Delay on First Blood

I'm sad to report that First Blood is not yet ready for release. Editing the final draft is taking a lot longer than I'd anticipated. I'll let you know when it's ready. In the mean time, I'll continue to let out some scenes from the book here as I get them ready.

If you'd like to be a beta reader for the new episode, leave a comment here.

Ken

Vignette from Days of Valor

This is just a peak at what's coming...

On a hot battlefield, you survive only by moving: the bad guys know where you are as soon as you shoot. And the only way to keep them from getting close to you is to shoot. Lt. Kieffer grimaced at the thought as he glanced up at the tactical display in his helmet visor. When this engagement started, he had two full fire teams. Now, he was down to six healthy troopers and a couple of mobile injured troopers. The other ten were now just letters he’d have to write to next of kin... If he survived.

He was moving in van with Trooper Stinson, providing delaying fire for the rest of the team to escape behind. A heavy mechanized battalion with air and artillery support had responded to their attack on the communication center. 

“Starbase. This is Roadrunner two over.” He called out on the uplink. He dove hard across the side of the hill as a homer round slammed into the ground where he’d just been. He almost didn’t hear the answer as he rolled to a stop behind a large boulder.

“Roadrunner this Starbase. Status?”

He rolled on his back to glance up into the night sky over head. All he could see were twinkling stars in a cloudless moonless night. She must be high he thought. “Mission accomplished. Taking heavy fire. We’re closing around alternate extraction site. Ten troopers k-i-a. Eight effective, two injured. Being pursued by heavy mechanized infantry with artillery and air support. Copy?”

The answer was immediate. “Copy Roadrunner. Dustoff and Vipers are downbound now. ETA five minutes.”

“Faster would be better Starbase.” He paused as he jumped again to a new location. He felt the heavy bumps of fragments hitting his suit as he did. He didn’t feel any pain. His visor flashed yellow. His suit’s armor was compromised: it wouldn’t protect him again.

“Roadrunner, we’ll be above the horizon in a couple of seconds. We’ll take some of this heat off you you. Tell your guys to go armor bravo.”

“Roger Starbase. Go Armor Bravo.”

He switched to his tactical net. “Roadrunners.” He shouted. “Go Armor bravo now. Dustoff in five.”

It was a testament to their discipline and desperation that there was no typical pre-pickup chatter that usually accompanied a dustoff call.

The Lieutenant grabbed his wrist control ring around his shooting hand and twisted it to Armor-bravo setting. The Witch warned him immediately. “Alert, suit power will last two minutes at this setting.” He didn’t bother to argue with the suit’s computer. He jumped to another hiding place and for the first time in several hours crouched behind the boulder.

The ground shuddered under his feat, again and again and again. Overhead the sky glowed yellow and actinic white from the reflected glare of massive explosions. His suit stiffened from the impact of a surge of high energy particles.

First Blood: Chapter 1, Scene 1

REPUBLIC
BETA HYDRI DEFENSE STATION
MISSION DAY: 0 TIME: 12:20
  Ty found himself standing in the middle of a tree lined city park filled with people. Out-stretched branches of ancient elms shaded picnicking families and busy people on the sidewalks.  Children were chasing one another in play on the park’s manicured grounds. Others intent on their tasks, walked by not noticing him. Overhead the sun shone a friendly bright yellow in a pale blue cloudless sky. A gentle summer breeze blew into his face carrying the scent of flowers mingled with city. The sounds of a thousand conversations inundated him; children squealing in delight, the occasional barking dog plus the distant muted rumble of a large city.
  This was the business section. office buildings protruded above the trees tops with their glass and chrome surfaces glinting and sparkling in the sunlight. On the north corner, an ornate red brick and glass bell tower began tolling ten o’clock. In the distance, to the south, he could see the distinctive shapes of shuttles bound for low orbit, lifting off and rising out of sight into the sky.
  The longer he stood there the more he could sense. Soon he could hear the quiet conversations of couples whispering, the soft tap of chess pieces being moved, even the sound of birds chirping and insects calling to one another. If he gazed in a direction for more than a few moments, he saw distant blades of grass and leaves waving in the breeze. What he noticed and felt most was the life energy of the people in the park and the city beyond. He felt and experienced the warmth of hands being held and the gentle touch of mothers stroking the backs of their children. This connection left him with a profound feeling of reverence and awe.
  He noticed at his feet, a second shadow next to the one cast by the late morning sun. He looked up and saw a bright point of light, like that of a miniature sun. In an instant, it shot down through the sky and over the eastern horizon, shining with such piercing brilliance, he had to close his eyes. The after images of its passing were as a razor straight white rip in the sky.
  With everyone else, he looked to the east. A distant line of white appeared on the horizon.  As it approached it grew into a wall of white light.  The massive shockwave of compressed air was heated to white incandescence, blasting buildings to sand, gravel and fine powdery sawdust as it passed. Before his eyes, every person, every tree, shrub, animal in the park, was atomized instantly into pink and brown mists. It left nothing but scoured rock and foundations.
   Overhead the sky grew dark indigo then black as the atmosphere was blown into space behind it. Stars appeared in dazzling brilliance along with the sun.
He looked down at his body and was bewildered when he saw he’d been unaffected by this event. Then he felt a rumbling coming from deep in the ground beneath him. He looked again to the east and saw another approaching shockwave, this one orange and yellow in color. Its passage shattered the ground beneath him. In its wake, the planet’s crust roiled like boiling mud and then disappeared, buried under boiling lava and magma that rose from the depths. Glowing chunks of stone ranging in size from small rocks to small mountains began falling to the ground causing explosions as they slammed into the ravaged surface of the planet around him.
  Then they appeared. They were white, wraithlike apparitions of the people he’d seen. They covered the tortured landscape as far as he could see. Turning to him, they pointed their outstretched arms at him. Ty gasped when he saw Lieutenant Commander Andrews and the rest of the people in the command center among them. In unison they called to him in pain laden and accusing tones, “You left us, you could have saved us. Don’t let more die this way.”
  He answered back to them, “But I did save you all.”
  They wailed back, “No, you let us die. Don’t let more die too.” Ty in that last instant felt the pain and terror they felt as their bodies were destroyed by the shockwave.
   He shouted in tormented agony, “NO!!” He held up his hands to shield his eyes from their gaze. Amidst the incessant cries, he pulled his hands away from his face and saw they were covered and dripping in blood. Then the wraiths rushed towards him, their screams rising to a deafening crescendo. He gasped when he saw Amanda among them as they rushed in towards him.
He sat up on the bed, his heart pounding like it would explode out of his chest, the thump-thumping of its beating audible in his ears. Images of the faces appeared in the darkness around him. “Lights,” he croaked. With the coming of the dim lights, the images receded into the dark crevasses of his mind and the shadows of the room. He placed a hand on his chest trying to get control of the pounding. He glanced down and saw no trace of blood. He leaned back on one arm and raised his trembling hand. His forehead wet with sweat.
  Stunned, he shook his head and said to the air around him, “That wasn’t just a dream!” The silence of the room was unnerving. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, saying, “It couldn’t be real.” This did little to convince himself.
  He looked at the clock by his bed. It was still a couple of hours before the Congo was scheduled to leave the station. Ty grabbed his ID card and made a call, “Beta Hydri Command Center, this is Ty Weiss.”
  Andrews answered, “Hey Ty, glad you called. There’s been a change.”
Ty didn’t say anything, he just sat in silence.
  ”Is everything ok?”
Ty shook his head no. He looked at his hand again which was still shaking. “I just had a horrific nightmare. It was so real, it has me spooked.”
“Want to talk about it?”
  Ty shook his head no. “I want to forget it!” He took a deep breath and felt his heart finally slow down. “I think I’ll be OK. There’s no way I’m sleeping again for a while.”
  “With what you’ve just been through, I’m not surprised. But suit yourself, however; you might want to consider talking to a shrink if they persist.”
  “Another dream or two like that and I won’t need a therapist. You’ll need a mortician.”
  Andrews gave a subdued chuckle, but there was real concern in his voice.
  Ty wiped his face with his hand. “So, what’s the change?”
  “Congo just got reassigned, flash orders from the fleet. She pushed out a few minutes ago.”
  “I really had my heart on seeing a larger ship. I guess that means I get to chill here for a few days?”
  “I wouldn’t get too comfortable, fleet said to get you to Nova Terra ASAP some other way, so I’m looking for another ride for you.”
  Ty chuckled. He had just the solution. “Relax, I can go in the LightJammer. Remember, it’s my ship now.”
  “Heh, I’d forgotten about that. Chief Sanborn was headed to Nova Terra, too. He got bumped as well, got room for him? Like you, his orders say to get to Nova Terra the fastest possible way.”
  Ty thought of the back cabin of the LightJammer and how it was configured. He smiled as he shook his head. “There’s room for him. He may not like it, not the way it’s rigged right now.”
  “Oh yeah, the smell!” Ty and Andrews both laughed.
  “Well, he’s a big boy and a married man. I think he can handle the cabin for a few hours.”
  Andrews snickered. “I caught a whiff of that scent. The pheromones in it are sure potent.”
  “They are indeed. Let me call Toni and get it set up.”
  “Sure thing. Command clear.”
  Ty set his ID on the bed beside him and thought about Toni and the LightJammer. He still couldn’t believe her dad had offered him her hand in marriage as a reward for saving the lives of his family. In the end, the old man had given him the LightJammer. Ty felt more like the proverbial dog that caught the car when he thought of owning the sleek hotrod of a ship that was the LightJammer. He decided, this was one way to make that dream more real. He grabbed his ID card and placed a call. “Antonia Belutoni, this is Ty Weiss.”
  There was no answer. She didn’t answer until after his third call. “Hi Ty.” Ty could hear loud dance music playing in the back ground and that she was shouting over it.
  “I have a charter trip for you.”
  “A what?”
  Ty spoke louder almost shouting into the card, “I have a charter for you.”
  “I still can’t hear you. Just a sec.” He could hear the music continue to play in the background and heard her talking to several other people. From the sound, he could picture her walking somewhere quieter. At last, the music went away. “Ok. I’m in a hush booth,” she said. “We’re you asking about a charter?” There was a trace of disbelief in her voice.
  “Yes. I need you to make a quick trip to Nova Terra, carrying two people.”
  “How much are you charging? Charter runs aren’t cheap. Transit fees in core systems not to mention operational costs are going to be,” she paused a second. Ty figured she was estimating the cost in her head. “About two thousand credits per person for a round trip.”
  “This would be one way for both.”
  “Well double it then, because we’d be deadheading the ship back here.”
  Ty was surprised. “It costs that much?”
  She came back instantly, “It sure does. Transit fees alone are five thousand credits for a core system like Nova Terra. Add to that power costs and the amortization of inspections fees. It adds up quickly.”
  Ty shook his head, he was the one in disbelief now. “I guess. Well, the fleet will pick up the cost.”
  “Sweet! We usually charge double or more for those runs since there’s so much paperwork and delay between the trip and when they finally pay. Who am I carrying anyway and when do we need to go?”
  “Who, is easy, me and Chief Sanborn.”
  She laughed a full bellied laugh. “I won my bet!” she shrieked.
  “What?”
  She took a minute to settle down. “My dad said it would be less than a week and you’d be asking for a ride in the ship. I told him, it would be less than two days. He laid a hundred note on you traveling in a week.” She laughed again. “I doubled down saying it would be in less than two days and doubled that if it was today. So let me guess, you do want to leave right away, right?” He smiled at the less than subtle encouragement in her voice.
  “Yeah, actually I do.”
  “Woo hoo! You made my day! Tess is docked at level three port two. Grab Sanborn and get there. I’ll arrive in a few minutes myself. We can push as soon as the two of you are aboard.”
  “That fast?”
  “When that kind of money is on the table, we move quickly to keep our customers happy, plus we haven’t been docked that long, the system will come up pretty fast. And since you’re the owner, I can push off those Persian ice miners. I can get you there and back in less than a day, so I can still carry them. It does mean one of you has to ride in the back.”
  “Heh. We’ll have to discuss that. Anyway, I’m getting the Chief. You get the ship ready to go. See you in a few.”
  “Remember, level three, port two.”
  Ty called back to Andrews. “Command, Ty Weiss.”
  “Hi Ty,” said Andrews. “Got a ride?”
  “Yes and one for the Chief too. Round him up and send him to level three port two.”
    Andrews said, “Ok. By the way, I’ve got something for you.”
  “Oh?”
  “The REACT made a final sweep through the debris field of the Adventurer while you were sleeping. They found your notebook floating several miles from where the Adventurer was. It has a trace of your DNA on it.”
  Ty stopped in mid stride. “My notebook? How can that be?”
  “Beats me. The only possible explanation is that someone threw it away from the ship when they realized what was about to happen.”
  Ty went back to his last moments on the Adventurer when they opened the emergency evacuation port prior to his leaving the ship. He could clearly see her haggard face towards the end of their ordeal and how tired she must have been. He thought of the tense hours they’d spent trying to save the ship from the Alliance’s relentless pursuit. He was sad for her death, but he felt finally, she was at peace. She was the only other person on the ship who knew how important the information on the notebook was. He was grateful he’d known her. She was a trooper to the very end of her life. "Sir, my guess is chief Anderson threw it away from the ship through an emergency evacuation portal.”
  “What’s on a notebook that would be so valuable?”
  “It’s a program she and I developed. Can you get it to me?”
  “Sure! I’ve got it with me. We’ll just have you gate in here on your way to the LightJammer.”
  “Thanks, sir.”
  He jogged back to the bathroom and collected his boots and gloves where he’d left them before showering and taking a nap. By the time he had them on, he could hear the gate shimmer to life. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror. Ice blue eyes under crew-cut-short, sandy hair in a face defined by its sharply chiseled chin, looked back at him. There were also rings of fatigue around his eyes. Yet, a lifetime of laboring for his step father a brick maker left him with wiry thin but incredibly strong arms and muscles. He smiled briefly thinking of how many times he’d turned down offers from the fleet to be a model for recruiting posters. He turned to the door and jogged through the sitting area, towards the gate. Andrews stood by the gate holding his notebook in his hand. He took it from him once he got through.
  “Level three is actually two hundred feet below us,” explained Andrews. “There’s an elevator down the hall outside the entry to the command center here. It’ll get you to level three. Just follow the signs to the dock. Got it?”
  Ty nodded. “I guess this really is it.”
  Andrews stuck out his arm, “Good luck.”
  “You too, sir,” with that, they shook and Ty headed out the command center towards the elevator. When Ty got to the docking port, he recognized Toni and Chief Sanborn but not the regal looking woman standing next to the chief. She was the Chief’s height, nearly six inches taller than Ty. They were both wiry thin and both had silvered hair. His was short like Ty’s, her’s would’ve been shoulder length, but she’d had it pulled into an intricately braided pony tail.
  They were standing with Toni talking and laughing together. Toni saw Ty coming down the hall and waved enthusiastically at him as he approached them. When the chief and the woman turned towards Ty, he noticed they were holding hands. The chief was in a sharply pressed fleet space suit. His gloves were resting on the duffle bag at his feet. She was wearing a light satiny sheer blue colored tunic with iridescent highlights and brown leather high-heal boots. As Ty drew close to them, he could see the Chief’s eyes were grey and hers were aquamarine blue.
  “Hi Chief,” said Ty as he stopped in front of them.
  The chief, smiled at him and motioned at the woman with his free hand. “Ty, this is my wife, Dottie.” He looked into Dottie’s eyes and said with a smile, “Dots, this is the officer I told you about. The one who stopped the missile attacks.” Her smile lit up enough to illuminate the room. She dropped his hand and reached to give Ty a hug. Instinctively, he returned it. A faint rose and lilac scented perfume washed over him as she did.
  She whispered into his ear, “Thanks for saving us all, especially my Jim.” She pulled away from him giving him another warm smile. She grabbed his hands with hers and gave them a gentle squeeze before taking the Chief’s hand again.
  “You’re welcome, I ah…” stammered Ty.
  Toni laughed softly. “See what I meant, Ty?”
  Ty glanced at Toni. She was still wearing the jeans and scoop necked blouse she’d worn when they’d met in Tillies several hours earlier.
  In the light of the passenger waiting area of the docking port, Ty could see her hair was actually a dark walnut color. He was wasn’t too surprised to see her hair matched her eyes. She was shorter than she seemed on the ship, her head barely came up to his eyes. She also had the face and figure which would never need the help of a pheromone to get men aroused. What surprised him most was how young she looked. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was about her, but she exuded a vivacious energy.
He conceded her point with a friendly nod. Ty glanced at her and at Dottie then the chief. “Hey, I have an idea, Mrs. Sanborn…”
  “Call me Dots please,” she answered.
  “Dots?” asked Ty questioningly.
  She gave a soft laugh. “My name is Dorothea Annabella Lynn. It’s such a stuffy mouthful, I prefer being called ‘Dots’ by my friends.”
  “Very well, Dots. As owner of this fine vessel we’re about to embark on, it would be my pleasure to have you come along with us to Nova Terra. After we’re dropped off, Toni can have you back in a day.” He gestured at Toni invitingly who first looked surprised then pleased with the offer.
“It would be great fun. We can keep each other company on the return trip,” offered Toni.
  Jim turned to her, “Come on Dots, it’s just a day. The store will wait.”
  She gave him a serious look, but his plaintive expression melted her resolve. The adoring look in her eyes as she looked at the Chief touched Ty. She relaxed a bit then relented. “I guess.” A twinkle came to her eyes. “Sure, why not! That’s a well trained mess down there in the shop. It’ll stay right where I left it.” Everyone laughed.
  A mischievous twinkle lit up Toni’s eyes. “Gotta warn ya Dots, the cabin configuration is rather interesting.” Ty immediately thought of the scent and the pheromones and how hard he had to fight its effect to not see Toni as a sex object. He briefly wondered what it would be like to not have to resist its effect and let his desires for his wife Amanda to run unchecked.
  “Oh?” The older woman gave her a concerned look but seemed mollified by Toni’s smile.
  “You’ll see what I mean in a moment. Let’s get aboard. We’re burning time.”
  Ty said, “Lead on.” Toni headed for the portal and tapped a series of numbers in a keypad. The inner door opened revealing the tube to the ship. While Ty knew what to expect when the fragrance and the pheromones hit him, he still found it hard to stay focused. He saw Toni was concentrating too. The Chief and Dots had completely different but reactions Ty expected. The chief dropped his duffel at the hatch and turned to look at Dots, desire written all over his face. She returned the look with an equally intense desire. Soon they were in a close embrace, swaying slowly, rhythmically side to side. Ty felt more than a little pang of jealousy as he watched the chief’s hands slowly, sensuously caress Dot’s thighs, hips and waist.
  Dots spoke with a dreamy voice, “Toni, I love this. You guys lock the door. We’ll be fine back here.” Ty and Toni quickly got into the flight deck. The hatch slid closed but not before the sound of Dottie giggling with delicious delight echoed through the small cabin.
  Ty and Toni both sat still for a moment grinning at each other, trying to clear their heads of the pheromone’s effect. Toni finally spoke, “Well, that didn’t take long!”
  Still grinning, Ty shook his head no, “It sure didn’t.”
  “Envious?” asked Toni. She gave him a teasing glance.
  Ty shook his head no again. “Well, maybe.” He paused as she gave him a stern, disbelieving look. ”OK, a lot,” he admitted.
  Toni gave a wistful sigh. ”Maybe I’ll try that on my honeymoon. Anyway, let’s let them have their fun. I think they’ll be pretty occupied for the trip.”
  Ty laughed. “I suppose they will.”
  Toni reached in front of him across the console and tapped a couple of commands on the main screen in front of Ty. A checklist appeared on the screen. “Why don’t you help with the preflight, OK? It’ll keep us both preoccupied.”
  He pursed his lips and nodded with a faint smile. He had to concentrate to keep from thinking about being in the other cabin with Amanda and appreciated the distraction. “Sure. Thanks,” he said at last.

Hi Everyone,

The next episode of the series is now live in the Amazon book store as a kindle ebook. It's name is: Commander. Here's a link

I've also submitted an omnibus containing episodes one and two. It's named: A Call to Arms. Here's the link to it

Right now, Pariahs, Episode One is free in Amazon Friday and Saturday this week.

I'm editing episode three, First Blood right now. I will be posting chapters from it in the next few days.

The Stilettos

ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 8 HOURS 39 MINUTES 
  Thirty-seconds before the Adventurer could jump, the stilettos arrived. They’d traveled 1.8 million kilometers in eighteen minutes with an average velocity 166 kilometers per second. The fire-control systems of the fourteen unmodified missiles concluded they could not engage and sailed on behind the Adventurer. The two modified missiles concluded they could intercept the fleeing Adventurer and fired their terminal engagement systems.  
  The two EMP blasts hit the Adventurer in quick succession. Breakers on the few circuits that they had left on popped and reset causing the systems to reset or restart. Throughout the ship, outside the shielded engineering compartment, electricity arced across exposed metal surfaces causing showers of sparks and arcing as the electricity generated by the burst dissipated throughout the ship. Air in the other spaces ionized leaving a tangy scent of ozone. Most of the ship was so severely damaged already, the effects of the bursts were spent without further ill effects on the ship.

ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 8 HOURS 39 MINUTES 
  “Ty, what was that?” Anderson asked. 
  “The terminal charges of two stilettos. We need to go NOW,” he shouted. “Chief, I don’t know how they did that, but we gotta move hard.” 
  Her hands flew over her console. “You’ve got it,” she shouted back at him. 
  Ty grabbed the flight stick and commanded a one-second level two push out of the engines. The Adventurer surged forward for an instant. He switched to the jump controller, saw that the Beta Hydri was centered in the jump targeting reticle and squeezed the jump trigger. 
  The two penetrators sailed harmlessly behind where the ship had been.


THE AATARR: T-PLUS 8 HOURS 40 MINUTES
  The timer indicating when the missiles should have attacked the Adventurer counted to zero. There were no explosions. The commander deflated then turned to the tactician and asked, “It must have jumped even with those modified missiles. Did we get a Remora notification of a jump?”
  The man’s face at first shook no. Then his face scrunched up in a frown as he stared intently at the displays. “It’s inconclusive sir. Remora sent no jump data from the Adventurer.”
  “What!?”
  The tactician held up a hand to forestall any other comment, ”Yet, there has been a gravity field discontinuity event that indicates they did jump.”
  The commander glanced sharply at the tactician, who replied with a startled shrug. The commander’s neck muscles rippled as he clenched his jaw and fists in an effort to come to terms with the information.
  “This changes things doesn’t it,” the tactician said.
  The commander let out a large sigh, “Most profoundly, I must send a message to the fleet immediately that Republic warships can now jump without Remora knowing about it.”
  He turned to go to his stateroom, completely lost in thought as he began mentally composing a message to fleet command.

IMPERIAL PALACE: T-PLUS 9 HOURS
  The Emperor sat as still as if death had taken him, staring at the display of the last still image they had of the fleeing the Republic ship. No one else in the room dared move or speak as he sat staring at it. He sat at the head of the table showing more emotion than he’d shown in years. His cheeks were flushed, spasmodically he rapped the table with his knuckles. Anger smoldered in his eyes. The rest of the people sat motionless around the table fearing even to breath as they waited for him, or Ramon, to do or say something.
  Ramon himself was outwardly impassive, but inwardly he smoldered too. The escaped ship had caused the death of his latest play thing, the tantalizingly blue-eyed, blue haired Lucretia Alvarando. No one had taken anything from him like that. He was determined to get revenge. The incompetent Jellis had insisted that she be sent out to make the final installations. He’d pay too. Worst of all, now, he’d have to find someone else.
  They all looked in disbelief with their gaze switching from display screen on the wall opposite the Emperor which showed the Adventurer before it jumped away and the order of battle display, with red lines through eleven ships and a yellow line through one denoting the losses and crippled ships respectively. They were mute testimony to the disaster that had played out in real-time before their very eyes. Compounding the disaster was the message from the Aatarr on station in the Sol system warning them of the ship’s ability to jump without triggering a Remora notification.
  Trays of cold, partially eaten and uneaten meals were scattered on the table. They sat with bloodshot eyes and waited.
  The Emperor spoke, “All of you out, except Mr. Mellendes.”
  There were several stifled gasps around the table. The Fleet Admirals looked impassively at each other not daring to betray what they were thinking and not daring to get involved in the exchange between the Emperor and his chief assistant.
  Ramon stood without saying a word as the rest stood and filed out of the room.
  “Yes, Your Highness,” Ramon answered with polished servility after they’d left.
  The Emperor continued, “How do you explain what has happened?”
  Ramon saw his opening. He paused a moment to organize his thoughts and desired outcomes. Then he spoke, “There were three breakdowns and two factors your highness. The first breakdown; our intelligence services underestimated the Adventurer’s resilience to this upgrade of Remora. Testing on the captured asset was clearly inadequate. I fear your Highness, we may need to delay deploying of version two of Remora until we conduct further tests. The second; the commanders of the various vessels involved were lax in their combat discipline in dealing with the Adventurer. The third; the commanders were also lax in utilizing data from Remora.”
  “And the factors?”
  “The commander of this Adventurer was one step ahead of our ships’ commanders throughout the engagement, which was in no small measure now attributable to the fact that he could jump without Remora knowing about it.”
  “And your corrective actions, Mr. Mellendes?”
  “The Ministers of Intelligence and Technology will be called to account for their failures today. The commanders of the ships have paid for their mistakes already. Admiral Bedring’s successor will address the training oversight that has been allowed to occur. We must notify the fleet that this has occurred and that they need to adjust mission plans and operational tempo accordingly.”
  The Emperor nodded. Ramon smiled inwardly, three competitor’s for the Emperor’s ear removed in one action. He felt that despite the losses of ships and men, it was a good day after all. The Emperor held up a hand to keep the man in his place. “I have one more assignment for you.”
  “Yes, your Highness.”
  “Negate this commander who did this today. Find out how this was done. I do not see how the fleet would deploy this capability to an obscure escort vessel first. Contain the spread of this information. Use our resources in the Republic to discredit him where possible or lead us to him if necessary and remove him. It must be done quickly. If the rest of the fleet learns what he knows… Understood? This is a personal assignment I give you.”
  The man bowed obsequiously. He focused his anger at the unknown commander and began to contemplate ways to get to him.
  He answered the Emperor, “My honor sire, is to do your bidding in this matter.”a

The Adventurer Again

ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 8 HOURS 20 MINUTES
  On the Adventurer, Ty watched the clock tick slowly by. This was the longest twenty minutes he’d ever lived through. A tickle of a thought began to brew in the back of his mind. 
  “Anderson, I’m going to look back at that Aatarr.” 
  “Ok, passive only. Keep it short. It’s on your main panel.” 
  Ty powered up the main panel. He punched in the coordinates for where the Aatarr would be. Only stars were visible. The drive flare was gone. He pondered the information and set the sensor to spread spectrum viewing to merge information not only from visible light, but from deep into the infrared and ultra-violet ends of the light spectrum. A bright dot appeared on the screen. Ty was certain it was the Aatarr and he could tell it had broken off the pursuit. He focused in on the dot and zoomed the magnification. A small cloud of sixteen flecks of barely discernible light appeared. They were on a different trajectory than the Aatarr. 
  “Missiles… stiletto’s. They’re the only ones that have a chance of getting us,” Ty said out loud.  
  Anderson came over to look at the screen. “How much of a risk are they to us?” 
  “You know what happens if they do hit us since we’ve been hit twice by them already. In our shape, another direct hit from just one will take us out.” 
  “Yikes.” 
  “Yeah, it’s a desperation shot though. That Aatarr is apparently at his limit on his engine otherwise he’d still be burning towards us. You can see how he’s broken off the pursuit.” Ty pointed at the dot that was the large ship. “See how it’s starting to move off to the left here.” 
  “What about the missiles?” 
  “What we’ve seen of stilettos is they are incredibly fast, but once the motor finishes, they’re purely ballistic weapons. Their typical flight profile however is burn, coast, burn to close, and then they orient towards the ship and fire a self-shaping penetrator at the target ship. Some of the later versions use the EMP burst that shapes the penetrator to disrupt the shields too. Nasty stuff.” 
  “How nasty?” 
  “It was such a stiletto that took out the Devonshire last month.” 
  “Ouch! A stiletto did her in?” Anderson was incredulous. 
  Ty nodded in assent. ”Yeah, she had four centimeters of energy-reinforced, ablative-doped, spun-fiber armor. Older stilettos just bounce off of the stuff, but the EMP burst weakened the reinforcement enough that the penetrator made it through the armor at nearly full speed. Our best guess is that it ruptured a containment bottle as it banged around inside the ship. By comparison, we have three millimeters of energy reinforced nano-fiber armor. If we had our energy reinforcement working, it would still get through, but it wouldn’t have enough energy to get this far into the interior of the ship.” 
  “Yeah, but we don’t have the hull energy.” 
  “It doesn’t matter really, they’re coming towards us at nearly ten percent light just to get to us. Remember that first Aatrix we took out?” 
  She nodded.  
  “That’s what will happen to us if even one penetrator touches the ship.” 
  “Ever the proverbial fountain of good news,” she said with a slight smile. 
  “Right.” 
  “So what can we do?” asked Anderson. 
  “It’s a sure thing they’ve spread those missiles out to try and cover the entire section of the trajectory where we’ll jump. To be perfectly safe, we need to change our velocity enough to move our jump point outside of that area.” 
  “How much?” 
  Ty paused a moment to do the calculation in his head, “Probably about fourteen seconds of a level one push against Jupiter from the gravity engine, is the least I’d do.” 
  Anderson paused as she did some calculations of her own in her head.  
  Ty interrupted her by adding, “The longer we delay, the greater the velocity change will need to be to get us out of harm’s way. If we wait until the terminal attack of those missiles, we’ll need to make a level three or four push.”  
  “You made your point there. What other options do we have?” 
  “Jump now or before the penetrators hit us. As it is, we’re…,” he glanced at a chronometer that was counting down to the jump point, “we’re fifteen minutes and a few seconds from jumping.” 
  “How about those missiles, have a guess on their ETA?” 
  “The commander out there knows we’re trying to get to Beta Hydri. He also knows our trajectory. So he knows where to aim the missiles because the arc of the trajectory that actually points at Beta Hydri is pretty short… maybe a hundred-fifty clicks or so long. So, his aiming solution is simple. With fifteen missiles that’s about one per ten click stretch. Those shards from the warhead are wicked fast. If they get there a couple of seconds before we do, we’ll be lucky if no more than three missiles are close enough to engage us.” 
  “Well, he fired them so he must be pretty confident they will.” 
  “I’m not so sure. He shot nearly his full complement of missiles in one volley.” 
  Anderson interrupted him, “How do you know that? How do you know all this stuff about the Alliance weaponry?” 
  Ty paused and gave her a strained look before he continued, “I’m a tactician.” He offered no further explanation. 
  “Is that all? Do they all know this stuff?” 
  “The good ones do. The only way I can anticipate what the Alliance will do is if I know what they can do.” He emphasized the “can”. “We have pretty good intelligence on their weapons. They’ve shot enough of them at us lately.” 
  “That’s for sure, you were saying?” 
  Ty picked up his comment as if nothing had happened.  
  “He broke off pursuit. My hunch is he’s got a hurt ship, yet he’s desperate to get us. The Alliance rewards failure brutally and we handed them their heads on a platter today. He knows these missiles are his best chance to get us and he’s not too confident that they will. He’s rolling the dice on at least one of them getting to us before we jump.” 
  “What do you think?” 
  “I’d know if I could get a sensor sweep. As it is, my guess is he’s betting we can’t make any course correction and he spread them all along the jump arc.” 
  “Hence, jumping early is our only real escape option?” 
  “No, changing velocity now is. It takes less energy, but there’s still a risk if we don’t make a big enough change. Our velocity change needs to be a big change, like a level two push. Anything less and we may still be in range of some of those missiles. Everyone of them that can fire, will fire if they detect they have a firing solution. Then it’s up to the accuracy of the aiming gun.” 
  “How good is that?” 
  “That’s the stilettos’ one weakness, it’s so-so. A focused EMP burst shapes and drives the penetrator. The strength of the stiletto is it gets right up in your face before it fires. Remember the burn-cruise-burn. That last burn is a fine point aiming or a sprint to close firing maneuver. So they didn’t have to make it really accurate.” 
  “And you think they had to use that secondary burn engine to even make the intercept?” 
  “I’m certain of it.” 
  “You betting the survival of this ship on that assessment?” 
  Ty paused before answering, “Yes”. 
  “If you’re wrong?” She gave him a look.  
  He couldn’t tell if it was angry or just joking. His answer was flat and matter of fact. “Then we’ll die.” 
  “Then I hope you’re right one more time.” 
  Ty chuckled before answering. “Me, too,” is all he said. “I’m programming a twenty-second level one push to get us out of that corridor.” 
  She made the computation in her head. “That’s about fifteen minutes of containment power then,” she said. 
  “I can live with that,” said Ty. He keyed in the course change and committed the change. The drive came to life for twenty seconds as it pushed them forward. 
  The two modified stilettos observed the course change, computed new intercept courses and fired their remaining engagement motor.

The Aatarr

ALLIANCE BATTLESHIP “AATARR” CLASS: T-PLUS 8 HOURS
  Two million kilometers away the Aatarr continued to bear down on the ship. The commander of the vessel looked at the readout on his main drives. They were on the verge of failing, due to being pushed so hard in their attempt to capture the fleeing vessel. He weighed his options carefully. If they broke off the pursuit and saved the engines and his crew, he knew he’d likely pay for the choice with his life. The Jackal did not care about people or machines, only the accomplishment of the mission. Those who failed, paid dearly. It was that simple. Yet, if he continued the pursuit, he’d condemn himself and his crew to death with the failure of the main drives. As it was, he wasn’t sure they’d survive now. He hoped a long shot would suffice. 
  “Tactical, status of the fleeing Adventurer?” 
  “Sir, the vessel continues in a ballistic trajectory away from the fifth planet. It has not so much as made a single minor course correction in the past hour after making the trajectory change, sir. At our present course, we will be in range within twenty-five minutes.” 
  He walked over to the officer’s station. “You say, it hasn’t maneuvered at all?” 
  “Not a bit, sir. As near as I can tell, their main generator is in running at a high level since we transitioned into this system. Yet, they are completely silent in their emissions, sir.” 
  “So she was hurt badly?” 
  “Yes, if I were to guess, their power busses are damaged forcing them to rely upon their reserves. By now those are so depleted, they don’t have the power to shoot back, nor drive their shields, nor maneuver. I doubt they can even power a sensor. If they have any power at all, they’re hoarding it to make a jump.” 
  “A jump? How?” 
  “Their trajectory, sir, it’s a perfect shot at Beta Hydri or will be in about twenty minutes.” 
  “Have we gotten anything on Remora yet to indicate an exact jump coordinate?” 
  The man shook his head, “Not yet. Normally, Republic vessels transmit within the hour before jumping. This one hasn’t. But we can still identify where they must jump to hit the Beta Hydri system.” 
  “When will they be aligned to jump?” 
  The man studied his display for a moment. He keyed some data in and looked at the results. 
  “Beta Hydri is fairly close, so they have a fair amount of leeway in their jump zone.” 
  “I don’t need the lecture.” He smiled reprovingly as he spoke. 
  “Sorry, sir, they have about a ten second jump window. They’ll enter the window in about twenty minutes.” 
  “So, twenty minutes to cross two em-clicks?” 
  “Right, at this range, energy weapons will be too dispersed to be effective.” 
  “But a fast solid…” 
  “Yes, the Stiletto.” 
  “Can it reach them in that time?” 
  The commander nodded as he assimilated the data. He thoughtfully stroked the tip of his beard. The Adventurer’s condition was poor consolation for the vessels that had been crippled or destroyed fighting her. He’d never heard of a warship used like this. He marveled that a small fleet escort bested so many capital ships. He marveled even more that such a consummate warrior had been relegated to such a menial ship. He held any further thoughts along that line in check. That commander, no matter how gifted, was a member of the Republic and therefor an enemy of the Alliance.  
  “When’s the latest we can engage the Adventurer with Stilettos?” 
  Ker’rhoam glanced up at him from his station. He pursed his lips as he thought for a moment. A faint grin flashed across his face. He looked down and typed vigorously into a keypad for a moment. His brow furrowed in concentration. Then a smile appeared in his face. 
  “If the main drive holds up, we can launch in three minutes. Using its engagement drive as a booster, a Stiletto will then get to the Adventurer just before it jumps; however, we’ll only have terminal aiming of the penetrator so they could easily evade it.” 
  “True, but I’m willing to bet they don’t have the power to do it. Prepare a volley of… how many do we have?” 
  “Twenty, sir” 
  “This commander has done the unexpected repeatedly today. I think he knows what he thinks we’ll do, so launch fourteen of them configured as I’ve said. Stack the engagement drives of the other six into two missiles, so each of the last two have three engagement drives.” 
  “You want to have two missiles with the ability to respond to a course change on his part?” 
  “Yes, the extra engagement drives will be needed for the extra mass, but it should leave them with enough maneuvering capability to catch anything except a major velocity change.” 
  The old tactician nodded his head in agreement. 
  “Then launch all of them as soon as we can. Reprogram them for this different mission profile and then set them for a proximity burst, spread for maximum coverage of the Adventurer’s jump corridor.” 
  “Yes, sir,” he answered and repeated the order before leaving. 
  The orders were given. The minutes ticked by. The commander watched the number of ready missiles count up on the status panel. Ten-seconds before the time ran out, he gave the fire command.  
  “Weapons, fire when ready on the count.”  
  The remaining seconds ticked down. 
  The ship trembled slightly as sixteen missiles volleyed away from her. The flares of their drives showed as a cloud of rapidly fading stars on the display. Then, as their motors burned out, the stars winked out. The engagement drive of each missile flared for a moment and then all of them were dark. 
  “Helm, stand down from the pursuit. Engineering, you may begin repairs on the main drive.”

Escape from Mars

ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 8 HOURS 
  Waiting, not able to do anything to help was the hardest part of the ordeal so far. Ty knew at this point, there was nothing more he could do to help. He was forced to silently watch as Anderson’s engineers continued to shut down whatever circuit and system they could to reduce the power bleeding away from the containment batteries. 
  He thought also of the team of engineers working in the deck beneath them trying to repair the severed main power buss. There had been two. Anderson was certain they could repair it given time. Once repaired they would have the full output of their main generators. But that was at best an hour away. 
  In the mean time, they worked by the light of emergency light panels since they didn’t draw power from the power cells. It was unusual to have such subdued lighting in the engineering space. Like everything that happened up to now, what he thought would happen hadn’t and what he never thought would happen, did. Ty kept part of his attention focused on the readout that plotted the current and projected power level of the power packs. The power had unexpectedly fluctuated and dropped below the line McPherson had made. His team was working trying to conserve enough power for them to make the jump. 
  Unlike the freighters that had jumped, the Adventurer with its military grade jump targeting system could safely make a jump much closer to a star. But for the time, they still had to wait. 
  Ty suppressed the urge to say something, knowing full well that everything that could be done, Anderson was doing. Ty turned back to the other nemesis pursuing the Adventurer, the last Aatarr battleship. According to the last reading he’d taken, the gargantuan ship was now thirty minutes from being in effective firing range of its primary directed energy weapons. 
  Before today, he would not have worried about the ship because they would normally be long gone before it arrived. But after today, he dared not allow himself the luxury of thinking they were out of danger. He didn’t know how much more the Aatarr had to give with its engines. The drive flare of its electric drive was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye from the Adventurer. From his perspective, it shown like a fingernail sized feathery wisp of light aimed above the solar ecliptic pointing away from the sun. He was in awe of the amount of energy it represented. 
  “Sir?” Anderson called out to him. She was feeling better and had resumed her post. 
  “Yes, chief,” he replied automatically. 
  “I’m suggesting we shut off gravity everywhere but where McPherson is working and in the infirmary. It’ll save us several kilowatts of power.” 
  “Sure. Do it,” he said. 
  “Ok, hang on.” 
  Nothing happened. He heard some muttered obscenities. 
  “What happened, Chief?” 
  “A lot of the gravity grid is not responding due to battle damage. About half the ship is shut down and the switching circuitry just failed. We can’t get the rest shut down soon enough to help out.” 
  “Is it working anywhere else besides here, that’s still inhabitable?” 
  “Charlie deck, above us. And the infirmary on Echo deck.” 
  He nodded his head in approval. Ty glanced at the power display, the level of power bleeding out of the batteries dropped a little. Knowing what it meant, he wished it were at zero. 
  “It has reduced the amount of power bleeding from the batteries. I’ll take it. I am going to need to look at that Aatarr soon. We need to know what he’s up to.” 
  She came over to his station. “I’m making a small change in the charts here,” she said. She entered a few changes into the chart properties. When she finished, the remaining power chart looked like a stack of thin rectangles. 
  “Each segment here,” she said as she pointed to the chart, “represents fifteen minutes of power to run the containment fields. Jumping is going to bring this graph down to here.” She pointed at the place on the chart showing about four hours of power would be left after the jump. “That’s all the reserve you have until we get the buss fixed.” 
  Ty nodded and Anderson walked back to her station. Twenty minutes and we’re out of this nightmare he thought. He smiled at the hope that they’d be gone ten minutes before the Aatarr could shoot at him.

Defeating the Aatarr

ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 1 HOUR
  Eleven hours later, the Adventurer caught up to the Dragon. Ty maneuvered the Adventurer to close formation with the fighter.
  “Dragon, Command,” Ty called.
  There was no answer.
  Ty repeated the call. “Dragon, Command, Vince?”
  “Dragon,” Vince finally answered. Ty tried to bring up telemetry from the fighter but there was no signal.
  “SitRep Vince.”
  “Ty? Took you guys long enough to get here. My sitrep is that I’m not good my friend. Got hit by a couple of railgun frags. Left shoulder is shot up. Got my suit patched though, so it’s not leaking, but I still am. Canopy and most of instrument cluster is shot away. Drive module took a hit. Main data leads and power busses are shot away, but the ship has switched to alternates. I’ve got engines and life support. Power cell is at seventy percent. I have a Plasma-Arc hung on the rail. It won’t launch.”
  “Yeah, we decided to go for a stroll around the neighborhood while Anderson tried to put some of our now, not so shiny, ship back together. Looks like your telemetry lines are down too. We’re not getting anything from you.”
  “Nah, works fine. I cannibalized the telemetry lines to restore data connection to the drive module. It’s my turn now, Command. How’s the ship? She looks pretty beat up from out here.”
  Ty thought for a second before answering. “We’re going to be delayed a bit getting the ship ready for picket duty at Beta Hydri.”
  “A bit, eh?”
  “The fantail bay is shot up pretty bad. We’re out of ammo ourselves. Our power system’s been hammered pretty hard too. Plus, our high-link antennas are gone. No way to phone this one in any more.”
  “Can we send through Mars Station?”
  “Not a chance, that Aatarr vaporized it while we were getting back here. Two hundred civilian scientists and families lived there, all are dead.”
  He could see the Alliance coming after him and his ship because of what he’d done to them today, but attacking a militarily insignificant science station made no sense. As much as anything, he wanted to teach the commander of the Aatarr a lesson just for that.
  “You know, for your first day on the job as captain you sure trashed your shiny new ship,”
  Ty chuckled. He could hear Vince give a painful chuckle too.
  “Yeah, a pukin’ noob for sure.”
  “Got that right. So what’s next boss?”
  Ty shook his head. He looked over the ship status display. There were hardly any green lights showing and a lot of red and yellow lights. His map of the ship showed the aft third of the ship was still depressurized due to battle damage.
  “We gotta get that Aatarr. But for the life of me, I don’t know what with, spit maybe?” Ty glanced at the mission clock over the display. The convoy ships were half-way through their deceleration maneuvers now. That’s where he would have gone instead of blasting a science station to plasma. There was a long moment of silence between them.
  “I got another hair brained idea, Ty.”
  “Sure, Vince, what?”
  “Throw a rock at it, just like we did with the rail gun slugs on the first Aatrixx.”
  “I’m out of slugs, Vince. Plus you can see the bay better than me. We can’t hold anything in there anymore.”
  “Wrong. I got me a twenty ton boulder right now.”
  Ty scrunched his face in concentration as he digested Vince’s words. The realization and import of his words registered. He shook his head no.
  “Not gonna happen, Vince. There has to be another way. I gotta get you home, too.”
  “I’m not as good as you are at the tactics thing, but I can tell that all you have in your hand is a pair and the house is holding a straight flush. I’m giving you an ace in the hole, Ty, so you can get everyone else home.”
  Ty glanced around the engineering room. Aside from the noises of the generator and machinery, all conversations had stopped. Everyone was making a point to not look at him, but he knew they were all listening. Ty nodded to himself and then he shook his head.
  Ty’s next words tore at him more than when he turned down the promotion, “Ok, you win this one, Vince.”
  “I still get the patent, Ok?”
  Ty chuckled and shook his head at the comment. “I’ll make sure your wife and kids get all the money.”
  “Thanks, Ty. You do that. Now, how do we do this?”
  Ty started to lay out the attack he had in mind. They waited until the Aatarr was on approach to Jupiter and about ready to decelerate into orbit around the planet.
  Vince flew the Dragon into the shattered bay and then the Ops team chained the fighter to the wrecked cradle. Next the Adventurer jumped across the solar system to make the course changes she needed to make iy far enough from the Aatarr so that when she jumped back, they wouldn’t know until she jumped, in which direction she’d be coming from.
  Once they made the jump, the crew in the bay removed the chains and pushed the fighter out by hand. Once clear of the bay, Vince lined up the Dragon behind the Adventurer and applied maximum power to his drive. The Adventurer, with its drive slaved to the Dragon kept pace in front of him. With nothing to serve as a point of reference, the two ships appeared to be motionless in space. The only indicator he had of anything changing was the steady drop in available power as the drive pushed the ship forward. He kept his attention focused on the mangled bay in front of him. He saw several suited figures in the bay. He couldn’t tell who they were, but he suspected they were his ops crew. One of them held up his hand to his helmet and then nodded. He extended the hand and blinked the flashlight at him. Two white flashes. It was the signal to go. In unison all of the suited figures in the bay stood at attention and saluted. They held it until Vance waved with his right hand. It was the best he could do. They then stood at attention as the Adventurer rotated around so it was moving backwards towards the Aatarr.
  It wasn’t long now. Memories of being with his family flooded his mind. Especially moments when he was with his wife. He could see flashes of light silhouette the Adventurer. She was taking laser fire from the Aatarr. Then pieces of debris came flying up over the ship and past him. He forced the thoughts out of his mind and focused on peering forward. He grasped the flight control grip and waited.
  The Adventurer’s thrusters fired white hot as they shoved her up and to his left. Directly ahead of him was a white dot. The Adventurer disappeared. Time slowed down for him. The distance indicator which till now had been counting down so fast he could barely keep track of the thousand digits, now seemed to be running slow enough that he could keep track of the tens. The ship soon turned to a speck and then took its familiar flattened elliptical shape. It began to swell quickly in size. He could see he was headed for the starboard side of the ship and that he was going to hit forward of where he wanted. He fired the starboard thrusters to push his trajectory to the left and at the flaring drive nozzles of the main engines.
  Vince and the Dragon fighter flew into the drive plume of the engine. Both man and machine were vaporized instantly and lost nearly a third of their velocity before striking the ship between its two primary nozzles. The impact velocity was still in the hundreds of miles per second. The massive ship shuddered and pitched over from the impact. Chunks of its hull the size of a large house flew away from the impact point. Secondary explosions blew the drive bells apart and sideways from the stricken ship. They pirouetted slowly away as debris scattered in a cloud around it. After a couple of minutes, thrusters began firing to bring the tumbling under control.
  In its final act before plunging into Jupiter, the Aatarr fired at the convoy vessels that were now in the middle of their turn around the planet. She scored direct hits on two freighters which converted them into expanding balls of plasma. Then she plunged into the planet’s atmosphere. From the convoy’s vantage point, the ship flared into a fiery point of light that burned steady for an instant, sputtered and then blossomed into a titanic explosion. A plume of gas and plasma, many times the size of the Earth was ejected from the planet only to fall back, most of it hours later.
  On board the Adventurer, they had little time to celebrate. Using the wrecked fantail bay as a shield of sorts had worked in limiting damage from laser shots to just the aft section of the ship, but the Adventurer had taken a pounding by the Aatarr’s lasers. While the Aatarr plunged into Jupiter, the Adventurer’s surviving crew worked feverishly to repairing internal bulkheads, gathering up injured and killed crewmen and repairing damaged systems.
  For a while Ty thought it was touch and go. Most of the time, he could only stand by and watch as McPherson and Williams directed the repair and damage control teams.
  After a couple of hours of intense work, McPherson motioned to Ty to join him at his engineering panel.
  “Just wanted to let you know where we’re at, sir. I think we got a handle on things now.”
  “Sure.”
  “Our biggest issue is power, both busses are either damaged or destroyed. Power cell three is a goner, two is severely damaged, and one is damaged but less so. The generator is running out of control and without the busses, of no help to us,” he said.
  “Do we have enough power to make the jump?” asked Ty.
  The man gazed at the power cell status and the navigation display before answering.
  “That’s what I was getting to, sir. We’ve got enough juice in the power cells to line the ship up for a jump, if we turn around Jupiter, but once we do, we don’t have any to make the jump.”
  “What about using power from the containment batteries?”
  “That’s a problem, sir, that means hot-wiring the batteries into the ship’s power grid which is risky enough even when the ship is in good shape. Additionally, once connected, the internal shorts in the power cells will drain power from the batteries too.”
  An alert sounded. “Alert: Alliance transition event detected.”
  Ty started repeating along with it, “At radial two seven seven, point seven AU from solar center. Ship detected…” he paused while the controller concluded with the word, “Aatarr”.
  Ty was ready to scream in frustration until someone in the engineering room spoke up, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Stupid A-tards! They aint got sense enough to know when to quit, Adventurer owns this system!”
  Several others joined in the chorus of jeers. When they died down, Ty looked at McPherson then glanced down at Anderson. She was watching him. She gave a thumbs up.
  I am left with just spit now, Ty thought. He said out loud, “Ok guys, we ran the house today and they know it. I’m done playing with these clowns for now. Let’s concentrate on getting to Beta Hydri. Open bar and pizza on me at ‘Tillies after we pull in to the station.”
  More jeers and catcalls erupted.
  Ty felt better as turned back to McPherson. “Is there enough power in them to make the jump?” he asked.
  “Yes, but we’ll severely reduce the time they can power the containment fields around the generator core. You know what happens when they fail.”
  Ty nodded. “Anything else?” he asked.
  “Like that’s not enough right?”
  Both gave dry chuckles.
  “Besides power, our stabilization system is shot. We don’t have enough thrusters left to align the ship. All we have are the gyros and they require power to run.”
  “We’re going to need them until we jump.”
  McPherson nodded, then said, “I get that, sir. That’s what I was going to suggest. It means we’ll start tumbling once we jump.”
  “All right, connect the batteries to the power grid. Let me know when you’re done. Let’s plan on disconnecting the batteries after we jump. I’m going to program in our escape course.”
  The man nodded and walked back to his station, giving instructions to his team while Ty started working on a departure trajectory. As he did, he kept an eye on the sensor data about the Aatarr. It was burning for an approach to Jupiter. There was no doubt in his mind now as to who they were after.
  After a few minutes McPherson walked over to him. He had a marker in his hand. He called up a display that showed two bar charts. He then drew a line through the shorter one on the left.
  “This line, sir, represents minimum containment threshold. This chart,” he pointed at the power level indicator, “shows how much power we have until we fix the busses, this is all there is. When this drops below that,” he pointed at the line, “ we’ll have containment failure.” He made a small exploding gesture with his hands as he did. “This other bar chart on the right, shows how much power we’re pulling out of the containment batteries. The shorter it is the better. You’ve got the power now. I’m taking a team with me to try and repair one of the main busses. I’m leaving Cambridge here,” he pointed at a young crewman behind him. Cambridge turned and nodded then turned back to watch the panel. McPherson continued, ”to run the panel while we’re below working on the busses.” With that he walked back to his post.
  Ty walked back to his station and keyed in the program and hit the commit button. Yet again, the Adventurer headed for Jupiter. Once the drive finished, the power indicator was one-fourth of the way down. Now they waited as the ship took an hour to swing over the North pole of Jupiter and down the far side of it from the sun towards Beta Hydri.
  He slumped to the deck and sat at the base of the display, with his back towards the display, knees up and feet on the floor. He thought about the events of the past two days. He thought of Vince and what he’d tell his wife and children. He thought of the now two dozen people he’d have to tell about the death of a loved one. He thought of what they’d learned about the Alliance and their access to critical Republic technology. The next thing he knew, McPherson was tapping him gently on the shoulder with a gloved hand.
  “Skipper, were in the turn. The controller just started squawking something about that Aatarr out there.”
  Ty woke fully at that. He muttered a thanks and turned to the display. This second Aatarr was faster than the first one, but it was staying in the planetary plane and burning hard to get to Jupiter before the Adventurer jumped. His ship would finish turning, but not jump before the Aatarr arrived at Jupiter.
  “Go save your Aatrix. It has survivors. The Frescos’ probably have survivors too. Leave us alone,” he said to no one in particular.
  Time passed. The countdown timer to start the acceleration to jump speed hit zero. The drive thrummed again. It took longer to accelerate because he’d set it at a lower power setting to use as little battery as possible. The drive quit after ten minutes of running. The level of power available on the indicator now rested just above the line McPherson had made on the display. Now they just had to wait for Jupiter to finish pulling their trajectory into the jump trajectory for Beta Hydri.

The Second Aatrixx

ADVENTURER: T-MINUS 10 HOURS
  Forty minutes later, Ty said, “Sound general quarters. Code Blue.” As the klaxon reverberated through the ship, he donned his helmet. After he had his on, he checked with Anderson to make sure hers was properly seated. While he waited for the report to come back in that everyone was ready for Code Blue, he reviewed the attack program one final time.
  Anderson interrupted him, “Command, the ship is at general quarters. We’re ready to implement Code Blue.”
  He turned to her and nodded. She in turn gave the order over the engineering comm channel. In response Ty heard the pumps begin which pulled the atmosphere out of the living spaces of the ship. The din gradually decreased as the air pressure dropped. He felt the final faint pull at his legs as the last of the air was vented into space.
  “Command, Engineering.”
  Ty turned to Anderson, “Command,” he said.
  He could see her speak through the faceplate of her helmet. “We’re set.” She leaned into him allowing her helmet to touch his. He could hear her distorted voice as it conducted through the material of the helmets. “Let’s kick it. I wanna get out of here.”
  She stood back up and gave him a thumbs up. Then she walked over to the power management console. Ty took in a deep breath and thumbed the commit button on the main display. The engineering chamber brightened noticeably as the main generator ramped up to full power. He could feel the harmonics of the generator and drives coming up through his feet and legs from the deck beneath.
  The timer started counting down to zero from two minutes.
  The Adventurer leaped forward and began its streak across the Jovian system.
  “Command, Dragon.” The call came at exactly thirty-seconds.
  “Command.”
  “Launching.”
  “Good luck, Vince. Don’t get lost taking the Dragon out for a spin, Ok,” said Ty.
  Vince clicked his mike in response. The timer reached zero. The cradle latches released. The Dragon, weightless, floated free in the fantail bay. The Adventurer began to accelerate again, leaving the Dragon behind, inert and dark. As she pulled away from the fighter, the space suited ops team began man handling the loader mockup into place. This time they set it in the cradle oriented so the missiles it would carry pointed out the open bay door. While one team began loading live Heli-arc missiles on the mockup, another team man-handled the Jersey generator into place between the missiles. Once it was in place they rolled their test rack for the missile guidance system into place and a ladder between the missiles.
  As they continued their work, Ty watched them on a remote camera feed. After another thirty-seconds, he tapped the next button in the checklist he’d set up. The drive shut off and all power on the Adventurer shut off too. She was as close to being a hole in space as they could make her. Everyone on the ship hoped it would be enough. At Ty’s console, a new timer was counting down to zero again. Ty knew when this one reached zero a lot of things would start happening quickly.
  The Adventurer came around Jupiter. The planet bent the trajectory of the ship towards the remaining Aatrix. The timer reached zero.
  Ty tapped another button on the display. The power came back on and the Adventurer came back to life. They were now two minutes ahead of the Dragon that was still coming behind them, and less than a minute from the Aatrix. As sensor inputs started coming in, he saw that it was still in the same orbit. It was jinking now as he suspected it would be. The main projector began firing its pre-programmed sequence of shots. The first targets were the exposed sensor towers. While the shields attenuated most of the shots, enough still came through to overload the delicate receivers. Safety circuits shut them off in an effort to save them from being damaged.
  Alerts sounded in the Aartixx’ command center. Automatic fire control systems began to acquire the attacker but were delayed vital fractions of a second as the sensor protection systems kept the sensors covered. The Adventurer continued on. In quick succession the two dorsal rail gun turrets were destroyed in blinding flashes as the slugs slammed into them. Not all slugs hit the guns. Some hit the armored hull of the ship and plowed thirty foot long furrows in the hardened ceramic and concrete.
  Other slugs slammed into the base of the sensor towers. One tower was blown clear of the ship and tumbled away, trailing sparks and debris. The other tower fared better in that it stayed attached, but the data lines between the sensors and the rest of the ship were severed.
  The Aatrixx gave chase. Powerful thrusters pivoted the ship so it could follow the Adventurer as it passed over head and away. Its main engine fired up and began burning to catch the fleeing ship. Its powerful lasers began lashing out at it.
  Two shots hit the Adventurer’s shields in quick succession causing them to flash blinding white as they absorbed the energy of the shots. They failed after the second shot when the anodes overloaded and exploded in a shower of sparks. Arcs of electricity jumped from the interior components of the anode into the surrounding bulkheads. With the vacuum in the ship, there was no air to transfer any of the energy in the form of blast overpressure anywhere else in the ship, so all of it was absorbed by the Adventurer’s frame and deck plates. Several deck plates and frames surrounding the anodes buckled from the heat.
  Ty started the flight-controller’s jinking routine. He could feel himself get lighter then heavier or sway to the left or right as the ship moved around him. He had to hold on to the display panel and lock his feet to the floor to keep his position in front of the display. The Aatrixx’ lasers continued to fire. Another shot hit the side of the fantail bay with enough energy to blow away several skin panels and cut through a support frame. A fourth shot cleanly entered the open bay door and slammed into the forward bulkhead. It punched through the bulkhead and caused an explosion when an oxygen bottle was hit and failed. Every member of Red-five was killed instantly by shrapnel from the explosion where they waited in the Goat Locker.
  Ninety-seconds after they passed the Aatrix, Ty commanded the launch of the missiles from the fantail bay. All six fired at once, filling the bay with flame, hot gasses and debris as they did. The missiles quickly acquired the ship and altered course to intercept. With the dorsal rail gun turrets destroyed, the ship tried to engage the missiles with lasers. One by one the missiles guidance packages were destroyed by the lasers, but being little more than rods of tungsten with a motor strapped on to them, they bored in relentlessly. In a desperation move, the Aatrixx shut off its main engines so it could rotate the ship enough to bring the ventral rail guns to bear on the missiles. The aft turret, then the forward turret, began acquiring and firing on the missiles.
  The Aatrixx was in this nose up attitude when the Dragon came in range. Vince smiled and shook his head in awe.
  “You got it right again, Ty,” he said to himself. He squeezed the trigger on his control stick and volleyed all of the Plasma-Arcs. Number three failed to launch. It was on the same attach point where the other missile failed its check out. He scowled momentarily then watched with glee as all three missiles streaked into and detonated inside the drive bells of Aatrixx’ main propulsion system. Secondary explosions rippled through the aft section of the massive ship, throwing large chunks of hull and debris from the motors into space. The ship continued to pitch up and over as the Dragon passed over it. Vince fired the Dragon’s motor at full power and began aggressively jinking as it came into the field of fire of the ventral rail guns. A cloud of fragmenting pellets came swarming at the ship. Several hit the ship, one lanced through the cockpit, shattering Vince’s left shoulder and exploding the canopy. Another penetrated the drive compartment, severing power conduits and data lines as it did before exiting the ship. The drive motor quit and the Dragon tumbled away into the dark. Vince’s suit sealed itself, but could do nothing for his shoulder. His quick-check light, began to blink bright yellow and red.
  When Ty saw the explosions wracking the Aatrix, he commanded a jump. The Adventurer jumped across the solar system.
  “Command, Engineering,” said Anderson.
  “Command.”
  “We just jumped. We in the clear? We’ve got a lot of busted ship to fix.”
  Ty nodded, “We’re clear. Set code green through the ship.”
  “Roger that.”
  They repressurized the engineering space first. The air was cold. Ty checked the atmosphere light on his right wrist pad. It had gone from black to yellow to green as air was pumped back into the room. Once it turned green, he began to remove his helmet. The first thing he noticed was the smell of burned circuits. But the room held the air. They began working their way forward then aft from the engineering space. Decompression alarms and warnings sounded when they tried to restore the air in the aft section of the ship.
  “We took a real pounding back there from that Aatrix,” said Anderson.
  “You want to lead the repairs back there? We lost another team in the attack.”
  Anderson nodded, her face a mask of grim determination. “We’re runnin’ out of people to keep this ship going.”
  She turned to two technicians. “McPherson, Williams, grab your tool kits, a port-a-wall and some power lines. Then come with me, we got a ship to fix.” They kept their helmets on, but worked with their face plates open. After they left the engineering space and headed down the main deck, McPherson spoke up.
  “So, chief, what gives? We all thought this was just a convoy job. Guard a bunch of ships to Beta Hydri and we’re done.”
  “Well, there is a war on you know.”
  “But this?”
  She stopped and turned to the man. “Listen, I don’t know more than you on that. For some reason I can’t fathom, the Alliance is determined to push us out of this system. But right now, we got a job to do and that’s get this ship fixed.” They continued walking down the passageway.
  “I’m Ok with that, so what’s a tactician running the show from engineering anyway?”
  “Are you really that stupid? Or did you take a stupid pill this morning?”
  “No, chief I get the destruction of the command center. It’s just Weiss was always the skipper’s go-to guy when he needed a tactician, but not today. Just curious as to why he didn’t handle them LongBows from the git-go.”
  “I don’t know,” she lied. “I’m just glad it worked the way it did. Drucker would’ve had us dead a long time ago.” They all nodded at that.
  They came to the end of the passageway. Williams examined the controls on the door to the Goat Locker. The safety valves were all popped effectively sealing the door shut. They got to work. While working on restoring power and gravity to a berthing area on the port side of the ship, a junction panel exploded because of a shorted wire in the fantail bay when she tried enabling the circuit. She was thrown back across the room and into a rack that had fallen down during the earlier encounters. Her head hit the rack with such force it split the helmet in two. She dropped like a rock to the deck. Williams was with her in an instant.
  “Medical, Red-Eight,” he called on his suit radio.
  “Medical,” answered in his head set.
  “Medical emergency on Echo deck at frame one eighty.”
  “Medical copies, we’re on our way.”
  Two corpsmen came into the room in a few minutes with a collapsible litter. They lifted her carefully and strapped her into the litter before taking her away.
  Ty caught up to her in the infirmary.
  “You can’t get out of work this way, you know,” he said as he stood beside her bed.
  She smiled and shook her head, “I’ll trade you places, if you want.”
  Ty shook his head no.
  “Listen, Ty,” she continued. “I can’t be stuck down here in the infirmary. I’m already short manned with the loss of Red-Five. I gotta be in the engineering space to help keep an eye on things.”
  “I’ll agree to that, provided you stay on your back. You’ve had a couple of hard bangs already.”
  “Yeah, you can go to McPherson for anything power related. Williams is good for everything else.”
  Ty nodded, “Ok, I’m walking the ship to get a feel for things. The Ardie’s a tough old girl. She’s given better than she’s gotten today and is still standing.”
  Anderson smiled, “See you in a few then.”
  Ty patted her arm and left the room. It was filled with several other people. Most of them had severe burns and were sedated with IV lines. He worked his way past them all and headed up to the main deck. As he walked towards the aft of the ship, engineering called him. “Command, Engineering.”
  Ty recognized the voice as Svenson’s, the young woman who shot the LongBows.  That seemed like another time, yet it was just a day earlier.
  “Command.”
  “Sir, we’re passing Earth to starboard. We’re close enough to see a disk.”
  “Thanks Engineering.”
  He suited up and walked back to the fantail bay. Once in the airlock , he closed up his suit, waited for the locks to cycle, and then entered the bay. The bay’s lights were not working, yet it was filled with a soft white light. He walked past the empty cradle to the edge of the fantail deck. The earth was a white pearl, big enough he could almost cover it with his outstretched thumb. The moon was also visible behind the planet. Are you still there, he wondered?
  A profound calmness came over him and then in an instant, the earth was just a planet with oceans and land masses and clouds. He blinked and did a double take, but when he looked again, it was white as he’d always seen it.
  “Engineering, Command.”
  “Engineering.”
  “Anyone up there watching the earth?”
  “Yes, sir, just about everyone.”
  “Did any of you see anything unusual?”
  “Let me check.” He came back in a few moments. “No sir, just a plain white ball of light.”
  “Ok, thanks,” he said as he pondered on what he’d just seen. Who’s going to believe this, he thought to himself.

Attack Run

ADVENTURER: T-MINUS 11 HOURS
  Ty figured that before the Aatarr joined the two Aatrixx in orbit around Jupiter, he needed to deal with them first. They were in a low orbit around the planet. The period and altitude of their orbit over the planet would put them within a few thousand miles of the apex of the convoy’s trajectory around it. Their sensor returns showed the two ships were just a couple hundred miles apart in the same orbit and that neither was taking any defensive maneuvering.
  He knew from the outset of the attack that timing would be crucial. Using Junior to command the jumps would leave the Alliance ships in the dark about where the Adventurer was until the light from their location got to the ships. But that was just a few minutes. In that time, he had to jump in system, which was easy enough and then accelerate directly at either of the Aatrixx to maximum subliminal speed, a little more than twenty percent of light.
  Ty began to program the attack run into the flight control and fire control systems. Lastly, he entered the jump parameters into Junior. After reviewing the information, he sounded General Quarters again. It was time. The attack run would take all of twenty-six seconds to execute. He commanded the jump.
  T-Minus twenty-six seconds… The Adventurer jumped and began her run at the Aatrixx from nearly a million miles away. They were eight light seconds from Aatrix. Ty remembered as the ship began to accelerate all the previous times he’d done this in a simulator against the software doppelgänger of the ship he was now approaching. He wondered how close reality would be to what he’d practiced. He could tell from the sound of the generator that it was, for the first time in a long time, being called upon to put out close to its full combat rated output.
  At T-Minus Twenty-Three seconds, the Adventurer had accelerated to ten percent of light speed.
  At T-Minus Nineteen-seconds, light from the jump reached the Aatrix.
  At T-Minus Seventeen-seconds, the Adventurer had accelerated to maximum speed of twenty percent light speed. The Aatrixx threat warning system detected the Adventurer accelerating towards the ship and began to sound alarms of an imminent attack.
  At this point, the computers were flying the ship and doing the fighting. The reaction times were simply too short for a human to have any hope of firing the weapons and driving the ship safely. The seconds ticked down. Ty watched the targeted Aatrixx in a window that he’d set up on the main display panel. In reality, they would never be close enough to see it with their naked eyes. Nothing would happen down to two seconds prior to crossing. The Aatrix’s only hope of surviving the attack was to hit the Adventurer and destroy it with a laser shot. The Adventurer would jump away before any missile or rail gun slug got even close to it. To that end, he’d shut the aft shields off to give the forward shields as much power as they could muster. Everything would occur and they’d either survive or not, in what happened in a tenth of a second before they jumped past the ship at one second before crossing.
  At T-Minus Twelve-seconds, the duty officer on the Aatrixx stabbed the button releasing the defense systems to actually fire at the oncoming ship.
  At T-Minus Ten-seconds, the Adventurer’s laser began firing at the Aatrixx sensor towers in an effort to blind the ship.
  By T-Minus Nine-seconds, the gun turrets and the laser batteries had extended and swiveled into position to face the ship. The fire control systems for the rail guns determined there was no workable solution and so didn’t fire the guns. The lasers on the other hand targeted the onrushing ship and began firing at it. While it was seconds away, the distance between the ships was still measured in tens of thousands of miles. Most shots missed, those that that hit were absorbed by the shields.
  At the same time, the Adventurer’s rail guns began firing a mix of solid and fragmentation slugs at the ship. Those rounds travelled in their own trajectories towards the ship.
  At T-Minus Five-seconds, the Adventurer rail guns stopped firing. The rounds, if fired, would have sailed passed the ship.
  At T-Minus Four-seconds, the laser targeting systems began to detect the onrushing railgun rounds and recognizing them as the greater threat, aimed at the rounds to try and kill them. Several of the rounds were vaporized by the intense beams, but even the vapor continued on towards the ship at twenty percent of light speed.
  At T-Minus One point two-seconds, just two thousand miles from the Aatrix, the Adventurer jumped using Junior to control the jump. The Adventurer jumped across Jupiter’s system of moons and rings and braked hard to drop down to a full stop. She took another nine-seconds to decelerate. The trajectory arced the ship behind the planet so that it was between them and the two ships.
  During the encounter, all Ty or anyone else on board could do was stand and watch the displays and infer from the readings how the attack went. When the Adventurer slowed into orbit around Jupiter, Ty turned to Anderson, “Well we’re still alive. There’s some success there.”
  “Yeah, but did we hit the Aatrix?”
  “Let’s see what the sensors picked up after we jumped.”
  Ty tapped on the display’s control panel. A new window appeared in the display. He sent the output of the sensor to the display. He found the Aatrixx and zoomed in on it. He set the playback to slow motion. A counter in the upper right corner of the screen, counted the time in hundredth’s of a second. For several seconds, nothing appeared to happen.
  “What you’re seeing are images that were captured from a five light-second distance after we made the escape jump. The effects of our laser attack won’t manifest until we hit two hundred on the timer counter here,” said Ty. He tapped the counter in the window, “The rail gun rounds won’t arrive until the counter gets to five hundred.”
  “Ok”
  When the counter hit two hundred seven, the shield surrounding the Aatrixx began to pulse a blinding violet white flash every five hundredth’s count. After ten flashes, other secondary flashes could be seen at several places on the ship’s hull. Ty tapped a button to freeze the playback.
  “Are those the shield generators failing?”
  Ty nodded, “That’s the beauty of a pico-second burst. All the power of our one hundred megajoule beam is compressed into a thousandth of a second. That increases the energy level of the shot some, and it creates a very intense shock to the system.”
  “How does that make a difference?”
  “You like taffy right?”
  “Yeah, who doesn’t,” she winked at him. Ty just smiled.
  “Well, what happens if you apply a force over time on the taffy?”
  “It stretches.”
  “What happens if you apply the same level of force, but you jerk the taffy instead?”
  “It snaps and breaks.”
  “That’s what happens here. If the beam energy is spread over a full second, which is how we rate the power, then the system can absorb that energy input. But if the same amount of energy is applied in a very short time, the molecules of the ship’s hull or in this case the shield waves can’t absorb the energy fast enough. In the case of a solid material, that sets up shock waves which shatter molecular bonds. In the case of shield waves, it induces fluctuations in the wave form of the shield which the shield anodes can’t absorb fast enough and so shockwaves in the shield anode occur, with the same result.”
  “So without the shield anodes, the shield collapses?”
  “Yes, and you get this, those secondary explosions are the shield anodes failing. We’ve still got about ten more pulses before the laser stopped firing. From here on, the hull is going to take the hits from the laser pulses.”
  True to his word, the shields no longer pulsed, instead a point on the hull near the aft sensor tower lit up in bright flashes of light. With each flash, increasingly larger chunks of the hull began exploding away from the ship. At four seconds in, the flashes stopped and the boulder and rock sized chunks of the ship’s hull could be seen floating away from the ship.
  “When we get to six seconds, the rail gun rounds start hitting, if we aimed right that is. Mind you these are coming in at twenty percent of light. There is a horrific amount of kinetic energy in those slugs. If even one hits, it’s going to be spectacular. We’re talking twenty-one quadrillion joules of energy.”
  At six seconds there were three blinding flashes away from the ship followed almost instantaneously after by the hull of the Aatrixx flashing a brilliant white. When the flash faded away, the Aatrixx was rotating along its long axis. It soon became apparent that the ship had been broken into three large pieces.
  “Damn,” said Anderson. She was almost slack jaw in awe of what was being displayed. “What happened there?”
  “I’d say that’s a kill. But to be precise, three slugs were hit by the lasers firing in point-defense mode. Our slugs were vaporized, but the matter of the slugs was still moving towards the ship, just in a plasma or gaseous form instead of solid. It still had most of the kinetic energy, it was just diffused over an area as the gas expanded in the vacuum. What you saw was the radiation and heat of the gas and plasma striking the ship, but that was enough to break it apart.”
  “Powerful case for using kinetic weapons, don’t you think?”
  Ty shook his head disagreeing with her. “No, they were just incredibly stupid. That other Aatrixx will start jinking now which will make this kind of an attack a lot more difficult if not impossible. Our next attack will be different,” he said with a smile.
  “Besides, the next attack is designed to draw them away from Jupiter.”
  “When do you start?”
  “In forty minutes, as soon as we loop around the planet. This’ll be a conventional attack, so we need to get everyone suited up.”