Doomsday minus 302 Earth days.
Gael Dedrick arrived at Ares Dry Dock to take possession of the Arrow-class hauler Liberty at 1100 hours local time on November 19, 2401.
“She’s ready for you, Commander,” said Ethan Press, handing him a compupad. “Reznick has already signed off on the upgrades and moved the funds. You just need to read that and add your thumbprint, and you’ll be good to go.”
Dedrick scanned the text on the screen. “This is an expropriation notice.”
“Earth High Council is grabbing up every available ship and crew for the evacuation effort.” The other man gave him a helpless shrug. “According to that document, you’ve got two weeks to report to an airfield onplanet and begin shuttling refugees to one of the transfer points.”
“And if it takes me longer than that to assemble my crew?”
“I’m only required to get your thumbprint before letting you take the hauler. What you do after that is your business. But it might interest you to know that Mr. Reznick ordered an extra fuel reservoir installed.”
“Did he now? And is it filled?”
“They both are, to capacity, sir. You can go pretty much anywhere you want in that vessel.”
“Thank you, Mr. Press.” I believe I will, he added silently.
Two weeks later, the Liberty was on approach to the docking ring at Riviera Hub.
“This is the captain of the Arrow-class hauler Liberty, requesting clearance and docking instructions.”
“You’re not on our arrivals schedule, Liberty,” said a young-sounding female voice.
Hearing Christmas music in the background of her transmission, Gael realized that it must be December on Earth.
“I know. I won’t be staying. I’m just here to deliver a gift to a friend.”
“That sounds very mysterious, Captain,” she remarked. “Can you be more specific?”
“A little. Please tell Ranger Captain Ross Posey that Gael Dedrick has come to keep the promise he made earlier.”
“Curiouser and curiouser. All right. He’s off duty right now. You wait out there while I try to raise him.”
Five minutes later, she was back on the air. “You are cleared to dock and board, Captain Dedrick. Captain Posey will meet you at portal nine to receive his holiday present.”
“Well, that’s one way to get a promotion,” Posey commented as Gael stepped through the debarkation bay door and onto the station proper. “Although you do seem to be out of uniform, Captain.”
Dedrick grinned and replied, “I’m an independent ship owner now. I’ll dress any way I damn well please.”
“And go where you please?”
“Not quite. You remember our discussion last year, about where things were headed back on Earth?” Posey nodded. “You wanted to be on the front lines when everything hit the fan, and I promised to get you there. They’re being drawn as we speak, Ross, out in Sector Five. A massive alien invasion of Earth space, at Daisy Hub.”
“When?”
“Twenty-six intervals from now, give or take.”
“So, less than ten months. That explains the Relocation Authority’s sudden decision to increase our staff by thirty percent,” Posey remarked sourly. “They’re evacuating as many Eligibles as possible off-world.” His eyes widened with hopeful speculation. “Wait a minute. Are you here to take me to Daisy Hub?”
“If you still want to go.”
“Damn straight, I want to go! I’ve got plenty of leave time coming, so that won’t be a problem. Just give me a few days to make it official. The higher-ups tend to frown on officers who desert their posts in time of need. Oh, and how do you feel about carrying a couple of paying passengers along with us?”
Dedrick hadn’t even considered this possibility. “I’m licensed for it,” he replied slowly, “and I have to say I like the idea of making a few credits from the voyage. But I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety in what will soon become a war zone.”
“They’re not tourists, Gael. I think they’re well aware of the danger they could be in. In fact, I suspect that’s why they’re so anxious to go there. These two were in the first wave of refugees from Earth, and they’ve been trying to bribe their way to Daisy Hub from the day they arrived here.”
“But if their postings are recorded in the database—”
“We’re overcrowded, and they don’t have permanent working assignments. They’re already as good as disappeared. Trust me, in the current situation, no one is going to miss them.”
Dedrick considered for a moment. “All right,” he finally said, “but I won’t take any credits from them. Not until I know why they’re so desperate to go to Daisy Hub.”
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 284 Earth days.
“Those two are having altogether too much fun,” Ruby muttered.
Townsend leaned over her shoulder and watched her screen for a moment. Gouryas and Singh had been testing the features of the field generator. Today, they were programming images into the molecular paintbrush and projecting them onto the interior of an expanded invisibility field. In rapid succession, he saw a moon, a small ship … and a large rubber duck.
“I thought you liked the color yellow,” Drew teased her. “It’s cheerful.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” she said and blanked the screen, just as a comm light began flashing on her console. “This will be Zulu, wondering what the hell we’re playing at.”
She was half right.
“Townsend, we’ve got a problem,” said Rodrigues’s voice once she’d opened the channel. The Ranger sounded genuinely worried.
“Talk to me, Paul.”
“An Earth ship just entered the system, headed your way. It’s military. Planetary Security. When we challenged it, we were informed that SIS no longer has authority here.”
“What?” Ruby yelped.
“I’ve put in emergency calls to the Sector Five command base and to my contacts on Earth, but it could be days before I get a reply. Meanwhile, a medium-sized transport will be knocking on your door in about eight hours. Listen, we both know that things have been rough on Earth since the news broke about the Corvou invasion. There’s a good chance that martial law will be declared, not only onplanet but all over Earth space. And if it is, given that Daisy Hub is where the first battle will be fought…?”
“…we can expect the military to try to take over the station,” Drew said, completing the thought.
Ruby’s expression hardened. “Only if they can find us,” she declared.
“No,” he told her. “We don’t know anything for sure yet, and in any case, we don’t want to tip our hand. Fortunately, they’re still too far away for a visual sighting. Tell Gouryas and Singh to shut the field generator down. Then call a situation code yellow. Everything has to look perfectly normal as they approach.”
“What can we do to help?” said Rodrigues.
“Nothing yet, Paul.”
A pause, then, “You’re planning a con, aren’t you? Be careful, Townsend. You’ll be dealing with trained military personnel aboard a heavily armed ship.”
“Aren’t you the one who said that I’m dangerous when I’m thinking?”
Another, longer pause. “Just don’t go lobbing any alien grenades at them, okay?”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” he promised.
—— «» ——
Six hours later, everything was in readiness. Since the approaching craft still had not hailed the station, Lydia opened a channel and initiated the contact herself.
“Good afternoon! This is Daisy Hub Control to the ship on approach. Please identify yourself.”
“Daisy Hub Control, this is the Earth Planetary Security vessel Priam, Captain Keith Axelrod commanding.”
“You’re a little far from home, Captain,” she remarked pleasantly. “Is there any particular reason you’re in our neck of the woods?”
Drew could practically hear him puffing himself up. “I’m following an order given by General George Bascomb, Commander in Chief of Planetary Security. That’s all you need to know. We’re going to dock. And you’re going to keep out of our way while we do our job.”
“Excuse me?” she asked sharply. “Are you saying it’s your intention to board the station?”
“That’s what I said, lady. We’re coming aboard. We have our orders.”
Drew took the mic and said in a steel-edged voice, “Listen up, Axelrod. I’m Drew Townsend, the station manager, and I happen to know that martial law has not been declared in Earth space. That means I’m still the one who gives orders around here. You’re not just going to barge into my House. Either state your business or go back the way you came.”
There was a pause.
“Code red?” Lydia stage-whispered.
He raised a hand, signaling to her to wait.
Grudgingly, the other man replied, “We’ve been ordered to prepare Daisy Hub to do its part in the coming battle.”
The news feed O’Malley had set up got updated every few days, so this had to be a recent development. Or, what was more likely, a back room deal. Townsend squared his shoulders and demanded, “By whose authority?”
“Earth’s High Council,” came the smug response. “General Bascomb got his clearance directly from them. Daisy Hub is now officially a military asset.”
Lydia breathed an exasperated syllable. “Just when we thought they’d run out of ways to screw us over,” she muttered, only half to herself.
Meanwhile, Townsend’s brain had upshifted to full alert. “I see. So, tell me, Captain, how do you propose to prepare my station for battle? There are forty-seven civilians living here who would really like to know. Will you be installing weapons? Applying special armored hull plating? What?”
“Wait a minute. Did you say forty-seven?”
“Yes. If you’ll open a visual link, I can have them all stand in front of the screen and wave at you, if you like.”
“Son of a bitch! Forty-seven civilians? That’s not what we were told.”
“Well,” said Drew pleasantly, “it appears you’re on the spot, Captain, with a choice to make. You can either go back and call your general a liar…”
“…or we can remove you all from the station, by force if necessary, and proceed with our mission,” Axelrod concluded.
“That would not be a good idea,” said a third male voice on the channel.
“What? Who the hell is that?” Axelrod demanded.
“I’m Captain Paul Rodrigues, commanding the SIS detachment assigned to protect Daisy Hub. Our scanners have picked up a huge quantity of explosive materiel aboard your ship, Captain, and that makes it a threat to the safety of the civilians on the station. If you check your instruments, you’ll notice that I have three shuttles in the area, with guns locked onto your communications and weapons arrays.
“And if you’re thinking of deploying your shields, we have some EM grenades that we can throw at you to shut them down. Mr. Townsend has asked how you plan to prepare the station for battle. I think he deserves a full and honest answer.”
Silence. Mental gears were grinding at the other end of the commlink, Drew was certain.
At last Axelrod replied, “We’re an explosive ordnance detail, sent out here to mine the station with remote-detonation devices.”
Lydia’s eyes sprang saucer-wide. “Oh, my god…!”
“So, the general’s plan is to turn Daisy Hub into a huge decoy mine while forty-seven Humans are still living aboard it?” Drew summed up grimly. “Does that sound like a legal order to you, Captain?”
“Casualties are an unfortunate part of war, Mr. Townsend,” said Axelrod, practically spitting out the last two words. “And I follow orders. I don’t question them.”
“Yes, that’s quite … a shame. Well, I have my orders too, so we’re not leaving, and you’re not boarding, and if that puts us at an impasse, then we have a problem. However, if you’re willing to consider an alternative way to carry out your mission…?”
Silence.
Townsend continued, “We are just as committed as you are to winning the coming battle, and I can think of several ways for us to make use of the explosives you’ve brought, without destroying the Hub in the process.”
“You’re suggesting that we simply hand the materiel over to you? Dream on, Townsend.”
“Not to them,” Rodrigues put in. “They’re untrained civilians. On the other side of this planet is Observation Platform Zulu and my detachment of SIS specialists. Give the ordnance to us, and we’ll see that it’s properly handled and put to good use against the Corvou.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I’m afraid we’ll be forced to fire on your ship, with the explosives aboard her. Your general wants something to blow up? I’m prepared to make it happen, one way or another.”
A pause, then, “If I go along with this, what am I supposed to tell General Bascomb in my mission report?”
“Come on, Axelrod! You want us to do all the work?” said Rodrigues.
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 283 Earth days.
There had been no communications from Zulu for the past standard day and a half, while the Earth ship remained docked at the Rangers’ platform. How long did it take to offload a few containers of explosives?
“What the hell is going on over there?” Townsend muttered at Ruby’s light screen.
“I’ll bet Rodrigues says the same thing, every time the Nandrians show up to celebrate a tekl’hananni victory,” she commented. After watching him for a moment, she pointed out gently, “It’s not going to answer you, Chief. You may as well go back to your desk. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Reluctantly, he complied.
Half an hour later, she called across the deck, “Ask and ye shall receive, Chief. It looks like Bascomb’s Bombers are finally on their way home. And there’s an incoming message from Zulu.”
“Put it on speaker.”
“Townsend?” Rodrigues’s words came out in a rush. “I’m sending a shuttle to pick up a couple of your genius engineers to help my men disarm all these damned mines. There’s enough materiel here to lay waste to half the system … which would have been the whole point of the exercise, I guess. Anyway, the explosive is stable, but the last thing we need is for some stray electronic signal to set everything off. And by the way, you’re welcome.”
“I … yes. Thank you. And I’ll have your tech support ready to board whenever the shuttle arrives.” Hesitant to broach the subject but feeling that he should, he added, “Are the mines taking up a lot of space over there?”
“Why? Are you offering to billet the detachment?”
“Well, I— Listen, if you really—”
He heard a snort of laughter. “Rest easy, Townsend. You’re safe. We all are, for now. And I know how your people react to having Rangers on the station. At some point, I may have to put a detail aboard the Hub, but we can figure that out when the time comes.”
“Thank you, Paul,” Townsend repeated. This time he meant it.
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 254 Earth days.
Drew didn’t know and didn’t want to know whose news account O’Malley had managed to tap into back on Earth, but if the information scrolling upward on Townsend’s screen was the truth and nothing but, things were definitely not going well on the home front.
The panic following the revelation that an implacable enemy was coming to wipe Humanity out had been nothing compared to the rage unleashed when a leaked report confirmed that most of Earth’s population would not be evacuated before the alien armada arrived.
Not surprisingly, martial law had been imposed in an effort to bring the rioting under control. However, by the time peace could be restored, most of the commercial and administrative areas of the urban districts had been trashed by angry mobs, leaving them looking a lot like the Zone. The enclaves had fared even worse, with many of their tidy rental homes being burned to the ground. Some of the wealthier businesses had been spared, but only because they’d been able to develop or invest in state of the art protection. And the EIS was safe, headquartered as it was in the middle of a forty-block area that was already little more than ruins and rubble.
Fire was not the High Council’s friend right now. All over the globe, Supreme Adjudicators were being burned in effigy, and an attempt to blow up the Council chambers in New Chicago had been thwarted by an alert Planetary Security guard.
Meanwhile, if the reports were to be believed, Humans with private access to Gate-enabled ships were taking their futures into their own hands, picking their own destinations and departure times, and leaving Earth in pairs and groups, in open defiance of the Relocation Authority and Air Traffic Control. No one pursued them. Earth’s elite military Fleet had already appropriated all the ships that could have caught them, and every other available vessel was earmarked for refugee shuttle or transport duty.
The large corporations on Mars had apparently seen through all the earlier lies disseminated by the High Council and decided to take matters into their own hands as well. The first of four corporate-funded ark ships had just left the Terran system with one hundred and fifty Martian families aboard, on a quest to find a moon or planet suitable for the establishment of a new Human colony. The second launch was scheduled to take place in less than a month. By the time the Corvou arrived, the planet would be nearly deserted. The High Council was displeased, but could do nothing but gnash their teeth.
Alien support for the evacuation program had arrived from four worlds so far including Stragon and Eggenar. Each world was promising to shelter as many refugees as their own ships could carry back. Thirty million to Stragon, one hundred thousand to Eggenar, fifty thousand to a place whose name had no vowels in Galactic Standard, another hundred thousand to an alien colony world that was too new to have a name. Each number was a tiny fraction of Earth’s population, but every Human life mattered now, and it was the thought that counted.
The final item in the news feed sent a chill straight to Townsend’s core. It was a casualty report, listing the names of everyone who had died in the civil unrest so far. Involuntarily, Townsend scanned them, hoping not to find anyone he knew, but knowing it was foolish to hope. When there was rioting, a mob mentality took over. It was a form of insanity, and insane people were capable of doing cruel, unspeakable things.
Townsend had to blink his vision clear again when he got to the name Romero, Charles. Right after that came Truman, Gabriel, and Lupo, Daniel. The 33rd Precinct had been hit hard. Six officers he’d worked with had perished on the streets in the past few months. He recognized other names as well, some that he’d sat across from in the interrogation rooms, others that he’d trained with. Three were EIS agents who’d been recruited at about the same time as he was. All were now dead.
Against all logic, a part of him wanted to blame Olivia for that too. Their parents thought she’d died years ago. Did that even matter to her? Drew wasn’t sure he wanted an answer to that question.
“Chief, we’ve got a ship coming in on approach,” Ruby called to him. “The Liberty. It’s a blue collar vessel, Arrow class, Earth registration. The captain is identifying himself as Gael Dedrick. He says he’s here to drop off passengers.”
“Gael Dedrick? Wasn’t he an officer on the Marco Polo just a few intervals ago?”
“Life is change, Chief. Rodrigues would have warned us if there was going to be a problem. Shall I transmit docking instructions?”
“Not yet. Let me talk to him.”
She handed over the mic and earpiece.
“Captain Dedrick? Welcome back to Daisy Hub,” Townsend greeted him.
“Mr. Townsend,” came a familiar voice. “I’m glad to be back.”
Ever suspicious since the Priam’s aborted mission, Drew purposely mispronounced Lania’s name. “Is Lana with you?”
“You mean Lania? She’s with Doctor Deneuve aboard the Marco Polo for now. Have you finally solved your problem with the Nandrian field generator?”
“We have,” Townsend replied. “I know you’re aware of our situation here, so I can’t help wondering why you would be bringing passengers with you, Captain.”
“I wondered too, at first. Then I found out who they were. Their stories check out, Mr. Townsend. However, I can understand why you might be skeptical. Why don’t you meet them aboard the Liberty and listen to what they have to say? Then you can decide whether to let them onto your station.”
“Agreed. Stand by for docking instructions.” As he passed the mic and earpiece back to Ruby, he instructed her, “Have Hagman meet me on A Deck once that ship is ready for boarding.”
Five hours later, Drew was back on the Hub, speaking excitedly into a wallcomm beside Portal 5. “Ruby! Tell Holchuk and Lydia to drop whatever they’re doing and come up to A Deck, right now!”
—— «» ——
As Lydia and Walt Garfield exited the tube car on AdComm, tears of joy were streaming down their cheeks, and she had a grip on his left arm that was probably cutting off the circulation to his hand.
Townsend got to his feet and walked around his desk to meet them.
“I had to— I don’t know how—” she blubbered.
Walt thrust out his free hand for shaking. “Thank you for finding me.”
“I can’t take all the credit,” Drew replied, extending his own hand, “but you’re very welcome.”
“I gather this gentleman won’t need guest quarters prepared for him?” Ruby chimed in as she crossed the deck with arms outstretched to give Lydia and her husband a welcoming hug.
All at once, “No! Absolutely not!” said Holchuk’s voice behind the other tube car door before it slid open, spitting him onto the deck.
He was followed by a determined-looking young woman with eyes and a mouth that closely resembled his own. “You don’t get rid of me like that,” she informed him. “I’m your daughter.”
He wheeled and confronted her. “I know! And that’s why I want you as far away from here as possible. You were safe on Riviera Hub. You need to go back there.”
“I’ve spent fifteen years trying to find you, five of them on active duty with Regional Security. I don’t run from a fight. And what I need is to get to know my birth father.”
Holchuk turned beseeching eyes to the group gathered around the end of the filing cabinet wall. “Can one of you talk some sense into her? Please! She has no idea what’s about to land on us.”
Looks were passed back and forth. Drew saw Lydia reaffirm her grip on Walt’s hand.
Finally, Ruby turned and said to Holchuk, “Why don’t you introduce her to Teri?”
“Good idea,” he replied, reaching past Madeline to summon a tube car.
When the Holchuks had departed, Lydia said, “You really think Teri can persuade her to go back to Riviera Hub?”
“No,” Ruby replied, “but I think maybe Teri and Madeline together can persuade him to let her stay here. Safety isn’t all it’s cracked up to be right now. Meanwhile, why don’t you two lovebirds go find your nest and get reacquainted with each other? The Chief and I can hold the fort up here.”
With many grateful looks backward, Lydia and Walt headed for the tube car door.
“You know, he looks a lot like you,” Ruby commented after it had closed behind them. “Same height and build, same coloring, same haircut…”
“Don’t start that,” Drew warned her. “There could never have been anything between her and me.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Really? Then why did you race back to C Deck the moment she walked through that portal to board the ship? Was it because you couldn’t bear to watch their tender reunion?”
“I wanted them to have privacy in case things didn’t go as expected. As clearly happened with Madeline and Holchuk,” he replied stiffly.
“Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that, Chief.” And she subsided into knowing silence at her console.
Resuming his seat behind the desk in his office, Drew couldn’t help wondering. The husband and wife had evidently fallen, weeping with joy, into each other’s arms. The father’s initial happiness had evaporated into terror when he realized the danger the daughter had put herself in, because he’d never stopped loving her and wanted her to survive.
What about a brother and sister who hadn’t set eyes on each other or shared a word of communication for nearly thirty Earth years while she pursued political power, leaving him to be a pawn in Dennis Forrand’s game of life? What would that reunion look like?
In idle moments, he sometimes imagined himself watching Olivia step through one of the docking portals onto the station. In his mind’s eye, she would recognize him and open her mouth to speak. And then the image would freeze, every time. Because, really, what was there to say?
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 253 Earth days.
“According to Rodrigues, it’s an actual interstellar war, to the death of the losing race, and Daisy Hub is where the first and last battle will be fought.” Posey paused, apparently mulling over what he’d just said.
Dedrick watched his expression darken as the meaning of the words sank in. He knew what his old friend was feeling. Gael had been dealing with those same emotions for almost a year, ever since Townsend had briefed him in Captain Takamura’s office aboard the Marco Polo.
When everything hit the fan, it was going to hit hard. Many lives would be lost in the fighting, and billions more would die on Earth if the Fleet and their allies couldn’t hold the line in Sector Five.
While waiting for Townsend’s decision regarding the disposition of their civilian passengers, Dedrick and Posey had made a side-trip to Zulu. It was partly so Posey could pay his respects to a fellow detachment commander. Mainly, however, he was scouting out the front lines and wanted to glean as much tactical intel as possible in advance of the battle.
Their discussion with Paul Rodrigues had been enlightening, to say the least. It had certainly given Dedrick a lot to think about.
Now, sitting across from Posey at one of the round tables in the Daisy Hub caf, Gael watched him lift his mug and sip some of the dark liquid Ruby McNeil had referred to earlier as “Jensen’s famous sludge”.
Dedrick made a face. “How can you swallow that?”
“It’s not so bad,” Posey replied, taking another mouthful. “You never tasted the stuff that comes out of the dispenser in my office on Riviera Hub. Caruso loves it. He calls it ‘super-charged espresso’.”
“I thought you drank the same java as the tourists did.”
“Originally, that was true. Shortly after I arrived to take command, however, Caruso called it ‘dishwater’ within the hearing of the station’s chef. She took umbrage, and we were cut off. And since he fancied himself such a java connoisseur, I put him in charge of brewing enough every day to supply the entire detachment. It was supposed to be a punishment. Turns out he enjoyed it. Go figure.”
Glancing up, Dedrick saw Townsend approaching their table and shifted his chair to make more room as the station manager sat down.
“Well, gentlemen, it appears your work here is done. I’ve spelled things out for your passengers and, despite the danger they’ll be facing, they are both determined to stay on Daisy Hub. I could refuse them permission, but that wouldn’t be good for crew morale. At a time like this, contact with family is important. Besides,” he added with a brief smile, “I can’t very well kick them off the station after ordering O’Malley to go to heroic lengths if necessary to find them.”
“O’Malley,” Dedrick repeated. “He’s your computer expert, right? The man who came aboard the Marco Polo about a year ago to … clean up our onboard systems?”
Townsend had evidently been holding his breath. He let it out in a rush. “He’s one of our experts,” he confirmed stiffly. “We have a lot of engineering talent aboard the Hub. Why? Are you thinking of poaching him from me?”
“Not at the moment. But I thought you’d like to know that our passengers were very talkative during the voyage from Riviera Hub. They told us all about the measures the Relocation Authority had taken to bury them in the system — the changes in identity, the falsified records, the multiple entries and encryptions and dead ends in the database. No investigator on Earth was able to find these people. And yet, somehow your crew member, working unassisted, managed it from the edge of Earth space. That doesn’t make him an expert, Townsend. It makes him a damned miracle worker. If you believe in that kind of thing,” he added, deliberately meeting the station manager’s gaze.
Townsend’s eyes suddenly widened, then just as quickly narrowed again as a pleasant mask dropped over his features. “I’ll be sure to pass your compliment along,” he said. That wasn’t what Dedrick had meant, but he let it go. Townsend wasn’t stupid. He would figure it out.
“Before we leave, what’s your evacuation plan?” Posey wanted to know.
Townsend glanced from one to the other of them, then replied, “At the moment, I don’t have one. This is an orbiting gulag, so I very much doubt whether anyone on Earth has even given a thought to our safety.”
“Rodrigues told us about the mines,” Dedrick said. “He was pretty worked up about them.”
“The High Council had no business turning the Hub over to Planetary Security without removing its civilian population,” Posey declared.
“But they did it,” said Townsend, “which proves that as far as Earth’s government is concerned, everyone aboard this station is already dead.”
“It also places the responsibility for your crew’s safety on your own shoulders. You need a plan, Townsend. You need to vacate the station before the battle begins,” said Dedrick. “You can’t stay aboard, and you can’t release escape pods into an active combat zone. Either way, it would be a slaughter.”
“I’m well aware of that, Captain, and I’m open to suggestions, if you have any.”
Suggestions? Dedrick had a few, none of them practical. However, one remote possibility had been rattling around inside his brain from the moment Rodrigues had begun describing the Nandrian ritual aboard the Hak’kor’s ship.
“Actually, I might. I’ll have to check out a few things first.”
“Take your time,” said Townsend drily. “We’re not going anywhere.”