Table of Contents

- FLYLEAF

- PRAISE FOR RIGHT ASCENSION

- RIGHT ASCENSION

- ALSO BY DAVID DERRICO

- CHAPTER 1

- CHAPTER 2

- CHAPTER 3

- CHAPTER 4

- CHAPTER 5

- CHAPTER 6

- CHAPTER 7

- CHAPTER 8

- CHAPTER 9

- CHAPTER 10

- CHAPTER 11

- CHAPTER 12

- CHAPTER 13

- CHAPTER 14

- CHAPTER 15

- CHAPTER 16

- CHAPTER 17

- CHAPTER 18

- CHAPTER 19

- CHAPTER 20

- CHAPTER 21

- CHAPTER 22

- CHAPTER 23

- CHAPTER 24

- CHAPTER 25

- EPILOGUE

- THE END...?

- DECLINATION

- ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FLYLEAF

The dim light radiated by the candles flickered imperceptibly, casting dancing shadows along the earth-toned walls of the room. Tapestries of both human and alien origin adorned the walls, and a collection of artwork assembled from throughout the known galaxy decorated the small chamber. Though it usually gave him much pleasure, the room gave the Admiral little solace now.

Even the seat his wife sat in was a work of art—created by an Arcadian sculptor thousands of years ago. His wife, too, seemed to be a part of that sculpture, her graceful lines blending with the subtle contours of the chair. His eyes followed her elegant form, tracing the flowing patterns of her robe up to the supple lines of her neck and into the recesses of her dark eyes as they burned back into his.

“I think you should go,” he finally blurted out. “It’s too dangerous for you to stay here, Tara.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him, stiffening up at the unexpected request. “Where do you think I should go? To stay with my parents on the mainland? Would I be safer—”

“No, not on the mainland,” he replied, looking down into the dark fibers of the carpet. “I mean somewhere else … maybe just to Mars or the moons of Saturn for a little while … or maybe to the Cygnus System …”

“The Cygnus System?” she repeated incredulously. “My God, Dan, Earth has to be better protected than Cygnus Prime—this has to be the safest place in the sector.”

“That’s what they said about Korgia Prime,” he snapped uncharacteristically.

The soft lines of Tara’s face deepened noticeably. “What is it? What is it you know? The Confederation reports claim everything is under—”

“Under control? No reason to panic? Of course that’s what they’re saying.” He paused and took a deep breath. “But the truth is there is damned good reason to panic, Tara.”

“Daniel,” she said seriously, leaning toward him. “I’ve never heard you talk like this before. Not when there were daily attacks on Earth in the old days … not even when the Korgians were massing for their assault. What in the hell is going on out there?”

“I wish I knew,” he lamented helplessly. “I wish I knew.”

PRAISE FOR RIGHT ASCENSION

“Overall though, this is a great little book and with a subject like genocide on the agenda I think it’s appropriate to raise the subject now. We humans are great at obliterating what we do not understand; perhaps Derrico’s book provides a little insight into the intricacies of the human mind. … Well done and sure to do well in the science fiction market.”

- Alastair Rosie, eBook-Reviews.net

“David Derrico’s first novel kept me turning its virtual pages, wanting to read longer each evening than time would permit. … his hero carries the narrative, which features believable alien cultures and a plot that kept me guessing until I bumped up against the book’s cliffhanger conclusion.”

- Nina M. Osier, eBook-Reviews.net

“Right Ascension goes beyond the standard realms of the futuristic space epic, subtly tackling the issues of human morality, honor, and loyalty where many authors would fear to tread. Derrico has a remarkable talent for characterization, and in presenting his core characters with a series of awkward situations and dilemmas, he adeptly manages to challenge our definitions of right and wrong. Right Ascension is an utterly thought-provoking novel rich with vividly drawn characters, electrifying action sequences and plenty of food for thought.”

- Toby Emden, Bookbooters Press

RIGHT ASCENSION

A Novel By David Derrico

RIGHT ASCENSION

Publishing History

First digital edition published, May 2000

First paperback edition published, Jan 2001

Second digital edition published, Jan 2007

Second paperback edition published, Feb 2007

Copyright © 2010 by David Derrico

Cover art copyright © 2010 by David Derrico

Cover background image used courtesy of NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

v. 2.1K

ISBN: 978-1-4486-8760-2 (print version)

ALSO BY DAVID DERRICO

DECLINATION,

The Sequel to Right Ascension

For my father, Daniel Derrico, the real Admiral Atgard.

CHAPTER 1

1 Mar 3040

All was quiet as a pair of sleek fightercraft coasted through the dark velvet backdrop of space. Chad’s fingers anxiously played over the control stick in his hand. Through his excitement, he tried to concentrate on what he had learned at the Academy. He went through his in-flight checklist, ensuring that all combat systems were engaged in standby mode and operating properly. He eased his fighter even closer to the identical ship beside him, nearly touching the other fighter’s hull as he mirrored its trajectory. I should be getting extra points for this, he mused.

Up ahead, a large, slow-moving asteroid loomed. On the far side of the rock lay the object of their mission—a pilot in a disabled fighter that they were to rescue. Maintaining radio silence, Chad followed the subtle course corrections of his wingmate, carving out a flight path that nearly skimmed the asteroid’s surface, an attempt to avoid detection should anyone be watching. Chad smiled as the disabled fighter came into view. A quick burst over to the ship, and Chad would attach a tow cable to the fighter and be gone before anyone detected their presence—likely in record time. Chad eased the control stick forward—

The instrument panel of his fighter exploded in warning as a half-dozen enemy ships launched from a deep crater in the asteroid behind him. Bright red lances of laser light flashed past his cockpit, and Chad quickly raised his shields. “Figure Eight!” barked Krystal’s voice over the intercom. “Break now!”

Chad jerked his ship hard to the left, pulling away from Krystal as she shot in the opposite direction, quickly putting distance between the two fighters. Chad continued his arc, pulling hard on the control stick and adding speed to his turn. As he came around, he saw Krystal’s ship, which had performed a mirror image of his own maneuver. The two ships rejoined behind their attackers, and Chad quickly observed that they had split into groups of four and two in a confused effort to track the faster fighters.

“On my wing,” barked Krystal, banking hard toward the smaller group of enemy ships. They were Arrows, medium-sized fighters used mainly by pirates—a big step up from the slow Vagabonds Chad was used to facing. Chad hesitated just for a moment before falling in behind Krystal. Any other pilot, and Chad would have demanded the lead.

Krystal closed on the enemy ships at breakneck speed, no doubt aware that the larger group would be on them soon. She angled her ship slightly upward, targeting the topmost of the two ships, and Chad slid his ship underneath, locking onto the other enemy fighter. Both pilots thumbed their firing sticks at once, and two pairs of lasers tracked toward the fleeing Arrows. The barrages hit, and the exhaust from both ships abated, leaving them coasting helplessly in space.

A smattering of laser fire raked the rear of Chad’s ship—these Arrows are quicker than I thought! His shields held, though, and Chad again separated from Krystal’s ship, providing more difficult targets for their attackers. Their initial success had evened the odds somewhat, but Chad realized they were still outnumbered two to one, and being pursued by ships more powerful, and nearly as fast, as his own SF-233 fighter. He concentrated on defensive maneuvers as two of the Arrows chased after his ship. He hoped Krystal would be able to handle the other two—right now, there was no way for Chad to get to her.

Chad checked his display to see that he was speeding toward an asteroid field, and that he had barely put any distance on the pursuing fighters. A warning chime sounded as he approached the field and a thick red line on his tactical display, but Chad ignored it, pushing the control stick even farther forward. He kept an eye on the display as he closed on the dense array of asteroids at great speed. This better work, he mused, or all this has been for nothing.

A flicker of doubt entered Chad’s mind, but the pursuing fighters finally broke off and arced away from their paths. Chad fired his retro thrusters and pulled his ship straight up in as tight an arc as he could muster. He strained against the inertial forces, trying to hold on to consciousness for just another second longer. When he could bear no more, he pulled out of his turn and struggled to re-focus.

The two Arrows were visible through his front cockpit window now, and were already turning back toward him. Chad seized the moment and sped toward the closer Arrow, peppering it with laser fire. Its shields held, but Chad matched its maneuvers and continued to fire. No way this guy gets away from me. The Arrow dinked right and Chad instinctively dismissed the bait, instead angling to the left and catching the Arrow with a full laser burst as it came back into Chad’s field of fire. I’ve seen that textbook maneuver in the flight sims too many times—

Pleased with his victory, Chad had forgotten about the other fighter, which raked the side of Chad’s ship with a powerful burst from its quad cannons. Sirens blared in the cockpit as Chad’s shields failed. He cursed himself under his breath and pulled the control stick to angle toward the attacking Arrow. The ships closed at great speed before the Arrow veered off course, and Chad pulled in behind him, pouring laser fire into his engines. A few well-placed bursts, and the enemy fighter was finished. Chad sped back toward the remaining ships, and Krystal.

Chad’s shields were off-line, so another shot would disable his fighter and mean certain failure. But he saw that both remaining Arrows were still after Krystal, and he nudged the throttle forward as far as it could go.

He needn’t have worried. Before he could reach them, Krystal had literally flown circles around her pursuers, finishing both off with her ship seemingly unscathed. Chad settled in beside her and gave her a grin through the cockpit plasticite. She gave him a thumbs-up sign, and they coasted toward the disabled fighter to finish their mission.

Chad’s adrenaline was starting to subside, but he was still eager to finish the mission and get back to base. He pushed his ship forward and readied the tow cable, thinking of the accolades he would receive upon his return—

“Chad!” Krystal’s voice blared over the headset. He looked up to see the disabled fighter shed off an outer layer of concealing metal plates, and in its place, a fully-functional Arrow leveled its quad cannon at him. All for nothing …

The rest happened in slow motion. The enemy Arrow fired—and Krystal’s ship surged in front of Chad, taking the brunt of the attack. Her shields held, and she returned fire, quickly disabling the stationary ship. In an instant, it was truly over.

“Krystal—you–you saved me,” Chad stammered, considering the ramifications. “But your perfect score …”

There was no hesitation from the other end. “We passed, Chad, both of us, and with honors—although you damn near flew out of bounds.” He could almost hear her smirk. “Our perfect score will have to wait for the real thing.”

Chad’s combat systems disengaged and a voice broke over their headsets, “Congratulations, cadets. This concludes your final exam. Excellent work, both of you. Return to base.”

Chad exhaled and looked over at Krystal. The seven disabled Arrows powered back up, piloted by instructors wielding only simulated lasers, just like his own training fighter. All nine ships angled back toward the Confederation Academy shipyards.

The final hurdle was over. Chad had passed, and at the top of his class. He would need to hear his final score at the debriefing, of course, but his scores would surely be high enough for him to earn his commission and begin active duty.

A broad smile lit his face. There was one call Chad could not wait until landing to make. He thumbed his wrist-worn nanocomputer.

“Dad?” he said. “I did it. I passed. I’m going to be a Confederation officer.” He paused, and his eyes began to water. “Just like you.”

• • •

Lieutenant Atgard flinched as the shuttlecraft emerged from the upper atmosphere and the dull pink glow that had surrounded the ship abruptly gave way to the inky blackness of space. He was not yet accustomed to the sudden jolt that accompanied a spacecraft as it entered a vacuum, just one of a hundred new experiences he would surely be getting used to over the next several years.

Fresh out of the Yeager Fighter School of the Confederation Academy, and only 21 years old, Chad Steven Atgard had undergone thorough training and simulated combat exercises, but there was much he had yet to experience first-hand. His quivering legs attested to his almost palpable excitement—he had waited his entire life for a day like this one, yet even in his most optimistic moments he had not actually dared to believe what was happening to him now.

The minutes ticked by as the shuttle traveled from Earth at a seemingly leisurely pace, though when Chad fingered a key on his wrist nanocomputer, it showed their actual speed accelerating past 100 kilometers per second. While such speed was hardly slow, it paled in comparison to some of the fighters, scouts, and even heavier Corvettes that cruised at speeds many times as fast as the utilitarian shuttlecraft. Even the behemoth Indomitable cruised several times faster.

With that thought, Chad came out of his reverie. He blinked twice and looked around the interior of the small shuttlecraft. Dull gray padded benches on each side of the austere transport ship held three people each, four of whom he knew only superficially, but he knew them all to be recent top graduates like himself. Seated directly across from him, in fact, was Jonathan Cole, valedictorian of the Yeager Fighter School and grandson of Fleet Admiral Tiberius Cole, the aging captain of the Indomitable. Jonathan, his head turned to gaze out the front viewport, carried an unmistakable air of cold perfectionism about him as he sat with the stiff, perfect posture gleaned from years of growing up in the company of military officers. It must be difficult, Chad remarked silently, following in the footsteps of a living legend, but Jonathan certainly was making an admirable attempt.

He knew the credentials of the other graduates were not much different from Cole’s. He also knew the woman seated next to him, Krystal Rolari, was undoubtedly the best fighter pilot he had served with at the Academy. Although he had never admitted it to her, he knew that she was better than even he himself was, having proven it in simulations many times. It was a singular point of pride for him, in fact, that he was the only pilot in the entire class to have ever bested her in one-on-one combat in the flight sims.

He studied the contours of her face as he remembered their days at the Academy, not so far behind him as they now seemed. The long, jet-black tresses of her hair framed her angular face, and her innocent beauty belied her inner fortitude. Her strength, however, was apparent from her high, strong cheekbones and a granite chin that spoke of hard-fought battles won not in the void of space, but rather in the corporeal world of men.

Her mouth dropped open as he gazed at her. Staring out the front viewport to her left, she silently mouthed the words, “My God.” Turning to look, Chad’s own mouth dropped in amazement and his heart momentarily ceased to function.

In front of them loomed the Indomitable. Though the vessel was indeed shaped like a ship and was capable of faster-than-light travel, to call what appeared before them a “ship” was almost unthinkable. The magnificent, gleaming vessel was nearly the size of Earth’s moon, its impossible mass dwarfing the puny shuttlecraft whose insignificant shadow fell on the mighty colossus as they approached. Two sets of enormous, sweeping wings converged in great arcs into the plump fuselage of the behemoth spacecraft. Jutting out from the beast’s cavernous torso was a long, rounded nose section, the far end of which could not be seen through the shuttle’s front viewport. The surface of the vessel had a perfectly resplendent, almost angelic white luster that reflected light from the nearby sun and bathed the entire area in a vivid, divine luminescence. The brilliant glow forced Chad to cover his eyes as they approached, but once they had adjusted, he could make out the lettering on the vessel’s curved white flank, which read “U. C. S. Indomitable.” Each letter was several times the size of the shuttle.

It was, quite simply, the most awe-inspiring thing Chad had ever seen.

Unable to control his reverence, one of the cadets let out an involuntary gasp of amazement as they approached one of the myriad landing bays of the vessel. Approaching the opening doors of the bay looked for all the world like the tiny shuttlecraft was being sucked into the cavernous, daunting maw of some immense metallic beast.

“Wow,” murmured Chad softly, unable to find words properly befitting the humbling experience. A sudden lightheadedness finally reminded him to inhale.

The Captain, seated next to the pilot in the front of the shuttle, turned back to the cadets and said, “Wow? When I first saw her this close, the only thing I could think to say was holy shit.” The cadets all grinned at the Captain’s remark, and all silently agreed that his expression was far more apt than their own.

Entering the massive landing bay, the shuttle slowed and finally halted on the docking platform. Almost unable to move, Chad rose from his seat and anxiously looked toward the opening hatchway. As the cadets silently filed off the shuttle and onto the ship, each wore the uniform expression of awe spawned by actually being aboard the legendary Juggernaut. Chad stepped with trepidation down the short exit stairway, feeling an intense surge of adrenaline as his boot made contact with the polished metal deck, knowing his life was forever changed.

“You all must be overwhelmed,” said the Captain, eyeing the cadets with a knowing smirk. “To be perfectly honest, I still get a chill when I set foot on her.” The shuttle pilot next to him nodded his agreement. “But there will be plenty of time for awe. Now, you are all to follow me to the orientation room.”

Following the Captain into one of the broad hallways of the ship, Chad looked back at the hangar bay portal and at Earth, no longer nearly so magnificent nor awe-inspiring as the ship he would be stationed on for the next six years.

• • •

“Can you believe it, Krystal?” asked Chad once the orientations had ended and they had been taken to their barracks. “Can you believe this thing?”

“No,” she said pointedly. “It’s like a dream.”

“The Indomitable. Think of it! I mean, I’ve read all about it since I was a kid, but—”

“To actually be aboard it is another thing entirely,” Krystal finished for him.

“Man! Do you know this ship can hold half a billion people? That it’s almost half the mass of the moon? That it …”

“Knowing all that and seeing it are entirely different things, aren’t they?”

“Wow. I mean, holy shit was right.”

Smiling, Krystal embraced him. He held her, and thought of how everything had come together almost perfectly for him. Here he was, graduated at the top of his class from flight school, on board the Indomitable, and with Krystal. Though she didn’t know it, the last thing was what made him most happy. At least he didn’t think she really knew. If she did, it never got in the way of their friendship, which started almost as soon as they joined the Academy together, six years ago.

“Do you think we’ll ever know our way around this place?” Krystal asked as Chad reluctantly released her and watched her survey their new home. “I hear even Fleet Admiral Cole doesn’t know where everything is.”

“How could he?” asked Chad incredulously. “That would be like knowing every street, house, and building in North America. How many square kilometers of space are there aboard this ship?”

“Who knows?” replied Krystal with an absent shrug. “Isn’t that a trivia question or something?”

“I wonder if anyone really knows,” said Chad, beginning to call up the ship’s schematics on his nanocomputer.

“What I do know,” replied Krystal, turning to him seriously, “is that every square centimeter on this ship is the safest place in the galaxy to be.”

Chad nodded and looked up at her. “Yeah … they say the armour is impenetrable.”

“Or as close as it can theoretically be, anyway. Quantum mechanics was never my thing, though.”

Krystal was referring to the super-dense construction of the atomic armour plating that protected the ship, Chad knew. Though he admitted he was not an expert on such things either, he did know that the basic principle was that subatomic particles were somehow packed together so densely that they were all but impenetrable. Add to that the Indomitable's impregnable shields, which were more powerful than those of any planet, and he could see no way how anything could be more than a nuisance to the mighty Juggernaut-class starship. In fact, after the Indomitable’s construction, symbolically finished on January 1, 3000, no other species had even attempted to make anything rivaling the monstrous ship. After all, what was the point? Chad doubted that anything larger than it could ever be made, and if any hostile species tried, there would be no way to hide it and no way to stop the Juggernaut from obliterating it before it came anywhere near completion. None of the neighboring species, however, even felt a need for so powerful a weapon for their navies, as the commission of the Indomitable marked the beginning of a peaceful era. The ultimate Doomsday Weapon, the Indomitable solidified the peaceful, democratic authority of the United Confederation of Planets and aligned nearly all the worlds in the Alpha Sector. Though it was used only as a symbolic show of force in most of the ensuing minor skirmishes, its effectiveness, once proven beyond any reasonable doubt, deterred any serious invasion. Any hostile species that were out there were staying the hell out there.

Of course, what made the Indomitable so frightful a specter was not her armour, nor her shields, nor even her powerful energy weapons. What made the Indomitable legendary was the Omega Cannon.

“Chad?”

Chad blinked twice and looked over at Krystal, flashing her a feeble grin. “I wonder, Krystal …” he began.

“Wonder what?” she asked, walking over to him and sitting with him on one of the bunk beds arranged in neat rows throughout the large room. “What is it?”

“It’s just that … I don’t know. Doesn’t it kind of bother you in a way?”

“It?” she asked, momentarily confused. “You mean the Omega Cannon.” It was not a question.

“Yeah,” he admitted, looking up into her face, a face that once again reminded him not of a rookie cadet, but of a seasoned veteran with decades of experience behind its beautiful facade. “I mean, it has kept the peace for over 30 years.”

Krystal took his hand in hers. “I had to come to terms with that dilemma before I could ever set foot aboard this ship, Chad. And I think you need to come to terms with it as well.”

Chad sighed heavily.

“And I think you need to arrive at your conclusion on your own,” she finished. Kissing him on the forehead, she rose to leave. “But right now, let’s get some sleep. We’ll probably have a big day tomorrow.”

Forcing a smile, Chad nodded and watched her walk out of the room. But he knew sleep would be the last thing on his mind.

• • •

The barracks were quiet—eerily quiet, Chad noted uncomfortably. And when it was quiet at night, Chad had time to think. And on this night in particular, he had a lot on his mind. Predictably, his thoughts turned to the Omega Cannon.

The size of a small moon all by itself, but encased in the oblong nose of the Indomitable, the Omega Cannon was the final word in naval power. Larger and infinitely more powerful than any conceivable conventional, nuclear, or energy weapon, the Cannon was what scared aggressive species from coming anywhere near the Confederation. Though there were powerful hostile armadas out there, they were all rendered meaningless by the Cannon.

Of course, the details were not revealed to anyone but the most trusted, high-ranking members of the Confederation Navy, but how exactly the weapon did what it did was irrelevant. What mattered was what it did to the attacking armies of the Korg Empire on June 6, 3007.

Though it happened many years before his birth in 3019, Chad and every other sentient being in the sector knew very well about the events that took place at the Korgia Prime System that day. It was after the Korgians had attacked and inflicted heavy casualties on a few outlying Confederation outposts, and appeared to be readying for a more serious assault on the Core Systems. Dispatched from Earth, the Indomitable arrived unescorted at Korgia Prime, where the entire Korgian Armada had massed for their upcoming assault. As the Korgian ships started swinging into position and firing harmless energy beams at the Indomitable, she powered up the Omega Cannon.

Though the entire incident was classified, and certainly none of the Korgians lived to tell about it, what happened next was legendary. While accounts of exactly what happened vary, and thus the details are not commonly agreed upon, what Chad and everyone else did know was that the immense Omega Cannon fired, and, as the Indomitable spun away and departed through hyperspace, the entire Korgian Star System, including its twelve planets, nine billion people, and hundreds of warships, was completely obliterated. Not surprisingly, to this day, no one has since dared launch a major offensive on any Confederation planet.

It was not always so safe and peaceful, Chad noted. Back in his grandfather’s time, during the days when Fleet Admiral Cole became a living legend, there were constant wars and threats of extermination from evil alien species. Even his distinguished father’s period had seen its share of war. Many, like his grandfather, had died defending Earth and other Confederation worlds from invaders.

But those days are far behind us now, thanks to the Cannon, Chad thought quickly. After all, the Omega Cannon had, almost single-handedly, kept the peace for over thirty years. Eventually, with that notion to comfort him, Chad was able to fall into a weary sleep.

• • •

During the night, his first aboard the Indomitable, Chad was awakened by the familiar ringing of alarm klaxons. It took him a while to realize that he was no longer at flight school, and that this must be the real thing.

Sensing his thoughts, Krystal arose from her bed and, as she donned her flight gear, calmly said, “Probably just a drill. They probably do this to all incoming pilots on their first night.”

“Kind of a ‘welcome aboard’ type of thing, perhaps?” Chad agreed as he rubbed his eyes, quickly growing alert. “Well, let’s make it look good.”

With that, they finished getting ready and stepped into the hall and raced down to the briefing room. It was chaos as they entered and found a chair.

“Take a seat!” barked the normally relaxed Captain, heavy furrows evident on his brow. “This is not a drill.”

Krystal and Chad looked at each other in surprise as they sat in one of the many rows of chairs in the back of the room. Not a drill? What could be so threatening as to warrant all this activity? A rogue pirate in a 200-series fighter, perhaps? Chad stifled a chuckle.

“Pilots,” began the Captain, “an unidentified bogey has just arrived in the Sol System. We are maneuvering to intercept.” He fingered a button on a remote, calling up a three-dimensional representation from the holo-vid projector showing the nose of the Indomitable and a tiny silver speck floating before it.

A pilot near the front raised a hand. “Didn’t we track them on long-range radar?”

“No,” replied the Captain. “That’s what has us so intrigued. We had no contact from any sensor or radar scans until three minutes ago when it arrived. The ship is small, not quite Capital-class, but sensor scans are unable to penetrate its shielding. We’ve never seen anything like it before. We are assuming they are a new species.”

“Wow,” whispered Krystal enthusiastically. “How exciting!” Though far from common, encountering a new species was not extraordinary considering that the vast stretches of space spawned scores of sentient creatures. Chad had certainly never been present for a First Contact, however.

“They’re probably friendly,” the Captain continued, “but of course, we are not to let our guards down. We are to be on full combat status. Alpha through Delta Wings will launch immediately and take up escort positions. You are to remain Weapons Hot but are not to fire under any circumstances until ordered otherwise, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir!” was the unanimous reply from the assembled pilots. With a nod from the Captain, they began moving quickly to their ships. Chad rushed to keep up with Krystal as they raced from the briefing room into the corridor.

“It should be fun taking out the new SF-357’s,” he remarked as they hurried down the corridor, pulsating lights overhead directing them to the fighter bays. “They didn’t have any ships this advanced at the academy.”

“Stay focused,” Krystal warned uncharacteristically. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay? The Indomitable may be invincible, but we’re not.”

“But it’s a First Contact! You really think they sent one sub-Capital ship to start a ruckus with the Indomitable? Don’t be—”

“Just be careful, okay, Chad? I have a funny feeling about this.”

Chad had learned to trust Krystal’s intuition. “Krystal,” he asked, slowing slightly. “At the Academy—our final exam. If those had been real lasers … ?”

“We’re a team, right?” Krystal nodded to him. “Just stay close to me—and stay alert this time.”

Chad smiled. “You worry too much,” he teased, grinning. “You’re just scared ‘cause you’re not as good a pilot as me.”

Krystal couldn’t help but smile, and some of her seriousness faded. “I’ll fly circles around you any day, space slug. Just try to keep up.” With that, she sprinted ahead.

Chad laughed to himself and the pair raced to their respective fighters.

• • •

Launching out of the hangar bay, Chad was once again reminded of just how immense the vessel he was leaving truly was. Pushing those thoughts aside, however, he concentrated on the task at hand, following Beta Leader around on a hard left turn, the stars pinwheeling violently in front of him. Decelerating quickly, he eased into formation, guiding his ship behind and to the right of Krystal, who in turn was on the right wing of Beta Leader. Chad double-checked his readouts, making sure his shields were up and his weapons were fully powered, and glanced to his left at the massive Indomitable, the mighty Juggernaut completely eclipsing his view of Earth.

“Beta Leader to Beta Wing,” barked Jonathan Cole’s voice through the comm speaker, “hold position and retain attack formation.”

Chad slowed his ship and stopped, surrounded by the other eleven members of Beta Wing, who were likewise aligned in perfect formation. He stared through the cockpit plasticite at the speck of an alien ship that had caused all this commotion. He could make out few details of the small ship; it appeared to be ovoid in shape, and composed of some reflective, swirling metal. “I guess we just wait while they try to talk to it now, huh?” Chad asked over the comlink.

“That’s right,” replied Cole stiffly. “Those are the orders. But stay alert.”

Fine, thought Chad, running his fingers wistfully over the fighter’s controls. I’ll stay alert, all right. But can’t I just go take this baby for a spin for a while?? He looked over into Krystal’s cockpit to find her smiling back at him. He knew she could tell exactly what he was thinking, and, what’s more, that she was thinking exactly the same thing.

CHAPTER 2

Admiral Daniel Atgard surveyed the scene before him on the expansive viewscreen. Straight ahead, and clearly visible though many millions of kilometers away, was the Indomitable. His view was of the stately profile of the mammoth ship, of which Earth, hanging behind her against the mottled background of stars, seemed to be no more than a satellite. Surrounding the Juggernaut, he knew from his tactical display, were hundreds of small but potent fighters, one of which was piloted by his son, Chad. The Admiral watched with fervent interest, as not only was he witnessing his son’s first mission, but also the discovery of a new species. Although, to be more accurate, Daniel remarked silently, the other species had technically discovered us.

The alien vessel, visible exclusively on the tactical screen, was of unknown origin. Strangely, his sensors had been unable to garner any data on the exotic vessel. He hoped the Indomitable's sensors, being at much closer range, were enjoying more success. In addition, he reminded himself, his sensors were set to passive scanning, as they were unable to actively transmit radar signals while cloaked. Though just a precaution, he had elected to keep his ship, the Apocalypse, fully cloaked, which—theoretically—rendered it undetectable.

Daniel turned once again to the tactical display and zoomed in on his son’s SF-357 fighter, which hovered in perfect formation on the near side of the Indomitable's right flank. Daniel longed to hail his son over the comlink, but knew he was unable to transmit while cloaked, a precaution that may have seemed paranoid and unnecessary to some. However, though the alien ship seemed benign, Admiral Atgard had not survived to rise to his current rank by underestimating unknown adversaries.

Admiral Atgard had, at age 35, become the youngest man to ever hold that rank when he was awarded it in 3011. Still one of the younger men to currently hold the title, Daniel Atgard earned the respect and notice of the Confederation Navy at an early age. Originally a fighter pilot, Daniel proved his courage defending Earth from invaders before the days of the Indomitable. After his bravery and skill had caught the eye of Admiral Cole, he was commissioned to a covert branch of the military and given command of a swift Corvette. He was sent on many dangerous and clandestine missions, ranging from exploration to espionage, all of which were of critical importance to the Confederation. Repeatedly establishing his mettle as a pilot, a captain, and a tactician, Atgard was made an Admiral after his pivotal role in the discovery of the aggregation of the Korgian Armada.

A man of wisdom, valor, and, above all, integrity, Daniel Atgard was ferociously respected by his friends and crewmates alike. Daniel’s reputation as one of the most fiercely innovative and cunning men in the sector was well known, and he had pulled his ship and crew through insurmountable odds on regular occasion. A heroic, noble warrior-philosopher, Daniel often found himself outgunned or outnumbered, but never outwitted. Resolute and indefatigable, his august visage was born of years of hard-earned experience and invaluable knowledge. Slender wisps of stately gray hair mingled with his ebony locks, but the intensity with which he bore himself suggested a man half his age. Perceptive and inquisitive, the Admiral firmly believed that if he outthought his enemy, the battle was already won.

Silently surveying the scene, the Admiral looked around the bridge and regarded his assembled officers. Seated in front of him and to his left at the pilot’s station was helmsman Zach Wallace, a cocky young ex-fighter pilot chosen expressly for his unparalleled piloting skills. His bravery and ability were matched only by his recklessness and bravado. He looked the part, too—dark, unkempt hair, evidently just this side of regulations, and an ever-present smirk that hinted of confidence fostered by genius. Daniel could tell by the gleam in his eyes that the young Lieutenant currently wanted nothing more than the thrill of the opportunity to chase after the unfamiliar ship through some dense asteroid field.

Seated to Zach’s right was Lieutenant Nathan Latimer. Nathan was a Fedoran, and hailed from the Cygnus System. Fedorans were unusually similar to humans—they were bipedal and breathed oxygen. Unlike humans, however, Fedorans had but one arm, which jutted from the center of their roughly cylindrical bodies and ended in eight, half-meter-long tentacles. Their skin was a dull brown in color, and they lived several times longer than the average 135-year life span of humans. Ironically, Daniel thought their wrinkled skin and faces made even the youngest of them look rather aged.

The presence of aliens aboard human Confederation ships, while rare, was not unheard of. Most alien species were so different from humans that they would not only be unable to survive on human ships without protective suits, but they would be completely unable to operate the same controls or read the same viewscreens as humans. Even relatively similar species would usually experience adverse effects in human environments over an extended period of time due to subtle changes in air composition and pressure, gravity, ambient light, and many other environmental factors. For this reason, nearly all aliens in the Navy were assigned to ships specially designed for their species. Luckily, Fedorans were able to survive comfortably in human environments, and their acute vision was sensitive to visual and ultraviolet light. Admiral Atgard had hand-picked Nathan to join the Apocalypse's crew not only for his loyalty and knowledge, but also for his abilities, exceptional even by Fedoran standards.

Serving as the navigator and astrometric technician, Nathan’s memory was photographic: he was able to recall detailed star charts from systems he had visited years before with startling precision. He also possessed phenomenal mathematical abilities that allowed him to calculate jump points and course headings nearly as well as any computer. Only marginally older than Daniel’s 64 years, Nathan appeared much older. His bald, leathery head was spotted and furrowed, and deep-set wrinkles framed his perceptive brown eyes. Solemn and quiet, Lieutenant Latimer gave no outward impression of his thoughts as his gaze shifted between the viewscreen and his navigation panel. Daniel surmised that he was probably trying to ascertain the origin of the newcomers’ vessel.

Shifting his gaze to the stalwart, dark-skinned man to his left, Daniel studied his Tactical Officer, Lieutenant Commander Dex Rutcliffe. A serious and impassioned warrior, Dex was a master of military strategy and a tactician of eminence and renown within the Confederation. A former elite Marine Commando, Dex had been promoted and made a Naval officer when it was realized that his keen tactical mind could not be wasted in the role of an infantryman. Though merely a young Lieutenant at the time, Dex Rutcliffe’s innovative ideas, now taught at Academies throughout the Confederation, were responsible for routing the Vr’amil’een Armada in a skirmish some 15 years ago. Lieutenant Commander Rutcliffe was a robust, well-built man in his early forties whose stern countenance befit a warrior of his stature. His eyes never moved from the tactical display panel in front of him, and Daniel felt relieved that if this encounter were to turn hostile, Dex already would have run through a score of mental simulations and come up with a dozen viable strategies for every possible contingency.

Seated to Daniel’s right was his First Officer, Commander Anastasia Mason. Daniel had known Anastasia since their days together aboard his Corvette, the Excalibur. She was his First Officer then, and he requested—rather, demanded—that she be allowed to accompany him when he took command of the Apocalypse upon its commission in 3033. Daniel found her empathetic perspective to be an invaluable counterpoint to his methodical and analytical approach. Though brilliant, Commander Mason relied more on intuition and gut feeling than facts or numbers when formulating strategies or opinions. The Admiral was wise enough to realize that her input was often beneficial, and that their two styles complemented each other perfectly.

Daniel had first met Anastasia when she joined him aboard the Excalibur at age 24. Only a few years out of the Academy then, Daniel could already sense that the young Ensign possessed the qualities of a great leader. She moved up the ranks quickly, and was his First Officer by age 35. Now, at 49, Commander Mason had an air of regality about her. Tall and slender, with porcelain-clear skin and long, full, jet-black hair cascading down her back, Anastasia could, in another setting, have easily passed for a Queen or ruler of some aristocratic society. She bore herself with a stately charm, but her genuine warmth and empathy kept her from ever seeming distant, aloof, or elitist. As Daniel studied her, she turned to meet his discerning gaze and silently conveyed her anxiety. Daniel knew from years of experience that situations such as this one made her uneasy—she knew nothing about the aliens except the data flicking across the screen from the inconclusive sensor scans. She had no inkling of their motivations, their feelings, or their culture. Always adroitly adept at interpersonal communication, psychology, and empathy, Commander Mason must have felt as if she were entering this situation bound and blindfolded. She stared at Daniel helplessly, unable to offer counsel, nor even venture a guess as to the next move of the aliens aboard the strange silver ship that floated silently before them in the void.

“They’re transmitting the welcome message, Admiral,” reported Dex.

Daniel stared at the viewscreen and wondered if the aliens would be able to receive it. Though the Indomitable was broadcasting at every known wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum, it was still nothing more than a shot in the dark to presume that the aliens’ instruments would be able to decode the transmission. And although the message was, theoretically, universal, consisting of prime numbers, pi, and other such mathematical encodings, there was no guarantee the aliens could comprehend it. Even if they could decipher it, Daniel wondered, who was to say that the number three didn’t mean “go to hell” in their language?

“How long do you think it will take them to respond?” asked Zach, spinning in his seat to look at the Admiral. “And how will they let us know if they understand or not?”

“They will find a way,” replied Anastasia. “Simple ideas—understanding, curiosity, love—are shared by all sentient species. They might not be able to ask for a cup of coffee, but we’ll be able to communicate somehow. It just might take a little time to get the details ironed out.”

Nodding, Daniel added, “Remember when we—accidentally—made first contact with the Slarthi? We were just on our way through the Sirius System when we literally almost bumped right into them.”

“Of course,” replied the Commander. “How could I forget? We, of course, weren’t equipped to deal with meeting a new species. We didn’t have the people or the equipment that we were supposed to …”

“But in the end,” continued Admiral Atgard, “we were able to communicate enough to not only convey our mutual peaceful intentions, but also to start learning a little about each other. The breakthrough in communication,” Daniel added, looking around the bridge, “came when we—accidentally—sent them Anastasia’s recipe for chicken soup from the food synthesizers!”

Everyone chuckled as Anastasia finished, “It turned out, with the information we had already sent them, they were able to synthesize it themselves. Once again, my cooking skills saved the galaxy from certain annihilation!” She flashed a wry smile at Daniel.

“That’s why I made sure you were transferred here,” Daniel joked. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of exploring the fringes of the known galaxy for years on end without your chicken soup around.”

Once again, the crew laughed lightheartedly at their banter. “So that’s why you keep her around, eh, Admiral?” Zach asked facetiously. “I thought it was for her stunning good looks.” He beamed a cocky smirk in her direction.

“You’re lucky you’re a good pilot,” retorted Anastasia, smiling subtly. “Because if looks were a requirement, you would have been reassigned to a cargo frigate to haul fertilizer to Lethe Minor a long time ago.”

“Oooooh … crashed and burned, eh, Zach?” laughed Dex. “Still having trouble with the ladies, I see.”

Slightly pink from embarrassment, but still sporting his ever-present smirk, Zach turned back to the viewscreen. Quickly changing the subject, he began, “So … how long has it been since—”

He stopped there as everyone’s eyes became focused on the viewscreen. There was activity from the alien ship.

Peering ahead, the Admiral’s face quickly grew serious once again. “Dex, magnify the viewscreen. Center between the aliens and the nose of the Indomitable.”

As the viewscreen snapped into focus to show a closer view of the area, they could see that a bright lance of light had shot from the nose of the alien ship and remained suspended in space, reaching out to rest upon the nose of the Indomitable.

“Dex, what is that?” asked the Admiral.

“I don’t know, sir,” replied Dex. “But it appears to be of low intensity … it’s certainly not damaging the Indomitable. Perhaps some sort of sensor beam, or maybe just a spotlight of some sort?” he ventured.

“Well—which is it?” asked Daniel.

“I … I don’t know. It’s not … light, per se … . Sir, I don’t know what in the hell it is.” His gruff voice carried with it just a hint of concern.

“Daniel, you had better take a look at this,” interjected Anastasia. She hit a button on her control panel and the viewscreen switched to a less-magnified view, showing the Indomitable in its entirety. The narrow beam of light was still visible. The Admiral followed it from the alien ship to the nose of the Indomitable and …

He could see it clearly emerging from the tail end of the Indomitable.

Before the Admiral could respond, a large white ball of light shot from the nose of the alien ship. Traveling quickly, and riding the narrow beam of light, it sped toward the nose of the Indomitable. As it reached the front of the ship, it disappeared, but moments later, a series of explosions began to ripple from deep within the Indomitable's hull. Beginning at the nose and convulsing down the length of the ship, small arcs of incandescent fire and plasma shot out from within the interior of the massive vessel. Within an instant, the ball of light had passed out the rear of the Juggernaut and the explosions had reached the tail of the mighty colossus. For a long second, nothing stirred, and then, all at once, the Indomitable, the invulnerable symbol of human Naval superiority, flashed into an immense ball of blinding white plasma and was completely destroyed.

• • •

Mouth agape, stunned, and unable to move, the Admiral and his crew watched helplessly as the alien vessel turned and shot away back in the direction from which it had come. Where, moments ago, a ship the size of a planet, hundreds of fighters, and a sleek alien vessel had resided, the viewscreen now showed nothing but Earth, small and vulnerable, nestled amongst the stars that were helpless to protect her from this new enemy.

The words came out slowly, laboriously. “Life signs … ?” The Admiral’s voice cracked uncharacteristically.

There was a momentary silence, which hung like a leaden blanket over the bridge crew. “N–None, sir,” stammered Dex. “None at all.”

CHAPTER 3

The room was dark, illuminated only by the glow from the holo-vid projector that radiated a three-dimensional picture of the massacre in the center of the room. Admiral Atgard’s ashen face, illuminated by the pale light from the projector, looked as though it were carved from a bleached slab of limestone. He stared at—almost through—the image, which for the hundredth time showed the last moments of the Indomitable and the awful explosion that had consumed her. Fingering a key on the remote, the Admiral watched as the holo-vid projected a close-up view of his son’s tiny fighter. His keen eyes staring at the display, Daniel looked at the cockpit of the SF-357. He was not completely sure it wasn’t just some trick of reflective lighting on the canopy, but as the projection slowly replayed the last moments of Chad’s life, just before the aliens fired, Daniel swore he could see a broad smile on his son’s face just before the explosion hit.

• • •

It was not until the third signal that Daniel realized that someone was waiting at his door. “Come in,” he muttered weakly.

The door slid open to reveal Commander Mason, her expressive face nearly as pallid as the Admiral’s own. “May I … ?” she asked.

“Yes, yes, please,” Daniel answered, flicking off the ghastly display and bringing the room lights up as Anastasia entered his quarters. “What is it?”

“I … I just wanted to see how you were, Dan,” Anastasia said, looking directly into her old friend’s eyes. Her voice was calm and soothing, possessing a strength that seemed to somehow buoy the Admiral’s doleful spirits.

“Well … I … I don’t know. I’m okay.” He looked up at Anastasia, and could tell she was as unconvinced as he was. “You have to look at these things stoically …”

“You don’t have to put up a front with me, Dan,” she said. “We’ve known each other for too long; we’ve been through too much.”

“I know … I know,” he said weakly, his voice a far cry from his normally authoritative, resolute tone. “What can I say? They spent 250 years building that ship. They put half a billion people on it. They put the best soldiers …”

Anastasia gazed silently at the Admiral. Tears welled within his bloodshot eyes.

“They put my son. He was 21 years old, Anastasia.” His voice sounded as if he was pleading her to bring him back, as if she could. “Twenty-one … he had so much ahead of him … I was so proud …” The first tear rolled down Daniel’s cheek. “I am so proud.”

Anastasia walked slowly to her friend’s side. Sitting on the couch beside him, she put her arm around him and let his forehead rest on her neck. The tears were falling now, and Daniel was powerless to stop them, his hands shaking as he clutched a picture of Chad in his right hand. He could sense that the tears were welling in Anastasia’s eyes, too, but that she struggled to fight them back, not out of embarrassment, but out of the desire to be strong for her friend, more in need now than she had ever known.

“You know, Daniel, I spoke to Chad two days ago, when he learned of his assignment.”

Daniel’s head perked up. “You did? When?”

“When he called for you. You were still coming over on the shuttle from the Indomitable, from your meeting with Fleet Admiral Cole. I spoke to him for a while until you arrived.”

“Yeah? What did he say?” asked the Admiral, beginning to rein back the tears that had fallen freely across his face. “He sure was happy that day, wasn’t he, Anastasia? He was so happy he was going to the Indomitable.” Daniel’s face brightened slightly as he remembered how vivacious his son’s voice had sounded. After all, he reminded himself, it was exceedingly rare for a cadet to be assigned to the Confederation flagship directly out of the Academy. It was an honor reserved for only a handful of the most highly-qualified cadets.

“Yes, he sure was happy. But that’s not what we talked about.”

“No?” asked the Admiral curiously. “What did he say?”

“He said he was happy that he had been assigned to the Indomitable, of course, but he also told me that his assignment was not what he was most proud of.”

“What was that?” asked the Admiral.

“He said he was most proud,” said Anastasia slowly, “of being your son.”

• • •

The lights were off; all was quiet, yet Daniel could not sleep. He stared at the inky blackness of the ceiling, the blackness that seemed to be alive and palpable as it threatened to consume him. The light from faraway stars struggled in vain to dimly illuminate the room, and Daniel strained his eyes against the darkness and tried to view the two portraits that hung on the far wall. Obscured by a dark shadow, his son’s likeness was invisible, swallowed up by the same gloom that hung over the Admiral’s soul. Peering into the blackness, Daniel wondered how many other mothers and fathers were doing the same thing, mourning the loss of their own sons or daughters in their own way somewhere. Glancing to the other portrait, he knew of one in particular who would be.

Daniel’s thoughts turned to his wife, Tara. Although he had been unable to contact her since their son’s death, he knew his wife could not be taking it well. Sensitive and caring, Tara loved nothing more in the world than Daniel and Chad, their only child. Daniel wondered if she really knew what happened when she saw the explosion from Earth. Their home in Key West, Florida, would have been facing the Indomitable when it was obliterated. Being able to see a starship flying hundreds of thousands of kilometers away with the naked eye was truly an awesome sight; watching that starship explode in a fireball the size of Mars must have been horrendously spectacular; knowing your son was killed by that explosion was about the most painful experience a human being could endure.

Daniel tried to clear his head. He could not contact his wife, as he was still cloaked and unable to send radio transmissions, knowing that if the awful alien ship had known they were there, the Apocalypse, too, would be nothing but debris.

The Apocalypse. Commissioned just recently, in 3033, the sleek vessel was absolutely state of the art. While the Indomitable was the mighty, highly visible monument to human Naval excellence, the Apocalypse was the silent technological marvel that, being built many years later, possessed technology that made some of the systems on the Indomitable look like antiques. While the Indomitable took over 250 years to build, and thus used some technology from almost 300 years ago, there was not one system aboard the Apocalypse that was anything less than the most advanced technology in the known galaxy. Although the physical size of the Indomitable was undoubtedly awe-inspiring, Admiral Atgard knew the Apocalypse was actually the more impressive vessel.

Run by a crew of only eight people, the Apocalypse, though magnificent to look at, gave no outward hint of her true potency. Smaller than large frigates or cargo ships, the Apocalypse's combination of power and agility was unparalleled. The ship’s average size and absence of outwardly-visible weaponry belied its unique formidability. Though larger than any standard fighter, the vessel’s voluptuous lines reminded one of nothing so much as an aerodynamic and nimble fightercraft. The bridge of the ship was located where the cockpit would be, but accommodated the five members of the bridge crew. The engineering section, located toward the aft, housed the remaining three crewmen. Just about the fastest ship known to exist, the Apocalypse’s energy weapons and shields were the match of all but the mightiest Battlecruisers.

And it had its own, highly miniaturized version of the Omega Cannon.

Humans throughout history had never been comfortable with merely being superior militarily, Admiral Atgard mused, they always had to be dominant to the point of overkill. For once, human military paranoia had been well founded. Her very existence and nature unknown to anyone but a handful of the highest-ranking Confederation officers and her own crew, the Apocalypse contained within her sleek hull the most amazing conglomeration of high-tech, experimental, and innovative systems ever created. Utilizing an advanced version of the ultra-dense armour of the Indomitable—armour that, Daniel remembered solemnly, proved useless against the alien’s awful weapon—the Apocalypse, at a tiny fraction of its size, was as well protected as its larger and older cousin. The miniaturized Omega Cannon, somehow engineered to fit within the moderately-sized ship, was theoretically about as powerful as the original version. And then there was the Quantum Refractor.

Though Daniel considered himself well versed in many areas, from philosophy to supralight propulsion, he had to admit he knew very little about how the Quantum Refractor actually worked. Originally theorized by an incredibly brilliant and equally eccentric physicist only 20 years ago, the concept behind the Quantum Refractor was immediately concealed by the military and all documents hypothesizing its possibility were summarily seized. Once the military discovered the theory, which postulated that matter could be manipulated in such a way as to make it seemingly disappear from existence, they quickly worked to develop the technology to create the perfect cloaking device. To this day, no one was sure exactly where the matter went when it was cloaked, but once the military scientists found out how to perform the manipulation on an entire ship and, more importantly, bring it back, they immediately incorporated the device into the nearly-completed Apocalypse. Being exorbitantly expensive and prohibitively experimental, the Apocalypse was the only ship on which it was equipped.

Personally, Daniel was slightly uncomfortable entrusting his life and that of his crew to a device that neither he—nor anyone else—understood completely, and thus he used it rather sparingly. Hypothetically, in essence all it did was vibrate the atoms of the ship and everything aboard to a certain frequency that caused them to seemingly vanish without a trace. When the device was activated, the ship “phased out” of existence and became incapable of sending electromagnetic transmissions—including radio communications and sensor scans—to the outside world, but was still able to detect incoming signals as they passed through the cloaked vessel. One postulation was that the oscillations of the atoms actually distorted space-time, somehow enveloping them in a bubble that distorted matter around them. In fact, asteroids, energy weapons, or even living beings seemingly went right through the cloaked ship as if it weren’t there, undetectably flowing around it, following the distorted path of space-time. Sensor, radio, and radar beams were not reflected by the cloaked ship, theoretically rendering them completely undetectable. It was as if they were hidden in a pocket that was not part of normal space-time, existing not in time nor space, but somewhere else. Where exactly that was, not even the device’s creator could surmise.

Furthermore, what would happen if the Quantum Refractor were to malfunction, or if the ship were to try to fire a weapon while cloaked, was anybody’s guess.

Abruptly, Daniel rose and brought up the lights in the room. He walked slowly over to gaze at the portrait of his son that hung on the wall. The picture was of Chad on his graduation day, and his son was wearing the same genuine smile he wore when he was killed. Turning quickly away, the Admiral fought to push his son from his mind. He knew that if he didn’t come up with some way to stop these aliens, he, and the rest of his crew—not to mention everyone on Earth—would be joining his son soon enough.

It was up to him, he knew. And him alone. Confederation Command could not risk broadcasting a tight-beam message to him without compromising the secrecy of their location. And they couldn’t just send out an omni-directional message for anyone with prying ears and a receiver and descrambler to listen in on. It hardly mattered, he knew. With Fleet Admiral Cole and most of the military leaders dead after the Indomitable Massacre, ConFedCom must be in a state of chaos.

But what could he do? The alien vessel had demolished the Indomitable like it was a minor annoyance. But why hadn’t it gone after Earth? What was the point of jumping in, destroying the flagship and jumping right back out? Did they want to capture Earth and not destroy it? Were they just sending a message? Or was there a limitation to the power of the awesome enemy vessel? Perhaps it could only fire once before it needed to recharge or reload or …

Flopping down on his bed, the Admiral fought to think clearly. He replayed all the great battles of history in his head, looking for anyone that had ever used such a strategy, anything that might give him some inkling as to what was going on in the minds of these new enemies. Trafalgar, The World Wars, The Alliance Wars, the Korgian Annihilation. He wondered what history would call the Indomitable Massacre, or if there would be anyone left to remember it.

What did they want, these aliens who could kill millions seemingly on a whim? Were they looking for a planet to colonize? Were they afraid of the Omega Cannon; did they want it destroyed? Or were they just cold-blooded killers? Was it possible, Daniel wondered, for a species to advance to the superior level of technology they obviously possessed without any regard for life?

Daniel had always thought with chagrin that mankind’s technology had advanced far faster than its morality. Over three millennia ago, great thinkers pondered ethics and morality and answered questions about right and wrong. Over the centuries, as man became able to kill in greater and greater numbers with greater and greater ease, his morality had stagnated. In fact, the most recent human philosopher Daniel could recall was Glaucynon, but even his theories had come too late, as, by the 25th century, man was already too mired in the depths of the Alliance Wars to listen to reason.

There were no great philosophers anymore, Daniel lamented. There were scientists who built bigger and bigger bombs and stronger lasers and some madman who had envisioned and developed the Omega Cannon. He wondered if that man’s ethical theories were as sound as his scientific principles.

How could one justify such a weapon of mass destruction? As a doomsday weapon, perhaps? Not so much a weapon as a tactical bluff, the threat of which would save billions of lives? Maybe we felt it was needed to ensure our very survival. How would ethical considerations stack up against that? Daniel had to come to terms with such weighty questions before he even took command of the aptly-named Apocalypse, much less thought about using the weapon.

Many had given a Utilitarian justification of the Korgian Annihilation. They reasoned that the greatest good for the greatest number would be brought about by the slaughter. Daniel wondered what kind of calculus could outweigh nine billion lives.

Besides, Daniel knew, morality was not about numbers. It was not about math. It was about rights, and each one of those Korgians had a right to live. Of course, so did the billions of humans the Korgians were trying to conquer. Was there any right answer in such cases? Could such a horrendous genocide ever truly be justified? Was it ethically permissible to ever build such a weapon in the first place?

It wasn’t just weapons, Daniel realized. Abortion, cloning, eugenics—technology made them all possible. But just because something was possible didn’t mean that it should be done. Without a firm base in morality—a base that was lacking in humans and evidently nonexistent in these new aliens—technological advance heralded the doom of civilization. How could such an amoral society as these faceless butchers develop past the nuclear age without killing themselves? That was the balance that held technology in check: Daniel had seen it on many worlds he had explored personally, and read about it on many others. They would find an unexplored world, sometimes with the radiation dust still clouding the atmosphere, centuries after the Armageddon. There would be precious little left for the xenoarchaeologists to sift through by then. Whole civilizations—their people, their culture, their arts and philosophies—reduced to ash once technological progress overcame philosophical evolution. Mankind had barely avoided such a fate, and it was a good thing, Daniel thought solemnly, that species too violent to do the same killed themselves off before they learned to take to the stars.

Evidently, that particular cosmic system of checks and balances had failed.

• • •

Admiral Atgard strode resolutely onto the bridge. All was silent as the bridge crew turned to face him. He studied them wordlessly, and felt emanating from them a combination of shock, despair, and—most stridently—fear. Intense fear that humanity, just yesterday the master of the known galaxy, was about to be destroyed in an awful, instantaneous genocide and that there was nothing anyone—even the Admiral—could do about it.

Bravely speaking up, Zach’s words echoed the crew’s unspoken thoughts. “It’s all over, isn’t it, Admiral? They’re gonna come back to fry Earth, we’re gonna try to stop them, and they’re gonna obliterate us too. ‘Cause it’s either that or we turn tail and run like cowards, and I, for one, am not going—”

“You’re wrong, Zach,” the Admiral declared. He spoke in a deep, resonant voice, a voice copious in its vehemence and persuading in its solemnity. “We’re not running. And it’s not over. We shall not go gently into that good night.”

The crew stared silently at the Admiral. He tried unsuccessfully to determine if they thought he was crazy, brave, stupid, or all three.

“And you’re wrong about one other thing, Zach,” he added. “They are not going to come back to Earth to destroy us.”

“How are you so sure, Admiral?” Dex interjected. “Why wouldn’t they come back? Tactically speaking, it only makes sense for them—”

“They’re not coming back,” the Admiral assured them, “because we’re going after them.”

CHAPTER 4

The starlines sped past on the viewscreen and the steady hum of the Apocalypse's mighty engines gave little hint of the tremendous speed at which the vessel was traveling. Barely 24 hours after the attack, Daniel watched the viewscreen as he catapulted his ship and crew ever closer to the horrible confrontation that awaited them, the confrontation with the aliens Anastasia had dubbed the Gens Laniorum, which translated roughly from Latin as “The Race of Butchers.”

“How long until we reach the Arcadian System, Nathan?” Daniel asked.

“ETA: seven minutes, Admiral,” he replied, speaking in his low, gurgling Fedoran voice. “Do you really think we will find anything?”

“It’s our best bet, Lieutenant. Someone has to know something.”

Daniel knew that exploring the far-away systems that lay along the aliens’ approximate flight path was a long shot at best, but right now it was all they had. Maybe these aliens had attacked somewhere else; maybe some other society that lay closer to their home planet knew something about them; maybe, with more than a little luck, eventually they would stumble right upon the aliens’ home world. Daniel wondered what in the hell they would do then.

Though at first glance the Arcadian System seemed tactically unimportant, Admiral Atgard had decided to begin the search there, as he had reason to believe something could be learned from the trip. The Arcadian System was situated roughly along Nathan’s best approximation of the aliens’ flight path, far from Earth on an adjoining limb of the Milky Way galaxy. The Admiral had skipped the nearer systems, due to the fact that if the aliens had attacked there, they would have known about it almost instantly. Though not yet to the point of true instantaneous interstellar communication, communications technology had advanced a long way in recent decades. Due to the newly-completed Hypervelocity Transmission Accelerator Net installed throughout most of the systems around Earth, near-instantaneous communications to and from systems nearby were accomplished by relaying data at faster-than-light speeds amongst the many planet-based and orbital transmission accelerator stations now in place, resulting in a lag of only a few seconds or so. Transmissions to systems outside the transmissions net, however, took some time to reach their destination, as the increased distance between stations and lack of accelerators caused a disproportionate lag in transit time. The delay was governed by a variant of the inverse-square law, so beaming a transmission to a receiver three times as far away took nine times as long. Once outside the reach of the relatively closely-spaced accelerator stations of the HTAN, the delay often stretched from seconds into hours.

Daniel knew that the Arcadians, due to their distance from Earth, backwards communication technology, and nearly nonexistent planetary defense systems, probably would not have had the time to beam a transmission if they were attacked. In addition, Nathan had calculated that the time it would take to beam a message to them and wait for a reply would take almost as long as it would take the swift Apocalypse to travel there. Thus, combined with the transmissions blackout of hyperspace, Admiral Atgard was essentially arriving at the system blind.

They were almost at the Arcadian System now, home of the peaceful and enigmatic Arcadians. Humanity hadn’t had much contact with the Arcadians, partly due to their distance from Earth, and mostly due to the fact that they were a relatively unadvanced race, having just recently been contacted by the Confederation when they launched their first primitive rockets beyond the confines of their own solar system. If the Gens Laniorum had decided to attack them on their way to Earth … . Admiral Atgard winced as he thought about the Arcadians trying to fight the aliens and their awful death ray.

Daniel wondered if the aliens would have stopped at such a tactically unimportant system. On the one hand, it made little sense to attack such an undeveloped race. On the other, Daniel had no real idea what the Gens Laniorum were after. He still had precious little knowledge of their motives. If they were truly barbarians on a killing rampage, there was no reason why the Arcadians should be spared. If they were looking for worlds to colonize, there was also little reason to bypass the lush, unexploited planet of Arcadia. When he saw what, if anything, had happened to the Arcadian System, he would have a better idea of what these aliens were after.

“Approaching Arcadia Prime, Admiral,” Nathan reported.

Daniel’s muscles tensed involuntarily over the armrests of his command chair. “Slow to sublight.”

The starlines on the viewscreen quickly gave way to a bloated red giant sun that dominated the three small planets of the Arcadian System. The second, Arcadia Prime, was merely a small splash of green awash in the radiant sea of ruby light spewed forth by the massive star.

“Dex, tactical scans,” barked the Admiral. “Give me long range, life forms, residual.”

“Tactical: no starships in system,” Dex reported. “Long range: no ships in range. Life forms: approximately two billion; normal. Residual: there’s no evidence of a battle of any kind, Admiral.”

The Admiral’s muscles relaxed slightly. He could feel Anastasia’s eyes burning into the side of his head. He knew what she was thinking, what they all were probably thinking. Why not Arcadia? The conclusion was unavoidable: they were after humans, and humans alone. They had gone out of their way to leave the defenseless Arcadians untouched.

The next question was: why? If they had avoided the unadvanced Arcadians, why would they go after mankind? The answer, again, was unavoidable: they went after humans because we were too advanced—too powerful. Humanity was, after all, the dominant force in the sector, at least until 24 hours ago. Maybe humanity had crossed some unmarked technological line and the Gens Laniorum were the Galactic Police who had come to rein us back. Maybe some species far more advanced than ourselves had decided that we were not allowed to possess such power or devastating weaponry. But why now? The Indomitable had been operational for 40 years. Surely they couldn’t have just found out? Or just gotten here?

It was Zach who interrupted the Admiral’s thoughts. “Admiral?” he asked in his slightly squeaky voice. “I guess the Arcadians didn’t tick them off like we did, huh? They passed right by them.”

“Apparently they did,” replied the Admiral. “Let’s go down and see if we can find out why.”

• • •

Descending through the hazy atmosphere, the Apocalypse must have been a magnificent sight to the simple people below. Landing on a small airfield, the Apocalypse descended vertically, its powerful antigrav repulsors slowing the ship as it alighted on the paved surface. Although there was no formal Human Embassy on Arcadia Prime, humans were far from completely unheard of in the area. In fact, there was now a handful of humans living permanently on Arcadia Prime, apparently favoring the simple life it afforded to the advanced, highly-technological society of Earth. To an extent, Admiral Atgard could sympathize with them.

As they disembarked the ship, Daniel was forced to cover his eyes to block out the overbearing red light cast by the nearby setting sun. His eyes adapted quickly, however, and he was able to make out three Arcadians wearing diplomatic dress standing a short distance away. The Arcadians stood erect as humans did, but stood on three spindly legs, arranged triangularly underneath their rounded torsos. Their slender frames were characterized by soft curves and lack of any visible musculature. Looking closely, the Admiral could barely make out their tiny facial features at this distance. In the background, two unimposing groups of soldiers stood at attention and flanked a golden path that led from the landing platform to the Capitol Building. The Arcadians had invited them to land at the private landing field at the Capitol, and apparently, they were intent on giving them lavish treatment. It was not often, the Admiral surmised, that a ship of the Apocalypse's stature visited Arcadia. Actually, since there were no other ships of the Apocalypse's stature, it was, technically, the first time. Obviously, the Arcadians had no idea of the true importance of the ship or its mission, but when they saw the resplendent vessel and when they learned of Daniel Atgard’s title of Admiral, it apparently qualified as momentous news to them.

“It certainly is impressive, Admiral,” remarked Dex as he stepped from the ship and onto the landing platform, the lighter gravity of Arcadia Prime causing him to bounce just slightly with each step. Daniel turned and studied the imposing Capitol Building admiringly as it loomed in the distance, the monumental stone walls of the huge alien ziggurat robust and formidable but clearly aged. The tall peak of the edifice jutted into the hazy, blue-orange sky, ending just below the lowest groups of flattened pink clouds. The Admiral sniffed the air, apparently rich in oxygen, which hinted of the scent of warm cinnamon.

Shifting his attention to their immediate surroundings, Dex looked cautiously at the assembled Arcadians. “Do you know who these three are?”

“The one in the center is one of their three Vice-Chancellors, Margiam don Huntley nee,” he replied. “The one on the left is their Ambassador to Earth. I don’t recognize the other one.” Daniel stopped speaking as they approached the three Arcadians.

“Welcome, Admiral Daniel Atgard,” announced the Vice-Chancellor, in good, if not perfect English, his three unlidded eyes staring curiously at the Admiral. “I greet you in the name of Arcadia.”

“Thank you, Vice Chancellor Margiam don Huntley nee. I gratefully accept your invitation.” Bowing slightly, the Admiral waited as the Ambassador translated his words to the Vice-Chancellor. Apparently the two sentences he had spoken were about all he knew of English.

“[I must admit I am indeed surprised by your arrival,]” said the Vice-Chancellor as the Ambassador translated his words into English. “[If we had notice of your visit, we would have been able to prepare better accommodations for you and your crew.]” The Vice-Chancellor looked toward the ship, apparently to see if more than just Dex and the Admiral would be coming. “[How many guests will we be honored with, Admiral?]”

“Just the two of us,” said the Admiral. “We have just come to see if you might be able to provide us with some information.” He waited as the Ambassador translated.

“[Of course. You come to find out about the aliens that destroyed your ship,]” the Vice-Chancellor said bluntly. “[We will gladly make any information we have available to you. But for now, come, please. We have prepared food and services. Follow me.]” The Vice-Chancellor bowed and indicated the golden path. Nodding, the Admiral and Dex followed the three Arcadians toward the gates of the ancient Capitol Building.

• • •

Once inside, Dex and the Admiral were led to a lavish banquet hall. A large triangular table adorned the center of the room, and was covered by ornate table settings and serving trays. Also on the table, and scattered throughout the room, were small incandescent balls of light that were ensconced in elegant silver receptacles. A larger glowing ball was located on a tall, elaborate stand in the cut-out center of the triangular table and was veiled by a sheer, translucent sheet that kept the room at a comfortably dim illumination. Sheets of the same glimmering fabric hung high on the towering walls, framing great, brightly-colored tapestries that also glistened in the soft light. All in all, Daniel thought, it was one of the more beautiful settings he had seen in his travels, rivaling or surpassing those of many more “advanced” civilizations.

Dex and the Admiral were directed to seats in the center of one of the stone table’s sides. The Vice Chancellor and his small entourage seated themselves at the center of another side. Already seated at the remaining side was the Arcadian Grand Chancellor and two other important-looking Arcadians. Dex and Daniel sat on the stone benches that surrounded the table, which at this distance Daniel could see was ornately engraved, though he had little knowledge of the engravings’ significance.

Sitting on a slightly elevated platform, the Grand Chancellor spoke through his interpreter. “[Admiral Daniel Atgard, I am Grand Chancellor Hungis don Mercilius ree. Welcome to Arcadia. We have prepared for you a traditional meal, after which we shall hold a ceremony in respect to your departed brethren. You are welcome to remain as our guests for as long as you please.]”

“I thank you, Grand Chancellor,” said the Admiral, bowing slightly. “But we do not intend to burden you for long. We have come in search of any information you might have regarding the species that attacked us.” The interpreter dutifully translated his words.

“[Of course,]” replied the Chancellor. “[First, we will eat. Afterwards, we will help you in any way we can.]”

“Your help is appreciated, Grand Chancellor. As is your hospitality.” Daniel bowed his head slightly and turned as servants began bringing in steaming plates of food and setting them down at the table. He and Dex both received identically-prepared plates of an aromatic mix of meats and vegetables. One of the Arcadians seated near the Chancellor, apparently a religious leader, spoke some brief words in Arcadian, after which he took a ceremonial first bite and the remainder of the assembled Arcadians began to dine. Even with his impressive knowledge of xenobiology, Daniel was at a loss to name what was on his plate, but he found to his satisfaction that it tasted excellent, flavorful and surprisingly filling.

After the meals were finished and the table was cleared, the religious leader and the other Arcadian seated near him rose and walked over to a small dais at one end of the room. The ceremony began with a short speech by the religious leader, only a few words of which Daniel understood. Afterwards, several of the glowing balls were produced and dropped one at a time into a translucent cauldron of clear liquid. Upon touching the liquid, the light from the balls was extinguished, and, though Daniel understood little of what was being said during the ceremony, he could readily understand the significance. Though Daniel knew the Arcadians to be highly religious people, he was still moved and somewhat surprised by the ceremony. After all, very few species Daniel knew of would show such genuine concern and sorrow for the loss of foreigners. Though not easily impressed, Daniel was forced to admit that the hospitality and compassion of the Arcadians was almost overwhelming.

• • •

After the ceremony, Daniel and Dex were escorted into luxurious living quarters, with the Ambassador explaining that it was quite late, by local time, but that any questions they had would be answered in the morning. The Chancellor had also approached them and presented them with a finely-crafted figure modeled from the same glowing substance for which Arcadia was famous. Daniel studied the figure, a replica of the Indomitable, as Dex paced around the perimeter of the room, which was decorated by several of the ubiquitous glowing balls.

“The room looks clean, Admiral,” Dex reported, scanning the readouts of the nanocomputer on his wrist. “My instruments don’t detect any listening devices, traps, or secret openings. You can go to sleep, sir. I’ll keep watch.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Dex. The Arcadians have no intentions of harming us.”

“I don’t think so, either, sir, but as a precaution …”

Smiling, the Admiral said, “If they had wanted to harm us, they could have done it a hundred different ways by now. Now, relax. I only brought you along because I knew you would have insisted anyway.”

“Of course I would have. You’re my friend, and you’re getting way too old to take care of yourself,” Dex joked. Turning more serious, he added, “And if there’s anyone that can stop the Gens Laniorum, it’s you. So I intend to make sure that nothing happens to you.”

Though he was fairly certain the peaceful Arcadians had no hostile intentions, he was also relieved to know that Dex was watching out for him. After all, his skills as a Marine Commando had not been lost, and Daniel knew that Dex’s hand-to-hand, small arms, and close combat skills were unsurpassed. Apparently, Dex felt his loyalty to the Admiral extended beyond his duties as Tactical Officer, and he considered himself Daniel’s personal bodyguard, whether in space or on the ground. Unfortunately, Daniel thought uneasily, neither Dex nor anyone else could protect him from the sleek silver ship that had killed his son.

• • •

Daniel arose in the morning to find that Dex had not slept, but instead had remained seated in a chair facing the only entrance to the room. “Have you been up all night, Dex?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Yes, sir. There was no incident. The Arcadians have two guards stationed at each end of the hall.”

“Well, I suppose we had better see what it is that they know. I hope it’s useful; we have already spent too long here. The Gens Laniorum could come back any day.”

The Admiral dressed quickly, and as he came back into the room, Dex looked at him soberly. “Sir, I’ve been thinking about something all night.”

“What’s that, Dex?” asked the Admiral. Daniel gave great weight to Lieutenant Rutcliffe’s advice, and apparently he had some to offer.

“Sir, it’s just that, while we’re here in this palace, the aliens might be on their way back to Earth. Why are we looking for them? Shouldn’t we stay to defend Earth and let them find us?”

“I understand your feelings, Dex, but the reason we left Earth was not so that we would not be there when they got back.”

“Of course not, Admiral,” he replied quickly. “I would never imply—”

“I know, Dex; I know. But the reason we left Earth was that if they came back and we had no new information on them, we would suffer the same fate as the Indomitable.”

“But, sir,” he protested, “the Indomitable wasn’t able to bring the Omega Cannon to bear. Or any other weapons for that matter. I mean, did you see the size of that thing? It was smaller than the Apocalypse.”

“Exactly, Dex,” replied the Admiral. “Just as the Apocalypse, being the more advanced vessel, is much smaller than the Indomitable.”

“I see your point, sir,” Dex agreed. “But exactly what kind of information are you looking for? I mean, even if the Arcadians have heard of them or know of them, how much could they really know? What could they really tell us about that ship?”

“I realize the Arcadians have not stumbled upon a set of blueprints to the aliens’ vessel,” the Admiral admitted. “But there are many other areas in which knowledge of the aliens and their culture could prove invaluable.”

“Of course knowing one’s enemy and his tactics and history are important, but I don’t see what we can do against that weapon.”

“Neither do I, Dex. And that’s why we’re here.”

• • •

They followed the Ambassador down a long and lavish hallway that was topped with a high, arched ceiling and adorned on both sides by framed paintings of stately Arcadians. At the end of the earth-colored hallway, flanked by two guards, was a set of tall, wooden double doors that towered some eight meters high. Opening the door, the Ambassador turned to Daniel and Dex. “Admiral, I’m afraid the Lieutenant will have to remain outside. You see, you are about to be presented with some very—shall we say—sensitive information. The fewer people who are told, the better.”

Dex eyed the Ambassador suspiciously. “It’s okay,” said the Admiral, turning to Dex. “I’ll go in alone.”

Though clearly unhappy, Dex obliged, scowling as he waited outside the thick doors. The Ambassador bowed and indicated the entrance, and Admiral Atgard entered the majestic throne room. He was surprised to see that the Ambassador remained outside, closing the doors after Daniel walked through. Looking around the spacious room, his attention was diverted from the elaborate surroundings by an enormous shimmering throne against the far wall. Stepping toward it, the Admiral saw the room’s sole occupant, the Grand Chancellor, dwarfed by the massive chair in which he sat. As Daniel approached the throne, which was beset by many brilliant glowing globes, the Chancellor indicated an ornate chair opposite him and the Admiral sat down to face him. Settling into the chair, the Admiral studied the aged, learned face of the Arcadian leader.

“I apologize for the secrecy of our meeting,” began the Chancellor, “but, you understand, this conversation must remain between you and I. What I am about to tell you is not known to outsiders, and is not normally revealed.” Daniel leaned forward inquisitively as the sepulchral voice went on. “However, your situation—our situation—warrants that you have this information.”

It took a moment for the Admiral to realize with surprise that the Chancellor was speaking perfect English.

“I am afraid,” the Chancellor continued, “that a grave danger faces you, and I can not in good conscience withhold any information from you that may be of help, no matter what the cost.”

Daniel looked at the Chancellor respectfully. Apparently, divulging this information would come at great cost to the Arcadians. He could clearly sense the hesitation with which the Chancellor was revealing it, but admired his integrity for doing so. Tough choices were the onus of great leaders, and doing that which was right was seldom easy.

“You must understand, Admiral,” the Chancellor continued, “we Arcadians are not exactly as we seem. We are seen by the galaxy as an unadvanced, simple people. And this is, while not wholly wrong, also not wholly accurate. We have, of course, not dissuaded people of that opinion, but we Arcadians have actually been around a very long time; the building you now reside in was built many years before Earthlings began painting on cavern walls. Arcadian society and technology developed before humans, before your dinosaurs, indeed, before any other species in this sector. You see, Admiral,” the Chancellor paused to let his words sink in. “We were here when last the Lucani Ibron came.”

The Admiral stared at the Chancellor intently. Had these simple Arcadians defeated the Gens Laniorum many years ago? Was there some way they could help now?

“Lucani Ibron,” continued the Chancellor after a hiatus, “means ‘The Ancient Arbiters’ in our language. They came once before, to Arcadia, many, many years ago. Well before the Earthlings’ ascension in this sector.”

“Why did they come?” asked the Admiral, afraid that he knew the answer all too well. “What did they do?”

“They came then for the same reason they come now, Admiral,” he said, peering at him intensely. “They came because we, too, had once taken it upon ourselves to build a doomsday weapon such as your Omega Cannon. They came to destroy it. And then, as now, they succeeded.”

Daniel studied the Chancellor’s face, looking into the three dark eyes that peered back at him. “Chancellor, if I may ask, why do you reveal this information to me now? Apparently you have endeavored to keep secret the truth about your race, for whatever your reasons.” The Admiral considered that perhaps the Arcadians enjoyed the peaceful, unperturbed life they were now afforded, or perhaps they reformed their society after the Lucani Ibron came and hid their old ways from even their own citizens to prevent history from repeating itself. Perhaps there were also many other reasons the Arcadians had guarded this information so closely.

“Plus, of course,” Daniel continued, considering the repercussions of the Chancellor’s actions, “the Lucani Ibron may find out about your aid. And surely your peaceful race does not approve of the Omega Cannon nor of the Korgian Annihilation. So I ask you, Chancellor: why do you help us?”

The Chancellor leaned forward in his massive throne and gazed at Daniel intently. “I have studied you, Admiral. I know what type of man you are; I know of what you are made. I tell you because I believe that, in your hands, the Omega Cannon can be a source of peace, and not of death.”

Daniel contemplated his words. In your hands …

“You see, Admiral,” the Chancellor continued, “we simple Arcadians know much more than outsiders realize. We know about your ship and its terrible capabilities. But I have thought very hard on this matter, and I can not sit by and allow the genocide of the human race.”

The Admiral sat back in his chair and folded his hands together, pressing them against his pursed lips as he contemplated what he had just learned, purging his mind of all his previous thoughts of these “unadvanced” Arcadians. Evidently, they knew far more than anyone realized.

“If I may ask, Chancellor,” the Admiral ventured, “what happened when the Lucani Ibron came to Arcadia?”

“As I said, Admiral, it was many centuries ago. We too, had begun exploring the stars and had battled with some of the races we had encountered. Our military scientists came up with a weapon so powerful, it was dubbed the Ultimate Nullifier. This weapon, however, was ground-based, but it had the ability to collapse a star several systems away. Some time after its development, but before it was ever used, a ship like the one you saw suddenly arrived over Arcadia. Without warning, it destroyed our weapon and half the continent on which it was situated. Afterwards, it simply disappeared, and the Lucani Ibron had never returned.”

“Not until two days ago,” added the Admiral.

“Correct. Although, this time, they will not simply disappear. They will be back. And they will destroy the Apocalypse.”

Daniel thought for a moment. “So you are saying they are just after my ship, and that Earth will be spared?”

Gazing at him deliberately, the Chancellor replied, “I did not say that, Admiral. When the Lucani Ibron attacked Arcadia, they destroyed not only the Ultimate Nullifier, but also the laboratory and production facility that had designed and produced it, rendering us incapable of building another one, even if we had so desired. However,” the Chancellor cautioned, “your case is different. After destroying the Indomitable and the Apocalypse, I believe they will still want to ensure that no more Omega Cannons can be produced.”

“But, Chancellor,” the Admiral pointed out, “there are research labs and production facilities all over Earth that could produce another Omega Cannon in a month. They can’t simply destroy one factory …” The Admiral’s voice trailed off.

“Precisely my point, Admiral. They can’t prevent you from building another Cannon,” the Chancellor pronounced dismally, “without completely destroying the Earth.”

CHAPTER 5

As the Apocalypse lifted off from the Palatial Landing Field of Arcadia Prime, Admiral Atgard could not help but notice the sense of foreboding doom that hung over the crew of his ship. He had told his crew of the pertinent aspects of what he had learned about the Lucani Ibron from the Chancellor, without unduly revealing any extraneous information about the Arcadians themselves or their secrets. Looking at the austere faces of his bridge crew, he struggled to present an image of confidence when he was actually utterly unsure of whether any of them would ever see Earth again.

As the ship emerged from the upper atmosphere and was once again enveloped by the vacuum of space, Daniel rose from his chair and paced toward the front of the bridge. “Nathan, input coordinates for the Turepon System. All possible speed.”

Nodding, Lieutenant Latimer entered the coordinates as the Admiral continued walking past his station and to the center of the front of the bridge. His hands clasped behind his back, he watched the nearby viewscreen as the myriad points of light stretched into starlines. Imperceptibly bracing himself as the ship surged up to speed, he could feel the eyes of the crew on the back of his neck. He and his crew had been through a great deal together, and every one of them trusted him implicitly, but that did not alter the fact that they all believed they were being sent to their deaths, chasing an unconquerable adversary.

Too composed to let himself believe that to be true, the Admiral knew that he had to find a way to convince the crew that their mission was not one of glorified suicide. No foe was invincible. The Indomitable had proven that.

“Friends,” he said, turning to face them, “we have faced many enemies together. But we all know that neither we, nor anyone else, have ever opposed an enemy such as this. The Lucani Ibron may well have been colonizing the stars while we were evolving from primates. They may have an invincible ship, an unstoppable weapon, an unlimited technological base. They may have an armada unparalleled throughout the known history of the galaxy. But so did we, until two days ago.” The Admiral paused to study the faces of each of his crew in turn. Resoundingly, he continued, “What they do not have—what they will never have—is the indefatigable human spirit. The will to win, the strength to persevere, the determination to survive. Battles are not won with technology; they are not won with guns; they are not won with blood nor with iron. They are won by the incommensurable human mind.”

He paused once again to study his crewmates. The four of them sat at rapt attention, and Anastasia looked not at, but through his hazel eyes.

“These aliens may be the most advanced species in the galaxy. They may even be the original inhabitants of the Universe. But just because they were here before us does not mean that they will be here after we are gone.

“Their attack came completely unexpectedly,” the Admiral continued, his voice gaining volume and strength. “They caught us with our guard down. They had the element of surprise on their side—but no longer.

“Now it is we who are foraying into their territory. It is we who will come upon them as they lie unprepared. And it is we who will strike a blow for humanity!

“You know,” the Admiral continued, his voice bated, “they say in the tactical manuals: never make it personal. They say to remain objective, impartial, unattached. But it was the Lucani Ibron who made it personal.” Though he spoke softly, Daniel’s words were filled with venom. “And to hell with what they say—those bastards killed my son!” The last few words rose to a crescendo, and the Admiral slammed his fist upon the console in front of Zach. “And maybe they made it look easy, and maybe they are more ‘advanced,’ but I don’t give a damn! Because I swear to you—all of you—they will pay for what they have done. I will make them pay …” The Admiral’s voice trailed off, as the adrenaline that had pumped through his veins like hellfire began to subside.

“May God have mercy on their souls,” whispered Dex bitterly.

“God can not help them now,” the Admiral replied icily, turning slowly to face him. “No one can.”

• • •

Daniel waited for the doors to open as the transport tube came to a halt. With a soft hum, the doors slid apart and the Admiral stepped into the Engineering Section. Turning to look at him was Chief Engineer Darren Alexander, who stood behind his Assistant Engineer, Alexis St. Claire. Alexis was seated in front of him, her attention focused on a computer console, and did not immediately notice the Admiral’s arrival. Daniel stepped out of the transport tube, tacitly wondering how two people so diametrically opposite in appearance could be so similar in their expert knowledge of engineering science. Darren was slightly overweight, his age overly apparent, as evidenced by his fully gray hair and wrinkled skin. Alexis, in contrast, was the antithesis of old age—her petite frame and crimson hair spoke of a positive energy made possible only by the unspoiled purity of youth.

After a moment, Alexis noticed the Admiral’s approach, looking up at him and flashing a broad smile. Daniel returned her smile and walked over to them.

“Are you overworking her again, Darren?” asked the Admiral facetiously. “Because if you’re not, there will be hell to pay, let me tell you.”

Alexis looked up at him and scowled. “Of course he is, Admiral. He said some hot-head on the bridge wants us to make this rig go faster, so … .”

“Daniel is not just some hot-head, Alexis,” Darren corrected her, grinning. He gave her an insincere stern look and spoke mock-seriously, dropping his voice even lower in pitch than usual. “He is Admiral Hot-Head, and if he wants this ship to go faster, then that’s exactly what we’re going to make it do.” Daniel and Alexis exchanged grins.

“I’m glad to see you are both in such good spirits,” said the Admiral after a brief pause. His voice had sobered up noticeably. “But I really do need any extra speed you can give me.”

“We all understand how important this is, Daniel,” said Alexis, “and we understand what we’re getting ourselves into. Hell, we even understand why you want us to get us all into it even more quickly!” The Admiral could not help but chuckle. Suddenly solemn, she added, “Admiral, we know what’s at stake. But I, for one, refuse to act as if we’re already dead.”

Over her shoulder, Darren cocked his head and grinned. He, too, knew that Alexis was as fiery as her flame-red hair. Always upbeat, Alexis brought a tangible energy to the ship. The Admiral hoped she would never allow age to dull her dynamic personality. At age 29, she was the second-youngest member of the crew, but her knowledge of propulsions systems was unmatched.

“You know,” Darren began, “this situation reminds me of the time when—”

“Here we go again,” muttered Alexis, grinning.

Just then, there was a ping from a control board on the opposite side of the room. “That’s the problem with young people these days,” Darren sighed. “They just don’t appreciate the experience of their elders.” Shaking his head, Darren turned and walked ponderously to the sound, studying the readouts displayed on the screen.

Abruptly looking up at Daniel once he was gone, Alexis spoke bluntly. “We’re all scared, Admiral. But we have faith in you. And we’re ready to do whatever you need. Don’t worry about us nerds down here,” she said, smiling slightly. “After all, I know you didn’t come down here just to get an update on the propulsion systems.”

Putting his hand on her shoulder, Daniel looked into her emerald eyes. “You are the wisest young person I know, Alexis. And I plan to make sure that you become the wisest old person I know. Your faith in me is appreciated. I will not let you down.”

“I know,” she said earnestly, putting her hand on his. “I know.”

• • •

Their visits to the Turepon and Saracyn Systems went without incident, but, unfortunately, also failed to turn up any new information. Now five days after the attack, the Admiral lay awake in his bed, several hours before their scheduled arrival in the Tu’oth System. Still not in contact with Confederation Command, the Admiral hoped this entire venture was not in vain. He fought to push from his mind the thought that the Lucani Ibron could be obliterating Earth at this very moment while he was out roaming about the stars. Would history remember him as the coward who ran from mankind’s greatest threat? Or the hero who delivered humanity from its darkest hour?

Such weighty concerns often visited the Admiral in the middle of the night as he struggled to sleep. A notorious insomniac, Daniel rarely slept, and even when he did, he did so fleetingly and for short stretches of a couple of hours at a time. He found that the quiet solitude of his nights gave his mind the proclivity to ponder many onerous and vexatious ruminations. Indeed, partly from design, partly from necessity, and partly from sheer will, the Admiral had adapted to require very little sleep, as his inexhaustible intellect seldom allowed him the luxury of unfettered slumber.

But how could he sleep, knowing that awful alien death ray loomed just beyond the horizon? How could he relax when the fate of his crew, his planet, and his species rested squarely on his shoulders? I have promises to keep, thought the Admiral wearily, and miles to go before I sleep. Miles to go before I sleep.

Just as he began to settle into a fitful rest, the doorbell chimed softly. The door opened, and Anastasia entered.

“I took a chance you were up.”

“Lucky guess,” countered Daniel dryly.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” Anastasia added. “So I knew you would be awake.”

“I’ve barely slept since it happened, ‘Stasia,” Daniel lamented. “I can’t stop trying to think of what I should do.”

“I think you’re doing all that can be done, Daniel.” Venturing a guess as to what was troubling him, she added, “For what it’s worth, we all think you’re doing the right thing. I think you’re doing the right thing.”

Looking up at her, Daniel nodded imperceptibly. Though he was normally comfortable and confident in his decisions, the Admiral could not deny that he was inordinately plagued by this one. Though he had convinced himself there was nothing to be gained by waiting at Earth, it seemed somehow more … honorable to at least be there to defend her on her day of judgement.

“We can’t just wait around for them to come back. Besides, that’s never been your style, remember? The renowned Galactic Tactical Competition Champion, Admiral Daniel Atgard, meekly waiting for his adversaries to come to him at their leisure? That hardy seems fitting.” She offered him a slight smile. “You’ve always believed that the best defense is a strong offense, Dan. And you’ve been right more than your share of times.”

“But I can’t afford to be wrong this time, Anastasia. This isn’t some competition or simulation.”

“You’ll do your best. We all know you will.”

Daniel looked at her disconsolately. “What if that’s not good enough?”

“Then you’ll just do better, Daniel,” Anastasia assured him confidently. “You always do.”

• • •

Slowing to sub-light speed some distance from Tu’oth’roor, the Apocalypse headed directly toward the capital planet of the Vr’amil’een. Never particularly friendly to humans, the aggressions of the Vr’amil’een had noticeably subsided after their Armada was dealt heavy losses in 3025. That overwhelming show of force, combined with not-so-subtle threats regarding the use of the Omega Cannon, had served to subdue the reptilian species for the past 15 years. Admiral Atgard realized, however, that the opportunistic and belligerent Vr’amil’een might not be as civil to the Apocalypse now that they believed the humans’ flagship and sole Omega Cannon to be destroyed.

“Tactical scans, Dex,” requested the Admiral. Never one to take unnecessary risks, he had the Apocalypse on full combat alert.

“Sensor scans calculate 314 ships in system. Forty-two warships, none larger than Corvette-class. None of them are powering weapons or moving along attack vectors.”

Daniel studied the tactical panel carefully, his wrinkled brow revealing his intense concentration. Though there was nothing unusual so far—including the otherwise conspicuous absence of any Cruiser-class ships or larger, as per the Vr’amil’een Treaty—he did not intend to allow himself to grow complacent. “Slow to one-eighth light speed. Let’s go in nice and easy.”

Zach complied, and the ship’s engines abated to a soft, resonating hum. The viewscreen showed the dark and foreboding planet of Tu’oth’roor, the mass of which almost completely eclipsed the sun. One of the advantages of a defending world in an assault was that the enemy had to come in far from the system’s center of gravity, and thus could not shield their arrival by coming in with the sun at their backs. Though some of the more advanced Confederation scanning systems, such as those on board the Apocalypse, could somewhat compensate for the immense radiation spewed forth by a star, having the sun at one’s back in an assault was a decided tactical advantage. Of course, the Admiral reminded himself, this was not an assault, and the Vr’amil’een would probably not even be expecting the Apocalypse, although their previous visits to other systems had hardly been done in complete secrecy. If they were watching, they would have been able to track the uncloaked Apocalypse's arrival for hours.

“What is it, Admiral?” asked Anastasia. “You haven’t lifted your eyes from the tactical screen since we’ve arrived in-system.”

“None of the ships are making any aggressive moves, Admiral,” added Dex. “Maybe they’re too worried about the Lucani Ibron to think about settling old scores.” The Admiral wondered if the Vr’amil’een had any idea Lieutenant Commander Rutcliffe, whose strategies routed their Armada 15 years ago, was aboard the sleek human ship that approached them.

“That’s just it,” Daniel replied after a delay. “They’re too quiet. The Vr’amil’een don’t normally let a ship get this close without challenging it and demanding authorization.”

“Remember, Admiral, they haven’t fired on a ship in ten years,” Dex put in. “Not since they destroyed the Devonshire and we passed the Ultimatum.”

“No, they haven’t fired,” the Admiral said distractedly, his adept eyes still scanning the display. “But they still challenge unknown ships that enter their system. More a point of pride for them than a tactical maneuver … evolved from their sexual dominance rituals …” The Admiral’s eyes narrowed. “Zach, adjust course 20 degrees to starboard.”

“Aye, Admiral,” replied Zach.

“Sir, I haven’t detected any ships change course to intercept. And they’re not laying a trap, either … I extrapolated their current headings and our present course and there is not—”

“Exactly, Dex,” the Admiral interjected. “Not one of the 42 military vessels has changed course so much as a degree since we’ve jumped in.”

“But, sir, that doesn’t mean that they’re up to something. In fact, the Vr’amil’een are a notoriously aggressive race. As soon as they know they have a tactical advantage, they will push it immediately. That’s how I got them to fall into my trap 15 years ago.”

“Vr’amil’een military strategy is based on a state of constant readiness,” countered the Admiral. “As such, they make sure to change ship headings at random intervals to throw off an attacker’s advanced tactical calculations. It is almost numerically impossible that not one of those ships has not changed course since we have arrived. But you are right, Dex, they will push a situation as soon as it turns to their advantage, which means one of two things: one, they do not plan to attack us, or two,” the Admiral looked squarely at Dex, “the situation has not yet turned to their advantage. Zach, increase speed to two-thirds light. Let’s see if we can get their attention—or at least throw them off … get them to play their cards a little sooner than they had planned.”

The hum of the Apocalypse's powerful engines magnified as the planet started to enlarge visibly. Suddenly, as the angle changed to place Tu’oth’roor out of the path of the sun, the profile of a large ship became visible on the viewscreen as it cleared the edge of the planet. A massive, oblong vessel, Battlecruiser-class at least, the ship sported numerous visible energy cannon emplacements and missile racks. Almost before the alarm klaxons began to sound, the Admiral’s resonant voice rang out. “Shields up! Evasive maneuvers!”

As the Apocalypse pitched at a violent angle, bright lances of light began shooting out of the side of the Battlecruiser. Promptly joining the fray were the remaining 42 ships of the Vr’amil’een Armada.

CHAPTER 6

The veil of space enveloping the Apocalypse, ordinarily jet black, was ablaze with a hundred brilliant lances of light. Veering wildly, the nimble ship managed to evade most of the guns and lasers, but an ever-increasing number were finding their marks, rocking the well-shielded Apocalypse with each impact.

“Zach, change course 32 degrees to port,” barked the Admiral. “Continue evasive maneuvers. Dex, return fire; concentrate on the Battlecruiser.”

The ship pitched in a sharp, rolling turn, narrowly evading a salvo of missiles. Bluish-white streaks of plasma shot out from ports concealed on the Apocalypse's nose and wings and sped toward the Vr’amil’een Battlecruiser. “Admiral,” asked Zach, “You want me to head straight for the ‘Cruiser?”

“That’s right, Zach,” responded the Admiral coolly. He watched as the heavy ship began to turn ponderously toward them. “All possible speed.” Fingering a button on his control console, he spoke through the intercom. “Darren, I need all the speed you can give me—right now.”

“I’m giving her all she’s got, Admiral,” replied Darren’s voice from the speaker. “I can give you 15 more percent if I reroute hyperdrive coolant and auxiliary power, but then we won’t be able to use the hyperdrive or the Quantum—”

“Do it,” the Admiral replied. “Zach, change course 12 more degrees to port.” They were almost at the Battlecruiser now, and Daniel did not intend to let his ship get in the crosshairs of the ship’s heavy forward-facing cannons. Suddenly surging to even greater speed, the Apocalypse veered away from the nose of the heavy ship and fired bright streaks of energy into its hull. Checking the tactical display, the Admiral watched as most of the smaller ships, failing to allow for the Apocalypse's incredible speed, fell farther and farther behind as they converged on a spot well behind the speeding vessel.

A heavy blow rocked the ship as the Apocalypse passed by the still-turning Battlecruiser. Firing vigorously, the Apocalypse rushed by the larger ship and continued past the planet of Tu’oth’roor.

“Should I come back around for another pass?” asked Zach excitedly. The bright streaks of tracer rounds were still visible as they shot past the Apocalypse on the front viewscreen.

“No, Zach,” replied the Admiral. “Maintain course and speed. Continue evasives.”

“But Admiral,” he protested. “We’re not running, are we? I can take them … they can’t hit me! They can’t hit me!” The ship swerved crazily as a large shell from one of the Battlecruiser’s heavy cannons hummed past, narrowly missing the darting ship.

“We’re not running,” said the Admiral deliberately. “We are taking out that Battlecruiser. Dex, shield status?”

“Shields holding at 86 percent,” replied Dex tersely.

“So you want me to make another pass, Admiral?” Zach’s speech was halting and broken, owing to his intense concentration as he continued lurching the ship in a violently elaborate elusive pattern. “Or are we gaining distance so we can use the Cannon?”

The rest of the crew sat silently for several seconds, mouths agape. They all stared heavily at the Admiral.

Anastasia spoke up first. “You’re not thinking of using that thing on them, are you, Daniel?”

“Fry ‘em, Admiral!” yelled Zach. “Take ‘em all out!”

“We’re not using the Cannon, Zach,” Daniel said calmly. The cannon fire began to thin out as they outraced their pursuers. “Maintain course toward the system center. Nathan, what is our distance and ETA to the Tu’oth Asteroid Belt?”

“Seventy-five million kilometers, sir. ETA: 90 seconds.”

“But sir,” interjected Dex, “there’s no way we can take out that ‘Cruiser. If it didn’t have the other ships protecting it, maybe. But 43 to one? The only way for us to take it out is with the Cannon.”

“I disagree, Dex,” replied the Admiral firmly. “And I will not kill 7.9 billion people to destroy one ship.”

“But, sir, they are in violation of the Vr’amil’een Treaty. Legally, we have every right to—”

“Right?” asked the Admiral vehemently. “What man could ever have the right to kill eight billion people?” The Admiral gazed torridly at Dex. “This is not a war game, Dex; it’s not some simulation. Those are real people down there on those planets, not numbers. And I follow a higher code than that created by the diplomats who composed the Vr’amil’een treaty. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to capriciously butcher them like the Lucani Ibron butchered us.”

Humbled, Dex was silent as the Admiral turned to Zach. “Slow to cruising speed,” he ordered. As the ship decelerated rapidly, the first asteroids began to come into view as they sped toward the ship. The Admiral checked his tactical display and could see a handful of the faster ships beginning to come into firing range. The Battlecruiser, still chasing them, lagged some distance behind.

“They say you’re a pretty good pilot, Zach,” said the Admiral. “Let’s see what you can do.”

“We’re going in?” asked Zach incredulously. “At this speed?” The violent and unpredictable nature of asteroid belts, especially dense ones such as this, meant that they were usually navigated at about one-tenth the Apocalypse’s current speed. After all, the asteroids, which ranged in size from a few meters to a few hundred kilometers, were composed of dense rock and iron. An impact at this velocity would be devastating, perhaps even deadly.

“I thought you said you were a good pilot, Zach?” challenged the Admiral. Daniel knew that if he stoked his ego, Zach could confidently fly the ship through a shopping mall.

“The best, sir,” declared Zach resolutely. “Hold on to your cane, old man. Let me show you how to fly this thing.”

Just as the trailing ships began to come into range, the Apocalypse entered the thick field of rock and debris. Deftly navigating through the fragments, Zach concentrated furiously as he maneuvered the nimble ship. Large chunks of rock screamed past the viewscreen, often missing the ship by mere meters.

“Are they following us in, Dex?” asked the Admiral, though his knowledge of the Vr’amil’een made him confident that they would be. To the Vr’amil’een, abandoning the chase of an enemy was an enormous dishonor despised more than death itself. The Captain who chased the Apocalypse into the asteroid belt and scored the kill would be honored highly and promoted immediately. Of course, Daniel had no intentions of getting anyone promoted today.

As Admiral Atgard expected, Dex confirmed that most of the Vr’amil’een pursuers continued into the asteroid field with reckless abandon. Trying in vain to keep up with the ship, they too plummeted into the cacophony of flying debris at breakneck speeds.

Shifting his attention back to the viewscreen, Daniel was alarmed to see an immense asteroid blocking their path. Suddenly, the rock dropped out of the viewscreen’s field of view as Zach pulled the ship up and into an inconceivably steep climb. Pulling over the jagged rim of the massive boulder, the Apocalypse executed a spectacularly-controlled turn and left the enormous asteroid behind it.

Looking once again at the tactical display, the Admiral tried to see how his pursuers were faring, with little success due to the clutter of the asteroid field. “Dex, can you read anything from tactical over there?” he asked. “Try to isolate the composition of the Vr’amil’een ships on the scanners. See if you can filter out some of the noise.”

“Aye, Admiral … recalibrating,” he replied. “Twenty-two ships have entered the field. Fourteen have disengaged, and the remaining six have not yet reached the belt. Seven of the 22 ships have been destroyed or disabled by asteroid collisions.”

“Excellent,” responded the Admiral. “Zach, maintain approximate course and speed.”

Zach, however, did not reply to the Admiral’s request. He was concentrating too intensely on the deadly obstacle course he was navigating.

“Nathan,” asked the Admiral, “how long until we clear the asteroid belt?”

“ETA: approximately two minutes, assuming we continue at our present course and speed,” replied Nathan, turning to face the Admiral. Daniel could see beads of perspiration wetting his wrinkled forehead as he struggled to maintain calm amidst the hailstorm of asteroids whizzing by the ship. “Of course,” he added softly, “we could reduce speed by 30 percent and still clear the belt in under three minutes …”

“Don’t worry, Nathan. Zach knows what he’s doing,” replied the Admiral confidently.

“Sure I do,” affirmed Zach, still deep in concentration. “In fact, they suspended my license for doing stuff like this back when I was a kid.”

“H–How many times have you navigated an asteroid belt at this speed, Zach?” stammered Nathan, his brown skin several shades paler than normal.

“Huh?” replied Zach belatedly as they reached a relatively sparse pocket of the belt. “Oh … at this speed? This is my first time.” Yanking the control stick violently, he once again adroitly avoided an asteroid suddenly appearing in his path. “But I made a few runs like this on the sims back in flight school.” Pulling another gut-wrenching turn, he added, “My survival rate was almost 65 percent. That’s more than half.”

Somehow Nathan did not seem relieved.

“Tactical report, sir,” Dex interjected. “Fourteen pursuing vessels have been disabled.”

“How close is the nearest remaining ship?” asked the Admiral as he studied his own tactical display. “Try improving the signal gain and filtering out some more of the clutter.”

“I’m getting some odd readings on the displays, sir,” reported Dex. “I’m getting ghost images of that Battlecruiser all over the asteroid belt. I’ll try a vector filtration … there. That should do it, sir. The nearest ship is …” Dex studied the display, punching buttons hastily. “Right behind us!” As he spoke, a projectile impacted the rear of the ship, jarring it slightly. “Four heavy fighters—they must have been launched by the ‘Cruiser. They were too small—I hadn’t detected them before.”

“Alright Dex, return fire with the rear batteries. I don’t know if you can hit anything with all this movement, but see what you can do. Zach, we’ve got company. Evasive maneuvers.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Zach replied incredulously. “This is as evasive as it gets!”

Still gaining on the heavier Apocalypse, the nimble fighters fired repeatedly at the darting ship. As they neared their target, a disturbing amount of their shots found their marks, somehow tracking the spasmodically lurching vessel. Suddenly, a heavy missile impact rocked the Apocalypse, jarring her off course and spinning her precariously.

Fighting valiantly with the controls, Zach struggled in vain to correct for the deviation. Heaving on the control stick with all his might, he pulled the ship into yet another steep turn. Daniel could see, however, that this one was not going to be quite steep enough.

“Brace yourselves!” bellowed the Admiral as he watched the spinning rock careen into their path on the viewscreen. Though Zach still wrestled with the controls, the ship could not turn sharply enough. Suddenly, there was a furious jolt as the Apocalypse impacted the small asteroid. Alarm klaxons rang out and emergency harnesses sprang into place as the bone-chilling sound of scraping metal filled the cabin. Within an instant, the asteroid had skipped off the Apocalypse and continued its haphazard path through space.

“Shields down, Admiral!” yelled Dex, recovering quickly. “Starboard hull plating damaged, but intact.”

The Admiral instinctively scanned the bridge and saw the limp body of Lieutenant Wallace hunched over the controls. Acting immediately, he thumbed a switch on the arm of his chair and a control stick flipped up into his hand. Without hesitation, he veered the ship away from a collision with yet another asteroid, finally wrestling the ship under control.

Suddenly, another nearby explosion rocked the cabin mildly. “Got one!” reported Dex triumphantly.

The relentless onslaught of asteroids continued as the Admiral expertly guided the ship through the maelstrom of rock. As the Apocalypse pulled around the rim of an immense boulder, three smaller asteroids suddenly appeared on the viewscreen. Approaching at a startling pace, the three tall rocks were splayed horizontally along the Apocalypse's path, with the center one arrayed slightly behind the other two. Reacting instantly, the Admiral jerked the stick to the right and brought the ship into an impossible turn, veering to the right of the starboard asteroid. Clearing the rock by mere centimeters, the Admiral coerced the ship into a tight, corkscrewing turn, looping back around the jagged boulder. Decelerating frantically, the ship spun into position between the three rocks, facing back in the direction from which it had come. Daniel thumbed the firing studs on the control stick, and the Apocalypse opened up with a fusillade of laser fire that caught the three trailing fighters just as they cleared the rim of the immense asteroid. The fighters’ armour was no match for the Apocalypse’s weapons, and within a few moments, all three had been destroyed.

Suddenly tranquil as it floated between the rocks, the Admiral began to ease the Apocalypse the remaining distance to the edge of the asteroid belt. Unbuckling her safety harness and jumping from her seat, Anastasia ran to the front console and knelt down beside Zach. As she touched him, he regained consciousness and sat up groggily in his seat. A narrow rivulet of blood streamed from his forehead as he shakily rose to his feet. “I think he’ll be okay,” Anastasia reported as she helped him to the rear doors and off the bridge.

Clearing the last remnants of the asteroid field, Admiral Atgard killed the engines as the Apocalypse turned back to face the wall of rocks and slowly drifted away from them. “Tactical?” asked the Admiral as he turned to face Dex.

“Most of the ships have either retreated or been disabled, Admiral,” reported Dex. I can only find two more still making their way through the belt.”

“Do you have a fix on the Battlecruiser, Dex?”

“Scanning … sir, it appears the Battlecruiser is coming through the belt as well.”

Daniel turned to stare at Dex in disbelief. “How in the hell will that thing ever get through there?”

“It’s moving slowly, Admiral,” Dex continued. “ETA: three more minutes.” Glancing back at the tactical display, he appended: “The remaining two ships are clearing the field, sir.”

“Fire as soon as they clear the belt, Dex,” said the Admiral. “Take them out quickly; shields are still off-line.”

“Shouldn’t we be moving, sir?” asked Dex. “With shields down, evasive maneuvers are—”

“The Vr’amil’een are probably tracking us through vector analysis,” responded the Admiral confidently. “With shields down and engines off, they should think we’re just another asteroid coasting through space. Don’t fire until you have a lock on them.”

“Aye, sir,” replied Dex as the first ship cleared the rocks. Erupting in a deluge of energy, the Apocalypse's powerful cannons targeted the incoming vessel, overwhelming its shields and destroying the oblivious ship before it could manage to return fire. The second ship, following a minute later, met the same fate.

Flipping a switch on his chair, the Admiral addressed Lieutenant Alexander in Engineering. “How long until we have those shields back, Darren?”

“I’m afraid not for some time, Admiral,” he replied. “The shield capacitors were fried when we hit that asteroid. It’s a wonder they kept us in one piece. But I can’t repair them until we reach port.”

His brow furrowed, Daniel mulled over his situation. “Alright, Dex,” he said. “Looks like we’ll just have to duke it out with that ‘Cruiser. Target the bridge.”

“Yes sir,” Dex replied enthusiastically. “Now the odds are evened up a little bit.”

Before he had a chance to reply, the hulking form of the Vr’amil’een Battlecruiser cleared the asteroid field and, like some primeval beast intent on a kill, headed toward the wounded Apocalypse.

Admiral Atgard jerked violently on the control stick, darting the Apocalypse out of the path of an enormous blast from the ‘Cruiser’s nose cannon. Pulling around in a controlled circle, Daniel headed for the aft of the oblong vessel as Lieutenant Rutcliffe poured well-aimed plasma bolts into the bridge of the ship.

Returning fire with its secondary weapons, the Battlecruiser ponderously struggled to turn quickly enough to face the speedy Apocalypse. Obviously unprepared for a vessel with the speed and firepower of the Apocalypse, the massive ‘Cruiser looked like a lumbering bear harangued by a pestering insect. The weapons of the Apocalypse packed quite a potent sting, however, and, even with her shields down, her almost impregnable armour could withstand all but the most powerful of barrages. Unable to bring her heavy cannon to bear, the Vr’amil’een ship was clearly outmatched as the agile Apocalypse repeatedly darted around the damaged vessel, firing relentlessly at her vulnerable bridge area. Finally, in a fierce explosion, the bridge erupted, leaving the Battlecruiser to drift helplessly back into the writhing mass of deadly asteroids.

• • •

His crewmates wounded, his ship badly damaged, Admiral Atgard examined his options. Without shields, continuing the search for the Lucani Ibron was hopeless. Sighing imperceptibly, the Admiral reluctantly turned to Nathan. “Plot in a course, all possible speed, Lieutenant.”

“What is our destination?” asked Nathan.

“The Sol System, Nathan,” replied the Admiral wearily. “We’re going back to Earth.”

CHAPTER 7

The darkness of space hung over the Earth like a sable curtain, insulating her from the malevolent Universe that surrounded her. Even Earth itself somehow seemed abnormally dark now; without the resplendent Indomitable nearby, she appeared lonely and forlorn—a dark, mourning planet patiently awaiting her own annihilation.

Slowing to orbital speed, the Apocalypse approached Earth through the dense traffic of military and civilian space vessels that surrounded her. While the Admiral had heard vague rumors of people evacuating Earth in fear, he had no inkling of the mass exodus that continued now before his eyes.

“I have ConFedCom on the comlink,” reported Nathan. “They …” His voice trailed off as he continued listening through his earphones. “They are not too happy, sir.”

“I figured they might be a little upset,” mused the Admiral. “Just tell them I’m on my way down.”

“I’m on my way down?” repeated Anastasia. “Aren’t we all going?”

“No,” replied the Admiral. “I don’t see any reason why the rest of you need to be there.”

“But, Admiral,” Nathan reminded him, “they were very clear—they distinctly said that they wanted everyone aboard to come down to give a complete deposition.”

The Admiral thought for a moment as he studied the faces of his crew, each of whom looked at him hopefully, expectantly. He looked carefully at Anastasia, her expressive face voicelessly revealing the wishes of them all.

“I’ll handle the depositions,” decided the Admiral resolutely. “The rest of you are free to attend to personal business on Earth. Just be absolutely certain that you are back aboard an hour before the repairs to the Apocalypse are complete. That should give you just under ten hours from the time you arrive in spacedock.”

Smiling, Anastasia watched as the Admiral began to walk off the bridge. “Admiral Le Jaunte is going to be pissed, Dan,” she warned him, half-seriously. “He’ll want your head on a platter.”

“Don’t worry about Pierre,” replied the Admiral sardonically as the bridge doors swished open. Le Jaunte and the Admiral had never been friends, and Daniel was sure that some of Pierre’s animosity stemmed from Daniel’s victory over him in the finals of the Galactic Tactical Competition, ten years before. “I can take care of him,” he assured her. “Just tell your kids I said hi.”

Nodding her tacit approval, Anastasia watched as the Admiral walked through the sliding metal doors and they closed softly behind him.

• • •

Finding his way to the minuscule hangar bay, the Admiral entered the small but potent ZF-255 fighter stationed there. The hangar was cramped, allowing for only this one tiny, 200-series fighter, but fitting the hangar bay at all on a ship the size of the Apocalypse was a design and engineering marvel in itself, Daniel thought. He quickly studied the familiar instruments in front of him, reacclimating himself with the fighter’s layout. His helmeted flight suit felt strangely tight and restrictive within the cramped cockpit, a subtle reminder of the Spartan efficiency of Confederation fightercraft. Though the Apocalypse itself was miniaturized and necessarily austere, it was far more comfortable and habitable than any fighter. There were times, however, when the weeks rolled into months, that the cramped quarters of the Apocalypse did take their toll.

As he powered up the fighter, Daniel keyed the control to open the hangar bay doors and was met with an expansive view of the planet below. Thick white clouds shrouded most of the Earth’s surface, concealing much of the rich blue ocean that gave way to the black terminator line. Launching from the bay, Daniel accelerated rapidly as he descended through the atmosphere. A bright wall of fire formed around the ship, jostling it violently as it lost altitude. The small craft finally emerged from the turbulent upper atmosphere, and Daniel slowed the ship as he approached the landing field. Quickly regaining the supreme confidence he had earned in his days behind the controls of a fighter, Daniel executed a flawless landing and quickly disembarked the ship. Walking up briskly to meet him was a well-dressed aide.

“Greetings, Admiral,” he said. “If you would come with me right away, please.”

The Admiral nodded curtly and followed him toward the ConFedCom Capitol building. A towering, modern building composed of reflective, high-density metals, the building glistened in the afternoon sun. Walking quickly, Daniel followed the aide through the massive double doors and through the security checkpoint in the lobby. The doors to the transport tube at the far end of the room were already open, and they quietly entered and began the descent to the building’s sub-basement.

Once the transport tube had stopped, the doors swished open and the aide stepped out, leading the Admiral through another security checkpoint and down a long hallway. The hallway’s cramped, windowless metallic walls and the drab gray coloring of the tiled floor were in stark contrast to the vast, open expanses of deep space he was accustomed to. Daniel had never enjoyed the enclosed, fortified feel of the Command Sub-Basement, but it had never seemed quite so oppressive as it did today.

The hallway ended in a pair of thick double doors, flanked by a pair of armed guards standing stiffly at attention. Once they had reached the end of the hallway, the aide opened one of the doors and held it ajar as the Admiral entered a small conference room, dominated by a long table in its center. Already seated at the table were a number of high-ranking military officials and the surviving members of Confederation Command. Seated at the head of the long wooden table was the President of the Confederation, William Stadler.

“Do come in, Daniel,” he said as the Admiral walked to his seat. The President was middle-aged, in his sixties, and his dark brown hair showed no hint of gray. The right side of his face bore a long jagged scar from his days as a fighter pilot. In fact, Daniel remembered, Stadler had graduated from the Yeager Fighter School just one year after himself.

“So good of you to join us today,” he quipped as Daniel sat down.

“Yes, well, I’ve been busy,” responded the Admiral vitriolically.

“You know, Admiral,” interjected Admiral Le Jaunte, “there is a chain of command around here. And even you have to respect that chain just like everybody else.”

Looking at Le Jaunte for the first time, Daniel’s perceptive eyes flicked to the new Fleet Admiral insignia on the older man’s shoulder. Evidently, the powers that be had decided to replace the distinguished Fleet Admiral Cole with Le Jaunte, whom Admiral Atgard had never particularly liked nor, more importantly, respected. Le Jaunte was indeed brilliant, and in fact was second only to Daniel as the youngest person ever to be promoted to Admiral. Daniel’s dislike for him, however, was more than personal: he found his attitude merely nauseating but his arrogance truly dangerous.

“With all due respect,” Daniel replied tersely, “I don’t think we have time to discuss my supposed insubordination. You can court-martial me when this is all over, for all I care.” Daniel looked at the President pointedly. “If any of us survive.”

“We can take care of it, Admiral,” retorted the Fleet Admiral. “They caught us off guard, but we didn’t need you gallivanting around the galaxy doing whatever it is you were doing. Now that the Confederation Navy is on alert and under my command, we shall have no trouble—”

“Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make proud,” quoted the Admiral caustically.

“Just because a military situation arises does not mean that you can go fly off on a whim like some maverick fighter pilot,” berated the Fleet Admiral, his French accent flaring up as he became more agitated. “We had orders for the Apocalypse—it’s not yours, by the way, Daniel. That ship belongs to the Confederation Navy.”

“What orders?” mocked Daniel derisively. “To sit here and wait for the Lucani Ibron to come back?” Mellowing somewhat, his voice dropped a few decibels and he added, “I had no way to contact ConFedCom without compromising my position. And General Order 417.42s clearly states that a cloaked ship is never to uncloak for communications purposes until the situation is under control.”

“You dare quote General Orders to me, Admiral?” bellowed Le Jaunte, his violent upper-body gesticulations whipping his dark ponytail over his shoulder. “When have you been known to play it by the book, Daniel?”

“Besides, I knew that ConFedCom would be in crisis,” Daniel continued deliberately, ignoring the Fleet Admiral’s rhetorical question. “I did not think that we had the luxury of wasting time while you regrouped and got things together down here.”

“Excuse me,” the President interjected. “What did you say before … ? The Lucani what?”

“Lucani Ibron, sir,” Daniel replied. “You see, I haven’t been off chasing shadows as Mr. Le Jaunte seems to believe.” Daniel shot a poignant look at the Fleet Admiral. “I had a rather productive week,” he continued, “… a week that included the destruction of a Vr’amil’een Battlecruiser.”

“Have you gone mad?” roared the Fleet Admiral. “There are no Vr’amil’een Battlecruisers!”

“Not anymore, no sir,” replied the Admiral coolly.

Before the Fleet Admiral could respond, President Stadler spoke up. “Could we forget about the pissing contest for a while, gentlemen? I want to know everything you’ve found out. I sincerely hope you have made productive use of your free time, Admiral.”

“Yes, sir,” Daniel replied, slowly withdrawing his icy glare from the Fleet Admiral and turning to the President. “Lucani Ibron is an Arcadian term. It means ‘Ancient Arbiters.’”

“Why did you make up a nonsense name for them in Arcadian?” interjected the Fleet Admiral condescendingly.

“I didn’t make it up, Pierre,” Daniel replied acrimoniously, leveling his gaze at the Fleet Admiral once again. “The Arcadians did. A hundred thousand years ago.” Daniel paused to allow the full implications of his words to sink in. The ensuing silence was palpable in its severity.

“It seems you have much to tell us, Daniel,” said the President somberly, the edge suddenly gone from his voice. “Why don’t you tell us just what you have learned of these ‘Ancient Arbiters?’”

• • •

After relating the events of the past week to the group—in exacting, time-consuming detail—and checking with the status of the repairs on the Apocalypse, Daniel decided that he could afford a brief trip to see his wife. After all, he reasoned morosely, this very well may be his last opportunity to do so.

Tara was all that was left of Daniel’s family now. His father had been killed in 3006 while commanding an outpost near the Korgian border, and his grandfather had died just two years ago, active and energetic until his sudden death at age 127. He did not remember his mother, but from what his father had told him, she was a highly-skilled fighter pilot who had been killed only a few years after Daniel’s birth, leaving him to be raised on various military bases by his father. Daniel never regretted the military life he was born into; on the contrary, he embraced it, having once “borrowed” a fighter for a joyride on his fourteenth birthday, zealously eluding the ships sent to retrieve him for several hours. A year later, he had been accepted to the prestigious Yeager Fighter School on Earth.

The small ZF-255 fighter sped toward his home, passing over the Florida peninsula, high above the commercial and civilian transports that flew far below. Though a glance at his nanocomputer showed the trip took only about 15 minutes, they ticked by inexorably as the Admiral neared the end of the string of islands off the south coast of Florida. Once he had landed in the grassy clearing behind his house and remembered that he had not yet spoken to his wife since Chad had died, it suddenly seemed as if he had just left the Capital moments ago.

Climbing down the ladder, Daniel removed his helmet and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and allowing the ocean breeze to whip his black hair from his forehead and fill his lungs with the welcome scent of fresh air. Looking toward the house revealed Tara, who stood facing him, her dark brown hair swaying in unison with the stalks of knee-high green grass that covered her lower legs. Her smile was evident even from the distance at which she stood, and her face, always radiant, reminded Daniel of nothing so much as a newborn star.

The grass in front of him rustled as something came bounding toward him beneath the cover of the swaying green carpet. A hint of gold was visible through the grass, and Daniel knelt down to welcome the dog that barreled into his torso. After knocking him to his back, the cocker spaniel licked his master’s face vigorously, his stubby tail wagging at an absurd pace. “Okay, Plato, okay,” he said, trying in vain to avoid the dog’s eager tongue. Rising to his feet, Daniel began to jog toward his wife as she came out to meet him.

Wordlessly, they embraced, and Daniel closed his eyes to let the touch of his wife flow through him. Although it had actually only been slightly more than a week since last he saw her, the events of the past seven days had made her absence more unbearable than ever before. Only a week, he thought somberly. Only a week since those bastards killed my son. He could feel his wife’s tears falling softly on his shoulder.

Raising her head, she looked at him, the tears still welling in her eyes. “God, I missed you,” she said, her voice cracking. “God, I miss you both.”

He could feel the tears welling in his own eyes now, and although he could count on one hand the number of times he had cried before, there was no stopping the tears that came falling down his cheek now, tears that left their salty taste on his lips as they rushed down his face and fell to the soft grass below.

“How long are you here for, Daniel?” she asked expectantly. She squeezed his hands and he could see a hint of a smile forming on her lips. “I could make dinner … you must be hungry?”

“No,” he said softly. “I’m not too hungry, really.” Averting his gaze from her chestnut eyes, he could not bear to tell her that he would not be staying very long at all.

The hint of happiness disappeared abruptly from her face as she looked to the fighter that sat in the field, its landing lights still shining through the tall grass. “You’re not staying, are you?”

Looking down, Daniel let out a heavy breath. “I’m afraid not, honey. I have to be back—”

“No, no, no,” she muttered, her body quivering like some angelic, ephemeral flower growing amongst the tall weeds. “You can’t go back out there … you can’t …”

“I have to,” he told her cheerlessly. “Someone has to do it.”

“But why does it always have to be you, Daniel?” she demanded. “Haven’t you already done your part? Haven’t you gone above and beyond your call of duty? Why you??”

“Because I’m the only one that can do it. Because there’s too much at stake for me to entrust it to anyone else.” He paused a moment, and his voice dropped to barely a whisper, almost inaudible above the gusting winds. “Because someone has to make them pay for killing our son.”

Tara embraced her husband once again. She understood. Though she didn’t like it, she understood. She had always understood, from the dangerous combat missions to the prolonged, undercover operations, she had steadfastly supported him and his commitment to the Confederation. Just as she had supported their son, who had given his life in defense of the same Confederation that was supposed to protect them now, protect them from this genocidal race and their omnipotent weapon.

• • •

The dim light radiated by the candles flickered imperceptibly, casting dancing shadows along the earth-toned walls of the room. Tapestries of both human and alien origin adorned the walls, and a collection of artwork assembled from throughout the known galaxy decorated the small chamber. The glowing sculpture given to Daniel by the Arcadian Chancellor rested in the center of a long, low table in front of the couch. Exotic statuettes, hanging ornaments, and musical instruments all contributed to the room’s decor. Though it usually gave him much pleasure, the room gave the Admiral little solace now.

Even the seat his wife sat in was a work of art—created by an Arcadian sculptor thousands of years ago. His wife, too, seemed to be a part of that sculpture, her graceful lines blending with the subtle contours of the chair. His eyes followed her elegant form, tracing the flowing patterns of her robe up to the supple lines of her neck and into the recesses of her dark eyes as they burned back into his.

“I think you should go,” he finally blurted out. “It’s too dangerous for you to stay here, Tara.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him, stiffening up at the unexpected request. “Where do you think I should go? To stay with my parents on the mainland? Would I be safer—”

“No, not on the mainland,” he replied, looking down into the dark fibers of the carpet. “I mean somewhere else … maybe just to Mars or the moons of Saturn for a little while … or maybe to the Cygnus System …”

“The Cygnus System?” she repeated incredulously. “My God, Dan, why would you want me to go there? Earth has to be better protected than Cygnus Prime—this has to be the safest place in the sector.”

“That’s what they said about the Indomitable,” he snapped uncharacteristically.

The soft lines of Tara’s face deepened noticeably. “What is it? What is it you know? The Confederation reports claim everything is under—”

“Under control? No reason to panic? Of course that’s what they’re saying.” He paused and took a deep breath. “But the truth is there is damned good reason to panic, Tara.”

“Daniel,” she said seriously, leaning toward him. “I’ve never heard you talk like this before. Not when there were daily attacks on Earth in the old days … not even when the Korgians were massing for their assault. What in the hell is going on out there?”

“I wish I knew,” he lamented helplessly. “I wish I knew.”

• • •

Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. His wife had always been resolute, to say the least. And without anywhere near as much time as he would have liked to try to persuade her, the Admiral had failed miserably. Tara had never left Earth in her life, disliking space travel vehemently for some old-fashioned reason that Daniel understood only moderately. His plea to convince her to pack up her belongings and leave her only home indefinitely was destined to meet with failure no matter how long he tried, Daniel had reasoned, reminding himself of that fact only half because it was actually true and half because he felt so guilty that he was leaving her on Earth helplessly awaiting the awful alien Armageddon.

His back pressed into the seat as the engines of the ZF-255 strained against the Earth’s gravity. Not willing to take the time to achieve orbit and complete a time-consuming standard orbital dock with the Apocalypse, the Admiral nudged the throttle even farther forward and was rewarded with yet more power from the eager engines. Killing the engines just before he achieved escape velocity, the Admiral let the Earth’s gravity and atmosphere bleed speed from the racing fighter. The friction-glow of the atmosphere died down, revealing the belly of the orbiting Apocalypse, its hangar bay doors open and awaiting his arrival. Easing just a touch more power from the thrusters, he maneuvered the ship into the tight confines of the bay, lining up the docking clamps precisely as the doors closed against the vacuum behind him.

• • •

Everyone turned to face him as the Admiral stepped through the sliding doors onto the bridge. Zach was back at the helm, wearing a small bandage on his forehead, but still sporting his trademark smirk. “You okay, Zach?” asked the Admiral.

“Me? Oh, I’m fine, sir,” he said flippantly. “Just a scratch.”

“Glad to hear it,” Daniel replied. “By the way, that was some pretty nice flying back there.”

“I told you it would be a piece of cake,” he said smugly, his smirk somehow growing just a tad wider. “And I saw the replays from after I was knocked out,” he added belatedly. “Was that really you doing all that flying, old man?”

The Admiral allowed himself a slight smile. “Nah … the ship must have been on autopilot,” he joked. Adding an elderly warble to his voice, he quipped, “These dadgum reflexes just aren’t what they used to be, you know … .”

The crew chuckled lightly. The Admiral was glad that they were still able to laugh even amidst the rigors they were facing. After all, in the most trying of times, often one’s only options were to laugh or to cry.

Daniel turned to look at Anastasia, and, though she was smiling, he could sense something deeper, a juxtaposition of conflicting emotions stirring within her. He saw genuine happiness in her eyes—a lighthearted mirth mixed with relief and joy over her recent visit with her loved ones. He did not need Anastasia’s advanced degree in psychology, however, to tell that there was also something hidden just beneath the surface of her emotional well—as her smile slowly faded, he could see that she was also silently somber and afraid, afraid that this had been her last visit with those she loved.

Not that the Admiral could blame her. Not that he could blame any of them for being afraid. He could scarcely have blamed them if they had gone AWOL and left on the next shuttle to the Outer Rim, which was no doubt part of the reason he had been lambasted so thoroughly for granting them leave by the Fleet Admiral after his deposition was completed. Daniel knew, however, that his crew’s loyalty was unflagging. If not to the Confederation, then certainly to him.

“Dex, have you completed the shield diagnostics?” he asked as he sat in his captain’s chair, knowing that he would have already done so no less than three times.

“Yes, Admiral,” came his expected reply. “Shields reading at 100 percent, 6.3 terajoules. The techs at the station were able to boost them four percent.”

“Excellent,” he replied. Every joule they could get between themselves and the enemy was welcome. Of course, the Indomitable's total shield output from its three planetary-class generators was several thousand times that number, and it had proved as useless as a soap bubble against the Lucani Ibron’s fantastic weapon.

“Do we have new orders, Admiral?” asked Zach eagerly. “Did they give you a hard time down there?”

“It wasn’t too bad. They were too worried about our problems to spend any time scolding me.”

“Problems?” asked Anastasia perceptively, picking up on his use of the plural. “What else do they have to worry about? You’d think the Lucani Ibron would be enough to keep them busy.”

“Normally they would be, Anastasia,” he replied. “But they have other things to worry about as well.”

“Other things?” Dex interjected. “What in the hell else could they possibly be worried about? We even took care of the only Vr’amil’een Battlecruiser for them.”

“I’m afraid we didn’t, Dex,” responded the Admiral gravely. “ConFedIntel has just received reports that, as we speak, they’re massing more hidden Battlecruisers for an assault on Earth.”

There was a short silence as the crew considered the implications of a hidden Vr’amil’een force coming to attack Earth in her weakened state. “So are we supposed to stop the Vr’amil’een, or the Lucani Ibron, Admiral?” asked Nathan.

The Admiral sat silently for a moment as he looked at the faraway stars peppering the viewscreen. Sighing imperceptibly, he turned slowly to Lieutenant Latimer. “Yes, Nathan,” he said wearily. “We are.”

CHAPTER 8

Daniel had always marveled that the layout of the Apocalypse somehow crammed amazing technologies like the Quantum Refractor and the Omega Cannon, advanced systems like the powerful engines and the shield generators, and enough room for the crew into such a relatively small vessel. After all, there were living quarters for eight people, the main bridge, the engineering section, the fighter bay, and a central chamber that alternated between serving as a briefing room, a “recreation” area, and a dining room. Though the rooms and hallways were far from spacious, they were also far from being unbearably small. The central chamber, known as the Hub, was the largest room on the ship, and it was there that the Admiral addressed the members of his crew, all of whom were to be assembled except Nathan, who remained on the bridge—just in case.

The Admiral surveyed the room, quickly noting that Assistant Engineer Ryan Taylor was not yet present. A moment later, however, he rushed in, his glasses bouncing where they rested atop his bald, coffee-colored head, devoid of hair by choice and not by age. Ryan was only in his thirties, well built and muscular, a firm believer in health of both body and mind.

“I was just finishing up some quick adjustments on the engine control subsystems, Admiral,” he explained, taking his seat. “Thought I could get us a little more speed.”

The Admiral nodded. After all, it was just like Ryan to loathe being torn away from his engineering duties for a meeting, or anything else, for that matter. Daniel had never met a man so in love with his work, and had routinely found him studying some new computer configuration well past the end of his designated shift. Ryan’s specialty was computer engineering, and before joining the Apocalypse's crew, he had worked on the notorious Implanted Microprocessor Project. The IMP had been an attempt at attaching a nanocomputer to the human brain, an attempt that had been technically and surgically successful, but ultimately canceled for other reasons.

The “other reasons,” Daniel remembered morosely, were that, within a month of the implantations, the test subjects had all developed acute complications. The majority of subjects abruptly “burned out,” their brains physically unable to keep up with the vast amounts of information and computing power now made available to them. Once they had “short circuited,” they regressed to a permanent vegetative state, no longer able to communicate with the outside world. The remainder of the subject group, however, those whose brains were physically able to handle the information, fared far worse.

This group, those with superior or genius mental capability to begin with, was physically able to withstand the deluge of information and corresponding exponential increases in synaptic activity that came with the procedure. The psychological effects of the operation, however, were considerable. The nanocomputers, like the ubiquitous wrist-worn models they were modeled after, were fitted with wireless modem devices, and enabled the subjects to tap into a literally infinite wealth of information, communications, and power. With a simple thought, the subjects could now talk to each other—as if through telepathy, learn anything they wanted—instantly, and remember everything—indefinitely. The psychological stresses of this omniscience turned out to be too much to bear. Every one of these subjects eventually developed disorders, which ranged from paranoia to depression to God complexes. Within a few months, they had all been declared clinically insane. Not a single one of them had recovered before their eventual deaths.

Purging his mind of the troubling history of the IMP, the Admiral turned his attention back to Ryan’s previous comments.

“Good, Mr. Taylor. It seems as though we’ll need all the extra speed we can muster, as our new orders now require us to basically be in two places at the same time.”

“Is that all?” asked Alexis sarcastically. “We got off easy.”

“Well, not too easy, Alexis,” he replied. “Fleet Admiral Le Jaunte in particular was rather annoyed with me. And now they want us to both continue our current mission of searching for the Lucani Ibron, and also to investigate the Vr’amil’een fleet buildup.”

“‘Investigate?’” asked Anastasia skeptically. “Is that what they said?”

“Well,” admitted the Admiral, “perhaps I am paraphrasing just a bit.”

Anastasia smiled. “So which one are we going to do first?”

“I think—” began the Admiral, only to be cut off by Nathan’s voice coming over the intercom. “Admiral,” he began, “I have found something I think you should probably take a look at.”

“Good,” said Ryan from the back of the room, smiling. “I love short meetings.”

• • •

“I have some good news,” ventured Nathan once the Admiral had returned to the bridge, “and some bad news, I am afraid.” Daniel knew the Fedoran’s voice well enough to sense his trepidation.

“Figures,” sighed the Admiral.

“Which one would you like to hear first?”

“I think I could use some good news right now, Nathan.”

“Well, sir, the good news is that while the ship was being repaired, I stayed aboard to play a hunch I had.”

“A hunch?”

“Well … more than just a hunch, I suppose. You see, using data I requested from the Arcadians, which just arrived a short while ago, I began calculations on the interferometry readings of the Lucani Ibron’s hyperspace field inducer trails. Using our readings from their appearance a week ago as a baseline, and extrapolating the quantum coefficient from the combination of that data and—”

“Mr. Latimer?” interjected the Admiral cordially. “What have you come up with?”

“Yes, sir,” he continued. “I believe I have found a way to at least roughly track the Lucani Ibron’s hyperspace movements.”

“That’s outstanding, Nathan!” Daniel exclaimed. Sobering quickly, he added, “What’s the bad news?”

“Well, sir, if these calculations are correct …” Nathan paused, pretending to study the numbers flashing by on his display panel. “They will be here in just under six hours.”

“Figures,” sighed the Admiral again.

• • •

Hastily closing the book, the Admiral rubbed his eyes and fought to concentrate. His mind was certainly not on the novel he was reading now, a vain attempt to distract himself from the imminent confrontation that awaited him, the specter of which loomed over the entire ship. Though he had been strongly advised by Anastasia to get some rest before they intercepted the Lucani Ibron ship, he was, predictably, completely unable to sleep, kept awake by a potent combination of adrenaline and fear that overcame his nagging and ubiquitous weariness.

Suddenly, there was an abrupt jolt as the Apocalypse was wrenched out of hyperspace. The jarring tone of the alarm klaxons rang out belatedly as the Admiral leaped to his feet, racing out the doorway that led directly from his personal chambers to the bridge. “Warning,” trilled the monotonous voice of the computer. “Unanticipated hyperspace termination; reason: unknown.”

The Admiral rushed onto the bridge and into his command chair. “Dex, status report!” he called.

“Sir, we’ve been knocked out of hyperspace somehow,” Dex replied, studying his instruments. “I don’t know how or why.”

“Admiral,” added Nathan, reading his displays, “There do not appear to be any gravitational anomalies that would have pulled us out of hyperspace. There are no—”

Nathan stopped in mid-sentence as the eyes of the entire bridge crew became transfixed on the viewscreen. Abruptly appearing in a flash of light was the ovoid alien ship.

The thought that struck the Admiral first was how dauntingly large the ship seemed at this range, unexpectedly pouncing within a few kilometers of the startled Apocalypse. Its surface was composed of nothing the Admiral had ever seen, a semi-reflective, semi-translucent silver material that seemed to be more fluid than metal. It reminded Daniel of nothing so much as the surface of a placid lake on an overcast day, when the reflection of the drab gray sky overhead mingled with the murky water underneath the surface, creating the illusion of peering into the depths of infinity.

Mesmerized by the convolving surface of the ship filling the viewscreen, the Admiral almost failed to notice the white pinpoint of light that had appeared in the center of the writhing mass of liquid metal, the pinpoint that was growing larger by the instant.

“Evasives!” roared the Admiral, and Zach’s keen reflexes jerked the ship violently to the right. An instant later, a thin white beam of light shot out of the alien ship, passing through the spot inhabited by the Apocalypse a moment earlier. The Admiral quickly called up the astrometric displays, which pinpointed their location just at the fringe of the Creelar System. A system, the Admiral realized with horror, inhabited by more than two billion sentient beings.

“Damn!” exclaimed the Admiral as Zach sped away from the alien ship. “Aren’t they still supposed to be two hours away?”

“Yes, sir, they are supposed to be,” replied Nathan, perplexed. Looking down at his console, he added, “Admiral, I have an incoming message from ConFedCom, Priority One.”

“Figures,” groaned the Admiral. “On screen. Zach, get us some distance, please, and Dex, raise the shields.” Grumbling under his breath, he added, “… for whatever they might be worth.”

There was a short crackle from the bridge speakers as the viewscreen reformed to reveal the visage of President Stadler himself. “Admiral Atgard,” he began hastily, “you are ordered to destroy the alien ship immediately. You are authorized to use whatever means necessary.”

The Admiral’s face hardened noticeably. “May I remind you, sir, that there are two billion sentients in this system?”

“Two billion, one hundred fourteen million,” added Anastasia rebelliously.

The ship continued to lurch violently as Zach eluded the alien vessel in an exquisitely haphazard pattern. The rest of the bridge crew awaited the President’s reply, slightly delayed due to their distance from Earth. A quick glance by the Admiral at the tactical display showed that the alien ship was slowly but undeniably gaining on the swift Apocalypse.

The viewscreen showed the President shift in his seat, his brow furrowed. “The President is aware of that fact, Admiral,” he retorted. “May I remind you that I have just given you a direct order?”

Daniel did not flinch. “The Admiral is aware of that fact, Mr. President,” he hissed.

For what seemed like a long time, no one spoke. The periodic lurching of the ship went almost unnoticed as the crew sat in stunned silence. Turning away from the Admiral, President Stadler leveled his gaze at Dex. “Lieutenant Commander Rutcliffe, I hereby place you in command of the Apocalypse. And I order you to fire the Omega Cannon at the alien vessel immediately.” His lip twitched angrily.

Dex’s muscles tensed as he flicked his gaze down to his weapons panel. A short moment passed before the Admiral spoke up. “Belay that order, Mr. Rutcliffe. Nathan, end communication.” The President’s mouth began to open in outrage just as his likeness disappeared from the viewscreen and was replaced by the external view of the Creelar System. “And, Zach, get us the hell out of here. I want hyperspace right now!”

There was an inertial rush as the ship surged into hyperspace, temporarily leaving behind the alien ship and the Creelar System, but not the Admiral’s imminent court-martial nor the ire of his commander, the President of the Confederation.

• • •

The bridge was unusually quiet, even by recent standards. The only sound was the gentle throbbing hum of the engines as the Apocalypse raced away at maximum speed—away from the Creelar System, away from Earth, and away from the Lucani Ibron ship. It was a ship, the Admiral lamented, that seemingly had the power to pluck them from the safety of hyperspace, a ship that still chased them through the endless reaches of the cosmos. It was a space-age game of cat and mouse, mused the Admiral, a game whose winner would determine the fate of humanity.

They had no real destination, as the Universe, for all its infinite vastness, ironically offered no place to hide. They were traveling roughly away from Earth, though the Admiral could not dispel the nagging notion that all that might accomplish would be a short reprieve in the Earth’s death sentence once the Apocalypse was eventually caught and destroyed by her unrelenting pursuers.

But the Admiral, as usual, did have an idea.

“Can’t you make this thing go any faster, Darren?” asked the Admiral through the intercom. “Can’t we divert all that new shield energy to the hyperdrive? They’re still gaining on us.”

“I already have, Admiral,” he replied through the speaker. “Believe me, if I could think of anything else to coerce so much as another drop of speed out of this thing, I would do it.”

“Nathan, call up the astrometric charts for this sector. How close are we to the Eagle Nebula?”

“At this speed … 2.4 minutes.”

“Zach, alter course to the nebula,” said the Admiral.

“Aye, sir.”

“What is it?” asked Anastasia. “What are you trying to do?”

“The nebula will offer some sensor interference,” Dex interjected. “But I would think the Lucani Ibron’s sensors would be able to penetrate it.”

“We’ll find out soon enough how good they are,” replied the Admiral. “Nathan, would you transfer me our exact speed and heading, please?”

Nathan dutifully transferred the readings to the Admiral’s display console. “Also, Nathan, I would like you to locate the section of the nebula with the highest interference, particularly in the upper Z-bands. Calculate a course to that point, and give me an exact ETA once you are finished. Zach, adopt the new heading as soon as Nathan determines it.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Admiral,” asked Nathan uneasily, “is it not generally considered a bad idea to travel in hyperspace in close proximity to gravitational fields? Like inside a nebula, for example?”

“Generally,” replied the Admiral calmly. “Generally it is.”

Dex and Anastasia watched as the Admiral pored over the figures and calculations on his display console. The ensuing minute seemed to stretch into hours.

“The calculations are complete, Admiral,” reported Nathan suddenly. “I am relaying the coordinates to your consoles.”

“Changing course now,” Zach announced.

“Dex, engage the Quantum Refractor precisely when we reach those coordinates,” ordered the Admiral. “Zach, the instant we are cloaked, jump to hyperspace, heading: 117, mark four. Maximum speed.”

“ETA, five seconds,” warned Nathan. “Brace yourselves.”

It all happened at once: the sudden deceleration and appearance of the luminous interior of the nebula on the viewscreen, the signature resonance of the Quantum Refractor engaging, and yet another inertial rush as the Apocalypse surged back into hyperspace, almost exactly 90 degrees from its original course. It all took only an instant, and once it was over, the viewscreen again showed the familiar starlines of hyperspace.

“Dex, tactical scans?” asked the Admiral. If the gambit had not worked, the Lucani Ibron ship would overtake them momentarily.

“I have nothing on screen, Admiral,” he replied jubilantly. “It worked! Son of a bitch! You did it again.” The entire crew looked at him in triumphant astonishment.

“They are continuing on their old course,” reported Nathan. “They have not changed course to intercept.”

The Admiral finally released the breath that he did not realize he had been holding. For an instant, a flash of hope surged through him, a feeling that this, too, would be overcome. But his euphoria was short-lived.

“Admiral,” ventured Nathan cautiously, “when we exited hyperspace, I picked up a report, coming over the news grid.”

“What does it say?” asked the Admiral apprehensively, rising from his chair.

“It seems—I am sorry, sir. It seems they have arrested your wife, just a few minutes ago.”

A wall of flame seemed to slam into the Admiral as his blood coursed like wildfire through his veins. His temples throbbed and he slumped back into his chair, resting his head in his hands. It took several seconds of deep breaths for him to regain his composure.

“Well, Zach,” he sighed finally, “I guess we had better plot a course for Earth. Your Admiral needs to be court-martialed.”

• • •

He only had to ring the entrance chime once before the doors slid open to reveal Anastasia reclining on a plush purple couch, a large hardcover book open in her hands. It was one of the many things Daniel had always liked about her: although multimedia presentation plates and holo-vid projectors were—Daniel thought—depressingly overabundant, Anastasia, like himself, firmly believed there was no substitute for a good book. Fluorescent pixels on a screen or a disembodied voice lifelessly reading text did little justice to the masterful words of the great authors.

“Come sit over here with me, Dan,” offered Anastasia as he entered the dimly-lit room and walked over to the couch. Sitting up, Anastasia held the book open in front of him as he sat beside her.

“It’s magnificent,” he said after he had studied the book in front of him for a moment. The pages it was open to contained a picture of an indescribable sculpture, the likes of which he had never seen. It was composed of some sort of translucent glass that refracted and magnified the light cast upon it into a prismatic projection that floated in the center of the creation. The effect, even in the two-dimensional representation, was absolutely breathtaking. “What is it?”

“It is a piece of Creelarian Prism Art,” she replied, her own eyes deep in the picture. Slowly, she began turning the pages, which showed text and diagrams explaining the creation process. “From what we know, it takes their most skilled artisans years to painstakingly create these masterpieces. They use no tools of any kind in its construction, but simply gather the glass-like material by hand and blow the complex shapes with nothing but their powerful suction tubes. Each piece of the material is unique, with its own distinct reflective properties. As such, the selection of the glass is critical, and the artists must create these works without prior plan or calculation, instead molding the glass spontaneously as its particular prismatic properties become gradually apparent. If a mistake is made, the entire sculpture must be discarded and the artist must begin anew.” She paused for a long moment. “With all of our wonderful technology, we have never been able to properly duplicate it.”

The Admiral shifted his gaze from the book to Anastasia’s face and saw a single tear roll down her delicate cheek.

“And it, and all the others like it, and its creator, and all the others like him, would have been instantly destroyed if you had done what Stadler wanted you to do back there.” She finally tore her eyes from the picture to look fervently at Daniel. “So if you came here because you were agonizing over your decision, if you came here for reassurance that you made the right choice, if you came here to find out if I agree with your decision, your answer is right here on these two pages. Because isn’t this reason enough right here?”

Daniel took the book from her hands and placed it on the glass table in front of them. As he turned to her, they embraced, and into his ear she whispered, “Thank you.”

And in that instant the Admiral knew he had done what was right. The court-martial be damned.

CHAPTER 9

The return voyage to Earth was uneventful, although that was hardly surprising considering that the Admiral had instructed Nathan to take his time in repairing the “communications difficulties” they had coincidentally incurred in the aftermath of Daniel’s recent insubordination. In fact, for at least a few hours of the trip, Daniel had actually slept in his quarters, somehow relatively at ease even in the face of the upcoming repercussions of his failure to heed President Stadler’s order to fire the Omega Cannon in the Creelar System, an order, it must be noted, which would have resulted in the obliteration of the entire system and all its inhabitants before they had even advanced to the point of interstellar travel, the point at which they would have been officially contacted by the Confederation. In other words, every single member of a species with no knowledge of either humanity or the Lucani Ibron would have been instantly wiped out by an unfortunate confrontation of which they had no part, no knowledge, and no responsibility.

Though ConFedCom had explicitly instructed the Admiral to remain onboard the Apocalypse until a transport vessel had docked with them in orbit, Daniel figured he had little left to lose by continuing to feign the communication malfunction and again descending to Earth in his ZF-255 fighter. Doing so, he reasoned, would perhaps ensure that ConFedCom did not go after any other members of his crew as well.

When he landed, he was only moderately surprised to find two armed “escorts” awaiting him. He was also only moderately surprised that they did not insist upon placing him in restraints.

The trip from the landing field to the ConFed Capitol building and down the transport tube to the sub-basement was quick and wordless. Daniel was escorted by two guards, each of whom wore a dark facial shield that obscured his feelings behind an inexpressive reflection of the drab, battleship-gray walls of the transport tube. When the cramped cubicle arrived at the bottom floor, the doors opened swiftly and the Admiral stepped out and headed down the corridor to the President’s conference room. Daniel noted that the escorts did not accompany him out of the transport tube, instead waiting behind but holding the doors open until he was through the security checkpoint and out of sight.

The door at the end of the hallway was again flanked by two guards, one of whom wordlessly opened the door at the Admiral’s approach. As far as he could tell, they were the same guards who had been on duty during his last trip to the basement, wearing the same facial shields and uniforms and standing in the same stiff military posture.

Once he had stepped through the heavy doors, the Admiral was met with the familiar array of Confederation officials. At the head of the far end of the table, again, was President Stadler. Conspicuously absent, Daniel noted, was Fleet Admiral Le Jaunte. Which was just as well, he thought sardonically.

Though he did not speak right away, the President’s ire was both considerable and immediately apparent. The muscles of his jaw were pulled taut, and Daniel wondered how long he had been grinding his teeth before his arrival. With an indiscernible sigh, the Admiral seated himself in the empty chair before him.

“Admiral Daniel Caesar Atgard,” began the President ceremoniously, “I trust you know what this little meeting is about?” Daniel had always hated it when he was addressed by his full name. It usually meant something unpleasant was about to happen.

For a moment, a litany of wisecracks ran through Daniel’s mind. Though tempting, he did not feel any of them would help ameliorate his current situation. “I do,” he replied.

“Good,” said the President evenly. “Now, though I would love to make small talk, why don’t we just get straight to the point?”

Daniel nodded his tacit assent. It was, after all, merely a rhetorical question.

“Do you recall your actions yesterday in the Creelar System, Admiral?”

“I do.”

“Allow me to refresh your memory anyway,” the President continued. “You, as commander of the Apocalypse, disobeyed a direct order from your Commander in Chief. Instead of facing the enemy, you turned tail and ran like a coward.”

Under the table, Daniel felt his fists clench involuntarily.

“An act, I might add, that endangered every one of our lives, and, as such, extends beyond the realm of mere insubordination and borders on treason.”

Treason. Strong words.

“So I ask you, Admiral—do you deny that you disobeyed a direct order?”

“I do not,” he replied stoically.

The President’s voice grew louder. “Do you deny that you fled from the enemy, possibly endangering the lives of every man, woman, and child on this planet?”

“I do not.”

There was just a hint of a smile at the edge of the President’s lips as his voice rose to a crescendo. “Then I ask you, Admiral—do you have any defense of your treasonous actions?”

The question seemed to echo throughout the room as the President’s eyes burned into Daniel’s. Daniel abruptly realized that the President was taking this not only very seriously, but also very personally.

Casually reaching to take a sip from a glass of water in front of him, the Admiral did not speak for some time. Sensing an unexpected easy victory, the President’s mouth opened to speak, only to be cut off by the Admiral’s belated reply.

“Yes, Mr. President,” he said softly. “I do.”

After a moment, the President flashed a condescending smirk. “I’d love to hear it.”

Nonchalantly, the Admiral reached into a pocket of his flight suit. Pulling out a sheet of paper, he slammed it on the table and forcefully slid it across. The President instinctively jerked away as it fluttered to rest before him. A few of the assembled officers around the table let out gasps of surprise.

“That is my defense,” declared the Admiral.

The President reached in front of him and picked up the paper, slowly letting his gaze fall from the Admiral to the document before him. “What in the hell is this?” he asked.

“That is a picture of Creelarian Prism Art,” replied the Admiral, “and it is my defense.”

The President laughed uproariously. “This?” he asked, stunned. “This is your defense? A damned sculpture??” He dropped the paper down on the table between peals of laughter. There were snickers from the assembled officers as well.

The Admiral was silent.

The President’s laughter slowly abated. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Am I serious?” mocked the Admiral. “Are you?”

Any hint of humor that was present disappeared instantly from the President’s face. “Perhaps you don’t realize—”

“Perhaps you don’t realize, Mr. President,” yelled the Admiral as he rose from his seat, suddenly animated. “Perhaps you don’t realize precisely what it was you asked me to do.”

“I asked you to defend your planet!” yelled the President.

“You asked me to butcher an entire race!”

The President fumed, but said nothing.

“Before we learned the term Lucani Ibron,” said the Admiral gravely, “we called them the Gens Laniorum.”

“I’m sorry, Admiral, but I don’t speak—”

“The term means ‘The Butchering Race,’ William,” explained the Admiral. “We called them that because they killed millions of sentient beings in one callous act.”

“So what?” demanded the President, livid. “What do I care why …” His voice trailed off.

“You care, Mr. President, because if I had fired that awful Cannon, we would have been the Gens Laniorum too. And we would have no more right to live than they do. The Creelarians would be the only innocents. But they would all be dead.”

The room was silent for a long while; the assembled Confederation officers seemed hesitant to enter into the heated conversation. After a minute or so had passed, the Admiral finally calmed down enough to retake his seat. Another few seconds passed before the President spoke again.

“Daniel,” he began, the edge gone from his voice, “surely you do understand that, whatever your reasons, you may not simply disregard the chain of command?”

“No, sir,” he replied squarely. “I do not.”

The President sighed heavily. “You never have been good at following orders, Daniel.”

“The depths of hell are filled with men who were only following orders, sir.”

“Don’t quote Glaucynon to me,” shot the President. “I see your side, but damn it, Admiral, I can’t have you running around out there out of control.”

Daniel was silent. He knew the President had to enforce his authority, but part of what had sometimes gotten Admiral Atgard into trouble with superior officers was that he did not feel his duty was to them, but to himself; not to the President of the Confederation, but to its people—he felt that he had a moral obligation to do what was just, whether he followed orders in the process or not.

“So you leave me little choice,” the President concluded. “Daniel Atgard, I hereby find you guilty of insubordination, and, through the power given me by the declaration of martial law, demote you to the rank of Captain. You are also hereby relieved of all duties indefinitely.”

Daniel did not flinch. “And my wife?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” replied the President. “I do apologize for that. But I had to be sure you would come back. She will of course be released immediately.”

Daniel rose and walked to the door. Opening it, he turned back to the assembled officers. “One other thing, Mr. President,” he said solemnly. “If you ever touch my wife again, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

He then turned and walked out, leaving the room in stunned silence.

• • •

At least some good had come out of it, Daniel reasoned. At least he was home with his wife.

At least that’s what he thought for most of the first day, a day spent relaxing at home with Tara. But that night, he was visited by other, far more troubling thoughts.

Sure he loved the time at home with his wife. And the demotion didn’t particularly bother him. Daniel Atgard was never the sort of man to put undue weight on titles.

What bothered him, far more than he expected, was sitting idly by while the fate of humanity was decided by others. As he lay in bed, struggling to sleep, he tried to come to terms with his sentence, convincing himself that he would be better off spending time with his wife instead of off getting himself killed.

For most men, such rationale would be more that adequate. Most men would revel in their newfound freedom.

But not Daniel Atgard.

• • •

Getting up quietly, Daniel sneaked out of bed and out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. He walked down the short hallway to his den, stopping to don a robe from the hallway closet. Once inside, he closed the door and sat at the desk, powering up his military-issue communicator and keying the secret emergency frequency of the Apocalypse. Always planning for unforeseen circumstances, Daniel had installed this private communications system some time ago, a system that would allow him to contact Anastasia and Anastasia alone.

It took less than a minute for her to reply, her image coalescing over the table in front of him. The background showed she was, predictably, in her personal chambers onboard the Apocalypse. Daniel peripherally noted the Creelarian Prism Art book lying open on the glass table in the background.

“Daniel,” she began, “I figured you would contact me this way eventually. I’m glad you did; there’s quite a bit you should know.” Daniel could sense the uneasiness in her voice.

“So what have I missed while I’ve been vacationing down here?” he asked.

Flashing him a half-hearted smile, she responded, “Well, for one thing, the Fleet Admiral is missing. He seems to have just vanished sometime yesterday.”

“Missing?” Daniel asked, startled. “Does ConFedCom have any idea where he is?”

“No clue. In fact, from what they can determine, he’s not even on-planet.”

“Either that,” Daniel muttered, half to himself, “or someone is intentionally concealing his location.” High-ranking military officials were implanted with homing beacons that could pinpoint their locations in case they were needed in an emergency, in case they were abducted, or even in case they went AWOL.

“That’s not all, Daniel,” she continued. “The Vr’amil’een assault is apparently almost under way. ConFed Intelligence reports several more Battlecruisers revealed from hiding.”

“As if we didn’t have enough to worry about,” Daniel sighed.

“Oh, it’s much worse than you think,” she added gravely. “ConFedCom wants us to go to the Tu’oth System—apparently without you—and destroy the Armada before it launches its attack. And the whole troublesome Tu’oth System with it, of course,” she added, trying to sound sarcastically flippant, with little success.

“Just like the Korgians,” Daniel whispered, appalled. He knew she was also horrified by the order.

“Maybe this is why you could never get your Ethics Review Board proposal passed,” ventured Anastasia.

“Yeah, well, it sure would help us now,” Daniel sighed. “Maybe there would be some way we could stop this.”

“What are we going to do, Admiral?”

“First of all, I’m no longer an Admiral,” he corrected her. “They’ve demoted me.”

“Bastards.”

“Well, that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that I am ‘relieved of all duties indefinitely.’ They want to just shuffle me out of the way down here until the crisis is over.”

There was a flash of anger that coursed like a bolt of lightning through Anastasia’s sky-blue eyes. “Are they mad?” she cried. “Don’t they know you’re our only hope?”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but there’s really—”

“Do you still have the ZF-255?” she interjected.

Daniel could not help but smile. He knew Anastasia well enough to know where the question was leading. “I know what you’re thinking—no, you can’t sneak me on board. There’s—”

“Sure I could,” she replied, deliberately misconstruing Daniel’s use of the word can’t to mean “are not able to.” “Hell, I’ll cloak the damned ship and land it in your backyard if I have to.”

“No, no,” laughed the Captain. “I can’t let you do that. We’re all in enough trouble already. If you ever pulled a stunt like that, they’d probably try you all for treason.”

Anastasia opened her mouth in rebuttal, but the Captain held up a hand to silence her.

“You know I won’t let you do it, ‘Stasia,” he said firmly. “It’s out of the question.” She had known him long enough to realize that he would not be swayed.

“So what are we going to do, Admiral?” she repeated, intentionally referring to him by his former title.

“I don’t know, Ana,” he sighed. “I just don’t know.”

CHAPTER 10

The tumultuous sea of liquid metal swirled and gyrated in a pattern both dangerously beautiful and violently exquisite. It was all Daniel could see, as if he had fallen into an infinite abyss of the entrancing fluid. He strained his muscles to free himself from the writhing broth, which felt cold and slimy against his naked body. Suddenly, he was out of the quagmire, floating up and away from the horrible liquid.

As he receded from it, he could begin to see what it was: the convolving outer sphere of the Lucani Ibron ship. Inexplicably, he traveled away from the spherical vessel, and looked to his left to see the enormous Indomitable, which imposingly dwarfed the alien ship. The Indomitable, oddly, was not its normal lustrous white, but instead a dull gray, bland and nondescript except for its impossible size. Shining like a small star on the near side of the Juggernaut was a single tiny fightercraft, casting immaculate white light in all directions. Daniel was quite some distance away now, suspended somehow in space, and he could see a beam of light begin to emerge from the alien vessel.

Everything happened slowly, slowly enough that Daniel had time to look to see the light beam exiting the rear of the Indomitable before the white ball of light shot out and traveled along the anchoring light beam. He watched as it traveled slowly but inexorably toward the mighty Indomitable, watched as it disappeared with a brief flash into her immense nose. It took some time before the explosions began, the horrible, booming explosions that would be the death knell of the invincible Juggernaut. Boom, boom, boom, boom … .

• • •

Daniel awakened with a start. Groggily, he fought to regain consciousness, though the booming had not abated. His mind was clouded by fatigue, and took a moment to respond. Belatedly he realized someone was knocking rather forcefully at the front door.

By the time he had put on his robe and walked downstairs, Tara had already answered the door, an odd look on her face. Plato barked dutifully, though Tara held him back from the door’s opening.

Walking into the foyer, Daniel could see that it was a young Confederation soldier standing just outside. Though bright sunlight streamed in through the doorway, the Captain could hear the sound of rain rapping against the windows.

Tara stepped aside as Daniel approached the doorway. “Captain Atgard,” the soldier began, “I have been ordered to escort you back to Confederation Headquarters immediately.”

“What in the hell do they want with me now?” asked the Captain, rubbing his eyes as they slowly grew accustomed to the sunlight.

“I have no knowledge of ConFedCom’s intentions, sir,” he replied nervously. “I have just been ordered to—”

“Escort me back immediately,” Daniel finished for him. “Yes, yes, I know.” His eyes finally adapted enough to allow him to see the three other Confederation soldiers standing behind the Lieutenant, one of whom was a massive Vamalian whose three muscular arms gripped a heavy weapon of unknown design. A waiting aircar, pelted by rain whipped into sheets by the gusting winds, hovered outside.

Shrugging his soldiers, the Captain turned to walk back into the house. “I’ll be ready in a moment,” he called congenially over his shoulder.

The young Lieutenant exhaled heavily, slumping noticeably from his earlier rigid military posture.

Tara shook her head and smiled. She, too, realized the young soldier was just following orders, and was probably terrified about coming to retrieve the renowned Daniel Atgard. “Why don’t you come in for a drink while we wait?” she invited him.

“That would be very nice, ma’am,” he replied, obviously relieved. Catching himself, he amended, “But I really don’t think I should … .”

“Don’t argue with her,” called the Captain as he turned into the hallway, smirking. “You’ll never win.”

• • •

Casually tossing the last of his things into his silver duffel bag, the Captain silently wondered what the eminent minds at the ConFed Capitol Building had in store for him this time. Perhaps they had come to their senses, he reasoned, but more likely they needed him for something. Or maybe they would demote him again. He shrugged dispassionately.

He walked back into the foyer to find his wife walking in through the door, a tray covered with empty glasses in her hands. “I thought they might be thirsty,” she smiled, putting the tray down and offering Daniel an umbrella. He shook his head, and she reluctantly put it down and embraced him. “I can’t believe you’re leaving again,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Just when I thought you might be staying for a while.”

“I know, Tara,” he replied. “I know. Maybe they just want to yell at me a bit and then they’ll let me come back.” He tried unsuccessfully to make himself sound convincing.

“Is that what you want?” she asked carefully.

Daniel sighed as he released her. “You know I belong up there, Tara. Maybe they’ll realize that too.”

Tara shook her head, thick tresses of her brown hair falling over her face. Daniel knew there were many things she wanted to tell him, but all she chose to say was “I love you.”

“I love you too, Tara,” he said solemnly, kissing her once more. “I love you too.”

With that, he walked out the open door and off the porch. The rain, which had mostly abated, sent a brief but violent shiver through his just-awakened body. Squinting slightly, Daniel followed the Lieutenant into the large aircar. He felt unusually energetic as he strapped himself into the seat, figuring that at least he felt refreshed and ready for whatever inanity ConFedCom had in store for him. Daniel admitted he was rather surprised that they had wanted to see him again so quickly. It was also unusual that they had sent a detail of four soldiers, including a Vamalian, to get him. The most surprising thing of all, thought the Captain, was that he had slept until noon.

• • •

The aircar ride was short and uneventful, and the trip down the transport tube went much as before: a silent escort accompanied him to the sub-basement and remained on the transport tube as the Captain continued through the checkpoint and down the metal-walled hallway. This time, however, one of the guards directed him to proceed to the second hallway, at the end of which was the President’s personal meeting room and office.

The door at the end of this hall also was flanked by two guards who opened the door and granted the Captain entry. This door, unlike all the others he had seen in the sub-basement, was made of a dark wood instead of the familiar cold metal. As soon as he had walked inside, the guards promptly closed the door behind him.

Daniel had only been in the President’s personal office twice before, and only once in the five years Stadler had been in office. It was much as he remembered it, however—everything was kept meticulously clean and ordered, the Presidential Seal dominated the center of the plush rug in the middle of the room, and the rich wood desk was almost completely devoid of papers, data plates, or anything else that might prove useful to getting anything done.

“Do sit down,” requested the President, sitting in an ornate wooden chair behind the large desk. He motioned to the lone chair across from him. The Captain obliged, sitting quietly on the chair and clasping his hands neatly in his lap.

“Perhaps I was a bit harsh yesterday,” the President began, not quite managing to sound apologetic. “Perhaps I acted in haste.”

Daniel remained silent. He must want something, he thought, and I had better wait to find out what it is.

The President was also silent for some time. His eyes passed over Atgard, measuring him wordlessly. Finally, he rose from his seat and walked around to sit on the near edge of the desk to the Captain’s left. “Daniel,” he began, “why don’t we both try to make this easy on each other?”

“What is it you would like me to do?” asked the Captain coyly.

The President sighed. “Very well. Look—I don’t want to fight with you anymore, Daniel. I never did.” He paused for a moment, shaking his head wearily. “I think we need each other, and I think we both need to be big enough to put our personal differences aside on this one. I need to respect your autonomy … and you need to respect my authority.”

Well, at least he was blunt and honest, Daniel thought. He respected that.

The President continued. “I know you’re one of my best people, Daniel. That’s why I entrusted you with the Apocalypse. I know you are as well respected as any officer in the Confederation.” He shook his head again. “I sure as hell know how loyal your crew is.”

Daniel’s head perked up a bit. So that’s what this was about … .

“Look, Daniel, here’s the situation,” said the President quickly. “Commander Mason has cloaked the Apocalypse and is refusing to communicate with us until you are put back in charge.”

Daniel tried in vain to subdue the smile that fought its way to his lips, but he could not help but be overwhelmed by his crew’s unflagging loyalty.

“I see you support their insubordination,” shot the President. “It appears they learned the trait from you.”

The smile disappeared from Daniel’s face. “I’ll follow your orders, Mr. President, as long as they are orders I can live with.”

“In that case, it’s not really following orders at all, now is it?” he demanded.

“I must answer to higher orders than yours, sir.”

“And don’t I?” asked the President, raising his voice. “What in the hell do you think I do? Do you think I’ve asked you to do anything out of weakness, or malice, or personal gain? Do you think I take my decisions lightly?”

Daniel thought about Stadler’s words. He did not doubt the President’s intentions. And he did realize that if the chain of command was ignored, there would be anarchy. But he could never bring himself to follow orders he believed to be unethical.

The President rose and walked to the side of the room, pacing along the left wall. He stopped beneath a portrait hung prominently in its center. “Sometimes, a leader must take a great evil upon himself,” he began, “in order that others may be saved.” He turned to look at Daniel. “Even if it costs him his own salvation, both in this world, and the next.”

“Peter the Great,” murmured Daniel, looking up to gaze upon his stately likeness.

“Yes,” said the President. “He realized that great decisions are never black and white. Believe me, Daniel, I see your side. Killing those Creelarians would have been a great tragedy.”

“It would have been genocide,” Daniel corrected him.

“Yes,” Stadler sighed, walking over and sitting back in his chair. “But what do we face now that you didn’t fire?”

Daniel was silent.

“I know there is no right answer to this one, Daniel. Sometimes there just is no right decision.”

Daniel shook his head. “I couldn’t do it, sir,” he said softly. “I just couldn’t do it. I can’t kill two billion innocent people.”

“Even to save ten billion more?”

“It’s just that …” The Captain sighed as he looked across the room toward another portrait, this one of the Indomitable and her hidden Omega Cannon, the Cannon that had destroyed the entire Korgian race in one horrifying instant. “I’m just not so sure we’re all so innocent anymore.”

• • •

Before he knew it, the shuttlecraft had arrived. Daniel had spent the time staring out the viewport, not looking at the magnificent view of Earth below, but instead at the empty space around her.

Up ahead was the Apocalypse, and as the shuttlecraft docked with the larger vessel, Daniel realized just how glad he was to be going back aboard. It was, after all, where he was supposed to be. Even one day away had seemed like an eternity.

Daniel stepped off the vessel and the airlock sealed behind him. After a brief delay to equalize the pressure, the inner airlock door opened with a hiss, revealing Anastasia and Alexis. Anastasia said nothing, but instead hugged him vigorously. Behind her, Alexis called, “Good to have you back aboard, Admiral.”

Daniel smiled. Though Stadler had officially re-granted him the title, he realized that it scarcely mattered to his crew. “It’s good to be back,” he said. He looked at Anastasia sternly. “You know, you could have been court-martialed for that little cloaking stunt … .”

Anastasia feigned an innocent look. “Were we cloaked? Alexis, did the Quantum Refractor engage itself again?”

Alexis smiled and played along, thoughtfully stroking her chin with her hand. “You know, it has been doing that quite a bit lately. Maybe I should get down and check it out.”

“Yes, maybe you should,” laughed the Admiral. “It would be unfortunate if that were to happen again.”

“I’m pretty sure I can fix it now,” said Alexis. “I don’t think we’ll have any more problems.” With that, she smirked and walked away.

Daniel looked at Anastasia. “So did you have everyone in on this?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said seriously. “The vote was unanimous. In fact …” She looked down the short hallway in the direction Alexis had gone. “Most of them insisted on it.”

• • •

Once back on the bridge, in his familiar command chair, the Admiral got to work immediately. “Dex, has the ZF-255 been returned to the docking bay?” he inquired.

“Yes, sir,” he replied. “The ZF-255 is secure and the shuttlecraft has disengaged.”

“Very good, Mr. Rutcliffe. Nathan, plot a course for the Tu’oth System, all possible speed.”

“Aye, sir,” he replied, and Daniel thought he sensed an inordinate amount of enthusiasm from the normally reserved Fedoran.

“What are we going to do?” asked Anastasia. “What will we do once we get there?”

“Well,” began the Admiral, “luckily the President had a change of heart. He has left the specifics in my capable hands.”

“The specifics?” she asked, cocking her head slightly.

“Well, Anastasia,” he said coyly, his right eyebrow raising half a centimeter, “when you get right down to it, isn’t everything specifics?”

Dex laughed loudly. “I guess you’re right,” Anastasia agreed. “So what’s the plan?”

“I plan to find out what in the hell is going on here,” Daniel replied. “I plan to find out what our friends on Tu’oth’roor are up to.”

“How are we going to do that?” Dex asked.

“I’m glad you asked,” answered the Admiral, swiveling in his chair to face him, “because you and I are going down there to find out.”

CHAPTER 11

The Admiral’s eyes were fixed on the fluorescent numbers that slowly counted down on his display console. The background hum of the hyperdrive engines permeated the bridge, broken only by the almost inaudible tapping of Nathan’s fleshy tentacles on his navigation console.

“Should I prepare to return to sublight speed, Admiral?” he asked, the characteristic hint of nervousness evident in his modulating voice.

“Not yet,” replied the Admiral deliberately. His gaze still rested on the display, which showed a yellow dot rapidly approaching a large, shaded ellipse. Just below that, the numbers ticked inexorably toward zero.

Nathan cleared his throat, an odd, phlegmatic sound. “My display reads five seconds to optimal realspace emergence point, sir.”

“Yes,” murmured the Admiral absently. “So does mine.”

The Admiral, perfectly composed, watched as the numbers counted down to zero and the yellow dot representing the ship flashed orange. A short ping from the bridge speakers followed shortly thereafter, preceding the familiar, monotonous voice of the computer. “Minimum recommended hyperspace exit point exceeded,” it reported. “Twenty seconds to hyperspace destabilization.”

Though the computer said it calmly, “hyperspace destabilization” actually meant that the ship would be destroyed, passing too close to the deadly gravity well of the Tu’oth System.

“Don’t worry, Nathan,” the Admiral assured him, never removing his eyes from the display. “I have no intention of allowing that to occur.”

Nathan gulped loudly, not sounding particularly convinced.

The numbers had now turned amber, and counted upward. Raising his right arm, Daniel extended his index finger toward Nathan. “Prepare to exit hyperspace on my mark,” he ordered, flicking his eyes from the display just long enough to see that Nathan had turned back to watch him, his tentacles poised readily over his console.

The numbers reached 18 and the orange dot turned a bright red as the Admiral dropped his hand. “Now, Nathan!”

The Fedoran’s reflexes were excellent. In fact, judging by the speed at which they came out of hyperspace, Daniel could not help but wonder if he had taken them out just an instant before he had actually given the order.

The viewscreen dimmed itself automatically as it abruptly filled with the giant orange Tu’oth star. They had emerged from hyperspace precariously close to the burning sun.

“Engage the Quantum Refractor,” ordered the Admiral.

There was a lengthy buzzing sound as the cloaking device engaged, beginning abruptly and dwindling to an unsettling silence. The Admiral was banking on their proximity to the star, now intentionally situated directly between the Apocalypse and Tu’oth’roor, to disguise their arrival. Even if they were detected, the Admiral reasoned, the Vr’amil’een would probably think the momentary radar blip was simply a system short or transient reading of some kind, perhaps merely a solar flare.

Zach maneuvered the ship around the massive star, bringing the planet of Tu’oth’roor into view. As it grew larger in the viewscreen, its details became apparent: it was a dark, foreboding sphere, pock-marked with craters and consisting of one enormous land mass that covered the entire viewable half of the planet. As they sped ever closer, orbital bases and ships came into view.

ConFed Intelligence had been right. The Vr’amil’een were massing for an assault.

Battlecruiser-sized ships dotted the viewscreen, clustered around orbital bases, weapons platforms, and shipyards. Small transport ships swarmed in all directions, docking at bases and supply depots and ferrying materials from the planet below. Drawing ever larger in the display, the bright arcs of welding tools could be seen as service vessels hastily finished construction on skeletal Cruiser and warship frames. Like an elaborate dance of space-faring fireflies, the Vr’amil’een readied for war.

Passing close enough for the flight recorders to obtain detailed readings of the preparations, the Apocalypse veered and headed around toward the dark side of the planet, which was dotted with harsh red pinpricks of light. There were fewer ships on this side, though several scattered defense platforms still orbited the planet in darkness. Apparently the shipbuilding facilities had been concentrated on the far side of Tu’oth’roor.

There were a few large ships floating on this side of the planet as well, so when another one appeared around the horizon, the Admiral was not especially concerned.

As more of the ship became visible, however, the Admiral’s face tightened noticeably. It appeared larger than even the immense Vr’amil’een Battlecruisers.

When it had finally come completely into view, the eyes of the entire crew were fixated on the behemoth vessel. Though not nearly the size of the Indomitable, it was larger than any other ship the Admiral had ever seen.

And with the Indomitable destroyed, that left it as the largest ship in the known galaxy.

How could ConFed Intelligence have missed this? thought the Admiral incredulously. Perhaps their reconnaissance services were less than superb, but how could they have missed this??

And suddenly the Admiral remembered. The strange readings in the asteroid belt. The Vr’amil’een had been hiding their warships right under their noses, not 100 million kilometers from the planet.

“My God, sir,” gasped Dex. “I didn’t think they made them that big.”

“Neither did I,” replied the Admiral. “Neither did I.”

• • •

The Apocalypse headed toward one of the several orbital supply depots encircling the planet. The depot consisted of a toroidal structure that surrounded a partially open enclosure filled with various ores and materials. It was a uniquely Vr’amil’een design: the ring-shaped structure served as a magnetic coil that generated a field just strong enough to contain the floating metallic ores. Undoubtedly housed within the structure were facilities for zero-g refining, an essential process in producing the specialized Vr’amil’een armour plating used on the warships of their Armada.

A small transport ship had just discharged its cargo of metallic ores, leaving them floating in the random mass of slowly drifting ore fragments. As the small ship turned back to the planet, Zach maneuvered the cloaked Apocalypse in amongst the flotsam, hovering unseen in its midst.

A small drone ship floated out from a cargo bay on the inner ring of the toroidal depot. Moving toward one of the ore fragments, it extended a robotic jaw and began collecting sections of the minerals. The tiny ship was obviously unmanned, and there did not appear to be any windows or observation posts on the depot itself that suggested any live presence.

“There doesn’t look to be anyone here,” ventured Dex. “If anyone was on board, it would probably be spinning, generating artificial gravity.”

“Yes, it does appear to be unmanned,” agreed the Admiral, “especially considering what that magnetic field would do to anyone stationed on board for any length of time.”

“We won’t know for sure until we decloak and scan for life forms,” Dex said matter-of-factly.

“Well, I guess we might as well give it a shot,” decided the Admiral. “Nathan, go ahead and decloak.”

The scene on the viewscreen shimmered slightly as the Quantum Refractor disengaged. Dex’s report was almost immediate. “No life signs aboard, Admiral.”

Daniel nodded slightly. “Excellent. Okay, Dex, let’s get to the fighter. Time to visit Tu’oth’roor.”

• • •

Fitting two people in the small ZF-255 was never comfortable, but could be done if necessary. The tiny cockpit was even more cramped than usual by the addition of two equipment bags filled with survival gear, scanning equipment, and, of course, weapons.

“It’s all in,” reported Dex, his mouth just centimeters from the Admiral’s ear. He was hunched over in the tiny space behind the pilot’s chair, and carried the two dark equipment bags with him. Daniel keyed the cockpit sealing mechanism, and the canopy closed securely around them, shutting them in even more tightly.

“I’ll try to make the trip brief and as smooth as possible,” promised the Admiral, not envious of Dex’s position in the least. He quickly fired up the engines and the hangar bay door opened, depressurizing the chamber with a powerful gust of air. Daniel smoothly lifted the fighter off the deck, his view of the planet below almost entirely blocked by the slowly-drifting masses of ores and minerals surrounding them. Passing cautiously through the hangar doors and into the mélange of debris, Daniel surveyed the fragments, which floated perilously close to them, suddenly much larger than they had seemed as blips on his display console. Behind them, the Apocalypse shimmered and abruptly disappeared.

Easing in slowly amongst the rocks, the Admiral checked the radar display to find that there were no ships in the immediate vicinity. So far they seemed to have gone unnoticed, and if the Apocalypse had not been spotted, the ZF-255 surely would also be rendered undetectable in the ore field.

Daniel flicked on the electronic countermeasures suite, which, though by no means as foolproof as the Apocalypse's unique cloaking device, would perhaps confuse the Vr’amil’een radar well enough for them to slip down to the planet in secrecy. He guided the ship out of the ore field and began to meander down to the planet, following the approximate path of the cargo ship that had just departed. Hopefully, with the cacophony of small vessel traffic during the frenzied buildup, they would simply get lost amid the clutter, just another tiny transport weaving its way amongst the chaos.

Daniel descended toward the planet slowly, approximating the speed of the many shuttles that crisscrossed before and around him, their blinking navigation lights forming a complex web of red specks contrasting against the dark planet below. He noticed that there seemed to be little pattern to their movements in space, but that they did seem to confine themselves to several loose invisible flight corridors when they entered or exited the turbulent atmosphere of Tu’oth’roor.

The tempestuous gasses of the upper atmosphere were not far now, and the Admiral maneuvered the fighter onto the tail of a descending shuttle, following its lights down the approach corridor but hopefully keeping enough distance so as not to look suspicious. The craft shuddered just slightly as it entered the upper reaches of atmosphere, which even at this rarefied level were gusting fairly violently. Daniel noticed that the shuttle before him was descending relatively quickly; the speed was normal for a fighter, but seemed a bit high for a shuttle descent. Perhaps the Vr’amil’een shuttles were built to be more durable in order to withstand the rough atmosphere, or, more likely, all the ships buzzing about the planet were in more of a hurry than usual.

Suddenly, the comm speaker crackled to life. It took a moment for the computer to isolate the frequency and modulation of the alien transmission, but once it had, a gruff Vr’amil’een voice could be heard barking over the intercom. Had he not known that to be the normal tone of the Vr’amil’een, the Admiral would have been sure that the harsh words indicated that their ruse had been detected.

Silently, Dex handed a translator chip up to the Admiral, who placed the tiny mechanism gently in his ear, a difficult maneuver considering that he was still piloting the ship through the ever-more violent atmosphere. Daniel hoped that the ECM suite was confusing the Vr’amil’een readings enough to allow them to pass for a shuttle.

The Vr’amil’een voice repeated its earlier query, this time translated by Daniel’s earpiece. “[Repeat: unidentified shuttle, this Ground Control. Your transponder signal weak. Must identify.]” Behind him, Dex softly began to grumble various profanities.

The Admiral flicked a switch on the communication console, creating a soft buzz of static and a fairly pervasive crackling. “Communications malfunction,” the Admiral began, his words translated by the fighter’s communications system before the signal was sent. “We are … trouble.” Daniel purposely spoke haltingly, and intentionally omitted words. Combined with the computer-induced interference, the signal would be barely audible to the receiver. “Transponder not … properly. Following … shuttle down.” He hoped the listener would believe the deception, aided by the electronic countermeasures suite, or simply be too busy or too lazy to care.

There was an inordinately long silence, as if the listener was deciding whether to follow the appropriate, time-consuming procedures, or just let them go and save himself the hassle. If the radio operator decided to pursue the matter much further, Daniel would have little choice but to abandon the charade and make a run for the planet.

“[Shuttle … cleared for descent,]” he growled finally, obviously unwilling to spend any more time on the problem. “[Follow Shuttle Sith’van’een approach vector. Ground Control out.]”

Daniel exhaled heavily. They had bought it.

Following the shuttle ahead of them—the Sith’van’een, apparently—the ZF-255 passed through a thick layer of clouds and emerged in the dense lower atmosphere. Unfortunately, the shuttle had headed toward the daylight half of the planet, and the skies around them were now partially lit by the dim rays of the setting sun, rays that had been filtered by the hydrogen-rich atmosphere into a hazy, ubiquitous reddish glow. If they followed the shuttle much farther now, they would be visually identified from the ground, even in the failing light. After all, though they were roughly the same size, it was difficult to confuse the fighter with a Vr’amil’een shuttle, even at dusk and with an untrained eye.

“Where do you think we should touch down, Dex?” Daniel asked, scanning the countryside below. The majority of the terrain was barren wasteland, dark brown, cratered plains punctuated by scattered mountain ranges. Several large cities, each inhabited solely by members of their respective tribes, could be seen nestled in amongst the jagged peaks of the taller mountains, their reddish glow illuminating the cliffs around them. The Vr’amil’een were a violent, territorial race, even amongst themselves, and as such, their cities were built as walled, defensible fortifications sheltered in the protective mountain ranges. The plains were home to only drifters and smaller, less socially powerful tribes and families.

Each Vr’amil’een city was home to a single tribe, with the sole exception of the capital city of Roor’nun’kwa. Roor’nun’kwa was home to ambassadors from all the major tribes of Tu’oth’roor, as well as their delegations and several million permanent residents. Though the planet of Tu’oth’roor was more or less united under this central government, territory wars or blood feuds were far from uncommon. The three other inhabitable planets of the Tu’oth system—Tu’oth’rat, Tu’oth’mur, and Tu’oth’nun—were home to drifters and vagabonds even lower on the Vr’amil’een social ladder than those who inhabited the wastelands. As such, these other planets had no presence in Vr’amil’een government.

“I don’t know where we can land, sir,” replied Dex belatedly. “I really can’t see very much from back here, but it’s going to be tougher to touch down unnoticed in this light.”

Daniel nodded as he surveyed the terrain again. There was precious little vegetation on the planet, as though the purely carnivorous Vr’amil’een inherently disliked foliage of any kind but grudgingly realized its necessity in their ecosystem. There were scattered but perfectly-shaped dark patches of vegetation throughout the continent below, mostly concentrated as far from the mountain ranges and population centers as possible. Strangely, the large cities tended to be inland, situated some distance from rivers or lakes, which almost universally were instrumental in transportation of goods and people in most societies. In fact, as Daniel scanned the terrain, he could not find a single city directly bordering a body of water.

Daniel hoped that the radar operators would not be monitoring his descent closely, and he began to slowly veer off from the shuttle as it headed roughly toward the large city of Roor’nun’kwa. With any luck, they would just assume he was headed toward a quarry or mine or some other remote site in the wastelands.

There were no further questions over the comm system, so Daniel dropped toward the mountains beneath them. The onboard scanners picked up no large concentrations of people or structures other than the capital city several kilometers ahead, so he dipped the fighter lower, the sharp peaks of the mountains rushing abruptly toward them. Daniel settled the fighter into a narrow valley, which wended through the jagged cliffs and seemed to meander its way purposefully toward the city ahead.

The walls of the chasm were draped in shadow as the wan light of the setting sun fought to filter through the thick atmosphere above. Just outside the fighter’s canopy, jagged outcroppings sped by at an alarming pace, and Daniel was silently thankful that it was Dex and not Nathan sitting behind him as they hurtled through the slender ravine.

Forced to rely on the terrain mapping radar as much as his own eyes, the Admiral found a suitable alcove in the canyon walls ahead and slowed the fighter, descending almost to the valley floor. The cave, near the base of the starboard cliff wall, looked to be large enough to accommodate the ZF-255 with just enough room left over to open the canopy once they had landed inside. As they reached the opening, Daniel slowed the ship to a hover and deftly maneuvered it into the jagged maw of the cave. Gently touching down, the Admiral quickly powered down the fighter and popped the canopy.

Daniel hastened out of the cramped cockpit, painfully dropping to the ground and stretching his aching limbs, immediately noticing the higher gravity of Tu’oth’roor. At 6’2”, the Admiral was never particularly comfortable in the confined fighter, even when he was its sole occupant. He realized, however, that his discomfort would be less than Dex’s, who was equally tall but more well built, and had been forced to withstand the entire turbulent journey unnaturally contorted behind him. To the Admiral’s mild surprise, Dex exited the fighter smoothly, both equipment bags slung over his shoulder, showing no outward sign of the obvious discomfort he had endured. Never one to complain, Dex probably actually looked forward to the physical exertion this mission would surely bring.

“The first thing we need to do is hide the fighter,” advised Dex, dropping nimbly to the ground. He immediately set the bags down and reached into a panel on the underside of the fighter, opening it and producing a thin, folded sheet. He quickly unfurled the material, which was the familiar translucent gray of an inactivated chameleon tarp. The Admiral helped throw the tarp over the fighter, making sure it dropped to the ground on all sides. Dex fingered a control on his wrist nanocomputer and the tarp instantly shimmered, its gray coloring quickly replaced by the ambient brown of the cavern walls. When it had finished, the space where the fighter resided now looked like nothing more than an ordinary boulder. Removing his glove, the Admiral ran his fingers over the tarp, now the exact color and texture of Vr’amil’een rock.

The Admiral belatedly noticed that his chest had begun to burn, and the aching in his muscles and joints was getting worse. He rubbed his chest absently, finally remembering that the oxygen content of the Tu’oth’roor atmosphere was dangerously low for humans.

Dex had apparently noticed the Admiral’s breathing difficulties, as he had already retrieved a syringe from one of the equipment bags. “Here you go, Admiral,” he said, injecting the contents of the syringe into his arm. “This should let you breathe easier.”

Almost immediately, the ache in Daniel’s chest began to subside as he could feel his body processing the oxygen more efficiently, an effect of the fluerenzinone shot. Looking over at Dex, he could see that he had already injected himself and retrieved one of the personal holographic emitters from the equipment bags. The emitter was shaped like a spider web, with a small central projector hub and several thin wires tipped with tiny sensors radiating out from it. Dex affixed the center of the device to his chin, attaching the sensors to various points on his face and neck. The effect made him look somewhat ridiculous, until he activated the device, which instantly projected the daunting visage of a Vr’amil’een over his own.

“How’s it look, Admiral?” he asked, the gaping crocodilian orifice moving in sync to his own face and mouth, hidden beneath the disguise. “[Is the translator working?]” This time the words came out in Vr’amil’een, translated by the chip still in Daniel’s ear.

“Looks great, Dex,” replied the Admiral, beginning to affix the other holographic emitter to his own face. Meanwhile, Dex had begun to don one of the heavy hooded cloaks that covered every part of his body save his disguised face. The loose brown folds of the cloak made Dex look more massive as well, though he was still on the thin side for a Vr’amil’een.

By the time the Admiral had put on his own cloak and activated his holographic emitter, Dex had already hidden the equipment bags back inside the fighter. “I can’t wait to set out, Admiral,” he said, slipping his sidearm under his cloak and tossing Daniel’s to him. “Are you ready for this one, old man?”

The Admiral caught the weapon, the quick movement reminding him how his joints ached. The last thing he wanted to do was begin a long, grueling journey through unforgiving and hostile terrain right away.

“Of course,” he replied, trying to sound enthusiastic as he checked his weapon and hid it under his cloak. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 12

The wind whistled through the narrow canyon, each jutting crag and sharp outcropping of rock adding its unique timbre to the raucous symphony of air. Dex and the Admiral trudged along the broken floor of the ravine, heading toward the increasingly bright reddish glow of the city in the rapidly failing light. Protected both from the winds and, more importantly, prying eyes by the heavy, hooded cloaks they both wore, the two officers traveled toward the Vr’amil’een city at a brisk pace, a pace they hoped would allow them to arrive before the short, cold Tu’oth’roor night had ended.

The bright glow of the city ahead, combined with the light of Tu’oth’roor’s two moons, was enough to provide the barest hint of illumination, casting a somber, blood-red tint on the uneven walls of the ravine. Dex rotated the dial on his flashlight from white to red, his light beam changing to approximate the hue of the city lights. Picking up the cue, Daniel did the same, unpleasantly finding that the red color favored by Vr’amil’een eyes was not as effective at helping him avoid the innumerable pits and spikes in the rocky ground below.

As they neared the city, a bend in the valley revealed a group of dancing reddish lights moving haphazardly toward them. They appeared to be flashlights, but they swung violently in random directions, as if their owners were more interested in the optical effect than actually lighting their way. Daniel noticed that Dex had quickly shut off his own light, hiding it in the folds of his cloak and leaving his right hand concealed thereunder, undoubtedly resting on his sidearm. “Both of us using lights would have been suspicious,” he whispered, speaking softly though Daniel was sure even sensitive Vr’amil’een ears could not hear them through the howling winds at this distance. “Just walk right by them. They won’t be expecting us to be sociable.”

They were near enough now that Daniel could make out three dancing flashlight beams, representing more than enough Vr’amil’een to handle both Dex and the Admiral if their intentions were to turn hostile.

Daniel pulled his hood farther over his face, nervously running a gloved finger over the tiny holographic emitter fastened to his chin, as if to check that it had not somehow spontaneously disappeared. He glanced quickly at Dex, completely indistinguishable from a normal Vr’amil’een even at this distance. Actual Vr’amil’een, however, were nocturnal, and thus possessed acute night vision and the ability to see infrared light, meaning that the darkness of night would offer Daniel and Dex little shelter against their sensitive eyes. Daniel hoped the holographic emitters would do the job.

The loud, resonant voices of the approaching Vr’amil’een could now be heard, and it was not long before it became apparent that they were thoroughly inebriated. Though Daniel could not be sure, he would have bet they had been ingesting large quantities of Un’qui’do, a particularly potent Vr’amil’een ale that was almost lethally toxic to humans, even in small doses. The ale, which increased the body temperatures of the cold-blooded reptilians, accounted for their erratic flashlight beams and loud voices, and, unfortunately, often also served to increase the already ferocious level of Vr’amil’een aggression.

The swaggering group finally seemed to notice Dex and the Admiral as they neared to within twenty meters or so. Though Daniel now nervously counted five Vr’amil’een—two of them without flashlights—he forced himself to continue walking at his previous pace, veering slightly to his right in an attempt to simply walk past the drunken mob.

Upon noticing the officers, the voices of the Vr’amil’een quickly muted. Daniel cursed under his breath when he saw them slow and stop before him, their hulking masses blocking the majority of the narrow ravine’s width.

Finally close enough to make out some of the details of the Vr’amil’een in the reddish glow of the flashlights, Daniel studied their husky, bipedal frames, instantly noting their wide, powerful mouths that were filled with razor-sharp teeth on all four sides. He had not seen a Vr’amil’een in the flesh in many years, but he remembered that their daunting maws had, remarkably, evolved solely for combat, and that they each possessed a second, smaller mouth on their necks that was actually used for feeding. A thick, scaly armour plating covered their bodies, though it did not prevent them from moving with deceptive speed and agility. Their immense strength and the three-clawed hand at the end of each of their two stubby arms combined to make the Vr’amil’een, pound for pound, the most feared unarmed combatants in the sector.

The largest of the Vr’amil’een took a step forward, his toothed mouth open and full of acidic drool, gleaming blood-red in the scarlet glow of the flashlights. He held a massive, gnarled club in one hand, the top of which was furnished with the skull of some unfortunate animal.

“[Why you on path of Glu’ok’noor?]” he barked angrily, his throaty words translated by the chip in Daniel’s ear. “[You pay tribute to walk here.]” His comrades laughed ominously.

Before Daniel could respond, Dex spoke up, his words again translated seamlessly by the emitter on his chin. “[Bo’reg’tuth no pay. You let us pass.]” He had taken a step forward, and only a few paces separated him from the five deadly Vr’amil’een.

Daniel’s hand clenched around his weapon, still hidden under the folds of his cloak. Dex was trying to bully the drunken Vr’amil’een, but the Admiral doubted they were drunk enough to forget their five to two advantage. If his bluff failed and the lizard-men attacked, they would probably be killed by the ferocious reptiles before either of them could even squeeze off a shot.

It was quite a gamble, Daniel thought, but their other option was to acquiesce and pay the tribute—luckily they had brought a small amount of Vr’amil’een currency. However, there was little chance the bloodthirsty reptilians would merely let them go on their way once they had given in to their demands. Weak or cowardly Vr’amil’een had remarkably short life spans.

The lead Vr’amil’een laughed heavily. “[You no pay?]” he asked, in a tone Daniel guessed was amused surprise. “[Then you die.]” His tone now sounded deadly serious, and his claw clenched tightly around his staff. Even in the dim light Daniel could tell that his muscles had tensed, ready to uncoil and pounce at a moment’s notice.

“[All right,]” stammered Dex quickly. “[Bo’reg’tuth pay.]”

Glu’ok’noor relaxed slightly, a cruel smile forming around his misshapen lips. “[Give to Glu’ok’noor now,]” he demanded, motioning toward Dex with a clawed hand.

Dex reached under his cloak and produced a small object. Straining his eyes, Daniel could see it was not a coin.

“[Take it,]” said Dex, flipping it casually toward Glu’ok’noor.

The gas bomb seemed to arc toward him in slow motion. Daniel could see the husky lizard-man reflexively reach out a grubby claw to catch what he thought was a coin, and could see his jaw drop in shock as he realized it wasn’t. Dex had already begun to dive toward the left cavern wall, and Daniel hastily did the same, shielding his face and diving for the relative safety of the jagged wall to his right.

Daniel did not see the explosion as the gas bomb projected a thick cloud of smoke toward the startled Vr’amil’een mob. He heard its soft poof just as he landed on the ground with a painful jolt, half bouncing and half rolling into the unyielding wall of the ravine.

By the time he had achingly struggled to his feet, the five Vr’amil’een lay unconscious before him. The last wisps of greenish smoke dissipated into the stiff breeze and Glu’ok’noor’s staff, dropped from his hand as he fell, rolled to a stop at Daniel’s boot.

“You alright, Admiral?” asked Dex, looking over the fallen party. When the Admiral nodded, he added, “Sorry about that, sir. But it would have seemed unusual if you had spoken for us, being smaller than me and all.”

“Good work, Dex,” replied the Admiral, rubbing his bruised right shoulder, tacitly thankful that the thick cloak had cushioned the blow. “But we had better be long gone by the time they wake up.”

Dex nodded. “They should be out for a while, sir,” he predicted, smiling subtly. “Not so much from the gas, I think, as much as from the Un’qui’do.”

• • •

The Vr’amil’een city loomed ahead, its now nauseating red glow reminding the Admiral of the stark contrast between the planet’s teeming cities and its desolate wastelands. The city was as alien as anything Daniel had seen—deformed constructions, fabricated to simulate rock, jutted up from the rocky ground like giant glowing stalagmites, their illuminated peaks visible over the top of the great stone wall encircling the city. Towers and weapon emplacements adorned the top of the wall at seemingly random intervals, and the valley road they had followed led to a large, open gate through which a steady stream of Vr’amil’een passed.

As they got closer, the Admiral’s fears that they might have difficulty getting past the gate guards were allayed when he realized the guards were not doing much to stop the flow of travelers entering and leaving the city. Perhaps they were more diligent in their duties only when they were expecting violence or there was a tribal feud in progress.

Daniel wondered how the warlike Vr’amil’een had been able to come together to form a centralized government capable of uniting the planet enough to produce the impressive space armada they had before and seemed to be building again. The history of their current government, only 400 years old, had already seen its share of civil war, but it had wisely outlawed the production and use of weapons of mass destruction long ago. Vr’amil’een technology, which lagged far behind humans’ in many areas, was uncomfortably close in the military sphere—Vr’amil’een ships and weapons were formidable indeed, and the discrepancies in some areas, such as armour plating and projectile weapons, were almost nonexistent.

“Looks like we’ll just be able to walk right in,” whispered Dex, moving slightly closer to the Admiral. “The guards don’t seem to be overly vigilant in their duties.” Daniel figured that they were, like the majority of the population, probably mired in an Un’qui’do-induced haze at any given time. The lackadaisical apathy of the radar operator and these guards seemed to be prevalent amongst the Vr’amil’een.

By now they were quite close to the gate, and they had begun to mingle with the mob of reptilians pushing and shoving their way through. Daniel had trouble keeping from being knocked over by the massive Vr’amil’een, who probably hardly noticed the relatively violent jostling they were enduring. A couple of the guards seemed to cursorily scan the faces of those coming and going, and a few travelers seemed to have been picked out at random to be searched, probably more to alleviate the guards’ boredom than anything else. Daniel and Dex stayed in the middle of the moving river of Vr’amil’een, trying to avoid the glare of the guards. Before they knew it, they were through the gate and the crowd had begun to dissipate around them, fanning out into the city itself.

The Admiral nonchalantly checked his nanocomputer, which showed a three-dimensional overview of the city. Highlighted on the display was the records building, which should contain the information they were after: the Vr’amil’een fleet deployment specs and their plan of attack on the Confederation. The record building was not as heavily guarded as the main military complexes, but Daniel was sure getting in and retrieving the data would be far from easy. The Vr’amil’een tended to favor actual guards over high-tech security measures, and the Admiral doubted it would be quite as easy to slip past them as it had been to enter the city.

Daniel and Dex continued toward the records building, trying to keep to fairly well-traveled roads and avoiding the dangerous dark alleys as well as major thoroughfares. There were a decent number of Vr’amil’een out, most of them on foot but several riding in armoured hovercars that floated about a meter off the rocky ground. Even in the city, the ground was rough and pebble-strewn, and only the largest of streets were paved. The buildings, though most were actually formed of composite materials, were indistinguishable from rock by the naked eye, and were intentionally left jagged and unaltered from the monotonous russet color prevalent throughout the city. If one were to judge solely by the visual aspects of the city, the Vr’amil’een seemed to be a primitive race, indeed. Only the multitude of red lights and the occasional passing of a hovercar even hinted at their true technological ability.

No one stopped or talked to Dex or the Admiral during their trip to the records building—luckily, the Vr’amil’een were not very sociable. During the trip, Daniel noticed fewer and fewer Vr’amil’een on the streets as the night gave way to dawn and the large orange sun began to creep over the tops of the buildings on the horizon, bathing the city in a faint pink light.

The walk took almost an hour, and Daniel’s legs ached from the strain. The combination of the long walk across rocky terrain, high gravity, and oxygen-poor atmosphere had begun to take its toll, and Daniel could feel the sweat beading on his forehead, even in the cool morning air. Breathing heavily, Daniel fumbled under the folds of his cloak and pulled out the fluerenzinone syringe, injecting himself with another shot of the respiration-aiding chemical. His mouth was dry, as the arid Tu’oth’roor air was a far cry from the heavy humidity of the Florida Keys or even the artificially humidified air of the Apocalypse. He risked a heavy gulp of water from his canteen, making sure no curious Vr’amil’een eyes were on him, and glanced at Dex, who diplomatically pretended not to notice the Admiral’s difficulties. The upturned lip of his grotesque holographic facial projection, however, betrayed his knowing smirk.

Looking ahead, the Admiral could see that they had come to a great central square, where apparently many of the roads of the city converged. In the center of the square was an immense complex, shaped like a miniature mountain peak. It too, however, was dotted with reddish lights, some of which demarcated aircar landing platforms on its sides. It, like most of the buildings in the city, was completely windowless, and it was encircled by a thick, low wall that looked to be heavily guarded. The menacing aspect of the armed guards at the front gate led Daniel to believe that gaining entrance to the Capitol building, if necessary, would have been exceedingly difficult.

Continuing around to the right of the complex, careful not to stray too near the wall, Dex and the Admiral headed toward the records building, now visible around the edge of the Capitol. Much smaller and less imposing, the records building appeared to be guarded far less strictly. In fact, the windowless, rust-colored building had no external guards, only a set of double doors in the front. Daniel had noticed that most Vr’amil’een structures lacked rear entrances, presumably to make them more easily defensible.

“You ready for this, Admiral?” asked Dex as they approached the building, now only a hundred meters away. “Just give me about a minute before you come in.”

The Admiral nodded and veered off to his right, heading inconspicuously down a random alley while Dex continued on toward the records building. Daniel tried not to look obvious as he watched Dex confidently stride up to the double doors. Without hesitation, he opened them and walked inside.

The minute Daniel waited seemed like an hour, as he listened carefully for any sounds of struggle from the records building, nervously sneaking furtive glances at his nanocomputer to check the time.

Finally, Admiral Atgard walked to the records building, and, covertly checking his sidearm, opened the double doors and walked inside.

The doors opened into a dimly-lit room with a large desk in front of a second pair of doors directly across from him, which appeared to be the only other exit from the room. Dex stood in front of the desk, talking with one of the two guards stationed there, and seemed to be doing quite well, judging by the fact that he was still alive.

Daniel’s eyes adjusted quickly to the dimmer light of the moderately-sized room, not really as dark as it had first seemed. He walked over to a crude bench near the left wall and sat down, finding that it was far from comfortable, even with the thick padding his cloak provided. Pretending to wait for Dex to finish, the Admiral got to work.

Daniel tried to move his hands inconspicuously beneath the cover of the cloak, reaching for the coin-sized, spider-like robot he had attached to his belt. He unfastened it from the belt and slid it down his leg toward the ground. It tumbled the last few centimeters, landing silently among the folds of the cloak, which rested upon the dusty floor. Daniel glanced downward and could see it emerge from under his cape, silently scurrying under the bench and quickly darting toward the wall, where its chameleon skin would mimic the color of the drab walls, hopefully allowing it to scamper undetected under the double doors and to its destination.

Unfortunately, due to the thickness and construction of the outer walls of the building, Daniel had to remain inside to receive the report from the robot once it had found the information it was searching for. Thus, he could not afford to directly monitor its progress or control it remotely, but rather he was forced to leave it to its own sophisticated search algorithms and quasi-sentient programming.

Daniel turned his attention to Dex, who was trying to stall the desk guards, apparently with some success so far. He had asked the guards about some records he was supposed to be transferring, and, from the patches of conversation Daniel could hear, they were becoming increasingly insistent upon seeing his authorization.

“[What you mean order not come through?]” Dex asked, raising his voice and slamming his fist down on the desk, playing the role of an angered Vr’amil’een to perfection. “[Bo’reg’tuth need data backups now!]”

The guards both rose from their seats, looming imposingly over Dex, each of them large and well built, even by Vr’amil’een standards. “[You no have orders, you no have records!]” the head guard yelled, leaning over the desk toward Dex. “[You go now before Heth’glug’noor get angry!]”

Daniel hoped Dex’s stalling tactics would distract the guards sufficiently without riling them up enough to get both Dex and himself killed. Considering the hair-trigger tempers of Vr’amil’een, he toed a fine line.

The nanocomputer on Daniel’s wrist vibrated, and, seeing that the two guards were sufficiently enthralled in their argument with Dex, he carefully slid his arm out from under the folds of his cloak and checked the display. The tiny robot had hooked itself into the records computer and had found what it was looking for—faster than Daniel could have hoped—and had already sent him the data. The display on Daniel’s wrist showed the view from the tiny camera embedded in the nose of the spider-robot, a view that was abruptly filled by the snarling face of a Vr’amil’een guard.

Before Daniel could even mutter a curse, a loud, blaring alarm reverberated throughout the building. Showing incredible reflexes, Dex had already lunged toward the bench to his right, diving behind it as he began to fire blue energy beams from his phaser. One of his shots caught one of the surprised Vr’amil’een in the shoulder, doing little but increasing the level of his already impressive anger.

Daniel jumped up and pulled his sidearm from under his cloak, firing toward the desk to keep the guards pinned down as he moved toward Dex and the doorway. Just as Dex began to emerge from behind the bench to follow him out, the pair of doors behind the desk burst open and three armed Vr’amil’een poured forth.

Just before Daniel ducked out the doorway, he could see Dex dive back behind the overturned bench he had been hiding behind. Daniel quickly scooted out the opening, pressing his back to the wall to the left of the doorway. His angle of vision allowed him to see Dex, pinned behind the bench, a hail of bullets whizzing past him.

“[Go, Admiral!]” he yelled, waving his arm furiously. “[Get the hell out of here!]”

The last of Dex’s words seemed to reach the Admiral in slow motion. A surge of adrenaline had taken over his body, and suddenly his mind became very clear and focused. He forgot about the pain in his limbs, the frenetic racing of his heart, and the feeling of dread threatening to engulf him. He did not hear the reports from the Vr’amil’een weapons, and the once pervasive alarm siren no longer rang in his ears.

Diving to his left, Daniel contorted his body into a half-twist, landing on his right shoulder as he rolled across the open doorway. He poured several bright blue beams into the opening, strafing the desk and the Vr’amil’een gathered behind it. Quickly regaining his feet on the other side of the doorway, the Admiral had already pulled the flash grenade from under his cloak. Without hesitation, he flung it into the building, arcing it over the desk and toward the remaining guards.

Daniel covered his eyes as the intense beam of light shot out the doorway, surely blinding the sensitive eyes of the Vr’amil’een. It only took a moment before Dex had rushed out the door, firing his phaser wildly behind him.

CHAPTER 13

The russet buildings whizzed by in a blur as Daniel struggled to keep pace with Dex, running through unfamiliar alleyways and over unforgiving terrain. Several Vr’amil’een guards raced after them, shooting wildly, and though the Admiral did not risk taking his eyes off the ground ahead, he figured by the commotion behind him that there were no less than three guards in pursuit and that they were probably gaining on them.

A new pang in his side unceremoniously added itself to the litany of aches and bruises on the Admiral’s body. Though he had always considered himself to be in fairly good shape, this particular excursion was turning out to be as much as he could bear. He gasped for air, the oxygen-thin atmosphere of Tu’oth’roor feeling empty to his burning lungs. His right thigh had cramped long ago, though the Admiral continued forcing it to faithfully propel him away from his pursuers.

Though Daniel did not feel like his pace was slowing, Dex had begun to pull away, but slowed himself when he realized that the Admiral could no longer keep up.

“[We’ll never make it to the gate, Admiral,]” he said as Daniel pulled alongside him, his words still translated and then retranslated back to English in the Admiral’s ear. “[We’re gonna have to take them out.]”

“[Okay,]” panted the Admiral. At this point, even a firefight with the Vr’amil’een guards sounded better than continuing their sprint.

“[Follow me and stay down,]” advised Dex, turning down a narrow alleyway. The Admiral followed him, and, seeing Dex dive behind a pile of rubble, Daniel did the same, hurtling himself to the ground behind what appeared to be a sturdy, if repugnant, garbage dumpster, the insipid squalor of the entire city nowhere more apparent than in this fetid alley.

Upon hitting the ground, Daniel made an effort to remember how many times he had been forced to throw himself at the rocky terrain of Tu’oth’roor. He could not remember exactly, but it felt like a lot.

Trying to catch his breath, Admiral Atgard struggled to his knees, unholstering his phaser from his belt. He peered out to the right of the dumpster and aimed the gun down the alleyway, peripherally noticing a stream of blood running down his arm from a cut on his elbow.

An instant later, three Vr’amil’een spilled into the alleyway, their short, stout legs working furiously and propelling them toward Daniel’s position at alarming speed. Dex’s phaser began to fire just before Daniel’s did, and several bolts from both weapons struck the lead Vr’amil’een in his bulky torso and wide head. With an anguished grunt, he went down hard, skidding several meters along the broken ground before slumping lifelessly to a stop.

Of the other two Vr’amil’een, one turned and dove behind another pile of rubble, and the other continued toward the dumpster Daniel hid behind, never slowing his breakneck pace. Daniel fired frantically, most of his shots impacting upon the beast’s thick hide, but the monster kept charging, bellowing a great, daunting war cry as he approached to within a single meter of the Admiral.

Just as the giant crocodilian maw began to snap toward the Admiral, two thoughts raced through his mind. The first was that the beast would probably decapitate him with a single bite. The second was that Dex, inexplicably, did not seem to be shooting.

The Admiral feebly flung his arms in front of his face just as there was a loud, thundering explosion and the guard’s head, now close enough for Daniel to feel its humid breath, exploded in a shower of putrid debris. Wiping the gook from his face, the Admiral could see that Dex had fished a heavy blaster rifle from his equipment bag, and the muzzle was trained on the now-headless Vr’amil’een at Daniel’s feet.

A bullet ricocheted off the dumpster near Daniel’s face and he shied away from the edge, readjusting his grip on his pistol. He looked to his right to see Dex pull a concussion grenade from under his cloak and arc it over the pile of rubble the remaining guard hid behind. Covering his face, Daniel both heard and felt the blast from the grenade, remaining curled up for several seconds as the debris rained down around him. Finally uncovering his eyes, he saw Dex standing over him, his sidearm already holstered beneath his cloak. “[I think it’s time for us to get out of here, Admiral,]” he said, extending a hand to help Daniel rise wearily to his feet. “[Let’s find somewhere where we can rest for a while.]”

Daniel knew he really meant “where you can rest for a while,” but he was far too tired to even thank him for his discretion.

• • •

The cantina’s putrid odor was revolting, but the Admiral barely noticed. What he did notice was that the booth at which he sat, like everything else in this godforsaken city, was made entirely of rigid, unyielding stone.

Dex came back to the table carrying two large mugs and a plate of some repulsive raw meat. “[Don’t even think about it,]” he admonished as Daniel reached for one of the mugs. “[All they serve in this rat hole is Un’qui’do.]”

The Admiral grumbled under his breath and instead reached for another swig from his nearly empty refrigerated canteen. The cool water was incredibly refreshing, and combined with a few minutes of rest and yet another shot of fluerenzinone, Daniel was starting to feel as if perhaps he would not die of exhaustion after all.

Keeping his arm hidden under the table, the Admiral turned his attention to checking the data the robot had downloaded to his nanocomputer, carefully reading the fleet deployment specs and plan of attack of the Vr’amil’een Armada. Within a moment, his jaw had dropped almost to the floor.

The Vr’amil’een had inside information about the Confederation defenses.

It was, after all, the only way to explain their plan of attack. Once the Indomitable had been destroyed, the Confederation had been forced to recall several ships from outlying systems to defend Earth, leaving some systems all but unguarded. The Vr’amil’een planned to attack precisely the two outposts that were the least defended, but these merely acted as feints for their true assault. They had detailed information on which vessels would be dispatched to defend the outposts, information that was too exactingly accurate to be a mere projection or even a phenomenally lucky guess. They knew exactly which ships would be where at all times, and their plan called for them to come in on an attack vector to Earth that, through some seemingly intentional loophole, would leave the depleted Confederation forces practically ambushed. Not only did they have inside information of the Confederation fleet, they seemed to have an agent on the inside, one with the authority to create this gap in the fleet deployment.

The rest of the report, however, turned out to be far more troubling.

If the timetables scrolling across the Admiral’s display were correct, the massive Vr’amil’een fleet buildup had begun well before the Indomitable had been destroyed, a buildup that would have led to nothing more than glorified suicide had the Indomitable still been around to defend the Earth.

Once again, the conclusion was inescapable. The Vr’amil’een had known that the Lucani Ibron would come. Even worse, they had also known that the Indomitable would be destroyed.

• • •

Dex stared at the Admiral in awe, his grotesque Vr’amil’een visage distorted by the horrified look on his face. Several minutes passed before he could speak.

“[Who do you think it is?]” he asked the Admiral, referring to the double agent. “[How in the hell did the damned Vr’amil’een get a man on the inside?]”

“[I have no idea,]” the Admiral admitted. “[But we have to get back to Earth before it’s too late. The timetable has the assault beginning sometime soon.]”

“[It makes it tougher since Admiral Le Jaunte was abducted,]” Dex whispered furtively. “[Before, he would have been the only one capable of setting up fleet deployment plans, but since he disappeared, ConFedCom has relied on several people.]”

The whining Doppler effect of another approaching siren in the distance cut short the conversation, reminding Daniel that they could not hide in this tavern forever, as much as his aching body wanted him to. Though they had traveled a fair distance from the spot of their firefight with the guards, the police would probably get around to searching this tavern soon enough. Luckily, Vr’amil’een police forces were far more austere than those of humans, owing to the fact that Vr’amil’een society accepted and even condoned a certain level of violence, aggression, and self-reliance among its citizens.

“[We had better get going,]” warned Dex as he covertly poured out most of the Un’qui’do mugs’ contents and threw some of the slop on the floor under the table. “[Our first order of business is to get the hell out of this city.]”

The Admiral nodded meekly and forced himself up from the table, his entire body throbbing in protest once again. He followed Dex through the crowd and toward the cantina’s rear entrance—it was one of the few buildings they had seen that had one. Daniel figured that a rear exit, transcending cultural boundaries, was probably standard in every bar on every planet throughout the galaxy, for precisely the reason they were using it now. As Dex opened the exit door, Daniel silently hoped they had not given anyone here any reason to remember them once the police did arrive.

The door opened into a narrow alleyway, the smell of which was only a slight improvement over the pervasive stench of the tavern. Dex quickly checked his nanocomputer and pointed the Admiral toward one end of the alley, shutting the door behind them. The sounds of police sirens were prevalent, though they seemed to be concentrated back in the direction of their confrontation with the now-deceased Vr’amil’een guards.

The alley led to a small, deserted street, thankfully devoid of police hovercars. The Admiral followed Dex around the corner to the right, walking briskly in the direction of the city gates, not so fast as to seem in a hurry, yet not so slow as to seem suspicious. They still had a ways to go before they would reach the city walls and even farther before they reached the safety of the fighter. Daniel doubted very highly that he would make it half that far.

They somehow made it to the city gates without incident, though the kilometer they had traveled felt like half a parsec to the Admiral’s weary and aching limbs. Thankfully, most of his shooting pains had receded to a single dull, pervasive throbbing that he had almost gotten used to, just so long as he did not have to throw himself at the scabrous, rocky terrain any more.

The alley they had been traveling in ended roughly 100 meters from the wall and the now well-guarded gate. Daniel and Dex crouched behind a wide pillar that supported a sturdy balcony above them, surveying the line of police vehicles and mob of guards who were now thoroughly checking every traveler entering or leaving the city. The traffic through the gate was scarce, however, and the Admiral reminded himself that most of the nocturnal Vr’amil’een were either sleeping or passed out from drinking by now.

“[There’s two heavy tanks, three hovercars, and I can make out nine, no, ten guards,]” Dex reported, peering around the edge of the pillar. “[Not to mention, of course, the gun emplacements in the towers.]”

“[Of course,]” Daniel muttered sardonically.

“[Well, there’s no way we’re getting through that, Admiral,]” he said, shaking his head. Upon seeing Daniel set to work on his nanocomputer, he added, “[Unless you have an idea?]”

“[I do,]” Daniel replied, deep in concentration. “[We’re getting the hell out of here, and if we can’t get to the fighter, then I’m bringing the fighter to us.]”

Dex chuckled. “[You’re insane.]”

“[That’s what the doctors keep telling me.]”

Daniel never took his eyes off the three-dimensional holographic display emitted by his nanocomputer. He remotely steered the ZF-255 out the narrow cave opening and down the slender ravine toward the city, keeping it low and moving as quickly as he could without dashing it to pieces on the canyon’s twisting walls.

Though it had taken Daniel and Dex several hours to walk to the city, it only took the fighter about a minute, even at the reduced speed necessary to safely navigate the treacherous ravine. The Admiral kept his eyes transfixed on the display, even as the muted whine of the fighter’s engines could be heard approaching the city.

Appearing around the last bend of the canyon, the ZF-255 headed directly toward the gun tower to the left of the gate. Before the weapon’s operators could even turn the heavy guns around, the fighter had launched a missile at their position and arced sharply to the right, heading over the gate. Just as the missile impacted the tower, the fighter simultaneously released a bomb above the gate and fired its lasers at the remaining gun emplacement, destroying it and most of the tower. By the time the bomb had gone off, Dex and the Admiral were already running toward the gaping hole in the wall where the gate used to be.

Daniel concentrated on landing the fighter as he ran, mostly following the sound of Dex’s heavy footfalls and barely managing to avoid tripping on the uneven ground, a catastrophe that would have sent both he and the ZF-255 crashing to the ground.

Daniel remotely landed the fighter just beyond the gate, for the first time noticing the blaring alarms and heavy smoke engulfing the area. The charnel stench of roasted flesh wafted to the Admiral’s nostrils as he picked his way through the rubble, emerging on the other side of the bomb crater and madly rushing toward the fighter’s canopy.

Dex reached the ship first and catapulted himself into the cockpit, planting his hand on the edge of the canopy and contorting himself into position behind the pilot’s seat. It took Daniel slightly longer to scramble up the short ladder, but once he was in, he had lifted off almost before the canopy had completely sealed around them.

• • •

The now-comforting feel of the cramped fighter’s cockpit felt strangely safe, though the Admiral knew that not to be the case. Several dozen kilometers of hostile airspace still separated them from the safety of the Apocalypse above.

Daniel maneuvered the ZF-255 into a vertical climb, the inertial dampeners negating some but not all of the tremendous g-forces that pressed him back into the seat like a giant hand. Daniel shuddered to think of the discomfort Dex was feeling, without the relative comfort of the padded pilot’s chair, balled up behind him like a stowaway who had picked the wrong ship to sneak aboard.

A series of short blips directed Daniel’s attention to the radar display, which showed six red flashing lights, each of which represented a Vr’amil’een fighter in pursuit. The Admiral, however, was not especially worried about the pursuing fighters—he worried more that there would be another Battlecruiser awaiting him when he had escaped the planet’s atmosphere.

Daniel tried to key the long range radar to scan through the highly-charged ionosphere of Tu’oth’roor as the intense winds buffeted the tiny fighter. He lacked the time, however, to properly configure the isolation algorithms, so he would have to wait and find out the old-fashioned way in about twenty seconds.

The speedy ZF-255 handily outraced its pursuers, shooting out through the last layers of atmosphere, wisps of pink ionized gas clinging to the fighter’s magnetized hull. As soon as the atmosphere’s intense friction glow had abated, the front of the canopy was abruptly filled with the sleek form of a Vr’amil’een Corvette. Several gun turrets were already trained on him, and they soon began spouting deadly bursts of gunfire in his direction.

“[Damn!]” cursed the Admiral, ripping the holographic emitter from his chin. “This is very bad for our side.”

“Not to worry,” said Dex, who had apparently already removed his emitter. “Just don’t let them hit us.”

“Thanks for the hot tip,” muttered the Admiral as he launched his second, and last, missile at the Corvette—though he knew it would do little in the way of actual damage—and veered sharply to his left, preparing to make a mad run for the orbital supply depot where hopefully the Apocalypse would still be waiting for them.

Suddenly, one of the Corvette’s many projectiles struck the rear of the fleeing fighter, overloading the shields as it rocked the ship’s inhabitants and tumbled the tiny vessel into a spin. The Admiral fought to regain control before another blast destroyed them, only to find once he had righted himself that another ship had appeared ahead of him in the distance. The Admiral’s heart sunk momentarily, just before the yellow dot on his display flashed a warm, reassuring green—the ship was the Apocalypse.

Rapidly growing larger as it approached at incredible speed, the Apocalypse fired bright streaks of laser energy over the ZF-255 and at the Vr’amil’een Corvette. The Corvette was no match for the magnificent vessel, and was disabled in seconds, leaving the Apocalypse to loop back around to allow the ZF-255 access to its hangar bay.

Once safely aboard, the Admiral bolted out of the fighter, quickly adjusting to the Apocalypse's lighter artificial gravity. He raced down the short corridor to the bridge, sloughing off his heavy cloak and rushing through the bridge doors, hastily sitting down in his command chair, grateful for its comfortable memory-gel padding.

“Get us the hell out of here,” he ordered Zach, filling his lungs with a deep breath of the oxygen-rich air. He checked the radar display, which showed several ships converging on their location, the nearest one impossibly large. “I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

Before Zach could travel far enough from the Tu’oth sun to launch the ship into hyperspace, the enormous ship from the tactical display came into view. Even before he could visually identify its dreadful signature shape, the Admiral somehow knew that the ship that was about to intercept them was none other than the Vr’amil’een flagship.

CHAPTER 14

The dot on the display console, representing the Apocalypse itself, flashed an angry red and the countdown still read 25 seconds, an eternity with the enormous Vr’amil’een Supercruiser in pursuit. Time seemed to slow as the dot, like an incandescent ant mired in the inescapable lair of an ant lion, sluggishly plodded through the gray, shaded ellipse that represented the Tu’oth gravity well.

The Supercruiser, on an intercept course, was closing on the Apocalypse with surprising speed. Daniel’s quick calculations showed that it would reach them and cut off their escape well before they could enter the safety of hyperspace.

Just as the Admiral was about to order Dex to engage the Quantum Refractor, a bright blue flash enveloped the Apocalypse, violently knocking it off course and causing the immediate blare of several alarm klaxons. Only the restraining harness kept Daniel from being thrown through the viewscreen. The bridge lights abruptly failed, though the reassuring yellow glow of the emergency lights soon replaced them. Belatedly, the Admiral realized that the ship’s artificial gravity had failed.

“Damage report!”

“We’ve lost primary power and life support. Inertial dampeners are failing, the realspace engine core is damaged, and the SLC antenna is fried,” Dex reported grimly, reading the report from his tactical console. “We have manual fire control of projectile weapons and missiles, but our energy weapons and shields are off-line and are not responding.”

“They knocked out our shields with one shot?” asked Anastasia, an incredulous look on her face. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Neither did I,” replied the Admiral, grasping the chair’s armrests for support as he closed his tired eyes, trying to block out the dizzying rotation of the ship. “I didn’t even think they were in range. Zach, can you straighten her out, please?”

“I’m trying, sir,” said Zach, wrestling valiantly with the control stick. “The maneuvering thrusters are off-line.”

With some effort, Zach slowed and finally stopped the ship’s frantic spin, the failing inertial dampeners barely doing the job. Trying to clear his pounding head, Daniel looked to the viewscreen only to find it filled with the hulking mass of the Vr’amil’een flagship.

“Sir, I have an incoming transmission from the Supercruiser.”

“Put it on-screen, Nathan.”

The screen abruptly filled with static, but soon resolved to show what appeared to be the bridge of the Vr’amil’een ship. Several bulky russet chairs were arranged in rigid formation, surrounded by myriad glowing display consoles. The entire room was bathed in the faint red glow the Admiral had quickly grown to despise. Vr’amil’een officers occupied the chairs around the perimeter of the room, but the captain’s chair directly in the center of the viewscreen was occupied by a human.

Admiral Atgard’s heart sunk. The human was Pierre Le Jaunte.

• • •

Every muscle in Daniel’s body had abruptly tensed, his right arm unconsciously reaching toward the screen, hovering eerily in zero-g. There sat Le Jaunte, perched in a chair on the bridge of the Vr’amil’een ship. Fleet Admiral Pierre Le Jaunte, the man who had disappeared several days ago without a trace, the man who had been Daniel’s nemesis even when they were supposedly on the same side, was here, just outside the Tu’oth System, on board the deadly Vr’amil’een flagship.

“Hello, Daniel,” he said, his lip subtly curved in his familiar smirk. “So nice to see you again.”

It registered immediately. Pierre had not been captured by the Vr’amil’een—he had somehow joined forces with them. He had not been abducted—he was a traitor.

Daniel looked into Le Jaunte’s eyes, suddenly recognizing them as those of a madman. His dark irises literally gleamed with power and satisfaction, savoring every moment of this victory over Atgard. Daniel knew the look, as he had seen it in those same dark eyes before, in the finals of the Galactic Tactical Competition. It was when Le Jaunte had thought he had won, just before Daniel had brilliantly and impossibly seized victory from him at the last possible moment. He had seen the deep, almost lecherous satisfaction Le Jaunte had taken from his apparent victory, more personal than even the high stature of the competition or his opponent would have merited. Daniel had seen Pierre’s genius then, but had not quite realized that it was genius tainted by insanity.

Admiral Atgard, however, had also seen Le Jaunte’s eyes when he realized that he had in fact been beaten. Daniel’s mind flashed back to that moment, ten years ago—Le Jaunte had caught himself before he had acted on his impulses, and to the assembled crowd he had seemed to accept the defeat with grace and aplomb. But Daniel had seen it, before his rationality had taken over. He had seen Pierre’s true, unchecked emotion, emotion that was not inhibited by reason or prudence. He had seen that his were the eyes of a wounded animal, eyes of a man whose ego did not even accept the possibility of being second best. I should have known then, Daniel thought, disconsolately. Or, then again, maybe I did.

“Oh, come now, Admiral,” quipped Le Jaunte. “I have never known you to be at a loss for words.”

Daniel forced himself to inhale deeply, never taking his eyes off Le Jaunte, smirking at him from the screen, larger than life. He had won, thought the Admiral helplessly. And this time, it meant everything.

• • •

It was Dex who broke the silence. “Bastard!” he yelled, livid.

“Now, now, Lieutenant Commander,” mocked Le Jaunte. “Do not be upset merely because I am the victor and you are about to die.”

“If that’s the case, then we who are about to die salute you,” replied Dex sarcastically, extending his middle finger toward Le Jaunte’s revolting visage.

Le Jaunte laughed, the hideous sound echoing throughout the bridge, sounding more like a shrill, mechanical reproduction of a laugh than one backed by any true human emotion.

A surge of unbridled rage welled within Daniel’s body as he stared at Le Jaunte through bloodshot eyes, narrowed to tiny slits. The sound of Le Jaunte’s hideous laugh, still reverberating in his ears, was gradually replaced by the sound of the blood coursing through his temples, his heart pounding like a heavy steel drum. A wave of pain washed over Daniel’s jaw, clamped together tightly enough to grind chips from his teeth, and a cracking noise in his clenched left fist signaled a bone in his finger breaking under the stress. His breathing was shallow and rapid, and his body literally quivered with pure, visceral anger. His eyes never moved from Le Jaunte.

“So you knew the Lucani Ibron would come,” Daniel spat, his words filtrated through clenched teeth. “And you allowed those bastards to kill my son.”

“Allowed them?” replied Le Jaunte, momentarily taken aback. “Oh, no, no, dear Admiral. I am afraid the destruction of the Indomitable was not my doing at all. The Lucani Ibron’s abrupt visit was the first I had seen of them also, I assure you.” His lip curled into a viscous snarl. “I truly am sorry to disappoint you.”

The Admiral was silent, but his anger had not abated.

“You see, Admiral,” Le Jaunte continued, “the Lucani Ibron’s arrival just served to—shall we say—expedite my plans. Merely a fortuitous coincidence.”

“Your plans?” asked Anastasia, her words filled with venom.

“Yes, well, things had already been set in motion before the Lucani Ibron arrived,” responded Le Jaunte matter-of-factly. “As I see you learned from your little trip to Tu’oth’roor.”

Tu’oth’roor … Le Jaunte … the Vr’amil’een fleet buildup … the assault plans … it slowly began to dawn on the Admiral how they all fit together.

“So then you planned to somehow disable or destroy the Indomitable yourself before you had the Vr’amil’een attack anyway, is that right?” asked the Admiral, as much to himself as to Le Jaunte as he pieced it together, his rage giving way to lucidity. “I guess with your clearance, the sabotage might have been possible. You had sold out to the Vr’amil’een, giving them information, setting up the dubious fleet deployment, and planning for the Indomitable's destruction before you staged your own disappearance. But when the Lucani Ibron showed up and beat you to the punch, it was merely an unexpected bonus.”

“I knew you would not disappoint me, Admiral,” gloated Le Jaunte, nodding. “But you really can’t blame me for planning to destroy the Indomitable. Hell, I would have been doing you a favor.”

“A favor?” growled the Admiral, his previous rage abruptly returning.

“Yes, yes,” mused Le Jaunte, his unsettling smirk that of a man who knew he had won. “You should, in fact, be thanking me for what I did, Admiral. After all, your actions in the Creelar System show me that you would have done the exact same thing yourself.”

“I doubt that very much,” Atgard replied. What was this madman up to?

“You know, Admiral,” he continued, every word filled with the smug arrogance Daniel had always hated him for, “we are more alike than you would care to admit, you and I. We are both brilliant warriors, tacticians, philosophers. I have always very much enjoyed playing against you. You were, after all, my most worthy opponent.”

“This is not a game, Pierre,” said Atgard caustically. “This is not the Tactical Competition. We are talking about billions of lives.”

Le Jaunte waved his hand absently, as if dismissing the point. “Yes, yes, I know, Admiral. Destroying the Indomitable was the single greatest needless massacre in the history of the galaxy, is that right?”

“That’s exactly what it was,” the Admiral replied, speaking through clenched teeth, furious beyond words at this madman who had planned to kill half a billion people to win a game, to settle some imaginary ten-year-old score. Daniel’s anger almost overcame him; without even realizing he was speaking aloud, he added, “You’re more than a madman. You are pure evil.”

“Ah, my good Admiral,” retorted Le Jaunte, obviously amused. “I really do appreciate that. But I am afraid your assessment is incorrect. I know you think the Indomitable was destroyed at random, or at least for no good reason, but—”

“What in the hell reason could you possibly give for that massacre?” demanded the Admiral loudly, spitting the words at Le Jaunte as if they were acid. “There could be no defense—no justification—for such a thing!”

“Is that a fact, Admiral?” goaded Le Jaunte. “Are you positive about that? Could there really be no justification?”

“For killing 500 million innocent people?” screamed the Admiral.

Le Jaunte chuckled fiendishly. “Are you really so sure they were all innocent?”

The Admiral opened his mouth to give his enraged answer, but no words would come out. A queasy feeling of trepidation had engulfed him. Le Jaunte’s eyes once again betrayed his depraved confidence.

“Why don’t I just let you decide for yourself?” laughed Le Jaunte, unable to control his mirth any longer. “Why don’t you just watch and perhaps the answer will become clear.”

With that, the picture on the viewscreen changed to show a three-quarter view from the rear corner of the bridge of a starship. Belatedly, the Admiral recognized it as that of the Indomitable.

Visible in the massive Captain’s chair to the left of the screen was the right profile of none other than Fleet Admiral Tiberius Cole. Arrayed in front of him and scattered around the perimeter of the bridge were stationed numerous other officers. The Indomitable’s viewscreen, which took up most of the right side of the display, showed several planets in front of a faraway sun. Squinting at the screen, the Admiral could also make out a number of tiny warships massing around one of the larger planets, a reddish gas giant.

The Admiral realized with horror that he was looking at the last moments of the Korgian Empire.

Abruptly, the image of Admiral Cole spoke. “Prepare to fire on my mark, Commander.”

From the corner of the display, an officer seated at the communication console quickly turned to face Cole. Holding his earpiece to his ear, he shouted, “Admiral, we have an incoming transmission from the Korgian Armada.” He paused for a moment, listening to the message, and the stress wrinkles on his face suddenly disappeared. “Indomitable, we surrender. We surrender. Do not fire. We surrender.”

Several of the bridge crew turned to Admiral Cole, the expressions on their faces ranging from mere relief to utter exuberance.

The determined expression on Fleet Admiral Cole’s face, however, did not change. He continued to stare directly at the viewscreen. His right eye twitched involuntarily as he spoke.

“Fire.”

• • •

Admiral Atgard’s body went limp, his very vivacity instantly drained.

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” he whispered inaudibly. So passes the glory of the world.

CHAPTER 15

The viewscreen, still frozen just after Admiral Cole had given the horrifying order, filled Daniel with a nauseous rumbling in the pit of his stomach. It was impossible, he thought. Impossible that Cole, a man he had considered his good friend, could have done such a thing. Impossible that he would have fired on the Korgians even though they had clearly surrendered. Impossible that the Confederation he swore allegiance to had murdered billions needlessly.

It was just as inconceivable that such a thing could have been kept from him. After all, it would have been one thing if the truth had been hidden from the general public, but that it was kept secret from him, one of the highest-ranking officers in the entire Confederation? Daniel didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it.

But there it was. It had become appallingly obvious that our technology had exceeded our humanity.

Of course, Daniel would have Lieutenant Taylor confirm that the tape was not merely a fake, but somehow he knew—inexplicably, he knew—that he would indeed find it to be authentic.

As the viewscreen finally switched to once again show Le Jaunte, smiling broadly, the Admiral abruptly remembered that he would never get the chance to confirm the tape’s accuracy. Daniel had subconsciously forgotten—or not let himself believe—the fact that he was about to die.

Daniel was suddenly acutely aware that the members of his bridge crew were all staring at him, voicelessly begging him to tell them that what they had just seen was an illusion, a mirage, or a forgery. They looked to Daniel Atgard, the man that, to them, embodied the righteousness of the United Confederation of Planets, a personification of all that was good and truthful, an avatar of morality in an often immoral and corrupt Universe. He could almost hear their silent pleas for him to tell them it wasn’t so—all they had fought for, believed in, and devoted their lives to, was based on one unthinkable, horrific lie.

But he could not.

“So, Admiral,” began Le Jaunte, his evil grin once again filling the viewscreen. “What do you think?”

Daniel doubted Le Jaunte had ever been so happy in his life.

Impulsively, Zach cried, “It’s a fake! It can’t be true!”

“Ah, the naiveté of youth,” laughed Le Jaunte bitterly. “But I am afraid it is indeed authentic.” He stared poignantly at the Admiral.

“That’s not why you are doing this, Pierre,” Daniel replied, his voice sounding eerily poised, carrying its usual power and calm authority. “That has nothing to do with it at all.”

Le Jaunte smiled, as if actually gratified that Daniel was not fooled. His eyes again flashed with the same icy confidence he had always shown. Just before he began to speak, however, Daniel noticed something else: a tiny, almost imperceptible upward flicker of his eyes, akin to the movement of a man who was listening to an earpiece or somehow receiving hushed information. It lasted only a brief instant, but Daniel had seen it clearly nonetheless.

“I really would like to continue chatting with you, Admiral,” he concluded suddenly, “but I am afraid I have other, more pressing matters to attend to.” He smiled impishly. “But please do not think me a monster, mon amie. After all, I am not going to kill you.”

Le Jaunte’s ever-present smirk warned Daniel not to let himself become overly optimistic.

“In fact, I am just going to let you go,” he finished. “It will give you some time to think about what I have showed you.

“Oh, and by the way,” he added suddenly, as if remembering some trivial point, “it seems your current course will take you directly into the path of a large comet. And I am afraid you will impact it well before your shield or propulsion systems come back on-line. I am terribly sorry.”

“Why leave it to a comet?” muttered the Admiral despondently. “That’s not what you want, is it? Come, Pierre—let’s die together.”

Le Jaunte’s lips arched nervously upwards as he considered the Admiral’s words, but his thirst for vengeance was quickly overcome by his capacity for cowardice.

“Oh, no, no, my dear Admiral,” he quipped sarcastically. “I am afraid I really must be going. Ta ta, Daniel. It was so good to see you again, as always.”

With that, the viewscreen changed to show a faraway comet careening through space, trailing behind it a tail of dust and ice particles. Le Jaunte’s final, deranged gift to Atgard was this extra time to not only think about his own death and that of his crew, but also about the ghastly tape of the Korgian Annihilation, an image now burned eternally in his mind.

• • •

It was almost poetic, Daniel thought. Le Jaunte could not have beaten him any more soundly. He had not only, in effect, destroyed the ship and killed him, but, more importantly, he had broken his spirit.

Daniel now knew that Admiral Cole had murdered the Korgians, after it was clear that they had surrendered. They had not attacked the Indomitable as the legend had claimed—they had surrendered to her, prostrate and helpless before the terrible Omega Cannon. They had been bluffing—albeit a stupid, dangerous bluff—but they did not force the Confederation’s hand like the story that had been concocted had indicated. Daniel wondered how many people knew the awful truth—the Indomitable's bridge crew, Cole, Le Jaunte … who else? Was it Cole’s own moral turpitude that led to the slaughter or did the order to fire come straight from the top?

Daniel had, in essence, devoted his entire life to the Confederation. Like his father before him, he had practically grown up in the military, and had served as an officer in the Confederation for 33 years. He was one of the men most directly responsible for humanity’s rise to prominence, their hard-earned ascension to their current position as the most powerful species in the sector. He had always—always—thought he had been fighting on the side of right during those 33 years, promoting peace, not war; alliance, not subjugation; moral responsibility, not the callous disregard of an entire species.

But he had been wrong. His entire life’s work had been a lie. He had been working for the very Confederation that was, as Le Jaunte and apparently even the Lucani Ibron had realized, the galaxy’s worst enemy.

Daniel hung his head disconsolately, an odd feeling in the weightlessness of the ship. He wondered how long he had until they impacted the comet or ran out of breathable air. He hoped it was soon.

“Admiral?” asked Zach carefully as he turned to face him in his chair. “What are we going to do?”

The Admiral chuckled briefly, his eyes still on the floor. “What are we going to do?” he repeated bitterly. “We are going to die.”

“Damn it, Daniel!” yelled Anastasia suddenly. “Snap out of it! There will be plenty of time for despair after we die.”

Daniel looked up at her, stunned out of his stupor. Her expression was filled with fire, but an oppressive hopelessness hung over the Admiral, smothering his very soul.

“C’mon, Admiral,” Zach urged again, his innocent optimism somehow irritating to the Admiral’s sunken spirits. “There’s got to be something we can do. I mean, we don’t have shields, or life support, or fresh air, or propulsion, but—”

The Admiral’s head snapped up. “What did you just say?” he asked, suddenly animated. “What was that?”

“Um, I said we don’t have shields, life support, air, propulsion—”

“That’s it!” he cried, tearing at his restraining harness like a frenzied animal. “Zach, you’re a genius!”

Zach, like the rest of the crew, thought the Admiral had finally lost it. He looked back at him as if he had simply gone insane.

• • •

“I need you, Nathan,” the Admiral called, finally ripping off the emergency harness. He held onto the chair as he adjusted his body, which reluctantly readapted itself to its zero-gravity training. He eventually maneuvered himself into position and pushed off gently from the chair, sending himself floating toward the bridge doors.

“Yes, sir,” replied Nathan, his snaking tentacles adeptly finding the harness release hatch. He used the suction-cupped tentacles to move himself away from the chair and toward the floor, where he could travel along the ground with relative ease. Fedorans were, after all, highly effective in zero gravity, and could even survive in a vacuum for almost an hour at a time.

“Daniel, what are you doing?” Anastasia asked as he floated by her. “Do you have a plan?”

“I hope so,” he replied. “I’ll worry about the comet. You try to get our systems back on-line. Start with life support, and try to get some emergency heaters.” The temperature aboard the ship had already dropped noticeably, sending a chill through Daniel’s body, though it was a chill that was not wholly caused by the temperature.

Daniel turned as he approached the bridge doors, opening the panel to their right. He braced his left hand on the ceiling for support, sending a shooting pain through his recently broken finger. Ignoring his discomfort, he pulled down on the manual release lever with his other hand, causing the doors to slide apart and allowing Nathan to scoot deftly under him and into the hallway. The Admiral followed him, pulling himself through the doorway and grasping the first of a long series of rungs that were embedded in the top of the corridor.

“Go to the hangar bay,” directed the Admiral, hauling himself along the rungs and down the passageway, but not fast enough to keep up with Nathan. The process was tedious, creating fresh pains in his still-aching arms and finger, but luckily the hallway was not incredibly long.

Nathan disappeared around the bend in the corridor, and by the time the Admiral had arrived, he had manually opened the heavy double doors. The Admiral followed him in, directing Nathan to close the doors behind them.

The ZF-255 took up most of the bay, but it was not the reason the Admiral had come to the hangar. He quickly moved himself along the wall to the equipment closet, pulling out a spacesuit and carefully beginning to maneuver himself into it.

“What are we doing here, Admiral?” asked Nathan. “Are we going to use the ZF-255 to destroy the comet?”

“No, we’re not,” replied the Admiral, sliding his legs into the spacesuit. “I already used both of its missiles. Would you be so kind as to pull us both over to the outer doors?”

“C–certainly sir,” he replied, just a hint of hesitation working its way into his voice. Again positioning himself face-down and grasping the floor with his tentacles, Nathan moved under the Admiral and allowed him to hook his leg underneath his own. Nathan scissored his legs together, holding the Admiral by his foot, and began crawling toward the bay doors. It did not take the Fedoran long to crawl across the room, his muscular tentacles finding ample purchase on the hangar’s grated floor. Daniel struggled to seal up the suit by the time they had reached the far wall.

Upon seeing the Admiral open the auxiliary panel to the side of the bay doors, Nathan let out a curious whimper. “Air propulsion, sir?” he asked, belatedly realizing what Zach had said to tip the Admiral off to the idea. “Are we going to try to alter our course by letting out the air in this room?”

“Yes, we are,” replied the Admiral, moving himself down to where he could reach a cargo line that floated several centimeters above the floor. He yanked on it, and, when it held taut, he began to hook it to a ring embedded on the belt of his spacesuit.

“But surely we need all the air we have, Admiral?” Nathan asked nervously. “Without the oxygen recyclers on-line, it will only be a matter of hours before—”

“Would you rather crash into the comet?” Daniel asked, securing the line tightly. The line was thin, but was made of a braided composite alloy. For some reason, Daniel’s mind drew a blank as he tried to remember its rated strength factor.

“You do not really want me to—” Nathan began, cutting himself off as he realized that it was exactly what the Admiral wanted him to do.

“I’ll hold you while you open the doors,” explained the Admiral, helping Nathan get upright and spinning him so he faced the lever. “And the quicker the better, if we want it to change our course enough to avoid the collision.”

Daniel was glad that he could no longer see the expression on the Fedoran’s face as he grasped the lever with his strong tentacles. “Are–are you sure you have me?” he stammered.

“Positive,” replied the Admiral, trying to put as much confidence as he could into his voice. He wrapped his arms completely around Nathan’s thick torso, clasping his hands as tightly as he could. Fortunately, time, adrenaline, and the cold air had combined to make his broken finger all but numb by now.

Nathan let out another nervous whimper, but it was quickly drowned out as the heavy doors began to part and the air began to hiss through the opening, the cord attached to Daniel’s belt coming taut with a jolt. Once the doors were open half a meter, the force of the escaping air and the roar of the wind were almost unbearable, trying valiantly to suck the entire contents of the hangar out into the vacuum of space. Daniel squeezed his hands tightly, his entire, tired body violently protesting the effort. Just as the pain in Daniel’s finger became unbearable, the gusting winds began to dissipate and Nathan quickly jacked the lever back up, sealing the doors. There was a sudden, peaceful calm in the hangar bay, and the Admiral slowly released the massive Fedoran. Daniel had no idea if the gust of air was sufficient to move them out of the comet’s path, but even if it had, the lost air of the relatively large hangar meant that they now probably had less than an hour to get the life support systems back on. If they could not, then the last thing they would all surely think as they slowly froze to death and ran out of oxygen would be that they should have simply let themselves be killed by the relatively painless collision with the comet.

• • •

Once out of the hangar bay, the Admiral sent Nathan back to the bridge, continuing down the corridor toward the engineering bay. He arrived to find the doors open and Darren and Ryan frantically working at an open access cover on the main power grid. Ryan looked up as Daniel approached, still clad in the spacesuit, though the helmet hung back from its hinge at the neck. “We sent Alexis up to the bridge, sir,” Ensign Taylor reported, still partially concentrating on the instrument in his hand. “We’re trying to at least get back emergency power and life support.”

“I can handle it from here,” said Darren, not looking up from the dimly-glowing grid. “Finish hooking those generators up to the life support systems. If we don’t at least get oxygen and temperature control back, we won’t have time to worry about anything else.”

Ryan nodded and pushed himself across the room to a pair of floating portable generators that were hastily rigged to another access panel in the far wall. The generators, metal cubes one meter to a side, each had a display panel that showed a green energy bar, indicating how much power they had remaining. Once Ryan hooked them to the life support systems, those bars would turn from green to yellow to red to nothing all too quickly.

“It’ll just take a couple of minutes,” mumbled Ryan, fiddling with an unseen control buried within the access hatchway. “I’m going to restore the oxygen recyclers and bring the heat up a bit. The optimum efficiency settings are 75 percent normal exchange and 15 degrees Celsius, sir … unless you would like me to set it to something different?”

The Admiral was highly intelligent in many areas, and had ample knowledge in many fields, including electrical engineering, but he realized that this did not preclude the fact that trained experts almost always knew more about their specific field than he did. Daniel had always known when to trust the expertise and recommendations of his crew. After all, he was an Admiral, not an engineer.

“Whatever you think will keep us alive the longest, Ryan,” he said, turning toward Lieutenant Alexander. “How are you doing on the power grid, Darren?” he asked.

“Well, sir, this thing is fried better than a Hunrithian myops that flew too close to a magma geyser,” he replied, throwing in one of his usually colorful metaphors. “It reminds me of the time my old ship passed through those ion clouds by Yhafil IV, except this is much worse than that ever was.”

“Can you fix it?” asked the Admiral, not exactly sure what happened to the main power grid when it passed through the ion clouds by Yhafil IV. “Can we get main power back?”

“Well, I don’t know what I can promise you, Admiral,” he replied, staring intently at the grid, “but main power looks shot. I might be able to get auxiliary power if I re-polarize the grid emitters and reroute power from the capacitors, but we would have very limited hyperspace capability. Of course,” he added, flashing a glance at the large, unlit contraption jutting out from the floor in the center of the room, “the Quantum Refractor would be out of the question.”

“Of course,” replied the Admiral. “Just try to get us hyperspace and supralight communication as soon as possible.”

“Oh, the SLC antenna was destroyed beyond repair, sir,” Darren added casually. “Even if we had enough power, we’re limited to normal radio communication until we have it replaced. We can’t call home for a while, I’m afraid.”

“Perfect,” Daniel muttered, under his breath. “How long do you think until we’ll have the hyperspace engines back?”

“It should take about five minutes to re-polarize the grid, Admiral, though I did it in three one time back aboard the Ulysses. The capacitors should only take another minute or so.”

“Good. I’ll expect hyperspace in five minutes, then,” he concluded, turning to return to the bridge. Sniffing the air, he noticed that it suddenly seemed less stale than it had been and the temperature seemed to have increased at least enough to begin to drive the numbness from his bones. Pushing off from the wall nearby, he added, “And get us some gravity as soon as possible, Darren. This is a pain in the ass.”

• • •

With great discomfort, the Admiral made it back to the bridge, the warmer air bringing the throbbing back to his broken finger. Daniel momentarily struggled to remember if he had broken it in his rage after seeing Le Jaunte, or if it was from back on the planet of Tu’oth’roor. Only the persistent aching of his entire body reminded him that he had been running for his life on that planet not nearly so long ago as it suddenly seemed.

Daniel could see that Alexis was on the bridge, floating face up beneath Nathan’s tactical console, hovering a few centimeters off the deck. She flashed the Admiral a smile as he drifted back through the open bridge doors. “This zero gravity stuff is great,” she quipped. “Much easier on the back.”

A slight smile fought its way to the Admiral’s lips. Alexis always had been able to make him smile, even in the worst of circumstances. Fittingly, thought the Admiral, these truly were the worst of circumstances.

“We should have auxiliary power back in less than five minutes,” the Admiral said, making his way back to his seat. He strapped himself in, the secure feeling of the restraint harnesses comforting after his recent movements in zero g.

“Will we have hyperspace?” asked Anastasia, reaching into her lap and flipping Daniel a small personal heater. The heater floated slowly toward him, and Daniel noticed that Anastasia had already distributed one to each member of the bridge crew. Though the temperature was far more bearable now, the small heater helped to drive the accumulated cold from the Admiral’s weary body.

“We should,” replied the Admiral, “but Darren said it would be limited. I assume we won’t be able to go much faster than—”

Daniel was cut off by an abrupt sound, akin to the sound of hail pelting the roof of an aircar. The sounds were tinny and high-pitched, as if an abundance of tiny rocks were sprinkling the Apocalypse’s hull.

The comet.

The sounds quickly grew in intensity, and the Apocalypse, no longer stabilized by her failed inertial dampeners, began to slowly spin counterclockwise. It was only another instant until the sound was gone, leaving an eerie silence as the Apocalypse, narrowly saved from a collision with the deadly comet, spun uncontrollably through space, light-years away from Earth and powerless to return.

CHAPTER 16

The vapid drone of the hyperdrive engines reminded Daniel that the normally swift Apocalypse traveled toward Earth at only one half her normal top speed. The Admiral, sitting wearily on his bed in his quarters now that gravity had finally been restored, powerlessly tried to will the ship to greater speed, knowing that every second counted in their race to reach Earth before the Vr’amil’een attack force.

Daniel rubbed his eyes, his left middle finger numb after it had been repaired by the surgical droid. The droid, theoretically immune from making the mistakes a human doctor could, was more than capable of taking care of minor injures like broken bones. Nonetheless, the Admiral would have felt better with a live, human surgeon working on his body instead of the lifeless machine, advanced and “perfect” though it might be.

“Lights off,” commanded the Admiral, and the computer dutifully brought down the lights in the room to a nearly pitch-black level. He slumped his head back on the pillow, the memory gel comfortably molding itself around his head. His entire body tingled after his immersion in the soothing effervescence bath, and although it was far less sore than it had been, Daniel’s body still longed for rest. A brief shiver ran through him, and while he normally would have simply raised the temperature of the room or of the bed itself, the fact that they still ran on auxiliary power impelled the Admiral to instead reach for an extra blanket at the foot of the bed. Though he doubted the few joules of electricity it would take to heat the bed would slow them down or deplete their remaining energy at any appreciable rate, he figured that he was running the Apocalypse beyond its recommended auxiliary limits as it was. When they arrived at Earth, the ship would have perilously little energy left should they need to enter into combat.

Of course, the idea was to reach Earth before the Vr’amil’een and warn ConFedCom of the impending threat. Remarkably, Nathan had calculated that the time to reach the nearest communications station within the HTAN and send a message to ConFedCom would actually take slightly longer than simply traveling to Earth to ring the alarm in person. After all, even at one half full hyperspace speed, the Apocalypse was still reasonably swift, and the detour, including the time-consuming realspace approach to the communications station and the delay in arranging for a coded priority transmission, would have negated any time savings. Better to give the message in person and then be there to help defend against the assault as well, the Admiral reasoned. Besides, coded though the transmissions might be, the Admiral was not prepared to transmit either the Vr’amil’een attack plans or the horrible truth he had learned across open space.

Inconveniently, the documents he had obtained on Tu’oth’roor did not set a specific date or time for the assault, but the attack seemed to be imminent. Either way, it would probably be close. In preparation of the very real possibility that they did arrive after the Vr’amil’een, the Admiral began running mental simulations of the upcoming battle based on the information he had gleaned from the report. Before long, however, his profound weariness overcame him and he fell into a deep sleep.

• • •

By the volume of the door chime, which gradually increased as it repeated itself, the Admiral knew that it had taken quite a few repetitions to awaken him from his slumber. A quick glance at the chronometer showed that he had been asleep for over 13 hours, meaning that they should be about an hour from Earth.

“Come in,” he said, groggily struggling to sit up. The Admiral could not remember the last time he had slept for anywhere near 13 hours, and although he felt noticeably better after the rest, a creeping exhaustion still permeated his body. He could no longer deny that his age was beginning to catch up to him—he felt years older than he ever had, though he suspected that only half of it was physical.

The door slid open and Anastasia entered, raising the light in the room to a comfortably dim illumination. “I didn’t want to wake you, Dan,” she said as she walked toward the bed. “After all, I figured you would need your sleep. Dex told me all about your adventures, old man.” She chuckled good-naturedly. “He sounded quite impressed that you didn’t simply collapse during your travails.”

“I appreciate his confidence in me,” the Admiral deadpanned. “But I really wish everyone would stop calling me ‘old man.’ In fact, as I remember it, I practically had to carry Dex most of the way.” The Admiral smirked as he stretched his arms and neck, his body reluctant to respond.

Anastasia smiled warmly. “That’s how I figured it actually happened myself, but I thought I would let Dex have his fantasy.”

“Very kind of you,” Daniel quipped, willing himself out of bed, his body stiff but not nearly as sore as it had been. “What is our ETA to the Sol System?”

“Just over an hour,” she replied, her demeanor quickly turning serious. There was a brief pause before she added, “What are we going to do once we get there? I mean …” She left the thought unfinished.

“I know what you mean,” he replied, staring at the floor. “But right now I think we just have to worry about the Vr’amil’een. After that …” He looked up at her blankly.

“I guess you’re right,” she sighed. “I … I just have to believe Admiral Cole had some good reason for what he did. Or maybe the tape is a fake, I don’t know. Ryan is inspecting it now.”

The Admiral shook his head. “It’s not a fake, Anastasia.” She could see that he was somehow sure.

Commander Mason slumped into a chair. “Then I don’t even know what we’re fighting for anymore. Maybe we should just … I don’t know.” She hung her head listlessly.

“I’ll tell you what we’re fighting for, Anastasia. We’re fighting for the eight billion people who live on Earth, people who have no idea what even went on in the Korgia Prime System, let alone were responsible for it.” He walked over and knelt beside her, reaching across and lifting her chin to stare into her eyes. “We’re fighting for my wife, and your kids, and everyone else’s wives and kids. We’re fighting because that one mistake, appalling though it might have been, should not condemn humanity to death.”

She nodded softly, grasping his hand in hers. “You’re right. I know. It’s just so … disillusioning, disheartening … I don’t know.” She inhaled deeply and looked up at him. “I just hope we’re in time. If not …”

“I know,” replied the Admiral, looking across the room to the portrait of his wife. “I know.”

• • •

Anastasia had gone to the bridge and Daniel walked down the short hallway to the engineering bay. With only an hour until their arrival at Earth, the Admiral wanted to know exactly what his capabilities would be once they had exited hyperspace. He realized his ship would be dramatically crippled without main power, but he did not intend to sit idly by while the Vr’amil’een pounded Earth.

Upon entering the engineering bay, Daniel could see Ryan seated in front of a console, studiously watching the replay of the tape Le Jaunte had shown them. As Daniel entered, Ryan looked up and shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s real, sir. Either that, or it’s the best damned fake I’ve ever seen. Even the readings on the displays are all correct.”

The Admiral nodded silently. After all, he had really already known it was true. The look in Le Jaunte’s eye had told him more than Mr. Taylor’s extensive analysis.

Ryan looked up at him as the tape continued to play in the background. “What does this mean, sir?” he asked timidly. “What are we going to do?”

The Admiral, reading his expression as much as his words, tacitly realized that Ryan had just subtly promised his allegiance and willingness to go along with whatever decision he made. The loyalty of Daniel’s crew had never ceased to impress him. After all, it would be easy for any one of the crew to spill the story for any number of reasons: a sense of duty, a desire to tell the truth, or even plain old greed for the trillions of credits the story could surely produce. But the Admiral knew no member of his crew would do such a thing. He would not quarantine them, nor monitor their communications—after all, they trusted him enough to abide by his judgement, and he felt he owed it to them to trust them as well. Perhaps that was one of the reasons they were so loyal in the first place.

“I don’t know yet, Ryan. I really don’t know. For right now, I’m just worried about the Vr’amil’een. What will our capabilities be under auxiliary power?”

“Lieutenant Alexander has been studying the specifics, sir,” Ryan began, peripherally glancing at the screen over Daniel’s shoulder. “He should know—”

The engineer’s reply stopped in mid-sentence. His mouth hung open and he stared blankly at the screen. His eyes were glazed over, and he looked as if he had just seen a ghost, some horrifying specter back from his past to haunt him.

Without speaking, Ryan reached across the panel and rewound the tape playing on the monitor. Daniel looked and saw that it had played past the point where Le Jaunte had shown the tape from the Indomitable, and now showed Le Jaunte sitting on the bridge of the Vr’amil’een ship.

Ryan stopped rewinding and brought up the volume as the tape played back on the screen. Daniel could hear the last few words come out of Le Jaunte’s mouth: “… it is indeed authentic.”

Though the screen still showed Le Jaunte, Daniel’s own reply was audible from the speakers. “That’s not why you are doing this, Pierre. That has nothing to do with it at all.”

And then Admiral Atgard saw what Ryan had seen, what he himself had seen before: the tiny flicker of Le Jaunte’s eyes, a flicker he had all but dismissed but that Ryan evidently took very seriously.

“Did you see that?” asked Ryan softly, pausing the tape. “Were you watching his eyes?”

“I was,” replied the Admiral. “What did you see?”

With some effort, Ryan tore his gaze from the screen to look at the Admiral. “Sir, do you know about my history with the IMP? The Implanted Microprocessor Project?”

“I do,” Daniel replied. “I know you were an integral member of the design team.”

“Yes, well,” Ryan continued, clearly flustered, “I also worked with the subjects after they had received the implants. I monitored several of them very closely.” He swallowed hard.

“Yes?” prompted the Admiral.

“Well, when the subjects accessed information or received data through the wireless modems in their implant chips, they … their eyes flicked upwards.” Ryan stared at the Admiral, aghast. “Just like Le Jaunte’s did right there.”

Daniel’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you sure, Ryan? Are you positive?”

“Yes, sir, absolutely I am positive,” he said. He spoke with a horrified confidence that could not be doubted. “Trust me, sir. I will never forget that look. That was it. Pierre Le Jaunte has an implant.”

• • •

Once back on the bridge, Daniel ran back the conversation with Le Jaunte several times in his mind. The more he thought on it, the more it made sense: the arrogance, the cold brilliance, the overriding need to be superior—they all fit in with the effects of the implant. But all of the subjects had gone insane, and had all eventually died from the stress. So how did Le Jaunte get an implant? Perhaps he had recently found a way to create a new version of the implant for himself, and it had turned him into a madman.

The Admiral shook his head. No, that wasn’t right … after all, for as long as Daniel had known him, he had exhibited those qualities. This was not a sudden change—this is what Le Jaunte had been all along. He just had reason to hide his insanity before.

The chime of the bridge doors opening caught the Admiral’s attention, jolting him out of his train of thought. Darren walked through, carrying a data plate to the Admiral and handing it to him.

“Well, sir, that’s about what we can do,” he said, scratching his graying hair absently. “Under auxiliary power, it’s not much, I’m afraid.”

The Admiral mumbled his acknowledgment as he pored over the information on the plate. “So we can fire lasers, or raise shields, but not both?” he asked, studying the readings.

Lieutenant Alexander pulled himself up to his full, if unimpressive, height. “Sir, if I may say so, I had to do quite a bit of recalculations and re-optimizations and re-routings and re-chargings just to get you either. You know, under the circumstances, I think I did pretty well, considering that I eked out more auxiliary power for us than I ever did on the Northern Star, and her power grid had almost twice the output and 20 percent more capacity than ours.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Alexander,” Daniel said, this time looking him sincerely in the eye. “I realize you have, as always, done exceptional work. I am quite sure you have done all that can be done and then some.”

“I should say so,” he huffed.

Daniel looked back to the data plate in his hand. “I merely meant that it is unfortunate to be entering battle at less than full capacity. But at least you have given us something to work with. Thank you, Mr. Alexander.”

Darren relaxed slightly, the perceived affront to his considerable skill rescinded. “Happy to help, Admiral,” he replied, bowing slightly and turning to leave the bridge. “I’ll be back reconfiguring the power converters if you need me again.” The bridge doors closed silently behind him as he left.

Daniel looked to Anastasia, who smiled back at him. They had both worked with Darren long enough to know that he was quite proud of his work, and any insult to it—real or imagined—was perceived as an attack on him personally. They also both knew, however, that his quirkiness was more than made up for by his loyalty, skill, and ardor.

“Can I see the plate, sir?” asked Dex, and the Admiral handed it to him. Dex stared at it intently, his brow deeply furrowed as he read over the restrictions they would be forced to live with were they to do battle.

Nathan turned to face the Admiral, and in the several seconds before he spoke, it was obvious that there was something on his mind. “So, Admiral,” he finally began, “exactly what kind of implant does Pierre Le Jaunte have?”

Daniel let out a long sigh. “I have no idea what it is or where he got it. I’m pretty sure he’s had it all along, so it’s not something he got from the Vr’amil’een, but all the subjects of the IMP are dead. Maybe he stole one from the IMP lab or maybe he developed it independently. I really have no idea,” he admitted, “but I intend to find out once I get a chance back on Earth.”

“Do you think the Vr’amil’een will still attack once they know we are waiting for them?” Nathan asked hopefully. “Would it not be logical for them to abort the assault under those conditions?”

“You perhaps look at these things from too logical a standpoint at times, Nathan,” advised the Admiral, peripherally noting that his Fedoran friend never used contractions in his speech. “Sometimes, some people, or some species—like the Vr’amil’een—will astound you with their ability to defy logic. People do not always do what is strictly wise or prudent or logical. That’s why you must be prepared for your enemy to do anything, logical or otherwise.”

“But that is foolish,” Nathan replied, the skin around his beady, unlidded eyes squinting slightly. “Such people or species should be easy to defeat.”

The Admiral smiled inwardly, aware that while Nathan was a fine astrometric technician, he would make a poor starship captain or tactician. “On the contrary, Nathan, being too logical and too predictable can often spell disaster. Without a little spontaneity sometimes, it is easy for your enemy to anticipate your actions. You would be reasoning like a computer.”

“Is that not good?” asked the Fedoran, clearly confused.

“No, Nathan, it is not good at all,” Daniel chuckled, remembering his victory over Le Jaunte, now in a new light. “Logic and reason and calculation can only get you so far.” He glanced at Anastasia. “Intuition, innovation, and passion are just as important.”

Lieutenant Latimer mumbled his assent, but the Admiral could see he did not fully understand. After all, it was near impossible for the mathematically-minded Fedoran to accept such notions. Daniel hoped his words had at least made an impression.

Suddenly, and without warning, there was an abrupt jolt and a blaring alarm, both of which were, by now, all too familiar.

With a sickening shudder, the Apocalypse was jostled unceremoniously out of hyperspace, momentarily blacking out the bridge in the process. When the auxiliary power had kicked back in, the viewscreen automatically flickered to life, but before he could even see the ship’s dreadful signature silver coloring, Daniel knew the ship that would appear would be that of the Lucani Ibron.

CHAPTER 17

A sudden surge of anger welled within the Admiral, though, considering the circumstances, a more logical emotion would have been surprise or even fear.

“Forget the shields,” ordered the Admiral, just as Dex opened his mouth to ask. “Target the ship and fire all available weapons. And Zach, keep us moving.” To himself he added, “This is getting old.”

A fusillade of lasers streaked toward the alien vessel, followed closely by a savage volley of missiles and projectile rounds. The missiles impacted the center of the ship and blossomed into a brilliant ball of fire, expanding to fill the expansive viewscreen. For several tense seconds, nothing stirred.

“Is that it?” asked Zach incredulously. “Are they dead?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” replied the Admiral. “So keep moving!”

Instinctively, Zach jerked the control stick to his left, just moments before a bright beam of pure white light shot forth from the center of the collapsing fireball. When the explosion had subsided, the viewscreen once again resolved to show the silver alien sphere, completely unscathed by the vicious barrage.

“Damn it!” yelled Dex. “I gave them everything we had.”

Anastasia quickly checked her displays. “There aren’t any inhabited systems for parsecs,” she said. “I don’t suppose we have enough power to fire the Cannon?”

“Of course not,” grumbled the Admiral, cursing their poor luck. “That would be too easy.”

Though Zach was skillfully darting the ship in an elusive pattern, a well-aimed beam of bluish light shot from the Lucani Ibron ship and struck the Apocalypse squarely in the fuselage. Within an instant, every status board and display panel on the bridge lit up like an angry Christmas tree. The bridge lights flickered spasmodically and a new set of alarm sirens rang out through the ship.

Darren’s voice boomed over the intercom. “Whatever that was, it was bad, sir. The starboard engine core is going critical!”

“Can we stabilize—” started the Admiral.

“No—we have to eject it now!”

How long do we have?” Daniel asked.

“Fifteen seconds, tops.”

The Admiral thought for a split-second. “Zach, turn us around and get us out of here right now.”

“But Admiral,” Nathan began as the ship spun around and surged up to speed, “what about the core?”

“Not now, Nathan,” Daniel replied curtly. “Darren, I have core jettison control. Nathan, go to hyperspace on my mark.”

The Fedoran gulped audibly.

Several seconds passed in total silence, save the incessant blaring of the alarms. As the imaginary fifteen-second countdown approached zero, four pairs of eyes stared unrelentingly at the Admiral.

“Daniel,” warned Anastasia, sounding genuinely concerned, “now would be a good time.”

Daniel’s display console flashed a bright red and an urgent-sounding alarm rang from the speakers. “Now!” Daniel yelled.

An instant later, Nathan launched the ship into hyperspace just as Daniel ejected the critical engine core behind them. The ensuing explosion, though magnificent, felt like nothing more than a muffled thump as the ship accelerated to incredible speed. With any luck, the explosion would have concealed their hyperspace trail, making pursuit by the Lucani Ibron difficult. In addition, their escape might give Daniel a chance to test his theory that the awful silver ship, though seemingly omnipotent, did indeed need to recharge after firing its deadly death ray.

“Is there any pursuit, Nathan?” asked the Admiral, not sure if he could pull off another miraculous escape if there was. “Are they following us?”

“Not that I can see, sir,” the nervous Fedoran replied.

“Well,” responded Anastasia, “if they had followed us, they probably would have caught us by now.”

“Sir,” Dex began, “I have a theory. It is consistent with the aliens’ known tactical history that they need to somehow recharge their ship after firing their primary weapon.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” replied the Admiral. “That certainly does seem to be the case.”

“So perhaps it gives us a short reprieve with which to deal with the Vr’amil’een?” asked Anastasia rhetorically.

“Perhaps,” Daniel agreed, his mind sluggishly refocusing on the impending Vr’amil’een threat. “Nathan, what is our ETA to Earth?”

“Forty-two minutes, 17 seconds, sir,” he replied.

Daniel nodded silently, folding his hands in a pyramid in front of his chin. I’m coming, Tara, he thought. I’m on my way.

• • •

Daniel stared into the starlines that breezed past the viewscreen, bright lances of light that streamed like effulgent daggers toward the speeding Apocalypse. Each of those light beams was a star, Daniel knew, many of which were surrounded by planets that supported some level of sentient life. One star that no longer burned, however, was the Korgian Sun, destroyed 33 years ago by an act of unsurpassed cowardice, weakness, and evil.

Daniel wearily rubbed his temples, the oppressive weight of his newfound knowledge almost too much to bear. Now, he rushed headlong toward Earth, to save the very Confederation that was inherently responsible for that horrific act. But Earth was not responsible for the Annihilation, Daniel reminded himself. No more than a handful of Earth’s eight billion inhabitants even knew the awful truth, let alone were responsible for it. Whatever his rationalizing, Daniel had no choice but to protect his wife, unaware of the Armada that was coming to attack her.

If it had not already arrived.

“One minute to arrival in the Sol System, Admiral,” said Nathan, interrupting his reverie. “I’m taking us in as close as I can before we disengage the hyperdrive.”

The Admiral nodded, a bit taken aback by how quickly the past several minutes had passed. Daniel straightened himself in his chair, making one last check of the status reports and the ship’s remaining inventory.

Upon turning back to his console, Nathan quickly punched up the main viewscreen. “Ten seconds to realspace emergence, sir.”

The hum of the hyperdrive engines slowly faded away and the sun, a brilliant yellow-white, dominated the right edge of the screen. Before Daniel even asked, Dex called out the sensors’ results: “No Vr’amil’een ships in-system, Admiral.”

Daniel relaxed for a moment, but fixated his eyes on the screen. As the sun slipped off the right edge of the viewscreen, Daniel could more clearly see Earth. Several warships were breaking orbit and rushing headlong toward the sun, speeding away from the planet. Before Nathan even spoke, Daniel knew what they were rushing toward.

“Sir, I have incoming ships on long-range radar,” exclaimed the terrified Fedoran. “ETA: three seconds!”

And there they were. The viewscreen shifted to show their arrival, jumping in just beyond and below the asteroid belt, on the far side of the sun. The Armada screamed toward the yellow star, closing toward Earth and the Confederation warships scrambling to intercept them. Both groups of warships, each several dozen strong, converged on a point equidistant from both sides, a point that was now—unluckily enough—inhabited by the crippled and ailing Apocalypse.

CHAPTER 18

A three-dimensional representation of the opposing fleets, created by the holo-vid projector, hovered in the center of the bridge, depicting the imminent battle between the Confederation Fleet and the Vr’amil’een Armada. On the right were the Vr’amil’een ships, racing in tight formation toward Earth at full speed. On the left was the surprised Confederation Fleet, looking far less organized, rushing haphazardly to meet the threat before they got close enough to threaten Earth. The swifter ships were out in front, trailing the heavier Battlecruisers behind them as they tried in vain to get into position to face this unexpected assault in time. Though the way the swifter ships were rushing headlong into combat was undeniably brave, they would do little to even slow the mighty Vr’amil’een Supercruiser that spearheaded the assault.

And they would be slaughtered.

Daniel wondered how in the Seventeen Systems the Vr’amil’een had been able to arrive in the Sol System undetected. Though it did not specifically say so in the stolen plans, he assumed it was made possible through Le Jaunte’s treasonous aid. Now that they had been surprised, the Confederation Fleet was the picture of chaos, rushing toward the threat seemingly with neither plan nor coordinated purpose. Apparently, Le Jaunte had done much to undermine the Fleet before his departure.

“Who’s in charge here?” wondered the Admiral aloud, rising from his seat, his eyes still fixated on the projection. “Nathan, get me a secure channel to the Victory right away.”

Nathan fingered a control on his console and nodded to the Admiral.

“SB-112,020 Victory, this is Admiral Daniel Atgard of the ZX-999 Apocalypse. Who is in charge here?”

There was a brief delay before a reply came over the bridge speakers and an image appeared on the viewscreen, visible behind the now-dimmed projection. “Admiral Atgard,” the man on the screen began, “this is Admiral Robert McLaney.” He cleared his throat. “I am in charge.”

“Mr. McLaney,” the Admiral began, acutely aware that time was of the essence. “What in the hell are you doing??”

McLaney cleared his throat once again. “Well, sir, I thought the Corvettes could slow them down and give us time to regroup and intercept …”

The Admiral cursed under his breath. Though McLaney was a good man, he was a lousy tactician, and Daniel wondered about the circumstances surrounding his sudden promotion to Admiral.

“Mr. McLaney,” the Admiral began diplomatically, taking a deep breath and preparing to offer his advice to the nervous commander. A glance at the viewscreen, however, told him that he didn’t have the time. More drastic measures were necessary.

“Nathan, broadcast to all friendly ships,” commanded the Admiral, pausing just long enough for the Fedoran to complete the order. “To all Confederation ships, this is Admiral Daniel Atgard taking command of the Fleet. Corvettes, fall back into flanking positions behind the Victory immediately. Cruisers, form around the Victory, defensive grid Gamma Three. Victory, adjust heading to course 319, mark 72 and decrease speed to 75 percent.”

There seemed to be a slight hesitation from the Fleet, as if waiting for McLaney to challenge the Admiral’s authority. He did not.

Surely glad to abandon their suicide rush, the Corvettes were the first to change course, looping away from the Armada and back toward the Victory just before they entered the range of the Supercruiser’s cannons. The other Cruisers, racing ahead of the slower Victory, slowed to allow their flagship to catch up, forming around the specified coordinates. The Victory, after a few seconds hesitation, ponderously changed course to the heading Daniel had requested.

Daniel’s eyes focused on the massive Vr’amil’een Supercruiser that dominated the group of Vr’amil’een ships. The display showed that the Victory, though immense in its own right, was only three-quarters the size of the enormous Vr’amil’een flagship. Daniel knew from experience that no ship—not even the mighty Victory—would want to be in the crosshairs of the Supercruiser’s deadly nose cannon.

The Admiral’s mind raced. It did not take Daniel long to realize that the match-up was no good. The Victory was not designed for speed or evasive maneuvers; it was designed to meet enemies head on and win through overwhelming force. As the viewscreen plainly showed, however, the Supercruiser would not be overwhelmed, and that nose cannon would take a heavy toll, even on the powerful shields of the Victory.

They had to take out that Supercruiser, and quickly. It was the key—without it, the Vr’amil’een Armada could be dealt with without serious losses; with it and its unbelievably powerful cannon, the Victory would probably be destroyed. Daniel seriously doubted whether the remaining ships of the Confederation Fleet possessed the requisite firepower to destroy the imposing colossus.

Daniel thought back to how the Apocalypse had defeated the first heavy Vr’amil’een Battlecruiser back in the Tu’oth System. Their agility negated the awesome power of the ship’s powerful nose cannon, and, even without shields, they had been able to withstand the ship’s secondary weapons with their nearly impregnable hull. If he could somehow get the Supercruiser to concentrate on the Apocalypse …

A smile found its way to Daniel’s lips. “Hey, Dex,” he called coyly. “The Vr’amil’een don’t like you very much, do they?”

• • •

A quick check with Darren revealed that his original assessment had been correct: they could fire weapons to an extent, but they would not have shields. Luckily, the Apocalypse had more than just energy weapons, which would deplete their energy reserves very quickly.

“Are you ready, Dex?” asked the Admiral.

Dex nodded. He rose and walked to the center of the bridge. Daniel walked over and took Dex’s seat behind the tactical console.

Once he was seated, Dex turned to Nathan. “Open a channel to the Vr’amil’een Armada.”

Dex drew himself up to his full height, aware that the transmission would contain video as well as audio. “Hostile vessels,” he began, “this is Admiral Dex Rutcliffe of the Apocalypse, in charge of the Confederation Fleet. Surrender immediately or you will be destroyed.” Dex paused for a moment before adding, “Again.”

Daniel wondered if Le Jaunte would still be aboard the Supercruiser. His gut feeling told him that he would not—after all, Le Jaunte was not the type to put himself into harm’s way. The coward undoubtedly planned to show up to claim victory after the battle had already been decided.

Whether Le Jaunte was aboard or not, however, the Admiral knew the proud Vr’amil’een would not be able to pass up the chance to avenge their prior defeat at the hands of Dex, whom they held personally responsible. And he knew that the honor that would come from capturing or killing Dex would be so great that the Supreme Commander of the invasion—who undoubtedly would be commanding the Supercruiser—would not let it go to anyone but himself.

It did not take long at all for the Supercruiser to turn ponderously toward the tiny Apocalypse. A tight smile stretched across Daniel’s lips, just before he realized how ironic it was that what he was celebrating was the fact that the Vr’amil’een Supercruiser was now coming to destroy him.

In chasing after the Apocalypse, however, the Commander was either overconfident in the capabilities of the rest of the Armada, or he was so blinded by vengeance that he did not care. Either way, the Fleet—even under the dubious command of McLaney—should be able to handle the remaining threat, especially considering that Daniel had directed them to a location within range of two separate automatic defense stations.

For now, however, Daniel had more pressing problems. Now that he had baited the Supercruiser into attacking him, how was he going to defeat it?

His first thought was to zip around it as he had the Battlecruiser in the Tu’oth System; however, once he saw the fighters streaming from the Supercruiser’s huge hangar bay and the numerous heavy gun turrets aboard the behemoth vessel, he thought otherwise. Luring it through the Asteroid Belt—again, as he had the previous Vr’amil’een Battlecruiser—would be ineffective, as the belt in the Sol System was not nearly as wide nor dense as the one near Tu’oth’roor. And, without shields or full energy weapons, a prolonged firefight was out of the question.

What did he have? Though the loss of the starboard engine bank would inhibit his sublight propulsion systems and their limited power supply would inhibit the use of energy weapons, his impressive arsenal of projectile weapons and missiles was available at minimal energy cost. There were even a couple of nuclear warheads aboard.

Daniel’s thoughts were cut short as the first wave of fighters came into firing range. Zach instinctively jerked the ship out of the path of the fighters’ gunfire, though several shots from the small fighters found their marks nonetheless, the muffled pings of their projectiles’ impacts audible over the low drone of the crippled engines.

“Return fire with projectile weapons only, Dex,” replied the Admiral, settling into his command chair and calling up the tactical displays. “Zach, keep us just outside the firing range of the Supercruiser. Let’s lead it away from Earth for a while. Head for the Saturn defense station.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

The guns of the Vr’amil’een fighters proved to be ineffectual against the Apocalypse’s dense armour, and Dex adeptly took out several of the annoying ships with well-aimed bursts from the rear guns.

“Sir, we have five heavy fighters coming into range,” Dex reported, still concentrating on destroying the smaller fighters that buzzed about the ship. “They have heavy warheads, and, without shields, we don’t want to take too many of those.”

They were approaching Saturn now, and already the automated defense station had begun spewing deadly beams of laser energy into the paths of the enemy fighters. Just as the large fighters came into range, predictably firing homing missiles at the Apocalypse, Zach dipped the ship into Saturn’s dense ring system, causing an immediate outburst of noise as harmless ice particles pelted the ship. Daniel tracked the missiles on the tactical display, watching as the proximity warheads impacted harmlessly on the ice particles behind them.

The incessant barrage against the ship’s hull drowned out the gentle throb of the engines as Zach piloted the ship deeper into the innocuous ring system. They could hide here, or outrun the Supercruiser, or simply use the Apocalypse’s infinitely superior speed and maneuverability to avoid serious damage from the Vr’amil’een ship almost indefinitely. But that would only serve to delay the inevitable. At some point, the tiny Apocalypse would have to mount some sort of offense against the mighty ship.

Suddenly audible above the cacophony of ring debris was a resounding explosion, undoubtedly the result of the Supercruiser’s cannon. “There goes the defense station,” Dex reported stoically. Though the defense stations, vestigial remains of an older military era, were unmanned and for the most part outdated, the Admiral had hoped this one would have at least helped destroy a few more of the fighters that were now bearing down on the Apocalypse once again.

Dex continued firing at the fighters, which had followed them into the dense ring system. Though several of the fighters’ shots were finding their marks, the Apocalypse remained relatively unscathed.

“Admiral,” warned Dex, sounding concerned, “the Supercruiser is in range.”

“Already?” asked the Admiral in disbelief. The huge ship had intercepted them with surprising speed, closing on the tiny Apocalypse that hid within a ring system that would do nothing to stop the Supercruiser’s heavy cannons.

Almost as if on cue, a bright beam of light flashed down from above, striking the fleeing Apocalypse and rocking the ship violently. The ship plunged toward the planet, momentarily breaking forth from the ring system before Zach stabilized the controls.

“Rear armour integrity damaged, but within acceptable tolerances,” reported Dex, shaking his head. “And that was one of their secondary turrets. Whatever happened to the Vr’amil’een lagging behind us in energy weapon technology?”

“Evidently they have learned quite a bit,” mused Anastasia. She looked toward Daniel, her eyes making it clear whom she thought was responsible for the newfound technological abilities of the Vr’amil’een.

Another explosion rocked the ship, this time from a guided missile that had found its mark through the ring debris. Daniel’s display showed that two light and three heavy fighters still remained, though Dex continued to fire at them, aiming his shots carefully so as to conserve their limited ammunition supply. Of course, the fighters were the least of their problems.

Another bright flash of light flared across the viewscreen, narrowly missing the darting ship. Though the ring system provided excellent cover, Daniel knew they could not hide there forever. The Supercruiser, still hovering over them, several hundred times their own mass, had to be disabled or destroyed.

Luckily, Daniel had an idea.

“Zach, take us up out of the ring system. Nathan, open a channel to the Supercruiser.”

The Fedoran nodded when he had done so.

“Vr’amil’een Supreme Commander, this is the Apocalypse,” Daniel began, his voice and demeanor calm and deliberate. “Hold your fire. We surrender. I repeat—we surrender.”

The mouths of his crew dropped in unison. Dex was the first to protest verbally.

“Admiral, with all due respect—”

“Calm down, Dex,” Daniel assured him. “I’ll surrender to them the day I pick a fight with a Vamalian in heat.”

A gruff, disembodied voice came over the bridge speakers, translated by the computer. “[Apocalypse, we accept surrender. Will be escorted into hangar bay. Power down weapons and engines now.]”

Daniel nodded and Dex did as he was told, powering down the requested systems. The Vr’amil’een scanners, reading the Apocalypse’s already lowered energy levels, would surely think they were almost completely powered down.

The remaining fighters surrounded the ship as the huge Supercruiser descended on the Apocalypse, a giant foot crashing down upon a helpless insect. A gaping hole opened in the ship’s underbelly, directly above the Apocalypse, and the Supercruiser, once again exhibiting surprising maneuverability, swallowed the tiny ship into its hangar bay. The outer doors snapped closed and the Apocalypse, humanity’s last real hope for survival, was trapped within the belly of the Vr’amil’een flagship.

CHAPTER 19

With engines and shields off-line, Daniel was left to listen to a bridge so silent he could actually hear the silence. It took nearly a minute for Anastasia to speak up.

“Daniel? I know you know what you are doing, but …”

“What gave you that idea?” he quipped, but the upturned edge of his lip meant that Admiral Atgard, as usual, knew exactly what he was doing. After all, he knew the Vr’amil’een Commander would not be able to pass up the opportunity to capture Dex alive and bring him back to Tu’oth’roor for a suitable public torture and execution.

“Admiral,” Nathan interjected. “We have an incoming communication from our captors.”

“On-screen.”

The viewscreen quickly resolved to show a particularly bulky and ominous Vr’amil’een officer, sitting in the captain’s chair once inhabited by Le Jaunte. He spit his words quickly, and though they were again translated by the computer, their original virulence was not lost. “[The human known as Dex Rutcliffe will exit ship now. The rest will power down ship and wait for further instructions.]”

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the transmission was over.

“Well, Dex,” said the Admiral, “I guess we had better do as they say.”

Dex gulped audibly, and his expression, though not exactly indicative of fear, nonetheless showed more than a hint of concern.

• • •

The Apocalypse’s entry/exit ramp, located below the bridge on the underside of the ship’s nose, opened with an almost inaudible whirr, lowering itself to the rough composite deck of the spacious hangar bay. Through the opening several fighters could be seen, some dormant and some hovering in flight, no doubt completely surrounding the ship. In front of them, arrayed before the exit hatchway, were several dozen armed Vr’amil’een guards. Their weapons, bulky devices half the size of a man, were uniformly aimed at the hatchway’s opening. None of them moved or spoke as they awaited Dex’s arrival.

A soft, metallic ping sounded through the now-pressurized hangar bay. A second later, it began to repeat itself, growing slightly in intensity. The sounds, ever-growing in volume, came closer and closer together, until a large, ovoid metallic ball bounced down the hatchway and onto the hangar bay floor, rolling toward the assembled guards like a metallic bowling ball.

Instantly, the hangar erupted into chaos as both the scattering guards and the surrounding fighters fired savagely at the Apocalypse. Within an instant, the bay was awash with laser fire and filled with projectiles of all sizes, the ricochets bouncing off the Apocalypse’s hull and wreaking havoc on the assembled guards.

Leaping from the deck like a jungle cat, the Apocalypse spun toward the hangar bay door and released a vicious salvo of lasers and missiles that disintegrated the door instantly, sending several more guards shooting out the opening to their deaths. Before the smoke had even cleared, the Apocalypse had rocketed out the opening with several fighters in close pursuit. Only a few moments later, there was a colossal explosion from deep within the Supercruiser’s belly, as the high-yield nuclear device the Apocalypse had planted blew the hangar bay and half of the stunned flagship into oblivion.

Zach, Anastasia, and even Nathan simultaneously let out shouts of glee, while Dex steadfastly continued firing upon the remaining fighters still trailing the Apocalypse. Daniel was diligently studying the tactical displays, scanning the charred hulk of the Supercruiser, which spun slowly along its long axis, air and debris from its gaping wound bleeding uncontrollably into the void.

Daniel stared closely at the viewscreen, his keen eyes narrowing to tiny slits. The ship’s uncontrolled rotation had begun to slow. Within a few moments, Daniel could tell that the ship was stabilizing itself, and he could see that the torrent of debris flowing from its belly had also diminished. Slowly at first, undoubtedly meant to look like nothing more than a random movement, the Vr’amil’een Supercruiser, far from dead, began to turn, bringing its deadly nose cannon to bear on the tiny Apocalypse.

• • •

Daniel stared at the screen, watching the slowly-turning Supercruiser carcass as it somehow maneuvered itself into position despite its heavy damage. The entire bottom portion of the hull had been blown away by the blast, and a crater-shaped indentation scarred the enormous beast’s underbelly. Showers of sparks and jets of flame shot from the wound, and a cloud of debris, blown from the ship by the explosion, began to settle toward the planet, possibly to join Saturn’s impressive ring system.

A short alarm tone rang out, jarring Daniel’s concentration. The bridge lights suddenly dimmed, and, though it was not immediately evident, Daniel realized that several other systems had been either diminished or completely disabled.

“Auxiliary power failing, sir,” reported Dex, as though the Admiral did not realize the significance of the alarm. “Auxiliary reserves at ten percent. Shields, energy weapons, and propulsion are all off-line.”

Daniel hastily punched the intercom. “Darren, reroute emergency power to the engines. I need all possible speed right away.”

“There’s not enough left in the emergency reserves,” replied Darren, his voice strained. “I just can’t squeeze you anything else, sir—our energy banks are as dry as a Sylargian desert at high noon.”

“So we have no propulsion ability whatsoever?”

“Well, sir, we do have maneuvering thrusters,” he said, sounding deeply apologetic, though their current predicament was certainly no fault of his own. “Other than that, I’d have to get out and push, but you give the word and I’ll get my old bones out there, sir.”

Daniel could not help but smirk, though—or perhaps because—the old engineer did not intend the remark to be humorous in any way. “I don’t think that will be necessary, Darren. You just keep the oxygen flowing as long as possible.”

“If we don’t get out of the way of that Supercruiser,” interjected Anastasia solemnly, “it won’t matter if we have life support or not.”

Daniel turned to the screen to see that the hulking ship’s rotation speed had increased. Another few seconds, and the Apocalypse would be staring down the massive barrel of the ship’s nose cannon.

“Everyone grab onto something,” said Daniel, his words carrying over the intercom into the engineering bay as well. “This is going to be very bad.”

With his left hand, Daniel hastily called up the weapons inventory on his display, selecting a concussion warhead from the list that appeared. With his right hand, he popped up the auxiliary control stick, and, utilizing the still-functional maneuvering thrusters, angled the nose of the ship downward a few degrees. He set the delay fuse on the warhead to a mere half-second, though that would mean that the missile would barely clear the Apocalypse’s rear missile tubes before it exploded.

Daniel thumbed the firing stud and there was an almost instantaneous muffled explosion and a violent jolt as the missile’s expanding concussion wave forced the Apocalypse out of its way. The surge propelled the spinning ship forward and downward, pushing it below the Supercruiser’s immense nose. Though the inertial dampeners were again inconveniently off-line, Daniel had already begun to use judicious bursts from the maneuvering thrusters to bring the ship’s rotation under control.

“Dex, target their main power supply,” he ordered.

“Sir, I’ve been scanning the vessel—its redundancy systems are incredible. I’m getting power readings from all over the ship.”

“Very well,” he replied. “Then target their main power coupling unit.”

A florescent green targeting mark appeared on the viewscreen. Snaking its way along the underbelly of the ship, it suddenly stopped and flashed a bright crimson. As soon as it had changed, Daniel thumbed the firing stud, sending a salvo of missiles toward the ship. “This had better work,” he mumbled.

“How many missiles did you fire?” asked Dex.

“All of them,” he replied.

Turning back to the viewscreen, the Admiral could see that bright balls of fire had begun to erupt within the exposed underside of the Supercruiser as missile after missile—seventeen in all—hurtled into the crater. By the time the barrage had ended, a screen of smoke obscured most of the ship, and another debris cloud had started to form.

The ship was motionless for several seconds, before a series of smaller explosions began within the ship’s hull. When they had ended, the Supercruiser went completely dark, hovering lifelessly above Saturn and her magnificent rings.

Daniel exhaled audibly, slumping back in his chair and releasing the restraining harness. Peripherally, he glanced at his tactical display to find several ships from the Confederation Fleet, apparently having already dispatched the remainder of the Vr’amil’een Armada, rushing toward them, undoubtedly to help the tiny Apocalypse fight the enormous Supercruiser.

“Just in time,” muttered Anastasia sarcastically, but Daniel was too tired to even chuckle.

CHAPTER 20

The Admiral stepped through the airlock, disembarking the crippled Apocalypse and entering the relatively spacious orbital repair dock. His crew followed behind him, each carrying little more than a small bag of personal effects. Daniel knew that although the Apocalypse would receive top priority for repairs, her damage was extensive and would probably take over 48 hours to repair completely, 48 hours that seemed like an eternity with the faceless Lucani Ibron still wandering the stars in search of the Apocalypse. It was only a matter of time before they either found them, or, even worse, decided to ignore them to concentrate on obliterating Earth.

The inside of the domed spacedock was a chaos of men and machines, as techs scrambled to work on the plethora of wounded vessels and repair droids carried supplies, welded metals, and diagnosed electrical problems. The interior of the spacedock was a large, rounded room, with a high domed ceiling that arched upward to an apex 50 meters in the air. Airlocks and access ports ringed the structure, where as many ships as could fit were tethered around the circumference of the station. The center of the room was dominated by four enormous elevator tubes that served to transport materials from the supply rooms below.

Sidling up to the Admiral unnoticed amidst the chaos, a tall man in a casual tech uniform offered Daniel his hand.

“Hello, Admiral,” he began, speaking quickly. “I’m Devorak Lipinski, and I’m pretty much in charge here.” He turned to look at the chaos behind him and added, “If you can rightfully say anyone is in charge of this mess.”

“I’m sure it looks more unorganized than it actually is,” Daniel offered.

Devorak smiled. “Yes, and I can assure you, Admiral, that the Apocalypse will receive our highest priority and my own personal attention. You have my word on it. Now, if you would excuse me, a transport is waiting to take you down to Earth. You will of course be notified the instant the repairs are complete.”

“Thank you,” replied the Admiral, but before he could continue, Devorak had already nodded and begun on his way.

“Looks like he has everything under control,” remarked Anastasia from beside him as they wended their way to the airlock at which the transport was waiting. “But what are we supposed to do while we wait for the repairs?”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll keep busy, Anastasia,” he said, entering the airlock. “There is much I plan to find out in the next couple of days.”

• • •

As the bulky transport descended toward the landing pad, Daniel sedately realized that this was the first time in recent memory that he was arriving at the ConFedCom Capitol building when he was not in some sort of trouble. He fingered a key on his nanocomputer, completing a transmission, and realized that his good status would not last for long.

After the ship had landed and discharged its passengers, a small group of men bounded toward the landing platform.

“Admiral Atgard,” called the lead man cheerfully. “Admiral Atgard, I would like to thank you on behalf of—”

“Where is the President?” Daniel asked, cutting off the man, whose jaw hung open in surprise at the affront. Daniel was simply not in the mood to be thanked.

“Well, he–he’s meeting with the Command Committee,” the man stammered. “But I’m sure he wants to thank you personally just as soon as—”

“Thank you,” said the Admiral, and with that, he walked past the man toward the tall Capitol building.

Anastasia hurried to follow him. “Who was that?” she asked.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Daniel responded. “I need to talk to Stadler now.”

Anastasia smirked ominously. “I don’t want to miss that.”

Walking wordlessly past the guards, Daniel entered the waiting transport tube and punched the button for the Central Meeting Hall, which was only a few floors beneath the surface. The transport tube descended quickly, and Daniel stepped out and was met by a well-guarded pair of thick wooden double doors.

Daniel simply began to walk past the guards, one of whom stepped in his path. “I’m sorry, Admiral, but there is a meeting in session. I can’t let you through just yet.”

“Then shoot me,” Daniel replied sardonically, brushing past the guard and violently throwing open both heavy doors.

The murmur of conversation in the meeting room hushed instantly as Daniel and Anastasia entered. Seated behind a podium at the head of the room was President Stadler. The guard followed them in, apologizing. “I’m sorry, Mr. President—they just burst through …”

The President dismissed the guard with an absent wave of his hand. “That’s alright. We all owe the Admiral a debt of gratitude. Daniel, I—”

“Screw my debt of gratitude,” shot the Admiral furiously. “Just tell me—did you know?”

“Know? Know what?” stammered the President. “Daniel, I realize you seem to be very upset, but—”

“If you realized how upset I was, you would answer my question,” was the Admiral’s icy reply.

“Perhaps we could speak in private?” asked the President.

Silently agreeing, the Admiral walked toward President Stadler, who led him and Anastasia through a doorway and into a private meeting room adjacent to the large meeting hall.

“Now, Daniel, I am grateful for your fine work, but this is simply uncalled for,” Stadler began. “What could be so urgent as to interrupt me in the middle of a meeting with the Command Committee?”

Daniel reached into his pocket and produced a data disc. “Play it,” he ordered.

William looked at the Admiral quizzically. “Very well, Daniel. I hope it’s important.”

The Admiral’s fists clenched.

Walking over to a computer unit on the wall, Stadler inserted the data disc, causing the computer to project a two-dimensional picture into the air before them.

The image was that of the bridge of the Indomitable, and as Stadler watched the tape, Daniel carefully watched him.

“So you knew,” Daniel said as soon as the recording was complete. “You bastard.”

“Yes, Daniel, I knew. But before you judge me, please remember I was 33 years old when this occurred. I had not even entered politics yet. I am no more guilty for this than you yourself are.”

Daniel’s anger was immense, but he grudgingly realized that the President did have a point, and that it was unfair for Daniel to levy his anger against him simply because he was in charge now.

“So what’s the story?” Anastasia asked. “Was this the plan all along? Or was Cole acting on his own?”

Stadler laughed, a laugh of nervousness, not humor. “I don’t know. I doubt anyone knows. But clearly you see why the truth can not be told?”

“All I see is that we are responsible for the murder of the entire Korgian race,” impugned the Admiral.

“So what are we supposed to do about it now?” shot the President, raising his voice several decibels. “Tell everyone and incite mass chaos and revolt? Lay down and let the Vr’amil’een or the Lucani Ibron destroy us? Tell me, Admiral—what would you have us do about it now?”

“The truth must be told, William. We owe the Korgians at least that much.”

“Will that bring them back? Will that help anything? Would that make you sleep any better at night? And would that be worth the anarchy it would bring?”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil,” countered the Admiral, “is for good men to do nothing.”

William sighed heavily. “Edmund Burke.”

“Yes,” replied the Admiral. “And he knew then what I know now: it had to be told. It had to be told to ensure that it could never happen again.”

The President opened his mouth, but froze. “Had to be told?” he repeated.

“Turn on the newsgrids,” Daniel replied casually, “and see for yourself.”

“You idiot,” said the President weakly, slumping into a chair. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“Yes, William,” Daniel replied. “I do.”

• • •

Daniel and Anastasia walked directly from the ConFedCom Capitol building to a waiting aircar. Wordlessly, Daniel opened the gull-wing door, holding it open for Anastasia to enter. As soon as they were inside and the door had closed, the aircar began to accelerate.

“Good work, Ryan,” said the Admiral, settling into the memory-gel rear seat cushion. “Did you find anything?”

“All I could find was Le Jaunte’s home address and a little background,” Taylor replied. “Since the truth about Le Jaunte has become known, ConFedCom has made any information pertaining to him Top Secret.” Ryan slowed the aircar as it approached one of the security gates ringing the Capitol. “Oh, and, as an added bonus,” he added sarcastically, “his house is now being guarded around the clock.”

“Great,” muttered Anastasia.

“So what were you able to dig up?” asked the Admiral.

“Not much, sir. It seems he lived alone at a house near Norfolk, Virginia, and has no known living relatives.”

“Interesting,” mused the Admiral. “No relatives? How convenient.”

Though the aircar, now through the security checkpoint, was traveling at a fair speed, faster than the normal flow of traffic, the Admiral could not help but feel as if the pedestrian civilian transport was plodding interminably toward their destination.

“Computer: activate,” commanded the Admiral, and a section of the seatback in front of him slid away to reveal a flat display screen. Daniel’s hands flashed through the air, the screen’s sensors interpreting the movements and carrying out the Admiral’s directives.

“It seems as if, as an ancillary benefit, the Indomitable news story and its reaction has preoccupied the Military Police for us,” began the Admiral, “which is good, inasmuch as there will be that many fewer MPs there to arrest us when we break into Le Jaunte’s house.”

“That is fantastic,” shot Anastasia wryly.

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the MPs,” Taylor predicted. “You see, according to their duty log, his house is already guarded by three people.”

“And that is good for us because … ?” prompted Anastasia.

“Well, the three people assigned to guard it for the next six hours are Ryan Taylor, Anastasia Mason, and Daniel Atgard.”

“So much for doing this covertly,” Anastasia lamented.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Ryan explained, “the odds of them not finding some evidence of our presence there are just slightly worse than zero percent. Besides,” he added, “the two of you are tagged. They’d be able to trace you there anyway.”

“He’s right,” agreed the Admiral, though he did mildly object to the word “tagged” as used in reference to his locator implant.

“Is all this really necessary anyway?” asked Commander Mason. “Wouldn’t the guards let us in?”

“Well, they do tend to look down on unauthorized investigations, especially of Top Secret areas. But our main problem,” explained the Admiral, “is that Stadler will be looking for any excuse he can find to bury me after that little news story stunt I just pulled.”

“Yeah,” chuckled Anastasia, “you should have seen his face, Ryan.” She looked toward Daniel, shaking her head. “Boy, was he pissed.”

• • •

The aircar descended quickly, alighting in a field adjacent to a nondescript house. There were no other structures that could be seen from the ground in any direction, and no roads—dirt, paved, or otherwise—led to the isolated domicile.

“Just the type of place I could see Le Jaunte living,” muttered Anastasia.

The three of them exited the aircar and started toward the house, walking past an MP vehicle parked on a small gravel landing pad of sorts. As Ryan had predicted, three MPs waited for them at the door, ready to be relieved from their posts. At the Admiral’s approach, they each stiffened into a rigid military salute.

“At ease, gentlemen,” said Daniel casually, returning their salutes. “We’ll take it from here.”

Two of the guards immediately turned to walk away, clearly cowed by the Admiral’s rank and prestige. The third guard, however, hesitated, calling forth the gumption to question the Admiral’s authority. “Um, you’re here to relieve us, sir?” he asked.

“That’s right, Sergeant,” he declared, adding just the right touch of mild annoyance to his voice. “That’s what it says on the duty roster, doesn’t it?”

The nervous Sergeant fumbled with his nanocomputer. “Yes–yes, sir, it does. But that’s not what it said this morning … sir. If I’m not mistaken.”

“Have you ever seen a duty roster changed at the last minute, Sergeant?” asked the Admiral rhetorically, subtly raising his voice and strengthening his tone. He stared unblinkingly at the soldier.

“Well … yes, of course, sir,” he replied, his confidence clearly wavering in the face of Daniel’s puissant demeanor. Abruptly, he straightened himself up to his full height. “But I’ve never been relieved by an Admiral, sir.” The other two guards stood idly, clearly unwilling to intervene in the confrontation.

Daniel retorted without missing a beat, his voice still gaining strength and authority. “If you had the requisite security clearance, perhaps I could inform you of the situation,” he said, his eyes widening dramatically. “However, I have neither the need nor the inclination to explain myself to you. Now, if you need to check up on my orders with your supervisor personally, you can go do that. But right now, you are relieved, Sergeant, and you are to vacate this area immediately if you wish to avoid being court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and arrested. Have I made myself clear?”

Though, physically, he was not overly daunting, when Daniel wanted to be, he was as intimidating a presence as a pack of enraged Vamalians. Even were he not dressed in full military uniform, there would have been little doubt that he was a man of great authority, and when he raised his voice and stared into the virgin eyes of a young soldier such as this one, it was almost as if he were using some form of hypnosis against the hapless youth.

“Yes, sir. Crystal clear,” replied the Sergeant belatedly, trying to save face. “I just wanted to make sure I followed proper protocol to ensure there was not a mistake, sir.”

Daniel’s tone relaxed noticeably. “I understand, soldier. We would not want to dismiss protocol, after all.”

With that, the Sergeant saluted, and he and his two subordinates, clearly glad to leave, walked to their MP vehicle and took off.

“How do you do that?” laughed Anastasia after the aircar was out of sight.

Daniel’s eyebrow elevated subtly. “Those whose minds are weak are easy to control.”

CHAPTER 21

Once the departing MP vehicle was out of sight, Ryan immediately turned his attention to the front door. Ryan extended his arm, allowing his nanocomputer to scan the doorknob for skin cells or other bodily residue that would allow them to cross-check Le Jaunte’s DNA. After a few moments of scanning, the computer beeped affirmatively and Ryan retracted his arm to study its tiny screen. His eyes narrowed, as if he did not want to see what he knew was coming. A few seconds later, he closed his eyes completely, despondently releasing the breath he had been holding.

The Admiral knew that what he had found was not good. “What is it?” he asked.

Ryan took a deep breath, steeling himself as he began. “Back when I worked on the IMP, we wanted to test the implants on a broad spectrum of candidates—men and women, young and old, and, most importantly, intelligent and stupid.”

“So Le Jaunte was one of the original IMP subjects?” prompted Anastasia.

“Yes, yes, according to his DNA, he was. But I did not know him as Pierre Le Jaunte then. We only knew him as a number: X-222.7. It was only later that I learned his name. At that time, his name was Damian Savage.”

“But you’re sure it’s the same person?” asked the Admiral.

“Yes, sir. The DNA doesn’t lie, and I checked it against my personal records, not the official ones that he might have changed.” Ryan nervously ran his fingers over his bald head. “But, you see, sir, X-222.7 was not simply an average candidate. He was the smartest subject we could find, with intelligence tests off the scale. However,” he lamented, looking downwards, “his psychological profile was borderline at best, but certain … concessions … were made in order to facilitate his acceptance as a candidate.”

“I see,” said the Admiral.

“And, as you know, sir, the most intelligent subjects were the ones who fared the best.” He paused for a long moment and slowly shook his head. “Relatively speaking.”

“But I thought all the subjects—even the more intelligent ones—went insane and eventually died, right?” asked Anastasia.

“Well,” Ryan began, “they all certainly did go insane. But it seems the records have been altered somehow, because, clearly, Le Jaunte is far from dead.”

“With the power of his implant, it would have been easy for Le Jaunte to fake his own death, change the records, and give himself a new identity.” Daniel sighed heavily. “And God knows what else that madman could do, how he’s modified himself since then. Everything’s networked, so he has a direct cerebral connection to basically every computer in the sector.”

“Which means,” Ryan concluded, “that Le Jaunte is all but omnipotent.”

• • •

The front door opened into a small foyer. The walls were decorated with replicas of classical artwork, and lush potted plants occupied each corner of the room. Arched doorways in the center of each wall were framed by rich wood moldings, contrasting against the pastel floral-printed wallpaper. All in all, it was one of the most cozy, inviting rooms the Admiral could ever remember seeing.

“Something’s wrong,” he declared.

Ryan looked at him quizzically, but apparently Anastasia had also noticed something was amiss. “No known relatives, eh? This room definitely has a woman’s touch.”

“Maybe he just has good taste?” offered Ryan diplomatically.

Daniel and Anastasia exchanged glances.

“This,” said Daniel, gesturing about the perimeter of the room, “was not done by Le Jaunte.”

“Maybe he hired a decorator?” Ryan offered again.

“Yeah, maybe,” he replied absently, but it was clear the Admiral was not convinced.

“Well,” said Anastasia, “I guess we might as well split up and search the place.”

Admiral Atgard nodded his assent and walked through the archway directly before him as Ryan and Anastasia each chose directions of their own. Daniel’s archway opened into a neat sitting room, where perfectly-matched teal leather sofas and chairs were arranged in a comfortable semicircle, facing a full-wall flat panel display that currently depicted an imaginary, though convincing, image of an exotic fish tank. Hanging plants again decorated the corners of the room, and several walls contained glass-covered recesses that held various statuettes and small sculptures.

As Daniel turned to walk through another doorway on the room’s far wall, he caught a glimpse of a reflection on one of the niches’ glass surfaces. Spinning to find where the reflection had come from, his eyes finally narrowed on a recess on the wall beside him. The Admiral walked to the display case, opening the glass door, and reached in to grasp the sculpture it held. He looked at the piece, an exquisitely detailed abstract representation of the evolution of man, and tried to remember where he had seen it before. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers along the sculpture’s soft contours, his fingers remembering the unique shape and feel of the piece.

And suddenly it hit him. Daniel remembered where he had seen the sculpture before.

“Ryan, Anastasia, get in here.”

When they arrived, Daniel was standing in the center of the room, slowly pivoting, his outstretched nanocomputer performing a video capture of the perimeter of the room.

“What is it?” asked Anastasia, walking to him as he completed his rotation.

“Doesn’t this whole house look somehow … familiar?” he asked absently, keying in a command on his nanocomputer. “Don’t you have a strange feeling you’ve seen it before somewhere?”

“Well, I had kinda noticed it seemed sort of familiar,” she replied, thinking. “But I thought it was just because it was so cozy.”

“Cozy and antiseptic,” Ryan interjected. “Sir, other than the outer doorknob, I have yet to find a single fingerprint, hair follicle, or speck of dust in this whole house.”

“That’s because he doesn’t actually live up here, Ryan,” replied the Admiral, still staring at his nanocomputer. Finally looking up, his face contorted into a wide grin.

“But I made sure to check the logs on his locator beacon, sir. He spent a great deal of time here.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” mused the Admiral. “But he doesn’t live here. Not in the sections of the house we’ve seen.”

“It sure seems like he went through an awful lot of trouble to decorate a house he doesn’t actually live in,” Anastasia said.

“But he didn’t go through any trouble at all, Ana,” said Daniel as he keyed a button on his nanocomputer, causing it to project a display into the air. “I remember where I’ve seen all this before, and you probably do also.”

Anastasia stared at the display, and she, too, smiled in recognition.

Noticing Ryan’s confusion, Daniel explained. “You see, Ryan, this house is actually simply an exact, inch for inch replica of the Emperor’s Palace on Traxil IX, and not one thing is so much as a micrometer out of place. Neither Le Jaunte nor anyone else actually lives here.”

“But the locator—” Ryan began.

“If the locator said he was here, but he doesn’t actually live in this area …” prompted the Admiral.

Anastasia picked up on where he was going. “Then he must live underneath this structure.”

The Admiral nodded. “Alright, then. Let’s start looking for a way down.”

• • •

“Found it!”

Daniel and Anastasia rushed to the sound of Ryan’s voice, finding the engineer kneeling in a corner of one of the bedrooms of the house.

“I finally found a few more of Le Jaunte’s skin cells in this room, sir, so I performed a thorough scan. The computer found minute stress fractures in the floorboard of this corner,” Ryan explained, studying the floor where he had already ripped up the carpet. “They indicate an uneven distribution of force consistent with a non-load-bearing opening or trap door.”

“Excellent,” replied the Admiral. “Now how do we open it?”

“Well, sir, it won’t be easy,” he replied, scanning the area with his nanocomputer. “It’s magnetically and hermetically sealed. The lock is computer controlled, and appears to use a fractal code matrix with 1,024 kilobit encryption.”

Daniel nodded, and as he did, the hairs on the back of his neck began to tingle and a sudden shiver ran through him. He had the unmistakable feeling that he was being watched. Reflexively, Daniel looked above him, and noticed that the slowly-spinning ceiling fan had begun to wobble precariously.

“Look out!” he yelled, diving at Anastasia and tackling her onto the bed just seconds before the ceiling fan came crashing down, impacting on the edge of the bed and falling to the floor with a resounding crash.

“Everyone okay?” asked the Admiral, getting off Anastasia and helping her to her feet.

“I’m fine, Admiral,” Ryan replied, surveying the damage the fallen fan had caused. “That was one heavy fan.”

“And one unfortunate coincidence,” Anastasia grumbled. “One would almost think that was somehow done intentionally.”

“Yes,” mused the Admiral, warily looking around the room. “One would almost think.”

• • •

While Ryan worked on the electronic combination, Daniel and Anastasia searched the remainder of the house, using their nanocomputers to compare video captures of the various rooms to the schematics of the Emperor’s Palace, but not a single thing was found to be out of place. Indeed, it seemed Le Jaunte had somehow made an exact duplicate of the Palace, which the Admiral remembered visiting for a diplomatic function several years ago. Daniel, the more he thought about it, recalled being notably impressed by the Palace, which was suitably famous for its award-winning interior design.

As they were concluding their last sweep of the last bedroom, Anastasia flopped down on the bed lethargically. “Dan, I think I need to lie down for a bit. I suddenly feel a bit lightheaded.”

While Daniel thought it was odd that Anastasia would have so suddenly run out of energy, what he found even more odd was that he himself had just experienced the same feeling.

A wave of drowsiness passed over the Admiral, and he nearly lost his footing, catching himself on a nightstand near the bed. “Something … in the air,” he gasped, struggling to retain consciousness.

He looked down to the nightstand, abruptly realizing that he had lost the capacity to see color. As he watched, his field of vision narrowed into a small circle.

With the last of his strength, the Admiral clutched a decorative ashtray on the nightstand near his hand. Spinning to his left, in one desperate motion, Daniel heaved the ashtray through the bedroom window and simply collapsed on the bed beside Anastasia, who had passed out several seconds before.

• • •

Daniel’s eyelids fluttered as he awoke, groggily finding that he lacked the strength to rise from his unceremonious position on the bed. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with much-needed oxygen, and finally realized that Ryan was standing over him.

“You okay, sir?” he asked. “Don’t inhale too much too fast. I’ve brought the oxygen levels up to 28 percent.”

“What happened?” asked the Admiral as his brain slowly began to function again. “Where’s Ana-?” He looked over to find Anastasia slowly awakening as well.

“The oxygen in the house was replaced by carbon monoxide,” Ryan explained. “Simple, but quite effective. It’s a damned good thing you broke that window before you passed out, sir.”

Belatedly, the Admiral remembered what Ryan had said. “You raised the oxygen levels, Ryan?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, helping the Admiral to his feet. “I cracked the combination just as the air started to change. Luckily I realized what was going on and I went to the control room and changed it back.” Catching himself, Ryan appended, “Oh, yeah—you had better come see this, sir.”

The two of them helped Anastasia to her feet, and, after a few more lungfuls of air, they went back to the bedroom where the trap door was located.

When they entered, they could see that a metal hatch in the floor had been propped open in the far corner of the room. “It’s down here, Admiral,” Ryan explained, motioning toward the trap door. “Don’t worry—I deactivated the rest of the traps and security measures in place.”

Ryan led the way as the three of them descended down the hatch on a metal staircase that led to a dim basement. As far as the Admiral could tell, the walls and floor of the room were all made of metal. Along the far wall, a group of multicolored status lights peered at them through the darkness.

As the Admiral’s eyes adjusted, he could see that the entire room was ringed with massive mainframe supercomputers, and that a single metallic chair sat before the main display area along the far wall. The chair’s back rose up to include a hemispherical cap fitted with what Daniel surmised was a port used to directly connect to the processor implanted within Le Jaunte’s skull. An involuntary shiver ran down the Admiral’s spine—Le Jaunte appeared to be more machine than man.

“Look at all this stuff,” gasped Anastasia. “You could run the whole sector with all this computing power.”

“Pretty damned close, anyway,” agreed Ryan solemnly. “He has some serious computers here, sir. Some of them are more advanced than I’ve ever seen.”

Daniel slowly walked over to the display along the far wall. As he approached, the holo-vid projector embedded in the display flashed to life, projecting an image in the air before him. The image was Le Jaunte’s face, grotesquely exaggerated in size, and sporting a bright artificial halo reminiscent of a work of Renaissance art.

Predictably, the face contorted into a revolting smirk. “Ah, my good Admiral,” it began. “I see we meet again.”

Daniel turned to Ryan. “Is this an automated—”

“No, no, mon amie,” the projection replied, sounding quite disappointed. “It is me, your old, old friend. In my purest form.”

“We know what you are,” shot Anastasia. “You monster.”

“Quite the contrary, my dear Commander Mason. I am what all humans will eventually evolve to become.”

“You are not an evolution, Pierre,” countered the Admiral. “You are a mutation.”

Le Jaunte rolled his enormous eyes. “Semantics.”

“It’s over, Pierre,” Daniel said. “The Armada has been defeated. You’ve lost again.”

“Ah, but it’s not; it’s not, my friend. It has only just begun.”

Daniel remained silent, waiting for Le Jaunte to play his hand, as he knew full well his arrogance would not allow him to keep his plans to himself. After all, to an egomaniac like Le Jaunte, his genius was nothing if it had no audience.

“Don’t you understand, Daniel,” he began, “that I can never be defeated? Thanks to the marvels of technology you see around you, my consciousness can reach out to you from across the galaxy. And my influence can reach anywhere—into the Galactic Bank files, into confidential records and communications, into the internal monitoring system of the Confederation Command room. I know all, dear Admiral, and as you well know, knowledge is power.”

“Yes, knowledge is power,” Daniel agreed. “And power corrupts.”

“But surely you see, don’t you, Daniel?” Le Jaunte chided, ignoring his words. “It is my place to rule. It is my right. Even Plato knew it, three thousand years ago—you’ve read the Republic, Admiral: ‘In the perfect State … the best philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings.’ Don’t you see? I am destined to rule. I am invincible! I am more than a man.” His voice boomed dramatically. “I am a God!”

“You’re insane,” muttered Anastasia.

The eyes of the projection flashed an angry crimson. “I heard that,” the sepulchral voice roared.

Peripherally, Daniel noticed a small turret had appeared from the wall behind the projection, swiveling to face Anastasia. “Ana, look out!”

But it was too late. Briefly illuminating the room, a beam of light streaked toward Anastasia, catching her squarely in the chest. She gasped softly, and slumped to the ground, unconscious.

“Bastard!” yelled Daniel, spinning back to face Le Jaunte, wary of the unseen lasers surely targeted on him at that very moment. “It’s me you want! It’s always been me!”

“Yes, yes, mon amie,” Le Jaunte replied, his eyes returning to their normal brown color. “You are correct. It has always been you, stymieing me every step of the way, getting in the way, causing trouble. It has always been you.” The face grew even larger in size. “But no longer.”

“Wait!” yelled Ryan, bent over Anastasia’s motionless body.

“For what?” scoffed Le Jaunte.

“You don’t know everything, do you, Le Jaunte? You’re not invincible. You’ve been beaten. I saw you lose, and so did most of the galaxy.” Ryan looked at the Admiral, and Daniel saw something he could not quite put his finger on in his deep eyes.

“That was a fluke!” Le Jaunte shrieked, livid.

“It was no fluke, Pierre,” replied Daniel calmly, staring into the nebulous eyes of the holo-vid projection. Even after all these years, Le Jaunte could not accept his defeat in the Galactic Tactical Competition. And, though it was originally intended to be held every four years, ConFedCom had belatedly decided to cancel the event due to the apparent opportunity for its enemies to use the simulations to their own advantage in actual combat. As such, Le Jaunte had never had a chance at a rematch, and the loss clearly haunted him still, a fact Daniel fully intended to take advantage of. “Wouldn’t you like to know how I did it?”

“There was a trick, wasn’t there?” Le Jaunte yelled. “I knew it! I knew I could never have been defeated fairly!”

“Yes, Pierre,” replied the Admiral, flashing a glance toward Ryan, hoping he understood the crafty Engineer’s plan. “There was a trick. And I want you to know what it is before you kill me.”

“Tell me!” he screamed, the hologram distorting fiendishly. The halo around Le Jaunte’s head had turned a malevolent scarlet.

“Even better,” replied Daniel, trying not to smile. “I’ll show you. Ryan, send it to him.”

“Yes, send it, little engineer,” he replied. “Now I can finally clear my name in the eyes of my followers.”

Daniel nodded and Ryan keyed the transmission from his nanocomputer. An invisible stream of data flowed through the air toward Le Jaunte’s mainframe.

The holo-vid projection flickered momentarily, its focus wavering slightly. The expression on Le Jaunte’s face was one of consternation. “What … is … this?” he asked, his eyes darting wildly from side to side. “Wh–what … are … you …” The voice weakened as it spoke, and finally cut out altogether.

A loud crackling began to emanate from the mainframe, and the projection flickered in and out, horribly distorted. Le Jaunte’s voice could barely be heard over the noise. “Seventeen cubed plus 29 cubed … error. Seventeen cubed plus 30 cubed … error.”

“Admiral,” prompted Ryan. “I think we should get out of here.”

Daniel took one last look at Le Jaunte’s image, horribly mutilated by the failing holo-vid projector. Just before the image flickered out completely, one last, piteous wail emanated from Le Jaunte’s mouth.

Ryan grabbed Anastasia’s limp body and they ran up the stairway, bounding out of the bedroom and down the hallway to the foyer. Daniel threw open the front door and rushed onto the lawn as Ryan followed a few steps behind him.

From behind them, there was a great explosion as the house erupted into a ball of flame. The force of the blast threw both men to their knees, but Ryan held Anastasia firmly.

Daniel turned back toward where the house had been. All that remained was a deep crater, black and empty. A thick plume of black smoke snaked into the evening sky, and in the distance, Daniel could see a swarm of MP aircars converging on the scene.

CHAPTER 22

Though they had thankfully spared him the indignity of restraining and arresting him, the MPs had insisted upon taking the Admiral back to see Stadler once again. Daniel, Ryan, and Anastasia sat placidly in the back of the MP car, and, though there were no windows in the rear of the vehicle, Daniel could tell from the angle of the light streaming through a small slit in the dividing wall that they were not heading back to Washington, D.C.

“Where are we going?” he asked into the slit. Anastasia looked at him quizzically; apparently she hadn’t noticed the deviation in her groggy condition.

A gruff voice returned to him from the front of the aircar. “I told you—we’re going to see Stadler.”

Daniel’s brow furrowed as he thought for a moment, finally remembering that Stadler’s vacation home was in the direction they were traveling. The aircar began to descend, and the Admiral checked his position through his nanocomputer, finding that they were indeed almost at Stadler’s home in Martha’s Vineyard.

The vehicle made a rough landing and, a few moments later, the rear doors opened, streaming sunlight into the car and momentarily blinding its occupants. As Daniel moved toward the open doors, he could make out the shapes of several additional guards waiting outside.

Daniel stepped out of the aircar into the brisk Massachusetts air. The sound of waves crashing against the shore caused him to turn to his right to see the orange sun, low over the water, casting a reflection of itself into the ocean’s mirrored surface. To his left was the President’s home, classical in design and impeccably maintained. Creeping vines covered the second-story walls, and several large windows were open, revealing white curtains that floated ethereally upon the soothing breeze.

“Let’s go, Admiral,” instructed one of the guards, and as he began to follow him toward the house, he noticed that the guards were not allowing Ryan or Anastasia to follow.

“Can’t they at least wait inside?” asked the Admiral, looking toward the guard who appeared to be in charge. “They might need to use the facilities, you know.”

The lead guard pondered for a second. “Very well,” he agreed, and Ryan and Anastasia were led toward the house as well.

Stepping between another pair of guards, Daniel entered the front door, and the guard nearest him pointed toward a spiral staircase against the left wall. The Admiral wordlessly ascended the staircase, glancing around the house as he did. Tall white pillars reached to the two-story ceiling, and the entire floor, including the ornate staircase, was fashioned of glistening white marble. Wooden sconces along the walls held small ivy plants, which looked like tame versions of their larger siblings that enshrouded the walls on the house’s exterior. While the decorations were not quite as perfect as those in Le Jaunte’s “home,” the fact that this house was authentic made it far more impressive.

When he reached the top of the staircase, Daniel was surprised to find Stadler himself waiting for him in the hallway. “Please, Admiral,” he began, “why don’t you join me for a drink?” Stadler motioned toward a nearby doorway.

Taken aback by the President’s warm reception, Daniel bowed his head ever so slightly and walked past William into the room. As he walked through the doorway, he was greeted by a comfortable sitting room, average in size and sporting several animal-head trophies decorating the dark wood walls. Two brown leather sofas faced each other in the room’s center, and a wooden bar and pool table adorned the far side of the room.

Stadler closed the door behind him as he followed the Admiral through, gesturing toward the near couch. “Please, do sit down. What can I get you to drink?”

“Ice water will be fine, thank you,” said the Admiral, settling into one of the couch’s plush cushions. “I don’t drink.”

The President’s left eyebrow elevated subtly. “Very well. I, however, think I need a scotch.”

William walked to the bar and silently poured the drinks, handing one glass to the Admiral and taking a hearty sip from his own before he sat down on the sofa opposite Daniel. He stared at him for a moment across an oak coffee table that separated the two couches. “Was your trip to Norfolk fun, Admiral?”

“I wouldn’t exactly use the term ‘fun,’ William. How about ‘productive?’”

William took another sip from his glass. “Oh? How so?”

The Admiral shrugged. “Well, we killed Le Jaunte.”

In mid-sip, Stadler nearly choked on his drink, catching himself just before he unceremoniously spat it back out. Swallowing hard, he asked, “You did what?”

“You should have seen the mainframes he had hidden under that place,” the Admiral added. “He wasn’t finished with his plan by a long shot.”

“I would have liked to see them, Daniel,” Stadler retorted, “but you blew the damned place up.” Surprisingly, a smile formed on Stadler’s lips, and his words were without malice.

“Le Jaunte was a sick, sick, man,” Daniel continued, resting his glass on the table. “Have you heard of the IMP?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Le Jaunte was one of the IMP’s original subjects.”

Stadler’s brow furrowed. “But that’s impossible.”

“Nonetheless,” replied the Admiral, “it is true. He faked his own death after he went insane and created a new identity for himself, but his insanity only grew.”

Stadler was silent for a moment as he contemplated the news. “It does make sense, actually. The cold brilliance, the arrogance—that bastard. How did you kill him?”

“Actually, sir, Engineer Ryan Taylor deserves all the credit. He gave Le Jaunte a virus.”

“A virus?”

“A computer virus. It was quite simple, really, and quite elegant, I thought.”

“How so?”

“All he did was write a small program that forced Le Jaunte to do nothing until he solved a simple equation.”

“But you said he had several mainframes at his disposal,” asked the President, clearly confused. “What was the equation?”

“x ^ n + y ^ n = z ^ n, where n is greater than two.”

“But that equation is impossible. It has no solution,” said the President, realizing as he said it that that was the point.

“In effect,” Daniel explained, “that directive caused him to ignore all other functions, such as breathing, until he died.” He paused a moment before adding, “If you could call what he was ‘alive.’”

A tight smile formed on the President’s lips. “Brilliant.”

“Yes, well, now all we have to worry about are those pesky Lucani Ibron.” The Admiral put a hearty dose of feigned jubilation in his voice.

“Do you have a plan, Daniel?” asked Stadler, turning very serious.

“If past experience holds true, we have another day or two until they return. In the meantime, while my ship is repaired, Nathan is working on a way to track them more accurately. I plan to intercept them in an uninhabited system and destroy them using whatever means necessary.”

Stadler leaned forward. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

Daniel reached for his glass and took a long swig. “It means I’m going to annihilate those bastards.”

William nodded solemnly. “Good luck, Daniel. I’m afraid you’re our last hope. The Vr’amil’een damaged the Fleet pretty well, and, from what you told me in your report, conventional weapons had no effect on them anyway.”

There was a short, but uncomfortable silence. Daniel tacitly measured Stadler, the deep scar that ran the length of the President’s face a silent reminder that, at one time, Stadler was a fighter pilot like himself. As such, he surely understood Daniel’s independent, take-charge attitude, at least at one time if not now. The Admiral, however, was not sure if Stadler had come to peace with Daniel’s flamboyant style, or if his attitude was simply being influenced by a few glasses of scotch.

“So,” Daniel began, “now what?”

“Now,” Stadler replied, “you go home to your wife until your ship is ready.” He emptied his glass and put it down. “That’s an order.”

Admiral Atgard looked at him suspiciously. “Are you drunk?”

The President laughed. “No, Daniel, I’m not drunk. But I want you to know that I have a tremendous amount of respect for you. I always have. We don’t always agree exactly, but you always do what you believe to be right, no matter how difficult it might be, and I admire that.” The edge of Stadler’s lip curled upwards. “But I also want you to know, Daniel, that you are a tremendous pain in my ass.”

“I try, sir.”

“But, you know, maybe you were right about releasing the Indomitable tape. Public reaction hasn’t been as bad as I thought. Sure, there are some protests and some people calling for my head and some religious fanatics trying to incite chaos and telling us that we’re all going to hell. But you know how those religious fanatics are, Dan. They tell us that all the time anyway.”

Daniel stifled a chuckle, mostly because he had never known the President to be this candid. He suspected that the scotch had something to do with it, and he suspected the one he had just finished was not his first glass.

“Well, you had probably better get going, since I don’t really want to arrest you. Hell,” he added, “I’ll probably have to give you a damned medal.”

“I don’t need a medal, William. But if you want to give out some medals, there are some members of my crew whom I would enthusiastically recommend.”

“Really?” asked the President. “Which ones?”

Daniel finished his water and, rising to leave, he placed the glass near William’s on the coffee table. “All of them,” he said earnestly. “Every one.”

• • •

Though his visit with the President had gone almost unbelievably smoothly, it had not ended one moment too soon for Daniel Atgard. The President had been gracious enough to provide Ryan, Anastasia, and the Admiral with their own aircars, and, after confirming that the Apocalypse would require at least another 24 hours to repair, Daniel headed straight to Key West.

Tara was, predictably, waiting for him when he landed, as he had called her shortly after leaving the President’s home. The trip, by civilian transport, had taken nearly an hour, a time that seemed like an eternity to the Admiral, a man used to moving at a far faster pace.

“My God, Daniel, you’re all right,” Tara called, running to meet him as he exited the aircar. “I had seen some of the newsgrid footage and that big ship was chasing after your little ship … .”

Daniel chuckled. “I told you not to worry about me in my ‘little ship,’ honey. We whipped that big ship’s ass.”

Tara smiled and embraced him. “It was just very frightening, you know, watching those big ships shooting at you. I couldn’t watch.”

Daniel silently cursed the newsgrids, which, through their accursed satellites, were intent upon bringing live coverage of every newsworthy event, especially military actions, right into his wife’s living room. Daniel begrudgingly realized that the media did serve a purpose, after all, but that acknowledgment did little to dilute his present scorn.

Tara released Daniel and looked into his face. “Is this visit just another quickie, or will you be here for a while this time?” He could tell by her tone that she had already expected and accepted the answer she knew to be coming.

“Oh, I’ll be here a while this time,” he joked. “Almost 24 hours.”

Tara flashed him a lopsided grin and shook her head. “Isn’t it time for you to retire, old man?”

Daniel returned her grin. “Not quite yet,” he answered, turning deadly serious. “There’s one more thing I still need to take care of.”

Tara embraced him once again. “How are you so brave? You’re the one going off to fight who-knows-what and I’m the one who’s terrified.”

“You don’t have to be afraid anymore, Tara. I’ll take care of them. I’ll protect you … I promise.”

Tara looked up at him, and Daniel could see her dark eyes had welled with tears. “That’s not what I’m afraid of, Daniel,” she began, her voice cracking as she spoke. “I’m not afraid for me. I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid you saving the galaxy will make me a widow.”

Daniel opened his mouth, but could think of nothing convincing to say. Instead, he simply drew his wife closer to him and did not let her go for some time.

• • •

The beeping of Daniel’s nanocomputer woke him instantly. Since the computer could monitor his biorhythms, and knew not to wake him for normal calls, the incoming transmission must be urgent.

Daniel muted the alarm and slipped out of bed, hoping he had managed not to wake Tara as he did so. He tiptoed softly out of the bedroom, and, closing the door behind him, he keyed for the transmission to begin.

The nanocomputer’s tiny holo-vid emitter projected an image into the air, which quickly coalesced into Nathan’s wrinkled face.

“Admiral,” he began without ceremony, “it is imperative that you return to the Apocalypse right away.”

“What is it, Nathan?” he asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “The ship isn’t even supposed to be ready for another 12 hours.”

“No, sir, it is not, but, as you know, I have been working on perfecting our method of tracking the Lucani Ibron, and I now have a long-range reading on their position.”

The Admiral sighed. “Are they on their way, Nathan? What is their position?”

“Yes, sir,” he explained, “they are. They are currently just over a thousand light years from Earth.”

“Oh,” replied the Admiral, relieved. “So we have some time?”

“Not really, sir,” Nathan warned. “We had better get going as soon as possible.”

It was just like Nathan, Daniel thought, to get overly excited and worried, though they clearly had at least several hours until the Lucani Ibron got anywhere near the Sol System. “Exactly how much time do we have, Nathan?”

“It is hard to say exactly, sir, but if I had to guess …” the Fedoran stroked his wrinkled face with a tentacle as he thought. “About an hour, maybe two.”

The Admiral’s eyes widened dramatically, jolting him fully awake. “Nathan,” he said, trying to speak calmly, “are you telling me that the Lucani Ibron ship can travel one thousand light years in an hour or two?”

“Yes, sir,” Nathan gulped. “In about 90 minutes, the Lucani Ibron will arrive at Earth.”

CHAPTER 23

ConFedCom sent a swift military transport to retrieve the Admiral, and by the time he had hurriedly finished his preparations to leave, it had already arrived, though he did keep it waiting for several minutes while he said good-bye to his wife, quite possibly for the last time.

Transports had also been sent to retrieve the rest of his crew, most of whom had already arrived by the time the Admiral got to the spacedock, scarcely 15 minutes from the time he had left Key West. Waiting for him when he arrived was Devorak Lipinski, who carried the same hurried manner and appeared to be overseeing the same level of chaos as when last the Admiral was there, only 36 hours ago.

“Well, sir, as I said,” Lipinski began, “it would take at least 48 hours to affect full repairs.”

“What is the current status of my ship?” asked the Admiral. Daniel was interested in results, not apologies.

“The good news is that the energy grids and engine cores are completely repaired. Your ship has full power, Admiral.”

“And the bad news?” he prompted.

“The bad news is that we could not complete full repairs on the rear armour plating—atomic armour is tricky stuff. As we speak, our techs are finishing patching it up as well as they can, but hull integrity is back to 100 percent.”

“You said I have full power, Commander? All systems are functional?”

Devorak straightened up. “Yes, sir. Full power. All systems on-line.”

“Excellent,” replied the Admiral. “Thank you, Mr. Lipinski; that will do just fine.”

Lipinski saluted, and the Admiral returned it and walked to his ship. The Commander had done a good job, Daniel thought. In fact, it hardly mattered that the rear armour was less than 100 percent. After all, this time, when they met the Lucani Ibron, running would not be an option.

• • •

Daniel could tell by the vigorous hum of the hyperdrive engines that the Apocalypse was once again traveling at her full speed, rushing headlong into the crosshairs of an invincible ship and its omnipotent weapon.

The Hub was full, save Nathan, who once again remained on the bridge performing last-minute calculations as to the position of the incoming ship. By his last estimate, scarcely 15 minutes remained until the two mighty ships were to intercept each other.

Admiral Atgard was no stranger to this, the proverbial calm before a battle. He was no stranger to his current situation, leading his crew, outmatched and outgunned, against a vastly superior foe. And he was certainly no stranger to the unknown, having ventured further into the depths of space and the far reaches of the galaxy than any man before him.

But what he felt now was different.

Daniel looked to his crew, each of whom sat facing him in absolute silence. He tried to read their faces, but what he saw in them now he had never seen before. Even the seasoned crew of the Apocalypse was now treading on unfamiliar ground.

And so, too, was he, Daniel realized. Never before had he been so unsure—so unsure of what to expect, so unsure of how to proceed, so unsure if the coming hour held victory … or death.

After all, he still had far more questions than answers, or even good guesses. Though he knew what the Arcadians had told him, though he saw some of what the aliens’ mysterious ship could do, though he had seen how useless his own weapons were against them, Daniel still had a complete lack of information about many far more important questions: who were they? Where did they come from? And why were they here?

Though many of his questions were left unanswered, Daniel’s instincts provided him with an answer to one. Without being able to totally explain how he arrived at his conclusion, the Admiral somehow knew this would be the last time he and the Lucani Ibron ship would meet, one way … or the other.

Daniel looked out at his crew once again. His gaze passed to Commander Mason, who stared back into his hazel eyes, her keen glare equally focused on him. Like he himself, he sensed from her a fear—a fear borne not so much of what they knew of their near-hopeless situation, but of what they did not. He could sense, however, that Anastasia, like the rest of the crew, was ready for whatever was about to occur.

“No speeches,” Daniel decided abruptly, stepping away from the podium. “Let’s go kick some ass.”

• • •

Daniel had already run the status checks half a dozen times, and on the seventh, he finally realized that he was just trying to avoid thinking about the Lucani Ibron, now a mere ten minutes away. After all, there was precious little else of use he could think about: the way they had destroyed the Indomitable like it was a defenseless cargo ship; the way his own weapons were useless against them; the way they probably planned to destroy Earth after they were through with the Apocalypse.

Daniel came out of his ruminations to hear Zach finishing a joke. The rest of the crew laughed at its completion, but their laughs were uniformly hollow—sounds made merely to fend off the stifling trepidation that fought to subdue them all.

The display showed that there were no inhabited star systems for parsecs in any direction—only the Apocalypse, the Lucani Ibron ship, and the cold void of interstellar space. The Admiral peered at the display, pitch black save for the green dot of the Apocalypse and the menacing red sphere that represented the approximate location of the alien ship. Daniel stared into the ebony panel, letting his thoughts drift to another time.

Chad was there, in his backyard in Key West, his tiny hands feebly trying to catch the ball Daniel had tossed to him. His hair, then a light brown, caught glints of the brilliant summer sun and looked more like the dirty blond hair he sported as a toddler. Though he had dropped the ball, the look on his face was one of determination—Daniel knew even then that his son possessed the perseverance to work on something until it was mastered.

As Chad picked up the ball and looked back up to his father, however, his aspect changed. His eyes had narrowed, and his small hand had gone to his forehead to shield his delicate eyes. The boy’s mouth cracked open, and he absently let the ball drop from his hands.

Daniel looked behind him, trying to focus on what his son was observing with such awe. Squinting from the harsh sunlight, Daniel could see, just above the horizon, the majestic, hovering form of the Indomitable.

Daniel turned back to his son to find his arm outstretched, half pointing and half reaching for the enormous starship that hovered several thousand kilometers away. Daniel looked back to his face, and saw there the face not of a toddler, but of a young man, a man who had already envisioned his ultimate dream.

“Admiral?”

Anastasia’s voice jolted Daniel out of his reverie. His eyes instinctively flicked to his display, finding that they had nearly reached the red sphere representing the Lucani Ibron ship.

“Let’s take her out of hyperspace,” ordered the Admiral, straightening himself in his command chair. “And prepare the gravity buoy.”

The starlines on the viewscreen slowed, then stopped, finally receding backwards into the points of light they actually were. Nothing else was visible on the screen, and nothing moved in the depths of interstellar space.

“Grav buoy ready, sir.”

“Very good, Dex. Release the buoy. Nathan, move us a few kilometers to starboard,” Daniel directed, “and engage the Quantum Refractor.”

With a muffled thump, the grav buoy shot out the port missile tube and traveled away from the Apocalypse, its dark form merging with the black of space as it receded from view. A few moments later, the stars on the viewscreen shimmered in unison, heralding the cloaking device’s activation.

“Now it’s time to drag them out of hyperspace for a change, eh, Admiral?” asked Zach, his customary cockiness struggling to overcome his fear. “Let’s see how they like it.”

Before he could respond, Nathan spoke up. “Sir,” he reported succinctly, “they are here.”

Daniel trained his eyes on the viewscreen, grimly realizing that only seconds remained before he came face to face with his greatest, most enigmatic enemy for the last time. As he watched, a fast-moving gray glow appeared in the distance, a glow that gradually slowed and coalesced into a single gray sphere. The alien ship, jarred out of hyperspace, sat idly for a moment, and then began slowly moving forward, toward the gravity buoy to the Apocalypse’s left. It casually passed the buoy, its course subtly arcing around behind the Apocalypse. Maintaining its deliberate speed, it continued toward a spot to the rear of the ship, and, as it moved directly behind them, nonchalantly turned toward the cloaked vessel.

“My God,” whispered Daniel, his mouth fixed open in awe. “Those bastards can see us.”

But it was too late. The alien ship had already fired.

• • •

The bolt of energy that coursed through the Apocalypse tossed the ship like a cork rocked by a mighty tidal wave. Daniel felt a strange vibration, and the pinpricks of light on the viewscreen shimmered violently.

They had been decloaked.

Alarm klaxons rang out as the Quantum Refractor, rendered useless by the Lucani Ibron, violently disengaged, leaving Daniel to wonder if there was anything beyond the power of these bizarre aliens. Not only were they able to somehow detect the cloaked Apocalypse, but they were apparently able to decloak them at will. And unless the Admiral did something soon, they would surely destroy the Apocalypse.

“Zach, spin us around,” commanded the Admiral, his eyes narrowing to tiny slits. “Dex, charge the Omega Cannon and prepare to fire.”

“With pleasure, sir.”

Suddenly, the rapidly-darting stars on the viewscreen were replaced by a new image, which soon resolved to show what appeared to be the bridge of a ship. Translucent chairs, seemingly untethered, floated throughout the area, and holographic displays around the perimeter of the room projected indecipherable, swirling patterns into the air. The entire room was bathed in a strong, pure white light, a light that caused Admiral Atgard to raise his hand to his eyes. Within a moment, his pupils had adjusted, and he could see that the chairs—or perhaps receptacles of some sort—were occupied by small luminescent beings, beings whose skin convolved like the outer surface of the ship they occupied. The beings had neither arms nor legs, but were roughly spherical in form, though their shape seemed to be remarkably elastic. Several of the aliens floated around the perimeter of the room, moving as if propelled by an unseen hand. Looking at them, Daniel could not actually tell if they were composed of matter at all, or if they were simply pure energy in motion.

In a chair directly in the center of the viewscreen hovered a being more luminous than the rest, and Daniel thought it seemed slightly larger as well, though it could have simply been an effect of its increased glow. Though it made no outward indication or movement of any kind, it somehow began to speak.

“Humans,” it began, its voice as light and ethereal as the being itself, “you have transgressed. We are here to rectify that transgression. Do not resist us.”

As the being spoke, it slowly dawned on Daniel that it was not actually speaking at all. The words were audible only in his head.

The Admiral looked around, and realized that the rest of his crew had perceived the disembodied voice as well. Nathan and Zach in particular sported looks of pure bewilderment, as if unsure of whether they had actually heard the words or not. Dex’s jaw was clenched in anger, and the look on his face was one of indignation. Anastasia’s eyes, however, were the most complex of all. In them, Daniel sensed an admixture of fear, outrage, and uncertainty, feelings he himself felt in abundance.

“Admiral,” whispered Dex through clenched teeth, “let me cure all their ills.” His finger rested precariously over the fire button.

“But sir,” Nathan interjected, “are you aware that we are well within the blast radius of—”

The Admiral’s determined look made it clear he was indeed aware.

Slowly, deliberately, Daniel turned back to the light-beings on the viewscreen. Though he was not sure they would understand him, he began his belated reply.

“What gives you the right to judge us?” he asked, his words driven by a penetrating anger. “What gives you the right to condemn us to death? What gives you the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner?”

Apparently the light-beings could understand the Admiral’s words, as several of them flickered with increased brightness for several moments. It seemed to the Admiral as if they were communicating amongst themselves.

“We are the guardians of justice in the Universe,” the voice replied, in the same manner as before. “We are those who judge and rectify transgressions against that which is right.”

Daniel rose from his chair and walked purposefully toward the screen. “Then tell me something,” he said, his teeth clenched in anger, “who is it that judges you?”

“We are those who judge and rectify transgressions,” the voice repeated. “And we have found you guilty of mass-murder, dishonesty, vigilantism …” The voice gained a disconcerting strength. “… and genocide.”

The last words echoed in Daniel’s head, reverberating powerfully against the walls of his skull.

“Our day of judgement for that massacre has already come,” Daniel replied, his own voice as powerful as the alien’s. “But today, it is I who have come to bring judgement upon you.”

The alien form brightened noticeably, flickering with intense bursts of light. Daniel could not fight the unfounded suspicion that the light-being was laughing.

“You have come to judge us?” the voice repeated. “That is inconceivable.”

“Then perhaps you can conceive this,” Daniel replied, his voice as icy and unyielding as it had ever been. “I find you guilty of mass-murder. I find you guilty of vigilantism.” His voice dropped several octaves. “I find you guilty of killing my son.”

“You have no right to judge. You can not—” the alien voice protested.

“I can and I will,” declared the Admiral, walking back and taking his seat. “And I hereby sentence you … to death.”

Several of the light-beings flickered spasmodically, clearly perturbed by Daniel’s words. The Admiral, however, did not wait for their reply.

“Fire,” he said, turning to Dex. “This case is dismissed.”

CHAPTER 24

The sonorous hum of electricity immediately permeated the Apocalypse’s bridge, the hum growing more and more intense until the entire ship, now glowing from the energy, literally quivered with power. As the energy levels reached a crescendo, the nose of the ship began an elegant transformation. The four sides of the nose split open and spread apart, like the petals of some effulgent metallic flower, revealing the hollow barrel of a great cannon. Sparks danced along the edges of the cannon as waves of electricity began to course through its hollow barrel. The ubiquitous hum, now almost unbearably loud, suddenly abated, leaving nothing but a very short, but very pervasive silence.

And then it fired.

The effect of the Omega Cannon, though hard to put into words, was truly magnificent. What appeared to be a bubble-shaped distortion emerged from the weapon, moving at high speed toward the Lucani Ibron ship. The anomaly, not itself visible, could only be seen due to its distorting effects on the stars behind it. As it traveled, however, it left in its wake a faint glimmering trail, almost as if it had ripped a crease in space itself.

Within a few seconds, the swift bubble had reached the Lucani Ibron ship, impacting it and immediately spreading around the entire surface of the vessel. The ship’s hull, already spectacular to look at, suddenly appeared even more bizarre, as sparks and peals of energy danced along its circumference, distorting the ship’s very shape into an amorphous, sparkling gray blob.

Tearing his eyes from the death throes of the Lucani Ibron ship, Daniel looked slowly around the bridge, finally locking eyes with Anastasia for the last time. As he gazed at her, however, her face was replaced by that of his wife, safe back on Earth now that the Lucani Ibron were about to be destroyed.

Daniel turned back to the viewscreen to see that from what appeared to be within the alien ship, a great ball of pure white energy had begun to expand rapidly in all directions. As the surging explosion reached the Apocalypse, however, it slowed its frenzied expansion, inexplicably halting for a moment just before time seemed to reverse itself as the ball of light receded back into the alien vessel. There was a blinding white flash, and the Admiral reflexively covered his eyes, not sure if he would ever open them again.

It took several moments for Daniel to realize that he was still alive. Once he had, he shook his head to clear it, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes.

In front of him, the viewscreen, still locked on its previous position, showed the spherical gray form of the Lucani Ibron ship, hovering quiescently, completely unmolested by the awesome blast of the most powerful weapon known to man.

• • •

The mood of Daniel’s crew somehow turned even more deathly somber. It was as if the flash of light had carried with it a dose of stunned disbelief, hopelessness, and despair.

Daniel, however, had a different reaction. The sight of the alien ship, undamaged, served only to strengthen his resolve. While the rest of his crew slumped lifelessly in their seats, Daniel unbuckled his harness and rose to his feet, his face the shape of determination personified. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the Lucani Ibron ship, and, inexplicably, a smile found its way to his lips.

“Alea jacta est,” he said aloud, rhetorically speaking to the alien ship. “The die is cast. Come and get me.”

With that, Daniel punched a key on his console and rocketed the ship into hyperspace, shooting it away from the Lucani Ibron.

As if the aliens had heard him, their ship stretched and shot forward, rocketing into hyperspace after them. And, though they would overtake them soon, that was precisely what Daniel had wanted them to do.

“Zach,” ordered the Admiral. “Change course. Heading 13, mark three. All possible speed.”

“But sir,” gulped Nathan, performing the calculations in his head, “that course will take us dangerously close to the Devil’s Graveyard, will it not?”

“No, Nathan,” replied the Admiral, “it won’t take us close.” The Fedoran breathed a sigh of relief. “It will take us directly into the Devil’s Graveyard.”

Nathan, this time, was right to be concerned. After all, the Devil’s Graveyard was aptly named. It was a stretch of space that, through some mysterious phenomenon, contained a massive concentration of black holes. Very few ships that had entered the Devil’s Graveyard had ever emerged, as there were no maps or accurate charts of the area’s chaotic, wildly-fluctuating gravity wells, wells that had caught more than one unsuspecting ship in their deadly web. Once the first few surveying ships had been lost trying to map the area, ConFedCom had simply given up and declared the entire area off-limits.

Needless to say, the area had never been successfully navigated by a ship moving at faster-than-light speed. In fact, most were fairly sure it was scientifically impossible. To Daniel, of course, the impossible was merely that which had yet to be done.

“What is our ETA, Nathan?” asked the Admiral.

Nathan’s voice sounded even more somber and gloomy than usual. “Ninety seconds, sir.” Daniel could tell that the Fedoran had all but resigned himself to the fact that he was going to die.

“Keep your head up, Nathan. We’re not going to die.” The Admiral retook his seat and added, “Not today.”

Nathan turned back to the Admiral and nodded solemnly, straightening himself in his chair. It was as if the skittish Fedoran had somehow tapped into the Admiral’s own resolve.

Anastasia leaned over in her chair. “Daniel,” she whispered, “do I even want to know?”

Daniel shook his head. “Probably not,” he admitted. “Probably not.”

• • •

The Devil’s Graveyard was dangerously close now, and the Apocalypse was already past the point where most prudent captains would have turned away or at least slowed to sublight speed. Most prudent captains, however, did not have a Lucani Ibron ship chasing after them.

Daniel punched the intercom. “Darren, what is the status of the Quantum Refractor? Was it damaged by the attack?”

“Well, sir,” came his reply, “the positron inducers have been damaged somehow. I really can’t tell if we can still use it or not.” There was a slight pause. “You know, I’ve been around a lot of years, Admiral, but I have to admit I still haven’t got the faintest clue how this thing really works.”

“The ship is closing on us,” Dex interjected. “Sixty seconds to intercept.”

“That should be plenty of time,” replied the Admiral, studying his display.

“Plenty of time for what?” asked Dex. “For us to be destroyed by the Devil’s Graveyard?”

“Well,” the Admiral admitted, “that is a distinct possibility.”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Dan?” asked Anastasia. “I mean, tell me you have a plan.”

“Oh, I have a plan, and it’s a darned good one, too,” replied the Admiral. After a short pause, he added, under his breath, “If it works.”

Anastasia covered her eyes and slowly shook her head.

Daniel keyed the intercom once again. “Darren, prepare to activate the Quantum Refractor, but first I want you to reverse the polarity.”

“S–sir?” Darren stammered, clearly flustered by the request. “You want me to do what?”

“To reverse the polarity of the Quantum Refractor’s output modulator. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Well, sure, sir,” he replied, “I can reverse the polarity of a 12-ton nucleomagnetic drive coil if you wanted me to. The question is: why in the Seventeen Systems would you want me to?”

“I have a hunch,” Daniel replied.

Zach spun around in his seat. “This is your plan? A hunch?”

“The Quantum Refractor vibrates the molecules of the ship in a way that allows them to pass through other matter,” the Admiral explained. “I think that, by modifying the way the molecules vibrate, it may allow the ship to pass through the gravitational fields projected by other matter.”

“An interesting theory,” commented Darren.

“Anyone have any other suggestions?” asked the Admiral. “If so, now is the time.”

“I say we go for it,” said Nathan, far more enthused than the Admiral could ever remember him. The Fedoran looked around for a moment, and in response to the shocked looks he was receiving, he added, “It is not a bad idea, you know. I have calculated a 43 percent probability that the Admiral’s plan will work as he intends.”

“But that’s less than half!” retorted Zach, clearly unconvinced. “How is that logical?”

Nathan shrugged. “Sometimes, one needs to take chances. Logic is not always the answer.” He flashed a look at the Admiral. “Besides, they will never expect it, and I doubt even their advanced instruments can successfully navigate them through the Graveyard.”

The Admiral smiled. “Okay then. Everyone buckle up. Darren, prepare to activate on my mark.”

“You know,” said Anastasia, half-seriously, “I don’t think the restraining harnesses will protect us from a black hole.”

Daniel flashed her a grin and took her hand in his. “Now, Mr. Alexander. Here goes nothing.”

• • •

The Admiral sincerely hoped that the sensation he felt as the Quantum Refractor engaged—in reverse—he would never be forced to endure again. As soon as the device activated, Daniel immediately lost his senses of sight and hearing, leaving him to concentrate on nothing but his overwhelming feelings of nausea, anguish, and unbridled pain.

Though mere words fail to adequately describe the process, Daniel felt as if his body were being literally sucked inside out. Waves of nausea surged through the Admiral as he went through permutations the human body was obviously never intended to endure. Though he doubted the actual process took more than a few seconds, the time passed interminably, and Daniel was not completely sure that time had not somehow slowed for the sole purpose of prolonging his incredible agony.

There were several distinct phases of the experience. Following the initial nauseous agony, there came a powerful force that seemed as if it were trying to rip Daniel’s body apart, atom by atom. At this point, the Admiral was glad he had lost the ability to see, as the pain he felt seemed to indicate that his body was being stretched several times longer than its usual length. In retrospect, Daniel thought this might have been the effect of one of the many black holes.

After that feeling had passed, the initial queasiness returned, though now it was stable and less severe. In addition, Daniel could feel a new vibration, one that threatened to literally shake his body apart.

It took all of Daniel’s concentration to focus on his body, fighting off the devastating effects he was experiencing. He struggled to concentrate only on his left hand, squeezing it against the armrest of his chair. Though his movements felt like some sort of dream, he slid his finger along the armrest console, eventually finding what appeared to be the correct button. With the last of his strength, he pushed it.

And then, everything went black.

CHAPTER 25

When the Admiral regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was pain, a pain that coursed and tingled throughout his body and made his hair stand on end. What he next noticed, as he blinked rapidly to restore his vision, was that Dex was standing over him, gently shaking him awake. A few moments later, his hearing returned as well.

“Admiral,” Dex was saying, “are you all right?”

Daniel suppressed an urge to vomit. “I … I don’t think so,” he replied.

With some effort, the Admiral straightened himself in his seat, looking around the bridge as he did so. The effort proved to be a mistake, as the bridge—which had already appeared to be spinning—seemed to increase its revolutionary speed in an effort to further disorient him. Through his hazy field of vision he could see, however, that Zach and Anastasia were still unconscious, and that Nathan was just coming to.

Daniel took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “What happened?”

Dex staggered back to his seat and slumped into it, apparently almost as drained as the Admiral himself. “The Quantum Refractor. Your idea, remember?”

The Admiral concentrated, finally clearing his head, though his pain and nausea had not abated. “Did it work?” he asked, but even as he did, he was calling up the ship’s recorders on the main viewscreen.

Dex, meanwhile, scanned his own console. “I have no ships in range,” he reported.

The viewscreen begrudgingly flickered to life, though it showed only static. No amount of adjustment would coerce it into showing anything else—the recorders simply had not worked after the Refractor had engaged.

“Sir,” said Dex, “I have something from the tactical recorders.”

The viewscreen now resolved to show the view that was normally seen on Dex’s tactical display. A large red dot closed on a smaller green dot, as both traveled toward an immense, shaded region. The Admiral recognized the display screen as portraying the events of just before the Refractor had engaged.

Daniel leaned forward, peripherally noticing that Zach and Anastasia were slowly regaining consciousness. The green dot on the display suddenly disappeared, just before it reached the edge of the shaded area that represented the complex gravity wells of the Devil’s Graveyard. Zooming in on the display, the Admiral watched the Lucani Ibron ship continue along its course. Daniel stared closely at the viewscreen, pushing aside his disorientation, and watched as the red dot flickered out just after it crossed the threshold of the intense gravity field.

A few moments later, the green dot that was the Apocalypse reemerged on the other side of the shaded area, its Quantum Refractor now disengaged. Dex and the Admiral stared at the display in silence for several tense moments, but the Lucani Ibron ship did not reappear. It seemed that it had, instead, become the latest victim of the notorious Devil’s Graveyard.

• • •

Of all his crew members, Zach had taken the shock of the Quantum Refractor worst, but he, like the rest of the crew, though far from comfortable, was over what they all hoped to be the worst effects of the experience. Nathan, for one, had commented repeatedly that he thought the incident had “taken years off of his life.” Considering the way he felt, Daniel could hardly argue with him.

The Apocalypse now traveled back to Earth, making sure to circumvent the Devil’s Graveyard on the return trip. Though everyone on board surely wanted to do nothing more that try to sleep off their conditions, they all remained awake, their monumental victory over the Lucani Ibron enough to overcome their physical discomfort.

“I’ve got to hand it to you,” began Dex jovially, “that was some stunt you pulled back there. Personally, I thought you were crazy, but you hadn’t let me down yet, old man, and I, for one, like to bet on a horse until it loses.”

A few retorts to Dex’s “old man” comment formed in Daniel’s head, but he was too exhausted and exhilarated to even reply. It was an odd sensation: the accumulated exhaustion of the past few weeks had suddenly slammed into him all at once, yet his elation at his monumental victory sustained him, the adrenaline alone keeping him from collapsing and passing out.

The doors to the bridge opened, and Alexis was the first to come bounding through, almost knocking the Admiral over as she rushed past Darren and Ryan to embrace him. “I told you you would do it,” she said, squeezing him tightly. “You don’t know how to fail.”

Daniel smiled. “I didn’t do it alone,” he replied, looking around the bridge. “Each of you deserves just as much credit as me. I could never so much as hope to serve with a braver, more loyal crew. This victory belongs to all of us. You did it—you saved the world.”

It was Dex who first broke out into applause, but it only took a moment before the rest of the crew had joined him, vigorously laughing and hugging each other despite their fatigue. The Admiral had not said what he did to boost morale, however; he had said it because it was true.

“I wonder,” said Zach after a pause, “does that mean they’ll reinstate my license?”

Nathan’s throaty laugh drowned out the rest. “God help us if they do,” he replied.

“What?” laughed Zach. “Are you saying you wouldn’t ride with me?”

The Fedoran appeared to seriously ponder the question for a moment. “Well,” he began, “I would say there is a 62 percent probability that I would do so.”

Zach pretended to be hurt. “I see how it is.”

“Not to worry, Zach,” Nathan replied, an odd smirk visible on his face. “That is more than half.”

• • •

When the Apocalypse arrived back at Earth, there was a ceremonial escort waiting for them, as four resplendent diplomatic vessels flanked the tiny ship on its way down to the planet. The landing pad had been decorated and blazed with holographic light, and a red carpet led from the platform to the Capitol building. On either side of the carpet, rows of military officers and, behind them, throngs of civilians cheered as the ship touched down. Once the crew began to disembark the vessel, their cheers were almost deafening.

“Word travels fast, I guess,” commented Zach, gazing at the thousands of people who had gathered. “Looks like we’re heroes now.”

Daniel, however, was not focused on the horde of people on the platform. He only scanned their faces to look for his wife.

And there she was, bursting forth from the crowd before Daniel had even completely descended the exit hatch. He ran to her, embracing her and lifting her as he spun around, holding his wife close as the noise of thousands of people suddenly died away, leaving him alone with the one person he cared for most.

Tara kissed his face, her eyes moist with tears of joy. “You’re staying now, aren’t you?” she cried, holding his face with both hands. “You’re staying with me?”

“Yes,” Daniel replied. “Yes, I’m staying. For a good long while at least.”

His wife buried her head in his chest, and as she did so, Daniel noticed for the first time that a swarm of cameramen, photographers, and military officials had surrounded him. “But first,” he amended, “I have to let them give me some medals or something.”

Tara looked up and smiled. “Well,” she said, looking around, “I guess you have to do what you have to do.”

Daniel kissed her once more and let himself be enveloped by the crowd as they herded him down the red carpet and toward the ConFedCom Capitol building. Though several of the men near him were speaking, Daniel could not make out what any one of them was saying.

Once he got to the building, the swell of people subsided, as the cameramen and civilians were barred from entering the building. Daniel was pointed toward the transport tubes, and once inside, more people crowded into the small tube than he had thought possible. Luckily, it only took a moment for the transport to arrive.

Daniel stepped out into the familiar anteroom of the Central Meeting Hall. The guards, this time, held the door for him, and he walked through.

Awaiting him inside was the entire Confederation Council, all of whom were standing and applauding. Daniel was guided toward the front of the room, where the President, too, was applauding him.

“Congratulations, Daniel,” he said as he approached, reaching for his hand and shaking it vigorously. “You saved us all.”

“Well, sir,” Daniel began, “we just did what we had to do.”

“You did much more than that, Admiral. Or, should I say, Fleet Admiral Atgard?”

The room once again exploded into applause at the President’s words, while the President leaned forward and whispered, “That means you’ll have no one to answer to, Daniel. Not even me. Just the way you like it, no?”

“Sir,” he replied, “I thank you for this honor. But everyone must answer to somebody. No one is above reproach.”

“Is this your Ethics Committee idea again, Daniel?” Stadler asked. “Very well, very well. I’ll see if I can’t get that proposal passed, okay?”

Daniel smiled. “Don’t do it for me, William. Do it for the Confederation.”

The President nodded, and, as the applause from the Council members began to abate, he continued. “And it is with great pleasure that I present to you our greatest honor: the Medallion of Virtue. Through your courage, your valor, and your skill, you have—single-handedly—saved us all. I can think of no more deserving recipient.”

The Council once again erupted into applause, but Daniel motioned for them to stop. “No, no,” he said, speaking above the commotion, “the President is wrong. I did not do anything single-handedly. And I alone do not deserve this honor. It was my crew that defeated the Lucani Ibron. It was their bravery that saved us. And it is they who should be standing here.”

Daniel was beginning to think that all the Council did was applaud, but as they did, the President motioned to one of the guards by the door, and, a few moments later, Daniel’s crew was ushered in to stand beside him.

“Wow,” said Zach, mouth agape as he walked down the aisle. “The last time this many people cheered for me was when I played baseball at the academy.”

Anastasia walked up and stood at Daniel’s side. “Does this mean no court-martials?” she joked.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it does,” he replied, scanning the faces of the rest of his crew. They were each singularly overwhelmed, save Nathan, whose face, though hard to read, showed a look of consternation rather than joy.

Daniel sidled over to him. “What’s the matter, Nathan? They’re cheering for you.”

“I know, sir,” Nathan replied. “But I have been playing a hunch I had.”

“Uh-oh,” replied Daniel.

“During my scans of the area after the Lucani Ibron ship was destroyed, I came across a strange energy spike. I postulated that it may have been a transmission of some kind.”

“You mean a signal sent by the Lucani Ibron before they were destroyed?”

“I did not think so at first, sir, because I traced the transmission, and its path did not pass within range of a single star system, inhabited or otherwise.”

“But?” prompted the Admiral, aware that the Council’s applause had ironically begun to die down.

“Well, sir, if you follow the path of the transmission much, much further,” Nathan explained, holding up his nanocomputer so the Admiral could see for himself, “you can see where it does go.”

Daniel rubbed his eyes and stared at the small screen, vainly hoping that his interpretation was somehow incorrect.

Nathan, however, removed all doubt. “Sir, the transmission passes directly through the Andromeda Galaxy.”

Daniel stumbled backwards, leaning against the podium for support. “My God,” he breathed, his hand going to his mouth. “Even if it had the range, that journey would take our fastest ship over a hundred years.”

Nathan nodded. “But what really disturbs me, Admiral, is not how fast they got here—it is how they even knew about the Korgian Annihilation in the first place.”

The Admiral scanned the room as he realized the sheer impossibility of it, his eyes falling on scores of beaming faces who no doubt believed their victory to be permanent. But to Daniel, the ramifications were both obvious and terrifying.

Anastasia appeared at Daniel’s side. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What is it?”

Daniel gestured to Nathan’s nanocomputer. “Even with the most powerful telescopes,” he said, “the light from the explosion at Korgia Prime would not have reached their eyes for over two million years.”

Anastasia’s brow wrinkled. “So how could they have found out so soon, let alone traveled here?”

“That’s the problem,” the Admiral confirmed. “It seems we didn’t just recently attract the attention of the Lucani Ibron.” He looked pointedly at Anastasia. “They must have had ships here, in our galaxy, silently watching and studying us for some time.”

The blood rushed out of Anastasia’s face. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “For how long, do you think?”

The Admiral sighed. “If I had to guess,” he replied, “these ‘Ancient Arbiters’ probably watched the first humans drawing on cave walls.”

“That certainly is a disturbing thought,” added Nathan.

Anastasia slowly shook her head. “That’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that they’ve been watching us for hundreds or thousands of years, and they never felt we were even worth communicating with. They watched us build the Omega Cannon and never even warned us against its use.” An involuntary shudder escaped her. “Instead, they just waited for us to use it and then used that as an excuse to exterminate humanity.”

The Admiral let out a sardonic, humorless laugh. “And now that we have their attention, I doubt they will be content with merely watching us anymore.”

EPILOGUE

28 August 3046

“C’mon, dad, I want to go play now!”

Eilleen really was the sweetest child in the world, but when she wanted something, she was not at all shy about making it known.

“Okay, okay, sweetie. I’ll be out in a minute.” Daniel, though he loved playing with his daughter, was not looking forward to the oppressive summer heat, heat that seemed to have no effect on the vibrant youngster. Eilleen had just turned 11 today, and ever since they had adopted her five years ago, Tara and Daniel had noticed that she was an unusually energetic, happy child. She had always done well at school, and her outgoing nature had allowed her to make friends easily. Daniel smiled as he thought of the bright future she had ahead of her, a future wondrous in its uncertainty. She could become anything she wanted, Daniel thought: an engineer, a singer, a teacher … . Right now, however, Daniel was concentrating on training her to be an athlete.

Eilleen grabbed both her glove and her father’s and ran out the front door, letting the screen door slam loudly against its wooden frame. She bounded out of sight around to the side of the house, where she would wait patiently for her father—for about 90 seconds.

“She sure loves to play, doesn’t she?” asked Tara, sitting beside Daniel on the couch as he donned his shoes. “I can’t believe she’s already eleven. It seems like just yesterday we brought her home.” Tara was practically beaming.

“She sure does love to play,” Daniel replied, taking another sip of the fluerenzinone-enhanced sports drink Tara had thoughtfully poured. “And to her, the hotter it is, the better.”

Tara chuckled. “What’s the matter, old man? Can’t take a little Key West heat? It’s barely a hundred today.”

“Yeah, in the shade,” Daniel retorted. “Which means, by the way, that it is hot enough to melt titanium ferrite.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Tara chided. “You are wearing sunscreen, right?”

“Yes, yes, dear,” he said, rising to go meet his daughter outside. “Just be sure you have the oxygen tank waiting for me when I get back.”

Tara smiled and turned away, bringing the empty glass back to the kitchen.

Though he was wearing a personal cooling system, which flowed cool water through tubes all over his body, Daniel stepped into the midday sun with trepidation. A wall of heat slammed into him as soon as he stepped outside, and his contact lenses automatically tinted to help shade his eyes from the sun, though the small plasticite lenses were horribly outmatched. Turning the corner of the house, he found Eilleen tossing the ball up in the air and diligently chasing after it as it fell.

“Alright,” Daniel said, pretending to turn back, “that’s enough for me.”

“Daddy!” she exclaimed, and caught up to him, tugging on his tunic and thrusting the glove into his hand. “Here.”

“Oh alright,” he replied. “Tell you what—I’ll stand here in the shade and you go stand out there by the trees.”

“Okay,” she agreed enthusiastically. Ah, youth.

Daniel gripped the ball and tossed it to her, his arm, still slightly sore from the day before, protesting only mildly. Eilleen thrust her glove out at the ball, and it ricocheted off the heel, though the youngster managed to adroitly catch it with her free hand before it fell to the ground.

“Nice catch,” Daniel said, “but you want to catch it in the pocket. Use your other hand to cover it.”

“I know, daddy,” she replied, her petite face taking on a very adult expression, clearly not appreciating being patronized. “I can catch it.”

“Okay, sweetie, okay,” Daniel chuckled. “Now let’s see that arm.”

Eilleen wound up and released the ball, and, though she was standing almost ten meters away, it carried to Daniel in the air, almost getting by him and impacting the side of the house.

“Nice throw,” said Daniel, removing the ball from his glove. “How about a high one?”

Before he threw the ball, however, Tara appeared from around the corner of the house. “Daniel,” she called, more than a hint of concern in her voice, “there’s a transmission for you. They say it’s urgent.”

A million thoughts ran through Daniel’s mind, the most pervasive of which was: were they here? Had the Lucani Ibron come back after all these years??

Daniel tried to remain calm as he retrieved his nanocomputer from Tara. He keyed the transmission and listened intently, a concentrated look on his face. His wife watched him carefully, but when the transmission was over, he flashed her a lopsided grin, allaying her fears. “Don’t worry—it just seems that they need me for a special meeting of the Ethics Review Board.”

Tara breathed a sigh of relief.

“You know, this is precisely why I left my nanocomputer inside,” he lamented. “Why do they need me?”

“Well,” Tara laughed, “you are the Chairman.”

Daniel shrugged and turned back to his daughter. He threw the ball to her, but it sailed over her outstretched glove and rolled to a stop just before the tree line began.

The child sprinted to retrieve the ball, running toward the shaded area near the tall oak trees. She bent down to pick up the ball, but as she turned back to Daniel, she absently let the ball fall from her hand. She was staring into the sky, and her outstretched arm pointed over Daniel’s head.

Daniel turned to look behind him, and he could see a sleek fighter speeding toward the house, undoubtedly sent to pick him up. He turned back to his daughter, and watched as her emerald eyes traced the path of the swift ship, following it until it descended on the far side of the house, out of sight.

It figures, Daniel thought, watching her standing there in awe before the gently-swaying trees. After all, he noted, Eilleen was now standing almost directly beneath the bridge of the cloaked Apocalypse, which hovered, unseen, on its antigrav repulsors several centimeters from the ground below. Daniel could not help but chuckle at how ironic it was that the ship was hidden, as it had been for the past five years, right in Daniel’s own back yard, patiently awaiting the eventual return of the Lucani Ibron.

THE END...?

Thank you for reading Right Ascension—I hope you enjoyed it.

But the story is just beginning … continue the adventure with Daniel, Anastasia, and the rest of the crew in:

Declination

Declination, Astron. One of two coordinates (the other being right ascension) representing the position of a heavenly body in space, expressed in degrees and calculated as an angular distance north or south from the celestial equator.

• • •

A continuation of the saga begun in Right Ascension, Declination finds us in the year 3050, ten years after the dreadful Lucani Ibron have been driven from Earth. Now, the Confederation’s crises are spawned from within, and one brave woman struggles against all odds to keep mankind united amidst a hailstorm of rebellion, war, and moral declination.

The Lucani Ibron have yet to return, but all is not well within the Alpha Sector. Internal strife, terrorism, and ever-escalating conflicts with several neighboring species have spread the Confederation’s resources dangerously thin. Captain Anastasia Mason, together with an eclectic group of humanity’s most decorated heroes, struggles to hold the Confederation together against powerful forces that threaten to rip it apart at its very core. Then, at what appears to be mankind’s most desperate hour, an old enemy returns from a ten-year hiatus, casting humanity to the brink of civil war … and outright annihilation.

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Keep reading for a sneak peek at

DECLINATION

available now!

On the bridge of the Apocalypse, multihued status lights blinked their variegated chorus, tactical display consoles streamed data garnered from the enemy vessel, and the ship’s computer silently tended to a myriad of pre-programmed functions. The ship was seven short of its normal complement, leaving only one man—Daniel Atgard—but his attention was not concentrated on blinking lights or scrolling readouts. Daniel Atgard’s attention was, instead, focused rather intently on the viewscreen, which displayed an image that was, though from a decade ago, hauntingly familiar.

Seconds passed and seemed like eons. There was no sign of activity from the alien ship. No movement, no attempt at communication. The categorical indifference was, indeed, the very hallmark of the alien species.

Suddenly, the viewscreen changed, resolving to show the bridge of the alien ship, a sight with which Daniel was also all too familiar. Though he had last seen it ten years ago, his recollection was as vivid as any memory he had. Every detail of the alien bridge was exactly as he remembered it: hovering light-beings clustered around indecipherable patterns of light, flickering and changing shape seemingly at will. In the center was a being more brilliant than the rest, and the Admiral was forced to squint in order to prevent the entire scene from merging into a single luminous blur.

“Yes, Admiral Daniel Caesar Atgard,” came the being’s delayed response. “We do indeed remember you.”

The words—or, more accurately, the thoughts—of the creature were not spoken aloud, but instead reverberated only in Daniel’s mind.

“Good,” replied the Admiral, leaning forward in his command chair, uncomfortably aware that he was alone on the ship. “Then you remember what happened the last time you killed innocent people without provocation.”

“Yes,” replied the being, in the same manner as before. “We do indeed remember what happened.”

“Yet you destroy entire planets,” spat the Admiral, only peripherally aware that his emotions were threatening to overcome him. “And you come again to destroy another. Must we trade death for death? How many will be enough? How many humans do you have to kill before the ‘justice’ you claim you seek has been meted out?”

The aliens appeared to ponder this for several moments, flickering in unison as they presumably discussed their response. Abruptly the flickering abated, and Daniel thought he sensed an increase in the beings’ luster.

The light-being in the center seemed to float slightly closer as it spoke.

“All of them,” it said.

The viewscreen suddenly went black.

Continue the adventure!

Download Declination, the sequel to Right Ascension, from Amazon here!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Derrico was born just north of Miami, Florida, and developed his appreciation for complex moral issues while receiving a degree in philosophy from the University of Florida in Gainesville. He wrote his first novel, Right Ascension, before attending law school at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). Right Ascension was first published by Bookbooters Press in 2000, and garnered its inaugural eBook of the Year Award.

Derrico wrote his second novel, Declination, during law school, while he was probably supposed to be studying. Nonetheless, he graduated, passed the California Bar Exam, and worked as an attorney at a large, international law firm in Los Angeles for several years. While practicing law (all that practice actually made him pretty good at it), he managed to write some short stories and a novella, The Twiller, while always yearning for more time to write his next novel.

Recently, Derrico retired from his “day job” as a big-firm attorney and moved back to South Florida, where he is working on that next novel, Face Value, a story about a genetically-perfect Utopia where society’s perfection is only skin deep. Derrico maintains a website with reviews, excerpts, current news, and purchasing information for all of his novels and other works at www.rightascension.com.