Prologue
“So what is this I’m looking at? Because it doesn’t look like a Red cruiser,” Captain Renault said. “And I was promised a Red cruiser.”
There was a bit of nervous laughter in the CIC.
The ESS Advantage had been following the Cardinal Order battle cruiser for the better part of a day. The tiny hunter-killer was staying just outside her sensor cone, dipping in and out to get better readings. Renault suspected the cruiser knew it was being followed.
“Yes, sir, I know. But for some reason…” The sensor operator turned. “For some reason, they just aren’t here.”
Renault suspected that the captain of the Red vessel just didn’t think the Empire had the balls to stop it as it attempted to run the Empire blockade that encircled the farthest point of Mars’ orbit.
“I can see that, Smitty,” Renault replied. “Can you maybe theorize on where they went?”
Old Earth had been cut off from supplies for a month now, as the Empire put the squeeze on the Reds. Their forces were devastated. It was believed that the Reds’ entire fleet had been reduced by more than fifty percent and their effectiveness by even more than that, if you talked to the Empire strategists.
Maybe they were right. Maybe not. But Renault’s orders were clear.
And out here, as far as Renault was concerned, cornering a battle cruiser was a good way to start a fight.
“They missed their down transit,” the op said. “They must have.”
“Fat chance,” Renault answered. He was willing to bet they’d transited earlier, ghosted the signal, and jumped farther out so they could come around and meet the Advantage when she down transited. It’s what he would do if he was looking for a fight.
Or making a last stand.
Renault leaned back in the command chair. He slapped at the arm comm. “Bravo team, look alive out there.”
“Copy Bravo, go,” said squad leader Tor “Tons” Timmons. “Go for look alive.”
There was static on the line as the squad leader no doubt sent out commands to his alert team. Renault wanted an eyes-on look to see if there was something wrong with their sensor readings.
“It’s lonely out here,” said Tons. “Repeat, we’re walking alone.”
Renault ran his hand though his short-cropped hair. Red battle cruisers just didn’t disappear. The Advantage had been following this convoy for the better part of an hour.
“I don’t buy it,” said Renault. “They must have seen us.”
“We were in the planetary wake,” said the nav officer. “I don’t think there’s any way they were able to tag us.”
“Sir,” snapped the sensor op. “Contact, dead ahead.”
“Make?”
“That’s her!” the sensor op said. “She’s incoming fast.”
“Guess they didn’t get the memo,” Renault said. “Battle positions. Set point-blank batteries and get ready to fire.”
“We’re inside Mars, sir,” said the nav officer. “Be advised that it will breach treaty to fire.”
“Not if they do first,” Renault said, well aware that they were provoking the Red cruiser. That was, in general, the idea. But the Advantage hadn’t fired on the cruiser when they’d first spotted her. They’d waited to see if the ship rendezvoused with any friends.
But no such luck. She was a lone wolf. A lone wolf with more firepower than the Advantage, if it got into a shooting battle. The Advantage held all the cards in quiet pursuit, but she was smaller than her prey and couldn’t afford a direct assault.
“This might be it,” said his XO Kallan in a calm voice—his first words in hours. He seldom had a word for anyone if it wasn’t about the operation of the ship. He stood, wiping down his perfectly crisp uniform, and tapped the old air wing on his shoulder three times. His OCD habits were famous on the ship.
“How do you figure?” Renault asked.
“She’s turned in and crossing the T. She’s getting a good look at us. We won’t have a good firing solution from here. She knows it.”
“If it’s a war they want, I’m happy to oblige.”
“It’s a war we want,” Kallan said coolly. “And I’m sure the Emperor is willing to sacrifice one hunter-killer, if that’s what it takes.”
“True enough,” Renault said. “But she’ll be even happier if we start her war and don’t lose the ship.”
Kallan smiled cryptically. “You and your optimism.”
“Sir,” snapped the comm officer. “Bravo has inbound targets, but … they aren’t from the Red cruiser.”
“Not from the cruiser?” Renault said as he sat back in his command chair. He slapped open the command channel. “What the hell is going on, Tons?”’
“There’s a new player,” said Tons. “I have a dozen ships inbound. No classification. No makes.”
Renault glanced over at his sensor op. “What do we have on long-range?”
“Nothing, sir,” said the op. “We’re clear.”
Renault furrowed his brow. “It doesn’t sound like we’re clear.”
“What would you like us to do?” Tons asked.
“What kind of ships?”
“A pair of destroyers. Are you guys seriously not seeing this?” Tons asked, incredulity in his voice. “They’re plain as space.”
Renault glanced at his XO. “What the hell is going on?”
Kallan shook his head. “You know I trust the guys on the sticks any day. They’ve got eyes on.”
Kallan was an old fighter pilot. Renault had come up through commands on other vessels and had no fighter experience, but he tended to agree. Those guys were seeing something with their eyes.
“They’re firing!” shouted Tons. “Missile barrage.”
Renault lurched around to tactical. The operator there shook her head before he even had to ask. “I got nothing,” she said. “My board is clean.”
Renault made a snap decision. “Helm, evasive alpha, go!”
“Tactical, defensive fire spread at—”
“Where’s it coming from, Tons?”
“Starboard, Z negative!” he shouted.
Renault made the calculation in his head. “Z-1k, three o’clock, full spread defensive yield.”
The tactical officer shook her head but followed the orders. He felt the old shuddering sensation as the armament was away.
Almost instantly, the ship rocked violently.
“Who the hell was shooting at us?”
“I— I don’t even know what we impacted,” said the tactical officer. “I have a debris field, but it’s like it showed up out of nowhere.”
“So we fired at invisible missiles and hit something,” said his XO.
“Fired from invisible ships,” Renault said. “Helm, move us clear—“
An energy signature roared in front of them. This was clear as day, because it was broadcast on the screen in front of the CIC. The red bloom indicated an enormous energy blast. Renault knew without asking what that was. Everyone in the CIC did. It was the Cardinal Order battle cruiser going critical.
“Visual,” snapped Renault. The image changed just in time for him to see the Red cruiser break into three pieces, with the rear portion of the great ship completely engulfed in a debris field where it had been blown to bits. The front half had fractured just behind the forward compartments. Renault didn’t see escape pods, although he suspected somebody must have gotten clear.
“They were hit by those destroyers,” Tons said, unprompted. “Shit, they fired the same barrage at them.”
The Advantage was a much smaller target, and that made her, ironically, much easier to defend against a full missile barrage. Even if the Red cruiser had seen what was coming, a full wave of missiles at that range might have been impossible to stop.
But Renault had a feeling that she hadn’t seen them, either. “Did they fire?”
“Negative,” Tons said.
“What are those destroyers doing now?”
“One’s going for the Red wreck,” Tons said. He paused. “The other’s coming at you, Advantage.”
Renault sat back. This wasn’t something he was equipped for. “Come back to the nest,” he said to Tons. “Crash protocol. We’re spooling for up transit the instant you hit the deck.”
“Sir!” snapped Tons, and the Bravo fighter squad immediately began streaking back toward the Advantage.
“Helm, spool us for up transit. We go when they hit the deck. Tons, tell us if they fire again.”
“Just did!” Tons said. “Another barrage.”
“How close?”
“We’ll beat it,” Tons said, reading the captain’s mind.
Renault glanced at his XO. He shook his head but said nothing.
“We’re spooled,” the helm said.
“Last Bravo on final approach—”
“I’m in!” shouted Tons. “Go, go, go!”
Renault didn’t need to be told twice. “Up transit!” he snapped.
The Advantage’s engines whined, and the FTL bubble encased them. In another blink, the universe around them would disappear as the ship up transited into FTL space.
But the stars didn’t stretch away. Instead, Renault felt the engines cooling down, beginning the shut-off process. “Helm!” he screamed.
The helmsman held up his hands. “I don’t have control!”
“What?” Renault leaped out of the captain’s chair and to the helm’s console in two huge steps. When he got there, the control board was blank. “What the hell is this?”
On the screen was a single word.
JUSTICE.
“What the hell is this? Is the computer down?”
In answer, the lights in the CIC went dead, and they were all plunged into darkness.
“What is going on?”
“We’ve lost power,” his XO said, his voice as close to panic as Renault had ever heard it. He’d never seen the OCD-perfect first officer get rattled by anything, until now.
“We have no control. It’s like the computers have all died. No power. The internal systems just shut down.”
Renault looked down again at the helm computer. It was on. It was the only light in the entire CIC. The word JUSTICE was glowing there, clean and unaffected by the loss of power in the entire ship.
That wasn’t possible. Not if it was truly a catastrophic power loss.
This had to be sabotage. The rest of the ship hadn’t failed. It was shut down. All but this console.
“What about those missiles?” his XO said, real fear in his voice. “What about those—”
Chapter 1
“I can’t wait to get a shower.”
“None of us can wait for you to get a shower, Malby,” Jiang said.
“And sleep,” he said. “Sleep would be nice.”
“Real sleep would be nice,” Dabs said. “But not ice.”
Lucky forgot sometimes that Dabs wasn’t a Frontier Marine like the rest of them. Lucky was used to going back into cold storage between missions. He didn’t have much to care about outside of the mission these days; he was way too time-shifted to have anyone in the universe living in real time.
“They won’t ice you,” Malby snorted. “You’re an Inquisitor,” he added, using air quotes. “You’re special.”
“Trust me, Malby,” Jiang said. “You’re the special one here.”
Lucky let them talk. Good banter was healthy for the team. They finally had a second to breathe up here. A second to collect themselves. And maybe—just maybe—a chance to actually unwind a bit before they were boxed for the next mission.
Assuming, that is, that their rescue ship actually showed up.
“It’s overdue, isn’t it?” Lucky asked Dabs.
Dabs and Lucky were standing at one of the few high places they could find. With the Embassy destroyed and what was left of the dropship from the Everton, along with the Everton herself, somewhere down below in the Stalks, there wasn’t much left up here on the top that wasn’t a burnt-out husk. Jiang was further down the hill, lost in her own thoughts, or so Lucky assumed.
“For the millionth time,” Dabs said, doing nothing to check the exasperation in her voice, “they didn’t clue me in.”
In the mayhem of the Everton making an unscheduled stop on the planet, another Empire ship, the Jamestown, had responded to an automated distress message and had signaled the intent to come to their aid.
The Jamestown was a giant, a super destroyer capable of moving a full flotilla with her in her FTL bubble. But the timeframe the ship had given was long overdue, unless Dabs had gotten it wrong. They were more or less at the mercy of her recollection of events at this point. No point harping on it, but Lucky wasn’t sure he could hold his tongue. Luckily, there was always Malby nearby.
“Maybe you just heard wrong,” Malby said.
The tech specialist was at the very top of the hill they were on, fiddling with some piece of equipment that he supposedly knew how to work. He’d set it up with minimum fuss. It had a small dish on top, and a platform for a console not that dissimilar to what Lucky had seen on ship CICs. Lucky knew it was a mobile Receive and Transmit station, but the RT station didn’t seem to be doing much receiving.
Lucky doubted Malby was working it correctly, but he was probably doing better than Lucky could do with it.
Probably.
“Malby, are you getting anything at all?” Lucky asked. “I mean, anything?”
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