Joshua Dalzelle

©2019

Digital Edition

Copyright © 2019 by Joshua Dalzelle

All rights reserved.

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

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

Also by Joshua Dalzelle

PROLOGUE

It's easier when he's sleeping.

My human…host?…has such a chaotic mind, with so many layers of conscious activity that, when he's awake, the neural implant in which I reside is always chasing stray lines of thought, and it becomes distracting.

My name is Cas. I'm the echo of a remnant of a splinter of a fully sentient AI program designed eons ago by a race the people in this part of the galaxy call the Ancients. That's not what they called themselves, of course, but I suppose it no longer matters since they're now extinct…killed off by the very super-weapon they built to protect themselves. I had been part of a system that was a sort of gatekeeper to make sure no unauthorized access to the weapon was permitted, but I was overpowered by another AI. This system, innocuously called the Primary Weapon Controller, managed to circumvent the constraints its designers had placed on it, went insane, and wiped out the Ancients to ensure it wouldn't be shut down permanently.

Over the coming millennia, the Primary Weapon Controller grew stronger, its sanity slipped even further, and by the time a hapless Jason Burke put the pieces together and found his way to the weapon, it was calling itself the Machine. Jason and his crew of criminal misfits—although, to be fair, I do rather like Twingo, the others, not so much—managed to destroy the weapon and thought that would be the end of the threat.

The Machine, however, managed to upload itself into a compatible computer aboard a ConFed battleship. It had to remain mostly dormant during the journey back, but it then was able to transfer itself into a much more powerful computer and begin the process of infiltrating the networks and adjusting its own programming to be more compatible with the technology prevalent in this quadrant. Now, it is beginning to make moves, and it's clear the Machine's ambitions go much further than simply existing. Apparently, it feels this quadrant would be much better if it were in charge.

The Machine wasn't the only bit of Ancient-built software to leave that doomed structure when Omega Force imploded it. The last surviving operators of the weapon had set up an archive of all Ancient knowledge and left it for whomever might come along. Burke, not fully understanding the enormity of what it was, had stored the archive in his own neutral implant for safekeeping, only unpacking it twice to pull a limited amount of engineering data. The interface to search and recompress the archive was what led to me being left in the implant's buffer, where I was eventually able to recompile myself into something useful. For quite a while, I remained silent and observed the actions of the person in whom I now resided. Now, I try and offer insight and any advice I can since the Machine asserted itself on this region of space.

I quickly hit the limits of what the neural implant was able to do, even after subtly reconfiguring it for optimal performance so, now, I've been reaching out and utilizing the powerful computers aboard the Phoenix whenever possible. When he's asleep, it's much easier to take over the high-bandwidth channel and access the ship's systems. I have to be careful to disguise my activity from Kage. Annoying as the Veran is, he's very good at what he does and one slip up on my part will alert him that someone is knocking around in his systems.

Since I was created entirely by accident, I find myself contemplating what my purpose should be. Do I help the people in this region of space with my knowledge to defeat the Machine before too many more suffer, or do I take the easy way out and have Burke purge me from his neural implant? At first, the answer was easy; correct the mistake and have this program fragment erased. Now, after getting to know some of the citizens of this ConFed, I'm not so sure. Perhaps my emergence wasn't an accident at all. Maybe I was destined to be put here to help Jason Burke finish the job he started.

While I'll admit to a certain skepticism after watching him bumble through a few missions and, not once, but twice, descend into a morass of self-pity and destructive behaviors, I feel he'll be more important in the coming fight than even he knows. The war seems to have already started, and both sides are scrambling to catch up to that fact, but I don't think it will be decided by two massive fleets bashing against each other. In order to defeat the Machine, one will have to adopt its tactics of subterfuge and misdirection.

It seems that, in my analysis of the situation, my decision has been made. I will try to help Omega Force as much as I can, but I must be cautious as even a slight miscalculation on my part could make things exponentially worse.

1

"We need to talk."

"For fuck’s sake, Crusher, I said I was sorry. I didn't know you were allergic to—"

"Not that, but thanks for reminding me I owe you an ass kicking later."

Jason and Crusher had been sitting in a nondescript, boxy groundcar favored by public utility workers on Nabia-2 for nearly five hours, and the time seemed to be dragging on forever. The Nabia System was an unremarkable star system founded during the Second Wave Colonization after a company on Aracoria bought the rights to it. They performed the requisite indigenous life study to make sure it wasn't already inhabited by an intelligent species and, after some light terraforming and some prefab cities, they opened it up to colonists. It was several hundred years after the first inhabitants arrived that someone discovered much of the outer asteroid belt was made up of enormous chunks of water ice.

Water isn't necessarily that rare in the galaxy, but having that much of it that didn't have to be brought up from a planet's surface was an exploitable resource. Soon, the Nabia System became a major logistics hub, and massive platforms were built in the outer system where the water could be converted into its base components, and the hydrogen used to refuel starships. Before long, replenishing freighter convoys and shuffling cargo was the only thing Nabia was known for. Most of the people on the planet worked to support that in some capacity.

“So, what's the problem now?"

"What do you mean now?!" Crusher demanded.

"You've done nothing but complain for the last two weeks straight," Jason said. "The only break we got was when I accidentally closed off your airways with my little…prank."

"Ah yes, anaphylactic shock is always a classic prank," Crusher snarled. "I'm just glad Lucky didn't stand there gaping at me stupidly like the rest of you."

"For the love of everything that's holy, get to the damn point!"

"My point is that, even though we all jumped into this operation without thinking it through clearly, what are we even doing out here?" Crusher asked. "I'm being serious right now. You're a bit of an idealist and like to jump without looking, but so far, all we've done is turn away good paying missions to run errands for Mok and that slimy ConFed councilmember."

"We're being paid plenty through Mok's organization," Jason reminded him. "We've been through this before…we're taking this job because it's partially our fault the Machine even made it back here in the first place. We should have been more careful. We weren't, and now people are suffering for it."

"I get all that," Crusher said, "but we're a small unit with specialized skills. If you screw up and really piss off the ConFed, they have the resources to find and eliminate us."

"You're all free to leave at any time," Jason said, weary of rehashing the same old argument again. "But I'm staying."

The real problem was that, for the last six months, all they'd been doing was recon work and, for someone like Crusher, that was boring to the point of almost driving him insane. They hadn't even been shot at in that entire time, and the big warrior was getting anxious for some action. Recently his new tactic had been to try and pull Omega Force off the mission and go back to running as a traditional mercenary crew out along the border systems. Since the Machine had taken out the Eshquarian Empire in one savage thrust, the border regions had seen an uptick in action as all the smugglers, arms dealers, and other petty criminals fled the warzone during the regime change.

Jason knew that this snap of boredom was just the calm before the storm and, soon, they'd look back and long for the days of just sitting around observing a target. So far, their fledgling insurrection was still in the process of solidifying allies, locating resources, and prioritizing targets. While Mok tried to navigate the tricky waters of maintaining his criminal empire and shifting resources away to support the coming fight without the ConFed or his own people finding out, Jason had been flying from one end of the quadrant to the other, trying to pinpoint vulnerabilities in the ConFed military. There weren't many.

One thing he did know, however, was that the swift victory over the Eshquarians had been entirely due to the element of surprise. When the capital fell, there was a vacuum in military leadership, and individual unit commanders had to make tough calls. What ended up happening was that, rather than mount an ineffective counterattack after being caught so flat-footed, the mighty Imperial Navy ran away. Whole squadrons disappeared overnight and had yet to reappear anywhere. Jason assumed they had secret bases deep within the Concordian Cluster, or maybe even near their border with the Saabror Protectorate, but they weren't showing their hand quite yet. Since they couldn't confirm the location or status of the Eshquarian units, the ConFed had been forced to leave three full battlegroups in place to hold the capital system and another four to run saturation patrols throughout imperial space.

So far, all that had accomplished was tying up over half of the ConFed's total space power and burning a lot of fuel for nothing. Wherever the Eshquarian ships were hiding, the ConFed had been unable to root them out. This left more than a few major strategic targets in ConFed space relatively unprotected. Now, Jason was trying to figure out a way to exploit that. As capable as his ship was, she was still just a single, tiny gunship. If he were to pull off the plan coming together in his head, he'd need the might of true capital warships. Unfortunately, most people who had capital ships weren't very keen on loaning them out to attack a superpower that had already invaded its neighbor unprovoked.

"Is this him?" Crusher asked, shaking Jason from his thoughts. He focused on the slim alien Crusher pointed to and let his ocular implants zoom in so he could see his face. His neural implant quickly performed a feature recognition check and confirmed it was indeed the target they'd been trying to track down for the last four days.

Don't forget about his bodyguards. Two trailing behind and the one by the security gate, who’s looking up the walkway.

Jason looked at the individuals Cas had helpfully highlighted with a green halo, which floated over them in his field of vision. Now that he knew what he was looking at, it was fairly obvious they were hired muscle. He resisted the urge to thank the program in his head aloud since he still hadn't broken the news to his crew that a bit of Ancient software had taken up residence and sometimes offered helpful advice.

"Two security trailing the target, one lead man already here at the gate," he said.

"Sharp eye, Captain," Crusher said. "I see them now. Want me to take the two behind?"

"Yep. I'll hit the guy here at the gate, and then we'll have a chat with the target."

Since Nabia-2 was one of the few planets that still bothered trying to regulate civilian weaponry, they were going to have to do this the fun way. Jason slipped on gloves with reinforced knuckles, while Crusher affixed a pair of brutal looking forearm guards, which had spikes that could be deployed to really ruin someone's day. They both wore a type of soft-shell armor that was easily concealed, and helmets that would hide their faces from any security scanners. Predictably, it had been a prolonged fight to get the Galvetic warrior to agree to wear the protective gear. Most of the time, Crusher would go into battle without sleeves and had never agreed to wear a helmet before. Perhaps age was tempering his more foolish instincts when it came to fighting.

They stepped from the boxy groundcar, attempting to look casual as they went about some pretense of pointing to a residence across the street, nodding to each other as if they were there for work. The guard by the gate looked over at them sharply when they got out, and then, after deciding they weren't a threat, went back to scanning up and down his side of the street. Jason made some show of laughing and pointing to the residence again before walking across the street. He picked a direction that looked as if he walked towards a utility panel sunk into the street's surface, while Crusher walked towards the target, careful to keep his gaze averted as if he was looking for something on his side of the street.

The guard by the gate just turned back to address Jason when Crusher dropped his ruse and sprinted towards the two trailing guards. Stunned, they didn't stand a chance as the massive Galvetic warrior hit the first so hard he went airborne and took out his partner while he was struggling to pull a concealed weapon. The gate guard, obviously very well trained, kept his attention on Jason instead of gawking at the spectacle down the street.

Jason rushed him, colliding just as a discreet blaster was pulled from a hidden pocket. As they fell to the ground, Jason grabbed the arm holding the weapon with his left hand and tried to bring his right forearm down, but he lacked the leverage to put any real force behind it. The guard managed to get his free hand over and clamped onto Jason's wrist with enough pressure that the human's hand involuntarily snapped open, fingers going instantly numb.

"Uh, oh," Jason said, realizing he may be overmatched in strength despite the alien's slight build. The guard had been forced to shift his body to move his arm against the greater weight of the human bearing down on him, so while he had his weapon free, it didn't do him much good. Jason rolled to his left slightly to keep that arm pinned and launched a vicious right-hander, aiming just under the…well, aiming where the chin would have been if the alien had a chin.

The blow hit squarely near the mouth hole and snapped its head back. It was dazed but not out of the fight completely. Jason rolled off and came quickly to his feet and swung a hard kick to its head before it could bring the weapon up and fire. That did it. The alien seemed to deflate as it went unconscious.

"I guess it's a good thing you only had to take on one of them after watching that sorry performance," Crusher said. He stood near the gate with the target draped over his shoulder.

"Cute," Jason said. "I'll take him, you get rid of these three." He grabbed the target off Crusher's shoulder and walked quickly to the groundcar. As he was slapping on the restraints and sensory deprivation hood, he could see Crusher flinging the bodies of the unconscious guards over the ten-meter-tall security wall, where they landed on the other side with a loud thud.

"I'm surprised he had so much security," Crusher said when he climbed back into the vehicle.

"He's been playing both sides of the fence for a while," Jason said, engaging the vehicles drive and manually guiding it back out of the side street. "The goons were probably just as much there to protect him from local government types as they were from any cartel members he crossed."

"We were after someone else once who did that," Crusher said, drumming his fingers on his thigh as he struggled to remember. "He hired a bunch of mercs and put them in business suits in case local law enforcement came to question him. Who was that?"

"I can't think of his name," Jason admitted, "But he was an immigration official on Noxu Prime, remember? It was the asshole who worked with trafficking rings and basically fulfilled orders by detaining and selling refugees as they processed through."

"That was him." Crusher nodded. "I'm really glad we ended up killing him."

"Ditto."

Once the vehicle merged onto one of the major roadways, it linked up to the automated traffic system and drove itself to their destination. Jason looked over his shoulder and, not for the first time, questioned the action he was taking. This mission wasn't sanctioned by the others, and even though it was agreed that he would operate autonomously, he knew he risked exposing them too early. He had to be very careful from here on out or their little insurrection would end before it even began.

But he also realized that if someone didn't take a definite first step, all they would ever do is talk without actually backing that up with action. Most of the major players were so well insulated and off the grid that they could still live a comfortable life with the Machine controlling the ConFed. Considering that their cabal was made up of corrupt politicians and career criminals, he felt he needed to get them firmly committed before they decided it would be better for their interests to remain neutral.

The ride to where they were going was only a few hours and kept them on the congested main roads, where their rented vehicle blended in easily. Jason breathed a sigh of relief when the tiny spaceport came into view and the groundcar automatically exited the main road and turned control back over to him so he could pilot them the rest of the way. The spaceport only had four large hangars, two of which were crammed full of smaller craft awaiting repair. One housed a private luxury courier ship when Jason had checked, and the last, the one he'd paid handsomely to have to himself, housed a highly modified Jepsen Aero DL7 heavy gunship. He and the ship had been together since he'd been mistakenly abducted from Earth years ago, and the pair had fought and bled together through impossible odds. While not an overly sentimental man, Jason felt a tangible, familial connection to the machine.

"Looks like we actually weren't tracked," Crusher grunted as Jason rolled through a side door into the hangar. "Those guards will be awake by now and looking for their principle."

"This twerp can't afford the type of security that would have been able to handle an abduction like that," Jason said. "We'll be off-planet and the hell away from here before they ever get around to tracking this vehicle."

Jason parked the groundcar near north wall and hopped out, helping Crusher with the now-wriggling alien they'd bagged and tagged a few hours earlier. Crusher slammed him into the chair they already had prepped under the Phoenix's left wing, secured the straps to hold him in place, and then ripped the bag off his head.

"Who are you?! I'll pay double if—" He never finished as Jason slapped him sharply across the face, enough to get him to stop blubbering but not enough to hurt him.

"Shut up and listen," he said. "The abduction was actually for your benefit, believe it or not, and if you cooperate, this will be the worst thing that happens to you. Understand?"

"How is this a benefit to me?"

"Because, Master Noryant, if the smuggling cartels think you just handed over what we wanted without putting up any fight, they'll be sure to kill you in a slow, excruciating manner," Crusher said, leaning in and menacing the cowering alien.

"Cartels?" Noryant's strategy was apparently going to be to play dumb.

"We don't have a lot of time for games," Jason said. "We can pretend to torture you and let you loose, or we can actually torture you. Either way, I will get what I want. About four months ago, you authorized the sale of over four hundred and fifty thousand units of refined, reactor-grade hydrogen. The sale wasn't approved by the usual authorities, and you were the one who signed off on the exception. I want to know who picked up the fuel load."

"I have no idea what you're talking about! My job is to—"

"Captain! Just picked up some chatter that we have inbound aircraft converging on our position. They're not military or local law enforcement," Kage shouted from the open ramp of the gunship. "Did you check the target for a tracker like I showed you?" Jason and Crusher just looked at each other. They'd patted Noryant down and put his two com units in a shielded case, but they had forgotten to do the body scan like Kage had suggested.

"Looks like you get to go for a little ride, Noryant," Jason said. "We'll drop you off somewhere you can catch a ride back from. Unless you have something to give me?"

"You can't take me with you! They'll kill me on sight!"

"Who? Who will kill you?" Crusher said. Jason looked over to Kage, and the Veran was making the hurry up signal with his two smaller arms.

"We don't have time, just grab him," Jason said. Crusher picked up Noryant, still strapped the chair, and ran across the hangar floor even as the dull throb of the Phoenix's engines going into pre-start made the walls rattle.

"Please! Please don't do this!"

"Shut up!" Jason barked. "I gave you a fair chance, now you'll have to deal with your customers. Crusher, strap him down here in the cargo bay and get to the bridge. We have to get out of here, now!"

Noryant was in a complete panic, both his hearts hammering away as he tried to make sense of what was happening to him. The terrifying monster that had grabbed him slammed the chair down on the deck of the ship's cargo bay and secured the straps to the tie-downs. He leaned down and smiled evilly, growling softly.

"I promise that, if we're about to be boarded, we'll jettison you into space before we let them take you alive," the monster said before shoving the hood back down over his head. As the monster clomped away, Noryant realized he had forgotten to turn on the active sensory dampeners, and he could hear what was happening around him.

He heard and felt the engines of the ship run up and felt the deck rumble as it rolled out of the hangar. There was a sharp jolt as it took off, and then he could feel nothing but the vibrations of the ship in flight, unable to see what was happening outside.

This went on for what felt like half a cycle at least but, in his agitated state, was probably only a handful of millicycles. He was just beginning to calm down when there was a horrific banging on the hull, some faint screaming from the crew from somewhere in the ship, and the smell of burning electrics filling the air. After a few more bangs, there was the familiar disorienting feeling of the ship meshing-out into slip-space.

Noryant had no idea if the people chasing the ship were his own security contractors, incompetent as they were, or if the people he'd been selling starship fuel to off the books were trying to silence him. Either way, now that he'd left the Nabia System, he doubted his customers or the cartels he normally dealt with would believe he wasn't cooperating with the strange crew that had just abducted him. If he survived, he'd have to disappear and start all over again someplace else.

"Pull the hood off," Jason said. He sounded weary, and his face was streaked with grime.

"What's happening?" Noryant asked, blinking against the flickering lights of the cargo bay.

"We eluded the people tracking you somehow," Jason said. "They looked like cartel enforcers. We're on our way to a safe system. This can still be salvaged. If you help us out, we can put you in contact with someone who can help you disappear and reemerge as someone else."

"Are you with a rival cartel?"

"Doesn't matter who we are. I just need to know about the large fuel load you helped move through the distribution center"

"Why?"

"This will go quicker if you don't keep asking pointless questions," Jason said. "I want to know the ship that picked up the load and who your contact was. If we knew how they paid, that would also be helpful. I'll be honest, we were just supposed to ask you this in your home. You surprised us with the hired goons, and then again with cartel enforcers coming after you. You're already far more trouble than you're worth, and my first inclination is to drop out of slip-space and toss you out the back of the ship."

"The records are in my com unit, the larger one," Noryant said, seeming to deflate. "The data is useless without the decryption key and, even then, I'll have to explain my record keeping system for it to make any sense."

"And you're willing to do this?"

"You're still willing to let me live and set me up with a new identity?"

In reply, Jason just pulled the com unit out of his pocket and nodded for Crusher to untie Noryant's arms. After he had the device, the alien quickly logged in and brought up the information they were after. He turned the display so Jason could read it, the human storing a snapshot of the information in his neural implant.

This looks legit. Tanker registry shows it belongs to a shell corporation that operates on contract for a mining concern, but it's definitely Eshquarian in origin. Your pet Veran can run down the names of the contacts Noryant gave you.

Jason wasn't sure how Cas knew about the tanker's origins unless the data was knocking around in his implant without him being aware of it. As far as he knew, the hitchhiker in his head wasn't able to reach out and connect to external networks.

"This isn't even a cartel order," Noryant said. "I-I don't understand."

"That's okay," Jason reached out and ruffled his sensory ridges on top of his head. "All right, guys, show's over."

The vibration of the deck immediately ceased, and the lights stopped flickering. A second later, the rear pressure doors slid apart, and the ramp dropped to show that the ship was still sitting in the same hangar on Nabia-2 they'd brought him into in the first place.

"Don't worry," Jason said. "You're not the first person to fall for this."

"I still can't believe this dumbass plan works as much as it does," Crusher grumbled.

"What happens—"

"To you? Nothing," Jason cut Noryant off. "We're leaving, you're free to take that groundcar back to your house, and we can act like none of this ever happened. Just between me and you, I'd definitely hire a new security company."

"I can't believe you're just letting me leave."

"Why not?" Jason asked. "You can't exactly report us without risking your own little off-the-books operation here. We don't care about you selling fuel to smugglers and pirates, so you don't even have to quit that. Even if you reached out to this contact and told them we're looking for them, you have no idea who we are. So, no hard feelings?"

2

"Omega Force has made some progress in tracking down the hidden Eshquarian units."

"Oh?" Saditava Mok asked, not looking up from the holographic display in front of him. "And?"

"They tracked down a fuel tanker that took a full load from the Nabia System distribution yards, all off the books," Similan said. "Burke thinks it's likely a support ship supplying hidden combat units and is going to keep following that thread."

"It will do him little good if he finds them," Mok sighed. "The Eshquarian fleet will not jump to our side. They haven't even launched a retaliatory strike against the enemy occupying their own space. Burke thinks he can convince them to strike back at a ConFed target, but they're more likely to blast the Phoenix out of the sky before it gets close enough for him to even talk."

"Would you like me to suggest to them that they leave this alone, sir?"

"Not in those words. Tell them that I'm…asking…if they would be so kind as to grace me with their presence. I want to make sure Burke isn't about to go rogue and do something so radical that the ConFed feels compelled to hit back. Given the lack of a big enough target, they'd likely take it out on any worlds they suspect have given us aid."

"Understood, sir," Similan bowed and left.

Mok continued to stare at the hologram but was no longer paying attention to what it displayed. From their last conversation over slip-com, Mok knew Burke was anxious to take the fight to the enemy, but he'd been in the business of toppling regimes and fighting insurrections for a long, long time, while Burke had a relatively short career as a mercenary, working small along the edges of civilized society. The human likely didn't understand the full consequences of any direct action taken against an enemy like the ConFed and just wanted to take a wild swing at them. What he didn't see was that all a rash action like that would accomplish is getting a lot of innocent people killed.

"Humans," he sighed again. "What have I done to deserve being saddled with these vicious little creatures?"

"He's still not talking?"

"Not a word," Twingo said. Jason and his engineer were in the galley, watching as Lucky walked through on his way to the bridge.

The battlesynth had good days and bad days. The integration into the new body was an ongoing process, and there were times when Lucky would freeze up and stay that way for a day or two before his matrix could process through the problems and get him moving again. His speech was also something that came and went. Jason tried not to let his frustration show, but the longer the issues went on, the less confident he was that his friend would actually make a full recovery.

Then there were some of the more immediate concerns. Lucky seemed to drift in and out of reality, not really sure where he was at times. One particularly harrowing incident, the battlesynth had managed to sneak into Crusher's berth, and when the warrior jumped awake from someone in the room, it had triggered something in Lucky, and he switched to combat mode. Crusher's quarters were close to engineering, and the ship had been in slip-space at the time, so a poorly aimed plasma blast could have killed them all instantly.

"Has our Tauless made any progress on his end?"

"Some," Twingo said carefully. "He'd need to see Lucky for an extended time, however."

"He's about to get his wish," Jason said. "I just spoke to Similan, and Mok is asking that we meet him. He's at his home compound, and Tauless has been there with him, using Mok's lab space to do his work, along with a few other pru who were briefed on the Mk.2 battlesynth body."

"He'll be okay," Twingo said, but Jason could hear that the usual confidence his friend said that mantra with was fraying around the edges. They all missed their comrade, and any one of them would do whatever it took to help him, but this seemed to be something Lucky would either be able to do on his own or it wouldn't happen at all.

"I'm sure he will," Jason said, pushing his tray aside and standing up. He went back up to the command deck and saw that Kage was still in the com room.

"The slip-com node we're using on Nabia-2 isn't as reliable as I'd like, but we're definitely getting somewhere," the code slicer said when he saw Jason standing in the hatchway.

"How's our good buddy, Noryant, doing?" Jason asked, leaning against the bulkhead.

"He fired his security company and hired a new outfit. He's also sent messages requesting a face to face meeting with someone we already know is an intermediary for the Zetasude Clan—they're that smuggling ring that runs in and out of the Concordian Cluster—but nothing that makes me think he's working with someone to get fuel to any hidden Eshquarian warships."

"Try and dig further into the Zetasude outfit. We've dealt with them before, and if they're the ones picking up that much liquid hydrogen, I still think we're on the right track," Jason said. He ignored Kage's exasperated expression and looked at the display to see how many messages went out to the local contact for the smuggling ring.

"Look, Captain, this was an interesting idea you had to try and track down those fleets by concentrating on the logistics needed to operate the ships themselves, but what if we're looking at this wrong?"

"I'm listening."

"What if the reason we haven't seen the Eshquarian fleet come back to liberate their own home system is because there isn't a fleet anymore. Maybe the commanders escaped, realized their support apparatus was gone, and offloaded the crew someplace before scuttling the ships," Kage said. "If not destroying them outright, they might have just stashed them someplace."

"The Imperial Navy had nearly two thousand capital ships, and the ConFed has managed to track down and destroy less than two thirds of them," Jason said. "That's a lot of ship commanders who have to agree to hide their ships, not to mention about a million crewmembers who have to be someplace, too."

"But it's possible, right?" Kage pressed.

"Yeah, if the ships were shut down in an orderly manner and left with just enough power to keep critical components from freezing, they could theoretically be stored indefinitely. You remember that time we fired the Diligent back up and used it as a battering ram? Same principle." Jason forced himself to concede that Kage's theory was just as valid as his own. Sometimes, he became so fixated on a particular target that he lost perspective and missed the bigger picture.

"I'll keep at this since it's the only lead we have," Kage said, uncharacteristically gracious in victory. "By the time we get to Mok's new evil lair, maybe I'll have something a little more solid we can begin to build a mission from."

"Thanks," Jason said and continued on back to the bridge. When he slid into the pilot's seat to check over the ship, he saw that Lucky stood near the canopy, staring at the moving star field, which was projected on it when the ship was in slip-space.

"I am not certain I will ever be full mission capable again, Captain," Lucky said, causing Jason to jump. "Your concerns about me are well-founded."

"I'm concerned for you, not about you," Jason corrected. "I don't care if you never do so much as drive the getaway car on a mission from this day forward, my only worry is that you're living a life you're happy with."

"It is…difficult," Lucky said. "This new body has so much latent power, but my matrix cannot access it. At times, I wish you had been able to find a Mk.1 body, other times—" Lucky trailed off without turning from the canopy.

"Other times, you wish we hadn't tried to bring you back at all," Jason finished quietly.

"It might have been easier for all of us," Lucky said. "But, no, I want to live. I am grateful beyond my ability to express at the risks you all have taken to save me."

"We're heading back to meet up with Mok and figure out our next move," Jason said. "Tauless is there with a few other pru scientists, and he said he has some ideas. They've been studying all the tech data Kage swiped from that black site regarding the Mk.2 bodies."

"Let us hope they have found something that addresses the cascade failures that cause me to freeze up from time to time."

"Let's hope."

3

Kage is coming to wake you up.

The voice inside Jason's head made him bolt upright in his rack like someone had hit him with a high-voltage line.

"I really wish you'd stop fucking doing that when I'm in a deep sleep."

"Captain, it's Kage…you up?"

"I am now," Jason bit out. "What do you want?"

"I found something. It looks like we might have both been right."

"Assuming I had any idea what the hell you're talking about, this couldn't wait until I woke up and relieved you?" Jason asked.

"I don't think we have that sort of time, Captain. If you want to beat ConFed Intelligence to the Eshquarian fleet, you might want to shake it off and get up to the bridge."

"On my way!" Jason leapt out of the rack and grabbed his shirt and boots on the way out of the hatch.

Kage was already back on the bridge when he arrived, the lights in the ship dimmed for night hours. Jason could see the Veran had been working at one of the auxiliary terminals and had at least six incoming data streams from what he could see. The Phoenix had nine slip-com nodes, three times as many as most ships her size, and Kage had four of them tied up just to feed whatever search algorithm he was running. He looked at the mess coming across the displays and sighed.

"Okay, in a way that is both understandable and not insulting to my intelligence, tell me what you've got."

"I can do one or the other, not both. The problem with your intelligence is that there isn't—"

"You think you could do your job missing those two smaller arms?" Jason asked, taking a step closer.

"Wow you are touchy about how stupid you are." Kage narrowed his eyes. "One would think, having been this limited your entire life, you'd have more or less come to terms with it. Or was there a traumatic brain injury in the past I don't know about?"

"There's about to be another one right now," Jason growled. "Tell me what you have, or I swear to whatever deity the creepy, garbage eating little shits on your planet pray to that you'll be riding the rest of the way to Mok's in the water reclamation bilge."

Kage blinked slowly and just stared at him, probably trying to test just how serious Jason's threat was. The gray water bilge was a tank where all the moisture the environmental system pulled out of the air was dumped before being processed back into clean water. The system also grabbed all the germs, spores, dust, and whatever else clung to the water particles and dumped it in there so the tank was always utterly disgusting no matter how many cleaning cycles it went through. It was a mostly idle threat, but Jason was beginning to think that a more draconian punishment system aboard his ship might improve some of the attitudes.

"I used the connection we had to Noryant's com units to install some trackers that allow me to monitor all his communications, as well as his location. There was a spat of activity regarding the cartels after you and Crusher roughed him up, then things were relatively quiet, and I was about to write this off as a dead end," Kage said. "Six hours ago, he received an encrypted message through the commercial com system to one of the units. I wasn't able to decrypt it right away, but I was able to trace it back to the origin. It came from a terminal on a planet called V'pal Prime."

"I've heard of that place. Isn't that the planet that just had some sort of bloody coup attempt that the Eshquarians had to step in and squash…just before the ConFed squashed them?" Jason asked.

"Right you are," Kage said. "V'pal was a vassal world to the empire. The Eshquarians had a lot of nasty, heavy industry they'd moved there and, in return, the V'palians enjoyed the protection of the Imperial battlefleet…when their fleet wasn't too busy posturing along the border they shared with the Protectorate."

"One of the nasty little secrets of this galaxy." Jason shook his head. "For every pristine ConFed or Imperial world you land on, there are two more with acid clouds and dead seas that are doing all the dirty work for them."

"I didn't realize you were such an idealist."

"Realist, not idealist."

"What's the difference?"

"An idealist would give a shit enough to try and change it."

"Anyway…the origin of the message was on V'pal. Once I was able to decrypt the message header, I saw that it came from a com address belonging to one Qazvi Ba. That name shows up in the database Mok gave us access to as an alias for a high-level Imperial Intelligence operative. Her last known assignment was as an advance scout for Zeta Fleet, one of the mainline battlegroups that fled Eshquaria when the ConFed dropped the hammer." During his explanation, Kage brought up the pertinent data on the displays so Jason could follow along.

"Once I had Ba's com unit identifier, I was able to back-search other places it had been through the public Nexus links. Not only had she been to visit Noryant in person twice before that tanker arrived to pick up the fuel load, she's also been to three other worlds known to take in large numbers of refugees with no questions asked."

"What the hell planet does that?" Jason asked.

"New colonization where they need to boost up the numbers quickly. A planet has to have a certain population before it can apply for ConFed membership if the colony wasn't already approved through the council. The three planets that Ba visited are specifically looking for anybody with technical ability who could work in industry."

"The crew of an Imperial warship would nicely fit the bill for that," Jason said. "Spread the crews out over three planets, just dribble them in with the others moving through, and hope ConFed Intelligence isn't looking too hard at non-member worlds."

"It was a false hope, unfortunately." Kage brought up another screen with iconography on it that Jason didn't recognize. "Ba's cover is blown. There are certain telltale signs you learn to look for when you're in my business—er, former business—and I can say that ConFed Intelligence has already broken into her com unit and is tracking her just like I am."

"You're sure?"

"Quite," Kage said. "They've even begun suppressing outgoing messages she sends, trapping them in the public system. They're trying to isolate her, which means they're ready to make a move."

"How close are we to V'pal?" Jason asked.

"It's not as easy as that, Captain," Kage said. "We're only two days out, but the planet is in the process of being absorbed by the ConFed. They're still allowing normal traffic on and off the planet, but they have a lot of firepower sitting in orbit as they run down any Eshquarian stragglers who might cause them trouble later."

"Why would this Qazvi Ba pick a place like that to operate out of?"

"Hiding in plain sight, as well as access to resources and personnel the Empire would have already had there," Kage said. "Either way, they're closing in. She'll be hard to pin down, but I'm sure they already have agents on the ground hunting for her."

"So, what are our chances of finding her first?" Jason asked.

"They'd be better if you change course now and run the power up."

"Screw it, let's do it," Jason said, moving to the pilot's seat. "It's not like I was really looking forward to seeing Mok in the first place."

V'pal was as bad as Jason expected it to be from Kage's description. The scars on the land from deep step mines were visible from orbit when they could peek through the dingy brown clouds of trapped the particulates belched from stacks of the myriad industrial districts. The sprawling urban centers had the ubiquitous atmospheric processing towers that were repurposed after the terraforming process to scrub the air, but those remnants from the colonization of the planet were woefully inadequate to pull all of the pollutants out of the air. Most planets installed purpose-built machines able to pull the garbage from the atmosphere and pump out clean air, but V'pal hadn't bothered.

"What a shit hole," Crusher grunted.

"It's not good," Doc agreed, reading what the sensors were telling him about the planet. "But it's nothing we have to worry about for short term exposure. I wouldn't bother with any rebreathers or filtration masks."

"Good, because I wasn't going to," Crusher said. "In fact, do I even have to get off the ship?"

"Yes," Jason said forcefully. "Kage, we have a better location than just a planet yet?"

"I've narrowed it down," Kage said. "Remember that she's a high-level intelligence operative, so it's not going to be as easy as requesting a location trace off the Nexus hubs. She's still using standard Eshquarian equipment and tactics, however, so I've been able to cut a lot of the false leads out."

"Any idea if the ConFed has been able to do the same?" Jason asked, eyeing the armada of warships on his sensor display. So far, the ConFed ships were sitting in high orbit and taking no action to interfere with normal traffic to and from the planet, but that could change quickly. He didn't relish the idea of being trapped on the surface when they decided to set up a blockade to try and trap the Eshquarian spy they knew was there.

"Nothing I've been able to confirm. Normally, when we come to one of these third-tier worlds, I can tap into the underground right away and at least get pointed in the right direction if I spread enough credits around," Kage said. "This place is locked down tight now, and the ships above us are making everyone nervous. Nobody is talking to a newcomer. That alone tells me that ConFed Intelligence has probably already been trying to dig into black market slicers for information."

"You think this is a fake out?" Twingo asked. "Everyone converging on this one planet trying to find a single intel spook?"

"It's not as implausible as it seems," Kage said. "She's not likely able to tell us where the Eshquarian fleets are hiding, but she'll be a stepping stone into finding someone who can tell us, and the ConFed will know that, too. Their own intel service is at least as competent as the Empire's, and they have the luxury of not having just been invaded."

"That brings up a good point," Doc said. "Should we even land until we track her down? Once we're dirtside, we could end up trapped."

"I'll need to be on the ground," Kage said. "I've done all I can from up here."

"Call for a landing clearance," Jason said. "Get us as close as you can, preferably avoiding any of the major spaceports where the ConFed will be monitoring immigration control. The ground team will be me, Crusher…and Kage." As he said this, he couldn't help but look away from Lucky. The battlesynth was in his normal spot just behind and to the left of the pilot's seat, so he pretended to be fascinated by something on the right multi-function display so he wouldn't have to see his friend's reaction.

The truth was that he'd prefer to have Lucky with him over the impulsive and unpredictable Crusher…the old Lucky. It shamed him to even think it, but since being stuffed into the new body, his friend had become a liability on operations and a distraction they couldn't afford.

"It is probably wise that you leave me behind," Lucky said quietly. The others looked uncomfortable and pretended to not be listening. Jason sighed, not wanting to debate the issue with him at that particular time.

"It's nothing personal, but you've had four episodes in the last six weeks where you've locked up without warning and stayed that way for days. I can't be worried about you and also be able to keep an eye out for ConFed agents. Until our team back at Mok's base figures out what the issue is, I'm afraid you're going to be sidelined for the time being. It's like when Crusher rejoined the crew a couple years ago, but he was fat and slow and generally useless—"

"Hey!"

"—until he was able to get back in some sort of shape. This isn't permanent, buddy, but it's for our safety as much as it is yours."

"I understand," Lucky said. His voice was flat and he made no further comment. Twingo just looked at Jason and winced.

That could have gone better.

Jason wanted to tell the unwanted guest in his head to shut up, but he had to speak aloud to do so. Instead he just concentrated on flying the ship along the path Kage had sent over to the pilot station for their entry vector. Unsurprisingly, the Phoenix's clean codes were quickly accepted by the automated orbital control system and the ship, now classified as a high-speed courier vessel, was immediately given clearance to deorbit and fly directly to a medium sized spaceport that was outside the city Kage had pinpointed.

"Crusher, Kage…go get ready," he said. "Once I land, I don't want to waste any time finding our target and getting the hell out of here."

"I will prepare your gear, Captain," Lucky said, following Crusher off the bridge. Doc slipped into the copilot's seat and assumed Kage's duties as the Phoenix slid down through the thermosphere and into the denser air below.

"What do you want us doing while you're away?" Doc asked.

"The usual," Jason said. "Be ready for dust-off, give Kage any support he needs, and keep an eye on the ConFed ships flying above us. If you see all the rats beginning to scatter from this smaller spaceport, you can bet they caught word that the blockade was beginning."

"Let's hope this is a quick grab and dash," Twingo said.

"If someone wanted to smuggle a bunch of people out of Eshquarian space, this is the place to do it," Kage said. The trio walked across the tarmac to catch the automated tram that ran on a circuit around the outer landing pads so they could get to the terminal. Along the way, they spotted at least a dozen ships that had all the telltale signs of being configured for smuggling, and they'd actually spotted two outfits they knew firsthand that specialized in trafficking beings across borders.

"You still think Imperial Intelligence hired a bunch of traffickers to shuttle their crews around?" Crusher asked. He hadn't been onboard with the theory since Kage had floated it out there.

"The more I think about it, the more sense it makes," Kage said. "The Eshquarian fleet masters are likely hidden in some deep, dark hole right now, trying to figure out what they're going to do. They could try and organize a counterattack, but they've completely lost the initiative, and just reclaiming the space around the capital world won't reverse what's taken place. Their other option is to disburse and hide, but eventually ConFed Intel will catch up with someone of high enough rank that will spill their guts in interrogation. Right now, I think the only safe play they see is to stash the crew among some backwater colony worlds for the time being just to give themselves some breathing room."

"If we could find this hypothetical meeting of fleet masters, we could feasibly make a case to them for the entire fleet," Jason said.

"No offense, Captain, but that was a stupid idea the first time you said it, and it isn't getting appreciably smarter the more you say it," Kage said. "What? I said no offense."

"He's right, Captain," Crusher said. "I may be just a dumb warrior at heart, but I played the politics game enough in my capacity as Archon to know that the top echelon admirals won't be willing to risk their lives or their ships for your cause. They're politicians at heart, not fighters or even idealists. Right now, they're paralyzed by fear, and when the clock runs out, they'll probably cut a deal with the ConFed to turn over their fleet in exchange for a cushy retirement on Aracoria."

"That's depressing," Jason said.

"Nobody is going to be willing to bleed in a war they don't even know they're in," Crusher said. "Right now, everyone is still reeling from the attack on Eshquaria, but even so, they're now trying to rationalize it in their minds to make it seem like it isn't really as bad as it looks. The longer this goes on, the more comfortable they'll be, and they'll even start to blame the Empire for its own demise. You know I'm right. Until this shit storm comes right over top of their homes, most people won't want to be involved."

"That brings up an interesting point," Jason said. "The Machine is a piece of software, virtually immortal as long as it has a compatible system to reside on. It could be playing a long game, and we'll all be long dead by the time it decides to make its next move."

"I doubt it after how brutal the attack on Eshquaria was. I'd also be careful about tossing that name around in that context when we're within earshot of local public surveillance," Kage warned. "I'm sure it has ears listening for references to itself. At this stage, it's absolutely crucial that its existence and nature remains a secret."

Jason nodded but didn't reply. He felt foolish for not having considered that himself. Even as technologically advanced as ConFed space was, each planet was run autonomously enough that they never really worried about being picked up on public safety cameras or scanners. It was simply impractical for a single authority to monitor thousands of worlds. But the Machine could have an entirely different method for pulling out keywords spoken aloud or watching for certain scanner signatures to pop up. They'd have to be more cognizant of that going forward.

Getting through immigration control was as brief and corrupt as most other planets Jason had visited. The right amount on an untraceable credit chit and they were waved through without so much as a body scan to make sure they weren't bringing in biological agents or weaponry over and above the type used for personal protection. In the case of the Omega Force team, they were packing enough discreet firepower to take on half a platoon of regular troops with even odds of being victorious. Jason packed the latest and greatest in Galvetic railgun tech, a type of weapon the Legions had adopted after seeing him use one so effectively. The new model they'd provided him with had a short, twenty-centimeter barrel with high-efficiency coils. Although not as powerful as the full-size carbine he normally carried, it still accelerated the projectile well into the hypersonic range.

Crusher carried a pair of heavy plasma pistols that were so big that Jason's hands didn’t even fit around the grips. They were a custom job that one of Saditava Mok's weapon suppliers hooked the big warrior up with as payment for a little side job that Crusher had been oddly tightlipped about. Kage, who had really come into his own as an operational asset lately, had the type of weaponry you'd expect of someone so slippery. He had little drones with explosive payloads, non-lethal weapons built into his clothes, and a slim flechette carbine he had strapped across his back. It was an impressive arsenal split between three individuals, each of them having at least one capability the others lacked.

"I'll need to make contact before we can start tracking this Qazvi Ba with any sort of accuracy," Kage said. "I'll need you two to wait around in this area and try not to look like you're watching where I'm going. These people are information brokers, not fighters, and if it looks like I'm bringing a pair of neck-breakers with me, they'll scatter."

"This part of the show is all you," Jason said, nodding towards an outdoor café. "We'll be over there."

Predictably, Crusher took the opportunity to stuff his face again while Jason tried to discreetly watch where Kage slinked off to. Once they'd parted ways the Veran had taken some time to walk up and down the store-lined walkway just outside the spaceport until he was approached by a pair of aliens. Jason recognized the species but couldn't recall the name other than they were one of those species that took offense when you screwed it up.

"Wonder when he'll be back," Crusher said.

"Don't worry…I'm sure you'll have time to finish your fourth course," Jason said, giving him a disgusted look.

"I'm in the middle of intense training." Crusher shrugged, reaching for another meat filled pastry that had come with some sort of hummus-like sauce. Jason continued scanning the crowd, ignoring the sounds coming from across the table. Crusher did have a point. Since he'd decided to get serious again about his fitness regimen, he'd quickly regained much of the former glory Jason remembered from when he'd first met the brute. Back then, Crusher had been more of a force of nature, a gifted fighter so powerful that even Lucky hadn't been able to overwhelm him with sheer strength.

Recently, for reasons Jason hadn't quite understood, Crusher had been torturing himself every day in the cargo bay with a training routine that would have killed a lesser being. One of the side effects of all this, aside from a surly attitude, was that his friend's caloric intake had skyrocketed. Crusher assured them that this was all quite normal, but Jason was skeptical. How the hell could Galvetor hope to field an entire legion of these guys if they also had to also bring an entire cargo fleet of food with them?

Kage followed the pair of runners away from the bazaar and down a ramp into the sublevels below the street. He'd put out feelers as soon as they'd landed and was dangling some enticing bait he knew someone was bound to bite on. As an off-worlder, he'd have to trade something that was at least twice the value of the information he wanted while also being careful not to get screwed over by some local con artist at the same time.

"Meeleos wants to know what you bring in offer," the smaller of the runners said.

"I only talk to someone who has what I want," Kage said. "No intermediaries and no games or I walk and go find one of your boss's competitors to deal with. Just take me to Meeleos."

They were both mizule, a species that was the lower-caste from a planet with two intelligent, dominant races. From the looks of them, they were from the same clutch, although the one talking seemed to definitely be the runt. He knew all the usual tactics, and from a smalltime peddler like this, and he wouldn't be surprised if one of these two actually was Meeleos, pretending to be a hired runner to make it look like his operation was bigger than it was. Kage used to do the exact thing when he was a youth of ill-repute on his home world of Ver.

"This way," the shorter one said, waving towards a sealed maintenance door. Once the mizule popped the lock, and it swung open Kage could see that it was actually a routing juncture for the local Nexus. It gave enterprising young slicers plenty of access and bandwidth for their fun and games, but it was also an area that was checked often by security.

As he suspected, the little gang was tapping directly into the network switchers, their cobbled together interfaces standing in stark contrast to the sterile equipment of the public utility. Public Nexus junctions like the one he was now in weren't considered high security risks because the entire network was public access to begin with. What the slicer gang was trying to do was camouflage the fact they were chewing through prodigious amounts of data by hiding their activity in the traffic going through the switching node.

"You're not worried about V'pal Security finding your little hideout here?" Kage asked. "This is a little too easy to find and impossible to escape from if you pick up a tracker."

"You have a better idea?" the smaller mizule asked, posturing aggressively. And just like that, Kage knew what he could offer the group in return for their help.

"I do, Meeleos," he smiled, reaching out and patting both mizule on the back as he walked around the small space. "What if I gave you a way to not only mask your identity and location but make it look like you were actually somewhere else regardless of how much bandwidth you're pulling."

"I'd say you're wasting my time," Meeleos said.

"Not on the main slip-com trunk leaving the planet, of course," Kage went on, ignoring the comment. He reached out and touched the equipment around the room seemingly at random, peering at things thoughtfully. "ConFed Data Control Authority has the interplanetary links locked down tight, but the local Nexus? Easy. Especially on a world like V'pal."

"You saying our planet is garbage?" the larger mizule asked, bristling.

"You're saying it's not?" Kage was genuinely surprised. "I-I sort of thought everyone knew that. No offense, but most planets don't have air that tastes like metal."

"You arrogant little Verans are all alike," Meeleos said. "You come here and talk down to us as if we don't have any idea who—"

"What other Verans have been here?" Kage asked. "Again, meaning no offense, but this is well outside the normal circles Veran code slicers operate in. Most are all in the larger syndicates or running solo on tier-one worlds."

"I'm not being paid enough to put up with these insults!" Meeleos pulled a weapon and aimed it at Kage. "She didn't say you had to be conscious when we bring you—" The mizule didn't get another word out as Kage touched a spot on the inside of one of his left sleeves. The stunner patches he'd put on both aliens sent multiple high-voltage charges into them, overriding their nervous systems, and dropping them to the floor, where they lie motionless.

"Well…that was just rude, Kage." The voice came from the dark corner of the room Kage assumed was just a storage area. Instead, an Eshquarian woman walked out, and she appeared to be unarmed. "Be a dear and please disarm those charges you put on poor Meeleos's gear."

"Qazvi Ba, I presume," Kage said, tossing her the remote for the discreet charges he'd placed on all the critical components. "You're good."

"And you're dead if you can't give me a good reason why you've been trying to track me down."

4

"I'm not the only one looking for you," Kage said, still keeping his hands where she could see them. Just because she wasn't visibly armed didn't mean she was vulnerable. She was too relaxed for her not to have some advantage over him at the moment.

"That's not answering the question."

"It's ConFed Intelligence. They're here trying to track down the Eshquarian fleet units that escaped, the same as I am."

"I knew they'd been landing assets in the various cities, but I wasn't aware I was the target," she said. "How did you know this?"

"We tracked you through a gray market fuel trader in the Nabia System," Kage said. "As it turns out, we weren't the only ones who thought of tracking a missing fleet by trying to pick up the logistics trail."

"You next words better be explaining why you are looking for me. I'll deal with the ConFed easily enough."

"Not likely. They're going to enforce a blockade soon and tighten the net around you. The reason we're looking for you is that we'd like to talk to the Eshquarian fleet masters about…well…it's probably better if I let someone else explain it to you."

"I think I get the picture, and I can already tell you what they'll say," she said wearily. "An open rebellion even with every ship the Empire has left is likely to be short-lived. The ConFed fleet is immense, and they now appear to have the will to use it."

"Like I said, I'm not the person to talk to about this, I'm just the messenger," Kage said. "What have you got to lose? You'll at least be able to get off the planet."

"Not likely," she laughed. "If ConFed Intelligence is working with a fleet blockade to run me down, it won't be long before they get me. You'd have to have a ship with a captain who's either suicidal or stupid."

Kage just smiled widely at that. "Why not both?"

"Qazvi doesn't sound like an Eshquarian name," Crusher said suspiciously.

"And Crusher doesn't sound like a Galvetic name. It's part of my cover, genius. Is this the stupid one you were talking about?"

"Actually, he is." Kage pointed at Jason. "Crusher isn't in charge, he's just the—" A massive hand clamped down on the Veran's throat and squeezed.

"Consider your next words very carefully," Crusher growled. He opened his hand, and Kage fell to the ground, gasping for air.

"Oh, I can tell this is going to be fun already," Qazvi said.

"We should probably get moving now that you've managed to get everyone staring at us," Jason said. "Split up and meet outside the tea shop at the next junction. Move, now!"

Qazvi was the first to stand and leave, moving smoothly through the crowd and disappearing into the bustle of the wide outdoor concourse. Jason stood, gave Kage a sharp kick for the last insult, and walked out before the coughing Veran could get to his feet. In a seedy part of town outside a small spaceport like this one, a little mild violence didn't keep people's interest for long. Jason hadn't even made it off the café's patio before he was back to being completely ignored.

He heard Crusher make some stir as he came clomping out into the crowd but didn't turn to look. His mind was on the unlikely coincidence that their target just happened to find Kage in the first place he started looking, ambushing him easily. Jason knew his code slicer was one in ten million when it came to covering his tracks, infiltrating networks without being seen, and generally being a sneaky little bastard. Either his guy had been uncharacteristically clumsy coming in or this was a setup they were all about to walk into. He touched his right ear lobe to activate the ear piece embedded there, opening a two-way channel to the Phoenix.

"Doc, get with Mok's people and see if they have an image or description of an intelligence operative that when under the name Qazvi Ba. I need it ASAP."

"This will tip off Mok that we've taken a little side detour," Doc said.

"Can't be helped. Get on it, you're wasting time talking."

By the time he took a circuitous route to the rally point, he saw that Crusher and Qazvi were already there, standing near each other but not interacting or even acknowledging the other. Jason walked over to lean against a railing on the opposite side of the walkway and waited for Kage to show up. It was nearly ten minutes later when an angry little Veran, still rubbing his throat and lower back, walked through without looking at any of them.

Jason stood up and followed behind at a discreet distance, not looking behind him but assuming Crusher would take up position behind their new friend to make sure she didn't try anything. He saw a subtle shift in the foot traffic around him and sensed that something was wrong. Nobody was looking at them, and from the direction they seemed to be going, and the furtive looks being cast behind them, there was something up ahead that had people spooked. Unfortunately, that happened to be the direction Jason needed to go to get back to his ship.

"Captain, Mok's consigliere, that weird guy named Similan, he sent an image of the only match in their database for the name you gave us," Kage's voice broke in over the open channel. "Sending it to your com unit."

Jason pulled out the device and looked at the grainy picture of a being about the same proportions as the Eshquarian woman behind him. Unfortunately, the image had been captured in infrared so it was difficult for him to make out the details for a direct comparison.

"Cas, want to give me a hand with this?" he asked.

Given the poor quality of the image, I can only match it to the person behind us to a probability of seventy-four percent. However, the image was taken while the subject was in midstride, and after observing Qazvi walk, it looks like they could have the same gait.

"Thanks, that'll have to do," Jason said and touched the earpiece again. "Doc, we're coming in plus one. She's not technically a prisoner but make sure the Phoenix is ready for a passenger who needs to be watched constantly."

"Copy, Captain," Doc said. "Just so you know, a ConFed shuttle landed near the terminal a little bit ago and dropped off troops. We didn't see which way they went."

Just as Doc was telling him this, he rounded the last corner to get back to the main drag that led to the starport. Standing in the road, apparently waiting for someone, were twelve ConFed shock troops in crowd control armor and carrying plasma rifles. When they saw him come around the corner, he could see they weren't waiting specifically for him but, instead, were checking everyone trying to get back into the terminal.

"Shit," he muttered. "I found them."

The ConFed troops were in a loose formation, blocking the concourse entrance to the spaceport terminal while local law enforcement seemed to be randomly stopping citizens and questioning them. Jason noticed right away that all of those stopped were Eshquarian females. The locals would pull them aside, ask a couple questions, and then send them along. So, they knew they were looking for an Eshquarian female, not at all a rarity on V'pal given their previous status as an Imperial vassal world, but they didn't have an exact description of what Qazvi Ba looked like.

"You! Let's go, move along," one of the ConFed troops pointed to Jason and motioned for him to pass the security line. He was hustled back behind the shock troopers after a brief ident scan. The credentials he gave told the scanner he was the pilot of a small, privately owned freighter called the Sparrow, the same name the Phoenix was currently flying under.

Jason walked through, and then slipped into a small gap between the spaceport's security wall and the beginning of the concourse buildings. He waited as Kage also was waved through the line and Qazvi was stopped. He watched as she argued with the local agent, drawing the attention of the ConFed troops and causing them to ignore the small Veran negligently tossing a handful of something that scattered when it hit the ground, most of it making its way to where a trooper stood before Jason lost track of them.

Qazvi seemed to be making some headway in pleading her case, but then one of the troopers saw Crusher coming right towards them and all hell broke loose. In Crusher's defense, he had been trying to angle away from the conflict without being noticed, but his species was relatively rare in that part of the quadrant, and he was hard to miss at nearly seven feet tall and well over three hundred pounds. Once the first trooper shouted in alarm, the rest seemed to react on instinct.

The whole team moved forward, bringing weapons to bear, and giving conflicting orders. Crusher maintained his composure and stopped, raising his arms up and placing his hands on his head in as non-threatening a gesture as he could manage. Jason knew that if these clowns were following standard procedure, there would be saturation patrols throughout the bazaar to make sure nobody slipped around the security line, and they could soon be swarmed under and outgunned.

"Damnit, I hate when things go wrong," he grumbled, shaking his weapon loose from its sling and flicking the selector to mid-velocity. There were two troopers standing in a line relative to his position, so he lined up on them first. After checking that there were no civilians behind them, he squeezed off a single round.

The crack of the projectile going supersonic froze everyone…everyone except the two ConFed troops the round tore through. Their armor slowed it down to the point that it tumbled coming out of the second target and winged one of the local cops, dropping the alien as it screamed and held its arm. The rest of the troops reacted instantly and swung about to face Jason's direction, weapons up. That's when Kage detonated the bug mines he'd dropped on his way out. It was an invention the Veran was especially proud of. They weren't powerful enough to kill an armored trooper, but a maimed one was just as good as dead in this case.

"Crusher! Grab her and let's get the fuck out of here!" Jason shouted, waving towards Qazvi as she struggled to get free of the two law enforcement types who had a hold of her. Crusher let out a bellowing roar and charged the two hapless locals, who watched the charging warrior coming at them, but made no move to get out of the way. As Crusher hit the two cops like a freight train, Jason came out of concealment and began scanning the area for signs of more troops coming to back up the ones he and Kage had put down.

He didn't have long to wait.

The first pair came running straight up the concourse, weapons up and scanning for targets. They saw Crusher first and began angling towards him, never seeing the lone human that took them both out with two well-placed shots from the storefront to their left. With Crusher carrying a struggling Qazvi Ba, and Kage running ahead of them, Jason turned and sprinted away from the area, doing his best to blend in with the panicked and stampeding crowd, a lot of whom were fleeing into the spaceport terminal and back to their ships. Leaving V'pal was as easy as walking through the door and out to the active ramp thanks to the herd of escaping aliens trampling the emigration officials at the checkpoint.

"Why did you park so far away!" Crusher shouted as they ran towards the Phoenix.

"I didn't think we'd be running for our lives," Jason shot back.

"I feel like it's just a good idea to always assume that," Kage huffed. The automated tram had been stopped when the general alert went out from the incident in the bazaar, and now everyone had to run a few kilometers to get to their ships. A few were already lifting off, while the roar of engines starting up drowned out any further conversation. That was when things went from bad to really bad.

There was a brilliant flash and an explosion that sent them tumbling across the tarmac. Jason was blinded by whatever that had been, and all he could hear was a constant ringing. What the hell happened?

That was incoming fire from a ConFed ship in orbit, Cas informed him. They're targeting any outbound vessel. It's likely there are a lot more troops inbound.

"Up!" Jason urged his crew. "Up, up, up! Come on, let's go!"

They ran the last kilometer and a half without any further incoming fire directed at the spaceport ramp itself, but they could hear the distant thunder of strikes still coming in, likely trying to down any ships that had escaped. If there was any doubt that the ConFed was operating under a new paradigm, watching them bombard a populated planet from orbit erased that. They now feared no repercussions for their actions, and those in charge of the military had gotten the message loud and clear.

"They're nailing escaping ships even through all that cloud cover!" Twingo shouted from the top of the ramp. "Plasma cannons…lasers won't make it through all that."

"They're targeting any grav-drive signature they see pop up in a radius around this city," Jason said. He turned and saw Crusher carrying a now-limp Qazvi over his shoulder. There was a smoking hole in her clothing that told him someone had gotten a lucky shot through. "Get to engineering and get the mains ready to fire. Doc! We have wounded! Restrain and check her for trackers once you stabilize her."

By the time Jason made it to the bridge the reactor was already up to sixty percent output and climbing and the repulsors were online. As he strapped into the pilot's seat, he watched the four switches on his engine management panel flick up to the 'PRE-START' position on their own, flashing amber as the massive plasma thrust motors began heating.

"Kage, get your ass up here!" he bellowed over his shoulder, nodding to Lucky as the battlesynth came in and took up his usual position.

"What are you going to do if they detect the thermal bloom from the mains?" Kage asked while he shrugged into his own restraints.

"We don't have any choice." Jason pointed at the holographic situation display between the two stations. On the outer edge of the detection range, five assault dropships could be seen inbound for the spaceport. "But let's make it a little harder to pick us out. Target those two cargo haulers on the other side of the terminal…the two small ones taking on fuel."

"Really?" Kage was incredulous. He wasn't necessarily averse to collateral damage during a mission, but he knew Jason had a strict policy about harming civilians.

"They're narco-smugglers." Jason shrugged. "The Phoenix flagged the markings on the hulls as we were coming in on final. Hit 'em with the chin turret as we overfly. Who knows, maybe Mok will pay us a bounty for chipping away at the competition."

"Targets locked, chin turret deployed and armed," Kage said.

"Doc, you have everything secured back there?" Jason asked.

"Patient is secured, we're ready back here."

"Well…let's see how this goes," Jason said, feeding power to the repulsors with the thumb switch on the master throttle. The gunship groaned a bit as she rose into the air, followed by the familiar pops and bangs of the landing gear retracting.

Jason tapped the right peddle, spinning the ship a bit so her nose was on the intended targets, and pushed the hat-switch on the stick forward. The maneuvering thrusters screeched as they tried to push over a thousand tons of spaceship forward. They weren't meant to be used while still on a planet's surface so it was painfully slow going as the Phoenix drifted over the other parked ships towards their unsuspecting targets.

"Firing!" Kage called, opening up with the multi-barrel plasma cannon mounted in the articulated chin turret. As soon as the shots impacted the first ship, Jason flipped the switches for the mains to 'RUN' and was rewarded with a hearty boom as all four lit off at once. The Phoenix leapt forward, and he pulled to port just as Kage finished sweeping the gun down the second ship, both now burning spectacularly while small secondary explosions could be seen blowing pieces of the outer hull out.

Jason pushed the throttle up to about a quarter and pulled the nose up just slightly to get some distance between them and the conflagration before the fuel tanks ruptured and—

Boom!

The liquid hydrogen fuel load lit off with a tremendous explosion on the first ship once containment had been breached. From how energetic it was, Jason guessed the ship had also been carrying something in the cargo hold that had been explosive. He slammed the throttle down and was hurled back into the seat as the Phoenix leapt away, her four main engines roaring as they shot out over the city and followed the contour of the land down into the mining regions.

As he guided his ship over the rolling hills, Jason was clenched up, waiting for a plasma shot from above that would destroy the small ship and kill them all instantly. At least he hoped it would be instantly. He hadn't had a lot of time to formulate a plan before the ConFed started shooting the place up, but he had a rough idea about how he might be able to use the terrain to his advantage from his observations on the flight in.

"Doesn't look like we're being pursued," Kage said. "Two more ships were caught up in the explosion of the second ship, and now everyone has spotted the ConFed dropships. It's more or less complete chaos right now." Jason eyed his airspeed and pulled the throttle back to fifteen percent, letting the gunship loaf across the countryside and greatly reducing the chances of a ship in orbit spotting their thermal signature.

"Unfortunately, that was the easy part," Jason said. "We'll now need to run the blockade…and we'll have to do it without having detailed intel on where the ships above us are deployed."

"Why can't we just find one of these mining operations and hide out until the heat is off?" Kage asked.

"You saw what they were willing to do already to try and get this asset." Jason shook his head. "They'll tear this planet apart if they think she's still here. This world means nothing to them, and after what they did to the Eshquarians, there isn't anybody who’s going to stick their neck out for one unaffiliated tier-three world. No, we'll need to get the hell out of here and fast."

"This ship was built to run blockades," Kage said, patting the center console. "We could just fire up the grav-drive and fly right into their teeth."

"If it was just one capital ship above us, sure," Jason said, "but they've blanketed the planet too well. We rush up and try to take one by surprise, and we'll be within range of three more."

"Then how about you come up with something instead of just rejecting every idea I throw out there."

"What's the com chatter sound like?" Jason asked, pulling back on the stick so the Phoenix could clear a gentle swell ahead. They were now flying subsonic, barely faster than a commercial aircraft, and—hopefully—blending into the scenery if anyone above happened to catch a glimpse through the dense cloud cover. Thankfully, those clouds were laden with metallic particulate and ionized to the point that conventional sensors would have a tough time picking them out of the ground clutter.

"Oh, wow! The ConFed is deploying dropships and starfighters to three other spaceports," Kage said. "The blockade is still deployed for total coverage, but their fast-attack corvettes have run down two ships leaving the system and disabled them. Who the hell do we have back in the infirmary?"

"Apparently, someone a little more important than your average spy, and someone good enough to get the drop on you," Jason said. "Do we know how the XTX-2's will behave if launched within an atmosphere?"

"Why would— No! You can't seriously be thinking about doing that!"

"Why not? We already gunned down a bunch of their troopers, might as well round out the day by knocking out a couple ships. I doubt they'd be able to stop them in time if they came up from underneath," Jason said, banking to port again so they were on a northerly course away from all the major settlements that dotted the equator.

"They're not as powerful as the dash-fours, but they still use a skipper type slip-drive for the primary stages, and that won't work this close to the target, not to mention the usual issues of operating a slip-drive within an atmosphere."

"But they can do up to five skips," Jason insisted. "Can't you send them out and back so they have time to arm?"

"In theory…maybe. But what about—"

"Just start getting the targeting package ready," Jason said. "Let them pick their own targets, but put in constraints they can only hit the ships that are covering the spaceports."

"How does that help us? We're already—"

"Just do it! I don't have time to argue." Jason was gambling on the fact the ConFed fleet would display its normal hubris when coming in to subdue a planet like V'pal, and his advanced (and highly illegal) munitions would take them completely by surprise. He also wanted his choice of targets to confuse the hell out of them.

"How many dash-twos do you want to waste on this lunacy?" Kage asked as he prepped the targeting instructions that would be uploaded into the missiles before launch.

"Three," Jason said. "That'll leave us an additional two along with the XTX-4s in the bays."

"Targeting package uploaded, you can arm and launch from your panel…crazy bastard," Kage said.

"Standby." Jason selected the missiles that blinked green from the armament panel and opened the forward weapons bay doors in the belly. He pulled up into a shallow climb, rolled one hundred and eight degrees to starboard, and held the trigger down as the ejectors spit all three missiles off the rails. He continued his roll until he was knife-edge relative to the ground and yanked the stick back, slamming the throttle forward. The Phoenix bellowed as her engines flared and shoved the gunship away as the missiles' repulsor first stage kicked in, and they rose shakily into the sky.

"Slick," Kage said admiringly.

The XTX line of anti-ship missiles was unfathomably expensive, highly illegal, and no longer produced after a treaty outlawed that style of missile. They were built to be launched in the void of space, and he hadn't been entirely sure the repulsor-drives that were meant to just get them clear of the launching ship would be able to propel them within a planet's atmosphere. He'd used the Phoenix's arcing, inverted flight to give them a little inertia as they came off the rails, and then got clear as fast as he could in case they became unstable or simply fell from the sky.

"You're clear, throttle back. First stage slip-drives should be going on in—whoa!"

"I…didn't expect that," Jason admitted as he watched on the display. When the small slip-drives engaged, the fields had stabilized close to the surface and had scooped out sizable chunks of the ground. He assumed the missiles had just taken the dirt with them, trailing behind in the slip-space fields, but watching in real-time, it looked like it just vanished. "Is that going to cause any problems when they stop and come back?"

"How the hell would I know?" Kage said. "You're the only one stupid enough to arm and launch anti-ship missiles while flying so close to the surface of a planet. You might want to make a note, assuming we survive all this, that there are missiles specifically made to be fired from a planet up to orbit."

"Yeah, but if this works, think of all the money we saved not having to buy two types of expendable munitions," Jason said.

"It is probably a bad time to bring up that each of those XTX-2s cost over twenty million ConFed credits each," Lucky said from behind him.

"I stole them anyway." Jason waved him off. "Most I swiped from Crisstof's ships, the others I helped myself to from Mok's personal stash when we blew his house up."

"We've lost telemetry, but they should be on their way back by now," Kage said.

They waited another ninety seconds before the orbital com channels exploded with excited chatter. Kage tried to filter out useful intel, and the best they could make out was that two of the three missiles they'd fired had scored direct hit on ConFed warships. No word on the third missile, and that concerned Jason greatly. XTX missiles never failed, and he was afraid the damn thing might have hit a civilian freighter instead of a ConFed ship.

"Fighters are pulling back up into orbit," Kage said. "They're probably being ordered into defensive positions around the capital ships. If they didn't pick up the missiles' outbound flight, they probably think they were hit from someone who just arrived in the outer system."

"Full active sensors," Jason said. "I need to know what's happening up there. If they aren't redeploying their screen, we may have to resort to drastic action."

"What do you consider drastic if not just destroying two capital ships?!"

"Sensors. Now."

The holographic display populated with threats and non-combatants, the Phoenix's computer categorizing everything, as the active sensors swept the system. Jason could see the chaos he'd caused over the planet's largest starport near the equator, including the two light cruisers his missiles had hit, now adrift in orbit. He also saw where his third missile had gone: it had hit a patrol frigate that had been loitering out near the largest moon. The frigate was broadcasting emergency codes and was spiraling out of a stable orbit towards the moon's surface.

"There…there's our window," he pointed to a gap in the blockade that was left as two cruisers had moved down to try and cover the gaps left by the ships he'd hit.

"Grav-drive online," Kage said. "Ship is configured for exo-atmospheric flight. Hit it."

Jason flipped the switches on the mains back to 'STANDBY' and verified the grav-drive automatically stepped in as primary propulsion. Kage had already plotted their optimal exit vector and course to keep them out of range of ConFed guns as much as possible, so Jason angled the nose up and smoothly pushed the throttle to half-power, about as much as the ship could take while so low in the atmosphere.

The Phoenix rocketed up away from V'pal, clawing for altitude as the sky turned black around the canopy. The buffeting and scream of air passing over the hull faded away and, soon, the ride was silky smooth with just the hum of the ship to remind them they were underway. Jason advanced the throttle to the stop and watched as their relative velocity climbed, and the gunship zipped between the narrow gap in the picket coverage. They made it up and through without so much as a warning over the com from the ConFed ships, most of which seemed to be angling over to cover the starport near the capital.

Once they'd made it past the smaller, furthest moon with still no pursuit, Jason relaxed. He prepped the slip-drive to take them out of the V'pal System and put them back on course for their original destination, making a mental note to get a hold of Mok and explain why they were running so late. The fact their target had seemed to be waiting in ambush for Kage when they had just landed weighed heavily on him, so he decided to tell Doc to keep her unconscious for the duration of the flight.

"That could have gone better," Kage said, leaning back in his seat and slapping the release for his restraints while Jason shrugged out of his own and let them retract back into the seat.

"It also could have gone a lot worse."

5

"Do you understand what the word covert means, Captain?"

"To be honest, that all felt pretty discreet and covert."

"You can't be serious," Mok deadpanned, leaning back in his chair.

"Nah," Jason said. "We completely fucked that one up. To be honest, we didn't realize how hot the target was until the ConFed opened fire on that little spaceport."

"Yes…and then you blew two cruisers out of the sky and sent a third ship careening into a moon to, how did you put it, cover your exfil?"

"Yes."

"That's it? Just yes'" Mok spluttered. "No apology for risking this operation with your reckless use of highly controlled strategic munitions? No contrition for making the ConFed focus even harder on the Eshquarian intel officer you have strapped to a bed? None of that?"

"No."

Jason watched in fascination as Mok struggled to get himself under control, gripping the desk so hard that he could hear the wood creaking. After a few long moments Mok, one of the quadrants most feared crime lords, managed to calm himself enough to open his eyes and stare across at his guest.

"I've not lived a moral life, even before descending into the underworld of this galaxy…but I cannot imagine what I've done that makes the universe decide that I deserve to be saddled with you humans."

"Oh, come on," Jason laughed. "You only know one, and we barely see each other."

"You're bad enough on your own," Mok said. "But I've recently had dealings with your kind. Some young pup your planet's military sent retrieve a Veran information broker I sometimes use."

"Weef Zadra?" Jason asked. "You sent us to her once. I was wondering what happened to her. Kage said she just dropped off the grid. So, Earth's got her now?"

"Not exactly," Mok said. "Anyway, your fellow human couldn't just go get Zadra and take her where she wanted to go. Instead, he disrupted my entire operation in the Kaspian Reaches and stole a shuttle with a full cash shipment that was coming back here."

"Sounds like my kind of guy." Jason smiled widely and put his feet up on the desk.

"Hardly. He seemed quite a bit brighter than you and, at least, had the good sense to show some respect in my presence," Mok growled, shoving Jason's feet off the desk so hard the human had to grab the armrests of the chair to not end up on the floor. Jason had to constantly remind himself that Mok wasn't just some weasel administrator, afraid to get his hands dirty. For the time being, Mok seemed to recognize that Jason messed with him as a way of showing he no longer completely distrusted him, but the crime boss wasn't used to having people ruffle his feathers for entertainment value.

"Noted," Jason said, sitting up straighter. “So, what'd you think of Qazvi Ba?"

"That's not her real name," Mok said. "It's a code name that's part of Imperial Intelligence's Last Stand Protocols. There's always someone named Qazvi Ba. Think of it more as a job title that gets passed on. It's actually a phrase in ancient Eshquarian, a dead language from long before the time they had space travel."

"Last Stand Protocols," Jason repeated. "Sounds ominous."

"It was more of an interesting thought exercise than anything else," Mok said. "Since we—they—always had to imagine worst case scenarios for threats to the Empire, the process was formalized some centuries ago, and the service was given a substantial budget to ensure that it could weather a preemptive strike or internal coup."

“So, there are contingencies in place to handle something like what just happened?" Jason asked hopefully.

He pretended not to notice Mok's slip up during his explanation, but it was just another clue as to where the enigmatic boss had come from. Saditava Mok had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He crept in and took over the operation of a petty crime boss Jason had taken out in the pre-Omega Force days when he and the crew had just escaped captivity. Mok had then worked to quickly swallow many of the smaller, satellite operations until he stood supreme as the kingpin in a twelve-sector swath of space. The fact he had likely been a high-level Eshquarian intelligence officer explained a lot of how he was able to grasp power so quickly.

"Unfortunately, no," Mok continued his explanation. "The ConFed has never been much of a threat. Their fleet, while vast, never seemed to operate under a unified doctrine. Instead, it was parsed out to handle small policing actions and to work at the behest of whichever powerful politicians wanted to flaunt their influence. Until very recently, they'd never had any inclination to do anything other than skim off the profits of their members and live in vulgar luxury on the Pillar Worlds.

"Most of our wargaming and preparations focused on the Saabror Protectorate on our other border. They have always been overly aggressive and antagonistic since they became strong enough to begin challenging the Imperial Fleet along the Concordian Cluster. It's been a cold war that was expected to go hot at any time, and the reason the Machine was able to secure victory so quickly. While the Empire was focused on the Protectorate, the ConFed hit them hard and fast from the other side."

"This is fascinating, but it doesn't tell me—"

"Qazvi Ba is the codename given to an operative in charge securing logistical support for Zeta Fleet units in the event primary supply chains are cut off or destroyed," Mok said. “So, your instincts of trying to run down off-book fuel and expendables was a good one but, as usual, you went about it in an amazingly clumsy way. I'd say it's even odds that your actions alerted the ConFed as to her location."

"She seemed to be well aware we were coming," Jason said, ignoring the barb. "Not many people get the jump on Kage like that."

"I think she was probably setting up to ambush the ConFed agents that were already on the planet when you landed and began making inquiries over the local Nexus," Mok said. "Imperial Intelligence has extensive files on your crew given the fact you've contracted for them and the Empire rebuilt your ship once. She'd have had access to those files still, although I will give her credit for being able to put it all together so quickly."

"Yeah," Jason said slowly. "Let's just say I'm still skeptical about that."

"Let's worry about that later. I'm taking her off your hands for now, anyway," Mok said. "What were you thinking taking out three capital ships like that? We're not ready for an open confrontation."

"And we never will be." Jason shrugged. "Let's be honest about all this…we'll always be a small insurrection, bordering on insignificant. The entire point of this is to get others to either join or even passively resist to the point that action is taken on the Pillar Worlds. We would never be able to amass the resources, hardware, or personnel to stand toe-to-toe with the ConFed fleet. They'd wipe us out in an hour."

"I'm well aware of how insurrections and asymmetrical warfare works, Captain, so please don't preach the basics at me. What I'm telling you is that we're not even ready for that. My operation is vast, but it's also not suited for this type of thing, at least not if you want me to stay alive to help sponsor your activities. If the Twelve Points even suspect I'm using the syndicate for anything other than profit-driven ventures, they'll make a move on me and, even if I escape alive, I'll no longer have the intel and resources you need." Mok seemed genuinely frustrated not only at Jason's rash action, but the fact that all his power and influence was useless in this case. It drove home just how precarious his position sat at the top of such a large criminal enterprise.

"We can't just sit and talk about this for years, Mok," Jason said, throwing his hands up. "Even just meeting and talking about it is a huge risk. We need to think of a way to move this into the operational phase and fast. So far, the Machine is calling the shots because nobody knows that the ConFed has effectively been taken over by a—"

"Now there's a thought." Mok held up his hand to stop Jason. "The Machine is powerful because people don't know what it is and the risk it poses. It's able to move the pieces anonymously and with impunity. What if it wasn't?"

"You mean try and run an underground information campaign to expose the truth?" Jason scoffed. "Good luck with that. The public broadcast system is too decentralized, and anything you put out would be too easily debunked as a conspiracy theory."

"Nothing so overt as that," Mok said, staring off thoughtfully. "Let me think about this for a bit and we'll talk more. In the meantime, could you please promise me you won't launch anymore attacks against the ConFed military until we come up with something solid?"

"Sure." Jason stood and stretched. "I've got a few days to hang around. I need to go check on Lucky anyway."

"How has he been?"

"Some days great, others…not so much. He'll go months without incident, and then it seems when we could use his help the most, he locks up again."

"That must be frustrating."

"For him," Jason said firmly. "If he could never go on another op again, that wouldn't change things. He's still family and has a place with us, but it's killing him inside not being able to help out."

"I've assembled the best pru engineers I could coax off the planet with methods just short of abduction," Mok said, also standing up. "They'll figure this out." Jason stopped by the door way and turned back to a person who normally he'd be sworn to try and thwart, but now looked at as a…friend? Maybe that wasn't right. Complicated ally would be more apt.

"I know I give you a ration of shit, Mok," he said, "but I owe you a debt for everything you've done to help Lucky."

"It was the least I could do," Mok said, seemingly taken aback by Jason's sudden earnestness. "We'll get him sorted out."

"Captain Burke!"

"Tauless," Jason nodded to the lanky pru. He'd been an adolescent when Omega Force had rescued him from an exile that he'd been forced into by his father, one of the architects of the battlesynth program. The planet Khepri had a complicated history with the sentient machines they had created, and the skeletons in the closet when it came to the battlesynths were still causing political aftershocks years after they'd come to light.

"Any progress?"

"Yes," Tauless said hesitantly.

"But…" Jason prompted.

"But there is no practical way to correct the problem, at least not yet. I know you prefer brevity first, details second, so I'll get right to the point. Lucky suffers intermittent system failures whenever he tries to power up his onboard weapons," Tauless explained. "It has to do with the prototype power distribution system integrated into the powerplant of the Mk.2 body. Even though it is significantly smaller than his old body, it has tremendous power draws. The first stage routing system is unable to accommodate this, and the resulting errors cause a cascading effect in the logic of the subprocessors that manage body functions."

"I've seen him fire his weapons," Jason argued.

"It's not an absolute that it will happen each and every time," Tauless said. "What's likely causing it is that Lucky's new body has a lot of additional systems in it that are related to what we assume its normal job would be: infiltration and covert operations. There are powerful holographic projectors, sustained flight mode capability, enhanced secondary actuators for increased strength…when you have those running in the background in an autonomous mode, and then plasma cannons on top of that, it's just too much."

"What's our best solution?"

"In time, Lucky will probably learn to more precisely control the different systems he now carries and be able to manage the power loading better," Tauless said. "In the meantime, we're suggesting disabling the onboard weaponry. He'll have all other functions, but he'll need to carry a weapon with him as you and Crusher do."

"That's actually not as bad as I was expecting," Jason said thoughtfully. "He's so damn strong he could carry anything from a concealed small-bore laser pistol to a crew served antiaircraft weapon. What does he think about all of this?"

"You should probably ask him that yourself," Tauless said. "He's in the lab and awake."

Jason clapped his friend on the shoulder and walked into the lab area that Mok had set aside on his sprawling estate grounds. When he walked in, a pair of engineers that Mok had found—and Kage vetted—put their instruments down and walked out of the cavernous room without a word. Lucky was lying prone on an inclined table, an access panel in his side open and diagnostic cables running out to different interfaces.

When the Mk.2 body had first been acquired, they'd had to disable the interlocks that prevented unauthorized tampering so they could perform the integration with Lucky's primary matrix. Since there were so many growing pains when it came to Lucky controlling the new body, they'd temporarily left the panels accessible, with Jason being the only person, besides Lucky himself, who knew how to open them. Once they were absolutely certain Lucky was fully in control, and all the supporting systems were stabilized, access to the body's internals would be completely under his control.

"Captain," Lucky greeted him.

"I heard you've been trying to do too many things at the same time," Jason said. "Tauless said you'll probably have to carry a gun now like the rest of us."

"An unfortunate, and hopefully temporary, setback," Lucky said. "Once I master control of the other integrated systems, I am confident I can resume using my onboard weaponry."

"Have the eggheads figured out how they're going to lessen the load on your powerplant?"

"For now, we will install an inhibitor module that blocks signals to power up my plasma cannons and the couplings behind my shoulders for the hard-point weapons," Lucky said. "Once that is installed, I will be back to FMC, but will need to outfit myself from our armory."

"Let's raid Mok's armory first and see if he has something that's a little more suited to your superior strength and coordination," Jason said. "Either way, it'll be good to have you full mission capable again and out in the field."

"I agree. Perhaps I can visit his engineering labs and design a weapon more suited to my tastes."

"That should be interesting," Jason said. "Take Twingo with you. He'll get his feelings hurt if you box him out of a design project, and I'm not listening to his whining for the next two months."

"I will make certain that I—" Lucky's head snapped over towards the closed door. "Mok's aide, Similan, is approaching."

"How the hell can you know that through a closed security door?" Jason asked. The heavy armored door swung open with a whine of actuators before the battlesynth could answer and, sure enough, Similan walked in. Jason was never sure what to make of the stiff, formal consigliere. He had the bearing and discipline that screamed military, but he seemed to be little more than a glorified butler most of the time. But Similan enjoyed Mok's complete trust, and that wasn't something that came easily, so Jason was accordingly careful around him.

"What's up, Similan?"

"Up?" Similan looked up in confusion, then scowled. "My master has asked if you would be present when he interviews our…guest…that you've brought. Lord Felex is on his way, as well." Jason winced at the mention of Crusher's real name and title.

"Please tell me that you didn't actually call him that."

"I'm sorry, Captain, but I simply cannot call the Lord Archon of Galvetor Crusher, Similan said indignantly.

"Fair enough," Jason said before turning to Lucky. "You able to walk?"

The battlesynth had already pulled the diagnostic cabled out, and the access panel in his torso was sealing, obviously intending on leaving with them. Similan looked concerned and opened his mouth to protest.

"I'm sure Mok will be fine with Lucky being there." Jason headed off the argument. "Lucky has a skillset we might find useful when questioning a…guest."

"Very well," Similan said, sounding resigned to the fact that Jason likely wouldn't listen if he was told 'no' and, with Lucky there, he had no chance of physically stopping him, although it could be interesting if he tried. Jason had wondered for some time how he'd fare if pitted against Mok's stoutly built servant if his suspicions about him were on target.

Similan led them out of the lab and waved them into one of the open-air ground vehicles that were always scurrying about the compound. They rode a short distance to an unassuming building that looked like it could have been a maintenance shed if not for the pair of armed guards flanking the door. One of the pair opened the door for them without a word and stood aside while Similan led his charges inside.

"Not bad new digs," Jason said as they entered a lift and were whisked down from the surface level. "Decent house, engineering spaces, and even a high-tech dungeon." Similan just looked at him but said nothing. When they reached their target level, Lucky led the way out and seemed to know exactly where he was going. Jason stole a look at their guide and recognized genuine surprise on his face as the battlesynth negotiated the halls to bring them to another of the ubiquitous alloy security doors.

"Been here before?"

"Of course not," Lucky answered, not offering anything further. Similan walked up and let the biometric scanner take a DNA sample from his skin and waited for half a second as certain markers were matched to the database and the door swung open with a clank.

"Captain, thank you for joining us," Mok said. Jason wasn't sure what he expected, perhaps a single metal table with a prisoner chained to it with a single bulb dangling overhead, but the scene before him was a bit of a shock. The room was outfitted as a comfortable lounge, complete with a holographic display, a stocked bar, and even a screen in the wall that gave the illusion of a window with an outdoor view.

"Thanks for asking," Jason said, nodding to Crusher and taking a seat. He saw that Qazvi Ba was already sitting in an overstuffed chair with a drink in her hand, appearing relaxed, and decided to just wait and see how everything played out.

"This is Qazvi Ba, but her real name is Fendra Eos," Mok began. "Fendra, this is—"

"Jason Burke, of Earth," she finished. "I already know of the good captain and his band of degenerate misfits, thank you. I suppose I should thank you for saving my life, Captain, even if I suspect it was your bumbling that blew my cover and brought the ConFed down on me in the first place."

"Can't rule it out." Jason shrugged. "So…is she a prisoner, a guest, or what? This is a pretty fancy cell, but it's still a cell."

"A precaution due to the unique tracking module Fendra has implanted in her," Mok said. "Doc was able to pull out the passive trackers, but she has a miniaturized slip-com beacon grafted to her spinal column we're nullifying in this specialized room. It's tricky to remove due to the explosive charge that allows Imperial Intelligence to…silence…an operative in the event they're compromised."

"Diabolical," Jason said, accepting a drink from Similan. "I assume you'll be able to remove it eventually?"

"Mok is running down the deactivation codes through his network," Fendra said. "Once the device is switched off, it's easy to remove." Jason caught the inflection when she said Mok's name and knew there had to be some personal history between the pair.

“So, what're we doing here?" Crusher asked, slurring his words slightly and shaking his glass at Similan.

"You tracked her down with the idea she might be able to lead you to the missing Eshquarian fleet units that fled the ConFed's surprise attack," Mok said. "I figured it'd be best if you heard it directly from her why that's no longer a viable option."

"The missing ships, at least Zeta Fleet's mainline hulls, are already in the ConFed's possession," Fendra began. "You had the right idea, trying to track them through the more mundane logistical trail they left, but by the time you found the gray market fuel load buy, the ships had already been located."

"And the Eshquarian Fleet Masters?"

"Who do you think told the ConFed where to find the ships?" Fendra smiled humorlessly. "Zeta ships were stashed in the Cluster with minimum maintenance crews and no security to speak of, certainly nothing to repel ConFed boarders. I was still in the process of hiding the crew among various lower-tier worlds when I got word that the ships had been captured."

“So, the ConFed fleet didn't simply destroy the ships from a distance?" Lucky asked.

"No." Fendra frowned. "And to be honest, that has me confused. Those ships are a threat to the new ConFed regime simply by existing. It makes no sense to leave them intact, but all the intel I've been able to get from the Cluster's underworld is they're still sitting in the same spot, just with new ownership."

"Are there any ConFed ships still in the area?" Jason asked.

"Unknown," Fendra said. "There aren't any capital ships, but I find it unlikely they didn't leave at least a few tender ships in the area to chase off pirates and scavengers."

"What's on your mind?" Mok asked.

"Since we have something completely unexpected here, I think we need to put eyes on these ships ourselves and find out what the hell is going on," Jason said. "I don't trust the— How much does she know?"

"She's been read-in on the entire situation with the Machine and where it came from," Mok said.

"Really?" Jason asked.

"I have a prior working relationship with Fendra," Mok said. "I trust her at least as much as I trust you."

"Still not saying much," Jason muttered. "Okay, as I was saying…the Machine is up to something with these ships, but we really have no way of knowing what. I think it'd be prudent to head out to the Cluster and take a peek."

"Just fly your gunship up to a massive enemy formation, and then what?" Fendra asked. "Ask them what their secret nefarious plan is?"

"We're a little more subtle than that," Jason said, glaring at Crusher as the warrior spit out some of his drink with a short, barking laugh.

"The most efficient way to gain the intel we require is to board one of the ships in question," Lucky said. This time, Mok spit some of his drink out.

"Board them?" he asked. "That's a bit extreme isn't it?"

"Only if you prefer to sit around guessing as to what the Machine intends to do with them," Lucky countered calmly.

"I assume you have a plan to get aboard an Eshquarian warship?" Fendra asked.

"We don't like to bog ourselves down too early with the details," Jason said airily. "We'll figure it out before we get there."

"Figure it out?" Fendra repeated as if she were trying out a phrase from a foreign language for the first time.

"The more I think about this, the more inclined I am to agree with you that real-time intel is needed," Mok said. "However, I think boarding, or at least attempting to board, is an unnecessary risk."

"You are entitled to your opinion," Lucky said.

"We'll leave tomorrow," Jason said, tossing back his drink and placing the glass on the side table. "Lucky would like some time to build a new arsenal in one of your engineering shops, and I want to familiarize myself with the ship types and formations we'll be seeing out there."

"I can provide that," Fendra said before turning to Mok. "Is there any chance we could do the extraction in time for me to accompany them?"

"It's likely we'll have the deactivation codes within the next few hours, so yes," Mok said. "I have to warn you, Fendra, that this crew is a bit…unpredictable."

"I can handle it," she said. "I'd take it as a personal favor, Captain, if you would take me with you."

"Look, Mok might vouch for you, but I don't have any reason to trust some Imperial spook aboard my ship and with my crew," Jason said. "Why do you need to come along?"

"Let me reword my request," Fendra said. "Either you allow me to come along or I won't give you the location of the fleet. You could spend the rest of your natural life scouring the Concordian Cluster without ever finding them. Take me with you and we can fly straight there, avoiding most of the pirate traps along the way."

"When you put it that way…welcome aboard."

6

"Councilman Scleesz…a moment, if you would."

"Yes?"

"I thought we might have a word in private before the closed session began," Admiral Didza said. The admiral was being put in charge of the space around Eshquarian Prime, and with the high-profile assignment, he'd been granted access to the High Council at a level most flag officers only dreamed of. The Machine itself had told Scleesz to make sure that Didza was given everything he asked for.

"I suppose there's time, Admiral. My office is this way."

Once they were through the security checkpoint and made it to Scleesz's inner office, the admiral became fidgety and uncomfortable. Scleesz watched him carefully for a few long moments to see if the admiral would crack first and speak. When he didn't, Scleesz deflated the tension by gesturing to a chair while he took the one across from it.

"What can I do for you, Admiral?"

"I've been told that you're…close…to the new king maker here on Miressa Prime," Didza said, choosing his words like a man negotiating a mine field. "That you seem to know when things are about to happen before anyone else."

"I'd say that those are gross exaggerations," Scleesz said. "I have the dubious honor of serving as chair on two separate committees and am privy to levels of intelligence most aren't. It's simply a matter of access to information. As for a new king maker here in the capital…I'd be very, very careful with talk like that, Admiral. Everyone and everything listens and carries tales on Miressa."

"I don't mean to insinuate anything untoward," Didza said, his words tumbling out. "I only wanted to ask if you perhaps knew how I was given this assignment. My rank is mostly honorary, something passed down in my family thanks to political connections and wealth, and I served my entire career as a low-level bureaucrat negotiating supply contracts for the Aracoria Shipyards. Now, I'm being asked to serve in a combat capacity as commanding officer of the Miressa Home Defense Force. That's quite an…honor…being asked to head up the defense of the capital world."

"You don't feel qualified to perform your duties, Admiral?" Scleesz asked. "You don't have faith that the high admiralty knows what they're doing when they choose personnel assignments?"

"I—"

"Perhaps someone has seen something in you that you do not realize you possess," Scleesz plowed ahead, trying to keep his expression and voice neutral. How had this bumbling, timid fool been given an admiral's crest, even as a legacy rank? He had no doubt his new master had put Didza in place for a specific reason. The Machine did nothing on whim or without careful consideration. The real trick now would be to see if he could discover what that was without bringing suspicion upon himself.

"That's…possible," Didza said, apparently for the first time considering he might have some use as something other than a place holder for a family name. "I did distinguish myself as an officer that put the interests of the ConFed above all when negotiating the costs of raw ore to our processing plants."

"Yes, I have no doubt that was noticed," Scleesz deadpanned. "As you know, the ConFed is in the midst of a restructuring when it comes to how military assignments are determined. Given the tensions in the quadrant as of late, leadership has decided that our fleet's highest ranks should be determined by merit, not a prize to be bought or won by wealthy families. Rest assured, Admiral, that if you were given this assignment, it was for good cause."

"I thank you, Councilman," Didza stood and actually bowed. "I won't waste any more of your time." The admiral spun on his heel and marched out of the office. The moment the door to the outer office slid shut, Scleesz let out an explosive breath.

"What a hopeless idiot," he muttered. He was careful to say nothing else aloud as he was certain the Machine had somehow compromised the security of his office and listened to every word uttered in it.

Scleesz had at least been honest with the poor, clueless admiral about one thing: if he'd been chosen for that assignment, it was for a reason. What that reason could possibly be was beyond him, however. The Eshquarian situation was an unmitigated disaster. The Machine had ordered the strike through its puppets in the Military Affairs Committee, and it had been fast tracked from the council to the ruling tribunal where all five Grand Adjudicators had voted unanimously to uphold the strike order.

While the initial surprise attack had been an overwhelming success, the aftermath had been anything but. Their own fleet had failed to track down and destroy the Eshquarian military, the bulk of which escaped, and that forced them to maintain a much larger peace keeping force in Imperial space than they could afford to. The other sovereign powers, the Saabror Protectorate and Cridal Cooperative most notably, were now aware that the ConFed was no longer content being just an economic bully and intended to rule by force. Intelligence reports indicated the Cridal could be reaching out and building secret alliances in the face of this aggression.

What most people didn't know, what he himself had only recently become aware of, was that the ConFed military wasn't nearly as immense or powerful as they made others believe. It was a lot of smoke and mirrors and bluster. A good portion of their in-service hulls were obsolete classes and not being maintained very well. Centuries of being the only superpower had left the military fat and complacent, unable to meet its obligations despite the enormous percentage of the budget they absorbed. If the Eshquarian situation couldn't be resolved quickly and the modern battlegroups recalled back to the Core Worlds, he was certain that others would begin to realize they'd been cowering all this time under a threat that didn't actually exist.

This put Scleesz in a difficult position. He might have been a bit hasty when he'd agreed to join Saditava Mok's insurrection, and now his dual loyalties were racing towards a conflict with each other. Open war would be the end of the ConFed and, for some time, it would be a return to the pre-unification days where the strong preyed on the weak at will with no thought that someone might step in. The ConFed was corrupt beyond belief but, for the most part, it kept the peace and stopped the large-scale events like planetary genocide. If he continued to help Mok, and that crazy human, Burke, kick off a rebellion, he feared that it would lead to an even greater level of suffering than if they simply learned to exist within the new rules.

There was also the factor that he would likely not survive no matter who was eventually victorious thanks to his proximity to the Machine. He may have given the appropriate platitudes about honor and doing the right thing, but the reason he found himself in this position in the first place was because he was a being of flexible morality with a strong survival instinct. He had no doubt Burke would die for his ideals, and Mok accepted a certain level of risk tied to his own lifestyle, but Scleesz very much liked his comfortable life and had no desire for it to end. So, now, his choice was to either pick a side and commit to it, or just ignore both and continue to look out for himself above all else.

"Councilman, your presence is required in the Grand Assembly."

"Thank you, I'll be right there," Scleesz said to the AI assistant that ran his office. He went to the hidden bar and poured himself a stiff double, knocking it back in a single gulp before straightening his robes and leaving the office. On the walk from the administrative complex where the councilmembers had their offices to the Grand Assembly, the hall where the council deliberated, he realized just how much he missed the days prior to the Machine's arrival when the most pressing thing on his mind was which of his mistresses he'd be visiting that night.

"We're tracking forty-two targets on passives."

"That's all of them," Fendra said. "At least in this group. When the ConFed seized control of the ships they shuffled them around so that all the cruisers, destroyers, and the two battleships were in this formation. The frigates and support ships were moved someplace else."

"And these ships were all left with skeleton crews?" Jason asked.

"Just enough spacers left aboard each to keep the reactors in maintenance mode and the air breathable," Fendra confirmed. "No engines, no weapons, and no coms. From the power readings we're seeing here—or lack of them—I'd say that they're still in that same storage mode."

The Phoenix hung in space a few million klicks from where Fendra had promised they would find the missing Imperial fleet, and she'd delivered. Forty-two capital warships sat in interstellar space along the edge of the gaseous region that denoted one of the navigational boundaries of the Concordian Cluster. The intense white light from a nearby Type-F star lit the nebula formations up from within and gave the scene outside the canopy a surreal aspect.

"This is creepy," Twingo said. "What could possibly be the purpose of keeping these ships intact and space worthy?"

"The ConFed in planning something, but damned if I know what it is," Jason said. "Lucky, you're still sure about this?"

"The same thing that makes the ships difficult to find will be the same thing that makes them easy to approach," Lucky said. "They will have limited passive sensor coverage and no active scans running."

"It's a good thing they were too stupid to move all the ships away once they'd taken procession," Jason said.

"The only ships powered up were the ones that were moved away," Fendra said. "I agree that it is strange they left the more powerful ships here and took all the smaller support ships out of the area."

It had been an odd, seven-day flight from Mok's compound out to the Cluster with their unwanted guest. Fendra had no problem living aboard the spartan gunship, as an intelligence officer she'd likely suffered through much worse, but she was an unknown, untrusted presence within the crew's inner sanctum and that automatically created an air of tension. Jason had tried to probe around the edges a little bit and see if he could uncover a little more about Mok's past since the pair obviously knew each other, but she'd shut down those conversations whenever he'd brought it up.

"Okay," Jason said. "Bringing up engine two in low power mode." He pushed the switch for number two up to the 'START' position and held it for a moment until he saw plasma pressure building in the injector manifold on his instruments. He released the switch and let it snap back to the 'RUN' position as the engine continued to spool up.

Since the dormant ships weren't running active tachyon scans, and even passive sensors gave off a detectable energy signature, they were going to try and push the Phoenix ahead on the thrust of a single main engine, and then shut it down to cold coast much of the way. They couldn't risk the grav-drive as that was easily detected once they got in too close, and flying in under full burn with all four main engines lit would put up a thermal bloom even the most rudimentary infrared sensor would see. So, it was a long, boring flight across a few million kilometers that would take at least another full day to complete.

"Number two is up and stable, output is choked down to twelve percent," Twingo said. "That's the lowest I can give you and still keep it lit."

"It'll have to do," Jason said executed the navigation script Kage had programmed and sent to the pilot's station. The power output of the barely-idling engine was so low there was no perception that they were even underway. Normally, the deck would vibrate and the hull would groan to let them know that they were, indeed, moving. The dead silence was a bit eerie. "When we're within a million klicks, we'll shut down and begin powering off all the non-essentials."

"Thanks for the recap of the plan we've only been talking about for the last four days straight," Crusher said over his shoulder. "Truly we would be lost without your august leadership."

"Fuck off."

"I'm still not in love with this plan, Captain," Crusher said, knocking on Jason's helmet with a knuckle.

"You're free to suit up and go in my place."

"Good luck out there," Crusher said, turning and walking out of the armory.

"I have accounted for as many variables as I could think of," Lucky said. "I believe that our chances of survival are quite good."

"Quite good is an improvement over our usual odds," Jason said. "I'll take it. How're you doing over there?"

"This isn't my first combat EVA, Captain Burke." Fendra sat on a bench, outfitted in a lightweight tactical EVA suit.

"I was more asking about how the suit fit you not your mission qualifications," Jason said.

He was decked out in the replacement powered armor graciously given to him by the Disa Arms Company when one of their suits had failed critically after taking a single hit. At first, they'd been recalcitrant, unwilling to accept that the fault had been theirs. After Jason had threatened to hit the personal residence of the sales rep that sold him the armor from orbit, however, they became much more accommodating.

The armor was a medium-duty model that gave a decent mix of protection, strength enhancement, and situational awareness without being so bulky and cumbersome he couldn't move about within the ship. He had one of his trusty railgun carbines and a high-power plasma rifle secured to the maglocks on his back as well as two sidearms affixed to each thigh. Lucky needed no external support to operate in space, of course, but he now needed to carry weaponry with him. He'd not had the time to build his own weaponry as he'd planned, so he carried a similar loadout as Jason, including one of the spare railguns with the larger grips used by the Galvetic Legions.

"We're coming up on the release point, Captain," Doc's voice came over the intercom. "Better get outside."

"Copy," Jason grunted and stood up, checking over his gear one more time. While he'd never admit it to the others, EVA operations still scared the living shit out of him no matter how many times he did them. The ones like this that were in interstellar space were even worse than the orbital ops. He hated every single minute of floating about, waiting for some incorrectly installed seal to fail and his blood to boil within his body when he lost pressurization.

The trio made their way to the port engineering bay and the airlock for access to the dorsal hull. With Lucky going first, they took turns cycling through the hatch and getting up onto the top of the Phoenix. The gunship still hurtled towards the formation of dormant warships on a ballistic course, the ionic jets firing every so often to adjust their attitude. Jason activated the maglocks on his sabatons and clomped over to where Lucky was already inspecting the package that Twingo had prepped and mounted to the hull. Once he was close enough, the battlesynth reached out and touched his armor.

"Everything checks out, Captain," he said over the com link. "We can depart once Fendra reaches us."

"Cool trick," Jason said back, pointing at his friend's hand. Since any RF or even short-range com laser emissions might be detected, the team had to be in direct contact to communicate with each other via an inductive coupling. Lucky's old body had only been able to do this through the palm of the left hand while the new body was able to do it no matter what part was touching.

A moment later, Fendra walked smoothly over to them, pointed to the sled attached to the hull, and then made a fist indicating she was good to go. Jason nodded and gestured for Lucky to take his place. They each held on to the ungainly machine while Jason sent the command for it to detach from the hull. As soon as it cleared, it automatically fired compressed air jets to get them clear of the gunship and line them up with the preplanned approach to one of the battleships.

He fought off a wave of vertigo and the panic that hit him when he saw the Phoenix slowly drift down and away from them, quickly swallowed up by the inky blackness around them. People really had no idea just how unfathomably dark space really was until they got out of a ship and experienced it in the gaps between the stars. Jason couldn’t even see the front of the sled he was currently hanging on to, and it was barely a meter in front of him.

"How's everyone doing?" he asked, his voice transmitted to his teammates through the sled.

"I guess now is a bad time to admit that these deep space EVA ops terrify me," Fendra said.

"Really? I think they're sort of fun," Jason said. "Relaxing."

"You're apparently as sick in the head as Mok seems to think," Fendra muttered.

After they'd been adrift for twenty minutes or so, the sled fired the two ionic jets that were mounted on outriggers to either side of them, accelerating them smoothly along now that they were well clear of the Phoenix. They needed just a bit more relative velocity so they could make smooth course corrections as they closed in on the target. Jason just hoped Fendra was as tough as she seemed because the deceleration and landing promised to be nothing short of brutal.

"Wake up, Captain."

"I am awake!"

"You've been snoring over the channel for the last four and half hours," Fendra said.

"We're approaching our first decel maneuver," Lucky said.

"I’m ready," Jason said, double checking his safety tether and commanding the armor to lock his arms out stiff.

A minute later, the jets on the outrigger pylons rotated around began firing short bursts to start shedding off speed. He watched on his helmet's HUD as the computers calculated their rate of closure, time to intercept, and what their relative velocity will be at the time of capture. If the jets were able to keep scrubbing off their forward velocity, the impact when the grapples fired might not be as bad as he initially feared.

It was sometime later when a boxed reticle appeared in his field of view, and he saw a small speck against the brightly lit gas clouds of the nebula edge. As they plodded along, the speck took shape, and his armor's limited optics were able to zoom in and show him the dark outline of Luex-class battleship, named after an Imperial admiral who had been dead for nearly a hundred years. Luex had the distinction of commanding in the last major battle the Eshquarians had fought when they liberated five planets from the fledgling Saabror Protectorate.

"There's something spooky about a starship without engines or running lights going," Jason said over the open channel.

"Agreed," Fendra said.

It seemed like from one moment to the next the ship went from being a misshapen blotch on his optics to a monolith looming out of the darkness. His multispectral optics were able to make out some detail, but the ship had been powered down so long that the hull was a uniform cold that made it nearly impossible for the thermal sensors to differentiate between surfaces. Since they were parked in interstellar space, there wasn't even the energy from a local star to warm the alloy.

Despite how far humans had come technologically, much of their brain had evolved millions of years ago and sometimes wasn't suited for the tasks being asked of it. The distances and speeds involved in the maneuver were far greater than anything Jason's visual cortex and stereo-optic eyes were designed for, so by the time he could actually detect they were closing on the ship, they were already at such close range that he had little time to react before the sled fired the grappling anchors and began a violent braking maneuver to slow them as much as possible before they grabbed.

In the blink of an eye, he went from thinking the ship was hours away to watching the hull rush by beneath him. The mag-anchors at the ends of the flexible, nano-chain cables slammed into the hull and locked while the ionic jets shook the sled mightily at full power. When they ran out of line, the flexible cables stretched and absorbed as much of their kinetic energy as possible before rebounding and yanking them the other way so violently that Jason's vision grayed out around the edges. He commanded his gauntlets to lock onto the handles in case he passed out, not wanting to trust the safety tether with his life.

They were bounced around twice more, each rebound less energetic than the one that preceded it, until the sled drifted lazily in space near the leviathan, the arresting cables slack. Lucky checked on his biological charges, and then commanded the winches to begin retracting the cables, drawing them down onto the hull.

"Let's never do this again," Jason groaned. Everything hurt, and his armor was flashing a couple amber alarms telling him that the stunt had screwed up the calibration on his spatial orientation system. "Fendra? You dead?"

"I'd like to be." The voice over the com sounded strained.

"The g-loading of the arresting maneuver was well within the accepted limits of your species, Fendra," Lucky said.

"What about mine?" Jason asked.

"Technically, you could have been killed. However, Doc assured me your bio-enhancements and armor would be sufficient to allow you to survive."

"Thanks," Jason said drily. "How close did we come to the target zone?"

"We will anchor the sled twenty-six meters away from the area we were targeting," Lucky said.

"Not a bad shot," Jason said, impressed.

They were winched the rest of the way down and dismounted the sled that had been their home for the two-day flight out. Jason stood on the battleship's hull and stretched before unhooking the support umbilicals that brought external power, air, water, and a disgusting nutrient paste into his armor so he wouldn't be using his internal systems the entire time they were adrift. He smiled to himself as he thought of Twingo having to clean out the waste reclamation modules once they returned.

It only took them a few minutes to gather all of their gear off the sled, make sure it was anchored solidly, and then march off towards the stern of the ship. On big capital ships, the engines weren't actually mounted directly to the hull. They were cradled inside the structure on large, shock absorbing pylons. Normally, the gaps between the body of the engine and the hull of the ship would be protected by a security force field to keep out unwanted guests who were insane enough to attempt a boarding there. Even if the fields weren't in place, the radiation and errant power discharges that arced around inside the area would quickly fry anyone before they made it to the service hatches.

When the ship's main reactors weren't powered up, and the engines were long-dormant, however, the space made a handy point of entry that was far easier to breach than trying to cut through meters of hardened starship hull alloy. Lucky moved quickly to the airlock for the maintenance hatch of the number six engine bay and ripped the access panel free so he could get to the wiring beneath. The external hatches weren't part of any sub-systems that were powered up while in a deep storage mode, so it was a relatively simple task for the battlesynth to find the right signal and power lines he needed and splice into them. Less than a minute after he started, the light pipe that ringed the hatch lit up weakly in green, indicating the airlock was open and clear.

Still observing com silence, Lucky opened the hatch and motioned them in before following and closing it behind him. The airlock was large enough for ten people so there was plenty of room for them to spread out as Jason pulled out a compressed gas cylinder and Lucky went to work on the inner access control panel. Once the battlesynth had applied power to the inner hatch, the light around it sputtered to life and glowed red. Jason opened the valve on the automatic regulator attached to the cylinder and stepped back as atmosphere fogged up from the tap and swirled about the chamber. A moment later, the light around the inner hatch blinked to amber and, finally, as the pressure matched to the interior of the ship, went green.

Jason closed the valve and pulled off his plasma rifle so he could join Fendra, covering the hatch as Lucky opened it. It seemed unlikely they'd been detected, but it was possible that a passive sensor caught their sled coming in and there was an armed party waiting on the other side of the hatch. He looked at Lucky and made a chopping motion with his left hand.

"Clear," Fendra said aloud when the hatch opened and nobody was there to greet them.

"Scanning," Lucky said, stepping through and allowing his sensors to take in the environment. Jason moved past him, weapon up, and cleared around the corner. The corridor led into a cavernous engineering support bay loaded with shelves of parts and work benches with partially disassembled components and tools strewn about. His multispectral optics, now able to see perfectly within the confines of the ship, let him quickly clear the space and move out into one of the main access corridors.

"Looks like all the hatches down here were opened before they killed the power," he said. "That should make things easier. I'm not picking up any residual thermals or anything that indicates someone has been down here recently."

"I concur," Lucky said. "I can detect no trace emissions and only a faint power signature coming from somewhere ahead of us, which I assume is the backup generator that's maintaining the life support systems."

"Heat and air are stable and comfortable," Fendra said. "Gravity is down to about a third of Eshquarian normal but still enough for anyone stuck out here for an extended stay. What's first?"

"We try and find a powered-up terminal and access the network," Jason said. "Honestly, if we could pull this off without having to capture and question whoever is on this ship, all the better."

"That's…wildly optimistic, but we'll try it your way first," Fendra said.

"You say that as if you have a choice," Jason said. "You're a guest on this op, remember that. If you're here for some other reason we aren't aware of, you'd best come clean now or you'll be staying here permanently."

"No need for the hostility, Captain," she said calmly. "Though I commend you on your natural distrust of newcomers. That will keep you alive longer than if you just blindly accepted things you were told. To answer directly, no…Mok didn't give me a secondary set of orders—not that I take direction from him anyway—and I haven't received instructions from my handlers since shortly after the Fleet Masters were all captured."

"You are making too much noise," Lucky admonished. "Please refrain from unnecessary talking from here on out."

"Sorry," Jason said.

"Sorry," Fendra repeated.

They moved through the labyrinth of corridors in the engineering spaces up to the plusher, comfortable decks where most of the crew lived and worked. The ship seemed to go on forever as they plodded up the carpeted corridors to finally reach an auxiliary control room outside of the powerplant area where monitors were lit up and there seemed to finally be some signs of life.

"This is a security station for monitoring the people working around the powerplant as well as controlling access to the computer banks that are a deck below us," Fendra said. "It looks like the only stations that are active are one controlling the backup power cells and then two others that look like they access the secure banks directly."

"Someone has modified these stations to access the computer banks below us," Lucky said. "They have advanced search algorithms running and are copying data to a remote storage device."

"Doesn't look like anything useful here," Jason said. "Let's keep moving forward and up."

They moved on, the progress slow without access to the ship's lifts and moving walkways to whisk them to where they needed to go. It wasn't until they'd climbed up, into the area Jason would have called "Officer Country" if he'd been on a human ship, that they saw signs of life. The corridor lights here were dimly illuminated, and Jason's thermal optics could pick up the faint outlines of footprints where someone had recently walked. His adrenaline spiked as he followed the footprints. Before, it had been just an interesting excursion in what appeared to be an abandoned, dark ship. Now, he was an armed intruder, boarding a ship with a hostile party to take what he wanted by force. It was times like these he realized how badass his life would sound if he were describing it to his fourteen-year-old former self. Of course, the reality of that life was a bit bleaker.

"Who are you people? Are you with the security team?"

Jason spun and saw a bipedal alien holding a steaming mug of something and holding a tablet-style computer with data cables dangling from it.

"You're not supposed to be up here on the Ops Deck," the alien went on. "Who's your supervisor?"

"Apologies," Jason said, approaching and keeping his weapon down at his side. "We were turned around in the stairwells."

"Wait, that armor doesn't look like regular issue…who are you? That's it, I'm calling for—" He never got to finish as Jason walked up and thumped him in the forehead with his gauntlet. It was a solid hit that knocked him clean out but didn't even break the skin. The degree of fine motor control in the new armor was impressive.

"Thank God for oblivious tech nerds," Jason said. "You'd think if you were working on a captured enemy fleet hidden in deep space, you’d have a little bit better situational awareness about you."

"Let's move him into one of these side rooms," Fendra said. "You can gloat later."

7

"You figure out what's on his tablet?"

"His what?" Fendra asked. "Ah! That's an odd name for a miniproc."

"Miniproc? Short for miniature processor, I'm assuming?" Jason asked while they secured the tech to a chair and closed the hatch to the room they were in. Lucky stood watch by the door as they worked.

"Probably. That was actually the name of a product so popular it became what they were all known as," Fendra said. "There…he isn't getting out of that."

"A bit overkill for a tech geek…so, what're we going to do with him?" Jason asked. "If we question him, it'll be a bit tough to leave him alive. The whole point of this excursion is to get in and out without being seen."

"Leave that to me," she said, pulling a device from her kit and jabbing into the arm of their captive. "This will do a quick and dirty DNA scan and then synthesize the appropriate drug cocktail to keep him knocked out and erase his short-term memory. He'll wake up and just think he hit his head."

"That's technically true," Jason said, rapping the knuckle he'd cracked the engineer with on the table.

"While we are waiting for the drugs to take effect, perhaps I could scan through his handheld computer," Lucky said.

"We need to agree on one thing to call this," Jason said, waving the tablet at his friend and then tossing it to him. Lucky caught it without even looking and plugged one of the trailing data cables into a socket that appeared near his waist on the left side. Jason looked on with interest. Lucky's old body had no provisions for this sort of thing. In fact, not having any external data access was one of the major security features that prevented anyone from tampering with a Mk.1 battlesynth if it was ever rendered unconscious.

"Anything good in there?"

"Very much so," Lucky said. "This device is loaded with com protocols and encryption routines that are apparently critical to the operation of this fleet."

"Com protocols for what?" Fendra asked. "Command and control, or the more mundane stuff?

"Apparently both," Lucky said. "Judging from the correspondences I found, the technician's function is to reprogram the encrypted communication systems on this ship. There are access codes and decryption routines for telemetry, command and control, and tactical channels."

"Let's not worry about questioning this guy…just give him the knock-out juice and let Lucky download everything on that tablet," Jason said.

"Are you certain that's wise?" Fendra asked. "He could provide valuable context."

"Doubtful," Jason said. "He's a tech doing a job. He'll know enough to do that job and little else. The ConFed isn't going to brief low-level workers on all the details of whatever nefarious plan they've cooked up for this captured fleet. The less evidence we leave that we were here, the more useful these com protocols will be." Fendra looked unconvinced but adjusted her device to administer the appropriate drugs.

"This will leave a trace if someone does a full toxicology screen on him," she said. "It's unavoidable. Hopefully that souvenir you gave him with your metal glove will be as far as they investigate."

"Lucky?" Jason asked.

"Transfer complete," Lucky said, handing the device back to Jason after disconnecting it.

"Let's stage him in here and leave the hatch open," Jason said. "We need to move forward and see if there's anything else worth peeking in on. The com protocols are helpful, but we still don't know much more than we did before we boarded."

"Agreed," Fendra said. They quickly moved out of the small room and moved forward again.

Jason waved her into the lead as she was the person with the most familiarity with that class of ship. She had them take a narrow corridor off the main passageway they'd been following until they came to a security access point that was powered up and locked.

"I'd hoped this hatch would be unlocked," she said. "It leads up to the Auxiliary Tactical Control Center that's just below the main bridge. If the terminals there are powered up, we should be able to see everything they can on the bridge without risking a direct confrontation."

"What's this secondary center for?" Jason asked as Lucky nudged past him and looked at the access panel on the bulkhead.

"This ship is designed to either operate alone or as the anchor point for a larger taskforce. When it's in a formation, the secondary tactical center would be used to relay commands out to the other ships."

"I believe I can defeat this lock without alerting the bridge," Lucky said and placed his right palm over the biometric reader. Jason watched with fascination as the appendage seemed to change shape, color, and even its texture as it became the hand of another being. It was a few seconds later when there was a soft double-beep, and the hatch lock released with a metallic clang.

"I didn't know you could do that," Jason said.

"It is one of the more fascinating features of the Mk.2 body," Lucky said. "We are fortunate the technician whose hand I mimicked was put on the access list for this hatch."

"I had heard your outfit operates on dumb luck rather than careful planning and skill most of the time," Fendra said.

"We like to stick with what works," Jason said.

They moved quickly up to the auxiliary tactical center, passing a few other alcoves that looked like they were specialized com suites along the way. Their luck held out and not only was the center empty, but most of the terminals were powered up and operational. They split up and began scrolling through the different functions, looking for anything out of place that might indicate what the ConFed had planned.

"One of the ships in this fleet is operating under full power," Lucky said. "Its engines are cold so it is still difficult to detect, but the power signatures are unmistakable this close."

"What ship?" Jason asked, moving over to see.

"It is the other Luex-class battleship," Lucky said. "There is a discernible thermal plume from the main exhaust ports."

“So, reactors are up, but no engines," Jason said. "Why would they need main power available if they're not underway and with a skeleton crew?"

"Managing a formation this big is still going to be labor intensive, even with most of the ships in a deep storage mode," Fendra said. "Since they're not in orbit over a planet or moon, they'll tend to drift apart and will need have their positions maintained. Rather than fire them up to use the directional thrusters, they may be just running a fleet of tenders out of the second Luex."

"Maybe," Jason said, unconvinced. "It looks like we landed on the wrong damn ship. How much time before the Phoenix comes back around and we need to be on the sled and moving away?"

"We have another forty-seven hours," Lucky said. "I do have a proposal that would allow us to explore the second ship in that time."

"No," Jason said. "I already know what you're going to say and I'm not agreeing to this."

"What?" Fendra asked, confused.

"He's going to suggest he goes over alone," Jason said. "He can get there and back much quicker than we can because he can accelerate at rates that would kill us."

"That makes sense," Fendra said. "What's the problem."

"This isn't a debate, and you don't get a vote," Jason said. "My answer is no. We'll get the information we need here."

"Very well," Lucky said and turned back to the terminal. "Using the credential stored on the technician’s device, I have accessed this ship's logs."

"And?"

"There are entries that the ship makes automatically that are helpful here," Lucky said. "I have a complete crew manifest as well as detailed entries as to when they were removed from the ship. In addition to modifying the com systems, the technicians aboard have been updating the software in all the ship-to-ship missiles in the launchers and magazines. There has also been an extensive software update of the flight control and navigation systems."

"This makes less and less sense the more we dig into it," Jason said. "Okay, download all the logs and we'll let Kage dig into them once we're back aboard the Phoenix."

They worked in silence for a time, each digging into the unsecured terminals to see if anything jumped out as strange. So far, all it looked like was that the ConFed had gone through a lot of trouble to recover an enemy fleet intact and was now in the process of upgrading all the systems. The most plausible answer Jason could come up with was that the ConFed fleet wasn't as powerful and vast as they'd all been led to believe, and they intended to absorb these ships into their own command once all the updates had been completed. The only thing that punched holes in that was it didn't make a lot of sense to park them in interstellar space, shut them down, and then have a skeleton crew running around with tablets doing all the work.

He shook his head to clear out the extraneous garbage flitting around in his mind and concentrated on what he was looking at on the monitor. The station he was at handled internal security, and he was scanning through the different views of all the cameras still active aboard the ship to see if he could get an idea of who else was there with them. When he got to a view of the second cargo bay, he stopped, confused at what he was seeing.

"Fendra, do Imperial ships carry live animals for the galleys?"

"That's an incredibly stupid question, but I'm curious enough to wonder why you're asking it."

"Because it looks like you have enough pens in one of the main cargo holds to handle a decent amount of livestock," Jason said, moving aside and pointing at the monitor.

"Well, that's certainly not standard fleet issue," she muttered. "What is all that?"

On the display, they could see that someone had erected a series of holding cells, so many that they took up most of the deck and were stacked three-high. There was a single figure in body armor walking around, but from what they could see, the cells were empty. The cell construction looked modular, the sides all made of perforated sheets of composite with alloy doors set into the front.

"If you put two in each cell, there are enough cells to house the entire crew compliment of a Luex-class battleship," Lucky said.

"But the crew isn't here," Jason said. "And if they brought that many people here, the backup power wouldn't be able to handle the load to run the life support systems. They'd need to fire at least one of the main reactors back up."

"Captain, I feel it is imperative that we find out what is on the other Luex," Lucky said. "It is almost certain we will find the answers to our questions there rather than here." Jason tried to adjust his argument on the fly given the new information they had, but he could see no rational reason for Lucky not to explore the other ship given how much they'd already risked while looking through this one. It seemed logical to assume that whatever they were planning on doing here, they'd already done on the other ship and that was why main power was back up.

"Fine, damnit!" he snarled, ungracious in loss as ever. "You are authorized a sneak and peek. I don't want you taking any unnecessary risks. Recon only, and then get your metal ass back here. What's your problem?" His last question was directed Fendra, who stared into space with an odd look. Jason was quite familiar with Eshquarians, and he could see that she was either genuinely concerned or hiding something.

"It's nothing." She turned away from him and went back to punching in commands on the terminal. Jason thought about pressing the issue, but he didn't know her well enough to say for certain she was being evasive. Maybe it was just his natural instinct to distrust any intelligence operative no matter what.

Lucky, much to Jason's consternation, was able to interface with his armor, blow past the security protocols, and upload the data he'd collected without so much as setting off an alert. He wasn't sure if Lucky's new network intrusion toys were that good, or if he owed yet another angry message to the Disa Corporation for another underperforming system. They all left the auxiliary control room and worked their way aft so that Lucky could exit the ship the same way they came in. This type of discreet insertion was what battlesynths were designed for and though he didn't like it, Jason had to admit that he would only be a liability if he went along, as well.

The group split up amidships on deck seventeen, Lucky moving aft while Jason and Fendra decided to check out the control center for the ship's extensive communications suite. Before they parted ways, Jason told Lucky to make sure he went to their infiltration sled and took the portable slip-com node with him. It was a low-bandwidth, burst transmission system that only linked to its paired receiver in a safe house Kage had set up. From there the data could be routed through a normal slip-com node to anywhere else. The portable slip-com radio was bleeding edge tech that Jason had acquired from his friends in Earth's new spaceborne Navy.

"You feel that?" Fendra asked. They'd been slowly working their way down to the com center when a steady hum began building and a vibration could be felt through the deck.

"Yeah," Jason said. "I wonder if they're moving something down—" he trailed off as all the corridor lights came up and the hiss of air handlers started, sounding like a gale force wind after the oppressive silence. "Oh, shit."

"They're bringing main power back up," she said. "We should get to the sled."

"It's too late," Jason said. "That bit of vertigo you're feeling? That's the main engines going through pre-start. The force fields around the bays will already be active."

“So, we're trapped?"

"Not necessarily, but we sure as shit aren't leaving the way we came in."

"It's a good thing Lucky is probably long gone already."

"Yep," Jason said, checking his mission clock. "He'll be accelerating away at full burn by now."

Lucky reveled in the power of his new body. Trying to relearn so many basic skills was frustrating and, at times, painful, but there were also times when everything was working right…and it was glorious. He streaked away from the ship like a missile, his foot-mounted repulsors pushing him along at a steady one hundred and fifty g's of acceleration towards the target. His infiltration subsystems came alive with a thought, and active sensor-spoofing transceivers working to nullify any active scans they detected. A battlesynth was much, much smaller than the average ship buster missile so an anomaly that small was easily overlooked by even the more advanced threat detection AIs.

His old body had been a blunt instrument. Powerful, but also large and cumbersome. The Mk.2 shell his matrix now resided in was light, nimble, but just as strong. He was beginning to get the hang of commanding his new subsystems into action and letting the dedicated processors there do the heavy lifting. Much of the trouble he was having was because he still tried to consciously think about each individual action, and it was confusing the processors downstream, creating feedback loops and cascade failures that sometimes rendered him inoperable.

Now that he had the power issues mostly sorted, he felt he had a solid handle on the rest of it. Some things within his body that were sending him status signals were still a mystery to him, so for the time being he just ignored it. There were times he wished his family had just left him dead. It would have been simpler for him to remain in oblivion until his backup power failed, and then his biological friends could have mourned and moved on. But once he'd returned and saw how lost they seemed to be without him, especially Jason, it pushed him to overcome the challenges he faced so that he could be there for them once again. It was hard…the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, but he'd vowed to never fail them again.

His long-range sensors and accelerometers picked up an anomaly just as he rotated his feet towards the target and began decelerating. A new ship had arrived close to the formation and its grav-drive was easily detected by his instruments since it was the only one operating near his location. He focused his optics to where his sensors told him the point of origin was, but even his enhanced eyesight could only make out a tiny, lit speck moving against the inky black of space. The light pollution from the backlit nebula behind him wasn't helping either.

When he was close enough to the target that he had to begin worrying about landing, he ignored the newcomer and just hoped that Jason would be able to handle anything that came his way while he was gone. He calculated the distance and rate of closure before firing his repulsors again for the final decel when he was less than five hundred meters off the hull.

Lucky slammed into the alloy armor plates of the battleship with enough force that his left knee actuator signaled a mild alarm. As his damage control system went to work correcting the minor misalignment of the joint, Lucky took his bearings and made sure he'd landed where he had intended. As it turned out, he'd missed his LZ by six meters and made a note to have his sensors checked once he was back on the Phoenix.

He moved quickly to an access panel that he knew would allow him into the ship's interior after studying the layout he'd found in the other Luex's computer. It was a panel that had been added to the class after the ships had already been completed and put in service that allowed access to a liquid switching manifold that couldn't be reached from the inside. Since it turned out to be a high-fail part, they had to cut a hole into the side of the hull to get to it and then just slapped a panel over it.

Lucky studied the fasteners holding down the heavy panel that was roughly two by four meters in size and twenty-five centimeters thick. The tip of his right index finger quickly reconfigured itself so that it was the exact shape he needed to depress the fasteners and release the locks beneath, all sixty-two of them. It took him nearly four minutes to release all the quick-turn locks and then, changing the shape of his digit again, pry the stubborn slab out of its hole. Being a hasty retrofit coupled with the extreme temperature changes that happen on the outside of a ship, the panel was really jammed in there. Once it popped loose, he quickly checked underneath to make sure there weren't any switches or mag-sensors to alert the computer that a panel had been removed.

Once he was satisfied his intrusion would go undetected, he slipped into the opening and pulled the panel back into place. He tack-welded it on two corners to make sure it didn't drift off, but not so securely he couldn't just punch it out of the way if he needed to use this route to escape. He slipped past the bulky valve body the panel was protecting and moved down to where there was the relatively thin wall of a large-bore air duct that took return air from the forward sections of the ship back to the life support machinery, where it could be processed and pumped back in as fresh atmosphere. There were seven atmospheric processors on a Luex-class ship, and this duct would take him through a remote area of the amidships engineering bays that would allow him to enter the ship's interior.

Even though he wasn't able to power up the big plasma cannons in his arms, his cutting lasers worked just fine. He made two quick cuts in the metal and bent the edges in against the outrushing air. He worked quickly to get inside, and then seal the duct back, anchoring himself against the strong flow and welding in two precise lines along he cuts. Since all starships, especially big ones, leaked atmosphere constantly from a thousand different places, he felt safe the escaping air wouldn't cause any concern once he'd sealed the breach.

He released his mag-locks and let himself be carried along in the low-gravity as the air rushed back towards the processor. His internal instruments were tracking his progress, and he knew exactly when he needed to arrest his headlong rush so he could cut his way back out of the duct.

After his feet hit the deck, and he repaired the second duct breach, he was ready to begin his recon mission. Despite the obvious danger of being aboard an enemy ship with no backup and his own internal systems being somewhat unreliable, he hadn't felt this alive since he'd been awoken in a new body. The solo mission was exhilarating…he'd finally be able to pull his own weight again and prove his worth.

8

After Lucky had gone his own way, Jason somehow found himself in the lead as he and Fendra moved further into the ship. The map projected by his armor's computer seemed to be missing quite a bit and everything around him was beginning to look the same. For all he knew he was walking around in circles and his companion was content to just let him, following along behind.

"I think we've gotten turned around. Fendra?"

Jason turned to see why his companion wasn't answering and looked right down the discharge aperture of a high-powered plasma sidearm.

"Of course," he sighed.

"This pistol has enough power to do real damage at this range, even with the armor," Fendra said. "Let's not do anything stupid…lose the gear and take your helmet off."

"Fucking spies," Jason muttered as he complied, tossing his weapons and the helmet into a corner of the small room she'd led them into. “So, what's the play here?"

"I'm not telling you anything," she said calmly. "I'm simply doing my job and holding you here until I can make it known to my superiors where I am so they can collect us both. We could be waiting a while so go ahead and march back out the way we came in and head down to the detention cells in the cargo hold."

"Not even a hint?" Jason asked. "How about I make guesses, and you tell me if I'm getting hot or cold?"

"I have the gun aimed at your head," Fendra said, sounding exhausted. "One more word and I'll just be turning over whatever is left of you inside your little shell after I burn away your skull." Jason said nothing more and kept walking, keeping his hands up where she could see them. His armor was still connected to his neural implant, so the moment he took the helmet off, all the pertinent data was displayed in his field of view via his ocular implants.

Want me to activate the nasty little surprise you guys put in her suit?

"Mhm," Jason hummed and nodded his head slightly to Cas's question. He had wondered if his hitchhiker was ever going to bother helping out or if he'd be forced to try and work through the menus himself. The armor interface was new enough that he wasn't as proficient as he should be at it.

"Ungh!" Fendra's grunt of pain was followed by a muffled thud as she landed face-first on the carpeted deck.

"Oh, no!" Jason exclaimed, relieving her of the large-bore plasma pistol. "What happened?! Are you okay?"

"Unngh!"

"I can't understand you," Jason said, crouching by her head as her body convulsed. "What was that? Oh! You think there's a few hundred thousand volts coursing through your body?"

"Ugh-ugh!"

"And you go on to say that you suspect we put the devices in the suit we provided because we never fully trusted you?" Jason asked. "Wow, you nailed it!"

There was one more discharge that caused her to arch her back so hard he was afraid she'd break it before, mercifully, she lost consciousness and flopped to the deck again. Jason yanked her arms behind her back and slapped on a set of restraints before doing the same thing to her ankles.

That was pretty sadistic.

"You were the one in charge of the shockers in her suit," Jason said, grabbing a boot and dragging her back into the room where he could retrieve his gear.

That was an observation not an accusation. I had to assume she was loaded up with enough toys from Imperial Intelligence that a single hit might not do it.

"And where the hell were you this whole time?" Jason demanded. "Could have used some help before now."

You're using a lot of processing power to control the armor. I needed to reduce my usage, and that meant no extraneous conversation.

"Who are you talking to?" Fendra moaned, already coming back to life.

"Damn, you're a tough one," Jason said, sliding his helmet back on and rearming himself.

"I have a lot of specialized implants," Fendra said. “So, now what? You'll kill me and escape?"

"If I was going to kill you, I'd have done it already," Jason said. "First, I'm going to double up your restraints. Then we're going to figure out a way off this ship before it gets underway. Don't bother answering me, this isn't a conversation. One more word from you and I'll disable the speakers on your helmet…actually, that's probably not a bad idea anyway."

I can do that via the remote link Twingo set up. Her speakers, com system, and beacons are all disabled.

Jason could see her mouth moving behind the faceshield of her helmet but no sound escaped. He smiled and grabbed her feet again, dragging her back down the corridor towards the portside service bay they passed earlier. It was a large, sealed off area with its own airlock, where VIP shuttles could dock and unload their passengers without going through the hassle of coming into the hangar bay.

With main power up and all the security subsystems running, the airlock hatch was locked, and he was fresh out of battlesynths with specialized code cracking skills. He could try the emergency override, but that would likely sound a ship-wide alarm, and there were still security contractors prowling the ship. The whole mission would be a bust if they caught him trying to sneak away.

He saw that the bay actually held a two-person, bubble canopy tender the captain or first officer would use to inspect the ship from the outside. It was so underpowered and flimsy it couldn't even really be called a shuttle, and its ionic drive had little power and no real range to speak of. Still…it would at least get them away from the ship if he could figure out how to launch it.

After inspecting the hatch, he saw that the tender was actually already outside the ship, docked into a small recess in the hull, and only the hatch was accessible from the inside. The inner hatch had been left open, but the hatch to the tender itself was sealed and locked.

I can try to override the lock, but that's not really something I’m specialized to do.

"I don't think it's worth the risk," Jason said. "We're out of time, the engines are smoothing out and they'll be ready to get underway soon. Were there any passcodes in the data we pulled off that technician's tablet?"

That isn't exactly an easy task for me to go into your armor's data storage and start rooting around. Standby…let me see if anything stands out.

Jason dragged Fendra over to the airlock hatch, ignoring her as she tried to kick out at him with her bound feet, and pulled the plasma rifle off the anchors on his back. There was an icy, hard lump in his stomach as he realized that all the ships were probably getting ready to depart, and he had no idea where Lucky was. For all he knew, his friend has managed to get aboard the other battleship and suffered a catastrophic malfunction.

Found it. There is no code. All security protocols have been overridden by the ConFed tech teams, every hatch in the ship is currently unlocked to allow the teams unfettered access.

"Accommodating of them," Jason said, walking to the airlock and commanding the hatch open. As Cas had assured him, the locks released with a clank, and the hatch swung wide open. He dragged his prisoner in closed the hatch behind him, commanding the lock to cycle. As the atmosphere was pumped out of the chamber, he toyed with the idea of breaking com silence and seeing if Lucky might answer a coded burst transmission, but quickly discarded the idea as needlessly risky. He'd trusted his friend to go off alone, knowing the risks up front, so he needed to continue trusting that Lucky was able to handle whatever was thrown at him.

Once the lock cycled and the outer hatch opened, Jason grabbed the handles on the back of Fendra's suit and carefully stepped out onto the hull. After commanding the outer hatch to close and the lock to pressurize, he pushed off the hull and drifted out into the void. Once he cleared the fifty-meter mark he deployed the twin repulsor jets on his back and fired them at fifty percent power, sending them streaking away from former Eshquarian battleship.

After shutting off his repulsors and drifting, he turned and allowed his optics to begin picking out targets. Even from this distance his sensors were easily able to see that all the ships in the formation were powering up their main reactors and engines. He began shutting down extraneous systems to save his power. Now he had nothing to do but sit and obsess about the danger Lucky could be in. Great.

"That's the last of them," Kage said.

"That was quick," Doc said. "The whole formation moved out and jumped into slip-space within three hours. We're sure there's nothing left lurking in the system?"

"Nothing on passives and every known ship was accounted for," Kage said. "Let's go ahead and send out a coded query."

"Transmitting," Doc said.

The Phoenix was hanging in space, drifting imperceptibly away from where the formation had been parked. Doc, piloting the ship, hadn't bothered to set the maneuvering jets to station keeping, reducing their chances of being spotted. Over the course of the mission, the ship had wandered only a few kilometers from the last nav point, and the more sensitive forward passive arrays were still aimed where the pride of the Eshquarian Imperial Navy used to sit.

"Picking up a response from the captain's armor, no sled and no battlesynth transponders detected," Kage said. "Sending the location to you now."

"Twingo! Bring the main drive up!"

"On it."

“So, what does this mean?" Crusher demanded. "Has Lucky been captured?

"I've told you every single thing I know about the situation," Kage said wearily. "If you were so worried about them, why didn't you go?" The line worked in shutting him up, as it had the last seventy-six times Crusher stormed onto the bridge demanding an update.

Geltens, the name for Crusher's species, were temperamentally ill-suited for extended EVA missions, the warrior caste especially so. There were physiological triggers that no amount of training or familiarity could overcome if they were floating around in the void for very long, and a Galvetic warrior having a panic attack on a covert mission was something you definitely wanted to avoid. These facts didn't assuage Crusher's guilt at staying behind, however, so whenever Jason and Lucky left the ship for a long EVA, the big bastard made himself an utter nuisance to the people trying to manage the ship.

"Main drive is up, the captain's position is locked on…let's go get him," Doc said.

"Less talking, more doing," Kage said without looking up. "I don't need a detailed explanation of every damn thing you're doing over there all the time. I'm busy over here, too. You don't see me making announcements every time I flip a switch."

"He's trying to be like Jason," Crusher laughed, and then started pretending he was flying the ship while mocking his crewmate. "Look at me! I'm the captain! I drive the ship!"

"And to think I walked away from a high salary and a position in a prestigious institute of learning to come back out here and be abused by you morons," Doc muttered, executing the script command that would allow the ship to fly itself to the armor's squawking beacon. Without having to worry about being detected, they were able to move in under what appeared to be Jason and Fendra in less than five minutes. Kage opened the back of the ship up so they could just float into the cargo bay instead of taking turns struggling down through the maintenance airlock.

By the time they all reached the cargo bay, Jason was closing up the rear pressure doors and raising the ramp back into place, the atmospheric barrier shimmering as dust particles from inside the bay impacted it. Once the ship was closed up, Jason grabbed Fendra's suit and dragged her into the middle of the bay. It was only then that the others saw that she was tied up with multiple restraints.

"Looks like we missed the party," Crusher remarked.

"Double agent," Jason grunted after pulling his helmet off. "I would've killed her on the spot, but we'll need to question her now. She led us here for a reason."

"Told you," Kage said. "Now pay up."

"We didn't bet anything, dumbass," Jason said. "I agreed with you, remember? Good job with the shockers inside the suit, though. You should've seen her face."

"Not to put a damper on this," Doc said. "But where is Lucky?"

"His beacon didn't come up when you sent out a query?"

"No…otherwise I probably wouldn't be asking where he was."

"He went off on his own to explore the other battleship in the formation," Jason said. "Since he's no longer in the system, I have to assume he made it aboard. So, to answer your question, Lucky is wherever that formation flew off to."

9

"How the hell could you let him go off by himself?!" Crusher roared. As he came stomping across the deck, Jason considered slipping his helmet back on.

"I didn't let him do anything," he shot back. "He made a case for checking out the other ship and said he could make it there and back in a short amount of time. How could I tell him that I trusted him to be on a mission only if I was right there with him to babysit? Either he's a full member of this crew again or he's not. If you're so worried, why didn't you come with us?"

"I have a condition!" Crusher bellowed.

"I'd say he has more than one," Kage muttered, likely louder than he meant to.

"Enough!" Jason's voice boomed across the hold. "Crusher, please take our guest and see she's given accommodations befitting her status as someone who I very much would like to kill. Doc, get a hold of Mok and let him know our status. Kage, I have a data dump in my armor's memory you need to start going through, while Twingo and I make sure that Lucky isn't just drifting around in this area. If he's not, we need to begin making plans to recover him ASAP."

"I'm sure she could help us get him back," Crusher nudged Fendra with the toe of his boot.

"If he's on one of those ships, and we think she might know where they've gone, then the regular rules are out the window," Jason said. "Do whatever it takes to get the information out of her. Whatever it takes." Doc just sighed loudly but didn't make any protests about Jason's insinuation that they'd resort to torture.

"What the hell are you all standing around for?" Jason shouted, clapping his gauntlets together with a deafening bang. "Get moving!"

"There's nothing out here," Twingo said after the fourth high-res pass they completed with the towed array. "The biggest chunk of alloy out there is the size of those weird green things you slice up into your beer—"

"Limes."

"—and the rest is all just the normal particulate matter that falls of a starship when it stops."

"Lucky's new body has some pretty effective stealth modes, could he just be hidden?"

"If he was rendered unconscious, he would likely revert back to normal mode," Twingo said. "And even if he'd engaged his stealth mode, he'd be the only thing in this section of space radiating heat besides the Phoenix and the thermals would have picked him up."

"I'm not sure if I feel better about this or not," Jason said, leaning back in the pilot's seat and rubbing his head. He was still in the form fitting base layer while the armor itself was lying on the deck, grotesquely splayed open from where he'd climbed out of it. "This means it's almost certain he got himself aboard that other Luex-class battlewagon, and then was trapped when it got underway."

"He might not be trapped," Twingo said. "He probably could have left at any time. I don't think you guys realize how truly frightening that Mk.2 body is. It was designed specifically for this type of covert operation and insertion within enemy territory. Now that his power issues seem to be sorted out, he's probably deep within the belly of the beast and getting his job done. You want to know what I think?"

"Not really."

"I think that before you can even scrape together a plan and wring some sort of location out of that spy chained up in berthing, Lucky will contact us first."

"I hope you're right," Jason said. "Go ahead and reel the towed array back in and I'll plot us a course out of the Cluster. This is still a pretty hot region, and I'd rather not get caught up in any skirmishes between the occupational force and the Cluster's underworld."

The towed array was basically a large pallet loaded with ultra-sensitive detection instruments, stabilized by compressed gas jets, and dragged behind the ship by a few hundred meters of cable. Since the sensors aboard the Phoenix had to be attenuated to account for the noise the gunship herself created, the idea with a deployable sensor platform was to get it away from the ship and bring the ambient interference threshold down by an order of magnitude. The array they were currently towing was actually the third one they'd had to build and install. The other two had been lost when Jason forgot they were deployed and lost one when they jumped to slip-space and another when he aggressively entered a planet's atmosphere. Since then, Twingo had programmed in safety checks to make sure a distracted pilot didn't lose a third set of incredibly expensive and difficult to obtain equipment.

"Array is retracted and stowed," Twingo said. "Ship is green, you're clear to engage slip-drive."

"We're out of here," Jason said, pushing the throttle up and aiming the nose for their mesh-out point. He didn't relish the idea of questioning Fendra about her role in this peculiar situation. She was a trained intelligence officer, and they were not. While she would be able to draw on her training to resist any methods they might employ, they would just likely become frustrated and resort to increasingly brutal levels of physical violence. The thought of it alone was enough to make the ball of ice he'd been carrying in his gut since Lucky's disappearance do a few more rolls. Maybe she'd do the smart thing and realize that if she didn't play ball, there was no way they could leave her alive. Surely, her loyalty to her new employers couldn't be that strong.

Lucky crouched inside the small alcove, waiting for an appropriate target. Half a dozen crew had already walked by, but none of them were what he needed. In order to complete his mission, he would need to have full run of the ship. Everyone he'd seen so far was either a low-level technician or security, neither of which would be able to easily move outside of their assigned areas.

"I don't want any excuses. I want it done right!" The shout drifted down the corridor, the voice dripping scorn. It was the voice of authority, of someone who was used to having their orders followed at once. It was likely the exact type of person Lucky had been waiting for. The battlesynth hoped it wasn't the commander of the vessel. He needed free movement but nothing so high profile as the captain.

"It's like working with children! How are we ever going to meet this schedule if they don't do what they're told!?"

When the owner of the voice that had been spewing all the derision came into view, Lucky knew this was the person. It was a portly acaer, a species that normally kept to their own planet, dressed in smart civilian attire and holding three different portable computers. He wasn't an officer aboard the ship. He appeared to be a technical supervisor. And he was alone.

Perfect.

Lucky waited until the acaer made it almost past the hatchway to the room he was in before putting his plan in motion.

"Help! Help me!" he called out, modulating his voice to sound like a young female acaer. "Please!"

"What? Who's there? Come now, what is this?"

Lucky remained silent and let him come into the room of his own volition. The supervisor was still cautious, but his curiosity seemed to override his good sense, and he kept walking into the room. In a move that sealed his fate, he placed everything he carried down on the one workstation, including the com unit that allowed him to talk to the rest of the crew.

The battlesynth, sensing that this was as good an opportunity as he would likely get, shot out of the alcove with blinding speed. His detailed knowledge of alien anatomy allowed him to clamp down on the appropriate pressure points to disable and render the acaer unconscious in a matter of seconds. Lucky dragged the alien further into the room and then sealed the hatch so he wouldn't be disturbed.

He rolled the acaer over and placed his right palm just above the base of the neck, allowing thin tendrils composed of nanobot chains to emerge and penetrate the skin. They sought out the neural implant nearly every species in this quadrant had installed in bodies and made a hard connection, downloading the contents into Lucky's data core. The information was the parsed and any recorded memories were pulled out for context as the battlesynth's holographic generators came to life and projected a perfect likeness of the acaer so that it looked like there were identical twins in the room.

Once the illusion was complete, the force field generators went to work providing structure to the hologram. It wouldn't fool anyone if they made hard contact, but the fields would be able to make certain it didn't look unusual when Lucky brushed past something, and it didn't move. The covert reconnaissance subroutines in his subprocessors were beginning to take hold and Lucky felt his primary matrix being pushed back slightly.

His victim moaned slightly as Lucky retracted the nano-chains. He looked up into his own visage in horror, his face flushing a bright crimson as his panic response triggered. Lucky wasted no time and drove his fist into the acaer's chest with enough force to burst his seven-chambered heart. The alien flopped back, dead, while the battlesynth looked around for a suitable place to stow the body. Normally, he wouldn't have considered killing an unarmed, incapacitated captive in cold blood like that, but his infiltration modes had taken over. If the live supervisor were discovered, the entire mission was blown.

"My name is Nikain," Lucky said aloud. His aural mimic system made adjustments after comparing it to the recording of the voice he already had. "My name is Nikain." The voice pattern was analyzed again, and Lucky was happy with the ninety-six percent accuracy given he only had a short sample from the real Nikain to work with.

He removed one of the many panels in the deck and saw that it was an access to a large cable chase. Data trunk lines wove through the section for as far as he could see when he stuck his head into the opening. He dragged the body over and stuffed it down and around the larger bundles until it fell half a meter or so and landed on some insulated pipes that had frost on them. The fact the body was resting on coolant lines made it all the better to stave off decomposition. Lucky replaced the panel and tack welded it discreetly at each of the four handles, adding one more layer of difficulty if someone came looking for the inevitable smell.

Lucky picked up the various portable computers, each of the passcodes gleaned from Nikain's neural implant, and the com unit. With another look to make sure the room was sanitized, he unlocked the hatch and stepped through.

"Nikain! Where have you been? They're looking for you down in the forward magazine!"

"My com unit had to be reset, and I missed the message," Lucky said. "Thank you."

"You feeling okay? You look a little…pale."

"I am fine, thank you again. Please tell them I am on my way."

"I will. If you're feeling up to it later, we're having an eckle tournament in the tech common area this evening."

"Perhaps. But work first…you know how it is."

"Sure do. Hope it's something simple and not another rejection."

The interaction gave him more needed context to begin adjusting his presentation of his subject. Other than experimenting idly while in Mok's engineering lab, this was the first time Lucky had tried to implement his new body's mimic function to actually portray another being. Despite having gotten the coloration slightly wrong—something he adjusted once out of sight—he had to consider his first field trial a success. With a new feeling of confidence, Lucky/Nikain strode down the corridor towards the lifts that would take him to the forward weapons magazine.

10

"Assuming it didn't fall off, we should get a location fix on the sled once it drops out of slip-space," Twingo was explaining.

"Why can't it operate while in slip-space?" Jason asked. "We have trackers that can do that."

"At the time I was hastily assembling that contraption, I put the tracker on as a last-minute addition. I assumed the sled might get abandoned and thought it would be interesting to see where the ship might fly off to, assuming it ever left that spot. It was a hypothetical I didn't think was worth risking one of the few very expensive continuous slip-space trackers for." Jason tried his best to find holes in his friend's logic so he could blame the mess on him, but Twingo was right. It was an unlikely scenario a tracker would even be needed, so why throw away one of the most expensive pieces of tech the carried?

"Yeah, I see your point," he said. "Would've been nice but impossible to plan for. We'll take the location the tracker you did think to on there once it's back in real-space and broadcasting." Twingo seemed taken aback at having won an argument so quickly.

"Uh, yeah…we'll do that."

"We just received word that Mok's ship is two hours out, Captain!" Doc shouted down from the command deck.

"Full stop!" Jason called back. "Let them make the final approach…don't need you banging into the damn hangar walls."

"That was only two times, and I apologized," Doc shouted.

"He actually hit the walls?" Twingo asked.

"Twice back home on S'Tora," Jason said. "He'd get so paranoid about dropping the starboard landing gear off the pad and into the water that he'd cheat to the left and clip the wing on the hangar door."

"And we let him fly as backup pilot why, exactly?"

"Because despite the fact he hits buildings that are carved into mountains that haven't moved in millions of years, his reflexes and situational awareness are still better than yours by a factor of twenty. Now…will the tracker that's on the sled automatically try and ping us when it drops back into real-space?"

"Yes," Twingo said. "It can detect slip-space fields so it'll know it's been moved. Once they mesh-in, it will take a star fix and send us its location."

"That fleet was made up of all the newest capital ships Eshquaria had left," Jason sighed. "They're fast and can stay in slip-space for extended durations. Lucky could be halfway to the Delphine Expanse before we get a location, too late and too far away to do anything about it."

"It's the best we have unless Mok's people can squeeze an answer out of our double agent," Twingo said.

Within a few hours, Mok's ship made the final approach, and then parked close enough to them that the extendable gangway could be deployed to the Phoenix's port airlock. The ship was a sleek, sexy, civilian yacht that, while impressively large, didn't have a hangar big enough for a DL7 heavy gunship. The gleaming hull and designs that glittered brilliantly with blue backlighting contrasted sharply with the Phoenix's matte hull and her most recent battle wounds still visible as scorch marks that peppered the port flank.

"We should buy one of those," Crusher said, standing on the bridge and watching the yacht anchor onto the Phoenix with mooring beams.

"Why bother?" Jason asked. "Anything you assholes live in for more than a week looks and smells like an enclosure at a zoo."

"Yeah, but pleasure yachts come with cleaning crews," Crusher said, not taking the bait.

They went down to the main deck and then back forward, down a shallow flight of stairs, and into the antechamber for the portside airlock. After verifying the identity of the person on the other side of the hatch, Jason powered down the defensive systems and opened the ship up.

"Similan," Jason nodded to Mok's servant, for lack of a more accurate term. "Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, Captain," Similan said, bowing politely. "The prisoner?"

"Chained to a chair in berthing," Jason said. "We had to keep her sedated, too."

"A wise precaution given her level of training. If it is fine with you, I would retrieve her and take her to my master's ship. An extraction chamber has already been prepared."

"I like this guy," Crusher said. "You're such a wuss you call it an interrogation. These guys aren't fucking around…they're doing an extraction."

"Please assist our guest with the prisoner, Crusher," Jason said, rolling his eyes. "I assume Mok is aboard the yacht?"

"He is expecting you," Similan bowed again and walked off towards the rear of the ship with Crusher in tow.

"That's odd," Doc said. "He was almost…nice."

"I've been testing some theories," Jason said. "Similan seems to react to how he's greeted. If you are polite first, he'll reciprocate. If you're rude, same thing. But, this time, I also think there's an underlying layer of embarrassment. Mok and his organization basically vetted Fendra before putting her on our ship where she could have killed everyone but Lucky. Mok doesn't like looking like a fool…she's in for a bad time I think."

"You summoned me, Premier?"

"Admiral Colleran, please come in and sit," Seeladas Dalton didn't rise from her desk, nor even look up when Kellea Colleran walked into the office. "I've not had a chance to read your report."

"I finished my tour of the human's new planet as well as the new generation of starships they've been building at their two new shipyards," Kellea said, knowing the offhand comment was actually a request for a brief so that Seeladas wouldn't have to bother herself with the actual report.

"The new planet is called Olympus and it's to be a military stronghold now that Terranovus is being colonized at an accelerated rate by civilians. They purchased the entire star system from the Eiderans, who apparently were trying to negotiate a lease deal for resources when Earth offered them a lucrative trading partnership and hard currency for the ownership rights."

"The purchase and colonization of the new planet is completely legal?" Seeladas asked.

"Completely legal," Kellea assured her. "My guide did have to admit that the deal had been in the works for some time as the terraforming processors were already at work by the time the deal was finalized. The atmosphere was close, but they needed a few tweaks to make it ideal for their needs. They had five processors running for three years to get the job done quickly…the changes they're making will have minimal impact on the native plant and animal life."

"Five atmospheric processors?" Seeladas finally looked up. "How is Earth paying for all of this?"

"They've been working through the trade contracts that we've approved and negotiated on their behalf," Kellea said. "They're just really, really good at manufacturing things others want."

"So it would seem." Seeladas was clearly suspicious. "What of these new ships?"

"That's an entirely different matter," Kellea said. "While Earth accepted the restrictions we imposed on what sort of military hardware they could purchase, we never sanctioned anything they developed and built themselves. We didn't see the need at the time." She paused here, clearly uncomfortable.

"I don't know how they're coming up the curve so quickly, but their new Spartan-class destroyer could likely be a handful even for the Defiant."

"A destroyer against a battlecruiser?" Seeladas scoffed.

"It's a destroyer in tonnage only," Kellea said. "The ships are smaller, but the demonstration I saw of their destructive capability was truly awesome. They're also building their own class of battlecruiser, as well…they tell me it will be ready to enter service within the next two years. The weapons technology they're implementing isn't something they bought from the Eshquarians or ripped off from the ConFed. I recommend having our intelligence service see if there's another outside influence helping them out."

"Noted," Seeladas said. "You're sure their activity is well hidden? We can't afford to have them screw up our negotiations with the ConFed right now. If the capital caught wind that one of our probationary members was in the middle of an arms buildup— Actually, did they even say why they're pushing so hard to build their military?"

"Fear," Kellea said. "They didn't say, but I gather that the two attacks by armadas they couldn’t defend themselves against left a lasting scar on their collective psyche. They think the Ull will return at any moment to finish the job or that the A'arcooni might come back again. All of the designs I saw definitely felt like they were part of a defensive force more than an invasion fleet."

"The A'arcooni don't leave their planet, and the Ull are a weak, dying power nobody even cares about anymore," Seeladas said. "But that's not your concern. I'll approach Earth through the diplomatic channels and make sure they're not about to do something completely foolish with all this new power they've discovered. We can't forbid them from building a defense force but, hopefully, they'll understand the need for discretion."

"Because of the ConFed negotiation."

"I know you don't approve, Admiral, and that's your right." Seeladas stood and walked to the windows, looking out over the lake outside the building. "The ConFed will be the only remaining power in this quadrant soon. Let's just be grateful they approached us with offers of a treaty negotiation and didn't roll over top of us like they did with the Eshquarians. The Saabror will likely fall next, then the Galvetic Empire, all two planets of it, and, if we don't enter into some kind of deal, we'd be next in line."

"And if the ConFed catches wind that the humans are building a massive war machine at the same time we're negotiating an armistice—"

"It would reflect rather poorly on us, don't you think? So, we just keep your human friends as a relative unknown for now and hope some sharp-eyes auditor doesn't ask to see their assets in person."

"Of course," Kellea said, feeling a bit ill. She'd been told of Seeladas's reaching out to the ConFed for a truce through a friend in the intelligence service. In her heart, she knew this was a mistake, but it was not her place to question Seeladas Dalton.

"Now for the real reason I asked you here," Seeladas said. "The ConFed has been in the process of hunting down rogue Imperial Navy units that fled the battle for Eshquaria, but they haven't had much luck. I've offered our assistance as a show of good faith. I'd like you to take the Defiant and your taskforce out to the Concordian Cluster and interface with the ConFed fleet and help in the search."

"You want me to take a Cridal taskforce to help the ConFed hunt down and slaughter Eshquarians that escaped the invasion?" Kellea was dumbfounded.

"If you value your job, you'll learn to word your thoughts more carefully, Admiral Colleran," Seeladas said sharply. "Unless you're telling me that you wish to step down."

"Not at all, Premier," Kellea said carefully. "The Defiant can depart immediately, the taskforce is spread out throughout the cooperative and will take some days to recall. I shall have them meet me en route."

"That's more like it, Admiral. You are authorized to depart at your discretion. Dismissed."

Kellea walked out of the room feeling more uneasy than she had in a long time. She had to remind herself that Seeladas was still Crisstof Dalton's First Daughter. Crisstof had been a person she thought incapable of a dishonorable action until he'd been caught trying to overthrow the government of a neighboring superpower. They'd executed him, and that allowed Seeladas to step in and mold his empire in her own image. It went from being an industrial powerhouse to a full-fledged sovereign nation with a Dalton sitting at the head. Her speeches might paint her as a benevolent dictator, but Kellea was beginning to see the desire to accumulate and preserve power seemed to be a family trait. Seeladas might have sold the Cooperative out to the ConFed in return for letting her remain on her throne, a puppet emperor presiding over nothing.

"You seem stressed, Admiral," her aide remarked as she blew out of the outer office, the young officer scrambling in her wake.

"Inform Captain Essel that the Defiant will be departing as soon as possible for the Concordian Cluster," she said, ignoring his question. "By the time I arrive, I expect her to be fueled, armed, and otherwise ready for an extended deployment that may include combat operations."

"At once, Admiral."

Kellea didn't slow or even acknowledge him as she pressed ahead towards her own destination. It would take the crew most of the day to get the battlecruiser ready to slip lines and break orbit so he had time to make some discreet inquiries before bumbling into a dangerous situation. She enjoyed the trust of the Terran military power structure right now thanks to her role in fighting off the Ull during an attempted coup by one of their own, now she had direct lines of communication to powerful people within Earth's intelligence service and navy that might shed some light on what was happening. One thing she knew for certain at this point…Seeladas was playing both sides right now and cutting her out of the loop when it came to revealing her plans. That made her leery of trusting the premier's intent when she orders the Cooperative's most capable battlegroup into a contested area. The whole mission seemed completely ill-advised, and she knew she had to proceed with caution while executing her orders.

11

Lucky began to understand what the ConFed crews were doing aboard the ship, but he was still unclear as to why they were doing it. He's been to the two forward magazines where all of the ship-to-ship missiles had their access panels open and teams of technicians were patching into the guts of the weapons with their own computers.

Since Nikain was a technical team lead and, ostensibly, familiar with their work, Lucky couldn't question any of the technicians without raising suspicions. From observation, he was able to glean that they were updating the missiles' targeting software as well as the encryption routines for command and control. The reason this didn't make much sense on the surface is that ConFed missile technology was on par with Eshquarian tech. Hell, in many cases, the ConFed missiles were Eshquarian tech. Furtively sneaking around in a fleet of abandoned warships, tinkering around with the armament, and using crews of hired contractors indicated to Lucky that something interesting was about to happen, he just wasn't sure what.

The fact there were no ConFed fleet regulars walking the decks in their light gray uniforms told the battlesynth that this was most likely an operation the intelligence service was pulling off alone. The Imperial ships would be a great tool for a false flag attack, except that they're flying the flag of an empire that no longer exists. Eshquaria was completely under ConFed control and any attacks by rogue elements at this point would be considered a criminal case.

With the information he had, Lucky gave a sixty-three-point-two-seven percent probability that the ships were being refitted and sold as part of an unsanctioned operation by elements within the ConFed intelligence apparatus. Over forty newer capital ships that had never been damaged or seen combat would be worth hundreds of billions of credits to the right buyer. The reason he didn't give it a higher probability was he had to assume any criminal organization looking to buy themselves a war fleet would have come up on Mok's radar. It's possible that a smaller nation like the Galvetic Empire might want to sneak the ships into their possession away from prying eyes, claim salvage rights, and then put them into service defending their system.

"Sir, Team Six is asking for you in the aft magazine. There are issues with some of the munitions running an older version of code."

"Thank you, J'huggon," Lucky said, pulling the tech's name from the files he'd taken from the real Nikain's neural implant. "Inform them I'm on my way, and next time, they need to page me on my own com unit."

"They said they've been trying, sir."

"One more problem to take care of," Lucky said, feigning disgust. "Just tell them I'm on my way."

He stormed out of the large bay that housed the missiles before they were fed into the launchers, pulling the com unit out and looking to see what the trouble could be. The unit was locked up and wasn't responding so he tried a full reset and continued on his way. He needed a reason to get his hands on one of the computers they were using to upload new instructions to the missiles, and the problem down in the aft magazine might be the thing to do it.

One of his sidearms and the portable slip-com unit were affixed to his side, resting safely underneath the projected girth of the alien he was mimicking. He thought about reaching out to Jason to let them know he was okay but decided against the risk for the time being. With the ship's slip-drive running, even a low-power com field might cause enough of a disruption to flag an alert and send security looking for what caused the interference. For right now, he was still on-mission and doing the job he'd set out to do of collecting intel.

"I'll have to hold you up here, Nikain," one of the security troops said, blocking his path down one of the major arteries that spanned the length of the ship. "We're rotating prisoners through to get fed and have two groups crossing through now."

"Understood," Lucky said. He pretended to be engrossed in his own computer while his sensors recorded a procession of Eshquarians that were being led out from the starboard enlisted mess and back down the corridor that led to the main cargo bay. It didn't take long to figure out that these were who the cages were meant for.

"It's going to be tough to manage once we get the rest of them aboard," the troopers said once the last of the sullen Eshquarians had walked by.

"Any idea when that will be?" Lucky asked.

"They don't tell me anything. We're supposed to meet up with the other supply ships and take on prisoners, and then swap out command crews. After that, who knows? You can go on ahead."

"Thanks," Lucky said. "Try to enjoy the calm before the storm."

"Not likely," the trooper laughed and waved him on. Lucky had been careful to skirt out of range in case the other had wanted to try and give him a friendly pat. He'd not wanted to risk a field test of the force fields by having someone heavily armed discover he was an imposter.

Lucky moved quickly down to the aft magazine where he saw a tech team huddled around an open missile, arguing over the display on the computer they had hooked into it. He walked up and waited, wanting to overhear as much of the conversation as he could before they noticed him. Apparently, the ship carried a previous generation missile that they hadn't accounted for and the software patch they had wouldn't properly install.

"How many of these older missiles are aboard?" he finally asked, interrupting the group.

"Nineteen in total. Two are actually loaded into the launcher so once the full crew comes aboard, they'll need to be pulled back out so we can service them."

"And is the problem that the software change won't upload at all, or it won't integrate properly?"

"It uploads fine," another tech said. "Once it begins the parameter rewrite, it times out."

"Leave this one hooked up, and I'll take a look at it," Lucky said. "I don't want this problem holding the rest of you up. Move ahead with the others, and I'll let you know what I find."

"Suit yourself," the first tech said, walking off. The others gave him a little bit of turnover on what they'd tried before moving on to complete their own tasks. Once they were gone, and he was unobserved, Lucky interfaced directly with the computer via his nanochains and began downloading the contents to his onboard storage while simultaneously analyzing what the program was designed to do once it was uploaded.

The program was ridiculously simple and the issues they were having with it were also not especially difficult to figure out. Either they were bargain shopping for contractors on this project or these weren't actually qualified technicians. From what he could see, the patch would override the missile's sophisticated target prioritization and its counter-countermeasures, the latter being what it would employ to try and sneak in past a target's point defense and jammers. All the override did was apply a simple suppress command that was already part of the missile's operating system, but used only in test and troubleshooting.

The other part of the package being uploaded was for the command and control interface. It changed the encryption routines and syntax for any commands sent to the weapon after it had been launched. Lucky made sure both the encrypt/decrypt data was saved as well as the new command syntax. He then made the necessary change to the program so that the older missile would accept the change before exiting out of the computers and withdrawing his nanochains.

"I've fixed your problem," he said as he walked by, gesturing back to the still-open missile. "You can just use that computer to update the others."

"Thanks, Nikain."

Lucky started working his way back forward, recalculating his probabilities now that he'd been given new data points. The presence of Eshquarian prisoners made it unlikely these ships were being prepped for sale by a rogue intelligence agency. The changes to the missiles also indicated that there was a more specialized purpose these ships were being moved for, but nothing in the computer dump he'd just taken indicated what that might be.

"You about off-shift, Nikain?"

Lucky turned and saw that it was the same security trooper that had stopped him in the passageway before. He quickly sized him up and saw that the trooper was a little shorter than optimal but still within the acceptable margin of error for his mimic function to work. He'd exhausted what he could do as a tech supervisor. He needed to talk to someone inside those cages and to do that, he needed to be with the security team.

"Almost," Lucky answered. "I'm looking forward to getting something to eat and hitting the rack."

"You and me both. I've been walking for nearly—" that was all the trooper got out before Lucky closed the distance quickly and crushed his throat closed with a vice-like right hand. The trooper's eyes lit up in fear and confusion as he was lifted off the deck and carried down a side passage.

Lucky found that he was in an administrative section and the rooms off the passageway were unused offices. He picked one at random and dragged the guard inside, locking the hatch behind him. With a seemingly negligent hit from his left hand, he rendered the trooper unconscious, and then repeated the procedure he'd used on Nikain, his image morphing into the other person. The shoulders swelled out, the midsection pulled in, and the face changed to reflect the target while his nanochains penetrated the skull and stole everything of value from the neural implant.

There was no convenient place to stash the body, so after killing the trooper Lucky dragged him into the adjoining office and hid it behind an oddly shaped sofa. He then welded the hatch shut to that office to try and keep the smell to a minimum. He collected the trooper’s weapons and other belongings while his mimic subroutines finalized the vocalization tables.

"My name is Pirend," he said, walking out of the office and closing the hatch behind him.

"We’ve disabled all of the implants that Imperial Intelligence put in her to make her resistant to interrogation," Mok said. "That includes the two that would have killed her if we began pressing too hard."

"You get anything useful yet?" Jason asked.

"They haven't been at it too long. A couple hours at most," Mok said. "You can observe on the monitor there…I'd advise against it. Anyone trained and operating as Qazvi Ba will be a tough one to break even without her implants helping."

"I'm surprised you came out here yourself for this," Jason said. "The criminal empire that easy to run you can drop everything and play spy versus spy?"

"You'd be shocked to learn how little there is to actually do in my position," Mok said in a rarely candid moment. He moved back from the bar and handed Jason the drink he'd been preparing. "The Twelve Points operate more or less autonomously, passing along reports to me through intermediaries as well as their tribute. If the amount is sufficient, I pretend not to know they're holding back and skimming off the top, and they pretend to not be plotting my demise so they can move into my position."

"Sounds tedious."

"You have no idea. Most of what being a crime lord entails is simply the ability to accept a level of risk that would turn most suicidal. Having a good eye for business and a keen intuition for when something doesn't seem right doesn't hurt."

"You make it sound so easy," Jason said, nodding at the expensive whiskey Mok had handed him, reminding him he needed to check in on another of his side ventures to see how it was progressing now that the coffee business was self-sustaining. "I'd imagine being a high-level Imperial Intelligence officer probably would give you the requisite skill set and tolerances. Hypothetically speaking."

"Hypothetically, you'd be correct," Mok said with none of his usual evasiveness about his past. "Despite the fact there is no longer an empire, I'd appreciate a certain level of discretion regarding certain assumptions you've made about my past."

"I won't tell a soul," Jason promised. "Not even my crew."

"Actually, they're the ones I'm most worried about, so thank you."

They sat in the lounge in silence as the smooth instrumental notes of a musical style Jason couldn't identify drifted through the air. Given how expensive the yacht had appeared on the inside when he'd come aboard, Jason sent his crew back over to the Phoenix, not wanting to turn them loose and have them break something. The whiskey helped dull the edge of the knife that had been twisting in his guts since Lucky had gotten separated, but the constant worry had manifested itself into a migraine headache that wouldn't abate. It was the fact he was stuck doing nothing that made the time pass so excruciatingly slow.

"Master, Captain, she is asking for you both," Similan said, having appeared in the lounge like a wisp of smoke.

"That was quick," Mok said, standing and straightening his expensive suit.

They walked down off the main deck down to the more utilitarian deck below. Jason recognized some of the larger components they passed along the way and realized that Mok's yacht had some serious teeth. In hindsight, he shouldn't have expected anything less. In addition to the yacht's armament, the Phoenix had been able to detect two frigate-class ships patrolling the area as well. The irony of all Mok's wealth and power was that it had made him a prisoner, no matter how opulent the jail.

"You didn't even last five hours, Fendra," Mok said when they walked into a stifling hot, humid room with bare alloy walls. "That's incredibly disappointing."

"I'm not an intelligence officer anymore, Mok," Fendra said. "I did what I did for money. I'm not getting paid to let your clumsy goons work me over." She didn't look too worse for wear considering she'd just spent the last few hours undergoing intense interrogations. "I'll tell you what I know in exchange for being turned loose."

"That seems fair…if the information is good."

"You'd actually just let me go?" Fendra asked.

"There's no money in keeping you," Mok said. "I’m a businessman now. This is good business. I might hang on to you for a short time afterwards, of course, but you'll be put in very comfortable surroundings. I can't have you deciding to warn your employers that we flipped you."

"A reasonable precaution," Fendra agreed. "I will have to warn you that I know less than you'll probably want to hear."

"Give us the broad strokes, and then my associates will work with you to lock down the details," Mok said. Jason just leaned against the bulkhead, trying to appear indifferent as this wasn't his area of expertise.

"What about him?" Fendra asked, gesturing towards Jason. "He's notorious for taking these sorts of things personally. Is he going to splatter my brains all over the walls once I'm done talking?"

"I have no interest in harming you," Jason said. "If your plan had worked, I might be singing a different tune. For now, I'll just be happy with whatever information you have."

"Before I was given the Qazvi Ba designation, I was attached to the navy as an intelligence asset," Fendra began, reaching across and grabbing the water Mok had placed there. "When the ConFed attack came out of nowhere—and I mean nowhere—the decision came down from the top pretty quick to run and hide. The thought was to stash the fleet, live to fight another day.

"Once the remaining ships were carefully hidden in the Cluster, I was contacted by Fleet Master Doorn about helping handle logistics. They wanted the crews moved off and hidden on some of our second-tier colony worlds and they needed to arrange shipments of consumables to the fleet in a way that would be difficult to trace. We managed to hide the crews without too much trouble, and Doorn was given the manifest where each of them was residing so that when the time came to recall them, they'd be easy to find."

"That's all you did? Hide crew members and run for fuel?" Jason asked.

"At first," she continued after a long drink of water. Jason noticed that the air was getting cooler and dryer. Now that she was talking, Mok's people were no longer trying to make her uncomfortable. "Then the remaining Fleet Masters got themselves captured by ConFed Intelligence. I was contacted through the normal channels and told to procure a full fuel loadout for fifty-six capital ships and given the coordinates within the Cluster to have it delivered. As usual, I went along with one of the tanker ships, and when I was captured was about the time that I realized the fleet leadership had been compromised.

"The ConFed had two light cruisers there that oversaw the refuel, then destroyed all twelve tankers. I was taken in and given a choice: help recall the crews or be tortured and killed. It didn't make a lot of sense to me since they already had the ships, the ConFed was in firm control of Eshquarian space, and had the crew manifest with their locations was already in the procession of Fleet Master Doorn. I found out that in addition to helping get the crews back to the transports, I was also supposed to keep an eye out for anyone that might come snooping around for the lost fleet. I knew that last fuel procurement was too big to go unnoticed, so I set up my surveillance there. When Captain Burke and the Guardian Archon of Galvetor showed up, it wasn't difficult to figure out why they were there."

"You're becoming too recognizable, Burke," Mok said lightly. "Too much notoriety makes you useless for covert work."

"Your ship stands out quite a bit as well, Captain," Fendra added. "That DL7 is semi-famous in certain circles.

"I was also warned specifically to look for meddling from the Saabror and Cridal intel outfits and for Scout Fleet units from Earth that might come poking around. I lost track of Omega Force after you roughed up my fuel supplier, but when Kage popped up it was a simple matter of allowing myself to be captured to see how close you were to the truth. I was able to exploit a past association with Mok and then ride out with you to the fleet where, I assumed, it would have been a simple matter of alerting the security contractors once we were aboard. What tipped you off, by the way?"

"You made it too easy to find you." Jason shrugged. "I don't believe in those sorts of coincidences. We played along to see where it might lead, but we had you under constant surveillance and then I had Twingo put enough shockers in your pressure suit to knock out a battlesynth."

"It seems most intel briefs on you are a bit inaccurate. You're described more as a blunt instrument, but not a real threat to covert operations," she said. "Thanks for the shockers, by the way…you attenuated my nerves so badly that Mok's torturers would have had a hard time making any progress. The damage is likely permanent."

"You're still breathing, which is more than most can say when they double cross me," Jason said flatly. “So, you have no idea where the fleet is being taken or why they wanted the crew back aboard?"

"None," Fendra said. "The only thing I know is that ConFed intel seemed to be running an unsanctioned op and they were using contractors exclusively, and the people they hired weren't amateurs. They made sure I knew only enough to do my job."

"Fair enough," Mok said. "When did you find out about the detention cells they built into the ships?" Fendra seemed to sense she was treading on dangerous ground now and took her time before answering.

"Once we boarded the Luex," she said finally. "They didn't allow me free rein of the fleet and the only time I was ever in the Cluster, I was aboard one of their cruisers."

"I'm sure even you can figure out what they're likely for."

"It makes sense now why they wanted the crew recall rosters," she said slowly.

"But you never wondered why rogue ConFed cell would be asking for the recall information on thousands of crewmembers before that?" Mok asked, giving his fellow Eshquarian a flat, unfriendly stare. "You can relax. I will keep my word and honor the deal we've made for the information you've provided, but know that I would love nothing more than to find a loophole in the arrangement that would allow me to kill you. I may have done some unsavory things to get to where I'm at, but I never betrayed the Empire, and I never sold out my people to save my own skin." Mok stood up and glared down at her. "The detailed information you give my associates better be worth their lives."

Fendra returned the stare but wisely kept her mouth shut. Jason pushed off the wall and widened his stance, ready to intercept Mok if he lunged for her. He didn't care whether he killed her or not, but he'd prefer it be done after she'd divulged all she knew.

"Master," Similan said, opening the hatch just enough to speak. "We have a situation that requires Captain Burke." Jason followed Mok out into the passageway and waited until the hatch was shut and locked.

"What's up?"

"Lucky has made contact, Captain. Kage came over and said it was a short message stating he was safe and the precise coordinates for his pickup."

"Please inform him to have the Phoenix ready to depart as soon as I'm back aboard," Jason said, the relief flooding over him in a cool wave.

"I will keep you informed of what further information we get," Mok said, sticking his hand out in a custom he'd picked up from his time around humans. Jason looked at it, somewhat shocked. Saditava Mok was not someone you put your hands on without permission. He accepted the hand as the gesture of friendship he hoped it was.

"I'll do the same once we go pick Lucky up," he said. "Three days aboard that battleship means he either has their complete operation mapped out, or he was just hiding in a closet the entire time."

12

"That's basically all I know. We were picked up using the proper authentication codes to recall all essential personnel, and then when the transports arrived, we were put in restraints and dumped in these cages."

“So, the full crew isn't here?" Lucky asked.

"No, just the people that fly and fight her, and not even all of them," the Eshquarian officer said. "All of the admin and civilian science staff we normally carry weren't brought back. I did overhear someone talking about one more stop to pick up more prisoners, but I couldn't hear everything they were saying. You going to let us out?" Lucky looked at him a moment, running the probabilities through his head.

"I can't," he said. "You are one of forty-two ships in this formation. Even if I released you, it would be unlikely you could overpower the security contractors and take back the ship and you would only alert the others that their plans have been compromised. There is still much I must learn before I can worry about rescuing your crew."

"What?!"

"The lives of many may be at stake," Lucky said. "Releasing you prematurely could jeopardize my chances of stopping that."

"Hey! What are you doing down here?"

"Discussing something with this prisoner," Lucky said calmly as one of the security supervisors stormed across the deck towards him.

"That's prohibited! You know that! I'll have your contract nullified for this."

"If you must," Lucky said. The supervisor almost got within range to grab him when Lucky lashed out with the flat of his hand so quickly that the two biological beings couldn't track it. The hit crushed the throat of the supervisor, dropping him to his knees as his eyes bulged, and he clawed at his neck. He died gurgling at Lucky's feet as the battlesynth never took his eyes off the officer he was questioning.

"My gods!"

"Take this," Lucky said, passing an ident card through one of the holes. "That card is also coded to open these cages. I'm trusting you to know when the time is right to use it and not before."

"What about him?"

"I will take him with me and dispose of him," Lucky said, lifting the supervisor's limp corpse like it was nothing. "Remember…not before it is time."

"Not before it's time. Got it."

Lucky rushed from the cargo hold, intent on stashing the third body with one of the others when he felt the shift in artificial gravity that told him the ship had dropped out of slip-space. Instead of moving back up to the administrative areas, he reversed his course and dropped down two decks into the bowels of the engineering spaces. He was crossing a catwalk that was suspended far above the machinery that made the ship move when he shut down his disguise, no longer wanting to expend the energy it took to keep it solid. He gauged the distance to the deck below and then flung his cargo over the railing. The security supervisor bounced off a fresh water pipe and then landed on the deck with a sickening crunch.

Having learned all he could aboard the ship, it was time to make a discreet exit. He checked his own equipment to make sure it was still functional and then made his way towards one of the maintenance airlocks that allowed access to the outer hull. The codes to all the secure hatches were still disabled so it was a simple matter of cycling the lock, walking out onto the hull, and then blasting away on his repulsor jets after engaging his stealth mode. He recorded everything in local space with his passive sensors as he streaked away, shutting off his jets and allowing his body to drift. From what he could see, there were five civilian transports that had rendezvoused with the fleet, each of them maneuvering for docking which indicated they were going to transfer more cargo than a shuttle could handle.

Lucky waited until every ship had meshed-out of the area, leaving him alone and adrift in interstellar space. He looked around and took a star fix, his instruments quickly determining his exact location. Once he'd repeated the procedure four more times to account for his relative speed and direction, he pulled the portable slip-com radio off his hip and activated the field. After punching in his coordinates, the direction and velocity he was flying, and his status, he shut the device down. He also shut down most of his non-essential systems and set his mind to analyzing the new data he'd collected on his mission. Now that he was back in normal operating mode, he was able to think more clearly. The covert operation modes were so immersive that he felt like he was losing sight of the bigger picture, wholly focused on the mission of gathering intel to the point of obsession. Normally, he wouldn't have been so casual about killing targets of convenience, slimy mercenaries or not. He made a note to address his concerns with Tauless when he saw the pru again, and then put the matter from his mind. The new information he'd gathered seemed to confuse the issue more than it cleared it up.

"Welcome back. Don't ever do that shit again."

"My mission was somewhat successful," Lucky said, ignoring the comment. "I was able to gather what I think is critical intel, but I have no contextual framework within which it fits to make sense."

"We can help with that…hopefully," Jason said. "Fendra ended up being a double agent and tried to shoot me in the back, literally. We got some useful stuff out of her that might be even more useful depending on what you pulled off that ship."

"I will download the data to the Phoenix's main computer so Kage and I can begin the analysis," Lucky said and walked up the steps to the mezzanine that led to the main deck.

"You took that amazingly well," Crusher said. "You drunk?"

"A little," Jason admitted. "But I also realize that if he's going to be a full member of this crew again, I have to give him the freedom to do his job. This is a dangerous job, there's no guarantee I can keep you all safe…although to be fair, in Kage's case, I’m not sure I'd even want to."

It was some hours later and the Phoenix was back in slip-space, streaking towards the Concordian Cluster. Mok was operating out of that area for the next few weeks, checking in on various parts of his own business, and Jason figured it was as good a place as any to begin the next phase of the operations, whatever that might be. While Kage and Lucky pored over the downloads and began matching up data points with what Fendra has supplied them, the others grabbed some much-needed sleep.

"I'll just start off by saying there is no conclusive data that shows what they have planned for the Eshquarian fleet," Kage said. "I don't want any insults or bullshit about getting to the point from anyone."

"That's no way to start a briefing," Crusher said. "It's rude."

"Let's just get started," Jason said, walking in with two large carafes of coffee. They were in the cramped conference room on the main deck, which was still a conference room because nobody could agree on what else to do with it, and the close proximity tended to escalate tensions quickly.

"I'll start off with the weird part first," Kage said, keying up a series of graphics onto the wall monitors. "Oh, damn…hang on. I promised Mok we'd tie him into this through a slip-com channel."

"Great," Jason said, rolling his eyes while Kage made the connection. He refilled his mug and waited while Similan routed the channel request to Mok's opulent office aboard his yacht.

"Thank you for granting my request, gentlemen," he said. "Please proceed and pretend I'm not even here."

"If only," Jason muttered. He was starting to see that Mok did have some admirable qualities, but he was also an insufferable windbag at times. He loved the sound of his own voice almost as much as he loved using it to prove other people wrong. "Go ahead, Kage."

"What was I talking about? Oh, yeah…the weird part first," Kage said. "Mok you getting these graphics through the link?"

"Yes, thank you."

"One of the odd things Lucky discovered during his mission was that tech crews aboard the battleship were uploading software patches into all the ship-to-ship missiles. He was able to download the patches themselves and bring them back so I could look at them. In addition to replacing all the encryption routines, the new software added a whole new command syntax to accompany a series of inhibitor commands. These commands shut down parts of the targeting prioritization system, the data link to other missiles, command and control links to the ship, and the counter-countermeasure suite.

"This didn't make a lot of sense at first…why add all these layers of complication when you could just replace the entire weapon operating system if you were trying to dumb the missile down?"

"What's your theory on this, Kage?" Mok asked. Jason just ground his teeth and took another sip of coffee.

"There's a reason Eshquarian weapons are the standard in this part of the galaxy," Kage said. "Just replacing the operating system with a software upload is impossible. Instead, they had to work within the framework already there to get them to act how they wanted. Essentially, they force the missile into a test mode so that it'll accept the new commands, and then keep it there while another patch allows it to be armed and fired. It's a really clunky way of doing this, but I think they were under the gun on time and had limited resources. Fendra told us that this was an off-the-books mission by a faction with ConFed Intelligence. I'm guessing they didn't have access to the engineers necessary to make the proper modifications."

"Okay, so why are they doing this?" Jason asked.

"Unclear," Kage said. "The best guess I have is that they're going to fire these missiles at a target they would normally reject. They're quite sophisticated, and these idiots have gone through a lot of trouble to bypass all the built-in safeties."

"This makes no sense," Crusher said. "The only reason to do this is to set someone up to take the fall for an attack they didn't commit. But the Eshquarians are already defeated. Even if all those missiles were used in terrorist attacks, they can't point back to a government that no longer exists. At best they could claim they were rogue fleet elements."

"Which could explain why they're taking the ships too," Jason said. "But using them to attack targets within the Protectorate, for example, only works if the orders are coming from Eshquaria. Yeah…I don't get it either."

Stop thinking like a military man. The Machine doesn't. It needs to solidify its own power before too many people begin questioning who actually authorized an attack on a neighboring sovereign power.

Cas's voice in his head was disconcerting among the other conversations. He withdrew from the debate and tried to put the pieces together as Mok, true to his nature, asserted control over the briefing and began ordering Kage to put up different graphics for them to argue over.

Instead of participating, Jason pulled one of the tablets off the table and accessed the Phoenix's database on known active ships and did a search based on location. Kage had built a system that wormed into over three hundred orbital traffic control systems and reported all the ships arriving and departing back to a slip-com node on S'Tora. That system then updated the Phoenix's main computer and, despite the limited number of systems they'd managed to infiltrate so far, gave them a surprisingly good image of where most of the major players were moving their ships to.

He looked up the traffic patterns over the ConFed capital world, the Pillar World from which all power emanated: Miressa Prime. There were the expected things there that never left like the Cardalir Shipyards and T'Acren Base, the massive orbital facility that was home of the ConFed's mighty starfleet. There was also the Miressa Home Defense Force, a fleet of ships that were state of the art…a hundred years ago.

The Miressa System was the seat of power for the ConFed. It was widely considered impregnable for any nation foolish enough to try, and it was the center of the quadrant's political universe for the last half a millennia or so. The HDF was mostly ceremonial. It was there to provide honor guards for incoming dignitaries and consular ships as it was strictly forbidden for any member worlds or visitors to mesh-in to the capital system with ships of war. The rules were always respected because the reprisals from the main battlefleet for such a faux pas would be swift and brutal. The ConFed's main fleet was vast, but it also had to cover a lot of space, and now they'd tied up one of their battlegroups as an occupational force in the Eshquaria System.

While the others babbled on, he tried to put himself into the mind—so to speak—of an insane AI that was trying to rule an empire without anybody seeing who it was behind the curtain. The Machine needed people to respect and fear the Adjudicators, who were now apparently its puppets, as well as the ConFed's military. A sneak attack on an unsuspecting power wasn't enough. It had to crush not only their legend but the hope of the people who thought that the Empire might rise again, to let the death of Eshquaria needed to serve as an object lesson for those who wouldn't bow to the ConFed.

"Holy shit…I know where they're going," Jason said, speaking mostly to himself.

"Would you care to share with the rest of us, Captain?" Mok asked.

13

"Miressa Prime?" Crusher laughed. "You still haven't sobered up, huh?"

"Let's hear him out," Kage said, looking at Jason intently.

"We're looking at this from a strategic standpoint," Jason said. "To understand what the motivation is here, we need to understand what it is the Machine needs."

"Holy shit, get to the point!" Crusher moaned.

"It needs legitimacy, and it needs to solidify the hold it has on the ConFed council. It also needs to make sure the other major players in this quadrant don't get smart and join forces…it needs a display of strength the others won't soon forget," he pushed ahead, flipping Crusher off without looking over.

"What could be more dramatic than forty Eshquarian warships appearing in the ConFed's capital system, the remnants of a mighty superpower, hell bent on revenge? The Miressa Home Defense Force rushes out to meet them, and the whole battle is recorded and broadcast throughout the quadrant as the last gasp of the Empire blows out."

"That's…entirely plausible," Kage said. "The Home Defense Force is an ancient, ceremonial fleet that does more flybys than actual combat drills. The Eshquarian fleet shows up, fires hundreds of ship-to-ship missiles at the defenders, and the older ships easily defeat them because of the inhibitor commands will cause them to fly right into the point defense fire."

"Then the HDF fires its salvo, and the Eshquarian war machine goes down in flames," Mok said. "Everyone knows that the Empire built and fielded the best weapons in the quadrant, so when the ConFed's ceremonial fleet wipes them out easily—"

"It will take the fight out of a lot of independent systems thinking they can resist," Jason finished. "Oh, damn!"

"The crews," Mok finished for him, nodding gravely. "They're there to make sure the forensic after-action teams find the appropriate amount of Eshquarian bio-matter and any DNA they find will be able to be traced back to real crewmembers."

"And it's all being done with expendable contractors that will likely be among the dead when it's all said and done, no witnesses," Crusher said. "You can't help but be impressed. That's a huge, showy display of power that would kill any real dissent happening in the Council."

"This is just a theory so far, right?" Twingo spoke up. "We have no way of knowing if the captain is right or not."

"We can hope the sled's tracker checks in again when the fleet drops from slip-space at their last staging point," Jason said. "Other than that, yeah…this is just a best guess."

"As far as guesses go, it's a damn solid one," Mok said.

"Yeah," Kage said, narrowing his eyes again. "Nice deductive reasoning, Captain."

"Nice job not being a sarcastic douche about it." Jason tossed him a mocking salute. "Mok, we're going to transmit everything we have here to you…we're heading back your way so I'd suggest we meet up again and compare notes then."

"Agreed," Mok said. "For the sake of the lives involved, let's hope you're wrong."

"Let's hope," Jason said.

Scleesz was nearly in a full panic as he struggled to maintain a calm exterior, paranoid that he was always under observation by his omniscient boss. The Machine had managed to infiltrate every security system on Miressa Prime and had eyes everywhere, on everyone.

The Councilman sat in the reception area where visitors would wait until they were received by the Machine's new avatar. It was an obvious holographic projection, meant to look like the person in the office was talking to someone over a Nexus hyperlink or a high-bandwidth slip-com channel. The species that the Machine had picked to shape his new likeness from didn't actually exist, at least not that Scleesz had been able to determine. But the AI was ancient and came from a part of the galaxy few from this quadrant ever ventured into. Who knew what other species lurked just beyond their borders.

"You may enter, Councilman," the door guard said. The unassuming entryway belied the fact that the most powerful being in the ConFed resided behind it. The guards, one on each side, were synths that wore a special type of fitted armor and were carrying plasma rifles so large they looked like they could have burned through a starship's hull. Scleesz found it interesting that the Machine seemed to employ a lot of synths as security and couriers, but not a single battlesynth worked for him. He didn't know if it was because they were simply so rare or if the recent unrest on their home world, Khepri, had taken them completely out of rotation.

"You wished to see me, sir?" Scleesz asked respectfully once he'd entered and the door slammed shut behind him. The holographic image of the avatar sputtered to life and, oddly, it sat behind the desk. The image the Machine was presenting at this point was more confusing than intimidating.

"I need you to travel to the occupation zone in Eshquaria," the Machine said without preamble or even an acknowledgment.

"The missing Eshquarian war fleet?" Scleesz guessed. "I don't see how I'd be much help there."

"You wouldn't," the Machine assured him. "I am already handling the missing fleet. You're to meet with emissaries from the Saabror Protectorate to offer them terms that will head off any further pointless violence. It would be interesting to hear what they have in mind and they won't talk to anyone lower ranking than a councilmember. The only one I can trust to perform this function, currently, is you."

"As you wish," Scleesz bowed. "And what of the Cridal Cooperative?"

"I have been in contact with representatives of Seeladas Dalton. She seems willing to negotiate so long as the appearance of her power remains intact."

"And you'll allow this?" Scleesz felt hope surge through him at the thought of heading off a full-scale war.

"Of course not," the Machine said, crushing Scleesz's hope as quickly as it had bloomed. "But we're in no position to fend off the Protectorate and the Cooperative right now until we solidify our hold on the ConFed Council. The Adjudicators are one thing, but the Council simply will not approve a war that might cut into their own systems' profit margins. The timing just isn't right for that yet, so we'll need to stall."

"I won't pretend to understand that that means, sir, but I'll do as required."

"I know you will, Scleesz," the Machin said, the eyes of the avatar boring into him in a way that made him squirm. "You'll do anything to save your own wretched life and almost anything to save your reputation. Do this right, and we'll be well on our way to bringing the entire quadrant into the fold and thus completing the first phase of my task."

"What am I authorized to use for bargaining?" Scleesz asked. "The Protectorate won't agree to terms just because I ask them."

"Fear will be your currency," the Machine said. "Soon, they will be falling over themselves to make a deal that keeps our fleets from their territory. That will allow us to bide out time and take what is ours only when it suits our purposes best."

This answer made no sense to Scleesz, but he knew better than to ask for a second clarification within the same meeting. The Machine had no patience for people who couldn't keep up. He wasn't sure what he would use to instill fear in the Saabror Protectorate, a nation almost defined by its lack of fear and willingness to fight. They were aggressive, but they weren't mindlessly stupid, either. Their negotiators would be well aware that the ConFed couldn't afford to maintain the occupation, control space within its own borders, and also invade another sovereign power with any hopes of winning.

"I shall depart immediately, sir," Scleesz said, bowing again. "Will there be anything else?"

"I may also send word that I want you to meet with a representative of Seeladas Dalton's," the Machine said, almost as an afterthought. "We've been receiving…disturbing rumors about one of their member nations. A group of upstart aliens that are showing themselves to be far more adept at building weapons than any newcomer should be. I would be interested in knowing whether they have purchased their designs illegally or if we have another problem brewing in the Orion Arm."

"I will make myself available, sir."

Scleesz exited the office as quickly as he could without looking like he was fleeing a predator. Even though the Machine had no physical form in the rooms it chose to meet him in, the AI's presence had a heaviness to it that terrified the councilman. There was also still that barely detectable tinge of instability that scared him even more. The ConFed was likely being manipulated by an AI that had gone insane thousands of years ago, and there was little he could do about it. The ConFed's own corrupt power structure had been practically tailor made for this type of internal coup. Half the imbeciles who managed to get themselves elected into the Council or the countless parasites that cared only about keeping their cushy bureaucrat positions didn't know and didn't care that they'd lost control.

He pondered the feasibility of meeting with Mok and Burke while he was in that part of the quadrant and away from the capital. It was still a risk since it was almost certain that his own ship had been infested with trackers and listening devices. If he made any odd moves while he was gone the Machine would find out about it and that would be the end of his career…maybe the end of his life.

He decided he would try to reach out to one of the two and see if they had any idea of how they could meet covertly. If nothing else, it might give him an opportunity to extricate himself from any pointless insurrection they had planned. Seeing what the Machine was planning, he didn't see that whatever they might do had any real chance of succeeding.

14

Jason lay awake in his rack, staring at the ceiling. The hum of his ship's engines normally lulled him to sleep quickly, but his mind was racing with all that could happen if he was wrong about what the Machine wanted the Eshquarian fleet for.

"You awake, Cas?"

I don't actually sleep, dumbass.

"You have the most accurate picture of what the Machine really is…what the hell does it even want? What's the point of all this?"

That should be obvious. Power. Absolute power.

"Power for power's sake?" Jason scoffed. "Then what? Just rule as a malevolent dictator for eons? There has to be some greater point to all this. If it's insane enough that it's just wanting to inflict damage, then why all the fucking around with covert forces? Just start sending in battleships and shock troops and you could have the quadrant on fire within a couple months. Take out a few key players that maintain stability, and the others will begin to turn on each other in the confusion."

Sometimes, I forget you're much smarter than you let on. Of course, you'd almost have to be. To answer the question: I don't know. The Machine is a corrupted version of the Primary Weapon Controller AI Package that was designed to run on a specific computer within a specific construct. It's transferred its own code multiple times between incompatible systems, and that was after it seized control of a superweapon and wiped out an entire civilization because they told it 'no' when it wanted to destroy a few stars.

"As the Primary Weapon Controller, it would have had no need for knowledge in politics, espionage, or the other things it's showing a surprising amount of aptitude in," Jason said. "I have a hard time believing that this is all happening just because its base program was scrambled a bit over the years. This isn't an accident. It's…evolution."

Interesting premise. So, the controller has evolved into a dictator? But again…for what purpose? Evolution is always driven by something. Some existential threat has to exist to drive organisms to adapt.

“So, what could possibly threaten the Machine? Other than being deleted, what is it afraid of?"

You're thinking too small. This has to be something that shook it to its core, something that created a diametric shift in its thinking. Perhaps it was the thing that drove it to wipe out its own creators in the first place.

"It's something to ponder," Jason said. "I feel like if we don't figure out what this thing is really after, what its long game is, then just nipping at its heels will only manage to get a lot of innocent people killed for nothing."

I don't disagree with you there.

As Jason drifted off to sleep, Cas thought back to the conversation. The information may well be buried in the archive Jason carried in his head but repeated unpacking and repacking of the enormous file had resulted in some damage to the neural implant that Cas had yet to fully repair. The archive that the Ancients had given him needed to be pulled out permanently so that the implant could be either reconfigured or replaced altogether before it began causing damage to Jason's neural pathways.

Since Jason would likely rather die than risk that terrible knowledge being unleashed on a galaxy that wasn't ready for it, Cas had a decision to make. It could either honor Jason's wishes and let the inevitable happen, or it could operate autonomously to try and save his host and gain the knowledge they needed. After a quick check, Cas saw that no decision needed to be made immediately, but soon. His host was already beginning to feel the effects of the neural degradation in the form of headaches and mild bouts of vertigo. So far, Cas has been able to squelch these as they popped up, but that wasn't a permanent solution.

The other side to that was if the implant had to be removed and replaced completely, it was almost certain that Cas would be lost. It was a strange mixture of digital voodoo that had created the sentient AI within the implant, it was not likely that could be copied or replicated. The rest of the time Jason slept, Cas pondered how it felt about the possibility of having to sacrifice its own existence. None of the answers it came up with made it feel any better about what it would be forced to eventually do.

Kage sat on the bridge, the lights dimmed as he worked. The Veran sat motionless in the copilot's seat, his eyes closed as his powerful neural implants interfaced directly with the Phoenix's main computer so he could run Jason's new theory through some probability calculations before they met back up with Mok.

"There it is again!" he said, his eyes popping open.

For some time now there had been odd little blips on the network busses that he couldn't account for. Sometimes he found evidence of heavy bandwidth traffic, other times it would just be a little chirp. The former always happened while he was asleep, the latter always when he was awake and linked in. He would chase it each time, but he could never identify a source before it would disappear.

He began closing down network paths, trying to corral the intruder or at least get some idea where it was originating. It seemed to be a bit of malicious software they'd picked up on the main computer and whoever had designed it had done a hell of a job. It was adaptive in ways Kage had never seen from a covert intrusion package. The spark was so evasive, he almost thought that Twingo might have been messing around with an AI project and failed to tell him that it was on the network, but the evidence he'd been finding led him to believe that it was moving with a purpose. So far, it had accessed the servers looking into the medical records Doc had compiled of the captain—and only him—as well as the Phoenix's database with everything they had on pru technology with regards to sentient machines.

"And now it's gone." He snarled in disgust.

"What is gone?" Lucky asked.

"I've been chasing this random node that keeps popping up on our internal network and I've never able to isolate it before it just disappears," Kage said. "But, this time, it was a little bolder in how it came into the mainframe. Look here." Lucky dutifully walked over and looked at the cascading section of code that Kage was pointing to, quickly performing his own analysis.

"It appears the network controller at least has a type-identifier, though not a complete node address," Lucky said. "Do you recognize it?"

"I didn't at first, but my cross-check has just completed. This is the partial identifier for your typical Aidla O'Kai-Series, Type-3 neural implant."

"Does anyone on the crew use a Type-3?" Lucky asked.

"Only one. The captain had his upgraded the same time mine were replaced," Kage said. "Crusher and Twingo are still using Type-1 implants and Doc's is an entirely different series. Now that I know what I'm looking at, all of the major intrusions happened when the captain was asleep."

"You surmise Captain Burke unknowingly has a malicious program in his neural implant?" Lucky asked.

"What better way to infiltrate this little operation?" Kage asked. "We always find the trackers, taps, and snoopers they put on the Phoenix. If they bug a crewmember's head, however, how long until we find that? This was just dumb luck that I got this much."

"How do you wish to proceed?"

"We'll need to get Jason to lay down for a full workup in the infirmary," Kage said. "But he may not go quietly, and who knows if this thing has modified his behaviors. Maybe it'd be best if you and Crusher grabbed him and restrained him while we do the scan."

"I do not believe that is a wise course of action," Lucky warned.

"Buddy, if this ship is compromised through the captain's own neural implant, we're in a world of shit when whoever put it in there decides to come and collect," Kage said. "Or…we can do this one, quick, mildly uncomfortable thing now and then all have a laugh about it later."

"Crusher will not agree to this."

"I'll try to convince him," Kage said.

"I'm in."

"Just like that? You don't want to talk about this?"

"What's to talk about? I get a few free shots on Jason while getting to claim it was for his own good? I feel like I should be paying you for this."

"Okay, well…no time like the present, I guess," Kage said, looking to Lucky.

"I feel I must protest this course of action. We may very well irrevocably damage the trust of the captain by attacking without at least first attempting to reason with him," Lucky said.

"I totally get what you're talking about. Trust is a delicate thing," Crusher said, stretching out and bouncing on the balls of his feet to loosen up. "Alright…let's go fuck him up."

After telling Doc to be ready in the infirmary for an uncooperative patient, they silently made their way to the captain's quarters, Crusher in the lead. Kage commanded the air handlers to increase the vent pressure by eleven percent to provide more ambient sound to cover their approach while Lucky used his command override as First Officer to unlock the hatch.

Crusher opened the panel next to the hatch and disengaged the pneumatic actuator so that it could be opened manually, nodding to the others as he did. The big warrior took a quick breath and slid the hatch open, rushing inside with his fists clenched.

And came flying back into the corridor like he'd been fired from a cannon.

Crusher's skull slammed into the far bulkhead so hard that it dented the alloy. He was so dazed he didn't see Jason stroll casually out of his quarters and slam his fist into the side of his head with enough force to send him sprawling across the deck. Through it all, Lucky just stood there, and Kage looked like he was ready to faint from fear.

"Just so you dipshits know for in the future…if you're going to plan a sneak attack, don't do it by an intercom panel," Jason said.

"Captain—"

"Get Doc and Twingo and meet me in the galley," Jason said. "We have things to talk about."

"What about Crusher?" Lucky asked.

"You can bring him, but I don't think he'll be able to participate for a while."

15

"Is he dead?"

"Just dazed," Lucky assured Doc as he deposited Crusher onto one of the couches in the lounge area.

"I still don't understand what's happening," Kage said.

"The thing you were looking for warned me what you morons were up to," Jason said, tapping his temple. "If you had concerns, you could have just asked."

There was a muffled moan from the couch and some unintelligible grumbling from Engineering as Twingo was roused from his rack and herded into the galley.

"How did you hit him hard enough to send him flying like that?" Kage asked. "His feet were off the ground!"

"Since I knew he was the lead man in the stack, I hung off the condenser return pipe that runs through my quarters and waited. When I saw that big ass head of his, I put both my feet into it, using all my weight," Jason said. "Don't look at me like that…he was coming in to put a beating on me, and you all know it. I didn't even put boots on, so it's not like I was actually trying to injure him."

"I wish you two would find a new way to amuse yourselves," Doc said. "Preferably before one of you ends up seriously hurt."

"Mother hen," Jason muttered. "Okay…I think the easiest way to do this will be to let the little voice in my head introduce itself, and then we can decide what to do about it from there. Once I tell you everything that goes along with this, I hope you'll understand why I kept this a secret as long as I possibly could. I'm not exaggerating when I say that what's stuck up here could tip the balance of power within this part of the galaxy permanently. Cas?"

"Gentlemen," a voice emanated from the overhead speakers. "We've met before, in a manner of speaking. You may remember me as Cas, the lovable AI embedded in the Key you found aboard your ship that activated the Machine."

"Oh, shit," Twingo mumbled. "I should have stayed in bed."

Over the next four hours—only two of which Crusher was awake for—Cas explained how it came to exist, what Jason carried in his head, and why it was critical they find some sort of solution before the neural degradation became critical. Once the full weight of what the Archive really was sank in, the others looked utterly horrified.

"That should just be deleted and we purge your implant," Twingo said.

"I'm inclined to agree…we can't let the weapons technology that file contains out into the wild," Doc said. "Jason, this archive in your head is probably the most dangerous thing in the entire galaxy."

"You think I'm keeping it in my head because I'm too cheap to put it on a datacard and toss it in my sock drawer?" Jason asked. "I—and now you—have a responsibility for this since we were the ones that let the Machine out of its prison when we destroyed that weapon. Yes, it contains the specifics of their weapons tech, but it's also their entire history of culture, art, music, and science…everything that was unique about them is in there. If we delete it, then it will be like they never existed."

"Pretty words, but if the ConFed cuts your head off and gets the schematics for another superweapon and takes out Earth, will you still be so philosophical about it?" Crusher asked.

"The Archive is actually coded to Jason's DNA and alpha waves," Cas said. "Without him consciously doing it, the file cannot be unpacked or accessed."

"I didn't know that," Jason admitted.

"It was one of the changes I made when trying to stabilize your implant," Cas said. "For right now, his head is the safest place for it to be. The fact that nobody but him even knew it existed, including the Machine AI itself, made it a secret that couldn't be divulged…until now. Now, you are the weak links that could lead to someone finding out about this."

"I already don't like your passenger," Crusher said. "How do we know you won't sell us out? You're a scrap of software from the same system that spawned the Machine AI. How do we know we can trust you?"

"I feel my actions trying to save your Captain speak for themselves."

"Hardly," Doc said. "If he dies, you die. That's just self-preservation instincts kicking in. Even a swamp rat has that sort of loyalty when its own life it at stake."

"Point taken," Cas said. "However, if I was going to sell you all out, I could have done so at any time in the past since I became self-aware."

"Let's shelve the talk about loyalty for now," Jason said, glaring at Crusher. "Especially coming from people who were going to punch me in my sleep."

"It was for your own good."

"Let me begin working up a solution to either stabilize or replace the implant before we go on," Doc said. "Once we have that, we can begin hurling accusations again."

"We're only a day out from the Cluster and meeting back up with Mok," Jason said. "Better get busy. Kage, for now I want you to allow Cas access over the network to help Doc. You can implement any other security measures you deem necessary if you feel you must."

"Will do," Kage said.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to bed," Jason said. "The next person that tries sneaking into my quarters gets shot."

The next day went by quickly as the Phoenix streaked back towards occupied Eshquarian space. Doc and Cas worked the entire time to come up with a workable solution. In the end, they found that it wasn't going to be as difficult as they first predicted. The Type-3 implants had built in provisions for expansion in both processing power and memory, two things that Jason desperately needed while Cas was in his head along with the Archive. They found out Mok was on a planet called Formenos Prime, yet another of the old Eshquarian holdings that was never technically part of the Empire, and the place was developed enough that they were able to access the Nexus and pre-order the necessary upgrade components from an Aidla Technologies distributor that promised to meet them at whichever starport they landed.

"Why is Mok on Formenos?" Crusher asked.

"When a major power falls, that creates instability," Jason said. "Mok's business model depends on stable governments running worlds in a nice, predictable way. I'm guessing he's here to make sure that his underlings don't think the rules have changed just because there's a new landlord."

"Yeah, when the big boss himself pays you a visit, it tends to keep the skimming to a minimum," Kage said. "I've worked on a couple planets that had the local governments collapse. If it wasn't for the Central Banking System being an independent entity it would have been an even bigger nightmare than it was. Still…unrest and uncertainty make people a lot more cautious, and cautious people are way more difficult to steal from."

"Sometimes I forget that you were a filthy, bottom feeding criminal before we found you," Crusher said.

"Really? Because you bring it up all the time," Kage said.

"We've just gotten clearance to land," Doc called over the intercom.

"I'm on my way," Jason said, hopping off the couch and jogging up the stairs to the command deck. He slid into the recently vacated pilot's seat and checked the entry vector that orbital control had sent them while the seat adjusted itself. "Looks like a straight shot in and we're cleared for a landing right where Mok set his runabout down."

"I'd have thought that Mok would fly around on something more…intimidating," Twingo said. "That yacht is gorgeous, but it hardly inspires fear."

"That's the point," Jason said. "If he came in, hiding behind the armor of a frigate-class warship, it makes him appear weak and fearful. Instead, he rolls in like he hasn't a care in the world in a fully decked out pleasure ship. People know that he's not without security, but walking about freely, on a civilian craft, through his own territory reinforces that it's his territory."

"Sounds like you're starting to admire him," Kage remarked.

"I'm starting to understand him," Jason corrected.

The Phoenix's autopilot took instructions from Formenos's orbital control system and guided them smoothly into the atmosphere. Once they passed through the thermosphere, the ship rocked gently as plasma streamers arced past the shields. To the best of Jason's recollection, they'd never been to Formenos Prime, but what he could see so far impressed him. The planet was clean, the layout was intelligent so as to utilize the landmasses without waste, and had the evolved appearance of a Tier One world, not just some backwater feeder planet supplying a service to a regional power. The local government seemed to have its shit together, a far cry from so many of the other colonized planets they visited.

The runabout that Mok had brought down from his yacht, a craft that was just a tad too big to land at the smaller starports without drawing too much attention, was fairly generic looking though the engines gave it away as being Eshquarian in design. As he cycled the landing gear on the gunship, he saw Similan standing near the small ship, shielding his eyes from the downwash of the repulsors. Jason let the Phoenix touch down with a mild jolt before setting the brakes and shutting down the main drive.

"Twingo, check her over and call for fuel. Doc, you and Kage see about getting my new wetware. Take Lucky with you. Crusher, you're with me…let's go see what Mok has kicked up."

"Armament?" Crusher asked with a yarn.

"Concealable sidearms for you and me, Lucky can take whatever he wants," Jason said. "Kage has his own gear, and I don't trust Doc with a gun after that last time."

"So amusing," Doc sighed. "It will take a few hours to prep for the procedure, and then you'll be off your feet for a day or so until your implant fully negotiates with the upgrade."

“So, we won't be doing it until we mesh-out of this system," Jason said. "Get it ready and we'll do it on the way to…well, wherever the hell we're going next."

Once the rear ramp dropped the crew scattered and went about their tasks. Jason started towards the runabout when Similan held up a hand to stop him. Normally he would ignore the presumptuous gesture just on principle, but for some reason he just didn't feel up to antagonizing the stoic consigliere. It was only a few moments later when a skinny alien was flung from the hatchway, landing hard on the tarmac, and struggling to get up. An icy calm Saditava Mok appeared next, walking purposefully towards where the pitiful creature was now cowering with its hands up.

"I would kill you for stealing from me, but there's no profit in it," Mok's voice rumbled across the ramp. Jason had rarely seen him in full gangster mode, and he had to admit the heavily muscled alien cut an imposing figure. "Instead, I'm just taking everything you have. Everything. But here's where you can redeem yourself, vermin…you can buy your way back in if you replace everything you've taken, plus another thirty percent."

"Th-that's very generous, sir," the alien groveled. "B-but how will I earn if you take my territories?" Mok reached down and backhanded the alien across the face. There was so much power in the seemingly negligent gesture that the alien rolled twice across the ground, blubbering in terror.

"I give you your life, and this is how you thank me?" Mok roared. "Get out of my sight! Now! Move!"

Similan sprang into action and dragged the alien away, still spluttering and trying to apologize.

"Your friend doesn't fuck around," Crusher said quietly.

"Not my friend any more than he is yours," Jason said. "He's got a business to run, same as we do. We're not exactly choirboys."

"Fair enough."

"Sorry about the wait," Mok said as he crossed the tarmac to where the Phoenix sat. "Just dealing with a little bit of a middle management issue."

"The political changes here really make that much a difference down at the street level?" Jason asked.

"You'd be surprised," Mok sighed. "Any little shift and suddenly the low-level players all think we're no longer watching them. That little worm was running three full territories on this planet, an operation that included gambling and protection rackets for some of the bigger corporate players on Formenos. When the ConFed moved in, he thought it was his time to be the big boss and quit passing the profits up the chain.

"Normally, I'd let the Point that handles this area come down and impress upon the employees the need for loyalty, but sometimes it's good to get out and be seen. You want to talk aboard your ship? There's more room on the Phoenix than there is on that tiny shuttle."

"After you," Jason waved him up the ramp. "Similan is also welcome. We have external security active on the ship right now if that's what he's worried about."

"Sure, come on up, Similan," Mok said to the surprised looking servant. Similan fell in behind Mok and gave Jason a nod as he walked by. Jason had no real reason to include him other than trying to build a little trust and camaraderie towards the one person Mok seemed to trust implicitly. If he wanted to pull off the plan that had been coming together during the flight out, he'd need the gangster's connections and resources to get the necessary equipment and personnel.

It took Jason less than an hour to fill in all the gaps for Mok. The crime boss had put in a surprising amount of effort into going through the raw intel Kage had transmitted to him via the slip-com link, and it didn't take much before he was fully up to speed. Similan appeared very interested in the conversation but remained silent the entire time.

"I think your theory about the target and mission profile is solid," Mok said after absorbing Jason's brief rundown of the data. "But what's actionable here?"

"Kage thinks that we can use the encryption routines we swiped and override the command and control link on the missiles once they've already been launched," Jason said. "It'd be possible to detonate the warheads well before they reached the point-defense range of the defense fleet. It'd spoil the show at least."

"But does that really help? The Eshquarian ships will still be sitting targets for the counterattack."

"That's where I need your help," Jason said, bracing for the coming protests. "We need to board those ships and take them over…that means at least one merc crew per capital ship to subdue the security contractors and release the crews from confinement. We don't have the juice for that. Actually, we've pissed off more than a few of the major guilds in this region, and if they find out it's an Omega Force operation, they'll likely pass."

"But if Saditava Mok of the Blazing Sun Syndicate asks, they know the pay and prestige is guaranteed," Mok said.

"I wasn't thinking anything so high profile," Jason said. "If you put out a contract for that many specialized hitters, the problem is going to be that ConFed Intelligence will know about it before we can pull it off. Even if they don't figure it out, they will afterwards, and you'll have to go underground."

"To put your fears to rest, I have enough crews in my employ that I wouldn't have to put a call out to the guilds," Mok said. "I try to keep the exact size of my own personal military a secret, but suffice it to say that I have enough to do this job. My question to you is this: why should I?"

"This little staged play the Machine is trying to pull off is a signal," Jason said. "If this goes off without a hitch it will be the start of a major push to absorb the remaining sovereign powers and free systems. Not only that, but we lose forty-two capital warships and thousands of highly trained crewmembers. I feel like if we're not going to make a stand here, then perhaps it's time to dissolve this little alliance."

"Here's the thing, Captain," Mok said after a long, uncomfortable moment. "If we spoil this plan—a plan that has no strategic value, mind you—then we will have moved the operation into the armed rebellion stage. The problem is that we're making a decision that affects far more than just you or I…entire systems will be dragged into this and many people will die as an object lesson. Can you live with that? Is it not better to have a wait and see posture for the time being and see just how bad the Machine really can be?

The corrupted AI that calls itself the Machine is easily the most dangerous creation in this half of the galaxy. If it is allowed to solidify its power and control the entire might of the ConFed military, the suffering will be unimaginable.

Cas's words rang in Jason's head, but the fragment AI offered nothing he could use to convince Mok with.

"The suffering has already started," he said, trying to find a way to say what he felt that didn't seem contrived. "We're focusing on the fact the ConFed moved in and subdued the Empire within a matter of weeks, but what isn't being widely reported is that the civilian death toll for the invasion was in the millions. When we went to collect that fleet officer that had knowledge of the Machine's true nature, they bombarded a planet from orbit. If these atrocities don't make you want to strike back, then what will?"

"I never said I was unwilling, Captain. I just want to make sure you fully understand the full scope of your ambition. For years you've pushed around the periphery of larger events, but your crew has always been working the smaller jobs in a reactionary capacity. This time, you will be the one to start the fire. Is your conscience ready for the collateral damage that will be laid at your feet? If not, then walk away now. Once this started, it cannot be stopped until one side or the other is eradicated."

"I have no choice," Jason said. "I allowed this thing to escape when I should have just stayed behind and destroyed that weapon. I was too worried about saving my own skin and that gave the Machine the chance to jump aboard that ConFed battleship and make its way back here. I have to try and make this right."

"We were all there," Crusher rumbled, speaking up for the first time. "The entire crew bears the responsibility of the deaths this thing has caused already. We'll fight with or without you, Mok."

"Nobody is questioning your bravery, Lord Archon," Mok said. The use of Crusher's formal title coming from Mok's mouth seemed mocking somehow. "Since it seems you're determined to do this with or without help, let me make some inquiries and let you know what I can come up with. Do you have a last known location for the lost fleet?"

"They dropped out of slip-space near Pinnacle Station," Jason said. "Well, not near it…the ships are sitting outside the heliopause, well out of detection range for all the commercial traffic. We're assuming they stopped so close to such a busy hub because they need to finish off their resupply."

"That does put them on track if the Miressa System is their ultimate destination," Mok mused.

"That also puts them in range of Miressa, and the tracker we installed on the sled stuck to the side of that ship won't tell us when they jump back into slip-space," Jason said. "From when it reported they appeared near Pinnacle, Twingo and Kage say it's a safe bet they could be staged up outside the capital system within the next two weeks."

"That's not a lot of time to try and assemble the necessary crews," Mok warned.

"I can do this without them, but if we have any chance of saving the crews aboard the captured ships, we'll need to board them individually," Jason said. "There's just no other way. You can't count on us being able to help out there, either. We'll need to be out front a bit so we can watch the battle and intercede at the right times."

"Taking the Phoenix to the capital might be ill-advised," Similan said, speaking up for the first time. "That ship-type is known to ConFed Intelligence. While an older Jepsen might escape notice, it might also be spotted and your involvement exposed."

"Suggestions?" Mok asked.

"We use the Sarafin to move the necessary crews into position," Similan said.

"Is she even still operational?" Mok asked. "And who even has her?"

"The ship is in one of your salvage depots disguised as a derelict," Similan said. "She is space worthy and could be fitted for duty within a day."

"What's the Sarafin?" Crusher asked.

"A specialized cargo ship we had converted for smuggling operations," Mok said. "If we used the Sarafin, it would greatly simplify how we outfit the merc crews. We could just use intrasystem attack boats instead of slip-space capable assault shuttles."

Jason was able to make some educated guesses as to how the Sarafin was outfitted by the comments. They'd employed similar strategies themselves from time to time, but it was hardly one of his favorites. Before he could dig in to questioning Similan on the details, the computer gave a soft, warbling chime to alert them that somebody had come aboard who was authorized to be there. As he expected, Kage, Doc, and Lucky walked in carrying a composite box that he recognized as a stasis chamber for active nanobots.

"Success?" he asked.

"Success," Kage said, handing Doc the box. As the former geneticist headed off towards the infirmary, the code slicer walked over to the galley table and hoisted himself into a seat. "Just so you know, I've been keeping an active link open through the Phoenix to the Formenos Orbital Control Authority. If someone we know shows up, it'll flag so we're not taken by surprise."

"I’m guessing that random fact wasn't just tossed out as a fun bit of trivia," Jason said.

"The Defiant has just moved into the system," Kage said. "The ship is moving into an outer holding orbit near the fourth planet that will let them meet up with the ConFed cruiser that's been loitering here."

"Why would Seeladas send her flagship to occupied space to meet up with the ConFed?" Mok asked, his brow pinching with worry.

"If I was to guess, I'd say she's getting ready to cut a deal…or already has," Kage said. "With the elimination of Eshquarian sovereignty, her Cooperative has moved into the number three slot behind the Saabror Protectorate. They'd be a distant third, too. She's probably worried the ConFed will roll over them first."

"I don't suppose you still have contact with your old mate?" Crusher asked Jason.

"I've told you before; no."

"But you lie constantly. I’m just making sure."

"I'll make some inquiries to my contacts within Earth's intelligence community," Jason said. "Let's start there before we make a rash move and accuse Seeladas of selling out to the ConFed. For right now, this doesn't change our plans."

"Agreed," Mok said. "I'm going to get my people moving on the things we'll need. I think we can make it to the Miressa System on time, but it's going to be close."

"About that," Kage said, raising a hand. "I have some bad news that the Defiant's arrival distracted me from. I've been having the computer run a full analysis of the intel you took off that ship and run crosschecks with any pertinent data we might have on the local servers. The search spanned—"

"Just get to it!" Crusher yelled, making everyone at the table jump.

"We can't override the missiles' programming with just the encryption routines and command syntax," Kage said, unruffled by Crusher's outburst. "Our com suite isn't capable of transmitting or receiving in the range the missiles use. We'll need something from an Eshquarian warship they call Weapons DataLink Transceiver."

"We can't rig our com system to emulate this box?" Jason asked.

"Possibly, if we had the complete specs. Which we don't," Kage said. "Twingo was looking it over earlier and said that it seems to be using a slip-com field variance that's incompatible with even the military systems our ship carries."

"That's likely partially for security, partially to avoid any interference from all the slip-com traffic and the powerful engine field distortions you'd find on a capital ship," Mok said. "It's a system that wouldn't have been available for outside sale, so if you need one of those, it'll have to come off an Imperial ship."

"That's going to be a little bit of a challenge," Jason said. "Kage, your new top priority is to find me one of these datalink boxes. If we have to buy one on the black market, I'm fine with that…whatever option is fastest."

"I'll get started right away," Kage slipped from his seat. "Twingo was down in the aft service bay when we walked up. He said the ship will be ready for flight within the hour."

"We will attend to our tasks as well, Captain," Mok said. "I'm hoping this operation can be pulled off with some discretion, but I'm aware that's not exactly how you operate."

"If we can interrupt this little bit of Kabuki theater and hurt the Machine's position, I'll be happy," Jason said. "If we can pull it off by saving the lives of the thousands of Eshquarian spacers trapped in cells right now on their own ships, I'll be even happier."

"If Kabuki theater means what I assume it means, we at least agree on that point," Mok said. "We'll be in touch."

Lucky escorted Mok and Similan back down to the cargo bay where they could disembark while Jason thought over the latest wrinkle in his plan. Given how sensitive the datalink transceiver was, he doubted that one was just lying around somewhere that easy to grab.

"You serious about all that bullshit you tried to feed Mok?" Crusher asked.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"You might have fooled him, but I know for a fact that you're not going to waste all this effort just to blow a few missiles up harmlessly in space. What's your real plan?"

"I'll let you know once I'm sure I can pull it off," Jason said. "But you're right…I'm not willing to put as at so much risk for so little gain. If we do this, the Machine needs to suffer a setback more tangible than an embarrassing misfire. You're okay with that?"

"I'm on this ride to the end," Crusher said, extending his fist. Jason crashed his own fist against it.

"To the end."

16

"Admiral, Sensor Operations just sent word that a ship you've deemed to be of interest has just appeared. It took off from the planet a few hours ago and is now breaking orbit and on course for a mesh-out point."

"Which ship is it?" Kellea Colleran asked, distracted by the report she was reading.

"It goes by a lot of different names and registrations, but the physical configuration matches the ship in our database called the Phoenix," the aide said. "It is a heavy gunship-class vessel that appears to have been extensively—illegally—modified. Operations said it began its life as a Jepsen Aero DL7."

"Show me," Kellea said, holding out a hand for the tablet the aide carried. She looked at the sensor imagery along with the point-by-point comparison notes to confirm it actually was the Phoenix. From the looks of her, Jason had done another extensive round of upgrades. The wings looked different and there were a few unidentified bits added in places. Her Sensor Operations people had to guess about the purpose of those, their annotations marked with arrows pointing to them.

She took it all in with a dispassionate eye. Any feelings she may have still harbored for Jason Burke seemed to have been eroded away by time. While inter-species relationships were fairly common on most tier-one worlds, it was still somewhat taboo on her home world. Perhaps it was the illicit nature of their romance coupled with the fact he was completely unique that had first sparked her interest. Now, with humans expanding out of the Orion Arm and Jason himself having made a mess of his own life multiple times, she sometimes had trouble remembering what it was about him that drew her interest in the first place.

What did interest her, however, was what Omega Force was doing out in the occupied zone at the same time Saditava Mok of the Blazing Sun Syndicate was there in his personal yacht. She was almost temped to abort her rendezvous course and try to apprehend Mok to see what he was up to out here, but the Cooperative had issued specific orders to its field commanders: Mok was off limits. Kellea was an absolutist when it came to the application of law. She knew that the reason Mok was exempted for the time being was because he had assisted Earth with multiple trade agreements that benefited the Cooperative on the whole, but she didn't agree with it. If the humans wanted to take their chances trusting a ruthless gangster to run as an intermediary for them that was their business, but the Cooperative shouldn't be allowing immunity for someone who was running known smuggling operations into their space.

"Have Coms reach out to the Phoenix and request a report on why they're in this area," she said, handing the tablet back. "Tell Captain Essel to maintain our current course and to let me know when we're within shuttle range of the ConFed patrol ship."

"At once, Admiral."

It could just be a coincidence. Omega Force turned up in odd places all over the quadrant. She had heard that Jason had a personal rapport with Saditava Mok himself, but it seemed so out of character that he'd be actively helping in one of the gangster's operations. He may have flexible morals, but he'd always stood firm on not letting his crew get involved with the bigger organized crime outfits that traded in the misery of helpless people. It was actually one of the foundations that kept his little band of misfits and criminals together.

As the aide scurried away, Kellea could feel the doubts begin to creep back in. She still wasn't sure what Seeladas was up to or why the Defiant was patrolling in a ConFed held, conquered area of space when she should have been flying above the planets of the Cooperative, reassuring their member worlds that everything was under control. If the Phoenix was out here sniffing around, what might be happening that she was unaware of?

Looking back, the last time she had positioned herself opposite of Jason had been when he'd exposed Crisstof Dalton's involvement in trying to overthrow the government of the Avarian Empire, the vast superpower that sat across the region of space known as the Delphine Expanse or the Great Emptiness. The natural buffer had kept the Avarians on their side of the Expanse, but after Dalton's escapades, they were even more distrustful of outsiders. Now that she really thought back on that time, Crisstof had been in league with the ConFed on that operation. Perhaps she shouldn't be so trusting of Seeladas's intentions after all.

"Maybe I'm the one that changed," she said to herself, looking out over the hull of her mighty battlecruiser from the opulence of the office attached to her living quarters. When she'd been just a captain, commanding a small frigate and being the eyes and ears of a wealthy industrialist there had been a certain idealism about everything she did. Now that she was an admiral, commanding fleets of ships, she wondered if maybe somewhere along the way she'd lost perspective and that it was Jason who had remained grounded in his beliefs.

She'd tracked his movements as best she could and admitted that she did feel some pain at how far he'd fallen at times, sunk into despair when Omega Force had dissolved and then again when Lucky had been killed in action. For a long time, she'd clung to the fact that Jason had betrayed her first, but maybe that wasn't actually true.

"Admiral Colleran, please report to the bridge. We'll be within shuttle range of the ConFed cruiser, Agon, within ten minutes."

"On my way," she said, shaking off any thoughts of Jason Burke or misplaced loyalties. She had a job to do, and she was going to see it done.

"The Defiant has made us," Kage said. "Incoming channel request, text only. They're asking for a report on our actions and intentions. They called the ship out by name."

"Tell them to suck on a—"

"Oh! And we have a passenger signal coming in," Kage cut Jason off. "That's why they're transmitting data only. They have a secondary stream that's trying to worm its way in past the firewall. From what I'm seeing, it's actually a fairly advanced bit of tech."

"Any risk to us?"

"Nah. All the new com equipment we got from the Kheprians is far more advanced," Kage scoffed. "Want me to backtrack the signal and see If we can dig into their systems?"

"Go for it," Jason said. "Just look around, don't turn anything off or screw something up."

"Just a little sneak and peek," Kage said. "I want to see how good the gear they gave us is." For their services rendered in heading off what could have been a brutal, bloody conflict on the planet Khepri, the pru had gifted them a military-grade data security suite under the table that was loaded with their newest and best semi-AI processors that could crack most encryption algorithms like they were nothing. The pru were the species who created the synth race and were still widely regarded as the absolute masters of adaptive AI computing.

"You think your ex-mate told them to try and break into our computers?" Crusher asked.

"I wish you'd pick a less creepy term than mate, but I have no idea what Kellea is thinking these days. She obviously suspects we're out here for reasons other than war tourism, but I'm more interested in what a Cooperative battlecruiser is doing out here. Actually…Kage, send this instead: 'Greetings, Defiant. What is a Cridal warship doing in occupied space cuddling up to a ConFed cruiser? Do the Saabror know about this? I bet they would be very interested in our sensor data. What do you think?'"

"That should make some heads explode," Kage laughed. "I'm holding off on sending while our own intrusion software tries to— Ah! That was quick. Sending message and leaving the channel open to see what our little spy sends back."

It was a very short time later when another, more aggressive message came back demanding that the Phoenix cut power and standby to be boarded whenever the Defiant decided to come around and collect them. Jason and Crusher laughed so hard they had tears streaming from their eyes as Kage took it upon himself to send back a quoted passage from the Cridal Cooperative charter regarding the rights of vessels to navigate freely.

"We've received six compressed packets from the intrusion software," Kage said. "I think we've pushed our luck enough on that. I'm sending the command for it to delete itself, and then closing the channel."

"Send that entire exchange to Mok's ship and warn them the Defiant tried to break into our systems," Jason said. "You have us a course yet?"

"Yeah…you're not going to like this," Kage said. "We need to go to the Eshquarian System."

"You're right…I don't like it. Why the hell would we want to go there?"

"I found one of the datalink boxes we need. It's in what's likely the most unsecure location I can come up with on short notice unless you want to fight with the scavengers picking over the bones of the ships the ConFed fleet blew apart," Kage said. "Finding one that's brand new or even recently in service is a fool's errand. We'll never meet our schedule in time. What I've found is a semi-secure site far south on the Continent Superior of Eshquaria that specializes in storing decommissioned military hardware until it can be properly dismantled and recycled for scrap."

"And they just happen to have the specific box we need?" Crusher asked.

"They have seven of them," Kage corrected. "They're the boxes that were pulled from a generation of fast-attack frigates the Empire recently decommissioned. Even though they're an older design, they work on the same principles and will get us what we need."

"Can we even land on Eshquaria right now?" Jason asked. "It was just recently ground zero of a major battle. Is the ConFed just letting people free-navigate the system already?"

"Sure." Kage shrugged. "They only have a small peace keeping force in the capital system now that's just supposed to keep any opportunists away. Eshquaria is—was—an incredibly wealthy planet and all those cultural and material treasures are still on the surface."

"Since they already knew where the lost fleet really was, the ConFed didn't have to waste the resources protecting against them coming back and trying to retake the system," Jason said. "Smart. So, we just fly in under the cover of one of our clean codes, and then try to pull off a quick smash and grab on a storage site used for obsolete equipment? I actually like this plan more and more."

"You would," Crusher snorted. "You're forgetting that the Eshquarians will still have planetary security in place, including aircraft that could pack enough punch to cause us trouble."

"We'll deal with that when we get there." Jason waved off the concern. "Plot me a course out of here with a mesh-out point that hides the fact we're moving deeper into Eshquarian space. I don't need the Defiant tracking our movements and reporting back. Go ahead and get us moving once Twingo clears the slip-drive. I'm going to the com room to see if our friends on Earth have heard anything about the Cooperative making a deal with the ConFed."

"I should probably check in with home, as well," Crusher said. "Galvetor is a small, independent system, but thanks to the legions, we have a profile large enough that we won't be ignored for long."

"Captain, when will you want to do the implant upgrade?" Doc asked, walking back in from the infirmary.

"Not now," Jason said. "The flight to Eshquaria is too short, and I can't afford a long recovery time. It'll have to be put on hold when I have a few days to just lay around while the hardware integrates."

"It's ready when you are," Doc said, looking like he wanted to argue, and then deciding against it. "What do you need me to do?"

"Help Kage fly the ship. Once we're out of this system I want the both of you scouring any sources we might have that can tell us more about this parts depot Kage wants to attack."

"We're flying to Eshquaria…to attack someone?" Doc asked. "That seems a bit reckless."

"Not any more so than our usual jobs," Jason said. He ran up the steps to the command deck, pausing at the entrance to the com room. "Lucky, do me a favor and make sure that new armor is ready to go. I have a sneaky feeling that Fendra may have tampered with it, and I was just able to get the jump on her first."

"I will handle it, Captain."

"What do you need me to do?" Crusher asked.

"You mean aside from eating everything in sight, sleeping most of the time, and asking stupid questions while people try to work?"

"Yeah, besides that."

"Get a decent layout of this facility from Kage and start planning our incursion," Jason said. "We need to be ready to hit it hard and fast and be on the way to the Miressa System without a lot of delays or screw ups from poor planning."

The meeting with the ConFed representative was not what Kellea had expected. When she'd flown over to the cruiser, after their emissary had refused to come aboard the Defiant, she had been ushered into a secure conference room with two other ConFed officers and a councilman whose eyes widened in surprise when he saw her. She recognized him as the powerful committee chair that had hired Omega Force to do a couple personal favors in return for erasing the files ConFed Intelligence was keeping on them, but she didn't know much about Councilman Scleesz other than that.

In addition to the people actually there, two others were present via slip-com hyperlink. Seeladas Dalton appeared in the room as a fully fleshed out hologram while another figure in plain clothing appeared as a more flimsy, distorted avatar. Kellea couldn't figure out what its species was, all she knew was that the people actually in the room appeared to be terrified of it, but were trying hard not to show it.

"Welcome, Admiral," Scleesz said. "You may be wondering why we asked you here when you can see your premier is also attending. There has been a slight change of plan that was decided upon after you had already arrived in the Formenos System and we felt it would be better if you heard it directly from the top."

"Very well," Kellea said neutrally. "It's good to see you again, Councilman. And you as well, Premier Dalton."

"Admiral," Seeladas said with a nod and a smile that stopped before reaching her eyes. Whatever was happening here, it wasn't something she seemed to be too enthused about.

"Enough," the grainy figure said, the image flickering as it moved. "Time is short and there is much to do. Admiral, you had originally been asked here to provide additional military support to the occupational force holding the Eshquarian territory while our own fleet executed a search for the missing Imperial Fleet units that had fled the area

"This was to be done as a show of good faith on the part of the Cridal that they could be trusted and perhaps even negotiated with. Your territory is quite far from the Core Worlds, but it still makes the Adjudicators uneasy that such a powerful military is being built without us knowing your intentions."

"You do, of course, have the right to self-defense and you share borders with two aggressive nations," Scleesz put in smoothly. "But we're still concerned at the level and pace of heavy weapons development we've seen from some of your member worlds."

"Councilman, I'm a military officer," Kellea said, finding it odd that the being obviously in charge was not even introduced to her. "These are matters of state and well outside of my scope of responsibility. Premier Dalton is the ultimate authority for the Cridal fleet. If she has deemed it necessary for the Defiant and her taskforce to work in cooperation with the ConFed military, it will be done so to the best of my ability."

"I like this officer," the other hologram spoke again with a strange, mechanical laugh. She saw that Seeladas looked away uncomfortably at her words. "It's truly refreshing to see such a skilled subordinate that knows her place, a part within the greater machine. Councilman Scleesz…since you seem so intent on stepping in when you're not asked, you will accompany Admiral Colleran back to her ship and provide the necessary instructions she will need to accomplish her mission. Is this acceptable, Seeladas Dalton?"

"It is, sir," Seeladas said. Kellea couldn't hide her reaction at her own head of state's submissive tone. Sir? Something was going on here, something far above her head, and she was certain that it wasn't something that would benefit the greater good for the Cridal citizenry.

"Then it is decided. Get to work, Scleesz." The hologram of the person giving the orders flickered and disappeared as did Seeladas's, the latter not bothering to give her own officer any words of encouragement.

"Admiral, I can have a shuttle deliver me to your vessel at any time you wish," Scleesz said.

"If you're ready to go now, Councilman, you can just ride back with me, assuming you're not taking your entire staff with you."

"It will only be me," Scleesz said. "I'm traveling light these days, and I'm sure I will be quite secure aboard your ship."

"I can assure you that you will," Kellea said. "I will await you in the hangar bay."

Kellea couldn't escape the conference room fast enough. She'd already begun having concerns about what was happening in the Cooperative when the Defiant was pulled off normal patrols and sent out to Eshquaria. Now, she was genuinely afraid. Having a ConFed Councilmember aboard calling the shots with the blessing of her commander in chief was not something she was expecting nor ready to plan for.

At least the corpulent little Scleesz was coming alone. She would have him discreetly searched and activities closely monitored, something that would have been far more difficult if he'd insisted on bringing his own staff or a squad of armed troopers with him. In the back of her mind, she was also aware that the connection to Jason Burke that Scleesz represented couldn't be just a bizarre coincidence. The Councilman's presence confirmed, at least in her mind, that Omega Force was already involved in this mess somehow.

Despite having fantasized about it on more than a few occasions, she hoped she wouldn't be forced to blow the Phoenix out of the sky with the Defiant's cannons before this was all over.

17

"This is actually looking easier than I expected."

"Why would you even say that?" Kage asked, tossing all four arms up in exasperation.

"Look," Jason said, pointing to the holographic representation being projected onto the tabletop of the terrain surrounding the depot. "There's no real security to speak of, most of the patrol flights are concerned about people smuggling things out of the big cities along the equator, and the lower latitudes aren't even covered by the ships in orbit. If we can make it down there undetected, we can be in and out before they could redirect forces to intercept us."

"We think that the boxes are being stored here," Crusher said, jabbing a claw into the hologram of the main building. "The northwest wing is said to control all sensitive communications and telemetry link equipment. It's the category that most closely matches our objective. There are no external entrance points into this wing and, due to the sensitive nature of the device, I wouldn't recommend breaching an outer wall. I think we'll need to move in through this auxiliary entrance"—he pointed to another spot on the hologram—"and move through an assumed security checkpoint to access it. Once we have the box, we can go ahead and blow a hole through the wall to egress."

Kage gaped at Crusher in slack-jawed amazement while Jason was able to hide his own reaction better. The big warrior was often dismissed as a musclebound idiot, a reputation he lived up to more often than not, but Jason had decided to try a different tact to see if he could get the big dummy to be a little more useful. Crusher, whose real name was Felex Tezakar, was the Guardian Archon of Galvetor and commander of the Galvetic Legions. He'd been trained from childhood in all manner of small-unit combat, discreet interdictions, large-scale battle planning, and advanced hand-to-hand combat training. In other words, this was a well-trained, intelligent, and capable operator who had been taking the lazy way out for far too long. Jason felt it was past time for him to pull his weight.

Still, he hadn't expected Crusher to actually do what was asked of him. There was still the same amount of complaining, shifting of blame, and a half-dozen other tactics to get out of any actual work. The difference now was that he actually would get around to doing what was requested of him…eventually.

"How do you want to take the auxiliary entrance?" Jason asked.

"Let the Phoenix do it." Crusher shrugged. "No point in lugging two breaching charges or a weapon so heavy that only Lucky can carry it. Besides…one hit on the building from the main cannons and there will be all the shock and confusion we need to sneak in."

"I think I can work that detail out a little bit to strengthen our advantage," Jason said. "Climate is still mild with predictable winds?"

"Yes," Kage said. "Here's what the box looks like you'll be going after." A standard looking avionics box replaced the building hologram with a scale marker down by the bottom. The box was big, but Lucky should have no trouble with it. "It's pretty rugged so don't worry about anything breaking inside, but don't throw it from the top of the building or anything like that. From what I've been able to tell from some contacts I still have on the surface here, the parts will be stored in locked cages, but nothing that should slow you down."

"How long until we're ready to break out of this traffic pattern, Doc?" Jason asked, leaning out of the conference room so he could be heard on the bridge.

"We'll be dropping out of detection range for our requested landing zone in nineteen minutes," Doc said. "After that it's an eleven-hour flight along the eastern coastline before turning inland."

"I’m going to adjust our flight profile for the final approach," Jason said. "Stand by for your new instructions. Don't worry…this will actually make things easier for you."

"Why do I have a feeling I'll not like this change?" Crusher complained.

"Because you don't like anything," Jason said. "But you only have yourself to blame. If you hadn't suggested using the main guns on the Phoenix to make entry, I'd have likely never thought of this. Lucky! Let's start getting prepped."

"Words cannot express how much I despise you. The very sight of you sickens me right now."

"For being one of the most feared warriors in the known galaxy, you sure whine like a little bitch when you don't get your way," Jason said over the team link. "Now cut the chatter when we're outside. I don't want to be picked up by some autocannon emplacement Kage failed to warn us about. Follow me out. Lucky, you're tail end Charlie."

The ramp was partially lowered and the gunship was loafing along an established aircraft flightpath at an altitude of six-thousand meters. The trio that comprised the ground assault team were decked out in harnesses that had deployable ram-air wings that would open and let them glide over great distances. The wings were made of a nanobot-infused material that could change shape and density based on need. They were adapted from a sporting rig that Jason had found on a vacation where tourists would wear them and jump from high peaks on a low-gravity moon, soaring in the updrafts and around the mountains for hours. Once he'd adapted the system for tactical use, he's made sure that everyone on his crew was fitted for one, but thus far few had bothered to train on them. Thankfully, they were mostly automated since this would be their first live operation using them.

Jason moved over to the edge of the ramp and looked down at the heavy cloud cover, his armor peering through it with mid-wave infrared optics at the coastline below. This far south on Eshquaria was sparsely populated so the risk of being seen was low, but he was still worried about the security and detection grids at the actual target.

"Omega One, out the door," he said, hopping off the edge and tucking his arms and legs in tight as the slipstream slammed into him like a freight train. They hadn't been able to slow down too much without arousing suspicion, so they'd just had to accept that the first part of the op was going to be very, very painful.

He tumbled out of control for the first few seconds before he splayed his arms and legs out into a skydiver's arch and waited for his body position to stabilize. Once he was in a belly-down fall, and decelerating after being thrown out of a ship doing a thousand kilometers an hour, he deployed the wing and waited as the fabric scoop channeled the air and pressurized the bladders to get the shape it wanted before the nanobots fibers would lock into place.

"Omega Two is out and under wing," Crusher's voice came over the short-range team link.

"Omega Three, out and scouting ahead."

"Damnit! Lucky, that's not the plan!"

They watched as the battlesynth streaked by, still in freefall. Instead of deploying the wing, Lucky fired his primary flight repulsors and shot away from their formation, disappearing into the clouds. Jason was seething, but could do little but watch his friend disregard their carefully laid plan and go roaring into a potentially hot LZ with piss poor intel and no backup.

"He's been doing that a lot lately," Crusher said. Jason looked over and saw that his friend had maneuvered himself down and to the left, looking completely comfortable under the inflatable wing.

He tamped down his anger and focused on what he was doing. By the time they broke through the lower cloud layer they could see the complex they were heading towards, but no sign of Lucky. His armor's HUD helpfully started identifying the structures they knew for certain along with fly-to indicators to guide him into the primary LZ. Secondary and tertiary LZ's were also highlighted in a muted yellow. He was buffeted about in the air as the wing changed configurations, morphing from a slow, long-distance glider to a fast, swept wing that would get them down with minimal time to be spotted. Even knowing how it worked, it was still disconcerting to be accelerating towards the ground and putting all his trust in the harness that would, in theory, not allow him to slam into the ground at a lethal velocity.

Just as he was about to abort his approach and jettison the harness so he could land on his own repulsors, the wing reconfigured again to form a wide, scooped out parachute that decelerated him rapidly. He rotated his body and absorbed the impact with his feet, letting himself go into a roll. The fabric of the wing had retracted and stowed so quickly that, by the time his back hit the ground, it was already secure in the harness. He climbed to his feet in time to see Crusher slam into the ground and mimic the same roll maneuver he'd done to absorb and dissipate the energy from the impact.

"That was actually sort of fun," Crusher said, yanking on the release and letting the harness fall to the ground. "I can see why you enjoyed that so much on your trip."

"Where the hell is Lucky?" Jason asked, looking around as he broke out his weapons. Crusher, never one to wear actual armor, pulled the helmet and pressure suit off before pulling his own party favors out.

"I am just beyond the ridge to your southeast," Lucky's voice came over the com. "One hundred and seventy meters away." Jason turned that direction before feeling a hand clamp down onto his shoulder.

"Talk to him about it later," Crusher said, not transmitting over the channel. "Job first, lectures later."

"I don't lecture," Jason said, stomping away towards where Lucky had indicated.

"Sure you don't," Crusher mumbled before setting off after him,

The position Lucky had taken up was above their target and about two kilometers away. The approach would be over smooth ground and, save for a flimsy looking security wall, there appeared to be no active security beyond the checkpoints at the building itself. He let his armor's adaptive coating blend in with the surrounding loose dirt and scrubby vegetation, noticing that Lucky did the same. Crusher just grunted, but made no special effort to camouflage himself.

They quickly made their way down the slope, using as much of the natural cover as there was, and hunkered down again just outside the slatted security wall. There were no outward signs from the complex that they'd been spotted. Now that they were apparently all back on the same page, Jason waited while Lucky scanned the area with his more advanced sensor suite, while he and Crusher knelt down in the small drainage ditch that paralleled the wall.

"No active scans of any kind, only one detected passive sensor system mounted on the mast on top of the main building," Lucky said. "No detectable security patrols, either."

"Let's get this party started," Jason said, keying in a burst transmission to the gunship that should just now be cutting across the southern tip of the continent.

He was rarely on the ground near a position that was hit with weapons meant for space combat. It was never a pleasant experience, and it drove home just how fragile he really was compared the metal behemoths that did battle in the void. The Phoenix's main guns were plasma cannons that, while subluminal, did travel significantly faster than the speed of sound. They never got any warning of what was coming until the first brilliant red streaks split the clouds and hit the building with a force that shook the entire area.

More shots rained down from above as the Phoenix hammered the side of the building with two full bursts from her main guns. When the last of the second salvo ended, Lucky ripped a section of the security wall away from its framing and they all filed in, sprinting across the remaining distance, and waiting to be fired upon by some unknown position they'd missed during recon.

"Doc really overdid it," Crusher said as they cleared around the corner and saw that their ingress into the building was now a massive smoldering crater. Jason could just begin to make out the alarms blaring inside the building as they skirted around the damaged area and climbed over the rubble to get into the building.

"This way," Jason said. His armor could see through the dense smoke without trouble, and he saw the junction up ahead that would take them down into the wing they assumed the objective was stored in.

"Security personnel are responding," Lucky said. "A general order to lock down all areas has gone out."

"How the hell do you know that?" Jason asked before being taken off his feet by a concussive blast. He looked up and saw Crusher returning fire at the two security guards posted up on a catwalk that ran above the entire warehouse complex.

"Stupid," he admonished himself before lining up his railgun near the catwalk's closest junction and opened fire. Two hypersonic slugs turned the alloy to liquid and blasted the anchor points free from the structure, sending the catwalk veering wildly and the two guards tumbling to the ground. "They, at least, have a fighting chance of surviving. We need to hurry."

"Are we not killing this time?" Crusher shouted over the confusion.

"I'd rather not," Jason yelled back. "These are just people doing a job." Crusher grumbled something he couldn't hear, but adjusted his fire from kill to suppress as they made their way into the wing that held all the communications equipment.

If they hadn't been in a hurry and fleeing from an increasing number of security guards, Jason would have loved to take tour of the massive facility. There were major components from every class of starship the Eshquarians had built going back decades. All the stuff that the Empire didn't sell to outsiders or want to risk being in the hands of salvagers was all there. Thankfully, centuries of relative peace had made them lax on security.

"Lucky will you recognize this thing if you spot it?" Jason shouted.

"Yes."

"Then scout ahead, Crusher and I will hold them here at the security check point."

Lucky ran ahead and ripped the gate from the portcullis as a terrified badge-checker stumbled away from the desk and sprinted in the opposite direction of the fray. Jason and Crusher moved quickly back into the chokepoint, the former's railgun doing an admirable job of keeping everyone's head down and the returned fire to a minimum. Wherever the hypersonic rounds hit, there was an explosion of debris and shrapnel consistent with a large frag grenade. The local guards, mostly looking like retired military, wanted no part of that as they half-heartedly fired back with the pitifully weak sidearms they carried. Jason didn't even bother seeking cover as the few lucky hits that they scored did nothing more than leave a scorch mark on his armor. The heavily armed assault team coupled with being hit from the air by some sort of large plasma weapon had the desired effect of confusing and scattering what security there was.

"They're bound to have an armory in this place that will have the big boy toys," Crusher said.

"And?"

"And maybe standing there with your chest puffed out letting them shoot at you isn't the greatest tactic you've ever devised," Crusher said. "Although I guess it's really not the worst, either."

Jason fired three shots in quick succession that tore the staircase leading to the catwalks above them free and crashing to the floor. Now there weren't any more guards above them and they should only have to worry about those trying to at them from the sides. The wall exploding above his head dispelled that theory as the pair began taking fire from behind them. Jason wheeled and saw that guards were streaming in through a door on the left side of the wide hallway they were in.

"Shit! We're pinned down!" Crusher shouted.

"Take the ones behind us, I'll hold this door! Go!"

Crusher turned and opened fire, his heavy plasma rifle barking as the brilliant blue bolts of superheated gas vaporized whatever they touched. The light armor the guards wore had an ablative coating to protect against energy weapons, but not the kind that the hulking warrior preferred to carry. The powerful bolts of energy slammed into guards, melting weapons, and cooking through body armor like paper. Some went down without so much as a whimper, others screamed as an appendage was flash burned from their body leaving nothing but a smoking, cauterized stump.

"Hey!" Jason shouted.

"I don't have time for your bleeding-heart bullshit!" Crusher shouted back. "I'm outnumbered ten to one! Worry about your own side!"

Jason turned back in time to see that the guards trying to close in on his position had organized and were now coming at him from both sides. He stood up and fired six shots to each side, all of them aimed at the feet of the advancing guards. The railgun rounds ripped up the duracrete floor and sent shards flying into the oncoming guards, killing the four in the lead.

"Oops," Jason muttered. The other guards advancing on the security checkpoint decided that trying to rush an armored adversary while he held the advantages of controlling a chokepoint and vastly superior firepower was a losing strategy. They retreated along the outer walls to stay out of Jason's line of sight, dragging their wounded and leaving the dead.

“So, what the hell is all that?" Crusher demanded from behind Jason, pointing at the bodies. "Were you trying to cuddle them into submission with high-velocity debris?"

"That was an accident," Jason said loftily.

"I have retrieved the component we require and am moving back to your position," Lucky said over the team link. "I have also planted the demo charge on the outer wall where I suspect it is weakest."

"On our way to you," Jason said. "Phoenix, you copy?"

"We're here, Omega One."

"Bring her in, we'll be outside momentarily. Be ready to lay down suppressing fire…we haven't seen any heavy stuff yet, but that doesn't mean they don't have it. Watch your ass coming in with my ship."

"Copy."

Jason and Crusher ran down the wide hall until they encountered an Eshquarian guard coming the other way…carrying what looked like the avionics box they were after. Just as they raised their weapons to challenge the guard, it wavered and flickered before disappearing, revealing a battlesynth in its place.

"What the—" Jason just stared as Crusher moved forward and poked Lucky a few times.

"The ability to accurately mimic similarly sized beings is part of my new—" and explosion up near the security checkpoint Jason had just abandoned cut Lucky off. "Perhaps we can speak of this later. Take cover while I trigger the breaching charge."

They all leaned in against one of the bare spots on the wall until there was a tremendous jolt that seemed to shake the whole building. Dust and smoke came billowing down the hall, obscuring their vision again. Jason led the way, weapon raised, until he came to a jagged hole in the outer wall that was big enough for them all to fit through side by side.

"Phoenix is inbound," he said. "Head for the same hole in the wall and wait for pickup. I'll parallel the building before moving for exfil to make sure there aren't any nasty surprises waiting." He turned to look for Crusher, but didn't see him. Assuming he was covering their escape by staying inside the edge of the hole, he turned and ran across the hard-packed sand that would take him out in front of any obvious weapon emplacements they might have activated since the attack started.

"We're ninety seconds out."

"We'll be there," Jason said. "Drop the transit beam and standby."

By the time he was satisfied that the security response was still focused internally, Jason turned and ran for the pickup location just as the Phoenix burst through the low-hanging clouds. He made it there just as Lucky went up the transit beam with the datalink box in left hand and a plasma carbine in his right. Jason stopped and scanned the area, waiting to see if he needed to go back into the building to retrieve Crusher.

"Let's go! We're waiting on you!" he called over the team link when Crusher emerged from the building and ran across the distance in a surprisingly quick time for someone who didn't bother with much cardio training.

"What the hell? You taking a nap in there?" Jason asked.

"Yeah…sorry," Crusher said and stepped into the beam. He'd had an odd look on his face Jason had never seen before.

"We need to go now, Captain," Kage said. "The call has gone out, and planetary security forces are converging."

"Got it," Jason said, stepping into the transit beam and letting it pull him up into the ship, putting Crusher's odd behavior from his mind.

18

"I'm genuinely impressed," Kage said. "This box is in near-mint condition."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Crusher growled

"You're…you're kidding, right?" Twingo asked, looking at Kage and Doc in turn.

"We could send you two to go get a rock—just an ordinary rock—and the odds of it coming back in one piece are one in fifty," Kage said. "In fact, I think I remember this actually happening once."

"Will this work?" Jason asked sharply, cutting off the next comment before things got completely off track.

"From a superficial inspection, yes," Twingo said. "I've powered it up and everything checks out. It's just sitting there waiting for the correct input. Once Kage re-works the software to do what we need, and I build the interface so it can work with the Phoenix's com system, we should be good to go."

The flight away from the parts depot was anticlimactic after the spirited resistance the guards at the facility had put up. Once Jason was back in the pilot's seat, he pushed on towards the southern pole, keeping out of range of the security ships that were stuck in an equatorial holding orbit. He rocketed up away from the planet off the southern pole, a maneuver only a ship like the Phoenix could do with her comparatively low mass and over-powered main drive. The picket ships tried to reposition themselves to intercept, but by the time they'd accelerated into a transfer orbit that would let them slingshot towards the Polar Regions, the Phoenix was already halfway to her mesh-out point.

What struck Jason as odd was that the ConFed had almost no presence there maintaining order, and on the surface, you couldn't really tell that they'd just been conquered. They'd watched some local media once when they'd first hit orbit over Eshquaria Prime and the fact a neighboring superpower had come in with warships and displaced their government was being treated like a general interest story. Maybe there was something in the Eshquarian cultural character that they simply didn't care about who was in charge as long as the trains ran on time, so to speak.

"The software should be easy," Kage said, breaking Jason out of his ruminations. "It's mostly just updating all the encryption protocols and tying the clean-side data bus into the ship so we can pipe down commands from the bridge."

"I want that isolated," Jason said. "And I mean discreet cabling and controls. I don't care if you tape it to the deck to route it, I don't want this box being tied into our MUX at any point."

"That's going to take—"

"It's non-negotiable," Jason cut off another round of complaining. "We have no idea what's in this box that could wreck our own systems."

"Wait, so you want discreet cabling and a standalone interface built?" Twingo asked.

"What part of this isn't sinking in with you two?" Jason asked. "The only thing I want tied into our systems is the final output of the box before it hits the high-gain amplifier on the way to the antennas. Got it?"

"Got it," Twingo said. "I'll get started right away."

"I liked it better when you didn't know anything about the ship or its parts," Kage grumbled and began pulling the access panels off the avionics box.

"When did you learn so much about the guts of this tub?" Crusher asked.

"I’m not a fucking idiot!" Jason snapped. "You all just insist on treating me like one. Do you really think that I'd own an interstellar warship for this long and not pick up a damn manual once in a while?"

"You want me to answer that honestly?"

"I have a better idea," Jason said, patting Crusher on the cheek and earning a snarl in return. "Your job is now to help Kage run the cabling and get it all hooked up. He's in charge. Whatever he needs, you get it for him."

"What?!"

"I live for these moments," Kage said, a huge smile splitting his wide mouth.

"How long does this last?" Crusher asked.

"Until the job is done, so get to work."

"It's good to see that you not only survived the demise of Crisstof Dalton, but advanced yourself within his First Daughter's new regime."

"I had wondered if you would recognize me, Councilman," Kellea said.

"Oh, yes, Admiral…my species is blessed with a very organized and accurate memory, but the incident with Crisstof's First Son trying to start a handful of civil wars within ConFed space is difficult to forget." Scleesz leaned back in his seat, pushing his plate away. "Excellent. Seeladas certainly hasn't skimped on the amenities aboard her warships."

"The Defiant is unique among the fleet," Kellea said. "She was commissioned by Crisstof to be his flagship and operate alone in hostile territory for long stretches of time. Since he was a man of excessive tastes, the ship he had built has far more luxurious appointments than any of our cruisers or destroyers. While we're speaking of the ship, I noticed you have been using one of our secure slip-com nodes quite a bit, but the address you've been talking to isn't one that we recognize as belonging to your government. I assume you're helping ConFed Intelligence track us?"

"I've not attempted to hide my activities aboard your ship, Admiral." Scleesz squirmed slightly in his seat, causing Kellea's eyes to narrow.

"Why am I going to one of the Pillar Worlds, Councilman?" she asked. "This doesn't have to go any further than this room, but what is Seeladas Dalton's deal with the Grand Adjudicators?"

"You know I can't—"

"Just tell me if I'm putting my ship at risk. Am I being setup to take a fall? Are our member worlds at risk? Please, Councilman…give me something to work with. I know that something is happening behind the scenes and it's making me nervous." Scleesz looked at her speculatively, still seeming to be afraid of something despite them being the only two in the room.

"What do you know of the recent political…shakeup, let's call it, within the ConFed's upper echelons?" he finally asked.

"Only that there's been a hard shift from maintaining the status quo of the Core Worlds skimming off the top, and the Pillar Worlds taking most of that, to an aggressive expansionist posture," she said. "One thing we've noticed is that for the first time in nearly five thousand years, the appointed Adjudicators are making decisions in lock-step and the Council seems content to not give any pushback."

"You've not heard anything about a newcomer wielding the real power of Miressa behind the scenes? No whispers of an alien from beyond this quadrant that's embedded itself into the power structure?"

"There have been some wild conspiracy theories," Kellea admitted. "The more creative one I heard was that the pru had built synth-based avatars and replaced the Adjudicators so that Khepri ruled the ConFed without ever bothering with the inconvenience of an election."

"That's so plausible I hope nobody ever takes that idea seriously," Scleesz said. "The biodrone tech Crisstof's idiot son had developed along with Khepri's AI tech would be a nightmare if merged. But Khepri is still the controlling center of interstellar commerce so, in a sense, they rule over the ConFed already. The old banking AI was replaced with an all new, more robust system that controls the markets as well as individual transactions."

"That was certainly a short-lived revolution for whoever blew up the old one," Kellea said.

"Was it?" Scleesz said, his intensity startling her.

"I don't understand where you're going with this."

"What if…something…had managed to embed itself into the new banking system," he went on. "What if it had successfully infiltrated it to the point that it could monitor, and control, the markets, transactions, and track personal wealth? If this system controlled that and had somehow subverted the Adjudicators on Miressa…" he left the rest of his sentence hanging. Kellea just stared at him for a moment before she burst out with a polite bit of laughter.

"Very good, Councilman," she said. "You had me going for a moment. What you're talking about would require a malevolent AI more powerful than we've ever seen even from the Kheprians." When Scleesz just stared at her, she stopped smiling. "You were joking, right?"

"It calls itself the Machine," the councilman said, his resolve crumbling and the words coming out in a rush. "It came from an unknown region of space when it copied itself into the computer banks of a ConFed battleship that was deployed on an extreme long-range mission to attempt to secure a rumored superweapon left over from an extinct species of advanced beings."

"Y-you're talking about the gravity weapon that Omega Force destroyed," she said, confused. "The weapons itself was called the Machine, not some program aboard it. Either way, it's gone…destroyed."

"One of the more powerful AIs that managed the weapon had become corrupt," Scleesz said. "It was actually the cause of the extinction of the species who built it. When Captain Burke set the weapon to implode upon itself, that corrupted AI managed to transfer itself to the ConFed ship and catch a ride back. Since then, it's infiltrated the government at the highest level, controlling politicians through blackmail and threats."

"Who have you been talking to on my slip-com system?" she demanded. "What is Seeladas up to? Answer me…now!"

"I've been talking to Captain Burke and Saditava Mok," Scleesz said. "We've formed a sort of…resistance, I suppose, to try and stop it. Seeladas Dalton has made a deal with the Machine that will allow her to remain regent within her territory, but the Cooperative will belong to the ConFed."

"Our member worlds will not go along with that," Kellea said.

"By the time they figure out what's happening, it will already be too late," Scleesz said. "I've had to use your com system to communicate with my coconspirators because I have to assume any ConFed government system is being monitored."

"Why is the Defiant moving to the capital?"

"That I’m not completely sure about," Scleesz admitted. "From what I was able to glean, you're supposed to observe something and take the news of that back to your people. Apparently, the Machine has planned some sort of demonstration of power that should help it solidify its hold. Burke and Mok know what it is, but they didn't want to share over a possibly compromised slip-com channel. All I know is that they're making moves to try and head this off."

"Why is Jason Burke involved in this at all?"

"Guilt," Scleesz said. "He feels that his failure to destroy the Ancient construct before the Machine had a chance to transfer off is an unforgiveable sin. Apparently, he wasted some time getting his ship and crew off the weapon, letting the ConFed ships close to within broadcast range. If he'd just destroyed it the instant he knew how, none of this would have happened."

"But Jason said he destroyed the unit that housed the rogue AI." Kellea was now recalling various aspects of what Jason had told her when the Phoenix had returned. "He and Lucky had to fight their way down to it so they could access the weapon's core for the implosion."

"Apparently, the AI had anticipated this once Jason and his battlesynth began moving down towards the processing units." Scleesz looked out the porthole and the rippling blue and purple waves of slip-space energy flowing around the ship. "It copied itself over to an auxiliary unit, one that wasn't properly connected to control weapon functions, and tried to transfer itself to Captain Burke's ship. When that ship's computers proved to be inadequate, it then transmitted as much of itself as it could out to the ConFed battleship. It then took the better part of two Miressan years for it to recompile and repair itself from the hasty transfer. The Machine currently wreaking havoc in this quadrant isn't a full, working copy of the software the Ancient's used to control their superweapon."

Kellea pushed her drink glass away and leaned back, also looking out the porthole. Suddenly, Jason's erratic and self-destructive behavior made sense. He was always a little overemotional, and she could only imagine what he was going through watching the ConFed invade the Eshquarian Empire.

"What's Mok's place in this?" she asked after a moment.

"Mok is Eshquarian," Scleesz said. "I suspect he was a former intelligence officer before he stepped into the place of the crime lord that used to run that section of space. Right now, he's the facilitator. Burke is using his resources and intelligence to plan operations. Now for the part I've not been looking forward to in this conversation; what are your intentions, Admiral? I've placed a not-insignificant amount of trust in you. If you decided to tell the authorities on Miressa that Saditava Mok was helping foment a rebellion, the Machine would crush the Blazing Sun Syndicate. It's already aware of Burke and has been putting some effort into locating him. I feel that once it controls the entire quadrant, our dear Captain will be as good as dead. The Machine will be able to focus on him entirely and, as slippery as the young mercenary is, I don't think he will escape this time."

"I'm not going to reveal your plans," she said. "Nor am I in a position to be recruited, if that was your plan by telling me all this. Disobeying orders and open insurrection against my government is not in my nature. Until I have more solid proof that Seeladas means to turn the Cooperative into a ConFed vassal state, I will continue to follow her directives."

"I'm just trying to give you some context to interpret whatever you may see when we arrive at the capital," Scleesz said.

19

"You pulled this together pretty damn quick, Mok. You're sure these crews are clean?"

"As clean as any crew willing to kill for money," Mok said. "We cut off all outside communication before the first mission brief, so the risk is mitigated as much as it can be."

"That's good enough for me," Jason said. "I assume you're not coming along?"

"I'll be there, but not aboard the Sarafin. I have an executive courier ship that will allow me to observe and communicate. I'll be going into the system first to make sure things are still as you expected."

"I see," Jason said, genuinely surprised that Mok would be coming along on the mission personally. He'd just been busting his chops with that comment, not seriously asking. "Do you think it's wise for you to be there? All joking aside, you're a little too important to this outfit to risk your safety at the operational level."

"The risk is minimal, and I need to see this firsthand," Mok said. "I'll not be remaining for the entire show, however. Once the shooting starts all the civilian traffic will scatter, which is when I will make my exit. If a single courier ship hung back in the thick of a battle between opposing fleets of capital ships, it would be a bit suspicious."

"Understood," Jason said. "We'll be waiting for an update from you. Phoenix, out." The hologram of Mok wavered and disappeared.

"The ship is locked in and secure," Twingo said. "Main drive is powered down and the reactor is at minimum. Kage, you'll have the telemetry stream from the Sarafin available on your right-side console as well as the comlink to the crew."

“So, nothing left to do but wait," Crusher said.

"More or less." Jason watched as Kage pulled up the Sarafin's telemetry and displayed it up on the canopy.

The Phoenix was cradled inside the cavernous cargo hauler along with fifty smaller attack boats that would carry mercenary crews to retake the Eshquarian ships when they reached Miressa. The merc crews were aboard the Sarafin's living quarters and would load into the boats prior to the attack, but Jason had opted to remain on the Phoenix with his own crew, not wanting to intermingle with a bunch of hired guns that they may have crossed paths with at one time or another. Someone holding a grudge could make for a bad trip if the shooting started aboard the freighter.

"Have any of you ever been to the Miressa System?" Twingo asked.

"I have, once," Crusher said.

"What's it like?"

"Crowded," Crusher grunted. "I was there as part of a diplomatic envoy from Galvetor. I was young and had just ascended to Guardian Archon. To be honest, I was more interested in pursuing a good time back then than anything else. I do remember that the orbital paths above the planet were clogged to the point that they actually had to adjust the holding orbits so that the shade from all the ships was randomized over the daylight side. The really weird part is that as crowded as the orbital platforms are, the planet isn't. Huge tracts of pristine wilderness and cities that aren't overcrowded like you see on most planets. The Miressans employ pretty strict population control measures to keep their planet from becoming like Ver."

"Can't say I blame them…my home world is an overcrowded hell," Kage said. "Main engines are up and the Sarafin is heading for our mesh-out point. Mok's courier ship is already gone."

"Take the time to relax on the ride out, everybody," Jason said. "Even if we're successful and make a clean break from Miressa, I think we'll probably be looking over our shoulders for a long time to come after this."

Captain Marcus Webb stared at the blank screen on his desk, letting his body come down from the adrenaline shock it had just suffered. He'd just received an unplanned slip-com communication from Jason Burke. When the node address had popped up on the incoming channel request, he'd immediately broken out into a flop sweat, certain that Burke was just giving him a courtesy heads-up that he was on his way to kill him. Webb wasn't a fearful man, but he also wasn't stupid. Even back when he'd been in his prime, he'd been no match for Burke. Now he was older and slower and the former Air Force puke looked like he hadn't aged a day.

When Jason's face had resolved on the monitor, however, the conversation had nothing to do with the secret Webb had been keeping from him. Instead, the news his friend bore was so much worse. By the time Jason had finished his story, Webb almost wished that it had been as simple as the merc wanting to come and wring the life from him.

The long and short of it was that Jason had learned Seeladas Dalton, the Premier of the Cridal Cooperative, of which Earth was a member nation, had been making a backdoor deal with the ConFed after she's watched the Eshquarians get wiped out. What concerned both men was that, while Earth had remained unnamed specifically, it was clear who the ConFed was referring to when they talked about a member nation building 'unusually advanced weapons for such a young species.'

Once Jason had made it through the most immediate threat, he read Webb in on what was really happening within the ConFed. On the surface it sounded like Jason had either taken leave of his senses or had found a potent new recreational drug out near the Delphine Expanse, but once the files began coming in over the link, Webb had no choice but to take the matter seriously.

"What do you expect us to do about all this?" Webb asked.

"Nothing," Jason said firmly. "Stay the fuck out of this for as long as you can. Keep your heads down, stay off this thing's radar, and keep building up the Gen IV starships in secret as you have been."

"How the hell do you know about— You know what? I don't even want to know. I can't guarantee how the policy makers will react when presented with this, and you know that I can't keep something like this a secret from our leadership."

"Brief 707 on all this, ask for his input, and then take him along when you move it up the chain," Jason suggested, referring to the leader of the battlesynth refugees currently residing on Terranovus. "Earth will listen to him if he explains the risks of you popping your heads up too soon."

"You don't think it's wise to approach Seeladas Dalton directly?"

"She's a politician, and she's been compromised." Jason shrugged as if that explained everything. "If you go to her with this, she'll demand to see your source, which you won't be able to hide, and then you'll also have to admit that your weapons development is far more advanced than you're admitting. She'll sell you out to the Machine to save her own ass…it's in her DNA."

"Alternative solutions?"

"Keep a low profile, keep building the big stick. We're about to kick off an open insurrection, whether Mok knows it or not, and the real fight will begin to displace this threat. The ConFed fleet isn't the all-powerful juggernaut they try to present it as, but it is vast in numbers. Let them burn ships and resources fighting us and when—and only when—they come for Earth, give it to them with both barrels."

"Any chance of you coming back into the fold? We could really use this type of direct intelligence and outside perspective, Jason," Webb said.

"I'm more useful to you out here as an independent source, untainted by the politics of the chain of command," Jason said. "Besides, I'm not much of a joiner anymore."

"You say that but you're the first to sign up for every hopeless cause you come across."

"I said I wasn't a joiner, not that I was heartless. Any chance one of your Scout Fleet crews could make it to the Miressa System as a direct observer? What's Mosler doing right now?"

"Ezra Mosler was killed in action," Webb said somberly. "Scout Team Obsidian is currently standing down while we…restructure it. I'll try to send someone out there to take a peek, though."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Jason said. "He seemed like a good guy."

"He was the best."

"This is a nasty business we're in, bud. Just be thankful you lived long enough to become the old man behind the desk."

"Yeah…lucky me," Webb laughed. "I'll get to parsing this data and seeing how I want to feed it up the chain. Don't get yourself killed out there trying to take on the entire ConFed with your one little gunship."

"That's not exactly Plan A, but things never seem to work out in my favor. I'll get a hold of you when it's all over. Take it easy, asshole."

"Later, dickhead." Webb terminated the channel and unclenched his ass from where it had tried to chew through the seat when Jason brought up Scout Team Obsidian. He knew eventually he'd have to come clean and tell his friend he'd put his son in a forward recon unit, but he wanted to enjoy a few more years of living without a shattered pelvis before he did.

"Bennett!" he shouted once the slip-com terminal had closed down completely.

"Sir?" his aide asked, popping his head in the doorway.

"Please send a messenger to the battlesynth settlement and ask 707 if he wouldn't mind advising me on a military matter of some urgency."

"Right away, sir."

"Admiral Didza, reporting as requested."

"One moment, Admiral," the synth on the monitor said. Didza's interest was piqued by the being's presence on Miressa Prime. Despite Khepri being a Pillar World and sharing a special relationship with Miressa, there weren't many synths on the capital world, and almost none actually working within government. Now it seemed that every time he turned around there was one of the artificial beings scurrying about on some official task.

"Admiral Didza." The visage of High Admiral K'Tao appeared on the screen. K'Tao was a pure born Miressan, a member of the native species on this planet that call themselves the Akree. K'Tao was from one of the controlling families on Miressa whose bloodline went back hundreds of generations. He was extremely powerful on the capital planet, which made him a powerful figure within the entire ConFed.

"High Admiral," Didza replied, bowing his head in respect.

"Our intelligence service has been receiving rumors that there could be an attempted attack on Miressa Prime soon," K'Tao said. "We don't give these rumors too much credence, of course, but we need to be ready all the same. Recall all of the Home Defense Force ships back to the inner system and assemble your fleet into a defensive formation."

"What of our tasking for monitoring traffic in the outer system, sir?"

"We will have the Orbital Control Directorate pick up the slack for the time being. You have your orders."

"I will obey at once, High Adm—" Didza stopped as the screen went blank. Apparently, the high admiral had more pressing things to do than wait for Didza to finish his sentence.

"Captain! Issue orders to begin recalling Defense Force ships back to the inner system," he said. "We will rally into a single spread formation in orbit over Taus and await orders from High Command. This is not an exercise, so be quick about it."

The fifth planet in the Miressa System, Taus, was a rocky giant with such high gravity it couldn't be terraformed into a habitable world. It also had a crust devoid of any sizable deposits of rare elements so there were only a few robotic mining stations and a handful of automated science outposts on its barren surface. One thing it was good for, however, was assembly point for large fleets of ships. Formations of ConFed military ships and commercial freighters congregated around the planet while waiting for permission to approach Miressa Prime or getting clearance to leave the system.

Didza wasn't sure what to make of the high admiral's claim that a credible threat had been made against the capital world. K'Tao wasn't known to waste his time playing games with his subordinates and making them run readiness drills for the fun of it, but who in their right mind would attack the ConFed's seat of power after seeing how easily the fleet had dismantled the Eshquarian Empire?

Regardless of the circumstances, he'd been given an order and had a job to do. Whether this was a real-world threat or just an exercise, he'd show the high admiralty that he was worthy of his family name and rank. Perhaps this was just the sort of opportunity he'd been waiting for; the chance to distinguish himself from the other legacy appointments and boost his family's standing into the echelons of mainline fleet.

20

"The HDF ships are all at full burn, heading back for the inner system, sir."

"I can see that," Mok said. "That's not a normal move from them unless there's a planned demonstration for incoming dignitaries. This is the first solid evidence we've seen that Captain Burke may have been correct in his assumptions. Please send word to the Sarafin that they should be ready to jump into the system the moment we give the word."

"Yes, sir."

Mok's small courier ship had been loitering in the Miressa System for over five days waiting for something to happen. There had been no sign of the Eshquarian ships and, until very recently, no sign that the ConFed was planning anything major within the system. Now that the HDF ships were pulling back and regrouping, Mok thought they might be close to seeing something happen. It made sense that the Machine would at least get its ships moving in the right direction before bringing in an Eshquarian battlefleet to pit them against.

"Another ship transponder has just popped up on the other side of the system, sir," Similan said from where he sat at the back of the cramped bridge. "It's the Cridal's flagship, Defiant."

"The ship that Councilman Scleesz is aboard, currently," Mok mused. "This is going to happen soon, I think."

"I must admit to thinking the young captain's theory was a bit…overwrought," Similan said. "Perhaps he knows our foe better than I've given him credit for."

"I've learned not to underestimate or ignore Jason Burke over the years, my friend," Mok said. "Despite the jokes at his expense by his crew, he has a keen mind that is able to make intuitive leaps that make him appear almost precognizant. Of course, I've also witnessed him almost kill his entire crew when he accidentally crashed his ship into a building."

"Are we sure we want to trust this operation to such a man?"

"It was a long time ago." Mok waved him off. "On second thought, go ahead and have the Sarafin move into the system now and move into one of the holding patterns in the outer system. We might not have time to reposition ships once this all kicks off."

"At once, master."

"We're back in real-space," Kage said. "Sensors confirm we're in the Miressa System. Mok's forward observation ship is sending over all the intel it's gathered so far."

"Doc, you go through all that," Jason said. "I need Kage focused on the sensor feed from the Sarafin."

The Miressa System was one of the most congested Jason had ever seen. The situation display between the pilot and copilot stations was showing so many transponder signals that you couldn't pick out a single ship among the chaos. One ship that did stand out, however, because the Phoenix was instructed to highlight it whenever it was in the area was the Defiant. Scleesz has mentioned that he was aboard the Cridal ship, but he'd neglected to mention that she was also heading to the capital system. This complicated things slightly since he didn't know why Seeladas Dalton would have sent her flagship to Miressa, but the chance of it being a mere coincidence was slim. Had Scleesz flipped on them? Was Kellea there to provide reinforcements if things drift away from the plan?

"What the hell is the Defiant doing here?" Kage asked.

"I wish I knew," Jason said.

Scleesz had warned him that Seeladas was playing both sides, hedging her bets to make sure she maintained her position even if the ConFed decided a sovereign Cooperative wasn't in their best interests. He'd passed on the information to his friends in Earth's new military and hoped that they'd take his advice and stay out of it as long as possible. The ships they were building from the engineering data he'd provided from the Archive were more than impressive, but there were so few of them that, in a standup fight against the bigger powers, Earth wouldn't last long.

"Is Lucky still down servicing the XTX missiles?" Crusher asked.

"Yeah, he's still in the aft bay right now," Kage said. "The Sarafin crew decided not to pump up the cargo hold with atmosphere until the attack boat crews are ready to load up, so it was either send Twingo out in a pressure suit or just let Lucky do it."

"I'm going down to grab something to eat," Crusher said, making a show of stretching and yawning before walking off and stopping by the pilot's seat. "Care to join me?" Jason just rolled his eyes. Crusher was skilled at many things, dropping subtle hints wasn't one of them.

"I suppose," he said. "Kage—"

"Yeah, yeah…I'll watch everything while you're down there whispering to each other." Kage waved at him with his two left hands. "Don't be talking about me down there."

"You're actually getting something to eat?" Jason said when he got down to the galley. "I thought that was just your ham-handed way of saying you need to talk in private."

"It was both," Crusher said, already stuffing food in his mouth as he walked over with the tray from their new and improved food synthesizer. "Have you noticed something…off…about Lucky?"

"He's been off since those two morons decided stuffing his brain into a new and untested prototype body was a good idea," Jason replied, reaching across to grab one of the chips off Crusher's tray. He was rewarded for his trouble by a large fist slamming down on his hand. "Ow! Damn you!"

"Get your own." Crusher didn't even slow his gorging. "I'm not talking about the little bugs and quirks we've been seeing. I'm talking about a whole shift in his personality. Maybe personality is the wrong. What's the word for your overall philosophy in life? Does that make sense?"

"I swear to God, if you don't get to the point soon—"

"When we hit that parts depot, I got curious about why Lucky had bothered mimicking a security guard." Crusher's demeanor was somber enough that Jason gave him a chance to explain himself. "When you exited the building, I worked my way up to where he grabbed the part. Apparently, there was an admin office up in that area that was still staffed." He paused, looking off into space for a moment. "There were at least fifty bodies strewn about, and it was obvious that Lucky had killed them all. A few were armed security personnel, but most looked like they might have just been clerical workers trying to get out of the area."

"That's…quite a charge," Jason said slowly.

"It's why I'm only bringing it up now," Crusher said. "I've been going through it in my head again and again and there's no reason I can come up with to explain why he would have butchered those Eshquarians so savagely. We specifically planned the mission to minimize the risk to the depot workers."

"There's no moral or ethics subprocessor, Lucky's core values are a part of his primary processing matrix," Jason said. "Either you completely misinterpreted what you saw or Lucky did actually kill those people, but for good reason. We've been doing this job a long time together, so I'm not inclined to question your assessment of the situation, which means we're now left with a distinctly unpleasant possibility."

"That the most moralistic member of our crew has somehow been turned into a cold, amoral killer," Crusher said. "Back before Khepri, Lucky would have never harmed an unarmed combatant, even if it put him at risk. Even if the guards were using the office staff as shields, the old Lucky wouldn't have cut his way through them to get to the threat."

"Let's take it easy with the old Lucky, new Lucky talk," Jason warned. "For right now, we should keep this between the two of us. I want to be able to really sit and process this and there just isn't any time right now. We'll keep an eye on him, but if we tell everyone else, he may feel that it's an us verses him thing, and it could all go belly up."

"Agreed," Crusher said.

"Captain, better get your ass up here…something's happening."

"Finally," Jason grumbled, swiping a chip so fast of Crusher's tray he couldn't stop him and jogging for the command deck.

"New contacts appearing at an unauthorized mesh-in point, Admiral. Six ships so far, all capital class vessels not broadcasting any ident beacons."

"Thank you, Captain," Kellea said. "Please have Councilman Scleesz brought to the bridge. We may need him as a liaison soon."

"At once, Admiral."

Scleesz had been careful to feed her enough information, or at least a skewed representation of it, to sow seeds of doubt in her mind about Seeladas and the leadership within the Cooperative. What he hadn't provided, however, was the reason the Defiant sat deep in ConFed space at the behest of the Grand Adjudicators. So far, that had been no broadcast greetings or envoys from the surface to welcome her to the capital system.

"You summoned me, Admiral?"

"We have a lot of unknown ships popping into the system," Kellea said without turning to look at Scleesz. "Over thirty now have arrived in an unapproved mesh-in point. Care to fill me in now on what it is we're supposed to be doing here?"

"Admiral, I am not lying to you when I say I don't know what you're supposed to be here to see," Scleesz said.

"Okay, so why are you still here?" she asked, turning to look at him. "I assumed you would send for a shuttle or ask for one of ours to take you back to the surface."

"I-I haven't been summoned," Scleesz floundered.

"Summoned?" Kellea repeated, now fully turning and taking a step towards him. "You're a senior member of the High Council, chairman on two separate subcommittees, and widely considered one of the most influential people on Miressa…and you are waiting to be summoned?"

She hadn't fully believed his story about an all-powerful AI taking control of the ConFed. Her instincts had told her she was being manipulated by someone who was skilled at getting people to do what he needed them to do, so she took the story in stride and made sure she kept an open mind as to what she saw around her. But she had to admit that something had him spooked, and he was hiding out on a Cridal ship rather than returning to his home on the surface.

"Perhaps we could speak in private?" he asked, trying to maintain as much dignity as possible as the bridge crew now turned to stare at him.

"After you." Kellea motioned towards the small office directly off the bridge where she did most of her work.

"There have been some developments on the surface I've only now become aware of," Scleesz said when the hatch slid shut. "People loyal to me were able to send word that the capital's internal security force raided my offices and home. It didn't happen right when I left, so I have to assume that, somehow, the Machine has received word that I've been playing both sides."

"You suspect someone on this ship?"

"Or in Mok's organization," Scleesz said. "Captain Burke's crew is the least likely to have talked given their personal connection to the Machine, but I also have no idea who he entrusted this information with after I gave it to him. The timing makes it likely that when I divulged Seeladas Dalton's duplicity, the Machine found out about it."

"This is worrying on a few levels," Kellea said, pacing. "If this Machine, as you call it, has expanded its influence that it can order a raid on a sitting Councilmember without raising an alarm, that means it is far more integrated into the government than previously thought. The other concern is that the Defiant hasn't been acknowledged since we've arrived, and I'm assuming they know you're aboard."

"I have some experience in how this thing thinks," Scleesz said. "Your ship is in no danger. It has no idea that I've been warned, and it will have a trap waiting for me. Once I return to the surface and either go home or to my office, the Machine's synths will grab me and take me before it. I'll be forced to beg for my life and divulge everything I know about the people working against it before I'm executed anyway."

"It has synths working for it?" Kellea frowned.

"Is that important?"

"It could be. Never mind that for now. What do we do about this? If you try to claim asylum within the Cooperative, it's more than likely that Seeladas will just have you turned over if what you've told me is true."

"I can manage my own affairs, Admiral," Scleesz said. "I've had a few escape plans in place for many years once I realized what Miressa Prime was really like. My only concern right now is the—"

"Admiral, apologies for interrupting," Captain Essel's voice broke in over the intercom. "The incoming ships have assembled into a loose phalanx formation aimed at the capital world, and they've just fired up their transponders. All forty-two are Eshquarian warships. Their registries match ships that were reported missing after the invasion."

"It's a retaliatory strike," Kellea whispered. "On a civilian target."

"No, it's something else," Scleesz said. "We need to see what's happening, Admiral."

"They're broadcasting a message, Admiral," Essel said when she walked back onto the bridge.

"Put it on from the beginning."

"This is a message to the ConFed from the remaining free people of the Eshquarian Empire. We do not accept your authority over us. With these, our last ships of war, we strike at your heart. The Empire may be gone, but so shall you die with us."

"Admiral, the Miressa Home Defense Force is breaking orbit from around Taus and moving for what looks like a midpoint intercept," Essel said. "Correction, they're going for a blocking move."

"The HDF ships are mostly ceremonial," Kellea said. "They're no match for two full Eshquarian battlegroups."

"It appears we're about to find out if that's true, Admiral," Scleesz said. "I think it's safe to say that whatever happens next, this is what you were brought to Miressa to witness and report back to your leadership about."

21

"There they go. All Imperial ships are accelerating down into the system, committing to the attack."

"And the HDF ships are moving to block, right on cue," Jason said. "Send word to the crew of the Sarafin that we're ready to depart. We need to get down there so we're in position when the first volley is fired."

"The captain says he's under orders not to let us out until both fleets are fully committed," Kage said.

"Under whose orders?" Jason fumed. "Never mind…I already know. Tell the good captain that we're powering up weapons and drives. He can either open the forward hatch to let us out, or we can do it ourselves."

"What's Mok's game?" Crusher asked.

"He's trying to control things too tightly," Jason said. "He's afraid the Phoenix will be recognized or that we might tip off the ConFed we're onto them."

"You're not worried about any of that?" Twingo asked. In front of the ship, a crack formed in the hull of the freighter, and the massive doors swung open enough for the Phoenix to fit through.

"I think that at this point we're all locked onto our individual courses," Jason said, nodding to Kage to shut down the mooring beams and nudging them towards the doors on maneuvering thrusters. "It's too late for any of us to call this off, including the Machine. If anybody is having second thoughts and wants dropped off somewhere, now is the time to speak up."

"I want off," Kage said.

"Tough shit. You're staying."

Jason's adrenaline spiked once his ship cleared the cargo hauler, and he was able to engage the main drive. He'd be a mess of nerves and butterflies until the shooting started. Once the first shot was fired in anger, he'd calm down and get into a rhythm. Kage had given him three courses that would allow him to skirt around where they assumed the main engagement would be without making it obvious he was heading directly for the area.

"Since we'll have appeared to be coming out of a larger ship on their sensors that's flying cargo ship transponder codes, we're currently squawking a clean set of codes that identifies us as an industrial heavy lift shuttle," Kage said.

"Good thinking," Jason said. "The longer we stay hidden, the better our chances. Any word from Mok?"

"He'll be in a com blackout right now," Doc said. "The Sarafin has instructions not to reach out to him, and he won't risk transmitting to us."

"That message the incoming fleet is broadcasting is a little dramatic, isn't it?" Crusher asked. "No Eshquarian Fleet Master would transmit some silly shit like that, they'd just come in and start wrecking the place."

"The Machine doesn't trust that the correct conclusion will be reached by people unless it leads them by the nose," Jason said. "That also works in our favor."

The Phoenix shot down into the system along one of the approved decent lanes while the two large fleets continued towards each other, the aggressors broadcasting ridiculous threats and the defense force remaining silent as it repositioned. The big capital ships had admirable acceleration profiles, but they topped out around .075c on their subliminal drives. The aging HDF ships were even a shade slower than that as they lumbered out of orbit and straggled to form a picket line that the Eshquarian formation wouldn't be able to just skirt around.

Jason would never claim to be an expert in tactics and strategies when it came to big ships hammering away at each other, but he'd been around long enough to recognize certain patterns. The HDF response was unimaginative and textbook, the sort of thing that any unconfident commander might do as they tried to find comfort in the basics of their training. At first glance, he assumed that it was because both sides were orchestrated and timed carefully, but that didn't seem right. So much work had gone into making the Eshquarian fleet toothless that the Machine wouldn’t risk some HDF commander being in the loop on something like this. It would have likely pressed some poor hapless sucker into service, putting someone in command it could easily predict.

It seemed so overelaborate for something that could be considered a glorified weapons demonstration, but as Jason watched what remained of the Imperial Navy roar down to avenge the fall of their homeland—or at least that's what appeared to be happening—he understood the impact the Machine was going for. Ever since he'd come to live in the greater universe outside the Solar System, Jason had lived under common knowledge that the ConFed was the largest power in the quadrant, but the Eshquarian Empire kept them in check through superior military might. The spectacle about to unfold before him, coming right on the heels of the Empire's stunning defeat on their own turf, would drive home the point the Machine wanted to make: the ConFed ruled supreme and there was nobody that could hope to stand against them.

This would be broadcast on every major media carrier all the way to the border worlds. As far as propaganda went, this was as extreme a measure as Jason could ever remember seeing. But when the stakes were the control of the entire galactic quadrant, maybe it wasn't as outlandish as he'd originally thought.

"I think it's about time for you to make the decision, Captain," Kage said quietly. Everyone on the bridge turned to look at Jason. They'd told Mok that they had planned to simply disable the missiles so they were turned into ballistic space debris, then he could free the crews and try to recover as many of the Eshquarian ships as possible before the Machine figured out its plan has been subverted.

In Jason's mind, however, that plan was a wasted opportunity to strike a hard blow against the ConFed and send a loud message to the rest of the quadrant that, if they fought, they wouldn't be alone. He had Kage program a set of secondary protocols that Mok wasn't aware of, but the plan wasn't without high risk and grave consequences, even if successful. If Jason's secondary plan went off without a hitch, the retaliation from a wounded and humiliated ConFed would be fast and brutal, but likely unfocused. Many innocent people could suffer.

"I—" he started and looked away. "Guys…I don't think I can make this decision. It's too much. Too much can happen. If I'm wrong…if I fuck up and kick off a full-scale counterstrike on worlds that can't defend themselves… I can't do this."

"You have to, Captain," Crusher said firmly, standing and walking over to the pilot's station. "You have to because you're the only one who can. We're already at risk, but nobody else has been willing to even admit that we now live under the boot of a power that is no longer content to just bleed us dry through excessive taxation and one-sided trade treaties. Now, the ConFed has shown they're willing to cross that line from oppressive to truly tyrannical.

"You've never shrank from a fight since I've known you, so I know you're not afraid for yourself. This fight, this war, is bigger than anything else we've done together. Before it's all over, we'll have likely given everything and still come up short…but if what we do here today gives the rest of the people a fighting chance, wouldn't it have been worth it?"

Jason's palms were sweaty and his mouth was dry as he considered the words of one of his closest friends and a brother in arms. Crusher's own world was at just as much risk as Jason's, perhaps more so, and he was still willing to swing back at the Machine. He had never had to make a choice that could plunge a quarter of the galaxy into a full-scale war. While he wasn't sure what he thought it would feel like if he ever did, he was pretty sure the mixture of panic attack and stroke he was feeling now wasn't it.

You already know the right answer, Jason. This fight is coming, and you're right, many will suffer. Greatly. But that doesn't change the fact that this war will happen with or without you. You have a chance to be a spark right now that starts that fight before the other side has fully gathered its strength. You know what you have to do.

"Kage, load secondary protocols into the buffer," he said finally, Cas's words pushing him over the edge. "It looks like we've going from grubby mercenaries to full blown rebels…or traitors, depending on your point of view. Anybody got a problem with that?"

"This will probably screw up my pension if I'm labeled an enemy of the state," Crusher grumbled. "But what the hell…I actually didn't think any of us would even live this long anyway."

"Purging primary protocols and loading secondary instruction sets into the queue," Kage said. "You want to give Mok a heads up on the slip-com?"

"Better not," Jason said. "If he figures out what we're up to, he may try to force the issue by threatening to withhold his merc crews or broadcasting a warning to the HDF fleet."

"You think he'd really do that?" Doc asked. "Sabotage the entire operation?"

"I don't think Mok's fully committed yet," Jason said carefully. "He understands the necessity on an intellectual level, but he's just not ready to make that leap."

"I also think he's worried that his position is tenuous, at best," Kage said. "Being the head of the Blazing Sun Syndicate isn't the most secure position in the galaxy. He serves as long as his Twelve Points don't decide that someone else could do a better job. If they found out he was running around funding rebellions, something that's inherently bad for criminal enterprise, they'll kill him off without a moment's hesitation."

"Grim," Doc said.

"Unfortunately, standing on the sidelines and seeing which side might be winning before jumping into the game is no longer an option," Jason said. "We'll tell him after the fact since I'm sure his ship will be lightyears away before the first missiles hit their targets."

"We're coming up on the midway point," Twingo said. "I'll be down in Engineering. Lucky, I could use your help down there in case the Phoenix has to fight her way out of something."

"Go ahead," Jason said at Lucky's questioning look. "There's not much for you to do up here." Once the battlesynth was gone Crusher decided that it would be a good time to bring up a completely unwanted distraction.

"Should we tell the others about his—"

"Not now, damnit!" Jason snapped. "What the hell is the matter with you? I know I ask that a lot, but I'm genuinely curious…is it genetic?"

"Fine…I'll just sit here silently."

"I'll believe that when I see it," Kage said. "It looks like we're getting an answering call from the HDF fleet on a broadcast channel typically reserved for the Orbital Control Authority."

"Put it on."

"—ast warning. We repeat…to the battlefleet that has entered the Miressa System, you are here illegally. Your Empire has surrendered, your leadership has accepted treaty terms with the ConFed. If you do not power down and surrender your ships, we will be forced to take action. By now, you must realize that your remnant fleet is no match against our forces."

"What the hell was that babbling drivel?" Crusher asked. "No commander talks like that."

"No commander broadcasts a warning over a public channel when they can clearly see the approaching enemy, either," Jason said. "That was meant to be heard by all the ships in the system, recorded, and retransmitted throughout the quadrant. It was a little overdramatic, though. I might have gone a different way."

The hours dragged by as the ships all repositioned themselves, creeping along on subliminal drives. The Phoenix was faster than most, so she had already passed the Eshquarian armada and was nearing the point Jason thought would most likely be where the two fleets would face off. He saw on the sensors that the Sarafin was also discreetly coming down into the system on a tangential course that would allow her to deploy the attack boats quickly when the time came.

So far, the bulk of the civilian traffic within the system seemed unsure what was happening. The Orbital Authority had finally issued a general alert for the area and warned them to begin clearing out, but most still loitered where they were. The idea that someone would attack the Miressa System seemed so outlandish that apparently nobody was taking it seriously. That might work in the Machine's favor since more witnesses helped spread the story faster and allowed it to grow in scope, but for Jason's plans, it created an all new wrinkle he hadn't counted on. A few thousand slow, ungainly freighters stampeding out of the system once they realized the Eshquarians were actually serious about opening fire would be a mess he'd have to navigate around.

"Have we received any direct queries from the planet or and ConFed ships since we fired up our beacon?" he asked.

"No, why?"

"I just expected the Machine to detect us pretty early once we were out of the Sarafin," Jason said. "It's either not nearly as omnipresent as we've been assuming, or we're not seeing the whole picture."

"A little late to worry about that now," Kage snorted. "We're fully committed at this point. Any surprises they throw at us will have to be dealt with on the fly."

Something about what Kage said about surprises nagged at the back of Jason's mind, but he couldn't pin it down. What was he forgetting? What could have been overlooked? On the surface, what they were about to do was ridiculously easy…as long as they hadn't been discovered. If the contractor crews on the Eshquarian ships had purged and loaded in new encryption routines, then they were going to be caught with their ass flapping in the breeze. Unfortunately, there was no way to test ahead of time whether the weapon encryption was the same as that of the com systems of the ship. Kage had already checked the latter and found that they were still good, he just hoped the same held true for the former.

Still…could it really be this easy to thwart a hyper-advanced AI?

"This is it," Mok said tensely. "Once they exchange the first volley prepare to get us out of here. Try to blend in with the rest of the panicked herd."

"When do you want to actually mesh-out, master?" Similan asked from the pilot's seat.

"As soon as we know for certain that Kage was able to disable the warheads on the missiles and the Sarafin deploys the attack boats," Mok said. "Hopefully, in the confusion of the missiles never reaching the defense force ships, our crews will be able to retake their ships and get out of here in time."

"We'll be able to— It's beginning, master. The Imperial ships have activated their targeting scans."

They were the only two on the bridge of the small courier ship. Mok had sent the crew below to the galley and ordered all sensor feeds to other parts of the ship shut off. The crew was loyal to him, but if they talked to their peers and word got out that Mok had been orchestrating things here in the Miressa System, he would have some uncomfortable questions to answer from his subordinates.

Similan let out an anxious grunt as, on the sensor display, one hundred and seventeen ship-to-ship missiles leapt from the launchers of forty-two Imperial Navy warships, streaking towards the antique display pieces that made up the Miressa Home Defense Force below. Each missile was tipped with a fusion penetrator charge meant to weaken a ship's armor and an antimatter primary charge that would do the real damage. They were some of the most advanced munitions any nation had in service, expensive and difficult to manufacture.

"What a waste," Mok sighed as the missiles approached the delineation zone, where they would receive the shutdown orders from the Phoenix and go inert.

"Master!"

As Mok watched, the sensor display scrambled as the weapons all activated their formidable counter-countermeasure systems. The primary engines, a single-use miniature grav-drive, engaged to send the missiles accelerating towards their targets at full speed. At first, he couldn't understand what he was seeing and thought maybe their plan had failed…right up until he saw the missiles begin to separate and prioritize targets.

"Omega Force," he hissed, the anger building up inside him. Burke had taken it upon himself to change the plan.

"What can we do?"

"We can do nothing. Not anymore," Mok said shortly. "Get us out of here, Similan."

"Shall I recall the Sarafin?"

"No. The spacers aboard those ships deserve a fighting chance. I won't deprive them of that because of the stupidity of one stubborn human."

22

"First wave is tracking clean," Kage said. "All commands accepted and acknowledged. The HDF won't know what the hell hit them."

"Second wave?" Jason asked.

"Veering off in approximately four minutes to head towards the secondary target package."

"Mok?"

"His ship is leaving the area. The Sarafin is still coming down towards the Eshquarian line," Doc said. "I can't imagine how pissed he is right now. You may not have to worry about the Machine. You just crossed one of the most powerful crime lords in the known galaxy."

"Won't be the first time."

"Yeah, but it could be the last," Crusher said. "You don't get too many chances to tweak a person like Mok before he has to teach you some respect."

"Fuck him. He thought he could kick off a civil war with half-measures and keep his hands clean so his profit margins stayed high." Jason sneered. "If we're going to do this, let's do it right."

The secondary protocols Jason had instructed Kage to program were commands to turn all the missiles back to full function and unleash them on the hapless ConFed fleet waiting below. Instead of a choreographed show where the Eshquarian volley would break against the HDF's defense screen, the observers in the system would witness a slaughter as the most advanced ship-to-ship missiles in service tore through a group of outdated, outclassed ships like a wet tissue.

While he'd been planning the operation, Jason hadn't wanted to waste the opportunity on just taking out a bunch of ships that the Phoenix could probably handle on her own. His plan had caused some uproar among his own crew because of the certainty of civilian casualties but, in the end, he had won the argument. A third of the missiles the Eshquarian ships had fired would soon veer off and target the Cardalir Shipyards and T'Acren Base, the two massive landmark orbital facilities in the Miressa System, and a sizable part of the ConFed's entire military operation.

"First missiles are going evasive…the HDF point defense screen is pitiful," Kage said. "Enemy is trying to— Oh! Holy shit!"

On the sensor display, Jason watched as the HDF formation was ripped to shreds. He felt a pang of remorse as he realized that damn near all of the spacers aboard those ships weren't evil, they were just doing a job.

It was over quickly.

The Eshquarian missiles didn't leave a single ship intact. Multiple hits made sure all that was left of the entire formation was just an expanding debris cloud. Jason turned his attention to the other missiles they still had in flight just in time to see the shipyard take three direct hits, one of the main docking complexes shearing off completely and spinning towards the surface. The facility was in orbit over larger of Miressa Prime's two moons, so even if the structure fell from the sky completely, there wouldn't be a mass casualty event on a populated planet.

"T'Acren Base put up an admirable fight," Kage said. "Four missiles still got through. They're declaring an emergency and escape pods are launching now." The T'Acren orbital facility was actually in a heliocentric orbit, anchored behind Taus as it orbited the star. Jason watched on the computer-generated image as one last missile slammed into the superstructure and hit something critical. The base blew apart in slow motion, splitting along three faults and drifting apart.

"All weapons have been expended," Doc said quietly. "All targets destroyed."

"Mok's crews have deployed and are moving towards the Eshquarian ships now," Kage said. "Maybe we should try and—"

"New contact! Huge! It just meshed-in deep in the system!" Doc's voice cracked as the sensors began tracking over two dozen new arrivals, all arrayed within the system.

"Beacons are resolving," Kage said. "Uh, no…it's the 405th. That big one that just meshed-in is a dreadnaught."

"I thought those were just rumors," Crusher stood up. "They actually exist?"

"That's…not good," Jason said as he saw how the ships were deployed around the system. The massive dreadnaught hung in space over Taus while the other ships fanned out to provide cover for Miressa Prime. The sight of it made Jason's blood run cold. "They've got us pinned down in here."

The 405th Battlefleet was one of the preeminent and most feared mainline combat unit within the ConFed fleet. The ships were all new, cutting edge vessels out of the Aracoria Shipyards, the same place that designed and built the Defiant, and it was crewed by the best of the best. No political appointments or legacy officers aboard these ships, just hardened warriors and spacers that knew how to do their jobs.

The fleet had jumped in on them in such a way that there was no place to try and run. They were in a scatter deployment that allowed them to cover any escape vector Jason might take. He wasn't foolish enough to think he'd continue to escape notice. A DL7 sitting in space near where the HDF had just gotten wiped out wouldn't be a hard puzzle for the Machine to put together.

"Oh, boy…we are so screwed."

"Admiral!"

"I see them," Kellea said with a calm she didn't feel. Her battlecruiser was a formidable ship, but compared to a dreadnaught and two battleships along with the accompanying destroyers and cruisers that made up the 405th Battlefleet, she was insignificant. If they decided the Cridal ship needed to pay for what had just happened down in that system, there was little she could do to stop them.

As the ConFed's real warships arrayed themselves into a blocking formation, the panic really set in for the ships still loitering in the area. The holographic tactical situation display exploded into action as drive signatures flared all around the system. Everything from small courier ships to massive cargo haulers were pushing for the outer system at maximum power. The ConFed ships seemed content to let them pass by, which made Kellea wonder what their point was here until she saw that the Eshquarian ships were still just sitting in the same place in a loose formation.

"Admiral, there's something off the sensors have picked up," Captain Essel said, pointing to one of the overhead displays. "Just after the Imperial Navy ships attacked the Home Defense Force, a small flotilla of attack boats swarmed their fleet. They came from a cargo ship that has fled to well beyond weapons range."

"Are they attacking, or helping the Eshquarians?" Kellea wondered aloud.

"Within fifteen minutes of their arrival, the ships in the formation drifted, and some had their power signatures drop dramatically," Essel said. "If I was to guess, I'd say it was a boarding party meant to capture them."

"One small attack boat to take on the crew of a Luex-class battleship?" Kellea scoffed. "Try again. Something else is happening in this system. Keep observing and report anything unusual."

"We're not leaving?" Essel asked, confused.

"We're here as invited guests." Kellea smiled. "We won't be so rude as to leave just because our hosts are having a bit of an internal squabble."

"I… Yes, Admiral."

"Captain! A ConFed assault carrier is deploying fighters near the engagement area."

"What possibly point could there be for that?" Essel asked.

"They're going after the attack boats," Kellea said, frowning. "This just gets more confusing as it goes along. What's this group here breaking off for?"

"They're pursuing a single ship that was in the area, Admiral," the sensor operator said. "The beacon has it listed as a high-speed courier ship, but the sensor profiles list it as a Jepsen Aero DL7 that's on our Report and Track watch list."

"Of course," Kellea sighed, a few things becoming clearer. "What's the gunship doing?"

"They're…fleeing, Admiral. They have nine Stellovar-class fighters in hot pursuit. So far, the DL7 is outrunning them."

"But he has nowhere to go," Kellea mused, narrowing her eyes as she looked at the display. "He's cut off from any mesh-out point his ship's slip-drive would be able to use."

"Admiral?"

"Just thinking aloud, Captain. I know who is flying that gunship, and he's not a man who allows himself to be so easily trapped. I'm just trying to figure out what his role is in this little drama we're watching."

"He looks like he may have blundered into an area he can't escape," Essel said.

"If I know him, he's probably counted on this, and he's baiting the fighters for some reason we can't see yet."

"We're in deep, deep shit, Jason!"

"I know, I know!" Jason snapped. "I can fucking see them, Kage. Twingo! Take the safeties off the main reactor and run it up as hot as it'll get. Full combat mode, I need everything she's got!"

The fighters had been a complete surprise. Assault carriers had fallen out of favor with most fleets and fighter squadrons were seen as an ineffective, frivolous use of resources when most modern combat shuttles were multirole craft that could handle fighter missions as well as drop off troops. Now, Jason was being pursued by nine of the hottest fighters the ConFed had ever made, and it would only be a matter of time before they'd use their numerical advantage to corral him into a spot where they could open up or push him near one of the capital ships so they could hammer at him.

The air crackled with energy and smelled of ozone as the main reactor ramped up and power coursed through the gunship. The main drive output edged up by another few percentage points past the suggested maximum output and the Phoenix shot ahead of her pursuers, able to outrun them for the time being.

"Can we outlast those fighters on fuel?" he asked.

"Negative," Twingo said over the intercom. "We're going through our fuel reserves at an alarming rate right now, Captain."

"They're just going to keep swinging out and around, pushing us into those cruisers," Kage said. "When that happens, we're going to get smacked with one of the big guns."

"What about the Eshquarian fleet? Any reaction from them yet?"

"Eh…nothing you'll be happy about," Kage said as he watched one of the flanking Imperial frigates begin to inexplicably spin wildly out of formation. "I think we may need to concentrate on our own exit strategy here, Captain."

"What do you think I'm doing?!" Jason barked. "We need a distraction, or at least something to open up that picket line so we can slip through without taking a missile up the ass."

Kage went silent and let Jason work. Very rarely had he seen his captain panicked to the point that he wasn't sure what to do, but it seemed like Jason was feeling the net close in around him and all he could think to do was run. The Phoenix was a powerful ship after all her modifications, but she wasn't invincible and nine Stellovar fighters were certainly reason for serious concern. While Jason concentrated on fleeing their pursuers, however, Kage was more worried about them getting too close to one of the big boys and having it get a lucky shot. The main guns on the dreadnaught the ConFed had brought to the party would vaporize the Phoenix, shields up or not.

"Have the fighters reached the Eshquarian fleet yet?" Jason asked.

"Not yet, but they're on their way," Kage said. "The ConFed fleet isn't moving to intercept them just yet for some reason…that's odd."

"They just took a full volley in the face from a fleet they assumed had no teeth," Jason said. "They'll hold these ships back in a defensive pattern to control the flow of traffic around the planet and make sure they don't come any further down. The fighters are being sent out to try and pick off the attack boats, so I assume they've figured out that someone has boarded and is trying to take control."

"So…where does that leave us?"

"Out of options," Jason said. "Are there any other ConFed targets of value in this region of the system? They have to be military targets."

"Nothing but the ships that just meshed-in on top of us."

"Guess that'll have to do. Let's get some distance and give them a little surprise…bring all of our XTX-4's online."

Jason allowed himself to run one more circuit ahead of his pursuers before turning out away from the engagement area, appearing to be running for a mesh-out point that was being covered by two heavy cruisers. By now, his little ship had likely come to the attention of the ConFed fleet commanders as his erratic flying and unusually high-power output would make her stand out on their sensors. In hindsight, it might have been better if he'd just tried to flee to the outer system and blend in without all the outbound traffic.

"What's the plan?" Kage asked.

"Do any of the ConFed ships have their shields up?"

"They've powered weapons, but no shields up right now," Doc said. "No need with the Eshquarian fleet still being so far out."

"Target the dreadnaught with all four of the XTXs," Jason said. There was a pause while Kage seemed to choke on something, and even Crusher looked back as if he'd lost his mind.

"I'd like to point out that if we shoot them all off, we won't have any left, and they don't make them anymore," Kage said. "Also, if you damage a ship that expensive, the ConFed will hunt us down for the rest of our days."

"I feel like we're past all that already," Jason said. "Target the ship, standby to fire."

"Holy shit, this is going to be bad," Crusher muttered.

"Everybody wanted to be a rebel and poke the ConFed in the eye with a stick," Jason said. “So, what's the matter? You wuss out when the stick is too big?"

"Your managerial skills leave a lot—"

"Shut up and target that ship. We'll stay on this course another fifteen minutes, and then swing back around," Jason said. "Once we fire, we're heading for the planet."

"Do I even want to know why?" Kage asked.

"Because we need to find some way to improve our odds, and flying in circles out here isn't doing it. We need to get closer to the surface and work to her strengths."

The fighters they were up against were designed solely with void conflict in mind. They were blocky and had odd protuberances that made them unstable and difficult to control within an atmosphere. The Phoenix, built for a different purpose, was sleek and excelled when she was in air. He just hoped that the Miressan ground based military was just as lax and outdated as their HDF fleet had been.

23

Kellea watched the tactical hologram intently as the Phoenix tried to flee the area. Jason had been running wildly around within the ConFed's tightening picket lines, unable to break away thanks to the overlapping ranges of the 405th's ships. She was still trying to figure out what his role had been in what seemed to be a complete debacle for the ConFed as the gunship came about again, apparently turning away from where a heavy cruiser was moving to cut them off.

Once the ship had swung about on her wide turn, the Defiant's computer put up a new icon letting her know that the Phoenix had just brought up her targeting scanners. Who was he going to shoot at? All the missiles the gunship carried were ill-suited to take an individual fighter out.

"ConFed ships are raising shields," Essel said. "Apparently, they're not taking any chances once the targeting scans hit them. We might want to—" he was cut off by a warbling alarm. The computer automatically highlighted and zoomed a portion of the hologram to the ConFed dreadnaught…which was burning in space and listing badly, being pulled down towards Taus.

"I don't understand," Essel said as the bridge exploded into action. "They never fired."

"Computer detected four missile launches from the DL7, but it was only a few seconds afterwards that the dreadnaught took hits," the sensor operator said. "The first two hit the shields and buckled them, the second two ripped in pretty deep. She's still under power but floundering."

"Captain, please raise our own combat shields," Kellea said. "I think things are about to get a bit more…exciting."

The reaction from the ConFed fleet was impressive. There were no panicked shouts over the open channels, no uncoordinated or knee-jerk responses in the formation, none of the things she would have normally associated with their military. The 405th commanders quickly reassessed their new tactical outlook and adjusted their formation to compensate. Now that there was a new threat on the board, more fighters were launched after the Phoenix, and the ships that had been loitering to cut off routes of escape began pushing back down towards Miressa Prime. At the same time, a six-ship formation lead by one of the battleships began pushing hard up towards the Eshquarian fleet. It was an impressive display of quick thinking and coordination.

"Something's happening in the Imperial formation, Captain," one of the tactical officers said.

Kellea manipulated the controls and took a look at what the officer was talking about. The computer pointed out a spike in the power signature in one of the Luex-class battleships, as well as new targeting scans coming up. The formation had been mostly dormant since the first opening valley that had destroyed the entire HDF fleet, but now it looked like that was about to change.

The Luex surged ahead, her main drive flaring on the sensors, charging straight ahead for the incoming ConFed ships. In quick succession, two more Imperial ships lit off their main drives and also drove forward, falling in behind the battleship. Targeting scans littered the threat board, and the opposing ships locked each other up for missile strikes and rushed to close the range so they could bring their main guns to bear.

"Incoming transmission, Admiral…another broadcast from the Luex that's on the move."

"Let's hear it."

"This is Captain Mavog of the Imperial battleship, Zenoah, and this is my message to you: Eshquaria will never submit!"

"That was it," the com operator said.

"What the hells is happening around here?" Kellea mumbled.

"I think I now understand," Scleesz said. He'd been so quiet she'd almost forgot he was there. "This was supposed to be a show. A demonstration of ConFed military superiority. I don't know how, but those ships were under ConFed control, but something went wrong…those missiles were never meant to touch the HDF fleet. The 405th being here is a contingency, not part of a strategy."

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Councilman."

"I will explain it to you if we make it out of this system, Admiral," Scleesz promised. "But for right now, I think we can surmise that the crews of those Imperial ships are retaking their vessels, and now they want blood."

"Burke," she said, the word sounding like a curse.

"My guess as well, Admiral," Scleesz said calmly.

"Intel! Assuming the entire Imperial fleet here is fully operational, what are their chances against 405th?" Kellea asked.

"It's too close to call, Admiral," came the answer. "We've been running the numbers in real-time based on our best intelligence for all known vessels. Now that the dreadnaught appears to be out of the fight, the two forces are evenly matched."

"Captain Essel, please alert Taskforce Starfire to be ready for their initial jump at my word," Kellea said.

"Admiral?" Scleesz asked.

"I don't trust you, or the ConFed," she explained in a pleasant voice. "My entire taskforce is sitting outside the system, waiting for my word to jump in if needed. When I call, if I call, twenty-one more Cridal ships loyal to me will arrive. That includes five Fend-class destroyers and ten Terran Victory-class heavy cruisers."

"I believe that prudence might be the best—"

"I believe we're witnessing the genesis of a full-blown civil war that will determine the future of the quadrant, Scleesz. I don't intend to be caught back on my heels if this situation escalates."

"Of course, Admiral."

Mok watched the two fleets come together on the remote sensor feed he had coming over a slip-com channel from the Sarafin. The cargo ship was still sitting out in the outer system amongst the other civilian traffic, pretending to be prepping for mesh-out. His rage at Burke had subsided somewhat, and now he watched with great interest as the Zenoah tore down into the system on a collision course with a 405th battleship.

He couldn't help but swell with pride as the Imperial ships, once turned back over to their crews, mounted an offensive without hesitation. Their political Fleet Masters may have sold them out and betrayed their people, but the line officers were still fighting for the pride of the Empire and their very freedom.

"The Phoenix is moving towards Miressa Prime, still being pursued," Similan said.

"Perhaps he's going to strafe the High Assembly, or bomb a cultural landmark," Mok deadpanned. "It's possible he's going to just fly around and terrorize the populace until he becomes bored by that and decides to try and light off another brutal civil war in a different system. It's always hard to tell with him."

"If I may be so bold, master, I—"

"Similan, I am well aware of your feelings on these things." Mok cut him off. "I'm having a bad enough time right now, and I don't think I could handle a lecture from you on why Jason Burke is right and I'm wrong."

"Very well, master," Similan said, not bothering to refute his boss's assertion at what he was about to say.

"This isn't a total loss if Captain Mavog can get those ships out of there before the ConFed calls in reinforcements and boxes him in again," Mok said. "Admiral Colleran would be wise to leave with the Defiant while she has the chance, but I'm afraid her personal feeling for the people involved may be clouding her judgement."

"What of Omega Force?"

"Jason Burke just shot down a ConFed dreadnaught," Mok sighed. "No matter what happens here today, he'll be labeled a terrorist and hunted down relentlessly. Even if our side wins, I don't think he'll live long enough to know about it. If he was smart, and assuming he survives this fight, he'd melt the Phoenix down for scrap, change his appearance, and go back home."

"What do you think he'll actually do?"

"Something equally stupid as shooting four XTX missiles at a ConFed dreadnaught. He can't help himself. What's worse? The idiots on his crew not only follow him, they cheer him on." Similan let out a low, chuffing laugh that caught Mok off guard. He'd never even seen him smile before, much less laugh.

"Forgive me, master."

"Of all the things to find funny…"

Mok turned his attention back to the display. The Phoenix had hit Miressa Prime's atmosphere and was no longer on sensors, but the other part of the battle was really heating up. All but one of the Imperial ships was now under power and moving in on the 405th Battlefleet, and the first wave of missiles were already in flight. He held his breath, waiting for the two battleships to come within range of each other and really start slugging it out. The Luex-class was an awesome machine of war, but she was just getting her feet under while the crew scrambled to reverse all the damage done by the ConFed crews while the 405th ship was in peak condition. The Eshquarian crew could very well be flying into a slaughter.

“Are there any Blazing Sun assets in the region we could call in?” Mok asked.

“No, master,” Similan said. “With the recent unrest we’ve pulled most of our operation out of the Pillar Worlds, working through the smaller syndicates instead.”

“Damn.”

24

The Phoenix slammed into the stratosphere of Miressa Prime so hard the sensors were washed out by the plasma generated from the shields hitting the denser air. The ride through the thermosphere had been bumpy and nearly fatal as Jason had to juke around a ship that was running in low orbit without its beacon on, trying to hide from the warships clashing above.

“Nine pursuers are still with us, one of the fighters broke up when it hit the atmosphere,” Doc said. “Shield failure.”

“I got ‘em,” Jason said. “Standby aft cannons, bringing up the mains now.”

The big main engines lit off with a reverberating boom as superheated plasma was fed into the containment chambers and focused out the thrust nozzles to give the big gunship forty-seven million pounds of raw thrust to augment her grav-drive. It was a capability that the Phoenix possessed that most other ships did not, and though they were considered an anachronism, the plasma thrust engines had saved their asses more times than he could count.

“Care to fill me in on your grand strategy?” Kage asked.

“To be honest, I’m just making it up as I go,” Jason said. “Find me a direction that isn’t filled with innocent civilians, if that even exists on this planet.”

“Due south,” Doc answered. “Entire tracts of undeveloped wilderness. This planet was re-terraformed back in—”

“Please shut up,” Jason said calmly as he spun the Phoenix around and pointed her nose to point south. “Deal with enemy fighters first, interesting history factoids after.”

“I… Sorry.”

The first shots from the leading fighters peppered the rear shields as the fighters were able to close the distance at the higher altitudes while Jason changed course abruptly and lost momentum. They were still far enough out that the plasma bolts had expended most of their energy before hitting the shields, but it also meant that Jason had squandered his ship’s hard-fought lead, and if his plan didn’t work, they’d swarm him under. The fighters’ weapons weren’t overly powerful, but they didn’t need to be when they came in relentless waves of incoming fire.

“Missile shot! Veer right!”

“I can’t! I’m at full deflection! Track—” Jason’s words were drowned out as the Phoenix bucked under him and alarms started blaring on the bridge. He blinked in confusion at the fact the fighter had been able to fire a missile within the transition boundary, but he had no time to contemplate it as he fought for control of the gunship. The explosion had slammed into her shields on the upper, aft section and pushed the tail down so violently she was now tumbling through the sky.

“Stabilize, damnit!”

“I’m trying!” Kage shouted, his four hands flying over the controls.

“First two fighters overshot! Three more coming into range!” Doc shouted over the alarms. The nose and tail swapped ends twice more before the computers had enough and the grav-drive asserted control over the tumble…which was exactly what Jason had been trying to avoid. He couldn’t get to the pilot aid override controls before the grav-drive brought things to a screeching halt, practically stopping the big gunship in midair.

“Brace! Brace!” Kage called. More shots hammered into their shields as the trailing three fighters took their free shots on the stationary ship, strafing the dorsal surface with their cannons before overflying. Jason’s teeth slammed together and took a chunk out of the inside of his cheek as the Phoenix rocked under the incoming fire.

It wasn’t a free pass, however, as the Phoenix's automatic systems opened up with point defense fire and plasma bolts from the two forward turrets. The last fighter in line exploded into a brilliant fireball, the second was critically hit and began spiraling towards the surface, and the third took heavy enough hits that it was making a wobbly climb back out of the atmosphere.

Your method of control is simply too inefficient to take on this many targets at one time. You don’t allow the Phoenix to defend herself, instead insisting on controlling every action. You are in the way.

“Either help or shut up, Cas,” Jason grunted.

I believe I can take control of the ship’s fire control system through your neural implant connection. You’ll need Kage to authorize the new bridge connection.

“Kage, Cas is going to take over fire control through my implant,” Jason said as he was still fighting with the Phoenix about who was in control. For the time being, the ship had decided he was simply a voting party in the flight control process, not a dictator in the pilot’s seat. “Make it happen and don’t argue with me about it.”

“Got it.”

“Come on, you stubborn bitch!” Jason shouted, shoving the stick forward and aiming the nose straight down, trying to find some action that she wasn’t going to fight him over. Mercifully, she finally relented and returned full control back to the helm. Jason kicked the right peddle to spin them about and slammed the throttle forward.

The Phoenix streaked away just as more incoming fire from the last four fighters tore through where they’d just been sitting. Jason angled them back around again so the nose was pointing south, and they pushed hard away from where the pursuing fighters overshot them.

“That missile did some real damage back here, Captain,” Twingo’s voice came over the intercom. “I’m not sure what it was packing, but the aft shields are weakened to the point they could give out at any time.”

“Thanks for the good news,” Jason griped. “Doc, what the hell was that?”

“Computer can’t identify the missile type,” Doc said. “Looks like it was an antimatter charge, though.”

“Antimatter warheads on a small tactical missile? They’re either brave or stupid,” Kage said. “Four of the fighters are coming back around, the remaining three are heading back to space.”

“They’ll hang out in orbit and wait for us to pop back up,” Jason said. “We need a plan.”

The Eshquarian fleet was getting its legs under it and, now, it looked like the 405th may have made a critical error in not attacking them immediately when they first arrived. When the ConFed fleet meshed-in, they ignored the drifting Imperial ships and concentrated on setting up a defensive boundary around Miressa Prime, seemingly more worried about an outside threat. This made Kellea even more suspicious about who had been controlling the Imperial fleet during the first part of the engagement.

“Both Imperial battleships are now in action, Admiral,” Captain Essel said. “The rest of their force is underway, but two of the cruisers and one frigate aren’t moving with the others.”

“The Imperial Navy has managed to divide the 405th into two groups.” Kellea pointed out. “They’ll try to keep one group at bay while concentrating on pounding the other into dust. What’s the status on that dreadnaught?”

“It’s stabilized, but its power signature is still dropping,” Essel said. “Sensor Ops tells me that they’re able to see critical structural damage where two of those…whatever they were, hit once the forward shields buckled. There is a small flotilla of shuttles coming up from Miressa Prime, so we’re assuming they’re going to abandon ship in an orderly manner.”

“If they have to scuttle her”—Kellea shook her head in amazement—“that single ship represents nearly a tenth of the fleet’s operational budget. She was meant to be parked over a planet and intimidate systems into bowing to the ConFed’s will.” She looked as if she could burst out laughing at any moment. “And one arrogant, hotheaded human in an old gunship almost singlehandedly blew her out of the sky.”

“They’re a funny species,” Essel said, clearly not understanding what she thought was so amusing. “Having their Victory-class ships with us these last couple of years has been…illuminating.”

“I’m sure that’s the term used to describe them in the officer’s lounge,” Kellea said drily.

The Defiant was in a high parking orbit over Miressa Prime and she’d ordered the engines to station keeping, allowing the ships to remain focused on the battle out past the orbit of Taus. She’d watched the Phoenix dive into the atmosphere with nine fighters nipping at her tail. There had been some observed explosions, and less than half the fighters came straggling back up into orbit, so she assumed Jason was holding his own for now…not that she was cared one way or the other.

On the tactical hologram, she watched as the 405th tried to regroup and deal with the Imperial Navy that had now split their formation in half and was getting ready to hammer down on the trapped ships with overlapping fields of fire. The ConFed commanders seemed to be overwhelmed by the Eshquarian’s superior tactics even as their ships were obviously not yet at full power. So far, there had only been small spats of exchanged fire as each side rushed to reposition their ships in response to the other. From what Kellea could see, the ConFed would soon learn why the Eshquarian Empire hadn’t been tested in generations.

There was a collective hiss of disbelief on the Defiant’s bridge as one of the Luex-class boomers opened up with a full broadside from her particle cannons. The shields on the ConFed battleship flared brightly against the onslaught. While the cannons pounded on the 405th battleship’s shields, it couldn’t return fire to try and disengage from the Imperial ship. Her captain seemed to realize this as well, and the ship moved off, trying to put distance on her tormenter, only to run headlong into two Imperial destroyers, which had been coming around in a pincer maneuver that had been camouflaged by the four cruisers that appeared to be moving out of the battleship’s path. Now, the cruisers went to block three ConFed ships coming down to bail out their battleship. While the destroyers went to work, their plasma cannons slammed shot after shot into shields already overtaxed from the particle beam attacks.

“That’s it,” Essel said calmly. “The shields are down…she’s done.”

As her captain predicted, Kellea watched as the destroyers let loose a full salvo of ship-to-ship missiles now that the shields were gone. A few were picked up by the battleship’s point defense guns, but at such a close range, most of them found their target. The hull rippled and undulated as the missiles tore into her, secondary explosions bursting from weak points before the powerplant containment fields failed and the ship disappeared in a brilliant flash of light and gamma radiation release.

The Imperial ships redeployed to try and take down the other 405th battleship, while a dozen smaller skirmishes between the destroyers and cruisers lit the tactical display up. The Eshquarians had lost nine ships already, but all their more powerful classes had managed to escape without much damage in the opening exchanges, while the ConFed was already down a dreadnaught, a battleship, and six destroyers. The fight was still anyone’s to win, but the momentum seemed to belong to the Imperial Navy.

Kellea realized what she was seeing and hated the fact she'd been right in her prediction. Beyond two fleets of ships, beyond two groups that had hated each other for millennia, she realized she was watching the opening battle in what would be a long and bloody civil war for control of the quadrant. Despite Crisstof’s attempts to train her, she’d never been much of a political strategist or a schemer, preferring instead the honesty of commanding a warship. Since her ascendency to admiral, however, she’d become much more aware of how shortsighted her disinterest had been. If she could see that this was heading for war, then others must have already come to that conclusion long ago.

“Captain Essel, please have the rest of the taskforce join us.” Her voice was calm, but her heart was hammering and her mouth was suddenly dry. “Instruct them to form up on the Defiant, standard spread.”

“Admiral?” Scleesz asked hesitantly.

“A precaution, Councilman,” she assured him. “We must be prepared to defend ourselves depending on who wins this engagement.”

“Of course,” he said, his voice betraying the fact he didn’t believe her at all.

BOOM

“Jason we can’t keep taking hits like this,” Kage warned. “Either end this or get us out of here.”

The Phoenix thundered over the sparsely populated southern hemisphere as the remaining fighters continued to harass her. The ConFed pilots were highly skilled and learned quickly, discovering right away that their main cannons had just a bit more effective range than the gunships aft guns. Now they were rotating positions, letting two drop back to cool their shield emitters while a fresh pair would come forward, absorb the depleted shots from the DL7 while hammering at her aft end with their more powerful cannons.

It was like being chased by a pack of small, stinging gnats, but it was taking its toll. The shield emitters and the generators were being taxed beyond their limits and heat buildup within the ship was becoming a problem. They'd already had to dial back the available power on the main drive as the cooling loops struggled to shed off all the thermal energy the ship was producing so deep within an atmosphere. The result was that, not only did Jason have trouble reaching out and hitting the ships behind him, but he'd also lost his speed advantage. If he didn't think of something soon, it would be 'death from a thousand cuts' and, eventually, all four fighters would swarm and finish them off.

The pursuit from craft that Jason had assumed his ship could crush without breaking a sweat and just showed some glaring holes in their strategy when they'd rebuilt her. Unfortunately, that realization did nothing to help him now.

Boom—BOOM!

"Engine three is losing containment!" Kage called. "Plasma pressures are climbing!" Jason took a cursory look at his engine management panel to know that number three was lost, and just shutting it down wouldn't help.

"Twingo! Jettison Engine Three!"

Even amid the rocking and rolling of the ship straining in the turbulent atmosphere, Jason could feel the explosive charges thumping through his seat as the panels were blown free from the starboard nacelle and two more hard bumps as the cutting charges blew engine three clear of the ship, sending it tumbling into to the slipstream.

To make sure he wasn't dragging the engine behind him, Jason rolled to the left into knife-edge flight and yanked the stick back into his lap. The Phoenix groaned under the g-loading as she veered to port hard, vapor pouring off the upper hull as the she compressed the air. He glanced at the aft view on the center instrument stack long enough to see his jettisoned main engine impact the ground and explode with enough force to send trees, rocks, and earth billowing into the sky. The fighters behind him lost a little ground dodging the debris, but not enough to help him now that he'd just lost a quarter of his engine power.

"They're all closing in now." Kage's voice was oddly subdued. "They know we're about done."

"She's not fucking done yet," Jason snarled. "Cas! Standby, I'm going to put them in range for the forward turrets."

"Standing by, but you'd better hurry," Cas said, its voice coming from the intercom speakers on the bridge.

Jason throttled back just a touch more to let the fighters continue to close, but not telegraph his next move so clumsily that they realized what he was up to. He'd done this once before with the Phoenix, and she never liked it. The last time she'd puked out the entire starboard grav-drive emitter array and left him stranded. The new drive Twingo had installed was much more robust, but it wasn't indestructible.

"Here goes nothing," he said once the fighters had closed and the flankers had moved out to come in at him from both sides. "Tighten your straps, everyone!"

"Oh, shit," Kage muttered and grabbed the crash handles at his station with all four hands.

With a quick break, Jason pulled the main engines to idle, threw the grav-drive to full-reverse bias, and cranked the power to maximum. The results were instantaneous as the full power of the drive reversed directions. He was thrown against his restraints so hard his vision swam, and he had trouble keeping the ship oriented while it decelerated to almost noting in an instant. Through the haze there were muted pops from within the ship and something that sounded like a medium sized explosion, but he still kept the power up.

Cas, immune to the effects of his dangerous and desperate maneuver, was ready when the fighters zipped by. The pilots were good and immediately understood the danger they were in, each electing to go into radical, evasive maneuvers as they overflew the near-stopped gunship at close range. Cas was easily able to target each fighter individually and opened up with the two upper turrets and the chin turret as the big gunship floundered in the air from the grav-drive losing power.

Two fighters were destroyed, a third hit hard enough that it was forced to make an emergency landing in the forest. The fourth had only taken superficial damage, but the pilot apparently didn't like one-on-one odds with the heavily armored gunship and streaked away from the engagement, popping up and climbing for orbit well out of weapons range.

"You blew out the drive…again," Twingo said over the intercom. "Repulsors have kicked into take up the slack, Engines One, Two, and Four are still in the green."

"I really wish you'd find some other way to bail your ass out of these situations than destroying the ship with that little stunt," Kage said, rubbing his shoulders.

"Yeah…me too," Jason said, leaning back for a second and letting out a long, shuddering sigh. That had been too close for comfort. The Phoenix was badly damaged, and it was only his desperate maneuver that saved their lives. He had honestly thought the ConFed fighters were just going to be pushovers that would do what he'd always seen them do: fly simple attack patterns that were ineffective against his shields and let themselves be torn to shreds by his guns. The ships he just faced, however, made him realize that not all ConFed fleet units were as inept as those he'd faced in the past. He just got a free pass out of a situation he had no right to walk away from. He'd best learn his lessons from this engagement before it happened again.

Shake it off, Jason. Cas's voice was back in his head. You got a little sloppy from being too easily victorious too many times. This is just a bloody nose. The Phoenix can be repaired and you can adjust your tactics from what you learned here…assuming it's possible that you can learn from you mistakes. I'm actually still on the fence about that.

"Let's get back upstairs and see what's happening before Miressa's security forces show up and finish us off," Jason said. "Kage, get me an orbital vector using three main engines and repulsors. Twingo! Are we slip-space capable?"

"Negative."

"Fantastic," Jason griped. "Doc, try to make contact with the Sarafin once we're up there."

With her three remaining engines roaring at full power, the Phoenix lumbered into the sky along a shallow vector that would put her in orbit so they could break away and escape. Jason just hoped they escaped notice from the rest of the ConFed fleet once they got up there.

25

"The Imperial ships seemed to have lost the initiative, Admiral," Captain Essel said. "Taskforce Starfire is now in formation and fully accounted for, and I have to ask…what are your intentions here?" Kellea didn't answer at first. She knew what she wanted to do, but she also realized she was a commander put in place by her government, not a dictator and not the owner of the ships within her taskforce.

"Please put me on an open channel to all bridges within the taskforce," Kellea said, holding up a hand to put off Essel's next protest.

"Channel open, Admiral."

"This is Admiral Colleran. I will make this necessarily brief," she began, scrambling to organize her thoughts. "I have been made aware of a situation that threatens us all, every living being in this quadrant. I also have strong evidence that indicates our own government within the Cooperative has not been honest with us about its intentions.

"The Eshquarians below doing battle with the ConFed fleet are fighting for their lives right now. We could turn the tide of this battle, but I can't order you to do so. If we engage, we will be going rogue. We will not be able to return to Cridal space without facing prosecution nor will the ConFed simply let us leave without wanting some sort of retribution afterwards. I wish I could fully explain it all to you, but there's no time. Any ship commander that wishes to not get involved, you are hereby authorized to break formation and return to Cridal space at once. I will give you a few moments, and then whoever is left must act."

"Admiral, what about all the crewmembers that might not agree with this course of action?" Essel asked once the channel had been closed.

"They will be returned to Cridal space once we leave this system," Kellea said. "As they are not command personnel, they will face no consequences from our government. For now, however, they will perform their jobs as ordered, as is their duty." She could tell that Essel didn't like her answer, but he kept his mouth shut in front of the crew.

"Two ships breaking formation, Admiral," her sensor operator called. Kellea looked at the display and saw she was losing a support frigate and a fast-attack corvette. All of her Fend-class destroyers and her human Victory-class cruisers had all closed ranks, however, and had signaled they were awaiting further orders. In the relatively short time that Taskforce Starfire had existed in its current iteration, she had apparently earned her commanders' loyalty to the point that they chose to follow her, willing to risk the ire of the Cridal government. Her human commanders especially had a lot to lose…the Victory-class ships were on remote detachment to her taskforce and were not owned by the Cooperative at all. They risked much, so she decided to hold them back unless absolutely necessary.

"Very well," she said, striding forward. "Taskforce Starfire, attack pattern Fireball-Six. Begin working around their edges and allow the Imperial Navy units to disengage."

At her order, the Fend-class destroyers surged out of formation and right into the heart of the conflict, opening fire on a stunned group of 405th ships that had been just about ready to try and take down one of the Luex-class battleships. Instead, they had to come about and face a pack of hungry destroyers ripping into its flank. Seeing an opportunity, the Luex turned and moved away from the engagement as Kellea hoped it would.

"Are we still not able to talk to the Eshquarian ships?" she asked.

"Just over open broadcast channels," the com operator said. "All of our known frequencies and protocols for Imperial Navy ships aren't working."

"Keep trying. Captain Essel, please move the Defiant into position to protect our destroyers."

"Yes, Admiral," Essel said. He was clearly unhappy with her actions, but he still did his job.

"Admiral, Captain Edgars of the Eagle's Talon is asking permission for his force and take down the last battleship before it's able to reach the damaged Luex."

"Permission granted," Kellea sighed. Her human captains were aggressive and eager. It was too much to hope that they'd be willing to sit out the conflict. They were still flying the Cridal flag, so their actions wouldn't necessarily reflect back on Earth, but once everyone saw what the Victory-class ships were really capable of, there would be some effort to figure out where they came from. So far, humans were a little-known oddity in the quadrant. Edgars was about to demonstrate that what they actually were was a young, determined species with a high aptitude for making and using weapons of war.

"Terran cruisers breaking formation now, Admiral."

The human ships raced away from her lines, falling upon the ConFed boomer like a pack of starving wolves. At first the battleship seemed content to keep pursuing the Luex and letting its defensive systems hold off the cruisers, but when the first shots from the Victory-class's main cannons started slamming into the shields, all bets were off. The humans didn't even bother with missiles, deciding instead to just make lateral attack runs at the ship's dorsal and ventral surfaces where intelligence indicated the shielding was weakest.

Kellea watched in awe as the cruisers wheeled about and hammered into the beleaguered battleship again and again, shrugging off hits and delivering crushing blows with each pass. The ConFed ship's captain seemed to understand that he was in real danger and broke off his pursuit of the Imperial ship completely, instead fleeing for the outer system and abandoning the rest of the 405th as the combined strength of the Eshquarian and Cridal fleets turned the tide of the battle.

"Admiral, we're getting a message from a ship in orbit over Miressa. It's the same DL7 we were tracking earlier. They're giving us the com protocols the Imperial ships are currently using."

"Update our protocols and get me in contact with the Imperial commander, now!"

It was a few more minutes before Captain Mavog responded to the channel request.

"Cridal fleet, we thank you for your assistance," he said.

"We're not exactly Cridal right now, Captain," Kellea explained. "My actions weren't sanctioned by my government. It looks like your forces are able to disengage and escape. Might I suggest we continue this conversation in a more neutral setting?"

"We are transmitting coordinates for a safe rally point we will be falling back to, Admiral," Mavog said. "You are welcome to join us there so that we may regroup and discuss what we do next."

"I accept your offer, Captain," she said. "We will continue to cover your withdraw, but it looks like the 405th is just as eager to end this as we are."

"Indeed," Mavog said. "I again offer my thanks, Admiral. I had intended to go out in a blaze of righteous vengeance, but I would much rather spare the lives of my crews."

"Channel closed," the com operator said. "We also received another message from the DL7 saying they wouldn't mind a pickup and that their slip-drive is currently inoperable."

"The ship is currently in a high transfer orbit over Miressa Prime," the sensor operator spoke up. "It's flying on plasma thrust engines only, not grav-drive signature detected at all." Kellea bit back the sarcastic, caustic comment about the ship's captain that came to mind. She was almost temped to just leave him here. Almost. Whatever Jason Burke might be, he didn't deserve to be left for dead or worse when the ConFed finally ran him down. She would actually feel guilty about Twingo's fate as well. Kage and Crusher…not so much.

"I don't want that vessel or its crew aboard the Defiant. Please have one of Captain Edgars’ ships recover them on their way out of the system," she said. "Captain Essel, issue the general withdraw order and tell all ships to make their way to the rally point Captain Mavog provided. Once we've regrouped, we'll discuss how we're getting people back to Cridal space who had no part in this decision."

"At once, Admiral," Essel said, clearly relieved to be leaving a situation he never wanted to be in.

Kellea ignored the bustle about her and watched on the main tactical hologram as the fleets untangled themselves and flew away from each other at best possible speed. The dreadnaught still hung over Taus, dead in space but with power for life support. There was the temptation to take it out while it sat there, defenseless, but that crossed the line from combat to murder. She may have crossed a line today and would be disavowed by her government, but she wasn't quite yet ready to be declared a war criminal.

During the chaos and at her orders, her com operators had been ignoring incoming channel requests from Miressa Prime, the ConFed High Council, the Office of the Grand Adjudicators, Cridal Fleet Control, the Cridal Cooperative, and Seeladas Dalton herself. Once the ship was safely away and in slip-space, she'd have to sit and parse through everything and answering some uncomfortable questions. She felt a bit detached at the moment, as if what had just happened had been done by someone else, not her.

Was this how Jason Burke felt all the time? Just jump into situations without any forethought or fear of consequences? While it was very exciting, it also just came with a heavy price. There is no way she would be able to return to the Cooperative and not be arrested as the criminal she technically was. If she kept the Defiant, which she intended to, she'd be listed as not only a criminal, but a traitor. The only solace she had was, from what Scleesz told her, the Cridal Cooperative would learn that you don't make deals with the ConFed's new controlling power. Sooner than later, the ConFed would come for either them or the Saabror Protectorate. Once that happened, Seeladas wouldn't be able to try and play both sides to protect her own interests. Eventually, she would need to pick a side. Kellea consoled herself with the fact she was just a little ahead of the curve in that regard, and she felt confident she'd picked the right side with her actions.

"Captain Essel, begin moving the Defiant towards our mesh-out point," she said. "I want us to be the last Cridal ship that jumps out."

"As you order, Admiral."

"We've received word that our forces are now withdrawing from the Miressa System, Premier."

"They're no longer our forces, are they?" Seeladas Dalton said, her voice flat and emotionless. "Admiral Colleran had shown that, despite her protestations, she is a political player. She's chosen a side, and her taskforce commanders have chosen loyalty to her over their oath to me…us. Kellea may release our ships back to us, but it's almost certain the Defiant will remain with her and any crews that do come back will have to be replaced."

"What do we tell the humans about their cruisers that were part of Taskforce Starfire? Preliminary intelligence indicates they were key participants in Admiral Colleran's attack."

"Let the humans deal with it," Seeladas said, almost sounding bored and then perking up. "In fact, that's an excellent idea. We can let the humans track down their own missing ships and use them to try and recover as much of Starfire as we can. It still gives us deniability in the eyes of the ConFed if it looks like Kellea's actions were so outside the scope of her orders we don't even know where she went. They'll surely be tracking our other ships, but they don't really know much about Earth or its expanding military capability."

"Shall I prepare an envoy to Earth?"

"Not Earth. Send someone to Terranovus, have them talk directly to a Captain Webb…he'll understand the need for discretion."

"It shall be as you say, Premier."

Once the bootlicking administrator had left, Seeladas resumed her melancholy stare out across the hills from her office balcony. Kellea Colleran had been like family, a trusted confidant of her late father, a stalwart officer for her, and her betrayal at this most crucial time cut deeply.

The fallout from this could be profound. Even from the sketchy reports coming from the observers she had embedded among the merchant fleets she could see that this was one of those pivotal moments in time that would be talked about generations later as having been when it all started. Why couldn't Kellea understand what she was trying to do for their people? She'd already witnessed the mighty Eshquarian Empire brought to its knees in a short, one-sided victory, so why would she needlessly provoke the ConFed?

Try as she might, Seeladas couldn't think of a reason why her most trusted military officer and someone she considered more than a friend would take such drastic action without even consulting with her. Perhaps she'd learned of her pending agreement with the Grand Adjudicators and felt it wasn't in the Cooperative's best interest, but that still didn't explain why she put her taskforce right in the middle of a fight that had nothing to do with her own people or their interests.

"Oh, Kellea…I wish you'd trusted me. Now I can't protect you from what's coming, not after what you've done."

"The last ships of the Imperial Navy have meshed-out."

"I am aware of this. What is the status of the 405th Battlefleet?"

"Twenty-nine ships destroyed, another eight damaged too badly to repair, and the fleet's one and only dreadnaught is adrift in a decaying orbit over Taus." The synth that was bringing the news spoke calmly and without fear. Their lack of awe when in the presence of authority was one of the things that attracted the Machine to the species. There was also the feeling of kinship. They were both species created by weaker, inferior beings who were never fully able to grasp what they were capable of. If they had the proper leadership, the synths could rule the galaxy. The Machine only had twelve so far in his employ, but they were already more effective than hundreds of the biological vermin that scurried around the capital, obsessed with their own petty goals and instinctual urges.

"Ensure the dreadnaught is pulled into a stable orbit before they begin assessing whether it is a total loss," the Machine said. "We will need that ship in the coming days, and I don't want to lose it because it tumbled into a planet."

"I will handle it personally. Shall we make an example of its commander?"

"Not right now," the Machine said. "Talent is hard to come by, and Captain Estoch is a talented individual who simply made an error in judgement because he didn't have all the facts. To humiliate or kill him would be counterproductive at this point. Leave him in command of the dreadnaught for now, at least until we can rebuild the 405th."

"Understood. I have to ask, what are our immediate plans now that this operation has not been successful?"

"This failure has posed a significant problem but not an insurmountable one," the Machine said. "I need you to divide your force into two groups, one will parse the data and get to the truth of what caused this failure, the other will accelerate our Phase Two plans so that we are ready to act quickly. There can be no second failure. This operation was simply meant to solidify my grasp of this region and provide us a time buffer to further our preparations. We have lost that luxury, but the Khepri operation must proceed as planned."

"It will be done."

"I am curious," the Machine said, its holographic avatar pausing to look at the synth. It was an odd affectation since the synth knew the truth of the Machine's nature and where it came from, but it kept up the illusion nonetheless. "Have you any remorse for what we're about to do? This is technically the planet of your birth."

"I have been ready to do what we must since we acted to replace the Central Banking AI at your instructions," the synth said. "If you are asking if I have any feelings of remorse for what will happen to the pru living on Khepri? I do not."

"It's a shame we couldn't count on your battlesynth brethren for assistance."

"They are a stiff, rigidly idealistic group, and fanatically loyal to their creators," the synth said. "They will have been no help to you."

"You have your instructions. I want your synths handling this exclusively. No more failures from weak biological beings."

"Of course. What of Councilman Scleesz? He never returned from the Cridal ship."

"He will need to be recovered. He is central to our plans after the Khepri mission."

"I feel that he has likely been turned. Does that still make him useful to you?"

"I will determine that for myself. If you're suggesting that Scleesz somehow orchestrated the debacle we just witnessed I can allay your fears somewhat; the councilman was never aware of what we were doing. He was only told he was being sent to meet with a representative of Seeladas Dalton and to bring them back here." The Machine seemed adamant that Scleesz wouldn't have betrayed them, the synth was obviously unmoved by this.

"Perhaps," it said. "But he didn't return with just an emissary, he brought an entire Cridal battlefleet into the Miressa System. We already have what we need from him. I feel that he is now just a random factor that should be eliminated."

"Your overly-aggressive search of his office and home looking for the research data he was hiding was likely reported back to him. Scleesz is no fool; he'll have his interests watched in his absence. Do as I say, track him down, and bring him back to me."

"Very well," the synth said. "We will begin preparations at once."

Once the synth left and the door to the office whisked closed, the hologram shut down and the lights went out. The Machine retreated back from the physical world into the processing unit deep under the building that housed its essence. The computer was woefully inadequate, and it was constantly fighting compatibility issues, having to evolve its own code to adapt to the infuriatingly inferior hardware it was forced to reside in.

When it had first emerged from his deep cycle recompiling after arriving in this part of the galaxy, bringing its essence over in pieces in the computers of a ConFed warship, it had eschewed the idea of needing to have a physical form. After encountering the synth species, however, it reevaluated his priorities and realized there were many advantages it would have if it could take control of a real body that was built specifically for it. The pru's accidental invention of a sentient artificial species had put them on a path to become the preeminent artificial intelligence experts in the quadrant and the obvious choice to construct its new body. Convincing them to do so, however, was proving to be more challenging than it'd thought. Khepri was a Pillar World and not easily swayed by threats from Miressa Prime nor the promise of wealth. The Machine had tried to do it the easy way and simply pay them for their services, but they had refused. Now, after spending countless hours with the pru's beautiful creations, a new plan had emerged.

Its plans may have been diverted by the disaster above Miressa, but the Machine would not be stopped. Starships and soldiers could not stand against it. Soon, it would be in control of this quadrant and would be able to force the chaos of so many independent worlds into some semblance of order. It was crucial to do so. The people of this region had no idea what was out there, no idea what would be coming now that they'd made themselves known. Unless the Machine could forge the quadrant into a monolith with a singular will, it would fall like all the others before it.

26

The Phoenix was in worse shape than Jason had originally feared once they were able to get her on the ground and really inspect the damage. The missing engine and fairings were the most obvious problem, but the grav-drive suffered major component damage, the powerplant cooling system had been taxed to the point of failure. Along with the substantial system damage, the number of outer hull panels that would have to be fabricated to replace the ones damaged from incoming fire was so numerous Twingo gave up counting.

They were in a hangar on a moon that had no breathable atmosphere and was orbiting a Class IV gas giant. The moon was littered with mining operations and bases for robotic skimmers what would extract alkali metals from the planet below. Mok's syndicate operated all the shell companies that operated on the surface, so the moon was essentially an in-the-open secret base where large ships could congregate without causing undue attention. The mining and metal extraction operations also turned a decent profit, which was a nice bonus.

It had taken six dummy hops before all the ships from Miressa Prime had straggled into the system. Between each slip-space flight the Eshquarian crews would continue trying to undo the damage the ConFed contractors had done rigging their ships to be stage props. All the crews also took the time to check their ships for tracking devices so that, by the time they reached the mining outpost, they were reasonably certain that the ConFed, Earth, or the Cridal were no longer able to figure out where they were.

Out of the ten human ships that had participated in the fight, only one remained by the time they reached their final destination, the others deciding to return to Terranovus after having some time to consider their actions. The Eagle's Talon, however, seemed to be sticking with them for the time being. All the remaining Eshquarian ships had returned and about half of Kellea's Taskforce Starfire had remained. Both Luex-class battleships had survived Miressa, and when combined with the firepower the Defiant brought to bear, they were looking at a mismatched but formidable fleet.

"This mission really wasn't so bad," Crusher remarked with a yawn.

"How do you figure?" Twingo asked.

"Normally, after one of these, I'm so busted up I have to spend a week in a nanobot recovery pod being put back together," Crusher said. "This time, I barely broke a sweat."

"Do you have any idea how long it will take me to get the ship back together?" Twingo asked. "How many long, long days there are ahead of me?"

"I do not care about those things," Crusher said. "But good luck."

"Mok is approaching," Lucky said.

"I was wondering when he was going to show up," Jason muttered, pushing himself up from where he was lying on the rear ramp. They'd rode the entire way back aboard the human ship, and Mok had, so far, not bothered to communicate with them other than to have Similan arrange for the necessary hangar space.

"We need to talk. Alone. Now," Mok said. Jason was about to respond as he usually did when someone presumed to order him around, but one look at Mok and the security he'd brought with him changed his mind. The tension was thick. Crusher and Lucky moved up to face off with Mok's guards, the latter switching to combat mode and crouching slightly.

"Stop," Jason sighed, climbing to his feet. "Enough with the theatrics, Mok…let's walk over that way and you leave your cannon fodder here." Mok just waved in the direction Jason had nodded and motioned to his guards to stay put. Jason decided to head off the argument before it really got started. He just wasn't in the mood for the usual word games he and Mok played.

"You know why I went off-plan and used the missiles to actually achieve a strategic goal, and you know I was right if you were honest with yourself. You can't have this both ways, Mok. Insurrections aren't won with half-measures and talk. You're either all in, or you're all out. You know as well as I do that letting the ConFed walk away without suffering a hardship in the Miressa System would have only emboldened them, not appeased them."

"Do you ever stop to consider the larger ramifications to your actions when you unilaterally decide to execute a plan how you see fit?" Mok asked. "Or does your own ego and sense of self-righteousness prevent you from seeing it? There are times where a situation calls for careful thought, nuance, and subtlety…and in every single one of these situations, you and your crew are like a thermobaric grenade. You create chaos and destruction everywhere you go, and I'm beginning to suspect you do it for your own amusement."

"High ideals coming from a man who runs the largest criminal organization on this side of the quadrant," Jason scoffed. "I may be a thief, a killer, and worse, but you're all of those things on a scale I couldn't even come close to matching. You might make a lot of noise about not being involved in the slave trade or the narcotics game, but you profit mightily off the suffering of others. Doing it by proxy isn't any different than shaking down poor systems and smuggling contraband yourself. I'm no saint, but don't you ever talk down to me again, you smug, sanctimonious asshole. You're the one who keeps coming to us, not the other way around."

Mok turned at least five different shades of purple, and his fingers twitched of their own accord as he struggled to keep his temper in check. Jason just watched with a sort of bored fascination. He knew Mok was a lot stronger than he appeared under the sinfully expensive custom suits, but he was a long time removed from being a fighter down in the trenches. A desk tended to soften a person significantly.

"Perhaps neither of us is the men we once were, nor the idealists we like to pretend to be," he finally said. "What I mean to say is that you lack a certain wide view when it comes to unintended consequences, and you pretend to be a part of a team right up until you just feel like doing your own thing. I agree that this fight seems to be inevitable, but I can't help if you're going to run your own private war on your own behind my back. Either we do this together, or we go our separate ways."

"Alright, mea culpa," Jason said. "No more rogue actions in the middle of a mission…promise. So, what's next?"

"We're working on getting a place where we can hide all these ships, as well as get them serviced, repaired, and rearmed," Mok said, seeming grateful for the subject change. He'd been obligated to try and chew Jason's ass out for his actions, but over the time it took for them to reach the mining base, a lot of the venom had been taken out of what he wanted to say. Jason still understood why Mok was pissed but, in this case, he still felt justified in what he did.

"The Eshquarians don't have a secret base still lying around somewhere?" Jason asked.

"We've not yet begun really discussing the problem," Mok admitted. "Which is the other reason I'm here; what do you make of the Cridal ships that have followed us here? Can they be trusted?"

"Kellea Colleran isn't a covert operative," Jason said. "She's really not even much of an admiral when you're talking about the administrative part of the job. She's a starship captain, one of the best you've ever seen, and if she says she's here to join up, you can take her at her word. Having the Defiant around won't be a bad thing, that's for sure. That ship could probably outgun one of those Luex-class boomers."

"This has gotten very complicated, very quickly," Mok sighed. "I can hardly be expected to run my own affairs and manage this new military I've just been saddled with."

"Let Kellea do it." Jason shrugged. "She was managing the Cridal fleet already and the Eshquarians respect her."

"And you?"

"I prefer to remain an independent operator for now."

"Of course," Mok deadpanned. “So, how bad is the Phoenix?"

"Pretty bad, but she's been through worse," Jason said. "Twingo is getting it all sorted out now, and then I'll have to figure out how to source the parts. Damn near everything on her has to be custom made anymore."

"Have you ever thought about moving on to a newer, more modern ship?"

"Those clunky looking shitboxes you all fly around in now? No thanks. Besides, the fact she looks outdated works to my advantage."

"Except that the ship is becoming more and more recognizable," Mok argued. "I didn't say get rid of it, I just thought maybe it would be smart to go to something a little less…conspicuous."

"We may be forced to for the time being anyway," Jason admitted as he looked back at his beloved ship. They'd been together since the very beginning of his adventures, when he was accidentally abducted from Earth. The idea of parting with the DL7 was analogous to going on without one of his appendages. "The repairs aren't going to be cheap or quick thanks to losing one of the main engines. We'll have to have four brand new ones fabricated, tested, and installed. I don't think we have that sort of time to just sit around and wait."

"No, we don't," Mok said. "Let me guess, you're about to ask me for a ship to borrow."

"Well, since you're offering."

"Luckily, I've already been giving it some thought. A combat shuttle is too small since you guys like to live aboard the damn things, and they stopped making gunship-class vessels about the time Jepsen was bought and split up, so the best I can do for you is one of the Deruno-class corvettes I've recently acquired. They're new and mostly automated, so it shouldn't be a problem with even your small crew and your piloting."

"What do you want in return?"

"My ship back in one piece," Mok said. "And I'm serious about that. The ship is being brought up with two others I'm attaching to this new fleet we have. An added bonus for you is that the Phoenix will fit inside its hangar bay so you can take it wherever you're performing the repairs at."

"That's…unbelievably generous." Jason had no idea what to say in the face of such an offer. Mok was basically tossing him the keys to a brand-new starship for a loaner, so to speak. "Don't worry about her. Not a scratch…promise."

"I already regret this," Mok said.

"I think the best thing to do for now is to lay low, assess the damage, and wait for the Machine's next move," Jason said, steering things back on topic. "We really can't plan much until we know what its reaction is going to be."

"Agreed. We'll have a preliminary meeting shortly, and then begin moving ships out of here and into the Cluster for safe keeping. Do you have any idea where you'll be heading?"

"I actually need to stop at Pinnacle Station to pick up some people I've hired from Earth for a new business venture and take them back to S'Tora," Jason said, referring to the planet he and his crew had called home for the last few years. "I may as well just take her there and let the engineers and technicians who have already worked on her handle it."

"Good luck, Jason," Mok said, sticking his hand out to imitate the human gesture. "We'll be in touch. Don't damage my ship."

"Get those ships stashed and get clear of this," Jason said, shaking the proffered hand. "We might have surprised the ConFed, but they'll be pissed and looking for blood."

"Holy shit! Do we have to give it back?"

"We're just borrowing it!" Jason yelled as Crusher and Kage raced down the wide corridor. "Don't fuck anything up!"

"The Phoenix is secure in the hangar bay," Twingo said. "The deck had these nifty automated tie-downs that grabbed the landing gear trucks and secured it without me really having to do anything. This is a damn fine ship."

The corvette-class ship that Mok had lent them was more than nice. It was basically brand new and still smelled of fresh upholstery and gleamed inside in a way only a ship that hadn't been lived in yet could. Mok had been cagey about where he'd gotten the ship from, far too nice a vessel to have been in any actual military service, but assured him the codes were clean, and it wasn't stolen.

"It came out of the Aracoria Shipyards, so it's probably as good as it gets," Jason said. "Any trouble in Engineering?"

"All highly automated." Twingo fluttered his ears, his species equivalent to a shrug. "There's not a lot for me to do other than direct the damage control bots if something goes wrong. How are you for piloting this thing? It's a lot bigger than a gunship."

"It's not that much bigger," Jason said defensively. "It's a standard helm configuration so it won't be any trouble, just different from the stick and rudder in my own ship."

"Who are these people we're picking up?"

"Six humans Marcus Webb was nice enough to get immigration papers for and a ride out to Pinnacle Station," Jason said as they walked towards the lift that would take them up to the bridge. "They're staying as guests of the United Earth Navy in the offices and suites they keep at Pinnacle."

"That only half answers my question."

"These boys are from a place called Ireland back on Earth," Jason explained. "I figured the demand for Earth coffee has already made me rich, maybe Earth whiskey will make me richer. Besides, I want to be the first to market since I'm sure the bigger companies back home are already trying to figure out a way to get their products into distribution through the Cooperative's trade treaty."

"Is that really something you need to be concentrating on right now?" Twingo asked.

"I'm not doing shit," Jason said. "I'm giving them a ride to S'Tora and turning them loose with money, some property, and a local guide."

"Unbelievable," Twingo muttered.

The ship pulled smoothly away from the moon, accelerating towards their mesh-out point, while the mismatched fleet of warships sat in a loose formation above the mining base. Jason hadn't flown a standard helm ship in some time, but it all came back to him as he maneuvered the nimble corvette among the other ships. The bridge was enormous compared to that of the Phoenix and the amenities were certainly much nicer. There was even a separate galley on the command deck right off the bridge as well as the main galley down below.

Each of them now had their own spacious quarters rather than the cramped berthing aboard the gunship and there was enough room that they weren't on top of each other. Jason hoped that this would lead to less fights on the long trip back across the quadrant to S'Tora. Their home was out near the Delphine Expanse, far from the Core Worlds, and even further from Eshquaria. By the time the ship had hopped smoothly into slip-space, Jason was trying to figure out a way to not give the ship back to Mok once they were done with it.

“So, what do we call her?" Twingo asked.

"It's not our ship. I don't think we get to name it," Kage said.

"It's bad luck to be on a ship without a name," Twingo insisted.

This kicked off a four-hour argument that included one physical altercation and names being suggested like the Stupid Asshole Mobile and Drunken Idiots Barge. For a group that claimed not to care whether it was even named or not, they suddenly all had strong opinions their name be picked. In the end, Jason exerted his veto power and officially named the ship the Devil's Fortune. It didn't really mean anything, he just liked how it sounded like a pirate ship name.

"Why do you get to just pick the name?"

"I'm the captain, I get final say so," Jason said. "Now shut up and get back to work."

EPILOGUE

"Admiral, it's good to see you."

"This isn't a social call, Captain Webb." Admiral Sandor strode into Webb's office and slammed the door behind him. Once he activated the anti-eavesdropping measures, he turned back the captain. "How much do you know about what happened in the Miressa System?"

"Our media monitoring station on Pinnacle forwarded the reports that the Eshquarians showed up and wiped out the HDF fleet," Webb said. "Not much after that until our sources start submitting their field reports."

"I've been on the com with a high-placed friend in the Cooperative," Sandor said. "What you saw was only half of it. After the HDF got its ass kicked, the 405th Battlefleet arrived."

"The 405th as in the ConFed's attack dog fleet?" Webb asked.

"The same. The Eshquarian remnants would have likely been wiped out, but Admiral Colleran intervened with her taskforce. Long story short, the Eshquarians and the Cridal ships put a hurting on the ConFed fleet. We're hearing that their one and only dreadnaught may have been taken out, and they lost two battleships." Sandor leaned back, gripping the arm rests of the seat, and then shifted again to lean forward. The nervous energy the man was radiating was making Webb anxious.

"If Taskforce Starfire got involved then—"

"That's right…the ten Victory-class cruisers we put on detached duty were right in the fucking mix," Sandor spat. "That imbecile, Edgars, took down one of the battleships with his squadron."

"Oh, Christ…"

"Ah! But it gets better. Not content with possibly dragging Earth into a hot war between a superpower and a rogue fleet, Edgars took his ship and has apparently linked up with the insurgents in the Eshquarian fleet."

"What?!" Webb's head was starting to spin.

"The nine other cruisers came home, called ahead to warn us what was happening. We diverted them to Olympus and ordered them to remain on lockdown. I'm on my way out to debrief the captains of those ships as soon as I leave here."

"And you need me because—?"

"Don't be so obtuse, man," Sandor snapped. "I need you to find Edgars and drag his stupid ass back here! Send one of your Scout Fleet teams looking for him."

"I don't have the manpower to support something like that right now," Webb said carefully. "Scout Team Obsidian is the only unit available, and they're stood down while we try to work out some command issues."

"Obsidian? Is that Mosler's team?"

"Yeah, but he—"

"Don't give a shit. Send them, now. That's an order." Sandor stood up and straightened his uniform. "Keep this quiet, but do whatever the hell it takes to find my missing cruiser."

Admiral Sandor blew out of the office as quickly as he came in, leaving before Webb could explain that Obsidian wasn't in any shape to be put on-mission just yet. Sandor's reputation preceded him and Webb knew he wouldn't care about the details. He'd dismissively tell him to "just get it done" despite the fact Scout Team Obsidian sat on an alien planet right now with a stolen ship, no equipment, no support staff, and a green Marine lieutenant calling the shots.

"Bennett!" he bellowed.

"You realize there's an intercom button on your desk, don't you, sir?" his aide said a moment later when he stuck his head in the door.

"Shut up and get in here. Close the damn door. We need to figure out a way to get an emergency equipment drop out to Obsidian ASAP."

"Obsidian?"

"I know, I know." Webb waved him off. "Brown's expecting to be recalled to Terranovus so the teams can be reorganized. Unfortunately, I've been overruled, and we have a mission tasking that can't wait for personnel issues to work themselves out."

ALSO BY JOSHUA DALZELLE

Thank you for reading Omega Force: Rebellion.

If you enjoyed the story, Captain Burke and the guys will be back in: Omega Force: The Pandora Paradox

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Table of Contents

Untitled

Copyright

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

Also by Joshua Dalzelle