the North Koreans attacked Seoul. I’m not sure.”

“A nuclear weapon exterminates eighty-thousand of your kind, and you’re not certain which city was wiped out?”

“How could I possibly tell? It happened centuries ago. Dozens of cities were nuked back then.”

“Dozens.”

Hadar could feel the disgust in that single word. It had come from the small one. “I wasn’t responsible. I wasn’t even born on Earth.”

“But the ship you travelled on is equipped with similar weaponry. You do have weapons capable of destroying on a planetary level, do you deny it?”

“No, I don’t deny it,” Hadar said. “But your people threatened us. They said they were going to end our existence.”

“We have been monitoring your civilization… picking up your signals. Your people are dangerous. We tried warning you to stay away.”

The screen was now displaying ancient videos of men on horses. They were wearing silly hats and firing side arms into the sky. More men with paint on their faces and feathers in their hair were firing back with bows and arrows.

Hadar tried defending his species. “It isn’t all real. You’ve misunderstood us from the very beginning. Not all these pictures are actual events. Some of it is fiction.” He struggled to try and make his captors understand. “These videos were pretend… created to entertain my people.”

“You pretend to kill one another for entertainment? Your people watched these images and derived pleasure from them?”

“It isn’t what you think.” Hadar closed his eyes. “We aren’t like that anymore.”

“No,” the little one answered inside his brain. “You’re worse.”

Chapter 23

“Cold grav restart in ten seconds.”

Sulafat and his bridge crew sat in silence as Gacrux started the final countdown. The Pegan warships were moving back in towards Ambition. Let them come, Sulafat thought. At least they’ll die with us if this doesn’t work.

“Eight… seven…”

Argus Cor announced a final warning throughout the ship. “All hands prepare for fold drive initiation.”

“Six… five…”

“It has been a pleasure, Captain.”

Sulafat looked down at Nash. “What?”

“Working with you. It’s been an honor.”

“Four… three…”

“Yes, likewise… an honor.”

“One…”

An invisible fist punched Captain Sulafat in the stomach. He lurched forward in his command chair. Stars swam before his eyes. A moment later he was gasping for air, clutching at the armrests. “Re…” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Report.”

Gacrux’s voice over the speakers came through sounding as shaky as the Captain’s. “Cold restart successful… no damage detected in the DMP column. It worked, Captain… We travelled faster than the speed of light… considerably faster for at least a minute.”

A minute? It seemed like only seconds to the Captain. The image onscreen answered his next question. They had jumped back out of fold drive and were in close orbit around the Pegan moon, Mantus. Considerably faster indeed. Over a hundred and fifty million kilometers in sixty seconds. The moon’s dark cratered surface revolved slowly before them. “Pull us back, we’re in too close.”

The young officer at navigation double-checked his figures. “Everything appears to be in order, sir. We’re orbiting Mantus at eighty-four thousand KPH, distance from surface is twelve hundred. Auto-nav safety kicked in just as we fell out of the fold.”

“Put another thousand kilometers between us and that rock, … uh, what is your name again?”

“Kalin, sir. Kalin Aurig. I was transferred to bridge position during your long walk.”

Well that explains that. I can’t be expected to know everybody’s damn name on this ship.

“Mantus’s gravity field is exceptionally weak, Captain,” Nash pointed out. “Remaining in a low orbit could keep us out of Pegan sensor range for awhile.”

Sulafat nodded. “So long as the belly of this ship doesn’t scrape along the rim of a crater, we can stay where we are. Reduce speed by half and keep the moon between us and the planet. That should buy us a bit more time to recover.” He stood and stepped down from the raised platform. “Keep an eye on things up here, Nash. I want to see what’s left of my quarters.”

Chapter 24

“Talk to me, Kella.”

“Wha… whas you want… me to say?”

Hail smiled weakly at her. “Anything. Call me a kid. Tell me I’m a shitty fighter pilot. Just stay awake a little while longer, okay? Help’s on the way.”

“You’re a… terrible liar.” She tried to smile back but only one corner of her mouth rose up. Her half-closed eyelids drooped down a little more. “Don’t worry about me… Can’t feel a thing anymore.”

“We’re getting out of this together, Kella, and that isn’t a lie.” He shook her gently until her eyes opened wider. Kella’s normally dark complexion had turned waxy grey. Perspiration lined her forehead and collected in the pockets of her sunken cheekbones. The bleeding had stopped, but she required further medical attention that wasn’t available in the tight confines of their broken fighter. Kella needed water and a steady supply of breathable air. Bee’s oxygen was running out faster than Hail expected.

“What’s that?” She struggled to sit up in his lap. “What are… those lights?”

“There aren’t any lights, Kella. It’s just you and me.” He brushed back some of the damp hair stuck to her forehead. “I told you to keep talking, not start hallucinating.”

“Not hallucating.” Kella lifted an arm with considerable effort and rested it on Hail’s shoulder. She pointed out beyond the canopy cover. “Out there… I see lights.”

Hail twisted as best he could with her weight on him and saw three shimmering beams dancing off the gorge wall to their right. He craned his head back a little more and saw the concentrated lights heading down towards them.

“We can’t stay here.” Hail placed Kella’s helmet back over her head and helped her sit up. He reached for the emergency medical kit and found a roll of sealant tape within. The hole in Kella’s spacesuit wasn’t irreparable. When he was sure the tape had covered enough of it to hold a pressurized seal, he placed his own helmet on and released the canopy cover one last time. “I’m not going to let them take us out that easy. Come on, Kella, get moving!”

Something bright smacked into the rock wall next to them. Smaller chunks of rock and black sand rained into the open turret. Kella groaned as Hail hoisted her up under the armpits onto the fighter’s remaining wing. A second blast tore the discarded canopy cover into pieces as they jumped down to the ground and rolled away. Hail covered Kella’s body with his own as more debris fell around them. “Get up! Get moving!”

“Where?” Kella asked as she struggled to her hands and knees. “Where you… expect us to go?”

“Down into the dark, deeper into the gorge!” Hail knew it was only delaying the inevitable, but he was going to fight for whatever life was left to them for as long as he was able. He picked her back up and the two started staggering away from the ship. More alien fire struck into Bee’s rear thrusters and the surrounding rocks.

“The ship,” Kella gasped. “Blow the damn thing… to bits.”

It took Hail a few seconds to realize what she was getting at. Destroying Bee would seal their fate on Oread, but blowing it up at the right moment would definitely finish off the aliens trying to kill them. He took a hold of his side cannon and aimed it with both hands at the underside of Bee—right where the remaining bit of rocket fuel would be sitting in its tank. He fired and the energy burst ricocheted off the crumpled metal. The canopies may have been crap, but the shells of Ambition’s fighters were made of tough stuff. He fired again—Bee remained stubbornly intact.

Something big jumped up onto the wing causing the entire ship to shift. Hail could see it turning from side to side, spreading the light on top of its monstrous head across the rocks and into the shadows, searching for them. A second being appeared under the wing, crawling rapidly on metal fists and knees.

One of the probing lights found them. It blinded Hail as he pulled the trigger a third time.

The exploding ship tore the aliens to pieces and blew Hail and Kella onto their backs.

Kella was the first to speak a full ten seconds later. “We’ve sure made… a mess of this scouting mission, haven’t we?”

Hail was lying flat on his back, staring up at the stars through the slit of gorge rocks. “Yeah, we’re a couple of screw-ups, alright.” He heard her giggle through the speakers. “You sound… better?”

“Nothing like running for your life to give you that extra boost. Don’t get me wrong… I still feel like crap, but I’m not quite ready to die yet.”

“Good to hear.” They helped each other back up. “Where to now?”

“Nothing up top.” Kella pointed further into the black gorge below. “You called it before, kid. We keep going down.”

Chapter 25

“Faster than light?” Vin asked again.

“A lot faster.” Rastaban nodded excitedly. “For a full minute. We’re in low orbit around Mantus.”

Vin sat up and shook her head. The last time she had seen her best friend, he was the one lying in a medical center bed. Now he was standing over her. “It’s all so hard to believe. CS Ries and so many others… gone.”

Every bed around them was filled with injured and dying crew members. Doctors and nurses were moving about quickly, attending to as many patients as they could with limited staff. Vin could hear Hal Gulum off in the distance barking out orders, attempting to coordinate them as best he could.

“You’re lucky you weren’t one of them. If that robot hadn’t gotten hold of you and the Captain—”

Vin swung her legs out of the bed. “The Captain! He’ll be expecting me to be with him.”

Rastaban tried to make her lie back down. “Hey, you haven’t been cleared to leave yet.”

She found a clean uniform at the foot of the bed and began dressing. “I’m not staying here.” The clothes were command black, not science blue. “See? I have a new job now.”

“I’m sure that whole ‘Captain’s Assistant’ thing can wait. You need to rest.”

“To hell with rest. If anyone should still be in bed, it’s you. Have you looked at yourself in a mirror recently?”

“I try not to,” Rastaban answered quietly.

“I’m sorry, that was a horrible thing to say.” Vin had one boot on and dropped the other back to the floor. She hugged him. “Has Dr. Gulum scheduled your reconstructive surgery yet?”

“Too much going on for that.” He pushed her away after a few more moments. “Too many people with bigger problems than mine.”

“You will have it done though, right?”

Rastaban shrugged. “Looking like a freak has its advantages. People have started taking me more seriously.” He pointed to the ruined side of his once beautiful face. “With a mug like this I can rise up pretty quickly in the ranks.”

She finished buttoning her tunic and started for the nearest exit. Rastaban jogged behind her, sidestepping around nurses and aids along the way. The elevator door opened and they stood back as two orderlies pushed a gurney out. A white sheet drenched in blood was covered over their patient. Vin and Rastaban stepped in and the doors closed. “Command level,” Vin instructed. “Why are you following me?”

They started to move. “General Emin ordered me to join him on the bridge half an hour ago.”

“You don’t follow orders all that well.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere until I was sure you were okay.” Rastaban smiled at her, but only half of his face moved. The scarred side of his mouth remained stuck in a scowl. “Now we can go together.”

“It’ll likely be a short shift. When the Pegans find us…”

Rastaban shrugged again. “At least we’ll be together in the end.”

“I just can’t get rid of you, can I?”

The elevator rumbled upwards.

Chapter 26

Ly Sulafat sat at the head of the conference table in the same chair he’d voted against war with the Pegan civilization. The chair had a slight wobble to it and a noticeable lean to the left where some bigger object had collided with it on its way out into space. An object. Maybe one of his section heads.

He was facing the emergency bulkhead—that massive block of steel that had dropped down into place ten seconds too late. If crew quarters were still equipped with automatic atmosphere shields like those in the fighter garages, lives might have been saved, perhaps all of them. But the auto-atmos had been stripped from non-essential areas generations before to conserve energy.

Conserving life should’ve been their number one priority…I could’ve seen to it myself and had them re-installed years ago. Just another failure on my part to see things done right.

He looked around once again at what used to be his living quarters. Pictures had torn away from the walls, and fragments of glass had ground into the short carpet everywhere. Most of his treasured books were gone. A few dozen torn-out torn pages and a couple of bent covers remained, wrapped around broken furniture legs and jammed into air vents. The books had been ancient before Ambition had even left the Sol system seven centuries ago. Dozens of captains before him had cared for them. Now they were frozen tatters, floating in the vacuum of space a hundred million kilometers behind the man that would most likely be the last captain to ever command Ambition.

He stared back at the blank steel slab, feeling sad for the loss of so much human history, and devastated at the senseless deaths of people he cared for—one whom he loved dearly, even though he hadn’t told her in decades.

“Captain… General Emin reports a hundred fighters from garage 2 have set up a defensive net around the ship. One hundred thirty remain docked and ready for immediate deployment. Four are unfit to fly but repairs are underway.”

“Nash,” Sulafat replied softly without looking away from the bulkhead. “For such a big machine, you don’t make a lot of noise. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You appear lost in thought. Quite understandable.”

“I saw them coming before Sheratan… I froze and she called the warning.”

“Command isn’t an on-going test.” The robot’s big metal feet crunched glass into the carpet as he strode over to stand next to him. “The crew isn’t judging you.”

“The hell they aren’t. They’ve been judging me for years, and with good reason.” Sulafat leaned forward and rested his head into his hands. “I never want to see your face again.”

“Captain?”

“Those were the lasts words I said to her before… before—”

“You didn’t mean it. You couldn’t have known the Pegans were going to attack the next moment.”

“But I did mean it. I was disappointed in her… infuriated. I let my emotions get the best of me. And I didn’t react quickly enough when the attack began. She died because of me… because I’m too old and slow to command this ship into war.”

“The ship is now safe due to your actions. Hundreds of additional lives were saved with your decision to keep the fighters in garage 2.”

The chair creaked as Sulafat stood up. He went to the bulkhead and placed an open palm on its surface. “Sheratan should’ve been in command of this vessel when we arrived to this system. I’ve been fighting against this senseless conflict for as long as I can remember. What kind of warship captain thinks like that?”

“The last twenty-eight.”

Sulafat turned slowly and raised an eyebrow at the android. “What are you talking about?”

“Admiral Neil Lennix was the first commander of Ambition when this journey began, and the only one that believed in the war. Every captain since has, in some degree, been against it.”

“Every captain? How could you possibly know that?”

“Every captain told me.”

It was easy to forget sometimes that the robot had been actively serving aboard Ambition for the better part of a millennium. He had seen and heard it all. Every captain’s decision, all of their doubts and misgivings. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“You never asked.”

Sulafat bent over and picked up the remains of a book older than Nash and Ambition itself. Three quarters of the pages had been sucked away from the hardback’s spine. “War of the Worlds.” He tossed it onto the conference table. “I believe Lennix brought it onboard himself.”

“He did,” Nash confirmed.

The chair made an unhealthy creak as Sulafat sat back down and considered things thoughtfully. “If the Turnback Revolution hadn’t occurred, the cryonic storage canisters would’ve never been irrevocably damaged. The Admiral might very well be sitting here now, instead of me.”

“But the revolution did occur, Captain. Admiral Lennix and his associates are still frozen away on Sciences section, level 88.”

“I know, old friend. I know.” Sulafat looked up at the robot. “You knew the man… tell me about him.”

“He was only in command for the first four years of the voyage. Once we’d cleared the Kuiper belt, the Admiral, Major Tomas Weston, and the five mining corporate owners of Ambition voluntarily entered cryogenic suspension. They were to be revived once we entered the Pegan star sys—”

“I know all about that,” Sulafat rolled his hand in the air. “I asked about Lennix. What was he like?”

“He was strong, well trained. He possessed a keen military mind.” Nash paused. “But he wasn’t well liked by the rest of the crew. Most of them referred to him behind his back as the ‘Asshole Admiral’.”

Sulafat was almost smiling. “Perhaps we need someone like that now to get us out of this mess.”

“Captain, I’ll only ask this one more time. Are you well enough to command?”

It sounded like a threat, but Sulafat knew it was genuine concern. This would be his last opportunity to step down and let someone else take over. He could hear Sheratan’s voice in his mind. You could’ve walked away years ago, why quit now?

“Probably not, but I’ll see this through to the end anyway. Get a work crew down here and have this place cleaned up.”

The door to the bridge stairway opened and Vin Vir stepped into the ruined quarters. “Reporting for duty, Captain.”

“Vin. It’s good to see you back on your feet. Are you ready to help me win this war?”

“I’m not sure what good I’ll be to you, but yes, sir.”

“Self doubt.” He smiled up at Nash. “There’s been too much of that on Ambition for far too long.” Sulafat put an arm around his new assistant’s shoulders and started back for the stairs. “The only way past it is by working together.”

Chapter 27

The Captain took his chair and looked about the bridge. They were an officer short. “Where’s General Emin?”

“He left a few moments ago with Rastaban Drac,” Argus answered. “He’s meeting with his CS in fighter garage 2 to go over tactics with the remaining bosses and chiefs.”

Sulafat had promoted Tor over Seginus Boo as military leader. Seginus would be good and pissed off that he hadn’t been chosen to fill Shain Agle’s boots, but the Captain didn’t give a damn about the Command Second’s feelings. Ambition’s military needed a drastic shakeup—every section on the ship needed one—and Tor Emin was the right man for the job. He could be unpredictable and downright violent if pushed too far. The Captain saw that as something they all needed now. It had taken guts to vote for the war minutes after being promoted by the man against it. He was loyal, but not blindly so. Tor was a lot like Sheratan, and Sulafat needed more people like her.

“The General told me to tell you one more thing, sir,” Argus continued. “Since Geth Cules was killed in the garage 1 explosion, there are no more serving colonels aboard Ambition. He doesn’t see the need to promote anyone else to the vacant positions since our forces have been cut in half.”

There were now less than six hundred men and women serving in Ambition’s military. Tor and Seginus could lead them well enough with the help of the remaining squadron bosses and platoon chiefs. It was an efficient decision. Sulafat nodded his approval. “I agree, the less officers butting heads, the better.”

“And what about you, sir?” Argus asked a little fearfully. “I mean no disrespect, but you don’t have a Command Second serving under you anymore.”

Nash was standing down by the Captain’s side with Vin. Sulafat leaned over and slapped what looked like a shoulder. “My new CS is right here.”

“I’m a robotic aid, not an officer.”

“You’re a robotic aid and an officer now. If you need any help with the human side of things, you can refer to our young Vin Vir there.”

Vin looked more shocked than she had when Sulafat had made her his assistant. “Captain?”

He grinned at both of them. “Two Command Seconds all in one. I couldn’t be in better hands.”

Gacrux Crucis entered the bridge holding a computer pad. There was a stack of papers stuffed under one of his arms. “I have something you might want to see.”

Sulafat met him at the empty weapons station. Gacrux spread the papers across the console and handed the pad to his Captain.

“What am I looking at?” Sulafat asked.

“I think it might be a way to take the fight to the Pegans.” He pointed to the small display. “This is an interior image of the DMP column on Ambition. Protons are pushed through at a high rate of speed and enter the collapse chamber down here.” He tapped the bottom of the screen so Sulafat could see an expanded picture of the ship’s main propulsion system.

“How many times are you going to explain to me today how this ship moves?”

Gacrux chuckled. The other bridge officers gathered around as he poured over the papers. “These are schematics of the fighter fold drives, smaller of course, but they work on the exact same principle. Laris’s sacrifice may have shown us a way to defeat the Pegans entirely. If we intentionally disrupt the proton flow before they reach the collapse chamber—”

Sulafat stopped him. “Hold on a second, I’m not sure I follow… Are you suggesting we use our remaining fighters as collapse bombs?”

“Not the fighters, Captain.” He pushed the top papers away, revealing more schematic images beneath. “Our video drones. They’re equipped with rudimentary fold drive capabilities as well, on an even smaller scale.”

“How big of a black hole could one of these drones produce?”

“It isn’t about size, necessarily. The gravitational disruption would be just as powerful, but its duration would be much shorter.”

Vin had worked long enough in the Sciences section to picture it her head. “Mini implosions. Instantaneous collapses, and then nothing. Little pops disrupting space-time, sucking in whatever’s too close.”

“Exactly!” Gacrux exclaimed.

Sulafat picked one of the papers up and studied the video drone’s interior representation. “How many drones do we have left?”

“Sixty-four active and over two hundred in storage.” Gacrux looked at the stunned faces around the weapons station. “It seems like a lot, but this was a mining vessel before it was a warship. More than a dozen Earth companies with representatives onboard were continually exploring for resources in the Sol system.”

“It’s why this ship was named Ambition,” Nash pointed out.

“Ambitious indeed,” Sulafat said quietly. “Well done, Gacrux. I didn’t want this war, but you’ve shown us the way to win it. Get those drones out of storage. It’s time to head for the Pegan home world.”

Chapter 28

Hadar was still in the room with the screen broadcasting ancient Earth videos of conflict, brutality, and all out war. The metallic restraints around his head and throat had been removed. He could move his arms and legs, and he could stand up and walk around. But Hadar wasn’t allowed to leave. If he attempted it, or became even slightly violent, the restraints would be put back in place. The bug-eyed little being had even threatened to experiment on other parts of his body with the tools still laid out on the table.

He was given what looked like porridge in a bowl to eat. It was salty enough to make his eyes wince.

One of the taller aliens had stayed with him. It had remained silent the entire time until Hadar went to place the bowl on the floor after just one swallow. We aren’t trying to poison you. We know enough about your species to provide you with proper sustenance during your stay.

“And how long will that be?”

You should feel honored… the first of your kind to make contact with another civilization.

Hadar picked the bowl back up and ate some more. It tasted terrible, but he was starving. Parts of his mouth were still numb from the drugs; globs of the food spilled down onto his chest. “Your civilization attacked my people. You killed Kraz Corvus.” The alien didn’t respond. “Kraz Corvus was the gunner I was flying with. He was an ugly old bastard, but he could make me laugh. He has two daughters back on Ambition.”

Your ship is called Ambition. Even its title reveals the nature of your people. Greedy. Ruthless. War-mongering.

Hadar wanted to curse. He had told the Pegan more than he should’ve. “Strap me back down if that’s what you have to do. Fill me with more drugs and drill back into my brain. I’m not saying another word until I’ve been returned to my people.” He threw what was left in the bowl to the floor. The container shattered and the salty porridge splattered across the Pegan’s skinny grey legs.

The alien stood and went to the door. He motioned Hadar to follow with one long finger.

Hadar remained in his chair. No more games. I won’t go. I’ll stay right here. Let them kill me.

I can read your thoughts, Hadar Cen. We already know about your ship, your people, and your mission. Come with me and learn about us.

“What’s there to learn?” He refused to communicate with the alien telepathically. Speaking out was one of the only actions left he could control. “Either let me go or kill me. I won’t co-operate any longer.”

Please, Hadar. You’ll want to see this.

Following the creature couldn’t be any worse than remaining where he was. Hadar stood up. He wouldn’t cooperate, he wouldn’t say another word. But he could observe. And if there was even the slimmest of chances of returning home, Hadar could report what he’d seen, maybe even help his people out of this hellish situation.

The Pegan began leading him down a long corridor. Hadar paused and stared through a window on his left into another room. Six more grey beings were standing motionless in glass tubes. The tubes were filled with amber liquid. A cluster of heavy wires and cables led out from the top of each unit. They ran up into the ceiling and forked off into power conduits built into the walls.

Hadar’s promise to not say another word was quickly broken. “What is this? What have you done to them?”

They are not needed at this moment. They will remain suspended until required.

Glistening black eyes stared out from the semi-transparent brown fluid at Hadar. One of the heads twitched, stirring up a swirl of bubbles.

Come along, Hadar Cen. This will be worth everything you’ve gone through. They walked to the end of the corridor and stopped at a closed door. Be prepared, you may want to cover your eyes.

Hadar ignored the alien’s warning and watched the door open. Light flooded through, blinding him momentarily. He blinked once, twice, and then gasped at the sight before him.

“God of Sol… where am I?”

Hadar stepped forward onto a lush carpet of green. Cool air pushed against his face and ran through his hair. It smelled wonderful, fresh. He looked up and saw billowing formations of white set against endless blue. “Clouds,” he whispered. “Those are clouds.”

“Yes, Hadar Cen. Clouds, sky, and green grass.” The alien voice had changed. It was no longer muffled sounding. “Do you know where you are now?”

Hadar didn’t reply right away. He was too involved with the enormity of his new surroundings. He stumbled forward a few more steps. There were hills in the distance covered with trees—hundreds and thousands of trees. Forests. Hadar looked down at his feet. He was standing in a patch of colorful vegetation. Plants blossoming in purple and yellow. Flowers.

“Hadar Cen, do you know where you are?” The voice asked again.

He finally realized the voice was female, and she wasn’t speaking inside his mind. He turned around slowly and saw a beautiful woman standing just outside the open door. The grey-skinned, black-eyed alien was gone. “Is this… am I on Earth?”

The woman stepped towards him. Her hair was the color of gold, her eyes a match for the sky. She smiled and placed one warm palm on his cheek. “Not Earth. Welcome to the planet Pega.”

Chapter 29

Hail and Kella continued down into the seemingly endless gorge. “This is pointless,” Hail said. “We’re so far down into this rock I can’t even see the stars above anymore. Our oxygen supply will run out in less than four hours. We’re finished. Let’s go back up top. Maybe we’ll get to see Grannus rise one more time before we die.”

“Such a pessimist.”

He grabbed onto her arm and forced her to stop. “You can add claustrophobia to my long list of problems. Please, Kella, I don’t want it to end down here. I don’t want my body stuck down in a hole on some alien moon. Can’t we at least die somewhere with a view?”

“Why are you so fixated on death?”

“Aren’t you?” He could see the glean of sweat had returned on her forehead. Her color was beginning to fade again. “Maybe you should sit down for a few minutes.”

“Bad idea, we have to keep moving.”

“What for? There’s nothing down here. The moon’s lifeless.”

Kella took his hand and started walking backwards, further down into the darkness. “Didn’t you find it at all odd that the Pegans found us here so quickly? Think about it… Ambition is searching for us—at least I hope they are—but it will take them days, maybe weeks to find us. But the Pegans locate us hidden beneath the viewable surface of a dead moon in what, less than an hour? Was it even that long?”

“Maybe they followed us here after the initial attack.”

“I doubt that. Why not finish us off out there? No, I think there were Pegans already here. Why did you land Bee into this narrow strip between mountains of rock?”

“Because it was the flattest piece of surface I could see on the canopy chart. It was also the straightest—” Hail stopped talking. Kella watched his eyes grow wide. “I didn’t land us in a naturally formed gorge, did I?”

She shook her head and smiled. “You’re starting to get it now.”

“We’re on a trail of some kind… a road.”

She was still walking backwards. Their helmet lights were trained on each other’s faces. “I think so, and the only way to find out where it goes is to keep heading down.” She started to turn, and her shoulder slammed into something hard. Her helmet bounced off it next, and Kella fell back into Hail’s arms.

They trained their lights on a slab of metal built into rock. It was octagon-shaped, five meters high and wide. “It’s a door, Kella! We’ve found a door!”

She was rubbing her shoulder. “Yeah, I noticed. Now how do we get inside… knock?”

Hail shone his light along the door’s outer edge. He saw something on the right side ten feet off the ground that looked promising. He stepped up onto a pile of crushed rocks to get a closer view. “Looks like a receiving console. Vehicles broadcast a signal on the way down, and the door begins to open before they get here.”

“I don’t suppose you have anything to signal it with?” Kella asked.

She sounded tired, running out of breath again. Hail knew she didn’t have much time left. “No signaling device, but there’s something else here.” He brushed black dust away from a rod set horizontally into the door frame beneath the console. “I think it’s a manual handle of some kind.”

“Don’t just stare at the thing… pull down on it.”

Hail gripped it with all of his strength and prepared to do just that. He felt something click through the fabric of his glove, and the rod shifted down four inches all on its own. The big door started to swing inwards. Dust kicked up all around them as the vacuum of space met a pressurized atmosphere within. Hail jumped down from the rocks and helped Kella inside.

“It’s some kind of pressurization bay,” Hail said. Rows of red lights were blinking all around them in the cylindrically shaped area. A second door was located at the far end twenty meters ahead. “We need to get through there somehow.”

The first door had finished swinging all the way in. It connected with a console set in the wall, and the red lights turned bright white. The door started closing again five seconds later. “Looks like… it might happen… automatically.”

The door thumped shut and dust started swirling around them again. The HUD activated inside Hail’s visor. “Oxygen, nitrogen. It’s pumping in breathable air.”

The process completed. The blinking white lights turned steady green. The second door started to rumble open. Kella started staggering towards it. “Hurry… before it closes up.”

The door began swinging shut when they were still ten meters away. Kella fell to her knees. Hail picked her back up and wrapped one of her arms around his shoulders. He jogged for the opening, dragging Kella along. He pushed her through first and squeezed his body sideways a second after. The big door clunked shut with a deep thud.

Kella removed her helmet before Hail could stop her. She breathed in deeply and sunk back down to her knees. “It’s okay… the air’s fine.”

Hail waited a few moments longer before removing his own helmet. “You’ve got to start thinking before doing things. There might’ve been poisons in the air our HUDs couldn’t register.”

“If I thought things through too much… like you… we’d be walking for the surface… preparing to die.”

Hail pulled his side cannon out and looked around. They were in a small mechanical bay. Vehicles with heavy rubberized tires were lined against one wall in varying stages of assembly and repair. Fuel tanks and tools were strewn about the floor. There was a thin coating of dust on everything. “Doesn’t look like this place gets used much.”

“Reminds me of the main fighter mechanical bay… back home.” She was lying on her side now, one elbow propping her up off the dusty floor. A small pool of blood had started to form around her. “Hail… I don’t feel so good.”

“Hang tight, there’s got to be something here we can stop the bleeding with.” He rummaged through the vehicles. There was nothing. What did he expect to find? They were trapped on a moon, inside an alien installation. There would be no emergency medical kits jumping out at him, and even if there were, they probably wouldn’t be compatible with humans. He kicked one of the big vehicle tires in frustration.

But they were breathing air, he realized. Whatever kind of beings worked and lived here couldn’t have been that dissimilar from them. There had to be something. He looked past Kella and saw what appeared to be an inner office built into the far wall. Hail ran to it and went inside. There was a desk and chair set in the middle of the room. Papers were littered across the desk’s surface, and stacks more were piled into trays and boxes to the side. There wasn’t as much dust in here, he noted. Someone had been working through these papers recently.

The wall behind the desk was lined with small doors. Hail began rifling through them, tossing things over his shoulder and onto the floor that were of no use to him. Cups, writing utensils, boxes filled with nuts and bolts.

There was nothing that could help save Kella’s life. He stepped back and sat dejectedly on the desk’s edge. One of the paper piles next to him toppled over and fell to the floor. Hail watched the last few sheets flutter down. He looked up and saw a five-foot-high metal door set into the side wall.

Hail pulled on the handle and it opened with a creak. There was a power control box built inside with dozens of electrical switches arranged in rows before him. Below the power box was a red container sitting on its own shelf. A single black image was stamped on its surface recognizable to any species. It was a simplified picture of fire. Hail laughed out loud. He had found an emergency burn kit.

“What took you… so long?” Kella asked as Hail squatted down next to her.

He opened the container out onto the floor. Rolls of gauze wrapped in plastic spilled out. Squeeze tubes of what had to be sterilized medicine followed. “Quit talking and get out of that spacesuit.”

Kella sat up and started to undress slowly. “What’s in there?” She pointed to a large white bottle still attached inside the container. “Is that water?”

Hail snapped off the plastic strapping and unscrewed the cap. He smelled the liquid inside. “Maybe.” He removed his gloves and poured a bit of clear fluid onto his fingers. “Sure looks like it, but I wouldn’t recommend—”

She snatched it away and started drinking. “Yeah, it’s water alright.” She sloshed some more onto her face.

Hail took the bottle back. “Save some to clean your wound… dumb girl.”

Kella giggled as Hail began working on her.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m being treated by Ambition’s biggest hypochondriac… a guy that probably can’t even stand the sight of blood.”

“Keep reminding me and I’ll likely faint on top of you.”

The giggles stopped once he’d finished cleaning the blood away and started in with the squeeze tubes. “That stings.”

“Probably means it’s working.” He applied the largest bandage he could find and made her straighten up. “Lift your arms and sit still.”

“Thank you, Hail,” she said as he started wrapping the gauze around her midsection. “You’ve put up with too much crap from me. I’ll quit being such a smart-ass, okay?”

He taped the last of the gauze down against her stomach. “I don’t want you to stop being who you are because of me.” He leaned back and their eyes met. “Believe it or not, I kind of like you the way you are.”

The color had already begun to return to her face. Was she blushing? He backed away further and handed her the water bottle. “Here, drink a bit more, but save some for later.”

Kella grabbed onto the back of his neck and pulled him in. Their lips met, Hail’s heart started to pound up into his throat. A door opened somewhere behind them and the kiss was broken.

A man dressed in dirty work clothes stood less than twenty feet away. His expression was total shock—one cheek was bulging out with half-chewed food. Part of it was hanging out over his lip. A cardboard box beneath his arm fell, and the rest of his pastry lunch rolled onto the floor. He blurted a single-word question and started to back away. He said it again louder.

“What’s he saying?” Hail asked.

Kella picked his side cannon up off the floor and pointed. “How should I know?” She fired a six-inch hole into the door behind him. The man jumped to one side, lost his balance, and smacked his head into the rear fender of a half-disassembled vehicle. He was out cold before he’d finished hitting the floor.

Hail ran to the fallen body and placed a hand on his chest. “He’s still breathing. Were you trying to kill him?”

“He was going to run… find more aliens.”

Hail’s hand shook as he pulled it away. “They aren’t aliens, Kella. The Pegans are human, just like us.”

Chapter 30

Tor Emin had better ways to spend his time. He was the newly appointed General of Ambition’s military, and even though its numbers had been cut in half, the Captain expected him to be organizing their remaining troops into a ready fighting unit, not sneaking around in the dark bowels of the multi-leveled Sciences section. The Captain didn’t know where he was—Thank Sol—or what he was up to. If Sulafat, or just about anyone else onboard, even suspected his sinister ties with Chort Leo, Tor would be immediately knocked back down to the rank of milun. Hell, he would be kicked out of the military altogether and likely spending the rest of his days in the ship’s prison.

Tor hated it down here. He rarely visited this area of the ship, and only the schematic loaded into his com-pad—directions provided by Chort—showed him where he needed to be. There were too many goddamn machines, he thought. Row after row of humming computers stretched off up into the ceiling ten feet above his head. It made him feel like a trapped rodent, scurrying down too-narrow aisles, sandwiched between the towering, black monoliths. The machines threw off a tremendous amount of heat as well. Tor was drenched in sweat, the com-pad slippery in his fingers. He continued on, desperate to have this clandestine meeting over with.

He saw no one along the way. A majority of the rooms he passed through were running on minimal power and staff. Ambition was at war, and every available crew member was somewhere else trying to win it. The computers could run on automatic, and the research could wait. Even the lighting had been set to emergency minimal, casting everything in an eerie red glow.

It wasn’t too late to back out. He could abandon this centuries-old obsession handed down throughout generations of his family. Tor came upon an unmarked door and punched a seven-digit code into the console. It slid open noiselessly and he stepped through into an even darker area.

Chort was waiting for him in the shadows. “I was beginning to wonder if you got lost.”

“This is wrong,” Tor whispered, even though there wasn’t anyone around to hear them talking. “I did what I said I’d do out in space… fulfilled my part in it. I even voted for the war when Sulafat put me in charge. I can’t afford to be seen with you.”

The Science section head flipped a switch on the wall. Their surroundings brightened slightly in a sterile shade of blue. “You wanted this just as much as I did, Emin. We all did. We’re fulfilling a promise that can’t be broken.”

“I’ve never been here before.” Tor began walking slowly through the hidden control room. The biggest computer he’d seen yet was sprawled out across an entire wall fifteen-meters across and five-meters high. It was a mass of monitoring screens and control panels. He could feel the power of it humming through the bottoms of his boots. “Part of me always thought the tomb didn’t actually exist.”

“Less than a dozen people onboard are aware it’s still running. Everyone else believes it was shut down and abandoned more than six hundred years ago.”

The tomb was a name given to the single cryonics facility located on level 65. Seven personnel born on Earth had been placed in deep freeze near the beginning of Ambition’s long mission. They were to be revived seven decades later when the ship arrived in the Pegan system to assume military command of operations. The Turnback Revolution had put an end to that. The cryonics facility had been sabotaged, the machinery heavily damaged, but not completely destroyed. The technology to revive the suspended had been lost. The lives stored within had remained frozen.

Tor made his way to an observation window at the far end of the room. A row of seven cryogenic canisters set at forty-five degree angles rested on the floor surrounded by a network of heavy cables and cooling tanks. “It’s them… the original seven.”

Chort pointed to the third canister from the right. “And that’s your grand-father, sixteen times removed, still resting peacefully after all this time.”

Tor placed the fingers of one hand on the glass window before him. “Major Tomas Weston. He was second in command when Ambition set out.”

“And he will be again.” Chort pressed a button on the wall and a door opened. “Come inside and get a better look at him.”

Tor hesitated. “No, this isn’t right. Perhaps we should let the Captain in on this. We could all work together, our generation and theirs.”

“It’s a little late for that.” Chort pulled gently at his arm. “The Captain is old and weak. Tomas Weston and these others are young. This is their time.”

Tor followed him inside. The top half of each cryonic canister cover was constructed of heavy glass. They looked down into the first few, seeing the faces of men and women frozen centuries before.

Tor stopped in front of Tomas Weston. The blue light inside made him look even colder, literally a block of human ice. “He… doesn’t look anything like me.”

“He has your jaw, and he is a big bastard.”

Tor stood there for a few more moments unable to say anything else at all. This is my ancient ancestor. He’s the reason I’ll betray my people… my Captain.

“Allow me to introduce a distant relative of my own,” Chort said quietly. He patted the canister next to Major Weston’s. “This is Olivia Bertrand. She was—still is—the Vice-President of Operations for the mining company, Ganymede Unlimited.”

An attractive woman no older-looking than forty lay inside the canister. A fine layer of white frost had settled over her short black hair. It had settled on the narrow eyebrows and full lashes. Her lips were thin and mauve-colored. Attractive, yes, Tor confirmed to himself, but hard-looking. Sheratan Ries could’ve passed as her descendant before the round-faced Chort Leo.

Tor glanced over at the last canister next to Bertrand’s. There was no blue light within. There was no one laying inside. “You’ve done it,” he gasped. “You’ve actually revived one.”

“Through Sol’s good graces, he’s done more than that.”

Tor spun around and saw Zosma Lion standing in the open doorway. Beside him was a tall, silver-haired man wearing a medical-issue gown. He appeared to be roughly Tor’s age with wide shoulders and powerfully built arms. His skin however was deathly white. He stepped forward slowly with the help of a cane. The man’s dark and bloodshot eyes penetrated into Tor’s.

“My name ish…,” a line of drool spilled from one corner of his mouth. “My name is Admiral Neil Lennix.” He wiped the saliva away and stuck his chin out confidently. “I am the Commander of Ambition… you will help me take her back.”

It wasn’t a request. Tor lowered his eyes to the floor and answered anyway. “Yes, sir.”

Chapter 31

“What is your name?”

The blond-haired woman’s fingers trailed down Hadar’s cheek and took hold of his hand. “My parents named me Jule. On my fifteenth birthday I added the second name, Adeen.” She pulled him along and pointed to a distant grove of tall trees. “Those are adeens. They grow forever, and never stop reaching for the clouds. The tallest one there is over a thousand circles old. I like the idea of that, always reaching high and never dying.”

“You speak my language, like those other Pegans… the grey ones.”

“The interrogators?” She laughed. “They aren’t Pegans. They aren’t even human like you and I. And I’m speaking your language because you haven’t learned mine yet.”

Hadar stumbled along beside her in a daze. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be here, walking in grass with a beautiful woman holding his hand. “Is this a trick of some kind?” She looked at him questioningly. “Am I still strapped into that chair? How do I know you aren’t drilling back inside my head or pumping me with drugs to see all of this?”

She squeezed his fingers. “This is real. I am a true Pegan, and you are walking on my world. I’m truly sorry for the way you were treated. If I had any say in it, those barbaric practices would end. But I’m just a diplomat. First contact and security procedures are handled solely by the militia.”

Hadar couldn’t take anymore of it. He pulled his hand from hers and dropped to his knees. He felt faint, light-headed. Jule Adeen knelt beside him and picked one of the purple and yellow flowers. “Here, smell this.”

Hadar closed his eyes and smelled. It reminded him of the scent of the flowers grown back inside the horticultural levels on Ambition. It reminded him of home. He breathed in through his nose a second time, deeply. The smell grounded him. The light-headed sensation began to pass. He opened his eyes again and felt a longing to be back with his people. They had called it homesickness a very long time ago, but Hadar was the first human in centuries to experience it firsthand.

“Do you wish to go back inside?” Jule asked.

Hadar shook his head. “No. Not back inside.” He turned and beheld the immense block of a building he’d been held captive in for the first time. “I never want to go back in there again.”

She helped him stand back up. “You don’t have to. There’ll be other buildings, but that one has finished with you. The interrogation part of your stay with us has ended. We’ll help find you more suitable quarters in the city. You can remain safe with us for the rest of your life if that’s what you wish to do.”

“City?”

“Come see for yourself.” She ran away from him, away from the distant forest and up a hill covered with more waving grass and wild flowers. Hadar was in no condition to run after his ordeal. He kept the young woman in view and met her at the hill’s top a minute later.

“There,” she said. “That’s the city of Sharell… it’s named after the first planet in our system, the one your people call Grannus.”

Hadar had never walked on grass, or witnessed an open sky above his head until a few short minutes ago. Seeing an actual city sprawled below them in the distance was no less awe-inspiring. Steel spires a hundred times taller than the adeen trees stretched away as far as he could see. Hadar focused in and saw a few specks of movement—ships rising up noiselessly from the buildings and dropping down from the clouds.

“A city.” He looked at her. “Sorry, it’s all still a little overwhelming.”

“That’s understandable. You’ve been cooped up in that ship of yours for a long time. What you’re seeing is only the perimeter. The city center is still over a hundred kilometers away.”

Hadar turned away and stared back down towards the building he’d been interrogated in. “None of this makes any sense. You say I can stay here, safe, but you attacked our scout ships. Your people killed my friend. They probably destroyed the others, too.”

“That isn’t true.” She stepped in front of him. “I believe your intentions in all of this were honorable, but Earth did come to Pega to start a war, you can’t deny that.”

He shook his head. “The three ships Ambition sent ahead were reconnaissance only. I’ll admit that military conflict was still being considered, but the people I was sent out with were only observing. You attacked us.”

Her light eyebrows furrowed together. “No. We sent ships out to intercept you—we had decided to end the centuries-long communications freeze and welcome your civilization. One of your fighters fired a long-range nuclear missile twelve hours before ours forces met your ships. Five of our vessels were destroyed in the blast… fifteen people killed.”

“That can’t be right. Our orders were to observe…” Hadar’s words trailed off. Nail had disappeared moments before Bite and Bee were hit. He’d called out to Tor Emin and Rastaban Drac but received no reply.

“Your people started this war, Hadar Cen. You will remain on Pega. You will be kept safe and treated well as a prisoner of war.”

Chapter 32

Rastaban emptied the glass and ordered another drink.

Ma Ades re-filled it. “You don’t come here all that often, and when you do it’s usually for just a single shot or two.”

“I’m waiting for someone,” he said sullenly.

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the patronage. This place has been pretty much empty since all the hostilities broke out.” She swept an arm through the air to indicate how much the Black Hole’s business had suffered.

Rastaban glanced over his shoulder. “It’s completely empty. Your establishment’s living up to its name.”

“You can say that again.” She pulled a second glass from under the counter and poured herself a drink. “Mind if I join you?”

“It’s your bar.”

Ma took a sip. “You’ve been waiting for this ‘someone’ for over an hour. You sure she hasn’t stood you up?”

“That someone is my commanding officer, and she’s a he.”

The door slid open and Tor Emin stepped through. Ma rolled her eyes. “Oh you poor bastard. I’d be pounding the liquor back even faster if he was my boss.” She plopped a third glass onto the counter.

Tor motioned it away. “Nothing for me. This isn’t a social visit.”

“Yeah? Well then you still owe me for the busted table and chairs.”

“Later, Ma. When all this has been settled, I’ll personally see this dive gets completely refurnished.”

Ma brushed her thick hair back with one hand and finished her drink. “That’ll be the day.”

Tor pointed to a table in the far corner. “Rastaban… we have to talk in private.”

Ma poured herself another drink and shooed the two away. “Go then, Sol forbid I stop you.”

Rastaban started for the corner. Tor paused and grabbed the bottle and two glasses from the counter. “If it makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t. Paying for it once in a while would.”

“Soon, Ma, that’s a promise.” He winked at her and walked away.

“What the hell’s going on?” Rastaban mumbled once the two men were seated. “You ask me to join you on the bridge and then send me straight here.”

Tor motioned for him to lower his voice even more. “I was held up… family matters.”

Rastaban’s good eye opened wide. “Chort’s still going through with it?”

“Lennix has already been revived.” Tor filled the glasses to the top and pushed one towards him.

Rastaban’s hand shook as he drank it down. “I never thought the day would come… The Seven coming back to life.”

“You knew it was close when we set out on the scouting mission. The plan to bring them back as soon as we entered the Pegan system had been decided years ago.”

“Scouting mission, my ass.” Rastaban pointed to the scarred side of his face. “This is what I got from your scouting mission.”

“Easy now.”

Rastaban poured another drink. “Firing a nuke at the Pegan ships wasn’t part of the plan. We were supposed to take them on face to face. I only went along with the sneak attack because you were mission leader. It wasn’t your call to make.”

“So I initiated things a little early. It’s what the Seven would’ve wanted.”

Rastaban wanted to punch him between the eyes. Two things would happen if he tried it; Tor would kick the crap out of him, and he would end up back in the medical center. Rastaban did not want to end up back there with even more damage to his face. “We could’ve honored our responsibility to the Seven and achieved peace with the Pegans. That won’t happen now. You’ve jeopardized everything.”

“That nuke didn’t take all of them out,” Tor countered. “The Pegans caught up with us and fired upon Bee and Bite. I tried to defend them.”

“Bullshit. You thought I was so busy flying the ship I couldn’t see what you were up to? The Pegans didn’t shoot Corvus and Hadar’s wing away. You did that, admit it.”

Tor’s face went white. “Keep your voice down.” He leaned forward, close enough that Rastaban could see the sweat lining his forehead in the dark bar. “It had to be done. If Chort was unable to thaw the Seven out… well, we just couldn’t afford to have any witnesses come back from that mission and report what really happened.”

“Bite’s wing collided with my canopy cover.” He pushed away from the table noisily and pointed to the purple scars covering the left side of his face again. “Did you intend for this to happen as well? Are you that good of a shot, General?”

“Hey, Emin!” Ma smacked the counter hard enough to get their attention from the far side of the room. “Are you going to start another fight? You’re the only two in the place!”

Tor turned and saluted her with the bottle. “No fights, Ma.” He refilled Rastaban’s glass and whispered. “Sit back down and shut your mouth for a minute.” Rastaban sat. “I never intended for that to happen. But you knew what we were really doing out there—you should’ve been prepared. You should’ve had your helmet on.” 

“Murdering our own people wasn’t part of any plan I was ever let in on.”

Tor finally swallowed his drink down. He filled the glass again. “It was a last minute decision—me, Chort, Zosma, and a few of the others held a meeting… It was decided there could be no witnesses. If you weren’t a member of the cause, you weren’t coming back, period. I was against it, but they made sense, and as much as I hate to admit it now, it was the right thing to do.”

Rastaban had been shaking his head slowly through the entirety of Tor’s reasoning. “No, it wasn’t. Listen to you—siding with Chort and Zosma… Zosma, damn it! He’s a Sol-worshipping freak.”

“Yeah, he’s a freak, but he has ties with the Seven, just like you and me.”

Both men sat in silence for the next minute, sipping from their glasses. “I can’t go through with this,” Rastaban finally said. “The Captain has to be informed. We have to come clean and tell the entire crew what we’ve been up to all these years.”

“I’ll murder you before you make it to the door,” the General warned. “And then I’ll break Ma’s neck, and dump both of your bodies into space.” He leaned forward and grabbed Rastaban’s wrist. “It would be easy. It’s just the three of us here. No witnesses.”

Rastaban gave in to the threat and the increasing pressure around his wrist. “What… What do you want me to do?”

“You’re going to your quarters after this. You’ll keep that ugly mouth of yours shut and remain there until I call for you again. Can you do that for me?”

Rastaban nodded.

“Good.” Tor let him go. “Remember… the Council keeps an eye on all of its members, all of the time. You’re one of us, Drac—you swore an oath. One word from you to the Captain, or that nosy Vin Vir…” He raised his eyebrows to finish the threat. “Are you absorbing all of this?”

Rastaban nodded again.

Tor stood up. “It’ll all have been worth it when Ambition’s original command crew is back in charge, you’ll see. Even the Pegans will thank us in a few decades—what’s left of them—when an Earth government is running things.”

The newly-appointed General made for the door, clunking the empty liquor bottle on the counter along the way. Ma went to the table and gathered up the glasses. “You need another drink, or are we finished here?”

“I’m finished,” Rastaban answered. “Most definitely.”

Chapter 33

Sixteen hours had passed since Ambition’s faster than light jump through space into orbit around the moon of Mantus. Sixteen hours in which Gacrux Crucis, his brother Becrux, and dozens of other crew members from propulsion and sciences had rigged a hundred and thirty-two video drone fold drives to stall and overload by remote control. They were half done. The ship still contained a mighty arsenal of conventional weapons, but this was Sulafat’s guarantee the war could be won.

If it came to that.

Sixteen hours was a long time for a leader to think things through. The Captain sat in his command chair, brooding how to inform his crew that the threat of war might be all they needed to avoid any further conflict. He had been wrong before, and people had died. The Pegans had attacked them minutes after he’d voted against a military strike. Sulafat had the authority to override the Baker’s Dozen vote, but would the people follow him? Would they see his last-ditch attempt at peace as strength of wisdom, or just another sign of weak indecision?

He was finished second-guessing himself. They would follow his commands and give peace one more try. And if some didn’t like it, to hell with them. They could be confined to their quarters, or see the rest of this through in the brig.

Sulafat clicked a switch on his armrest, opening a line to the entire ship. “Attention all crew members. We now have the means to defend ourselves against any further Pegan attacks. Our ship has taken damage, but she lives on.” He paused, and the bridge crew stared at him expectantly. He considered his next words carefully for a few more moments and finally continued. “I wish the same could be said for the seven hundred and fifty-two members of our family lost in the last eighteen hours. I don’t want their deaths to have been for nothing… I believe we can steer away from this path of destr—”

Kalin Aurig at navigation interrupted. “Sensors have just picked up the signals of over a hundred enemy vessels. They’ll be on us in minutes.”

So much for peace. “I want ten of those collapse bombs launched towards them in thirty seconds.”

Gacrux’s voice sounded over the comm system. “Already loaded in the torpedo cannons and programmed to intercept.”

“Fire when ready.” No more second-guessing. As much as it pained him to see an interstellar conflict escalate, Sulafat would not risk the life of another single crewmember so long as he had what might be the upper hand.

Vin Vir was at the weapons station. “Port torpedo doors seven through twelve open.”

The Captain nodded at her with silent approval. She had relieved the exhausted officer serving there less than half an hour ago. Sulafat knew more about her than Vin suspected. The young woman was smart enough to fill almost any bridge position, he was sure. Why she had chosen to pursue a career in sciences over command baffled him, but having her here with him now was all that mattered. Whether she could handle the pressure remained to be seen.

Nash spoke at his side. “Captain, I’ve detected a power spike in Sciences section, sub-level four.”

Sulafat kept his eyes glued to the main view screen as six of Ambition’s heavy torpedo chambers slid out past the open doors. Sub-level four was cryonics. Why was a power spike being registered there? “Will it affect in any way what we’re about to do now?”

“Negative. Readings are dropping back down to normal already.”

“Then you can investigate the cause after we’re done here.”

Vin unlocked a small console cover on the top half of her weapons board. A single button lit in red waited underneath. The light turned green. She pressed down on it forcefully with one thumb. “Collapse bombs away.”

Six cylindrical objects shot out from the cannons. “Drone view,” Sulafat commanded. The single image of Ambition’s receding torpedo chambers was replaced with half a dozen nearly identical shots of outer space. Mantus’s rocky surface appeared at the bottom of each as the drones picked up speed. Another advantage of using video drones as bombs was a bird’s eye view of the destruction to come. “How long until they intercept?”

Vin struggled for only a moment to find the right readout screen on her board. “All drone fold drives have engaged towards their targets. Optimal damage can be achieved in… twelve seconds.”

“Did you hear that, Gacrux?”

“Affirmative. I’ve set the drives to malfunction accordingly.”

“The Pegan ships are firing at the drones,” Vin reported. “Impact in four seconds.”

Two of the six images on screen went black a few moments later. The bridge crew could hear Gacrux curse over the open line.

“Patience,” Sulafat said. “We still have four to go.”

A spread of lights larger than the background stars appeared in the remaining drones’ view. The lights quickly took form as dozens of Pegan ships flying in formation bore down on Ambition. The alien vessels wouldn’t get the chance to fire a second time.

All four remaining images on the view screen went black. Sulafat clutched the arms of his chair and waited. Gacrux made a whooping noise loud enough to cause the speakers to crackle. “It worked, Captain! Four fold drive overloads, four implosions.” There was a pause as the propulsion chief gathered more information. “Thirty-eight alien ships have vanished and the rest are turning back.”

The bridge erupted with cheers.

“Impressive,” Nash said.

Sulafat winked at the robot and gave Vin Vir the thumb’s up.

“Captain!” Argus had to shout to be heard from her communications station. “Captain, one of the Pegan ships is still advancing—sir, they’ve opened a direct line… They wish to talk to us.”

Chapter 34

Hail had hidden the unconscious mechanic behind the office desk while the slowly recovering Kella cleaned up the remains of human and Pegan blood from the floor. If they were going to be discovered, they first needed time to figure out exactly where they were, and how best to defend themselves.

“This is insane,” Hail whispered as they snuck down a dimly lit service corridor. Their helmets were back on, lighting the way ahead. “We should go back to that mechanical bay and see if we can get one of those vehicles going.”

“And where would we go if you managed to get one running? Back up onto the moon’s surface? Maybe we could fire our side cannons into space for Ambition to see a hundred million kilometers away.”

“I thought you said you were going to stop being such a smartass.”

“It’s a tough promise to keep when you say such stupid things.” She squeezed his arm affectionately. “I know you’re scared, I am too. We should’ve been dead half a dozen different times by now, but we’re still here.”

“If that’s meant to encourage me, it isn’t doing the job.”

They crept out into a wider tunnel. “It’s meant to make you think there might be a reason we’ve come this far.”

The lighting inside the tunnel was even dimmer than it had been inside the service corridor. Energy was being conserved in this part of the alien facility. “Are you talking about some kind of divine intervention? I might have my hang-ups, but believing the Spirit of Sol is watching over our every move isn’t one of them.”

“I don’t believe in any of that either. I was starting to wonder if the Pegans were intentionally allowing us to get this far.”

“Tell that to the guy back there you took a shot at.”

They continued down the tunnel, both side cannons drawn. She pointed with her weapon to what looked like another opening in the wall further ahead. A deep rumbling sounded somewhere behind them. Moments later a bright light appeared at their backs. They jogged towards the opening and slipped into a shadowy alcove. A vehicle thundered by on eight giant tires, pulling an open container filled with rocks.

“It’s a mining facility,” Kella said resting her hands on her knees, attempting to catch her breath. “That vehicle, the ones we saw back in the bay… designed to carry heavy ore.” She holstered her side cannon and trained her helmet light on a door behind them. There were no keypads built into it requiring secure access, just a plain handle. She gave him a look to prepare, and Hail trained his weapon on it as Kella pulled the door open. Rubber flaps sealed along the top and bottom edges scraped across ceiling and floor.

Hail stepped through with his side cannon leading the way. Rows of narrow metal doors were lined on either side of them. Kella opened the first one on her right. There were clothes hanging on a hook inside. Dirty boots and safety goggles were sitting on the floor. “Worker storage lockers,” she whispered.

They moved in deeper, passing by an open area of shower stalls, toilets, and sinks. Kella found a side corridor and motioned Hail to follow. They came into a room of tables and lounge chairs. There was a large map pinned to one of the walls—an immense overview of the entire complex.

Kella whispered softly. “It’s a lot bigger than I thought.”

Hail rested a finger on a red dot at the upper most part of the map. “I think this means we’re here.” A collection of thin lines surrounded the dot, like roots beneath a tree; a few snaked away up to the moon’s surface—represented as a thicker jagged line—but the majority of them sunk down even deeper. Here they joined up with what looked like a massive conglomeration of industrial complexes, retail centers, and living areas. “Those weren’t mining vehicles we saw, Kella. They’re excavators. We’ve just stumbled into a gigantic city buried under Oread’s surface.”

“It’s more than a city… you can see the curvature of the moon’s surface. If this map is to scale, almost half its interior has been cleared out and colonized. It’s a world inside a world.”

Oread was the smaller of Pega’s two moons, but it could hardly be considered tiny. A thousand Ambition-sized ships could fit within the area they were looking at.

Hail stepped back to take it all in. “And it’s obviously been here a long time. That might explain why things are running on minimum power up in these higher levels. The heavy work of removing so much rock has already been done.”

“Tens of millions of people could be living here.”

“More likely hundreds of millions.”

“We have to get out of here, Hail.”

“I’ve been saying that ever since the emergency landing. Why are you suddenly agreeing now?”

She smacked the center of the map with an open palm. “Take a closer look. I can’t see any militarized zone—no guns, no missile silos, not even a sign of any exterior shielding. This place is practically indefensible. That’s information Ambition can use to win this war.”

Kella was right. Oread was what the ancients once called a sitting duck. But there was one major flaw in her plan. “How the hell are we going to get back home and tell them? What’s left of Bee is sitting a kilometer above our heads in a thousand little pieces.”

She indicated towards the map with a half nod. “You don’t think we’ll find another space ship in all of that?”

Hail winced. “I’d rather not try. I have this aversion to being captured and tortured.”

Kella had already unpinned the map from the wall and was beginning to fold it up. “Who’s being the smart ass now?” She grabbed onto his arm and pulled him towards the door. “Come on, let’s go find a ride home.”

They had made it back into the big washroom area when they heard voices coming from the locker room. Hail pulled her into a corner next to a row of stand-up urinals, and they listened. He held up three fingers, indicating how many different voices he could detect. Kella shook her head and showed him four fingers. A moment later she showed her thumb as well.

“Five?” He whispered. “That’s too many to try and shoot with our side cannons.”

Kella nodded and pointed to one of the eight toilet stall doors in front of them. She started creeping for the first one, but Hail pulled her to the furthest stall. “If any of them have to go, chances are they’ll pick the closest one.”

They squeezed inside, their boots on either side of the toilet. Kella closed the door and pulled the slide lock into place. The voices got louder. Two men entered the washroom. There was a six-inch high opening at the bottom of the stall. Hail pointed it out to Kella, grabbed onto her shoulders for support, and climbed onto the toilet seat rim. She did the same until they were both awkwardly squatting in front of each other, their knees touching.

They could hear one of the men urinating. The second one said something and laughed. Hail and Kella heard the clunk of his boots approaching the toilet stalls. He didn’t stop at door one or door two. He kept on walking past doors three, four, five, and six.

Kella almost fell back into the wall reaching for her side cannon. She steadied herself against Hail and pointed the weapon at the door. Toe boots appeared in front of their stall. There was a clunk and slight shudder as the worker attempted to pull the door open. He said something quietly and tried it again. He pulled harder, rattling the handle back and forth. The man shouted a single word—a profanity, Kella and Hail were sure—and went to use the toilet beside them.

He flushed, used one of the sinks, and left with his companion. Kella started to lower herself back to the floor, but pulled her boot back up into place quickly when they heard more voices. A lot more voices. Toilet stall doors opened and closed. Urinals were being pissed into. Showers started running. Hail leaned in close and whispered directly into Kella’s ear. “There’s a lot more than five now.”

“Quiet. They’ll be gone soon.”

They held onto each other and waited as the place started to steam up and stink. Hail’s legs were beginning to ache. Kella’s were shaking. They wouldn’t be able to last much longer.

Chapter 35

Sulafat stood up from the bridge command chair and straightened his tunic. How is a leader supposed to look when confronting an alien species for the first time? Was he expected to stick out his chin in open defiance? His hands—what was he going to do with them? Arms crossed over chest? Legs spread apart how far?

These thoughts, and a hundred other worries flashed through his mind in less than a second. I’m far too old to be worrying about crap like this. He let his arms rest at his sides, his stance remained normal. “Put them on the screen, Argus.”

He could sense the collective shock of his officers around him as the alien vessel hanging against space was replaced with a looming grey face. Below the bulbous skull and terrifying black eyes was a bump of a nose, and a slit for a mouth.

Sulafat wondered if the Pegan was as equally shocked at the appearance of Ambition’s bridge crew. “I am Captain Ly Sulafat of the Sol Ship Ambition.” He waited a few moments for the grey face to reply. It didn’t. “You have attacked our scout ships… inflicted minimal damage on this ship. I call for the immediate surrender of your vessel.”

The creature blinked. Its head tilted slightly to one side, as if it were trying to understand what Sulafat had said, or perhaps listening to the input of another alien off screen. It turned its attention back to the Captain and replied in a deep voice that rumbled over the speakers. “Ly… Sulafat. Aggressor representative of Sol star system… Earth planet… Your Ambition is guilty of attack … and casualties to Pegan citizens.”

“We defended ourselves against the hostile actions of your people.” Unless the alien could read his mind, Sulafat couldn’t see the need to confess they had travelled to the Pegan system to begin the war that had already broken out. “I say again, surrender your vessel or suffer the consequences.”

The view screen went black. Sulafat turned to communications. “Did you do that?”

Argus shook her head adamantly. “No sir. Nothing wrong on our end. The Pegans cut the line.”

He looked over to Vin. “Instruct Gacrux to load another collapse bomb. Kalin—prepare to back us away from that ship.” Sulafat sank down into his chair and exhaled heavily. “So what did you make of that?” He asked quietly.

“I have been observing human behavior for over seven centuries,” Nash answered. “I have had less than one minute to study the behavior of Pegans. Based on that exchange, I would surmise the alien truly believes—forgive the old expression—that we started it.”

Sulafat nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. It’s either telling the truth, or its lying right out of its ugly mouth. Do you know what a poker face is, Nash?”

“It’s what Commander Ries accused me of having the last time we met for games in your quarters.”

The Captain chuckled, remembering the night with a combination of contentment and sadness. “That alien wears the same expression, I’m afraid.”

Gacrux’s voice came over the speakers. “I have a drone loaded and ready to go, sir. Auto-launching in ten seconds”

“Hard to port, Kalin,” Sulafat instructed. “Get us out of here.”

The alien face suddenly reappeared on the view screen. “Hadar… Cen.”

Sulafat straightened up in his chair. “Hold us where we are! Gacrux, do not let that drone out, I repeat—do not launch the drone.” The Captain’s fists clenched as he stared into the black eyes before him. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly… That last communication was garbled.”

“Hadar Cen,” the alien repeated. “Unless you agree to… negotiations, his life will be terminated.”

Negotiations.

Minutes ago both species were set to annihilate one another. Now the Pegans wanted to negotiate terms. A human life hung in the balance, but it was a starting point, Sulafat figured. Perhaps the war he’d been born to lead humanity into could be averted after all.

“We will meet with a small, unarmed delegation of your people to discuss this matter further.”

“Approved,” the alien agreed with a human-like nod of its head. “We will receive you aboard our ship in… one hour.”

“No. The meeting will be held here, on my ship.” He stuck his chin out without realizing he was doing so. “It’s either that, or I’ll collapse you and your vessel into oblivion.”

The head nodded again slowly a few seconds later. “Approved.”

Chapter 36

“End of the line,” a soft-spoken computer voice announced. “Please remain seated while compartment recharges for return trip.”

“Recharge the compartment and wait here.” Military CS Seginus Boo stood and opened the travel tube door. “I won’t be that long.” He stepped out into a dimly lit cavernous area and straightened his uniform. Seginus was on level one in the extreme aft end section of Ambition. Once, many hundreds of years ago, it had been a storage bin for processed ore. Now it was just a dead and neglected part of the ship, located too far from the vessel’s heart and hub of activity. The crew referred to it as Ambition’s ass-end—a final resting place for centuries worth of expended materials and broken parts.

The CS began walking past towering stacks of half-filled crates and containers, headed towards the small shipping office at the back of the bay. He checked over his shoulder once to make sure the travel tube was still there. If it left him here now, chances were high it wouldn’t return for at least another hour, perhaps longer. The tubes and lifts still functioning were busy carrying Ambition’s officers to more important sections of the ship. Anyone this far from the action would be last in queue, and Seginus couldn’t afford to be missing that long—not with the company they had preparing to come onboard.

He rapped softly at the office door. “Open up, I’m here.”

The door slid open. “Thank you for coming, CS.”

Boo was shocked at the haggard appearance of the man seated behind the solitary desk, but did his best not to let it show out of respect. “I can’t stay long, General. We’ll have to make this quick.”

Shain Agle attempted to stand, belched loudly halfway up, and sank back down into the chair. “And thank you for calling me General. It’s been a… difficult adjustment.”

“Are you drunk, sir?”

“Drunk, stoned, wasted.” Agle bent over with considerable effort and retrieved an empty liquor bottle from the floor. “Thought maybe if I got shit-faced, the Captain might put me back in command of the military again.” He threw it against the office wall, hoping for an impressive explosion of glass. It clunked down to the floor still intact and rolled to a stop at Boo’s feet. “Sulafat likes drunks running things, doesn’t he?”

The CS took a step back towards the door. “Don’t do this to yourself, Shain. You might be able to get your command back when this is all over.”

“I don’t think so.” Agle reached into a breast pocket and pulled out a smaller, plastic bottle. He fumbled with the lid and spilled a few pills onto the desk. “The booze doesn’t agree with me like it does Emin… but these little beauties have always made me see things crystal clear.”

Seginus watched him chew two of them down. He’d always known of the General’s habitual opiate use; Dr. Gulum had first prescribed the white tablets as pain management after Shain had broken his leg during a training exercise ten years earlier. The leg had healed fine, but the drugs had remained a permanent crutch. “Give me the pills, General. I know the last few hours have been hard, but you’re going to kill yourself if you keep this up.”

“Does it matter?” Agle looked up at the CS with crazed, bloodshot eyes. “Even holed up in here I’ve heard the ship chatter. I know about the meeting Sulafat’s arranged with the Pegans. They can’t be trusted. We’ll all be dead soon enough.”

Boo held a hand out. “The pills.”

Agle stuffed the bottle back into his pocket. “You ever visit this section of the ship, CS?”

“Rarely.”

“I started coming here when I was a little kid. I’d sneak away from home at night after my father was done beating me.” The chair groaned as Agle sat back. “The farther away from that bastard I could get, the better. And there’s no place farther away from anywhere onboard than this. I kept coming here long after he died. It’s a good place to think… It’s safe.”

Seginus nodded slowly. He knew of the drug abuse, and he knew where the General went to ‘think’. The closer Ambition traveled to the Pegan star system, the more frequent Agle’s visits to the ass-end of the ship had become. It was the main reason so many of his responsibilities as Military Commander had been neglected, and placed on the shoulders of Boo and others. “I’m aware, sir.”

“Sulafat knew, too. He’d warned me months ago to clean up… said he’d relieve me of my command if I couldn’t pull it together.”

“And now it’s happened,” Boo stated bluntly. “But he went easy on you, Shain. He told the crew it was due to poor fighter maintenance and shoddy preparedness. You can’t act like any of this came as a surprise. Do as he says now… clean up, and get your command back.”

“It’s too late for all of that… I see it now. My life has no more meaning.” Tears had begun spilling down the middle-aged man’s fat cheeks. “When the moment comes… if I call on you again one last time…”

CS Boo nodded after a second of hesitation. He’d been obeying the General’s orders for too long not to grant him this final request. No more words were said as the door slid back open and Seginus walked out.

Agle reached again for the little bottle in his breast pocket.

Chapter 37

Vin pounded with both fists against the cabin door. “I know you’re in there, Ras! I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me!”

A door slid open behind her. Rastaban’s neighbor, Enka Ep, an older lady that worked in Education section stepped out into the corridor carrying a stack of files and a com-pad under her arm. “You’re right, he’s in there, but probably not in any condition for visitors.”

“What’s wrong with him, is he sick?”

“Self-induced,” Enka said, as she started away for wherever it was she was headed. “I saw him stagger home a few hours ago.”

Vin watched the woman disappear around the corridor corner. Rastaban drunk? He never has more than one or two drinks with me. She hammered on the door again. “Get your ass out of bed and come talk to me! I’m meeting up with the Captain in twenty minutes. The Pegans are coming onboard!” She started kicking the bottom of the door. “They’re holding Hadar captive!”

She heard a thump from within. The door slid open a few moments later. Rastaban was leaning up against the interior frame looking like death warmed over. “Hadar? Hadar Cen is still alive?”

“So the Pegans claim. Sulafat’s agreed to talk with them here on Ambition.”

Rastaban ran a hand down the scarred side of his face. “The aliens… they’re coming here.”

“That’s what I said. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for half an hour. You wouldn’t answer over the comm. I was starting to worry.” Vin pushed by him and entered the messy quarters. “And now I find out you were drinking. At a time like this, Ras?” She winced. “It smells awful in here.”

“Yeah, the smell… I’ll get to that later.” He collapsed heavily into an armchair by the open door.

Vin saw a puddle of brown liquid next to his bed. Some of it was still dripping down off the sheets. “Is that vomit?”

“Couldn’t make it to the toilet in time.”

“Doesn’t look like you even tried.”

Rastaban could feel more of it working up from his stomach. The last thing he wanted to talk about was puking. “Is Kraz still alive too? What about Kella and Hail?”

“No word on them. Hopefully the Captain can get more out of the Pegans once the negotiations are underway.”

“Negotiations?” More color drained from Rastaban’s face. “He can’t be seriously considering coming to terms with those bastards, can he? We have them on the run, we should destroy them completely.”

Vin stood in front of him, hands planted on her hips. “Look at you—hung over and talking about wiping an entire civilization out. I know you’ve suffered, but this isn’t the Rastaban Drac I know. Your face can be repaired, the trauma you went through out there can be treated with therapy. Quit feeling sorry for yourself.”

“You don’t understand… you don’t understand a damn thing. I can’t talk to Hal Gulum or any of his staff about this.”

“Then talk to me about it.” Vin looked at the clock on the wall behind him. She needed to be in that garage in less than fifteen minutes. “As soon as the meeting’s over, I’ll come back here. I’ll even get drunk with you if that’s what it takes.”

“Sol, no… No more alcohol.” Rastaban got to his feet and leaned back against the door frame. He motioned her to leave with one hand. “Go to your negotiations.”

She stopped halfway through. “You’ll clean this place up before I get back?”

He pushed her gently out into the corridor. “I think it would be best if you didn’t come back at all. Thanks for the effort, Vin, but I want to be left alone… permanently.”

The door slid shut. Vin stood there for a few seconds longer in stunned silence. She raised a fist, preparing to pound on it again. She lowered it instead and started walking away. “To hell with you too, Rastaban Drac.”

Chapter 38

“So nice of you to join us,” Sulafat said as Vin jogged through the open door into the observation deck overlooking fighter garage 2. “Finally.”

“Sorry, sir, I had an important personal matter to attend to.”

“I can’t think of many things more important than meeting with an alien civilization for the very first time.” She squeezed between the Captain and Nash in front of the window overlooking the cavernous bay. “How is Rastaban by the way?” He asked quietly.

“Self-centered, a pain in the neck.” She glanced up at him. “He’s Rastaban Drac, sir.”

“Pegan shuttle craft approaching at fifteen-hundred KPH and decelerating,” Nash announced. “Arrival time in one minute, twenty seconds.”

“Activate atmosphere shield and open the front door, Nash,” Sulafat commanded. “Let’s prepare to receive our guests.”

The green shield flickered into place. The giant bay door began lifting seconds later. Nash changed the exterior view on the small screen in front of them from the approaching craft to one of the bay’s exterior. “No alien explosives detected on the hull… The Pegan vessel has powered down completely and is continuing its approach on forward momentum only. There appear to be no weapons capabilities built into it.”

“So far, so good,” Sulafat said with an audible sigh of relief. He clapped Nash on the shoulder. “First contact will be your honor alone, old friend. You will see the Pegans from their craft and guarantee they mean us no harm before the rest of us join you.”

“Understood, Captain.”

“Shut it down if you detect—if you even sense any sign of deception. We’ll disengage the atmosphere shield and depressurize the bay immediately. You’ll be able to withstand the sudden vacuum conditions, our visitors will not.”

“Understood, Captain.”

Sulafat grinned up at him solemnly. “Is that all you have to say?”

Nash’s head tilted slightly to one side as it always did when he wasn’t quite certain how to respond. “Catch you on the flip side.”

“What does that mean?”

“An ancient Earth expression. It means that I will see you again.” The robot clomped off to the service lift. The glass doors closed behind him, and he was lowered forty feet to the main bay floor.

Sulafat, Vin, and half a dozen officers watched as he walked to intercept the alien ship that had just slipped noiselessly through the atmosphere shield. “That robot can think, can’t he?” Tor said. “He can actually feel emotions to a certain degree, right?”

“That’s correct, General,” Sulafat answered. “What’s your point?”

“He has a lot of guts for a machine.”

The Pegan shuttle was a smaller version of the larger craft it had set out from; streamlined, smooth silver metallic hull, with sharp front and rear ends. There were no discernible windows or weapons turrets, but Sulafat knew they could see the android approaching. Nash had said the ship had no built in weaponry, but the beings inside could be armed. Perhaps they were strapped with explosives—waiting for their ship to touch down before blowing themselves and Ambition’s second fighter bay to bits.

The craft set down.

“This doesn’t feel right, Captain,” Tor warned from behind his left shoulder.

“No… It feels different. Don’t let your fears get the best of you, General, and for the love of Sol, don’t let those snipers you have out there do anything without me ordering it first, understand?”

Tor looked down at the two rows of empty Ambition fighter ships parked on either side of the alien craft. There were more than a hundred of them, but he took particular interest in the four that were closest to the Pegan shuttle. The gunner turrets of these were occupied, and the miluns positioned inside were prepared to open fire as soon as Tor gave the word.

A square section near the front of the alien ship lifted upwards. A metal platform slid out from the bottom and came to a rest on the bay floor less than thirty feet from Nash. A long grey leg appeared. The alien stepped out and slowly worked its way down the steep incline.

Vin stated the obvious. “It’s not wearing any clothes.”

Sulafat nodded. It wasn’t wearing any explosive devices either. “Turn up Nash’s audio feed. I don’t want to miss a single word the Pegan has to say.”

Argus Cor had accompanied the Captain and Nash directly from the bridge. She adjusted the controls on the console in front of her. “Audio at maximum.”

A second alien descended the ramp and stood next to the first. Nash called out to them in a deep, mechanical tone. “You shall abide by the laws of the Sol star system during your stay onboard this vessel. Any hostile actions, or threat of hostile action will be dealt with swiftly by Ambition’s security forces.”

The aliens nodded simultaneously. Sulafat wondered how their skinny necks managed to keep those massive skulls balanced. He imagined Hal Gulum dissecting one of them in his medical center and shuddered. The doctor would likely be performing the autopsy for real if this didn’t go well.

Nash continued. “You will permit me immediate access to the interior of your ship for the purpose of inspection. Once the inspection has been completed, and I am able to ensure the safety of everyone on this vessel, you will be allowed to meet with our Captain.”

They nodded again and Nash approached. The Pegans stepped to one side as he started up the ramp. The robot disappeared inside the alien ship and everyone waited. A minute passed. Two.

“I don’t like this, Captain,” Tor said. “Not one little bit. I’m going to have one of the miluns power up a missile. Acamar’s fighter has a direct line of fire into that thing. We can make whatever nasty surprise they have waiting inside go away in one shot.”

“Nash is inside that thing.” Sulafat stared up into the bigger man’s face. “Did I make a mistake promoting you over Seginus Boo, General?”

“Seginus is a sycophant,” Tor shot back. “Maybe Colonel Cules would’ve been a better choice over me, but he can’t command anything anymore. Geth and half of Ambition’s fighting forces have already been wiped out. If you want the other half to survive, you’d better start letting me do my job.”

“Shut up, Emin,” Vin snapped. She had never liked him. She’d grown to despise him more when Rastaban’s training for the scouting mission began. Vin had even started to blame him inwardly for what happened to her best friend. It was unjustified—Tor had tried to save her when the Captain’s quarters had come under attack—but there was something about that whole scouting mission disaster that still didn’t sit right with her. She just couldn’t bring herself to accept the man. Rastaban’s behavior earlier had only made it worse. “The Captain’s in charge here, not you.”

Sulafat was staring at her with one eyebrow raised.

Tor was practically shaking with rage. “Are you going to let her get away with talking to me like that?”

“Yes, I am.”

Nash exited the alien vessel and spoke over the comm system before Tor could object further. “The Pegan ship is clean, Captain. It is safe for you to come down now.”

Sulafat and Tor entered the lift. Vin tried to step in after them but the Captain shook his head. “Two of them, two of us. The rest of you will remain here and monitor the situation from a safe distance.”

Vin was mortified. “You and Tor are Ambition’s highest ranking officers. The two of you shouldn’t be going down there alone.” She tried forcing her way in but Tor held an arm out to block her.

“We’ll hardly be alone,” Sulafat said. “Tor’s men are in the fighters, and Nash will see to our safety.” The lift door started to close. “I knew I saw something in you I liked.” She caught the sideways glance he gave Tor before the service lift carried them out of sight.

Nash stepped aside as the Captain and General approached. The Pegans slinked back slowly a few steps. Both were half a foot shorter than Sulafat, Tor and Nash towered over them. The alien they’d seen on the bridge view screen had seemed much larger. Perhaps they had intended to try and give that impression.

They’re physically intimidated of us, Sulafat noted. It’s a barbaric advantage, but an advantage nevertheless.

Sulafat closed in until the Pegans’ backs were almost pressed up against the hull of their vessel. “We require proof that you are holding our crew member, and that he has not been harmed in any way.”

Nash spoke. “Hadar Cen is in adequate condition… He is being held in a city on Pega. He is being cared for.”

Sulafat looked at Nash. “Is that information you found on their ship?”

“We are speaking directly through your bipedal mechanism,” the android said.

“Nash… are you still in there?”

“I am here, Captain. The Pegans are somehow using me as a conduit to communicate with you.”

Tor started to reach for his side cannon. “If they can talk through him, maybe they’ll try and control his movements as well—use Nash against us.”

Sulafat slapped his arm back down. “Wait, he has control… You do have control, Nash?”

“I do. I can see their thoughts… Hadar Cen is indeed safe and being held in a city called Sharell. The coordinates of its location are now available to me.”

An interior bay door opened forty meters behind them. A dozen armed men began approaching.

“What the hell is this, Emin?” Sulafat demanded. “I never authorized the use of any additional force.”

“You no longer have any authority at all, sir.” The General leveled the barrel of his side cannon at Sulafat’s chest. “You’re being relieved of command.”

Nash sprung forward and knocked Tor to the floor. The weapon left his hand and clattered against the metal deck plating. Sulafat started for it but was stopped cold in his tracks. “Step away from that side cannon!” One of the armed men shouted. “Hands out to the sides, Captain.”

Ten of them were carrying heavy rifles. One was at aimed at Sulafat, the rest were trained on Nash and the two aliens. Chort Leo appeared from the back of the group with another man Sulafat knew all too well, but had never met. Impossible. It can’t be him.

“Tell your android to stand down, Sulafat,” Chort ordered. The men surrounded them in a half-circle formation. “Don’t force us to do something we’ll all regret.”

Sulafat recognized each one of the armed men’s faces; four security guards, three miluns, and a platoon chief. “You’ve already done that, Chort. It’s called mutiny. All of you! Lower your weapons this instant.”

“I’ll be giving the orders again from here on in.” The man next to Chort stood in front of Nash. “An automaton unit. I wasn’t aware there were any still active onboard. What number are you?”

“Three,” Nash answered.

“Aaah, yes. I recognize your voice. Do you remember me, Three?”

“Yes, sir.” Nash retrieved the fallen side cannon from the floor and handed it to him.

“Nash!” The Captain shouted. “What are you doing?”

“Unit Three is responding to his original programming,” the man said. “He’s being dutiful. Allow me to introduce myself, Captain. I’m Admiral Neil Lennix. This ship is mine.” He pointed the side cannon at one of the Pegans and shot it dead. The second alien tried running into the open shuttle. “Grab that thing and lock it up in the brig. Chort, have the rest of these men take Captain Sulafat into custody.”

Sulafat was forced to his knees. Metal cuffs were placed on his wrists. “Nash, stop this madness. That’s a direct order.”

“Admiral Lennix was my original commander centuries before you were born, Captain. It was my duty to follow him then, and it is my duty to follow him now.”

Sulafat didn’t say another word as the men dragged him forcibly from the bay.

Chapter 39

He could see forever. The sky was unending.

There were no walls blocking his view, no cramped cabins and artificial lighting. The biggest open area Hadar Cen had ever been in was fighter garage 1.

Until now.

He was on a balcony attached to the one hundred and fiftieth level of a two hundred story building in the city’s center. Sharell surrounded him on all sides, its steel towers and glass spires were even more magnificent to behold standing within their midst.

He knew he was a prisoner, and realized prisoners of war sometimes didn’t make it home. But it was hard to forget that he was the first man from Earth to step foot on an alien world. He could be dead before seeing his first sunset, but no one could take that away from him.

Jule Adeen had remained with him the entire way to the city from the interrogation facility, pointing out historical Pegan landmarks on the city’s outskirts, and within Sharell itself. Hadar had nodded through it all, remarking how interesting everything was, but he hadn’t absorbed a single word of it. His mind was stuck on two thoughts:

He could see forever. The sky never ended.

“It’s all still a little overwhelming, isn’t it?” Jule was seated at a small table a few feet away. “I’m sorry about the restraints. It’s standard procedure.”

Hadar hands were secured to the four-foot high balcony railing. “I understand.” She made it sound as if holding visitors from other worlds against their will was an everyday occurrence on Pega. It’s how they treat all prisoners, he realized. Hadar leaned forward and peered down. A few vehicles were parked along the streets, but there was little to almost no activity. What movement he could see was like observing insects crawling within a grid. It made his head swim, being so high up. He pulled back again, slowly. “I guess there’s the worry of me jumping and ending my life.”

“Yes, that was considered.”

“It’s the farthest thing from my mind, believe me.” He rattled the chains lightly. “Please, I promise not to do anything stupid.” Jule’s eyebrows furrowed inwards. She pinched her lips together at one corner of her mouth. She’s considering it, Hadar thought. “I have no desire to commit suicide—not now, not after seeing all this.”

“You won’t try and throw me over?”

“What good would that do?” He looked past her to the two armed guards standing behind the balcony’s glass door. “Your friends there would shoot me first before I could lay a hand on you. Trust me, Jule—I don’t want to die, and killing you won’t get me back home any time soon.”

She went to Hadar and released him from the cuffs. “You still consider Ambition home. I couldn’t stand living inside a space ship my whole life. Co-operate with my people, and Sharell could become your new home. We transferred you here to show you what that could be like.”

A small ship appeared on the skyline and rumbled towards them. It flew slowly past, less than fifty meters above Hadar’s head, and then vanished around the building on the opposite street. It emerged again half a minute later, and swung around another building on the next block. Hadar spotted a second vessel weaving around towers more than a kilometer away. Neither ship seemed to have any particular destination in mind; they were looking for something, or perhaps on some kind of routine patrol.

Hadar rubbed his wrists and looked back up into the clouds. “I’ll cooperate the best I can… without endangering my people. I think we may have been wrong about Pega—I’m beginning to see that now. Maybe after some time, our people could come to some kind of agreement. But you’re right about Ambition. It’s home. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

They went to the table and sat. “Can I get you anything?” She asked. “Food or drink?”

Hadar shook his head. He hadn’t eaten a thing since the since the salty porridge crap at the interrogation building. “Those things—the beings I encountered when I first woke up. They aren’t like you… they aren’t like anyone else I’ve seen here. What are they?”

“I can’t go into much detail about that, Hadar.”

“They tortured me, got inside my head. Are all Pegans telepathic?”

“I can’t read your thoughts. There are no mind-reading Pegans.”

“So those grey things aren’t Pegan?”

Jule smiled. “Enough about them.”

“Then what about me? Why have I been brought here? If I’m a prisoner, then this is an awfully nice jail cell. Has something happened?”

That thoughtful-looking pinch of her lips returned. “It’s like I said, this could end up being your new home, this world, this city. A lot’s happened since your arrival here. Ambition attacked our ships, many Pegan lives were lost.”

“So that’s that.” Hadar leaned back in the chair. “We’re officially at war with each other. You’ll never allow me to leave here.”

“There may be hope. Contact was finally made. One of our vessels was received aboard your ship a few hours ago. We’re still awaiting word on how it went.”

Hadar did indeed feel hopeful. The majority of Ambition’s crew may have bought into the ages-old prime objective of destroying a civilization they knew practically nothing about, but not her Captain. Hadar had never heard the man come right out and say it, but there had been rumblings amongst the senior officers for years that their commanding officer would rather talk to the Pegans instead of annihilating them. They whispered that he had no guts. Hadar didn’t see it that way at all. If any man could achieve peace with the Pegans, it was Ly Sulafat.

They sat out on the balcony and watched as the sun began to set. The sky turned orange, streaked with bands of crimson red. It painted the stone towers and glass buildings around them in shades of pink. One of the guards came out and placed a tray on the table containing two steaming plates of food. A woman wearing a tight-fitting white dress followed, carrying a bottle and two glasses. She poured what appeared to be wine into each of them. “Enjoy your meal,” she said with a smile before slipping back through the door.

“I have to admit,” Hadar said smelling the food before him, “you know how to take care of your prisoners.”

“It isn’t everyday we receive guests from other worlds.” Jule glanced at a decorative device strapped to her wrist. A clock of some kind, Hadar presumed. She’d been looking at it more and more as the day went on.

“Is there some place else you’d rather be?”

“I’m sorry?”

Hadar shrugged sheepishly. “An old Earth expression. I saw it on a movie once. Never thought I’d get the chance to say it.”

“Yes, your movies.” She sipped her wine. “I’ve seen some of those broadcasts. It was required training. I didn’t find them very entertaining.”

He remembered the war footage he’d been forced to watch while strapped in the chair. “There’s more to us than violence. The broadcasts you saw make us seem much worse than we are. We call that propol… propu—”

“Propaganda,” She finished for him.

“Look at you, a woman from Pega teaching a man from Earth his own language.” They both laughed at that. He tried the food. “This is… really good.”

They finished their meals and sipped at their wine. Jule kept looking at the device on her wrist. The sky darkened deep blue, and Sharell began to light up around them. The first stars appeared overhead.

Hadar took his glass and went to stand against the balcony railing again. “It’s just as beautiful in the dark.” A crescent of silver had begun to rise over a distant chain of mountains. “Is that Oread?”

“Mantus,” Jule said, walking over to join him. She pointed to the tiles at their feet. “Oread is in that general direction at the moment.” She glanced at her wrist again.

“You’re worried about the meeting on Ambition.”

“I thought we would’ve heard something by now.”

“No news is good news.” She gave him a puzzled look. “Another old Earth saying.”

One of the guards knocked at the glass door behind them causing Hadar to jump. He’d almost forgotten where he was, and why he was there. Jule went inside and conferred with him.

Both guards returned with her. “I’m afraid it’s all bad news, Hadar. We’ve just received word one of our representatives was murdered aboard your ship.” The cuffs had reappeared in her hands. “I’m sorry it’s come to this. I believe you’re an honorable person.” The guards were pointing their weapons at his chest.

Hadar offered up his arms and Jule snapped the cuffs in place. “Where… Where are you taking me now?”

“To a more secure location.”

“Not back there. Please, not back to those grey things.”

“I truly am sorry.”

Chapter 40

“I look ridiculous,” Hail grunted.

Kella pulled up on the yellow suspenders of his work uniform and tilted her head to one side. “Yeah, I have to agree.”

“At least yours fits. I’m too skinny to pull this off. They’ll see right through us.”

They had rummaged through a dozen workers’ lockers for the clothes, heavy boots, and helmets. Kella had even gone so far as to rub dirt into their faces for effect.

“Not if we look like we belong, and pretend we know where we’re going.” She pulled the map they’d lifted from the wall from an interior pocket and unfolded it onto the floor. Kella groaned as she settled down onto her knees. “Damn, that hurts.”

“Maybe you should let me clean that wound out again.”

“The wound’s healing up just fine. It’s my knees. They feel like broken glass after squatting on that toilet for two hours.”

“Yeah, that last guy… who would’ve thought aliens could suffer from constipation?”

“Let’s not talk about it anymore.” She tapped near the top of the map. “We’ve already set out in the wrong direction. We should’ve turned right down that first service corridor after the mechanical bay instead of going left.”

“How can you make any sense of this thing at all? Everything’s labeled in gibberish.”

“You don’t have to know the language to understand the diagram.” She followed the excavation tunnel line where they were now to one of the bigger open areas shown on the map. There was a series of diagonal lines shown as strips of long dashes running throughout it. “This is where we’ll find a ship.”

“How can you tell?”

“Look at the angle of all those lines. It’s a two-dimensional image trying to represent a three-dimensional world. Those are runways, not all that different from the gorge we landed into.”

Hail started nodding slowly. “Yeah, that makes sense, but there’s a problem.” He ran his finger along the excavation tunnel line, all the way over to Kella’s underground ship terminal. “Judging from the scale, that’s at least thirty kilometers away. How are we going to get there on foot without being seen, or worse, run over?”

A minute later they were standing in the shadows of the main excavation tunnel, waiting for one of the big eight-wheeled vehicles to thunder by. “This is crazy,” Hail said. “Are we just supposed to walk out in front of the next one and wave it down? We’ll be squashed flat.”

“We’re not going to stand in front the thing, we’ll jump on the back. They won’t even know we’re there.”

Hail wanted to point out that she was still recovering from the wound in her side. He never got the chance. The noise came up on them fast, followed by bright lights. “You go first,” she yelled over the roar.

A wall of dust blew against them, Kella pushed Hail forcibly outwards after the fourth six-foot high tire passed by. There wasn’t time to think things through. Hail ran after the machine, he reached up and found the edge of its rear gate. He pulled and jumped at the same time. Gravel and rock poured into his face, but he held on, throwing one leg up over the gate. He heaved with all of his strength, and rolled himself into the trailer.

“Help!” He heard Kella scream. “Can’t… pull myself up!”

Hail wiped dirt out of his eyes and saw her fingers clutching at the edge. He grabbed onto her wrists and pulled her in. Kella landed on top of him in the rocks. His arms were still wrapped around her—their faces almost touching. Hail kissed her.

She pushed him away. “Are you crazy?”

“But I thought… back there… after I bandaged you up—”

“There’s a time and a place for things like that—holding on for your life in the back of a moving vehicle filled with rocks isn’t one of them.” She sat up and rested her side cannon on her lap. “Let’s find a way out of here before dealing with all that other crap.”

Hail remained on his back a while longer, staring up at the tunnel ceiling, and wondering what it was about women he just couldn’t get. The vehicle churned on.

Chapter 41

Vin slapped Rastaban hard across the face. “You bastard. You’re a traitor!”

Rastaban turned away from her and went to the edge of his bed. He sat, and sunk his head into his hands. “I thought I was doing the right thing… bringing the Seven back was our legal obligation. It was their mission in the beginning to finish. You have to believe me. No one was supposed to get hurt in all of this, and I sure as hell didn’t want anyone to die.”

“You can’t tell that to Kella, Hail, and Kraz. They’re already dead. Hadar will probably be joining them soon, too.”

Vin didn’t know where else to go after Chort and his armed men had shown up and murdered one of the Pegans. Argus Cor and the other officers gathered in the bay’s observation room had remained behind and watched as their Captain was led away. Vin had fled. Nash was in on the mutiny—Sulafat’s most trusted advisor. He’d handed the side cannon off and allowed the murder to happen. Vin’s world had turned upside down. And now her best friend had admitted to being a part of it all.

“I wanted to tell the Captain,” Rastaban said. He was almost sobbing. “Tor threatened me in the Black Hole, said he’d kill me and Ma if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. I’m so sorry, Vin.” He looked up at her. “What can I do? How can I make any of this better?”

She sat next him. Rastaban was guilty of many things, but he wasn’t a murderer. “You can start by telling me everything about this secret council of yours.”

Rastaban took a deep breath and began to tell his story. “The Council was formed shortly after the failed Turnback Revolution way back in 2369. A group of second generation crew members—the sons and daughters of the highest-ranking officers—began meeting regularly and discussing how to make sure another uprising didn’t occur again on the way to Pega. They only wanted to keep order, see Ambition’s sole objective was met.”

Vin interrupted him. “To annihilate an entire species.”

“I never said their intentions were noble. They were following orders.”

“The orders of the Seven—Ambition’s first command crew.”

“Yes, Admiral Lennix, Major Weston, and all the rest. Most Council members never believed they’d ever be revived from their frozen state… We were just keeping their memories alive—meeting like we have been for centuries, one surviving generation after the other.

“But then Chort’s father came along about thirty years ago and said he wanted to bring them all the way back. Chort’s an ass, I’ll admit it, but his father was a genius. He began what everybody on the Council believed was a hopeless task… trying to repair the cryonic revival systems. Algen Leo dropped dead of a heart attack twenty years into his secretive project, but Chort took over the work. Enough of that genius must have rubbed off on the son.” He stared into Vin’s face. “He’s done it… He’s brought them all back.”

“It’s not right. They can’t just take control from Captain Sulafat and the others.”

“By rights, this ship is still theirs to command, Vin. The Captain is no longer running things.”

Vin stood and started pacing back and forth in front of Rastaban. It was either that, or slap him across the face again. “You’re a member of this council—you went out on that scouting mission knowing full well you were going to provoke a war.” She watched him slump down a little further. “But you just told me you want to help make things better. What could you do? How could you help me take back this ship and put the Captain back in command?”

“Whoa, wait a minute. I never said anything about trying to stop them… I can talk to the Council, maybe even try and arrange a meeting with Admiral Lennix to see if they can go easy on Sulafat, but anything more than that would be attempted mutiny.”

“Meet with Lennix? Are you joking? He doesn’t know you.” She saw an open com-pad on his disorganized desk. She typed the Admiral’s name into a search field and an image of Ambition’s first commander popped up. “Look at the bastard. Believe me, he looks even scarier seven hundred years later. Do you seriously want that for a leader?”

Rastaban shrugged and threw up his hands in frustration. “Vin... it’s difficult. If it were any other man…”

Her eyes opened wide. “Wait a minute… You’re a direct descendant of one of the Seven. He will know you.”

“Yeah, I figure he will.” Rastaban flopped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Admiral Lennix is my great, great, however-many-more-times-over great grandfather.”

Vin wouldn’t allow him the time to get any more comfortable. She grabbed onto the front of his shirt, and hauled him up to his feet. “No more feeling sorry for yourself. You’re going to have that meeting with Lennix, and we’re going to clean up this mess together.”

“Didn’t I tell you we should stop seeing each other just a while ago?”

She pushed him towards the door. “I don’t take rejection that easily. Now move.”

Chapter 42

Tor’s fighter shot out into space and slowed to a near halt four and half kilometers from fighter garage 2’s open bay door. “Bring us around for a better look, Chief.”

The General’s pilot, Chief Foma Austrin, did as she was told, and maneuvered the ship a hundred and eighty degrees. They watched as Ambition’s remaining force of two hundred and forty fighters flew out in pairs and assumed formation around the General’s lead ship, Raze.

Raze had belonged to Shain Agle not so long ago, but the ex-General wasn’t in command of military operations anymore—Tor Emin was, and Tor’s orders from the top were clear; lead a three-pronged attack force against the planet of Pega, and rescue Hadar Cen in the process.

Tor opened a line to Ambition. “We’re ready here, Gacrux. Send out the reinforcements and wish us luck.”

“They’re on the way now, General.”

The line was closed without another word. To hell with Gacrux, Tor thought. He didn’t need the propulsion head’s blessings, only his co-operation. Ambition was under the command of Neil Lennix once again, its rightful leader. If anyone had issue with that, they could join Ly Sulafat in the brig.

Sixty moving lights appeared from the far side of Ambition. The video drones rose above the massive ship and formed a three-kilometer-long line. They had all been converted into collapse bombs, and there would be one accompanying every four fighter ships in the force heading for the planet. Tor spoke again into his helmet for all the men and women surrounding him to hear. “Okay everyone, punch your call numbers into the computers so our watch dogs know which ships are theirs’ to protect. We don’t want them getting confused and mistaking us for Pegan fighters.” The drones started to separate into smaller groupings, heading towards their assigned ships.

Tor gave the order to begin their mission. “In groups of three, people. One wave at a time. Alpha—you’re up first.”

Eighty fighters and their accompanying drones broke away from the main pack and swung out over the surface of Mantus. They picked up speed, and within half a minute disappeared from view altogether. “Go, Beta,” Tor commanded. Eighty more ships and twenty more drones headed away, around the moon’s opposite side.

A voice broke in through Tor’s helmet speakers. “General Emin, this is Admiral Lennix. Keep an eye on your herd, bring back as many as you can.”

“Affirmative, Admiral. I’ll be bringing Hadar Cen home as well.” A few hours ago Tor had wanted Hadar dead. But things had changed. He no longer had to keep the Council and its objective a secret. Order had finally been restored aboard Ambition. The original command team was back in charge. Tor would gladly bring Hadar Cen home to a hero’s welcome.

“General,” Lennix continued, “there’s someone else here that would like to speak with you.”

There was a pause. “Hello, Tor.”

He had never heard the man’s voice before, but Tor knew instinctively who it belonged to. “Hello, Major Weston.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting you, son. We have a lot of family catching up to do. Come home safe.”

Tor had dreamed of this moment, hearing the voice of his distant ancestor—meeting face to face with him. Now that the moment was actually here, he had no idea what to say. “I… I’ll see you soon, sir.” The audio feed to Ambition was cut, and Gamma group departed last.

Squadron Boss Wez Canis was the first to fly around Mantus and see the planet of Pega through the canopy cover of his ship. It hung in the blackness like a blue and white gem, seemingly defenseless and totally vulnerable to attack. More than a hundred yellow points of light suddenly appeared on the canopy’s grid before him, indicating the planet was anything but helpless. “Multiple contacts, Alpha. Spread out and send the drones in first. If this goes as planned, we won’t have to fire a single shot.”

The eighty fighters cut their speed to half and broke into four groupings of twenty. The drones accelerated, and shot ahead. Wez watched as the approaching alien ships blasted six of them away in less than three seconds. A blinking red spot on his grid indicated the drone assigned to his four ships wasn’t one of them. He reached forward and held a thumb over the switch that would automatically trigger the drone’s fold drive to stall. Wez kept his eyes glued to the red spot as it moved closer towards the yellow points.

Fifty kilometers. Forty… Thirty… Twenty. An alarm buzzed through his helmet speakers, and Wez pulled down on the switch. The red spot disappeared, taking nine yellow points of light with it. Six more dropped off the grid a few seconds later, and another ten moments after that. Wez took a few slow breaths and waited for the fourth drone to implode. More than a dozen alien contacts blinked out of existence on his grid. “Evasive maneuvers, people. We don’t want to risk the chance of falling into those collapse events before they close up completely.”

Alpha group swung away from the remaining Pegan ships. Eighty more friendly contacts appeared on the chief’s grid. Beta was on its way to deliver a second round of deadly drone attacks. “We’re on our own now, Alpha. It’s up to our gunners to get us through the next wave of Pegan defenses if there are any. Planet-bound fighters—you have your landing coordinates. I’ll see you all on the surface soon.”

A flash of white from the starboard side of Wez’s fighter blinded him momentarily. One of the four ships in his grouping had been destroyed. More alien contacts had appeared on the grid directly in front of them. He locked on to the lead ships and fired his missiles. An eruption of orange appeared moments later.

“You got one of them, Boss!”

“Yeah, imagine that.” Wez seemed more surprised than his milun pilot. Up until now, the Pegan ships had seemed practically invulnerable to conventional weaponry, and almost impossible to detect with their scanners. Perhaps they had already expended the best of their military capabilities in the attack on Ambition. The alien avant-garde was behind them. The two species were now fighting with equal capabilities.

A second Ambition fighter blew apart half a kilometer above them. “We’re spread too far apart! They’re picking us off one by one. All Alpha fighters form up around me—we’ll create a wedge and drive it through the center of them.”

The remaining fighters pulled in tight to the boss’s ship. They fired all weapons simultaneously, throwing a concentrated bombardment of missiles and laser bursts into the heart of the alien force. The Pegan ships began breaking apart, returning fire as their main body spread out. Five more Alpha ships were blasted away, but the majority made it through.

Wez’s pilot spoke again. “They’re forming up again behind us, sir!”

The squadron boss pushed down on a pedal with his left foot and the entire weapons turret spun around. “Full speed to the planet, pilot. We only have to hold them off for a few more seconds until Beta group shows up.” Wez fired a pair of missiles at two advancing Pegan ships. One hit its target; the other missile blinked out of existence along with the second craft. “Looks like there here already.”

Beta’s collapse bomb spread couldn’t be witnessed with the naked eye, but its effects could be seen on the canopy grid as one red Pegan blip after another vanished. General Emin’s Gamma group would clean up whatever alien threat remained after Beta.

“Entering planet’s upper atmosphere, Boss. We’re on the home stretch.”

“I’d hardly call it home yet.” Their fighter began to shake and rattle as it punched into heavier air. “This war’s just getting started.”

Chapter 43

Captain Sulafat was being taken from Ambition’s brig back to his personal quarters. That’s all the information the four-man-armed escort would give him. The elevators and travel tubes had been cleared before hand; he hadn’t seen a single member of his crew—hadn’t been allowed any contact with another living soul—since his incarceration.

Incarceration for what?

Sulafat may no longer have been in command, but he hadn’t committed any crimes. He had been against the war, but had abided to the vote. He had even approved the conversion of video drones into collapse bombs, giving them the upper hand in the conflict. So why was he still in wrist restraints?

He had felt sorry for himself for too many years—questioning his ability to lead more than ten thousand people into a questionable future at his age. But age had its benefits. He knew all of them by name, and the four guards pushing him towards whatever fate waited ahead were no exception.

“Arneb Lepus,” he said the first name without looking at the man directly to his right. “Your father was in security as well. He was a good man.”

Lepus took hold of his shoulder. “Keep moving, sir.”

“Sir... I’m relieved to hear you can still show some sense of respect.”

The man to Sulafat’s left wasn’t as gracious. “Keep your mouth shut. You’re not giving orders anymore.”

“Al Nair. Your mother was a teacher. She’d be disappointed in you, son.”

“You talk like my mother’s dead. She isn’t. Neither is Arneb’s father. Maybe if you’d spent the last few years being more involved with the lives of the people onboard this ship instead of plotting a return to Earth, you wouldn’t be where you are now.”

Nair was right. Sulafat may have known the names of everyone presently serving on his ship, but he hadn’t kept in contact with many of the men and women that had served when he was a younger man. Apparently their opinions of him had been handed down to the sons and daughters. The resentment and mistrust had been building for decades. Sulafat didn’t bother saying anything to the two remaining guards trailing after them.

They arrived at his quarters. The place had been tidied up. Every piece of broken furniture, every last shred of paper from his destroyed books, and all the pictures that once hung on his walls had been removed. It felt like he was being erased from Ambition’s history, and in a sense, that was true. All that remained was for him to hear it from the man that had stripped him of his command.

Admiral Neil Lennix was seated at the head of the conference table. Nash was standing behind him, a silent and unmoving sentinel. Sulafat paused and stared at the man. His skin was too white, his sunken eyes appeared too dark. That’s what spending seven hundred years frozen solid can do to you, he supposed.

“Captain Sulafat,” he announced. “Please take a seat at the end of the table and we’ll begin your trial.”

“Trial? You’ve already relieved me of command. What crime have I committed? Nash… how can you just stand there and allow this to happen?”

Arneb Lepus pulled him along. Sulafat looked at each of the dead-eyed, pale faces seated at the table. Men and women born on Earth—military leaders and corporate executives that had been revived to fulfill Ambition’s original mission—a mission he had regrettably started to carry out.

He was forced down into the chair where Tor Emin had received his promotion. “I’ll ask again, what crime have I committed?”

“Gross incompetence,” Chort Leo answered. He was sitting at Lennix’s immediate right. “Your negligence and indecisiveness led directly to this ship being attacked. Hundreds of lives lost, including your CS and three other section heads.”

Zosma Lion—the only other crew member Sulafat knew personally in the room—was seated next to Chort. “You almost lost this ship before we made it to Pega. That would’ve been very bad for business.”

“Business? You oversee our religious communities,” Sulafat said. “What the hell are you even doing here?”

A few people chuckled. The woman sitting next to Zosma spoke. “Mr. Lion represents far more than Ambition’s spiritual needs. He is the last in a long-serving line of faithful employees. He is a representative of Ganymede Unlimited, Phoebus Mining, and Kuiper Belt Power—the three largest sponsors of this venture.”

Sulafat recognized all the ancient corporate names. They were still etched into plaques and bulkheads throughout the ship, ancient reminders of Ambition’s original purpose. “This vessel was militarized centuries ago. We were sent out here to respond to the Pegan threat—not to further the needs of some power-hungry conglomerate.”

“We were sent out here to do both,” Lennix replied calmly. “Pega did indeed threaten us a long time ago, but there was more to it than that. Very few people living on Earth at the time were aware that we’d contacted the Pegans first.”

“That’s… not how it happened,” Sulafat said. “They found us.”

The man seated to the left of Lennix leaned forward. “Both civilizations had been aware of each other’s existence for almost fifty years, but we initiated first contact out of necessity. Earth’s power demands were great—our population had grown to record levels. The terra-formed cities on Mars, Europa, and Callisto could no longer accommodate our growing numbers. We had to spread out, but couldn’t tell our people the entire truth.”

“Major Weston is correct,” Zosma said. “Earth needed Pega’s resources, and we had to have a good reason to go take them.”

“The Pegans turned you down,” Sulafat finished for him. “They said no, and told you to stay away. This entire mission, all these long centuries of travel… it’s all been based on a lie.”

Lennix stood. “They still threatened to end our existence!”

“Only if you entered their system!” Sulafat was standing now as well, shaking his cuffed hands before him. “They were defending themselves!” Arneb and Al Nair took hold of his arms and pushed him back down. “You can end this now, Admiral. We’ve had no contact with Earth in over seven hundred years. Something’s happened—something must have changed during all this time. This damned mission of ours no longer has any meaning.”

The Admiral placed his fists on the table. “Captain Ly Sulafat… I find you guilty of once harboring traitorous intentions of turning this vessel away from its original mission. I find you guilty for the deaths of over six hundred and twelve Ambition lives. Does anyone here wish to say a word in the Captain’s defense?”

Cold silence.

“Chort Leo and Zosma Lion will accompany you from these quarters under armed guard. You will be taken directly to fighter garage 2, where your life will be terminated by a firing squad.”

Sulafat was picked back up and forced towards the travel tube exit. He resisted near the doorway. “Nash! You can’t allow them to go through with this. We don’t need to go to war, we never did.”

“Unit Three,” Lennix said. “Accompany these men to the bay, and see Sulafat’s dead body ejected into space.”

“Yes, Admiral,” the robot obeyed. “It shall be done.”

Chapter 44

Tor Emin’s fighter set down in the grass with a heavy thump. “That was a rough landing, Foma. Perhaps your mind was elsewhere?”

“Sorry, General. Flying one of these things through a planetary atmosphere was tougher than I thought it would be. It was nothing like the simulations we ran back home.” The milun completed her landing checks and looked out around them. “And seeing all of this in person wasn’t something… well, it isn’t anything like I imagined.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to adjust.” Tor flipped the canopy release switch and began unbuckling. “Your orders are to remain here with the other fighters.” He pointed to a featureless grey building without windows off in the distance. “According to Nash, the Pegans have moved Hadar Cen again, back inside that facility.”

“You sure we can trust Nash, General? It seems awful strange that robot can track the movements of one of our people from so far away.” She hesitated and then added. “Maybe the Pegans are feeding him false information.”

“Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. I quit trying to figure out what makes that machine tick a long time ago.” Tor climbed out onto Raze’s port wing and began lowering himself to the ground. “Don’t worry about Nash. Let’s concentrate on finding Hadar.”

Tor jumped down to the grass and surveyed their surroundings. Thirty-six fighter ships had landed in the clearing from groups Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. They had planned for sixty.

Squadron Boss Wez Canis approached the General, his arm extended out in front of him. Tor took his hand and shook it. “Good to finally see you on solid ground, General. We’ve been monitoring Beta and Gamma group activity since setting down. I’d hoped we’d cleared a wide enough path for you to follow, but it looks like the Pegans had some other ideas.”

“Yeah, we had a little more to clean up than expected. How many fighters left in orbit?”

Wez grimaced. “One hundred ten.”

“One hundred ten,” Tor repeated in a whisper. “Two hundred and twenty more lives lost since setting out from Ambition. That throws total casualty levels close to a thousand.”

“Almost ten per cent of our world,” Wez added grimly.

Tor once again found himself wishing the hit he’d delivered on Hadar’s ship had killed him along with Kraz Corvus. No single person was worth that many lives. He wished Chort Leo could’ve revived the Seven sooner, and avoided a fighter-led attack on the planet altogether. The arsenal of ancient nuclear warheads stored on Ambition could have prevented all of this. Ly Sulafat had been too much of a coward to launch them. Admiral Lennix wouldn’t hesitate when the time came. 

Tor clapped Wez on the back. “Not one more, Boss. I want you with me when we storm that building.” He stripped out of his space suit as all the other soldiers had done that had landed on the planet before him. He then opened the storage compartment located at the exterior of his fighter and began donning his lightweight body armor. Tor reached into a hidden pocket and produced a silver flask. He took a long swig and offered it to Wez. “Go on, finish it off. We’re going to kick some alien ass, and nothing makes you kick harder than this stuff.”

The boss waved it away. “I don’t think so, sir. We should—I want to keep my head clear.”

“Suit yourself.” Tor drank the rest down. “We’ll get good and drunk together back home when all this is over.” A rumbling noise sounded above them. They looked up and saw three Ambition fighters flying through the clouds. The ships roared over them, and disappeared into the far horizon a few seconds later. Tor set his rear end into the grass and pulled on his combat boots. “Have any of the sky patrols reported enemy movement?”

“Nothing yet. No activity on the ground whatsoever. It’s damn strange, I thought the place would’ve been swarming with activity.”

Tor was back inside the storage compartment, retrieving his weapons. “Maybe the Pegan ground forces aren’t all that strong. I’ve seen them in person, Boss. Ugly grey bastards, but weak-looking. I doubt they’ll put up much resistance face to face.” He placed a side cannon into his belt holster and took hold of a bigger rifle with both hands. “Assemble the rescue force. Let’s go get Hadar.”

Fifty of them set out from the ships, advancing on foot through grass and flowers towards the single building set in the clearing’s center a kilometer away. Wez was right, Tor thought. It was strange. The Pegans were holding a valuable prisoner here, but there was no sign of the location being defendable. There were no security walls or fences surrounding the structure, no guard towers or automated weapons. This feels wrong.

Tor looked back over both shoulders. He was at the point of a wide arrowhead-shaped formation of soldiers that was spread out across seventy meters. If he was leading them into a trap, they would need even more distance between them. Tor paused and spoke into his helmet mic. “Let’s break into four groups, get people on every side of the building. Sky units—discontinue your grid overpasses, I want you to start circling the facility. Blast anything moving that isn’t human.”

He waited another minute for the three fighters to return and begin their kilometer-high rotation around the structure’s perimeter. Tor motioned his soldiers forward. They split off into their groupings and surrounded the building. It’s not a building, he thought to himself, aiming his rifle at the single door on his side. Buildings have windows. This one had none. Tor and twelve of his people were standing in the shadow of a massive grey block, twenty meters high and a hundred wide. It’s more like a box. He spoke into his mic again. “What are the rest of you seeing?”

Three soldiers reported in, a single door on each side. Nothing more.

Back off…forget Hadar Cen. Tor ignored the warnings ringing in his head. “We go in on three… two… one.” He pulled the rifle’s trigger and the door exploded inward. Dust settled and smoke cleared. Tor moved towards the jagged opening and slipped through into darkness.

Chapter 45

Shain Agle had been waiting in the observation deck for more than an hour. He’d watched as the last grouping of fighters departed, led by Ambition’s new General, bound for whatever glory or disaster that awaited on the surface of Pega. It didn’t much matter anymore to Agle how it went. Soon his suffering—and everyone else’s—would be over.

The observation lift door opened and closed behind him. “Thank you for meeting me with again,” Agle said.

CS Boo stood next to him. “It’s more convenient than the last place.”

“The time has come, Seginus. I need you to do something for me.”

“I’m aware, sir.”

Shain placed an arm around the smaller man’s shoulders. “I no longer have the security clearance to any of the ships… You’ll need to sign off on one for me.”

“A ship, General? You want to leave Ambition? I was under the impression that you wanted me to… that you needed someone…”

Agle looked down at the side cannon strapped to Boo’s hip. “You came to kill me?”

“Not murder!” Seginus squirmed out from under him. “Assisted suicide. I thought you wanted me to help you die.”

“We’re all going to die, CS.” He pushed a meaty forearm into Boo’s throat and forced him up against the glass. “Sulafat’s lost control of the ship. Ambition’s under the control of monsters from her past. Nothing makes sense anymore.”

“You’re… ch-choking… me,” Boo gasped.

Agle pulled his arm back some, and relieved Seginus of the weapon hanging at his side. “I’m taking the Exodus shuttle out of here, and then I’m flying it right back into the hull of this ship. You’re going to authorize it.”

Boo’s eyes bugged out, even with the pressure against his throat reduced. There were a hundred escape shuttles onboard, all non-weaponized, save one. Exodus had been reserved for Ambition’s highest-ranking command officers in the event of a mass evacuation. It was equipped with a thousand mega-ton yield nuclear warhead. If any Pegan force attempted capturing her, they would most certainly regret it. “I can’t do that, Shain… please don’t ask me to do such a thing.”

Shain Agle placed the barrel end of the side cannon against Boo’s quivering lips. “I’m not asking, Seginus.”

Boo’s entire body had begun to shake uncontrollably. He grabbed onto the barrel and tried forcing it away. Agle pulled down, and the weapon discharged. A blue flash of plasma smacked into the observation window, inches from Seginus’s face. He yelped and pushed Agle back. The side cannon fell to the floor as the two men grappled. It was a short struggle. Agle was almost twice his weight, and the drugs flowing throughout his system were only fueling his already frenzied state. He threw Seginus down and landed on top of him, cracking three of the smaller man’s ribs along the way.

“You’re going to sit in front of the flight requisitions computer,” Agle rasped, his face touching Boo’s, “and you’re going to authorize me use of Exodus, or so Sol help me, I’ll break your neck.” Seginus nodded frantically beneath him. “Good.”

Agle hauled him back up and dragged him to the nearest control console. Boo groaned and sank into the chair. “It hurts, Shain… I can’t breathe.”

“You won’t be in pain much longer.” He grabbed onto the back of Boo’s neck and pushed his face into a computer screen. “Open your goddamned eyes, let the machine complete its retinal scan.”

Seginus drove an elbow into Agle’s crotch. Agle fell to his knees, but kept a solid grip on Boo’s neck. He pounded the man’s forehead into the console once, twice, three times. Boo let out a final throaty gasp and fell still.

“Seginus?” Agle got back up and looked into the man’s lifeless eyes. “Well shit, Boo… it didn’t have to end like this.” He wiped blood away from the cracked monitor and held his dead CS’s head in place, six inches from the screen. “Computer… recognize command officer.”

Nothing happened. Agle took two fat fingers and forced one of Boo’s eyes open wider. The screen lit up, and the computer spoke.

“Military Command Second, Seginus Boo recognized.”

Agle let Boo’s body drop to the floor. He slipped into the chair. “Computer, open shuttle storage bay one and bring Exodus to the floor.”

He could hear the rumble of metal plating sliding open beyond the observation window. Agle stood, cradling his sore genitals. He leaned against the window and tried catching his breath. Exodus had risen from its hidden bay and was waiting for him on the garage floor, three levels below. Shain Agle opened his little bottle and popped the last five pills into his mouth. He stepped over the body of his friend and headed for the lift.

Seginus groaned.

Agle spun around. “Seg?” The CS began to writhe slowly. “Tough little bastard, aren’t you?” He staggered back and hoisted the man up over one shoulder. “And too good of a friend to leave behind.”

Chapter 46

Rastaban shook the Admiral’s hand and wondered if his ancestor was as repulsed at the sight of his distant descendant as he was of him. They were of a similar-looking age, but the man’s white hair and dark eyes seemed to belay a sense of ancient authority that even outgrew the centuries already separating them. Neil Lennix was from a different time, born on a different world. The pictures Rastaban had grown up with couldn’t compare to what it was actually like standing before him. He let off an air of confidence—a powerful, almost menacing presence. Lennix was good-looking, as Rastaban had once been, but a handsome face couldn’t mask the overall feeling of cold control that accompanied it. Vin was right, he was terrifying.

“It’s good to meet you, son,” Lennix said as the other recently revived members of Ambition’s original command structure began clearing out of the room. They all had that cool, self-privileged look to them. The Admiral sat back down at the head of the conference table and motioned Rastaban to do the same. “I hope you don’t mind me calling you son. A great number of generations may set us apart, but we are still family.”

“You can call me Rastaban, sir, or just Ras if you prefer. That’s what my friends call me.”

“And is this one of your friends, Rastaban?” He nodded once at the young woman still standing.

“My name’s Vin Vir, Admiral. I’m—I was Captain Sulafat’s assistant.”

“Aah, yes… Vin Vir. From sciences. Chort Leo told me about you.” He pointed to the chair next to Rastaban. “Please, sit.” Vin sat. “I’m afraid I have no need for a personal assistant. That position no longer exists. I will expect you to report back to sciences as soon as we’ve finished here.”

Vin could feel the blood rushing into her cheeks. She nodded at Lennix and kept her lips sealed. Nothing pleasant would come out of her mouth if she said another word. Rastaban was the one that needed to do the talking. She prodded him in the ribs with a knuckle.

“Admiral… sir… We’re here on behalf of the Captain. I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. Ly Sulafat is a good man, an honorable man.” Rastaban fidgeted nervously in his chair. “He’s been serving as Ambition’s leader since as long as I can remember.”

“And I was its leader centuries before he was born. Get to the point.”

“I don’t think it’s fair—I mean it doesn’t seem right that—,” Rastaban looked up at the lights over his head trying to find the right words. “I… I don’t how to say this—”

“He shouldn’t have been thrown in the goddamned brig!” Vin finished. She could contain herself no longer. “He’s the Captain of this ship, and you’re treating him like a criminal. We’re not asking you to relinquish command, but at least show him some respect and let him free.”

Ambition’s original commander leaned forward, pressing his hands down on the table. “I’m actually surprised this ship has made it this far after so long. We had major concerns at the very beginning that the seventy-year voyage would tax this vessel’s capabilities too far—that the generation or two of following crew members wouldn’t be able to keep their shit together for another six decades. But you did make it to Pega. Somehow you’ve all held it together—we’ve all held it together—for seven centuries. That’s an astounding achievement.”

Vin crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “What does any of that have to do with the Captain?”

“It has everything to do with him. The military ranking structure on Ambition is almost unrecognizable—Captain now outranks Colonel and Major. Miluns—what the hell is a milun? We called them privates and sergeants back in my day. People have lived so long traveling through the stars they started naming their children after them. Without contact from Earth, change was inevitable, I suppose… militarily, culturally.” Lennix lifted his hand and indicated a one-inch gap between forefinger and thumb. “Ly Sulafat was this close to finally accomplishing what we were sent out here to do—after all those years, all of our struggles—and then the old fool begins peace negotiations with the Pegans.”

“He was trying to secure the release of one of our people,” Vin shot back. “He’d practically won your war for you already.”

“It’s more than a war, young lady, it’s an extermination. I’m here again to see it carried out. Sulafat’s execution may seem extreme, but we have to set an example… We need to remind everyone living onboard Ambition now why we were sent out here in the first place.”

Vin and Rastaban stared at the Admiral in stunned silence. He was joking, he had to be. They waited a few more moments, expecting—hoping—the man to break out into laughter. Lennix didn’t crack a smile. “You’re having Sulafat put to death?” Rastaban asked.

A whistle sounded before Lennix could answer Drac’s question. The Admiral clicked a button on the on the table’s comm-pad. “What is it?”

“The Exodus shuttle, sir,” Weston’s steady voice replied. “It’s just launched into space.”

“Stand by, Major. I’ll be with you shortly.” He ended the communication and stared back at his two visitors. “This is what happens if you don’t have order… Yes, I’m having Ly Sulafat put to death. I’ll have anyone blown out of an airlock if they jeopardize this mission.” He stood and motioned them to the bridge stairway. “Now if you don’t mind,” he placed a hand on Rastaban’s back, “the family reunion will have to wait a little while longer, son. Report to your quarters and remain there, both of you… I have a stolen shuttle to bring back, and after that, a planet to conquer.”

Chapter 47

Agle swung the shuttle around and pointed its nose at Ambition. He’d piloted Exodus more than a hundred kilometers away from the massive vessel, but it was still too close for his liking. “Even this far out isn’t enough,” he muttered to the unconscious form of his CS propped up in the co-pilot’s seat. “Remember what I told you about my father, Seg?” Seginus didn’t reply. “I used to dream about moments like this. Those late nights when I hid in Ambition’s ass-end, I’d imagine I was flying a fighter all by myself to some distant star. It didn’t have to be Pega… it could’ve been any point of light in the sky. So long as I was flying away from him it didn’t matter.”

Seginus made a choking sound, started to cough. Agle reached over and guided the man’s battered head to the side so he could spit blood out. “But I guess we can never run far enough away from our troubles,” Agle continued. “Sooner or later it all catches up and you have to face it like a man.”

The yellow comm light started blinking again. Ambition had been trying to talk to him for the last six minutes, and Agle had ignored the calls. “They’re going to fire on us in another minute or two, Seg. Time to give them our little going away present.”

He slid a depressed console cover open on the shuttle’s main control board and pressed down on the lone button hidden beneath. “Computer, lock nuclear guidance system onto the bridge of Ambition.”

“Target acquired,” the shuttle computer announced.

Agle called out six numbers. “Seven, three, zero, four, seven, zero.” He leaned over and rested his hand on Boo’s arm. “Launch nuke.”

“Unable to comply.”

“What?” Agle straightened up in the pilot’s seat. “Why the hell can’t you comply?”

“Exodus nuclear launch code is incorrect.”

“Incorrect? Those are the right numbers, computer. I update the codes twice a year!”

“Exodus nuclear launch code was updated by Military Command Second Seginus Boo on the order of General Shain Agle. Please enter the correct six-digit code to continue.”

Agle stared uncomprehendingly at his CS. And then he remembered. Standard protocol aboard Ambition required the launch codes of all nuclear weapons be changed every six months, even the one resting in the belly of Exodus. It was the Military General’s responsibility to see it done—a duty he’d handed off occasionally to Seginus. Unfortunately, the latest update had been left for his CS to complete.

He grabbed at Boo’s sleeve and shook him violently. “Wake up! I need the code! Give me the goddamned numbers!”

Seginus’s body slumped sideways and came to a final rest against the arm of the chair. Agle slid his fingers down to the narrow wrist and felt for a pulse. There was none.

An alarm sounded from the control console. The computer spoke again. “Ambition starboard-aft torpedo bays have opened. Missiles in shafts twelve through fifteen charged and trained on Exodus. Evasive maneuvers recommended.”

Agle leaned forward and set the emergency fold drive jump to maximum.

“Try contacting him one more time,” Lennix commanded.

Argus Cor spoke into her mic. “Ambition to Exodus, come in Exodus. You are ordered to power down and return to garage 2 immediately… Exodus, please respond.”

“We can’t let this go on, Admiral,” Major Weston warned from the base of the command dais.

“Are you positive he had final access to the codes?”

“Yes. According to the weapons logs, he updated the codes three and a half weeks ago. We have to destroy that shuttle before he releases the nuke.”

Lennix was just about to give the command when Exodus suddenly vanished from the view screen. The officer at helm-nav called out. “He’s jumped away at fold speed, sir. I’ve locked the shuttle’s coordinates in… preparing to pursue.”

“Don’t bother,” the Admiral sighed. “When we’re finished with the Pegans, we’ll find CS Seginus Boo. There’s nowhere for him to run to out there.”

Chapter 48

The excavation vehicle rumbled to a halt in the tunnel half way to their destination. Hail and Kella settled down further into the broken rocks and waited. Bright lights powered on through the settling dust over their heads. A voice called out, issuing commands in an alien language. The sound of boots running on the ground followed the voice. The vehicle was being surrounded.

“I have a feeling they might know we’re back here,” Kella whispered.

The tailgate dropped, sending them to the ground in a mini avalanche of shattered rock and dirt. Six men stood around the two dressed in filthy coveralls and heavy work boots—the same kinds of clothes Hail and Kella had stolen from the storage lockers.

One of the men poked the brim of his helmet up with a finger and studied them disdainfully. He shook his head and muttered something. The others started to laugh.

“What the hell’s going on?” Hail whispered.

“They don’t know who we really are,” Kella muttered under her breath as the men continued laughing. “Probably think we’re just a couple of lazy workers trying to sleep off a shift.”

“So what do they find so funny about that?” Another thought suddenly occurred to Hail. “Oh. I believe they think we might’ve been up to something else besides sleeping.”

Another man bent down and hauled her up. She could feel the wound under her bandages open up. The pain was excruciating. Kella swung an arm, connecting her fist with the end of his nose. The man staggered back, tripped over one of the spilled rocks, and ended up on his rear end. The other five workers broke out into another roar of laughter.

Kella helped Hail up and shook her fist at the entire group. She walked along the side of the excavation vehicle, past the massive rubber tires, and to the driver’s cab. A greasy-looking man leaned out the open window and looked at her questioningly. Kella motioned with one thumb for him to climb out.

The man shrugged, opened the door, and began hauling himself down.

“Your helmet,” Hail whispered. “It’s red. Mine and everyone else’s are yellow. I think you must have rummaged through a higher-ranking worker’s locker.”

She pushed him onto the steps once the driver was clear. “So long as it works. Now keep your mouth closed until we’re inside the cab.”

Hail climbed in, maneuvering past a giant steering wheel and over clusters of gear shifts. He settled into what looked like a passenger seat on the far side, and watched Kella plop herself into the big chair behind the controls. She glared at him. “You’re going to make me drive?”

“I crashed the fighter, remember?”

Kella studied the console in front of her. It appeared less complicated than the controls in Bee’s cockpit, but every button, switch, and dial was labeled in a language neither one of them could even begin to decipher. “How do I even start the stupid thing?”

Hail leaned over and grabbed onto the only key sitting in the board. “This looks like ignition.” He twisted it and the vehicle rumbled back to life. “Your guess is as good as mine on how to get it moving again.”

Kella pulled down on the shift stick closest to her. The vehicle shook harder. “I think we’re in gear.” She shimmied up on the seat a few inches and reached for another lever. Her right foot found a pedal. She pushed down on it experimentally and they started to move.

“Good guess!” Hail shouted over the roar.

Kella could see the driver standing off to one side in the vehicle’s rear view mirror. The workers that had dumped them out of the back were still grouped together farther back in a growing cloud of dust. “Remember what I said a while back about the Pegans intentionally letting us get this far?”

“Yeah. You still think they’re behind all this?”

“No, and I don’t believe the Spirit of Sol is helping out either.” She shook her head and grinned at him. “It’s dumb luck, Hail—the most unpredictable, most powerful force in the entire universe. It’s what brought Ambition this far, and kept the two of us alive.”

“I’ll believe that when we’re finally in a ship headed for home.” He opened a door located in the console in front of him and started rummaging through the contents stuffed within.

“Anything useful in there?” Kella asked.

“Another one of those medical kits. You should pull over and let me change those bandages.”

“No time for that now. What else?”

Hail placed the kit down between his feet and continued to search. “Garbage… crap… Wait a second.” He pulled a booklet out and leafed through the first few pages. “This looks like some kind of vehicle instruction guide.”

Kella pushed up on another shifter, forcing them ahead at an even faster rate of speed. “I don’t need it, got this baby mastered already.”

“It’s more than an excavation truck, a lot more.” He showed her one of the schematics located near the end.

“Those look like missiles stored in the front fenders.”

“Big missiles, Kella. The kind that pack enough punch to clear through kilometers of solid rock.”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. This rig was obviously designed to carry rock out, not blast through it.”

“I agree, it isn’t a mining vehicle, but maybe it’s equipped with emergency explosives in case of a tunnel collapse.”

That did make sense to Kella. She glanced at the booklet in his hands again. “It’s possible. Turn that last page over.” Hail flipped the page. A miniaturized diagram of the same controls in front of Kella was represented there. Two buttons side-by-side stood out in bolder outlines of black. Kella found them on the upper left corner of the console. She pressed one of them.

The fenders sitting on top of the front tires blasted off to the sides. Two three-meter long missiles secured to metal arms swung out. “Whoa now!” Hail cried out. He shoved the manual back where he’d found it and slammed the door shut. “Do not press that second button.”

Kella put both hands back on the steering wheel. “I won’t if nobody gets in my way.” She winked at him. “Nothing’s stopping us now, kid. Settle in and enjoy the ride.”

Hail slouched back into the passenger seat and shut his eyes. Kella’s feeling that some kind of universal ‘good luck’ had gotten them this far wasn’t rubbing off on him. “Just ease off on the speed, okay? … And quit calling me kid.”

Chapter 49

The travel tube carrying Sulafat to his execution came to a stop. The door slid open and Nash stepped out first, surveying the corridor both ways before allowing the other five men to exit. The robot signaled for them to follow. Chort and Zosma came next, followed by the still cuffed ex-Captain, and two armed guards.

“We’re almost there, Ly,” Chort said. “One more elevator ride down ten levels, and this will soon be all over. No more worries, no more stress. Your extremely long responsibility of command will finally come to an end.”

“I know where garage 2 is. Why don’t you do us all a favor and keep your mouth shut the rest of the way.”

The Sciences section head made a snorting noise, but didn’t say anything else. No one else said a word. Sulafat felt an inner sense of satisfaction; it would likely be the final order he’d give in his life that would be obeyed, and it was a good one.

They walked down the empty corridor another twenty meters to the elevator alcove. The doors slid open noiselessly and they entered. “I know you had nothing to do in any of this, Nash,” Sulafat said quietly. He felt his stomach lift slightly as the elevator began dropping. “You’re simply following original orders… I’m no longer upset with you.”

The robot looked down at him. “I appreciate that, Captain. It is an honor serving with you.”

Is?

The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. A long-haired woman was standing before them clutching a side cannon in both hands. It was aimed directly at Chort Leo’s face. “Everyone step out nice and slow. Guards in the back—leave the rifles on the floor.”

Sulafat was more than a little stunned. “Ma Ades?”

“I haven’t seen you in my bar in ages, Captain. Maybe after all of this is over you’ll start frequenting the place more often?”

“It would be my pleasure.” He stepped out of the lift. “Where’s my firing squad?” A hand to his left grabbed onto his arm and pulled him to the side.

Gacrux Crucis pushed him gently up against the wall and pointed his own weapon at the men now exiting the lift. “Tied up and sleeping in a storage compartment. You didn’t actually think we were going to let those blocks of ice get away with this, did you, Sully?”

Nash wrapped his hands around the necks of Chort and Zosma and forced them to their knees. “I apologize for the deception, Captain. Ma Ades informed me of the planned takeover just a few hours ago.”

The woman shrugged sheepishly. “I have the tables in my bar bugged. How else am I going to learn what’s really happening on this ship?”

A third armed crew member appeared on the right side as the elevator doors closed. He ordered the guards to lay flat on the floor. A large bandage was taped across his nose, and both of his eyes were black. It took the Captain a few more seconds to recognize him as Neb Kaitos, a fighter mechanic.

“You won’t get away this!” Chort yelled. “There are thousands of crew members now opposing you, Sulafat. The Seven won’t stand for this, the Seven will—”

Nash made a fist and rendered Chort unconscious. “Thousands is a bit of stretch, hundreds maybe.” He went to do the same to Zosma, but Sulafat ordered the robot to step back.

The Captain knelt down in front of him. “All these years preaching lies, pretending to be something you weren’t. You sicken me.”

“It was the perfect cover,” Zosma said. “Everyone listens to the man in the robes. Chort was speaking the truth—there’s a mighty faction on this ship that no longer finds you fit to command. The Admiral will have his way. The citizens of Pega will be wiped away, and a new Earth society will rise up in its place.”

“By society you really mean Ganymede Unlimited, Phoebus Mining, and Kuiper Belt Power.” Sulafat grabbed onto the man’s white beard and yanked him back to his feet. “You’ll transform the planet of Pega into a wasteland.”

“Not just the planet—the entire system.” He removed Sulafat’s fingers from his whiskers. “Don’t look so shocked, Captain… it’s just business.”

Ma Ades lunged forward and belted Zosma between the eyes with the handle end of her side cannon. He crumpled down on top of Chort. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I never was much of a church-goer.”

The elevator doors re-opened. Vin Vir and Rastaban Drac stepped out. “We thought—,” Vin paused and stepped around the unconscious bodies, “—we’d assumed you might need help being rescued.”

“We’ll still need all the help we can get taking Ambition back,” Sulafat said. He picked up the rifles and tossed one to Vin. “We have to get to the bridge.”

“That will be difficult,” Nash pointed out. “The remaining military and security forces onboard are firmly under the Admiral’s command.”

Gacrux nodded in agreement. “Lennix may not hold all the hearts onboard, but he’s in control of all the guns. You have to leave the ship, Captain. You have to get down to the planet, find Hadar Cen, and order our people to call off the attack.”

“Tor’s with them,” Rastaban warned. “He won’t stand down unless the Admiral orders him to.”

“Then I’ll have to try and convince him otherwise,” Sulafat said. He looked about the empty bay for a ship. “Aren’t there any goddamned fighters left on this vessel?”

Neb Kaitos still had his weapon aimed at the men lying on the floor. “Anything fit to fly is already in orbit around Pega or on the surface. The only fighter left on Ambition is Rastaban’s piece of crap, Nail.” He pointed with his gun towards the far end of the garage over half a kilometer away where the last ship sat in pieces. “It isn’t as bad as it looks. The wing’s been repaired, and I’ve finished replacing the pilot canopy cover. All that stuff around it is mostly spare parts and tools. She’ll fly if you need her to, Captain.”

Sulafat winced. “You just called it a piece of crap.”

“Only because it still stinks like that traitor, Emin. The asshole broke my nose and knocked out half of my teeth. Trust me, Nail can make it to the planet.” He touched the tip of his bandaged nose and winced. “Do me a favor, and blow Tor’s head off when you get there.”

“There will be no more senseless killing.” Sulafat slung the rifle over his shoulder and spoke to all of them. “I plan to see order re-established here. We’ll fight to take our home back, but I won’t let our efforts devolve into a murdering spree. Our people may be split on how to fight this war now that it’s upon us—they’ve started to take sides, but we’re still one family. We will not kill members of our family just for the sake of killing. Do I make myself clear?”

They all nodded in silence.

“Good, it’s settled then.” He focused his attention on Nash. “Find a way to keep these people safe while I’m gone. Seek out more crew members—find a way back up to the bridge, and take Ambition back.”

“Consider it done, Captain.”

“You’re with me, Kaitos. Let’s get that fighter out into space.” He grabbed onto the mechanic and started for Nail. He stopped after a few steps and looked back to the robot. “Those things you said when Lennix took over—about him being your original commander, how you followed his orders back then, and how you would follow them now…”

Nash tapped the side of his head with a metal finger. “It’s those human engrams floating around up here. I can lie with the best of them.”

Sulafat smiled and turned back for the end of the bay. Vin jogged up behind him. “Get back with the others,” he ordered. “Neb will help me get the fighter launched.”

“You’ll need someone in the weapons turret, Captain. I’m coming with you.”

“You have no military training.”

“I didn’t have much training as your assistant when this started either, but here I am.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Promoting Tor Emin to the rank of General was the biggest mistake I ever made. Am I going to regret placing that much faith in you as well?”

“I think you already know the answer to that, sir.” She slung her rifle over one shoulder, and the three jogged on together towards Nail.

Chapter 50

“Another corridor, sir,” the milun called from around the corner. “No doors, no windows.”

Tor motioned the men behind him to move. They turned the corner and met up with the soldier he’d ordered ahead. “It never ends,” the General mumbled. “One narrow Sol-cursed hallway after another.” He spoke into his helmet mic. “Are the rest of you seeing this?”

The other three groups reported in the same. Tor called again to the fighters circling overhead. He wasn’t expecting a reply, and didn’t receive one. They hadn’t heard a word from the ships in the sky or those parked in the clearing since they’d entered the building fifteen minutes earlier. “It’s a trick of some kind,” he said to the soldiers gathered around him.

“A labyrinth,” Wez said.

“A what?”

“Labyrinth. It’s an old word, a really old word for a maze. The Pegans have separated our numbers and led us into it. This isn’t a building—it’s a container. We have to get out of here, General.”

Tor leaned up against one of the walls and considered his options. Lennix wanted Hadar Cen brought back to the ship; the Admiral was a firm believer in the ancient practice of leaving no man behind. Major Weston would undoubtedly feel the same way, and Tor didn’t want to disappoint his recently revived relative. But Hadar was only one man. Tor was responsible for the lives of hundreds. He would get as many of them back to Ambition as he could. To hell with the rescue mission. “Okay, everybody, we’re pulling out. Rendezvous back at the fighters.”

They retreated back around the corner and Wez ordered them to stop. “This isn’t the same corridor we just came down.”

Tor peered ahead. The corridor was much shorter, and instead of there being a single joining passageway to the left, there were two leading off in both directions. “That’s impossible.”

One of the other group leaders spoke through his speakers. “I hate to admit this, sir, but we seem to have gotten all turned around in this place.”

A third leader reported in. “Hey, General, has your group found an exit door yet? I think we’re lost.”

Tor didn’t wait to hear from the last group. He raised his rifle and began firing into the far wall at the corridor’s end. “We’ll have to blast our way out!” The wall was thick, but it couldn’t withstand the combined fire power of four plasma rifles bearing down on it. Concrete and steel gave way. “Hold your fire!” They crept forward. The smoke began to clear and dust settled.

Tor stepped through the opening first—into another featureless grey corridor.

Wez followed moments later. “Shit. This isn’t good.”

“Then we’ll just keep punching through.” He turned left and aimed his rifle down the hall.

“Hold on,” the boss said. One of his hands was resting against the destroyed wall edge. “You feel that? It’s shaking.”

Tor placed a hand next to Wez’s. He felt a steadily growing vibration through his finger tips. “Did we take out the wall’s main support?”

One of the miluns called out behind him. “Not just the wall—the whole building’s moving.”

The fighter ship, Comet, dropped down a hundred meters through the lowest layer of clouds. Platoon Chief Hera Meda could hardly believe her eyes. “Comet to landing party—the entire structure is dropping down into the ground, I repeat, the building is being swallowed up whole.”

Chief Foma Austrin didn’t need air support to tell her the obvious. All of the remaining soldiers assembled around her on the ground could see it sinking. They could hear it rumbling, and they could feel it beneath their boots. She glanced up at Comet; the fighter was still descending. “You’ve come down far enough, Hera. Climb back up and watch our backs. We’re lifting off immediately.”

Men and women started scrambling for the ships. Foma was half way up the rungs to her cockpit when she noticed Comet still dropping. “Hera! Pull your ship back up!”

Static crackled through her helmet speakers as Hera attempted to respond. “—gines down! We’ve lost all—”. The communication suddenly went dead. Foma hung onto the rungs and watched in horror as Comet spiraled down. It crashed nose first into a corner of the still-descending building, throwing up a plume of orange fire and black smoke.

A second impact explosion occurred moments later over a kilometer away on the clearing’s far side. Ambition fighters were falling all around them. Foma scrambled up the rest of the way and dropped down into the cockpit. Atlas Tau, the milun that had replaced General Emin in the weapons turret, called down to her. “The ship’s dead, Chief! Canopies won’t drop and there’s zero power to the controls!”

Every ship in the clearing was dead. Pilots and gunners were unbuckling and climbing out just seconds after strapping in. All helmet communication was gone—they were shouting from ship to grounded ship, jumping back down to the ground. Foma tried her mic again anyway; she called out to the fighters still in orbit around Pega. She even attempted hailing Ambition, knowing full well the ship would be out of range. The background static in her speakers was no longer there.

“Chief?” Atlas had climbed out of the turret onto the left wing of their ship. “What’s happened? What does it all mean?”

Foma didn’t have any answers for him. She looked out past the disorder of the landing troops running about their powerless vessels. The building General Emin and his troops had stormed was gone, swallowed up completely beneath the waving grass and wild flowers.

“The Pegans,” she finally replied. “The Pegans did this… they must have.”

White light suddenly consumed the green grass. It blasted the blue from the sky. Foma tried shielding her eyes from the brightness with one arm, but it got through anyway. She bent over and buried her face into her lap.

“Sol preserve us,” Atlas said moments later. “They’ve done it, Chief… They’ve actually gone ahead and done it.”

Foma looked up and stared out over the horizon towards the distant hills and forests. Day had turned into grisly orange night. A towering inferno of flame was rising into the sky, pushing waves of smoke up above it into the planet’s stratosphere.

The milun was still talking. “There’s a whole damn city over those hills.”

“There was,” Foma said grimly. She could hear a rumble approaching from the conflagration. A numbing sense of horror rushed through her when she realized what it was. “Everyone back inside their fighters! Drop your canopies manually and take cover!”

She had barely managed to secure the hatch of her own canopy when the shockwave hit.

Chapter 51

“We have confirmation, Admiral,” Major Weston announced from the bridge weapons section. “The high-altitude EMP probes triggered… nuclear detonation occurred twelve and a half kilometers above the planet’s surface, approximately four-hundred kilometers west of the target city’s center.”

“That city, is there anything left?”

“The bomb was carrying a yield of seven hundred and fifty megatons. It was by no means our largest, but I’m sure it did the job. The majority of buildings might still be standing, but there are now ten million or so less Pegans we’ll have to worry about.”

“Did the EMP disable our fighters already on the planet’s surface?”

“It would’ve knocked out anything within a six hundred K radius of the city.” Weston turned and faced the Admiral. “You know that. The fighter back-up computers will activate automatically in thirty minutes—if they survived the blast.”

It was a calculated risk Tor Emin hadn’t been let in on—a gamble no one in the rescue force was aware of. The decision to jump Ambition into orbit around Pega minutes after the last grouping of fighters had departed couldn’t be shared with anyone Lennix didn’t completely trust. The Pegans had engaged their fighters—they hadn’t prepared for a single mass assault from Ambition with so many of its own people headed for the planet’s surface in an apparent rescue attempt. The aliens didn’t see the main attack coming until it was too late.

“I want to be informed the instant our people down there are able to communicate with us again—do I make myself clear?” He spun his command chair around. “Did you hear me, Cor?”

Argus Cor sat at the communication station—her chair turned towards the main viewer as everyone else’s was—staring at the immense orange blister erupting up from the planet’s surface on screen. There were only two other bridge officers there with her now that had served under Captain Sulafat. The rest of them were men and women from Ambition’s past—her original command crew. “I… I don’t think this is right, sir,” she finally answered. “I’ll continue monitoring all frequencies, but I really must protest…”

The Admiral looked at Olivia Bertrand standing nearby. The woman wrapped an arm around Argus’s shoulders and helped her to stand. “It’s alright, I have some experience with communications. Perhaps it would be best if you went to your quarters.”

Lennix pointed to Kalin Aurig at helm-nav and section head Homa Sis at the security console. Two more of the Admiral’s original officers replaced the men at their stations. He could no longer rely on any of Sulafat’s people to complete this initial round of planetary strikes. The Admiral rubbed his chin thoughtfully as Kalin and Homa were led off the bridge with Argus. “Patch me through to the fighter garage, Olivia.”

“A line’s open, Admiral.”

“Unit Three, report.” He waited a few seconds. “Three—has Captain Sulafat’s execution been carried out?”

“Nothing wrong with the line,” Olivia said. “If anyone’s down there, they aren’t answer—”

“The garage bay door is opening,” Major Weston interrupted. “A fighter is attempting to launch.”

Lennix pounded a fist into the chair console. “Security! Lock this ship down—every deck, lift, tube, and goddamned door.” He glowered at Weston. “Bad enough our executive shuttle was stolen beneath our noses, I sure as hell won’t allow a traitorous Captain to escape with a fighter as well. As soon as that ship’s within range of the exterior cannons, blast him out of the stars.”

Chapter 52

“Incoming!” Vin yelled.

Sulafat banked Nail hard to starboard. The laser blast fired from the cannon streaked over his canopy cover in a flash of angry red. “Don’t sound so surprised.” He straightened the fighter out less than ten meters above Ambition’s hull. “We knew they’d try and cut us down. Now the trick will be to pick up as much speed as we can while remaining as close to the ship as possible, and set a course for Pega. By the time they get the cannons trained on us again, we should be a pretty small target.”

“Should be?”

Sulafat engaged the fold drive as Nail skimmed over the last kilometer of Ambition. “I tried this a few times in simulation when I was a lot younger. Enemy ships always blew me to bits about a hundred K out.”

Vin tightened her grip on the gun controls as she felt her body being forced back. The blue and green globe of Pega expanded before her eyes like a swelling balloon. Nail lurched to the left, and a second red beam scorched through the blackness of space on her right. The fighter dipped down, and then up. The Captain was performing a series of evasive maneuvers. Another beam flashed by, no where near as close as the first two. Ambition fired one final time, missing its target by kilometers instead of meters.

“We’re clear!” Sulafat announced.

“Now you sound surprised, sir.”

“I may be old enough to be your grandfather, young lady, but I’ve spent my entire life flying through space, not fighting in it. This is new to all of us.”

“Then as one new warrior to another,” Nail had begun plunging into the planet’s upper atmosphere, “I respectfully request you disengage the fold drive before we become a permanent fixture on Pega’s surface.”

Nail dropped out of fold; the fighter’s engines whined as Sulafat attempted to further slow their rate of descent. Cold air blasted around Vin’s legs as cabin compensators adjusted for the increase in temperature caused from the atmospheric friction. The ship punched its way through a heavy bank of brown clouds and leveled off less than five hundred meters from the surface.

“There,” Sulafat said. “Not too bad for an old-timer, wouldn’t you say, Vin?”

She didn’t respond right away. A city—or what had recently been a city—was spread out before them in a blanket of fire, and Nail was headed straight into it. A towering inferno of steel girders a kilometer high and half as wide was directly in front of them. Parts of its glass exterior were still burning intensely, melting down the red-hot steel skeleton frame.

“Pull up!” Vin screamed, knowing full well there wouldn’t be time. Nail was going to drive right into the center of it—they would die literally living up to the fighter ship’s name.

The building’s outer support girders suddenly buckled about a quarter way up. It began collapsing down, level after level, unable to withstand the million or so tons of melted glass oozing down its exterior. Nail was enveloped in a thick funnel of black smoke, and then they were clear.

Sulafat continued taking them up to a safer altitude, and began a slow sweep of the destroyed city’s perimeter. He checked the canopy display and confirmed the rescue fleet’s landing coordinates.

“Captain,” Vin spoke quietly. “Did we do this?”

“Not us… Lennix and those others are responsible.” He didn’t say another word as Nail drifted through the smoke and ash, picking up speed towards the blackened hills and still burning forests beyond.

Chapter 53

The building had stopped moving ten minutes earlier, but Tor and his men remained together, unmoving, hunkered down in darkness. He had led them into a trap, but he wouldn’t jeopardize one more life by foolishly setting out blind into complete blackness. They still couldn’t raise the other three groups that had entered the building with them over their headsets, and the powered night vision goggles each of their helmets were equipped with had gone dead.

Tor’s soldiers were getting more than a little restless. They wanted to get moving. One of the more impatient ones—a milun named Etenar Danus—worked his way through the squatting bodies and tapped the butt end of his rifle against the floor to get the General’s attention. “Are we just going to sit here forever?” He whispered when their shoulders were touching. “I say we keep firing our weapons—light a path all the way out.”

“Out to where?” Tor snapped. “The entire building has descended into the ground. We’re not moving another inch until we have some idea where it is we’re going.” He glanced to his side and saw the dark outline of Etenar’s helmet. The milun was shaking his head. “Do you have a problem with—”

“Sir?” Etenar asked when the General didn’t finish. “Are you alright?”

“I can see you, Danus.” Tor looked to his right. Wez Canis’s bulky form was squatting down next to him. “I can see you too, Boss.”

Wez nodded. “Yeah, the light’s coming back slowly, but something’s wrong.”

Tor stood and aimed his rifle down the corridor to his left. It was the direction they’d last been heading when the lights went out. But there was no corridor. There were no more walls at all, anywhere around them. The light grew stronger, but none of them could see its source. Everything around and above them was shrouded in grey. The floor beneath their feet was the only thing of substance any of them could see besides each other; it stretched off in all directions like an endless, tranquil sea.

“Over there!” Etenar shouted. He raised his rifle and started firing into a blob of moving black figures.

Wez began shooting in the opposite direction. “No! They’re coming from the right!”

Tor felt a hot sting rip through the top of his shoulder. It had come from directly ahead. A milun screamed behind him. Tor spun around and watched as one of his soldiers collapsed to the floor. The top half of his head was missing.

Etenar slammed into Tor a second later and both men fell. The General took hold of his shoulders and shook him. “They’re our people! We’re firing on our own!” The soldier didn’t respond. Tor looked down and saw the majority of the young milun’s intestines spilled out across his legs. He pushed the corpse away and called to the boss. “Cease fire, Wez! Everyone stand down!”

Someone from one of the other groupings shouted back at them. “General Emin—is that you?”

“Yes, goddamn it, it’s me!” He yelled at the top of his lungs. “All of you quit shooting!” A few more shots fired, but they quickly petered out as the four groups came together somewhere in the center of the vast grey area. They looked around and counted the dead. “Nine of us,” Tor muttered. “We killed nine of our own people.”

“The Pegans made us do it,” a woman said. She threw her gun to the floor in disgust. “They separated us, got us all twisted around.”

“Why worry about the Pegans?” Another soldier added, throwing his rifle down as well. “We’re a bigger threat to ourselves.”

Tor grabbed at the edges of the soldier’s chest armor and pulled him in. “Pick up your weapon, Andro, and shut your mouth.”

“Or what? You’ll break my nose and knock out my teeth? This isn’t the Black Hole, Emin. You can’t punch your way out of this one.”

Tor pushed him away. “Pick up your weapon.” He glanced at the woman. “You too, Cyon. That’s an order.”

Milun Mosa Cyon sneered at him. “Yours or Admiral Lennix’s?” Cyon removed her bloody combat helmet next and tossed it at the general’s boots. “I’m not taking orders from either one of you anymore.”

Tor removed his side cannon from its holster and pointed it at her.

“Don’t do it,” Wez warned.

“Go ahead,” Cyon said defiantly. She stepped towards Tor until the barrel end of his side cannon clunked into her chest. “The only person I’ll take orders from now is Captain Sulafat, and he isn’t around to command any of us… You’ve seen to that, haven’t you, General?”

He was going to do it, Wez realized. The squadron boss aimed his rifle at the side of Tor’s face. “I can’t let you do this. Please, General… lower the gun.”

Tor went to squeeze the trigger but couldn’t get his finger to respond. His entire hand had grown numb and heavy. He was having difficulty concentrating. What’s wrong… with me? His head started to swim. The woman in front of him started swaying and forth. He staggered back into one of the other soldiers without realizing he’d done it.

Cyon sank to her knees, and collapsed to the floor on her side. Wez teetered forward and crashed down next to her.

Tor tried standing. When did I fall? Why is everybody lying down? The grey light turned bright white. The air… the air smells wrong. Big bobbing heads on spindly necks surrounded him. Long fingers took hold of his arms and pinned him down onto his stomach. There were dozens of them, hundreds.

Something sharp was pressed into his neck. The darkness returned.

Chapter 54

“Look for it again.”

“I’ve looked a thousand times,” Hail complained. “There is no stupid exit from this tunnel into your spaceport. According to the map we’ve already overshot it by at least three K.”

Kella cursed. “Then we’re on the wrong level. The damn thing’s probably above us or below us somewhere.”

“That’s the problem with alien maps, they usually aren’t labeled in English.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “Then we’ll have to turn back.”

“It’s a big tunnel, but I don’t think there’s enough room to turn the vehicle around.”

Kella steered to the left and decelerated as the tunnel took a sharp curve. She stopped altogether when they’d straightened back out. She pulled the main gearshift back and they sat there, idling in neutral.

Hail was still looking at the crumpled map, trying to figure out where they needed to be. “I said there wasn’t enough room to turn around. You’re not considering backing us up, are you?”

“We might not have a choice.” She pointed through the front window.

At least a dozen men were waiting a hundred meters ahead, spread across the tunnel, armed with heavy rifles. “It could just be a routine check point,” Hail offered hopefully. “Show them your red helmet and maybe they’ll let us through.”

“They’re pointing those weapons right at us—nothing routine about that. It looks like our luck might’ve finally run out.”

“Then back us up out of here, before they open fire.”

She put the excavation vehicle into gear. They started moving forward instead of reversing.

“Kella… you’re going the wrong way.”

She pulled down hard on the shifter and they lurched ahead, picking up more speed.

Hail saw the flash of multiple guns firing simultaneously as he ducked down. Definitely not a check point, he affirmed to himself. The blasts thumped into the front of the vehicle, and ricocheted off the front window. “This vehicle was built to withstand falling rock and traveling up on the moon’s surface,” Kella yelled. “They’ll need to hit us with something a lot heavier to do any real damage.” She pulled herself forward until she was practically standing over the steering wheel, and jammed her boot down onto the pedal. “And I’m not going to give them time to switch to bigger weapons.”

The men in front of them fired sporadically for a few more seconds. When the vehicle was less than five meters away and still accelerating, they began tossing their guns down and jumping to both sides of the tunnel walls. Kella couldn’t be certain they’d all made it to safety as the giant truck rolled through their broken line, and she didn’t much care.

Hail straightened himself up to peek through the front window. “Door ahead, Kella.”

“I see it.” The massive door was octagon-shaped, like the two they’d entered through from the surface on foot. Kella kept her boot down on the acceleration pedal.

He grabbed her arm. “Plowing through a bunch of armed guards is one thing, Kella—trying to ram your way through a foot of solid steel is another. We won’t make it.”

“It’s going to open.” Eight green lights had begun to flash around the door’s outer edge as the excavation vehicle bore towards it. “Trust me.”

Hail looked about desperately for some kind of safety restraints—for all the good it would do him. There weren’t any. He leaned back and braced his feet up against the console beneath the window. “Trust you… yeah, sure. I trust you.”

The big door started swinging in. Kella eased up on the pedal and lowered gears. The vehicle rolled through, and she brought it to a stop. The door clunked shut behind them. Another one was ahead, fifty meters away. “There, we made it.”

“Made it?” Hail repeated incredulously. “We’re almost right back where we started, inside a pressurization bay with Oread’s outer surface on the other side!”

Kella began moving the vehicle forward again. Eight red lights flashed on around the door’s perimeter. “You think it will open automatically as well?”

“I highly doubt it. They have us where they want us now… we can’t go back, and we can’t move forward.” The truck picked up speed. “Kella! They’re not going to let us out!”

“No, they’re not.” She reached over and pressed the second button on the missile control pad. They lurched over as the driver’s side rocket launched free of its fender casing and streaked off ahead.

Kella accelerated into a wall of fire.

Chapter 55

Rastaban stepped out of the stalled travel tube into an abandoned corridor, his plasma rifle leading the way. Ma exited after him, pointing her side cannon in the opposite direction. Two security guards armed with plasma rifles appeared from around a corner and started shooting.

“Get down!” Ma yelled. She dropped onto her side and returned fire. She caught one of them in the leg, but the other guard continued towards them, discharging one blinding energy burst after another.

One of the bursts slammed into the wall inches from Rastaban’s face. He pointed his rifle calmly, took aim at the running man’s chest, and shot him down.

Ma sat up and stared at Rastaban. “Are you okay?” She pointed to the side of his face. “You’ve got a little something there.”

He swatted a few pieces of smoldering metal out of his scarred cheek. “Thanks. I can’t feel a thing there anymore.” Rastaban poked his head inside the open travel tube. “It’s all clear now.”

Eight more men and women stepped out of the tube, each brandishing rifles and side cannons of their own. They had picked up support along the way from garage 2. Word had spread throughout the ship of Lennix’s takeover, and as it turned out, more than half of Ambition’s crew were dead set against the Admiral and his recently revived officers. Physical resistance had been minimal, but unfortunately, most of the ship’s mechanical functions could be controlled from the bridge, and progress to the command center had been slow.

“How much further?” Ma asked.

Rastaban led them to an elevator. “We’re seven levels directly beneath the bridge.” He smacked on the call button but the lift didn’t come. “It may as well be seven light years now that they’ve shut down the remaining tubes and lifts. Looks like our mutiny ends here.”

Neb Kaitos pushed his way through the small group. “Don’t give up so easily, Drac.” He motioned them all back to a safe distance and blew the door in with his rifle.

“Blasting our way inside the lift won’t make it work,” Ma pointed out.

The smoke cleared and Neb looked inside the dark shaft. “We’re not taking the lift.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder, reached in, and found a metal rung off to one side. “We’re climbing the service ladder.”

Ma followed the fighter mechanic in next. She made the mistake of looking down. Dull blue lights placed at each level of the ship indicated fully just how massive—how deep—Ambition actually was. She locked her arms around one of the rungs and froze. “Go on without me. I’ll keep a lookout from here.”

Rastaban tapped at the bottom of her boot. “That’ll be difficult for the rest of us to do with you hanging there in our way.”

“I don’t get out of my bar nearly enough to deal with this kind of shit.” Ma clamped her eyes shut. “Looks like I’m afraid of heights.”

“Yeah, we can see that.” He pushed her foot up. “One step at a time. You can do this, Ma.”

She started moving again. Rastaban continued comforting her as they slowly worked their way up six more levels.

“Uh, we’ve got a problem,” Neb called down. “The lift’s parked at bridge level.”

Ma made a weak moaning sound. Rastaban wiped sweat out his eyes with one arm. “There should be an emergency exit door somewhere on the bottom. Can you see it?”

“Yeah,” Neb answered a moment later. “Trouble is it’s on the far side of the shaft next to the other ladder. We’ll have to climb back down and go up that one instead.”

“Climbing up was bad enough,” Ma whined. “No way in hell I’m going back down.”

“She’s right,” Rastaban agreed with her, but for different reasons. “We’ve wasted too much time in here. There’s a good chance of being captured if we go back, and an even greater chance of someone on the bridge activating the lift in the next few minutes. We have to get inside that elevator, now.”

Neb held the ladder with one hand and rummaged through the small tool pouch wrapped around his waist with the other. He pulled out a small wrench with a light attached and shone the beam up on the lift’s bottom. “There are six anti-grav bars built into the underside. We could use them as handles to swing our way over to the hatch.” He placed the wrench between his teeth and did just that. Ma made another weak mewling noise as the mechanic swung out and worked his way across the bottom of the lift, one hand-grab after another.

“I can’t do that, Ras,” Ma whimpered quietly. “I won’t have the strength or the courage.”

“You have plenty of both. You have to do it.”

Opening the emergency hatch was easy enough for Neb to accomplish. The door swung down with one pull on the release handle. He grabbed onto the inner floor edges and hoisted himself up into the lift. His head popped back down seconds later. “Your turn, Ma.”

She didn’t give herself another second to think about it. She scurried up the last five rungs and reached out for the first anti-grav bar. Her hands started to slip on the fourth bar. Ma could feel her arms shaking, “I… I told you I wasn’t strong enough.”

Neb got a hold of her wrist and started yanking her in. “I’ve got you—climb up my arm.” Ma sunk her fingernails into his forearm, she clawed at his elbow, and finally into his shoulder. Neb braced a knee into the floor and a boot against an interior wall, and heaved her up into the lift with him.

Rastaban followed through after her and helped the people still clinging to the ladder across the treacherous chasm, one by one, until they were all sitting breathless inside the elevator cabin. “We’re at a disadvantage, even fully armed as we are,” he said. “They’ll be prepared for this—their numbers will be spread out across the bridge. We’ll make easy targets bursting through that door for them to pick off.”

Neb grinned, revealing a black gap where his two front teeth used to sit. “That’s one hell of a pep talk, Drac. Really makes us all want to rush right in.”

“That’s not what I had in mind.” Rastaban stood, leaving his rifle on the lift floor.

Admiral Lennix sat confidently in the command chair, facing the closed elevator. “They’re misguided—clinging faithfully to the man they called Captain their entire lives, but they’re still our people. Try not to kill any of them,” the Admiral instructed. “Aim for the knees.”

Major Weston lowered his rifle aim down an inch. Olivia Bertrand and others did the same.

The lift door slid open and one man stepped onto the bridge, his arms raised above his head.

“Rastaban,” Lennix uttered. “Give this up, son. Tell the others behind you to leave their weapons on the floor and exit the lift.”

“I won’t do that, Admiral… not until I have your word they won’t be harmed.”

Lennix shrugged. “I don’t want to see any more people get hurt.” He nodded to Weston, and the Major lowered his rifle altogether. “That’s goes for all of you. Lower your weapons and let them enter.”

Rastaban turned and motioned at Neb to bring the others onto the bridge. “This is just one small group of people that oppose what you’ve done, Admiral. There are thousands more spread throughout Ambition standing with us. We demand you step down. Return command back to Captain Sulafat.”

“Ly Sulafat was lawfully replaced.” Lennix leaned forward. “I was always—and still am—Ambition’s commander. It may take time for the crew to adjust to this, but they have no choice in the matter. I’ve been patient with you, Rastaban… you’re my descendant, but we’re ending this now.”

“Ending it? More than half the people serving on this ship are against you.”

The Admiral stepped down from the dais and stood directly in front of him. “I’m not talking about your mutiny—I’m referring to our mission.” He clapped a hand down on Rastaban’s shoulder. “You and your little band of rebels here have fought hard.” He glanced at Neb standing next to Rastaban. “Some harder than others by the looks of things.”

“We’re just getting started,” Ma Ades said. The color in her face was still missing, but she’d recovered her courage. “Do us all a favor, and go back inside those canisters you crawled out of before we decide to get serious.”

Lennix stepped behind her and ran the fingers of one hand through her long hair. “We may just do that when the Pegan threat has been dealt with. It would be nice to wake up a second time back on Earth to a hero’s welcome.”

“There’ll be others after us,” Rastaban said. “More leaders will follow after Captain Sulafat to fight against this senseless war you created.”

“As I was saying,” he worked his way around them and ended up in front of the weapons control console, “that’s why we’re ending it now.” The planet appeared before them on the main viewing screen. The blue oceans and green continents were still there, but a dark brown smudge had risen up into the swirl of white clouds near the bottom of the screen. “We’ve already taken out one of their major cities… In a few minutes, the rest will follow. The entire surface of Pega will be wiped away.” His hand hovered over the nuclear weapons control pad.

Rastaban lunged at Lennix before he could punch in the final sequence of launch commands. The two men collided together and ended up on the floor of the bridge. Olivia Bertrand stepped in front of the weapons console and pointed her side cannon at the rebels. “Stay back,” she warned. “This is between the two of them.”

They rolled across the deck, fingers wrapped around one another’s throats in a desperate struggle. Lennix finally ended up on top. He pulled Rastaban’s hands away and pinned his arms to the floor. “Don’t make me hurt you, son,” he gasped. “You’re scarred enough already.”

Rastaban attempted to drive his knee up between the Admiral’s legs, but Lennix shifted over, taking most of the impact on his inner thigh. He rammed his forehead into Rastaban’s nose, and the struggle ended.

“Everyone stays where they are!” A voice called out. “Nobody moves!”

Gacrux Crucis appeared from the front of the command platform with a plasma rifle pointed squarely at Lennix. Nash ascended the final few steps from the Captain’s quarters and stood next to him. “Step away from Rastaban Drac, Admiral.”

Olivia dropped her side cannon to the floor. Tomas Weston began raising his rifle again.

“Unwise, Major,” Nash warned. “If Gacrux is unable to incapacitate the Admiral, I will do it for him. And then I’ll come for you.”

Weston placed the rifle down at his feet.

Rastaban groaned, sat up, and wiped the blood from his face. “Took the two of you long enough to get here.”

“It’s a big ship,” Nash replied.

Neb and Ma helped the others gather up weapons. Admiral Lennix glared at the robot. “I should’ve known something would’ve short-circuited inside you after seven hundred years. It isn’t too late for you, Three. We can clean up your programming. You can become a valued asset to this ship once again.”

“I quite like who I am now, Admiral… and quit calling me Three. My name is Nash.”

No one was watching Olivia. She was leaned up against the weapons console, her hand slowly crawling over buttons. She began entering the code.

Rastaban caught the Admiral glancing that way. “Stop her! She’s trying to launch the nukes!”

Gacrux shot her in the stomach. The force of the plasma blast pushed her all the way up onto the console. Olivia’s fingers were still on the buttons. She pushed one more before sliding lifelessly to the floor.

The image on the main screen switched automatically from the planet’s surface to an exterior view of Ambition’s outer hull. Dozens of glaring lights appeared as torpedo bay hatches fell away. Everyone gathered on the bridge watched as the screen view switched back to the planet. More than a hundred nuclear missiles set out towards the surface, targeting cities all over the globe.

“In a few minutes the worst of this will be over,” Lennix announced. He placed an arm around Rastaban’s shoulders. “Pega, or what’s left of it, will be ours.”

Chapter 56

Sulafat landed in a carpet of black ash amongst the fighters dispatched earlier to rescue Hadar Cen. He tried to imagine what it must have looked like just hours ago, when the ashes were green grass, and the sky was blue. Most of the color had been scorched from the ground, and the sky was now choking in dismal layers of brown.

“Did you take your anti-rad meds, Captain?” Vin asked. “Our suits will have enough trouble blocking the worst of this radiation out.”

Sulafat popped the big pink capsule into his mouth and swallowed it down. “Done. Let’s be quick about this.” Their canopies popped open at the same time, and they climbed down to the ground.

Men and women approached them from the other grounded fighters through swirling eddies of dust. They were all still bundled up in the spacesuits they’d arrived in. One of them tapped at her helmet visor, indicating the communication device was inoperative.

The Captain motioned back and forth across his own visor, instructing the woman to clean her face plate so Sulafat could identify her. She wiped the dirt away.

“Platoon Chief Foma Austrin,” Vin announced. “She would’ve been Emin’s pilot. What’s happened here, Captain? Why can’t any of them communicate with us? Why are they all still sitting here exposing themselves to so much lethal radiation?”

“Lennix and his people would’ve sent a HEMP device—high-altitude electromagnetic pulse—shortly before the explosive to cripple whatever defenses Pega might’ve had in place. Unfortunately, our people here were victims of the mass power loss as well.”

The headsets inside their helmets started to crackle. Foma’s voice cut in. “—ould’ve launched back into orbit a lot sooner, sir. We were waiting for the backup computers to kick everything back up again.”

“Understood, Chief,” Sulafat said. Fighter running lights began powering up on all the ships around them. Pilots and gunners were scrambling into their cockpits. “What happened here, Austrin? Where’s General Emin?”

“Last we saw of him was over in that direction.” She pointed to a large square patch of recessed ground a hundred meters away. “He took about fifty soldiers with him to the building to find Hadar Cen.”

“There is no building,” Sulafat observed.

“Not anymore, Captain,” another voice cut in. Atlas Tau approached them. “The whole damn thing just dropped into the grass and vanished, taking Tor and his men with it.”

Sulafat exchanged a quick glance with Vin. “You’ll need to be a little more specific, Milun.”

Foma ordered Atlas back to their fighter and explained the entire situation to her Captain. Sulafat nodded grimly at the end. “You did all you could under the circumstances. I want you to get these people back home, Foma. Vin and I will stay here awhile longer and try to find the others.”

“They’re gone,” the chief argued. “We have to get off the planet’s surface before Lennix sends more nukes down to finish the job—all of us, Captain.”

Sulafat asked her a question he feared to hear answered. “Who’s your commanding officer, me or the Admiral?”

“I was on your side the entire time, Captain. Some of the others I wasn’t so sure about—but after this… I don’t think there’s a doubt in anyone’s mind who our true leader is anymore.”

Sulafat butted his visor gently against Foma’s. “That’s good to hear. Now get these soldiers back to Ambition and help win our ship back. We’ll be right behind you.”

“At least let me and a few of the others come with you.”

“You’ve already been exposed to the radiation for too long. He pushed the woman towards the parked fighters before Foma could argue further. “Come along, Vin. We have people to find.”

They started across the burned clearing, rifles pointing towards the dark recess of ground in the distance. Sulafat paused halfway and watched as the fighters lifted into the air and set out over their heads into the brown clouds.

“I remember reading about the great wars on Earth when I was a kid back in school,” Vin said.

“Me too.” Sulafat was still looking up sadly into the sky. The last of the fighters vanished from view, the roar of their chemically fuelled engines increased for a few more seconds, and then all noise cut out as the fold drives engaged, blasting them through the remaining atmosphere and out into space.

“Reading about it wasn’t enough for the teachers,” Vin said as they continued forward. “They made us watch all the old videos over and over. It scared the hell out of us, but they kept at it—said we were the final generation, that we more than all others born before us would experience what war would be like in person. And then my parents would drill it into me after school. The other kids got it at home too.”

“Sounds like you had a rough childhood. Don’t hold it against the teachers and your parents. They wanted you to be fully prepared.”

“I’m not blaming anyone, sir. I understand why they did it. But now that it’s happened… now that we’re surrounded by all of this,” she made a pass with her rifle across the bleak-looking horizon, “it’s like none of what they taught us sunk in. I feel numb to the whole thing.”

“Then perhaps the lessons prepared you more than you realize.”

They’d made it to where the building had once sat. A massive square block of grey was set six feet down into the ground. Ashes and dirt swirled about its surface. “It looks like all that’s left is the foundation. Maybe it got blasted away in the shockwave?”

“The shockwave was big, but I don’t think it had that much force left by the time it got here. Our people and their fighters survived it. Foma and Atlas said they saw the building drop down. This isn’t the foundation… we’re looking at the roof.” Sulafat worked his way down onto the concrete, assisting Vin along the way behind him.

“Do you think they could’ve survived, somewhere beneath us?” She asked.

Sulafat didn’t get the chance to answer. A section of the roof slid open twenty meters ahead, and a figure started to emerge. Vin aimed her weapon. The Captain pushed the end of her rifle back down. “No need for that, he’s one of ours.”

The figure was dressed in an Ambition flight suit and helmet. A voice spoke out over their headsets. “If you want to see your people alive, I suggest you place your weapons down completely.” The he was definitely a she.

Sulafat squatted down and laid his rifle in the shifting dust. Vin hesitated. “Captain, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“We were the ones that dropped the nuke. She’s come unarmed. Do as she says, Vin, and maybe we’ll all get out of here in one piece.”

“A wise decision,” the woman said. “You are Captain Ly Sulafat?”

“I am.”

“My name is Jule Adeen. Let’s go below and discuss our… situation.”

She started back down into the opening. Sulafat and Vin followed.

Chapter 57

Foma Austrin double-checked the display on her canopy. A hundred red points of light were moving across the grid towards the planet. “Atlas, tell me I’m reading this damn thing wrong.”

“I’m seeing it too, Chief. Ambition has launched ninety per cent of the remaining nukes.”

“And the only thing between them and the planet is us.”

The three dozen fighters that had landed on Pega’s surface had joined back up with the ships left in orbit. Foma opened a direct line to all of them. “I know a lot of you out there weren’t too pleased with the recent change in command, and there’s some that were all for it. I’m not going to waste time debating which man deserves to sit in the chair, we can argue that later. But I don’t think any of us wanted to be responsible for the mass extermination of billions of defenseless people. I won’t sit back and watch an entire civilization get wiped away. Captain Sulafat would’ve never gone through with something like this.”

No one interrupted her. Not a single voice cut in to object.

“I plan on taking out as many of those missiles as I can before they reach their intended targets,” she continued. “If anyone doesn’t like that, they can break off now and return home.”

The fighters remained in a tight formation, bearing down on the nearest rockets headed for Pega. Atlas spoke for all of them. “Lennix can wave his fancy gold admiral bars around for another seven hundred years saying he had the right, but it’ll never change the fact that asshole was willing to let us fry down there. We’re with you, Chief, all of us.”

“Then let’s get to work. All fighters spread out and let your targeting computers select a closest match.”

The ships broke off and began firing at the oncoming warheads. “I’ve got a lock on one,” Atlas announced from Raze’s weapon turret.

“You don’t have to wait for my permission, Tau.” Foma pulled down hard on the controls as Atlas launched one of their rockets. A streak of white light shot away from beneath Raze. She tracked its movement on the canopy. One of the red nuke indicators blinked out of existence. “Nice shooting. I’m taking us to target number two.”

Reports began streaming in through her headset from other fighters. The red lights were winking out off her canopy at a steady pace. Fortunately, the nuclear payloads couldn’t detonate before the missiles were in range of their intended target zones. Blasting away at targets that couldn’t fire back was easy enough, but the sheer number of guided rockets was too much for them to wipe out completely. A few got through in the end, and headed down into the planet’s upper atmosphere.

Tau successfully managed to take two more out before Foma called off the fighters. “We did the best we could. It’s time to go home.”

“I wouldn’t expect a warm welcome,” one of the pilots from another fighter said. “The Admiral fired those nukes, Chief. He’ll probably try to take us out next.”

“He’s welcome to try.” Foma attempted to sound more confident than she felt. Ambition wouldn’t be ‘home’ again to any of the returning fighters until Lennix and his people were dealt with, and judging from what they’d just been through, that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

“Take a look planet side,” Atlas said. “The nukes are going off.”

Foma banked the ship over slowly until Pega filled the entirety of her canopy. Three gigantic orange columns, each spread approximately a thousand kilometers from the other, were billowing up into the upper atmosphere. A fourth appeared further away along the planet’s horizon.

“Six made it through,” Atlas reported. “It looks bad, but it could’ve been a lot worse.”

“Tell that to the people living below.” Foma brought the fighter back around. Ambition had finally come into view. The ancient warship moved towards them, growing in size.

“What do we do now?” Tau asked. “Shoot our way back into the garage?”

She waited a few more moments before replying. Ambition’s pitted belly slid over the assembled fighters. Even from a few kilometers away, the massive vessel blocked out all the stars beyond. Its blackened hull swam in swirls of orange and yellow, reflecting the burning atmosphere below. “They haven’t fired on us yet, maybe we won’t have to either.”

A voice everyone recognized broke through over the headsets. “Ambition to fighter groups Alpha, Beta, and Gamma… welcome home.”

“It’s good to hear that mechanical voice of yours, Nash.” Foma paused. “What’s happening up there? Did you fire those nukes off?”

“Not us, Chief Austrin,” the robot answered. “Admiral Lennix and his associates have been taken into custody. Garage 2 is now—”

Foma waited a moment for him to finish. “Nash? I didn’t get all of that. Please repeat your last transmission. Is the garage open or not?”

“Multiple long range contacts have just appeared,” Nash answered. “You’re going to have to wait outside a little longer.”

“What kind of contacts? More Pegan fighters?”

“Much bigger than fighters. These are warships, Chief, and there are a lot of them.”

Chapter 58

The excavation vehicle had made it through. The missile had blown the tunnel door apart, and Kella and Hail had escaped up out of the underground city and back onto the moon’s surface. But the vehicle’s front end had sustained heavy damage. It had chugged along for a few more kilometers across the barren landscape and sputtered to a grinding halt.

Hail stared out at the endless mountains of excavated black rock and dirt on Oread’s cold, airless surface. People back on Earth used to bury their dead beneath manmade structures almost as large, he thought. He couldn’t recall any of the ancient civilization names, or what the massive tomb structures had been called. He and Kella wouldn’t be buried under the massive deposits strewn kilometers about them, but they would definitely serve as markers. Something warm dripped onto his lip.

“Here, let me get that,” Kella said. She wiped the blood away from under his nose. “Quit staring outside and hold your head back. It won’t stop bleeding until you do.”

Hail leaned back into the seat. “You’re crazy. You know that, right?”

Kella tried the ignition again. The excavation vehicle’s starter churned twice and quit. “I had to bust us out, what other choice was there?”

“Oh, I can think of at least a dozen that wouldn’t have had us sitting out in the rocks without a breathable atmosphere.”

“Tell me three—even two.”

Hail couldn’t think of one. He grabbed the dirty cloth they’d found jammed between the seats and wiped more blood away. “I still think you’re crazy.”

“This coming from a guy that bust his nose against his knees.”

“It’s not like you gave me a lot of time to find the safety restraints.”

Kella tugged the harness belt up from the same space she’d found the cloth. “Here, buckle up now if it’ll stop your whining.”

He leaned his head back further into the seat and sighed. “We’re right back where we started, marooned on this moon’s surface with no chance of getting home. I’m beginning to get the feeling we weren’t meant for scouting missions. We’ve spent most of our time out here trapped in downed fighters and busted trucks.”

“And toilet stalls,” Kella had started to giggle. “Don’t forget the toilet stalls.”

Hail chuckled as well. “Please, don’t remind me.”

The heat pumping out around their feet suddenly stopped, killing their good humor at the same time. Kella tried the ignition one more time. There wasn’t even a click. “The batteries have drained completely. It’s going to get cold, fast.” She tapped on a nearby gauge indicating the interior atmosphere pressure. “Looks like the oxygen runs on a separate power source. According to this it looks like we have about an hour of air left.”

“So we’ll freeze to death before we asphyxiate. Good to know.”

Kella closed her eyes and rested her head against the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Hail. This is my fault… all of it.”

“You got us this far, I’m grateful for that. It’ll all be over soon.”

She opened her eyes and saw a handle built into the underside of the operator’s seat. Kella reached down and pulled on it. A drawer built into the seat’s base slid open. “Are you seeing this?” She asked incredulously. “Is there one under your seat, too?”

Hail bent forward and found a second drawer. He pulled a helmet out. “There’s a whole spacesuit stored in here!”

Kella had already started unfolding the rubbery fabric of hers out over the wheel. “Light weight… not the sturdiest of material.”

“They were probably only meant to be used in case of an emergency—if the vehicle broke down or got stuck out on the surface.” He began pushing his feet into the legs of the suit. “The oxygen tanks and heating units are pretty small. They won’t give us much more time.”

Kella could feel the cold already pushing in around them as they dressed. “Another hour, maybe two… it might be all we need.”

“You won’t give up on that ‘universal luck’ theory of yours, will you?”

“Like you said, we’ve gotten this far.”

“You’ve gotten us this far, Kella—you and that crazy brain.”

He started pulling the helmet down over his head. Kella stopped him. “Not yet. Let’s use up what air’s left in the cabin first.”

They sat there for a few more minutes, breathing slowly, watching their cold exhalations fog up the windows around them. “We’ve got one missile left, you know,” Kella said.

“Maybe you should ignite it right here and warm us up.”

“I was thinking of trying to point it back into that tunnel we came out of… Blast it off and say goodbye to those assholes below.”

Hail wiped a section of the passenger window clear with his arm. “I wonder why they haven’t come for us already.”

“They don’t have to. There’s nowhere for us to go. It’ll be easier to retrieve dead bodies instead of fighting ones.” Kella shifted in the seat in an attempt to warm herself. She winced, and grabbed at her side. “Damn… that stings.”

“It’s probably opened up again.” He retrieved the small medical kit from the floor and opened it up. “Slip out of that suit and I’ll change the dressing.”

“Not a chance. I’d freeze to death before you got the old ones off.”

“It isn’t that cold yet.”

She shook her head. “We’ll use up too much oxygen with the effort, besides, the pain will keep me aware longer.”

Hail leaned back and sighed. “Leaving it like that isn’t good. You could get an infection.”

Kella almost laughed again. “That isn’t my biggest concern at the moment.” She began crawling over the gearshift console towards him. “If you want to help out, share some of that body heat of yours.”

She nestled on top of him and wrapped her arms around his body. Hail squirmed, but he didn’t want to push her away. “The suits are insulated. I don’t think this will have much effect.”

Kella rested the side of her head against his. “For such a smart guy, you really can be dense sometimes.”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“Before, when you pulled me up into the back of the trailer… what you tried to do.” She looked into his eyes, their noses touched. “This is the right time.”

“Oh.” Hail didn’t need it spelled out any further. He kissed her forehead. She kissed the tip of his chin. Their lips met, and the cold crept back for a little while longer.

Chapter 59

Jule Adeen led Sulafat and Vin deeper into the sunken facility. More beings joined them along the way. These were true Pegans, Sulafat thought to himself, with their big grey heads and bulging black eyes. He didn’t know who or what Jule was; the woman appeared human, but she certainly wasn’t from Ambition. He prided himself on knowing the faces of all his crew, and he had never seen hers before.

“You’re not native to this planet,” he finally said. “You’re from Earth, aren’t you?”

“I was born and raised on this planet, Captain. I am a Pegan.”

“Then these… other ones,” he peered at the six aliens walking along with them, “they’re a separate Pegan species altogether—a second sentient race living on the same planet.”

“They are Hunn-ephei, and they are most definitely not from this planet.” She stopped in front of a closed door and the rest of them gathered around her. “They’re from a neighboring star your people call Alderamin. We have been at war with the Hunn civilization for more than a thousand of your solar years.”

Vin looked into the oily black eyes of the Hunn standing closest to her. It remained silent, but she could feel the being attempting to reach inside her mind, pushing its way in with pure thought. Vin shuddered and looked away. “You say you’re at war with these peop—with this race. It doesn’t appear that way to me.”

“An agreement of sorts was reached between our two star systems less than a century ago. Representatives from both home planets were exchanged as a diplomatic work program. We’ve been sending our best people to the Alderamin system for years, and the Hunn have been sending us theirs.”

“Diplomatic work program,” Sulafat repeated the words with a hint of skepticism. “You used them as props against us—made them appear as the terrifying face of the Pegan people. Did you think it would be enough to frighten us back the way we came?”

“It had been our hope, yes,” Jule confirmed. “We have had—how would your people say it—we have had our hands filled just keeping the Pegan and Hunn home worlds from destroying one another. The introduction of a third civilization was the last thing anyone wanted. Your people were warned to stay away a very long time ago, Captain. You should’ve heeded our words.”

Sulafat quoted the infamous centuries-old transmission. “‘We are aware of your existence, and we will end you’. That was more than a warning, it was a threat. Our people had every right to defend themselves.”

“There was more to the warning your people obviously never heard, or chose to ignore.”

He couldn’t argue with her. Sulafat had been let in on that dark secret only a short time ago. Ambition’s entire mission had been built dozens of generations before on half-truths and outright lies. The damage done up to now from those manipulations was severe; a thousand Ambition lives had already been lost—perhaps ten thousand times more in Pegan casualties. Sulafat still believed he could turn things around now that the full truth was coming out, but this wasn’t the time or place to begin the process. “Our people… show me where they are.”

Jule pressed a palm on the door’s surface and it slid open. They stepped into an auditorium-sized room. At the center of it were Ambition’s rescue pilots and gunners. Forty-one of them in total, all seated on the floor, seemingly conscious, but barely aware of their surroundings. They were gathered in a relaxed cluster, unrestrained, their heads were tilted forward, back, and to the sides, indicating near sleep or extreme intoxication.

“What have you done to them?” Vin shouted, rushing forward.

“I assure you, they’re all in good health,” Jule said. “We had to take measures to guarantee they wouldn’t harm us. A gas was released into the air to subdue them. The effects weren’t long lasting so we had the Hunns condition their behavior to a less hostile state.”

“Mind control,” Sulafat murmured. “These alien representatives of yours got inside their heads.”

“It was for everyone’s good, Captain.”

Vin was now squatting down in front of Tor Emin. She was looking directly into the General’s face, but his half-closed eyes barely registered she was there at all. “It’s disgusting,” she called back to Jule. “You’ve turned them into vegetables.”

“The effects aren’t permanent,” the Pegan assured her.

Tor’s head lolled slowly to the side. A string of drool broke free from his bottom lip as he attempted to speak. “Trapped us… walls moving… lost our way.” He shook his head, blinked hard, and tried to focus on Vin’s face less than six inches away. “We opened fire… on our own people.”

Sulafat stepped towards his docile crew members. “You consider treating them like this for their own good? It’s barbaric.”

“You destroyed one of our largest cities with a nuclear device. More surface detonations have been registered in the last few minutes. Which of our three species’ is truly the most barbaric, Captain?”

He knelt down next to Vin and tried lifting the big man up. Vin helped, and they brought him to his feet. Tor attempted one step forward, slumping in their arms. His head began lolling to the side again. Sulafat shook him. “General Emin! Did you find Hadar Cen? Is he still alive?”

“Lennix,” he mumbled. “Only answer… to Admiral Lennix.”

Jule whispered something to one of the Hunn beings. The grey head nodded, and moments later a large door slid open from the far side of the room. Nine figures walked through.

“I’m alive, Captain.” A voice called out from the center of the group. Hadar stepped ahead from the others. “The Pegan people have treated me well.”

Sulafat could feel Tor’s strength returning under his arm. He slipped free of him and left Vin to support the man’s weight on her own. “It’s good to see you, Hadar.” He stood in front of the fighter pilot. “A lot’s happened since you left us.”

“I’m aware, sir.” Hadar indicated to the men and women standing around him. “The Pegan High Council has told me everything.”

They were all dressed in flowing robes of red. Sulafat looked from one grim face to the next. “You are this planet’s government?”

“We are but a portion of a much larger body,” an elderly man standing at the edge answered. He stepped up beside Hadar. “My name is Stof Ewer. I speak as leader for this High Council. As a result of our millennia-long conflict with the Hunn, the Pegan civilization has spread out and colonized every planet. There are more than twenty billion citizens and a hundred active councils within the Pegasi system.”

“Our long-range scans detected no life on the four outer planets,” Sulafat countered.

The old man smiled at that. It transformed his already heavily lined face into a maze of ancient wrinkles. Sulafat suddenly felt a lot younger in his presence. “Your instruments couldn’t find life on the planets, Captain, because we’ve colonized deep inside all of them. Even here, on the surface of Pega, there are no populated centers. The cities you’ve seen are all empty.”

“That’s impossible. A city less than a hundred kilometers from here was just destroyed. We flew over it—we saw with our own eyes.”

“No lives were lost in Sharell, Captain,” Hadar said. “I was there. The city was completely empty before Ambition nuked it.”

“That isn’t entirely true, Hadar,” Jule said. “Three hundred and twelve of our people were killed in the blast. They belonged to long-term maintenance crews and patrol groups assigned to watch over the city during its latest contact period.”

“Contact period?” Vin asked. “You knew we were coming so the cities were evacuated?”

“We’ve been aware of your arrival into this system for some time, but the evacuation had nothing to do with Ambition. A contact period occurs approximately every ten years between the Pegan and Hunn civilizations.” Jule pulled Vin gently away from Tor. The General swayed unaided, but managed to stay standing on his own. “It’s an exchange from one home planet to the other. A hundred thousand of our people for a thousand of theirs.”

“Hostages,” Sulafat said. “You take them for their ability to reach inside the minds of potential new enemies.” He thought about it for another moment before adding. “But the numbers are vastly unequal. What do the Hunns get in exchange?”

“A work force.” Jule had begun to guide Vin back from Sulafat and the others. “The Hunn-ephei may be our mental superiors, but they are physically inferior. A hundred thousand able-bodied Pegans can perform the labor of a million Hunn much more efficiently and far faster. They maintain Hunn infrastructure.”

“You send your own people off to become slaves,” Sulafat finished.

“Again, Captain, your species has treated its own citizens far worse. Do not assume you have the right to preach to us from some higher moral ground.”

Sulafat was about to respond when one of the red-robed women of the High Council interrupted. “Enough of this. The fleet has returned from the Alderamin system, and they’re closing in on the enemy vessel as we speak. There is no need to justify ourselves to these citizens of Sol. Their intentions have always been hostile, towards themselves and us. Captain Ly Sulafat… you and your people will be put to death. The warship Ambition will be destroyed. Your incursion into our star system ends here and now.”

Chapter 60

The Seven were gone. Rastaban Drac was now seated in the captain’s chair, surrounded by a handful of recently returned bridge crew members. They looked at him from their respective stations expectantly. He leaned to one side and whispered to the robot standing below. “Why the hell am I sitting here?”

Nash made no attempt to hide their conversation from the others. “All officers outranking you are still out in space or stranded on the planet below.”

“Where’s Shain Agle?”

“Shain Agle was stripped of all command duty. He hasn’t responded to any of our inter-ship hails. He is either unable to, or he is dead. That leaves you in command of Ambition.”

“What about you, Nash? You have centuries more experience than me. Why don’t you plant your metal ass up here?” The robot remained where he was, staring stoically at the main view screen and its image of rapidly advancing Pegan ships. Rastaban sneered at the robot with the scarred side of his face, and smiled with the other at the communications officer. “Looks like I’m all you have to work with, Argus. Call all fighters back home.” He shifted in the chair towards Kalin Aurig at the navigation-helm station. “As soon as the last fighter’s landed, get us out of here.”

“Heading, sir?”

“Does it matter?”

“Indeed it does,” Nash said. “We can’t outrun the Pegan vessels. They’ll be on us in minutes after the fighters return. Ambition’s exterior defensive capabilities have already sustained heavy damage. We couldn’t outgun them even if the ship was operating at a hundred per cent efficiency.”

“Then we’ll have to go into hiding again. How far are we from the closest moon?”

Kalin studied his panel. “We could make it to the far side of Oread at space normal maximum speed in twenty-three minutes.”

Rastaban looked to Nash. “Twenty minutes too long,” the robot said.

Gacrux called out from the propulsion station. “We could attempt a second multiple DMP release.”

“Will it get us hidden behind Oread in time?”

“It could,” the engineer started to answer. “But there’s a better chance we’d be sucked into our own collapse field. I haven’t had much time to run column stability tests since the last faster than light jump.”

Rastaban leaned back into the chair and rubbed the dead side of his face. It was an odd sensation, touching flesh he could no longer feel. The Pegan cruisers were growing on the screen. He rubbed at his cheek harder. “We’re dead if we stay here. Make it happen, Gacrux.”

Chapter 61

Sulafat stared at the hard-looking High Council woman. “I hardly think your people are in any condition to dictate terms. Most of your defensive fighters orbiting above have either been destroyed by Ambition fighters or fled. Your cities may be empty, but they’re continuing to be bombarded with our most powerful weapons.”

“You appear troubled with that,” she replied. “Do you regret the crimes your people have committed here?”

“Of course I’m troubled by it. A small faction of original command officers has been revived and taken control of the ship. I can stop them, there’s still time.” He spoke to Jule, the entire High Council, and his own people. “I never wanted this war. We set out from our system long ago with one objective—to defend ourselves against an alien threat. But we were misled from the very beginning. Tens of thousands of our people lived and died journeying through space believing we were acting in the preservation of our civilization. Our government—our High Council lied to us. They sent us here to steal your resources… to conquer the entire system and wipe all life away.”

Stof Ewer was no longer smiling. “If you are attempting to gain favor with us, you’re doing an awful job of it… or perhaps this is a confession on behalf of your entire species?”

“Yes!” Sulafat nodded. “It is a confession—a confession of ignorance. We can stop this now. Allow me to return to Ambition with my people and we’ll begin setting right all these terrible wrongs.”

Another High Council member spoke out. “How convenient. We keep no hostages, you return to your vessel, and continue the aggression.”

One of the Hunn standing behind Jule leaned forward and communicated with the woman telepathically. Jule nodded and reported to the High Council. “The planetary attack has ended. Four more cities were obliterated, but the remaining alien missiles were destroyed… by Ambition fighters.”

Sulafat sighed an immense breath of relief. Vin grinned at him, hiking one thumb up in a sign of victory. They’d done it—Rastaban Drac, Ma Ades, Nash and all the others—they had taken Ambition back from the Seven.

“It appears this faction of original officers has already been dealt with, Captain,” Stof Ewer said. “Perhaps it isn’t too late to reconsider the fate of your people.”

“It’s a trick,” another Council member said. “They’re attempting to rescue these prisoners by feigning a cease fire. If they are returned to Ambition, the attack will continue.”

Stof Ewer shook his head. “Ambition is no longer a threat. The fleet has retuned from Alderamin. I say we give these people from Earth one last chance.”

“No peace,” Tor Emin lurched towards the ancient Council leader. “We must fulfill… our prime objective.”

More of the brain-washed soldiers were coming to their senses, but none as quickly as the General. Sulafat attempted to pull him back, but Tor knocked the Captain aside. His hands wrapped around Stof Ewer’s scrawny neck and started to squeeze.

“Stop him!” Jule screamed.

One of the female council members produced a confiscated side cannon out from under her robes and pointed it at the General’s head. She fired wildly, the plasma burst missed its intended target by inches and struck into a far wall. Tor pushed Stof Ewer down and grabbed at the woman’s wrist before she could fire a second round.

He took the weapon from her and pointed it at the Captain. “We had them beat… You’ve ruined everything.”

Sulafat raised his hands and attempted to talk Tor down in a soft voice. “We don’t belong in this system, Tor. We never did. The war was a fabrication… a lie.”

Vin began creeping forward. Tor pointed the side cannon at her. “Stay where you are! This is between the Turnback traitor and me.” The gun barrel swung back to Sulafat. “You’re the liar. You were never strong enough to lead us into battle. Men like Admiral Lennix—like my uncle—they’re the real leaders.”

“I saw something in you, Tor,” Sulafat pleaded. “It’s why I promoted you.”

“What you saw was someone willing to finish what we were sent out here to do. I’m finishing it now, Captain, because you can’t.”

Tor shot Sulafat square in the chest. Vin screamed out as the plasma discharge punched into the Captain and exited out through his back. He slumped to his knees, stared uncomprehendingly into Tor’s eyes a few seconds longer, then fell lifelessly to the floor.

Squadron Boss Wez Canis had regained enough of his senses to wrestle the side cannon away from Tor. Two more Ambition soldiers grabbed onto the General’s arms and held him in place. Stof Ewer was helped back to his feet with the help of his council members. He rubbed at the reddened flaps of flesh around his throat. “I was wrong about the Earth people,” he croaked. “They can never be trusted. The Council’s original decision will be carried out. Ambition and her entire crew must be destroyed.”

Vin and Hadar were on their knees next to the fallen Captain. Jule stepped forward and wrapped her arm around Hadar’s shoulders. “The war is over. We will allow one of you to return to your ship to prepare your crew for what is to come.” She waited for a reply. “Do you want to go home, Hadar?”

He twisted free from her. “I don’t have a home anymore. None of us do.”

“I’ll go.” Vin stood and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “They deserve to know what happened here.” She glared at Tor. “They have a right to know what he did before we all die.”

She turned and left the room without saying another word.

Chapter 62

“If they’re still alive down there, I can’t reach them,” Argus said in frustration. “There’s just too much electromagnetic interference in the atmosphere from those damned nukes.”

“Understood,” Rastaban said, knowing full well there wouldn’t be time to retrieve the Captain, Vin, and all the other Ambition soldiers on the planet. The ten Pegan vessels still closing in wouldn’t allow them to mount any kind of last rescue mission. They were on their own. Vin was on her own. He wanted to apologize to her—tell her he was sorry for being such an ass during these final hours. It would’ve been nice to see her face one last time, if only to say goodbye. “Keep trying anyway.”

“I have the coordinates for a low orbit approach to Oread set on automatic,” Kalin Aurig reported. “I’m bringing Ambition around to line us up for the jump.”

The Pegan ships centered on the bridge viewing screen began to drift out of view as Ambition slowly turned away from the planet of Pega. “Keep them on screen,” Rastaban ordered. “They’ll be within firing range any minute, and I want us fully prepared if they take a shot before we jump.”

Argus switched the video feed from the ship’s exterior cameras to a drone in higher orbit above Ambition. The Pegan ships appeared again at the center of the screen. It gave them a top down view of the approaching behemoths. Each was half the size of Ambition, and all of them were bristling with heavy armament. “Choke me with Orion’s belt,” Rastaban gasped. “Just one of those things could tear us to shreds… We never stood a chance.”

Gacrux had left his station and was now standing beside Nash. “Apparently not, but we will be able to slow them down. I have a half a dozen converted video drones loaded in the torpedo bays.”

Rastaban sat up in the chair, feeling hopeful. “Could they create collapse events large enough to destroy all those Pegan ships?”

“I doubt it, unless they charge willingly into the drones’ flight paths.”

“The Pegans will be aware of our tactics by now,” Nash added. “At best the drones will force them to change course, slow their advance enough for us to make the jump.”

Rastaban smacked his hand down onto the chair armrest. “Why are you still standing there, Gacrux? Launch the drones.”

The propulsion chief raced back to his station and punched the codes into his board. Seconds later six tiny points of light appeared on the screen, rushing headlong towards the enemy vessels. A streak of blinding blue laser light shot out from one of the ships, destroying the closest drone before it could collapse in on itself at close range. More lasers were fired from other ships, blasting another pair of drones clean from the cosmos.

“It’s no good,” Gacrux said. “Those last three will never make it close enough to have any effect. They’re just too small and too far away.”

Rastaban was no expert in propulsion physics—it was enough that he knew how to steer a fighter ship—but Gacrux’s last words began to create a simple image in his mind. Too small, too far away. “Direct the remaining droids on a collision course with each other and trigger the collapse events simultaneously.”

The idea couldn’t have been that crazy, Rastaban thought, as Gacrux bent back over his board, inputting the new trajectories. Or perhaps it was because the propulsion chief had no other sane option available. They watched the screen as the Pegan vessels opened fire again. The blue beams sliced through empty space as two of the drones dove in at the one in the middle.

Gacrux waited a fraction of a second longer, allowing the drones to travel another fifty kilometers and merge into a single point of light, before throwing the switch.

***

Vin swore into the mic of her helmet as she powered the fighter up and through the last of Pega’s outer atmosphere. She could see Ambition now through her canopy, but all communication devices available onboard were inoperable. There was no way to talk to them, no way to let Rastaban know she was still alive.

“Breathe, Vin,” she said to herself. “I can’t talk to them, but they can probably see me coming.” Ten blobs of red light suddenly began flashing on the canopy grid. She craned her head up and to the right slightly, and saw a fleet of Pegan ships moving in.

Vin’s heart sank again; she didn’t think it could sink any lower. The war had been lost. The Captain had been murdered before her eyes. She was returning home to die with her family, and now even that was about to be stolen away from her.

“I’ll give them a goodbye to remember,” she muttered. Vin powered the weapons systems to automatic and plunged her small fighter towards the enemy vessels. A barrage of laser fire shot out from the ships as they came within range of Ambition; the lead ship started to turn. At first Vin thought the Pegans had seen her approaching, that they’d mistaken the fighter for something a lot more threatening. But what happened next made her realize Ambition wasn’t as helpless as she appeared.

The lead Pegan ship had almost turned a hundred and eighty degrees to its starboard side when the back end started to stretch away. It was like watching a toy made of plastic exposed to great heat being pulled in two directions. Ambition had begun turning as well, towards the moon of Oread orbiting Pega two hundred thousand kilometers away. It jumped out of sight moments later, leaving Vin’s fighter all alone on a direct course for the Pegan vessels.

The aft section of the lead ship continued to stretch away from the main body. Vin throttled down and pulled back on Nail’s flight controls, fearing she too, would be pulled into whatever collapse event her people had initiated. The Pegan ship wasn’t actually being pulled out of shape, she realized. The massive vessel was sinking into an unfathomably powerful gravity well. Time itself couldn’t escape its grasp. Vin was witnessing the Pegan ship’s final moments as the man-made black hole pulled it from her universe, sucking all matter, living and inorganic, within a twenty-kilometer radius. The people onboard were being crushed, the atoms of their bodies compressing inward. Half a million tons squeezed into a space smaller than a quark in less than three seconds. And smaller still.

Smaller, until nothing.

The stars around Vin flickered, as if a door had suddenly shut. Time and light appeared to snap back into focus as the collapse event ended. The remaining nine Pegan ships had cleared the disturbance, but were in various states of disarray. Some were dangerously close to colliding into others. Vin could only imagine the panic and mass confusion spreading throughout all of them.

Now was the best time for her to get out of there, before they regained control. She punched in the directional coordinates that would take her into orbit around Oread—where she hoped Ambition would be waiting—and engaged the fighter’s fold drive.

Chapter 63

Hail checked the interior temperature indicator on the sleeve of his space suit again. He couldn’t read the Pegan numbers displayed in digitized orange, but the steadily vanishing bars next to them told him more than he needed to know. “What does yours say?”

Kella didn’t bother to look. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” He twisted his body into a more comfortable position—or at least into a less painful one—and Kella shifted with him, their closed visor plates clunking off one another. It was getting colder. The breathable air inside the excavation vehicle cab had run out completely half an hour earlier, forcing them to seal up completely inside the suits. It allowed them more time to live, but Hail only wanted to feel her skin against his. He was tempted to remove their helmets, sacrificing what precious air remained, to die with his lips on hers.

“Are you scared?” She asked.

“Yes. Scared… and sad.”

“Me too.” Kella yawned.

Hail knew she wasn’t tired, she was trying to pull more oxygen into her lungs from the almost empty tank. “I wish we’d spent more time together back on Ambition.”

Kella hugged him tighter. “Everyone regrets something near the end. Be happy that we had these last few days together.”

Hail rubbed frost from the window and looked into the big rear view mirror attached to the passenger door’s exterior. Half a dozen mechanical beings crawling on multiple legs were approaching fast in the deep tire tracks Kella had left behind. “Uuh… not sure you want to hear this right now, but—”

“I see them.” She replied sluggishly. Her gaze drifted away from the mirror and looked up into the stars. “Looks like this is it, kid. Let’s hope they make it quick.” A point of moving light caught her waning attention. “There was an old saying back on Earth… wish upon a shooting star.”

“Never heard it before.” One of the mechanisms had jumped from the moon’s surface and attached itself to the back of the vehicle. It dug into one side of the metal haul bed and began crawling towards them. Hail squeezed Kella into him and looked away from the mirror. “And I don’t think it would do us much good now anyway.”

“Up there, Hail,” she lifted an arm slowly and pointed out through the front window. “I see a shooting star.”

Hail saw it a moment later, streaking across the black horizon. “That’s no shooting star, it’s a ship!” He maneuvered an arm underneath her and searched for the seal release of his alien pressure suit. Cold blasted against Hail’s chest as he dug a hand inside and searched for the beacon unit he’d retrieved from Bee. He pulled it out, and a steady green light filled the cabin. “It’s one of ours!”

“They’re not… receiving our signal.” Kella pushed away from him and crawled back over the gearshifts into the driver’s seat with the last of her remaining strength. “Gotta let them know… we’re here.”

Metal claws ripped into the passenger door, shaking the entire cabin. A second crawling mechanism jumped onto the roof, squishing the ceiling down six inches. Hail slouched over and shimmied away from the door. “It’s no use, they didn’t see us.”

“I’ll make them see.” Kella pounded at a button on the control panel.

Hail stared out the passenger window helplessly and watched the alien mechanism draw one of its arms back to smash through the thick glass. Bright orange light fired up all around it as the excavation vehicle’s second missile rocket activated. The missile shot forward, incinerating the multi-limbed robot in its wake.

There was no way to control the missile’s flight path. It streaked ahead and slightly up, covering two kilometers of open space before plunging into the top of one of the excavated mountains of rock.

“Too late,” Hail said after the flash of light died down. “They’re gone.”

Claws tore through the roof and began peeling metal away. More appeared directly in front of them, climbing up onto the hood, headed for the glass shield. Kella reached for the door handle and jumped back when something slammed into it. A massive dome-shaped head appeared moments later, flooding the cabin interior with probing red light.

She grabbed onto Hail’s hand and squeezed without saying a word. There wouldn’t be time to say goodbye. The roof had been completely ripped away, the claws reached down. A flash of light blinded Kella and Hail. A single metal arm dropped down into the gear shifts between them, still glowing orange and smoking at the end where it had suddenly detached from the rest of its body. Two more flashes streaked across the vehicle’s hood, blasting the mechanical creatures away from the glass shield.

“They came back!” Kella yelled triumphantly.

Hail looked out the side window and saw an Ambition fighter hovering less than six meters from the ground. It began a slow sideways sweep to the front of the vehicle, blasting the remaining mechanisms away. The driver’s side window shattered outwards—the last of the automatons reached for Kella’s leg. The fighter shot its head off, dropping the powerless body halfway through the frame.

The ship fired its landing thrusters and settled to the rocky surface in a cloud of swirling dust. Hail clunked his helmet visor against Kella’s. “We made it. We’re going home.”

“Never once… doubted it.”

The oxygen left in their tanks was almost gone. Getting to the fighter less than ten meters away would be the greatest challenge yet. Hail’s limbs ached as he dragged her from the vehicle. They spilled down onto the ground and began crawling. He looked ahead and saw the weapons canopy open. Kella collapsed fully into the dirt. “Don’t you quit on me now.” He grabbed onto the fabric at the back of her suit and pulled.

They made it to the fighter. Hail lifted Kella one last time and placed her hand on the bottom rung of the turret ladder. Her fingers wrapped around the metal and she pulled. Hail bent down, placed one shoulder into her rear-end, and pushed. What would’ve taken less than ten seconds under normal circumstances, stretched out into a full minute of life-sapping struggle. By the time they’d both made it all the way in, Hail no longer had the strength to even close the canopy.

It dropped down automatically and sealed. Pressurization lights flashed red, orange, and finally green. Hail could hear the rush of oxygen outside his helmet as a breathable atmosphere was re-established. He removed his helmet and gasped in deeply. Kella’s shaking hands couldn’t find the release switch for hers. Hail did it for her, and pulled the helmet free.

A voice was calling to them through the cabin speakers. “—are in possession of an Ambition fighter homing beacon. You have three seconds to identify yourselves, or I’m going to release that canopy again.”

“It’s Hail Vela! Hail and Kella Sa from Bee!”

“We thought we’d lost you two. You’re a little ways off from where you’re supposed to be.”

“Vin Vir?” Kella was gasping in the air. “Is that you? What’s a science tech doing in the pilot seat of a fighter?”

“Long story. How did the two of you get here?”

“That’s an even longer story,” Hail answered. “Take us home and we’ll tell you all about it.”

There was a pause before Vin responded. “You’ll have to tell me along the way.” The fighter lifted off from Oread. “I don’t think we’re going to have a home much longer.”

Chapter 64

“They’ve found us,” Kalin reported from his station. “Nine of the ten Pegan vessels have just appeared on the sensors.”

Rastaban sneered at the young officer. “Location and range.”

“On the other side of Oread, facing the planet. They’re picking up speed and will intercept us in less than four minutes.”

Rastaban spun in his chair and faced Gacrux. “How soon can you make another faster than light jump?”

The propulsion chief shook his head. “There won’t be any more jumps. We’ve just completed the first round of diagnostics on the collapse chamber. There’s a definite crack on level three, section twelve. If we try forcing even one DMP through, a collapse event will occur before it clears the column.”

“How long before you can fix it?”

Gacrux raised his eyebrows and looked to Nash. The robot answered for him. “It will require weeks to complete the testing, and months to effect repairs. Depending on the breach severity, it could take more than a year before we can make the jump into fold space again.”

Rastaban’s fingers were rubbing at the dead skin on his face. “Do we have any more video drones to throw at them?”

“Less than a dozen left, but none yet rigged to implode,” Gacrux replied. “My brother and his crew report the first three will be available to launch in another hour.”

“Ambition doesn’t have an hour,” Rastaban said. “We have three and a half minutes.”

Argus Cor joined in on the discussion. “What about the rest of our nukes?”

“Slower and less manoeuvrable than the drones,” Gacrux answered. “The Pegans would pick them off before they could get close enough to do any appreciable damage.”

Rastaban held onto Argus’s suggestion. “We could launch them anyway—distract those ships long enough to make another run.”

“We wouldn’t get very far at space normal speed,” Nash said. “I suggest we power down altogether and surrender.”

Rastaban waved the idea away. “The Captain tried that once already. The Pegans didn’t fall for it.”

Nine distant lights appeared on the view screen above the edge of Oread’s cratered surface. No more options were offered. The bridge fell silent.

A light blinked on Argus’s communication panel. “We have another contact.” She adjusted her controls and brought the signal through her headset. “It’s Vin Vir! She’s piloting Nail home!”

Rastaban rose up from the command chair, his chest pounding. “Put her through on the main speakers!”

There was a blast of static, and then her voice sounded throughout the bridge. “Looks like you have your hands full, Ambition. Any chance of opening a door and letting us slip in?”

“Vin…” Rastaban staggered down the dais steps, his eyes glued to the screen. The image changed from the Pegan vessels to that of the lone fighter streaking through space. “You don’t know how good it is to hear your voice again.”

“Ras? You’re in command of Ambition?”

“Admiral Lennix and his people have been deposed. I was next in line. What about you? What happened down on Pega? Where’s the Captain?”

“Captain Sulafat is dead. General Emin murdered him in cold blood.”

Argus gasped somewhere behind Rastaban. The acting commander lowered his head and closed his eyes. “Understood… And the rest of the landing party—did you find Hadar Cen?”

“Hadar is alive. We lost a lot of the soldiers sent down to get him. They’re not going to give us a third chance, Ras. We’ll have to try something really desperate now if we want to survive.”

“We’ve been living on desperation our entire lives, these last few hours especially. There’s nothing left for us to try.”

“Don’t give up so easily, Captain Drac.”

Rastaban knew his friend well. He didn’t need to see her face to know she was smiling. He heard something in the tone of her voice the others couldn’t. “What’ve you got for me, Vin?”

“Not what—who. I have a couple of stowaways riding along in the weapons turret. Let us in and we’ll explain everything.”

Chapter 65

“I don’t care if there’s an underground city in the center of that damn moon,” Hal Gulum snapped. “You’re suffering from the effects of first stage hypothermia and near asphyxiation. You should be back in bed at Medical—not risking your health any further up here on the bridge.”

“There won’t be a medical section much longer if we don’t act fast, doctor,” Kella countered. She was sprawled out uncomfortably on the weapons section chair, having the wound in her side treated.

Hail was down on one knee next to her, holding the young woman’s hand. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Yeah, she’ll be fine,” Hal grumbled. “But she isn’t doing her recovery time any favors. I’ll see her strapped to a bed for at least a week when this is over.” He glared at Hail. “The same goes for you.”

Rastaban and Vin were standing a few feet away at the base of the command dais. Drac’s hand was still wrapped around her waist, unwilling to let his closest friend slip away again. “Finish your job here, doctor, and I promise to have them strapped in bed for a month. Until then Kella and Hail are remaining on the bridge until we figure a way out of this.”

“I’m picking up multiple energy signatures from under the moon’s surface,” Gacrux called out. “They’re faint, but something is definitely there.”

Nash was standing over him, reading from a separate display. “Oread is the densest of all planetary bodies in this system. It would’ve been no easy task carving out such a substantial area to place a city, but with that much lead and nickel in the rock, it definitely makes for the most undetectable and hidden of locations.”

Rastaban finally let go of Vin. He climbed the dais steps and sank reluctantly back into the command chair. “Then we’ll offer the Pegan ships a choice; back off and let us leave the system, or watch as we pound the city below with our remaining nukes.”

“You’d better reach out to them quickly,” Kalin said. “The lead ship has just opened fire.”

All eyes went to the main screen where a growing orange globe of concentrated plasma had suddenly appeared. “Hard to port!” Rastaban yelled. “Fire all starboard cannons!”

Ambition’s heavy exterior guns swung as the ship turned and released a simultaneous barrage of concentrated lasers and octogen-tipped missiles. A few found their target, and struck into the heart of the alien explosive, blasting it into a thousand balls of glowing energy.

The smaller plasma globes rained into Ambition’s aft section, sending multiple shudders throughout the ship. Rastaban clutched at the arms of his chair as fellow crew members were thrown hard to the bridge floor. “Why aren’t the Sol-damned shields up?”

“Power for the deflection screens are siphoned automatically from the fold drive,” Gacrux shouted back. “With fold inoperable, the shields operate at less than half maximum capacity. It’s why we sustained such heavy damage during our first encounter with the Pegans.”

And it was the main reason Ambition would be destroyed that much quicker now, Rastaban thought. Their ancient ancestors had refitted the mining vessel into a war vessel, but had neglected to equip it with sufficient defensive properties capable of staving off a direct attack. The deflection screens protected them from meteor strikes and radiation during long periods of travel; Ambition’s thick outer hulls were her crew’s primary protection in battle.

“Drop a nuke onto the moon,” he commanded. “Give them a taste of what will happen if they don’t back off.”

“It would be a waste of our remaining resources,” Nash said. “There’s almost a full kilometer of heavy rock protecting the city underneath. A nuclear detonation on Oread’s surface would barely be felt that far below.”

The Pegan ships had begun to spread out, surrounding them on all sides. A red beam shot down from one and began slicing into Ambition’s exterior. A second laser pierced up into the ship’s belly. “They’re going to cut us into two pieces!” Gacrux announced. A continuous shake was building under their feet; they could hear the growing rumble of two-meter thick hull plating being ripped apart.

“Concentrate all fire on the one above our port side!” Rastaban swivelled the chair to face Kalin at the helm. “Cut all power to the orbital thrusters and let us drop on top of the ship below.”

Oread’s gravity grabbed onto Ambition and began pulling her down. The continuous discharge of missiles and lasers from the upper aft bays pushed the ship towards Oread’s surface even faster.

“The ship below has cut off its attack!” Kalin yelled triumphantly. “They’re pulling away to avoid collision.”

“The vessel above has sustained heavy damage,” Nash announced much more calmly. “They’re drawing back as well.”

The shuddering and rumbling ceased. Ambition steadied. Vin grinned up at her friend in the command chair. “It looks like you’re fitting into this new role rather well.”

“Fear’s an excellent instructor.”

Nash assisted Vin back to her feet. “We’re still being pulled in. If we don’t engage thrusters, the ship will collide into the moon’s surface in less than one minute.”

Rastaban leaned back and stared at the screen. Oread’s black mountains and deep craters were growing in size. He had done all he could. The Pegan ships would reorganize and resume their attack as soon as Ambition tried climbing back up into a controlled orbit. Why give them that satisfaction? “Let us drop then,” he finally said. “Let it end here, by our own hand.”

“Captain Drac,” Nash spoke again. “You’re forgetting Ambition’s fold drive.”

Rastaban looked down at him uncomprehendingly. “The fold drive is inoperable.”

“As a means of transport, yes. But there isn’t much holding the collapse chamber together in its present state. If half a dozen or more DMPs were forced through the column now…”

Gacrux finished for him. “It would create a collapse event much larger than anything the video drones were capable of producing.”

“How much larger?”

“Enough to pull in those ships and tear most of Oread apart.”

“It would kill all of us,” Vin said quietly. “And all the people living below.”

“That’s a decision we’ll let the Pegans make.” Rastaban called over his shoulder to Argus. “Open all lines to those ships. I want to inform them what will happen if they take one more shot at us.”

Chapter 66

The Pegans had drawn a net around and over the low-orbiting Ambition. Any one of them could destroy the crippled Sol ship with a single shot at such close range, but none attempted it.

Captain Rastaban Drac had issued a final ultimatum; unless all offensive actions against Ambition ended, the moon and its buried city of over a hundred million Pegan citizens would be sucked into a collapse event.

The attack had ended.

Rastaban chose to remain seated when visual contact was finally established. He turned his head slightly, revealing fully the purple scarred side of his face to the Pegan on screen. “There is no need for our two civilizations to end first contact this way,” Rastaban spoke in a low, menacing tone. Let the voice match the face. Don’t show fear. Inspire it. “You have us surrounded and outgunned. We are beaten and cornered. Do not force me to destroy the lives inside that moon. Return our people from the planet, and we will leave your system, never to return.”

Vin had informed him the Pegans were human, or at least a lot more human in appearance than the grey beings they’d passed themselves off for earlier in the conflict. Rastaban could read the face before him as the translation was made. The bushy eyebrows furrowed together, and the lines on his sweaty forehead deepened as he absorbed every word. His bottom lip protruded. He winced painfully and wiped at one eye. The Pegan ship’s bridge was filled with smoke. Ambition had inflicted heavier damage than Rastaban first believed.

“He looks confused,” Hal Gulum whispered. The doctor had remained on the bridge with Hail and the recovering Kella. “I get the feeling he isn’t in charge of things here.”

The view screen suddenly went black. The communication had been cut.

“Get him back up there,” Rastaban demanded. “Don’t let them take control of the situation again.”

“A second communication is cutting in,” Argus reported, “from the planet of Pega.”

Jule Adeen’s beautiful face appeared onscreen. “We agree to your terms, Ambition. An escort of four Pegan ships will see you to the outer edge of our system.”

“No escorts,” Rastaban snapped back. “We go alone—once all of our people are safely returned.”

The Pegan woman conferred with a small man dressed in red off to the side. She nodded after a few moments and spoke to Rastaban once again. “No escorts, but your people will remain here as hostages.” Jule paused, pulling at her bottom lip with her teeth. “Do not push us on this. The decision is final.”

Rastaban leaned back and studied the weary faces gathered around him. They were frightened. They were beaten. They were filled with despair.

But they were alive.

“On behalf of Ambition and her crew, I accept your terms. We will begin—”

“Wait!” Vin climbed up the dais steps and stood defiantly in front of her friend. “Return the body of our Captain—send Ly Sulafat home to us for a proper interment.”

The screen went black again.

Rastaban lunged up out of the chair and spun her around. “Damn it, Vin, what the hell was that? I made an agreement with them—I’d saved our lives! You’ve put everything back into jeopardy.”

“I won’t leave him behind like this… I can’t.”

A familiar voice sounded over the speakers. “You don’t have a choice, young lady.” Captain Sulafat was on the screen now. He appeared pale and weak, but very much alive, due undoubtedly to the mechanical device attached tightly around his chest and back. Jule Adeen was supporting him up on one side, Hadar Cen at the other. “It seems as though the Pegans have found me far more useful alive than dead.” The entire Ambition bridge crew was standing now, hanging on to every word from their resurrected Captain. “Emin’s side cannon blast passed through my chest, just inches above my heart.” He glanced down. “This… thing brought me back.”

“We call them healing braces,” Jule said. “It will rebuild your Captain’s damaged tissues and replenish all the lost blood. Six hours from now there won’t even be a scar.”

“Incredible,” Hal Gulum gasped. “Absolutely incredible.”

“I agree, Doctor.” Sulafat winked. “You could learn a lot from Pegan medical sciences.”

“Captain!” Vin could no longer contain her joy. “Come back to us! Come back and take us home.”

Sulafat shook his head. “I’m sorry, Vin. We’ve been negotiating terms down here as well. I’ve agreed to remain on Pega with the others. You will assume command of Ambition and take our family back to Earth.”

“Rastaban,” she choked the name out. “Rastaban has kept your ship together, sir… He should be her new leader.”

“Very well. Rastaban Drac… please step forward and raise your right hand.” Ly Sulafat swore the man in as Ambition’s thirty-first Captain. The other bridge officers closed in around him, silently offering their support and loyalty.

A few more rushed farewells were granted to the men and women that would remain behind in the alien star system the rest of their lives. Sulafat’s sad smiling face appeared last, his final words saved for the closest friend he’d ever known. “I know I’ve said this already, but it has been an honor serving with you, Nash.”

“And again, sir, the honor has been all mine. Take care of yourself and our people.”

The smile dropped suddenly from Captain Sulafat’s face. “We will see you on the flip side.”

Nash’s head tilted to one side. The main view screen’s image transitioned to a wide angle shot of deep space.

“The war is over,” Captain Drac announced. “Set a course for the Sol system, Kalin.”

“Course laid in, sir. Firing thrusters and breaking orbit.”

Rastaban turned his chair around. “Begin repairs on the fold drive, Gacrux. Let’s see if we can shave a few centuries off the return trip.”

“Right away, Captain.”

Vin was still standing on the platform next to him, motionless, silent. Rastaban took a hold of her hand. “I wish we could’ve brought him home.” He squeezed her fingers. “He’s alive, Vin. It’ll have to do.”

“Yeah… I suppose it will.” She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “At least my pompous, arrogant, self-centered friend has finally returned. I have a feeling command is going to suit you very well.”

Rastaban half-smiled, half-sneered back at her. “Is that any way for the new CS to address her Captain? Get the rest of these people to work, Vir. I want to see Earth before I die of old age.”

Nash remained standing in place a few minutes longer, his head still tilted to one side, considering Ly Sulafat’s final words.

Ambition started her long journey home.

Chapter 67

One week later

Too many lives had been lost to hold individual services. Captain Drac had arranged a single group ceremony in fighter garage 2 that more than six thousand crew members attended. Vin Vir stood above them all on the wing of a fighter and called out the names, starting from the highest-ranking officers—Sheratan Ries, Shain Agle, Geth Cules—all the way down to miluns Mosa Cyon, Betel Iham, and service mechanics Turus Scella, and Aten Cet.

But it didn’t end with the names of the dead being remembered. There were others still living that needed to be put to rest.

The following day

“We’ll be ready for the first faster than light jump in approximately eleven months,” Gacrux said as he and his brother accompanied the Captain throughout the dark corridors of the sciences section.

“Good to hear,” Rastaban replied. “You’ve cut a substantial amount of time from the original estimates.”

Ambition’s return trip home had barely begun. The battered ship was still traveling well within 51 Pegasi’s inner system somewhere between the orbits of the fourth and fifth planets. The sixth and final planet, Taranis, lay another four billion kilometers beyond their present location. It would be many more long months spent limping at space-normal speed before the mustard-colored bands of that gas giant’s atmosphere came into view with the naked eye.

“Reinforcing the damaged section of shaft on level three with a secondary column was what sped the entire process up,” Becrux added proudly. “I came up with that myself.”

Gacrux shot his twin an annoyed glance. “It doesn’t fix the original problem, but it’ll allow us to begin jumping while we continue work on the stabilization of DMP stacking.”

“Good, keep up the great work,” Rastaban mumbled without looking at either of them. “Any sign of Seginus Boo and our missing shuttle?”

“Nothing but silence,” Gacrux reported. “He could be well beyond the star system now with an operable fold-drive.”

“For all the good it’ll do him,” Becrux said. “He’ll be dead in six months once the shuttle’s emergency supplies run out.”

The Captain scowled. “No loss… It was a pity to lose Exodus, though.”

Gacrux was walking on the Captain’s ‘good’ side. He tried to avoid the scarred side whenever possible. It was unreadable, a permanent purple mask. “You seem a little distracted, Ras.”

They came to a stop at the entrance of the cryonics labs. “Can you blame me? The people waiting behind this door are war criminals… One of them is my distant relative.”

“We’re not putting them to death,” Gacrux said. “They’ll answer for those crimes some day.”

“There are still plenty of crew members that believe they were right—that their actions were justified. I was one of them until a short time ago.” Rastaban glared directly at Becrux for the first time. “I’m not asking for anyone’s forgiveness, and I sure as hell won’t apologize for doing what I know was right in the end. The best any of us can hope for now is to bury the past away again. Let some future generation deal with them.”

The door slid open and the three men joined up with the other section heads already waiting inside. They were milling about uncomfortably, speaking to one another in hushed voices. CS Vir stepped away from the observation window. “Dr. Gulum and his assistants finished the drug-induced paralysis process ten minutes ago. Their bodies will remain completely immobilized, but they’ll be conscious during the freezing.”

“Thank you, Vin.” Rastaban looked through the glass at the raised canisters. Seven sets of unblinking eyes stared back at him. The faces were expressionless, but their eyes were filled with fear. Chort Leo was laying in the third canister from the left, his eyes conveyed the most fear of them all.

I was with him not that long ago, Rastaban thought. I wanted to have them all brought back.

His eyes settled on the Admiral last. He didn’t appear as frightened as the others. There was much more going on behind Neil Lennix’s dark stare; contempt, hate… disappointment.

Rastaban turned away. “Will they be able to hear me announce the Baker’s Dozen decision?”

Vin nodded. “Loud and clear.” She clicked a button located on the wall console.

The Captain cleared his throat. “To the original command officers of Ambition—to the representatives of Ganymede Unlimited, Phoebus Mining, and Kuiper Belt Power… and to Chort Leo, son of Algen and Media.” He paused and reached for Vin’s hand. “This is not a sentencing. There has been no trial, no rulings of innocence or guilt. Your fate rests in the hands of whatever governing body awaits us back on Earth. Until then, you will remain frozen during the entirety of our long voyage home.”

Rastaban took a step back from the window. There were no goodbyes, no apologies. He nodded at Vin to end the communication. “Freeze them and lock this place down.”

Doctor Gulum initiated the process. The canister windows began to frost over, hiding the terrified eyes within. Rastaban left the room before it was over.

Chapter 68

Eight months later

“Nova Sa-Vela!” Kella announced proudly. “It works for either a boy or girl.”

Hail pushed his plate away and took a sip of wine. “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

“What’s there to think about? Nova—new, a new life born in the stars.”

“I knew a kid back in school called Nova. He used to bully me.”

Kella stood from the table and blew out the candle. “Our child won’t be a bully.” She started clearing the table. “If you have any better star names, share them now.”

Hail gathered the dishes and followed her into their tiny kitchen. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought… maybe we should go with something more Terran.”

“We’re not back on Earth yet.”

He set the plates in the sink and wrapped his arms around her. The little bulge of her stomach settled against him. “But he or she will live on Earth. What about Adam?”

Kella giggled and rolled her eyes. “And Eve if it’s a girl? Come on, kid, we can be more original than that.”

He kissed her. “Dinner was wonderful, very romantic.”

She ran a finger softly down the side of his cheek. “It beats riding together in the back of excavation trucks and squatting over toilets.” Kella tapped thoughtfully on the tip of his chin. “Adam does have a nice sound. I like it.”

“And if it’s a girl?”

“Nova, and that’s final. Hopefully she won’t pick on you too much.”

***

“You’re a cheater,” Rastaban snarled.

Nash responded dispassionately to the accusation. “Robots do not cheat.”

Vin flopped her cards on the table. “I don’t know about any of that, but one thing’s for sure, he’s a better card player than me.”

“I’ve had more than six centuries of experience… I’m better than anyone.”

“You’re a cheater and a braggart.” Captain Drac rapped his knuckles impatiently on the table. “Give me another card.”

“Okay, Ras, enough is enough.” Ma tossed her cards on top of Vin’s, and emptied the remains of their whiskey bottle into the three glasses. She glanced at the clock behind the bar. “It’s after four in the morning. That’s way too late, even for a dump like this.”

“We haven’t completed the last hand,” Nash said as the others downed their drinks.

Ma rubbed her eyes. “Then take your cards with you and finish the game tomorrow. It’s bed time for the rest of us mortals.” A whistle sounded somewhere behind them. “Are you kidding me? Who the hell’s calling at this hour?”

Vin leaned back in her chair and groaned. “It’s that new night-shift bridge crew we’re training. Ras has them so wound up, they’re afraid to cough without permission.”

Black Hole’s proprietor went behind the bar and checked her communication console beneath the counter. “It’s the kids upstairs, alright. They want to speak to you, Captain.”

“Pipe it through down here, Ma,” Rastaban said, stifling a yawn.

A timid sounding voice began speaking. “Sorry for disturbing you, sir, but we’ve received a message from deep space.”

“A message, Atria?” Rastaban raised an eyebrow. Had the young woman fallen asleep at the communications station?

“Yes. It’s set on repeat, and it’s definitely meant for us.”

“From Pega?”

“No, Captain… it’s from… well I don’t know exactly how to explain it.”

“Let’s hear it.”

There was a pause, a second of crackle, and then a male voice began speaking through a background wash of soft static. “To Captain Shain Agle of the Sol Ship Ambition—” a second blast of crackling interference cut off the next few words. “—Edmund, commander of the warship Retribution. Your distress call has been received. We are on the—”

A third round of blaring static sounded, and the message suddenly ended.

“Do you want me to play it again, Captain?” The young bridge officer asked.

“No,” Rastaban answered. “That won’t be necessary.”

Vin was staring at him across the table, her mouth hanging open. Nash laid his winning hand down on the rest of the cards.

Ma reached under the counter for another bottle.

Thank you for reading AMBITION, the first book of my Long Haul trilogy. I would love to hear your thoughts. If possible, please try and leave a review. It means a lot to authors!

The story continues in RETRIBUTION, available in March 2017.

Other Books by Geoff North:

Thawed (CRYERS Book 1)

Horror (CRYERS Book 2)

Lawmen (CRYERS Book 3)

Live it Again

Make Believe

Children of Extinction

Conspiracy Hotel

Out of Time

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Please visit my website at www.geoffnorth.com to see what else I’ve been up to.