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Within the globular hologram, a man screamed.
Alexi Noovin, High Councilor of the Grand Galactic Alliance, smiled at the image hovering over his desk. That expression broadened as its subject—a handsome mid-forty-something, dark-eyed, dark-haired—was dragged through a parking garage to a waiting hovertruck by hulking figures in the riot armor of Penal Division guards. At the last moment, just as the back door of the vehicle slid open, the orange jump-suited man thrashed out of their grips and lunged for whoever was recording the incident.
Alexi chortled. “He’s a nasty piece of work, to be certain.”
“And a vocal one,” a voice said chidingly.
Noovin looked away from the globular.
He’d spared no expense for the den beyond, perched in the highest floor of his planetside estate on Nova Terra. A fire crackled from a hearth to one side, flanked by huge windows against which dumped an unseasonably early blizzard. These provided most of the light to a large, dimly-lit room of antiques from Old Terra, polished real wood surfaces, and bookshelves stuffed with ancient tomes he’d actually read.
Not that any of the eight visitors lounging within it was likely to be impressed.
“The Judiciary has already issued a gag order to the HoloMedia,” he replied. “And Brad’s penchant for confrontation has earned him a stint in solitary confinement. His outbursts will be forgotten soon enough, what with the war on. As well, encouragement from some of our allies at Omnipresent will see to it the public loses interest.”
In the globular, one guards lashed a shock baton across the howling man’s back before he reached the holocamera. The cyan strobe of low-power blast bolt snowed the recording for an instant, even jolted the camera holder back a step. Two guards lifted the twitching prisoner from the blastcrete floor like a sack of produce and dragged him back to the vehicle. Another of their detail held up a hand to ward off the holocamera.
“There’ll still be a trial.”
Noovin worked to maintain the smile he’d honed to quicksilver perfection from the floors of the Galactic Assembly to the dais of the High Council. “Which, in light of his—and Syntar Fleet Corporation’s—crimes against galactic security, will be classified and kept sealed away.”
“There’s always someone who leaks,” another of his visitors said snidely.
“There is.” A bit of exasperation began to enter Noovin’s voice, despite his efforts. “And hearsay is always the chum of the Holomedia shark tank. In that feeding frenzy, the actual truth will be obscured.”
In the globular hologram, the subject, Bradley Boxer, former CEO of Syntar Fleet Corporation—former clandestine fundraiser for Noovin’s own political ambitions—was flung into the back of the hovertruck with a boom. The hiss of its automated doors sealed off his groaned protests and the view froze as the recording ended.
Noovin looked around at his guests. “What?” he said with hands up, deciding to let his irritation show. “Are you not all pleased?”
The five men and three women looked at each other in the warm gloom before turning their collective gaze back on Noovin.
“We need assurances, Alex.”
The speaker was a slim, sour-faced woman with black hair scraped back into a severe bun. A plain but impeccably-tailored pants suit of Nova Terran silk, adorned with a single ruby at the left breast—a gem from the fire-mines of Golcana—made her a creature of careful, yet expensive tastes. Her eyes were completely black, drained of color, draining to anyone they looked at.
Most of the rest had the same eyes.
Noovin didn’t pretend to understand what caused that, some side effect of their vast, vast lifespans. He, himself, had had the surgeons restore his own irises to the wolfish blue-gray they’d once possessed, long ago, before he reentered public life. But the others seemed to revel in their unnatural states.
Methuselahs. Beings of urban myth. Legends, as they no doubt thought themselves.
And, apparently, rattled ones.
Noovin steepled his fingers together, leaned back in his desk chair, and shrugged. “And just what do you call” he gestured at the hologram “that, Karissa?”
“A loose end,” the ageless, ancient woman replied.
Noovin glanced at the others as they shifted and murmured. “Very well,” he growled and leaned forward over the desk. “My contacts can see to it he never lives to see that trial.” Another shrug. “An accident, I suppose.”
“Reckless,” another of the Methuselahs sneered. Unlike his compatriots, who’d cultivated various flavors of fixed-agedness, this one had embraced his hideous oldness, a cadaverous, misshapen gray wisp in a black, outdated suit. The creature glowered around at the others. “I don’t know why we allowed ourselves to be taken in, again, with his scheming!”
“Power,” Noovin said over the surge of the others’ voices. They stilled as he turned his gaze on the ugly one. “Power, is why, Anton.” He looked around at the others again. “Power is the reason we brought the Sabbat back together again, after lying so long dormant.”
“Power to steer galactic affairs,” Karissa hissed. “Not to watch them spin even more out of control than they had under the mortals.”
“Things are under control,” Noovin said, waving dismissively.
“Are you daft?” another of the Methuselahs snapped. This one affected the high-fashion of a Primus society gala-goer, sheathed in a shimmering black suit, but without tie, dress shirt open to the third button to hint at a sculpted chest. Smirking, he had the look of a spoiled, late-twenties monied scion, bored and foppish. Both the latter were true, in fact. “Half the galaxy is in rebellion against the Alliance!”
“It’s more like a third, Julian, and—”
“And the loyal worlds now suffer from shortages of every kind, not the least of which is with hyper fuel!” he cut Noovin off. “It’s panicked the markets and led to all manner of unrest, even here on Nova Terra! Why, the Opera season had to be delayed because of food riots, this past month!”
“Truly hard times,” Anton sneered from his chair, and to the chortling of the others.
“Oh, shut up, you decrepit ruin!” Julian snarled back at him. He turned flashing, depthless eyes on Noovin. “You promised us power, Alex, but this is anarchy!”
“Anarchy is power.” Noovin had to control the snarling rise of his voice. “The transuranic supply crisis has compelled the Council to nationalize the hyper fuel industry, taking control from Syntar and the lesser private firms. And with Syntar’s implosion, the Navy’s ship-building program has been, likewise, placed under emergency Alliance oversight.” He offered his fellow Methuselahs a predatory grin. “These things, we now control directly, through the Council.” He couldn’t help adding, “Through me.”
Cautious smiles began wrinkling the false faces of some of his guests.
“And the war,” he went on. “The war has given the electorate an appetite for more decisive measures from its government. The Assembly’s gone especially quiet, no more demands for peace envoys to the rebels, and the Committee for the Conduct of the War has suspended its meetings. No one wants to rock the boat.”
“Wars are uncertain things,” Karrisa said slowly, “and the enemy—the Union of Free Stars—gets a vote.”
Noovin didn’t bother hiding his scowl, now. Pathetic. All that remained of the once mighty Sabbat; now shrunken by excesses, accidents, and self-destruction. These craven survivors preferred the shadows, the creep of slow, quiet corruption. But once upon a time, having discovered the means to prolong their lives indefinitely, they’d used the long-viewed wisdom and preternatural patience of immortality to guide the affairs of humanity across the stars.
It may not have been enlightened or even benevolent, but it had been grand.
“The Union is a joke,” Noovin grumbled. “And after a few early successes, they’re reeling. Our victories of the last few weeks have thrown their fleets back to their starting points, abandoning worlds that had only just gone over to their side. The fallout from that is pulling the Union apart. And Fleet Admiral Harrison briefed the Council last week. He’s moving on Bolingbroke, Fury, and Saipan by now. With those worlds back in our grasp, we can reopen the transuranic mines there and relieve the energy crisis.”
“The Union won’t just sit idle while we fly in and take them,” Karissa replied.
“I hope they don’t!” Noovin exclaimed. “I hope they’re there waiting for us. Resistance will cost them ships and crews they can no longer afford to replace. It will accelerate the end!”
“It had better,” Julian said with smoldering eyes.
Noovin met the irritating stare. “Or what?” He stood from behind his desk, came around to stand in the middle of the room, in the midst of them, looking around. “Any of you?” Glowers met his own, but no words. “No?”
A few looked away.
“Good,” Noovin snapped. “Because you all chose this. You all chose me, to insert us back into the corridors of power, to take control back from the mismanagement of lesser beings. It has taken me decades and a fortune—so much I had to risk it all, allying with that brute, Boxer—but we are here, now” he clenched a fist, shook it “right at the cusp of taking it all!”
They looked back to him, now, most of their dark stares unwavering. A few even nodded. Karrisa folded her arms, obviously unsatisfied but unwilling to press further. Julian muttered. Anton sat as still as the grave he looked like he belonged in.
The disgust in Noovin rose to near-unbearable levels. He lowered the fist, unclenched it, felt as tired as he had in decades. “We’ve been at this a long time.” That much was true, hours of pouring over holographic reports, tables of organization and planning, holovideos of Assembly hearings, riots, war. “I’ve arranged for refreshment downstairs. Might I suggest we all retire there for a late dinner?”
“Not quite yet,” Anton said, sitting up from the depths of his plush chair. He glanced at Karrisa before pulling a fingernail-sized crystal from a wrist band, hidden till then in his baggy sleeve. Spidery, liver-spotted fingers inserted it into the data input slot of the coffee table before him. “There is still this.”
A new globular flashed to life from the table’s projector, kept flashing as slivers of lighting slashed the image within in. Stars spun in the background. Metallic shapes ripped through the foreground. One intersected with a streak of cyan and ruptured like a rotten fruit, pumped full of petroleum and thrown against a wall. Against that fiery smear of death, a second steely shape streaked—
—and froze, held there by a pause in the holorecording.
Noovin recognized the starfighter, felt a thumb of ice run down his spine.
“You no doubt know of these?” Anton asked.
“Hellhound,” Noovin replied. “Standard attack flitter of the onetime terrorist organization known as the Hell’s Jesters.” He shrugged. “What of them?”
“You don’t seem especially concerned,” Karissa noted.
“We haven’t seen much of them, of late,” Noovin replied, “what with them having folded up into the Union Fleet, proper. They took heavy losses at the Battles for Loudon, by all accounts.” He fixed Anton with a stare. “Am I supposed to be more concerned than that?”
“A human organization, pairing up with machines and artificial intelligences of a reputedly high level of sentience?” Anton’s lips peeled back from the crooked, yellowed shards of his teeth. “That doesn’t sound familiar to you, at all?”
It did, of course. But Noovin sighed derisively. “You mean Ghost in the Machine?”
Despite his tone, the room stilled, as though he’d spoken the name of some eldritch spirit. In fact, the specter of the homicidal AI that’d plunged the entire galaxy into decades-long strife and brought the Methuselah-controlled order down in flames, clearly haunted them still. And even Noovin felt the chilly caress of those dark days in the back of his skull.
“We never knew if we got every copy of it,” Karissa said in a hushed voice.
“You’re right,” Noovin said, “but this isn’t that. It’s an outlaw party wielding outlaw tech; nothing more.”
Julian arched his perfect eyebrows. “You seem very certain of that.”
“We’ve heard rumors otherwise,” Karissa added.
“Oh, your whisper networks have picked up on something missed by the Crime Division of the Cybernetics Bureau?” Noovin asked incredulously. “Or by the AIB?”
“That would be the same Alliance Intelligence Bureau that didn’t know an entire task force of Alliance ships and crews would desert to the Union at the war’s start?” Anton quipped with a rat-like smirk.
Exasperated, Noovin held flung up his hands. “Fine. You want to hear it?” He pivoted to glare at each of them, as though he was haranguing the full Assembly and High Council. “It’s concerning. Of course, it is. But unless one of you brings evidence that not one of the intelligence departments of the entire Grand Galactic Alliance has uncovered, I’m not exactly certain what you expect me to do about this!”
“Assurances, Alex,” Karissa pressed. “We need to be sure.”
“How?”
“Destroy the Jesters!” Anton snarled with venom so sudden a tendril of spittle drooled from his awful teeth. “Wipe them out and every shred of whatever tech they’re utilizing!”
“You think we haven’t been trying?” Noovin fired back. “For years?”
“But you know where they’ll likely be next,” Julian said in an even voice clearly meant to calm the outburst. “Those intelligence apparatuses have at least been keeping tabs on them.”
“Yes.” Noovin nodded slowly, gave his anger time to settle. “Yes, they have. The chatter from the Admiralty is that the offensives against Bolingbroke and Saipan are likely to be stubbornly-resisted, full Union commitment. Their fleet movements suggest it. And Saipan just declared for the Union, last month. Levine and his traitor government don’t want to be seen abandoning yet another world after losing so many.”
“And the third world?” Karissa asked. “Fury?”
“Looks to be defended on a shoestring,” Noovin replied. “The Union landed a division of former-Alliance marines, there, six months ago—a hardened force.”
“Traitors.” Anton wiped the slobber from his chin.
Noovin nodded. “To be sure, but tough ones. They hold the most habitable regions, as well as the mining sites, and have defeated the local Alliance forces’ attempts to break their beachhead. But their aerospace assets have been whittled down to near nothing and the Navy has been increasingly successful at ferrying in reinforcements.”
“So, all eyes turn to Fury?” Julian prompted.
“It’s rumors,” Noovin replied, “but Naval Intelligence does suspect the Union will throw the Jesters into the mix there.”
“Then there’s your opportunity,” Karissa said.
“And, again, I’d ask what it is exactly you expect me to do? These are military matters, not civilian ones.”
“You’re a High Councilor of the Grand Galactic Alliance, Alexi,” Julian drawled. “Placed there by the Sabbat to right the affairs of the galaxy, to bring them back where they belong after being torn away from us, so long ago.”
“By a machine,” Anton snarled.
“If the Hell’s Jesters come back out in the open,” Karissa said, “you are to ensure every resource is marshalled to ensure their destruction and the destruction of whatever technology it is that stands behind their remarkable successes.”
“In exchange for the Sabbat’s continued support of your leadership, we require this of you, Alexi.” Julian leaned forward in his seat. “Above all other things.”
Noovin met the false-youth’s gaze, turned to take in the smugly quiet stares of the others. He hated them, had always done so. And there’d come a time when even the Sabbat’s usefulness to him would run its course.
But not now.
He offered them his best High Councilor’s smile. “It will be as you ask.”
***
THE AIRLOCK CORRIDOR leading to the shuttle trembled as an internal blast rocked the Union heavy carrier Concordia. Grand Admiral Carson Greer flung a hand up to a bulkhead to steady himself. The air stank of fires and scorched electronics and rang faintly with screams.
Hands pushed him from behind. “We’ve got to get you off the ship, sir!”
“Easy, now,” Greer growled over his shoulder at Lieutenant Commander Arrian—the ship’s Tactical Officer and, after that last Alliance sortie had crippled her weapons systems, his babysitter. “Panic benefits no one.”
Arrian flinched a little at that. He was no coward and Greer instantly regretted the hasty words. “At best, Concordia’s dead in space, sir,” the young man insisted. “At worst—”
Greer’s stomach flopped over as a dizzying sensation went through the floor, like getting caught in a dropping elevator. Arrian wobbled into him, features going momentarily green with nausea. Artificial gravity failure, he thought, steadying himself again. Damn, the old girl’s hit really badly this time.
“Sir,” Arrian pressed.
Feeling the gravity settle, Greer started down the corridor again. “Right.”
It had all gone to hell so fast.
The battle across the Bolingbroke System had been the kind of blind-fighting brawl Greer hated. Gone were the early days of the war, when the Alliance flung its ships straight at them. Now, it was cut and feint, maneuver and false retreat. The fleets hid from one another in the vastness of space, sending out feelers by way of starfighter sweeps, then lunging out of darkness into storms of fire when they found something.
Greer had found the Alliance Fringe World Fleet first. But they’d landed the last blow. Concordia had paid the price.
A pair of star sailors in the olive drab jumpsuits of shuttle crew waved with increasing urgency from the airlock. Greer hustled to them. “I’ll want contact with Admiral Avery immediately!” he called over his shoulder to Arrian.
“The heavy cruiser, Solomon, is closest,” Arrian replied. “We’ll get you transferred over to her first, sir.”
The deck quivered beneath him again as Greer hurried through the airlock. Stooping, and with the unneeded help of another crewman, he found his way to a seat in the cramped administrative shuttle, plopped down unceremoniously, and tolerated it as the crewman buckled him in. The little flitter was meant for ship-to-ship transfer, minimal deflector shields, no weapons. A part of him tensed at the idea of rushing out into space, even for only minutes, with the enemy still slashing about.
It was all such a cock-up. How would he explain this to Levine and the Legislature?
Arrian stumbled into the seat next to Greer’s left, jostled him. “Get us out of here,” the Commander ordered, waving off the attentions of the unhelpful crew. They scattered to their stations as yet another judder shook the carrier and reverberated through their own ship.
“Does this work?” Greer asked, flipping open the comm plate affixed into the armrest of his seat.
“Should, sir,” the shuttle’s pilot called back to him.
Greer’s fingers were already working the controls. Within moments, he had the link and a globular hologram fluttered to uncertain life above the armrest. Within it a tiny woman of jet hair and Eurasian features looked up. Half her face was blackened from aerosolized blastisteel. A blood smear marred the other. Behind her, the bridge of the Concordia smoldered and shadowy figures scrambled.
“Are you pulling away?” she asked through a snarl of static.
“Just about,” Greer replied. A thump of released airlock pressure confirmed it, followed by steady weight on his body as the shuttle’s inertial compensator struggled to keep up with a rush of acceleration. “How’s our girl?”
Mia Hyabusa, longtime Flag Captain of the old carrier, hesitated before answering, and Greer despaired. “We’re still fighting her, sir. That last strike triggered a chain reaction all the way from the grav drive distributor line to the fusion bottle assembly. Navigation’s shot. We’ll probably need a tow, if we can get these damned fires under control!”
Greer nodded. It was as he’d feared. “Do what you can, Mia,” he said softly. “But no more unnecessary risks.”
“We’ve still got a chance, sir,” she replied. A flash of something from a console behind her cast sparks that briefly silhouetted her.
Greer glanced at Arrian, who was working the communicator controls at his own chair frantically. “Have you gotten Avery, yet?”
“Working on it, sir.”
“Engineering thinks they can get the core restarted,” Hyabusa was saying from the globular. “If they can avoid another misfire.”
She wasn’t just fighting out of stubbornness, Greer knew. Concordia was the Union’s only modern heavy carrier, deserted from the Alliance at the very beginning of the war, along with a full task force of sister ships. Other crews and vessels had come over to the Union, one here, a squadron there. And the Union’s construction yards were working at full-tilt now, finally, would have two new carriers coming in months, if they skipped the shakeout time. Resistance-class strike carriers, they wouldn’t be the exactly equal of an Alliance heavy, but they’d have advantages their opposites didn’t. Greer knew. He’d helped design them.
But the Concordia was more than any of that, more than just a ship. She’d been Greer’s flag. She’d been through so much, had become, in a very big way, the heart of the poor, beat-up, hodge-podge Union Fleet.
“Do what you can, Captain,” Greer told the hologram.
“Aye, sir.” The globular dissolved.
Another was crackling into existence from Arrian’s armrest. “Think I got him, sir!”
The image stabilized to show a blocky-jawed, brown-haired man blessed with youthful looks his old, tired eyes belied. Static smeared his first words. “—rson, are you clear?”
“We’re away,” Greer replied. “I should be aboard the Solomon in about five minutes.”
“Concordia’s that bad, then?” A flicker of pain crossed Rear Admiral Preston Avery’s features. She’d been his flagship, before the war—another life—before he brought her over to the Union with the Secession Crisis. And Greer had always felt a twinge at the way he’d pulled her out from under him for his own.
But it was just a twinge. “Point is,” he pressed on, “I’ve been blind. What’s happening?”
“Looks like they’re finally pulling back,” Avery replied. “We shot that last attack wave up pretty bad. Sensors show Harrison’s regrouping on the far side of the system. Unless he’s brought more fighters in from hyperspace, I’d say he’s thrown his last punch. Even if he did, our pilots think they got two of his carriers and damaged all the rest. Fresh fighters will have no place to refuel and rearm.” Avery shrugged. “My analysts think Harrison’s looking to pull out.”
Harrison, Greer though with a simmer of rage. Oh, you got the better of this one, didn’t you, Nehemiah? Alliance Grand Admiral Nehemiah K. Harrison, top of his class, former protégé of Greer, himself. But the student was rapidly becoming the teacher.
“He still has more ships, Admiral,” Greer noted. “Even if his starfighters are spent.” And it’s not like we have a lot left.
Avery nodded with a hungry hint of a grin. “Harrison’s shown little appetite for capital ship engagement since his return to fleet command.” The grin broadened. “Not since Junction.”
Junction, where it’d all started.
Harrison had brought in the entirety of the Fringe World Fleet there, to smoke out the Hell’s Jesters, who’d been squatting there for years. Greer had met him with everything the Union could cobble together at that time. The ensuing melee had been a confused wreck, capital ships rushing in for point-blank broadsides, starfighters perishing by the hundreds. In the midst of that slaughter, Harrison had blinked, had pulled out, rather than risk greater loss, leaving Greer the field and the Union its first victory.
At the time, it looked to have ruined Harrison’s career. He’d been relegated to an advisory role on Nova Terra while other commanders were given a chance against the Union. But all of those had failed spectacularly, in turn—that maniac, Geiger—leaving the Admiralty with their least-bad option, once more.
And clearly Harrison had profited from the experience.
“Bolingbroke remains free,” Avery declared.
“But not out of danger,” Greer growled. “If Harrison’s backing off, it’ll only be just outside the system, or maybe hypering back to their staging areas at Coronado. He’ll be licking his wounds and waiting for more ships. But he’ll jump at us again, given the chance.”
And he would, went unsaid. The bastard’s got more of everything. He just has to wait for it. Greer beat his thigh with a clenched fist. When the thrust towards Bolingbroke had become obvious, he’d welcomed it, craved it. The Union had been bleeding slowly across multiple fronts, in a dozen slow sieges. The fresh wave of planets declaring for the Union had, unfortunately, brought little in the way of material reinforcements. And Greer still had to defend them. Harrison’s attack had seemed the answer to a prayer, a set-piece battle, a chance to really hurt the Alliance again.
Greer had hurt them, all right, and badly. But he’d gotten hurt, himself.
“So, we’re pinned here,” Avery prompted when Greer’s simmering silence dragged.
“Some of us are,” Greer said. “I’ll stay with a strong force, parked here. But that feint towards Saipan might turn serious. We have to have something mobile to respond there.”
“Turner’s in position,” Avery pointed out, “and she can draw reinforcements from Theseus.”
Greer stopped pounding his thigh, unclenched the hand and raised it to run the fingers over the frizz of his now-completely white hair. Thoughts quivered a moment, then settled. The navigation system of the shuttle was chiming and the holographic viewscreen showed a shark-like silhouette of metal growing before the stars. Greer winced at the sight of the Solomon. Even at a distance, he could see the heavy cruiser had taken damage, too.
“You’re thinking of Fury?” Avery asked.
Greer nodded. “No one’s made a play for it in weeks and what we left there has been bled white. If I was Harrison, and I’d just drawn us out elsewhere, that’s where I’d throw ships. We’ll need to counter that.”
“You...have someone in mind for that duty?” Avery asked archly.
Greer offered him an unpleasant smile. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Avery visibly clenched his jaw. “How soon?”
“Immediately,” Greer replied. Avery had the last-gen strike carrier Sacramento as his flag, the escort carrier, Caruso—little better than a blastisteel coffin, that one—and a small task force of one battleship, two cruisers, and a destroyer screen. All had been used hard, just now, but they were intact. And the Sacramento could carry two starfighter squadrons. “Don’t scowl, Preston,” he quipped. “I’m not going to leave you totally holding the bag. How are your fighter losses?”
“Bad,” Avery admitted. “We’ve still got unaccounted, but I’d say we’ll have a hard time scraping together even a full squadron.”
“Ditch any of the lost causes and swap the rest over to the Bubo.” Greer knew the light carrier would be bulging at the seams, but needs must. “I’m going to send you the remainder of Concordia’s flight group.”
“The last of the Valkyries?”
“What of them are left, yeah.”
The Valkyrie AF-1B was the mainstay of the Alliance fleet, the most advanced space superiority fighter in the galaxy. When Concordia went over to the Union, she brought her full load of Valkyries with her, a wing of three squadrons. Of course, after nearly two years of war, Greer had less than two of those remaining. But they were almost the only thing he had that matched the Alliance, starfighter-to-starfighter.
Almost...
“We should be able to service them,” Avery was saying. “Going to take a little work, though. Sacramento’s built to take on Firestorms.”
The ST-111 Firestorm was the Union’s answer to the Valkyrie and, honestly, an uneven one, chosen not because of any merits, but because they had them. They’d been mostly out of service at the outbreak of hostilities, relegated to planetary militia and independent security forces. It was from those the Union had scrounged most of theirs, and the rest from factories they’d managed to restart.
If it had any advantage over the Valkyrie, it was that it was hyper-capable, didn’t need a carrier to jump from system-to-system. Early in the war, that had been an asset, the Firestorms hitting targets throughout the galaxy, regardless of starting point, whereas the Valkyries could only meet them where their carriers were. For a time, it seemed the tactical theories of space combat had changed.
But as the war became one of taking and holding worlds, as opposed to tearing up space, the balance shifted. The Firestorms could hit hard and fast, but without the ability to rearm and repair, they quickly had to fade away, back to distant bases. Meanwhile, a carrier-backed Valkyrie group could stand off a contested world indefinitely.
Which was why Greer needed to get his surviving handful of “rebel” Valkyries to Fury immediately.
“Work the kinks out on your way,” Greer said. “I want you out of here within seventy-two hours. You’ll take the entirety of Task Force 3 with you.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral.” Avery hesitated. “The Omu is struggling—engine damage.”
Greer nodded, sighed. That was one of his cruisers. “Leave her with us, then.” He manipulated the controls on his armrest, after a moment brought up a holographic star map, zoomed in on a quadrant of it, and estimated transit times. Fury glowed balefully at the center of the display. Greer’s eye caught another system, far off to one side, but one he knew well. He considered it.
“Anything else for me, sir?” Avery asked as Greer’s silence dragged.
“Hit anything you find there,” Greer said, “but preserve your force. Contest the space. But no unnecessary sacrifices. I’ll transmit clarifications once things are more settled here.” He offered Avery’s image an ugly smile—his other decision made. “And don’t worry, I’ll be sending you other help.”
Avery made a face. “I don’t suppose I want to know what kind of help.”
“You probably don’t,” Greer replied with a laugh. He flipped the hologram a casual salute. “Good luck to you, Preston. We’ll see you soon.”
Avery returned the salute with far more precision. “You as well, sir.” His hologram vanished.
“Solomon’s signaling,” the shuttle pilot announced as the heavy cruiser filled the forward viewscreen. “Docking in ninety seconds.”
“As soon as we’re aboard,” Greer said, putting a hand on Arrian’s shoulder, “we need to get them working on a hyper-capable message drone. I don’t want to trust this to ether-tenna signal. Once we’re sure it won’t be intercepted by any of Harrison’s stragglers, I’ll want it launched.”
“Destination, sir?”
Greer smirked. “Shangri-La System.”
Arrian hissed. “You can’t be—”
A flash scrawled the forward viewscreen into momentary white. That blanked out into black as the shuttle’s computer cut the glare to save its human occupants’ eyes. Cries of alarm burst from the shuttle crew and Arrian flopped suddenly into Greer as the ship rocked. Alarms warbled from its control consoles and the crew was suddenly scrambling at their work as the Solomon lurched dangerously close.
The shuttle wobbled again. Greer could feel the strain of maneuvering fields as the pilot flung the craft clear of a collision. That’d been damned fine work, he realizing, gulping reflexively as the ship steadied. They’d only been seconds from the docking chute and a crash would’ve been—well, it would’ve been over.
The drift of the shuttle over the spine of the heavy cruiser brought their viewpoint tilting back the way they’d come.
A miniature star had flared to life, but was already dying.
“My, god!” Arrian choked at Greer’s side. “Concordia...”
Silence gripped the shuttle as all eyes beheld the fading glow of plasma fire and cooling debris. Fusion bottle breach, part of Greer knew clinically. But horror howled through his soul. It was more than the ship. They’d been hurriedly evacuating more than just his worthless hide, so some would’ve gotten off. But thousands of less fortunate—star sailors still fighting fires, medics scrambling to get their wounded out—had just perished. So many...Mia! She would have stayed to the last, he knew. Damn.
Greer gripped Arrian’s arm hard. “Focus.” He looked around at the rest of the crew, raised his voice. “Focus, people.”
Arrian gave himself a shake. “Sir.”
“I need you working on that hyper probe, once we’re aboard, Commander.”
“Aye, sir.” His voice was still husky with emotion, but his eyes blinked, seemed clear of the glassines of a moment before. He was a good kid. They all were. “You actually think they’ll come? We’ve heard nothing from them in months. They’ve just been hiding out there, at the edge of the galaxy, brooding.”
“Of course, they’ll come,” Greer forced himself to laugh, “they’re the Hell’s Jesters!”