IT was too weird. Peeing standing up. Who had designed human plumbing this way? Anneke finished at the urinal, zipped up, and moved to the washbasin, pausing to eye herself in the mirror.

The face that stared back wasn’t her own.

It was the face of Sublieutenant - no, Captain - Jinks Heller. Anneke ran a finger along her jaw line, poked her cheek, and prodded her nose. It never ceased to amaze her. She’d had renovations before, some more thorough than others, but this was something different. She felt like a stranger.

She was shorter, broader across the chest, more muscled, and hairier, too. Her breasts were gone. The first time she had gazed at her slab-like flat chest she’d almost cried. She’d never been renovated as a man before, except cosmetically, wrapping her small breasts to make herself appear even flatter. But she’d never before lost her womanhood.

It was disquieting. Profoundly so.

That, and having an extra appendage. She’d had to make a huge effort to avoid communal showers.

Fortunately, as a captain, she now had her own bathroom, a blissful luxury.

Suddenly, the whole room lurched. She grabbed for a stanchion and managed to stop herself cracking her head on the wall of the tiny washroom.

Must have hit some turbulence, she thought. Even n-space wasn’t free of snakeholes; occasionally, entire ships disappeared into the higher dimensional realm, itself one big anomaly.

A scientist called Ernst Kobol had discovered n-space. He’d been investigating time travel, but discovered instead a place where space and time collapsed in predictable ways. He had gone on to develop the jump-gate technology that had revolutionised transportation and travel throughout the galaxy. In its own way, it helped unify the galaxy, heralding an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. The world on which Kobol had made his discoveries was a planetoid called Dyson’s Drop, which circled a rogue F-type star that had been making its way through Orson’s Drift for the last million years.

Anneke noted the time. Uh-oh, time to move. She was expected to give a security briefing in ten minutes. Or rather, CaptainJinks Heller was.

‘Okay, listen up everyone.’ Anneke’s masculine voice momentarily jarred her. But it reminded her that as a relatively inexperienced officer, she needed to exude some nervousness. She reached into a large three-di mensional hologram that floated midair in the centre of the briefing chamber. The room contained about twenty specialists, security troopers and advisers. In other words, her ‘assault’ team. Nathaniel Brown sat at the back, watching everything, and the Envoy stood near the door. From time to time the alien eyed Anneke-as-Heller, but Anneke could not read his expression. She learnt that it had been the Envoy’s idea to put Heller in charge of the security of this expedition, a fact Anneke found both curious and disquieting.

Anneke deliberately stumbled over several statements, but not enough to appear incompetent.

‘Our main task will be to reach the hub here - actually, here, as well as these three key installations.’ She pointed to each one in turn; as she touched the spots the locations in question turned red and pulsed.

‘Our primary mission is not to engage the enemy, so let’s leave the gung-ho theatrics for the experts.’ She grinned sheepishly, wincing inside. ‘No dead heroes on this trip. That’s an order!’

There were a few good-natured laughs around the room.

Just so I know you all understand this back to front, our job is simple. We pave the way for the attack troops. We infiltrate the target’s defences and bring them down.’ She looked around at those gathered before her. Several nodded. ‘Dyson’s Drop is no ordinary planet. It is almost completely artificial. And it is one of the most defended worlds you will ever encounter. Ernst Kobol wanted one thing above all: that his jump-gate technology be used for peaceful purposes only. He knew it would attract those with other ideas. So he made sure its defences were pretty damn impressive.’

A young woman spoke up. ‘But surely, sir, he had to know one day somebody would come along and clobber the place. That’s basic evolutionary tactics. There’s always a bigger fish out there.’

‘He did. So as well as building up the defences of Dyson’s Drop he also made it disappear. For nearly two hundred years nobody had a clue where it was. Then it re-emerged from the unscannable depths of Orson’s Drift about twenty years ago, by which time its defences were the best in the galaxy. But he had gone further. He decentralised the jump-gate technology. In effect, no one group can control the entire network.’

At the back of the room, Black smirked inwardly, and thought: Unless one controls the entire galaxy.

The young woman persisted. ‘But then I don’t understand. Why did Myoto take Dyson’s Drop? And how?’

‘First off, Myoto did not take Dyson’s Drop militarily, but within the code of the Covenant of Militarised Companies and Clans. It was a hostile takeover, sure, but it was primarily a business takeover.

Myoto controls Dyson’s Drop - and the jump-gate technology - because they control the majority of voting shares in Dyson Enterprises and the Board that runs it. As such, they don’t need to have their hands on every jump-gate nexus and control centre. They own the whole thing.’

‘And we’re going in to take it back, right?’ someone from the back called.

‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do.’

‘But then we won’t control it either, will we?’

‘No, but we’ll control a great chunk of it. After that, I guess we’ll have to deal with those who control the other chunks. The system either all works together or it doesn’t work at all. That’s how Kobol designed it. Now, we need to go over the deployment tactics and timing. Everyone get out your e-pads.’

Black watched as Heller led the squad through their mission parameters and made sure each was familiar with the ‘terrain’ they would encounter on Dyson’s Drop and their own task. Black had to admit Heller was a natural. Once again, the Envoy’s instinct in picking the right human for the job amazed Black. And puzzled him. How did an alien get so good at reading human beings?

Heller finished with some sobering advice. ‘If we do this job right, there’s no need for us to suffer casualties. So make sure you know what you’re doing. Anybody unsure, come see me. In the meantime, everybody gets a memory tattoo of the layout inside Dyson’s and of the tactical schematics I’ve shown you. That’s all. Get going. And make sure you get a good night’s sleep.’

Interesting, thought Black. He genuine ;); cares about his people. Maybe that’s what makes him different from Argus, who regarded his underlings as cannon.fodder.

Later, in her captain’s quarters, Anneke ate a solitary meal. She had gone over the mission again and again in her head, weighing all the variables. It was not her responsibility to safeguard the lives of the squad, yet she could not let them walk into danger without doing her best to prepare them, even though they were her enemies.

Nor was she willing to kill anyone on Brown’s behalf It had taken all her effort to stop herself just killing the mole herself, even if it meant sacrificing her own life. But in the end the only certain way to kill him would be to destroy the entire ship, and that - with its attendant death of innocents - she was not willing to do. Brown, she had discovered, never went anywhere without his superhuman bodyguard, the Envoy, as well as an array of sophisticated shielding devices.

She had opportunities to take a shot at the mole, but none certain, none without consequences. So she forced herself to play out the plan formulated back on Lykis Integer.

That, after all, was good tactics.

A knock on her door startled her. She opened it to find the young woman from the briefing standing there, looking nervous.

Anneke frowned. ‘Specialist Yosira, isn’t it?’ Yosira, a small, slim Eurasian woman with an attractive face, ski-jump nose and full lips, smiled.

‘Ever the joker ... sir.’

‘Can I help you with something?’

Yosira tilted her head. ‘It’s rather what I can do for you, sir. May I come in?’

Anneke stood back as Yosira brushed past her. Anneke shut the door, turned, and found the woman standing millimetres from her face. Then Yosira grabbed Anneke and planted her mouth on Anneke’s in a kiss off the Richter scale.

Anneke, for once, was at a complete loss.

She managed to disentangle Yosira only to find the young woman starting to unbutton her tunic.

‘Wait a minute!’ She grabbed Yosira’s hands, holding them tightly. The Eurasian looked at her demurely. ‘This isn’t going to happen, Specialist.’

Yosira pouted. ‘That’s not what you said on Procyon III.’

‘Procyon?’ Damn. Just what she’d hoped would never happen. Running into somebody who knew the real Jinks Heller. She should have invented a whole new personality, with officer status within Quesada, but that would have taken longer and been open to more uncertainty. Well, it had happened. She’d have to read the situation as carefully as she could.

‘That was ... uh ... different circumstances.’

‘Because you weren’t an officer then?’ Yosira accused. ‘Or because you were blind drunk?’

‘To my discredit, both.’ Blind drunk was good. And sudden rank superiority wasn’t bad, either.

‘So you don’t remember me?’

‘Sure. But that was then. This is now.’

Yosira stamped her feet petulandy. ‘We had so much fun!’

‘Yosira, we have a mission tomorrow and I’m now a captain. How would it look?’ Anneke tried to sound as reasonable as possible. And then had a brainstorm. ‘How about we continue where we left off when we get back to base? No prying eyes there. I’ll make it worth your while. Could be a promotion in it for you, too.’ Great. Just like a guy.

Yosira stroked Anneke’s cheek then kissed her again. There was no getting out of it so Anneke did her best. It wasn’t that bad. Yosira was a good kisser. Young Jinks Heller was in for some good times, if they ever ran into each other again. Not likely of course, not where she had him, out of harm’s way.

Anneke shut the door behind the young woman and breathed a huge sigh of relief If that was the worst that happened to her, she would count herself lucky.

She took two grams of n-doze and went to bed.

Anneke rose early, washed and dressed in combat fatigues, body armour, deflector and dampener shields. She checked her weapons, scanners and communications equipment, then went looking for her squad.

She found them assembled in the aft command bay, prepped and ready. She walked in to big grins and good-natured comments about captains who slept in and nearly missed their mission.

Anneke grinned back, taking it all in her stride.

‘Well, since you’re all so energetic this morning, let’s see you do two laps of the bay.’ As a testament to how quickly she had bonded with these young men and women, she didn’t even get one groan, just more cheekiness.

The two laps, which Anneke joined in on, ironed out the kinks and got her blood pumping. She ran through their mission once again and at the end held up her hand for silence. ‘There’s one more thing you have to promise me.’ She gazed at each of them solemnly. ‘Expect the unexpected. This is Dyson’s Drop. It’s been in known space for barely twenty years. There’s more that we don’t know about it than we do.’

‘What you expectin’, Cap’n? Spooks?’

Anneke remembered the Orbital Engineering Platform. ‘That, and worse. Okay everybody, it’s T-minus one hour and counting. Into the shuttles.’ The squad broke into three groups and filed into the waiting shuttles. Anneke got a call on her helmet radio. ‘Captain Heller, are your troops ready to deploy?’ The voice belonged to Colonel Moto, who was overseeing the operation.

‘Yes, sir. We’re loaded for bear.’ Whatever that meant.

‘Proceed when ready, Captain.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Captain, good luck!’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Anneke checked on her squad, tightening a few straps in a paternal (or was it maternal?) way. She wished them all good fortune and long life, then took the helm of the Chasti!J, the lead shuttle.

Some time later, the Chastiry came out of n-space directly above Dyson’s Drop. By then the attack had already begun, though it was a feint, designed to get her people in under the wire.

As soon as they appeared in normal space, Anneke pushed her shuttle into a steep dive, plunging down towards the planet’s artificial surface.

In scant minutes they were within twenty klicks. The shuttle’s sensors portrayed the shifting field harmonics of the defensive grid around the planet on a screen above Anneke’s head. The attack on the far side was designed to draw power from the grid and open ‘eyes’ in the wall.

As the Chastity dropped lower and lower, Anneke kept looking for an eye, but none was visible. In another second or two, she’d have to slow up or crash headlong into the field. The impact would be the same as crashing into ferroconcrete.

Her co-pilot, a man named Kuder, eyed her nervously. ‘We’re goin’ pretty fast, Captain. Could be time to slow a little.’

Anneke ignored him. Her instincts told her otherwise. She knew to the kilowatt how much power the attack on the far side was drawing. The field had to collapse at this point. Behind her, the other two shuttles hurtled in her wake without slowing. In a part of her brain, she was proud of them. They trusted her.

‘We’re gonna crash, Captain!’ Kuder said suddenly, his voice breaking in fear.

Then the eye opened, like a great iris. The Chastity shot through, followed by the other two shuttles; then the eye closed behind them as the fields shifted yet again.

Beside her, Kuder breathed out, managing a grin. ‘You’re a piece of work, Captain, no mistake.’ Anneke knew he would recount this tale to the crew and that her standing with them would rise even higher.

‘Check on the crew,’ she ordered. Kuder pinged each squadie, getting a ping back. Meanwhile, Anneke brought the Chastity in lower, ducking down into a huge canyon between high metallic walls, dotted with windows and viewing balconies. The other two shuttles did not follow. They had separate missions. Only one shuttle needed to be successful.

Calculated redundancy.

Anneke dived further into the canyon. The lower she got the safer they were from crossfire, and the closer to the habitat wall on the other side.

But this did not stop longitudinal fire. Suddenly a spread of green dots, pulse beams from head on, was coming right at them. Anneke’s reflexes responded instantly, throwing the ship into a twist, ejecting chaff at the same moment. ‘Tactical!’ she yelled.

‘Run some interference here, will you?’

‘Yes, sir!’ The woman at the tactical station manipulated the Chastity’s own fields, using them to interfere with surrounding fields, causing confusion for the gunners up ahead (whether AI or human), but also strengthening them at the likely points of contact.

Anneke continued to weave as unpredictably as possible. An AI watching this would sooner or later find patterns in her manoeuvring. Humans were pattern-making animals, even when trying not to be.

‘How far to target?’

‘Three klicks, sir.’

Suddenly, they took a broadside hit. The ship rocked and metal screeched. Anneke heard a furious hissing nearby. She turned to Kuder, but realised with a gasp he was dead, half his face missing. Somebody had taken a shot at them, catching them behind the reinforced fields. Damn.

The shuttle started bucking and tumbling.

‘Vacuum drill everybody!’ shouted Anneke as she activated her suit field. They had, she figured, one chance in twenty of making it down alive.