Timmons never pulled his hand back. He took his piece and executed a double jump before Kim could react. It was like catching the snitch.
The werewolf threw his arms in the air and stood up from the chow hall table. “The undisputed combat checker champion!” he howled.
Timmons waggled his formerly broken fingers to make sure he was back up to full speed. Kimber crossed her arms and groaned.
“You gave it—” Auburn started.
Kimber turned to glare. “Don’t you dare say, ‘your best.’ I lost!”
“Ever since Kae left, you’ve become a bit competitive.” Auburn wanted to bring the issue into the open. He wanted the Kimber of old back.
“Do you like my haircut?” she asked.
“Whoa! That escalated quickly.” Auburn held his hands out in front of him as he pushed his chair backward.
“I don’t understand,” Kailin asked Christina. She smiled at him.
“So young, and so naïve.” She patted the top of his head.
“I must have been absent that day.” Kai scowled and pushed Christina’s hand away.
“Does this shipsuit make me look fat?” Christina asked him, pulling his chin around with a finger until he looked at her.
“You look amazingly beautiful.” He beamed.
“You didn’t answer my question!” She pounced. “It does. I’ve let myself go, and you hate me.”
He recoiled in horror, and she started to laugh.
“You about gave me heart failure. Of course, it doesn’t make you look fat. Why can’t you say what you really mean?”
“So naïve,” Kimber said. Auburn blew out the breath he’d been holding, happy to be out of the limelight.
The comm crackled to life. It didn’t have to sound like that since it was efficient without background noise or wired interference, but Colonel Terry Henry Walton had asked Smedley to include it for old time’s sake. The AI had quipped about TH showing his age, but everyone seemed to like it as a heads-up that a message was inbound. The mess deck instantly quieted so everyone could hear.
“TH is on his way back to the ship,” Char reported. The system crackled again to suggest that was the end of the transmission.
“That’s it?” Kai asked.
“She’s mad at him,” Kim told him nonchalantly.
“Oh, yeah,” Sue agreed. “That’s our cue. We better catch that shuttle back to the station.”
Timmons stood and offered his hand to help Sue up.
“How are your brains wired?” Kai wondered aloud, pushing away from the table so he could take in the crowd. “TH is on his way back. It’s a trivial thing, but something to be aware of.”
Kimber shook her head impatiently, ticking the numbers off on her fingers as she spoke. “One. He was supposed to be back last night. Two. She never makes an announcement regarding his coming and going since they do it all the time. Three. No emotion in her voice.”
“That says it all.” Christina shrugged as if it were as obvious as the nose on her face.
“No emotion means Grandma’s angry now.” Kai threw his hands up in surrender.
“Of course, when taken in conjunction with the other two points.” Kimber fixed her son with a hard look. He stared blankly back at her, a look she’d seen too often during his formative years.
“What do you think will happen when he gets back?” Kai asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll probably get a new assignment. It’s been too long, and I’m getting antsy.”
“Me, too,” Christina said. “Let’s see what’s up. Maybe we’ll have something juicy like a war over fruity drinks on a pleasure planet.”
Kai grinned broadly at Christina’s wink. They stood together and held hands as they headed toward the hangar deck.
Chapter Two
The Myriador destroyer crept closer, slowing as it reached the limits of sensor range. “Anything?”
“No, Lord Mantis. There is no indication that these creatures are aware of our presence.”
“Full stop,” the commander ordered. The crew complied instantly and without question.
The ship’s commander studied the sensor feedback, letting the system cycle a third and fourth time before continuing.
“Ahead point two percent light speed.” The ship’s maximum speed was fifty percent, but it took months to reach it, and then months to slow down from it. The lord lusted over a Gate drive, a system that would replace their backward technology.
But they had the cloak, and were invisible to the alien invaders. They had rudimentary yet effective weapons, and they weren’t afraid to use them. To the contrary—Mantis relished the opportunity. Only three times previously in the history of the Myriador had an alien invasion been detected, but those had been nothing like this. Single ships attempting to colonize inner systems of the Dren Cluster had been dealt with, further reinforcing the Myriador’s xenophobia. No alien could stand before them.
Mantis wouldn’t be the commander who let his people down, even though this infestation was orders of magnitude more complex.”
“To be the greatest, one must rise to the greatest challenge,” he mused. “Take us into the enemy fleet. Prepare to drop mines.”
The station’s shuttle maneuvered slowly into the hangar bay, guided by Smedley’s steady AI hand. Cory was first out, followed by Terry Henry Walton. Sue and Timmons held up their hands and slapped high fives on their way into the vehicle for return to Spires Harbor. No one said anything. Terry realized how tired he was after running drills for nearly twenty-four hours straight. Cory didn’t look much better.
Char stood in the doorway that led into the War Axe. Her arms were crossed, and she impatiently tapped a foot.
TH smiled at her. “You know me…” he started, but she cut him off by tipping her head and looking out from under darkened brows.
“Shoe shopping on Onyx Station,” Char declared.
“Done!” Terry said happily, stopping when Char started to shake her head.
“Complete honeymoon package.”
“I like the sound of that.” He sidled in and slid his arm around her waist. Peering into her eyes, he realized that wasn’t all of it.
“For Cory and me to enjoy some alone time.”
He deflated, the final nail hammered into his joy coffin.
“Fine. I’ll work extra at the bar. It’ll be one big party while you’re gone, but don’t think about that.”
Char smiled and leaned in and kissed him. “We won’t.” Her eyes continued to sparkle.
“Did you tell him?” Cory asked, leaning around her father to see her mother.
Char nodded and winked.
Cory started to laugh, understanding the subtle word jousting that had taken place. Her parents knew the end result before saying their first words, but they continued the back-and-forth, each giving in their own way, never letting the magic of play fade from their relationship.
Even after a hundred and fifty years.
“Welcome back, Colonel Walton,” General Smedley Butler, the ship’s AI greeted TH, interrupting the family reunion. “Do you have a new mission for us?”
“I’ll review the RFPs (Requests For Proposals) after I’ve had a shower and some chow and gotten some shut-eye.” Hand in hand, Terry and Char headed up the stairs and deeper into the War Axe.
Cory had never understood her father’s fanatical devotion to the language of his distant past. He refused to give up his roots. Her mother had left her short stint in the Navy far behind. One would never know that she had served, but the Marines had left an indelible mark on Terry Henry Walton.
It had served him well, and would again.
“What the hell happened?” Merrit shouted from the warship-turned-operations center for Spires Harbor, the fastest-growing shipyard in the entire galaxy. Vented atmosphere and internal materials created an expanding cloud at the edge of the fleet. “What ship was that?”
“Frigate 471,” Ben In Ralls, the Harborian manning the console
replied. His fingers flew across the panel as he sought more information. “The ship simply exploded.”
“Ships don’t explode for no reason,” Shonna, the other half of the werewolf pair tasked with running the shipyard, noted. “Personnel on board?”
“None,” Ben replied instantly.
“Replay video, expand and enhance.”
“On the main screen,” Dionysus replied. The AI, who was normally tasked with running Keeg Station, was assisting Spires Harbor until an appropriate artificial intelligence could be convinced that it was not beneath it to run a shipyard.
Shonna and Merrit moved closer to the screen and stared at it. Merrit pointed, and Shonna nodded. “Replay at one-tenth normal speed,” Merrit ordered.
The frames flowed slowly past. “Mark one,” Merrit noted. The video continued. “Mark two. Replay from twenty frames prior to mark one to mark two, and slow to two percent of normal.”
Shonna pointed at the location where the explosion started. They watched it tear into the ship, and then secondary explosions blew the ship apart.
“Dionysus, did you see what we saw?”
“An explosion from the outside in.”
“Exactly. What would do that?”
“I’m sorry, Merrit. Insufficient data.”
“Prepare a Pod, please. We’re going out there to take a look and collect material samples for analysis,” Merrit replied.
The commander didn’t smile. “One down, more than a hundred to go,” he stated clinically. “Prepare magnetic grapples for the remaining stock of mines. We’ll deploy them directly onto the enemy ships.”
“Yes, my lord.” The weapons specialist tapped the order into his console and leaned back, refusing to meet his commander’s gaze. There were fewer mines than enemy ships.
“Show the pattern onscreen,” the commander ordered.
Instantly, the deployed mines appeared as a grid. The gaps were wider than the commander was comfortable with, but there were too many intruders, and space was immense.
“Target these vessels here and here.” The commander pointed to ships at the edge of the pattern. The destroyed enemy ship had accidentally contacted the far edge of the Myriador minefield.
“The aliens have deployed a small ship to examine the wreckage,” the ship’s pilot reported.
“It changes nothing, except to compress our timeline. Make sure your people are working as expeditiously as possible. No breaks or meals until the grapples are ready. We’ll begin phase two within two hours. Make sure the mines are ready.”
The weapons specialist stood up from his position, saluted, and hurried from the bridge. There was no choice but to be ready to deploy on the commander’s order.
“These are some bullshit jobs, Nathan,” Terry told the comm screen.
The leader of the Bad Company shrugged. “Success gets you either more work or less. In this case, you are a victim of your own success, in that the systems would rather work out their issues themselves since Bad Company isn’t your usual work-for-hire military team. You resolve the problem, and as often as not, it’s the group that hired you that’s the problem.”
“They hire us for our brains as much as for our brawn.” Terry leaned back and blew out a breath. He didn’t have anything else to say. “I can’t take any of these. These are petty squabbles for which they offer to pay next to nothing. Looks like the Bad Company will sit idle until something better comes along. Do we need to make a video or something?”
“A video? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Advertising. We need paying customers. Isn’t that what companies do when looking for customers? I find it appalling that I have to advertise for my All Guns Blazing franchise, but I do. Word of mouth should be enough, but it’s not. Aren’t we in that same place?”
“No,” Nathan replied without further explanation.
Terry waited. Nathan waited better. Terry finally caved.
“Do I have to take one of these jobs?”
Nathan snickered. “You do not. I don’t want the Bad Company to be relegated to insignificance through minor actions that imply you’re no better than cheap mercenaries.”
“You could have started with that,” Terry replied, making a face at the screen.
“I only wanted to ensure that we’re on the same page. I knew we would be. What I’m working on behind the scenes is a deal with Lance Reynolds for the Bad Company’s Direct Action Branch to become more of a strike team for the Federation. They have work that needs to be done, but the official capacity versus unofficial is yet to be worked out. Funding isn’t a problem since the Federation’s economic engine is revving at high speed.”
“Money is good, Nathan, but I don’t really care about that except in how it allows us to keep doing what we’re doing. I’ve always wanted to make a difference for the better.”
“I know, TH. You’re a rare soul, and we don’t want to burn you out or let you think you’ve been dumped on the trash heap of history.” Nathan rubbed his chin in thought.
Even a man like Colonel Terry Henry Walton needed the respect of people he respected. He didn’t want to live within the echo chamber of his own mind. He trusted Char’s counsel, but she was on the inside with him. They didn’t see what Nathan Lowell saw. They didn’t have the big picture. Very few people did.
“I appreciate that, Nathan.”
“Keep training, and I think we’ll have some better options for you soon.”
“I’ll have Smedley send the rejections to these. I think we’ll have a bistok roast in celebration.” Terry waved and stood.
“Whoa!” Nathan exclaimed.
TH quickly sat when he realized he wasn’t wearing pants. He had put on his uniform shirt for the call, expecting it to be quick and thinking they’d disconnect before either went their merry way.
“I don’t know what to say,” Terry said to the screen, face turning red around the perpetual stubble of his beard.
Nathan stared at the screen until his image faded to black. “Smedley! Make sure we’re disconnected and send rejections to all the RFPs in the queue.”
“Yes, Colonel Walton. You are disconnected. There is one RFP you have not yet reviewed. Do you want me to send the reject notice to that one, too?”
“I’ll take a look first. You never know if there is a gem hidden within.” Terry had started to stand, but sat back down and accessed the queue to bring up the latest request. “Holy shit!”
“Are the Harborian ships that weak?” Merrit asked.
Shonna groaned at the size of the expanding debris field. The small pieces radiated outward, and very few of the remains were recognizable. Merrit shook his head. “One explosion and the ship was vaporized.”
“More or less.” Shonna, an engineer by trade, didn’t understand how the redundancies and bulkheads had not isolated the explosion, limiting it to the section where it had started. She leaned toward the Pod’s viewscreen and asked the bits and pieces, “What happened to you?”
“I wish it was that easy,” Merrit told her. “Scanning for the computer core to see if it knows more than we do, but I don’t have high hopes. That ship was in cool storage, floating harmlessly at the edge of the fleet, minimal station-keeping engaged. Did it float into something?”
“The only thing it could have floated into that would have done that is—” Shonna’s face dropped, and her heart started to race.
“Mines,” they said together.
“Dionysus, please activate the Harborian fleet and start scanning for mines in and around the ships, then expand the search to the area between the fleet and the station,” Shonna ordered.
“Activating and scanning. It will take a few minutes to bring the systems online and correlate the data.”
“Standing by,” Shonna replied before tapping the screen of the Pod. “For now, I think running minimal power and staying exactly where we are is important.”
“I couldn’t agree more. We’ll find the core and anything else on
ce it’s confirmed whether we’re in a minefield or not.”
“How in the hell could mines get deployed here? That makes no sense whatsoever. Do that many people know we’re here?”
“We have a Gate now, so maybe yes?”
“But no one’s come through that Gate that we don’t know!” Shonna threw up her hands in frustration, then froze as if she didn’t want to shake the ship.
“If it’s psychological warfare, it appears that they, whoever ‘they’ may be, are already winning.”
Chapter Three
The emergency klaxons sounded on the War Axe. TH nearly jumped out of his skin but recovered quickly, tearing off his uniform shirt and jumping into his shipsuit, cursing how long it was taking all the while. He stuffed his feet into his boots and bolted from the room, Char holding the door as he raced through on his way to the bridge. She pounded down the corridor, close on his heels.
What’s going on? Terry relayed using his internal comm chip. Confusion gripped his mind.
There’s been an incident in the shipyard, Colonel. We’re assuming an emergency posture as a precaution, Micky replied.
Be there in a few, Terry replied. He couldn’t imagine what kind of calamity would cause the War Axe to go to General Quarters.
“Something happened in Spires Harbor,” he told Char as they ran.
“How would that…” She let the thought drift off since she figured TH had already asked the question.
“We’ll find out soon enough. The only thing I can think of is that Ten has escaped and is trying to take over the Harborian fleet, but that makes even less sense.”
“It would be alarming,” Char quipped over the klaxons.
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