While not so vast a swarm as the billion railgun spheres, twenty thousand enemy fusion drives still struck fear into SystemLord’s complex molecules. Academically he knew this missile wave might be no more dangerous than the unexpected kinetic attack, but now he began to wonder just what else the Humans had prepared, and it worried him deep in his life code.
Even so, he was thankful that he had an accurate count of their incoming weapons and a rough prediction of their targets. Crossing the system boundary at less than one third of light speed and slowing, the missiles would take only hours to reach vital installations. The Meme commander transmitted instructions to his flotilla to gestate countermeasures specific to this type of attack: myriads of simple interceptor midges.
These tiny seekers were given just enough brain to sense, close with and attack the enemy weapons. They could be sown in their paths and be activated at the right time, like mines. Frigates and cruisers began to spew forth these countermeasures like fish laying eggs. Soon, hundreds of thousands of midges took their places, blind sacrificial defenders of the Empire.
This strategy met with moderate success; more than ninety percent of the Human weapons were destroyed as they approached but that still left over a thousand missiles to home in on targets of opportunity.
Many of these were killed by fusor beams, SystemLord’s ships’ close-range weapons. Nevertheless, seven newly born cruisers and thirteen frigates perished in nuclear fire, a number that would barely be replaced by the time the enemy ships arrived. SystemLord shed futile molecular curses that Monitor absorbed, exciting the great ship further. He sent the beast chasing after additional ice and ore. I need more ships, the Meme commander raged, and no easy food remains.
SystemLord observed as the remainder of the enemy missiles homed in on the Underlings’ orbital and planetary defense installations, obliterating all but three. Through his mobile Sentry network he watched as the hybrids desperately defended themselves, destroying many incoming weapons, but they simply were not equipped to handle hundreds of attackers at high speeds. Physics could not be overcome by the technologies available, and thus the planet he was supposed to protect was stripped almost bare of defenses.
Only the great Weapon on the inner face of the Underling planet’s moon remained untouched, even undiscovered, for its Meme controllers’ orders had not included firing on missiles that targeted others. Thus they had stood silent as the fortresses orbiting the planet below died to the enemy missiles.
SystemLord damned himself yet again for not issuing general directives to engage any threat, but accepted the advantage his mistake had unwittingly preserved: the Humans probably did not know of the vast underground complex and its destructive engine originally intended to crush any Underling rebellion.
The longer the Weapon remained hidden the better, for once the enemy fleet had given up its incredible speed, had slowed to enter and possess the system, it would also give up the vast kinetic energy necessary for such devastating strikes. The Humans would have to close to natural ship ranges and fight their way in, and if SystemLord guided his forces correctly, the Weapon could turn the tide of battle.
***
Admiral Absen eyed the bridge displays with his chin in his hand. Task Force Conquest had crossed into the Gliese 370 system sixteen hours ago and had slowed to a tenth of light speed. He watched the ships decelerate intermittently and randomly according to their captains and helmsmen’s whims, better than any computer program. Combined with lateral maneuvers, he hoped this dodging would allow them to close with the enemy unscathed. At the present rate it would take almost one hundred hours to reach Afrana.
Absen used that time to pace and consider his options. As with a sailing captain of old on his own quarterdeck, the narrow space behind The Chair was sacrosanct, and when he was in it, his officers knew not to disturb him for trivialities.
Splitting his forces in the face of the enemy was always a mistake, according to everyone from Sun Tzu to Schwarzkopf. While the exception occasionally proved the rule, he didn’t think this was the time to do it, not until he really knew more about the defenses around the planet.
That left attacking the Meme fleet directly, or threatening the planet.
Theoretically, attacking the Meme fleet had the advantage of taking care of one problem at a time. The two major parts of the enemy’s strength were the planetary defenses, and the mobile warships. But the only way to hit their fleet was to maintain speed and try to strike on the fly, firing and racing past. Otherwise, the Meme ships could simply run away, as they were so much faster to accelerate and maneuver.
If the EarthFleet task force did so, it would take days to slow down and come back, giving the enemy that much more time to gestate ships and weapons. Absen deemed that unacceptable. He had done his best with the surprise railgun and missile strike, and now he had to be ready for a slugging match.
He could win a slugging match. He’d won many in the past, defending Earth over the last several decades. What he couldn’t do was win a long, drawn-out war of maneuver with the faster, more resilient Meme ships.
So that left choice number three: threaten what they value. It was the same with any fleet, from ancient wet navies to modern space fleets.
Meme might live in space but taking planets from them denied them slaves, bodies to blend with, material resources, and the other things only possible on a life-bearing world. Clearly they were committed to defending Afrana; conversely, the Earthlike world was what humanity needed to colonize and thrive.
We have to put Afrana at risk, Absen thought, to bring them to battle at a manner and time of my choosing. Otherwise, the enemy ships could dance out of reach, conducting long-range attacks and harassing the colonization. And when we do, we have to decisively cleanse the system of enemy. With the Meme’s living ships, give them enough time and the threat will grow back again like weeds.
Absen’s pacing thought was suddenly interrupted.
“Conn: Sensors, bogeys, multiple bogeys,” Commander Scoggins on the primary sensors console called. “Inbound small hypers, count one hundred sixty-six. I detect the same number of stealthed drone launchers. Marking.” Her neatly pinned hair exposed the wires plugged into the link sockets at the base of her skull.
Soft bleeping alarms highlighted flashing red icons on the main 4D holotank. To Absen it seemed as if a swarm of red bees had appeared out of nothing in the path of the task force, too close to avoid. “Counterfire on automatic,” he heard Commander Ford at Weapons report.
The admiral barked, “Comms, sound Battle Stations. All ships prep damage control parties.”
“Should I authorize defensive drones?” Ford asked.
“No,” Absen responded after a long moment. “We’ll need them all later. We’ll just have to gamble on the rest of the defenses taking them out. We can absorb a few of these small hypers.” And a few casualties...it’s the cost of doing business.
Scoggins updated, “Looks like they were laying in wait along our path. Profiles match their standard scout drones used in their attacks on Earth. They should only have one shot each.”
“Good thing they’re too small to have nukes,” Ford growled. “Beam cruisers engaging.”
Forty-eight massive primary lasers, half the beam cruisers’ complement, flashed out and plucked the same number of enemy scout drones from space, ignoring the hypers they had fired. In keeping with Meme doctrine, the sentries had not maneuvered but had let the launch of their own missiles push them aside in hopes of dodging any fire and returning to stealth status while gestating new weapons.
Using primary lasers against such small targets was like using sledgehammers to swat flies, but in this case the sledgehammer could be spread wide, encompassing enough space to catch the little flies before they slipped away. Another forty-eight beams fired while the others recharged, destroying almost thirty more Sentries.
By this time missiles spat from launchers on all EarthFleet ships, one at each remaining enemy scout. These easily closed with and destroyed all but three of the rest, which slipped away into the black.
Neither of these weapon systems bothered with the inbound hypervelocity missiles themselves; accelerating at hundreds of gravities, these simply could not be intercepted at long range. The lightspeed delay itself made it impossible to hit them as they flew their serpentine courses, jinking in all directions to make even lasers miss. As they got closer to their targets, the task force’s multilayered integrated missile defense system came into play.
First the laser drones engaged, scattered by the hundreds in a cloud throughout the fleet. Inevitably some of the hypers crossed paths with these tiny pickets and their lightspeed weapons, and were damaged or destroyed; a few missiles turned to attack the little EarthFleet shiplets, annihilating themselves in the process.
“One hundred twenty-eight still inbound,” Scoggins recited. The bridge crew stared at the approaching red icons – just the first shower of darts that presaged the swarm to come.
Next came short-range charged particle beams, deliberately focused wide to catch the dodging hypers. These weapons generated enormous electrical energies that penetrated the living missiles they hit, scrambling their nervous systems and destroying their brains, causing them to tumble harmlessly off course.
“Forty-six…forty-three…” Scoggins counted down the tally as the impact clocks descended toward zero. At nine seconds out she called, “Thirty-eight got past the CBPs. Everyone’s on their own.”
Finally, electromagnetic shotguns on the surface of targeted ships engaged incoming projectiles at point-blank range, spewing forth millions of tiny tetrahedrons that shredded the enemy missiles. So great were the energies of these broken hypers that they still struck their targets, but instead of impacting in tight, deadly punches, they splattered themselves against EarthFleet armor and did not penetrate.
Even so, a few of the missiles dodged all attempts at interception and bore in to draw their first human blood.
One struck the massive forward armor of the battleship Bukavu, penetrating almost a meter before its energies dissipated, a bare pinprick. Two more impacted Conquest herself with no more effect. Five found forward faces of beam cruisers as they turned their armored glaces outward, achieving nothing. Three flew into the missile boxes of frigates, destroying swaths of weapons but sparing lives.
Despite all efforts, one smashed itself through the thin plating of the assault carrier Giessen and entered one of its four service decks at thousands of meters per second. Kinetic energy equal to many tons of explosives spewed debris across the hangar, cutting down crew chiefs, technicians and Marines alike, and destroying the eight StormCrow fighters resting there. Fires went out almost immediately as automatic systems sealed the flight deck off from the rest of the ship, leaving it and its grisly contents in vacuum.
As the word came in, Absen knew the Giessen’s dead were the first in a long litany of casualties sure to come. He should not have assumed attacks would come only from the enemy warships and the Guardian. It had been a clever ruse to maneuver the stealthy little drones into their path like mines. He had no doubt the Meme commander aboard that enormous ship would have more surprises.
***
Vango Markis ran through his preflight checklist as the numbers on his opticals counted down, and he knew Helen was doing the same in the back seat. The digits seemed to float in front of him but that was only an illusion caused by the direct feed to his optic nerve. When they hit five minutes the shiplink enabled and his consciousness expanded.
It was almost orgasmic, this rush of virtual sensation. He could hear the multilevel chatter of other preflights, could feel the thrum and pulse of his StormCrow Weaver, of idling fusion engines; he could see in all directions around him, he could taste and smell the healthy readiness of the weapons and systems.
Dangerously immersive, every Crow jock longed for this seductive state of being; to be fully integrated into a powerful, deadly machine. Perhaps only the Helmsmen who piloted starships shared this sensation. Even a wizzo in the back seat experienced only half of it. In this place and time his legs were engines, his arms were wings, his hands were drones, his fingers railguns and lasers, and his eyes…once they got into space his eyes would see the universe.
Supposedly it was the same in the simulators, but Vango could tell the difference. Probably Helen could too, but relying on that feeling was stupid, which is why he had slapped her hard, back in training. Since then she seemed to buckle down and give it her best.
For now, all he saw was a short narrow tube lined with rails. Weaver floated millimeters from the electromagnetic conduits, straining to be loosed. Vango felt the tug of the outward spin of the assault carrier; even if Temasek lost all power and grav, the fighter would fall outward and away from the mother ship, ready to fight.
As the numbers reached zero, Weaver accelerated gently, sliding smoothly until suddenly Vango was free and in open space. Around him he saw the rest of the sortie of one hundred StormCrows deployed now to counter any more threats. Out and ready to deal with anything the Meme threw at them, they extended the sensor reach of the fleet – and frankly shifted two hundred people off of each crowded carrier. The other seven ACs would be launching their sorties as well.
“I love this moment,” Vango said over the internal comm. “Free at last.”
“I know what you mean,” Helen responded from her position above and behind him. “What’s our assignment?”
“Weren’t you listening in the briefing?”
“Not really. Too busy being sick.”
“Sick?” Consternation filled his voice.
She laughed. “Yeah, Stymey brewed up some cheap hooch somehow. I was glad to link in and not feel my body.”
“Dammit, Helen, we’re going into combat and you’re hung over?”
She laughed wickedly, and then he got it.
Vango said, “You’re jerking my chain.”
“As hard as I can. You’re such an easy mark, Vincent Markis. I’m as fit as you are, more’s the pity.”
Vango scowled. “You know that’s why I use my handle. To make them all forget I’m the son of Earth’s Chairman.”
“Nobody cares about that shit out here.”
“Even so, that’s –” he broke off. “Update coming in anyway…” He examined the data burst as they drifted, then confirmed their orders. “Here we go. I got the coordinates. Looks like we just patrol quietly until we see something.”
“Right. Running weapons diagnostic sequence.” Vango could feel her pushing electrons around in the ship. “All in the green.”
“Good to hear.” He rotated Weaver, then tapped the fusion engine. Other Crows around did the same, spreading out in all directions to take their places between the big ships. “Let’s see those little SOBs try to sneak in now with eight hundred of us waiting.” His statement reeked of bravado, he knew, because even eight hundred fighters were swallowed in the vastness of interplanetary space.
The ship he wore was more than just a short-range weapons platform. Though small for a spaceship, it was over fifty meters long, a sleek cylinder with four stubby wings that had nothing to do with flying and everything to do with weapons, sensors and maneuvering thrusters. Each of the four sported a laser, a turreted railgun and a rotary missile launcher for short-range use. Tucked behind each lurked a shielded port from which feather drones could be ejected and recovered.
Weaver’s main armament filled its nose: a large microwave emitter, designed to cook the internal biology of their living enemies. Where normal lasers flash-heated the enemy skin with optical frequencies and thus could sometimes be reflected away, the electromagnetic beams of masers required different defenses. EarthFleet’s varying weapon suites were designed to force the Meme to play rock-paper-scissors with their countermeasures.
On the other hand, EarthFleet heavy warships relied on a brute-force approach for their defenses: ferrocrystal armor layered with reflectives, superconductors and ablatives. Each successive skin countered different types of weapons, usually taking several hits before it failed. The enemy hyperkinetic missiles were the most dangerous exception, delivering so much energy that massive hardened thickness was the only real proof.
A StormCrow was far too small to be armored that way, and so relied on speed and agility to survive. Still, Vango knew, they were there to support the fleet, not vice-versa; their role was to skirmish, to hit and run, to pick off weapons and take the easy shots. Let those battleships slug it out with weapon swarms heavier than my entire fighter, he thought. We’re here to sting and sting again.
“Datalink is up,” Helen called.
As the narrowband comms found Weaver, the fighter integrated into the aerospace control network and his senses expanded even further. Vango unsealed his skinsuit for a moment to reach inside and withdraw the tiny drive Rick had given him. No time like the present, he thought, and, I hope you don’t get us killed, ol’ buddy. But he trusted his friend and cyber-warfare expert, and out here he figured they needed all the help they could get.
Slipping it into a data slot, he told it to boot. Like ants under the skin, he felt the program start to scurry though the ship software, as if digging myriad new tunnels.
“Let’s –” he started to say.
“Bogey, danger close –” Helen yelped, and Vango’s attention suddenly narrowed to a pinpoint as he felt something appear nearby, a mere hundred kilometers away and drifting closer. “Where the hell did that come from?” she stuttered. “It wasn’t there before!”
“Don’t talk, engage it!” he said as he launched the Crow’s feathers. These tiny drones had no weapons but were full of active sensors. If something wanted to home in on a radar or lidar, it would hit the squawking drones and not the silent StormCrow.
“Already on it,” she said, and he felt the wing weapons firing at the bogey.
Looking closer, he realized the target was stealth-black and cold, and even the hammering of the feathers’ actives didn’t show very much. How had they even seen it? No way he could have…but he hadn’t seen it. Helen had noticed it first, then he had felt it…
Suddenly the thing blazed with fusion light, turning to leap toward Weaver at hundreds of gravities. Vango’s reactions were even faster, lighting his own fusion drive to dodge sideways and forward, turning toward the enemy in the age-old tactic of the fighter pilot – get inside the opponent’s turn radius and thus his decision curve.
Fortunately this enemy wasn’t as maneuverable as a hyper. As it flashed within a kilometer he could finally see it, lit up brightly in the glare of the defensive lasers. His link told him it was a Meme sentry. Must have been one of the ones that got away. It was lying doggo and as soon as we lit it up, it tried to suicide. It must be out of missiles.
“Ahh!” Vango wasn’t sure if it was him or Helen yelling over the link as he twisted his metal body out of the way of the oncoming drone. He could feel his wizzo pummeling it with laser energy and railgun ammo, one-gram ball bearings. The scout staggered and tumbled, flashing past as its fusion drive died.
Helen fired a chase missile that quickly caught up with it and blew it to scraps.
“Save those,” Vango barked. “Remember, there is no resupply. Next time just let me line up the maser and fry it.”
“Sure,” she sulked. “You get all the fun.”
“Cheer up, you did a fine job for your first real engagement,” he praised. “Nobody can call you ‘cherry’ anymore.” Vango sent a query through the network. “Looks like we got the first fighter kill of this battle.”
“Okay, old man. How many does that make for you?”
“Forty-nine combat sorties, third confirmed kill, not counting hypers. Meme don’t use small craft enough to rack up many.”
“Maybe you’ll be an ace before this is done.” Helen adjusted her weapons suite. “How did we see that thing?”
“What do you mean?” Vango asked casually. He already had a suspicion.
“One minute it wasn’t there, then suddenly it was…like I could smell it. I’m reviewing the record and I can’t pinpoint anything concrete…just that I suddenly knew it was there before Weaver’s systems detected it.”
“Yeah, me too. Must have been something intuitive. That’s why human minds will always be in the fight.”
Helen snorted in disbelief. “That’s a crock. It must have been something concrete, like it passed between us and a bright star and we both noticed it.”
Vango deliberately did not respond, hoping she wouldn’t think any more of it. Happened right after I loaded the software…
They remained quiet for a few minutes, running through their checklists and watching their sectors.
“I still think there’s something funny going on,” Helen muttered.
Because of the link, Vango could hear her no matter how quietly she spoke. Crews who worked together a long time claimed they started to read each others’ thoughts that way. There were a surprising number of marriages that resulted from fighter pairings, and even more longtime friendships. He wondered to himself if he should say anything…then decided that this was the best time to do it, after they’d just dodged a bullet and won a victory.
Vango cleared his throat. “Helen, there’s something I should have told you earlier.”
“What? Come on, spit it out.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, you know Commander Johnstone – Rick – is a CyberComm expert. Actually, he’s more than an expert, he’s a bloody software genius. He hides it so he can stay on the bridge instead of stuck in some geek cell deep inside the ship, but he’s as good as they come.”
“So?”
“So…he gave me some upgraded software to try out.”
“Try out…here, now? In combat? You asshole, you could have gotten us killed!” She sounded furious.
Vango stiffened. “Overreacting a bit, aren’t you?” She’s green, and it scared her, that’s all.
“Don’t change the subject, you turd,” Helen snarled. “It’s fine to risk your own life, but not mine too.”
“That’s Flight Lieutenant Turd to you, Sub-Lieu,” he snapped back, “but it worked. I’m thinking it was the new software that allowed us to see and smell the scout. And when you were fighting, didn’t it feel like everything was easier, faster?”
She choked back a reply to try to think without passion. “Yes, now that you mention it, it did.”
“So, there you go.” Vango hoped that settled it.
“There you go what? This isn’t about whether it was good software, it’s about you and me being a team. It’s my ass out here too. So are we?”
“A team?” He chuckled. “What do you think?”
“Hmph.” Helen kept a sulky silence for as long as she could, then said with a grin in her voice, “I about crapped my pants when that thing showed up, though!” She started laughing uproariously.
After a moment Vango laughed too, sharing her giddiness at surviving their first real combat mission together.
***
The BioMed station called out, “Admiral, I have an odd report. Assault carrier Giessen says they are having problems with a bio-weapon released by the missile that hit them.”
“Counteragents?” Plagues were nothing new. The Meme routinely added them to their missiles and the damage control parties deployed decontamination chemicals, counterphages and nanobots to control them.
“They say nothing’s working, sir. They’ve tried everything, even radioactives, chemical fuels, hydraulic fluid…this stuff just keeps eating plastic and metal. The only thing that’s slowed it down is flame, or vacuum. They’re requesting help.”
Absen swore. “And that damned puppy Captain Bailey is only just telling us about it? It’s been how many hours since the missile hit him?” I’ll have that fool in the brig – if we survive this. “Start shifting Marines and other non-crew to other carriers, and get all of BioMed working on a counteragent, tell them I said this is maximum effort. There are more than two thousand people on that ship.” He deliberately did not think about what would happen if they did not get the infection under control. “And point out to them that if they don’t find something to stop it, Conquest could be next hit. That ought to motivate them.”
At least it wasn’t a nuke. Because of the incredible accelerations of the Meme hypers, they didn’t often use nuclear warheads, unless they wanted to drastically cut their speed and range. The delicate mechanisms of atomics couldn’t take the strain of hundreds of Gs.
Turning back to the screen he examined his fleet formation. The irony of their continuing deceleration and evasives meant that their ETA never got any closer. As they approached Afrana they moved slower and slower, extending their time, much as if a ground car kept braking the nearer it got to its destination.
Absen felt better with the StormCrows out on rotating patrol. The stealthy drones lying in wait had already shown him his error, and he tried never to make the same mistake twice.
He’d also complicated his own situation by shattering hundreds of thousands of asteroids with the railgun barrage; now there were tens if not hundreds of millions of pebbles in the fleet’s way. The lighter ships had lined up at a distance behind as the heavy ones swept forward, clawing debris out of their way with their magnetic scoops, blasting it with lasers, or smashing it aside with their armor.
The StormCrows just had to take their chances.
They’d already lost two to rock strikes, though their pilot-wizzo teams had survived. Price of combat. Absen needed them and their feather drones to see. Right now those were hammering the ether with their radar and lidar, to allow others to collect the reflected electromagnetics.
They’d also fended off another smaller attempt to ambush the task force. Fortunately the little Meme pickets did not seem smart enough or well-directed enough to go after his most vulnerable ships – the assault carriers and missile frigates.
“Sir, I have coordinated fusion flares,” the sensors officer on watch said, throwing the computer simulation up into the main holotank. “Order of battle matching says it’s sixteen cruisers and thirty-five frigates, maneuvering into our path at slow speed. Intercept looks like about…nineteen hours at these velocities.”
“Keep an eye on them, you know how fast that can change. Major Parnell,” he turned to the helmsman in the cockpit, “keep a running plot of Potential Minimum Engagement Time assuming maximum Meme effort. I want to know the soonest they can hit us at all times.” This measure, usually just called “Potential,” determined how soon the enemy could close to engagement range if they suddenly went to full acceleration – which, for Meme, was very high. If the enemy was actually under acceleration, then the time to engagement was termed “Actual.”
“Yes, sir. Running the numbers now.” A moment later she fed her data into the holotank, adding symbols, colors and numbers, suppressing others. “Right now Potential is thirty-four minutes ten seconds – that number there.” A row of digits pulsed.
“Raise our readiness state as Potential falls. When we’re under ten minutes, call for the Primary Watch.” Absen liked to have his best people on the bridge when battle was likely. “How long to the planet?”
“With current deceleration profiles, twenty-two hours to cross the orbit of Afrana.”
“So they might be planning to engage us three hours from the planet, and fight us as we approach. Makes sense. We’ll have to slow down a lot or fly on past. How many orbital platforms do they have left?”
“Just three, sir, that the nukes didn’t get,” Sensors responded. “They look to be mechanicals, sir, like the intel briefing showed us. We’ve never seen anything exactly like them, but we got a rough idea of their firepower from the fight with our missiles. They’re about dreadnought level power, but physically bigger.”
“That’s assuming they don’t have something we haven’t seen yet. And they could have heavier weapons because they don’t need to waste space on engines, high-capacity gravplates, bulky supplies…any number of things only a starship needs.”
If I were the enemy commander, I’d try to induce a running fight to sucker us within range of those huge orbitals, and bring up that Guardian ship. That would be the schwerpunkt, the point of decisive battle, at the planet.
“The Guardian is moving up, sir,” Sensors called. “It’s on an intercept burn to join the others, but later and back a bit.”
“Makes sense. He’ll use his warships to screen and his big ship to anchor his fleet – just like we are.” Absen stroked his chin. “Comms, bring everyone to ready state two. Five minute drill. Weapons, what’s your estimation of a missile and railgun strike on the remaining orbitals?”
The Weapons watch officer brought up a graphic. “It would take a significant amount of expendables to finish them off from this distance. The farther away we are, the easier it is for them to dodge. I’d advise against it, Skipper.”
“All right.” Absen rubbed his chin. “Tell the battleships to start a slow rolling fire of railgun single shots every few minutes, and keep it up. That will force the orbitals to keep adjusting, burning fuel. And maybe we’ll get lucky. In fact, tell them to start laying slow fire on all the enemy ships including the Guardian. Might as well use cheap ammo to keep them from resting.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Weapons touched a control. “Firing will begin in two minutes.”
Absen stood up to stretch, shooting COB Timmons a significant look. “Chief, initiate a no-notice drill for the auxiliary bridge to take over function in…” he looked at his watch, “seven seconds.”
The COB pointed at the helmsman, who nodded and closed his eyes, and seven seconds later the bridge’s consoles all went dark.
“Take a break, everyone. Get up and stretch. Let them run the fleet for a while.” Absen liked to rotate his command officers into The Chair for real. “I’ll be in my quarters. Call me if you need me.”