Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers E-Book

Orson Scott Card

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Continuing the definitive space opera anthology series. Today's most popular writers produce new stories set in their most famous universes, alongside essential and seminal short fiction from past masters.The definitive collection of explorers and soldiers, charting the dark frontiers of our expanding universe. Amongst the infinite stars we find epic sagas of wars, tales of innermost humanity, and the most powerful of desires – our need to create a better world.The second volume of seminal short science fiction, featuring twenty-six new stories from series such as Wayfarers, Confederation, The Lost Fleet, Waypoint Kangaroo, Ender, Dream Park, the Polity and more.Alongside work from tomorrow's legends, revisit works by masters who helped define the genre: Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Campbell, Becky Chambers, Robert Heinlein, George R.R. Martin, Susan R. Matthews, Orson Scott Card, James Blish, E.E. "Doc" Smith, Tanya Huff, Curtis C. Chen, Seanan McGuire, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes, Gardner Dozois, David Farland, Mike Shepherd, C.L. Moore, Neal Asher, Weston Ochse, Brenda Cooper, Alan Dean Foster, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kevin J. Anderson, David Weber and C.J. Cherryh.Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers brings you the essential work from past, present, and future bestsellers as well as Grand Masters of science fiction.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Anthologies Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Editor’s Note and Acknowledgements by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

INTRODUCTION: SWORDS AND SPACESHIPS AND CYBORGS, O MY!

by David Weber

THE LOST FLEET: ISHIGAKI

by Jack Campbell

WAYFARERS: A GOOD HERETIC

by Becky Chambers

MISFIT AKA “COSMIC CONSTRUCTION CORPS”

by Robert Heinlein

A THOUSAND WORLDS: A BEAST FOR NORN (HAVILAND TUF)

by George R.R. Martin

SKIPJACK: THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

by Susan R. Matthews

ENDER’S GAME: MESSENGER

by Orson Scott Card

LENSMEN: THE VORTEX BLASTER

by Edward E. “Doc” Smith

CONFEDERATION: FIRST IN

by Tanya Huff

KANGAROO: FIRE IN THE POCKET

by Curtis C. Chen

FRONTIER ABCS

by Seanan McGuire

LIADEN: DARK SECRETS

by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

DREAM PARK: THE LADY OR THE TIGER

by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

EARTHMAN, COME HOME

by James Blish

A SPECIAL KIND OF MORNING

by Gardner Dozois

RESPECT

by David Farland

KRIS LONGKNIFE: BOOT RECRUIT

by Mike Shepherd

NORTHWEST SMITH: SHAMBLEAU

by C.L. Moore

POLITY: THE VETERAN

by Neal Asher

GRUNT: THE END-OF-THE-WORLD BOWLING LEAGUE

by Weston Ochse

FREMONT’S CHILDREN: DEATH, BUTTERFLIES, AND MAKERS OF WAR

by Brenda Cooper

PIP AND FLINX: SIDESHOW

by Alan Dean Foster

DIVING: LIEUTENANT TIGHTASS

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

SAGA OF SEVEN SUNS: FEET OF CLAY

by Kevin J. Anderson

BOLO: THE TRAITOR

by David Weber

RESCUE PARTY

by Arthur C. Clarke

COLD SLEEP

by C.J. Cherryh

Author Biographies

Editor Biography

Copyright and First Publication Information

INFINITE

STARS

DARK FRONTIERS

ANTHOLOGIES AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Infinite Stars edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Predator: If It Bleeds edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Aliens: Bug Hunt edited by Jonathan Maberry

Associates of Sherlock Holmes edited by George Mann

Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes edited by George Mann

Dark Cities edited by Christopher Golden

Dark Detectives edited by Stephen Jones

Dead Letters edited by Conrad Williams

Dead Man’s Hand edited by John Joseph Adams

Encounters of Sherlock Holmes edited by George Mann

Further Encounters of Sherlock Holmes edited by George Mann

The Madness of Cthulhu edited by S. T. Joshi

The Madness of Cthulhu, Volume Two edited by S. T. Joshi

Mash Up edited by Gardener Dozois

Shadows Over Innsmouth edited by Stephen Jones

Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth edited by Stephen Jones

Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth edited by Stephen Jones

Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams (US only)

Wastelands 2 edited by John Joseph Adams

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams

INFINITE

STARS

DARK FRONTIERS

TbHE DEFINITIVE ANTHOLOGY OF SPACE OPERA

Edited by

BRYAN THOMAS SCHMIDT

TITAN BOOKS

INFINITE STARS: DARK FRONTIERS

Print edition ISBN: 9781789092912

Electronic edition ISBN: 9781789092929

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: November 2019

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Collection and introduction Copyright © 2019 by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. All Rights Reserved. Complete Copyright and First Publication Information listed on page 627.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For George Lucas, who first ignited my love of

space opera and storytelling,

David Spangler and Al Girtz, who first made

me believe I could tell stories for a career,

And Noah Melson, who’s just beginning to

dream as he starts college this year.

EDITOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BRYAN THOMAS SCHMIDT

Getting to do one anthology like Infinite Stars was a dream come true. After all, space opera, more than any other subgenre of science fiction, was what drew me to science fiction as my first love. But to then be asked to do another is… intimidating. Anything your publisher labels as “definitive” takes on a whole new scope. So I found myself back to researching authors and stories with new fervor, looking for those who have had and are having the most impact.

Seeking to add to the creative diversity, I strove not to go back to all the same people who contributed to the first volume, though a few have come back—for example, Jack Campbell and Orson Scott Card. David Weber returns with an all-new introduction and one of his short stories set in the Bolo universe. Kevin J. Anderson and Larry Niven are back, writing in different universes.

Everyone else here appears in Infinite Stars for the first time, and what a group they are. From Becky Chambers, the woman who popped onto the scene with a crowdfunded novel that reinvented modern space opera, to well-known pros like Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, whose Liaden books have long been bestsellers. Upcoming space opera star Curtis Chen’s Kangaroo novels will be new to many, while Mike Shepherd’s Kris Longknife and Tanya Huff’s Confederation have garnered an established and fervent following.

Other persons of legendary talent have decided to break new ground. C.J. Cherryh, famous for her Foreigner series, offers something wholly new, as does David Farland, perhaps best known for his Runelords epic fantasies. Susan R. Matthews takes leave of her Jurisdiction series to try something new and exciting, as well.

Altogether, Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers offers up twenty-six stories in this round—two more than the previous volume. For reprints we delve back even further into space opera’s origins for a 1930s story by E.E. “Doc” Smith, the writer often credited with founding the subgenre even before Bob Tucker gave it its name. There’s a seminal example of Robert A. Heinlein’s space opera, written well before Starship Troopers, an Arthur C. Clarke tale which appeared years ahead of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the renowned “Shambleau” from C.L. Moore’s amazing Northwest Smith series which continues to influence writers even today.

Another innovation this time around is that many of the authors give us a brief note to introduce the story, placing it within the context of their larger universe. This adds a unique personal touch, and helps introduce readers to broad horizons they may not yet have experienced. If you find stuff you love, please go explore the further adventures. The purpose of any survey like this is to help you discover new characters and series with which you want to spend your reading hours.

Herein you will find award winners, more modern tales with golden age roots, and rare space opera stories from science fiction’s founding fathers, all collected to provide a rich variety and hours of reading pleasure—always the goal of a superior anthology. May this volume join the first Infinite Stars as a necessary addition to the serious reader’s library, and I hope you enjoy the fruits as much as I enjoyed the labor.

As always I have to thank a few people. Of course, Steve Saffel, Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung, Laura Price, George Sandison, Katharine Carroll, Lydia Gittins, Polly Grice, Hannah Scudamore, Valerie Gardner, Lukmon Ogunbadejo, Jenny Boyce, and all of the folks at Titan Books for allowing me the opportunity and doing such a great job with my books.

I also owe thanks to Rich Horton, Gardner Dozois, Ken Keller, Michael Knost, Joe Monson, David Bridges, and David Sooby for recommendations and research help on stories. Eugene Johnson for typing up old manuscripts that had no digital version, Peter J. Wacks, Ken Keller, and Michael Wallace for advice and friendship when I needed talking down off those ledges from time to time. My parents, Ramon and Glenda, and my crazy dogs Louie and Amelie, my great constant companions.

Of course, David Weber for an amazing opening essay. He had quite the challenge following up Robert Silverberg from the first Infinite Stars, but David rose to the occasion—as I knew he would. Also many thanks to Sharon Weber for aiding our communication and coordination as always.

Last but not least, thanks to all the authors for their hard work on stories that I really enjoyed reading and am proud to edit and include. It was a thrill working with some of my own writing heroes, in universes I myself love exploring. Without further ado, I present Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers, a rich cornucopia of space opera and science fiction adventure that I hope will occupy your minds and dreams for many hours to come.

Bryan Thomas SchmidtOttawa, KSMarch 2019

INTRODUCTION: SWORDS AND SPACESHIPS AND CYBORGS, O MY!

DAVID WEBER

So, how do you improve on Robert Silverberg’s explication of “space opera” in his introduction to the first volume of Infinite Stars?

Answer: you don’t. I went back and reread his essay for the first Infinite Stars when I foolishly accepted Bryan Schmidt’s invitation to write the introduction to Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers. I’d read it the first time around, of course, but time has a way of swallowing things up, and I’d frankly forgotten what a masterful job Silverberg did in providing an expert’s summation of the space opera genre, its evolution, and the matching evolution of the term “space opera” itself. I believe the words “hard act to follow” might reasonably be said to apply.

So instead of talking about what “space opera” is (and, as Silverberg suggested, the term is still very much a matter of “in the eye of the beholder” in a lot of ways), I thought I’d look at two other questions. The first is how space opera differs from military science fiction, and the second is why people write space opera and why people read it.

In Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers, Bryan has assembled a wide-ranging selection of new and reprint entries. There’s something in here for just about anyone’s tastes, and the older stories provide a context, a sense of the way in which the genre has evolved over the years, from C.L. Moore’s “Shambleau” (1933) and Northwest Smith’s… unfortunate decision to rescue a Venusian vampire from a transplanted Transylvania mob, through Robert Heinlein’s “Misfit” (1939) which introduced Andrew Jackson “Slipstick” Libby (one of my favorite Heinlein characters), and Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rescue Party” (1946) in which more or less benevolent aliens discover that those pesky monkey boys and girls from Earth have already rescued themselves, which may not bode well for the rest of the galaxy. Then there’s James Blish, with “Earthman Come Home” (the title story from the first volume of his Cities in Flight series from 1956), with one of the more audacious techniques ever evolved for moving entire cities into space… and, eventually, controlling the end of the universe.

Obviously, all of those stories fit the definition Silverberg quoted from David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer at the end of his introduction: “Henceforth, ‘space opera’ meant, and still generally means, colorful, dramatic, large-scale adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic heroic central character and plot action… and usually set in a relatively distant future and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone.” Some of them fit better than others, and I think there is a generally “darker” feel to this second Infinite Stars collection as a whole, in keeping with the title. For example, neither “Shambleau” nor “Earthman Come Home” are particularly optimistic (about human nature, at least), but like Doc Smith’s “Vortex Blaster” and Clarke’s “Rescue Party,” they are definitely part of the platform upon which more modern space opera rests. And space opera is alive and well today, from works of the seventies and eighties, like The Mote in God’s Eye and Lucifer’s Hammer by those masters of space opera Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, to countless ongoing works like C.J. Cherryh’s many skillfully told stories over the last forty-odd years, from Gate of Ivrel way back in 1976 to her wonderful Foreigner universe (with Emergence, the 19th novel in the series, releasing this past January and the 20th due out soon); Seanan McGuire’s stories (like one of my favorites, “The Life and Times of Charity Smith, Schoolteacher,” included in this anthology); and Steve Miller and Sharon Lee’s delightful Liaden universe, beginning with Agent of Change (February 1988) or Crystal Soldier (February 2005) depending on whether you are a read-them-in-print-order or follow-internal-chronology sort of reader.

But not all of them—by a long chalk—would also qualify as military science fiction.

Let’s begin by establishing that while a great deal of military science fiction fits into the genre category of space opera, not all military science fiction is space opera and not all space opera is military science fiction. They have been joined at the hip since the days of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and the relationship is alive and well today. But while they may be fraternal twins, they are not and never have been identical.

Some military science fiction is easily identified as such. David Drake’s Slammers books, John Ringo and Travis Taylor’s Von Neumann’s War, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War books, and my own Honor Harrington novels fall into that category. Military operations are at the core of the story lines—the stories don’t make sense without the military aspect—and the writers are concerned with portraying not simply the effects and consequences of war on populations in general but also on the institutions and individuals actually fighting the wars. Drake’s Slammers are poster children for PTSD and the alienation of professional soldiers from the civilians around them (and also reflect the callous obliviousness of those civilians in too many instances), and Joe Haldeman’s brilliant Forever War (and its sequels) takes that a long step farther by including the temporal alienation of soldiers set adrift from everything they’ve ever known by the time dilation effect of relativistic cruises between stars. Most of what I consider to be military science fiction also looks closely at the processes of military organizations, although often without worrying the readers’ heads too much over little things like logistics and supply chains. And the best of it, in addition to dealing with the impact of combat operations on human beings, also tries to get inside the military mindset. To understand the dynamics and to explore what is in many ways the ultimate team effort.

There is another subset of military science fiction that tends to concentrate on loners. On individual warriors, often supported by a small core group of loyal companions, who are more often than not at odds with the military institutions around them and win despite those institutions. Stories written about Achilles and not Ajax, one might say. Keith Laumer’s Bolo stories also fall into this category, and they also tend to be very dark, as well, with the mighty cybernetic warriors time and again proving to be far more than their fallible human creators deserve. (I should add that my beloved wife Sharon will not attend any reading of my own Bolo short story in this collection, “The Traitor,” because of the last two lines. Can’t imagine why Bryan would have included it in something subtitled Dark Frontiers.)

Stories about individual warriors can be great adventure stories, and I’ve read a stack of them and enjoyed them a great deal over the years, but by and large they tend to fall outside my rubric of what constitutes military science fiction. It’s worth remembering that Roman legions routinely defeated many times their own number of barbarian warriors. Not because the Romans were any braver or stronger, and certainly not because Italians were bigger than Gauls (they weren’t). They won because they had doctrine, they had uniform and well thought-out equipment, they had training not as individuals but as members of their unit, they had logistics, and above all else, they had discipline. Brilliant individual warriors were no match for the maniples of a Roman army that fought as a team—as a composite machine, built of interlocking cogs that all served the same function.

That distinction is why a lot of “lone warrior” stories slide into the territory of another type of fiction, the sort which Toni Weiskopf described to me many years ago as militaristic science fiction. These are stories which are most often written by people who don’t grasp the military mindset or the way that military organizations have to operate. People who want to write a “military” story but don’t have the window into actual armies or navies or air forces to understand the DNA of the military. They miss the fundamental difference between Achilles and Hector and they usually don’t worry too much about the long-service noncoms, because they simply don’t understand why those Roman legions and those hard-bitten Roman centurions routinely massacred barbarian armies.

Another thing “militaristic” fiction frequently misses is what motivates soldiers or sailors when the shooting starts. It’s seldom patriotism or philosophical purpose at that point. I’m not saying soldiers and sailors aren’t patriots or that they don’t have deeply held moral beliefs and commitments. I’m simply saying that when someone is shooting at you, it’s not the Pledge of Allegiance going through your mind. It’s survival, and it’s the other members of your unit. The men and the women in the crucible with you, who are part of the same team, who depend on you, and upon whom you depend. You may not like all of them very much, but you depend upon them, and that creates a sense of corporate identity and loyalty to one another that never really leaves you.

There are also stories in which the military action is decidedly secondary or viewed primarily as a causative factor for the other things the storyteller really wants to concentrate on. Sort of the way that a tidal wave’s impact can be the “causative factor” in a novel dealing with post-catastrophe survival, perhaps. Orson Scott Card’s Ender stories (represented here by the new story “Messenger”) tend to fall into this category in my mind, and it wouldn’t be implausible to include The Forever War, as well, given how much of it focuses on the returning veterans’ efforts to deal with the consequences of their isolation in both time and life experience.

Clearly, Ender’s Game and The Forever War are both space opera, but so is Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer (although, admittedly, it is set on a single planet) in which the actual military combat—the final defense of the valley and the nuclear power plant—are simply the culmination of a story which is far more interested in testing the ingenuity, audacity, and moral fiber of human beings in the face of worldwide disaster. It’s interested in the ability of people who are primarily civilians, not soldiers, to rebuild and their willingness to pay the price for that rebuilding. And in the same way, the Liaden and Foreigner novels, which have components which may be military (you do not want a Liaden scout’s ship shooting at you, trust me), but whose primary focus is somewhere else entirely, are just as clearly space opera without being what I would classify as military science fiction.

The bottom line is that the descriptor “space opera” is both broader and more… nuanced than readers sometimes realize. It is a very far-stretching genre, which welcomes a vast spectrum of both writers and readers, and one has to wonder why it has such staying power and attracts so many fans.

I think people probably read space opera for as many reasons as there are readers, but I suspect most of them have certain characteristics in common. They like fast-paced stories (for the most part; the tempo of some space opera is much more measured) with consistent world building; characters with whom they can empathize (whether that be to love or to hate the characters in question); large-scale canvases, even for single-character stories painted into a corner of the canvas; plots that make sense (although they like it even better if the writer can keep them guessing or take them in a surprise direction); and writers who play fair with them and with their favorite characters, without ringing in sudden God weapons or authorial intervention when things get a little sticky.

In short, they want to explore worlds their imagination gets to help build while simultaneously experiencing what makes human beings human. Well crafted and executed aliens are a treasure beyond price in space opera—Chuck Gannon’s current Caine Riordan series is a splendid example of that, as are Carolyn Cherryh’s Chanur novels—but ultimately, the reader wants to see how those aliens interact with humans and how the contact changes both species. And because those well crafted and executed aliens are the product of human storytellers, there are going to be points of congruence with humanity within them, because if there aren’t, then a human reader—and the human characters in the story itself—can’t fully connect or engage with them.

I’ve written a space opera or two in my time, and most of mine do include things that explode, but not all of it does. For example, in the Liaden novels (which I’ve already mentioned, possibly because they are some of my favorite stories in the world), Green and Miller handle combat, both on the personal and the ship-to-ship level, very well and military action is definitely a major plot strand in many of the stories, but the emphasis is on the social structures, the elements which define who and what the characters in the books are and how the disparate branches of humanity—Liaden, Terran, and Yxtrang—define themselves as well as the resonances of who they are that each of them discovers in the “otherness” of those “alien” beings. Carolyn Cherryh’s Foreigner novels would fall into that same category of non-military space opera, whereas Downbelow Station has a much stronger, overtly military strand.

At the end of the day, it’s the characters and the challenges those characters confront that make or break any story, and space opera—whether overtly military or not—is no exception to that rule. Where space opera differs from many other genres is the scale upon which those challenges work out. In multivolume space opera series, individual books or stories may be “small-scale,” focused on individual characters or single families or isolated corners of explored space, but those individual stories are linked on a far larger stage. In standalone space opera stories, the scale of the universe is normally made clear quickly. But in almost all cases, the characters’ decisions and challenges have major consequences. Their decisions and actions matter. There may be shades of gray, ambiguity, even dystopia or an antihero slant, but what happens—what responsibility is taken (or evaded) and what the characters do—is important, and usually not just for the protagonist and his or her friends.

I think it’s that scale, more than the number of light years between encounters, that truly draws readers—and writers—to space opera. Space operas are our modern Homeric sagas. They let the storyteller create heroes and villains who operate on playing fields and battlefields where challenges are met and grappled with decisively by characters who, whether by choice or necessity, are called upon to perform at a level above themselves. And they let us, as readers, explore characters who inspire, or caution, or fail because of flaws we might see within ourselves, but who touch us on that deep, inner level where dreams, hopes, emotions, and our sense of our own obligations all flow together.

Writers of space opera are conjurers, the “man behind the screen” creating the narrative and the world in which the reader’s imagination and personal experience interacts with the words to spin spells that neither the writer nor the reader could have created in isolation. As someone who writes space opera, believe me when I tell you that the writers are fully aware of our intimate partnership with our readers. And we’re equally aware that without those readers, our story and our vision must ultimately fail. Space opera is collaboration on a grand scale between the imagination of the storyteller and the imagination of the audience. Neither could succeed without the other, but together they can take us on a voyage beyond any starship without ever leaving our own library.

That’s what truly draws both readers and writers to space opera, and that’s really what the stories in this volume are about. Some of the classic stories—like “Mismatch” and its archaic “slipsticks”—are like messages in a bottle from our own literary past. The contemporary stories in this collection, those that last, will someday be messages in a bottle to someone else’s literary past. But all of them get down into the weeds of what it is to be human, to face challenges, to meet obligations, while at the same time creating worlds that never were or are yet to be as they invite the reader into the storyteller’s magic cave to sit around the fire while the wonders of might-be are unwrapped and laid before him or her.

So find yourself a comfortable rock near the front, where you can keep an eye on that conjurer’s hands and see if you can spot the moment the illusion truly begins. You may not be able to, but I think you’ll probably enjoy the evening, anyway.

Jack Campbell is the pen name of John G. Hemry, whose amazing fiction has appeared in all of the major science fiction magazines. His New York Times bestselling series The Lost Fleet has spawned two sequels, and is one of the most popular military science fiction series currently running. Centered around the legendary John “Black Jack” Geary, The Lost Fleet reveals how he gained his renown, and the various spin-offs continue the chronicle—as does our story, which is a fast-paced tale of a chief gunner’s mate trying to prove her own merit while under the shadow of a legend. Hit with heavy fire and facing boarders, she must push the boundaries of her understanding and military rules in order to save her ship.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:The Lost Fleet is a military science fiction/space opera series set one-hundred-plus years into an interstellar war between two different human cultures: the Alliance and the Syndics. So far the original Lost Fleet series has led to three spin-off series: Beyond the Frontier, The Lost Stars, and The Genesis Fleet. This story takes place a few years after the century-long war began when John “Black Jack” Geary fought a desperate battle to stave off the first Syndic surprise attack. Geary himself is presumed dead and is being celebrated by the Alliance government as a great hero to inspire others in the war effort. The surviving crew of his ship have gone on to other ships and other battles. But all of them remain defined by their status as someone who was present at “Black Jack’s Last Stand.” And each of them feels the need to live up to that. Regardless of who they were before, now they are forever survivors of Black Jack’s crew. This is the story of one of those sailors, and of the gunner’s mates who have always kept the faith no matter how hot the guns get.

ISHIGAKI

A LOST FLEET STORY

JACK CAMPBELL

The former cruise liner, which stripped of its fine furnishings now served as a military transport, had crossed the gulf between stars to arrive at a gas giant planet orbited by half a dozen massive construction yards. Sailors, many of them fresh from their first training, barely noticed the majestic view on display as they were packed into shuttles and distributed to the new warships being built as fast as humans and their devices could do the job. A few of those sailors, probably on their first journey to another star, might have been thinking of the bitter irony that the discovery of a practical means for interstellar travel had also made interstellar war practical, but even they would have insisted that this was not a war of their choosing. Their homes, their families, their freedom had to be defended against those who threatened all three. Though humanity had found new battlefields, it still fought the same wars.

“Chief Gunner’s Mate Diana Magoro reporting for duty.”

“Welcome aboard the Ishigaki,” the nearly-overwhelmed-by-work officer of the deck said, his eyes scanning her data on his pad rather than looking at her face. “Durgan! Take the chief to Ensign Rodriquez.”

A tired-looking sailor gestured to Magoro before heading into the interior of the ship.

She followed past a ship’s crest painted on one bulkhead, a stone tower looming in the center of the crest and the words “Stone Wall of the Alliance” along the bottom. Apparently the name Ishigaki had something to do with that. It wasn’t surprising that a heavy cruiser had such a name, as they were usually called after defensive fortifications or parts of armor. But this was the first time she’d encountered a cruiser named Ishigaki. Traditionally, Alliance ships had tended to pass down the same names as old ships were stricken and new ships constructed. These days, with the Alliance fleet adding warships as fast as they could be built, new names were being revived from the history of humanity far away on Old Earth and the cultures that people had brought with them to the stars.

Along with war. People had brought that, too, of course.

Magoro followed her guide down passageways that were never quite wide enough for all of the personnel moving through them. Cables, conduits and ducts along the sides and the overhead further constricted the passages. Everything about Ishigaki felt new, something Magoro still had trouble getting used to. In the pre-war fleet, nearly every ship had been at least a decade old, sometimes much more than that. Now, nearly every ship felt new.

The old ones were gone. Destroyed in battle, fighting desperately until new ships could be built.

They passed a lot of other sailors, faces and names that were unfamiliar to her but would become well-known before long. Those other sailors glanced at her face, followed by a glance at the ribbons on the left breast of her uniform. Everybody did that. She did it to them. Do I know this person? And what has she done? The face told one story, the service ribbons and medals another.

She hoped no one would notice one of her ribbons. Regulations required her to wear it, but it tended to gather way too much attention.

The sailor left her at a compartment with “Weapons Department” stenciled on the hatch. Inside, several desks fastened to the deck were covered with scattered parts and equipment, many tagged as faulty. A female ensign with a harried expression on a face that seemed too young for an officer looked up as she entered. “Yeah?”

Diana offered her comm pad to the ensign. “Chief Gunner’s Mate Magoro, ma’am.”

“You’re mine?” The ensign stared at her orders. “You’re mine! Welcome aboard, Chief! Have a seat! I’m Ensign Rodriquez. Gunnery Officer. Just a moment while I check your record…”

She jerked with almost comical surprise. “You’ve been in the fleet for ten years?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’ve got ten years of experience as a gunner’s mate?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ten… years?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My ancestors must be smiling on me!” Ensign Rodriquez grinned at her. “An old fleet sailor! With pre-war experience!”

Magoro nodded in reply. Everything today seemed to be measured that way. Not yesterday and today and tomorrow, but pre-war and war and after-the-war, though she’d noticed that after six years of fighting people weren’t mentioning after-the-war as much lately. “I’ve been working on weapons for a while,” she said. Ensign Rodriquez’s reaction to her wasn’t surprising. Many of the old, experienced sailors of the pre-war fleet had died in the first desperate year of the war, and the survivors were now spread thin in the much larger fleet. She felt a bit like a ghost at times, part of a dwindling remnant of what had once been.

“You actually made chief?”

The voice, tinged with what sounded like mock-surprise, was vaguely familiar. As Ensign Rodriquez scrambled hastily to her feet, Magoro stood and turned to see a face she remembered better than the voice. “I see you made commander, sir.”

Ensign Rodriquez, startled by their exchange, took a moment to speak. “Chief, this is Commander Weiss, captain of the Ishigaki. You know Chief Magoro, sir?”

Commander Weiss smiled slightly as he looked at Magoro, but his eyes stayed hard, questioning. “We served together on another ship about six years ago, when I was an ensign.”

“Six years—” Ensign Rodriguez’s voice cut off as she stared at Weiss and then Magoro, her eyes going to the dark ribbon with a bright gold star centered on it. “You were on Merlon, too, Chief? With Black Jack himself?”

Black Jack? “Um… with Commander Geary, yes, ma’am.”

“At his last stand,” Rodriguez said, looking at her in awe that exceeded the previous wonderment at her experience. “Ancestors save me. Ishigaki has two veterans of Black Jack’s last battle aboard!”

Magoro, uncomfortable, looked back at Commander Weiss, who this time gave her the polite smile of a shared past. But the eyes of Ishigaki’s captain remained challenging.

“I’ll talk to you later, Chief,” Weiss said, nodding in farewell to Ensign Rodriquez. It sounded like a simple, polite statement, but to Magoro it carried more than a whiff of a grim promise.

Great. Her past had really caught up with her this time. Magoro listened to Ensign Rodriquez continue her welcome speech and description of the challenges facing the Weapons Division on the Ishigaki, familiar challenges involving new equipment hastily churned out to meet demands and new sailors who had passed technical training but lacked much actual experience. Through it all, half of her mind stayed on Commander Weiss.

She wasn’t looking forward to that talk with the captain.

*   *   *

About four very long hours later, after meeting the sailors who’d be working for her, and making initial inspections of the hell lance batteries, which were in better shape than she had feared but still needed work, Diana Magoro ducked into the chiefs’ mess to grab some coffee. Despite everything else that had changed since the war began, that one thing remained the same. There was always coffee available. It was usually bad coffee that sometimes looked and tasted like tar, but that was also traditional. She shuddered as she took a drink, grateful that it was so hot it helped mask the flavor.

“Diana, right?” Another chief extended his hand to her. “I’m Vlad Darkar. Engineering. Welcome aboard.”

“Hey, Vlad.” She followed the other chief to the small table with chairs fixed around it, grateful for the chance to relax for a moment with another chief who’d give her straight information. “What exactly happened to the guy I’m replacing?”

Vlad shook his head, looking down at his coffee. “He cracked during our work-ups. Couldn’t handle the pressure.” Darkar shifted his gaze to look at her. “Part of that was because he didn’t know the job well enough. You know how that is.”

She nodded. Officially, no one got promoted unless they had the necessary skills. Unofficially, everyone knew that the demand for senior enlisted personnel far exceeded the qualified supply. Some of the “old hands” in a chiefs’ mess probably had only three years of service under their belts.

“I hear you’re old fleet, though,” Darkar continued. His eyes flicked across her ribbons, pausing in their movement as he focused on one in particular. “Damn. You were at Grendel?”

“Yeah.” She took another drink of the coffee to avoid having to say more.

“With Black Jack himself, huh?”

She managed not to frown in puzzlement at Darkar’s use of the nickname. First the ensign and now a chief? “Commander Geary was my captain, yeah.”

Vlad Darkar sat back, his eyes admiring. “What was that like?”

“Grendel, or Commander Geary?”

He grinned. “Both.”

Magoro shrugged. “Grendel was a battle. I was on a hell lance crew. Battery Two Bravo. We knew the odds we were facing, but you do your job, right? We felt the ship accelerating and braking, changing course, and sometimes our gun fired.” Some people in a fight saw the big picture, knew what was happening, but many others saw only their small part of it. She knew it disappointed those who wanted her to describe Geary issuing heroic orders, but she hadn’t been on the bridge. “Then we got hit bad a few times. We took some hell lances right through the battery. They killed some of the guys in the crew, and the hell lance got torn up too bad to fix, so I was sent to another gun crew trying to get their battery back on line. We were still working it when word was passed to abandon ship and we headed for the escape pods.”

She paused, remembering fear and haste amid the minimal light cast by the emergency lights on the badly hurt cruiser, sailors a bit clumsy in their survival suits scrambling past damage, the harsh sound of her breathing inside the suit and the unnatural sharpness of everything she could see with the ship’s atmosphere vented through holes in the hull. “It wasn’t until we boosted clear that most of us on the pod I was in heard that Commander Geary had stayed behind to keep the Merlon fighting a little longer, so we could get away and so the Syndics wouldn’t be able to catch any of the convoy we were escorting.” Guilt lingered whenever she thought about that. But it had been the captain’s decision to stay behind a little longer, and disobeying his orders wouldn’t have been right.

Darkar shook his head in admiration, as if she’d just told some story of her own heroism. “They say that if Black Jack hadn’t stopped that attack force at Grendel the Syndicate Worlds’ surprise attack would’ve done a lot more damage. Maybe enough to have knocked out the Alliance before we could react in time.”

“We just delayed that Syndic flotilla at Grendel,” she said. “And made sure our convoy jumped clear so they could warn about the attacks on the way.”

“But that made all the difference! Black Jack saved the Alliance!” Vlad Darkar leaned a little closer to her. “You talked to him when he was your captain, right?”

“Sure.” Diana Magoro hoped she wouldn’t wince at any of those memories as they flashed through her mind. Especially that one time, standing at attention, waiting for the hammer to fall, knowing she deserved whatever she got.

If she did flinch, the other chief didn’t notice. She managed to redirect the conversation to the state of Ishigaki and her crew, picking up some new information before heading back out to try to catch up with work that should’ve been completed weeks ago.

*   *   *

Diana Magoro was half-inside the bulk of a hell lance particle beam projector when the ship’s interior lights dimmed to mark the official beginning of “night” aboard. Space didn’t care about day and night, but humans needed it. They clung to things from the past, she thought, like the way gunner’s mates called the hell lances “guns” instead of using some more technically accurate name.

She checked the connection on the part she’d finished replacing before pulling herself out of the weapon’s interior and yawning as she stood up.

“Working late?”

She tensed, looking to see Commander Weiss watching her. “Yes, sir. I’ve been personally checking over each hell lance projector.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Diana Magoro I knew on the Merlon,” Weiss said.

“I’ve changed a bit,” Magoro said.

“Hmmm.” Commander Weiss switched his gaze to the hulking hell lance, whose shape tended to remind people of an ancient troll kneeling as it prepared to leap at an opponent. “How are you fitting in?”

“Okay, sir.” Magoro shrugged. “Lots of questions about Merlon and the captain. Commander Geary, I mean.”

“I understand.” Weiss smiled crookedly. “Even though I’m commanding officer of this ship, I know who you’ll be talking about when you say ‘the captain.’ I do the same thing.”

“I guess we all do,” she said. “No disrespect to you intended, sir.”

“Really? You used to skate as close to disrespect as you could.” Weiss paused, his expression growing colder. “Have you told anyone that one of your personal encounters with Commander Geary involved him busting you down two paygrades?”

“No, sir.” Magoro grimaced at the memory. She noticed Weiss waiting for more and realized why. “I deserved it. I admitted it at the time. You were there. And I haven’t done that since, sir. Nothing like that.”

Commander Weiss made a face. “Falsifying maintenance records. Hacking system records to hide it. You know why I’m worried.”

“Because now I’m responsible for making sure the hell lances on this ship work. Your ship. I haven’t done it since, sir. Commander Geary gave me a second chance. I was stupid back then, but not too stupid to realize how lucky I was.”

“Lieutenant Commander Decala wanted to court-martial you and kick you out of the fleet,” Weiss said.

“So I heard.”

Weiss sighed. “We really need an experienced chief gunner on this ship.” He gestured around the ship surrounding them. “You know what we’re facing. The crew’s been rushed through training. Actual experience is rare. They know the theory, but they haven’t got the time working with the gear.”

“Yes, sir. It’s a familiar problem these days.”

Commander Weiss studied her again while Magoro waited. “Chief, if you pull anything on Ishigaki like you did on Merlon, I won’t court-martial you. Instead I’ll let the fleet commander have you shot for malfeasance in the face of the enemy.”

“Then I have nothing to worry about,” Magoro said, feeling her stomach knot and hoping it didn’t show. “Because I’m going to do my best, sir. And I know this job.” To emphasize her words she stood straight and offered Weiss the best salute she could manage.

Weiss cocked one eyebrow at her. “Maybe you’ll be okay. You’re certainly not the same. The Diana Magoro I remember was always getting chewed out for sloppy saluting and sloppy bearing and sloppy uniforms. Now, on a ship full of new sailors who can barely wear the uniform right and have trouble saluting without hurting themselves, I’m seeing you in a flawless uniform and rendering salutes so sharp I could shave with one of them.”

Magoro grinned despite her nervousness. “I have to be a good example now, sir.”

“I’m glad that you realize that. You were my biggest problem child when I was an ensign.” Commander Weiss nodded at her. “Don’t be a problem now. I’ve got a lot to deal with. Six years from ensign to commander of a heavy cruiser is a fast leap.”

“Six years from being busted back to the lowest grade of sailor to chief is pretty fast, too, sir.”

“They need our experience, limited as it is,” Weiss said. “And we have to make sure we don’t let down those depending on us. Especially you and me. People look at us differently because we were on the Merlon at Grendel.”

“I’ve noticed,” Magoro said, drawing a real smile from Commander Weiss this time. “Sir? How many of us who got off the Merlon are left? Does anyone know?”

The smile faded. “I think there’re about fifty survivors who haven’t joined their ancestors yet. Probably less than that now. We lose some with every battle.”

Magoro grimaced. “It feels wrong. To die, I mean. Because Commander Geary gave his life to make sure the rest of us got off the ship. Dying seems like betraying what he gave his life for. That sounds kind of stupid, doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Weiss said. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“Sir, can I ask you something about Commander Geary? What’s with this Black Jack stuff? I try not to get too involved in talk about that, but it’s getting kind of weird, isn’t it? I mean, Commander Geary was a good commanding officer. I owe him a lot, not even counting him saving our lives at Grendel. But I think back on Merlon I heard somebody whisper that Black Jack nickname once and everybody said don’t ever do that again, he hates that name. And now people who never knew him are calling him Black Jack like they’re old shipmates and talking like he was a living star come to save us.”

Weiss looked to the side, his expression troubled. “You’re right that he hated that nickname. Just like you hated being called Gundeck Magoro.”

She winced. “Yes, sir. But that nickname didn’t follow me.”

“Hopefully that’s for a good reason. As for Black Jack, even ensigns like me knew better than to say it anywhere Commander Geary might hear us. But it’s part of the way the fleet is treating his memory. The new people are being told stories about Commander Geary, about how amazing he was. I can’t really talk to them because if I say he was just human they look… betrayed or something. I guess the Alliance needs a hero, he got the job, and using the Black Jack nickname makes him feel like one of us even though he was supposedly more than us.”

“I guess it can’t hurt him,” Magoro said, “him being dead at Grendel and all, but it doesn’t seem right. I mean, it’s good to remember the best things about people who’re dead, but making up stuff seems wrong. I figure that has to bother his spirit.”

Commander Weiss shrugged. “Commander Geary’s spirit can probably handle anything thrown at it. I’d rather you worried about the guns on this ship. Your record since Grendel looks good, so I’ll give you the same chance Geary did. Don’t make me sorry I did, Chief.”

“You won’t be, sir.”

*   *   *

“Did everybody get that?” Diana Magoro said, looking at the rank of gunner’s mates who’d just watched her demonstrate a complex maintenance task. “You have to get this right. Hell lances use a big burst of energy when they fire. That energy has to be handled right and built up to the right level at the right rate of increase. You do not get slack with any step of this.”

“Ma’am?” one of the younger looking sailors asked.

“Do not call me or any other chief ma’am, or sir,” Magoro said. “We work for a living.”

“I’m sorry! Chief, what if we’re asked to power up the weapons faster than the procedures call for?”

Somebody always asked that. The answer was always the same. “You tell the bridge that they’re being powered up as fast as they can be.”

“But what if it’s an emergency? Can’t we shave even a little time off by pushing against the safety parameters?”

That called for a Chief’s Glare at Maximum Intensity. “No. Everybody! What happens if you try to power up a hell lance too quickly?”

A gunner’s mate named Bandera raised a tentative hand. “Um… doesn’t that cause a Catastrophic Energy Containment Failure, Chief?”

“Very good. Take an extra cookie tonight at dinner.” Magoro kept her glare fixed as she swept it across the sailors before her. “For those who like small words, another way of saying Catastrophic Energy Containment Failure is explosion. If you somehow survived that explosion, the fleet would bend every effort to keep you alive just long enough for a firing squad to be collected so they could kill you legal and proper. Don’t mess with the safety parameters on the gear! Because if you do and the gear doesn’t kill you, and the fleet doesn’t kill you, I’ll kill you. Got it?”

“Yes, Chief!” they chorused.

After the others left, Bandera stayed behind. “Chief? Can I ask you something?”

He was a hard worker, and enthusiastic in a naïve way that both pleased her and pained her. Life in the fleet would wear down that enthusiasm in time, but for now she liked him. “Sure. What?”

“That stuff about powering up the hell lances faster,” he said, looking hesitant. “When we graduated from tech school, some of the older gunner’s mates took us out to celebrate and while we were all drinking some of them started talking about ways to power up faster.” The sailor swallowed nervously as he saw Magoro’s reaction to his words. “I just… Chief, why’d they talk about doing that if it’s so dangerous?”

She sighed, looking over at the bulk of the nearest hell lance. “It’s a challenge. That’s why. We’re gunners. We want to play with the guns. Tweak them, test them, try new stuff. I’ll bet you the very first gunner who was shown the very first hell lance immediately started trying to think of ways to make it power up faster. It’s natural for us to wonder about that. But it’s stupid.”

Magoro looked back at the sailor, who she was pleased to see was watching her with an appropriately sober expression. “Before the war, when all we had were drills and maintenance to keep us busy, some gunner’s mates on a lot of different ships decided to spice things up by having a secret competition. They tried to see who could power up a hell lance faster, shaving tens of seconds or even hundredths of seconds off the process so their ship would have bragging rights. What do you think eventually happened?”

The sailor winced. “An explosion?”

“Yeah. Somebody shaved off just a little too much time, energy containment failed, an entire gun crew died, and the investigation into the accident found out about the competition. That was peacetime, so nobody was shot, but a lot of people ended up wishing they’d been in the gun crew that did die.”

“I understand, Chief. Thank you!” Bandera hustled away.

Magoro heard someone clear their throat and looked to see that Ensign Rodriquez had been listening. “That was great, Chief,” she said. “I couldn’t help listening, and… that’s just what they needed to hear. Follow the rules.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Magoro eyed the ensign. “Ma’am, you know that there are circumstances when you shouldn’t follow the rules, right? That’s one reason why we’re here instead of letting ’bots do the job, because the ’bots always follow the rules even when that’d be stupid. But the thing is, those new guys don’t know what those circumstances are. It’s our job to know when we need to do things a little different.”

Ensign Rodriguez hesitated. “Chief, were you…?”

“Part of the competition before the war? No, ma’am. I joined the fleet a couple of years after that came to light. Lots of people were still talking about it, of course.”

“Of course.” Ensign Rodriguez hesitated again. “Uh, Chief, when it comes to deciding when not to follow the rules…”

She tried to look reliable and reassuring. “I understand, ma’am. I won’t use any initiative without asking permission beforehand.”

“Good! Good!” Rodriguez hustled out, on her way to do some more of whatever it was officers did.

Diana Magoro stood alone for a while in the hell lance battery compartment, thinking about the mistakes she had made. It wasn’t about being perfect, she told herself. It was about learning and not doing that sort of stupid thing again.

“I think you’re smart enough to learn from this,” Commander Geary had told her more than six years ago as she nearly shook with fright. “I think you can be a good gunner’s mate. Prove me right.”

She still didn’t know whether the captain had been right. But she wasn’t ready to stop trying.

A week later the Ishigaki joined up with a group of other warships taking on supplies. When they headed out afterwards, even the dumbest sailor knew the cruiser was headed for her first fight.

*   *   *

A long, high-pitched, wavering whistle sounded over the ship’s general announcing system. Conversation in the chiefs’ mess halted as they waited for whatever announcement followed.

“All hands, this is the captain. We’re part of a task force headed for Kairos Star System,” Commander Weiss said. “That’s a Syndicate Worlds–held star near the border region of space. The fleet is preparing a major attack on Atalia Star System, so our job is to carry out a successful diversion to draw Syndicate warships to the defense of Kairos, leaving Atalia weakened when our main force hits it. Be prepared to hit the Syndics hard and fast, then live up to Ishigaki’s name as we fight a delaying action against Syndicate reinforcements. To the honor of our ancestors!”

Diana Magoro looked upward, puzzled. “That’s a new one. Why tell us where the real attack is going in? What if some of us get captured?”

“Did the captain tell us where the real attack is going in?” Chief Drakar asked. “Or is it really going to be someplace other than Atalia?”

“A double diversion?” Chief Kantor from fire control looked worried. “Send the Syndics scrambling to Atalia if some of our people crack under interrogation? But that’d mean the brass are hoping some of us get captured and spill our guts about what we heard.”

“Yeah,” Magoro agreed. “I hope you’re wrong, Vlad. I’d rather believe the fleet brass didn’t think things through. Based on experience, that’s not too hard to believe.”

“You’re the old sailor,” Chief Darkar said with a laugh.

“Anyway,” Kantor added, “I heard the Syndics aren’t always taking prisoners anymore. Unless they think we have some special information, they’d probably just shoot us.”

“Aren’t you the cheerful one,” Darkar said, no longer laughing.

“I’m just a realist,” Kantor said. “The war’s stalemated, isn’t it? Who knows how long it could go on? And I know my history. The longer a war goes on, the worse it gets.”

*   *   *

Jump drives made interstellar travel routine, allowing ships to use jump points that existed only near objects as massive as stars to enter a gray nothingness called jump space that shrank distances so that another star was only a week or two travel time away. Diana Magoro had long ago decided that traveling through jump space was like being in an apparently endless fall. You could do things, work, eat, sleep, but hanging over it all was the realization that you weren’t really anywhere and that at some point the whole thing would abruptly end. And it was then, that moment when your ship lurched back into normal space, that things could really get bad.

Since they were arriving at an enemy star system, everyone was at battle stations when the drop out of jump space occurred. Magoro was in charge of the port hell lance batteries, while Ensign Rodriguez was with one of the starboard batteries. She’d chosen to post herself at battery Two Bravo, forward of amidships but not at the bow. Two linked hell lance projectors sat facing the firing ports, their energy cells maxed, ready to fire on command. Magoro and the three members of this battery’s gun crew were all in survival suits, ready in case enemy fire put a hole in the hull and the atmosphere in the compartment vanished into space.

As a chief, Magoro had the benefit of being able to link her survival suit’s internal display to the fire control status, so she was able to see what was happening outside the ship.

The entire task force had dropped into normal space. A battle cruiser, four heavy cruisers of which Ishigaki was one, two light cruisers, and a dozen destroyers. They were in a spherical formation, the battle cruiser in the center, the heavy cruisers spaced around, above, and below it, and the light cruisers and destroyers making up the outer portion of the sphere. She gazed at the image, thinking that before the war that “small” task force would’ve represented a substantial fraction of the entire Alliance fleet.

The jump point they’d arrived at was a good four light hours from the star Kairos. The sole inhabited world in this star system orbited about three and half light hours from here. No enemy forces were near the jump point, but Magoro saw a Syndic flotilla only a light hour distant. It seemed to be about the size of the Alliance force.

It’d be an hour before the Syndicate forces saw the arrival of the attacking warships, but the Alliance task force wasn’t going to wait for that. Magoro felt the force of Ishigaki’s main propulsion cut in as it and the other Alliance ships accelerated toward an intercept with the enemy formation.

*   *   *

Damn. Damn. Damn.

At point-one light it had taken more than half a day to cover the distance between the opposing forces, the Syndics only accelerating in the last hour before contact.

Magoro wasn’t an officer, wasn’t trained in the skills of fighting in a three-dimensional battlefield with no limits, no up or down, and distances so immense that light itself, and messages sent at the speed of light, took seconds, minutes, and even hours to bridge the gap.

But she’d seen a few battles since Grendel, and as the two forces closed to engage this one had felt wrong. Clumsy. Unimaginative. She couldn’t have said why, but maybe it was just because the admiral in charge of the Alliance force was charging straight in without trying any fancy maneuvers. How much experience did that admiral have? Six years ago, today’s admiral could have been a lieutenant. If that.

The first pass had been a brutal exchange of fire that rocked Ishigaki. Magoro monitored the performance of the starboard hell lance batteries as they hurled streams of charged particles during those moments when enemy ships were close enough to target. The second pass was better as the enemy concentrated fire on other Alliance warships, and Ishigaki’s own fire helped knock out a Syndic cruiser. Unfortunately, two Alliance heavy cruisers had been taken out, one of the light cruisers had exploded, and six destroyers were gone. The Syndics hadn’t been hurt as badly, but at least the Alliance battle cruiser was still in decent shape.

On the third pass, Ishigaki took two enemy missiles followed immediately by a barrage of hell lances and grapeshot. The heavy cruiser’s shields collapsed, the enemy fire lashing the hull. Hell lances punched holes through everything in their way, while the solid metal ball bearings that made up grapeshot either tore their own holes or gave up their energy in flashes of heat that shattered anything they hit.

Two enemy hell lance shots went through the compartment that Magoro was in. She didn’t see them, only the holes bigger than her fist that suddenly appeared on the outer hull, on the casings of one of Ishigaki’s hell lance batteries, and on the inner bulkhead and deck as the enemy particle beams tore through anything in their path.

Which also included two of the gun crew. One of them didn’t move, a large hole completely through one side of his chest, his body lax in death. The other stared at the thin strip still holding her upper arm to her body, the rest of that part of the arm gone.

As atmosphere rushed out of the ship, Magoro slapped an auto-tourniquet on the sailor’s arm above the injury, the device latching on, slicing cleanly through her survival suit and the arm beneath to seal off the wound. Magoro punched the first aid controls on the sailor’s suit to have it slam sedative and anti-shock drugs into her. “Bandera, take her to sick bay.”

The remaining member of the gun crew stared at her. “Chief? But… but… the guns.”

“They took hits. They’re off-line. I’ll see if they can be repaired. Get ’Ski to the sick bay so they can save her and then get back here.”

“Yes, Chief.”

Magoro glanced at the status of the other starboard hell lance batteries, shocked to see that all of them were out of action. “I need status reports on batteries Two Alpha and Two Charlie!” she called over the internal comm circuit for the guns.

“This is Richards in Two Alpha,” a quavering voice answered her. “Both of our guns are gone.”

“Gone doesn’t tell me status, Richards! How much damage did the guns take?”

“They’re gone