Command Center

IMPERIAL PALACE: T-MINUS 21 HOURS 30 MINUTES
  There was stunned silence in the room as people glanced at the Emperor and at the now blank displays coming from the system. There’d been a moment of elation when the Republic ship just shut off in space and the command bubble on the top of the ship exploded when hit by the laser. There was some curiosity as to why the shot hadn’t completely destroyed the ship, but there were approving nodes and high-fives just the same as they viewed the data coming in from the test. They watched as the two LongBows began to match course with and approach the wounded ship.
  There was some real debate whether they would be able to capture this ship too. The command was given to cease firing at the ship in the hopes that they could capture it.
  The mood changed when the Republic ship vanished. Remora immediately reported that the ship had jumped nearly eleven million miles away. There had been a debate for a few minutes, as to what should be done. In the end, orders were given to dispatch a squadron of frigates to assist. When they analyzed the sensor returns from the ship after it jumped, they concluded ship was still disabled. The LongBows were ordered to approach and investigate. They were admonished to not fire on the ship unless it fired at them, in hopes that it could still be captured. The fact it still had a working jump drive was considered a great intelligence coup.
  The curiosity turned to shock when communication with the two LongBows ceased without warning. The Emperor turned to the Admiral, “Bedring, what did we just see?”
  “Your highness,” the admiral began, “we’d need data to confirm it.”
  “Just give me your best guess,” the Emperor said with a soft voice that sent chills through the spines of everyone else in the room.
  “The LongBows have been destroyed. I don’t know how. It’s possible the attached vehicle was launched when it jumped and they didn’t detect it. It’s got the weaponry to destroy a cruiser, not to mention a small ship like a LongBow.”
  “Yet, didn’t the sensors indicate the attached vehicle was still inside the Adventurer?”
  “True sire, but such things can be faked enough to convince the sensors of a warship from a long range, as these apparently were.”
  The admiral was sweating by now. He chose not to mention that Republic ships were a lot stealthier than the Alliance ship’s sensor suites could usually handle.
  “Do you think we could still capture that ship?” asked the Emperor.
  Bedring thought a moment before answering, “I think it is still possible. But if the crew can, the crew of the Adventurer will destroy their own ship before they allow that to happen. That’s what our crews are trained to do at the least.”
  The Emperor nodded and then spoke, “Capture it if you can.”
  Bedring nodded and said, “Yes, your Highness.”
  The Emperor went back to his chair. Bedring signaled to an aide who stood out of site in an alcove in the wall. This aide was one of the palace staff rather than a military aide. She was hired not for her brains but for her smile and figure. She was a brunette, pert smile, and dark eyes. Her hair was coiffed in a bun revealing a slender neck and a delicate chin line. She wore black tights and a fitted tunic.
  She spoke softly with a lyrical voice, “Yes, sir? How can I serve you?” She couldn’t have been more than a teenager he figured. He had older daughters. She simply curtsied, smiled up at him, and waited.
  “I need an encrypted comm circuit with Fleet operations.”
  “Right away sir.” She curtsied again and left.
  He wondered if she really knew what that meant. In a moment she returned carrying a small platter with a black handset on it.
  “The duty officer at Fleet Ops sir,” she said as she extended the platter.
  Bedring took the handset and waved her away. He walked over to an unoccupied alcove in the room. As he entered it, he could sense a privacy field come into place around him.
  “This is Bedring. Who’s there?”
  “Yes, sir, Duty officer Williams sir,” said a masculine voice.
  “Very well. Send a message to Task Force twenty to deploy immediately two Aatrixx cruisers and the frigate squadron in support of Mission order one-one-zero Tango.”
  The voice on the other end repeated back the order.
  “That’s correct; by my authority.”
  “Right away sir.”
  Bedring held the handset in front of him and tapped the button to end the call. He waved it at one of the aides. This one came out immediately and took it away. He watched her walk away. She had a nice figure too. The perfume she wore sent a tingle through his system he hadn’t allowed himself to feel since his wife died several years ago. He noticed the uniforms the aides wore in here, while fully covering the aides, accentuated the figures of the women and the men. He shook his head.
  “Too much cream cheese for this old horse,” he said to no one in particular.

The Duel with the LongBows

ADVENTURER: T-MINUS 22 HOURS
  Ty sat alone at a table in the Adventurer's wardroom pondering his fate and wondering how to tell his wife that he’d gone through with quitting.
  The wardroom was empty. The rest of the ship's crew was standing at alert station. I should be with them, he thought. The Skipper, Commander Roper offered to bend rules a bit and let Ty watch the imminent engagement from the Adventurer's command center. But Ty had declined, not wanting the Skipper to get in any trouble on his account.
  Roper readily agreed to Ty's counter request, to allow Ty's program, Junior to tap into the Adventurer's data-net. He grabbed his local desk and pulled it to him so he could use it. He tapped the power key, the screen came to life immediately.
  “Launch junior,” he said to the machine's built in speaker.
  The program launched, showing him a small duplicate of his duty station's tactical display. He was proud of this program. It represented the culmination of all of his spare time while on active duty in the Space Force. With a twinge of sadness he realized, with his new status, Junior belonged to the Space Force and that he would never get to actually use it after today.
The engagement was nearing its climax. The two ships, LongBows, had headed for Jupiter shortly after they’d transitioned into the system. With the jamming they were doing, there was no way for certain the ship could tell the fleet what was happening. The only indication of trouble would be when the Adventurer failed to check in on the hour as it transited the system. Drucker had chosen to go with a blink attack wherein the Adventurer would execute a short range jump behind the two LongBows then attack each simultaneously, jumping away before they could return fire to assess the results of the attack. Drucker had asked him for advice on how to engage the two ships. Ty was happy to help, but he had to bite his lip to make a recommendation that went counter to what Drucker was trying to do. So he spent most of the hours watching the two ships approach Jupiter from monitors in the wardroom. Drucker had programmed in the attack nearly an hour earlier and had spent the remainder of the time configuring the main weapon and aligning the ship for the fraction of a second that it would be in firing position behind the two ships.
Ty set the miniature tactical display to show what the sensors were showing Drucker. The Adventurer was still high above the systems ecliptic headed “down” toward the turning point for the Beta Hydri jump. The convoy was strung out behind them. The Adventurer was programmed to jump in a few seconds before the light from the convoy ship’s deceleration reached the two LongBows. Ty had started a stop watch on his computer to count down to the time the ship jumped. It was down to less than a minute. He watched as each second ticked away.
  At ten-seconds, the commander announced over the intercom, “Jump to attack in ten-seconds.” He counted down to zero and the ship jumped.
Without warning, the lights in the wardroom went out and the gravity field shut off. An instant later a powerful unseen force slammed into the Adventurer from above. It threw him out of the chair he was sitting in and up into the overhead bulkhead. The shock-wave of the impact reverberated through the ship like a titanic thunderclap. He could feel, even see the ship begin rolling clockwise. He saw briefly before he slammed into the overhead, that his local desk was still on and floating in the air in front of him. It had bounced harmlessly off of the overhead and was now tumbling in midair. Seeing Junior frozen caused a momentary twinge of sadness, then horror as the reality of the situation registered, Adventurer's controller was off-line.
Ty knew that without it, the crew could do nothing to deal with this situation. He fended off the overhead without any trouble and pushed himself towards his tablet. He grabbed it and headed for the door.
  Emergency glow panels were on now, giving enough illumination to see. Weaker blasts began hitting the Adventurer, accelerating the ship''s rolling tumble. The epicenter of the first blast had come from the direction of the ship's control center three decks above him. Ty headed for the engineering center down below.
  In the semi-darkness he could hear the muffled shouts of crewmen calling out to each other through the air circulation conduits and trying to deal with powered doors that wouldn't open. Ty grabbed at his comm-card and pulled it out of his jump suit's right breast pocket. He glanced at it to see if it was still on. It was.
  He checked the command circuit, it was dead silent. He switched to the damage control circuit. There was some traffic on it. Seconds passed, still no one came up on the command circuit.
  Finally, he spoke into it, “All hands, this is Tactical One. We've had a main systems controller failure.”
  Instinctively he'd used his old call sign. He berated himself for the lapse for a second before the repair teams began reporting in.
“Red Three team aye, sir.”
  Ty knew from memory that the team was in the aft section of the ship near the Dragon Launch Bay. He recognized the voice. It belonged to Specialist Grover.
  In all, five teams out of seven responded. The two nearest the command center hadn't responded. The five reported no internal damage to the Adventurer in their areas. Ty had to pause a moment to recall which damage control team, that had responded, was closest to the command center.
"Red Two Team, Tactical One."
"Yes, sir."
  "Send two runners up to the command center. Report to me what they find."
  "Right away. Red Two out.”
  Ty kept working down towards the Engineering center. He had to hand pump the doors open. It was a slow process. All the while he could feel the Adventurer shudder from the hits she was taking. The intensity of the hits gave him the impression they were little more than small caliber cannon rounds. Just the same, he knew it was only a matter of time before the hits started blasting through her thin armor.
  Finally, Ty got to the Engineering doors. They were locked shut. He switched his card to engineering's circuit.
  "Engineering, Tactical One."
  Senior Chief Anderson answered immediately, “About time you guys talked to me. What happened?"
“What?” Ty asked. “I don't know. I'm out side door three."
"Hang on, I’ll let you in.”
He could hear the door's locks disengage. The door slid open just wide enough for him to squeeze through. Anderson, a wiry wizened lady floated over to him.
  "What happened?" she asked, raising her voice over the sound of the power generator.
  It was running at combat output with nowhere to send the power it was generating. Ty noticed the engineers were trying to bring up dead consoles and opening up access panels to restore the control system. Even in here, the gravity was still out.
Ty shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know. I was down in the wardroom. The lights went out and then the gravity failed and then POW."
  Anderson shook her head. Once Ty was inside, she pumped the door shut and they pushed off towards her station.
  “That about describes what we experienced too. The controller dropped off line right before that first hit. I see you brought your computer. Is it working?"
  Ty glanced down at his tablet before answering. "Yes, I was running Junior when this happened. I looked down and saw Junior had crashed hard. That's what clued me into the controller failure."
"We've got to get it up so command can get back in control," said Anderson.
  Ty nodded.
  She pointed to the alternate control center. "Let's go here. I got an idea."
  He figured she might. She knew as much about Junior as he did, more in fact, on its inner workings.
  She spoke as they floated to the area, "I want to connect your computer to the data-net and see if there's enough to Junior to help me run the Adventurer until we can get the controller back on line."
  Ty immediately grasped what she wanted to do.
  "I'll need to reboot Junior.”
  His card beeped with an incoming message, "Just a sec..."
  Anderson nodded.
A nervous voice came over the card. "Tactical, Red Two lead."
Anderson raised an eyebrow at the use of the call sign but kept quiet. "Go Red Two."
"Sir, all the pressure locks on B-deck from the two-ring in are closed. Safety valves are popped too."
  Anderson's face blanched at the words. Ty's jaw muscles tightened. The voice continued. "We can't get any further into the center of the deck."
  Ty cut him off, "Thanks Red Two. Standby." He turned to Anderson, "Command is gone. At the very least, they're not in any condition to fly the ship."
She nodded wordlessly. Her face stricken with grief and terror. She spoke softly but with increasing firmness, "Ty, you have more command time than me. I know the results of the board and technically you are just a passenger now. But, under the circumstances, I say we try to survive first and then work out the details of who's the boss later. As far as I'm concerned, you should be the commander."
Ty nodded and felt the heavy weight of responsibility settle on his shoulders. He paused briefly to consider the turn of events. What he'd always dreamt of having was now his, command of a warship in the Republic Fleet. He thought there might be some satisfaction, but all there was, was fear. Fear of what happened, what was happening and what was about to happen.
He commanded a ship, barely. Barely because the ship was barely alive and because he commanded on the barest of pretexts. Yet he knew the consequences of failure on his part meant certain death for him as well as everyone else on the ship just as surely as if he were the captain. It began to grip him with a paralyzing wave of nausea. And then, when he felt he would slide into the terror and oblivion, a feeling of sublime peace settled over him. Words from a song his mother had taught him years ago came to his mind.
"Just as above the darkest clouds, the sun shines in skies of blue.
"During your darkest hours, God is watching over you."
"You OK Ty?" Anderson stared at him intently.
  As he focused in on her, he felt wrapped in a blanket of peace that almost detached him from the noise and confusion of the engineering room and the muffled booms of the hits the Adventurer was taking.
"Yeah, I"m fine. Let's get to work,” he said.
  He smiled and lightly touched her shoulder. The blanket of peacefulness he felt evaporated, but an inner core of peace lingered within him. He felt an acute sense of awareness as if the world around him had shifted into slow motion. Everything was crystal clear to him, from the motes of dust dancing in the air to the minutest detail of the panels around him. They ran to the alternate command station.
  "I'll start setting up the networking,” said Anderson. "You get your tablet rebooted."
He started the process. As he waited for her, he called out on his card, "All hands. Alternate command now has the ship, all communications need to be sent there on damage control circuits."
The damage control teams began reporting off, along with the stations throughout the ship. Only the command center failed to acknowledge the order.
Ty's notebook finished rebooting. It was ready by the time she got back. She pulled an access panel off of a comm station and put a small disk on one of the data conduits.
  She turned to Ty, "That's a low-bandwidth sending unit we can use to bootstrap the rest of the system."
"Let me have the receiver?" Ty asked.
  She handed the unit to him. He checked the connector and then plugged it into the local desk. He went to setup the controls of Junior. He set it to command and online. For an instant nothing happened. Ty wondered if it was going to fail, then the lights in the room blinked and came on. He felt himself sink into the floor. Gravity was back on. There were whoops of joy in the room.
Anderson went to her station and called out to him, “Your sensor routines have crashed, probably because it can't talk to the sensors. It means we don't have combat sensors. Plus, we don't have any data links with the command center."
  Ty powered up the alternate control station displays. They worked. He studied the displays. They were still blind and tumbling and taking hits.
  "Do we have enough power to jump?" he asked.
Anderson looked at him from her station and paused before answering. "Yes, but..."
  "We can’t stay here. We'll die if we don't move and they can follow us anywhere if we don’t jump away."
"We'll die if we jump into a rock or run into something else,” Anderson answered.
"Yeah, well, we'd better not jump where there are a lot of rocks,” Ty said with a grin.
  Anderson jogged to him from her station.
  "Fine. You make the call,” she said. "But get us out of here. Our navigation sensors are off line too. So whether we jump into a rock or stay here, the result will be the same."
  She ran back to her station. Ty programmed the jump.
  "Jump engine is on line,” said Anderson.
Ty commanded the jump. There was a slight tremor through the ship as they jumped.
  "What was that?" Anderson asked.
  "Don't know. This isn't a full blown controller we're running on. But have you felt that happen before?"
"Not really, where did you put us?" Anderson asked.
  Ty said, “I just commanded the second jump of the attack, about a light minute away.”
  With the Adventurer damaged the way it was, Ty hoped to use the one Dragon fighter the Adventurer carried to evaluate the Adventurer’s condition and see what the LongBows were doing.
Ty called out to the console. "Dragon Ops, Alternate command.”
  "Dragon Ops… What happened?" Ty's friend Vince answered.
  Ty ignored the question. "Is the Dragon ready to launch?”
"You can't tell?" There was surprised pause in his voice. "Yes, she's ready and loaded with six Heli-arcs and one plasma-arc on the centerline."
  Ty outlined his plan of action with Vince. A Dragon, looked like a barbell with two teardrop shaped weights on each end. The pointy ends of the teardrops pointed in the same direction. The pilot sat in the front barbell and the other housed the drive. Strung along the central cylinder were numerous attach points. Weapons, extra power cells and the like were hung on them. Dragons usually looked ungainly, but they were incredibly agile and fast. This one was loaded with seven missiles. A large missile capable of destroying a capital ship, and six anti-fighter missiles.
  The Dragon launched immediately. Vince was driving it. He swung around to look at the Adventurer.
  ”Alternate. Dragon.”
"Go Dragon."
  ”Command center's completely gone. There's a crater where it was. I can see down to B-deck through the debris.”
  For an instant Ty thought again of Commander Roper and the rest of the command team. Eight good friends had been killed in an instant.
“Copy that Dragon. How does the outer hull look away from the crater?"
There was a pause.
  ”A scattering of low-energy blast marks and some craters from small caliber cannon rounds pock the surface. Aside from the crater though, the hull looks OK.”
“Thanks for the report. Using just passive sensors, look back where we were. Can you see the LongBows?”
  Ty imagined the Dragon pirouetting in space to turn towards their earlier location. While that was going on, he punched the intercom.
  "Red Two and Red Four. Check the emergency bulkheads on Bravo deck. Clear out Charlie deck and set emergency barriers on Charlie deck in case the Bravo deck bulkheads fail."
  He switched back to the command circuit, "All hands, command. All personnel implement pressure loss protocols immediately. Repeat, implement Code Blue.”
Everyone in the engineering center began donning emergency pressure suits. Dragon called in.
  ”Command, Dragon.”
"Go."
”The two LongBows are pursuing us. ETA is about twenty minutes. They're doing a level five acceleration. No drive plume though.”
  A nagging thought bothered Ty about the report, but he couldn't put his finger on a specific reason to be alarmed. He thought about the report and turned to Anderson. She glanced back at him. Ty's eyebrows popped up.
  "They're awfully confident,” he commented.
"Yeah, like they think they've got us?"
  Ty nodded.
  "Do they?" she asked.
"Depends on if we have weapons." Ty held up a hand. "Red Five, Command."
"Red Five."
"I need you to check the circuit and data-link bays from the forward sensors to the master interlink."
"We're on it."
"Red Seven, Command."
"Red Seven."
"Check the power conduits from the main projectors back to engineering. Be quick."
"Right away sir."
Ty turned to the Tactical display. He noticed as he did that the generator began dropping to a lower power output. Anderson lowered the generator's output to match the ship's current need.
  “Anderson,” he called out.
She shouted back, "What?"
"How long can the generator run the way it was?"
“It can run forever that way, I just think it’s a waste to keep it up."
"Leave it up."
"What? Why?"
"Energy output is a good indicator of what the ship is doing. They saw it running at full power and it didn't phase them earlier. Bounce it back up like we lost control again. I want them to think we're still hurt."
"We are still hurt."
Before he could answer, Red Seven called in, "Sir, both power conduits are good to go. Each channel shows it can take a full power flow."
"Good, I want you to reposition to the fantail and replace Red Five's position."
"Red Seven, Aye."
"Dragon, Command."
"Dragon."
"I want you to go stealthy and move to two red one-twenty about seven or eight kay-clicks out. Then go silent, laser link only. Ping me every five minutes with a sensor feed. If I want more, I'll ping back."
  The Dragon double-clicked his microphone in acknowledgment of the message.
  "Dragon-Ops, Command."
"Dragon Ops."
"Can you make it look like the Dragon's still in the bay?"
"You want us to fake a Dragon sir?"
"Yeah, as real as you can make it. But be fast. You've got maybe five minutes before the LongBows can tell what's in the bay."
"We can do that."
Ty switched his display to check on the ship’s position in the Solar System. He noticed they were still tumbling. He fired a nose thruster just enough to accelerate the pitching the ship was doing. By now, she was pointing nose down. She'd be pointing back at the LongBows in a few minutes.
  Red Five called, "Sir, the navigation conduits run through the depressurized portion of b-deck and are severed in there. But on both sides of the break they look good. We could run a wireless bridge to get them back."
"Can you get into the depressurized area to see if it can be fixed?"
"Yes, We've got a couple of porta-walls…"
Ty cut him off, "Good, do it."
  Ty punched up a schematic of the ship only to have a gray screen appear. Junior didn't have the data. Ty let out an exasperated sigh. He glanced at the clock in the display. If the LongBows were still coming, they were ten minutes away. A flashing light caught his attention. He heard Anderson talking into her card.
  "Dragon Ops, Engineering."
"Dragon Ops."
"You're depressurizing the bay?"
"Yes, chief, we’ve pulled the circuit breakers on the door and we're hand cranking it open."
  Ty noticed the questioning look on her face. It dissolved into a grin and grinned himself as he listened in on the report.
  "Ma'am, we pulled the loader mock up into the launch cradle and we have a Jersey generator giving it power. I've got Wally sittin' in the cockpit of the thing. And we're hangin' live ones on the rails and a plasma cannon on the center line.  I’ve also pulled an engine calibration rig out and fired it up, so it's pumping gravitons like a real Mark Eight drive that's being readied for a launch."
"Good job Dragon Ops,” Anderson answered with a chuckle.
  Ty shook his head in wonder.
  "Kid deserves a medal," she said. "I'd be fooled and I know what to look for."
A sensor feed came in from the Dragon. Ty studied it. The LongBows were still coming. They were in a tighter formation, only a couple hundred clicks apart. No shields were up. No defensive jinks. They were approaching this like they were headed out to a range for target practice. Maybe they think they are, Ty mused to himself.
  "Well, you keep coming that way," he said out-loud to himself.
  He tweaked the pitch rate just enough to have the approaching ships in his main projector's aiming cone before they got close enough to really hurt the Adventurer with their cannons.
  "Come to Daddy boys, I've got some good stuff waiting for you."
A couple of minutes later, Red Five called, "Sir, we've got the navigation signal conduits patched, spliced and degaussed. It was already depressurized so we didn't need to evacuate it."
  Ty acknowledged, “Great work. Deploy to Charlie deck forward and assume a standby posture there."
"Rog."
Ty resisted the urge to power up the navigation system. He knew  that would be a dead giveaway, that they weren't hurt as bad as they appeared. He stood away from the sensor panel for a moment and rubbed his eyes. Thoughts of his last conversation with Commander Roper came flooding back to him. He couldn't accept that he was dead now and that his old station on the command center had been vaporized along with Commander Roper. Yet, the inner peace was still there.
Another five minutes passed. Another sensor feed came in from the Dragon. The LongBows were within range of the Adventurer's main weapons, yet they still hadn't fired on the Adventurer nor were they taking any kind of evasive action.
"You're curious?” Ty asked himself outloud. "You want to know how we moved and yet appear so dead now. Well, better you than us."
  They were decelerating to inspect his ship. He could tell that their sensors were all aimed at the Adventurer. They'd taken the bait of the Dragon decoy in the bay. Anderson came over to him so she could talk without shouting.
"We've checked the controller circuitry. I think we can reload the controller and use the real thing in a couple of minutes if you want."
  Ty shook his head, "Not yet, I do need weapon control though. Can we load that and hook it into Junior?"
"It's possible, I'll see what I can do. What are the LongBows up to?"
"They're matching velocity with us. They'll be along side in about six minutes. They're a little further out than the Dragon right now at two-eighty red six. Our pitch rate will put them in the primary's cone of fire in forty-six seconds."
A wry smile crossed Anderson's face. "I can give you manual aiming using the calibration scopes on the main projectors,” she offered.
"Really? I didn't know you could manually aim a primary."
"Yeah, it's a technique used to calibrate the targeting mirrors and deflector. It's pretty effective at short ranges. Svenson over there on the power panel has popped ship-sized asteroids from two kay clicks with it."
"Get him over here."
“Her,” Anderson corrected.
"Whatever,” said Ty.
  Anderson pushed off and floated across the room to the woman and spoke in her ear. A smile flickered across her face. Then the two of them pushed off from the panel and came floating over to Ty. Svenson began taking off her pressure suit as she floated across the room. Anderson introduced her to Ty.
She defended her actions simply, "I need my arms free to shoot, sir."
  By the time Anderson had the calibration station up, Svenson had stripped off the top half of her jumpsuit. It flopped around her waist. She was wearing a white tee-shirt under it. She pulled up her sleeves so her arms were completely uncovered. Her yellow blond hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She had the petite features of a porcelain doll Ty thought. Yet her eyes were steely gray and as hard as ice at the moment.
She locked her boots into the foot locks on the deck and leaned into the console so she wouldn't drift around when she grasped the grip of the calibrator. The screen over the console lit up. A star field appeared with an aiming reticle superimposed over the image. Anderson worked a couple of knobs to bring into view two white dots. She zoomed in on them. The dots never resolved to anything more than white specs of light. Anderson glanced down at Svenson and gave a curt nod.
Svenson began moving the calibrator with deft nearly imperceptible movements. The aiming reticle began to move slowly across the screen until it rested on one of the dots. She had to constantly move the reticle to keep it on top of the dot as it slowly moved across the screen.
  Without glancing up at Ty, she asked, "Those the LongBows?"
Ty glanced at the aiming coordinates on the screen and back at the tactical display. The LongBows were just a thousand clicks away now. Point blank range for the primaries.
  "Yes, they're the LongBows."
"When do you want me to shoot?"
"When can you shoot?"
  She glanced at him and gave him a pitying stare as if he were the most clueless person alive.
  "Now, sir. How much power in the shot?” she asked deadpan.
Ty thought for a second as he considered the energy absorption capacity of the LongBow shields.
  “Make it two hundred mega-joules condensed to a pico-second burst. Then fire."
  She gave him a cheesy grin and looked back at the screen. He moved to watch the screen over her shoulder.
Without turning away from the screen, she said, "Would you mind, sir. Please,” as she dialed in the energy settings on the shot.
He backed away, "Sure."
  Soon after, in quick succession, she pointed the aiming reticle on one dot and pulled the trigger on the calibrator. The Adventurer gave a slight shudder from the recoil of firing the energy at the ship.
  “That's one," she said.
  In a deft movement, she moved the reticle over the second dot in little more than a second and pulled the trigger again. The ship shuddered again.
  “That's two,” she said as she watched the screen for a moment before backing away from it. "There you go, sir,” she said as she raised her head to face him before continuing, “Two powdered LongBows."
  On the screen, the two dots had been replaced with two coin-sized disks of light that slowly expanded and faded to black.
"Command, Dragon." The transmission snapped them out of their revere.
"Command."
"Nice shots! Flashed them both. There's nothing out there but plasma. I didn't detect any emission from the second LongBow before it was flashed."
  Ty let out a big breath. He felt the tension drain out of him.
"That was sure anti-climactic. Anderson, let's get this ship, ship-shape,” he said with a grin. "I relinquish command, to you."
She nodded, "All hands, command." She paused just a second as she heard her voice reverberate through the engineering space over the sound of the generator. "Engineering Specialist First Class Amber Svenson just destroyed two LongBows. The solar system is clear of Alliance forces. Command out."
Ty could hear whoops of joy over the intercom and in the engineering room as the generators dropped down to virtual silence. In a matter of minutes, they'd collected the Dragon, repaired the sensors and rebooted the controller. He turned to Anderson as they contemplated what happened.
Anderson nodded in approval. She paused a moment before speaking, “Ty. For the duration, I’m going to announce to the crew that you are acting commander. You’re actual status is between you and me. Ok?”
Ty nodded, “Fair enough.”
“So, Mr. Weiss,” Anderson said with a twinkle in her eye. “What do you want us do to?”
“I suggest we take up a picket position sunward of Jupiter. We should stay here till the convoy jumps away. We’re also going to need someone to run weapons, defense and sensors. We also need to recover and relaunch the Dragon. I don’t think we’re done with the Alliance yet.”
  She nodded, “I think you’re right on that account.”
  They continued their discussion as they sorted out who would do what on the ship.

The LongBow

ALLIANCE GUNBOAT “LONGBOW” CLASS: T-MINUS 29 HOURS
  Sub-commander Merlin Marshall chaffed at the presence of all the imperial technicians that were aboard his ship. Like maggots burrowing through rotting bread, they’d burrowed into panels and sub-systems in his ship replacing components and apparently haphazardly adding things until it barely looked like the polished and spit-shine clean machine he strove to have. Now, like moldy bread, the consoles had data bundles running from behind loosely connected panels. Every section of the ship had been affected. They’d also removed his communication antenna array and replaced it with a hodgepodge collection of antennas and components he couldn’t identify.
  That they’d made a mess of his ship bothered him. That much of what they’d done, he didn’t understand troubled him greatly. For the umpteenth time he called up the mission orders on his comm display and read the orders about this. He gritted his teeth and let the technicians continue to work on his ship.
  “I can’t wait for them to be gone, either,” said his commander, Ha-Shin. The woman’s gravely voice caught him by surprise and he jerked around to look at her where she sat in her acceleration couch next to him. As commander, she sat in the left seat.
  He nodded his head. “Must be reading my mind.”
  She snickered. The brief smile split her lined and weathered fact into a million lines. The crows feet around her eyes made her jade green eyes sparkle.
  “You young pups are too easy to read. Plus, you’re reading those tasking orders again.”
  She reached across the console in front of him and tapped the display with her gloved hand. The orders vanished.
  “Look, Marshall,” she paused to get his full attention.
  He regarded her for an instant as she paused to continue. She was easily into her second century. While her face showed the years, her figure, even clad in a full pressure suit, as was required when combat was imminent, was as trim and athletic as his. Her hair which was just beginning to streak with strands of silver was flaming red. While she kept it cut short to fit in the skull cap their helmets required, there was always a curl of her bangs showing under the cap. No matter what she did, it was always there. It had gotten her, her call sign, ‘Curls’.
  She continued softly, almost whispering, “These technicians come directly from the Imperium.”
  That explains, he thought to himself, why the females among these technicians were the hottest things he’d ever seen in a jumpsuit and at the same time were totally oblivious to him.
  “Marshall,” she rasped, “pay attention. Don’t let your gonads get in front of your thinking. I’m trying to tell you these people have access and visibility that you don’t want to mess with. This test has visibility you don’t want to mess with.”
  “What do you mean, Ma’am?” he asked.
  “While you were stewing in your juices, I got an update to our orders.”
  “Oh?”
She turned away long enough to look around the cramped flight deck and through the open hatch that led to the rest of the ship’s interior where the other technicians were working. She turned back to him.
  “Yeah, we and the Seven, move pretty soon.”
  “Our sister ship?”
  She nodded, “Yes, could leave any moment. When we do, the telemetry from the mission will be relayed via sub-link directly back to the Imperium itself.”
  “You mean the Emperor himself will see this?”
  She rolled her eyes and nodded.
  “The Jackal too?”
  She cut him off with a harsh shush, “Shush you fool! Yes, people disappear for less than what you just said!”
  He gulped.
  “Now, get your eyeballs caged and focused on our mission. Got it?”
  “Yes, Mam,” he said as he turned back to his console to review the ship’s status and to go over the list of issues the technicians still wanted them to address.
  As he did, she muttered softly, “Those ground pounders can’t roll like a real spacer anyway.”
  The comment caught him off guard and he cringed as he thought of his commander in that activity. The next thing he felt was her slugging him in the arm.
  “Get to work.”
  He glanced back at her. There was a trace of a grin in her face as she ignored him and turned to her list of things to do.
  One by one, they finished tasks. Finally the lead technician, an alabaster colored woman with the most amazing electric blue hair Marshall had ever seen, stepped to the back of the flight deck. Marshall had been too busy to see her come, but she wore a perfume that was like her personal signature. It strong but not overpowering and like nothing he’d ever smelled on anyone else. She tapped on the bulkhead.
  “Lead Technician Alvarando, requesting permission to enter the flight deck, Ma’am.”
  Marshall kept concentrating on his list of tasks. There had to be a pheromone in her perfume because as she got closer he could feel himself reacting to her proximity. He could feel a wave of desire wash over him.
  Ha-Shin answered, “State your purpose? Is it urgent?”
  “We have new requirements, commander. It is not otherwise urgent,” said the woman.
  “I see…,” there was a pause before she continued, “Ms. Alvarando what perfume are you wearing?”
  “Morning Fantasy, commander. Do you like it?”
  “No, in fact, while you are on my ship you are to immediately shower and get that off of you.”
  “Commander, it is authorized in the Imperium. Even desired,” she answered.
  “Ms. Alvarando,” Ha-Shin’s speaking slowed.
  At this point Marshall dared to turn and look to see what was happening. Ha-Shin was turning in her couch to face the other woman who still stood outside the flight deck. Alvarando was tall, nearly six feet. In her mid-twenties Marshall thought. She had dark aquamarine eyes that went well with her blue hair. She wore her hair pulled back in a braided pony-tail. Marshall could tell that undone, it would have covered her shoulders and dropped probably to her waist. Despite the bagginess of the flight suit, her figure along with the effects of the perfume were nearly overpowering.
  Ha-Shin continued, “In the Imperium you’re welcome to wear whatever the regulations allow. But out here, in my ship, especially in a combat zone, the last thing my crew needs is some dim-witted technician walking around smelling like a two-bit whore who’s in heat. Plus, get your uniform in compliance with fleet regulations. Do you understand?”
  Marshall wondered at that and then noticed that Alvarando’s flight suit, instead of being zipped to the top and snapped shut it was unsnapped and unzipped.
  “And in case your fellow technicians haven’t gotten the word, they are to dress the same way,” she was almost roaring now.
  Alvarando glared back at her, saluted and then left, stepping so heavily it was almost stomping.
  Once the woman was gone, Ha-Shin continued softly, “That was way overdue.”
  Marshall raised his eyebrows at the comment.
  “We have work to do, sub-commander.”
  Before he could respond, a comm chime sounded. It was an intercom call from the communications station beneath them.
  “Flight deck, Comms,” the voice was that of Specialist Derling who acted as corpsman and communications officer.
  Marshall answered, “Flight deck.”
  “Tasking order from the fleet, sir, priority blue.”
  “Read it.”
  “Message begins: ‘Initiate mission by 0745 standard time. ROE is Victor-Bravo.’”
  Marshall knew without looking at a clock that meant they had less than 10 minutes to get underway and make the transition to null-space. Alvarando’s shower would have to wait. He actually didn’t mind that.
  Ha-Shin spoke, “Plot me a course to the nearest transition point we can reach with a five minute burn. I’ll coordinate with Seven.”
  “Aye, sir,” he answered.
  His ship, a LongBow class gunboat, number 305 or simply, “Five” in their squadron of four ships was directly orbiting Epsilon indi about fifty-million miles from the star. The nearest planet, a gas giant, was 20 million miles further out and directly ahead of them. The task force had been on station for several days waiting for this moment. After the planning had been done, the ships, Seven and Five began accelerating away from the fleet. Unlike the rest of the fleet which used electric drives, the two ships began moving as their drives began amplifying the gravitational attraction between the two ships, the star and the planet that lay actually some 86 million miles away.
  Ha-Shin by now had donned her skull cap and helmet. The rest of the crew was fully suited. The technicians sat in the acceleration couches and waited for transition to occur. It took five minutes to accelerate to ten percent light, transition speed. Then, in the blink of an eye, the two ships simply disappeared from this universe as they transitioned into the null-time universe.
  The transition effect onboard the ship was nothing more than a fleeting instant of vertigo.
  “Ok, Marshall, how do we look?” asked Ha-Shin.
  “Sir, we’re safely into null-time space. Ship status is nominal.”
  “OK, I’ll run the post-transition checklist here. Get down to the stasis chambers and get everyone tucked away. We’re eleven point two light years from Sol, it’s going to be a 112 year trip.”
  Marshall nodded as he released his harness and clambered out of the couch. He worked his way down to the stasis chamber where the rest of the crew and technicians were gathering.
  Familiar with the process, the crew went about their business of changing out of their pressure suits and into stasis suits. The technicians huddled in a knot away from the crew waiting to be told what to do. The stasis suits looked like wet-suits used for sea diving, but they had additional wires and tubes attached to them.
  Marshall walked over to the technicians. For the first time since they’d been on the ship, they weren’t as smug as they’d been earlier.
  Marshall started speaking, “May I have your attention?”
  There were nods and grunts from the group. He avoided eye contact with Alvarando. She still had the perfume on and the other two female technicians were also wearing perfumes that had a similar effect.
  He focused on the men and continued, “These are standard fleet stasis tubes. You used them to get here. You’ll use them to get back to the Imperium. Everyone else in the fleet uses them, unless you want to hang around in the ship by yourself for more than a century. Unless you have any questions, you’ve heard the lecture before. Remember, wear no jewelry and no implants of any type. I’m assuming since you’re all here, none of you have an internal implant. Right?”
  He let the question hang. No one answered.
  “Fine. You can change here or in a dressing room over there.” He pointed at an open arch into a side room. “If you haven’t already, go to the bath room. You don’t want a mess on your hands when you wake up. Take your clothes off and put on the stasis suit. There’s a chamber for each of you. You’ll find your suit in your chamber. Once you are dressed in the suit, check with me and I’ll make certain you have it on correctly. Any questions?”
  Again there were none.
  “Then get going. Power lasts only another two hours before everything is shut down.”
  He didn’t wait around, but went to get into his own suit. As he did, he noticed most of the men simply began to strip and change in the chamber as the rest of the crew had done. Two of the women went into the dressing room. Alvarando didn’t. He didn’t need the distraction so he turned away to concentrate on getting into his suit.
  After several minutes, he turned back to face them. All of them were in the suits. A couple of the men, those who were standing closest to Alvarando, had problems with their suits. He guessed it was because they were too busy watching her change rather than pay attention to what they were doing. He fixed the issues fairly quickly, then took them one at a time to their chamber. He left Alvarando for last.
  By the time he was ready to put her in her chamber, the rest of the crew were in their chambers. They appeared to be sleeping.
  “So, ready to put me into bed?” she asked coyly.
  He sighed, “Chamber, yes. Bed, no.”
  Undeterred, she continued, “Is everything in place?” She shimmied sensuously in front of him.
  He glanced at her figure, which was much more clearly revealed in the stasis suit than the jump suits. It was by force of will that he concentrated on the connections and placement of the tubes rather than the body beneath them.
  He finally answered, “Yes, ma’am everything is in place. Now, take this pill.”
  He handed her a small blue tablet in a plastic wrapper.
  “Just swallow? I need a glass of water.”
  “No ma’am, just put it under your tongue. It’ll dissolve in place.”
  He held out the tablet again.
  “You want to place it?” she cooed.
  “I don’t have time for this, ma’am.”
  “But we have more than a hundred years?”
  “No, ma’am we don’t.”
  She harrumphed and snatched the tablet from his hand. Ripped it out of the wrapper and placed it under her tongue in one fluid movement.
  “Now, please get in the chamber and lay down on the pad.”
  This she did, pouting at him all the while. Once she was down, the tabled took effect quickly and before he’d finished making the connections, she was sound asleep. In a couple of minutes, she was in the stasis state. He touched the controls at the head of the chamber that rotated the clear containment wall in place. When it finished, she was sleeping inside a clear glass cylinder. He stood up and patted the glass softly. He heard someone approach him from behind.
  “She was a handful wasn’t she,” said Ha-Shin behind him. Marshall turned to face her. She was already in her stasis suit. Unlike everyone else’s suits which were grey colored crew suits, her’s like his, was a gold colored command suit. Unlike his, her’s had a white band around each sleeve indicating her status as ship commander.
  “No kidding! What a tart! She didn’t stop.”
  “You handled yourself well. I admire an officer who doesn’t go rutting around with anyone who makes a play like she did.”
  Marshall looked down at the sleeping woman. He had to admit, even without the presence of the pheromone laden perfume, she was very attractive. The suits were so tight, there was nothing left to the imagination about the body inside. They also helped hold things in place. Even Ha-Shin’s figure looked pretty good in her suit. He looked back at Ha-Shin. She recognized the appraising look in his eyes.
  Before she could say anything, a computerized male voice came over the PA. “Life support and ancillary systems now in cruise mode. Ship is in deep sleep mode. Oxygen levels in this room will not be replenished until pre-emergence sequence begins.”
  “That’s our cue Marshall.”
  He nodded and sat on his stasis chamber. Unlike the others, he could make the connections between his suit and the chamber while sitting. Once he did, he swung his legs up on the bed and popped the tablet in his mouth. As he laid his head on the bed, he was barely aware of the glass sliding quietly into place as he faded off to sleep.
  A couple minutes later, the lights in the room faded to black as the commander too, sunk into a deep, coma-like sleep.
  The ship continued on into the void. It was a 300 foot long, 70 foot diameter cylinder. Each end tapered to a point like an armor piercing bullet. Half-way between the ends of the cylinder, the hull bulged out another fifteen feet to enclose part of the gravity drive. After the transition, a long spike extended from the forward tip of the ship. It then expanded out, like a flower blooming to become a 100 foot diameter disk. Water was pumped from tanks inside the ship out through small openings in the disk which built up a layer of ice a foot thick. As collisions with dust in interstellar space, eroded the disk, more water would be pumped forward to fill and replace the lost ice. A thousand mile long filament spooled out behind the ship. As the ship travelled through the star’s and the galaxy’s magnetic fields, a small current of electricity was induced in the filament which would power the ship for the trip.
  For one-hundred twelve years it coasted through the void towards the Sol system. A year before the cruise ended, the computers on board began the involved process of awakening the ship and crew. A week before the scheduled transition event, the stasis chambers for Marshall and Ha-Shin began awakening them.
  The next thing, Marshall was aware of, the glass cylinder rotated away into the side of the chamber. When he opened his eyes, he saw Ha-Shin looking down at him.
  “Get the rest of the crew awake first. Save the techie’s until we’re all awake.”
  He nodded. They spent the week waking the rest of the crew and checking the ship to make certain it had made the trip without any problems. Once the ship was checked out, it was time to revive the technicians. Marshall revived Alvarando first since she was the lead technician. He walked up to the cylinder and looked in at her. She still had the same little pouting expression. He punched the revive button at the head of the chamber. With a quiet click, latches released and the glass rotated back into the chamber.
  He indulged himself and allowed himself to watch her intently as she began to revive. It was regulation anyway. In a few moments she blinked her eyes. For a second there was panic in her face. She started to sit up.
  “Whoa there,” Marshall said as he gently held her down with his right hand.
  She laid back down and turned to face him. The pout disappeared from her face. “Wanted to wake me first is that it?” she winked and smiled.
  The moment for him vanished. Her shoulder was warm though he noticed. He imagined what the softness of her lips and skin would be like, but he caught himself before those thoughts got any further. He was grateful the chemicals in the perfume hadn’t lasted the trip. She had the smell of a woman who’d been in a stasis chamber. It wasn’t exactly nice, it was more pungent like week old socks. He watched her face as she detected the scent.
  “Oh, yuck, what is that smell?”
  “You ma’am,”
  She glared at him,“Really?”
  He nodded.
  “I need a shower.”
  “Just remember, no more perfume.”
  “Has it really been a hundred years? I fell asleep just a minute ago it seems.”
  “Marvels of technology and the laws of chaotic relativity,” he answered. He continued when he saw the puzzled look in her face. “Think of the universe as a two dimensional thing. Then think of another universe like it but different and next to it.”
  “Like two sheets of graphene?” she asked.
  Marshall thought a moment about her answer, then nodded, “Yeah, that works really well. What do you know about graphene?”
  “It’s used a lot in the molecular motors and components we use for actuators and the like. It’s a lattice of carbon atoms one atom thick with the atoms sharing electrons.”
  He nodded and she smiled.
  “Very good! These two universes, share a common structure, with stars forming the nodes of the lattice rather than carbon atoms.”
  “Which is why we transition close to stars?”
  Marshall nodded, “Yes, the closer we get to the star or the more massive it is, the easier it is for us to transition between universes.”
  “But,” she continued, cutting him off, “because they are two different universes, they are not joined by time. So the time flow in one doesn’t affect time flow in the other.”
  She got smarter and cuter as she went he concluded. “Yes, so when we re-enter our universe we do so at the same time we left it.”
  “So how do objects in the two universes stay in the same relative position? If they’re not bound by time?”
  “They’re bound by gravity. Beyond that, the math to explain chaotic relativity goes like this.”
  He waved a hand over his head. She laughed. He thought it sounded like the tinkling of a wind chime. She was hot! He disconnected the tubing and sensor leads of her suit from the chamber.
  “Now, I need to wake the rest of your team. Our mission briefing is in two hours.”
  She smiled then got up off the bed and went to change. This time, he noted, she changed in the dressing room.
  Two hours later the entire crew was assembled in the ship’s small wardroom. The commander stood at the commander’s table. Behind her was a display that filled the entire wall. On it was a map of the inner five planets of a star system. Marshall darkened the room’s lights as she began speaking. This time, the crew and technicians were all wearing pressure suits. Everyone already had their skull caps on to control their hair. Aside from the faces, the easiest way to tell them apart was the crew chatted amongst each other while the technicians were quiet and glanced around the room.
  “This is the latest intel we have. A Republic convoy, consisting of about twenty freighters bound for Beta Hydri VI has jumped into the Sol system.”
  A blinking light appeared on the far left edge of the screen. On the far right was a yellow circle indicating the star. The orbital paths of five planets and an asteroid belt was visible on the screen.
  She continued, “It’s being guarded by one Adventurer class escort ship and an attached Dragon class interceptor. As near as we can tell, they jumped into the system here,” she pointed at the blinking light, “which is a point approximately one point five astronomical units above the system ecliptic. We will transition into the same system near Venus in about six hours.”
  A green “x” appeared on the edge of the second orbital path.
  ”It will be 0745 standard time when we transition. Our mission is to lure the Adventurer in close enough for us to test a new system designed to disable Republic warships. Our role is to jam it’s ability to communicate with its headquarters, then disable it. Once disabled, our sister ship, ‘Seven’ will destroy the ship with an upgraded laser.”
  “Our plan is to deploy out to where the convoy will turn around Jupiter here,” she pointed at the fifth planet’s orbital track. On the track was a smaller grey disk representing the planet.
  “They will have to engage us. If they don’t we can and have been ordered to destroy the convoy. This mission is not without risk. If the test fails, we will certainly be engaged in a pitched fight with a capable opponent.  The ‘Five’ has served the Alliance well in the past. We will again today. I wish to remind you that the Adventurer is every bit as capable a warship, even superior in some ways than our ship. Don’t be careless. Do your duty and we will prevail.”
  “Now, a recorded message from the Emperor,” she said as she turned to Marshall who held a controller for a hidden projector.
  The display of the star system faded to black. Then an image of the Emperor appeared. There were some whispers and comments as people recognized the time of the recording from a clock displayed behind the emperor. It was less than an hour old.
  “To the gallant crews of the 'Five’ and ‘Seven’. This war between the freedom loving peoples of the Alliance and the power hungry rulers of the Republic of planets began decades ago to right the injustices perpetrated upon us centuries earlier when our two colonies were established and continue on to our day.”
  The fleet’s anthem began to play quietly in the background behind the emperor’s voice.
  The Emperor continued, “Through tireless hours of selfless effort, scientists of the Alliance have developed a weapon that will disable the warships of the Republic. This new weapon, once brought into full service in the fleet, will significantly weaken the warships of the Republic and bring to a quick conclusion, the end of this very costly war. Many of your countrymen’s lives will be saved by what you test today. It has already been tested extensively in our laboratories, but needs this final test in actual combat circumstances before we can deploy it widely throughout the fleet. I thank you for your courage and your gallantry.”
  The image faded to a waving flag of the Alliance and the volume of the music increased. When the anthem ended, the lights came back up.
  Ha-Shin walked to the center again and spoke, “You know your orders and your duties. We transition in less than six hours. Seven hours after that, we will engage the Adventurer. Good hunting.”
  With that she left the room and everyone else returned to their duty station or bunks.
  On time, the two ships transitioned into normal space near Venus. The planet was a rocky world buried under a thick atmosphere of Carbon monoxide. As soon as they did, “Five” began jamming the Republic fleet’s communication channels. The two ships immediately began cruising out towards the fifth planet. Forty-four minutes into their trip, they detected the dropping of the convoy into the system.

***
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The Choice

TERRAN REPUBLIC FLEET ESCORT - ADVENTURER: T-MINUS 32 HOURS
  Sitting on his bunk in Warrant officer billet on the Adventurer, Warrant Officer Ty Weiss knew there was no appeal from this as he read over the letter again. From the official Space Force logo at the top of the notice to the signatures at the bottom, this represented the final answer from the adjudication board in regards his promotion. If he recanted his religious beliefs, he’d be converted to a line officer with the rank of Lieutenant. If he didn’t, he would be separated from the service with an administrative discharge. After all the months of writing letter after letter, appeals and waiting, he now had till the end of his duty shift to think about the offered choice. At that time he had to give his answer to the Captain. According to the letter, the consequence, either way, would be immediate.
  The choice left a bitter taste. The offered promotion represented a life goal he’d worked toward since he was a teenager. As he contemplated the decision before him, memories of countless all-night study sessions he’d pulled learning the basics of his craft, flashed through his mind. He thought of the weekends he spent doing extra simulator work as others played and relaxed or of the extra time spent away from his family. The arguments he’d had with himself and his wife during that time came flooding back as he’d vainly tried to assuage the guilt he felt being away from them. It was only his certainty that this sacrifice of time was what he’d felt was the right direction for his family and him to take. He was now faced with the decision of whether or not to recant. If he didn’t he’d throw it all away.
  Opposing this decision were the memories he had of growing up under the tutelage of a devout family that had taken him in when his own family had been killed by an Alliance attack. He remembered their kindness and sacrifices to feed him from the meager amounts of food they themselves had managed to eke out from gardens grown in barren soil. He remembered the nights hiding in caves on the edge of town while their home had been searched by   Alliance troops. And how his adopted parents had risked all to get him away to the safety of the Republic. Over the years, he’d lost track of them due to the ill fortunes of the war.
  Now, after finally getting into the fleet, to attain his goal wherein he hoped to help stop the Alliance, he had to renounce the religion they had taught him love through a lifetime of their sacrifices. All of that swirled around his answer to this letter.
  He put the letter on the table in front of him and stood. The wardroom was silent and empty, everyone else was either sleeping or at their duty stations. Everything stood in sharper relief than he was accustomed to seeing. He saw the scuff marks on the counter tops and table legs, grime on the data terminal keyboards, and even the traffic patterns in the carpet. He could hear the muffled rumble of the main generators coming from the engineering space beneath him and the soft hiss of air being circulated through the room. There was a slight ozone tanginess mingled with the ever present scent of machine oil and soap in the air. The room was standard military gray with dark gray carpet and matching gray walls with a lighter gray overhead. The walls and overheads were the plastic-metallic material fleets had been using for decades in the living spaces of their ships. Designed more for fire resistance and ease of maintenance than aesthetics, it had all the design appeal of a slab of steel.
  He sat motionless for a good while, thinking. Finally, he picked up the paper and moved over to one of the two comm-booths in the room. He sat in the chair, then unzipped and reached into his left breast pocket. He pulled out his comm-card and dropped it into the slot on the left edge of the screen. He pushed the privacy button centered beneath the screen. The sounds in the room around him faded to silence.
  “Place a call. Please,” said Ty.
  The booth’s pseudo feminine voice answered, “Please state name and location of receiving party.”
  He answered, “Amanda Wiess, Murphy’s World, South Continent, Dover City, Three-four-four South DeGrew Street.”
  “Please wait, placing call,” said the booth. After several seconds the booth spoke again, “Call ready to complete. Receiving party requests audio only. Call time begins now.”
  Amanda’s voice answered in the booth. She was whispering.
  “Ty? Is that you?”
  “Yes.”
  “What’s wrong? Is everything OK?”
  Ty felt a rush of conflicting emotions run through him at her question. “I’m fine, but I need to talk.”
  “What’s happened?”
  “I’ve gotten the final decision from the promotion board.”
  “Isn’t that a good thing? Why are you calling me for that? It’s two in the morning right now.”
  “I get the promotion only if I recant my religious beliefs.”
  “What? How can the fleet do that?”
  Ty noticed the sleepiness vanish from her question.
  “It’s the Responsible Service Act. Anyone with devout religious convictions is disqualified from a position of governmental responsibility. Separation of church and state and all.”
  “That’s such a ridiculous law! What are you going to do? Can you appeal the decision?”
  “This is the final word, there is no more appeal. It’s hard Amanda, I want to recant. I want to stay in the service. It’s what I’ve prepared all my life to do. But…” the words choked in his throat.
  “Yes, I know how hard you’ve worked. I can’t, I won't answer for you. But…” she paused. She continued, her voice choked as well, “I know the man I married. I know you’ll chose right and I’ll support you in that choice.”
  There was a moment of silence as he paused to wipe the tears from his face. He felt embarrassed that he would do such a thing.
  “I have until the end of my duty shift to make the decision. I’m going to let the captain know then.”
  “Do you know what you’re going to do?”
  “I’m thinking about it. I’ll call you later when I get off duty.”
  “Just remember these calls are expensive. You can send a text too if you want. I’ll understand.”
  He smiled at that.
  She continued before he could answer, “By the way, they are rationing power here. I’ve about used up all my card’s power today. We get more power in the morning. Don’t try calling or texting before then.”
  “What happened?”
  “You haven’t heard? There was a battle last night at the orbital power station. There was an Alliance attack. There were flashes in the sky visible from the ground. The news is saying we won, but at the same time, the government is saying the station was damaged and power needs to be rationed until it’s repaired. They didn’t say when that would be.”
  “Kids OK?”
  “We’re fine. My card’s almost dead. Talk later ok?”
  “Ok, love you.”
  “Me too,” she said.
  With that the line clicked off. Sounds from the room reappeared as the privacy effect went away.
  He heard footsteps and voices of some people coming down the corridor to the wardroom. Ty glanced at the clock. By the time he guessed it was the Dragon detachment coming in for a few minutes break from getting ready for the next jump. He heard Vince’s voice in the group. From the sounds of it, they were telling another joke. They always told jokes he thought. Ty gathered up the letter and was putting it in the breast pocket of his duty suit as they burst into the room, laughing.
  They all headed for the beverage dispensers. Only Vince noticed Ty.
  “Hey Ty,” he said as he smiled and waved. “Congratulations on your…”
  His voice faded to silence as he saw Ty’s expression.
  Vince spoke to the others, “Be right with you all back at the bay.”
  Some nodded. Others appeared to ignore him as they concentrated on getting something to drink. Singly and in pairs they left the room. Vince walked over to Ty.
  “You OK, Ty? You look like your mom just died.”
  Ty shook his head, “I just got the final notice from the adjudication board.”
  “I thought that was a lock for you, what with General Allison endorsing you and all.”
  Ty shrugged, “Kind of, I get the promotion if I recant.”
“What?” Vince said disbelievingly. Anger along with disgust played across his face as he looked intently into Ty’s eyes. “You’re not going to recant, are you.”
  Ty looked down and then into Vince’s eyes, “Am I that easy to read?”
  A smile flicked across his face, “I know you that well.”
  Ty grimaced, “I wish I knew myself that well. I really want this promotion. I just never thought it would come at this price.”
  Vince nodded, “It’s a controversial law for certain.”
  Ty nodded, “I used to think it was a good thing when it was used to drum all the ‘Firsters’ out of the service. Never conceived of it being used against me.”
  Vince nodded again. “Yeah,” he said. “Justice is blind, but it’s also influenced by the winds of political change these days.”
  Ty looked hard into Vince’s eyes at that.
  Vince continued as he glanced at a clock on the wall over the dispensers. “Well, gotta get back to my section. Choose well.”
  And with that he patted Ty softly on his shoulder and left the room. Ty could hear him jogging the length of the corridor. Ty stood like a statue for several minutes, thinking. Finally, he zipped all the open pockets on his duty suit and did his habitual check of his uniform to make certain it was ship shape. He walked out the wardroom and into the same corridor. Vince’s duty station was aft in the ship’s hangar bay. Ty’s station was up, in the command blister on the top hemisphere of the ship. Rather than climb two decks’ worth of ladders, he chose to gate into the command center. He stepped to the gate which looked like a chrome arch eight feet high and four feet wide built into the passageway. A single red light the size of his palm glowed in the center of the arch. The area of wall enclosed by the arch while it was inactive was just more of the metallic material that made up the rest of the wall.
  Ty spoke at the gate. “Gate, Command Center,” he said.
  The red light blinked and turned green. As it did, the passageway illumination darkened and the semi-dark command center appeared in the arch. Ty stepped through it and into the semi-dark world of the command center. Like all of the other command centers on all of the ships in the fleet, it was a hexagonal shaped room. In clockwise order starting from the main screen was the defense station, then the ship systems. Opposite the main screen was the mission planning work area, which was where the ship’s Captain, Commander Roper was hunched over a plotting table that dominated the area. Next, came the gate and the power management section and last of all was the offense station.
  Ty stepped up to the plotting table beside Roper.
  “Ah, Ty, we just got additional intel reports from the fleet.” He held up a small tablet in his hand for emphasis. “There are indications the Alliance will attempt to attack the convoy once we jump into the Sol system.”
  Ty nodded in response, “How can I help?”
  “We are just a couple of hours from the jump. I want you to review the intel. Then give me your assessment of the information and work up an action plan to deal with a probable attack.” Ty nodded. “Oh, and…” his voice dropped to barely above a whisper, “…I will need your answer at the end of your duty watch, which occurs right after we jump.” He gave Ty a pensive smile and then continued. “I’m going to get a bit of a rest. I’ve been up since yesterday morning. I want Drucker to receive the briefing too.”
  Ty nodded with a smile, “Ok, skipper, I’ll have my scoop ready for you when you return. I’ll get him up here too.”
The man nodded and patted Ty on the back as he walked towards the gate. Ty glanced into the arch when the gate opened and saw that Roper was headed to his quarters. Roper walked through the gate, it turned back into a wall as soon as he did.
  Ty glanced at the main screen. On it, were symbols of all forty of the ships in the convoy, including the Adventurer, his ship. They were in jump formation, one ship after the other all following the same trajectory with about a four-second spacing between ships. They formed a long arc nearly 300,000 miles long. At the speed they were traveling, it would take them almost three minutes to get the whole convoy jumped. As the ship providing protection for the convoy, the Adventurer would go first.
  They were departing the 85 Pegasi star system and making a 40 light year jump to Sol, man’s original home system. From there they were going to jump to Beta Hydri. Ty turned to the table, it was set to 3D mode. He could see their plotted course started near the top of the display and ended near the bottom of the display. Their jump through the Sol System was in the lower half of the display. He looked at the point of light that represented the system and pondered for a moment on the prospect of actually being that close to Earth. He wondered if they’d even be able to see it now. He called up a screen to display the intel reports. As he did, several of the stars represented in the chart table began to blink indicating there was an intelligence assessment linked to the system.
  The Epsilon Indi star system was blinking. Their jump to the Sol system would take them pretty close by the star system. The report appeared on the screen. It spoke of ferrets in the system picking up Alliance comm traffic within the past hour. He immersed himself in the mission planning.
  Time passed. Before he realized how much, an alarm reminded him to get Lieutenant Drucker. Ty called and woke him using the intercom. He arrived through the gate just as Commander Roper arrived. The two were opposites. Roper was a bear of a man standing six and a half feet tall and weighing more than 250 pounds. Drucker on the other hand was a foot taller and more than a hundred pounds lighter. Both were career officers in the fleet. Roper had jet black hair with flecks of silver at his temples. He kept the thick hair cut in a butch. He had heavy dark eyebrows and brown eyes so dark they looked black.
  Drucker was wiry thin and although twenty years younger, completely bald. What hair he did have, he cut so short it was invisible.
  “What do yo have for me Ty?”
  Ty stood erect at the table and faced the Captain before answering.
  “Standard stuff really, there’s some traffic about comm signals being detected in the Epsilon Indi star system.   They weren’t specific about what was detected, so I’ve planned a couple of contingency departures if we need them. But the problem with this system is all of our possible escape jumps require free turning in the second jump to get back to our planned track.”
  “That could be a problem, but we can’t avoid it. This convoy has to get through. Do you think they might try to jump us as we transit?”
  Ty shook his head no as he answered, “It’s always possible, but I doubt it. Aside from the fuel carrier we have with us, we’re not that high a value convoy. I’m recommending we use the gravity well of Jupiter to alter our trajectory for the Beta Hydri jump. It’s the most massive planet in the system. It’ll give our drives the best performance. It’s also in the best position for the turn. The other planets we could use, Uranus or Neptune are further out and so out of position.”
  “Bigger cross-range,” Roper said, more than asked.
  Ty nodded, “From where we’re entering the system? Yes, it adds up to a faster, more stealthy transit of the system by turning on Jupiter.”
  “How much time by turning on Jupiter?”
  “Twenty hours cross-range coasting. Eight hours to execute a level-two deceleration to turning speed. Two hours to make the turn around the planet. Four hour coast to finesse our aim at Beta Hydri. Then ten hours to accelerate to jump speed by pushing away from Jupiter. Total time in system, Forty-four hours. Total window of vulnerability is about six hours centered on our turn. Since our trajectory is nearly perpendicular to the system’s ecliptic, they’ll have to be in orbit around Jupiter to be a real threat to us.”
  “What about the other planets, Uranus and Neptune?”
  “It’s seventy hours on Uranus and ninety hours on Neptune. Windows of vulnerability are correspondingly greater.   But in no case will the Alliance catch us so long as they don’t detect us until we begin decelerating for the turn.”
  “Probability of them detecting us before braking?”
  Ty sighed before answering, “We’re just 45 minutes from Sol, the Alliance’s outer transition limit is at Venus. Once the ships in the convoy start their motors, they’ll be easy to see. Before that, the Alliance will have to know where to look to find us.”
  “What if we get ahead of the convoy, break hard and go into orbit around Jupiter to stand picket?” said Drucker.
  Ty answered, “I thought of that. It’s pretty much sixes in my book. We have several ways to go, sir. We do what Drucker suggests or we jump in and stand picket duty sunward of Jupiter here.” He pointed at a place between the planet and the star. “Or we stick with the convoy and brake with them. Any kind of movement on our part will give us away this close to any ship that’s in system.”
  Roper turned to Drucker, “What do you think Lieutenant?”
  Drucker pursed his lips in concentration before answering, “I’m inclined to stay with the convoy unless we need to engage. Then if we must, we execute a blink attack by jumping on them from wherever we are.”
  “Textbook answer,” said the Captain as he nodded in approval. He turned to Ty. “What about you?”
  “The one thing that’s working really well against the Alliance is the static defense we’re using at systems like Beta Hydri. We don’t jump, we just have roaming pickets that dash towards the enemy ships and fire at maximum range. Once they fire, they withdraw and assess, then repeat as needed. I’d probably go with that approach here. We’re well outside of the Alliance’s transition limit. And Jupiter, as large as it is, isn’t big enough to transition around, so we can attack pretty much from the place of our choosing.”
  Roper nodded at that. Drucker glared.
  “Any other reason why you want to turn on Jupiter then?” the Captain asked with the barest hint of a smile.
  Ty gazed into his eyes a second, “Shorter transit mostly Skipper. I’m concerned about those intel reports on Alliance traffic in the Epsilon Indi system. But it’s also closer to Earth.”
  “Earth?”
  “Yes, Sir, I’ve always wanted to see it, even from a distance.”
  “What do you think happened, Mister Wiess?”
  Ty glanced into his eyes, “Sir?”
  “Earth, why is it uninhabitable now?” asked the Captain.
  Ty blinked and paused a moment before answering. The pause was so long, the captain repeated his question. “Why is Earth uninhabitable? What made it that way? What did they do?”
  “I don’t really know, sir. You’ve studied history as much as I, so I won’t recite the events of that final war, but I would point out that just because an environment is ‘hostile’ to one life form doesn’t mean it’s hostile to all life forms.”
  The Captain looked Ty in the eye. “Do you think people can still live on earth?”
  Ty shook his head. “Obviously we can't, our ships with shields at full strength can’t get much closer to Earth than Luna, its moon.”
  “Interesting that you as a practicing Christian would think that. I thought one of your tenets is that Earth is still populated.”
  Ty paused again before answering. “I am a devout Christian, sir. I just think the Earth wasn’t destroyed, it was changed. Making it uninhabitable for us true, but not for those who live on it now.”
  Drucker rolled his eyes at Ty’s comments, but he kept silent.
  “Isn’t that a matter of semantics? Regardless of the process, if the effect is the same, the same label can be applied. No?”
  “Sir, take a forest, if you cut it down to make room for a city and use the wood to help make the homes. In a sense the forest has been destroyed, but there is still value to the underlying land. It still supports life. The animals can be relocated and the wood serves a purpose in the building of the homes. But it’s not destroyed and wasted in the sense of dropping a nuclear bomb on it.”
  “Ok, but you said, ‘them’. Who do you mean?”
  Ty had a pained look on his face. He wondered where the Captain was going with these questions. “Sir, it’s a historical fact, Earth did enjoy nearly a thousand years of peace under the rule of a benign theocracy.”
  “I don’t question that,” said the Captain.
  Ty continued, “While the idea has fallen out of vogue in recent decades, I believe the world government during that period really was divine in nature and not a secular dynasty that relied on technological sleight of hand to give the appearance of divinity. Towards the end, there were groups that rebelled against the government. They are the ones who eventually started the war. Our ancestors are the ones who saw the war coming and fled to the stars because they didn't want to take sides. It's really that simple to me."
  Roper asked, "What happened to the Earth then? Who do you think won the war?"
  "God won of course. But what happened? My research into the writings of that time say they expected the Earth to be changed some way. The writings are imprecise, no one seemed to really know. So I'm hoping that's what happened.”
  The Captain eyed him steadily for a moment before answering. “I suppose we should get to work eh?”
  “Ok, sir.”
  “You know, Ty. I will miss these talks.”
  “Miss them? I haven’t offered my answer yet,” Ty said as he looked questioningly at the other man.
  “Look Ty, if you recant, you will be promoted and sent to some other billet on a different ship. Your skills as a tactician are wasted here on these convoy duties. The fleet knows that, you’ll likely be reassigned as Senior Tactician on a C-class ship of some type on a shortlist to command as soon as we make port. General Allison hinted that such a billet may open on the cruiser ‘Callisto’ even. If you don’t recant, you’ll also be gone. Either way, you’re gone. I wanted to know how you really felt about these things while I had the opportunity to ask.”
  He smiled at Ty. Ty nodded in understanding.
  “On a less weighty subject, how is Junior?” asked the commander after a moment of silence.
  Ty smiled at the question. “Doing really well actually.”
  “How so?”
  “I flew an engagement against the simulator using our auxiliary command console in engineering, slaved to Junior. Drucker and I dueled it out for a good ten-seconds or so before I got him.”
  “He lasted a whole ten-seconds?” said Roper in mock surprise as he looked at Ty then at Drucker.
  Ty answered, “Well, actually, he did pretty well. We started the battles after all the pre-engagement maneuvering is done in neutral advantage relationships, so all there was, was the shootout and terminal evasive maneuvering. My average opponent in the shootout competition last year lasted about four-seconds. So, comparatively, he did pretty well.”
  “I happen to know, it was three point seven-seconds. Plus, that’s where you’re best.”
  “It’s Drucker’s strength too.”
  “It’s beside the point, Ty, what you’re saying is Junior can fight. Which I think is an amazing accomplishment.”
  “Yes, sir, so long as the rest of the ship’s systems are set to autonomous mode, Junior’s got enough smarts to autonomously run the targeting systems, shoot the weapons and tell the flight controller where to steer the ship. All he needs is an operator to guide him.”
  “So, we have a tertiary backup for our flight control system?” asked the Commander with a smile.
  Ty shook his head. “Not really sir, I only started this as a project to allow an entire combat team to work together on an engagement using laptops and our sole simulator. Getting enough of the flight controller into the memory of a laptop to actually fly multi-unit engagements was serendipitous.”
  “It’s impressive just the same,” said the commander.
  “Chief Anderson helped a lot. It wouldn’t have happened without her knowledge of the flight software,” said Ty.
  They resumed their conversation about what contingency plans Ty thought they should take on the pending jump. When they finished, it was nearly time to jump. While Ty remained at the plotting table, he donned his headset so he could speak to the Captain while he was merged. The captain took the command chair in the center of the room. He reclined it to get ready to merge. Sitting beside him, facing him, Davies, the junction monitor waited for him. The captain turned to face him.
  “Full sensors and maneuvering control only this time,” he said.
  Davies nodded. The captain laid his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes.
  As the merge began, he appeared to be sleeping. Davies focused on the readouts displaying on the monitors in front of him. His hands typed several commands into the system. Ty watched this.
  As the merge took hold, he heard the captain’s voice over his headset, “Ok, I’m merged. I’ve set the jump parameters now.”
  “Tactical copies,” said Ty.
  The other departments reported in. The jump parameters were broadcast to the other ships in the convoy. Ty made some adjustments to the charting table so it zoomed in on just the convoy. The ships appeared as a string of pulsing white pinpoints of light running along a thin translucent white line. A red circle appeared at the end of the line they were traveling along. The green dot representing the Adventurer was nearly on top of the red circle.
  “Jump in fifteen,” said the captain over the circuit. “Ten,” he said. He counted down from five, “Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Jumping.”
  Ty felt nothing when they jumped. He never did. In the chart table, the ships disappeared. Then four-seconds after they arrived, a point of light appeared behind them. Ty noted that the following ship’s trajectory was off from the Adventurer’s. He pursed his lips as he watched them arrive. The ships were scattered by the variances in the accuracy of their jumping systems. There would need to be some maneuvering to get them all on a workable trajectory. He knew the captain was looking deep into the solar system they’d just arrived in for signs of Alliance ships or snooping platforms.
  A minute after the last freighter jumped in, an alert sounded in the command center. The captain’s voice came from the intercom speakers. His figure remained still in the couch.
  “Our high-link transmissions are being jammed. The source is deep in system, near Venus. Assessment gentlemen?”
  Ty turned to Drucker as the senior officer at tactical.
They traded glances before Drucker answered, “Sir, it’s a sure thing, they know we’re coming.” Ty nodded in agreement as the man spoke. “It likely means we won’t gain anything by running silent.”
  Ty nodded again.
  “Very well,” Roper answered. He paused a moment. “Ty, as your watch is over now. I need to make a decision on what to do. One answer means you will be an observer of the engagement and watch it from the wardroom. The other answer means you’ll man tactical through the engagement. I’m certain the Lieutenant would like you at tactical.”
  Drucker nodded.
  “What is it to be?”
  As much as Ty wanted things to be different, to be somewhere else, the moment was upon him. He glanced at Drucker who waited passively. His face void of emotion. Ty glanced at Roper’s figure laying supine in the couch. While the figure was inert. Ty knew the captain was fully alert and waiting for his choice. Ty’s mind flashed back across the million and one arguments he’d made for and against this situation. While they’d all been academic to this point, it mattered now and the choice was terrifying. With the sinking feeling of stepping into space off of a ledge knowing there was no parachute or landing system to save him, but determined not to offend the God he knew existed and was watching him with equal interest, he let the words come out.
  “I can’t recant sir.”
  His words hung for a moment. The other officers in the command center turned to look at him from their stations. Some looked with shock, some with pity, others with silent approbation for his choice. The moment passed.
  Commander Roper spoke, “I’m sad Ty. I will try to understand. In accordance with your choice, you are hereby relieved of duty. Lieutenant Drucker, please escort Mr. Weiss from the command center to his quarters and arrange to have security monitor his presence in the wardroom. Then return here so we can plan the traversing of this system. Ty, I really will miss these conversations. I enjoyed serving with you. I regret this is what happened.”
  “Me too, sir, and likewise, I’ve enjoyed serving with you.”
  “Come on, Ty,” said Drucker.
  As he left the command center, as if directed by some unseen conductor, the command crew stood in unison and saluted Ty. He paused at the portal and returned the salute.
  Ty felt differently than he thought he would. On one level he felt at peace with his choice. On another level, he wondered what his new future would bring and how he’d ever do what he felt destined to do. On still another level, he wondered if he’d made the right choice. He also had a gnawing fear of how he’d support his family.

***
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The Demonstration

IMPERIAL PALACE - ALLIANCE OF PLANETS - 20 Years later
  “Ramon, you may begin your briefing,” said the Emperor. 
  The Emperor was a slender man in his early sixties. His hair was still a dark brown, which matched well his olive complexion and finely boned face. He had a matching VanDyke beard and mustache. He sat in a chair reserved for just himself and wore a simple black tunic over a black shirt and slacks. The tunic’s only adornment was a gold family crest embroidered over the right breast. 
  He did like fancy rooms though. Functionally, the room was a command center, but instead of functional displays and console stations, it was all mahogany wood panels, chandeliers, glass topped desks and luxurious  overstuffed chairs. Displays, when needed, were projected by hidden holo-projectors and appeared to hang in mid air. The emperor sat at the head of a long table. At his right hand sat his chief of staff, whom he simply addressed as “Ramon”. To everyone else, he was simply, “chief”. Everyone else in the room sat at chairs that were a little lower in height than either the emperor’s chair or the chief’s chair. At the far end of the table, opposite the emperor, was a lectern. 
  Ramon faced the Emperor and said softly, “Of course your Excellency.” 
  He stood and walked to the lectern. All eyes in the room watched him intently. Only the Emperor watched him without fear. It was the consequence of a reputation he took great delight in maintaining. He relished the power it gave him over those around him. It allowed him to speak softly when he gave orders. 
  “This briefing is classified,” he began. “Imperium-only. Any discussion of these items outside this room will result in a summary execution.” 
  Ten sets of eyes blinked. The emperor only smiled to himself. Ramon knew they all believed him. He suspected, correctly, that they feared he would enforce it personally too. They were all sitting around a large conference table and as Ramon began speaking, a holographic projection of a few stars appeared over the center.
  “As you are aware, our war with the Terran Republic has fared well to date, but our ship yards and training bases are still struggling to replace attrition losses caused by the operations we are currently running. We are now ready to deploy an upgrade to an existing weapon which should significantly reduce these losses. I am speaking of a new version of Remora.”
  Several members in the group exchanged glances with each other at the comment. Several hushed conversations rippled around the conference table. Ramon waited for them to subside before continuing.
  “As you know, the current version of Remora resides in the operating systems of virtually all Republic starships. Remora, in conjunction with our ability to listen to the Republic Fleet’s interstellar communication system messages, lets us know the location of every ship in the Republic Fleet.” Ramon paused as Admiral Bedring raised his hand. “Yes, Admiral.”
  Bedring spoke, “I would point out that Remora even allows us to know in limited but crucial instances, not only where the Republic ships are but also where they will be at the beginning of a battle. Knowing when and where the ships will be has allowed us to fire the first shot in virtually all of our engagements with the Republic. It’s the key to our many victories over them.”
  More conversations rippled around the room, many ending with smiles and nodding heads. 
  “I yield the floor, Sir. Thank you,” said Bedring.
  Ramon continued, “Thank you for your insights Admiral. This new version has all the capabilities of the existing version. This new version, when activated, shuts off the ship’s flight control, weapon’s control and power management systems, effectively disabling the ship. It is triggered by projecting a symbol which the target ships’ sensors detect as it scans our ships. This symbol is then processed along with all the rest of the data from the sensor. When Remora sees the symbol it shuts down the systems I outlined to you.”
Admiral Bedring spoke, “That’s all fine, but Republic control systems are very sophisticated. Aren’t they resistant to this sort of event?”
  Ramon nodded, “This is true. There are actually three redundant control modules called kernels on all Republic ships. Any two can vote out the third controller if they detect something wrong. A human operator can vote either of the remaining controllers out. Yet they all communicate along a common bus and control channel. This is where the new version of Remora lives. It sends a message to all the controllers that each has been shunted out and no longer in the command loop by the others. They all think they are the third system being removed from the system and this is what causes a total shutdown of all ship systems.”
  “And you’ve already tested this where?” Bedring asked.
  “We have a captured asset which we’ve tested this against. It works there. Now we are going into the next phase of the testing. This will be a field test of the weapon. The targeted ship just recently came out of refit. During that time, the modified flight software, including the new version of Remora, was loaded. Its name is Adventurer, it’s an Ardent class convoy escort vessel.”
  “How did we accomplish this?” Bedring asked again.
  The Emperor answered, “Admiral, we have a resource in the Republic that has facilitated this. Beyond that, no one   in this room is cleared to know.”
  Bedring nodded in deference and sat back.
  “Ramon, please continue now.”
  “Yes, your highness.”  Pointing to the holograph in the center of the table he continued, “This is sector zeta-four-four. It encompasses THE Solar System, the Tau-Ceti and the Alpha-Centauri planetary systems of the Terran Republic. It is the location of this test of Remora.” 
  He paused as the display zoomed into the 85 Pegasi star system. A blinking red light with a small red tail appeared. The tail indicated its direction as it travelled through space. 
  “The ship is currently escorting a convoy of at least a dozen freighters. It is transiting the 85 Pegasi system now as it is preparing to jump to the Sol System. It will likely jump within a few hours. When it does, our test of Remora will begin.”
  The display pulled back to enclose the entire sector. 
  “We are masking the test by combining it with the movement of Task Force Twenty towards the Tau-Ceti system. It is currently standing by in the Epsilon Indi star system. Admiral Bedring…” 
  Ramon glanced at the Admiral who took the cue and began his portion of the briefing. “Your Excellency, members of the select committee for special projects…” 
  As he started, the display zoomed in on the Epsilon Indi star system. As it did, a cluster of blue sparks appeared in the center of the display. When the display stopped zooming in, the sparks were arrayed in a cylindrical formation. Along the central axis of the cylinder were four larger sparks. Surrounding them in a constantly moving cloud of motion, like mosquitoes, were more than two dozen smaller vessels. 
  “…Task Force 20. Its composition is two Aatarr class battleships, two Aatrixx class heavy cruisers, an assault carrier, Gambolin class with two wings of Raptors embarked, is attached. Providing escort is one destroyer squadron and two frigate squadrons. There are also four LongBow reconnaissance class escorts. Two of them have been modified with the receivers and transmitters needed to interact with this new version of Remora. After the Adventurer and its convoy enters the system, these two will enter the Sol system using standard fleet movement protocols. They will draw the Adventurer and its one escort, a small Dragon class attached scout, towards them and induce them to engage them. At that point, the test of Remora will be made.”
  The image changed again to show the schematics of two LongBow scouts. The fleet personnel quickly identified the differences of these two vessels from regular LongBows. 
  “One gunboat will jam communications between the Adventurer and fleet headquarters. It will also send the signal that will disable the Adventurer. Once this happens, the other LongBow will destroy the Adventurer and engage the Dragon to destroy it. As needed, the fleet will then transition to the system and destroy the research station at Mars and destroy the convoy. After that, the task force will traverse to the Tau-Ceti system to engage the defense station in orbit around Murphy’s World, the human-inhabited planet within the system.”
  Minister Tor Jellis of the Technical Ministry spoke up, “I must take pains to point out that these two LongBows have special modifications in them. If this test works well, these modifications will be implemented throughout the fleet. It is imperative that these two ships not be lost. The receivers and transmitters on them are prototypes and will be essential in building the hardware that will actually be deployed to the fleet. Additionally, their crews are non-military technicians and ministry scientists.”
  “Minister Jellis,” Ramon countered, “if Remora works as it should, they will be in no danger. If it doesn’t work, it’s of no value to the fleet. The ships will be expendable at that point.”
  “My Lord,” Jellis countered. Every set of eyes in the room glanced at him in discreet shock. Jellis caught himself and smiled disarmingly. “Excuse me my Lord. I am out of line.” 
The emperor glanced at him askance and raised a single eyebrow. 
  Ramon barely responded with the slightest hint of a smile. “Of course,” was all he said. “Admiral Bedring, please explain the rest of the plan to Minister Jellis.”
  “Remora has worked flawlessly. However, the Republic fleet is beginning to adapt their tactics in ways that have mitigated the effectiveness of the tool.”
  “Do they still not suspect the presence of these systems in their ships?” inquired Minister Jellis.
  The Empire’s Chief of Military Intelligence answered, “Our analysis of their changing tactics indicate they are not aware of the true reason they are losing so many engagements with our forces. I must stress, this is our greatest weapon against the Republic. This must not be discussed outside this room. We must do all we can to protect this information from being obtained by the Republic.”
  “I would add, sir,” said Bedring, “it is our only effective weapon against the Republic. In every way but this, their ships are superior to ours. This technological gift we call ‘Remora’, from friends of the Alliance within the Republic, and the heroic efforts of our crews, are why we enjoy the successes we have. For this reason, if the test fails, all necessary actions are to be taken to destroy the Repubic ship, the convoy and the Mars station. There must be no witnesses to this test. The fleet will remain in system thereafter just long enough to sweep it clear of any Republic ferrets which may exist. Any further questions?”

***
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